AboveTopSecret.com: “…this year on October 14th the GFL (Galactic Federation of Light) will show up in a super galactic space ship beyond human comprehension in size…this ship will cover entire cities and circle areas of earth for 3 days…they are here to reveal to the world that it’s time for our awakening, it’s time to realize we are not alone…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4G4mFvM0OYIt has been one of those ‘on da road’-days today; it started in the hotel with a relatively early breakfast at 10am, WAY to early after a great wedding party ;), but at least it made the day longer. We then checked out and drove to my brother to see my nephew Jurre, the little man has grown a lot since I first saw him, two hours after his birth! We grabbed a pancake after that in De Lage Vuursche, at the same pancake restaurant that my grandparents always took us to and found out that service was not what it used to be…still nice to step back in time. 😉
A really yummie Indonesian dinner with Rob and Stefanie followed and now I just arrived in my hotel in Brussels…one beer in the hotelbar and then a good night sleep; I’ll have a full day with meetings with my customer European Commission tomorrow so I’d better be fit!
Our friends Wendy and Amit are getting married today. Friends and family are gathering together at the Doorwerth castle in the east of NL, quite a romantic place for a wedding! I’m looking forward to see the bride, she’ll be gorgeous in white! Saying ‘yes’ won’t be a problem for these two lovebirds, so the party will be great. 😉
One of the benefits of occasionally working from the dutch office, is that I’m able to meet friends and family. Tonight was great in that respect since it enabled me to attend one of my friends (Amit) bachelor party! Not the typical kind, so no nudity 🙁 hehe. Still, a very nice dinner with friends and a hilarious pilot outfit for the groom…he’s close to getting his PPL (pilots license), that’s why. 😉 It finished not too late too, which is nice because I’ll have to start EARLY tomorrow morning, aaahhhh! Raymond out zzzzz 😉
Lyn Evans (Project leader for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider): ‘We all feel as if we are ending a marathon with a sprint. Let’s now bring this machine alive.’
The Large Hadron Collider, LHC, a gigantic scientific instrument built underground near Geneva, basically a circular tunnel with a length of 27km (!), is the world’s largest particle accelerator. This device is built to accelerate the smallest known particles, hadrons, and recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang by a head-to-head collision of two beams of these FAST moving particles traveling in opposite direction.
Some (semi-?)scientist musicians created the following clip explaining the LHC a bit more:
Today the LHC will be switched on for a first attempt to circulate a beam through the entire LHC, the first high-energy collisions are planned from October 21 2008.
Some say that this project is risky and could lead to the doomsday scenario of the possible destruction of the planet. Most scientists however agree that there is no basis for any imaginable threat from the LHC particle collisions…well, I guess we’ll see that today, eh? (and when we see, it directly means we survived! 😉 )
The LHC will be used by researchers to understand and possibly answer questions like (and please focus on the last one, wow!):
– Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?
– Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?
– Do particles have supersymmetric (“SUSY”) partners?
– Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?[1] See also CP-violation.
– Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we “see” them?
– What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
– Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?
– Is time travel (utilising either General theory of relativity or wormholes or black holes) possible?
Uhhh, ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Beam me up Scotty’ for real?? 😉
Apple organized an event today titled ‘Let’s Rock’, that meant ‘Steve-time’…Steve Jobs, a presentation-master in action! I haven’t seen the video yet, I guess it will be released later tonight, but Engadget (among others) was live-blogging the event, bringing you as close as can be (well, almost…I *did* miss Robert Scoble, aka the Scobleizer, who was audio streaming a similar event last year 😉 )
The main announcements from Apple in this event:
This version comes with ‘Genius’, a new way to browse through content and make playlists
– a new version iPod Classic 120Gb replacing the 80Gb and 160Gb models
– a new iPod nano with a new, curved, aluminum design, available in 9 different colors, and it now includes a motionsensor enabling rotation of the display for album Cover Flow and a ‘shake to shuffle songs’ mechanism, nice. The newly introduced Genius function can also be used
– Ipod Touch v2 with a slightly modified design (stainless steel casing and even thinner), a built-in speaker, updated UI, and Genius functionality to create playlists
In the relative short 60 day period that the App Store is open, already 100 milion apps were downloaded! New games were announced, including Need For Speed and Real Soccer 2009…cool! The iPhone/iPod Touch is turning into the best portable device for playing games, eh?
