Ok. I changed my mind. I had decided not to blog about Michael Jackson’s untimely death. To much hype, to much blabla. But just out of curiosity I watched the Jackson memorial on CNN. I figured I could turn it off if I felt like it anyway. But I didn’t. I watched the whole thing. And yes, I am man enough to admit I did shed a tear. It was when Brooke Shields did her eulogy. The most sincere I heard all evening. Regardless of what you thought of the man: he was a living legend. And if your 40-something like […]
12 Monkeys part 2
The World Health Organization has declared the swine flu officially a pandemic (or alert phase 6) on June 11th. The first flu pandemic in 41 years and infections continue to climb in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere. The spread of the swine flu contagion has not yet reached scary “Resident Evil” like proportions, but I really think things will get pretty hairy out there! Even the famous Wimbledon tennis tournament is effected now, with a total of 28 staff that have been asked to stay at home with suspected swine flu! Surprisingly enough it is getting quieter […]
About Dilbert and Engineers
If your in the IT or technology business, you gotta love the Dilbert cartoons. Dilbert is a cartoon evolving round perfect office humor about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring engineer Dilbert. There are many, many very recognizable situations in the cartoon and I am 100% sure that anyone that ever had a job will recognize several character trades in their colleagues and – especially – their management. What I didn’t know, is that there were also Dilbert cartoons on TV and on the Dilbert Website. I didn’t know this until I came across a posting on another blog that featured […]
Death to newspapers!
I love Holland, but we sure do have some insane people politicians with the dumbest ideas you can think of. Today was a prime example. Some time ago a commission of wise men decided to examine the future of Dutch newspapers. As we all know there is an economic crisis going on and this hits every part of our society. Newspapers suffer because they lose money on advertising. Most companies spend their marketing budget on other media or a different media mix; they go where their target audience is. And guess what: their target audience no longer reads newspapers. Besides […]
Stig stunt
What a phenomenal stunt by my favorite TV-show – ever – about cars: Top Gear. This Sunday they started their 13th season with a great publicity stunt. They finally ‘revealed’ who the infamous “Stig” is. After driving a Ferrari FXX supercar around the track in the best time ever (1.10.7), the Stig came into the studio and took of his white helmet, showing the world his face for the first time. And no – it wasn’t Susan Boyle. It was Michael Schumachers face. But before you run out the house and start shouting “I see dumb people” because you “knew it […]
Speednames? No they are not.
Here’s a true story in the category “customer support hell”. It is one of those stories where you would swear that people are actually instructed to do anything but assist you and get a kick out of that. A prime example of customer harassment instead of service. So what’s the deal? Back in 2003 I decided to register my last name as a domain name. Because the .NL domain name was already taken, I decided to register the .COM domain. I used a Danish company for this called “Speednames” (part of Ascio which is part of the UK Group NBT […]
Mashup the music
Ok, this post is actually a blatant excuse to try out a WordPress plugin called “µAudio Player” that I just installed and enables me to attach MP3 files within my postings here at Bloggers@large. One could use that for Podcasting or, like I have done below, attaching audio files that I would like to share with you readers (or should that be “listeners”?). In this case I have inserted one file from the famous (or infamous) “mashup” artist who calls himself “Mighty Mike” and made a bootleg mashup of Duffy’s “Mercy” and the classic Police song “Roxanne”. I think that […]
Heckler & Koch P30L review
I recently bought a Heckler & Koch P30L 9mm pistol and decided to make a Youtube video about it. The gun is pretty nice (or at least I think so) and so far it works pretty well for me. Heckler & Koch P30L 9mm pistol with V3 triggergroup. Semi-automatic 9mm handgun. 9mm x 19 Modified Browning locking system 4.45″ barrel (11,3 cm) 15 round capacity (or 16: 15 +1 in chamber) V3 triggergroup: Conventional SA/DA trigger without cocking piece in the hammer with spur and centrally arranged de-cocking latch Exchangeable backstrap inserts and grip shells (S/M/L) fiber-reinforced polymer receiver Ambidextrous […]
Funk it up with Maceo Parker
Just came back from Amsterdam, Paradiso concert hall, where my friend Sander and me went to go see “funkmaster” Maceo Parker. Boy, can that guy still play the sax! Although he’s 66 now, he’s still touring like crazy. When you visit Maceo Parker’s website, and check his schedule, you’ll see what I mean. As usual when he visits Paradiso, Dutch Saxophone diva Candy Dulfer came over to play some numbers with Maceo. Not a big surprise, because when we arrived we both saw her walking out the building with her boyfriend.
Express yourself with Linux
I love computers. I love to experiment with Linux. And I love it when people create something that expresses both their technological knowledge as well as their aesthetic abilities. Linux is so diverse and gives you the unique opportunity to completely mold a system to your liking. So when I was surfing the web, reading about all new Linux distributions, I came across this video for “Elive”, a Debian based Linux version, using the Enlightenment window manager. As always with Enlightenment you can control the smallest parts of it. Some say that’s the problem with Linux because you can lose […]