What supposed to be a post about my highlights of this year’s edition of Pukkelpop, will be a post about probably the most scarifying day of my life.

The last few days my girlfriend and I spent some time at the beach. We had a great time, beautiful weather and wished we could stay a few more days. But we had tickets for Pukkelpop, a tradition that stands for years, so why miss that? The day begon good, the sun was out, but we knew rain was probably coming our way later that evening. Who could have thought that rain would be the worst storm of our lives?

As we were waiting for the first band we actually wanted to see that day, we were killing some time by eating delicious Vietnamese egg rolls and by having a fresh beer in front of the main stage. As the weather went darker, we decided to find some shelter for the upcoming rain. As we already wandered around some more, the closest place to stay dry was the Chateau. A stage we almost never visit. It’s a tent that looks like the one a traveling circus would use, with a line-up of bands I’ve never heard of. Inside the tent we sat down at the left side against the fences. Soon we felt rain coming inside, and the whole tent started to move. The wind pushed the fences hard in our back, so we stood up and started to walk in the direction of the exit to see what was going on. At that point, looking outside, we saw something terrible was about to happen. Usually you can see far down the site, but a wall of rain limited the view. The band (still don’t really know which one) kept on playing, probably not aware what was going on. Suddenly we saw the tent breaking open from top to bottom. I guess one of the stitchings couldn’t hold it anymore. The columns in the middle of tent, holding everything in place, started to lean towards us. All we could do, was to run. People around us started to panic, we saw people falling on the floor, and heard a lot screaming. We climbed over the fallen fences on our hands and feet. Luckily we could get out in a matter of seconds. Then we started running in the heavy rain, hail and wind towards another stage, the Marquee. We waited for a few minutes for the hail to stop, and we started walking towards the exit of the festival site. Everywhere was filled with debris in deep water and mud. We got to the car, but still needed an hour to get out of the area that was now one big place of disaster.

It was not until I got home, that the shock hit me. Because communicating through mobile phones was not possible, I started to look on Facebook and Twitter to see if family and friends were okay. Thank god for the internet. I saw everyone I know was reporting to be alright in their Facebook status, and that many people around the festival site were helping each other out. It makes me happy to see people still care of each other in difficult times.

The weird thing about it all was that my mind was clear at the moment of crisis. The only thing I could think of while seeing the tent being ripped apart, was to get the hell out of there. I tried not to loose my girlfriend out of sight, and I told her to be calm and run. Just run the fuck out of here. It was weird to see so many confused people, all wondering what was going on. In the Marquee I saw many people comforting each other, but they all showed fear in their eyes.

I will never forgot that moment. Thanks to what ever saved us. And my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the people who died in those horrible 10 to 15 minutes.

I didn’t took any pictures at Pukkelpop this year. But I found this video from someone filming just outside the tent we were in. You can see the big white tent on the left being trashed by the storm. Can’t believe we got out of it.

Live the fullest you can.

I just launched a new website for GizMag. The main goal was to focus more on the content, and remove all the clutter. So I kept it as simple as possible. I renamed the main sections on the site, so it would be clear what they stand for. Daily will be a blog, weekly will be the web magazine and monthly will be the PDF magazine. Of course, you shouldn’t take this too literally…

So take a look and tell me what you think: http://gizmag.eu

It has been a while since I updated my blog. So here you go. A post about everything and nothing.

It’s probably to early to review this past year, it’s still 20 days to go. A lot can happen in that time. But I wanted to say that even though for quite a few people around me this has been a terrible year, for me it couldn’t have been better. And that might sound selfish to say, but I’m very grateful for it.

At the moment I’m moving to a new home. So I’m playing the time card for the lack of updates on this blog and GizMag. But I promise 2011 will bring some new awesomeness! I have some ideas to rebrand the GizMag website, and expand it with something new. It’s all very early, it only exists as a concept in my mind for now. But it is time for some changes.

At the moment I’m spending my last days at Alley, which is a bit sad, but it will also give me the opportunity to spend my time on new ideas. It was a fun ride, and I’m happy to have done it. And that’s the only advise I can give anyone. If you have an idea, dream or chance to do something you really like. Just go for it. It’s totally worth it!

I’ll leave you with some awesome music albums I’m listening to at the moment. Check them out.

Sally Thompson knows what I like. :{) She sent me this little post package in the mail. It’s a mini moustache-themed artbook, to show her support for Movember (guys growing moustaches to raise money and awareness for men’s health charities).

I do love getting real mail, and does make me smile! Thanks a lot Sally!

Next month Alley will start with a new expo Camp Out featuring art from Ephameron, Ward Zwart and Louis Reith. It’s the last expo. At least for me. Our gallery will move to another location (just a few streets away) located on the Dorpsstraat in Hasselt. And I will leave the team in order to focus on different things. From time to time I’ll still be helping out I guess, updating the website for example. :)

Alley won’t change, but it will get rid of the guerrilla label without changing its attitude! So expect more upcoming and rising artists. More information can be found on our website (in Dutch) or on our Facebook page (in Dutch).

