Halloween 2011
Posted on Wednesday 02 November 2011 at 8:55 pm in category: Abby, Kees, USA
In the past week 6 people read this, in the past month 42 people read this.
Ben je al wakker?
Posted on Wednesday 02 November 2011 at 2:34 pm in category: Linkdump
In the past week 6 people read this, in the past month 39 people read this.
Related link: Soms bedenk je opeens iets.
Briljant en nutteloos tegelijk.
Wie is Harco Sorbato?
Posted on Tuesday 25 October 2011 at 2:32 pm in category: Helden - Heroes
In the past week 19 people read this, in the past month 108 people read this.
De laatste tijd wordt het sociale netwerk Twitter onveilig gemaakt door een mysterieus persoon, die schuilgaat achter het pseudoniem @HarcoSorbato. Als u hier alleen komt om het antwoord te krijgen op de vraag 'Wie is Harco Sorbato?', dan moet u maar even helemaal naar het eind van dit artikel scrollen, want daar kunt u de gewenste informatie verkrijgen. Ja, u leest dat goed.
Maar laten we eerst eens kijken wie Harco Sorbato nu eigenlijk is. Volgens zijn 'bio' op Twitter, is dit wat Harco Sorbato het beste beschrijft:
"Held. God. Rockster. Swaglap. Kunst. BAN'er (Bekende Anonieme Nederlander)."
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio, Part 6
Posted on Sunday 16 October 2011 at 8:48 pm in category: Police Reports
In the past week 6 people read this, in the past month 40 people read this.
The police reports have been a lot less hliarious in the last couple of weeks, but in today's Hudson Hub Times I found this one:
Now what does that mean, 'could use better judgement'?
What keeps the court busy in Cuyahoga County
Posted on Monday 26 September 2011 at 12:39 pm in category: Police Reports
In the past week 7 people read this, in the past month 45 people read this.
I've been making a little fun of the Hudson police recently, because it seems that they keep themselves busy with pretty stupid things, if you read the police report in the Hudson Hub on Sundays. To be honest, I am sure they have a lot of other things going on too, and do a lot of good work - but that wouldn't be as funny of course.
If you want to be really horrified by what people do to other people, you should read the 'Court Watch' section in Cleveland's Plain Dealer on any given Sunday. Let's look at a small selection...
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio, Part 5
Posted on Sunday 18 September 2011 at 11:40 pm in category: Police Reports
In the past week 7 people read this, in the past month 45 people read this.
just when I thought the police reports in the Hudson Hub were losing some of their luster, this gem showed up in the September 18th edition:
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio, Part 4
Posted on Saturday 10 September 2011 at 1:53 pm in category: Police Reports
In the past week 13 people read this, in the past month 66 people read this.
From the Hudson Hub, September 11th, 2011:
Hudson police doesn't waste any time messing with sick raccoons. Snare it & shoot the damn thing!
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio, Part 3
Posted on Sunday 04 September 2011 at 3:20 pm in category: Police Reports
In the past week 17 people read this, in the past month 60 people read this.
From the Hudson Hub, September 4th, 2011:
They even tried to jumpstart it...
Righthanded popcorn maffia...
Posted on Wednesday 31 August 2011 at 7:56 pm in category: Whatever
In the past week 12 people read this, in the past month 62 people read this.
A while ago I wrote something about how hard it can be sometimes to be left handed in a right handed world.
That was before I visited the Nashville, Tennessee office of the company I work for. This office has all the necessary office equipment, including a popcorn maker. Unfortunately, the scoop to put the popcorn in the little paper bags is the worst example of a tool that is only for right handed people that I've ever seen:
Are there left handed popcorn scoopers?
Shoemaker, stick to your last
Posted on Monday 29 August 2011 at 10:55 am in category: Whatever, Nerds
In the past week 13 people read this, in the past month 64 people read this.
Do you have a Google+ account? I do. Of course I had to get in on the hype, and made sure I had an invitation, just like I did with Google Wave, a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, Google Wave died pretty quick, but that really had some revolutionary stuff in it. It was cool.
Google+ is actually not that cool, I think. It looks good, there is some awesome ideas in it that Facebook will undoubtedly copy without any shame (they've already copied the best feature), and then it will die too. Over the past few years, I've joined just about any social network out there as soon as it was available. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Orkut (which is Google too, by the way), StumbleUpon (I still use that), ICQ, MySpace, and of course Hyves, which was (or is) very popular in The Netherlands, but is now losing it to Facebook as well.
Usability Issue
Posted on Monday 22 August 2011 at 11:51 am in category: USA, Whatever
In the past week 7 people read this, in the past month 51 people read this.
