Players of an Icelandic club found original ways to celebrate a goal. Enjoy!
Archive for the ‘fun’ Category
Cheering after goals :)
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010Back in Surrey
Sunday, August 29th, 2010A 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.
If the internet could have rules…
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Orange final!
Saturday, July 10th, 2010
If you’re reading this, then you ought to know I don’t care that much for football (/soccer). I don’t. Still don’t.
Having said that:
- It is a pity Germany didn’t make it to the finalsThe Dutch have been traumatised for 36 years, it would be good to have a shot at revenge :)
- We made it to the finals! Woohoo!
Tomorrow, place Knuedler. Probably there will be loads and loads of Spanish. :s Can’t be helped. I’m counting on the Dutch being there too.
PS: That is a really cool graffiti depiction of the match, innit?
“Professional defibrillist”
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010
Let’s face it, House has its moments :) (Season 4, episode 7).
Motivational poster
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
‘Nuff said.
PS: How to skip the non-skippable contents on a DVD (didn’t try myself).
Swing party!
Sunday, May 9th, 2010No Denis, not a “swingers’ party”, a swing party — a party with music from the 1920s and 1930s. Right here in Lux! And it was great fun :)
Well, what else can I add? The YouTube link is not from my party, but it gives a good impression of some of the fun to be had :)
Shopping spree
Sunday, May 9th, 2010Saturday two weeks ago was busy. I was in NL for Bianca’s birthday, a high school reunion, and… a shopping spree!
I was successful. :)
My old TV was showing its age, and I figured I deserved a nice, shiny, new, flat model. Then I dove into things and discovered LED TVs rock compared to ye olde regular LCD TVs. So I wanted one. Problem: the things were damn expensive.
I had held off on purchasing a new one, but it kept itching, so I gave in and decided to settle for a regular LCD model. Imagine my surprise when I went into the first store and found a model suited to my tastes (80cm), with LED backlighting, for a more-or-less affordable price!
I had to check this out. Went to another store, they offered a similar model for an equally similar price… Hmmms, very, very interesting. But if I was getting a TV with all sorts of modern capabilities, including HDMI, I also wanted decent sound. I had heard Gabriele’s new sound system, and it rocks compared to my meagre speakers (I was using my laptop-speakerset… not a great solution). Hence, let’s check out 2.1 sound systems… le OUCH!! That was some expensive shizzle. Nevertheless, the difference between even above-midrange laptop speakers was staggering.
By the way, why 2.1? Well, the point-one for the big bass — you need that for the sound, obviously. Why not more than two speakers, you ask? Easily answered. I don’t have much space, and a correct placement of the speakers would mean the rear speakers are floating somewhere in the room. I don’t want that clutter.
I listened to various sound systems on offer. The first two sounded indeed good. The third just bass-stunned me into an “I want that”-mode. Oh yes I wanted that fat bass sound (and I can tell you, while writing this, it makes you happy to have it :).
Hence, haggling commenced. Both the telly and the sound systems were sold out except for the store models… for the sound system, I’d say no big issue, for the telly… hmms. I think I drove a reasonably hard bargain, then they popped up with the required cables. Damn. So we haggled back and forth on those a bit, and finally I decided I didn’t need an expensive HDMI cable (it’s digital — get real, with a regular DVD player, the cable is not the limiting factor in quality. Plus, it can’t exactly lose quality — it’s digital!). For the sound I was slightly more anxious. So I got the more expensive optical audio connection. As it turns out: my bad. My very bad even. The speakers of my brand new sound system are connected via ye olde copper wiring to the amplifier (I guess Fahnestock clips. See the image — yes, it is roughly that pathetic.
Sound isn’t any less for it though :)
Le anyway, I struck a deal and got myself the equipment. By now, I have set it up and actually bought some CDs to listen to my new fat bass-sound :)
Incidentally, both the birthday party and the high school reunion were fun too :)
To like or not to like: House, MD
Saturday, March 27th, 2010My brother has been diligently following House, MD. As I was visiting him, I watched a few episodes too. Now I find myself on the fence. Is it good? Is it not?
The pro’s:
- The main character is an anti-hero (basically an asshole)
- The infights from the main character to the others are fun
- The medico-babble made me understand why people take exception to the technobabble in the various Star Treks
The con’s:
- Every episode is the same
- Seriously, just about every episode I’ve seen (but one) starts with a situation, where someone in a normal situation suddenly gets sick, maybe coughs up some blood or so, and falls over. WTF??? Does House only treat patients who were perfectly normal till they suddenly fell over??
- House is a world-class diagnostician… who is always wrong the first five or so times. Really, whenever he proposes a procedure that needs an okay from higher-up, they can just shoot it down out of hand. Why? The first request isn’t the cause anyway. For a guy who’s supposed to be smart, I still can’t believe he’s going with the first, second, third or even fourth guesses of his team. Take a hint, check your records: they are wrong. (Would really be refreshing to see a situation where they are actually right).
- The medico-babble is boring.
I don’t speak medico-babble. Throw in a few “pulmonary”‘s, and a few “thorax/cardiac”‘s, combine with “virulent, strain, infection, auto-immune”, shake, tadaaa: medico-babble. Sure, real doctors (the MD type, that is) speak like that. To me, it sounds as if they find the same diagnostics every single time they investigate a patient. It’s like a script: A? no? then B. No? Then C. Every time it sounds like exactly the same script. - The characters didn’t grow on me.
I know, my fault, I started following it in season 4 or 5. Still, I so don’t care about the soap opera aspects.
All in all, enough to complain, no? Well, I’m Dutch and I like complaining.
Perhaps that explains why I am still watching… ;-)
Beyond Good & Evil
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
As mentioned before, I brought back 2 old games from NL last time I visited (and a stack of books, which was missing the first book in the 12-ology. Grrr.). I popped in Beyond Good & Evil and started playing.
Well of course it’s a good game! That’s why I took it back :)
Two things stuck out as better than remembered though: the story, and the localisation. First, the localisation. The game can be played either in French or in Dutch (I probably have the French/Belgium/Dutch version of the game). I played a part in French, but it didn’t appeal that much to me. So I played the most part in Dutch. The voice acting in Dutch is good — really good. Substantially better than the silly dubbing you’d see at children’s cartoons. The way in which the characters speak highlight their characters — Pey’j sounds like a wiley, willful, down-to-earth, heart-of-gold guy, and he is. Double H sounds overly polite, like he’s god a stick up his …, and he sounds like a soldier strongly adhering to the manifest. Well, what did you expect after they addled his brains? He is a bit messed up and falling back on simple settings — and he sounds that way too.
The real gem, however, is when you get separated from Pey’j for a sec in the middle of a dark, dangerous dungeon. You open a door to let him in, and he goes “Wilt u soms kinderpostzegels, mevrouw?”. There is no translating for this, but the blatant flippancy combined with the inherent Dutch-ness of his remark is hilarious.
Second major upside: Story. Having played and finished the game before, the mechanics were known to me and never a big hindrance. So I progressed rather swiftly through the game (at one point, I was busy on the PC while the game idled, and I still finished within roughly 20hrs), which kept the pace of the story going. As it turned out, I waited long enough — I didn’t remember the details of the story (having forgotten completely about the middle third, and most of the other parts). So while gameplay was familiar, and finding my way about was not too hard, there was still plenty to discover, and enough story to discover. The story is creepy. It’s serious. It is, in my view, closer to books in its depth than to movies. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Next, I might play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which I remember mostly enjoying for the cool acrobatics. Story, not that much. If I get round to playing/finishing it, I’ll post an update to let you know how it is a second time around.