Nostalgia is not about how things were: It’s about how we remember them. I think we like to believe nostalgia is a faithful archive – a clean backup of the past we can mount and browse at will. But it isn’t. It’s more like a compressed snapshot: lossy, selective, and quietly edited over time. What we remember is rarely the full system state. The frustration, delays, the things that didn’t work out – they all get filtered out. What remains are the highlights: the warmth of a familiar routine, the excitement of discovery, the comfort of things that felt simpler […]
10 years online – my story
I would almost have forgotten it, but 2005 marks my 10th anniversary of being “online”. To be more accurate: from approximately 1993 till 1995 I was ‘semi-online’ using a dial-up connection to some Dutch bulletin boards like “Utopia” (later to become the first Dutch Internet provider called XS4ALL). I also had my own BBS (called WindowsBBS) using the Spitfire BBS software version 3.4. Then, in 1995 I started working for an Internet company called “Riverland Networks” and this marked my first steps on, what we now know as the “Internet”. Looking back it is hard to imagine my life without […]
When looking back one is always right
When looking back one is always right Nothing is easier than looking back on things and analyzing them. Such is also the case with the war in Iraq. People that were against the war (like me) are afraid that many innocent people will get hurt. But now it seems it’s a walk-over for the US. I wonder how much longer the war will last.
“There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action – J. Von Goethe (1749-1832)”
“There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action – J. Von Goethe (1749-1832)” With the war going into another day, this is a truly interesting quote that popped into my mind. The Iraqi’s seem to be able to hold back the US and British army more than we expected and this will make it more and more difficult to tell when this war will be over. Just a dream? In the night the war started I woke up in the morning from a dream I had. Well, actually it was more of a fragment of a dream. The fact […]
The number of the beast
The number of the beast In all the commotion around the upcoming war in the Middle East, people regain new interest in all the biblical and other mystical prophecies that surrounds these global events of epic proportions. Although I consider myself not religious in a biblical sense, I do find these prophecies – or better said: the interpretations of the prophecies – very interesting (one look at my DVD collection will reveal some movies with a very religious theme). So I dug up some interesting things on the net. Let’s start with the bible, King James Edition in English, and […]
Getting there
It feels like the war can break out this week. Bush’s war rhetoric isn’t going to end soon and we just know he wants to start a war. Whats up with that and whats up with Korea? Are the US afraid to tackle the problems they have with Iraq by diplomacy? They are not doing anything war-like against Korea. Movie freak I watched Donnie Darko again the day before yesterday. Then I gave the film to a colleague of mine to watch it: he liked it too. I will buy this movie soon. Its about $20 but worth every penny. […]
Bizarre coincidence?
Sometimes life is so weird. I was reinstalling a PC of a friend and I put XP on it. Now you might know that XP has this login screen with little icons on it. You can change them and replace them with a photo of yourself if you want. It seems that XP chooses a random icon to represent the people that can login. I created 2 users so I had 2 icons. Now here comes the bizarre coincidence: XP choose an icon of…. the space shuttle! I could *not* believe my eyes but it is true. Go through the […]