This is a big update, and should fix lots of bugs. It should also decrease the number of dropped calls, improve the battery life, avoid crashes with Apps and have a faster backup process while syncing with iTunes. Furthermore the software includes some great new performance enhancements…a free update, available from this Friday. (well, uhh…I guess I have to wait until my iPhone Dev Team friends release a new version of the Pwnage tool 😉 )
All in all Apple had some great announcements today, then again…the BIG one I was hoping for, a new line of MacBooks, did not come through, yet…guess I have to wait a little bit longer.
Google celebrated its ten year anniversary yesterday, at least, September 7 is the day that Sergey Brin en Larry Page from Stanford university turned their research project ‘BackRub’ into a company with the name ‘Google‘.
Now, ten years later, see where they are; coming close to a world domination of the world of information, or as their mission statement: ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. It comes close to having control over the universe, eh? 😉
Om Malik wrote an interesting post to mark Google’s 10th.
Also, some years back Robin Sloan made EPIC 2014, an online movie. It’s a peek into the Google future, interesting stuff! Check it out, and when you’re done proceed with the updated version, EPIC 2015.
I got the message I hoped for yesterday late afternoon; ‘Mr. Poort, your car is ready’, no more ‘Ray’s running for the bus’ and the most annoying of all; ‘Ray’s waiting for the bus’! 😉
Have to admit that ‘Ray’s sitting in the bus’, ain’t all that bad.
I’m still happy to be able to drive the car again; I need the flexibility and love to have the control over my commute times back! (why is it that buses are late when one is a bit early, and they are right on time, causing you to miss it, when one is just half a minute late?)
Wow, time flies when you’re having fun they say….well, I can confirm that it’s true!
September 4th last year we moved out of NL and arrived in Norway…it feels like yesterday, one big adventure so far that ain’t at its end, oh no!
A crazy, yet very satisfying year when I think back; we’ve done so much, have had a shitload of people coming over to visit us (always great!), found a bunch of new friends, have seen so many amazing new things, learned so much…always ready to experience new things, and lovin’ it!
Google yesterday released its own browser called ‘Chrome‘ (give it a try, I’m actually liking it so far), more information on the browser can be found in this comic book…funny. 😉
They claim that they don’t intend to run into a browser-war with IE, Firefox or Safari (plus Opera to a certain extend)…it could very well be the truth, who knows, really?
My take?
It’s just a spin-off from the actual product, soon to be released; a browser for the mobile platform…Apple has great success with MobileSafari for iPhone, Google is soon to release Android, its mobile OS, and certainly wants (/needs?) to run its own browser on it.
I brought the family-car to the garage today to have the power steering pump repaired…expected time to repair, well, uhh, just a couple of hours, they said…hmm…well, uhh, NOT! 🙁
It turns out that some other things related to the power steering pump were running bad, and since that could potentially damage the engine, driving is a no-no until it’s fixed…and…they can fix it only after they receive the required car part from France!! Aaahhh, come on people, it’s just a friggin’ basic Renault Mégane Scenic, not some special, one of a kind old-timer orso!! (or is it…? ;))
Anyway, they ‘hope’ to have it fixed on Friday…that means that Ray’s in the bus the coming days, nicely increasing my commute time from roughly 45 mins to over 1.5h…one way! Damn!
Well, at least that’ll give me more than enough time to catch up on some podcasts! (I am a bit behind on No Agenda and The MacCast)
Hmm, it’s not the best start for yesterdays rabbit, rabbit…still 28 days to go though…
Hey, by starting this first day of a new month saying: ‘rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit‘, I’m gonna receive good luck for the rest of this month, groovy! 😉
Yay, I made it!! I just crossed the finishline of the crrrraaazy mountainbike race called ‘birkebeiner’, hmm, I guess that makes me a birkebeiner in a way, eh…;)
I’m pretty pleased with my time too, 4h54m, and that includes the time I took some rest. Woohoo, not bad for someone who hardly trained! 😉
Kudos to Kristel, who has been driving the whole day; bringing me to the start this morning, meeting me halfway for a kiss and a picture and making it (just) in time for a finish photo!!
