Agilo's Weblog

Today was my very first gig, ever!
Lenna and I (see picture below) performed the song Sacrifice by Anouk.

This is a picture I took with Lenna at her place.

The day started off by her waking me up at 9 AM with a phone call, we talked for a while (me still being half asleep — she told me she'd got up around 7 AM ) and I eventually got up to get ready to leave.
I left home at 9:45 AM and arrived at her station on 11:15 AM.

We drove (by bike) to her village centre (where everyone gathered for the Queensday fair) to see if the truck (which held the stage) was there this year (there were some rumors it might not be there at all, so we were a bit worried).
Luckily it was, so we went to the booth which organised it all to ask if we could perform our song, to which they said that we couldn't.
Due to lack of interest in the previous years it was cancelled and the stage was set-up for a fixed schedule.

To say the least; we were very dissapointed but were still determined to play the song (be it in the crowded streets or otherwise), but before doing that we decided to go to her house to run it over a few times (and to upload the pictures we took with her webcam the last time I was there ).

It worked out well enough and so we headed off for the fair again (I told her we should ask the people again if they really didn't have any place for us, after all, we did practice for it and it was only one song).
So in our approach to the booth I saw a guy coming from the stage wearing a suit and I let Lenna know I spotted him and I though he might be the organiser.
Lenna approached that guy and we told him our tale and sure enough, he was the organiser!
Moreover, he'd see if he could possibly squeeze us into their schedule!

By this time we were (obviously) getting very excited (even though no promises have yet been made).

Because it took the manager so long we decided to have a walk through the fair and check out some of the stuff that was for sale.

We walked a while and came to a certain spot which, to her, looked like a good spot to play off-stage (I was unsure about playing off-stage at all) and right at that moment some people came (I think she said they were her neighbours) who asked if we were setting up to play, so now we had to choice but to play there (Lenna insisted and when Lenna insists.. there's no hiding ).
So I unpacked my guitar and we started performing (which was kinda quirky on my part) and finally decided not to finish the song at all because the music from the stage was overlapping our little off-stage performance too much.

After that little mishap we went back to the before mentioned booth to see if that manager had any luck in putting us on stage.

We weren't able to find him and it was at that point it started raining and eventually hailing horrendously!
We saught shelter under a party tent (which was very crowded) where I met a guy from my school (knew him by face, don't know him otherwise) which recognised me.
We had a little chat, turns out he also plays guitar and is a soprano singer himself (though he came there only for friends and the party).

Anyway, to get back to the story (I know it's getting tedious ).

The rain/hail cleared after a few minutes, we spotted the manager and he immidiately went to ask the schedulers if it was possible to fill us in on stage.
After having waited some more minutes we were told we could perform our song on-stage after the guy currently on the stage finishes!

Now we were getting really psyched and nervous!

We waited until that guy finished (luckily it took him some time ) and we were allowed to go on stage!

It's important to note that there weren't that many people on the main square at this point (which made it a bit more comfortable for me).

We went up, I set-up my guitar and did a very fast sound-check, turned around to face the audience and the main square was filled with people!

While performing our song, on-stage, I lost my nervosity completely and Lenna and I shun like the sun (at least for a couple of minutes that were the length of the song ).
She really is an amazing singer and I didn't do all-too-bad myself.

We recieved a warming applause when we were done and recieved a lot of compliments.

It seems even her parents saw our performance; they had just arrived to the main square as we started playing.

It was a very nice experience to be able to play on-stage for an actual audience and we have already planned to practice more songs to perform in the future.

I'm going to have my first small gig on a Queensday fair (Saturday) in Geldermalsen with Lenna; a girl I met on-line a long time ago (almost a year now) through SuperDudes/SugaBabes (she occasionally sung through her microphone via MSN Messenger so that's how I knew how well she could sing before undertaking this).

We're going to perform the song Sacrifice by Anouk.

I've been practicing this song for a a few weeks now and I went to visit her yesterday for the first time to practice together.

Sounds odd and all but she's a wonderful singer and I practiced this song so much I knew it by heart, and sure enough we worked magic (that is to say; even while practicing seperately, we still managed to study to perform this song perfectly).

