fishing contest in B/W

DSC_1295_bw
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Trying dxo optics on a shot I took this morning. Like it even though the whole series is not exactly getting great reviews.

quite proud of this one

Kal boeing 747
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Went planespotting for an hour this afternoon. After almost the complete F70 fleet the KLM owns this big brute came in.

landscape

landscape
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Went to one of the local farmers for potatoes. Followed the dog, noticed this and just had to take the shot. For me this embodies the Haarlemmermeer. The mixture of agriculture and modern architecture.

Stormy day at the beach

And his wife
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I decided to go for a late afternoon walk at Zandvoort. Noticed a beginning kitesurfer and this lady a bit further along the beach. Short chat, she was his wife shooting a few pics of her husband in action. (on a day where it wasn't warm to begin with and the windchill made it freezing).
Normally I wouldn't publish a pic of another person. In this case the person isn't recognizable and I really like the composition here.

Visit to fryslan

Frysian cottage2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Was visiting friends there. took a walk with the dogs and of course I brought my camera. Took a snap of this little cottage. It's probably at least 50 years old and likely just in use for vacations.

fallow buck

fallow buck
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Spotted this one on a walk trough the waterleidingduinen in really rotten weather. Look at it closely and you'll see noise and even some camera shake. look at it in this size and it's a lovely picture.

rough times for me

romantic bridge
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

New job, pending reorg at the office and now my mother may have a very serious illness.. Sometimes it's all a bit much. The past weekend I've had 2 anxiety attacks which were very scare. I've got a doctor's appointment on friday, last thing I want to do is end up with a burnout.
In the mean time I decided to grab an extended lunch break and go for a walk in Groenendaal park. Had my camera with me and shot this.

Autumn is here!

whooo!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

My favorite season of the year! Leaves falling, chill in the air, peace and quiet in my neighborhood... love it!

new goodies
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I picked up the 24-85 AF-S today. A shop at the other side of the country was going out of business and had this left in their used section. There's a black rim just outside the front element which has a tiny nick. Otherwise it's in fine condition. Physical aspects of the lens are very nice. There's no motion whatsoever in the front element wether you zoom or focus. "real" af-s is nice too. First results are encouraging but it's a bit early to tell if this will succeed my beloved 28-105.

Below it are 4 vapex batteries. A relatively new brand, supposedly just as good or even better as the famous eneloops but at half the price.

geotagging my pictures.

Train in motion
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

After reading something about it here: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1266438 I decided to try it myself. I already own a PDA, an old rx3715 with a bluetooth gps receiver which I use for Tomtom navigation.

I loaded outdoor gps or odgps which I found here: http://www.outdoor-gps.de/ on my pocketpc. Connect to the gps receiver (com6, 38400 baud) and let it get a fix. In the cockpit view it shows the current gps time. It's wise to synchronize your camera's clock as well as you can.

I then ticket the option "CollectData" and went shooting. When I got back I installed http://www.geosetter.de/en/ geosetter. This program recognizes Nikon's Nef files and the gpx file that odgps created. Then it's a matter of simply merging, saving and continueing with your normal workflow.

Only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to make flickr automatically place my images on a map but that's probably somewhere in the options.

Trying to get the hang of dizzler. Sounds good 3 million free tracks to listen to but for some reason it won't play.


Get Disturbed MP3s at dizzler.com

Caught in the act!

How do you make little maggots?
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I caught these two flies having sex in my window. Took the camera, flash in my right hand and fired of a dozen frames before I threw these two out.

Village street

Village street
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

The village street in the Archeon. We visited it again, third time in two years, last firday. Had a lovely time as always.

Renault Kangoo Family Review

I'm writing a review of my 2008 Renault Kangoo Family. I'll try to review the good and bad points of the car. Writing car reviews seems to be an art so let's see if I can do this.

Selection of the car
The company I work for gives people in some functions a company car. These are leased cars I first qualified for that in 2000 and selected an Opel Astra. In 2004 I choose a Peugeot 307 Break. When that was due for replacement this year I started to look around for something with even more space and yet a bit more affordable. I did look at Peugeot briefly but the 308 SW wasn't available yet and the 307 Break was only available in a full options and rather expensive version. So I looked elsewhere. I noticed the Peugeot Partner/Citroen Berlingo and the old Renault Kangoo. Affordable cars with a load of room but also old designs, passenger versions of mid 1990s panel vans with loads of engine noise. Then both Renault and Peugeot/Citroen announced new versions of these cars. Renault was the first to have the car available and that was just in time so I selected that car.

