raymondpoort.com

There haven’t been so many Songs of the Day lately, the last one has been 2.5 months ago (?!) though this all does not mean I lost my interest in music, haha far from that! 🙂

With the fantastic bright and sunny summer weather of these days, the following song makes a day even better (every day actually 🙂 ); the amount of energy packed in pumping beats and intermittent flow…I LOVE it!

Enjoy ‘Tsunami‘ by DVBBS & Borgeous, so get your ass from the couch and DANCEEEEEE! 🙂

Aboriginal Saying: “The more you know, the less you need.”

Just consider this the next time you are shopping for food/meat…and take YOUR responsibility!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”

Ha, who wouldn’t like to have inner peace? Below you will find the ultimate guide to just that…Njoy! 🙂

Fred Brooks: “How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.”

I am not ready to reveal things yet, but I can say that something new is about to start! It is quite exciting and today I took the first step to make it happen in the very near future!

PompidomPCpompidom…to be continued…… 🙂

John Gotti: “I never lie because I don’t fear anyone. You only lie when you’re afraid.”

The downtime on the domain has been a LOT less than anticipated; my blog is back online! 🙂 Instead of 24-48 hours as expected, it took only 2 hours, sweettttt! Restoring the WordPress database turned out to be a lot harder unfortunately 🙁 but, I solved it in the end! (‘I-don’t-quit’ is my middle name! 🙂 )

For the techies: the reason for it turned out the be a too big MySQL backup file having EXTENDED INSERTS, which made the server choke. Splitting up the database file didn’t work and although uploading the file via SSH brought back most of the data, I wasn’t able to log in to the WordPress administration Dashboard, *sigh*…a clean WordPress install followed by the (partial) file upload via SSH and uploading the remainder of the database file (split in smaller incremental files) through the phpMyAdmin Import functionality finally brought everything back (well, except for some Facebook Comments&Likes, oh well…).

Everything should run much faster now, please let me know if the blog is still slowwwwwww!

As mentioned yesterday, in a couple of hours my blog (whole domain actually) will be down for 24-48 hours as I will move the domain to a hosting plan based in Europe instead of the USA. It should make my site much much faster for the vast majority of visitors, so I can live with this small inconvenience. I hope everything will work out with the WordPress move though, fingers crossed! 🙂

Meryl Streep: “This is your time and it feels normal to you, but really, there is no normal. There’s only change and resistance to it and then more change.”

Obviously this post is a day late, as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off yesterday, but because my hosting provider (GoDaddy) was down yesterday, both my domain and blog were unavailable… 🙁 Also, I have not been too happy with the speed of my site lately (especially last night LoL), so I got in touch with GoDaddy today and decided to make some changes to my hosting plan. That means that my domain(s) will be unavailable for a day or so from tomorrow around noon, just so you know. 🙂

So much for website practicalities…As an Apple fanboy and geek interested in tech news, I did not miss Tim Cook’s Keynote speech yesterday, kicking off Apple’s yearly Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

There was no news on any new iPhone, iWatch, Apple TV, or any other hardware goodies; this Keynote speech was all about software and it was a LOT! Very interesting to see that Mac OS X and iOS are closing in on each other providing some extremely useful features for those using Mac computers *and* iDevices! 🙂

• Mac OS X 10.10 preview. The follow-up to Mavericks will be called Yosemite and will be released (for free!) this fall. The highlights: OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh modern translucent look, clearer controls that are smarter and easier to understand streamlined toolbars that put the focus on your content without compromising functionality, enhanced apps such as Safari, Mail and Messages. For instance in Mail: Markup allows you to quickly fill out and sign forms and even annotate images and PDFs from within the application, Mail Drop allows you to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5GB (!). Notification Center will be improved and will have widgets support, Spotlight on steroids; an ‘in your face’ search box which provides more than just local results, the web based results on keywords seem to be a first take on Google, dismissing them as the default search method. iCloud Drive is a seamless integration of cloud storage in OS X and iOS which might make me use DropBox only for sharing with non-Apple friends (there are less and less of those as many are switching 🙂 ) and it might even lower my use of BitTorrent Sync as that one is a tad techy and by far not well integrated in iOS. ‘Continuity’ is making Mac and iOS devices even better companions. Handoff especially is nifty; when your iPhone or iPad is near your Mac, it lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other (start writing an email on your iPhone and finish it on your Mac for instance(. Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network, and…*both* SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on your iPhone will appear in Messages on all your devices. You can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from your Mac and make or receive iPhone calls using your Mac as a speakerphone!
• iOS 8 is set to be the biggest iOS release since the launch of the App Store, and delivers a simpler, faster and more intuitive user experience. Highlights: iCloud Photo Library which will allow you to enjoy your photos and videos more easily across your devices; new Messages features to easily share voice, video or photos with just a swipe; and an entirely new Health app that gives you a clear overview of your health and fitness data all in one place. Predictive typing for Apple’s QuickType keyboard, Family Sharing, the easiest way to share purchases, photos and calendars within the same household, and iCloud Drive as mentioned above in OS X Yosemite, a super easy way tostore files and access them from anywhere
• iOS 8 SDK with over 4,000 new APIs for developers, bringing the biggest release since the origination of the App Store and giving developers the ability to create amazing new apps like never before. iOS 8 allows developers to further customize the user experience with major extensibility features like Notification Center widgets and third-party keyboards; and introduces robust frameworks such as HealthKit and HomeKit. iOS 8 also includes Metal, a new graphics technology that maximizes the performance of the A7 chip and Swift, a powerful new programming language.

If you dare, check out the complete Keynote speech video, if you are less of a crazy geek, the 10 minute summary below will give you a nice overview. 🙂

Howard Thurman: “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive… then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Og Mandino: “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.”

Edith Sitwell: “Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”