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This is my journal (). Find here: personal entries but also rock music, politics, urbanity, starcrushes, sports and technology.

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Pretty, hot and hubba-hubba

• Posted by Rob (#1) on June 20, 2007 22:46 CEST

Sure, she's pretty but I personally now prettier. Sure, she's hot but definitely not even close to even a mediocre porn star. Yet still.. there is something about Emma/Hermione that makes me go hubba all the way. Damn those teenage starlets!

(Edit: ah, the fun things one posts from the pub when drunk and happy about winning a 32-penalty shootout.)

• PermaLink: Pretty, hot and hubba-hubba
• Tags: Emma Watson, Hermione Granger
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Harry Potter theme park

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 31, 2007 17:51 CEST

It's hard to imagine a franchise without its own theme park these days - and it looks like Harry Potter gets one as well:

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is expected to open in Orlando in late 2009, as a joint venture between Warner Bros Entertainment - producers of the Harry Potter films - and Universal Orlando Resort.

Add the fact that Emma Watson will be of legal age in the US in 2008 (Europe: 2006) and fanboys can still hope the theme park will include Hermione Granger - The Ride.

• PermaLink: Harry Potter theme park
• Tags: Harry Potter, Orlando, Emma Watson, Hermione Granger
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European constitution blackmail

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 29, 2007 16:21 CEST

From Dutch teletext:

If the Netherlands reject another European treaty in a referendum, Dutch EU membership is in jeopardy. Says secretary of EU affairs Timmermans.

The bloke admits this sounds a lot like blackmail, but maintains "the second chance is the last chance".

Well, I'll be the first to remind him when we vote no again, just to make sure he can't swallow these words to create a third "chance" to force a new constitution down our throats.

• PermaLink: European constitution blackmail
• Tags: Europe, Netherlands, constitution, EU, Timmermans
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Jinxed Idol combo

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 14, 2007 16:23 CEST

For a while I've been trying to build Magic the Gathering deck around Jinxed Idol, but I never found a useful combo because on its own it can be a tad slow doing only 2 damage each turn.

The Time Spiral expansion set gets me a lot closer to making such a deck, though: Paradox Haze can give another player an additional upkeep phase each turn, doubling the effect of Jinxed Idol. Add Relic Bane for two more damage each upkeep and opponents will need their enchantment and artifact kill just to make sure they don't lose 4 or 8 life (depending on whether you have two or three of the combo in play at once, and where) each turn.

Probably best to play this combo with a lot artifact creatures (they'd probably leave those alone with the true damage being elsewhere) suitable for defense and sacrifice (Ornithopher) and add Jinxed Ring to add one additional damage each time an artifact hits the graveyard. Contaminated Bond sounds like fun as well because in this setup it allows black to pacify even the scariest creature - opponents shouldn't be too willing to waste 3 life when they see their total vanish every turn.

Something tells me that this deck should be finished with some seeker and discard cards to make it truly annoying, but we'll see when I start testing the deck.

• PermaLink: Jinxed Idol combo
• Tags: Magic, Jinxed Idol, decks
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Friends! Pictures! Zombies! Nookie!

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 14, 2007 13:45 CEST

Visiting mom for Mother's Day was not just sweet, nice and decent but also productive: did some hacking on the underground and bus.

Rob said: "let there be friends" and there were friends. Rob said: "let there be user (and concert, artist and venue) picture galleries" and there were picture galleries.

Not sure why I mentioned zombies and nookie, but I felt like title worthy of Hellogoodbye.

• PermaLink: Friends! Pictures! Zombies! Nookie!
• Tags: Hellogoodbye, Capsi, mom
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Why Wiki when you can wiki?

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 7, 2007 21:36 CEST

My database has reached the point where there are several thousands of artists and venues in it. Even though I want more, that's obviously a good start. But it also creates a tiny problem. Most web visitors would probably consider empty pages to be a tad boring, so I need biographies and descriptions for each and every one of them.

Originally I planned to find some sort of on-line resource for all that content, but why copy someone else when you can just make it part of your community? That's right, I'm taking the approach of so many wiki's and community dictionaries: every user can add their own content and the ones with the best voting record are shown. All of it tied-in with my revenue sharing model of course: users who contribute to the site should be rewarded.

Just finished the basics of it and it's already a lot better than the default "bla bla is an artist" or "bla bla is a venue".

Getting there, step by step. :-)

• PermaLink: Why Wiki when you can wiki?
• Tags: Capsi, content, community, wiki
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What's up with Rob?

