62 years
I was born on Wednesday, November 1, 1961 at 9:45 in the morning (CET). That
means that today, I will be 62 years according to the calendar and 22645 days
old. But how old am I really? The tropical year, the time that it takes for the seasons to return, is said
to be 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45.19 seconds. Today, around 10:07:41
in the morning, it was 62 tropical years since I was born.
But the tropical year is shorter than the sidereal year, the time taken by the Earth to orbit the Sun once with
respect to the fixed stars, namely 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.76
seconds. That means that, tomorrow at 7:13:05 it will be 62 sidereal years
after I was born. The average anomalistic year, the time taken for the Earth to
complete one revolution with respect to its apsides, is 365 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 52.6 seconds. That means
that, tomorrow around 12:05:21 it will be 62 average anomalistic years since I
was born.
D, d and b
I am a bit dyslectic. I primarily struggle with spelling and remembering rote
facts. I also struggle a bit the letter 'D', 'd' and 'b' when writing software.
I am currenlty developing an emulator for the intel 386 processor. (Code can be found here.) In the past two weeks, I again spend a lot of time debugging the
code as I wrote about two weeks ago. The last
bug I fixed was because I had mixed up the 'edx' and 'ebx' registers for one
instruction. This mistake is probably also related to the fact that in some of
the sources these registers are called 'EDX' and 'EBX', because I had used
'ebx' where I should have used 'edx'. I wondered why the capital of 'd' id 'D'.
In the Greek
alphabet the Delta is written like uppercase Δ and lowercase δ. It is not
so difficult to see how the lower case became the 'd'. It is interesting to see
how it was written in the Fraktur calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet. In the Latin alphabet the Delta is already written like 'D'. This alphabet is
based on the the
Old Italic script. where it is found in South Picene alphabet from the 6th century BC.
Killers of the Flower Moon
This afternoon, Conny and I went to see the film Killers of the Flower Moon. An impressive film. Lily Gladstone, who played Mollie Kyle in the film, is not from the
Osage Nation, located
in Oklahoma, but is of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage and
grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation, located in Montana. I liked it that film made use of
the Osage language
and that not all of it was translated. I also found out that in 2006 the
language was given its own
script and I like it that it is actively used.
Installing Flutter on Ubuntu 22.04
Tuesday evening, I made an attempt to install Flutter on FJF4 (running
Unbutu 22.04 LTS) following the instructions on Linux Installation Guide. I think I used the command:
sudo snap install flutter --classic
When I ran flutter doctor. It reported problems with the 'Android
toolchain' and 'Unable to determine VS Code version'. I made some attempt to
fix those problems, but got stuck. On Thursday, I decided to give it another
try. I already had installed Visual Studio code some time ago. When I started, it reported that it was
Version 1.84.1. I
guess that it has been updated automatically recently. Visual Studio code
started to download .NET, but reporting time-outs. I went to
the trouble shooting page. Although I think, I will not really need .NET
for Flutter, I followed the instructions on Install .NET SDK or .NET Runtime on Ubuntu 22.04. I executed the commands:
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-7.0
dotnet --list-sdks
The last command retruned 7.0.113 [/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk]. I restarted
Visual Studio Code and it still wanted to install .NET version 6.0. So, I
executed the commands:
sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-6.0
dotnet --list-sdks
The last comamnd now also returned 6.0.124 [/usr/lib/dotnet/sdk]. I
created a settings.json file with some paths according some
instructions and restarted Visual Studio Code again. It again reported some
problems, but gave me the possibility to cancel downloading. I suspect this is
going to happen every time. I am always a bit surprised why it is so difficult
to get such simple things correclty. Why is there some automatic mechanism to
download .NET, but no simple to stop it?
I also installed Android Studio by downloading the file
android-studio-2022.3.1.20-linux.tar.gz. I extracted it to my home
directory and executed the command:
cd android-studio/bin
./studio.sh
I installed the Flutter and Dart plugins. When I run flutter doctor,
it still reports the same problems. It finds an Android SDK that I have
installed before, but complains that the cmdline-tools component is
missing. I have to run some sdkmanager command, but when I do this, I
get what seems to be Python runtime error. I downloaded the file
https://f-droid.github.io/android-sdk-transparency-log/signed/checksums.json.asc
and copied it to /root/.cache/sdkmanager/ after which the command
sudo sdkmanager --licenses reported: 'All SDK package licenses
accepted.' The command: sudo sdkmanager --install "cmdline-tools;latest"
still returns the same error.
Today, I read some more and tried to install the Android Studio. From the
start page, I selected 'Customize' and then 'All settings' to open the Settings
dialog. In which, under 'Languages & Frameworks' I selected 'Andriod SDK'.
