Dreams Unlimited©

Diary

archives

A list of recent thoughts, things I saw or things I spotted on the Net, things that excite me (Uuh, baby!) or upset me, stuff I hate or love or in any other way find worth the trouble of blogging right here for your entertainment or interest and my archive. ;)

	Monday, June 30 Parkpop photos uploaded #Posted by Dreams on 18:32 I wanted to give Petra a chance to upload her Prague photos, so I booted the old win2k installation... that also gave me a chance to upload mine. :)
	Parkpop in The Hague #Posted by Dreams on 16:09 Went to Parkpop last Sunday but don't have pictures yet. Reinstalling my PC... Mp3s were filling my HD and win2k needed more than 2GB for itself. :( Boo! Decided to get a new HD at the same time and reinstall the system.
	Friday, June 27 DI.fm : Goa & Psychedelic Trance #Posted by Dreams on 17:43 Dunno 'bout you, but this is a GREAT streaming mp3 channel... DI.fm : Goa & Psychedelic Trance (y)
	Wednesday, June 25 Real world DooM #Posted by Dreams on 21:45 ROFL!!! :D You have got to read this. Know DooM from back in 1995? Played it? Got an Ipaq? Definitely read it!!!
	Wired News: Happy Birthday, Dear DNS #Posted by Dreams on 21:33 Wired reports that 3 days ago, DNS celebrated it's 20th birthday. No big thing, you say. You obviously don't know what DNS is. :) It's the Domain Naming Service of the Internet that lets you type a name and get an IP address. Because, after all, computers are still better with numbers than with names, aren't they? :) Without DNS, the web would exist of chains of numbered sites. And while I would have no real problem with it, I could remember the numbers too, but it sure is easier this way! :) This msg was posted from 192.168.0.168
	Who is crazy? #Posted by Dreams on 21:27 Sometimes you may consider yourself a crazy person. You do something naughty or reckless and you get a good laugh or kick ot both... But since the Internet, we know there is always someone far more crazy than you!!! Check Ferris' MS FlightSim hobby, gone a bit overboard... maybe? Nah! It's cool! Why? Just becaus eyou can!!! Woohoo! WTG Ferris! (y)
	TOP500 Supercomputer sites: TOP500 List for June 2003 #Posted by Dreams on 21:10 This is always fun to see... The 21st TOP500 Supercomputer sites list was introduced during the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2003) in Heidelberg, June 24-27, 2003. Goes to show that you can never have too much CPU power! :D LOL
	Incas used binary...? #Posted by Dreams on 21:04 The Independent writes that the Incas are believed to have used a binary code in their lives. It seems they used a 7-bit binary code in their knotted strings, called khipu. The code was capable of carrying around 1500 "words". A researcher believes he may have found the Rosetta stone, so we may know more not too much later. :)
	Monday, June 23 zandhap - ZANDindestad #Posted by Dreams on 01:10 zandhap, a brand new website with news about anything that happens on or around the beaches of The Hague, launched its first event in the city tonight. From 20h00 on we were invited for a haute cuisine dinner and rosé event in the heart of The Hague at "It Rains Fishes". The venue was graciously hosted by this awesome restaurant with a garden in the back. On this great summer evening, while rosé flowed freely (the price was all-in), dinner snacks were prepared every so often. It felt more like a garden party than a dinner party, but the atmosphere (with complete strangers) was as with good friends. :) Saying "HI!" to my new friends Jessica, Sander and Vincent! Excellent ideas! Great fun! Hope to see you soon! (y)
	Sunday, June 22 Gadgets and gizmos #Posted by Dreams on 22:24 www.gizmodo.com, from the makers of Wired...
	Google calls in the 'language police' #Posted by Dreams on 18:48 BBC NEWS reports that Google doesn't want people using their name as a verb, as in I googled, you googled, let's go googling and so on. A verb is normal language and it diminishes the value of the brand... Hmm, point taken, but I think you can't really do much about it. They've asked an online dictionary to take the entry down, but what are you gonna do against a gazillion people that just use the word to say what they mean? Right, absolutely nothing! Anyway, 'nuf said, I'll be goggling along now! Mzzl!
