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# Thomas De Maesschalck blog

The life of an online entrepreneur

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## Posts

- [Daily economics - stocks are falling](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/daily-economics-socks-are-falling/) - Just watched the latest episode of Weeds, what a lovely show :) Another series I've picked up is Supernatural, I didn't really expect much of this TV show but after watching the first episode I was hooked and worked my way through the first season pretty quick. Reuters reports "socks" fell to their lowest level
- [First update in nearly 2.5 years...](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/first-update-in-nearly-2-5-years/) - I guess it's safe to say my blog is pretty much dead now since I haven't updated it in almost 2.5 years. So what changed since then? Not much on the business front, and probably the most notable change in my personal life is that I've moved into a new house. At present I'm trying
- [Plans for the near future](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/plans-for-the-near-future/) - Busy days are ahead as I've got a lot of plans in my mind to get my business back up. Starting with DV Hardware you can expect a lot of reviews and I'm in the process of creating a Dutch version of DV Hardware, this new site will mainly be used for Dutch versions of
- [Been a while...](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/been-a-while/) - Just looked at my blog and noticed my last post was in January. Guess I kinda lost the spirit to keep blogging and I don't think I'll pick it up anytime soon. Business-wise things have been pretty rough this year and I'm hoping to find some new ways to boost my revenue so I can
- [Retiring rich with one investment per decade](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/retiring-rich-with-one-investment-per-decade/) - Most investment gurus would have you believe that you need to trade a lot and own a lot of securities to become wealthy. But is this really true? The analysts from Casey Research proof this is not the case, they give a clear example that one very well-informed investment decision per decade is all you
- [Rammstein concert in Antwerp (December 10, 2009)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/rammstein-concert-in-antwerp-december-10-2009/) - After months of waiting German "tanzmetall" band Rammstein finally performed in Antwerp as part of their Liebe ist für alle da tour. Tickets for the concert in the Sportpaleis were sold out nearly instantaneously, the ticket sales system was flooded with orders and I wasn't able to order them myself. Fortunately, I found someone with
- [If you build it.. they will not come](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/if-you-build-it-they-will-not-come/) - Ah the joys of central planning by a supposedly superhuman creature named government. Here's a video of New Ordos, a brand new Chinese city designed for 1 million citizens, built in just five years. But nobody moved in, the city is completely empty...
- [Freefall](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/freefall/) - Wonder why the value of the US dollar is going down? The St. Louis Fed has one of the answers:
- [First Gamescom articles are up](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/first-gamescom-articles-are-up/) - I went to Cologne, Germany for a couple of days this week to visit Gamescom. This new trade show is the replacement for the Games Convention in Leipzig and it was immediately a big hit, Koelmesse announced today that the first edition of the five-days long fair received a total of 245,000 visitors, making it
- [Going to Gamescom this week](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-gamescom-this-week/) - Wednesday morning I'm heading to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. This event is the (unofficial) successor of the Games Convention in Leipzig and will be one of the largest gaming expos in Europe. There will be four entertainment halls with nearly 400 exhibitors from all over the world, all major game publishers will be there and
- [How governments spin economic data (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-governments-spin-economic-data-video/) - Today I came across an interesting video created by Chris Martenson, it deals with how accurate economic data really is. Martenson gives examples on how governments spin economic data such as inflation figures, unemployment, and GDP to make them look rosier than they really are. It's just under 16 minutes long and definitely worth a
- [The Hunt For Gollum (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-hunt-for-gollum-video/) - Today I heard about The Hunt For Gollum, a freely distributed fan-made sidequel to The Fellowship of the Ring, the first Lord of the Rings movie. The Hunt For Gollum deals with Aragorn's quest to find Gollum and is definitely worth a watch if you're a LOTR fan, it's only 40 minutes long and pretty
- [One week in Lanzarote](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/one-week-in-lanzarote/) - This year Carmen and I went on a holiday to Lanzarote, the easternmost island of the Canary Islands. It's a relatively small island located in the Atlantic Ocean, just a bit more than 100 kilometers west of Africa. We left home very early in the morning on Wednesday July 15th and arrived at the hotel
- [Daily economics - inflation and more](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/daily-economics-inflation-and-more/) - The last couple of days have been pretty hot and it's about to get even hotter, so far this summer is lining up to be pretty good. Here's another edition of daily economics with an overview of some interesting articles and videos I spotted today (or in the last couple of days). InflationUS presents Hyperinflation
- [The bubbles of Goldman Sachs](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-bubbles-of-goldman-sachs/) - An interesting piece about Goldman Sachs appeared in the latest edition of Rolling Stone magazine. Writer Matt Taibbi claims the Wall Street giant played/plays a big role in at least five bubbles: The Great Depression, the Dot Com bubble, housing bubble, oil/commodities bubble, and the bailout (tax money funded) bubble. Taibbi believes the next bubble
- [Daily economics - What the Chinese think about the US dollar](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/daily-economics-what-the-chinese-think-about-the-us-dollar/) - Li Lianzhong, head of the Chinese Communist Party's policy research office, voiced his opinion today about what China should do to reduce its exposure to the greenback. The article offers some clues about what China's strategy may be, which likely includes a larger role for gold and other hard assets instead of worthless paper. Li
- [Chart of the day: the Nikkei 225](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/chart-of-the-day-the-nikkei-225/) - The Japanese Nikkei 225 stock index made headlines today as the index had crossed the 10,000 barrier. The Nikkei index has climbed around 45 percent since its March low and is now at its highest level in eight months. There's little reason to celebrate though, a quick peep at the chart below reveals that even
- [Daily economics - some bearish views](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/daily-economics-some-bearish-views/) - I haven't been posting a lot on my blog lately, because I didn't really know what to write about. This may change as I'm planning to post some more about economic related news, not the typical mainstream stories but the more juicy bits and fascinating contrarian views. One of the interviews I enjoyed reading today
- [Froglets swimming and jumping around](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/froglets-swimming-and-jumping-around/) - About seven weeks ago frogs laid eggs in our pond, the last time I wrote about them they were still in their tadpole stage and by now most of them have developed legs. Some develop much quicker than others though, there are some tadpoles in our pond that don't have legs yet, while at least
- [German company to roll out gold ATMs](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/german-company-to-roll-out-gold-atms/) - A German company named TG-Gold-Super-Markt.de plans to set up 500 gold-dispensing ATMs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Each of these machines will dispense 1g, 5g and 10g gold bars made by Belgian precious metal recycling company Umicore as well as the popular South African 1 oz Krugerrand gold coin. "In absolute numbers, the demand for
- [Update on the tadpoles](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/update-on-the-tadpoles/) - It's been over two weeks since I last wrote about my tadpoles, since then they've grown quite a bit and I have put most of them back in the pond. I thought about 30 tadpoles would hatch from the frogspawn I collected about a month ago, but it turned out to be at least double
- [Housing market literally hits the bottom (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/housing-market-literally-hits-the-bottom-video/) - In Victorville, California and several other places the housing market is literally hitting the bottom as banks are finding it more cost effective to bulldoze foreclosed houses rather than selling them. As the clip below shows, Guaranty Bank decided to demolish four model homes and 12 nearly finished houses in Victorville because they were facing
- [Tiny tadpoles starting to swim](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/lots-of-tiny-tadpoles/) - My tadpoles are growing up extremely fast. Thursday there were just in their egg stage, but today most of them are already swimming around a bit. The ones I'm raising inside are developing much faster than the ones in the pond, it seems that the warmer and more stable room temperature is doing them a
- [Lots of frogspawn in our pond](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/lots-of-frogspawn-in-our-pond/) - Thursday I discovered lots of frogspawn in our little garden pond, the two brown frogs I spotted earlier this week have laid hundreds of eggs between the waterplants. There are so many eggs because most of them never turn into a frog, but considering that there aren't any predators (like goldfish) in our pond it's possible many of them
- [Nice Spring weather](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nice-spring-weather/) - Today was another day with lovely Spring weather, very sunny but not too hot. Perfect weather to do some work outside on my laptop. Nature is waking up again, as the following picture illustrates. When I went outside this afternoon I noticed a greenish blob next to our garage door. When taking a closer look, it turned out
- [Going to GamesCom this summer](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-gamescom-this-summer/) - It's been a while since my last post blog post, didn't really have much to say This week I booked a hotel room for GamesCom, this is a new games and entertainment show in Cologne, Germany. It's somewhat the unofficial successor of the Games Convention event that took place in Leipzig the last couple of
- [Bought a couple of books](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/bought-a-couple-of-books/) - Carmen and I went to Boekenfestijn in Ghent today, a free fair where you can find more than a million of books at bargain prices. Here's a look at some of the things I picked up: - Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring paperback edition - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- [Living in a palm tree](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/living-in-a-palm-tree/) - Today I came across the Palm Fiction concept from German treehouse builder Baumraum. This luxurious tree house has a very futuristic look and could be build somewhere just a couple of meters from the sea. You can enter it by stairs, and while it looks pretty small, the cabin seems roomy enough inside. Additionally, the
- [New reviews on DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-reviews-on-dv-hardware/) - It's been a while since I last published something on my blog, but I've published quite a number of new reviews at DV Hardware in the last couple of weeks. Last month I wrote a review of some custom USB drives from PromoLocker with DV Hardware's logo, this company provides good service and I like
- [The Financial Crisis explained in 11 minutes](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-financial-crisis-explained-in-11-minutes/) - Jonathan Jarvis did a great job at creating an easy to understand animation that explains some of the main causes of the credit crisis: Gold is back over $1,000 by the way. Too bad I didn't pick up a couple of those glimmering coins a few years ago, that investment would have actually made me
- [CDOs made simple (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/cods-made-simple-video/) - Just come across a nice video on YouTube that illustrates what CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) are: A CDO is a very complicated way to spread risk and many people in the financial industry didn't fully understand the risk until it was too late. More and more companies are starting to get hit by toxic credits, earlier
- [Almost 13 percent of visitors blocking ads ](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/almost-13-percent-of-visitors-blocking-ads/) - Google recently enabled everyone to integrate AdSense into Google Analytics. This gives you a wealth of information and today when I was thinking about my business I wondered how many people that visit my sites are blocking ads. I checked Google Analytics to compare the number of pageviews I received in January 2009 with the AdSense
- [January income down 28 percent](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/january-income-down-28-percent/) - At the start of each month I gather all the available statistics I have from the previous month in an Excel file to get a rough view of how well or bad my business is going. As the global economy slows down, online advertising is going down as well and it has hit me pretty
- [DV Hardware USB drives](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-usb-drives/) - I received some custom USB drives from Promolocker this week. Here's a picture, a full review will follow later at DV Hardware.
- [Going to Lanzarote in July](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-lanzarote-in-july/) - Carmen and I booked our holiday trip this weekend, in July we're heading to Lanzarote for one week. We'll be staying at the H10 Rubicon Palace hotel near Playa Blanca at this island, which is the easternmost of the Canary Islands. The Canary Islands are an archipelago of several volcanic islands that belong to Spain.
- [Cold and icy weather](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/cold-and-icy-weather/) - The last two weeks or so the weather has been very cold here in Belgium. The past couple of winters were rather warm but this year it's extremely cold. Media report it's been more than a decade since it was so cold in my country, last night monitoring stations in several cities recorded temperatures of
- [Happy New Year!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/happy-new-year-2/) - Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a good time during the first couple of days of 2009. The year 2008 has come to an end and unfortunately it wasn't really a good year for me business wise. I was too lazy to finish most of the goals I set for this year, 2008
- [Windows 7 beta leaked, looks good](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/windows-7-beta-leaked-looks-good/) - As you may have heard by now, the first beta version of Windows 7 has been leaked on the Internet. Windows Vista shipped in November 2006 and the next version of Microsoft's operating system may arrive a lot sooner than most people anticipated because, too put it mildly, Windows Vista didn't really manage to capture
- ["If you were dead, they'd still give you a loan"](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/if-you-were-dead-loan/) - NY Times published an interesting story about the criminal lending practices of WaMu that resulted in billions of dollars worth of bad loans, you can read it over here. Shaky loans were big business for banks like WaMu; lending to people who weren't credit-worthy resulted in big bonuses but had very nasty consequences for the
- [New reviews and other things](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-reviews-and-other-things/) - New reviews at DV Hardware Two days ago I finally finished the review of the Spire Edge, a laptop sleeve designed for thin notebooks like Apple's MacBook Pro. It's a nice sleeve, but unfortunately it's too tiny for my Dell notebook. Among other things, I also published the first two book reviews at DV Hardware
- [10 outrageous economic claims for 2009](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/10-outrageous-economic-claims-for-2009/) - Saxo Bank has published a list of ten outrageous economic claims for 2009. The Danish investment bank says this is their annual attempt to predict rare but high impact events that are beyond the realm of normal market expectations: The Copenhagen-based online trading and investment specialist's predictions are an annual attempt to predict rare but
- [Product inbox: Blaupunkt TravelPilot 700](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/product-inbox-blaupunkt-travelpilot-700/) - An interesting new product arrived today: the Blaupunkt TravelPilot 700. This is world's first GPS unit with camera based driver assistance, the unit has an integrated 2MP digicam and overlays the navigational info on the video feed. The review of this GPS unit will be published on DV Hardware within 2-3 weeks.
- [A peek inside Intel's press sample cabinet](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/a-peek-inside-intels-press-sample-cabinet/) - While browsing around a bit on Intel's blogs to find out if there were any new juicy bits of information I found an funny post by Daniel Snyder, Intel's press sample guy. He provides a very brief peek into his press sample cabinet and shows a couple of interesting things. First up is a photo
- [The Big Three have a new ad](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-big-three-have-a-new-ad/) - Nice spoof: Source: The Big Picture
- [Dune reviewed](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dune-mini-review/) - A couple of months ago I saw the Sci Fi Channel's Dune and Children of Dune miniseries. I had heard about the Dune videogames before but basically the only thing I knew about the Dune universe before I saw the miniseries is that it involves deserts and giant worms. After watching the first part of
- [Start of holiday season, new review at DVH](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/start-of-holiday-season-new-review-at-dvh/) - Black Friday in the United States kicked off the holiday season, there are worries that due to the economic crisis people are going to spend a lot less this year but Black Friday spending seems to be a success. ShopperTrak says sales were up 3 percent from last year on Black Friday and a survey
- [It's snowing!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/its-snowing/) - It's snowing in Flanders! I can't recall the last time we had a nice layer of snow in November, it must have been many years ago. There was some snow yesterday but unfortuntely it wasn't really a lot and it was gone pretty quick. This afternoon is different, everything is slowly getting covered by a
- [More snowy pictures](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/more-snowy-pictures/) - About five centimeters of snow fell this afternoon, a lot more than I expected. Here are a couple of pics I shot today:
- [PC Magazine bites the dust](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pc-magazine-bites-the-dust/) - I read this morning that Ziff Davis will cease the print edition of PC Magazine to take the publication online, the January 2009 will be the last paper edition of this 27-year old computer magazine. The reason for the move to go web-only is the declining circulation and plummeting advertising. PC Magazine's circulation dropped from
- [NEXT coverage published at DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/next-coverage-published-at-dv-hardware/) - I've published a four-page long special about NEXT 2008 at DV Hardware. This was the first time I did coverage of a tech show and although there are some cool things I forgot to cover it went pretty well. The first edition of NEXT received almost 20,000 visitors, and if you ask me, most of them were
- [CES room rates dropping due to credit crisis](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ces-room-rates-dropping-due-to-credit-crisis/) - About 1.5 years ago when the credit crisis started unfolding few people outside the financial sector noticed consequences but in the last couple of months nearly every industry started to get affected by this worldwide recession. People are consuming less, major manufacturers are cutting back their production and thousands are getting fired. I just read
- [Back from NEXT Expo](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/back-from-next-expo/) - Today I went to the NEXT expo in Brussels. This new show brands itself as a gaming, electronics and IT expo but unfortunately it was mainly about gaming so it wasn't as interesting for DV Hardware as I had hoped. Full coverage of the event will be published on DV Hardware asap, probably tomorrow. There
- [The euro bubble is bursting](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-euro-bubble-is-bursting/) - When I wake up and start working one of the first things I do is read some sites, forums and blogs to get up to date. One of the many things I check a couple of times a day is the EUR/USD currency exchange rate to see where it's heading. Over the last couple of
- [Going to NEXT Gaming, Electronics & IT expo this weekend](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-next-gaming-electronics-it-expo-this-weekend/) - This weekend I'm going to NEXT to cover this new gaming and consumer electronics event for DV Hardware. To be honest, I'm not sure what to expect from this expo as it's the first edition of this show. The NEXT event has grown out of a gaming expo called Gamepower Expo which used to take
- [Time to celebrate again!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/time-to-celebrate-again/) - Happy birthday to me! Today is my 21st anniversary Unfortunately, the power grid thought today was a really good date for an outage lol. We've been in the dark for about two hours this evening, fortunately I had just finished cooking my dinner but we had to eat my birthday cake and drink champagne with
- [Happy Halloween!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/happy-halloween/) - Happy Halloween! Lol. Image source: The Big Picture
- [Favorite Belgian stocks of 2008 - how did they do?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/favorite-belgian-stocks-of-2008-how-did-they-do/) - Ten months ago financial newspaper De Tijd published a list of the favorite Belgian stocks for 2008. The journalists contacted sixteen analysts and compiled a top ten list. The year is far from over but lets have some fun and see how bad (or well?) these ten stocks did since the start of the year (excl.
- [Just in: 32GB USB drive from Kingston](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/just-in-32gb-usb-drive-from-kingston/) - UPS stopped by a couple of hours ago to deliver another package. In it was a new 32GB USB drive from Kingston - a review of this device will follow within a couple of days at DV Hardware. It's pretty amazing how big these drives have become. I got my first USB drive five years
- [Rough times ahead for online advertising?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/rough-times-ahead-for-online-advertising/) - CNET published an article about the state of online advertising with opinions from a couple of analysts. Cowen analysts Jim Friedland and Kevin Kopelman lowered their estimates on several firms such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon because of the worsening economic climate. The two analysts expect search-advertising spending will be flat, and that graphical display ads
- [Credit crunch to be the death of Web 2.0?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/credit-crunch-to-be-the-death-of-web-20/) - The death of Web 2.0 has been predicted several times over the past couple of months and even years. Currently, it's still alive and kicking but the current economic climate could have a severe impact on the industry. Cash and credit are becoming rarer these days and venture capitalists are focusing more on efficiency. Here's
- [The best investments of the past 52 weeks](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-best-investments-of-the-past-52-weeks/) - While browsing and reading a bit I found an interesting chart from The Big Picture that shows how different investments did last week and over the past 52 weeks. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the best investment you could make last week was the US dollar, this currency gained an average of 4.2%. That's one percent more
- [Bear arrives in Wall Street](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/bear-arrives-in-wall-street/) - Many people lost thousands of dollars in this bear market but the bear sure is a party animal. Here he is kicking the bull's ass in Wall Street:
- [Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles cancelled?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles-cancelled/) - Rumour has it that Fox is going to terminate The Sarah Connor Chronicles because of high costs and lack of viewers. First Firefly and now this great show is getting the axe? What a shame. If the rumor is true I hope they'll at least air the rest of the second season.
- [Start of the fourth quarter](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/start-of-the-fourth-quarter/) - The year 2008 is slowly coming to an end, just three more months to go! The fourth quarter is usually the best in terms of ad dollars for most sites and I hope revenue will start picking up soon. Earlier today I've compiled the numbers of the revenue my business generated in September and it's not
- [And it got even crazier](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/and-it-got-even-crazier/) - Last week was pretty crazy but it has become even worse. The Bel20 (a Belgian index) lost 7.98% today while the Dow Jones plunged 700 points (-6.98%) which is its biggest-ever point drop. The Nasdaq crashed 9.14% today and the stocks of most firms are down hugely. The S&P500 dropped 8.79% - it's biggest loss
- [What a crazy week](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/what-a-crazy-week/) - If you've been following the economic news you've probably noticed the past couple of weeks have been very crazy. Here's a quick overview of some of the more significant events that happened lately: September 7, 2008 A bit more than a week ago the US government nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest
- [Körperwelten IV - the art of the human body](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/korperwelten-iv-the-art-of-the-human-body/) - On Saturday we went to Brussels to the Cellars of Cureghem to see Körperwelten 4, a traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts. Körperwelten is German for "Body Worlds" and it's the child of German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, the inventor of a technique for preserving biological tissue specimens called plastination. The exhibition
- [Moon shots - part 2](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/moon-shots-part-2/) - I went outside tonight to take a couple of new shots of the moon. The shots I took tonight with the Canon EOS 450 + 55-250mm IS lens are a bit better than those I shot earlier this week. I used my tripod and the EOS 450's Live View feature to magnify the image 10x
- [Shot of the moon with Canon 55-250mm](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/shot-of-the-moon-with-canon-55-250mm/) - I just took a couple of shots of the moon with my Canon EOS 450D and the new 55-250mm IS lens. This shot was taken without a tripod and I did some post-processing to improve the sharpness. The photo features quite a lot of detail but unfortunately it didn't turn out as sharp as I hoped.
- [Weekend update - September 7, 2008](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/weekend-update-september-7-2008/) - I haven't blogged a lot lately so here's a quick weekend edition update on some stuff. Work Income is starting to go up a bit but still a lot lower than last year. I hope it picks up again as we head into the shopping season. Dollar rally A bit more positive is the huge
- [Business heading south..](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/business-heading-south/) - It's the start of the month again and one of the things I do on the first day of each month is add up all the (preliminary) earnings figures of all my income streams to get a rough view of how much money I made last month. I started doing this about a year ago
- [Canon zoom lens finally arrived](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/canon-zoom-lens-finally-arrived/) - It took ages but my Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS lens finally arrived today. This complements the 18-55mm IS lens I bought together with my Canon EOS 450D a couple of months ago. I'll post a couple of sample pics this weekend.
- [NVIDIA's bull is back](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nvidias-bull-is-back/) - I bought my first NVIDIA shares about a half year ago and one of the things I learned during that time is that this is a very volatile stock. Out of all the stocks I own or have owned NVIDIA makes the biggest jumps and dumps. In March-April the stock traded in the $18-$20 range,
- [Sharp rise for the U.S. dollar](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/sharp-rise-for-the-us-dollar/) - After months of decline the US dollar finally took a very sharp turn this month and gained a lot of ground on the euro. In less than a month the USD appreciated from $1.59 per euro to $1.47 per euro. Not only the dollar took a 180-degree but prices of oil, gold and other commodities
- [Online advertising in Belgium not growing](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/online-advertising-in-belgium-not-growing/) - A report about the advertising market in Belgium was released this week by CIM Media. The report took a look at the advertising spending of Belgian companies in January to May and found they were 2.1 percent higher than the year before. One of the things I find surprising is that the marketshare of online
- [The joys of online translation services](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-joys-of-online-translation-services/) - A Chinese restaurant used an online translation service to translate their name into English. Here's what they got:
- [The bubble is bursting..](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-bubble-is-bursting/) - Oil ramped up pretty quickly to almost $150 per barrel but that's last month's news. Since oil peaked at $147.20 the price has dropped - and fast. As the economy is slowing and people are using less oil the speculative bubble is draining pretty quickly. Yesterday oil reached a low of $120.50 in NY before closing
- [Almost to Italy](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/almost-to-italy/) - Next week Carmen and I are heading to Calabria, a region in southern Italy, for a one week-long holiday. We'll be staying at the Garden Resort Calabria hotel which has a very nice big pool and a long sandy/grit beach. One of the things I would like to do is visit Stromboli, a small island
- [Picture of the hotel's pool](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/picture-of-the-hotels-pool/) - I still haven't really had the time to finish my blog post about my holiday in Italy. Anyway, here's a photo I shot of the hotel's main pool which was very big, I had to stitch three photos together to capture it completely:
- [Back from Calabria, Italy](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/back-from-calabria-italy/) - Yesterday Carmen and I got back from our holiday in Calabria, Italy. We stayed at the Garden Resort hotel in Calabria for one week and we had a really good time. I'm kinda busy right now as I'm still catching up with some of the stuff I missed while I was gone but within a
- [How to spice up a tech site](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-to-spice-up-a-tech-site/) - The guys over at I4U really know how to make a tech site more interesting. They have a Gadget Photo Model gallery and about once a month they add a new set of photos with a gorgeous model that poses with some of the latest hardware like a new iPod, the Eee PC, a phone
- [Just ordered a new toy for my camera](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/just-ordered-a-new-toy-for-my-camera/) - I just ordered the Lowepro Cirrus TLZ 25 camera bag and the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens for my Canon EOS 450D dSLR camera. I already have the EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens and this new lens should give me more zooming power. The 55-250mm lens features Image Stabilization (IS) and according to many people
- [Mercedes to ditch petroleum cars by 2015?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/mercedes-to-ditch-petroleum-cars-by-2015/) - As oil prices keep soaring car makers are investing more and more into alternative fuels. Several car makers have plans to introduce electric or hydrogen powered cars but Mercedes seems to be the first that has plans to completely ditch petroleum cars. According to some sources like Tree Hugger the German car makers aims to
- [Doh!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/im-an-idiot/) - Wow.. I can't believe I forgot to renew this domain name. I tried to access my blog two hours ago and all I saw were a bunch of ads. I hadn't received any domain expiration e-mails from Namecheap - perhaps they were accidentally caught by my spam filter - but fortunately I could buy back
- [Make your money work harder for you](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/make-your-money-work-harder-for-you/) - An easy way to earn more money is to make the money you already have work harder for you. Here in Flanders most people keep their savings in savings accounts or other financial products from one of the three largest banks but in most cases you're leaving a lot of money on the table if
- [NVIDIA takes another pounding](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nvda-takes-another-pounding/) - Just when I thought the stock market was recovering well the whole market collapsed again. High oil prices, inflation and troubles in the financial sector are pushing the whole market down. There's a lot of panic and lots of shares are getting dumped at low prices but few are buying as many people think we'll go
- [German waterpark builds waterslide with looping!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/german-waterpark-builds-waterslide-with-looping/) - German waterpark Aqua Magis in Plettenberg is going to open a unique waterslide with a looping. It sounds pretty extreme but if you examine some of the pictures it looks pretty safe IMO, it's far from a complete vertical loop. The slide is 12.4 meters high and has a topspeed of around 65km/h. Some guys
- [DV Hardware was slashdotted](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-was-slashdotted/) - DV Hardware was on Slashdot and Engadget this weekend with an article about a new "supercomputer" for medical research from the University of Antwerp that uses four GeForce 9800GX2 graphics cards to do its magic. What makes this system to special is that this GPGPU powerhouse enabled these researchers to create their own low-cost supercomputer,
- [Yahoo Finance goes real-time](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/yahoo-finance-goes-real-time/) - I just noticed that Yahoo Finance now offers real-time stock quotes. AFAIK they are now one of the only sites that give their visitors access to free real-time stock quotes, sites like Google Finance all work with a 15-minute delay and that can sometimes be an eternity as things can move really fast. Real-time data shown
- [Oceade = lots of fun](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/oceade-lots-of-fun/) - Two days ago Thomas (yeah he has the same name as me) and I made a trip to Oceade, a tropical waterpark in Brussels. Pizza Hut First we went to one of the Pizza Hut restaurants in Brussels for their Pizza Buffet. Everyday between 12 PM and 2 PM you can eat as many pizzas as
- [Steve Ballmer vs college kid - 3-0](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/steve-ballmer-vs-college-kid-3-0/) - Hungarian college kid with a white "Microsoft = Corruption" t-shirt tries to give Steve Ballmer the egg-treatment, but fails miserably:
- [These guys thought of everything](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/these-guys-thought-of-everything/) - Last week when I bought a new boardshort from DC Shoes I was pretty suprised to find a hard object in the right pocket of my short. Turns out the boardshort features an integrated wax comb bottle opener! Pretty cool. Also, congratulations Carmen! My girlfriend finished the Start-2-run 10 kilometer training scheme on Friday
- [Just got back from the beach](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/just-back-from-the-beach/) - Carmen and I made a trip to the beach today, we went to Oostende. The weather has been really good in Flanders this week, with temperatures of up to 25°C, and today was no exception. It was really warm but there was a nice cool sea breeze so things didn't get too hot. Lots of
- [NVIDIA, the dollar and CMB](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nvidia-the-dollar-and-cmb/) - NVIDIA (NVDA) Yesterday I wrote NVIDIA gained another 2.81% and today the rally continued. NVDA has gained $1.02 (+4.74%) today and went up 11.76% in the last five days - a pretty nice rally on a high volume. More than 28.28 million shares were traded today, that's 50% more than usual and a good sign.
