People can't spell

2006-05-31 14:43:00

Just a few pet peeves of mixups people insist on making in discussions and writing. They -really- get on my nerves! Two are cases of mixed up nouns/verbs/adjectives and two are just plain bad spelling.

* Indentification. A mixup between "identification" and "indent"?
* Authentification. A mixup between "identification" and "authentication"?!
* Hallucinating mushrooms. That would be a sight to see! Toad, Mario and the princess sharing some LSD :3
* You are being paranoia. How can my state be described with a noun?! That's like saying "You are tree!" or "That cat is dog!".

kilala.nl tags: annoying, meh,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Lordi unmasked, looks like me?!

2006-05-27 10:51:00

Freaky Friday, Batman!

And here's another one for the "Holy shit" files! The other day my brother sent me the picture to the left. Remember the Finnish metal band Lordi who recently won the Eurovision Song Festival? The guys with the freaky masks? Well, the guy on the cover of Seiska is their lead singer, without his mask. The resemblance is striking to say the least and I may have to start wearing a mask myself, the next time I visit Finland. I guess it's true what people say: -everybody- in the world has a doppelganger. The odd thing is that when you look at the singer's photo by itself everyone says we look a lot alike. But when you put us side-to-side there's no similarity whatsoever. Weird... Guess it has something to do with the mind's eye and all. Either that, of the fact that I can't frown on pictures... I always start smirking.

kilala.nl tags: holy shit,

View or add comments (curr. 4)

Battle Beasts FTW

2006-05-26 17:14:00

Fire? Wood? Water? Which element is -your- Battle Beast?

Holy shit. I'd -completely- forgotten about Battle Beasts! Although not really "completely" of course, since I've now remembered :) I'm off to read some more on this stuff. Man!

kilala.nl tags: toys, geeky, childhood,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Ulysses 31 FTW

2006-05-26 15:58:00

Mortals! You dare defy the Gods?!

While hot on the trail of various classic anime, I've stumbled on something that makes me very happy! Back in 2004 a DVD box set was released for the French/Japanese anime "Ulysses 31", a show that we loved when we were kids. Basically it's a retelling of dozens of Greek myths in the 31st century. Most of the show was quite good, with a few notable exceptions. *cough*Nono-the-annoyingly-cute-robot*cough* Anywho: the box set can be had for as little as fifteen pounds at Amazon.co.uk. \o/

Which brings us back to toys and models. While searching for stuff on "Ulysses 31" I found the online collectibles store Lulu Berlu which, though not for those faint at heart (or wallet), carries a -huge- selection of old toys. My favourite for "Ulysses" would be this one which would set you back a whopping 999 euros! o_O WTF?! Their prices for G1 Transformers (though they are MIB) are equally extortionate.

This isn't meant to say that what they have is worthless, because it really isn't. Browsing their website I've already stumbled upon a few things that are really interesting :) Like Kubrick sets based on the movie Tron ^_^ CUTE!

kilala.nl tags: anime, childhood,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Website progress - Arrow Emblem

2006-05-26 00:03:00

Well now! It's been a few hours work, but two things are nicely done now! For starters I cleaned up things a little bit, removing stale image files and adding subdirectories to various image directories. And second off, I added that Arrow Emblem section to the website. You'll find everything from toy pictures to music and video footage from the series.

Now I'd better get myself to bed, since I need to be in the (home) office by eight in the morning. Today's a national holiday in Dutchy Land and my client gives everyone off on Friday, so I can easily work from home. *phew*.

kilala.nl tags: website,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka

2006-05-25 17:37:00

Hawk of Grand Prix!

