Wii got 15,000+ nintendo stars!

January 5th, 2008

And, on top of that, wii also have got err… somewhere around 25 stars in Super Mario Galaxy. Which is a cool game. Wii play, on the other hand… well, the tank game is cool. Perhaps some of the others will catch my fancy. Wii sports somehow never makes it in, funny that huh?

As for Wii Boogie: people claimed lack of a stereo sound output was unforgivable for a music game (Guitar Hero III) — well, you wouldn’t believe how damning lack of a decent font is for a karaoke game.

New Year’s Eve was a blast, really enjoyed it a lot. Rogier came round and somehow we ended up DIY’ing all over my room again (and scoring around 25 stars in SMG ;-). Stupid password expiration scheme of the uni chose to go off over the holidays, which means I am now about to go to work (managed to postpone it a bit, indeed). Finally finished checking a chapter for Mel’s thesis, but somehow didn’t get round to mailing it. Another biggie on the todo list. Beyond this, the new year looks fresh right now. Then again, it’s Saturday right now :)

PS: Upon rereading this post, I see that this one really totally fits the tagline of this blog (‘random rambling’) :)

PS: ashamed Happy New Year! (better late than never!)

UPDATE (14 january 2008): Apparently, Stars can be converted to Wii Points on a 4-to-1 basis. It’s not really very advantageous (if I remember correctly, you can also convert them on a 1 euro to 100 points ratio in a store (20 euro == 2,000 points)), but it is an actual, worthwhile use of your stars. Will consider this — but will need to get the Wii on internet first.

Posted in gaming, holidays | Comments Off on Wii got 15,000+ nintendo stars!

and everything breaks!

December 24th, 2007

Ever since yesterday evening (night, actually), I can’t get the song “everything burns” (Ben Moody with Anastacia) out of my head. The reason? Because everything breaks. E-ve-ry-thing. It’s unbelievable.

Where did this streak of breakage commence, you enquire? Well, it all started on a dark and starry night, a fortnight ago. Upon awakening in the morning, I discovered my bike had been assaulted. Not just mine, but all bikes that were parked outside (in the designated place) had been in a knife fight and had come out on the losing side. Major bummer, as I had just let a bike mechanic install anti-leak-tires on my bike a month earlier. The assailant(s) had deftly avoided the tire’s armour and made an incission on the side. Furthermore, they had seen fit to slash the saddle.

A couple of days later, I still had not found the time to have the bike repaired. So I was using my spare bike, when the propulsion mechanisms of that failed utterly. While riding it. This actually agitised me so much, I went up going home on a new bike that day (note: this is rather decadent, but at our local supermarket there are quite cheap bikes available). It was only 4 days later, when a careless bikester did not heed her turn very well, and managed to crash into me on this new bike (despite me leaving the entire sidewalk to her… some people should learn to look where they are going…). All seemed fine, no injuries were suffered, but about 15 metres from the accident, my brake handle falls from my brand new bike. Turns out that this is a rather flimsy piece to begin with, and the impact it had just born the brunt of was quite a bit more than it could handle. Nevertheless, again a breakage.

A little later, or perhaps earlier (in a parallel process, so to say), I taught a class on voting for our Introduction to Security course. As normal, I planned an Attack of the Week – this time on DRM things, which nicely offset the voting attacks I showed after the DRM class. I found a nice movie, and brought my laptop to show it. Turns out that WinXP did not recognise the file format, so I decided to reboot into Ubuntu and use the ever-powerful mplayer. Well, shutting down worked. Starting up again didn’t. The boot loader just wouldn’t show. Haven’t gotten round to examining that, but supposedly there is a hard disk problem too close the the MBR. So: insert live-cd, reinstall bootloader. Hopefully this will help. Nevertheless, breakage.

Then somewhere along the line, my mp3 player decided to stop playing mp3-files. It could read the file structure, but it could not play any song. “No songs found” was the message, but in browsing many songs were there. That caused one music-free train ride, where I would not have minded some distraction. Problem has been resolved (or, perhaps, circumvented — only time will tell), but this is another breakage.

