2006-10-31 06:47:00
I for one welcome our ferral, feline overlords. *salutes* Cats rule! *salutes*
As always, more comics by T. Ishida can be found over at Sinfest
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2006-10-30 06:25:00
Not everyone loves working for my current client. Mind you, the people are great and the work's interesting (and plentiful!), so that ain't the problem. It's just that there _something_ about the whole building and the atmosphere that acts as a constant drain on your energy. A very tiring environment to work in.
Bram left a few days ago, to go work for his local city council (good on him too!). Like me, he'd never been altogether that crazy about the whole work environment. Knowing how the environment vexes me, he left me the note on the left. That's actually the first time _every_ that I've received a note like that ^_^
It says:
Thomas,
Just a few days more. Good luck! Tuesday I'll do a little happy-dance for you!
It made my day. I guess it's one of those "you had to be there" moments...
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2006-10-29 22:03:00
Wow... I never had a very high opinion of the dutch national ombudsman organisation Consumenten Bond (Consumer's Union), but this takes the cake. A member of the Mac Freak fora had sent them an e-mail to complain about their negative and one-sided reporting on the Apple Mac platform. Corthom tells us about this experience in this thread
The editor in chief e-mailed him back to tell him that most of their members use Microsoft Windows, but that they consider OS X and Linux as "interesting alternatives". However, he also tells him the following.
U heeft gelijk dat onze bladen nog worden opgemaakt op Apples, maar binnenkort stappen wij daarvoor over op pc's. Ik vrees dat de Mac zijn hoogtijdagen in de grafische wereld heeft gehad.
This translates as:
You are right about our magazines insofar that they are still made on Apples, but we will soon be making the transition to PCs. I'm afraid that the Mac's heydays in the graphical industry are over.
So aside from reporting quite negatively on the Mac, they also seem to think that they know it all :) Idjits...
kilala.nl tags: annoying, apple,
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2006-10-28 19:10:00
Today was a day well spent. Instead of the usual groceries and cleaning, I spent the day in the Dealing Room at the Abunai 2006 convention, promoting both our own festival and our group holiday to Japan.
Aside from glomping Jimmy, hugging Vief and shaking hands with a big bunch of old acquaintances I also tried to pull useful information out of potential clients. For example, there were three lovely young ladies (all sisters, from Almelo I believe) who were more than willing to voice their opinions on our pricing, on our events, our movie schedule and so on. Quite an educational day :)
Also: twelve-player simultaneous Step Mania fscking fules. Seriously. We _so_ need to get this at Anime 2007!
kilala.nl tags: japan,
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2006-10-25 23:38:00
Phew! That was a long night! I'm not used to staying up this late on weekdays =_=
I went to the first NLOSUG meeting tonight, like I said I would a few days ago. Aside from finally learning a little bit about Open Solaris (although most of it was basic community stuff) and some more in-depth stuff on ZFS, it was also very cool to meet some old acquaintances. There was a bunch of folks from Sun whom I hadn't seen in a long time, as well as Martijn and Job with whom I'd worked as colleagues a long time ago. Shiny :)
So the eve' was mostly for fun, with a little education thrown in. Well worth the hours I put in...
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2006-10-25 17:49:00
I'm sorry if my explosion of excremental expletives offends you, but this is _very_ bad news.
I just read that Lik Sang has been forced out of business by Sony after litigation upon unfounded litigation. For those not in the know: Lik Sang is a highly reputed online reseller of imported games and toys from Asia. With offices both in China and Germany they have a huge customer base who rely on them for their daily dose of gaming goodness.
And now Sony has forced them out of business because they feel they should be able to regulate how and where their hardware and software is sold.
A quote from the press release:
"Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe's ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don't see fit. It's the beginning of the end... of the World as we know it", stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com.
"Blame it on Sony. That's the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally 'won', few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today."
Fsck Sony. Bastards...
kilala.nl tags: games, internet, annoying,
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2006-10-25 09:05:00
Many thanks to my colleague Guldan who pointed me towards a website giving a short description of using the BSD hardware-sensors daemon, together with Nagios in order to monitor your hardware. Using sensord should make things a lot easier for people running BSD, as they won't have to muck about with SNMP OIDs and so on.
kilala.nl tags: work, nagios, unix, sysadmin,
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2006-10-24 12:21:00
I'm sure most of us will remember the 1983 movie, War Games. This year, Introversion Software have created a simple yet stunning game based on global, thermonuclear warfar called Defcon.
