My new address is http://blog.zog.org.
Not because I was immensely dissatisfied with Radio, just because TypePad is the better service. That, and Robb's Law: I don't want to have a weblog (any website really) on a domain that I don't own.
Ik ben verhuisd
Mijn nieuw adres is http://blog.zog.org.
Niet omdat ik heel erg ontevreden was van Radio, maar gewoon omdat TypePad beter is. En omdat ik er een website kan hebben op mijn eigen domeinnaam.
zaterdag 28 september 2002
Het blijft grappig: Dubyaspeak.
And so, in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- or state -- my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation -- I asked Americans to give 4,000 years -- 4,000 hours over the next -- the rest of your life -- of service to America.
-- The medicine seems to be wearing off, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Apr. 9, 2002[Saddam Hussein is] a man who invaded two countries twice -- two countries, once each time.
-- Washington, D.C., Sep. 25, 2002
And we're making progress. It's hard to tell whether we're making progress or not, but we are.
-- Trenton, New Jersey, Sep. 23, 2002I had my first 'scope', as we say in the business, I think maybe five or six years ago. They discovered polyps for the first time.
-- Dubya seeming to indicate heretofore unknown expertise in proctology, White House, June 28, 2002DUBYA: I want to thank and welcome Geno Auriuma. Is that right?
MR. AURIEMMA: Auriemma.
DUBYA: Auriemma. Okay, fine. I've never been too good in English. But he's a heck of a coach, however he says his name.
-- Or however Dubya says his name, interaction with U-Conn. women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma, in remarks to NCAA men and women sports champions, White House, May 21, 2002
Which Flame Warrior are you?
Boe! Valsspelers!
At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and $250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.
What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's defence establishment and raised questions over the US military's readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper.
In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt.
What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US "victory". [The Guardian]
For the hell of it: Giant Squid Links.
Sprookjes van Grimm, maar dan wel in niet-verdisneyde versie.
Alhoewel. Bij Rapunzel geven ze de versie van de latere edities van Grimm:
Die Zauberin merkte auch nichts davon [dat er elke avond een prins bij Rapunzel op bezoek kwam], bis einmal Rapunzel anfing und zu ihr sagte: "Sag Sie mir doch, Frau Gotel, wie kommt es nur, Sie wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen als den jungen Königssohn, der ist in einem Augenblick bei mir ?" "Ach du gottloses Kind !" rief die Zauberin, "was muß ich von dir hören; ich dachte, ich hatte dich von aller Welt geschieden, und du hast mich doch betrogen !"
Uiteindelijk is het niet echt logisch dat Rapunzel zich zo zou misspreken. In het origineel moet ze iets gevraagd hebben in de zin van "tiens, enig idee waarom mijn buik nu zo dik geworden is dat ik mijn kleedje niet mee toekrijg?" -- en zoals Neil Gaiman zegt: een dergelijke vraag die impliceert dat ze (shock, horror!) zwanger zou zijn, was echt not done.
The dirty little secret of content management. Dylan Tweney's latest Business 2.0 column advises businesses to steer carefully between the six-figure CMS overkill solutions that thrived during the dotcom boom and the other end of the spectrum, reinventing the CMS wheel yourself in-house. I've been doing content management-related consulting for the last five years and there's a big hole in the middle of the market for CMS framework software that will handle 80% of the needs of most clients. There's no need, most of the time, to spend half a million dollars implementing a universal document management, record-keeping type system. I wonder how many businesses could manage their web and intranet content just fine with affordable tools such as powerful blog systems (for example, pMachine or Movable Type) or more full-featured but still affordable-bordering-on-free CMS tools (for example, Manila and PostNuke). [Radio Free Blogistan]
Dat is dus precies wat wij doen. Amercom Content Manager.
