Macbook osX reporting USB stick full with free space

I was having this problem before and every time it takes me a bit of time to figure out that osX likes to use .Trashes directories to hold trashed files on the volume itself instead of moving them off onto the macbooks own trash folder.

It is irritating as the Finder applications does not show dot (.) files by default and I hate to mess around in a file browser. Next time you encounter this you can try this in your terminal:

$ df -h

Filesystem                Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1              984M   970M    14M    99%    /Volumes/USBStick


$ ls -a /Volumes/USBStick

.
..
.DS_Store
.Trashes      <<<< need to dump this.
._.Trashes
BPM Paper


$ rm -rf /Volumes/USBStick/.Trashes


$ df -h
Filesystem                Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1              984M    45M   939M     5%    /Volumes/USBStick

This will get you back your free space.

Will It Blend? - iPhone3G

This is just the best usage of an iPhone I have ever seen!

PMS BibTexManager class on PHP Classes site answers

"Dear Eric,

 I looking for a php package to publish the list of my publications
contained in a bibtex file on a website, and to sort them according to
their type, year, .. I've found your BibtexManager package on PHP
Classes. I wish to know if it was powerfull enough to do that, and if
you had some documentation or example to use it correctly."

This is an example of the kind of questions I have been getting lately about a class (there are a few other related classes I get questions about, but this is the main one) I wrote for the Radboud University Nijmegen's Publication Management System (PMS).

I wanted to put the basic answer I keep sending out here so that future queries can be easily referred to this page, so here goes:

You might want to take a look at the PMS project, an Open Source project I setup that manages a database full of publications and bibtex data for the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Here you will find the running PMS application using this code and other related classes.

The project code can be checked out at the CodeYard hosted PMS Project site.

The PMS application website is built with e107 CMS and the PMS code is the backend. Feel free to post questions here and I will try to help out where I can.

Backyard renovation project completed

The backyard renovation project (link takes you to before pictures) has been completed!

As you can see when we left on our vacation the backyard was almost finished. Just a few finishing touches were needed and the gardener took care of these before we got home.

What we encountered is pictured on the bottom right, a very nice job indeed! A week later the electrician came over to wire the lighting into a remote controlled switch in the garage. I can sit anywhere in my house and turn on the backyard lighting at the push of a button. The lighting consists of 4 LED lights in the big stepping stones and 5 spots arranged in the border plants around the yard. I spent the evening in a patio chair, drinking some rose wine, and switched my new backyard lights on and off with a big silly grin on my face...

The watering system is also built into the backyard, two sprinkler heads that pop up when water pressure is in the system. They cover the entire yard, excluding the back left corner so that we don't have to spray the back patio.

We are very happy with the results and as you can see, the kids are already playing on the slide and with their soccer ball. They have even been running through the sprinklers once already! ;-)

Cycling in the Belgian Ardennes by Rochefort

I just spent a lovely vacation in the Ardennes with my family and had the chance to cycle almost every two days. The weather was great, mostly around 26 degrees. I have mapped out some of the better climbs and routes I took.

View Larger Map

I rode a total of 135 km spread over 5 rides, 52 km was the longest, and it was either climbing upwards or descending downwards. I was unable to find any flat roads at all. I spent the better part of my best rides in the 180+ heart rate range, just loving the steep hills.

See the map for details about the better climbs I found.

Visited Bastogne memorial to Battle of the Bulge

For those of you who don't know me very well, I have a soft spot for visiting historical battle fields, monuments, and generally historical military points of interest.

While on our vacation I was able to visit Bastogne. This is the sight of one of the more famous battles of World War II in the European theater, the Battle of the Bulge. The Mardasson Memorial marks the spot and is pictured in the top left corner.

My daughter and I climbed to the top of the monument which offers an amazing view of the entire area. There are 10 pillars holding the building up on which the Bulge story unfolds as you are led around the interior.

In the middle of the monument you have the plaque you see pictured on the bottom left. The flowers were still there from the most recent memorial day.

The museum was not much to see, but the monument was worth the ride. I am always in awe when confronted with historical facts while standing on those same hallowed grounds...

PRIMA project final grades

Today was the final presentation and defence of their thesis at the Fontys School in Eindhoven. As you can see here it went pretty well (on the board is their grade, a 9.0) for the PRIMA project, which explains the big grins. ;-)

Graduation is in July but I am glad to see that Lisa and Ikram received a good grade for their work. Lisa will be starting a new job at DAF as an Information Analyst and Ikram will be starting a Masters at the TU in Delft this fall. They both worked hard for this and the results have been more than we expected throughout the entire project.