Quite aptly the games tagline is "Nobody wins. But maybe - just maybe - you can lose the least.". All action takes place on a stylised world map, with opponents placing silos, weaponry, radars and defenses. Once Defcon 5 is reached, the action begins.
I can honestly say that this is the _first_ piece of Windows software that makes me wish I had an Intel Mac, so I could run Parallels Desktop or Crossover.
EDIT:
Sweet! Thanks to The Saint for pointing out Introversion's roadmap. Apparently they'll be releasing the Mac version of Defcon in November... Jawsome! Now let's hope they make it a Universal Binary.
kilala.nl tags: games,
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2006-10-23 12:33:00
Now this is some very interesting news! I just read in Games TM that a US-based programming group has released a new Megadrive game, called Beggar Prince. For around fourty euros you could own a unique and very rare (only 900 copies exist) game for your Sega Megadrive.
kilala.nl tags: games, megadrive,
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2006-10-21 19:06:00
Wynk keeps putting me onto the track of great movies!
I am _so_ going to see The Fountain, which tells the story of one man's thousand year journey to save his loved one. The artwork looks fscking amazing! The trailer's simply stunning. I _so_ need to see this :)
A little research also shows two other very interesting facts:
1) The movie is a work of Darren Aronofsky, who also made the absolute master piece Pi.
2) The movie is part of a multi-media project, which includes a comic book, published by DC Comics.
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2006-10-20 22:04:00
Today I could finally lay my hands on the big box of DVDs I ordered at Right Stuff (see the blog post for 2006-09-12). All DVDs reached our home unscathed and in perfect condition. Joy!
Now, I started with Sherlock Hound since I felt like watching a good classic. Dating back to 1981, the series may have lost some of its graphical shine but the stories are still rock solid. A good combination of excitement and comedy. Leave it to ole Miyazaki to direct a good adventure! <3
The three screen grabs above mark a few things I thought noteworthy:
1) I just love the homely feeling Holmes' house exudes. It all looks very comfortable!
2) Back in 1981 people were already putting pop culture references into anime. When the counterfeiting machine explodes in episode three it starts churning out oddly shaped pieces of metal. One of the henchmen grabs a piece that looks remarkably much like the aliens from Space Invaders. And to top it off, they even play a few Space Invaders sound effects in the background. Awesome!
3) Come on! You have to admit that Sherlock Holmes could be the blueprint of Spike Spiegel. Spike gives us the exact same, dull stare in the Cowboy Bebop episode "Heavy metal queen".
kilala.nl tags: anime,
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2006-10-20 13:13:00
Sun has made arrangements for the inaugural meeting of the Dutch Open Solaris Users Group. The meeting will be held on the evening of Thursday the 26th, at their office in Amersfoort.
Aside from the stuff you'd expect (like a few lectures on new Solaris features) you could also say it'll be a fun evening :) Meet some new people, have some food'n'drinks all mixed in with some interesting work-related stuff.
I'm game :)
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2006-10-19 20:11:00
While perusing the archives of my blog I found out that a three weeks of entries were missing. I guess those had been forgotten when I was recovering from The Great SNAFU of 2006. But luckily I was able to recover them from my backups! Hooray!
So the big, gaping hole between June 29th and July 20th has been (re)filled. o/
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2006-10-19 19:17:00
I love cartoons... I really do. But there's no end to my appreciation for the genius that is Foster's home for imaginary friends (Wikipedia entry).
The show's got everything I need! Insane characters, characters you'd have to be insane to think of, and insanity in general :3 But putting aside the story, I'm also well impressed by the art of the TV series: the style's right up my alley and everything's actually made 100% on the computer using stuff like Flash and After Effects. Shiny.
I guess it's kinda hard to convey what I like about the show. If you're in the least curious, try to catch the show on Cartoon Network.
EDIT: I just found the production blog for FHIF. Jawsome!
kilala.nl tags: cartoons, fun,
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2006-10-19 08:55:00
Nine days and counting... That's how much time I now have left to ensure that my Nagios project can be handed over to internal personnel. And with a ToDo list that's over a dozen items in length that means upping the pace by a few notches.
This time around I'm not counting on angry and loud heavy metal, but on synth-rock from the eighties, courtesy of the original Bubblegum Crisis' OST.
