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. ;)

	Saturday, July 31 Summer Carnaval Rotterdam 2004 #Posted by Dreams on 21:20 Today, Houkje, Petra and I joined my sister, Rob and Elise for the Summer Carnaval 2004 in Rotterdam. I've been trying to get there for years now, but never made it. Either I forgot, or the weather sucked or I had other things to do. But with the great weathr (finally) I simply had to go. Luckily, everyone else thought so too. So we took the train to Rotterdam, had a small lunch and went to the Stadhoudersplein, near the Doelen and the Pathé cinema. There, we waited in the sun forever until the trucks and the parade finally went past us. :) Petra took great pictures from the front, while I stood in the back to complement her close-ups with overview shots... (or whatever!). By 6pm or so, we'd had it, it was hot and the parade endless. Elise was exhausted and we were all tired and a bit hungry. Rob, Isa and Elise went home to put Elise to bed. Houkje, Petra and I went wander Rotterdam for some friends and a cooler place, preferably with food. We couldn't find our friends but did find a supermarket. We bought drinks, food and magazines and searched a place along the river Maas near the Erasmusbridge and rested on the shore in the sun. Excellent! Later that night, we went to Scheveningen to Soomers to party until 3am at their "Love to Dance party" with DJ Zoë Noa and others.
	Friday, July 30 Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer V1.2 #Posted by Dreams on 12:45 Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer V1.2 was developed in response to direct customer need for a streamlined method of identifying common security misconfigurations. MBSA Version 1.2 includes a graphical and command line interface that can perform local or remote scans of Windows systems. MBSA runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems and will scan for common system misconfigurations of many Microsoft software components, including the OS itself, SQL Server, Media Player and others.
	Thursday, July 29 Panorama Amsterdam - a 360 degree citymap #Posted by Dreams on 14:55 Really cool site that mapped out Amsterdam, to a degree not all of it of course, with panorama pictures.. Very cool and very nicely done. I hope it works in MSIE because in my Mozilla the (Java)script tricks won't work. :( Oh well, the counts in their favor already. B)
	Colllumn, the game #Posted by Dreams on 10:57 OK, I realize I may seriously jeopardize your highly skilled Time Management skills here, but I have to tell you about this: Colllumn. It's a small flash game, 4 KB in total, and really simple: just don't let the columns reach the level where your bat is. Otherwise, it looks and feels just like good ol' Breakout but it's just as addictive! So beware!
	Wednesday, July 28 Sending great birthday eCards, finally #Posted by Dreams on 09:12 My roommate found this great little website that lets you enter the birthdays of people you know: BirthdayAlarm. That way, you won't forget them anymore (as easily). However, the best part of their site is that you can upload upto 20 photos or pictures of your own and use them to send as eCards! :) A picture of yourself, your family or just scenes and images. BlueMountain used to do this and Hallmark has something a bit similar but not this quality. :) Regards.com lets you upload one (small) image but you have to keep uploading images, where BirthdayAlarm keeps upto 20 images handy and ready for you at all times... B) Very cool!
	Tuesday, July 27 Zomercarnaval 2004 #Posted by Dreams on 14:15 This weekend is the annual Summer Carnaval in Rotterdam. Aruban and Curacao steel drum music will sweep the streets and Rotterdam will proudly show its multicultured nature. The streets wil color with all the floats and dancers and all will be well... that is if the weather stays nice! It looks good but you never know, so close to the (North) sea.
	Monday, July 26 Nederlands centrum voor de ZelfKennisMethode (ZKM) #Posted by Dreams on 18:12 On Monday, I completed a 2nd session to get to know myself a bit better. I didn't have any particular reasons to enter it (not anymore - I did about a year ago or so...), but some friends had referred to it as useful to put the finger on your own sore spot. I'd contemplated the CSA Training method before, because it has really helped two good friends of mine. However, the "FUBAR" approach would have probably made me more rebellious instead of letting me look inside myself. So I tried the ZKM method (self-awareness method) and discovered some things that I already knew about me, but never this explicit! Kinda cool, those kinds of revelations! ;) Like a tough problem you're attacking from every angle only to exhaust yourself in scaling huge walls and creating more problems and just when you're out of options, tired and about to give up... the simplicity of the solution stares you right in the face! :D I hate it when that happens! LOL
	Saturday, July 24 Petra's back! #Posted by Dreams on 14:25 Friday night, I went to pick up Petra and Petula at the airport. Their flight was delayed due to severe weather over Frankfurt. This storm had been circling Central Europe all week, so I wasn't too surprised. Finally, at 23:16 hrs they landed on Schiphol Airport. First, we dropped off Petula in Den Haag and gave a bag of goodies to cover the weekend and then we went to Petra in Leiden. I'd filled the fridge, bought some flowers and some nice things for me ;) to get through the weekend. Petra's jet lag woke her up early, so she had plenty of time to clean up her shit before I woke up! :D Haha It was a great weekend, spoiled only by a dreadful Sunday...
