Graham of the Wheels (Page 2)

Thwarting skimmers

A month without Facebook

As you might know I like experimenting a bit with new ideas and concepts. I've tried barefoot/minimalistic running [http://gray-um.com/2010/09/18/learning-to-run/] and love it, it's the only way I run now. The same goes for not watching any regular television [http://gray-um.com/2010/02/

Focus

Our lives are quite digital these days and living without being plugged in is for some a big problem. You'll see tons of people checking their phone often while matching a movies (in the theatres), when on holiday, while crossing the road, bicycling or driving a car. Especially these last

Music you might have missed part 4 - Canada & The States

I've made these type of posts before, although they were titled "Bands you might have missed" but this title probably suits these little posts better and I started numbering them. I'm in for the long haul ;). As you must know by now I enjoy....or rather love music like a

Passwords just aren't enough

Passwords, it's near impossible to have never used those jumble of characters these days. I've posted about the use and management of passwords [http://gray-um.com/2012/01/06/mastering-passwords/] before. But these days passwords just aren't enough. Especially when people tend to use very simple passwords and using them

Experiencing couchsurfing

A few years ago while travelling through Australia I started hearing more and more about something called 'couchsurfing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couchsurfing]'. The first time I heard about this idea it made me snicker and I didn't really look into it until I got back home. In

West Coast Trail

Finally blogging about the West Coast Trail (henceforth called WCT or WeeeeCT as I said one day) that I hiked back in mid September with two friends. Like I mention in my previous blogpost I had been working out to shed weight and gain stamina/strenght. I managed to hit

Protect your computer from yourself - redux

I've noticed that my blogpost tend to start with "It's been a while..." and it certainly has as my last post was at the start of January. Well to all my loyal followers (about 20 or so) thanks for waiting around and I hope you will like this redux to

Mastering passwords

It's been quite busy and still am with all the recent changes in my life. Not to worry...no major ones like a baby or anything...honest! But after my last post more then 3 months ago I haven't had much time for blogging as my new job keeps me

Bands you might have missed - The summer feeling

The summer is nearly over on this side of the globe which wasn't really a good one with all the rain we had but the weather has been amazing the last week of September. Summer brings with it the summer feeling when everything looks just a little better. It might

Bad news

Shaking things up every now and again helps to keep things fresh in your life. If you keep on doing the same things you do every day without any change in pace, input or excitement it gets very mundane indeed. We need new stimuli to keep ourselves going. So we

Syria in retrospect

Back when I got home in July I saw this video on Vimeo [http://www.vimeo.com] by Ruslan Fedotow [http://www.vimeo.com/user3308201] about Syria [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria] which reminded me of my two weeks of travelling back in 2008. 5 minutes of Syria [http:

Lowlands 2011

One of my favourite pastimes has to be music. Listening to a new album over & over again, going to a concert of a newly discovered band but the highlight of the year has to be attending the Lowlands [http://www.lowlands.nl/english.php] festival with my friends [http://www.

Australia in hindsight

In hindsight it's always easy to look at decisions you made and know what you would have done different but that's not really how life goes now is it. One of my favourite quotes by this guy that was in some band puts exactly into words what I mean... > Life

Bali & Gili Trawangan

It's already been four days since I landed in this rather rainy country. Although it's summer on this side of the hemisphere it very rainy but I can't complain to much, the flights went very well. Even thought it was quite boring those 18 hours of flying from Bali > Jakarta

Western Australia

As you read this blogpost I am flying towards my next & final holiday destination, Bali, where I'll be staying for 2 weeks until my flight leaves for Amsterdam on the 13th of July. After weeks of trying to find work in and around Perth I've made the tough decision to

In & around Melbourne

It's been a while since I posted on my little blog, the last story was about Tasmania [http://gray-um.com/2011/02/27/tasmania-the-overland-track/] and my big adventure on the Overland Track. That was back in the end of February. Therefore in the last week that I've been in Geraldton

