B10[mg]

BoingBoing today posted about a guy believing he was living inside the Grand Theft Auto game.

In 2001, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reported that a man was imprisoned for stealing cars and assaulting people with weapons, then sent to a psychiatric facility for "acting in a bizarre manner." It turns out he thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto (the article doesn't say it was GTA, but what other game could it be?)

Being an extreme fan of GTA San Andreas, I can share this guy's weird thought pattern though. After countless of hours stealing bikes, cars, airplanes, shooting up entire gangs, I found myself walking down the street looking for nice ramps and bikes to just jump on. Luckily I can control myself, but I can see playing these kind of games for too long messes up your mind ;-)

That being said, the new GTA IV trailer has been launched and now I'm confused. Shall I buy the not-so-good Xbox 360 or the way-too-expensive PS3 ? I must have GTA IV!

GTA, xbox, ps3

You must get bored of my "header images" posts, but I promise from now on, they will not come by so often anymore, for I recently closed my European Tour with a visit to Berlin and Potsdam. Since Potsdam is nicer for photographers (and guys who pretend to be), the new header images only come from Potsdam (the Neues Palais and Orangerie, to be exact).

germany, berlin, potsdam

For a while now, I use Amarok and I figured I'd look at the integrated ShoutCast feeds for a while. Over there I found a feed called C64 SID Stream A click later I was listening to the good old C64 tunes!

So I went on a quest to find more of these precious little gems (hey, if you've had a C64, this is cool! Right, Brian? ;-) A little later I found a SID Player and two search engines with more than enough cool tunes.

Ah, The Last Ninja, Impossible Mission, Defender of the Crown! Sweet nostalgia!

C64, music, sid, amarok, shoutcast

BOK announced yesterday that he was quite happy to finally be tagged.

After what can be considered his longest post ever (fun huh, he knows how to talk about himself ;-), he passed the tagging stuff on to me.

I, on the other hand, did remember being "tagged" before (also by BOK) so I refuse to do it again ;-)

It was fun to read my own post though. Out of all the places I'd rather be at that moment, I have not visited one! The four websites I visited daily back in January 2006, I still visit daily. Oh yeah, I did move to a new city and did get a new job...

So, sorry to say, BOK, but the tagging stops here!

At the train station in Amsterdam, a big advertisement caught my attention. Since I'm not a so-called early adopter, I don't have a phone that can take pictures, so you'll have to do with my description of it, rather than a photo ;-)

The advertisement had an orange background, and in big bold letters it stated "In the Netherlands, more than 200.000 professionals work together to fight terrorism" followed by the text "What can you do?".

My initial thought was to write beneath it: "You can stop the FUD!" But of course I didn't have a big marker with me ...

200.000 professionals? Fighting together against terrorism? We don't have terrorism in this country and please stop trying to convince me that we do.

Sometimes, bad things happen in this country, of course. Floodings, explosions, huge car crashes, anything can happen, but usually, a pointless, expensive report later informs us that the authorities did not work together at all. So now I have to believe everybody is working together? Nope, I don't buy it. Besides that? Who are these professionals and who is paying them? Me? Time to visit the website. (www.nederlandtegenterrorisme.nl)

The 200.000 people include army, police, train personnel, cleaning personnel etc. They all keep their eyes open and bravely fight the terrorists. So, yep, most of them are paid by me, the tax payer.

Now the good thing is that the website offers you to download close to all publications they've made (also, probably paid for by me), except for this poster that got me angry at the train station. But oh well, let's see what we're supposed to do, according to my government. There's even an English PDF document

The document states under the header "what can you do?" that first of all "we must not distrust eachother". Great! I love, but wait, there's more, "but we have to be vigilant". What? We have 200,000 people guarding us, but we have to be vigilant? I'll quote from the brochure:

If we all stay alert, we can reduce the chances of an attack.

• Pay extra attention in places where there are a lot of people, such as metro and train stations, festivals, concerts and shopping centres.
• Check where the emergency exits or escape routes are in every building you enter.
• You might come across websites that incite hatred or violate the law in some other way. Report this at www.meldpuntcybercrime.nl.
• Never leave your belongings unattended.

Ok, fair enough. After that it explains what should be "suspicious" and in most cases the advice given is: call the police

My god, what happened to this country? Why should we spy on eachother? Oh yeah, don't distrust eachother, but do spy...

Probably the best part is that they try to justify the stupid compulsory identification act (search for it ;-)

The Compulsory Identification Act was introduced in part to prevent terrorism. Individuals aged 14 and over are required to carry a passport, driving licence or identity card with them when they are out and about. This makes it much easier to get the personal details of individuals who behave suspiciously.

Even if there was a terrorist. You think he'd carry his/her passport around?

All bullshit! The only thing you can do to stop the godforsaken government is to STOP THE FUD!

terrorism, fud, nederland tegen terrorisme

My mother-in-law is staying in the country for three months and since this is her first time in Europe, we, of course, have to travel around some. The cities I joined (for I had never been there myself) are Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Berlin. Berlin is still a few weeks away, but the other three capitals, we've visited already.

Paris

Paris, the capital of France and known for the Eiffel Tower. We took off from Amsterdam by Thalys, a high-speed train that will bring you to Paris in only a few hours.

I was not sure what to expect. Of course I have heard about all the sights and seen quite a few pictures before, yet I truly was not expecting much more than the Eiffel Tower and Arc d'Triomphe. What a big mistake! Paris has so much more to offer, for example the "Sacré-Coeur", and of course the awesome "Notre Dame".

We had awesome weather, which made everything very impressive and cool. Definitely a city to return to some day!

Barcelona

Home of Gaudi, the modernist architecture, this city didn't attract me much in the beginning. I'm not a big fan of the modernism, and thus I didn't like the "Sagrada Familia" and "Casa Batllo". The Ramblas were cool however and the weather (27+ degrees Celcius all the time) made it a wonderful city trip. I did enjoy "Port Vell" and "Parc Guell" quite much.

Rome

The Eternal City; City with too much history that still is on show. Wow, am I impressed by the beauty of Rome! The Colosseum, Palatino, millions of churches, the Trevi Fountain and by far the best part: the Pantheon! Unfortunately, I was hit by the overkill factor, as I was in Egypt too. After seeing a lot of old stuff, you'll get to this "... ok, now that is enough!"

Luckily you can always grab some coffee (bring your Lonely Planet and visit the top 5 coffee places ;-).

All in all, 3 very nice trips!

paris, barcelona, rome

I've returned from Barcelona and Rome so here are three more header images (well, from the Colosseum and Pantheon only) ;-)