MavEtJu's Distorted View of the World - Happiness
Organising a bridge tournament in a minefieldScared!
iPhone dock bar
Morrison Gedicht - Twee
Morrison Gedicht - Een
Project New House - introduction
Nintendo Wii hardware problems
DST is here again!
Digital Television in Australia
Page 56...
Christmas in the summer
Software I have known
Moving on from BarNet, to...
Things I've learned from the trip to the Greg Leheys Annual Hackers BBQ.
Abode or Adobe?
Hypnocube is finished!
Equinix AusNOG2007 present
One device, three measurement units
The relevance of numbers
Not patient enough
Moving!
Paul Simon - Cecilia
New lightbulbs
postgresql didn't want to start...
My current location
How to beat the raffle at the St Marys Dutch Festival
Babies and silver disks
New year for a baby!
Grandstream ATA486 DHCP behaviour
To let
Baby On Keyboard Quotes
Single geeks vs married geeks
How to spot a dutchman on IRC
US$ 25 million for handing over Osama bin Laden
Can't help but love her...
Vague persons
Bouncing email
Dream about John Kerry
RFID Jedi tricks
Virus scanners
...the day after
We've moved!
We're moving!
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Organising a bridge tournament in a minefield
Posted on 2013-08-10 18:00:00
Tags: Rant, Bridge, Happiness
Earlier this year Naomi obtained her bridge director status and is involved in the New South Wales Bridge Assocation. She is also directing at the Southside Bridge Centre and plays at the Port Hacking club. As they say, never a dull moment!
One of her ideals is to organise a bridge tournament in Southern Sydney and now that she is involved in the NSWBA this is something which might actually run! It's called the Inaugural Sydney South Trophy Day and if it's up to her, it will be the first of a yearly event. However, doing this without stepping on anybodies toes seems to be impossible.
Issue 1: The location. Naomi wants to run it at the Southside Bridge Centre because they can provide the room, cards, accessories for a price much lower than the rate at a commercial event venue company. Sounds reasonable... Well, not if you consider that a lot of owners of other bridge clubs wouldn't mind to have it at their place too. And if it is not at their place, preferable not at anybody elses bridge club. Seeing as if this might going to be a yearly event and thus the location might be somewhere else next year, that doesn't really come up in their minds.
Issue 2: The date. Naomi wants to run it on the Labour Day public holiday on Monday 7 October. That is the day that the Hurstville Bridge club normally runs. So the Hurstville Bridge club is angry because this is going to cut in their number of people coming.
The bridge community in South Sydney consists in general of old people: In the Port Hacking, Hurstville and St George clubs Naomi is the youngest by far, and no new blood is coming in. It is just a matter of time before they are gone. However, in the Southside, Ingleburn and St George Budapest bridge clubs are actively promoting bridge and get new people involved.
So... On 7 October there will be a bridge tournament, most likely visited by people who want to promote the game of bridge and see it continue in a healthy way!
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Scared!
Posted on 2013-07-11 08:00:00
Tags: Happiness, reddit
The website reddit.com, self-proclaimed "Front page of the Internet", has one section which I like to visit while bringing my kids to bed: The [[//www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/][Ask Reddit] section, in which people post their comments on a certain subject. There are a lot of shitty questions which you can ask, but due to the moderation system I only get served the highly rated ones, plus if the subject of the question doesn't interest me I don't bother to read it.
Yesterday the one I read was "What's a story that you've heard that still gives you chills to this day?". Most of them are real-life stories and some made-up-to-scary-teenagers ones. This one particularly stuck with me, but didn't scare me when I was reading it last night:
A kid is playing in his room, when he hears his mother call him from the kitchen. He puts down his toys and walks down the stairs, when suddenly upstairs he sees his mother who says "Don't go there, I heard that voice as well."
Typical sitting-around-the-fire-and-scaring-each-other-story and it didn't bother me last night.
This early morning at 06:00, still dark, while hanging up the washing, I hear a sound behind the bins which are standing in the dark corner of the garden about three meters away from me. And the only thought that my scumbag brain could come up with was "I heard that sound as well."... Needless to say that I wasn't feeling happy anymore.
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iPhone dock bar
Posted on 2011-09-08 08:00:00
Tags: iPhone, Happiness
The iPhone home screen has four icons stuck at the bottom of the screen. For the last year I had there Safari, Mail, Phone and Facebook.
Yesterday I swapped Facebook for Podcaster, which I have been using more frequent in the last four months.
Facebook is for people who are bored.
Podcasts are for people who want to learn!
