2007-08-31 07:00:00
Last night was the school year's official opening at Hogeschool Utrecht. Around 17:00 all aspiring tweedegraads teachers gathered in the cafeteria for a speech from the rector. It was interesting to see that the group was both large and varied. I reckon there were about a hundred people there, maybe one-twenty. Aged between twenty and somewhere in their fifties I saw a lot of caucasians, mixed in with a few turks and moroccans.
One startling realization was the fact that almost 50% of the group were there for the same degree I was after: tweedegraads maths teacher. I guess either it's a popular passtime, or people have caught on to the fact that maths teachers are sought after. All in all there's sixty people starting the maths course this year. Wow!
After the whole introduction and a tour of the school building (which we'll be leaving come January, to move to a new one) there were drinks. I finally got the chance to meet some of my fellow students. It's slightly daunting to know that a whole bunch of them are already in education, but I'm not going to let that get in my way :)
So far they seem like a nice bunch of people! There's the strong-and-silent guys, the rowdy drinking-after-playing-footbal guys, the silent-and-mousy women and so on. There was also this one woman (I think she's in her forties though I'm horrible at guessing ages) who's great! She's absolutely bubbling with enthusiasm for the course! Kind of like how I felt after my intake with the coordinator :)
Yes. This is going to be an interesting year!
kilala.nl tags: career, school, teaching, maths,
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2007-08-30 15:52:00
Heheh, this is so sweet. Not a few weeks ago was I wishing out loud that I'd get my old student number back, now that I'm returning to Hogeschool Utrecht
Lo and behold, today I get a letter that's part of my enrollment process. And what does it tell me? That my student number is good ol' 1018808. Sweet! I'm back to being me! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: school, awesome,
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2007-08-30 06:14:00
Yesterday we went out to dinner, to honour Marli's 24th birthday. I wanted to go some place special, where we'd never gone before, so I'd looked around a little bit. I stumbled upon Restaurant Week, an initiative of high-quality eateries where they invite people to come in and have a surprise dinner. I went for De Vagebond since their menu seemed very suitable for Marli (who dislikes fish and detests french cuisine).
Finding the place was easy, though it's hidden away deep inside Driebergen. It's about five minutes driving from the A12 high way. The restaurant's tucked away in a normal neighbourhood, though once you're inside you won't notice at all.
I'd checked out the restaurant's website beforehand, so I knew that at one time it used to be a cafe. They were supposed to have upheld the coziness and warmth of the old interior and I have to say they succeeded: loads of browns, yellows and reds, with green accents. Also: plenty of light! Very nice indeed, although to some it may come across as overly busy.
The food itself is great, though you may get a start at first. Judging by the interior and the fact that the restaurant offers take-away satay and ribs, you'd think that the food'd be very normal. Well, think again! It comes served in a rather posh fashion and they don't skimp on the ingredients either! That was a bit of a weird experience :)
The service was excellent. There were only two men in waiting, serving around twenty-five guests. Even though the place was rather busy, they never had us wait overly long and they -always- found time for a little chat about our courses. Very impressive!
Now... On to the food, shall we?
Amuse
Marlijne: Onion soup, Quail, Fillet of beef. Verdict: near orgasmic.
Thomas: Onion soup, Deep fried gamba, Fillet of sprat. Verdict: very good.
Starter
Marlijne: Roulleaux of chicken, Shredded beef sashimi, Salad. Verdicht: it was alright.
Thomas: Langoustine, Cocquille, Salad with shrimp. Verdict: good.
Main course
Both: Rack of lamb, with a herb/celery crust, Quiche, Stir-fried veg, with seasonal mushrooms and a balsamic sauce.
Marlijne: very good.
Thomas: very good.
Desert
Both: Curd of yoghurt (hangop in dutch), Sorbet ice of raspberry, Cheesecake of raspberry, Souffle of raspberry
Marlijne: it was alright.
Thomas: awesome!
As you can see, our overall experience with the restaurant was very good. The food is very well prepared, although not always entirely up our alley. We can heartily recommend this place to anyone who's looking for a posh-y dinner in the vicinity of Utrecht.
