stoneshop just got me this.



Yes, it's a USB drive. A full 8 gb of cuteness. It looks like Tigger, and like Tigger, it has a hole in its left ear.
Beware of geeks bearing gifts, you'll end up giving them your heart in return before you know it.

Look at what he got me yesterday... this gorgeous, vintage-as-anything, cute-as-can-be little electric heater from the '30s or '40s. He took a train for Amsterdam after work, just because I told him about this sweet little thingie I saw in a second hand store there last week... and didn't get. And it was still there.

Who needs flowers anyway? They're so overrated.


Click makes big

I've bought a couple of blue rams for my one-metre community tank. The camera sees them as bluer than the human eye does, but I can assure you they're gorgeous in real life, too. Just not as blue.

I've started a new LJ community: amphibilove . For all those who love amphibians, such as the anura, the caudata and the gymnophonia (who live underground, have no legs and get up to 1,5 metres long, and of whom I'd never heard in my life before today).
It's hard to believe, but up til now, LiveJournal had no serious community for talking about newts and frogs. Unless we count Gussie Fink-Nottle's Newt Fanciers' Group (gfnnfg ).
This doesn't mean that I'll stop my newt postings here. I just may put the more... technical stuff over there.

I hope the new(t) community gets lots of members and interesting posts!

Those of you who have met me know that my user icon actually represents my hair colour... during the first three weeks after I've dyed it, of course. After that, it gradually bleaches to a washed-out reddish hue.
Usually, right after stoneshop  cuts it, I dye it eggplant colour again, to get rid of the odd two-tone effect (because most of the dye has grown out by then).
This time, when he had finished cutting my hair and asked me to check how I liked it, I held the mirror behind me to look at the back of my head (using a second mirror that's on the wall), saw the familiar contrast of the reddish dyed part and my own greyish-blonde colour, and decided I liked it.
So, because it's nice to do things different every now and then, I dyed only the front part, so I'd have three colours.
The result is rather funky!


It's not easy to take a picture of your own head, but it'll do. You can see my own hair colour at the roots, the reddish/pinkish locks on top (which aren't exactly as pink as it looks here, but it all depends greatly on lighting), and the dark purplish hue near the front. I think I like it!

Gelukkig nieuw haar! (happy new hair)

Look what stoneshop bought me!
It's not a gift; it's purely practical having the same phone, so we can share changers and other peripherals. Sez he.
Well, I reserve the right to regard this as a gift, and a really neat one at that. Also, to jump up and down.
(I can jump up, but how does one jump down? I don't need to; so far, that part has always happened by itself. Never mind.)
This phone can do a lot of interesting stuff; it's also a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a radio, and a GPS receiver. But most of all, it's a sturdy and almost waterproof phone.

Happy icon. Because I am.

The mailman just brought me the new brake disc that gummihuhn ordered for me in Germany. It looks awesome. In fact it looks so awesome that it doesn't really suit the bike because *nothing*  else about that bike looks remotely this glamourous!


Here's my old brake disc, which needs to be replaced. Click to see the solid steel slice of awesomeness that just arrived.
To make things even better: it was dirt cheap, too.

Some of you may remember that the left mouse button on my laptop had worn out... and that I replaced the 'clickie thingie' underneath the button with the one from the middle mouse button, and eventually (when that wore out, too) the right. So I had to use a mouse with my Thinkpad because you do tend to use the right mouse button every now and then.
Well, no more!
The clickie thingies I ordered never arrived. The guy said that he'd sent them. Hmm.
But another solution was found: stoneshop's friend Charles in the States bought a keyboard for me on Ebay, took it with him to Germany when he went there for work, and then mailed it to me!
So I just took the old keyboard out of my X22 and replaced it with a brand new one.
Oh my! I've never seen such newness before, let alone touched it. The keys aren't even shiny, they're matted! And the trackpoint is bright red and clean! It makes the whole laptop seem new.
Interface = so important. Don't you agree?

Now I *heart* my Thinkpad even more. And Charles, of course, who made this possible!

I went and got myself some Otocinclus fishies. They're cute looking, small algae eating fish, with nice black striping along the side that makes them swim faster. Their English name is 'suckermouth catfish', but that doesn't sound very nice, don't you think?
Here's a video of one of them, busy eating algae off a leaf.

This is also my first YouTube video.