Specs:
I got the Renault Kangoo Family "expression" with the 1.6 petrol engine and the following extras:

• Pack Introduction Expression
• automatic lights and wipers
• manual airconditioning
• electric front and rear windows
• 3 airline type luggage bins above the rear seats
• electrically controled and heated mirrors in body color

Pack Style (required for Pack introduction)

• fog lights
• body colored bumpers

Pack driver

• Onboard computer
• radio Renault 4 x 15 W + CD-player (replaced that with my old clarion since an mp3 option was another 500 euros)
  
• cruise control and speed limiter (cruise control the reason for choosing this pack

I also got a luggage net. I selected the color "bleu menthe" for the car.

Almost 1600 euros worth of options. Also the first annoyance with Renault, almost all options are sold in "packs".

Delivery
Allowing for the paperwork to make it's way trough corporate burocracy I think my car got delivered after about 8 weeks. I picked it up at my local dealership just in time for my summer vacation. After a week of getting used to it we drove to the Correze in France, a 1000km drive. The luggage net came in very handy. It allowed me to stack the luggage higher than the rear seats.

First impressions
Room! Loads of room. Clear views all around, big side mirrors. Good view all around. Despite the "only" 110hp engine the car doesn't feel all that slow. Handling is good and direct enough. Since it has a huge sail area it is sensitive to wind. Suspension is rather french, soft and yet you do feel something of what's happening under the car. That soft suspension was very usefull on the horrible back roads in rural France.

Steering
It has power steering which is very nice for a car this heavy (1474kg) and big. It's direct enough just like the brakes and accelerator. Don't expect sportscar-like performace, you're not going to get it.

Interior
This is were the car shines. The driver and passenger have ample room. There's a parcel shelf above the dashboard which is nice for things like cds.
Above the rear seats I have the optional airplane like bins. Three seperate doors on those but just one big area behind them. So, store something small, take a few corners and you can guess behind which door that small item ended up with.
In back there's 660 liters of space below the shelf. There's a space just behind the rear seats to store the shelf if you're carrying something bigger than that. There's eyes to tie down heavy loads and there's hooks to hang up the luggage net. The booth is lined with some durable looking rubber.
The kids in the back have two airplane like tray tables. The first few times they fold these away the sound may startle the driver. Of course the kids love these tray tables. The sliding doors are also a big hit with my 2 kids but it does take some practice for them to close the doors themselves.

Bad points
Fuel economy. Even after 4000km the onboard computer indicates that I'm running 9.1 liter per 100km. (25,8 mpg) which I do find somewhat disappointing since Renault thinks I should get 7,9 l/100km. On the display I can clearly see that a quick sprint immediately pushes the fuel usage upto 20+ liter/100km. If the dutch government didn't put a 4000 euro extra tax on diesel engines I'd have gotten the 1.5 dci which has excellent fuel economy

Seats. The front seats are designed for someone a lot shorter than I am. They stop at my shoulder blades and don't offer good support for my upper back. Not a problem on short trips but after 2 hours or so my back starts to hurt. I'll have to fnd a pillow or something for that.

Electronics. My Peugeot 307 allowed me to close the powered windows after I had removed the car. If I pressed and held the close button on the remote control it even closed the windows automatically. With the Kangoo if I remove the key the only available power is to fold back the side mirrors if I turn the knob for that.

Vibrations. At 130km/h something in the car starts to resonate. It doesn't affect the handling but it is noisy.

Audio. As was to be expected from a french car in this price range the quality of the factory supplied speakers is dismal. It's not too noticeable if you use the Renault radio but with my Clarion DB348 it's quite clear.

Quality. At 4000km my Astra had already been in the shop for problems with it's LPG system and my Peugeot was developing issues with it's airco. The Kangoo has (knock on wood) not had any issues whatsoever.

Emotion
Despite these bad points and aside of the occasional nagging feeling of guilt about the fuel economy this is a car that makes me happy. A month after delivery I've always gotten used to a car. I'm used to this car but it still makes me happy. I really look forward to taking it for a drive again. I like it's handling, the view I have from the driver's seat, the color. It's a very likeable car for me. I'm trying to do something about the lousy mileage by coasting whenever possible which is easy because it's such a heavy car.

