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Diary, February 1995

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  26  27  28

Monday, February 20, 1995

I just watched out of the window and noticed that there are already some leaves appearing on the trees outside. The weather has been mild for the time of the year. The winters are not anymore as they used to be in the past.

I only see the tops of the trees, because there is a building in front of them. I had thought of taking a picture of the leaveless trees. I realize I have to do it soon.

(follow-up)

Tuesday, February 21, 1995

I just discovered that someone else got the same idea as me, to write a personal diary on the InterNet. This is what I found one the comp.infosystems.www.announce newsgroup: Only after quite a number of tries, I could read her page. (Our own server also has problems lately. So I should not complain.) Looking at her pages, I think I will keep mine short, that means the text of one day on one page. That will be many pages, but easier to read. (Remark: Later, I rearranged the pages in the current format)
I don't like all these home pages with a lot of pictures that you need in order to understand the page.

I don't feel so well, so I might not be in tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 22, 1995

I did not sleep so nice last night, but I felt good enough this morning to go to work. I brought a bottle of "Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa" (a herbal anti-cough syrup made in Hong Kong, containing 15 main natural herbs) with me. Good stuff!

(follow-up)

Lets first have a list of new links I found in the last days:

And by doing this, I once again increase the number of WWW pages that only contain references to other pages. What percentage of WWW pages do not contain any useful information, except references to other pages. Everybody who creates a home page, fills it with references to other pages, or makes a page with references. If this goes on like this, the World Wide Web will be come a World Wide Collection of Shared Hotlists (or a WWM)!

Today I had a second look at Carolyn's Diary. It made me think about the level of self-disclosure and the style that I should use for my own InterNet diary. (BTW, If you are in Europe, you should query her pages in the morning hours, then the response is nice. A trivial remark, BTW)

Thursday, February 23, 1995

My health is getting better. Tonight we have a dinner with our DOLLs sub working group, which I would like to join. It is to celebrate that the head of DOLLS has been working at the University of Twente for 10 years. I think that the sub working group (or whatever you would like to call it) was (co-)founded by him.

New Links

I only have collected two, since yesterday: I also found a page (maintained by the IHEP institute in Beijing) with information about Beijing. I would like to make some WWW pages that give an account of our honeymoon trip to Hong Kong and P. R. of China. We also stayed in Beijing for about 10 days, so that is why.

Friday, February 24, 1995

The dinner yesterday evening was good. We had a good time together. The menu card said: I joined a table with: Jan, Herman, Hennie, Annita, and Susan. We recalled memories of how some of us wrote there first programs on punch cards and/or punch tapes.
Anita and Jan recalled how one night in September last year the PRISMA-machine (of the PRISMA project) heated the lab up to sauna levels and switched itself off after sounding an alarm that send all the others out of the room, because is became overheated. (It uses 1600 Watt in full operations. Imagine the heat production of that.)

Annabel

When I came home yesterday night, Annabel, my daughter, reacted enthusiastic when she saw me. She must have missed me. Li-Xia, my wife, told me that she can now sit by herself on the bed, but not more than a minute. When she wanted to show it, Annabel appeared to be too tired. Yesterday she also had boiled egg-yellow with milk for the first time, and she liked it.

Li-Xia's memories

This morning, when I told my wife about last night, she recalled how she worked on the first micro-computer system, a CROMEMCO CS3A (Z-80 Computer System with ZPU, 64K bytes RAM, Two 1.2Mbyte 8" floppy disks, and 21 card slots) with a 8PIO (8-Port Parallel Interface card), that was ever used in the Xinjiang province of the P.R. of China, after she got the B.Sc. in mathematics. At the university she only had worked with punch tapes, so she was very exited to work with a computer where you could just type on the screen.
She had to go to Beijing for a 3 months course to learn how to use this computer. There in Beijing she met six of her classmates from the university in Urumqi (4000 km away from home) and had a very happy time with her friends and staying in Beijing. Many pictures were made at that time.
After two years the project she worked on, was awarded by the Xinjiang government, and she appeared on television, with the computer and the analytical instruments attached to it. The program she wrote used fuzzy-set methods for determing metal concentrations of samples based on spectrography. Her program had to control a scanning device that scanned photos taken from the light emitting from electrical sparks on the surface of the material. The trick was to scan only certain parts and to calculate the concentrations based on the scanned data.

Sunday, February 26, 1995

I write this entry on my DX2 PC at home on which I have partitions for DOS/Windows and Linux. I use Linux more than DOS/Windows. Probably because I like to write programs and because it is nice to have a system at home that is compatible with the one I have at work.

While I write this I am listing to the sound track of the movie Shadowlands, an epic romance based on the love affair between the celebrated British author C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and the American poet Joy Gresham (Debra Winger). (A quote from the cover.)
Li-Xia and I went to see the movie last summer, and we both enjoyed it very much. I am also a fan of C.S. Lewis and have read quite a number of his books.

Going to church

This morning we went to church, as we do every Sunday. It is a small church were everybody knows each other, except for the new people that visit us. It is a small church, but very lively and with many young people. The oldest couple we have are in their eighties, but still very young in their thinking. Quite a number of the members have a M.Sc. degree, yet we believe the Bible to be the Authorative Word of God, which should be taken literally except when stated otherwise.

This mornings preaching was about Matthew 5:28, where Jesus says: `but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.' (NASB, italics mine). Lust is nothing else then selfish greed and as such has nothing to do with true love. Jesus wants to make clear here that what is in the heart of a person is as important as his acts.

I have to stop now. It is already late. Tomorrow we have to get up early. They are going to rebuild our kitchen, starting at 8 O'clock.

Tuesday, February 28, 1995

Yesterday I felt a little depressed. So I did not write anything.
Hopefully, today will be better.

While eating my lunch

Sometimes I am surprised how easily I can get depressed or upset about small thing in my life (like the new water heater we got).

While biking to work this morning, I thought about my place in society (in the world) as a `scientist'. What does my work contribute to the real problems in the world? I mean the starving children, the prosecution of honest people, the selfishness of people, and so on.

We spend so much money on arms, but also on fundamental research. If I see the amounts of money spend on elementary particles research, I wonder: what's the use of this knowledge? And of course there are still people that can come up with sound reasons for doing it, otherwise such projects would not have been initiated.
I hope you get my point.

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