Wii

2006-04-30 11:39:00

Now we know why they're so creative...

I expect that most of you have heard about this now, but apparently the guys at Nintendo's PR were doing some serious chronic when they thought up the name for Nintendo's new console. Personally, I always liked the name Revolution and had no problems with Ninty marketing the system under that name. But Wii? I dunno... There's just too many weird jokes to be made about that... I mean, it's not like the names Xbox2 and PS3 are very imaginative, but still. I'd rather they'd call it the Nintendo RS instead. Like, Revolution System or something. It'd match the Nintendo DS naming.. Ah well, we'll see how things unfurl in the future.

kilala.nl tags: games, wii,

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Arie and Silvester: hilarious

2006-04-25 08:55:00

Arie & Silvester

Yesterday I stumbled upon a most impressive website: Kid of Speed. It contains a story and photographs detailing a young woman's journey through the Chernobyl area. The website provides a look into history as it was frozen ten years ago. Quite harrowing... Also, Monday night we visited the Carre theater in Amsterdam to see the show "200%" by Arie & Silvester. These two rank among our favourite cabaretiers and I have to say their show was a blast! It wasn't quite as good as "Vet", or "Rammen"... But still, quite enjoyable. And I just love the creative acts they throw into their shows. For those who haven't seen anything by them yet: Arie & Silvester use quite a bit of animation, audio and video trickery in their shows. It's hard to give proper examples. I guess it's something you'd just have to see :)

kilala.nl tags: arie en silvester, movies, cabaret,

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Website progress

2006-04-19 22:20:00

A-frigging-MEN! It took me a while, but I finally got the layout using tables debugged. Turns out that I was making a few stupid mistakes with the h-alignment of various table elements :[

/me = n00b

So now I'm back to only one big nag: the fact that Internet Explorer makes my site look like ass because it cannot handle PNG transparency. What a douche bag. I guess I'll have to tackle that sometime soon, by using another file format (possibly without transparency altogether).

kilala.nl tags: website,

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A holiday to Finland

2006-04-17 13:01:00

Helsinki's Dom church.

So now I'm back from my long weekend in Finland and I have to say: boy, was it relaxing! It was really nice to be out of the loop for a while, forcing myself not to think about work and other responsibilities. I spend my days playing Animal Crossing, hanging about with my family, having yummy Finnish food and sight-seeing. It was great being back in Helsinki, even though I had to be apart from Marli for a few days. The weather was absolutely awesome, as if someone up there new I was there for my peace and quiet. Only during the last few hours of my stay did the weather turn sour.

Naturally I brought back a load of swag, since there're so many great things you can get in Finland which just aren't available over here.

First off there were the requisite candies from Fazer, like Marianne, Fazer Mint, Geisha and so on. Then there were the traditional Moomin mugs and some books from our childhood. And finally a few cans of cider and two packs of riisi piirakka (rye pastries filled with rice). Also, for a friend's birthday Marli told me to bring back something from Finnish tradition, so I brought back a bottle of lakka liquor and a tin of bear soup. Yes... Bear... :3

I have to admit that I'm still considering moving to Finland altogether. My mom and me discussed the matter, with the pro's and the con's. Well, who knows?! Maybe, someday, we'll move over there ^_^

kilala.nl tags: finland, holiday, relaxing,

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Quandary on video gaming, children and adults

2006-04-13 00:12:00

The following is a post I made on the Ars Technica forums a few minutes ago. It raises an interesting issue, which I would like to talk more about. If you have any thoughts on the subject, please contact me.

Due to various reasons it seemed wiser to create a new character in AC:WW, while retaining the village. I've grown to really like the town, so I didn't want that to go to waste.

Which brings on an interesting discussion.

A lot of us are twenty-something, thirty-something hard working people, who like to play their video games. As this thread shows a lot of us also enjoy playing Animal Crossing online.

So how do we handle the tangled web that is today's kids? Cause we're bound to run into some very young players, even though we may not be aware of it. Or the other way around: they might not be aware who we are.

So, while we see no error in our ways (what's the problem in playing an online game with loads of people across the world?!) the kid's parents might not agree. I mean, it does sound kind of odd, right? Their eleven year old girl, playing video games with a 27 year old guy?!

And since my character Kilala is a girl, while I am in fact a guy, it might also raise additional question with these parents. Even when there's absolutely no reason to question my motives, it could still get strange looks.

So anyway. Please discuss I'm quite curious how all of you feel about this subject.

When I find the oppurtunity I will request a new Friend Code from Nintendo WFC. Until then, I'll be offline.

kilala.nl tags: games, problem, animal crossing,

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Website progress - messing with tables

2006-04-12 08:50:00

AAUGH! You'd think that with my history in IT I'd be able to get something simple as an HTML table to work properly! Right? RIGHT?! Well, I for the life of me can't figure out why this piece of crud HTML code keeps borking things up in Safari. Usually that browser's pretty good with layouts and so on, but the tables I use to put my pictures in keep getting mixed up. Even though I checked all the tags and made sure that all sections are closed off as they should.

Camino and Firefox seem to get everything right, while Safari and IE (for Mac) screw things up slightly. And don't start with me about Opera and IE (for Win). I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but my site looks totally ass in those browsers. ;_;

*growl* I'll deal with it when I get back from my trip to Finland. I don't feel like fixing it now. So for now you're stuk with a crappy lay-out. Sorry... -_-;

kilala.nl tags: website,

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Addicted to Animal Crossing

2006-04-12 08:33:00

Where animals get cross with you.

