Netherlands and more

Thank God it’s Friday! Which means it’s time for a next bit of my Musicellaneous micro-discoveries!

Our hero today is the prog-djent duo Victoria.

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Our today’s Musicellaneous guest is the Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Owane. He employs a number of instruments by thoroughly weaving djent riffs into the jazz-funk texture of his compositions.

Owane (real name Øyvind Pedersen) is a musician from Sortland, Norway and he has released three albums to date.

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Robot vacuum cleaners are a great help in housekeeping but all have one downside: they cannot walk the stairs.

Our Xiaomi Robot Vacuum 1S, which features a pleasant female voice and is therefore called Xenia, perfectly manages cleaning of one specific floor in our house.

Unfortunately, she’s afraid of stairs:

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Suddenly I got a whim to start a section about music, which could inform the dear reader about music pearls I discovered. I’d love to subscribe to something like that myself so that I could learn about new (or even forgotten old) talents. There are lots of them out there, but quite often they’re not widely known.

The choice of exhibits for Musicellaneous will be at my sole discretion, based on factors like how my left little toe feels, the weather on Io and Donald Trump’s statements.

And the first card in our card index will be the American progressive/djent band Arch Echo.

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The yesterday’s event has been a success in my opinion!

I’ve had a great time, and the turn-out was even larger than expected.

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Reminder for those who have signed up for the event: tomorrow, 21 November I will present about Hugo and the cool things you can make with it.

So if you’re interested how websites like Let’s Encrypt, 1Password Support, or this one are built, do stop by.

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Cold days are coming our way. This morning has hit -2 °C (28 °F)!

The grass is still green though.

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What’s the easiest way to download a video file from YouTube, Vimeo etc. in Linux? And how do you extract its audio track as an MP3 file?

You can opt for one of numerous online video converters, but I personally prefer doing that from the command line using youtube-dl.

It supports video downloads from YouTube, Vimeo, BBC, CBS, and about 1100 more (even from YouPorn).

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Being in the software business for a couple of decades, I used to think it’s generally a good idea to test the software you develop before you ship it out. Yet, I keep stumbling upon situations where the developer doesn’t seem to recognise the value of tested software.

Say, I’ve been using the Foscam C1 webcam for a couple of years, one that looks like this:

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I’ve finally managed to migrate off the ever-worsening Google Photos onto Cloudinary, a pretty convenient and—for the time being—free cloud image hosting provider.

Time will tell whether it was a clever choice, but I’m positive from what I’ve seen so far.

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It’s always nice to get a Tesla for your birthday.

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As soon as you turn into a freelancer (also known as zzp’er in the Netherlands), you’re free to choose the transportation method for commuting. Which I consider one of the benefits of being a freelancer.

So you can choose to walk, cycle, drive etc.—or to use public transport.

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