Branko's Weblog

I just loooooove Queen’s Day. Don’t ask me to self-analyse why, there are probably some deep-hidden anxieties that show themselves through me rooting through other people’s garbage, and I just don’t want to know. (In my defense: Parson’s Pleasure.)

Shown in this photo is the stuff I bought. Bought is the wrong word. Acquired.

To the left are 8 books I hope to be able to use for Project Gutenberg. To the right are 9 books for myself. I note in passing—I only saw this just now myself—that it’s all mind candy this time. Another one for the shrinks.

Then there are 4 comic books. No, I’ve never read Viz, but it featured large in the computer mags I read as a young geek. Colour me curious.

Finally 4 egg cups (I keep breaking the earthenware ones, the ones shown here are nice and metal), and a shiny metal saucer that I bought mostly to use as a sort of reflector thingie for macro and close-up photography.

I had hoped to find some photo gear this year, but struck out. I had not planned on taking home many books, as a lot of the books I bought last year remain unread till this day. But such are the weird contortions of fate that I actually got more books this year than last.

When I said that ‘bought’ was the wrong word, I meant that almost half of this stuff was found dumpster diving. In fact, we only dumpster-dove a small part of the route we walked earlier this April 30, as we were fairly tired. I am pretty sure that if I limit next year to dumpster diving, I’ll still be a very happy camper.

I have been playing Charlie II, the sequel to Charlie the Duck, for almost ten years now, on and off, mostly off. My own highscore only progressed slowly during that time, a thousand points here, a few hundred points there, until last week when I realized that I can chain the effects of power pills.

Sometimes I really am that slow a thinker.

(Chaining power pills is something that is as old as power pills, i.e. at least as old as Pac-Man. In Pac-Man it’s just not that useful. Note that the high-score shown here is of the shareware version, which only has 6 levels. The full version has 18 levels.)

I haven’t been hiking much recently, and that, coupled with a lifestyle that keeps me seated most of the time, meant I have gained quite a bit of weight. So I decided to strap on the old walking shoes and look for Holland’s country lanes again.

Yesterday I went to ’s Graveland, where once rich Amsterdammers built their retreats. The grounds of some of these houses have been opened to the public and are now popular with ramblers.

The last photo is of the pedestrian bridge at the Bussum-Zuid railway station.

(In case your screen is too dark, the photo shows fingerprints in the familiar 9×9 grid of a Sudoku puzzle.)

Hm…, Mc Chouffe.

Stuff I acquired on Queen’s Day this year:

I’ll William Tell you one book among them: De Idioot. Intriguing.

I bought the two football comics, the five old books, and the Grisham for the total sum of 2.35 euro. The Hiaasen I got for free from a guy who was handing out books for free.

The other three comic albums and four books I got from the post-retailgastic dumpster diving.

The train from Utrecht to Schiphol Airport, a 20 minute trip. For some reason it always seems to be made up of thousands of cars, mostly empty.

Picture I took ages ago, during my military service. We were practising at a 15 km range in what otherwise was a very quiet place where wild boars loved to come.

Sometimes the heath would catch fire, and we would have to take out our shovels and extinguish the flames by hitting them.

The last time I achieved Inbox Zero was somewhere last year. You should think I would be able to remember the exact date, but there you would be wrong. Sure, it was a momentous occasion. So momentous in fact that for days I was wrapped in the sound of heavenly trumpets and glided through life without care for such mundane things such as dates, diaries, and indeed, ouch!, lampposts.

This week I am going to try it again. I say week because Inbox Zero cannot be achieved in a single day, and the reason for this is simple. Some of the mails that one finally gets around to answering will elicit further replies from their overjoyed recipients. I will do the large part of the work today, but real Inbox Zero will be achieved some time later this week.

Life is good.

Update 5 pm: I am down to 7 e-mails (from about 20). I assumed I had about 3 two-hoursers hidden in my mail: this turned out to be 4. (A two-hourser is an e-mail that promises about two hours of work doing stuff you long ago agreed to do before you can either bin or archive the mail.)