I've dealt with reporting bugs to Opera and Wordpress. Also to some PHP projects and other things where I usually know the developers personally, or have nice chat/mail conversation with them (further unrelated to the bug as they all happened to use trac). Apperently submitting a bug report to Microsoft is a whole lot harder.
Today nrc.next published 100 questions about The Netherlands one has to answer if you wish to come here by marrying someone who already lives here. I don't know how many questions you should answer correctly, but the sixth question, Wat betekent Nederland?, or in English, What does The Netherlands mean? already gave me trouble. I was thinking about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of sexual orientation, Harry Potter for minister-president and things like that. As it turns out, the answer was as simple as low lands. I doubt how answering those questions correctly will make anybody a better (Dutch) citizen. Especially the knowledge that many cyclists in traffic is something typically Dutch (question 22) seems quite useless to me... I know it is so, but I couldn't think of an answer to the question nevertheless when I read it. However, they do get some kind of teachings-package thing they can study before they have to answer the questions, so that would make it a lot easier. I suppose that if the questions are in Dutch, at least it's a test to wether they can speak enough Dutch to understand and make themselves understandable or not.
Breaking news! JW photographed cleaning himself! This afternoon, your star photographer took a picture to prove that JW never cleaned himself while Flokkie does so all day. Who can imagine his imagination (haha) when about one hour later, JW started to clean himself! However, he quit soon after he started and got back to his usual lazy behaviour.
We have two rabbits running, eating and shitting around on our patio. Their names are Flokkie and Johnny Walker. Their lives are coloured with tragedy. A little less than two years ago, when I first came here, there were two rabbits doing their thing. One of them was called Whiskey, the other had the name of Flokkie. About half a year later, Leonie came to live here. She somehow managed to let her teckel lose and not much later Whiskey was history. To compensate for the loss, she bought a new rabbit. After a short consideration period we decided to call him Johnny Walker, in general speech JW (pronounced something like jayway). As you probably guessed, he is named Johnny Walker in honour of his predecessor, Whiskey. As laserlight so rightly pointed out, JW looks like a sort of a cross-breed between a dog and a cat. We already made fun of his ears from day one. But on top of that, he's absolutely allergic to being either caressed or picked up! If you try it he runs away like he saw the devil. Therefore he is quite useless as a rabbit. After all, why else do you have one? I do however find a strange kind of sadistic pleasure in picking him up anyway and forcing him to enjoy caressing. Or perhaps I am completely wrong about the rabbit and in that case he enjoys it much more than I do. Flokkie is the oldest and most photogenic of the two. He is about nine years old. Old age is beginning to take its toll and sometimes you can hear him panting after running a bit. Unlike JW, Flokkie either enjoys being picked up, or is indifferent towards it. If he is hungry, he has a demanding pose where he'll stand on his lower legs, looking somewhat like a squirrel. He also sits like that if he's cleaning himself. Since you seldomly see JW cleaning himself, I assume Flokkie is a lot cleaner. Both of the rabbits are a joy to roof-tourists (you can walk over the roof) and visitors. Especially the girls will usually utter statements like "wow, look at the cute rabbits!" While JW was growing up, there were a lot of conflicts with Flokkie over their rank. Meanwhile, presumably mainly during the summer, Flokkie clearly established himself as the leader of the stack, despite JW's bigger size and presumably greater physical power. Neither of them likes to pose for the camera much. Nevertheless, I think these pictures capture their spirits. Of course, they do not beat my intelligent cactus, but they're pretty cool.
Mick moved away to the city. He just left with his last belongings. You could say it hasn't really dawned upon me yet, but on the other hand, he'll change from a flatmate to a good friend. I guess it's not that different all in all. Yesterday Gerard, who moved away a few months earlier, came by for dinner. Interestingly enough, it seemed like he still lived here. And we still have to do a Christmas dinner. Crappy lack of time. The weather is great, but I haven't been able to do anything I wanted to do today for some reason. Call it lazy if you want. I think it's more a matter that my general feeling is "do it good, or don't do it at all". I felt that today I wouldn't have done it good. Still, it would be better if I had done it quite good than not at all. But how to force yourself to do that, that's the problem. JW is the strangest rabbit ever. If you give him a kick at his arse (accidently, who expects the stupid animal to sit right in front of your door?), he just sits there pretending nothing happened. If you feed him from your hand and try to caress him, he acts like he saw the devil and seeks some hideout.
Imagine. You SMS someone, some girl standing next to you happens to notice the name of whom you're sending it to and then two of them look disappointed. On one hand it was funny, on the other really sad. Was that the most interesting thing that happened? I think not, but my plan to call everything hardcore failed (I forgot all about it) and my philosophical babble is not that interesting.
