Agilo's Weblog

Another year has come to an end and so, just like previous years, it's time for me to reflect on events of the past year.

It's no secret that I haven't been writing many weblog entries this years, which has a reason: time (or lack thereof).
School in combination with my work are eating up so much time I have little time left to do other things, and if I do get around to doing other things, writing weblog entries isn't on the top of my list.

I do feel bad for not writing about it, though, because it doesn't give me a chance to read back on my life when I'm X years older in life, the very reason I started keeping a weblog in the first place.
Some may think that writing a weblog entry doesn't take much time and I should just write brief reports on what happened, but I won't do that simply for the fact that some events that have happened deserve their own individual weblog entries because of having a profound influence on my life (or just because of the scale of the event).
What happens next is that these events stack up and the task of writing about them becomes so great it's actually becoming demotivating.

At any rate, for the sake of my regular new years reflections I will list them here in short headlines (as I have done in previous years) just to have them written down; it'll remain to be seen if they'll ever be written out in large.

So without further ado, 2008 has been the year of…

• …one of the most important decisions in my life, to change my education to Computer Engineering (i.e. Technische Informatica).
• …getting my Propedeuse, within my first year!
• …Pokemon Mini, for which I've started developing passionately (but not enough due to lack of time, which I hope to better this year).
• …me and my younger brother went on vacation to italy (in the summer of 2008).
• …starting a class of my own at school, in which I give lessons to my peers in XHTML/CSS/JavaScript/DOM/Accessibility- and Webstandards/PHP/PHP+SQL.
• …Wintersports vacation to Val Thorens, for which I've bought my very own snowboard: Nitro's Pantera.
• …booking a backcountry snowboarding course with McNab Snowsports for February of 2009!
• …having went on a Company trip to Rome!
• …Symphony X, whom I've finally got to see, many times over (together with Dream Theater)!
• …finally buying a DSerial EDGE after waiting seemingly endlessly for Natrium42 to start producing and selling DSerial carts again.
• …buying a new mobile (smart)phone, the Samsung GT-i8510 INNOV8 with 8 megapixel camera.
• …buying an Amiga 500 (more on this very soon, in a separate entry).

2008 (on par with 2007, actually) has also been one of the most busy years of my life (which shows in the amount of weblog entries this year, heh).

Anyway, I close this entry wishing everybody a very prosperous 2009!

Yesterday was the official ceremony in which I was handed my so-called Propedeuse.
I was able to obtain it within my first year and I actually already had enough points to receive it back in June.

With this in hand, I'm well on track on getting my Bachelor's degree in three years from now.

Today I turn 22 years of age and it feels like a nice number.

I don't really have much else to write about, other than I'm busy with all sorts of things and I keep postponing writing weblog entries.. maybe soon! ;)

Well, I've not been so active in writing weblog entries the past few months and because of that I missed out on some stuff that happened because I wanted to really take my time in writing about them.
However, it's getting seemingly more apparent that I never will get around to doing that so therefore, I'll just write about it in this entry.

Last February I went snowboarding in France (Val Thorens) together with Mick and Ed.

Leading up to that, we decided to rent snowboards as we've been doing in the past, however by the time we got around to actually rent the snowboards all the snowboards had already been rented out.. so we had the choice: either rent snowboards in France, or buy our own snowboards.
I didn't plan on doing that but I had been thinking about it in the past and I did have some money saved up, so I decided it was time to actually go through with it and buy my own snowboard.

Because I'm in my element the best off the slopes I sought after a good mountain style snowboard and I eventually landed on Nitro's Pantera.
It's a beautiful board and it handles really well!

Nitro's awesome snowboard called: Pantera.

As for the rest of our stay in France: we hated the place (Val Thorens), it really sucked.  Snow conditions were bad but in all the terrain was really boring and really not that interesting.
It was fun being on our own, though, not having to worry about classmates or people in our group.
Not only that, we also experienced what it was like having to provide for ourselves staying in our little appartement and such, which I thought was really cool.

Since then I've also seen Symphony X perform at De Lantaarn (a.k.a.: the middle of fucking nowhere) and De Boerderij.
The shows were really fucking amazing and Michael Romeo was absolutely fucking awesome!

Two plectrums I recieved from Michael Romeo during the show.

I managed to score two plectrums from him (one of which I got through shaking his hand during songs)!
Also, equally awesome, I managed to get exclusive footage with my camera in which he performs a piece of the song Sea of Lies for my camera!
The footage can be seen on YouTube: Symphony X - Sea of Lies (live in Zoetermeer, Netherlands).

Did I mention the performance (in Zoetermeer) was mindblowing?  No?  Well, consider it mentioned because it really was absolutely mindblowing!!

I also spent some time (however little) on the Pokemon Mini (though not as much as I'd like to).
I fixed the Text Engine bug and I also wrote a little random number generator using an algorithm based on an article published by DonTronics (which I modified to work on a byte instead of a word).
The random number generator also taught me to work with the PM's timer, however basic it still is.

