Ski Cross

Saw this live, yesterday on BBC coverage of Vancouver 2010...
Real daredevils in action: a spectacular crash during ski cross

Ski cross is AMAZING...


A full report on the Ski cross event from yesterday, in Flemish, here:
Full report

Enjoy!

Holy Cow!!

8 months!!

That's how long it's been since I've posted something on my blog...
Neglection in its purest form.

A lot of stuff happened in the meanwhile though, and trying to think of them in a chronological order is hard...

The offspring
James is 2 and a half now, and you can notice :-)
He's talking non-stop (Flemish to me, and English to mommy), singing along with childerens songs, playing with bricks, jigsawpuzzles, looking and telling us what's happening in his books, and crazy about Jungle Book. (especially the part with the elephants, where he demonstratively stamps around shouting 'Hup two three four, One two three four'!)...
2 weeks ago, we had a bit of a crisis though, as I got a phone call from the daycare centre, telling me that they were taking James to the emergencies in Gasthuisberg (Leuven Hospital), because he had had an accident... I called Cate (not being very prudent with my choice of words, making her jump into a sheer panic), and we both rushed from our jobs to the hospital, to find James happily chattering away with the nurses, stealing their hearts, but with a big bandage around his right index finger...
Apparently he had put his finger between the door and the door jamb, while another kid had pushed the door shut, almost tearing the top of his finger in two... The top part of the top of his finger (with the nail) had separated from the bottom part, you could say it was nearly cleft in twain.
The nurses and doctor calmed us down though, I guess they see these kinds of things, and worse, everyday, and as James bravely went through the operation, his finger was put back together with needle and thread, some support-bandages, and a couple of tears...
We're now almost 2 weeks further, and doing the follow-up treating of the wound ourselves, and I think it's looking good; all is healing wonderfully. Tomorrow a visit to our doctor, he'll probably let us know if the healing process is going well or not.

That's one...
Now number two, because yes my little neglected blog, you don't know yet...
Baby number two is on it's way! Beginning of June is for when it's calculated, and Cate and I really have no clue how we're gonna manage two rascals...
To be honest, the second pregnancy is a lot different than the first... Cate is in month 6, and it's only been lately that we've started to think about all the things we need to arrange for the newborn's arrival... (Where I think, with James we started thinking about everything from the day we knew we were gonna have him...)

Which takes me to the next item...

The House
Don't ask.

We're not doing bad, but a speedy renovation is the opposite expression for what we are doing...
James' bedroom is now our main-focus, because it needs to be ready asap, so that he can move in and climatize to it, before the new one arrives.
Since last weekend, all the wood-structure is up, now I need to find time to finish the last bits of wood, finish the roof and wall-isolation, lay down the floor, and finish/paint the room...

In a momentary impulse we also started putting in the roof-isolation and false ceiling in the kitchen, but of course we had to stop that, to focus on James' bedroom, as that's the absolute priority now...

With other words, we're continuing... Tim & Cate style.

Geekiness
I'm writing this blog-entry on my new pride & joy; a custom built monster of a PC, that I put together around Christmas. Parts bought through work, and case bought in the UK. It's softly humming in the livingroom, next to the TV, with its open side-window emitting a blue electric wave of light to the corner of the room, so that yours sincerely can quietly satisfy his sudden needs of pc-tinkering while still being sat close to his family... Everybody happy(most of the time) ... :-)

Of course the new PC has an important role in my BOINCitis (see my previous blog), delivering 90% of my total daily credits. A true crunching machine :-)

Voila, that's it for now, I'm quite sure I'll be posting a bit more often now, as I'm quite ashamed I have neglected my dear blog so much in the last half year...

Bewitched

That's what our house must be...