Now we arrive in the Netherlands, going to meet with Johan over dinner. While just on my way, on my bike (the one in the Netherlands), which was just repaired because the chain had broken, the crank breaks. The crank is the piece of metal that connects the pedal to the bike. There is a “good” one to break and a “bad” one. The good one is the left one, which connects the pedal to the axis. The bad one is the right one, which has the gear attached to it. If that one breaks, you cannot just use any other crank from a random, busted bike. You need a crank with the right gear to replace it. Now you guess which one broke yesterday night.

At least I had some fun kick-scootering home.

Posted in travelling | Comments Off on and everything breaks!

Now you have it, now you don’t…

December 9th, 2007

Sinterklaas was a blast! Too bad I couldn’t bring all my siinterklaasgiifts back with me… Had to take some Sinterklaas candy of course, to spread the joy of the fest in Luxembourg (feeling a bit like a Sinterklaas ambassador here :). So, in the morning, about 5 minutes before we needed to go, I did the final check and decided to check for my Luxembourgian keys. No… such… luck.

WHAT?!?! AAARGH! I needed to get my train, and keys and and … ow shit.
We searched for a bit, no trace of them. Weird thing: I could also not find any trace of a (very) specific cable I put aside to take to Luxembourg. So they might be close together, but where? I turned my laptop bag inside out, turned my normal bag inside out, no clue. Not in my room at my parents, no time to check at my brother’s place… shit.

Well, decided to go and fix things in Luxembourg. That took a bit of doing, but in the end things worked out, I got to the sinterklaas celebration at work, having spare keys to go around. And three days later, I actually found my keys. In my laundry — where I put them because I had to take that to Luxembourg, so I was definitely not forgetting that.

Le duh.

Posted in luxembourg | Comments Off on Now you have it, now you don’t…

Siinterklaas

December 6th, 2007

Yesterday evening we celebrated Sinterklaas again. As usual, we had loads of fun. As usual some of the gifts were outrageous. Can’t wait to get some of the stuff to Luxembourg to have fun with it!

Congratulations to Maartje (and also Stijn), who will (also) become parents — and good ones at that!

And now: to ‘Bourg, to work, to classes!

Posted in friends | Comments Off on Siinterklaas

Hoopje of good news!

November 17th, 2007

Wow. Wowowow. I just learned so much good news from the Hoopje crowd: Marcel & Jessica will become parents, as will Mark & Diana! And, on top of that, Ferry & Yvonne are going to get married!

So, tonight it’s PARTY TIME!

Congratulations to you all, and I will be celebrating your happiness tonight in one form or the other!

Posted in friends | Comments Off on Hoopje of good news!

Make the world better!

November 12th, 2007

Help end world hunger and improve your English at the same time. Cool, not? It’s possible. Check freerice.com, play the game and start helping out!

In addition, you can also see a list of countries working to fight poverty and hunger:

As the chart above shows, five countries have already met the goal to give 0.7% of their income in international aid: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

— poverty.com

Sometimes being Dutch and living in Luxembourg can just make you feel good.

PS: proud achiever of level 37 in that game! How well are you doing?

Posted in in the news | Comments Off on Make the world better!

A Romanian Wedding, part I

November 3rd, 2007

6.30. The alarm will not go off for another 30 minutes and still… There’s this plane to catch! I double-check if I have everything. It slowly dawns on me that I know next to nothing about the whole trip, or the area where we will be staying, or anything. All I know is I should get to the airport, on the plane, and make sure I have met up with the others before I get off. Works for me!

