Juli

Surreal

I was walking to the busstop this morning, when I noticed a peacock standing near the road. It then calmly crossed the rounabout and went on it's way, out of my site. Very surreal. You know what else is surreal? It looks like I still have a chance of getting ADSL. Hurah! Apparently it's supposed to be available as of the end of this year. Can't wait.

Onieuw tropisch

Het blijft tropisch, de komende paar dagen. Net zoals gisteren gaat ook vandaag de temperatuur richting de 30°C. Het eerste tropische weekeinde deze zomer toog Nederland massaal naar het strand. Met kilometers file als gevolg. Zucht. Was het maar winter...

Ice

I love it when somebody gives me icecream when it's too hot to even blink your eyes, let alone write ColdFusion that'll make sense in a week or two.

Open your eyes

I watched Vanilla Sky last night. I had wanted to see that for a while, but never got around to it. Though somewhat strange and confusing, I did like it. And I think it'll improve with a second viewing. I was also impressed with the variation of the soundtrack. I am quite curious now about Abre los ojos, which is the original Spanish movie on which VS was based. Especially since I just noticed it got a higher rating on the IMDb.

Java

Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java, 3rd Edition has been publised online, a mere 9 days ago. If you want to read up on Java, I suggest you start here.

YahooPOPs

Just what I needed » YahooPOPs! is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 access to your Yahoo! Mail account. YahooPOPs! is available on the Windows and Unix platforms. And if you need some brain exercise, here are a number of Riddles.

Itchy

Oh no, stop it! My fingers are itching. I keep seeing sites I like, which give me ideas of things I want to change on my site. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me right back in, to quote from The Godfather. Anyhow, I can't help myself. I'm browsing Little Boxes to see if it gives me even more ideas. I want to change things around. Somebody stop me!

Dûûs

Plien & Bianca (en postbode Siemen) in Zaai
The Zaai fanpage is wonderful! If you know the show, and ofcourse can read Dutch, check it out. And don't forget the dictionary, that's my favourite.

Amphitheatres

I have never read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War, but have wanted to for quite some time. But they have it on Project Gutenberg, so I think I'll make a print and place it on the humongous pile of books and articles I want to read.

My brother keeps sending me Tunisia-related links, of which I wanted to share the one with loads of images of The Amphitheatres of El Jem. I love Roman amphitheatres, I've also been to the one in Arles, which was mighty impressive. You might know it from the movie Ronin. Or maybe not.

Return

My brother arrived yesterday. Everything's OK. Strange to share the space with others again, I'd just gotten used to being on my one. Anyhow, we just watched Shaft, which I still had laying around. Tjerk has just gone to buy some beer, he didn't have much in Tunisia. Uhm, what else. Well, I don't think there is anything else I wanted to mention. So I'll just leave it at this.

Huge sigh of relief

[loud scream] Just ignore me for a second. I'm just so relieved at the moment. I got the results from the hospital, about half an hour ago, you see. They have good hopes that I can be treated with medication, so it looks like I won't have to have an operation after all. Hurah!!

Youth

The Hula Hoop seems to have appeared on the streets again. I keep on seeing little girls on the streets carrying or using them. Strange how something suddenly re-appears after a number of years. I used to love Hula Hooping. I had a pink one with diagonal white stripes. I could go on for hours untill dizziness caused me to stop. Sigh. Why can't I be entertained by something so simple, for what felt like eons at a time, anymore?

LotR

I'm really enjoying rereading Lord Of The Rings. Wonderful. I've completely immersed myself in the world of Tolkien online also. So much more is available online since I last read it. Like the huge Encyclopedia of Arda or Bombadil Discovered at Grey Havens.

Transport

I must be insane, but I took my bike this morning, instead of the bus, which I usually do. The weather predictions were nice and I felt like the exercise. Strange. But it was nice though. It's only 8.5 kilometers. And I was faster at work than I normally am. And it'll be extra nice on my way back in an hour. Because the sun is even more present now and I don't have to sit in that hot bus or wait at the busstop. :-D

In case you're bored, there are some weird but interesting deep thoughts to be found here.