Last week the installation that will take the iron out of the (ground)water was put in place. But... just as we wanted to activate the pump (that's 40 meters below surface) the fuse that's controlling circuit to the motor of that pump blew.
Strange... that pump has always worked, and now, all of a sudden, it seems to short the circuit.
::Troubleshooting::
- Bypass the pressure switch, on top of the pressure vessel in the basement, to make sure it's not that pressure switch causing the short in the circuit.
- As I try to disconnect that switch, it breaks apart. Hmmm, I guess this thing could be the problem, so I go buy a new one.
- Connect everything up again, with the new pressure switch: same problem, the fuse blows.
- Bypass the pressure switch: same problem, the fuse keeps blowing.
- Next step: find the well-pump, and check it.
- Problem: we have no clue where that well-pump is situated in our garden.
- Solution: dig... dig... well, excavate is a more proper word for it... I spent a whole day digging holes and trenches in the garden (up to 100cm deep!) to find the pipe leading to the borehole. After 6 hours of exploring I found it, and waited for Cate to get home (serious man... eh... girlpower included), to hoist the pump to surface. (You should know, the motor of that pump weighs around 50 kg, and there's 40 meters of flexible but heavy pipe attached to it.)
- Disconnected the electricity lead from the pump, and activated the fuse again: it stayed up... no short in the circuit anymore.
- Conclusion: The motor of the pump is blocked or broken, and needs to be replaced.
- Problem: The motor (and pump) were made in the USA in 1983... For a well-pump that's reasonably 'old-age'. No motor can be found that fits the pump we have...
- Solution: a completely new pump needs to be ordered. (And whop! Another bite in our non-existing budget)

Hopefully a borehole and well-pump specialist that lives close-by will have a new pump for us by tomorrow (latest by Wednesday), so that we can start pumping up water again. Then the people from the iron-filter need to come again (fortunately free of charge) to put the installation in service.

I also need to buy 2 new filters for our rainwater-installation, as after 4 months of usage, the current filters are saturated.

Where's that guy that invented eco-friendly building and living? I'd like to shoot him please.

The current home- and foreign affairs

I expected myself to blog more often since our move to Elst... but the contrary has been proven

The House
Let's be honest. It's still just a camping tent disguised as a brick-house.
The water (and consequentially the heating system) hasn't been connected yet, because the water contains too much iron and lime. Filters are needed, but the installer-guy is taking his time to order and install it...
The toilets and outside-tap are working though, because they use the water from our rain-pit. (Which was nearly empty two weeks ago, but fortunately (yep, I'm happy when it rains now) some grand downpour was soaking our region last week)
The bedroom is nearly finished. I still need to finish-off some of the joins of the plasterboards (those up near the crest of the roof), and then it can be painted. After the paint, the laminate floor will be laid, and then finally we can move our bedroomfurniture and clothes upstairs and sleep in the bedroom!
The bathroom is also nearly finished, only the ceiling needs finishing, some lights need mounting, and the shower window needs putting up.
The kitchin is running at 40%. The microwave works, but the oven is (already) broken. The cooker is installed, but the cooker hood isn't. The fridge and freezer are working. The cabinets are installed very professionaly by the kitchenplace, but not 100% correct. (They need to come back to make corrections... weehoo).
And the rest... is for later... :-)
Yes, that's something we learned doing this house: one thing at a time... otherwise you don't finish anything at all... (well, i'm not sure if we really learned... we know it; that's a more accurate description)

The Garden
The 4 cats have a new hobby: "Find the mole".
And eventually kill it, but don't eat it.
We've had 6 (dead) moles on the patio at the back so far. Not bad.
As it turns out it seems like our whole garden is actually one big mole heap. Where we thought they were ratholes; they must be from moles... We haven't seen any rats, just a couple of mice, and loads of moles...
(Yes they are cute... but not in OUR garden! Thank you Musti, Joey, Louie and Malley.)

The grass in the garden has reached about 1m40 now. Poor Old Betsy died on us when we just moved in. (For those who don't know her, Betsy is an old Countax ride-on mower we bought in the UK last year) After trying to troubleshoot what was wrong (what do I know), the conclusion was 'it's probably the solenoid'. Great. What's a solenoid? Well, shortly said, it's a thingy between the battery and the starter engine. If it fails, the mower doesn't start.
As we were in the UK last week, we bought a new solenoid, and yesterday I replaced the old one with it. If I hadn't left my keys in the UK (what? typical? noooo), I could've tested the mower by now, and let you know if it really was the solenoid that wasn't working...