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 7, 2007 17:48 CEST

Other than still being able to write lame rhymes, everything is dandy here. I'm still somewhat hyper from GIAN and with three concerts coming up this weekend this means my happy vibe is going to be a prolonged one! I can't really dismiss Laura either but whatever the exact reason for the vibe, I feel great. :-)

Work is quite hectic, I put in plenty of over-time this weekend. And it looks like trips to Moscow (finally!) and Bucharest are about to happen this month. But anyone who slightly knows me also knows that I like to not just play hard but also work hard (when I'm not lazy). The only downside is that I haven't really had time to work on the new Capsi site but I'm hopeful that I will find a bit of time for that pet project later this week. I still have to finish the blogs, picture galleries, friends lists, proper form feedbacks and whatnot.. the basics look very promising to me though.

Tonight however will be a regular pub night.. I feel like I've deserved it, so you know where you can find me!

Edit: oops, hangover! Also, God apparently felt like handing me lemons because both Alexisonfire shows have been cancelled due to a family emergency for the band. So I made lemonade and hacked together cancellations and postponed dates for the concert site. :-D

• PermaLink: What's up with Rob?
• Tags: work, Give It A Name, Alexisonfire, Laura, pub, Capsi
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Capsi, for your eyes only..

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 2, 2007 23:26 CEST

I'm now offering a preview of my new site. A couple of important notes:

• You can not login or register yet, just look.
• Loads and loads of content and features are still missing. I am aware of this and will keep you posted on updates here.
• Internet Explorer version 6 might do crazy things with the design every now and then. I am aware of this.

Let me know what you think of it so far!

• PermaLink: Capsi, for your eyes only..
• Tags: Capsi, preview
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Tunnel/plug madness

• Posted by Rob (#1) on May 2, 2007 17:23 CEST

Okay, I've made up my mind. (Besides, it's not like you can't change ear jewelry when you change your mind again.)

I've ordered a light blue titanium tunnel, a simple skull plug and the ace of spades plug that I previously mentioned. Now all I need is one more stretch, to 10mm.. before I can find more places in my body to mess with. :)

PS: Happy birthday Kari!

• PermaLink: Tunnel/plug madness
• Tags: piercing, shopping, jewelry, body art, plug, tunnel, stretching
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GIAN 2007 London Day 3

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 29, 2007 23:59 CEST

The day started same old, same old: queued, got drunk, met up with Laura, Tash and Andy. Fortunately a few more good, fun bands played today, really enjoyed the soothing beats of Hellogoodbye and MxPx again (especially 500 Miles which brought a flashback of Storm), while you can never go wrong with Jimmy Eat World either.

Definitely a rough day as well, left the pit with plenty of bruises and headaches (nothing serious) while I had to miss most of AFI's show because some concussed person ended up in my arms. Oh well, I see too many gigs to care about missing a show or two when there are far more important things to attend to. What I do care about is being so stupid to forget to bring Laws' present so I'll have to give it to her next time.

Sadly all good things come to an end, as did Give It A Name again.

(Post-dated entry, written later than it appears to avoid an endless row of pictures inside the journal.)

• PermaLink: GIAN 2007 London Day 3
• Tags: MxPx, Give It A Name, Hellogoodbye, Jimmy Eat World, Laura, AFI, Tash, Andy
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GIAN 2007 London Day 2

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 28, 2007 23:59 CEST

Woke up early again, despite a long fun day before. Jamie urged me to get to Earl's Court quick because the queue was already quite huge in the morning and indeed when I got there around 10:15am I was fortunate I could jump in at the spot he and Yaels already were. Laura and Tash joined us not much later and we had a lot of fun when a drunken girl crashed in Jamie's arms only to be taken away by the medic later.

The music on Saturday was only so-so, the only band I really wanted to see were Enter Shikari. They only played a short show due to the singer having lost his voice - which was also the reason their April shows I planned to attend have been postponed to June.

Talking about so-so things, it was so boring to meet Laura again! I just had to snog Jamie again. Which probably wasn't such a good idea, he kept humping me all night and what I just said about Laws is bollocks so I wasn't really thinking about Jamie all that much. I was busy enough trying to focus on not falling in love head over heels.. blame (thank?) Jamie if I was too distracted to succeed at that. ;-)

(Post-dated entry, written later than it appears to avoid an endless row of pictures inside the journal.)

• PermaLink: GIAN 2007 London Day 2
• Tags: London, Give It A Name, Laura, Jamie, Enter Shikari
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GIAN 2007 London Day 1

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 27, 2007 23:59 CEST

What a morning! Forgot to set the alarm (damn drunken Thursdays!) so I was very fortunate to wake up at 5:10am which gave me just enough time to shower, pack and head to Rotterdam airport where a VLM flight was waiting to take me to London City airport. Dropped my luggage at the hotel around 9am and went to Camden where I decided a new tattoo would be a nice way to remember the GIAN weekend.

