Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Phoenix BIOS (Part 2)
When I was ready to depart from TkkrLab, I noticed that the box with PCB was still there. I causually made a remark about having taken the Phoenix BIOS ICs from one of the other motherboards. Then another member of the hacker space made some remark that he would like to have them as he took the motherboard, which happens to be from a 286 PC, and already had noted that the BIOS ICs were missing. I have promised to return them to him.Monday, December 8, 2025
Link
Saturday, December 6, 2025
Link
Thursday, December 4, 2025
A free space for experimentation
I went to Rijksmuseum Twenthe to see the exhibition Enschede: A free space for experimentation. The exhibition offers an overview of a groundbreaking avant-garde that emerged in the city in the past hundred years with as highlights the periodical 'De Enschedese School' and the AKI between 1980 and 2002. 'De Enschedese School' was a periodical of that was send by mail four to six times per year for a yearly subscription fee, at first only as printed material but later also other forms of art. It was started by Frans Oosterhof. I read in one of the publications (that was folded open under glass) that Wim T. Schippers was also on of the editors. (See for some more information the page about De Doka van Hercules, a comic book losely based on the Dutch literary novel De donkers kamer van Damokles by W.F. Hermans.) However, I agree with Ernst Bergboer, who wrote (in Dutch): "There was no lie in it, but the significance of art, and especially the experimental variants that emerged in Enschede, never penetrated the city". When in 2002 the AKI merged with some other art schools, it became less experimental and more traditional academic. I am not sure whether that should be considered as an improvement.I found the following works from the exhibition noteworthy:
- Model Study, Wim ten Broek, 1951-1952.
- Night with red, Jan Cremer, 1959.
- Garden, Folkert Haanstra (sr.), 1939.
- Untitled, Ben Akkerman, 1960.
- Untitled, Ben Akkerman, 1956-1961.
- Quarrels in the family, Ans Wortel, 1962.
- Untitled, Ben Akkerman, 1953.
- Houseboat in the Twente Canal, Klaas Bernink, circa 1961-1962.
- Interior, Klaas Versteegen, 1986.
- Freedom, Ria Rettich, 1982.
- The Italina Journey from the Brenner Pass to Rome, Uwe Poth, 1946.
- Untitled, Marlies Appel, 1990.
- Style Exercises, Raymond Queneau, 1980. (book.)
- The Painting, Frans Oosterhof, 1980. (Three-colour textile print and linen.)
- Villa Naispier, Jan van de Pavert, 1986. (Book and map.)
- Four oilballs on heavy sirup, De Enschedese School, 1980. (publication.)
- Colorless book, Ernie & Bidet, 1985.
- 650 Years of Enschede, De Enschedese School, 1975. (publication.)
- Post Shanghai, Harry Brusche, 1986. (publication.)
- The Darkroom of Hercules, De Enschede School, 1981. (publication.)
- No.9, De Enschede School, 1982. (publication.)
- Terra cotta me, baby, DE8/Kewi, 1983.
- Sword of Judgement, Kees Maas, 1985.
- The racing car, Gerrit de Wilde, 1984.
- Black Disk, Jan Dietvort, 1986.
- Untitled, Marlene Dumas, 1984.
- Mauhro's Canal, Kees de Groot, 1984. (Video 08'22min.)
- Nude, Aat Veldhoen, undated.
- Half-nude, Aat Veldhoen, 1964.
- Half-nude (painter's wife), Jan Sluijters, circa 1912.
Link
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Advent of Code: Day 3
I have been thinking about the math formulation of this years Advent of Code puzzles just using sets and vectors. For puzzle of today you have to find some sub sequence of 2 and 12 (for the second part) digits, such when interpretted as a number, the value would be maximum. This could be described with:
puzzle(V in Vectors of {1, ,, ,9}, l in {1, .. , sizeof(V)})
= max { value in Nat
| exists v in subvectors(V):
(length(v) = l) and (value, v) in reverse_base_repensation(10)
}
In this the V argument is the puzzle input represented as a vector of
numbers from 1 to 9 (including) and l the required length, which is 2
for the first part and 12 for the second part. The function
reverse_base_repensation returns a set with values and vectors
representing that value in the given base where the most significant 'digit'
is at the first location of the vector. (A more logical choice would be to have
the least significant 'digit' first for when you want to define operations on
those vectors.) To make this a bijection (if I am not mistaken), the following
definition can be used:
reverse_base_repensation(n in Nat)
= { (n in Nat, v in Vectors of {0, .., n-1}
| n = sum i in {1, .. , size(v)}: v[i] * n ^ (size(v) - i)
and not v[size(v)] = 0
}
(One would still need to proof that this indeed a bijection.) A sub sequence or
sub vector is made by taking a specified number of elements from a vector and
arranging these in the same order. So, we need a vector with indices taking
from the size of the vector in increasing order. One can achieve this by
defining a sorting function for the values in a set and an order function.
sorting(S in Sets, order is Sets of Vectors of S) =
= { v is Vectors of S
| length(v) = size(S)
and (forall e in S: exact one i: v[i] == s)
and (forall i,j: i < j implies (v[i], v[j]) in order))
}
subvectors(V in Vectors)
= { v
| forall s subset {1, .. , size(V)}
exists a in sorting(s, {(a in Nat, b in Nat) | a => b }):
forall i in {1, .. ,size(v)}: v[i] = V[a[i]]
}
There are probably other and better ways to define this with mathematics and
with a more mathematical correct notation. (I prefer to use words for
mathematical symbols.) It is not tivial write a program that could execute
these kind of definitions, because it is not immediately clear which is the
correct execution method, let alone to optimize this into a low polynomial
algorithm, because this requires reasoning that goes through all the
definitions.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Phoenix BIOS
At TkkrLab there was a box with old PCBs, mostly old motherboards, but also one with 7400-series TTL ICs, donated by someone for everyone who wanted to use them. On one of PCBs, I saw two ICs with the text Phoenix Technologies Ltd, 1987, 1988. The famous Phoenix BIOS, I presume. I found a screwdriver to remove them and took them with me.Links
- Advent of Code in Nasm Assembly.
- Lara_the_dev working on Vuntra City.
Monday, December 1, 2025
Advent of Code: Day 1
I woke up early and failed to fall asleep again for the first day of Advent of Code. I solved the two puzzles without much problems. The first part, I did in one try (including compiling correctly) and for the second part, I needed two tries. I already had some idea that my first try of the second part was going to fail, but I nevertheless tried it. Then I resorted to a bit brute force approach for the second part. I also spend some time improving MarkDownC, the literate programming tool I am using.Book and lithograph
At 15:53, I bought the book The Temporal Void written by Peter F. Hamilton in English, published by Pan Books in 2009, ISBN:9780330443036, from Het Goed for € 2.99 and I bougth a lithograph by Janny Endstra for €9.99.Link
Saturday, November 29, 2025
Computer problems
Andy came to visit us as he does every two weeks on Saturdays. The Lenovo Thinkcentre Edge72 desktop computer that he uses to watch YouTube did not want to start anymore as if it did not get power anymore. I unplugged it several times and pressing the power button did not have any effect. The LEDs on the network card did light up. We found some old laptop for him to browse YouTube. I installed Linux Mint on another old laptop, an Aspire 8935G, for him to use the next time.Friday, November 28, 2025
Link
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Leiden
Conny and I took the bus to the bus station in Leiden were she studied. In the morning, we visited Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. There we first saw the exhibition Masterful Mystery - On Rembrandt's Enigmatic Contemporary. This enigmatic contemporary is known as Master I.S. because only his initials are known. He signed his paintings with his (or her) initials written as a large I with an S written over it. I found the following works noteworthy:- Self-Portrait of the Painter in his Studio, Gerrit Dou, circa 1632.
- Saint Jerome as Hermit, Jan Lievens, circa 1631.
- Old Man Besiges a Table with Books, Master I.S., circa 1640-1649.
- Young Scholar, Master I.S., 1633.
- Saint Jerome in his Study, Master I.S., 1653-1655.
- Young Scholoar Half-Nakes, Master I.S., 1638.
- An Old Woman Singing, Master I.S., circa 1638.
- Old Woman Reading, Master I.S., circa 1624-1625.
- Old Woman Reading, Gerrit Dou, circa 1631-1632.
- Old Man, Jan Lievens, circa 1625-1626.
- Old Man with a Fur Hat, Master I.S., 1633-1658.
- Head of an Old Woman, Master I.S., circa 1645-1648.
- Head of an Old Man, Jan Lievens, circa 1630.
- Portrait of an Old Woman, Master I.S., 1651.
- Young Main with a Fur Hat, David Bailly, circa 1635.
- Old Man with Fur Hat, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1630.
- Portrait of a Woman, Facing Left, Master I.S., circa 1650.
- Old Woman Reading a Letter, Master I.S., 1658.
- Two Scholars in a High Room, Master I.S., 1640.
- Old Woman in Three-Quarter Profile, Master I.S., 1640-1645.
- Baptims of the Enuch, Master I.S., 1644.
- Five prints by Rembrandt van Rijn and five by Jan Lievens.
- Old Woman, Master I.S., circa 1645.
- Man with a Growth on his Nose, Master I.S., 1645.
- Man with a Blind Eye, Master I.S., 1635-1655.
We also walked to most of the rest of the museum. I found the following works noteworthy:
- Triptych with the Last Judgement, Lucas van Leyden, circa 1526-1727.
- Preparation, Roy Villevoye, 2009. (Depicting a barefoor Asmat man.)
- Regents of the Laridanshof in Leiden, Jacob Fransz. van de Merck, 1658.
- The Presentation, Ceasar van Everdingen, 1655.
- Merry Couple, Jan Steen, circa 1660.
- The Robbed Violin Player, Jan Steen, 1670-1672.
- Strips (unnumbered, 13, 30, and 33), Marlene Dumas, 1987.
- The Astronomer, Gerrit Dou, circa 1650.
- Girl with a Lamp, Gerrit Dou, circa 1660-1670.
- Rest in the Flight into Egypt, Adriaan van Gaesbeeck, 1647.
- History Painting with Self-Portrait of the Painter, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, 1626.
- Travelers Resting, Circle of Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, circa 1929.
- Musical Company, Rembrandt Hermansz. van Rijn, 1626.
- Spectacles Seller, Rembrandt Hermansz. van Rijn, circa 1624.
- Self-Portrait, Willem van Mieris, circa 1705.
- Languorous Linering, Larissa Esvelt, 2023.
- Family Self-Portrait, Jaasir Linger, 2019/2025.
- Winti tafra, Jaasir Linger, 2023/2025.
- Ingo opo a liba, Jaasir Linger, 2025.
- Ahead, Atelier Van Lieshout, 2014.
- New Leiden Blanket, Vera van de Seyp.
- Stained-glass window from the Algemeen Handelsblad building in Amsterdam, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, 1927-1928.
- Portrait of Akkie, Tinus van Doorn, 1929.
- Plucked Roasters, Floris Verster, 1888.
- Flowers and Leaves, Floris Verster, 1940.
- Blue-Green Chinese Bowl and Red Apples, Floris Verster, 1926.
- Flowers in a Conservatory, Floris Verster, 1891.
- La fille du héros, Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff, 1875.
- View of Noordwijk, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, 1918.
- Still Life with Bottle, Dish and Onion, Hendricus Petrus Bremmer, 1946.
- Preliminary study for stained-glass Composition VIII, Theo van Doesburg, 1917-1918.
- Preliminary study for stained-glass Composition VIII, Theo van Doesburg, 1918-1919.
- Staircase holyday-resort "De Vonk", J.J.P. Oud, 1917.
- Contra-Composition VII, Theo van Doesburg, 1924.
- The Breakfast, Hendrik Valk, 1921.
- Self-Portrait, Hendrik Valk, 1926.
- Composition III, Theo van Doesburg, 1917.
- Clearing in the Woods, Jan Vijlbrief, 1895.
- The Passion of Christ, Henri van Daalhoff, circa 1895.
- Self-Portrait, Theo van Doesburg, 1907-1908.
- Abstract Self-Portrait, Theo van Doesburg, 1915.
In the afternoon, we went to Japan Museum SieboldHuis. We watched the short introduction about the travels of Philipp Franz von Siebold and how he afterwards settled in the house that no occupies the musuem. He learned also that he, unknown to the Japanese, was able to smuggle out germinative seeds of tea plants to the botanical garden Buitenzorg in Batavia, which were used to start growing tea in Indonesia. Next we watched the exhibition of the collection on the ground floor. Upstairs we saw the exhibition Anaïs López - the Turtle and the Monk. An interesting exhibition. I found the following works (all by Anaïs López except if indicated differently) noteworthy:
- Pregnant in Kyoto.
- Mountains at Dusk.
- Carp in the Kamo River.
- Crow in a Tree the Kamo River.
- Two Herons by the Kamo River.
- Tabula scalata, Kyoto:
- The Empty Stone.
- My First Encounter with the Turtle.
