2 Hours = 1 piece of paper

Yes, indeed. 2 Hours = 1 piece of paper. At least if you are planning to go to your local authority to get an summary of your civil state. And this is how it goes in 10 easy steps.:

1. You go to your local authority.
2. Take a number, which in my case was 330. Look at the number board, which indicates that there are 27 people left before it's your turn.
3. Wait about an hour until it's your turn.
4. Go to the desk which is indicated on the number board.
5. Tell the man behind the desk that you need an summary of your civil state.
6. He will now do 5 minutes of work.
7. Your summary of your civil state is now ready. However it costs 5.95 euro. You'll receive a bill, which you have to pay at the cashpoint. Go to the cashpoint.
8. Go to the end of the line of people (about 27) and wait about 1 hours until you may pay for the summary.
9. Go back to the desk to get your summary of your civil state.
10. You are now finished.

This is how ineffecient the government works in the Netherlands. Imagine a supermarket would work like this. You go to the till, let the employee scan all your products, you receive a recepit, and than have to go to a cashpoint to pay. WTF?! With a simple change, like making the possibility of paying direct for the service instead of going to a special cashpoing, the time people would have to wait would drain with 50%! And yes, even a the dumbest civil servant, and there lots of them, would be able to opperate a till.

If you wonder why I write this, yes this is how I spend my 2 hours of free time in the evening last tuesday.

Free Dungeons

To polish my skills in C++ I am now following a tutorial about programming a game. The game is a 'Gauntlet' kind of game, and I just finished the 6th article (which is the last atm). To see my progress, you can download a test version:
http://calcwebzine.com/private/freedungeons.zip

Note that I didn't really 'wrote' the game, but Richard Phipps from Reflected Games did. Big thanks goes to him!

Here is a screenshot of the latest build:

-> Click here for the screenshot <-

Tropical Island

I am just back from vacation in Germany. Me and my girlfriend were visiting here mother, which we do several times a year. It's always quite fun and we go to all sort of different places.

This time Tropical Island was our destination. For those who don't know, this is what the official website of Tropical Island says:

"Swim in the South Sea, play at the beach, relax in
the lagoon, marvel at the rainforest, flirt in Polynesia,
drink a cappuccino in Bali, enjoy the show,
dance at the beach party, and love your day!"

The resort is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The price for a (4 hours) ticket is rather high for a 'tropical pool'; 20 euro. If you arrive between 21.00 and 06.00 you get 50% off, which results in a 10 euro for 4 hours.

To save some money, my girlfriend and I decided to stay up at 04.00 and arrive about 05.45 at the Tropical Island. When we arrived we noticed how empty everything was. We were almost the only who was there, which is a plus if you ask me.

Anyway... Tropical Island is in no way the 10 euro worth it claims. Almost all things are closed until 10 o'clock. Also you will have to pay extra for almost everything. You want to play beach volleyball? That's 10 euro for one hour. Nobody is there to play, but they really ask you to pay rent for those beach volleyball places. Another downpoint is, that you are not allowed to bring in your own food or drink, which means you are 'forced' to buy something inside. Other than that, the pool and the 'South Sea' are quite small and not really something you would expect if you read there description. Don't get me wrong. They are nice. But it's the same as in every other regular swimming-pool.

If you were planning to go to Tropical Island in Germany, reconsider it. You can better save your money for the 'real thing' or go to a regular swimming-pool.

Maddox wants a own game

Well, as strange as it may sound, Maddox search some programmers who make a game about him.

http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=maddoxgame

Unfortunatly he (or the one who made the flash demo) doesn't give the sprite sheet or anything away. You have to mail him if you are a 'serious' programmer. I guess that he destroys some motivation, as I am not going to try if I don't get the chance to without emailing him.

First steps in C++

Well, it actually happened. I made my first game in C++. It is a rather strange language compared to my previous programming languages like Z80 ASM and VisualBasic. But it worked after all.

You can download the game here (~700kb). Note that the game is in german, since the tutorial was in german aswell.

A "chain blog post" - Movies I saw

When reading a blog of someone I know, I stumbled over a intresting list. Here you go:

Instructions: This is simple. Copy-paste this list to your on blog and place an X inside of the brackets if you have seen the movie. When you are done with the list, add 4 movies that aren't on it.