Today we all got a "Netherlands against terrorism" brochure in the mailbox. I would just like to point out how incredibly "useful" it is. Most interesting of all, it contains a list explaining certain words at the back. Terrorisme (terrorism) Infiltreren (to infiltrate) De Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding (NCTb, national coordinator terrorism-prevalence) Radicalisering (radicalising) Propaganda (propaganda) Het Alerteringssysteem Terrorismebestrijding (alert system terrorism-fighting) Samenspannen (conspire) Innovaties (innovations) Forensisch onderzoek (forensic research) As you can see those are all words no human being has ever heard before, if you don't count that most of them occur in the paper, on television, on the radio and on the internet daily. Except one, perhaps. The ugliest one of them all. The "alerteringssysteem". My first thought on the word was "what goddamn idiot/anglofile used that instead of waarschuwingssysteem". And then on to the description: "a alerteringssysteem is a waarschuwingssysteem". Call the thing what it is. Anyway, besides for that horrible word the whole brochure is made for 2 years olds with a mental-handicap. If it was made the way I presume it was - in a coffeeshop with a good joint - then I forgive them. Otherwise someone has to be convicted. :P
I'm not mad, I have an intelligent cactus. Damn, everything feels like a gigantic workload today while I really don't have that much to do. Better luck tomorrow I guess. I watched all episodes of Coupling now and it's a series I can fully recommend to anyone. Also I'm stupid because Monday there was no Mechanics of Materials college, but today for some reason I slept through my alarm (meaning snoozing and then sleeping another two hours). I went to bed as early as 22:30 for God's sake, how can I sleep until 9:25?!?!? And I don't even feel awake, I feel damn tired, probably because I had too much sleep or something. On top of that there's wet snow right now, which sucks. Give me either snow or no snow, not the fake cheapshot stuff.
You Passed 8th Grade Math Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct! Could You Pass 8th Grade Math? I noticed this quiz over at Shelley's weblog. Yay, I got all of the simple questions correct. I'm wondering what 8th grade means exactly though, in terms of age. The hardest thing in the quiz was to figure out that "mode" is called "modus" in Dutch. :P Ah well, at least it proves I'm more intelligent than the cactus at my window. Although... I can't be too sure of that. I have hands and my cactus doesn't. So I can only be sure it proves that I'm far above "8th grade"-level. Too bad. I would've liked to know for sure that I'm more intelligent than my cactus.
Apperently multiple people searched for funny tree frans in Google, which resulted in their arrival on this weblog. Sadly I did not offer a funny picture of me with a tree yet, so they probably left shortly. However, I have one and it's requested according to the big G, so here it is. Am I funny under that tree or what? :P I hope they realized that they should have been searching for happy tree friends; or at least that's what I think they were trying to reach.
Apperently the Windows Firewall couldn't laugh about the joke I made yesterday in which I said it was insecure. When I booted up today, Windows warned me that the firewall was disabled. So I went to the settings and I got this: So it gave me a beating and left my data open for virus infections. Perhaps I even got a tiny cold because of it. The lesson is clear, stay friends with your firewall!
Yesterday I got myself this camera. It has 5 megapixels, 3x optical zoom and it's nice and small. The true kind of compact point & click camera. And it's bloody fast. I wouldn't be me if I didn't attempt to create interesting/freaky/funny compositions with it right from the start. But I didn't read the manual. Turns out I activated the "turn evil and take-over the world"-mode of my camera by accident. It persuaded my laptop to join his evil scheme as his accomplice. They managed to capture me and now I'm trapped. Someone better come and rescue me. It's pure luck that I never installed a better firewall than the Windows Firewall, otherwise my laptop would have been able to keep me from "typing" this cry for help.
Benjamin Franklin was a babe magnet. This may not be the most noteworthy of his many talents, but then again, it might be. Of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence, it's nice to know that the crafty dodger was sufficiently cognizant of the feminine mystique to gain notoriety for being highly attractive to members of the female sex. It speaks well of any male politician to genuinely like women. It's the old, "Make love, not war" style innovation. The standard accolades for Benjamin are things like "America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, humorist and business strategist." [1] Yada, yada, yada. Perhaps Monsieur Franklin did indeed accomplish much. But then again, maybe he was just in the right spot at the right time. The more relevant question is what was his philosophy, what was his ideals and aversions, and most significantly, how did he manage to attract all those babes? Why is this important? Together with Laurel & Hardy, Jack Nicholson and a couple of others he's one of my favourite Americans. This new information brings him up higher on that list, although the list doesn't actually exist. It basically turns him from a very interesting person into a rolemodel. :P
