I have no words to say, on this slow and useless day

roflol (via @berkes)

There are a bunch of really nice remixes of Mirah's songs. This is one of them.

Comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your LJ and elaborate.

lunapuella associated the following with me:
1. good musical taste

Thanks! :) I try to be open minded when it comes to music, and listen to both more-or-less the popular stuff as well as stuff that people would probably deem (more) obscure, and try to maintain a balance between the two. Otherwise, I'm also interested in the history of music -- trying to listen how earlier pop music shaped modern music. That's why I also have a fair bit of songs dating from before the 50's in my collection.

2. volleybal

I started out playing volleyball when I was 9, and it just stuck. Even after quitting playing for it for a couple of months. In general I like doing a sport because it contrasts heavily with what I do in daily life -- essentially sitting behind a computer. So there's all this physical stuff (you have to actually move etc.), but also on a mental level it's interesting, since the time to analyze the situation and deciding on an action is so short.

3. south park icon

I made this on a website a few years ago, and it was my avatar of choice for a while until I decided that the photo bakenius took of me in Berlin is a much better one. I only use it on LJ, last.fm and Flickr nowadays.

4. computers

We had computers around when I was very young. he first was a ZX Spectrum which we had for a short while. Then we got an MSX, which I used quite extensively to play games on. I also found out about programming then -- To load some of the games you had to write programming statements. This was what later on fascinated me: the power to make the computer do what you want. Nowadays I'm amazed by the social interactions people have on websites. And also the power to search through gigantic amounts of documents. Mobiles phones as well.

5. travelling

I like travelling -- to see different things, and to be in a totally different surroundings. For me, it also means letting go of your routines. And it's just nice to be away.

Yesterday I uploaded some footage I shot of the volleyball tournament I played on Saturday. It was fun to play, and the party afterwards was a blast.

(My team is on the right in the videos)

One of the projects I've been working on in the last year is peilend.nl, which is a website for media analysts to help them figure out what is important in the news. Yesterday, the site finally went public. So, without further ado, I present you:

http://www.peilend.nl/

Using this website, you can search in (currently) 11 different Dutch newspapers online, see commonly used words in the articles relevant to your query, as well as seeing the number of comments left by people in response to the articles.

Music meme:

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

artistic_sillie tagged me with the letter 'K'.

1. Kate Havnevik - Kaleidoscope
2. Puracane - Key Movement
3. Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches
4. Radiohead - Karma Police
5. 3 Doors Down - Kryptonite

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

Windows machines automatically open up the Poken website upon attaching a Poken to your computer because it is a USB device and has an autorun.inf file. On Mac OS X machines however, this does not happen of course, since autorun.inf is Windows specific. It ocurred to me however, that it is easy to emulate on the Mac using the Do Something When software. It is a System Preferences panel that allows you to specify actions to take when inserting removable media. So how can you instruct Do Something When to open up the Poken website automatically when you attach your Poken? It's actually pretty simple:

1. Attach the Poken to a USB port
2. Open System Preferences
3. Click on the DSW icon
4. Set the rule nam to 'Poken'
5. Select 'POKEN' From the first drop down menu, just below the rule name
6. Select 'Mounts' in the next drop down menu
7. Select 'Open' in the third drop down menu
8. Select 'Select Application or document ...' from the fourth drop down menu
9. In the dialog box, select the 'Start_poken' (.html) file on the 'POKEN' drive
10. Click 'Save'

For reference, the rule settings in Do Something When should be as follows:

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

From ValleyWag:

LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut about 1220 of 28 employees — and offered them no severance, we're told. (...) The company's product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support.

20 sounds like an awful lot. Best wishes to those that are involved.

(Hat tip: crschmidt)

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

I've already posted my top 50 albums for 2008, and my top 10 songs, but I should write something about the top 10 albums of the year (as that's where the songs come from after all).

10. Coldplay - Viva La Vida The fourth studio album of Coldplay, that was said to be more lyrically deep. It delivers, while still remaining unrecognizable Coldplay. Much for my love of this album is in the way that arrangements are great, and sometimes the supporting melody is even more beautiful than the main melody (which is exactly why Viva La Vida is on the top 10 songs).

