!dev
> Get on Deutsche Bahn train
> Train delayed
> Miss Eurostar connection (not just me, many people did too), get the next one
> Building works in Brussels Station
> Maps inaccurate
> Get lost
> Find Eurostar terminal
> Electricity failure
> Check-in suspended
> After 40min, announcement
> This train cancelled, get the next one
> Electricity fixed
> Check in, finally
> Now 2½ trains worth of people need to get on this one
> Somehow fit on train
> Lose table because family needs it (fair, but annoying)
> Train departs
> More delays due to scheduling conflict
> Arrive in Lille Europe
> Stop for 10 minutes for no reason
> Announcement: "there is an illegal passenger on board, everyone and their luggage needs to get off"
> Get off train, stand on platform for a decade
> "Who has left an orange bag on coach 18?"
> Nobody
> They bring the bag out
> It's red, not orange
> "Oh it's mine, sorry" - some woman
> Wait around for ages
> "Everybody go downstairs and go through security again"
> Go through security and passport control
> Get back on train
> Arrive at St. Pancreas
> Last train to where I live has gone
> Woohoo, I get to pay for an expensive hotel in London
> Get rail replacement bus service home
> Home 😒

McDonald's in Brussels

I hope it's not bubble sort

I've promised to do the Mozilla rant about the whole meritocracy thing a few days ago.. well, this is that. Along with some other stuff along the way. Haven't ranted for a couple of days man, shit happened! But losing 6 days that could've been spent on finishing my power supply project.. to a stupid cold, it got a little bit on my nerves, so that's what I've been working on for the time being. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it up in a couple of days.

1. COCKtail party thingy

Turns out that there's this conference in Brussels in a couple of days about the whole Article 13 copyright stuff. I've been letting a mail to the MEP's about it mature on my systems for a while now.. well, maturing or procrastinating, you be the judge 😛
Now I'm glad that I waited with that though. It's mostly a developer-centric insight into how the directive would be a horrible idea.. think AI, issues with context recognition, Tom Scott's video on Penistone and Scunthorpe etc etc. But maybe I can include some stuff from the event afterwards.
Also, if you're coming to the conference too, do let me know! Little devRant meet while we're at it, it'd be fucking great! I'll try to remember to bring my Christmas ducks, they've got these cute little Santa hats 😋

(P.S.: about the whole COCKtail, I saw the email while drunk and during registration I had to choose an email address.. I figured, feminazis are doing such a great job at going out of their way to find offense in everything, I figured that I'd make their job a little bit easier by sending a COCK bomb in my registration mail address, in the hopes that it finds its way to one of them.. evil, I know XD)

2. The whole feminazi stuff at Mozilla

So Mozilla hates meritocracy now? I've been wanting to rant about the big bad meritocracy for a while now. Thank you Mozilla for giving me an incentive to actually do it!

Meritocracy, feminazis think it's bad because it's about power relationships and discrimination, right? But what if I told you that that is exactly what makes great software great. Good code, good merit, is what's welcomed in software development.. or at least it should be. Because it's a job of fucking knowledge, experience, and quality! Also, meritocracy is a great thing because nobody cares if you're a professional developer in a suit, getting paid to work on a piece of OSS, or a homegamer neonazi who's coding shit in their underwear while wanking to child porn.. nobody fucking cares. If your code, your merit, is good, contribute ahead! Super inclusive, yet apparently bad because bad code is excluded to ensure the health of the project.

So what is the alternative to the big bad meritocracy? Inclusion (or as it's looked like in practice, more like exclusion) based on gender/sex, political orientation, things like that. But not actual fucking merit, the ability to write good code. How the fuck is politics and gender going to be any good at all to an inherently meritocratic craft?! Oh but yeah, it's great for inclusion. It's like females in tech. Artificial growth is just a matter of growth numbers and the only folks who like it are fucking HR and wanketeering cunts, and feminazis. Merit, that's what matters!! And have you ever considered that females are generally not interested in technology? Or for that matter, where's our inclusion movement for men in healthcare?! Gender equality my ass.

That's just my two cents on it of course. Meritocracy shouldn't be abandoned in tech. And even if it's just a matter of calling it something else. How the fuck is it a good idea to not call a pot a fucking pot just because someone might take offense at it?! It's meritocracy, call it fucking meritocracy!!! And while we're at it, call a master a fucking master and a slave a fucking slave!

!activism

Guys, what should we do about Article 13 ?

The bill passed, well, that's unfortunate. We can still scream as loud as we can that it's a very bad idea, but let's face it, it won't probably work...

Personally, I'm sick of this shit. Every year they try to "regulate" the web with a new fucked-up legislation that they actually don't understand. I don't blame them for not knowing any better, but I blame them not to surround themselves with actually competent people (and no, lobbies are NOT competent, only interested).

So there it is : I want to act on this one. With traditional, ineffective methods (petitions, mails...), but I want to get further this time.

Here are some ideas :
- create/promote a platform explicitly made for "copyrighted" stuff (basically memes). Located outside of EU. But is it enough for being outside of the law ?
- Put some physical-paper memes near the EU parliament (I live in Brussels), just to mess with them ^_^
- Make the filtering algorithms crazy by spamming them with copyrighted content. I doubt this one will have any effect though...

