Alligator...

Literal Video Versions

Literal Video Versions: new internet hit?
Gave me a good laugh.



Also check out Billy Idol's literal 'White Wedding' and a literal Rick Roll.

Shoes full of fail

I have a thing about shoes. When I can do without them, I go about bare foot as much as I can. It's healthy and I'm not wearing the heels down either. Anyway, I don't have the need for shoes inside the house.
I used to wear high heels once in a while, but a bad back makes sure I can't wear them as often as I'd like too.
But I'm very particular about my shoes. They need to be top quality leather, no seams at inconvenient places.

These days I go for comfort, but that does not mean I don't care for style.
There are a lot of comfy shoes out there and some are a good alternative to high heels. Take the ballerina for instance. I don't own a pair, but some can be pretty, if they're the right quality. You don't want to have a pair that makes you look like you've just come from your weekly jazz dance lesson or a pair you'd give your kids and say 'You'll grow into them'. So steer clear from the scrunched ones and avoid square tipped ones too.

But there is rather a big segment of the shoe market I find repulsive to the bitter end, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Just to make sure you won't be in them if the worst comes to the worst, be prepared. So to help you stay out of mischief; here's my top ten of fail shoes.
If you own a pair of these, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes when the fashion police come calling! The cells would be crammed to the ceiling.

Mrs B's Top 10 fugly shoe list:

10) boxer type shoes (boots & shoes): It's not fashion sweety, it's made in China and a cheep look. Those ultra flat soles do not help to get a grip. On reality.



9) Hard wedge sandals: They keep crawling from under the woodwork somehow. Style less.


8) Cowgirl boots: no, no, no. Unless you've got the complete kit you wear to your Saturday evening line dance get together. And it's not cool to wear them under a frilly dress either.


7) Boots under frocks: It didn't even look cool in the eighties you know. Don't ever wear ankle boots or even knee high boots with skirts. It's just silly. It really looks as if you're wearing your winter shoes because you've only got one pair and saving up for some new ones. I couldn't even bring myself to googling for an image.

6) Moon boots: Because you had to wear them as a kid doesn't make it ok now you're fully grown up.


5) 80's shoes: You know what kind. The smooth pumps, the ankle boots with the folds. They've been out of fashion for two decades. If you really want to stick to them: get the matching perm and polka dot dress and leg warmers that go with it.


4) Eskimo boots: Seriously, even elephants have a more elegant straddle wearing those.


3) Gladiator sandals: don't go there. It's not because it's called fashion they actually look nice. No matter how much you shell out for a pair, they still look cheap.


2) Flip flops: I'd like to see you catch a metro in rush hour on those and get back to me how many times someone stepped on your toes. Flip flops are something for tourists to wear when they stroll from their hotel room to the beach and back. Something you actually wouldn't get upset by once you've gone for a swim and on your return found out someone nicked them.


1) Crocks: Ah yes. The shoes I love to hate. You do know you look like a dork going around in those? Even though everyone else is wearing them too. Not even winter crocks (with the woolly inlay) or even crock boots (oh yes, they exist!) are even remotely acceptable. If you've got a pair to walk around the house or in your garden, fine. Pass them off as very practical slip ons if you must. But honestly, someone wearing those, especially morbidly obese people, in public have a very low self esteem. They're, come to think of it, a new version of those white orthopedic slippers and wooden shoes the old folk wear. And nurses. And truckers. And Germans and Dutch on holiday.
Like Birckenstocks. It's not even casual. It's uncasual, if there is such a thing.

You've got mail

As some of my dear readers will know, I don't think very highly of our national postal services.

Another incident made me go 'I don't bloody believe it!' yet again.

I got a letter. It was in some kind of plastic envelope. A big chunk of the letter and all the paperwork was missing in the corner.
The text on the wrapper read something along the lines of:

"Dear customer, sometimes things get damaged in the process of handling the mail. This has happened to the contents of this envelope. So in view of this incident and all the unpleasantries that might result from it, I sincerely wish to express my regret.
Please excuse us, The Postmaster."

It's not even signed or anything.

So they have pre-printed apologies now do they? It looks as they're just taking the piss, aren't they?
Probably so they can say: 'See, the stats say we've received less complaints this year. And we've issued x apologies to customers.'

So what actually happened to my letter? The dog ate the postman's homework? It's a lame excuse by any standard, but some people really still believe they can get away with it through adulthood on the job.

Drop the dead donkey

Oh no. Wait... It's not dead yet.

