Dafmetal's Blog

An exciting week for the bookmaplet!

2009-07-09T20:06:00.008+02:00

Wow, I just had a crazy week with the bookmaplet!One week ago, last Thursday the bookmaplet got featured on Lifehacker, and shortly after this it was also picked up by MakeUseOf.com and KillerStartups. The net result? Tons of people trying it out. Check out this Google Analytics graph:About 1200 visits on Thursday, and its settling around about 150-300 visits a day. Before that, I was averaging

Crimson Falls: Studio Report

2009-02-02T20:35:00.003+01:00

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to meet up with Crimson Falls in the CCR Studio where they were mixing their new cd, Fragments of Awareness. When I entered the studio, I could already hear one of the new songs, 'The Suicide Circle', blasting through the speakers. The song switches from deathcore to black metal style riffing, has vocals backing both styles up and the singer from Rafflesia

Lessons learned from building the bookmaplet

2008-12-16T22:38:00.001+01:00

Building the bookmaplet allowed me to learn a lot about programming for the Internet, even though it is only small, little webapp. There were quite a few gotcha's as well. Reason enough to share some of the lessons I learned.Website layouts are hardDoing the layout for a website is harder than it seems. I have a fair bit of experience with building Java GUIs in Swing, but doing CSS is whole

Rumor: Slipknot on Graspop 2009?

2008-12-15T20:16:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I was at the Slipknot concert in Antwerp, and Slipknot frontman, Corey Taylor, mentioned (what I think) is a big hint on their possible appearance on Graspop 2009:You can expect to see us back sooner than you think!I don't think they'll do new European tour again so quickly after this one (which ends tonight). This opens the door for them to do a string of summer festival appearances.

Official launch: Bookmaplet

2008-12-13T15:49:00.003+01:00

With this post, I'm officially launching my first webapp on Google App Engine:BookmapletHave you ever been on a webpage, saw an address of some company and wanted to know where it was located? Maybe not immediately the exact location, but just to get a general idea of whereabouts it is?That's what you can use the bookmaplet for!The bookmaplet is actually just a bookmarklet, which is a link that

A change of course

2008-12-12T20:46:00.003+01:00

When I started this blog, I expected to be talking about metal exclusively. However, it seems hard for me to consistently write something about that. So, I'm going to mix it up a bit. Open it up.The last few days (evenings actually), I've been busing writing a small webapp. I built it using Google App Engine, and hopefully, I can load it up later this evening.More info when it's launched!Oh, and

New Deathstars vid: Death Dies Hard

2008-12-10T14:11:00.003+01:00

The clip for "Death Dies Hard" of the upcoming Deathstars album, "Night Electric Night" has been launched:Death Dies HardIt's dirty.It's sleazy.It's deathglam, baby!I can't wait for the full cd to come out early 2009.

VirtualPresence: FriendFeed - Rooms

2008-11-18T15:18:00.009+01:00

Whoah, looks like I took my sweet time to follow up on my VirtualPresence posts. It's been a few weeks even. But I'm going to make it up by talking a bit about a cool and useful feature of FriendFeed called rooms.Rooms in FriendFeed are a bit like a forum section dedicated to a certain topic. People can join rooms and post, comment and like items that are shared in this room. Basically, in

VirtualPresence: FriendFeed - Basics

2008-10-28T20:50:00.006+01:00

At first, I was planning on gently describing some of the building blocks of the social web, like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and so on. This would then lead into some of the more tricky stuff like FriendFeed. However, as my posting is somewhat irregular, I have decided to immediately go to some of the more fun stuff. If you think I'm going too fast, let me know and I will fill in some of those

Graspop 2009 dates announced

2008-10-24T15:40:00.004+02:00

Mark your calendars!The dates for the Graspop 2009 festival have been announced: 26-27-28 june 2009.Now the speculating for who might play can begin. My wishlist:The Black Dahlia MurderAmon AmarthSlipknotCrimson FallsNeurosisDeathstarsAll Shall PerishAnaal NathrakhSaattueAbortedCradle Of FilthWho would you like to see on Graspop in 2009?

VirtualPresence: Do you have that URL in Small?

2008-10-16T10:01:00.003+02:00

If you used a service like Twitter for any amount of time, you quickly run into the problem of sharing a link through it. 140 character is not a lot of space, but there is a solution for this through URL shorteners. There is a whole lot of them, but the basics are the same for all. You give them a URL that you want to share, and they return you with a very short replacement URL that you can then

Murder Manifest is following you

2008-10-14T10:33:00.004+02:00

Two days ago, I noticed a new follower on my Twitter account. It was none other than Dutch death thrash formation, Murder Manifest. It looks like they got their online presence well established through their own website, and Twitter, Last.fm, and YouTube accounts (among a few others). They appear to be a good example of what I try to describe with the VirtualPresence posts.But there is more - and

An automatic lyrics evocifier.

