Still in its tin, but goodness it smells good... can't wait until it cools! Any tips on how to get it out of the pan gratefully appreciated! :/
I am watching this movie adaption of Nicholas Nickleby, and it's hilarious, so full of cameos of brilliant actors -- Barry Humphries, Alan Cumming, Christopher Plummer... and new ones keep popping up!
I've been futzing around with a lot behind the scenes here, what with adopting Nicholas' code and writing my own twitter comment system, things have been pretty busy. I've also been super busy with work and other things, which means I haven't posted in a while. Sorry 'bout that.
Recently I've been going all over the countryside: for work to Lille, London, and Delft (not too much to write about there -- I was inside, these places were outside, the pattern was wake up -> eat -> work -> eat -> sleep -> repeat so not so great for sightseeing), and for pleasure to visit Sasha in Antwerp (and also to go to Gent and Han-sur-Lesse).
So I'd prefer to talk about the latter for a bit!
That's me in Gent. There's a lot of photos in my photo gallery. Gent was great! It was very very cold and windy, though. We went to a lot of cool places including a castle with an amazing weapon and torture implement museum inside, the cathedral, and numerous little shops and cafes.
We also went to Antwerp, which was still quite cold! And we saw a few other things there, but mostly we ate yummy food and tried to stay warm.
This is a slightly fake castle. It's quite castly! but very small and mostly facadeishsortastuff, and you can't really go into it. I was somewhat disappointed, since it looks awesome.
Anyway last weekend we went instead to Han-sur-Lesse, where we visited an amazing cave system. I'm waiting for Sasha to put up his photos, because he really took some lovely ones of the formations! Quite spectacular -- definitely some of the best caves I've seen.
Anyway, along with that and being busy with work I've not had a huge amount of me time -- this weekend should solve that!
I've been riding my bicycle around too -- today I went to the post office to pick up some packages and I bought a side clip on bag for my pack rack thing (which is just what I wanted) so now I can go shopping with it more! woot! I should buy another one to put on the other side of the bike, they're very easy to unclip for when I fold them up too :D
Anyway, I hope to write a bit more often now that I've mostly sorted my bugs out with my software. Please, if you have any problems with the site or using the comment system please let me know. Something to remember is that if you just @reply in twitter to liedradotnet it will post the comment to the latest entry. This may change in the future but I think it's nice and easy for now :) Of course if you want to comment on previous entries you can still do that, by @replying to its status announcement.
This is a new static html blog. Nicholas wrote the engine, and I wrote a thing that exported all my Wordpress entries out and into it, and a Twitter-based comment system. I'm trying this as an experiment, if you have any major issues with it, please feel free to send me an email at liedra at this domain, because I'm interested in hearing your feedback.
It's in a very baby state at the moment so things could well break. I'm having a few problems with my old wordpress entries and the automatic thing that posts them to twitter, for example. But I couldn't be bothered fixing it right now. There also seems to be an issue with some of the pictures from before. I thought I'd fixed that but I guess I'll have to fiddle around with it a lot more grump Anyway, it's certainly useable for you guys, just lots of things to do "under the hood" to keep things happy.
Of course this means that the RSS feed has changed, and I won't be cross posting to livejournal properly any more. I'll probably set up a RSS feed over there for my friends though.
I think spring is springing in Namur! Today we had a beautiful sunny day with the temperatures around 7 deg C outside, getting up to about 10 in the sun which is virtually summer compared to some of the subzero temperatures we've had this winter!
Since I'd bought a new bicycle recently (a Dahon Vitesse D7HG) I decided that now that it wasn't snowy and icy and dark that it would be a great opportunity to "break it in" with more than just a trip to the post office. So I jumped on, unfolded it, and off we went!
Here's my new bike with the Citadelle de Namur in the background. Isn't it cute? :D
I did a bit of a roundabout trip, and I think I did close to 20km total in about 2 hours. It was such a nice ride though, mostly flat along the river, that it hardly felt like much work at all, though I am certainly feeling it now! :) My original plan of riding along the Meuse down toward Andenne was foiled by roadworks blocking off the RAVel in that direction, so I decided instead to head the other direction up the Meuse and check out the little island I'd seen from the Citadelle as well as the giant lock there.