9. Emiliana Torrini Emiliana's third internationally released album is a much lighter album than her previous one. And that is a good sign. I love the diversity of this album, ranging from the typical folky songs such as Fireheads, and the slightly more upbeat songs such as Me and Armini to the chilly Dead Duck. This is all exeplified in the song Birds, which starts off as a quiet folks song, then lingers a bit, and suddenly turns more intense and reminiscent to an Air song.

8. Sia - Some People Have REAL problems Sia's third album delivers nice sounding songs in general. Compared to the second album, the songs are more "gounded", so to speak, as it comes of less dreamy. The best song on this album is Academia, a collaboration with Beck (who made a good album as well this year).

7. Hello Saferide - More Modern Short Stories ... Hello Saferide is a norwegian band, fronted by Annika Norland. As with much of my music discoveries, I found out about Hello Saferide through last.fm. The main characteristic of the songs on this album is that they simply have great lyrics, and end in a smewhat srprising fashion (either musically or lyrically).

6. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing The Ting Tings debut album delivers primarily because of the awesome singles, which are incredibly catchy and will not get out of your head. Just fun music to listen to.

5. Lykke Li - Youth Novel Highly interesting, this Swedish singer. The album contains great songs, with often one or more odd sound effects in them ;), and pleasuring arrangements. Lykke's dreamy voice also adds to the greatness of the album.

4. Morcheeba - Dive Deep Morcheeba kicked out their lead singer, before working on this album. Normally, this is not a good sign. Anyone remeber Sneaker Pimps? They were no fun anymore when they threw out Kelli Ali. But somehow, Morcheeba came out for the better on this one. Several artists lend their vocals for the songs on the album, and they picks are great. I'm starting to think that this is their best release since Big Calm, which came ot in 1998.

3. Charlotte Sometimes - Waves And The Both of Us Charlotte Sometimes is an american singer, who is just 20 years old. The album features songs where she comes off strong and with confidence. And if you think that maybe she's getting a little bit too cocky, then there's the more fragile Build the Moon and Pilot.

2. The Killers - Day and Age The Killers' third one is a major hit -- I think it is by far their best album. The best about this album is however, that they are balancing on the thin line of being either completely serious or completely absurd. And that's difficult to pull off. Anyway, the intrumentation, which lends heavily from the 80's is irresistible.

1. Adele - 19 The most impressive album of this year, however, is Adele's debut. She has an awesome voice, and is pleasently modest about her achievements. The songs on this album are all greatly executed. High points (for me) are Tired, with the awesome intrumentation, and the more than excellent cover of Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love.

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

My year in cities, as per Kottke and Mark

• Amsterdam* (doh! I live here)
• Bergen (ok, ok, town, not a city)
• San Fransisco, CA, USA
• Sacramento, CA, USA
• South Lake Tahoe, CA, USA
• Barstow, CA, USA
• Las Vegas, NV, USA
• Beverwijk

One or more nights were spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

I've finally managed to narrow down the list of 50 albums down to 10, and I've taken one song from each album to form a top 10 of songs of 2008 (In no particular order). You can download it from here (MP3, 63.5MB). Have fun listening!

The songs:
Coldplay - Viva La Vida
The Killers - This Is Your Life
Sia - I Go To Sleep
Hello Saferide - I Wonder Who Is Like This One
Lykke Li - Hanging High
The Ting Tings - Be The One
Morcheeba - Riverbed
Charlotte Sometimes - How I Could Just Kill A Man
Adele - Tired
Emiliana Torrini - Birds

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

I've finally managed to put a selection of vacation photos online that covers the two and a half weeks that I spent in Calfornia a few months ago. It's not unlikely that I'll add some more photos in the coming weeks though.

Originally published at breyt. You can comment here or there.

It's the first of December today, which means that it's slowly getting time for some reflection on the past year. So also this year, I will be working towards a list of the music albums that were released this year, and which I consider to be the best. So here's the first step towards such a list. Listed in alphabetical order, and look out for the top 10 at the end of the month.

