july 2001 archives

Sunday, July 29, 2001

Hey, did you know there is a version of Google in latin?

The server on which my Web site is hosted seems to be down for maintenance at the moment, so it will be some time before you'll read this entry. This weekend, London experiences a beautiful summer. It's about 29 degrees! Today, I woke up because of the warm weather. Having taken a shower, I was sweating again anyway. Spent the afternoon on Clapham Common. It's like being on the Costa del Sol: everyone comes to the Common as early as possible to find themselves a space to lie down and enjoy the sun. The square around the band stand always looked a bit desolate, but now a nice cafe has opened. There was also a skaters' festival on the north side of the Common today. All in all, there was a lot going on here today. At the moment, I am listening to the Dutch radio as broadcasted over the Web. Long live ADSL! I am very much looking forward to next weekend when I will be the Netherlands to celebrate my birthday.

Thursday, July 26, 2001

At last. It is now long past 1 am and I am still online... Today Ian brought in his CD-ROM with the latest drivers for the ADSL modem. I am online from home now!! It has really happened eventually. So you'll be hearing more from me from now on I suppose. Good night!

Saturday, July 21, 2001

English: The Windows of languages. A complete and utter kludge, with most of its words stolen from other languages with an attempt to weld on an improper and unecessary grammar system in the 18th century, but everybody still uses it, because it's easy to pick up a basic understanding in short order. French: The MacOS of languages. Much prettier than English, tightly controlled by a central authority which is paranoid about the incursion of English words, despite the fact that most of them came from French intitially but still lets them in when it can come up with something "better". Used alot by artsy types. Latin: the UNIX of languages. Predates, in its origin, most of the ones currently in use, seems to be the source of most of the ideas (and even contents) of many others in wide use, only understood by dedicated geeks, traditionally used in academic settings. Some time ago Herman sent this to me. Post it here so it won't get lost. Sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? Well, this is the 21st century...

Saturday, July 14, 2001

"Wallabies, Lions, Test, Series, Kiwis and Ozzies". Yes my vocab has improved a lot today. Or was it just the two pints I downed well before noon? Well, this morning I met up with some people to watch the rugby game of the Four Nations against Australia in a pub in Westminster. Never watched a game in a pub (not even the football when I was back in the Netherlands) before, so it was quite an experience. Really enjoyed the match and afterwards we all went for a tasty English breakfast... And now? Hmmm... Off to sleep to catch up?

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

Aaarrgghh. Deep down in the nitty-gritty realm of FastCGI after a very nice weekend. On Friday night I met up with Marta and her collegues and one of her friends living in London. Had a long night ahead of us, but it did not dissuade them from waking up early in the morning again the following day. Spent some time in Camden, Covent Garden and China Town before we ended the night in Islington. On Sunday we walked (!!!) from St. Paul's to Buckingham Palace and ate Dutch pancakes on King's Road! Quite exhausting, but very nice to see Marta again and to meet her friends and collegues.

Wednesday, July 04, 2001

Ever heard of NTK? That's "Need To Know", *the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk. Well, on April 27th they covered my work! Hmmm.... "...leaving London? MULTIMAP warn you're venturing into "great unknown". Not really how you want to be remembered for posterity. But hey, the memory of the Internet is not too long, is it?

Monday, July 02, 2001

Back at work today. Otokai ni re: met Annelein on MSN again after a very long time. She's in Australia now! Last night I went to see Fargo at NFT. Was really great to see it on the big screen.

Sunday, July 01, 2001

After a few drinks in "All Bar One", I went out for dinner together with Ian and Sarah last night: a Persian restaurant on Goodge Street, "Dish Dash". Passed it a few weeks ago on my way to karate classes. Very good food and too much red wine... Recovered, today I visited the exhibition "From Ingres to Matisse": French paintings from the art museums in Baltimore. Some beautiful Impressionist works and of course Matisse was very powerful. Liked it very much. Fortunately it was a very small exhibition so it was not overwhelming at all.