Croeso

Humph

3 hour stationary in a taxi , missed my flight, now 3 hour wait for the next flight home. At least there is football to watch, but even that's 0-0 at half time France vs Swiss.

Testing The temperature of the World Cup

Well I'm in Germany just flown into Frankfurt for the day to visit a client. And I must admit the whole World Cup scene was missing from the airport. South Korea are playing Togo in Frankfurt today and no sign of groups of happy expectant fans at all. Maybe if it was the day of a Netherlands Germany match, all would be different. 74 n all that!

Pity my alternate train has just arrived

Otherwise I'd have bought another one.

Slightly less hot stuff

As a slight positive, having to change trains @ Haarlem, due to trains issues from the hot weather, I just had a rather jummy white Magnum with strawberry filling

Differing points of view

Now this is interesting, I've just read on the train 3 reviews from 3 countries on the Netherlands Serbi-Montegro match, the brits said Wesley Snijder ran the mid field, the Dutch said Philip Cocu ran the show, whilst the Italians stted Mark van Bommel was the midfield anchorman . Mind you that report did stretch my Italian. Hmm did they all watch the match I'm wondering? They all agreed Arjen Robben was the star despite Robin van Persie's grumblings about lack of service. Just goes to show you the mainstream press always get it wrong and the collective intelligence of us Web 2.0ers get it right.

Becoming more Dutch by the day

Well as most of the Dutch nation are, I too am gripped by the Winter Olympics. Especially the speed skating , the Dutch national winter sport. With 2 gold medals already in the bag, 2 silvers and 2 bronze, and the 1500m tomorrow it's all very exciting. It's so nice to see a nation so wrapped up and excited in a positive way at the moment, it would be nice if all the world's nations were the same these days.

Further Fungi Facinations

I really do need to buy a book so I can recognise what is what in the Fungi World

Bliss

A new rawhide hammer (buffalo leather) a DVD on French Polishing a hand printed T shirt with a poem from my wife and a new rasp. This is what birthdays are made for

Stamps

My father in law died earlier this year and now I have in my possession his stamp collection.

He did not have much time in the last years due to the farm and the children needs but he kept on collecting. He just horded the stamps into various cigar boxes, which are now in my possession. a whole large suitcase full!

Now when considering what to do with all these I poured through them all saying to my self ''it is such a pity to let these go'', as well as my child hood memories of stamp collection coming rushing back.

So I suggested to my wife's family I keep them which they were delighted with.

So here I am another hobby, and I'm scouring eBay looking for stamp tweezers, stock books, high end (yes there are such beasts) stamp albums and a magnifying glass with built in light and UV sources ( a must for all stamp nutters it seems)

I do like new passions as there is all the jargon to learn, kit to collect and the family to infect with enthusiasm. I'll be focusing on primarily organising, extending and presenting his Dutch stamp collection, but he has a lot more than just Dutch ones. And of course there are Cops on the subject and oodles of technorati tags, delicious lists etc etc hmm even stamp collecting bloggers to find, or is that mutually exclusive? Not anymore

Gee next I'll be building model railways - ha ha

Back into the flat lands

Having just spent a month on vacation ( I know us continental Europeans) I'm nicely relaxed and getting back into work.

We spent the last stage of our holiday visiting Anke's family in Burgundy. Anke's aunt and another Uncle plus their spouses and children moved there just after the WWII, and have been farming there since. Now there are a large group with great grandchildren, of the 4 original people only Hinke is alive, doing very well at 86.

It was amazing though, she lived in France all these years yet her and her children still can speak Frisian (The language of the northern province on The Netherlands famous for Frisian Holstein Cows.) So they speak Frisian and French. They also , still , eat loads of dutch things, Rye Bread, Stroop, Bescuitjes, dutch cheese, spekulaas, dutch coffee, koffie melk.... great for my kids!

So I felt I was in a Frisian enclave in beautiful Burgundy, marvellous.

One thing that made me smile thou, we cooked for Moike Hinke most days and I did a Bouillabaisse for her, it was the first time she'd had one - amazing she's only lived there for over 50 years!

It just goes to sho how long it takes for immigrants to naturalise (me being a direct case in point)

All quiet on the western front

Quite glad to report on this morning's commute into Den Haag, no more outbursts of Pottermania.

