2011-08-14 00:02:00
As a young boy I loved cartoons. I still do!
In preschool I grew up with imported animation and anime, broadcast by british TV on things such as Super Channel, or Fun Factory. At the time The Transformers was one of my favourite shows and I still have a warm place in my heart for them. Well, except for that modern-day abomination of a Baysplosion -_-
I read the Marvel comics, I watched the cartoons on TV and I had plenty of the toys that Hasbro sold. My very first one was Hound, I'll never forget that. What a cool toy he was! After that came a whole lot more. Off the top of my head there were Optimus Prime (of course), Metroplex, Smokescreen (what a beauty!), Beachcomber and a few of the Aerialbots and Protectobots. Funnily I never did get any of the Decepticons. Later on in life I also fooled myself into buying a Micromasters base, but that was a pretty rotten toy :|
Anyway... I was in my first or second year of high school when the Marvel comics series came to an end. I was twelve or thirteen by the time. I'd stopped actively reading the comics, so I only got a few glimpses of the last few issues and never knew how it all ended. And it left me with questions! "Whatever happened to Megatron and Ratchet after they got merged into one body?! How did OP's surrender turn out? How did they finally beat Galvatron? Would it ever come to a real ending?"
And finally I have the answers, after getting the full series as CBR. Yes I admit that it's not a 100% decent thing to do, but I'll just tell myself that Marvel wasn't going to make any money off me after twenty years to begin with. The ending? It wasn't great, but it certainly was an ending. An open one at that. But I'm still glad that as a 32 year old dude I got to finish something that 7 year old me started :)
kilala.nl tags: geeky, childhood,
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2011-04-16 11:49:00
We recently bought Dana a toy kitchen from the Houten Speelgoedparadijs (wooden toy paradise) shop in Almere. We don't often buy Dana new and shiny toys (at least not as often as other parents we know buy toys for their kids), so we thought it was time again. Personally I prefer wooden toys to the generic plastic stuff, probably out of the delusion that "wood is economically and ecologically better than plastic". Either way, at least her wooden kitchen looks a lot -nicer- than the standard plastic toys we see in toy stores.
We prefer shopping for toys at stores like these (another is Peter's Pakhuis in Zeist) because of their range of products. Many educational toys, lots of wood, lots of good looking miniatures of animals and so on. It also gives me a good feeling because we're "supporting the little man", instead of shopping at big chain stores.
Either way, Dana's very happy with her kitchen, serving us pancakes, chicken and fruits. Chicken? Yes, chicken! Because the store also sold a stuffed rotisserie chicken doll ^_^
kilala.nl tags: baby, childhood,
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2011-03-06 19:22:00
Tomorrow is the 40th birthday of der Maus, the titular mouse of one of my favourite childhood TV shows: Die Sendung mit der Maus. And after forty years the show is still going strong! I grew up with the smiling faces and the friendly voices of Armin Maiwald and Christoph Biemann, two voices that I'll never be able to forget. And now Dana is growing up with the mouse and his friends as well.
Below is a clip from years and years back, where the viewers are taught the basics of how websites and the Internet work. It's great that I recognize the web server as a box made by Sun (with whose systems I work on a daily basis), but that the hardware was made before I even left college for my first job in IT.
Judging by the IE4 installer used in the clip, the video dates somewhere between 1997 and 1999. That'd make the Sun box an Ultra server. Funnily enough I did used to work with a pair of Enterprise 4500's which stem from the same era and which were only decom'd a few years ago. Ouch!
If you want to see more recent episodes of der Maus they can be downloaded for free as podcasts.
Speaking of high quality, german educational TV that is available as free downloads! Another favorite of mine, targeted at teens, is Kopfball. Every episode the Kopfball team answer a number of viewers' questions and they often go into really deep technical details. Very cool stuff! Kopfball podcasts can be downloaded here. Some episodes that I really liked:
kilala.nl tags: geeky, childhood,
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2010-12-28 20:51:00
On Christmas eve we stayed over at my dad's place, who'd set up one of the attic bed rooms for the Sluyter family. It was my brother's old bedroom, which is still chockfull of boxes and stuff that he left behind when he moved to Finland years ago. I'm used to seeing those boxes, but this time one of them caught my eye because it was labeled "Thomas + Niklas: check!". Why would there still be stuff of mine lying around?
