As I heard the news about the death of Steve Jobs this morning I shed a few tears. At that moment I was unable to explain to myself why I felt so sad, since I never met the man. But as I write this message I’m figuring it out.
When I got home, the first thing I did was open my MacBook, which is wirelessly connected to my Airport Extreme. I played songs that fit in with my sad mood on iTunes. In Safari, I watched several YouTube videos and a TED talk. I tweeted about the loss on Twitter for Mac, and checked out the trending topic #SteveJobs. I found a link there that took me to http://www.apple.com/stevejobs, and clicked on a “mailto:” link. This opened a screen in Mail, arguably the finest e-mail client I’ve ever seen. And here I am, typing.
And all of that worked not just well, but very well in a beautiful way. My experience with OS X made me switch away from Windows, where countless Linux and BSD distributions have failed. Where I used to need a lot of tweaking just to make something work, I’m now often quite confused at how intuitive hardware and software from Apple really is. I actually needed to think different. For instance, installing an app by simply dragging it was entirely new to me.
I can easily say my experience with technology was very much changed when I found the products Apple makes. And Steve Jobs made that happen. When my MacBook dies, I can buy a new one, but Steve Jobs cannot be replaced. My condolences to everyone and I wish much strength and fortune to the company and staff in the future.
Kind regards,
Marjolein Tamis (The Netherlands)
Arjan also blogged about this, sharing Apple’s view. Jochem commemorates Steve in his own way.
A while ago my friend Wouter posted something about the Humble Bundle (part 3). For those who don’t like clicking links: the Humble Bundle is a bundle of games you can play, and you can define your own price for them. So if you feel like the amount of games you get are worth $20, that’s what you pay and if you only wish to pay $1, that’s alright too. You can even get them for free (but I’d feel awfully bad about that). When you pay for the bundle, you can decide how much of this money should go to the developers and how much to a number of charities. For all the games you get, you also get a Steam + Desura code, so you can play them from there as well. Plus, if you spend more than the average, which is now at $5.68, you also get all games from the 2nd bundle.
I decided to get it and immediately got hooked on the first game I started: VVVVVV. This one is as oldskool as it gets.
You play the captain of a space ship which has crashed and left all crew members lost in space. It’s up to you to get them and teleport them back. Here comes the awesome part: there is no jumping. Left is left and right is right, but the space bar makes you float up and stick to the ceiling, or go down again. This concept makes for some really unexpected and difficult moves you can make. The learning curve, therefore, is particularly big, easily reaching the levels of any Megaman game. The graphics look like they’re from the eighties, and the music fits that style perfectly. In that sense it’s pure nostalgia in a can. I’ve played three levels so far and I can highly recommend it!
Also, that Humble Bundle is just too good to miss :)
Nothing to see here: this is a post for my own reference.
I’ve been trying to rid my irssi of the script nickcolor.pl for literally years now. It’s a handy script in theory, but very often it’ll display nicks with equal length in the same colour, or it’ll display a lot of (non-bold) yellow nicks, thus making it difficult for me to read hilights (this is particularly irritating when scrolling back in a days worth of conversations).
Unloading the script would end up with me seeing all the nicks in the colour of the last person who said something. If red, all nicks turn red, if pink, all of them turn pink, etc.
My friend BenV handed me a simple solution for this. In irssi, type:
/format -reset pubmsg
This will reset the colour and make everything white again (exluding hilights of course). It has one side-effect which won’t go for most users but does happen for me. I have right-aligned nicks (all in 9 spaces), but the reset messes this up for anyone who talks except for higlights and stuff I say myself. This line fixes that:
/format pubmsg {pubmsgnick $2 {pubnick $[-9]0}}$1
So if I ever get it into my head to use this script again, because you know, I’m an idiot, this is how I fix it :)
I’ve never bought a console for one particular game. There were always several reasons for me to buy them. Until now.
