The day has come! Huzzah!

2010-02-06 19:57:00

After weeks, if not months, of puttering around the living room by holding onto couches and tables, the day has finally come: Dana can walk! /o/

Awesome! ^_^

kilala.nl tags: baby,

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Ramen, ramen everywhere!

2010-02-06 10:36:00

Very recently, the New York Times did an article on Japan's ramen culture: One noodle at a time in Tokyo. It's well written and has rekindled ramen passion in many westerner's heart. For those who need a reminder: "ramen" is a Japanese noodle dish, served with broth, veggies and meats. It's the basis for what we know as "cup noodles" in the west, though it's nothing like it :p In a funny bit of coincidence Marli recently brought home the DVD of The ramen girl, which I didn't hate. It's kind of like Lost in translation, but actually enjoyable ^_^

Either way... Should you ever find yourself hungry in Tokyo (or Japan in general), it won't be hard to find a ramen shop nearby. In the whole metropolis of Tokyo alone there are nearly 5000 different shops. If you find yourself wondering which ones are worth visiting, hit up the Ramen DB website, which has locations and reviews for most of these shops. Their map is very handy and did I mention they score with up to three decimal digits (from 0.000 to 100.000)? Food geekery to the max!

As it turns out, the shop I passed at least eight times in Tameike-Sannou (right around the corner from my hotel) gets a pretty good score, with one of their dishes scoring a 92%. I never stopped by because I thought it was a high-class, posh eatery. Shame...

EDIT:
If you have a few spare minutes, here's the New York Times' Ramen 101 video that accompanies the article.

kilala.nl tags: japan, cooking,

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Japan's been on my mind lately

2010-02-05 05:46:00

I was recently informed that my sister and father will be making a short trip to Japan at the beginning of April. She's been wanting to go there for years and since dad took my brother a few years ago, now it's sis' turn. She's ecstatic ^_^

As I am wont to do, I'm getting all manner of vicarious pleasure from her presentations. I'm giddy with the idea that we will be going to Japan again over Christmas and in the mean time I'm giving my sister tips left and right. They'll be spending a week in Tokyo, and there's plenty to do and see! First stop: the Shiranai Travel Google Maps project I made with 100+ things to do and see in Japan. The list is always expanding, as we keep discovering cool things that we think others might enjoy.

In the mean time I've had udon for dinner this week and I'm bringing curry to the office today :9 Yum!

kilala.nl tags: japan,

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Re-release of "Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou"

2010-02-04 16:23:00

Late last year I discovered a beautiful new manga: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, also known as YKK. Back then I resolved to search for secondhand volumes of the mangas on our next trip to Japan. Certainly Book Off would have these books available! Well, Kodansha has taken all the effort out of finding YKK books, because they've started a re-release of the series! The first two volumes came out in October and volume six is already expected in February! Lovely! Volume 1 at Amazon.co.jp.

kilala.nl tags: manga, japan,

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Apparently writing doesn't always come easy

2010-02-04 15:28:00

So far I'm about fifteen hours into writing the paper that goes with the presentation I will be giving at the NLUUG convention. It's been a while since I wrote an extensive article in English and by $DEITY does it show! I -hate- my writing! There's nothing wrong with my vocabulary, yet I seem to reuse the same words over and over again! There's maybe a dozen words that get used frequently and after reading a page or two it becomes very noticeable. Like I'm constantly stammering "uhhmm", but differently. :/

I feel like that kid from Little Man Tate, doing the show-and-tell (at first I thought it was from Two stupid dogs ^_^ ).

"Clipper Ships" by Matt Montini.
Me and my dad make models of clipper ships. I like clipper ships because they are fast. Clipper ships sail the ocean. Clipper ships never sail on rivers or lakes. Clipper ships have lots of sails and are made out of wood.

Well, first I'll make sure that the story itself's finished. Then I can get started on applying spit&polish. My brain needs a frggin' thesaurus :)

kilala.nl tags: sysadmin, meh,

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Home office setup

2010-02-01 21:11:00

Here's a shot of my home office in the attic. On the desk you'll see my Macbook propped up on an ugly plastic box and the usual stuff that's connected to it. I really should get a LackRack to raise the laptop to eye height. I just love having the Lego on my desk as well, because the buildings look really nice and the crane is a wonderful toy.

In the back you'll notice my kerosene heater (the attic is not hooked up to the central heating) and the white board. Out of sight are the big hobby/gaming table, our foldable sofa and our 500+ books

kilala.nl tags: house,

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Tried MobileMe, stopped trying the same day

2010-01-31 17:32:00

I've finally broken down and decided to give Apple's MobileMe (Wiki) service a try. The first two months are free anyway.

The syncing of contacts, bookmarks and calendar items between my Macbook and iPhone works very well. I haven't given the mail syncing a try, because I have a lot of mail and I need to figure out a proper strategy first.

About the iDisk online file storage: it's a nice competitor to Dropbox, which I've been using for a while now. One big problem with MobileMe: the upload speeds from Finder are -awful-. Seriously! As many people on the web have remarked: it's like you're back on dialup :(

For the upload of many or big files I've decided to give Transmit a try, which apparently has much better WebDAV support than Finder. I sure do hope that Apple will FTFF, as they say.

So far I wouldn't give MobileMe more than a 6/10. I wouldn't spend the 99 euros per year on it, though I'm tempted to pick up one of the 50 euro licenses on eBay. I could always charge it to my employer ;)

EDIT:
Yuck! The iDisk app for the iPhone will not let me flick through JPGs stored remotely like the Dropbox app does. This kills reading manga and comics. Next to that the performance of the iDisk itself is enough for me to stop using MobileMe on the day I started. As they say in the mobster movies: Fuggedaboudit!.

kilala.nl tags: apple,

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How exciting! I'll be presenting at NLUUG

2010-01-31 07:46:00

Yesterday I received an email from the NLUUG (dutch Unix users group) conference bureau: Dear Thomas, We have received your abstract for the NLUUG spring conference 2010. We would like to thank you for your submission and your patience. It is our pleasure to inform you that your abstract has been chosen by the program committee to be presented on May 6th.

Holy carp! This means that I'll be getting on stage, in front of 50-200 Unix admins, my peers if you will. The last time I got in front of a big crowd it was thirty high school juniors, so this is going to be just a -little- bit different. =_=;

Yeah, this is a little scary, aside from being uber-exciting :)

kilala.nl tags: sysadmin, unix,

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