My Disappointment is Real

I am disappointed. Disappointed at myself. After a little over 3 years of cold turkey, I have rejoined Facebook. It was triggered by my previous blog entry, when I figured it would probably be wise to try and find those people using what is still the biggest social network for people beyond adolescence.

As it turned out, my old username was still available so nothing much changed. But I am only going to use it to find and communicate with people. No updates, no pictures of my food, no product likes and shit. Just a search tool to get in touch with people. Besides, Firefox has a Facebook container plug-in now, so I cannot be tracked all over the place except on the Messenger, Facebook and Instagram sites.

I noticed Facebook had changed quite a bit since April 2018, visually, but it did weirdly feel like a warm embrace. I recognise it for what it was – the warm feeling of something you’ve been addicted to. Now I just need to stay vigilant so it will not again overwhelm me.

Here’s hoping…

Wanted Dead or Alive (Preferably Alive) – I need to find these People plz

I am looking for a bunch of people. I am hoping you, dear visitor, will be able to help me get in touch with any of the following folks (it’s quite a list, so I hope you’ll bear with me)…

PEOPLE FROM THE FORMER/CURRENT ATARI ST/FALCON SCENE

I am working on a 42nd Anniversary Edition of my disk magazine ST NEWS. I am looking for a few people who were essential to the world of the Atari ST and/or Atari Falcon home computers, as well as some who worked on/for ST NEWS with me who I have lost touch with. The 42 Anniversary Edition will be out in July 2028, so I have time.

– Jesus Cea Avion, Spain (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Lucas v/d Berg, Netherlands (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990, lived in Nijmegen)
– Christoph Berner, Switzerland (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Federico Bicini, Italy (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Claus Brod, Germany (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990, mass storage specialist)
– Rufus C. Camphausen, Netherlands (active in the Atari ST scene around 1987, was involved with Canopus Esoteric Research) PASSED AWAY 20 May 2013 🙁
– Math Claessens, Netherlands (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990, used to live in de Wagenaarstraat in Geleen)
– Leif Einar Claus (from Norway)
– Richard Clarkson, Australia (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Richard Decowski (ran ST X-Press), USA (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Les Ellingham (former Page 6 editor), UK (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990) FOUND
– Casper Falkenberg, Denmark (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Jacob Geensen (born 13 May 1939, who lived in Reeuwijk around 1990 and who, or whose son, was active in the Atari ST scene selling “F.A.S.T.E.R.” disk magazine)
– Paul Glover (used to run the FaST Club), UK (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Dan Hollis, USA (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Bryan Kennerley, UK (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990) FOUND
– André Lafreniere (ran F.A.S.T.E.R. disk magazine), Canada (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Ray Lovell (used to run W.A.C.E.), New Zealand (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– David Meile (ran MAST Newsdisk), USA (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Frank Ostrowski (programmer of GfA Basic) – PASSED AWAY IN 2011 🙁 (though I am still looking for people who know more about him)
– Jordi Maria Pau, Spain (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
Piper, UK (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990, never knew his real name, lived in Blackheath, but had also lived in the Netherlands and was involved with Stichting STEM there)
Les Player, who I think had something to do with GfA Systemtechnik in Düsseldorf – PASSED AWAY 🙁
– Petar Soldo, South Africa (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Shiraz Shivji, USA (designer of the Atari ST and Commodore 64, worked at Packard Bell afterwards, among others)
– Roy Stead, UK (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990) – PASSED AWAY IN THE EARLY 2000s 🙁
– Guido Stumpe, Germany (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990) FOUND
– João Carlos V. Teixeira, Portugal (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– Krzysztof Wroblewski, Poland (active in the Atari ST scene around 1990)
– a person who knows about ST/Falcon modding – FOUND Exxos!

PEOPLE WHO ARE RELATED TO ME

Early 2021, triggered by results of my DNA test coming in, I became more interested in finding out about my direct ancestors. Since my mother’s father is unknown, I’d like to get in touch with some people who are related around that side of the family but that I have never been in touch with. I think my mother was too ashamed about her past when she was still alive. The below people are mostly half-siblings of hers.

– Digna Johanna de Fouw (born 16 September 1955, Kruiningen)
– Julia Maria de Fouw (born 30 April 1959, Kruiningen)
– Jacomina Johanna Oppeneer (born 29 September 1937)
– Someone who has researched an Oppeneer or Lavooij family tree (Dutch families primarily from the province of Zeeland)

PEOPLE WHO HAD TO DO WITH THE METAL BANDS FIRST ATTACK, DÉTENTE, FEAR OF GOD, OR FOG

I am the webmaster of the official Fear of God/Détente/Dawn Crosby site. To lift the content of that site to the next level, I need to contact quite a few people who were involved with those bands, or Dawn Crosby. I’d like to pick their brains about their time in the band, or their memories of working with Dawn.

