Er staat al veel onzin op het internet, maar er kan altijd meer onzin bij. (Net zoals er altijd iemand bij kan in een al overvolle tram.) Vandaar sinds een paar dagen mijn eigen domein…

www.NogMeerOnzin.nl

Die .tk-dingen zijn leuk, maar dit is leuker en betrouwbaarder. En voor nog geen 15 euro per jaar is het nauwelijks duurder.

Goed… De vorige keer dat ik een weblog bijhield (t/m begin augustus van dit jaar) hield ik het niet zo regelmatig bij, bovendien wist bijna niemand ervan. Dat ga ik nu proberen te veranderen, en we zien wel… Een andere verandering is dat ik nu gewoon in het Nederlands ga schrijven, niet meer in het Engels.

De rest van m’n site is nog grotendeels in het Engels. De meeste pagina’s zal ik de komende tijd vertalen naar Nederlands, maar sommige dingen (zoals het fotoalbum en m’n verhalen) blijven waarschijnlijk in het Engels.

Hopelijk zie ik je hier vaak terug!

Tomorrow morning at 8.45 I’m scheduled to leave for Turkey, to enjoy a week of vacation with two of my best friends. It’ll be much more a lazy, do-nothing vacation than Norway was, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be any less fun! I’ll get back on August 13, so expect a report and some photos after that date.

It’s been more than a month since I posted anything here, and that is partly due to me being on vacation to Norway for three weeks. Another reason was that the site has moved to another host, because Maxi (my old host) could no longer host the site. Of course, the site can still be found at www.lonewolf-lair.tk; you just get redirected to another address.

Anyway, I just put up the photos from Norway, so enjoy them. Also, feel free to leave a message either with the comment option below or on the tagboard!

Wee-hoo! We won yesterday’s baseball game against the second-place team of our competition, pretty much against all expectations. They were pretty pissed off, because this greatly reduces their chances of regaining the top spot. We were very happy, of course, because this was only our second win this year. The game did show what I’ve been saying all year: if we play a solid defense and get in some hits, we can get quite far. Well, yesterday we had a solid defense and we had some good hits, including a three-run double to put the final score at 7-3. (And to think we lost from these guys by 23-5 earlier this year…)

I got to pitch the entire game, which was something I hadn’t done before. (Interestingly, both our wins this year happened when our regular pitcher didn’t pitch.) With four strike-outs, two infield flies caught and two assists to first base while giving up only two earned runs (and one unearned), it clearly worked out :-) Of course, the rest of the team was a great help, making only one error that cost us a run. Two base-running errors by our opponents were also welcome… In the fourth inning with one out and runners on first and second, a fly ball was hit to the short stop. The umpire ruled it an infield fly, meaning the batter is automatically out and play is suspended. However, both runners still tried to advance to the next base, and the one from first was easily tagged out to end the at-bat. Their second error occurred in the final inning. With two outs and a runner on first, the batter hit a line drive right over my head. I didn’t jump high enough to catch it, but I did hit it with my glove. The short stop got to it and threw the ball to first, but his throw was wide. As the runner at second advanced to third, our first baseman retrieved the ball and threw it to third. He was too late to get the runner… if the runner had stayed on the base. He didn’t, so he got tagged out to end the game. Always nice to see the other team help us :-)

As for my batting performance, let’s just put it like this: pitchers don’t hit. I struck out twice, grounded out once (to the pitcher) and flied out once (also to the pitcher). I’ve never been a very good hitter, but this year really sucks. Oh well, maybe I’ll have more luck next time…

Any Metallica fans out there? Last Monday, I was at their concert in the Amsterdam Arena and it was absolutely magnificent. Great music, fine atmosphere and a solid podium act… Everything worked for me there! (Plus it was also nice to see the Arena – which is one of Holland’s largest soccer stadiums – from the inside for the first time.) Thanks to D (or DJ) for the invitation to a wonderful night :-)

Meanwhile, the Netherlands are playing their third group match at the European soccer championships, after drawing their first game (against Germany) and losing their second (against the Czech Republic, after leading 2-0). They’re leading Latvia by 2-0 at the moment, and the Germans and Czechs are currently tied 1-1. If those scores remain the same, we’ll go through to the quarter finals. If Germany wins, we won’t. If they lose and we draw or win, we’ll go through. If they draw and we draw or lose, we won’t. At least, if I got it right. Not that I particularly care, of course. Oh well, there’s the European Championships baseball in a month or so…

[Update (June 23rd, 2004): I'll be damned... We won 3-0 and the Czechs won 2-1, so we're into the quarter finals.]

