As I am being forced to work in Windows again (man I miss virtual desktops!), I of course ran into problems with accented characters again (in mutt — I do get some mails in French :). Turns out that this time it was solved by telling PuTTy to translate as ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe). I’m pretty sure the world out there knew that already, but I didn’t :)
For the record, my shell is set to en_US.UTF8 (but setting PuTTy to UTF8 messes things up — don’t you just love consistency? :).
For the love of God: WHY is the world inhabited by so many incompetent people?! You know, it is not that hard to achieve mediocrity. Millions of people do it daily, so why am I confronted with people who can’t?!?!
Oh. My. God.
Not that I am very religious, but imagine returning home to find signs that someone entered your room and violated it. And when I say violated, I mean they went into your kitchen, and removed the heating plates.
Rumours of this had been flying around. I suspected my landlord (the University of Luxembourg) to act responsible and with care. No notice whatsoever. I return home and find myself without cooking equipment. Not only did someone(s) enter my room without my consent or even my awareness, but also something was forcibly taken from my room. To the reasons for this I can only guess — seeing as I have yet to receive any notification whatsoever.
I have been and still am contemplating notifying the police. Given the rumours, I suspect that this is a well-thought-out action by my landlord. But I don’t know. For all I know, someone might have found a way into my room and removed the heating plates. For what purposes, only the gods can guess.
Hmms. I was typing this from an unattached laptop, when I realised the danger in that — or should I say the luck that this was not taken? Yes, abstractly this might be panicking. Then again: an unauthorised person entered my room and took something — something that was quite well-attached and not easy to take. Of course I should worry about other things.
Well, I will sleep on this. For now, I am tired and quite pissed.
PS: In unrelated news: pics / movies from Hoopje weekend are online!
Just returned y’day from the Hoopje Weekend 2008. It was really good to see the group again, and to catch up with people. Of course, in such a weekend you never manage to have a good talk with everyone you would like to catch up with. But I did enjoy myself tremendously :)
In a nutshell:
Spent some time looking for a way to get the Wii on internet. First attempt: transform the laptop into a wireless access point. Should be do-able, right? Well, not enough nerd-points for that (although I do have enough nintendo stars by now :).
Second option: get a wireless router. Plenty of bonus stuff compared to getting an official Nintendo dongle — the thing is not just limited to supplying internet to nintendo-gear, which is cool for visitors. In the Netherlands, you can find a WiFi router for about 25 euro. In Luxembourg, you can find one for about 50 euro.
Okay, so either I wait ’till I am in the Netherlands again, or I wait ’till I am in the Netherlands again. I am willing to spend a bit more, but not that much more.
During my hunt for a WiFi router, I came across a Nintendo dongle for 30,-. Reasonable price, but limited. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. It’s small, compact — I will take a usb-stick with me when moving; dunno about a router. USB stick will fit, no matter what, routers… just don’t know.
So the next day, I happened to be in the neighborhood around closing time. I decided to check, and by cosmic coincidence I made it in time. Took the thing home, and installed it. That was not that easy, but it turned out not to be an official Nintendo dongle, but a WiFiMax by Big Ben. Cool thing is, that this gadget converts my laptop into an access point! So now I have my router — or at least enough of a router for my current purposes.
And I have plenty of Wii Points (virtually no more stars though, but they were deprecating come July, so that’s not too bad. At least they are put to good use!)
Finally, I managed to get my sporty rhythm back. Or at least, the barest remnants of it were uncovered once more in the deep cavities of my memories. In the beginning, I discovered a flaw (do not drink fruit juice prior to running), and an obstacle (moderate counter wind has a far stronger influence than previously anticipated). Thankfully, the latter was mitigated by altering the course from the open fields to running into the residential area. This also had an ameliorating effect on the former. Stark ignorance of the issue complemented the remedial approach applied towards the former. On the whole, this proved to be sufficient, if not totally satisfactory. Upon arriving at my abode, the complete absence of wind made me feel ballsy, and I decided to prolong the endeavour a bit further. However, upon completing extension one (the possibility of a further extension was present), I happened upon a co-inhabitant of my residence, waiting for the bus. I stopped for a short talk and discovered my co-inhabitant was in the process of moving out, so instead of swiftly continuing, I called an end to my route and waved her off.
