If all you know is porn, the concept of a rimshot for comedic effect might seem strange and arousing.more/less
(Jun 25 @ 09:06)
"You will be guided through the installation process." If you didn't know, how is this going to help you find the 'Continue' button?
(Jun 25 @ 09:06)
No seats left on train. Suit guy with us, the peasants. Spread out a newspaper to sit on. Reading 'Cash', eating apple. He won't last long.
(Jun 25 @ 07:06)
Football isn't the same after Ruud Gullit shaved off his moustache.
(Jun 24 @ 23:06)
The problem with downloaded movies: at low-res all the women look like Marisa Tomei. Wait, did I say problem?
(Jun 24 @ 21:06)
... so THIS is what Brightkite does to my tweets? kthxbye
(Jun 24 @ 10:06)
One of the many profound pieces of Icelandic wisdom goes as follows: “Many small things make one big thing.”
In the office there is a Coca Cola machine where that blackest of beverages can be purchased for a mere 55 cents. That’s so easy to spend without a second thought.
Now, early this year I acquired a money managing program and have been faithfully keeping track of my expenses, no matter how small, ever since.
Now that it’s been a while and the data is slowly becoming meaningful, I can say with full confidence that I’ve spent €10.45 in that machine so far this month. That’s just silly money. That’s also more than 6 litres.
So I’ve decided to stop and switch to coffee exclusively. It’s free, and so I don’t have to enter it into the program and can therefore go back to being blissfully ignorant about my unhealthy lifestyle.
If they fire me now, I’m quite sure they will not be able to recuperate the costs from the business cards they just ordered. Should be deterrent enough.
Unless they find another webdesigner named Björn Kristinsson, of course.
As luck would have it there are two of us as far as I know. Until the other one has been eliminated, I will remain feeling slightly insecure.
Since the train schedules were changed late last year – to the misery of nearly everyone but me – the 8:51 train to Leuven is scheduled to arrive at platform 17 of the South station of Brussels. Without fail it is redirected to platform 16.
“Spoor zeventien, spoor zeventien, spoorverandering. De CityRail met bestemming Leuven van acht uur een en vijftig komt aan spoor zestien in plaats van spoor zeventien” the announcement goes, signalling me to go to the platform. In French as well, for good measure. This is a luxury not afforded to everyone.
That’s not all. On the screens showing arrivals and departures, any platform changes are marked with a yellow box, requiring no more than a glance to find my train.
I never appreciated this, until now. The schedule has been updated to reflect these constant changes, and now the train arrives at platform 16 as planned.
No more yellow boxes. No more announcements. And the whole thing has somehow become a little bit less special.
The world of vexillology is sometimes exciting. Which I like, because I like vexillology :)
Today a new Iraq flag was hoisted, with the stars of the Baath party removed and Hussain’s handwriting replaced by Kufic script. The text remains the same: Allahu Akhbar.
(new and old)
In short, an attempt to remove the legacy of Saddam Hussain, without offending anyone, as few things stir up more emotion in people than the changing of their national flag. Silly things.
It didn’t really work, as a lot of people refuse to accept this new flag and will continue to fly the old one. It is however rather more successful than the previous attempt, suggested back in 2004.
A much more drastic change, and almost universally rejected. Apparently it looks too much like the Israeli flag, perhaps an understandable protest in that part of the world. Understandable, but still pretty silly. It looks about as much like the Israeli flag as the Faroese one.
Anyway, it’s not over yet, as the Iraqi government is still looking for a new flag. A contest was started a while back, and I’m sure the whole world anxiously awaits the results of that.
This would mean I could get things done really easily wherever I am, if I wasn’t so busy entering stuff into a sophisticated ToDo application, then synchronising with iCal, which in turn synchronises with my iPod via iTunes, and my mobile phone via iSync all the time.
The escalator broke down, and this time they put up a yellow fence instead of mere tape and signs. I guess too many people were risking life and limb by actually walking up the stairs last time they broke down.
