May 2003

There are many reasons why I have this website. It allows me to stay in touch with people who I don't see everyday, and it's cool to be able to look back now and then, and see what I did almost a year ago.

Another reason is that I like "playing" with a website -- a hobby indeed. This weekend I've been reading a book on website design, called "Don't make me think". I knew that my website is not the most user-friendly ever, and that not everybody appreciates the yellow background. The last days I've been trying to incorporate some of the books' ideas in the layout of this website. It's not completely ready yet, some small things here-and-there, but I hope you'll like it.

We were watching the European Songcontest at the BBC. The voice-over was by Terry Wogan -- he was absolutely hilarious.

The songs were a lot worse than I had imagined they would be. It was the first time I saw it.

Sasha got a very good job for the summer this week. She'll be assisting a professor in a very interesting research-project.

This is one of the reasons we went to look for a second computer desk. Today we found a nice one: not expensive and just the right size. Turns out to be sold out and a new delivery won't be made before June 10th or so. I guess we'll just wait for that, we're not extremely in a hurry but it was a bit of a disappointment.

Had more luck with some other things. We came home with two big flower pots and soil for plants that need to be replanted. Got the pots for free from a girl in a flower shop; very friendly.

I also went to get a haircut. I always go to the same place, Caprino. It's a one-man business where you don't have to make an appointment: perfect for me. Saturday is really a day for things we don't have time for during the week.

"The course 'how to deal with disappointments' has unfortunately been cancelled".

This Friday there's an interesting theme of the photo-manipulating contest at Retecool.com: genetically engineered animals.

As always, Mr. Ratelband is a popular target; just like Mr. Balkenende and Mr. Bos.


The ideas of "Poolifant" and "Jamai de Bij" are nice too, have a look.

What a depressing weather! It's raining cats and dogs, and it's almost June. I got a bit of a cold which doesn't really make me feel better.



But here at Chess it's warm and the programming is nice. Tonight we'll probably go to the library, that's something I like. It makes me feel rich to see so many books, all of which I can just take home and read.

It took me longer than I thought, but yesterday late I finished the installation of OpenBSD 3.3. In the process I removed my whole /usr directory, because it contained a lot of old stuff. This required me to re-install (the binaries of) Apache and MySQL, which I did this morning. That went very smooth, in 20 minutes the installation was ready. The webserver is running since 9.10 o'clock again.

There is still some configuration to be done, but at least the websites work again (not only this one, but also Jaap Bosman.com and 2otherwise.nl).

I just moved Apache to a chroot environment. Wanted to do this for a long time, and it was actually very simple. Now I'll see if I can install OpenBSD 3.3... it turns out I don't have to use a diskette! (why this is so nice). From the documentation:

"On some platforms, bsd.rd is actually the preferred installation technique -- you place this kernel on an existing filesystem, boot it, and run the install from it. On most platforms, if you have a running older version of OpenBSD, you can FTP a new version of bsd.rd, reboot from it, and install a new version of OpenBSD without using any removable media at all"

It didn't work:

I guess it was worth trying, but Java on such a small server is probably not a good idea anyway. PHP it will be, for now.