As I suspected, the box was mostly filled with my brother's old toys from our childhood days. And just as I was about to put the box away there it was! My 1980s Japanese bootleg pencil case!
I asked around on /r/anime to see if anybody knows the serie(s) used for the graphics on the box. Never underestimate the power of the hive mind, because a few hours later I had my answer! The "cool" looking robot+dude are from Metal Armor Dragonar, while the chibi robot is from the comedy show Choriki Robo Galatt. Seeing how Flomo, the company that made the pencil case, is from China and seeing how both series are not at all connected I'm pretty sure it's a bootleg :)
Putting that aside, it's Grade A childhood nostalgia! We bought these pencil cases when we were on holiday in Finland. I don't remember when it was, but I was still in primary school and I think my brother'd only just started going. So I was probably in fifth grade, maybe sixth. I had this mecha case, my sister had something that looked like Candy Candy and I believe my brother has a "normal" Grand Prix pencil case. Ah, nostalgia!
I'm thinking of fixing the case. Who knows, maybe I'll use it for something! :)
EDIT:
To take away any doubt that I'm a geek, here's the original opening of Dragonar. It really does have all the cliches, doesn't it? ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: japan, childhood, geeky,
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2010-02-16 23:12:00
Definitely one of my favourite parts of the NOD storyline. I <3 Kane.
Animated GIF ^_^
Oh, and congratulations on your promotion! ^_^
EDIT:
For those who've no idea what the heck I'm talking about, this is still about me replaying classic Command&Conquer.
kilala.nl tags: geeky, childhood, games,
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2010-02-14 13:59:00
Three years ago I waxed reminiscent about playing Command & Conquer as a teenager. All of us loved the original C&C to bits, as did we love the Red Alert spin off. They were absolutely marvelous games. Now, fifteen years after the first C&C game was published the final installment of (part four) will get published. While I won't be getting that particular game, I -am- reaping the benefits of its publication.
EA Games have made three classic Command and Conquer games available for free! The original C&C, the original RA and C&C2 (Tiberian Sun) can all be downloaded and played for free. How awesome is that?! Because they were made for Win95/Win98 I think you'll need WinXP. I don't know if there's a way to make them work in Vista or Win7.
Luckily, there's stuff like Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox (free!) and other virtualization tools. I still had a WinXP virtual machine that I'd built when I was in college in 2007. After upgrading to PD5 the VM has virtual graphical acceleration hardware, meaning that WinXP can now use DirectX/DirectDraw, which is what you need for C&C. Nice!
So there you go! Command & Conquer classic, running on Mac OS X. In the clip below you'll see me run C&C in 800x600 full screen mode on one of my OS X Spaces. It's great being able to switch back and forth from the game to OS X and the rest of my apps.
kilala.nl tags: apple, games, childhood,
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2009-12-06 10:10:00
My oldest piece of clothing currently still in use is my LA Kings hockey jersey, which is virtually indestructible. Save a few details it looks exactly the same as when my mother bought it for me fifteen years ago. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time and she'd made a trip to Finland with my brother. As a souvenir I'd asked for a jersey of the Finnish national hockey team, but apparently they were prohibitively expensive. Instead, the LA Kings shirt was more affordable and still good looking
At the time the shirt was way too large for me and the sleeves reached well beyond my wrists. The hemline also reached below my hips. These days the shirt still looks fine, though obviously I've grown in all directions making it a much better fit
So here's to you, fifteen year old jersey! May we be together for fifteen years more!
kilala.nl tags: life, childhood,
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2009-10-08 16:55:00
The other day I'd filled up my notebook and it was time to get a new one. Instead of getting a bulky hard cover one I got a bunch of Moleskine smaller ones. They're pretty nice, though I like my paper to be a bit smoother.
