July and August typically mean vacation for those of us working as educators. I teach about web development and Linux server management in a three year professional bachelor degree called Interactive Multimedia Design and for me, summer is typically not spent on school work. This year though, I decided to spend as much time as possible in school. Not to teach, since I would probably be talking to an empty classroom anyway. While school was closed for summer, me and two other highly motivated colleagues decided to spend time creating an inspirational work environment for our students …

Sometimes, when you are working with CSS3 multi-column layouts , you will run into the problem of content being split across columns in a way that makes no sense at all. In the screenshot below, you can see the problem I was running into when showing a simple table with a few percentages in it. The table appeared right at the point where my CSS wanted to split the content into multiple columns. The result is one table row shown at the bottom of the first column, where the rest of the table is shown at the top of the second column, which is nasty. There's a simple way to …

The CSS3 Multi-column Layout Module gives us a very easy way to create, well, multi-column layouts. This is especially useful when you have a longer piece of content that you want to show in a grid-like fashion. Browser Support Browser support is pretty decent as you can see on the screenshot below. The only worrying browsers for me were IE8 and IE9. You typically will be writing your code with prefixes for mozilla and webkit browsers like this: -moz-column-count:3; -webkit-column-count:3; column-count:3; -moz-column-gap:40px; -webkit-column-gap:40px; …

Finding a job isn't the easiest thing in the world, especially if you are looking for your dream job in the creative space. But guess what: there's an app for that [the app has since been removed from the app store]. Creativeskills.be is one of the leading job vacancy sites in Belgium when it comes to job openings in the creative industry. It's now easier than ever to find new job opportunities or internships by using the iPhone/iPad application that we developed in collaboration with our friends over at Creativeskills. Here's a short video overview of what you'll find in the app. …

It started a few years ago, when me and my friend Dries had an idea for a hosted e-commerce solution. At the time I was often looking for a solution to build out online stores for my clients, without having to go through the horror of customising Magento and the like. At the time, the only thing that came close to what we had in mind was Shopify, but even their software was overly complex for most of my clients and it didn't feel like the way we wanted to build stores. We decided to roll our own solution with only the features that were really needed and nothing else. We created …

If you're like me, you may have an old desktop computer sitting around your home office somewhere serving as a Linux machine. I use my old desktop as a Centos server acting as an exact copy of my production machine. That way I'm able to easily try out updates to web apps I'm creating before deploying them to an online production server. I don't have a UTP-connection where I work at the moment so I had to find a way to connect the Linux server to my Wifi network. There's a lot of information floating around the internet, but sometimes when it comes to Linux, it's hard to find that right …

I wanted to experiment with node.js , canvas and a whole bunch of other cool stuff for some time now but never really got to it. For the past four years or so, since I moved to Mechelen, we've had weekly meetups at my office or at a friend's place every thursday night. We hang out, talk about the latest tech or watch a movie. To make these evenings a bit more interesting I decided to hook up a projector and build a game that we could play from the couch with two players at the same time. For the controllers I've decided that it would be cool to use our phones. Here's a …

Yesterday I started a small experiment in preparation for a class I'm teaching about building simple web apps. Because I like to keep things stylish - you know me - I've created Loo Me! , a simple web app that will help you find a public toilet in Antwerp the day after visiting your not so favourite Indian restaurant or on any other day for that matter. Used resources If you're experimenting with something similar, here are a few of the resources I used to get the app up and running quickly. I hope they come in handy for some of you. Subtlepatterns for the backgroun…

For some reason, it's easier to write about what bothers you or what you would call a fail, than it is to write about wins! I've decided to look out for what delights me in the real world, but until then ;), here's what I found frustrating the other day. My girlfriend was driving the car and I wanted to put the radio volume up. After 30 years of crancking up the volume, my mind got tricked into thinking I just needed to look for a round centrally located knob. That's the volume-crancking-button on any other device right? Not on this radio it wasn't. Instead, you will be changing the GPS …

If you earn a living by working behind a computer most of the day, it's definitely important to keep in mind that you are prone to suffering from RSI. Wikipedia describes this modern side effect of working with computers as follows: "Repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) are injuries of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems that may be caused by repetitive tasks, forceful exertions, vibrations, mechanical compression (pressing against hard surfaces), or sustained or awkward positions" My definition would be something along the lines of: "A tingling sensation and sometimes even …