We ended up paying 66 euros, drinks included, because of the Restaurant Week offer. Without discounts it would have been around 70 euros and it would still have been worth it!
kilala.nl tags: restaurant,
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2007-08-29 07:50:00
Isn't it funny how you can go from +2100 euros to -70 euros in half an hour?
There was a big stack of bills waiting to be paid this month, including two "overdue"s. It's a weight off my shoulders each month to get rid of them, but I won't say I'm happy to see the money go ;)
Ah well! Such is life!
/me trots off, whistling Grand Prix no taka.
kilala.nl tags: money,
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2007-08-29 07:01:00
Just to keep track of my own "progress": it happened again tonight.
I woke up in the early stages, feeling very warm with only a slight tingling instead of the burning sensation. I slowly got out of bed to grab a plastic bag I keep handy and went back. After about twenty minutes of just lying there and breathing into the bag I managed to fall asleep again. Crisis averted. This time Marli slept through it all, thankfully.
I'll continue keeping a record of incidents and I'll see what I'll do with it later. I -could- go see that hack of a doc again, though he didn't seem that interested the last time. I'd rather get to the -cause- of things, instead of being sidetracked with breathing exercises.
Maybe it -is- stress related. The Saint -has- been telling me to take things easier for weeks now. Bless 'is 'eart :)
kilala.nl tags: hyperventilation, health,
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2007-08-29 06:49:00
About two months ago I bought this big stack of books, right? Well, I've been reading through most of them and now I loved you Dalek is on the top of the pile. Or more accurately: it's been in my night stand for over three weeks now, only having read the first sixty pages.
It's a shame, but Mr. Griffiths writing fails to captivate me. At times he tries too hard to be funny and at others the story's just a bit dreary. Sure, the book has its moments! But so far it hasn't stuck on me. Shame really. Maybe this is one of those books where you have the read the first hundred pages, before you get stuck in.
For now I'm giving up on this book.
Instead I'll read Sergei Lukyanenko's The nightwatch. This books had me by the throat by page 2. My brilliant sister and B-i-L managed to find it for my birthday and I'm ever so happy they did! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: reading, doctor who,
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2007-08-28 07:28:00
Tomorrow's officially Marli's birthday. We celebrated it last Sunday with all of our friends and family, which was awesome. We also part-celebrated my birthday as well, though that was back in June. We got some absolutely lovely presents from everyone, so thankyouthankyouthankyou to everyone!
Our collective parents+partners pitched in together, to buy Marlijne the latest Harry Potter Lego castle. She's absolutely nuts about Harry Potter Lego, so there you go :) I have to say that it -is- a lovely boxset!
And one never outgrows Lego!
kilala.nl tags: lego, toys, geeky, birthday,
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2007-08-26 23:21:00
This is it! I've just told TransIP to switch the DNS servers for Kilala.nl over to the DreamHost boxen. In a few hours most of you should be noticing the transition to the new website. I hope you guys'll like the new look and feel of the site.
There's only bug small bug left and that concerns commenting. Leaving comments works as it should, it's just that the automatic reload of the original page isn't working yet. So instead, you'll have to press "back" and "refresh" on your browsers. Sorry ^_^; I should have that fixed momentarily.
In the meantime I'll go to bed, while the DNS servers do their work. Catch up a little sleep after the long birthday-day we had today. I'll tell you about all of that tomorrow :)
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-24 14:11:00
About an hour ago I had my final meeting from the long list of appointments I'd made in light of my career change. After talking to teachers, schools, students, my employer and so on I finally got to talk to the government. The CWI (Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen / Center for Work and Income) is the part of the government that jobless people go to talk to. They are the ones who cover finance of those missing out on (a part of) a job.
Finding the place turned out to be harder than the talk itself. I had a quick chat with a friendly lady who was rather amused by my case. The only way I could get an appointment at the CWI was to register a new account with them, faking that I was going to be unemployed ^_^ After we got things going it soon became clear that I'd already covered all my options and had explored all avenues.
So, while the talk itself didn't give me any new insights, it did provide me with something important: reassurance that I'm on the right track.
kilala.nl tags: career, money,
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2007-08-24 09:18:00
Bastards...
