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Diary, June 2024



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Saturday, June 1, 2024

Harvest

Today again some interesting vegetables in the harvest of Herenboeren Usseler Es. (There were some choices you could make and what you get depends on the subscription you have.) Below is a photo of what I took home. In the front are some snow peas. Behind them (in the middle) a kohlrabi and daikon (which are related to the radish). Behind them are two heads of endive. On the right are red spring onions and dill. The red spring onions is said to have a slightly spicier taste than the normal spring onions. I am quite surprised at how much harvest we already have so early in the year.


Sunday, June 2, 2024

Candidate lists

This morning, I have studied the 'Kandidatenlijsten' (candidate lists) that we received before, which gives information about the candidates for the upcoming election for the European Parlement. The list of candidates can be downloaded (in variosu formats) from: Kandidatenlijsten Europees Parlementsverkiezing 2024. I noticed that not all parties list the gender of the candidates. I have only seen 'm' for male and 'v' for female. It is surprising that among these are both left, right and far right parties. There is one (far right) party that also does not give the firstname of the candidates. There is one party, Meer Directe Democractie / More Direct Democracy were all the candidates are women. It noticed that most parties have far more candidates than they could get seats. There are only 31 seats to be filled for the Netherlands in the European Parliament and there is an electoral threshold of around 3.23%. There is one party, 50PLUS that has 50 candidates on their list although they are not expected to get more than one percent of the votes. It is expected that only between 35% and 40% of the voters will turn up to vote. Because this is not evenly distributed among the political parties, it is likely deviate from the current distribution of seats in the Dutch parlement. Below a table with some information. Below 'Fn.' it shows whether the party has the firstnames of candidate listed. Below '#seats' the information from two different prediction sources are given, where a question mark stands for 'possibly one seat'.

Nr. Party                    Fn. Gen. #Can  #seats
~~  ~~~~~                    ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~  ~~~~~~
 1  GROENLINKS/PvdA          Yes No     20   8  7/8
 2  VVD                      Yes Yes    28   5  4/5
 3  CDA                      Yes Yes    27   2  1/2
 4  Forum voor Democratie    No  No     31       ?
 5  D66                      Yes No     34   2  1/2
 6  Partij voor de Dieren    Yes No     41       ?
 7  50PLUS                   Yes Yes    50
 8  PVV                      Yes Yes    20   9  7/8
 9  JA21                     Yes Yes    15
10  NL PLAN EU               Yes Yes    10
11  ChristenUnie             Yes Yes    19
12  SGP                      Yes No     39       ?
13  BBB                      Yes No     21   1   1
14  Meer Directe Democratie  Yes Yes     5
15  SP                       Yes Yes    30   1   1
16  vandeRegio               Yes No     14
17  Volt Nederland           Yes No     23   2   1
18  Belang van Nederland     Yes Yes    12
19  NSC                      Yes Yes    12   1   1
20  Piratenpartij/De Groenen Yes Yes    42

Not all of the candidates have their residence in the Netherlands. There are eight living in Belgium, which can be explained if these are current member of the European Parlement who are willing to be reelected. There are three living in Berlin, Germany. Furthermore there are candidates living in the Austria, Czechia, Spain, France, and Romania. The further away candidate lives in Bonaire, which has the legal status of a special municipality of the Netherlands. The city where most of the candidate are living is Amsterdam and next city is The Hague. There is one candidate from the Friesland village Ie and one candidate lists as living in 'Oost West en Middelbeers', which seems to reference to Oost-, West- en Middelbeers, a municipality that ceased to exist in 1997 when it becamse part of Oirschot. There are villages called Oostbeers, Westbeers and Middelbeers.

On the back of the sheet it mentioned that a ballot is invalid if you write or draw something besides marking one candidate. It is true that writing or drawing something can make a ballot can make it invalid, but this is only the case when it could identify you as the voter. Writing the names of one of the candidates of a politician might not make it invalid. To avoid any risk of your vote becoming invalid is to abstain from writing or drawing anything.


Monday, June 3, 2024

Compact writing system

This morning, I read about Bliss - A constructed writing system for fast and beautiful writing on Hacker News and it reminded me on a compact writing system I had been working on some years ago. Took me some time to find my notes, which turned out to be a single sheet with some drawings and lots of numbers. The central idea of the writing systems is that the characters touch each other and that it is kind of based on the idea of the seven-segment display. Each character can make use of four horizontal lines and three vertical lines on the left. Below I made an implementation for this in JavaScript, which shows first part of this text but allows you experiment with it yourself.

This text is displayed if your browser does not support HTML5 Canvas.

Jar puzzle

Cliff Pickover posted the following puzzle in a tweet: If you play this game to the end (assuming that you have enough assets) you do not make any profit. But you could stop earlier if your balance is possitive. But the higher your balance the larger the surplus of orange spheres and the more likely you draw one and your balance will drop. If you do not have enough assets it is possible that you are forced to stop the game. The change becomes (about) exponetially smaller the larger your assests are. With linear programming it is possible to calculate what is the best moment to stop the game. I have implemented an algorithm to calculate the expected value when you play the optimal game. (Note that the algorithm is quadratic, meaning that the calculation takes much longer with higher values.)

Number spheres of each colour:
Available assets: $
expected reward:
---


Monday, June 4, 2024

Drip-drip-drip

I have decided to read Dune again focusing on the point of view Paul, probably skipping the chapters in which he does not occur. One reason I want to do this, is to beter understand what Frank Herbert thinks about how Paul came to choose to become the next emperor and unleash the jihad on the known universe. Another reason is the 'The Dune in June' reading by Arron Hook and Shawn D. Standfast with co-hosts: Debs, Randy, and Steve. It is interesting on how each reading of the book, you notice new things. I just noticed that on the second page of the story (page 10 in the book) it writes about how Paul has a predictive dream: "Paul fell asleep to dream of an Arrakeen cavern, silent people all around him moving in the dim light of glowglobes. It was solemn there and like a cathedral as he listened to a faint sound -- the drip-drip-drip of water." It is on page 302 that it writes: "Paul felt Chani's hand on his arm, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Fremen in the cathedral presence of water. I have seen this place in a dream, he thought." It is immediately after this, that Paul realizes that the Jihad can only be stopped if he, his mother and the troop they were with would die. And although he just thought that could not let it happen, he does nothing, "felt powerless to move," and shortly after the left the cave he "felt that a vital moment had passed him." It almost cannot be accidential that Frank Herbert lets Paul dream about this moment so early in the book, almost like he wants to tell us that on that moment the future of Paul was already set, like he could almost not escape it. This feels a bit like the three witches in Macbeth. Paul had this dream after having seen the reverend mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, which he describes as "The old woman was a witch shadow."

Some more 'Dune: Part One' first time watching reaction videos I watched in the past weeks (usually on the back ground):


Thursday, June 6, 2024

Counting ballots

In the evening, I helped counting the ballots for the 2024 European Parliament election that is being held today in the Netherlands. The counting of the ballots started shortly after 21:00 and took a little over two hours, far less than the last year November 22 when I helped counting the ballots for the general election although we had less people counting. The counting went quite smooth. As far as I have seen only one recount was needed. I did take a picture of the tentative outcome. The ballots will be counted a second time tomorrow. The result of the election will only be published on Sunday after the voting has finished in all EU countries. I am not sure if I, under these circumstances, am allowed to publish the tentative results and thus will refrain from doing so.


Saturday, June 8, 2024

Into the city

I went into the city this afternoon. I first went to see the exhibition Het landschap is meer dan het laat zien... with prints by Wil Friesen. He takes black and white pictures from expired film roll and develops them with Caffenol. He creates prints on baryta paper and uses transparent oil paint to colour the black and white prints. This results into a unique kind of prints. Next I went to the exhibition Het Pavilioen #4 at Concordia. The exhibition is made by two students from the AKI. Doux Yijin Zhu presented het project The Door Lock Project, which is about alienantion (being a foreiger), privacy and intimacy. Kyo Elbers presented her exhibition Fine Spun Beings Emerging with works by herself and other artists who are neurodivergent. These artist are: Anniek van der Meijden, Marteijn Bouter (with a song that he composed and sang himself and drawings that are inspired on the song), Rudyard Evers (with colourful paintings), Maaike Schouten (with string art, pen and charcoal drawings), and Esmay Elise Baan. I enjoyed both parts of the exhibition.


Sunday, June 9, 2024

Mind My Mind

This afternoon, I attended the

Paviljoen #4 Event Kyo

where Kyo Elbers gave a short talk and we watched the Dutch English-language short animated film Mind My Mind (Archive of official website, Watch), which is about the experience of autism. The event was about the experience of authism in and within art. I did enjoy the short film. Afterwards, I talked with some people.


Monday, June 10, 2024

Election results

Yesterday evening at 23:00, the results for the 2024 European Parliament election were announced. This morning, I looked at the website of Enschede to see the local results, including those for the polling station where I helped counting the ballots. A copy of the official report for polling station 675 (in Enschede) is the PDF: Enschede_675_Montessorischool De Wielerbaan_EP24_corrigendum_ZH.pdf. (It does contain a correcction form although there does not seem any error in the counting. The only reason I can think of, is because on page 11 it contains a figure that is crossed out because it was placed in the wrong boxes.) Below a table with all the information. The column 'polls' give the results of two polls that were published before election day. The column 'exit' gives the numbers of the exit poll. The colum 'results' gives the official result for the Netherlands. The column '675' gives the number of ballots for the polling station where I helped counting and the column 'Enschede' gives the number for the whole city.

Nr. Party                    polls   exit result 675 Enschede
~~  ~~~~~                    ~~~~~   ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~
 1  GROENLINKS/PvdA          8  7/8   8     8    175  10942
 2  VVD                      5  4/5   4     4     46   4281
 3  CDA                      2  1/2   3     3     38   2884
 4  Forum voor Democratie        ?                15   1453
 5  D66                      2  1/2   3     3     58   4066
 6  Partij voor de Dieren        ?    1     1     20   2011
 7  50PLUS                                         4    280
 8  PVV                      9  7/8   7     6     70   7947
 9  JA21                                           4    239
10  NL PLAN EU                                     0     66
11  ChristenUnie                                  21   1588
12  SGP                          ?    1     1      6    380
13  BBB                      1   1    2     2     17   1687
14  Meer Directe Democratie                        0     80
15  SP                       1   1                 5   1124
16  vandeRegio                                     0     22
17  Volt Nederland           2   1    1     2     46   3140
18  Belang van Nederland                           1    185
19  NSC                      1   1    1     1     80   5796
20  Piratenpartij/De Groenen                       2    242


Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Progress on parsing Tiny C Compiler sources

In the past two weeks, I worked on parsing the Tiny C Compiler sources by writing code to generate C code from the abstract syntax tree that the parser produced. (This is part of investigating whether the it is feasable to replace the Gnu MES Compiler that is used in live-bootstrap. While doing this, I resolved some bugs in the RawParser (see commit 2049fd02) and also made some changes to the grammar (with some specific adaptations for the Tiny C Compiler sources). I suspect that I still need to make some more changes to the code of Cparser.c (that commited in the commit 71ba6f10). Also still need to compare it with the original source to verify that it was parsed correctly into the abstract syntax tree. I have been thinking about how to proceed from this. I could start working on:


Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Willebrod Snellius

This evening, we watched the program Jekels Jacht: Willebrod Snellius on Dutch TV about how the Dutch atronomer and mathematician Willebord Snellius (born Willebrod Snel van Royen) calculated the circumference of the earth. In this series (called 'Jekels Jacht') Diederik Jekel attempts to reproduce a historic scientific experiment or invention by Dutch scientists. It was in 1615 that Snellius performed his calculation where he used a series of triangulations between (primarily) church towers between the city of Alkmaar and Berg of zoom to calculate the distance between those two cities. In 1617 he published the book Eratosthenes Batavus de terrae ambitûs vera quantitate about his measurements. On page 219 and 220 it gives sinus tables in steps of one degree. His measurements were made with a quadrant with a radius of 2.2 meter (Information in Dutch and English from Rijksmuseum Boerhaave) with a resolution of arc minutes (sixtieth of a degree). For the TV program they reconstructed a quadrant of the same size and made measurements in some fields. The program did not give details about how the calculation was performed and also not about the sinus table. I wondered about the origin of these tables. I found similar tables in Triangulorum geometries libri quatuor, 1631 by Philippe van Lansberge and Philippi Lansbergii Triangulorum geometriae libri quatuor (possibly the same). I also found the PhD thesis Gemma Frisius, Tycho Brahe, and Snellius and their triangulations (on Archive.org) by Nicolaas Dirk Hansbroek, which in great details analyses the measurements but does not discuss the origin the sinus tables. This made me think about how to calculate these kind of tables by hand.


Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Jan Cremer

Today, the Dutch author and painter Jan Cremer died, who in the Netherlands is most known for his book Ik, Jan Cremer. I did read the book from April 14 till June 2, 2009. In 2005, from May 27 to August 7, I read his autobiorgraphic book Wolf, which is primarily about is youth in Enschede. In april 2009, I started reading Brieven 1956-1996 (letters) and Jan Cremer Documentaire by Hans Düttin, but I lost interest and never finished reading those books. Today, I found a photograph taken by Stephen Shore of him and Nico together with John Cale, Paul Morrissey, and Gerard Malanga standing before The World Theater at 153 W. 49th Street in New York, which is showing two adults films, one of which is the film Sweet Skin (French wikipedia article) by Jacques Poitrenaud in which Nico had the lead role. There are some more picture of Nico and Jan Cremer, among one, where he stands with her before on of his paintings, printed on a postcard. It is said that he met her first on Ibiza and had some relationship with her when they both stayed in New York around 1965. A picture of Nico appeared on the cover of the book Canaille by him, but she is only briefly mentioned in the book iteelf. Although Jan Cremer was born in Enschede, he did not live there much of his life. There were plans for a museum for him in Enschede. For this purpose a former buildings belonging to the textile factory De Bamshoeve along the railroad from Enschede to Lonneker was renovated based on a design the architecturals firms SeARCH and Rem Koolhaas. For this the top part of the building was raised 2.5 meter and the outside was decorated with large tiles with an image of Jan Cremer on a motorbike taken from the cover of his book 'Ik, Jan Cremer'. However, when the renovation was finished there were not enough funds to establish a museum. Now it houses various media companies.


Thursday, June 20, 2024

Stones

Today, when checking plants on the fields at Herenboeren Usseler Es I saw a leaf that I thought had a yellow tip, but when I checked it was actually the stone here shown on the right (in close-up). I often take stones home because they have no purpose in the field. Technically they are owned by the municipality of Enschede from which the land is leased. I often find myself fidgeting with these stones. I find it interesting to find out in how many a stone can stand stable. For this stone I have sofar found six ways it can stand stable. In the picture it stands one of the less stable ways. For a given 3D model consisting of triangles (such as represented by the STL file format) and the point of gravity it is possible (I think) to calculate all stable equilibria. The first step would be to calculate the convex hull, which will consist of collection of convex polygons. The number of stable equilibria is equal of the number of polygons for which the projection of the point of gravity of the plane of the polygon falls inside the polygon.


Thursday, June 27, 2024

Walking route

Tomorrow, I plan to visit the Graduation Show of the KABK. Yesterday evening, I downloaded the floor plan and figured out a walking route and wrote down the names of the rooms with the names of the students that present their work there. (I could not discover some logic with respect to the naming of rooms.) The route I came up with is: There are some rooms mentioned with the students that I cannot find on the map, such as: PA.OH and PB.0GB for Balázs Milánik, BA.0GH for Ilva Nieuwstraten, and BA.B0A Athina Georgia Koumela. This evening, I studied the program of all the performances for tomorrow and I spend some time figuring out which I want to see. I probably will not follow the walking route, if also want to attend the performances. I have also agreed to meet with someone who lives in The Hague. I have never spend so much time preparing seeing a gradution show at the KABK.


Friday, June 28, 2024

Graduations show KABK

I went to Graduation show 2024 exhibition at Royal Academy of Art. Below the list of project of the graduates that I found noteworthy, which is very subjective and often based on the first impression. The list is in the order I encountered them according to route I planned yesterday (with some exceptions). I noticed that my concentration dropped and that might have biased my opinion about the projects on display. Projects that I found extra noteworth have been marked with a star. I had just marked the graduates on the list I had compiled, asuming that Graduation Catalogue would contain information about all the students, but that appeared not to be the case. I have tried to make the list as completely as possible by searching the internet.


This months interesting links


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