Due to recent budget cuts, the rising cost of electricty, gas and oil, plus the current state of the economy the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
Have a nice day!!!
Category Archives: Funstuff
Nostalgia
In a flair of …… I backed the ZX Spectrum Next Issue 2, essentially my start into computing with in 1984 the ZX Spectrum 48K (rubber keyed version). As only other system I’ve owned the 128K Toastrack model which in hindsight I should not have sold as their value is more than what I paid for in those days and back then I sold it for 150 Dutch Guilders, like 70 Euro’s (not counting inflation).
Reality Bites
You see, not so big after all…….
Oops…
That’s one large file, not sure what the phone was thinking but it contains a bit more than just the picture as dimension wise it is no different than the others and they average between 2 to 4 Mb.
Yes, we take photo’s with a standard smart phone. As in most cases we move about a lot we try to carry as less as possible. Essentially anything you didn’t use the last time, you do not pack the next time. I would suggest to pack the things you missed or couldn’t acquire as long as it passes the airline restrictions of these days.
To Japan we actually took one small suitcase, but it was left behind when moving locally, which was a first in years with the exception of China. I think I can even go without a suitcase to China as there is still clothing left at my in-laws. But better to take one with me, otherwise you stand out and get picked out of the queue by local customs.
Chinese Torture
Got it from a colleague of mine, he must have been wondering about my inlaws.
A young man was wandering, lost, in a forest when he came upon a small house. Knocking on the door he was greeted by an ancient Chinese man with a long, gray beard. “I’m lost,” said the man. “Can you put me up for the night?”
“Certainly,” the Chinese man said, “but on one condition. If you so much as lay a finger on my daughter I will inflict upon you the three worst Chinese tortures known to man.”
“OK,” said the man, thinking that the daughter must be pretty old as well, and entered the house. Before dinner the daughter came down the stairs. She was young, beautiful and had a fantastic figure. She was obviously attracted to the young man as she couldn’t keep her eyes off him during the meal. Remembering the old man’s warning he ignored her and went up to bed alone. But during the night he could bear it no longer and snuck into her room for a night of passion. He was careful to keep everything quiet so the old man wouldn’t hear and, near dawn, he crept back to his room, exhausted but happy.
He woke to feel a pressure on his chest. Opening his eyes he saw a large rock on his chest with a note on it that read, “Chinese Torture 1: Large rock on chest.” “Well, that’s pretty crappy,” he thought. “If that’s the best the old man can do then I don’t have much to worry about.” He picked the boulder up, walked over to the window and threw the boulder out. As he did so he noticed another note on it that read “Chinese Torture 2: Rock tied to left testicle.” In a panic he glanced down and saw the line that was already getting close to taut. Figuring that a few broken bones was better than castration, he jumped out of the window after the boulder. As he plummeted downward he saw a large sign on the ground that read, “Chinese Torture 3: Right testicle tied to bedpost.”
Read the news…
Last week I was in Catania, Sicily and managed to miss one thing I would have loved to see. A volcanic eruption… I only learned of it when I got back and people asked about it. On the 14th of June Sunny and myself took a train ride around Etna on a narrow gauge diesel train line linking small villages based near Etna, called Ferrovia Circumetnea. I actually wanted to go up, however Sunny wasn’t keen on that idea so we stuck to her travel itinerary. The next day it erupted according to news articles I found after people started asking. Seems the airport was also closed during my stay and also today it is closed. Yesterday when we went back all was normal and also on board the plane I didn’t hear anything about the volcano erupting.
And this years rollercoasters are from….
…. Disneyland Paris. Sunny wanted to go there and as such organized a trip towards Paris including one day in Disneyland Paris. The trip was operated by a Chinese tour operator so although I was in Europe it did have a slight oriental feel to it with all the Cantonese and Mandarin that I heard around me. It is also 20 years ago that I was in the same park (called EuroDisney in those days) and parts look like they aren’t cleaned during all that time. The X-Wing fighter looks a lot greener, like it came from the swamps of Dagoba instead of brand spanking new. So far for all the parks I’ve visited it seems the Efteling in the Netherlands is the best if it comes to maintenance. Some pictures from the visit are posted to WeChat and others can be found on Sunny’s page. As far as I’m aware Sunny wants to visit Walibi next year, but we will see. The Efteling was last year.
You can do anything…
…with PowerShell.
Even fixing ceilings.
My own thoughts on the iPad
During my stay here in China I was asked to look at an iPad a friend of the family had bought because she could watch movies on it. Thought it was a kind of expensive as a video player, especially here in China where dedicated video players are dirt cheap and play just about anything opposed to the standard video player in the Apple.
But it allowed me my first experience with the device and coming from Apple it is at least a solid high quality build product. But after trying it out for a few weeks I decided not to buy one myself.
Found it a bit heavy and to big to carry around, especially as I normally don’t like to carry around bags and such. I had a number of issues it couldn’t find the WiFi Access Point where my laptop had no issues but tend to think this is simply caused by the product itself as due to the way you hold it the antenna aren’t always aligned that well. With a laptop this less of an issue. Found iTunes a horrible product, and was not able to share uploaded data between applications, it seems to have restrictions in this. The video files uploaded from an iPhone was playable only on the onboard videoplayer, a later installed VNC player couldn’t use it, it had to be uploaded again. Bummer. Would have liked a folder structure to access the data I want to access. It’s not just negative, loved the capacitive screen with multitouch. Found Harbour Master, eventhough it was the freeware version utterly addictive. Web browsing was a breeze, although Flash is missing I noticed.
Also Sunny enjoyed it, so now it’s a thing of finding a tablet which is the size of Samsungs Galaxy Tab, which is the only other one I saw besides huge amounts of local Chinese things with the older resistive screens. The experience isn’t great once you’ve used a capacitive screen and after some didn’t want to start in the shop I decided those aren’t for me. When I have time I’ll see what else is on the market on 7 inch tablets, so my arm doesn’t start to hurt when using it for longer periods. I don’t need 3G either and fail to see why the Samsung device is so expensive, you would almost by an Apple for just that reason alone……..
So long and thanks for all the fish
Well had to do something during the daily commutes on Beijing’s subway and the weekly visit towards Sunny’s grandma. That something was reading and for those that read science fiction might already guessed which books they where…… Michael Douglas’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series…… I’ve had five (electronic) books in total and the last one is just finished. For those that like scifi it makes good reading, the title for the post comes from the 4th book. On on a totally different subject. Dad, congratulations with your birthday……. See you in one and half months…….