The past week some spamming company has been using addresses from my Kilala.nl domain as their "Sent by" address. Of course this means that I'm getting the brunt of their spam-run, what with all the bounces and OORs coming back to me. Just this morning I've had >1000 e-mails thanks to those bastards.
All e-mail addresses start with the word patrolparts, followed by a few additional letters. For example: patrolpartseadih AT kilala.nl. All the bounces and such are caught by my catch-all mailbox and thus end up in my inbox. Luckily Mail.app flags them as spam, so I'm not -really- confronted with them. The only downside is that from time to time the mailbox goes over-quota.
When I make the final switch to DreamHost I plan on -not- using a catch-all box. It makes things a bit less flexible, but I don't think I'll be missing out on much. A few of my forum accounts may point to non-existent addresses, but that's easily solved.
kilala.nl tags: internet, annoying,
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2007-08-24 08:38:00
A long long time ago I installed Qemu and Windows on my Powermac G5 so I could run some old games of mine. Most notable the Magic: the Gathering game from the late nineties.
This morning I installed Windows XP in a Parallels VM. I may heartily dislike Windows, but there's still something cool about running a Windows VM on Mac OS :D Dance puppet, dance!.
Again I plan to use Windows for Magic, but the main purpose is to run some Windows-only software from School.
Ah, the miracles of modern-day science :)
kilala.nl tags: apple, windows,
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2007-08-23 08:49:00
The design and code behind the new site is about 98% done, but there's still one thing that irks me. Apparently fonts are rendered very differently when you compare OS X and Windows.
The new design looks wonderful in Safari and Firefox on OS X, but some of the DIVs are not wide enough on Windows. Why the heck is it that "verdana 10pt" isn't the same size everywhere?! On OS X the menus look neat and tidy. On Windows the characters get huge and start wrapping around to a new line. Meh...
I'll have to bang on that a little bit more :/
kilala.nl tags: apple, website, windows,
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2007-08-22 11:57:00
Recently I discovered that the Netherlands' largest online bookstore Bol deals in secondhand books. Or more precisely: it works as an intermediary between seller and buyer. I guess you could compare it to the Amazon Marketplace.
Study books are notoriously expensive, often ranging between forty and a hundred euros a piece. Of course I wasn't looking forward to paying such a huge sum now that I'm starting college. Lo and behold! Bol's secondhand section listed six out of the eight books I need for the first semester. By buying these books I managed to save seventy euros, bringing the total down to a little over two hundred. Nice!
Another nice way of saving a few bucks is the fact that Hogeschool Utrecht allows spread payment of my fees. This year's college fee is about a thousand euros, give or take a few. Instead of paying this whole sum up front, I can now pay in six terms. Even better, these terms are spread all over the whole year. This means that we can easily save up a little money and still have ample breathing room.
kilala.nl tags: money, school,
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2007-08-22 08:58:00
There you have it: my school roster for this year. It may be a bit hard to read the first time around, but let me break it down for you.
The table shows all courses for both the first and second years of my study (english math teacher). All course are given on Monday and the appropriate times are shown on the left. The four columns to the right indicate each semester: there's four in a year and most courses are only given once a year.
Due to my prior experience and BCS in electronics I get to skip on approximately 100 - 130 ECTS out of the 240 ECTS required for the whole study. ECTS are the pan-European equivalent of America's credits. Because of that I can manage to squeeze in some of my second year courses in the first year. W00t! /o/
SEMESTER 1:
* Statistiek 1. I'll need to study both the math and the didactics behind statistics and the calculation of changes.
* SLB. This roughly translates as Study career guidance. We'll discuss my progress, the school itself, the materials. It's a bit of a meta-course.
* Vakdidactiek 2. A second year project on didactics and the interaction with students. I'll need to find out whether I can take this in the first semester without any big problems.
SEMESTER 2:
* Analyse 1. I can skip the math behind analytical math (differentials, integrals, logarithms), but I'll need to study the didactics.
* SLB. The same as the first semester.
* WER. Preparing for my internships, later in the year.
* Kijk op leerlingen. A project on the psychology and behaviour of students.
