| Soon to move? |
[07 Jul 2007|06:16pm] |
Hi guys,
I'm planning to move soon. I'm currently working on the new site, and the domain name is not yet there. However, you can take a look at the site at http://82.110.105.86/notaboutme.nl/
Don't forget to type that last "/", otherwise you'll end up with a 404 ;).
This is probably my last post on this blog, but feel free to take a look at my new spot!
Cheers!
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| notaboutme.nl is on the way |
[07 Jul 2007|10:01am] |
Undoubtedly it's not the best domain name ever, but it'll have to do for now. Besides, it only cost 6 euros anyway ;). Although the IDeal payment program crashed, I do think that I'll be having a new webspace soon.
The main reason of taking it, is that I'm currently doing a bunch of different things, but I'm not really able to store/share them in one webspace. This causes a lot of things I find/make to either end up on different places or to not be shared at all. Hopefully all that will be fixed with the new webspace thing, and hopefully the new place will be more fun to visit as well. Here are some things I plan on putting on there:
- This blog (but probably in more active form)
- PDF documents of my d20 setting. I won't put up everything right away (the campaign has not completed yet), but I plan to share at least some of the rules as a starter. I'm still looking for a fantasy graphics artist, to draw out a few nice flavor pictures to accompany my bulks of text, and to edit/review my stuff in general. I expect that search to take a good while, but that's okay. I have plenty left to write anyhow in the meantime ;)
- A bunch of reviews of whatever comes on my way (books, films, festivals etc)
- An academic section, so that people can read all of my scientific stuff, if they feel like it
- Photo's, some old and some new (possible movies later on too?). If I can find the peanut butter photo, that one will be added too ;)
- Basically anything else that I can find on old harddrives, including old stories, self-made games etc. It's a shame to let it all sit in the corner really, even though most of it is pretty much incomplete.
However, first things first: let's see when the space becomes available :)
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| Fresh advice from my supervisor. |
[06 Jul 2007|06:10pm] |
Today I met up with him to talk about my paper, and he said that although my written English is pretty decent, I still make a bunch of common mistakes. The proposed remedy? Reading more English.
Non-scientific English books that is, because apparently scientific English works are more poorly written than non-scientific ones ;). He recommended Orwell, although he personally liked the writer of Jurassic Park as well O_O.
So...I guess I'll be picking up books a bit after years of booklessness again? ;)
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| Japan? |
[06 Jul 2007|12:40am] |
Nothing is certain, but chances are that I will be going to Japan next year. Twice O_O...
*crosses fingers*
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| Webspace & hosting |
[04 Jul 2007|04:48pm] |
Hi all,
I am planning to set up an independent website of my own, but I'm still looking for a decent hosting provider that supports stuff such as WordPress or PHPnuke, has decent connection speed and is not overly expensive. Does anybody have any particular recommendation perhaps?
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| Graspop 2007 Review |
[25 Jun 2007|04:24pm] |
A brief review of Graspop, where I went last weekend with Tijs and Marco :).
Friday - 6 concerts attended.
After a quick trip in the morning with the Peugeot 205 and setting up our tents, we went to the festival area quite early already. And rightfully so, as Sabaton severely rocked the place as opening act. With nipple-twisting guitar solos and Sabaton being Sabaton we were well beyond amused, and estimated that this festival would not be just an ordinary one. After seeing Epica (which was a reasonable performance), Within Temptation (a bad voice day for Sharon, but still wonderful sound and an enjoyable performance), Joe WTF-is-he-doing??? Satriani, Aerosmith (almost as ugly as Iggy Pop, but a lot more enjoyable methinks) and Blind Guardian (Brilliant as always) we estimated that this festival would be all but ordinary. We made some small jokes about a 6-6-6 attendance (where we'd attend 6 concerts on every festival day ;)), but in the end, we were actually not all that far off! At 2:30, the last concert ended and we were completely exhausted + wasted.
Saturday - 3 concerts attended.
