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.)
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
Byline review
For a while now I have been using Google Reader as my rss reader. Managing feeds was simple, though not ideal and it was accessible from just about any computer. Better yet, I did not need to find way to sync between all my different rss readers, which was starting to get tiresome. On the iPhone the situation was a bit different. Even though Google Reader on the iPhone is reasonable, it felt slugish and not very natural. Running in mobile safari, that was of course, to be expected.
I decided it was time to look for a dedicated rss reader for the iPhone. I was looking for an application that offered syncing with Google Reader, and that was about it. I decided to try Byline from Phantom Fish. I have been using Byline for a month now and am very happy with it. So much so I decided to write my first app review about it. Let me give you a closer look at it.
- The icon: Clear and unique enough to not be confused with other apps. The icon is definitely beautiful, though in my opinion it could have been a bit more abstract.
- Setting up: Setting up is as simple as logging into your google account. Works well.
- Usage: The app is responsive and slick. It feels fast and the UI is very natural. I cant imagine going back to Google Reader.
- Sync: Syncing works really well. I can't remember having any kind of trouble with it.
As I mentioned before, Byline also caches the feeds so that you can read while offline. Traveling around europe regularly, it is possible for me to use my rss reader without the need to pay ridiculous amounts of money for roaming data (1 voor 100kb).
All in all I am very happy with Byline. It does everything I wanted it to do, and it does it well. What I am missing is the ability to view entries per feed instead of per group. However this is a minor complain seeing the overall experience.
In fact I liked the use of Byline so much, I switched back to an rss reader app on my computers as well. Readers that sync with Google Reader that is. Look at Phantom Fishs Byline page for screenshots and video demo. Or use the link bellow to go directly to the app store.
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.
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!
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
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_getcache_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.
A few more pictures
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Me
As part of my 365 project, here is the first picture of me. Plan to make one every week.
A photo a day for a year
The sun reflecting on the Hogelandsekerk as seen from Aharale & Geiske's window
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.