But lets get down to business. I kept the summaries short last time and didn’t mess about with genres. I’ll stick to that plan, I’d rather interest you in the band that make up your mind for you.

	Jens Lekman (website|myspace|last.fm) Although born in Sweden he resides in Sydney, Australia. He uses a lot of sampling and healthy use of strings with guitar. Your Arms Around Me is the song that caught my eye or rather ear.
	Jónsi (website|myspace|last.fm) Jónsi or Jón Þór Birgisson which is his real name, is better know for his work in the band Sigur Rós (see below) but his solo album Go is quite good. He can stand his own and still touch your soul with his voice accompanied by a more electronic sound. Just have a listen to Go Do, feels like nature waking up to me. It was quite special to see him again at Lowlands this year.
	Kings Of Convenience (website|myspace|last.fm) A recent addition to my music collection. A duo from Bergen in Norway with a very mellow sound. Especially nice on those dreamy summer evenings or just as background music. Like Boat Behind.
	Mando Diao (website|myspace|last.fm) You probably know this song Dance with Somebody, which is quite the dance track. But there is more to these guys. Nope it’s not a solo artist, the name Mando Diao is quite random. I’ve only heard their Give me fire! album but it sounds good.
	Mew (website|myspace|last.fm) I saw these guys at my first ever Lowlands festival back in 2006. It’s an acquired taste but the rock with melancholic voices sound quite good to me. Although I’ve only heard there Frengers album. Am I Wry? No is probably my favorite song.
	Peter, Bjorn and John (website|myspace|last.fm) Another band you already know one song by. Young Folks should sound like music to your ears. Peter, Bjorn and John from Sweden make divers music which doesn’t quite fit into one box but singer-songwriter is probably the best label. Besides Young Folks which is easily liked, Amsterdam is nice as well.
	Razorlight (website|myspace|last.fm) Although formed in the London it is a Anglo-Swedish band and so I can cheat a little here. I especially like the selftitled album with tracks like In The Morning, America and Back To The Start. But there album Slipway Fires doesn’t disappoint. Wire To Wire for instance is a great song. I’ve seen them live once on stage at Paradiso.
	Röyksopp (website|myspace|last.fm) Electronic music by two guys from Norway. I especially like their older music compared to their album Junior which wasn’t well received. But than again I don’t dislike Junior either. Songs like Eple, What else is there vocals by Karin Dreijer Andersson and Remind me are my favorites.
	Saybia (website|myspace|last.fm) Saybia is hauntingly beautiful music. It music that makes you think about it all. Formed in Nyborg, Denmark and consists of five guys. Live even better than on CD, it certainly worth a listen. I Surrender for example sums up exactly what I mean.
	Sigur Rós (website|myspace|last.fm) Last but certainly not least, Sigur Rós. I’ve already cover the lead singer of this band above, Jónsi. Anyways after hearing this beautiful music in several movies (Penelope and Childeren of Men) I went on the hunt to find out who made it. I was overwhelmed by this soul striking music that is Sigur Rós. They sing in Vonlenska which basicly is unintelligible lyrics sung by the band. The English term for this is Hopelandic. The unintelligibleness of the lyrics add to the effect I must say. Although listening to an album doesn’t quite cut it. It’s really a live band. Shamefully I’ve only seen them live once but it was very special and the best concert I’ve ever seen at Lowlands. If you have the time you should really watch Sigur Rós @ Lowlands 2008 or even get their DVD album Heima.

Other social network sites like Facebook are a bit more work. Of course a lot of my friends use it and don’t get Twitter at all. They have been nagging me to get a Facebook profile for ages but until now I’ve kindly declined every time.

So what has changed on my views towards social network sites like Facebook? Honestly nothing much really but I do want to get a hands on experience. Besides it’s quite easy to stay in touch with people you meet while traveling. Which is what I want to do for a while comming year.

Anyways I’m going to use Facebook as an experiment with this type of social networking for at least a month. After the month I’ll either keep using it or delete my profile.

Public transport in The Netherlands is quite good. Sure we rant about the trains being late and when the first leaf or snowflake falls on the rails it causes the entire trainsystem to die on us but generally it’s good. Recently however the government and major transport companies introduced a new payment system, based on the UK Oyster card that uses RFID. It’s called ‘OV-Chipkaart’ from Dutch openbaar ‘public’ + vervoer ‘transport’ + chipkaart ‘chip card’). The idea is great but lets just say it was implemented with stupidity, at least for train travel.

When I first heard about the system that would be replacing paper tickets and stripcards I figured that this would be a good thing. Sure privacy wise it’s a nightmare and even one that made the news in The Netherlands a couple of times but than you can opt-in for a anonymous OV-chipkaart if you wanted one. But this post isn’t about the privacy issue; it’s about why something that could have been easy has been made difficult.

