Internal Dialogue

So, for those of you that don’t understand Dutch: the letter below says that the construction company will soon start to refurbish the entrance to our apartment block. They’ve actually started already, although by started I mean that they’ve just demolished a few things.

They also moved the mailboxes to a temporary place. The girl who lives across the hall from me lost her mailbox key, and asked for a screwdriver so she could try and pry it open. Otherwise she had to pay 80 euros for a new lock, which I agreed it a little too much. I told her that we would soon get new mailboxes anyway, so it didn’t really matter if her current one was demolished. After a few minutes I went downstairs to lend her a hand, and breaking the thing open turned out to be a lot more difficult than I imagined. Granted, I didn’t have the right tools for the job, but we expected it to open very quickly. Unfortunately it was much stronger, and even though it was getting seriously deformed, the lock was pretty strong. Just when I was about to give up I tried the other side (the hinges), and in just 30 seconds it was open. Turns out you the lock is pretty useless if you can just force out the hinges on the other side pretty easily.

Other things: I started working on a technical manual for the system I partly developed during my internship (and later adjusted). Hopefully this will be the last freelance job for them, since I don’t really wish to be their first line of support anymore. Apparently they outsource some of their technical staff to Eastern Europe, so I’m writing the manual in English. Not that I mind, though. Unfortunately the system was written with Dutch variables, comments and database field names, so it probably won’t be very easy for third parties to understand how everything works. But if they know what they’re doing, and read my upcoming technical well, it shouldn’t be too difficult for them to familiarize themselves with the system.

Someone also recently asked me why I’m not pursuing my photography more aggressively. I wanted to write a separate blog about it, but there’s actually not much to say. I really do like photography, but by attention span comes and goes. There are times that I’m really into it and want to explore and experiment, but there are times that I just don’t feel like it. This is partly because I don’t know what I want: do I really want to do something with photography later on, or should it remain a on again off again hobby? The reason I don’t go on forums and ask people for pointers is because I really don’t think my photos are that good, because I don’t have a clear genre I like, and because I think I already know what the comments will be. Sometimes I wish I was better, and that I would one day pursue a career in it. But I don’t think that’s very realistic, and I can’t really see it happening.

And finally: I’ve been playing a lot of GTA IV this past few week, both single player as well as multiplayer with a few friends. I find the free mode multiplayer is particularly fun. I can’t really point out what it is exactly, but it’s just very enjoyable to drive around together and create chaos. I guess it’s just the fact that the game is supposed to feel realistic, but that in some ways it’s totally not. The things that you can do are just so ridiculous that it’s funny. Graphically the game is also very good, and it amazes me that the engine keeps the game fluent while rendering such a huge environment.