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2006, was indeed, a great year. With lots of changes, both personally as well as professionally, this year will be something I’ll remember for a long time.

Filled with lots of new musical influences, courtesy of friends and last.fm, quite a few new skills, thanks to my college, employers and my own striving and a new appreciation for the arts of our culture - yes, 2006 did indeed kick some serious butt.

Now, there’s one more thing that I want to get off my chest before I head out to conclude this past year in a fitting manner:

Happy New Year, may 2007 bring you and your loved ones the things you are longing for and if it does, think a minute about all those who aren’t able to live life in the same great way as most of us are able to, be it because of financial problems or because of other circumstances. If you are in the position, donate something to an organization you deem worthy of your support. It may not make you feel any better, but it will make someone else, somewhere else thankful. That should be rewarding enough, I know that it works for me.

This is the third and final part in a series of posts where I’m reviewing media from the past year. The first part discussed printed media, followed by my thoughts on televised media. The finale of this trilogy belongs to audible media, anything from music to spoken content.

2006, for me, marked the year of indie content. I bought more albums from magnatune.com this year than I did buy in retail stores during the last five years. Why? Because I like their concept. I get to choose how I acquire my media (loads of formats available), how much I pay and best of all … I get to share it with friends. Their concept is great and I’m thankful to them for providing such a great service.

Number one hit, for me personally, this year was certainly Scott Sigler’s Ancestor. While the story actually started in September of 2005, it wasn’t concluded until spring this year. Scott’s plot about xeno transplantation and the various side effects kept me hooked till the bitter end. Thanks to this podiobook, commuting actually became bearable.

Dubbed “medicine for the soul” by a commenter on YouTube, fingerstyle guitar artist Andy McKee really deserves a spot in my toplist. The way he makes love to the guitar is just amazing. It’s just amazing how he manages to convey a very vivid image with his song, without the need for any vocal support whatsoever.

Last but not least, Grey’s Anatomy Soundtrack, Vol. 1 is the perfect candidate to conclude this review. Featuring songs from season one of the show, the compilation contains songs which have the power to make you feel happy. Out of the 15 songs on the disc, I personally like two thirds a lot and find the other third to be awesome. It rarely happens that I like more than half of a compilation’s songs, but this time, it’s spot on.

This is part two of a three post series where I’m reviewing media that was made available to me in 2006. Part 1 talked about printed media, this part will discuss televised media and part 3 will discuss audible media. Sorry folks, nothing computer related this year, not in this trilogy anyway.

First in the listing is CBS’ Jericho, dubbed a post-apocalyptic drama about a small town (Jericho, Kansas), the directors
managed to deliver eleven breathtaking episodes, combining interpersonal drama with action scenes and topped the whole thing with a great cliffhanger. The actors do a great job in portraying their characters. If you want to read more about it, click here or here.

SciFi’s EUReKA is the second series I’d like to discsus want to talk about. SciFi’s program managers planned the first episode during the premiere screening of the Battlestar Galactica Season 3 trailer. A very smart idea, with a high reward. EUReKA’s pilot turned out to be the highest rated show ever televised on the SciFi channel. A series about small town with a big secret, EUReKA mixes funny stories with interesting science.

Last but not least, there’s Grey’s Anatomy, dubbed a chick-flick (it’s actually a series, not a flick), I find it far more entertaining than comparable series like ER et al. Granted, the characters don’t appeal to me on a visual level, but then again, that’s not what I’m looking for anyway. I like the easy to digest stories that are never too complicated to be incomprehensible when you’ve missed an episode or two. The music that’s selected for the show, a combination of feel-good music and alternative rock, spiked with meaningful lyrics, is what really makes my day though.

Based on a series I started back in 2004 and didn’t continue in 2005, I’d like to post some thoughts on media in 2006.

Let’s start out with readable media - printed books, eBooks, magazines, anything non-digital really. I managed to continue my stream of eBooks this year, even though I didn’t succeed in reading as much as I did in 2005. Nearly two years after I bought my first eBooks, I still believe that this is the future, at least for me and a few more people who are openminded enough to accept a new form of content delivery.