Also, really exciting news is that a long standing member of Team Pokeme, Asterick, is working on a new Pokemon Mini emulator (Minimon version 2) with recently reverse enginered information!
Not only that but he's also set up a new Wiki which will replace the old (and somewhat inaccurate) Pokemon Mini Hardware Reference!

I'm also thinking of moving onward with programming for the Gameboy Advanced (so as to teach myself to work with the ARM CPU) but that'll come when the time comes.

Lastly, I've booked a flight to Sicily for the upcoming vacation to go and see my Father together with my little brother Emanuele; can't wait to be back there again.

About a month ago I changed my education from Computer Science to Computer Engineering (Technische Informatica).
Reason for this is that this type of education is more technically challenging; not just saying "visit this site, download this, copy/paste that there and you have a program" but now more like "the first x bytes are used as a file identifier, then follows xx bytes for ..." (etc.), meaning: deeper into the technical side of things, which I love more than just creating generic applications.
This will also give me deeper focus on the thing which I've come to love the past few years: embedded devices (such as, for instance, the Nintendo DS or more recently the Pokemon Mini).

In all, I'm happy with the change, even though it means I need to seriously brush up on my maths skills (which is close to none right now since I previously didn't have anything related to maths).
Anyway, I'm guessing with enough work it will turn out fine.

A few months ago (and I don't remember if this is because of Dark Fader's website or pouet.net) I came across a very cool little device made by Nintendo called the Pokemon Mini; the smallest handheld console in the world to be cartridge-based, have a black-and-white LCD display, rumble feature, shock-detection, include an infrared port for multiplayer and have the more common buttons you'd expect from a handheld (namely a D-pad and three input buttons; B, A and C).
Aside from that, the system has a 4 MHz proprietary CPU called the Nintendo Minx.

A picture of a Pokemon Mini

Why did I find it so exciting?  I mean, it's a Pokemon-related device to begin with..  Well, it has very severely been reverse engineered by the people over at Team Pokeme!

The reason I mentioned not being certain how I came across it is because I've been somewhat into the Nintendo DS homebrew scene (as a by-stander), from which I came to know of Dark Fader, but I've also been into the demo scene for about a year now (again, as by-stander so far ) from which came one of the coolest scene demos, made by Team Pokeme (which won first prize in the wild compo at Breakpoint 2005), called: SHizZLE.
That prod really opened my eyes as to how cool a device such as the Pokemon Mini really is and what can be achieved on that architecture; needless to say, I wanted to play with it (i.e. program for it) myself, badly.

After reading about how to get started it became clear to me that I needed a flash cart to place a program on to be able to test on actual hardware (like the video of SHizZLE shows at the end), the only problem was, however, that flash carts stopped being made by Team Pokeme at around 2004, so I was shit out of luck (as it seemed at the time).
At around this time I decided to get onto IRC to the room where Team Pokeme housed themselves; #pmdev on EFNet.
I idled in the room for about a week to see what they were up to themselves (as I usually do when I enter a new scene) at which point I decided it was time to let my interest be known.

I talked to a guy called ph0x at the time, telling him (and the room) I wanted to get started sometime soon; invest time into PM development because I thought the device was just awesome.
After some time I asked (knowingly) if flash carts were still being made or sold, to which he replied that sadly, they were no longer being made nor sold.
I didn't want that to be the end of it, though, because I really wanted to do something with this, so I asked if the schematics for the PCB was available for me to have, so I could potentially build it myself.
Ph0x told me to contact a guy called pop or another guy called Lupin^, who happened to be idling in the room.
As I continued talking about my intentions Lupin^ rose from his idle state and asked me if I had any experience in soldering anything.
I told him I didn't but I was willing to learn it, at which point (after some discussion) he gave me all the information I could hope for; complete schematics of both the Flash Cart and the Linker PCB (as it needed a way to program the actual cart)!

Immediately after that I started gathering resources which could help me put the flash cart into realization.
Shortly after that, I was told by Lupin^ that he had a fully functioning linker and a flash cart which only needed to be soldered ready for me to buy from him!
This, of course, was perfect as it enabled me to get started a lot quicker, so I paid him 30 Euros for them (they used to go for 30 Euros each!) and the only thing left for me to do then was wait, buy the necessary parts and eventually solder the parts to the flash cart so I could get started.

During the time spent waiting I asked a teacher (who is a Computer Engineering teacher himself, which is why I approached him) if he would be able to help me with the soldering, as I've never soldered anything before (also expressing my love for embedded devices such as the Nintendo DS).
The teacher said he'd love to help me, picking up on my interest for his department, and referred me to another teacher that would be better suited to help on the actual soldering.

At this time I was told by Lupin^ that he would be able to solder it for me himself (perhaps out of empathy)!
I felt kind of bad for the teacher who was willing to help me (and for myself as I didn't get the chance to learn to do it myself now) but I accepted his offer because, as I mentioned before, it enabled me to start getting into this more quickly (remembering that I could always just make another flash cart based on the board schematics).

