dutchnid

Death Korps of Krieg

2009-11-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

Last sunday I finally fought Piotr's Death Korps of Krieg. They are Imperial Guard from Forgeworld and the models just blow your mind (nothing to do with the enormous amount of ordance they bring). For those who don't play 40K, just scroll down towards the photo's!!!! It really pays off to enlarge them *click 'em*.

We played a 2000pts game (I'm used to play 1500).
In short:
Broodlord + 5 stealer retinue
Flying Tyrant
19 hormagaunts (s3)
16 hormagaunts (s4)
18 spinegaunts
12 termagants
8 stealers
2x 3 leaping warriors
1x 3 shooting warriors
2 raveners
3 Thropes
1 carnifex with barbed strangler + venomcannon & spinebanks
1 carnifex with barbed strangler + talons

Against
4x 5 Roughriders (EVIL!!! )
3 Large artillery pieces
5 smaller artillery pieces (you'll see the difference in the photo's)
2 Diggerunits (unit can dig underneath the enemy, large blast s10 ap2, and then the unit behind it can still shoot & charge.
and a LOT of troops with lasguns and some other weaponry.

As you could see before, he's a great painter. The pics below proof it once again. Unfortunately the lighting was bad and I didn't take much time to set up a decent photo-shoot so I'm not happy with all pics. I will do that another time.

The large ordnance piece

The smaller ordnance piece

Roughriders

Part of the dig-crew

Some leader figures

Banner and flag

Random guards

The game was a big slaughter, but in the end we called it a draw because we lacked the time to finish it, but we agreed that I had the better chance of winning in the end, even though I've lost lots and lots of troops.

DSB Bank tumbling or not?

2009-10-13T05:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'm not big on economics so don't shoot me too hard if I'm off now and then..

About 3 years ago a bank filed for bankrupcy (this word seems thé perfect word at the moment), before that it was 24-25 years ago since a bank tumbled. Last year saw our government spend billions on banks to keep them running. I got all of my accounts with the ABN Amro which got taken over for if I'm not mistaken 51%. It's of course debatable if a country should invest so much in banks to keep them upright.

But yesterday the definite news came that the DSB Bank was in really big trouble and might have to file for bankrupcy. As we speak there are curators who are looking at possible ways to save the bank (and more important the money of its clients). The Dutch (and probably some other) customers already picked up a couple of hundred million euro's to put into accounts in other banks. The state declared that they would ensure any amount of money of the clients upto 100 000€. So for the little man there shouldn't be too many problems untill house-sales come into the picture.

But I just received a mail from my employment agency that if you called in today before 5pm (and only today!), you could change the account into which they pay your salary if you are a DSB client. That's a hard service.

There are two sides to this.
1) The trust in the states promise to guarantee your money upto 100K € seems to (if still possible) tumble even further. The fact that the agency mailed this enhances the distrust so even if people didn't transfer all of their money, they'll feel supported to do so now (even if they are far below the guaranteed amount) and if nothing else, if able, change their salary account. I hope for the people who have more than 100K in the bank that DSB comes up with a plan to be able to support itself and at least save its customers from MAJOR money loss.

2) As said before it's a hard service. A hard service, but in a time where jobs are sometimes hard to find and you really want to be sure of your income as well as you can, it's a writing on the wall that the agency does nót trust the government to be able to save all banks, let alone the DSB and the agency wants the best for its clients. The least it has done by this mail is to keep the trust of its 'employees'.

Has anything like this happened in your country or are you expecting it? People weren't expecting it here, that's for sure!

I'm sooooo retro

2009-10-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

It's a public secret I don't have an Ipod, I use some ancient device called an mp3-cdplayer to listen to my music while on the road. It's still working after 8 years and I'm not planning to replace it anytime soon (as long as it's still working of course).

Everytime someone sees me pull this one:

out of my pocket they're like WHAT THE F is that! But I like being able to just grab a normal cd or an mp3 cd out of a rack and press play, instead of hooking a machine up to the pc and having to erase-copy stuff and fix playlists and whatnot, and I'm not getting started about being forced to use itunes. I'm just lazy like that.

