Mardou, can I be your balloon?

2006-07-29 23:41:00

Incredible. A part of "The subterraneans" actually made sense!

"Good Lord! You wait for inspiration before writing? Man! That's even less reliable than doing dope or alcohol!"

EDIT @ 00:17:
Two more observations...
* Mardou is cute, but crazy as a fox!
* This movie proves once again that emo is timeless and not just something of the last five to ten years.

kilala.nl tags: movies,

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Strawberries, hippies and violence. Where's my cream?

2006-07-29 22:56:00

Strawberries and blood... And loads of hippies.

TCM was airing The strawberry statement tonight. Most impressive I have to say! Not only is the topic it covers something that strikes me, but the techniques used in filming and cutting the movie are also awesome. Very trippy! As some of you may know, the movie's based on the student protests and revolution from the sixties. Annoyingly I am very hazy on the details of the whole deal, so I -definitely- need to read up on the subject. The culmination of the movie is the violent breakup of the students' sit-in, by both the police and the national guard. This should actually go onto the "Required watching" list for my kids... When they're around eighteen. I wonder if DVDs keep that long... Oh, and Kim Darby (who plays Linda in "strawberry" was a cuty!

And sweet Jeebus, may I add that came on TCM after "strawberry" is even trippier? Lordy-dordy! It's like the whole crew's on acid! The subterraneans. As far as I can tell by now (after about fifteen minutes) it's about a square's introduction into some zany Beatnik/Hippy/Crazy society... Maybe it would make sense if I were drunk (which I never am, so all hope is lost)...

"Go! Go! Go!"

kilala.nl tags: movies,

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Weird Japanese toys just got a little bit weirder

2006-07-28 17:00:00

Today I was doing some more research for my Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka page, which turned up all kinds of nice auctions on eBay. It's amazing to see the kind of toys Popy created in the seventies and eighties. For instance, what do you think of CompoBoy, the Stereo Robot? XD Yes, a huge collection of miniature Hifi equipment that can be combined to form a robot... What'll they think of next?

kilala.nl tags: japan, toys, geeky,

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Website progress

2006-07-28 00:16:00

Changes and modifications complete ...

kilala.nl tags: website,

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Website progress

2006-07-27 19:17:00

Site directory structure overhaul in progress. Please ignore any flakiness.

kilala.nl tags: website,

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Rainbow apples FTW

2006-07-27 13:03:00

A veritable cornucopia of stickers!

Fo' shizzle! Do I love the community that is Ars Technica. In the Mac Achaia we were discussing the various odd places where we have put the Apple stickers we got with our hardware. Just yesterday Durf pops in and mentions that he's found a whole wad of the classic "rainbow" stickers. And that he's giving them away! O_O That's fscking awesome! So all the way from Tokyo, a sheet of rainbowy goodness will be coming my way <3. I'm so excited!

kilala.nl tags: apple, awesome, friends,

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Nagios clients for UNIX/Linux

2006-07-27 13:01:00

I've added a small comparison between the various ways in which your Nagios server can communicate with its clients. It's in the menu on the left, or you can go there directly.

kilala.nl tags: work, unix, nagios, sysadmin,

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Gojira to the rescue

2006-07-26 19:39:00

Gruuraaaargh!...

So we all know how everyone's dscking around in the Middle East, right? And now the US, the UN and uncle Bob's cat (meaning everyone else) all decide to get involved as well... I think it should be apparent to them by now that they're not really wanted there. * Fifteen countries get together to have a meeting on the whole subject (which fails by the way), to arrange for some kind of truce. None of the parties involved in the whole turmoil is even willing to be present at the meeting.

* The UN set up some observation post in Israel. It's taken under fire ten times during the day and ten times the UN asks Israel to stop shooting at them, which they promis to do. By the end of the day, the UN -suspects- that Israel was firing at them intentionally. YOU THINK?!

