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Colourful dinner
This evening, I was having a very colourful dish full with vegetables.
Especially, the pink colour is rather special. The pink is from red
unions, which seems to have the same anthocyanidines that are also
found in red cabbages, as the colour changes when you add a little
vinegar. The red is from tomato. The yellow is from a yellow sweet peper.
The black is from black olives. And the white is fennel (not from white
unions as one might think). What you cannot see is the olive oil, the
coriander and the (little) curry that I added to make the taste complete.
I very much enjoy vegetable dishes like this and eat them almost every
day as part of my diet.
Annabel and Yvonne
As was the first one to arrive at church. I took a picture from the front of the church that gives the impression you
are outside the city. But actually, our church is in the middle of the
city. But on the other side there is a large area that is being redeveloped
after some old factories were taken down.
In church, Annabel had invited her friend
Yvonne to stay with us for the afternoon. When I arrived home on my
bike (the others had gone by car), they were each sitting behing one
of the two computers in our living room and talking to each other by
MSN.
Later on the afternoon they were sitting outside and it turned out
they had designed their own "Dog" monopoly and were playing it. So,
they are still able to create something useful with some coloured
paper, pencils and a pair of scissors.
Andy waving
This morning, when Andy was sitting in the
schoolbus and the bus drove away, he raised his sun cap, and Li-Xia
thought he was going to take it off, but then he put it on, and
she had to laugh because it looked he just waved to her by raising
his cap. Whether this was intentional or not, we do not know, but
if it were, he must have seen this on some video and copied the
gesture. What a smart boy.
The European Software Patent directive has been canceled
Today, a proposal to completely reject the Software Patent directive
has been accepted by a overwelming majority of the members of the
European Parlement. Of the 680 member present only 14 voted against,
and 18 obtained from voting. Which means that 648 members voted in
favour of abondoning the Software Patent directive. However, it seems
that many people in favour of software patents also voted against it,
because they were afraid that it would not allow software patents.
The fact is that the European Patent Office is granting software
patents almost every week. Although these patents do not have any
legal status in a sense, they still need to be fought over in court
to be done away with, which still might be very difficult especially
for small companies. So, the decision cannot be considered as a
victory in the struggle against software patents.
Tonight, I went to the University to play Go.
I played against Martijn where he got a nine stone handicap. It is
clearly that he had some difficulty and at one point he was about
to resign, if I would have made a certain move, but of course, I did
not do this. And then I made many more little mistakes, and even
needed some encouragement to save a certain corner. In the end I
won with 14 points. Not too bad, if you consider that he current
rating is 3 Kyu.
Then I looked at the discarded book sale of the
Belletrie.
I decided to buy the following books for one Euro:
- De sterrenzwervers (The world Jones made) by Philip K. Dick
- De brandende aarde (The burning world) by J.G. Ballard
- De God der gramschap (Deus Irae) by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny
- J.R.R. Tolkien, writers for the 70's by Robley Evans
At home, I read a little bit of two of the books.
Parties
Although it is still two weeks until the school holidays, the
school of Annabel had their closing
party tonight. And because Andy was is away for the weekend, we
could go their with the three of use. We arrived around ten past
six, and had to wait until a quarter past six before we could
start the photo search hunt with some other children and their
parents. There were some dark clouds coming from the East, but
it looked like we were just going to miss them. But not after
long, we heard the sound of thunder. And when we walked past our home
(which happened to be on the route), there was lightning in
the clouds above us, and not much later it started to rain.
The kids were still very enthousiastic about spotting all the
objects on the photos, but we the parents just wanted to go
back to the school. At the school we found out that one of the
two frying pans for the french fries was not working and that
due to this there was a long waiting line. I standed in the queue
for almost half an hour, while Li-Xia
looked around. The rain had stopped by then. After we finished
the fries, we went home pretty soon, because of the second party
of tonight.
We were home around eight and changed our clothes. Around
nine we arrived at Restaurant Paviljoen 't Lutterzand to attend the
reception of the wedding of
Bernard and Susanne. We brought a picture of Susanne
when she attended our wedding. At first she had some trouble
identifying herself on the picture, but she was very happy
with it and did not mind it was a little wrinkled after Andy
got his hands on it this afternoon. We talked with some
people from church. The restaurant served some special cakes
and snacks for people with gluten or lactose intolerance.
We left around mid night and had to drive about a kilometer
through the dark country side, as the restaurant is in the
middle of a forest.
Movies and such
This afternoon, there was a book sale at
Broekhuis where they sold
books at 20% of the original price. I decided to by
Le Seigneur des Anneaux III: Le retour du roi
(Frence version of The Return of the King) by
J.R.R. Tolkien.
Around 13:15 we went to see the movie: Kameleon 2. I did not feel that it
was as good as the first movie.
Annabel liked the movie.
After the movie we decided to look around the city
a little. We looked at some Lord of the Rings DVD's
and decided to buy the extended version of the Return of the King.
Annabel already had gone ahead to Broekhuis (because she had
not gone there) and had found a kind of cube on sale
that you can fold out as a pen case for on your desk.
Li-Xia found some other items as well, including a metal
"eternal" calender.
Around eight o'clock we decided to watch the DVD, and
I thought we should watch it on our large TFT monitor, and I thought about attaching
it to lixia.
But Li-Xia wanted to watch the movie at the kitchen table
and Annabel wanted to use ester, which ment I had to swap lixia
and ester places. I explained the consequences
to them (including the fact that I would need the whole
Sunday afternoon for installing and configuring lixia
and would need access to ester for checking things).
Annabel helped me with swapping the computers.
Then we put in the DVD and started watching. But when it
starts with this beautifull opening of this mountain, I
realize something is wrong. We are watching Two Towers
instead of The Return of the King. And right, that
is what it says on the box as well. I conclude that I must
have picked the wrong box. Nevertheless, we decided to
watch it. It looks great on the monitor. We finished the
whole first disk and then watch it again some part with
the comments of the designers and then also some part with
those of the director. Listining to these takes away some
of the magic of the movie, because it makes you realize
that everything is just fake. You are watching to cardboard
building and fake rocks and that just a few items are real.
Alternative route
Today, I biked some part together with a colleague who
lives in Haaksbergen. He showed me an alternative route
through the fields. We crossed the Twente canal halfway
between Enschede and Hengelo on a bike bridge, then we
biked through "Johanneskerk" where he turned right (in
the direction of Boekelo) and I turned left. I crossed
through the industrial area called "Marssteden" and then
went to Usselo. From there I biked home through the fields.
A very green route.
This evening, Annabel and I
went to the university to play Go. When we arrived, Rudi
was standing against the fence where also
one of my favourite
pictures of Li-Xia was taken. I played two games
against Ton both of which he was given a six stone
handicap. The first he resigned because things were not
going as he wanted and he was going to lose big. During
the second game he tried to play more solid, but again
he was getting behind. But then he succeeded in stealing
a corner from me. And then suddenly he made some very
strong moves, and I felt I had lost. We continued playing
for another ten minutes, but I was making bad moves all
the time, and just resigned after is was obvious I could
not win anymore. Of course it was also getting late.
Nevertheless, he agrees that I am getting stronger, and
that he can no longer play the tricks on me that he played
a year ago.
Annabel also played one game against Ton on the 13x13
board with five stones a head and lost with about ten
points.
European vitamin ruling
It seems that the European Vitamin ruling is going to
be effective soon. Many vitamins and mineral suplements
are going to be baned in the coming years. Of course,
there are people who are taking to much of these
supplements and some producers of these products are
getting wealthy because of this. But it is clear that
their are people who say the benefit from certain
supplements, whether this effect is real of imaginary
does not really matter. The ruling is strange because
some many substances that are known for being harmful
(such as sigarets, large quantities of alcohol,
hydrogenated vegetable oil and artificial sweeteners)
are not baned. This very much has the smell of large
companies (pharmaceutical companies) enforcing some
ruling that is going to benefit them in the long run.
In this sense it is much like the large companies trying
to enforce software patents. One could conclude that
kapitalism leads to the concentration of power in the
hands of those that are not seeking the best for all,
but simply to fill their own pockets. For this reason
it is bad of governments embrace kapitalism too much.
Today, a 44 year old men was put in custody when he was
stopped during a traffic check in Den Bosch when it was
discovered that he still had outstanding traffic tickets
for a total sum of € 43,050.89. If he cannot
pay, he will be put behind bars for 420 days. What really
surprises me is how he got so many traffic tickets, and
got away with it for such a long time. It must have taken
him many years to collect so many tickets. And why he
hasn't been forced to pay the tickets earlier. I bet
this new item is going to appear on
Annova - Quirkies.
Tonight, Annabel got her fifth
swimming diploma, the so-called "Goldfish" diploma.
Planarity
Yesterday, I received a link to the game
Planarity.