	Friday, July 23 CueListTool #Posted by Dreams on 21:45 Was just browsing some .cue sheets I have and noticed this tool being mentioned: CueListTool by Stefan Bion. Great, small (750 KB) tool to do just what it says and nothing else. Gotta love it! So now, I can create .cue sheets for my new DJ Donovan tracks... ;)
	Beach Parties #Posted by Dreams on 19:42 This will be a great weekend with sun, nice temperatures and all, so check out Beach4Fun.nl and URBAN Cult for a party near you!
	Schiphol.nl #Posted by Dreams on 18:22 Just 4 more hours and my sweetie is back! Yeah! Schiphol lists all the departures and arrivals on the site, of course. But the interface sucks. It's split into 4 time groups, instead of just by the hour. :( Amateurs! (n) Soo many clicks...
	partyflock foto van Extrema Outdoor #Posted by Dreams on 18:01 LOL Here's another photo of last Saturday at Extreme Outdoor. This is just before the heavens opened their gates on us...
	Elise's walking and standing freely #Posted by Dreams on 17:42 Isabelle sent me a proud video (700 KB) of Elise playing in a small pool in their garden. Elise, just 11 months old, stands up and walks a little. Okay, very little, but it's the idea that counts! :) Isa said she'd post new pictures soon. So go bug her for them!
	Thursday, July 22 ICANN adds IPv6 to root servers #Posted by Dreams on 15:44 InfoWorld reports: ICANN adds IPv6 to root servers: "In response to the rapid growth in the use of the Web, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced Tuesday at a board meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that it has added next-generation IPv6 technology to its root DNS (domain name system) servers, essentially enabling every person and every device to grab an IP address." If that doesn't mean anything to you, never mind. If it does: Itsn't that great! :) Finally!
	www.waterski.nl - waterskien en wakeboarding #Posted by Dreams on 11:11 I was gonna do this on Tuesday but the weather didn't look that good then. It turned out to be okay but we'd moved the water skiing to Thrusday already. But that today and that's NOW! It gorgeous, sunny, clear and warm. I'm all "oiled up" in sunscreen factor 20. Got everything so I'm off to go to www.waterski.nl here in Den Haag with my old buddies from the EPO! :) I'm taking my camera, so there'll be pictures later! (Update: pictures are there)
	Wednesday, July 21 Window Media Player Classic #Posted by Dreams on 16:06 Oh and BTW... I no longer install QuickTime, RealAudio nor Video nor Windows MediaPlayer on my PC (which is win2000 Pro). Instead, I use the 1.2 MB large Media Player Classic. That is an open-source version of an enhanced version of Windows Media Player (WMP) 6.4, which came with Windows 9x/2000. Since then, Microsoft has bloated their player to slice, dice and make coffee, included all kinds of exotic codecs (Windows Media v7, v8 and v9!), but at the cost of RAM requirements and virus back-doors. I just want to play videos or sometimes audio streams (I mostly use WinAMP for that). So now what...? Just install Media Player Classic (MPC) , download the Quicktime Alternative, Real Alternative, DivX, XVid and Microsoft Media Codecs and MPC can play it all for you! "But that's soo much work! I don't want to install anything, I just want it to work!", I hear you say. Sure, me too, but even with WMP9 you need to install the codecs. Sometimes Microsoft did it for you already, but not for QuickTime, RealMedia nor DivX or Xvid! You still need those anyway. The benefit of MPC is having a very small, tight player to watch videos on, using any required codec. You always need to install the appropriate codec anyway if it's not present on your PC. And Microsoft only plays Microsoft without any additional installations... Funny how that works... ;)
	Donovan : Sexy, Sophisticated House Music from San Francisco #Posted by Dreams on 15:34 Yesterday, as I was looking some party images, I stumbled across this DJ Donovan from San Francisco. I noticed he had some sexy, groovy, deep house tracks on his site to listen to. Unfortunately, they were RealMedia streams, streamed from Groovefactory, an Internet radio station I used to listen to a while ago. However, Donovan's sexy, soulfull, groovy deep house is something I wanted to have and to hold, in sickness and in health 'til death or a disk crash do us part. Not just listen to when I have my 2Mb DSL line there to please me. So... what now? Well, I found HiDownload Lite (free for 30 days, more than I need ;) to download the streams for me. (I could have used winamp to do it for me but I was listening to mp3 and I didn't want to sit without music for 1+ hour plus.) Anyway, I downed 4 streams to RealMedia and used dBpowerAMP with the Real Alternative Codecs to convert the .rm into OggVorbis files! Presto! Smooth, crisp, clear steaming mp3 files for a sexy party... If you're interested, mail me! Or tune in yourself!