Potter Mania

Well I was sat on the train yesterday work bound with the new Potter book, and the lady opposite me snorted her disgust! Then after a delay of no longer than 5 seconds, launched into a tirade about how the HP books were terrible literature, badly written and a general scourge on the world. Now I tried to explain that , anything that has the following attributes cannot be that bad:

1. 250 million (give or take) sold ,mainly to children - seems to have got many kids reading again
2. The pope doesn't like them
3. Translated into Welsh and Latin (we have both of those in our house)

Then she went on to add that I should have waited till November till the dutch version is released as that will be at least an improvement as all the bad story constructions will be fixed. Now this statement pleased me no end as she must have thought I was dutch, as normally my poor grammar and johnny foreigner accent would have given it away.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying HP and JKR are High literature, but they are a cracking read, nicely dark for kids books, and the story flows very nicely naturally allowing long sessions of reading without the post 2 hour sag that I normally suffer from. Even my wife who is an award winning serious writer and poet, agrees they are quite good. (praise indeed if you know my wife)

She kept on and on about it - so at one point I flipped the book over and there on the back was the photo of JKR, I looked over at the woman now red in the face and annoying the whole section of the train , and stated "and she's not only rich but much better looking than you are!".

Bingo, desired effect , angry from Alkmaar left the carriage and sat in second class, 2 other woman in the carriage congratulated me on keeping my cool and getting rid of her, one even patted me on the shoulder.

Now I'm not normally like that, I'm mild mannered and hardly get annoyed, but if I'd had HPs wand with me I'd have turned her into a toad (on second thoughts no need she already was one). Why do people put there noses in where :

a) it not wanted
b) there is no need (as what harm was I doing?)

My wife later thought, maybe she just had her Children's book manuscript rejected by the 10th publisher - Hmm that thought kept me smiling all evening.

Some people

Feeling rather healthy

Waiting at the station on the way home today (first day in new job - went well I think!) I looked around and smiled to myself, I was eating 2 plums and a banana, on the platform was a pizza eater, a burger king eater, a croissant eater and a fritjes (chips with mayonnaise) eater.

I did feel proud

What a football match

With the swing from despair to elation through nerve racking last minutes, then the tension of the penalties, I hardly slept a wink last night. I'm still excited about it now!

The beautiful game!

Hah - Missed the connection but Big Yinn'in

Finally sat in the train in Amsterdam, Heiloo bound and Billy Connolly has come on, now I have eulogised about Billy for years if you ask me he's one of Scotland national treasures (Scottish Comedian for those of you who don't know). My Dutch mates who I've mentioned him to, say all he does is say Fuck all the time and talk about sex, that is partially true, but I like him as a social commentator, and for the fact that I piss myself laughing (not literally but close!) when I'm luckily enough to get tickets to his shows. I was amazing fortunate to meet him at a Bert Janch party once and we chatted for a long while about our favourite mandolin players, and he is everything in real life you (or at least I) would like him to be, what an evening that was.

O gee I'm laughing out loud on the train to the 'woman cannot keep secrets gag' !!!

And I'm smiling for 2 reasons a) the BC mp3 files I have are hilarious, but b) it reminded me of the time in the summer I actually was painted the windows on the house. I was always up a ladder at the 2nd or 3rd floor when random play delivered him, how I did not fall, drop the paint or paint the wall instead of window due to the manic giggling I'll never know. My wife would even pop out to see if I was OK as she heard me roaring with laughter!  Anke is a bit bemused as she does not understand him due to his accent, like me trying to understand Rotterdamers, but she understands my affinity for him - and is amazed how I still laugh at the same thing on the 20th play

Oh no it's the 'mate working in the mortuary story'! Ha ha ha….. (and the guy opposite is somewhat bemused at me giggling and grinning like a Cheshire cat whilst typing)

Oh well nearly home!

Brussels

I like Belgium a lot, nice people, great food, super beer, stunning fashion, and they are not gravity challenged as NL (they have hills, and great climbing), but I'm not so fond of Brussels. That French speaking enclave in the Flemish part of the country,  it has all the above (except hills naturally), but its crowded, busy, always full of road works, and 3.5 hours away from home, even with the Thalys which I'm on at the moment. Mind you I just afforded my self a small smile, I just had a munch at Quick that ever so French competitor to the big Mc's (or 'citadel of evil' as my old aussie veggie mate Jo calls them). I like supporting the underdog and the munch wasn't too bad either bacon that tasted as bacon should and a burger that seemed to emanate from a bull - hot fries and a jus d'orange with bits in it- tres bien!

