Advertising new weblog and one preview pic

Just a quick note. First I want to advertise my new weblog BrownNoiseMusic which I started last Monday. If your familiar with BrownNoisePhotos the name doesn't need much explanation, I guess. BrownNoise is of course the nickname I choosed when I started this photoweblog in August 2005. In this post I explained where the name BrownNoise comes from. So when BrownNoisePhotos is about pictures and photography then it won't surprise you that BrownNoiseMusic is about music. At BrownNoiseMusic you'll find future reports about new musical discoveries I did (old and new stuff), reviews about new CD's I've listened to, music-DVD's I've watched, interesting or fascinating musicvideos I found on the net. You can find posts about classical music, jazz, pop, rock, indie, singer-songwritermusic, world music etc...

In the near future I also might start a weblog about movies and one about books/literature. It probably won't be hard to find out what the name of those weblogs will be.

To finish this post I'll end with a preview of some pics I will post within a few days. This one was made a week ago during a cyclingtrip I've made through one of my regular routes next to the river Vecht. It is a remarkable and noticeable markingpoint in the landscape, although I must admit I didn't notice it during one of my previous cyclingtrips. But because it was on the other side of the river Vecht and I probaly was paying attention to the traffic on my side of the river I didn't saw it before. It's some kind of electricity distribution house.

Today I also went on a cyclingtrip in the early morning. During this trip I shot mostly pictures of birds with newborn babies. I'll post some pics from this trip also later this week.

More pictures will follow soon during the upcoming week.

Vote for me

Just a short request to my regular visitors and to the visitors who get here by coincidence. If you visit here and if, for some odd reason, you like what you see, please hit the "Vote for me"-button in the right sidebar. It looks like this:

It will give this weblog a higher ranking and I've notice on my webstatistics it will draw some more visitors.

Other buttons that involve blogdirectories are:

and:

You'll find these buttons also on the right sidebar a little below the "Vote for me"-button. Clicking on these buttons also will give me a higher ranking and possibly more visitors.

There is no pricewinning involved. It only will make me a happier weblogger.

Thanks!

Some maintenance and some animalpics

I have been doing some maintenance on my weblog. Since January I'm using the New Blogger. One of the new features is the use of labels. The past few days I went through all my previous posts, added labels and added also some extra links to backgroundinformation related to the subject(s) of the post. If you click on a label you'll get all the posts with the same label.

This time some animalpics that were shot in our hometown Utrecht both by my girlfriend and me with her camera. She took care of the dog pics and I took care of the cat pics

Looks like I've created a monster. A typical case of shooting a picture at the wrong moment. If you didn't know better you would think that the cat was very vicious and ready to scratch my eyes out. But she was only yawning.

This is how the cats looks like when she's not yawning.
I've posted about the cat and the bulldog before in this post.
The dog didn't look very clever, but he compensated it with his friendlyness and enthusiasm

If my owner would tie me up to the bicycle and went for shopping I would thought: "Screw you guys I'm going home". (With thanks to Eric Cartman from Southpark)

Advertising other websites/blogs

I didn't took much new pictures the past weeks and I also didn't scan much slides or negatives. So this time I would like to make some advertisement for two weblogs. I also added their URL's on the sidebar on the right.

The first one is a cartoonweblog made by my partner and future wife Noriko. I copied three images from her cartoonweblog. The rest of her cartoonweblog can be checked here. The story based on the daily life in Utrecht is in Japanese right now, but maybe there will be an English version in the near future.

The style of the comic is known as Manga, the Japanese word for comics or print cartoons.

This is just an example of three images of the cartoon. the rest of the cartoon can be seen here.

The second weblog is a photoweblog run by my mother in law in Tokyo.

I copied a few images to here but there are loads of pictures overthere, so if these copied pictures here made you curious, you can check the rest here.

There are some really nice pictures on my mother in law's photoweblog. Photography is one of her hobbies and I think she often has a good eye for things.

Christmas atmosphere in Tokyo, Japan.

I have no idea where this picture was taken, but I like it for some reason.

A gorgeous autumn view from Japan.

This one was taken at Lafayette a huge departmentstore in Paris.

This is Hana-chan a semi-straycat that's getting feed for some years now by my mother in law. In the beginning she was a bit frightened for people, but nowadays she is less shy.

