Woke up early today and did something I had wanted to do in a while. I shut down a lot of the minor websites I have and that I never use. Now I am still left with way too many websites that I never update, but that I think I should update… I’ll probably consolidate them somehow. Anyway in the unlikely case anybody is actually missing a site, just let me know.
August is World Building Month … not my idea, but I am participating! You’ll find my work on my world building blog.
Flags and Toilet Paper
Saw this at work – the cleaning staff seems to have a weird sense of humor – either that, or a large dose of patriotism.
For the past five days now, my Internet at home has been offline. Well, intermittently offline: When it’s only it “only” disconnects all existing connections every ten minutes – and it’s slowly as hell on connections. Wasn’t even able to download a new RC of OpenOffice.
The whole mess only happened because my landlords have this company, bits GmbH, which is doing the Internet stuff for all apartments. I didn’t want to buy from them but they basically told me, “hey, we control the wires, what are you going to do about it?”
It’s quite easy what I will do about it; I’ll actually shop around and buy my Internet connectivity from someone who actually knows what they are doing. Until then, my apologies to everybody who tried to talk to me over the weekend, and especially to Pedro for not being able to continue our Assassin Duo team play on Guild Wars.
Having no Internet at home sucks big time.
Update, a week later: Took them pretty exactly a week to get this fixed. I am really not happy.
Still experimenting with Inkscape.
It’s very simplistic, but at least it kind of looks like a cave. (And, yes, I know that water doesn’t look blue in a cave, but it’s still the easiest way to get the idea across.)
This gallery contains 38 photos.
Went to San Francisco. Took a bunch of photos. Returned home. Nuff said. (Well I was on a training while I was there)
Watched two movies on the way to SFO:
Jumpers is an action movie about a guy who discovers that he has the power of teleportation, as well as his subsequent run-in with a secret government-sponsored organization that is set up to kill his kind. There are really not many surprises in this movie, the action is passable, and I did kind of like the premise. This is one of those movies that’s very watchable when you are stuck iun a jetliner for 12 hours, but otherwise it would be a waste of money to rent it.
The Spiderwick Chronicles is an action/fantasy movie about a house plagued by goblins. The owner, Arthur Spiderwick, wrote a book about faeries, and now the evil ogre Mograth is trying to get that book (an obviously has been for 80 years, the poor bastard needs a life). When the great-grand-nephews of Arthur move into the house and discover the book, all hell breaks loose.
As you’d expect, the premise works out to another crummy Hollywood fantasy movie. The beginning is alright but it deteriorates quickly. The design of the monsters in the book shown in the first minutes – is pretty neat and reminds me of Brian Froud’s work, but the ones in the movie itself are normal CGI fare. If I had to sum it up in a few words, I would describe Spiderwick Chronicles as a cross between The Gate and Labyrinth, and it fails at it. Again, it’s watchable… barely.
Got out of the plane and this is what I saw:
San Francisco
It’s like 9°C here at night. Unbelievable – California is colder in June than Germany is in January.
As promised, here is the other cool thing IronPort did with Lego bricks:
IronPort Lego Logo
The little sign reads:
IronPort 3D Logo 2007
Built by New York-based artist Nathan Sawaya in the IronPort booth during the 2007 Interhop event in Las vegas, this Lego exhibit was awarded “Most Ludicrous Promotion” by Smart Exhibits magazine.
More about the artist: Nathan Sawaya creates awe-inspiring works out of the most unlikely things. His recent North American museum tours feature large-scale sculptures using only Lego bricks. www.brickartist.com.
No Legos were harmed in the making of this piece.
42″ x 42″ x 60″
This sculpture now stands in the lobby of the IronPort HQ in San Bruno.
IronPort Appliance made from Lego
Okay – Do I work for the coolest company ever, or what? This is a LEGO model of an IronPort appliance, something they gave out last year at a trade fair. I just found it on Flickr.
I’ll try to get my hands on one of these, but I am sure there are none left. There’s something else I’ll post a photo of. Stay tuned.