JFK murder solved
Yesterday evening, Li-Xia and I, watched a program
by a Dutch criminal reporter about the assassination of JFK, which appeared to
be based on www.jfkmurdersolved.com.
On of the authors of that website, Wim (or Willem) Dankbaar, is Dutch. In the
previous days the program was advertized as bringing new and shocking relevations.
Yesterday evening, I already felt that it was rather boring and not very shocking.
This morning, after a little googling, I discovered that most of the fact presented
have been known for some time, and that it seems more of a promotion of the books
written by a small group of authors, then a critical investigation. I did find some
information that the statement of James Files as being the shooter on the grassy knoll,
have not been generally excepted as reliable.
Today, was the first real summer day (not officially) with temperatures above 25
degrees Celsius. It was not an official summer day, because in De Bilt, the
temperature did not rise to 25 degrees. Li-Xia and I
decided to have our dinner in the city, because both Annabel and Andy are staying elsewhere. We met
around half past five in the city. We first looked around some shops, and than
did have our typical dinner at Camel. Then we looked around the V&D apartment
store, that was still open (most shop close at six o'clock, except on shopping
night, when they stay open till nine). When we arrived home, it was still warmer
inside than outside. We did some things in the back garden and enjoyed the nice
weather.
Earlier today, Li-Xia phoned with her brother to ask
him about the specifications of the computers that my family have in China.
It looks like both Li-Xia's mother and sister have a computer at home. They
are living in the same apartment building, just above each other. If I understand
it correctly, the computers have a 850 Mhrz pentium processor, 128 Mbyte of
memory, 28 Gbyte hard disk (not sure about this), and a CD-ROM and DVD drive.
I am not sure whether they also have a USB 2.0 interface. It seems that they
run Windows 98. They do have ADSL. Which is nice. I still rather inclined to
bring a laptop, just to be sure, we will not encounter any problems. I am also
afraid spending a long time to get some things work. If we bring a laptop, I
can install everything I needed pre-installed on the laptop.
Ice cream sticks
Yesterday, one of my colleagues bought some ice creams for us, because it
was so nice weather and he had to go to the shop anyway to buy gifts
for the speakers of the EAM2006 congres. The ice cream sticks reminded me
about how I as a little boy collected ice cream sticks and tried to put
them together. Immediately, I remembered that you could put five ice cream
sticks together, such that stayed together (without using glue or tape).
But, I also thought that you could also put them in the form of a pentagram.
I got five sticks, washed them, and tried to put them together, which went
very easy especially because the wet sticks could be bent easily.
This morning, I took it apart and tried to put it together, but while doing
so, I discovered that it is also possible to put four sticks together,
simply by removing one of the sticks of the pentagram and swap the tips
of the sticks close to the piece removed.
Today, my mother phoned to tell us the number of her new passport that she
got this week. This evening, Li-Xia wrote an
email containing all our data, which might be needed for buying a ticket,
and we mailed it to her brother.
Runescape
Annabel likes to play Runescape. Now she made herself a Runescape wallpaper.
It is based on a screenshot, but she made some modification with Paint using images she
found on the Internet.
Teens make child-porn movie
Today, the police of Gouda has arrested three boys and a girl of
fifteen and sixteen year, becaused they had made a movie of a
fourteen year old girl that was performing sexual acts while taking
a bath. One of the suspects has distributed the movie through the
Internet. The incidence took place during a party in the house
of one of the subjects. The teens were under the influence of
alcohol and encouraged the girl to masturbate. The girl only
later heard that the movie was distributed over the internet and
pressed charges together with her parents.
The teens are charged with child-porn production, possesion and
distribution.
I don't think it is the first time that teens make movies like
this. But it was rather stupid to distribute such a movie over
the Internet. Of course, it was also not very smart of the
fourteen year old girl masturbating before a camera. It would
not surprise me that she did this to earn her position among
her peers, as she was the youngest of the group.
