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Lowlands!

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Reminder: I'll be blogging live from Lowlands festival this weekend on my Capsi Journal.

Lowlands 2008 Live Moblog

Air Miles is a scam

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Back in the mid nineties when the Air Miles customer loyalty programme was introduced, the idea behind it was that after shopping for a certain while, you would be able to fly for free. So I checked some prices for GIAN weekend on-line.

Fly for free? It's not even the cheapest option! What a scam.

London/Camden trip

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Most concert related entries will no longer be posted here but on Capsi, so if you want to read about my weekend trip to London to see Exit Avenue, hit the link and be happy.

New haircut.. have patience!

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In case you're wondering why I still haven't uploaded a picture of my new haircut: my home Internet won't be restored until after my upcoming skiing trip.

I do of course have Internet access on my mobile, however Opera Mini doesn't allow me to upload files from my memorycard. And although it can take pictures, I don't like the dimension mos orientation of the ones it takes.

I suppose I'll have to upload it in the morning when at work!

Update: gone with the emo, back with the punk. Check the pictures here, here and here!

I remember when..

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I remember...

I feel old.

Real air guitar (and drums)

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Some bloke in Rotterdam created an air guitar that actually works, as well as an air drum kit. Forget about Guitar Hero on your Playstation, this is way more fun!

No, it's not hot air. Mannak demonstrates the air drum set. With two drumsticks he hits the air and indeed: there's the sound of drums. If he strikes at the height of his chess, you hear the cymbals. At the height of his stomach, the bass drum. The sound is made by a small loudspeaker attached to his belt.

Unfortunately not available until April 2008, so forget about getting it for Christmas for now.

I love tuna fish

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I really do, love tuna fish.

I'm well aware that dolphins get caught in nets but is that really on my mind when setting my teeth in a tuna melt? Not really.

I'm also quite aware the species is nearly extinct. Well, me not eating it is not going to make a difference so instead I'll eat as much as I can before it is! The fish might be gone a week earlier but I will have had tenfold the average amount so yay me.

Yum!

(That's all folks! I have a salad nicoise waiting for me!)

I'm not dead!

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It's been three weeks since the last post - eight since the one before that. But I'm not dead, in fact.. I think I'll go for a walk. (Reference will most likely be missed by 80% of the five readers I have left.)

No, it is simply so that life has kept me busy.

There have been ups (concerts, Halloween, K3 Kusjesparade, booking my skiing trip) and there have been downs (mostly work related, but I've also been ill and away).

Capsi continues to get better every week and yet I am still not convinced it is everything I want it to be. And it probably won't be in a few weeks either because I'm taking a small detour for another new project. Fortunately just a blog and therefore much smaller in scale when it comes to programming. "Should be up in no-time!" (TM)

Man-made objects visible from the moon

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Most people believe that the only man-made object visible from the moon is the Chinese wall. As usual, most people are wrong. The Chinese wall might be long, but it's certainly not significantly wide. If it were visible (and it isn't), then certainly a lot of canals, highways and dikes would be too. So please, ignore that urban myth for once and for all because it's simply that: a myth.

So are any man-made objects visible from space? The palms in Dubai might be a good candidate. If you know where to look, both the Jebel Ali and Jumeira Palm islands appear as tiny pixels in Google Earth as soon as your zoom level takes you somewhere between 3000 and 4000 kilometers of eye altitude. That's still a long distance away from our definition of where space begins (I believe 62km is the norm), but so far it's the best we got. Or is it?

I'm willing to argue that we, the Dutch, can actually claim to have made the most visible object: Flevoland. Google Earth is not very useful here because surrounding land blur the distant images into one colour, but again: if you do know it's there, you can easily see it stretches more than a single pixel from the same distance. And it would have to, because this man-made island is probably the biggest artificial object mankind has ever made: dikes, mills and pumps have reclaimed over 1400 square kilometers of land. With a population of over 300.000, the island is not just a fun housing project, but an entire province. And even if it isn't visible from space: it's home to Lowlands festival and therefore worthy to be mentioned.

Boring weeks..

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Being skint isn't as romantic as some want you to believe. Sure, there is a certain charm in finding good deals and cheap forms of entertainment. But to be honest, I prefer the charm of being able to mindlessly spend heaps in pubs, lunchrooms and rock venues. Money doesn't buy happiness but trust me: lack of money doesn't either and with money at least you can get wasted enough to not care about happiness anymore! ;-)

Even though it has only been a week since I saw the Misfits in Amsterdam, a great night by the way, I'm starting to miss beer and live music. Not because it's been too long, but mostly because it looks like it will be a while until I can party hard again. By the looks of it I will have to cancel all planned gigs for the rest of the month. If you know me at all, not being able to go and see gigs is something that makes me rather angry.

On top of that, I haven't seen Laura on-line in a while (sob!). Playing Castlewars isn't the same without her, I tell you. (Maybe that's because against her I actually win a game occasionally, something I have yet to achieve with others.)

So all in all it's been a boring week and I expect a few more boring weeks to follow. The only upside is that I've cleaned my flat and have taken care of overdue laundry, but those aren't tasks I can repeat endlessly so I'll have to find other ways to waste time. If you know of any, let me know.

This is the end, my only friend

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MSN today:

me: had my birthday yesterday
her: how old?
me: i'm no longer a twenty-something
her: *offline*

Okay, thirty now officially sucks. I don't feel any different but apparently it's truly a big con for your social life haha.

Still no power chord..