( ) Napoleon Dynamite ;
( ) Saw
( ) White Noise
(X) Anger Managment;
(X) 50 First Dates
( ) Jason X
(X) Scream
(X) Scream 2
(X) Scream 3
(X) Scary Movie
(X) American Pie
(X) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) Harry Potter
( ) Harry Potter 2
( ) Harry Potter 3
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
(X) The Village
( ) Donnie Darko
( ) Lilo and Stitch
(X) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
(X) 13 Ghosts
(X) Signs
( ) The Grudge
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original)
(X) Spiderman 1
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) Thirteen
(X) I Robot
( ) Dodgeball
( ) A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came A Spider
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
(X) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet The Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) A Cinderella Story
(X) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Constantine
( ) The Usual Suspects
( ) SLC Punk
( )Benny and Joon
( ) Fight Club
(X)American History X
( ) Son in law
( ) The Nightmare Before Christmas
( ) The Notebook
( ) Billy Madison
( ) Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle
( ) the Doors
(X) Forrest Gump
( ) Reservior Dogs
(X) A Clockwork Orange
( ) Tuck Everlasting
( ) How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
( ) Ghost World
( ) Garden State
( ) Camp
( ) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
( ) Mallrats
( ) Amelie
(X) Speed
( ) Idle Hands
( ) Tomcats
( ) Equilibrium
(X) Identity
( ) Chocolat
( ) Vanilla Sky
( ) Requiem For a Dream
( ) John Q.
( ) Biodome
( ) Romeo and Juliet (new)
( ) closer
( ) run lola run
( ) spirited away
( ) sin city
( ) The Royal Tenenbaums
( ) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
( ) Grave of the Fireflies
( ) The Trip
(X) X2: X-man United
( ) The Pillow Book
( ) Suburbia (1983)
( ) Shaun Of The Dead.
( ) Evil Dead.
(X) Edward Scissorhands
(X) Pulp Fiction
( ) Hedgewig and the Angry Inch
( ) The Amityville Horror (new)
( ) The Pest
(X) Hitch
( ) Cry-Baby
( ) Boondock Saints
(X) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(X) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(X) Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(X) Dune
( ) Children of Dune
(X) The Ring
( ) The Ring II
( ) Dead Man Walking
( ) Pay It Forward
( ) Strictly Ballroom
( ) A Room With A View
( ) Pieces of April
(X) Mean Girls
( ) Bend it like Beckham
( ) The Princess Bride
( ) Fever Pitch
( ) Ice Princess
( ) Austin Powers Goldmember
( ) Pumpkin
( ) Secretary
( ) Very Bad Things
( ) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) The Count of Monte Cristo (newest version)
( ) Wings of the Dove
(X) Interview with the Vampire
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) The Goonies
(X) Schindlers List
( ) Center Stage
(X) Pirates of the Carribean
( ) Ever After
( ) X-Files (the movie)
( ) The Adventures of Milo and Otis
(X) A League of Their Own
( ) But I'm a Cheerleader
(X)Ocean's Eleven
( ) American Beauty
( ) Anchorman
( ) Spiderman 2
( ) Ocean's 12
(X) Star Wars Episode VI
(X) Indiana Jones III: The last crusader
(X) Home Alone
(X) Army of Darkness
(X) Ghost (with Patrick Swazy)

A list of (free) tools everyone need

I though this would come in handy for some people. If you want the tool, use google to find the last version. I am to lazy for giving all the links. Here we go:

• Picasa2. The best image album tool there is. It's from google, so you can guess how good the search function is!
• Winamp. Better than WMP. More plugins, more skins, better library, less ram usage.
• MSN7. But you propably have that already.
• WinRar. For all archive stuff. Use it. Love it.
• Firefox. Secure & Fast and built in Google. What do you want more?
• Crimson Editor. The best source code editor there is.
• AVG Free Edition. #1 in anti-virus software. And it's free too!
• DVD Shrink. Shrink down your dvd's to backup them on your DVD-Roms.
• WS_FTP 6.0 LE. Though the LE version is not supported anymore, you can find it everywhere on the net. Very good FTP tool.
• mIRC. For all your IRC needs. (Or vIRC for all your free IRC needs)
• Network Stumbler. To find those WiFi hotspots. (If you don't have WiFi, you certainly suck ;) )
• Azureus. For all your BitTorrent Downloads.
• Eudora. If you don't have Outlook, use Eudora.
• K-lite Codec Pack. Helps you to watch all those movies.
• BSPlayer. Best and smallest player out there.
• VirtualDub. Very good video compressing tool.

That's about it. With those tools you should have enough power to actually DO something on your PC. :P If you have additions, post them in the comments.