Amat victoria curam!

We are on our way for a little motorbike tour circle around London. We started our trip with the excellent ferry crossing from Hoek van Holland to Harwich - which takes you right in the heart of England in a very convenient manner.

Happy birthday Mr. Mandela!

Had a free moment in sunny Munich today - so I visited the always fun and interesting BMW museum and Welt. Saw the BMWi3 concept car - which really looks very appealing.

Dr. Huxtable wore more then 131 different sweaters over the years - this one was chosen by his fans as the best. I totally agree.

Finally got my hands on a copy of Bioshock Infinity. Looks very sweet - Cannot wait to play - but it has to wait till after our motorbike trip to England.

Next week we will visit Canterbury and I can finally see where the Tales originated from and to see the destination of the travelers, the statue of Saint Thomas Becket. Cannot remember a lot from the stories though - maybe a good thing to reread a few before.

Today Marijn and I had all kinds of meetings around Amsterdam - so we took our bikes and had a "Tour D'Amsterdam". My antique original Gary Fisher Bike is still rolling strong...

Wow - this is probably one of the most boring movies I have seen in a long time. The story is unbelievable, the script ridiculous ("I need answers!") and the editing or slow motion (yawn) or do fast that you cannot see anything... I came out of the theater rather numb - like a...uhh... zombie.

Still working and learning on my Arduino projects - but I must admit that I am lured away by the new Lego Creator kit: The Sydney Opera House. 2989 pieces, 63cm wide... hmmm. Not sure where to put the final result. Anyway - have to wait till September to order it.

After a fun couple of days riding here in sunny Eifel - along the Mosel, through ancient wooods and quiet towns, it is time to return home - which is fun as well :-)

Here in The Eifel on every corner of your trip you will find tiny villages who will transport you right back in time - centuries. You can imagine the original inhabitants wandering around as time stood still.

Luckily there are plenty of sweet places for a stop...

The food in our Hotel is actually pretty good - combined with the view, the sun and the company you wondered what else do you need.

We rode to Ahrtal (Germany) to have a couple of short motor trips in the neighborhood. Our hotel is perched on a wine hill overlooking Bad Ahrweiler and the view from our room - and the restaurant is really mesmerizing...

We couldn't resist any longer - after years of futile excuses not to watch Breaking Bad, we just capitulated and went on a bing viewing weekend of Breaking Bad. Until now? Great!

This whole Ibiza theme gives me lots of inspiration - so I created a new track and already have some new ideas for even more :-)

The famous Met’s admission button will be replaced by stickers - it was to expensive to keep them apparently. A pity because it was part of the experience and part of the art actually.

Sometimes it just nice to have a break from the quantifying group and just walk/run/sleep without any devices - well for a couple of minutes that is - I am afraid to lose vital data otherwise :-)

Mina första svenska låt är remixen från Brott och Straff. Vad täcker ni?

Also "Men of steel: seem to shiver in the cold...

The new Supermen is rather disappointing: weak story (we spend hours on Krypton, then talking and then ruining Manhattan). Like a lot of current movies is is about 33% to long (2 1/2 hours). Henry Cavill is sweet looking - especially without shirt and with a beard - but I am not sure if he can replace Christopher Reeve. But then again: can anyone?

Now that Google reader is retiring -for reasons still unknown to me- I had to go for an alternative in order to keep on reading/browsing trough hundreds of articles a day. I considered and tried some alternatives, but Feedly clearly is the winner. So from now on I Feedly will quench my thirst for everything that is new(s)

Since I got connected with IFTTT (if this then that) life got yet an other level so much easier. There are hundreds of interesting recipes to use and the boring times of copying stuff from one place to the other or checking things manually are over.

On the left Preston (Max) and the right Porter (Charlie) or is it the other way around?...

Wouldn't it be great to have a spin off show with the Scavo brothers? I am not a fan of teen wolf - so that doesn't count...

Thanks to the great people of Conrad, today my Arduino Starters Kit arrived. So I can start to develop all kinds of awesome electronics projects. First I have to start with the very basic stuff though - to get the hang of it. In a couple of months I hope to create something like the Robotshop Rover...

In the British Museum, there are always a few favorites which are a fixed item on our route. The Rosetta Stone for sure, some mummies (always great), the original Portland Vase and the Wedgewood copies. We never saw the Warren Cup though and we had some trouble locating it in the vast exposition rooms - now knowing that is ts actually a tiny cup and NEXT to the (roman) Portland vase...

Houses of parliament

Haendel House Museum

The tour in the houses of Parliament is something not to be missed: great to walk around in such familiar spaces and to hear the stories. All the different traditions are great as well. (How the parties in the houses sit opposite each other, red lines they can not cross, green bags for petitions etc.)
Also when walking around in London you cannot notice memorial plaques attached on houses to mark what kind of famous people lived there once upon a time. Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Nancy Mitford and Haendel to name a few.

