At last we were able to take a hot shower. Our landlord's insurance assistance service sent over a heating expert who took the machine apart and cleaned its interior. Luckily it was just very dirty and not broken. Let's just hope that the next rain will not flood it all again.

Looks like we're in a lot of luck :-/. The warm water heater has been submerged by the flood and refuses to work. Since the sewer contents have probably touched the interior of the heating machine, there's a high probability it's broken.

The landlord came by and contacted their insurance assistance service. They are sending someone over this afternoon to evaluate the situation. Let's cross our fingers since it's already clear that the landlord would have a lot of trouble to free the funds needed to install a new heater in a short notice.

Last night our beloved municipal sewer system decided that it was time to expand its horizons, to enlarge its kingdom beyond the straight lines of the evacuation pipes. Oh how happy we were to discover at 4am in the morning that our little cellar had been chosen as one of the noble destinations. Floating turds, minced shit, layers of used toilet paper and disposed condoms graceously wrapped themselves around all the objects in the cellar.

We spent the whole day wading through excrements and trying to wash them in an antiseptic way from everything that was worth saving. Sadly Nathalie's Powermac 8500 and my Amiga 1200 were not so lucky and the brown substance covered most of the circuit boards. We decided to dump them instead of trying to wash it all off and being allmost certain that it wouldn't work anymore anyway. An era has thus passed and I'm now left without the computer that so fundamentally changed my life so many years ago. I honestly have to say that I felt a grip on my heart when I tossed the ruined parts on the scrapeyard. I almost bursted in tears, really!

After cleaning for 14 hours we finally got most of the stench out of the house and got everything back into a supportable state again. We however didn't not clean the cellar in perfect detail since it's very possible that the next rain will have the same tasty outcome. Until the mayor decides that the cause is a flaw in their sewer system, they'll probable not do much and just leave us sitting in the shit. Monday we should know more about this and if not, we're preparing with the other neighbours to take legal action.

Below are some links to pictures that show what state the cellar was in after the water had all gone away. Note that this is probably not for the sensitive and easily shocked people, it's quite disgusting : first and second

Google has quite an intelligent algorithm do rank websites. Other than using keywords it takes the internet linking structure into account to determine which sites are more relevent. This always seemed quite sensible since sites that are referred to a lot obviously interest more people.

However, since the web is becoming more and more collaborative through wikis, blogs and forums, people have found intricate ways to link to their site. Deep into their sites that seem interesting at first, they link further through to porn sites. Obviously, this is their intent since their porn sites become more relevant to Google through this mechanism.

Take notice of this and prevent such spam from polluting the community! You can read more in Steven's post.

Today I joined the real-life protest action in Brussels against software patents in the European Union even though I'm working very long hours (16h / day) to try to finish a project on time. Software patentability would be so harmful to our entire society that I just had to physically join the demonstration.

I was rather surprised, it was actually quite well organized and even fun. I managed to take some pictures and short movies. They can be seen in my gallery.