French television

There is only French television in France. I know there must be more, but we were never lucky or smart enough to find it. France 1, 2 and 3 and then there is Canal+ behind the decoder and Arte and M6. That is it.
I think we have been going to France on vacation for at least 20 times or so, can not remember ever being able to watch other channels then the ones mentioned. And, obviously, everything is in French! And that is a lot of strain on the brain. To understand while watching a movie, the news or whatever.
I know that more channels is certainly possible; I have seem it many times in various hotels. From CCN to German light porn commercial junk. But why the heck is it not viewable on the average home TV?

iPhone

Few weeks ago the great moment was finally there for many gadget lovers. The iPhone entered the Dutch market. Not that I wanted to buy one, I am perfectly happy with my iPod Touch and regular Nokia phone. It does not have camera, it can not send color pictures, but when it drops on the floor it stays in one piece and nobody wants to steal it :-).
I must admit that it is a damn handy thing; the iPhone that is.
Anyway after being on the US market for more then a year I think, it was Europe's turn. Last time I was at an AT&T, the 8 GB was $399 and the 16 was $499. What would they be sold at in the Netherlands?
Huh there is only an iPhone 3G version in the shops. Three! 3 GB? I did not even know those existed. Isn't that sad? Criminal? First the market introduction is one year later so that everyone who would want one becomes more eager. And if they were not that lucky to have a friend or relative who could take one from the US for them, they would not have much patience anymore. So they buy a 3GB version. And next year the 8 or 16......
And something else, why in heaven's name does an extra 8 GB need to cost a hundred bucks? I can by a 250 Gig HD for that kind of money!
Damn those Apple marketeers! But man, did those engineers make a slick looking great piece of wonder.
-------------------------
Sent from my iPod

Cultural Diversity

It is funny but also incomprehensible how you move from one culture to another to again another during half a day driving. From the Randstad (agglomeration of the cities, towns and villages in the western part of the Netherlands: Holland) south through West Brabant towards Luxembourg. The countryside already changes in Brabant. And more then just the view. It is also the crops, the houses, even already the style of driving. Less then 50 miles from home and you can detect a few things indicating that there could well be cultural differences between you and them.

Obviously differences are increasing when entering Belgium. The northern part is Flemish (Dutch speaking), the southern part is Walonian (French speaking). Coming from the NW going to Luxembourg you go from one language/culture to another significantly different language/culture; still one country.

Luxembourg small as it is and squeezed between Belgium, Germany and France is so different from Belgium you think you are in a totally different place. Differences are in the people. So much more 'European'. The official language is French, but most of them speak just as easy German and a third language.
And you know what was realy funny? When we turned on the TV we had the Simpson subdubbed in German dealing with aliens. Talking about cultural diversity!

TAMOE

Iemand heeft het verzonnen. Een ambtenaar die interessant wilde doen? Een stukjesschrijver die een grapje wilde maken? Geen idee, maar er lijkt weer een wansmakelijke afkorting aan het Nederlandse taalgebied te zijn toegevoegd: TAMOE. En dit moet dan staan voor Tijdelijke Arbeidskrachten uit Midden en Oost Europa. Getver! En dan die nadruk op Tijdelijk en het gebied waar de mensen vandaan komen. Brrr. Zou het trouwens per ongeluk zijn dat het lijkt op Tamil? Toch wel handig zo'n associatie met een beweging die je weer met terreur zou kunnen associeren.

Trots op certificaat taalcursus

Vandaag in het "Witte Weekblad", een Noordwijks suffertje, de foto links op de voorpagina. Trots op certificaat taalcursus, het staat er echt boven. Ik heb het niet verzonnen. Maar kijk eens naar de foto. Zit er ook maar iemand trots bij? Misschien de vrouw helemaal links, maar de rest lijkt zich eerder te schamen dan ergens trots op te zijn. En dan staat er ook nog 'Deze moeders geven het voorbeeld voor hun kinderen'. Voorbeeld? Welk voorbeeld? Dat je je bijzonder ongemakkelijk voelt als je op de foto moet? Wie verzint zo'n tekst?

En dan de overige gefotografeerden. Die lijken wel blij en trots te zijn. De juffen en zeker de man op de achtergrond, die blijkens het artikel de wethouder is. Maar ach de arme cursisten. Marokaans of Afgaans zijn ze, wonen in een land waarin alles anders is en je de taal niet (goed) spreekt. Jullie hadden het echt verdient als er een iets intelligenter persoon met meer compassie over jullie prestatie had geschreven. Had ook zonder foto gekund.

En die muts die het stuk in het Witte Weekblad (ook die naam heb in niet verzonnen) had geschreven kan voortaan beter thuisblijven. Ik adviseer WII Brainpower. Wel op 'easy' beginnen hoor!

WoW: Maggy Down

Got him. This time, last night it was, we realy got him. The start was not optimal, even got wiped by the trash but the rest was much better then last week. OK, it took a few training runs, but already in the second we got his HP down to 29%. And what went especially well is killing the 5 warlocks. For a good run you should get 3 and the 4th almost down before Maggy roars, we got them all within the time limit + a few seconds. Fantastic!

OK 29% in the 2nd run, 90something in the 3rd (oops). But in the fourth run we got his big corpse on the floor. It was close, maybe only 5 players still standing, but the guild made it. I am happy to be part of such a great team.

