2005-01-31 06:42:00
Currently listening to a Britney Spears remix album
Well, we sure were busy this weekend! While I was away helping Menno move into his new house, Marli has spent about 60% of her weekend ripping all of her CDs into iTunes. Of course she's not nearly done, since she has a lot of albums and she has to label all of the songs manually since we don't have a broadband Internet connection.
Moving Menno's stuff actually was done in a record time :) Luckily all of his belngings were already in the van when I got to their place around07:30, so we could get cracking immediately. Everything was upstairs in his new digs around 09:30, so we really did make nice time! By the by, here's something you don't see every day: Menno's appartment is located in Arnhem's red ligth district :p
What else? Not much I guess! Later!
kilala.nl tags: other tech, house,
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2005-01-21 06:44:00
By God I'm beat!
It wasn't until somewhere around 02:30 that we finally turned to bed. I'm glad that we got to cover all of the stuff Marli needs to know for her exam today, but man I wish I didn't have to get ouf of bed so early. Just like every other Friday I have to be in the office at seven, which means getting up at five. *ugh*
kilala.nl tags: school, studying, rhythm,
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2005-01-21 00:17:00
I must say that this has been a very interesting evening/night ^_^
Marlijne will have her first maths exam of the year tomorrow and we've been crunching for a couple of hours now to get all of the formulas and equations into her head. While to most of you that may sound like a horrid ordeal, to me it was actually a lot of fun! A veritable feast of recognition so to speak, because the last time I studied basic math was in high school. And it really is a lot of fun! Thanks to tonight I remember why I liked math so much :)
I really wish I hadn't thrown out my math books from high school and college.
kilala.nl tags: school, rhythm, studying,
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2005-01-20 08:20:00
Currently listening to "Enjoy the silence", a Depeche Mode cover by my brother.
I gotta tell ya, if I weren't so busy with so many other things I would love to try and teach myself how to make music. Sure, in the past I used to sing a bit, but it would be kinda neat if I could play some instrument as well :) What brought _this_ up? If you take note of the Currently listening to I include in my blog entries these days you will notice that Niklas, my brother, is quite a talentred musician. I mean sure, he makes mistakes here and there, but that doesn't weigh up to the fact that in the songs and covers he makes he _is_ the band. I know that these days you can do a lot with software like Garageband, but I still think it's Ÿber-cool.
Anywho.. As you may have guessed from the timestamp of this blog entry I've overslept horrendously, which means that I'm gonna have to take two hours from my holiday hours, since I need to be back home quite early. *ugh*.
In other news: I've finally kicked my own ass back in gear when it comes to the Anime Con. I'd been slacking a bit, which didn't feel too good -_-; So I made a new schedule for myself and a checklist for all events. So now I have a clear overview of al of the stuff that I still need to take care of. On the one hand pretty damn handy, but on the other hand sobering, since I'd comfortably forgotten the fact that I hadn't even _started_ on at least two events yet. *eek*
Well, I'm going to have breakfast now... Later!
kilala.nl tags: family, music, awesome,
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2005-01-17 17:05:00
I just had to rant a little bit :) God! I love having this eMate at my disposal! I can work on stuff for which I would usually not have any time. Just now I typed out some notes from our last meeting and I'l work on some stuff for the Anime Con now. I know the eMate is no match for a normal laptop, but for my goals and wishes it's bloody awesome!
kilala.nl tags: apple,
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2005-01-17 06:47:00
Currently listening to various songs and remixes from "Sakura Taisen"
So I've been working on one of the new events for Anime Con 2005, which requires the recoding of a bunch of DVD and VCD files. I intend to rework these files into 3ivx MPEG4 format (plus MP3 audio), so I can work everything into a nice show.
The odd things is that the tools that used to work for me (a combination of OSeX, DiVA, mAC3dec and 3ivx) now no longer seems to give the same results. Almost a year ago I started work on an AMV using the same tools. The resulting MPEG4 video _did_ work with Final Cut Express. For some strange reason though now they don't. I'll fiddle around with the controls some more in the next few days, 'cause this really is an event that I would like to see happening.
Oh. And the work on that AMV I'd started has been dropped a long while ago. At the time I did not have the disk space or the patience to go through converting two seasons of Ranma 1/2 into MPEG4.
What else is there? Well, as you know I spent another weekend in the office, due to the NIS+ move. Also, my flu seems to finaly be subsiding and moving on to Marli :[ And finally, Marli's in her second exam period of the year (out of a total of four) so let's keep our fingers crossed! Gambate-ne, Marli-chan!
kilala.nl tags: anime 2005, geeky, anime,
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2005-01-16 15:38:00
Bad news for those sysadmins out there waiting for news regarding the NIS+. We tried our best yesterday, but moving NIS+ to a new Master server failed again :( This time around we used a tried and true (although much improved upon by Jeroen) procedure, which is usually reserved for worst case scenarios. Unfortunately we ran into some unforeseen problems. I'll tell you more about them when I deliver the _real_ procedure.
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2005-01-13 21:51:00
It's strange how the scale of problems differs across the world. While people down in Africa are worried about the question whether they will be getting any food this week and while people over in Asia have lost everything they had, here I am worrying over hard drive space.
To us over in the western world life is so completely different to lives of people who live no further than a few thousand miles away. And sometimes I feel a bit guilty about that... I mean, when comparing some of our dialy problems to theirs it hardly seems fair, does it?
Personally I think that most of us have a realisation like this at least every now and then. I also think that most of us, myself included, try to blissfully ignore these differences so we may go on withour daily lives. As I said: sometimes I feel a bit awkward about it. Let's just say that I am quite happy that there are people out there who _do_ care.
So, what got me started with a rant like that?