In time and too late
This afternoon, we had an appointment for Andy with his paediatrician for Andy's half-year check-up.
I arrived at about seven to two at the office but could not see
Li-Xia, so I decided to walk back
to the entrance to meet her. But when she did not appear, I
decided to go back the office of the paediatrician to report
my self. When I did so, the lady told me that they were already
in with the doctor and when I was let into the room, the doctor
told me that they were ready. Li-Xia already had discussed
with him about what to do for the flight and he had prescribed
some Promethazine
that causes drowsiness. I shortly discussed the vaccination
issues with him, and he thought that everything was okay.
Nobody had contacted him with respect to the travel vaccinations.
He also mentioned that we should give Andy something to drink
when the plane starts to decent, to prevent problems with his
ears.
This afternoon, I phoned KLM Care to talk about some issues. I have
not sent in the medical forms
yet. Today, I realized this again. They said we could just bring
the 20 Kg of formulea as hand luggage. Per person, and we are with
five, we can bring one piece of hand luggage with maximum dimensions
55 x 35 x 25 and maximum weight of 10Kg/22lb. We still have to
think about a good way to package the formulea. Maybe we can
just bring it in the boxes as we get it. I think I will add a
letter to the medical forms that I will send, and discuss the
food problems and the Promethazine that the peadiatrician has
prescibed.
(follow-up)
This evening, Annabel and I went
to the university to play Go. Because
of the nice weather we could play outside, except for there
appearing a lot of musquitos. I played against Marcel with
an eight stone advance. I lost with 30 points, because I
lost one corner. Annabel played against Martijn on a 13x13
board with five stones ahead. She lost with 31 points.
Go karting
After work, we went to go karting with a group of colleagues.
We went to Coronel
Kartracing in Enschede. We drove two heats of twelve minutes
with half an hour break in between. We were with fourteen people.
The track is said to be about 800 meter long. The first heat I drove my
fastest round in 56.43 seconds (about 51 Km/h), while the fastest
round was 43.72 seconds (about 65.87 Km/h). I was the slowest driver,
mainly because I was being very cautious.
The second heat, I had a stronger kart and I lost most of my
fear. I was still one of the slower drivers, but I drove much
faster. My fastest round was 48.46 seconds (about 59.4 Km/h). Almost
everyone drove faster. The fastest round was 42.72 seconds
(about 67.4 Km/h). The fastest round of the month was 38.34 seconds.
(Later, doubts about the length of the track were raised.
Maybe it is only half as long as stated.)
Recording videos
I spend the whole day recording videos. It appears harder than
I thought. The biggest problem was to find the most efficient
way of working for the coming weeks. I also discovered that
the LaCie drive has a
maximum file size of 4 Gbyte. I decided to store the captured
video as AVI files with the DV Video Encoder, 720x576, 25 frames
per second. This because this is the native capture format.
Producing MPEG's or DVD's requires about the same time as capturing
time.
Injection tube flute
This evening, when I had come home, Annabel
showed the funny noise that you can make when you blow on the end
of a large injection tube. It is one of the tubes that we used to
feel Andy. We made several recordings.
This is one of the recordings, where
you can also hear the popping sound at the end when you pull it out.
This evening, I finally wrote the letter that I am going to send with the medical forms to KLM
Travel Clinic (or KLM Care as it is also called), to accompany the
medical forms, which we have to send in with respect
to Andy.
Go tournament in Apeldoorn
Today, Annabel and I went to Apeldoorn for
a Go tournament. There were less people than
last year. But there were more young people.
I won three out of five round and also played a number of games outside
the tournament. I enlisted myself as 16 kyu, and this rating appeared
to be in accordance with my position in the final result of the tournament.
That means that I really have become stronger in the past year.
Annabel lost all of her tournament games, but she did win some of the
other games that she played. All children could pick some present
at the end of the day. Although she did not win any tournament games,
she did enjoy the day.