– Ann Boleyn (vocals in Détente and Hellion)
– Dennis Butler (drums in Détente)
Greg Cekalovich (guitar in Détente) FOUND
– John Childs (vocals in Fog)
Blair Darby (bass in Fear of God) FOUND
– Frank Dimauro (guitar in Fear of God)
– Brendan Etter (drums in Fear of God)
Rob Farr (bass in Détente) PASSED AWAY 9 MAY 2021 🙁
– Bruce Greig (bass in Fear of God)
– Rick Hartwell (bass in Détente)
Bill Hayden (guitar in Fear of God) FOUND
– Rob Hunter (drums in Détente)
– Chris Kalandras (bass in Fear of God)
– Jason Levin (bass in Fear of God)
– Tony Mallory (guitar, keyboards in Fog and Chapelblaque)
– Scott McDaniel (guitar in Allies)
Rob Michael (bass in Fear of God) FOUND
Kevin “Bl00d” Nunn (the webmaster of the original Fear of God site until late 1998) FOUND
– Roberta Tempelman-Peterson (record company exec at Warner Brothers in 1990)
Caleb Quinn (guitar in Détente)  FOUND
– Fred Rascon (guitar in Détente)
– George Robb (guitar in Détente)
– Ross Robinson (guitar in Détente, producer of various Nu Metal bands – I know he’s on Twitter but he doesn’t respond there)
– Dave Smadbeck (keyboards in Fear of God)
– Chuck Stadulis (drums in Détente)
– Steve Stamato (bass in Détente)
– Dana Strum (producer in Détente)
Douglas J. Sylvia (drums in Fear of God) FOUND
– Sport Thompson (bassin Allies)
– Jim Tutone (guitar in Détente)
– John “Sparky” Voyles (guitar in Fear of God
– Andy Wallace (producer for Fear of God around 1990)
– Generally anyone involved with First Attack
– Generally anyone who can tell the world anything about Majesty (the band Dawn Crosby was involved in, not the band before Dream Theater)

MISCELLANEOUS

There are a few people I’d like to get in touch with who have nothing to do with the above.

– Hans van der Linden (lived in the Uiverlaan, Helmond, around 1987)
– Bastiaan Plantinga (lived in Utrecht in the 2010s, born in 1963, son of Gerrit Plantinga, seems to have vanished off the face of the earth)

If you know any of these, please contact me. Oh, and I am also looking for a bunch of things :-). Thanks for your time!

Last updated 10 September 2023

AirTag App Idea

So I got myself a couple of these new Apple AirTags. They allow you to keep track of your keys, your bike, your car, etc. The “FindMy” app allows you to see where they are…but that is where it stops.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you had an app that could not just show you where your airtag is, but also where it’s been? You could send the tag around the world and keep track of it, see which spots it has been on, with proper map integration. And maybe even allow for communication to whoever finds/gets the AirTag so that it can be sent back (with proper reimbursement), or sent to the next address on its path? Or that the tag owner would get notifications when a specific spot is “visited” (like the same city as the Taj Mahal, or the continent of Antarctica, or near the Great Wall of China, or basically any other set of locations worthwhile according to what the user wants).
I don’t know the exact protocol used with these AirTags. I do think there is some sort of possibility of communication with the finder (at least a notification, which may or may not have standard text). And it’s obvious there is always some chance of losing the tag. But I feel this is an app idea worth investing some brainstorm time in…and then for it to be concocted by someone who can actually make iPhone apps 😉

DNA & Genealogy

In June 2016 I decided to partake in the Genographic Project, which was where National Geographic organised a global, affordable and appealing way to have your DNA analysed, to give insight into your ethnic background. Ostensibly, it was set up to show people how we’re all much more related than you’d think (perhaps most shockingy for those who consider themselves of a pure race). All you had to do was collect some saliva and mail it off to be processed, after which you’d find out where you fit on the huge patchwork quilt of human ethnicity.
My urge was mostly triggered by regular curiosity, but also because one of my grandparents (my late mother’s father) is unknown. My maternal grandma had been, let’s so, fruitful with several partners before she got legitimately married. My mother used to say her biological father was probably a German soldier (her having been conceived in World War II), but there was no telling whether that was actually true. She had distanced herself from that past, at any rate, by legally changing her surname from her biological mother’s to her adopting family’s the moment she became of age.
I had always known about these circumstances, roughly, except for the actual dates and later marriage, which my dad found out about when he did family tree research around the turn of the century. In fact, my mother turned out to have had two half-siblings from before her mother’s marriage, plus two more that were conceived in wedlock. Except for one of her pre-marital half-siblings, whom I had known as an uncle, I did (and do) not know where the others (who happen to be aunts) live. My dad said that my maternal grandma’s pre-marriage history was also unknown (and, indeed, upon my dad revealing it, initially denied) by her grandchildren.

