Yep, I blog too…
It’s been a week now since I started working for CARET. I’m not in Cambridge at the moment as I’m working at home but I’ve booked my ferry ticket today. My car is coming with me to Cambridge so the ferry is the way to go I guess. I’m looking forward to move into my new home.
The bigest disadvantage is that I’ll miss my girlfriend and family though 
. I will be coming back to Belgium on regular basis to visit everybody.
Cheers,
Bert
I’ve been in Belgium for a couple of weeks now and I’m still getting used to it. It’s definitely good to be back but I’m looking forward to return again too. From August on I’m going to be working at the University of Cambridge at CARET. I’ve completed my internship there and I’m happy to be able to go back and work in Cambridge. I’ve met a lot of interesting people during my internship so it should definitely be a good experience again 
.
We’re closing in on the last week at CARET. I’ve received my final project last week. It’s a design project for the American Academy of Religion (AAR) to be implemented in Sakai. I’ve been doing some design work for a few days now and I really like this project. ‘Designing stuff’ is something that’s often looked at as ‘not that hard to do’ but there is so much wrong with that statement. To make a design you have to be able to get in the skin of the one that will end up using the site. User testing will help too but you still need that ‘Fingerspitzengefühl’. If I’m not sure if something is decent in a design the chances are big that the end user most certainly won’t like it. I usually just rethink or throw it away in that case.
I sometimes refer to a good design as love. It’s hard to get it, easy to be thought of as obvious and frustrating if it never feels right. People often forget that behind a great website goes a lot of thinking, throwing away ideas and starting all over again. It’s one of the downsides of being a designer; but getting it absolutely right makes you forget about all downsides. Just my two cents.
I’ll end this post by giving you an example from Clients From Hell.
Client: “The cost is very high, we can save costs by getting our guy to design it.”
Web designer: “That’s possible, would save some amount of money.”
Client: “Yeah, he’s an illustrator but I am sure he can do web-design, it’s all the same art stuff anyway.”
Clients From Hell: http://clientsfromhell.net
Last week we went punting in the Cam. The weather was excellent to do it that day and it was very relaxing. Punting seems easier than it is and you should definitely try it if you get the chance.
Yesterday we visited the 37th Cambridge Beer Festival. The atmosphere was brilliant I must say and I got a cool balloon hat! I gave it to another guy when we left and he seemed very happy with it 
. Some beers where better than the other but ‘Funky Monkey’ was definitely the best I got.
Work has been cool too, I’m working on an AIR application that let’s users log in to Sakai from their desktop and do everything they can do on the website itself. I’ve been cooperating on the Cambridge University Library widgets project, BERA project and now starting the AAR project too. You can read about them in the links below. The rest of my time is divided between writing my thesis and enjoying the good weather (not today ).
I’m getting my first job offers too. That’s a big confidence boost . Check out Meebo!
It’s a little late to say my internship lifted off but I meant the planes on the awesome air show yesterday. The air show was, not surprisingly, held in Duxford. Duxford has a former Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield that was used a lot during the Battle of Britain. ‘Battle of Britain’ is a name given to the air attacks waged by the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, against the UK during the summer and autumn of 1940.
There is a museum at the airfield where you can view old and new planes and enter some of them. We got inside some planes including the Concorde. I always thought that plane was much bigger. We didn’t get to see everything of the museum since there are a lot of planes, bombs, vehicles,… to view and the air show started at 2PM.
You can view the photos in my gallery linked here and in the top menu. I’ll provide some interesting links about the Battle of Britain and Duxford too. It was good fun!
Duxford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duxford
Imperial war museum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_War_Museum_Duxford
Battle of Britain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
After Planet Rock, the new Slash album and some Q music I’ve tuned my UK radio to Last FM. I’ve created an account which you can add as a friend so we can see what awesome music we like. Apparently in Belgium you have to pay for the “Radio” on Last FM but here in the UK I don’t seem to have any limits on it so it’s free!
Last weekend some we held a football match with some Caret Colleagues and friends. Our team lost in the end but it was a great game, I really enjoyed it even though the weather wasn’t that good. I hope this weekend the weather is better because we are planning on playing football again.
Cheers
Bert
Apparently my laptop decided to give some weird stuff on my screen while booting. Luckily it still boots and I can work on it like I should be able to. I hope it doesn’t break while I’m in Cambridge because I need to get my thesis done. 
It has been a great weekend so far. Some friends from Belgium were visiting the UK and they were in Cambridge for three days. On Friday we went to several clubs and had a great time there. We were joined by a colleague of mine too, awesome!
On Saturday the weather was great! We walked around in the center of Cambridge, laid around in some parks, talked some nonsense and enjoyed it a lot. This city really is kick-ass when the weather is good. ”Awesomesauce” would one of the guys say that visited 
. In the evening I went to their hostel and had some diner at “the Rock”. Sadly enough it was raining on the way back home. There are some pictures but I’ll probably get them later this week.
Life can’t be about partying all the time ( ) so today I’ll work on my thesis and reports. The first version of it is due in 17 days so it’s probably a good idea to spend some time on it. Tomorrow is a bank holiday so we’ll probably do some laundry and, depending on how the weather is, play some frisbee or football in the park.
