Schop Logt

A Google Netbook!

Posted on Thursday 09 December 2010 at 10:57 pm in category: Nerds
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 28 people read this.

A couple of days ago, I saw this blogpost on engadget.com. Of course I signed up for the test-drive right away, thinking I would probably never get one, but it was worth a shot. No confirmation, nothing. So you can imagine my surprise when I came home this afternoon, finding a UPS box addressed to me. This could only mean one thing! Inside the UPS box was another, gorgeously designed box.

Thanksgiving

Posted on Wednesday 24 November 2010 at 11:12 am in category: USA
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 25 people read this.

De tijd vliegt, en dus is het morgen alweer Thanksgiving, een feestdag die gekenmerkt wordt door het eten van een kalkoen in besloten kring, en 'Black Friday' de volgende dag, waarop mensen om drie uur 's ochtends gaan winkelen om hoge kortingen te krijgen, zodat de grote winkelketens aan het eind van het jaar een positief financiëel rapport kunnen publiceren.

Een onderbroek op de parkeerplaats

Posted on Friday 19 November 2010 at 09:01 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 7 people read this, in the past month 33 people read this.

Normaal gesproken rijd ik in een staat van half-slaap naar mijn werk 's ochtends. Als ik mijn oprit af ben, moet ik één keer een bocht naar links maken, dan één naar rechts, vervolgens een minuut of tien rechtdoor, en dan een laatste bocht naar links, en ik ben er. Ik hoef dus niet echt goed wakker te zijn om er te komen.

A new layout

Posted on Wednesday 17 November 2010 at 10:26 pm in category: Nerds
In the past week 6 people read this, in the past month 29 people read this.

Finally, I decided to change the layout of this blog, hoping it will encourage me to update it on a more regular basis. I agree that it doesn't look very snazzy or colorful, but that wasn't the intention either. I like it simple, and I'm not in the mood for vibrant colors either.

A couple of remarks about the design:

If you're using Internet Explorer to look at it, the header doesn't look very good, but then you're probably used to seeing crappy websites, so you might not care. I used some CSS3 thingies in there, and Internet Explorer is notorious for not following standards like the other browsers. For people that use an old browser: this is what it would look like if you used Opera, Firefox, Chrome or Safari:

I used the Google Font Directory for the first time too, and I must say it works like a charm.

And of course, it is all powered by the fantastic PivotX, a product that makes me proud to be Dutch.

En nou niet moeilijk gaan doen...

Posted on Thursday 12 August 2010 at 1:17 pm in category: Whatever
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 20 people read this.

Zo, daar zijn we ook weer vanaf

Posted on Friday 06 August 2010 at 9:10 pm in category: Whatever
In the past week 5 people read this, in the past month 20 people read this.

Windmill Web Work redesign

Posted on Saturday 31 July 2010 at 10:40 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 3 people read this, in the past month 21 people read this.

Even een kort berichtje: de website van WIndmill Web Work heeft een nieuw ontwerp. Komt dat zien.

WK Voetbal 2010 Pool

Posted on Saturday 17 April 2010 at 10:40 am in category: Whatever
In the past week 8 people read this, in the past month 36 people read this.

Deze zomer is het WK voetbal in Zuid-Afrika. En zoals bij elk groot toernooi, worden er overal weer voetbal pools (of poules, ik weet niet precies wat de juiste spelling is) georganiseerd. En dat is leuk.

Voetbal pools hebben altijd een bijzondere aantrekkingskracht op mij, omdat ik denk dat ik er alles van weet, en dat de uitslagen die ik voorspel natuurlijk goed zijn. Het tegendeel is meestal waar. In het verleden was ik ook vaak degene die de pool organiseerde voor bedrijf, vereniging of familie. Maar ja, als je naar de USA verhuisd, dan wordt dat lastig. Hier houdt men zich meer bezig met College Basketbal op het moment, en deze zomer is er natuurlijk weer honkbal en dat soort dingen.

De oplossing is natuurlijk simpel: ik organiseer gewoon een online voetbal pool. Iedereen kan meedoen, je kunt online je inleg (€10,-) betalen (of ouderwetsch overmaken), en hoe meer zielen hoe meer vreugd (en grotere prijzen) natuurlijk.

Ga naar de pool.

Overigens kun je ook zelf de voetbalpool downloaden en je eigen pool organiseren, als je de beschikking hetb over een webserver met MySQL en PHP5 ondersteuning: http://www.windmillwebwork.com/wk2010/

Number 1 on my wishlist: Nikon D3000

Posted on Thursday 25 February 2010 at 10:47 pm in category: Whatever
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 20 people read this.

So, my mom and dad were here for 3 weeks, to see the new baby, and help us get through those first weeks with three kids. My dad brought his new camera with him, a Nikon D3000 Digital SLR, which is the most awesome digital camera you can buy for under $500 these days.

The baby that remained nameless for 48 hours

Posted on Monday 08 February 2010 at 10:26 am in category: USA
In the past week 4 people read this, in the past month 26 people read this.

on Friday the 5th of February 2010, our newest addition was born. Although I was pretty much convinced it would be a girl, it turned out it was another little boy. We didn't expect him until the 10th, and because we come from a long line of procrastinators, we didn't have a name yet.