Long ago, in 1998, I owned a Nintendo 64. At that point I was a geek at my school newspaper (we worked with Macs ^_^), and my friend the editor had this game for it, Ocarina of Time. Had I ever heard of Zelda? Nope, somehow it went completely by me on the NES and I never even owned a SNES. I borrowed it from him and was glued to the screen for a few weeks. I remember the awe at everything I saw in that game. Most of all, the world was so big! I was used to Mario 64 by then, which does have some big looking levels but the whole is still, for al intents and purposes, quite small. In Zelda I got my horse and found land as far as the Gerudos. I was thoroughly impressed. Later on in life, World of Warcraft would ruin that for me, by the way. No game world can ever look big to me now.
Not so long ago I decided to buy the game in the Wii shop, but the gameplay really sucks when you don’t have the original N64 controller. Then I found out that it was out, in 3D, for the Nintendo 3DS. I had to get it, and within about 4 days I had it.
The game is pretty awesome. They improved the graphics, for instance making bushes appear bushy instead of blocky. Tiny stuff like Link’s fairy and butterflies are incredibly detailed and it looks well-adjusted. In the story, nothing has changed. I was able to blindly find my way through the first 3 dungeons because I remembered them so well. All secrets and holes and heartpieces and fairy fountains are there, exactly where they used to be. The only addition to the game is a stone you can use to see into the future, giving you hints and tips on what to do next. The most awesome part is the addition of 3D mixed with the improved graphics. Just play a song on the ocarina and you see the most pretty effects, in 3D. And try walking through the twisted corridor in the Forest Temple, it’s brilliant.
I might be very much biased on this topic, but I can only recommend this game. If you loved it once and you’re longing for the same experience again, it’s great to be back. If you’re new to the game, it’s a must-have as well. But then I’m just a big Zelda fan ;)
I almost never plan a holiday. The last one I planned was 3 years ago and consisted of 3 days in Denmark, which ended badly; long-distance relationships suck, especially when you try them with insensitive a-holes. But I digress, my apologies.
This year I had some other financial plans that I wanted to do first, so in my mind I had already forgotten about the idea of a holiday. But I’ve been working almost nonstop since november and I haven’t been out much. Especially during the time I worked fulltime with the 2 hour commute, I was a hermit after work. So it’s time for a holiday. Still, I was really not looking forward to making holiday plans. I’d have to go alone since I have no partner or available friend, and where was I supposed to go? Moreover, having a business which means no working = no money makes me reluctant to take time off. I need all the money I can get.
But I needed to get out anyway. I figured the location itself isn’t even important, as long as it features a good hotel with decent service which will enable me to just stay in bed and relax. I decided to go to Berlin. That thought turned into “well maybe not Berlin, I can go to Center Parcs and hang out in a bungalow”, which turned into “that’s too expensive, I’m not going”. But now that I got a fairly decent payment for my job, I started thinking about it again, and clicked a trip together on a pretty cool website I used to translate for.
Yesterday I got my new American Express card, which I’m testing for free this year to see if I like it. And before I knew it I’d paid for my trip with it. And now I can’t wait! Even the hotel alone will make me want to stay there, since I went with something more luxurious than I ever did.
I’ve seen many people experience holiday stress, but I think mine is different. I experience stress at the idea of committing myself to taking time off. When I do go, I know from experience that I love it. But planning it is something else entirely. I do know I want to push myself to do this more often. I might actually be going to Center Parcs as well this year!
Onze Steve, die in Cupertino zijt,
Uw Merknaam worde geheiligd;
Uw Rijkdom kome;
Uw wil geschiede in de App Store zoals op de iPhone.
Geef ons heden onze dagelijkse apps;
en vergeef ons onze hacks,
zoals ook wij aan KPN hun DPI vergeven
en leid ons niet tot Windows,
maar verlos ons van Microsoft.
(Met grote dank en oprechte excuses aan mijn katholieke opvoeding, Martijn Bakker en Jochem Oosterveen.)