I got a free messenger type bag from my bank today, because I put some money aside and filled in a form  ;-)
It's a nice shoulder bag (not that I don't already own oodles of bags, but hey, it's free and I'm Dutch) albeit rather blue.
It has a transparent part in front, where you can put something you'd like to be visible from the outside.
Of course, that makes it totally suitable as an instant BookCrossing bag. Pimp my bag!
The slogan reads 'Read and Let Read'.

I may as well tell you right away because there is no way you're going to guess.
No, not books. (Au contraire, mes amis.)

A new aquarium pump.

My (heated) aquarium holds a hundred litres and I've had some nasty algae problems. In particular the so called blue algae which is a combination of algae and bacteria, if I understand correctly, and very hard to get rid of except by using chemicals.
I recently did that. The tank doesn't look very happy yet. The blue crayfish in particular looks rather unhappy lately.


So I did some research, by reading up on the subject, and it seems that blue algae is usually a problem that rears its ugly head if the water is too still.
Hmm, I'm using a rather tiny filter driven by an air pump.
Furthermore, it seems that crayfish like streaming water.

Bingo!
*comic-book type lightbulb over head*
Appartenty I can improve both the water quality and the mood of my crayfish by getting a filter pump, one of the kind that pumps water, not air.
The one I just bought filters 700 litres in an hour; that means the entire water contents of the tank will be filtered SEVEN TIMES an hour. Sounds good, huh?

I think I'll install it tonight. And I'll be sure to tell you if the crayfish shows any signs of cheering up.

I have decided I like it here, so I'm moving all my MySpace blogs over. This has to be done one by one, and some edits are needed, because I don't want the pictures stored there anymore either, for obvious reasons.
That sounds more ominous than I intended; I just mean the links to the pictures will break if/when I decide to delete the account.

Another reason to edit is that I've been learning a bit about how LiveJournal works, and how my entries can be seen on other's friends pages, with different layouts; and while 500+ pixels wide pictures work fine on my layout and my laptop screen, they may be too large elsewhere. So I'm limiting them to 300 pixels, and making them link to a larger version if I have one.

Of course, the comments to these old blog entries are lost. They can't be carried over from MySpace. Oh well.

So my archive will be filling up during the next few days. Nothing spectaculair, just some stuff about books and other things I'm interested in. Feel free to take a look if you're really, really bored.

I drew it myself, based on an idea from 'The Little Prince' by De Saint-Exupéry. It says 'a year is over before you know it', which is true, especially if you live on a very small planet. Now that I think about it, that would only make your days go faster... oh well, shorter days probably result in shorter years, too.
Anyway, I wish you all a very happy, healthy, lazy and active 2008. May some of your most cherished dreams come true. But not all of them, because then you'd have none left.
Happy New Year!

Hi! I've moved over from MySpace because it's full of teenagers and bands, and I'm neither. Besides, the interface is pretty bad. I hope I'll feel more at home here.

You can find me on bookcrossing , too. Here.

My username is supposed to be Moem, but that was already taken, as usually by someone who's not even using it. Hence the version with the funky writing: M03M.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Or actually, I was entered into a prize drawing because I filled in a survey.
Or in fact I filled in the survey because it said you could win a watch, and then I was never asked for my e-mail address or any other personal data, so how could anyone ever win it? That's what I asked them in an e-mail, and they answered me, saying: Hmm, you may have a point there.
(Sounds familiar? Check this older blog entry. Am I the only one that notices these things?)
And so they decided that they'd let me win the watch. Either that or I'm the only one they had an e-mail address for.
Today it arrived! And they haven't been cheap about it. The watch looks great.


Yes, I know that it's a men's watch. I don't care. I'm going to have the strap shortened and wear it with pride.
Go, Läkerol!

(Originally posted on MySpace.)
My father came over and visited me, and he gave me a lovely, lovely gift. Here it is:

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Time for some shameless showing off here!
Yesterday we went to visit my aunt who had invited us for a family tea & tapas party. Good news all by itself as she has excellent taste in food. A good time was had by all.
Just before we left, she asked me if I'd like something really silly. Of course I said yes. Silly is good.
And then she presented me with something I'd been secretly desiring for years: her Goblin Teasmade!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
This is my page on MySpace. I don't think I'll update it much. But welcome anyway.