B10[mg]

Rarely am I really impressed by an album anymore, yet my first listening to the new Hate Forest album struck me like lightning. I didn't even know this Ukrainian band really. Yeah, shame on me!

Sorrow is perpetual blasting. The drums and bass seem to hit just one rhythm constantly. Add to that the insane guitar riffs and you get some nice minimalistic Slavic black metal that will get you in an evil trance.

The album is just so awesome, that I can play it over and over and over without getting bored of it. Thank god for the "Repeat" button on my CD player.

Time for me to pick up the older albums by this insane band (well, band... guy ;)

Label: Supernal Music

For a recent website I had to find a way to paginate some search results and couldn't find the code I've used before to tackle this "problem" fast enough. So I've scanned CPAN and found three modules that could be used for this task. I've described them in my article use Data::Page

After some complaints about my X and streams from http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/ (a Dutch site which has streams of TV programming in rather good quality), Joffie came up with a great idea.

We should be able to watch those streams on our Xboxes. I didn't check it yet, but maybe a plugin already exists. Let's create one.

I truly loved the idea and went scanning the Net. Not much later, I found a XBMC script that did exactly what we wanted, and so nice! The script does this in such a great fashion that I am truly in awe. What a great way to get more out of your Xbox!

Screenshots can be found at the script's site

Nu.nl had an article yesterday on computer gaming. According to J. Jansz (researcher at the University of Amsterdam), playing games helps developing a personality, due to mixed experiences and emotions.

Good to know that I'm developing my personality by playing Ninja Gaiden. I'd better go work on it right now!

The local supermarket had a special offer today: wireless keyboard and mouse (Trust) for cheap, so I finally said goodbye (for the time being) to my good old, indestructible, clicketyclick IBM keyboard.

This keyboard has many extra keys (Refresh, Email, Home, Calculator, Play, Stop, Volume up/down etc.) and -of course- the infamous MS Windows keys between the Alt and Ctrl keys.

As usual, I buy hardware and then realize that there might be a possibility that it won't work well with Linux. This set (keyboard and mouse) however posed no problem whatsoever. Just plug and ... type!

But, when you have extra keys, you want to use them, so I looked at my first stop in such quests http://freshmeat.net/. There I found the LinEAK project (Linux support for Easy Access and Internet Keyboards). Easy to setup and easy to work with. Before I knew it, I had my dubious Perl and shell scripts run at the press of a button!

The local supermarket had a special offer today: wireless keyboard and mouse (Trust) for cheap, so I finally said goodbye (for the time being) to my good old, indestructible, clicketyclick IBM keyboard.

This keyboard has many extra keys (Refresh, Email, Home, Calculator, Play, Stop, Volume up/down etc.) and -of course- the infamous MS Windows keys between the Alt and Ctrl keys.

As usual, I buy hardware and then realize that there might be a possibility that it won't work well with Linux. This set (keyboard and mouse) however posed no problem whatsoever. Just plug and ... type!

But, when you have extra keys, you want to use them, so I looked at my first stop in such quests http://freshmeat.net/. There I found the LinEAK project (Linux support for Easy Access and Internet Keyboards). Easy to setup and easy to work with. Before I knew it, I had my dubious Perl and shell scripts run at the press of a button!

NanoBlogger 3.2 is out and I decided to upgrade. It took some time to convert the templates and such (especially my own hacks) but now it seems the conversion is completed Yay!.

Hopefully nothing is broken. If it does seem like that, refresh your cache and see if it still happens. If the bug is still there, let me know.

To celebrate my one year anniversary of being together with my lovely girlfriend (yes Sandra, you ;), I decided to take her to the Dolfinarium.

Before we could go though, I had to check the opening hours. If a referendum shows that the majority of people don't even want shops to be open on Sundays, how sure can you be that the Dolfinarium will be?

The first hit on a Yahoo query directed me to a funny site. Not the official Dolfinarium site (dolfinarium.nl), but some portal'ish website that couldn't provide me with the answer:

Geachte bezoeker,

Vakantieland.nl is pas 214 weken geopend voor het grote publiek.

Dat betekent dat wij van veel bedrijven nog geen volledige gegevens hebben.

Roughly translated, that is:
Dear visitor, Vakantieland.nl has been opened for only 214 weeks. That means that -for many companies- we do not have all information yet.

I didn't know it would take more than 214 weeks to add opening hours to a website, but ok.

After a small drive we arrived at the park and it was really fun. Dolphins, seals and sealions everywhere, doing silly shows and tricks. The weather could have been better, and also the entrance fee (for I think €24/person is quite much!), but all in all it was good fun. Hurray for the real Flipper and his friends at the Dolfinarium!

My girlfriend (Update: yes, you Sandra) could arrange two tickets to see Duran Duran. Of course I had to say yes to the deal (half priced tickets) and so we were standing in front of the stage, enjoying the good old songs and some new material.

The gig was located in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. I had never been there before (bands I like usually don't play in such big venues) and was pleasantly surprised by the good sound. All instruments were clear and balanced.

This type of concert (boyband ;) was new to me. The crazy 80'ish moves made it hilarious. Also I was surprised to see that the band still has a large female fan base of both forgotten times and nowadays.

After two hours of reviving childhood memories, the awesome show came to an end. Too bad the merchandise was over-priced. €32 is just too expensive for a shirt in my humble opinion.

1. Sunrise
2. Hungry like the wolf
3. Planet earth
4. Union of the snake
5. Astronaut
6. I don't want your love
7. Sound of thunder / i feel love
8. Come undone
9. What happens tomorrow
10. Reflex
11. Tiger tiger
12. Chains
13. Ordinary world
14. Save a prayer
15. Bedroom toys
16. Notorious
17. Nice
18. Careless memories
19. Wild boys
20. Come up and see me
21. Girls on film
22. Rio