raymondpoort.com

What a day…no, it’s not important to mention that I bought tickets for the CC Cowboys concert on Saturday. No, it’s not important to mention that I filled in and sent my tax report (just in time)…what does matter is that it was Queensday (Koninginnedag) in The Netherlands today, and some *dumbass* decided to ruine to festivities, killing at least 5 people and injuring many more, by driving his car through the crowd, intending to crash the open car that the Queen was in…I’m silent… 🙁

It has been quite some time since the last issues with one of the cars, so I guess it was time for some repairs…unfortunately.

And of course Murphy decided to strike twice in one week; the bimmer got a 25cm crack in the front window, which had to be replaced. The family-car decided to completely give up last Saturday. It had to be towed to the garage after the motor turned into a steam engine, spreading cool fluid and oil everywhere…it turned out to be a broken waterpump, and some more. 🙁

Total damage for the two events: around EUR 1000,-…darn, I love these weeks, NOT!

(and it wasn’t even time for the Renault to breakdown, as August 27 has become its yearly breakdown day…)

I don’t expect SPAM to ever go away, and luckily most sophisticated tools these days will hide spam related items from everyday use…and, what you don’t see does not exist, right?

Well, it’s still there, and recently I noticed a shift in where spam hits within my domain; the email spam went up 30% compared to a year ago, the comment spam on the blog went down dramatically and is back to where is was before the sharp increase that started last year. Email still seems the way to go for the beloved spammers.

Oh well, I’ve always been a great fan of spam…the canned meat that is. 😉

I bought tickets for the Lowlands festival in August, a festival that I wanted to go to for the past 10 years…it’s finally gonna happen, yay!

I’ll be going with Robbert, Tom and, uhh, about 54997 others…did I already mention it was a popular festival? 😉

Headliners (announced so far) are The Prodigy, Artic Monkeys, Basement Jaxx, Bloc Party and there’re many more to come. Besides music the festival also offers a huge variety of other amusement such as literature, cinema, stand-up comedy, street theatre, etc.

The full name for the festival is ‘A Campflight to Lowlands Paradise‘…well, camping is what we’re gonna do, and paradise it will be then!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

The ones following me today on twitter already know my result on the Skarverennet race: I finished! Not bad, eh? Considering that I am dutch, so without cross country blood running through my veins like the norwegians, without too much practice, so basically NO technique! 😉
I have to admit, it was pretty tough and the only way to get to the end was to take it easy today. No drama, I wasn’t competing to get the best time, main goal was to finish and I did! Leaving me completely knackered now, with a party coming up at the cabin where we’re staying with 11 people…I’m gonna try to hang in there and then probably collapse at certain moment…tough times. 😉

I am packing my things for tomorrow big event; Skarverennet, a 38km cross country ski race, oofff…wish me luck! 😉

I noticed that coincidentally today one year ago was the first time I ever tried cross country skiing, nice.

Guess what??

It’s my Birthday today!

And even though the day itself doesn’t mean that much to me (I find it always amazing that one becomes a full year older in just one day 😉 ), I noticed that I made a tradition of posting the event on the blog…

So, Happy Birthday to me! 😉

Could it be true?

The establishment, aka Energy Elite, will most likely do everything to ‘proof’ this to be a hoax…remember, there are always two sides to a coin.

CBS News 60 Minutes: ‘When first presented in 1989 cold fusion was quickly dismissed as junk science. But, as Scott Pelley reports, there’s renewed buzz among scientists that cold fusion could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production.’

Click on the link above and watch the video.

Some related articles; Wall Street Journal, LowCarbonEconomy.com and Wikipedia. Interesting stuff!

There is very special and outstanding talent discovered in each episode of Brittain’s Got Talent. Last week Susan Boyle stole the show, and this week Shaheen Jafargholi got spotted. Only 12 years young and gifted with SUCH a voice…amazing, he IS the new Michael Jackson!

