New online music site

One of my rss-feeds pointed me to a new 'play online music for free' site: We7.
Interesting, as sites like Pandora were forced to restrict themselves because of the licencing costs.

Anyway, the sound is good and bandwith is adequate (no sudden stops midsong). So far.
I'm probably going to create an account and play around with it.

Time sync of a linux virtual machine on an ESX host

It took me a while to find this following information, maybe it is of use to someone out there.
If you have installed the VMware-tools on your linux box but don't have X you can't use 'vmware-toolbox'. However you can turn on synchronisation with:

> vmware-guestd --cmd "vmx.set_option synctime 0 1"

You can (and should) turn off ntpd if you do this.

Leek pie

Lynn's 'special recipe' leek pie.
As usual, this gets gobbled up pretty quick in our household! :-)

Thanks, redundancy

We had a circuit breaker trippping in our server room this weekend.
Luckily it was only one and all our servers have dual power supplies. Still, nice to know things actually work and are connected properly.

Sep 28 04:44:46 Fibre Channel Loop is Down (8012)
Sep 28 04:44:58 Availability for LUN 600508B40001356500016000004A0000 changed to Reduced
Sep 29 07:47:24 Fibre Channel Loop is Up (8014)
Sep 29 07:47:41 Availability for LUN 600508B40001356500016000004A0000 changed to Alive

Merel hast passed her final exams!

She was nervous until the final liberating phone call from school. She shouldn't have worried, she has marvellous grades.
So, as is customary here in the netherlands, we hang out the flag with the schoolbag attached.

Sun screens and roll-down shutters

Yesterday our house was upgraded with sun screens and roll-down shutters. I'm sure that in a few weeks we will think 'now why didn't we do this years ago'. It took the workmen only five hours to attach them.


There are some more pictures here.

Chimney sweep

We don't use our fireplace that much, so we don't need to have our chimney sweeped that much. But because our chimney doesn't get sweeped that much, we don't use our fireplace that much.
Anyway, it's done now.

Unexpected guest

Not knocking on the door but quietly waiting to be let in, yesterday there was a duck standing in front of our door. When Lynn opened the door it just walked in and started eating the pieces of bread she threw. Of course I had to get my camera.

Accepted!

Our daughter Merel has been accepted as first year student on the Media College Amsterdam.

She has been a bit nervous about this because admittance was partly based on her portfolio. And as her current schooling is floristry she was unsure if her work would be good enough.

Now all she has to do is pass her exams...

Brilliant albums don't get posted on usenet

The last few years I have been getting more and more picky about actually buying (gasp!) cd's. I download a lot of stuff to 'sample' it and there is some nice stuff here and there but most of the times it's only a track or two that's really interesting. Other times a potentially good album is spoiled by the Loudness War and I then I think I might just as well stick with the mp3's instead of paying money for a cd that will not sound much better.


Anyway, a few weeks ago I ordered the new Pugwash album Eleven Modern Antiqueties from their webshop (no use looking in the shops here) and it's a beauty. It's also a real 'Album', not just a bunch of good songs. It speeds up, slows down, gets melancholic and makes you smile. What's even better is that it sounds great, you can actually turn the volume up and not be ashamed. There are samples on their website and MySpace.

Another album that looks promising is the new Milk & Honey Band record. Someone made a clip for new track Spiral and Arc that is posted on the Hubble Space Telescope site because they liked it so much.

A room with a view

Last weekend we returned from a trip to Gerolstein in Germany. We rented a five person bungalow but were upgraded to a bigger and newer six person model due to problems with the heating. Included (for free) was this grand view.

Magic moment

No, that's not what normally happens when Maui (that's the black cat on the left) and Jumper (the dog) meet. But for a few magic minutes they were peacefully sharing the cushion. Luckilly the camera was at the ready (with working batteries even!).

I'm available.

No I'm not.

Let me explain. I had the privilege to have two of my tracks (recorded in the early 80's) included on the Trumpett Days lp (yes, as in vinyl).
But it turns out it's already sold out right after the release! Only 520 copies and it will never be 'repressed' :-)
You can listen to a clip on the Enfant Terrible site or on the VPRO luisterpaal (but I think it will be gone soon).



If I get some more listens on my MySpace page I will put up some new/unreleased tracks there. I also take requests ;-)

Ninety-eight!

Our 'auntie' Elsie from the Ilse of Wight celebrates her 98th birthday today.


The pictury is from july this year, although I understand the weather's not too bad on the island at the moment.