I had a lot of fun at Alley. And it was a difficult decision to make. But I’m happy that Daan and Debora will keep Alley open, and I wish them a lot of success with it in the future. They’re doing a great job!

I’ll probably take some time off after this, spending my Saturdays with my girlfriend from now on. :)

Because I wasn’t sure about this myself, I began running a search on the web about the history of touch screen (smart)phones. Of course, the iPhone (released in 2007) is not the first of its kind, and HTC may not have produced the first one either. It’s actually pretty interesting to see that this goes a whole way back, even further that I could imagine. What follows is not a full research paper, but some highlights of what I found.

PDA vs smartphone

The first thing I wondered: what is the difference between a PDA and a smartphone? But it’s pretty vague to me. Basically, a PDA is not supposed to have a phone feature, where a smartphone does. So a smartphone is a mobile phone with more advanced computing abilities. The first one was launched by IBM (and BellSouth) in 1993, and was called Simon. The term PDA (personal digital assistant) was introduced by Apple in 1992. It referred to their platform Apple Newton (released as the MessagePad in 1993).

PDA vs tablets

The difference between a tablet computer, tablet PC and a PDA isn’t that big either. A PDA is a small handheld, where tablets have a bigger screen. A tablet computer is a full touch screen device, that uses a stylus or your fingers to input data. A tablet PC is more or less the same, but is a full functional computer. More about touch screens, later.

Apple, Android and BlackBerry

• The iPad is the second tablet computer from Apple, after the Newton MessagePad.
• The iPhone is a smartphone (even though some blogs may disagree).
• The iPod Touch might be considered as a PDA (but that’s my conclusion).
• Android itself is only an operating system, originally built for any mobile device. It’s made popular thanks to manufacturers like HTC, who is using it for some of their smartphones.
• The BlackBerry OS is designed by RIM, to run on smartphones (and email enabled mobile phones).

Feature phone

On a side note. There is also a difference between a feature phone and a smartphone. The term describes a low-end mobile phone, like the one most people nowadays are used to. It has limited functionality, usually a custom OS, but can run applications based on Java ME or BREW.

Touch screens

So what about touch screens? Apparently, they were already researched in the 1940s. But the first touch sensor was developed in the 1970s. It is difficult to find the first touch screen mobile phone (notice I’m not looking for the first touch screen device). The problem lies in the definition. Touch screen is considered to be a screen operated by your fingers (electrostatic, capacitive touch screen, which is multi-touch). Where a pen-enabled screen is a also a touch screen, but operated by a pen or stylus (pressure sensitive, resistive touch screen). And besides from these two you have other methods using infrared, acoustic waves, and so on. Of course there is a difference between all these technologies, but the basic concept remains the same. It’s a screen you touch (whether it is with a finger, pen or sausage). So I’m going to say that a touch screen device, is any device that you operate by touching the display.

The first touch screen mobile phone

Sure, we all remember the popular iPAQ, produced by HTC for Compaq (later HP). But that device wasn’t introduced until 2000. I think I might have mentioned the first smartphone with a touch screen already. So was Simon the first one on the market back in 1993?

Thanks for thinking I’m awesome! :)
You made my day, Matt.

http://www.mattclough.com/
http://gizmag.eu/issue/105/

This week I rooted my HTC Magic with the customized ROM of Cyanogen. It’s a firmware based upon Android 2.1 for the HTC Magic, HTC Dream, Nexus One and Motorola Droid. There a lot of ROMs out there, but I choose this one, because it gets good reviews, and, to my knowledge, it is the only one at the moment that is running a stable full featured version of Android 2.1.

The procedure is not that difficult. You can find a lot of information on their forum (which is down for the moment, though). But there are also other sites you can depend on for help, such as xda-developers and TheUnlockr. I actually followed a good tutorial on the last one.

Of course I made some mistakes, which resulted in a rather stressful course of trying, failing, trying and failing again. But thanks to some tips on Golb’s blog, and some support of Cyanogen’s forum, I managed to get it up and running. I lost my backups in the progress, so don’t be a n00b as me, and copy them to the hard drive of your comupter before swiping your SD card! But in the end I am super happy with the upgrade, as Android is a damn good OS. The Cyaogen Mod even comes with some extra features. And even though the upgrade progress didn’t go as smooth as I hoped it would, you can not really f*ck up your device that easy if you stick to the tutorials. I’m not going to describe the whole process here, but I will if someone is interested of course.

My smartphone is now equipped with a better and faster firmware. Suddenly my battery life is restored (since my battery drained in one day, the last few months). And I can install almost every application in the Android Market. Coming from Android 1.5 this is quite the upgrade. Of course I could have waited for an official upgrade, but because I bought my phone through my mobile carrier, Proximus, I had to wait for them to release one. And I don’t think they every will.