I read about 30 books this year (which is 40% less than last year) and the three that made my charts are, in no specific order:

Steven Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner - Freakonomics:
Freakonomics talks about the hidden side just about everyone has and gives plenty of examples to elaborate on the special view of the world the authors craft. While at first you might think that it’s just rambling, the authors are actually on to something…

James Surowiecki - The Wisdom of Crowds:
Surowiecki uses “The Wisdom of Crowds” to explain how great masses of people can be and actually are smarter than a small flock of higly intelligent, business driven people. With easy to understand examples, the author explains the various types of wisdom found in a crowd and then analyzes the elements that are “required” for a crowd to be considered smart. The book also contains a good explanation why sometimes “crowd wisdom” fails and how we can prevent it from failing. Funnily enough, Surowiecki recommends people to keep their ties loose and expose oneself to as many different sources of information as possible - his statements link up nicely with a recent blog post

Brad Thor - Takedown:
Thor once again delivers a kick-ass (excuse my excitement) thriller. I-clean-up-and-get-things-done-agent Scott Harvath once again is tapped to solve the problems that arise when a group of terrorists decide to cut off Manhattan from the outside world in any way possible. It’s a great read and other than a handful of references to previous adventures, you won’t miss anything if you haven’t read the other books. Certainly worth buying if you’re looking for a good action movie for your mind (yes, Thor is capable of writing THAT vividly).

Other than great reads, I also picked up my new favorite magazine, BRIGHT - a mix of technology, lifestyle, gadgets and high quality journalism. No it’s not FHM, it’s better and less sexist. Worth checking out if you live in the Netherlands or Belgium and speak Dutch and feel like staying on top of the information flow.

Read part 2 of this series here and part 3 right here.

The past year, for me personally, was a year of change. Like the years before, I got to meet a lot of great people and I even got to know some of them quite well.

What follows is a list of the people that influenced me the most this year, from a personal or professional point of view, or whom I’m just thankful for for being part of my life. Oh, and in case you’re wondering – the list is ordered in counter clockwise geographical order, meaning we start out in Canada and end in the Netherlands.

Katie, I’ve known you for close to two years now and you still continue to amaze me. I value the input you give me when I ask for it and I appreciate your enthusiasm when I break any idea to you. You helped me out a lot more than you probably know when I was going through a rough time and I am thankful beyond words for that. You always know how to cheer me up when I need it and you seem to be capable of providing the right answers and insights when I’m not. Thank you.

Ben, you’ve introduced me to a great deal of media I wouldn’t have experienced without you. You seem to know what kind of song or movie or series I’m longing for and are able to provide just that. It may be coincidence, but I’m still thankful. You have shown remarkable strength in a time when you were down on the ground and I respect that a lot, most people your age would just “break”, you didn’t. I know that, because the conversations we have show that you are miles ahead of people who are five years older. You, my friend, are destined for greatness.

Scott, from a business point of view, I couldn’t be more thankful. You always have one gig or another for me to work on, be it for your company or for Sigler Media. I respect you highly on a professional level, because you know how to get things done, but also because you seem to be able to put up with my (sometimes) slacking attitude. You present me with the possibility to come up with my own, creative, solution and hardly ever limit my flow of ideas. On a personal level, you have been a source of inspiration for me. You show me how important it is to pursue one’s own ideas and not just “quit” when times are rough. Thank you.

Josef, without you, I wouldn’t probably be writing this post, because without you, I wouldn’t have a server to maintain. While it may seem purely technical to most, thanks to you, I can broaden my knowledge on the technical aspects of maintaining an online presence and therefore you contribute to upping my market value. Believe me when I say that your contribution is very much appreciated.

Kevin, you can be a royal pain in the butt, but when you decide to cooperate, the real “you” surfaces and with that, skills that far surpass mine. One of the youngest designers I know, you have produced works that I admire, for the simplicity and quality contained within. Thanks for the inspiration (and sometimes even guidance) you provide.

Jack, we’ve only met some ten weeks ago, yet we’ve had some of the weirdest but also most sincere conversations I’ve had this year. It’s really odd to meet someone who is so much like I am. Whenever we talked, I recognized how your life, in many situations, seems to be a nearly identical version of mine. I’m glad I finally found someone who appreciates life the same way I do.