- [Nice tech rally today](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nice-tech-rally-today/) - The stock market has already recovered quite a bit since the crash earlier this year. The Dow Jones closed at 13,010 (+1.48%) today, the highest level since early January. Especially tech stocks did really well today, Nasdaq gained 2.81% and is now at the highest level since mid-January. The markets seem to be happy as
- [Ballmer uses a Mac?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ballmer-uses-a-mac/) - Looks like Steve Ballmer may have used a Mac to give a presentation on Business Leadership and Digital Innovation for Future Graduated at the university of Louvain in Belgium last week. I can't say for sure whether the Mac was really used by Ballmer as I wasn't there but some folks claim it was just
- [Beautiful Spring weather!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/beautiful-spring-weather/) - The past week or so the weather here in Flanders has been exceptionally well. Lots of sunshine, no rain and temperatures in the range of 22-25°C! Maybe Carmen and I will make a trip to the beach this weekend as the weather forecast looks pretty good for the next couple of days . Later today
- [Scared of heights?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/scared-of-heights/) - I wouldn't like to walk on the Caminito del Rey lol: In 1901 it was obvious that the workers of the Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide transport of materials, vigilance and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway took four years; it was finished
- [Eyes Wide Shut and 2001: Space Odyssey review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/eyes-wide-shut-and-2001-space-odyssey-review/) - This week I also watched two Kubrick films for the first time. First I saw Eyes Wide Shut, a movie which Stanley Kubrick finished just a couple of days before his death in 1999. This flick stars Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) and it's all about sex and fidelity. At
- [Braveheart review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/braveheart-review/) - I bought a DVD of Braveheart a couple of months ago but I didn't watch it until a couple of days ago. I dusted off the DVD and watched this fine movie for the third (or perhaps fourth?) time. Braveheart tells the tale of William Wallace, a 13th century Scottish commoner who attempts to unite
- [Product Inbox: Super Talent 8GB drive](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/product-inbox-super-talent-8gb-drive/) - Super Talent send over one of their new 8GB Pico drives. These drives are among the smallest 8GB flash drives you can buy. A full review should follow soon.
- [Which country has the lowest taxes?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/which-country-has-the-lowest-taxes/) - Forbes has published the latest edition of their Tax Misery Index. The list includes 66 countries and indicates France, the Netherlands and Belgium impose the harshest taxes while Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong have the lowest tax rates. The misery score is the sum of the taxes shown in the colored bars,
- [Blogging may be bad for your health](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/blogging-may-be-bad-for-your-health/) - NY Times suggests blogging may be bad for your health. The newspaper argues the around-the-clock Internet economy demands a constant stream of new content which causes a lot of stress and other problems like weight loss or gain, sleep disorder, exhaustion, etc. Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell
- [Canon EOS 450D - New camera has arrived!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-camera-arrived-450/) - I received my Canon EOS 450D dSLR this morning. Canon announced this camera in January and after weeks of waiting it's finally available in some retail stores. I bought mine at a webshop called digicamshop.be and I'm very pleased with their service, I placed an order around 5 P.M. yesterday and I received the camera around 10.30
- [Misc. ramblings - March 30, 2008](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/misc-ramblings-march-30-2008/) - Razer Destructor review I've been slacking a bit this year but I finally got a new review online. The Razer Destructor is a $40 mousepad that ships in a very neat carrying case. Currently I'm working on a review of the Spire Edge laptop sleeve and a review of the OCZ Vendetta 2 is also
- [Argh.. downtime](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/argh-downtime/) - Argh.. my online properties were down for more than 6 hours today . Fortunately my webhosting provider has very little downtime (except scheduled downtimes for server maintenance) but when it does happen it's very inconvenient. Each minute of downtime means visitors won't be able to reach your site and less traffic equals less income. I'm
- [When do you stop working for your government?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/when-do-you-stop-working-for-your-government/) - I just read an article over at CNN that this year's Tax Freedom Day in the U.S. is April 23rd. Tax Freedom Day is a purely theoretical date that helps you to visualise how much the government steals from the income of an average American. It depends a lot on the state you're living in
- [CNET to fire 120 employees](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/cnet-to-fire-120-employees/) - I just read at Reuters that CNET is going to fire 120 workers, that's about 10% of its staff. CNET is the owner of various popular sites like news.com, download.com, GameSpot, GameFAQs, MP3.com, TechRepublic, ZDNet, ... CNET expected pre-tax restructuring charges from the job cuts to run between $3.5 million and $4 million, most of which
- [Video: Exploding wind turbine](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/video-exploding-wind-turbine/) - This video was shot about a month ago in Denmark. The braking mechanism of this turbine was malfunctioning and a storm caused the blades to spin so fast that that the turbine exploded. Fortunately no one got hurt. Now I know why I don't want a wind mill in my back yard .
- [Hoax tricks webmasters into banning search engines](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/hoax-tricks-webmasters-into-banning-search-engines/) - While browsing around a bit I read a pretty nasty hoax is going around in Germany that tries to trick webmasters into banning search engines from their website. The e-mail claims millions of web servers are being attacked by viruses and that you can protect yourself by creating a robots.txt with a couple of lines
- [Turbulent times - dollar drops again, gold gains ground](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/turbulent-times-dollar-drops-again-gold-gains-ground/) - These are pretty interesting days as lots of things are going on right now on the financial markets. A couple of hours ago for instance JPMorgan Chase announced they'll buy Bear Stearns for just $2 a share in a stock-swap deal and also significant is that the Fed agreed to fund up to $30 billion
- [Stock markets up bigtime today](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/stock-markets-up-bigtime-today/) - It was a pretty interesting day on the stock market. The Fed pumped $200 billion into the market to boost liquidity in the financial system and this fueled a massive gain in the stock markets. The Dow Jones gained 416.66 points today, a 3.55% increase! That's the biggest gain since the US invaded Iraq five
- [Misc ramblings - March 9, 2008](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/misc-ramblings-march-9-2008/) - OCZ Reaper HPC 1150MHz DDR2 reviewed I just published a new review on DV Hardware. The subject of today's review is the OCZ Reaper HPC PC2-9200 memory kit, this product is advertised with a frequency of 1150MHz and features a heatpipe cooling system. Next week I'm going to publish one or two game reviews on
- [Goal for this month: make money with affiliate marketing](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/goal-for-this-month-make-money-with-affiliate-marketing/) - One of the goals I've set for this month is to get started with affiliate marketing again and make some small profits (like 250EUR before the end of the month). If successful I'll try to scale it up and develop it onto a new income stream that supplements my current income. My online business generates
- [Another busy week](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/another-busy-week/) - This week is going to be really busy as I'll get flooded by tons of news from CeBIT - this is a European tech show in Hannover, Germany. Most major computer and tech firms will present all their latest products at CeBIT, just like at CES in Las Vegas two months ago. Hannover isn't really
- [Dollar drops to new record low](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dollar-drops-to-new-record-low/) - As oil jumped over $100 per barrel and gold reached new record heights of over $960 the U.S. dollar reached a new record low yesterday. For the first time since the euro was found in 1999 the U.S. dollar crushed the psychological barrier of $1.5 per EUR. Analysts believe the Fed will further cut the intrest
- [Google's paid clicks are dropping](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/googles-paid-clicks-are-dropping/) - Google's stock took another big hit today on fears that it won't be able to meet Wall Street's expectations. Market research firm comScore published a report today that indicated that the amount of paid clicks on Google's search engine dropped 7% month-over-month in January and remained relatively flat with the same period last year. In its
- [There Will Be Blood review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/there-will-be-blood-review/) - Unlike you may expect from the title There Will Be Blood isn't another Hostel or Saw-like horror film, it's a drama about the rise of a ruthless oil man. The star of the show is Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), a man who makes his entry into the oil business in California at the
- [Rambo review - Heroes never die... They just reload](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/rambo-review-heroes-never-die-they-just-reload/) - In 2006 Sylvester Stallone made a comeback with Rocky Balbao and this year he breathes new life into his other alter ego, Rambo. The story of this new Rambo movie focuses on the problems in Burma and starts with some news videos to make the viewer aware of the situation in this country. The star
- [DV Hardware now has +400 RSS readers](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-now-has-400-rss-readers/) - I've been using FeedBurner for quite some time now to track how many RSS readers I have and today is the first time the DV Hardware feed reached over 400 subscribers! On average we have about 365 subscribers but now it has jumped to 402 My blog currently has 19 RSS subscribers.
- [Stock Market 101: Fundamental and Technical Analysis](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/stock-market-101-fundamental-and-technical-analysis/) - The stock market and the economy are for a large part unpredictable but there are several techniques to help you pick the right stock for your stock portfolio. Fundamental analysis and technical analysis are two trading theories I'm getting familiar with. Fundamental analysis The way I see it fundamental analysis can help me to pick
- [Gambling on the stock market](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/gambling-on-the-stock-market/) - Playing a bit on the stock market was one of the things I've been wanting to do since I was a kid but I never did it because I was too afraid that the stock would tank and never recover to the level I bought it at. Two years ago for instance I was planning
- [NVIDIA gets hammered by Wall Street](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nvidia-gets-hammered-by-wall-street/) - I just learned the hard way that the stock market can be very unpredictable. Yesterday I wrote about NVIDIA's earning results and I said I expected the stock to go up because earnings were higher than analysts expected and also because the guidance NVIDIA gave during the conference call was pretty good. I was quite
- [NVIDIA beats expectations, good guidance](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nvidia-beats-expectations-good-guidance/) - As I wrote a couple of days ago I bought some NVIDIA shares. NVIDIA's stock performed fairly poor in the days after I bought the shares but since yesterday I'm back in the green. Today they've announced their financial results and it was a pretty interesting day, NVDA opened at $26.20 and closed at $27.02.
- [Tech shares are going up again](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/tech-shares-are-going-up-again/) - The INTC shares I bought last week are doing pretty well. When the stock market dipped I managed to buy the stock at $18.32 - one of Intel's lowest levels in one year and a half. I was planning to keep the stock for at least several months and the market went up quicker than
- [Dollar heading the right direction - EUR to drop under $1.4?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dollar-heading-the-right-direction-eur-to-drop-under-14/) - The dollar is gaining some ground again this week. After flirting with $1.5 per EUR the currency exchange is now heading up again to $1.45 and higher. Currently 1EUR is worth about $1.45 and I just read that ING analysts expect the dollar will rise to $1.38 per EUR this year on lower US trade deficits, optimism
- [Darco is growing up pretty fast](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/darcos-growing-up-pretty-fast/) - It's been a while since I last posted something about our new dog. Darco is now about five months old and he's getting bigger every day. Here are two pictures from three months ago: And here are two pictures I just took, the pics look a bit washed out but that's because I shot them
- [New Year's resolutions - one month later](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-years-resolutions-one-month-later/) - Now January is coming to an end I thought it would be fun to take a look at how I'm doing with the nine resolutions I wrote down at the start of this month. Grow DV Hardware: That was the first resolution and I haven't really been successful at it this month. Traffic is a
- [Two new reviews at DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/two-new-reviews-at-dv-hardware/) - I've published two new reviews at DV Hardware, first there's the review of PC Power & Cooling's Silencer 610. This is a 610W PSU with a 49A +12V rail and a high efficiency. Overall this PSU is highly recommended if you're building a high-end system, it doesn't have any fancy features but delivers stable power.