Anyway, back to the ethnicities revealed by my DNA results, which I received after a few months:

55% Scandinavia
20% Southern Europe
12% Western and Central Europe
7% Great Britain and Ireland
6% Eastern Europe
1.1% Neanderthal

Because I had primarily known about my family being from the Dutch province of North Brabant (granted, that’s mostly from the Karsmakers side), I was a bit surprised by the analysis. Had my mother’s genes instilled a lot of Scandinavian heritage? I didn’t know. I also didn’t really know how to interpret the results, so my initial enthusiasm petered away. I got back to my daily life and didn’t heed the DNA stuff much. Somewhere in 2019, National Geographics discontinued their Genographic Project, too.

Early this year I stumbled onto another site, 23andme.com, where you could order DNA collection kits as well. More or less on a whim, I ordered three (one to use for myself as a re-start, one for my wife, and one for her son – my stepson). By the end of March I received the results again. They were a little different, and perhaps more logical considering the German soldier anecdote:

85,6% French & German (which for some reason includes Belgium and the Netherlands)
12,3% Great Britain and Ireland
0,5% Scandinavian
1,6% broadly Northwestern Europe
<2% Neanderthal

Part of the results on 23andme.com also showed so-called “DNA Relatives”, i.e. people with whom you have a certain part of your genetic material in common. The closest  turned out to be a 3rd cousin, which is a person with whom I very likely have 2nd great-grandparents in common (see picture).

Someone on 23andme.com advised me to check out a pretty good site to build your family tree, ancestry.com. I started converting some of my father’s family tree research (for which he had used a powerful but not very visual Dutch program called Aldfaer). This was rather a lot of work, initially, especially because I discovered that his research had been woefully Karsmakers-name-centric and unfortunately riddled with typos and even wrongly typed dates. After having added one or two generations to my family tree on the site, though, I noticed that ancestry.com started giving me Ancestry Hints, which are suggestions on who might be related to a person you have already added to your family tree. The algorithm is quite reliable, as it retrieves information from their vast database that has (parts of) names and specific dates in common with people in your tree. They take this information from a large variety of reputable (indeed, often official) online genealogical sources, as well as other ancestry.com member family trees. In fact, their database is so enormous that you end up with more hints than you have time to handle (to wit, my current tree has 2363 people with nearly 5000 of these hints I should still check out). And every person you add gives you more new hints.
To give you an indication on how user-friendly ancestry.com is: I started on April 13 and today, May 8, I have added the abovementioned number of people, and managed to find all my direct ancestors that ancestry.com knew about.

Like I explained above, I only know 3 of my grandparents. This means I have 6 potentially known great-grandparents, 12 2nd great-grandparents, 24 3rd great-grandparents, 48 4th great-grandparents, and so on and so forth. Using the ancestry.com site, I even managed to find 8 (of my possible 98,304 😉 15th great-grandparents, dating back to the second half of the 15th century. I found all potentially known 12 2nd great-grandparents, which provided me with the information I needed to contact that 3rd cousin I found on 23andme.com.

A total of 2 parents (50% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 2 (100%)
A total of 3 grandparents (25% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 3 (100%)
A total of 6 great-grandparents (12,5% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 6 (100%)
A total of 12 2nd great-grandparents (6,25% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 12 (100%)
A total of 20 3rd great-grandparents (3,13% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 24 (83%)
A total of 29 4th great-grandparents (1,56% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 48 (60%)
A total of 50 5th great-grandparents (0,78% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 96 (52%)
A total of 71 6th great-grandparents (0,39% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 192 (37%)
A total of 89 7th great-grandparents (0,20% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 384 (23%)
A total of 88 8th great-grandparents (0,10% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 768 (11.5%)
A total of 69 9th great-grandparents (0,05% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 1536 (4.5%)
A total of 64 10th great-grandparents (0,02% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 3072 (2%)
A total of 58 11th great-grandparents (0,01% DNA in common) were found of a possible maximum of 6144 (1%)
A total of 54 12th great-grandparents were found of a possible maximum of 12288 (0.44%)
A total of 43 13th great-grandparents were found of a possible maximum of 24576 (0.17%)
A total of 30 14th great-grandparents were found of a possible maximum of 49152 (0.06%)
A total of 8 15th great-grandparents were found of a possible maximum of 98304 (0.01%)

Except for these arguably sterile statistics, ancestry.com also allows you to unearth information of a non-genealogical type. I found out, for example, that one of my granduncles was put to work in Germany during World War II (because ancestry.com has access to the files the Germans kept about these things), and that several of my more distant ancestors (10th great-grandparents and up) are from Belgium, Denmark or, indeed, Norway. I have the feeling that I am only just at the beginning of this road of discovery!