Badly shorn sheep's™ owner is not very good at looking after his animals. Even the adorable stubborn donkeys look as if they've been reanimated five times over. Every morning when I look out the window I fear the worst has happened.
It is getting worse every day. A goat and a sheep are limping badly and he's not doing anything about it.
Animal welfare people have been to look in on him after we alerted the police a couple of months ago, but I've not seen them do anything. They just gave him a warning he needed to mend his fences.
Which he kindof tried and resulted into a farce.

Maybe I'll give them a buzz again when temperatures pick up and I haven't seen any improvement.
The poor beasts are void of any water. The little horse that was born last year is so skinny one could play ribcage xylophone on it. They don't get any extra feeding and have to make due with the non existent grass in the too small a field.

Poor animals are being maltreated and there's nothing I can do about it.

Soyuz docked to ISS

I watched the docking from the Sojuz to the ISS, as a little intermission from my Gothic Architecture studies.

The broadcast did start at 14:15 sharp, first we got a good overview of the Space Flight Command Centre. Then we got 'Programme Crypte: Insertez une Carte'. And then it went to colour bars again. It's not exactly NASA TV.
Good thing they are better at launching a rocket than public outreach. No, that's mean of me. They are doing a great job and very much trying to bring this to a wider audience. The Dutch ESA centre has some cool options for young space enthousiasts and artist/biologist Angelo Vermeulen is currently working on an art/research project.

Anyway, after some time the technical glitches were solved and we got a good look at the docking and very interesting audio commentary from André Kuipers, the Dutch astronaut about docking procedures and how the Sojuz has to rotate to have its solar panels pointed towards the sun.
...Radar information corrects computer predictions. Ground tracking control is lost once it flies over China, an antenna that is no longer needed is folded up, and we enter the night part of the earth...
Automatic docking took place over southern Japan at 14:35.

Once docked the space travellers have about 1 rotation around the earth to check everything. It takes some time to do this, they are in full space suits in case something goes wrong. Once everything is ok, no air leaks or what have you, they can open hatches on both sides.

How cool is this. Countries who were entangled in a cold war two decades ago cooperating on this kind of scale. Where politics fail science and technology succeed. How much more proof do we need?

Three cheers for science!

Oh, and the crew had a nine hour sleep before starting manoeuvres. So next time Dr Livingstone says I sleep way too long, I can tell him astronauts sleep late too on some occasions.

Two of a kind?

Irritating web banners, I have a thing for them.
You know, those things filling in the sides of web pages. Flashing, urging you to click on them.
Even dating sites do advertisements.
These ones caught my eye. They were on different sites but the girl in both pictures is the same one.
I smell scam all over. I wonder how much money they make by conning people out of their dosh. They cater to different audiences, granted, but gullibility is, alas, found all over the world.

How's this for irony

I've forgotten where I left my memory stick.

Famous Spanish Inventions

I've been trying to get the right healthy & energy foodstuffs in me so my brain makes it through this exam period.
I bought a bunch of oranges that come in one of those strange nets. The label assures me they were Producido en España.
Now, in the run up to the European elections, I was curious about the pre-concieved notions we Europeans have about other Europeans.
You know, Germans are sticklers for rules, Belgians always on holiday, French always on strike,... those kind of things.

Now a word about Spain. Plenty of cultural heritage, an ideal vacationing spot, lovely food.
But what about the other things? Spain's contribution to the world of inventions? They don't actually stand out as, say, Germany or England do in the field of famous inventions. The industrial revolution sort of blew straight by them. There are probably al lot of naval or warfare improvements around which the Spanish can claim were theirs, but I'm thinking commercial, well known stuff here. How many famous Spanish scientists do we retain from history? I'm afraidy wady I don't know a single one by heart.

So in an attempt to be fair I did a bit of a search and this is what I came up with.

Here are Those Famous Spanish Inventions listed in full:
-a machine that can de-seed pomegranates automatically
-the autogyro (think Little Nellie, the James Bond one seater copter)
-tapas
-Spain, of course, goes without saying
-errr
-that's it.

I may be a bit harsh, but the label on the oranges kind of confirmed my pre-conceived notion about the Spanish.
I mean look at it. Take a good look at it. Even someone who isn't even remotely interested in mechanics will have worked this out in a jiffy.

