Heh, finally found a link on how to get my extra fancy mousebuttons to work in X. Not terribly important, but the list of annoyances is dwindling, which is the most important conclusion :)
Linux working more and more
April 16th, 2007Daytrippin’
April 15th, 2007Today I joined Dmitri on a beer bike tour (photos, trip + pics on google maps)(yes, I drank more beer today than I have in a long long while). We took a train to Libramont and mounted our iron steeds. It took us a bit to get used to biking in the Ardennes (kind of weird to be biking on roads with a speed limit of 70 km/hrs, but more on that later). We arrived safely in St. Hubert and visited the Cathedral. Lonely Planet was right, the inside is much better than the outside would lead you to believe.
We continued over an all but deserted road towards Fourneau St-Michel. The first part involved some climbing — it’s not really that mountainous, but still, uphill is uphill. Of course, there is always a sunny side, and today the sunny side was everywhere! Especially after we reached the top. You know how you can become accustomed to situations you would’ve considered outrageous, if you are confronted with them often enough? Well, I started to consider 50 a relaxing speed for my bike…
Best part was when we hit the 14% downward slope. That was after a lengthy descent. Yes, this is begging for it. I had to break, since I prefer not to race over a crossing at that speed and I couldn’t see it clearly enough. And then I could. Turns out there wasn’t any crossing. Cool, brakes loose and go, go, GO, GO, GOOOOO!!
And I went. Oh my God did I go. I BROKE THE SPEED LIMIT. Which was 70 km/h. On my bike. Without peddling.
Admitted, that last part is not so impressive :) But I am still impressed with the rest. 72.6 km/h. Oh wow. Best tried if there is no crossing of any kind whatsoever, and if there the road continues uphill afterwards to help you slow down again.
Still: is that cool or what?? :) :)
We continued to Ambly, where there is a very small brewery: St. Monon. We enjoyed a beer there, bought a souvenir (more beer) and continued onwards towards our goals: Han-sur-lesse and Rochefort. We wanted to check out the famous caves near Han, and buy some Rochefort in Rochefort :)
However, we arrived late in Han (partially due to enjoying getting our feet relaxed by a mountain river), so first thing (after buying sunscreen – quite overdue, but better late than never) was going to the caves. You are taken there by a train, and before departure photo’s are made of most people with a stupid bird. I did not feel like that, but before I could object the damn bird was on my shoulder. Grr. Next thing, the stupid animal grabbed my necklace (brand new) and did not let go until it broke.
CURSE WORDS! I had bought the necklace 2 days earlier!! At a jeweller — meaning that (as far as I know & payed for), it’s from genuine gold. A.k.a. not cheap shit. GRRRRRRRRR!
Well, last thing isn’t said on that, but anyway, the caves turned out to be pretty cool (and not just literally), but by the time we returned to sunlight again, it was close to closing time for shops. So we (Dmitri) sneakily bought Rochefort in Han-sur-Lesse, after which we biked via Rochefort (closed shops by the time we passed through) to Jemelle, where we took the train back. All in all, a very nice way to enjoy one of the first free summer days of the year :)
(except for grrrrrr part)
Dinner: boerenkool again, dessert: monastery cheese and russian fish
Running
April 14th, 2007Running is gradually becoming more and more easy. Wednesday I pushed it too far, but to my own surprise I recuperated quickly. Still, with all the hills here, I am taking it a notch down — better safe than sorry! Ran a bit on Friday here, and that went down smoothly.
Recent dinners: Cheese fondue (yum!), boerenkool with Bretonnish dessert (yum!!)
Nice :)
April 9th, 2007Two fun things occurred:
- I had fun on a seesaw. With only one other person on the seesaw. While the seesaw was in sort of balance.
(to me, that’s a new experience) - Running is going well. Managed 6×2, 5 sessions. First time I actually felt myself working for it (instead of just my knees working for it, I mean)
Well, let’s see what the rest of this lovely Easter Monday brings :)
Last gamed: Zelda: Minish Cap
Being in .nl (update galore #2)
April 7th, 2007It feels like I’m lacking focus with all these “update galore”‘s, but then again, much to tell (and more not to tell :), so let’s get this show on the road!
