Wie iets voor zeven een uiterst heldere, bewegende ster in het noorden zag, was getuige van een vuurbol. Deze meteoor met oranjerode kleuren spatte blijkbaar in 3 delen uiteen. Uit de waarnemingen door Nederlandse en Belgische getuigen, moet de meteoor in de atmosfeer binnengekomen zijn boven Tilburg, en opgebrand boven Den Haag.
Eén getuige slaagde erin de vuurbol in beeld te brengen. Meteoren boven Vlaanderen komen regelmatig voor, al is het exemplaar van deze avond uitzonderlijk groot & helder. Meestal gaat het hier over kleine brokstukken ter grote van een steen, of schroot van satellieten die terug in de dampkring valt, en daarin volledig opbrandt.

There has been a lot of writing about the performance impact of Intel based graphical cards under Linux since the rewrite of the kernel driver, up to the point that it's becoming almost impossible to find a decent configuration, especially after some upgrades of your favorite distribution in terms of kernel and x.org. I found 3 modifications in my xorg.conf file which were causing really bad performance on my eeePC. After cleanup, I found myself with the following configuration, which gives me satisfactoring performance :

Section "Device"

	Identifier "Configured Video Device"

	Option "EXAOptimizeMigration" "true"

	Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

EndSection

Trick is not the be using UXA or tiling, which might be a cause of the performance hit.

The Tolkien gateway is a marvelous example of what a successful wiki can achieve. It is packed with useful information about the world of Tolkien and has an active bunch of editors. And even better, you can contribute too !

Al wie "Gij ook, Brutus?" nog vertaalt als
Tu quoque, Brutus ?
heeft zijn Latijn van de pastoor in de sacristie geleerd. De vocatief, jongens en meisjes, maakt dat de correcte vertaling is :
Et tu, Brute ?


Ga heen, en doet er uw voordeel mee.

Have you ever been tricked by ads for food ? I, for instance, vividly remember the day I walked into an English Subway, ordering a turkey sandwich, and receiving something horrible with several kinds of black greasy sausage slices. And everyone knows about the wafer-thin burgers you get in every burger restaurant.


Pundo3000.com started with some real-life examples of this kind of food trickery. It features 100 pictures of junk food ads, accompagnied by a real-life example of the advertised goods. Needless to say, with a high WTF factor. If you don't feel like wading through 100 examples, head over to The Guardian, featuring a fine selection. Warning : not for the weak stomach.
If you're still hungry, check out some of the earliest pioneers in this trade, with some older examples of fine junkfood cuisine (including my Subway turkey sandwich).
Bon appetit.

I just finished the Riftwar saga by Raymond Feist. It consists of 4 fantasy novels describing a fictional universe featuring the worlds of Midkemia and Kelewan. Human magicians and other creatures on the two planets are able to create rifts through dimensionless space that can connect planets in different solar systems. Midkemia was originally created as an alternative to Dungeons and Dragons, and I recommend the saga to everyone interested in fantasy of this kind.


As most fantasy books, the Riftwar saga got lots of fansites; starting with Crydee.com, named after the city where the first book starts of, which is the official website of Feist. Other fansites include the familytree of the rich character set of the books. The most interesting place to go, is the Elvandar.com website, featuring maps of most continents and places this strange world consists of.

De laatste tien dagen een Rhodesian Ridgeback op logé gehad. Ridgebacks zijn kortharige grote honden, met een gekweekte borstel op de rug. Martine denkt zwaar aan hondenopvang, en een hond die bij de oorspronkelijke hondencreche niet terecht kon wegens te druk, leek ons het best om eens te kijken of hondenopvang ons wel lag. Het resultaat mag zeer positief genoemd worden : alleen het vele wandelen was wat onderschat, maar het heeft ons tenminste nieuwe wandelwegjes opgeleverd. En de Ridge had na zijn week verlof blijkbaar zelfs heimwee naar zijn opvangouders :)

Wat hebben wij westerse mensen toch een fixatie met eten; zelfs onze verzorgingsproducten moeten tegenwoordig volop met eten gelinkt worden : shampoo met fruitextracten, douche gels met yoghurt, tandpasta met kruidenextracten. Carrefour heeft nu een douche gel lijn uitgebracht die volledig in de culinaire sfeer liggen : geuren (smaken ?) op basis van citroentaart, creme brulee en tiramisu. Nooit om een culinair experiment verlegen, besloot ik om de fondant editie mee naar huis te nemen.