	Small World , Small Wonders #Posted by Dreams on 12:38 No, it's not Disney! For crying out loud don't sing that song!!! This Small World Gallery is about a microscope and a Nikon camera and taking pictures. Muuch cooler, I hear you say! Of course! Take a look at some of the images from the 2003 contest: WOW! Sooo cool! I knew I should have studied Microbiology too. (And Electrical Engineering. And Marine Biology. And Polymer Science.) There just aren't enough hours in the day... :'(
	Tuesday, July 20 Dance Valley Festival 2004....a decade of dance! #Posted by Dreams on 13:44 Got a newsletter today from UDC about Dance Valley Festival 2004. Good news is that drinks will be cheaper this year. They better coz last year it was a little ridiculous! There will be seperate drink & food coins again. :( That Sucks coz they usually raise (food) prices with that! The toilets will be free this year! That's a relief (literally) but it might mean that the difference will be paid somewhere else... :( We'll see. The line-up will be released this week too, so we can all start planning! And they're also gonna make TV recordings for the special DVD that's coming out. So y'all can see my dance qualities saved for man-kind! ;)
	Volare!!! Baila me! #Posted by Dreams on 13:34 In this lousy Summer, with more storms and rain than usual, albeit with pretty reasonable temperatures, you just can't get into that Summer feeling you usually have. A trip to sunny destinations seems un-avoi-da-ble! Unless... unless you can force that happy, sunny Summer mood into your house instead of going after it like a teenager with puppy love. Just bring the mountain to Jozef, goddamnit!!! So put on shorts, slip in a sexy top or shirt, ease into the slippers and put on the Cool Shades, turn up the volume and sing along to this... Santé! Proost! Cheers! Skol! Fuck Summer! :D
	Sony/BMG merger gets the nod #Posted by Dreams on 12:36 Yet another mega big huge record.movie/media company is formed! The Register reports that the Sony/BMG merger gets the nod: "The European Commission has approved the merger of Sony and BMG's respective music units." sigh And they will yet again increase prices, hold monopolies and try to prevent P2P music sharing... deep sigh Well I for one protest by downloading more music instead of buying it. What happened to the good old "if you can't beat them, join them"? They know they can't stop mp3 on the Internet. It's useless. It would require all out, all over monitoring of all networks and all systems and such huge tracking database to build up cases against people, that they would simply rule the world because they have to monitor and snoop into everything! And we know that is not possible. Because if it were, someone would have already done it by now! And Sony/BMG would have to acquire FBI/CIA/NSA too... But that's actually I would like to see! :D LOL
	Monday, July 19 Network Intrusion Detection System - Firestorm #Posted by Dreams on 21:04 A firewall protects your systems from ordinary "burglars". It prevents unauthorized access to your systems. But how do you know that your system isn't already broken into and being used as you read this? Perhaps some was very smart of by-passed your firewall. Like with a Trojan Horse... For that, they have Firestorm NIDS: "Firestorm is an extremely high performance network intrusion detection system (NIDS). [...] A Network Intrusion Detection System is a system which can identify suspicious patterns in network traffic. If a firewall is a doorman, a NIDS is an undercover KGB agent."
	LG's New 3.24-Megapixel Clamshell Cameraphones #Posted by Dreams on 17:59 I think it's time to trade in my Sony DSC-U20 for the new LG's 3.24-Megapixel Clamshell Cameraphones. Actually it's already the 2nd one because Samsung just released a 3Mpx mobile phone too. Jeez! 3Mpx! I'm curious about the quality though...
	Journal photos Cambodja #Posted by Dreams on 14:29 Well, my baby is almost coming back again! So I'm keeping myself busy by looking up her photos in her travel journal photolog. (No, not like that! Get you're mind out of the gutter!!!) That way I'll recognize her when she get to the airport! LOL
	Joe Eigo's Multi Level Moves #Posted by Dreams on 13:30 I think I've seen some of this before through a friend from my old gymnastics club, Linea Recta. But seeing Joe Eigo's Multi Level Moves again is simply unbelievable. This is a combination martial arts, stunts and gymnastics that you've got to see! :) Simply amazing the ease with which he jumps from cartwheels, to back summersaults, into inverse summersaults, back handsprings and full stretch summersaults with twists. :respect: Truely amazing the jumps, vaults and other tricks he can do. Must see!