(although I feel that the show was staged; Shaheen started with a bad performance of an Amy Winehouse song, got another chance and then topped it with the superb MJ performance…a pity to see that TV will always be TV…and produced…)

I had to wait five months (indeed, patience is a virtue! 😉 )…today is the day that the speed limit on the Oslo ring (a.k.a. ‘miljøfartsgrense’) ended, boosting up the speed from a zzzlow 60km/h to a stunning 80km/h…duh! 😉

It’s April 20 today, or 4/20…an important date for fans of the holy herb and since I am dutch, the rest of the world will put me in that ‘fan-box’, so; happy 420 y’all! 😉

Another YouTube clip, it’s turning out to be a YouTube weekend! 😉

This time a recording from the ‘Brittain’s Got Talent’ show last week Saturday…Susan Boyle takes the stage, she will blow you away!

I am a frequent flyer, my girlfriend is flight attendant, and still, both of us never experienced THIS on board of an aircraft…it would be cool though!!

My blogposts have always been cross-posted to Facebook via the Blog import option of the ‘Notes’ application.

It works quite ok, but there are some drawbacks; it normally takes quite some time before the application imports the post (I’m talking hours!), the post layout sometimes gets screwed up, the Facebook import is static, so any updates to the post will not be shown and last but not least, comments to the post end up at multiple places (on the blog and within Facebook).

I will therefore use a different method for cross-posting to Facebook; the Wordbook plugin for WordPress. This plugin creates a link to the original blogpost and puts it on my Facebook Wall…all drawbacks of the Notes-Blog import are gone! 😉

So, if everything went well, this post created a link on my Facebook Wall…did it??

UPDATE: IT DID! 😉

So, a structural problem for a lot of people in these hectic days is, how to keep up with your favorite TV shows, which are broadcasted at a fixed time every week? Of course you can record it on tape (uhh, what’s that?) or dvd. Some might have options in their digital set-top box, allowing one to watch programs at a later time (kind of Video on demand service), others schedule their life around their favorite show, or have other means.

But, if you’re not afraid of any potential legal consequences, and BitTorrent is no secret to you, then eztv.it might be your cup of tea! They claim to be ‘your one stop source for all your favorite TV shows’, and are basically ‘offering’ torrents for most tv shows out there…coolio! 😉

I tend to have less of a problem with the legality of this one compared to distributing/downloading music and movies via the BitTorrent network…after all, most of the time you already ‘purchased’ the content via your cable and satellite subscription, so you’re only changing the timing of the viewing and the medium your watching from, no problemo, right?

Well, I guess that statement is up for discussion… 😉

I found an interesting article, called ‘Sugar replacement battle has a new gun’, on John C. Dvorak’s blog…you might know the guy from the ‘No Agenda‘ podcast which he does together with Adam Curry! Listen to it, it’ll change your view on the bigger things in life!

dvorak uncensored: ‘For the last decade the big three — pink packets of saccharin, aspartame in blue and sucralose in yellow — have fought to a kind of stalemate. But now a new player, dressed in green, hopes to shift the balance of power, opening up the $1.2-billion-a-year world of fake sugar to all kinds of changes.’

Now that we know that we’ll have to move out of the house we’re renting in July, we’re moving FAST to investigate our options, mainly options to buy a house already this summer.

First things first, and money unfortunately always comes first when considering to buy a house…so, today we had a meeting to discuss mortgage options.

Well, getting a mortgage shouldn’t be ANY problem (sjeez, and a LOT I might add, I still don’t trust the banks… 😉 ), the only thing is that due to the ‘crisis’, we can’t get 100% financed and have to bring considerable cash, at least 10% orso…and, uhh, most of the cash ‘disappeared’ after we bought our car three months ago.

Hmm, a catch-22 if you ask me. I guess I have to find some serious cash under a tree, or work out other options (there are still some…).

Anyway, we’re IN the market for a house, it’ll be a nice experience to search (AND find!) a new Castle on a hill! 😉

Denis Watley: “The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.”