dammIT home

*Gulp*

Ten years ago I was sixteen years old, an uncertain, geeky teenager. Right this moment we where on a school trip in Paris, that nice, big city in France you might have heard of. Earlier on a few girls of my class had tried to set up things, but I decided to do it my way. On the Thursday evening boat trip over the Seine, I managed to get a place next to that cute girl I knew. We watched the city glide by together, pointing out places where our little group had walked that week and weird statues we noted. When I put my hand on her leg, she didn't remove it or complain. When we left the boat, we walked hand in hand.

It's been ten years I've been together with this wonderful girl who has grown from an (also bit geeky) teenage girl with awesome long hair to a professional pharmacist who still for some weird reason seems to love me. It's also been two and a half years that we 'engaged', or rather made our relation more official. I won't comment on the 'and when is the wedding' questions yet ;)

The last decade has been fun, both of us growing from teenagers going to high school, going through university and ultimately landing a nice job, with me being proud of my girl being head pharmacist of her own pharmacy (even though she doesn't own it; hey, no burdens, only benefits :) ). I love you sweetie, let's multiply that decade by a large amount.

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 2 comments »

Interesting links of this week:

Differences between developers from various parts of the world

Yes means: "I understand what you say" vs. Yes means: "I agree with what you say"

Creationist critics get their comeuppance

A couple of weeks ago we reported on the work of Richard Lenski, who has spent much of the last 20 years maintaining cultures of E. coli to see how they evolve. His paper describes how one of his populations evolved the ability to metabolise citrate, something E. coli cannot do by definition.

It's one of the most dramatic examples of evolution in action ever seen, and because Lenski freezes samples of the population every 500 generations, it is possible to go back and track how the ability developed. Lenski and his team are now doing so, and hope to have a detailed history of the ability developing, mutation by mutation.

...

First up was Michael Behe, the intelligent design proponent and biochemist, who argued in his Amazon blog that Lenski's work was in fact excellent evidence for intelligent design. His argument is a variant on the usual "it's just so improbable" line: the ability to metabolise citrate required several different mutations (true), which each have a low chance of happening in a given time (true), and it may even have been necessary for them to happen in a particular order (true), therefore Darwinian evolution can't explain it. Er, no, it just means it would take evolution a little while to manage it. 20 years, as it turned out.

Good stuff

Teach The Controversy About Barack Obama

This one quite cracked me up. I'm quite neutral on the US candidates, but this was a nice read.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times, even in the shower. One time he DROPPED THE PIN down the drain, and he PATRIOTICALLY disassembled his entire plumbing to retrieve it.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag, and he has an American flag in EVERY ROOM in his house. Some days it takes him OVER 45 MINUTES to get out of his house. He also ends every sentence by saying, "WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." On the INTERNET there is video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

...

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic, which is the language JESUS SPOKE before he learned English. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

[more on the linked site]

Lego Secret Vault Contains All Sets In History

*speechless*

[That spaceship! I've got that one!]

[Flash] Belspelletjes, de waarheid

Brilliant video mix-up about those stupid phone games

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 1 comment »

Today I traded the head pillow I had on try-out for a regular, new one, after which we made the bed with shiny new linen and my new, very comfy pillow. Sleep is good :)

After giving the community some time and updating my tablet a bit, the N810 with Diablo is useful again :) [Read: irc'ing over ssh is possible again]

Updating over the GPRS link of my phone [theme is the non-default Hendrika one]:

Application manager now supports updating the whole OS [through apt]; how neat is that? No more flashing your device!

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Yesterday evening I flashed Diablo (Maemo 4.1) on my Nokia N810 tablet. This is a great update BTW. I restored the backup of my contacts and some other minor things and set up the Modest email client (which suprisingly now marks my mails as 'read' on the imap server, which it didn't before). However, almost every other program still has to be packaged for this operating system update, so now I'm stuck with a nice tablet that I can only surf and read my mail with :)

/me wants ssh for his daily IRC dose on the couch, dammit ;)

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Yesterday we went out to buy some stuff (shopping Sundays are rather convenient). We came back with a new pillow for me, which should make sleeping even more fun, but not the two games we wanted.

Of course, those are amongst the most popular at the moment, but you would guess that would mean Nintendo did their best to meet demand? We just want to give you money for Mario Kart and Wii Fitness, now let us dammit!

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Interesting links of this week:

Visualizing the commit history of the Python scripting language project

Now that's an awesome way of visualising additions to a code base!

Firefox 3 Memory Usage

Interesting background information on what changes and tweaks where performed to make Firefox 3 a lot better

Most complex crop circle ever discovered in British fields

And it looks cool too!

Uniqlock

Music, dance, clock. Japanese girls dancing. Nice :)

Kazuharu Sakura's leather keyboard: only touch typists need apply

Classy

FAQ: So you have a demon (How to deal with an immortal evil)

*g*

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Some people find it a stupid concept [a bit like how I find Valentine's day overrated - why only be sweet to your lover then?], but I think it's a good day to show your dad you appreciate his existence and actions :) Maybe I'm just blessed with my old man, but I think showing that you really am thankful for his unselfish help fixing random things by giving him some decent audio equipment isn't that much to ask. [Don't worry, those ear buds weren't *that* expensive ;)]

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Interesting links of this week:

Updating your n810/n800 to a Diable beta version

With a simple apt-get, no less. Diablo is the codename of the upcoming update of OS2008, which is also on the n810 wimax edition

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

We came back from the Greek island of Zakynthos last week, and as expected I made a lot of pictures. Here is a small selection; an album will be up later. Mouse over for texts, click for larger versions.

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »

Interesting links of this week:

YouTube - BANNED Adam and Eve, the gay version

ROFLMAO

Posted by Michiel Scholten | | 0 comments »