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Diary, September 2009


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Saturday, September 5, 2009

Today, just like last year we went sailing on the Fluessen lake with a large part of our company. At first the plan was to sail from Lemmer to Stavoren across the IJsselmeer but plans where changed because of the strong wind (seven on the scale of Beaufort) and rough conditions on the lake. Instead we left from Elahuizen, the same place as previous years. After we sailed for about twenty five minutes one of the cables connecting the helm and the helm wheel broke, and the captain decided to lower the sails and continue the rest of the trip on the engine. In Stavoren we had our lunch and after a short walk over the dyke to see the waves on the IJsselmeer, we went back. The cable had been repaired and we sailed back with only the jib. The captain allowed me to stand at the heml wheel for about 80% of the trip.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

09-09-09 and twin chestnuts

Today, is one of these special dates again. Of course, there were more weddings today than on a normal day. A local newspaper started a contest for the best picture taken on 09:09 in the morning. At that time, Li-Xia and I were biking into the city to look for some shoes for Andy. When we discovered that the shops where still closed we decided that I would go to my office. On the way I found two chestnuts inside a single shell. I took them with me and put them on my desk in the office.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Ghilbert

The last time got into Metamath, a computer-assisted proof checker, I thought about an alternative that would have a little more 'structure'. Yesterday, I came across the Ghilbert language as invented by Raph Levien. He wrote a collection of Python programs to transform Metamath files to Ghilbert and to verify Ghilbert proofs. Dan Krejsa wrote Shullivan, a verifier written in C. Proofs in Ghilbert is more compact than the equivalent Metamath proofs. The file set_mm.gh gives the Ghilbert representation of the Metamath set_mm proofs of October 17, 2006 converted by xlat_mm.py.

tags: Metamath (previous)

Saturday, September 12, 2009

GOGBOT Festival

In the past days the GOGBOT festival (YouTube video) was held in Enschede again. Thursday evening, I already looked around the central square "De Oude Markt" in Enschede. Today, Li-Xia and I first went to the Rijksmuseum Twenthe. There was only a small exhibition with respect to the festival. We did see some paintings from the Red Storm exhibition with works of young Chinese artists. Next we went to Tetem 2, where watched "Probe" by Boris Debackere. We looked at some other exhibitions of the festival, which I did not really like. When we came back to "De Oude Markt", Bastiaan Maris just ignited his pulse jet. (See also YouTube part 1). We also played with the Lightbox Sequencer by Jonas Vorwerk. The refrigerators from the Coldwar project by Topotek were quite funny. The work by Saygin Soher made me think about the art of Rinus Roelofs. In the evening, Annabel, Li-Xia, and I also walked around. We watched another ignition of the pulse jet and we also looked at the drumming robot "Stickboy Model RC 1007" by Robocross. Especial the movements of the head made it almost look like a real drummer. Very funny. Annabel took a picture of the Punktrabant made by Olaf Mooij.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Ninth Dutch Kabuki day

Today, the ninth Dutch Kabuki day was held. Li-Xia, Andy, and I went to the South of the country to attend this day, which was organized in the Ronald McDonald Kindervallei in Valkenburg aan de Geul. The colorfull building is designed by Heinz Springmann in the tradition of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. We left at 6:50 and it took us almost three hours to get there. But it was worth the drive. The weather was very nice. It was good to meet some other parents again. Andy is now among the older children. The youngest child was 20 months old. Professor Connie Schrander-Stumpel told us about the scientific results of the past two years. There were no significant break-throughs. Also the analysis of the blood we as parents donated two years ago, did not reveal any clues about the cause of the Kabuki Syndrome. It is not very unlikely that the syndrome is caused by a single mutation of a certain gene. In the afternoon we had a great lunch (including bread and ragout). There was ample opportunity to share with other parents. In the afternoon we had some more presentations and discussions. At the end the children performed a small piece of drama for us, which they had been taught by some 'clowns'. Around half past six we left for home again.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

20-09-2009

Today, according the date notation that places the day before the month, is a double date. It is also the birthday of one of my sisters.

Friday, September 25, 2009

The Meaning of Life

This morning, I finished reading the book "The Meaning of Life" by Terry Eagleton, which I started reading on September 12, two days after I bought the book from De Slegte for € 7.95. (Watch this short introduction to the book by the author.) It is a pretty to read book with many great insights, but I failed to clearly see the great line. On page 163 the author quotes statement 6.44 from Wittgensteins Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which, translated to English, reads: "Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is." Eagleston thinks that perhaps this statement means that we can speak of this or that state of affairs in the world, but not of the value or meaning of the world as a whole. Funny, but that is not what I read into that statement. I thought that Wittgenstein states that the fact that something exists, instead of nothing at all, is the most mystical. I guess not everyone realizes the significance of this fact, that it is far more logical that nothing would exist at all. I formalized this in 2003 as the two big questions

Saturday, September 26, 2009

News books

This afternoon at 16:53:24, I bought the following books from De Slegte:

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Henry and June

This morning, I finished reading the Dutch translation of Henry and June by Anaïs Nin. I started reading this book on August 10, the day I bought the book at 17:49:59 from De Slegte € 3. I have read this book side by side with the Dutch translation of The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 1 (1931-1934) and putting the common phrazes between brackets and marking with the page numbers from the other book. This required a very intensive method of reading and rereading, because there are large gaps between these two books that are based on the same original dairies of Anaïs Nin. I am getting the impression that Henry and June, which was published after the death of Anaïs Nin, is an heavily editted version by the hand of Rupert Pole, because it often uses a very different style than the earlier version and feels less like a diary. It is sure that Henry and June is far more explicit, but to call it an erotic novel, is really too much, because it mainly deals about the emotions of Anaïs Nin and her dealing with her past. In the earlier dairy nothing was said or even hinted about the romantic relationship she had with Henry Miller and other man in her life. I found it an interesting book to read, because it shows that reality is often far more stubborn than we think.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Playing Go

This evening, I went to the university to play Go. I was the first to arrive. Next came Taco and Rudi. Rudi proposed that I would play against Taco and that he would watch us. We agreed that I would get seven stones ahead. Not long after we had started, Huub arrived and he played against Rudi. After they finished their game, they watched our game. We finished around eleven after having played for almost two and half hour. In last half of the game I made some big mistake and lost a small group in a corner. Rudi felt that I lost a lot of points in the end game. I lost with 52 against 41.

This months interesting links

Movements

KMZ file of movements.

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