Bart Vander Sanden - All Posts
Freelance app and web developer in Leuven, Belgium
Latest posts
Stuff I listened to in 2022
Yeah, I know, it's March already. This post was sitting as a draft on my computer since December of last year or so, but rather than thinking "This is too late to be relevant!" I decided to post it anyway. Just like in 2020 and 2021 I kept track of the songs that grabbed my attention. I found that 2022 was a great year for music (but is it ever not, honestly?), which led me to this…
Batch convert all JPEG images in a folder to WebP with ImageMagick
I'm in the process of converting all (or at least most) images on my website to look nicer (meaning: sharper with 2x their resolution) on modern high resolution screens. This is actually fairly easy , but unfortunately this blows up the bandwidth needed to load my site. Enter WebP! This image format is not that new anymore, but in the last couple of years browser support became high enough to make…
Getting into medium format photography with a Mamiya 645
I recently acquired an old Mamiya 645 (original model) medium format camera with a bunch of lenses. Years ago I dabbled a bit in analog photography with my dad's old Canon AV-1, and I recently felt the itch to once again pick up taking pictures on film. Then, suddenly, this camera popped up for the right price at the right time, so I decided to go for it! A few first impressions: This thing is…
Park Nieuw Zuid in Antwerp - March 2022
Happy new year - notes on 2021
Happy new year! (Even though we're already near the end of January) Getting vaccinated. We didn't have the sudden "halt" of public life in 2021 like we did last year during the first lockdown, and we as a society got a better understanding of the characteristics of the virus so it was a bit easier to live with the situation. Less uncertainty, more room for doing normal stuff. It was really nice to…
Even more walks in Leuven
Another batch of photos of the things we've come across on our walks in Leuven lately. Handbooghof, Leuven. Kruidtuin (Botanical Garden), Leuven. Kruidtuin (Botanical Garden), Leuven. A Magnolia tree in the Kruidtuin. The pond of the Kruidtuin. The entrance of the Kruidtuin. A small pond near the De Bron park.
A review of potato chips flavors in Thailand
Over the years we've found ourselves looking for weird and new potato chips flavors whenever we're traveling, as we've noticed that these snacks are popular all over the world, but the common flavors vary greatly across borders. Most of the time we could find plain salted chips everywhere, but otherwise the default flavors are unique in each country. For example: in Belgium Paprika chips is the…
Out and about with a Game Boy Camera
After finding a Game Boy Camera for cheap some time ago I kept the thing inside of a drawer, waiting on the perfect time to slot them into my old Game Boy to take amazingly high resolution (128 x 112 pixels) photographs. Yesterday I finally took out my cool retro toy on a stroll in the local park, which resulted in these pictures. Using the Game Boy Camera to take pictures is easy: you turn on the…
Walks in Leuven
Some pictures taken during a few of our many (but not enough) walks in and around Leuven these past few months. Kessel-Lo Provincial Domain. A bird and a duck in the Kessel-Lo Provincial Domain. The train tracks entering Leuven as seen from the Stoemperspad walking bridge. The central University Library of Leuven, with trains in the foreground. Leuven Station. Saint John the Evangelist’s Church at…
An end to 2020 - things I've listened to and played in 2020.
Happy new year! I don't think anyone can say that 2020 was a normal year with everything that went down in the world. I'm hopeful that 2021 will be better, but before we turn the page I wanted to write down a list of the stuff in media that made last year a bit more bearable. Music For the last couple of years I didn't pay much attention to new music, and I basically kept listening to the artists…
Video: 10 modern layouts in 1 line of CSS
Here's an excellent video by Una Kravets on using CSS Grid and Flexbox to easily create great looking layouts with simple lines of CSS code: (Don't forget to play around with the examples on her demo site ) Via CSS-Tricks
Tips on Working From Home as a Web Developer
As more and more people are working from home at the moment due to the measures taken for Covid-19 , I thought it might be interesting to write down some tips and tricks I've learned in the last couple of years while having my main desk at home. As an independent web developer since 2016 , I'm spending the majority of my working days at home. At first, not having to leave the house to get work…
Rue du Marché aux Fromages in Brussels in the morning
Rue du Marché aux Fromages in Brussels in the morning.
Mechelen - Belgium
Mechelen - Belgium.
The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada
My favourite announcements at Apple's WWDC 2019
Apple held its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference again last week for the developers on their platforms. It always starts with a big keynote on Monday , where Apple shows the rest of the world what's coming up for all of its platforms in the near future. Contrary to, say, their yearly iPhone event in September, this keynote always puts the focus on their software. Likewise, I follow these…
Playdate - a new handheld console by Panic
A press shot of the Playdate (© Panic). This week Panic announced Playdate , a quirky new yellow handheld console with a black and white screen and a crank. It's wonderfully bizarre , and I want to order one ASAP. For long-time Apple users in the web and design sector Panic probably doesn't need an introduction anymore: they created a host of great apps, like Transmit (an FTP client), Coda (a…
Climbing Mount Misen in Miyajima and a quick stopover in Okayama, Japan
Location: Miyajima and Okayama, Japan Duration: An overnight stay + half a day in Miyaijma and the same in Okayama Period: March 2018 The Great Tori during high tide. After our trip to Hiroshima we took a short boat ride (for which you can use a JR Pass!) to get to Miyajima, a small but beautiful island a bit south of our previous city. We decided to stay on the island for the night, as we spent…
Hiroshima and the aftermath of the atomic bomb - Japan
Location: Hiroshima, Japan Duration: 1 day Period: March 2018 Looking over the Motoyasu river, with the Atomic Bomb Dome on the right. Hiroshima is one of those cities that symbolise a key moment in the history of our world: it was the first city to be attacked with an atomic bomb , which was a turning point at the end of the Second World War, but at a significant human cost of more than 100,000…
Place Rogier - Brussels
Chinese New Year in Leuven
Chinese dragons roaming the streets of Leuven. Last weekend the Chinese community of Leuven celebrated their start of the new year for the first time in Leuven. The weather was awful (lots of wind and tons of nearly ice cold rain descended on us), but we quite enjoyed the exhibition shows of the local martial arts and dancing groups, and the march through the city with the dragons leading the way.…
Eating Wagyu beef and walking around in Kobe, Japan
Location: Kobe, Japan Duration: 1 day (+ overnight stay) Period: March 2018 A bridge near the Meriken Park in Kobe. After finding our way through the maze that is Osaka Station (seriously, it's a gigantic and confusing underground labyrinth) we took a short train ride to Kobe , a port town to the west of Osaka, and world famous for its local speciality dish: Kobe beef . Eating Kobe beef at Ishida…
My winter commute in Belgium
The station of Leuven at sunset. The city hall tower of Brussels near the Grand Place. The Anspach Boulevard in Brussels. A road near Saint-Catherine in Brussels. Train tracks from Brussels to Leuven. A cold morning in Brussels North Station. The sun going down near the Rogier metro station. On my way to Brussels after a night that brought us a bit of snow. Lately I've been taking pictures…
Attending a sumo honbasho in Osaka - Japan
Location: Osaka, Japan Duration: 2 days Period: March 2018 Sumo wrestlers in action at the Edion Arena in Osaka. Osaka is the second largest city in Japan, and a central hub to quite a few important cities in the area, like Kyoto, Nara and Kobe. We went to Osaka via a short 30 minute train ride from Nara . The city is probably best known for its wide variety of high quality food , but we went…
Burning torches at the Omizutori festival in Nara, Japan
Location: Nara, Japan Duration: 1 day (+ overnight stay) Period: March 2018 Sunset at the Todaiji temple. Nara used to be the old capital of Japan, and nowadays it's mostly known for its shrines (which are also part of the UNESCO World Heritage , like the ones in Nikko and Kyoto ) and its hundreds of tame deer which roam the area freely. It's a 50 minute train ride from Kyoto, so it's easy to just…
Discovering the ancient history of Kyoto, Japan
Location: Kyoto, Japan Duration: 4 days Period: March 2018 A couple of torii gates at the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Kyoto is probably the second most popular destination in Japan after Tokyo, and it's seen as one of the most important historic centers of Japan . It's easy to get there by using the Ihari Shinkansen line, a ride that takes a few hours. Unfortunately, the trip to the freezing shrines of…
A useful tool: mybrowser.fyi
Andy Bell created this small tool to find out the basic configuration of your browser and device, called mybrowser.fyi . It's simple, yet extremely handy as you can send this site to a client, and they can send back the results in an instant. It's a lot easier than the old fashioned way by explaining to the client over the phone where they can find the about menu of their browser.
Visiting Nikko for half a day, Japan
Location: Nikko, Japan Duration: 1 day Period: March 2018 Arriving in Nikko A few days into our trip to Japan we went on a quick outing from Tokyo to Nikko, a small village north of the huge busy metropolis. Nikko is mostly known for its numerous shrines, which are part of the UNESCO World Heritages. Getting to Nikko via the Shinkansen Train Breakfast on the Shinkansen train to Utsonomiya On the…
Exploring the different neighbourhoods of Tokyo, Japan
Location: Tokyo, Japan Duration: 5 days Period: March 2018 Tsukiji Fish Market as seen from the bridge. Japan is a fascinating country: for centuries it was nearly fully isolated from other countries, creating a culture that's vastly different from the rest of the world. We wanted to travel to the country for ages, and last year (after careful budgeting and planning) we finally took an 11 hour…
Fixing locale errors with Jekyll plugins on Linux
I've been working on setting up my blog in a way that makes it possible for me to edit and update this website from anywhere. Jekyll makes it easy to create a website that's fully portable by not working with a database, which makes it easy to just push and pull your data from Git, but until a few days ago I just compiled this website on my laptop. This works nice enough, but I have to rely on a…
Sleeping cat
A drawing of our cat, sleeping on the sofa. I'm trying out Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro as a drawing app, and it's quite nice. The lines feel a bit more refined that those drawn by Procreate , but it's not a big difference. I'll see if I'll keep using it before my trial period ends.
Chinatown in New York City
Bayard Street in Chinatown, Manhattan, New York City (taken in 2016).
Our travel video of Japan
Location: Japan Duration: 3 weeks Period: March 2018 A few months ago we spend around three weeks in Japan to discover their nature, culture and food. With our phones in hand we documented this trip, in which we traveled to Tokyo, Nikko, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Okayama and then back to Tokyo. We filmed this footage with an iPhone 8, a Samsung Galaxy S5 and a Sony RX100 Mark…
Brussels North Station
Linked: Using A Static Site Generator At Scale: Lessons Learned
Here's an interesting article by Stefan Baumgartner on using Jekyll for larger sites. I've noticed myself that the build time for this (Jekyll based) website takes a lot longer with a large number of posts. Generating this website with just the blog takes a few milliseconds, but when I add my concert photo galleries it bumps up to 6 seconds. Still fast enough, but I can imagine this becoming a…
Designing SN Magritte for Brussels Airlines
A few months ago I was asked to design a new poster at Brussels Airport for the Magritte plane of Brussels Airlines. It was nice to work with this special plane again, as I also worked on its design a few months prior (with Thomas Dieu and Thomas De Louker). (First photo by Thomas De Louker )
Trying to get back into blogging
For years I've been trying to start a blog. Previously, my blogs where always about one subject (concert photography, web design, ...), but this always felt restrictive to me. I'm the kind of person that's always busy with 500 things at a time (to a fault), so I think it's better for myself to just start writing down what comes up in my mind. Let's see if this goes somewhere.
Some things to do in Stockholm in a weekend
A few weeks ago we went to Stockholm for a quick break from work. I’ve visited the city before, but only during winter, with temperatures as low as -20° Celsius and sunsets at 3.30 in the afternoon. Summer is a much better time to visit this city. Stockholm feels so much more alive when you’re not walking around in something that feels like a gigantic industrial freezer. It’s also much nicer to go…
Photographing Les Nuits Botanique in 2015
Rone Since 2011 I’ve been part of the official photographer team (with Indiestyle) of Les Nuits Botanique. It’s the perfect kickoff of the festival season with 10 days full of music in some of the most beautiful music venues of Belgium. The festival is situated at the Botanique, an old botanical garden in Brussels that was converted to a concert hall a few decades ago. During Les Nuits the…
10 years of Josworld: the party
Josworld, a Brussels based designers collective, celebrated their tenth birthday last Friday at the Beursschouwburg. Great location, great people, great party. You can find the rest of the pictures on their Facebook page .
The Dijle, Leuven
The Dijle in Leuven on a sunny Saturday morning in July.
The Keizersberg in Leuven
Keizersberg, Leuven on a nice summer evening.
Stromae at Rock Werchter 2014
Yesterday Stromae finished this year’s edition of Rock Werchter on the main stage, as the finishing touch of an already great edition of the festival. The artist had his breakthrough in Belgium a few years ago with ‘Alors On Danse’, but his rise to fame has been unstoppable since the release of his second album ‘Racine Carrée’. His headliner spot was received with scepticism by a lot of people,…
Tomorrow: Rock Werchter 2014
This Thursday it's time again for Rock Werchter. On the lineup: artists like Damon Albarn, Miles Kane, Franz Ferdinand and Stromae. The pictures will be available at indiestyle.be and enola.be . (Photo: Palma Violets, last year at the same festival)
Arcade Fire at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp
A few weeks ago Arcade Fire performed at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp. Although their latest album was certainly not their best, the concert was great, with a certain energy that just wasn't there at their (disappointing) Reflectors gig at Les Halles De Schaerbeek last year. The lights at this concert were great, but because there was a full film crew in the front stage moving around was nearly…
6th Avenue, New York City
Eurosonic Noorderslag 2014
The past three days I was at Eurosonic Noorderslag, a showcase festival in the north of the Netherlands. This is a festival with an impressive number of bands (294 to be exact) performing in tiny venues (like pubs and theaters) across town, playing their hearts out to impress all the important bookers and promotors at the gig. During these days I’ve met a lot of great people, saw some great (and…
Foster The People at the AB
Daedalus at the Bozar Night
Crazzyyyyyy