I’m not a graphic designer by trade, but I like designing simple layouts and especially for my own weblog. Since starting a contracted job my motivation to do website ‘stuff’ after work has exponentially decreased. I don’t have the creative energy to create a new design after work hours. The current design is a year old and not even finished. So I have decided to purchase a premium theme that is more fancy than my simple ones and focus my energy 100% on content.

I haven’t written much if anything at all in more than a half year and I’m starting to miss having a journal of what I have been doing, thinking, etc. Hopefully I’ll have the new theme up and running this week. It will be a magazine like theme with focus on photos and content. Might motivate me to take more photos for my entries.

As for keeping the graphic skills that I do have, fresh, work will provide plenty opportunity for that.

On February 7 I boarded KLM for a ten hour trans atlantic flight back home to Aruba. Last time I have been home was 3 years ago. I was happy to finally go back for a vacation, especially with the sudden sub zero cold in the Netherlands.

My days consisted of waking up early every day, eating breakfast on the patio while watching the sunrise. Then we would go out to visit family, shop, drive around or to the beach. Of course I ate out more than at home. Especially fish and soup I could not pass up. The only junk food I ate was a salad at Wendy’s and hash browns breakfast at McDonald’s. I still cannot comprehend why McDonald’s in the Netherlands doesn’t has hash browns nor pancakes.

My second week-end I went to Curacao for three days to see my cousins and aunt. I barely slept a total of 10 hours those three days. Family meals, driving a round taking photo’s, a short walk in the city and before I knew it I was boarding a plane back to Aruba.

Three days after my trip to Curacao it was time to head back to the Netherlands, back to the winter cold. This year I’ll be living in the Netherlands for 12 years. It was the first time I could board a plane back here without a feeling of dread. While Aruba will always be home and where my family lives, the Netherlands has also become home.

Photos from Aruba | Photos from Curacao

I played tennis every week, more than once a week and more than one hour at times. I wasn’t really good, I was small for my age, thin, with no hint of muscle power. My peers always crushed me on court, I only won one game in my short 7 years career(mostly group lessons, from age 7 to 14) of tennis. That game I won is still very dear to me. 3 sets, one hour each. But I loved tennis and still love it very much. If it wasn’t due to health issues I would have never quit.

But I’m getting off track. What I learned and what I like about tennis is, it is not only a physical endurance sport, but it is an equally mental endurance sport. You are out on the court alone, facing your opponent, no team mates, no coach, no one to talk to. You can only draw strength form yourself and the public cheering for you.

Brian Phillips writes about the epic Australian Open Final between Djokovic and Nadal. His beautiful written article really drives the point across of how epic a tennis match can be.

Nadal and Djokovic battled for 6 hours in the Australian summer heat for the grand slam title. Six long, painful hours which they had only themselves to keep going. It was a battle of gladiators. I love most sports, but none, none can be like tennis. Soccer, football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. They are all team sports, with coach support and most of them with time limits.

So when I read a prose about tennis like the one written by Brain Phillips, that reminds me of what tennis really is, my heart swells for the love of the game.

December last year I got the go ahead from my transplant doctor that I can get a tattoo. I had to wait since my transplant in 2009 because of immune suppressing medication that I take. I figuratively went from my doctor’s appointment to the tattoo shop. On December 17 I went for a two hour session to get my owl inked. After thinking long and hard I chose the owl for wisdom. The design is part of a piece from a Canadian print artist.

This one was way more painful than the text one I got early 2009. Also way more bloodier, my sister started getting nervous when the plastic covering the tattoo kept filling with blood. But it wasn’t real that much. The healing process went without any issues, two weeks. Only thing is as you can see on the image of the finished version, on the stomach of the owl. that the ink didn’t stick under my skin, it looks like an under skin wound. Later today I’m going back to the shop to let them look at it and schedule another appointment to touch up the design here and there.

I’m still thinking about a design to blend the owl and text together making it kind of a half sleeve. I’m not one for flowers or too girly stuff. So I’m looking at patterns, etc. to come up with an idea.

Getting a tattoo is an experience on itself, I was comparing with a friend who also has a couple of tattoos how it feels and he feels the same. You take a lot of time to come with an unique as possible tattoo with personal meaning. When getting the tattoo it’s painful as hell sometimes and you wonder why you are such a masochist for pain and that you don’t want another tattoo again for a long time.