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Morrison Gedicht - Twee
Posted on 2011-08-04 16:00:01
Tags: Happiness, Memories, Weeshuis van de Hits
ik wou dat ik een oma had die ik soms zomaar op mocht bellen en die 's avonds bij m'n bedje zat om mij een sprookje te vertellen maar oma's hebben allemaal al iemand voor wie ze oma kunnen zijn ze zitten dan wel in tehuizen maar elke zondag is het kamertje te klein dan komen ze allemaal op visite en vragen of ze een zwaantje vouwt en als ze 's avonds moe gaat slapen weet ze dat er iemand is die van haar houdt hoe zou het dan toch komen dat heel veel oma's eenzaam zijn en van hun kleine kinderen dromen die nu veel groter en verhinderd zijn al die oma's die truien breien waarvan niemand zegt: wat fijn! die hoeven me dat truitje niet te geven maar willen ze alstjeblieft mijn oma zijn? Morrison
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Morrison Gedicht - Een
Posted on 2011-08-04 16:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Memories, Weeshuis van de Hits
het is al bijna avond wat gaat zo'n dag toch gauw ik klim zo in mijn bedje en dan denk ik weer aan jou dan lig ik stil te luisteren naar de geluiden om me heen dan hoor ik zoemen tikken fluisteren want ik lig hier niet alleen! soms vertel ik mijn avonturen aan Tiberius da's een bromvlieg en die woont op het kozijn dan snort ie heel tevreden want als er iemand tegen 'm praat dat vindt Tiberius hartstikke fijn vandaag ook Ricky nog gesproken die woont bij de kersenboom het is een soort van rups maar hij wil later vlinder worden net als zijn vader en moeder en zijn tante en z'n oom zelf wil ik als ik later groot word proberen klein te blijven omdat Tiberius en Ricky anders bang voor me zijn dan blijf ik ook dichter bij de bloemen en zal ik altijd gelukkig zijn Morrison
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Project New House - introduction
Posted on 2011-02-16 08:00:00
Tags: Project NH, Happiness
Project New House
Earlier this year my family and I started project New House. After renting for about 10 years here in Australia, we close the door on that issue and open the door of our own house.
Buying a house is not cheap, but thanks to proper saving in the last ten years and some luck (Getting shares from the company you work for at the lowest possible price at the beginning of the GFC for example :-) we now own the lower part of the house while the bank owns the upper half.
The town house itself is relatively new, 15 years old, one old-lady-owner who didn't do too much damage to it. So far I haven't found any skeletons in the cupboards.
The stats are: Three bedrooms, nice kitchen, nice bathroom, a grand total of three toilets (WTF? Why does a house like this three toilets?), two car garage (so the car is allowed inside next to the bicycles).
We already met four of the four neighbours, nice people. The fifth neighbour, not met despite various communication attempts) is described as a woman who does not like children and complains about everything. Oh well, five friendly families out of six houses is not bad. And if she wants to make her life miserable, go for it.
Some things need to be fixed, adjusted or just peed on to make it ours:
Because we moved in the hottest days in summer this year (not worlds greatest idea), we know exactly where the hottest parts and least ventilated parts in the house are and have invested in a couple of ceiling-fans for these rooms.
The light in the ceiling of the bathroom might be at the right position for small Australia old ladies to look in the mirror, for tall Dutchmen it just gives me a nice halo around the head, so we will get an extra light above the mirror.
While swapping the lightbulbs for energy-saving ones, I found out that the light above the frontdoor has a screw-fitting instead of a banjonet-fitting, which gives me the opportunity to use an old present from my brother: An 1.5 Watt LED colour-changing-lightbulb. Dank broertje!
Over time I hope to give more updates on the sub-projects of Project New House, like fixing the garden (Currently covered with "Buffalo grass" or "St Augustine Grass" or "Stenotaphrum secundatum" which makes it impossible to mow with a handmower and getting a solar-thingie on the roof.
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Nintendo Wii hardware problems
Posted on 2009-10-07 12:30:00
Tags: Happiness, My Computers, Electronics
Last weekend Hanorah managed to break the Nintendo Wii: Forcing a second DVD into the chassis kind of ruined it for everybody. On its own this isn't a big issue, but considering that this month everybody in the family got addicted to Super Mario Galaxy, the tensions in the house rose faster than a couple of neighbouring countries with old wounds and money to spend on armies.
As usual, fixing this thingie seemed impossible. This guide on how to disassemble your Nintendo Wii talked about a tri-wing screwdriver (which I didn't have (but found in a shop in Bankstown)) and a normal small screwdriver.
Thanks to the above mentioned guide, I knew which screws to unscrew. Three minutes later I had found the problem (some metal bars of the disk lifting mechanics were bended) and rectified the problem. The disk spinned again!
I had removed a total of 20 screws, in six different shapes and sizes. In the good engineering tradition I managed to put the Nintendo Wii back in into its original shape leaving seven screws on my desk which didn't properly fit in any of the holes currently still unoccupied. And this metal cover also didn't make it back into the box... Nintendo, please reduce the amount of different screws because this is just bad design.
Anyway, I'm off to collect Star Bits and Stars and Grand Stars, because Bowser still has Princes Peach in his captivity!
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DST is here again!
Posted on 2009-10-04 17:45:00
Tags: Rant, Happiness, DST
For the next six months, we will have DST in large parts of Australia again. The blogosphere is full with people who don't like it (for the right or wrong, the good and dumb reasons) and are under the impression that their opinion on this issue is important. See also Parkinson's Law of Triviality and the example of the Colour of the Bikeshed.
I for one am happy with the extra hour of daylight.
My two children wake up when the sun starts to shine (which was at
05:30 this week, making me wake up two hours before my train leaves
for work (my boss doesn't allow me to start earlier)), this will
give me a less reasonable time I get woken up. And it gives me one
extra hour of sunlight when I come home from work, I can't wait
until we have dinner outside again!
Give me the DST time of days all of the year!
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Digital Television in Australia
Posted on 2009-06-23 22:00:00
Tags: TV, Happiness, Mass Media
When I moved from thet Netherlands to Australia I lost access to television.
Not because there isn't television here, but more because there is either much television (horizontal programming with reruns of old series) or not enough diversion on television (three commercial channels fighting for your eyeballs with reruns of old series, plus two non-for-profit and one community station).
The worst part is the delivery of the signal: Everybody here still has their own antenna on the roof or, even worse, inside their house. Were you used to receiving a crystal clear scala of stations via a municipal coaxial cable in your house, here you get (if you are lucky) six channels with varying quality. And nobody to complain at when it looks crappy (signal delivery wise). Oh boy, this was going back to the middle ages.
For a couple of years I haven't really worried about it. The only channels I am interested in are ABC (Doctor Who, The Chaser etc) and SBS (Top Gear, Mythbusters, any foreign spoken movie) and most of the time I managed to get a (relative) clear picture for them. The other channels had weeks in which one or more were undecodable for the human eye.
So what has changed? First, extra channels for the ABC and SBS, but only on the digital channels. And to tease us, they are showing Torchwood and the Tour de France on it. Now I'm not really easily blackmailed into something, but a combination of the Tour de France for me and Captain Jack for Naomi, that is something very hard to refuse.
So... We got a set-top-box and had a !@#*)!*#@) hell of a time to get it synced. For a long time we had nothing until I once by chance had a signal good enough to receive some ABC channels. And I was happy, because it also showed that there was an button on the remote control (but only once it had found a channel) which says how good the signal strength and signal quality are. Oh boy, finally something to work with. But it didn't find anything besides the three ABC channels. And now and then when I did a rescan it also lost the ABC channels... Even spending 70 dollars on a new antenna, with an amplifier, didn't work. Very frustrating!
It wasn't until this week that I understood that what I was doing was wrong: While the ABC showed up on channel 21, 22 and 23, that actually were logical channels on carrier channel 12. Once that principle was clear, I suddenly knew where to find other channels and one by one they popped up: SBS, Digital 44 and Channel 9. So far I haven't found Channel 7 or 10, but it will be just a matter of time. Maybe. So that Naomi can watch Jeff Goldblaum on L&O:CI and Dirkie can watch Funniest Home Videos.
So which channels do we have now? ABC (1, 2 and 3), SBS (1, 2, 3 and 4), NITV, D44 (including random news and the Federal parliament), Nine (crappy signal). Good enough for now :-)
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Page 56...
Posted on 2008-12-02 19:00:00
Tags: Happiness
The game is simple:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
Judge Studdert also considered pages describing visits to a Bombay brothel, a Cairo brothel and 'Wilson's Perv Gallery' of nude pin-ups to be obscene, and held that the sex theme 'is played on throughout the whole book' even if only in a suggestive and not legally obscene way - in descriptions of a belly-dance of conversations about brothels, prostitutes and homosexuals and bossoms.Obscenity, blasphemy, sedition - The rise and fall of literary censorship in Australia by Peter Coleman.
I bought this book for two dollars in a second-hand bookshop. Don't ask me why.
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Christmas in the summer
Posted on 2008-11-27 18:00:00
Tags: Xmas, Lost memories, Happiness
This year it will for me be the eight time the Christmas celibrations will fall in the middle of summer. And still I am not used to it.
