It took a week, but I finally got around to editing the pictures of the trip to Plattsburgh and the lake Champlain islands.
Some samples:
More pictures here!
First set of pictures!
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Author Archives: levelzero
Road Trip!
We took a road trip today around Lake Champlain.
We left from Burlington to South Hero and then took the Grand Isle ferry over to Plattsburgh, NY.
From there we drove around a bit, mostly going north until we got to Fort Montgomery (also called Fort “Blunder”) near Rouses Point, NY (very close to the Canadian border). We went back to the Vermont side of the lake there across a bridge.
Right after that, we got to the town of Alburg, VT .. or should I say Alburgh, VT? I don’t know .. but neither do the people that live there, it seems. There’s a whole disagreement going on about whether or not the town’s name should end in an H or not. Alburg(h) is sort of unique in that it’s the only part of the USA that actually only touches Canada and is surrounded by water on all other sides (Apart from Alaska).
From there we traveled back southwards towards Isle la Motte and visited St. Anne’s Shrine. It’s a really pretty outdoor church (though the church itself wasn’t open now).
After St. Anne’s Shrine, it was pretty much directly back to Burlington. The sun was setting anyway, so there wasn’t much left to be seen outside, except for the sunset over the Lake Champlain islands.
Overall, I took about 120 pictures today. I will try to upload some of them soon.
Trip (part 2)
Well, 10:13 PM turned into 10:38 PM and eventually we left Philadelphia by 10:55 PM. Burlington Airport looked like it was waiting for us to leave to they could close, so I guess it was a close call whether we would be able to fly to Burlington at all.
We landed at 12:15 AM. On the way down, we passed through some clouds where it definitely looked like it was snowing there. It’s not snowing yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it started snowing later this night.
We got checked into the motel and now it’s time for a good night’s rest.
Trip (part 1)
Well, it’s 5:30 PM now (though my mind still thinks it’s 11:30 PM) and I’m now in Philadelphia Airport.
So far, the trip went well. Left home this morning at 7:15 AM to go to the trainstation. My train to Schiphol had a delay of about 15 minutes, but that was ok, I had plenty of time to check in anyway.
Checked in, went through customs, did the whole security thing …
By 12:35 pm, we were away from the gate .. 13:00 we actually took off.
8 hours later, we landed in Philadelphia, 15:00 local time. It only took me 2 hours to get here !!
Going through the security checkpoint took the most time, but even that was a matter of about 5-10 minutes (getting all electronic devices from my bag, packing them all back in …)
Waiting for my connecting flight to Burlington now, which leaves at 8:55 PM. Only a bit over 3 hours left to wait. Good thing there’s wireless available here. I wouldn’t know what to do with so many hours of free time …
UPDATE 6:43 PM: Guess I spoke to soon. The connecting flight to Burlington has been delayed and is now scheduled for 10:13 PM. The streak of good luck was going to end sooner or later, I guess.
Firefox 2.0.0.9
Yesterday, I got an upgrade message from Firefox, telling me version 2.0.0.9 was released.
I took that time to actually uninstall Firefox and reinstall it cleanly. Over the past year or so, Firefox had gotten more and more sluggish, especially when downloading files.
As soon as I clicked a link for a download, Firefox would become unresponsive for at least 30 seconds or so. And only after that, it would start downloading.
Of course, reinstalling Firefox meant I lost quite a few settings (like saved passwords), but I’ll live with that. It’s not like I don’t actually KNOW those passwords .. it’s more just convenience.
So after deinstalling, removing the firefox directory from Program Files, removing the firefox directories from my profile, I reinstalled.
Then I hunted down my favorite Firefox addons:
On top of that, I installed the Littlefox theme, for more screen space.
Now downloading works the way it should again. Immediate response when clicking a file, instant start of downloading.
Iced Earth + Annihilator Concert
Yesterday we went to 013 in Tilburg for a concert.