Tasmania & The Overland Track

For over two weeks of incommunicado, especially the 5 days on The Overland Track [http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=7771], it’s time for another post from me from Down Under. So as you read before in the previous post [http://gray-um.com/2011/02/04/

Melbourne

After visiting Sydney, I moved on to Melbourne [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gray_um/sets/72157625809801677/]. I took the night train from Sydney to Melbourne on Friday around 20:40 and arrived in Melbourne in the early morning. I really wanted to see the countryside a bit and flying

First week in Sydney

Well after several days in Sydney [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gray_um/sets/72157625876944772/] I've finally found some time to make a blogpost about my experiences here. It's been almost 7 days now and I'll remain here until Friday when I hope to move on to Melbourne, either by

Preparing for travel

After years of longing and months of planning today I will finally fly towards Sydney, Australia (don't worry I'll definitely NOT make the Sydney, Canada [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1205495/Dopey-Dutch-pair-end-Canada-flying-wrong-Sydney.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1205495/Dopey-Dutch-pair-end-Canada-flying-wrong-Sydney.html] mistake). Preparing to travel for a

A slightly different holiday

It's that time of the year again when Christmas and New Year cheer is in the air. Family and close friends get together for dinner and to enjoy each others company. Pity that the holidays fall in the weekend, so no extra off days this year. Although I have the

Backup your Flickr account with Linux

As promised in my previous post [http://gray-um.com/2010/12/12/backup-your-google-mail-and-calendar-with-linux/] , in this blogpost I'll guide you through a way to keep a local backup of your Flickr [http://www.flickr.com/] photos with the use of Python [http://www.python.org/] script on Linux. The script itself

Backup your Google mail and calendar with Linux

Our lives these days are more digital than ever. Just think about all the stuff you have online. E-mail, photo's, addressbook, calendar and probably a whole lot more. Of course you can trust that your data is safe from harm in "the cloud", it probably is but still a personal

Enjoying Facebook

Nope your not going crazy, my second post in two days. I had some drafts that I needed to finish up on. That and the preparations for my big travel plans in January didn't really give me much time for my blog. So a double treat ;) A while back I

Enjoy the moment

One of my favorite pass times has to be listening to music, I enjoy it immensely. And on occasion I get to see one of my favorite bands live, which is an experience in itself. Some bands sound exactly like their album, for instance Blood Red Shoes [http://www.bloodredshoes.

Learning to run

I never been the athletic type or liked sports much, especially watching sports on television has never much interested me. Although watching the Olympics Games and World Cup is always fun. I didn't play any football like most boys back in my youth, I was more into Judo [http://en.

Bands that you might have missed, the Nordic connection

Last time that I made post about Bands that you might have missed [http://gray-um.com/2010/05/02/bands-that-you-might-have-missed/] it was on Dutch and/or Flemish bands. Bands from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are the subject this time. The Nordic connection [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_

Another social experiment

Last year around this time I started using Twitter [http://gray-um.com/2009/07/12/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/] and soon I reached my 1000 tweets [http://gray-um.com/2010/03/02/1000-tweets-later/]. I like Twitter a lot because it's simple and down to the point mostly due to it's 140 character limit.

The commute made easy

Ever since I started going to a school in another city at the age of 9 or 10 I had to take a the bus. This was my first experience with public transport and I still use it frequently. I'm 29 now and still don't own a drivers license. Why?

