Yesterday, after .. something.., I’ve decided to take me further offline. Being continuously online for more than 12 years has brought me far, but not where I wanted. I’ve cut already some websites, e.g. removed me from Twitter (which I didn’t use, and which I didn’t like anyway). My Facebook account is idling. I’ll still upload to Flickr, I’ll still blog from time to time because of work, and maybe about my pictures.

I’ve just uploaded some of my pictures of Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia (DE). The town itself is pretty dull, but the surroundings are apparently worth visiting. Especially Zollverein, part of this World Heritage’s. Essen, bombed flat at the end of World War II, was apparently rebuilt in a haste that didn’t leave room for originality or beauty. Today downtown is a big, open air shopping mall with a few churches, office towers, and.

An old couple barely managed to get off the train. She helps herself forward with two extra legs; her husband strolls a bit behind. Suddenly he picks up the pace, reaching for I thought was her hand. No, her coat was not hanging right, and it toke lots of his energy to put it right. She didn’t notice, he puffed a breath and I cracked a smile.

Sometimes it’s good when a train got cancelled. I was forced to take the slower IC from Frankfurt to Essen, but right now I am enjoying watching the river Rhein carrying goods and people. It’s also a beautiful, sunny day so the castles and old towns are looking nice. Still a couple hours to go and I am runny out of coffee money.. In Koblenz just now..

I am a bit dwelling in the wonderful world of Microsoft Windows. And if you know me, you’d say: “WTF?!?”. Anyway, checking out some trick (which I’ll blog later) I tried a simple GRANT to see if the grant-tables were OK. mysql> GRANT SELECT ON foo.* TO 'geert'@'localhost'; ERROR 1133 (42000): Can't find any matching row in the user table Now that’s cryptic, isn’t it? Reason: SQL Modes! sql-mode="STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION" The problem, or rather, the cool thing is the NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER.