Alpha Core

On July 22 a new feature got added to Google Maps, making it even better: walking directions. This was announced on the Google Earth and Maps team blog. Here are two pictures showing the difference between driving and walking from the city center of Leuven to the train station.

For those who don’t know Leuven really well: it’s a maze of one-way streets and as a visitor, you’re probably better off just taking the outer ring around the city if you’re by car. But fortunately, if you feel like walking around, you can ignore all these one-way streets and find the best route thanks to this new feature. It only works for routes under 10 km though.

We recently went eating sushi again in the Sushi Circle in Hamburg. I would like to recommend that restaurant. The personnel is friendly, the food is really good and there’s and all-you-can-eat option for merely €16,90 (miso soup included).

If you don’t know where to start, the salmon sushi is always great. And when you get to the desserts, keep an eye out for the doughy banana balls with vanilla sauce because they won’t be on that belt for very long – they are simply the best! If anyone happens to have that recipe… pleaaaase!

I’m taking a swimming technique course for a few weeks now, in which I plan to learn how to properly swim the crawl and the dolphin butterfly stroke. The breast stroke I knew already… or that’s at least what I thought until last lesson.

Well, I already improved a bit. Meaning: I’m not half drowning anymore immediately when I try to swim the crawl. Until now we didn’t try the dolphin butterfly stroke yet, but I’m very optimistic about this one… *cough*

During my drowning swimming lessons I need some additional motivation in order to keep on trying and Dory from the movie Finding Nemo supports me like this:

Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) program that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. You can talk to your friends using your Live Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, IRC and other accounts without the need to have lots of individual clients installed.

Today I also uninstalled mIRC (an IRC client) because I have no need for it anymore. Thanks to Pidgin (formerly named Gaim), I can now hang around on my favorite chat channels and get popup notifications when my nickname gets mentioned without needing an extra program to clutter up my system.

Pidgin is free software (GPL). For more information, visit the official website.

A woman enters an ice cream parlour and walks up to the counter. She says to the clerk: “I’ll have a scoop of chocolate please.” The clerk responds: “I’m sorry ma’am, we’re all out of chocolate.” The woman replies: “Oh, okay. In that case I’ll have the chocolate.” The clerk decides she must’ve misheard him and repeats more clearly: “We’re all out of chocolate ice cream for today, miss.” The woman cries: “Oh, okay. Sorry about that. I guess I’ll just get some chocolate then.” The clerk, frustrated, says: “Look lady. Spell van, as in vanilla.” The woman says: “Okay… V-A-N.” The clerk says: “Good, now spell straw, as in strawberry.” The woman confidently replies: “Okay, S-T-R-A-W.” “Excellent!”, cries the clerk, “Now spell f**k as in chocolate.” The woman, puzzled, replies: “But there is no f**k in chocolate.” The clerk cries: “THAT’S WHAT I’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU!”

(Source of the picture)

For all the fans of escape games out there: Jay is Games is having a new column since the end of June, called ‘Weekday Escape’. Every Wednesday they present at least one new escape game as an easy source for point and click addicts. Walkthroughs are also provided. So check it out next Wednesday or better do so immediately. You might have missed one already.

Don’t forget to also check out my post about Escape Games.

In a desperate attempt to keep this blog a bit personal, I’ll still mention (even though it has already been in May) that Tom and me went to Frankfurt am Main for a few days to visit my dad (who lives in Bad Homburg) and my grandma (who lives in Bonames). Actually we stayed in Bad Homburg, which is a very cosy city with a lot of lovely parks and it also happens to be the place where I was born. Thus, back to my roots, Tom had to endure many long stories about where I grew up and had to act interested while we visited all the places where I used to hang around when I was a child.

The first picture shows the Kaiser Wilhelms Bad in Bad Homburg, which I thought was the most representative picture for Bad Homburg, apart from all the park pictures we took and the second picture is obviously Tom and me in front of the skyline of Frankfurt am Main.