A nice car, recommended if you want a roomy family car for a decent price. I was a bit surprised to see that it "only" got a 4 star rating at Euro NCAP.
When shopping for a car in this class I would advice you to also check the new Berlingo/Partner and see what they are like. From what I've seen they are a bit more expensive and a comparable trim level.

my new car
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Yoga class

Yoga class
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Esther was teaching Rhianne some yoga basics. I was really surprised how serious Rhianne approached it.

my new car

my new car
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Yesterday I picked it up at the dealer. A brand new renault kangoo 1.6 I love it! It's roomy, it's fun to drive and it has ample room for my whole family. And the color makes me smile,

Sonim XP1=KPN Porto 300.

Typically for KPN they've bought a phone, had the manufacturer stick on a KPN label and they're selling it for a lot more than the standard price.

Only difference I can see is that they are offering Push2Talk with their business subscriptions.

http://www.kpn.com/kpn/show?aboform=buy&compare=prices&dbid=393631&id=1564392&saleschannelid=102237

Bas trying a piano

My first piano
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Bas trying a piano lesson. According to the teacher he just may have some real talent. Made me proud of course.

Sonim XP1 BT review

End user reviews of this phone seem to be scarce or even non-existent so here's my attempt at one.

Introduction
Recently it was announced here at the office that a bunch of us would get a company SIM and that we could buy a phone for upto 250 euros.

I looked at the current offerings of Nokia, Samsung and Motorola and could find very little there that appealed to me. So I looked elsewhere and found the Sonim Xp1 BT.
Sonim is totally unknown as a maker of handsets, at least here in Europe. Despite that I found that this phone had some very appealing features. It calls, it can be used to send SMS and it's very durable. Since I have a tendency to drop phones the durable appeals to me. Now if you surf around for information and reviews you'll notice that people have tried and failed to break this phone. Sonim itself has links to the various videos on youtube. Have a look and prepare to be amazed.

I work in the IT business so chances that I will drop mine in a cement mixer are slim but I still want a phone that can be dropped and that's loud enough to be heard in a room with 600 servers. (if you've never been in a fair sized server room just imagine an old, noisy pc, add some vacuum cleaner and multiply that mix by 600). I'd pretty much made up my mind to get one so I started looking for a good deal on one. Prices varied from 255 to 329 for the model with bluetooth. Local webshop typhone had the Sonim XP1 with bluetooth (which is what the BT stands for in it's name) for only 255 euros I decided to order one.

The box
A couple of days later it arrived. Neat little box with the phone, battery, charger and a booklet , a very hefty belt clip and nothing else. I did have a problem getting the back lid of the phone which involves unlocking it and inserting your nail firmly in the edge of the lid but after I sorted that out it was happily charging itself. 3 hours later it claimed to be fully charged. That first charge lasted me almost 8 days. Two charges later I'm getting 8 days with BT always on and not too much talking.

But how does it perform?
Reception is absolutely astonishing. I tested this in my mother-in-laws living room which is a notorious black spot. Every phone I've ever used always lost it's signal once I set foot in that room. Not the Sonim! I still got 2 bars reception and a slightly degraded connection to my voicemail.
Call quality is excellent! On default settings it can be a bit too loud but that's easily corrected. Conversations are clear but I do get the impression that high frequencies can sometimes be clipped a bit. When I'm calling from the server room people do think I'm standing very clause to an airco exhaust but I'm still perfectly understandable.
Ringer volume is awesome! Use the factory supplied extremely boring ringtones and even at the lowest settings it's hard to miss a call.

Data transfer
So, as a phone it works well. The trouble starts when you connect it to a PC. Via Bluetooth you see this:










Not very usefull it seems. A comm port to map, dialup networking, and obexpush which seems to be some sort of businesscard exchange. It's not until you happen to google across http://www.gsmarena.com/philips_xenium_9@9g-reviews-1835.php that it makes sense. That links to http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/c/ct9a9hgry_40/ where you can download Philips Phone tools. (162mb) This phone seems to be built on the same platform as the Philips 9@9r. When you install that Phonetools thing (looks exactly like Motorola's) you get this in the about screen:

PHILIPS - NEXPERIA SY.SOL 6120 (21/04/2006)

The Philips connection becomes even more clear when you hook it up via usb. (use any old usb-mini usb cable). Then, after a lot of hunting for drivers you'll see this:


Philips DF2000 GSM and some weird Philips USB lun device. No idea what that is but it can be added as a drive. If you do that you'll get a removable disk. Double click it and it tells you to insert media.