I want to wish them all the luck in the world and hope their paths will cross mine again in the future.

Backyard renovation approaching completion

Today the backyard renovation project laid out the new ground and got ready to lay down grass. To shape the boarder they also bricked out the edges of the lawn.

You can see clearly here the new stepping stones that form the path, which include small LED lighting in each second stone. You can also see the flexible hose used to hook up the sprinkler system that will mean I do not have to run around with a hose anymore!

The next step will be to put in manure, plants, and grass, so stay tuned.

Backyard project laying out the brick work

Today the backyard renovation project took a turn from destruction and started on the creation phases of the project. Up to now they have only been removing things from the backyard, today they started putting some of the pieces back together.

They laid out the patio in the back left corner and put in the bricking. The dug out the drainage pipe and sunk it down a few centimeters so that my kids would not trip over it. They also have redone the front patio bricking to make to front edge a straight line. This last task removed some sunken places in the front patio bricking. You can also see in the photo take from above that the 1m x 1m step stone plates are stacked against the left fence. These will be used to create a path between the front patio and the back one. Two will have embedded LED lights in them.

The final photo shows the integrated water system tube coming out of the patio which will provide me with a single turn on point for watering the entire backyard. Little sprinklers just pop up out of the ground, gotta love that! You can also see the thin black wiring that will be attached to a switch in the garage for turning on the complete backyard lighting system that will be installed (including the lights in the stepping stones).

The next step will be putting in fill dirt, manure, and then planing the grass and flowers. I can't wait until next week!

PRIMA project goodbye party

Turn down the music... turn off the lights... the party is over...

The PRIMA project has completed it's tasks at the SNS Bank and are off into the wide world. It started when I met them in the fall of 2007 at an open evening at the SNS Bank and since that time we have put together an amazing tool. From January 2008 to June 2008 the two team members, Lisa and Ikram, worked diligently within a SCRUM project framework to produce the foundations of a project reporting tool that has already caught the imagination of departments outside our Java team. It has been a great ride and I would like to thank them both for making me look good!

The project team not only enlightened the Java team as to what their project was doing, but they also spoiled us with their food. Thanks for the Gado Gado and Indonesian cake that you see us all enjoying in the pictures.

The 46" LCD screen is on the wall, the projects are being reported, and the European Championships have integrated the PRIMA projects display into our Dutch supporting gear as you can see in the photo to the left.

Even though it was their last few hours, Ikram and Lisa kept up the great work ethic they showed during the entire project by pushing out one last deployment. This contained improvements to make a few more members of the Java team happy and the final photo shows Ikram deploying during the final minutes of his internship.

They have given their final presentation of the PRIMA project to the SNS Bank, handed over copies of their final thesis, and will be making the final school presentation in two weeks at the Fontys school in Eindhoven before receiving their final grades.

I will have to think long and hard about this grade as they both snuck off without washing my car first... ;-)

A fun toy, the Wordle

Check out this little toy:

"Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

So what can you do with it, well I have put in my blog front page and this is what you get out (click to view a bigger result).

Backyard renovation cleans out the greenery

The backyard renovation project has taken off at full speed. They finished cleaning out the stumps, roots, and bricks that were left over from yesterday. They basically came through here yesterday with a big pair of shears and wacked all the plants and trees they could find.

Today they brought in a mini digger through our garage and you can seem them pulling up all the left over stuff. It was amazing to watch them drive that thing through the doorways to get out back...

They used two flatbed trailers to haul away all the greenery they had cut out yesterday. Today it was all put into a big container that was delivered in the morning via a semi truck.

I was off to work at 0900 hours so only saw the start, but when I got home they had filled the container full of roots, old bricks, and lots of earth that they had scraped off. They also left behind a mound of sand and had setup the brick layers that would be coming in the weekend with sand laid out in the patio areas.

These guys have been doing a real nice job and meeting all deadlines so far. What more can you ask for?

PRIMA project and sushi?

You must be wondering what the PRIMA project has to do with sushi. Well, let me tell you! After finishing up the application (see the screenshots) last week we headed out into town for some sushi. As you can see, we had some trouble catching any sushi on our plates for the photos, but we had a great time!