Another advantage is that I just use rechargable batteries and I always have an extra set with me so that I'm not stuck without music.

But what I was building up to was that about a month (or is it already 1,5?) ago I bought an LP player, brand new but it still has a retro feel to it buying a new thing to play old music. My parents got a ton of lp's that they want to put on cd, and I would just like to play them as lp's.
I'm really looking forward to be able to play Peter and the wolf or some other oldies again:

It's at least 10 years since I've heard this one!

Next to that, last week I bought 2 LP's. One with the best of Ennio Morricone and BÖC's Imaginos:

I'm really eager to play those.
But somehow I can't get my lp player to work. I only have an old miniset radio with an aux function on it but the LP player has the option of using a line-in connection instead of the phono. And besides that I couldn't get the thing to at least start turning which you would expect even if the music signal couldn't be transferred if it's plugged into current. I hope I'll be able to solve this and listen to old music again before long.

Of course the 'I'm soooo retro' is in jest, I just like the fact that my mp3 player still works and I really love to be able to play those old lps again.

Dutch movies (top 10) pt 2: Blackbook

2009-09-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

I watched Zwartboek (Blackbook) today. As said before I'm not planning on making a real ranked list but seeing this movie I do want to place it in the list.

In (very) short: the movie is about the resistance in the Netherlands (Holland..whatever Dan..) and about the Germans taking away & killing Jews. I could extend the synopsis, but you just have to believe me here that it's darn worth watching.

The movie is spoken is mainly spoken in Dutch, but when needed in German and English which is personally already a testament of quality. The version I got was subtitled when it wasn't spoken in English and it even mentioned when German was spoken (eg. (Geman) Thank you).

Stuff people throw out of the window pt 3?

2009-09-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if it's part 3, but it doesn't matter really, it could just as well be part 25 to me.

As some might know, I live in a flat filled with about 80-90% students or people who just finished their studies. The rest are a strange collection of young families and elderly people. The thing with students (yeah I know I'm one too) is that some think that because they are students they can thrash stuff and throw it out of the window and leave it there to rot just because no-one cares..
I care as much as far as to the point that it irritates me when someone throws a pc out of their window at 3AM or something or chairs or whatever. It wakes me up and instead of just throwing it away with the garbage it lies there waiting for someone (the flatowners possibly) to send a clean-up crew and take it away.

What it's all about:

The guy in the lawnmower was happy to shred some stuff like the pillow and the keyboard.

Blue Öyster Cult in concert!

2009-09-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last saturday (5 september!) I went to a Blue Öyster Cult concert in Zoetermeer and it was really really cool! There was a band warming us up that I never heard of (666 the nightmare) they were a Dutch band which played covers of great 80s rock tracks and performed really well, so I'd say youtube them and don't be scared by the way they dress up, all part of the act.

Around a quarter to ten the BOC themselves entered the stage and the whole crowd got excited. The band (although in a changing group) has been going at it for 40 years! As far as their fitness goes, they shouldn't have any trouble to add at least another 10 good years. Of course they played great hits like Don't fear the reaper, Burning for you and Then came the last days of May, but they also played a lot of other tracks. There was a 50 years+ guy next to me who completely broke the stereotype that you would've given him on the street (he looked like a major executive) and he just went completely crazy shouting and whistling. That was just awesome.

Eric Bloom & Buck Dharma:

Richie Castellano and the bassguitarist from Queen as a subsitute for the BOC bassplayer Rudy.

Eric Bloom telling us something important

He made these concentrated faces constantly, he would throw up his stick fetch it and just continue drumming like nothing happened, awesome.

The band:

Minor improvement points for the Merchandise stand: they only had 2 different t-shirts on sale and they didn't sell any cd's...would've been a smart move because the shirts sold like crazy (got one myself too).

Other small downside..I had to drive back home for 3,5 hours..well 3..but I took 2 breaks to prevent me falling asleep at the wheel..

The photo's above are all made by Moon in Virgo. Take a look either at my photobucket or her site (linked in name above) for all photo's. I'm still waiting for some photo's a guy would send to me, but this is what I ripped from the website of the Cultuurboerderij itself.

