Suitcases
Today, Li-Xia looked for our suitcases
in the attic. When I came upstairs, I saw her brown suitcase, with
the initials LXL. I made some remark about my green suitcase. But
when I noticed a red suitcase, I concluded that it must have been
red. We had promised Andy to go to the city
in the afternoon, because he could not go to church as he had expected.
It had started raining around noon. We did not know what to do. Li-Xia
felt, I should go on my own, while I felt that we should take Andy
with us as promised. Around half past two we left by car with the
three of us. While driving into the city, we soon discovered that
we were not the only ones having this idea. I decided to try another
parking place on the other side of the city, only to discover that it
was full and had a long line of cars waiting. We looked for some
more places, and finally decided to park with the Park & Ride
parking place and take the bus. When we arrive in the city we went to
V&D to look at the
suitcases that were on sale. We found a nice Samsonite suitcase.
Li-Xia felt we should buy two, I thought that one was enough. In the
end we bought one blue one and went back to the car.
At home, I discovered
that the red suitcase was not the suitcase I had in mind. Li-Xia
said that she already had seached the attic, and had not found any
suitcase. It was getting late, and we quickly had to decide what to
do. I was quite sure that we had a "green" suitcase. Li-Xia said she
could not recall anything. I even made her phone her mother to ask if
we did not let her take it home one of the times that she visited us.
This was not the case. We both were a little annoyed about everything.
After some time, Li-Xia came down with the messages that she had found
some more suitcases and if I had a light. We went upstairs, but amongh
the suitcases that I had in mind, was not the one I had in mind. Then
suddenly, I found my suitcase in another corner that had been uncovered
by Li-Xia taking away stuff. It was not green, but red. It was also
a Samsonite, with exactly the same size as the one that we just bought.
Commercials echo
At the moment, Annabel is acting like
a commercials echo, although echo is not the correct term, because
usually she runs ahead a few seconds. Whenever there are commercials
on TV she starts to echo them. She is remarkable good at it. Using
the right intonation and often immitates the melodies as well. I think
it is a typical thing for girls of her age to do this. I find it quite
funny.
Nonogram solver
In the past weekend, I worked on another algorithm for solving the
Nonogram. It did not meet my expectations.
The Nonogram solver is still working
on the 14x14 squares. At the moment is working on the square on the
rows 74 to 87 and columns 59 to 72, which is the square highlighted
in the image on the right. I am not sure how long it has been working
on this square, but it might be more than a week.
(follow-up)
Kidsday
Today, we went with the whole family to the Kidsday organized
by Kans voor een kind
(An opportunity for a child), which organizes activities for children
who are suffering from a chronical disease and their family.
Andy received an invitation for this because he is seen by a
paediatrician of the hospital in Enschede.
When we left, I asked Andy to put on his
coat. He first put on his shawl and next put his hands in the sleeves
of his coat that was laying in front of him. My first thought was that
it was not going to work, but with a swift move, he threw the coat
over his head and had it on. To be honest, it really made me laugh
to see him perform this little trick. I guess they taught him this
in school.
We arrived around a quarter to two at the Expo Center Hengelo. When we went in, Andy received a nice
sticker. It was already quite crowded. Food and drinks were for free.
Annabel made apply use of this to eat all
kinds of sweets. The show started about half an hour later, with
the performances of Magic Unlimited
and the girls group Kus. After a break,
performances by 123 Kindershow,
and Chipz. Andy is a great fan of
Chipz, but when the finally came on stage, he was not very interested,
probably because he was quite tired. The noise also seemed too much
for him. At the end, I took Andy to the front and stayed close to the
stage. Annabel was also there. Around five o'clock we went home. At
first we had planned to go to MacD, but because we already had eaten
so much food, we decided to skip this. It also took us much longer to
get home because it was much busier on the road.
This evening, Annabel and I were the first
to arrive at the university to play Go. Not much
later Ton and the others arrived. I challenged Ton.
