Vacation weekend at Plopsaland 10Aug08

Now that Livia is old enough (barely) to understand where we take her while on vacation, we decided to spent a long weekend at Plopsaland de Panne in Belgium.

Along with Grandma and Grandpa we drove to the coastal town of de Panne in southern Belgium. There you can take the tram (4 stops or so) to the park while staying at a nice hotel right along the beach in de Panne. The hotel we stayed at was Hotel Ambassador, it is close to the beach (2 minute walk) and the tram-stop is just a 3 minute walk. Kids love the tram, so did Berit and Livia.

The Plopsaland theme is of course well known to children in the Netherlands due to the many characters appearing on tv and in theaters and Berit and Livia are no exception. Favorites are Kabouter Plop, Piet Piraat, K3 and Mega Mindy.

The park is especially suitable for children between 2 and 6 as almost all of the rides are accessible for kids in that age group. Added bonus while visiting the park are the many appearances of the ‘real’ characters you see on tv etc. You can see 2 of them in a video I took of Berit and Livia, plus 5 others from our park visit.

My first ever newspaper article 5Apr08

Chances are slim you saw the article bellow in today’s AD newspaper, but I want to mention it anyway. It is the first ever article I wrote which was published in a newspaper.

Ok, it’s not some intellectual piece about some country far away but nonetheless I think it is cool to see your name appear next to an article in a national distributed newspaper. It’s about the new Photoshop Express webapp and if you want to read it in the paper you can find it on page 21 of the Weekend section in today’s AD edition.

The online version of the article can be read here.

Livia eats cheese twirl 17Feb08

Yesterday on Berit’s birthday I experimented with using a Panasonic HDC-SD5 Full HD videocamera. These widescreen HD camera’s are getting smaller and smaller. They are just as, or even smaller then my Sony Mini DV camera. Very lightweight also, holds no tape but uses an SD card to store video. You can put 40 minutes of full HD quality video on an 4GB SD card which I found quite surprising.

This is something I filmed while waiting on Berit and Yvonne to pick up Berit’s birthday cake. Livia is eating a cheese twirl while listening to her favourite song. I imported the video into iMovie 08 and uploaded it to YouTube.

There is not much left of the quality of the HD recording so I uploaded another version to my .Mac account. This version is HD content. 960x540 pixels and also directly exported from iMovie, which works great b.t.w. Click here for a much higher resolution video.

Indiana Jones IV first trailer 14Feb08

He protected the power of the divine. He saved the cradle of civilization. He triumphed over the armies of evil. Now he’s back!

Indiana Jones returns this summer (may 22nd) in a new adventure that stretches from New Mexico to South America. The first full trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has debuted and it is absolutely amazing.

Royal Rumble 08 recap 28Jan08

Royal Rumble highlights from my perspective.

Cool Michael Buffer announcing, don’t use a card dude.
That Umaga neckless is really a hazard with all those loose beads.
Shelton Benjamin; more like disposable standard!
Superfly & Piper? WTF man, that’s dumb. Thank you Kane
I love Hornswoggle…
Here comes the GAME!
Damn, Cena, didn’t see that one coming…
Kane gone, man how many times must Kane participate in a Rumble to win?
Show down ... cool but it looks like this Rumble will be a comeback match to get Cena on top again, the Game and the Animal are going to sacrifice themselves to help Cena back on top, since he has never won a Rumble.
Wow, Batista is out !! Cena (30) and the Game (29), is this where Triple H turns heel again??? No, guess not.
Lame, Cena back from injury and wins the Rumble, and will win his title back from Randy at Wrestlemania…
The finish was lame too, I have seen better endings then this one.

Overall a pleasant start to a year in PPV’s. I give this Rumble a 7.