I write, therefore I amWith 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. | |||
Saturday, March 13, 2010De Slegte: Three books for fiveThis afternoon at 14:04:23, I bought three books from De Slegte for five Euro. I only wanted to buy one book. The books are:
Thursday, March 11, 2010De SlegteThis evening, when I was visiting bookshop De Slegte I noticed one of the shop-assistants moving around books. When I asked him about this, he told me headquarters had ordered them to reorganize the shop and close the third floor. On the first floor there are only new books that are no longer being sold by normal prices. On the second floor there are only second hand books. On the third floor there are some second hand books and some new books. In some way I can understand the idea to close that floor, but on the otherhand it means that the total number of books in the shop will be reduced, which, I think, is bad. But if they are going to have some sale of the books that they have to put away, then maybe it is good. I wonder what they are going to do with the third floor. It would not surprise me if they are simply going to close it for the public and use it as a storage area. We will see.Wednesday, March 10, 2010Divisibility sequencesEarlier this week, I was contacted by Richard Guy again with respect to the sequences in my one mathematical paper. He is still working on the subject of divisibility sequences. He asked me if I had some proof of some the sequences being divisibility sequences. I tried to find a definition for with Google, but only found references to papers. When I told this, he replied with: "A divisibility sequence is simply a sequence {a(n)} with the property that a(m) divides a(n) whenever m divides n." Furthermore he stated that although they are easy to define, they are not so easy to prove.Monday, March 8, 2010LinkWiki on a StickSnow!This morning, while I was still in bed, Annabel shouted: "It is snowing outside". She even opened the blinds and curtains to show me while I was still laying in bed. The snowing stopped around 10 o'clock when there was about 2 cm of snow.Friday, March 5, 2010SnowThis morning, when I went outside, I noticed the first snow flakes. Soon they became more and I noticed that they stayed on the ground. But when the sun came out, it quickly disappeared. Around noon, there where some big snow flakes falling from the sky, but they did not really stay on the ground. In the evening, between seven and eight there was some substantial snow, but again, it did not stay everywhere on the ground. It quickly disappeared when the snow turned into rain.Tuesday, March 2, 2010LinkDark Matter Used to Measure Age of Universe.Saturday, February 21, 2010Wireless routerThis afternoon, Annabel, Li-Xia and I went into the city to look for a wireless router for Annabel to be used in combination with her netbook and het Ipod touch. We first went to Mediamarkt. They really had made a mess of their wireless section. After searching we only found two wireless routers that we might consider to buy. The cheapest was Netgear N150 for € 39.99. Next we went to Paradigit. They had a Sitecom and a Linksys wireless router. Next we went to Dynabyte. There they had the same Linksys wireless router, but it costed about 10 euro more. Although Linksys is know for its beter quality, we felt that the Sitecom wireless router with 300N was better than the Linksys of the same price. At 15:12:15, I bought the Sitecom Wireless-N 2.0 Router WL-341 v3 for € 39,99 from Paradigit.At home the first question was how to wire it up to the rest of our network. At the back it has one blue socket and four yellow sockets. The blue socket is meant to be connected to your ADSL monitor. But we already have a Sweex network router with build in ADLS modem. First I connected a network cable from this router on one of the yellow sockets, but I could not figure out which IP address to use. I also expected a conflict between two DHPC servers on both sides of the cable. Next I connected the cable to the blue socket and tried to connect to it, but that too did not work, which did not really surprice me. Finally, I connected the netbook with the short blue cable that came with the wireless router on one of the yellow sockets and was able to configure it. However, when we tried to make a wireless contact with her Ipod touch, it did not work. I changed the key on the rooter, but what we tried did not work. I searched the internet for more information, but was not able to solve the problem. I let the problem rest for some time and read some more manuals. When I tried the next time, I decided to change the key in something with all capitals, and then it suddenly worked. I spend some more time to configure the ACL with the MAC addresses of netbook and the Ipod touch. These kind of things always take more time than you would expect even for someone who has a degree in computer science. Thursday, February 25, 2010LinkTriumph of the Cyborg ComposerWednesday, February 24, 2010LinkCaltech Neuroscientists Find Brain System Behind General IntelligenceSunday, February 21, 2010Uru onlineThis afternoon, I downloaded the free version of Myst Online. I tried it out a little than, just to check if it installed correctly. In the evening, I played the game for the first time. It very much looks like stand-alone version of Uru, which I played before. It does contain some new ages (worlds). You have to replay all the ages again. I already did some of it. It is funny how much you remember. It is almost like revisiting a city you went to years ago. For some details, see the logbook I am writing.Thursday, February 18, 2010Nonogram solversThis evening, I came across Survey of Paint-by-Number Puzzle Solvers. Paint-by-number puzzles are also called Nonograms. In the past years I worked on several solvers myself, and I believed that I did have quite a strong solver. I downloaded the set of 5000 random 30 by 30 puzzles (linked to in the survey) and tried them on the various programs I developed only to discover that my solver is not very fast and that there is still a lot of room for improvement.Tuesday, February 16, 2010Dylan on DylanThis morning, I finished reading Dylan on Dylan in which I started reading on December 30 after I bought it on December 29 at 17:37:29 from De Slegte for € 2.50. The book contains 31 interviews with Bob Dylan taken from 1962 to 2004 and thus cover a large part of his life. Some interviews are interesting others are boring