To go with the new notebooks I decided to get myself a fountain pen. It's been years since I've written with one, even though I used to write with one on a daily basis. All through K3-12 and for a few years during high school as well. I reckon it was about ten to fifteen years ago since I last used a fountain pen. Anywho, because I wasn't sure whether my writing'd still be okay I got a cheap-ass one that's intended for school use. Well, I still -love- writing with a fountain pen, that's for sure! My cursive writing sucks (it's really awful), though my own handwriting looks as good as ever.
I reckon I'll quickly replace the six euro doodad I bought with one that looks a -bit- nicer. Criteria for me are: cheap, slender/straight with a medium nib. I don't like fine nibs as I tend to scratch with them.
Ideally I'd get a wad of the pens we used when I was in primary school. I -think- they were made by Heutink, but I just can't be sure. I know they were slender and straight, came in three colors (dark red, dark blue, dark green), had a silver tip at the end and had a metal cap without clip. *sigh* I don't think they make those pens anymore though, because I've looked all over.
EDIT:
Haha! This took me back! Collecting the tiny balls from ink cartridges was definitely a hype in primary school.
kilala.nl tags: life, childhood,
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2009-09-06 07:57:00
It's funny how stuff you love can suddenly pop up where you least expect it. Case in point: Danny Choo's recent article about his meeting at the Cospa company. Cospa are specialized in cosplay items and character goods and to my knowledge are a pretty big name in that field. Seeing how Danny always includes swathes of photographs in his articles I read on in anticipation.
What I -didn't- expect was to see the mouse from Die Sendung mit der Maus (Wiki)looking back at me in the first pic. Later on he returns in a pic with various shirts (seen on the left).
The MP3 above is the show's opening theme, which of course has been solidly embedded in my brain since early childhood. Courtesy of Serienoldies.de.
Putting things together I reckon that Cartoon Network in Japan have purchased a broadcasting license for Die Sendung mit der Maus and that they've actually been airing it there. Well, that's actually not too surprising since it's a show that easily adapted! The animated sections do not have ANY dialogue except for "CLACKCLACK" noises and "PHWFT PHWFT!" (for the elephant). The "how it's made" educational sections can either be dubbed or just replaced with local-made .edu sections, keeping costs down.
EDIT:
There we go! Die Maus (note the grammatical error) at Cartoon Network Japan. There's even an online shop with Die Maus character goods. :)
kilala.nl tags: japan, tv, childhood,
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2009-05-15 21:40:00
While rummaging about the web last week I ran into this OP for a cartoon series that I used to love. So, guess that theme song! I'm looking at you Nik, though it might ring a faint bell in Menno's head as well.
kilala.nl tags: geeky, tv, childhood,
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2009-04-04 21:27:00
I'm very grateful for many aspects of my raising, one of them being my musical upbringing. Personally I'm not much of a musician (though I enjoy singing), but that's not because I wasn't encouraged :)
Through our parents we got to hear a very diverse palet of music, including classical, opera, finnish folk music and country. They never denied us our own choices in music either, even if they hated the music themselves. Heavy metal, house, pop music, everything was allowed into the house. We were allowed to try any music we liked, which was pretty awesome.
We were also encouraged to learn to play musical instruments, which in the case of my siblings has worked out wonderfully. Sister-dear plays the flute and cello, while my brother's a veritable one-man band. Me, I stupidly let myself be blocked by a fear of learning how to read sheet music and by the idea that playing the recorder "is for girls".
The above MP3 comes from Le nozze di Figaro. My father has a lovely music box with this particular piece and we loved it as kids. I was reminded of it today when watching Mezzo, together with Dana. We saw a wonderful performance by Teresa Berganza, which I've promptly bought on iTunes.
Anywho... There's not much point to this post except for two things:
1. I'm very grateful for how our parents brought us up :)
2. I can only hope that we can give Dana a similar upbringing.
EDIT:
Proof that my brother's indeed doing pretty well :D -> Distained. Menno, go check out that page and see if you can pick him out. My bro's done some growing up :D
kilala.nl tags: childhood, music,
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2009-02-27 18:05:00
Mmmmm! *burp* I'm so damn full! ^_^
Tonight I cooked a dish that I hadn't had for at least ten years: Pyttipannu. Pyttipannu is a Finish/Swedish (Scandinavian?) variation of the fried-leftovers-for-dinner concept. As the Wiki page suggests people don't even use leftovers anymore and simply cook the meal from scratch.