Firstly though, I met some friendly swans. They were courting each other, much like all the other swans I saw on my trip. One couple were being very lovey-dovey in the water, dancing around and nuzzling each other, it was really quite cool to watch (no photos though, since they were quite far away and in a lot of shadow).
Further down the river I stopped to take some photos of the beautiful view back to the Citadelle on my real camera, it was so picture-postcard beautiful!
In that last picture you can see the island I went to look at. It's a wildlife refuge, with no bridge, but I saw lots of swans and ducks and other birdlife in there from the shore.
I also had to cross the lock:
I really had a lovely ride, and the bike seemed to hold up pretty well. It was lovely and smooth except where there were uneven cobblestones, and we even negotiated lots of muddy areas where the roadworks were going on -- thank goodness for the mudflaps! Heh. I think my next trip will be in the Andenne direction, but on the other side of the Meuse this time :)
The second part of Chapter 2. I'm trying to improve my reading aloud, so constructive criticism is welcome! Apparently the little Flash player doesn't re-post very well to Livejournal. I'd recommend either viewing the original on my site or subscribing to the feed or, if all else fails, downloading the one you'd like to listen from the directory here.
A couple of thoughts after the Kraft buyout of Cadbury
So Kraft bought out Cadbury, after a long set of negotiations. Instead of talking about the possible ramifications of that, which are rather boring, ultimately, I'd like to talk about the differences between the Cadbury Dairy Milk that I ate in the UK and that of Australia.
First up, some brief facts about the contents of each type of chocolate:
So, the Australian Dairy Milk is actually milkier and chocolatier than the UK version, which basically sums up my taste test between the two. This is a bit of a shame really, since I would have thought the UK version the "definitive", but honestly the Australian one tastes a lot richer and smoother than its parent.
Let's hope Kraft doesn't mess with the Australian recipe in any case! Dairy Milk 2.0 anyone?
(Donations of Aussie Dairy Milk gratefully appreciated, this Belgian chocolate is all well and good but sometimes you just want something that reminds you of home :)
I am reading through The Pickwick Papers for Nicholas, and I thought maybe others might like to subscribe to my podcast. I am reading the version available on Project Gutenberg for those who wish to read ahead! There are also illustrations, the pertinent ones of which I will attach to each post. I will do these when I get the urge to, which will probably be fairly often. Dickens is hilarious, in a really beautifully creative way, so I am really quite enjoying reading this. The first episode is a little tricky to understand because it involves interjections and such, but later episodes become a lot easier, so bear with me! :)
If you would like, you can subscribe to this podcast only feed (with iTunes or whatever) at http://liedra.net/wordpress/category/podcasts/feed
It's cold! Very cold! But it's snowing and snow is pretty :)
I have lots of photos. Here are a few!
Ice sculptures in the Namur Christmas markets. Pretty!
The citadelle after a night's snow. More Christmas markets and an outdoor ice skating rink!
First snowfall!
Holly outside my window -- it's definitely Christmas!
Sunset after today's snow
Someone went to a lot of trouble to make some very large snowmen!
The ducks and geese are appreciating the most of the water they have left (it's been down to -13degC!)
My first and rather poor attempt at a snowman - a snow bunny for ixchelbunny!
Some other intriguing things have arrived in Namur: A milk vending machine! The lack of fresh milk has been a source of annoyance for me, so this arrival of a vending machine not only helps the farmers who have been having a tough time of it recently but also provides me with fresh milk for much cheaper than my previous source! :) Yay!
Nicholas came to visit me at the beginning of the month and we pottered up to Amsterdam, home of canals, art, deep fried batter balls, fantastic Ethiopian food, and rain. I put up some photos here. We had a wonderful time and it was really awesome to see him. I'm hoping he'll be back in Europe next year!
This week I am off to the UK for Christmas, staying with Yvan, Kat, and Yvan's sister Yaël for Christmas itself, then off to visit Chris for the break between Christmas and New Year! I'm very much looking forward to it :) Missing everyone at home for Christmas, and the nice warm temperatures -- but I must admit it's fun to have some snow! Heh. Let's just hope I can get on the train though -- Eurostar has cancelled 3 days of travel because of the bad cold conditions... so I hope that by Wednesday it will clear up! Even then there could be issues with the backlog of passengers from this weekend!
Anyway, hope you all have a happy and safe new year! Looking forward to seeing what the new year will bring!