One challenge that I'm going to have to tackle is this. In my first two years I'll have the course WER, which stands for Work, Experience, Reflection. The second-year WER requires me to teach ten consecutive classes, one a week. This would mean that I'd have to convince Snow to allow me to take ten three-day work weeks. Ouch. So far I don't know how or when all of this will take place, but I'd better prepare a good story for Snow :)
kilala.nl tags: career, school,
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2007-08-21 14:37:00
Oh dear ^_^;;
Right now I'm at school, waiting for my 1500 appointment with the course coordinator. My $DEITY, am I nervous!
I left work around 1230, handing over my operational shift to Edmond. I quickly rushed home, 'cause I still needed to get pictures taken as well. The plan was have to that done at city hall, while Marli got her passport renewed. We left around one and I was already feeling my nerves :D I was tense and my stomach was playing hell on me! It only got worse when I left city hall around two to catch my bus. In my book that's cutting things rather close, since I like to be about half an hour early for big meetings. I had no clue how long my bus ride would take.
Well, turns out everything was fine. I got here half an hour early, took a trip to the john and found the office I was expected at. And now I'm here, typing up this little thing. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
This is -so- funny ^_^ This is the first time in -years- that I've felt nervous to the bone! The hour before our wedding was even easier than this! As I mentioned earlier I believe that this is down to the fact that there's a real possibility of me failing at this endeavour.
*shudder* Well, here goes!
kilala.nl tags: school, life, career,
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2007-08-19 21:20:00
I've no clue what's going on and I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it at all.
I've almost finished the programming work on the new version of my website. Most of it seems to be working rather nicely and I've hammered out most bugs. Most of the code has been greatly improved and I've taken away a lot of the extraneous PHP files. For instance, no longer will I need six separate PHP files to display blog posts and the archives, nor to add or view comments. All of that is now handled by two site-wide scripts. Nice.
Of course now that things are wrapping up it's time for the weird bugs to show up. I should've learnt my lesson from The soul of a new machine. I mean, I've only read that book three times. :/
Anywho... This morning I added three articles to the database, through Firefox on my Powermac. All three of these articles show up with completely screwed make-up. The CSS is completely ignored, as is the HTML and some parts of the text itself. Two articles that were added after that show no problems whatsoever. The problems are independent of which index.php file I use to view them as each of these shows A) the buggy posts incorrectly and B) normal posts correctly.
So there's -something- in these three posts that's interfering with the post displaying code that I've written, that doesn't show up with any of the other posts. Remarkable. At first I thought this might be due to these posts having been written on my Powermac, as opposed to my Macbook. Who knows, maybe there's some difference in character encoding or whatever between the two. But no dice. I replicated one of those posts using my Macbook and the same problem pops up.
Weird.
I'm gonna have to spend some midnight oil on this =_=
EDIT:
Nevermind. I'd made a braino. I'd forgotten some of the make-up rules I'd enforced on myself =_=; It's fixed now. Only one, really weird bug left!
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-19 21:00:00
I've been using Bits on wheels as my OS X torrent client for a while now. So far it's suited all my needs, even though development was ceased almost two years ago. I've never had problems leeching or seeding data and usually get rather high speeds.
That is, until this weekend, when I was stimmied by one particular torrent. The whole weekend it would leech at speeds between 0.1 kBps and 5 kBps. Atrocious, to say the least. While that was loading I was also seeding five other torrents through the same tracker host. I tried twiddling some of the up- and download settings but to no avail. I did finally manage to get better performance, I just don't understand why ^_^
1 leech, 5 seed, upload capped @10kBps -> download speed sucks.
1 leech, 5 seed, upload capped @25kBps -> download speed sucks.
1 leech, 3 seed, upload capped @25kBps -> download speed got better.
So even though I'm still uploading the same amount of data, I -am- getting better performance. How odd is that? I'd be grateful if anyone would care to explain. :)
kilala.nl tags: internet, other tech, weird,
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2007-08-16 10:28:00
Damn. I should've seen this coming.
I just phoned the IBG to check up on my college application. The school coordinator'd told me that my application would come through in time, but I decided to check up on it anyway. Nope. No sign of any application or registration yet. Apparently they take three to four weeks to process. Ugh!
