The other minute, when I opened the sources of my Semantic Gallery extension for MediaWiki, I noticed that I had been mixing tabs and spaces again. So it was time to look up the VIM feature which allows you to put a configuration line in a comment at the bottom of a file. This quote is another perfect example of why it’s good practice to blog about such things. I remembered that the last time that I had wanted to do this, I could not find a useful search string at all and resorted to finding back an example in the code where I had first seen it and modifying that. Now, I thought I’d have to do the same, but from a quick googling I learned that I’m not the only one to use his blog as a memory extension.

Good. Hopefully, from now on, I’ll remember that this configuration-thingy-at-the-bottom-of-a-file is called a modeline, so that I can just enter :help modeline in VIM the next time that I forget where the colons have to go.

An example for when I do forget:

# vim:set ts=4 sw=4 noexpandtab:

This reminds me of my many searches for Heredoc syntax when I didn’t know that they were called Heredocs.

I was very flattered when I was asked by Jeroen to give some SEO advice in the test stage of his website. I was even happier when I saw how well he had implemented my suggestions. In his concert photography section, he now has links consisting of the event name and the band name and the number of the photo. An example URL: http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/noordschok-2007/prey-band/1/. Also his page titles follow the same structure. As is often the case with SEO, the best results are acquired by remembering that good URLs are URLs which are cool enough that you won’t want to change the in the future and that good titles are titles which look good anywhere, be it in a bookmark or a search result.

I also noticed that, following some evangelizing on semantics and CSS from me, he had greatly cleaned up the HTML markup. Some pages could still profit from some bettermore pedantic markup though. An example from the news section (cleaned up for readability):

<p> The following bands played:<br>
 - <a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/eluveitie-band/">Eluveitie</a><br>
 - <a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/thy-majestie-band/">Thy  Majestie</a><br>
 - <a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/drottnar-band/">Drottnar</a><br>
 
 - <a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/whispering-gallery-band/">Whispering Gallery</a><br>
</p>

In my opinion, the above is a very awkward way to define what is really an unordered list:

<p>The following bands played:</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/eluveitie-band/">Eluveitie</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/thy-majestie-band/">Thy  Majestie</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/drottnar-band/">Drottnar</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://jeroen-dekker.com/concerts/fear-dark-festival-hedon-12-mei-2007/whispering-gallery-band/">Whispering Gallery</a></li>
</ul>

Finally, a nice touch that I noticed on his site is that he doesn’t have explicit pagination. By this I mean that clicking on the page 2 link simply takes you to the first photo on that page, so that he needs only an URL for each photo and not an URL for each page or even photoset.

We started our mental journey in her bedroom, after she had created a little atmosphere by lighting a few candles and turning off the electrical lights. Soon after we started—I was sitting against the wall with my knees stretched while she was sitting in front of me, cross-legged on a small sitting bag—my mind started wandering. My thoughts moved uncontrollably while my body vibrated uneasily. My breathing was very convulsive and I found it hard to return to my mantra. (For the uninitiated, a mantra is the word or phrase which you repeat to yourself to quell away any thoughts that occur during meditation.)

Some time passed with my awareness moving around. It moved from the strangeness of this new environment to my unfamiliarity with this strange girl—a beautiful new friend whom I could hardly believe to be sitting there in front of me to share this bizarre, new sensation. I was still in a nervous mind. All the hopes and fears regarding myself and this person kept my mind away from the deep acceptance and love that where present in the moment.

After some time, my breathing did steady a bit and my mind did center a bit (and my legs and my butt started hurting a bit), but it wasn’t until the moment that my watch announced the end of the meditation that I started to realize how deep I had been affected by this session.

When, after 20 minutes, we both reopened our eyes, we started to exchange experiences. I noted that even my belly was wet with clammy sweat as were my palms, my armpits and my back. I noted that, to me, it felt as if this was the result of the enormous tension which I had released. While I said these things and as we spoke further, I experienced a novel feeling of acceptance and peace. I was awe-struck when she told me how her experience had also been so much more powerful than what she was used to. She described to me that, with her eyes closed, she had seen me as an energetic silhouette or shadow with my Chakras visible to her and connected to hers. We continued to talk for a very pleasant little while, in a still somewhat connected state, until we were called to dinner.

The moment, later that evening, that I finally had to let go of her company, I was filled with a lonely feeling of melancholy and sadness, even of despair.

For many months, something under the surface had been causing me a recurring need, but no actual cause, to cry or shout or do whatever else is needed to let go of whatever it was that often made me feel miserably melancholic. Now, that feeling was stronger than I ever remembered it to be. I wanted to cry to let it go but nothing happened. I tried to wallow in the feeling, but that only made it worse.

Two nights before yesterday night had been the first night that I reluctantly, but somewhat seriously, had told myself that I was o.k.. That was a first in my life. I even went as far as to tell myself that I was o.k. the way I was, which somehow, until yesterday evening, was a big thing. It was so big a thing, in fact, that there’s nothing in my life of which I’ve been more scared than simply admitting that there’s nothing I need to do before I am acceptable.

Yesterday evening I felt truly accepted, and it didn’t come from me. It came from Iris. Her accepting presence butchered the possibility of not accepting myself. Now, I’m clumsily crawling back to that haven of peace, because, after we had to disconnect, I was left to my own devices. She was no longer there to accept me for me. Now I have to accept me for myself, and I’m still feeling the healing of a painful wound. Not many days ago this wound was still almost invisible. I could only feel the hurting and not where it was from. Now I know where it’s from. After my experience with Iris, I also know how it feels without. Even though that difference makes the hurting so much worse, it makes the healing so much easier. I can hardly wait for the next session!

(A special thanks also goes to my mom, who, when I arrived at her house after this painful goodbye, patiently massaged the tense tissue of my back, my neck and my shoulders until I felt less lonely and more relaxed.)

His Ferrari F50, not your usual lawn decoration.

Strongly straight-forward

As a very analytical, factual thinker, Wiebe is the kind of person who doesn’t run with the newest buzzwords. He simply says what he thinks and his thoughts usually follow from very sound and steady logic. As a programmer, this makes him invaluable. At times, as a human, this may make him hard to stomach if, as is usual, he is right and you are not. But, don’t worry: he will usually be kind enough to explain to you exactly—very exactly—why it is that you are wrong.

So, he may not be the type for marketing, but for anything that needs to be done robustly and thoroughly, he is irreplaceable.

Solid knowledge

• System administration: As every Geek with family and friends, Wiebe has the obligatory knowledge of how to keep a network of Windows systems somewhat stable, but this knowledge is irrelevant compared to his experience and skill in Unix system administration. His favourite Linux distribution is Gentoo Linux and, as follows from his many posts to the Gentoo Forums, he is a Linux Guru indeed.

• Backups: even to most system administrators, they’re just an afterthought, but he really knows his dar backups from your tar’s. And, he’s published about it too.

• Audio-engineering requires an enormous level of insight in the complex dynamics of audio waves and electronics. To me, it’s mostly Chinese, but he has built his own amps, speakers and subwoofer. If he notices even the slightest artifact in the sound, he goes back to the drawing board and just redoes the circuits another time.

Learn more

Wiebe can be contacted at wiebe@halfgaar.net, unless if you’re a spammer, because he happens to be an expert-level SpamAssassin administrator.

Web presence

• www.halfgaar.net – the official website.
• His profile at the Gentoo Forums.
• His profile at the Blender Artists Forum
• His posts at the Dutch Gathering of Tweakers forum