Before everything arrived I started getting ready myself by setting up a development environment (i.e. getting the assemblers, emulators and documentation needed ready to dive into it when the time came) and when it finally did arrived I was able to jump right into it.

So far I've toyed with some of the features of the Pokemon Mini (using Lupin's Pokemon Mini tutorial and the Pokemon Mini Hardware Reference) and already came across some oddities (such as the rumble feature not working unless the LCD is initialized).
Nevertheless, it's a very fun and awesome platform to work on, especially since everything is in Assembly.

To see my creations (thus far), visit: /files/PM

Many thanks to the PM dev scene and especially Lupin^ for all his help so far!

Another year has come to an end and so, like previous years, it's time for a reflection on past events.
This year has offered a lot of big changes in my life and because of that I didn't get around much to writing weblog entries but despite that, I'm going to list a couple of items here.

2007 has been the year of…

• …Gwen, my first girlfriend with whom I've had my first kiss.
• …Hogeschool, for I passed my admission exam (with a lot of strain and effort as far as maths is concerned) and have given it my all ever since (and luckily that also shows in my scores so far).
• …Liones, where I've started working since the beginning of the summer; a job which suits me perfectly at a company which is absolutely awesome!  (Thanks again for introducing me, Michel! )
• …New Guitar, for I've bought the best guitar I've ever played so far (beating even guitars that are thrice the cost): the ESP LTD M-200FM!
• …Concerts, for having seen Dream Theater and Symphony X have blown me away by miles, Spock's Beard on which DVD I'll (hopefully ) be seen and Beardfish, a fantastic band who I've come to know by attending this year's Symforce festival.
• …Portable Development, because I've started doing a lot of programming on not just the Nintendo DS, but soon also... (stay tuned )
• …Maturity, for I've turned 21 years of age and am now officially an adult.

That's it so far, I think.. if I've forgotten anything I'm allowing myself to edit the list at least until there's a next weblog entry.

Anyway, happy new year to everyone and all the best wishes for coming 2008.

Thursday, last week, there was a company trip Liones hosted that I attended (lasting three full days) that had been announced via countless e-mails and word-of-mouth.
The location as to where we'd go, however, had been kept a strict secret and undisclosed until the very last moment of departure.

Everyone (21 employees including staff) got together at 5PM sharp on that Thursday, bags packed and everything, and after having been kept in further suspense for about fifteen more minutes, we were given our directions as to where we'd go.
The note given revealed the location to be a hefty 200 meters from the building!
Dreading the long time on the road, we reluctantly got into the cars and started this treacherous journey into the void, arriving at our destination no less than 3 minutes after departing!!
It was to everyone's surprise to be at a very ancient place filled with mystiques of the orient: a Chinese restaurant!

Of course, this was just the very beginning of the trip.

It had been tossed around that the actual place we'd head to would be in a 200 kilometer radius surrounding The Netherlands, so we knew it would be a long trip getting there and we speculating all sorts of destinations (for instance: Denmark, London, even Finland and Sweden — even though those were outside the given radius.. but in saying that, there had been rumors that "200 kilometers" itself was a lie.. so who knew?  Let alone the fact every e-mail was signed off in a different greet from a different language, inciting more speculation).

Anyway, needless to say, we ate a very nice meal at the restaurant before being given the location of our true destination: a hotel in Belgium (seemingly in the middle of nowhere).

After dinner, Michel inputted the destination into his navigation system and we were off (we had sort of a bet as to who'd be to arrive there first).
We stopped twice: once in The Netherlands to get some snacks and use the restrooms and once in Belgium to get cigarettes.
It took us a couple of hours to get there (I don't recall how many exactly, could have been around three hours) but after arriving at the destination we came to the discovery that we were the first ones to arrive!
What was also of note was that while nearing the destination, we saw some road signs telling passing vehicles the way to the nearby airport.. this only added to the speculations and thinking about it made sense of a lot of things that had been told to us, like needing to get up the next day at 5 in the morning and only having our bags in one bag (preferably a suitcase).
We were certain this would be the reason we headed to Belgium as it makes sense (it's cheaper, thus better affordable, to fly from certain airports).

When the others arrived and we were complete, we were told that one of the organizers was baffled that no one had seemingly gotten it because he still heard speculations as to where we'd go (by car, down south in France or Spain perhaps) to which I quietly but noticeably reacted with airport! to which he responded with Exactly., going on to tell us that we'd need to get sleep now because we had to check in the next day at 5AM (still not revealing our true destination!).
Anxiously we headed off to our rooms for the night to get ourselves some shut-eye (I was put in a room with Michel — they told us that because we were such good friends, they gave us the room with a single bed for two people.. thank God that was just a joke as it was actually two single beds stuck together.  Needless to say, we quickly separated those two beds).