- Mountains surrounding the City.
- Kami.
- Reiko.
- My Encounter with Kami the Turtle.
- The Saxophonist, Niva Yuta, 2024.
- Woods in the Mountains.
- The Ancient Wood III.
- Deer in the Night.
- Kami Apparition in the Mountains.
We had dinner at the Indonesian Restaurant Sumatra House.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Beach
In the afternoon, Conny and I travelled to Oud Poelgeest, a small castle in Oegstgeest, a small town near Leiden. We are going to stay in the hotel behind the former coach house of the castle. From November 19-23, 1979, I stayed here during a highschool camp. At that time, there was no hotel yet. I vaguely remember there were wooden barracks. The Dutch author Jan Wolkers often visited the estate around the castle during his youth and his first published collection of stories starts with an autobiographic story about someone stealing two sphinx statues from the castle. One of the statues was returned in 2013, the other, according to the story was hidden somewhere at the estate, has been lost till now. After we checked in, we travelled to Katwijk aan de Zee to visit the beach on the North, Were we walked along the sea hoping to see the sunset. We did not see the sunset due to clouds at the horizon, but did take some pictures. We also collected some shells. The restaurant we had planned to have dinner at was closed. We travelled to the city and parked under the dunes at the sea side and had dinner at the beach pavilion Het Centrum.Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Link
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Some wet snow
This afternoon, there was some wet snow. When we noticed the wet snow, I looked outside and saw some snow 'flakes' on the ground, so it is possible that the snow started with some large flakes that stayed a bit on the ground.Saturday, November 22, 2025
Wrong solution for alignment problem
It looks like I have chosen the wrong solution for the data structure alignment problem that I mentioned last Monday and talked about last Thursday for the C compiler I am developing as a replacement for the MES-compiler used in Live-bootstrap. I found that the Sym struct is fed into a hash calculating algorithm that assumes that the fields are packed. So, it seems I cannot get around implementing 'packed' structures. There are some design decisions to take. Am I going to extend the intermediate language with commands for retrieval and storage of two byte values? Am I going to do the implement the packing for all structures? What about the alignment of pointers, this because the Stack_C intepreter assumes that pointers are aligned on four bytes. I could also decided to do the packing for structs that do not contain pointers, because there is a problem with structs used inside structs for that matter.Thursday, November 20, 2025
Data structure size
This is a continuation of 'Data structure alignment' that I wrote last Monday. I have implemented the idea that when fwrite (or fread) is called on a struct, it is rewritten in separete calls for all its members. It now generates object files of the correct size. But when I compared the file with what the program compiled with GCC generates, it still contained difference. I quickly noticed one cause, the use of the sizeof operator. The value returned by this function depends on the type of alignment that is used. This requires some more, Tiny C Compiler specific hacking, because when it is used to allocate or copy memory inside the program the size should be used that matches the alignment used by my compiler, which gives a minimum of four bytes to all members, but when it is used to establish the size when GCC is used, it should return the size when a smaller alignment is used. I have to perform some analyses on all uses of sizeof and figure out a method to differciate between the two kind of uses.Links
Monday, November 17, 2025
Data structure alignment
I encountered a major stumbling block in compiling the Tiny C Compiler (TCC) with C compiler I am developing as a replacement for the MES-compiler used in Live-bootstrap, In the past weeks, I made steady progress in fixing bugs and implementing some missing functionality. With respect to data structure alignment my compiler, for simplicity reasons, make use of a 4-byte alignment for all members of a struct. However, TCC to create an ELF file, uses the function fwrite to write a struct to the file that makes use of the 'typical' alignment rules. This is not good practice, because the alignment rules and also the endianness are not defined by the C standard. If I want to implement the 'typical' alignment rules in my C compiler it will complicate the implementation a lot. Fixing the TCC sources is also not desirable because that means that the trusted release cannot be used. The hack that I am thinking about is to recognize calls to fwrite with a structure and generate code to write all the members of the struct with the number of bytes that matches the 'typical' alignment rules. I will also have to do that for fread statements that read data into a C struct.Sunday, November 16, 2025
Designing programming languages
Yesterday, I came across the page Language Design, which talks about all the aspects of it, and I realized that I have been designing languages as long as I learnt my first programming languages, which were Algol 60 and FORTRAN. List of language design activities:- Around 1980: Design of a compiler-compiler and a small language in LISP.
- Around 1982: Implemented a small language and compiler on the Atari 800 XL.