- [Hummer HX - the Halo car?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/hummer-hx-the-halo-car/) - GM presents a concept model of the Hummer HX at the Detroit auto show. This car is powered by a 3.6l V6 and features a slightly more green approach as it can run on E85 ethanol fuel without any modifications. I'm not too fond of the Hummer H3's design but this concept looks pretty interesting. The car looks quite
- [Gizmodo editor gets banned from CES](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/gizmodo-editor-gets-banned-from-ces/) - Lots of members of the press try to have some fun at CES but some people go a bit too far. Gizmodo apparently crossed the line last week when they shut down dozens of LCD displays with some kind of universal remote: CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers
- [From robots to adventurers - Terminator and Indy](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/from-robots-to-adventurers/) - Over the last two weeks I've seen both the Terminator and Indiana Jones trilogies. I've seen a couple of these movies when I was a kid but that's so long ago I could barely remember what these movies were about. With Indiana Jones 4 slated to be released in May and a new Terminator TV
- [Going to Italy this Summer](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-italy-this-summer/) - Carmen and I booked a holiday yesterday, in 2006 we went to the Greec island Corfu and this year we're going on a beach holiday to Italy. After looking through dozens of destinations we decided to go to Garden Resort Calabria, this hotel is located in the Italian region Calabria and most people on travel
- [Happy New Year!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/happy-new-year/) - Happy New Year everybody, best wishes for 2008! Today I sat down for a while and came up with nine things I would like to do or would like to do better in 2008: Grow DV Hardware. One of the main things I would like to do in 2008 is to expand DV Hardware and
- [New gear for DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-gear-for-dv-hardware/) - It took a while but I finally received my photo light tent. Usually when I order something on the Internet it arrives pretty quick but that was not the case with this product, it took almost five weeks till it arrived! I guess that's one of the disadvantages of ordering things the "El Cheapo" way
- [Merry Christmas!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/merry-christmas/) - Hope you're all having a good time
- [I Am Legend review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/i-am-legend-review/) - Two days ago I saw I Am Legend, a new post-apocalyptic film that stars Will Smith. This film is loosely based on the same-name science fiction novel which was published in 1954 by Richard Matheson. The plot: A miraculous cure against cancer becomes a global nightmare. The cure evolves into a plague and spreads all
- [The 114EUR PC](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-114eur-pc/) - I assembled a new computer system for my dad this week for only 114EUR . I have lots of spare parts so the only thing I needed to buy for his system was a motherboard and a processor. This rig will only be used for office work and Internet browsing so the specifications are pretty
- [30 Days of Night review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/30-days-of-night-review/) - Carmen and I saw 30 Days of Night this afternoon, this new thriller seemed to have a quite interesting story but 113 minutes later we both felt disappointed. The story is set in Barrow, a small Alaskan town where the sun sets for 30 days every winter. A large part of Barrow's population leaves the town
- [Two new reviews @ DVH](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/two-new-reviews-dvh/) - I've published two new reviews this week. First there's the review of the Noctua NF-P12 fan, this is a new silent 120mm fan. It has about the same noise level as the NF-S12 fans but moves more air. Next is the review of the huge ThermalTake Xaser VI case, this case is even bigger than
- [One of the benefits of making money online](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/one-of-the-benefits-of-making-money-online/) - One of the benefits of making money online is that the money just keeps rolling in, even when you're not actively promoting an ad network anymore. If I would stop working on all my sites today I'm sure I would continue to receive some money from all affiliate networks and ad programs I use for many years
- [Stardust review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/stardust-review/) - It's been a couple of weeks since I last did a movie review, mainly because I was too lazy lol. Last Sunday I saw Stardust, I checked it out because of its high IMDB ratings but didn't really expect much from it as it looked pretty childish. Turns out my first impression was wrong, this
- [Pigs review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pigs-review/) - A while ago I watched the movie Pigs. The name of this movie doesn't really sound appealing but contrary to what you may expect it isn't about those cute animals who love to roll in the mud all the time - it's about sex. Pigs is a typical teen comedy and the main star of
- [Weird search queries people used to find this blog](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/weird-search-queries-people-used-to-find-this-blog/) - I took a look at some of the search queries people used to find my blog in November and was pretty amazed. Some of the search queries were just plain weird and others were very sick. A lot of the search queries had something to do with the most popular post on my blog but
- [New reviews at DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-reviews-at-dv-hardware/) - New reviews at DV Hardware I've published quite a lot of new content at DV Hardware in November. One of the first products I took a look at last month was the SteelSound 4H headset - this product performs pretty well in games but isn't really suited to listen to music. I also took a look at a bunch
- [Read Revenue Magazine for free](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/read-revenue-magazine-for-free/) - I just received an e-mail that the November/December edition of Revenue Magazine can be viewed online for free. Revenue is a magazine for online marketers, I wanted to subscribe to this magazine about two years ago as I had heard some good things about it but unfortunately I couldn't subscribe because for some reason their
- [Everyone loves a good success story](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/everyone-loves-a-good-success-story/) - Everytime I check my blog's stats I notice that one article in particular is very popular and gets dozens or on some days even hundreds of reads. It's the post about the 17-year old girl that makes up to $70k a month with MySpace, the article was published about three months ago on August 27th
- [Simpsonize yourself](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/simpsonize-yourself/) - While browsing around a bit I found a cool site: Simpsonize Me. Upload a picture of yourself, wait a while (it can take up to 10 minutes..) and turn yourself into a Simpsons character! Here's my Simpsons character, it doesn't really look exactly like me but there are some resemblances: And here's simpsonized Carmen: In this
- [Thanksgiving rocks!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/thanksgiving-rocks/) - Happy Thanksgiving to all American readers! In my country we don't celebrate this holiday but I got to join in the fun online! This time of year consumers start buying a lot of new stuff and gifts and advertisers crank up their advertising budgets. When I woke up and checked yesterday's earning stats I was
- [DV Hardware Product Inbox - Noctua & ThermalTake](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-product-inbox-noctua-thermaltake/) - Some quick previews of upcoming reviews on DV Hardware. First we have the Noctua NF-P12 fan, this one should sound even less noisy than the other fans from Noctua I tested a couple of months ago. This review should be ready within a week or two. On Tuesday I received the new Xaser case from
- [Super Talent memory module giveaway](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/super-talent-memory-module-giveaway/) - DV Hardware teams up with Super Talent for a holiday giveaway. We're giving away three 2GB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 memory kits. These modules run at 800MHz and have 4-4-3-8 timings. You can enter the contest at DV Hardware. The contest runs till December 19th. Good luck Right now I'm trying to clear my review queue. Last
- [Two more pics of Darco](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/two-more-pics-of-darco/) - Here are two more photos of Darco. It's not easy to get nice photos of him because he's mostly moving to quick At the moment I'm testing two notebook coolers and I'm also preparing a new memory contest that will be launched tomorrow on DV Hardware. We're going to give away three DDR2 kits from Super Talent.
- [Google to make your life harder](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-to-make-your-life-harder/) - Just before the holiday season onrush Google decided it would be a good idea to mess around with the AdSense ad units. John Chow published a picture of what Google is planning to do: Currently visitors on your website can click the entire ad but once the changes kick in the only clickable areas will
- [Now and then: Processor coolers](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/now-and-then-processor-coolers/) - A retro post on Niko's blog gave me some inspiration for a retro post on my blog. Here are two pictures of processor coolers - a modern one and one from more than ten years ago. On the left you can see my first (and only) AMD CPU together with its cooler. This chip comes from my
- [AMD Phenom keychain](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/amd-phenom-keychain/) - I found a photo of a pretty cool keychain from AMD on a Japanese hardware site called IT Media. I don't understand Japanese but I believe AMD is handing out some of these Phenom keychains to select journalists at the Japanese Phenom processor launch event. I want one
- [Proof that Global Warming is real...](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/proof-that-global-warming-is-real/) - and that it may not necessarily be a bad thing at all : If that's the case it's time to start burning some more fossil fuels to get the temperatures up By the way, I read an interesting article this weekend on CNN Money about the cost of oil. A barrel of oil is now
- [World's biggest BSOD?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/worlds-biggest-bsod/) - HardOCP published a photo of what might be one of the biggest Blue Screen of Deaths. Four giant displays at a The Bay store where showing a BSOD for the last few days..
- [The ship is sinking](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-ship-is-sinking/) - Wow the U.S. dollar is falling quick these days. An announcement from Chinese officials that China would further diversify its currency reserves made the dollar drop to $1.47 per EUR. A couple of months ago this was still about $1.36 per EUR. Here's a chart from Yahoo showing the €/$ currency exchange of the last couple of months: Guess I'll
- [Time to celebrate!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/time-to-celebrate/) - Happy birthday to me! I turned 20 today. Here's a blast from the past. Not sure how many years ago this picture was taken but I guess it's probably about 15 years ago
- [The Thousand Islands](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-thousand-islands/) - While browsing around a bit I found some pictures of a place called Thousand Islands. This is a chain of islands in the Saint Lawrence River on the U.S.-Canada border. There are 1,865 islands, some belong to the state of New York and others are part of Ontario. The smallest island has just enough room
- [October revenue figures up 13.8%](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/october-revenue-figures-up-138/) - A new month has started so it's time to take a closer look at how well (or bad) my business did last month. Some of the revenue figures still need to be audited but I guesstimate my total income for October is about 13.8% higher than September. I think there are two reasons for this. First
- [Some new toys](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/some-new-toys/) - Some new toys arrived today Last week I ordered a sound meter on eBay from a Chinese firm called ineSun, took about seven days until I received the product but it was pretty cheap. It only cost me about 50EUR ($73.64), inclusive shipping costs. The AR824 has a range of 30dB to 130dB and ships
- [Photos of our new dog](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/photos-of-our-new-dog/) - We got a new puppy today, a German Shepherd just like Toby. He's about two months old and loves to play. Now we just need to come up with a good name
- [DVH Product Inbox: Silencer 610 & Endo bag](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dvh-product-inbox-silencer-610-endo-bag/) - Two new products arrived this week and I spend about 30-45 minutes today on taking pictures of three products that will soon be reviewed on DV Hardware. On Monday I received the PCP&C Silencer 610, this 610W PSU will be compared to the Silencer 750. This morning a new notebook bag from Spire arrived, the
- [Google working on Manage Ads feature for AdSense](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-working-on-manage-ads-feature-for-adsense/) - The Google AdSense team unveiled on their blog that they are working on a new ad management feature which may make it a bit easier to experiment with different AdSense settings. This new feature allows you to place a code on your website and make all the changes to the ad layout on the Google
- [Google PageRank finally updated](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-pagerank-finally-updated/) - Google finally updated the toolbar PR figures and this is definitely a weird update.Many people are baffled because lots of websites lost a lot of PR and no one really knows why. Here's a list I copied from SEOmoz which shows what happened to a bunch of fairly well known websites: www.autoblog.com PR6 > PR4
- [RIP Toby  - 27/7/1997 - 22/10/2007](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/rip-toby-2771997-22102007/) - Sad days. Our German Shepherd died yesterday evening. We already saw it coming a bit as his behaviour changed a bit last winter (he suddenly became lots less active) but we never expected he would be gone so quickly. Rest in peace my four-legged friend.
- [Random Saturday Ramblings](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/random-saturday-ramblings/) - Yesterday I finally finished the review of the OCZ Flex XLC DDR2 memory. Normally this review should have been ready in September but I was kinda lazy and I also adjusted my "review queue" a couple of times to get reviews of newly announced products up first . The OCZ FlexXLC memory kit I tested
- [It, Troy and Road Trip](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/it-troy-and-road-trip/) - When I started this blog I watched quite a lot of movies and published lots of movie reviews but these days I don't really watch a lot of movies anymore. Over the last couple of weeks I only saw about three movies. One of them was Road Trip - a comedy which I watched together
- [W Revenue - new blog with some nice tips](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/w-revenue-new-blog-with-some-nice-tips/) - I read a review on John Chow's blog today about Scott Wainner's new blog. This guy had a lot of success on the Internet in the late 90's - he had a successful hardware site called SysOpt and had a price comparison site called ResellerRatings. Both sites were getting quite a lot of traffic and were sold in
- [How to get started in PPC marketing](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-to-get-started-in-ppc-marketing/) - Zac Johnson wrote a guide on getting started with PPC marketing. There are many ebooks out there that promise you riches for the low price of $97 (but only if you act within the first 24 hours!)… but in the end they are usually nothing more than broken promises, outdated strategies, or just an overall
- [Had some fun today with the OCZ ATV Turbo](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/had-some-fun-today-with-the-ocz-atv-turbo/) - Over the years I've already reviewed over 100 products at DV Hardware. Some of these products were kinda boring to review but some products like the OCZ ATV Turbo allow you to be a bit more creative. The drive didn't only perform really well but it also managed to survive all the extreme tests.
