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10 items tagged "kikuism"
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21:10
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
I need a new credit card and my bank offers this special option for an extra annual fee of EUR 3,- where I can upload pictures which are then printed directly on the cc.
Atiriiri…I thought, what fun! Let’s see what my vanity (& a sleepless night, hence the motivation for this beautiful waste of time) comes up with:
1. Kikoi - I’ve actually thought about using this Kikoi image (see header logo on my blog) more often- even with a possible new WP-template.
2. Brokat - my grandmother’s ball gown (I really like the pattern!)
3. view from the backyard @ Forodha Towers on Nairobi ;-)
4. afternoon rain, somewhere between Limuru and Ruaka
5. my favourite view on Garissa
6. somewhere in Kitengela/Mbagathi. Mzeecedric knows where this is.
7. Somewhere on the way to Olepolos…
Since I can’t decide which one to choose (1.,6. or 7.?), you are hereby cordially invited to contribute your 2c-comment! :-)
You know these (basic!) VISA cards cost around 20,- EUR / a - so I was wondering whether anyone is actually using those bonus-cards (Gold, Platinum, Amazon, etc.) where you’re given extra miles for any purchase via the card + insurance package? I know the system is totally different from the one in use in the USA, but here in Europe credit cards are not that common (= not everyone has one!) as we also have national direct debit card systems such as the Maestro system by MasterCard.
  
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16:28
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
The missing ability to run a simple cronjob on my 1&1 hosting package actually contributed to the decision to eventually move all my domain names and sites to another server.
Kwaheri, 1&1…
I don’t know about 1&1 in the US, but here in Germany where they started many years ago (I had become their customer in 1999 when they were still called puretec.de), 1&1 = United Internet AG just suck. It’s their web hosting package that doesn’t provide enough flexibility (limited amount of MySQL dbs, no cronjobs, etc.) as well as how they treat their broadband customers. Back in 2004 when flatrates were introduced to the DSL market in Germany, the flatrate option was only made available to new customers, leaving those with an ongoing contract (min. 24 months) stuck to a volume- or 20h/month contract. And the worst, really worst, part on 1&1 is their so-called customer service. Whoever does their L1-support should be fired and kindly asked to stay away from computers.
Technically, though, 1&1 is great. During all those…9years?? with 1&1, I never experienced any server failures nor speed issues.
And it’s not that I or other customers never told them to improve. The management @ 1&1 (United Internet) obviously never studied The Cluetrain manifesto. Did I already mention how much I hate their customer service? Well….
Anyhow, the missing cronjob and limited number of available databases (5, which already was an improvement to the previous 3!), my good mood on a thursday morning and the perspective to be paying much less in future (I’ve spent like ~2.8000 € on hosting services since 1999 alone) eventually led me to switch to a cheaper and much more competent web hosting service. Not the cheapest - and maybe I could/should have switched to one in the US instead (who btw also often have some hidden extra costs), but one that just delivers. Fast. The way I like it.
As a consequence of that, I’ll be moving (done!) all of my domains and sites from the old server to the new one in the next few days. Let’s hope it all works out, especially the database backups. For those of you trying to get in touch with me via e-mail: try my gmail address or twitter account (@jke). Thx!
It also means that I’ll be implementing some changes, or rather - I’ve thought about changing a basic issue that has been bugging me for quite some time now:
change of name / blog title
My online presence under the nickname “Kikuyumoja” started off in early 1997, with my own home page residing under different URLs (AOL, geocities.com, Rhein-Main.Net, Manri.com) until I managed to register kikuyumoja.de in early 1999, quickly followed by uhuru.de and umoja.de.
While searching for an adequate blog title way back in June 2005, I chose to continue using “Kikuyumoja’s realm”. My blog was accessible either via [blog.uhuru.de] or even via [kikuyumoja.de] .
Now, imagine the situation where someone asks you what “Kikuyumoja” actually means. That is, to me it’s just a name, but to many others it’s either “Kikuyu1″ or “Kik-Kuuu-ju-moh-jha”. Something that remains difficult to explain. And yet it’s just another (sort-of) brand name like WhiteAfrican, Afromusing, Mentalacrobatic, tHiNkEr’S rOoM to name just a few.
So please allow me to ask the following questions:
1. What do you - dear reader - think I should do? Change it from “Kikuyumoja’s realm” to just “Kikuyumoja”? “Kikuyumoja’s”? “JKE”? “Kikuyumoja Inc.”? “Kikuism”?