I've been digging around the web to find all kinds of stuff about that series I mentioned yesterday, "Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka". It turns out there's all kinds of stuff that was released back in 1977-78. Since all of the stuff is scattered around the web I've decided to gather them all on my website so they're more easily found. I will put up everything I have in the anime/manga section of this site, where it belongs <3

Now, as much as I love looking at all this old stuff, I do realise that I should probably not hunt after it. As with many of these pursuits, in the end I will probably not be that happy owning the items. Why? Because owning them means that the hunt is over. It means that I've fulfilled another quest and most importantly I can no longer -dream- about how cool it would be to own them. Odd? Maybe. But that's how I work :(

In another blast from the past (though related to "Arrow Emblem") I've dug up the Cool 80s cartoons thread on Ars Technica. This was the -very-first- thread I posted in on AT :3 'ts been almost six years now. Why dig it up? Well, I remembered someone from that thread begging me for footage of the series' opening sequence and I've finally found them :p Hope you like the WMVs Aphasia!

kilala.nl tags: arrow emblem, anime, japan,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka

2006-05-24 00:19:00

My first real anime experience.

Oh. My. God. This brings back childhood memories! When discussing the Karaoke Cafe event for the upcoming Anime 2006 festival on the Aniway fora something pushed me to trawl the web for information and files on my first real anime experience: Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka. And luckily I did! Among many things, there's a Real Media version of the opening sequence. I loved that series as a kid (I was seven at the time, I think) and would still love to see the full series even though the animation is stale and the art dates back to 1977.

Also, today is our second year's wedding anniversary! \o/ We've taken the day off so we can celebrate. I won't tell how just yet, since Marli might be reading this page sometime between now and when the surprise gets sprung :P

kilala.nl tags: arrow emblem, anime, japan, childhood,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Working at home

2006-05-23 09:22:00

Oasis of peace and quiet.

Due to circumstances I've decided to work from home for a few days. Let's just say that the chaotic atmosphere at the office wasn't helping my ability to concentrate on my work. Anywho... I have to say that I'd love a job where I could work from home more often. There's peace and quiet, comfortable furniture, plenty of natural light and good coffee. Of course there are down sides as well, the most notable being the lack of face-to-face contact with my colleagues. MSN, e-mail and cellphones help a lot, but it still isn't perfect.

kilala.nl tags: work,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Attending the SANE 2006 conference

2006-05-18 14:31:00

Thought I'd give you a little update from SANE'06. I'll keep it short, since there isn't a horrible lot to tell.

* Monday: Linux SysAd course was cancelled so me and Frank switched over to the IPSec course. This was 100% new material to me and (while boring at times) it was quite interesting. Now I'll at least know what people are talking about.
* Tuesday: The Solaris SMF tutorial was well worth the money, although a full day would've suited the material -much- better than half a day. In the AM I decided to crash the BSD Packet Filter tutorial and I guess the tutor should be happy I did. He had some trouble with the Powerbook used for the presentation and I was able to resolve his problems :)
* Wednesday: A full day of CF Engine, which was -totally- worth the money! Mark Burgess is an awesome speaker! Funny, smart and capable of conveying the heart of the matter I'd have loved to have this guy as a teacher in college!
* Thursday: As I suspected the conference itself is quite "meh". A few interesting speeches throughout the day, but I'm mostly taking things slowly. Instead I'm reading a bit in my new books. Unfortunately I slept -horribly- last night, so I'll be skipping the Social Event in the evening. :(

kilala.nl tags: work, studying, snow, conference,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Travelling to SANE 2006 in Delft.

2006-05-15 18:17:00

The next few days I'll be cooped up in a hotel in Delft with my colleague Frank. We'll be visiting the Sane 2006 conference, which is a combination of vacation and studying. The first three days will consist of tutorials, with the remaining two being filled with various talks and keynotes. Should anyone feel the need to hook up with me, I'll be taking the following lectures:

* Monday = Linux system administration
* Tuesday = The Solaris service management facility
* Wednesday = Host configuration and maintenance with CFEngine
* Naturally we'll also be attending the Social Event on Thursday.

Just look for the guy with the funky iBook and the Snow t-shirt. <3

kilala.nl tags: work, snow, conference,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Chick flicks make me cry ;_;

2006-05-14 01:20:00

Tearjerker and outright good movie

This evening has once again affirmed my status as a non-macho guy <3 Originally planning on putting the Azumi DVD on, I started surfing the various TV channels to kill some time while the disc was loading. However, I got stuck on BBC 2, where The english patient had just started.