Deze douche gels ruiken dus echt naar eten : de fondant verspreidt een lekkere chocolade saus geur af, en zeker na contact met water. Met mijn kop vol witte shampoo en me inzepend met schuimende chocoladesaus voel ik me een beetje als een gigantische Dame Blanche. Ook na afspoelen en afdrogen blijft een subtiele lekkere chocolade geur hangen. Een vreemde gewaarwording, zeker voor wie de normale geuren van bloemetjes en eau-de-cologne gewoon is. Voor wie er geen graten in ziet om ruikend als een paasei door het leven te stappen, kan ik deze douche gel alleen maar aanbevelen. Ik krijg er wel zin in chocolade van : eigenlijk dus alleen maar een uiterst slimme zet om mensen op een subtiele en onbewuste manier meer te laten consumeren.

When a whisky gets 'finished', it means that it gets transferred from its first cask to wooden barrels, mostly ex-bourbon barrels to mature during a large amount of time. Traditionally, the type of barrel is always the same, but during the last decade, some distilleries have experimented with other wood finishes in order to get new taste into their whiskies. While I applaud this creativity, I sometimes get the impression that many non-conventional wood finishes are just marketing tricks in order to boost the price up and create a false sense of whisky collector items.


The folks at Glenmorangie are seen as pioneers of the 'wood finish' trend that has come to the world of whisky over the past decade. This is part of the old wood finishes range (burgundy, madeira, port, sherry) that has been replaced in recent months by a new trio of finishes. Port is now called "Quinta Ruban", sherry finish is "Lasanta", and a Sauternes finish called "Nectar d'Or". I got my hands on an older Madeira wood finish; I like Glemorangie, and the Madeira sweet taste blended into the light Glenmorangie seemed an interesting combination. The price was awesomely high, but probably because spanish oak casks that once held madeira are about 10 times more expensive that bourbon casks and still significantly more expensive than wine or wine spirit casks.


Smell : starts interesting with an explosion of caramel, chocolate, apricot and raisins.
Taste : what a disappointment. All the subtleties of Glenmorangie are blown away by the crude taste of Madeira wine. It just tastes like someone mixed a gallon of port wine with some whisky blend, and nothing more. Alcohol exploding in the mouth and leaving you gasping for air. Awefull lot of pepper in the aftertaste.


Sadly, this combination doesn't work (for me). The Madeira finish takes away the mild whisky taste, and is so unexpected, as if you suddenly get smacked in the face by a 10 year old schoolgirl.

I personally think that Nintendo screwed up with the Wii. Sure, it has a revolutionary interface, but the possibilities for end user experiences with this console were endless. If they only could have released a Youtube channel, a movie trailer channel, ... It would have lifted the Wii up from the simple game console it is now, to a multimedia Home Theater interface that could have been a smashing success. But instead, Nintendo chose to reinvent Mario Bros for the 10^6th time; Virtual Console ? Come on, Nintendo, was this all you could give us ?


So maybe your Wii has been resting too much time at your TV side too ? Do you want to give it a second chance ? Then the Homebrew Channel might be something for you. It is an application loader to run unofficial Wii software, which behaves as a separate channel. Most of the software provided are simple games, but with some, you can transform your Wii into a FTP or web server or transform it into a home theater solution with MPlayer CE, which runs on top of a slim Linux distribution.


Unfortunately, the Homebrew Channel isn't delivering what Nintendo failed to do : I would love to see Youtube support get provided as a simple application, or get better integrated into the MPlayer CE app. And most of the gaming applications are emulation softwares for eg Nintendo64 or Sega games, which mostly provide ... Mario Bros games. Sigh...


A word of warning before you head over to the HomeBrew website : it uses hacks and bugs in the Wii software to run these kind of softwares, and with the installation, there might be a slim chance that you brick your Wii.