Klaas

Filezilla is your friend

Actor: - Actress: - Movie: crouching tiger, hidden dragon (well, the last one i've seen) Color: blue, red, green Band: too many actually. I like experimental or folky stuff, as long as it isn't mainstream and commercial Book: haven't read a novel for a while. Authors I like are Robert Jordan, Louis Paul Boon, Paul Mennes, Ben Elton, etc. I also like anything about history, design, art, linux or programming. Food: pizza and chinese food

During the end of june it was extremely hot here (to our standards), from 35-38C. Now it's much less hot, yesterday only 15C though temperatures are rising again to around 20. It did rain a lot last week, a neighbour province was recognised as "disaster area" because many regions there were flooded. I live just at the border and behind our house there's a swamp. If it rains that much it becomes a small lake, always impressive to see

Thanks for the tips Eken Well I'll definatly do those churches and the catacombs you recommended, sounds very interesting

Cool Well I've been in Rome already so I've seen most of the known areas. My gf has never been there though, so I'll have to show her everything first. But since I'm staying in Rome for 8 days I'm planning to do some of the lesser known things, but no idea what though. Any suggestions? What impressed me most was St. Peters. Really insane how huge it is, simply overwhelming. Oh, and all those nice and cheap restaurants; I'm saving up much dough to make this trip a culinary feast

I was surfing Google maps a bit and I'm amazed what level of detail there is for the satellite pics of certain cities. Since I'm going to Rome in August I present you some pics of it here (do another zoom+ for best detail): Old Rome (Coloseum and forum romanum): http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&ll=41.8...10664&t=k&hl=en Pantheon: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&ll=41.8...10664&t=k&hl=en Vatican: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&ll=41.9...10664&t=k&hl=en Circus Maximus: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=rome&ll=41.8...10664&t=k&hl=en

Lol, well I would probably make a donation Haven't received anything yet though so I guess that means I'm not accepted :/

I'm waiting for tomorrow (today for the Americans) to receive an acceptance/rejection email from Google's Summer of Code

The main reason why this is an interesting and peaceful forum is because we aren't so big imo, once we get larger and have about 500 active members it certainly won't be so peaceful anymore. I'm moderating a forum with 6800 members, the largest political one in Belgium (politics.be), and it certainly isn't easy. If I would be as "harsh" as the mods are here it would be a full time job moderating those forums (and we have a team of 15 mods). I'm not saying we're too harsh here though, I like posting here much more than at politics.be because people don't get so angry easily here or don't make fun of you or insult you. At politics.be people are really constantly making racist remarks, calling others fascists for no reason, make fun of others, etc. But we don't do anything about that as a moderator since it would be too much work and because we garantee the right of free speech (so racism is allowed). The only thing we do is when someone insults people personally and the victim asks us to remove the insult or when someone is breaking the law (calling for violence, negationism, revisionism, slander, giving out private info of others, etc.). Anyway, what I want to say is that this shouldn't become a huge forum because it would certainly mean much less quality. But when 0ad is released I suppose it will get much bigger, nothing you can do about that and it's good PR for the game. But at politics.be we have another forum (offsite) for the more serious and "established" members, which is a lot smaller. Might be an idea for the future

Yeah, I guess the looks of them scare us (atleast me) most. I've also heard that some of those bird spiders aren't poisonous or very moderatly, but still, they look scary

Lol me neither. When I was younger I've been to a "spider demonstration" where they showed really big spiders (we call them bird spiders). Well it was cool watching them, but taking them in my hand was a step too far That last one in those pics looks pretty nasty, we Europeans are certainly not used to such beasts. Well actually we aren't used to anything, the only really dangerous animals we have here (Belgium) are giant wasps but you don't see them often (only saw three of them in my whole life). My uncle was once stabbed by one, had to go to hospital for a few weeks.

Lol, well we Europeans aren't really used to large spiders, 1-2cm is really big here . I think large house spiders are probably the largest ones around here, haven't seen anything bigger than that. We once had a spider twice as big though but it was in a bag of special soil for flowers, so probably it travelled with it.