There's only one solution to this world's problems, and it's pictured above. I say we let the kaiju take over the world...

kilala.nl tags: annoying, politics,

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Using SNMP with Solaris and Sun hardware

2006-07-26 16:25:00

After digging through Sun's MIB description (see SUN-PLATFORM-MIB.txt) it became clear to me that things are a lot more convoluted than I originally expected. For example, each sensor in the Sun Fire systems lead to at least five objects each describing another aspect of the sensor (name, value, expected value, unit, and so on). Unfortunately Sun has no (public) description of all possible SNMP sensor objects so I've come to the following two conclusions:

1. I'll figure it all out myself. For each model that we're using I'll weasel out every possible sensor and all information relevant to these sensors.
2. I'll have to write my own check script for Nagios which deals with with all the various permutations of sensor arrays in an appropriate fashion. Joy...

EDIT:
For your reference, Sun has released the following documents that pertain to their SNMP implementation. Mostly they're a slight expansion on the info from the MIB. At least they're much easier on the eyes when reading :p
* 817-2559-13
* 817-6832-10
* 817-6238-10
* 817-3000-10

kilala.nl tags: unix, work, nagios, sysadmin,

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Website progress - moving to mySQL and PHP

2006-07-25 22:44:00

Linkage section is now also running from mySQL. My PHP code must the shittiest on teh Intarweb, but at least it works. It's also been expanded greatly to be up to date with my bookmarks...

kilala.nl tags: website, programming,

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Tom Nook wants a word with you

2006-07-25 20:40:00

Now you can visit all your friends... In the theater!

Oh my... <3 I'm giddy with anticipation because apparently December will see the release of the Animal Crossing movie. Now I knew that I absolutely -love- this game, even though I don't play it anymore. I mean, what's there not to like? The game (if you can even call it that) has originality, it almost never gets boring, each and every day you play has a surprise for you and, to me at least, it always feels a little bit like a holiday away from home. So imagine my surprise when I heard about the movie. I had no clue how much AC touches me though, until I heard the sounds and music while the website was loading. I have to admit that I got a little teary eyed, reminiscing about my "friends" in the game. I really ought to play Animal Crossing sometime soon again. If only to clean out all the weeds from my town Luna... *sniffle*

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

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Using your Mac OS X system with Vodafone GPRS

2006-07-25 10:42:00

Sweet! I've finally gotten my Nokia cell phone to work as a Bluetooth modem for my GPRS connection.

Vodafone had already sent me a manual describing how to set up the connection, but unfortunately it wasn't working for me. Turns out that Vodafone skipped a few steps. The life saver in this matter turns out to be Ross Barkman's website which has GPRS modem scripts for leading brand cell phones.

If you would like to get your OS X system connected to the Internet through GPRS, do the following:
* Download the appropriate scripts for your phone from Ross' website and install them in "/Library/Modem scripts".
* Add your phone as a BT device (refer to your GSM provider's manual for details).
* Tell OS X to use the phone for a high speed Internet connection (refer to your GSM provider's manual for details).

Up to now I've been working according to Vodafone's manual. These are the changes I had to make (all of them in System Preferences -> Network -> Bluetooth modem)...

PPP tab:
* Instead of "*99#", use "office.vodafone.nl" as your telephone number (depending on your subscription it could also be "web." or "live.".
* Username and password are still "vodafone" and "vodafone".
* Turn off "Send PPP echo packets" and "Use TCP header compression" under PPP Options.

Bluetooth modem tab:
* Instead of "Nokia infra-red", use "Nokia GPRS CID1" as the modem script.
* Turn off "Wait for dialtone".

Now your connection should work. Try dialing in using Internet Connect or the Dial Now button in Network preferences.

kilala.nl tags: apple, other tech, sysadmin,

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Sun-platform-mib.txt

2006-07-25 09:34:00

Right now I'm working on getting my Sun systems properly monitored through SNMP. Using the LM_sensors module for Net-SNMP has gotten me quite far, but there's one drawback. A lot of Sun's internal counters use some really odd values that don't speak for themselves. This makes it necessary to read through Sun's own MIB and correlate the data in there with the stuff from LM_sensors.