So what do we see? We see a donkey attached to some kind of contraption by means of a fixed rod. What is the animal supposed to be doing? I assume it should go round the pointy thing (looks like some kind of a sombrero) in circles, Samson style.
But what is that big round thing? It's a waterwheel. The flow of the water is supposed to make it turn. The axis of the wheel is connected to the donkey through the sombrero.
Now what is going on here? A few questions leap to mind:
-Is the donkey trying to pull the wheel out of the water?
-Is the donkey powering the wheel and making the river flow?
-Where is the owner of the sombrero? Is he having his siesta underneath the palm tree behind the little house?
-And what has this got to do with the oranges in the net?

The more I look at it the more I am puzzled.
I can only conclude one thing: the Spanish sucko mucho at mechanics, hence no famous Spanish inventors.


Ok, so they may suck at graphic design as well.

Let's not split hares

It's been a while but Mouser has been bringing some unusual stuff home again.
'Look what the cat dragged in' has to be taken quite literally.
Mouser's been collecting hares. Just like the one it caught last year.

Some doors and windows were open and I heard that specific yelping sound it makes when it's caught something. I wasn't fast enough to go and have a look out. Mouser abligingly brought it into the living room for me to see. It sat proudly next to the hare. Just like a Golden Retriever.
I took it outside, no pulse, no breathing. It was still warm. Mouser played with it for a while and then I put the hare on the compost.
Cat didn't see I'd taken it and went looking all over.
Then it crossed the street into the field where all the cows are and went on the prowl again.
I resumed my computer work.
About ten minutes later I heard yelping yet again.
Another hare!
I was confused. Did it go and get the other one I put on the compost? I had to go see and check.
No, it was still there! She'd gotten another one!
I let kitteh keep this one. Mouser started to nibble on this one, half of it was already gone by the time I started typing again.
This morning the rest of the hare was gone.
What a good little hunter!
Too bad it's poaching other fields, it should catch all the mice and moles in our garden.
Ah well, they do say variety is the spice of life, don't they?

Towel Day

Today is Towel Day!

Always remember where your flanel is.
If you don't you're not a proper geek.

"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have"

One for the road

For Bert, who is currently driving around in Scotland.

We learn from our mistakes?

People don't seem to learn any lessons from history.
Every group has it's own motivations.
Ironic how everyone uses the same kind of channels to get their different, nay, conflicting views across.
It seems hatred of human kind is latent in some. Even after much endured hardships.

Click on the picture to sample proof of an example found on Facebook.

Hitchcock was a Belgian

A friend of mine took a picture of a restaurant in downtown Toronto called The Fat Belgian.
Notice the logo in between the windows? Now compare it to the world famous silhoutte of Alfred Hitchcock.
See it?
Yes, Alfred Hitchcock was indeed a fat Belgian.

Mother Theresa on the washing line

As my neighbour was hanging some clothes on the washing line, I noticed something.
A slight resemblance. And I mean slight in the broadest sense of the word.
Mother Theresa’s head scarf.
Is it going to be a Second Class Relic some day if she makes it to sainthood?
Granted, the blue colour has faded a bit, but then again, sworn poverty does tend to put the strain on buying a new outfit once in a while, hence the faded trimmings.
Luckily there was no red sock amid this article of clothing.
A pink scarf would have been out of the question.

Belgian Army under fire

Belgian armed forces partaking in an exercise called operation Crazy Trip in Den Helder have had to endure a few complaints about their behavior:
-Dealing out spent and unspent training ammo to kids.
-Taking up position on a balcony of an old people's home and firing their weapons in the middle of the night.

A storm of protest ensued. Granted, dealing out ammo to kids is not very safe. And some of the old dears in the home probably relived their world war childhood.

Mind you, they did kinda apologize by taking them a bunch of flowers the following morning.

But this begs another question: Last year a similar exercise took place in Ostend on the 28th of August called FTX Storm Tide. This was a joint exercise including Belgian commando's, Spanish infanterists and Dutch marines.
Soldiers standing on top of the Koninklijke Gaanderijen were dealing out spent shells too. Pictures galore on the intertubes.
And no one started an investigation about that. Isn't that a bit odd?

The soldiers also had their picture taken when standing next to the statue of King Leopold II on top of the Drie Gapers.
It struck me as quite funny, it reminded me of occupational German forces during the war doing exactly the same thing and then sending off a few copies off to the home front to see where they'd been and all the nice places they'd already conquered.

Funny how history mimicks itself in the strangest fashion and the smallest details...

Elephant born in Antwerp Zoo

This morning an elephant was born in the Antwerp Zoo to Phyo Phyo, a 28 year old Asian elephant. They're calling it Baby K till they've settled on the name. And managed to make out its gender.
All the other elephants are pretty curious to see who their new companion is. This baby-elephant looks adorable. Dumbo looses hands down on the cuteness vote.

