Cologne Zoo

We visited the Cologne Zoo yesterday. We didn’t have a good start, it took more then half an hour to park the car, but eventually we could find a spot just 200 meters from the main entrance. Then we started walking in the zoo, and there were several cages without animals… Later on this changed and we eventually saw an animal we never saw before.

Below are some pictures I took.

Camels

Egyptian vulture

Flamingo

Great pied hornbill

Japanese crane

Nile crocodile

Przewalski horse

These pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Importing my old blog

I’m trying to import my old blog, since I desperately want to remove this old Wordpress installation. I exported all the content to one big XML file. Problem now is how to extract only the necessary info.

I’ve done some XSLT processing some years ago and luckily I still have the files I used then so I can use them as example. Then I was still in Windows XP land and the libxml executable was really good. Unfortunately I have had no success with a command line tool on Mac OS X yet. After some Googling I found a GUI tool called Editix. Luckily the free edition does enough for my needs!

So far so good: I managed to use an XSLT to remove all the clutter. Now comes the hard part: splitting the new XML file in hundreds of smaller files, while converting the content to Markdown (or at least as close as possible).

Short holiday

We are taking a short holiday to “recharge the battery”. I’ve taken the opportunity to check the website, which was in a coma for the last two/three months, and made some changes.

First notable is I implemented a privacy policy. Since this website is hosted in the EU, and I do use some cookies, I’m mandated to use a cookie policy. As explained in the settings I only use cookies to anonimously track usage of the site (Google Analytics) and cookies for social media (so you can share my content easily and comment with Disqus). I will never ever track anyone on this site for other purposes.

Second I made some tweaks to get better validated HTML. It’s not there yet, but it’s getting better.

Part of recharging the battery are some walks in the forrest. The terrain we’re staying is right next to a big nature reserve, where the dogs can run free. I don’t think I’ve posted a picture of Coco before on this site.

You see some strange trees sometimes.

These pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Living on the edge

I upgraded my Macbook Pro a week ago to Yosemite and came across some snags. Living on the edge has it’s drawbacks… After using Outlook 2011 for Mac exclusively for quite some time (we use a Microsoft Exchange server at work) I thought it was time to try using only Apple Mail for a while, a decision inspired also by the fact that the integration with OmniFocus was not working anymore (I’ll dedicate another post on that at a later time). It didn’t last long. Mail is constantly filling up the system log file with error messages resulting in general slowness of the whole MBP. So, back to Outlook. I eventually figured out what was wrong with regards to OmniFocus, even though it took me several hours.

Then I came across a change in the dungeons of OS X. Apple decided to upgrade the Apache web server included in every install from version 2.2 to 2.4. I use my MBP for updating this website too, and the local website wasn’t looking like it should anymore! This website, based on Fletcher Penny’s MultiMarkDown CMS makes use of Server Side Includes (SSI). In Apache 2.4 using SSI however has changed. I discovered this only after investigating the problem for several hours! Eventually I found the solution on this page: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26495204/osx-10-10-yosemite-apache-upgrade-to-2-4-server-side-includes-no-longer-works. Including the following in the .htaccess file in the folder where this website in located makes Apache 2.4 use the expression parser of Apache 2.2:

<IfModule mod_include.c>
SSILegacyExprParser on
</IfModule>

It removed any and all of the problems I was experiencing.

Learning photography

Last week I bought the 5DayDeal: $2000+ worth of eBooks, videos, textures, Lightroom presets and software for just $89, all photography related of course. A couple of days ago I started with Trey Rattcliffs and Miss Anielas Midnight in Paris video. I just finished part 1 and 2 totalling 1 hour and 45 minutes and came to the conclusion that, since there is 70+ hours of video in total in the deal, I need several weeks of completing just the videos! And more, I need to start using all the techniques presented in the videos. Where am I going to find the time?

Holiday 6

After getting off the ferry we stayed at a small hotel in Bourbourg, near Dunkirk. The WiFi was terrible, the breakfast was typical French (just some slices of baguette, and very little to put on them), the owner only spoke French. After breakfast we packed our stuff and went en route to Bruges. After some driving around we finally found the parking garage near the train station (yay roadblocks). We planned a walk through the city to see the highlights, but we had to cut it short because it would take to long to finish it. We had to get home too afterall! I didn’t take a lot of pictures worth sharing, but here are a couple.

These pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Holiday 5

On the 4th day of our holiday we visited Deal Castle and Walmer Castle, before getting on the ferry back to Dunkirk. Both castles are part of the defenses against a possible invasion force from the mainland of Europe. Where Deal Castle is sort of in the same condition as several hundred years ago, Walmer has been repurposed, serving as the residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

Walmer Castle is built in the shape of a Tudor rose.

The oven used to bake bread.

Another look at the rose shape.

Walmer Castle looks quite different. Here is the dry moat with clean cut grass.

The garden constructed for Lord Warden Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Taken from the moat.

These pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Holiday 4

Hmmm, somehow I managed to not continu posting about our holiday. Oh well, I have to get over my problems myself…

On our 4th day in England we visited Canterbury. I had great expectations going there, but somehow it didn’t quite work out. I don’t know why, but it was just another town to me.

I had hoped to visit Canterbury Cathedral, but getting inside was rather pricey. Getting a picture from the outside was totally impossible too, as the grounds are surrounded by houses and walls all around. So we resorted to some shopping (lots of souvenir shops selling souvenirs of London!) and walking around. We did visit St. Augustine’s Abbey (more about that below).

Tower of St. George’s Church:

St. Augustine’s Abbey (below) was nice but not as impressive as Bayham Old Abbey and the Battle site we visited earlier. The audio tour was rather dull:

These pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

New foundation

The downside of not being updating your website every now and then is you forget how it works. Last year I updated the site to use the Foundation responsive web framework, to bring the site up to speed with current times. Today I found out the framework was updated to a newer version. Well, it does all the time, but I didn’t realize it.

So, I set out to update to the new version. I anticipated it would be a lot of work, but luckily I only use a small portion of the framework. I finished it in under an hour, updating the navigation buttons underneath the posts in one go.

I guess this site is now even more future proof!

Holiday 3

While we’re on a roll, the third post about our holiday.

After some light rain in the morning, we set off to Old Bayham Abbey, near Royal Turnbridge Wells. It’s totally in ruins and the grounds are not that big, but the site is very beautiful. There were almost no other visitors so we had the site to ourselves.

Through the gate.

The nave.

When we finished our visit, we drove off to Battle, the famous site of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, were William the Conqueror fought against Harold II. The site itself is mainly a big sloping field, but we had audio tours explaining what happened where and when. Below you’ll find pictures of the abbey ruins on top of the hill. The abbey was built after the battle.

The Dormitory, where the monks slept.

The latrines. The was a big structure on top of what’s left now.

Under the Dormitory, the so called Vaulted Undercroft, where the novices slept. If you look closely you can still see one or two wander about.

All these pictures have a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.