Getting to sleep was a real challenge for me but even more of a challenge was getting up at 4:30AM!
We quickly assembled and headed off for the airport and checked in where we were handed our tickets to.. Milan!!!!
Never had I thought Milan would be a real option but how excited I was just to get to be in Italy!

We boarded the plane and landed in Milan just one and a half hour later!
With a serious case of jet-lag (I'm kidding ) we got our baggage and got onto the bus that was going to take us into the city.

After arriving in the city we immediately headed for our hotel there to store our baggages so we could go explore the city (we didn't check in, we only placed our baggage there).
We were told that they tried to set us up with scooters but were unable to get enough scooters for everyone so they had arranged bicycles for us all; all we had to do was go into the city to pick them up.
So on we went, stopping once by a small place for a quick cup of coffee and some breakfast, enabling me to quickly boast with my extensive grasp over the Italian language (in all honesty, I don't know many words outside of daily life, enabling me to just get by).
After breakfast, we arrived at the store to get the bicycles but there was a bit of trouble acquiring them, where I was put in the position of being the interpreter.
The problem was that we didn't finalize the deal resulting in the owner of the store to not have our bikes ready.
In order to get the bikes ready he needed 30 minutes, so we waited in the bar next door where we got some coffee.

When we finally got our bikes we headed off to the park called Parco Sempione in which lay a castle called Castello Sforzesco.
Getting there proved to be challenging to say the least.
As a colleague so aptly stated in his weblog entry: the rules of traffic didn't seem to apply when Liones traveled through Milan.
We didn't get there undamaged, however, as one of the employees was hit with a stroke of bad luck: a flat tire, resulting in the need for a repair shop or tools to fix it.
After asking some people, we came to find out that there was a store nearby, so we fixed the problem without taking too much time.

The castle itself was really something: very impressively put together and a real cool sight.
We took a company photo in front of a big fountain which I may link to later, if allowed to do so (I'll modify this entry for that — something I normally don't do — so keep this entry in check ).

We then headed off through the city in search of a cathedral, or I should say: the cathedral; the Duomo.
The Duomo is such a magnificent building.. absolutely stunning, to say the least!
I took many pictures with my phone in hopes of capturing anything of its excellence but the results didn't capture anything worth showing here.

After having seen the cathedral, it was time to head back to the hotel.

The Hotel was a three-stars hotel and it was a very nice hotel to stay in.
The best part was that some of us (including me) got their own individual rooms!

After taking a shower and freshening up we assembled for dinner.
We headed off to the nearby subway to take us into the city, stopping at an apperativo bar before going to the restaurant where we had reservations.
The restaurant we went to was a very nice place, we had a four-course meal which was absolutely delicious!
There were a lot of laughs, a lot of drinking (wine, obviously ) and we all had a nice time.

The night was young and after dinner some of us (group of about 10) decided we'd want to go out clubbing.
Before that, though, some felt it necessary to go to a bar first to get some drinks and possibly just remain there.
As time passed, I made it clear that I wanted to go clubbing (I don't like bars much) so I told Michel and we mentioned it to the group (we were all getting to be a bit drunk too, including myself).
It was then decided to search for a nice club to go to and our boss (who shall remain nameless due to privacy reasons.. bla, you know how it is ) went up to some girls asking for directions.
I accompanied him (thinking I might be needed if they didn't speak English — which they did, as we were to find out) and we discovered there were a lot of places to go to within a small area not too far from where we were.
The Boss arranged some taxi's to come pick us up (some felt ill or didn't want to come with us so they went back to the hotel) and just a few of us, I believe we were a six or seven man group by now, ventured on to the clubs!

We got there at about 2 AM (I knew this because at 2 AM, bars across Italy are forbidden to serve alcohol.. and we were thirsty ) and after managing to get a single alcoholic drink, we went into a seemingly very interesting club: Discoteca Hollywood.
I won't describe everything that went on in there but we danced a lot, had fun, etc.
We left the place at 5 AM and needless to say, I slept like a rock.

The next day we had breakfast at a bar somewhere in the city and we split up in two groups.
One group wanted to go to the burial grounds (which was noted for having nice sculptures and decorative tombs, etc.) and the other (including me) went into the city again, just to check the stores and maybe buy some clothes, etc (I ended up not buying anything ).
In all, we didn't really do much noteworthy: I got to eat Granita  and we ate a pizza for dinner (couldn't resist ).

We went back to the hotel later in the day to check out (two of our bikes got stolen in front of it —not mine — which needed to be resolved: we needed to pay for them) and after going by a local supermarket to buy my favourite of all cheeses (Galbanino) we left off for the airport again.

We landed back in Belgium at 10:50PM and left for home.
I eventually got back home at around midnight.

The story has been cut short near the end because it grew to be a huge weblog entry but make no mistake about it: this has been the best company trip I've witnessed and been part of and I don't think it'll get beaten by future trips easily (although I have some hopes )!
I want to thank the managers for such a cool destination and I want to thank the Boss for paying for it all: I never thought it'd be so elaborate as it turned out and I sure had the best time!

