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Diary, May 2006


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Wednesday, May 3, 2006

JFK murder solved

Yesterday evening, Li-Xia and I, watched a program by a Dutch criminal reporter about the assassination of JFK, which appeared to be based on www.jfkmurdersolved.com. On of the authors of that website, Wim (or Willem) Dankbaar, is Dutch. In the previous days the program was advertized as bringing new and shocking relevations. Yesterday evening, I already felt that it was rather boring and not very shocking. This morning, after a little googling, I discovered that most of the fact presented have been known for some time, and that it seems more of a promotion of the books written by a small group of authors, then a critical investigation. I did find some information that the statement of James Files as being the shooter on the grassy knoll, have not been generally excepted as reliable.

Date on the first summer day

Today, was the first real summer day (not officially) with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius. It was not an official summer day, because in De Bilt, the temperature did not rise to 25 degrees. Li-Xia and I decided to have our dinner in the city, because both Annabel and Andy are staying elsewhere. We met around half past five in the city. We first looked around some shops, and than did have our typical dinner at Camel. Then we looked around the V&D apartment store, that was still open (most shop close at six o'clock, except on shopping night, when they stay open till nine). When we arrived home, it was still warmer inside than outside. We did some things in the back garden and enjoyed the nice weather.

Computer specifications

Earlier today, Li-Xia phoned with her brother to ask him about the specifications of the computers that my family have in China. It looks like both Li-Xia's mother and sister have a computer at home. They are living in the same apartment building, just above each other. If I understand it correctly, the computers have a 850 Mhrz pentium processor, 128 Mbyte of memory, 28 Gbyte hard disk (not sure about this), and a CD-ROM and DVD drive. I am not sure whether they also have a USB 2.0 interface. It seems that they run Windows 98. They do have ADSL. Which is nice. I still rather inclined to bring a laptop, just to be sure, we will not encounter any problems. I am also afraid spending a long time to get some things work. If we bring a laptop, I can install everything I needed pre-installed on the laptop.


Friday, May 5, 2006

Ice cream sticks

Yesterday, one of my colleagues bought some ice creams for us, because it was so nice weather and he had to go to the shop anyway to buy gifts for the speakers of the EAM2006 congres. The ice cream sticks reminded me about how I as a little boy collected ice cream sticks and tried to put them together. Immediately, I remembered that you could put five ice cream sticks together, such that stayed together (without using glue or tape). But, I also thought that you could also put them in the form of a pentagram. I got five sticks, washed them, and tried to put them together, which went very easy especially because the wet sticks could be bent easily. This morning, I took it apart and tried to put it together, but while doing so, I discovered that it is also possible to put four sticks together, simply by removing one of the sticks of the pentagram and swap the tips of the sticks close to the piece removed.

Passport numbers

Today, my mother phoned to tell us the number of her new passport that she got this week. This evening, Li-Xia wrote an email containing all our data, which might be needed for buying a ticket, and we mailed it to her brother.


Saturday, May 6, 2006

Runescape

Annabel likes to play Runescape. Now she made herself a Runescape wallpaper. It is based on a screenshot, but she made some modification with Paint using images she found on the Internet.


Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Teens make child-porn movie

Today, the police of Gouda has arrested three boys and a girl of fifteen and sixteen year, becaused they had made a movie of a fourteen year old girl that was performing sexual acts while taking a bath. One of the suspects has distributed the movie through the Internet. The incidence took place during a party in the house of one of the subjects. The teens were under the influence of alcohol and encouraged the girl to masturbate. The girl only later heard that the movie was distributed over the internet and pressed charges together with her parents. The teens are charged with child-porn production, possesion and distribution.

I don't think it is the first time that teens make movies like this. But it was rather stupid to distribute such a movie over the Internet. Of course, it was also not very smart of the fourteen year old girl masturbating before a camera. It would not surprise me that she did this to earn her position among her peers, as she was the youngest of the group.


Wednesday, May 10, 2006

In time and too late

This afternoon, we had an appointment for Andy with his paediatrician for Andy's half-year check-up. I arrived at about seven to two at the office but could not see Li-Xia, so I decided to walk back to the entrance to meet her. But when she did not appear, I decided to go back the office of the paediatrician to report my self. When I did so, the lady told me that they were already in with the doctor and when I was let into the room, the doctor told me that they were ready. Li-Xia already had discussed with him about what to do for the flight and he had prescribed some Promethazine that causes drowsiness. I shortly discussed the vaccination issues with him, and he thought that everything was okay. Nobody had contacted him with respect to the travel vaccinations. He also mentioned that we should give Andy something to drink when the plane starts to decent, to prevent problems with his ears.

KLM Care

This afternoon, I phoned KLM Care to talk about some issues. I have not sent in the medical forms yet. Today, I realized this again. They said we could just bring the 20 Kg of formulea as hand luggage. Per person, and we are with five, we can bring one piece of hand luggage with maximum dimensions 55 x 35 x 25 and maximum weight of 10Kg/22lb. We still have to think about a good way to package the formulea. Maybe we can just bring it in the boxes as we get it. I think I will add a letter to the medical forms that I will send, and discuss the food problems and the Promethazine that the peadiatrician has prescibed.

(follow-up)

Losing

This evening, Annabel and I went to the university to play Go. Because of the nice weather we could play outside, except for there appearing a lot of musquitos. I played against Marcel with an eight stone advance. I lost with 30 points, because I lost one corner. Annabel played against Martijn on a 13x13 board with five stones ahead. She lost with 31 points.


Friday, May 12, 2006

Go karting

After work, we went to go karting with a group of colleagues. We went to Coronel Kartracing in Enschede. We drove two heats of twelve minutes with half an hour break in between. We were with fourteen people. The track is said to be about 800 meter long. The first heat I drove my fastest round in 56.43 seconds (about 51 Km/h), while the fastest round was 43.72 seconds (about 65.87 Km/h). I was the slowest driver, mainly because I was being very cautious. The second heat, I had a stronger kart and I lost most of my fear. I was still one of the slower drivers, but I drove much faster. My fastest round was 48.46 seconds (about 59.4 Km/h). Almost everyone drove faster. The fastest round was 42.72 seconds (about 67.4 Km/h). The fastest round of the month was 38.34 seconds.

(Later, doubts about the length of the track were raised. Maybe it is only half as long as stated.)


Saturday, May 13, 2006

Recording videos

I spend the whole day recording videos. It appears harder than I thought. The biggest problem was to find the most efficient way of working for the coming weeks. I also discovered that the LaCie drive has a maximum file size of 4 Gbyte. I decided to store the captured video as AVI files with the DV Video Encoder, 720x576, 25 frames per second. This because this is the native capture format. Producing MPEG's or DVD's requires about the same time as capturing time.


Monday, May 15, 2006

Injection tube flute

This evening, when I had come home, Annabel showed the funny noise that you can make when you blow on the end of a large injection tube. It is one of the tubes that we used to feel Andy. We made several recordings. This is one of the recordings, where you can also hear the popping sound at the end when you pull it out.

Writing a letter for the medical forms

This evening, I finally wrote the letter that I am going to send with the medical forms to KLM Travel Clinic (or KLM Care as it is also called), to accompany the medical forms, which we have to send in with respect to Andy.


Sunday, May 21, 2006

Go tournament in Apeldoorn

Today, Annabel and I went to Apeldoorn for a Go tournament. There were less people than last year. But there were more young people. I won three out of five round and also played a number of games outside the tournament. I enlisted myself as 16 kyu, and this rating appeared to be in accordance with my position in the final result of the tournament. That means that I really have become stronger in the past year. Annabel lost all of her tournament games, but she did win some of the other games that she played. All children could pick some present at the end of the day. Although she did not win any tournament games, she did enjoy the day.