The transition

At the end of this week I will have finished my study of Computer Science (Bachelor) and I begin to wonder which course my life will be taking in the next several years to come. It kinda makes you think back on all the decision you made and what you

The failure of Shuttle

It's never fun when hardware fails you, especially if you lose your data but of course you need to backup your data damnit [http://gray-um.com/2009/11/06/backup-your-data-damnit/]! And I did so no worries there, although I did lose part of my thesis. Turned it in last week

Bands that you might have missed

It's about time that I posted about music again but this time dedicated to bands from my region of the world. With band members that are either Dutch or Flemish or a mix of both, songs sung in the English and that you might have missed if I didn't post

StumbleUpon - Discover the web

Although I try to post atleast once every 2 weeks recently a lack of inspiration and lower back problems has cost me to keep to this promise. Besides that I'm also quite busy with finishing my study. Anyways inspiration has returned, back problems are over (or at least it's not

HTML5 Video - The alternative to Flash

[https://grahamofthewheels.com/content/images/2014/12/html5_loading_badge.png]Flash [http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/], a great delight for rich web content like streaming video on site asYouTube [http://www.youtube.com/] and Vimeo [http://vimeo.com/] but a major annoyance as blinking ad banners. And irritation doesn't

Customs - Enter the characters

Yesterday I finally saw Customs live on stage at Rotown [http://www.rotown.nl/]. Customs [http://www.last.fm/music/Customs?ac=Customs] is four men band from Leuven, Belgium with a post-punk/rock/'80 style feel to their music which many have described as a blend of Interpol [http:

1000 tweets later

Exactly 1000 tweets ago I [http://twitter.com/gray_um] started using Twitter [http://twitter.com] andposted [http://gray-um.com/2009/07/12/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/] about it. At the time I was unsure if I would keep using it but it seems that Twitter has found a place in my life.

No TV for a month

In January of this year a friend of mine posted about a little experiment he did and made a post about it "experimenting: a week of no TV". I was quite intrigued by this as I don't watch a lot of TV via a real television set, I mostly use

Centralize your knowledge

Recently I upgraded my Knowledge Base [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base] from using Mediawiki [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki] to Atlassian [http://www.atlassian.com/]'s Confluence [http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/] to enhance it's functionality from a plain text based wiki to a fully customizable

Pearl Jam - Backspacer

Pearl Jam [http://pearljam.com/] released a new album at the end of last year called Backspacer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspacer]. Ever since the soundtrack of Into The Wild by Pearl Jam's frontman Eddie Vedder [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Vedder] I've enjoyed those acoustic songs and

Chrome meets Greasemonkey

Google Chrome [http://gray-um.com/2009/12/20/google-chrome/] recently introduced extensions [https://chrome.google.com/extensions] for the Mac beta version [http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-beta-of-google-chrome-for-mac-with.html] . Extensions were already available for the PC and Linux version. Extensions are a great way to enhance your browsing experience

Vampire Weekend - Contra

Vampire Weekend [http://www.vampireweekend.com/] isn't a weekend where all vampires come out and play, no it's much much more or rather an American indie rock band from New York. Their music can described as mix of reggae, African music, rock and probably some other blends but I would

Tweak Google Reader to use Google Apps

Google Apps [http://www.google.com/apps/] is a great way to get more out of your own domain without much of a hassle, although some technical know-how is required. It is great to use for your entire family to setup your e-mail. Every member gets his or her own

The Alternative - Open-source software

Applications you use everyday can be quite expensive if you stick with what's used by the masses. But there is so much more available to you if you look a little further. I'm not saying there isn't software worth a few bucks (I paid for Total Commander [http://www.ghisler.

New Year's Resolutions 2010

How fast a year can go and every year seems to go faster than the last. A good friend told me once that this is because of the experiences we have during our lifetime. The older we get the less new experiences we have, sure we experience things but most

Bleeding for your fellow man

Especially around this time of they year we think about the less fortunate and how we can help. There are several ways you can help out your fellow man in your direct area or even on a global scale. Like community service, donating money, giving your old clothes & shoes [http:

Google Chrome

This post was initially going to be about the extensions I use for Google Chrome [http://www.google.com/chrome], very similar to My Firefox extensions [http://gray-um.com/2009/09/27/shared-my-firefox-extensions/] post a few months back, but then I only use a few at the moment (mostly because