We woke up, still exhausted but well nourished. As often with second days, the lineup was not as good as on the first day. Instead of a kneel-down-and-worship-now kind of lineup, we had to endure a lineup which was only extremely-fucking-great. So yeah...we slept some more than planned, ate our meals. We didn't eat and drink all that much actually, there was just far too much to check out :P. Anyway, first up was Stone Sour. I had *felt* them at Pinkpop, as their baselines neatly resonated with the toilet where I was craftily dumping my digestions, but I have to admit they are more fun as a visual and audio experience. With solid, rough but still somewhat melodic songs, Corey and the lads gave off a convincing act, even though the music itself isn't fully in my street. Later that day, Less than Jake flushed away my traumatic experience with them at the Melkweg. If it weren't for Tijs and Marco, I probably wouldn't have checked them out, but I don't regret having given them a second chance. The circle pit around one of the supporting posts in the tent was cute, but the Wall of Death near the end was downright impressive! The band interacted a lot more with the audience than back in the Melkweg, and the sound was a good lot better as well :).
During the late night we saw a bunch of weirdos from Britain. Best concert ever :P.
Sunday - 7 concerts attended (but a few only for half).
Morning came, we rose and shone and marched to the festival field for the firs.....and then hell broke loose above us. Ah well, we retreated into the tent, ate our egg and bacon (not much else came with it really). Then the rain ceased and we went to one of the Marquees to at least see the last part of Eluveitie. And that was a big bummer. Not so much because the performance was bad, but rather because we could only experience the last 15-20 minutes of this completely insane folk-metal band with high-kicking flutists and soulscorching grunts. Then came Turisas, the battle metal band who appeared in full Viking attire, and laid down some tremendously over-the-top tracks. The audience cheerly participated by swinging morning stars and inflatable battle axes while the over muscled lead singer laid down heavily bombastic battle hymns and heroic anthems. Third act was Moonsorrow, which was not bad, but a little bland. Hammerfall was a disappointment, we left mid-concert, and Karpiklaani (sp?) was a bit too folky to be really fun. Our euphoria had faded slightly after this string of less than incredible concerts, but fortunately Children of Bodom was there to make it all up. With tremendously powerful guitarplay and songs that are both catchy and super-tight, they turned the place upside down and brought us back into the real metal mood again. Next up was Finntroll, yet another folk metal band, but this time with more metal and some heavy influences. Their performance was quite good, and even though we were pretty worn down we stayed until the end.
Later that night Slayer (boring) and Ozzy (sounded good from a distance) performed, but we were too worn down to check them. But I don't think that was a problem, because we've had our share of metal for sure!
Sidebar - Me and the horns.
Yeah... throwing the metal horns with a cast around your middle finger is awkward to say the least. Actually, it was downright impossible so I threw up some kind of multicolored goat head as well. It looked rather lame, and I got my share of remarks. One guy that it was very handy of me to bring my own toilet paper, while the singer of Less than Jake decided to stick his middle finger in his nose after seeing me throwing goat heads rather than metal horns due to the cast.
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| Finally :D |
[17 Jun 2007|09:53pm] |
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mood |
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After months of pondering and brainstorming on my paused D&D campaign, I know finally have a worthy intro sequence for the campaign, part 2!
For those not completely into it, I've been leading a campaign in my regular fantasy world for about half a year, much to the pleasure of myself and many of the players. However, my inspiration was dwindling as the campaign came close to its conclusion, and eventually I decided to do an extensive pause in my campaign right in the middle of a big boss battle.
In this huge battle, the party battles (among others) Tiaryl, an ex-character of one of the players who succumbed to sheer greed and has possession of the Nail of Keldar. A toenail of a uberstrong divine deity which has magical properties that are somewhat similar to that ring trinket thingy in Lord Of The Rings. As troops were eradicated and sub-bosses eliminated and de-instantiated, the party meets its final foe in a character that was once an innocent warrior, but now a berserking bleedin' edge factory of fatalities. Yet they get quite a way at bashing him down, and just when Tiaryl is close to being defeated I decided to end the session and pause the campaign for ten months or so.
Of course, with this main boss dude defeated, the remainder of the campaign would be very short, as the party would simply get possession of the Nail and finalize their standard blahblahyawn LOTR ripoff sequence.
Thus, I decided to pay some thought to figure out how I could possibly turn this potential course of events into a worthy campaign part II. And tonight I figured out how :)
To be continued (someday in 2008...)
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| My middle finger |
[01 Jun 2007|05:20pm] |
Will be consisting mostly of plastics for the next 6 weeks, thanks due to a partially ripped tendon in the upper part of my middle finger. As an extra, I'm unable to really bend it, which means that I am permanently flipping the bird towards my environment now :P. In fact my ceiling is getting the middle finger right now.