Tsunami vs 9-11

2009-09-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

I came across this Brazillian commercial from WWF, which as far as I understand is no(t) longer shown on tv.

WWF already excused itself for this and said it should never have been published etc. But on the other hand..if there wasn't such a fuss about it I would have probably not seen this on a Dutch newspaper website. Maybe..after 8 years (no matter how difficult it still is) people should no longer cringe about it as hard as if it was published on 10-11. Although it still doesn't feel quit right to put it out as a commercial.

The Offspring @ Huntenpop

2009-08-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

I went to see The Offspring at a small festival somewhere in the middle of ffing nowhere but it was worth the drive!
They did a couple of tracks from their new cd but the majority was old hits and about 90% of Americana *which ísn't a bad thing*.

I haven't checked closely but I wouldn't be surprised if I bounced in view in the vid below. There was a LOT of moshing going on including an enormous circle pit.

Some photo's that a friend of mine took:

Yes that's me on screen there for those who recognize me :-)
The only bad things about the day were: there was not enough decent food, there was no food or drinks outside the festival *there were a bunch of hungry people waiting outside* and there was very very heavy rain on the way back.

Dutch movies (top 10) pt 1

2009-08-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

I was tagged weeeeeks ago by Dan to do a top ten movie list of Dutch movies worth watching, at least I think that's what he wants. Because I'm working too much, trying to have a social life and still do other time consuming silly stuff, and of course because I'm lazy, I'll just use IMDB for short synopsis info (without spoiling) if I agree enough with it.

The list is at random, not specifically the best movie first, just some Dutch movies you should see. Because of said lazyness this is pt 1. This is 1 of the first titles that came into my head when thinking about good Dutch movies.

Soldaat van Oranje/ Soldier of Orange (also known as Survival run).
Trailer:

Synopsis:
SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a film about a group of friends who encounter the occupation of Holland by the Germans in different ways. The film splits up it's time dealing with the stories of the friends and that of one of them who becomes a high ranking member of the OSS and close political ally to the queen of Holland. The film, set during WW2, is even handed in it's approach. SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a unusual film and was made with a high degree of quality. The film goes for a sense of realism not often seen in cinema, the film,made in Holland is in dutch yet in the sequences in england it is in English. I recommend this film to WW2 buffs and fans of art-house cinema alike. Both groups will be pleased as will foreign film fans who can be assured of finding something worthwhile.

Personal adds: remember that it's a movie from 1977 and it shows a bit, but for the time it was (and is) still a very good movie. Directed by Paul Verhoeven.
I'll try to update with pt2 on wednesday.

Good and bad news

2009-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

I spray painted a white base coat on ALL of my remaining 40k plastic racks (just like model airplanes, everything is in racks), roughly 10€ off paint. So that's progress.

But while trying to grab a mouthcap..my Orljonok model airplane which was still work in progress came crashing down from over 2m high...wing broke off at gluepoint and some other stuff, I'll have to see how good I'll be able to fix it.
I think I haven't cursed as loud as today in a long while..

Spectaculair sand art & music performance!

2009-07-31T00:51:00.000-07:00

I found this over at a Dutch newspaper blog (nrc next). This was performed at Ukraine's got talent.
I can't say much more about it than that it's just spectaculair how she draws things in sand.

It's telling a story about the 2nd World War where around 5 million Ukrainians lost their lives.

Some movies I saw of late

2009-07-26T12:43:00.001-07:00

Some movies I saw lately in the cinema or on dvd. I'm gonna keep the reviews short because otherwise I'll probably say what others said tons of times. I'll keep it to a short judgement and a personal touch (where possible).

Terminator Salvation
I can be fairly short about this one, it wasn't as good as say the first Terminator movie, but I díd like it as an actionpacked popcorn cinema movie. Nothing too deep, just a saturday night action movie. What I didn't really like is what might be a problem MC described as the thin line between making a reference to a movie and ripping it off. In TS there were Matrix-like drones and a bunch of other things that were more on the ripping off side of the line than the reference-making side of a couple of movies.