James
He's doing great. He has lots of fun in the new house, running from one side to the other, climbing on ladders and stairs, chasing the cats and playing in the garden. (well, the little piece I managed to mow with the other mower) His talking is improving (that is, he's talking more and more, expanding his vocabulary, but unfortunately he's turning out to speak Japanese, instead of Dutch or English...)
He also made a giant leap in doing his puzzles (you know, baby-jigsaw puzzles), looking at the shape of the piece and then neatly putting it in the right spot almost immediately. Looks like a click was made in his mind last weekend in the UK. (Aah, thàt's how you do it!)
He's still obsessed with cars ("auto auto!"), and Piet Piraat ("piwaaa"). But new interests are coming: Kabouter "Pok" Plop, Aunty "Aati" Aki, and poo ("kaka") (yes, the excreta).
He's 620 days old today (1 year, 8 months and 12 days), and I've enjoyed all 892800 seconds of them :-)

Cate
My dear munchy is under quite some stress. Mostly from her job (of which I cannot speak... I even signed a confidentiality document because as you know she is a secret agent for a secret crazy company with even more secret (and crazier) people), and a reasonable amount of stress caused by yours truly; I'm not doing the household things I should be doing (I seem to be preoccupied with sleeping, working, working more and then some sleeping), which makes the cleaning and tidying-up land on her shoulders alone... It's not fair, so that'll have to change; I'm gonna start tonight by cleaning up the house before she comes home, so she doesn't need to be bothered with that anymore. (And I intend to do that more often in the future as well)

Geekiness
I abandoned the Windows XP Operating System on my home pc, and installed a Linux OS (Ubuntu). Why? Because I wanted to try it.
It looks nice, it works faster, but you need to dedicate some time to it to make it work just the way you want it to... And that I lack at the moment, so I regularly switch back to Windows (it's a dual boot system) if necessary.

I also re-joined BOINC (Berkeley Open-Infrastructure for Network Computing), which uses the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research.
You might know the most popular project of BOINC: Seti@Home. (Search for extra terrestrial instelligence using telescopic data)
Why? Because it's fun (for a geek). You don't need to do anything at all, but you do help scientific studies. Really. I even intend to install a Linux system on my Playstation3 to do just that thing; use the power of the cell broadband processor of the PS3 for scientific research. (Later, when there's time, after finishing the house for example :-))

I stumbled upon a 'new' series on a new channel '8', which broadcasts mostly HBO series and shows... The best one so far (and it's really really brilliant I think) is Flight of the Conchords. If you don't know them, please check this and this YouTube video... That's the kind of humour.
(I'm sure my dad will love it as well :-))
Aki got me and Cate hooked up to The Wire as well, so we have a lot of screenwatching to do... when we find some time :-)


Foreigners
As I already mentionned, we went to the UK last week. I don't know if you had noticed, but it's full of British there... I hope they have a good foreigner-policy.
Cate's mum was delighted, of course, to see James again. I can imagine it's not easy for her, only seeing her only grandchild every 3 months... Maybe we should start using the webcam a little more often, or let James call her more often. (I'm not kidding, James has started to understand the concept of making a phonecall! He listens, and talks when a question is asked. Not that what he says makes any sense, but it's the idea! :-))
A country full of foreigners also has nice advantages: cheaper stuff than in Belgium. So we bought plenty of new trousers, tops, socks and underwear and a baby-slide for indoor and outdoor use, (yes, for James), and some other things.

Pictures... take time to process, and I know I've been lagging enormeously with posting new ones, but I'll try my best to do some updates this week. That's a promise.

Elst!

