RSS Feed“burn; new intense energy drink. Control your energy.”, said the advertisement, and being a big fan of energy drinks, of course I had to try it. Initially I regretted the decision, but now that the “rush” is gone, I feel that I can make a proper judgment.
I’m talking about Burn, an energy shot-drink produced by the Coca-cola company. It comes in a small plastic bottle (c.a. 50ml), which clearly states that an adult person shouldn’t take more than 2 of these drinks per day. I wonder how they measured that; since humans can vary anywhere between 1.5m and 2.5m (roughly). Logically you would assume that the larger person would be able to handle more drugs in his/her system.
Upon opening the bottle, I noted that it smells a bit like strawberries. The taste, however, was far from similar to strawberries. The first thing that sprung to my mind, when trying to find something to compare the flavor with was coughing syrup. Yes, I kid you not; this stuff tastes like coughing syrup. Not what you’d expect from an energy drink. As expected from a shot-drink, it’s a one-chug deal.
I can understand why they called it “Burn”, and why they placed the 2-serving warning on the bottle, because the effect was noticeable quite fast. Normally it takes a while for the taurine and caffeine to kick in, but with this drink it was pretty much instant boost. All in all, it wasn’t that bad; but it’s not even remotely close to the superior flavor of the green Monster energy drink. But I must admit that it's near to impossible to defeat the green Monster.
Imo it’s not worth getting for the taste; there’s much better ones out there. Since it’s a one-chug deal, it’s not really a good thirst quencher either. I probably would try it again sometime, but only if I need an immediate boost.
Lucid Dreaming is the ability to be aware and even manipulate your dreams. A small part of Lucid Dreaming is that you can remember your dreams. While I can recall my dreams, it makes me wonder how much I was aware of last night’s dream, because it was one of those dreams that don’t really make any sense:
- 1. The Tunnel.
It was somewhere in the (near) future, and I was fighting my way through a very long highway tunnel that was crammed with blown up vehicles and soldiers. The soldiers were undoubtedly part of some totalitarian regime, as we may expect them in the (near) future, and they looked a bit like the Combine from the game Half-Life.
Fighting alongside me was a big muscular man called Gundar. He fought brave and valiantly, and managed to kill a lot of soldiers with his weapon of choice. I can’t remember the exact details of his weaponry, but my weapon of choice was pretty clear. My all-time favorite rifle is, of course, the Heckler & Koch G36K, and it is pretty safe to assume that I was using just that.
After a fight that seemed to last forever, Gundar and I emerged from the tunnel in some kind of SUV, which reminds me a little about the new BMW X6, but it was less graceful. After a short drive over some kind of bridge, an army helicopter with a huge turret mounted on its nose started shooting at us. It had a yellow laser beam that was used for aiming and locking on to targets, and a big pulse-canon that shot bright photon bombs that were causing the actual damage.
It fired some pink stuff at our vehicle, and after an explosion we landed upside-down on some rocks in the water next to the bridge. The yellow laser was scanning for us, but I soon found out that the laser couldn’t locate or lock on to us if we were under water. We grabbed some snorkels and began to swim back to the cliffs where the tunnel was. Gundar noted that there was a smaller, partially submerged tunnel next to the highway tunnel. We swam into the tunnel for about a mile, when I noticed some stairs on the side.
- 2. The slave-girl.
As I was walking up the stairs, I suddenly noticed that my hair had gone black, and I was wearing nothing but a black silken Babydoll. Around my throat was wrapped a band of steel of about an inch in thickness. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had suddenly become a Kajira, a Gorean slave girl.
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Anyway, on the top of the stairs there was a kitchen area where many other slaves were preparing meals for some festivity. I was assigned to making desert for the event, as it was said that I had a talent for making the best pudding known to man. After a while, we heard that our Master had arrived, and demanded to taste the food before the event would start. In the courtyard, I presented a big bowl of pudding to my Master and two of his friends. I never saw his face, but he called me Hilda.