Hacking to the tune of "Funky doll" and "Mad machine" :3 I'll post an MP3 snippet as soon as I can...
kilala.nl tags: work, rhythm, music,
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2006-10-17 20:20:00
I heard on the radio today that Stem Wijzer is back again, to help us Dutchies form an idea of which political party suits our opinions the most. As always the website employes thirty statements, combined with some valuing to compare your opinions to those of the eligible parties. Just keep in mind that one really oughtn't put too much faith/trust in what they tell you. Just consider it a basic guide line.
Anywho: if it's any surprise, Groen Links and PVDA led my list by a long shot. I'll probably be voting for the former, since they're usually much more "friendly" than the latter.
Also, another helping-you-decide website has popped up: Kies Kompas, although they've not yet started their operation. Let's see next week what they'll be telling me.
kilala.nl tags: politics, netherlands,
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2006-10-17 19:38:00
Monday and Tuesday were not spent with the usual Nagios project in Amersfoort. Instead, I spent two days cooped up in a small hotel, somewhere in the Achterhoek (for my foreign visitors: one of the Netherlands' rural, backwater areas). It was time well spent, on a inter-personal communications course from CCCM.
While originally quite sceptic, the course turned out fine. About halfway Monday things took a course that made me decide that their approach might not fit my preferences, but half an hour later I also decided that _sticking_ with the course would help me in achieving one of my goals: learning to play my cards close to my chest and not letting a group of people on to my emotions regarding a subject. So even though the course may not be 100% up my alley, I may as well take the time to get some practice in :)
Anywho... November and January will see two additional training days, with a few personal talks at the CCCM office thrown in as well.
kilala.nl tags: work, studying, snow,
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2006-10-15 17:59:00
November the 22nd will see the new elections for parliament. This year around I thought I'd _finally_ read up on a few of the parties, to make sure that I know who I'm voting for.
Ever since I turned eightteen I've always voted for Groen Links (a lefty party, which used to stress proper care of our environment), but this year I'm considering three: Groen Links, Partij Van De Arbeid and the Socialistiche Partij. Hereafter I'll abbreviate these as GL, PVDA and SP.
As is plainly obvious from today's image, my preferences lie with left and red.
As I mentioned, GL is my traditional and safe choice. They seem like a good bunch and never attract a huge number of voters. PVDA seem to have started a small revolution, with their popularity rising steadily ever since the last elections. They however seem to be becoming more and more moderate, toning down their initial "revolutionary attitude". Finally, SP seems to be a fairly radical choice for me (or at least less "safe"), but they're also the smallest party of the three.
Anywho... I've been digging through their programmes and two things are glaringly obvious:
1. The programmes for SP and PVDA are fscking huge. They're over seventy pages! GL weighs in at a lighter thirtythree pages.
2. They all make some good points, none of'em claim stuff that I disagree with, and none of'em say really radical stuff. In a lot of cases they actually say the same things :(
Quite... So here's a few things that made me stop and think.
=====
One of the recurring themes in the party programmes are the monthly wages paid to people who are employed in the public sector. There have been numerous cases of people working for the benefit of our society, who were making exorbitant amounts of money. On the one hand one could say that, because an entire country is benefiting from their work, they are entitled to this amount. But on the other one could state that, since they are working for the benefit of our country, they should also expect to be paid a "normal" amount of money.
These days it's become quite popular for a political party to state in their programme that the wages for any person working in the public sector should be maximized at a certain amount. I agree. However, for some silly reason everyone I've heard on this subject keeps saying "let's maximize it at what the prime minister's making". Seriously: why? Who decides that the PM is the most important person in the country and that his salary should be the basis to define everybody else's salary on?
I say we draw the line at amount X, irrespective of who makes what right now.
=====
PVDA seems to fancy integration on a European scale, while the SP seems to be in favor of a more individualistic approach. I think that in my heart I'll have to agree with the latter: I for one do not feel much for a grand and unified Europe. The United States of Europe... *brrr*
=====
Also, mobility. GL and SP seem to be heavily in favour of public transport over conventional transport by car. Something I couldn't agree with more. Either that or we all switch to hybrid models, which also seems to be something GL and SP favour. PVDA seems to be happy mucking about rolling more tarmack through the Netherlands.
=====
This one got me into a bit of an argument with Marli... I oppose any form of discrimination. Naturally, "negative" discrimination is just plainly stupid. But likewise I oppose "positive" discrimination: if we're all supposed to be equaly, than we shouldn't be giving favours to a person just because they are part of a certain demographic.
