Archive for October, 2010

QOTD October 31 2010

Sunday, October 31st, 2010
Gilda Radner: “I always wanted a happy ending… Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”

Halloween party night

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

I’m in NL this weekend to take care of housing stuff; the renters are handing over the house since they are moving out. Timing is great as I’m now able to go to Bonzzzz’s Birthday party a.k.a. Halloween Costume Party…we’re all dressed up and ready to scare the shit out of people! Hehe, do you recognize Mr. Anti-Christ below?? ๐Ÿ˜‰

Making movie trailers with iMovie ’11

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Marko has his Birthday today (he is turning 40…congrats dude! ๐Ÿ˜‰ ).

Besides all the singing, cheering, singing again, baking a Birthday cake, cooking his favorite meal and uhh, singing once more, we also prepared a very special gift for him; his own movie trailer!!

Making it was really simple since we took the time to shoot a lot of videos of Marko during the week. Apple’s iMovie ’11 (part of the recently released iLife ’11) did the rest…it really lived up to its promises as it took no more than 5 minutes to have the movie trailer ready! Hahaha, it’s a breeze to turn raw footage into a cool and Hollywood-style movie trailer this way…FUNNNN!!

Dinner in Oslo

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

We’re out in Oslo with the six of us tonight, enjoying a nice dinner in Klosteret, a very nice restaurant in Oslo. It has a somewhat romantic setting, something like a cozy dungeon with brick walls, lots of candles and great food…life is superb!

Japan to China, take your Jet Ski with you??

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

This one is hilarious!!

Take a moment and do the following:

1) go to Google Maps (maps.google.com)

2) Click on ‘Get Directions’ (‘Routebeschrijving’)

3) Type in from (A): Japan to (B): China

4) press <enter> or ‘Get Directions’

5) Scroll down to point 43…

WTF??? They suggest you to travel HOW across the Pacific Ocean for 782km??? A friggin’ Jet Ski?!?!?

LOL!!!!

(click on the picture for a larger version)

(via Michel van der Riet on FB)

Kissy’s Birthday

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Kissy is turning 36 today…Happy Birthday babe!

QOTD October 25 2010

Monday, October 25th, 2010
Mary Tyler Moore: “Having a dream is what keeps you alive. Overcoming the challenges make life worth living.”

Friends visiting and half a surprise

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Rob and Stefanie arrived today for a week of relaxing, enjoying nature and the company of each other, drinking, partying and more. ๐Ÿ˜‰

They made a tradition out of it to come over in the last week of October since it’s Kissy’s Birthday on the 26th. The surprise this year was that Muriel and Marko came with them! Actually, they didn’t fly here, but all drove with Marko’s car (a 25h trip!)…it meant that they were able to bring most of the bigger ‘Ode to Love‘ gifts with them, yayyyy, terrific!

I’m really looking forward to this week with our friends, it’s gonna be lovely!

Happy 9th Birthday iPod

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

Who can imagine a world without the iPod? It feels as the king of portable music players has been around forever, yet the era of ‘mp3’ ain’t all that old (16 years) and the iPod only has its 9th Birthday today; on 23 October 2001, Steve Jobs (hehe, him again) announced the iPod as ‘a Mac-compatible device with a 5 GB hard drive and a capacity that put ‘1,000 songs in your pocket’.

The portable media player can be seen as the turning point for Apple; the company gained traction from the masses, became a style icon, and the Halo effect has had a staggering impact on perception of Apple’s other products.

Hehe, their products are true wannahaves…my current count? 4 iPods, 2 iPhones, 2 Airport Express Base Stations, 1 Airport Extreme Base Station, 1 Time Capsule, 1 MacBook, 1 Mac mini, 1 iPad…what Apple products do you own??

Count the colors, the answer

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

OK, here we go, the answer to the ‘Count the colors’ quiz of the day from last Tuesday:

In total 10 people commented, five of them said ‘3’, four thought it would be ‘4’ and one thought the correct answer is ‘5’.

The correct answer is: 3!!

Great, half of you were correct, it’s apparently a bunch of smart people reading this blog! ๐Ÿ˜‰ . I am pretty sure however that not everyone was correct for the right reasons! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Let’s first start with the original picture:

No one can deny that you see 4 colors; two smaller stripes (orange andย  magenta) and two bigger spirals (blue and green).

Well, letโ€™s now first remove the small orange stripe:

The bigger stripes ‘change’ in color it seems, and become a little closer in relation than before. So, letโ€™s now remove the magenta:

Wow!!

It is now clear that the ‘blue’ and green are actually the same color, in reality there is no blue in this picture!! The actual RGB (RedGreenBlue) color code is r=0, g=255, b=150, so mostly green with some blue in it.

Another thing that helps in tricking your brain is that the orange stripe crosses the green spiral, but not the ‘blue’ one and the magenta stripe crosses the ‘blue’ spiral, but not the green one.

Nice to see how you can be tricked, ah?

