Wiebelen Chomsky

I'm turning into a real Apple head. Today I decided to make a nice little video from all the footage we've gathered of our bunny Chomsky over the years. I knew the perfect sound track for it: 'Konijntje' by AKA the Junkies and Willy Wartaal. Since I did not feel like downloading an entire compilation album from Pirate Bay for just one song, I bought it for a buck at the iTunes store. I created a new project in iMovie and dragged my Chomsky multimedia items in from iPhoto. It was all wicked easy. (Does Apple pay me for this free publicity? No sir. They should though, right?)
After some serious cutting and pasting and editing and dragging I created this monstrosity. I hope you have five minutes to spare - it's quite long - to watch it and tell me what you think. Yes, that sound you hear at the end of the song is Chomsky moaning. Didn't know bunnies could moan? Than you porbably also never heard a koala grunt...



Update: today my Chomsky tribute is 'nr. 1 most viewed today in the category pets and animals in the Netherlands' at YouTube. Ok, maybe it's not as awesome as JP's nr. 4 rating in June 2007. But still, I'm quite proud. :)

Kerst 2007

Ja, typisch gevalletje van oud nieuws, maar we hebben vandaag pas een leuk compilatiefilmpje in elkaar geknutseld van eerste kerstdag. Dat wil zeggen, Peter-Bas heeft geworsteld met de nieuwste versie van iMovie (wel een stuk gemakkelijker dan de vorige, maar nog steeds even puzzelen) en ik zat ernaast hinderlijke aanwijzingen te geven.

We hebben eerste kerstdag in Zundert gevierd zoals ieder jaar met mijn familie. Alleen dit jaar hebben we dat voor het eerst sinds ever (d.w.z. sinds ik geboren ben) niet bij mijn oma thuis gedaan. Ze is namelijk in december naar een prachtig appartementje verhuist in de Molenstraat (equivalent van de Kalverstraat maar dan in Zundert) omdat haar oude huis en tuin te groot waren geworden en hier en daar begonnen te vervallen. Ze heeft het er goed naar haar zin, maar het was toch iets te klein om tien mensen een groot kerstdiner voor te schotelen. Afgelopen kerst hebben we dus met z'n allen bij mijn ouders thuis gevierd. Met z'n allen dat zijn mijn ouders en zus Becky, oom Jan en tante Willy, mijn neefjes Johnno en Dylan, PB en ik en oma natuurlijk. Oh ja, en de hond van Jan en Willy; Boris. Zoals je in dit filmpje kunt zien, was het erg geslaagd.

When Friends Split up

I know it happens all the time, it's just as much a part of life as winter and summer, sadness and happy times, death and new life. And taxes of course. But when two of your closest friends decide to split up, it just gets to you.

I'm one of the lucky few whose parents never got divorced, but for a tiny little bit I can imagine how it might feel. I understand that two grown people have every right to decide that it's better for them to not be together anymore. But what about us? Are there going to be two christmasses for the friends? I don't think so...

Of course I'm being terribly selfish (and despite my effort not very funny). I just hope that my friends both find peace of mind and the strength to pick up their lives again soon. And even though they won't be together, I'd like to call myself their friend for a very long time to come.

Wild New Year's Eve Party

No better way to end 2007 and kick start the year 2008 than by having a wicked awesome party with friends! We went to a café/restaurant in Amsterdam at the water (IJ) together with Gabe and Tamara and some of their friends who are really fast and steadily becoming our friends as well. The theme of the party was 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'. Some of us arranged a gorgeous costume, many of us were just gorgeous themselves, but we were all having a kick ass time! It all started out pretty innocent, but soon it got pretty wild. In the pictures are (randomly) Wiendelt, Esther, Inah, Patricia, Gabe B, Mijke, PB (as gangsta rapper in case you didn't notice), Hugo, Tamara, Gabe Mac (as emo rock star), me (as Paris Hilton note Tinkerbel the chihuahua),...

... and of course Captain Mark of the love boat.

Thanks for making such great pictures, handsome! ;)

New Beginnings

It's normal for people to get sentimental around this time of year. You think back on the good times and not so good times of the past year and dream about the exciting stuff waiting for you in the year to come. Well, usually I don't remeniss like that at New Years Eve (just give me that bottle of champagne ;) ), but this year was different...

January 2 I started my new job as web editor for a Dutch website on the automotive industry, that's why. I'm working with an all male team of very professonial and driven journalists (of course they're driven, they're automotive journalists! Was that joke too cheesy? I stole it from Eddie Izzard). It's great to work with such enthousiastic people in a company supporting that atmosphere. Especially the last part was kind of new for me, but it's quite a relieve as you can imagine.

I'm working for Automotive Online four days of the week, and the rest of my time I'll be doing freelance work. I've been thinking about setting up my own little business for quite some time, and now I got the chance to try it out, I find it a bit scary. Especially the taxes and administration part, I'm just not good with figures. But I'm not planning on giving up, I want to really give this experiment a chance. Today I got my first freelance assignment. I'm very pleased with myself. It's about bioplastics, a topic I used to write a lot about for my last job, so this couldn't have been a better subject for me. Very exciting!

By the way, if you want to hire my freelance writing/editing services, leave a message. My expertise lies with cars, plastics, industrial design, cross media and web 2.0. Oh and bunnies of course.