I moved the posts of the holidays in Leukerbad to the archive. This way, it won’t show up anymore in the sections sidebar, but in the static section of the site.

Because of the ordering of the journal, the holiday diaries should be read in reverse order. I’ll look into it to check whether it is possible to define your own ordering, thus enabling an ascending chronological order (instead of descending like in the journal).

Photos of yesterday’s visit to ‘s-Hertogenbosch, our province’s capital.

 Hmm, why can't I help getting the impression that Google introduced [a new service](http://talk.google.com/) today? P.S. I have some invites left for those who want to try it out.

My old black and gray t-shirt look website is gone. I moved the journal to the root of the site, building the rest around it and am now working on creating a photogallery entry type for Hobix, my blog-software. The old site will still be available on another location for a while.

In my view, it was a good design, simple yet attractive. But it didn’t fit with the needs of the journal, which became an increasingly bigger part of the site. Actually it was the only part which got updates.

So, like I said, I’m working on a photogallery entry type. The current status is that I have one single page with all thumbnails on it, accompanied by the image description. A click on the thumbnail opens a new window with the larger version. This is of course absolutely undesirable and I really have better ideas, but hey, it is only the first preview not-even-release. The final version should have automatic thumbnail generation, some navigational facilities (maybe using AJAX?) and some other cool things I don’t came up with yet (like EXIF information).

You can already take a look at the Berlin 2001 gallery.

Nice weather, “some” (i.e. around 8.000) nice bikes, but not so nice to take pictures. Why not? Downtown was full, completely packed. About 75.000 people thought of going to watch and taking 50 pictures of the same pose but of a different model isn’t really interesting to watch. I nevertheless took some and put them in my Luijten.org dump-repository.

Ah, I guess there are some alright, but not that great.

Indian

Reflections

Reflections II

This one from the 2002 edition actually was better, but I couldn’t find a nice set of bikes so nicely arranged this year, it was a mess.

3 Heritage Softails

Today, the UPS courier brought a large box, containing my all new Canon EOS 350D. I only ordered it Wednesday from TopVision in Luxembourg, got the confirmation yesterday and today it was already in the Netherlands.

Mwuhahaha! Fear, for I have a camera!

Since the camera is delivered without flash memory, I was orienting about what cards are fast enough for the 8 Mpixel images (a side-by-side test of many cards). Of course, the top items – mainly SanDisk Ultra II and Extreme III, followed by cards of Lexar – can’t be found anywhere on such short notice. So, I got a plain and simple Dane-Elec card from BCC and was prepared for a slow shooting… That became a positive disappointment, storing a full-size fine JPEG costs less than a second. I guess the speed differences between cards become more apparant when shooting RAW format. Okay, so no need to spend loads of cash on flashcards.

This Sunday is Harleyday in Breda and it will be the vuurdoop, I hope I will get some nice shots (and nice weather, too).

Today we moved the Mac mini from the study into the living room. Not because my mom wanted it, but because we’re going to be renovating the study and that can take some time, so the machine has to be somewhere. This isn’t bad at all, since it is warmer in the living room.

My shuffle had its longest time without refill this holiday and I must say, two weeks is definitely too long for this device. After a week, you’ve heard every song and you’re in need of a change.

That I couldn’t update it was of course my own fault, since I had a laptop with me, also loaded with music. I just have to find out which free app is the best for updating iPods (in Linux).

For all you feed-readers, I updated the site layout of my journal in which you’ll notice some personal favorite subject to the banner ;-).

Today, I had completely had it with the swapping and other memory issues in OS X, so I went to the Computerland and bought two very nice and not-so-very-pricy Kingston DDR PC3200 256MB parts and installed them in my Mac.

To open the case and install the memory exactly zero screws are to be unscrewed and exactly one tool, namely one of your fingers, is needed: Open the external case latch, remove the aluminum plate, remove the plastic air deflector shield thingy, remove the two fans in front of the CPU cooling block by just pulling them out. Insert your RAM banks, put everything back in place and boot the system… Yes, very easy, even an idiot could do it. And to prove that, I forgot to put the fans back in :-)

I already can feel some grave differences between 512 MB and 1 GB. For instance, calling the Dashboard is a lot more responsive, the harddisks have more time off, switching between programs isn’t as slow anymore… Of course, there is also the excitement factor, the improvements might not be this great, but there actually are improvements and that’s good.

