Posts
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To Dresden
read moreGot my Interrail ticket today, on Thursday I’m leaving for Dresden to visit Admar—who really should post something new to his journal, by the way!
So I’m leaving on Thursday morning, 7:02 with the Intercity 1917 to Venlo, wait 20 minutes, then with the RegionalExpress 9011 to Düsseldorf Hbf, wait some 40 minutes and then with the InterCityExpress 1759 straight to Dresden-Neustadt, where I will arrive 10 hours later, save one minute, at 17:01.
I’m looking forward to it!
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Cellphone kaputt
read moreTo anyone having my cellphone number; my phone is broken and is now turned off pretty much all the time. It had a hole in the display for a few weeks, now the keys 2, 5, 8, and 0 don’t work anymore.
Update: I’ve been to the Vodafone store, where they could tell me that on August 9, my contract will enter its 3 last months and I can choose between a new phone or a SIM-only discount. So I’ll just wait for that and see what they’ll have on offer by then. The keys magically started working again, by the way.
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Spam in Icelandic?
read moreHmm, found this in my mailbox today:
Og einn dag . .inginu er menn gengu fj.lmennir til L.gbergs og er .ar var lykt a. m.la l.gskilum .. kvaddi Gunnlaugur s.r hlj..s og m.lti: “Er Hrafn h.r .nundarson?”
Accompanied by the picture of a certain female I’ve never met, a text of a sexual nature and a web address.
But that last part wasn’t even the most interesting, it was the text. It obviously is no English; but by a coincidence I could clearly recognize it as being written in the language of the Icelanders.
A little searching revealed that we’re dealing here with an extract from chapter 11 of Gunnlaugs saga:
Og einn dag á þinginu er menn gengu fjölmennir til Lögbergs og er þar var lykt að mæla lögskilum þá kvaddi Gunnlaugur sér hljóðs og mælti: “Er Hrafn hér Önundarson?”
And on one day of the thing (an assembly) many people gathered to the Lögberg (the hill on Þingvellir where law was spoken) and there was a smell of talk about the definition of a law when Gunnlaugur took the floor and spoke “Is Hrafn here Önundur’s son?”
Jæja… Well, I haven’t read the saga yet, but now I might, thanks to some spam on a rainy day :)
Detail for the Lord of the Rings fans; Gunnlaugs nickname is Ormstunga; Worm-Tongue or Snake-Tongue. Guess where J.R.R. got Gríma’s name!
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Synchroniciteit
read moreWim de Bie had het er al over,
synchroniciteit,
het verschijnsel dat twee ongerelateerde gebeurtenissen onafhankelijk niet
eens zo heel opmerkelijk zijn, maar wanneer ze tegelijk optreden wél.
Toevallig net gisteren nog trouwens, synchroniciteit aan het werk, want
precies vandaag produceerde Nu.nl een knap staaltje!Neem nou deze twee koppen:
Wat gebeurde er, ontstond eerst de brand waarna de Eerste Kamer besloot
waarschijnlijk tegen een referendum te stemmen omdat de stemmachines op zich
zouden laten wachten en nog meer uitstel ongewenst zou zijn? Of lekte het
nieuws uit dat de Eerste Kamer het wetsvoorstel zou verwerpen en heeft daarom
de directeur van Nedap de vlam erin gezet om zo toch nog iets van de
verzekering te vangen van die onverkoopbare stemmachines? -
One Europe: Let's start with the railroads
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A great idea this week by the high
speed train operators Eurostar, Deutsche Bahn, SNCF, SNCB, NS Hispeed,
ÖBB, SBB and Thalys, Lyria and Alleo; they’re going to create a single
tariff system for their combined high speed rail system. Reductions and
special offers in one country will be available to customers in all the
other countries etc. One step closer to a united Europe.So far, so good. I found out however that while the tariffs become clearer,
the names don’t. Today on the website of Deutsche Bahn I saw the mention of
an ICE Sprinter, which is an
extra fast InterCityExpress
train that halts only on a few stations on the line, thereby winning time.
French long-distance TGVs do this by default.Ironically (?),
Sprinters are the
new and hip trade name (well actually the name existed already since the
70s for the SGMs) of commuter/regional trains of the Nederlandse
Spoorwegen – replacing the clear but rather dull name
Stoptrein. Now, I don’t know how
it is in the rest of the world, but commuter trains are quite the opposite
of extra fast.Both sides have a fair argument for their choice of name; Sprinters are
usually fast (point for DB), but they’re also specialised at short
distances (point for NS).One Europe, what a great idea. Let’s start with common and clear names for
our products.