Good suggestions!

Personally I had cooked up "If you would post an anonymous question at askmefi about now what would it be". It's easy to be much more comfortable discussing very personal stuff with complete strangers that will be 10000 km away in a week, like me. (provided they promise not to mention it on mefi of course)
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 2:54 PM on July 3, 2008

"If I were to ask your friends to imitate you in Charades, what would they do?"
"Think of a time when you tried to be funny and it completely tanked."

What I like about those is that they introduce an atmosphere of making fun (of oneself). Most questions, while good, create an atmosphere of great earnestness. Which isn't always what you're looking for when relaxing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 4:43 PM on July 3, 2008

If I were you I'd find a public library, find a classic travel guide like the green Michelin guide for the area around Paris and choose a nice old town that offers a medieval altar as its main attraction. Pick a hotel. Voilà.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 6:07 AM on June 22, 2008

That's how the setting input locale French works out in Windows. Apparently your browser had a setting for preferred input locale French.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:41 AM on June 20, 2008

Don't use your vocal chords while sneezing. Makes a huge difference.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:49 PM on June 18, 2008

When the other side doesn't do too well and their supporters are rather quiet repeat on the refrain of Go West
't is stil aan de overkant
which means literally
it is silent on the otherside

medley of football songs. As you can tell melodies tend to be extremely simple and fitting for a pub that's filled with drunk people.

Indeed hup holland hup which means go holland... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:29 PM on June 18, 2008 marked best answer

Dutch polders are very flat. Dutch river landscapes are pretty flat too. Only dikes provide difference in height.
I'm hard pressed to think of any incline in major Dutch cities like Amsterdam, The Hague or Utrecht.

There are a few hills in Holland. We call them mountains.

Bangladesh is also a river delta. I suspect that's very flat too.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:30 PM on June 16, 2008

I used the point and shoot camera of a friend. A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33. (well, actually the previous model FX30).
Having only used an older digital camera I was amazed by the optical stabiliser option. It's great to be able to take pictures with the available light, no flash, and have them come out sharp. And I don't have very steady hands either.
That combined with good optics and a size that makes it easy to have it always available in my pocket. In that sense I... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 3:07 AM on June 15, 2008

Can you let the cat out at night? Being able to chase mice and explore territory greatly reduces annoying behaviour and neediness.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 6:16 PM on June 14, 2008

Using ask.mefi to draw attention to your gripe blog is not a good idea.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 2:23 AM on June 6, 2008

Percentage of p2p protocols
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 2:01 PM on May 29, 2008

Reaper - funny cute show
Mad men - well acted
30 Rock - hilarious

HBO's Rome was awesome
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 7:14 AM on May 26, 2008

Fertilisation can occur between 5 days before and 2 days after ovulation. Ovulation is generally on the 14th day of the menstrual cycle but that can vary.
If this occurred within that timeframe there's a chance that she'd get pregnant.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 4:54 PM on May 15, 2008

Ten Steps that Transform Anger into Compassionate Connection
Describes a way to deal with anger in a relationship in a constructive way.
I encountered that link on mefi. But I forget who posted it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 1:30 PM on May 5, 2008

kowtow
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:00 AM on May 4, 2008 marked best answer

Yeah, start speaking Spanish exclusively with them, start making mistakes but communicate anyway, get a little drunk.
In other words: speaking a foreign language is about communication first, using the language correctly will follow. Trying to do it the other way round is a recipe for not learning the language at all since you'll never know it sufficiently to start speaking it without errors.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:36 AM on April 30, 2008

Some quick notes on my less than overwhelmed experience switching to Mac.

I'm a technically savvy power user with a history of windows and linux.
Looking back after about 4 months I'm not that excited.
I like that the wireless connects very fast and with less problems than my previous experiences. I really like that.
The OS is not very important for using the internet or office like activities since those experiences are determined by... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:42 AM on April 29, 2008

Ah, forgot one other positive thing about my Macbook Pro: two finger scrolling on the touchpad. That's a very intuitive feature that I got used to immediately and would sorely miss.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:38 AM on April 29, 2008

Ah another dislike: if you install an application that uses an installer, not the drag&drop way of installing, there's no way to remove the thing. The OS does not provide features for that. Can you believe it?
You can inspect the original installer using some obscure shell commands and search out the individual files and remove them.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 12:03 PM on April 29, 2008

One of the most renowned Dutch poets of the previous century is Gerrit Achterberg.
He was a common middle school teacher. People thought he was a little peculiar.
Around the time that his first modernist poetry was published he threatened physically his girlfriend.
She left him. He was apprehended carrying a gun while on his way to her.
He was admitted to a closed asylum.
He wrote some more great poetry, was in & out of asylums and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 5:54 AM on April 23, 2008

Thanks for your explanations. Seems my scepsis was appropriate.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:08 AM on April 22, 2008

Wow. Some more great additions. Thanks people. I learned a lot.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 5:39 AM on April 23, 2008

I think you know the answer.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:41 AM on April 21, 2008

Je kende de podcast site van de nederlandse radio waarschijnlijk al.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:31 AM on April 21, 2008

In the java space there are solutions that manage (initialise) objects and their dependencies. Examples are OSGI implementations like Apache Felix and dependency injection frameworks like Spring and Seam.
Basically these are implementations of DSLs that allow you to describe initialisation and 'building' of an object tree. Individual objects only know by interface what other objects they need to accomplish their tasks. The actual implementing objects are determined by the DSL... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:00 AM on April 16, 2008

You could use hotspot shield.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 12:16 PM on April 15, 2008

When I was a student in university and not without affectation I smoked Dimitrino Botschafter.
Oval cigarettes of the egyption type. The old fashioned black box was marked with the gold coats of arms of the russian czar, the prince of Prussia and the king-emperors of Austria. Yes, as if the first world war and the russian revolution had never happened.
Also I used to smoke Frères Kyriazi cigarettes. Also oval egyptian type.
When I'd visit London I'd get Balkan... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:50 AM on April 15, 2008

One other thing: I think we’re both expecting that he will propose to me. I don’t want to propose to him, and I don’t think he’d like that either.
Wanting to marry somebody while having a taboo on any utterances that are similar in intent to "will you marry me" will lead to a lot of strategising, indirect communication, misunderstandings and manipulation that might well be counterproductive.

Just a male perspective.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 1:35 PM on April 14, 2008

His official position is that he wants to marry me, but if he felt that way, wouldn’t he propose?
No. Conceivably he might just be in a vague procrastination mode. Maybe marriage in itself is not as important to him as it is to you and he's putting the hullabooloo off. Nothing in that would have any relation to the strength of his feelings for you. Combine with that the possibility of his unwittingly feeling manipulated and you run the risk of missing out on a lot... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 2:01 PM on April 14, 2008

If you seek to work in corporate communications that might be hard with a wholly Dutch company. Because that obviously involves a high skill in written Dutch.
But there are also companies in NL that are just located in the Netherlands but their activities are international and the language used is english. So I'd aim for those companies if you want to work in corporate communications.

If you want to work in IT: there's a real shortage.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:47 AM on April 13, 2008

English is a foreign language to me. And I remember growing up with a lot of hit song texts that were all meaninglessly reproduced sounds, mondegreenes to me.
But nowadays I know US english to well to be able to fake it using nonsense sounds. I guess that will hold true for everybody on metafilter.

The most common way of imitating US americans is by saying things in your native language, Dutch in my case, with an american accent. Similar to english speakerz... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 4:26 AM on April 13, 2008

Searching in german brings up the following information in the first 2 links
- it's supposed to look like polyester. In the GDR a lot of those kind of higher agents wore polester anoraks.
- they pointedly don't tell whether the costume designer Gabriele Binder made it herself or got a real DDR era jacket.
Hope that helps you further.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 5:52 PM on March 30, 2008

There are a lot of people of both sex who find it easier to be mellow with members of the opposite sex. (don't know how this works with gays)
I always think that's because they tend to be very competitive with members of their own sex but not with members of the other sex.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:27 PM on March 26, 2008

Some women seem to have clitoreses that seem more 'submerged' and it seems as a result orgasm by clitoral stimulation is harder.
You can 'pull back' , 'pull away' some of the surrounding skin folds and labia (mostly skin fold above from the mons pubens) and make the clitoris stand out as much as possible. That sometimes makes clitoral orgasm possible where it wasn't possible previously.

