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I write, therefore I am

With this variation on a famous statement by the philosopher Descartes, I would like to express that the act of writing about what happens in my life is important to me.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Border poles near Coevorden (part 2)

Conny continued our search for border poles near Coevorden. We looked at three different locations. Some poles where hard to find due to a lot of over grown. The poles we found are:
  • At 11:36, two poles 132-I.
  • At 12:06, pole 138-I.
  • At 12:17, pole 138.
  • At 12:50, two poles 147-II.
  • At 13:09, only one of two poles 148.
  • At 13:23, pole 148-I.
  • At 13:34, two poles 149.
  • At 13:40, pole 150-I.
  • At 13:54, pole 151.
  • At 13:56, pole 151-I.
  • At 13:57, pole 151-II.
  • At 14:10, pole 151-III.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Second wave

It looks like the second wave of COVID-19 infections has arrived in the Netherlands (as well). The number of infection has steady risen in the past weeks. It is only last week that also the number of hospitalizations has gone up. In the past week they have doubled. It is likely that this will continue in the coming weeks. Last Friday some addition regional measurements have been announced. This evening, I watched last Sundays episode of Zondag met Lubach. It explained how the problems with the number of test being available in the Netherlands is related to the choice of the government to have the tests being done by the fifty regional labs, which are tied to hospitals, and not using commercial testing capacity until recently. Hugo de Jonge, the current minister of Health, Welfare and Sport has stated that this was also to sustain the regional labs until after the COVID-19 crisis. The program also mentioned that one of the member of the Outbreak Management Team is the chairman of the Dutch Association for Medical Microbiology, which represents the microbiologist working at the regional labs.

Sunday, September 20, 2020

PARR specification

In the past weeks, I have been thinking about the steps with which a formal specification of the PARR patterns could be transformed into the PARR generator, which I wrote last month. In a way it is also similar to proving the correctness of the program. I have come up with some kind of specification of the collection of all PARR patterns using a made up specification languages where types are defined as sets. There are three types of 'complex' values: list (denoted with square brackets), sets (denoted with curly brackets) and maps (denoted with curly brackets and a colon separating key and value). Sets stands for all enumeratable sets and Nat stands for a natural numbers (including zero). 

Graphs = { { "V" : V, "E" : E }
         | V in Sets and
           E subset { { v1, v2 }
                    | v1 in V and v2 in V and v1 != v2 } }

subgraph(G1 in Graphs, G2 in Graphs)
  = G1."V" subset G2."V" and G1."E" subset G2."E"

FullPARRgraph = { "V" : V, "E" : E }
    where { "V" : V, "E" : E } in Graphs
      and V = { [x, y]
              | x in Nat and y in Nat and
                0 <= x and x < 4 and 0 <= y and y < 5 }
      and E = { { [x1,y1], [x2,y2] }
              | x1+1 = x2 and y1 = y2 or
                x1 = x2 and y1+1 = y2 or
                x1+1 = x2 and y1+1 = y2 or
                x1 = x2+1 and y1+1 = y2 }

PARR(nrp in Nat, nrl in Nat)
  = { graph
    | subgraph(graph, FullPARRgraph) and
      size(graph."V") = nrp and size(graph."E") = nrl }

This is not really an executable specification, yet it contains everything to calculate the PARR function.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Link

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

32.1° Celcius

The temperature at Twenthe Airport went up to 32.1° Celsius, which breaks the previous record of 29.3° for the temperature on this date in 2016.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Border poles near Coevorden

Conny recently bought the book Op zoek naar grenspalen (which translates as Searching for border poles) by Herman Posthumus, which give walking routes along border poles along the border with German and the provinces of Drenth and Groningen. Today, we decided to give the first route a try. We parked the car near the pumping station called De Mars south of Coevorden and close to the border between the provinces of Overijssel and Drenth and started walking along the canal. We first walked on the north side of the canal before I consulted the book and realized we should be walking on the south side of the canal. We had a hard time finding many of the poles that were mentioned in the book because there was a lot over overgrown. The poles we found are:
  • At 11:29, pole 133, which is at tbe border of the provinces of Overijssel and Drenth as well.
  • At 11:32, pole 133-I.
  • At 12:00, pole 134-I.
  • At 12:23, pole 135.
  • At 12:49, pole 137, which we unearthed after having it located with the help of some pocket knifes after having estimated it location using a picture from the book. This pole has sunk into the ground completely. We even did not completely unearth the top, but only the area around the number tag attached to the top.
  • At 12:52, pole 137-I.
  • At 13:10, on the way back, pole 134-II.
Next we drove a little further along the border and parked the car on the Europark Allee. The border makes bluges in both directions, following a ditch, in a kind of S-shape. There was a farmer who had land on both sides of the border along the ditch. Now there is some dispute about on which side of the ditch the border lies. Because governments on both sides of the border, wanted to create an in industrial area, now called Europark, he was expropriated. (The ditch is no longer visible and the main offices of Intergas have been build in the area.) He claims that he still owns the area of the ditch, because it was not bought by government parties on both sides of the border. And because there is also a dispute about the exact location on the border, he now has declared it an independ country called: "Vrijstaat Beukeveld". More information, in Dutch, can be found on the site www.eurostaete.eu.

The poles we found there are:

  • At 13:47, the former pole 143. We searched for the official pole 143, which according to the book should have been 20 meters futher away, but we did not locate it, fearing that it is now in the middle of the pond near the Intergas offices.
  • At 13:58, pole 142, one of two poles where the border is in the middle of the poles.
  • At 14:03, pole 141.
  • At 14:17, pole 140.
  • At 14:28, pole 142, the other of the pair.
  • At 14:31, pole 144 and metal circle on the bike path with the text: "grenz punkt" (German for border point).
  • At 14:46, pole 145-II.
  • At 14:49, pole 145-III.
  • At 14:50, pole 146.
  • At 14:51, pole 147, which no longer stands at the original point, which lies on the road.

Some links (in Dutch) with information about poles along the route that we took:

After this, we also walked around the city center of Coevorden, which used to be a fortified town.

Friday, September 11, 2020

GOGBOT

At noon, I went to the GOGBOT exhibition, which this year is only held at a few locations. Due to COVID, the exhibition inside requires you to buy a ticket for a certain time slot. When I entered the exhibition some installations were not running yet. I found the following installations interesting:

Around 14:00, I went to TETEM art space to see the exhibition Reflecties (Dutch for reflections). If I am not mistaken, this is the first time that they open again for an exhibition. There were a lot of students entering before me and I had to wait some time to see the exhibition. At the start of the exhibition, I was offered a tablet, but I refused it, only to discover that it was required for each part of the exhibition. I was a little dissapointed as it felt a little like a physical website, more about a philosophical discussion than about art.

Link

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Dune 2020 trailer

Yesterday evening, shortly after six, I watched the trailer for the Dune (2020) film. When I saw it I was not sure whether this would be a good film adaptation. Even one of the first words in the trailer doesn't match the book, because Chani calls Paul Usul in his dream. And I also can't remember that the book speaks of a crusade (Paul in the trailer says: "There is a crusade coming"), but of a jihad, a holy war. This morning, I watched the Dune featurette. Now that I've seen this, I think it might be a good movie. I doubt whether all layers in the book will be addressed. Maybe some will only be recognized by those who have read the book. It is only after I reread the book last year, that I understood that it is (also) about a profound tragedy of someone who without realizing himself degenerates into someone he never wanted to become. Let's hope the film will be a great success, because it only covers the first half (more two thirds) of the book, and it would be nice if the second half and the following books are also made into films with the same cast.

Link

Wensday, September 9, 2020

Link

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Vitamin D

There is more and more evidence that vitamin D has a positive effect on how someone responds to a COVID-19 infection. A recent double-blind experiment showed that vitamin D is even a good treatment option for people who have been administered to a hospital: Effect of Calcifediol Treatment and best Available Therapy versus best Available Therapy on Intensive Care Unit Admission and Mortality Among Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: A Pilot Randomized Clinical study. In the past weeks the number of registered infections has been increasing in the Netherlands, but so far this has not led to a strong increase of people administered to a hospital and the number of casualties. Only about 3% of the people who are being tested, test positive on COVID-19. Among the people who test negative, there also some people who have no symptoms, but have themselves tested because they came from a high-risk area or have come into close contact with someone who was infected. I have heard of several people who were ill, even with a few days of high fever. There seems to be some kind of other virus going round. You would expect that there are less infection now that people practice social distancing (albeit to a lower degree than at the start of the outbreak). One reason why there are not many people in hospital, is because it seems that mostly younger people test positive. Maybe that older people excersize more social distancing. Another reason could be that many people have higher vitamin D levels so shortly after the summer. So far, I have not heard any statements in the media about administering vitamin D supplements for people who are at risk to develop severe complications due to COVID-19.

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Link

Monday, August 31, 2020

Link

Sunday, August 30, 2020

PARR generator

I have implemented an algorithm using JavaScript to generate a random PARR configuration, which consists of a number of dots on a four by five grid connected with a number of lines. The number of dots and lines can be specified. For pratical reasons the number of dots is limited to a maximum eleven. I took care that every possible configuration has the same change of being shown. This algorithm generates all possible configurations without any restrictions, which means with crossing diagonals and not all dots connected.

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

Dots: Lines:

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Book

At 14:12, I bought the book AKI eindexamen catalogus 2001: wat is de filosofie achter je werk? written by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Nelleke Zandwijk, Sipke Huisman, and Maarten Binnendijk in Dutch and English and published by AKI in 2001, ISBN:9789075522181, from Kringloop Enschede for € 1.00.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Zomergasten

Zomergasten ("Summer Residents") is a program on Dutch television which takes up an entire Sunday evening, lasting typically three hours, in which a notable guest is being interviewed interspersed with (usually ten) cinema or television footage selected by the guest. Earlier this summer, Conny asked what would be my ten selections for fragments that I would use if I would have been asked to appear in the program. Here is my list of ten (actually eleven) fragments:

  1. Final dialog between Spock and Kirk of The Galileo Seven.
  2. Fragment from Dune: Crisis and observation.
  3. Fragment from The Imitation Game (Turing) Alan Turing and detective Robert conversation - The Imitation Game
  4. Does John Conway hate his Game of Life?
  5. Life, Death and the Monster (John Conway) - Numberphile (About the Monster Group)
  6. Hollandse Meesters: Peter Struycken
  7. Sean Carroll - "From Particles to People"
  8. Proof: "I wrote it" scene
  9. Oona...
  10. Esmerine "Spiegel im Spiegel" (Arvo Pärt) - - For Lhasa's Birthday

The guest can also select a movie, which will be broadcast after the program. My choice would be the movie Proof.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Link

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Museum MORE

Peter Struycken invited Conny and I for a visit to Museum MORE. I had never heard of this museum before. There were three exhibitions. The first exhibition was a selection of works from the collection of the museum. I found the followings works notable:
  • Barbara, Erwin Olaf, 2007
  • Victoria, Erwin Olaf, 2007
  • Cubicles, Arnout Killian, 2011
  • Truth or Dare, Lotta de Beus, 2008
  • Between Us, Lotta de Beus, 2007
  • Vessel, Lara de Moor, 2015
  • De Zeppelin, Carel Willink, 1933
  • Le mur blanc avec port, Beaumont, Raoul Hynches, 1957
  • Het huis van Cervantes in Toledo, Wim Schuhmacher, 1934
  • Stadsplein, Carel Willink, 1958
  • Remiseterrein, Frans Stuurman, 2007
  • Nederlandse haven, Jan Ouwersloot, Undated
  • Betonningsvaartuig, Herman Berserik, 1988
  • Bunker, Johan Marinus de Vries, circa 1946
  • Beemster, bloeiende boom, Charley Toorop, 1943
  • Untitled, Carla Klein, 2008
  • Mauve's Muse, Tessa Verder, 2002
  • Straatwerker, Walter Nobbe, 1979-1980
  • Oorlogsruïne Rossinilaan, Carel Willink, 1946
  • Untitled, Har Sanders, 1971
  • Stilleven met flesjes, Edgar Fernhout, 1949
  • Hoed, Barend Blankert, 2006
  • Prop Table (after El Gerco), Lara de Moor, 2018
  • Het laatste ezelschilderij, Rien Draijer, 1968
  • De Haas, Raoul Hynches, 1946
  • Dode meeuw op het strand, Wim Schuhmacher, 1936
  • Het satijnen lint, Raoul Hyches, 1944
  • Stilleven (met viool), Dick Ket, 1932
  • Zelfportret, Wim Schuhmacher, 1942
  • Staand naakt bij kachel, Wim Schuhmacher, 1926
  • White box painting nrs 334, 339, 349, 392, Christiaan Kuitwaard, 2018-2019
  • Stilleven met kaas en eieren, Henk Helmantel, 1987
  • Hoer met cyclamen II, Herman Gordijn, 1985-1988
  • Petri Leijdekkers, Annemarie Busschers, 2008
  • 'Poet Laureate' Driek van Wissen, Annemarie Busschers, 2006
  • Zonder titel, Lidwien van de Ven, 1989
  • Zelf portret, Annemarie Busschers, 2008
  • Landschap III, Levi van Veluw, 2008
  • Zonder titel, Katinka Lumpe, 2007
  • Nine self-portrets, Philip Akkerman, 1983-2003
  • Zelfportret met bontkraag, Charley Toorop, 1940
  • Zelfportret in spiegel, Johan Mekkink, 1940
  • Beheaded mannequin, Arout Killian, 2004
  • Staand meisje, Pieter Pander, 2003
  • Study in Green #2, Ruud van Empel, 2003
  • M.T. met pistool, Thom Puckey, 2008
  • Woman with white Turban, Mary Waters, 2008
  • Een ontmoeting, Koosje van Keulen, 2004
  • Dubbelnaakt, Wim Schuhmacher, 1937
  • De zilveren bruiloft, Carel Willink, 1924

Next we saw the exhibition of Jan Mankes. I found the following works notable:

  • Zelfportret, 1910
  • Zelfportret, 1908
  • Anne Mankes-Zernike, 1918
  • Ditte van de Vies, 1917
  • Bouwland, 1917
  • Gemberpot met dopheide, 1916
  • Avondlandschap te Eerbeek, 1917
  • Duingezicht met stoomtram, 1915
  • Bomenrij, 1915
  • Avondschemering (woudsterweg), 1914

Finally, we saw the exhibition Jan Beutener | After All. I found the following works notable:

  • Over de rand | Over the Edge, 2005
  • His, 2012
  • Schutting | Fence, 1974
  • In Between, 1986
  • Tussen de lijnen | In between the lines, 2004
  • Daar | Overthere, 2007
  • In Beeld | In the Picture, 2015
  • His 1,2, & 3, 2014
  • Windscherm | Windbreak, 1976
  • What next, 2017
  • Iets | Something, 2006
  • Liggend naakt | Reclining Nude, 2010-2011
  • Heer van achteren | Gentleman seen from the Rear, 1972
  • Schilderij | Painting, 1980
  • Delen van een wand | Part of a wall, circa 1978
  • The Room, 2015
  • Bed, 1978
  • Twilight, 1975
  • Komend van rechts | Coming from the Right, 1995-1996
  • On the Wall, 2016
  • Muur | Wall, 1973
  • Binneskamers | In Private, 1985
  • De Buren | The Neighbours, 2012
  • Wet, 2008
  • Drie cipressen | Three Cypresses, 1987
  • Buiten gebruil | Out of Service, 1982
  • Boven de horizon | Above the Horizon, 2004

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Links

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Anet A6 Prusa i3

This evening, I got an Anet A6 Prusa i3 3D printer from a member of TkkrLab. I want to see if I can get it running with some slicer software and also think about writing programs that generate G-code for it. I found the specification of the Prusa-specific G-codes.