I received an invitation to Google Wave recently and went to have a play. Fortunately I know some people who are involved with Google so it meant I had a few people to fiddle around with things with but to be honest I am not hugely fussed by it.
My main thoughts on it, having played around for a little while without really knowing anything about it:
1) It's very difficult to use. The UI is very cumbersome, and they seem to have given everything silly names that are not in the least bit descriptive. On its own that might be okay, with one or two like that (such as with twitter/tweets) but with waves and blips and gadgets and robots and god knows what else is going on you need a pocket reference book to take with you. Also, it's completely unintuitive as to how to add a gadget to a wave. I spent the better part of 5-10 mins trying to work out how to add a gadget to a wave before discovering I had to "reply" before I got the options up.
2) Not much information about what has been done recently. It's a pain in the butt to have to read through 100+ "blips" to see what's been updated along the way. This is connected to the "feature" where people can edit other peoples' posts. However "useful" that might be, I could see it being highly irritating to miss an edit because there was no highlighting of it or anything useful like that.
3) Gadgets. Only a couple of gadgets are available, yet there seem to be heaps on other app sites yet with no easy-seeming way to add them. How do we add them? Also the weather app is only in Fahrenheit. Grump.
4) Settings. I realise that the main settings are coming, but the extension settings didn't actually allow me to customise anything I wanted to actually customise. Like the weather app being in Fahrenheit. Also, why can't we easily add more extensions from here? Why do we have to "add from URL" (another COMPLETELY confusing option) when replying to a wave?
5) Freedom. I suppose that's what this is all about, but to be honest I find Wave too free. It has no real focus, anyone can edit anything, and so it makes it pretty useless to replace irc/forums or similar, yet there isn't the infrastructure to really handle much more than making it a glorified dumping ground for youtube videos and sudoku games. What is Wave supposed to be, Google? It doesn't fit anything I can think of that might be particularly useful, except maybe for D&D tabletop gaming. lol.
So that's my little review of Wave. I realise I'm probably just ignorant about some of these things but honestly this is what struck me :) Mostly #5 too. I look forward to seeing how it develops, but atm it doesn't do anything that my other forms of communication don't already do, and there are some weird, off-putting bits that need ironing out.
It was a little while ago that Nicholas introduced me to the concerns about ghostly activity, after spying evidence of ghosts in Sydney one day on his iPod touch weather report. Since moving to Namur I can say that the ghostly activity has increased massively, such as this weather report that I received yesterday:
See that? Tuesday. Ghosts.
However, I've discovered that ghosts can be quite tricksy creatures, in that today as I was going to work, there was a high amount of spectral activity going on.
Thankfully Nicholas was able to take my source picture and find a definite face to the ghosts that inhabit Belgium.
I went to Tampere last week for work, and we saw some nice things in the area! The best bits were the dinner in the tower and the trip to the lakeside cottage which had a sauna :D
Anyway, Finland is quite pretty. I'm starting to notice the differences between forests there and here -- forests in Finland have more pine trees, interspersed with birch trees, which were all changing colour while we were there. Gorgeous!
Unfortunately my luggage decided to not arrive with me, and after buying a few little things at the shop I then also decided to wait to see if my luggage arrived later before giving up at about 10.30 pm and buying a shirt and some underwear, etc. from the hotel lobby shop which seemed to CONVENIENTLY have these things... lol.
Of course what should happen but at around 11pm my luggage shows up! So I returned all the stuff (fortunately I hadn't opened it) and yeah. Good times. The tv was default tuned into the "welcome" screen but also the local metal radio station, which was awesome.
Anyway we went for dinner up a tower, which had a revolving restaurant in it, which was cool. We got there right on sunset which made for a spectacular entrance to the tower!
The dinner was amazing, and at the end I tried a cloudberry liqueur, which was so delicious, I just had to buy some in the duty free shop on the way home.
The next day we went to a cottage by a lake to have a proper Finnish sauna. I went in with one of the other girls and we had a fantastic time -- you essentially get naked, jump under a shower to get thoroughly wet, then go sit in the sauna. It was close to 100 deg C, and felt amazingly good. When the water was sprinkled onto the coals it became really a lot hotter for a moment, but it was nice -- the only uncomfortable part was the initial sitting down on the wooden bench (quite warm!) and sometimes breathing in through my nose -- the hot air felt like it was blasting my nostrils sometimes!