- 3. The Master
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I opened my eyes and saw my new slave Hilda gracefully walking back to the house with a big bowl of pudding over her head. The House partially consisted of tunnels in the cliff behind the house. Shortly after all the slaves had left the courtyard, my guests arrived and (apparently) we had a good party. I can’t remember anything of the party itself, except how the party ended. My guests and I were sitting on the rocks near the water. On a rock about 3m into the water, a slave girl was dancing for our entertainment. I remember saying “The night is young, and there are plenty of women; so go get some”, after which many of my guests took a slave girl up to the house.
I took a woman by the hand and started to walk towards the house. Suddenly the woman slapped me in the face, made some rude comments about not being a whore and ran towards the house. Enraged and insulted I followed her, bent on raping her and beating some sense into the girl. When I found her in another courtyard, with an old shed in the middle, she was wielding two daggers and said she would rather die than become a slave.
I drew my sword and told her that she should be careful to what she wished for. I told her she was already a slave, and that she had killed her former master, but still wore his collar. The collar was not visible due to some scarves that were wrapped around her neck and shoulders. With the butt of my sword I smashed against a couple of bricks of the shed, which turned out to be hollow. ”Where did you hide the key?”, I asked her as I was smashing more and more hollow bricks with the butt of my sword. After a while Gundar entered the courtyard and helped me smash hollow bricks so we could find the key to her collar.
After we had finally found the key, I suddenly woke up.
Most people would say that dreams are completely random, yet the famous English neurologist Hughlings Jackson stated that dreams are a side-effect of some sort of maintenance program for your brain. He stated that during the day we gather all kinds of data, and during our sleep the brain processes this data and discards all the data which it does not deem important enough to remember.
Thinking back about the dream I had last night, It makes me rather curious about what kind of memory fragment my brain was trying to process. Please allow me to recap last night's dream:
My earliest memory was that I was attending some kind of meeting with a group of friends. It could have been a company party, but it could also have been a RL meeting with a gaming clan. On the meeting there was some kind of contest, and apparently I had been eliminated in round one. Another attendee of the meeting had also been eliminated from the contest, and we were standing at the side of the event waiting for the contest to end.
The other person was a Japanese guy in the range of 45 – 55 of age. He looked like an average older Japanese guy, with the flawless hairdo and a big pair of glasses on his nose. His name was Hitori Miyagi (of course... it had to be Mr. Miyagi...), and he was a friendly guy. He said it was kind of warm inside, and suggested that we would wait outside where it was cooler. As we stepped outside, I noticed that we were in Brussels, Belgium. I have absolutely no idea why I said that, as none of the street images made any sense to me; but Brussels it was.
As we were standing outside, enjoying the weather, Mr. Miyagi noticed a tiny ice-cream shop across the street and offered to buy ice-cream for us both to make the waiting a bit more pleasant. When we arrived at the opposite side of the street, the tiny ice-cream shop had suddenly become a sort of ice-cream fast-food restaurant with a buffet. Mr. Miyagi and I got in line and I ordered some sort of pancake that was rolled up with ice-cream inside and some fruit salad with whipped cream on the side. Mr. Miyagi’s order was finished way before mine, and so he continued down the buffet as I was waiting.
While waiting I had a friendly conversation with some hooligans that were wrecking part of the restaurant. I don’t remember which soccer team they were supporting; all I know is that their shirts were red and white. After my order had been completed, one of the hooligans commented at the size of the pancake and slapped my butt. I giggled and continued down the buffet. Further down the buffet was the drinks section. I ordered a 0.25 liter bottle of cola, but the lady behind the counter gave me a 1 liter bottle with a little bit of cola in it instead.
The buffet continued and ended up at the entrance of some city park. The person behind the counter told me that the cashier was at the other side of the park. I walked through the park, which was filled with pine trees, and arrived at a small booth where the cashier was located. He told me that Mr. Miyagi had already paid for my order and was waiting for me at the patio. He told me that Mr. Miyagi had reserved a table under the name “PA”. He handed me a tablet-PC with some index program in which I could look up table names. It looked like some “looking for group” interface as can be found in many MMORPG’s.
As I was walking back through the city park with the pine trees with my ordering tray in my hands, some small Volkswagen van passed me by and came to a halt about 200 meters behind me. The sliding door in the rear opened and a very large brown dog jumped out, and came dashing at me. It was most likely some pit-bull, but it must have been the size of a small horse. “Aww crap” was the first tangible expression that came out of my mouth, and I turned towards the dog, hoping that I could thrust the ordering tray between myself and its massive jaws.
As the dog approached me, it jumped up and over my left shoulder, before disappearing into the bushes. Immediately following that, another dog (a white, smaller one) appeared out of the bushes on the other side of the road and followed the brown dog into the bushes. And that is when I suddenly woke up.
Dreams… we have many of them each night but most of them happen without us being aware of them. Recently I’ve been having dreams that I can remember in full, vivid detail. Most of these dreams are related to things that don’t make any sense to me. I’ve decided that from now on I will write down any dream that I can remember, so I can read them back at a later point and see if I can make any sense of them. Let me tell you about the dream that I had last night:
The first thing that I remember about this particular dream is that I was driving in my car with my female partner. I don’t know if she was my wife or my girlfriend, but I do know that she was my mating partner. Her name was Nevelle; she was blonde and had a long ponytail and was a bit chubby (not fat, just chubby). She was a tough but tender girl, the kind you would expect to be working at a gardening center, for example.
We were driving to a small village somewhere in the countryside, but for what reason I do not know. After parking the car we walked down a small paved path in a park, where some families were walking with their kids and babies in strollers. As we were passing by the entrance of some playground or campsite, I’m not exactly sure what it was exactly, Nevelle said she had to pee and asked if we could stop for a bit so she could visit the toilets there.
As Nevelle walked into the toilet building, she was called back by a woman who said that she had to pay first before using the toilets. Apparently Nevelle didn’t have any change on her, because next I remember she was asking a random man that exited the building if he could change a larger coin for smaller ones. The next moment I gave Nevelle a 2 euro coin and eventually she paid about 4 euro before she entered the toilet building. After Nevelle entered the toilet building, a small crowd started to gather outside. More and more families stopped at the building, and several people had to go use the toilets. Strangely enough none of them had to pay to use the toilets.
After a few minutes, a tall slender girl who was crying exited the building. She walked a couple of meters away from the crowd and just stood there looking at her feet. She was a short-haired brunette and wore a short orange silken dress. Her black panties were dropped to her knees, and her bra-strap was slipped over her shoulder. I asked the girl what was wrong, but she said nothing was wrong. As I helped her pull her panties back up, she told me her name was Cheyenne.
When Nevelle came outside she was flabbergasted about how many people had gathered outside, and asked me what happened. I told her nothing had happened and that I had no idea who all these people were and why they were standing there. Nevelle accepted the explanation I gave and we continued to walk through the park. Cheyenne and some other person, of whom I can’t remember any specific details, followed us along the path.
As we cleared the park or forest and saw the village in the distance, Cheyenne and the other person were walking besides me and Nevelle was walking 2 or 3 meters in front of me. Suddenly the weather turned bad pretty much instantly, and it started to rain really hard. Nevelle yelled “we need to find shelter!”, and we all started to run towards the town.
What happened next, I do not know. The next thing I remember is that I was walking across the bicycle-path next to the street where I live right now, with my left arm wrapped around Nevelle and my right arm wrapped around Cheyenne. They both rested their heads on my shoulders and seemed happy and content. As we crossed a small bridge, I suddenly woke up.
It makes me wonder… what is this dream trying to tell me? I know for sure that I am polyamorous, but who are Nevelle and Cheyenne really, and why was Cheyenne crying? All those questions that will probably never be answered… dreams can be weird indeed.
Deep in the forests of Propsteierwald, Germany lays an abandoned camp of the Belgian Army. Since it is only a 10 minute drive from Daniel’s house, we decided to go check it out.
Click here for the full album.
Next on our list was the abandoned train station of Montzen, Belgium. It still amazes me how little graffiti can be found on the place. One would assume that an open train station would attract many vandals and youths, but the place is relatively unharmed.
Click here for the full album.
Personally I’d love to re-visit the sites when the weather has improved a bit. I’m sure that the buildings of Camp Astrid look even cooler with the forest in its full glory.