Point is, Sun isn't very forthcoming with their MIB even though it should probably be public knowlegde. Nowhere on the web can I find a copy of the file. The only way to get it is by extracting it from Sun's free SUNWmasfr package, which I have done: here's SUN-PLATFORM-MIB.txt

In now way am I claiming this file to be a product of mine and it definitely has Sun's copyright on it. I just thought I'd make the file a -little- bit more accessible through the Internet. If Sun objects, I'm sure they'll tell me :3

kilala.nl tags: unix, work, nagios, sysadmin,

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Let's us be bad guys!

2006-07-24 20:39:00

Take my love, take my land... But don't you dare touch my Firefly DVDs!

Today I was lucky enough to find a thread on Ars Technica, about the Done the impossible fan documentary about Firefly. Some of my geekier readers will be familiar with Josh Whedon's science fiction series that got cancelled halfway through its first season. The series managed to gather quite a large fan base, and finally even got its own movie: Serenity. Anywho... In the end a documentary was made about the series, the movie and most importantly all of the fans.

The documentary was made freely available, but can also be bought on DVD (which contains bunches of extras). The .MOV file can be downloaded trough this Torrent file.

In other news, it turns out that people in the Netherlands people are wisening up to the fact that people in general are _stupid_. Each summer sees the recurrence of a few multi-day hiking/biking events and this year at least two have been cancelled because people have, apparently, died because of the heat. So now they're cancelling these events left and right. Why? Well, according to them these activities are too "dangerous" and they don't want people to get into trouble. The bottom line being that everyone knows people are too stupid to take care of themselves (not drinking and resting enough, not covering up themselves, etc). Hooray for humanity...

kilala.nl tags: movies, internet,

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Let's kick shell!

2006-07-24 13:29:00

Thanks to an old friend I am now aware of a totally awesome movie that's coming our way in 2007: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

I really like the style of the CGI and am very happy that they didn't use the cell-shaded crap they used on TV for the feature length movie. Yes, there's a trailer and it's promising. Like the sense of humour... :)

kilala.nl tags: movies, childhood, awesome,

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Website progress - Internet Explorer screws me over

2006-07-24 06:16:00

It's reassuring to know that my website still looks like ass when browsed through the likes of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I don't know how I do it, but it looks decent in all other browsers... But since 39% of my visitors still use that browser I'd better do something about it... So here's the problems that I'll try to fix RSN:
* All icons and logos used at the top of each page will be converted from .PNG with transparency to .JPG without transparency. Apparently MS can't be pantsed to put in decent .PNG support.
* I'll try and see why IE insists on putting extra whitespace between each line in the menu bar. I think it may have something to do with the changes I recently made with regards to the W3.org compliancy.

Don't you just hate pandering to the lowest common denominator?

kilala.nl tags: website,

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Website progress - moving to mySQL and PHP

2006-07-23 21:20:00

Well, finally all the blog posts for 2006 have been loaded into the database. It took a bit of effort, but was actually over faster than I thought it would. Posts from before 2005 will stay where they are: in the flat text HTML file that they're already in.

I hope to add the comments facility to the website sometime later this week or month. It's just a shame that I'm still struggling a little bit with the inclusion of images into the blog posts. I currently can only work one image into each post in the way that I'm used to. Other images will have to be kludged inline, looking a little bit awkward.

Ah well :) I'm just happy that this is working well now...

kilala.nl tags: website, programming,

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Addicted to Iittala

2006-07-23 19:01:00

Sounds like a bargain, for such priceless art.

It's been a few months since I last saw my mother, so she came by to visit us today now that she's visiting the Netherlands for a week. It was very nice to see her, her husband and my sis en b.i.l again :) It's just that... Well, I think mom wants me to sell my soul to the devil... How so? Observe! The Iittala Birds collection. When I visited Finland in April I ran into these beautiful glass sculptures at Stockman (one of Finland's leading department store chains). I was awestruck by the beauty of these little glass birds and immediately there was a small voice in the back of my head, telling me that I -needed- to get these!