For me, Christmas is the celibration of light in the darkness. In the Netherlands, it's twilight around 09:00 and 16:00 during these periods of time. Having a tree with lights in the room and candles in the house, it gives you the feeling that the worst part of the winter is over and from now on it will only get lighter. In reality it won't be the case, because "Als de dagen lengen dan gaat de winter strengen" (When the days are getting longer, the winter will be stronger), so the worst part is still ahead of it, but at least the horrible darkness is over.
When cycling back home from work, or walking outside in the evening, and you look inside all the houses you pass and see the christmas trees with their white lights and the candles on the window ceils and tables, it gives you a feeling of hapiness inside your heart. Having to watch the the multi-colour flashing monstrosities on houses and in gardens, which only purpose is to compete for attention with the neighbouring area, that just makes me sad: Christmas is a time for looking inside yourself, pondering what you did last year and how you did it last year, not a time of showing off.
For me, Christmas is being together with the family. Now that I have a family of my own, the absence of my parents, brother and sister will hopefully be less of an issue (hopefully), but I would love to celibrate just one more Christmas lunch with them.
This year Christmas eve will be celibrated at Naomis aunt place in Heathcote. Heathcote has the advantage of being outside from Sydney, so on the way back there will be a couple of kilometers of road where it will be dark. And when we are on the highest point of the road, in the distance you can see the twinkling lights of the houses in the greater Sydney area. And hopefully it will give me that happy feeling inside again.
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Software I have known
Posted on 2008-10-10 22:00:00
Tags: Memories, Computers, Happiness
Over the last years I've used a set of unique tools which names have faded into history but when mentioned still bring a warm feeling to people who have used these tools. These tools were on often on platforms which didn't stand the test of time, for good or bad reasons.
4DOS and 4OS2 by JP Software.
Everybody who has ever tried to write a batch script in the MS-DOS COMMAND.COM interpreter knows about its limitations. The 4DOS interpreter took these limitations away and replaced them with powerful features. Interactive batch files suddenly became possible, filename completion was introduced, coloured directory overviews and string manipulation became a piece of cake.
As long as MS-DOS was sold, 4DOS would live on. But the moment the command-line was replaced by the GUI of MS-Windows95, it was dead. Obsoleted because the operating system didn't run from the command-line interpreter anymore.
Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS
Qedit by SemWare.
By default, MS-DOS came with a editor called "edlin" which was enough to do some rough editing to get a system working again, but for the rest it was not worth mentioning.
Qedit on the other hand, it was full screen, it was fast, it had split window support, it had ASCII drawing support, it could change the resolution of the monitor to 43 or 50 lines and it could edit files hundreds of kilobytes big.
On the MS-DOS platform it was the best text editor you could get, but as so many other applications it didn't survive the migration to the GUI of MS-Windows: It had a more-or-less working text editor and the editors coming with software development suites had full blown IDEs.
Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_SemWare_Editor
ModPlay Pro by Mark J Cox.
Before the rise of the compressed music (read: MP3), the Amiga world developed a way to store music efficient: Instead of a stream of sound, it recorded samples and the patterns to play the samples in. Since the musical part of a song (so not the voice) consist of repeating elements, it was space-wise very cheap to store the song. And that is the MOD file format.
ModPlay Pro was text-based and had several views of the data being used. One was a frequency/volume overview and one was a tracker overview, in which you could exactly see the pattern being followed and the samples being played. And if you followed it often and intensive enough you started to involuntary "disassemble" songs you heard on the radio into the four tracks available in the MOD format.
The MOD format became popular before soundcards were widely available and affordable. The workaround for it was to build a simple D/A convertor on the parallel port of the computer with a cable to your stereo. And if you bought a second parallel port you could even have it in stereo!
With the rise of more powerful computers and faster networks the MOD format became unpopular in favour of the MP3 format.
Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mod
TheDraw by TheSoft Programming Services.
TheDraw was the tool of ANSI BBS Administrators and wannabees to create fancy menus and of ANSI artist to create text based animations.
Creating a coloured line with ANSI codes isn't difficult, just cumbersome. To change a colour of the next character you need four characters of which one isn't printable ("ESCAPE [ 25 m"). Testing the menu out can be done from the command-line but figuring out where a colour change is necessary is next to impossible.
Not with TheDraw. With TheDraw you could design the ANSI menu as-is and then write the whole sequence of ANSI escape codes and strings to a file, ready to be displayed on your BBS.
Where did it go? With the rise of the WWW and the demise of the BBS, ANSI became an obsolete in favour of HTML and images.
Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDraw
DESQview by Quarterdeck
You have your Qedit editor, your Turbo C compiler and your ModPlay Pro, but you can not run them all at the same time. After all, this is all still the MS-DOS era! Luckely Quaterdeck developed a lightweigth text-based pre-emptive task switcher called DESQview. That way you could run multiple MS-DOS programs at the same time, without having to quit them or to suspend them. So you could edit your program, compile it in the next task and test it in a third task.
