I write, therefore I am
With this variation on a famous statement by the philosopher Descartes, I would like to express that writing about what happens in my life is important to me.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Link
Monday, January 23, 2012
Chinese New Year
Today is the first day of the year of the dragon according to the Chinese calendar. The spring festival has begun.Leo Vroman
Today, at 16:46, I bought the book Misschien tot morgen (See you tomorrow, maybe), diary 2003-2006 by Leo Vroman (ISBN:9789021485348) for € 2,50 from bookshop De Slegte.Sunday, January 22, 2012
Where is Jelle?
This evening, just like every other evening, I was reading to Andy from one of the reports of the weekend and holiday care that he attends. Today, I was reading from Monday, July 12, 2010. When I was about half way the report, Andy suddenly shouted: "Where is Jelle" (Jelle is a Dutch boy name). I had not read about Jelle being at the care, but it often happens that children come and go. Knowing Andy's excellent autobiographical memory, I expected that the name of Jelle would come up. And yes, indeed it did, suddenly he was mentioned in the evening. I asked Andy when Jelle had arrived. He immediately answered: 12 o'clock (at noon time) with a big smile. It would not surprise me if he is absolutely right. Now it must be the case that I have read this report before in the time in between, but it still it is a remarkable feat for any person to remember this kind of detail. Andy (now 14) is always very keen on noticing who is present and not. He is the one who immediately notices when someone is missing. During the breaks at school he will often walk up to the teacher of another class to ask where this and this child is, if the child is not present. I wonder if these kind of remarkable (almost Savant like) skills are common among people with Kabuki Syndrome.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
More metal
When I arrived at the office yesterday, I noticed that my front tire was getting flat. My boss was so friendly to give me a ride home in the evening. This morning, I inspected the tire and found two pieces of metal, of which one had caused a puncture. Yesterday, I also had found another piece of metal, after I reported having found one. On the right a picture of all the pieces I found so far.Last seen in Lhasa
Tonight, I finished reading the Dutch translation of Last seen in Lhasa by Claire Scobie, which I started reading on last Sunday, after I bought the book last Saturday. The fact that I finished the book so quickly shows that it made a great impression on me. The book is about the travels the author made through Tibet with a strong focus on the friendship she developed with a Buddhist wandering nun called Ani. The book also shows how Tibetian Buddhism is slowly dissappearing and many (secret) teachings are no longer passed on. Even the Tibetian language is slowly being replaced by Mandrin Chinese, and with this knowledge about Tibatian "religious language" and classical religious texts is disappearing as well. Although I am not a Buddhist, the idea of this makes me sad. In a way I respect a nun like Ani, who travels the country as a pelgrim and meditates in caves like a hermit. She seems to be a free spirit, free to go where she wants, but still she has a lama (a guru) who she visits every year for counsel. Then also why should you escape the sufferings of daily life (which is harsh in Tibet) to endure all kinds of hardships (such as living in cold caves under) only to spend time meditating? Is meditation indeed necessary to become enlighted, to escape the wheel of karma (as Buddhist say)? And is it in a sense not very egoistic to seek enlightment for yourself? Yes, she seeks compassion, yet she often lives as a hermit instead of taking care for others.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Piece of metal
This morning, I found a piece of metal in the back tire of my bike, which is the likely cause of a flat tire that required me to walk home yesterday from the office. It looks like me to be a piece of a "snap-off blade" utility knife. I have no idea how it got in my tire. It is about 4mm (1/6 inch) long, although it might look larger in the picture on the right.Saturday, January 7, 2012
Book sale
I went to bookshop De Slegte and, at 12:21, I bought three books that where on sale. I love book sales, because it makes you look at books that you otherwise would not have looked at. The books I bought are:- Uit de tweede hand with drawings by Peter Langenberg in a box together with a drawing by him made on September 22, 2003. No ISBN. For € 7.50.
- Een vriendschap in Tibet (Last seen in Lhasa) by Claire Scobie. ISBN:9789044513035. For € 2.50.
- Dit is geen lied songtexts by Frédérique Spigt. ISBN:9789057591167. For € 2.50.