Marcel played with Annabel. Ton gave me six stones ahead. We finished
around a quarter to ten. A little to our surprise, it turned out that
I had won with 18 points. I have to say that Rudi made some remarks
that might have influenced my game play, and thus might have had a
positive effect on the score. Annabel played two games with Marcel on
a 13x13 board. She got five and seven stones ahead. Marcel feels that
she is becoming stronger. Then I watched the game between Marcel and
Rudi that they had started. We left around a quarter past ten.
This evening, I made some small improvements on the version
of the Nonogram solver that I started to develop last weekend.
(source). I tested it while we
went to play Go. I came to the conlusion that it did not perform as well
as I had expected.
(follow-up)
Hunters of Dune
I just read second chapter of Hunters of Dune. This chapter is
less of an introduction chapter, like the first chapter, which
was released about a month ago. This
chapter contains some very clear inconsistencies with the previous
book. As far as I remember, Duncan only erased the memory banks. He
did not perform a new kind of space fold that would have brought them
to an alternative universe. I also remember that there were stars
visible after the first space folding, but that there were recognizable
constilations. And then the introduction of the "Oracle of Time", a God
like creature, using Duncan to bring the no-ship back to the "normal"
universe. I find it very hard to believe that this was in the outline
that Frank Herbert left behind.
Today, I aborted the Nonogram solver, which was still
working on the same square as before. Yesterday evening,
I modified the nonogram solver such that it now searches all squares and
rectangles starting with those that have the least unknown positions.
(source).
Playing Go
We arrived early at the university. I was quite busy on the parking
lot. Later on the evening, there were many children walking around.
I guess that this might have been some Eastern celebration of a school.
Soon, Rudi and Ton arrived. When Taco arrived, he asked me to play
a game of Go. Ton asked Annabel. He gave her five
stones ahead on a 13x13 board. She won with 30 points, also because at
the end she managed to beat some stones from Ton. He had hoped that she
would not have seen it, but she did. I resigned after Taco managed to
a second group of mine. Both of the groups I lost, because I made the
wrong type of defense move.
IQ of 48
Today, we received the results of the psychologic test to determine
the development level of Andy. The test was
done on February 8 and 15. They started with the
SON-R 5.5-17
Nonverbal Intelligence Test, but when it became clear that had
problems with this, they continued with the
SON-R 2.5-7
Nonverbal Intelligence Test. This test consists of six subtest,
where three involve spatial insight and three call upon reasoning
abilities. On the subtests involve spatial insight, he scored as
follows:
- Patterns: 2 year and 6 months
- Mosaics: 3 year 10 months
- Puzzles: 4 year
On the subtests calling upon reasoning abilities, he scored as follows:
- Analogies: 4 year 3 months
- Categories: 4 year 7 months
- Situations: 4 year 10 months
According to the test, his IQ on reasoning scale is 64, and on spatial
insight scale is 50. His average development level is that of a four
year old child. His average development age is four years. The report
concludes that based on this IQ is 48.
Going on a date
This weekend, both Annabel and Andy are elsewhere. Annabel will return
tomorrow, after church, and we have agree to catch Andy around eleven
on Monday. Today, Li-Xia and I went into the
city. Around one o'clock we had some donner kebab, falafel, and salad.
We sat outside, because inside there were some people smoking, and the
weather was nice enough to sit outside. We walked around the city and
spend some time looking at external harddrives, digital cameras,
memory cards, and digital video cameras. We still haven't made up out
mind about what we are going to take with us to China this summer. After we bought some vegatables, including
Curly Kail, we went home.
Digitizing videos
This weekend, I made some attempt to digitizing some home videos.
Some week ago, I had reinstalled Studio 9 from
Pinnacle Systems,
during which I was informed I could upgrade to Studio 10. However,
I could not find any way to upgrade to Studio 10, only to Studio Plus
10. Such an upgrade costs 49€ where a new version of Studio 10
costs 69€ against 99€ for Studio Plus 10.
