So I woke up at Tim’s this morning, and decided to walk home as a spur of the moment type of thing. It was amazing weather outside, and I ended up walking to Bampaku Kinen Koen 万博記念公園, the ’70s expo commiseration park. Didn’t have my camera with me, but my cell, so photo’s are a bit low def. And I walked around 15+ kilometers Check the gallery

Sorry for the inactivity, but studying, or trying to, a lot, and there isn’t anything worth posting. Not even photos. I do have bad news though for people who are waiting to see all my photos. I managed to drop my hard drive, so everything on there (which is FUCKING EVERYTHING) is gone. Unless I manage to save enough money to get it fixed, which isn’t going to happen. Structural and mechanical damage on a hard drive costs €1000 upwards to repair, as opposed to corrupt data. Fuck, it sucks to be me this year. Hopefully, I’ll manage to figure out a way to fix it anyways. For now, you’ll have to be happy with facebook/picasa. Sorry. I suck, I know.

Yup yup, still not dead

Had a friend visit for a couple of days, was fun, photos are up in the gallery.

Not one to jump on the cool-train for the heck of it, I refrained from testdriving Google Chrome for a long time. Yet … even after a relatively short testdrive I’m sorely disappointed. It’s supposed to have this neat feature where it processes tabs and certain processes seperately, thus making it more stable than its current rivals (most notably Firefox). I have not had a crash with Firefox in years, and the ones I did have was because malicious sites borked my system. And Acrobat is a piece of shit software, hogging all the resources and bandwidth, making Firefox and Explorer crash. The rest of the time, Firefox runs smoothly, and above all, fast. Chrome was hailed as the fastest browser around, and yet, I have yet to notice this supposed speed. I use 5 addons in Firefox, which by the way are “notorious” for slowing a browser down. Adblock, Rikaichan, Nipponster Toolbar, Zotero and DownloadHelper. And I must say, Firefox out-performs Chrome in terms of speed. The time it took Chrome to load the ads and large, unnecessary and unwanted pictures, was double the time I clocked Firefox loading the same page, with a freshly cleaned history as well. I purged my entire private data file, including cookies, browsing history, cache, search history and saved form history. Yet it still sped past Chrome.

I guess what I’m trying to say is; I’m glad I didn’t jump on the band-wagon with all the fan boys and nerds, and rationally tested this new browser. It has come up short compared to Firefox, which I will continue to use, until Chrome implements the ability to add extensions. Then I will retest both browsers. But until then, Chrome is second rate, slow, and less user friendly (uncustomisable tab options (meaning there are *none*), and you need to be a handyman as a developer to tinker with the advanced options without borking the browser).

Todaiji

Yamayaki

Fireworks

]]> http://naikou.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/new-photos-and-movie/feed/ 2 belowme Todaiji Yamayaki http://naikou.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/new-photos/ http://naikou.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/new-photos/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:17:19 +0000 belowme http://naikou.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/new-photos/ ]]>

New photos uploaded. *points at gallery*

Tot ik m’n hoofd eindelijk uit m’n reet heb gehaald, zal het posten wat minderen. Hoe de gallery in’t oog, daar zal ik wel af en toe foto’s posten.

The year will be over soon. It’s been a tumultuous year, for many of us. A short recollection of the best and worst moments …

New year’s eve 2007: A quiet evening with Anske. A few hours worth treasuring, as I could not stop feeling love welling up every time I looked into those sparkling brown eyes. It’s a cliché to be saying it, but it felt like staring into space and never seeing an end to it. I can be fairly certain in saying I was happy, not merely content.
The quiet evening was followed by a pumping party at Fak Letteren. A small, crowded bar, filled with sweating, dancing, heaving bodies. New year’s celebrated as only student can. It didn’t help much that I got free drinks at a certain point.

February to July – August: I finally got the chance to apply for a scholarship and foreign exchange program to Japan. Even though I didn’t get to apply to the college I initially wanted to, I was excited at the prospect of going to Japan. I didn’t know I was accepted until the start of August, even though I knew off the record at the start of July. It turned out to be a very stressful period, with a lot of bickering and fighting with Anske, along with days of complete depression and grumpiness. I will forever be grateful for Anske’s support, and her unrelenting care and comfort. Without her I would not have gotten to where I am now, nor would I have been able to pay for my flight. Furthermore, I’ll never forget the fact that she didn’t drop me for the fool I am, after the endless moping and feeling sad for myself.

April 29th: Anske’s birthday. After having spent a buttload of cash on presents for family and friends, I was broke. For a brief moment, I ceased to understand women in their subtleties and believed her when she said “It’s not necessary to buy me a gift, I know you don’t have the money”. Foolish as I am, I didn’t .. which turned out to be a big mistake. I noticed early that day something was off. Turns out I wasn’t the first one to wish her a happy birthday (someone had sent her a message at 12:01 or something, my bad), and she was sad and pissed that I hadn’t gotten her anything. Which sparked something in me, because I decided to not hold back. I decided to do a little something for her, every hour, for 12 hours, on the hour. It ranged from getting her a pizza from pizza hut (which she had been craving for weeks) to a CD I thought she’d like to a power point presentation fittingly displaying my love for her. I never actually asked her, but I think she appreciated it all. It cost me enough, but I didn’t and still don’t give a rat’s ass.

August 4th – 7th: Weekend at Paris with my beloved. I had been longing for this a long time and was ecstatic when we finally arrived at our cosy little hotel. It was nothing special, located at the outer rim of l’Isle de Paris, but it was exactly what I wanted. 3 days of unsupervised, unwatched, released togetherness. We could do what we wanted, when we wanted. Which we did. We didn’t plan anything specific up front, just the major sites we wanted to hit. The Louvre, la musée d’Orsay, and several other sites were visited, but sadly on the day we planned to visit Versailles, it rained. I planned on buying Anske a ticket back to Paris, a day trip to Versailles, but sadly life has ways of screwing with you.

Mid-August: A short vacation to Tuscany with Anske and her folks. At first I was very apprehensive about the parental side of it, seeing as I had never spent more then half a day together with only them, and that was only once. But it turned out great. I still think her father hates my guts, but he was surprisingly kind and mellow towards me. They even let us sleep in the same room. We were joined with Anske’s Aunt, Uncle and nephew Brecht. After a week, we got slightly tired of the incessant badgering from the nephew, and just wanted to spend a day alone, which was granted to us thankfully. While the parents and the relatives left for a trip to some wine -producing town, Anske and I were left to our own devices at the cottage. The cottage was awesome. A small cottage, to be sure, but cosy, and homelike. It had a pool and everything, and the fellow residents (we shared the building with 4 other families, and an adjacent building housed 4 more) were kindly and easy going. The weather was terrific, 30° and up every day. I tanned my hide something fierce. I still can not thank her parents enough for taking me along, and even though they told me I had to pay for my own food and drinks, they changed their mind later on, which made the trip entirely free. I’ll have to pay them a thank you visit some day.

October: The month I left for Japan. I’ll leave the Japan related issues to the previous posts, but I have to mention the emotional farewell. I have never felt my heart feel so heavy with regret as the moment I was sitting in the departing train, seeing Anske with a tear streaked face.

Start of November: Anske and I decided to break up. Due to reasons and motives I will not disclose publicly, we decided it was the best for both of us. One of 3 moments in my life that I regret. One of 2 moments in my life that I have felt my heart break into a thousand pieces, leaving me no other choice than to pick them up, one by one. The first time my heart was torn out was nothing compared to this, and as of yet, I haven’t dealt with it any better than that fateful day. My heart is heavy with sorrow, sadness, longing, regret every day, ever more. I will always respect her, she is one of the most fantastic persons I have ever met. Not only because she treated me in a way that I’m semi-confident we’ll be able to remain friends, but because she treated me with the same amount respect I treated her with. That was a first for me. She’ll remain a treasured memory, if not the most treasured one, even if we end up treading our own paths.

Ever since November, I haven’t really had much to tell, even though I did a lot. Everything seems out of perspective, slightly askew … gray. I might be a simpleton, because I’m letting this influence my experience in Japan so much, but I’ve always been and always will be an emotionally hammered guy. One can not say I let my emotions rule me. I open myself to them, I accept them, and coincide with them. Most people would probably fake being happy all the time, and enjoying themselves, however I cannot.

There we go, a bit of a “heart on the sleeve” post, but what the heck.

I hope everyone has a happy new year, a magnificent 2009, and attain what they desire most. Fuck knows I had it and lost it. Piece out.

Foto’s van Kerst

Foto’s van tempel bezoekjes

Foto’s van het maken van mochi 餅