2. I didn’t use uhuru.de as the starting page of my blog, as I am currenty hosting different sites on my webspace of which some are accessible via uhuru.de/xyz.
So I was wondering: should I configure my blog to take uhuru.de as the ultimate starting page and force other sites on uhuru.de to use their own domain names? Much like it already is the case with WhiteAfrican.com? Solved!
3. How long does it take to load my blog in areas where there’s no broadband available? Should I maybe reduce the amount of posts shown on a single page? And what should I do with that blogroll? Do ppl still need it? Will I need it or may I just kick it out?
4. What about those Google Ads on my site - are they offensive in any way? I’ve noticed some advertisement for Asian dating services on my blog - which is kinda strange. I understand that GoogleAdSense isnt the only advertisement programme out there, but they at one time in the past at least helped me to *pay lunch* - so I thought about keeping their ads inside my blog.
Ah, so many open questions. Comments on these are highly appreciated!
Thank you.
[EDIT: DAMN....will still have to do something about that UTF-8 issue...argh!!! Fixed!]
[EDIT2: just registered kikuyumoja.COM after 9 years of kikuyumoja.de - and although I do not think Kikuyumoja is such a good name, it still is a brand).
  
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14:56
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
“This private blog is presently not open because it is closed” JKE
…for some reasons I just love this pic above [via, thx!] and maybe also because it perfectly helps to illustrate my silence aka blog-abstinence earlier this week - due to this:
Approx. 4kgs of papers related to the beautiful subject of hydrof******mechanics - an exam I had been procrastinating since 2004 (!) and eventually maneeeeegehhhd to passssss. :-)
Can u imagine I even carried this material to EAK the other day?
Kawia ufike.
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21:48
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
What’s this?
Blog material.
No, seriously - what you see here is my broken Tusker polo shirt.
Bought this One-Way XXL shirt sometime in 2006 and after only 4 months in use, the collar suddendly fell apart. Obviously, there’s something to the one-way name that didn’t quite appear to me when I coughed up the mbeca for this Tusker goodie. Also, “XXL” is meant to be read: “this shaat will shrink once you hand-wash (!) it at 30°C”.
A tailor in Embu even tried to fix it the other day but it just wouldn’t work. Apparently, the collar went into early retirement.
I am the polo shirt guy. That’s why you’ll hardly ever see me in t-shirts. BarCamp Nairobi shirt? Africantees.com? Naaa….no polo shirt (no collar), no deal with JKE.
Actually, I just bought this polo shirt because of the TUSKER logo, but then: I wouldn’t mind if there was “JKE” on it instead, as long as it comes in a good quality. Something that will stay in shape after washing (and mind you, I am not using any dryer), won’t expand like those many Made-in-Bangladesh clothes as found @ H&M & Zara and that’s still affordable.
What’s the best shirt then? I hate to admit it, but I quite like these Ralph Lauren classic polo shirts because - if original - they’ll just be as solid as Barbour wax jackets.
The other day I decided to get a used (ati, I am cheap..) RL polo shirt from eBay and…well…
…baaad idea. What you see above are two RL polo shirts in size XL. The turquoise one is my old one, the black one on top is the “new” used one from eBay. Can you see the difference? Atiriiri…how am I supposed to cover my Tusker belly with such a short shaat?
So, because I know I am not the only one out here with peculiar dressing habits, let me ask you: is there any brand out there you can recommend? Any polo shirts that will just remain in shape after the 20th washing and that come without any stupid logos or brandings? I know you folks from the USA will laugh about this, but there seems to be a difference between the clothes you can buy in Europe and those you’ll get in the US. Even if they are all made in some low cost countries.
@Bwana Kobia: polo shaats @Africantees and I’m your next customer! :-)
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14:02
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
As mentioned earlier, I am currently searching for a new template for this blog. Don’t get me wrong - the current Sirius theme is great and offers lots of comfort and whitespace, but it’s from 2006 (dev unfortunately stopped since then which is such a pity!) and so I thought about going for a new one. Simple as that.
Most templates aren’t that 100% perfect though and/or still require lots of tweaking. So what IF i come up with my own layout? Instead of stealing something from here or there and mixing it all up, let me just do some try&error sketching and present it here as a raw draft:
Actually, I like this grey wallpaper, also have it on my desktop. Wallpapers are a bit too 1990s, but so what. Used to have no image on my desktop to save RAM + keep it fast & clean, but nowadays I just dont care. So, the basic idea was to create something around this wallpaper that doesnt look too ..ahh…strange ? :-)
Next task was to see which colour may fit. I need lots of whitespace due to my inability to include transparent backgrounds to the smaller banners. Whitespace looks nice. Lakini here, there’s no whitespace. Only transparent ebony(-white) supposed-to-be-slightly-rounded boxes that have a yellow-ish touch to it. White on ebony/yellow - does that work?
