When in Greece, do as the Greeks do…

It wasn’t going to spend hours behind a computer during my holidays, but since the cybercafe was right on my path anyway, I thought I’d just write a quick posting.

Most noteworthy events so far, are:
- changing of the guards in front of the parliament building (I don’t normally watch Changings of Guards, especially in London, but this one was alright)
- afternoon excursion to Cape Sounion, where there is a nice temple of Poseidon, the ancient god of the Sea (Neptune), and an even nicer view on the Aegean sea.
- Diner at an ‘estiatorio’, a small restaurant, where the food was great, but the service awful.But the view was nice enough, in front of the the Cathedral

There is actually more, but I’m running out of time at this cybercafe, that’s it for now…

O Demos Athenaioon…

Tomorrow, I’m off for 5 days to Athens, not one of the 14 Athenses (sp?) in America, but the Real Athens in Greece.

See you next week!

McAfee ViruScan again

As an addendum to my previous posting on McAfee ViruScan, I just want to mention that I found a link for downloading up-to-date virus definition files after all. Currently, that is a file called 4271XDAT.EXE, if you’re using McAfee 5.0 like I am.

Updated 2003-07-04: there is also a page on TUCOWS which has these DAT files

The Matrix Reloaded

I’ve finally seen The Matrix Reloaded, and I must admit, it was quite alright. Good enough for me not to realize that we had been sitting there for more than 2 hours…

The effects (or should I call it cinematography?) are truly awesome; the contents, not too bad. The dialogs were disappointing at the time of watching, but when I later read this posting at Wozar.com, I guess there’s a bit more to it than it seemed at first.

Long Weekend in Paris

Had a nice long weekend in Paris. The main purpose was to meet my cousin from Canada who is in Europe for a conference in Hungary, some time next week, but before that is traveling a bit in France and Holland. On Whitsunday, we visited this nice church, and had lunch in the Chinese / Vietnamese restaurant where my parents used to come when they were students. It still exists, and although they have changed proprietors many times, the dishes are still the same. And as students like them: big and cheap.

Afterwards, we went to a piano recital in the beautiful St. Merri church, as part of the L’accueil Musical series where the pianist, Lydie Barkef, played works by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt. In the interval, while looking for a toilet, we went into the Grizzli cafe, and paid EURO 7,20 (!) for two Heineken beers. I admit they were a twice as big as the ones you normally get in Holland, but still not cheap… Oh, well. Those things happen when you are in a tourist area. And with Euroflation.

By Your Command

While looking around at Mediamarkt in Den Haag, and wondering whether people really needed that much hardware and software, and whether ever more consumerism would make people happy…

Suddenly I saw something that would: a DVD edition of the full length feature movie of the TV series Battlestar Galactica, which was produced in 1978, a quarter of a century ago, and broadcast here in Holland somewhere around 1980. Memories returned of a carefree childhood and daring dreams…

For real fans, there’s also the BG Club site and the BG Fanclub Site. And for people who are into computer graphics, this page has a dozen or so 3D models of BG ships to render on your own machine. Most of them are in 3D Studio Max and Lightwave format, but there should also be (somewhere) some for POVray, the open source raytracerthat also comes with some Linux distributions.

Another DVD I picked up was one that I had always wanted to see in the cinema, but never got a chance: the Danish movie Festen (The Celebration). For someone speaking Swedish, Danish sounds like a throat disease, but this will probably just add to the eccentricity of the movie…

Oh, and another nice discovery I made was a small shop called “Spui Records Part II”, at the Spui in Den Haag, next to where there used to be the Asta cinema. Anyway, this shop specializes in Classical and Jazz CDs (and some vinyl records as well), at ridiculously low prices. I found a top quality CD of Hélène Grimaud, on which she plays the Schumann piano concerto and the Burlesque by R. Strauss, for only Euro 3.99.

P.S. if you’re wondering where the title of this posting comes from, you haven’t watched BG…