It shows that you cannot trust what you see even with your own eyes. Colors are not what they appear, shapes are not what they appear, objects are not what they appear…the next time someone swears they saw Elvis, or a UFO (that could actually be true!), or a ghost, show them this picture.

Hehe, what you see is definitely not what you get! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Ringnes Beermuseum

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Similar as what Heineken has in NL with the Heineken Experience, the (‘THE’?) Norwegian beer-brand Ringnes has its ร˜lsenter, a Beer Museum within their old brewery in Grรผnerlรธkka, Oslo where they arrange beer tastings and other beer-related activities. Tonight we went there with a group from work to uhhh, learn about the history of beer ๐Ÿ˜‰ …well, as it was all in Norwegian, spoken fast and pretty technical, I didn’t learn much, the drinking and tasting part however was pretty easy to follow, hehe…yummmm! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Going back home afterwards felt like a ‘Driving home for Christmas’…indeed, snow came early this year! Jeez, it’s October 21 and we’ve had the first snow of the season, it’s gonna be a looonnngggggg winter!!

Apple event: ‘Back to the Mac’

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

It’s hard to miss anything that Apple announces these days; Apple is hot and trendy so literally *all* media are on top of its news. And today for a good reason…if only it was to see Steve Jobs presenting, he is a phenomenal presenter!

If you have some time, check out the video of today’s ‘Back to the Mac’ event and/or check your favorite technews site for more information on the announcements today.

A short wrap-up:

New in software

– iLife 11; updates for iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, iDVD and iWeb. It has some very cool new features such as creating hollywood-style trailers (within 5 minutes!) with iMovie. Available today!

– FaceTime for Mac; giving you the ability to do FaceTime chat with other Macs, iPhone 4 or the new iPod Touch; Beta release out today!

– Mac App Store; the App Store that we know and love from iOS revamped for your Mac, finding and installing new software will be *easy*; it will open within 90 days!

– Mac OS X 10.7 ‘Lion’; in which the good of iOS meets OS X, including Multi-Touch Gestures, App Store, App Home Screens, Full Screen Apps, Auto Save and Apps Resume When Launched…the interface looked promising, expect it summer 2011


New in hardware

– New MacBook Air; where the MacBook meets the iPad…two stunning devices (13.3″ and 11.6″) that are powerful as a laptop, yet almost as thin and light as a tablet…they’re available today, wow!


Quiz of the day; count the colors

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

There is something special about this picture.

I will explain it later, for now I’d like to ask you to count the number of different colors that you see and put this number in a comment!

QOTD October 18 2010

Monday, October 18th, 2010
Martha Beck: “Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.”

Soapbox car race

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Having a young kid visiting make you do different things than usual during the weekend; today we were together with Katka and kids and went to the local Grand Prix for soapbox cars (Olabillรธp)…a lot of fun for kids and adults, as you can see from the pics below! (click on them for bigger versions)

It was splendid autumn weather, so the soapbox cars did not need their rain tires…the field next to the track wasn’t so dry though, and our car got stuck…uhh, oops! Luckily help is always nearby in this farmer region! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Enjoying nature & chopping wood

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Yet another great day with Martine, Arjan and Tygo; it was absolutely stunning weather, so we decided to enjoy nature and went for a walk to Buvannet, a lake at just 5 km from our house…truly fantastic as you can see in the pics below (click for a bigger version).

We ended the afternoon with an activity for true men; chopping wood!!

We also reorganized the wood storage, looks good, ah? ๐Ÿ˜‰ It now has enough space for some more wood, hehe, much needed to make it through the coming winter months!

Nephew visiting Norway

Friday, October 15th, 2010

My sis, Arjan and Tygo are visiting us this weekend. Great to see them in Norway again, it’s their second visit ‘up north’ and the first time in our new house…they brought blue skies and loads of sun today, winter is however nearing as temperatures below zero! Hehe, that means that we are burning wood in da fireplace, yay, a cozy and relaxing weekend coming up!!

The last time we played ‘Uno’, this time we’re prepping homemade sushi, yummyyy! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Love, the healing drug

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Telegraph.co.uk: “Passions triggered by the early flushes of a relationship block physical pain in a similar way to painkillers and drugs, a study has shown….The scans revealed that the effects of love could be compared with those of morphine and cocaine, both of which target the brain’s ‘reward centres’…When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain.”

Haha, the science is IN…this proofs it; let’s all fall in *LOVE* with each other and cure all the pain in the world!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

It seems a follow-up on research done in 2003:

BBC News: “Dr John Marsden says dopamine – the drug released by the brain when it is aroused – has similar effects on the body and mind as cocaine or speed…”Attraction and lust really is like a drug. It leaves you wanting more,” the National Addiction Centre head said.”

Hmm, did it really take 7 years to come from ‘love, the drug’ to ‘love, the painkiller’?? ๐Ÿ˜‰

Human Clock

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Have you ever heard of Humanclock.com? It’s a website showing a photograph of your current time, with the photo changing every minute of the day. The site originally started in 2001 and is up in its current form from 2003. Check it out, it’s quite cool.

QOTD October 12 2010

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Eddie Cantor: “Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”