We all know what happened to the MS-DOS market, and DESQview is one of its victims...
Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
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Moving on from BarNet, to...
Posted on 2008-07-08 12:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Moving, Jobs
The rumours are true, it is official: I have quit my job at BarNet. For the last seven years I've worked in a couple of great projects, learned a lot more about networks, systems and people than I already knew.
A couple of highlights and learned lessons:
- Over time, the network got replaced from simple central router plus remote FreeBSD based routers to a partly meshed network (still with a lot of FreeBSD based routers) with dynamic routing, a proper serverfarm and failover where possible.
- I've learned a lot about radio links (which can be tricky due to the density of other radio links in the city) and laser links.
- Over the years, we went from FreeBSD version 4.x to 6.3 now, with all changed in their technology and capabilities.
- I learned a lot about the accessing of data in databases, database administration and realtime replication of database.
- For in-house developed applications, it is good to have a framework which generates a consistent look-and-feel, plus gives easy access to often used datasources (databases, XML feeds).
- VoIP Telephony and legacy systems integration... certainly a nice job, but not as something which is an add-on project, but as a full-time job. It will help you to find of some before-this-unknown problems in your network.
- Content Management Systems for webhosting is important to have done correctly, but none fits all. Programmers/system administrators are not a replacement for graphical designers. Are there any graphical designers which are capable of producing maintainable HTML, or does xmlindent(1) have to be used on everybodies output?
- If you have a document storage application, and a issue tracking application, and a customer relation application, then it's a good thing to make sure you keep using the same names for the same topics: Use them consistent, don't invent different names for the same thing in every new application.
Of course, I could bitch and moan about the bad things which have shown up in the last year but let's keep it positive.
Now I'm in the handover phase... Which of course totally doesn't go as I had hoped for. We had two months time for it, in which we could do one month for handover, then two or three weeks for the last items which were missing or not clear or where the new people needed their hands to be held. But it was decided that it all should happen in the last two weeks...
Next step? Nothing set in stone yet, just talking. Want to talk to me?
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Things I've learned from the trip to the Greg Leheys Annual Hackers BBQ.
Posted on 2008-01-07 10:00:00
Tags: Travelling, Happiness
Last weekend Sam Lawrance, Juha Matti and I went to the yearly hackers barbeque from Greg Lehey. We learned the following things:
- At 06:00 in the morning with a plane leaving at 06:45, don't expect to get through the queue at the Virgin Blue checkin. Just wait politely in the queue until a lady shouts your destination and redirects you to the priority checkin.
- On a Virgin Blue plane, you can turn off the screens on the chair in front of you by pressing the minus button a lot of times. The sound of on the headset keeps going, so you still can listen to the radio.
- The trip from Tullamarine (Melbourne airport) to Avalon (Avalon airport) is smooth, except for the sixty odd speedhumps on the last 200 meters towards the pickup and dropoff point at Avalon Airport.
- Don't get lost in Ballarat... If you think that (insert a random town) is badly sign-posted, Ballarat is worse. On the eight kilometer trip to the information center we found four sign-posts with an "I" on it. And one indication said "<- B300 ->" but it didn't say which places it went too.
- Sign posts in Victoria don't have distances on it. They tell you which city/town/county/township you are going to, and which road number you are on, but it doesn't tell how far away you are. Except for Ballaret, they just give you the road number.
- Gregs house is on the right hand side of the road, while his mailbox is on the left hand side of the road.
- At Gregs place, don't count on GSM reception. On the other side of the swamp which is next to his place, less than a kilometer away, you have five out of five bars.
- Same with 3s 3G reception.
- The Vikings landed in the last 200 years in Victoria to leave some wooden construction in Gregs part of the swamp (don't ask me, look at the pictures)
- Beer can't be so bad that Matti doesn't drink it. At least three quarters of it.
- Don't worry about not being able to find the 12 Apostles stone formation, it's obvious where it is when you are there.
- The Great Ocean road is horrible... It's long and winding as hell. It's not a single bit like the road George Harrison sang about. Your average speed is far below 40 kilometers per hour. People at the back seats get sick. It's very winding. People with weak stomachs get sick. Very very winding. And it doesn't stop. It's called a B-grade road, but it's more winding that the C roads we have been on. Even if you decide you want to get out of the car and die here in peace, you can't get back to civilisation because you still have to do that long and winding road. Walking or cycling is the only solution, but there is nowhere to buy a bike. Get of that road as soon as possible, back to the A300. Don't worry about going from a B grade road via a C grade road to an A grade road, the C grade road will be much better than the B grade road. Man, what did I feel bad...