Always a sucker for WWII drama I put down the remote and turned off the DVD player. Oddly enough I'd never seen the movie before, so I didn't really know what to expect except for the fact that it matched one of my other favourite genres: chick flicks.
So yes, just like with many other love dramas I ended up bawling out my eye balls. *blush* As I said: can't get much more non-macho than that.

Incidentaly, while looking up the URLs for the IMDB references of the two movies above, I found out that a sequel was made to Azumi. Excellent! Now I'll have to get my hands on that!...

kilala.nl tags: movies,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Wim Helsen, mad genius extra-ordinaire

2006-05-06 23:07:00

Madman or genius?

In past blog entries I've mentioned our love for cabaret. What most of our international visitors won't realise is that Dutch cabaret is nothing like what the Americans call "cabaret". Over here the term is used for performers who make you laugh, who make you feel angered and who make you think. They entertain, but require you to pay attention to their wisdom. Or their insanity. Either way :3 One of my favourite "cabaretiers" is Wim Helsen, a Belgian fellow who recently rose to fame. Personally I think the guy's a genius. A pure and unadulterated genius. In his show "Heden soup" he comes across as incredibly unstable, bordering on insane. At times yelling violently, at others as gentle as a summer's breeze. One minute standing there quietly, and another dancing wildly while muttering unheard words to himself. Personally I can only admire someone who can play a madman so convincingly.

kilala.nl tags: wim helsen, awesome, movies, cabaret,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

Mucking about with Windows and OS X

2006-05-06 11:15:00

Well shucks, I can really tell that I'm completely out of the Windows loop. I'm having all kinds of troubles backing up Marli's HP laptop (running XP) to that new LaCie hard drive. Fiddling with partitions (both the creation and the order thereof), mucking about in the BIOS and kicking around Norton Ghost (so it'll even recognize the fscking things). And now it seems I can't even boot the laptop from the dang USB interface! -_-; Sure reminds me why I made the switch to OS X in the first place!

Which brings me to how things went with my Powermac and iBook... I was done in half an hour maybe. Plug in the printer to our Airport Express base station, install the driver on OS X (since I had only installed Epson drivers originally) and click -three- times to add the printer. It was working perfectly. Same thing for the LaCie: just plug it in and it worked. Just had to partition the thing (which I ended up having to redo three times because of fscking Windows!) and start the backup software. *sigh* Bloody Windows...

I'll readily admit that I had to play around with Disk Utility for about half an hour to get my OS X backup to work, but still... Nothing should be worth the hassle I'm going through with Windows.

For the curious few out there: it's much easier to clone your drive from the command line, than it is using Disk Utility. Just run the following: sudo asr -source /Volumes/Powermac/ -target /Volumes/PMAC/ -erase. In this case "Powermac" is the name for my Mac's boot drive and "PMAC" is the name for the backup slice on the LaCie.

kilala.nl tags: apple, windows, meh,

View or add comments (curr. 0)

I got me a shredder!

2006-05-05 06:45:00

Let's play bank! I'll be the ATM :3

Yesterday evening it was Christmas all over <3 Recently most of us at Snow had received a bonus which could either be put to use in our IT budget or be paid out to our bank accounts (with all the taxes incurred in such a case). After some debate (we really didn't feel like losing 40% to taxes) Marli and I decided to use the little extra to buy some IT kit we needed around the house (and which would be very useful for my job as well). Aside from getting a laser printer (Lexmark e342N!), a FW hard disk from LaCie and some Kensington locks I had also ordered a "decent paper shredder, which is of use in a SoHo environment". Well, Mona (who takes care of us geeky IT consultants in the field) ordered me a heavy duty Fellowes machine which really seems to be up to the job. The funny thing about this machine though, is the fact that it has a separate slot for smart cards or credit cards. The geek in me instantaneously thought of all the fun we can have at our place, playing Bank with our friends :D

kilala.nl tags: snow, work, toys,

View or add comments (curr. 0)