For those of you who have reason to find out whether they are related to me (and, if so, from whom exactly), here’s the Excel file with my direct ancestors as far as I know them: Direct Ancestors.
For those who want to actually compare their DNA with other people’s, or have it analysed in a variety of ways, you can upload your raw DNA data to Gedmatch (if you want to compare it to mine, my kit number is UY9604721). The Gedmatch site will accept raw DNA data exports from 23andme.com as well as other popular DNA analysis providers. It will also allow you to do much more DNA-related exploration that has so far turned out to be too complicated for me to explore.
The ancestry.com site also offers their own DNA analysis kit, but they unfortunately do not allow for raw third-party DNA data to be imported. Also, in case you want access to their whole Ancestry Hints database when building your family tree, you need to pay a fee.

Avalanche Magazine

The other day I was looking through some old boxes. It was during this excavation of semi-ancient memorabilia that I found a bunch of old “Avalanche” magazines. This time I did not merely put them back in the box, but decided to scan them.

“Avalanche” was a short-lived pseudo-underground heavy metal magazine,  published  in the Netherlands but written in English. It was started in 1993 by brothers Jesse and Marijn Vermunt, together with some of their friends. I don’t remember how I got in touch with it exactly, but I was part of the writing staff from June 1994 to March 1995. My first contribution was for their first “regular” issue (1994 Issue 1), a Paradise Lost interview I had done together with a friend of mine, Erwin Jorksveld. It later gave me some great opportunities to meet all kinds of musicians, and it got me some real breaks, like visiting the Wâldrock festival to interview Gwar and Obituary, meeting Yngwie Malmsteen and, a few years later, meeting Venom. With subsequent issues I did more interviews and reviews, and was also in charge of spell checking. In the end I got rightfully chucked out because I arrogantly criticised some fellow writers’ English and journalistic abilities in a most unprofessional way. I also disagreed with the editor about him not wanting to use my Dream Theater interview because the band was too soft for the target audience. Well, I guess he had a point ;-).
The magazine sadly folded around the summer of 1995, after one promo and 4 regular issues. The final one was a real corker, very professional, on glossy paper and all. “Avalanche” could really have gone places.

Below you will find complete PDF scans of all issues…

Avalanche Magazine 1993 (promo)
Avalanche Magazine 1994 (issue 1)
Avalanche Magazine 1994 (issue 2)
Avalanche Magazine 1995 (issue 1)
Avalanche Magazine 1995 (issue 2)

P.S. When I Googled “Avalanche Magazine” I discovered that there was another magazine of the same name – an art magazine published by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp of which 13 issues were released between 1970 and 1976 (source: Wikipedia). Needless to say, that is an entirely different magazine.

2020 Sucked Argentinosaurus Thingy

Of course, 2020 had to come around and become the worst of my 53 years so far. I guess to anyone who’s spent their lives in peace time, it’s been the worst year ever.

As 2019 morphed into 2020, the whole Covid-19 scare seemed as far off as SARS and MERS had been – a thing of distant lands, a little mysterious and definitely, doubtlessly, safely remote. I’d seen footage of Asian people with mouth masks for years, but I have to admit that didn’t vex me much. News reports mentioned Covid practically daily, but I wasn’t worried at all, not in my Western European privileged bubble. The world was a big place, and this was SEP – Somebody Else’s Problem. I was more affected by the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart on 7 January, which I managed to cope with by belatedly discovering and playing “Guitar Hero: Metallica”.

My little self-centered universe did not begin to be impinged upon until February.