So… the European Championships soccer started last Saturday. Sixteen countries, amongst which the Netherlands, will compete over the course of three weeks to become European champion. Soccer… The number one sport in most of Europe, but right now it seems more like the number one madness. I’m not a big soccer fan myself, and at times like this, I’m more of an anti-fan. Such stupidity, such overkill, it’s downright ridiculous. And then there’s people saying something like, “But hey, how can it be that bad? Everybody likes soccer, don’t they?” Well, no, not everybody likes soccer.

Tonight, the Netherlands will play against Germany, our biggest rivals in soccer. It’s said to become an exciting match, even an all-time classic. Most likely, both teams will be so nervous that it’ll either be very boring because no one dares do something, or very entertaining because both sides only make mistakes. I don’t care at all. I sure as hell won’t watch.

Fortunately, there’s at least one good thing to all of this… With many people going home early to see the games, there’s less traffic on the road when I go home :-)

Quite a dramatic game of baseball we had last night… After giving up a 6-0 lead we went into the last inning trailing by two runs, 10-8. Despite getting two quick outs, we managed to score two runs to tie the game. In the bottom half of the inning (with me pitching), our opponents got runners on second and third with two outs. I got their next batter to a 2-2 count before he hit a ground ball to the short stop. Of course, that should have been the third out, thus finishing the game in a tie. (At our level, we don’t necessarily continue playing until there’s a winner.) Alas… the throw to first was a bit low and although our first baseman got the ball into his glove, he let it slip out again and with the batter safe at first, the runner from three had scored.

To say I was unhappy with that ending would be a huge understatement. I don’t really mind losing a game, but I do mind losing it this way. I was really pissed off at everyone and everything when I walked off the field, including myself and my own performance. Of course, it didn’t help that I didn’t play very well myself. At bat, I grounded into a fielder’s choice twice (one of which resulted in an out at second, the other of which didn’t), struk out once, and got one walk. That’s 0-for-3, bringing my season average down to 1-for-17. Yeesh… Even my grandma could do better than that, so to say. (On the bright side, I did score each of the three times I got on base.)

Defensively, I played 2 1/3 innings as first baseman and the rest of the game as pitcher. At first, I had one putout (a grounder to second) and two errors (failed to catch a pickoff throw from the pitcher and failed to properly field a grounder). The only thing that went quite well for me yesterday was pitching, with three strike outs, two assists to first base and only two earned runs (plus four unearned, but as the name says, that’s not my fault) through 3 1/3 innings. (On the down side, I was credited with the loss.)

Beware, long entry ahead…

A lot has happened in the last couple of days ago, but I didn’t get around to writing about it until now. First, let’s go back to Wednesday last week, when the annual VCSVU sports day took place. Around 60 undergraduate and graduate students competed in soccer, American football, frisbee and a relay run (or whatever that’s called in English), and they did so in a steady rain for most of the day :-( In fact, the tournament was cut short after lunch, because no one really wanted to continue playing. It was fun nevertheless, but not as much as it would’ve been in good weather. (And ironically, Wednesday was the only day last week with bad weather…)

Last Friday, I and eleven fellow students travelled to the city of Gent in Belgium for a camping weekend, mainly to celebrate the VCSVU’s upcoming eighth lustrum. We had a very good time there, with beautiful weather and a great atmosphere. We didn’t do much on Friday except set ourselves up, eat pancakes and enjoy our freedom, but we didn’t have to do any more. On Saturday, we did a 45-kilometer biking tour around the lovely countryside, and after a barbecue we went out into Gent to visit some pubs. We slept late on Sunday and enjoyed more sunshine as we slowly packed our stuff back up and got ready to go home again.

Yesterday we had another baseball game, and after our first win two weeks ago, this one was a huge loss (22-2). Granted, our opponents this time are one of two likely candidates to win the competion, but still we could have done better than 22-2. Myself, I played two innings at first base and two as pitcher, and I was a substitute for one inning. At first, I had one putout, on a grounder to third. It almost turned into a double play as I threw the ball back to third base to get the runner from second, but the guy was fast enough (or too fast, from my perspective ;-) ). Unfortunately, I also committed an error on a pickoff throw from the pitcher, allowing a runner to score from third base.

I came in to pitch when we were 18-2 behind, and managed to keep that score through the first inning, with one strike out and two ground outs (one to the second baseman and one to myself). The second inning I pitched I allowed four runs to score, one of which was unearned because of an error by the short stop. I struck out another two batters that inning and I almost had an assist. In fact, I would’ve had one if I’d acted just a little quicker… The first batter I faced laid down a bunt that I got to quite fast, but I took too much time throwing the ball so he beat my throw by a step.

