www.tjeerd.net

Today I came along the Home Project site, which is all about our world and the environmental impact we have on our world. Very nice sceneries and places on earth are shown, but also the negative impacts on the environment we have as human beings. It reminds me a bit of Al Gore’s film, be it that Al Gore shows a lot of statistical slides about environmental problems. For a lot of people that film was a good start to get some insight about things going on on our planet. Not all was true perhaps, but it was a good thing to start the discussion.

Anyway, the Home Project is nice free documentary available on Youtube (even in HD) which you should see. Speaking about the environment, I think we will get there in the end and that this century we can/should change a lot of things and use less resources. Or at least use more renewable energy sources. But hopefully this project will again freshen up people’s minds.

And now go to The Home Project site to see the documentary.

Today we finally heard whether our bid on the house – I wrote about in the previous post – was accepted or that of another buyer (colleague of Nina, a very big coincidence). The resolutive conditions about the construction technique were probably a problem for the seller. Now a colleague of Nina has won the bid on the house. A big pity that we didn’t get the house, because there were actually no negative things about the house (location, inside et cetera). Of course there had to be done some upgrading, but that’d be worth the effort. But compared to the previous houses we saw I am actually happy that we came this far and didn’t buy one of the previous houses. So as everyone says “probably this house wasn’t meant for you”, we hope that an even better or at least equal house will come along. Next!
 

Last week was a busy week for me, in the sense of having big workmeetings everywhere the whole day and evening. That was good, because it distracted me from the failing househunt. But we were still in doubt about whether the house was really sold. Because if the bid was accepted between the buyer and seller, they’d have three days to cancel it. And after those three days the internet site where the house is on should be updated saying “sold with reservation”. This was not the case and so Nina called the realtor last Wednesday to ask whether the house was already sold and the realtor replied that the buyer and seller had agreed last Tuesday on the house price. That’s the first strange sign. Anyway, could still be the case of course. This morning we got an e-mail that the status of the house had changed, but when we looked at the site, it was still for sale. They only added a brochure to it.

At this moment we really didn’t understand what was going on. So this morning we decided to bike to the realtor’s office to see whether the house was being advertised in the display window. And indeed it was, still for sale. We were lucky that the office was open, so we went inside to ask some nasty questions.

We asked the receptionist about the house whether it was sold and she said it was still for sale. She said we had to wait for the realtor who could explain it to us what’s going on. We asked why the house isn’t sold with reservation and he told us that the woman who wanted to buy the house couldn’t yet get the required mortgage and that they had some difficulties with that (”you can’t get a mortgage that easyily nowadays”). Furthermore we asked whether other people were on the waitinglist and he said that there were none on it yet. We knew that we were on that list, so that was clearly a lie (or he just has a bad memory). Actually with every question we asked him he turned around his eyes and was clearly thinking of a good excuse.

Anyway, we again put ourself on the waiting list and next Tuesday we will hear if the house is really sold with reservation. We hope that the woman can’t get the mortgage for this house of course. This may sound evil, but it’s our only hope. We will know more next week. And if it’s sold then it’s really over for us, for this house at least.

Since two days I really miss my favourite radiostation, it’s now officially out of the ether. Immediately I looked into alternatives. One alternative is to connect the stereoinstallation via coax to the cable, where Arrow Jazz still broadcasts. Unfortunately the installation doesn’t have a coax input. Then my gadget-instinct showed up and I searched for streaming audioplayers on the internet. This means you can listen to thousands of internet radiostations and the most important thing, I can also listen to Arrow Jazz again. After some research I decided to buy the Logitech Squeezebox Classic (actually manufactured by SlimDevices) at RAF (Utrecht).

This device is elegant, small, low power (only several watts) and very functional. It contains a vacuum fluorescent display with a 320×20 resolution which can display the songname, RSS-feeds or a VU-meter for example. Furthermore it contains a Wifi-receiver for the internet audiostreams and several audio outputs (analog RCA, digital optical, digital coax and headphone mini jack). The nice thing about the device for me is that there is a big open source community behind it (Wiki, forums). The company (SlimDevices) is really open about the design and what components are in it. Furthermore you can also get plugins for custom visualizations.

Finally you can also control the device (volume, change radiostation, add RSS-feeds) via internet or via the remote that comes with it. Anyway, I/we am/are very happy with it. The old radio is now stored somewhere upstairs.