The four musketeersThis turns out to be easier said than done, though. I do not see anyone waiting at what I think is the info-desk. Then, while standing in line for the security check, I suddenly see the *real* info-desk and realise my mistake… too late of course. Ah well, can’t be helped. By the time the gates open, I am getting a little anxious… but then I spot someone who just has to be Michiel’s (i.e. the groom’s) brother. Found ’em!
There are 9 Dutchy’s flying today: Michiel’s  father, his brother, 2 aunt, a niece, and “the four musketeers”: Koos, Johan, Tas (not his real name, but to avoid confusion with the groom I will call him “Tas” here) and me. We will be sharing a room in the hostel, while the family will be staying in a hotel a couple of blocks further.

A quick flight, later, we land in Budapest. I am curious to see how we will find our bus driver(s) on a terminal, but before we’ve finished the coffee, Koos has found them already. Turns out Koos speaks a tiny bit of Hungarian — his brother, Michiel’s witness, is married to a Hungarian. We manage to get our things into the van and leave the airport on schedule. Given that the plane was delayed, this is an unexpected pleasure. The first stop, after an hour or three, is still in Hungary, at a local diner. The prices of food take some getting used to — it’s rather cheap compared to The Netherlands.

The border crossing goes swiftly — much easier than at the airport at any rate. A short ride from the border we gas up and have a 15 minute break, after which we continue into the Transsylvanian night. In the bus, Gert-jan, Koos, Tas and me play cards — rikken. For some of them it has been a very long while, which leads to some hilarious surprises. Eventually, we tire of the game and settle to glance at Transsylvania. While the night is slowly settling, the full moon eerily illuminates the desolate landscape… Welcome to Transsylvania!

After some more hours of driving, we finally enter (well, “fly”… the bus company’s name, ‘nemeth speed’, was deserved!) into Cluj Napoca, the place to be for the wedding. Quite a bit bigger than I had expected actually. We end up at the big church, where Michiel is waiting for us. After settling in to our respective ho(s)tels, we join up with the others for dinner. Afterwards, the night is of course still young, we explore and discover the Romanian nightlife.

After a short search, we hear some music pumping out of a cellar. Well, why not? So we enter the building, go down and find a hip bar (‘Avenue’) downstairs. Many tables, many people sitting and talking, but also loud music, and much dancing. The Romanian nightlife is cool, exciting, and hip. The crowd here seems to be 16 (on average). This gets corrected five minutes later when a couple of girls walk in with a birthday cake with candles “19”. By that time, the Romanian approach to picking up girls has completely dumbfounded us musketeers. One thing is clear, we are missing some of the subtleties involved.

But that’s not what we’re here for anyway. The music is pumping, the party is going, and we are having fun! Relatively early we call it a night. Well, we know what to do tomorrow!

Posted in holidays, travelling | Comments Off on A Romanian Wedding, part I

The prequel (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday)

November 3rd, 2007

“One word sums up the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is `to be prepared'”

After waking early on monday morning, I quickly got myself to working. Not my favourite thing in the morning, of course, but there was this presentation hanging over my head, and there was not sufficient material yet in the presentation. One of the first things is of course checking mail… hey look, a mail from the symposium organisers. Turns out that I do have enough material already! Woohoo! :) Okay, time to hop in the train to Enschede, meet the people there and finish the slides there.

Getting to work in Enschede took some time (even though it is handled neatly, explaining my laptop that it is handled neatly was step 2… eventually, I get connected, work on the slides, meet the people (it’s nice to see them all again), work a bit more and then it’s time to visit Ileana & Stefan’s new apartment. It has changed incredibly since the last time, Stefan & Ileana worked quite hard to get this far it seems. Ayse comes over for dinner too, and we have a nice, traditional Romanian dinner (cabbage+sour cream stuff). Good, I like to be prepared for the wedding :) And, if these tastes are anything to go by, Romanian food will be OK!

Next morning, some more work on the slides, and then they feel finished. Of course they aren’t, but that’s okay, the seminar doesn’t start until two o’clock, so let it settle a bit, have lunch, go through it once more and then: done! There’s actually some new stuff in there compared to the WISSec presentation. All of that is fairly new, so I am not feeling too confident yet. Luckily, there’s enough time to prepare…

And then surprise, surprise, turns out the seminar starts at one instead of two. UH-OH!!! A hurried lunch and a couple of quick glances at the slides later, it’s almost time! Most of the audience are familiar to me, so that’s a relief… waiting to be dissolved by the last-minute entrance of a couple of new folks. :) Good thing I thrive on this sort of thing, I guess. At least, perhaps if I think that I’ll fall for that.

