Present Perfect

So, we could use one more important tip.

We're arriving this Saturday fairly late at night, and I want to jump right into the nightlife I still have the strength.

But I have no idea where to go, and I hear it's hard to get into places... so drop me a line and tell me where to go, or if you live there, and take us on. (BTW, I'm more into rock/guitar or RNB and not into electronic, if that helps)

So, we could use one more important tip. We're arriving this Saturday fairly late at night, and I want to jump right into the nightlife I still have the strength....

Amazingly, it's been snowing pretty much all day long. I hope I will actually be able to get a bus to the airport in an hour!

I know have my own garden full of snow. Ownership can be a wonderful thing.

Yesterday's Death Cab For Cutie's concert was mostly ruined by an invasion of American girls at the front. Either the current song was a favourite of one of them, causing them to yell incessantly about how the song was their favourite, or it wasn't a favourite of any of them, in which case they yelled incessantly about other things.

In any case, Ben Gibbard mentioned to the audience how he felt that the day before he had passed another milestone on the way to adulthood when he opened the door and thought 'Oh no. Snow.' While before he would have thought, 'Yay, snow.' And he felt a little sad.

I could only feel happy knowing that the day before my first reaction had been indeed 'Yay, snow!'

Trot out the boards please.

Amazingly, it's been snowing pretty much all day long. I hope I will actually be able to get a bus to the airport in an hour! I know have my...

I don't often have the opportunity anymore to spend part of the weekend in Barcelona, which I miss, so when Kristien told me she was going to be busy receiving a really old Spanish guy and his boat in Antwerp on TV this Saturday, I decided I was going to spend my Friday night and Saturday in Barcelona.

A good decision! Thursday I went with Mariette and Sofie to go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Contrary to what I've been led to believe, the film is excellent and tells a wonderful story about love by putting caricatures of people into a situational movie. It's clear the story worked very well as a lesson in love because I got drawn to a different message that was in the movie than some of my friends were, just going to show that a good story is multifaceted and resonates with a different one for different people. I also ran into Carl at the theatre who had gone to see Bye Bye Belgium - apparently they show the mockumentary here in Spain!

Friday night was spent hanging out in one of the Usual Suspect bars after work, then going out with Carl to one of his friend's birthday drinks. Didn't go to bed before 4:30, which is how a Friday night in Barcelona should be spent.

Saturday was a lovely day, 18 degrees C and sunny all day long. I spent it walking through the city, going to La Botifarreria to get some excellent sausages for a Sunday lunch in Belgium, seeing all the apartments for sale (surely this is a sign the prices are going to go down), and strolling through Parc de la Ciutadella. On the plane in the evening, to arrive home at midnight and crash into bed, exhausted.

Sunday lunch was spent with An, Mike, and my god son Arthur. I made home-made fries and mayonaise to go with the sausages. Sausages were a mix of apple/curry, spinach/pine nuts, foie gras, fig/mushroom, roquefort, sweet, and chocolate. It took Arthur a while to warm up to the idea of 'sausages with specks', as he calls it, but the fries definitely helped.

He kept making me build Lego houses so he could knock them down. I confused his young mind by saying that from now on, he was only allowed to knock over and break apart each house only once. Not realizing that there was no difference, he got angry and proclaimed that I was the worst person to play with. He quickly got over it though after we jointly invented the shove hug (push and hug until the other falls over)

We ended the evening by going to see Sigur Ros at Vorst Nationaal. We arrived as they closed off the main floor and instructed us to go to the highest seats, which sucks. But I managed to sneak us past the barriers and onto an only half filled floor anyway. We had a great view a good 15 rows from the front.

The opening band was called 'For a minor Reflection', also from Iceland, and though the name sounds off, they were really good. I ended up getting their album and listening to it all the way back to Spain - although you'd be hard-pressed to hear the difference between this and an Explosions In The Sky album. I guess that's a downside of having no singing in your music - while I scoff at people who can't hear the difference between Interpol and Editors, or Radiohead and Coldplay based on the voice alone, I would definitely have mistaken these guys for 'is there a new EITS album ?'

Sigur Ros was good, picking from their darker works compared to the festival sets. For whatever reason I didn't enjoy it as much as the two summer gigs - the sound's never very good at Vorst Nationaal, and I was probably too tired. But the closer, song 8 off of (), was perfect.

All in all, a damn fine couple of days. I should plan to stay in Barcelona for the weekend more often.

I don't often have the opportunity anymore to spend part of the weekend in Barcelona, which I miss, so when Kristien told me she was going to be busy receiving...

Prize for best intersong banter this year goes to Guy of Elbow

Who where in the audience is married ? Raise your hands

Ok, this next song is for Stef, the most married man in the room!

As always, a spectacular concert. What a voice... He's definitely grown in his role as a band leader over the years. Besides the amusing banter between songs, he had the crowd sing Happy Birthday to his girlfriend, who was in the room, and he challenged us to sing Bohemian Rhapsody during the 'band-goes-off-stage-and-hangs-backstage-before-the-encore' part, which worked out better than expected.

Prize for best intersong banter this year goes to Guy of Elbow Who where in the audience is married ? Raise your hands Wow, that's not a lot of you....

After wasting again a big chunk of my weekend over fighting with mod_rewrite and wordpress to do some (to me at least) simple feed syndication, I finally figured out that I was in fact simply wrestling a wordpress quirk.

A URL like this: http://thomas.apestaart.org/log/index.php?cat=19,22

*only* works as expected when the Permalink structure in wordpress is set to default.

That is, the resulting page will show posts that are in category 19, or 22, or both at the same time.

As soon as you 'enable' permalinks, however, this breaks - the URL gets redirected to a URL of the form 'log/category/(name of first category)/, and only posts from the first category get shown.

I have no idea why this has to be the way or if there is a workaround, but feel free to let me know.

Now it seems I'm forced to choose between permalinks and feed syndication...

After wasting again a big chunk of my weekend over fighting with mod_rewrite and wordpress to do some (to me at least) simple feed syndication, I finally figured out that...