Jurassic Park SNES

Posted on | July 10, 2011 | No Comments

Did anyone play this when they were little? Oh my god Jurassic Park for the SNES was so scary and hard!! Dinosaurs everywhere, raptors jumping out of the forest, fucking T-rex coming out of nowhere… It was especially scary when you have to go inside the buildings and play it in 1st person view
Also, you couldn’t save the game, so you have to play it all the way through in 1 go… I liked playing it though, but I never finished it…

Interestingly, there’s a 7-part speedrun on Youtube

PS. I watched the ending of the game and OMG it’s the lamest ending ever! You walk up to the helipad. See yourself lift off the island and then a caption will appear “Congratulations! You escaped the island…”….. lol

[How-to-Fix] Google Maps Short URLs

Posted on | July 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

The experimental short GoogleMaps URLs stopped working since the beta launch of Google+. This was very upsetting, because we were sent back to the stone-age with super duper long URLs. For example this is the full link to GoogleMaps with a view on my old university in Eindhoven The Netherlands “http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Technische+Universiteit+Eindhoven,+Centrum,+Eindhoven,+Nederland&hl=en&ll=51.448872,5.49046&
spn=0.018,0.052314&sll=51.447428,5.482478&sspn=0.018,0.052314&z=15″.
It would get even longer if you have more search terms and filtering enabled.

Anyway, back to the main reason why you people are reading this.
Go to http://goo.gl/ and simply paste your GoogleMaps URL and voila!!
Our new link would be http://goo.gl/JmgYe
There you have it! Short links again

It requires a bit more work than the Labs experiment (clicking on the link button vs. going to http://goo.gl/ and enter the url). http://goo.gl/ works with every link you want to shorten and it saves all the short urls that you’ve made before if you have a Google Account!! Here’s the short(er) link to my blog http://goo.gl/UxBIh

Deus Ex Human Revolution The Year 20270

Posted on | July 9, 2011 | No Comments

Amerikaanse F-1 Visum Aanvragen

Posted on | July 8, 2011 | No Comments

Wow! My very first post in Dutch!! If you can’t read Dutch please follow this link.

Voor een F-1 studentenvisum dien je een DS-160 online applicatie in te vullen voordat je een afspraak maakt met de Amerikaanse Consulaat. De informatie in de DS-160 wordt gebruikt door een de inspecteur tijdens je interview. Nou waren er al wat dingen niet duidelijk voor mij tijdens het invullen hiervan, maar uiteindelijk werd me duidelijk na wat rondvragen en Google-werk. De onduidelijkheden noem ik hieronder op en hopelijk hebben andere mensen hier wat aan  

• Passport Book Number?  -  Neen!! Nederlandse paspoorten hebben geen Book Number.
• Have you even been issued a U.S. visa?  –  Alleen als je eerder een visum hebt aangevraagd. Een VWP (Visa Waiver Program) die je op de ESTA website moest invullen om tijdelijk in Amerika te verblijven voor een vakantie geldt hier niet onder.
• Een digitale pasfoto in U.S. formaat voor je DS-160?  -  Je kan gewoon zelf een foto maken met een digitale camera en uploaden. Let wel op dat de foto aan de juiste specificaties moet voldoen (neutrale achtergrond, gecentreerd en de minimale afmeting 600x600px op 300dpi).
• Retourenvelop voor je visa interview?  –  Een(aangetekende)  A5-envelop halen bij het postkantoor en die frankeren met €7,-.

