Present Perfect

Yesterday we got a visit from Daniel Fischer who works on Warsaw Pakt. He showed us some of what it can do, along with a cool video of a performance being done with it where a person dancing is being traced in real time, and a generated image gets projected on a big screen behind her. At some point it was generating an outline for the shadow that acted like a contracting shell. So she would extend her arms, causing the outline to grow organically, and then shrink back around her later on. Hard to explain, and I'd link to the video which is supposed to be on the site but I can't find it.

Anyways, afterwards we met for dinner at our favourite tapas place again. There Johan informed us that he 'disliked birthdays'. Apparently I wasn't the first to be informed of his dislike and I had the same 'huh ?' question as everyone before me. The observing reader will have realized by now that it was, in fact, Johan's birthday.

So we sang a song and then Johan got to decide what to do that evening. So we ended up drinking a cocktail in the city, then a cocktail by the beach (which is where 'they' got an Orgy, which you can only order if there's at least four people ordering it), and then that got rounded off with a nightly swimming session by Johan, Wim and Ismael. I was happy enough just watching their clothes for them since some guy was taking pictures and circling around us.

So, happy birthday to a not-quite-so-young-anymore turnip.

Yesterday we got a visit from Daniel Fischer who works on Warsaw Pakt. He showed us some of what it can do, along with a cool video of a performance...

Kristien was back to Belgium for the first time for her new contract. She's working only halftime but making good money, so it's worth it. I spent the weekend trying to sleep off my lack of sleep from the previous week, and for some reason I went in overdrive cleanup mode. My collection of computers had a number of copies of home directories at various stages in my life, because each time I a) get a new machine b) get a hard drive failure c) get a new hard drive to have more size, I just dump my homedir as a backup to some other drive without actually cleaning it up.

Which turns out to be quite painful when you decide you want to a) clean up and b) do proper backups for a change.

Also, going through some of my archived CD's with photos, I have now convinced myself that CD rot is in fact a real problem, and about the only thing that will give me peace of mind is a combination of backing up to CD, DVD, and a live hard disk RAID. So I'll start working on having a nice setup for that soon. The way I figure it is that my data matters to me, enough to pay for keeping it around. I wouldn't like losing a whole bunch of pictures, or a bunch of old stuff I've done, so I have to do some work and pay some money to get it done correctly.

Of course, I also cleaned parts of the house, did some laundry and ironing, and other assorted bits, like trying to fix some stuff in the house.

Kristien was back to Belgium for the first time for her new contract. She's working only halftime but making good money, so it's worth it. I spent the weekend trying...

Here I come baby !

I am going to an old friend's wedding. I'll be in Boston between the 16th and the 19th of September. Tickets were 426 euro, could have been worse. If you have waited to interview me for a job, now is a good time to speak up. And if I know you in some capacity unrelated to job interviews, let's do lunch. I'll have my people contact yours.

Here I come baby ! I am going to an old friend's wedding. I'll be in Boston between the 16th and the 19th of September. Tickets were 426 euro, could...

This weekend I was looking for a piece of plastic that disappeared from a lamp causing it to fall on the floor. Which is where Kristien left it :)

So I got on all fours, looking around for the plastic bit, and I managed to put my hand on a push pin. It went clean into the palm of my hand, half a centimeter next to an important vein. That gave me quite a scare. I pulled it out, inspecting the thing for any rust spots, then calling my dad (who's a doctor) to ask for basics to ease my mind. It did hurt a bit when I stretched my hand, but I didn't hit any important muscle apparently. Every few hours I look at the delicate little red hole next to the blue vein and realise I'm probably lucky I didn't hit anything major.

Of course, in my mind I was already ordering a one-handed keyboard.

This weekend I was looking for a piece of plastic that disappeared from a lamp causing it to fall on the floor. Which is where Kristien left it :) So...

On Thursday three girls arrived. An was the girl getting married. Vanessa and Isabel where the girls joining in for her bachelorette weekend, together with Kristien. It was fun to hear some more from "the other side" again - since moving to Barcelona I haven't been around that much girl talk. And to be honest, I'm the kind of guy who likes to hear lots of girl talk - "know your enemy".

Anyways, they seemed to enjoy themselves, they took real good care of me (I had some great dinners), and I've never seen someone drink bottoms up as fast as An did. That girl doesn't swallow even once when she downs a glass of champagne or beer.

On Saturday we went to the Razzmatazz again, which made me wonder why again I don't go there every chance I get. Five rooms of music, some of it very very good... Been a while since I've been to a party and heard Sonic Youth, Pixies or even god forbid Elastica. I should have forced my friends to go there when they were here - I'm sure Peter would have enjoyed hearing at least three Cure tunes full blast at a big party, accompanied by visuals from the video clips... I need to get out here more often.

Last week I still thought I'd be solely responsible for getting the word on the new Soulwax album out here in Barcelona, but I guess I was wrong. Imagine my surprise when at 4 in the morning the main room was playing "NY Excuse", an album track, not even a week after the album's official release. I guess my work here is done.

An had fun too, getting her picture taken with just about every guy passing by. A bachelorette party is always such a good excuse to get attention ...

One of the rooms had one of the guys from the Inspiral Carpets as the DJ. He was an excellent DJ, so I forgave him when he closed off the room with one of their biggest hits, Saturn 5, and he decided to sing along.
We left at 5.15, Wim decided to stay a little longer on his own. He seems to be having a great time here. Hope I won't take as long to get back there.

On Thursday three girls arrived. An was the girl getting married. Vanessa and Isabel where the girls joining in for her bachelorette weekend, together with Kristien. It was fun to...