When you get one of these cards and you want to travel by bus, tram or metro it’s pretty straight forward. Just put some money on it, hold it in front of the gate or scanner and get into the transport of your choice. When you are at your stop scan it again and get out. Easy as pie. But traveling by train is quite different. You can’t just show up at the trainstation and use your card…no that would have been to easy. You need to activate the card before you can use it there. And activating it at the trainstation isn’t even possible. To activate the bloody thing for train travel you have to first use the website of the NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen or Dutch Railways) and insert your cardnumber. And after 1 hour, so they say (cause for me 1 hour was 1 day), you get an e-mail saying that you can activate your card at one of the ticket machines. Yeah that’s right those things at the trainstation. Finally when you’ve activated the card you are set to go. Why?

I just don’t get it. It works great for bus, tram and metro when you buy it but for the train, which is public transport the last time I checked, you need to follow a separate procedure. Why not activate it for train like for the rest of public transport, right away!

There are many other things I dislike about the system. Like not having any (weekend) return discounts you use to have with paper tickets, making the system more expensive for the consumer than the old one. I guess we are paying for it in the end. But the above mentioned issue is probably the most hated by me. Sure it’s just the one time you need to do it. But it’s not really user friendly now is it. Nobody wants to think about these sorts of things, they just want to travel and get there on time without any big fuzz. In short the commute made easy or at least easier.

But this post isn’t about hardware failing on you, it’s about a certain piece of hardware that has failed on me twice (two different housings) and it didn’t just fail on me. A good friend had the same model and it failed on him, same goes for a colleague of mine. These are all individual cases with the same issue being the problem but more on that later in this rant. It seems that a lot more people out there have had the same exact issue with the exact same housing from Shuttle. Just google “shuttle k45 dead” to see what I mean.

Let’s start at the beginning. Last year my first Shuttle K45, which I had owned for about 8 months, failed on me. It would not start up after pressing the power button. You could hear the fans spin up but spin down again after a few seconds. So I began to test different things like changing ram out, CPU swap and even the power supply but to no success. So I figured I use my warranty and got a new K45 in a matter of days. I even got a Ice Genie shipped from the USA so I could get a better cooling on my CPU. Cause to be honest the CPU on the mainboard is positioned in such a weird way that a Intel Stocked cooler only covers it 2/3 of the cpu surface.  You can see this by the indentation of the cooler in the Arctic Silver thermal paste.

Cooling by Intel Stocked cooler on a K45 mainboard cools 2/3 of CPU

My new setup or rather my old setup with a new K45 held out for one year, it failed about three weeks ago or to be precise. Surely the same problem didn’t happen again? It did! But now I got angry so I started to research what the exact issue was. And found this post how to repair the k45 motherboard on the Shuttle forum which explains how to fix the board (or at least in part).

It seems that Shuttle has been using bad capacitors on the K45 (don’t know about other models). Bad capacitors you say? Yes, bad capacitors which have been plaguing electronics from begin 1999 but if you really want to know a bit more about the badcaps or Capacitor plague read up on it on Wikipedia. Quite interesting even for non-geeks.

So by saving a few pennies here and there Shuttle has created a flawed series. I would have expected them to recall the K45 series after they noticed the above issue but they didn’t. And the K45 is been around for a few years now so THEY must know about it or they have there heads so far up their corporate asses that they can’t see straight anymore. To me it looks like they just don’t give a shit.

Enough harsh language towards Shuttle. What’s done is done. Let’s get back to fixing the K45. You will need tools and soldering skills to fix it or maybe your tech savvy friend can fix the board for you. The post above on how to fix the K45 isn’t entirely complete so I will add to it or rather I will convey what my dad told me. He has the tools and skills and fixed the K45 twice (for me and a friend), I have the blog

The capacitors you need to replace are the 1800 µF 6.3 V 8mm x 20mm (marked red) and 1000 µF 10 V 8mm x 14mm (marked purple) in the picture below. Although you might want to check if these are bad. Bulging tops or even bottoms with the rubber bulging out are a good indication of a bad capacitor. Check for higher temperature or even feeling hot to the touch, they should not be warmer at all. If so replace it. The 1000 µF is the most important. I got the premium Rubycon capacitors from badcaps.net. This website has been dedicated to the capacitor plague and replacing badcaps. It has a lot of information on the issue. Thanks again Chris for the speedy delivery (within 5 days).

Items to order are 8 capacitors of 1800 µF 6.3 V 8mm x 20mm (marked red) and 1 capacitor of 1000 µF 10 V 8mm x 14mm (marked purple)

Besides Chris I would like to thank my dad for helping and fixing two K45 for me. I might know a thing or two on how to fix electronics but he certainly takes the cake. Although he really needs to update his site.

It’s all peachy in the end but I will not be using my fixed K45. I’ve completely lost trust in it even though it works great after the fix, besides I was on the look out for something a little less hungry for wattage anyway. So within a few months I will replace my temporary setup with a nice Atom 510 motherboard.

Currently I’m looking for the next phone that I’ll be using in the near future. I’ve narrowed it down to an Android based phone which will probably be by HTC or even the Google Nexus One which is made by HTC anyways. I want a phone that I can twiddle around with on a software level and an iPhone will not deliver that sort of control. Even though the iPhone is well designed and works like a charm straight out of the box for the average Joe.

Reading up on the latest phones and developments made me think about all the mobile phone that I have owned over the years.

A list of them…

As you can see my old phones have even included a external antenna one, which is about 13 years ago. The biggest change has to be the screen taking up more and more space while the keyboard has moved from a full sized telephone keyboard to a few keys in combination with a virtual one on screen.  I still have the Sony Ericsson K700i as a backup and even though it’s 4+ years old it still works like a charm.

I will summarize the different bands, give them a short description and link to their music.  However I’m not gonna mention genres cause I hate doing that, you can make up your own mind without me telling you.

	Alamo Race Track (website|myspace|last.fm) A Dutch band which has created two full-length albums so far, Birds at Home (2003) and Black Cat John Brown (2006). Currently working in a different setup for a theater show for which they will compose the music. After the summer the composed material will be releasing for their third album. Black Cat John Brown is my favorite album.
	Bettie Serveert (website|myspace|last.fm) Although this Dutch band has been around for more then 20 years there last album Pharmacy of Love toke a while to make. During it’s lifespan the members of this band have changed a lot but has also grown as it comes to their unique rock sound. Their last album is a good example of that.
	Customs (website|myspace|last.fm) A band from Leuven, Belgium but then again I already posted about them.
	The Death Letters (myspace|last.fm) A two man band from Dordrecht in The Netherlands or rather teenagers as they aren’t even 18 yet. Their amazing rock blues sound that you would not expect from them can knock your socks straight off. Their first selftitled album is quite good.
	Daan (website|myspace|last.fm) The second Flemish artist in this line up. A friend of mine introduced me to Daan (Stuyven)’s music or rather his album Manhay which I have played a lot. Daan, has already worked 20+ years in the music industry. Before he went solo played in the band Dead Man Ray.
	Drive Like Maria (website|myspace|last.fm) A rock trio that has Dutch and Flemish bandmembers. They play rock music that is very easily liked and gets stuck in your head. Recorded their debut album in America and named it after a place in Dallas where it was mixed, Elmwood.
	Johan (website|myspace|last.fm) The Dutch band Johan are lyrical very strong with beautiful songs. Released 4 albums of which the fourth is their final album, a greatest hits. After several years and quite some time between albums the band has stopped playing live and producing albums. My favorite being THX JHN.
	The Mad Trist (website|myspace|last.fm) A Dutch band from the city of Maastricht, which they named their band after. They play Queens of the Stone Age like rock music with a sound of their own. If the debut album Pay The Piper blast out of your speakers while driving you’ll just have to put your foot down. It’s that sort of music.
	Mintzkov (website|myspace|last.fm) Belgium has a nack for producing great band and this is another one. The song Opening Fire from their last album Rising Sun, Setting Sun is great and so is the rest of it. It’s the third album by this five man group from Antwerp.
	Moke (website|myspace|last.fm) Moke isn’t completely Dutch but being based in Amsterdam they must feel a home here. The debut album Shorland is one hell of start for a band but their second album The Long & Dangerous Sea fails to impress me but does have some nice songs on it.
	Triggerfinger (website|myspace|last.fm) Yet another great band from Belgium with an amazing rock sound. The three man band is one of the best rock bands I’ve ever seen live and that’s saying something. Their second album What Grabs Ya? is filled with great rock tunes to the brim. If you get the chance to see them, DO IT!
	De Staat (website|myspace|last.fm) The Dutch rockers from Nijmegen have been playing a lot of gigs in the last few years to get experience and with their album debut Wait for Evolution they have certainly impressed me. A great mix of blues and rock with a country feel to it. Another band that’s even better live than on an album.
	Voicst (website|myspace|last.fm) And for the last band of this post we have Voicst. A three man band from The Netherlands with rather catchy tunes and speedy lyrics. Very upbeat feel to it. A Tale Of Two Devils is my favorite of their four albums.

Hope you enjoy some of the bands above, feedback is welcome

3 May 2010 – Update:
Added Bettie Serveert.

Internet is a vast enormously gigantic source of information and this information comes in many different forms (text, multimedia, etc.). Sifting through all this information can be quite hard but mostly you will be able to find what you are looking for when you use a search engine. A search engine enables you to find specific sources of the information you are looking for on internet and can narrow down your search. Using a search engine can be quite an art if you wish to narrow down your search results to a low number but using the Advanced Search that Google supplies is one way of doing it. But finding something completely new on the web is even more difficult.