Mijn eigen interview moet nog komen en is op 4 augustus. Ik post na het interview mijn ervaringen

Mijn interview was geen echte interview. Ik had een afspraak gemaakt om 14:30 en ik arriveerde rond 14:00 voor de US Consulate. Er was een dikke rij voor mij en ik begon me al zorgen te maken of ik wel op tijd zou zijn voor mijn interview. We werden allemaal netjes gecontroleerd en wat me erg verbaasde was dat de security guards erg vriendelijk waren! Geen gezeik en ze maken zelfs een gezellig praatje met je.
Nadat ik binnen in de consulaat was werden we een voor een naar voren geroepen naar het loketje waar we dan onze paspoort, sevis, etc. moesten afgeven. Daarna moest je dan weer gaan zitten en wachten tot je naar een ander loketje werd geroepen voor je “interview”. Ik werd geroepen voor mijn interview en het enige wat ze vroegen was waar heb je gestudeerd en waar/wat ga je studeren? Gelijk daarna zeiden ze: “Your visa has been approved. Your visa will be delivered at your home in about 2-3 days.” Dat was dus mijn interview helemaal voor niks extra documenten meegenomen en zitten stressen! haha
Misschien hadden ze een goede dag of zijn ze altijd zo aardig? Anway, ik heb mijn student visa binnen!

F-1 VISA and the US Consulate HerpDerp

Posted on | July 8, 2011 | No Comments

Most of you might know that I’ll be going to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh for master’s degree at the Entertainment Technology Center. The course won’t start until August 29th, but I need to be there on the 16th already for the mandatory International Orientation week. I initially thought that I would have 1 month of holiday after going back from New Zealand to the Netherlands, but this has now been cut down to a mere 2 weeks.

My time in New Zealand is almost up. 24 days until I leave sheep & mint sausage country and go back to the Netherlands and have some decent cheese and ham  I’ll be leaving Christchurch on August 1st and arrive on the 2nd in Amsterdam after a long and exhausting 33 hour trip with stopovers in Auckland, Los Angeles and London. Hopefully the flight will be smooth as the previous one!

Anyhow, I finally processed all the necessary documents and made an appointment at the US Consulate in Amsterdam for my F-1 VISA interview.
In order to get this far, I had to:

• Pay $200,- for the SEVIS. The SEVIS is a web-accessible database used by the Department of Homeland Security to collect, track and monitor information regarding exchange visitors, international students and scholars who enter the United States.
• Pay the $140,- VISA application fee and complete an online DS-160 form on the US Consulate website. This online application is used to collect the necessary application information from a person seeking a nonimmigrant visa for temporary travel to the United States. Consular Officers use the information entered on the DS-160 to process the visa application and, combined with a personal interview, determine an applicant’s eligibility for a nonimmigrant visa.
• Make a €15,- appointment for an interview by phone. Furthermore, I still need to get an ID photo in US format (2x2inch) and an envelope with €7 postage on it.

It was such a hassle and the phone call to the consulate was by far the worst. I called and the first thing the pre-recorded voice will say is “for English press 1, for Nederlands press 2″ with a very non-Dutch/American accent. The voice actually sounded like a mixture between a Hispanic and Middle Eastern person haha! Anyway, I called several times but the operators were busy every single time. I was put on hold and the electronic voice will keep babbling about the instructions of applying for a VISA. The weird thing was that my call would always be cut off after 7:30 minutes. I’m not sure if it’s because I was calling with Skype (I’m in New Zealand remember ) or that they just cut me off…..

Finally, today, I got through and the first thing the operator would say is “Hello… What is your credit card number?”. After providing the details and telling him about my application for a F-1 VISA, the guy said with a very monotonous voice…

“Did you receive the VISA documents from the school?” – Yes
“Did you complete and paid for the SEVIS?” – Yes
“Did you complete the DS-160 form?” – Yes
“Did you pay for the VISA application?” – Yes

And suddenly after answering Yes to all the questions, his voice changed to a more cheerful and lively voice!! I managed to make an appointment and give him all the necessary information. Providing the information didn’t go smooth at all! He said my connection was bad, so he needed me to spell out all the letters of my documents. I forgot a lot of  those reference words like A for Apple in Dutch… So I was like R for…. uhm…. R for…. until he filled in the gaps for me haha. It didn’t happen once, but it happened around 4-5 times! herpty derp!! ┐(‘～`；)┌

In the end, everything went ok and I’m going to finish my work here at the HIT Lab in the upcoming weeks. Meanwhile…. FOOOOOODDDDD!!

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