- Around 1982: Designed the language Ecom, but never got so far as to implement it.
- In my computer science master thesis, I used my own formalism (based on sets) to define the semantics. I also used it, for example, for formalizing Havanna and PARR specification.
- CoCoA language developed during the TransCoop project. See: An Introduction to CoCoA, Integrating Organisational and Transactional Aspects of Cooperative Activities, and source for CoCoA parser and compiler.
- A specification language.
- BFF: A grammar for Binary File Formats.
- BiZZdesign scripting language, which was further developed by others.
- Template script for an IDL compiler for Cyclone DDS, which was never used. See xtypes_ts branch on GitHub. For an attempt to make it into a stand-alone back-end, see Templ_script GitHub repository.
- Data Language: A data oriented language.
- Stack_C: An intermediate language for a C compiler. See MES-replacement GitHub repository for Stack_C to x86 compiler and Stack_C interpreter.
Link
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Duo Expo
I went to artist collective B93 to attend the opening of the new exhibitions In Between Silence with painting by Saheed Wahab and Self Defense by Karolina Żyniewicz, in which she continues her long-term project on poisonous plants, where she makes embroideries depicting of poisiones plants with thread soaked with a sap of that plant. She was doing that during the opening while sitting cross-legged against a wall. She also had some note books with samples of poisonous plants with text describing the effects.Link
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
BlinkyTile dodecahedron (Part 2)
This afternoon, I spend some time to put the BlinkyTile dodecahedron together with some masking tape. This evening, at TkkrLab, I spend about three quarters of an hour to solder the tiles that I had put together with tape. I used a lot of solder with putting it together. I did a quick check for short circuits and then it worked the first time I plugged it in. I have not looked into reprogramming it.Sunday, November 9, 2025
Stable coalitions
Yesterday evening, there was some mentioning about stable coalitions. In the Netherlands no party is large enough to form a government, which means parties have to form coalitions such that they have a majority in the House of Representatives. It means that they have to have at least 76 seats of the 150 to make that their proposals and motions will pass. Furthermore, parties should agree with each other on many subjects. Whether parties agree with each other can be estimated based on how often the agreed on how the voted on motions that were submitted in the past years (see table, I presented on October 7). In a possible coalition, the difference between the most right and most left party should not be too large. So, the question one could ask is whether there is a party in the coalition (probably one of the parties in the middle of the coalition) such that the lowest number of agreement with the other parties is the best. I wrote a program to calculate these numbers. The sorted output of the program is included as a comment in the source code of the program.The by many prefered coalition honouring the election results is a coalition with People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) with 22 seats, Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) with 18 seats, Democrats 66 (D66) with 26 seats, and GroenLinks-PvdA with 20 seats. This is a broad coalition with 86 seats and an average agreement score (taking into accound the number of seats per party) of 77.29 and when the program of the CDA is taken, a minimum agreement of 65% with GroenLinks-PvdA. However, the VVD has stated before the elections that they do not want to be in a coalition together with GroenLinks-PvdA. Dilan Yeşilgöz, the leader of VVD, says that the GroenLinks-PvdA is to far to the left, while in the past the VVD has been in coalitions with the Labour Party (PvdA). They prefer a coalition with JA21 instead, which has only a slighter higher average agreement score of 77.35% and when again the program of the CDA is taken, a minimum agreement of 67% with JA21. D66, who won the election, are not favour of a coalition with JA21, which is a far-right party that in their program have many plans that go against the constitution and/or international treaties, which are considered anti-democratic. There is another right-wing coalition where JA21 is replaced by Farmer-Citizen Moverment (BBB), Reformed Political Party (SGP), and Christian Union (CU). This coalition has an average agreement score of 78.26% and when the program of CDA is taken all parties agree at least for 72% (with BBB). Although this coalition is more 'stable', I am not sure D66 is very possitive about it, because the strongly differ on ethical issues (abortion and euthanasia, for example) with the two small Christian parties SGP and CU. The most 'stable' coalition is a left-wing coalition with Christian Democratic Appeal, Christian Union, Democrats 66, GroenLinks-PvdA, Socialist Party (SP), Denk, and Party for the Animals (PvdD), which has an average agreement score of 81.44% and when the program of D66 is taken the minimum agreement of 73% with CDA. But I wonder whether the CDA want to be in a coalition with the small (far) left parties, who have never been in a government and whether those small left parties want to be in the government, being afraid that they will lose even more votes.
