Snow in January
March 7th, 2010
A Dutch poem
March 5th, 2010
After 15 years of not writing even a scratch of something poetic (and before that not writing more than two lines of it), I’ve finally, finally, come up with something that remotely resembles a poetic (and seriously tragic but also recognisable) idea. It’s Dutch, and here it is:
wolken
op jouw voorruit
door mijn binnenspiegel
maken je warmer
Korzo at 5Hoog & Japanese bookbinding at UB
February 28th, 2010
Last Friday I joined a small workshop on Japanese Bookbinding at the UB. It was quite interesting to learn about its tradition and to spend 20 minutes fiddling with paper, needle and thread, glue and objects to hammer with. But most spectacular were the Japanese books on exhibit just for this workshop. They were taken from the Siebold House’s vault and worth a fortune. Maps, travel-guides for Tokio’s eighteenth-century’s red-light district, anatomy books with folding-away limbs and strategically placed towels (no really!) were on display. Seriously impressive stuff if you’re into books!
After the workshop Alexandra and me went for beers and spontaneously decided to go see a dance show in Den Haag. We got on the train and walked for about 15 minutes to the theatre 5Hoog, which is actually an old and empty office building close to the railroad tracks. The show was crap (something about a dream–which doesn’t help trying to interpret the show), but the view from the cafe was breathtaking! We got back to Leiden at about 23:30, after eating at a small take-away Falafel off of Spui, and despite biking home through the rain in Leiden I thought the day splendid.
iPod synchronisation error (-48)
February 28th, 2010
I ran into a problem with iTunes this morning where it would tell me that it couldn’t synch my iPod—which wasn’t a problem until this morning. I’ve had issues before concerning synchronizing and copying music to my iPod, which had to do with the speed of the usb port I used. Apparently the usb ports on the front of you pc are slower than the ones at the back. Changing to one at the back solved my copying problem.
And now this. For some reason a negative error-code looks scarier than a positive one so I thought I’d be in a fix and no mistake. I could still copy music to my iPod but I’d get the Dutch errormessage “Er heeft zich een onbekende fout voorgedaan (-48)” every 30 seconds or so.
A quick google suggested the solution: run chkdsk on your iPod’s associated drive letter, using the \F switch. This means Windows checks the physical HD of your iPod and fixes any errors it may find.
And it fixed my problem!
My reading place
February 21st, 2010
One sure window into a person’s soul is his reading list.
Mary B. W. Tabor
J.C. Bloem
February 19th, 2010
Combichrist
February 12th, 2010
Last week I visited a concert by Combichrist, a hardcore techno band that’s currently Rammstein’s supporting act on their Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da tour. I saw Combichrist at the Rammstein concert in the Gelredome on December 6th, and I’ve been gathering their music ever since. They tweeted last week that their show in P60 in Amstelveen was not sold out, so I ventured to P60’s website and bought myself a ticket. I particularly liked the idea that Assemblage 23 was their supporting act, as I rather enjoy their music, sometimes.
Ok, Assemblage 23 was a big disappointment. Three middle-aged guys: two of them bald and overweight, one wearing a Status Quo kind of hair-due, and all of them dressed in the same black shirt with their logo on it. They just sang their songs and did not perform any kind of show at all. Seriously boring. All 60 minutes of it.
So on to Combichrist. They started with A Rain of Blood, which in fact is my current ringtone. The percussionists banged and hammered, the singer jumped and clawed and growled and the keyboard-player actually had his birthday. They funnelled half a bottle of red wodka down his throat before continuing with Electrohead, and a dozen other songs that seriously kicked ass.
I had almost forgotten what it feels like to be in a small crowd that’s gathered for the same purpose. There were many goths in the audience, most of them looking gorgeous and angry. It felt good to be there, part of the fanbase, and part of the experience of that particular concert.
Here is a reasonably good recording of Feed Your Anger, as it was performed in P60 on February 5th:
Anton Pieck
February 4th, 2010
I’ve been a fan of Anton Pieck’s work for about two years now (and yes, he’s the guy who thought up the Efeling sprookjesbos), and in this time I’ve gathered some scanned prints of him. To make a long story short, here’s one of the best drawings I’ve seen:
Food Rules
January 31st, 2010
I just finished reading “Food Rules”, a book by Michael Pollan about how to eat healthily. He provides 64 simple rules that lead to a healthier diet, and through such a diet, to a healthier life. Most of these rules are common sense if you think about it, and taken all together they don’t really present a new perspective on food. They do, however, remind you of the common sense most of us leave behind as we shop for food. I suspect that that’s the main reason this book was published: it reminds you of something you already know, and reminds you to remind it when you go about shopping for food.
The basic idea behind this advice can be summarized like this:
What should I eat? – Food.
What kind of food should I eat? – Mostly plants.
How should I eat? – Not too much.
I’d like to share some rules with you, the ones that I find stick to the mind.
10-20mm
January 30th, 2010
I bought a second-hand 10-20mm Sigma lens the other weekend, and last Tuesday I got my first real opportunity to use it while visiting a friend who was dog-sitting a friend’s dog for a few weeks. We got outside to walk the dog, and I took some pictures of Leiden as we went along. It still amazes me how much red and yellow light ordinary lampposts give out. Humans apparently compensate for it, but on my EOS400D, the sensor picks it up mercilessly. There’s a lot of Photoshop going into making night photography around Leiden look good!
Looking at the pictures I took, I now realize it takes a lot to get to know a particular lens. I need to get to know this lens a lot. That’s cool, because it means taking lots of pictures with it 
. The first thing I noticed is that the fish-eye effect is much bigger than I anticipated. You can see this effect best around the edges of the first picture. It doesn’t show up as much in the second picture, but that is mostly because there are no vertical lines in it. The second is that Depth-Of-Field is weird in these picutres; I need to get used to the fact that around the edges, objects might be quite close!
The rest of this post has pictures of Goji, the dog my friend was dog-sitting. I took lots of pictures of it, but those of you that own a dog or any other pet know it is difficult to get action pictures where the object is actually sharp; animals keep moving! Nonetheless, I managed to get a few good pictures of this wonderfully happy dog!
My name is Marco Hokke. My blog is about the things that interest me and things I might forget if I would not blog them.