Today we visited Woodstock, IL, to see the set of one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day (1993), featuring Bill Murray. Groundhog Day was filmed here 13 years ago, but everything still looks just as in the movie. You can retrace Bill Murray’s footsteps from Ned’s Corner to Tip Top Bistro to the place where he stepped into the puddle, then across the street toward Gobbler’s Knob in Square Park. More »

In Rotterdam today a subterranean shopping area flooded with 600 cubic meters of boiling water from bursted pipes. Six people were brought to the hospital for second and third degree burns on their feet. Here are some photos. More »

This week a White-beaked dolphin stranded in the Oostvoornsemeer, a lake south-west of Rotterdam here in the Netherlands. It is a very popular spot for diving schools, and it is where we finished our PADI Open Water Diver course this summer. Two bird-watchers spotted the dolphin and called the Eerste Hulp Bij Zeezoogdieren (EHBZ), or First Aid for Sea Mammals, who think the dolphin swam into the Rotterdam harbor last weekend during a storm. More »

Do you know what the number 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 stands for? It’s the number of possible (9 by 9) Sudoku grids, as calculated by Bertram Felgenhauer. Since we saw so many Sudoku books on our last trip to London, and Amy started doing the puzzles on her way to work, I decided to pick up a small book of Sudoku puzzles myself. This was only last week and already I am hooked; it’s incredible how addicting these puzzles are, and how quickly I am longing for new and more complicated ones. More »

This is the time of year when magazines and websites publish ‘Best of 2005 …’ lists. Here is a list of some of the best news stories, books, movies, music, and gadgets of 2005. More »

The crash between two driverless robot buses in Rotterdam on Tuesday 6 December was caused by a human error, reports Connexxion. More »

My favorite computer games of all time were the Space Quest and King’s Quest adventures from Sierra On-line. Back in 1983 King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown was the first animated adventure game ever. The character was moved around the 16-color environment with the arrow keys, and everything else in the game was controlled by use of a text parser (e.g. “Pick up apple”). At the time these graphics were amazing; it may not seem like a big deal now, but seeing the blocky Sir Graham move behind a tree or a big boulder was many person’s first true 3D experience. The eighth and final King’s Quest game game out in 1998 — but this week Vivendi Universal Games announced that they will allow the work on the unofficial King’s Quest IX to continue!! More »

Beware of your links appearing on the popular site digg.com. Last night a link to this site appeared on the homepage of digg.com, and almost instantly the site crashed from the sudden surge in traffic. It received thousands of hits instantly and that quickly used up our 5 gibabytes per day permitted data transfer. Our hosting company disabled the site as the traffic was affecting other customers. The site has just now come back online after being offline for nearly 18 hours. It was a true diggalanche.

Two driverless shuttle-buses crashed in Rotterdam this morning causing a lot of damage. No passengers were inside at the time of the accident. More »

Apple today expanded their selection of TV shows on their iTunes Music Store. ABC’s Lost and Desperate Housewives have been available since October, but today new and old shows from NBC, Sci-Fi and USA were added. Also this week CNN started online television with their new CNN Pipeline service, with four commercial-free live feeds for $2.95 per month.
More »