Saturday, November 8, 2025
Flowers
This afternoon, Conny and I went on a bit longer walk that usual. We walked along the Usselerrietweg and turned to the left into the Oude Boekelerdijk (heading the South). The photo below shows the flowers in the field along Oude Boekelerdijk. (Farmers are encouraged to sow flower along the edges of their fields.)
Friday, November 7, 2025
Official election result
Today, the official election results for the Dutch general election were announced by the Electoral Council. The final results with respect to the distribution of the seats, did not deviate from the distribution given on October 30. I downloaded the official report from the download page. From page 187 to page 230 of the PDF file it countains all the complaints that have been reported by people and how the councel dealt with them. From page 231 to 253 it reports all the recounts that have been commissioned by the electoral council and the corrections that were made based on the results. On page 254 it reports that (translated from Dutch): 'The Electoral Council has received more than 100 requests for a full recount of the votes, but without any justification or factual basis. The Electoral Council acknowledges these requests." That high number of baseless request and the higher number of complains, 23 pages in 2023 against 43 now, resulting in more recounts, 8 pages in 2023 against 22 now, must because of the many rumours of fraud going round on social media in particular X including the questions Geert Wilders raised quoting some wild rumours when it became clear that his party lost with a small margin from Democrats 66. Being a member of the House of Representatives since 1998, he should be well aware about the procedures for counting ballots and how the Electoral Council operates and how people should complain in case they think they have observed an irregularity. I am affraid that he is doing this and that it should be regarded as an attack on the foundation of our democracy.Links
Thursday, November 6, 2025
Exhibitions
Again, it was a warm day for the time of the year, but not as warm as yesterday. The temperature reached 16.1° Celsius at Twenthe Airport. In one of the exhibitions rooms of University of Twente, I saw the exhibition Dissonance with works by novice and professional photographers, a photo exhibition in collaboration with COWMAG. I found the following works noteworthy:- 15: Untitled by Læila Chaoui
- 13: Mapping on Grounds of Unvertainty by Annalisa Volcan
- 6: HOLLY GLEN - My family and the Elephant by Sietse Henselmans
- 4: Disrooted by Lana Amira
- 1: Untitled by Julia Bootsgezel
- 2: Sidwalk by Aalt van de Glind
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
18.4° Celsius
The temperature at Twenthe Airport has gone up to 18.4° Celsius, which breaks the previous record of 17.3°C on this date in 1963. According to the prediction, the temperature would only reach 15.8°C. When Conny and I went walking, we left without coat but with sweaters. About halfway, we took of our sweaters off. I spend some time in the garden, pruning our magnolia.Tuesday, November 4, 2025
BlinkyTile dodecahedron
This evening, at TkkrLab, I made an attempt to create a BlinkyTile dodecahedron, that I bought on August 11. It proved harder than I thought. I only managed to solder six of them together. Maybe I should try to use a different type of tape at home.Sunday, November 2, 2025
Profile picture
This afternoon, Conny took some pictures of me in our back garden. Below, there is one of them after a bit of trimming.
Saturday, November 1, 2025
64 years
I was born on Wednesday, November 1, 1961 at 9:45 in the morning (CET). That means that today, I will be 64 years according to the calendar and 23376 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. Yesterday, around 21:45:12 in the afternoon, it was 64 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, today at 19:31:24 it will be 64 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 0:33:06 it will be 64 average anomalistic years since I was born.Harvest: big red cabbage
This morning, as usual, we went to pick up the harvest from Herenboeren Usseler Es. The harvest season is winding down, but there's still plenty in the fields and/or in storage. What you get depends on your subscription (number of mouths) and your own choices. I came home today with a red cabbage weighing 4 kilo. We will probably make sauerkraut with it again, since it is impossible to eat it all at once. I also picked up: small green bell pepper, two tomatoes that are still green, two leeks, small celeriac (without leaves), sweet potatoes, beets, salad, and an apple (from the giveaway table, from Limburg, probably traded with another Herenboeren there).Thursday, October 30, 2025