I have been sharing my previous experiences with my Brussels based colleagues on the only part of business where we can ethically and professionally be sneaky - Competitive Intelligence - great fun.
Now I'm tuned into the MP3 jukebox (loads of Brel today - (how the bloody hell does it know I'm in Belgium - whoops paranoia again) but Max Boyce is playing at the moment - oh the days when we were great at Rugby!) sat on the Thalys in first class with a power socket and apparently a wifi connection (pity my work pc is radio silent so to speak). So thought I'd blog a bit via email . Hmm just had Cecelia Bartoli and now Metallica, what a great thing random play is!!!! Now Catatonia!

Nadolig Llawen

I should write more clearly

Lilia commented on my last lot of postings that she was worried about my attitude to blogging, I think she misunderstood me a little, the 'crap' I was referring to was when you have a plan to do something and if something else appears, and you do not take that new opportunity , it's a pretty crappy way to behave , actually boringly mundane if you ask me!

So when the John Peel evening came on Radio One I abandoned all plans and listened to that. If your not British nor a World Service listener then the impact on the sad loss of John Peel maybe hard to read, he was basically the godfather of all new British music and was the champion of progression. Many of us feel deeply saddened by his loss. I actually met him once in the corridors of the Royal College of Music where he had heard there was a young tutor there with a Marshall stack and a Les Paul in his office - we chatted for half an hour or so and he impressed me to death, mind you I never did ask him what he was doing in the Royal College of Music, as he didn't just come to see me.

Anyway I shall endeavour to be a bit more clearer when I blog in the future, maybe I shouldn't blog when I'm emotional, but a blog does give you that immediate outlet which is what I seemed to have needed from my comfy sofa that evening.

Listen to John Peel now

To understand a little about what all the Brits were on about when John Peel died - listen here now (live bbc radio)

A plague on all their houses

Sometimes those little annoyances of modern life get me really pissed, I know on most occasions  I do not have any rights to be so pissed off as I'm sure my actions are not always appreciated by all, but there we are pissed off I can be.

Little strategies to deal with such annoyances sometime strike a real accord with me and the rebellious streak that sits deep in us all becomes ignited and off we go with the sweat allure of revenge lading us to wards some form retribution.

What has sparked this off you may wonder? Well it was a little action by Lycos to enable the Internet community to fight back against the spammers. SPAM being the afore mentioned offender. All you need to do is download their screen saver from MakeLoveNotSpam.com, and when the screen saver runs the spammers get spammed back - Now that's the spirit. It even gives you a running score of your contribution to the fight!

Another little technique I do I learned from Ben Elton, when you get junk mail , rip up all the junk mail, put it into the pre paid envelope (with your name and address on the top). Then the people who bug me at home, a) have to pay for the postage b) and pay for the time for the worker to open the envelope.It always brightens up my day when I walk to the postbox with such replies. I know some people's jobs rely on this work but really I'd rather the economy put these people to a much more productive (from my point of view) use.

I'm continually impressed by the power of the mass Internet users, lets hope this little screen saver can mobilise that and clean the inboxes of the world from SPAM

Croeso

There were two young ladies from Perth
Whose mother had just given birth

Said Jelte with a fright

Or a shriek of delight?

Oh no 3 people wearing a skirt!

A warm welcome to Paulien and Nora.

Who said being married to a poet and writer has it's down sides?

Intolerance

A dreadful murder was carried out last night in Amsterdam when a member of a radical Muslim group killed a Dutch Film director Theo van Goch. Link
Such barbaric acts have no place in a democracy such as Holland's where free speech and open debate must be an absolute standard, irrespective of how controversial your points of view. It is a very sad day indeed and makes me fearful for the future.

Gob smacked

John Peel died last night, gee he was the champion for almost all of the great and good in British Music , from Led Zeppelin to The Undertones and the Fall. My MP3 jukebox is stuffed full of 'his' discoveries.

I've spent the afternoon glued to the radio with a tear in my eye. I really do fear for the future of all those 'unpopular' bands in the UK who are all rough diamonds just needing someone to air them.

