Fire?

This morning I drove on the A4 highway towards Amsterdam. Close to Schiphol Airport on my righthand side I saw an airplane come down with high speed and a lot of 'smoke' behind it. This was mainly water because it was raining (again). Some hundred meters later on my lefthand side, just before the Schiphol tunnel, I saw lot of black smoke and huge orange/red flames... It scared the shit out of me. "Planecrash!" I thought. But no news on radio Veronica. Nothing on NU.nl... Complete silence. Then a colleague of mine came up with this. Strange coïncidence? Or a major cover up? :-) Decide for yourself...

iPhone = free

It was to be expected: the iPhone is hacked and is now free for use with every possible provider. Not (only) by opening up the phone and do mumbo jumbo nerdy technical stuff. All it takes is just a software update. Check it here.

A while ago I thought about buying an iPhone (but it will not be available in Holland before December). It seemed like a good device, well thought of and well developed. BUT... what I disliked most is the exclusivity contracts Apple closed with a small group of providers. You cannot pick a subscription or company of your choosing. It's so last century to push your customers into an exclusive contract without giving them the opportunity to figure out the best solution themselves. Hoorah, Apple is punished now. Or are they? I think AT&T is the real victim. They paid a huge amount of money to get exclusivity. Since the hack everybody can use the phone with every provider. Bye bye exclusivity. And Apple shares went up by 2,5%, since more people will get the phone.

> Here's a nice story about the hacker George Hotz on Youtube.
> And here a nice video (in Dutch) on how to crack your phone

In case you want an iPhone, check this review.

What's real and what's not?

I really love sci fi and fantasy movies. Becouse of the stories, special effects and imagination behind it. You all know Star Wars and Lord of the Rings of course. Personally I think LOTR is the best special effects movie ever made. Peter Jackson and team used a lot of computer generated stuff to make it look real, but also 'older methods' like miniatures and matte paintings.

What I think is so cool about matte paintings in LOTR is that you can't see where the real footage ends and the painting starts.

A very good website to see some examples is that of Dusso: www.dusso.com. To make it easier for you I selected some examples:

> LOTR's Frodo & Sam walk around in Emin Muil

> LOTR's great plains of Rohan

> Pirates of the Caribbean - ship in Port Royal

> Star Wars' city planet of Coruscant

SOME MORE...
Here's a nice 'how to make your own matte painting'.
And here another great Matte Painting website.
A great site for digital effects and behind the scenes looks: fxguide.com. Alex, thank you for the tip.

The big build

Yes! We finally uploaded images of the big redecoration of our small home to Flickr. We used the whole of February to change the house from an old and muffy place into our little palace.
The set description is still short and the photos lack good titles, tags and descriptions, but that will be fixed soon.

Check them pics out!

Them good old 60's

Who remembers Mike Flowers? A nice nerdy singer from the 90's with a good old 60's look. And really great 60's smile and moves too. He gained a little fame by covering both Oasis' Wonderwall and The Doors' Light My Fire. Both worth a sneakpeek and renewed enthousiasm. Spread the word dude, totally rad.

Cool Flickr Toys

Flickr is amazing. And so are toys by other people that make use of it. Check these out:
> Retrievr. Draw something and find photo's that look like it.
> Color Fields Color Pickr, if you need a photo of a special color.
Play on!

A small step for us, one huge leap for Romeo

Tina called me this morning, I was already at work. "He can walk" she said. "What?" "He can walk and stand all by himself". Romeo could walk before, but always needed our support. Now, for the first time he took some steps without help. Isn't that great!? A real milestone for the little guy. Well done boyo, I am so proud of you! Can't wait to see you do it.
As soon as we have a flick I'll post it here!
[UPDATE, 12th of August] It seems that Tina and I had some miscommunication :-). Romeo can walk, but not entirely by himself. Instead of two hands, he now only needs one hand support. So still a big step, but not a giant leap. Soon we hope to see him walk alone. We'll be back then for sure!

You traveller, me photographer

Hoorah! One of our photos has been selected for the online travel guide website Schmap. It's a pic of Dublin cafe Voodoo (part-owned by Fun Lovin Criminals' Huey). Check it out here. How we got there? It was found via Flickr... Make sure your tags are alright and you will be found also.
A great tip before going on holiday: type in a city in Flickr and be amazed.
See our full Dublin set here.