After about 5-10 mins we went out and showered again to cool off, then went back in, and sweated for a little longer, then we grabbed our towels and went down to the freezing cold lake. It was FREEZING! But amazingly good after being so hot. We swam around for a few mins (that's about all you can take), then went back, and by that stage I was feeling a little light-headed so I showered and went to have dinner. Fantastic experience though! Highly recommended!
Here's a video of the lake and the cottage, but as usual you can see lots more photos in my photo gallery.
Tonight I wandered out into the amazing spectacle that is the Fêtes de Wallonie à Namur (warning again, cheesy music -- but it's awesome cheesy music, so you should listen!). I could instantly see why my boss had warned me about it, I was out there at about 7.30 and already people were really drunk, staggering about, peeing against any wall they could find, and generally being fairly loutish.
It seems that this place is invaded by students from all over Belgium -- each group wearing some sort of identifying jumper. They all get drunk, buy silly glowing glasses and funny hats (and megaphones that play various soccer calls), then stumble about and find one of the many concert stages to dance drunkenly about.
Contributing to the drunkenness were the colourful flavoured shots of a type of liquor that I am not certain the name of, but it tastes quite nice (it's probably best likened to a schnapps).
You could buy them individually or "a metre" (18 shots) for 15 euros.
There were lots of people, as earlier established, and lots of concerts. I came upon this jazz band playing in the Place d'Armes which had an awesome backdrop of the 17th C belfry which was part of the defences of the city (to the left, through the gate, the other building ... I'm not actually sure what it is!).
After pushing my way back through crowds, eating a tartiflette (finally, and it was delicious!), seeing the champignons and escargots and churros for sale, and stopping to listen to a song from a local metal band, I headed back home. The band wasn't hugely great (the main singer sounded like he was barking more than singing, but the guitarists were good and they looked like they were enjoying themselves) but it was fun.
Anyway, all in all an interesting night. The best bit I think was listening to an old man band playing Beatles covers atrociously. The music was fine, but the singing was awesomely hilarious. A wonderful Frenglish version of "Imagine" almost had me in stitches with the liberty taken in the wording ("and the worrrrld, will one a one"). Good show old men, you made me :D
I'm off to Finland Sunday as previously mentioned, which means I will miss out on the point of this festival, which is the stilt-jousting. Stilt-jousting!
If you, like me, are fascinated by the art of stilt-jousting, you can read more about it at the Echasseurs website (in English too!).
Earlier this week I went to Lille for work. I didn't get to see much of the city, but I did see some nice things! We were staying in this awesome art deco hotel which reminded me a lot of some of the furniture from Bundanoon.
There were ashtrays everywhere, but surprisingly the place didn't smell bad. There was even an ashtray in the toilet! (I assume that is what this is anyway)
For the first night I met up with a few of the workshop people and we went for dinner at this place called "Omnia". It was an old brothel and porno cinema turned restaurant. It had the most awesome entrance:
The food was quite delicious, except what I thought would be a hot delicious filling stew turned out to be a cold JELLIED STEW which was completely unexpected but not altogether as gross as I expected.
Of course there were some lovely buildings outside too!
The streets were just gorgeous though -- lots of art deco and older buildings, and a huge storm hit just as we were walking to dinner the second night, I'd not brought an umbrella, but my leather jacket kept me perfectly dry (except for my head) as I walked briskly but calmly through the torrential rain. It was pretty fun actually :)
There's a huge festival on in Namur at the moment -- the annual Fetes de Wallonie (warning, cheesy sound). I pottered down to the free concert at the cathedral tonight and caught "The Experimental Tropic Blues Band" who were basically a punk rock/hard rock group though they also played some other things too. I ate what was ostensibly a hot dog but really was a sausage in a baguette with ketchup and then like 3 metric tonnes of sauerkraut dumped on top of it. UGH. I ate the sausage and some of the bread and dumped the rest :( I should have waited for the tartiflette to finish cooking ( it looked like a less seafoody paella, with potatoes instead of rice and big slabs of stinky cheese cut up over the top. OK so not much like paella at all).
There's heaps on all weekend, but I'm off to Finland for another work thingamijiggit early Sunday morning (and I'm going to try a sauna, I swear!).