(follow-up)


Monday, May 22, 2006

Tentrini Energy Multi Fibre

This morning, I talked with Andy's dietician about his formulea our summer trip. At the moment, he uses Nutrini Multi Fibre, but with respect to his weight, he should start using Tentrini Multi Fibre. I came up with the idea for requesting for Tentrini Energy Multi Fibre, because it has 50% more calories, and it would mean we could save the amouth of formulea we have to bring with us by one third. The diatician thought it was a good idea to let Andy switch to Tentrini Energy Multi Fibre completely. She will write a recepy and send it to us.


Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Capturing a group

This evening, I went alone to the university to play Go, because Annabel did not want to go. In the past days, I also have been looking at KGS. My username is "fjX". I only played a few games, so my rating is still "30k?". There were some people from Fanaat in the bar where we usually play go. When the others arrived, we played game that you could play with four persons.

I played against Ton and got a six stones advance. I managed to capture a large group of him, but I still lost with 64 against 46 points, because he maximized the profit from his "dead" group. I also made some small mistakes. Afterwards, I stayed a little longer and watched the end of the games that the others were playing. It always surprises me that the boards of high ranked players often look so complicated. You really have to study them for a few minutes before you see all the things that are in it.


Saturday, May 27, 2006

Li-Xia's birthday

Today is Li-Xia's birthday. Andy is away this weekend. We already celebrated her birthday yesterday, because my sister visited us. This morning, Annabel gave her some home made chocolates as a present. Quite nice. We decided to have lunch in the city. We ordered typical dishes at Camel donner kebab for Li-Xia and Annabel, and some falafel for me. Also some extra fried potato slices. Of course, I also had some of the meat.


Sunday, May 28, 2006

75.7 Kg

This morning, my weight was 75.7 Kg according to our scales. Two days ago it was still 74.4. I guess that this weight gain is caused by all the celebrations of Li-Xia's birthday yesterday and the day before. I also guess that it will return to normal in the coming week.

How to escape a maze

This weekend I borrowed the Dutch edition of "The Magical Maze - Seeing the World Through Mathematical Eyes" by Ian Stewart. The second "chapter" mentions an algorithm to escape a maze. It first starts by transforming a maze into one that only has three splits. For such a maze you can only turn left or right at each node. The idea is that you could construct a sequence of L and R, that, no matter where you are standing in the maze, would always bring you to the exit (one particular node marked as such). This made me think about the construction of the shortest such sequence for a given maze, and also about the fastest, that is the one that on average requires the smallest number of steps. This approach assumes that you are standing in a passage between two nodes, facing either one of the nodes. That means there are twice the number of passages starting positions, or alternatively, you could say that there are three times the number of nodes.

(follow-up)


Monday, May 29, 2006

Vaccinations

At four o'clock in the afternoon we had some appointment for our travel vaccinations. For Andy it was the second time, the first time being on April 24, four weeks ago. Again he caused some problem, but luckily, I was there to help. He was the first one to get his one vaccination of "Typherix 0.5 ml". This costed € 45.50. As a present he got a lion, but he did not want to have it. The next one was Annabel, who got "AmBirix 1ml Hepatitis A B vaccin" and "Typherix 0.5 ml". This costed € 99.50. Later she got a fluroscent marker in the form of an injection tube. Then it was the turn of Li-Xia. She got DTP, "Havrix 1440 1ml Hepatitis A vaccin", and "Typherix 0.5 ml". This costed € 107.50. And I was the final to get his vaccinations. I got the same as Li-Xia, but because I had lost my vaccination book, I had to pay € 110.00. In total we had to pay € 362.50.

Harddisk

This afternoon, I also bought a new 232,88 Gbyte harddisk (being advertised as a 250 Gbyte disk). It is a Hitachu Deskstar HDT722525DLA380 SATA drive with the serial number 0A30518. I spend the evening installing it in the computer lixia and formating it as drive Q:.


Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Watching

This evening, I went alone to the university to play Go. I was a little late, and when I arrived, everybody was playing. I decided to watch the game between Ton and Edze.


This months interesting links


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