Weblog | May 2003

One of my most surprising music purchases of late has to be Agalloch. Their The Mantle is beautiful.

I spend only a few hours reading in the sun yesterday, and still my arms are red and itchy. A mild case of sun-allergy I get at the end of spring. Very annoying. So I'm staying indoors today. Once again become addicted to The Sims. And I'm still thinking about the redesign for my site. Installed Fusebox for PHP, just to do some experimentation. But I'm not sure if it'll be worth the effort to use it here. We'll see.

Went to see Eric van Sauers in Leiden last night. Had a good time.

CSS Zen Garden shows a nice gallery of designs. Oh, and this shirt rules.

I'm not in the best of moods today. It's too warm. Plus someone's decided to use a jackhammer next door. Luckily tomorrow is Hemelvaartsdag, or Feast of the Ascension in English, so I've got the day of. And, like so many around me, I'm not working on friday either. A glorious four-day-weekend. Wonderful.

Reread The Business Benefits of Web Standards, which I found again via Zeldman. On the same site, I also found a link to this example of CSS tabs. There are many ways to achieve this, but many aren't platform independant. This one is. Well, apart from NS4. But who cares about that? I'm thinking of a redesign for my site, using tabs. I know. Yet another redesign. But common, it's spring!

Turkey won the Eurovision Song Contest last night. I've only seen tiny bits and pieces, but wasn't terribly impressed, to say the least. It's all the same, the only variation is the crappiness of the accents. Anyhow, the new Aardschok arrived today. Interview with Type O Negative's Peter Steele. Looking forward to the new album, which is due for release. About time. He also mentioned they're going to be touring with Opeth. A rather weird combination, but quite cool.

Miracle baby 'grew in liver'. Impressive.

For some reason, I didn't really appreciate Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. The style was to different from the series and it didn't really grabbed me. So I've decided to get back to the Dune Chronicles, and continue where I left of, Book 5: Heretics of Dune.

I went to The Matrix Reloaded last night. It's been reviewed to death already. So I won't get into the details. But I must say I tried to lower my expectations after seeing so many negative reviews. And even though the first was better, it was still a damn good movie. Good enough for me to return in November, to catch The Matrix Revolutions. Oh, and if you're going to see part 2, remember to stay seated untill after the endcredits, because they showed a trailer for part 3.
Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice? The Oracle: Because you didn't come here to make a choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand why you made it.

The new version of Phoenix Firebird released last week.

The Geexbox looks quite interesting. Now all I need is the hardware. Dropped by my brother yesterday, because he celebrated his birthday. Watched the movie Highway, which I was pleasently surprised by. Oh, and if all goes well we're going to see The Matrix tomorrow.

Just visited Carfree.com, about making cities carfree. I'm all for this, especially after seeing all those SUV's in New York last week. Insane. I wonder what will happen after the oil runs out, which apparently is going to happen in the near future.

Reading up on CSS3, which has some great improvements for working with text. Ah, allmost weekend. Can't wait. Think I'm going to sleep most of the time. I'm not good with jetlag. Luckily the windows are finished so I'm back in my own bed. Much more comfortable.

Drugsdealer.nl is quite lame. I've joined nonetheless. How sad am I? Evilfinder, however, is cool.

Here are 50 Reasons to stay away from the new Matrix Reloaded. However, I for one am looking forward to the premiere. I'm not looking forward to clearing out my room, which I have to do later this evening. The window and all the framing at the front of the house are going to be replaced in the next few days. I'm staying in the attic untill then. Means I have to disconnect my computer also. Sigh. But first, I'm going to finish Dune. Nearly finished.

There's finally more info available on Fusebox 4 at the beta-site. There are going to be 2 versions. One with XML and one, for those who prefer object-orientation, with CFC's. The beta will run untill July 4th, after that the final version will be released. Can't wait to install the beta.

I think I've mentioned this one before, but it still is hilarious » Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

This must be the weirdest weekend I've ever had. Everybody says you have to follow a normal pattern to avoid jetlag problems. But I woke up at about 9:00 on friday morning, 15:00 CET. Slept only about half an hour on the plane last night, so you can imagine what state I was in last night. I finally allowed myself to go to bed at 21:00, meaning I was up for 30 hours. It was still light when I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediatly and woke up at 13:00. Probably my longest night ever. It'll be hard to set my alarm for 7:30 for work tomorrow morning. Sigh.

Got back earlier today. Left for Newark with the shuttle at 17:40 local time and arrived here at about 10:30 CET at Schiphol. Took the train and then the bus home to collapse on the couch at about noon. Weird to loose almost a complete night. Sleeping on the plane prooved to be more difficult than I expected. Must not fall asleep untill tonight. More details about the trip will follow ofcourse. But first, I'm going to check out the pictures I took.

I have to keep it short, but I just wanted to say 'hi' from New York. Times Square to be exact. It's only day 2 and I'm already very tired. This is one busy city. We went on the Empire State Building last night. Wonderful view. We're now doing the bustour downtown, which is nice because you see a lot and you get to sit down. The hotel is nice. Spacious room. Oh, the timestamp for this post is CET. It's 6 hours earlier here, meaning it's 15:41. Gotta go. Bye!

Leaving for New York tomorrow morning. The plane leaves at 8:00, check-in is at 6:00. Well, hopefully I can sleep whilst we fly. And I hope the weather is nice. I'll be back next saturday, sometime in the afternoon.

Caught a preview for The Shipping News a few days ago. Looked quite interesting, great cast. See if I can get a copy sometime. Webmonkey's got a nice tutorial on Digital Photography for the Web. Should come in handy, now that I've got my camera. Next thing on my list is an MP3 player. Like the Zillion Digital Audio Player, which look pretty damn cool. Another article that interested me, is this one about clean URLs over at Evolt. I wonder how if and how that will work with Fusebox.