Grocery shopping...

Posted on Monday 01 February 2010 at 12:46 pm in category: USA
In the past week 39 people read this, in the past month 137 people read this.

... is usually my job on the weekends. I like grocery shopping. And I'm good at it, as long as I get an itemized list from home. The list has to be detailed for me to be good at grocery shopping though. A simple item like peanuts does not suffice. It has to be "Planters Cocktail Peanuts, jar, 1lbs.". Luckily, the person that writes the list knows that (she learned that the hard way), so most of the time I come home with the intended items.

How Toyota is saving the American auto industry

Posted on Friday 29 January 2010 at 08:50 am in category: USA
In the past week 11 people read this, in the past month 55 people read this.

On January 21st, Toyota announced a massive recall of vehicles in the US, Europe and China, because of a sticky accelerator pedal. Although there is a very small amount of cars in which this might actually happen, Toyota has taken its responsibility, and offers to fix 2.3 million cars in the USA alone.

The American public has seen Toyota outselling the big American automakers in the last couple of years, and the media couldn't wait to jump on this news. In the past week, I have not been able to turn on the radio in my (American) car, and hear some kind of report on the dangerous faulty gas pedal in Toyotas. Toyota's stock has taken a little bit of a plunge, although probably not as big as a lot of people would have hoped. Finally, the press has found something bad to report on a Japanese auto maker.

Bizarre: The story of Elizabeth Báthory

Posted on Wednesday 27 January 2010 at 1:51 pm in category: Anti Helden - Anti Heroes
In the past week 82 people read this, in the past month 317 people read this.

After writing that thing about Issei Sagawa a while ago, I wanted to write some more about evil people.  In my search for evil people in history, this time I've come across somebody that may or may not be the most evil person ever (not taking people like Hitler in consideration).

The evil person I would like to introduce to you today is probably the most prolific serial killer in history. The fact that it is a woman is pure coincidence.

Stanislav Petrov, the guy that saved your life

Posted on Friday 22 January 2010 at 08:57 am in category: Helden - Heroes
In the past week 293 people read this, in the past month 1171 people read this.

You probably don't know this, but there is somebody that saved millions of lives, including yours. He might even have saved the whole planet. The guy I'm talking about is Stanislav Petrov. Back in 1983, when the Cold War was still going strong and Miley Cyrus wasn't even born yet, Stan had a pretty important role in the army of the Sovjet Union. As a lieutenant colonel, he was responsible for monitoring the Sovjet satellites hovering over the United States, to make sure somebody wasn't firing nuclear missiles at the motherland.

Stranger in a strange land, part 1

Posted on Wednesday 20 January 2010 at 10:38 am in category: USA
In the past week 11 people read this, in the past month 50 people read this.

It is now 5 and a half years ago that I first set foot on American soil, on July 4th 2004. After that things went kind of fast, and since September of 2006 I am officially a resident of the United States. You would think that after all that time I wouldn't really feel like a stranger anymore, and most of the time I don't. But still there are certain things that I will never get used to. For somebody that grew up in The Netherlands, the US can be a strange place to live. And I'm not talking about the fact that there are 12 McDonalds restaurants within a 10 mile radius of my house, or the fact that some stores here are open 24/7, but more about the way people think.

The relationship between crap & kids

Posted on Sunday 17 January 2010 at 1:25 pm in category: USA
In the past week 1 people read this, in the past month 21 people read this.

While spending a couple of hours in the garage, trying to get it back in a condition where both cars would fit in it again, I was wondering why this was necessary.

When we first moved in this house, there was so much room we didn't really know what to do with it. I admit, we did put some stuff in the house that made it look a little less roomy, like a desk, furniture, a TV, a bed and some other stuff, but that really made the house more comfortable to live in.

Bizarre: The story of Issei Sagawa

Posted on Wednesday 13 January 2010 at 07:33 am in category: Anti Helden - Anti Heroes
In the past week 2864 people read this, in the past month 4306 people read this.

In the last couple of weeks, I noticed that most of the visitors to my humble blog get here after searching Google for 'Renée Hartevelt'. This is because of a post I wrote in November of 2008, in a series of articles about bad people, so I thought it would be nice to rewrite it in English.

I have some strange fascinations. One of them is that I'm interested in everything that has to do with serial killers. Believe it or not, I actually own a bunch of books on the subject, though the person this article is about is technically not a serial killer (as far as I know, he's killed once). Nevertheless, the story of Issei Sagawa is bizarre.

Mailbox got knocked down...

Posted on Saturday 09 January 2010 at 1:16 pm in category: USA
In the past week 8 people read this, in the past month 39 people read this.

Ok, I understand that driving a snowplow during the darkest hours of the night in a blizzard is not the easiest job. But overlooking a complete mailbox? It's not like it's white...

Last night a snowplow knocked over our mailbox (which is, for reasons that are still mysterious to me, across the street from our house). Now what? Is the city of Hudson going to put it back up after the snow is gone, or maybe just buy us a new one, or do they expect us to do that ourselves?