After 36 hours of non-stop moving, we managed to transport all our stuff from Lotenhulle to Elst. The new house is hardly ready for us, but we are ready for the house :-)
Apparently our internet connection is working, so Telenet did a good job here on Thursday. Cate's filling the kitchen cupboards, half asleep, and I'm emptying the vans (still), trying to find a place to put all the boxes... The garage is as good as full, and there's still a big full van to unload...
Yes.. good planning is a term unknown to us...

Progress

How about an update?

Quite a lot has changed since my last blog post...

Aki's coming back to Belgium (for her a decision made with mixed emotions, but I can assure you I'm glad she's coming back! :-)).

James is still not making any sense while 'talking', but he thinks he is though... You should hear him explaining to Cate and/or me how his toys should be properly arranged (Usually in a for us, silly parents, very chaotic way)... There's some words becoming more and more pronounced though, like Miaauw (cat), Banana or banaah, ball or babaal, Ballauwn (balloon), girauw (giraf), leuuwww (lion), broom-broom or auwtt... auwwttt..o (car)... It's grand.

I started working at Newtel on the 1st of March; what.a.difference! I get time to study, nice collegues, free lunch, better salary-package, and the idea I can make progress (carreer) again. I really needed this change in my life; one of the better decisions I made in the last few years.

Our house is almost ready for the big building-up again. The leveling of the floor is done (under screed is laid); all electricity has been pulled out and renewed (and this time it's nicely integrated under the floor and in the walls); the future office-space (which used to be the kitchen); is level with the rest of the ground floor (and the tiles will nicely merge from living room to office space); All pipes for sanitary and heating on the ground floor are ready (top floor needs a few more); ...
Next week the guy that so professionaly laid the under screed will put all tiles down in the kitchen, living room, hall, little toilet, sauna space and office space, and then we can start putting the gyproc (plaster boards) against the walls and ceiling on the ground floor. We're getting nearer and nearer to the finish!
(I'll post some pictures of the current state of the house later on, probably tonight at home).

Voila, that's it for now... As progress is made, more news will follow here :-)

HDR

What's HDR?

High dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques.
The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

And how is it done?
Well, you take (at least) 3 pictures of the same scene, but every one of 'em should have an increasing step of luminance. (First one underexposed, second one correctly exposed, third one overexposed)
And then it's photoshop time. You can merge the pictures to 1 HDR file, and then start tone mapping to get the picture right.

I tried this for the first time this evening, and here's the result:

Van EarthBlues

Time for a picture update

It's been a while, and some people have been complaining about it, but I've managed to find/make some time to update my picture experience page.


There's a new Special: James' Amazing UK Christmas Tour '08, where you'll find some serious, less serious and funny pictures of our visit to the UK around Christmas. Janet, Sandra, Brian, Justin, Rachel, Liberty, Cate... if you don't like the way you're on the pictures... though luck :-D (Pictures aren't photoshopped, they're just a mere reflection of reality!)




It's finally happened: The pictures of our house renovation project have found their way to my picture page as well. I'll have to make some new pictures, though, as the last ones you can see here, were taken in November... (not that thàt much has changed since then, but... still :-)

Enjoy!

The colour of magic

Yesterday Cate and I started watching the first episode of this 2-episode film-adaptation of Terry Pratchett's novels "The colour of magic" and "The light fantastic".

After having seen the Hogfather (the first Pratchett novel to be moviefied (is that a word?)), I had high hopes for this one. (As in "I hope it's a lot better than the Hogfather!")
As "The colour of magic" and "The light fantastic" are the first two Discworld novels in the series, it would be important for the movie adaptation that the whole impression, the complete picture you get from the Discworld and it's inhabitants, was painted in an witty, describing and somehow accurate way...
After having seen episode 1, I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. Rincewind, Death, Twoflower, The Unseen University, ... it's all there, and it's there in detail! And to my great satisfaction, even Cate liked it!
If you'd like to see Inspector Frost (David Jason) play an anxious, skilless wizzard (yes, with double z), Samwise Ganmgee (Sean Astin) the first (and maybe last) tourist the Discworld's ever known, Tim Curry (Tim Curry) as a superb, power-mad wizard, and many many more great actors, (or if you simply love the novels of the Discworld, it's a must), go buy this movie!