- [DVH Product Inbox - OCZ ATV Turbo](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dvh-product-inbox-ocz-atv-turbo/) - The new OCZ ATV Turbo flash drive arrived today. This is a rubber flash drive that should be shock resistant and waterproof. The review should be ready later this week. Shawn Knight from OCIA tested this drive last week and came up with some interesting torture tests. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to
- [Do no evil.. or something like that](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/do-no-evil-or-something-like-that/) - Bad news for lots of site owners. It looks like the rumours that Google is penalizing sites for selling links are true: Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from (PR9) when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That's a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some
- [300 with cats](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/300-with-cats/) - Someone created a funny cat movie with background music and vocals from 300: Pretty cool :smile:
- [Leo gives away a Halo 3 Legendary Edition](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/leo-gives-away-a-halo-3-legendary-edition/) - Leo Chiang, who is perhaps best known for his role as the tattooed pilot on Battlestar Galactica, is holding a new contest on his blog, this time he's giving away one of the Legendary Editions of the extremely popular Xbox 360 game Halo 3. This limited edition features the cool Spartan helmet scale model and
- [DVH Product Inbox: SteelSeries 4H](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dvh-product-inbox-steelseries-4h/) - Just got another product to review on DV Hardware; the SteelSeries 4H headset. I'm not sure yet when you can expect this review as I still have a pretty big backlog.
- [The income report - September 2007](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-income-report-september-2007/) - All earnings data from September rolled in today so it's time to take another look at the evolution of my earnings. In the past I didn't really keep track of this, I just looked at the numbers on a day-to-day base to get a basic idea of how well or bad I was doing. Compiling
- [Sharing some link love](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/sharing-some-link-love/) - One of the things I like to do each month on this blog is to share some link love at the start of each month. My personal blog has been online for a bit more than 4 months now and I've already received more than 350 comments and 1267 spam comments on 163 blog posts.
- [Quest to earn more money, TV shows and games](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/quest-to-earn-more-money-tv-shows-and-games/) - This week wasn't really productive, I planned to publish some articles but was too lazy to write them . Another thing I didn't really like about this week is that the U.S. dollar reached a new record low against the EUR, the last time I bitched about this it was 1.3879 dollar per EUR but
- [OCZ Vendetta - DVH product inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ocz-vendetta-dvh-product-inbox/) - A new product from OCZ arrived today. Their new Vendetta heatsink is inspired on a design by Xigmatek and features three large copper heatpipes that make direct contact with the base of your processor. The cooler uses a 80mm fan and has a relatively compact design. It will be interesting to see how this cooler
- [Making money with the social networks - Facebook Flyers](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/making-money-with-the-social-networks-facebook-flyers/) - One of the places were you can/could make a lot of easy money are the social networks. Places like MySpace are spammed to death by marketers trying to promote all kinds of products and services - with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately for these grey area marketers MySpace and advertising networks have seriously cut down
- [WordPress 2.3 released](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/wordpress-23-released/) - The WordPress folks released a new version of their blogging platform which sports a bunch of new features: Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if
- [An iconized version of myself](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/an-iconized-version-of-myself/) - While browsing around a bit on my PC and watching some photos I came across a folder which contained some Iconize Me pictures of myself. About 2 years ago I paid the guys from Iconize Me! $50 to create an online portrait of myself: I intended to use this picture as an avatar on forums
- [Why I removed BlogRush](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/why-i-removed-blogrush/) - Three days ago I decided to give BlogRush a try but as you may have noticed I've removed the widget today. Before I started using this network I already had some doubts - I expected the CTR would be really small but it's even worse than I expected. According to the BlogRush dashboard I've earned a total
- [Digg adds over 50 new features](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/digg-adds-over-50-new-features/) - Digg made some changes to their website today. The Digg crew revamped the user profiles, which should make it easier for you to share stories and discover new stories by seeing what your friends are digging. They've also made it easier to find friends on Digg and there's now also a shoutbox on your profile so
- [Mother-in-law and large homes = bad for business](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/mother-in-law-and-large-homes-bad-for-business/) - A largely new but quite controversial field of research tries to link the private life of CEOs to the performance of their company. CEOs are often seen as critical to the business they lead and therefore some investors want to learn as much as possible about the man behind the wheel in order to optimize
- [Free stuff - a good way to promote your company](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/free-stuff-a-good-way-to-promote-your-company/) - One of the easy ways to promote your company is by giving away something for free. This technique is commonly used by all sorts of companies and people absolutely like this marketing technique. At trade shows you usually get overwhelmed by lots of free stuff such as pens, stickers, candy and other cheap products which
- [17-year old girl makes up to $70,000 a month with MySpace site](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/17-year-old-girl-makes-up-to-70000-a-month-with-myspace-site/) - Fast Company published a fairly long article in the September edition of their magazine about the 17-year old Ashley Qualls. This girl runs a MySpace layout and graphics site called Whateverlife. I never heard about this site before but she seems to be doing amazingly well, according to the article the three-year old site receives
- [Trying out BlogRush](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/trying-out-blogrush/) - Just like thousands of other bloggers I'm going to give BlogRush a try. This new widget was launched a few days ago and really took the Internet by storm, you can see it popping up everywhere. So what's the purpose of BlogRush? Well it aims to send your blog more traffic. By placing the code
- [Chitika Premium Publisher - because publishers aren't equal](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/chitika-premium-publisher-program-because-publishers-arent-equal/) - One of the income sources I use is Chitika - they are a bit controversial as not everyone is pleased with their service but I've already been using them for quite a long time and never encountered any big problems. About two weeks ago I received a quite surprising mail from my Chitika account manager which explained
- [Next review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/next-review/) - Two days ago I saw the science-fiction action movie Next. Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is the main character in this movie and he has an extraordinary gift: he can watch two minutes into the future. He's hiding under an alias in Las Vegas because he was sick of all the examinations he underwent as a
- [U.S. dollar keeps dropping](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/us-dollar-keeps-dropping/) - As I get mostly paid in dollars the $/€ currency exchange plays a relatively big role in how much money I earn. For the last couple of years the currency exchange hasn't really been that great - the overall trend is that the U.S. dollar just keeps dropping and dropping against the euro. The euro
- [Lamborghini Reventon - new 1 million EUR car](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/lamborghini-reventon-new-1-million-eur-car/) - Lamborghini announced a new car for the very rich. Their new Lamborghini Reventon is expected to cost about 1 million EUR ($1.4 million) and will be very limited: To be dubbed Reventon, it's based on the Murcielago LP640, and it'll cost a breezy one-million euros. Only 20 are set to be constructed, and all have
- [Iron Man trailer](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/iron-man-trailer/) - This decade we've already been bombarded by superhero movies and next year we can expect a new film based on the Iron Man comics. I just saw the trailer of this new superhero film and it looks pretty interesting. The plot of this movie is pretty actual. It's about a weapon designer who's taken hostage
- [SteelSeries S&S mousepad review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/steelseries-ss-mousepad-review/) - I published a new review at DV Hardware this weekend of the SteelSeries S&S mousepad. A couple of weeks ago I already checked out the cloth QcK mousepad and now I've taken a closer look at the S&S mousepad which is made out of plastic. The mousepad performs really well but IMO it's a bit
- [Got Dugg](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/got-dugg/) - You might have noticed that this blog and DV Hardware were loading slow or not loading at all yesterday. That's because one of the articles on my blog made it to the frontpage of Digg. The article which got dugg is the one about the 17-year old girl which makes up to $70k a month
- [WordPress 2.2.3 - time to upgrade](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/wordpress-223-time-to-upgrade/) - The WordPress developers have just released another security and bug fix release. Most of the updates in this new release fix some minor bugs but there's also one fairly high-risk security bug that've plugged today: Users without unfiltered_html capability can post arbitrary html The user only needs to tamper data sent to post.php or page.php
- [Motorola ROKR E6 Transformer phone](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/motorola-rokr-e6-transformer-phone/) - This got to be one of the coolest phone mods I've ever seen: More photos of this Motorola ROKR E6 Transformers phone at Gear Fuse.
- [Another Dell goes up in flames](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/another-dell-goes-up-in-flames/) - Another notebook from Dell goes up in flames. Not really breaking news anymore as this has happened a couple of times before but the owner of this laptop did make some pretty pictures of the fire. More at HiPDA.
- [OCZ PC2-6400 FlexXLC CL3 - DVH Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ocz-pc2-6400-flexxlc-cl3-dvh-product-inbox/) - A new toy to play with arrived this morning: the OCZ FlexXLC Edition 800MHz DDR2 memory kit which is guaranteed to run at 3-4-4-15 timings. This latest edition to the highly-awarded OCZ Flex XLC product family is engineered to produce significant performance gains on the latest NVIDIA nForce SLI platforms by implementing Enhanced Performance Profiles
- [SilverStone FM123 review published](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/silverstone-fm123-review-published/) - I just published another review today. This time it's not really something special, just a new fan from SilverStone. The FM123 fan ships with a small fan controller and can achieve some pretty high airflow levels of up to 106.3CFM according to the specifications. Soon you can also expect a review of the SteelSeries S&S
- [Income up 17-18% in August :)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/income-up-17-18-in-august/) - A month ago I wrote a post about my biggest income sources in July and today I'm going to do the same for August. Income-wise August was a pretty good month, all my regular income sources performed quite well, I added a couple of new ones and my sites also received a bit more visitors
- [Some link love for the Top Commentators](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/some-link-love-for-the-top-commentators/) - It's the end of the month again so it's time to hand out some more link love to everyone who visits this blog a lot. The top commentator this month with 20 comments is Shaun Low, he has just published an article about the All In One SEO plugin for Wordpress. I'm using this
- [Starship Troopers review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/starship-troopers-review/) - Two days ago I saw Starship Troopers, a movie by Paul Verhoeven that was released in 1997. This movie is set in the 23rd century - democracy has failed and the world is now run by a fascistic and very militarist government. For instance, if you want to be a real "citizen" in thiw world
- [AC Ryan MobiliT notebook battery review ready](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ac-ryan-mobilit-notebook-battery-review-ready/) - The weather was pretty good today which allowed me to do some work outside on my notebook. One of the things I worked on was the review of AC Ryan's MobiliT notebook battery. This product is compatible with most notebooks available on the market and will give your system a few hours extra battery life.
- [Another reason why Google should drop DMOZ](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/another-reason-why-google-should-drop-dmoz/) - A couple of days ago I wrote about ShoeMoney's bad experience with DMOZ. Basically some corrupt editor demanded $5,000 from ShoeMoney or else his listing would be deleted - he refused to pay and much to his surprise he noticed that his listing was indeed gone. Today when I was browsing Digg I noticed an
- [Movie Review roundup](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/movie-review-roundup/) - I've watched quite a lot of movies in the past weeks but wasn't really in the mood to write little reviews about them on this blog. Kinda weird but since I got back from Pukkelpop last week I haven't really felt motivated to do a lot of work, besides the daily routine I haven't really
- [Tempo - stores all your trash](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/tempo-stores-all-your-trash/) - CagnidaDesign posted a pretty sweet concept on their site called Tempo - this is an external hard drive in the shape of a trash can that stores everything you delete. Intended to protect the user from accidentally deleting files, it can also be used as an external storage device. As you delete files, they are
- [DMOZ is corrupt](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dmoz-is-corrupt/) - I was a bit bored today and checked out a couple of blogs I haven't visited in a while, like ShoeMoney's blog. I noticed a pretty interesting post on his blog about the open directory project, DMOZ. ShoeMoney says he got an e-mail a while back from a guy who claimed to be a DMOZ
- [PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W PSU reviewed](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pc-power-cooling-silencer-750w-psu-reviewed/) - The review of PCP&C's Silencer 750W power supply was published on DV Hardware a couple of hours ago. This is a quite powerful unit with stable rails but if you're looking for absolute quietness or modular cabling you better look elsewhere. I still have a lot of news to post today but I'm planning to
- [The Itanium processor desk](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-itanium-processor-desk/) - Today I came across a pretty nice looking modded desk on the Internet. A German guy called Matt Tovey got his hands on hundreds of Itanium chips which were supposed to go the scrap-yard but he got a better idea: he incorporated all the CPUs in his new desk. It took him quite a lot
- [Games Convention 2007 in Leipzig](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/games-convention-2007-in-leipzig/) - Three weeks ago I discovered that there's another quite interesting gaming/computer show in Germany this week called Games Convention. With more than 180,000 visitors GC in Leipzig is one of the biggest gaming events of the year, only rivalled by the Tokyo Game Show. At GC2007 most game developers will show off their new games and lots of big computer brands like
- [Requiem For a Dream review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/requiem-for-a-dream/) - Last night I watched Requiem For a Dream, a movie from 2000 which gets pretty good reviews all over the web. This movie follows the lives of four persons: Harry Goldfarb, his mother Sara, his girlfriend Marion Silver and one of his best friends, Tyrone C. Love. One of the central themes in this movie
- [Turistas review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/turistas-review/) - I first heard about this movie a couple of months ago and while the story seemed pretty interesting I decided to skip it after I saw the bad ratings on Rotten and IMDB. However, last week I read some positive reviews about this movie on a forum I frequently visit so I decided to check out if
- [SteelSeries S&S mousepad - DVH Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/steelseries-ss-mousepad-dvh-product-inbox/) - A new product arrived here at home while I was at Pukkelpop. This time it's another mousepad from Steel Series. Last week I checked out their QcK mousepad which is made out of cloth and now I'm going to take a look at the plastic S&S mousepad. Currently I'm still working on the review of
- [Back from Pukkelpop](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/back-from-pukkelpop/) - I'm just back home from Pukkelpop, this year is already the sixth time we went to this festival. We left around 7 AM on Thursday and arrived in Kiewit a bit more than 2.5 hours later. From there it's a short walk to the festival and camping area. Carmen and I set up our tent
- [Gone to Pukkelpop - August 16-19](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/gone-to-pukkelpop-august-16-19/) - Tomorrow Carmen and I are going to Pukkelpop, a music festival in Kiewit. I won't have access to the Internet overe there so don't expect any updates on this blog until I'm back, which will probably be Sunday noon. Pukkelpop has eight stages: the main stage, marquee, dance hall, skate stage, boiler, club, chateau and
- [Back to school with a bulletproof backpack](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/back-to-school-with-a-bulletproof-backpack/) - One of my friends pointed me to a video of a pretty weird but innovative backpack that offers protection against gunshots. Here's a video of the bulletproof backpack: The backpack is lighter than a 15-pound police vest but is capable of stopping even the deadliest 9mm hollowpoint bullets. Pricing starts at $175.