Heavens - Patent Pending

YES, this is a must see/listen: a great song by Heavens (formed by former members of Alkaline Trio). It's called Patent Pending and you can see the clip with funny intro here. I really like the speed and the style of it. Punk with a catchy tune. More info on the band here. Don't hesitate any longer.

It could happen to us

What would happen if the internet broke down? How could it happen? What would fill the void? And how can we all get it back online? Check it out in this geniously made flick.

Conan the Rasterbarian

Have already been canvanized? Do you want to be (even) more creative? Rasterbate! This is a cool site where you can rasterize your photos, divided over multiple A4 / Letter pages. So you can fill your walls easily with a huge poster that you made yourself. All you need is a printer, lots of ink, a little patience and - of course - a good photo. Go create.

Canvanize

We always wanted a canvas on our wall. But we didn't have a good photo yet and also lack of time was a disturbing factor. But thanks to our good friend and colleague Marco - who shot the photo - we now have one. It's fantastic. The original picture was shot in color, but we turned it into black and white first and then gave it a purple haze. To go with the rest of our livingroom. We used the site mooiaanjemuur. They offer good value for money, deliver for free and are really fast. Go check it out and canvanize your house!

Get Simpsonised

Curious what you would look like in Springfield? Find a good photo of your face and get yourself a Simpson look!. Too much work to look through all your old pics? Figure it our yourself here then (click on "create your Simpsons avatar").

Pool

Yesterday we went to a swimmingpool. It was Romeo's first time. He loves bathing in a tub and to splash water around. But this was something else! What a huge tub that was! And a lot of people in it too. It took him some time to relax, but then he was unstoppable. I made him fly over the water, which he enjoyed very much. His arms went up and down like a swam that is taking of. He also loved playing with a ball. And walking around in the shallow water. He lifted up his feet and peddled around, like a little duck, holding my hands all the time. Our little duckling is fun to swim with!

Mobile Wedding Service

Today I saw a van passing by on the A4 highway. It had text written on it's side: Mobile Wedding Service. Wow! I thought. How can you get married in one of those things (the van wasn't that big). Or how does it work? Can you get married anywhere you like? Do they come to your house? My imagination fired up...

Until I saw the actual text on the side. Then I realised I had misread it. Mobile Welding Service is a whole different thing.

What would you expect from a Mobile Wedding Service? Well take a guess... It does exist!

Big party

Yesterday we had Romeo's party. And it was a big one! We had invited over 60 people. Due to holidays and illness not everybody could come, but eventually about 50 people turned up! And that is quite a lot for our small house! Neighbours, family, friends, people we hadn't seen in months (sometimes even years). All came. Weatherforecasts for sunday were good at the start of the week (we expected the worst, remember this?) but on saturday our luck changed. A 50% chance of rain and thunder and extremely warm and damp. We had made preparations for everything but rainprotection. So in a hurry we installed a big screen. Some ten minutes later water came down as if someone had openend a huge shower over Alphen. I went out to borrow an umbrella and placed it in the backyard. Just before the first guests arrived at 1 o'clock the rain stopped and a little sunlight came through the black clouds. From then on it stayed mostly dry. Everybody ate cake, drank coffee and whine and beer. Then bosnian specialty cevapcici were handed out. My dad, a friend and I fired up the grill and bbq'ed saté, shaslicks, fish and shrimp. A grand feast! :-) Romeo had a great time but was - what a surprise - extremely tired. He could not sleep in the afternoon. And he could not sleep in the evening. So he went to bed around 11 o'clock... One year old and already a latesleeper :-).

Romeo = 1

Romeo had his birthday last thursday (12th of july). He turned 1! We celebrated it in style: we sang for him in the morning (he loved it) and gave him presents. One of his presents is a huge talking Nijntje (Miffy). Then we took him downstairs where we had decorated the whole living room with serpentines and a lot of balloons. He loves balloons and did not know where to look when he saw them. :-). After a lunch in Alphen centre and an afternoon sleep his grandparents visited us. The day ended with a diner in the local "pancakefarm" with Tina's parents. Romeo had a pancake with raisins, banana and apple. The guy can eat! We all went home well fed and put the guy in bed. It took some time but eventually he fell asleep around nine. A succesful first birthday with still a big party to come!

Ogre's, a donkey and a puss

Yes, we saw it! Shrek the Third. Tina and I went to the local cinema last Friday. It is a lot like #2, but better. The dying frog scene, the horn blowing boatsman and - of course - Puss in Boots are fantastic! Haha. I cannot explain it, you must go and see for yourself.