	Rood Petje - Fotografie, omdat het leuk is. #Posted by Dreams on 18:44 Rood Petje - Fotografie, omdat het leuk is. This is a (Dutch) blog for, about and by a photographer. Excellent! Very well done. Simple, elegant and informative, the way blogs should be. :) :respect:
	Saturday, June 21 BJ and Freeke getting married! #Posted by Dreams on 16:57 :D LOL My friends BJ and Freeke aka Freaky are getting married! Woohoo! That is so cool! I don't know how it happened or when, but Freek sent a picture of them and I guess they just decided. :) The smiles are miles wide... :) Marriage won't be until mid 2004, so long time to go until then... Can't wait though, it'll be great!
	GIF patent is expired... #Posted by Dreams on 12:25 On June 20th, the GIF patent that Unisys enforced (the LZW compression part of GIF, that is) for image editing tools and more, has expired! :) So some things might get cheaper now.
	Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing and Crypto Breaking? #Posted by Dreams on 12:12 Slashdot reports that Sweden might be passing a new bill of law which will make File Sharing without explicit permission illegal, as well as breaking any copy protection or the creation of software to do so...
	Friday, June 20 Speedtest.nl - Just How Fast is That Download? #Posted by Dreams on 16:26 Speedtest.nl let's you fill in your ZIPcode and list the providers by up or download speed. The numbers are based on people like you and me, who run some transfer tests. Those tests then make it into the database and thereby server other people wanting to know the local maximum speeds available. Coool! So go ahead, DO the test for your neighborhood. Then see who your line performs. Oh BTW, you can check any connection type, not just xDSL. Telephone or ISDN also works!
	Dutch (KPN) phone switches and ADSL availability #Posted by Dreams on 16:18 Ever wondered how far you actually are from your neighborhood telephone switch? Wondered if you can actually get ADSL, or if you're closer than 2800 m (right?) a faster variety like HSDL or VDSL? My Dutch readers can check the Nederlandse telefooncentrales en ADSL beschikbaarheid page from someone at the TU Delft. Excellent! Recommended! (y)
	zandhap.nl #Posted by Dreams on 14:33 Some people had an idea that I also had a while a go, namely to create a website that lists all the things going on at the beach: Zandhap.nl. Any activities the beach clubs have, on the Noorderstrand (Scheveningen) or the Zuiderstrand (near Kijkduin), are listed; any job openings or special events in the city of the Hague that are somewhat or somehow related to the beach in the big sense of the word. :) Cool! You can find out when beach volleyball tournaments are, skate routes, music or art festivals (like de Parade) and of course North Sea Jazz. ;) The latter probably just to attract extra traffic... :D LOL
	Want to make your PC more quiet? #Posted by Dreams on 08:55 Go check out Silent PC Review... :) It's brillant. Did you know there are power supplies that make 14dB of noise? Have no idea how much that is, do you?! :) What if I tell you that 30dB is a whispering conversation at 3 meters (10 feet). But it's logarithmic, the decibel (dB) scale. So 14 is not twice as silent, but... uhm... uh... MUCH much more! :D LOL You have no idea. So check out the site and look for nice ways to make your PC as quiet as a elf taking a nap on a mushroom in the forest, or whatever. ;)
	Thursday, June 19 Isabelle's Baby : Mom and Elise #Posted by Dreams on 21:22 I hear that mommy and Elise are both home. So it must have gone well with Elise and the infection completely gone. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent both home already. But I glad to hear both are alright and ok. :) Big (k) for Elise!