L., you, even though you probably didn’t even realize, opened my eyes to the finer aspects of culture. You influenced me on a purely personal level and somehow I (want to) believe that I’m a better person for it. Dank je.

Apart from those five, I also owe thanks to the group of people who contributed and are contributing to my upcoming movie(s) as well as the two Jeroens for maintaining my server when I’m unable to set any time aside for doing so and for ensuring that a huge group of CS:S players are able to enjoy a high quality gaming experience.

Thanks to all of you, 2006 was as great as it was, thanks to all of you, my skills, both on a professional and on a social level, have expanded more than they could have without you. You rock, each and every one of you.

Twenty years ago when people referenced their friends, they generally talked about people they knew for a very long time. Relationships lasted long, friendships lasted even longer. Basically, most friends you made back then were going to stick around till the bitter end and you’d meet up with them on various occasions.

I’m no researcher, but I think that the above concept of relationships and friendships is outdated. Don’t get me wrong, I value people who stick around for a long time, stand by you during the good and the bad times and help you overcome obstacles, but I personally don’t see it happening for many people I know.

Let me elaborate, during the last decades, our mobility increased by 500%, going shopping in London in the weekend (no matter where you live) is easily accomplished. Participating in a relationship with someone who’s living some 2,000 miles away is doable. Making acquaintances all over the globe and meeting them at some point is daily life for some people.

With all the added mobility however, comes another feat: priority and prioritizing. Many people have various levels of friendship – there are the close friends, the very close friends, the good friends, the normal friends, the friends –friends, the yeah-I-heard-his-name-kind-of-guys (and gals). Two decades ago you had best friends, friends and people you knew. Now, with all these added layers, people are prioritizing, some on a conscious level, most on a subconscious level.

Friends are like information in today’s world. Everyone has a story to tell, everyone has one quirk or another and we have to remember each and every one of them, or at least a great deal. One might note all this information in a notebook, another might use digital technology to track the attributes of their friends and someone else might just remember most stuff. Either way, people have to cope with loads of extra information that wasn’t available (because of the lack of different layers) twenty years ago.

Naturally, it’s important to remember many attributes of your friends; after all, that is what partially makes you a good friend. Supporting each other, no matter if romance is involved or not is still as important as it was two decades ago, but today you have a lot more choices. Do you want to talk to your best friend or your partner? To which one are you going to talk to? The one you are romantically involved with or the one you’ve been dating a year ago?

Added layers mean lower intensity. At least, they do for me. I have a certain amount of time I’m willing and am able to spend on friends every day, week, month and the more friends you have, the more you need to spread that time out in a fair way. If you have loads of friends, you’re probably not spending half as much time as you should (and would like to) with them, if you have few friends, you can focus a lot more on the individual, but you lack the added information; information that can be turned into knowledge to improve yourself, your character or your creations, in the most broad sense possible.

All in all, I personally experience micro relationships as very positive. I believe that these relationships are a lot more flexible and they don’t have a clearly defined beginning (or end). You meet ad-hoc, whenever it suits both persons, you have fewer expectations to meet, yet you can still contribute a lot to such friendship, it’s all up to you.

Naturally the concept of micro relationships doesn’t apply to people in a marriage, but then again, some might argue that marriages are a form of the past too …

I wonder what others are thinking - feel free to contribute.

For the last few months, I’ve been working on a Battlefield 2 based movie. Machinima movies always intrigued me and I wanted to shoot a film in 2006 anyway, so I thought that I might as well combine those two.

During the summer months, I started writing a story about the war some soldiers have to fight during the actual war. Since the movie is based on Battlefield 2, we’ll have loads of American and Middle Eastern actors and I’m doing my best to create micro stories around each and every important character. Granted, only five or six of them really are important, but you’ll probably know a lot more about them by the end of the movie.

I’m not willing to break the story yet, but I wanted to talk about something relating to this movie:

During my first year in college, we spent two weeks in a short-term project called “FreeSpace”. The idea behind said project is that the only thing your tutor gives you is a word, no idea, no limits, just a word. Ours was “waiting room” and during the two weeks the project lasted, we (a small group of four students) came up with a less than greatly executed solution. Don’t get me wrong, the idea we had really had (and has) potential, but the way we executed it just wasn’t up to par.