I am well aware that minorities and women are still discriminated against on a regular basis. I believe this problem should be taken care of by eliminating the negative discrimination. Not by _adding_ positive discrimination to the equation.
Yes, I am also aware that I am part of the demographic that has it "easiest": white, male, middle-class, from a western EU country.
=====
Hmm... The snippet above on positive discrimination made me think. If I claim to oppose positive discrimination, how is it that I also am in favour of taxing people by their income? Because if we decide to give "poor" people benefits over "rich" people, doesn't that count as positive discrimination as well? Hmm... I'm going to have to think this one over.
=====
Finally, open source software, which is quite important in my field. None of the parties really seems to know what it really is, but all of them support the use of OSS by the government. It almost seems like a token piece of the agenda: let's include it because everyone else is.
GL seems to be the party with the best idea about what OSS really is.
=====
Well... Let's conclude that my decision hasn't been made just yet. Didn't expect to either, in just one day. Reading through the programmes takes quite some effort (especially the PVDA one, which is very dry). I think the public debates should add some weight to the scales. Let's wait for those...
Party programmes:
Groen Links [.pdf]
Partij van de Arbeid [.pdf]
Socialistische partij [.pdf]
kilala.nl tags: politics, netherlands,
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2006-10-15 16:08:00
Finally. I should've seen this movie years ago, but last night I finally watched it on a spur. BBC Three was airing it and I'd heard so many good things about it.
Well, the people at the Ars Openfora weren't wrong: Donnie Darko is an excellent movie. A bit of a mind-fsck at times, but that's part of what makes it so great. Although, about fifteen minutes from the end of the movie I do think the story drops a little in intensity... Shame.. But still, very cool :)
Very cool: of all of the time-travel movies I've seen so far this is the _only_ one that doesn't leave you with unanswered questions. You will not be stuck thinking "OMG, this doesn't make sense!". Shiny!
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2006-10-12 22:27:00
Recently, a colleague of mine informed me off the fact that Google Video has a copy of a documentary called The Secret History of Hacking. The show's basically a fifty minutes tabloid feature on the history of hacking and computer hobbies. Not very in-depth, although they did manage to get three of the most famous people on board.
And even though the show seems to be a 50-50 mix of sucking Woz's cock cause he's so great and poor Kevin's such an innocent guy, it's still quite enjoyable. If just for the old computer imagery from the seventies and eighties.
Go grab a copy of the video through Keepvid.com, before Google gets forced to take the vid down due to copyright issues.
kilala.nl tags: tv, internet, geeky,
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2006-10-12 07:09:00
Thanks to the good people at the Ars Openfora I'm being kept semi-uptodate about new anime releases in Japan. Pumpkin Scissors has just started airing over there and people seem to be fairly enthusiastic about it.
And I have to agree with them, so far the show seems pretty interesting. So yeah, it's working the stereotypes pretty heavily, but that doesn't have to make it a bad show per default.
Which stereotypes? Think of stuff like:
* Pretty, young, female officer in charge of a very small unit of semi-geeky intelligence soldiers.
* Said officer is overly zealous and is naive in her definitions of honor and valour.
* There's the "OMG! He so mysterious and spooky!" big guy, with a dark, war-torn past.
* Things are supposed to be made more mysterious by adding German names to just about everything that's already supposed to be spooky.
* And so on... Did I mention the mild mannered department head and his overly grouchy boss? Yea, they're here too.
As I said: it doesn't make the show bad per default. I like the artwork a lot (reminds me of Sakura Taisen for some reason) and I am kind of intrigued by the history behind the 901-ATT unit (ONOZ Gespanst Jager!). I'll get my hands on ep2 through fansubs RSN. Gives me something to do during lunch :3
EDIT (@17:11):
I just found out that, even though the show has only started airing recently, there are already bunches of cool merchandise out there. For example, check Gee Store for some cool cosplay stuff! I'm _so_ going to order one of those insignia.
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2006-10-10 22:09:00
Oh! I also wanted to re-congratulate my little(r) brother, who semi-regularly visits my blog as Mistoffelees. He's just landed a great job, while still in his first year of polytechnical college in Finland.