This will be the first time I'm on-stage, ever, with my guitar and I'm already a bit nervous (although I have high hopes).

Oh well, we'll see coming saturday.

The evening of the day before yesterday (being Wednesday-evening, if you're still with me so far ) I went to the concert of The Flower Kings with Ed, his girlfriend Saskia and Mick!

The concert was fucking awesome!

Of course, I've been to one of their concerts before, but that was an instrumental tour, this was with actual singing.

Their set-list was amazing (playing a lot of big epics, including my favourite: Love Surpreme).
I've gotten this from some forum (can't remember which, I was Google-ing — it's funny how that can turn into a verb, isn't it? — for the setlist and found it on some forum.  I think the encores were different, though..):

• Check In  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Paradox Hotel  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Hit Me with a Hit  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Last Minute on Earth  (from the album: The Rainmaker)
• In the Eyes of the World  (from the album: Stardust We Are)
• Jealousy  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• What If God Is Alone  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Pioneers of Aviation  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Love Supreme  (from the album: Adam & Eve)
• The Truth Will Set You Free  (from the album: Unfold the Future)
• Touch My Heaven  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Mommy Leave the Light On  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• End on a High Note  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• Life Will Kill You  (from the album: Paradox Hotel)
• I Am the Sun - Part 1  (from the album: Space Revolver)

Encores:

• The Blade of Cain  (from the album: Adam & Eve)
• A King's Prayer  (from the album: Space Revolver)

There were camera's all over the place, and it was said on the website from that venue that they would be recording for a DVD.
I'm sure I'll be on it and I'll definitely buy it (if just for the songs alone).

The concert started at 7:30 PM and finished at 11:15 PM (actually, I found out later it wasn't finished yet, they still played one more encore which I missed! ) at which point me and Mick left to go home (had to catch the train).

I arrived at Rotterdam Central Station at 12:15 PM (Mick took another train towards his home) where I had to wait a long while for my next train towards Utrecht Central Station (which goes past the stop I need to get off; Rotterdam Alexander), so I put on my MP3 player and started listening to Pink Floyd's CD; Meddle (Track 6; Echoes — one of their best songs ever in my opinion).

It was by pure coincidence that when my train departured from Rotterdam Central Station that Echoes finished playing; while the train was speeding up I was hearing the sound of the space-ship — or the likes — taking off at the end of the song, which led into the next song at track 1; One Of These Days (I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces).

It's hard to discribe now, but I got a real eerie feeling from that.
It was really cool as it took place.

So anyway, the concert was amazing, I got home at 2 AM (I was beat to shits the next day as I had to get up at 7:20 AM) and I really enjoyed myself.

Last Saturday I bought an Atari 800XE!
I bought it from a guy at a very small fair for 5 Euro's (about the same in dollars).

I came with the following 7 games:

• Moon Patrol
• Super Breakout
• Defender
• Star Raiders 2
• Rescue on Fractalus
• Barnyard Blaster
• Hardball

It works perfectly and is in very good shape.
I'm going to learn BASIC somewhere in the future to try and do something interesting with this thing (besides gaming ).

I waited with posting this due to the possible complications that might follow by what's happened, but since everything has been solved I'm now able to (finally) post it.

Okay, so, April 1st, also known as April Fools.
Boy, what a fun day, everyone playing tricks on everyone and such!

Being what day it was (or rather; would be, because this was still on March 31st), me and Ralph (from here on called "Ralf" because I like that better ) decided to play a little trick on a girl both he and I know on MSN; Sabina.
It started out as a thought; tell someone the lie that I'm gay (people who know me will know that is fairly impossible to believe) and then go from there (no real goal or anything).

I decided to play the trick on Sabina on that day (so it wouldn't get noticed).

So I told her I had confessed to a guy in school that I liked him and that he didn't really accept it and I would be affraid that he'd tell the world.
She didn't really seem to care about it much but I kept building the story up and franticly trying to get "help" (advice) from her.

Anyway, Me and Ralph decided to also pull this prank with his girlfriend (Nadine — who is best of friends with Sabina).
I was not to tell her anything; I'd leave it all up to him and he wouldn't tell Sabina; that was up to me.