Since I came to .nl this time around, I got a quick round of updates — to be expected of course, especially if there’s a wedding (see previous post). I finally got to see Denis’ fancy new hotrod (and yes, it’s a nice car). Visited the IPA dinner+social event on a special invitation — originally I couldn’t make the IPA days due to appointments, but when I apologised the organisation was friendly enough to invite me to partake in the social event. This time, the game (it’s always an adaption of a game) consisted of teams shouting letters and placing the shouted letters in a square in order to make as many long words as possible. Hard game, but we had the coolest word – “ij” was allowed as a typical dutch letter (not to be confused with “y”), so our team made the 5 letter word “ijstijd”! :) And in the end, most other teams hadn’t found a use for the two “ij”‘s, gna gna. Biked back in the middle of the night, thanks to Chris accompanying me — the offer of a bed in Heeze sounded very tempting…
The day after I missed out on the ouwelullenborrel of GEWIS because we at FM had a borrel at the same time – I know, I should plan the FM borrels at different times (yes, I am still the main initiator for these borrels :). By this time, the plans for my return journey had been rearranged again. It seems like every time I come to .nl, there is something rearranging my plans for returning to Lux ;-)
Anyway, afterwards enjoyed a very nice dinner Chez Ania, with the fancy new steamer (which had a broken button, so it was exchanged the next day). Ania had told me there was a surprise planned, turned out to be karaoke. I never mind that, but I always feel a bit of pity for the crowd ;-)
Somewhere along the lines I discovered that Stijn is the proud owner of a Wii nowadays – news that was followed the next day by Nintendo announcing a higher expected profit over 2006. Coincidence? I think not :)
To finish off: just dropped Ania off at Schiphol – nice of the car to hold out for once past Utrecht ;-)
And: I just ran a bit again. The 6-3 schedule (6 mins run, 3 mins walking) seems to be pushing my joints to the edge, but not beyond. And that is really good news! (If you’re me at least :) Anyway, off for a shower, meeting Johan and partying with Tijntje.
Last gamed: WarioWare, Megagame$ — unlocked the damn Pyory game, I consider the game finished now
Updates galore
April 4th, 2007Phew, much happened since last update. First up: a big congratulations to Jeroen, Tijntje, Maartje, Arnout & Aukje and Yohan on respectively birthday, graduation, birthday, wedding and PhD defense. The wedding was lovely, and the ensuing party was very nice. It had been quite a while since I had seen most guests (some never, but I mean the guests I know). Almost didn’t recognise Arnout’s parents – but it had been 10 years, and they also didn’t recognise me :)
One last thing about the discussions I had at the wedding: Suzanne: I’m not sure how you remember it, but to me the whole thing between you, Karin and me always ended in a tie :) So let’s keep the memory like that ;-)
(and have a nice wedding yourself!)
So, that was a short look back, but kind of in reverse… so a bit longer, and in a better order:
I travelled back by train from Lux on Wednesday the 25th, and had a nice pause in Maastricht to meet Jennifer and cook for her once. She has some nice housemates, we enjoyed a nice dinner (dessert: strawberry, freshly stirred cream and ice) and then it was onwards again for me. (Could say a lot about how nice the evening was, but I won’t :P)
Thursday, after meeting Sjouke at CWI, me, Ania and Marek had a very nice dinner and afterwards Marek and me got our asses hand-fed to us in a game of Carcasonne. Friday was the big day of the wedding, so I dressed up nicely, went for a swim and half a day of work, and then onwards to the officialities. Gotta say one thing about Nout: he is, inevitably, Nout. :) Wisecracking during his own ceremony :) :) Aukje looked lovely, and somehow I couldn’t notice the nerves on Arnout — though I am sure he had plenty of them. Well, he deals with nerves by making jokes, and in that regard… he was definitely nervous ;-)
As said, met a lot of people I hadn’t spoken in quite a while at the party, so there was some nice catching up. (To give you an idea of how long it had been in some cases: people coming up to me and noticing I have lost a lot of weight). Saturday Marek, Ania and me teamed up for lunch, serious shopping and a game of squash — really cool, I should play more often. Marek hadn’t played before, but he quickly started returning the ball. Ania, of course, had played before, but it had been quite a while… so at first I had the upper hand. And, of course, then she realised how to improve her stance… second time that week I got hand-fed my own ass ;-)
The rest of the weekend consisted of pizza, Heroes & Naruto (with Steven); Boboti & catching up with my brother, and shopping on Sunday in the sun. Ran into Ania during shopping, and we shopped together a bit. We were just dropping of the shopping, when the doorbell to OUR place (the unofficial name of the house where Ania, Petr and Amandine live) rang. Turned out to be Yohan’s parents, so with Yohan not being there yet, I got to practice my French a bit. 20 minutes later, Yohan came in with a whole bunch of French friends and family, and I got to practice my French even more :) Luckily Baptiste has been helping me out a lot with French.
Well, skipping the defense, that sort of concludes it (skipping over SAFE-NL too). À la prochaine!
Now gaming: not gamed since last update
Switch!
March 26th, 2007It looks more and more like I am making the switch to Ubuntu. There are still some annoyances, but the bigger ones I have managed to take care of. Have to admit though, every time I start a program I haven’t used until then, a surprise awaits me. Sometimes (GAIM), a pleasant surprise, sometimes (Skype) a not so pleasant one… but in that case, the problem surfaced in Windows as well, so I resolved it there (much simpler, more power to me there), and then bravely switched back and solved it in Ubuntu as well.
Yep, kind of happy about that… still, two things that bug me right now (your input on it more than welcome):
- Screen resolution
Somehow, on my desktop, the first X greeter that starts has a completely wrong resolution. ctrl-alt-backspace resolves this, and then another greeter is started. This one works, but the screen is shifted to the left. To fix it, I set the monitor to shift the image to the right (so rightshift on the monitor increases from 50 (centered) to 82).