Learning to play

Music has always been a big part of my life, 3 years ago I decided to make that an even bigger part and picked up my first electric guitar. Something I always wanted to do ever since I was a little kid. It is quite an ordeal to start learning

Them Crooked Vultures

At Lowlands [http://gray-um.com/2009/09/20/a-campingflight-to-lowlands-paradise/] this year I was one of the lucky ones that saw the surprise act up close (spitting range even, but forgot my camera :(). The Grolsch tent was packed and the surrounding area was engulfed with people waiting on this act. Although

Mumford & Sons - Sigh no more

I haven't done any reviews of albums yet but I love music so this will probably not be the last one. Although it's more of a recommendation then a review as I'm gonna keep it very short. Recently I was introduced to an album Sigh no more [http://en.wikipedia.

Backup your data, damnit!

Yes you there, sitting behind your computer with your hands in your hair because you've just 'misplaced' your data and now it's all gone. Everything! Your documents, photo's, bookmarks, music, etc....your entire digital life that was on that little piece of hardware called a harddisk. First time? Second?! Third!

Playing dressup with your browser

Although changing the appearance of a application isn't new at all, it has become a lot easier for Mozilla Firefox [http://www.mozilla.com/] and Google Chrome [http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=CTK3Z6OvuStCPJsuU-gbTvMXQA-PHro8BkfvW-wvto_D0JggAEAFQyNHvjvj_____AWCRhKCFjBigAf31yPYDyAEBqgQTT9BuG4h6lVfxyrnXwxrnq6Jbww&sig=AGiWqtx7ktVG19Gb_5QZwMOgE5-SAjdeEg&q=http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html%3Fhl%

Just a feedburner test...

...nothing else. What's feedburner? Well some kind of management tool for RSS feeds and I wanna try it out. RSS Feed for this blog will automaticly redirect to http://feeds.feedburner.com/gray-um_com (old one is http://gray-um.com/feed/ [http://feeds.gray-um.com/gray-um_com]). More info on

Television series

Even with the web, I still watch TV. Although watching it actually on a television-set has been less and less frequent in recent years. I would go so far as to say I will not get a cable TV connection in my next apartment straightaway. Why? Well mostly cause every

Augmented Reality

As we see our lives integrate more and more with technology, we will steadly see our reality being changed, impacted or altered by technology in the way we view it. This is the segment where Augmented Reality comes into play. Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_Reality] explains the

Protect your computer from yourself

Security is a hot issue these days, anti-this and anti-that software is being sold to the not so computer savvy consumer making them feel less burden and safer while using their shiny machine. But are they safer with these types of software? While it does protect a computer system from

My Firefox extensions

Plugins, add-ons, extensions, call them what you will. It seems nowadays more and more programs are getting this handy ability to extend it's basic feature set. This makes the basic program relatively simple and fast but also extendable to your own liking. Anyways this post is about what Firefox [http:

A Campingflight to Lowlands Paradise

After my first ever U2 (Vertigo tour) concert in 2005, I have attended some 56 events [http://www.last.fm/user/gray-um/events/2005]. Pinkpop [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkpop]was my first festival back in 2006 and I was kinda disappointed. The only day I went was Monday

Running a server as a life philosophy

Recently I had some server problems, which meant downtime for this site amongst other things. Without going into much technical detail about the exact issue besides being a hardware related failure, it made me realize how much I depend on my little Linux box to do it's job to be

To tweet or not to tweet

Twitter [http://twitter.com], the hot newish thing (for me that is) on the web. But what is it? And why use it anyway? I certainly wouldn't...or so I though. But lets see what Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org] says about Twitter: > Twitter is a free social networking [http:

Shortened URL's, are they evil?

Well they can be as sites like tinyurl [http://tinyurl.com/], bit.ly [http://bit.ly], tr.im, is.gd [http://is.gd/] and probably some more pop their heads up on the internet to help along the demand for url shortening. One reason for the demand might be the

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