ik versta een beetje nederlands, maar ik wil MSN in het engels zijn*

Posted on by Shifty

MSN is smart. At some point they detected that I was living in the Netherlands, probably by my IP, and since I lived in NL I obviously perfectly understand Dutch. For the first few weeks it was cool, I really felt like I was on a foreign adventure. Then it just got in the way. Have you ever tried to put a comment on someone’s blog, and not known which button was ‘submit’, and which ‘cancel’? I have, and I didn’t like it. I still don’t like it.

Luckily, I know enough Dutch to know that taal is the word for ‘language’. So I clicked on the ‘taal’ link in MSN. Ah. My taal was set to Nederlands, when I really wanted it in Engels. I set it to Engels. Oh, what sweet relief, the next page was in English, and the one after that. It was that easy. So if you get stuck in Dutch, go to the ‘taal’ page and set your language to Engels and all future MSN pages will be in English.

Until your next session.

I knew that MSN was big, but I did not realise how frequently I visit MSN sites. After frustration multiplication it would easily be 20% of my internet use. Do you know that ‘gekke kikker’ is Dutch for Crazy Frog? I do. At least, when I leave the country it will detect by my IP that I am in an English country, and I will be assumed to be an English speaker.

No.

I have been back in Australia for 3 weeks now and MSN is still in Dutch. I have changed it back to English four times now, and four times it has reverted to Dutch. People tell me that MSN Search is getting pretty good these days, but I can’t tell.

    darryn is searching for:

english

MSN Search finds:

http://www.uva.nl/english/index.html

English – De officiële KNVB website

http://www.knvb.nl/english

Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) – Engli

http://www.english.uva.nl/

More Results …

Aaarrrrggghhh…

*translation: I understand a little bit of Dutch, but I want MSN to be in English.

A blast from the past – Engadget 1985 BBS post

Posted on by Shifty

Check out this post over at engadget. It will bring you back to the days before Internet, when dialling up to a local BBS was the evening’s entertainment*. The excitement of choosing which piece of shareware to download, knowing that it would take an hour and would use up the daily 100Kb download limit.

*This is not sad. It is cool.

Anakin’s Father

Posted on by Shifty

I was watching Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith the other night and I came to a startling conclusion. It is my suspicion that Palpatine is Anakin’s father. It all comes together:

  1. Anakin was “spawned by the midichlorians”.
  2. Palpatine can use the Dark Side to influence the midichlorians to “create life”.
  3. Profit.

*In an earlier post at darryn.net, I wrote that my girlfriend came up with this theory. She has since corrected me. Her theory was that Darth Plagueis was Anakin’s father. So this one is my theory.