I just came back from seeing Symphony X and Dream Theater yet again and what an absolutely fucking amazing, mind-blowing show this has been!!!!
I'm still very enthusiastic about the show (writing this at 2:30AM while the show stopped at around 11:30PM should give at  least some hint as to the extent of my excitement)!

I'll tell the story from the beginning: once there was a young mother who gave birth to a very talent— well, maybe I'll skip a bit.

We (Michel, Mick and I) arrived at the venue (Ahoy, in the city I live in, which is Rotterdam) at around 5:15PM (45 minutes later than planned due to the small fact of dinner which I didn't take into account ) at which point it was already very crowded.
Luckily my friend Ralph and a friend of his (also named Mick) kept us some warm spots in the front of the line () so we could still be likely to have good positions in front of the stage.
We'd also already planned to stand on the left side of the stage because we were standing on the right side of the stage last time we saw them so we would be able to see it from another perspective (also being perfectly aligned with Michael Romeo).

As we were getting in when the doors opened at 6:30PM (after having waited almost one-and-a-half hours in T-shirts in the cold for so long) we were frisked by security for weapons and also home-brought foods/drinks (which were not allowed); I knew this was going to happen but I still took two cans of Coca-Cola with me because I knew I'd be getting thirsty once inside.
When I was frisked, however, I took one can out of my pocket and held it in my hand (holding my hands in the air so he could frisk me) and as I had thought, he found the can I was holding in my pocket and threw it away but as stupid as it may seem  he neglected anything I was carrying in my hands, so I was able to bring in with me (in open air in everyone's sight) a can of Coca-Cola.

Once inside, I ran to the stage (as previous experience taught me) straight to the spot where we were supposed to meet (left side of the stage) but once there.. I saw no one.. it had seemed the others were just behind me, so I waited and Michel and Mick showed up but Ralph and his friend Mick were nowhere to be seen!
As we waited I got anxious and looked around and sure enough.. the fuckhead was standing right in front of Petrucci again (right side of the stage).
After calling (I wasn't about to leave my perfect spot) he explained that Dream Theater (meaning Petrucci in this context) was more his kind of thing so I was just going to stand there.
Anyway, didn't matter much I guess (aside the fact it was considerably more boring).

The show finally started after having waited another hour at 7:40PM (twenty minutes sooner than planned — which made expectations rise even higher) by the Intro to Paradise Lost (just like last time) after which they came out on stage playing the subsequent track of the album (like last time) called Set The World On Fire, after that they played Domination and Serpent's Kiss (like last time) but that's when it happened... Russel informed the crowd they'd play the theme song off their last album and without even processing what he'd said I immediately screamed The Odyssey!!! FUCK!! YEAH!!!!! after saying that (being the only one that really understood what he meant? — no one else reacted to it) I started doubting myself, thinking wait a minute.. they played Paradise Lost last time, shouldn't they mean from the current album? but no! they started playing The Odyssey in its entirety!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It fucking BLEW ME AWAY; that I would have the honor of witnessing them play The Odyssey!
Needless to say, I reacted very enthusiastically to the performance, jotting down (in thought) some of the chords he played and some of the riffs I was struggling with and to my absolute amazement I came to realize that one certain part of The Odyssey which I learned to play in the past (called Journey To Ithaca starting at 3:40 into the song until 6:10) matched up EXACTLY with how I figured out how to play it!!
Reason for excitement is that when learning it I was seeking tabs and most tabs were so horribly wrong and unreasonable in their thoughts for outlining a certain part of that piece, I got frustrated and started figuring it out myself!

After that they went off stage and I mourned about it for the remaining minutes leading up to Dream Theater's intro.
Their Intro is very cheesy but effective to say the least (if you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey you'll probably know what I'm talking about if I mention apes and sticks? Well, that part anyway, but more dramatically.. ).
Not saying it's bad but a song from one of their albums would have better suited, in my opinion.

Anyway, Dream Theater played a lot of songs from Systematic Chaos (as expected and to my slight dismay) but it was still very good to say the least!
They really had fun in performing (which I felt was missing last time) and it really showed!
Dream Theater's highlight (for me) was their performance of Blind Faith (Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence remains my all-time favourite album ).
In all, Dream Theater's setlist was a lot better this time, I feel.

It was also very cool to see Jordan again with his Zen Riffer Keytar; I deeply respect Jordan for his love (and expressing) of real Prog and instruments.
John Petrucci really played outstanding and what was also awesome was that he acknowledged Ralph and Mick for their effort in trying to score a guitar pick (they were bowing down to him — like I was last time, together with them — and showing him a piece of paper with Please give guitar pick written on it or something in that sense).
He actually liked it so much (and probably also recognized them from last time) he kept throwing guitar picks at them (something he normally never/rarely does!) until they both had one!!
I envy them immensely for that but it's okay, I'll get my chance next time.
It's just a guitar pick... right?  (Right? )

Also, speaking of acknowledgments: I was acknowledged myself on a couple of occasions by Michael Romeo and Jordan Rudess.
(Had to mention that briefly; it's nice to be acknowledged by such respectful musicians. )

In closing; this concert has been everything I hoped for and more!!
I can't wait to see them again in the future (especially Symphony X — hopefully separated from Dream Theater so there's more of them to go around )!