And all this happened because some dude decided to kick my fingers while I was trying to grab the ball. It's too bad that my camera broke down, otherwise I could show you a picture of the one and only appropriate response...
*flips the bird*
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| Back from NAC |
[17 May 2007|04:10pm] |
The first three days of the week I went to the 'Nationale Astronomen Conferentie' in Veldhoven, which didn't quite go as I expected. I expended a somewhat bland and possibly at times even boring conference, but it was nothing like it! As far as all the talks went: I'm actually starting to somewhat understand all this astronomy blahblah, and many of the talks came with pretty cool presentations. In addition, there were a bunch of very accessible and interesting side talks. One of them was about Astronomy in Mesopotamia, one about The Astronomy Olympiads, but moreover there was one talk about Aelium (a plan for a huuuge Scientific amusement park where people are literally brought to a fantasy world by 'space shuttles') and a talk about Eternal life. Especially the last one was quite the eye-opener for me ;).
There was also a report about the Stardust space mission, a 200 million dollar+ project that aimed to launch a rocket to get pieces of a comet, only to come back with pieces of a meteorite :P.
Aside from the talks times were quite good in the pubs as well. The hotel had a local 'Abbey Pub' and several people brought enough booze to make us last until 4 am on both days. Yesterday I came back, quite sleep-deprived and somewhat wasted but very very satisfied.
I guess Pinkpop is up next now :P
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| this persona, that persona, dead persona? |
[02 May 2007|10:41pm] |
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mood |
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Once in a long distant past I started browsing and posting on the internet, and I picked a nickname. Now eight years later I noticed something peculiar. The nickname ceased being a nickname and became somewhat a persona of its own. This is caused by me changing in real life, while my interactions on the net have been somewhat limited. People who knew me over internet but not in real life have not caught up to changes, and respond to me in similar fashion as they would several years ago. Of course, that is not very interesting so I figured I'd try something different. And with different being killing off said internet persona and coming up with a new one. Now coming up with a new one isn't that easy. I could use my real name, but the downside of that is that if that ever becomes a persona of its own I can't really get rid of it ;).
So I'll have to think of something else. Something that is suitable for now, but won't give massive frowns if I ever decide to exchange it for something else in the far future again. And with my gift of devising names it may take a while before I know something :P
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| The Myth of Creation |
[28 Apr 2007|01:00pm] |
(disclaimer: this is not to be confused with the creation of Myth, which is likely a much more vulgar story)
Anyhoo, I wrote up a creation myth for my D&D campaign setting, which will One Day (tm) be shaped into a real roleplaying accessory. I'm going to post it here, for the sake of calamari if anything I guess...
If people like to read this stuff and rate/comment/trash/praise it, I might post more stuff later on. After all I've got plenty of stuff where this comes from, and the quality of it all currently ranges between truly abysmal and somewhat decent I guess ;).
( Read more... )
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| Crud, how many injuries can a leg have? |
[17 Apr 2007|10:55pm] |
Blisters on foot sole, half-deceased toe nail, 5 inch wound on my shin, open wound on my knee, torn/overstretched muscle on the back of my knee.
My right leg feels fucking handicapped right now. But at least I finished my first academic article for my Phd., so not all is bad ;).
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| Funny :P |
[16 Apr 2007|08:51am] |
I could describe the whole situation, but Gorilla already described it much better than I ever could:
I'm not sure if anybody heard about the arrest of Kasparov, but frankly I was quite touched by the whole ordeal over there. Russia is becoming increasingly undemocratic and it is good to see that a prominent man stands up against Putin's regime. Now, who will make the first move? ;)
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| A time of choices |
[14 Apr 2007|01:42pm] |
After 14 years of uninterrupted participation I made a big decision last week. Next season I'll be leaving S.V. Hoofddorp, and playing soccer at some club in Amsterdam instead :). The reason is mainly the fact that I lose 7.5 hours a week on travelling back and forth nowadays, and that I only play half of the matches as well. The atmosphere may be great, and the people nice but I simply think I can have a lot more fun elsewhere :).