First off, Turisas played. We didn’t get in until 15 minutes into their show, so I haven’t seen much of it, but overall it sounded quite OK. It wasn’t really my type of music though.
What did stand out to me was the thick furs the Turisas members were wearing, the fact that the singer looked a bit like Darth Maul, while the bass player looked like Barf (from Spaceballs). Turisas only played 30 minutes.
Second up was Annihilator. The last time I had seen Jeff Waters & co. live was back in February 1995, so it was long overdue. They played lots of old songs like King of the Kill, Annihilator, Never Neverland, Alison Hell and Phantasmagoria. 45 minutes was not enough, IMO.
And then lastly, Iced Earth. This is what I had come to Tilburg for. They did not disappoint at all. I thought the concert was very good. They played a mix of new and older works, including old classics as Burning Times, The Hunter, Stormrider and Iced Earth. Ripper’s voice is very suited for the old stuff as well .. (there were one or two songs done by Jon Schaffer, but Ripper did the rest).
I had a great time at the concert and next time Iced Earth is in the neighbourhood, I’ll be sure to go again!
WordPress 2.3.1
WordPress 2.3.1 got released friday and this was the first time that I could find out if the subversion method really would save me some time.
Turns out it’s one single command to update to the newest version:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3.1/
After that, I reran the /wp-admin/upgrade.php script (even though there were no database changes) just to be sure and the upgrade was done. It took about 1 minute.
Instructions for upgrading wordpress through subversion can be found here. I definitely think this is worth changing to, it will save you a lot of time in the future.
Weird programming languages
I’ve come across quite a few strange programming languages over the past few years. To name a few:
Today I found yet another programming language .. this one maybe even stranger than these previous three. The name is LOLCode and it is based on the text used on the pictures shown on pages like http://icanhascheezburger.com.
An example program in LOLCode would be as follows (Hello World example)
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE
There’s already a .NET compiler available for LOLCode as well.
It’s not fully complete yet, but it’s getting there.
30% less viagra spam as of today?
According to an article I just read a Russian spammer, thought to be responsible for roughly 30% of the viagra spam worldwide was found murdered in his house this week.
Now the optimist in me wants to see this as a revenge action where he spammed the wrong person, but I bet he just failed to pay his protection money or something silly like that.
The end result should be 30% fewer viagra mails .. if only for a few days until someone else takes over the botnet this idiot was using.
EDIT: Appearently, this is a hoax. The original domain this post was on was registered just before the story appeared, has no other content and is hosted at a hosting provider (ESTDomains) which is known for hosting malicious websites in the past. Securityfocus.com notes that this might be an attempt to create a highly referenced URL (through blogs, digg, slashdot, google, etc.) that later could be used to host malicious code.
Eastpak Antidote tour
Yesterday I went to the Eastpak Antidote concert in Willem 2 in Den Bosch. The following bands played:
Sonic Syndicate: Good show, especially considering the age and overall experience of the band. I expect great things from these guys (and girl 
) in the future!
Caliban: Not much to say .. not my style of music. But judging by the reaction from the crowd, I guess they didn’t do too badly.
Dark Tranquillity: Brilliant show, I loved every minute of it (and experienced it all from right in front of the stage too). They played five songs of the new album, they were: Terminus, The Lesser Faith, Inside the Particle Storm, Focus Shift and Misery Crown. The other five songs they played were: The New Build, The Treason Wall, The Wonders at your Feet, My Negation and Punish my Heaven.
Soilwork: Good show .. I wasn’t all that familiar with their music yet, but I definitely liked them. I will check out their stuff and I am looking forward to the new CD that’s coming out next week.
After Soilwork played, I was on my way to the exit when I saw Mikael Stanne and Martin Brandström from DT come out of the backstage area, so I took a detour to get a chance to talk to them.
I didn’t get home until 1:15 AM, or so, but overall the evening was definitely worth while, I had a great time, had a few beers, saw some good bands performing and even managed to chat with some of the people from a band I’m a big fan of 