We got the first Dutch Covid cases. In the traditionally Catholic south, the annual Carnival festivities caused a huge outbreak. The rest of the country was treated to visuals of ICs filled to the gills with patients, and everyone was strongly advised not to travel to the Southern province of Noord Brabant. I couldn’t visit my father, who had been in a nursing home there for the past three years. The rest of the country was beginning to worry, fueled by doom scenarious involving a shortage of respirators and all the country’s ICs filling up. I was beginning to worry, too, because I had quite a hand full of cards when it came to reasons to be in the “at risk” group of people: male, overweight, older, and having bronchitis.
Closer to home, an important educational school site I’d made a year or two earlier broke because of an update to PHP 7.2. Because I’d basically cobbled together other people’s stuff (including the rather essential login system), it was utterly beyond my skills to fix quickly. Hundreds of students needed it to check their reading skills and prepare for their central exams. I needed to arrange a separate virtual server that could run PHP 5.x to keep that site going, and hope to find time (and knowledge) to fix stuff when I had the time. That, and Covid looming ever close, caused quite a few sleepless nights.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte announced a set of Corona restrictions on 12 March. People went berserk on 13 March, madly hoarding toilet paper, pasta, canned vegetables and rice. On 15 March, secondary schools were closed by the government.
These restrictions and closures were, to be honest, quite exciting initially. The weather was beautiful, so my wife and I cycled 10-20 km daily. I had my first sunburn within a week. I was barely able to teach, because there was no fixed schedule yet, with a lack of structure. After about two weeks, this changed. Lessons were done using Microsoft Teams, and my wife (who works at another school, half an hour away) used Zoom. Teachers all over the Netherlands virtually instantly transformed from hesitant n00bs into fairly adroit digital professionals. Teachers were also considered “essential”, in the same category as care workers among others. It was nice to feel appreciated for a change.
Outside school hours we still cycled a lot – constantly irritated by the speed cyclists who seemed to have come out from under every rock – and wondered at how silent the city centre was, with shops closed, restaurant terrace furniture piled together on the premises, traffic information boards reading “Together Against Corona”, there being virtually no traffic on the roads, the large parking square in front of my house just about empty, no incessant flow of buses full of tourists from far-flung countries. It was the kind of atmosphere the word “eerie” was coined for. No shaking hands, always avoiding being close to others in the supermarket and on the streets. The weather continued to be awesomely sunny for weeks on end, but the mixture of excitement and worry was palpable.
The excitement began to abate as we began to realise we were not going to go on any holidays up to autumn at least, no concerts, no theatrical performances, no cinema, no festivals, no eating out in restaurants…and no final school exams either(!). And the excitement began to lessen even quicker when my wife and I discovered that it’s awfully inconvenient having to teach via video chat when you’re in the same room simultaneously. Sometimes we even had social get-togethers with wine and beernuts via video chat, both of us, at different ends of the room, irritating at each other’s tipsy ramblings. Writing it down like this, it certainly seemed like things weren’t too bad at all, not when compared to other places on the globe.
It was an interesting time, where we also discovered that the efficiency of online lessons can’t quite match physical lessons. Some of the kids joined lessons from their beds, from the comfort of sunny seats in a garden, or even less educationally conducive locations. Testing students also created special challenges. Slowly but surely, I really began to miss my students, and some of them even admitted to missing me. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I suppose, also goes for school situations.

Early June my school started to do physical lessons again, within strict rules involving hygiene and distancing. It was different and not especially fun. It was certainly barely more efficient than teaching at a distance, but at least we got to enjoy the social aspect of teaching again. The exam classes got their diplomas, after having done optional “Result Improvement Tests” to allow for students who would normally have increased their grade averages during the final exams to have a better chance to graduate. As a result, only a handful of students failed to graduate. The graduation ceremonies were modest affairs with each candidate only allowed to bring a maximum of two people with them.

The summer holiday was different, too. We went to a few different places and spent a few nights in several bed and breakfasts, even spent a week in a rented house in Germany with all the kids. We started looking for a house to buy, which quickly turned out not to be quite as tempting as previously thought – house prices had shot through the roof instead of crashing like they had in 2008. We made bids a few times, but we got outbid each time. Where are the times when only one person could bid on a house instead of 20 people having to make offers in hopes of outbidding all others?

After the summer holiday, all Dutch schools opened again, just like things had been until February. The students no longer needed to keep 6 feet apart. If all citizens kept their distance and generally followed the rules, there would be no need for further restrictions. At that time, restaurants were open, cinemas showed films again, and the world seemed to be carefully holding its breath until Covid would disappear. Everything was still different – fewer people could be in theatre halls, cinemas, restaurants and the like. Students would sometimes disappear for several days during which they turned out to have been in quarantine for a Covid test, or sometimes they stayed away longer when they actually turned out to be infected. Teachers at my school were expected to keep in touch with them and, where possible, allow the absentees to attend the classes by filming them via Teams. These hybrid lessons were the shittiest of all, and more difficult to implement than you might think as my school does not offer regular class-based education, rather domain-based education (which is perhaps an issue for another story at another time).

In October, things got heavy again. First, 6 October saw guitar hero Eddie van Halen dying. It crushed me. And 10 days later both my wife and me found ourselves at home with a Covid infection. Due to my aforementioned hand of “risk factor” cards I worried a lot that I would end up in an IC, on a respirator, hanging on for dear life. One day I woke up with a mild fever which sent my pessimism-laden imagination into overdrive. But in the end all I had had was a sore throat that came and went, a sniffy nose, a few days of headache, and then a few days of energy deficiency. My wife only had mild symptoms, too, though post-Covid complications (utter energy deficiency in her case) have caused her to have to stay at home until now (and probably for another few months). Not a regular flu virus, this one! I fervently hope medical science will now be motivated to come up with something that disables viruses in general from taking hold in the human body – which will also cure a whole host of other diseases that plague humanity.

