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Going below the equator (SA update #1)

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Flag of South AfricaIt’s cold here! I arrived at Johannesburg airport yesterday morning, having hardly slept. My bad: we left at 11pm, more or less, and in the first hour and a half they were handing out food and such. So then, I figured to try the video on demand part ;-) It was cool! Gnomeo and Juliet, Rio, Thor, another movie I’m interested in (will watch on the way back). The plane was also a gigantic whale! 2 levels… geez! I found that a good place to sit is probably either near a door or in the center isle in the center — provided no one is sitting next to you. All because of legspace. Sitting next to the aisle isn’t great: people walking by, and you shouldn’t dump your legs in the aisle because of that…

Anyway, Around three I realised sleeping would be a good plan. Around 7, people were waking up and around 7.30, breakfast was being served. That ain’t much sleep. Ah well.

I got off the plane (as one of the later ones), took forever to get money (I’m apparently withdrawing from my savings account?!?!) and then lazily made my way to the pickup point: a hotel. There, I picked up internet and tried to work. No luck, too tired. Waited for hours till the pickup showed up (as scheduled) at 17:00. It took another 30-45 min before we were finally off, and then a 2 hr drive to the reserve. We were just in time to have dinner (though it was cold and leftovers). Made my way to bed, read a bit, and slept with earplugs (too much wind making noise). Earplugs caused me to sleep in till 6:44, which was nice, I guess. Breakfast was supposedly served at 7, though in reality everyone was slowly working up to there, so 7.15 was more like it. I will so sleep in till 7.15 tomorrow!

Anyway, no pictures yet. So far, SA didn’t look tantalising, but that’s probably because I was dead tired and almost asleep in a hotel for most of my stay here. The reserve (where the conference is taking place) does look cool! Tonight: game drive! ;-)

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Vienna, here I am!

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

travel logoI had to wake up way too early on Friday to get to my 7:10 plane to Vienna.Funnily enough, by the way, I managed to squeeze everything into one piece of carry-on luggage. Not sure yet on whether or not I’ll do that again for the next hop — I do appreciate some more leg space, but I’ll have a transfer and I also appreciate having everything there. To ponder about. Anyway, I got up way too early, wasted time at the airport and touched down near Vienna. Then, I hopped on a train to Graz and got moving to Baptiste and Katherina.

I had a wonderful weekend there. Most of the Friday consisted of catching up on much-needed sleep :) The rest was good too: Graz is actually a really nice town. Visits recommended! Sunday I got back to the station, and bak to Vienna. I quite easily found my hotel. It has turtles. Agnieszka wondered if they were ninja turtles, I’l try to find out.

Anyway, Vienna, here I am! Now entertain me ;-)

PS: I’m here for a conference, which takes up most of the week. Might decide to play hookey a bit though. ;-)

Posted in holidays, travelling, work | No Comments »

Playing with GIMP

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Gimp logoThe other day, for work, I wanted to make part of a picture stand out. I opened GIMP, but not sure to proceed. And then I hit upon an idea: have the original in B&W, and have the highlighted part in colour!

Sometimes this looks really good, sometimes it’s more okay than amazing. But, at any rate, it’s neigh-on trivial in GIMP, as this tutorial shows.
Short short version

  1. duplicate background layer (right-click layer, “copy”)
  2. make new layer grayscale (color menu -> desaturate, try the options)
  3. add layer mask (right-click layer, “add mask”, select “white”, click add)
  4. paint on the mask with black to remove those parts of the layer (brush tool or pencil tool)
    fix mistakes by painting with white (press ‘x’ to toggle between background and foreground color)
  5. save image

And what does that get you?

voting booths voting booths (b/w)

Pretty nifty for my first serious GIMP’ing, no? :)

Edit: just found out how to easily have lines around a selection:

  1. select something,
  2. choose a brush or pencil of appropriate size and color
  3. Click Edit > Stroke selection; choose the lower radio button (“Stroke using a paint tool”)
  4. done!

