QuintinSmits.com

Hi!

Welcome to my new blog. I have migrated the content of my old blog to this blog-engine and I will be adding some plugins and changing the layout to something I like better than this one tonight or this weekeind. I’ll also check all my old posts to see if any of them are messed up in any way by the migration script.

I have converted all my posts!

I’ll also write a bit about installing Typo on Gentoo, with Apache 2.2, Mongrel_cluster and mod_proxy.

My girlfriend wanted a Senseo machine for her birthday. I decided to go and buy one. As it turns out, there are MANY different types of Senseo machines. Not only does Philips make quite a few different Senseo machines, but there are also by a lot of other manufacturers that make Senseo machines! I decided I would stick to Philips and I went home to find out about some of the different Senseo machines...

Click to see the whole post to see the details of the machines I found. (with pics of each machine)

HD7810 - This is the standard model, also the oldest. about 50 to 60 euro.

HD7812 - The improved standard model. With a led to show water level and heating status. About 80 euro.

HD7820 - Same as the 10 and 12, but with a larger water reservoir. About 80 euro.

HD7823 - Height adjustable, rest is the same. About 90 euro

HD7824 - Same as the 23. About 90 euro.

HD7830 - Choose the amount of coffee you want, indicates when the machine needs to be cleaned. About 130 euro.

HD7841 - Same as the 23/24, but better looking (aluminium). About 150 euro.

HD7842 - Same as the 30, but better looking (aluminium). About 170 euro.

There are probably more Senseo machines than the ones listed above. I left the models with the milk-foaming option out on purpose, as I am not interested in those. I bought a HD7820, the black "New Generation" model, for my girlfriend. These are also available white and silver, but you pay 10 or 20 euro extra just for another color?! (white is more expensive than black and silver is more expensive than white...)

Just to make my old Kenya blog known a bit, a link to it. These are the newsletters my team and I sent to our sponsors and family in the Netherlands when we were in Kenya doing volunteer-work for Ex-Change which has since fused with the Edukans foundation. The pages are in Dutch!

Just to show that the downwards spiral in the world economy isn't the only thing happening in the world (as the regular news services seem to think). Take a look at this website to see all the "disasters" in the world, as they are happening: Havaria information service It is based in Hungary, I find it very interesting to see how much is happening in the world, while the regular news is only talking about the elections in the US and all the problems with banks en the economy...

Today I decided to find out what all the fuss is about. I found out and this post is me trying to explain this to other people.

Yes, some people might find me a bit slow to catch up.

Still, there are many people who have not yet discovered the advantages of RSS readers! (I used to be one of them!) I often find myself going through my list of bookmarked blogs to see if there are any new posts.

Sometimes there aren't even any new posts and I still have to click through all my bookmarks to find out. It takes a lot of time to load all these pages and I'm not even talking about all the mouseclicks.

So, Lately, I have been on a quest of sorts to increase my productivity. This seemed like a very good place to start looking for improvements.

I installed a RSS-reader and subscribed to the feeds of my favorite websites. After some reading and checking around I decided on NetNewsWire.

Now, if I want to check all my bookmarks for new content, I simply click "Refresh All" and all the feeds are checked for new content. This greatly reduces the time I spend to still my hunger for information.

Usually though, I just let it sit in my dock and have it notify me when there are new posts on any of the feeds I'm subscribed to. Currently, I have the check interval set to 1 hour.

This means I will be interrupted every hour to read a bit. I might change this interval in the coming days when I get used to working this way.