Last week I wasted 33 euros on starting a diet. I’m quite overweight, that’s no secret. Now it’s never been a health issue to me, I might be less fit than the average person but otherwise I’m perfectly ok. Until I get depressed over something, and then the whole idea of being overweight just drags me down even more. Last winter, my state of mind wasn’t that great. I got the idea that my weight was really horrible and a big issue due to popular opinion and the fact that people who are older than me (and no longer my friends, I might add) were still mocking me for my weight. I mean, come on people, it’s 2011 and we’re not eight years old anymore. Although I can still feel like that when that happens.
Then, a while ago, I visited my bookkeeper. She was doing the WeightWatchers diet and showed me a diary indicating everything she’d eaten the past few days and how many points that cost her. Just to explain things: in this diet you’re given a set of points for the day, which you -have- to finish, and an extra set of bonus points a week which you can use for extra things like sweets, cookies, you name it. Of course, fat things cost many points. You’re also required to eat 300 grams of veggies and 2 pieces of fruit, and to drink about 2 liters of water.
I thought about this diet for an eternity, and finally figured I should do it. I was hoping to get a few things out of it: a better eating pattern, and some healthy options for mainly dinner, which aren’t too much of a hassle to put together. What did I get? Well, how do I describe this… in Little Britain, they actually do a parody of this, called Fat Fighters. The woman I saw at the course was a woman who strikingly resembled Marjorie, with a hint of Rita Verdonk (if you’re foreign and you don’t know her, look her up). She kept the group entertained for half an hour with questions (“Do you like the seasons?” “Do you always throw away clothes that are too wide for you as well?”) and completely unrelated stories. Then she gave us a few very random hints and tips, and off the group went. I got the incredibly rehearsed newbie-talk and was sent home with a set of booklets. Good Luck(tm).
I got home at around a quarter to 10 at night, I’d finished planning breakfast and lunch for the next day with what I had in the fridge by half past 11. My regular bedtime is at least before half past 10, so that was very late for me. I didn’t sleep until 1 o’clock and I was wide awake again at 4 in the morning, wondering how the hell I was going to solve the dinner equation. I was incredibly tired but I managed the whole day, not feeling particularly hungry. I finally failed at dinner, because I didn’t have more than one hour to fix myself dinner and eat it. I had to skip the exercise as well. I worked somewhat that evening for extra money and went to bed again at half past 11, thinking the same recipe would do for the next day. Woke up insanely early, literally sweating and worrying about the veggies and the points. This went on for a while, and then at half past 7 in the evening, one hour after my regular dinner time, I was calculating how many points anything I had that wouldn’t take over an hour to cook would cost me. I quit right there and made myself a nice dinner with rice and chicken in about 15 minutes.
Quitting this didn’t feel like failing for even a second. Even if the feeling might have been dormantly present, it was trumped by a huge sense of relief. I don’t count dinner, I eat it. Plus, I learned a lot from this:
I wanted good recipes, but this diet doesn’t offer me that in a convenient way. I’m better off buying a cookbook or browsing the internet and printing out recipes I like.
I do need breakfast, it sets my body in motion and makes sure I actually feel better.
I cannot possibly eat loads of veggies during lunch. Dinner is a different matter.
Exercise will get me quite far as well and I was already doing well in that area.
I’m fine the way I am.
All in all that’s a well-spent 33 euros wasted I say.
As the title probably suggests, I’m about to tell you a disaster story. When I just moved into my new place I had grand plans concerning the technology I wanted in my home. I’m a big fan of watching TV series, so I needed some system through which I could just stream all downloaded stuff to my TV (which I was planning to upgrade as well, I have done so by now). Obviously there are a lot of different solutions around for that, but I’d set my mind to a WD TV Live, which does not have any storage of itself but connects to any network easily and has some added features which I hardly ever use. I’d heard some good things about it, and it wasn’t too expensive, so I got one.