The first day you really need to get used to having a new tattoo on your body, it feels foreign. After a week the swellings is gone, it’s healing nicely and you are all giddy with the new tattoo and before you know it you start dreaming about the next one.

The website used to be in tables without any separation between content and presentation. The website was really slow on the school computers which run on Windows XP with IE8 as standard browser.

Old table based website

This was my first try at responsive design, learning along the way. It may not be mobile first or ‘real’ responsive, but it gets the job done. It’s still a work in progress, and I have a lot planned for this website.

I used Typekit for this project, I liked it so much I’m contemplating a subscription myself for my own websites. The paid versions are way more attractive than the free one I tried once.

Original written on 17 November

My weblog has been very quiet last couple of months. The reason is that I found a job that actually requires me to leave home 4 days a week. Since early 2009 I have been doing freelance work while looking for a steady job.

With the current economy and my disability(deaf) you wouldn’t believe how hard it can be to get a job. I went to a couple of job interviews, while some companies had valid reason why they can’t hire me, I got some lousy reasons from others. At one place I applied for a non-payment internship specifically coding PHP to improve my skills for my CV. They said no because according to them I’m a “junior front-end coder”. That was the most baffling email I had gotten after an interview, ever. First I’m a medior front-ender and second I applied to code PHP not HTML/CSS.

A visit to a career event in Amsterdam was my lucky shot. I gave several places my CV and turned out that Rotterdam College has a program that promotes hiring people with disabilities. I have been working there at the schools magazine editorial since September and just got my contract for the rest of the school year. My job ranges from coding websites, social media, data processing for articles and whatever my colleagues need help with. I’m also at the disposition of the other departments.

I’m very happy with finally having a steady job, working freelance is a pain with clients who don’t pay on time or don’t pay at all. I have great colleagues and it’s nice working at a school, lots of people around and just the college feeling. If fate was different I would have kept studying until getting a doctoral degree.

I enjoy waking up every morning and traveling one hour by tram, train and metro to work. Sometimes I’ll go to my favorite deli; Lebkov and grab a chocolate latte before taking the metro. On the train I read everyday from my iPhone, Kindle or hardcopy and before I know it I’m already in Rotterdam.

29 November 2011

Last week I stayed home from work, a little cold that drained all my energy. I was reminded I don’t have the energy of a 100% healthy person and that I need my rest to keep up. Lesson learned, sleep more in the week-ends.

I’m currently finishing my first project at work and hopefully I’ll be able to show it within two weeks. While I’m no Dan Cederholm of HTML and CSS, I tackled this project alone, implementing CSS3 and media queries. Ethan Marcotte’s “Responsive Web Design” was unmissable while reading up for this project.

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.” -Steve Jobs

The world has lost one of its greatest visionary. Take a moment and think on how much influence Steve Jobs has had on the technology you use today, because Steve Jobs dared to think different.

I was an ocean away but it felt like it happened across a lake. On September 11, 2001, I was 20 years old, living a year already in The Netherlands to attend college. I was sharing a house with 4 other students where I had my own 3 by 4 room.

That day I didn’t have any classes and it was the period I discovered the Harry Potter books. I was home alone lying on my bed reading book 2 or 3 I think when my phone started ringing. It was my cousin who lived close by calling and telling me to turn on the TV. I asked what channel and she said whichever one. As soon as the TV was on I was the WTC Towers, heavy dark smoke rising from both of them. I couldn’t imagine what could have caused that scene. Soon after the news channel showed a repeat of the planes hitting and I was left wordless. After a moment I began telling my cousin(which whom I was still on the phone) that most people should be able to get out if they weren’t on the impacted floors. I didn’t even finish my sentence when I saw the South Tower starting to collapse. I cried, I had never cried before while watching the news. The faces of New Yorkers, scared and shocked, broke my heart.

The rest of the day after that is a blur, I don’t remember if I went out, only that I was glued to the TV and internet. I do remember the next day I had to get up early for classes. I used to commute with the train to Utrecht where I attended college, I lived in Arnhem back then. I was at the train station before eight in the morning, slap dap in the peak hour. You could feel it in your bones that the world had changed, you just knew it was never going to be the same again. Every newspaper, on the stands, in people hands, in the train, was covered with the burning towers. Even though commuters went hurried about their way, there was an eery feeling in the air.

