Netherlands and more

I’ve recently been to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to help my parents to renovate the apartment they had moved into. Just for your information, Russians recognise Saint Petersburg as the “cultural capital of Russia” due to its rich cultural traditions, heritage and, arguably, population.

But I’d like to touch on another subject now. For the sake of the renovation I had to do a lot of shopping in a big builder’s store. Just because it was big, I preferred to ask staff for directions rather than waste my time looking for the thing I needed.

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And here we are, almost four months after the exam I officially possess a Shodan Aikido Aikikai:

The diploma has been solemnly granted by Marc Jongsten (who also took the exam) during a short ceremony at Aikido Centrum Leiden.

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I’ve finally nerved myself to tell you about a sad development for prog lovers.

I first learned about the Dutch prog band Sun Caged when I came to Holland back in 2008. Shortly after I’ve even seen them playing on Walhalla. I must say I was impressed. But three years later, in 2011, the band has released The Lotus Effect (which also happened to be their last album), I was totally blown away as this was absolutely a masterpiece of progressive metal. I can’t even explain why, but I deem this album one of the best rock works ever, and I seem to be able to listen to it endlessly.

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I already happened to receive things packaged in an oversized box, but this one beats all imaginable records.

An online store sent me a Bosch jigsaw blade kit in this box:

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Being quite happy with my 75 inch whopper Samsung UE75HU7500, the only thing I wanted to do about it was giving it ambient backlighting. When watching TV in complete darkness your eyes get quickly tired because of the stark contrast between the bright screen and its dark surroundings. Even though this device features an ambient light sensor, which is used to automatically adjust the screen brightness, the contrast is still all too harsh.

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Here’s one of the reasons:

The most worrying part is that in Russia that is considered a funny minor incident.

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I’m just back from Amersfoort where I’ve quite successfully finished a half marathon, 21.1 km.

The day’s been a scorcher with 27 °C (81 °F) in the shade. On the Dutch scale it’s a lot, and with a clear blue sky you feel like being roasted.

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When a geek gets bored, he usually dives into home automation. And when there’s nothing more left to automate, he blogs about it.

When leaving my house I usually check the weather forecast for today and if there are any train disruptions. The thing is, it takes precious time and I’m usually in a hurry. Therefore the idea of having all the useful information on a single display was in the air for quite a while. Recently I’ve finally got to implement it. Please meet InfoPi.

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The last Queen’s Day to date happened three years ago, when Princess Beatrix, then still the Queen of the Netherlands, announced her upcoming abdication for her son Willem-Alexander. The latter celebrates his birthday on April 27^th, which is very conveniently near the former date of April 30^th.

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Moore's law teamed up with the Chinese electronic device industry are inserting new steps into the Lansink’s Ladder. Next to the sections for used fluorescent bulbs and batteries, which are classified as klein chemisch afval (household hazardous waste), Albert Heijn grocery stores have now added a separate opening for used mobile phones!

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Igor Abakumov, also known as Mr. Raskolnikov, an ex-member of Radiolaria, has shared some new material with me: tracks that were recorded for his own solo project called Zapreschennaya Akustika (“Forbidden Acoustics”). Even though it’s a home recording and perhaps you can’t really appreciate the Russian lyrics, the musical aspect seemed quite interesting to me.

So far four new tracks are available, all of them pertain to the sky for some reason:

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This spring is full of sporting activities. First aikido (I hope my certificate with nice Japanese characters is already on its way), now a half marathon.

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