Back soon!

Creepy stalker cat

It has reached the point of ridiculousness. Mouser's little stalker friend is being a bit of a nuisance. It clings to the poor little cat like a shadow.
And it doesn't do anything. It just sits there and watches. And stares. Good thing it doesn't ring up at odd times or something.
It has peed on my car come to think of it. I washed it down, but the place it'd hit was just the right hight for a cat spray.
The minute it starts wearing a trench coat with rolled up collar hiding in the bushes with a pair of binoculars, I'll be on the phone to the police like a rat up an aquaduct.

Science: No shit

Lollipop noise

I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, I do not like those stupid facebook apps. No matter how hard I tweak the filters and try to bar any of those silly things showing up in my feed, some do manage to sneak through. It's annoying. It's noise.
But this one caught my attention. It is double entendre prone for sure. For privacy's sake I took out my friend's name. (click to enlarge)




My reaction to that would be (in following order):

Has he really? I don't care who it is. I'm certainly not going to comment. I'm certainly not going to do that thank you very much.

Massive damage to heritage after quake

Yesterday's earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy caused ''huge'' damage to the medieval city's artistic heritage, Heritage Ministry Secretary-General Giuseppe Proietti said. The apse of the Abruzzo city's largest Romanesque church, the 13th-century Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, had collapsed ''from the transept to the back of the church,'' he said.

The Basilica, with its famed pink-and-white jewel-box façade, was the site of the coronation of Pope Celestine V in 1294 and thousands of pilgrims still flock there each year.

The Porta Napoli, the oldest and most beautiful gate to the city built in 1548 in honour of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was destroyed in the quake.

There were also concerns for the National Museum of Abruzzo, which is housed in the 16th-century castle.

Created in 1950, the Museum unified the collections of the civic and diocesan museums as well as a private collection of paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries and includes a beautifully preserved fossilised skeleton of a prehistoric elephant found near the town in the 1950s.

The castle suffered a collapse on its third floor and is too dangerous to enter, according to Proietti.

''The store rooms where damaged works are kept safe are also in areas that have collapsed or unstable,'' said Proietti, who added that he was gathering a team of heritage experts from other regions to help salvage the works.

Elsewhere in the city, the cupola of the 17th-century Anime Sante church and the bell tower of L'Aquila's largest Renaissance church, San Bernardino da Siena, were also down.


The cupola of the 18th-century Baroque church of St Augustine collapsed, flattening the prefecture that held L'Aquila's state archives.

St Augustine was previously destroyed in an earthquake in 1703 and had to be rebuilt.

''Naturally there have been various collapses all over the city, with cornices, walls and pieces of roof often obstructing the streets,'' Proietti said.

Source: Ansa.it

More pictures of the devastation caused by the trembling earth can be found at the Italian State Police Site.

For a more detailed historical and scientific look at quakes in the Abruzzo region go here.

Inertia is my homeboy

I've discovered I'm quite the little sadist when it comes to watching sporting events on the box.
The Malaysian Grand Prix made me come to that conclusion about myself. I was hoping for more rain so cars could skid off the track and make it just a tad more spectacular.
Same goes for cycling. A wet stretch of road is just grand. I remember when I was working at the Zolder race track during the Road Cycling World Championships about six years ago, that new layer of asphalt induced massive pile ups and when one guy fell, he took down a fair amount of the peloton with him.
Another example could be the Tour de France. I never watch that, except for the descent etappes if the Alps, or any other mountain ranges, are included. I just watch to see if one of those guys misses the turn and takes a massive dive into a ravine.
It could just be I associate the Ronde van Vlaanderen with pain. About seven years ago, on the same day the Ronde took place, I fell down a flight of stairs, banged my head on the floor and ended up with a mild concussion, a chipped tooth and a stitched eyebrow.
Football, that other boring sport, is only interesting when it's been raining for days on end, the field is covered in a thick fog or the ground frozen solid so the ball bounces the other way everyone least expected it to go.
Now rally and those kind of things are just silly. You just know they're gonna crash sooner or later. The suspense is missing.

Gravity rulez! Inertia is my homeboy!

