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Biggest (techno) news in the Netherlands was probably the failure of the Internet. The largest ATM Internet backbone massively failed in the Netherlands. This resulted in thousands of people without any Internet access for 1-3 days.
Currently the problems are temporarily patched, but they are still on high alert.

For the first time I wasn’t affected. Normally this only occurs to me.

Purely coincidentally, I found a South Park episode (s12e06/Over Logging) in which the Internet fails. This results in mayhem in South Park (just like it did over here).

Furthermore, I drove 170 kilometer today, and it took me about 5 hours. Traffic jams due to spring rain (????) were to blame (according to the traffic information services). I think it’s because people are egoistic when they’re driving, and won’t anticipate (when they’re reading the paper, shaving, and/or applying make-up using the rear view mirror).

So no Internet (for large parts of the Netherlands), and traffic jams from here to Tokyo. So slow might be an understatement.

In a couple of weeks I’m off to New York for a couple of days. This time I’m packing a DSLR instead of the old Canon IXUS V. And to save my back (and neck), I’m not taking any of the regular zoom lenses with me. It’s just gonna be me and a couple of prime lenses. These lenses aren’t as flexible as a zoom lens, but they weigh a lot less Three primes approx. equals 1 nice zoom lens (nearly 2 pounds), but you mount only 1 lens at a time on the camera.

Currently I’ve got a 35mm f/2D and a 50mm f/1.8D prime for my D300. The lack of zoom capabilities will force me to be a little more creative while strolling the streets of NYC.

It would be nice to have a 24mm f/2.8 (or 20mm f/2.8) as well for a little more wide angle. Downside is that those are relatively pricey, or not available. the biggest photo/video store in NYC sell those at low prices, but they’re out of stock…..

UPDATE: first images of the Nikon 35mm f/2D looks promising. The lens is a bit larger than the 50mm f/1.8, but image quality looks better (contrast, colors).

As of yesterday, the latest Ubuntu release ‘Hardy Heron‘ is available for download (both client and server). Every time a major Linux distri(bution) hits ‘the shelves’, the Linux community roars. With each release (Ubuntu or whatever flavor) the Linux community gets closer, and closer to Windows.

Even though the OS itself is getting better and better. It still lacks the support of decent major software like Adobe Creative Suite, etc. It’s missing the software people use in every day (business)life.
Sure, there a million different ways of running Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on a Linux OS, but these require a commercial piece of software (CrossOver) , or in depth knowledge of the OS to make it work (Wine in some cases). Two things that shouldn’t be required. Not if you’re used to Windows (or Apple’s OSX). And even if you find a ’substitute’ it’s most likely to have an awful user experience.

The average housewife won’t use Linux, because her friends all use Windows. All those nice little Windows programs, which makes life easier (or a living hell with all the mal/spyware out there). So if the Linux community wants to make a difference they need to create some sort of critical mass (by their selves, or by Microsoft screwing up) to get the attention of the ‘normal’ user. But in a community where there’s no real (commercial) business model, it’s gonna be damn hard.

Microsoft created this critical mass by playing (probably) the best marketing trick in the world; Release Windows 95, and turn a blind eye to those who use a pirated copy at home. The home users create demand on the workfloor, so businesses start to use it on their workstations. Soon everyone was addicted. And now it’s damn hard to beat the addiction.

B.t.w., Apple is doing it a lot better. They created a nice and stable OS (just like the average Linux desktop distribution), BUT the OS has ALL the relevant drivers for the hardware used. ALSO they have a complete (and cheap) software suite (iLife and iWork), which is more than enough for the average family. No need to search the caverns of the Internet for software, and they look and feel the same as the OS.

So, I guess that my conclusion is that the OS is nearing perfection, but it (Linux in general) lacks good and decent third party software (and a good marketing machine )

In the mean time; I’m gonna upgrade my Linux (mail, web, and ssh) servers at work to ‘Hardy Heron’.

Last weekend I visited Ouwehands Dierenpark. A Zoo near the town of Rhenen in the Netherlands.

It had been a while since my last visit to any zoo. It sure is nice to stroll around the zoo with a camera, but in many cases it almost seems cruel to see those animals in those cramped spaces for the rest of their lives.

I think it might have to do something with seeing all those animals in the wild in Africa. Once you’ve seen that, the rest is kinda sorry, but on the other hand, not everyone has the possibility of going to Africa, and this might be the only way of seeing those animals in real life……

B.t.w. those cute polar bears are known to chase humans. Especially photographers

I ‘found’ a couple of ‘weird’ photo’s in my Lightroom collection. It seemed that they were supposed to become a panorama, but I somehow forgot to create it…..

It has been a while since my holiday to China and Tibet, but it’s better late than never :-).

More panorama’s on my flickr page

It’s been a couple of days since my firmware update, so it’s time for a small update on the subject.

The biggest advantage is that the mail client is very stable. I use (secure) IMAP and I have 3 mailboxes configured on the device. The mail client hasn’t crashed yet.

The biggest downside (in my opinion) is that the 3G connection drops automatically, so you need to re-establish the connection every time. Sure, it saves bandwidth (and costs), but it’s annoying that you actively have to monitor your e-mail.

Thankfully, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, so I’m still happy with the Nokia E61i.