Thankfully, 2020 was not a total loss for me. I re-launched a bunch of websites (the Fear of God fan site being the main one, but also datzeizij.nl and Twilight World Online), I created a pretty OK grammar support site for my school (grammar.training), I discovered what it’s like to fly a decent drone, and bought the world’s coolest practice amp (the Spark) to lift my guitar playing talents to a (though perhaps not the) next level. My wife and me took up ballroom dancing again after a year of inactivity. In the Christmas holiday I activated Amazon Prime. Maybe, in the long run, this whole pandemic will also make people appreciate care workers and other essential professions more. And no doubt the best thing to happen in 2020 was Joe Biden beating that narcissistic liar-in-chief. Joe has his shortcomings, but I feel Kamala Harris and he can change the world for the better. Why on earth did the Trumpanzee get more than a handful of votes is for future sociologists to fathom.

The world has become a smaller place. We are all dependent on each other. I hope 2021 will inch us a little closer to putting aside our grievances – political, religious and otherwise – and just make the world a better, safer and healthier place to live.

Yes, I know dinosaurs most probably didn’t have external sexual organs, in the same way reptiles and birds don’t. I hope you will find it in your dino-loving hearts to forgive me.
At any rate, I would like to wish you all a 2021 that will suck a lot less. Oculudentavis thingy, maybe.

First Steps on the Drone Path

Bird’s-eye views are not normally possible unless you have a helicopter at your disposal. So when I found out drones were becoming affordable I bought and sold a few second-hand ones (starting in October 2016), experimenting with them a bit. I started with a seemingly (long story) dysfunctioning second-hand DJI Phantom Advance. Gave up on that in January 2019 when I got the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Elite Edition. That one worked fine, but I thought it was really bulky and noisy and somehow didn’t motivate me to use it. So none of them really ticked all the boxes, but thankfully I discovered an Indiegogo campaign for the Micro Drone 4.0, initiated by Extreme Fliers. The specs were amazing, the price was under $200 and I went for it straight away. It hit the required funding (over €1.5 million) in late March 2019, so that made me quite happy. Now all I needed to do was wait. I also ordered some extra batteries, at which time I had only spent a little over $200 (drone was €145, 3 extra batteries €65).

Those of you who have heard of the Micro Drone will by now already realise what I didn’t really want to realise until mid May 2020: the specs had deteriorated (in particular a flight time of less than 5 minutes per battery charge) and the entire device was not going to get delivered until after the summer (well over a year later than projected). In fact, the whole thing might indeed be a scam. Over 14000 comments on the Micro Drone’s Indiegogo page and a “backers unite!” effort to get their money back will provide you with plenty of disaster tourism to whet your appetite on.

Be that as it may, sometimes you’ve just got to take your losses and move on. Thankfully the Covid crisis left me with nothing to spend my holiday money on, so I could get a proper drone. Not second-hand, not via eBay, but new. And the kind backers at the Micro Drone page on IGG had been going on about another and much better drone to get as a replacement, the DJI Mavic Mini. It was about twice as expensive, but a flight time of up to half an hour on a single charge, and a range of up to 4 km sure seemed to more than compensate that. At just under 250 grammes (amazing!) you also don’t need to officially register it. I went for the DJI Mavic Fly More Combo, which included two extra batteries, a smart charger, propeller protectors, a carrying case and a bunch of spare propellers. More than enough to have a lot of fun with.

In the days between ordering the item and receiving it I watched quite a few videos n Youtube. There was a guy who made it fly 5 kilometres and back (over a flat landscape), and someone else who made it go up 500 metres. Exciting stuff, with beautiful videos as a result.

But it wasn’t until I actually got my hands on the Mini that I truly realised what it was like to have a properly manoeuvrable sky camera at my disposal. You suddenly view terrestrial objects in a different light, like how to approach them from the air, where to take off and land without trees or too many inquisitive people, which viewing angles would be most advantageous. It gives you a feeling of tremendous freedom, and a rekindled appreciation of places you visit, or even the town you live in. Seeing things from above is just, well, frikkin’ awesome.

Obviously, the first flights are adrenalin-fueled. The first time I got a “connection lost” message, or a “strong wind” warning made my bollocks drop and stomach knot. The first time flying over water. The first time you see a bird flying by under it. The first time you accidentally use  “sport mode” when you’re pretty close to trees. The first time you actually lose sight of where it is. When you see some birds showing semi-aggressive interest in it. But after a couple of flights you get a feeling of how to navigate and, quite literally, the sky becomes the limit.