Those two weeks were really the only time during that year I regretted, I didn’t learn anything (new) and we (all) created tension that, for a certain part, still lingers around and influences current decisions, nine months after “FreeSpace” concluded.

This year, I wanted to do something different, I wanted to do something productive and expand my knowledge. Normally, “FreeSpace” in the second year links up with a very short internship (of ten working days) at a company that will probably help you make a final decision as to which profile you’re going to choose for the last two years of your college career. I was really looking forward to that internship and even got in touch with a print shop, because, well, printing stuff, the right way, is something I’m interested in.

Long story short, we were supposed to have some sort of orientational period this year but it won’t be an internship - a pity, if you ask me. Then again, I already know what I’m going to do next year and I don’t want to waste another two weeks, just to regret them two months from now (FreeSpace is coming up at the end of January 2007).

So, not wanting to waste another two weeks of my short time in college, I decided to put in some work and talk to the man. I pitched my idea for the movie in the most business-like way I could imagine and guess what? It worked.

Turns out, the people I pitched my idea to where sold after about the first minute, out of the ten minutes I talked. Apparently, it’s just about how you sell it and if you do it the right way, your college will even give you permission to play a game and earn some credits with it.

(Naturally, I’m not just playing a game, I’m actually writing a scenario, drawing up story boards, locating suitable actors and supporting actors, dabble with Adobe Audition to clean up the audio, work with Adobe Premiere to cut and edit, use Adobe After Effects to create flashy effects and finalize the whole thing in Flash Video with Adobe Flash.)

Back at the The Next Web conference, I was first presented with a product called “Fleck“, basically a web 2.0 post-it service. Now, since this probably doesn’t make much sense to most people, I’d suggest clicking on this link and experiencing the goodness that is Fleck for yourself.

Fleck is a project by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Patrick de Laive and Arjen Schat - if you don’t know those names, you don’t know your internet history very well, I guess. These three guys, like they’ve done so many times before, came up with the whole idea and coded it from the ground up and made sure it was ready to rock when they released it into the wild.

Being a privately funded company, means, to me at least, that there aren’t loads of resources for extensive marketing so the Fleck team came up with something unique, something perfectly suited for their service:

Fleck’ians invaded BRIGHTLive and Fleck’ed just about anything they saw.

Total cost of this gig is probably around EUR 20, if not less. Total exposure is probably worth 20 times as much. Great job guys, that’s the way to do guerilla marketing!

Three days ago, I attended BRIGHTLive with some friends of mine and considering the price we paid, we certainly got our money’s worth. The whole venue was a lot more commercial than I’d have liked it to be, but that’s to be expected really. It’s the same for CeBIT and other, similar events.

I’ll cut the guys from BRIGHT some slack though, since this was the first incarnation and I’m quite certain that the next BRIGHTLives will be a lot bigger.

When I first read BRIGHT, at the Web 2.0 conference “The Next Web“, I was immediately sold. The content of this mag links up nicely with my topics of interest and it’s generally stuff that isn’t available 6 weeks up front via the internet (to be honest, it probably is, but I’m too lazy to spend time on looking for it).

So, back then, I signed up for a trial of three issues and read thru the day I received each one; I wanted to prolong my subscription, but decided to wait a little bit, till after BRIGHTLive, to see if they’d come up with a really good reason.

Turns out I don’t have to wait that long: I managed to talk Dion, a BRIGHTLive staffer, into handing me over one of the official BRIGHTLive tee’s for nada. In return, I signed up for another three issues of their mag. Quite the win-win situation for both of us, especially considering that the official price for those tees was EUR 25. Thanks Dion!

All in all, BRIGHTLive was certainly worth the time, especially if you consider that we got to see an improv-performance from BOOM Chicago new show “Me, MySpace and iPod”. I even managed to record one of their songs, albeit the visual result turned out quite bad. Turns out that BOOM Chicago isn’t for everyone. While I loved their show and couldn’t stop laughing, the other guys attending the show didn’t appreciate it as much.

Naturally, I’ve uploaded a “few” shots from BRIGHTLive to my gallery too. Enjoy.

- me too Ben, me too.