1. Adele - 19
2. Alanis Morissette - Flavors of Entanglement
3. Alphabeat - This is Alphabeat
4. Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
5. Amy Studt - My Paper Made Men
6. Anna Ternheim - Leaving On a Mayday
7. Beck - Modern Guilt
8. Britta Persson - Kill Hollywood Me
9. Charlotte Sometimes - Waves and the Both of Us
10. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
11. CSS - Donkey
12. Dido - Safe Trip Home
13. Duffy - Rockferry
14. Emiliana Torrini - Me and Armini
15. Gabriella Cilmi - Lessons To Be Learned
16. Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
17. Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
18. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
19. Heather Nova - Jasmine Flower
20. Hello Saferide - More Modern Short Stories
21. Jason Mraz - We Sing We Dance We Steal Things
22. Jem - Down To Earth
23. Joan as Police Woman - To Survive
24. Kathleen Edwards - Asking For Flowers
25. Keane - Perfect Symmetry
26. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
27. Lady Ga Ga? - The Fame
28. Laura Marling - Alas I Can Not Swim
29. Lykke Li - Time Flies
30. Mandi Perkins - Alice in No Man’s Land
31. Maria Mena - Cause and Effect
32. Marit Larsen - The Change
33. Mirah - The Old Days Feeling
34. My Brightest Diamond - A Thousand Shark’s Teeth
35. Morcheeba - Dive Deep
36. Novastar - Almost Bangor
37. Pink - Funhouse
38. Portishead - Third
39. Rachael Yamagata - Elephants
40. Sharleen Spiteri - Melody
41. Shelby Lynne - Just A Little Lovin’
42. She & Him - Volume One
43. Sia - Some People Have Real Problems
44. Simone White - I Am The Man
45. Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns
46. The Hush Sound - Goodbye Blues
47. The Long Blondes - Couples
48. The Killers - Day & Age
49. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing
50. The Verve - Forth

What do you think?

• The Geekfest meeting at lonneke and patrick was loads of fun! Also, thanks for being such great hosts. My photos can be seen over here.


• My Flickr photostream, and my twitter account are a better indicator of what I have been doing lately than this blog (sorry).


• I'll be going to California on Thursday for two and a half weeks for vacation. Lots of fun awaiting :)

I made a lolcat out of one of alypat's pictures. Please vote for it!


moar funny pictures

Team Photo
Originally uploaded by Breyten Ernsting.

I had a lot of fun this weekend participating in a volleyball tournament. Unfortunately we only won one volleyball match, but we compensated that with winning the competition for best outfit! As you can see, we spent some time thinking about it, so I think we fully deserved to win.

Earlier tonight I posted my 1,000th photo to my Flickr account (all in less than four years), which is quite a milestone. Especially if you consider that I didn't used to take photos at all. Most of the photos that are on my Flickr account have been uploaded directly from my mobile phone. There's something to be said for such direct uploading of photos. It removes a complete step in the process of putting your photos online. Also, since you are pretty much unable to edit the stream of photos as it all happens real time, it gives a very honest view of what you are doing in your life (It is kind of implied that your photos don't always need to be perfect).

Anyway, on to the next 1,000 photos. Or something

In my old wallet, I carried my bank pass, my chip card, my credit card, my insurance card, my gym pass, a couple of business cards, some banknotes and a lot of change. It was bulky and I stopped actively using it about two months ago, at which point I decided to only take the most important cards and the banknotes with me and put them in my front pocket. This was of course, a great improvement, but the free roaming of cards and banknotes inside my pocket still left something to be desired. Since yesterday I own a Slimmy, a minimalist front pocket wallet that solves these problems, without the added bulkiness.

Long time, no post, I know. Life is a bit slow, although I'm doing fun things in between.

Anyway, I'm quite happy to tell that starting tomorrow, I'll be working a full-time gig at my current employer (as opposed to the half-time gig I've been doing up until now).

It's strange, the first time in over two years that I'll be working full time again. But, I'm looking forward to it.

Let's bring you up to speed in a round of updates:
- I saw the movie Juno with logpoes a few weeks ago. Good movie, quite amusing.
- I saw Persepolis with bakenius. Was a great movie. Loved the animation style.
- I bough an Airport Express today, to be stream music to my stereo. Works like a charm.

More later..