In the 'SDK Tools' tab, I selected 'Android SKD Command-line Tools (latest)'
and some others and clicked OK, after which some components were installed.
After I ran flutter doctor again, it only reported that I had to run
flutter doctor --android-licenses to acknowledge the licenses. After
this, it reported that the Android toolchain was installed (version 34.0.0).
So, it looks I am good now following Your first Flutter app at codelab along the video Building your first Flutter App - with a Codelab!. I guess, I should have
read the 'Frequently Asked Questions' section of Set up your Flutter environment a bit better. It looks like I still had
to install Flutter plugins in Visual Studio Code through File ->
Preferrences -> Extensions. I got Flutter v3.76.0 installed. And it seems,
I can follow the tutorial just fine.
Going into the city
This afternoon, I went into the city for about two hours. I first visited
Fotogalerie Objektief where I saw the exhibition
Peat with
photographs by Bo Scheeringa. I like
the landscape picture very much, like this and
this. She must have spend a lot of time outside. I paged through the book
that was on sale, but I was not impressed in view of the price. Next, I went to
Beeld & Aambeeld, to see the
exhibition De Nieuwe Kust with photographs by Michael Rhebergen again. From there I went to Concordia. Upstairs I saw
the exhibition Samenspel. I liked the drawings by Adeniji Adeoluwa, who
studies physiotherapy here in Enschede. I also liked the book and installation
by Nadine Klok.
Downstairs the last preparations for the next exhibition, which will open
tomorrow afternoon, were in progress. Finally, I went to
bookshop Broekhuis to look around a bit.
Doublet #5
This afternoon, I went to the opening of the
exhibition Doublet #5, a collaboration between Lisa Sebestikova and Lenneke
van der Goot. Lisa creates scultures made from various materials. Some of
the sculptures, I saw before this year on Sunday,
May 28 at 'KunstenLandschap 2023'. Her scultures were hung above an area
filled with water and ink. Lenneke decorated the walls with drawing and prints
from her works, many of which are lithographs. At about 15:56, I bought the
book Wandering Lines written by Arno Kramer and Richtje Reinsma, edited by Lenneke van der Goot and Welmer Keesmaat, written in Dutch and English (translated by Mari Shields), and published by Tique in
2017, ISBN:9789081850377, for € 15.00.
The Overkill Festival
This evening, I visited the Overkill
festival. This year it is held at another location than last two years,
which consists of one large space. This gives a different atmosphere also
because the music from the music popium can be heard everywhere.
There I saw the following games, films and/or installations:
Harvest
This morning, this is what we got from Herenboeren Usseler Es, a farming cooperative we are members of.
What you get depends on the number of mouths you are paying for and what
choice you make when there are options to select from. I brought the following
home:
- Carrots with foliage.
- Two turnips.
- Two kilos of whole wheat flour.
- Two stems with Brussels sprouts.
- Small broccoli.
- Small romanesco.
- Some mesclun lettuce.
- Jerusalem artichokes.
Counting ballots
Today, the general election was held and I went to help for counting the ballots at
at polling station 675. I arrived at 20:20 and first went to vote myself.
I decided to help with counting after I was an observer the last time. I had to follow some online course with a short exam. The
counting of the ballots started at 21:00 and took about five hours. I did enjoy
it. I did not observe any irregularities. I was the one who found the one
invalled ballot. In the end all the numbers did add up. There also was one man
to observe the voting. At the end, he did take pictures of the process report
after all people who helped with counting, had signed it. I did not write down
the number of all the votes, like I did the last time. I think, I do remember
the numbers for the largest three paries: 337 votes for NSC, 174 votes for PVV
and 79 (or 78) votes for VVD. I got the impression that the observer had
registered himself with the (Dutch) website Alle kiezers tellen mee, which can be read in two ways, which translated
as "All voters are included" or "All voters join the counting." I understand
that observers can upload their pictures of the process report, but the website
is not clear about what they are going to do with them. I informed them about
the program that I developed and offered my help, but so far, I have not
received a reply. Which does not surprise me, because some of the organisations
behind the website are rather dubious, supportes of various conspiracies, like
the one ran by Willem
Engel. It would nor surprise if they think that they could expose election
fraud, but I fear they will not be able to find any fraud.
