Anne van Kesteren

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Twenty-four

Time seems to go pretty fast. This blog is over seven years old now. My employment by Opera Software over five. And I just reached twenty-four.

In Argentina I got the idea to visit all continents before I turned twenty-five. But if I am to visit Antarctica — the one I am missing when following the seven continents model — it would have to be by sailboat. That seems the most exciting. Turns out that getting a place on a small sailboat is rather hard if you are just by yourself. I will gladly accept any tips — about sailing to Antarctica — as birthday present! :-)

Holy

On the holiest of holy books in my room, the A to Z telephone directory, I swear to tell the truth. Life is empty. But of course, there is some salvation. That is to say, it wasn’t so utterly empty from the very outset. It takes real effort upon effort, an all-out struggle, for us to wear it down, to reduce it to an empty nothing. Here is not the place to go into just how we struggle, how each and every way we wear it down to nothing. Too much trouble. Anyone who simply must know has only to read Romain Rolland’s Jean Christophe. It’s all there.

From the non-existant novel One and a Half Times around the Rainbow by the fictional author Derek Heartfield (who comitted suicide in 1938 by walking of the Empire State Building with a portrait of Hitler in his right hand and an open umbrella in his left) imagined by Huraki Murakami for Hear the Wind Sing.

Strong

“But then again, the conditions are the same for everybody. We’re all riding the same disabled airplane. Sure there are them that get all the breaks and them that don’t. Them that are tough through it all and them that are weak. The rich and the poor. But you know, there’s nobody who’s got more than normal reserves of strength. It’s the same across the board. The haves are forever worrying that they’re going to lose it all, and the have-nots are worried that they’re going to stay have-nots forever. It’s the same for everybody. Anyone who catches on earlier should strive to become that much stronger. Even if they only pretend, right? There’s no strong people around anywhere. Only those who put on a good show of acting strong.”

From Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Murakami.

Matterhorn Tour

A few days before leaving on vacation to Switzerland we walked into a mountaineering store and found a book called Tour of the Matterhorn by Hilary Sharp. We skimmed through it and thought the seven stages it described could easily be done in the time allotted for our vacation. The evening before leaving we figured out it might be slightly tougher than anticipated, but still doable. Turns out — especially the first two days — walking in the mountains with an eighteen kilo or so backpack is quite exhausting. In fact, I can still feel my legs. Although somewhat shorter (estimated at about hundred forty-five kilometer rather than hundred seventy), the trail was quite a bit tougher than the Tour du Mont Blanc, which we walked a couple of years ago. Back then we did not carry a tent and cooking equipment either. Just like last time I kept some day-to-day logs.

The overall story is much longer of course.

(On Flickr I posted a Matterhorn Tour set.)

Writing

We must all be cut out for what we do, he thought. However you make your living is where your talent lies. He had sold vitality, in one form or another, all his life and when your affections are not too involved you give much better value for the money. He had found that out but he would never write that, now, either. No, he would not write that, although it was well worth writing.

From The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway.

Proud

So then you have something to say that fits in one hundred and forty characters, but twitter is down. My brother Remy van Kesteren just aced his exam. The exam being an absolutely stunning harp concert. So proud! Much more should be said about the details, his story telling — view on things, the different pieces, the sound the audience made while he was silent, but alas, it is late and I am tired.

VP8 Quality

Recapping WebM’s First Week: We’ve done extensive testing of VP8 and know that the codec can match or exceed the quality of other leading codecs. Booyah! If you’re interested in media formats for the web it is probably worth subscribing to the WebM blog.

Why

‘But what is the purpose of all this? Why are you doing this to me?’ ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing, darling — ah — hem — Sal has pleaded and begged with me to come and get him, it is absolutely necessary for me to — but we won’t go into all these explanations — and I’ll tell you why … No, listen, I’ll tell you why.’ And he told her why, and of course it made no sense.

From On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

Forever writing. Getting lost in words. Describing the moment. A friend mentioned Jack Kerouac. In relation to what is written. Wikipedia’d him. As it turns out, Jack Kerouac inspired Haruki Murakami. All intertwined. Then in Amsterdam. Much later and with plenty of time to kill. Looking for shoes. Finding a bookstore. “H for Hemmingway” … “K for Kerouac,” on the English shelf. Bought On the Road. It is great. Thanks Art.

Makizushi

Yesterday I rolled my first maki. The rice was already prepared however. Making the rice exactly right is probably the hardest part when making your own sushi. It is something the Albert Heijn for instance (otherwise great) completely screws up. Or whoever delivers to the Albert Heijn which they then sell under they own AH brand. Anyway, I should learn making that perfect cooked vinegared rice as everything else is relatively straightforward. Or stick with sashimi. :-)

Xbox LIVE Recover Gamertag Feature

I had this great plan to rant here about the “Recover Gamertag” feature on the Xbox. And hopefully be noticed by someone on the Xbox QA team and get it fixed in some Xbox LIVE update. I usually do not play on my own Xbox 360. If there is a really great game, such as Modern Warfare 2, I might get into it for half a day, but typically I play on someone else’s Xbox 360. And each time that happens and we want to play online Xbox gamertags need to be recovered. This is an extremely painful process. First you enter your gamertag. You do not select it. In fact, you cannot select it. No, you enter it character by character using the directional buttons on the controller. Extremely painful and also superfluous as the gamertag is typically already known by the system. It gets worse from there. Now you need to enter your email address. Then your password. Apart from the fact that it takes ages it is also very annoying. Then you have to agree to a disclaimer that was not downloaded in the background but is in fact downloaded right that instant. At least that is the only way I can explain the extreme slowness for it to appear. And even though you will not read it you still have to wait because the agree button is disabled until the download has completed. After that you still have to wait around a minute for your profile associated with your gamertag to be downloaded. It must be either fricking huge or on a slow server. Either way, it sucks. After that all should be fine and you can play your game.

Now I said had at the start, because as it turns out Microsoft recommends me to carry my gamertag and associated profile around on some kind of storage device. Where as I use their servers as some kind of storage space. So arguably I am incorrectly using the “Recover Gamertag” feature and can therefore not complain about it being so broken, because in theory you rarely need it. However, working with an Xbox 360 storage device seems rather non-trivial and extremely cumbersome. Not to mention the fact that you have to remember to copy all your data each time you might end up playing a game somewhere else and you have to carry that storage device around. On top of that both Xbox USB drives are rarely empty because the play & charge kits have to be continuously plugged in as their batteries are horribly broken.

Putting this data in “the cloud” seems so obvious. Especially since it already mostly is. The user interface just needs to be cleaned up.