I’d like to show you a bit of northern Dutch summer in our damp off-season. Last June we’ve visited the city of Leeuwarden (Frisian: Ljouwert), situated in the very north of Holland. It is the capital city of the Friesland province, which is famous for its language that makes very little sense to an average Dutch.
It’s automn here again. Some annoyed expats keep insisting there’s only just this season in Holland, but that’s not true.
We are fortunate enough to live in a very picturesque woodland area. One of these days we went on a hike in one of numerous forests called Baarnse Bos and situated near the equally picturesque village Baarn (which I posted about five years ago).
It’s been a while since I wrote about the masters of drive and female vocals, one of my favourites, Stream of Passion. They’re still there and have even recently toured in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, which they posted about on their Facebook page.
Just before those, very special for both sides, events I’ve visited two performances happened with an interval of one week.
The application indicator for Ubuntu called Sound Switcher Indicator (which I blogged about) has been updated to version 1.1.1. There’s no new functionality in this release, its main purpose is to make the indicator work in Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander). It was broken because of a bug in libdbusmenu.
I’ve done something useful in my spare time. I crafted a website for my aikido school (or dojo) called Aikikai Amersfoort, which is now located at aikikai-amersfoort.nl.
The former website was really ancient-looking, built back in 2004 and totally outdated. For example, one had to download an .avi file if they wanted to watch a video. YouTube did not exist at that remote moment.
My today’s story is about a well-known yet impressive graphic editing technique called multiplicity. It allows you to multiply objects on a photo—most commonly people, but it can be just as well kittens or lawn-mowers. Using this technique, you can make pictures like this:
I’m a Linux guy and hence my favourite graphic editing tool is Gimp, but the same can be done with any other editor that supports layers and masks.
Recently I’ve discovered a peculiar feature of my M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 speakers.
Last weekend I’ve finally got to visit the most eminent, in every meaning, place in Amersfoort. Since I’d come to live here, my country has changed its president twice, one of them has divorced and the other has made quite a few equally destructive achievements, yet I failed to take my time to get to it.
In the brochure of Spoffin I found a discount coupon for climbing the tower for € 2.50 instead of € 4. The coupon was valid until August 31st, which conveniently fell on Saturday. This chance we couldn’t miss.
It’s August again, which means festival time in Amersfoort! In the beginning of the month there’s usually the world-famous Gay Pride in Holland. The main venue is, of course, Amsterdam, but many other cities, including Amersfoort, hold smaller parades. However in the beginning of August I was in Tyumen, so I won’t tell you anything about that.
Sagres is a small town in western Algarve. It is noteworthy mainly for the nearby Sagres Point (Ponta de Sagres) and its fortress.
Our tour guide described Alte, which is 20 km northwards of Albufeira, as “the most picturesque village in Algarve”. To verify this statement one would have to travel around all other Algarvian villages, so let’s take it on trust.
