A visa (from the Latin charta visa, lit. “paper that has been seen”^[1]) is an indication that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was “issued”, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant’s passport. Some countries do not require a visa in some situations, such as a result of reciprocal treaty arrangements. The country issuing the visa typically attaches various conditions to the visa, such as the territory covered by the visa, the time that the visa is valid, the period that the person may stay in the country, whether the visa is valid for more than one visit, etc.

Doesn’t sound that bad, does it? So why do I think it sucks then? Well, let me explain the situation.

I know this girl from Egypt via the internet. We something chat and cam and what not. Last week she told me she wanted to come to Belgium, and she already booked hotel and flights. Awesome news is awesome, right? But no, as she is from Egypt she needs a visa.

I do understand that people from certain countries need a visa. Some basic screening of the people who want to visit the schengen area is important. Checks like: don’t they have a criminal record, are they coming back, etc etc. whatever, I can agree with those rules. Apparently she also needs an invitation letter. Don’t ask me why, she has enough money, she has booked everything already, she doesn’t have a criminal record.. . Another thing I hold against that is all the illegal people in Belgium. did they need an invitation letter? I don’t think so.. but apparently tourist people are more dangerous than illegal people.

The law is the law I guess, so I went writing some nice letter that I know her, and I’ll show her some parts of Belgium, so she doesn’t get lost, make sure she will be on the plane back etc etc. I included some personal data of me, that I normally don’t share due to privacy rules, but I know her well enough that I can trust her. So she went with my letter to the Belgian consulate in Cairo, where they told her that the letter isn’t good, because I don’t work for over a year yet. It’s kinda hard for someone who just stopped school to already have a job for over a year, right? And why do I need a job? She supports herself, I don’t need to pay a dime for her?

As I travel the world I know that most people in the world are nice people. The cool thing about me is that I’m European. I don’t need to have a visa to go to most places in the world. And even if I need one, it’s not that hard to get one. Why is it then so hard for non-EU / US people to get into Europe? Does anyone have an explanation for that?

This was the opening of Devopsdays 2009. Quite a funny clip isn’t it? But what is a devop actually? Kris Buytaert is an expert on the subject, and I found a nice presentation of him explaining the concept:

DevOps is not about operators or developers, it is about how to get things done the right way. DevOps is also about how operators talk to developers, but is not about an operator who becomes a developer and visa versa.

A dev team that follows the DevOps principle, talks to the operators during the development of the applications. What do we need? What can we get? Doing you development on the same machines as the ones the production runs on, is always good. You find the bugs faster, you find other issues faster, and you end up with a better product, while you shorten the development time.

I’m already looking forward to the next devopsdqys in Europe. I just might join them to learn more, and share my own thoughts about the subject.

I have one of those ‘I should quit school’ days.. And just today I saw a post on planet fedora from Mel Chua .
She is not alone one of the most awesome geek girls I know, but she also helped me out a couple of times already. (big thank you Mel!)

The title of her blogpost was ‘How to do stuff?‘. While I was reading the post I saw some very familiar things.. I C/P’ed some of her text (I hope she doesn’t mind):

In My Parents’ World – How to Do Stuff (answer: “Get A Job according to these Complex Procedures”)

1. Be interested in something
2. Study (very, very, very) hard
3. Get (very, very, very) good grades
4. Make a resume
5. Buy suit
6. Apply to jobs
7. Get introduced to recruiter
8. Get interviewed
9. Get hired
10. Do Stuff

Except that the “Do Stuff” might be… well, entry-level job, filing stuff, doing thankless gruntwork waiting ’till you could move up the ladder and really Do Stuff, you know…

In The FOSS World – How to Do Stuff (answer: “Do Stuff”)

1. Be interested in something
2. Do Stuff
3. get hired

As she is already working,she must be one of people that know what they are talking about. right? So I told her on IRC I was thinking about quiting school, and start searching a job in open source.. But then she said something interesting:

<biertie> but, I also want to thank you for your blog post :p
<mchua> ah, thanks!
<biertie> because I’m considering stopping school -_-
<MooDoo> biertie: why?
<biertie> because they don’t care about foss
<MooDoo> that’s not a reason to stop is it
<biertie> I wanted to help loupgaroublond out, and do a project for them
<biertie> and it’s not good enough, because I could learn something from it!
<biertie> #wtf
<MooDoo> ?
* mchua wrestled with similar things as an undergrad, would be happy to talk with you about this.
<mchua> biertie: if schools don’t care about foss, and everyone who cares about foss leaves school, who’s ever going to bring foss /into/ schools?
<biertie> so then I send a mail to them, about open source, and the about a changing world and blah blah
<biertie> and he thought I was rude then
<biertie> mchua: good point
<mchua> You may decide that you’ve got better things to spend your life on than fighting that fight for however many years you’ve got left, and that’s fine. It is a long and thankless one, but it does make a difference in the long term.
<mchua> biertie: Yeah, it’s a hard balance to strike, and it’s also hard to know how administrators and profs will respond sometimes.

So maybe I should stay at school, and try to fight the big forces in our school, so we can have lessons in a culture where they DO care about foss, and maybe even work with it!

Let me know what you think about it!

Name: Bert “bret” Desmet
IRC nickname: biertie
IRC channels: #fedora, #fedora-ambassadors, #fedora-social, #fedora-nl, #fedora-devel on freenode; #cfk, #ict on Quakenet
Location: Ghent, Belgium

As one can Imagine, we weren’t talking about Jews, but about the Islam. My political view is central-right, and hers is left, so that means that we have a different view on such things, and I thought we had an interesting conversation about it.