PROS:

  • it is really very compact: drone + remote + 3 batteries fit in a modest 26x20x6 cm carrying case
  • single-charge flight time is almost almost 25 minutes or more, which is usually enough for at least 2 and usually more sessions
  • very good video quality, more than good enough for a non-professional user
  • easy to use for an utter novice such as I was (and still am, a bit)
  • nice automatic video shoot options (though you eventually won’t use ’em that much I guess)
  • very convenient “go back home” option to get it to fly back to where it took off
  • wonderful range

CONS:

  • no collision detection – if you pay no attention, it will just fly into things
  • no tracking option (I understand they didn’t include it in the software because otherwise DJI would not be abe to sell the somewhat more expensive models anymore)
  • the batteries take quite some time to charge (up to 90 minutes per battery)
  • the propellors seem pretty fragile
  • it sees where it is, and will automatically adjust maximum height depending on where it is, or even not take off near an airport (I can see how that could be a “pro” rather than a “con” for many people 🙂 )
  • flying at night is really not useful, the camera doesn’t pick up too much
  • the camera is always horizontal, so no yaw like on a helicopter

I made a bunch of short-ish videos of flying around Gouda that I edited (without sound) and put on a Youtube playlist in case you’re interested. Despite there being more cons than pros, I would unreservedly advise anyone who wants to get a drone that is more than a child’s toy yet no expensive professional one to get this Mavic Mini. The pros are much, much bigger than the cons, for sure. Expect to pay a bit under €500 for the Fly More Combo package.

Update on 12 February 2022: By now there are nearly 34500 comments on the MicroDrone IndieGoGo page and I have needed to replace two Mavic Mini propellor blades. I am still very happy!

Announcement of new Fear of God / Détente site with Forum

I first heard Fear of God’s “Within the Veil” on 14 March 1992 and I was instantly hooked. In the month after, I saw Fear of God twice, and both times met their vocalist Dawn Crosby. I did not realise it wasn’t the original line-up, but the music was there. To me, “Within the Veil” was the album of 1991 (not Metallica’s black album, though I loved that too back then).I was 24 at the time, and Fear of God struck a chord in my soul despite my rather privileged life.
In autumn 1998 I found a site dedicated to Fear of God maintained by Kevin “Bl00d” Nunn. Oddly enough, I was the one that told him about Dawn’s untimely death nearly two years earlier. Her death affected me deeply. Could I have done anything to prevent it? I had been in touch with her off and on since 1992, but apparently my fan comments had not sufficiently helped her see the bright side of life. I knew she had been a pained, troubled soul.

At the time I discovered Kevin’s tribute site, he barely did anything to update it anymore. So when I asked him if I could take over, I think he happily agreed.

So on 8 December 1998 I launched the first iteration of my version of the site. Since I was not in touch with any members of the original line-up, it focused on the then current incarnation of the band, going by the name of Fog. My main contacts were vocalist John Childs and guitarist Tony Mallory. The domain was jezabelsdreams.com, named after the album released by this band.

Fog dissolved, as it does, and in March 2001 I launched a totally revamped version of the site, inspired by having been on the phone with original guitarist Mike Carlino the winter before. It focused much more on the line-ups that recorded “Recognize no Authority” and, obviously, the seminal “Within the Veil”.

Years later, I happened upon Tony Keastead’s Dawn Crosby fan page on Facebook. We struck up a mutually beneficial exchange of information. When I decided my Fear of God site wasn’t really going anywhere due to lack of time and lack of news, I contacted Tony to ask if he was willing to take it over and become the third webmaster. He agreed, and nearly 17 years to the day after I had re-started the site, he took over. I occasionally visited the site, and was glad to see it was being updated more often than I did.

Late 2019 or early 2020 I visited the site and noticed the domain had expired. There was now no official presence of Fear of God, nor Dawn Crosby, on the web.

During the Corona crisis it occurred to me that I should at least make sure that there was some semblance of a repository of All Things Dawn. This culminated in my registering fearofgod.band (fearofgod.com, my first choice, was taken by some fashion brand). I re-instated the site from a backup, checked out the Wayback Engine Internet Archive to add some of Tony’s latest changes, updated various bits and bobs on the site, and also added a forum.

Now it needs to be said: The new version of the site doesn’t use state-of-the-art web design techniques, so it may not work well on phones or other small screens. But there is for now, and the foreseeable future, a place where fans of Dawn and her bands can find information and, due to this forum, meet.

If you’re interested, visit the site on fearofgod.band. I hope you’ll enjoy the site and that you’ll join the forum if you’re into these bands. I only wish Dawn could have been around to enjoy this part of her legacy.