Despite all this the only way I could find to get my custom ringtone onto the Sonim was to transfer it via BT to my Motorola V8 and from there via BT to my sonim. No problems.

Of course I tried to contact Sonim about this. Since I couldn't find a local distributor I contacted Sonim directly. No response whatsoever. As an end user I can be safely ignored it seems.

OK, moving on.

User interface and other annoyances.

Since the feature set is so limited it is an easy phone to master. The manual supplied is adequate but you don't often need it. If I don't mention a function here you can assume it's OK.

Keyboard lock. On Nokia it used to be unlock and *. On the Sonim it's press and hold *. You just have to get used to it and then it is OK. Keypad lock can be set to off, 10s, 30s and 60 seconds.

What is incredibly annoying is that even when it's locked you can still make emergency calls. So without knowing it you could have it in your pocket and you could be dialing 911 or 112 or whatever it's in your location. I haven't found a way to disable this!

Ringer volume has three settings, loud, even louder and really loud. Ringing and vibrating at the same time seems to be a challenge. The option is there but somehow it's not saved. There's only a few profiles available and the default profile is the only one that can be renamed, the rest cannot.

Phone book, select it via the right menu button and you have to select "view list" first before you can see the book. Use the big button on the side instead.

Texting/SMS
There's T9 support and that works fairly well.

Conclusion
If you're looking for a sturdy, loud phone look no further. If you value communication with your PC, a camera or other features look further. Despite it's design annoyances I'm keeping my Sonim. I just hope the company will soon take end users serious enough to provide at least a basic level of support. I've come across some annoyances that seem to be very sloppy user interface design. Any capable engineer can turn out a software update to fix this in a week or so.

What makes people kill children?

And more importantly, what makes me read the news items? I know that when I click one of those links I will be reading a story that breaks my heart.

Take this latest one for example, a mother in the belgian town of Angleur near Liege let's her 21 months old toddler starve to death because she didn't want the child and felt neglected by her partner who was working in another country. She calls emergency services because the child was sitting lifeless in his chair for two hours. Autopsy revealed a 0% fat content in the body. Her three other surviving children have been taken away.

Can anyone imagine the agony and despair that child must have gone trough? I've got two children, I remember that age when they'd sit in their little chairs munching their way trough a bowl of fruit.
It's bad enough that children die in famines but this....

Sometimes you need to treat yourself

My new toy
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Got me a 100mm tokina 2.8. Lovely piece of gear.

Trying a vintage lens

Trying a vintage lens
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Got a Nikon 135 f2.8 Ai lens for next to nothing. Stuck it on my D50 where it's totally manual.
This pic isn't perfect and yet, there's something about this lens I like.

getting the flash off the camera

Faded rose
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

It's a theme many people will encounter. Get your flash away from your camera. Get several flashes and some radio triggers and create an elaborate lighting setup.

I'm not too sure about the elaborate setups yet but it's fun to play with this.

The Protective Filter Craze

I see this so often on the various forums and message boards. People buy a camera with a kit lens and feel the need to stick a UV filter on it.
Now, let's face it, kit lenses are good value for money but they are often not the greatest lenses on the market. Why would you run the risk of lens flaring by adding some glass to the front of the lens? Most lenses are designed as a whole package. From front to rear element they are designed to bring a good image to your sensor (or film).

What are you protecting your lens against? I've used SLR cameras for about 20 years now and I have never had front element damage. Take proper care of your gear. Use a lens hood whenever possible and use your lens caps.

Of course there are circumstances thinkable when you'd want to use a protective filter. If there's stones flying around or if you are in a situation where there's salt water spray or beer flying around for example. So, it can be useful to have a protective filter in the bag. When you do buy one, a skylight or a UV filter don't try to save money there. Get something at least multicoated. The Hong-Kong based firm hvstar has excellent prices on filters and good customer service.

Even with good filters, such as the 62mm Nikon circular polarizer, I own you still need to take care or you will end up with this:



For further reading I suggest reading what Thom Hogan has written on the subject.

Blowing out the candle on her cake.

Blowing out the candle on her cake.
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Rhianne turned 7! Proud owner of a Belle princess dress and a big girl now.

rock, water, earth

rock, water, earth
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took my lunch walk today and noticed this puddle on a rock.

Second attempt at adding the very fashionable vignetting. I think in this case it does add something.

