Diary, July 2000

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    23  24  25  26  27  28  29
    30  31

Saturday, July 1, 2000

Ocobamba: Vuelo por el mundo

In the city we came across some musicians from Latin-America making music on pan-flutes and other types of flutes. We could not resist buying a CD from them with the title: Ocobamba: Veulo por el mundi, which mainly contains some covers of popular songs. They made a nice adaption, and the quality is good.

Monday, July 3, 2000

A flash

In the middle of the day, there was a sudden flash, which appeared to happen simultaniously with a very short power dip. At the moment I turned around the flash was followed by the sound of thunder at short range. There was less than a second between the flash and the thunder. The most strange thing was that it wasn't dark outside, and we hadn't heard any noises of thunder before. It immediately made me think of the firework disaster. Was this an explosion again, or just a relatively harmless atmospheric electrical discharge? A few minutes later it started to rain a little.

(follow-up)

Saturday, July 8, 2000

Diet

This morning, I weighted around 83 kilo. A few months ago, I was still around 88 kilo. Around that time, I was visited by a lady who was a member of a famous multi-level marketing company selling dietary food products. When I found out that it was in deed an MLM company, I thought that it must be possible to achieve the same result as they were claiming without having to buy their products. This is what I now eat on an average day:

For breakfast:

Three slices of whole-wheat bread with jam made from fruits without any sugar added.

One glass of fiber enhanced grapefruit juice.

One glass of orange juice, which I use to swallow my daily doses of Q10, vitamines, and minerals.

Around 11 AM:

One apple.

At lunch time:

Two slice of whole-wheat bread with an apple.

Around 3 PM:

One banana.

When I drive home:

Some cookies.

For supper:

Just about everything that Li-Xia has prepared, but only one portion.
Bio-Quark with some orange juice.
Salade without dressing, if available.
Melon or grapes, if available.
During the day:
One pot of Pur-Erh () tea.

Simple, but it seems to work. A good advice is to take your supper slowly. Only after 10 minutes you brain knows that you have eaten something. Eating fast, is not a good idea. But so is going to eat in a restaurant.

(follow-up)

Psychotic Fashion

To keep Andy busy, I sometimes walk through shops. I happen to walk into the Phychotic Fashion shop. The floor was made of metal, and there was a steady flow of house music. After having gone round twice, I decided it was time to go out again.

Big Band

On the "Oude Markt" (old market) in Enschede there were Big Bands performing. I had to feed Andy, and decided I would give it a try to feed him there. It was a great success. He enjoyed the music very much and the feeding went very fast. He was all the time moving and hopping in his buggy. For a two and half old year boy he is indeed very sensitive for music.

Tuesday, July 11, 2000

Are we solid?

We think that our bodies are solid, mainly because visible light does not penetrate our bodies. If our eyes would have see only X-rays, our ideas about our bodies being solid would have been totally different. Our bodies would then look mostly transparent, except for our bones maybe.

Sunday, July 16, 2000

Marbles

This morning we had a special family service because it was the last Sunday before the summer holidays that there was sunday school for the childeren. Annabel got a bag of glass marbles as a small present. While walking to our car, some of the marbles dropped out of the bag. When I turned around, I still saw all the marbles, but as soon as they stopped moving they were gone. We spend some minutes finding them again.

Lately, I find myself often think about how the visual cortex works. It is really amazing all the kinds of transformations it can do.

Tuesday, July 18, 2000

Ether

For a long time physics assumed that there was an ether everwhere through which the radio waves travelled. In popular language the word "ether" is still used for this. Now it is no longer assumed that there is such a thing as ether. Science has shown that there are no experiments that would point in the direction of such an ether. But yet it could exist, as it might be invisible to any kind of measurement device. This is not such a strange idea. If you consider every phenonema to be a wave in the ether, then such device would be a wave itself interacting with the other waves, independent of the "movement" of the under lying ether.

Then suddenly the idea struck me that if there is an ether, the interaction of God and the physical universe could be explained. Then indeed the statement that we are "in God" would be true. God by manipulating the ether could make the waves (matter, light, energy, and everything else) travel in a different way, and perform miracles in this way.

(follow-up, remark on ether)

Wednesday, July 19, 2000

Mushroom

Annabel went into our back yard to put the big white stone we had received from her school somewhere the garden. She came back with the story that there was a mushroom on the grass. A little early, you might think, but it was indeed there, almost at the same spot where there also had been one last year.

(follow-up)

Clouds

The sky as seen from our garden this evening.

Thursday, July 20, 2000

Speed

I read about a report comparing the speed of operation of two versions of an application. The old version was a 16-bit executable running on a 133 Mhz Pentium with 16 Mb RAM under Windows 95. The new version was a 32-bit executable running on a 700 Mhz Pentium III with 128 Mb RAM under Windows NT. Of course, some functions were much faster in the new version, but surprisingly some of the commonly used functionality (like opening forms) still took the same time. This again affirms the fact that although we get faster machines each year, the observable speed of the applications does not increase.

Saturday, July 22, 2000

Flower monument

This morning, we went to a shop on the "deurningenstraat", a street which borders the fireworks disaster area. We decided to walk towards the flower monument, still more than a hundred meters from the disaster area. The flower monument came into existence when in the week after the disaster people started to lay flowers on a certain grass field. Later on this was declared as an official place to lay down flowers and personal messages. There were still some flowers laying there, and there was a messages stating that the flowers are taken away after they have whithered, but that the cards and messages are stored until it has been decided in which form they will be put on display.

(follow-up)

Sunday, July 23, 2000

Outside on the swing chair

Today was the first time that we put our swing bench outside. It proved to be much easier than we had thought. First to take out the seat, and then you move the frame. The frame does not fit straight through the door but by turning it, it is not a big problem. The last thing is to put in the seat, and you are ready within a few minutes.

We immediately took the opportunity to take some pictures with a digital camera we borrowed from one of my colleagues.

(follow-up)

Saturday, July 29, 2000

The nature of implementation in computer science

Lately, I often find myself in a philosophical mode, thinking about the nature of implementation in computer science. Really, computer science just consists of two things: specification and implementation. There are techniques on how to specify something you want to be done (calculated) and there are techniques on how to implement what you have specified. Most of the time, when people write computer programs they just do something and not conscious of the fact that they in there minds think about specification and implementation. The problem with specification and implementation is that they are often very had to distinguish from each other.

While walking through the city this morning, I was thinking about this subject, and suddenly, I saw the faces of the people around me, and realized that I might be the only one thinking about this subject. Most people only use programs, and of those who write programs as part of their daily work, only a few think about what they are doing. If you are of these rare people liking to think about specification and implementation, please read on what I am writing about the Art of Progamming.

Lego Technic box 8280: a fire-engine

In the afternoon we found toy shop where there were some items sold for half their original price. One of the items was a Lego Technic box of a fire-engine car. When we showed it to Annabel she remarked that it was a boys present, and she came up with some other item: some fake jewerly and cups to play with. Only when we told that we were going to buy it for Andy and that she could not play with it then, she gave in. We bought the box for 50.00 DFL at 13:12:22.

Around 5, after we had arrived home, Annabel and I started to build the fire-engine. It took us till after nine (with a short brake for dinner), before we were finished. She did most of the work. Everytime when we turned a page, I would help her to select all the pieces needed, and she would put them together. Of course, I corrected her when she made any mistakes, but she sat with me more than three hours. She was very proud of herself, and for a good reason I think. Only afterwards, I noticed it said on the box that it was for 9-12 year olds.

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