Now I'm going to have to make arrangements with school to either study there unregistered, or to do some other red-tape trickery. It'll work itself out, but it still feels a little stressful.
kilala.nl tags: school, career,
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2007-08-15 07:12:00
Remember how I got a DVD player as my parting gift from the Anime 200x cons? Well, right now I really, -really- love that Pioneer DV-696AV!
For the past two weeks I've been hooked on a Korean drama called Coffee Prince. This series comes as 700MB AVI files with separate .SRT subtitling files. I'd been looking for a way to put all of those files together and burn them as a DVD, but now it turns out I won't have to! You see, this marvel of modern tech is capable of reading these .SRT files! ^_^ I'm so happy! Now all I have to do is burn the .AVIs and .SRTs as data files onto a DVD :D
Anyway, on to Coffee Prince. Just like the Japanese drama/comedy I'm currently following it starts out with a girl posing as a boy to attain some goal. However, where Hana-Kimi often takes jumps into the absurd, Co-Pri stays rather down to earth. Sure, it's got comic moments (and especially the first episode is a bit over the top), but most of the series is actually rather serious! I guess it helps that most of the main characters are older than 23, thus taking the story into really life, as opposed to high school.
A synopsis from the D-addicts website:
The life of Go Eun Chan (Yoon Eun Hye) is not easy; she works many jobs to pay off debts and even gave up her feminine image. Choi Han Kyul (Gong Yoo) is the heir of a big food company, but his grandmother wants him to settle down, so she arranged many dates for him. After Eun Chan bumped into Han Kyul and was mistaken for a boy, Han Kyul decided to hire Eun Chan to be his gay lover in order to avoid the arranged dates. Desperately in need of money, Eun Chan had no choice but to accept. Han Kyul's grandmother also made Han Kyul in charge of a filthy coffee shop in danger of being bankrupt. Eun Chan begged to work at the coffee shop, and not long after, feelings start to spark, except, how would Han Kyul accept his "homosexuality"?
What the synopsis doesn't mention is the strained relationship between Han Kyul's nephew and his girlfriend. There's a very interesting love triangle going on there. Mix Eun Chan into this whole picture and things get even more interesting! One of the men knows she's a woman, the other doesn't... Both start to fall for her.
Subtitles can be found at the D-addicts fora, in this thread. Most of you should know where to get the rest ;)
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2007-08-14 22:22:00
Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, something suddenly dawned on me. I was feeling anxiety, or even fear about making my career switch!
This is the first time in years that I've felt anxious about an undertaking, because I might actually not be able to do it. I know that I love maths and I know that love teaching people. But there's no guarantee for me that I will actually succeed at my college degree.
And you know what?
It feels great!
It's been years since I didn't feel like I could easily tackle a task! Or knowing that I could at least wing it. Nope, this is for real! I love it :3
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2007-08-14 21:36:00
Since school starts in about three weeks I thought it was about damn time to start getting prepared! It's one thing to make all arrangements with the school, taking care of paperwork and talking to people. But it's another thing entirely to actually be prepared for the course material!
I graduated from college a little over seven years ago. For about half of my college years I was very busy with maths, learning all kinds of new tricks. All the other time was spent programming, doing web design and learning about Unix. Since my career progressed with the latter half of what I just described, it's only natural for my maths to be a little rusty.
Well, rusty would be an understatement. Consider if you will one of the original, iron nails that Noah had used in his arc. Having been exposed to tremendous amounts of sea water and ages upon ages of time it's sure to be a bit rusty. Now, let's assume that ever since that flood the nail had been exposed to corrosives, acid rain and various other nasties. Not much would be left of it, right? A nasty, little chunk of iron would be all that's left.
Well, that's where my current grasp of maths is.
Thankfully I am confident that I can at least completely revive my high school math skills, considering this blog post. Back in 2005 I prepped Marlijne for an exam that consisted of all my HS maths in only a few hours.
Also thankfully, unlike what I wrote in that blog post, I did -not- throw away my math books! /o/
The picture above shows all of the books that I want to go through before school starts. The bottom row (plus the b/w book at the top left) are all high school books from my final two years. They cover everything from functions and equations, through trigonometry, to differentials and logarithms.
The top row is the stuff I went through in college. It's also the stuff that currently gives me a dread feeling in my stomach because it is way beyond me. They start out by repeating a little bit of HS stuff (differentials, functions), but then quickly move on to limits, logarithms, partial differentials, integrals, multiple variable equations and vectors. Zounds! I won't even mention the two other books that cover Laplace transforms and Fourier strains. Although I doubt whether I'll need to know any of that stuff.
Unfortunately I -have- thrown out all of my syllabi, meaning that I'm out of materials on chance calculation and on matrices. Luckily my friend The Saint is willing to lend me his copies. Apparently his storage space is larger than mine and he's hung onto most of the stuff from our college years ^_^
Well! Here I go! Study study study!
kilala.nl tags: studying, school, maths,
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2007-08-11 22:07:00
It's been on my mind for a few weeks now: I want to re-read all the Van nul tot nu comics I used to read as a kid.
Van nul tot nu (From zero 'till now) is a series of comics from the early eighties that was originally published in Donald Duck magazine. These comics were originally lauded for making our national history accessible to young kids.
Starting around 500BC, the first part of the bound series takes us to approximately 1648. The stone age, the middle ages, the various Christian struggles and wars, the war with Spain, everything gets covered in a manner that's not above the average grade schooler. For such a small and mostly wet country we sure have a tempestuous past!
I have to admit that I have forgotten most of my history lessons, so reading through these books is a pleasant way of refreshing all the stuff I've forgotten.
kilala.nl tags: childhood, reading,
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2007-08-11 08:19:00
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2007-08-11 08:11:00
Great. I woke up hyperventilating, again. I really hate that burning sensation and the pounding heart. Especially when it disturbs a great nap. Now I'm feeling crappy this morning :/
Luckily Marli was on top of things (I love how she's always very much together in a "panic" situation) and got me a plastic bag to breathe in. The crappy thing is that, when you're still between waking and sleeping, breathing into a bag for ten minutes gets hard. I usually give up after a minute.
Ah well... The whole episode lasted about ten to fifteen minutes. After that the burning had subside enough for me to fall asleep again.
kilala.nl tags: hyperventilation, rhythm, health,
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2007-08-09 13:42:00
The past few weeks I've been working hard on the code behind the new version of this website. I'm quite proud of how things are turning out so far, though there are still loads of bugs to squash.
I've decided to implement one of the features for the new site in the current build as well. Let's call it a sneak preview ^_^
By subscribing to this RSS feed you will automatically get all comments left at my blog. That way, if you've left a comment or two, you won't have to come back repeatedly, just to check if someone answered your comment.
I'll be using this feed myself too. I favour it above the current scheme which sends me an e-mail every time someone leaves a comment.
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-09 13:27:00
Hey guys... This is just a temporary blog post, put here for my Bloglines verification. Pay it no heed, it'll probably disappear soon.
Feel free to leave nonsensical comments :P
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2007-08-07 23:37:00
Remember how I told you that Blackie needs her nails cut? And how Marli was scared shitless of our little Furball Of Doom (tm)? Well, I'm ever so proud of both my girls!
After not cutting Blackie's nails with Menno, nor with Peter, I decided to give it a shot myself. Unfortunately I quickly concluded that I really would need three hands. So, on the spur of the moment, Marli jumped in. I grabbed the cat by the scruff, held her paws, squeezed and Marli cut each nail! Wonderful! She was quite scared of doing this, but Blackie was -very- well behaved! She didn't put up a fight and after two nails actually started purring! I think she knew what we were up to :3
Yay for a small, household victory! /o/
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2007-08-07 13:14:00
Bwahaha, this is awesome! ^_^
A few months back I wrote an article about Unix shell variable scoping. I wrote the article after running into an odd situation where variables would lose their value, depending on which part of my script was running. All programming languages have these kinds of issues and they are commonly referred to as the variable scope. In the end I figured out most of what was going down and I wrote about it so others would find my solution.
In the meantime dozens of people -have- found this article, but one reader in particular has done something rather amusing with it! Instead of applying it to a scripting problem he (or is it a she?) was having, my article was turned into the diary of a Linux nerd.
Here's a small excerpt.
I was playing around with her (for a) "while" and was pipeing some data into her "while" (construct). Everything was working fine while I was inside her, but the moment I got out, it was as though everything changed. She has no memory of me and all the things I had did inside her. Half an hour of work and no final effect and I actually thought she was enjoying it.
