Will make some more layout changes though, and I think it's also time for a new banner.

SexySammy

I celebrated the end by going to Avatar 3D. I liked everything of it, the story, the graphics, everything. Except for the entrance fee; THIRTEEN euro's. I might sound like a cheapskate, but i'm still a student with no job. And I wanna see that movie again and again.

So this let me to my new years resolution. First I tried to analyze myself, to see what I could do better. I concluded that I have a bad focus. I'm easily distracted, or lose interest when things aren't going according to plan. I decided I should stop trying to multitask; it is evil. My brain is not smart enough to do multitasking. I cannot work and listen to music at the same time. I know it sounds not like a big deal, but I'm the type of person who likes to listen to the lyrics.

So my plan is this new year is to commit myself doing only one task at a time. And maybe give me time limits. For example: I could commit myself to work one hour on homework, without any instant message programs on, without checking some news site, without listening to the radio, without having the television on in the background. Just put all of my attention on just one task.

An other new years resolution is making todo lists - and accomplish them. I want to make a todo list or list of goals for every month. Give myself objectives; I believe this will help me to be more focussed. Also it will give me a sense of feeling that I have accomplished something.

Well, that's pretty much what I wanted to blog about this new year.

Have a great one everybody!

Sammy

Since I have an iPhone I found a lot of apps that help me log almost everything. My weight, my expenses, my appetite.. Even though I want to be more aware of my life, I think I should draw a line with logging everything.

SexySammy

ps: Yes, Sexysammy.nl doesn't exist anymore. I have always intended to keep the URL for only a year. At that time Lycos had this promo where I could get a URL for 1 euro the first year.

Last week I had a small chat with a colleague of mine, who was making the opening animation for the Chinese-New-Year-themed promo's. He told me that this will be the year of the ox. And since he was born in that year he will begin his "third generation".

The chinese zodiac has 12 signs, according to my colleague each cycle is called a generation. He said that the chinese believe your "third generation" is the right time for your life to change. To make career, to change your environment. The "fourth generation" is where you'll settle down.

This year will bring some drastic changes in my life. And not only my environment is changing, I'm also trying to change personally. To try to look at the world from a different perspective. The word "change" has become quite personal theme to me, and I just found it funny how that word kept reappearing in conversations or even in the media. Since Obama is president of the USA, "Change" is the keyword in most articles (beside that other key-thing like him being the first african-american president)

Change, it's the only constant in life. Yet, for the first time in my life, I realize it to be true. The world is constantly changing, evolving, creating anew. People change their morals, create new perspectives, change of hearts. The morals we held yesterday, have evolved into the morals we keep today. Tomorrow will bring even new insights.

After writing this all down, I feel adding an other new year's resolution. "To always keep an open mind". To not get stuck in morals, ideas, and perspectives. Wasn't it Socrates who said: "All I know is that I know nothing". What's the point in fighting over your morals, if they will change in time. And who is to say your morals are right. I hope that even when I'm turning grey I still have an open mind. Age brings the illusion of time and experience, it can make you feel arrogant by thinking you know everything.

So maybe I'm even wrong about having an open mind If that's the case.. just forget everything said above

SexySammy

Ok, I know there is such a thing like MSN or Yahoo Messenger, but communication on those platforms is different. You are usually at work, and don't really have time to chat. Now there is also such a thing like email, but the advantage of blogging is that you can share some of your thoughts, and your friends can choose for themselves if they want to read it and comment on it. Where as with email you might annoy someone with your silly stories, and he/she might feel obligated to reply the email.

Now I know the guys have found Jaiku as a platform for small talk. But I really hope we will continue this trend of blogging, and hopefully Alfred will come with his own system (like me ) and not use wordpress like the others.

SexySammy

Hi guys,

It's been a long while since I wrote a post on my blog. I felt inspired to write this post after reading Jeroen's Blog. It made me want to write my own new year's resolution.