	Sunday, July 18 Pictures of Extrema Outdoor 2004 #Posted by Dreams on 20:45 And don't forget Extrema Outdoor 2004, which took place yesterday! The weather gods were sympathetic with us but also proved to have a good sense of humor! :D While temperatures soared to 25+ C and higher, cloud 9 had a little something cooking for us. And boy do I mean cooking! But until about 6:30 pm it was nice, hot and dry and people went all out to celebrate the music, the DJs, the atmosphere, the sand, grass, water and their friends. Then... all hell broke loose. But that just thinned the crowds, left the true party people and sent home the wussies! Ha! "And stay out!" :) After 8 pm it cleared back up, clouds broke and we had a lovely, soft, quiet summer evening! Very, very good indeed! :D I hope the rest of my friends will be there again next year, because Aquabest and Extrema make for an unbeatable combination!!! :hug: Missed you! Also check out Martin's photos!
	Birthday Ninette #Posted by Dreams on 20:23 Well, I went to Utrecht and celebrated Ninette's birthday, over dinner with her friends in restaurant "het Licht" in Utecht. Great place!!! Relatively new, trendy colors, nice staff and good crowds. Food was great and the DJ after 10 pm made it all complete! :) We had a lovely dinner but called it a night at 1 am because Extrema was the next morning already!
	Friday, July 16 Ninette & Extrema Outdoor #Posted by Dreams on 14:05 Tonight, I'm going to Martin and Femke in Utrecht. Ninette has her bday again (funny how that works) but not as big as last year. Then tomorrow, it's Extrema Outdoor 2004. Woohoo! Weather should be much better than now, but not as awesome as last year, my god! Expected highs will be 25C (80F) but chances of heavy rain and thunderstorms later in the afternoon. We'll see... (Mental note: bring dry clothes!)
	Thursday, July 15 Happy Birthday Mozilla! #Posted by Dreams on 20:34 The Mozilla Foundation, creators of Mozilla, FireFox, Thunderbird and Camino, celebrate their one year anniversary! Woohoo! Congratulations for this and a job well done! :respect:
	Apple - iTunes sells 100,000,000 songs #Posted by Dreams on 15:41 Apple - iTunes - Music Store sold its 100 millionth song at 10:26 PM PDT (19:26 CET) on Sunday, July 11th. Wow! And at $0.99 each that is... oooh, roughly $100,000,000 isn't it! And who was it who said that selling music legally over the Internet wasn't gonna work... :) Duuh!
	Jewelboxing - CD and DVD Cases #Posted by Dreams on 12:38 Do you regularly make or copy CDs and/or DVDs? For instance for friends and family, home videos or images or vacations and so on? Be sure to check out Jewelboxing for an easy to use do-it-yourself (DIY) jewel box set, kit, thingy with some assembly required! ;) "We created Jewelboxing to allow individuals to produce a short-run of high-end packages and to give them the freedom to concentrate on the most important part of the job, the creative."
	:: Bonjour :: c'est fushe #Posted by Dreams on 11:23 Weather here sucks BIG time, but nonetheless I'm gonna check out the famous Mecca parties in Scheveningen on the beaches of "het zwarte pad". Tonight is another edition of :: Bonjour :: c'est fushe with Bart Maes. Now he sounds familiar but I don't know from what... We'll see!
	So Tired - Where Web surfers go when they haven't slept a wink #Posted by Dreams on 11:17 You have to read this story by Paul Boutin@Slate: So Tired - Where Web surfers go when they haven't slept a wink. It's a perfect example of what can happen on Internet if you're not careful. LOL Brilliant!
	Wednesday, July 14 Proxy Elite: Free Proxy Servers, Security & Privacy #Posted by Dreams on 12:30 If you surf or use the web, your IP address identifies you every single time. If you have broadband or dial-up, most ISPs assign one to you at random, so you're a little more safe, but... These assigned IP numbers usually have an expiration. And if you get back online before they expire, you won't get a new number but your ISP will simply reuse the one it assigned to you last time. So the problem is still there and everything you do is tracable. (Police can ask the ISP to reveal the person who's subscription is linked to a particular IP number.) So what if you'd like to be a little more private...? Check Proxy Elite, which hourly gives you addresses of anonymous proxies you can configure your PC and browser to use. If you have to ask how to do this, you probably don't need it! ;)
	PDF SpeedUp v1.0 #Posted by Dreams on 12:17 Here's a cool tool if you frequently use Adobe Acrobat Reader v5 or higher to view PDF files. Recently, this tool has become 15+ MB, excluding any plugins you might have. So starting up the reader seems to take forever. PDF SpeedUp disables most of the plugins except the really required ones, thus resulting in a speedier starting of Adobe Reader. B)
	Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention: A List Apart #Posted by Dreams on 12:13 A List Apart (ALA) has a great article on Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention. That's when external sites are linking to your images but without copying them. So whenever their webpage is displayed, your server also transfers your picture to be displayed in the foreign webpage. That's fine if it's only occasionally but if you run an often visited website with cool or sexy images, this form of bandwidth stealing can cost you money because you'll exceed your bandwidth limit much sooner whereas no one is visiting your site! Check it out... the solution is really simple.
	Monday, July 12 DJ GT has new ones #Posted by Dreams on 15:05 At GENERATION TRANCE, you can download two new releases by DJ GT! Oooooh, they're so nice again! :bounce: He's my hero! Recommended!
	Storm, rain, sun, wine, birthdays, dance, soomers #Posted by Dreams on 13:51 Pfff, weird weekend. So many things to do... I did a lot but most different from my plans! :) LOL You should never plan too much because then the agony of not doing anything you've planned just kills it! :) Friday, went to pick my wine at Winery de Fontaine. There was a wine tasting on July 4th and I liked a few. But when I went to pick them up, Richard was back from Beirut and invited me to stay for a tasting of their own for new wines in the Bistro l'Orange (next door). So by 6pm Friday I already had a slight buzz. hihi ;) Also on Friday, tons of parties on the beach here: Mecca, de Karavaan and de Billabong beach all had their own party but cooperated on the PR and flyers. Great idea, I think. Sadly, by the time I was gonna go, they were already over. Oh well, more energy for Saturday. Saturday, I hoped would bring better weather. But unfortunately it was only half way better. We did have sun but also strong winds upto force 6 on the beach. However, sun is sun so I hoped on my bike, brought books, music and sunscreen and went to Mecca. This I would be there or bust! Sun was very nice, music at Mecca was great. They were preparing for that night all day. In the mean time, I searched for friends willing to join me. Bas was at the airport in Madrid on his way back, when I SMSed. So set to meet at Scallywags in Den Haag for drinks and foods, in honor of Richard's milestone birthday. (You have to ask him which one!) :) That was great and Bas and I went to check out Mecca at 1am as well. The beach was dark, windy and empty but Mecca still packed 200-250 party people. So we danced until about 4am. Sunday, I would finally be able to go to Soomers again. They'd had so many private parties lately that I didn't even try, even in spite of the bad weather these last 2 weeks. :( Inside it's always dry! But Sunday was the first "Ssst" party at Soomers. I must have SMSed 30 people to come and join me, but no one was able to or in the mood. :( Sad lonely me! Absolutely great music by DJ Morgan, DJ Hero and DJ Branz!!! Really really nice, groovy, soulfull and deep house tunes. Unable to stand still, I danced until about 10pm. By then I had lost interest. There were too many nice women and I missed mine... :( So I went home and to bed...
	Saturday, July 10 timeok [swiss trance artist] #Posted by Dreams on 00:56 Was listening to di.fm again and got this really nice stomping trance stream. So I checked their forum and the playlist to find: timeok [swiss trance artist]. He also has a download page and some niiiice Trance mp3s. :respect: I love it when they do this. Summer Trance Mix 2004 is highly recommended!!!
	Friday, July 9 The ThinkGeek 2004 Sysadmin Pageant! #Posted by Dreams on 08:44 The sysadmin... he's the person who tries to make sure that all the IT at work doesn't fail so you can't blame your lousy day on that! In honor of all those hundreds helpdesk, CIS, CIV and KIM people out there, July 30th is world Sysadmin Appreciation Day. Or SAD as I'd like to say! LOL :D But this year's SAD will be something special because of the The ThinkGeek 2004 Sysadmin Pageant!. Nominated your favorite sysadmin who's saved your day countless times without you even knowing it!
	Thursday, July 8 Canon DSLR Challenges #Posted by Dreams on 18:15 Just a quick check the Canon forums at DPReview quickly confirmed that there are Canon DSLR Challenges as well... pffew ;) Although the Nikon format is much more visible and nicer for viewers. (y)
	DPReview Nikon D70 mini-challenges at smugmug #Posted by Dreams on 18:11 This is so cool and so simple, you could have thought of it yourself! Someone from DPReview came up with the idea of getting a smug and hosting sample images from anybody. But not just anybody, users/readers of DPReview who own a D70 and want to participate in mini-challenges! They've had several already and #6 just ended July 7th. The topic was sunset/sunrise... go check them out... Jaw-dropping gorgeous pictures! Amazing! Thanks to Martin for pointing me to this!
	Saga of the Seven Suns #Posted by Dreams on 17:05 WOW! That's all I can say. I've just finished reading A Forest of Stars by Kevin J. Anderson, the 2nd book from the Saga of the Seven Suns. And I finished it almost in one blow. 440 pages the first day! I couldn't put it down! That was two days ago. But now I can't wait for the 3rd book... Damn he's good! :respect: Highly recommended if you're info SciFi books like Dune, Foundation and other big sagas.
	Petra : Journal Photos Cambodja #Posted by Dreams on 16:20 Petra posted new photos in her travel journal from Cambodja. Also, check the journal itself for the stories...
	Slashdot \| Wikipedia Hits 300,000 Articles #Posted by Dreams on 10:11 About 4 months about, I reported that an online encyclopedia already had 200,000 articles in it and that just covered the English content. Now, already, that same encyclopedia Wikipedia hits 300,000 English articles using just over 90 million words. Compared to the meager Encyclopedia Britannica's 85,000 articles in 55 million words. Pfff, measily amateurs! ;) BTW, all languages combined there are 790,000 articles. Feel like you're an expert at something? Go ahead, put your money where your mouth is and contribute; in your own language if you like. (y) Highly recommened! For any subject...
	Wednesday, July 7 Computer Games Don't Affect Kids... #Posted by Dreams on 17:59 LOL, saw this stmnt in a person's profile: Computer games don't affect kids. I mean if pacman affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music. :D :bounce:
	Skype, the VoIP system that rocks! #Posted by Dreams on 17:40 Skype has been around for a little while already, but I first heard about it when Slashdot reported that a Linux version was now available. "So what?!", I thought. I'd seen Internet telephony years ago and wasn't impressed even though it was very handy when I was sitting behind my PC anyway. Recently, I also saw MSN and Y! users video and voice chat together and had a strong "here we go again" feeling. But Martin called me this morning using Skype and I was baffled! I was stunned, shocked even. Why hadn't I tried this before?!? "You dork!", I yelled at myself... Fortunately Martin couldn't hear me because my PC didn't have a mic with it, otheriwse he'd still be laughing and I'd never hear the end of it! So I went to the store, bought myself a ?15 headset, plugged it in and called Martin back. Woohoo! Do yourself a favor: install the mic, install Skype™ (pron: skaip) and call me!!! I'm in the book!
	Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 Demos #Posted by Dreams on 17:29 What's the next thing Microsoft is doing? It's TV! Yes, sadly that universal fool-proof device will soon run Windows too. At least, if the demo of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 is to be believed... Check the website or just download the video directly. What does it do? Well not much more than a barebone PC fitted with a decent ATI/nVidia video card incl TV out, a decent 5.1 sound card, a 160GB hard disk and a DVD player (with or without recording capabilities. Set this next to your TV and HiFi stereo and you get the same. But without the XP Mickey Mouse GUI and without all the familiar CPU-cycle wasting fading animation gizmos. In fact, it'll be so cool for anyone with an IQ between 70 and 110 who's most recent PC was the P3 and who's PC experience tops out at turning on a preinstalled, preconfigured desktop that I'm afraid this will be very VERY big by Xmas. :'( Oh well... Meanwhile, I'm busy getting MythTV working. Why? Because I can! ;)
	About Geocaching #Posted by Dreams on 10:45 You have a GPS, fine. No biggy there. Lots of people have them nowadays. And you use it, what 3-4 times a year? Fine... but a bit of a waste, don't you think? Maybe you should take up fishing and map out all the great spots, when you find them. Or if you're a shopaholic, perhaps you could map out all the "must-see" shops in your area. Or... you could stash away some treasure, mark its location and go GeoCaching!!! What's that, you ask? Why, step into my office! :) "Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for GPS users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a GPS unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet." You can already buy a basic GPS unit for ?140 here in the Netherlands. Or get them at the airport...