Dramatic, no?
kilala.nl tags: unix, geeky, fun,
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2007-08-07 07:55:00
Well, now there's absolutely no way back: I've sent in my application form for the local college. Hopefully I'll receive more information in a few days time.
I have to say that I rather dislike the application process though. In the Netherlands, there's one big organisation that handles 99% of the college and uni applications: Informatie Beheer Groep. They also take care of all student loans and grants and the resulting debts. As they are a governmental organisation, they allow one to log in using one's national DigID. This DigID is tied to one's social security number and allows one to get a lot of stuff done through the web. Thus one will not have to fill out endless forms, or to wait for hours at city hall.
Theoretically speaking that is. Because for some reason the IB Groep doesn't allow you to any applications online. Oh sure, they've made a very nice web app that'll walk you through the process of filling out the form with all the requisite data. Sure! But once the whole process is done, you're still going to have to print the form, sign it and send it in. :(
I thought we were getting that DigID (which includes SMS verificatin) to sign crap like this?
Anywho: the application is on its way! /o/
kilala.nl tags: career, school,
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2007-08-04 13:28:00
While making my rounds at Anime 2007 I once walked into a video room screening the movie Udon. As the name suggests the movie is all about that humble, Japanese noodle dish udon noodles.
Having watched the first half of this movie this morning I just -had- to have udon for lunch. Luckily our local asian markets carry udon noodles and the other ingredients were quickly found. To the left you'll see my first attempt at tsukimi udon (view of the moon udon), the raw egg yolk portraying the moon. My opinion? The noodles and egg were fine, but I used too much chives as a topping. The broth was too weak and too abundant: stronger and less will be my motto for the next time!
Now, about that movie. I think it's great ^_^
It may not be a wonderful or deep work of art. It's no high flying production featuring an all-star cast. It's definitely not the best movie ever made. What it is however, is two-fold. The first half of the movie has an upbeat, comical tone with the main characters teaching the Japanese public to love udon noodles through the udon hype they started. The second half of the movie is more sober and down to earth, with the main characters learning to love udon themselves.
The switch between the first and second halves comes rather abrupt, though not as unexpected as in From dusk till dawn. Now that I think of it, the tone of the movie follows the flow of a hype:
* it starts off low, like an underdog.
* it starts to get upbeat, when people get interested.
* it gets absolutely frantic, when the hype is at its height.
* the mood then crashes completely, just like in the aftermath of a hype.
* after that, everything's rather peaceful while people come to grips with all that has happened.
If you're looking for a nice evening in with a movie or two I'd heartily recommend Udon. I don't know if it's out on DVD with english subtitles, but fansubs do float around the web, rare as they may be.
kilala.nl tags: movies, japan, cooking,
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2007-08-03 21:40:00
Finally! I've found the clue that'll help me use transparent PNGs as part of my website without Internet Explorer screwing them up!
I've been using PNGs for quite some time now, deeming it a rather worthy successor to the aging (and proprietary) GIF. To make webdesign easier for myself I've also started using transparency in logos and such. Unfortunately I've always run into problems with Internet Explorer. For some reason it could never handle transparency in a "normal" way, turning it into moss green, purple or white.
Thankfully, thanks to the Wikipedia page on the PNG format I've found the solution. The fact that Internet Explorer 4.0 - 6.0 did not support alpha-channel transparency has led some people to erroneously believe that Internet Explorer 6 does not support transparency at all. However, colormapped (palette) PNGs can be given a single transparent background color, which works on IE and is equivalent to the transparency available with GIF images. (In the GIMP, suitable PNGs can be generated or converted by setting the Mode to 'Indexed' rather than 'RGB'.)
I'm a happy camper!
kilala.nl tags: website, other tech,
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2007-08-03 13:33:00
Well, after all those years of holding it off I've gotten a Skype account. Skype'll allow me to have free voice chats with my family in Finland, including video streams if they have a webcam. I reckon mom and me will be talking a lot more to each other in the near future ^_^
Should anyone else care to add me to their list, my account is Cailin_Coilleach.
kilala.nl tags: other tech, internet,
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2007-08-03 06:44:00
Yesterday, my brother Mistoffelees sent me an e-mail reminding me that Assembly 2007 had started. For those who don't know, Assembly is one of the world's most famous demo parties, with five to six thousand visitors. Demo parties are hard to describe to the layman, but these days they are a mix of a LAN party, a block party, a programming marathon and a rave.