Driving to work on the highway can be a serious drag, everybody knows that. To reduce the boredom and save on the fuel consumption of my car, I always drive to work through the countryside. There's more stuff to see, and occasionally you notice something cool.
A few weeks ago I suddenly noticed a collapsed roof through the branches of the trees. Normally it would have been impossible to see, with all the leaves in the way; but now that most trees are bald, the roof was only just visible. My curiosity was triggered, and I decided to check it out today. What I found was a pair of abandoned and partially decayed cottages that were squeezed between the trees on the edge of the forest surrounding the Loonse & Drunense Duinen.
Click here for the full album.
Unfortunately, I forgot my tripod in the car, so I will be going back again sometime in the near future to make some more pictures.
Christmas 2009…after having stuffed my face with tasty goods, I went to sleep as a happy person. When I woke up the next day, I wasn’t such a happy person, however; since my right foot was hurting. A quick peek under the blankets made it clear to me that my foot was swollen quite a bit.
On Christmas I bumped my foot quite hard against my bed, and naturally I assumed that this was the problem. After a couple of days of rest, the pain and swelling were gone, and I decided to get it out of my head and continue with living. The next day I visited my therapist, but had the bad luck that I had to walk a bit because the parking place was full. On the way back to the car, my foot started to hurt again, and I cursed myself for walking suck a long distance only a day after my foot had seemingly healed. The next morning I could hardly walk, so I called in sick from work to let my foot heal up again.
When my foot was healed up again, my mom told me that she thought she knew what the problem with my foot was. A bit of research on the interned confirmed it: It was a case of good old-fashioned Gout.
Gout is a medical condition that can be genetically inherited or, in my case, an unhealthy lifestyle. I eat a lot of meat and seafood, and consume a lot of sugar due to the drinking of sodas. All of these can lead to Gout. You could say I had a firm wake-up call to kick my diet into overdrive this year. I definitely don’t want to get Gout again, ouch! 
As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking pictures of abandoned and decaying pictures. While I’ve been exploring these buildings for quite some years, I never took photos of my adventures in the past; with exception of this photo. A few months back I suddenly decided to start taking some photos; at first with my cell phone, later with my Canon PowerShot A620.
On its own the PowerShot A620 is a fine camera, and it has served me well for nearly 5 years. But traveling through moist and dark buildings, I started to notice the limitations of a “point and shoot” camera; even though the PowerShot has plenty of options for custom settings. And since I started to like taking pictures more and more, I decided to start looking for an upgrade.
I had already decided that I wanted to get a “Digital single-lens reflex” camera; more widely known as “DSLR”. After reading a lot of reviews and comparing models, I had found my new camera: the Canon EOS 450D.
The EOS 450D has a very nice 12.2 megapixel resolution, which is more than enough to produce high quality images. The lens that was included with the kit is not –the- best lens, but it does its job quite well. I will probably get a better lens at some point in the future, but for now this lens will do just fine. The camera has a 9-point autofocus system that works remarkably fast. Where the PowerShot took about 1 second to focus, the EOS 450D does it in maybe 0.1 second. I’ve got a bunch of memory cards lying about that I can use with the camera. On a 4 GB card I can store 658 photos in JPG format or 177 in RAW format.
I’ve ordered some accessories from DealExtreme, which should arrive in a week or two. I’ve ordered a nice camera bag, some lens cleaning products and some useful thingies like a water level that you can slide onto the camera and a lens-hood.
It might take some fiddling and practicing before I will have mastered this beast, but I’ve read a lot of tutorials, watched a truckload of how-to videos, and I’ve got quite some experience with photography already; so it won’t be long before I’ll be able to produce some kick-ass pictures 
The results will, of course, be available in the photos section of this website. I can’t wait to get outside and play 
It’s been a while since I decided to rebuild my website from scratch. I’ve been really busy with other stuff, but I finally found some time to make a simple photo album system.
Not all albums are visible yet, which is due to a conversion mistake from the old system. The missing albums are still intact, but the timestamps have been messed up. As soon as I’ve figured out how to fix that, those albums will become visible as well.
No words, just yummie food and a superb atmosphere with co-workers