In this case I took the usual diced potatoes, mushrooms, onions and hammed and made an easy, yummy and horribly filling meal. Conform to our family's tradition the ham is not an expensive piece of fresh ham, but instead a nice slab of canned ham :D The only thing I forgot to add was the fried egg.
You know? Like the American hash, this stuff would be great for breakfast as well! :9
kilala.nl tags: cooking, finland, childhood,
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2009-01-10 15:29:00
A lot of folks between the ages of 25 and 35 will know about Thundercats: an animation series from the eighties that became a short-lived hit. While the series hasn't stood up to the tooth of time, there are still staunch fans out there. Fans who do wonderful stuff like this ^_^
That must've taken a lot of work to make!
kilala.nl tags: childhood, cartoons,
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2008-11-01 08:40:00
Remember this one? The Morris Worm, from 1988 (found through Reddit).
I remember reading about this horrible situation in Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's egg. Back in 1988 this run-away worm/virus brought most of the Internet to a standstill. At the time the Internet was of course much smaller than what we now know, but it was still a memorable occasion.
Film at eleven!
kilala.nl tags: childhood, internet, geeky, tv,
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2008-10-19 20:11:00
When growing up as kids we had a number of books that we really, -really- loved. A number of these were finnish books by Mauri Kunnas (Wikipedia) and at least two of them were works of Richard Scarry.
Both authors created illustrated story books featuring anthropomorphic animals which are heavy on the drawings. Actually, most of each page is filled with artwork with just a bit of text. Both Scarry and Kunnas also have a knack for filling each page with small, hidden jokes. All in all, this stuff is great for kids!
Things is, I still love these books! Now I could always use Dana as an excuse to buy these books (No no, it's for my daughter! ^_^;), but why would I? So far we've gathered Kunnas' reworkings of the finnish epic Kalevala, of King Arthur's story and of Santa Claus' factories. We only recently bought a Scarry book, which is actually an omnibus of three of his books.
*glee* I just love these books!
kilala.nl tags: reading, baby, childhood,
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2008-07-22 17:45:00
I still had a little bit of birthday money left and with it I bought a few DVDs on the cheap. Why they were so cheap I will never know, but for me they're of great value. You see, I'm very nostalgic about the series that I've bought, the first of which is pictured to the left. Anyone who's watched the BBC during the eighties will probably know it: The trap door.
It's a silly claymation show about monsters living in the dungeon of a castle, trying to take care of a bigger monster while trying to keep other monsters at bay. Yes, that's a lot of monsters ^_^ Each episode only lasts for a few minutes and it's all very light hearted. I used to love it as a kid and I'm sure that our future offspring will be at least amused by all the bright colours :D I've included the show's opening at the bottom of this post.
The other two shows are Ulysses 31 and the classic anime Nils Holgersson. The first being a French/Japanese retelling of the Greek epos in a sci-fi setting. We -loved- this show as kids and I've been on the lookout for good DVDs for at least ten years now. And it only cost me ten pounds for the whole box! The latter is a Swedish folk tale that ran on Dutch TV when I was very young. Some folks may remember it for the young boy who got shrunken by magic to travel with a flock of geese.
kilala.nl tags: childhood, tv, anime,
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2008-07-14 19:20:00
Business etiquette has changed a lot through the years. One thing that seems to have disappeared completely is the notion of having one's boss over for dinner.
I remember from the eighties that occasionally we would have guests over for dinner. Us kids were expected to be on our best behaviour, or upstairs asleep, IIRC. These guests would be from my dad's firm and IIRC they were higher-ups. I also remember the same thing occurring in many of the cartoons of the time.
In Jan, Jans en de kinderen (Jan, Jans and the kids, pictured above) Jan would occasionally have to entertain his bosses or directors to stay on their good sides. You see the same thing happening in series like The Flintstones, where Fred has to appease Mr. Slate after some cock-up.
I'm wondering if anyone else remembers this stuff from back then. I reckon it stopped being "a thing" sometime late in the eighties, because I don't seem to recall anything like that happening in the nineties. I wonder why we stopped doing this. I wonder why we actually -started- doing this :)
Anyone a bit older than me willing to shed some light?
kilala.nl tags: work, career, childhood,
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2008-06-28 08:20:00
I just read about this at Dark Mirage's blog. I love this idea!
Many of us were in our late teens, early twenties when Nintendo first burst onto the scene with Pokemon in the nineties. Many of us loved the games and some of us (like me and my brother Mistoffelees) also rather enjoyed the TV series and movies. These days we tend to look back on those days with a hint of nostalgia, longing for the days when there were only 151 Pokemon. I had the same with Magic: the Gathering: at one point in time things get too popular and all of a sudden there's a bajillion different cards/characters and the original romance has been lost.
For people like us, Nintendo's come out with a line of t-shirts for the game geek in his twenties/thirties, called Pokemon 151. For now, there's four different shirts but I'm hoping that they'll come out with a few more. I'd really love to get my hands of a few of these shirts though! Maybe I'll commission them from Kaijuu or Niels-sama on their next trip to Japan.
EDIT:
Darn... As Kaijuu points out, even the measurements of the XL shirt are way too small for most Eurofolk and USAdians...
kilala.nl tags: childhood, clothes, geeky, games,
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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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2007-07-14 20:45:00
Wow, this is a flashback! I Googled the random line "Hey is for horses" after reading it in the short story Hey Hopey from that Love and rockets book. I've know that line as Hey is voor paarden ever since I was about twelve or thirteen after reading it in (what I now realize was) another L&R short. Back then it was feature in a dutch, underground comic mag called zone 5300.
Anywho... The flashback part got bigger with this Google result. The song featured on that page is completely constructed from programmed tunes built into a Casio keyboard. The very same Casio keyboard that I owned when I was twelve! o_O What a great coincidink!
Mistoffelees ought to recognize the horrible melodies, as should Menno...
kilala.nl tags: comics, childhood,
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2007-04-18 00:49:00
Some time last week I paid a visit to my local, favourite game shop Dr Games. They have a rather decent collection of retro games and the store itself is actually run by a bunch of game-fanatics. If you happen to be in Utrecht, be sure to drop by their shop on the Amsterdamsestraatweg.
Anywho... That day I purchased Rival Turf for the SNES, which is a blast from my past. Me and Menno used to love playing this side-scrolling beat'm-up and my brother was quite good at it. At five bucks for the cart alone it may have been a bit pricey, but thankfully I got it for free (thanks to the saved up bonus points on my store card). I'm looking forward to playing this game again!
I also picked up Phoenix Wright 2: Justice for all for the Nintendo DS, after hearing so much good about the series. So far I'm half way through the second court case and I have to admit that I'm not 100% enthused.
For those not in the know: the PW series has you playing the role of a defense attorney, defending seemingly impossible cases where the accused can't be anything but guilty. Or is he?
My opinion? Yes, it's a good game and I enjoy it. But no, the game is hardly exciting.
* The animation is crude and repetitive.
* The english translation can get on your nerves with lame jokes.
* The pace of the game is sloooow. This isn't something that I mind, but oodles of people will most definitely be turned off by it.
That said, the game does have its moments and it'll have you thinking hard about what evidence you'll need to present at what times. All in all it's twenty-nine euros well spent, though I wouldn't have bought it if it'd gone over thirty-five.
EDIT:
Heehee, this is funny. Just tell the website how you feel on a subject and let it generate Phoenix's OBJECTION! for you! ^_^
kilala.nl tags: games, childhood,
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2007-03-05 19:37:00
In the course of one's life certain words or sentences get stuck in your head, never to leave there again. You'll be repeating something you picked up when you were seven years old when you're eighty-seven and in the old folks' home.
For me these include things like EnWiAkDuFa, which was my reminder for my wednesday's schedule during my third year in high school. Or SOSCASTOA, which was a maths shortcut to the Sine-Cosine-Tangent rules. Or Zij brengt rozen op Gerrit's graf bij vies grijs weer (or translated into English Betty brings roses on Yorick's grave by vapid, grey weather), which is the engineer's shortcut to the resistor colour codes.