A mound of wiki

Ah, my favourite online encyclopedia makes me giggle once more.
After seeing a brief troll intervention on the 'Dinosaur' entry (see my I love wiki post), some more gibberish found its way on the wikipedia-entry for 'Tumulus'.
Don't bother looking now, it has already been edited. Luckily Mrs B took a screen cap for all of you to smirk at! (click picture to enlarge)

Pig Latin

I've been wrestling with some Latin text I'm trying to translate. It's several pages (well, 54 pages actually) of the Acta Sanctorum. It's not going very smoothly. I ran into some obstacles along the way:

-I did not study Latin in secondary school. The inflections and all the other stuff was too much to cram into my head at the time, it was just not worth it.
-The text is very ugly Latin. Not the classical pure stuff you would find in text books or dictionaries. They sure made some stuff up as they went along.
-So I tried the easy way out. But there is no online latin translator to help me out. None whatsoever. Zilch, nada, bupkis, zero, niente, didly-squat, nix.
Even if it were a very bad one I'd be fine with that. I get the gist of the text when skimming it, but once I get started on single sentences, I get bogged down.

While still hoping to find an online translation tool I ran into several sites but none did what I had expected them to do.
Then I saw a google ad at the bottom of the page:

Pig Latin? I was aware of something called Dog Latin, the Private Eye sometimes has a section devoted to mock honorary degrees. But had never heard of Pig Latin. I must be getting on, out of touch. Not down with the kids anymore.

Otnay ownday ithway ethay idskay anymoreway.

Polonius is offline

A funny satire of facebook:
It's William Shakespeare's facebook page.

It has little gems like:
-Hamlet added England to places he's been
-Laertes wonders what the hell happened while he was gone
-Horatio thinks he saw a ghost

NIN Freebie

NIN is currently on tour. Their tour website is up. If you register you can download previously unreleased material from Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction and Street Sweeper.
If you liked The Slip, you'll like this too.

Richard Gere has a statue at Chartres Cathedral

If you ever go to Chartres and visit the beautiful cathedral, make sure you also look at the wonderful portals.
Take your binoculars with you to see every detail.
I'm taking a course on gothic art, the professor was talking about the difference in styles between two portals and was pointing out an evolution in the way statues were being used and why they looking the way they look mid thirteenth century.
And then he pushed the button on his computer to put the next slide up.
It was an image of the Porch of the Martyrs (the left doorway on the south transept).
The statue on the far left is Saint Theodore. He showed us a closer shot of the statue and then suddenly stopped mid sentence. He stared up at the image projected on the screen and then said:

'Don't you think that statue looks exactly like a young Richard Gere? That statue is a dead ringer for how he looked from the time he starred in American Gigolo'.

Roaring laughter.
Throughout the rest of the lecture he kept referring to it as Richard Gere instead of Saint Theodore. These scolars say the darnest things due to lack of sleep.

1 + (-1) = Napoleon

Yesterday my Professor of Philosophy pointed out that according to Hegel 1 + (-1) equals not zero but Napoleon.

I thought that was quite funny, I wonder if Napoleon would have liked the comparison.
I am referring to the little known fact Napoleon himself was a brilliant mathematician.
And having a theorem named after him and all that. It goes something like this: 'If equilateral triangles are erected externally on the sides of any triangle, their centers form an equilateral triangle.'

Simple comme bonjour, non?

Here's more exciting math if you can't get enough.

Well how about that

One of the online monkeys at De Standaard newspaper put this on the front page today:











'Fourteen dead in plane crash'

Sarcasm, who needs it?


UPDATE:
My post about this on the ILS forums caused a bit of a stir. I thought this was funny but most people couldn't see anything funny about a plane crashing into a graveyard.
Well, I saw the picture with the caption above it and had to think about a joke which could go along the lines of:

"Reports have come in that a two seater plane has crashed on a cemetery, so far as much as fourteen bodies have been recovered, aid workers are expecting many more"

So just to be clear on this, I don't think crashing planes are casually funny, but the caption and photo are if you think about the joke as mentioned.

Widgety weather

Apple's weather widget had a spell of extreme climate change at the beginning of the week:

Tuesday's prediction: 24º and thunder, around freezing point at night.

I'll have to re-arrange the clothes in my cupboard so I can reach woolly jumpers and my bikini.

Stairway to Heaven

Nearly 800 years ago our ancestors started building the Sint-Rombouts Cathedral tower in Mechelen and they're still adding bits today.
A glass walk way is being added so all lovers of high and old things can peruse around at 100 meters above street level.
Louis XV, Napoleon Bonaparte and King Albert I all had to do without such a contraption.
I wonder how long it will take before the first base jumper gives it a go.