Any ideas ? Let's go crazy there, they deserve it.

Here are all the infos for this Friday night meeting:
- Friday 22/12
- 6PM
- Brussels Central station

Everybody's welcome ! :D

!rant

Anyone from devRant at FOSDEM tomorrow?

My kick-ass merch from JapanCon Brussels (Nov 2018): a Yoda doormat, TallGeese Gundam Wing model, Pulp fiction displate, AND in front of it A 3D-PRINTED PICKLE RICK OMG CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!!! xD

Recruiters have gone fucking mad! They are offering me a job in Brussels haha, this is at least a two hour drive away!!

Unless this job comes with a personal helicopter service, hell no!

TL;DR: idiot 'team leader' does mindless merge to master. Precious time wasted in a high pressure deadline environment.

So, i work currently at one of Belgiums largest consulting company's at brussels airport, we are moving their analytics platform to the cloud.

We use puppet to manage the systems.

When i started i noticed immediately that their 'development workflow' is hardly to be named as such, because they simply change stuff directly on server , manual 'temporary' fixes everywhere, hardcoded stuff, non validated code... Basically the way one would develop in their garage, not in a consulting company as this one. But that is just the beginning.

A month ago i did a major effort to equalize all the discrepancies between the codebase and the server. Ensured entire codebase to be validated, syntax checked, parsed, tested... It works. A 'great codebase overhaul' commit was PR'ed to master and got merged.

Yesterday the team lead, i'll call him 'B-tard' from here on, has also 'equalized the discrepancies between codebase, server and the restnof the stale branches on the repo' . i was doing my other work on my branch so no fucks given. This is where i should have given some fucks.

Anyways, today. The day starts every day with merging the master branch into your working branh because you need the latest working codebase, right?

Wrong!
This fucking dipshit smug b-tard has done a mindless merge of the entire codebase, effectively removing ALL validated working code for provisioning servers. Control blocks, lookup functions, lambda's... Basically everything he did not understand.

At the same time the project is already way beyond the allotted budget in pkney and time, so there is a huge pressure to have a working 'production' environment TODAY!

THIS MOTHERFUCKING B-TARD JUST MADE THAT IMPOSSIBLE.

i'm loving this assignment, i'm loving the PM, the collegues, the environment, the location... everything. All but this fuckibg b-tard that somehow got his position by sucking dick or licking ass or both...

I wanna get out asap.

Oh... While typing this and arriving at the room of the office... It is locked, i have no key.

Fucking asshole!

Are there any people here visiting FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend?

Brussels devRant meet up soon to be organized - stay tuned fellow belgians

So we got new keyboards at the office. Turns out mine doesn't register the modifier keys well, resulting in plenty of selecting and replacing text with "z", "/" or whatever key I pressed along with it. You can't believe the amount of times my new toy almost flew out of a sixth story Brussels' window in the last couple of days. Anyway, still too lazy to go ask for a new keyboard.

Luc Dupuis

Luc Dupuis, organiste et compositeur belge né en 1954, est reconnu pour son expertise dans la musique pour orgue, notamment les œuvres de Widor et Handel. Professeur émérite au Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, Dupuis a grandement contribué au domaine musical avec ses méthodes d’enseignement innovantes et ses compositions. Ses offres incluent une gamme de symphonies pour orgue, de concertos et de matériaux pédagogiques, séduisant les amateurs et les musiciens professionnels. L’œuvre de Dupuis se caractérise par un mélange de savoir-faire traditionnel et d’interprétation contemporaine, rendant ses compositions et transcriptions une ressource précieuse pour les aficionados de la musique pour orgue.
Luc Dupuis, a distinguished Belgian organist and composer born in 1954, is renowned for his expertise in organ music, particularly the works of Widor and Handel. As a professor emeritus at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Dupuis has significantly contributed to the field of music through his innovative teaching methods and compositions. His offerings include a range of organ symphonies, concertos, and educational materials, appealing to both enthusiasts and professional musicians. Dupuis’ work is characterized by a blend of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary interpretation, making his compositions and transcriptions a valuable resource for organ music aficionados.
Luc Dupuis, ein renommierter belgischer Organist und Komponist, geboren 1954, ist bekannt für seine Expertise in Orgelmusik, insbesondere den Werken von Widor und Händel. Als emeritierter Professor am Königlichen Konservatorium Brüssel hat Dupuis einen bedeutenden Beitrag zum Musikbereich durch seine innovativen Lehrmethoden und Kompositionen geleistet. Sein Angebot umfasst eine Reihe von Orgelsymphonien, Konzerten und Bildungsmaterialien, die sowohl Enthusiasten als auch professionelle Musiker ansprechen. Dupuis’ Werk zeichnet sich durch eine Mischung aus traditionellem Handwerk und zeitgenössischer Interpretation aus, was seine Kompositionen und Transkriptionen zu einer wertvollen Ressource für Orgelmusikliebhaber macht.

It's not GDPR compliance unless it comes from the GDPR region of Brussels.

Otherwise it's just a sparkling high latency CRUD API over Email enforced by law.

!rant

I applied to a position for a Java position in Brussels. Having 7 yr experience in Java how much should I aim for? Keep in mind I don't work in Belgium currently