Two other lines that I will never forget came from the weekly Donald Duck comic magazine. For as long as I can remember my whole family's loved those strips and we've always had a subscriptin. My dad's even had a sub for most of the years that the magazine's been published in the Netherlands!
Unfortunately I had no way of tracing the quotes back to the original comics, even though I tried using Google. So I wrote a letter to Uncle Donald, asking whether his librarian could help me out. And they did! They put me on the track of the excellent I.N.D.U.C.K.S. website, which strives to index each and every Disney comic every published. Thanks to them I finally know which issues or comic books I need to hunt after ^_^
Ach en wee ben ik de klos, met mijn boog schoot ik een albatros! (Woe is me, I'm at a loss. With my bow I shot an albatros!) came from the 1966 Carl Barks classic The not-so-ancient mariner. This is of course a pun on The rime of the ancient mariner, by S.T. Coleridge.
RabarberBarbaraBarBarbarenBaardenBarbier (RhubarbBarbaraBarBarbariansBeardBarber) came from the 1991 Evert Geradts Rabarber. This was a two-page story featuring Gyro Gearloose (Willie Wortel). AFAIK, the sole basis of this comic is a dutch tongue twister, occasionally used in speech therapy.
Now! To schedule a day to dig through the piles and piles of Ducks at my dad's place ^_^ Glee!
kilala.nl tags: comics, childhood, geeky, awesome,
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2007-02-16 17:59:00
How's this for childhood memories? I remember that, when I was a kid of maybe five years old, I was in love with the song My baby just cares by me by Nina Simone. Aside from the catchy bass and piano lines there was also the fact that the video featured my favourite animals (ZOMG cats rule! :3) doing cute stuff. I'm sure my mother will remember my infatuation with this song as well.
Driving back home the other day, giving my colleague Casper a ride home as well, I played one of her albums on the stereo and naturally this song comes by. We got to thinking about the video and were sure that YouTube would have a copy of the video. Well, YouTube turned up short but Casper did manage to find a rather nice, 24MB AVI version of the clip instead! I'm so happy! This clip is never leaving my hard drive again <3
kilala.nl tags: music, childhood,
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2007-02-01 15:49:00
Last night I was leafing through one of the Games TM issues on my To Read pile. In it I came across an article on the final installment of the Command & Conquer series, Tiberium wars. I really can't believe it's been twelve years already!
I remember like it was yesterday, sitting in my high school bench, discussing the Tiberian Dawn trailer that came with C&C Covert Operations. We had such high expectations of C&C 2 and it all seemed so close! We felt as if the game was just around the corner and that we'd be playing it before we'd left high school!
Well, that one didn't come true as C&C 2 came out when I was just about ready to leave college. But it didn't matter: back in 1995 we loved C&C to no end and I spent many a weekend and night with my best friend Menno, playing the game over a serial null-modem cable. Many a game was interrupted by unstable serial comms, but that didn't make the nights any less fun!
And OMG, Menno do you remember the very first time that we encountered a visceroid in one of our multiplayer games?! We had no clue what it was, but we were enthralled by that little, grey blob moving around the playing field. We were also quite horrified to find that it would happily eat our men! So whenever one of'em appeared, we cease the war to attack The Blob! :D
Ah those were the days!
So... Now the third and final installment of the series is out. I seriously doubt whether I'll be playing it. I've never been that good at RTSs and these days I play mostly console games anyway. Besides: I never played part 2 of the series either, so I have no clue about the backstory...
Ahhh... Memories... :3
kilala.nl tags: games, childhood,
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2006-12-03 19:53:00
Ever since I was a small kid, I've always had a great love for Donald Duck. His short stories in his magazine and his longer stories in pockets, which at times came with some great artwork!
Today, while waiting for the rest of the Anime 2007 staff at Dordrecht station I ran into a new comic at the magazine stand: Duck Power, a sturdily bound and printed comic focusing on Super Donald in the year 2020. Super Donald of course being Donald Duck's super hero identity (apparently he's internationally known as Paperinik).