Here's something that has been bothering me for a while now. I've been to the parking garage of Akron General Hospital quite a few times, and everytime I drive in there, I see this sign:
As you can see, the parking deck has nice color coded floors, so you can remember where you parked easily. The buttons in the elevator inside do not have these color codes, which is stupid in itself, but I can live with that. Somebody has given the basement floor the color green, the ground floor the color blue, first floor is orange, and the second floor is red. A committee has probably looked at it and approved it.
The real problem is this: wouldn't it make way more sense to give the 'Basement Floor' the color blue, so you can remember Blue - B - Basement, and the 'Ground Floor' the color green (Green - G - Ground)? Of course, I'm not even talking about people that are colorblind, but they probably should use the handicapped parking spots anyway. I do not know if everyone has this problem, but I do. When I get in the elevator, I always push the 'G' button, because I remember being on the green floor, and then I end up looking for my car on the wrong floor...
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio, Part 2
Posted on Monday 22 August 2011 at 10:46 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 11 people read this, in the past month 46 people read this.
This is starting to become a returning subject here, so it now even gets its own category.
Weve all threatened our kids that we're going to call the police if they don't do their chores. But a 12 year old, really? And the police actually shows up for that kind of stuff?
Odd sign
Posted on Monday 22 August 2011 at 09:40 am in category: USA, Whatever
In the past week 4 people read this, in the past month 28 people read this.
I've had fried green tomatoes, and they are good. But why would a store called Sam's Applicances in downtown Akron have this sign on the window?
What keeps the police busy in Hudson, Ohio
Posted on Sunday 14 August 2011 at 12:58 pm in category: Whatever, USA
In the past week 11 people read this, in the past month 52 people read this.
This, my dear readers, is what keeps the Hudson Police busy:
From the Hudson Hub, August 14th, 2011.
International Left Handers Day
Posted on Thursday 11 August 2011 at 06:41 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 61 people read this, in the past month 258 people read this.
Related link: Left Handers' Day - Celebrate your right to be left handed
This Saturday, like every year on August 13th since 1976, is International Left Handers' Day. A club of left handed people started this initiative to raise awareness about some serious issues that left handers need to deal with on a daily basis in this world that is dominated (in numbers at least) by right handed people.
I myself am left handed, and going to school when I was a kid, it was pretty unique. It wasn't until I was older and attended Hogeschool Rotterdam en Omstreken that I realized that among my fellow engineering students there was a pretty large amount of left handers.
The laws of nature
Posted on Wednesday 10 August 2011 at 6:34 pm in category: Abby
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 22 people read this.
A conversation I had with my 6 year old daughter today (over the phone):
Abby: Dad, you need to fix my bike
Me: Oh, what's wrong with it?
Abby: I think it has a flat tire
Me: Oh no, a flat tire again?
Abby: Yes, I think so. But it's only flat in one spot.
Me: Only flat in one spot? Is that the spot at the bottom?
Abby: It's the spot where the wheel is touching the street, so I need you to fix it so that spot stays at the top.
Blog hosting moved
Posted on Wednesday 10 August 2011 at 6:22 pm in category: Nerds, Whatever
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 29 people read this.
Related link: A Small Orange Hosting
Remember I wrote this 3 days ago?
Well, today I succesfully moved my website from it's old stomping grounds at MijnDomein.nl to one of the servers of A Small Orange. Although these moves can take up to 72 hours, they say, it was done with 3 hours.
I don't know if you've noticed the speed of the website now, but I have. Loading pages is 3 to 6 times faster all of a sudden! In the "back-end" of the website, where I write these blogposts, the difference at least feels like it is 10 times faster!
Starbucks is throwing laptop-lingerers out
Posted on Tuesday 09 August 2011 at 08:49 am in category: Whatever, USA, Nerds
In the past week 16 people read this, in the past month 73 people read this.
Related link: NYC Starbucks Taking Steps to Block WiFi 'Loiterers'
Apparently the people that use the free WiFi in Starbucks coffeeshops are starting to become a problem. I have to admit I have done this too: you go into a coffeshop, order a cup of coffee (maybe a pastry), and sit down with your laptop at one of the tables. Nobody bothers you, and you can sit there virtually forever.
Some Starbucks restaurants in New York City want to put a stop to this.
Who made this stupid logo?
Posted on Monday 08 August 2011 at 11:24 pm in category: Whatever, USA
In the past week 6 people read this, in the past month 43 people read this.