	Seems CSA is more than meets the eye... #Posted by Dreams on 17:08 CSA exists for a while already... Appearantly, the founder Jeff Cosby was researched (source in Spanish) by a company from Argentina. There is more than meets the eye, very similar to my first suspicion and that of my friend Hugbear. The article below is in German, translated from Argentinian, so you may not be able to read or use it. If interested, get in touch with em and I'll summarize and translate it. Argentina Works: Chronik eines Bombengeschäfts ( perfekten Geschäftes)
	Personal Training #Posted by Dreams on 16:07 I've decided it's time to go do something about myself. I may know myself pretty well, can live myself very well ;) and am very well capable of leading a pleasant life according to local circumstances... Nonetheless, I think it can't hurt to attempt getting to know me better. If nothing else, I learn new insights and methods to deal with me better for the things I already knew. My friend Martin is over-excited about them (CSA), so why not? And hopefully I learn to get along better with the people around me, because I know from experience that I step a few toes along the way, although it is almost never intended... almost never ;)
	Small Form Factor TECH #Posted by Dreams on 15:40 Have you heard of BareBones PCs? No? Heard of the EPC? No? The XPC maybe? Neither?!?Hmmm, you should get out less and browse for useful stuff! :) BareBone PC are popularized by Shuttle, Iwill and so on. They are very small PCs that can fit in small dorm rooms, closets or suitcases. They also work well in your livingroom when your wife or gfriend doesn't want you to put your fully modded, übercool and blazing fast Tower of Power© anywhere near the designer Italian furniture (or whatever reason they can think of). ;) Checkout SFF TECH for in-depth reviews of the latest Barebones and get ready to be amazed. Today, a barebone means no compromise unless wanted and they can replace a normal PC completely. Great for mom or dad, for the gameroom or as a cheap Home Cinema replacement with Dolby Digital™ to play surround sound DVDs, mp3s, watch DivX movies on your TV (using TV-out) and so on. Choices and possibilties are endless. The hardest part is chosing which one. I'm getting the new MSI Mega PC! Soon, reeeally soon!
	Mozart #Posted by Dreams on 11:04 "Aber wenn die Götter mir eine Papagena versprochen haben, warum muss ich sie mit so vielen Gefahren erringen?", Papageno said wenn asked to undergo severe tests to prove his worthiness for receiving his chosen mate in the Magicflute, my favorite Mozart opera. I know how that feels...
	Wednesday, June 18 Cousins (1989) #Posted by Dreams on 22:49 Sometimes I wonder why I do it. Life I mean. Why am I here? What am I doing here? Why am I doing it? What for? I dunno. Mostly, I kid myself that I am fine, that I have it all under control and enjoy it. Life, I mean. But sometimes my bubble bursts and I scramble for more detergent to make more soap water. :( I learned a lot in life so far. 3 University degrees, great high-school time, sports, good childhood, excellent parents, the easy life you could say. But what for? To do what? "Whatever you want to do!" They'll say. But "what do I want to do?", I wonder. I dunno... I've had tons of fun from life. Met hundreds of people, most of whom I don't remember. I've moved abroad or equivalently far away, on average every 5 years. Everytime, it costs a lot but you gain more. Of all the friends I've had, I keep roughly 1%, after all this time. One hand, that's all. Of all the girlfriends I've had, only 3 really mattered. The ones I loved most, hurt me the most. Highest of highs, lowest of lows (song by Everything But the Girl). Everytime I learned more about life, about me, my part in the whole big thing. Everytime, I thought that I'd been all wrong in the past. But now here I am, 35, just started all over again and still no clue whatsoever. I am an uncle now, still single but seeing someone. And I wonder what I am doing here. Why? Start all over... again? What for? And then it hit me... I'm a dreamer, a hopeless romantic, a fanatic believer in serendipity, true love, faith and destiny. And all I need to be really happy is someone to believe in that and in me... that's what I'm in this for...Cousins (1989) And they say I always smile and laugh... "But you're never there, when I'm gasping for air, and the airplanes all explode" (Herbert Groenemeyer)
	Iomega DVD-burner does all #Posted by Dreams on 21:11 Tweakers.net reports that Iomega has made a DVD burner that does all three standards for rewritable DVDs: DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and DVD-RW. The speeds are also not bad, the Super DVD Drive will do DVD-R and +R at 4x, DVD+RW at 2,4X, DVD-RW at 2X en DVD-RAM at 3X. But wait, there's more... the drive also toasts regular old CDs. Those it can do at 24X/16X/32X. That makes it the fastest burner next to the Sony DRU-510A.