We’re on our way to Willy’s Birthday party now, he turned 40 two weeks ago, hehe, I’m in the mood to party!!
Well, tomorrow is the big day; 91km mountainbiking through the forest from Rena to Lillehammer, I’m really excited about it…I will be a birkebeiner! 😉
You can track my progress during the race via the sportsim site, just do a search on my name.
Now, it’s time to hit the hay ;)…I have to leave EARLY tomorrow morning!
I wasn’t able to update my iPhone to version 2.0.2 yet, I lacked time to go through the complete process at first and by now I read some reports of (minor) issues with the release…since there ain’t that many new features in it, I’m holding off, waiting for v2.1 in September…;)
Hmm, a not so nice coincidence;
Today exactly one year ago our car (the infamous family-car) decided to break down with a failing thermostat house…this year it decided to fail on the power steering pump. 🙁 🙁
We’re not really lucky with this car, and Norway is certainly NOT the country you want to be in, at least in case of car repairs; prices here go through the roof! So, I bought a new pump in NL where it’s almost half the price and am now searching for a decently priced workshop to build it in.
Ehh, perhaps i should just buy an old Volvo and say byebye to costly (/any?) car repairs?!?
Apple released new iPhone software last week Monday (version 2.0.2) and the iPhone Dev Team included support for this new version in their Pwnage tool yesterday…I’m gonna give it a go tonight, from what I read it is supposed to speed up some of the applications!
Some say that all good things come in threes…in other words, when something good happens, it will be followed by two other similar, good, things.
I have heard people in aviation say that airplane crashes come in threes (not so good, eh?)…we’ve had Madrid last Wednesday and Bishkek yesterday…uhmm, did I miss one or will there be another one soon?!? And if so, would that mean that all BAD things come in threes??!?
Some belief that the rhythm of the world is based on the number 3, it’s a magic number and it is good.
Hmm, confusing…;)
One could argue that ALL things come in threes?? Good or bad, who decides on that anyway?? Perhaps all things just come? And they just are…
Just for the record; I LOVE Google Maps on my iPhone!
I was biking today (a nice total of 60km) and climbed up the Grefsenkollen hill to stop at a small restaurant owned by some fellow dutchies, Robbert and Trine. I knew that it should be possible to take a shortcut home through the forest from there, instead of following the main road, and decided to go for it (hey, I have a mountain bike, right? ;)). The only challenge was to find the right way…and THAT is where Google Maps comes in! (built in standard into iPhone, no GPS for me since I don’t have iPhone3G)
See the map below (and click to enlarge) for the difference between the main road and forest:
It worked perfectly, I occasionally had to stop to check for a left or right turn on the map, but found the way easily, yay!
I’m pretty knackered now, but enjoyed the trip…it was a great! And a perfect practice for next weeks Birkebeiner. 😉
I signed up for a crazy mountainbike race called ‘Birkebeinerrittet’ which is held next weekend, August 30. It’s one of three related Birkebeiner events; the Birkebeinerrennet (a 54km ski race), the Birkebeinerløpet (a 21km cross country running race) and the Birkebeinerrittet, a 91km mountainbike race through the forest…uhmm, that means rough, off road terrain, with some steep climbs along the way, brrr! 😉
The course (click for the pdf):
Besides the fact that this is one hell of a trip, there is a great story behind the Birkebeiner event:
Way back in the 13th century there was a civil war in Norway. Two groups were fighting for the throne, one of them was called the birkebeiners. Their leader died and the birkebeiners wanted to find safe haven for his son, then still a baby. Because of the difficult winter conditions, two of the birkebeiners had to go ahead with the little boy and were able to save him by taking a heroic shortcut via a mountain trail. The boy later became King Haakon and ended the civil war.
Read the full history on the Birkebeiner side or WikiPedia.
Wow, this certainly gives an extra touch to the race, I feel it’s a great way to integrate more into the Norwegian culture…I am honoured to take part in a race based on this historic expedition.
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