Talk went okay-ish. Somehow felt it could/should have been better, but it wasn’t a substantial miss apparently either. Aah well, something to think about for a next time. Later that evening, I help Ayse out cooking a nice dinner for Stefan & Ileana. We have some fun, and too soon it’s time to go get a train. In the train, I find that I am exhausted. So instead of going to Eindhoven, I get off in Nijmegen and meet up with my sister for a change. It had been a long time, so this is actually really nice.

The next morning I quickly go to work in Eindhoven, to prepare the final things for the trip (doublecheck the Romanian cheat sheet with Simona to see if there are some other words that might come in handy). Home: pack, early to bed, and prepare to get going!

Posted in cooking, friends, work | Comments Off on The prequel (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday)

Guess who’s back?

November 3rd, 2007

So, a short holiday and a not-so-short wedding in Romania later, and some other attended business, I AM BACK BABY! Ronald & me drove back, had a nice evening here, and now I AM BACK!

Wooooooohoooo! Finally, time for some peace, quiet & work! And err, a deadline in 2 weeks, a class to teach next week, a presentation in 3 weeks…. okay, so much for peace & quiet ;-) Well, one out of three is not so bad, now is it ;-)

Still, I am back and I am blogging! First up is of course backblogging (that is not a word… yet) on the wedding. To be done after this post. Or at least to begin after this one. So, hold on to your hats and let’s go on this majestical matrimonial tour…

Posted in friends | Comments Off on Guess who’s back?

Zieleroerselen

October 24th, 2007

In de trein. Vermoeiende dag achter de rug. Vermoeiend weekend achter de rug. Eigenlijk een vermoeiende week, of nee, maand, of nee… wannneer heb ik voor het laatst eigenlijk uitgeslapen? Of goed geslapen? Doet er ook niet toe.

In de trein. Emotionele dag achter de rug. Emotionele week achter de rug. Eigenlijk… shit. Ik zou zeggen vakantie. Komt er ook al aan, alsof het allemaal op bestelling loopt.

Zo slecht gaat het niet hoor. Eigenlijk gaat het prima — reuze zelfs. Zit alleen even in een klein dipje, het is nu wat laat. Alweer. Dat went trouwens best. Dus dat is het eigenlijk niet. Maar dat wist ik ook wel.

In de trein. Nog iets van twee uur te gaan voor ik aankom. Dan nog een half uur lopen. Met mijn aandachtsboog verveel ik me uiteraard na vijf minuten al te pleuris. Gratis krant uit. Er liggen nog vijf exemplaren hier en daar op de grond. Het is hier een zwijnenstal.

In de trein, verveeld, laat. Je moet wat. Werk dan maar? Geen zin in, of eigenlijk wel zin in. Plus die vervelende aandachtsboog he. Je zou het beter een aandachtslijn kunnen noemen. Ik pak mijn tas. In een ultieme poging het werk van mij af te houden, open ik niet het hoofdvak, maar het voorvak. Een nutteloze poging, weet ik bij voorbaat.

Twee kandelaars, netjes opgerold. Shit. Dat was dus toch het verkeerde vak. Daar zit ik dan, met mezelf en twee kandelaren in de trein. Vermoeid. Laat ik dat niet vergeten zeg, dat is een plausibele uitvlucht. Wat eenwoord, daar kan ik vast ook even met mijn gedachten heen — een seconde of vijf. Het voorvak is dicht, de kandelaars uit het zicht, de laptop gepakt, het werk roept. De kandelaars zijn nog niet uit mijn gedachten.
Shit.

Posted in travelling | Comments Off on Zieleroerselen

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »