Reach out!

New Zealand, travel,

Okay okay, my bad! Tech junkie that I am was absorbed in the laying out of our Google route. That’s done now, so go ahead and check the link in the previous post if you haven’t done so.

Before I get on with my travel storiez, let me give you our NZ phone numbers:

Maurice: +64 211 689 620
Corine: +64 211 691 398

You can use teledump(.nl) as a carrier service and call us for 0,25 euro cents. First call 0900 1518, and then enter our phone number (without the ‘+’) when the voice asks for it.

Allrighty then, lets get on with it! But first let me tell yo that Corine has decided to put up a Dutch blog at corinecorine.waarbenjij.nu. I will lean on her and translate what she’s been saying in the next post. With my own extras ofcourse 😉

But I am hungry now and must go looking for lunch somewhere. What a pain :p

Resurface

New Zealand, travel

Haaaaaaai thir! Finally found a place with true broadband internet….pfff. And it even lets me do all the things I want 🙂 I got kicked out of the last joint, for complaining about my $2 being spent on rebooting and wiping the comp. Anyway, I got many picz uploading right now, so feel free to check them out here. Also, check out our route so far in Google Maps here (or click here to view in Google Earth). I’ve been going as fast as 69.304 km p/h according to my geologger 🙂 That was one scary downhill I remember.

In the mean time, let me tell you what we went thru in a nutshell.

First of all, some NZ Airways guy or girl forgot to take Corine’s bike bag off the plane. Stuff like that happens all the time to us, so no biggie there. We just cycled thru Auckland a bit to get some gear and fix up our bikes. The flight from Shanghai to NZ was just too rough on the bike(boxes). The baggage ppl throwing them in the plane secretly tried to fix up Co’s rear light, without noticing that parts were missing :p. I did, however :]

Aaargh! been in the shop for 3 hours, and they’re kicking me out 🙁

But what about these rules?

personal, travel, , ,

It turns out that helmets are mandatory for cycling in New Zealand. Getting fined will cost you $55,-. Not much for coolness, if you think about it. I could not find out how many fines a day the police are allowed to hand out, however. So we decided to get helmets. But we won’t follow those unwritten rules about wearing stupid ugly cycling helmets, no way!

looking fine Corinelooking hot Maurice

What about these?

If our kitten could come along she’d surely love to have one too.

Songza: just music, no strings.

internet, kool apps, ,

Ha, very refreshing! Remember how most of todays online music services want you to install a client? Or want you to register? Or give you the impression that it might be tapping into a limited store of sponsored songs? Or are just too complex or trying to do too much?

Go check out Songza. It’s just a Plain Ol’ Website (with some smart scripting) that makes you search what you want and then play/playlist it with a clean friendly interface. I don’t say it looks that nice, but hey, I just wanna hear some music!

If you wonder where the songs are actually coming from, I checked under the hood: Youtube items are searched for, and only the audio is played. I wonder how much of those downloaded bits are actually used for music. Might not be such a good use of your bandwidth resources 😛 Also, if you are a quality freak, you might barf on some of the noise…

Anyway, try it while it’s online! The copyright lawyers might decide to take it down before turning to the real bad boy of the class: Youtube itself.

Under construction?

blogging, internet, personal, travel, ,

Btw, did I mention that I am working on this freshly installed/manipulated/upgraded/enhanced WordPress blog of mine? I am in love with her, and that means touching and feeling the lot of it. Don’t bug me about it, I just have to do this. She not only gives me butterflies, but also these delicious plugins that I have to devour. Wow, I can do so much now that I know her. It’s an empowering feeling. I take her as she is, but I have the feeling she will grow on me.

Yes Corine, you are fantastically wonderful too 🙂 But now I have to test drive this plugin that will geo tag my posts when we travel :p

Lets take her for a spin, honey.

gadgets, personal, travel, , ,

Yes! Me and Corine are going to travel New Zealand per bicycle. We found out that we both liked the idea to do a cycling holiday somewhere on the planet, yoohoo! And not just on ordinary bicycles. No, we will be getting our own recumbents. And I have found just the perfect specimen with the comfiest saddle around! Try this link if your interested. Just what I need to get me going through those thousands of miles. It seems that NZ is a good place to learn to ride it too. Being kinda flat ‘n all. I was already at the store yesterday, so I know what I want. But Corine still has to find a model that suits her as well, so we will be test driving some models this weekend. But after all the investigating I have done, I think she will turn to the Nazca as well 🙂

How to create a personal RSS feed from my blog.

blogging, firefox, personal, , , ,

Install Firefox if you haven’t yet. It is not really necessary, but makes life on the web a lot easier.

Then take a look at all of the orange RSS feed icons you see on this site. They indicate some kind of broadcasting rays. The icon on the top of this site will give you a feed to all my posts. The feed icons next to the categories will only feed you the posts for that category.

Just go ahead, click on the feed icon of your choice.

What happens next is up to your computer. If it has apps installed that can handle RSS feeds, it will ask you with which of these applications you want to register the feed. If you have Firefox installed, you can also add the feed as a ‘live bookmark’. This will add the feed as a bookmark, and if you click it it open, you will see my most recent posts. Really handy if you want quick access to your favourite feeds (like mine :).

For all other feeds that I read I use Google Reader, because I LOVE internet apps. They go wherever I go. My laptop doesn’t :]

Why, why…WHY?

blogging, personal

Yes, I started my own blog (finally). And yes, I know, I must have my answer ready when people ask me why they should read my blog. So here it is. No preparation, straight in your face:

You will MISS OUT IF YOU DON’T !!

I am already enjoying this, and I know you will too…soon. When I start posting incredible stuff that’s happening on the net. And in my life, and in real life….and and…

“STOP! Don’t flood your readers boy. Don’t think that the rules of blogging don’t apply to you.”

Wtf? I listened to the voice of the masses, resonating through the forgotten, emptied bodies of dying blogs. It continues:

“Specialise in a subject, please, please DON’T blog about EVERYTHING. We want to know what to expect!”

But I have so many topics to rave about. What do I do?
Hah! So I must create distinct categories for my posts! And use meaningful tags. So people can find what they want!

“Yes boy, filter, FILTER!”

And maybe I could provide RSS feeds for those categories. For my readers’ favourite apps to consume? That way they wouldn’t have to go to my blog and do all that clicka dee click to get what they want.

So off I went…to create a structured tree of my offered interests. If you take a close look at my ‘categories’ section, you will possibly find something of interest. If so, just click on te RSS feed icon next to one, and save the feed. You don’t know what that is or how to do that? No worries, I will tell you how in my next post.

Home

Argentina, personal, travel

By Corine

No ola and chao anymore, it’s back to hallo and doei. Yesterday, 5 april, we arrived in Holland at 11 in the morning (Argentinan time: 6:00 am). Maurice was picked up by his parents and Marjolein, I got a ride from Rikkert in my old citroneta (which is now his!). Kristin left the house really clean and tidy for me. When she left for Berlin she had problems leaving the cats here 🙂 Later friends came for beers, Bas cooked for everyone. I thought I would be knock-out by midday, but fel into bed at about 1 o’ clock in the night. At 9:30 this morning I was already drinking coffee with Rikkert. Now I am organizing my house again, doing the mail, taxes etc. I am used to be here again, though it is still strange to hear people talking Dutch on the streets. And in the supermarket my first reaction is still Spanish 🙂 Our last remembrance of Argentina was the champagne breakfast we had with friends, just before we jumped into the taxi to the airport. I wonder what they are doing now.