Rocket Trail at Sunset
Credit: James W. Young ( TMO, JPL, NASA)
Bright light from a setting Sun and pale glow from a rising Moon both contribute to this stunning picture of a rocket exhaust trail twisting and drifting in the evening sky. Looking west, the digital telephoto view was recorded from Table Mountain Observatory near Wrightwood California, USA on September 19, four days before the autumnal equinox. The rocket, a Minuteman III solid fuel missile, was far down range when the image was taken. Launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base it carried its test payload thousands of miles out over the Pacific Ocean. The red/orange color from the setting Sun dramatically intensifies near the top of the rocket trail, but below the sunset line, the very bottom of the trail is faintly illuminated from the east by a nearly full Moon. Still in full sunlight, the bright diffuse cloud at the top of the trail, the result of a rocket stage separation, is tinged with rainbows likely produced by high altitude ice crystals forming in the exhaust plume. Astronomer James Young comments that the cloud takes on the appearance of a white dove flying from right to left across the sky. [Astronomy Picture of the Day]
Tee hee: Stijn (denk ik toch) sprak gisteren over deze foto van Dubya aan het lezen. De idioot (dubya, niet stijn uiteraard).
Salon rankings. Well, the race is on. Will I catch up to the (on vacation) Plan B blognovel to become the number two all-time Salon blog after Scott? Or will the Cowgirl lap me before I make it? For all I know I may have plateaued (that can't be the right spelling) already. It's embarassing to be beaten by both halves of filchyboy (I still don't get what's up with his site being registered at two usernums—it really cuts into his rank!). At our current differential, RevCow will outstrip me in twelve days or fewer. I just have to hope Plan B's vacation lasts that long! Nevertheless, I'm afraid I'll be back in third place again before long even if I do make it to the coveted (if meaningless) number two spot. I shouldn't count out Michel Vuijlsteke either, especially not if he spots another topless model sometime soon. At least I'm keeping ahead of the anonymous Pornographer. [Radio Free Blogistan]
Count me out. I'm laying low. I don't want any more hits on my blog.
The byline for my weblog translates to "Always wanted to keep a diary". And that's exactly what I wanted to do on my blog: write down my personal thoughts & feelings, jot down a link or two, keep in touch with people I know but don't see (or phone or e-mail) as often as I should, perhaps share a photo or two of my kids with the world at large.
I used to have around a hundred hits a day, and that was fine. I could smile at odd referers--an early one was that a colleague of mine once mentioned a couple of voyeur-style porn sites to me, and ever since then I've been getting hits from searches for "boygirlbang password" and "mike's apartment password".
I basically wrote pretty much what I wanted. I wrote in my native tangue, and I thought no-one I didn't know would ever notice the site or spare it more than a passing glance if they did.
And then I mentioned the De Kock woman. And that got me all those hits. And writing personal things started feeling awkward.
It just wasn't fun anymore. OK, I'll admit, the first few days *were* a bit exhilarating. But that got old real fast.
So right now I'm laying very low, taking special care not to mention anything that might attract attention of the Veronique De Kock kind to me.
I'll gladly see myself gently sliding down the ratings.
And then I'll take up the keyboard again, and write my magnum opus on website usability! And dethrone Jakob Nielsen! HA! And people'll read me because they're interested in what I say! Ha! And I'll start raking in money! And I'll be able to stop working and renovate our house! And buy a real library for all my books! And buy even more books! Ha! Ha!
[sorry for that, got caught up for a moment there :) ]
Hold the Button.Aaaargh: waar mensen hun tijd mee kunnen verdoen!
Blijkbaar heeft Daschle ook zijn ballen teruggevonden nu Dole kritisch is voor Bush:
[...] increasingly over the course of the last several weeks, reports have surfaced which have increasingly led me to believe that, indeed, there are those who would politicize this war.
I was given a report about a recommendation made by Matthew Dowd, the pollster for the White House and the Republican National Committee. He told a victory dinner not long ago, I quote, "The No. 1 driver for our base motivationally is this war."
Dowd said war could be beneficial to the G.O.P. in the 2002 elections. [...]
I thought, well, perhaps that's a pollster. Perhaps pollsters are paid to say what's best, regardless of what other considerations ought to be made. Pollsters are paid to tell you about the politics of issues. And were it left with pollsters, perhaps I wouldn't be as concerned. But then I read that Andy Card was asked, well, why did this issue come before Washington and the country now? Why are we debating it in September? Where were we last year? Where were we last spring? And Mr. Card's answer was, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
New products? War?