	The Geek Test #Posted by Dreams on 20:04 The Geek Test This is a good one! Take it, mail me your score or leave it in my guestbook. I'll tell you mine. :) It's 25%+... so go on... take it! I dare you... :D
	DevHawk #Posted by Dreams on 10:56 Always wanted to know what the life on someone working at Microsoft looks like...? Well, thanks to blogs like this one you can... DevHawk is a developer at Microsoft and he keeps a faithful blog everyday. Turns out, he's just an oridinary nerd like the rest of us, or at least some of us. ;) Who would have thought...! :)
	Tuesday, June 17 Nano-nose sniffs out smallest particles \| CNET News.com #Posted by Dreams on 17:13 Nano-nose sniffs out smallest particles \| CNET News.com Sooo cool! :nerd: B)
	Boeing 737 simulator #Posted by Dreams on 17:10 Just when you were almost certainly sure that there was no one crasier than yourself... I read this message about a guy who built a 737 1:1 flight simulator in his garage!!! :respect: Uses real cockpits, chairs, no hydraulics or anything... just MS FlightSim and tons of real parts... Amazing!
	Cool Robot Of The Week #Posted by Dreams on 16:52 Of course you know there are robots out there. Some working 24/7, some prototypes in labs, others still on the drawing board. But I had no idea there were enough robots out there to be able to select one that stands out everything single week of the year! :O NASA has a Robot of the Week page, which lists a cool or inventive or new robots of interest for you with easy links. One for every week... Go check it out!
	Nokias Series60 will use J2ME MIDP 2.0! #Posted by Dreams on 15:06 Cooool, I was working on this 3 years ago at Not a Number... Heise News-Ticker reports that Nokia annouced on the JavaOne that it lastest phone/PDA/PIM device will use Sun's lastest Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) v2.0 specification to run on Symbian OS. :D B) :bounce: It's too cool to explain in plain language, so I won't. You do the reading! ;)
	Heise News-Ticker: Sony Ericsson T610 #Posted by Dreams on 14:59 The Heise News Ticker reports first impressions of the successor to the highly acclaimed Sony Ericsson T68i, the Sony Ericsson T610. :) Text is in German, sorry. Should have paid more attention in high-school I guess. ;) The phone is tri-band, faster menus, built-in digicam but at a lower resolution than before (VGA). It also features Bluetooth, IrDA and cable interfaces to your PC or other devices. But is also supports SnyML, Nokia's flexible, extensible synchronisation language! Woohoo! (Build your own sync server!!!)
	CompactFlash 2.0 #Posted by Dreams on 14:52 CompactFlash Association Homepage has details on the lastest specs of CompactFlash cards. These represent the most widely used type of card storage in (solid state) mp3 players, digicams, PDAs and so on of this moment. The new cards can transfer at upto 16Mb/s , twice the speed of the old cards. That's good news, now that 2+ GB cards are becoming more and more availalbe... :)
	Monday, June 16 Isabelle's Baby #Posted by Dreams on 22:10 Well, turns out the baby's fine. Dr. Bob uploaded birth pictures. Don't worry, it's PG so even the kwoosie people can watch safely. :D LOL Elise had an infection, probably due to something Isabelle gave her jjust before birth. She was sick too. But for the baby, it was a bit mroe serious. So she's on anti-biotics and that went perfect. Pain stopped, baby's sleeping, feeding and sleeping again and Isa is recuperating. Baby will be home around Thursday, after she finishes the anti-biotics. Isa prolly too...