	Bloglines updated its interface #Posted by Dreams on 10:29 The great cool wonderful people of Bloglines have, in honor of their one year anniversary, updated and upgraded their web interface. It's now very easy to use and much clearer than before! Very nice! If you read several websites a day, any kind, you owe it to yourself to check this out! It's that easy! :respect:
	Tuesday, July 6 HedgeHog VBS portscanner for Excel #Posted by Dreams on 18:20 OK you probably will never need this, but if you do... you need it bad! Astalavista lists HedgeHog: a VBS portscanner for Excel. What does it do? It scans which ports are being used by what on your network. If you're a corporate environment, you might be able to run things like this and for good reason, so be careful: try this at home first! ;)
	Sharps Shows Prototype Color eBook #Posted by Dreams on 18:06 So coooooooool! Sharps Shows Prototype Color eBook: "Sharp has shown a prototype eBook reader with a screen that is only 1mm thick". Check the link, there are picture too! B)
	Evaluating Windows XP Service Pack 2 RC2 #Posted by Dreams on 18:02 InformationWeek has a lengthy review of the upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 RC2. It has several important features to make XP much more secure by default instead of relying on moronic users to do so themselves. ;)
	Monday, July 5 Sun reveals most significant changes in Java in 5 years #Posted by Dreams on 11:50 Sun has released the most significant new release of Java since 5 years. The new Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0. "Known as Project Tiger, this updated Java platform offers dramatic ease of development, new application monitoring and management features, a dedicated focus on rich client support for the PC desktop and record-breaking performance."
	DShield - Are you cracked? #Posted by Dreams on 11:13 Are you wondering if your PC is infected by something and is being used for illegal and unwanted purposes (DDoS, Spam, trojans, etc)? Check your IP against the DShield system and see if it comes up. If so, it's very possible that there is something in your system that is making it slightly more upblic than you'd want...
	RSS Readers (RSS Info) #Posted by Dreams on 11:02 Oh and BTW, should you want to start using a newsreader for your RSS feeds, check out the RSS Readers page, where you'll find info about about 10-12 feedreaders or so, including Bloglines, FeedDemon, NewsGator and NetNewsWire.
	Scoop \|\| Collaborative Media for the Masses #Posted by Dreams on 10:54 I've been following the CMS market for some time now and was always looking for a CMS that would also let the visitors to a site contribute to the site. Forums are commonly used for this, with or without mail list or news (nntp) interfaces. But today I found Scoop: "Scoop is a 'collaborative media application'. It falls somewhere between a content management system (CMS), a web bulletin board system (BBS aka forum), and a weblog. Scoop is designed to enable your website to become a community. It empowers your visitors to be the producers of the site, contributing news and discussion, and making sure that the signal remains high."
	Sunday, July 4 Bloglines \| Free, Web-Based News Aggregator #Posted by Dreams on 23:28 Just one more thing before I goto bed. You know about blogs, of course. You may know about RSS feeds and content syndication. If you do, you may find yourself checking 5-6 websites each day just to see if there's something new. If you do, you might have heard of news feeders aka news readers aka feedsters. These tools are installed on your machine and once you tell them which RSS feeds to watch, all you have to do it check the tool (some can be integrated into Outlook!) and you're done. The tool checks every site you want every hour or even more often. But what about when you're on holiday, away from your own PC? Of at a friends? Maybe he doesn't have yuor reader, so you'd have to install it feed it all the feeds again, etc. etc. etc. But problem is solved!!! Enter Bloglines, the Free, Web-Based News Aggregator. You log in, check ya feeds and be done! Coooool! B) Highly recommended! It even has a special feature but you'll have to write me for that! It's just too cool! Trust me!
	Photos from Ultimate Frisbee in Hargen aan Sail 2004 #Posted by Dreams on 00:59 Photos of the CRUNCH HUT ultimate tournament, part of the annual Hargen aan Sail 2004. I was gonna play with Force Elektro in this tournament, but my injury to my left calf still prevents me from doing anything sportive. So I went as driver, coach and photographer. :) The weather was nice although a strong wind (at least for 5-6) made throwing the frisbee an adventure. :D LOL And the storm made for some very impressive clouds and rain storms that passed us by all day!
	Saturday, July 3 Guinness World Records Recognizes Cisco Router #Posted by Dreams on 22:36 Cisco has entered into the Guiness Book of World Records!: "Guinness World Records certified Cisco's CRS-1 router as the highest capacity Internet router at 92 terabits -- 92 trillion bits per second -- of total throughput. [...] The CRS-1, which Cisco unveiled in May, is capable of downloading the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress in 4.6 seconds, as opposed to a dial-up modem transfer rate that would take 82 years. It is designed for telephone companies to deliver data, voice and video services over the Internet."