Proud mother

Last weekend my mother received the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, which is the highest Catholic Church award for "distinguished service to the church by lay people".



For almost 35 years now, she has been working as a volunteer in a nursing home to help people in wheelchairs to attend mass. My brother set things in motion to apply for this award, so he got the honour to pin up the medal. The person on the left is the director of verpleeghuis Prinsenhof.


Pictures by Pastor L. Kaserer

Birthday Girl, anyone?

You know the movie, right? Well, I really had a laugh while reading this message that for some reason was not marked as spam. I mean, who believes this stuff?

Write to you the woman from Russia. My name is Olga. And I'm 26 years old! I want to find the man for serious relation in your country. I am ready for creation family and want it very much. I cannot find the man in Russia for myself because it very difficultly in Russia. It is a lot of men in Russia who drink alcohol much and I'm not like it. I want to create family and to live in your country because the government to care about people. I want to live and be sure in the future. In Russia it is not possible to live easy.
I want to tell about myself a little. I live in city Yoshkar-Ola. It's 1000 km from capital of Russia Moscow. My city small and very beautiful. I work as the seller in shop home appliances. I'm cheerful woman who like to go for sports and do all what like are usual peoples. My history: I'm with my girlfriend were going to go in your country as tourists for search of men for serious relations. But my girlfriend could not go with me. She had problems with your family. But very soon I will receive visa and I don't want to lose a chance to arrive in your country. I will receive visa in 7 days for your country. Now I'm in Moscow also and waiting for reception of my visa. It will be great if you can meet me and we can to have relations with you. I'm understand that it very strange, but probably it's desteny for you and me. I understand that you will ask me "Where did you get my e-mail?" I'm right??? ;) Ok, I got your e-mail through internet dating agency in my city. I gave them my letter and they told me that they will send my letter for 4-5 men. And I will be very happy if YOU will answer to me.
I will be very happy you will write me and we will have our meeting very soon. And it is possible we a meeting in 7 days because I can arrive to you.
Please tell to me about yourself a little! What is your full name? Your age? City?
I send to you my photo with hope that you will like it and answer to me back...
I will wait your answer so much...
Write to me on e-mail : olga********@**.ru
Yours new friend Olga

There's nothing decent on the TV page

I've been working on a way to know in advance if TV series we follow are really new or that the channels switch to re-runs in the middle of the season (something our commercial channels are known to do a lot, even with hit series like CSI).
Luckily the tv guide lists the episode name (sometimes a lame translation to dutch) and thanks to all the episode guides on teh interweb most of the times I manage to have a timetable ready for the week.

I started out with a bunch of hyperlinks (bookmarks) but wanted to have them available on other computers so I created a html page. Next I made things neat using a table structure and links to the IMDB because there you can directly link to the season. Handy, because there I link to the season that we are watching at the moment (a lot of the time the channels start with a number of reruns when series are resumed and I hate to start watching only to find out it is vaguely familiar and getting more so by the minute).

Anyway, now I've started working on the page I will probably be working to get it to looking better and better. I think finding out about CSS is the way to go.

Meanwhile, take a look here.

Nice movie

Thanks to the 'AH Filmweken' we went out to see a movie again, with the kids. It was The Bourne Ultimatum and is highly recommended if you like a good movie with a lot of action. We all jumped in our seats a few times (a good sign).
After we came home we pulled out the previous 'Bourne' move (The Bourne Supremacy) because we were a bit confused by the story. Not that the story matters that much with a movie like this, but it turns out that the story of the third movie actually starts before the end of the second one. For instance, the 'incorrect' date of Jason's birth (an important clue in the third movie) is already mentioned in the second movie.
Anyway, just as with the old James Bond movies (I think 'Never Say Never Again' was basically a remake of 'Thunderball') this does not take away any of the fun.

The End of an Era

Daniel did his last paper round yesterday. After more than two years, it was time for a change. Here he is loading the last stack in his bicycle bags (the bags were collected this afternoon by the next 'victim').

Back to school, bringing back presents

It sure was a long summer this year but finally our kids went back to school again this week. Merel is in the final year of the VMBO-green and as her profile is 'flower' it looks like she will bring home a boeket of flowers every week :-)

Merel made this boeket yesterday, it got the best grade of the class (9 out of 10, graded on exam level).

This was made three days ago. I postponed making the picture to this morning and as you can see (if you click the picture to enlarge), some flowers are already losing their freshness.