(follow-up)
Tentrini Energy Multi Fibre
This morning, I talked with Andy's dietician about his formulea
our summer trip. At the moment, he uses Nutrini Multi Fibre, but
with respect to his weight, he should start using Tentrini Multi Fibre.
I came up with the idea for requesting for Tentrini Energy Multi Fibre,
because it has 50% more calories, and it would mean we could save
the amouth of formulea we have to bring with us by one third. The diatician
thought it was a good idea to let Andy switch to Tentrini Energy
Multi Fibre completely. She will write a recepy and send it to us.
Capturing a group
This evening, I went alone to the university to play Go, because Annabel did not want to go. In the past
days, I also have been looking at KGS. My username is "fjX". I only played a few games, so
my rating is still "30k?". There were some people from
Fanaat in the bar
where we usually play go. When the others arrived, we played
game that you could play with four persons.
I played against Ton and got a six stones advance. I managed
to capture a large group of him, but I still lost with 64 against
46 points, because he maximized the profit from his "dead" group.
I also made some small mistakes. Afterwards, I stayed a little
longer and watched the end of the games that the others were
playing. It always surprises me that the boards of high ranked
players often look so complicated. You really have to study them
for a few minutes before you see all the things that are in it.
Li-Xia's birthday
Today is Li-Xia's birthday. Andy is away
this weekend. We already celebrated her birthday yesterday, because
my sister visited us. This morning, Annabel
gave her some home made chocolates as a present. Quite nice. We
decided to have lunch in the city. We ordered typical dishes at Camel
donner kebab for Li-Xia and Annabel, and some falafel for me. Also some
extra fried potato slices. Of course, I also had some of the meat.
75.7 Kg
This morning, my weight was 75.7 Kg according to
our scales. Two days ago it was still 74.4. I guess that this weight gain
is caused by all the celebrations of Li-Xia's birthday yesterday and the day
before. I also guess that it will return to normal in the coming week.
This weekend I borrowed the Dutch edition of "The Magical Maze - Seeing
the World Through Mathematical Eyes" by Ian Stewart. The second "chapter"
mentions an algorithm to escape a maze. It first starts by transforming
a maze into one that only has three splits. For such a maze you can only
turn left or right at each node. The idea is that you could construct a
sequence of L and R, that, no matter where you are standing in the maze,
would always bring you to the exit (one particular node marked as such).
This made me think about the construction of the shortest such sequence
for a given maze, and also about the fastest, that is the one that on
average requires the smallest number of steps. This approach assumes that
you are standing in a passage between two nodes, facing either one of
the nodes. That means there are twice the number of passages starting
positions, or alternatively, you could say that there are three times
the number of nodes.
(follow-up)
Vaccinations
At four o'clock in the afternoon we had some appointment for our
travel vaccinations. For Andy it was the
second time, the first time being
on April 24, four weeks ago. Again
he caused some problem, but luckily, I was there to help. He was the
first one to get his one vaccination of "Typherix 0.5 ml". This
costed € 45.50. As a present he got a lion, but he did
not want to have it. The next one was Annabel, who got "AmBirix 1ml Hepatitis A B vaccin" and
"Typherix 0.5 ml". This costed € 99.50. Later she
got a fluroscent marker in the form of an injection tube. Then it
was the turn of Li-Xia. She got DTP,
"Havrix 1440 1ml Hepatitis A vaccin", and "Typherix 0.5 ml".
This costed € 107.50. And I was the final to get
his vaccinations. I got the same as Li-Xia, but because I had
lost my vaccination book, I had to pay € 110.00.
In total we had to pay € 362.50.
This afternoon, I also bought a new 232,88 Gbyte harddisk (being
advertised as a 250 Gbyte disk). It is a Hitachu Deskstar
HDT722525DLA380 SATA drive with the serial number 0A30518.
I spend the evening installing it in the computer
lixia and
formating it as drive Q:.
Watching
This evening, I went alone to the university to play Go. I was a little late, and when I arrived, everybody
was playing. I decided to watch the game between Ton and Edze.
This months interesting links
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