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Joerg's Blog If you are reading this, you must definitly be bored. Either that, or you're looking for information about this site and/or its author. For the first group of people I advise YouTube. For the second group, well, read on.
This is my personal blog page. I'll be referring about all things happening to me - that might be interesting for whoever reads it. I can not garantee it will be very high level for everyone though... But it is mainly maintained for far away relatives/family to have a glimpse of what I do with my life.
So - what is a blog anyway ? For this - check out Wikipedia - they have the best description for this. If you want to contact me - you'll have to reformat my E-Mail - so - good luck.
What I am ? I call myself a hacker.
Please note - most people think about the bad guys doing bad things to other computers. Well - I would say - that those guys are the Black Hat guys - also known as crackers.
What I call myself - is a White Hat hacker. See it as a system administrator using professional tools to probe the robustness of his own systems and networks, and trying to get the maximum out of the used hardware - making its use as efficient as possible. This is legitimate - as I do not break into anything - while crackers attempt gaining unauthorized access to systems for eventual unethic actions.
The difference between hackers and crackers does not lie in the tools or techniques they use (the same hammer can be used to build a wall, or break it down), but in their intentions !
For me - building a stable and secure system is a very interesting challenge, and to know it is stable and secure - I need to test it with all tools available. And this is what I like doing most.
Please note that all I say on these pages is for personal use only and under no circumstance has to be taken/used/copied without my explicit written permission !
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Retro c'trop 2022 was live again [ | ] |
After not being able to go to any music festival for 2 years due to Covid & restrictions, we could finally go this year again to retro c'trop in Tilloloy.
This year we only went Saturday and Sunday to see some of the good bands playing.
On Saturday we had Alice Cooper , Rival Sons , Status Quo - and honestly one of them should have performed "Singing in the rain" to reflect the weather...
While on Sunday we had Simple Minds ,Madness ,OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark) playing. This time though, the weather was really nice. Not too warm or cold - just as required for such an event.
There were some other bands playing and you can still get the full program from their web-page
To be honest, Alice Cooper made as always, an amazing show on stage. OMD had an awesome performance, and Simple Minds were as they always were. I noticed however that the musicians in simple-minds changed over the years. But the singers still had their voices and the quality of the event was top notch.
What was also very positive is that Women start to have different roles. Alice cooper had an amazing female guitar player, while Simple Mind had an awesome Drummer.
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Written on Fri, 01 Jul 2022 - 13:50 | 1270 views
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Achievement unlocked: Playing with my band :) [ | ] |
just before the covid lockdowns around the world started, I had decided to do some different activities and decided to take saxophone classes.
In my 3rd year now, my teacher asked me if I wanted to join the M&M's - her Jazz Band from the music school. I really didn't know if my skill-level would fit what they played, but agreed to try it out. In the end, my skills appeared to be usable already
Last week-end the Les Zicophonies festival took place, and our band participated with me taking part in the gig.
All in all, it went pretty well. And this is, again, worthy of an:
Achievement unlocked: Playing Saxophone with my band!
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Written on Mon, 23 May 2022 - 17:30 | 1469 views
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New family members [ | ] |
Having had a discussion for some time now to adopt some cats, we finally made it reality.
Please welcome 2 new family members - recovered by the SPA (The Society for the Protection of Animals (SPA) and its shelters ... ).
- Left: Socrates - but definitely not a philosopher. Rather say he's a sleeper for the large part of the day, and and explosion of energy for the rest of the day.
- Right: Then we have Saba - deity - and in the beginning she really behaved like that. Fortunately, now that she has taken possession of the house - she grants us permission to stay home and feed her.
Both are from the same litter. Hence they a really adorable when playing together, even though some edges cannot be avoided anymore as the speed limit has long be surpassed. The crash noises are heard in the entire house.
Did put some pics on our public cloud gallery.
1 month: Note that the house interior has been Cat-Sanitized : means, nothing hangs around that these cute devils could use to play or scratch
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Written on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 - 13:46 | 1663 views
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Time travel to Napoleon's epoch [ | ] |
The past week-end, my wife had organized our participation to the event called: "Napoléon à Versailles".
The requirement to participate was that everyone had to be dressed in the style of the 19th century, as the people during his reign as emperor.
During the event, many actors performed according to how things were done at that time. We could see military parades and maneuvers, a medal ceremony, military base camp.
On the camp-side, we could also visit some ancient trade sites, vintage dance presentations and many other related activity for that period.
In the evening, we could visit the private chambers of Napoléon (usually not opened to the public), some vintage dance scene again, participate to the goose game, which was heavily played at the court. There were also musical presentations of what was sung and listened at the time.
I have uploaded a selection of pictures and videos on our external cloud.
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Written on Sun, 12 Sep 2021 - 20:33 | 1949 views
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Achievement unlocked: N3 diving certification [ | ] |
After 2 weeks of ordeal (hard training), my oldest and I have successfully passed the level N3 exam for autonomous diver up to 60m depths.
One part (I'd rather call it rite of passage) was to go down between 10/20 m, make sure you where balanced and trimmed correctly, then take off your diving fins, remove your jacket and finally your diving mask and regulator to go on a little swim through 10m. Come back to your equipment stock, put the mask back on and empty it from remaining water, then only take back the regulator.