It has to be said, my moments with Linux (albeit short and few) were better than what OS X does to the memory. Much can be improved here on Apple’s behalf, I think.

Yesterday, it was 13 July and like I already posted earlier, Sigur Rós was performing in Paradiso Amsterdam.

Around three I went on my way to our nation’s capital, arriving there by half past four. The weather was nice and the streets were packed with people, so I decided to join them and take a walk through the city. I went from the central station over Damrak to Dam (where I completely forgot to look for the location of the new Apple Store in the center of Amsterdam), then through the Kalverstraat to Leidseplein. There I called Esther to join them (her, her friend Erwin and his (Icelandic) girlfriend Sola) for dinner, they were in the Sarphatipark, very close to the famous Albert Cuyp market.

Getting a bit thirsty I tried to find a supermarket, but somehow I didn’t manage to find one until I almost gave up looking for it… When I got in the park, it was already almost time to get us something to eat. That is not a very hard task in Oud-Zuid which is filled with little restaurants where you can have dinner for only a few euros. The hardest part is to decide which restaurant to go to.

At dinner, some dirty Icelandic words were exchanged and I learned a lot about them ;-). Especially what you shouldn’t say too loud in Iceland! ‘Tot straks’ for instance, being just plain Dutch for ‘see you later’, is pronounced much like the Icelandic ‘Tott strax’ and that means you want a blowjob right now. Must feel strange being an Icelander in the Netherlands.

When we were finished, it was already time to go to Paradiso, the doors would open at seven and we were already late. Outside Paradiso there was a huge line, which was very special apparently because it drew the attention of many Amsterdammers. The funny thing is of course that no one who asks who we are all waiting for actually knows Sigur Rós… One woman even thought they were from Spain, ha!

Okay, so we went inside, after we had to pay another € 2,50 for a Paradiso membership card. Upstairs we went to get a good view on the stage, plus that there are seats on the balconies! After a beer, the lights went down and Amina came on stage. They have played with Sigur Rós a lot and as would come clear during the performance, will be playing with them for some time in the future.

Amina is an Icelandic string quartet, playing virtually every instrument with strings, acoustic as well as electric and their sound fits perfectly with Sigur Rós as well as with Efterklang. After playing for about an hour, they left the stage and a curtain closed.

About fifteen minutes later, the silhouettes of Sigur Rós became visible on the (see-through) curtains and they began playing their first song, which is a new one (‘Introduction’ followed by ‘Glósóli’) from their new album ‘Takk…’ (thank you) to be released in September. No one knew this of course, but it was received very well by the audience (and also by me of course). After this song, the curtains opened and Jónsi began a haunting Ný Batterí intro, followed by the rest of the concert :-).

The setlist:

• Introduction
• Glósóli
• Ný Batterí
• Svefn-g-Englar
• Sæglópur
• Sé Lest
• Mílanó
• Gong
• Andvari
• Vaka (Untitled 1)
• Viðrar Vel til Loftárása
• Hafssól
• Popplagið (Untitled 8)

It truly was a great concert and I cannot really find the words for it, not in Dutch, let alone in English. I guess if you like their music, you really should try to catch a gig.

On the way back in the train to Eindhoven, I was not quite alone for some other rockband had a concert in Amsterdam too, only they were with a few more people.

I would like to send back a big ‘Takk fyrir’ to the guys of Sigur Rós and hope to see you next time!

Update:

The Dutch magazine OOR has an article about the concert, describing what I couldn’t.

Update 2:

Added the setlist and a Torrent file of nice FLACs of the concert is available.

Exams are done (bad grades probably though), the Software Engineering Project is finished and I’m almost done with my work for the Spacelabs Visionair project: Time for the summer holidays!

Well, holidays is a big word, I’ll have to do some work for university. I’ll do the distant learning course Hypermedia and will be finding a subject for the History of Computing essay. Oh, and there is a assignment for Linux we have yet to finish. Further, there are the courses of Semantics and Functional Programming for which I do exams in the end of August.

So I guess I have plenty to do, plus I’ll try to become more active in LEDR and Miriapodo.