Friday, December 30, 2005

PF whatever

Originally, I only wanted to post this, to prove that I really don't care about your luck in 2006:



But today I took this photo of Albert which reminded me that the world needs more love:

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Videogame memories

I dare you to click here and read five guys ranting about their all-time top 20 games (i.e. 100 games in total, with some repetitions).



If you can still appreciate the beauty of Final Fantasy VII, 8-bit Zelda or the original Warlords, this is not only the ultimate nostalgia trip but also informative article about other gems you might have missed during the course of the years.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

When less is more!

This is the season of giving. That's why I give you this link to photo gallery. Although some of the photos contain NSFW material, the point really is what is NOT in them.

Shame on you, Nintendo

After MarioKart DS, I am now proud owner of another online-compatible Nintendo DS game, Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Although the game is great (better than the Gamecube version), there is a slight problem with Nintendo being scared shitless that someone might use the online features to promote nazism, child rape etc. That's probably the reason why you cannot easily visit other players' towns and first have to register "Friend Codes" which you have to exchange by other means. The game also tries to censor dirty words, but as with any such measures, it can be circumvented rather easily...

Animal Crossing DS

animal crossing

Animal Crossing

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Get organized with JBROUT

If you are looking for SOMETHING to organize your digital photographs and if you hate non-compatible databases and destructive changes, you can have a look at jBrout.

It works on Windows and Linux (and probably elsewhere where you can install Python) and stores almost all its data right inside the JPG files. If you upload them to Flickr, for example, the title, description and tags are then already automagically pre-filled.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Amsterdam: The Basics

OK, first of all some basic tips before going to Amsterdam:

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I wholeheartedly recommend booking your hotel online at Bookings.nl. In some cases, it offers 50% cheaper rates than I got from three different Czech travel agencies! Also, when we arrived and the hotel desk, they checked if we really want non-smoking room (without asking what stuff specifically we will not smoke) and when we confirmed this fact, we got a free room upgrade. In the end, for 500 Euro, we got five nights in rather excellent room which normally costs 290 - 350 Euros per night.

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Unfortunately, if you fly to Amsterdam, no matter how cheap your air tickets will be, you'll have to pay airport tax which is extremely high (around $100) for Schiphol airport! Fortunately, Schiphol airport (about 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam, train leaves every 5-10 minutes and costs 3.40 Euro) is rather great. You can really spend at least 4 hours here, just looking through all the shops, restaurants and art museum. You can check you baggage in 24 hours before departure (and you can do it at one of the ubiquitous terminals, without waiting in queue).

As for the location, it's probably best to stay in a hotel near the "Dam Square". From our five-day experience, this neighborhood is the only public place that feels both alive and safe even late in the evening. It's rather weird but even shops in the heart of the city open rather late (after noon!) and close rather soon (at 6 PM!), even two weeks before Christmas! Of course, if you'd rather spend the evening in the pub or night clubs, you can fulfill your desires in almost any part of the city.

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But the most important tip (unless you insist on candlelit dinners) is: Albert Heijn! This is a chain of food supermarkets (akin to UK's Tesco, for example) that has really nice prices, good quality and large sortiment of goods. While the standalone hot meal (without soup, drink etc.) costs from 10 to 15 Euros in Amsterdam restaurants, in Albert Heijn you can get buy great dinner for two for around 15 Euros (there is super-sized Albert Heijn just a few meters to the west from the Dam Square). The problem with the restaurants is obvious: The ones that have menus in English often exist only to rip off the tourists. Also, they are usually full of drunk English tourists. However, we visited great Chinese restaurant in the Chinese quarter (the key here is to look for restaurants that accept credit cards - that usually means the food is not poisonous, there is no smell and the staff understands English).

Friday, December 16, 2005

Back again

Yes, I am back. However, I have lots of things to catch up with and Flickr has problems letting me upload about 500 photos from Amsterdam. A preview of things to come:

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As you can see, it was pretty hard to actually deduce which entertainment was for gays and which was simple straight porn:

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Friday, December 09, 2005

We're off to see the wizard...

OK, we are leaving for Amsterdam tomorrow. It seems Kryspin wants to go, too. Tough luck, Kryspin!

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And a word to all Japanese readers: Hahahahahahaha!

Monday, December 05, 2005

Art of war

I absolutely adore these paintings by Nigel Ayers, from his series "The War Against Terror" and "The War on Drugs".

Sunday, December 04, 2005

OnHand PC - are you geeky enough?

I recently got a very special present: OnHand PC. It looks like rather big digital watch but is in-fact comparable to 8-bit microcomputer from 1980s (although its processor is actually 16bit). It was probably cutting edge technology back in 1998 when it was introduced (128KB ROM, 128KB RAM, 2MB Flash memory) but I doubt it was actually useful for anything even back then. The whole thing is navigated using miniature joystick and entering any text into its applications (it even has a word processor!) is much slower than writing SMS on your mobile phone.

Today you can buy it for $100 but it never sold well (as evidenced by the fact that the manufacturer gave 1000 of them to 9/11 rescurers for free). But it has extremely hardcore fans who created development evironment and several applications for it!

Yes, it's bulky and you have to press the button to actually see what time it is (unless you want to exchange the batteries each month). But there is something extremely geeky about this gadget and I feel like I am wearing a bit of history on my wrist. At least until the batteries run out...

Saturday, December 03, 2005

!!!HOT!!! Bizarre g.a.y p.0.r.n XXX photoset !!!FREE!!! CLICK NOW!!!

If you are heterosexual or easily offended, please don't click the image on the right!

Time to leave the closet?

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Sexy bitch

Could it be... Viky, a bride for Chucky?! Finally?! And what about Albert?

P.S: Princess Peach drifts better than Vin Diesel.