Missing friend Chanin Nickerson

Missing friend
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Not a very flattering picture of my friend Chanin. She moved back to Canada in early august 2006. We exchanged a few emails but she seems to have dropped of the face of the planet in october 2006. I've found a facebook account under her name but even that hasn't been touched in months.

Rosey Rose

Rosey Rose
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

The little bit of glitter on one of the leaves caught my attention so I built my shot around that.

Organic apples

Organic apples
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Visit to the Olmenhorst orchard. Shot a couple of frames and we picked 8kg apples.

purple passion

purple passion
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took this yesterday. It looked ok on the camera but really spectacular on the PC. I'm very proud of this shot.

No Difference

Is one of those excellent songs by Everything but the girl.
You watch the phone Like it was the TV If you're all alone Well, whose fault can that be Your keys, your bag, the car They're where they always are And the light goes down And all the lights.. come on And they call to me Oh come on come on And you don't make, you don't make no difference to me

Excellent. Listening to it makes me see a video of someone driving trough a dark and wet city. Sometimes it can be nice to listen to something as sad as this. I found it on the excellent compilation album "Like the deserts miss the rain"

Learning to swim 2

Learning to swim 2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Is this vacation or what?

Vacation shot

Selftimer, check!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Selftimer. Somewhere in the woods near robertville, belgium.

space

space
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Taking a walk and I suddenly noticed this. Like the emptiness here.

modelling

modelling
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Last lesson in my photography course I got stuck with the first round of modelling. So I asked the teacher to take my camera and shoot a few frames.

Vermeer could have done this

Vermeer could have done this
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Is what I thought when I saw this. Shot raw, almost straight out of the camerea, only used captureNX to "cook" the file and apply a touch of sharpning (set to normal)

This was shot during a trip to the Archeon in Alphen aan de Rijn in the Netherlands. It's a theme park with buildings from 8000 b.c. to about 1500 A.D. with actors portraying persons from history.

These two ladies were from a visiting 13th century reenactment group from Germany.

View on a view

View on a view
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Shot this in the center of Hoofddorp yesterday. I like the lines and colors.

20x30" prints from a D50? Easy!

Well... according to Roman. He was nice enough to share his technique on the dpreview discussion board:




Uprez instructions:

1. Process in ACR at the largest MP size allowed for your camera. 360PPI.

2. Enhance contrast (USM 20/30/0), increase saturation (if needed), sharpen (USM 300/0.3/0) and add noise to reduce the 'watercolor effect' of the next step (0.8% Gaussian monochromatic).

3. Interpolate to 60”x40” at 240 ppi using the Fred Miranda SI Pro 2 plug-in.

4. Down sample it to your desired size (I recommend maximum size of 20”x30” for 6mp….and 30”x45” for 10/12+MP) @ 150 ppi using bicubic sharper.

5. For shots with smoother detail…add noise (3% Gaussian monochromatic) for yet more natural lookif you have a lot of smooth surfaces (No problem with detailed landscapes)

there might be slight variations in the 'usm' and 'add noise' settings …adjust these to taste.

I use smart sharpen for the second piece, but USM works fine.

That’s it.

Now....my stronger reccomendation is to just to PP up to the point just before uprezing.....and send it to a shop that has a LightJet or a quality RIP on a printer like an Epson 9800....they will uprez better than you can even with these technique....(its a small diffrence but it is better)

Roman

His album's here: http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

Quick daisy

Daisy 2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Had taken my camera to the office. Just before my shift was over I strolled out and shot this. Not too shabby!

Disaster recovery

Is an important aspect of managing any IT infrastructure. I just spent the week doing a test at IBM Almere to see if we could get a client's infrastructure up and running there.

I was really impressed by the facilities and the helpful and skilled personnel at IBM Business continuity services. Restoring a backup from a HP system on IBM hardware is very easy using their methods.

What I've learned

• Having a system state backup with NT Backup somewhere on your local drives can help a lot
• If you've restored exchange with HP dataprotector eseutil /cc is an easy way to replay your logs into your store
• The ancient Citrix 1.7 this client uses takes restoring really well
• Restoring DHCP is simply a matter of copying the MDB file from the backup location to the right folder and starting the service.

All in all an intense, tiring and very interesting week.

Hairy behind

Hairy behind
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Digitalis in my garden is attracting bumblebees. Like to see them getting in and out of the flowers.

Bakery demonstration

Bakery demonstration
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took the kids to an open day at a local bakery. Nice demonstrations, good products. I think it's important that they know where their food comes from. (Although I think I'll postpone the abattoir for a few more years)

cycling pic

DSC_6144
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I'm very proud of this. A lot of hard work went into it.

