Jorg's Brain Log

I thought I would give an update again on what is going on at the moment in the life of Jorg. 2009 is already an interesting year and there is so much going on.

One of the things I’m the most proud of is that I’m really sporting again. Not like 1-2 times a week, but a real schedule with set goals and everything. On January 4th I started my ‘getting back in shape, start sporting and loose many kilo’s’ schedule and I must say it worked real well. I lost 10 kilo’s, did 4 fitness sessions a week, 2 times running and 2 times swimming and some freediving. All in all it felt great to be back in the gym, water and on the road.

3 weeks ago I tested my body in the snow: 1 week of snowboarding, and I noticed  that my body was again more ready for the task than 3 months before. But apparently I was not done yet; the week after snowboarding I was sick (it was a long time ago!). My throat hurt like hell and I had to cough every few minutes. So while I wasn’t really down, sport wasn’t an option either. Last week I still felt some pain in my throat but I decided to start with some cardiovascular work again: some running and swimming. While it wasn’t that easy as normally because of my throat I still managed to get some work done.

Stupid thing is, that once you get out of your schedule, everything get mixed up. Besides barely sporting for the last 2 weeks, I also dropped my newly build eating habits. And in conclusion I added 2 kilo’s, getting back to a healthy 118 kilo’s. You want to know what a healthy 118 kilo’s can do? Check this!

So physical activity was good in the last months, but not really in the last weeks. So time to improve again! From today on, I’m back on a good schedule. Rule: Minimum physical activity a day: 20 min

I will publish my whole sport/life schedule later on. It’s an intense but low volume schedule! More sport moments and less time spend on sport. So that I’ve got time to develop the mind as well.

In the last few weeks I discovered books again. When I was around 20 years old I did a speed reading course by Tony Buzan to get me through my study books. I used it for several years but afterwards I somewhat forgot about the technique. As I was reading again some books in the last weeks, I started applying the techniques again and speed went up big time again. I don’t really have as much time as I would like for reading but I still manage to do around 1000 pages a week. That’s around 2-4 books a week, and it’s a good schedule I try to keep up with. The last 3 weeks I read 9 books and 4 were really interesting and gave my some good new useful knowledge.

Due to some professional changes (I will write about this later) I also had the opportunity to spend a lot more time with my kids and girlfriend and learned the importance and pleasure in this again. Time with them is the most important thing in the world to me so it was good to be so close again and be in their 9 to 5 lives for a few weeks.

Sleeping has been terrible the last weeks. Where I normally slept for around 4-5 hours each night, I now regularly sleep for around 6-9 hours and still feel tired afterwards. Now, I’m going to give my girlfriend the fault for this because she needs a lot of sleep and she likes it when we go to bed at the same time. But damn, it’s so frustrating to go to bed at around 23:00 hours and get up at 8:00 and still like to stay in bed. This has to change big time, now! It just doesn’t work. So I’m going to set the sleeping pattern back to 6 hours a night (still much more than the regular 4-5 hours), and do a micro sleep in the afternoon. I want to sleep and not feel tired afterwards!

The above where just a few things I’m busy with improving. There are some interesting projects going as well, but that’s for another blog post later on.

Enough on me for now! How’s your life going on and how are you trying to improve it?

I’m a real Internet nerd, I have my complete digital life stored in the cloud. Some people will start arguing that that is not something very smart, or that it’s dangerous and I could give you my whole list of actions/thinking’s what I did to make it ‘safe’. But that’s not the point of this post.

Last week when I was on vacation, I thought thinking what was not yet in the cloud yet on my laptop. I opened my laptop and started looking what I had installed on it. Thanks god, it was a very short list. I remember the days that when I clicked on Start my whole page would fill up with lists of stuff I had installed on my pc. Here’s is the complete list:

Windows XP,7-zip, Belastingdienst (Software for sending my taxes directly to the dutch ‘IRS’), Dropbox, Evernote, Filezilla FTP-client, Foxit Reader, FTD, Google Chrome, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk, ID Software Quake Live plugin, K-Lite codec pack, Mozilla Firefox, Imageburn, Network Associates McAfee, Newsleecher, Picasa 3, Videolan VLC, Tweetdeck, Openoffice

Windows XP and McAfee came pre-installed on my new laptop 1,5 years ago and the rest of the software I use is all free. So all in all I say that 95% of the time I’m working on my laptop I do this in Google Chrome. My non working time mostly consists of using my laptop as a media player for my movies, music and photo’s. If my laptop gets stolen, or falls down the table and it breaks it hard disks… no problem. Everything I have on hard disk is back upped by dropbox the minute it is created or changed.

So instead of a big clumsy laptop I need a new and smaller Internet device/media player. I recently got myself a G1 android phone and I’m very pleased because of the easy OS and great functionality the phone has. If only it had a big screen and keyboard, I think it would already be enough as a laptop replacement.

My ideal Internet device would have the following features:

• Connectivity: WiFi, Blue-tooth, Giga-Ethernet, HSDPA
• Battery Life: at least a 6-cell battery that last for 8 hours or more. A whole working day without recharging.
• Good keyboard, nothing strange or too small
• Good screen that is viewable in every condition. Also directly in the sun. Think 1280 x 800 as minimum for ideal working environment. Think 9/10 inch max. Touchscreen would finish it to make it a good media player as well.
• Hardware that does the job: working in the cloud and acting as a mediaplayer. Oh and of course the mandatory web cam for videoconferencing.
• Good expandable solid state memory options, USB ports and HDMI.
• Doesn’t look like a toy! In other words: I can bring it as a business device to customers.
• Custom Linux OS: Android would do the trick for me. The tight Google integration is ideal for my needs.

At the moment the yet to be released Asus Eee PC T101h is the closest thing coming to it, but many other manufacturers are releasing new netbooks every month that come closer and closer. I still have a few months before I must buy a new device, so I keep an eye out to some new and interesting netbooks that come out and update about it here.

I don’t expect Android to be available on any netbook before the end of this year, but some people already made it possible to run Android on a regular Asus Eee PC. I just love open source and its enthusiastic community.

After looking back at my history of phone numbers, email adresses and personal websites I have used over the years I thought it would be usefull for a small post with my latest contact information and some other links that link to my online presence. Let’s start of with the basics:

Keep in mind I have a new mobile number since March 2009!!!

Mobile phone: +31 634 027 003

E-Mail: jorg.jansen at gmail.com

Personal Website: www.jorgjansen.com

The above is also what is stated on my personal business card, so with the above info, you have it all. To make it a little more complete below you will find my online presence and how/why I use them:

• Friendfeed: My online presence aggregator! I’ve got a big gadget on my personal website. It collects most of my online stuff over here. So don’t bother reading the rest of the list, but everything interesting turns onsite here!
• Twitter: Everything done on friendfeed is also put on twitter
• Google Talk: my main use is actually not the IM function but the status update/lattitude function. I use this to update my status and location through my t-mobile G1 android phone. Friendfeed grabs the status and pushes it to twitter, hyves and some other status update function on some social websites.
• Google Reader: My RSS aggregator. Thinks I like or read I also share, sometimes with some extra comments with them.
• Google Calendar: Where I put all my appointments in. Everybody is free to watch my calendar and see when I’m in a meeting and not available on phone. Or when I’m free to plan an appointment.
• Skype: You can find me with the name jorgjansen. How convenient! now that I got it installed on my G1 phone I plan to use it a lot more just for calling. I don’t have it installed on my laptop, because I don’t like installing stuff on my laptop… I really need a netbook I guess.

My presence on different social networks:

• Linkendin: for my business network. If you have something interesting to mention/ask you’re free to add me.
• Facebook: Mostly used for my non-business international network.
• Hyves: The Netherlands has their own biggest social network called hyves and here’s my profile. Looking through it now it’s maybe to clean up a little bit.
• I’m also on Plaxo, Myspace, Orkut and districtworld but I seem to loose more and more interest in these networks.

Other stuff:

I’m on many more popular websites, but that’s probably not so interesting to mention here. You can follow activity on those mostly through my friendfeed page. Think Digg, Chi.mp, Brightkite, Goodreads, Flickr, Picasa, Last.fm, Reddit, Slideshare, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Youtube and many many more.  My up to date list contains 221 websites I’m subscribed to, and I didn’t even dare to look at my notepad filled with website info.

So all in all, enough options to reach me!

Finally back behind my laptop. I was on winter sport for the first time of my life. It was a great experience! Not only was it great to do some snowboarding but I also learned a lot; about myself, others, general stuff and not so general stuff.

My girlfriend stayed home with the kids and I went together with Sanne and his girlfriend. So all in all, I was pretty much boss of my own time, not influenced by urgent needs from the kids or other appointments and agreements. I planned to do a lot of snowboarding and the rest of the time find some rest by reading books and watching movies that I brought on my laptop.

We drove from Eindhoven to Solden (Austria) on Saturday 7th of march in a good pace. Starting at 6:30 and arriving in Austria around 13:30. But the last 100 km took us around 3 hours, so by the time we came in our rented pension we were pretty tired. A quick pizza and beer for dinner and after picking up our rented gear and after that it was pretty much over with the energy.

On Sunday morning it was our first day. And after studying the map of the ski region it was pretty clear that our pension location was very good. Only a 3 minute walk to the first elevator! After paying a ridiculous amount of money for a 6 day ski pass, we walked to the lift and went up. It’s a pretty fast ride of around 10 minutes that brings us from 1300 meters to 2300 meters at the giggibach pistes. Sun was shining, weather was good and I had a knot in my stomach from what I was seeing.

I think I have snowboarded before for around 12 times or so. But all the time it was on a great indoor piste. 550 meters long, elevator inside and everything. And I thought I was prepared and ready to go. I must admit that when I took the lift to the first blue piste (the easy one!) and I looked down I really second guessed if I was ready and why I was going to throw myself from a mountain. After attaching the bindings correctly and standing on my board for several seconds, my adrenaline-jorg took offer and a little voice said: go go go…

You can prepare as extensivly as you want, but nothing beats just trying the real thing! First lesson learned: If you’re afraid to fall, you will never learn anything!

After a few times up and down the piste it was becoming more and more easier to manoeuvre all the ways I wanted to and I even began to relax a little bit on my board. As soon as I relaxed on my board, the board took the way with the least resistance and that was not the way my body was going. Major wipe out. Lesson 2: Don’t be too comfortable soon, prepare for the unexpected!

After 3 hours non stop on the piste it was time to take a lunch. Down at our rooms we relaxed and ate a bit and at the same discussed what we were going to do. We looked at the map and decided it was time to find the highest point and take the long way back. What sounded like a great idea, became a long trip down feeling like a triple marathon. Because we did the 12 kilometer route in the afternoon many people already destroyed the snow with their ski’s making bumps and holes everywhere in the route. Bumps and holes are maybe fun for skiers but not for snowboarders, or at least boarders called Jorg!

Lesson 3: Don’t take the road much traveled! It’s boring and you don’t learn a thing!

We came back exhausted after this long trip, but all in all in was a good first learning day. There were many more lessons coming up in the next 5 days!