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Although my new adapter has arrived, the power chord is still not here (those were out of stock but should have been mailed to me yesterday). Major suckage.

Productivity halted

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The past days I've seen a surge in my productivity. At work I've been developing and bugfixing with the greatest of ease, while my personal Capsi.com project has seen major progress while hacking away at the pub (haven't uploaded anything though, most of the features are within the user accounts for which registration is not yet possible anyway).

But major progress is not going to happen today: the adapter of my laptop stopped working which means working on someone elses workstation. Sure, I can get certain things done. But definitely not as fast as I could have using my own desktop, interface settings, scripts, bookmarks, and so on. Reading e-mail through a webmail client is also nowhere as efficient as a proper desktop application, especially not when the hosting provider seems to have fewer clues about uptime and high availability than, for example, the boons at MySpace.

Next time I buy a new laptop I'll make sure to order a spare adapter in advance.. because honestly today has been hell so far.

Almost mature!

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My birthday is coming up in less than two weeks. Most people tell me to expect major changes in lifestyle and maturity when I hit that big three-oh, but they've been saying the same as 25, 21 and 18 so I'm reluctant to believe them. So instead of feeling blue I'm going to celebrate irresponsibly - in London, obviously. Booked my flight and hotel on Monday so I'm ready to party! :)

Jinxed Idol combo

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For a while I've been trying to build Magic the Gathering deck around Jinxed Idol, but I never found a useful combo because on its own it can be a tad slow doing only 2 damage each turn.

The Time Spiral expansion set gets me a lot closer to making such a deck, though: Paradox Haze can give another player an additional upkeep phase each turn, doubling the effect of Jinxed Idol. Add Relic Bane for two more damage each upkeep and opponents will need their enchantment and artifact kill just to make sure they don't lose 4 or 8 life (depending on whether you have two or three of the combo in play at once, and where) each turn.

Probably best to play this combo with a lot artifact creatures (they'd probably leave those alone with the true damage being elsewhere) suitable for defense and sacrifice (Ornithopher) and add Jinxed Ring to add one additional damage each time an artifact hits the graveyard. Contaminated Bond sounds like fun as well because in this setup it allows black to pacify even the scariest creature - opponents shouldn't be too willing to waste 3 life when they see their total vanish every turn.

Something tells me that this deck should be finished with some seeker and discard cards to make it truly annoying, but we'll see when I start testing the deck.

What's up with Rob?

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Other than still being able to write lame rhymes, everything is dandy here. I'm still somewhat hyper from GIAN and with three concerts coming up this weekend this means my happy vibe is going to be a prolonged one! I can't really dismiss Laura either but whatever the exact reason for the vibe, I feel great. :-)

Work is quite hectic, I put in plenty of over-time this weekend. And it looks like trips to Moscow (finally!) and Bucharest are about to happen this month. But anyone who slightly knows me also knows that I like to not just play hard but also work hard (when I'm not lazy). The only downside is that I haven't really had time to work on the new Capsi site but I'm hopeful that I will find a bit of time for that pet project later this week. I still have to finish the blogs, picture galleries, friends lists, proper form feedbacks and whatnot.. the basics look very promising to me though.

Tonight however will be a regular pub night.. I feel like I've deserved it, so you know where you can find me!

Edit: oops, hangover! Also, God apparently felt like handing me lemons because both Alexisonfire shows have been cancelled due to a family emergency for the band. So I made lemonade and hacked together cancellations and postponed dates for the concert site. :-D

Tunnel/plug madness

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Okay, I've made up my mind. (Besides, it's not like you can't change ear jewelry when you change your mind again.)

I've ordered a light blue titanium tunnel, a simple skull plug and the ace of spades plug that I previously mentioned. Now all I need is one more stretch, to 10mm.. before I can find more places in my body to mess with. :)

PS: Happy birthday Kari!

Haircut, tunnel, gig

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It's been a good day: the barber gave me a new haircut, the piercing shop replaced the ring in my ear for a tunnel (and went from 7mm to 8mm for free) and tonight I'm seeing Tiger Army at Waterfront.

Let's just hope I won't be too drunk because I have flight to catch in the morning. Definitely looking forward to GIAN, shopping in London, and spending time with Laura and Rachel.

Ear Plug/Tunnel Considerations

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My ear is now stretched to 7mm and will soon go to 9mm, so I'm getting close to the centimeter I'd like for a final configuration. That can only mean one thing: shopping time!

At the moment I really, really like this plug:

/img/journal/earplug.jpg

But what I don't like about it is that it's mere plastic and that a plug doesn't really show the result of the stretching like a tunnel would: you could fake a plug with any button and some double-sided tape. :D

So perhaps I should go for an actual tunnel after all. (On the other hand, I'm considering to stretch my septum a little bit, so I could always put a tunnel in there?)

Pub poker

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Note to self: only play poker in the pub. Whenever I play it elsewhere, with patience and tactics, I lose money. Whenever I am totally hammered I seem to have the magic ability to go all-in on two-seven unsuited and still win the pot.

Okay, that's not entirely true (I play Hold'Em Limit on my mobile), but I turned another tenner into twenty-two last night with a streak of straights, which means there's four times the amount of money in my account now than what I've started with. I'll admit it's all peanuts and that I'm no big player, but still.. I'd rather make a small profit every week/month than pretend to be great while in reality all I do is make weekly deposits.

So yay to me and yay to drunken poker!

© Copyright 1995-2008 Robert John Kaper. All rights reserved.

Tom has more friends but mine are prettier! (#1/1)