Yesterday I went to Antwerp (Belgium, just 'cross the border) to see Symphony X and Dream Theater!
I bought my ticket in the beginning of February, I think it was, and it has been a long wait since then!

I went there together with Michel, Ralph and a friend of Ralph called Mick.
We decided to head there early in the day so that we'd have perfect positions right up against the stage when they'd start playing at 8PM.
So we got together at about 9:15AM and set out at around 10AM with a lot of food and beverages.
At around 11AM we made a quick stop at a McDonald's to have a bite to eat and afterwards we drove straight to the venue at which they'd play; the Lotto Arena.

Arriving at the Lotto Arena we expected to see at least a few dedicated fans already waiting, instead we found there to be none!
Maybe I was a bit too optimistic in my thinking but that didn't matter much, we brought plenty of food and drinks and also brought along our Nintendo DS' (and a PSP) so we'd have something to do while waiting.

At around 4:30PM the first fan (besides us ) arrived at the venue!
It was a guy named John who was also from The Netherlands, been tracking Dream Theater for a long time and been to many a concert.
Anyway, since his arrival it started getting more and more crowded until finally, at 6:30PM the doors finally opened!

Upon opening we immediately ran to the stage among around 70 other fans (rough estimate) and secured our well-earned place right at the stage where John Petrucci would be playing (he always plays on the audience's right side)!

The place was packing up and at 8PM sharp, the lights dimmed and Symphony X opened with the first track off their latest album Paradise Lost (which is a song that they can't really play live since there are a lot of classic instruments in the song itself so the stage was still empty for the two-minute-thirty-seconds lasting opening song) after which they came on the stage with a bang!
Their performance was mindblowingly awesome!!
They played a lot of songs from Paradise Lost and (among others) also also played Sea of Lies which was really fucking awesome to see live!
I really let myself go with their performance; singing along with the lyrics, jumping and head-banging enthusiastically to the music and really letting my presence be known to the band (both Michael LePond and Russell Allen acknowledged me on several occasions which was fucking awesome! ).

It's too bad Symphony X only got to play for 45 minutes, I would have wanted them to play on a lot longer than that.
What also irked me was that the mixing was set-up pretty badly: the bass was overly present and both the guitar and keyboard(s) were way too soft; other than that the show was fantastic!

So after Symphony X, Dream Theater came up on stage opening with a song from their latest album Systematic Chaos (an album which I — contrary to my previous comments about it — don't really like that much).
They played a lot of songs from Systematic Chaos and also played a lot of songs from other albums spanning their career (most notably to me, the song called Misunderstood from the album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, my most favourite album of all! ).

I enjoyed both performances a lot and loved seeing two of my idols (namely John Petrucci and Michael Romeo) live!

After the concert, I bought two T-shirts of Symphony X depicting the album cover of their latest album: Paradise Lost.

In all, it was an amazing experience and I'm really looking forward to seeing them again next Tuesday right here in Rotterdam (Ahoy)!

Yes, yes it's true!
I'm 21 years of age as of today and it feels great!

I have to say, I'm really happy with my current state: I'm attending the school I've waited on for five long years which is turning out to be even more awesome than I though and on top of it all, I work as a developer at a very cool company with awesome colleagues!

Not much to else to say in this entry other than a "thank you" to all that congratulated me today.

The past weeks/months I've been so busy with my studies/work, I barely had time to make entries in my weblog.
I'll now explain why the best I can, for it's practically impossible for me to bring it across well enough so American/English people can relate well enough due to huge differences in schooling systems.

First, a definition according to Wikipedia (this explains it better than I ever would):

Hogeschool

Another type of institution of tertiary education in the Netherlands is the hogeschool. While the literal translation is "high school," it is more accurately described as university of applied sciences or university of applied arts. Such institutions can award Associate's, Bachelor's and for some of them Master's degrees.

College

In the Netherlands the term college is used for institutes of secondary education. The term college is also used for classes or lectures at university.

During the end of my present school (college) I was working on getting myself a job and applying for a Computer Science study at the Rotterdamse Hogeschool (or: Rotterdam University; a university of Applied Sciences ― www.hro.nl).

I wasn't acceptable a the Rotterdamse Hogeschool by default, I had to take an admission exam in Maths For Higher Education, English and Dutch.
Of course, English and Dutch were a given and I expected them to be relatively easy but Maths.. now that would present a huge problem for me, as I've not had any maths at school for over four years!