However, I also immediately saw that collecting these birds was kind of like Pokemon: there were so many that you could get! They come in all shapes and sizes and all colours and plumage. And more importantly: each carries a hefty price tag.

So now that she gave me a beautiful, little smew for my birthday I'm hooked. I realise that I'm going to have to sell my soul to the devil now, since I'm sure as hell not giving up my first-born.

EDIT:
Marli apparently was amazed (distraught?) to hear that I wasted (invested?) thirty minutes on creating the above Sinfest-Iittala mockup. <3

kilala.nl tags: finland, art, awesome,

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Website progress - MySQL and PHP

2006-07-22 23:38:00

Fuckin' A!...

Today I've been trying to teach myself something new... Something I should've known how to do IMHO. What I've been working on, is getting the blog part of my site to work from the mySQL database I got from TransIP. So the page you're reading right now is already working according to this principle. I'll try to get the Archives working in the same way RSN(tm). Another thing I'm thinking of adding is a way for you visitors to leave comments behind. I've no clue if that'll be a popular feature, but I know of a few people who'd like to...

kilala.nl tags: website, programming,

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Young at heart

2006-07-22 12:17:00

I guess all I am, is a big kid <3

Yeah, I'm a big kid at heart :D I love my cartoons... I already mentioned my love for "Two stupid dogs" which was awesome when I was in high school and remains awesome to this day. "Fairly odd parents" has some great humor in it... Oddly enough it's -better- when dubbed in dutch! o_O Very odd. And finally there's Danger Mouse, a show from the eighties with some very clever jokes. The jokes are right up my aisle:

DM and Penfold are in a space ship on their way to the moon.
DM: Have you ever seen a weightless person before Penfold?
PF: Sure I have!
DM: How could you have?! You've never been in space before.
PF: But they're the women who bring you your food in the Chinese restaurant!
DM: ...

EDIT:
Hehehe... Apparently Wikipedia also has a sister-site which gathers quotes. Here's the page for "Two stupid dogs". I love this bit:
LD: Hey, hey, hey, hey! Why did you wake me up?
BD: So we can wake up.
LD: Well, if you didn't wake me up, I might've had a nightmare and it would've woke me up. Then, I could've woke you up, and we'd both...be...awake. But since you did wake me up, I can't wake up from this nightmare so I can't wake you up! So we're both still asleep.
BD: What?

kilala.nl tags: cartoons, fun, childhood,

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Website progress

2006-07-20 23:11:00

Well, it took me a whole evening of banging on the keyboard, but finally my website is completely XHTML 1.0 compliant. Meaning that I can now officialy stick the W3C's logo in the menu on the left :)

There are two pages of HTML left that I need to fix, but they will need to wait until tomorrow. Right now I -really- need to get some sleep.

kilala.nl tags: website,

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Website progress

2006-07-20 19:08:00

At this very moment I'm working on fixing all kinds of small mistakes in the HTML/XHTML code of my website. This in order to get my website fully validated by W3.org (or at least for 95%). Please bear with me if you see any weird glitches in the layout of the site.

I've also found out why my page dedicated to Arrow Emblem - Grand prix no taka wasn't working properly with Google. I'd written that page using SubethaEdit and had inadvertently set the file encoding to Unicode, instead of plain Ascii.

kilala.nl tags: website,

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It's too hot to hurry

2006-07-20 07:38:00

ZZZzzz...

