Me, me, me x 43

I’m gonna party like it’s my birthday. Cause it is.

Sorry for the mess around here, but I’m never going to finish it if I don’t just go live and fix it as we go along. So, comments are unstyled, individual page are incomplete and archives may or may not be working, etc, etc.

But: I’m so happy to be back on Movable Type after my WordPress and Pivot adventures. You have to work with the tools that suit you best and I’ve found out the hard way that MT is that tool for me. Unfortunately, most developers seem to have switched to WordPress and I don’t think MT is marketed at personal publishers anymore which makes it harder for me to find solutions or plugins. But even without that online support I know my way around MT best.

The reason I switched from MT was that it didn’t seem to handle my extremely large archive very well and rebuilding had become a real chore. This newer version of MT however does a better job, I think the server Pair has me on now is a little faster too. I’ve also lightened the load by dividing 7 years (!) of archives over four different weblogs.

So anyway, birthday, I’m not up to much, I think I need a hairdo…

Ceci n’est pas un midlife crisis

I’ve been going on about ‘monumental change’ since the start of the year, but to be honest I had and still have little idea what kind of change exactly. I’ve given up on growing up, it just isn’t going to happen. I’ll happily tag on to the current ‘gruppy’ fad, how convenient. So what else is there that I could work on?

A new job would be a kind of change. I’ve thought about it and have actually ventured out there and tried my luck, but the experience taught me that it’s not all bad where I am at the moment. In fact it’s pretty good. Pretty cool colleagues (although the age difference is starting to smart), smack in the eye of the web/tv/radio digital hurricane, excellent work agreement, ok pay. It’s the commuting that takes it out of me, the crowded trains, the daily loss of 2 hours… Honestly, workers should get paid for their travel time. But even commuting isn’t all bad – it gives me time to read, if I don’t fall asleep before I turn the page.

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A couple of tv moments

Lost’s Bernard to Mr Eko: ‘I liked you better when you were hitting people with sticks…’

Gnarls Barkley on TOTP performing the #1 song in the U.K., ‘Crazy’, live. Too bad about the rest of the album.

Dr Who Season Two premiere: Billie Piper has got a really weird face, but she’s acting the pants off David Tennant.

All of Bradley Whitford’s scenes on The West Wing’s ‘Election day, Part II’. A sad farewell to Leo/John Spencer, and the show itself.

How I spent my Easter vacation, part 1

The best thing about having a break is going out without the sense of urgency I normally feel. I do not have to hurry. I can take my time, walk slowly.

First I booked an appointment with a health spa in town for next Tuesday. That’s a first for me, a result of my rather severe upbringing. That kind of self indulgence was considered ‘common’. Consequently my muscles ache with stress related knots. Time for a 60 minute pounding.

I spent the rest of my first day off taking it fairly easy, doing some light shopping: A Jamie Oliver cook book for a family member, a new soundcard for myself (to be installed in a new computer to be bought later this year or next year), a ‘rocket air blower’ to clean the dust off my camera’s sensor. Looked at boots and sneakers, none took my fancy. Looked at jackets, none fit.

In my quest to test all the Japanese sushi places in town, I settled at Tokyo Cafe on Spui. I think they fancy themselves a rather chique ‘grand cafe and restaurant’, with the staff in traditional black and white clothing. But my overall experience was less favourable. It’s hard to see inside from the outside, and the first impressions were ‘tacky’ and ‘stuck in the 70s’. A waiter told me to shut the door behind me. I thought he sounded a little rude, but I did as I was told.

Someone had parked their Vespa in the front bar and the place looked like it hadn’t been open in a while. I was shown to my table where, once seated, there was a distinct whiff of the sewer.

All the staff were Chinese. Is there ANY Japanese restaurant in town where the staff isn’t Chinese? Have Japanese people all been deported? What’s the story there?

I ordered edamame, sashimi sake, sashimi hotategai, nigiri hokegai and nigiri ebi. And some sake to drink.

The sake tasted a little funny, but it may have been the cup they served it inl. The edamame was fresh and warm, but I wasn’t sure of their sashimi sake (salmon), and I definitely didn’t like the slices of lemon they put between the hotategai (scallops). The lemon just didn’t taste very nice in combination with the soy sauce and wasabi. I wasn’t impressed with their nigiri sushi either, the rice wasn’t sticky enough.

The rest of the day I spent encoding videos to upload to youtube.com. You can check them out, but it’s all old people’s music.