Google’s Street View is now available in a couple of towns in the Netherlands. Including mine (click picture for larger one) :

They forgot to blur my license plate :-)

This saturday It was nice and sunny! I reinstalled my battery in my motorcycle.  At least after I found my screw again while I tried installing it… I went for a nice ride. This time the bike behaved very well, better than last year. Let us hope for a lovely spring and summer. And even a bit autumn. :-)

Bike season has now officially begun!

Now that Knight Rider has a remake, a friend and I were fantasizing about who would star in a remake of the A-team. Apparently Hollywood is even working on planning this. No cast is known.

Anyways here is our list:

Hannibal: George Clooney

Murdock : Jack Black

B.A. : Michael Clarke Duncan (too old?)

Face: Matthew McConaughey (my friend is not completely convinced about this one)

For April you just take a random hot babe :-)

I just retrieved my copy of Call of Duty just in time. I was invited to a LAN-party 2 days later. We have been playing Call of Duty all day. I learned a lot. Sadly my laptop was giving my a higher ping than the rest. Resulting in me being owned by the rest of the group. Having low-end weapons on my low level does not help either. But it was lot of fun. The majority of lan parties goes along with pizza/chinese food and beer. Well we had the beer, but one of the participant’s main hobby is cooking. So we had a very delicious meal!  For everything a first time :-)

About the game it self. I focus on multiplayer. I have not played single player in years, so I probably will not start  with this game. I think this game provide a very good balance in casual players and hardcore players.  Counterstrike was terrible, I walked three meters and I died right away.  The idea whit CoD is to level up from level 1 with simple weapons to level 55 with top notch weapons. The start is hard because of all the high levels in the game, but when you have your first red dot scope on a weapon, the weapon difference is reduced. Then it depends on skill… and mine is not that good :-)

It has been a while I have been playing a game for a longer period besides World of Warcraft. But I really love this game. Specially when you have only half an hour to spare, just log on and shoot the bad guys (or the good guys depending on which team you are).

When living on your own, most mail is yours, instead addressed to housemates or ex-housemates. Some mail is nice to receive like a postcard from friends on holiday in the US. Some are less pleasant like bills. And finally some are just plain annoying like the two in the picture below that I received yesterday.

For the non dutch people: One is for speeding 7 km an hour: 19 euros. The other 11 km an hour: 36 euros. Waste of good money :S

My brothers birthday was in April. My family bought him a course for advanced bikers. In a nutshell this course teaches bikers who have their license for a while some new pointers. Things they did not know or things they should have known but forgot. Being the nice brother who definitely needs some training I went along.

Last Saturday was the big day. Er.. well wet day. It was pouring out of the sky when we woke up :S We went to the driving school and met with our instructor and the third student. Well the rain stopped while we were having a coffee and watched a powerpoint presentation of what kind of accidents can happen to a biker and how it is best to avoid them.  Also he told us about position on the road in different cases, for example when you approach a curve or when you pass a big truck.

Next thing we did was going to an empty parking lot, and did some excersizes like braking, making u-turns, braking and other excersizes to train our driving skills. After a nice lunch we went on the road. By turn one of us was the front driver. Our task was to watch the biker in front of you closely and make remarks about his driving style. The instructor was driving at the back keeping an eye on us all.  He made us stop at certain dangerous crossing. Tellings how they are best handled.

I have now a second certificate. I already had one for a advanced  driving course for cars. All in all very useful to do a course like this. It makes it a bit safer on the road for a biker. It was a very fun they, too bad my own bike was not tuned properly. I had to restart my bike from time to time.

Just a quick post to tell every one I am still alive. Not much to tell. The last couple of months were a bit hectic. With happy fun stuff, like my brother getting married. I am still having bassguitar lessons which I really am enjoying still playing in an orchestra etc etc.

Two major things happening though:

• ASTRON has extended my contract for another two years.
• I am currently looking for my own place to live.

So you are now up to date, see you in a couple of months ;-)

I am a software developer. I am not really good at other practical stuff. But last weekend I did some maintenance on my bike.

• I checked the freeplay of the chain
• I check the condition of all spark plugs
• I changed the oil
• I checked the air in my tires

I had some guidance from two friends, but I did all the chores by myself.

I am quite proud :-)

In my line of sight while I am typing this I see a birthday card. A friend of my and her husband have a little baby. A young healthy girl. I cannot wait to see her.

On the other hand I just heard that a college friend of my house mate committed suicide. A guy in his early twenties… I hardly knew the guy, but still is weird.
Some things are beyond my understanding.

I wanted to drive with my bike to work this morning. But when I was at the garage box (5 mins by bicycle) I could not find my bike keys… very bad start of the morning. So I grabbed my car and went to work, opened my mail box and found the following response to my (and friends) famous top vs. bottom posting article:

I prefer top posting – plain and simple. Please remove your article from the web as my research as shown that most Internet users prefer top posting as they down’t have to wade through old posts. and can get to the point of the post directly by reading the top.

This made me laugh on bad morning :-)

(Now where are me bike keys..)