Netherlands and more

Blog about life in Holland

Tuning Ubuntu for SSD

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In my last post I told you about upgrading an iMac with a solid-state drive (SSD). These drives are very fast (read throughput is usually ca. 500 MB/s if connected via a 6 Gbps SATA III) and completely silent.

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Replacing HDD with SSD in iMac 2010

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It’s been exactly four delightful years when the HDD in my iMac 27" informed me it couldn’t take it any longer. “Disk I/O error”, it said.

At that moment I already had plans to upgrade it with an SSD (solid-state drive). Those are much snappier and completely silent since there are no moving parts inside.

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A record autumn

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While euro and dollar are enjoying a record growth in Russia, we’re enjoying one of the warmest autumns on record here in Holland, yet again. Whatever caused it, sanctions or global warming.

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The Blog Has Moved

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I’ve finally managed to move my blog from Blogger onto a self-developed platform. The new address of the blog is: yktoo.

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Aikido demo at Vathorstdag 2014

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Even though I’ve now settled in Houten, I keep visiting Amersfoort now and then. I’m still doing aikido with Joginder Singh.

On September 7th our dojo gave a demo on a “district day” Vathorstdag 2014 (Vathorst is the district in Amersfoort our dojo is in), just like six years ago.

I didn’t participate this time, but was filming instead. There was also another cam, so the idea was to put both footages together nicely, and I volunteered for that.

I’ve tried a number of video editors for Linux, most of them proved to be utterly unusable (Pitivi wouldn’t allow me to edit track properties, OpenShot lacked the very basic timeline shift function, Shotcut quit abruptly after adding a clip, Kino is discontinued long time ago). Finally I’ve tried Kdenlive, and that one is absolutely fantastic! I was surprised how quick and hassle-free video editing can be nowadays. All in all it took me about a couple of hours, including the final render.

The result is under the cut:

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Houten ‣ Part 2. Bikes

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Holland is decidedly and prominently a bike-land. Any Dutch settlement features miles of bike paths, bike traffic-lights, special bike road marking, ubiquitous bike parkings and bike rental at every train station.

But our Houten seems to be in the lead here.

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Houten ‣ Part 1. Train stations

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The summer is almost over, though I haven’t seen much of it. It’s been quite busy here, but in a positive sense.

Firstly, I’ve officially become a Netherlander. Secondly, I’ve changed job yet again, which I’ll tell you about some other time. And finally, I’ve settled down and got stuck in Holland bought a house.

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Where my foot has trod

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A while ago I’ve added a new section to my website, Blog Map, which shows all places I ever blogged about. You can view related posts by clicking a place marker:

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Netherlander!

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I haven’t been actively blogging lately, and that’s not because nothing is happening. Quite the opposite, I can barely find time these days, so let me share the most important stuff with you.

Inevitable happened: my journey into an alternative reality I’ve embarked on exactly six years ago is now complete. A few days ago I’ve oficially become Dutch, a citizen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

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