Startrek
This was *yes your heart is gonna skip a beat* the first Startrek movie I saw in the cinema (not the first I saw!!). I really liked it though. I mainly grew up on startrek next gen with an older startrek version ep now and then on bbc or so. Of course I roughly knew most characters but not as well as with the other trek series. They told the story in a way that even when you're not a yearlong trek-vet you can get along just fine. I heard that a lot of startrek fans didn't like it, but well their problem. Another small thing I liked was that the accent of Pavel Chekov didn't irritate me. Sometimes you think..oh there we go again..the Russian accent guy, but it felt good here. There was a bit of too much drama at one point though (dramatic music etc) but I guess there's got to be something for everyone.

Windtalkers
I saw this on dvd. I liked the war-action scenes because the movie sketches the confusion of battle in the pacific as good as I might imagine it really was. But the movie was supposed to have a decent story about how the Navajo worked as code talkers and how important they were, but the entire story kinda got washed away by the action. It was more of a side-thing for the movie and I don't want to say that it should have been the other way around, but there was no balance. Oh and there was a very small love interest for Nicolas Cage which could have been left out just as easy, it didn't add anything to the movie.

Updates are coming

2009-07-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

During the week work and social life has just plummeted my internet time for the last week, and that is just únacceptable. I was able to comment here and there but wasn't able to get out a decent post and that at a moment where there's plenty to post.
I hope I will be able to make a couple of posts (set up the drafts and click publish later on) tomorrow.
Upcoming:
- Tv series, an addiction
- Top 10 Dutch specialty movies: characters, got tagged, not sure how positive 'specialty' is, but I'll run with it.
- Movies I've seen lately

That's what pops up at the moment.

Magnetized

2009-06-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

I've had this model for ages but this year I finally got around to start finishing it. One of the minor reasons was that I got decent magnets now.
I háven't finished the model yet but you're all smart enough to figure that out by yourself, this is just the last photo stage before I dó finish it.

The leg section with base:

I painted the magnetside of the magnets red (the other side I call the glue-side..wow that's creative!..not).

The model has 3 different shoulderpads, basic, weapon 1 and weapon 2.

The thing what is a bit stupid is that it has basicly 6 possible headcombinations, but only 11 headparts. The regen-part is combined with one of the basic-parts which leaves you with no nórmal head. Good thing that my 2nd carnifex has just arrived in a box, so I wíll make one.

So far I've magnetized the heavy weapons and 1 set of other guns, the rest (a bunch of other combi's) is WIP.

Heavy weapons above, other set below.

Even though I did the whole paint the magnetsize red so you know which side you need to glue etc..I did make a major error..the lower right torso magnet was glued the other way around than which it should have been and I already built in the heavy weapon arm magnet. If it was just the torso it wouldn't have been a problem to 'break' the magnet off, but I can't possibly get it óut of the heavy weaponsarm.
This just means that the places of the heavy weapons arms are fixed. The venom cannon is the lower set and the barbed strangler has to be the top set.
If not, it looks like this:
*the combi on the photo is a twin-devourer on top and a barbed strangler in the lower set, which doesn't work..*

As I said, the next carnifex has already arrived. I'm not sure I want to get that one magnetized too. Next to that I'm not sure if I want to built the error that I made on the above model into the new one on purpose so that all arms will be completely interchangable or that I want to do this one right and will have to wait a bit longer to get éach and évery possible combination (some sets such as the devourer only come in one set per model).

Pinkpop (music festival)

2009-06-18T08:35:00.001-07:00

At the end of May I went to the Pinkpop festival. I haven't been posting because I had too much other stuff to do, but I'm back.

Pinkpop is at least worldfamous in the Netherlands and it's the oldest yearly popfestival in the world (this was the 40st time!). A couple of years back there was a major decline in visitors but the organizers managed to get out of that dip and came back strong. A short explanation: it's around eastern (Dutch: pinksteren), the Dutch word contains 'pink', it has mainly popmusic, a 'pop' means doll in Dutch so you end up with a pink doll as a logo and lots of people walk around dressed in pink or with the pink hat sold for a good cause (amnesty international) and which is a real collectors item.

I've been going to festivals for years because at least the following reasons: 1) it's an affordable way to see a lot of artists in a short time 2)it's an easy way to get to know new music 3)we always go with a group of cool people 4)a long weekend of drinking and stuffing your face with junkfood..what's not to like.

I'll stop rambling, here are the photo's:

I saw in random order: The killers, Bruce Springsteen, the Tingtings, Kyteman, Placebo, Mando Diao, Franz Ferdinand, Novastar, Milo (famous for his cover of a 50ct track), Madness.

Some minor links to music which you should check out if you don't already know it:
Kyteman's hiphop orchestra (Dutch group, but a lot of English, and French texts)
The TingTings (poppy, but cool).

Walchsee: training and having fun

2009-05-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (thursday 14th-monday 18th) I went on a training seminar to Walchsee. I don't talk too much online about me doing martial arts because most(not all ;) ) people talking on the web about martial arts are a bit deranged and I don't want any spammers or too crazy people coming over here.

In short, we left on thurday with a rented car, drove to Munich, stayed the night, drove to Walchsee (meaning Walch-lake) in Austria, trained hard together with people from Munich till monday morning and in the afternoon we drove back (got back at 2AM) to Groningen. Great drive, great weather, great people, great training, great environment..etc..go check out the short photo vid I made with photobucket.

If anyone sees this and wants their photo removed from the vid, you know where to mail me :)

Dawn of war 2

2009-05-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

I know it's been out for a while now, but I only played it today.
It runs surprisingly smooth on my pc considering I heard it had high demands.
Like most RTS games, there are basicly 2 parts: the campaign and skirmishes.

Missions
I started off with the campaign which lets you fight as the Blood Raven space marines (no other campaign available as far as I know :P). They've mixed rts with a bit of rpg so that when you fight between missions you can upgrade your commander and your squads with equipment and with a sort of experience point system which lets you aquire certain traits. I really liked this system so far because it lets you really take control of the strengths of a squad and tune it to your way of gaming.

Bossfights
The missions (I think I'm in level 7 or 8 now) aren't too easy, but not too hard for a beginner either. After a couple of levels each mission ends with a bossfight. Sometimes the boss is a bit of a challenge and other times I find myself thinking, is dead already?..erm..oke.. You fight orks which are always plain funny if only for their acknowledgements and or screams when they run, the eldar (sometimes it's hard to see where they are standing, they're so thin) and after years and years of waiting..finally TYRANIDS! So far I've only played one mission against them, but they came in numbers as they should.

Skirmish
After the first mission against the tyranids I wanted to play around with the tyranids myself (hey..I've played Tyranids on the table top for years now) and started up a skirmish. The units are quite cool, the abilities look awesome and it's cool to finally see them running around on screen. But (you probably felt this one coming, there's a but) the upgrade system is sometimes a bit vague because of a bit of a disorderly system of upgrading the tyranids. Next to that as a table top player I think I've got the right to whine a bit, they change the rules or application of some upgrades quite a bit (a tyrant with reinforced chitin or crushing claws is impossible in the book, rending claws plain useless in the book). But those are just small tears because gamewise its all good.

The real minus with the skirmishes is that there isn't much to do than built up fast, crush your enemy as fast as possible or hold back (a bit) to make the game last longer. Either way, because with at least the tyranids there isn't much of the normal rts base-building (just 2 upgrades to your main building) which makes the skirmishes boring quite fast. I don't see myself play skirmish after skirmish online, let alone against a pc AI. The last option is still tons of fun in many other RTS games. In some games (even in small skirmishes) skirmishes give you the time to get a feel for a side, but you kinda have to force yourself to do this in DoW2 otherwise you'll just built some basic troops, some large critters and stomp the opponent.

Conclusion:
The campaign is cool. I like the tooling and upgrade system you use for your squads. The story isn't too deep, but name a rts where this ís the case... The abilities are quite cool, although there are always some abilities which won't be used in favour of cooler/stronger/better abilities. The effects of the abilities look really nice. But the amount of detail gets lost sometimes because either there is so much happening that you want to stay zoomed out or the detail is too small to really notice constantly. The acknowledgements are funny (orks), stern (marines) or arrogant/wise (eldar). But as cool as the campaign is, the skirmishes get boring quickly, and that's after playing only one skirmish. It seems skirmishes are just an obligatory option in this rts.
All in all:
The DoW games (1 + adds & 2) are a must for the warhammer 40k table top gamer (if only to see the different armies move around digitally) and are fun for most other gamers. As for DoW2, have a go at the campaign and it might even be fun to play around extremely with the upgrading system to see how much it affects your game. Try a skirmish, but don't be too disappointed if you get bored.

For more info: Dow2 website

A 'Lee' on my wall

2009-05-06T03:54:00.000-07:00

Lee from Quit your day job made a drawing of Wolverine in an elevator and sent it as a present for my birthday last February and I finally got it on my wall. I'm not sure if I réally like the color of the frame, but untill I find a really really awesome replacement this one will stay.

The reason it wasn't on my wall earlier was because the concrete walls here need a really really good drill, which I don't have. However, I found some small cheap concrete hangers in the local DIY shop and this one went into the wall without a problem. *note..my neighbour tried to slam concrete nails into her wall, and they came back flying..just to show how hard these walls are*

The first photo makes the drawing/frame look a bit fat, but that's because I'm afraid I rushed the chopping and resizing of this pic a bit.

Mr Carnifex

2009-04-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

I've had this model for over 2 years but I kept postponing it because I wanted to magnetize it and didn't take the time to find out where to get decent magnets.
Since I dó have magnets now which you know I've already tried out at another model, I finally restarted painting/building the Carnifex.

I wasn't satisfied with the way I started painting it so I did all the red on the legs and tail again and will re-do it on the rest of the model.

Next to having trouble getting started with the model itself, I decided I needed a cool scenic base to go with it. And last year I stumbled upon this base:

It's made by a small company in Poland and it didn't cost me more than somewhere between the 3-5€. There was some kind of knight-corpse on the base which I turned *I put down a holstered eldar gun on top of where his sword was* into an eldar ala Iyanden because they're one of the opponents which were struck hard by Kraken *sorry..that is just 40K talk*. The base isn't finished completely though.

I'll try and get some decent work done next weekend and I'll see how fast it can be finished. It's a lot of work though, magnetizing all configurations (different weapon-arms).

Food: Poffert

2009-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

Poffert is quite a local dish (northern part of the Netherlands), over half of the people I know..dón't know this 'dish'.
It's a kind of a doughcake with raisins & currants.
In normal circumstances, it should take you about 2,5 hours from start to finish (it being actual on a plate), but the while it's cooking you can go and do almost whatever you want.

The recipe:
Ingredients:
- 500gr self raising dough
- 250gr raisins/currants (pick one or mix them)
- 2-3 eggs
- 2,25 deciliters milk
- a knifetip of salt
- breadcrumbs..*can't seem to get a better translation of 'paneermeel'so click the link*

Preparation
Put the dough in a bowl and make a little cavity in it and break the egss in there. Add the salt. Get an electrix mixer *I'll show you later why you really need it!* and mix it, when the mixing gets tough, add some milk till you're all out of milk. When the dough's kinda smooth add the raisins/currants and mix them with it.

You need a special kind of cooking bowl for the Poffert (shown later) which you have to 'grease' with olive oil and cover it with the breadcrumbs. Put the dough in the bowl and top it off with breadcrumbs. Now you can put the lid on the bowl.

What you need is a very large pan *you'll see it below* and put the cookingbowl in it and fill the pan with water to just below the edge of the lid. Boil the water *lid on the pad* and let it boil on a low fire for 2! hours.
Take a look now and then to make sure everything's allright (if the fire's too high, you'll get water splatters all over your kitchen ;)

After 2 hours, take out the pofferbowl, open the lid and get the poffert out. Cut parts with a breadknife like you would do with a cake. I like to add butter and jam, sugar or syrup on it. Most people are stuffed after 4-5 pieces.
I'd say you can easily prepare a poffert for 4-5 persons and have a good meal out of it.

The photo's which will show how ..nót to do it, although it turned out alright.
Rico (a friend of mine..yes TAS..thé Rico) tries hiding the mess we were making

Ok, this is what happens when you find out you don't have a proper mixer and have to use your hands:

We scraped the dough of his hands with cutlery..*he didn't lose any blood*

The pan we used:

The special poffert bowl (notice the lid with clips)

Tada! Poffert

4th ed Genestealers + tripod!

2009-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

In January I took care of the cats and chickens at my uncle & aunt and in return I got this tripod!:

I didn't get it until last sunday because I hadn't seen them since January. The tripod, a Cullmann 2904 is old (at least 20 years), but it's in an as good as new state and it's just plain awesome. It also has an extra add-on (not on the photo) where you can attach an external flash or if you're just messing around, a second camera ;)

But on topic. I had plans to magnetize some models for ages, but I've been looking for a Dutch company who sold rare-earth (neodymium) magnets which were small enough and not too expensive and last year I found it and last mónth I ordered about 50 small ones. The simple thing with magnets is..you need to make sure you don't glue them before checking a gazillion times that you messed up the polarities (that is..glueing it the wrong side around!).
Of course I did...being a bit frustrated I immediately prepared a new head and found out that 2 heads will have you end up with this ;):

Unfinished front

Unfinished back

Front again

Finished mutant

The possibilities

The decent version:

What I learned during the magnetizing progress: don't mess up the sides of the magnets...códe the magnets: just paint the side that's going to act as the magnet, this way it álmost can't go wrong. Oh and stuck is stuck with superglue..damnit. That's why it's wiser to stick the 2nd magnet to the first magnet, put glue on the backside, make sure it fits into the 2nd part like a glove and you're a happy camper.
Oh and I messed around with the tripod and the countdown setting on my cam for this horrible shot:

*I'm a bit rusty in my html..so if anybody can give me a decent code to get the 6 small pics in a table where there aren't more than 2 next to each other, it'll be greatly appreciated*

Stealer update

2009-04-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

ok so I promised a new post, even a 40K post.
It's coming, but not this weekend. Due to eastern I'm running around a lot (family, friends ..you know..real life).

The genestealer is as good as finished..and I'll take photo's of the finished model on tuesday.
You'll just have to wait a bit longer.

Autorai 2009 (If I had a billion dollars)

2009-04-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

So I went to the Amsterdam 'Auto(car)Rai' 2009 yesterday. They used to (it was my first time, but so they said..) put the cars from one brand in one spot so you could visit all Audi's, Volkswagens, Rolls's etc in one place. They changed it this year. What they did is they divided the cars into segments like Family cars, Eco-cars, supercars etc. In essence it's a good idea, but well..sometimes I had my doubts about putting certain cars in certain segments.

Putting a BMW 7 series in the family segment is a bit much. I actually got driven *my boss's car* in one to the Rai and, yes you could fit a small family in there. It has seatbelts for 5 but to be honest you only want to travel with 4 people if you're all adults (the midseat isn't that compfy). Other than that it's an awesome car though!!!

On to the oooh's and aah's.
We saw this car in the garage, apparently they drove all the way from Monaco!

This one looked like a bit of a pimp car, but in a cool way:

I think it was Burton who built this 'original' Donald Duck car:

There were some very very cool concept cars, especially the rims were awesome:

I'm afraid that there were so many people I didn't get a good change to take the wheel-picture very well, so it's a bit blurry..
Next to cars, there were also all kinds of motorbikes *yay Harley*

Mazda had a car which just says: COOL!

There were some oldtimers

Maybach was there, and I was in it haha:

Unfortunately I don't have 600K under my pillow to spend *or at all for that matter*.
The veal-leather was really really compfy though! I didn't really like the shiny wood for the gears, but's that's just my sense of taste I guess.

