Ronald's Blog

Comparing messenger bags

ronaldvz — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:12:00 +0000

I thinking about buying me a new messenger bag (and no, I’m not a bike messenger). I’m kinda getting annoyed by the lack of compartmens in my current backpack, and want to have a messenger bag for a change. It should be sturdy enough the securely move my Macbook, while at the same time shouldn’t be too heavy. Below, I’ll describe my suspects:

Bonobo Messenger Bag

Bluelounge Bonobo Messenger Bag

This nice looking messenger bag from Bluelounge fits in very nicely into the product-portfolio of this company. The bag has an urban look, which is mostly why I like it. I’m not sure yet if the bag has the amount of compartments I’m looking for. Furthermore, I think this bag might be a bit too big for my needs. The website tells me a 17″ Macbook would fit in there, which makes me think the bag is far too big for my small 13″ laptop. Still searching for a nice video review of this bag on Youtube to make sure.

Timbuk 2 Custom Messenger Bag

Timbuk 2 sells custom messenger bags, meaning you can customize the bag to your own likings. I really like this idea and am very tempted to go for this one. Only problem: it’s an expensive bag (starts at $ 140,00) and I would need to pay for international shipping ($ 30 – 50) because the bags are sent from San Francisco. So that seems to be a no-go.

Crumpler Ziptease

Crumpler Ziptease

Crumpler also has some nice messenger bags in stock. They made a nice movie about their Ziptease laptop bag I like: watch it here. This bag has plenty compartments and I like the way the bag is opened. I like that fact is closes with both velcro as well as buckles.

The advantage of the Crumpler bag is that they seem to have European offices, so I might be able to get it from a store close to me. It would cost me € 139,-.

Ah well, I haven’t decided just yet. Which bag do you like? Any other suggestions?

Filed under: Gear Tagged: gear, messenger bag

New toy: Macbook Pro!

ronaldvz — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:55:47 +0000

Since we’ve all got the internet, people tend to think well about their purchases. We all try to figure out which product fits us the best by comparing products. This is something I do regularly when thinking about buying a new product. Two weeks ago, I made one exception..

Gosh, I bought a Macbook Pro

Explaining myself

Since I’m known as a Linux fanboy, I think I should try to explain my decision. Reasons for me buying this (in descending order of ‘importancy’):

I want to know what it is to work with a Mac.
The reputation of the Mac products is quite good; I like good quality products.
I like its looks. I know, I know..this shouldn’t really matter when buying a laptop for being productive at home, but still..I like its looks.

Specifically, I bought a Macbook Pro 13″ i5 because of two particular reasons:

I want it to be as portable as possible, without doing much concessions to performance (e.g. I think I don’t like the Macbook Air). In november we moved to a new home, with multiple floors. As I’m used to being behind my PC quite a lot, this removes me from the living room every night…not very kind to my girlfriend. Furthermore: I’d like my backpack to be a bit lighter than I’m used to when carrying a 15″ work laptop with me.
I didn’t have the budget to buy something more expensive. And well, let’s be honest; this one is expensive enough(!).

Hope this works out for me. Pretty soon I think I’ll be blogging some more about wannahaves around my Macbook, as well as a post about what apps I use and like. Any hints and tips around any of these subjects are most welcome!

Filed under: Gear Tagged: macbook pro

Social media: being selective!

ronaldvz — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:33:02 +0000

Social media have become important to loads of people.

Yesterday, on the last day of 2011, I’ve had coffee with two friends of mine. During our meet-up in a coffee-bar in the centre of Utrecht we had a talk about (the ‘need’ for) social media. We discussed the fact that during my trip to the coffee-bar, I had checked-in on Foursquare three times in total while arriving at two railway stations and when entering the coffee-bar. Was it really useful?

Foursquare
Foursquare has become a habit; it’s in my system to check-in at a venue as soon as I enter. I do it as soon as I enter the office in the morning, whenever I have a short dull moment when going for a drink somewhere, I tend to immediatly check-in. Why? I’m not sure. That’s why I decided to quit and I deinstalled the app on my Android device.

Facebook
In 2011 I already suspended my Facebook-account. This morning I deleted it. Why? This was mostly because I was (and am) very dissapointed about the fact that the overall mass-adaption of Facebook resulted in specific services to be accessible only when you have a Facebook account (think Spotify for example). This really bothered me.

The second reason for me to delete my account is the fact that Facebook has been fooling around with privacy settings to a point that I found it virtually impossible to maintain control over which person would be able to see my updates. This might be the reason I’m starting to like the idea of Google Plus.

