Misty thoughts

31Aug/090

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Sir Richard Francis Burton: "'The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.'"

(Via Quotes of the Day.)

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29Aug/090

The history of Johnnie Walker in 6min

The first whiskey I ever drank was a Johnnie Walker Red Label. It was horrible. Burned my mouth completely. I was, as can be expected young and knew nothing about whiskey, aside form the name. And that it was apparently "cool" to drink. So I tried. After that one sip I stayed of whiskey for over two years.

The second tim eI tasted whiskey, it was a Johnnie Walker Black label. It was strong, burning, and delightful. I do not know what has changed in those two years or if something changed at all. Maybe if I had tried the black first instead of the red, I would be set right off the start. For the next three years or so I only drank Johnnie Blacks.

As my taste evolved I stated trying more whiskeys. Like most people I started to value the single malts more and more. Eventually completely abandoning the blended sorts, of which Johnnie was my darling. Nowadays I have at home a small collection of singles, out of which I drink a glass almost daily. Whiskey has definitely become my favorite strong drink. Johnnie had a lot to do with it

That is why I was so delighted to see this 6 minute film over the history of Johnnie Walker. Even if you are not a fan of the drink, or the brand, it is worth 6 minutes of your time

Update: Unfortunatley the film was removed due to copy-write violations. quite unfortunate

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28Aug/090

Opposite directions

You probably heard about justice Scalia of the American supreme court saying executing an innocent man is not unlawful because he was found guilty in a legal trial. New findings which can acquit said innocent man, are, for justice Scalia, no reason not not proceed with what a court has found to be just.
That may sound strange, even scary coming from a supreme court justice. The thing is, I have seen this kind of thinking before from people who give service to society. Sometimes they seem to loose sight of what is actually the grand reason for them being there. They stop seeing their system as a system that gives service to society, but that society is there so obey their wonderful system.

This I believe is exactly what happened to justice Scalia. He lost sight of the reason he is there. To serve society. Executing an innocent man does not do that in any way. Look at it from the other direction, and you can see how he reasons.

One must ask himself if someone who completely lost sight of what its all about could, or should, remain in his position.

For more information on this case read this.

22Aug/090

Bolt’s new world record at the Berlin world championship

Look carefully at Usain as he moves. There is a lot of side movement still present. If he can improve his technique, I believe he might break the 9.5 sec barrier. How wonderful it is to see this man run!

14Jul/091

Cool longboard video

For a while now I have been thinking about buying along board. It looks a like a lot of fun and I am sure it will improve my snowboarding. For some inspiration, here is one amazing longboard video

29May/092

How to truly disable drupal cache

Drupal, like most CMSes uses cache intensively to speed things up. In a production site that is exactly what you what. However when developing, cache can cause you much pain.

If your an expert in drupal you probably already realized when you need to clear the cache in order to see changes and when not too. the developer module even makes it quite easy to do. However for me, and I am quite sure to quite a lot of other people it is not that clear.

"Wait", you might say. "Drupal has a disable cache setting". You would be right to say that. Only it doesn't completely disable the cache, only part of the cache, namely the page caching. To truly disable cache you need to do a bit of a hacking to the cache code. Yes I know they say to never hack core (cache is part of the core drupal release). for me this was worth it. I figure as long as you remember its there and don't use it in production you should be fine. The following piece of code needs to be added in include/cache.inc. There are two functions there that you need to edit:

  • cache_get
  • cache_set

In cache_get place the code right after the global $user. In cache_set place it at the start of the function. Here is the code that you need to add.

if(variable_get('cache', CACHE_DISABLED) == CACHE_DISABLED) {
return 0;
}

Kudos for this hack goes to Rolf van der Krol. Cheers mate.

24May/090

A few more pictures

This posts cover a few days worth of picture.

The 20/5 I took my camera with me to work to make some pictures of the vila and its surrounding. This gate is the starting point of the path I jog on regularly. The sun was just coming up, it was all really wonderful to watch.

The start of a path in the woods next to the DOP villa

The next picture is for the 21/5. That was a Thursday and Eran arrived for a visit. Made a mas out of Aharale and Mine plans to go climbing in France. Totally worth it though. Its great seeing Eran, which I have not seen for a very long time.

Eran sitting in Oliver's garden

The picture for the 22 is not dramatic. Unfortunately I have had little time to actually take pictures that day, so I stuck the camera outside the living room picture and snapped a few shots.

Plantsoen park from out apartment window

On Saturday the 23, Paula returned from her hiking vacation in the lake district. While I was waiting for her ship to dock up, I came across this sign. I just had to take a picture of it. Quite brilliant if you ask me.
Beware of dropping with car into water?

Today Ellen, Eran Paula and I went hiking in the dunes to the west of Den Haag. It was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed the landscape. It changes from city to forest to dunes to beach, all within a few km walk. I snapped this in one of out breaks, just before we broke out of the forest and into the dunes. I love the way the water and the light play with each other in this picture.

Some play of water and light.

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19May/090

Me

As part of my 365 project, here is the first picture of me. Plan to make one every week.Me

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18May/090

A photo a day for a year

The sun reflecting on the Hooglandsekerk as seem from Aharale & Geiske's window

The sun reflecting on the Hogelandsekerk as seen from Aharale & Geiske's window

A few days ago I came upon this idea and I really liked it. Each day, one photo, with one or two sentences, for a whole year. It helps you remember each and every day in that year, while making you a better photographer. I found this picture to be a good starting picture.
Yesterday I was feeling down about loosing two ships in Eve-online Today, I am celebrating this world, and starting on what I believe to be a great experiment in living.

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