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Found some wireless internet and couldn't resist: the destination of the surprise weekend: Texel!

Weather will be beautiful the coming days: sun, sea and sand between my toes!! 🙂

Kristel arranged the returning 'Birthday surprise weekend'…I really have NO clue where we'll go, exciting! She's continuously putting me on the wrong foot the last days, NOT good for a curious guy like me. 🙂

Am back from a great and relaxing weekend with friends in the always friendly village of Lippenhuizen (indeed, where on the F…ing map can that be found? ;-))

We made no plans upfront and found ourselves enjoying the quiet atmosphere of an old farmhouse surrounded by typical dutch nature views. Had 'some' drinks, marvelous food, played outdoor games (the game of boules was the weekends favourite), listened to great music and had good and interesting discussions. What else can one wish for? 🙂

Photos are uploaded to my Flickr-page!

Guess what? Sun is shining…amazing!!! I'm outta here, off to Friesland! Catchya all on the other side of the weekend!

Meteorologicaly (what a great scrabble-word btw.!) summer started today, 1st of June. Not yet though…frrrreezing cold, around 11 degrees.

Weather actually has been shitty for the past two weeks orso…hope things will be better the coming days as I'm spending the weekend with friends in Friesland (the northest province of The Netherlands).

The region is famous for its lakes, so if weather does what it's supposed to do from 1st of June and Sunday does what the name implies, it would be a perfect day to rent a small sailingboat and drink some beers on the lake…uhhh, sail! 🙂

Am not the biggest soccer fan, but like to watch a game every now and then.

Tonight I saw the dutch team making it to the finals of the European Championship under 21 in Portugal. They beat France in the semi-finals 3-2…way to go guys, hope the 'older' players have the same result in the World Championship starting in Germany next week!

Things come to you when they are supposed to;

Yesterday I started reading 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho, a book my cousin gave me for my Birthday.

I've heared of the book before, but actually didn't know what to expect…well, it's 'A fable about following your dream'! Nice timing since I am thinking a lot lately about where I am today, where I want myself to be and how to get there 🙂

A related quote from the book: "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

Our 9 square meters of grass in the backyard really needed a mow (10 inches is too much :)).

It stopped raining after a week and I got the summer in my head! Nothing beats the smell of freshly mowed grass…:)

I just read a story covered by nu.nl (a dutch news-site, so in dutch!), mentioning that the EU is investigating options to put tax on sending an mail (0.00001 Euro-cent) and SMS (1.5 Euro-cent)!!

What the fuck?!?

I've heared of the idea before, never thought it would be seriously considered/investigated.

Basic reason for it is the fact that globalisation of market and economies make it harder and harder for authorities to collect enough tax-money to run the country. It is for that reason that the European Parliament is finding new sources of income?!? Other ideas for instance are taxing on the online purchase of flighttickets (which in a way would make more sense).

But putting tax on emailing? Or sending text messages (SMS)?? CRAAAZZZY!

Sending an ordinary slain-mail message isn't taxed? The stamp you put on the envelop is to pay for the *transport* of the letter. With email this is all digitally and obviously one is already paying for the transport mechanisme (your internet-feed), so what the heck?!?

The fee that is proposed is near to nothing, so no one will really feel it (besides the small number of large corporates sending 100,000's of mail per day), but the idea alone…STOP IT!

How would they like to track this anyway? Setting up and maintaining a system for this would probably cost more than can ever be collected.

Thinking about this a second time…the only advantage could be that spammers suffer from it, then again…they are not trackable anyway, so will most likely not be taxed. 

The SMS-tax is considerably higher and will most certainly be harder to implement, again…the idea is off-base!

It started last weekend and will go on for the coming 5 weeks orso, packed weekends!

This weekend I'll be starting by staying over at family, go to a 'newly born' party on Saturday and visit friends in the south of The Netherlands in the evening. Then on Sunday I'll play soccer (!?!huh???) in a family tournament…guess I'll need Sunday evening to rest! 😉

Am trying not the miss the Monace Formula One race this Sunday, will probably have to tape it! 🙂

All of you who wanted to see last weekends photos on my Flickr-page in the last hours (in the timeframe of posting them yesterday till approximately now), will have noticed that they were not available, incomplete and a lot of 'bad links'?!?

Apparently there has been a major database problem at Flickr which they have worked on through the night. Most of it seems to be fixed now, it should work again!

So, check 'm out! 🙂

I posted a nice selection of last weekends Belgian Ardennes pictures on my Flickr-site, check 'm out!

I'm in!!! 🙂

Listened to the 5th DevCast this morning and won a 'Golden Ticket' (YEAHHH!!) giving me access to the Podshow Delivery Network and Podshow+, all still in Beta. Am able to take part in/follow the Podshow development…YESSS!!!

We've jsut returned back from the Ardennes, lovely weekend! The weather wasn't too good, but that couldn't spoil the fun. Great to spend a weekend with the whole family!

Pictures to come tomorrow, off to bed now! 🙂

(I found the 'best' way to decide what name to use for the Ardennes area in Belgium; both have hits in a Google-search, but Ardennes completely smashes Ardens! :))

'nuff for this week! I'm off to the Ardens/Ardennes, enjoying a weekend with the whole family, celibrating my parents 35th marriage anniversary! Catchya all later!!

Apple will open its Apple Store flagship today. The store is underground, with a glass cube as entrance (designed by Steve Jobs himself!) sitting on top of it, amazing sight!

The store will be open 365 days, 24 hours a day ready to serve people 'round the clock, targetting to set a new standard in retail experience…I've never been in New York, but this is another reason to go there…soon!! 🙂

Via frEdSCAPEs:

The next generation search engines could very well look something like InquisitorX.

Check it out yourself! It's a nice cross-over between a standard search engine and the highly valued Mac OS X Spotlight search technology which displays the results while you type. Supported search engines are A9, Amazon, Digg, Flickr, Google, Technorati and Yahoo!

Apple: “MacBook: the most advanced affordable Mac notebook ever.”

Today Apple released the successor to its entry level notebooks, the MacBook! It replaces the G4 iBook as well as the 12″ G4 Powerbook and can be seen as the little brother of the “MacBook Pro” line of Intel Core Duo based notebooks released earlier this year…uhhhh…I wanna have?? 🙂

Michal & Eva in Amsterdam,
originally uploaded by raymondpoort.

Robbert and I met up with Michal and Eva whom we know from Pohoda last year. Great to see them in our country! They love Amsterdam…uhhh, despite of or thanks to the coffeeshops? 🙂

three-wheel car,
originally uploaded by raymondpoort.

A car you don’t see that often anymore, a three-wheel car (or tricar for the British), picture taken in Amsterdam today!