Today my dad’s “comrade” was removed. Comrade here means the thing with all the chords and stuff going into his blood. His fluid diet was also cancelled, meaning he can more or less eat normal again. He can almost walk by himself again (currently with such a walker old people use) and just a few days ago he could barely pull up by himself. So everything’s going well. My father, with the operation and everything hadn’t yet heard I switched to IO (Industrial Design/Industrieel Ontwerpen) and was very positive about the news, as was my mother earlier on. This afternoon, together with my mom, I took care of changing my parents’ connection to “InternetPlusBellen” (Internet plus Calling), KPN’s new ADSL and telephony offering. You don’t have a normal telephone line anymore, but VoIP instead. Not that you’ll notice any difference in how you call as it’s compatible with old phones via the box which enables the stuff. Further the internet will remain the same as it is, but the complete package will be € 34,95 per month, thus cheaper. Besides you can call for free to non-mobile numbers in the Netherlands in the weekend, which is not that interesting, but will presumably make a little difference for calling with some family which isn’t on Skype yet. It also includes compatibility with soon to come technology like video telephones and such, but I guess I’d prefer just to buy myself and my mom a cheap webcam and use Skype 2 for that and I doubt my mom would like a phone with all kinds of weird things. Her own mobile phone she considers just fine and mine with camera and stuff she already considers over the top. Frankly I agree with her, but there are no phones with colour screen and other stuff I like without a camera in it anymore… and besides it has proven to be quite nice at times, although usually it’s just useless because of the low resolution. So for my parents nothing will change, except that it’s slightly cheaper. A much bigger difference, also included in the package for free, is the WLAN which also comes with the box enabling all the technologies. Secured Wireless Internet Access at my parents, and I don’t have to put any work into it, nor do I or my parents have to pay anything for it since we ordered before the first of March. Can it get any better? ;) Last Friday I watched Funny Business with Rowan Atkinson, a not too serious analysis of (slapstick) comedy techniques. Having acquired it from an American community of lovers of British comedy, I was surprised to find it was recorded from Dutch television, so Dutch subtitles were integrated in the movie itself. It’s illegal of course, but it’s not like it’s available on DVD or VHS, so my conscience simply enjoyed watching it as much as the rest of me. Just a little while ago I watched 50 things to eat before you die, something I got from the same community. It was quite an interesting list, although (with some national pride perhaps) I’d say it lacked herring (Dutch style). On the other hand, with Sushi being at 9 and fresh fish at 1, one could argue it’s basically covered by that. On the other hand, I consider it as unique as octopus (Greek style) in a way. The program got me really hungry so I ate some of my bread, but then somewhere in the 20’s of the list the American Breakfast came along. It certainly looked pretty good, but the one person portion looked like you could eat from it with six people, or perhaps even six third-world families. The mere sight made me feel completely filled. Right now I’m finishing the remainder of my bread, most notably the parts I put Roquefort on. It’s certainly lacking from that list of 50 things (not specifically Roquefort, just cheese in general), but on the other hand it’s a British list, I’d assume we’d get a different list in the Netherlands. Typing this on my laptop keyboard in the train I’m making more typos than usual, but Word seems to correct all of them automatically. It makes me wonder to what degree Microsoft is helping people in a habit of bad typing, for example to type “teh” without even noticing it. Last Thursday I went to Nedtrain with a bunch of other Mechanical Engineering students (switching is no reason not to go on interesting excursions, now is it?) and I basically planned to spend my time in the train going to Nedtrain by talking to Thomas and Ivo. In the last minute however Thomas decided to bring “The World according to Clarkson” with him, which he lent from their “bathroom-library”. In the train however, it turned so that I couldn’t sit with Thomas and Ivo for lack of space and I nicked the book. I haven’t returned it yet and I will not either until I finished it. That brings me to another interesting thing. Except for Lost and Die Hard, I’ve only been watching British programs over the past two weeks. I’ve mainly been listening to British music (Bowie, Pink Floyd, Stones) and now I’ve been reading a British book. Ah well, it doesn’t mean anything really as just a month ago I was only watching Friends, The Simpsons, reading Jack Vance and Kurt Vonnegut. And of course I’ve been watching a lot of Dutch cabaret/theater, it’s just that my foreign “efforts” always seem to be so concentrated on one country. I just noticed my writing is getting a little vague and less comprehensive. I’ve been going on without looking back for almost 30 minutes, so I guess it’s time to stop. I could easily continue typing for the other hour my train trip will last, but I’ll continue reading and listening to music instead. But another thought entered my mind and I cannot yet stop typing. Since the late 90’s,
My order arrived today (The Offspring's Smash, David Bowie's Diamond Dogs and Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, which is a book, not a cd ;)). I just thought I had to mention that except for Pratchett's book (which was based upon Mel's recommendation) I probably bought all of them because of illegal downloading. By that I don't directly mean that illegal downloading is good, but I do mean that this is the only way I get the control over the media I want (by buying non copy-protected CD's), combined with the fact that the current marketing methods usually aren't good most of the time. In fact the last album I think I really bought without having listened to it first in one way or another (including downloading, but also at friends or such) was Slipknot's self-titled album, which I listened a bit in the record store and decided to buy it. It's not directly bad, but turns out it's worse than I originally thought (4 years ago that is). I suppose this post was sort of hard to follow, which is easy to explain. I'm just typing down an inner battle in the hope to get more clarity of my personal view on it. I do however think it's righteous for me to get like a 2000 prints limited album in mp3 form, simply because it's not available in any other way. I think the law actually states that that is allowed, at least for libraries.
There are a few sort of old sites I wanted to tell you about anyway. SpreadIE.com is the logical answer to spreadFirefox.com. Firefox helps communist nations, switch back to IE! The content on the site is too obviously fake to be funny though. Then there's IE7.com. I consider it quite a brilliant action by whoever bought the domain. Meanwhile, Opera Mini is the only Opera related thing I've been spreading lately. Everybody in my circle of friends already switched to Firefox or Opera, so there seems little left to be done.