Around half 3 I walked up to Earl's Court after checking in at the hotel (can't do that in the morning). To be honest, Friday was by far the best day for music at Give It A Name in London. Countless of great bands played, with special kudos to Mindless Self Indulgence, Alexisonfire and the once-again very drunk Ville Valo of HIM. Their performance actually sucked but I met a nice bloke from London named Zach with whom I quickly managed a nice deal, he'd let me smoke his pot if I used my Dutch rolling skills. Needless to say, at the end of Friday I was quite stoned and couldn't care less that HiM was funny at best.

(Post-dated entry, written later than it appears to avoid an endless row of pictures inside the journal.)

• PermaLink: GIAN 2007 London Day 1
• Tags: London, HIM, tattoo, Give It A Name, Alexisonfire, Mindless Self Indulgence, Ville Valo, Zach
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Tiger Army

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 27, 2007 01:19 CEST

Had a good time at Tiger Army last night, they played a great albeit short show. Met up with Martijn and drank a few beers but didn't make it too late due to an early flight in the morning. Forgot to buy their latest CD so I suppose I'll have to buy it on-line one of these days.

• PermaLink: Tiger Army
• Tags: Waterfront, Tiger Army
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Haircut, tunnel, gig

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 26, 2007 17:05 CEST

It's been a good day: the barber gave me a new haircut, the piercing shop replaced the ring in my ear for a tunnel (and went from 7mm to 8mm for free) and tonight I'm seeing Tiger Army at Waterfront.

Let's just hope I won't be too drunk because I have flight to catch in the morning. Definitely looking forward to GIAN, shopping in London, and spending time with Laura and .

• PermaLink: Haircut, tunnel, gig
• Tags: Rachel, London, haircut, Laura, Tiger Army, tunnel
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Ear Plug/Tunnel Considerations

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 25, 2007 10:36 CEST

My ear is now stretched to 7mm and will soon go to 9mm, so I'm getting close to the centimeter I'd like for a final configuration. That can only mean one thing: shopping time!

At the moment I really, really like this plug:

But what I don't like about it is that it's mere plastic and that a plug doesn't really show the result of the stretching like a tunnel would: you could fake a plug with any button and some double-sided tape. :D

So perhaps I should go for an actual tunnel after all. (On the other hand, I'm considering to stretch my septum a little bit, so I could always put a tunnel in there?)

• PermaLink: Ear Plug/Tunnel Considerations (3 comments)
• Tags: piercing, shopping, jewelry, body art, plug, tunnel, stretching
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Ready for GIAN

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 23, 2007 14:37 CEST

Happy St. George's Day! I'm ready for Give It A Name!

On Saturday Powerfest gave me a nice preview featuring the likes of MxPx, Mewithoutyou, Sparta, Mindless Self Indulgence (yay!), Motion City Soundtrack and Jimmy Eat World. Added bonus: Voodoo Glow Skulls.. awesome!

This morning I booked a nice hotel in the Bayswater area which. It costed me more than I'd like to admit, but maybe now I'll finally learn to find a hotel early on. For some reason it's hard to find a good deal just four days prior to arrival.. oops.

Two more days of work after this one and then I'm off to Kinki for a new haircut on Thursday, followed by a pre-flight gig at Waterfront (Tiger Army). Then it's off to London City Airport, check-in to the hotel, party like a madman (HIM, Alexisonfire, Mindless Self Indulgence), sleep. Saturday: meet up with Laura, Jamie and Natasha, maybe hit Camden, party some more (Enter Shikari, Juliette and the Licks, Senses Fail, New Found Glory), sleep some more and/or party late at Camden. Sunday: meet up with Laura again, party some more (AFI, MxPx, Hellogoodbye), sleep.

On Monday all of Holland will be celebrating our monarchy (meh) so instead I'll do some shopping in London and late at night I'll fly back to Rotterdam with VLM airlines. I'm off on Tuesday as well so that means I can sleep in which in turns means that whenever I said sleep before I really meant party, snog and shag because why waste time in London asleep?

Yup, I'm ready for GIAN!

• PermaLink: Ready for GIAN (1 comment)
• Tags: London, haircut, Camden, HIM, MxPx, Give It A Name, Alexisonfire, Hellogoodbye, Jimmy Eat World, Laura, Mindless Self Indulgence, Enter Shikari, Tiger Army
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Pub poker

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 20, 2007 17:10 CEST

Note to self: only play poker in the pub. Whenever I play it elsewhere, with patience and tactics, I lose money. Whenever I am totally hammered I seem to have the magic ability to go all-in on two-seven unsuited and still win the pot.

Okay, that's not entirely true (I play Hold'Em Limit on my mobile), but I turned another tenner into twenty-two last night with a streak of straights, which means there's four times the amount of money in my account now than what I've started with. I'll admit it's all peanuts and that I'm no big player, but still.. I'd rather make a small profit every week/month than pretend to be great while in reality all I do is make weekly deposits.

So yay to me and yay to drunken poker!

