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Archive for category Howto

Belastingaangifte 2014 en (K)Ubuntu

Posted by on Sunday, 2 March, 2014

Vorig jaar schreef ik over hoe je het (32-bit) belastingaangifte programma voor 2012 op (K)Ubuntu aan de praat kreeg. Natuurlijk is het in 2013 weer nèt iets anders.

  1. Download de tar.gz van belastingdienst.nl
  2. tar -xzf ib2013_linux.tar.gz
  3. cd ib2013/bin
  4. ./ib2013ux

En dan:

bash: ./ib2013ux: No such file or directory
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The influence of speed on fuel consumption

Posted by on Thursday, 27 February, 2014

Fuel prices soar, driving a car is just about as much fun as burning your money in the fireplace. Aerodynamic drag has a very large influence on how much fuel you use. Let’s have a closer look.
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Efficient way to get rid of garbage (by using a bike)

Posted by on Wednesday, 19 February, 2014

A few weeks ago I decided that, with the new year well underway and all that, I needed to get rid of some old stuff lying around. Not only does it take up space in your house, but also in your head. So to get some peace of mind I sorted it into three categories:

  • Stuff I can still use (store in a decent place)
  • Stuff others may have a use for (sell it on the internet)
  • Stuff that could be classified as ‘garbage’

This article deals with the latter category. For instance, pieces of plastic, scrap wood and metal collected over the years for various DIY projects, old hardware and construction materials.

Don’t know about you, but here in The Netherlands we are quite heavy on separation of garbage into various recyclables. So I had a pile of old metal, which is actually worth money. A pile of plastic, which is collected where I live because it can be recycled into fleece sweaters, etc.

Anyway, after all this initial filtering I was left with a pile of stuff that we’ll refer to as ‘crap’, which had no other place to go than the ‘generic’ garbage. Now, I live in an apartment building and there’s a container in front, where we pay EUR 1,70 per ‘click’. Per click I am able to fit a garbage bag of approximately 30 liters in. This is an expensive method to get rid of large quantities of crap!

Of course I could load it into my car, and bring it to the ‘Environment Park’, which is a euphemism for the place where they collect garbage before it goes to the landfill / incinerator. Here your vehicle is weighed upon entry and exit, and you pay per kilogram. But in order to try something different I decided to take the bike…

So I loaded all the stuff onto my bike, both in the front and the back, and paddled in low gear to the Environment Park, riding past the queue of waiting vehicles, drivers bored while running engines were killing the environment. The weighing device was not able to measure the weight of me, my bike and all of the crap on it! I guess this is because it is designed for vehicles, no one ever figured someone would be crazy enough to go there by bike!

So I got rid of my crap, circled around to the exit and again it was not possible to get measured so I could just pass. So not only did I get rid of all my garbage for free, I also got to laugh at all the people standing there in their vehicles, waiting for the queue to move on while they are burning fuel and precious time. Added to that, there’s the kick of going against the system.

So when was the last time you did something ‘the system’ did not expect?

update: as of 2017, the weighing devices have been upgraded – unfortunately, they were able now to measure me and my bike quite accurately 🙁

Logitech G15: Rubber gets sticky

Posted by on Saturday, 20 July, 2013

The Logitech G15 was a great “gamers keyboard”. I bought it years back because the screen was awesome to do some programming with. The keyboard was coated with some sort of rubber, giving it a very awesome matte finish and touch. Unfortunately, this coating does not stand the test of time too well, and it becomes sticky. Read here how to solve this. Read the rest of this entry »

Belastingdienst aangifte: libXext.so.6 not found

Posted by on Saturday, 9 March, 2013

Al jaren ben ik blij dat de Nederlandse belastingdienst linux gebruikers serieus neemt met onder andere het programma voor aangifte inkomstenbelasting en de voorlopige aanslag.

Echter, op Kubuntu 12.10 kreeg ik deze foutmelding:

error while loading shared libraries: libXext.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
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