Luckily there was a course I could take at the Rotterdamse Hogeschool, for a mere two hundred and fifty dollars (excluding the hundred dollars I had to spend on purchasing the maths books themselves)!
The prices were outrageous, in my mind, but I paid it anyway for my own benefit.

So I took the two weeks-course during school and my internship, only my school was against me doing it during school/internship.
In fact, I had countless talks with the head master in order not to get sent off school (they said if I'd attend they'd throw me out of school).
I don't want to go in detail explaining this entire affair, it'd take too long: in the end, I worked things out and I was allowed to attend.

The course itself was really tough on me; I've never, ever studied as hard as I did for that maths course, ever.
A typical day would be; me attending the maths course, writing down and taking in as much as humanly possible, go to school/internship for the remainder of that day and as soon as I got home study like a mad man until 11/12 PM, then going to bed to be able to get up relatively fit the next day at 7 AM.
The weekends consisted of nothing more than maths, maths, maths.. nothing else; I didn't even turn on my computer!

After the two weeks course there was the long-awaited admission exam which I took, and passed!!!!
(I want to thank my neighbour and a girl called Paulien for helping me; you've both been a HUGE help to me!)

A few weeks later my internship ended: at the end of my internship for my present school I had to hand in a report for what I've been doing on my internship.
My teachers knew it was well above the standards the school laid upon me but I still needed to "officially" get it over with in the form of a report detailing what I've learned and how I've improved myself during my time there.
So at the end of it all, I thought I had it all rounded up and presented it but it was disapproved!
Instead of failing me they decided to push the submission date forward a bit, to upcoming September so as to give me time to get my things sorted out.

After that ordeal, I started working full-time in my summers vacation for a web developing company Michel introduced me to (a company he works for himself); Liones.
They make websites based on their own Content Management System (CMS): Lynkx, comprised of C# and XML.
I like the company a lot, it's a very professional and fun company.

During my time there, the time came to take the other two admission exams at the Rotterdamse Hogeschool: Dutch and English.
The exams themselves were not very difficult at all, though:
The Dutch exam consisted of reading a large text, answering a few questions about the text and writing a letter (in correct form and within 500 words).
The English exam consisted of much the same except there were only seven questions (which I could answer in Dutch!) and no letter to write!

I was still uncertain of the outcome as I've been skeptical of the English exam for being that easy.
I also didn't meet the 500 words requirement in the letter I wrote for the Dutch exam.
All my uncertainty was in vein though, as today, in the mail, I received the outcome of the exams and learned that I've passed them both, now being officially accepted for a study at the Rotterdamse Hogeschool!!!

Of course, I'll still finish my unfinished college education (which is still a lot of work) but I'm happy to know that I've finally reached the goal I've set.

Okay, so, I've been busy like hell recently.
I'll make some entries in coming weeks, hopefully.

I'm at the end of my internship (almost), rounding off school and also starting a full-time job next week (for two months, maybe longer depending on several factors..).
On top of that is my acceptance at the school I want to go to next.

All these things will be written about in detail soon.

Well, as I've mentioned in the past I was looking to buy a new guitar.
In search for this guitar I visited many guitar stores in various cities in The Netherlands (sometimes joined by Carl, Ralph, Ed, Michel and/or Mick).

I didn't just want any guitar, I set out to find a guitar according to certain specifications/demands.
It had to…

…have 24 frets.

I want to be able to play everything I want to play without a shortage of frets (I want to play things by John Petrucci and Michael Romeo which have licks/riffs/songs which go that far up the neck).

…have a floyd rose tremolo (double locking, of course).

I felt it is needed for the guitar I want so I can utilize it.

…have a thin U-neck.

I hate very thick necks, I feel limited playing on one because I feel I can perform faster on a very thin one (Ed lent me his Ibanez a while back which has a very thin wizard neck which I really liked).  I also don't want a V-neck or a flat back because they feel awkward to me.

…have a smooth neck (not a woody/slow feel).

I love polished necks, they make me play faster and smoother as I go up/down the neck.

…have a good/soft inlay (i.e. unlike a Les Paul model).

This is an important demand; I play better when my hand is rested properly which I cannot achieve that on a sharp edge.

…be within a 300-700 EUR price range.

Everything below 300 is a waste of money, in my opinion (I've had a cheap Ibanez before and it sucked), and I don't have the patience to save up beyond the 700 EUR price range.

Of all the stores I've been to, and of all the guitars I've tested (and they are countless), I found myself with only two choices which adhered to the required specifications:

1. The Ibanez RG1570 Prestige.
2. The ESP LTD M-200FM.

The only difference being that the Ibanez is a little more expensive (780 EUR) and that it also has a very woody unpolished (and cheap feeling) neck.

After giving both guitars some serious thought (I'm talking weeks of continuous weighing of the two choices and visiting stores to play them) I eventually decided that the Ibanez' (though be it a wizard neck) woody and unpolished feel was just not doing it for me.
My specifications were clear and I didn't base them on nothing; a polished neck just plays a lot better!
Let alone the fact it's 200 EUR more expensive than the ESP.