The not so timeless timeless songs

Today, on StudioBrussel, it's the Timeless Top One Hundered.
("De Tijdloze").
An attempt by Stubru and it's listeners to create a Top100 with pop and (mostly) rock songs from the last 50 years.

Already I'm getting frustrated... what is it with some songs people chose?
We've only gotten to number 90 now (an excellent song, which should be a lot higher up in the ranking in my humble opnion; The Doors - Riders on the Storm), and already they played 3 songs that should never have been released in the first place....

98. The Eagles - Hotel California
96. Bush - Glycerine
91. Therapy? - Diane

Come on people, these songs aren't timeless... They're stale... by most.
Unless, of course, that's what makes a song timeless... :)

Dangerous Toys

A year and nine months ago Sony released their third video game console in Europe: The Playstation 3.

You all know me, a gamer to the backbone, so you can imagine how excited I was back then about the release of this next generation game console. I won't go in the (for you undoubtably very boring) details of the technical specifications of this marvel of technology, but I promise you it's very, very, VERY high-tech stuff!

And then I saw the price. A whopping 500 Euros. Compared to an XBox360 or a Nintento Wii... that's an extremely obnoxious pricetag...
Result: wait for the price to come down.
12/2007: waiting... no price cut.
06/2008: waiting... no price cut.
12/2008: waiting... still no bloody price cut. WTF??!!

!BUT!

Something else came down in december. Not the PS3 price I had been waiting for, but The English Pound!
Ohyea; and what's the price for a Playstation3 in England? On Amazon.co.uk you pay at this moment 285 pounds for the console with one controller and a game of choice!
As the pound is now worth 1.02 Euros, you know what that means!

!YES!

It's mine now, I'm absolutely loving it, but I have to be very careful...
There are other things in life than gaming; The time I've spent on it already in the last few days.. hmmm.. Dangerous toys...

A new challenge

Last week I decided it's time for change.
Change for the better.

As Voxtron, the company I work for, had been becoming more and more an annoyance instead of a joy to me, I looked around in the IT/Telecom-world in Belgium, and found a nice, interesting and growing company, Newtel, hiring new staff.
In the past, in the field, I have had contact with support engineers from Newtel quite often already, but I never thought that one day I'd work for them...
Actually the whole process of deciding what to do next was quite quickly over with;
two weeks ago the first meeting, and last week the second interview, followed by the moment supreme, The Signing of The Contract.
So Monday, at the start of this week, I handed in my resignation at Voxtron. Our general manager was 'surprised', and didn't understand why I had taken that decision... Well, I guess he should have read my signals a bit better then. I really can't be bothered with what he thinks, or what's about to happen at Voxtron now. (Me leaving means 50% of the support knowledge and department will be gone...)

I feel really good with the decision I've made; I'm diving into a branch of IT that's always interested me, switching and networks, but never had the chance to learn about or specialize in. So now a new door to the future unlocked for me, I can't wait to start! I still have to wrap up the job at Voxtron, which will take about 2 or 3 months, but I'm ok with that.

The future looks bright... The future looks Newtel.

Sometimes...

Sometimes... taking a picture works out really well...

Don't you think? :-)

Chrome

In the search for the ultimate internet browser, I was surprised to find out Google have actually made their own browser.
I had never seen any ads or marketing campaigns for Google Chrome, as it's called, and was very curious to install it.

Well... I thought Opera was a fast browser... I was wrong!!
This Chrome thingy is a joy for the eye, and surfs like you've never seen before!

Although it's only available for Windows XP or Vista, (sorry... no Mac support yet), I think Google is going to score with this one...
Look here: www.google.be/chrome

Let me know your browsing experience!

Edit: Let me please stress the fact that this is a beta release of Google Chrome... Do not use Chrome as your default web browser, there still are some security related issues with it, so just install it to surf around a bit, and experience the flow of Google Chrome. Try to avoid surfing on sites where authentication is required (login & password, etc...)

I seem to resemble David Spade...