And then I listened to reports of the vice president. The vice president comes to fund-raisers, as he did just recently in Kansas. The headline written in the paper the next day about the speech he gave to that fund-raiser was, "Cheney Talks About War; Electing Taft Would Aid War Effort."
And then we find a diskette discovered in Lafayette Park, a computer diskette that was lost somewhere between a Republican strategy meeting in the White House and the White House. Advice was given by Karl Rove, and the quote in the disc was, "Focus on war."
I guess right from the beginning, I thought, well, first it was pollsters. And then it was White House staff. And then it was the vice president. And all along, I was asked, "Are you concerned about whether or not this war is politicized?"
And my answer on every occasion was, yes. And then the follow-up question is, "Is the White House politicizing the war?" And I have said, without question: "I can't bring myself to believe that it is. I can't believe any president or any administration would politicize the war."
But then I read in the paper this morning, now, even the president, the president is quoted in The
Washington Post this morning as saying that "the Democratic-controlled Senate is not interested in the security of the American people."Not interested in the security of the American people? You tell Senator Inouye he's not interested in the security of the American people! You tell those who fought in Vietnam and in World War II they're not interested in the security of the American people! That is outrageous! Outrageous!
The president ought to apologize to Senator Inouye and every veteran who has fought in every war who is a Democrat in the United States Senate. He ought to apologize to the American people. That is wrong. We ought not politicize this war. We ought not politicize the rhetoric about war and life and death.
I was in Normandy just last year. I've been in national cemeteries all over this country. And I have never seen anything but stars, the Star of David and crosses on those markers. I've never seen "Republican" and "Democrat."
This has got to end. We've got to get on with the business of our country. We've got to rise to a higher level. Our Founding Fathers would be embarrassed by what they're seeing going on right now. We've got to do better than this. Our standard of deportment ought to be better. Those who died gave their lives for better than what we're giving now. [New York Times]
Het ziet ernaar uit dat het een lange nacht wordt: er is nog heel veel werk aan een offerte die absoluut maandag binnen moet zijn, en aangezien we zondagnamiddag naar feestje voor 30 jaar getrouwd gaan...
Humor: een videootje van The Matrix op DVD fullscreen binnen Windows 2000 binnen Linux op een X-Box.
Ik denk dat ik mijn rug definitief kapot gemaakt heb door met dozen boeken te zeulen de laatste paar dagen: zo'n vage pijn linksboven, alsof het een blauwe plek was die niet echt veel meer pijn doet, maar waar iemand voortdurend staat op te duwen.
The old body's giving up on me, I guess.
Haha! Goed voor hem (en haar, vermoed ik): Major heeft gedurende vier jaar een affaire gehad met Edwina Currie.
En ook: oooooo een baby-gorillatje!
En nog: bij creationists.org hebben ze een speciale pagina voor mensen die via Fark binnenkomen.
En bovendien: Salon. Goed. Lezen.
Ahem. Niet zo simpel dus. De Linux boot disk om het paswoord te resetten vindt niet waar de SAM staat. Maar bon, uiteindelijk toch het paswoord teruggevonden, in een geëncrypteerde file. Fijn.
We vinden niet direkt het administrator-paswoord van parker.netpoint.be. Dus we moeten die machine hacken. Gelukkig is dat zo geen groot probleem met NT-toestellen. Bij NT Toolbox kun je een handige bootdisk downloaden waarmee je het admin-paswoord gewoon kunt resetten.
Richard's Multiboot Menagerie: een zot heeft 39 verschillende operating systems op één computer geïnstalleerd. Mind you, I know where he's coming from :)
Op post op het werk. Miserie met routing en firewalls, en ook met afspraken met de mens die ons daat zou bij helpen.
Enfin, we zien wel hoe het afloopt. Hopen dat AT&T ons niet op 30/9 om 0u01 afsluit. En vandaag wat dingen voorbereiden om maandag definitief over te stappen. Alhoewel: we moeten echt wel die MWS ook in orde krijgen.
En Westtoer. En GlobalSystems. En IFD. En dingen. En spel.
Ho boy.