- You can't do Melbourne - Avalon - Ballarat - Dereel - Port something - Great ocean road - A300 - Avalon - Ballarat with a 55 liter tank. But it doesn't differ much!
- Airports need more different pinball machines and normal prices. Two dollars for three balls is too much. Having seven The Simpsons pinball machines and one Lord of the Rings one is not a good distribution.
- Airports need more power outlets so that people with laptops can use them. For example under the (horrible) chairs and at every wall. I'm not asking for internet access, just power. And if you want to have a good idea about what shop to open at an airport, start a "You can charge your mobile phone here" shop.
- When your flight is delayed, don't expect any free on-board entertainment (no I'm not asking for half naked stewardesses to dance, I mean the little TV screens). Come on Virgin Blue, I'm not asking for free drinks or something...
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Abode or Adobe?
Posted on 2007-12-16 17:00:00
Tags: Happiness
I bought a new fan today and it wasn't until I came home that I saw the brand and the logo. I compared it with the logo of Adobe and wonder how long they will be able to get away with it.
But then, since it's made in China I doubt that there is much Adobe can do about it.
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Hypnocube is finished!
Posted on 2007-12-02 09:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Electronics, Hypnocube
About a month ago I ordered a kit of the Hypnocube (Things that go blink in the night). Having not touched a soldering iron in say eight years, AU$ 200.- was quite a big amount of money to spend on it, but it was worth it. A nice piece of electronics is now sitting next to the TV.
The score so far:
- Four hours of soldering time.
- One and a half hours of non-soldering time.
- Forty centimeters of duct tape.
- Quite some amount of soldering tin.
- One carton box formerly filled with mango to make the jig out.
Little Dirk has managed to watch the test pattern (which shows up when you power it up) about ten times in five minutes, after which I moved it out of his range.
Quotes from family and friends:
- Naomi: Insiders is a show I normally watch with full attention, but today I spend my whole time watching that silly cube.
- Naomi: You should have waited for the 8x8x8 version.
- Dirk: Red. And Green. And Blue. And White!
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Equinix AusNOG2007 present
Posted on 2007-11-16 20:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Equinix, AusNOG
Today I visited the second day of the AusNOG2007 conference (I missed the first day because of an unfortunate illness which caused me to sleep for about 48 hours in three days) and received a present from Equinix: A notebook (a paper one, not a computerized one) with on the first page all the Essential Telephone Numbers they could think of. What was missing was the phone number of the Equinix NOC...
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One device, three measurement units
Posted on 2007-10-09 17:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Numbers
This device measures... 2RU by 19 inch by (grabs measure-tape) 40 centimeters.
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The relevance of numbers
Posted on 2007-10-07 17:00:00
Tags: Happiness, Numbers
The number 36: When talking about health it's a good number: 36 degrees Celcius is good. When talking about a pregnant woman it's a good number: 36 weeks is still a month to go!
And for both situations, everything above 40 is bad.
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Not patient enough
Posted on 2007-05-10 10:00:00
Tags: Happiness
We were flying back from Cairns to Sydney, the plane landed and people stood up and started to unpack their overhead luggage and move to the front of the plane. This was a little bit too early in the eyes of the captain, and he announced "Ladies and gentlemen... Can you please stay in your seats until the seatbelts sign has been turned off?". Yes, we were still taxiing towards the gate...
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Moving!
Posted on 2007-04-12 15:49:11
Tags: Happiness
Goodbye MovableType! Welcome handfull of scripts!
The website known as http://weblog.barnet.com.au/edwin/ is going to disappear. The new site for MavEtJu's Distorted View of the World is at http://www.mavetju.org/weblog/.
If you are using the RSS feed (RDF or XML), it can be continued at http://www.mavetju.org/weblog/index.rdf and http://www.mavetju.org/index.xml.
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Paul Simon - Cecilia
Posted on 2007-03-18 12:54:01, modified on 2007-03-18 21:33:26
Tags: Music, Happiness
Recently I bought the Anthology album from Paul Simon. It's two CDs, one with old songs and one from and later than the Graceland album. The old songs are good for singing along, and the one which catches my ear every time I hear it is Cecilia:
Cecilia, you're breaking my heart,
You're shaking my confidence daily.
Yeah yeah standard love song. Fast forward to the interesting part:
Making love in the afternoon with cecilia
Up in my bedroom,
I got up to wash my face
When I come back to bed,
Someone's taken my place.