- [ThermalTake Toughpower 1000W reviewed](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/thermaltake-toughpower-1000w-reviewed/) - This week has already been very productive, I've done all my regular work and managed to write three reviews for DV Hardware. Yesterday I wrote the review of the Toughpower 1000W PSUfrom ThermalTake. This PSU is highly recommended if you're looking for a very powerful PSU, it's voltages are perfect and it's very stable.
- [Gangs of New York DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/gangs-of-new-york-dvd-review/) - Last week I watched Gangs of New York, I bought this DVD a couple of weeks ago in a bundle which also contained Spy Game and Assault on Precinct 13. This movie was released in 2002 and features Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz. This was the second time I've watched this movie, the
- [Online ad spending in Belgium up 131%](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/online-ad-spending-in-belgium-up-131/) - I found some numbers in the newspaper today about online advertising. According to a new report online advertising jumped 131% in the first half of 2007 in my country. The growth of online advertising is much bigger than the growth of ad spending on any other medium but the numbers are still very small. About
- [Two new SilverStone products - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/two-new-silverstone-products-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - I've been kinda overwhelmed with new packages today. This morning I already received the notebook battery from AC Ryan and a 750W PCP&C PSU and about half an hour ago a DHL truck dropped of two new products from SilverStone. I've been expecting most of this products for a while and strangely enough they all
- [PCP&C Silencer 750W - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pcpc-silencer-750w-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - The FedEx guy also came by this morning to deliver a package containing the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W power supply from OCZ. PCP&C has been making power supplies since 1985 but got acquired by OCZ a couple of months ago. PCP&C only shipped their power supplies in the U.S. but now that they are
- [AC Ryan External Notebook Battery - DVH Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ac-ryan-external-notebook-battery-dvh-product-inbox/) - Some new toys to keep me busy arrived today. GLS delivered the AC Ryan MobiliT Universal Notebook External Battery. The GLS girl who delivers the packages is pretty fast, I wasn't there quick enough and she just squeezed the package in my mailbox. This product is pretty useful for people who travel a lot. This
- [War of the Worlds DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/war-of-the-worlds-dvd-review/) - A couple of days ago I saw War of the Worlds, the 2005 version directed by Steven Spielberg. The main character in this movie is Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), he's divorced with two kids and isn't really the perfect father, although he does a lot of effort in the movie to keep his children safe.
- [Two new reviews on DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/two-new-reviews-on-dv-hardware/) - I got up earlier than usual today and managed to finish most of my daily routine pretty quick, giving me lots of time to start working on a new review. You can find the review of the SteelSeries QcK over here. Three days ago I also published another short review of the Antec NP-100 notebook power
- [Dead guy gets $218 trillion phone bill](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dead-guy-gets-218-trillion-phone-bill/) - Telekom Malaysia send a letter to a man who passed away several months ago, threatening to sue him if he doesn't pay 806,400,000,000,000.01-ringgit (about $218 trillion) within ten days: Telekom Malaysia billed him after his son Yahaya Wahab cancelled the contract last January and paid the $23 that the father owed at the time of
- [The house of a Windows fanboy](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-house-of-a-windows-fanboy/) - This is how the home of a real Windows fanboy looks like; with a big Windows-like window: I found this image on TechEBlog but they have very little information about it so I'm not sure whether this house really exists. Perhaps it's just a photoshop.
- [Google AdSense ads with Show More link](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-adsense-ads-with-show-more-link/) - Last week I noticed that Google is experimenting a bit with their text ads by adding a string of related search terms to the Google Ad units. These ads just randomly appear on my sites and I don't really see them a lot. Today when I was adding some new content I spotted another new
- [Jim Cramer's passionate plea against Bernanke (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/jim-cramers-passionate-plea-against-bernanke-video/) - A couple of days ago Jim Cramer, presentator of Mad Money on CNBC, held a passionate plea against FED charmain Ben Bernanke to consider cutting interest rates to help the market. Pretty entertaining to see how this guy goes nuts on TV:
- [ThermalTake Toughpower 1000W - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/thermaltake-toughpower-1000w-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - FedEx dropped off another package today, the Toughpower 1000W power supply with CableManagement from ThermalTake. This box is a bit bigger and heavier than most power supplies I've reviewed in the past. This 1000W power supply features four +12V rails with 20A on the first and second 12V line and 36A on the third and
- [Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/top-10-search-engine-ranking-factors/) - While reading a bit on Webmasterworld I heard someone talking about a new article on SEOmoz about the top ten ranking factors in 2007. Last year I still visited a lot of search engine and SEO related blogs and forums but I've kinda lost my interest in this field. I looked up the article on Google
- [PR update coming soon](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pr-update-coming-soon/) - Google updates the Toolbar PR about every 100 days and as the last update is already 100 days ago most people believe a new update will follow really soon. Some people on forums like Webmasterworld and DigitalPoint are already seeing some changes but most people don't. I've checked my blog and DV Hardware at SEO
- [Some random ramblings](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/some-random-ramblings/) - While the weather was absolutely perfect on Saturday and Sunday this week it's starting to suck again. Summer isn't over yet but so far this has been one of the worst summers I've ever had. Nothing but rain, clouds and barely any sunshine. I hope the weather improves a bit but on the other hand
- [Modded Vespa runs Windows XP](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/modded-vespa-runs-windows-xp/) - I found some photos on a forum of a modded Vespa scooter. Someone put a small computer in this scooter and modded a display into the front of the bike. A Vespa isn't really the type of scooter I would like to be driving but this mod is pretty cool.
- [The Condemned review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-condemned-review/) - One of the latest movies I've seen is The Condemned. A guy called Jack Conrad (played by former professional wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin) is the main character in this adrenalin-charged action movie. Conrad is awaiting the death penalty in a Central American prison but together with 9 other criminals he's bought free by a rich television producer.
- [Kevin Mitnick's and Steve Wozniak's business cards](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/kevin-mitnicks-and-steve-wozniaks-business-cards/) - I found a photo at Flickr of Kevin Mitnick's business card. Mitnick is a famous hacker who spend a couple of years in jail and now runs his own security company. His business card is really cool, this metallic business card features a break-out lock picking kit Not sure if this card is fully legal
- [SteelSeries QcK - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/steelseries-qck-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - DHL dropped off another package today which contained the SteelSeries QcK mousepad. I've already reviewed dozens of mousepads on DV Hardware but this is the first one that is made out of cloth. The SteelSeries QcK-line of mousepads are made of high quality cloth material, providing a precise and consistent glide. All mousepads feature a
- [How to get more out of Digg (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-to-get-more-out-of-digg-video/) - Matt Inman from SEOmoz published a video on YouTube a couple of weeks ago on how to get an article on the frontpage of Digg and how to leverage the traffic you receive from Digg: The vidcast is about 6.5 minutes long, it doesn't really contain any uber secrets but it's worth a watch if
- [Google testing new AdSense units](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-testing-new-adsense-units/) - While adding some new content to DV Hardware I noticed Google is experimenting with a new type of ad units that look like a combination between their regular ad units and the link units: (Click on image for a bigger version) So far the only ad unit I've seen with these link ads on
- [Wordpress - new security update](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/wordpress-new-security-update/) - Wordpress has issued a new security update for Wordpress 2.2 and the legacy Wordpress 2.0. Details and links to the downloads can be found at the Wordpress development blog. As this new update features mainly security updates or small bug fixes it shouldn't interfere with any of your plugins or themes, although it's still a
- [Dot Com Mogul Checklist for July](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dot-com-mogul-checklist-for-july/) - I noticed Stephen Fung updated his blog yesterday with the Dot Com Mogul checklist. I posted this checklist last month and Stephen's post just reminded me that it's time to post an update on my blog: 1. Your income must come about as a result of the money you make from the Internet - Check,
- [eXistenZ review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/existenz-review/) - I was looking for a couple more movies about computers/internet and came across eXistenZ, a sci-fi thriller by David Cronenberg. This movie was released in 1999 and is about Allegra Geller, world's most successful game developer. Not really something you'd expect from a girl, and definitely not from one that looks as hot as Allegra
- [Leo's giveaway to help find a cure for breast cancer](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/leos-giveaway-to-help-find-a-cure-for-breast-cancer/) - Leo is showing his good heart with a giveaway to promote the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. The reason why he's sponsoring this cause isn't only because he really loves titties a lot , but also because finding a cure for all cancers is a cause he (and I too) can champion. His friend Darla Briggs
- [Top 50,000 blogs made $500 million in 2006](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/top-50000-blogs-made-500-million-in-2006/) - Chitika and the University of Texas unveiled a report on the earnings of blogs: Blog Dollars Study (PDF). According to Chitika their goal was to put a figure on the total amount of money that is spent on advertising in the blogosphere. What they found is that the top 50k blogs (based on Technorati ranking)
- [Antec NP-100 - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/antec-np-100-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - DPD just dropped off another package, this time it's a new product from Antec. During the first two years of DV Hardware I reviewed a bunch of Antec products but now it's already four years ago since I've last had a product from Antec in my hands. The product I received today is the Antec NP-100,
- [Serenity DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/serenity-dvd-review/) - Today I watched Serenity, another DVD that I recently bought. This movie wraps up some of the story lines from the Firefly TV show. Firefly is one of the best TV series I've ever seen, it has lots of action, is quite funny and has a very special touch. Some people describe it as a
- [Is the Web 2.0 bubble about to burst?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/is-the-web-20-bubble-about-to-burst/) - John Dvorak published an article over at PC Mag about the Bubble 2.0. He says not only he but many other persons in the media who've experienced the previous dot com rise and bust are seeing the same cycle happen again. He's certain that just like in the past Bubble 2.0 will burst in the near future.
- [The Butterfly Effect 2 DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-butterfly-effect-2-dvd-review/) - Yesterday I watched The Butterfly Effect and today I watched the sequel. Like I already mentioned in the previous review I bought both movies together in a bundle. Just like the first movie The Butterfly Effect 2 is all about the "butterfly effect" which implies that one small thing or change can have a huge
- [Top Commentators for July](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/top-commentators-for-july/) - I'm just back home, this noon my dad and I went to a restaurant to eat "paling". I'm not sure how this fish is called in English but according to Wikipedia it's known as European eel in English. This is one of my favorite dishes and it was really delicious My blog is a bit more than a month old now.