Really discovering new things on the web has been a challenge in itself until a friend of mine recommended StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a community on internet that allows it users to discover and rate websites, photos and videos. By making a profile and even ticking off  the checkboxes of 500 topics you might be interested in on the StumbleUpon website you can start stumbling around on websites that other users liked. You can also submit your own.

Stumbling itself is quite easy to do. You can either use the StumbleUpon toolbar which doesn’t need you to install anything like I do or use one of the toolbar plugins for your choice of browser by visiting the main StumbleUpon website and clicking on Get the add-on. After this you just click on Stumble! and your are on your way.

Through StumbleUpon I’ve discovered many new and exciting websites (about 522 favorites and counting). Some of them are:

• www.colerise.com
• Amazing Insect Images By Igor Iwanowicz
• Aurora Borealis captured in stunning Northern Lights display
• Animated Drawings
• Pigeon: Impossible
• PIXELS
• and many more.

So if you want to discover more of the web it’s time for you to start Stumbling!

12 May 2010 – Update:
Ofcourse there are many other similair sharing sites like StumbleUpon. Like

• Reddit
• Digg

The good news is that browsers are going to support native (high definition) video soon by adding support for the embedding ‘<video>-tag’ in a  HTML page with the arrival of HTML5 (HTML is the basis of  every website) and there for Flash might soon be a thing of the past.

However there is still a bit of an issue on the codec that will be used. To quote a piece of Can I Play HTML5 YouTube Videos in Firefox Right Now? by Lifehacker:

The Problem

In order to move to HTML5 from Flash, video sites like YouTube need to host their videos in formats friendly to Flash-free HTML5 embedding. Unfortunately there’s no default standard for the format HTML5 videos should use.

As a dedicated open-source, open-standards browser, Firefox chose to support the Ogg Theora video format for HTML5 video. Like Firefox, Ogg Theora is free and open; it’s not covered by any patents, so it requires no licensing and is completely free to use for everyone involved.

Other browser makers, like Chrome and Safari, support H.264 for HTML5 video. Unlike Ogg Theora, H.264 is patented, and would theoretically require browser makers to pay licensing fees to use it (though the company that owns licensing rights to H.264 have said that they’ll offer it royalty free until 2016). Additionally, the issue isn’t just about licensing.

Some tests have shown H.264 to perform better than Ogg Theora in side-by-side comparisons. Apple’s stance on the matter, via Wikipedia, is that “H.264 performs better and is already more widely supported.” For video sites like YouTube, the main concern is likely which format can deliver the highest quality video with the greatest compression rates. Unfortunately for Team Firefox (and supporters of free and open web standards), it’s looking like H.264 might deliver the best results.

It’s worth nothing that browsers can support multiple video formats for HTML5 support, but currently Chrome is the only browser that supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora (though through the Frankenstein efforts of Google Chrome Frame, Internet Explorer also gets support for both). The chart below (from Wikipedia) lays it all out:

As you can see, unless either Firefox changes its stance or sites like YouTube decide to support a free alternative like Ogg Theora, Firefox fanatics don’t have a clear way to watch HTML5 YouTube videos.

As you can see HTML5  is quite new and not every browser supports it yet or even in the same way. It seems that it’s always a hassle to get everybody on the same page of a standard. However Google Chrome supports both video formats so that’s a safe bet if you want a HTML5 (Video) compliant browser for now.

If you would like to try out HTML5 video experiment on YouTube you can opt-in for it on this page. You either need Google Chrome, Safari, Google Chrome Frame with Internet Explorer or even with Firefox by using a workaround posted about by Lifehacker here . I can also see where Apple might be very intressed in HTML5 in the long run as they don’t support Flash on any of their mobile devices like iPhone and the recently released iPad.

HTML5 goodness doesn’t end with video though. Another example of HTML5 usage is Sketchpad.

17 March 2010 – Update:
Vimeo has a similair beta test running for HTML5 video. You can read more about it here.

20 March 2010 – Update:
Totally forgot to mention that as for now HTML5 video will not be available in fullscreen size.

12 May 2010 – Update:
A friend pointed me towards this incredible find, a great way to access your VNC server with just a HTML5 compliant browser.

The band consists of frontman Kristof, who looks like Val Kilmer besides singing and playing guitar, Jelle on guitar as well, Joan on bass and Ace on drums. All of them suit up while playing live.

A buddy (Thx, Jurgen ) introduced me to their music several months back, he sent me this videoclip.

Another song from their album, Enter the characters, is Justine.

Yesterday they also signed my copy of their album at their gig in Rotown.

Enter the characters is a great debut album and I highly recommend it.