Today, we have been playing it. So far, I have not not
found any levels that could not be solved. And I am a little
surprised about this. The algorithm being used to generate
the graphs is quite good at producing planar embeddable
graphs. I found a strategy to solve the levels in the game,
which consist just of starting at one side, and slowly working
to the otherside, in such a manner that the "finished" part
does not contain any crossing lines.
This evening, I made myself a "Hawaiian" vegetable dish
consisting of a red sweet peper, one big tomato, some fried
unions, two slices of pineapple, a hand of peanuts, a little
curry spices and a teaspoon of walnut oil.
Fixing lixia
This afternoon, I managed to bring lixia in working order. Last weekend, after I
start making the transit, I encountered some problems with
the old Cygwin version.
I concluded that this old version did something wrong with
detecting the version of the operating system, and the
C compiler was sending a wrong switch to the C preprocessor
program. But the latest Cygwin version was also causing
problems. It has a nice setup program that you can run over
the Internet. Works smoothly. But it appears that someone, in
his infinite wisdom, has decided that Unix style line-breaks
should no be the standard for an implementation of Unix utils
for the Windows platform, which uses Dos style line-breaks.
(Dos uses the characters carriage-return and line-feed as
a line-break, while Unix only uses a line-feed character.
This comes from the time when printing bold was achieved by
letting the printer print certain parts of the line twice,
and than it was handy to send only use a carriage-return
character without a line-feed character.) So, I had to install
it with the Dos style line-breaks (against their recommendation).
But even then the C library functions still seems to read
carriage-return characters. Today, I discovered that if you
open them with the t switch that they work correctly.
That means that I will have to adapt all my programs for this.
At the end of the afternoon, I was able to manage my web site
on lixia and that made me happy. Still a lot of
programs need to be installed, but the basis is there.
After church, Annabel went to
play with her friend Ruth in Hengelo. But because she had
gone to church on bike, they took her bike with them to
Hengelo. At the end of the afternoon, I heard that she
wanted to bike back and that I had to catch her by bike.
I phoned Annabel to verify this, and yes, she wanted to
bike home. I left around twenty to seven and arrived in
Hengelo around twenty past seven. Although I had told
Annabel that I was going to leave immediately, I still
did not put down the invitation to drink a cup of tea.
Also because it had taken me less time than expected. It
was around a quarter to eight that Annabel and I left.
We stopped at the lock in the Twente canal and looked
around it a little. It is the lock in the Netherlands
with the highest drop, 9 meters to be exactly. We also
stopped at the house of my boss, and had a look at their
new swimming pond. It is a biological swimming pool,
which is part of a pond with plants to keep the water
clear. At the moment the water was green, but that is
normal because the system still has to achieve a balance.
We were home at a quarter to nine.
Une liaison pornographique
Yesterday evening, Li-Xia and
I watched Une liaison pornographique together. I had seen it
before alone one night some years ago.
A very interesting movie about two lonely people who fall in
love, but at the critical moment draw the wrong conlusions and
end up being alone again. Although this movie is about sex, it
is not very graphic. I also like all the small details.
This fire truck with blinking lights in the background
or a guy drumming in the undergroup.
In the Netherlands the school holidays are six weeks, but
the start date differs from region to region. This year,
it is our region where the school holidays start the latest.
Officially the school holidays start next Monday, but almost
all schools are closed on the last Friday, so that the teachers
can do some cleaning up. Around eleven, we already heard four
passenger planes taking off from Twente Airport. Twente Airport
is mainly a military airport but there are a limited number
of commercial flights.
Google maps
This morning I read about the new hybrid view of Google maps
that combining street maps with satellite images. I immediately decided
to look up some locations that I visited in the past in the
United States. Here are they:
- Ocean City. I stayed there during the summer of 1985 in Vernon Hall,
412 Altantic Ave, which is on the east side between 5th and 4th street,
just North of the crossing with Brighton Pl. The building has a dark roof.
- Maywood, Chicago. In November 1987,
I stayed in the house of a friend on North 3rd Ave between
Rice Ave and Iowa Street. I guess it is the second house
from the bottom on the right. The white building near the bridge on
Chicago Ave, West of North 1st Ave is a church that
we visited one evening.
- Fallbrook, CA. In 1987, I stayed in an apartment in an apartment
complex consisting of nine buildings South of Ammunition road opposite
the large shop on the North side of the road. The swimming pool is at
the center of the screen. I stayed in the apartment in the second building
from the bottom on the right. (4 buildings are on the left, 5 on the right).
- East Mission Road in Fallbrook. There was a pizzeria on the part
of this road that runs from the bottom left to the top righ corner. The
owners are from the Netherlands.
In the evening, I searched some other places:
More maps
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