It may not fit the "hard working office guy" image that goes with the consulting business, but today everyone can just go fsck themselves. What with this bloody heat and high humidity I'm not running for -anyone-. I wish I could have found an photograph of the 1958 Snoopy patch (as opposed to the half assed image to the right) that say "I believe in conserving energy". Because that's what I'm gonna do today... I'll work, but I won't be rushed... EDIT: Ah! That's much better! Today's Sinfest episode had the perfect imagery! If you're curious, here's the previous image.

kilala.nl tags: summer, work, rhythm,

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Normal person + anonimity + audience = total fuckwad

2006-07-19 09:19:00

I deem this thread on the Gathering Of Tweakers fora to be further proof of John Gabriel's greater Internet fuckwad theory. The thread started out as a discussion on why Mac users are usually percieved as being snobbish, arrogant and downright asses. After a few pages it degenerated into name calling and the wearing of lead plates before faces. Gotta love the Intarweb!

kilala.nl tags: internet, annoying, other tech,

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Darlink? Please to be comink closer...

2006-07-18 18:00:00

Ze movie, eet ees the wanderful darlink!

Oh darn! Now I wish our DTV set top box had a hard disk recorder, or some such contraption built in. This evening MGM Movie Channel will be showing the "Borish and Natasha" movie, which isn't something I'd like to miss. Which is exactly what I will, since we'll be visiting my dad and his girlfriend. Ah well... Seeing that movie pop up on the EPG did remind me that I'm very curious about the original cartoon series from the sixties. Apparently Cliff Stoll and his lady loved this series :3

EDIT:
Oh... My... Gawd... TCM is showing Texax Carnival right now and... Sweet Jeebus, there are no words... I don't know whether this movie's over-the-top "we love Texas and the USofA" singing and cheering makes it a complete joke or a horrible piece of cinema. It's like a train wreck: I can't stop staring...

kilala.nl tags: movies, tv,

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Dobacaracol

2006-07-18 13:03:00

This morning I was listening to Radio 1 like I usually do in the car. Right before they broke into the news they played a charming song... Almost magical.


j'ai la fraicheur d'une riviere
La colere du typhon
J'ai l'amour d'une mere
Les tourments des 4 vents
Comme il tombent comme il tombent les flocons de l'hiver
ils s'entassent dans ma tete comme mes contradictions
et mes perles d'amour dans un ecrin de poussiere


Unfortunately the DJ didn't say who they were (I think they added this song impromptu), but I was very happy that they answered my query through e-mail. The song in question is called "Etrange" and is performed by DobaCaracol. And let me tell you that their album "Soley" (released Jan 2006) is quite good!

For all the dutchies reading this: if you happen to like Treble and don't mind a bit of french, then this band might be for you! Their music is less upbeat and features many more instruments, but it's still similar...

EDIT:
If you're curious, the video clip for "Etrange" can be viewed on their website, over here (requires Quicktime). I love the video... Clean, simple and very summery <3

kilala.nl tags: music, awesome, summer,

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Angry, heavy metal FTW

2006-07-18 09:01:00

Apparently, God likes sending them flowers...

Lately I've been having some trouble focussing at the work at hand. Don't really know why, because I'm learning all kinds of new stuff. SNMP I've never really worked with before and now I'm looking at integrating the whole bit into Nagios. Including the handling of SNMP traps that are sent to the Nagios server. I should be overjoyed... Luckily I've found that "angry" music helps me focus and to feel the urgency behind it all. Sads' album "The rose God gave me" falls nicely into this category. It's got very rough and loud guitars and violent singing, which admittedly I cannot always stomach. Anywho... Thank God this music is helping me along a bit.

kilala.nl tags: music, rhythm,

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What dreams may come

2006-07-12 21:17:00

After life comes torture... Comfortable, reassuring torture...

So... "What dreams may come" is on right now and it's reminding me that there's still a boat load of questions and answers that I need to find for myself. One of them (or many out of an infinite amount of possible questions) concerns the matter of life and death... Naturally... What happens when we die? Where do we go to? How does it feel? What happens to the "me" I know?

And it's not just for myself that I need to find these questions and answers. It just occured to me tonight that one day our kids are going to ask us these questions and many more like them. And I realised that I had better have some form of answer that I had given thought to. I mean, what use does a kid have for the answer "I don't know"?

So yeah... I think it's about time that I get a bit more serious about a few things. For now, let's finish watching the movie (the imagery is _awesome_). It's sure to be another tear jerker <3

kilala.nl tags: movies,

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I would walk 500 miles

2006-07-11 20:43:00

The Proclaimers on "Family guy".