In other news, it’s Monday and the coke machine is empty. The avocado-chicken sandwich I ordered for lunch goes down oh so well with cola. sniff
And in yet other news, I’m becoming a bit of a board game geek lately. A couple of weeks ago we bought Carcassonne, and this weekend another game called Puerto Rico.
Elisa was already becoming a bit tired of my constant cries of “Can we play Carcassonne pleeeeeease”, so I’m sure the occasional whiny mock American-Spanish accent “Can we play Puerto Rico por favooooor” will be a welcome change.
“Absolutely nothing, that’s what!” say the Dampoort station officials. The escalator was broken the other day, so they placed yellow warning signs to block it and a sign saying “Broken! Please use the stairs”.
The stairs are right next to the escalator, slightly wider that what is strictly needed for two people to pass, now cramped with about 60 grumpy passengers going up and down, and meanwhile the broken escalator (read ‘other stairs’) stood unused.
I gleefully wondered what whoever put up the sign would do with a broken electric toothbrush.
I no longer find this very funny though after seeing the dangers of immobile mobile stairs this morning. As I was rushing to catch my train in Brussel Zuid, I approached the obviously stationary escalator. Despite the obviousness of its staticity, the girl in front of me stopped suddenly as soon as she reached it. Right foot on the first step, left foot on the slightly higher second step, she started writing an SMS, oblivious to the fact that she was in fact not moving. My highly developed reflexes from crowded folk dancing evenings enabled me to change direction with lightning speed and avoid an almost certainly potentially fatal crash, but a less prepared person might have been less lucky.
Let’s see… I spent Christmas in Italy (which in part explains the lack of blogging lately), came back to Belgium where today is a normal working day so I’m in the office, finally had an Icelandic visitor, and tonight we’re having a bunch of people over for dinner before going to Soiree Bourree for jamming and juicing (Icelandic phrase).
Italy was great, although it was a bit weird to have a weather-like-spring kind of Christmas. We went to Rome, Foligno and Montalto di Castro, saw the sights, ate the food and were lazy. :)
Yesterday Vala came for a visit to Gent, and we saw the sights, ate the food and had a bunch of drinks.
And for dinner tonight: Hangikjöt! And Zampone! And more pleasant surprises.
That’s it, see you on the other side of the year change-over, and have a good ‘un.
I did something wrong to Google just now, apparently. One of my favourite book title’s of last year (although I haven’t read the book) is Stephen Colbert’s I am America (and so can you!). I had the idea that maybe there were some funny spinoffs on this on the Internets somewhere, so I ran the query “I am * and so can you” through Google. This returned mostly links to the book, so I decided to remove the word America from the results: “I am * and so can you” -America
Much better… except then Google complained with this message:
We’re sorry…
... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
I subscribe to quite a lot of these feeds to keep track of interesting websites and friends’ blogs and so on. Most of the time these give you an overview of what has been published and when as soon as it happens, which is so much easier than going around all of the websites to check if anything new has been posted.
Some of these feeds are crappy. And I hate them.
By this I mean they only give you, say, the title of the posted article and no content at all, forcing you to leave the comfort of your RSS reader to see the rest. I usually throw these out and stop following the websites.
Today I added my own site to my RSS reader, and to my horror realised that my very own site has one of these crappy RSS feeds. This has now been rectified, and those who subscribe will hopefully welcome the difference, those who subscribed before but were annoyed by it can now try again, and those who never did can now add me. Those who never used RSS (and I imagine those are in the majority) should take this chance to give it a try.
And here’s a nice video that explains the whole thing better than I could. Release your inner nerd! Use RSS!
As has repeatedly been pointed out to me, a year ago, Iceland was third on the Human Development Index list, Belgium thirteenth. Now, Iceland is first and Belgium is seventeenth and without a government.
Possibly I could blackmail the countries around me?
Welcome
I'm Björn, and this is my blog. To the left you can see the most recent entries. If you want more, use the navigation below. Or take a look at my photos to the right.
I'm Björn, and this is my blog. To the left you can see the most recent entries. If you want more, use the navigation below. Or take a look at my photos to the right.
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