Our Wedding Day

Magic tricks always do it nice on birthday parties. Hilarious laughter guaranteerd :-)

In a couple of years I think he will have regrets of making this face to me :-)

My mum with my youngest godchild.

My brother-in-law with a nice gift for him.

Birthday of my sister and brother-in-law at my parents.

The pink ladies in our garden. With new stuff bought in the nice Intratuin in Hilversum.

Trip from memory lane... our holiday in Gran Canario... not only sunbathing but serious biking in the Canarian vulcan mountains.

Trip in memory lane. This was one of our first trips together abroad. Going to Scotland together for a weekend in the beginning of 2003.

Visual Studio

The last couple of days I've been busy doing mainly other stuff at work than what I am supposed to do. On a project with a tight schedule I have been assisting in doing small development related work. And I must say that for a chance it was nice. Especially, because I could also explore MS Visual Studio Express 2005 Beta more, in which the Eyckenstein.com (simple) site also has been created. It's a cool product, but you need heavy machinery for it.

Tour de France

It has started again. Le Tour de France... 3 weeks of cycling in France. Heroism, dramatism, and other isms on a racing bike.

You can see more of it on <a href="http://www.letour.com">Le Tour de France</a>.

For the rest I'm sitting on the couch waiting till Visual Studio Express 2005 is installed.

Tour de France

It has started again. Le Tour de France... 3 weeks of cycling in France. Heroism, dramatism, and other isms on a racing bike.

You can see more of it on <a href="http://www.letour.com">Le Tour de France</a>.

For the rest I'm sitting on the couch waiting till Visual Studio Express 2005 is installed.

New design Eyckenstein.com

I am not completely satisfied with it yet, but the new design is here. I have to tune it all, and we have to write the content now, but it's here! The new "Wedding Special" design of Eyckenstein.com.

 

greetinx,

Jan

Archives working again

Not really worth to mention, but the archive of this weblog is working again!

Yesterday, we visited the closeby castle of Muiderslot. A 12th century castle in which we had a lovely tour. Jola, Jola's mummy and me. Unfortunately later on some rain. But that couldn't spoil the fun anymore.

This is the new one. Jola's mum more sharp, background more faded so she is more the centre of the picture and removal of one beer bottle in front of her. It takes time and practise but the result is quite cool.

For my nameday I got from Jola a book about editing pictures and making them look better with PhotoShop. Very interesting and useful. Here an original unsharp picture of Jola's mum. And the next picture is the new one.

Look here! It's 24th of June and it's my official Polish nameday. Even onet.pl shows it in the left top!

Redesign time...
The invitations have been sent and I have promised to give more information about the wedding on the website. So I thought it was high time to change Eyckenstein.com into what you see in the pic. Since I'm also busy doing things in the house I hope I find time to implement it soon and give you more info about the wedding. I'll keep you posted :-)

WE lost 3-2 from Czech Republic. What a game :-( It was fun to watch the game with friends in a pub in Utrecht. Nice atmosphere and lots of beer and wine, but what a dissappointing outcome it was. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the result on next wednesday.

SURPRISE!!!! Since last wednesday our new car arrived. In time for the wedding and the honeymoon! A nice Volvo V50 and to be honest, it's one big WOW experience :-)

This evening Holland vs Czech Republic. Will it be just as exciting as last week's game against Germany? Well, we're going to cheer for them probably in a bar in Utrecht.

Jola send a message to her collegues and friends to tell them about the weblog. What the result is you can see in the picture. Although the big majority comes from Holland, it still pays off to write in English I guess.

Yesterday Holland vs Germany. A dissappointing 1-1, but exciting game. Pieter & Marit joined us for good comments, loud cheering, and some laughter.

The 15th was Jola's nameday. Not her birthday, but nameday which means that you celebrate someone's name. And I managed to surprise her with something nice.

Dancing lessons

We did it, well, almost. In one half year time we managed to follow our first dancing lessons. And on Sunday we will go for our exam! And this all for our wedding. Funny part is that quite unexpectedly we both like it and are going to continue it next year. I never thought of myself as a ballroom dancer before :-)

And this is me with my almost father-in-law,

Jan taking pictures of the fishes with his new camera, and a nice one it is!

So this is a screenshot of the new blogging tool. Very easy, preparing offline, selct picture and publish. That's all. A child can do the washes :-)

Cigarette break

New option for blogging. Write a short mail during a cigarette break on your phone. Cool initiative, but not lasting long, since I have serious plans in quitting with this nasty habit.
If you have tips, pls, leave them in the comments section below this post :-)

The highlight of the evening. Colorful balloons and Frans Bauer singing some songs. 25 euris for a bad match, but at least some cheering for our national teddybear Frans in the end.

A picture a day
Makes your bad mood go away...

unless of course you visited the last game of the Dutch national soccer team and saw them loose to Ireland with 0-1. And they are called one of the favorites!