Tip: If on teamspeak or ventrilo or such: turn down the volume just before the killing blow.

WoW: Gruul

Gotcha! We got him down again. In one go, no wipes no nothing. And sweet old Gruul was so kind to drop the Leggings of the Fallen Hero which I was happy to win. Finally accept for trinkets I am full epic. Partly T4, partly PVP: (Merciless) Gladiator set.

Silly thing was that for some time we do not have any real problems getting High King Maulgar and his aids down while Gruul was still a challenge. Wednesday evening it was almost the other way around: not optimal pulls and very quickly there were dead healers and/or the tanking mage on the cave floor. Run to save your life - and gear!

Well, having 25 ppl coherently and consistenly doing the right thing in a synchronized way is clearly not easy and takes quite some training.

Having Gruul on farm, focus is now turning towards SSC. First challenge there: The Lurker Below.

WoW: Maggy

Maggy is the sweet nickname given to Magtheridon, a boss in Hellfire Citadel, Outland. I do not think I have to explain that Maggy is not realy a sweety; a picture is worth a thousend words.

Yesterday evening I went with my guild on a 25 ppl raid to down Maggy. First time for us as a group. Of course while the strategy was discussed someone pulled one of the warlocks: wipe! The second time, same kind of accident: wipe! The third time we were better and got 4 locks down before Maggy entered the fight. Should I mention that the whole cube turning thing was not neatly synchromized? Wipe! After the fifth wipe we stopped.

As it was still a bit early after our Maggy trials, I went with 4 to do Arcatraz (heroic). We got all the bosses but it took some damage by death :-). Anyway a good way to finish the evening.

Culture Vulture

At my work I am involved in a project on cultural awareness. We have the intention to make a video, some brochures and a website on the corporate intranet. In preparation of these we obviously do some reading of books, articles and browse the internet. Today I came across the site of Kwintessential with a lot of valuable information. Have fun.

Cultural Awareness Tip of the Day

Digital Camera

Early 2007 we finaly gave up and bought a digital camera. Compared to digital the good old chemistry had become rediculously expensive and slow. Still being frustrated with the fact that I am sitting there with my Canon SLR bodies and nice collection of lenses and there is hardly anybody selling good quality of color negative or slide film I did not feel like making a to large investment. So we bought a simple family camera: a Canon Powershot A540. Very nice and handy and by now we have shot some 5000 pictures with it. If you like you could check it out at: http://picasaweb.google.com/Peteronium.

Last week Thursday I bought a second digital camera, a Konica Minolta Dimage Z3. It was second hand for only 15% of the price of 2004. Good deal. The camera is still reasonably up to date, pretty good lens and 4M pixel is not to bad. One particular reason to buy this one was that I like the way it looks so much. Good thing is that it also uses SD cards, same as my Canon.

After trying it out the last couple of days I came to the next phase: uploading the pictures onto my hard drive. Surprise! It uses another type of USB cable then any of the types I have lingering around....

Language - Taal

Yes / Ja. Which language to use when writing my thoughts, stories and experiences to this blog? Should I be internationally/globaly orientated and write in (American) English? Or stick to what my mother tought me: Dutch? Obviously being born and raised in the Netherlands makes me far more fluent in Dutch then I am in English. On the other hand writing in English should mean reaching a far larger audience and there is value in that as well. We will see. I just started doing this and who knows where it may lead to. Perhaps even a bilingual blog. Take care.

WoW: PetraMag

A little bit more about World of Warcraft.

I started playing the game about 2 years ago. My first character was a human mage: PetraMag. Actually I still play it. It is difficult to say why playing a mage apealed to me that much. Part of the explanation is of course that I very much liked the sorcs when playing Diablo II. But that immediately brings the follow-up question: why a sorceress? I guess it must be that combination of great (fire) power combined with the fragility. Mages kill & die quikly. An other factor could be that as a caster you work from a distance, from an overview position: see, think, act. Fits more with my nature then sneaking up to someone and then backstab him/her (rogues).

White leg

The reason for going to this Vegro place is that my son broke his leg. That was now a little bit over three weeks ago. The picture shows him when we just got home from the hospital.
Anyway we went to the Vegro again to try to change the wheelchair. From the old fashioned heavy thing to something more modern, fresh colors and lighter.

Vegro

Vegro is one of the Dutch organizations providing equipment, materials and aid for selfcare. You could e.g. buy or borrow a wheelchair. And that is exactly why we were there. Financing is done via the AWBZ (general law special healtcare costs), an aspect I will not go into right here and now.
We went to the regional main center and what struck me was the large number of people working there. Must have been around at least 20. Add to that the number of ppl working at the smaller branches multiply that times an average gross anual income and then you discover that we have an overhead costs of a couple of million for a few 100k people. Would be cheaper to close them and just give every family a high quality wheelchair!

-------------------------
Sent from my iPod

World of Warcraft

One of my vices: I am a mildly addicted World of Warcraft junkie. In some later posts I will explain a bit more and give other WoW players a chance to see which chars are mine.

Me2

Yes, me to. There must be millions of people who have already started a blog, so you could think: "rather late mate". But then again there are billions of people who did not. So on a scale of 1 - 1000 I should still be in the top ten. Now that ain't bad.