Index of /log/Life/index.html

When my train was at Amsterdam Zuid this morning, a passenger collapsed. Because nobody else really did anything useful (they all stared at him), I had to find the conductor and tell him what was going on, so he could keep the train in the station while we waited for the ambulance.

Apparently, people think you should just let unconscious people lie on the floor...

I've decided to combine exercise with shiny new toys: I bought a new bicycle (a Batavus Crescendo) and a GPS (Garmin eTrex Venture Cx), and started cycling through the polders.

So now I have a list of tracklogs, and I'm in the process of upgrading bits of my website to display geographic positions.

I walked into the local MediaMarkt today (almost accidentally, I was waiting for another store to open), and they had 2 Nintendo Wii consoles in stock, which seems to be a very rare event here in the Netherlands. So I went home with a Wii, and it's great.

If anyone wants my Wii number, just send me an email with yours :)

A new OV Chipkaart system has been introduced in Amsterdam this year, and it will be available in all of the Netherlands in a few years. The concept is generally OK: no more counting of strips on a strippenkaart or buying train tickets; just transfer some money to the card and go (there is the thing where the card issuer can track who went where, and when, but I trust that will be resolved in time).

But there's a usability problem with the gates: it's not immediately obvious where you should wave your card (especially if you're left-handed). The gates seem to have sensors on both sides, but the one on the left is actually the one on the right for the next gate. I've only used the system for the first time today, but I've already opened the wrong gate twice, requiring me to run around to the right gate. Luckily it wasn't too busy..

Today I arrived at Schiphol to catch a train to work, as I do everyday. But somehow things were different today. The entire platform was full of people, as if the previous train hadn't shown up, and as soon as the train on another platform left, everyone went completely silent.

Usually you hear a few people talking (on the phone or in person), coughing, or maybe an announcement, but not today. The only sound I could hear was that of the escalator.

Until the train arrived…

Last week my sister came over for dinner, and we talked a bit about web pages, and that she didn't like Microsoft's new "Live" offerings. So I offered to set aside some space on my server, give her a domain (miek.info was still available, and it only costs €1.20/year!) and some space to put her photos and 'stories'.

So I went to work, figuring out more about stylesheets than I ever wanted to know and submitting a few patches to the Pyblosxom project.

And now it's basically done. Don't mind the horrible beautiful purple/green/pink color scheme... I didn't choose it ;)

miek.info

I've finally moved to my new apartment! I bought this apartment last month, (with a great view of our local "lake") and finally moved all my stuff over from my old place last Saturday.

I've had to re-paint every bit of wood and wallin the house (doors, windows, and their frames, mostly), because the previous owner had painted them in horrible greens, ugly purples and violent shades of blue. This took me the better part of a month, but it was definitely worth it. I now have dark grey door frames with light grey doors, instead of ugly green ones, and mostly very light grey walls (except for the 2 brownish yellow walls, and the 2 red walls).

I'll post some pictures soon.

I've been on a trip to Rome last week, and it was great. The city is ancient, with lots of old (and some new) buildings to see; the weather was great (at least on the final two days)..

The first day was a bit rainy, but it cleared up in the afternoon. We went to see the Vatican first, as we were expecting it to be very busy during the weekend.

After seeing the line for the Vatican museums, we gave up and went to the nearby Castel Sant'Angelo, which gives a wide view of the city, and which has an interesting history.

The next day we went to the Bioparco Roma, through the beautiful Villa Borghese.

On Saturday we went to the "ancient" part of Rome: The Colosseum, Forum Romanum, and the Circus Maximus. These bits of the city really gave me a sense of how ancient the city really is. Realizing that the (ruins of) buildings are more than 2000 years old makes it even more impressive, as it's easy to forget how technologically advanced the ancient Romans really were.

We spent Sunday (our last full day) walking around the city, to the the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and the Piaza Navona, trying to stay out of the sun.

More pictures of day 1, day 2, day 3, and day 4 are available.

Yesterday was my last day at my old job, Perl programmer at Dot TK (the .tk ccTLD registry).

After 1.5 years I got bored of being the only "coder" person in the company (which means nobody to test crazy ideas on, and as a consequence, lots of "design document bugfixing"). The huge stack of inherited unmaintainable (and unreplaceable, because time is money) code was also one of the reasons for me to decide to leave the company.

I'll be starting my new job at XS4ALL (the ISP) on Thursday.

Yesterday we went sightseeing in the old part of Montréal, and the old port. The buildings here are really beautiful, and are a nice change after (almost) only seeing the high-rise concrete jungle that is downtown for a week. After walking for a long time, we decided we'd go to the Olympic park to see the Biodôme and the botanical gardens.

The Biodôme is nice, but small and quite boring. It's basically just a zoo divided into 4 parts (tropical forest, temperate forest, the oceans and the antarctic). In every zone, you'll see a few plants and animals native to a place like that, and lots of small facts (on little signs). It's a GREAT place to take pictures (which I will post when I'm back home).

UPDATE! Thanks to the very generous (or just very stupid) neighbors of the hostel, the pictures have been posted.

Last Saturday I went to Berlin for a few days, and it was really great. I had to wake up quite early to catch the 7:54 train from Amersfoort, and arrived at my destination at around 13:15. Then I found out that there are 2 near-identical public transport maps: one for the bus/tram network, and another for the S-Bahn/U-Bahn network (and you always end up finding the wrong one first, of course).

After I figured out how the U-bahn worked, I had some beer with dholbach, doko and danielk, and in the next few days did a lot of "tourist" things.

More photos

Too bad my PDA/phone broke, and that some people don't understand the train reservation system (the numbers on your ticket match the numbers on the seats for a reason), but still it was great.

I'll be taking the train to Berlin tomorrow morning at 6:53 for a few days of vacation. If anyone has good ideas about what I should see/do, please leave a comment ("having beer with \sh and dholbach" is already planned ;))

A few months ago, I was sitting in the train to Leiden, and I noticed something weird on the doors:

Today I was standing in the train back from Amsterdam, and saw this on the door:

People do weird things...