Nicotine Vaccine... WTF?!

While browsing the news sites, I stumbled upon this Nicotine Vaccine video on Reuters. Nicotine (smoking)... Vaccine? Since when is smoking caused by a virus?

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.

What's next? A vaccine for Kleptomania? Bad driving? Being obnoxious? This is (in my opinion) nothing more than an effort of Big Pharma to have us take more and more drugs. They have to do something to keep their investors happy since more and more drug patents are expiring.

Posted on July 27, 2012 and filed under News, No Way!!!.

Best 'Unboxing Videos' Ever

It's the best, mainly because it's terrible. It's a montage of several unboxing videos of the Google Nexus phone/tablet thinghy. I guess I would have thrown the entire box + contents out of the window. Google can learn a lot from other companies like; Nikon, Canon, Leica, Apple... Hell, even the shrink wrap on Microsoft products are easier to remove. Unboxing is an integral part of the new gadget/thinghy experience nowadays.

Posted on July 16, 2012 and filed under Fun, Gadgets, Hardware.

Pearl Jam June 26th @ Ziggo Dome (NL)

Some photos and videos from the Pearl Jam concert @ the new music venture/hall Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam (NL). I hope you like them.

The new Ziggo Dome is a large version of the Heineken Music Hall; Especially built for live music performances. We probably had the worst seats in the house (top left corner), but even there the sound was excellent.

Posted on July 15, 2012 and filed under Photography.

Junos Pulse, Apple iOS, and Split-Tunneling

When you create (SSL)VPN access for you employees, you might enable split-tunneling to save corporate bandwidth. No split-tunneling means that all traffic is forwarded into the VPN tunnel. So if you browse the internet with an active VPN, the traffic goes through the VPN, and accesses the Internet through the corporate Internet connection. This isn't a big problem with a couple of employees, but with hundreds on the road or working from home, this might frustrate the employees in the building.

Posted on June 15, 2012 and filed under Annoying, Apple, Security, Software, Junos.

Peugeot 508 Hybrid4 Review

In January of this year I learned that the taxation on lease cars would change in Juli of 2012 (taxation based on the car pollution / emission gasses). This could mean that certain types of cars would be (way) more expensive if you leased them. Since my current lease contract at the time would expire in May, I wanted to make sure that I could lease a new car under the 'old' tax rules for lease cars.

My old (lease)car was a Honda Civic 1.8 Executive (with all the bells and whistles) which I loved very much. The car was relatively small, and drove like a dream (compared to my earlier cars). Unfortunately, the Civic was no longer an option, so I was in the market for a new (and preferably) cheaper lease car.

Posted on June 1, 2012 and filed under Review.

The Leica M-Monochrom and More

Last Tuesday (May 10th), Leica announced a couple of new Leica goodies to the world. Of the items, the Leica X2 was the least shocking (IMO). The other two items, a monochrome version of the M9-P (Leica M-Monochrom) and a new 50mm Summicron-M f/2, were quite the news. The Leica M9-P Hermès Special Editions were just overpriced versions of the current M9-P for the filthy rich (@ $50,000 USD).

Posted on May 14, 2012 and filed under News, Personal, Photography.

SmugMug Statistics Accuracy

I either got kicked from the Interwebs, or SmugMug updated their statistics module to a working version :-)

I guess the latter, since I find it hard to believe that I have >4000 image views per day on average. Funny thing though, that it started going down when I rearranged the galleries on my site.... Coincidence?

Posted on April 29, 2012 and filed under Website.

Leica Rangefinder M10 Rumors

Many of you may have heard, that Leica has scheduled an event for May 10th 2012. These events fuel the speculations of the things that may be announced. One of those things being a new Leica (rangefinder) camera called the M10.

Along with this rumor, everyone has (special) feature wishes / requests that this new camera should have. Some of those (IMO ridiculous) features include:

  • Auto focus
  • Electronic Viewfinder
  • Build-in Flash
  • Black and White only sensor
Posted on April 10, 2012 and filed under Gear, Personal, Photography.