I have some more stories to tell and some photos uploaded but I will save them for another time!
Oh yeah and I also finished my PhD. Like really and truly. After marking, I fixed up the changes recommended, and then all the changes were accepted, and I'm now a real doctor! :) Yay! Thanks to everyone for supporting and helping me through the last 4 years, love you all <3
Unfazed by the new font in the IKEA catalogue that arrived in my mailbox, I went through with my plans to visit after work and buy a new mattress. The one I have here sucks. It's foam and sinks overnight and I wake up feeling extremely uncomfortable (and don't often get a good night's sleep). Of course IKEA is extremely good and fairly cheap and I love the kids section and Swedish meatballs so of course I had to go visit!
The trip in to Brussels was fairly uneventful -- I'm getting used to the Namur-Brussels trains. I jumped on the metro from the central station, and found out the station I wanted was on that line! So it was pretty easy to get there. On the way there were the usual weirdos, a man who came on and gave the whole carriage a lecture (in French, I think it was about love though from what I understood), then went around with a cup asking for money. I escaped from the metro at the right station, and walked around following the signs (yes, they'd put in signs saying <-- IKEA, how thoughful!) until I arrived.
After entering, it was almost like I was back in Rhodes. This IKEA was almost exactly the same (though I guess I shouldn't really be surprised), except that all of the explanatory signs were in French and Dutch, Belgians don't seem to know how to "bus their trays" in the cafeteria, and some minor differences in products.
I couldn't find any noodle bowls or woks, for example, but they sold vacuum cleaners. It, of course, being Belgium, there was an entire section devoted to dogs.
In the cafeteria I ordered the traditional Swedish meatballs. The ordering process and the serving process are quite separate -- a man took my order for a serve of 10 meatballs etc. (you could get 10, 15, or 20), artistically placed some lingonberry jam and a swedish flag toothpick on my plate, then pushed it down the bench to a lady who was busy serving other people -- but despite knowing she hadn't heard my order, and fully expecting to have to repeat myself, she managed to serve me 10 meatballs! I'm putting it down to ESP requirements IKEA has for staff. Good times.
Anyway I bought some tins for my tea, 2 mugs to complete the set of 4 this house must have had once (there were 3 when I got here, then I broke one), some brightly coloured plastic tumblers, a cushion for my deskchair, a rather bright but mostly functional rug for my floor (it's quite cold underfoot!) some very ugly but functional house slippers (waiting for my ugg boots to arrive)! And of course the mattress. I got the slightly more expensive one, because it felt nicer to lie on, and I figured I could afford an extra 60 euro for a decent sleep for the next 3 years! The very helpful gentleman (who spoke English, thank god, although I had all my French sentences lined up Just In Case) organised the delivery for me and so it'll be arriving at the end of this month (I could have had it earlier, but going to France & Finland in the next 3 weeks makes that sort of thing difficult to organise so I thought I'd best make sure I would be around).
On the way out I checked out the food section (as usual). Lots of the usual stuff, but some things you can't get in Australian IKEAs:
Delicious! Well, actually I have no idea, since I didn't buy any. Also, the soft serve cones here come in proper waffle cones, none of that crappy fake cardboardy weirdo stuff!
As I was leaving, after self-checking out (yay! so much easier, and no queues!), I caught this wonderful sunset!
Caught the train home, it was very quiet and dark and I read some books and listened to music. Was really nice actually!
Here's a photo of the rug & chair cushion (it's actually pretty good to sit on, I'm pleased with it!)
And, this is for Nicholas particularly: guess what I found!
Hehe, excuse the rather blustered and hot look, I'd just walked very briskly home ;) But I found some! They come with a super hideous cat mask, and no I'm not taking a photo of that.
Anyway, so that was my evening. Much more interesting than... what I would have done otherwise! hehe.
I just got home and found that my key had been returned! Yay. However, there is now a confusing piece of paper on the front of the mailbox, and even worse, they have removed all the buzzer number labels. Lol. I have a photo I was going to upload but I might blank out the other inhabitants' names first, which is hard to do on an iPhone :) stay tuned for more mail box saga!
Tonight I am considering heading into Brussels to go to ikea which is open til 9. This could be a bad idea but considering I know exactly what I want (a mattress) it shouldn't be that bad... Right?