All in all, a 34 minute run. Could’ve been slightly better, but given the feeling after 14 minutes, slightly amazing I made it further. The new knee support might have had a positive influence here too :)
I have already been living here a full year… so much has happened, and yet time seems to have passed so quickly. It has been a wonderful year, start-to-finish (and nicely coinciding with Chinese New Year). Some things have still to be taken care of (kitchen cabinets…), some other things went so smoothly I don’t even remember spending time on them. I have enjoyed visits by many, and hope that in the coming year more of you will stop by. I’ve been learning quite a bit here, and enjoyed the work, the environment and the change of scenery. I will not say “it was all for the best”, for that would imply a ranking between the previous situation and the current one, but I have no regrets.
If you are interested to see what has transpired the last year, you can check the archive of course. There are too many highlights to start to list, and every time I reminisce a different set of memories stand out. I am looking forward to the new year with anticipation. If it is anything like last year, it’ll be gooooood.
Slight reminder to all of you vaguely planning to visit: countdown has started! I will be in Luxembourg for another 11 months. After that, currently all bets are off (as in: dunno how things go and where I will be living then).
Thanks to all for making last year so great and the transition to Luxembourg so pleasant.
Finally (although rather late), Dutch universities will require some teaching qualifications of their teachers. The situation used to be such, that to be a teacher in the Netherlands, you needed a special diploma. Different ones for teaching toddlers (4-6 year olds), for primary school (6-12), and a variety for highschool depending on the level and the age group of the children (12-16/18). But then, to teach university students — incidentally, the highest education you can partake in in the Netherlands — no educational qualifications were required. Teaching is / was a duty bestowed on the University research personnel. Now arguments can be made for such a situation, but case in point is that even someone teaching toddlers has/had to have vastly superior educational qualification than those teaching the pinnacle of our society.
Now the rectores magnifici of the Dutch universities have signed an agreement on this. There will be a 200 hour study program which results in a “BKO” certificate. And apparently, they want to create possibilities for excellent teachers to further their careers — unheard of, so far the only way up at a university is research. Interesting times ahead, but all in all I am at least glad that we will have some teaching requirements for those who teach our finest.
Currently playing: Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, New Super Mario Bros (the minigames).
Close to my work in Luxembourg, there is a supermarket — well, more a French hypermarché. Big does not begin to describe it; it’s gigantic. Humongous. And, in true Dutch fashion, they have a bonus-card-like system. You scan the card, and for some selected products, you get 5% of the price as a debit on the card. On Tuesdays, this is 10% (for most, but not all, products that grant you this). And sometimes there are special offers where you get more money or a larger percentage for a special product.
Over time, with careful planning (shop on Tuesdays! Buy into the hype, buy the products that come with money!), you can accumulate eventually some money.Enough to purchase Zelda: Phantom Hourglass at least :) :) :)
I’ll be trying that out in 3 hrs in the train, most probably :)
I have been forced to work once more under Windows. The experience is less than pleasant — most noticably the low resolution coupled with the lack of virtual desktops leading to desktop real estate being at an all-time high.
Anyway, under my trusty old Ubuntu I had configured CapsLock to double as a control key. It’s quite easy there. In Windows it is not so easy, but doable. There’s plenty of tips on the web (e.g. anticapslock.com). After a bit of Googling and browsing the following made the magic happen:
00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00
02 00 00 00
1D 00 3A 00
00 00 00 00
Explanation: the numbers are in little endian, so swap every block of two. 00 02 is the number of changes; 001D is the (left) ctrl key, and 003A is the CapsLock key. The rest is header and footer stuff.
It works, I am a happy camper now! Now onwards, to copy&paste more stuff from LaTeX to Word :S
Edit: Do reboot your machine afterwards for the settings to take effect. This is, after all, windows :)