• PermaLink: Pub poker
• Tags: alcohol, pub, poker, Texas Hold'Em
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Photography update

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 20, 2007 17:02 CEST

It's been a while since I've been in the mood to upload pictures, but there are over a dozen new ones from my skiing trip and my trip to Israel. My favourite pictures are Zell am See's black slope and me chilling at the beach in Tel-Aviv. Check all the pictures in the updated photography section.

• PermaLink: Photography update
• Tags: Kaprun, Israel, pictures
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Integrate AdSense with Google Analytics

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 20, 2007 12:29 CEST

Yesterday I found a great resource: the ability to track AdSense clicks in a Google Analytics account. This gives publishers a more advanced way to track their best-performing content, as well as the ability to analyse cross-segment performance. As a further benefit, this makes URL and content channels in AdSense a bit redundant, allowing publishers to focus on style/shape/positioning channels in the actual AdSense reports.

• PermaLink: Integrate AdSense with Google Analytics
• Tags: Google, AdSense, advertising, Google Analytics, publishing
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Call me for free with Jaxtr

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 19, 2007 13:28 CEST

There's a (new?) service out there that somehow links blogs to phones to free calls. I'm a bit too busy to call myself, but please give it a try and call me. It should be for free and you should even be able to make international calls at a local rate using your regular phone.

More when I'm done playing.

• PermaLink: Call me for free with Jaxtr
• Tags: telephone, Jaxtr, contact me, telecommunications
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Capsi Private Beta

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 19, 2007 11:51 CEST

I will soon be launching a private beta test for some of the features on the new Capsi concert site. If you're interested in testing cool new features and helping out a friend in need, let me know and I'll sign you up for it!

• PermaLink: Capsi Private Beta
• Tags: concerts, Capsi, preview, beta
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Ed Hardy breaking through

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 18, 2007 16:38 CEST

For a while now I have been telling my friends to forget about brands such as Lucky 13, Von Dutch, Vans and Converse. The next big thing is Don Ed Hardy.

And it looks like I've been absolutely right:

• All of a sudden Ed Hardy apparel is being worn by Dutch poker star Noah Boeken and Dutch TV celebrity Ruben Nicolai,
• Don Ed Hardy has updated their available for resellers. The pair of decks I wanted is no longer listed and many others have also been removed: could there be a production shortage?
• When I asked at Britain, which only started to carry their products recently, I found out the store has a hard time getting any new models from their importer. High demand perhaps?

• PermaLink: Ed Hardy breaking through
• Tags: shoes, poker, Don Ed Hardy, Britain, Noah Boeken, Ruben Nicolai
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Capsi Preview

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 9, 2007 14:50 CEST

Some of you have already been giving the temporary URL for the technology preview of the (renewed) Capsi.com concert and live music web site. Everyone else can now take a peek with this new screenshot of the site. Stay tuned for more updates.

• PermaLink: Capsi Preview
• Tags: concerts, Capsi, preview, live music
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Landlord Rob

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 6, 2007 18:32 CEST

Apparently the pub registered me with Jameson as their top Jameson drinker, which might or might not have to do with all the Irish coffee I order.

Anyway, this mean I'll get a certificate and deed for a couple of square feed in Ireland. I'm going to be a landowner in Ireland.

That's kind of neat considering Google has approached me again for a job interview. Their European tech centre is in Dublin so the more land I own there the easier it would be to relocate. :-)

• PermaLink: Landlord Rob
• Tags: Google, pub, Ireland, Dublin, Jameson, whiskey
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Giving up on MSIE6

• Posted by Rob (#1) on April 3, 2007 16:18 CEST

Soon I will be making a bold decision: I'm going to stop trying to make my new web sites work in Internet Explorer 6.

First of all, Internet Explorer 7 is a huge improvement. No serious hacks but only a few tweaks and workarounds were necessary to get my designs working in it. Believe it or not, a single static CSS file now actually gives me exactly what I want under all of MSIE7, Firefox , Opera and Safari/Konqueror. MSIE6 has really become the ugly duckling on the web and now that even Microsoft has a somewhat reasonable browser, even Redmond fanboys can escape its CSS horrors.

Also, Microsoft is doing everything it can to get a larger install base for MSIE7. MSIE6 has dropped from nearly 100% (amongst IE users) to 65% in the first few months. This puts the overall market share of MSIE6 under 50% - and falling with every use of Windows Update or Vista install. Consider how MSIE5.5 is already below 1% in market share and it's not a bad assumption something similar will happen to MSIE6 in a year time. And why spend time on getting things to work with obsolete software? This is 2007, where updating software is infinitely easier than it was in 1996 when 14k4 modems roamed the world.

So this is where I draw the line. Bye MSIE6.

• PermaLink: Giving up on MSIE6
• Tags: CSS, HTML, Internet Explorer, MSIE, Vista
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