When I got the thing, I started thinking about the actual setup I would need. No, I’m not a big planner, I spend much time winging things as I go along. Now there were a few factors I needed to take into account:
For downloading, I use µTorrent under Windows. The only way I would ever deviate from that is if they make µTorrent for Mac just as awesome. I heard they’re working on that, I haven’t checked it out yet. There might be a solution there if they’ve added the features I want (rss downloading to specific folders, renaming torrents when adding them to the download list, etc). But for now let’s assume Windows 7 is the OS I need to use.
I want the downloaded data on a USB HD that is located somewhere that
allows me to download data to it instantly (instead of needing to copy or some such thing)
doesn’t require me to turn on anything other than my WD TV when I want to watch stuff on that disk
The WD TV Live supports a USB HD, but that would require my WD TV Live to be switched on during downloading. Right now the disk is attached to my PC, meaning the PC has to be switched on when I watch series. Ideally, my Airport Extreme would be a good place to attach the disk to.
Well I tried this in a number of ways, and it’s impossible I tell you. First I formatted the disk as Mac OS Journaled, which was fine with Airport but Windows doesn’t do anything with it if you don’t download extra software to support the filesystem. I did that, and it still failed because Windows 7 failed to write to the disk. The WD TV didn’t see the disk at all. Formatting as NTFS posed a big problem for Airport, which just refused to share the disk on the network, so of course there was no visibility in either Windows 7 or the WD TV. Then I tried FAT32, because I was on the slippery slope down to hell anyway. Airport said “Ok sure why not”. WD TV said “Hey your disk is empty but I do see it!”. Windows 7 went nuts over it.
First it found my disk and went “Oh wow a network share! Awesome! Let me open that for you. Yeah, let me first get some coffee. And then open it. Really.” I got to the point where I believed (one can never be sure with Windows) I was on the disk, and tried starting a download. “Wait, you want to *download* stuff there now? Oh hell, let me get more coffee.” µTorrent finally just gave up on trying to write to the disk. I tried a simple copy after that, which sent Windows 7 into calculating the time for the copy for about 10 minutes, after which I decided to stop it. Then there was an actual file, but opening it was out of the question.
I have no idea to this moment what the problem might be. I could be Airport messing with the disk so Windows can’t read it properly, it could be Windows 7 entirely. I’ve tried all the suggestions I found through Google, like turning off Windows Search and tweaking all kinds of stuff on my Airport. Fact is, it won’t work. If anyone could give me any suggestions, I’m very open to them, but to me it now looks like a lost cause. So I boot my PC when I want to watch something, which is quite a shame.
As of today, I’m a freelance translator again. My own little business is back, and today is my first day at work again. I’m back at IBM, and enjoying the familiarity and calm atmosphere. I work four days a week, leaving one day to do other things and socialise.
As I indicated before, I didn’t enjoy being a freelance translator that much. I longed for a solid job which would cover illness, retirement, etc. An ex-colleague from IBM asked me if I wanted to work for a company in Zoetermeer. Not having any freelance work at that point and being quite desperate for job security, I took the job very quickly.
While the job itself was ok, wages were a lot lower than I was used to while working as a freelancer, and the salary I got still didn’t include a retirement plan. I didn’t really mind at first, though. I had very nice colleagues, the location was awesome (it’s a farmhouse) and the work was a challenge. I learned to communicate very quickly (phone calls and e-mails mostly) and to be more assertive (taking over tasks and initiating communications about them).
But the stress of the job got to me. And then there was the fact that I had a boss to report to (or rather two, including my boss’s husband). I didn’t respond well to authority, in particular when they started to change the rules. I don’t want to go into more details here, since it’s not wise. The changes were enough to make me want to go back to my freelance life, though, so that’s what I did. We agreed that they’ll hire me as a freelance translator when needed, so that gives me another customer to add to my list.
The experience taught me a lot. First of all, apparently I do not like commitment to a steady job as much as I thought I would. Also, I need a job that will allow me to keep a social life on the side, which this job left me no space for whatsoever. Oh, and I really like money, more than I cared to admit to.
And, without me realising it, IBM has become a place I return to gladly.