Other exercise were to make an assisted ascent without diving mask from 20m, plenty of other assisted ascents from 20m and 40m depth, deploying the shutes from 30m, etc.
It was quite sports , especially since we had changed some of our equipment. But by remaining calm, it worked.
After discussing it with the instructors (we had 4), it was actually to test our mental ability to deal with difficulties in high depth and make sure that we did not panic. So - all in all - we passed and got our Diving N3 certification.
Congratulations to my Oldest who passed with flying colors!
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Written on Sat, 31 Jul 2021 - 19:54 | 1728 views
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Achievement Unlocked: Dad of 2 [ | ] |
a long time ago, some time after I moved over to France, I had two little girls jumping around me screaming and during a silent moment (which was very rare), I was asked if I would become their new dad. A question I had not thought about yet.
Some years have passed and they asked me straight if I did not want to adopt them. And actually, thinking about it, I said: yes. Why not? They are already "my" girls. I am the "dad" they had for some time now. So I went on to face the challenge of adopting these 2 beauties
What I did not expect though, where all the road-blocks that I had to overcome. First of all, Citizenship. Luckily I had lived more than 5 years in france and married their mother in the mean-time. This eased the process of me becoming a french citizen to make sure my request for adoption of the girls would not be straight rejected by the court.
What I had not anticipated though, was this straight disapproval of my "old" family regarding this project. But who are they, not taking any part in our lives and always trying to control what I do, to interfere with our happiness?
In the end, after many month of struggles looking like the Twelve Labours of Heracles , I finally received the official court approval (papers) that I am now dad of the two most amazing girls I know. And that - is worthy of an
Achievement Unlocked: Dad of 2
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Written on Sun, 20 Jun 2021 - 17:20 | 2328 views
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Achievement Unlocked: Weather Station up and RIP [ | ] |
It took me a while to build, test and setup a weather station (roughly 6 months).
I wanted to understand how exactly it worked, what sensors were required, and tinker with the system that would collect the data. The Build-Blog shows all details of the journey.
Last Sunday June 21st, I finally hooked the Weather-Station up on the roof-top of our house where it started to provide data as planned. Everything went fine. Data was being sent to Wunderground.com and on my own site, however yesterday June 26th at precisely 20h03+, during a thunderstorm, lightning struck into the neighborhood. It was so near and strong we really felt the blast and our ears did rang a while due to the loud discharge sound it made.
Having anticipated the dangers of lightnings, we had unplugged all electronic devices that were not protected. However for the weather station, there was no protection. It was on the rooftop doing its job.
Doing some basic tests on the weather station, showed that the Raspberry PI WH seems to have suffered. Instead of 120mA it started using up 500mAh of power which is way too much for that small device. I cut off the power and will have to take the station down again to check on the damage. I'll report on that another time.
Note that the street lamps in our vicinity were taken out too.
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Written on Sat, 27 Jun 2020 - 14:37 | 5372 views
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A great day in Paris and Versailles !!! [ | ] |
We are all finally on holiday and we decided to enjoy Paris and its surrounding a little bit. We booked an exhibition at the Ateliers des Lumières in Paris. This "museum" is a former foundry which closed when the 1929 international crisis disrupted the world's economy. It became a tool factory which stopped operating in 2000 and in 2018 it opened again as a creative art space where paintings are illuminated, animated to the sound of music. All the walls, floor and ceiling are covered with light and colours. One can walk in the high-ceiling room and follow the images, or one can just sit down not far from a huge wall and enjoy. Whatever the choice it is beautiful. Check out the website https://www.atelier-lumieres.com/en/home
This year the exhibition focuses on Vincent Van Gogh whose colourful work particularly fits the concept. It is followed by a shorter program entitled Dreamed Japan, as Japan did inspire Van Gogh's work. But above all else it triggered memories and a bit of nostalgia as we so much enjoyed our trip there in 2018.
We spent the evening at Versailles where we booked a pyrotechnics show telling the tragic story of Marie-Antoinette queen of France. The performance was showcased in the castle's orangery. It was creative and the fireworlks really danced to the rhythm of the music.
Versailles always schedules amazing events and we plan to attend the Grand Masked Ball at the castle one day. We just need to wait for our last one to reach 18. But it's a plan !!!
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Written on Thu, 04 Jul 2019 - 11:18 | 7273 views
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Music Festival Retro C Trop reloaded !!! [ | ] |
We enjoyed last year's festival so much we returned this year and it was even better. We bought the tickets as soon as we found out that Tears for Fears was scheduled and it turned out that more rock stars would be attending. Midnight Oil was just as great. UB40 was amazing. The Dire Straits Experience sounded just like ... Dire Straits. And we discovered Popa Chubby and the Zombies as well as French bands.
The weather was perfect, we found shaded spots to spread our blankets (we were a bit more organised this year) and we met friends and had a great time together, listening to music and dancing.
We can't wait to see what next year's programme will be !!!
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Written on Mon, 01 Jul 2019 - 11:01 | 7187 views
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