Tag: brussels

Covid: It was bound to happen

EU Exit platforms hackathon

I finally got Covid19, where from exactly? I gather somewhere in Brussels or else where on my travels. Its been a super busy few weeks and my immune system wasn’t exactly in top form with the shifting sleep patterns recently.

To be clear, I am ok. Its not mild like a bit of a cold but its also not a case of going to hospital. I’ve had my 2 shots of the vaccine and a booster late last year just as omicron took hold in the UK. But I was shocked when the 2 red lines appeared on the rapid tests which has always been one red line. To be fair 2+ years without catching Covid once is good going.

My symptoms are flu like hot/cold fever, lack of focus, lots of sleepiness and something I never knew about before Covid toe! (here is much more detail if you are interested including some awful pictures)

While in Brussels, I started feeling my feet blowing up with large bumps, sometimes it became a bit painful to walk with pace. I thought it was an allergic reaction because my fingers started getting something which I would class as hives and I couldn’t even wear my Oura ring on the usual fingers. That plus my lips felt puffy and everything felt super dry no matter what I added to them.

I did do a Covid test while away on May 8th and 14th both were negative but on the 16th it was positive. So my best guess is that my body was fighting off Covid ahead of time?

Because of this all, I’m taking time off to recover. Mainly watching films and TV shows and maybe a bit of reading. Nothing which requires a lot of focus & attention.

 

The three cities of Belgium mix

The Atomium in Brussels

After a long weekend in Belgium, of course I got some time with the pacemaker device. I themed the mix after the 3 cities we visited. All recorded with the Pacemaker device during a delayed flight back.

Enjoy!

  1. Brussels
    1. Anomaly (CJ Art’s Underwater tales remix) – Gordey Tsukanov
    2. Daemoni Miserere – Dr. Clarke
    3. Rheinkraft (extended mix) – Oliver Klein
    4. Innocente (Mr Sam remix) – Delerium
    5. Z.I.T.A (Markus Schossow remix) – Hiver & Hammer with Funabashi
  2. Antwerp
    1. Eclipse – Neo
    2. Delores – Indecent Noise
    3. Anahera (Extended mix) – Ferry Corseten pres Gouryella
    4. The Dark Knight – KhoMha
    5. Be with me – Coast 2 coast feat Amanda Jami
    6. Deadline (Armin’s rising star mix) – Dutch Force
  3. Ghent
    1. Grotesque (Alex MORPH and RAM mix) – RAM
    2. End transmission – ReDrive & Patrick Blanes
    3. Shelter (Photographer remix) – Dash Berlin feat. Roxanne Emery
    4. Adagio for Strings (Matt Silver and Tony Burt mix) – William Orbit

 

Updated….

95th in the global tech trance chart

Everyone needs a little self-care time

IMG_20190625_161128-EFFECTS
Nothing better than a little self-care, by indudging my love of rollercoasters

Its a lesson I’ve learned after many mistakes from a previous life (before my brush with death). Taking some time for myself to chill out a little, especially after one of those busy weeks that I sometimes post.

A while ago during my sabbatical after my brush with death, I did read (listen) to a lot of things, this is also when I decided to get hypnotherapy for my fear of needles. Another thing I picked up was the idea of self-care.

Self–care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook. Good self–care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety.

I tie it directly to the conscious living lifestyle which is simple in concept again but being mindful is more tricky that it first seems. For example one of the things I do is plan in self-care time in my calendar, especially when I identify a potentially stressful period coming up. It could be a great time away for work but flights are always full of stressful moments and finding hotels etc. For example last week, I flew to Madrid to talk at the xR fest. It was great but the weather temperature hit a maximum of 41c and my flights were via Brussels. I knew the connection was tight with 55mins between landing and the connecting flight leaving.

Express connection ticketOf course we didn’t actually get into the air for 45mins from Manchester, giving me no time to run across the airport through passport control with the express connection ticket and luckily catch my flight as it was also delayed and they couldn’t quite close the gate with people arriving from previous flights. Trust me it was a close call!

This is all the stuff I thought about while resting in the hot tub at the Hilton Hotel Manchester Monday July 1st. I had planned in a day off and took advantage of a treatment some kind friend had bought me for my 40th birthday.

While listening to The Nod recently I was impressed with the discussion about Self-Care. There were two aspects I liked quite a lot (wish I could transcribe it). In summary the conversation was about getting men (especially black men, being a black culture podcast) to consider self-care as part of being masculine. The discussion reminded me of a discussion I had a long while ago about the game being a self-help book for men who usually avoided self-help books.

Self-care is clearly important but its equally important to find what works for you. The example of a yoga retreat just doesn’t work for me although it might work for others. My kind of self-care is certainly spas and rollercoaster parks…

Maybe your more a sleep in long hours type person or rearrange and clean the house hygge person. What ever it truly is (and I mean truly deeep down) then a little self-care when things get tough is really a life savor!

Fuel 2018 was fantastic

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/40970033904/

What happens when you put a firestarter in the middle of a load of fuel? Only good things right?

The thing about FUEL which surprised me was how massive the conference was. The production values were huge too. It makes sense from Belgium’s biggest commercial broadcaster. Usually when conferences say 1000 people I expect it might be closer to 700 but FUEL was  either 1000 or very close to that. The conference in its 2nd year was a mix of their clients, invited guests from the broadcast industry and 200 broadcast students. All single track with Q&As broken out over 30mins during lunchtime allowing for deeper questions and answers without using up valuable time.

FUEL 2018

The speakers were great, really interesting talks and great people. There was a speakers dinner the day before the conference which really helps gel the speakers along with the rehearsals. I don’t usually like rehearsals but it was good to see the converted slide deck and also get the superstar dj walk through on the massively long stage. If only they had customised sound tracks, because prodigy’s firestarter would have been perfect.

FUEL 2018

Most of the event was captured in a live blog but heres a few pointers from the speakers

Dietmar Dahmen made some quite compelling points about creative disruption and getting too comfortable with the status quo. I liked the analogy to superman facing a new world with no grounding. The climax involved sawing a chair with pillows in half on stage with a chainsaw. This simply wouldn’t happen in the UK, I thought as I filmed from my phone…

Simon de la Rouvière confirmed my thoughts about using Blockchain & Smart contracts for music. Also made me consider the dating site/app I talked about in the past.

Cathy Hackl is a xR (VR/AR/Mixed reality) expert who taught herself how to code joined HTC vive as a evangelist. Now shes a xR Evangelist and is one of a few people who has seen Magic Leap but of course didn’t say a single word about it (I hear their NDA is deadly serious). Such a passionate woman and it was a joy spending sometime with her the day before talking about diversity.

Rana June talked about creating and generating emotional human data for better experiences. It was interesting especially with some of the quantified self work I’ve been involved in. Loved to have talked to her more and its a shame I will miss her while in London.

I can’t do justice to all the speakers who made Fuel 2018 incredible, all were great and the format is well thought out and executed. Like Futurefest 2016 I was pleasantly surprised by the pretty much everything. The only down side was Brussels traffic, which the organisers have no control over.

Fuel on the burning fire mix

I recorded fuel on the burning fire, while on the plane back from FUEL 2018 in Brussels. Such a good time and lots of amazing people and upgraded to business class, giving me lots of room to stretch out and throw down another pacemaker device mix.

I’ve recently been including more and more rave/90’s dance music in my mix and this is no different. Enjoy from the sunny cabin of my flight back to Manchester.

Photo credit: Kartaba

  1. Kiss the Sky – Frequency
  2. 3rd Earth (heartbeat remix) – Solarstone vs Scott Bond
  3. Comet – Skytech
  4. One for you (oliver klein remix) – Oliver Klien
  5. Night in motion – Cubic 22
  6. Opium – Jerome Isma-Ae & Alastor
  7. Labyrinth (Paul Keyen remix) – Lee cassells
  8. Brush Stroke – Simon Patterson
  9. Running up the hill (jerome isma-ae bootleg) – Placabo
  10. Seven days and one week (club mix) – BBE
  11. Ultra Curve – Cosmic gate
  12. Southern sun (moe aly remix) – Paul Oakenfold

 

Going to Fosdem 2010

I'm going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting

I’m booked to go to my first Fosdem. Got the train from Manchester to Brussels return for 140 pounds but the hotel (Hotel Centrale) was quite a bit more but right next to the main station and Parc de Bruxelles. Never been to Brussels before, so on either side of Fosdem, I’ve decided to take some time off and have a wonder around the city.

The Fosdem conference seems to be shaping up into a good event too. Here’s a few of the talks I’ll be checking out.

I do wish there was some guys from XBMC and the Apache Cocoon project coming along, but hey I’m sure between the Mozilia, XMPP, OpenOffice and Ubuntu guys there will be lots of fun.