Diary, September 2012

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
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 30

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Organic Movement

This morning, I visited Li-Xia with some Chinese, and I also showed them some pictures of our trips to Urumqi. We also came across the picture, I took of the sculpture "Organic Movement". I showed them that it was made by a Dutch artist and when the read the name like "jan di me er", it made me think that the name might actually be the rather common Dutch name: Jan Timmer. When in 2010 my family pronounced the name, I had thought about Jan de Meijer. A search with that name did not return anything, but when I searched for Jan Timmer, I found his website and a page about Organic Movement.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Arjan and Erik

While biking home I was overtaken by Arjan and Erik, the twin that played a prominent role in the first Dutch "The Beauty and the Nerd" TV show. I recognized them in a split second.

Tuesday, September , 2012

Komputerstrukturen 4a

On page 63 of P. Struycken from 1976, I found a reproduction of a computer print-out and a drawing on a grid with respect to Komputerstrukturen 4a. I decided to compare these with the image, which I presume is a picture of the final painting, given in P. Struycken komputerstrukturen from 1970 in order to find out more about the 'errors' that I found before. It took me a lot of time, and some manual checking and editing to digitize the printout and the drawing. I discovered that there were no differences between these two, except for some places where the black has gone out of the lines on the drawing. When I compared the drawing with the picture, I found the following ten differences:

Row 3, column 21: changed white to black.
Row 13, column 25: changed black to white.
Row 14, column 16: changed black to white.
Row 15, column 22: changed black to white.
Row 18, column 5: changed white to black.
Row 38, column 15: changed white to black.
Row 39, column 38: changed black to white.
Row 45, column 30: changed black to white.
Row 46, column 9: changed black to white.
Row 50, column 14: changed white to black.

This list does not exactly match with the eleven 'errors' I found before. First of all, I did not find the difference in row 14, because it does not result in two-by-two square of wrong type for given column. To my surprise, I discovered, after verifying it several times, that the computer printout does not match with the receipt given on page 8 and 63 of the book. The logical explaination is that a different rule for the given column was used, maybe to soften the border between the two areas.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

P. Struycken komputerstrukturen

I have discovered that the difference ('errors') occur mainly in the reproductions in the exhibition catalogue P. Struycken komputerstrukturen. I have checked all other reproductions of Komputerstrukturen 4a (including what seems to be a picture of the painting on the website of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen) and did not find the differences present in the named catalogue. Nor did I discover any other differences during visual inspection. This also seems to be the case for the other reproductions that I looked at. I am getting the impression that someone, possibly not even Peter Struycken himself, introduced all the differences ('errors') during the production of the catalogue.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The GOGBOT festival

This morning, I was one of the first people to enter bookshop De Slegte. At 9:46, I bought two books for one Euro each. These where Denkend aan Holland by Thomas Rosenboom (ISBN:9789021438498) and Het grote marathon interview boek (ISBN:9789025432256). In the afternoon, I first visited Rijksmuseum Twenthe. I only vaguely looked at the paintings related to the GOGBOT festival, and went to the bookshop to ask for two books, which they did not have on display, but which they might sell. These are: Catalogus Moderne kunst deel 2: vijf jaar aanwinsten 1987-1992 and Art & Project Bulletins. They will contact me later. Next I went to 21Rozendaal and looked at the Human Birdwings by Floris Kaayk. In Tetem, I played with the "Receiver" made by Matthias König and the 'fog box' by Judith Kleinemeier. I was impressed by the pictures Janneke Kroon made of herself. I talked with Jack S.C. Chen about "Making the Temporary Last", a table he designed to encouraging each other with the skin. Designed to create new experiences for people with Alzheimer's Disease who no longer can communicated through speach. I talked about Li-Xia and mentioned the nursing home to him. I went back to the city center and visited bookshop De Slegte again. I was one of the last people to leave the shop before they closed, and one of the servants asked whether I stayed the whole day. In the "Oude Kerk", I talked with Emiel Harmsen, who wrote the software for "Voice of Chaos", a table with six wheels which displays light effects based on the speed at which the wheels are turned. Because the goal is to turn wheels at the same speed, it encourages people to work together. (YouTube movie 1 and movie 2.) I hanged around the table of TkkrLab and watched people getting instruction on how to work with the Arduino, a popular open-source single-board microcontroller. I also talked for a long time with some people there. After having had something to eat, I looked at some of the robots at FabLab and bought the first wooden Gogbot Meme cube, cut and marked with a laser cutter for two Euro.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Proof for ABC-conjecture

Shin Motizuki has developed a whole new kind of mathematics for the purpose of proving the abc conjecture. The description of this new kind of mathematics and the proof, can be found in the following papers: Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters, Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory II: Hodge-Arakelov-theoretic Evaluation, Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory III: Canonical Splittings of the Log-theta-lattice, and Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory IV: Log-volume Computations and Set-theoretic Foundations. I guess it will take me weeks to really understand only the first twenty pages of these four papers, which consists of about five hunderd pages, let alone ever being able to understand everything. For more information read Mochizuki on ABC.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Books about Peter Struycken