or even very vague, such as the one about his film Renaldo and Clara. In most of the interviews you see that the interviewer is wrestling with his questions and/or that Dylan is answering the questions in his own manner. In many ways it is clear that Dylan is not easily distracted and is independent of what other think about him. In a sense he comes to me as a rather enlightened personality living in the here and now, and not to much thinking about the past or dreaming about the future.Sunday, February 14, 2010Chinese New YearToday is the first day of the year 4707, the year of the tiger, according to the Chinese calendar. Today is also Valentine's Day and carnival is celebrated. A rather unique combination.Friday, February 12, 2010LinksMoscow-Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google Maps.Bridge Over Troubled Water - The organ music from TROUBLED WATER (deUSYNLIGE) My heart will go on - on small church organ Wednesday, February 10, 2010SnowThis morning, there was a lot of snow in the West of the country. Here in the East, it started to snow later, and when it started to snow here at first did not stay, but later it did. Around the time Andy usually arrives at home from day care we were phoned that he was still there and that the taxi was delayed due to the snow. It was only an hour later that he finally left and he arrived about two hour later than usual.Tuesday, February 9, 2010Dancing snow flakesThe whole day small snow flakes were falling from the sky. Especially during the afternoon, when I was laying in bed with the flu, I watched how the snow flakes where dancing along the window, as the wind would often lift them up or make them float along the window. In the early morning and late in the evening some of the snow did stay, but during the rest of the day it was just a little to warm for doing that.Monday, February 8, 2010Four Colors SufficeToday, I finished reading the book Four Colors Suffice by Robin Wilson, which I started reading on February 6, after I bought it on the same day at 16:56:10 for € 14,95 from bookshop De Slegte. I enjoyed reading the book, although I have to remark that where Wilson takes great care to explain many rather trivial mathematical facts in the first chapters, this lacks in the latter chapters where the mathematical details become more and more complex.Saturday, February 6, 2010Four Colors SufficeThis afternoon, at 16:56:10, I bought the book Four Colors Suffice by Robin Williams for € 14.95 from bookshop De Slegte. In the evening I started reading this book. When I showed Annabel the fake counter example by William McGregor, she immediately wanted to solve it, but failed to do so.Wednesday, February 3, 2010Dementia 'losing out' to cancer in funding stakesToday, I came across the article Dementia 'losing out' to cancer in funding stakes in the Health section of the BBC website. The article starts with stating:
Tuesday, February 2, 2010LinkA loop recording session with microKORG XL and Ableton LiveMonday, February 1, 2010Palindrome dateToday it is a palindrome date for the date format DD-MM-YYYY, because for today it gives 01-02-2010.Saturday, January 30, 2010More snowIt has been snowing in the past day again. This morning there was a blue clear sky, but also a thin layer of fresh snow. In the evening there was more snow. This evening, I discovered some interesting data on the site of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute which also contained some data about snowfall in various parts of the country. I wrote a program to compare this data with my own observations through the years. This resulted in an interesting list containing a little more than nine hunderd days in which I saw some form of snow.75%Today, the winter sale at bookshop Broekhuis was 75% off. At 16:15:17, I bought the following books:
I also watched the exhibition of Bernard Dorbeck. In the evening, I started to read the book Spellingscarousel about the various reforms of the Dutch spelling rules. Wednesday, January 27, 2010LinkProject EulerSaturday, January 23, 2010A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for LoversToday, I finished reading the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo, which I started reading last Thursday after I bought it. It is a novel about a young Chinese girl being send to England by her parents to learn English. Soon she meets an older man with whom she gets a relationship. She carries a dictionary with her. Most of the titles of the chapters in the book, which are often not more than four pages long, are entries taken from the dictionary. It is quite a funny book, but it also deals about some very serious issues and at some points it is even deep.Friday, January 22, 2010Prof. C. HoedeToday, I discovered that Prof. C. Hoede died exactly one year ago when I came across a in memoriam (in Dutch) written by Hajo Broersma. It is he who offered Li-Xia job here at the Discrete Mathematics and Mathematical Programming group at the University of Twente, without which I would never have met her. For an overview of his work on Knowledge Graphs, see the memo 25 Years Development of Knowledge Graph Theory: The Results and The Challenge. I think I first met him the fall of 1982 when he taught a class on Combinatorics (of something like that).Thursday, January 21, 2010Book saleDuring lunch time, I passed throught the city and I noticed that there was a Winter Sale at bookshop Broekhuis. I could not resist the temptation to go inside and check all the books that where on sale for half price. I found A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. At 13:22:34, I bought it for € 5.87. Next, I went to bookshop De Slegte where they were also selling books at half price. I looked at some of the books, but could not make up my mind. I went up-stairs to the new arrivals section. There I came across the book Christ the Ethernal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene. At 13:38:56, I bought it for ten Euro. The books that both contain Chinese characters. In the evening, I started reading the first book.
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IntroductionDiariesMarch 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 2010 2009 Alzheimer's Disease Trip to China 2006 -- contact -- HeartJesus ChristKnow God The existence of God May 24, 1979 My final words Sceptic FamilyFransLi-Xia Annabel Andy Honeymoon Faase Family tree Friends Others Pictures
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