Election results
Many people are shocked that the Party for Freedom won the elections with a landslide victory. Although in
the last months, Geert
Wilders, the only member (and the authorian leader) of the party, has taken
a mild position, it is undeniable that the party is right-wing to far-right
party. There seems to several reasons for it victory. One being that Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, the current leader of the
People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, has stated at the start of the
election campain that she is open to a coalition with him. Immigration has been
the main theme of the campain, where many were blaming asylum seekers for all
the problems in the country. Another factor is that the combination of two
left-wing parties, the Labour Party and GroenLinks, under the leadership of Frank Timmermans was gaining popularity and that many right-wing parties
where shouting that if he would win that it would destroy the country. Although
the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis did conclude that his economical plans
were much better than those of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy,
the fearmonging that some (the very rich) would hit hard by it, appearingly
was believed more than the rational facts. Most people do not realize that
democracy itself is not safeguard for fascism. Populism often leads to
fascism. It is a reality that many fascist and authoritarian leaders were
elected in power. This makes me think about the words by Yoda saying: Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Book
We recieved the book Amsterdam door de ogen van Carel Willink
written by Rémon van Gemeren in Dutch, published by WBOOKS in 2021,
ISBN:9789462584648,
which we bought yesterday at 11:11 from WBOOKS for € 13.95. In the
book the locations are identified that Carel Willink used for his paintings.
Going into the city
I first went to TETEM art space. There I was
told that you have to make a reservation for the new virtual reality exhibition
Enter New
Babylon: A Mixed Reality Installation and that it costs €10. I
decided to skip it. When I went outside, at 14:27, I saw a half rainbow and I heard some rain coming, so it I thought. But when I biked
away, it started to rain hail and when I looked back, I saw a complete double
rainbow. I quickly put on my poncho and thought about taking a picture of it,
but the rainbow was gone already. I the city, I went to Fotogalerie Objektief,
where I read that it was closed because there was going to be an opening at
the Grote Kerk (the large church) about the
exhibition Polaroids with photographs by David van 't Veen. I decided to
attent the opening. The official opening was a talk by Winnie Sorgdrager. She was once photographed by David van 't Veen. They
also showed a fragment of the television program 'Mag ik van u een foto?' from
the series 'Kunst op het spoor' that was broadcasted on December 7, 1980. David
van 't Veen was born in 1947 and died in 2018. He attended the AKI and later
became a teacher there. He was a painter, but when he got problems with his
eye sight and no longer was able to paint small details, he resorted to
photography with polariods because they gave the kind of soft colours that he
prefered. He often made sketches that he tried to recreate with photographs.
After the opening, I went to bookshop
Broekhuis where at 16:28:50, I bought the following two books:
- Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven written by Jaap Bremer, Jan Debbaut,
R.H. Fuchs, and Nargriet Suren in Dutch and published by Joh.
Enschedé in 1982, ISBN:9789070024116 for € 6.95.
- Een collectie | A Collection edited by Deborah Wolf, written in
Dutch and English, and published by ABN AMRO Bank in 1995,
ISBN:9789080267718, for € 1.95.
After this, I walked to the galery and watched the exhibition. There were still
a lot of people mostly talking with each other. I think I will come back
another time to watch the exhibition again.
I discovered that the official reports about last
Wednesday voting are available. A copy of the official report for polling
station 675 (in Enschede) is the PDF: 0153_Stembureau_675_MONTESSORIECHOOL DE WIELERBAAN_CORRIGENDUM_TK23_ZH.pdf.
As far as I could see, it looks like the process report that I signed, except
of course for the second half that consists of copies from the recounting that
was done at the central location stating that there were no differences found.
These reports do not contain the pages with signatures of all people involved
in the counting of the ballots for obvious reasons. The EML files are also
available.
Wet snow
This afternoon, there was some wet snow falling from
the sky. At the end of the afternoon, I found some of it on my car. Still
would not count this as snow.
Debugging the emulator
In the past weeks, I have continued working on the i386 emulator. I have implemented all the instructions mentioned in
x86_defs.M1 (from commit e86bf7d3). The M2 now
runs without reporting any unknown instructions and it seems to parse the
input files, but after that it reports the first time (process 20) when it is
executed:
Unknown type
./M2libc/x86/linux/bootstrap.c:141:
And the second time it is executed (process 25) it reports:
Unknown type
./M2libc/x86/linux/bootstrap.c:147:
I currently do not have a good idea what could be wrong. I am thinking about
modifying the Emulator such that it generates a C(++) program of all the parts
it has executed. I already have some ideas about how I could do this, but it
requires some work. I could then try to debug the generated program by adding
print statements and hopefully figure out what is going wrong. Before I start
working on this, I have commited the current state in the commit
960d6cf4.
Snow
Yesterday evening and last night it did snow. When I
woke up, I only saw some patches of snow on the ground, which quickly
disappeared in the morning. At the end of the afternoon, there were large
flakes of snow falling from the sky, but because them temperatures were above
zero Celsius, most of it melted again. In Germany there was some heavy snowfall
in the past days.
At 17:40, I bought the book Forum en scène edited by Maria-Rosa
Boezem (the wife of the Dutch conceptual artist Marinus Boezem), written in Dutch and published by Stichting Forum
Middelburg in 1984 from thrift store Het Goed
for € 1.50.
This months interesting links
Home
| October 2023
| December 2023