The story's pretty run of the mill when it comes to the longer Donald Duck tellings: a few surprises here and there, but nothing shocking. I love the artwork though and I do believe that the artists took a good, hard look at Games Workshop's Tyranid army from the Warhammer 40000 game. The Super Evronians look like a mixture of duck-tyranid. Very neat!
A quick browse through Wikipedia and a few other websites (including this thread on a dutch forum) confirm that these comics are actually quite old and that they were published in the Netherlands around 1997. Apparently the publisher's trying to peddle them again, after flopping the first time. Me, I could stand to read a little more.
kilala.nl tags: comics, childhood, fun,
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2006-11-27 22:24:00
This evening has been wonderful. Simply wonderful. :)
Up to half a year ago I had only two recollections of the Doctor Who TV series, both from my youngest years as a child. When I was about six years old I once watched an episode of the series with my mother and I was scared shitless :3 This is what I remembered from that one day:
1) The doctor is a fellow with bushy hair, a red coat and an uber-long scarf.
2) Slimy, green, scary creatures that eat your soul! OMG ONOZ!
And tonight, while watching BBC Four's Science Fiction Britannia, I was ever so pleased to see the exact same episode that I had remembered!
The episode in question was Ark in space, which tells the story of a great space station built to restore mankind after the earth's destruction. A strict selection was made from all of humanity and all other flora and fauna of the earth, in order to rebuild what once was.
Unfortunately there's a big, green problem called the Wirrn, a wasp like race that births it larvae inside mammals. Humans, in this case. A those larvae are what scared the crap out of me as a kid. Slimy, green monsters that infect you with a simple touch.
Funny to see that the monsters I was afraid of back then were made of green bubble wrap :D
Also, while on the subject of British science fiction, I will most definitely need to read and/or watch the following books and stories:
* "The purple cloud" (1901). Free eBook.
* "The world, the flesh and the devil". Hollywood version of Purple Cloud, at IMDB.
* "Deluge" (1927). A review.
* "The day of the Triffids" (1951). Wikipedia entry.
* "Death of grass" (1956). Wikipedia entry.
* "The drowned world" (196?). A review.
* "Threads" (1973). IMDB entry.
* "28 days later" (2002). Official website.
The concept behind "The purple cloud" sounds awesome to me: only one man has survived a world wide cataclysm that has wiped out all of humanity. Driven insane by loneliness he proceeds to burn every city he travels through to the ground, to wipe out any memory of humankind.
"Death of grass" seems compelling insofar that the author and I see eye to eye on one thing. On humankind he has said: "We really are a bad lot". When things get tough, humans will only look out for their own well-being. Something that also makes J.G. Ballard's "The drowned world" seem very interesting: the hero actually seeks out his own destruction by moving into the heart of the catastrophy.
All very good stuff. Now I just have to find the time to read it all :)
EDIT:
One of the authors featured on "The Martians and us" this evening actually made a _very_ good point. Writing science fiction about the destruction of our earth has gotten a lot harder these days. Why? Because there are already five or six processes hard at work doing so! If you want to write about the end of the world you'll either have to solve these problems, ignore them, or include them in your story.
kilala.nl tags: doctor who, tv, childhood, reading,
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2006-11-12 13:32:00
While there are bunches of useful things that I could or should be doing, it feels kinda good to simply ignore them for a while. I'm on vacation after all. So instead of studying, writing code or stuff like that I chose to make poffertjes for breakfast, which is always fun.
I can't imagine any full-blooded dutch kid growing up without poffertjes in some way. My father used to make them at home, even though he hated the chore of flipping a hundred of those mini-pancakes in their skillet. We used to go out and eat them at amusement parks and pancake restaurants. Grandma made them. And so on... They're such a treat and they bring back memories...
I remember one time when I was fifteen or sixteen (you know, the age that you're trying hard to prove that you're grown-up) that I ordered a large portion of poffertjes, with Boeren Jongens (lit. "Farm boys", the dutch nickname for rum raisins). Sweet Jeebus was I full! And I just didn't want to admit that I didn't like the rum raisins (cause of course I was trying the prove the whole grownuppedness).
