New scanner
This afternoon, I bought a Canon CanoScan 4200 F.
Most of the evening, I spend trying it out and scanning some negatives
of the first pictures we took of Andy.
Magnolia
Today the Magnolia in the back of our garden started to bloom
again. Not very strange, because
it has been quite warm the last days. This afternoon it was even
warmer outside in the garden than inside.
(follow-up)
KD802
My old bike was falling apart, literally. I already "repaired"
it with iron wires to keep all the parts together. Last Saturday
I bought a new bike. This afternoon, I went to get it from the
shop and to pay for it. I am now the proud owner of a black Kronan Klassik.
It is a very simple bike, and that is what I like about it. The
only problem is that the lock is to small for the extra wide tires,
and thus is slightly touching and making a chirping noise. All Kronan
bikes have a license plate. Mine has the number plate KD802.
(follow-up)
Hail in sun light
When I biked home, it started to hail while the sun was still shining.
The hail quickly changed into rain. I did not immediately see a
rainbow when I looked around, but after a
while I did see a rather bright piece of rainbow.
Later, when Annabel and I biked to the
swimmingpool, we saw a rainbow again. This one was larger and grew
to almost a 60% full rainbow, but it became very faint.
Funny statements
Andy is now in the (mental) age that he often
surprises us with funny statements he makes. He suddenly starts to
speak in full sentences. It seems that he now also starts to pronouce
the typical Dutch "g" sound (voiced velar frigative), and he even
starts to make a k-sound (unvoiced velar plosive). Today, in school
he kept on saying "Taadaa, ik ben hier" (I am here) everytime when
he entered the classroom. This afternoon he was angry about Annabel,
and he said "Ik bel de politie op" (I will ring the police).
Mysterious email
Today, I the following mysterious email, which virtual no content,
except that it does contain four different names, which I have made
bold.
From - Sun Apr 10 08:15:05 2005
Return-path: <AhmetCamirand@xx.xxx-82-159-39.xxxx.xxxx.net>
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 09:48:02 +0000
From: Carie Bresee <AhmetCamirand@xx.xxx-82-159-39.xxxx.xxxx.net>
Subject: Aili Barnhart
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 20
Daphine Algood
Although the spam filter did not stop this message, it looks like
spam, but with kind of purpose. Is it somekind of activation code
for a piece of mallware? It probably is, because I cannot see another
purpose for it.
15 rounds
Andy's school had organized a charity walk to raise some money
for the improvement of their playground. Annabel
had gone round the street and raised some considerable amouth of money.
She her self also donated something, and we then doubled the amouth.
Tonight was the actual charity walk. It was more of a "run" than a "walk".
For ten minutes Andy had to run round in a sport
hall. The track was about 60 meters. He finished 15 rounds. We were really
surprised and did not know he could run so well without falling a single
time.
Emergency Response Team Basic course
Today, I went to a "Emergency Response Team Basic"
course because I have
become member of the emergency response team of our office building for my
company. The course was held at a local fire department training facility.
In the morning we were taught by a fireman, about what to do when a fire
starts, and we got some practical training on how to exstinguish small fires
with different types of fire exstinguishers. They also gave us a demonstration
of what happens when you add half a cup of water to a pan with burning oil.
After the lunch, we received "first aid" traning by a ambulance worker.
He gave us a lot of practical information and told many first-hand stories
of things that can happen. We also did the "breathing" part of the reanimation
sequence on a dummy. We also received a course manual by
NIBHV (Dutch). Next Wednesday
the second part of the course will happen, including a written test on the
contents of the manual.
Tonight, Annabel and I went to the Go club to
play Go. She played two games against Marcel. She
also brought a science book with her, which we have started reading together.
She was just paging through it. I played against Ton, who had not played
for three weeks. We started with seven handicap stones for him. But then
after about ten moves into the game, I felt that his position was very
weak, and Annabel removed the center handicap stone (which, as it appeared
later, he did not see at all). When we finished the end game, he wanted
to start an invasion in one of my corners, and I said that I would resign,
because I was not in the mood of having to kill an attempt of him to create
a small living group. Rudi, who was sitting besides us, said that it would
be useless. Then Ton agreed that we would count. In turned out that he had
won with two points. I could have won with more, had I realized that one
of his groups in the corner was dead and I had killed it off. But then I
did get some help from Rudi, who at a critical moment, started to make the
sound of a chain saw, which he often does when he sees a nice invasion.
I was indeed able to make a deep cut in the territorium of Ton.
Super glue
This evening, we needed to glue something, and it was clear that the
normal glue was not going to do the job. We got the super glue that
we bought some weeks ago and used it for the first time. I decided to
use a needle to stick a small hole in the top. Now before I knew it,
I had the glue on my fingers. Luckily, I did not squize my fingers
together, but I had the stuff on my thumb and index finger of my right
hand. I should have put some hand cream on my hands before handling
the super glue, but I though I was only going to make a hole in the top,
and not expecting any glue to come out of the bottle. We did use the
glue for the things we wanted to use it for. Afterwards, I spend more
than half an hour trying to remove the glue from my fingers. It finally
did when I used some nail polish remover. But I guess I also removed the
top part of the skin of my fingers in the process.
Revenge of the Sith
Today, Li-Xia and I went into the city. When we were at
the Alhambra Theater, I went inside to ask if they still had
tickets for the May 18, 20:00 showing of Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith. The first showing in the
area with a digital projector. And they did. Because the ticket was
only € 7.50, I decided (after consulting Li-Xia)
to buy a ticket. My seat is C-7.
Star Wars: Revelations
Today, I downloaded
Star Wars: Revelations (using BitTorrent), and watched
it together with Annabel.
My PC seems
a little too slow for this movie, because it was not shown
flawlessly. I have to admit that I did not follow the
story because I missed some of the dialogue due to the
gaps in the sound. Quite amazing that people with such
a small budget can create such a good movie. All the little
details are great. It truely follows the atmosphere of the
original movies quite well.
Biking to the Go club
This evening, I biked to the meeting of the Go club at the university.
It was still light around half past seven in the evening, the weather
was nice, and I did not bike much because I went to the second and final
day of the Emergency Response Team Basic course.
This afternoon, I also went to the bike shop to get another lock
for my bike. I got an Axa "SP 150". It came with a lock
holder, which you can attach to the frame, but I have discovered it is
just as easy to hang it around the steering wheel.
I played one game against Ton, which did not go very nice.
I resigned after about an hour into the game, when Ton managed to kill a group of
mine. Then I watched Ton playing against Taco. Sometimes it is even
more addicting to follow a game, than to play one. I stayed about another
hour.
Exact Cover algorithm
Today, I implemented the exact cover algorithm that I wanted to implement
since March 8. I have only tested it on a trivial
example. I am planing to write a program that transforms a
Latin Square into a Exact Covering. Next, I
will probably write a Discrete Piece Fitting to
Exact Covering program.
(See below for the details)
Exact Cover algorithm solves Latin Square
This evening, I had time to check the Exact Cover algorithm (in C++) that I implemented yesterday.
As a test case, I decided to try it on the Latin Square that was
solved by the other program. So I wrote a Latin Square to
Exact Cover program for transforming the Latin Square that I used
earlier into a 525 vectors with
216 positions Exact Cover problem. The program produced a solution
within a second, which translates to the following Latin Square:
8 4 2 9 5 7 3 6 1
6 7 3 5 9 8 1 2 4
3 5 1 2 4 6 7 9 8
7 9 6 8 3 1 2 4 5
4 2 8 1 7 3 9 5 6
9 6 5 3 1 2 4 8 7
2 1 7 4 8 5 6 3 9
5 3 4 7 6 9 8 1 2
1 8 9 6 2 4 5 7 3
Lost with 83 point
Today, Annabel and I went to the
Go club. I played against Rudi and lost with
83 points. Although he is a 5th Dan player, it is still
a big loss, much worse than the last time. Afterwards we did some
analyses. But I fear, I have forgotten most of it. Annabel played
a game against Ton.
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Monday, April 4, 2005