I would expect that an upgrade to Studio 10 from Studio 9 would cost
about 20€, but it seems that that option is not available. I contacted
customer support, but so far, I did not get an answer to my question.
Yesterday, I started with the video of our wedding. I was a little
disappointed about the abilities of Studio 9. Capturing worked okay,
but the division in scenes does not work very well. While you can walk
through the movie, frame-by-frame, it is not possible to simply to set
a scene boarder to a certain frame. Also the restoration functions, do
not work very well. Also there is a black border around the captured
video. Creating a DVD took almost three hours. Today, I
tried to capture some other videos. When I captured the first video
of Annabel, it was dropping about one frame per second. I reasoned
that this had to do with the MPEG compression taking too much time.
The problem was gone when I selected highest quality. Which resulted
in a 20 Gbyte AVI file for about 90 minutes of video. Today, I have
been looking for some alternative software for restoring old analog
videos. I played with the idea to write such software myself, but
concluded that it probably would take too much time.
Medical statement
Today, Li-Xia brought the form to the
GP that he has to fill in about Andy
as a medical statement with respect to flying with KLM. It is one
of those small things that we have to arrange for trip to China. Next Friday we can get it, and I will have to contact
KLM to ask where I can send it.
(follow-up)
Today, Annabel was arrested by a policeman
in school. Luckily, it was not for real. It was a policeman on the
beat, Mr. Said Halimi, who visited the school for some
instruction and needed a volunteer to show how someone is arrested.
He is responsible for the Helmerhoek,
and I regularly meet him on his bike when I bike to my work.
This evening, Annabel and I went to the
University to play Go. Annabel played against
Marcel and won with ten points on a 13x13 board with a six stone advance.
Marcel is a 3 Dan player. Later he told me that she had left him no room
to win. I played two games against Ton, both of which I lost. Especially
the first game, we played very quick. It was one of those games where the
board is divided quickly amongh the players, without any major fights.
I got 79 points, he 88. I made some stupid mistake with respect to a monkey
jump, otherwise the difference might have been smaller. The second game
we played a little slower. I lost a group due to some stupid mistakes,
but even if I would not have lost it, I might still have lost the game.
I was about twenty points behind. But Ton says that it is becoming harder
and harder for him to play agaist me.
On the way home, Annabel told me that she wanted to become an architect.
Maybe this is related to playing with Sims 2. At least she has some
motivation now to study hard at school. I explained that she would need
to go to the university to become an architect.
LaCie 250GB
This evening, I bought a LaCie 250GB
external harddisk. I plan to use it
for storing all the high resolution video captures that I want to make from
our home videos.
Magnolia
Today has been a very nice day, and when I arrived at home, some of the
flowers on the Magnolia in our backgarden had started to open a little.
It is almost three weeks later than last year.
So, Spring is indeed late this year.
(follow-up)
In the past days, I worked on an arrow maze
that I made about 26 years ago. This evening, I finished recording all
of the arrows that I made, in order to check the correctness of the
maze.
(follow-up)
Nonograms
Today, I got an email from Marian Dvorsky, in which he points out that the paper
NP-completeness results for NONOGRAM via parsimonious reductions
shows a reduction from 3-Dimensional Matching to Nanogram, thus proving that Nanogram is
NP complete. He also pointed me at the Nonogram solver by Mirek and Petr Olsák. I remember having a look
at before, but I never tried the program.
First vaccinations
Some weeks ago we got an invitation for Andy
to receive his last DTP and MMS vaccinations. He is supposed to get
them next Wednesday. I realized that these vaccinations are rather
close to the one that was scheduled for today (
last month). Yesterday, I searched the Internet to see if their
is any danger with respect to ITP. There
seems that there is a correlations between MMS vaccination and ITP. It
is very small, but I think that in case of Andy's history, it might be
considerable higher. He already got his first MMS shot about four years
ago. When I do not know exactly. I do not think that the extra protection
that he gets from this, do weight up to the dangers of getting ITP for
a third time, also in the view that the complications of getting these
diseases (such as becoming infertile) might be less relevant for him.
