be.bartlog

This Is Not The End

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:23:44 +0100

The dazzling and wildly humorous adventures of myself and my loved ones continue on a new page. Hop over to www.bartlog.be to continue the suspense, the fun, the wicked sexual escapades and the complaining about trains being late, runny noses, etc.

In the unlikely event that you have a link on your weblog to this page, you may take this occasion to update your link. And for those of you feeding on RSS, you may want to update your link to http://www.bartlog.be/?q=rss.xml

See you on the other side!

2010

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:13:55 +0100

Happy New Year and all the best from Wolf, Mrs.B and myself!

I've made a present for you, just follow this link: www.bartlog.be

Winter Fun

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:25:40 +0100

The Efteling in winter

My little niece Hebe in the arms of Pardijn, one of the theme park's mascots.

The Efteling has a wonderful collection of antique merry-go-rounds. Some of them are still powered by steam engines.

Jolly Jolly

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:57:57 +0100

Santa's gonna bring me a really nice present!

I just can't wait. So excited!

No More Work

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:56:13 +0100

No more work, well at least not this year. Thirteen whole days of peace and tranquility. By that I mean of course that I won't have to do the daily commute to Brussels. Because there will be other work. There are ceilings to be installed in the bathroom and the room adjacent to it. And then there's the Christmas shopping, I still have to buy most of my gifts. Of course we also have to visit my parents and Mrs.B's mother and her godmother and then there's the New Year's party for which some friends of ours invited us.

All in all, I'll barely have time for myself.

A Wee Little Incident

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:01:19 +0100

There is a reason why people don’t take cows into their house as pets. They would piss and poo all over the floor. But who would guess you’d run the same risk with your toddler’s cuddly toy cow?

The other day, it was a bit hectic when we all came home. I was busy in the kitchen making the evening meal. Mrs.B was on the telephone with her sister. Meanwhile, Wolf was happily playing along with his little friends: Bear and Horse and Booh. They were the children and his was the parent, teaching them to use the potty. An innocent game, you know how children imitate their parents.

But then, someone who shall remain nameless and who was too busy calling with her sister had forgotten to empty the potty after Wolf had done a wee. So when Booh went on the potty, Booh’s bottom became wet. And when Wolf noticed that his little friend had dripped all over the floor and living room table, he decided to clean it up himself.

He is such a clean little boy, I don’t know whom he gets it from.

So he used Booh’s pee-soaked bum to rub it all over the living room floor and table. Meanwhile, Mrs.B who was still talking on the phone just looked at her son play and didn’t notice that something was wrong.

It was only when I came in to set the table that I noticed that something was very wrong. It was as if someone had mopped the floor. Then I realized that Mrs.B hadn’t mopped the floor. Then I noticed the potty and the wet trail leading from it. And then Wolf showed me Booh and I could feel that Booh’s bottom was very very wet and very very smelly.

So in the end, Booh went into the washing machine, while Wolf’s negligent mother mopped the floor and cleaned the table - with water and cleaning agent.

Old Age

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:27:04 +0100

Today, we celebrate the fact that I'm one year closer to senility, incontenence, loss of hearing and gray hair. I'm already senile and I don't listen, so I guess I'm halfway there. And I'll probably loose all my hair before it even has the chance to turn gray. So one day soon I'll piss on my shoes in a public toilet and drop stone dead in the act.

As old people tend to spend more and more time napping, I got pijamas as a birthday present. Wolf and Mrs.B practised singing 'Happy birthday' for two weeks, but when the cake came out he refused to sing it.

We went to a child-friendly restaurant in Antwerp this Saturday. And indeed it was child friendly, but the food wasn't that great. I had pumpkin soup with partridge as a starter, but there was so much pepper in it that I didn't taste the fowl - although it didn't taste that foul (please forgive me for that piece of old git humour). Mrs.B had something with speculaas, but again the speculaas was overpowering.

We both ordered the 'saddle of hare with autumn vegetables'. The meat itself wasn't bad, just a tad too well done, but the vegetables were a bad choice. All in all, it wasn't exactly the kind of quality you'd expect for the price we paid, and in the end Wolf was so tired that he never got to play with the other kids in the play area.

As you can see I'm really getting the hang of this old-fart-grumbling thing. Give me another couple of years and they'll glue me to a chair behind a window of an old pensioners home before I'm fifty!

PS: if you really must know: 38

Dad Is Nowhere To Be Seen

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:30:46 +0100

Ok, I confess: guilty as charged.

Sinterklaas

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:30:30 +0100

Well, SOMEONE must have been good this year, because Sinterklaas visited our house on Saturday night. So this Sunday morning...

An airplane!

Chocolate! And biscuits! And candy! And more biscuits! (And mandarines)

Someone's going to school in a couple of weeks

Chocolate-eating time!

Drip Drip

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:07:29 +0100

When uploading the previous post, my ISP’s server chocked on the many pictures. Again. You see, in this beautiful but retarded country of mine, the two main ISPs (*) still maintain strict limits on downloading, server space, scripts you can use (in my case: none) and so on. Some well meaning idiot tried to fight this policy by hacking the Belgacom servers and publishing a bunch of users’ logins and passwords. But he got caught, because even the police use computers these days. His trial starts next week.

I’m looking into less drastic alternatives to get around this ban. Of course I could move my weblog to Wordpress.com or – cough hack – Blogger – hack cough – but I like to keep things under control. And I don’t want to be entirely dependent on free services, that can change their policies any time. Such a thing happened to me recently with Gliffy.com, a free service to draw flow charts online. They changed their ‘free’ policy from an unlimited number to five charts per user. So now I have to throw 25 diagrams away or cough up $5 a month. I don’t want something like that to happen to my beloved Bartlog.

So I’ve been tinkering about with Drupal, a free content management system that allows you to create any kind of site: a webstore, a weblog, a forum, a photo collection, a simple one page website,… you name it! And that is precise its problem, because to create something like a blog you need to gnaw through tons of documentation. Drupal is developed and maintained by a dedicated community, and that is another one of its problems. Forget easy-to-follow step-by-step beginners manuals. You’ll be bombarded by so much information that it’s very difficult to keep focused. Oh, and then there is the panoply of extra modules that you need to install to get anything working. Want something exotic like images in your posts (imagine that, eh!), why you only need to install five extra modules for that. And then the real fun begins, because all those modules have settings that need to be changed and they are absolutely all over the damn place!

I guess you can say this thing has a steep learning curve. There is a simple explanation for its complexity: its made in Belgium (well, it started here, now it’s a worldwide community really). But on the plus side, you really can tinker about and tweak this thing to your geek heart’s desire. So if all goes well, expect a new, flashy and dynamic version of Bartlog any time soon. Like in 2020.

(*) Two, yes two as in 2. There are other ISPs, but there are only two separate networks, which means you can write off any free market principles. Internet is expensive here, service is lousy and their idea of internet security is blocking all customers from doing anything else but surfing and making old-school websites.