Then the font colours. I somehow like that green/turquoise. Sijui why. Maybe because of my Kikoi banner on the Sirius theme.
As for fonts: GEORGIA! Lovely font.
Icons by FamFam and 69mb (thx!).
1 content bar, 2 sidebars. 1st sidebar for blog related links (recent comments, links, meta, etc.), 2nd sidebar for external promotions / google adsense etc.
Thought about giving them some transparency - the most important one (= content bar) with the lowest transparency and so on (as pictured).
Overall width ~ 900 px, should display @ 1024×768. Oh, and content bar should be 505 - 530 px for all my 500px images + margins.
Everything else is work in progress. Before I continue, I would like to hear/read your HONEST opinion on this. Does this look OK or just horrible? Remember, I am the guy who does these things, so I may be a bit strange sometimes…
Any feedback is appreciated! :-)
Oh, and with white layers:
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22:33
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
Ich habe dieser Tage eine alte Aufzeichnung einer Lesung von Walter Kempowski im Radio gehört, der ja vor kurzem nach langer Krankheit verstorben ist.
Ebenso wie Kemposwki, verstarb dieses Jahr auch mein Vater im Januar, kurze Zeit später der von mir sehr geschätzte Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski - und jetzt vor kurzem leider auch Hans Otte, der hier in Bremen lange Jahre beim Sender Radio Bremen tätig war, und (nicht nur) dort ganz maßgeblich für ein neues Klangerlebnis gesorgt hatte.
Trotz dieser traurigen Botschaften war 2007 für mich aber auch ein sehr erfolgreiches Jahr, in dem ich viele neue interessante Menschen kennengelernt habe und jetzt einer Tätigkeit nachgehe, die meinem Profil weitgehend entspricht und den Freiraum bietet, den ich mir immer gewünscht habe.
Insofern bin ich gespannt auf das kommende Jahr und freue mich ob der Dinge, die da noch auf mich warten.
Ich wünsche Euch allen ein erfolgreiches und glückliches neues Jahr 2008!
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9:05
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
Einer der Umstände, die mich manchmal vom Bloggen bzw. Ausfüllen dieser Website mit Inhalten abhalten, ist die Auswahl der Sprache. Weniger ob Deutsch oder Englisch, als vielmehr die Frage nach dem Schreibstil.
Sicherlich kann man anonym bloggen und dann Dinge aufschreiben, die Andere gerne lesen, Reiseberichte verfassen, übers Kochen schreiben oder neues Technikspielzeug. Darum geht es mir aber gar nicht. Dieses Blog entstand ja im Sommer 2005 aus der Not heraus, dass ich mich bei Neon angemeldet hatte und den Moderatoren dort meine Texte für eine Veröffentlichung als Artikel nicht gut genug waren. Ohne Angabe von Gründen. Wohl nicht hip genug. Oder so. Daraufhin beschloss ich, mein eigenes blog aufzumachen - auch weil mich Cedric dazu ermutigt hatte - und bin damit seitdem auch recht glücklich.
Ich blogge hauptsächlich a) auf Englisch, obwohl ich manchmal lieber auf Deutsch schreiben würde, einzig auch nur um bestimmte Dinge anders - nicht besser - ausdrücken zu wollen und b) weil ich ein sog. “Bridgeblogger” bin, manchmal zumindest, der durch das Berichten über die lokale Situation das Ausland informieren möchte.
Vor allem aber versuche ich dabei c) nicht nur eine bestimmte Seite an mir zu bedienen, sondern mehrere Ebenen wiederzugeben. Ich bin ja nicht NUR so wie das dem Leser zwischen den Zeilen hindurchschimmern mag. Was ich hier schreibe muss ja nicht vollkommen meine Persönlichkeit wiedergeben. Deswegen habe ich auch irgendwann persönlichere Dinge gebloggt, weil ich mich für eine breite Palette an Themen interessieren und auch begeistern kann.