Lovely.... :-)

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Genology - Family web site

Almost Walking!

Gaining confidence and balance

11 days ago we celebrated James' first birthday.
Except Aki, who was present in the means of a lovely personal letter to him, everybody that has been important in his life so far were there to celebrate this wonderful event; Grandma England (Cate's mom), Oma & Opa (my mom and dad) and his own mommy and daddy.
There were plenty of cards and presents, and although he wasn't too bothered about all those giftwraps, once he saw what was inside them, he seemed genuinly pleased.

Since that milestone passed, it seems like James is taking giant leaps regarding his growing-up process... He seems to be babbling a lot more, and in a month time he's grown 3 extra centimeters (he's a full 80cm now!). But the most significant change is that he's really cruising around the livingroom now, while holding on to furniture, cats and human bits for support.

It's really amazing to see the process of how he went from sitting, to rolling over, to crawling... and now actually almost walking on his own.
He can actually do it already... for about 3 or 4 steps... but I guess he then gets scared, or over-enthusiastic, before he lets himself drop to the floor, or in your arms, whatever is nearer :-)

I can't describe how exciting these weeks are for me and Cate...it's like it's going to be any minute now, that he'll come dashing towards us! His freedom is coming... and ours will vanish :-)

Almost there!

Listen!

Here's some more Belgian music. You should definately take some time to listen these songs:

Jasper Erkens, the public's favourite on the most recent Humo's Rock Rally, covers Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy":
Watch him perform it live here

In 2007, 50cent brought us "Ayo Technology", but this version by Milow suddenly makes it sound a LOT different:
Watch him perform it live here, or listen to the studio version here:

Let me know what you think of them!
:-)

Finally an update

My previous post was... *gulp* ... 40 days ago.

(Which means I have posted f'k all in September)
(Obviously)

AND

My previous update on the picture page was... ehm.. can't remember really.
So, as an October Resolution... (eat that Bolsheviks!) and because tomorrow is James' birthday:
An Update!

:-)

The progress on the renovation of the house is visible, but it's going slower than we expected. (of course)
My other half's fears that it won't be finished before New Year need to be suppressed with gentle force, and less gentle, hard labour. Budgets getting tighter, items vanishing from the wishlist/to-do list and non-responsive contractors scourge the plan of our dreams...
But,
(Fortunately there's always a but somewhere)
generous parents, supporting uncles and very helpful cousins tug us through this new experience of making something from... well, something that was already there. (but not like we wanted it to be)
A big thank you to all of you who're helping and supporting us; I'm sure that without you we'd be in deep sh*t by now ... :-)
(Now we're just up to our ankles in it :-D)

Pictures of the progress are pending... sorry...

I did put new pictures of James online though, check!

Have a nice weekend!

Time

Something we lack.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
A verse of the song "Time" by Pink Floyd

Only 41 days to go before we celebrate James' first birthday.
Only 26 days to go before we get to see Lee Evans live in Sheffield.
Only 11 days to go before we sign the contract of the house.
Only 5 days to go before my band plays the Woodstock aan de Maas Festival in Rotterdam, Holland.
Only 3 days to go before my mom's birthday.
Only half a day to go before this one's over.
Only 6 hours to go before I see James & Cate again.

So much time. And so little time.
It sometimes gets me. But then it lets go.
Good. Because time has to move... from time to time.

Have a nice day... while it lasts!
:-)

James @ Oma

James is on holiday in Aartselaar... And as you can see in the picture, having a splendid time!
Cate and I went for a visit Wednesday evening. It's actually quite incredible; we didn't see him for only 3 days, but we miss him tremendously already! Ooh soo happy we were to hold him in our arms again :-) We think he's actually grown in those 3 days... :-) The paddling pool Oma bought for him proved to be a good idea as well, he splashed and splattered like a professional.. ehm... splatterer.
Oma was also very delighted to announce a première: James crawls! He's not very stable and good at it yet, but he does it! Well done Master James! Enjoy the Agrumes, mate, and see you again on friday! :-)