So... Imagine this: Paul Simon takes Cecilia to his bedroom, has sex with her and then just goes to the bathroom to have a quick face wash. In this bedroom, a man jumps from his wardrobe and starts having sex with Cecilia. That man must have been there all the time that Paul and Cecillia were busy with each other, and must have been there even before they entered the room and started to get it on! And Cecilia? She doesn't care, she just goes for seconds in somebody elses bed and house, while she knows that the owner of that house is just one door away from her... That makes you think, doesn't it?
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New lightbulbs
Posted on 2007-03-04 13:41:34, modified on 2007-03-04 13:46:44
Tags: Happiness
This morning when cycling towards Kurnell (it was actually on the way back) I found a 20 dollar note. Of course I could have put this in my wallet and use it without thinking, but I decided to do something special with it: I bought some energy saving light bulbs with it. They are $ 8.65 each (for an equivalent of an traditional 80 Watts light bulbs one). Going through our place I saw I needed eight inside and two outside, so I went back and bought seven more. Less than hundred dollars spent, and feeling inside a lot better!
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postgresql didn't want to start...
Posted on 2006-08-16 11:21:20, modified on 2006-08-16 11:22:44
Tags: Happiness
After an unexpected reboot of our webserver, the postgresql database didn't want to restart. It complained that the process in its PID file, #441, already existed. When checking this with ps xauw, it showed up as the mysql database!
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My current location
Posted on 2006-05-31 10:34:36, modified on 2006-05-31 10:36:13
Tags: Happiness
In the living room in our appartment, according to my mobile phone, I'm in Kurnell.
In the study in our appartment, according to my mobile phone, I'm in Dolans Bay.
And when I'm standing in front of the apparment, according to my mobile phone, I'm in Cronulla.
This house is of all places!
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How to beat the raffle at the St Marys Dutch Festival
Posted on 2006-03-27 12:20:03, modified on 2006-03-27 12:24:52
Tags: Happiness
Yesterday I went to the Dutch Festival in St Marys. Finally access to market fresh stroopwafels and boerenkool met worst!
Anyway, there was a so called instant raffle. You pay one dollar, you pick one ticket from the bowl and if there is a number on it, you win! So I payed one dollar and oh dear, no number. A sad dutchman for the rest of the day... (at least I didn't win a large bird cage).
Twenty minutes later, Naomi asked "Mind if I do an experiment?". No idea what she was talking about, but I'm always in for her kind of experiments. Two minutes later she comes back with a smile from ear to ear and a t-shirt. "Here, I won this for you at the raffles!". She said "It's pretty silly if they put sticky tape around the winning tickets with numbers...". I don't care, I got a t-shirt!
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Babies and silver disks
Posted on 2006-01-09 16:30:01, modified on 2006-01-09 16:37:54
Tags: Happiness, Baby
Fun is: finding dual layer DVD disks in the shop.
Not fun is: find out that they cost AU$ 8.50 each.
Fun is: burning your first DVD disk on the computer.
Not fun is: when the test run actually writes something (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=91536)
Fun is: seeing your baby playing with the expensive coaster.
Not fun is: your baby smacking the expensive coaster in your face.
Oh well, it's fun too :-)
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New year for a baby!
Posted on 2005-12-31 23:59:59, modified on 2006-01-09 16:44:47
Tags: Happiness, Baby
"Papa? How can the old year be finished when I'm not one year old yet?"
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Grandstream ATA486 DHCP behaviour
Posted on 2005-09-13 14:08:27, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness, Networking, Voice over IP, DHCP
64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=25 ttl=127 time=0.532 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=26 ttl=127 time=0.546 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=27 ttl=127 time=0.564 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=28 ttl=127 time=0.564 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=29 ttl=127 time=0.570 ms 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=34 ttl=249 time=0.420 ms 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=35 ttl=249 time=1.807 ms 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=36 ttl=249 time=1.283 ms 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=37 ttl=249 time=1.036 ms 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=38 ttl=249 time=2.385 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=39 ttl=249 time=0.764 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=40 ttl=249 time=2.500 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=41 ttl=249 time=0.507 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=42 ttl=249 time=2.383 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=43 ttl=249 time=0.612 ms 64 bytes from 10.192.14.243: icmp_seq=44 ttl=249 time=2.373 ms
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To let
Posted on 2005-08-26 09:42:01, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness
Heard on the radio (ABC Radio National, about 2005-08-26 09:40)
The verb "to let" can mean:
- To leave; to allow to pass.
- To hinder, prevent, obstruct, stand in the way of
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Baby On Keyboard Quotes
Posted on 2005-08-25 11:14:12, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness, Baby
Baby on mamas lap happily typing away on a MacOS/X keyboard
- Yes, you found the caps lock again.
- (Suddenly screen is filled up) Control V... how did you do that? Two keys at once!
- Hey look, he found spotlight. What is that?