On a side-note, I've been listening to Unia, the new album from Sonata Arctica and although it shocked me initially, it is slowly starting to grow on me. Still, I think it is by far the least catchy album they produced sofar ;)
Oh, and the new Within Temptation and Trail of Dead albums leave a somewhat bland impression on me sofar... ;)
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| Toto...more than just a toilet |
[21 Mar 2007|07:28pm] |
After having seen them giving a very enjoyable but qualitatively not always outstanding concert in Zuidbroek 1.5 year ago, I felt it was high time to see Toto perform in a venue that does have proper sound. Aside from that, they released a new album in 2006 which I seriously consider to be their best work since the Seventh One, and possibly even better.
So... with reasonable expectations I set off to the HMH, expecting a similar concert with better sound. The better sound was most definitely there, but the concert was completely different! First of all, bassist Mike Porcaro had a wrist injury, and was replaced by a guy called "Lee Sklar". This made the already strange lineup of Toto these days even more strange! Imagine a Modern rocker with pink/purple blouse on guitar, an old and slightly overweight Super Mario look-a-like on vocals, a groovy black dude on the keyboards and an alternative rocker with my hairdo on the drums. And let's not forget Steve Lukathar of course, the guy who probably has contributed to half a billion records by now. Okay, have a picture of that line-up in your head? Good.
Now let's add a fucking Gandalf to that lineup (go Google Lee Sklar if you don't believe me :P) and we have Toto in the HMH :P. Be it as it may with the weird looks, they fucking rocked compared to last time! High points? Well, let's name a few:
For the first time in aaaaaages, they played 'Africa' again. And yes: with those pesky high notes this time ;). Also, they played an acoustic version of Stop Loving You and a loungified version of Rosanna, only to proceed with a Classical interpretation of I'll Supply The Love. Considering that Greg Philiganes played a considerable number of keyboard solos with one hand, looking the other way I guess he wanted to try something new :P. Oh, and then there was the moment where Steve decided to find a good shag in Gandalf's beard too...
All in all, plenty O' fun as far as I was concerned :P. I sincerely hope that they'll keep up the good stuff for at least 10 more years :D.
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| ...en waar leef jij voor? |
[18 Mar 2007|06:31pm] |
...was the fitting graffiti text sprayed on the Hoofddorp railway station for over 5 years already. Nobody ever bothered to clean it.
Last wednesday somebody decided to jump in front of a train on that same station. In front of my train.
May he rest in peace.
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| Oh, and... |
[08 Mar 2007|05:35pm] |
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Considering this to be the end of my location transition period. I'll update more often again ;)
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| Veni vidi vici |
[08 Mar 2007|05:25pm] |
So there I was innocently sitting at my work...and this guy comes in the doorstep of my room, asking Evghenii if he wanted to participate with the Anton Pannekoek Institute Ice-skating tournament. Just at the point Evghenii was leaving, he looked at me wondering if very perhaps I'd be willing to give it a shot too. I thought: what the fucking hell, why not :P. My nose was already so thoroughly consumed that it started bleeding and my supervisor was still in his post-fathership hiatus.
2 hours later I find myself, despite the fact that I haven't touched an ice-skate in 8 or so years, winner of the tournament. Several guys brought their own skates of superior, but I completely lost mine so I just rented a couple. Yet my 54.16 (for 400m) was unbeatable for all of them. I almost feel obligated to participate in the other parts of the API tournament...
Ah well, victory lasts short anyway, I've got to leave for soccer in less than an hour, and considering my current state I think I can expect a thorough trashing there ;)
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| Ikeakrankjorum |
[15 Feb 2007|10:10pm] |
12 hours of IKEA is too...fucking...much. I've finally got what I need though :D.
Tomorrow most of it will be delivered, and then moving on Saturday :D
It's kinda depressing that all my savings instantly evaporated upon signing the renting contract. However, aside from the financial stuff all goes fairly smooth sofar. Still, there's a lot to arrange left.
I know this: moving is not something for the lazy, and I'm glad I took a few days off!
P.s. does anyone have a recommendation for a kick-ass upstream isp for a decent price? I really want to get my UberServer plan off the ground now ;).
P.s.2. And of course I want to give my parents some proper props for coping with me (and each other) for 12 hours straight in this ridiculous shopping marathon, which included waiting for one and a half hour at BCC, because they really were _not_ cheaper than MediaMarkt but the guy who went out to check it decided to take an extended break without notice instead..
P.s.3. My kitchen has 12 power outlets. Why, on earth??? :P
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