At bat, I struck out once and grounded out once (to second), so I’m 1-for-14 now. That’s an awfully low batting average, but right now, it’s so low that I don’t really care anymore. I certainly want to raise it, but I don’t want to put too much pressure onto myself for trying to raise it.

Finally, I should mention the strangest play I’ve probably ever seen in a game I participated in… While I was playing first base there was a fly ball to shallow right field. Both the second baseman and myself moved out to catch it, but I said I’d take it. Unfortunately, the ball sailed back to first a little, and I couldn’t get under it anymore.The ball glanced off my glove and hit my neck, and I thought it fell onto the grass. Well, it didn’t. To my great surprise, the second baseman managed to catch the ball after it glanced off my neck. I don’t know how he did it, but amazingly, he did :-)

And that brings us to today, where the main event of course is the Venus transit. As of about three-and-a-half hours ago, Venus is crossing right in front of the sun, and will continue to do so for another two-and-a-half hours. I got to see it with my own eyes (using a pair of special glasses), and there are numerous webcams recording the event. The picture on the right is from the Mira Public Observatory in Grimbergen, Belgium, and was taken at 10:00:05 local time, about halfway through the transit.

Yay! We won our first baseball game of the season yesterday, 12-5, against another team who had lost all their games so far. Well, now they still have lost all games, and we no longer have. Not surprisingly, we played quite good (certainly compared to previous games), with no costly fielding errors and quite some power at bat. Myself, I got three walks and a little pop up down the first base line, which the pitcher threw to first in time to get me out. That got me really annoyed with myself, because I’m very anxious to get some basehits. My batting average is 1-for-12 now, and that’s much lower than what I’d like. Ironically, that’s also part of the problem: the less I hit, the more I feel pressured to hit, and the worse I perform at bat. It’s something I have to put aside, so I can really focus on the pitches, and hit them. And I know I can hit them, because yesterday we practised a bit in the batting cage, and there I hit line drive after line drive.

Anyway, things were shining again for me on the defensive side. I thought last Monday’s six putouts was a lot, but yesterday I had seven. Four of them were regular ground-outs (two to short, one to third and one to the pitcher) and two of them were from a third strike that wasn’t caught immediately by the catcher. The seventh out was probably the most controversial and undeserved out I’ve ever made. The batter hit a ground ball to the third baseman, who threw the ball high to me. I had to take a few steps back to catch the ball, crossing the base right in front of the batter. He ran across first base (which is allowed), but got inside the foul line in doing so. In what was more a habit picked up many years ago than a conscious attempt to put him out, I tagged him. Much to my surprise, the umpire called him out. Our opponents understandably argued the call, but the umpire didn’t change it. Formally speaking, I suppose he was right, but it wasn’t really in the spirit of the game. Besides, the reason that the guy got inside the foul line was probably because he had to evade me, which made the call even more questionable.

Finally, let me mention two very nice plays we had at the plate. Both times, our short stop threw the ball from shallow outfield, and both times, he nailed a runner trying to score. The second throw in particular was absolutely perfect: the catcher caught the ball and didn’t even have to move his glove to have the runner slide into it. Beautifully done :-)

We almost won our first baseball game of the season last Monday, but we gave our lead away in the last inning :-( Like all previous games, we made too many defensive errors and didn’t have enough batting power to keep the lead. The good thing is, though, that this time we at least had a lead :-)

I got to play first base all game, and I certainly had a lot to do there: three grounders to the pitcher for an out at first, one grounder to the second baseman for out number four, another grounder down the first base line for number five, and a third strike dropped by the catcher and thrown to me for my sixth putout. At bat, I had two walks, a stolen base, and an out at first on a grounder to the short stop. That pulled my batting average down to .091, but my on base average went up to .444. Also, thanks to those six putouts (and no errors on my part), my fielding average increased to .848. That’s still below the .900 (or actually .950) I’d like to have, but that’s something I’m going to work on the rest of the season :-) (Hey, I gotta have some goals, don’t I?)

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about buying a better digital photocamera. The one I have makes nice pictures (just look at those from Berlin, for instance), but it allows virtually no playing around with. What I’d like to have is a camera capable of slower shutter speeds, so I can practice night photography. And talking about photography, I came across a wonderful site yesterday: www.mandolux.com. It’s got dozens of magnificent high-res wallpapers. If you’re looking for something to decorate your desktop, or if you just want to see some beautiful photos, go to Mandolux!

Also, I converted the entire site to PHP. Everything except the menu still looks the same, but maintenance has become much easier for me now, especially when I want to change something in the layout.