I spent many a teenage hour under the duvet listening to my old ITT radio with a single ear piece enthralled by John Peel. Until yesterday the world service and the Internet served me with those gems

How sad.

The others

A walk in the woods

Amazing what you can find not but 150 meters from the house, we have discovered so many different types of mushrooms/ toadstools - we've had to order The Collins Guidebook so we can name them.

It's finds like this that makes me wonder why I spend so much time away from the village where we live?

Early perception

I was playing to my four year old daughter, Femke, random music from my MP3 player and the Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' came on.
She looked at me and said "Papa - waarom is de muziek so boos?" - ("Dad why is the music so angry")

Wow she got it straight away! and at 4years old too! I then tried to explain to her ' well you see it was just before this music was written that Dawn's "tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" was no 1 in the UK.

Of course that confused her a little (not on my MP3 player you see!), but she turned round to her brother and told him I was sweet.

I nearly wet myself laughing for the most of the evening.

Priceless!

Who ever it was?

Well someone rang my office number at 3:05 am this morning and it transferred itself to my mobile (hence the call ID was lost.) which was in my jacket pocket on the back of the bedroom door!

To whom ever it was please please don't. I'm not a 24 hour guy not are my family

The sucker punch or the sucker was punched

Well I signed up for yahoo mail with 2GB of on line space (must be a server the size of Wales - but not as pretty - wrth gwrs)

You do get back-up functionality, anti virus automatically done, temp email addresses (very useful) and a host of other features.

When will this free ride end

Wonders will never cease

I've just logged onto my Yahoo! email account, and hey hey, they upped the free email limit to 100MB! I guess this in response to Google email announcement.

And what is even better a massive 2GB of email storage space for a miserly 19.99$ per year. I've got 1.5 GB of email archive since 1983 (I know I've backed it up to a DVD as we are migrating work PC systems soon - I'm shivering at the very thought of it! As it never goes well)

So for 20 bucks a year I can have all my email on line for ever.

It does make me wonder though who exactly pays for all of this I know Yahoo Inc make money but precious few .coms do.

The danger is of course if Yahoo! goes belly up (just like some bloggers have recently lost their blogs!) and you loose it all. I'll investigate with Yahoo, if you can periodically back it up to a DVD, and if so I may go for it. After all 20$ a year is only the same as buying a couple of drinks in a London Pub (I'm off there next week!)

p.s. CDs done

All 1056 CDs have been ripped, now the only problem is I've discovered Real Rhapsody and by using my US address I can download the CD files from the INTERNET, then rip them later. This means I can now buy again the best of the music I have on records (remember those) Ho hum the credit card is taking a hammering though - it's a good job not all artists allow their materials to be sold there!

Well we're at 434 CDs

I've been ripping like mad recently as well as much work with visits to Enschede Tilburg Moerdijk all in the name of the Km work.

I've made my MP3 player purchase and I did not go for an iPod (I know my postings were all about iPoding but it's a nice generic verb I thought).

I got a Creative Zen Xtra 60GB one (enough room for about 1500 CDs by my reckoning), the software is way better for a PC I was told - plus it's cheaper by 200 euros)

The really nice thing about it is the following: I've always liked it when someone comes to my house and chooses one from my vast array of CDs, and plays it. So it a little surprise to me what is playing. The radio does not fully do this to me as I do not like all the songs they play.

I found when you have loads of CDs you spend a few minutes perusing the collecting, making your choice and then walking it over to the player. By this time the surprise element is gone and as BB King so elegantly states, 'The Thrill is Gone'.

So now by using the random play feature on the Zen Extra I get surprised all the time, and I like (or liked at some stage in my life) the music.

I've cabled it into my digital amplifier and it sound great I must admit (I know it's lower sound quality in comparison to the CDs, but with young kids in the house you don't notice the difference).

So I'm about 33% through the CD collection (just doing Rodrigo, Neil Young and Schubert) as it seems the even spread across the letters is not true, I have circa 1100.

Phew back to ripping.

Artistic fun

The only person who actually appreciates the tiny amount of artistic talent I have is my 4 year old, actually we are sitting in the garden on a beautiful summer's late afternoon, so face painting seemed the perfect activity.

