A weekend in Vienna:)

 

Hi everyone, this is just a quick entry about my wonderful trip to Vienna. Well it all started with an amazing trip to Amsterdam. I spent the night in Amsterdam, walking around and looking at the beauty of Amsterdam which lies beyond what the common tourist sees. I did this as my flight to Vienna from Amsterdam was 7am, and getting to Schipol from Eindhoven that early is not that easy. As a result I spent the night in Amsterdam. Friday nights in Amsterdam are always fun.

 

I then caught my flight to Vienna, and what can I say… well I never really thought much about Vienna as a touristic place to go… well how wrong can one be?! It is a city FULL of history and culture, completely different from most cities in Western Europe. I only had one weekend and as a result could not see everything however I really got a great feeling about the place… I will be back one day.

It was really good to go there and meet up with Alice my little sister and her mother( and a few of her friends). Going to places with good friends really makes a difference. I had not really made a plan on what I wanted to see, however things were already predefined…. which was GREAT:) as we did not waste time on discussing what we were going to see… making the most of the little time we had.

 

Here is a short summary of what I saw:

State Opera, Sisi Museum, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Museum of Modern Art,commonly known as the MUMOK, Secession, Hofburg, St. Stephen's Cathedral, Wiener Schnitzel, and saw a bit of an opera:)

 

 

What a weekend:) I really recommend Vienna if you are looking for a nice culture weekend:)

 

It is really easy to get to the city centre and there are lots of places to stay. 16m from the airport to the city centre… and then the metro is really easy to use. 5€ for a day pass.

 

A geek moment…

Good morning everyone, this is just a quick entry to let you know that I have finally converted to the dark side… I took Windows off my laptop and installed Fedora 11: Reign.

Why you may ask, well I use Windows at work and as you all know over time Windows gets slower and slower… so I thought well why not just speed my old laptop up with a new OS. Fedora 11 boot time is actually really good, about half of my Windows OS.

But it is not just the boot time, it is clean fast, looks good, easy to configure, installing was a piece of cake, network capability is great, programs are great, all open source of course… turns out that I already used most of them.

Just like everything in life… your habits change… and as a result so should your OS. At work I am a power user in many different areas… but I guess when it comes down to my personal laptop I only really use the browser for looking/watching tv series, listening to music, configuring my multimedia network at home, a few programs in C/C++, Qt is my new favourite. Java is a close second… So if this is my use for my personal laptop… why should I install Windows 7? It is slow, heavy… okay it has DirectX 11… but I don't play games… soooo the logical thing would be to install a stable fast OS. There were a couple of options… but I really like the look and feel of Fedora. Red Hat has been going for years and several distributions have spinned of it… so why not just keep to the source?!

A weekend in Prague!!!

After Amsterdam and Roosendaal Sky Diving…. I had this urge to continue travelling…So got a couple of friends together and we rented a car and drove to Prague on Friday night. The plan… well it was simple:

 

Leave Eindhoven… Drive to Prague, stay there until Sunday afternoon and drive back:)

 

Some people say that life is boring, well I am a strong believe that you make life what you want. So what if the trip is 10h drive… look at things from a different perspective…. 10h (one way) with friends, talking, laughing, has probably more meaning than a few drinks in the pub one night.

Plus we got to see a beautiful city… Prague. It is a magical place.

 

So here is the summary from an Engineers point of view:

1854km

20h in a car

23 coffees

4 friends + plus a mascot

1 opel Corsa 1.2

NO Tom Tom, just a map (ya we did it the old fashion way)

Departure: Friday at midnight

Arrival in Prague: 10am

Departure from Prague: 4pm Sunday

Arrival in Eindhoven: 2am Monday morning:)

Lots of fun:) Yes we saw night clubs, castle, bridges, museums', heard classical music, the church, the astrological clock, had great meals… but what really inspired me was knowing that there are no limits to what you can do when you put your mind to it.

 

Thanks guys for the great weekend.

Let me finish this entry with a GREAT quote:

“Build a world made of maps and dreams of using them all”

Indoor Sky Diving

 

Hi guys,

 

This is just a quick entry to let you know about my crazy weekend… I had a few friends over from Portugal and we played Laser quest, Karting, and to top it off… we went sky Diving… but indoors…

 

It was AMAZING… It is not as easy as it looks… check me out trying my best… LOL.

 

We went as a group and I tried it for 2 minutes… It just takes practice…

 

We went to Roosendaal (close to Rotterdam).

 

Here is the site: http://www.indoorskydive.com/

 

Creative Ideas for Birthdays…

I have been meaning to put this down somewhere… or at least share this with the world. What can or should you do for someones birthday? Are you tired of always doing the same thing? Going through the hassles of organizing money, events, parties? Well this entry should give you some ideas that I have picked up along the way.

 

- Send flowers to his/her office every 30minutes

- Make a photo album from Facebook pictures

- Make a large poster from Facebook pictures

- Print photos on a pillow case : This way they can sleep with his/her friends all the time:)

- Buy small candles and put them in plastic cups and write their name in the street/beach/home with the candles

- Surprise them by blinding them for the journey to the party

- Hire an escort to follow them all night long with talking to him/her

- Fly them to another city

- Make a treasure hunt at the party, make them find the present by passing silly little tests (puzzels, games, questions, …)

- Get them a lolly pop

- Dont get a card, do something personal, sign a football, a shirt, a photo album, a poster.

- Take them up in a hot air balloon

- Buy a skydiving voucher… EVERYONE is scared but always loves it:)

- Invite long / lost or friends that are not expected to join (if they are in another country)

 

 

These are just a few crazy ideas that come to mind… if you have any more I would be more than interested to hear them:)

R2009b rocks:)

This is just a geeky entry…to let you all know that I am really happy with the new release of MATLAB R2009b:)

Check it out here: R2009b is live:)

“Accelerating the pace of engineering and science” – The MathWorks slogan:)

A weekend in Stockholm

So I decided to go to a new place… a new country… why not SWEDEN:)

Stockholm is a great place… and I was lucky with the weather.

Here are few tips on how to get there: fly Ryanair… catch a bus to the city centre and just enjoy yourself.

 

I went on the boat around the city which was a great way to get an overview of the city and then I moved on what I really wanted to see.

 

People are really nice and the night life is amazing. A highlight for me was the ICE BAR!!! I had heard of this place, and wanted to try it out… SIMPLY AMAZING!!! All the glasses, walls, tables, chairs are ICE!!!! As you walk in you get a jacket and some gloves (to hold your drinks) and you just have this great feeling of being and doing something different!!! I strongly recommend you going there if you have the chance.