Election results
Yesterday evening until half past one this night, I again helped counting ballots for the 2025 Dutch general election. According to the exit polls, the social liberal and progressive party Democrats 66 (D66) got 27 seats from the 150 in the Dutch House of Representatives and thus becoming the largest party, while the previous largest party, Party for Freedom (PVV), only got 25 seats. However, when the numbers came in, the difference between D66 and the PVV became smaller and at some points the PVV was even ahead of D66. Now at 99.7% of the votes being counted, D66 is about 15,155 votes ahead of the PVV. In the municipality of Venray the verification of the counting has been delayed due to a fire. And there are also still mail votes that can be included. The official result will be announced on November 7 by the Electoral Council. It is expected that D66 will remain the largest party. It is even possible that they will get an extra seat due to the algorithm to distribute the residual seats. Now the residual seat goes to the Socialist Party (SP) but if the D66 gets more votes relative to the SP that seat will go to D66. If this happens, Geert Wilders, the leader of the PVV, will not be very happy, because he stated today that there was no party with more seats than his party. Some people have said that the loss of the PVV was a blow to the far right parties in the Netherlands, but that is actually not true, because the two other far right parties, the Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21 both got more votes and their total number of seats increased with one. After this election, the parties need to form a coalition to become the government. Any coalition needs to include at least four parties, but some parties have already expressed that they exclude some other parties or are not in favour to work together. Parties also fear that if they form a coalition with some other parties that their voters will turn to another party in an upcoming election.Some table with numbers of seats. The first four rows are about forcasts. The fifth column is a combined forcast based on the first three forcasts. The sixth column is the exit poll. The seventh column is number of seats based on the count of today where 99.7% of the ballots have been counted. It shows that the forcasts are not very reliable even if they specify a 95% range of lower and upper number of seats.
Peil ips 1v Isa wijzer Exit 30
-------- --- -- --- ------ --- --
FvD 7 5- 9 6 6 4 4- 6 6 7
PVV 23 20-26 23 29 30 24-28 25 26
JA21 9 9- 7 11 8 8 9-12 9 9
BBB 4 3- 5 5 3 2 3- 5 4 4
VVD 22 20-26 17 16 18 15-19 23 22
SGP 3 2- 3 3 3 4 2- 4 3 3
CDA 20 16-22 19 19 20 18-22 19 18
CU 2 2- 3 3 3 3 2- 4 2 3
D66 22 20-26 23 24 22 21-25 27 26
Volt 2 2- 4 2 2 2 1- 3 1 1
G/P 23 20-26 23 25 24 22-26 20 20
SP 4 3- 5 4 5 3 3- 5 3 3
DENK 4 3- 6 3 3 4 2- 4 3 3
PvdD 3 2- 5 4 2 5 2- 4 3 3
50Plus 2 1- 3 3 2 0 1- 3 2 2
NSC 0 0- 1 1 0 1 0- 1 0 0
BVNL 0 0- 1 0 0 0 0- 0 0 0
Link
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Voting in museum
I visited the Rijksmuseum Twenthe to vote in the voting station that was in the goblin hall. After having voted, you were allowed to visit the museum for free. At the front desk, they just let everyone not even paying notice. I walked around the museum and found the following works noteworthy all of which I have already seen before, some of them only casually:- Portrait, Isaac Israëls, undated.
- Girl in White Kimono, George Hendrik Breitner, circa 1895.
- Falaises près de Pourville, 1882, Claud Monet.
- Autumnal view of Louveciennes, Alfred Sisley, 1872.
- Winter Landscape (Farm with Woman and Dog in the Snow), Anton Mauve, undated.
- A Flock of Sheep with a Shepherd, Willem Steelink jr., first half 19th century.
- Along the Canal, Jacob Maris, undated.
- journal la gomera, 1996-1997, herman & susanne de vries, 1997.
- earth museum vol 1. la gomera, herman de vries, 1980.
- untitled [collected playa de la caleta, la gomera], 1982.
- holy days [with marion reißner], 2008.
- witches' monuments 2004-2013, herman de vries, 2013. Five frames with the following poisonous plants that were believed to allow witches to fly: Ergot, valerian, henbare, belladona, and monkshood.
- belladonna (digitized 16mm film), herman de vries, 1983.
- The ITBON relief (v67-36a), 1967.
- v70-07 random objectivation, 1970.
- The coven - tree love, melanie bonajo, 2019.
- The coven - trustingingeling, melanie bonajo, 2019.
- The coven - cuddle coven, melanie bonajo, 2019.
- Watershed (Tough Love), Mark IJzerman, 2025.
- Night Soil - Fake Paradise (Trailer), melanie bonajo, 2014.
- Eye of Silence, Charles Stankieveck, 2023.
- Nightfall Hymn, Eady van Acker.
