2008-08-27 21:57:00
It's an obvious fact that I love Apple's Mac OS X. There's one feature though that's missing from OS X that I'd love to see implemented properly. So far, the guys who made App Fresh are doing great work in achieving this feature!
The feature in question: centralised updates for all the installed applications and prefpanes.
On my Macbook I have at least fifty different apps installed, each of which has its own way of getting updates. Some software, like Adium and iTerm, do automatic checks on their webservers and allow you to immediately install an update. Others, like Transmit and Unison, check for updates but require you to manually download and install a new version. It's all a bit hodge-podge. So how about we vie for a unified method of upgrading our software?
Enter the aforementioned AppFresh. After a brief configuration, AppFresh will search your hard drive for applications. Then, using the IUseThis.com database, it checks for new versions of your software and where to download them. Give AppFresh the order and he'll download and install all the updates in one fell swoop! Great!
Of course, such a course of action should only be used in production environments after testing all the new software versions. I also haven't checked yet, but I'm curious to see if you can point AppFresh at your own software repository. That way you could build your own, centralised software repo for your company. Possibilities!
kilala.nl tags: apple, other tech, sysadmin,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-27 21:01:00
One of the small details about traveling in Japan that I've enjoyed very much are the melodies that play at each train station. Whether it's subway, local train or the shinkansen bullet train: different melodies play over the PA upon arrival and departure. Apparently these songs are used to discern between the various stations and to warn of incoming traffic.
Ever since my trip to Osaka and Tokyo I've fancied the idea of having these jingles as a ringtone. They're not very intrusive and they're cute to boot! A short search on the web brought me to this Google Answers page that links to various sites with MP3s and WAVs. Among them was this beauty, which features a neat drilldown menu of the various Tokyo train lines and stations.
Great stuff! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: japan, geeky, music,
View or add comments (curr. 4)
2008-08-26 21:48:00
Would you believe that I spent the past two to three hours investigating diapers? Diapers of all things! And I'm honestly quite intrigued by it all! ^_^
Over at GoT the lovely Llewella introduced us all to the Kaatje Katoen website. KK is one of the Netherlands' main proponents of washable/reusable diapers, as opposed to the plastic throw-away stuff churned out by Huggies, Pampers et al. their products look pretty damn good to me and we'll soon be ordering one of their trial packages so we can try some of the stuff out. The genius of these cotton diapers is that one can invest between 450 and 700 euros and be done with it all. We wouldn't have to spend 100 euros a month on disposable diapers :)
This is definitely something we'll be looking into. Of course we -will- be buying disposable diapers for daytrips and such, because it's no fun carrying stinky diapers around an amusement park ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: baby, family, clothes,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-25 21:55:00
With the baby on the way (less than four weeks and counting!) I was planning on ticking things off the ToDo list, instead of putting new items on there. So "yay me!" for accidentally ripping the curtains and their rail from the ceiling this evening. *le sigh*
*puts a new item on the list*
At least we had a nice evening in with Menno and Kaijuu (who just returned from Japan tonight).
View or add comments (curr. 4)
2008-08-25 17:38:00
This morning I had an appointment for an interview, seeing how I start a new job on October the first. I'd expected the interview to be over within an hour, meaning I'd be having lunch with Dirk (my new boss) around noon. Well, things turned out quite differently!
I met my old colleague Brendan (who's now a team lead for the group I'll be joining) around eleven. We had a nice chat and got reacquainted, feeling good about me joining the team. A little to twelve we went downstairs to meet with two of the project managers I'd be working with; just for a short chat. Well, this short "chat" turned into their weekly meeting which I was invited to join in on. It felt great to be helping out with the list of issues their client had given them, especially since I was treading old and familiar ground.
This weekly meeting turned out to be exactly as how I remembered the meetings to be at $COMPANY: needlessly long and focussing on anal details ^_^ We needed ninety minutes to go over thirty bullet points and then we still weren't finished :D
But seriously, the work sounds absolutely great and I'll be working in the near proximity of some old friends and acquaintances. I'm very much looking forward to this new assignment! Challenging work and an interesting work environment! Huzzah! /o/
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2008-08-23 12:51:00
Our good friends Niels and Kaijuu are currently in Japan for one of their annual/famous trips. Hearing their stories it seems that they're having a great time over there and I'm very much looking forward to seeing their photographs.
A few months back we joked that they'd have to bring us back some baby stuff from Japan... And so they did! ^_^ Yesterday we got a package in the mail that's obviously from the land of the rising sun. Upon opening it we found a treasure trove of Totoro baby toys and clothes.
Thank you so much guys! You're the sweetest ever! <3
kilala.nl tags: friends, anime, baby,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-23 07:42:00
Last week my colleague Albert mentioned that he had some old Apple hardware lying around that he needed to get rid of. Since the thing was still working, he though it a shame to just throw it away and so he was looking for a good home for the thing. Loving Apple classics I naturally obliged :)
I'm saying "classic" here, because the Powerbook 540c in question is supposedly one of the best laptops Apple's ever made. At the time (1994) it was nigh on revolutionary, with all kinds of features that'd never been seen before in a laptop. The 540c was even voted #2 Best Powerbook, right after the venerable Pismo G3.
As Albert promised, the Powerbook still runs perfectly well. It's got OS 7.5 on it and Word and Excel are even installed. Unfortunately one of the batteries is shot to pieces, while the other will still hold a nominal charge. I reckon this laptop will make a nice, first computer for our daughter to play games on in a few years. I'll just have to hope that the SCSI drive in it will hold out.
There's all kinds of improvements that I'm thinking of for this beasty. For one, I'm thinking of recelling the working battery with new NiMH batteries. I'm also looking for a way to get the laptop to work with Compact Flash cards. On the one hand this will make file exchange a lot easier and on the other it will make a perfect replacement for the SCSI drive. Apparently the 540 is perfectly capable of booting from a CF card. Unfortunately both of these improvements will cost at least a bunch of bucks apiece and for now I'm not at liberty to just spend money on old hardware.
Thanks Albert! You gave us a nice little plaything. We'll take good care of your old laptop :)
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2008-08-23 07:39:00
The past two weeks I've been sleeping awfully. I get enough sleep, but I guess the quality's just not alright. *yawn* I reckon it's got to do with the change in Marli's schedule (what with her not working anymore) and the nervousness for becoming a father.
*yawn* I woke up around 03:30 this morning and haven't slept properly since then :/
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-20 22:12:00
We've learnt two things today, both of which can be put down to curiosity.
1. Blackie will very happily sleep on the couch, as long as there is something for her to lie upon that she's not supposed to. Just the couch? No go. Laptop sleeve, backpack, coat or man purse? *snore*
2. The flashlight trick works. The little lady had been very quiet all day and night yesterday, which got us a bit worried. She used to be very active and now she'd been still for hours. The OB listened for her heart today and she sounded alright, so that was reassuring. Today I remembered a neat trick I'd read about a few weeks and thought we'd try that. Bingo! Flashligt on belly = baby moving ^_^
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-20 18:21:00
While reading through the WikiTravel entry for Akihabara I stumbled upon a phenomenon I'd never heard of before: cat cafes, specifically Neko Jalala.
This is not a cafe where cats can go for milk and catnip, but where people can go to play with cats. Now I know that maid cafes were all the rage in 2005-2007, so I guess someone is trying to come up with something new. I have to admit though, as a cat lover, that they're on to something :)
The cover charge for the cafe is pretty high, just like at the cosplay cafes. Looking at the pictures from the photo reports (below) I'd have to say that I'd be willing to pay it anyway. The place just looks too nice :) If I ever go back to Akiba, I'll damn well go to Neko Jalala for some coffee.
EDIT:
It seems that there's more cat cafes in Akiba :) Greedy Catz
kilala.nl tags: japan, weird, cat,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2008-08-18 10:35:00
Ever since my trip to Japan last December I've been recognizing more and more things in the anime, manga and movies I consume. A building here, a subway line there, a part of the Tokyo skyline and so on. The same thing also happened when I was reading the Marmelade Boy manga (as mentioned below).
In volume 7, Meiko goes to Hiroshima to confront Namura about their relationship. I guess the Peace Park and a few of Hiroshima's other sights weren't romantic enough, so the meeting took place on Miyajima island right off the coast. Of course the island provides both comedy (the deer that harass you for food) and romance (temples, the sea and the Tori in the sea).
Lo and behold, in the background of their meeting I spot something that had bewildered me when Nick and I were on the ferry to Miyajima. On the hillside overlooking the sea, there's this huge, weird, white building with golden statues. It looked like a gaudy hotel, or some weird church/temple dealy. I even managed to find the building on Google maps.
Well, thanks to fellow Arsian and all-round cool guy Durf I now know what the building is ^_^ To quote Durf:
The place looks like it's called the "Umi no Mieru Mori Bijutsukan", "the Mori Museum with a View of the Sea". The website is here: http://www.umam.jp/.
The whole thing (including all the buildings to the south in the complex you can see on the map) belongs to the "Byodo Daiekai", a Buddhist splinter group that broke off from the Nichiren group some decades ago. There are lots of these "new Buddhist" organizations, with the most famous (and powerful) being the Soka Gakkai.
Anyway, I can't find a lot of information about the group online, but there are lots of bloggers who write about how upset they are with this white monstrosity wrecking the hillside view from Miyajima.
So... It -is- some kind of religious building and not a hotel for the rich and stupid :) The funny thing is that my father and his girlfriend had spotted another huge-weird-white-with-gold building on their last trip to the USA and that one turned out to be a religious building as well. Mormons, in this case. What is it with modern, splinter-group religions?
kilala.nl tags: japan, japan 2007, weird,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2008-08-17 13:59:00
Since I left school I've been tearing through a pile of books. Taking the train to work every day has given me the chance to enjoy myself again and to educate myself on non-school-non-work things. Here's a quick list.
Oscar Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray was a great read. I love the story and miraculously the way the text's written is still very legible these days. Oddly, the first page of the book is horrible and has sentences that run on for seven lines. After that first page everything's perfect through :) If you'd like to read the book, you can download it for free at Project Gutenberg.
Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything started out great, but got slower about halfway. I still need to finish it.
I read through the whole eight books of the Marmelade Boy manga. I'm so glad that Yoshizumi-san decided to give the series a happy ending. I loved the romantic, teenage drama ^_^
Verhoeven and Busnel's Vaderschap voor beginners (Parenting for beginners) is a dreary book. The information in the book is quite valuable, but the way it's presented makes it very dry. I had to skim through the book and pick out choice samples to read. It makes a nice addition to other, more pleasant books but that's about it.
Henk Hanssen's Baby management voor mannen (Baby management for men) however is an -awesome- book! The way it's written irks me (manager's lingo and acting like the baby is a product), but the information and the way it's presented is invaluable. I tore through this book in five hours and learnt boatloads! :)
kilala.nl tags: reading, manga,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
2008-08-17 13:53:00
A little over a year ago I wrote about our families' traditional restaurants. The Sluyter's will always default to De Noordmolen and the Stek's fall back to Het Braadspit for their special occasions. Unfortunately the latter will come to an end.
Joop Vendrik (the proprietor of Het Braadspit has announced that they will be closing down their restaurant after three generations of owners. His grandparents had originally moved from the dutch province of Limburg to the vicinity of Utrecht. They opened this mom'n'pop restaurant specialising in chicken dishes over a hundred years ago. The Vendrik's will now be moving back to Limburg, to go into consulting. Their main reason for calling it quits is an utter and complete lack of a private life, thanks to the restaurant.
It's a shame really. I understand their decision, but it's a shame that we're losing such a great restaurant.
kilala.nl tags: restaurant, family,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-16 18:05:00
Peter and Wendy returned from their week's holiday yesterday. Before returning home the four of us went with Harmen to see Wall-E. I'd been wanting to see the movie for a while now, 'cause I found the main character to be uber-endearing. Luckily I wasn't disappointed :)
The movie is definitely of the Disney feel-good variety, with lots of great jokes thrown in for the grownups. Unfortunately the fact that this is a movie from the Disney stable means that a romantic OHNOZ! moment was required right before the end of the movie. That ending was the only thing about the movie that bothered me a bit. The rest was just great ^_^
I <3 Wall-E
EDIT:
BTW, I'm convinced that the guys at Pixar are big fans of the Valve game Portal. This shines through in the evil auto-pilot which reminds me of GEDOS and in the short clip that precedes the movie. This short clip focuses on a magician, his rabbit and their two hats that function exactly like the portal guns from Portal.
kilala.nl tags: movies,
View or add comments (curr. 4)
2008-08-16 18:02:00
*phew* What a weekend...
Yesterday and today were spent shopping, shopping and shopping some more. We bought at least four hundred euros on essential baby stuff, like clothing, other textiles and bathing goods. Aside from that we also went to check out some better fitting clothing for Marli, though that didn't turn out too well. Our lunch at Ikea was alright though :)
kilala.nl tags: baby,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2008-08-11 10:47:00
"Sam and I used to go walking together, down in the deeps, where no one else ever goes. It's the sounds that always fascinated me. Turn off your flashlight and listen and you can hear old machines nobody remembers, humming and clacking away in dark corners and between the walls. We used to go hunting for them, for fun. We rarely found any."
Imagine if you will an underground city inhabited by countless people. The origins of the city are long forgotten and no one remembers how it all began. The only thing we know is that the city must keep on running and that each has his own task in this. There is a natural order to everything. Yet there are rumors! Rumors of an outside where everyone can be free, whatever "free" means. The sky is supposedly "infinite", yet we have no clue what that means. Besides, what does it matter if you've forgotten again tomorrow?
Such a world is portrayed in the indie film Wormtooth Nation (aka The sky is free). The crew had a total budget of around $5000 and managed to make a feature length movie that mixes a steampunk setting with William Shakespeare's A midsummer's night dream. I'm quite impressed with what they've managed to make!
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-10 21:34:00
I've made no secret of how happy I am to own my Pfaff 1215 sewing machine. It's been with me for over eleven years now and it's running as smoothly as the day it was given to me as a present. I'm also glad that I'm at least moderately proficient in handling the machine and making basic repairs.
Let me tell you, basic sewing skills are a must for the economical! $DEITY knows that repair shops charge you an arm and a leg for basic repairs to clothing and it's always a shame to just throw out good clothing. Would you believe that I was once quoted forty euros, just to repair the zipper on a pair of jeans? Unbelievable! Being able to sew has saved us a lot of money over the years.
Tonight I fixed a tear in a pair of jeans and trimmed the legs which were too long and which had gone ragged. These jeans were about a year old, had cost me seven euros (yes seven, not seventy) and I reckon I can still get a good year out of them this way. Nice :)
kilala.nl tags: creative, money,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-09 16:53:00
Since there are less than seven weeks to go before the delivery it's to be expected that our offspring will move into its "take-off position". Put your tray tables up, your feet in the air and plant your head firmly into the pelvic bone. Stuff like that.
I guess that's what she's doing right now, because she's kicking up a storm in there. I put my hand on Marli's belly just now and there's all kinds of wobbles and prods going on in there. So either she's bored in there and trying out a few sports, or she's trying to get more comfortable :)
We'd actually be very happy if she got into the aforementioned position, because up to a few days ago she was sitting down on the pelvic bone. Let me tell you, an ass-first labor is NOT what we're looking for as it's either very painful or it requires a caesarian. :/ Here's hoping!
kilala.nl tags: baby,
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-09 16:50:00
It's been a few years since we last bought a game that sucked. Well, a few weeks back we got Mario and Sonic at the Olympics and IMNSHO it sucks donkey balls. Sure the mini-games can be fun! I just wish the game'd actually let me play them! What the game boils down to are 20 second mini-games, separated by a minute of uninterruptible cutscenes and score sheets. Not just once, but between every sinngle fscking time that you'd like to play a round. *groan*
EDIT:
The opening movie sure was nice though :)
EDIT 2:
Marli kicked me; she likes the game. ^_^
View or add comments (curr. 0)
2008-08-07 22:01:00
The above image is part of the official school papers that I managed to lay my hands on. The above info proves that I managed to score a full 100% on the required ECTS (European standard credits) to pass my first year.
In the Netherlands this first year's scoring is a rather big deal, which is called the propedeuse. If you manage to get your prop a number of doors open for you, including a leg up to a university degree. Also, getting all 60 ECTS in your first year shows that your dedicated to your education and that you're willing to put in the time.
Anywho... It's official: I got my prop :)
kilala.nl tags: school, career,
View or add comments (curr. 11)
2008-08-05 08:12:00
Thanks to Dennilfloss at Ars Technica for pointing out an article at Boston.com that includes great pictures of the LHC in Switzerland.
As some of you may know, CERN is building a huge particle accelerator near the border with France. This awesome piece of machinery (with a track around 27 kilometers in lenght!) is called the Large Hadron Collider. It's kind of funny how incredibly, mindbogglingly huge a machine needs to be to make measurements at the tiniest scale of size and time. Seriously, we're talking atoms and nanoseconds here.
Check out the article for a whole bunch of stunning photographs. Also, check out LHC article at Wikipedia for details on what this thing actually is.
And should anything ever go wrong and we're all devoured by a black hole (or creatures from another dimension): at least we know that the end of the world was pretty ^_^
EDIT:
If all of that is too big to take in, here's the LHC rap >_<
kilala.nl tags: photos, geeky, awesome,
View or add comments (curr. 3)
2008-08-04 14:21:00
About a month ago we went shopping for the first load of baby stuff. The things that we ordered then came in today. Joy oh joy, everything's in order and there are no defects to be found :)
The Mutsy 4-Rider stroller we ordered is as good as I remembered it to be and the cot was easy enough to assemble. We're now stuck with three big boxes of garbage, but those'll luckily be picked up on Friday.
So... We'll need to make a bit of a list to decide what's left...
* A bath, plus the required odds and sods.
* A shelf or two to put on the wall.
* Diapers, both cotton and single-use.
* More clothes.
* ...
Oh my... We're not nearly done yet :D
kilala.nl tags: baby,
View or add comments (curr. 2)
2008-08-04 08:06:00
If there was any doubt in your mind: The dark knight is indeed quite awesome! SRSLY.
I wasn't too mad about Christian Bale's acting which, though adequate, was more of the same that I've seen from him so far. Ledger however shines as the Joker. I loved it, I loved it, I LOVED it. :)
Great movie! The first Batman movie that I could take completely serious! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: movies,
View or add comments (curr. 1)
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.