Advertisement for new website

The past few weeks I've been posting pictures from different fortresses that we visited. All those fortresses belong to the so called (Nieuwe) Hollandse Waterlinie, a unique defense line developed between the 17th and 19th century and made up of fortresses and waterworks to inundate (flood) areas in times of invading enemies to hold them back.

I'll post some more pics later from other fortresses we visited and tomorrow we will visit some more forts with my brother in law.

Noriko is absorbing all these books and information about the "Hollandse Waterlinie". She noticed that there is almost no Japanese information about this subject, so she launched a Japanese website about the "Hollandese Waterlinie". Some parts of the website are still under construction and even if your not understanding Japanese it´s worth a visit, because it also contains a lot of pictures from the fortresses that have been visited so far.

If you´re using Mozilla Firefox you might have some trouble because not all pics will be shown when you open pages from the website. Don´t know the reason, but if you download the Firefox-add-on IE-view you can open the page with one click in Internet Explorer. An useful add-on when you have an incompatible webpage.

This is the card that Noriko designed to promote her website:

The reason why Noriko used a bat in her design is that most of the fortresses nowadays are perfect places with their niches and irregular surfaces for bats when they are having their wintersleep, because the temerature is pretty constant. Thursdaynight we went on a bat excursion at Fort Rijnauwen which was interesting. We managed to see some bats.

Update: Normally this isn't a political blog

On May 11th I posted about the Egyptian Weblogger Alaa who was arrested for demonstrating peacefully in support of the independence of the judiciary in Egypt.

Today I heard through an e-mail from my brother that Alaa was released last Friday. This is great news and a good reason to remove the Free Alaa badge in my right sidebar..

Here is an update with some more background information.

Funny

Create your own Einstein image and put in your own text. The result you can save. I saw the link to this website on my brother's weblog. I thought it was funny and put in my own text and put the result here.

New items added

Every now and then I'm trying things out on my template and doing some maintenance on the right sidebar. I have added some new links, some (extra) newslinks and some new movielinks about Asian movies.

As you can see I also added a new item which provides news headlines from the BBC divided in World, Europe, Americas, Middle East and Asia. These headlines will be automatically updated every time you visit here again.

I also added two links under the title: "This day in history". I got the idea from my brother's weblog (Dutchblog Israel). You can check what happened on today's date throughout history.

Update service

Just added a new simple item in the right sidebar: An update service.

You'll find it below the newsitems.

By sending an e-mail (just click on the link) You will be added to an addresslist and you will get automatically a notification when this weblog is updated.

New links added

Today no new pics. This time I have added some new links at the right sidebar. Some time ago I already announced that I would add some new links. Little by little I will add some new ones.

This time I have added a few newslinks to news(paper) websites. Sites that I visit on a regular basis.

Also added a link to a Dutch weblog that I often visit called Verbal Jam. It's only in Dutch unfortunately, but is is well written and often with a good sense of humour. Recommended for my Dutch visitors.

Finally I have added some movie websites. As everybody can see in my profile I have a more than average interest in Asian movies. I like Japanese cinema for quite some time and since a few years I also discovered Korean cinema. It won't surprise much that I have added some Asian movie websites. Most of them offer reviews and some other backgroundinformation. I'm still looking around for more interesting moviewebsites. If I find I will add them later.

Enjoy!

Short announcement

I just enabled "word verification" in the comment settings. I just published a post and within a few minutes I had 4 spam comments which invited me to check some sites to make money and other shit. For those who wants to post a serious comment it means a little more inconvenience, but this way I can keep my comments clean from spam. Thanks for your understanding!

No pics today

I noticed on my brothers weblog (Dutchblog Israel) that he recommended some (Dutch) photoblogs and mine was one of them. I'll return the favor by mentioning his blog. I guess this won't generate much extra traffic to his blog yet, but it's the thought that counts. My brother's weblog gets more visitors so maybe that will generate some more traffic to this photoblog. For those who came here through Dutchblog Israel I would say: Welcome and enjoy!

Don't have much time this weekend to post some pics. So I leave it to this post for today. Going to visit my parents later today.

Later, don't know exactly when, because next Friday Noriko and I are going on a week holiday to Crete, Greece, I will put some more links to other weblogs and intersting sites.

For now: Bye, bye!!