Archive for 2005
User manual translation
This afternoon, we got a nice little package in the mail.
Because we ordered ADSL a few weeks ago, we received a free MP3 player. Nothing special, some unknown brand, but still a very nice, 256 MB MP3 player.
That’s not what this entry is about, however. It’s about the user manual…
It seems to me that the manual has been translated from Chinese, via Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, to French, then Russian, back to Chinese, Korean and finally to English. Let me quote (yes, literally) from the manual:
Not need to drive the USB dish function
need not to manage the procedure, can pass the “my computer “directly “can move dish” proceed the document operate, having no need in WIN2000 above system gearing the procedure
Encrypt the dish mode
make use of with the supplementary tool in machine, can be direct to divide the dish as two dishes, combine to encrypt an among those, conceal the space, keep to encrypt the part not been seen from, but conceal the secret
recording/reply to read
can pass the microphone recording and keep to WAV and ACT speech text file of the format, the eligibility chooses the part replies to read or contrast to reply to read
Boycott Internet Explorer
My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It’s a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn’t secure and isn’t standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators.
(…)
You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.
I totally agree with Paul Thurrott, I couldn’t say it any better myself.
(From Slashdot.)
Why I use Jabber
This is the reason I don’t use MSN Messenger!
Read through the comments of this blog entry (in Dutch)… Are these people for real?!?
Google Moon
After Google Maps and Google Earth, Google today introduced Google Moon.
In honour of the first lunar landing, on July 20, 1969, we can now surf the Moon’s surface and explore the landing sites of the Apollo missions. (Courtesy of NASA, of course.)
Don’t forget to check out the highest detail images!
The code of Carl Munck
If you’re interested in history and ancient monuments like Stonehenge or the pyramids, and you like fiddling around with numbers, take a look at this site.
It’s about coordinates of these monuments, ancients weights and measures, mathematical constants, and even “monuments on Mars”, such as the famous “Face on Mars”. There are all kinds of relations between all these numbers, or at least – we are led to believe that. It sounds all a bit too far-fetched, if you ask me…
Revenge of the Sith
This afternoon, we finally went to see Star Wars: Episode III. Very nice. I had actually hoped Anakin could be stopped from turning to The Dark Side, but alas… 
A minor drawback, I thought, is that the last part of the movie is more or less “predictable”, because you know of all the loose ends that have to be tied up, all the questions that have to be answered, since you already know the sequel. How does Anakin become Darth Vader?
What about his children?
, et cetera.
By the way, I recently found some of the Star Wars movie scripts, so I tried to collect all of them from various sites. I’ve got all six of them now. See my wiki. Upon my search I came upon The Internet Movie Script Database. If I had known that before… Anyway, if you want any other movie script, check out IMSDb!
Madagascar
Yesterday evening we went to Madagascar. No, not the country. The movie!
My brother and sister-in-law from Bristol were here for the weekend, so the four of us went to the cinema in Vlissingen. It’s a very funny movie about 4 wacky animals who… well, just read the rest from Ari’s weblog. BTW, I do agree with Ari that it’s not as good as, for example, Shrek. But it’s nice.
Our own stamp
Did you know you could create your own stamps?
At TPG Post, you can have you own picture be printed as a real stamp.
We already tried it a while ago. In fact, we used the stamps for our wedding invitations. It’s really easy, and not very expensive. I think it’s great for special occasions or something…
So, here’s the result:
(And this is the original photo, btw.)
SLATFATF, YZPIS and MH
During our honeymoon, I finished the next two parts of the Hitchhiker’s Guide: “So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish”, and “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe”.
As you will understand, I didn’t have the opportunity there and then to write that on my weblog… I do now, but in the mean time, I also finished (yesterday evening) the last part: “Mostly Harmless”.
You will have to wait for the quotes, though. I haven’t had the time yet…
Update: I almost forgot. I was reading the latest Natuurwetenschap & Techniek and there was an article about The Hitchhiker’s Guide and about a new book, called “The Science of The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”, by Michael Hanlon.
BTW, the article is also available online.
Honeymoon
For our honeymoon we went to Greece for two weeks. We flew via Athens to Thessaloniki. There was a rental car waiting for us at the airport. The first ten days we stayed in an appartment on the “Olympic riviera“, which is the area along the coast, near Mount Olympus.
During these ten days, we made some walks, swam in the sea, visited a castle and a nice old Greek village.
We visited Dion, the ancient city of Zeus, at the foot of the Olympus, with the ruins of an ancient village.
We made one very long and very tiring walk up Mount Olympus, from the starting point at about 1100 meters up to a cabin at 2100 meters. You could stay there for the night and walk to the summit (at 2917 meters) the next day. We returned to the car, however; it took us about 7 hours in total.
We visited the spectacular rock formations at Meteora. These rock formations are famous for the monasteries that are built on top. These are hundreds of years old. There used to be about twenty, now there are only six left, but they’re all open to the public. The rocks are really amazing, but the fact that monks decided to build monasteries on top, is just incredible!
At the end of the ten days, we returned (by car) to Thessaloniki, flew back to Athens and stayed there for another five days. We stayed in a hotel near Omonia Square, very close to the center of the city. We could walk to the Acropolis, which, of course, we did quite a few times. We’ve seen all the main tourist attractions: the Acropolis, the Tempel of Zeus, the Ancient Agora, the Roman Forum, but also the National Archaelogical Museum. The last day we went to Piraeus, to visit the (three, all natural) harbours.
Last Sunday, we got up very early, to get back to the airport. We had a good trip home, after two weeks of great weather in a beautiful country… it was a perfect honeymoon!
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