/me applauds
Good going man! /o/
kilala.nl tags: family,
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2006-10-09 13:04:00
Sunday afternoon I went to visit a friend of mine whom I met months ago, through Animal Crossing. Since then we've talked a lot on MSN, but never met in person. But yesterday I finally drove up to Amsterdam to meet Floortje. We had a fun afternoon, even though Marli couldn't come with me.
I had never heard of Sambakza or their great Flash animations, so Floor introduced me to those. Yes, it's old news (the "There she is" video was made in 2003), but I still love the video. Great style and animation, and as ever I'm a sucker for ska... Even if it is in Korean (or is that: "_especially_ if it is in Korean"?)...
Anywho... Thanks for the fun afternoon Floor! We'll have to drag you to Utrecht sometime soon <3
kilala.nl tags: music, internet, friends,
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2006-10-06 21:05:00
The Xbox 360 ain't ever coming past my doorstep, but I just love their new "Cops and robbers" commercial. I'd love to play games like that. ^_^
I needs to get me some geeks together!
kilala.nl tags: internet, games,
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2006-10-06 18:24:00
Ah yes... Today's the first day after summer that I've lit the gas hearth, which means that finally winter is truly on its way. It's been drizzly and a bit nippy for the past few days, but today I really just felt the need to turn on the heating.
So on the left you'll find undeniable proof! Not just of the fact that winter's on its way, but also that cats love furnaces! (or is that furnae?)
Right now, Blackie's all cozy, curled up on the beanbag in front of the hearth. God I wish I could be a cat from time to time...
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2006-10-06 15:27:00
This week my client's been replacing all their vending machines because they switched from three seperate contracts to one. So instead of having the Douwe Egberts Cafitesse, we are now stuck with the Autobar San Remo.
Lemme tell ya... The Autobar coffee tastes like -crap-! At least DE's coffee still tasted somewhat like the stuff I make at home, but this? Way too sour, way too watery... :r
Makes it almost a blessing, that I'm outta here in a month...
kilala.nl tags: coffee, drinks, annoying, meh,
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2006-10-04 21:09:00
When your hard drive is making those kind of sounds, start worrying.
Yesterday Marli's laptop started putting up a fight. It was -really- sluggish and the hard drive was making aforementioned noises. The "hard drive self test" in the BIOS confirmed my fears: the hard drive is just about to kick the can.
Unfortunately the last backup we made of the system was a few months ago (the Windows lappie is the only one -not- being regularly backed up at our place), so now I need to get Mar's files off the system ASAP.
But of course this wouldn't be an interesting evening if I didn't run into a few challenges:
1. Doing it from Windows is risky. I'll be running my OS from the hard disk, thus severely cutting in the remaining life time of the drive.
2. AFAIK there's too much stuff on the lappie for burning it on a CD. Burning would probably fail as well, due to the general fsckedupedness of the system.
3. Running a Linux boot CD is an option. I can then transfer stuff through FTP, Samba, or whatever. I would also not be stressing the hard drive, which is good. To this end I burnt a Damn Small Linux CD-ROM, which indeed boots up the laptop perfectly. It also mounts the Windows drive perfectly.
But there's one hitch :( The onboard LAN is a Realtek 8139, which only has limited (and experimental) support in the Linux 2.4 kernel. And wouldn't it be my luck if DSL doesn't want to initialise the NIC? *grrrr*
My options:
1. Try another distro (downloading Knoppix right now).
2. Go the SMB way through Windows (trying this right now).
/me crosses his fingers
EDIT:
Oh great! Fsck! *growl* Of -course- The admin user cannot access Marli's files in Windows safe mode. How could I have been so stupid to expect full access to the drive? Naturally I was expecting waaaaay too much!
/me kicks a wall.
kilala.nl tags: problem, other tech,
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2006-10-03 23:31:00
This goes to show that the proverb above is right: Joerg Linge, whom I met at NagKon 2006, just e-mailed me. He mentioned that right around the same time we had both come up with a similar solution to one problem.
The problem: use Nagios plugins through a normal SNMP daemon.
Our solutions were identical when it came to configuring the daemon, but differed slightly when it comes to getting the information from the client. The approach is the same, but while he uses Perl for the plugin, I use Bash ^_^
Life's little coincidences :)
Joerg's solution and write-up.
Anywho... Joerg's a cool guy :) Go check out his website and have a look around.
kilala.nl tags: work, nagios, sysadmin,
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2006-10-01 08:53:00
That is all.
kilala.nl tags: comics, awesome,
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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.