Dark, Darker, Darko

I forgot to mention Donnie Darko, which I've just finished watching. One of the darkest movies I've seen in a while. Very beautiful though. To keep things varied I'm thinking of watching Mission: Impossible 2 in a little while. I still hadn't gotten around to renting that. The same goes for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I'll save for tomorrownight. Checking out so many moviesites in so little time has made me notice how similar they all are. And they all seem to rely on Flash and/or heavy graphics. Don't get me wrong, some are really nice, but it gets quite boring after three of four.

Remix

If I hear one more Madonna remix by Mad'house, I swear I'll scream!!

Browsing

I'm browsing Pirated Sites, which features an overview of sites that are far from original, and dive into mark, which explains a more accessible weblog in 30 days.

Wednesday

Ah. Wednesday. The week is broken in half already. My brother called yesterday evening. Asked how I was and how things went on monday. He mentioned where they were going and that everything was great. Visiting old Roman cities like Carthage and such. I'm glad he's having a good time. I, on the other had, feel like I'm getting a cold. My throat is raw and my nose is getting clogged up. But I'm sure I'll survive. Well, I'd better get back to work now. I'm working on the new site for The Document Factory. Should be good. I'll let you know when it's done. You can take a peek then.

Jeugdsentiment

Ik heb een paar weken geleden de MP3 van Ovide en z'n Vrienden gevonden, en achteloos op mijn harde schijf geplempt. Nu heb ik de hele zooi in Winamp gegooid, en wat kwam daar langs? Juist, Ovide! Geweldig! Dat blijft vast de hele week nog in mijn hoofd hangen. :-D Uiteraard nog even bij Google gezocht, maar ik vond niet bijster veel. Wel een site waar de songtext te vinden is. En een link naar Merelroze over nostalgie. En via via kwam ik zo terecht op Jeugdseries en Bubblegum. Geweldig!

Gondrexange

Finally, a spare moment to post some thoughts. I decided not to go to work this afternoon, like I had planned originally, because I had some stuff to do. First I had another hospital appointment and a total of 4 tubes of blood were taken. But because the entire country appears to be closed for maintenance, the bus takes an enourmous detour, which didn't leave me much time. Therefore I decided to go on my bike. It's only 8km and the sun was shining. And after my appoinment this morning I went into town to stock up on some stuff and I've have only just gotten back.

Anyhow, I've cleared away most of my vacation stuff and though we had a good time last week, I'm looking forward to some solitude in the coming weeks. My parents are leaving again tomorrow and my brother is still in Tunisia (CIA Tunisia Factbook). Oh, it only just occured to me I haven't written anything about last week. Well, I joined my parents on an old-style holiday (when my brother and I were little, the four of us would do this one month out of every year) in France with my tent and their caravan. Because we only had a week we decided to stay in the northern parst and ended up in a small town called Gondrexange, in the Lorraine region. From there we explored the surrounding towns and sights, like the Parc Animalier de Sainte-Croix and ofcourse Strasbourg.

I didn't get round to reading everything I had planned, but I did read Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds, The Silver Sword (The Heirs of Cahira O'Connor , No 1) by Angela Elwell Hunt, the beautiful The River Midnight by Lilian Nattel and am currently halfway through re-reading Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1). As I was browsing the bookstore this afternoon I noticed all kinds of new editions of this popular novel. But I'm glad I've got my dads old copy, which he got on his birthday, when I was just 2 weeks old. It's gone all yellow and folded, but I think that's the charm of books, don't you?

Mail overload

Just got back. More on this later. I think I'll unpack first, otherwise I'll leave it, and it'll irritate me. Just a few minutes online, to collect my mail. Wish I hadn't, because I'm annoyed already. I've been away for nine days and my Yahoo mailbox is completely full. Over 250 messages, and about 10 of those aren't spam. Meanwhile my inbox was locked, can't send or receive anything new untill I delete something. Can't they install a decent filter? Sigh. I'm seriously thinking of leaving Yahoo.