So first I want to show you a nice presentation about the history and spreading from the Religions trough the years.

now that we know that, we can go further. In the next clip I’ll show you what is happening now, but be aware, I am quite sure that the clip is made by a right movement, so don’t believe EVERYTHING in it, but I think the essence is true.

So my fear is that when Europe would become a Muslim state, a lot of our knowledge would go lost, because “it isn’t true what we discover according to the Koran”. right… This thought is based on a fragment I saw from ‘weg naar mekka’, a Canvas program (#) (Dutch)

I would be pleased if you shared your thoughts about this subject too

1. Alex Agnew‘s new show
2. Willem who would ‘drink me under the table’. we had to carry him back to the street, from there he went alone to his house
3. Lester who had to give a crate of beer after some bet regarding PHP
4. Michiel who thought he had a girlfriend (epic fail!)
5. Inne who was to stupid to know we were laughing with her :’)
6. Dude’s who are even less familiar with girls then I am (somethings very funny, but for the girls maybe annoying).
7. making some funny video’s (check my YouTube)
8. Shoofs who called me mr brains in his lessons :’)
9. stealing Tux from the engineer-students!
10. the show from neveneffecten!

and last: the year 2008 in photographs (#) and what will 2009 bring? (#)

1. getting to know some new people
2. getting compliments of other people
3. getting my drivers licence
4. passing my first year ICT
5. starting to work again on Devnox (#) with Lester (#)
6. my vacation job! (#)
7. becoming 20 years old
8. becoming president of the ‘CFK’ (#)
9. dreaming about unrealistic things
10. Starting this blog!

1. in Bruges: a assassin movie, in the city of  (Belgium). I put this movie on the first place because I really like the conversations, and the almost impossible things happened in this movie.
2. loft: this is a Belgian production. It’s a very nice movie. maybe me and some friends will have our own loft later (but hopefully without dead women)
3. Madagascar 2: an extremely funny movie, especially the penguins!
4. 10.000BC:  a movie about ancient times, but not very authentic. very nice made though
5. hancock: This is a real superhero movie! erm, ok, maybe he’s not a hero, but he can do some awesome things I really enjoyed watching it.
6. Wanted: Some dude who wants to become an assassin. quite nice
7. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan: just a funny movie..
8. wall-E: This isn’t my favourite movie, but I enjoyed it though (for a dull movie, that is)
9. Persepolis: just a nice movie..
10. The Day the Earth Stood Still: quite a nice movie

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Windows): Simply the best editor on Windows! If you use this software, you know what I’m talking about. Be sure to also check out the ‘Source Code Outliner Power Toy’ (#)
2. Fedora 10 (Linux): My favorite operating system. But I don’t think Fedora is suitable for beginners. I think they should check out Ubuntu 8.10 (#).
3. MySQL Workbench 5.0 (Windows / Linux): A very good tool if you need to design big databases. It’s free software, it can export your scheme to SQL code. so: MySQL workbench >> Visio
4. Netbeans 6.5 (Windows / Linux): Netbeans is not only for Java developers anymore! with this release you can use this software to program PHP, C++, java, …, …. And it looks nice too now.. This is my favourite editor on Linux.
5. Opera 9.6 (Windows / Linux): I use Opera everywhere, on my desktop, on my laptop, on my cellphone, … . It is just a robust browser with lots of options, it is the fastest browser, it has a great rendering engine, and it’s quite awesome!
6. Amarok 2 (Linux): I think that this is the best music player in the world, and not only for Linux..
7. VLC (Windows / Linux): My favourite movie player, it plays like almost every format you have, it is leightweighted, and it just works (without all the shizzle you never need).
8. OpenOffice.org 3 (Windows / Linux): With this new release OpenOffice can open the new format of Microsoft, so that’s nice when you work on a Linux machine..  I think that about everyone should check out this free software..
9. Silverlight 2 (Windows / ”Linux -> moonlight“):  It didn’t convince me when I saw the first demos, but now I am working a little bit with it, and I like it a lot now.
10. Adobe Creative Suite 4 (Windows): Just a new release of this software

1. Belgian politics: we have a complicated country.. and I believe that this is a reason why this country is hard to run. But this year was a really really hard year! Prime minister Leterme offered 2 times the resignation of the federal government. And that’s why I give them the award ‘epic fail of the year 2008′!
2. world economy: I think everybody knows what I’m talking about.. Yesterday, I found a good presentation about how this crisis started. (#)
3. oil price: with a top price of over 140$ / barrel, all prices got way too high! but luckely the price is back on a more normal value now.
4. Tom Boonen: Cocaine, car accidents, you name it, he did it ^^
5. Michel Fourniret: he won’t rape any children anymore! the sick bastard is in jail now.
6. olympic games: protest before the games started, fake opening ceremony, …, … I call it a fail
7. peace treaty gaza – Israel: the treaty was one day over, and they were already shooting rockets at each other..
8. Geneviève Lhermitte (dutch): this is an almost fail: this crazy bitch is now in prison, after she killed all of her children, but changes were that she would get internated. luckily that didn’t happen (thank you jury!)
9. Silke’s blog!: because she failed my blog too ^^
10. this blog!: because I don’t have the visitors count I want to have..