Anyways I hope visitors will like the new design. All feedback is welcome

also don’t forget to update your feed to (not necessary if you are using feedburner!)

http://www.belgiantrotter.com/feed/rss/

new people should use:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheBelgianTrotter

• Type about:config into Firefox’s address bar and click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
• Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
• Restart Firefox

O Look! I’ve got my extensions back Enjoy!

Next, Adobe: An RSS reader for Video’s!

Adobe Systems plans to release Adobe Media Player (AMP), a free download for playing Flash-based Web videos on Macs or PCs. Written with Adobe’s AIR, AMP is a hybrid online/offline application that lets people subscribe to different video Webcasts.
The videos are either streamed from the content producer’s Web site or they can be downloaded. Adobe will host a catalog, called Adobe TV, on its site where people can find videos. Because it’s written with AIR, people can be offline or online when they watch.

I haven’t actually said anything usefull in this entry, have I? uh… I guess not…

My battery is nearly dying on me so I guess I’ll end this general ranting just about now

More here.

Take this guy for instance, an Austrian guy who has been on the road for the last 3 years!!! He owns one of these 6×6 rovers. He now is a freelance photographer during his more than extensive journey
Amazing!

I also found other “heroes” on these sites:

• A nice journey of 2 people from Germany to South Africa and back
• A Brit and a south African doing about the same route
• Sandy and Michael who have just finished their 2 years global tour
• A couple doing the South American continent: 22.000 km’s
• A dutch couple doing the whole world!

You need a car like this with as less electronic switches as possible (as these images proof )
And finally much to my surprise is that the same company offers RENTALS! So you can rent a 4×4 and starting planning your expedition

How cool is that!

But what I do not like about Facebook is:

• the design: I never understood how Facebook appeals to new users. It’s plain ugly. There aren’t any clean rounded edges. No fancy Ajax controls, no nothing
• Spam: while you cannot possibly know this when joining the site at first, Facebook is an extremely annoying spam-engine. It’s amazing how much mail you can get from Facebook daily. I, again, need to point out a lot of these mails can be disabled but you still get invitations or requests to use an application someone else in your friend circle installed. IMHO, Facebook should be much strict in their “allowed” application list.
• performance: Facebook is painfully slow!

It seems all this isn’t enough: Facebook announced a new feature: CHAT. (scream!)

The launch date for Facebook Chat is set in the nebulous area of “the coming weeks,” according to Product Manager Peter Deng. The Chat will function as an overlay, similar to GTalk in GMail that sits in a UI at the bottom of the browser screen. It can also, like GTalk, be popped out into a separate window.
So except all of you to get even more mails asking you to join a chat!

On the other side, Facebook is aware of their privacy, communication policy:
According to Matt Cohler, Facebook wants to create more ‘granular privacy tools’ and an easy to use product in the process. He also outlined some of the difficulties that Facebook has had as it has grown. When Facebook was started, he explained, it was geared towards the US college student niche.
Well I’ve got one word here: scalability!

I’m currently trying out another social networking site: PLAXO

Why?

Plaxo is using Google’s OpenSocial API!!!
Plaxo, online calendar and address book, has the honour of being the first to implement OpenSocial into a service and go live with it. It’s implemented in Plaxo Pulse, a service that lets you see social networking activities of people in your address book, like changes in their profiles, new Flickr photos they’ve added, etc.

For People not knowing anything about OpenSocial: it’s Google’s initiative to provide a single point of entrance to as much social sites as possible. This way people joining on social site1 could contact with people on social site2. Now how great is that!

And guess what: according to Plaxo using the social API is starting to deliver some results:

The social networking site war for users just got even more interesting

So after having to wait a long time for this Canadian movie to be released, I finally saw it! and Yes I have spotted myself

The movie itself is called Shake hands with the devil. Its a movie about the same titled book of Romeo Dallaire.
Dallaire received his commission as the Force Commander of UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance MIssion for Rwanda. Rwanda had just emerged from civil war between the extremist Hutu population and a small Tutsi rebel faction operating from neighbouring Uganda—with the signing of the Arusha Accords. In fact, UNAMIR’s goal was to assist in the implementation of the Arusha Accords. The Hutus worked through the Rwandan army and then-president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Tutsis through the rebel commander Paul Kagame, who is the president of Rwanda today. The conflict became a civil war when extremist Hutus began murdering Tutsis found inside Rwanda’s borders, as well as moderate Hutus who sympathized with the Tutsis. When Dallaire arrived in Rwanda, his mandate was to supervise the implementation of the Accords during a transitional period in which Tutsis were supposed to be given positions of power within the Hutu government.

He wrote his awful experiences about the failing of the West to prematurely stop the genocide! It’s not a happy movie. In the same genre you could also watch: Hotel Rwanda (most commonly known of all), Shooting dogs (I think one of the best) and Sometimes in April (most shocking one).
Shake hands with the devil was directed by Roger Spottiswoode known for James Bond’s Tomorrow Never Dies and also Air America (an old one).

Enjoy the pictures
ps: also in the picture are Bart and Guy. 2 belgian friends in Rwanda. Bart is the head surgeon of Kigali Hospital.

ps: Here is the trailer: