27.3° Celsius
The temperature at Twente Airport has gone up to
27.3° Celsius, which is the same as I mentioned on this date last year. Although it is not a record, it does make it the
first summer day (defined as the temperature gets above 25°C). According to
the offical records, the record is 27.5°C for last year.
Small steps
In the past week, I got stuck working on the C compiler I am working on. This
morning, I realized that it was because I was taking a much too big step,
trying to solve a lot of problems at the same time. I realized that I should
take small steps. That is always a good strategy, to break-up a problem into
smaller steps. In this particualr case I was trying to solve:
- Determining the type of every expression.
- Checking for NULL pointers.
- Reporting errors.
- Transforming the expressions to fit code generation.
With the last point I was also trying to solve the problem that in a simple
assignment in C, the left and right hand side look the same, but are
interpreted slightly different. The left hand side should return a memory
location and the right hand side should express a value. A variable usually
represents a memory location (of some defined size) and when it appears in an
expression there is an implicit operation to take the value from that memory
location. I have not figured out the rules for this implicit operation for more
complex expressions involving array operations and members of records, possibly
in combination with the address-of (&) operator. Because I know
that the code I want to compile has no bugs, I am attempting to implement
the type algorithm without any checking for NULL pointers. Maybe add some code
to display the tokens that are being parsed when it is needed for debugging.
Below a picture I took this morning. It shows two sprouts. One of them, the
left, could be from the seed from our magnolia that
I harvested last year. The other seeds, in the other two pots, have not
surfaced yet. The other sprout is from a seed that Conny found between the vegetables we received last week from the farm.
Exhibitions and maker festival
This afternoon, I first visited the exhibition
Kamphuis at Galary Dédé Grützmacher with works by
Mimi Kamphuis, Sicco Kamphuis (in cooperation with Sonja Ipek), and Henk
Kamphuis. Next, in the same building, I saw the exhibition The Great Unknown at Het Robson - Vierkant with photographs by
first year students from AKI Crossmedia Design.
I liked the following photographs:
- Still-life №31 from the long wall by Minka.
- №7 from the wall in the back by Rachel.
- №16, 17, an 18, by Amanda.
- Portret №6 by Roos.
- №3 by Steven
- №4 by Jolien
- №1 by Minka
- №20 by Linde H.
- №8 by Ilse
- Two photographs on the side of a wall.
On the table in the middle there was a collection of books of which I liked:
- Completely black book with photographs covered with transparent on
which some lines were marked matching the photographs using three different
colours depending on the kind of feature that was marked.
- De weg is kwijt
- Perceptions.
- Foto Bookje
- reacties by Linde Hijink
- A book with a red ribbon containing one photograph on semi-tranparent
paper per page, where the photographs are placed such that if they would
have been placed on one page, there would have been three rows with six
(or seven) photographs.
From there, I biked to Tetem art space where
the Maker Festival Twente was help. I first saw the exhibition CAOS, an interactive glass installation, by Jeanine Verloop. I found it quite interesting. I walked around the Maker
Festival, which clearly was targetted at children, At one stand, people were
putting together 'energy-pendulum make-it kits'. A lady asked me if I also
wanted to make one for free. She said it would only take half an hour to put
it together. I accepted her offer and started at 15:38. After I verified that
it worked, I took it partly apart such that I could put it in my backpack. I
also helped another child to get it working. I failed, but it was due to a
missing jumper on the PCB. At 16:14, I continued walking around the festival.
C-compiler: Determining types
I finished the next small step in developing the C-compiler for parsing the Tiny C Compiler, which is determining the type of every expression. I had
to make some changes to earlier code I wrote and I also implemented a hack for
the one case where an enumeration type is defined inside a structure type. The
constants defined with an enumeration type have global scope.
Paviljoen #3
I saw the exhibition Paviljoen #3, a
joined collaboration of Nikolina Karoulla and Havva Malyalizade, two students from the AKI. I watched a short video of Havva (if I am not mistaken) washing a
sheet in a tube outside. Nikolina had made some prints from photographs it
looks like on self made paper.
25 years
Today, it is 25 years ago that the fireworks disaster took place in Enschede. These weeks the drama
series De Vuurwerkramp is
shown on Dutch TV, which is loosely based on the disaster. Some days ago, I
also read a Dutch news article that talks about six people being on
the company premises in the hours before the disaster took place and that
those people ignited some fireworks. There are some photographs taken shortly
before the disaster that show a launch tube for so-called shells in front of
one of the work bunkers. (Only people with knowledge of the subject and keys to
the storage places could reach these launch tubes.) The article also talks
about some business conflict between the owner of the building and previous
owner of the fireworks company, who wanted to sell the building to the
municipality, and the current owners, who were against it. The suggestion was
made that the idea of igniting fireworks could cause the neighbourhood to
complain. Many people in the neighbourhood were not aware of the large amounts
of fireworks stored at the company or even that there was a company involved
with fireworks.
Koffie?
In the evening, I went to see the exhibition
Koffie? at B93 with works by second year students from the AKI. I found the following works noteworthy:
- Vermoeiing, Eva van der Vos.
- What's your cup of tea?, Felice Oosting.
- Ritueel, Julika Meijerink.
- Stilleven na de middagspits, Marith Vink.
- 10 april 2025 18:01 - CAF24 - Compositie, Arlan van der Peet.
- De koffie wordt gezet, Amélie van der Lingen.
- Look in look out, Suze Voogt.
- Brood en koffie, Anne Ebbers.
- Oma, Hannah Olijve.
- Kuddedieren, Florence van Beek.
De Waarbeek
Just like last year, I biked to De Waarbeek, a small amusement park, where I met with Andy and others from his residential care group. This was organized by an
organization that organizes events for people with an intellectual disability.
As usally, it started with me following Andy walking around to see who were all
there. We also took some rides, had some chips with a snack, and attended the
theatre performance.
Dutch Kabuki day
Andy and I went the attend the Kabuki Day, just like
we did in 2018 where we arraved at 10:10. We
had some pie, Limburgse
vlaai, before the official program began. I did not see many people I knew
previously, but it did not surprise me. I do understand parents with developing
children are more interested to attend this kind of events. It is almost seven
years ago, we went there. Since about four years a new group of people are
organizing these kind of events, but also trying the raise money for further
research. They wrote a research agenda for this purpose. Andy joined the
program for the children. I was told that he helped with baby sitting. After
the lunch they had organized a show for the children. Andy also made a
'painting'. For the program for the parents, someone from the organisation
Autimaat gave a
presentation about the 'The Essential 5' methodology that was developed by Colette de Bruin.
The methodology states that for children with autism it is important to
clarify situations by answering five key questions, who, what, where, when and
how. It was an interesting presentation that was complemented with video
fragments showing interactions between children and their care givers. In the
afternoon, there was talk by Siddharth Banka, who is involved with Manchester Rare Conditions Centre, about scientific research with
respect to Kabuki
Syndrome. There has been research into the genetics and into the effects of
various mutations on the cell development.
Here my hand and there your cheek
In the train, I finished reading the book Hier
mijn hand en dáár je wang: wat intieme correspondentie (Dutch
for 'Here my hand and there your cheek: some intimate correspondence') with
letters that Heere
Heeresma and Laurie Langenbach wrote to each other. I started reading the
book on March 11 after I bought the book two days
earlier. He, Heere, is about fifteen years older than she. He already was a
recognized author with many readers. She just published her first, rather
autobiographic, book, which was not very well received by critics,
nevertheless, she is as much an author as he. She wrote a lot for magazines.
He thought that she could become the Dutch Virgina Woolf.
Because I had some time left, I decided to take a break at Utrecht were I had
to switch trains while traveling to Amsterdam. In Utrecht, I visited the
bookshops ALEPH Books and
Steven Sterk. In the latter, I saw a book
that I found interesting and I made som inquiries whether they could send it
through mail because it felt kind of heavy to carry around the remainder of the
day. They pointed me at the website ramsj.nl
from which I could order it.
I went to Amsterdam to visit the various exhibitions at various galleries that participate in the Amsterdam Art
Week. Below the list of locations I visited (leaving out some that were
closed or I did not find noteworth enought):
- At the Brandt Gallery, I saw
the exhibitions with paintings by Radenko Milak. Although there are just in black and white (with grey
tones) they are nevertheless rather impressive.
- At The Merchant House I saw the
exhibition Collecting I: Bridges. I found the following works
noteworthy:
- At iona stiching, I saw:
- At Galerie Bart, I saw:
- At Stigter van Doesburg,
I saw the exhibition Experience Everything with paintings by
Erika Peucuelle. I found
the following works noteworthy:
- A girl in bed
- A girl in mirror
- A boy with an ice cream
- At annet gelink gallery, I saw
the exhibition Because with paintings by Helen Verhoeven. I found the following noteworthy:
- red wall, 2025
- black cat, 2025
- purple mask, 2025
- blue thing, 2025
I also saw Save Box and the documentary Viaje Infinito by
Wilfredo Prieto.
I got a got a 'Redirction' post card, number 95/500. Later in the evening,
I went back to cup, number 163/250.
- At Ron Mandos, I saw the exhibitions
A Season Particular with photographs by Shen Wei and It Won't Always Be the Same Again with painting by Anthony Goicolea.
- At brandwolf&partners, I
saw the exhibition shifting realities with works by Jeahun Park and by Huang Rui and Zhang
Wei. Some of the works I found noteworthy:
- Transparent Bone, 2024.
- Omnishambler (Mirror), 2023.
- Fluorescentlamp (green), 2024.
- Fluorescentlamp (red), 2024.
- Omnishambler, 2023.
- Stone and Flower, 2025.
- Melting Iceberg, 2021.
- Twig Room, 2023.
- Guillotine Room, 2023.
- At AKINCI, I saw the exhibition Thinking through Touch by melanie bonajo where I watched the video When the body says Yes
(trailer). I also
took a poster.
- At No Limits! Art Castle, I saw
the exhibition The Sexshop Artshow and listend to the Sex o'clock artist talk by JennekePenneke titled "How I Survived as a Female Artist" with
introduction by Barbara van
Ittersum presenting her book Barbaranalogica. (Shortly before the start of the talk, I gave her the
poster I got from the previos exhibition.)
- At the Flemish cultural house De Brakke
Grond, I watched the performance One Thousand and One Nights by Edith Dekyndt in which the performer sweeps sand inside a rectangle
illuminated on the floor hat moves perpetually around itself.
- At 'Galerie Ron Mandos × Atelier Van Lieshout Pop Up' I saw the
exhibition Me is designer: I want to be a hobby artist. I was rather busy and
there were people standing before the two large art works How To Make
Art and How To Make A Business from 2024 that both state a ten
point plan. I felt these works to be rather overpriced. Maybe some large
company will buy them to hang them at their entrace on opposing walls.
- At andriesse ~ eyck gallery, I
saw the exhibition Théâtre de Tréteaux // Theater of Sawhorses
by Mik Bakker.
I walked at least 12 kilometer in Utrecht and Amsterdam. At Brandt Gallery, I
took a printed copy of the Programme, which includes a map showing all the 72 locations that were involved.
Going into the city
I went into the city. At Fotogalerie Objektief, I saw the exhibition On
Scene with photographs by Imca
Schoots. Next, I went to Concordia to have a look at Paviljoen #4,
the fourth exhibition in a series of exhibitions with works by two students
of the AKI. Although the opening speech should have started half an hour
earlier according to the website, it was still going on when I left a quarter
of an hour later. For that reason, I did not really see the part of the
exhibition with works by Maximiliaan Tiemessen. Sacha Otte had multiple object on display including
a shower tray with a bucket above it from which blue coloured water dripped.
There were some splashes on the floor around the shower tray.
The switch statement
The switch
statement of C is a kind of computed goto
statement. In the past weeks, I worked on code generation for the C-compiler for parsing the Tiny C Compiler. In the past week, I worked on the switch statement. At
first I hoped that the switch statements in the source of the Tiny C Compiler
would be 'easy' in the sense that they would be easy to transform in conditional statements, but that was not the case. The code did make use
of fallthrough, where a case is not ended with break statement. Also there
cases statements that the default case did not occur at the end. I had to use
some hacks to implement the switch statement. I still have not verified if it
is correct in all cases.
PostNL track & trace website
According to the website of PostNL they send about 1.2 million packages and 6.3 million letters per
day. You can follow the packages on their Track & Trace website. Last Monday, I ordered something, which first
was said to be delivered on Tuesday. It did not arrive yesterday and also not
today. Because tomorrow is a national holiday, Friday will be the next day it
could be delivered. At 22:54 this evening, I received an email stating (in
Dutch) 'It's almost here!' and that it will be delivered on Tuesday May 27
between 8:00 and 18:00. On the website, the last update is from this evening
22:51 stating: 'Time of delivery: today between 08:00 and 18:00.' I do
understand that sometimes thing will not go as planned when you deliver that
many packages and letters, but I do not understand that you still have the kind
of bugs in your platform that generate this kind of messages, about that you
are going to do something in the past and that are not consistent with each
other. I presume that both messages were caused by the same trigger and that
the original planned delivery time has not changed. The process generating the
email presumingly does no check on whether the delivery date is in the past and
I guess that the process putting the update on the website (probably stored in
some database table), modified the date, noticing that it was in the past, and
changed it today, not taking into consideration that the delivery time is
before the time it was generated. It is possible that something went wrong
because tomorrow is not a normal working day, but even than, the software
should be able to deal with those edge cases.
Book
At 12:13, I received the book Designing Type written by Karen Cheng in English and published by
Yale University Press on Monday, May 1, 2006,
ISBN:9780300111507,
which I had bought on Monday, May 26, 2025 at 11:57:31 from Boekhandel
Westerkwartier for € 12.50.
This months interesting links
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