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...)