Back in March I was planning to go there with some colleagues. Unfortunately I've had to cancel my trip to Helsinki (which is where ASM07 is being held). Thanks to the efforts of the ASM TV crew (which includes my brother!) I can at least follow the event through the web.
ASM TV have three live streams you can choose from, all of which you can find on their streams page.
At the moment they're showing the Demo Coder's Exhibit, which basically is kind of like MTV. ... Well... If MTV showed a lot of trance and ambient videos with computer graphics generated on the spot :D I've been told that they also do live coverage of the event at other times of the day.
I've had a little trouble getting the streams to work with my Macbook, but it seems that at least the Quicktime stream works without any problems.
kilala.nl tags: geeky, conference,
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2007-08-02 15:41:00
Wow, that felt weird...
I just signed my new contract with my employer, taking a 20% pay cut. Damn, putting pen to paper felt odd, if not awkward. Having my nose shoved into the fact that I'll be going from 3000 to 2400 a month made things very definitive. The real loss after taxes isn't that horrible (about three hundred), but it'll still take some getting used to. I now officially earn less than when I joined up with Snow :D
At least it'll properly prepare me for a teacher's salary ^_^;
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2007-08-02 11:03:00
One of the marketing gimmicks employed by Snow is the handing out of tin cans filled with candy. These cans are obviously adorned with our company name and logo and are thus a nice eye catcher. Snow's usually remembered for three things by its (potential) customers:
1. The great and knowledgeable people that we employ.
2. The fact that we -all- drive blue Volkswagen cars, adorned with a snow flake.
3. The fact that our sales crew always drops off tins of candy. ^_^
Yesterday our account manager made another drop off. Eager as us sysadmins are for licorice we scrambled to find some way of opening the blasted tin. The office being a naturally can-opener-free habitat didn't offer much help. Enter the screw driver. We finally managed to entice the can into spilling its guts after some whacking and cutting and stabbing and poking and prodding. ^_^
kilala.nl tags: geeky,
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2007-08-02 09:41:00
I guess I'm just not lucky when it comes to my Diesel glasses. The day before yesterday, turning in for bed, I folded my glasses shut to put them on my night stand. Then, all of a sudden I was holding a two-piece frame ;_; One of the legs had simply come off. Apparently there was something about the molded plastic casing that had gotten brittle. I've no clue what caused it, but the plastic had simply come apart. -Really- odd.
I dropped my glasses off at the shop yesterday and I'll get them back in about a week. I am -so- happy that I'd had the sense to buy two pairs of glasses back in December!
kilala.nl tags: glasses, snafu, meh,
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2007-08-01 15:26:00
Last night's planned change was supposed to last about two hours: get in, install some patches, switch some cluster resources around the nodes, install some more patches and get out. The fact that the installation involved a HP-UX system didn't get me down, even though we only work with Sun Solaris and Tru64. The fact that it involved a ServiceGuard cluster did make me a little apprehensive, but I felt confident that the procedures $CLIENT had supplied me would suffice.
Everything went great, until the 80% mark... Failing the applications back over to their original node failed for some reason and the cluster went into a wonky state. The cluster software told me everything was down, even though some of the software was obviously still running. The cluster wouldn't budge, not up, nor down. And that's when I found out that I rather dislike HP ServiceGuard, all because of one stupid flaw.
You see, all the other cluster software I know provides me with a proper listing of all the defined resources and their current state. Sun Cluster, Veritas Cluster Service and Tru Cluster? All of them are able to give me neat list of what's running where and why something went wrong. Well, not HP Damn ServiceGuard. Feh!
We ended up stopping the database manually and resetting all kinds of flags on the cluster software. Finally, after six hours (instead of the original two), I got off from work around 23:00. Yes... /me heartily dislikes HP ServiceGuard.
kilala.nl tags: work, unix, meh, sysadmin,
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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.