Lost Summit

The six of us went for a week of rock climbing in Kandersteg. Well, Ton and Niek went walking really. Jolijn, Michael, Bart and I did one or two easy routes every day until 3 of 4 pm when thunder clouds set in.

The climbs could have been a bit harder to my taste, the most difficult multi pitch had one 5c bit in it (that felt easier, more like 5a). But we had a nice week, good company and great scenery around us!

Bart and I also did a 6a which was also pretty easy.
Check out the pics here: http://www.burlingtonrubyconference.com/?q=image/tid/51

This must be one of my best trips ever. 600kms from Amsterdam...

As I couldn't find anybody to join me I went solo. The Vosges has many unpaved and sometimes rough roads that criss-cross the landscape bringing you to places only foresters see.

On my trip I've seen deer, foxes, martens, eagles and zero people. That introduces a risk as well, if you fall off and break something you're not going to be found soon. There's little or no cellphone reception...

I did 1450 kms in 3 days, 600 km in and 600 out. The second day only off-road, I estimate in total about 250kms. This doesn't seem like a whole lot but riding on gravel, small stones and mud, up and down the mountains is really exhausting!

Check out the rest of the gallery: http://www.burlingtonrubyconference.com/?q=image/tid/46

Nice trip with a good 60% of road tracks. Too bad the trip was prematurely ended as the rear wheel of Jilles (Reprobate) came loose. Always check your dealer's work (fitted new knobbies last week).

Everybody knows that we're gonna run out of oil sooner than later. With oil prices skyrocketing electric seems to way to go. With cars like the one below I believe things may turn for the better after all! By the end of this year, entrepreneur Steve Fambro plans to begin selling the Aptera. That means "wingless flight" in Greek, but don't think this car won't fly. It's a sleek two-seat, three-wheel electric vehicle with a top speed of 95 miles an hour. It comes in two versions - all-electric and hybrid - and should sell for around $30,000. (Only the electric is due in '08; the hybrid doesn't have a street date yet.) Made of a Space Age composite material, the hybrid gets 300 miles per gallon, while the electric can travel 120 miles or 193 kilometers on a two- to four-hour charge.
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So I'm taking blurry pics with my new phone, that's art dude, art!

Recently I started to capture all sorts of reflections and movements. See if you like it. At any rate I'll evolve this skill as I continue to shoot (with my SE W890i). Note that these are all 320x240 clips, don't look at them full screen! Note: they're in .3gp mpeg format so you need an appropriate player under windows. Linux desktops usually play them out of the box. Reflections Sun Wind Shadows Colors

As I said a while ago, I tossed Vista and switched to Ubuntu 8.04 running the Gnome desktop. This great distro runs my laptop pretty much out of the box, now including tv-out, 3d graphics, wireless, bluetooth, it recognizes my new Sony Ericsson W890i and so on!

With Compiz-fusion for the best graphical effects and Emerald theme manager!

So I went back to my favo all road area, the area surrounding our national park 'the Veluwe'.
This is beautiful rural area with lots of dirt roads. Sand, gravel and grass to your liking. Too bad I had no one to share all this with today!

July 4th I'm finally going back to the mountains for some serious exercise. I'm going to try to summit first the Monch (4107m) and then the Jungfrau (4158m). Of course I'm not doing this alone, I've hooked up with 5 other veterans so if the weather gods are with us we'll make it.

Update June 30!
The trip is rescheduled to August 22 due to expected dangerous conditions.

I came across this old tractor outside a, still inhabited, farm ruin. Only 3km from home...

Upgrading Drupal is still no trivial task as I learned this weekend. I spent dozens of hours trying to move from 5.7 to 6.2 and every time images (attached to nodes) failed to show.

After 2 days of trying and Googling I came a cross this great piece of SQL from a Mr. pulsar
insert into image select upload.nid as nid , files.fid as fid , filename as image_size from upload, files where upload.fid = files.fid and files.filemime like "image/%";

Anyway, I've got it working. All I need to do now is get some sort of messenger back...

Lamp hanging outside an old and deserted chalk factory near Namur, Belgium

Graffiti inside old chalk factory neaar Namur, Belgium. The place had an eerie atmosphere and was definitely unsafe!

My cat Lynx, a male Maine Coon

Every now and then you need to practice for when it's wet again...

I wanted a new camera for a while now, to replace my 'old' Panasonic DMC-FX9. All things considered I again choose for a Panasonic, the just released and top-of-the-line DMC-FX500.

With a 25-125mm (35mm eqv) lens and all the latest goodies from Panasonic I took the plunge and bought it without even having read a review.

From now on probably most of my pics will be taken with the FX500.

Does it get any better? Only 7 kms from Amsterdam there are various great tracks through fields, woodland, it even has trails that are still muddy after 2 weeks of sunshine. Probably not doable after wet weather, this is a kinda swampy area...