The Black Keys

Last Sunday, I went to Amsterdam (The Melkweg venue) with Jan-Pieter to see The Black Keys. A blues-rock band of only two guys, building up a wall of raw guitar and drum sounds.

They sound like their sound is from the fifties, but use quite modern equipment and style of music. Because they are only two persons they are often compared to The White Stripes. Wrongly compared, I might add, since compared to The Black Keys, The White Stripes suck.

The opening act was not even that boring, but the show itself blew everything away. It was sold out, so quite crowded. Funny enough, I managed to meet a guy who I had not seen for about 5 or 6 years. We had a couple of beers and a couple of laughs.

The show itself took about 90 minutes, but they played all the great songs of their albums, some extra long ones and a couple of covers. The sound was really great, and it just being two guys makes it even more impressive.

It's probably this cool, because the band consists only of nerds, and since I am a computer dude, that appeals to me :-)

Minsk

Last week I spent another week in Minsk. For a change, this week was not planned full of boring project evaluations and process discussions.

For a change we actually did some real work there by going through all kinds of functional definitions and front-end code for one of Lectric's big customers.

We are creating a blueprint project on which to base all subsequent sites. I found it very useful to use some of the money made on the project to go to Minsk, mostly because now we have tackled about a month of regular communication and even more of issue fixing because some things were misinterpreted.

Of course, there were some nights of clubbing involved, but that is just something you cannot skip in Belarus. And I can tell you, to be in a discussion for 10 hours per day, about definitions, descriptions and work, after about four hours of sleep is quite hard :)

Bachelor party

Last Saturday my friends threw me a bachelor party, about one month before getting married. I had no idea what we were going to do, but I did guess the date correctly (our masters of ceremony are not really obscure :-) ).

We went to play Highland Games. So an afternoon of throwing heavy stuff around a field was in place. Caber throwing, Cannonball throwing, Horse Spear throwing, Barrel rolling and so on.

We had a really great time, and I finished third. See below for some pictures.

 

We had trouble just lifting some of the things we should throw. Not too many pictures, because the Internet connection from Belarus is not too good...

A busy week...

This week has been a rush all along. Except Monday. Monday was 2nd Whitsunday (we have 2 in the Netherlands). After that everything was over in a couple of minutes, that is how it feels at least.

On Tuesday I worked till about 9.30 to finish a massive functional design for a big customer (not just me, but the team).

Wednesday we went to see CocoRosie in Eindhoven (again). We tried to skip the support acts, since they suck. We still had to see the last 20 minutes of Quinn Walker. Boring as hell, but the CocoRosie show afterwards was very good. A couple of new songs, a solo by the beat boxer and many good songs. Lovely!

Thursday I went out for dinner with a couple of guys from work. Good food and a couple of beers afterwards. We had a very good time.

Yesterday we went to see Angus & Julia Stone in Amsterdam. That was the highlight of the week. It was a short but very good show. Even the support act was quite all right.

They played many songs that I more or less know by heart. A couple of new and unreleased songs too. Really good. It was fun to watch too, since they tend to be a bit too innocent / naive in their behavior apparently. Nice crowd too, not too busy.

Today our masters of ceremony (for the wedding) are visiting to talk everything through a final time. Tomorrow is day of rest and barbeque at the butcher where Anneke used to work. After that another week in Minsk, Belarus.

When I get home I get married in less than 20 days, so those two weeks will, most likely, be incredibly busy too. At work as well as at home.

PC broke down

Yesterday my computer broke down. At some point during the afternoon all systems crashed and nothing worked anymore. Rebooting doesn't work either. Nothing appears on screen most of the time, and some times it just shows the windows loading screen before it crashes again.

Most likely causes: Motherboard, Internal memory, or the video adapter. Replacement parts: difficult. The system is already four years old which means most parts are hard to get. The memory is free checking, since it is unlikely that all bits have broken at the same time, I can just perform a little trial-and-error testing. The video adapter is only about 40 bucks to replace, but still cash I don't want to spend if it is not necessary.

The main board is a different situation. Hard to know what you have in the first place. Replacing is something I can likely do myself, but I have almost no relevant experience in that. Apart from that I have to find one that fits my machine and other hardware...

I hope to find some other solution, since I have been looking for a new laptop instead of a big ass home computer anyway. Might have to speed that up now. The laptop from work solves the first line of problems, but downloading films is a different case :-)

I hope to be able to get my hands on a Dell XPS system. They are awesome and have great upgrade possibilities...

Straf in Den Bosch

Yesterday we went to the Album Release Gig of Straf, a local band from Den Bosch. They play Dutch folk music and I have seen them a couple of times in bars and local venues.

Yesterday their first full album was released and of course, I had to be there. It was a good show with a last minute support act, which was actually very good. One of the first times in my life I saw a good support act. Nathalie Matteau from Canada was opening for them.

In the end I bought their CD, and an EP of the support act. Quite nice. Just to have a couple of beers with friends is nice enough, live music kicks ass and those things combined are one of the best activities I can imagine... They should pour better whiskies in regular bars to improve even more...

CocoRosie in Amsterdam

Last Tuesday CocoRosie played in Amsterdam in the Concertgebouw. This venue is always used for Opera, Classical music and things in that genre. To get more younger people interested they did a kind of a combined show.

I expected it to be a CocoRosie show with an orchestra to back them up. This was not the case. On some songs this happened, but mostly CocoRosie played a couple of songs and then the orchestra played some pieces. I really liked it, although I think I need some more getting used to the orchestra kind of music.

The songs they did together (including one specially written for this show) were really kick ass. The fragile music and voices of the Cassady sisters compared to the classical violence of the orchestra really worked out well.

They show will be available as a webcast on fabchannel.com from May 6th.