Present Perfect

Day 2 kicked off with a great concert by De Portables, a band from Gent. A few of the members used to work at the same radio station as I did at the university, and the bass player is our favourite rock chick's boyfriend. They kicked off a rocking cover of Michael Sambello's "Maniac" with some bad news: Willeke wasn't there because she was in the hospital ! On the very day that her favourite singer - which I share with her - was going to close the festival... Ran into Geert, my technician from the days at the radio. He had been struck by a mysterious disease this year, but he seems to be on the rebound now and I'm sure a good healthy day of rock will have cured him even more ! Good to see him back.

Ran into lots of people I knew today, which was great. I hadn't expected to see so many.

By this time Jeroen and Annelies had also arrived, great to see them back !

Tried to avoid the Bloodhound Gang but failed because they were rescheduled, argh !
Enjoyed Elbow thoroughly, though I'd really like to see them play a complete show one day. Melissa Auf Der Maur was as cute as ever - even though these days everyone seems to agree with her being cute so that takes away most of the fun - but the music still sucked. Streets were good, better than expected. Bloc Party was a big surprise, fast and frenetic. Enjoyed half of Mark Lanegan then made the mistake to go see Blonde Redhead. And then it was time to see our national pride dEUS make their return to the stage. Bit of a letdown though - Tom couldn't say anything interesting between songs, didn't seem to really realize where he was, and it didn't seem like the band members liked each other very much. Playing was sloppy, mix was bad, ... Sigh. Let's just hope the new album is any good.

And after that, a few hours waiting for my reason for coming - The Twilight Singers. Rocking set, though maybe a bit too similar to the last time. Their cover of Bjork's Hyperballad (easily my favourite song by her) was great. And, thank heavens, Willeke had made it to the festival in time to see them, even though the doctor had forbidden here to come. You go girl !

Day 2 kicked off with a great concert by De Portables, a band from Gent. A few of the members used to work at the same radio station as I...

So, time for a quick recap.

Day 1 had me mostly walking around by myself - Wiebe had to work, and Peter and Tinneke were on their way but not quite there yet. Started off with Peaches, which was entertaining. Then came Keane, my favourite for the day. They were OK without being brilliant - maybe too much gesturing ? Skipped through Within Tempation. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone can take a so-called gothic band that manages to bring not one, but two, inflatable "marble angel statues" on stage serious. As much a joke as this was the next band, Papa Roach. Seriously, sometimes I feel like there should be a subject in school teaching the basics of music.

Anyways, I enjoyed the Delays, Phoenix (who were loud, rocking and right on targe this time around), Ash (who sang completely in tune this time around, with Charlotte doing heavenly backups), and Groove Armada (taking home the prize for best T-shirt). Faithless was OK-ish but nothing compared to their previous triumphs here in Belgium.

So far for day one !

So, time for a quick recap. Day 1 had me mostly walking around by myself - Wiebe had to work, and Peter and Tinneke were on their way but not...

Day 3 at the Pukkelpop festival. A short dead moment, only crap bands on right now, so took some time to sit down with the laptop and check our Fluendo stream of the KDE devel conference. Seems to be going very well. Since Wim optimized the Theora codec for MMX they could make the video size a bit larger, and it looks good. About 50 people on.

Saw lots of friends and acquaintances here, which was unexpected. Peter and Tinneke decided to come as well for three days, which is great ! Jeroen and Annelies dropped by yesterday, and I ran into lots more. Sad though that our favourite rock chick Willeke was sick yesterday, but she did manage to get their in time for our favourite singer, Greg Dulli. She's back home now though, recovering.

Anyway, more later, time to check some more bands.

Day 3 at the Pukkelpop festival. A short dead moment, only crap bands on right now, so took some time to sit down with the laptop and check our Fluendo...

Our server is currently serving 1825 real persons. Sweet. So we fixed the big bug from last week and broke through the default file descriptor limit with the help of PollMan (TM). So we have one machine producing in various qualities from various input cards, and overlaying some of them, then compressing using Wim's smoke codec. And then we have another machine far away from the first, relaying the produced streams to a bunch of clients. Time to start on MPEG4.

Christian just arrived with his backpacks, he starts today.

Johan, Wim and Christian are going to Akademy to stream the KDE conference. I hope it works out well for them, but they look prepared. Well, except for Christian :)

I'm not going, because I'm off to a festival, yeeha !

Our server is currently serving 1825 real persons. Sweet. So we fixed the big bug from last week and broke through the default file descriptor limit with the help of...

Two weeks ago, when planning to go to the movies, I saw that the big movie theatre here that has original versions was showing Secretary. Now, I had wanted to see this movie ever since I missed it in Belgium when it first came out, boring DVD rental store owners to death with my question "Is that movie in yet ?". Spain really is behind on some movie release schedules, but this one takes the crown.

Anyway, I'm not complaining ! Went to see it, and while it might not have lived up to two years of built up expectations, it's still easily about the best movie I've seen this year. Dark, romantic, funny and edgy.

This weekend we went to the movies with a bunch of us, so we had to settle for a "ok-for-everyone" type of movie. Two of us went to see Spiderman 2, but Kristien managed to drag me to "El Rey Arturo" with her on the promise that we'd see Spiderman 2 together if I could arrange for her to see the first one somehow. Women :)

The movie itself was quite a letdown. As far as I could follow the story, there seemed to be some huge plotholes in it. Keira looks quite dashing dressed in so little, but doesn't get a lot of screen time. The scene on the frozen lake was pretty spectacular though. Other than that, some heavy over-the-top acting. Arthur himself looked eerily like Alan Rickman, and I also couldn't put away the feeling that I had seen this guy before in something else. IMDB comes to the rescue - apparently he played the main character in Privateer 2 ! I should break out that game and try it again, I remember not playing it completely to the end. Wonder if WINE would manage it...

Two weeks ago, when planning to go to the movies, I saw that the big movie theatre here that has original versions was showing Secretary. Now, I had wanted to...