	Create an online image gallery quickly #Posted by Dreams on 00:43 My friend Martin just showed me this tool he wrote, AutoGallery, to quickly and easily generate a gallery of pictures without a database using PHP. You dump your pictures into a directory on your server and a PHP script will generate thmbnails and medium versions of them for you, all neatly in HTML. A CSS file takes care of formatting an lay-out. Sooo cool! No database required, just PHP and the Imagick tool (frequently present on web hosts). Recommended!
	Friday, July 2 Full Moon #Posted by Dreams on 19:34 Last night, I tried to take pictures of the gorgeous full moon we had. There had been a storm and the sky cleared up just enough after midnight when I was gonna go to bed. But the fast moving clouds messed up my already lousy position. I was indoors with a big window in my way and no zoom lens. At least I had a tripod... Anyway, I managed some pictures to hopefully give an idea of what it was like.
	Dutch government withdraws vote for Software Patents #Posted by Dreams on 18:07 Yesterday the Dutch government decided to withdraw its vote for Software Patents. :) Cool, that's good. Now let's hope it does some good too. See the FFII Software Patents section for complete coverage. "This act represents an incisive criticism of the European Council of Ministers' attempts to introduce broad patentability of software. Minister Brinkhorst, acting on behalf of the Netherlands, endorsed the Council's current proposal, which not only reiterated the terms of the Council's strongly criticized first proposal, but went even further, directly rebuffing the clear stance assumed by the EU Parliament, which voted to add numerous amendments which made clear how the category of logical algorithms would be treated."
	Bittorrent sites #Posted by Dreams on 17:39 Bittorrent is a mechanism by which download speeds can be increased. The rate at which you receive information is dependent on the speed at which the server can send it to you. If you could get the same file from 2 different server, and combine the streams, you'd download files roughly twice as fast. That's exactly what Bittorrent lets you do. Bittorrent sites is a site where you can find websites that host bittorrent files. The way it works is you http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.htmlinstall a bittorrent client (or this one) in your browser, download a bittorrent file but... you don't close the download window when it's finished. Because you now have the file, you can share a little of your bandwidth by uploading parts of your copy to others that request the Bittorrent file. You can leave the window open as long as you like, bandwidth permitting. Cool!
	Club for victims of Dutch CSA personal training and awareness courses #Posted by Dreams on 10:34 I keep getting Emails and comments from people who've been to CSA personal training sessions or want to know more about them. I wrote about this earlier and found a German website with the same warning about CSA. It even listed a study from South-America that had followed the whole program for 1.5 years. Unfortunately, the German site is offline. Now, I received this website of a club for (potential) victims of Dutch CSA personal training and awareness courses (site is in Dutch). They seem to want to gather and organise bad experiences and generally provide a bit more warning before you jump off the deep end. There also seems a trend of "jobplace recruiting" where your superiors, who themselves are very satisfied with their own CSA training, push or pursuade you or perhaps even force you to enroll in the CSA training...
	Thursday, July 1 MSN Search: Microsoft Humbly Gives In... #Posted by Dreams on 17:33 MSN Search has budged too and restyled its search page to match the basic and simple interfaces that we already know from Google and AltaVista. They've also redone the search engine, but I haven't really tested that. I'll stick with Google for sometime anyway, but it's good to know!
	the LDraw Family of LEGO? CAD Software #Posted by Dreams on 11:21 Remember Lego™? Of course you do! I had tons of it and everytime you need more because you don't have enough parts. And the coolest stuff is always new so you have to have that too... Right? Well, no more! Because today's youth has LDraw! LDraw is a CAD program where you can build 3D Lego things on your PC, render them to make pictures of what you built or print building instructions to let other humble builders share your creations... Soooo cool! Sadly, I'm really bad at 3D drawing...
	Great new water diet #Posted by Dreams on 11:06 I'm already sorry for this post but I have to post this! :) (Warning: nudity!) There is a great new diet around. It's really simple but highly effective. It involves drinking lots of water, swimming, diving and snorkling and a healthy, balanced diet. There are some before and after pictures of two ladies who have succesfully completed a total makeover... ;)
	De nieuwe officiële spelling #Posted by Dreams on 10:46 After a discussion with Petra's sister about possessive words in Dutch, I decided to look for an online guide for this. I'm terrible with spelling, primarily Dutch though because I never learned it properly (ironic isn't it), so I'm glad to have found a Handleiding bij de nieuwe officiële spelling (valid since 1997). Sadly, it says nothing about possessive words nor their ending. :) Oh well, was good to read again anyway. LOL