Kristof Goossens

We discovered a great company in the  UK called betweenthesheets where they make custom bed dressings in all kinds of different materials. Leather, polyurethane, silk, satin, bamboo, latex and any colour or colour combination you can wish for. They even make custom designs on request and deliver worldwide. We fell in love with a black and purple set which was shown on the website. The great part of it is that the duvet cover is custom colours, so you can pick and mix the colours and materials.  We had been looking for satin sheets for a while, but none could be found in normal stores. Since the guest bed where we wanted to use the sheets is located in the cinema room, we also wanted them to be of a subdued colour as white reflects the light from the big screen.  In addition, Rhiana has managed to spill her milk and cookies on the bed before, so having something with a water-resistant surface was even better.  Betweenthesheets created a custom sheet with purple satin on one side and black polyurethane on the other. The silk is very sensual to lie in and the PU is excellent in repelling water or oils. Thus far, the sheets have resisted ice cream, smarties, lush massage bars and someone grabbing hold of the side and pulling herself up on them with sticky hands. And best of all, it only takes a wipe down with a wet sponge to keep the glossy PU clean. For complete cleaning, the sheets can be washed at 40°C as well. The PU is very resilient and made from the same made from the same material as PU clothing with a very strong and flexible backing. Even the satin is very sturdy and feels very heavy and luxurious. Shipping is very affordable and the Parcelforce tracking system means you always know where your package is. We’ve ordered there two times and both times, the package was sent in about a week time with excellent customer service.

ilse, Rhiana and me went to the beach yesterday and it was an excellent place to try out my camera gear.

Some lessons I have learned:

• Remember that every canon setting (p, Tv, Av) remembers it’s own setting and that changing picture size in one mode doesn’t set it for all modes.
• Partial averaging is a bad idea when your subject is wearing a black jacket.
• Changing the autofocus setting for continuous AF is don with the AF button on the right of the 1000D and not in a menu (and i wasted minutes looking for it there)
• Always remember to set the white balance back to automatic after having used it on manual mode
• AI focus = let the camera choose focus mode; AI servo = keep the subject in focus by tracking it
• Put one lens and a flash on and stick to it, cause kids run around too fast to keep up.
• Seagulls are bloody hard to track with a 250mm

Well, since we were expecting company, I started cleaning out the basement which has the look of a shipping base since all the stuff for the renovations and my bike upgrades comes in there. As i was doing so, I came across an old fire detector (We replaced those with a more advanced system by Bosh with central monitoring and double failsafe outgoing communication lines (Yes, as former telecom engineer, I like redundancy in all systems.) I’m also a paranoid bastard who’ll think ways around systems to see if they can be outsmarted. In this context, I also had to look to see if the old detector had fissionables in them since they can always come in handy when it comes to practical jokes (Note to Daphné, the resident counter-terrorism expert and lizardly-shoed one, it was unfortunately one of the newer type with optical detection). On a side-note the metal parts were unexpectedly sharp so It’ll be nine-finger typing on Monday. I really do wonder why all sharp things seem to have it in for my pinkie. (it’s Pinky and the Brain, yes Pinky and the Brain, one is a genius, the other’s insaaane…). So as I was opening up the stuff, my iPod (well, one of the pink backup iPods actually : ) switches over to the theme from mission impossible. I wonder how much Apple is starting to know about me to make such good predictions. By the way, trying to make left-handed images with a dslr of a finger on the right hand is nearly impossible if you’re right-handed and working with little light. On retrospect, maybe normal people would have grabbed a bandage instead of the right lens to get it in focus. Fortunately I had some disinfectant nearby from the time a got that Tribal tattoo on my shoulder. So no problems there. (just kidding, I know my mum reads this stuff too. Hi mum. how about that Canon 70-200 F 2.8 L IS and 7D body for Christmas or that CBF 125/varader 125? Oh and our daughter is really out to get the rear doors open of the VW golf. The VW Scirocco has no rear doors. Coincidence? I think not. Tell dad to get the one with the 170bhp diesel or 210bhp gasoline and DSG transmission. Shadowblue or Salsared, preferably with the VW Dynaudio Excite speaker upgrade package. Mann gönnt sich ja sonst nichts.

I recently bought a ring flash add on for my canon speedlite; it’s actually a big plastic circle which channels the light from the speedlite and distributes the light around the lines. It’s very big and costs about one stop of light, but that still means a lot more power than a regular ring flash, and also a lot cheaper. The two disadvantages that I found were that it blocks the red focus pattern transmitted by the speedlite and that it does not allow firing of a secondary speedlite in slave mode. It does provide a very cost-effective method of macro and ring flash photography though.

