Hmm, Düsseldorf now has two airports, one on the original location and one in the Rhine where the Theodor Heuss Bridge used to be? Of course I reported this to Google.

It’s quite an old photo, the bridge over the Rhine they are building in the left is in service a few years already.

Update: In the meantime, Google Maps was updated extensively (higher resolution pictures are now available of the area) and the error has been removed.

My first second week of classes is over, and I dropped already two three courses, leaving 6 5 courses with classes and three more independent assignments.

• Automated Reasoning (assignment + exam)
• Web Information Systems (assignment)
• Programming and Modal Logic (exam)
• Intelligent Systems (exam, assignment already done last year)
• Software Architecting (assignment + exam)
• Interactive Virtual Environments (assignment)

Furthermore, these three assignments are still open.

• History of Computing assignment still needs a subject.
• The Linux Operating System assignment will be done in the week of 3 October.
• Hypermedia Systems assignment will be started after having read all the course hypertext.

I clearly will have my hands full on this, plus that I will be working as a student assistent at the Systemenlab of SAN.

I moved the posts of the holidays in Leukerbad to the archive. This way, it won’t show up anymore in the sections sidebar, but in the static section of the site.

Because of the ordering of the journal, the holiday diaries should be read in reverse order. I’ll look into it to check whether it is possible to define your own ordering, thus enabling an ascending chronological order (instead of descending like in the journal).

Photos of yesterday’s visit to ‘s-Hertogenbosch, our province’s capital.

 Hmm, why can't I help getting the impression that Google introduced [a new service](http://talk.google.com/) today? P.S. I have some invites left for those who want to try it out.

My old black and gray t-shirt look website is gone. I moved the journal to the root of the site, building the rest around it and am now working on creating a photogallery entry type for Hobix, my blog-software. The old site will still be available on another location for a while.

In my view, it was a good design, simple yet attractive. But it didn’t fit with the needs of the journal, which became an increasingly bigger part of the site. Actually it was the only part which got updates.

So, like I said, I’m working on a photogallery entry type. The current status is that I have one single page with all thumbnails on it, accompanied by the image description. A click on the thumbnail opens a new window with the larger version. This is of course absolutely undesirable and I really have better ideas, but hey, it is only the first preview not-even-release. The final version should have automatic thumbnail generation, some navigational facilities (maybe using AJAX?) and some other cool things I don’t came up with yet (like EXIF information).

You can already take a look at the Berlin 2001 gallery.

Nice weather, “some” (i.e. around 8.000) nice bikes, but not so nice to take pictures. Why not? Downtown was full, completely packed. About 75.000 people thought of going to watch and taking 50 pictures of the same pose but of a different model isn’t really interesting to watch. I nevertheless took some and put them in my Luijten.org dump-repository.

Ah, I guess there are some alright, but not that great.

Indian

Reflections

Reflections II

This one from the 2002 edition actually was better, but I couldn’t find a nice set of bikes so nicely arranged this year, it was a mess.

3 Heritage Softails

Today, the UPS courier brought a large box, containing my all new Canon EOS 350D. I only ordered it Wednesday from TopVision in Luxembourg, got the confirmation yesterday and today it was already in the Netherlands.

Mwuhahaha! Fear, for I have a camera!

Since the camera is delivered without flash memory, I was orienting about what cards are fast enough for the 8 Mpixel images (a side-by-side test of many cards). Of course, the top items – mainly SanDisk Ultra II and Extreme III, followed by cards of Lexar – can’t be found anywhere on such short notice. So, I got a plain and simple Dane-Elec card from BCC and was prepared for a slow shooting… That became a positive disappointment, storing a full-size fine JPEG costs less than a second. I guess the speed differences between cards become more apparant when shooting RAW format. Okay, so no need to spend loads of cash on flashcards.

This Sunday is Harleyday in Breda and it will be the vuurdoop, I hope I will get some nice shots (and nice weather, too).

Today we moved the Mac mini from the study into the living room. Not because my mom wanted it, but because we’re going to be renovating the study and that can take some time, so the machine has to be somewhere. This isn’t bad at all, since it is warmer in the living room.

My shuffle had its longest time without refill this holiday and I must say, two weeks is definitely too long for this device. After a week, you’ve heard every song and you’re in need of a change.

That I couldn’t update it was of course my own fault, since I had a laptop with me, also loaded with music. I just have to find out which free app is the best for updating iPods (in Linux).

For all you feed-readers, I updated the site layout of my journal in which you’ll notice some personal favorite subject to the banner ;-).

Today, I had completely had it with the swapping and other memory issues in OS X, so I went to the Computerland and bought two very nice and not-so-very-pricy Kingston DDR PC3200 256MB parts and installed them in my Mac.

To open the case and install the memory exactly zero screws are to be unscrewed and exactly one tool, namely one of your fingers, is needed: Open the external case latch, remove the aluminum plate, remove the plastic air deflector shield thingy, remove the two fans in front of the CPU cooling block by just pulling them out. Insert your RAM banks, put everything back in place and boot the system… Yes, very easy, even an idiot could do it. And to prove that, I forgot to put the fans back in :-)

I already can feel some grave differences between 512 MB and 1 GB. For instance, calling the Dashboard is a lot more responsive, the harddisks have more time off, switching between programs isn’t as slow anymore… Of course, there is also the excitement factor, the improvements might not be this great, but there actually are improvements and that’s good.

It has to be said, my moments with Linux (albeit short and few) were better than what OS X does to the memory. Much can be improved here on Apple’s behalf, I think.