Two weeks ago we visited the Lion King in Scheveningen (difficult to pronouce eh!). It's great to do these things together. Enjoying cultural things :-)

Another time consumer during the last weeks... I've repainted the corridor in our house. A satisfying but tiring job, esp. because the corridor is about 6 meters high and on that height a ladder doesn't feel that stable anymore :-)

Sneak preview of where it's all going to happen in August

lovely evening

It's wednesday evening around 11 o'clock PM and we're still sitting outside. Jola is calling her mum on her birthday and from what I understand in Polish they are discussing the wedding. Of course, it makes me happy if I see her discussing the greatest day of our life.

And I? Well double enjoying this time. Lovely weather, a vodka with orange juice (screwdriver) and typing away on my infrared keyboard in front of myp800. Life is beautiful.

Not removing

So I'm not going to remove the previous posting!
The whole idea of a weblog is to share thoughts, experiments, etc. with a slightly wider audience and this time I don't think that I want to show to you that everything goes all well in one go. You can see me suffering!

Blogging through phone

Merely also a test. Will remove it later!

Blogger by mail

This is even cooler I think.

If this works I can post my thought to the weblog simply by sending an email to an email address and the blogger thing does the rest!

And here we are in Jola's parents' garden. Her mother and father sitting next to her enjoying the nice weather in May in Legnica (PL). 

update marriage

So what was happening during the last couple of months?

Well a lot!
It's now officially within two months before the marriage and things are get more and more exciting.
Jola has her dress, which I haven't seen. Pictures of her dress are on the PC but I can withheld myself from looking at them.
I have two suits. One for the first day and a more casual one for the second day.
The official papers have been arranged. We got permission from the Dutch government to marry abroad and permission from the Polish government to marry in Legnica.
The invitations have been ordered and can be collected tomorrow at the post office.

So this was just a brief update and I'll promise to post more :-)

Blogger interface

I guess it either doesn't work how I expected it, or I don't work in the way the system expects it, but I do have some problems with the new Blogger interface.
I published my last posting and didn't see a result, being impatient I pressed back and Publish again and again and in the end I ended up with 4 postings i.s.o. only 1. But they are now deleted again.

Very long time ago

Did it loose my interest this logging? Well, sort of. I guess I'm too busy doing other things at the moment. Work seems to be consuming a lot of time and so is arranging things at home, arranging things for the wedding, and of course, playing with my phone.

But I guess that from now on I'm going to improve my weblog behaviour again.

It's so long ago that I hadn't even seen the new Blogger interface. It looks quite OK, I must say. Is it the Google influence? Or who was it again that took-over Blogger?

MS Sharepoint conference

Long time since I posted, but now I have some time. Right now I'm participating in a MS congress about SharePoint, a cool product of MS. Quite interesting and a lot of techies. Well, the room is filled with nerds. Quite cool that I'm still online, reading my mail, using MSN and browsing the Net. All from my phone!

What's wrong this winter?

Sorry, I don't get it anymore. Does anyone think it's strange that everyone in The Netherlands has the flue or a bad cold?

In one week time we had snow, then 13 degrees Celcius, and now this morning snow again! Not so much, not so staying-like, but at least it was accompanied by a beautiful rainbow.

Rainbow

Wayfinder Systems

And this is the latest gadget, but by far the best.

If you follow this link and click demo, you will see what I mean.
Wayfinder Systems.

GPS Navigating on my P800! Never being lost while driving. The thing guides me everywhere in Western Europe and it works amazingly cool.

No maps to be stored locally, because it collect through GPRS the route data or the map I want to use. And even with only small amounts of data (5kb for a trip from Hilversum to Leiden f.i.).

Yes, this is the best application/gadget I've encountered and, as you see, I am very happy with it.

P800 Keyboard continuing story

Long live the Internet!

In a couple of postings ago, I showed you my latest gadget. A IR wireless keyboard for my P800. Through some discussion groups I found a driver for the keyboard and was very happy.
Today I'm happy again, some guys on the net shared their own made drivers for the keyboard with the world. And more and more is possible with them.

Thanks guys!

UIQ keyboard Driver

tracking and tracing

Jeez, how I like the Internet and it's applications :-)
On Sunday I ordered a CD-Rom in the states with a English-Polish language course on it. And got a mail on sunday evening that it was processed and would be delivered through UPS. With my tracking number, since then, I've been tracking the progress of the delivery and as I just noticed it has been delivered to my house this morning. Chapeau! It took the parcel 3 days to get from the States to my house, and it even went from Utrecht to Cologne in Germany and back to Utrecht on one day. Here a screenshot of the delivery process.

Happy 2004!

Yep, it's there... a new year and, expectedly, an exciting new year.
Why? Well, in many areas may things are going to happen. In random order:
* we're going to get married in August
* a full year in our new house
* exciting new goals set for work
* etc.

Through this weblog, we're going to keep you posted on our progress with the several things. Hope you enjoy it, just as we do!

Happy New Year!