Pissebed = woodlouse (handy those firefox/interglot dictionaries ) Yeah we have lots of them too here but not in our house. The name "pissebed" (pee bed ) is because they are usually found in sourish and/or moist places. So if you pee in your bed and don't clean it up you can expect them to pay you a visit Yeah, don't have wire netting in front of my window, might be handy to keep them out. Thanks for the idea

Well the site is saying that hobo spider bites are as bad as those of the brown recluse :/ But I've been looking a bit further and it seems that the European hobo spider isn't really poisonous

Nice pic desmond I think I found which one it is: http://www.hobospider.com/info/index.html First I was thinking that it's a large domestic house spider but on that site they tell you can easily find hobo spiders in bath tubs because they're very bad climbers (can't get out). It seems they are poisonous though, and quite dangerous at that in some cases. My girlfriend has such a spider bite once and still has a big scar of it, probably by one of these things. Well fortunatly I'm not staying too long anymore in this dorm with those nasty spiders. We even have rats in the cellar :/

Yesterday I found a big spider in my shower, those typical "house spiders" you find here in Europe (brown, a bit hairy, +/- 1-2 cm big). I killed it and threw it away. Funny thing is that today a spider nearly looking exactly the same was sitting on the exact same spot in my shower. Killed this one too and looked around where they might come from but I only found two spider webs each with one smaller spider (those with a very small body but long legs). Well I was wondering if I'm overlooking something, where these things might be hiding and how to prevent them coming back. It's very hot since a few days, much hotter than usual and my window is always open in the bathroom, so they might come through there. I'm not really scared of them but don't like having physical contact while showering with those big ones

Nope, it's not in a town, but in a quite remote region. I'll ask them when I'm home Maybe that's because you guys were part of Sweden once, just like the Flemish in Belgium? Well, it's the same thing with the Flemings and Walloons here and with the Flemish and the Dutch. We like to make jokes about the Dutch and vice versa. There are two very common stereotypes: the Dutch are very very greedy and they always pee against the cathedral in Antwerp . Living in Antwerp I can assure you the last one is true, those drunk Dutch always have to pee against it, even though there are toilets close to it. But in the end the Flemings and the Dutch are good friends, especially since we're the only Dutch-speaking countries in Europe. With the Walloons it's quite different sadly, there isn't too much friendship there for some people. A friend of mine who also joked about me that I'm a regionalist studied in Brussels last year, his first real contact with the Walloons and francophones in Belgium. He isn't joking anymore after he read the francophone newspapers there and what they were saying about the Flemings. It's not joking anymore but plain hate speech. Sadly many Flemings are doing the same thing, telling that Walloons are all lazy, don't want to work, parasites, etc. So my advice is: don't get carried away with these stupid nationalist tensions. Just don't take part into it and when someone of the other nation tries to make a fool of you just ignore it. By visiting Brussels and Wallonia a lot I've experienced it enough that I heard people whispering flamin (foul Fleming) behind me, I just learned to ignore it. And certainly don't make the mistake that because one person of the other nation insults you they are all like that. It's just a rediculous stereotype, nothing more, nothing less. Btw if I go to Wallonia it also looks aweful compared to Flanders, especially in the Borinage region (where the cole mines were). But that doesn't mean every part of Wallonia is ugly. I've seen regions and towns that are much more beautiful than anything you'll find in Flanders. So it's just a matter of visiting it often and trying to go to more places than just one or two.

And where I'm staying during the week there are actually no trees (city center), so that's pretty ugly imo :/

My parents are going to Norway in July. About 300km north of Oslo, forgot the name though.

Well, so many that I haven't counted them yet. Around our house alone probably around 50, and on our property three times that amount.

Yeah, the thing is that trucks in the EU can only be x amount of length, so the trucks usually have a flat front with the engine under the passenger area. But they're about to change that law because flat-nose trucks are more dangerous then the American trucks. Personally I find that VW's suck big time My gf's dad has one (VW Golf) and I just hate driving that thing. Maybe it's just because it's not a diesel or doesn't have servo-steering, but it really isn't easy driving that thing in a hilly area.

Lol, my gf's sister went to Thailand too. She went in an excellent period, the end of the December 2004, just when the tsunami occured :/ (fortunatly she was in the north when in happened)

Yeah, I'll do that Adam. Well, maybe I'll just google a bit for it, no need to write up a long post if you don't feel like it

Lol, we're champions in going off topic; from countries to beer Yep, Grolsch is much better than Heineken. I guess the difference between Belgian and other beers is that we mainly aim on local quality beers while others aim on export of more "industrial" beers. It's sad sometimes, if I want to drink a good beer on holiday abroad you either get yellow water like Heineken or have to pay three times as much as in Belgium for a Belgian beer (if you find a bar selling it). Only in Czech they seem to have good beer because they also still brew local ones. Oh, a month ago we had some people from Switserland sleeping over for a weekend. The last night of their stay we organized a big barbecue and sold the local beer afterwards. Seems like they liked it, almost every one of them bought a few bottles

Hoegaarden is even a town in Flanders