So I finally decided on the ESP LTD M-200FM (in red — STBC)!
An added feature to this guitar is that due to the push/pull Coil Split on Tone Control I can even play with (albeit simulated) single coils.

After that, I placed the order for the ESP (which is 500 EUR) and the matching case (which is 120 EUR) a few weeks ago at laenenmusic.nl where the guitar is 70 EUR cheaper than other stores I've seen it.
I was told it would take some time for it to arrive and a week ago he let me know (via e-mail) that the guitar had arrived!

Saturday I went to the store with Michel and picked up my brand new guitar, which is really fucking beautiful!
Not only that but Michel bought a Musicman (SUB) bass guitar for only 800 EUR (price on the paper said "999 EUR" but he cut him a deal because it was 800 EUR at another store elsewhere)!

I really love my new guitar, it plays like a dream and I really feel improvement in my play already (I can do things which I previously couldn't because I was prevented by certain things like the neck).

The things I notice most are that pinch harmonics are done so easily and harmonics come through so clean and well and on placed I couldn't even dream of doing them on previous guitars (on the second fret or on the third fret on 3.3, 3.7)!

There are two things which irk me, though:

1. The Floyd Rose needs lots of force to pull up (increase pitch).
2. The metals of the frets are really high (which may result, at times, in unclean notes as I press down too hard).

The Flody Rose can be fixed in a guitar shop for some 30 EUR (which I plan on doing if I can't do it myself) and as far as the metals in the frets are concerned I'll just need to adjust my play accordingly (use less force pushing down).

Anyway, that's about it for now.
Need to get back to playing, I've been typing this entry for far too long.

Last friday I attended a long-awaited concert by Spock's Beard!

I bought tickets to see them when I first heard about their tour (back in January) and waited very anxiously for friday to come 'round.
When I read they were also going to be shooting for a DVD I knew this concert was going to be absolutely awesome.
I went there together with Ed, Lenna, Michel and Ralph and what a concert it was!!

When we arrived there there were some initial problems: when we parked the car it landed in kind of a ditch and we had to be towed out (at the time of this happening we were unsure if we'd even get to attend the concert) luckily things turned out okay in time as we managed to get towed out by a friendly bystanderd (who had a car and the tools requires to pull us out).
After that ordeal we entered the venue just after the opening act by Steve Thorne had started and after buying three Spock's Beard T-Shirts, we went into the room and we slowly drove our way forward through the crowd and eventually had reasonably good positions in the crowd; we stood in the center behind just 4/5 rows of people.

I have to say, Steve Thorne really sucked, I really didn't like the music he was playing (except for one song called "The Last Line" which was kind of okay but still very lacking..).
After he got of the stage (he played for thirty minutes or so) Spock's Beard finally got on the stage and I (together with the crowd) yelled my heart out to greet them.

What an incredible concert this has been, with loads and loads of highlights which will all be on the DVD (hopefully also including a small hilarious dialogue I had with the keyboardist Ryo which killed the crowd and myself laughing: the bandmembers were asking eachother how they were doing, and I yelled "Ogenki desu ka?!" — meaning "How are you?!" in Japanese — at Ryo and was promptly answered with "Fuck you!" ).

They played the roof of in their 3 hours worth of music ranging for lots of albums (including Alan's 4 O'clock And Hysteria)!
Too bad nothing from Snow was played but Thoughts Part 2 more than made up for that.

Anyway, in all it was one of the best concerts I attended so far and I'm looking forward to seeing myself on the DVD (and re-watching the concert over and over and ov- you get the point ).

I just downloaded the new recently leaked albums by Dream Theater; Systematic Chaos, and by Symphony X; Paradise Lost.

I listened through the album by Dream Theater; Systematic Chaos, and thought the album was really awesome!
It's heavier then I'm used to from Dream Theater but some tracks really grasped me.

After the album finished I noticed that the new album by Symphony X had also been leaked!
I immediately downloaded it and listened through it when it finished (still listening as I'm writing this — I'm at the 8th song now called Seven).
The moment I started playing this album I was shocked to hell and back again.. this album is SO FUCKING GOOD.
The first 3 minutes into the album (at the start of track 2) I already realized this is way better than the new Dream Theater album (no disrespect intended, the new DT CD rules but this just so much better!)!

I'm going to be playing these albums long after I'm done writing this entry, I just wanted to make a weblog entry about it.

Oh, and I'm also going to see Dream Theater AND Symphony X (together in one concert!) on their promotional tours in Antwerp on 4 October (going to buy tickets tomorrow)!
And also; Spock's Beard's concert is just two weeks ahead!!!

In totally unrelated news: next week I'll have my final exams.
I also ordered my new guitar which I'll own within two months.
I decided on the before mentioned ESP LTD M-200FM.
More about it when I get it.

That's it for now!