The following comparison shots were made when I came home with the new add-on. Notice the “what the heck has he bought now-look on the model : )

Straight regular speedlite

Speedlite sent trough the ring flash

You can find more info for it here.

well, that didn’t take long. the electronic measuring and filter system has broken down already. After only two refills, the display went dead when trying to reset it. I’ve opened it up to see what is inside and it’s the battery which went dead. So either this thing is pulling way too much power from the batteries or Brita is putting cells low on power in there. Fortunately, they can be replaced without destroying the sensor. everything clips into place.

A friend had his phone stolen and I had the same model as he wanted, so i sold mine and bought an LG KP500 cookie since I wanted a cheap smartphone. I do love it as it has handwriting recognition, an acceptable camera (no flash or focus unfortunately) but a memory card slot at the side so I can quickly get it out and copy stuff from the card onto the pc and put music on the card. most smartphones have the card buried away underneath the battery so that it has to be taken apart, so this was a big selling point to me.

The supplied pc suite software is mediocre at best as it keeps crashing on my windows vista pc, but I did manage to get the contacts and important settings onto it after a few tries.  USB connection speed is very slow at best, so having the removable memory card really solves all this.

The email settings were a bit more difficult to set up so here they are for those using hotmail or gmail via a belgian base account. (Thanks to P. Suhas from the microsoft mobile support helpdesk for the settings and quick reply to help request)

and the BASE GPRS EMAIL settings are

I got a new set of gloves from chainreactioncycles. it’s the Dakine Cross-x glove. They fit perfectly and are very cool due to the mesh fabric, but the smell is truly awful. I’m going to put these in front of a fan for a while until the nasty chemical odour has worn off cause my hands smell as if I’ve been working on a toxic spill. There is a nice soft fabric on the thumb to swipe away the sweat and I really love that in this hot weather.

And for the really rainy days, I got the oakley OTG visor which goes over my glasses when it rains. I also took the fire lens which looks really cool and actually improves contrast. There are large vent openings, but I have my doubts about how well the oakley OTG will survive usage with the soft foam. It’s really flexible though, so it feels very safe. Downside of the fact that it is an OTG is that it is incredibly big and looks somewhat ridiculous under a mountain bike helmet. Still it’ll keep my glasses from fogging up in the winter when it snows.

And finaly my long-desired Giro ionos helmet. It’s so cool that you even get a cap to wear under it during colder days. I must say that you really feel the wind trough the vents, but my hair is a bit too long to really get the full effect, so I’ll be trying a shorter haircut next time. It has huge vents and carbon inserts, but I can’t really say that it is lighter than my very cheap giro indicator. On the top right picture, the extra insulation is inserted to show you how it looks. There is also an extra set of inside paddings provided so that you can replace everything when it wears out. it is anti-bacterial silver and with the best fit I’ve ever seen. In short, I love it, but on rainy days, I’ll take the indicator helmet, cause all the water seeps down my glasses with the Ionos. You can’t beat ir for comfort and coolness though. Still, the indicator is a lot more value for money at only a fifth of the price.

Well, we bought a croozer for two since I couldn’t take my daughter along on the mountainbike.

And she really loves the way she can see everything from in there. Together with a book and a teddybear to keep her occupied when the road gets boring, it makes for a perfect combination. my top speed is reduced from 33 to 20-something though and you really feel the added weight when pedalling and on the brakes. There is a special cover against the rain and a second cover to protect her from debris coming of the wheels. There is a lot of room for luggage in the back as well.

I got the new Brita water filtering can (our third by now, we really use those things a lot to make tea, coffee and soda-club lemonade) and it beats having to drag plastic bottles of water from the store, not to mention a lot of space in the plastic container. Ours is called the elemaris Brita meter and it measures how much you filter, how long you are using the filter and the water hardness. I am curious to know how it compares to our previous filter, which only measured time and wanted replacement of the filter cartridge every four weeks. The taste will be exactly the same as it uses the same filter cartridge.

The funny thing is that the display also shows when you are filtering water by animating water droplets

The measuring element consists of a display with two metal prongs of different length. The good thing is that this one is removable so you can finally wash the filter lid, which was not possible with the previous model as the electronics were not dishwasher proof.

I have replaced the filter on my classic elemaris and on the new elemaris on the same day and I’ll let you know when they will ask for replacement cartridges (the classic will ask in four weeks time)

Update 01-09-2009

The indicator now shows that the filter has to be replaced. This is only one day later than the normal brita filter with timer. Thus far I  can’t see much difference. I’m going to swap their locations in the house so that it gets used elss to see if it will make a bigger difference in time or if it simply goes for the same four week interval.