Bugatti was also on the show:

They let me (as you could see) sit in the Maybach, but they dídn't let us sit in any of the Rolls's which we found a bit stupid. But who wants one of these? Ok so they're awesome. But it's really like they're built cars on a scale of atleast 2:1!
These ships are 6 meters long and at least 2,5-3 wide! You would need 4 parking spaces. You can't drive in half of the streets in the Netherlands because they're..well just to narrow and you probably wouldn't be able to make the corners:

Ferrari was there too:

As was Morgan:

And the Dutch Solar car from the university of Delft (the Dutch cars have won many of the solar car races) including those in Australia :)

*of course I took more photo's, but that whould make this to big of an entry, chech them out here.
The lighting in the Rai was very bright which sometimes made taking photo's a bit difficult, next to that the amount of people also wanting to have a glance or a photo made the photo taking a bit hasty which sometimes resulted in too dark or darnit..even somewhat blurry pics..and that with my eos 400d.. but at least I had a great day!

How to legally buy a cheap bike in Groningen

2009-03-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Having a bike in Groningen is essential. You don't really want to do too much driving by car in the city centre, the buses are overcrowded and bikes are fairly cheap.

The problem is, I live 10-15 minutes away from the city centre which means I make alot of miles, which in turn means my bike suffers. My last bike set me back about 70€ and at the end of februari (I bought it 2nd hand a year ago) my right brake, my gears, the chain and more random stuff were broken. And a month earlier I had my tire fixed for 13€. After the damage mentioned above, my bike just wasn't worth repairing.

So I had to get a new one..
Getting one cheap in Groningen leaves you with a couple of options:
1) talking to the first junkie you see offering a bike for 5-10€ (which will be stolen of course)
2) stealing one yourself
3) buying second (or third/fourth whatever) hand from a store
4) Going to the depot which sells bikes at a very good discount every first friday of the month.

1 & 2 are just plain stealing and me being oh so holy just won't make this step because it's really irritating if its your bike that get's stolen next time (and next to that the police are checking better lately which leaves you with a fine of 250€ and a criminal record!).

3: did this last time, set me back 70€, not cheap enough.
4: bikes which are left around in the city in the wrong places (outside parking zones in certain parts of the city, bikes get collected by cityworkers) or which are collected because they're wreckages get a fix up and are sold once a month for really good prices!

So if you want to buy a góod bike for a cheap price this is how it works:
It's half past 6 in the morning, it rains, it's cold and the people travelling through the city are grumpy. You take a place in the fastly growing row of bike-less people. An hour later you get to draw a number (first come first served). There were around 45 bikes this time and they gave numbers to around 60 people in case some people didn't want to buy the bikes that were left (not liking the bikes or those that were left might be more expensive than what someone wants to spend).

At 8.45 am the first couple (7 in our case of which me and my brother were 2) of people were let in to choose a bike. I think prices started at around 20-25€. I got a bike for 35€ which had: good brakes, working lights and 7 gears! Mind you, they also had bikes in categories around 180€ but those were really really good, you won't be able to buy a 2nd hand bike in a store of that quality in any store.
So after all my rambling this is my new bike:

push-& sit-up challenge

2009-03-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

Ok so this wasn't the planned update but I hope to make decent updates soon.
In the meanwhile Lee got me started doing bóth the push-up ánd the sit-up challenge and I'm also running before each of those tasks.

Why not do just one thing? Because first of all I don't have enough patience and second of all there's this test called the
apft test(army physical fitness test) which is about running 2 miles (3,2km), x number of sit-ups and x number of push-ups. There's a minimum you have to score within the age group you fit in.
In my case, I have to run 2 miles in 16,36min, do 50 sit-ups and 40 push-ups to be qualified as an active duty soldier. I'm not going to enlist, but I do want to get to this fitness level.

I started this week with a 1,5km run, week 3 (of 6) for the sit-ups and week 1 (of 6) for push-ups. The distance because I haven't run a decent distance for a while and I want to build it up gradually. The sit-ups, because my base was enough to start in week 3 and my push-up base was week 1. I was a bit disappointed by the latter, but I guess the running and sitting up was hard enough.

The separate challenges should only take you 10 minutes a day on 3 days a week, I suggest you do it before hitting the showers, or you can go at it again. In my case, it takes me about 30 minutes a day, but that's the cost of wanting to do everything.

The strength of these training schedule's is that even when you're not that fit, you should be able to be much and much and múch fitter after 6 weeks without going over the top. Now have a go at it (either one or if you're an idiot like me, all).