Yeah yeah, trivial stuff huh? Two things: 1, last time it took me way too long and the result was entirely unsatisfactory; 2. this works on any selection, not just a square or circle. And that is cool :)
Outlining Switzerland on a map of Europe in 5 sec is cool :)

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Monday mornings: low power levels

Monday, March 21st, 2011

It’s Monday. Despite the Monday-y-ness of the day, you manage to arrive in the office before 9. Hooray! As usual, you turn on your PC and fetch some water to make some… hold on. Let’s try that again.
You turn on your PC… … you turn on your PC… … …

Okay, let me check the instructions for turning on the PC:

  1. Press the powerbutton

Unlike its usual effect of starting to whizz and burr happily, today this doesn’t even induce the slightest dissatisfied hiccup from my trusty old PC. Just a blinking orange light of the power button. Hmmms.

Fastforward a bit, and after opening two deprecated PCs hunting for a replacement power supply, we have to give up. Before I finished setting up one of those old PCs as my temporary PC, the man from computer support returns wielding… a new powersupply! Hoooraaaaaay!

Five minutes later, and I’m typing this. It took a while to hunt down, but I am seriously impressed by the speed with which local computer support got me back on track. So: a happy note to start the week!

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Back in Surrey

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

A bit of background first: I’m on a grand European tour (for work). There are three events: the combined UK/Lux voting project meetings in Surrey (UK), the summer school on voting I’m (co-)organising in Bertinoro (Italy) and the voting workshop in Fribourg (Switzerland).

So, I’m back at Uni of Surrey. It’s a bit weird to be here — for having lived here a mere three months, the place seems steeped in memories. There’s the breakup, the supermarket where I always got dinner, walking around town and enjoying the shops again…

Today was a good day. Dave, an UniS colleague, proposed on Friday eve in the pub to go swimming. There was an outdoor waterskiing center, that opened its track to swimmers in the early morning. Why not, sounded like a challenge. And it turned out to be! Woke up at 6:40 (continental time), so anxious was I. 30 minutes ahead of my alarm… We went there, I rented a wetsuit (previous experience: outdoor swimming over long distances works a hell of a lot better with wetsuit), and off we went! it went okay, though I’m not used to looking where I’m going (in a pool, you can easily tell if you’re going straight — not so simple outdoors). After a jacuzzi, Dave showed me the borough. We drove up to the gates of Windsor castle, and it was impressive. Windsor itself is fun too, a typical british hamlet with some tourist attractions (the leaning teahouse was unfortunately still closed). Next up was Ascot. Yes, Ascot! I treaded where the horses race… the grass is well-kept, long and quite wet that early in the morning :).

Onwards we went, through the borough, some quaint little villages left and right, till we got back to Guildford. Dave drove up the hill behind Castle carpark. I’d never been there, and the view is amazing! A bit further up the hill, you can even see Canary Wharf. We enjoyed our brunch at a restaurant, and then Dave had to leave.

Next up: shopping! My backpack had broken two days before this trip, so I needed a new one. Went to Argos, and found a cheap replacement. It’s not a high-quality bag, but for 5 pounds, you can’t expect much (got a wallet and a pencil case — both come in handy for this trip).

Final stop: books. I had run out of books, plus: I’m in the UK, they’ve got English books aplenty here — and that is what I predominantly read. I got myself the new instalment in a series by KE Mills (aka Karen Miller) I started reading while employed in Guildford. Plus more (Snow by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel-prize winner), because I can and it came recommended :)

All of that was enough, so I went home, Tesco-lunch, home, worked a bit, and had dinner with Peter. Dinner was great for two reasons: one, we were having take-out Italian (and are going to Italy tomorrow); two, we ended up having a discussion on politics, on proportional representation versus geographical representation etc. That discussion was fun! Got us wondering when parties arose. It seems more logical in the Dutch (prop. rep.) setting than in the UK (geographical).

So: great day today, managed to do some work, still a lot of things to do before Wednesday :s. If time, I’ll try to post more after SecVote 2010.

Posted in friends, fun, politics, sports, travelling, work | No Comments »

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