Today was a lovely crisp autumn day. I accidentally slept in a little, then rushed through the morning routine before grabbing a waffle and heading to work. On my way out I discovered that noone but me had done anything about the mailbox situation (nor had anyone taken the key I had left in #8). This does not bode well.
At work I worked on some presentations for our trip to Lille next week. During my lunch break I headed out to the post office to pick up my parcel for which a note had been left in my box yesterday.
The post office in Namur is a brand new renovation (there aren't many brand new buildings in Namur, but many many brand new renovations), and a rather clever ticketing system had been put in place. (If only Mosman PO can learn from this! No queuing!) I carefully selected the thing I was there for (autre choses) and took my seat, clutching my little ticket in my hand, along with my passport (ID) and my package slip. When my number was up the lady told me I was in the wrong place (although I'd picked up a package from those counters quite happily a couple of weeks ago) and I just needed to see the woman at the purchases counter. All of this was in French, and most of it I picked up through context and some choice phrases and words. A quick "d'accord, merci!" and I was off to talk to the rather clumsy lady at the other counter.
After knocking her mouse, the stapler, the barcode scanner, and then her keyboard off her desk in short succession, I realised that a) the new renovation had not provided my friendly post office clerk with a wide enough desk and b) she was really clumsy. Fortunately she managed to find my package quite quickly, but then spent about 10 minutes juggling items of note and dealing with a "problem d'informatique", scanning the barcode 5 or 6 times, then eventually handing over my parcel with an apology for taking so long. "Pas de problem, bon journée!" and I was out on the street with my tightly bound package.
Coming out, I looked up at the citadelle and saw that some of the trees are starting to turn autumny colours -- so I snapped a picture and wandered back home via the yarn shop I'd found a few weeks back -- turns out it's a single-brand shop and not a particularly exciting one at that but they do sell opal sock yarn which is really cool stuff :D Got some of that and some yarn for my moogle hats and headed back to work.
Kinda wish I was up on the hill at the citadelle though instead of in my office working! :)
See that? Tuesday. Ghosts.
After entering, it was almost like I was back in Rhodes. This IKEA was almost exactly the same (though I guess I shouldn't really be surprised), except that all of the explanatory signs were in French and Dutch, Belgians don't seem to know how to "bus their trays" in the cafeteria, and some minor differences in products.
In the cafeteria I ordered the traditional Swedish meatballs. The ordering process and the serving process are quite separate -- a man took my order for a serve of 10 meatballs etc. (you could get 10, 15, or 20), artistically placed some lingonberry jam and a swedish flag toothpick on my plate, then pushed it down the bench to a lady who was busy serving other people -- but despite knowing she hadn't heard my order, and fully expecting to have to repeat myself, she managed to serve me 10 meatballs! I'm putting it down to ESP requirements IKEA has for staff. Good times.
Anyway I bought some tins for my tea, 2 mugs to complete the set of 4 this house must have had once (there were 3 when I got here, then I broke one), some brightly coloured plastic tumblers, a cushion for my deskchair, a rather bright but mostly functional rug for my floor (it's quite cold underfoot!) some very ugly but functional house slippers (waiting for my ugg boots to arrive)! And of course the mattress. I got the slightly more expensive one, because it felt nicer to lie on, and I figured I could afford an extra 60 euro for a decent sleep for the next 3 years! The very helpful gentleman (who spoke English, thank god, although I had all my French sentences lined up Just In Case) organised the delivery for me and so it'll be arriving at the end of this month (I could have had it earlier, but going to France & Finland in the next 3 weeks makes that sort of thing difficult to organise so I thought I'd best make sure I would be around).
Delicious! Well, actually I have no idea, since I didn't buy any. Also, the soft serve cones here come in proper waffle cones, none of that crappy fake cardboardy weirdo stuff!
Caught the train home, it was very quiet and dark and I read some books and listened to music. Was really nice actually!
And, this is for Nicholas particularly: guess what I found!
Hehe, excuse the rather blustered and hot look, I'd just walked very briskly home ;) But I found some! They come with a super hideous cat mask, and no I'm not taking a photo of that.
Today was a lovely crisp autumn day. I accidentally slept in a little, then rushed through the morning routine before grabbing a waffle and heading to work. On my way out I discovered that noone but me had done anything about the mailbox situation (nor had anyone taken the key I had left in #8). This does not bode well.