“Ich hätte gar nicht so viel zu schreiben oder den Drang, mich anderen mitzuteilen” - solche Sprüche hört man als Blogger oft. Glücklicherweise hat sich das in den letzten zwei Jahren bißchen relativiert, und ich glaube viele dieser Aussagen sind nicht richtig, da es meiner Meinung nach viele anonyme Blogger gibt, die nach außen hin dieses low profile bewahren möchten, um dann aber insgeheim irgendwo über ihre Erfahrungen zu bloggen. Wäre mal ne interessante Studie: wieviele anonyme Blogger gibt es?
Nein, nein, es geht nicht um die öffentliche Tagebuchfunktion. Nächste Woche Dienstag haben wir in der Firma die offene Web 2.0 Gesprächsrunde, die Christian mit moderieren wird, und es werden dann sicherlich nur die Inetaffinen Gestalten auftauchen, diejenigen also, die mit dem Begriff Web 2.0 auch wirklich aktive Inhalte verbinden können und den Sinn und Zweck verstanden haben. Ich freue mich schon sehr darauf und finde es großartig, das Christian hier so missionarisch unterwegs ist!
Meine Arbeitskollegin frug mich letztens, wer das alles lesen soll. Weiß ich doch nicht! Ich hab ihr dann aber den Link mit der öffentlichen Besucherstatistik zu diesem Blog geschickt, was die Frage einigemaßen beantworten sollte.
Für mich sind Blogs also nicht nur persönliche Tagebücher im Internet, sondern vor allem Publikationswerkzeuge, um Inhalte schnell und einfach einer breiten Masse im Internet präsentieren zu können.
Sobald sich mobiles Bloggen vom Handy aus durchsetzen wird (Stichwort: Googles offenes Handybetriebssystem, das diese Dienste mit Sicherheit verschmelzen wird), wird man auch nicht mehr unterscheiden wollen zwischen reinen Blogs und moderierten Webpräsentationen. Alles verschmilzt online zu einem großen Pool an Daten, everything is miscellaneous, ist auffindbar, wird über feeds dem interessierten Leser direkt in den Feedreader befördert, nach Inhalten sortiert, jeder Nutzer ist wie bei den P2P filesharing Diensten auch automatisch Bereitsteller von Inhalten (zB durch Kommentare)…kurz: das Web lebt vom Mitmachen und Verwenden von Informationen.
Die Zweifler werden sich ob des Hypes sicherlich immer noch fragend am Kopf kratzen und ihren old-school-Status unterstreichen wollen. Sollen sie ruhig. Die Verwendung von Blogs oder sozialen Lesezeichendiensten wie del.icio.us (die qualifizierte, von Menschen vorselektierte Inhalte festhalten) sind für mich aber der Beweis dafür, dass diese Dezentralität des Netzes die Gegenwart darstellt.
So, und an dieser Stelle würde ich jetzt gerne auf den Schreibstil eingehen, alleine: es gibt keinen eindeutigen JKE-Schreibstil und außerdem muss ich jetzt grad schnell los und meine Wäsche zum Waschsalon tragen. Have a nice weekend!
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17:29
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
There are a million subjects one could blog about - and while I prefer those that add a value in some way or another, I sometimes get carried away to turn this page into a tumbleblog.
Social networking services like Twitter, Facebook or even the commented links on Delicious often help to substitute these tumbleblog-tendencies in me, but there’s this question I’ve asked myself lately which just requires some feedback:
What’s the best baggage (luggage, case, travel bag)?
Yeah, what kind of travel bag(s) are you using for your travels? Non-wheeled luggage? Wheeled luggage? 2-wheeled? 4-wheeled? Backpacks? Duffels? wheeled duffels? Sports Bags? Trolleys? Spinners?….aiii - the classification in itself is confusing to a point where you just end up thinking: no way, maaaan, anything spacious will do.
Well, does it?
Now, let me pls rule out that I am by no means going to use those *insert politically incorrect term here* bags for my luggage. At least not for my next flight! :-)
Having said that, let me tell you about my Koffer-history. I grew up on using 4-wheeled upright Samsonite lightweight suitcases. My father for some reason one day decided to go for more durable cases, and back then during the early 1970s, he decided to switch from old-fashioned, fibreglass 1960s styled cases to modern Samsonite suitcases.
These Samsonites used to be nice up until the early 1990s when more and more people started travelling and suddenly even the local supermarkets starting selling decent trolley systems. And while my old Samsonite actually weighs around 6kg alone when empty (!), it weighs around 30kg when filled with normal clothes. And hey! I am tall. Tall people have bigger clothes = need for space = *should* be allocated a higher luggage weight quota. Reaching those 20kgs is a pain whenever I pack my stuff together for a longer journey, and while I often end up having around 23kgs, I am always extremly annoyed about the fact that the box actually consumes a 1/4 of the allocated weight quota.