Related link: via Michelle Malkin » Government logo fail of the day
We all know the goverment can be stupid sometimes. This actually goes for any government, not just the US government, but here is an example of the stupidity of the government of the USA, the land of innovation and hi-tech stuff:
You are looking at the logo of the new Department of Innovation Blog of the Smithsonian Institute, an institute that runs with government money. Everybody knows the Smithsonian. In their own words:
Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian is the world's largest museum and research complex, consisting of 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park and nine research facilities.
From an institue like that, you might expect some technical expertise, right? Well, I am sorry to break it to you, but they are stupid too. Look at that logo again.
Not only can 3 interlocking gears like that never move anywhere, the pitch (distance between the teeth on the gears) is not the same for all three either. This means that even if the two smaller ones were not interlocked, the whole construction would come to a screeching halt after half a turn.
Now, I admit that somebody that makes logos for a living might not know that, but you would think that a whole committee of well-payed people over there at the prestigious Smithsonian Institute have looked at it and approved it. Good luck competing with China!
Where to host a website?
Posted on Monday 08 August 2011 at 11:35 am in category: Whatever, Nerds, Linkdump
In the past week 15 people read this, in the past month 89 people read this.
Related link: Short answer: A Small Orange
A lot of times, I get the question: Where should I host my website? To be honest with you, I really don't know. It all depends. And there are too many hosting companies out there to compare them all. You canl;t really go by these lists of "Ten best hosting companies", because I'm pretty sure the hosting company that pays the most is on the top of those lists.
In the past, I have pointed people to MijnDomein for .nl domains, they seem to do a decent job, for not much money.
For non-Dutch people, I've recommended FatCow hosting, but mainly because they are cheap. The quality of their support is not all that great, I think, but if your demands are low, go ahead and do it.
If you want my honest opinion, A Small Orange hosting is the absolute best I've ever tried. They have a very knowledgable crew of people, that speak English. Their servers are fast, and their 'Tiny' plan is enough for most small websites or blogs. You can also register .nl domains with them, and this blog is going to be moved to their servers soon (it's on MijnDomein now, but it's just too much hassle to pay their Dutch invoices with my American bankaccount).
Disclaimer: Yes, these are affiliate links.
Blue Hen Falls
Posted on Sunday 07 August 2011 at 11:23 pm in category: Whatever, USA
In the past week 12 people read this, in the past month 61 people read this.
A short downhill walk through the woods off of Boston Mills Road, in the beautiful Cuyahoga Valley National park in North East Ohio, is a gorgeous waterfall called Blue Hen Falls. Although not quite as spectacular as the nearby Brandywine Falls, that I wrote something about two years ago, it is definitely a place worth visiting.
Things that kill more people than sharks.
Posted on Friday 05 August 2011 at 2:54 pm in category: Linkdump
In the past week 5 people read this, in the past month 46 people read this.
Related link: Things that kill more people than sharks
In honor of Shark Week.
A few yers ago, I posted on Facebook "The most wonderful time of the year: Sharkweek!". Exactly one year later, guess what Discovery Channels advertisements for Shark Week were...bastards!
Memory of The Netherlands (Geheugen van Nederland)
Posted on Friday 05 August 2011 at 10:01 am in category: Linkdump
In the past week 4 people read this, in the past month 24 people read this.
Related link: http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/en/homepage
A great website with beautiful pictures!
Erasmusbrug (Rotterdam) by night
Posted on Tuesday 02 August 2011 at 01:20 am in category: Linkdump
In the past week 5 people read this, in the past month 47 people read this.
Related link: http://static.zoom.nl/98742E10DC05CA316FB0BA7C620E916F-erasmusbrug-bij-nacht.jpg
Erasmusbrug (Rotterdam) by night
Weighing a baby giraffe
Posted on Tuesday 02 August 2011 at 12:07 am in category: Linkdump
In the past week 4 people read this, in the past month 43 people read this.
Related link: http://media2.wavy.com/photo/2011/07/29/GiraffeBabyWeight_7.29.11_20110729135326_640_480.JPG
A baby giraffe gets weighed.
Co-creation: learn from the masters.
Posted on Friday 29 July 2011 at 10:43 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 4 people read this, in the past month 32 people read this.
This was written for The Creative Impulse
Of course I should never have tweeted that I would write a blog post for anybody, about any subject.
Because within minutes, @CreativeImpulse asked me to write something about co-creation. Of course I was too proud to just say I wouldn’t do it, so here I am, writing about ‘co-creation’, something I’ve never thought about before, and a subject I would’ve never come up with myself. But here we go...
Witold Pilecki, the Auschwitz volunteer
Posted on Wednesday 27 July 2011 at 7:00 pm in category: Helden - Heroes
In the past week 16 people read this, in the past month 80 people read this.