Ah well :) These days I just make'em with powdered sugar + butter + cinnamon, or with a bit of syrup. Damn tasty and makes for a yummy breakfast. I should get a cast-iron or copper skillet though, instead of this stainless steel one. This one just doesn't seem to spread the heat right...
Speaking of breakfast at 12:00 in the afternoon, I think you can guess that I went to bed quite late :D I watched all four DVDs of the Rumiko Takahashi Anthology in one sitting (twelve episodes of around twenty-five minutes).
I'd originally expected a series that focusses on comedy, silly situations and such but I was dead wrong as it turns out. The series seems to be targeted at adults and covers the more serious aspects of grown-up life. Yes, there are some silly twists and turns, but the episodes mostly cover situations like:
* What if you're stuck in a marriage that leaves you neither happy or unhappy? With a wife and son who just don't seem to care about you that much.?
* You've dedicated the last thirty years of your life to your corporation and are now without a job. How do you go on from there?
* You're a housewife in an apartment building where all the other housewives pick on you, thanks to their nasty ringleader?
* You've been asked by a good friend to help cover up for his extra-marital affair.
* Your mother-in-law is trying to drive a wedge between you and your husband.
All rather serious stuff. Doesn't make it less enjoyable, but it's not what I had originally expected. Made me think a times too. Think about some things in my relationship that I really _should_ be doing. Things that I shouldn't put off.
/me saunters off to let Marli know he loves her. <3
kilala.nl tags: cooking, childhood, anime,
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2006-08-23 21:09:00
1. This world has too much emacs. Even when studying for my LPIC-1 exam it seems everyone feels the need to push the emacs editing style on me. Come on folks, a lot of people set their BASH to vi mode, or they use the arrow keys!
2. I just remembered the very first question I asked in high school. During our introductory hour to the school and our mentors I baffled the whole class (including the mentors) by blurting out: "What does it take to get expelled from this school?". o_O Sometimes I'm just -too-much- of a wise ass.
kilala.nl tags: other tech, school, childhood,
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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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2006-07-22 12:17:00
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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2006-05-26 17:14:00
Holy shit.
I'd -completely- forgotten about Battle Beasts! Although not really "completely" of course, since I've now remembered :) I'm off to read some more on this stuff. Man!
kilala.nl tags: toys, geeky, childhood,
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2006-05-26 15:58:00
While hot on the trail of various classic anime, I've stumbled on something that makes me very happy! Back in 2004 a DVD box set was released for the French/Japanese anime "Ulysses 31", a show that we loved when we were kids. Basically it's a retelling of dozens of Greek myths in the 31st century. Most of the show was quite good, with a few notable exceptions. *cough*Nono-the-annoyingly-cute-robot*cough* Anywho: the box set can be had for as little as fifteen pounds at Amazon.co.uk. o/
Which brings us back to toys and models. While searching for stuff on "Ulysses 31" I found the online collectibles store Lulu Berlu which, though not for those faint at heart (or wallet), carries a -huge- selection of old toys. My favourite for "Ulysses" would be this one which would set you back a whopping 999 euros! o_O WTF?! Their prices for G1 Transformers (though they are MIB) are equally extortionate.
This isn't meant to say that what they have is worthless, because it really isn't. Browsing their website I've already stumbled upon a few things that are really interesting :) Like Kubrick sets based on the movie Tron ^_^ CUTE!
kilala.nl tags: anime, childhood,
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2006-05-24 00:19:00
Oh. My. God.
This brings back childhood memories! When discussing the Karaoke Cafe event for the upcoming Anime 2006 festival on the Aniway fora something pushed me to trawl the web for information and files on my first real anime experience: Arrow Emblem - Grand Prix no taka. And luckily I did! Among many things, there's a Real Media version of the opening sequence. I loved that series as a kid (I was seven at the time, I think) and would still love to see the full series even though the animation is stale and the art dates back to 1977.
Also, today is our second year's wedding anniversary! o/ We've taken the day off so we can celebrate. I won't tell how just yet, since Marli might be reading this page sometime between now and when the surprise gets sprung :P
kilala.nl tags: arrow emblem, anime, japan, childhood,
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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.