Speaking of music that friends and lovers introduce you to: today I was reminded of The proclaimers, whom I was introduced to over seven years ago. Since then I haven't given them much thought. Now the brothers Reid may not be the most handsome looking singers in modern pop culture (some would describe them as "homely looking"), but their singing's awesome.

kilala.nl tags: music,

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Turner Classic Movies rocks my world

2006-07-06 12:22:00

My daily dose of cinema classics.

Boy do I enjoy Casema's digital TV "Plus pakket"! Among other things it's given me access to Turner Classic Movies and BBC Three. Thanks to Beeb 3 Mar and me can now finally see the Doctor Who TV series, which has got us hooked. And there's no limit to the amount of great movies I've seen on TCM! Classics like "Doctor Zhivago", "The Maltese falcon" and "The picture of Dorian Gray" are now within my grasp! Other stuff I'm quite happy to have are Cartoon Network (which regrettably has been dubbed in dutch) and Boomerang TV. BTV basically does reruns of old CN shows, which means that I can now finally see "Two stupid dogs again"! Awesome. *cough* Oh yeah... And there's pr0n too *cough* I -love- having DTV and the additional channels. Well worth paying ten euros a month for...

kilala.nl tags: tv, awesome,

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3y3 h4v3 b33N 0wn3d ;_;

2006-07-06 12:22:00

Keep files safe you must, or else!

Ah yes! Yet another display of my client's wonderful way of working together as a team XD The past few weeks I've been working fulltime on a completely new Nagios monitoring environment for the division that hired me. 'sCool, since I quite like Nagios and since it's a challenge (~500 hosts with over 8000 checks). But what's seriously uncool, is the fact that the server I was building my packages on was turned off and taken apart. Yes: "apart". The hard drive containing my software is now lying in someone's deks drawer -_-;

But luckily there's some cool stuff on the horizon as well! Yesterday I received my new cell phone, a Nokia 6021. It's a really boring phone, that doesn't do anything special except BlueTooth, GPRS and Tri-Band. But that's exactly what I want! I really dislike phones with all kinds of added crap and bags on the side.

Anywho: I always thought I'd never need BlueTooth, but now that I have it I couldn't do without it! Syncing my contacts with my laptop is a dream and using Salling Clicker to control my laptop is -wonderful-! This'll come in -so- handy when I'm giving my next presentation :3

kilala.nl tags: annoying, snafu, work, other tech,

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Awk, awk... Nevermore!

2006-07-06 12:22:00

Thus quoth the raven...

It's a universal truth that every relationship you are part in influences your character. That's how people change and grow over time. Many people from my past have broadened my musical choice quite extensively. Menno and Peter bring me obscure heavy metal, when I gave them Japanese jazz and metal. Maya-Deva gave me opera (and a love for quaint cult cinema), while Saskia introduced me to the Alan Parsons Project. Marli and me already had the double CD for "War of the Worlds" (which is an awe inspiring work!), but one item that had always been nagging at the back of my head was an album (vinyl no less!) that I bought together with Saskia: "Tales of mystery and imagination".

The album contains eleven songs based on poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, which by themselves are quite twisted. I'd been wanting to re-listen the album for years now, but was lacking a record player. Anywho: turns out that the iTunes music store has the complete album! So I'm happily listening to something I should've bought much earlier. :3

kilala.nl tags: music,

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Back from Anime 2006

2006-07-03 10:31:00

Wow, it's incredible how fast the past four days have gone by! On the one hand it seems ages ago since we travelled to Almelo for the festival. And on the other it seems like it all was over in a flash. I guess that's how things are when you're doing something you love :)

Right now I'm still napping, reading some manga and generally recovering from the weekend. I'll make a write-up of the festival Real Soon Now, but not just yet.

Heh, I didn't even catch a cold!

kilala.nl tags: anime 200x, anime 2006,

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