Overprocessed?

Bas en Oma
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Perhaps, certainly looks like a lot of PP went into it. I think I like it.

Ducks

Ducks
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Only shot with 50mm and a polarizer that turned out halfway decent.

Windows cannot create the object because the Directory Service was unable to allocate a relative identifier.

Is a message I got on a restored Windows 2003 domain controller. Restore went fine but I could not create a single object in AD.
This happened when we were doing a disaster recovery exercise and part of that exercise was restoring a single domain controller. Now, this is obviously a RID master issue. Most logical course of action would be to seize the FSMO roles. However, according to a netdom /query fsmo I already had all the FSMO roles on that DC.

Bit of a puzzler so I phoned a colleague who told me that seized roles do not become active unless a single successful replication has been made. In my case where I only had a single "surviving" DC the easiest option would be to use sites and services to remove all connections from my DC and let the KCC check the connections. 15 minutes later it had determined that this DC was rather alone and that it would be save to get the RID pool online. And it worked, I could once again create objects in AD.

Another interesting piece of experience I gained was that it can be very useful to have a system state backup made with ntbackup when you're trying to restore a machine on different hardware.

Shrimp molted!

I suspect they've done so earlier but yesterday I discovered the first evidence of a molted shrimp. Unable to take a decent pic because the old shell is lying in a dense patch of plants but it's there. Looks just like a shrimp has taken it's coat of.

I also have two females carrying eggs. Curious to see when they will hatch.

The tetras are still doing fine, only the lone male guppy is feeling a bit alone. He's still trying to impress the gold tetras because they're the closest thing to a female guppy.

Slave free chocolate!

Yes, it exists. The first chocolate bar made of chocolate were no forced labor whatsoever has been involved.
My wife just brought a bar back from the supermarket and it's very, very good, very more-ish. Website on:
http://www.chocolonely.com/

Blossom

Blossom
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Took a trip to the Heijmanshof. Nice photo opportunities there.

The system administrator song

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-7193470719293309352&q=system+administrator

Takes me back to the days when I did desktop support.

Pregnant shrimp!

Yes, one of my beeshrimp (Caridina serrata) is pregnant!
Picture isn't that great but you can clearly see about 2 dozen eggs under her belly.

I bought 5 of these lovely little shrimp when I redid my aquarium. I've had 'm for about 6 weeks now and this is the first pregancy I've spotted. According to the experts at petshrimp this species isn't very easy to breed so I must be doing something right.
I'm going to put some mesh in front of the filter intake to try and prevent any young from ending in there. I may add another shell for extra shelter and will feed the fish in my community tank extra, perhaps a few young will make it.

Here's a pic of my tank, a Jewel Rekord 70. at 70 liters or about 18 gallons it's not that big but I like it.

office building
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

And shot this during my lunchbreak. I like it. Some other shots in my flickr album.

As Roel pointed out, K's choice has clever and witty lyrics.

This I really like, it's from the album The Great Subconscious Club

I woke up between dawn and night
Thought I heard the voice of Mommy
Sounds as if my parents have a fight
So I woke up my brother lying next to me

I wonder why she's making all that noise
Better go and check it out
So without trying to breathe only the sound of little feet
We were about to discover what that noise was all about

And as we opened up the door
We saw them lying on the kitchen floor
We were grateful for they both did their best
But we said 'Hey, there must be an easier way to make breakfast'

They both got up real fast
As if they were caught (or something)
And then we understood at last
It was a surprise breakfast they were planning

Mommy stumbled, 'Later, kids, you'll understand'
While Daddy was busy putting on his pants
We said 'We already do, don't worry, we'll do the rest'
So far for our quest, we made coffee, boiled eggs
We made them breakfast

Rhianne drawing
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Since I started it mid-july 2006. This is the latest pic I put there.

I do find the 200 photo limit for free accounts a problem these days. I'm hoping someone will buy me a pro account here:
http://www.flickr.com/gift

Trees start flowering

flowering tree
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I noticed today during a walk in the "haarlemmermeerse bos".

Here's where I buy my flour

windmolen De eersteling
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Windmill "De Eersteling" is where I usually get my flour. There's a new, young miller in there and he sells absolutely the best flour I've ever used. I hardly need to touch it before the gluten start doing their work.

Every easter I bake a big somewhat flat loaf filled with raisins and almonds.