2008-10-09T13:47:00.003+02:00

I got an interesting comment to my previous post on the lyrical analysis (of Nocturnal by The Black Dahlia Murder). The idea that was proposed went as follows:Would it be possible to build a tool that could take a (first draft) of the lyrics to a song and propose more evocative words, or maybe introduce certain figures of speech?Would someone want to use it?My short answer would be: Build such a

Lyrical Analysis: Nocturnal by The Black Dahlia Murder

2008-10-08T14:11:00.006+02:00

I pay less notice to the lyrics of songs then I used to. Now, when I buy new cd's, I have a quick look through the booklet for the artwork, usually while I'm ripping them for my mp3 player. But for a lot of releases that is the only time the written lyrics pass by me. Once in a while however, a hear a song that does make me want to now what exactly is being sung. One of those is "Nocturnal" by

VirtualPresence: Hashing up some more Twitter

2008-10-06T15:57:00.001+02:00

Last week's post on Twitter was on basic Twitter usage. Today, we'll see another aspect of Twitter that you are bound to run into when you start using the service.As it happens, people on Twitter often post messages on the same topic. They might, for instance, reveal their thoughts on an upcoming event (like elections, etc.). These messages only go as far as the circle of people they are followed

VirtualPresence: Twitter

2008-10-01T16:50:00.014+02:00

First of all, I changed the name of this series from "Social Sites for Bands" to "VirtualPresence", while the former was kind of a bland description, the latter has a better ring to it and is shorter to write.So, today I'm gonna talk about Twitter and there's lots of stuff to say about it (probably enough for multiple posts) so let's start with the basics. Twitter is a small webapp where you can

Social Sites for Bands: Intro

2008-09-29T21:55:00.003+02:00

As a software engineer, I spend a lot of time behind a pc and online. There has been a big shift in the last years towards social websites and webapps and more seem to crop each month. It's easy to find your friends on these sites, but when I started looking for bands (or band members) on these sites, I almost couldn't find any at all. Now, I'm not talking about MySpace where everybody and his

lolmetal IV: archeology is a hobby

2008-09-23T19:56:00.003+02:00

I found some more lolmetal pictures that I made a while ago.

Graspop 2008 review

2008-07-03T20:38:00.002+02:00

The 2008 edition of the Graspop Metal Meeting was once again a resounding success with some excellent bands, a record-breaking crowd (about 135000 visitors!) and of course beer and hamburgers galore. I managed to get there for all three days and really enjoyed myself.So, let's have a look at what I think were the top 5 performances:5. Arch Enemy:Arch Enemy was much better than I expected them to

New Crimson Falls song online

2008-07-02T14:22:00.002+02:00

Belgian deathcore formation Crimson Falls have just put a new song online, called " A Period Of Consequences". You can check it out on their MySpace page. It turns out to be layered song with a lot going on inside it, and the intro should be able get a pit started during live shows in no time. You might have to wait a bit before you can see them live however, as they will be concentrating on

Neurosis on Pukkelpop!

2008-04-22T08:31:00.002+02:00

I heard some great news this morning on the radio. One of the bands playing at the Pukkelpop festival this year will be Neurosis. This is excellent news as they don't play very often. And it's been years since I was last at that festival but I'll definitely be going this year.If you haven't heard about Neurosis before, I recommend checking out the album "The Eye Of Every Storm". It's a piece of

Lenses are metal!

2008-04-15T18:44:00.002+02:00

In case you didn't know:Lenses are fucking metal!

Preview Graspop 2008: day one

2008-04-13T01:45:00.002+02:00

The complete lineup for Graspop 2008 is known by now, and I'll be going there anyway. So let's have a look at what we can expect this year starting with the first day.Firewind: Never heard of this band, but according to the bio, they are spearheaded by Gus G. formerly of Nightrage and Arch Enemy. Might be interesting, but they have to play so early that I'll probably miss them.Damn Your Idols: A

Tentacle Metal

2008-04-09T19:23:00.006+02:00

I mentioned my interest in the Cthulhu Mythos before, and I'd like to elaborate a bit on it in this post. In the 1920's there was an American writer who went by the name of H.P. Lovecraft. As someone who was regularly ill, he was confined to his house a lot which led him to start writing. He wrote horror stories that got published in several pulp magazines at that time. He also maintained an

lolmetal III: I has a hungry...

2008-04-07T20:28:00.004+02:00

For more lolmetal goodness, check out the lolmetal tag.Disclaimer: The copyright of these images lies with their respective owners. If you want to display one of the lolmetal pictures, please contact me and leave a link to this blog.