	Friday, June 13 Baby is sick... #Posted by Dreams on 16:21 Just heard from my parents that Elise is sick and in a couveuse, whatchamacallit-thingy they usually keep babies in that are born too early. But Elise was 2 weeks late, so there should have been no problem. However... I'm going over to my parents' tonight, so I should have more details by then. Rob also mailed me with questions on how to upload the pics. Isa is in the hospital so she can't do it. (Rob is IT manager, he knows nathing...) ;)
	Thursday, June 12 Uncle Chris! #Posted by Dreams on 17:44 My sister had a baby girl Tuesday night... Elise is her name. :) But her friends call her Lotus... :D So since two days I am officially Uncle Chris! :D Pictures will follow shortly...
	Thursday, June 5 Ogg Vorbis #Posted by Dreams on 17:32 Sound like a terrible version of SARS? Or the name of a distant solar system? Well, better brush up on the lastest nerd tech out there, coz this 0n3z h3r3 t0 stay! Ogg is a new, better way to encode mp3 files with. It saves 50% of the space. Or, in other words, you can double the bitrate while keeping the same file size! Imagine storing twice the number of files on your solid state mp3 player! Now 1 minute only takes 0.5 MB of space! W00t! Anyway, here are some links to read up on. Arstechnica and the creators Xiph.org. And BTW, the NEX mp3 player looks like becoming the first player to support it!
	Wednesday, June 4 Two new Sony U-series ultra-compacts: Digital Photography Review #Posted by Dreams on 15:50 Digital Photography Review<7a> writes of two upgrades to the digicam that I use: the Sony DSC-U30 and DSC-U60. The latter is a trendy water-proff (upto 5ft) digicam. Handy, I'm sure but not my style. The U30 sounds better, but not much. I hope they fixed the software in the U30 because that was seriously lousy compared to what the DSC-Px series offer. :(
	Tuesday, June 3 Extreme downpours #Posted by Dreams on 00:59 On the my back today from Groningen, where I signed off on my old house in the Herepoortenmolendrift, I had some extreme downpours!!! Weather report had warned about it on the radio, so I was prepared for some rain. But this beat everything I have experienced so far... UNBELIEVABLE! I went from 120 km/h to 30 km/h in about 100 meters, flipped on fog lights, wipers to max and turned on lights and blinkers... It was extreme! Fortunately, I have a picture to prove it! :D I was going slow... might as well, so I did!
	Wild Divine #Posted by Dreams on 00:47 Slashdot reports that "A new kind of game was debuted at the E3 expo. It is called Journey to Wild Divine. The game features a biofeedback USB interface designed to allow a player (or players) to navigate through the game using their mind power, breath, and heart rate. This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly, you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath. The game features an awesome soundtrack, including Grammy-nominated artists and spanning many genres. This is the new generation of gaming, and you have never seen anything like this before." Their site has a page with more information about the biofeedback aspect as well as a screenshot gallery
	ESA - Rosetta - How to land on an astroid #Posted by Dreams on 00:06 ESA annouced that the plan of landing on an astroid is back on track after being delayed, earlier this year, Slashdot reports. They are going to rendez-vous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. And you thought we had pretty done everything...! Shame on you! :D
	War is good for nothing... or is it? #Posted by Dreams on 00:01 War is good for nothing. It only destroys and costs more than you bargain for. Both in monetary as well as humanitary cost. Or is it really? InfoWorld has a cool article on technology in the last war in Iraq and how it may effect what we use in the enterprise in a couple of years. `[Source: Slashdot]It describes a scenario where soldiers are equipped with sensors and other networking equipment. "Each person is a network with routing capability to everyone else," says Peter Marcotullio, director of development at SRI International. This technology should be available in five years for the military, which probably means that we'll become networks ourselves ten years from now.`
	Monday, June 2 Visite to Antwerpen #Posted by Dreams on 23:54 BTW, I visited Antwerpen over the past holiday, Ascention Day, together with Petra. I made some pictures, of course, so you can see what I/we did...
	evilwm - a minimalist window manager for the X Window System #Posted by Dreams on 23:50 deep sigh It's always good to find a fellow human that has the same thoughts and principales as you do... Check out the evilwm window manager for Linux... wish I could install this over everything that winXP runs for you. Sure it would save 50MB of RAM all over the place... shjeeez!