Venice

Ah sunshine, Grand Canal, Venice, Beer, Pizza - who cares about KM

Cymro gorau, Cymro oddi catref

Ah it says it all

Value for Money?

I just bought a new DVD RW/CD RW drive with an extra IDE controller for my PC, (so I can rip 4 CDs at a time to MP3 to speed up the Rome fiddling process - quite right Euan!) and paid 59.95 euro for both items.

Now one part of my brain thinks crickey that's great, the other says hang on some poor soul is working slave labour to manufacture and package these items. Hmm the latter thought always dominates with me, it's hard to take the socialist out of this Welsh executive.

I wonder if in my lifetime if an EU style social chapter will ever be applied to China? being a socialist country n all

Well well there is hope for us all

An amateur runner has just qualified for the UK Womens Olympic Marathon team after an astounding 2h 33minutes, in her second marathon.

Bloody Marvellous - well done girl.

It's little stories like this that re-in-vigour me to keep pushing KM, as who knows what each and everyone of us can inspire to.

Magdalene Sisters

Anke and I saw this movie the other night, and this was one of those many occasions that the catholic church appals me!

MP3's and CD's

My little thoughts whilst waiting for the flight to Milan on MP3 player vs Cd's was crystallised whilst listening to a BBC World Service broadcast coming home from meeting with Carla Anjo Robert and Rogier. It was over a company called we-pod (I think albeit I cannot find their web - page) who send you a box, you fill it with your CD collection and your iPod, and they put the music on the iPod for £1 a disk, and return the Cd's to you with a bulging iPod. Now I know that's expensive, but I never knew iPods were so big (capacity wise of course). So I thought that could mean we put our music collection on an iPod and store all the CDs in the attic.

So last night I downloaded CD to MP3 converter (that also looks up the CD title and tracks for you via a Internet based database) and tried it out by loading a CD to my Pocket PC.

The sound quality was fine and it took about 4 minutes to make the MP3s and place them in my sync folder of my PC. Now being and ex pro I have hundreds of CDs but by my rough calculations a 40 Gig iPod will hold about 650 of them. Also at the moment from the apple store you get a free monster cable to connect to the home audio system amplifier.

You see what we want is space in my new cupboards to store all the music CDs, and that will mean a whole cupboard, that will cost way more than the iPod (assuming I make all the MP3 files), and then if we go the iPod route, we will have more room for books (Of course more books means another cupboard but we are happy about that even though the cash saving is not materialised, but it means less books in the cellar as even with 3 new cupboards, we will not have enough space for all of them)

The IPod will go in the new TV cupboard where the digital amp and DVD sit, which is coming along nicely in my furniture making course at Houtwerk in Renkum with Hans Koot.

Bopping along to the Stereophonics

Well here I am listening to the new Stereophonics CD 'YOU GOTTA GO THERE TO COME BACK', I just bought at the airport shop. These are a great Welsh band following in the footsteps of The Alarm, Gorky's Sychotic Mynci, Cardigans, Catatonia, Super Fury Animals and the Manic Street Preachers - just to name a few.

I get the feeling I'm a bit old fashioned, not by the music I'm listening to but by the medium, a CD walkman! Surely I should be downloading this stuff to an MP3 palyer, but then would I really download the whole album? After all isn't the album (do we still call them albums?) a complete statement and isn't taking one song on it's indiviual merits missing the point. Or maybe I'm just a die hard old Led Zep fan who isn't embracing the new world order of the downloadable (and therfore disposable?) music. Gee John Bonham would be spinning in his grave!.

I'm of to a workshop soon (Monday actually) with the BBC soon where such things will be discussed, we are in general going there from the digital media as a storytelling medium that allows the story teller (e.g. TV presenter) instant feedback via new digital TV technology, thus allowing the audience to influence the story tellers just like they did round the campfires and in the souks. So it will be interesting to see how this old muso reacts in the new digital domain of the 21st Century TV, that's in it's entirity will probably be discussed..

Anyway back to bopping (again I'm not even sure on the modern term for bopping, guess Femke should know since she is now 4 and going to school)

Lilja 4 Ever - time for refelction

Hmm
We just seen the Russian move 'Lilja 4 ever', such graphic movies of how horrible our world can be really stop you in your tracks and contemplate why do we worry about such trivia as KM, when the world has much larger problems to solve.