Clearly, something needs to be done about this.
Way back in 1997, I spent my first salary on a 2-wheeled Eastpak Warehouse travel bag like the one below.
This bag is just awesome as it offers a volume of 140 liters at a decent size of 84×45x38 cm. Yes, 38 cm width which means you can comfortably pull this bag on a narrow train aisle.
The downside of course is that there’s a chaos in this bag (you can actually just throw everything in it and move on) and that the pulling-mechanism is somewhat annoying. If you’re 6ft4 tall, all you want is long enough luggage so that you don’t have to dislocate your shoulder whenever you want to reach for your luggage. And: this is Germany. We do have a lot of US-American brands on our market here, but there are many more interesting products from the States which aren’t available here. The backpack for my 15,4″ notebook actually is a High Sierra model I was given by a friend last year who bought it in the States. Imagine I had checked ALL available laptop backpacks on sale in Germany, and none of them was good enough. Again, if you’re a tall person, finding the right luggage that uses the space provided by a longer back may sometimes be a tedious taks.
Back to my bag which has been used intensively since 1997: Just the other day while flying to Sweden, I saw this older US-American couple in front of me who were apparently touring Europe and who had very nice trolleys. This trolley technology is just perfect, and when you look at how the market for travel accessories developed over the recent years, you’ll see that more and more shops are offering those trolleys in different sizes, shapes, materials and weights.
So I started my search with the typical “what if I had enough money” question so see what’s the best product out there - and then move on to a more affordable solution.
These RIMOWA trolleys, either made out of aluminium or polycarbonate are sexy indeed, but while the alumium ones only look good (and still weigh almost as much as their fibreglass counterparts from Samsonite, Delsey & Co), the polycarbonate ones are a wobbly affair. I just don’t trust their stability as I’ve seen quite a few “refurbished” polycarbonate RIMOWAs for sale on ebay that all had the same problem: a broken corner. Quality? Well, RIMOWA gives a 30year guarantee on their products - which explains why you would spend at leat EUR 270,- on a 82l suitcase which just weighs 3,5 kgs. Nice gear, but not for me.
So I continued my search and came across this model by Eastpak (huuuh! again?) which basically looks like my older Eastpak bag with the difference that it’s a little bit smaller (105l vs 140l) and comes with a few smart details such as the trolley function and separated compartments:
Eastpak Godfather L, 78×40x30cm, 105l, 3.8kg
Is this my next bag for the coming years? Will my 3-weeks-luggage fit into this system and be my ultimate travel gear which I can pull from here around the rest of the world? That is: travelling for me includes everything from a comfy taxi ride, small aisles in trains, careless luggage handlers at airports to carrying this bag through never-ending stair cases and having it on my laps for a 5h ride in an over-crowded matatu. And then of course there’s this hotel across town, which means I’ll have to pull this baby through the neighborhood on never-ending streets with questionable sidewalks…
Obviously, trying to find the perfect equipment for a mixture of all those tasks is worth blogging - and a perfect distraction from other, much more important tasks that I am good at procrastinating (and which have kept me away from blogging lately, damn it..).
So what does your luggage look like? Any feedback is appreciated! :-)
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16:02
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
It’s furahiday evening, I’ve just returned home and found some nice items in my snail mail. Things that brought a smile on my face.
A dictionary on words as used by the German youth. With some equivalent translations for French, English and Spanish on each entry.
Ok ok ok, the other day I already asked for comments on some of these colloquial words as used in today’s German, but this booklet actually is a bit strange. Nevertheless, if you ever wondered about the real meaning of Gazellenfraktion, Bitchburner, Hülsenfrucht or Wurstmensch - this booklet might help.
Thx, Annette! :-)
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“Ukweli - the truth” by Anna Mwalagho
Irene forwarded this CD to me and I still need to listen into it (I’ve just unpacked it - is this some sort of poetry made for the US market? lemme check..).
THANK YOU, Irene! :-)
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Speaking of music, I currently enjoy listening to the audio stream of Radio Okapi. Soukous, baby!
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Attended another blogger meeting late last night right here in Frankfurt. After enjoying a few beers with my jamaas in the Kenyan blogosphere some time ago, I thought about trying to explore the scene over here in Frankfurt, and it turned out to be really nice!