This new year will bring a lot of changes in my personal life. I feel like I'm starting a new chapter. My new year's resolution will be: "To be more aware". I know it sounds pretty vague, but let me try to explain.

I am a dreamer, I dream of a perfect life. I dream of happiness, I dream of what could be and while I'm dreaming, I put my "real" life on auto-pilot. I do the things that are required of me, but without thought or conscience. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm brain dead, it's not as if I don't enjoy my life. But for a big part I go through life without thought and take everything for granted.

Lately, I have tried to put myself in a state of awareness, by trying to heighten my senses. I do this by focussing on one of my senses. For example I try to listen to every sound, and just this act has opened a whole new world to me.

I know it sounds weird, it sounds pointless, but somehow it felt important to me. To be more aware of my surroundings, to use my senses more often. To take a moment and look around, observing every object, each texture, each reflection, to take a deep breath and smell the air, to feel the warmth of the sun.

Now I know your thinking: "What possible benefits would this bring you?" And though I cannot answer this with scientific proof, I believe that by standing still from time to time observing my universe, I will experience my life more intensely, appreciating every detail that life is giving.

This year will bring a lot of joy in my life and I want to enjoy every moment of it. I don't want to fall back to a life where I just live, do my stuff and take every gift for granted. Life is wonderful, in every detail..

Have a wonderful new year

SexySammy

So just an other week and then I will go to Bali. I'm really looking forward to go. But we only be there for the weekend. So we are bit in a crisis on what to see.

SexySammy

I wonder who still works at Sorga. Been a long while since we've been there. The last time was in 2005 for a week. But without the guys.

Sure will be a great weekend, can't wait to see you guys again

SexySammy

I've made quite a lot of pictures, but haven't made a gallery on this blog yet. If you want to see some of my pictures just check my facebook profile. My colleagues uploaded a lot of pictures with me on it.

Well, that's it for now.. Life is good

SexySammy

I arrived safely and have been working for one and a half week now. I don't have my own computer at work, and my laptop isn't connected to internet. So I don't really had time to post on my blog.

But when I get home I will write a story and tomorrow I will post it on my blog.

Cheers

SexySammy

And since they don't have early trains from Zwolle to Frankfurt airport, I had to go a day earlier and find a hotel to stay in. But the hotels here are freaking expensive too. 215 euro for one night at the airport I asked if there was an alternative and the cheapest I found was a room for 90 euro in a hotel 15 minutes away.
I feel i'm getting ripped off in here. The hotel was not that bad, but definitely not worth the 90 euro. Apparently it is, since you are paying for the location, but that and the shower were the only good things about it. The television channels were all german. I couldn't understand a freaking thing. The breakfast was just bad.. The bread was hard and the milk was not cold enough. When I thought I poured in orange juice, I was actually pouring fanta

And then you have the airport. I have been in a few airports in my life and I must say for a western country this one really sucks. I've been to Singapore, Amsterdam, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta and except for the latter all of them had free internet terminals. Granted, you couldn't hang behind the computer the whole day. There is usually a limit of 15 minutes, but still it is free
Here in Germany you have to pay to check your email, the fee is 21 euro an hour. I threw in 2 euro and 20 cents for 6 minutes and some seconds. Enough time to check your email, but these freaking Germans messed up the keyboard for you. I felt like I was on Punk'd, I couldn't find the Y-button, when I finally found it on the bottom left of the keyboard I was confronted with the challenge of finding the @-button. Finally after going through all the numbers I found it on the Q button, but how to activate it? It wasn't the shift button, cause that only capitalize the letter Q. After an other minute I found out to use the alt button. But not the left alt-button, no the right alt button. Gosh
I really thought Ashton Kutcher would appear with his camera crew and shout: You just got Punk'd! And for the first time I felt sad that he did not

Anyway, it's time to shake of this bad energy Even with all those irritating things on my path (sending me from Terminal A to B and then back again, and again... or having to almost strip myself), I still feel very excited and happy about going to Indonesia. It's going to be a great time. Luckily I had no problems with my luggage. It was 21,5 Kg, but not too heavy. I can officially bring 20 Kg, so I'm glad they didn't forced the regulations. I'm currently waiting to board the airplane. I can't wait to take off and leave this airport

SexySammy

I'm really excited on going. But I can't start with the internship immediately, because I don't have a working permit or business visa. I need a letter of approval from the immigration office and since we filed in the request a bit late it means I have to wait before I can get to work. When I get that letter I will go to Singapore to get a business visa at the embassy of Indonesia.

Anyway, I'm really stoked on going. It will be a great time. I hope to make a few YouTube videos about my time in Indonesia. You can check them in my Videos section or visit my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/sexysammynl). I hope to upload a new video as soon as I arrive in Jakarta.

SexySammy

Been a while since I blogged. I was searching for an internship in Jakarta for this september. And I have finally found the internship that I wanted from the start. I had an opportunity to work as a web developer, but I want to develop my motion graphic skills.

And today I got the email from a company where I can do just that, develop my motion graphic skills

I won't say which company it is yet. Cause there are some legal things to take care of first. But things are looking gooOOOoood

SexySammy

Note: I spoke too soon, just got an email. And from what I can understand is that the internship is for a period of 1 month

In my last post I spoke of a project I was working on. The project was a performance with the Zwols Symphony Orchestra. They had the idea to have me project some visuals while they were playing film music.

The performance was on may 17 and yesterday my mom noticed an article in our local newspaper. I have put the article online for you all to see. But it is in dutch. So I will make a translation when I have the time hehehe

Click here to go to the article

SexySammy

I wish it was may 18 already.

SexySammy

The first really eye opener presentation was from DuranDuboi Studio. They worked on movies like "Asterix and the Olympic Games", "Hitman", "His Majesty Minor" etc. As a student it's really fascinating to see how a professional post production studio works.

The presentation that followed them was the company "L'Est". As I understand it they coordinated the different post production houses that worked on the VFX for the movie "Asterix and the Olympic Games". The presentation also showed some of the problems that VFX brings. Directors think that everything can be fixed in post production. One of the examples he showed was when they work with blue screens to extend a set. In some shots they had to go into post production because the shot showed a little bit of the blue screen, just a little corner. This could have been easily avoided by just moving the camera, the set extension didn't brought anything extra to the shot. I thought it was a bit weird that directors don't really care about those things even though they know that it cost them more money.

The presentation I liked the most was given by Glenn Entis (Chief Visual and Technical Officr, Worldwide Studios, Electronic Arts). He gave a personal view on 30 Years in CG. So why was this such an eye opener to me? Well, I have a thing for giving presentations. I'm quite shy, but I do like giving presentations. It's scary to stand in front of a lot of people, but so satisfactory when you do a good job. Giving presentations is not what I want to do for a career, but while I'm still at school I want to be better at it.

Glenn Entis keynote blew away all the other presentations that I saw up till that point. It was a bit like the keynote's I see Steve Jobs give on the internet, who I also find very inspiring. Now, when you read this, it may seem that the presentation was crammed full with animations and all and that I enjoyed the keynote more than the content. But that's not the case. The keynote was quite simple, but instead of using a lot of text, he used a lot of images. Images that were there just to support the things that he was saying. His text was short and clear. His background was just black, which worked so well on that big screen. Cause the projector didn't filled the whole screen, so using black as a background gave the impression of using the whole screen and also put the focus more on the items displayed on screen.

But let me talk a bit more about the content hehehe. Well, one of the points he made was. You can't give fun without having fun. So when his team worked on "Band of Brothers" he let the team play with tin soldiers. This brought the fun back in the team and was also a cheap and quick way of setting up the levels. Making fun and doing what you the things you love is something that you should strive to achieve.

Alex Laurant keynote was also impressive to me, simple and clean. He talked about his move from film to the game industry. How people think that games will turn into movies, but that they are wrong. Games are the new media and sometimes more complex than movies.