Today, I made some phone calls to get some more information. There is
no problem if we want to skip MMS. But I also found out that organisation
responsible for giving the ITP vaccination prefers that this happens
at least two weeks after an Hepatitis A vaccination, the one that
Andy is scheduled to get today. The doctor I talked with, was going to
make some inquiries and phone me back later.
This afternoon, Li-Xia took Andy with her to
the vaccination office. Andy was not very cooperative when they wanted
to give him the Hepatitis A (Havrix junior 1) vaccination. Two people were
asked to assist. Afterwards, Li-Xia gave him a car as a present, and
then she took the wrong bus from the railway station. It had the right
number, but it went in the wrong direction. Andy liked it very much.
They arrived home around six o'clock. The vaccination costed 59 €
in total, but some part is covered by our health insurance.
From the Dutch description of the Harvix junior vaccine, I understand
that it is discouraged to give any living vaccine in two weeks after
the vaccination. I understand that the MMS vaccine is a living vaccine.
Another reason why he should not get it. The last time we got our
traveling vaccinations, we got Hepatitis and DTP together. The description
also mentions ITP as one of the possible side effects, although a
definite connection has not been established.
No DTP and MMS vaccination for Andy
Today, I was phoned by the doctor who I talked with yesterday.
She told me that we should skip the DTP and MMS vaccinations
for tomorrow, because he had the Hepatitis vaccination yesterday.
She also said that there was no problem to wait till after the
holiday with respect to DTP as his coverage should still be
sufficient. She also suggested that we should discuss the matter
with our pedeatrician.
The weather was very nice today. It was so warm, that I did
not put on my coat when I biked home. All the flowers of
the Magnolia (except a few) were open,
and there were bees flying around it.
China trip
Li-Xia made several phone calls to
China. She asked our sister-in-law to order some tickets for our
flight from Beijing to Urumqi on July 24. (This sister-in-law, already
had promised to help us with this.) Possible flights we could
take are:
It seems that Xinjiang Airlines has been taken over by China Southern Airlines in
2003. Xinjiang Airlines has been the safest Airline company of China for many years.
Li-Xia also went to our PG to get the medical declaration
back. She already went there several times in the past days. This morning,
he said he wanted to make an appointment to talk with us. Li-Xia scheduled
an appointment for next Friday.
This evening, Annabel and I, went to the
university to play Go. We were the first to arrive.
Not much later Vincent arrived, and because we had brought a board and
stones with me, I started a game against Vincent. I was given eight stones
ahead. About twenty minutes later, the others had arrived. Annabel played
two games against Marcel on a 13x13 board. The first game she was given
five stones ahead, and she lost with 24. The second game she was given
six stones ahead, and she won with 12 points. My game against Vincent
lasted long. Rudi made some comments during the game, often encouraging
me to think harder. In the end, I won with 28 points. Not too bad.
Medical declaration
This morning, Li-Xia and I went to
visit our GP. Together with us, he filled in the medical declaration. We also discussed the posibility to
administer some tranquelizer (Valium) to Andy during the flight.
We decided to discuss this further with our pedeatrician with
whom we have an appointment on May 10.
Queen's day
This year, Queen's day is on the
29th, because tomorrow is a Sunday. This morning,
Annabel and I arrived around nine
o'clock in the city. It was not never busy, probably because
it was rather cold. We looked around and bought some Dalmatier
dolls for Andy. Annabel bought
some marbles for herself, and also a original Rubik cube and
a Pyraminx.
Today, I finished my "corrected version" of the
arrow maze that I have been
working on last week. I did some additional
programming to check the corrections, and to verify the data
on the page. For this I extended the
program.
This months interesting links
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