Fellow blogger Silke organized the event, and next to my new colleague Christian, I also had some nice conversations with Robert, Henning and Arno. There’s a webmonday coming up this next monday, and I am already considering going there. The beauty of such events is that you are actually talking to folks who read the same blogs (at least those from within the German blogosphere which is btw still very limited) and who are showing some interest in the international scene. The German section of GlobalVoices, for instance, is still very deserted, but as much as I like bridge-blogging, I currently don’t have the energy to cover the German blogosphere. Also, blog posts such as this one here clearly show that I am more interested in contributing my own content instead of just reposting another youtube video that seems to be cool or writing a summary/round-up on the important stuff that has been going on (another point is that I do not consider my English good enough for GV, but that’s another story..).
8 years ago, my bro KPT, Tammo and I went to a big VC guy right here in Frankfurt where we presented our (still cool) idea for an online application which was based on the wireless application protocol. This VC guy carefully listened to our idea and then ripped us apart, but also gave us some valuable feedback on how to improve that idea.
Later on, as everyone else had different careers going on, the project stalled, but this experience is still very vivid in our memory, and last evening, while talking to Burkhard who also works as a VC, I was reminded of this event. This particular VC guy from 1999 actually quit his job soon after the dot-com bubble bursted and is reported to be working as a salesman for prefabricated houses nowadays. LOL!
Vielen Dank für den sehr netten und interessanten Abend, liebe Rhein-Main pl0gger :-)
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To Braun, or to Philips: that is the question…every serious man will ask himself one time in his life. I know my bro-in-law actually only uses a wet shaving technique, but I prefer an errectricooor shavaaa.
So I am in the lucky state of owning both systems, and while I’ve been a die-hard user of the typical Braun shaver system (as pictured on the left) with this very Shave 1.0 blade in the past, I am currently trying to see if I shouldn’t use the Philips three-bladed approach instead.
So, dear comrades, what kind of shaving system are you using? And beware, I already tried the alternative one day, which left some little spots on my face the above mentioned dictionary would describe as “ant titts”. There you go…
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13:57
From: Kikuyumoja's realm
Read This Entry & More At Kikuyumoja's realm
The following post on cooking goes out to all my friends out there who hardly ever cook. Yes, those very same ppl who enjoy watching Jamie Oliver creating some culinary miracorrrrs, but prefer to opt for the quick & dirty solution when it comes to organizing dinner.
Ok now, this is Germany, which means lots of people eating bread. Healthy wholemeal bread and not that kind of white bread the Brits (who can’t cook! yes, I said it!) presumably introduced to a country like Kenya. If there’s one good thing about Germany, then it’s the beer, a wide variety of whole-meal breads and different kinds of sausages.
As for the bread, there are ready mixtures available for as low as EUR 0,35 that just require 320ml of warm water, 2h hours of resting and about 45 minutes of baking in the oven @ ~ 200°C. A simple and quick solution for your own bread that doesn’t come with any preservatives and other fake ingredients. Since you’re the one who bakes it, you know what’s inside. Pefect.
vegetable soup with fresh parsley and home-baked whole-meal bread
And then there’s the vegetaboooool.
The vegetable they are selling here in Germany often comes from some articifial plantations in Spain or the Netherlands - and while it looks great, it often tastes like…nothing. The potatoes I bought, for instance, have come from Israel.
Israel! Now that reminds me of the apples from China we had the other day…
So I went shopping and came across a bunch of more or less cheap vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots and celery. I added a bunch of parsley and headed home.
“No, I don’t want to eat any carbohydrates in the evening”, I heard this friend of mine complaining the other day. - “Yeah, sure…how about a light soup then?”.
Yes, how about a nice vegetable soup? My initial plan was to slightly cook the vegetable and eat it with some curd cheers, but then I just chopped everything, threw it onto the stove with some (very) salty water and let it boil until the vegetable had this particular “al dente” firmness: ready to bite.
I then pureed everything with my favourite kitchen gadgetimoja and added some nutmeg and fresh parsley and a bit of milk.
This recipe is just so simple and yet healthy as it contains no oils or other evil stuff that makes you think twice about the evening beer. Also, you may want to freeze any extra soup that you can’t finish in one day, which just makes it perfect for those many many singles out there who eat nothing at all in the evenings just because they are too tired to cook a single menu.
(this article is part of the “cooking with Juergen Kamau” series :-)
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