Twitter
I’ve been on Twitter since April 28th, 2008. The primary use: keep in touch with my collegues at Incentro. The secondary use would be to follow interesting peeps in my line of work. Fun, maybe even useful, but I’m gonna try to find out if it’s really something I need. I’m starting to believe that Twitter is a big distraction; I might be more productive following blogs of peeps in my line of work, instead of following them on Twitter and being redirected to their blogposts anyway.

After my first months of using Twitter, I suspended my personal blog because I felt that Twitter would be replacing it. Now, I’m turning it around. I deleted Tweetdeck from my phone and started writing this blogpost. Actually, this feels more constructive then writing a 160 character message on Twitter.

Let’s see if I’m gonna miss any of the social media described above. I hope not. Oh and just to be clear, you can still find me on the media below:

Filed under: General Tagged: social media

VLC becomes Incentro

ronaldvz — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:40:00 +0000

As of now, VLC, the company I’ve been working for for the last two years, will no longer be the company I work for. Why? Because today our company has been re-branded to its new name:

Although I was a bit skeptic about re-branding our company at first, I think that has changed in the past months. I got used to the idea. I’m absolutely excited by the new name, logo and website of our company. It might be a bit hard to turn the switch just like that, as I cherish some great memories about the last two years of my work with VLC. Nevertheless, I’m quite sure I will create more great memories with this company in its new form! I’m eager to see if our company can keep on growing as it did the past years and I’m sure I will be able to continue contributing to the success.

Let’s do this!

Filed under: Work Tagged: company, incentro, job

Patakalas

ronaldvz — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 16:10:13 +0000

This weekend I’ve managed to do something quite useful. After lots of preparations, it’s finally done: the new website of Stichting Patakalas is online:

The new website of Patakalas

Patakalas is a well-fair organisation aiming on helping orphans in Arequipa, Peru. As one of their boardmembers is a good friend of mine, I decided to help them out with a proper website. I’ve moved their website from Drupal to WordPress, hope they will enjoy it!

Filed under: Coding

Two more months

ronaldvz — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Only two more months and we will get the key to our new home. When I moved to my apartment in October 2009, I never would’ve thought I’d move again so soon. Nevertheless, I’m happy to go!

Today, we were invited to visit our new home. Feels pretty weird to walk into a house with a big living room, two upper floors containing 3 bedrooms and a 40m2 garden at the back of this house, knowing you will be living here in two months. Can’t wait!

Filed under: Apartment/House Tagged: House

King’s Speech

ronaldvz — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:25:19 +0000

Last friday I visited the cinema in Utrecht (Louis Hartlooper) with my girlfriend. We were in doubt of which movie we would like to see, but ended up going to ‘King’s speech’. We were in luck; we pre-ordered two of the last tickets. Apparently, the story of a stammering king attracts quite a public.

B-b-b-b-Bertie!

The movie made me laugh a great deal, mostly because of the excellent play by Geoffrey Rush. In his role as the kings personal speech teacher, he managed to make people laugh due to funny and daft remarks towards the king. Colin Firth also managed to translate his role as king very well. I believed it. This morning I heard the movie received four Oscars, which I believe are greatly deserved. In my opinion this movie is a must-see!

Filed under: Movies

New apartment: pics!

ronaldvz — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:09:42 +0000

As much of you might already know, I received the key to my new apartment on the 25th of September. I’ve just uploaded a shitload of pictures taken around my apartment to my picasa account!

Posted in Apartment/House Tagged: Apartment/House, home

Job: new start

ronaldvz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:47:17 +0000

This month I started a new step in my career at VLC. After a jobsearch of approximately four weeks, I had the luxury of choice in several job opportunities. VLC is the company that provides personal growth through training, interesting technologies and above all, a chance to prove myself as a consultant. These are the main reasons I chose VLC as the place I’d like to continue my career.

In the first month of work I’ll be educated through a masterclass program in which I will learn the basics of Enterprise Information Management, which results in a training in Documentum and GX as two Content Management Systems. When this month of training is done, I will be sent to one of VLC’s customers to ‘prove my worth’. In other words: I’m excited .

Posted in General

Crisis? What crisis?

ronaldvz — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:45:34 +0000

Yesterday I had the privilege of cleaning the hallway, toilet and bathroom of our home. These are being used frequently by me and eight homies. Either the economic crisis hasn’t come to the attention of my homies, or my homies have a (very!) high standard of personal hygiene:

I could be mistaken though. The amount of bottles (34!) could also indicate we all buy the crap, but don’t use it that often…heheh.

PS. Personally I can account for 2 bottles.

Posted in General Tagged: crisis, hygiene