Category Archives: xsamplex

Onst–mig

The weather has been fairly mixed the last couple of weeks and the only word that correctly describes it is the Dutch word ‘onstuimig’. At least I find there is some consistency: the weather is fairly unpredictable. Last week, I … Continue reading

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Roll Up The Rim 2009

Oh yeah: I happened to walk downtown and found a couple of Roll Up The Rim cups laying around, which effectively means that that specific time of the year has arrived. So, yeah, the contest rules are right above (or … Continue reading

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Sardines, cans, computers

A couple of days ago, I was watching Planet Earth (BBC’s award winning documentary) and I noticed one of the documentary’s crew member trying to though out a can of sardines (see photo). We used to eat that stuff too, … Continue reading

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Web Traffic

It’s that time of the year again, and a quick summary of last year’s statistics for this domain As suggested last year, December 2008 pageviews hit beyond 100,000 mark: either directly or via any of the popular search engines. My … Continue reading

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This Year In What

Earlier, I lightly remarked on a couple of top ten lists (see here, opens in new window). Personal observations: Science: The most remarkable scientific breakthrough I thought happened a month ago, when astronomers made the first photo of an exoplanet. … Continue reading

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VHS.

Over the Christmas days, I read that the last (US) VHS supplier bailed out from selling VHS tapes and if I believe The Register, this effectively means that VHS (Wikipedia article) is no more. VHS literally became a standard after … Continue reading

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Oh: hello, what’s your name, again?

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but walking in a town far away from the place I lived for almost 30 years, I keep thinking I recognize faces of people who I knew and who I’m 100 percent certain of … Continue reading

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Washing Machine

I was watching that story unfold about that 700 billion dollars bail-out, and I was just thinking, hey, maybe all they need is a washing machine. I saw the political theatre of American presidential elections where a presidential candidate suddenly … Continue reading

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Oh Dear

I‘ve been playing PyChess on KDE (which is actually a GNOME application) and noticed that it’s not too bad of a chess engine (I think the other chess engine is GnuChess). It doesn’t like trading pieces for example but comes … Continue reading

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Blueish

The last weeks were absurd so to say: first of all, my wife suffered from a (sort of) ear-infection which made her feel out of balance. This was also the week where we were exposed to the lows of the … Continue reading

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They Chose China

A couple of months ago, I downloaded the documentary ‘They Chose China’ to my Ubuntu laptop with an intention to watch it some day, whenever I had time. The documentary features American ‘turncoats’ in China: American soldiers, who after the … Continue reading

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From Thunder back to Sun

Today’s weather was as abnormal as it could be: Weather Canada had issued a weather warning for the region around Saint John, forecasting thunderstorms, heavy rain, windgusts and hailstones as big as 2 cms. We didn’t get the stones, but … Continue reading

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I didn’t but then I did

I remember a time, a pre-internet time, when chain-letters were the rage: I’m not sure what attracted people to send these ones out to others, classmates and relatives. I always thought it was an innocent concept, that is until those … Continue reading

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