I'm gonna stop now, cause I'm quite tired. I had no ideas that watching keynotes would be so exhausting. But the brain is active all the time, it's like a sponge, absorbing all those wonderful stories, analyzing what's been said and then getting inspired in a creative way. A lot of brain processing is going on. Yesterday I felt so tired, that when I got back in the hotel I fell a sleep immediately. I'm writing this in one of the conference rooms during a break.

I'm pretty sure tonight there won't be a lot of writing.

SexySammy

We were only stuck in traffic for a while and now I have Amy MacDonald's song stuck in my head ~ "Where we gonna go, where we gonna sleep tonight" ;P

The song was quite fitting cause we weren't sure if the room that I booked was available. I booked the hotel quite late, last friday night , and all we got was a standard email that our request was in progress and that we would get a confirmation within 24 hours. Well, that confirmation never came and on the day of arrival (today) I thought let's just try to call them and ask if they got the reservation. But I couldn't reach them and only got a tape saying their opening hours are from monday till friday. But luckily we got the last room

The hotel we are in is 7,5Km from were the FMX is being held. Check the FMX website to learn more about what it is about. Cause to be honest I don't really know what to expect out of it. But I'm sure it will be interesting

SexySammy

Which convinced of why IP banning is useless, so I need something else to defend my blog with I hate SPAMMERS

PS: From now on I won't post the emails you leave behind, I scrambled the emails with javascript so that spammer-bots can't read them, but you never know do you. These SPAMMERS are a bunch of parasites

On an other note, I'm also thinking of upgrading the blog with some AJAX features. If you check my archives list you'll see some fancy animated javascript when you click on it Well, just be sure to keep checking the blog, I'm sure you'll be seeing some changes soon.

SexySammy

I hope they like the animation, I only feel bad that I couldn't show the rest of the portfolio already. That's what you get when you are working on multiple projects at the same time, but I'll try to make some improvements on the website soon.

SexySammy

Unfortunately http://sammy.nl was already taken, it would have cost me € 750,- to buy the domain name. That's a bit too expensive for just an .nl domain extension.

But I'm happy with the .nu behind my first name. At the moment I'm pretty occupied with other projects, so I haven't been able to make a proper design nor made any adjustments to http://sexysammy.nl.

So what am I working on now?? I'm doing a project with my brother called: Cut out for Dance. The project is inspired on the work of Matisse. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a film maker and the "producer" of this project. Coming monday and tuesday we will film the project in Den Hague.

This thursday I also have to show some results for the research project I do at school. And in the back of my mind there are other projects that I really want to work on. Like the design for sammy.nu I made it very quickly cause I just had to. There was just an urge in me that needed to be fulfilled. Luckily it didn't really take me long to finish the result, but my mind is a bit jumpy. I have problems focussing on one task.

Well, break is over.. Back to work..

SexySammy

-edit-
I should be doing something else, but I build a RSS feed in my website. Now (if you want ) you can easily follow my blog using the RSS reader you prefer

-edit2-
I made an other adjustment. I moved sexysammy.nl from sexysammy.maeksm.com to http://sexy.sammy.nu .

If anybody gives you a weird look, just reply with: "What?? Don't you know it's Sammy's birthday??"

Hehehe.. The change, you might not have noticed, is that I'm now using the php framework CodeIgniter. For the people who don't know CodeIgniter or aren't into web development, CodeIgniter Rocks your Socks.. There I said it.. It just literally sweeps you of your feet and makes your socks do the twist.. It's that good

An other thing I changed is that your e-mail is now protected from spam-bots. So don't be afraid to leave your e-mail in your comments. CodeIgniter comes with a function that "writes an obfuscated version of the mailto tag using ordinal numbers written with JavaScript to help prevent the email address from being harvested by spam bots". (Yeah, I quoted that from the manual)

Oh and have you seen how the whole website is XHTML 1.0 Strict validated.. That's just sooo Sexy

PS: If you leave your website in your comment I will add it into my sidebar under friends, but only if I know you (read: like you )