- [My Biggest Moneymakers in July](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/my-biggest-moneymakers-in-july/) - Now that another month has past I'm going to write a short entry about my biggest money makers. I don't really feel comfortable with publishing the exact numbers so I'm only going to give the percentages and compare to figures with June. While I do check all my stats at least once a day I
- [Eight Facts about Thomas De Maesschalck](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/eight-facts-about-thomas-de-maesschalck/) - Well I kinda tagged myself yesterday over at Stephen Fung's blog . He continued the "eight facts about" thingie which has been going all around the blogosphere in the past few weeks and instead of tagging/spamming eight people himself he invited visitors to tag themselves by leaving a comment. This is how it works: Each
- [The Butterfly Effect - Director's Cut DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-butterfly-effect-directors-cut-dvd-review/) - I first saw this movie a couple of years ago and it's still one of my favorites. While ordering a couple of new DVDs two weeks ago I decided to pick it up together with The Butterfly Effect 2 as the price of this bundle was only slightly more than the price of the Director's
- [Web 2.0 communities where you can find me](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/web-20-communities-where-you-can-find-me/) - I noticed a post on Bob Buskirk's blog about Web 2.0 communities and thought it would be a good idea to publish a similar post on my blog. Here's a quick list of all the Web 2.0 sites you can find me on: - Facebook - MySpace and also one for DV Hardware. Both are
- [SanDisk Cruzer Contour review ready](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/sandisk-cruzer-contour-review-ready/) - I just broke a personal record I managed to completely finish the review of a product in less than 12 hours after I received it. You can check out the review of the SanDisk Cruzer Contour at DV Hardware. In the past when I still went to school it sometimes took an awful lot of
- [SanDisk Cruzer Contour - DV Hardware Product Inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/sandisk-cruzer-contour-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - I received a new product today, the SanDisk Cruzer Contour. This is a relatively new luxurious flash drive from Sandisk. My first impressions are pretty good. The build quality of this flash stick is really good and I was actually a bit surprised. I expected the Cruzer Contour to be made out of plastic like
- [Anyone got a spare 25 million EUR?](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/anyone-got-a-spare-25-million-eur/) - A friend pointed me to this eBay auction. Pretty amazing huh? Your own beautiful 225 acre island in Fiji for 25 million EUR. If I had just a little bit more money I would buy this without a doubt . The island is 1 mile long, 1/3 mile width and has 150 foot elevations. This island is called Blue
- [Assault On Precinct 13 (2005) DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/assault-on-precinct-13-2005-dvd-review/) - A bought a couple of new DVDs this week, including a box with Spy Game, Gangs of New York and Assault On Precinct 13. I saw the latter one this weekend, it's a loose remake of a same-name movie from 1976. At the start of this action thriller we see the main character, Jake Roenick,
- [Spy Game DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/spy-game-dvd-review/) - Spy Game is a movie that was released in 2001. Here in Belgium it was released in movie theaters in 2002 and I actually went to the cinema to view this movie but do to circumstances () I didn't really see a lot of the movie.. About a week ago while browsing play.com I noticed
- [Hop on The Geek Train](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/hop-on-the-geek-train/) - When I woke up this morning I noticed Leo and Juan Francisco Diez both tagged me for another link-train, the Geek Train. These link trains can be pretty fun but one of their main purposes is to increase the amount of blogs linking to your blog. Link trains have all kinds of benefits, they send
- [Spider Pig Ringtone from The Simpsons Movie](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/spider-pig-ringtone-from-the-simpsons-movie/) - Look out, here comes the Spider Pig! In an attempt to drive some more traffic to this blog I created a SpiderPig ringtone! Spiderpig, Spiderpig Does whatever a spiderpig does Can he swing from a web No he can't he's a pig Look out, here is the Spider Pig. This little tune from The Simpsons
- [Antitrust DVD review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/antitrust-review/) - Yeah here's another movie review, I really like movies lol. This time it's about Antitrust, a movie which I found on a motivational movies list over at Bob Buskirk's blog. Antitrust is the third movie in the Hackers movie series, it's sometimes referred to as Hackers 3. This movie mainly revolves around Milo Hoffman, a
- [Worst Tattoo Ever](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/worst-tattoo-ever/) - This got to be one of the worst tattoo's I've ever seen: Why would anyone want to put a Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) message on their arm?
- [Going to Pukkelpop - August 16-18](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/going-to-pukkelpop-august-16-18/) - I just bought a ticket for Pukkelpop, this is a three-day music festival in Kiewit. This year it takes place on August 16-18. There are eight different stages this year and dozens of bands are coming. Here's a quick list of some of the bands I'm probably going to see: - Kaiser Chiefs - Peter
- [Dell 2407WFP-HC screwed](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dell-2407wfp-hc-screwed/) - As a hardware reviewer I often receive packages from companies. During the past couple of years I've already reviewed about 100 products and mostly these products arrived in perfect shape. Theo Valich from The Inquirer wasn't as fortunate when he recently ordered a Dell 2407WFP-HC LCD display. Here's what happened to his 24" LCD display. Not
- [Kameraflage images - only visible through a digital camera](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/kameraflage-images-only-visible-through-a-digital-camera/) - A company called Kameraflage introduced a new display technology which can only be seen with digital cameras. This content can't bee seen by the naked eye but can be picked up with a digital camera because silicon-based imaging apparatus are capable of seeing a broader spectrum of light than the human eye. One of the
- [Jackal defends carcass - amazing wildlife photos](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/jackal-defend-carcass-amazing-wildlife-photos/) - I found an amazing collection of photos on Digg today which show a jackal that's trying to defend its meal from a bunch of vultures: More and bigger photos over here.
- [The Simpsons Movie review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-simpsons-movie-review/) - My girlfriend Carmen and I went to The Simpsons Movie today. She likes The Simpsons a lot and wanted to go see the movie on the opening day. We went to Siniscoop, a cinema a few kilometers away from us in Sint Niklaas. We bought some popcorn and some cool beverage and when we entered the
- [Plane lands on highway (video)](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/plane-lands-on-highway-video/) - Drivers on an American freeway were in for a shock a couple of days ago as an old T-6G plane from 1946 had to make an emergency landing. The plane was on its way to an EAA airshow but got engine problems. Fortunately the pilot managed to safely land the craft on Highway 41, near
- [Logitech V220 review published at DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/logitech-v220-review-published-at-dv-hardware/) - It's been another long night hehe. I was kinda bored so I decided to do some work. I started reviewing the Logitech V220 mouse and didn't stop until the review was finished. Looks like I'm the first one that published a review of this mouse. Most sites mainly focus on reviewing the high-end hardware and
- [VibrantMedia IntelliTXT earning results](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/vibrantmedia-intellitxt-earning-results/) - Last week I wrote about IntelliTXT, a new advertising program I'm trying on DV Hardware. Today is the seventh day I'm using it so I thought it's time to write some blurbs about my experiences with this company. One of my fears before I started using IntelliTXT is that it might have a big impact on the
- [The Blogging Tip Meme](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-blogging-tip-meme/) - Leo Chiang just invited me to take part in a new meme to get more backlinks to your blog. This new meme is called "The Blogging Tip Meme" and by participating in it you may get more visitors to your site, higher rankings in Google, a higher Google PR (yeah a toolbar PR update is
- [Small car accident during filming of Project Gotham 4 commercial](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/small-car-accident-during-filming-of-project-gotham-4-commercial/) - Filming of a commercial for the game Project Gotham 4 went a bit less smooth than planned. They got a nice Ferrari but the driver didn't seem up to the job as he crashed the Ferrari F430 into a wall while performing a drifting stunt: Here's a video of the damage:
- [28 Weeks Later review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/28-weeks-later-review/) - Five years ago a British movie called 28 Days Later was released in theaters, this film was a post-apocalyptic horror film which was set in Great Britain. In 28 Days Later viewers saw how a virus infected most of Great Britain's population an turned them into violent zombies. 28 Weeks Later is set 28 weeks
- [Comment spam gets smarter - but not smart enough](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/comment-spam-gets-smarter-but-not-smart-enough/) - My site DV Hardware has a pretty big admin module and features a page that I scripted a couple of years ago where I can keep track of all the new comments that users have posted on my site. I check this page a couple of times a day to see what visitors say or to
- [Lawn care company offers Bikini Service](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/lawn-care-company-offers-bikini-service/) - A three months-old lawn care company from Memphis, Tenn. is rapidly gaining popularity thanks to its special Tiger Time Bikini Lawn Care service which will send some scantily-clad young girls your way to cut your lawn. Lee Cathey, owner of Tiger Time Lawn Care, says some customers just sit in their lawn chairs with a beer while watching
- [Nigerian kids use OLPCs for porn](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/nigerian-kids-use-olpcs-for-porn/) - The News Agency of Nigeria reported last week that Nigerian schoolchildren are using the computers they've received from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to surf to pornographic sites. NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children's laptops."Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in
- [Mr. Brooks review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/mr-brooks-review/) - Mr. Brooks is a psychological thriller about a guy called Earl Brooks. On the outside he seems perfectly normal, he's a family man, owns a successful business and was just named Portland Chamber of Commerce's Man of the Year. However, Earl has a big secret: he's sometimes possessed by a dark alter-ego called Marshall which
- [1408 review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/1408-review/) - Saturday afternoon me and my girlfriend watched 1408, a thriller which is based on a book from Stephen King. 1408 is about a guy called Mike Enslin, he's a writer who has published a couple of best sellers in which he debunked supernatural occurrences. He's in the progress of writing a new book when he
- [New Battlestar Galactica mini-sodes in October](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/new-battlestar-galactica-mini-sodes-in-october/) - I just heard today that SciFi is planning to air new "mini-sodes" of Battlestar Galactica in October. These short 2 to 3 minute clips will show fragments of the original Cylon War and will start in October, eight weeks before the movie Razor will air. As fans of Battlestar Galatica get ready for the November
- [Cooler Master Cosmos case review published](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/cooler-master-cosmos-case-review-published/) - I just finished writing the review of the CoolerMaster Cosmos case, a couple of days ahead of schedule lol This is one of the best cases I've ever reviewed. Nice looks and lots of convenient features.
- [VibrantMedia IntelliTXT ads added on DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/vibrantmedia-intellitxt-ads-added-on-dv-hardware/) - To increase the revenue of DV Hardware I'm trying a couple of new services, this month I'm going to give Vibrant Media a go. I've been considering to use their ads for a couple of weeks now but hold off on it a bit because I feared these ads might have a negative effect on
- [Ferrari 430 Scuderia with 510hp V8](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/ferrari-430-scuderia-with-510hp-v8/) - Ferrari unveiled its 430 Scuderia car today. This 2-seater coupe features a 4.3l V8 engine that produces 510hp at 8,500rpm, the car weighs only 1,250kg and has a weight-to-power ratio of just 2.45kg per horsepower. According to Ferrari the new model is a special series based on the F430 and is aimed at Ferrari's most passionate and
- [PC installed in Cooler Master Cosmos case](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/pc-installed-in-cooler-master-cosmos-case/) - I've just finished transfering my system to the CoolerMaster Cosmos case which I received yesterday. Here's a picture of how it looks like: This case is pretty big and barely fits on my desk lol, it's even bigger than the NZXT Zero case which I used before I switched to the Cosmos. The full review
- [Video: Mice eating food in super market](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/video-mice-eating-food-in-super-market/) - Some guys made a video clip of mice eating bread in a super market. This wasn't happening in some third world country, but at an AH-to-go store at Utrecht Central Station in the Netherlands. The store owner claims they are aware of this problem but that they will continue to sell this bread. Ugh, pretty
- [Employee of the Month review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/employee-of-the-month-review/) - Employee of the Month is a light-hearted comedy about Zack, a young guy who lives with his grandmother and works at a warehouse store called Super Club. He doesn't really do a lot at his work, just like some of his buddies at work he tries to keep the working to a minimum. But that
- [Australian goes on cell tower killing spree](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/australian-goes-on-cell-tower-killing-spree/) - On Saturday a 45-year old Australian man had to appear in court after going on a rampage through Sydney's western suburbs in which he destroyed six cell phone towers with an armored personnel carrier vehicle. The police managed to arrest the guy before he damaged a seventh tower: "He continued to destroy mobile tower communications
- [Traditional tech media bleeding, blogs take over the market](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/traditional-tech-media-bleeding-blogs-take-over-the-market/) - A story over at Forbes caught my eye today. It talks that while Silicon Valley is booming again, the tech media is bleeding. The article states that the advertising revenue of popular magazines and sites like Business 2.0, PC Magazine and CNET is dropping enormously. Compared to a year ago PC Magazine's ad sales in
- [How much top bloggers make a month](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-much-top-bloggers-make-a-month/) - BusinessWeek published an article this week about top money making bloggers. Here's a quick overview of the sites and their estimated income. Some sites provided the income figures to BusinessWeek while other sites didn't so the reporter had to guesstimate the earnings himself, therefore I have some doubts on how accurate this list is: BoingBoing:
- [CoolerMaster Cosmos case - DV Hardware product inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/coolermaster-cosmos-case-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - The second product I received today is the Cooler Master Cosmos case. This case is really heavy, according to the FedEx shipping info the whole package weighs 21kg (46.3 pounds). Not all of this comes from the case though, Cooler Master used quite a lot of heavy reinforced pieces of paperboard to protect all the
- [Logitech V220 - DV Hardware product inbox](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/logitech-v220-dv-hardware-product-inbox/) - I received two new toys to play with today. The first one is the Logitech V220 mouse which is designed for notebooks. It's pretty small, light and should have a quite long battery life. The full review of this mouse will probably be ready next week. Later this summer I also plan to take a
- [The Last Kiss review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-last-kiss-review/) - This movie is about a young couple and their friends. Architect Michael seems to have a pretty good life. He has a nice job, good friends and a lovely wife called Jenna who is carrying his baby. But somehow Michael feels that something is still missing in his life, he believes that it's too predictable
- [Argh. I need a better work schedule](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/argh-i-need-a-better-work-schedule/) - One of the advantages of being your own boss is that you can do whatever you want. Don't want to work today? That's alright. You can go out, do some sports, watch some movies, play some games are do other fun things without having to worry about losing your job. When you run your own
- [Boiler Room review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/boiler-room-review/) - Here's my review of the second movie I found on ShoeMoney's list of motivational movies. It's not really my goal to turn this blog into a movie review blog but I like to post some blurbs about movies I've recently watched. The movie Boiler Room is already seven years old but it's one of the
- [Battlestar Galactica Season 4 spoilers](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/battlestar-galactica-season-4-spoilers/) - SciFi recently invited members of the online press to the Battlestar Galactica set. They got a tour and heared some spoilers for the fourth season of BSG. Production on the final 22 hours of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica is currently underway in Vancouver. An extended two-hour episode, “Razor,” will premiere in November 2007, setting
- [Zodiac review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/zodiac-review/) - I've recently seen Zodiac (2007), a film based on the notorious Zodiac serial killer which killed several people in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Zodiac is one of the most intriguing American serial killers. In the late 60s and early 70s he send lots of letters to newspapers, calling himself the Zodiac. Zodiac signed
- [MySpace's Inconvenient Truth](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/myspaces-inconvenient-truth/) - I came across a chart today which exposes the awful truth of MySpace's users. It shows a bunch of photos and tells you what they want you to think, and what the photo really means. Here are a few examples: (Click on the image for a bigger version) More over here
- [Finally some good weather](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/finally-some-good-weather/) - After weeks of bad weather the last three days were pretty nice. This allowed me to finally take a swim and float around a bit on my air mattress in my plastic swimming pool The water was still pretty cold but it was very refreshing
- [Porsche 2008 911 GT2 - what a beauty](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/porsche-2008-911-gt2/) - Porsche has unveiled the first official information about its 2008 911 GT2 dream car. This car is ultra-expensive but it's the best of the best. It's the perfect circuit car with superb aerodynamics that can also be used on the streets. 2008 Porsche 911 GT2 car specifications: 3.6-liter twin turbo flat six 530 horsepower at
- [Blow review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/blow-review/) - One of the blogs I occasionally read is the one from ShoeMoney. Yesterday I noticed a post on his blog about motivational movies and some of the movies he lists I hadn't seen yet, like Blow. I searched on IMDB for the plot (+ user rating) of this movie and it seemed interesting enough so
- [Dot Com Mogul Checklist for June](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dot-com-mogul-checklist/) - Even though we're already two weeks into July I'm going to do the famous Dot Com Mogul checklist which was started by John Chow last year. Heres the list: - Your income is made from the Internet. Check. In fact this is my first job, I've never done any other work. - The minimum Internet
- [Letters from Iwo Jima review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/letters-from-iwo-jima-review/) - Yesterday I watched Letters from Iwo Jima, this is a movie about the Battle of Iwo Jima between the U.S. and Japan in WO II. Iwo Jima is a relatively small island located about 1,200 kilometers south of Tokyo. Contrary to the movie Flags of our Fathers, this one tells the story from the Japanese
- [Teacher owns wannabe H4x0r kid](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/teacher-owns-wannabe-h4x0r-kid/) - I spotted a pretty funny story over at Digg today about a teacher who gave a wannabe "uber-hax0r" a lesson. It's from a guy who teaches some Linux IT lessons to high school students during the summer. He talks about "Pima" a 17-year old kid who considers himself an uber-hax0r and constantly interrupts the lesson
- [Planning to go on a holiday](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/planning-to-go-on-a-holiday/) - Me and my girlfriend didn't plan to go on a holiday this year but because this summer's weather has so far been exceptionally bad here in Flanders we're considering to book a last minute holiday to a more sunny location. The site of Neckermann (a European tour operator) offers some pretty interesting last minute deals.