Toy gun

I've seen one of the newest Guy Ritch films today: Revolver. Heard some good and some bad stories about it. My conclusion? It's shit. Read the user comments on IMDB and you'll read enthousiasm as well as anger. I go for the latter. What a pretentious bullshit. But perhaps I did not understand it... Have you seen it? What is your opinion?

Fixed!

Remember this post? Well, the problem is solved. We had two more days of rain and the roof leaked no more. Hurrah for roof-fixers!

Kid's stuff

Today Romeo & I went for a little visit to the pet farm. He loves animals so we took a look at the big pig with it's youngsters, petted the goats (who of course thought they we're going to be fed) and visited the bunnies. Amazing how kids react to animals. He was so excited just by looking at them! Jumping up and down and crying out loud with joy. Fortunately we stayed dry in spite of the dark clouds over us. We shared an icecream afterwards to celebrate good times.

Water down the hole

Summer in Holland comes in showers these days. We hardly see any sun and rain poors down like in an East European winter. Not so long ago we bought a small hundred year old house in the centre of Alphen aan den Rijn. And last friday and yesterday water came into our house... The ceiling in Romeo's room was wet and brown and a lot of water had fallen on the new wooden floor. Bad luck. Thank god we could contact a very nice guy from a roof repair service who came early this morning to fix it. It turned out the drainpipe was jammed with dirt and that the pipe was not constructed properly. So during heavy rain the roof floods and water gets around the pipe, under the roof and into our house (more specific: Romeo's room, just above his bed). The fixer fixed it in a jiffy. Weather forecast for today: 90% rain, wet, dark, depressing. So let's hope the fix lasts!

Back from Croatia

Yup, we're back. Quite some time now actually but we haven't had the time to tell you about it. And we will not do that yet. But you can check our photos here.

Alphen for capital

We live in Alphen aan den Rijn. A place in the middle of Het Groene Hart (The Green Heart). Some 30 kilometres from both Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam. Ideal huh? Too bad it is such a dull place... Today Romeo and I went shopping on the market. It's nice, we do it every week. Every now and then a city committee of some sort invites artists to entertain shoppers. Just to give Alphen that "real European city feeling". This week a drumband with flag wavers from Belgium were performing. I could not really find out the purpose of their doings. And neither could they, I could tell that by the look on their faces... They walk with their flags waving not caring for people in the crowd being hit by the enormous flagposts and stop after a few paces. Drummers hit the drums, the group turns around and the whole party walks back to where they had begun. Some ten minutes later we saw a fanfare will old people dressed up as frogs. Playing drums, tuba, trombone. The works. The things frogs normally only do when they are really really drunk. Funny to look at, but again we missed the point. That's the whole problem with this city. They try a lot, but seemingly without any real purpose. Get some thought into it lads!

Donations

Have you ever made any donations? I think it's noble when people give their money away to charity, healtcare, etc. So recently I made a donation. I responded to a letter and transferred some money. They're happy, I'm happy. Simple as that. But a few weeks later I found out they were not happy. Yet... Since my donation I am being spammed with all sorts of request. Cancer foundation, Heart foundation, Save the forest, Save the whales, Save us. Litteraly every week I receive two or more requests. And before my donation? Nothing. It probably works like this: "We have no phonebooks. We have no addresses of possible donators. We only have a file with people who gave us money before. Hmm... what to do? Eureka! We'll send them another request!" And charity funds exchange addresses of donators to expand their databases. Or it is just one big database. I repeat: charity is a good thing. But this is not. I am willing to give money. But not to all of them. Not because I think their cause is not good enough, but just because I do not want to. So, go contact some of those hidden treasures!

It's magic

Have you ever seen Derren Brown? It's amazing what this guy can do. Neuro Linguistic Programming it's called. Some of his other stuff is plain magic. And in some flicks people actually fool themselves. Take a look at this example. This one is good also.

Read us, see us

You can read us here, but see us there. Check it out regularly for updates.

Back!

It has been a while. A long while. But we're back! A lot happened since our last post. Tina got pregnant by November 2005, Romeo was born July 2006, we bought a house in October 2006, redecorated it in February, moved in in March, went on holiday in May... We have enough stories to fill this blog for the coming months! Welcome back y'all.