Monday, August 17, 2020

Heat wave

The heatwave (according to the definition used in the Netherlands) that started on August 5 has ended today, with yesterday being the ninth tropical day with temperatures above 30° Celsius. Last Friday the temperature reached 29.9° Celsius at the weather station at (the former) Airport Twenthe.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

One / Een

I went to Concordia to see the exhibitions. I did not have to register on forehand like a few months ago. I saw the exhition One / Een with works from twelve artist from the region. I took one of the information leaflets and did not immediately realize that it was the Tweants dialect version. Due to the heat and the high humidity, I could not really concentrate and I only very causally walked through the exhibition. I liked the works by:

Friday, August 14, 2020

Link

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Book

At 09:25, I bought the following two book from charity shop Het Goed:
  • In Cold Blood written by Truman Capote in English for € 0.50.
  • The Golden Notebook written by Doris Lessing in English, published by Panther, Granada Publishing Ltd in 1984, ISBN:9780586037959 , for € 0.95.

Eight tropical days

We had a record of eight tropical days in a row, where a tropical day is defined as a day with temperatures above 30° Celsius. This broke the previous record of six days. The minimum and maximum temperatures of the past days at Twenthe Airport weather station are: 

           min.  max.
August  6  14.1  31.7
August  7  14.4  34.2
August  8  14.4  34.6
August  9  18.5  32.2
August 10  15.3  32.9
August 11  19.7  34.6
August 12  18.7  33.3
August 13  18.6  32.0

Around 20:15 it started to rain with some thunder and lightning. The prediction for maximum temperature is 26.8° Celsius and stay around that level for the coming days.

Link

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

34.6° Celsius

The temperature at Twenthe Airport went up to 34.6° Celsius, which breaks the previous record of 34.3° for the temperature on this date in 2003.

Monday, August 10, 2020

32.9° Celsius

The temperature at Twenthe Airport went up to 32.9° Celsius, which breaks the previous record of 32.5° for the temperature on this date in 1975.

Sunday, August 9, 2020

32.2° Celsius

The temperature at Twenthe Airport went up to 32.2° Celsius, which breaks the previous record of 31.7° for the temperature on this date in 1992.

Link

Friday, August 7, 2020

Ammerter Gräberfeld

Conny and I made a trip to the Ammerter Gräberfeld nature reserve in Germany in the hope to find some more information about the archaeological findings in the area. The area is along the Flamingo biking route which is on both sides of the border between the Netherlands and Germany. We had seen it on one of the maps along the route. We walked along the biking route along the area but did not find any information signs.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Round Goki Puzzle (2)

I continued working on the program for the Round Goki puzzle. I did some refactoring and introduced an iterator, with some goto statements, which looks rather strange until you understand how it works. It implements a recursive function where an array is used to store the variables on the stack. The label l_call indicates the starting point of a (recursive) call and the label l_return gives the location where the call should return. I added some functions to calculate for each combinations of two (type of) pieces the possible combinations do occur in a solution. Below a table is given of the percentages of combinations that do not occur in a solution, where zero is replaced by a dash for clarity. A dash thus means that one can place the two (type of) pieces freely on their possible locations (not overlapping each other) and always can find a solution to the puzzle. The common marked with a hash, gives the number of ways to place the (type of) piece, which is higher if there is more than one piece of given type. 

    #   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R
A   2
B  12   -
C  66   - 95
D  54  88 56 91
E  12  75  - 78 67
F  12  59  - 75 75 13
G  12  13  - 64 39  -  -
H  12  21  - 63 47  -  -  -
I  12   -  - 64 30  -  -  -  -
J  12   -  - 64 30  -  -  -  -  -
K  12   -  - 64 30  -  -  -  -  -  -
L  54   - 12 79 43  6  3  -  1  -  -  -
M 220   - 28 84 54 17 12  4  7  - 22  -  1
N  66   - 16 78 44 10  7  2  3  -  -  -  - 17
O  12   -  - 64 23  -  -  -  -  -  -  - 52  4  -
P 220  24 48 89 66 38 38 31 36 85 29 30 92 44 44 42
Q  12   -  - 64 23  -  -  -  -  9  -  -  - 34  -  - 30
R  12   -  - 64 23  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - 10  -  - 42  -
S  12   -  - 64 23  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  6 24  -  - 22  -  -

Links

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Introduction

Diaries
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
2020
2019
2018
Alzheimer's Disease
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My life as a hacker
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eXtreme Programming Programs

Puzzles

Hamilton cycles
cutting sticks
Califlower fractal
more...

SARS-CoV-2

Tracking
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nextstrain.org/ncov


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