Martin @ Blog

My weblog was not very active lately. Mostly, this is because I’m posting a lot on Twitter (in Dutch however) and post some articles on the weblog of the company I’m working for. Especially the post on Devoxx is an interesting read in my opinion.

However, I’m planning to change this. It is not that I don’t like writing, and in my experience, when I write an article on a specific subject, I have the habit of do some research on it which increase my knowledge on the subject on the go. I have some articles in draft and some others planned to write. With the new year approaching, increased writing sounds like a good intention for the upcoming year.

In order to mark this change, I’ve decided to change the look of my site a bit and add some additional features on it (especially a Mobypicture widget). The new look is not yet finished, but that will come over time.

Last week, we went skiing with a group of collegues from Finalist. The week was very nice, apart from a few broken ribs, a pair of sunglasses that were lost and a pair of skis that where stolen.

Pictures can be found on my gallery.

Apparently, I suck a little bit at updating my weblog lately. Of course, there are several reasons for this. For example, I moved to a new home, I was very busy with a project for work and in the mean time, I also am involved in organizing a badminton tournament for students. All in all, I didn’t have much time left to write here, but also hadn’t much interesting to write about.

Next week, I am going to ski in Austria, so I will not post updates here. However, I may post some stuff to my Twitter page.

To end this post with something useful, I just found PicLens which is a nice application for viewing pictures.

I didn’t write much here for a pretty long time. Of course, I have my reasons for not to do so. Last month, my girlfriend broke up and as a result I had to move to another apartment. Needless to say, this was a difficult period, but currently, I have the feeling everyting is getting better now. At least I have my own place now, which makes things less difficult. Unfortunately, I don’t have an Internet connection yet at my new place, so I won’t write much here the coming weeks.

I want to wish everybody merry christmas and a happy 2008!

Yesterday, I had a nice letter of the Centraal Justitieel Incassobureau (CJIB), the Dutch organization which is responsible for collecting the money for tickets given by the police and other governmental organizations. The letter announced that I was a ‘suspect of a crime’, which makes me a bit scary. Further reading reveiled that I had received a speeding ticket which was rather high. In my opinion, it is a little bit unfair to give me such a high fine (of course) considering the time and location where I drove too fast. (more…)

Currently, I’m already working for one and a half week at my new job at Finalist. Thus far, it has been a pleasant experience. Obviously, I met a large number of new people. Last week, there was a quarterly meeting of the company which included a wild water raft experience which was very nice.

Mieke, still in China, is now halfway her internship, so only six and a half week to go before she returns to the Netherlands. I’m very looking forward to this, because it is quite lonely without her. The trip to China, from which I returned one and a half week ago, was very nice. I will write about this (probably in Dutch) later and put the photos online. Mieke has already uploaded some pictures to her gallery.

In my free time, I’m renovating my bicycle. Currently, the bike is completly stripped and I’m planning to paint the frame this weekend if the weather allows it. Then I can put the bike toghether again and replace the parts which can not be refurbished, such as the breaks and the rear mudguard.

Today my TU/e laptop, a Nec Versa P520, broke down. I think this is the tenth time the laptop is broken in the four years I own the device. Fortunately, while I’ve finished my study, I’m still officially a student. So the laptop is repaired under warranty. Currently, I’m starting the preparations for my trip to China, for which I’m leaving this Thursday. I will fly at 17:35 in the evening and arrive Friday at 8:55 in Beijing. I’m looking forward to it!

This week for my new Job at Finalist I had to choose a laptop. I could choose between a Dell and a Apple, which was not a very hard choice. If everything is ok, a black MacBook with 2GB memory and 160GB harddisk is ordered right now!

This morning I had the final presentation of my Master’s project. The presentation was not perfect, but it was sufficient to graduate according to the assesment committee. While it is not official (the board of examination has to approve the administrative part) I am now almost Master of Science 🙂

Yesterday I also bought a new used mountainbike. It is an Intersens with full Shimano Deore LX group and a Shimano XTR rear derrailleur. The front is a Rockshox Pilot spring. I’m very happy with it considering the price I paid for it. A picture (not taken by me) is below:

Today I booked a flight to China in June. Mieke is going to do an internship at a Chinese company in Beijing, called PER-Design. Since I’m graduating in May (if everything goes according to plan), I have some free time in June, which I will use to travel two weeks to China to visit her. I’ve never been to a country outside of Europe, so I’m looking forward to the trip. Obviously, I will take my camera with me to make some pictures.
During my visit, Mieke will hopefully have a few days off, so we can travel around. If anybody knows some interesting locations to visit in Beijing, please let me know. When I’m back, which is on the 30th of June, I have to visit the concert of Genesis in the Amsterdam Arena. Since I was planning to go with Mieke, I will have to find someone else to go with, because it is a bit of a waste to throw the extra ticket away…
The next day, monday the 2nd of July, I will start with my new job…

Update: Additional photographs can be found at my new gallery.

Yesterday there was an event at Eindhoven, called TU/e Fast. This event consists of demonstrations of several fast vehicles, such as motorbikes, drag race cars and rally cars. It was organised by the European Week Eindhoven committee. My girlfriend is chief editor of the newsletter which is published every day during the European Week Eindhoven (which is this week). So, I was allowed to take photo’s from positions where regular public was not allowed.

Unfortunately, I do not have a very fast camera nor a very good lens. I’ve used my Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) with an Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO. I think I took some nice pictures, but I’ve already seen better pictures from others. Oh, well… I’m still learning I guess.

Below I have a photo of a supermoto bike and a Lamborghini Gallardo. More pictures can be found in this TU/e Fast set on Flickr. I have lots of more pictures, which I will upload soon (at least a selection of it).