Soane's Museum

Olympia Antique Fair

We are staying at the Grand Northern Hotel at St. Pancras - a brilliantly new hotel next to the fully -wonderful- renovated St. Pancras / King Cross station. This must be the place in London with the most connections. Almost all underground, railwaylines (Eurostar!) etc. come together at this place.
But next to that the Camden area is very nice to discover as well. Away from your usual tourists places we find all kind of interesting stuff. The actual reason for visiting London, The Olympia Antiques fair, is a big disappointment. Sure you can buy some nice decorative stuff, but there are no real gems to be found. Luckily at the same venue there was the the London International Antiquarian Book Fair - which was great!

This is one of the best libraries of the world - you can wonder over The Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, countless medieval miniatures and even Beatles memorabilia. Funny fact is that the actual building is like a Iceberg: the larger part of is is under ground.

I switched back to iOS from WP8 today to experience the new iOS7 - and I am not so impressed. I definitely do not like the new design. It is really a bit of a mess, feels old fashioned and sometimes child-like. All that thin-lined icon + transparency stuff won't hold up in the sunlight (no problem in Amsterdam right now...) And especially the iOS 7 home screen icons look ugly, poorly balanced, and of an unattractive color palate.
Not a step forward. But there are some improvements (which Apple got from Android, HTC, Windows and others). The new control center is great. Airdrop, "your day notification", Safari, automatic app updates(!) etc. are all nice. But the overall feeling is disappointing. Back to WP8 and let's wait for the next release of MicroSoft.

Since 2006 I am working with my Mac Pro and I loved it throughout. Upgradeable, expandable, silent, robust: what more do you want? Well... The NEW Mac Pro!
WOW this is really something else. This cylindrical designed Death Star will definitely get a place ON TOP of my desk and not under neath it. Great specs as well. Not sure yet if I can connect all my current stuff to it though - and a little bit afraid it will be very, very expense...

Well this is probably the Game of 2013: The Last of Us (by Naughty Dog). It looks and feels greats ,o I almost cannot wait till Thursday when it will be released... A whopping 10 out of 10 on IGN.

Well who would have guessed? Kahn is back and after the original Star Trek II ("The Wraith of Kahn") 30 years later he still haunts us (and the USS Enterprise crew). This new episode of ST is really awesome. I like the acting, story art direction and direction. What else do you need?!
Well maybe an exclusive Star Trek outfit which you can buy on Ebay... :-)

While I am still making the switch to Barefoot style running, a new finding at annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis concluded that it probably doesn't make that much difference if whether you land on your heel or forefoot... Dr Gruber presented a research that she did which showed that heel-striking was the more physiologically economical running form, by a considerable margin. Heel strikers used less oxygen to run at the same pace as forefoot strikers, and many of the forefoot strikers used less oxygen — meaning they were more economical — when they switched form to land first with their heels.... SO WTF?!
Do I have to return to "classic running"?
Dr. Gruber recommends that runners run the way that is most natural and comfortable for them. So I will stick to that for now...

My first Ibiza track (work in progress...)

Underwater Queen Esther Williams died today at a very respectable 91 years old - probably swimming is healthy for you. Her (sometimes outrageous) aqua musicals were a whole new phenomenon back in the 1940's and no wonder she became a huge star. My favorite Esther Williams movie is "Million Dollar Mermaid" directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 1952. In this movie everything comes together and is over the top. Luckily in our video library we have dozens of Esther Williams Titles and I will watch some of those the coming days. Her autobiography (The million dollar mermaid) is worthwhile to read as well. It recalls her extra ordinary live and why she should be an inspiration for all of us.

Now that the summer finally arrived in Amsterdam I am feeling in the mood for some summer music, Ibiza style. So I can listen to my Ibiza playlist on Spotify or... I can make some tracks myself. So that's what I will do!

Because of Eddie's birthday we had dinner at Le Restaurant, the fabulous place of Jan and Kostya (with help from Graham). At least 20 different dishes made an extravaganza of food - which were all superb! Just as the rest of our evening...

I am still a bit of recovering of last Saturdays Stock Aiken Waterman party. It was back in time with all the hits they produced. And there are many. Think of Rick Astley, Mel&Kim, Steps, Bananarama, Dead or Alive, Divine(!), Princess (my favorite), Kylie Minogue, Donna Summer and many more. In the late 80's it seemed that every track they produced scored gold.. (which it did) Here are some on Spotify .

Today was an other edition of the Rock and Run competition. It seems that every years people get more crazy while running this event through the very heart of Amsterdam. The track is nice: running over the channels - but also challenging because you actually can hardly run because of the amount of runners participating. But it was fun anyway :-)

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