- (Windows resize and minimize, desktop is shown) Let's not touch the F keys.
- (To me) What will you do with him if he actually types a real message?
Me: He typed kill. I don't like him anymore.
She: He typed 8qqquu. And made a hyperlink of it.
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Single geeks vs married geeks
Posted on 2005-08-13 16:42:57, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness, Baby
I finally understand why *nix and commandline is so popular by single geeks and not by married geeks with babies.... When you're holding a squiggly baby on your lap with one hand, it's much easier to navigate with a mouse than it is with a keyboard.
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How to spot a dutchman on IRC
Posted on 2005-07-22 11:05:13, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness
It's not easy being a non-native english speaker. Here is a list of common mistakes I make on IRC:
I've lent that book from...In the dutch language, "to lend" and "to borrow" use the same verb "lenen". It's the next word "to lend to", "to borrow from" which is specifying the who the actual object has: "lenen aan" and "lenen van".
I've learned her that she should...In the dutch language, "to teach" and "to learn" use the same verb: "leren". It's the next word which describes who got taught: "leren aan" and "leren van".
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US$ 25 million for handing over Osama bin Laden
Posted on 2005-07-21 13:10:53, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness
You can get US$ 25 million if you hand over Osama bin Laden.
Imagine if somebody else from Al-Quada did do that, what a cash-injection they would get!
So far for drying up the funding of terrorists...
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Can't help but love her...
Posted on 2005-06-03 23:39:02, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:23
Tags: Happiness, Dr Who
After watching the second episode of the new Dr Who series, the following discussion took place:
Me: So who do think destroyed the home planet of the Doctor?
She: Most likely the Sontarans.
Me: Why?
She: They're the warrior race.
She: Besides that, it's a piece of crap that he's the only one left,
because there is still Romana the Timelady, she's saving refugees
in espace.
She: Yes I'm a geek girl.
Me: And that's why I love you!
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Vague persons
Posted on 2005-01-31 11:29:51, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:22
Tags: Happiness
me: "Which one?"
she: "Euhm you know... The one which is too big to eat at once so you have to cut it up before."
me: "The watermelon?"
she: "Oh! That's another one which is too big to eat at once. But I meant the yellow one..."
me: "The pine apple?"
she: "Yes. The pine apple."
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Bouncing email
Posted on 2004-11-19 22:55:10, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:22
Tags: Happiness
<MavEtJu> what does it say when it bounces?
<Suzan> boing boing boing
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Dream about John Kerry
Posted on 2004-11-05 08:37:54, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:22
Tags: Happiness
Me: "Oh, how was he?"
My wife: "He wasn't really in the mood to talk to an Australian chick who felt sorry for him."
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RFID Jedi tricks
Posted on 2004-05-14 09:54:30, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:22
Tags: Happiness
What if everybody had an RFID payment card implemented in their right hand palm. Imagine sitting at outside at a pub, the waiter puts down your drinks and says "that's is 2 dollars". All you need to do is wave your hand in front of his machine and say with your best Jedi voice "These drinks have been paid for.". Waiter will check his machine and go "You are right, these drinks have been paid for!".
Now where is my lightsaber and my Jedi cloak?
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Virus scanners
Posted on 2004-02-05 14:04:12, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:20
Tags: Happiness
If a virus scanner has all virus definitions in its data files, wouldn't the virus scanner pick them up then?
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...the day after
Posted on 2004-02-01 19:07:01, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:21
Tags: Happiness
nonsense
makes
sense
b . u . t n . o . t t . o . d . a . y
...not today
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We've moved!
Posted on 2003-03-01 18:05:38, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:21
Tags: Happiness
We have moved. Well, we had to move is a better description. The appartment we were living in was owned by a couple living in Brisbane and they decided to sell it. And with tenants it is hard to sell, so we had to go.
The week before we moved out the people below us had to go, because the couple who owned the place had a fight, she kicked him out and he needed a place to live. Talk about bad luck for the whole appartment complex!
The good news is that we found a nice place in northern Cronulla, second floor. No pictures yet (this line will change once they're on there, so quickly take all your screenshots for a historical webpage). Thanks to everybody who helped us moving: Tash and Nick, Blueice, Muz, Sandra and Paul, Genny and her sons.
In case you're wondering when we will get kicked out of this one: This flat is fully owned by a corporation, so the chances of staying here for a longer time have increased a little bit.
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We're moving!
Posted on 2002-09-07 03:30:12, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:21
Tags: Happiness
After being in Australia for more than a year we're moving into our own place: An appartment in Cronulla, opposite of Shelly Park. As usual, the X marks the spot. 250 meters from the sea and we can see the waves! My Cronulla page has more maps and pictures of the house.