A first. At least for as long as I can remember

A couple of weeks ago, I was pointed towards Google Maps on my Nokia e61i (I got a download link when I visited google.com on my mobile). After downloading and installing it (which was very easy), I started the application (which was hiding under Menu -> Installations -> Google Maps).

Most basic features are available on the phone app (directions, searching for restaurants etc., Zoom in and out), and there’s the possibility of positioning yourself on the map by using cellular positioning. Thankfully, this is done for you by the application. Downside is that it’s not that accurate. In my case, I could be anywhere in a 1.7 mile radius circle.

It’s also possible to use a GPS mouse (which I recently bought) for your location. The neat thing is that you can see yourself walk across the map (or drive if you’re by car). This is an excellent application.

These is one downside… Google Maps is using a constant Internet connection to update the maps, so make sure you have some sort of flat fee data service (or use wifi when available). Otherwise you might be in for a surprise when you receive your phone bill.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photogear wishlist. This list contained a Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 ED lens. This lens is nearly 10 years old (introduced in 1999), so Nikon introduced a new version in November 2007. The Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S is the successor of the legendary ‘Beast’.

And now, good fortune is knocking on my door (e.g. I won 10 euro’s in the new years eve lottery). I’ll probably order this new lens this weekend . Together with my dad’s Nikon D3 it should be a smashing combination.

I evaluated the MDaemon v9.7.2 mailserver, and I must say that it’s quite complex to get it to run… my way.

It’s quite common to separate the program and the data. So, I tried to put the data on a different disk. This isn’t done by using the GUI, but you need to edit the Mdaemon.ini file in the App directory (not every directory can be changed by the GUI). After changing the defaults, the MultiPOP feature didn’t work. It seems there’s another config file for remote mail stuff. This file (schedule.dat) needs to reference the same location as the Mdaemon.ini file. Why is that? Why use two config files for one program? And why use a different extension (.dat versus .ini)? Beats me.

For a mailserver that pretends to be a fair, and relatively simple alternative to the over-powered and over-featured Microsoft Exchange mailserver you need a ‘rocket science engineers degree‘ to get it to work properly.

W00t… KPN is finally starting to upgrade their network to support VDSL. This COULD mean a major speed upgrade for me. Currently I only have a 4Mbps ADSL2 line (but with a 1Mbps upload, thanks to XS4ALL). This is the maximum throughput for me, since I live too far from the distribution hub.

Other interesting news is that KPN won’t charge their customers for MOBILE data connections made from the 21st of December till the 30th of December 2007. So, it’s all you can download via GPRS, UMTS

Having a day off from work meant that I had some time to clean-up my server from everything crap. This also meant trying to upgrade Coldfusion MX 7 to Coldfusion 8. The new version supports some nice new features, with which I wanted to experiment.

Since none of my production websites run on Coldfusion (currently PHP), I could safely uninstall and install the new developer version. When I pressed ‘remove’ I had this flash from the past. When I tried to install version 7 I had humongous problems with the installer (services didn’t register correctly with IIS, etc.). But this could be just a coincidence…

Installing Coldfusion itself was straight-forward. The fun began when the installer wanted to launch the admin-panel to finalize the installation. No responds from the webserver. Even my blog was not working (”System cannot find the file specified“). Seemed that there were references to the old Coldfusion parser in the IIS.. After removing those instances, I had my blog back up-and-running.

Next was to finalize the Coldfusion 8 installation. I had to manually add the Coldfusion parameters to IIS (allowed Web Services, document types, … the works) After screwing around for nearly two hours, I could finish the installation.

Just to make sure that it wasn’t me, I installed it also in a virtual machine. And off course it worked flawlessly. Guess I need to reinstall my server in the next couple of weeks. Who knows what else is f*cking up the system.

Oh, another thing; I used to use RDS for development of the websites, so I tried to configure it again…. Well you might guess it… Not working. After yet another hour searching I found that RDS uses a ‘virtual file‘ called ‘ide.cfm‘. This file is located in /CFIDE/main/. The actual location (main/) doesn’t exist, so IIS returns a 404 error.
It seems that you need to uncheck ‘Verify if file exists‘ in IIS for the .cfm extension for RDS to work. Or do as I did; create the directory ‘main‘ and create an empty file called ide.cfm in that directory.

Well, this was an afternoon well spent…. NOT.

Next mission is to upgrade MySQL to version 5. So expect some serious downtime.

UPDATE: MySQL has also been upgraded to v5.something. It went surprisingly easy.

My new iMac 24″ arrived this week. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time in setting it up (business and social obligations), so I had to wait a bit… Very annoying. Anyway, in the mean time it’s up and running, and man…. it is fast. (more…)

The Holland Oyama Cup was held on November 4th in Zevenbergen. I made a Quick-and-Dirty gallery of the event which can be found here. I also placed some Black&White versions on Flickr.

Enjoy

I do have a (small) wish list for my hobby. The list (in a random order) consists mostly of high quality glass, and the combined total is a small 5000 euro (yikes!!)….. Anyone got some change to spare?

• Nikon AF-D 85mm F/1.8
• Nikon AF-D 35mm F/2.0
• Nikon AF-S 70-200mm F/2.8 VR ED Black
• Nikon AF-S 28-70mm F/2.8 ED Black
• Nikon AF-G 10.5mm F/2.8 G ED DX

Now where did I leave my lotterytickets???

UPDATE: w00t, I actually won….. 10 euro’s