Nobody really likes war. Wars aren't really fun, people die and stuff. But there's one positive thing you can say about wars, and that is that a good old-fashioned war usually creates a couple of heroes.
One of the heroes of the Second World War (or World War 2) is definetly Witold Pilecki, who is (as far as I know) the only person ever that volunteered to be imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Old blogs online
Posted on Wednesday 27 July 2011 at 2:25 pm in category: Nerds, Whatever
In the past week people read this, in the past month 13 people read this.
Much to my surprise, I've found an old backup of some blogs I wrote before 2008. to my surprise, because I'm not much of a backer-upper. Anyway, they are online now, becasue I was able to import them to this blog, that runs on PivotX.
There's only one problem...picutres in those blogs are not shown until I open the actual blog, and save it again.
They're all in Dutch, by the way.
A sign in my yard & a tip to save money
Posted on Tuesday 12 April 2011 at 09:09 am in category: USA
In the past week 2 people read this, in the past month 38 people read this.
Today, I have taken my 'being an american' to a whole new level. I now have a sign in my yard. The United States is the only country I know where people express their political views by putting a sign in their yard. Especially when elections are coming closer, almost every house will have a sign (or more than one) to tell you who or what to vote for. In The Netherlands only die-hard partisans would do this. The rest of the population would probably rather have a red hot soldering iron shoved up their nose than tell anybody what their political preferences are.
American politics differ from Dutch politics in a lot of ways. For example, most of the time when voting here in the US, you have two choices for every issue: who is going to be president (choose between these two idiots please), if you are in favor of a tax raise to keep the school going (yes or no), if you agree on having bars serve alcohol on Sundays (yes or no) and a ton of other things.
This is not an April Fools joke
Posted on Thursday 31 March 2011 at 3:27 pm in category: Whatever
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 25 people read this.
I admit, it was an easy joke to make. Yesterday I tweeted that I would give away 50 iPads today. As we all know, today is April 1st, historically a day that people publish hoaxes and other stuff that's meant to be funny. So no, it wasn't true. I was just trying to see if it would spread. And it did.
But I didn't expect is that it would take off the way it did. Within a couple of hours, the tweet had been retweeted and re-retweeted and even more often re-re-retweeted. Lots of people started 'following' me. Of course, by the time most people retweeted, the treshold of 50 had already been passed, so most of those re-tweeters would not stand a chance anyway.
However, today I really do want to give something away. I know it is not an iPad, but hey, it's free, and I thought somebody might be able to put it to good use, or maybe know somebody that could use it. It is my trusted Dell Latitude D800 laptop. It's not new, but it isn't really old either. It has a 1.7GHz Pentium Mobile processor, 1GB of RAM, is ready for WiFi and all that stuff, and has a DVD burner in it as well. I'll throw in the original laptop bag it came in as well. And before I ship it, I will do a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10, so we have no issues with licenses and stuff.
All you need to do to get it is this: explain in an e-mail why you want or need it, in English or Dutch, preferably without spelling or grammar errors. If you convince me, it's yours. You can either come pick it up or pay for shipping, whatever you want.
Below is this text in Dutch.
En nu in het Nederlands:
Ik geef toe dat het een makkelijke grap was. Gisteren tweette ik dat ik vandaag 50 iPads weg zou gaan geven. Vandaag is het natuurlijk 1 april, en het was dus een grap. Ik wilde gewoon eens zien hoe snel zoiets zich zou verspreiden.
Maar dat het zó zou gaan, had ik ook niet verwacht. Binnen een paar uur was het berichtje honderden keren geretweet, gere-retweet en zelfs nog vaker gere-re-retweet. Opeens werd ik door een heleboel mensen 'gevolgd'. Natuurlijk maakten de meesten van deze re-tweeters sowieso geen kans, want de 50 retweets waren binnen enkele minuten al gepasseerd.
Vandaag ga ik echter wel echt iets weggeven. Het is dan wel geen iPad, maar er zal best iemand zijn die er iets mee kan, of misschien ken je iemand die er iets mee kan. Het is mijn gebruikte Dell Latitude D800 laptop, met 1.7 GHz Pentium Mobile processor, 1GB RAM, DVD burner, WiFi. Ik zorg ervoor dat Ubunut 10.10 er schoon op geinstalleerd wordt voordat hij weggaat. En je krijgt de laptop tas er ook nog bij.
Hier is wat je ervoor moet doen: stuur even een e-mailtje, en leg uit waarom je de laptop wilt hebben (bij voorkeur met correcte spelling en grammatica). Als je me kunt overtuigen, is de laptop van jou. Het enige wat je dan hoeft te doen is de portokosten betalen. Of ophalen natuurlijk.
