Archive for the “Daily Life” Category
After I bought my MacBook last February, I’ve become a serious Mac addict. What Microsoft brainwashing never managed to achieve with slick duo presentations (look Jim it codes itself!) at TechEd, Steve Jobs did. I admit I’ve watched every possible Apple video that can be found in the cloud. From the Mac vs. PC series and iPhone demos to every keynote, speech or interview Apple’s CEO ever gave.
Wordpress’s web enabled editor produces valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which is very nice. Furthermore, it separates content, style and functionality, which is a prerequisite for any decent web CMS. Anyway my dear readers, I will be playing around with Wordpress the coming weeks so don’t be surprised if this blog’s look&feel will change drastically from time to time.
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Although a recent item in the Dutch newspaper Parool states that in many European countries Internet use has still significantly risen over the last year, in Holland it has decreased for the first time: we have 50.000 regular users less! Holland has the highest percentage of Internet users in Europe, presently about 70% of the total population. This is not surprising because the neccessary infrastructure (ADSL or Cable) is available to nearly all households. So, how can this lack of further growth (or even a small decline) of Internet use be explained?
Tournedos with mushrooms, baked patatoes and broccoli sounds pretty basic. However, I can be picky about my steak. As you probably know, a steak’s degree of cooking usually is rare, medium, or well-done. In France they serve an additional option called “blue” (or very rare): quickly flip over your steak twice; only for people who are into the blood department. I’m not. My ideal steak should in fact be medium-rare, as I explained to the friendly waitress.
On New Year’s Eve 2008 the evil sorcerer Gargamel captures 100 Smurfs and locks them up in his completely dark cellar. In there, he removes their white hats and randomly puts each Smurf a hat on from his collection of 10 red and 90 white hats. When finished, he tells them one or more Smurfs now wear a red hat and they have to find out who do, but they have to obey the following rules.
I’ve updated my list of free recommended applications for Mac OS X 10.4+. So far I’ve found no good reason to run Windows instead of Mac OS X for all daily tasks.
Dear readers, I’ve just returned from a great holiday in Japan. Our semi-organised trip went roughly from the northeast to the southwest of Japan: Tokyo, Utsukushi-ga-hara-kogen, Matsumoto, Kiso, Kyoto, Nara, Kurishiki, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Sandankyo, and finally Fukuoka. Below are some of my observations about Japan.
Maarten van Rossem is Professor of American Studies (in Dutch: Amerikanistiek) at the University of Utrecht. He is also known in the Netherlands for his elaborate and witty comments on TV about current political affairs. Last evening Robbert, Micha and I attended his 2½ hour (including a short break) lecture “The Cold War (part I)”.
Gaston and I have just returned from a great holiday (city trip) in Russia. We visited both Saint Petersburg (11 days) and Moscow (2 days). Instead of staying in expensive hotels, we decided to rent apartments which has many advantages: it is cheaper (half the price of an equivalent hotel room), you have more living space, cooking facilities, and it is not so touristic. If you choose well you will really live among the locals.
Occasionally, Sunday afternoon is sacred to me. Then I just sit down in cafe ‘t Hoogt and read a newspaper and do a little writing all by myself. Personnell must have long ago observed I’m here once every couple of weeks and only on Sunday, reading the Saturday paper. I know the small crowd, for example, there is a guy who I always just nod to when I come in, I’ll never talk to him and we both know it.
Last Saturday four friends ate at cafe ‘t Oude Pothuys in Utrecht. After that they all went to ‘t Gras Van De Buren, and later on the singles moved to cafe Hofman. Finally, two of them, Gaston and I, visited the quieter cafe Belgie until 3:00am. We had a good time and enough alcoholic beverages to cloud our judgement. However, Gaston and I later on agreed that going out to crowded noisy bars is a highly overrated experience. Why do we think so?
Today I changed hosting technology and will continue blogging using Wordpress. It will take some time until I have reinstated all articles from my previous blog (note Sept. 2006: restored two more old articles).
Saturday late afternoon. Sanne, Robbert and I drove to Arnhem. Rumour has it the Rijnkade houses a variety of interesting restaurants. Since temperatures were sub zero, we didn’t hesitate long to pick one. It seemed we had stopped in front of Rose’s Lounge. One peek inside had us collectively crying out: this place looks very wrong, very kitsch! But in we went anyway, curious and ready for adventure.
The sky over Berlin was mostly clouded and rainy last week, but I nevertheless enjoyed my stay. I found East Berlin having more of a distinct atmosphere than West Berlin, which I think is — apart from the well-known beautiful spots — a normal large European city.