This sounds a bit macabre: When I became deaf in 2007 I noticed that my brain could remember all daily sounds. Apparently when losing one sense your body compensates in all possible ways. Music I heard over and over again, voices of my family, basically all sounds I heard uncountable times were embed in my brain. I can also still remember how the jet engines of the planes sounded, the explosion when they hit, the rumble of the Towers collapsing and the sound of bodies hitting on the lobby roof from the adjoining buildings. Those horrible sounds that could be heard in news broadcasting, I never forgot them.

I cannot imagine how it must be for everyone who where there on that day. 9/11 changed the world, it took many lives on the day itself and still does till today with a war still going on. It gave politicians munition to use fear to get what they want.

A year later I flew to Aruba with a layover in Miami and was finally face to face with the reality. I had to take off my shoes, my belt, patted down, take my baggage through the scanner, the whole security nine yards. This how we would live from now on.

Now 10 years later, two wars, several more attacks around the world, adaptable as we humans are it’s like we never new different.

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn) There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn) And a time to every purpose, under Heaven -The Byrds

Going through a Facebook page for Arubians, “If you grew up in Aruba, you remember….“, I started remembering back then thinking about my youth. In the 80′s we didn’t have cable, only an antenna on the roof that got two channels from Venezuela, RCTV and Venevision. And one local channel that broadcasted a couple of hours a day, mostly news, obituaries and local game shows. That antenna needed regularly fine tuning to get a clear image.

So, for a great part of my youth I saw everything on TV dubbed in Spanish, I learned Spanish from TV. All the 80′s cartoons and old TV shows, especially Batman(with Adam West) always stayed with me. I’m more familiar with Robin yelling “¡Santo cielo Batman, una bomba!” than in English, “Holy bomb, Batman!”. And you know what? It sounds better in Spanish

I watched many shows in Spanish, Saved by the Bell, Alf, McGyver, Munster Family, The Three Stooges and lots of Mexican and Venezuelan shows.

Back to the Facebook page, for a small island the page trending like crazy, with over 4000 followers and even more posts. Remembering places that are long gone, like the ice cream parlor in the harbor we went to every Sunday after the beach. The first McDonalds that opened on the island, there is a Louis Vuitton store in its place now. The only complete CD shop there was, Zapp Music, it went out of business with the rise of MP3′s. I still have my CD’s and most of them where bought there.

Life was so simple back then, I grew up playing barefoot outside, climbing trees and playing with self made toys. I did have a couple of luxury like the NES, the first Gameboy, but most of my youth was spend playing outside and playing tennis. We didn’t have cable, internet or mobile phones. Our house phone was a rotary telephone, the latest model for that time and our phone number consisted of only 5 digits. When I see my younger brothers(10/15 years younger) I really see the contrast in how a different world we grew up.

Even though like with everyone else there was life hardship, I wouldn’t change my youth.

Vigilante fits two genres, Christian and Fiction. If there was a genre for super heroes, this book would fit in it. You should not let the Christianity factor keep you from reading the book, it’s no difference than Superman who follows the teaching of Jor-El.

The book is about Nolan Gray, a war veteran and most decorated war hero of the United States. He is a born soldier, very skilled and short of unbeatable. On his last mission he was taken hostage with several soldiers for years. Surviving the most gruesome tortures known to man.

Nolan is disappointed in society, he lives in a world where crime and corruption dominates. The story is set in New York, not the ‘Sex and the City’ kind of New York. A New York ruled by the mafia, where the mayor abides to the Mafia’s will. Nolan decides he will cleanse the world from evil, starting in New York. He will show people the way.

Together with is old friend General Branford and tech whiz Arjay, Nolan becomes “The Hand”. Fitted with high technology combat suit and gadgets plus his combat skills he takes on the criminals by himself while trying to stay ahead of the police.

I read Vigilante in two nights strait. A book that can keep me up till 3 a.m. reading till I finish it is a good book in my opinion. While the plot might not have any mayor or unexpected twist, Parrish knows how to keep you spellbound, wanting to know if Nolan will succeed in his most important mission yet.

If you are into super heroes stories you should read Vigilante. You could compare Nolan Gray with Bruce Wayne, minus the money factor and the extreme villains. Although Nolan’s nemesis, Vasko, would give The Joker a run for his money. All in all a solid book that reads fast and keeps you turning the pages.