I married this absolutely awesome woman, would you believe it? It is now twice that she broke her promise where she said "You're -not- getting that game!". The first time it was Mario Kart for the NDS which I love to no end and now she surprised me with Animal Crossing! A wonderful game which I'll be sure to play for months to come. I'm already hooked and have already made a few friends online *waves at Stella, Floor, Miika and Ashley*. As many others have remarked, playing Animal Crossing is a bit like going on a holiday. It's a carefree world where you can bathe in the sun, go fishing or travel abroad to other towns.

And given the fact that I'm totally hooked on Animal Crossing, there couldn't be a more convenient time for me to take a short break from work. Which I did! I took a week off, to relax, calm down, get my bearings and so on. And what better way to do that than to immerse myself in a game, listen to lots of music and to visit my family in Finland? I'll be going over there for four days and last night was spent hectically burning all kinds of DVDs with family movies they still need to see :D Don't you just love planning ahead? *rolls eyes*

For those wanting to play, I'm [ INFO CHANGED, see 13/04/06 ]. My Friend Code is [ INFO CHANGED, see 13/04/06 ]. I try to be online between 1800 and 2200 MET. If you want to visit Luna, drop me an e-mail (contact info can be found in the Cailin section).

kilala.nl tags: games, animal crossing,

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New mission badge

2006-04-03 22:15:00

It's hard work, in the sysadmin army

EDIT: I have no clue where the original text of this message went. *confused*

kilala.nl tags: geeky, work,

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You're in the Sysadmin Army now!

2006-04-03 22:14:00

Snow @ KPN, 2005-2006

This will seem quite odd to most of you, but I just spent the better part of my evening cooking up "mission badges". Inspired by the cool South Park patches my brother-in-law brought home from Iraq, I thought it'd be neat to make something similar for my Sysadmin work. I know that it's absolutely -not- comparable to being in the army, but... Well, you know. It seemed like a fun idea. Both of the badges are based on catch phrases we have coined at each customer. At $PREVIOUSCLIENT we were all completely mad about the song "Hollaback girl" by Gwen Stefani. And at $CLIENT we'd all be yelling "Mine!" (from the movie "Finding Nemo") at the oddest of times. These were tossed together -very- quickly, so they don't look -that- good. But I'm happy how they came out nonetheless. Were I ever to order real embroidered patches with these prints, then I'd completely redo them.

kilala.nl tags: sysadmin, work, geeky, snow,

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Mega update!

2006-04-02 11:23:00

I don't know why, but Opera and some versions of IE keep fscking up the table layout for this news post. Sorry guys.

Jimminy Cricket! Almost a whole month has gone by without any form of updates! o_O You guys must think I'm slacking off! Well, rest assured that I'm not, but that I'm very, very busy! Work+festival+private_life+finishing_the_house=lots of work and right now that leaves me with too little time to work on the site. For now though, here's a mega-update :3

As I mentioned near the end of February I went to see 7 Seconds of love play live in Amsterdam. I loved their music as MP3's (which they offer for free download on their website), but their concerts are on a completely different level! The energy these guys generate is awesome! The second act on stage that night, The Shenanigans (from Utrecht), was also very good! Their line-up was more like the classic-style ska and was executed -very- well.

Honesty drives me to confess that this was my first concert in more than ten years, but now I understand what I've been missing! It's a rare thing indeed when I'm compelled to "dance" in public by music.

EDIT:
Holy shiznit! Thanks to the 7SoL forums I just found out that one of the band members has put three videos of the concert online! You can find them at YouTube here, here and here. Awesome! Also I just learned about a website called KeepVid which will let you download movies from YouTube (something which isn't normally possible).

I seriously want these two bands to start putting out CDs. They really deserve some recognition and could very do well with some extra income.

Last Friday I took it upon myself to -finally- do something I'd been wanting to do for a very long time: mod my iBook! It really wasn't as a big a mod as the ones I did with my old Linux box (which I've recently sold off by the way), and it was very easy to execute... But I love it nonetheless.

So, what did I do? I modified the white, glowing Apple logo in the lid to have the colours of the original nineteen-eighties Apple logo. I.e. the rainbow Apple.

As I said: this was -very- easy to do. Just get a hex-key which fits the four screw in the iBook's lid and undo them. Then snap the white part of the lid loose (don't worry, the insides are very tidy and nothing will fall out). You can now simply tape some coloured plastic or silk paper (which is what I used) behind the clear Apple logo. Presto!

I love the way it turned out (a few bright colours against the sleek white of the iBook) and will be modding a colleague's iBook at the office on Monday. She's been wanting a pink Apple logo for quite a while now :3

Yesterday was the fourth annual Dataman ISP Kart competition. Around 800 people from all manner of companies delivering Internet services come together to compete in kart races. My employer Snow was there with about twelve people. We didn't win anything, but it was a nice day nonetheless. I just loved playing with the slotrace track.

Also, I did get to meet a few new people, which is always good. *waves at Kirsten and Marjolein*. I was genuinly surprised to hear a girl giggle when I was cussing at a colleague in Japanese. That made my day Marjolein ^_^

kilala.nl tags: music, apple, ibook, snow,

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