raymondpoort.com

Everyone knows I *love* my cats…if only I had a piano, they would rock da house!

As mentioned yesterday, my sister (Martine) was due to deliver any day…well, she ‘decided’ to pick her own Birthday as THE day!

Yesterday evening at 20.30h she and my brother in law (Arjan) got a baby boy, named Tygo! Everything is good with mother and son…and father…and grandfather/grandmother (this is a first timer!)…:)

Long live Skype, as I was able to see the baby live last night, wow! I’ll put up a picture later.

Sjeez….I am uncle Raymond now!

My sister has her Birthday today, 30 no less…as ‘we’ say in Norway: Gratulerer med deg!!

She’s also (very) pregnant and due to deliver any day…the doctors calculated the baby to come on the 25th, that IS tomorrow! Wow, I’m gonna be uncle!!

OK, thanks for all the advice and tips; I made up my mind and have decided to go with WordPress as blogging tool for my .com domain!

Basically I feel like learning something new and since WordPress has a lot more features and development going on, it will bring me more.

To be honest, the main reason I choose Pivot back in 2005, was the fact that I didn’t have a MySQL database in my hosting package…and I am WAY too cheap to pay extra for something I think should be standard!

Well, I’m not leaving Pivot entirely (yet?), but am interested in getting cross-posting working for both domains, so, between Pivot and WordPress that is. I should have the time coming weekend to work on things and go live!

My baby is flying to Houston coming weekend and….might come back with an iPhone!!! That would be soooo cool!

If things go as hoped, I expect the phone (sorry, the iPhone!) to come with the latest and greatest software (v 1.1.3, released during last weeks MacWorld)…that means I’m up for two challenges:

1. jailbreak it; in order to use all its functionalities except the phone

2. SIM unlock it; so I can use it with a different carrier than the U.S. based AT&T

All information I found on the net so far shows that the v 1.1.3 jailbreak is done, but will only be made available in February. :(  The SIM unlock might require some additional hardware, but I expect that software solutions will be available soon…right, developers??

Am wondering if I could downgrade the software to the previous version (v 1.1.2) for the time being, it would make things a lot easier!

Woo-hooooo, am thrilled! (yeahyeah, I *do* realize I sound like a geek hehe;))

Here’s another ‘cultural difference’ between The Netherlands and Norway;

In Norway most water taps in public buildings (toilets of bars for instance) use a mixer tap with a single valve, allowing you to mix the water temperature as you like.

In The Netherlands most of water taps in public places are just single taps, supplying only cold water.

I often see the mixer taps in Norway (in houses too) set in the middle position, providing a nice mix of warm water.

So, people here wash their hands generally with warm water, while most people in The Netherlands wash their hands with cold water…hmm, could it be that Norwegians warm up their hands this way in order to protect them from freezing off in the generally colder temperature in Norway??

Hehe, and I thought I emigrated to the land of tough Vikings!

In 2005 Steve Jobs delivered a commencement speech to the
graduates of Stanford University…it’s less then 15 minutes and I recommend everyone to take this time and listen to what he has to say…trust me, you will learn from it.

…everything happens for a reason!

The transcript of this great speech can be found in the Stanford University News Service Archives.

Mark Twain: "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

TGIF!

Am pretty knackered after an intensive week, but still have some energy left to go to the Balkan Beat Party tonight in Oslo!

It’s becoming very popular and I’m sure it’s an interesting experience when Vikings are mixing with people from the Balkan, topped off with a cheesehead twist!

Hey, hey…it is party time!!!

Will be working on the .com domain and weblog coming weekend (it’s still a re-direct to the .nl website).

Did not make up my mind yet on what weblog tool to use…I’ll either give Wordpress a try (it seems to be the most popular tool out there), or stick with Pivot…can use some advice here, anyone?

Still having ‘Airy’ thoughts crossing my mind…this notebook ROCKS!

I know some people are expecting a blogpost from me on Apple’s latest announcements as made by Steve Jobs today at MacWorld.

I just watched his Keynote speech so, here we go!

Steve said he liked to talk about four things today:

1. Time Capsule. It’s a companion product for Time Machine, basically an Airport Extreme basestation with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive enabling backing up wirelessly

2. New iPhone features; Maps with location (a great, innovative way to find your actual position by triangulating signals from WiFi Hotspots and GSM celltower information!)…Webclips…Customize home
screen(s)…SMS multiple people at once…Chapters, subtitles, languages…Lyrics support

The iPod touch got the same new features as well as some new apps; Mail…Maps…Stocks…Notes…Weather

3. iTunes
movie rentals, Every major studio is on board offering over 1,000 movies already. You’ll be able to start watching instantly within 30
seconds on all Macs & PCs, iPods and iPhones.

And, as for content on your TV at home…a new version of the Apple TV software allows movie rentals directly on your widescreen TV! This is Apple TV, Take 2 which doesn’t need a computer allowing you
to rent movies in HD quality with Dolby 5.1, play Podcasts and view photos from
Flickr & .Mac, watch YouTube movies, buy TV shows and music and of course still play all iTunes content from Macs & PCs

The tagline for this years MacWorld was; There’s something in the Air…well, there is…and it is called:

4. MacBook Air! World’s thinnest laptop. The features: 3.0 pounds (around 1.4kg),
measures 0.16 - 0.76 inches (thinnest to thickest part), 13.3″ widescreen
display, Full size and backlit keyboard, multi-touch gestures trackpad, iSight camera built in, 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB memory 80 GB hard drive, 64 GB Solid State Drive as option, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Magsafe.

There is no optical drive, options are either a MacBook Air external optical drive or new software that allows you to “borrow” a Mac
or PC’s optical drive over a Wi-Fi network. The battery life is a stunning 5 hours.

Just look at the pictures below, and be sure…this is what I wanna have!

Steve didn’t end with a ‘oh, and one more thing’, instead he mentioned that all of the above is introduced in the first 2 weeks of 2008, and there are still 50 more weeks to come.

I just finished an EXCELLENT Indian dinner prepared for Andrea’s Birthday, our dutch friend who decided to celebrate this event with us up North in freezing Norway…uhh, freezing? The temperature skyrocketted to a stunning +3 dgr Celcius today. Melting the fresh snow as only snow can, even without sun!

Not much too time for late night Birthday festivities though…am flying out to The Netherlands tomorrow early morning, business meetings until Thursday…hehe, I hope I’m able to tune in to Steve Jobs’ Keynote speech tomorrow!

Sholem Asch: "Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence."

MacWorld, the yearly event where Apple kicks off the New Year will be held in San Francisco coming week.

This years tag-line is: ‘2008 There’s something in the air’:

Last year the iPhone was announced…so, what will be BIG this year? Tune in to Steve Jobs’ Keynote speech, Tuesday January 15, at 18:00h CET…it’s a great experience to see him on stage!