Not a big issue if I don’t switch, but stupid and unnecessary I think - Fonts — especially in Firefox, for example when browsing to nu.nl.
You ever noticed the difference between the look of nu.nl in FF on windows and on Ubuntu / linux? Somehow the first block of items is completely ugly bold in ubuntu, and the fonts look… well, “off”.
Any assistance more than appreciated — and should I find more gripes, I’ll put them somewhere on the blog as well!
Last games played: Wario Ware, Inc; Wario Ware: Touched
Surprise visit!
March 25th, 2007Imagine this: you wake up in the morning (slowly), rouse yourself (without coffee! Ha!), get your laundry going, change into your sportsgear and just before heading out, your best friend calls. “Hi, you doing anything this afternoon?”
– “Not really, no”
“Okay, then we’re dropping by!”
How’s that for a cool start to your day??
Of course, I start running into phone trouble the moment I am relying on the damned thing :( — i.e. when expecting visitors. Apparently the damn sim-placeholder isn’t tight enough, and thus the sims can shift around a bit. What is worse, is that they do (shift around that is) — something the phone does not appreciate. Right now I am testing patch 0.01-beta (in normal words: a piece of paper stuck behind the simcard in order to fill up the holes). Since I am not 100% convinced this is the origin of the problem, and definitely less than 100% convinced that the current patch is sufficient remedy should this suspected leeway indeed be the origins of the crashes, expect me to be hard to reach phone-wise for the coming time.
That rant sort of interfered with me explaining how cool it is to have visitors. Well, trust me on this, it is :)
Last game played: Wario Ware: MicroGame$
Gotta share this one
March 21st, 2007Good thing Sasa didn’t join today — although I think he might’ve appreciated today’s meal, maybe even as much as I did :)
Anyway, apple-cinnamon-couscous-cashew nuts turns out nicely :) Next experiment will repeat yesterday’s meal in a slightly different fashion (of course different), but I am already looking forward to whatever Jen & me will be cooking on Wednesday next week!
Now gaming: WarioWare, Polarium, Phoenix Wright
Mostly about dining
March 21st, 2007But first one other thing: I finally managed to set up Ubuntu (more precisely: grub) such, that it defaults to Windows. Yihaa, I no longer get accidentally confronted by a broken desktop anymore!
Yes, we can start a nice flamewar on linux vs windows. Thing is: the moment I get into Ubuntu, it A) starts annoying me (with things being not how they should be) and B) distracts me from work (because I try to address these annoyances, and this is never fixed in a few minutes — even though the problem looks like it should be).
Anyway: dining! Saturday the SaToSS gang met up at the Auchan for some shopping. Somewhere along the line, the idea for a dinner on Sunday popped up, so suddenly we were shopping for a dinner together. Back at the office yes, still Saturday we ran into Sjouke still Saturday and invited him to dinner too. Then it sort of became non-earlish, but finally me and Sasa went back home again.
Incidentally, Sasa had borrowed my bike, which is hilarious, trust me! :) Well anyway, since it was late and we both could use something like food, we ended up having pasta (Italian style) at Sasa’s. Kind of funny, since the dinner of Sunday would be there as well.
For that one, planned without Sjouke’s advice, we had thought of doing something with couscous and some veggies. Since we all contributed some ideas, our ingredients were a mixed mesh without any real direction. And that’s why you invite the Big Boss to dinner ;-) Sjouke’s supervision proved superior, and with some extra items available in Sasa’s kitchen, we constructed a delicious couscous stew. For dessert we had yoghurt with some strawberries (strawberries are affordable, so we have an abundance of them ;-).
Well, the next day I realised that since we hadn’t executed the original plan for dessert on Sunday (fruit salad), Sasa had some ingredients which I could use. To thank Sasa for keeping the cottage cheese in the fridge, I made him a dinner — filled paprika, vegetarian style. Thanks to Sasa bringing cheese (quite essential ingredient, and planned), the dish turned out wonderful. Definitely worth having again.
Well, to top it off, after Saturday’s post-shop-closing-time invitation to Sjouke to join the Sunday dinner, Sjouke felt it would be nice to also invite us over once. In discussing what this would be, we finally settled for showcasing famous Dutch cuisine: hutspot!! :) Of course, Sjouke style dining and allowing me some free reign means appetizers (mozzerella, tomato and mint) and dessert (flensjes with icecream, whipped cream, strawberries told you we had plenty of ‘m and chocolate sauce). The hutspot was ok, of course, despite some improvising (no meshing kitchen tool). The unavoidable sausage turned out wonderful, and the appetizer was delicious. The dessert topped it all off — as if we weren’t full, having icecream, whipped cream (shaken, not from a can), pancakes and strawberries to ensure lack of hunger. For the next week probably ;-)
Anyway, it might seem to be all about dinner, but in reality it’s about having lots of nice evenings with my colleagues. The talks are much harder to capture in the blog, and some of it should be moderated, but we’re having much fun together :)
Now gaming: Wario Ware, Phoenix Wright