I wrote about The Reality last month, which was a large-ish LAN party where 700 people brought their computers to play games, share files and have a good time together. This month, however, I’m going to Dreamhack Winter in Sweden, the world’s largest LAN party. An expected 13 to 15.000 visitors will attend the party, supported by the world’s biggest and best network hardware.

Last year, Dreamhack used a 40Gbit internet connection and top of the line Cisco network hardware that allowed a throughput of 92 terabits per second. It’s also the home of ‘eSport’ championships and creative competitions.

All of this is made possible by Intel and Asus, who are sponsoring Duh-Events to bring the Belgian/Dutch qualifying Counter-Strike clan and a handful of press and enthusiasts to the event with a touring bus under the moniker ‘Pack4Dreamhack’. I am going as both – with a press pass in one hand and my Macbook Pro in the other, I’ll be reporting from Jönköping as the event progresses, wrapping up with an HD video like at WWDC this year. For realtime coverage of the craziness, it’s worth following me on twitter.

My tech-pack has been expanded and adjusted somewhat for this trip:

• Macbook Pro (17″) and Incase sleeve
• Koyono Built Laptop bag
• A PSP for the bus ride
• Steelseries Siberia headset with Griffin iMic
• My old iPhone & iPhone 3G
• Incase iPhone 3G battery
• Logitech G15 keyboard
• Razer Boomslang CE mouse
• Extra large black mouse pad
• Kensington Lock cable
• The usual array of power adaptors, chargers, and batteries
• Cat6E network cable
• Canon EOS XS SLR camera
• Canon SD960 camera
• and of course an extra Exploded Settings shirt!

I’m getting on the bus November 25th and will arrive at the Dreamhack venue in Jönköping the next morning. If you’re in the vicinity, let me know and we can meet up and have a drink together!

As you might have figured from my twitter updates, I spent the weekend at the locally hosted LAN party ‘the Reality’.

A LAN party is an event where a bunch of computer-loving geeks take their computers with them to play games and have fun together, which I certainly had. I made a little video to show what it looks like when over 730 people come together and go crazy. It’s HD – fullscreen playback is recommended!

While using Windows was a bit bumpy at times, the party was great and I’ve had a lot of fun.

Already looking forward to next year.

I just recently got my hands on a mouse I used and loved over eight years ago, and it forced me to reconsider an experience I have taken for granted for a very long time: using a particular mouse with my computer. In this post I detail me falling in love again again with a mouse from my younger years, and ask some of my friends about the way they use their mice.

I can’t design without one. Some people use tablets for this, but I can not wrap my mind around using a ‘pen’ for pointing at stuff on a screen. Even with my Cintiq, I find it rather annoying and clunky to use the Mac OS X or Windows UI. Try double-clicking with a tablet pen if you want a good example of why the computer interfaces of today are made for mice, and not digitizer pens.
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Shawn Blanc has a series of interviews up with various interesting folks sharing their Mac setups. I was honored to answer some of his questions and snap a few pictures of my desk and computer setup, which is in a constant state of flux.

Read the whole thing here. The entire series is worth checking out.

Wow, that was fun. A couple of awesome days in San Francisco with over half of the Mac and iPhone community walking around, meeting great people, having great food, and even seeing a keynote.

In this post, I quickly summarize my impressions of WWDC, and show off my last photos and an HD movie of the queuing for the keynote, getting some shirts printed, a pigeon, and much more.

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Today was a pretty special day in San Francisco for me: it wasn’t just special because I had a truckload of work to do, but also because I had one of my first meetups with internet friends from Macrabbit. You might know them from the excellent CSSEdit.

The Moscone is looking awesome this year. There’s some gorgeous façade artwork on display – there’s a lot more images of it in this post, as well as a look at the banners they hung up inside. But those weren’t the only huge icons on display since today, since me and Sean designed a truly massive print ad for doubleTwist that’s displayed on the side of the flagship Apple Store. It hit TechCrunch after it had been up there for an hour. Some great images of that further into the post as well.

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