I've been busy working on the Events for the Anime Con and for one of these events I need to recode a shit load of video so I can compile them into a set of DVDs. In order to do so I need massive amounts of hard drive space, as you can imagine. However, this morning I found out that my Media drive (the one I use to capture all of my DV files to) only had about 4GB free, which posed me a nasty dillema:
* Do I go out and buy an extra hard drive, be it S-ATA or Firewire?
* Do I start using my system disk for the video work?
* Do I try to delete as much of the already captured files, without losing any real work?
* Do I try to finish as many projects in one day as I can, so I can free up space on the Media disk?
* Do I temporarily store the other projects some lace else?
Unfortunately option 1 is out of the question, due to the lack of funds; hard drives may come cheap these days, but it still ain't nothing!. Option 2 has always been a no-no to me. Option 3 I had already tried a week ago and option 5 would require the aforementioned option 1, since DV files tend to be a bit larger than what a DVD can store.
So I went for option 4 and have been churning out DVDs since ten this morning. Mix that in with some groceries, a visit to the store for blank DVDs and some random household stuff and that's a surefire recipe for not getting any bloody usefull work done :[
So round about now I really _should_ be in bed. While I've almost recuperated from the flu, I'm not all the way there. But instead of turning in and falling into a cozy and warm, deep slumber I sit here under fluorescent light, waiting for my computer to finish encoding a DVD.
kilala.nl tags: life, problem,
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2005-01-12 08:19:00
Wow! It finally happened! Apple unveiled a sub $500 Macintosh computer: the Mac mini. The system is basically the same hardware as the previous generation of the iMac, but packed into a _very_ small housing and without a built-in screen. We're _so_ going to get one :)
kilala.nl tags: apple,
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2005-01-10 20:28:00
The man who sued God by the way is an excellent movie. It also gave me some inspiration, 'cuase I'm looking into sueing the old Man for ever inventing head aches :[
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2005-01-10 17:25:00
Currently listening to 25 random never-before played songs by iTunes Smart Playlist.
Figures... Standing-room only on the train home, right on the worst day of my flu. I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening: hooking up with a number of people from the Macfreak forums to see Steve's keynote @ MWSF. The way things look right now there won't be any live coverage, so we'll have to dig through various other sites to get our info.
Also, yet again, we're going through the final steps of preparing for the major NIS+ master server switch at the bank.They always say that the third time's the charm, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
kilala.nl tags: apple, awesome,
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2005-01-08 12:20:00
Wow! Talk about disappointment...
For Christmass my step-brother-in-law got me a copy of Warcraft 3 which is a PC/Mac hybrid game. Unfortunately at some point in time Blizzard printed a number of CD's which only contained the PC version of the game. Go ahead and guess which version I got? Exactly...
Now, getting a refund for the faulty CD was no problem. However, finding the proper version provided to be a lot more difficult. Two hours, three toy stores, four game shops and three music stores later I have given up for today. I guess I'm going to have to resort to mail order ;_;
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2005-01-08 09:24:00
Currently listening to "nothing" by "forgot my iPod"
I wrote the following rant while on the bus home and thought it would merrit some discussion. Please go to this thread at Ars Technica to see how things turned out.
When I read "The naked truth about Macintosh" a couple of months back I was still snickering about that one line which read "Be carefull though, because Macs have been known to break relationships". I might have been snickering, but there was a voice in the back of my head which told me that it could be true and actually, I already knew.
I knew it then because I've had complaints in the past about the amount of time I spent with my computer, which at the time was a Linux box. I know it now, because I get the same remarks (and more) about my Mac. Comments about me "loving my Mac", about "should have married my Mac" and "being obsessed with Apple" seem to ring true to home, although I absolutely disagree with the "marrying" one.
I'm wondering though: does my love for all things Apple not count as a harmless hobby? Yes, about 50% of the magazines and 60% of the books I read are Mac related. Yes, about 70% of the time I spend on the Internet is related to Apple and Macs in some way. Yes, I get excited about cool new Apple products and I get giddy about Steven Jobs's keynotes.
And yes, I do spend quite some time behind my Mac, but not all of the time I spend there is Apple related. A lot of the time spent behind the computer is being used for my volunteer work with the J-POP Foundation.
Also, in my experience there are far worse cases than mine. I've known people who really don't get out much because of their PC's. I've known people who are definately more obsessed with Apple than I am. And yes, I have seen people break up because of their computers.
But in all fairness, I will admit that each case is of course not alike. As the dutch saying goes "If your friend jumps into the Rhine for fun, why should you?" (the Rhine of course being a rather heavily trafficed river close to where I was born -> it's dangerous to jump into for fun). Or in normal terms: the fact that person A does X, doesn't mean that it's OK for you to do it as well.
Reading all of that you will probably realise that I am well aware that I'm over-doing things a bit. And maybe I'm indeed trying to make things seems a bit better than they are. Right now I'm just a bit curious how other people think about situations like this one. And I'm even more curious about people who've been in situations like this and how they dealt with it.
kilala.nl tags: life, problem, meh,
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2005-01-06 00:53:00
Currently listening to "Tales of a librarian" by Tori Amos
So.. We got home from our little holiday in the UK just a couple of hours ago. I must say that it's nice to be back at my own PC and to have all of our familiar stuff around (yay for the bed!).
A big part of the following three to four days will be spent on the following things:
1. Clean up the house :# We left in a bit of a hurry due to the holidays, so it's a bit messy around here.
2. Research my eMate. There's still a lot to learn about this neat gizmo and I'll be documenting every little bit.
3. Solder a serial cable which allows me to use the eMate as a portable console for our UNIX boxen.
4. Update my website and add some new graphics and logos.
kilala.nl tags: holiday,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.