So, April Fools cometh (Saturday), we told them both (me to Sabina, Ralf to Nadine).
Sabina's initial response was "BASTARD!" after which she "acted" like she was furious.
After I tried to calm her down she let me know that was her April Fools gag.

Then the wait was on to hear from Ralf who was supposed to tell his girlfriend.

After he told her (via phone) she really blew out.
She was really furious of both Ralf and myself.
She sent me a message through GMail Chat saying how pathetic I was and such (that would be the last time I ever heard from her).
She wouldn't even want to talk to Ralph anymore..

I really didn't understand where all her rage was coming from.. it wasn't as if I said I killed a person and was seeking help or anything.

Ralf mailed her and tried to get in contact with her but she didn't want any contact (seems she e-mailed him on sunday saying she didn't want to have anything more to do with him for the time being; she'd contact him).

He decided it might be a good thing to just go to her on Monday to apologise in person (I've asked eight friends of mine if that would be the right thing to do and all of them agreed it's the best thing to do in a fight; don't do it via e-mail/phone/MSN, talk to her in person).

Monday cometh, he skipped school to go to her and try and apologise.
She ignored him completely that morning when she went to school, so Ralf waited until she was off school (4 PM) and tried to ask again, and what do you know it, she ignored him again.
She then proceeded to call Sabina and (franticly and while wheeping) tell her she was being stalked by Ralf, that he had pushed her up against a wall (to try and get her attention is my best guess), that he'd been following her everywhere she went and that she was very scared of him now.
(...)

So Ralf turned homewards (confused as hell, I'll bet — at least, I was).

Days went by, there were some talks with all parties involved, nothing got resolved.

I didn't understand it, WHY was she so mad?!

I finally got my answer from an e-mail she sent Ralf saying that her mother was peeping in on her chat while she was having it with Ralf, so she asked her mother for advice to relay to Ralf.
If that wasn't enough, she also asked for advice to a (gay) friend of hers (while Ralf expressly told her to keep it confidential).
Then April 1st cometh, she (after having been told by Ralf) had to step up to the challenge of telling her mom and the gay friend it was "merely" an April Fool's gag.
That being a shameful thing on itself; while calling that gay friend of hers he had been getting really angry and was crying and said something along the lines of "Why do they always pick on gay people!?".

My response (I really feel the need to place this in my weblog)?: sniff-sniff, boo-hoo-hoo, cry it out you gay faggot.

But anyway, that does explain the reason for her being angry.. but so terribly angry?
It was just a joke!
Get the fuck over it!

She and Ralf both tricked me into a joke which was (at least from my feel) even worse and that wasn't even on April Fools!
I didn't stop talking to her and Ralf (at least not after the first 15 mins), what's wrong with her?

Anyway, after a few days she then finally went back on MSN (she had blocked me) to talk with ralf and saying she might wanted to try it again (still uncertain).

Still a few days went on, and coming the weekend Ralf asked me to go out with the whole group (which I declined) consisting of Nadine, Sabina, and some other people.

Later that night I get an SMS text message from Ralf saying Nadine has been "cheating" on him that night (he later told me on MSN that he caught her and a friend of hers making out).

He was really angry and hurt the first few days but he's better now, from what I can tell.

Moral of this story: I have no fucking clue.
But this'll probably be the last April Fools gag I ever pull..

Google Talk has updated with some very awesome changes!
Normally I won't post about application updates (other than my own creations), but this I feel I should mention (for the sake of publicity — even if my site doesn't get all that many visitors).

Notable changes:

• Avatars (support for transparent PNGs!)!
• Chat skins (built up using CSS!!)!

Notices:

• Google Talk will convert all avatars to PNG files and store the cache in C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\avatars\.
• Google Talk keeps chatlogs locally in C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\chatlogs\ (I'm wondering if Google Chat spools these here for GMail's chatlogs and if these can be messed with in a malicious way).
• Google Talk keeps its skins in C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\themes\, and custom skins in its user\ directory.
• C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\ holds older versions of Google Talk.
• (When a chat is shaded) Tab selects other chats (knew this before) but CTRL+Tab will move focuss to other chats.
• You can "steal" other people's avatars real easily (not a real challenge nor useful function, but funny nonetheless).

Expectations:

• Overthrow of Microsoft (there's always hope ).
• Linux client (I know you can use its jabber protocol, but I mean an official GUI client — I'd use it. ).
• Interface getting (even more ) homey (meaning: one can easily feel right at home).

Todo:

• Create my own skin/theme (or find a dedicated Google Talk theming site).

Also, something happened April 1st (A.K.A. April Fools) which I'll put in my weblog at a later date (I wasn't planning on making any entries before I'd make that one, but I really wanted to blog this, so..).

I picked this up from ACJ's weblog who in turn has it from one of DArqueBishop's weblog entry and thought it was kind of fun :

Choose a band / artist then answer ONLY in titles of their songs . . .

Choose a band / artist:

King Crimson

Are you male or female?:

21st Century Schizoid Man

Describe yourself:

Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With

How do some people feel about you:

I Talk to the Wind

Describe your x boyfriend/girlfriend:

I Ran

Describe your current crush:

Moonchild / Fallen Angel (I couldn't choose between these two, forgive me )

Describe how you love:

Model Man

Where you want to be right now:

Heaven and Earth

What would you ask for if you had one wish:

Dig Me

Share a few words of wisdom:

The World's My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum

Where do you live:

Pictures Of A City

Now say goodbye:

Peace

I've been real busy working on a new project of mine which features XMLHttpRequest which will eventually be an add-on for this very weblog.
It's been taking up a LOT of my time, I've really been taken in its grasps.
I've never worked with it, and I've never done such extensive work with javascript before.
To play it as safe as possible, the script will be added to this weblog without the need for extra HTML; I will include everything using your browsers' DOM (only one little change must be made and that's to the "onload" attribute of the body tag to initiate the javascript).
As an added side-effect, the browsers which do not support all of this won't have any strain put uppon them.

Of course, this is all still theory.

I've started on it and it's working but with a lot of hacking about.
Eventually I want the code to be real clean and sleek.

Not spoiling anything yet and it probably won't be such a big deal to anyway, but I still want to work on this if just to give me a better hands-on understanding of XMLHttpRequest (that, and it interests me).

In a non-related story, my mom bought me a new keyboard (the musical instrument, not the keyboard for a computer, duh)!
It's a Yamaha PS-55 which has no MIDI interface, but it's still a very awesome keyboard to have to jamm-sessions and the likes.
It's an awesome gift, thanks mom!

I've learned to play the song Horizon's by Genesis (from the album Foxtrot)!

I was playing the album the day before yesterday and when it hit this song I was amazed by its sound, I loved it!
I didn't even let it finish playing, I stopped it half-way through and I looked up the tabs for the song (which I had in a tab-collection ZIP I downloaded at NetGamez) and started learning it.

It took me three hours straight to learn the song!
But it's worth it.

I can't play it exactly as the recording and I still make a lot of small mistakes, but practice makes perfect, as they say.

After a week's rest from my wintersports vacation, I'm all set to go to NetGamez 2006A.
My leg (that is; my knee and my ankle) still hurt me when I walk or carry heavy things but that's not going to ruin the fun.

An ex-classmate is also going to compete in the Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament being held there with his clan which could be interesting to see (he's actually one of the few people who actually outskills me from school).
Other than him, band-mate (bass-player) and friend; Michel is also going with us.

I have a short list of things I want to download there and I've recieved a new 150 GB harddisk from my brother to download them on.
I'll see what's available for download.

Well, I'm back from my wintersport vacation!
It was very awesome, I had the best time ever!

I've kept a daily log since I was there.
It's not complete (meaning that I can't write down all the things I've done), but it's large enough as it is.

February 18, 2006  ^{(day 1)}

Today has been a very long day.
The bus-trip was fun but at the same time also terrible.
I managed to get some sleep out of the trip (about 6 hours worth) but I absolutely hate sleeping in buses; it's just not comfortable at all and you keep getting woken yo by noises made by other passengers, urgh.

Anyway, we left home (at the rendezvous) at 8:15 PM and eventually arrived at 10:20 AM (having made stops every 4 hours).

We had to wait a while before the organiser had settled everything so we could all unload, but we found a way to enjoy ourselves while doing so (Requires DivX to play).

After having been appointed a room and everyone got settled in, we went into town to get our gear and to buy day-passes so we could start hitting the slopes right away (we were among few to actually buy a day-pass for €24,-).
I found out I'd been given a very excellent snowboard, even better than the boards been given to either Mick or Ed.
Anyway, I made a few whipe-outs but otherwise did alright (not having boarded for so long).

We headed back to our stay at 5:05 PM to get back in time for dinner (which was horrible) and decided to keep a journal — on paper, mind you — to keep track of each day,

February 19, 2006  ^{(day 2)}

The day started off nicely, we (me, Mick and Ed) had a very nice and relaxing sleep (after our horrid bus-trip the previous night); we went to bed at 8 PM (and I have to say, the beds are fantastic)!

Anyway, we had a great day on the slopes, oh how I've missed the thrills and sensation of getting on a snowboard and boarding the mountain slopes.
I don't want to leave anymore.

During the day another buss arrived with new guests for the hotel, English (skiing) guests to be exact.
They seemed a cool bunch, but I didn't spend a lot of time with them or anything.

A big group of people decided to go out that night, as did I.
I decided to bust out the cool glow-bracelets I bought and wear them to be all cool'n'shit, y'kno?!
No, but seriously (), it looks pretty cool as added accessory.
Anyway, we went to a bar then decided it wasn't cool enough so we walked around looking for something else, met two guys also from The Netherlands (from Leiden) that were kind of cool and decided to go to a bar/disco we happened to come across that features topless dancers.
But yeah, it was a fun night with a lot of drinking and stuff, we all had a good time.

February 20, 2006  ^{(day 3)}

I woke up with one hell of a headache (read: hangover) and felt short of sleep but I had to get up sooner or later, so I did had breakfast and headed off to the slopes in Zell am See with Ed and Mick.
It was a perfect day; sunny not too cold nor warm, I boarded amazingly well (meaning that I didn't fall too many times or nothing bad happened, etc.).

We came across Peter Dullaard (my mentor in highschool and the organiser of the trip) and hung out with him and an accompanying teacher.
We ate in a very good restaurant on the top of a mountain and after that decided to go board for ourselves again (just us three).

Then, we found the perfect off-piste part of the mountain yet!

At first Ed didn't feel all to right about it, and neither did Mick, so we didn't do the route the first time we saw it (we also saw a guy in a kind of road-agent vest, so we thought people were being told not to go off-piste there — there was a fence to hold off people but there were tracks of people that went through the fences and onto the off-piste routes anyway).
The second time around I decided to take the initiative and go for it anyway, with or without Mick and Ed, so they had the choice to either follow me or let me off by myself (I have to say, I'm glad they chose to come with me).
It was perfect in every way (I felt so, anyway), it was very adventurous and felt a bit dangerous in some aspects (you had to keep paying attention to what you were doing or risk a high fall or a run-in with trees).

We've done that off-piste route twice and then I did it again by myself (alone) because Ed and Mick were through with it (It was very tiresome but truly awesome!).

I've found an element in snowboarding which I like most of all now; going off-piste.
The thrill and adventure of not really knowing exactly where to go and to keep paying attention to what you're doing and needing to have at least some skill to do some of the routes you find makes it all very attractive for me.
I love it!!

February 21, 2006  ^{(day 4)}

Today we went to Kaprun, a neighbouring town to Zell am See which is higher up in the mountains (reaching its peak at 3023 meters up in the clouds).

The stories I've heard were true!
Kaprun is perfect for going off-piste in every way!
We must've spent 90% of the time of the day off the pistes in Kaprun.

What was also very funny was that, once having reached the top (not the absolute top, but at around 2900 meters — the absolute top is the fun-park, which houses jumps and stuff like that) we (me, Mick, Ed and abound 8 other guys and one girl from our group — snowboarders and skiers) had a small race; the first one to get to the start of the ski lift wins.
To my biggest amazement, I actually won that race!
I went soooooo fast on my board, it was really frightening (I was a bit shaky getting to the finish) but I didn't stop once.
My board did the rest, I guess.

I also found an off-piste place which everyone can see from the ski lift but no one has done yet which was perfect!
I found my way to that place (in my second attempt; my first attempt got me to a place which was meters above where I had to be and made me shit my pants in fear of its steepness) and got two good rides over the beautiful unprepared snow (leaving my trails where on one has gone yet).
It made me kind of proud.

In the afternoon we went to a very fancy restaurant at 2000 meters high to have lunch where I ate very delicious pizza.
I'm thankful I ate a lot because the food at the hostel itself was horrible (as usual and as I expected).

February 22, 2006  ^{(day 5)}

We went to Kaprun again today and I decided to bring with me my MP3-player to have some music accompanying me while I board (as Ed has done for a few days now).
It's a fun experience having music to listen to while boarding, instead of hearing the wind breeze by (I was listening to the albums entitled Trilogy and Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Nursery Cryme by Genesis and Close To The Edge by Yes).

I ate Pizza again in the same restaurant as yesterday, and it was delicious once again.

Ed and Mick joined me to the place where I went yesterday because they also wanted to go through the same snow, and by now I knew exactly how to get there (I've been going there for a few times now).
Ed made some spectacular jumps there as well (almost knocked his head up against a ski lift!  Haha! ).
We've also made some pictures and movies of us boarding and also boarding this off-piste part (in which I nearly made a whipe-out ).

Also, I found the most perfect off-piste route yet!
No trees, but hella-dangerous and exciting!
One wrong turn or miscalculation and I could end up meters down over a small cliff and most certainly break something (which is exactly the kind of thrill that drives me to do these things).
I took the route three times, trying to convince Ed to come along but he didn't want to ("Maybe tomorrow", he said).

So anyway, at the end of the day my knees were killing me due to the amount of goddamn bügles (hopes of snow being piled up due to skiers).
I even had trouble walking around because of it, but a bit of ointment Peter gave me helped sooth it down a bit.

As usual the food was horrible and I got a good rest back in the hostel.

February 23, 2006  ^{(day 6)}

Today we decided to go to Kaprun again, which was totally unplanned.
We decided to go because the weather seemed to be in its favour and everyone had such a good time there.

This was perfect because now Ed could also try the off-piste route I found yesterday!

We decided to go there during mid-day and headed off in that direction.
To get to it we needed to cross a bit of the slope where speed was an essence in which (due to my pain in my knee) I made a wrong decision in that I went too fast where upon I fell really hard in a big heap of ice/snow where I sprained my ankle really painfully.
After a bit of muttering, aching and cussing, I finally got up and continued to do the off-piste part with Ed and Mick (feeling the pain, but not really realising how serious it was).
Me and Ed made our way up there and we both made the drops (Ed made a very dangerous drop through a very small and narrow exit through the mountain which was fucking awesome! ).
Mick also did the route but didn't make the exact place I kept telling him about, so he didn't find it near as spectacular.

Anyway, we then arrived at a small restaurant where I took a bit of a rest.
When I got up however I was unable to stand on my right foot (where I sprained my ankle)!
I hopped around a bit to get around and get some food etc., but I was unable to get back on my board (this was all around 3:15 PM).

I then stuck around at the restaurant meeting up with other people from my group and Peter and went back to the hotel at the end of that day (4:30 PM as every day).
Peter once again gave me the ointment he gave me before and I rubbed it over my ankle.
My ankle never hurt so much before in my life, I was really concerned about it.

I didn't go swimming as was planned for a few days now and I didn't go out with the rest of the group, instead I stayed in and tried to get some sleep but even sleeping hurt like hell, everything I did with my right leg hurt like crazy!

February 24, 2006  ^{(day 7)}

My ankle now hurts less resting me assured that it's just sprained, not broken, however I'm still not able to walk normally on it.
This was also the last day of the wintersport vacation and I had to sit it out.

While everyone went up the slopes of Zell am See, I returned my equipment and spent 5 long hours roaming the town I was in (waiting until the rest would bring in their boards and skis later that day so we could all head off back to the hostel together).
I spent the day listening to my music, taking walks (very slowly and painfully — my though was that I may walk it off slightly), going to an Internet café/arcade hall and I ate in a pizzeria next to the Internet café.
I nearly fell asleep twice while sitting on a bench outside.

The day couldn't be over quicker when people from my group started to come in (after having spent exactly 5 hours by myself).

Anyway, we then headed back to the hostel and packed the rest of our things to get ready to leave.

We left the hostel at 7 PM that night and arrived back home in the Netherlands at 8:15 PM.

Here are some of the pictures Ed made for us:

Wintersport Photographs

Fantastic mountain view at dawn (1).	Fantastic mountain view at dawn (2).
Fantastic mountain view at dawn (3).	Fantastic mountain view at dawn (4).
Fantastic mountain view at dawn (5).	Me (wearing a ski-mask), letting you know everything's rockin'.
Mick, letting you know everything's rockin'.	Mick, withering away in the cool breeze of the mountain.
The fantastic off-pistes of Kaprun.	Again, the fantastic (and at the same time dangerous) off-pistes of Kaprun.
Idem ditto.	Me, resting a while before taking on the treacherous off-piste mountain-side.
Me, taking on the treacherous off-piste mountain-side.	One of the off-piste routes which was very steep (not all-too-clearly visible in this picture).
The off-piste slopes as could be seen from the ski lift.	Idem ditto.
Ed, at one of the off-piste routes.	Ed, carving his ass off.
Mick, doing it Russky-style (got to love that adorable hat ).	Mick, doing something very awesome (if only I knew what. )!
The three Stooges!!	Me, being, like, what the fuck, dude..
Mick, being, like, himself..	Ed, being super-sexy.
Aww, the poor thing.  That cat got his paw stuck in between a door (from what I heard).  Poor little guy.	Ed, in a very awesome and artistic photograph.
Peter Dullaard, ex-mentor (in highschool) and the guy who organised our trip and set everything up.

The Nintendo DS is getting itself a web browser made by Opera!
Opera has made a press-release about it on their site.

It looks awesome and very promising.

Although never actually tried both, it seems that in functionality it bares a small resemblance to PointyRemote (one of the very first VNC-like applications to be made using SgStair's WiFi library).

Anyway, very cool stuff, can't wait to have/try it.

This must be the last thing anyone expects me to say, but (after nearly two years of using it) I'm really getting tired of Gentoo Linux.

I do want to say that, yes, I do use the ~x86 mask in ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86", so technically, yes, all of this is my own fault.

Still, I am seeing and have seen so many errors and bugs in newly emerged applications (or even while compiling, failing to do so because of library updates or misconfigured — by Portage itself — development applications), it's now driving me to the point where I'm no longer fine with it anymore.
I just want it to work!

Some might say to just change ~x86 back to x86, but that is impossible because I'd have to re-emerge my entire system (and it's not just the ammount of applications; it's more the incompatibility between certain applications with incompatible libraries and/or things like that).
I read (somewhere on Gentoo.org) that it's not recommended anyway.

I'm seriously thinking about a replacement for Gentoo in the form of *BSD (or maybe Debian — I've used it a bit for a project at school and I liked what I saw) or maybe (just maybe) even Mac OS X.

This isn't all I have to say on this but I'm sure I'll get back to it in a later entry.

Anyway, I'm going to look into getting another OS more in-depth after I get back from Netgamez.
For now, I'll just stick to Gentoo and take the poking.

I didn't have much better to do at school, so I started working on fixing the auto-paragraphs function.
I worked out how to fix it and implemented the fix as can be seen in a previous entry.
It's not pretty (neither code nor output) but it works.

So I'll be going to Netgamez again in 26 days (March 3 to 5) together with my brothers and band-member; Michel.
Some guys from school also said they might be going but are still uncertain (except for Leo, an ex-classmate who said he'll be going with his Counter-Strike clan, as far as I can remember).

Anyway, I don't have many things I feel I need to download (unlike last few times where I actually made lists of movies), but I'll see what's available when I'm hooked up on its network.
I may download a GBA games collection from someone (I've seen 'em last times) so I can play them on a GBA flash card I'm planning on buying; M3 Adapter (SD-card version).

It'll be the 6th time (or something like that) I'm going to Netgamez.