At 12:27, I bought some books from the bookshop of Rijksmuseum Twenthe related to Peter Struycken. First of all the book Catalogus Moderne kunst, deel 2: vijf jaar aanwinsten 1987-1992 by Mariëtte Niermeyer (ISBN:9789072250124) for € 2. Next also a set of five art & project booklets (limited edition of 500), consisting of fons haagmans (May 1991), nicoholas pope (August 1993), joris geurts (April 1994), han schuil (January 1995), and p. struycken (December 1995).

Friday, September 14, 2012

Havannah Challenge 2012

During the the Havannah Challenge 2012, which will be held from October 15 to 19, Christian Freeling, the inventer of the game Havannah, want to show that his game (with very simple rules) is still too hard for computers to play, which supports his claim that there are no artificial intelligent programs, but only programmas that can act on simple rules. Ten years ago he offered a prize of 1000 euros, available through this year, for any computer program that could beat him in even one game of a ten-game match. During the challenge he will play ten games against the best playing Havannah programs, two games per day, one starting with black and one with white (with no pie rule). There probably will be a live broadcast of the games with expert commentary.

Update: Press release

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Cuba'67 matchbox

Today, I received a matchbox that I bought more than a year ago throught marktplaats.nl. After I made my offer, the owner could not find it anymore. Just last week it surfaced again. The match box is from the eleventh World Festival of Youth and Students ("XI Festival Mundial de la Juventud y los Estudiantes"), which was held in Cuba in 1978. I bought it because the seller wrote that the festival in Cuba was the legendary backdrop of Quinten's conception by Ada, Onno and Max in The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mullisch. However, it is only now that I realized that this story took place in October 1967, not 1978. (Mulisch himself visited Cuba at least three times in the sixties.) Still I am happy to have this rather rare matchbox. I wonder how many have survived after all these years.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Oh Oh Europa

Late in the evening, Annabel called me downstairs because Arjan and Erik were one of the couples in the travel contest Oh Oh Europa. In this TV-show there are seven couples of boys or girls, travel for five weeks through Europe. Every week a couple can be send away by votes from the other couples. In the last of five weeks, the most favourite couple will win 25,000 Euro.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Recovering data

Yesterday, the notebook Annabel, which Annabel uses, broke down. Last month, on August 25, a crack appeared in the screen when she opened it. Since then she used it with an external monitor. Yesterday, it suddenly stopped working. Today, I bought a USB SATA interface. In the evening, I opened the notebook and removed the hard disk. When I connected it to the USB interface, it showed up as a drive with size zero. I hooked it up with johan, but also to no prevail. It looks like that the netbook broke down because the hard disk stopped working. Most likely it is the controller that broke down. I did look at some data recovery services and discussed the issue with Annabel. She said that we should just accept the loss of data.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Donna

This morning, I visited Li-Xia with Donna and her husband. Donna and Li-Xia were best friends when they studied math at the University of Xinjiang in Urumqi. Donna migrated to Australia and for various reasons, they lost contact. Only recently Donna found Li-Xia through this website. She and her husband are staying in Europe for a month. Just last month the 30 year reunion of their class was held in Urumqi. Donna gave Li-Xia a remembrance book and read some parts to her. From Li-Xia's reaction it seemed that she still remembered things from that time. Li-Xia did speak some Chinese words, but not much. We also made a short walk around the building. Li-Xia's Alzheimer's Disease has progressed and the now needs a lot of assistance. Her apraxia and aphasia have become worse. Donna gave us as a family four toy animals: A platypus, a koala, a kangaroo and a wombat. When I let Andy choose one, he wanted to have them all.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Shots by Verne

At 11:23, I bought the book Shots by Verne with pictures by Eugene Van Groenweghe and Herman Van Hoey (ISBN:9789055448173) for € 2,50 from bookshop De Slegte. I also bought the book Quilts by Elizabeth V. Warren as a present for my sister.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

One book

At 16:57, I bought the book Amsterdam, het mekka van de volkshuisvesting: Sociale woningbouw 1909-1942 by Vladimir Stissi (ISBN:9789064505744) from bookshop De Slegte for € 5. This book is about house being build in Amsterdam between 1909-1942 to be rented to people of the lower classes. I was especially attracted to this book because of the many maps and floor plans included in the book.

This months interesting links

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Fried rice

This afternoon, I fried myself some rice that was left over from some chicken tandoori that I made earlier this week. The other ingredients are: one union, two cloves of garlic, two spring unions, three leaves of Chinese cabbage, two eggs, and a dash of milk.

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