I finished reading the last book.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Disposing of computers
This afternoon, around 16:20, I placed two of our computers, andy and a Compaq LTE 5000 laptop, in a sea container with other electronic equipment at the waste disposal center South in Enschede.Thursday, December 29, 2011
Playing and solving Havannah
On December 16, Timo Ewalds presented his master thesis Playing and solving Havannah, which is about his program for playing the abstract game Havannah. He also solved Havannah for board size four (and smaller). He made the source of his program Castro open source on github.Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Notes on a Scandal
I finished reading Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller, which I started reading on November 22. I bought the book through a second hand website after I had seen the film adaptation. Of course, there are some differences between the plots of the film and the book. The most notable, I feel, is that Sheba stays with Barbara at the end in the book, while in the film she leaves her. It seems that the manipulative character of Barbara is far more explicit than in the book, where it seems that Barbara is not actively trying to manipulate situations. Nevertheless, I found the book interesting to read.Monday, December 26, 2011
Dismantling andy
This evening, I opened andy and removed some parts because I want to dispose of it soon. I removed the hard disk, a Connor CFS635A, with 635MB unformated size. I also took out the two 8 Mbyte memory modules and the network card from the Multu Player Gamers Network Kit, which I installed on March 10, 2001.Thursday, December 22, 2011
Link
- NASA: MapMakers (open source software)
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Broken layer of snow
This morning, there was a broken layer of snow on the ground. Not all the ground was covered but by judging the layer of snow on the cars, it seems that about one cm (half an inch) of snow fell during the night. Most of it melted before noon.Sunday, December 18, 2011
Diary 2012
This afternoon, I went to bookshop Broekhuis. I looked at the exhibition of Rudy Klomp and Ans van Berkum. I found the drawings of Van Berkum as interesting as the painting by Klomp. At 13:46, I bought Moleskine Daily Diary/Planner 2012 (ISBN 9788862937306) for € 15.95. At home, I discovered that again, I bought the soft-cover edition and not the hard-cover as I wanted. I guess that I picked the hard-cover edition with the address book insert, but then noticed that it was a little thicker than the edition with "Adhesive Labels" and did not realize that it was a soft-cover edition. I gusee, I stick with this version, because the one from 2011 still looks okay. I use these diaries to record what I did during the day.Friday, December 16, 2011
Wet snow
Around ten o'clock in the morning, there were big flakes of snow falling from the sky and the snow stayed on about half of the ground. But soon the flakes became smaller and also wetter and the snow did not stay long because the temperatures were well above the freezing point.Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Sorting with partial relation
Today, a colleague encoutered a situation where some sorting with quicksort did not work. As a solution, he used a different sorting algorithm. Usually, when sorting with quicksort does not work, there is a problem with the compare operator not being transitive. And indeed, this appeared to be the case. The sorting involved a partial relationship and in case two elements where not involved they where compared on name. The question was, how to use quicksort in case you have a partial transitive relation. Two colleagues came up with an alternative. One said that if the compare function would always return false when the two elements where not related, that it would work. I was not immediately convinced of this fact and he asked him if he could give a formal proof. He replied with asking me to give a counter example. I could not immediately think of one, but replied that it was not my task to do this. (As I joke, I told him that I believed that NP!=P and if he could give me a counter example of that.) My greatest objection against his compare function is that although it might work for quicksort, it would probably not work with any of the other uses in the Standard Template Library that we are using. Another colleague came up with the idea to sort on the maximum relation depth, which is defined as the length of the longest chain of elements with a given element that pairwise match the relation and where the last element is this element. It is easy to see that if two elements are in the relation the maximum relations depth of the second is always at least one higher than the first. Elements with the same maximum relation depth can be compared on name as before. Calculating the maximum relation depth is not always cheap, but this compare function does meet all the requirements for a regular compare function. I am still thinking about the optimal sorting algorith when the partial relation is not transitive by definition and when you do not want to calculate the transitive relation of the relation first.Friday, December 9, 2011
Links
- Protein 3D Structure Computed from Evolutionary Sequence Variation.
- Why Aren't We Smarter Already? Evolutionary Limits on Cognition
- Helping your fellow rat: Rodents show empathy-driven behavior
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Link
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Link
- Phylo: A Multiple sequence alignment game.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Introduction
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December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
2012
2011
Alzheimer's Disease
Trip to China 2010
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