(I hope this is clear. Hard to describe this stuff in a foreign language)
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:22 PM on March 26, 2008

Technorati of course gives an overview.
In the Netherlands where I'm based the experienced enterprise architects still seem to be rather old farts who write articles that they also provide as pdfs or static hmtl on their own sites. A lot of these are in Dutch but this aggregator started recently and provides a few blogs some of which are in English.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 3:05 PM on March 24, 2008

The enterprise architecture bookmarks on del.icio.us aren't specifically weblogs. But still a good way of searching laterally.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 3:23 PM on March 24, 2008

There are a lot of VOIP services like jajah, rebtel, fring, ...
There are a lot more. I myself have used rebtel for a while to call mobile-to-mobile between the S and NL. It's quite affordable but the quality was quite bad.
I'm curious as to experiences with other services.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 8:06 AM on March 21, 2008

My cat can be like that when he's not been out of the house for a while.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 1:04 PM on March 15, 2008

Yeah, there's a lot of choice in the java development space. That can be quite confusing.
I'd say start with installing java 6 on ubuntu and install either Netbeans or Eclipse. From there the differences between developing on windows and linux are minimal.

Then choose a beginners manual and work through that.

One warning: nobody builds or uses applets anymore. If you want GUI applications that can be deployed over http you could look... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:35 PM on February 12, 2008

Oh, and regarding what beginners manual to buy; I've heard people who like the style of the Head First series. So that would be Head First Java.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 2:56 AM on February 13, 2008

Find an opportunity to work with native Germans in Germany for more than a month. F.i. an exchange student program, working, volunteering. Stuff like that.
Listening to German hörbücher on subjects or fictiongenres that interest you.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 9:44 AM on February 11, 2008

I borked my link. The link was just a google for the word hörbücher. amazon.de obviously comes up.

You could also do a language trade: I wanted to have my English language thesis revised by a native speaker and somebody on mefi wanted to practice Dutch (my native tongue). So we talked over Skype.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:32 AM on February 11, 2008

Entering umlauts and ß is easier by setting the input locale in your operating system to German.
Under Windows using Dutch as an input locale I could type the following combinations
"e -> ë
shft ctrl s -> ß
'e -> é
`e -> è
I haven't tried German but I guess it will be similar.

Mac OS X has something similar using the alt/option key.
It's much easier than the codes and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 12:10 PM on February 11, 2008

..not in Windows.
That should read: ...not in Word.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 12:53 PM on February 11, 2008

It's my experience too that it's much easier to write in a second language (english). For me the one reason is the lower level of self-criticism as SageLeVoid describes.

Wrt to the subconscious aspect of language, I do think that a native language that has been learned in relation to social and emotional situations that you were involved in is different from a language that has been learned from books, movies and websites. The first one is laden with strong social and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:02 AM on February 11, 2008

My other problem is that I, personally, HATE being asked to do sort of fakey exercises and brainstorming especially if they are remotely touchy-feely in nature.

I think you get all the concepts of workshops. But you just don't want to do the more interactive kind of stuff.
Maybe because letting 'beginners' do exercises together feels to you as being very improductive since they don't know much yet.
You could change your... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 10:54 AM on February 9, 2008

Another part of your question
Without internet access or computers I have no idea how to make this topic very interactive or remotely workshoppable.

For instance if you have been telling them about the changing role of libraries as providers not of physical information carriers but as shepherds in an age where information has does not have a centrally controlled source or something. After having explained something like that you let them... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:07 AM on February 9, 2008

Another example: if you were to explain Twitter as an immediate broadcast of small events to a loosely organised group you'd use some simplified graphic to show all the involved concepts (groups, events, one-to-many broadcast, multi-channel reception, feedback).
Thy could use that simplified template in their groups to fill it in: what roles what broadcast, about what events, to what people, why would that be interesting to everybody involved etc. They could fill... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:17 AM on February 9, 2008

but the point of social software is the social, not the software
Good point Brandon. That's also why software developers that use agile methodologies prefer carboard cards, yellow stickies, markers, pieces of paper on the wall over using computers in collaboration.
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:20 AM on February 9, 2008

Also when you're doing a workshop the way the whole process goes is also a result of what other people bring to it. Not just you. You will stay in control of the overall process. But still.
If you were a very capable smart person for instance you might at a certain level not want to involve them too much since they will be much slower and inefficient. That might be true but then you are overlooking the fact that a workshop is very much about them. If their pace is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by jouke at 11:30 AM on February 9, 2008