The end of an era

It’s a sad day for those who love their classics. No, nothing about old writers or historical buildings. This is about something that recently got from the present- into the history chapter of our brains: the Floppy Disk.

I never had anything with inches, but 3,5inch does recall a lot. I grew up in the late eighties, early nineties and had my first “cyber experience” with a 12” black/yellow screen IBM. It had two external drives: the 5¼" floppy disk and the 3,5" diskette. There were a few games available at that time, playable from one of these disks. Hours of fun were passed on our computer, being an “8-figure” running from “A’s” and “X’s” that were enemies that could kill you. Around the mid-nineties, more and more games were developed for home computers. We got color screens and the graphics improved dramatically. One thing did not change though: all the games were still on floppy disks. Until, yes, until the Compact Disk (or CD) kicked in. Awesome as it was, it could contain over 500 times as much data and could be read out faster than a floppy. This meant the start of the decline of use and sales of diskettes. Especially with the Cdrewriters, the introduction of the USB storage devices and the quick development of online storage, the floppy disk knew its time had come.
After retreating from the world market, Sony Japan has now also pulled the plug on it’s domestic sales of floppy disks. No more cool games on little black squares. It’s the end of an era.

To my friends

I just got a heavy flu. It started Wednesday night and caused me to be a wreck on Thursday. I couldn’t do anything, my total body hurt and I couldn’t eat or drink anything or it would come right out of me immediately as water. Did I catch a virus? I guess so, but that couldn’t be the only thing. I hadn’t been sick for over 10 years and recently got a lot fitter. I ate well and I kept watch on my sleeping habits. Still I got sick, and I figured out why. I was too busy scoring, too busy working my ass of doing all kinds of things and I was to busy to taking a time-out now and then. My body warned me, I was asking too much from myself. Now I paid the price, I couldn’t do my last exam (statistics) today. But hey, life goes on and there’s always another chance.
The thing is, I’m not too sure what to do now. These past few days made me realise that I should really cut myself some slack now and then. For the past few months I’ve been thinking about my life after graduation (Master). Everything had to be done fast, smoothly, planned and finished. Maybe I should spend my final year as a student a bit more relaxed. Cause I’m not too sure what I want to do next year anyway. I’m only 23 years old, should I already look out for work? Or should I take some time off? Or would it be a better idea too postpone my graduation a bit, don’t care about the extra debt I will be in due to extra months of studying and take some more time to do the things I like?
One thing’s for sure, I always do the things I enjoy. Last year, 2009, was a great year for me. I went abroad to Dublin, met great people from numerous countries, made great trips to Barcelona, Paris and Sardinia, met a special girl who I’ll never forget about, found out who my real friends are, lived together with a great friend and best of all, did the things I wanted to and I liked to do.
This year (2010) is all about achieving goals, distinguish myself from all the others so I will be successful in my future career and to get acknowledged for all that. People don’t always see all the things I do, and think because I only get mediocre grades I’m just “one of the bunch”. I wanted to change that, and I hope I succeed. But it should NEVER go at cost of my well-being.
Injuries kept me from doing sports and my dad got a heart attack which made me scared. Not everything has been going so well till now. But I don’t want to be seen as a complainer and I always want to look at the bright side of things. For starters, when I was to sick to be able to do anything, my great great friend Nikki came over and took care of me, even though she wasn’t feeling so well either. And when my friends heard the news about my dad they supported me even though they hadn’t seen me for a while or they were busy at the time. These are the most important things in life: people you can trust, people you can build on and giving back to those people.

For the coming weeks I hope to speak to everybody who are important to me and figure out what to do now and what to do next year. And I want to see and talk to you all very soon, have a beer, or just on Skype, chatting about nothing. Thank you all.