An idea for a cool smartphone App – developers please check out

I don’t know if such an app exists, or if it is already part of the functionality of an existing app, however…

The basic premise is that the app gives you a notification when you hit a certain GPS location. This can be used by yourself or by others. If you want to send a notification to yourself, it uses no external app. If you want to send a notification to others, it uses Whatsapp.

Some of the uses could be:

  • Once you arrive at location you need a notification (when I am near the local supermarket, “I need to go in and get potatoes”)
  • Once another person arrives at a location they wll get a notification (“good luck with your job application interview!”)
  • When you arrive back home (“hang up the washing”, “get the food out of the freezer”)
  • When someone arrives at their holiday destination (“Have a great holiday, don’t forget to use sun tan lotion” – or something less patronising 🙂

The ‘internal’ (notifications to yourself) received notification screen should have a button for “Close/OK” and a button for “Next time” (so it will give you the message again the next time you hit the same GPS location).

The notification creation screen should have a zoomable, scrollable map on which you can drop a pin, specify an optional user from your contacts list (with name and phone number(s) listed, and if no user is specified, it will notify the person themselves), and type the actual notification message.

How to cause a message to pop up on another person’s screen depending on their GPS location? I don’t know, Although it would make the app less userfriendly and less instantly usable, it might actually require the recipient to also have the app installed (which will probably require some sort of registration system – if so then based on their international phone number?). Or maybe this could be limited only to the people you also have in “Find My” (which on iOS allows you to keep track of where people are). This latter option would greatly limit the app’s use, as you might want to send people notifications that you’re not so close with that they have allowed you to follow their whereabouts.

I don’t know if Whatsapp supports fully automated sending of messages, but I do know Whatsapp is usable by other apps so in the worst case it could automatically trigger Whatsapp with a predefined addressee and message, waiting for the user to actually confirm sending it manually.

Should anyone pick up his idea, I ask to be involved in the development and testing process. Thanks!

Nuraloop – The Second Coming

A little over two years ago I received the amazingly wonderful purveyor of sonic ecstasy, the Nuraphone (reviewed here). Almost a year ago I found out the same manufacturer was going to do a much more compact, in-ear-only version, the Nuraloop. Having been utterly impressed by its big-and-burly cousin, I transferred the required pre-order fee without any further thought. Originally planned for last December or January, the release date was moved down quite a bit due to Corona. I was pretty sure it would be worth the wait, though…or would it?

About a week ago I got out of bed and checked my email, finding a confirmation that the device was going to be shipped any day now, and could be expected within 1-7 working days. To my considerable surprise the Nuraloop arrived that same day, early in the afternoon! I eagerly unpacked the item, pleased by the thought that must have gone into the package design. Very functional, very aesthetically pleasing.

The Nuraloop earpods aren’t like many of today’s earpods in that they are not two separate pods. I knew that beforehand, obviously, and didn’t mind that at all. I am always losing things, and to me this just makes them more difficult to lose. An arguable disadvantage is its proprietary charger cable. No standard USB connector on the Nuraloop side. But it is very sexy – it clicks on with its magnet, and can’t be connected wrong due to the magnet’s polarity not allowing it. I am a sucker for these little stylish design touches. It makes for a very positive first impression.

Except for the pods and the charging cable, the packaging also includes eartips in 4 different sizes, a travel case and an analog mini jack cable. Like the charger cable, this mag(net)ically connects to the “Nura” thingamajig in the middle. It is very flexible, like those of its bigger cousin.

First thing you need to do, like with the Nuraphones, is connecting them to your smartphone via Bluetooth and downloading the Nura App. It will then examine your hearing, including its idiosyncracies, and create a Personal Hearing Profile. This takes about two minutes in total (part of which is spent giving you feedback on whether the earbuds are fitting snugly enough).
When it started playing music I was pretty much over the moon with how great everything sounded. That was when I discovered that the ‘Personalize’ option hadn’t even been enabled! Once it had, my jaw literally fell open, a lame “w-o-w” escaping. “Music in Full Colour” they call it, a description that couldn’t be more apt. It’s every bit as impressive as the sound quality of the Nuraphones, however in this case coming from a much smaller set of pods. I was impressed no end, blown away.

The Nuraloop has all the same features as the Nuraphones, including near-identical Active Noise Cancelling (ANC). And the touch buttons have even improved! Whereas the big cousin merely supports separate left/right click/double-click, the Nuraloop buttons support click as well as rotate (making rotating motions with your finger). Much more intuitive and user-friendly than its bigger predecessor.

The Nuraloop really is the full package. It’s everything it promised, every hyperbolic statement come true. I would unreservedly recommend these to anyone who actually loves music.

The Nuraloop retails at € 229 (excluding shipping) from the Nura website (where you can also find out about the features I have not covered here).