If any of you are interested in buying stuff, be sure to drop by at the NotAboutMe Shop. There’s still a bunch of stuff I’m looking to sell over the next month .

http://www.notaboutme.nl/blog/?page_id=341

Seriously, one of the hardest parts of my PhD thesis has to be writing my acknowledgements! I sure hope I didn’t forget anyone, but I am finally close to finishing them .

Sumo news that is not considered relevant enough to be covered by the Dutch media:

• Killed sumo-wrestlers.
• Expelled yokozuna’s due to bar brawls.
• A gambling scandal causing a third of the sumo wrestlers to be suspended or expelled altogether.
• Nearly a dozen of wrestlers kicked out due to a drugs scandal.

Sumo news that is considered relevant enough to be covered by the Dutch media:

• http://www.volkskrant.nl/opmerkelijk/article1413104.ece/iPad_blijkt_uitkomst_voor_sumoworstelaars

*slaps forehead*

I spent most of the Tuesday at home, both checking the web for apartments in London and catching up a little with The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Also, I went out to inform myself about the details of having other people babysit my house and I went out for dinner with colleagues. The dinner was absolutely great, although I was quite stuff after completely finishing a 3-person rice table with… 3 people .

As for today, today I’m crafting music together with Olli. We went all over the place revising drums, checking rythms but especially writing lyrics. Writing lyrics turns out to be surprisingly difficult, as the text has to fit the music properly while the key concepts of a song are still retained strongly and conveyed in a convincing way. It’s like taking the most difficult parts of poetry and music composition and combining it. We did make progress though and I’m sure we’ll have lyrics ready quite soon .

Talking about music, I’m considering to port some of my old tracking songs to Guitar Pro and converting them to mp3 from there. It may be fun as a nostalgic experience… but I’ll need some time and dedication to go through this processm so I’m not sure if it will happen anytime soon .

So…I took a week off this week, and today I decided to head downtown for shopping and other fun stuff. I ended up finding a t-shirt with a monkey with a keytar on it, the same pants I bought half a year ago but now for sale. Also, I decided to drop by at Pathe de Munt to watch the new Inception movie. It was absolutely awesome, although I came out somewhat less mind-boggled than back when I went to the first Matrix movie. That may well have to do with me getting older and less easily intimidated nowadays, rather than the movie being mediocre .

All in all I recommend Inception to all, and if you want to wreck your mind completely, be sure to analyze each dream using www.dreammoods.com ! .

“Peeks of me”, which contains tiny videos.

It has been sorely neglected . I’ve been creative today though. I worked a little bit on my D&D campaign, then brainstormed with Olli about the cover of my PhD thesis, then brainstormed about the song I’m going to write for our band and finally I’ve been doing a little work tonight. There’s still this nasty bug in my code, which I really should get out by tomorrow .

Now all I have to do is give this blog some of the attention it deserves. That attention will come, rest assured…

With thanks to Dan

http://www.physicstoday.org/beautiful_game.html

Tomorrow… off to Belgium.
Next Tuesday… off to England.

Life isn’t half bad at the moment .

I bought a new PC today, and I just found out that my motherboard supports automatic overclocking with a mere flip of the switch . How the times have changed!
Meanwhile I am carefully assembling my new workhorse piece by piece. I’m looking forward to playing Heroes 5 and Oblivion with maxed out details, and to give Dragon Age a try .