- [Girl knits her own Ferrari](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/girl-knits-her-own-ferrari/) - A 22-year old art graduate called Lauren Porter has knitted a Ferrari car for her honours degree at Bath Spa University. Wow, I wonder how long it took to create this car! The classic red bodywork consists of 250 squares of garter stitch made by Lauren and 20 family members and friends. The windows are
- [First money made with this blog](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/first-made-made-with-this-blog/) - I just made my first couple of dollars with this blog. Yesterday I submitted it to TLA (Text Link Ads) and today they've accepted my blog. Much to my surprise I've already sold two text links. That's quicker than I expected but there are probably two good reasons for this: - I'm currently listed on
- [Happy Flemish Holiday](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/happy-flemish-holiday/) - Today is the official holiday of the Flemish Community in my country. One of the things we commemorate on this day is the Battle of the Golden Spurs which was fought on July 11, 1302. Happy holiday to all people that live in and outside Flanders! Here's the full text of the national anthem of Flanders, but
- [The Italian Job review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-italian-job-review/) - As I already told in the review of Live Free or Die Hard I watch a lot of movies. Not only new movies but also older movies, like in this case The Italian Job, a movie which was released in 2003. The Italian Job is about Charlie Croker, a professional thief. Together with his brilliant
- [U.S. dollar sinks to new record low](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/us-sinks-to-new-record-low/) - Fears that troubles in the subprime mortgage loan sector would spread to other parts of the U.S. economy caused a new record low of the U.S. dollar against the euro and another currencies today. Financial media reports the euro is at it highest level ever against the U.S. dollar. As most of my income arrives
- [Looking for a new laptop](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/looking-for-a-new-laptop/) - About 1.5 years ago I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook and set up a wireless network so I could work everywhere in and outside our house. This was pretty nice and allowed me to work while lying in my bed, sitting on the couch or while relaxing a bit outside in the sun. But
- [Fisher Price toys help kids lose weight behind TV](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/fisher-price-toys-help-kids-lose-weight-behind-tv/) - While reading the newspaper today I found a pretty nice new toy from Fisher Price called the Smart Cycle. It looks like this toy maker learned a thing or two from Nintendo Wii Sports as this new product allows kids to lose weight behind their TV . The Smart Cycle is a stationary bike designed
- [AMD guy finds alternative use for old PSUs - Picture of the Day #1](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/amd-guy-finds-alternative-use-for-old-psus-picture-of-the-day-1/) - This could become a nice sport for LAN parties Source:The Inq
- [John Chow dot Com site review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/john-chow-dot-com-site-review/) - One of the blogs I visit daily is the one from John Chow. I'm not sure when I found his blog, if I remember it correctly it was in 2006 on the DigitalPoint Forums and I believe I also found it a few times through Digg. Just like me John Chow runs a hardware review
- [Spammers abuse CAPTCHA technique to fool spam filters](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/spammers-abuse-captcha-technique-to-fool-spam-filters/) - Like most of you know spam is a big problem on the Internet. There are various forms of spam and various techniques to stop spam. A lot of websites and blogs with comment and user registration forms use so-called CAPTCHAs to eliminate most spam. CAPTCHAs are simple tests to determine whether the user is a
- [How to get ice cold beer in 3 minutes](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/how-to-get-ice-cold-beer-in-3-minutes/) - Dumb Little Man published a tip on how you can very quickly cool a couple of beers (or any other beverage): Here is how he took beer from 80+ degrees Fahrenheit to (seemingly) 40 degrees Fahrenheit in about 3 minutes. 1. He took 6 hot beers from my garage and he placed them into a
- [Live Free or Die Hard review](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/live-free-or-die-hard-review/) - One of the things I like a lot are movies and TV shows. I watch quite a lot of movies and I'm also addicted to a bunch of TV shows like 24, Battlestar Galactica, Jericho, Heroes, LOST, Prison Break, Stargate, CSI and South Park. Today I've seen Live Free or Die Hard (which is also
- [5 plugins to get more comments](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/5-plugins-to-get-more-comments/) - Lets take a look at a couple of Wordpress comments that may help you to get more comments on your blog. 1) WP Grins This plugin adds cute clickable smileys in the comment form. This plugin normally uses the standard smileys from Wordpress (which originally come from phpBB) but on this blog I use other
- [Howto get MyAvatars to work with Brian's Threaded Comments](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/getting-myavatars-to-work-with-brians-threaded-comments/) - Last week I installed a bunch of plugins on this blog but unfortunately I couldn't get the MyAvatars plugin to work. This is a Wordpress plugin which shows cute little avatars next to your comments if you're a MyBlogLog member. This plugin requires a few code changes in the comments.php file from your theme but the installation manual
- [Save Session Firefox plugin](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/save-session-firefox-plugin/) - I recently found a very nice plugin for Firefox called Save Session. This plugin allows you to save your current Firefox session. The Save Session extension adds a new button to your File menu called "Save Session & Exit": When you click on this button it will close all Firefox windows and tabs. The next
- [Consumerist catches Geek Squad stealing pr0n](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/consumerist-catches-geek-squad-stealing-pr0n/) - Ever wondered what sort of things guys (or girls) from computer shops do with PCs that they get in for repair? Do they just do what they are supposed to do or is it quite common that they go sniffing around looking for 'interesting stuff' on your PC? The guys from Consumerist.com decided to see what happens
- [Apple iPhone vs Nokia N95](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/apple-iphone-vs-nokia-n95/) - P.S. I didn't create this and no, I'm not a Nokia fanboy.
- [Happy birthday DV Hardware!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/happy-birthday-dv-hardware/) - I can't believe it but I completely forgot the birthday of DV Hardware . My hardware and technology site is now 5 years old, it was found on July 5th, 2002. Kinda weird that I forgot about this but I guess it's better than forgetting the birthday of my girlfriend For those who want to learn a bit more
- [The history of DV Hardware](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/the-history-of-dv-hardware/) - One of my biggest projects online is DV Hardware, a hardware and technology news and reviews website. I'm basically the main force behind it, I post all the news, reviews and do all the other work. I started DV Hardware in 2002 together with one of my best friends when we were still in high
- [DV Hardware back up and running](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-back-up-and-running/) - As I already posted earlier today DV Hardware was hacked today. The hacker managed to upload a PHP file to my server and ran some commands to completely delete all the files on my webspace. Fortunately my webhost takes daily backups, I contacted them and they were very helpful. They first uploaded a backup of
- [Improve the security of your Wordpress blog](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/improve-the-security-of-your-wordpress-blog/) - I read a nice tip at ShoeMoney's blog to improve the security of your Wordpress blog. On standard Wordpress installations the plugins folder is open for public browsing. This basically means that someone can surf to yourwordpressblog.com/wp-content/plugins/ and see all the plugins you're running on your blog. Someone with bad intentions could then do some
- [DV Hardware hacked :(](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/dv-hardware-hacked/) - When I woke up this morning and checked my sites everything was still alright but when I wanted to start updating DV Hardware I noticed that my site didn't work anymore. All I got when I surfed to www.dvhardware.net was a blank directory index. Two things crossed my mind: either this was a temporary glitch
- [FeedBurner PRO features now free - Thanks to Google](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/feedburner-pro-features-now-free-thanks-to-google/) - Now that FeedBurner has been acquired by Google they have to worry less about the financial side of their business. Google has a habit of making lots of things available for free to Internet users and that's exactly the route they are taking with FeedBurner. In the past you had to pay a couple of
- [All in One SEO Pack for Wordpress](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/all-in-one-seo-pack-for-wordpress/) - I read a blog post over at John Chow's blog today about the importance of proper description META tags. I just started using Wordpress and I wasn't really aware that the SEO optimizations in this blogging platform aren't optimal yet so I decided to install the All in One SEO Pack plugin on my blog.
- [Setting up my blog.. new theme & plugins](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/setting-up-my-blog-new-theme-plugins/) - I've installed a couple of plugins to improve my blog a bit and I also uploaded a new theme. The new theme - Misty Look Theme The theme used on this blog is called Misty Look, you can download it at WordPress Themes by Sadish. I've seen this theme on a couple of other blogs
- [Back from Rock Werchter](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/back-from-rock-werchter/) - I just arrived back home from Rock Werchter. Later today or tomorrow I'm going to post a small review of this year's edition of Rock Werchter on this blog, including lots of photos. Now it's time to get back to work. I haven't been at home for about 4.5 days so I have a lot
- [To Rock Werchter 2007 from June 28th - July 2nd](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/to-rock-werchter-2007-from-june-28th-july-2nd/) - Thursday morning I'm going to Rock Werchter, one of the biggest festivals here in Flanders. Rock Werchter is a four-day festival, it starts Thursday noon and I'll probably be back home by Monday noon. This year is the third time I'm going to Rock Werchter and there's also a good chance I'm going to Pukkelpop
- [Google AdSense gets Corner Styling options](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/google-adsense-gets-corner-styling-options/) - Google today added a new feature to AdSense which enables publishers to choose between three different corner styles. You can choose between the "standard square" corners, "slightly rounded" corners or "very rounded" corners. Maybe some folks will be able to increase the CTR of their AdSense units with these new corner styles but I don't
- [English football stadium becomes swimming pool](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/english-football-stadium-becomes-swimming-pool/) - While I was reading the newspaper today I noticed a photo of a completely flooded English football stadium. I went online and found a couple more pictures over at Daily Mail. Newspapers report the River Don, which flows right next to the Sheffield Wednesday stadium, burst it banks and flooded the area. One of the reasons
- [U.S. now requires 10 fingerprints from foreign visitors](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/us-now-requires-10-fingerprints-from-foreign-visitors/) - Damn I just heard today that the U.S. has decided to further expand its biometric data collection at airports. Since 2004 visitors to the U.S. were required to give 2 fingerprints upon arrival in 115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land border checks in the U.S. but now they plan to start a program at
- [Hello World!](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/hello-world/) - I was planning to set up a personal blog for a couple of weeks but never really got to it. But this weekend I finally took the first step by registering a domain name! Normally the blog should have been up and running by Sunday evening but my webhosting company made a mistake which caused some

## Pages

- [About Me](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/about/) - Hi, I suppose that if you reached this page you want to learn a bit more about me My name is Thomas De Maesschalck and I live in Zele, a small town with about 20,000 citizens located in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking state of Belgium. I'm 21-years old and I'm the owner of an Internet company
- [Privacy policy](https://www.thomasdemaesschalck.com/privacy/) - Privacy Policy Thomas De Maesschalck has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for our website. All personal information that you entrust to this blog by creating publishing comments, submitting to a newsletter or any other action will be treated

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