The Nano

Could not get to sleep last night and was listening to a BBC World Service Program about food nanotechnology. The original broadcast is reviewed here and you can find a link to the program too.

More links and articles on this blog.

It comes down to fucking with your food on an atomic level, this can also happen in real life in a natural way (smoked salmon). Some products are already poisoning the Americans (and Australians (Don't buy Tip Top Bread)) and a lot of research is being done by the big food corporations.

One of the goals is to nuke the atoms in a hamburger in such a way so you can go to McDonald and eat 10 of them and none of the cancer causing particles stay in your body.

I think a simpler solution is possible: DON'T EAT AT MCDONALDS.

Of coarse the nanotechnology enhanced products are not labelled as such and when these products are more widely available it would be hard to avoid cancer. One could take the following approach: 'Don't buy food that needs a label' as my good friend Nicole once said. But this nanotechnology is also (going to be) applied to seeds so it will be hard to tell if the fresh food you buy has not been modified by either gene or nano-technology.

While doing some research and thinking about it I realized that big corporations are doing a lot of research (and we can pride ourselves that a lot of its done in Wageningen) at a high cost so we in the west can stuff ourselves without any (yet known) risk while it is still impossible to feed large parts of the world.

This only confirms my believe that large corporations are irresponsible psychopaths. Which also explains the current credit crunch (I just had to throw that in).

To prove that I am not a complete pessimist: while still listening to the BBC World Service the news announced that the Danish company Novo Nordisk will start providing insulin for free (with training for doctors and healthcare workers) to 10.000 children in the 3rd world.

The cost? They will be spending initially 20 to 25 Million US$. Not that they are making a huge sacrifice, profits for 2007 were 1,643 million US$

Miss Cathy

Miss Cathy lounging on the couch.

Some training

Have been working hard, web services and stuff and needed some training too.




Thanks to the trainer I have gained enough knowledge.

The much requested update

I finally came around to upload pictures on my camera to my (new) laptop.
These ones was taken on my short trip to Copenhagen.

This might have been my last name if I had been born in Denmark.



For Van Morrison Fan-reason taken.

iemand heeft het eg druk gehad in de herfst vakantie

The new laptop

I could not help myself and bought a new laptop yesterday, the old one had a batterylife of 3 minutes, a powercable that is broken, missing keys and buttons (had to turn it on with the help of a paperclip) and was becoming veeeeeryyyyy slooooooow.

The new one is an Acer 5715Z, system-wise nice, got everything, the sound is nice enough so you can watch a video and understand what people say without the use of headphones.

It is running Vista, which I hate to admit do not hate yet. Then again, without running any programs (just some gadgets and skype and stuff) it is already using 1Gb of memory (but it has 4).

Needless to say I probably will test Linux on it.

And Acer decided to install the usual crap, lots of it removed and one of the games provided seems to have a Trojan.

Did not see this picture in the paper

700 cats

And this lady is not crazy.
Visit the site Cat House on the Kings for more details.

The new phone

Finally got a new phone, it has got a a high gadget-value. Nice. Will take a trip up North today so I can do some road testing.



Of coarse one of the first pictures I took with it was one of Jacques (there is also one of Cathy but I still have that only on my phone (which I could blog from, must try that too later)

Getting comfortable with the phone and trying to fix one (and only) drawback took me whole of yesterday. The drawback is that an incoming call somehow overrides a little tool called S2U2 (Slide to Unlock, a tool that unlocks the phone by sliding your finger over the screen) which results in picking up the call by trying to slide the phone out of its pouch. No solution found yet.

If it is Thursday this must be Cophenhagen

Pictures will follow (only two or three) The work went well. An interesting and nice taxi driver who took me from the hotel to the office could speak Dutch, learned it from his ice-skating club; half of the members are Dutch, h4 showed me (on the map) an area close to Copenhagen where the streets have Dutch names (hmmm nice title for a song). I will need to do some research into that but not now as the aquavit is calling. I wanted to blog at least a little today because otherwise the title would have been: "If yesterday was Thursday, it must have been Copenhagen", which does not have the same ring as the current title.
Two other nice things:
Electronic Check in: when you get of the metro at the airport you can check in electronicly: type in your reservation number, verify an/or change your seat and your boarding pass is printed, on to security in two minutes.
The Metro in Copenhagen: the tracks are separated by a glass/seethrough walls and the metro stops excatly at the right place so two sets of sliding doors open up,it does wonders for the smell in the station and the mess on the tracks.

The waddle

Apparently a group of penguins on land is called a waddle. I finished re-organizing my penguin collection. This collection is not really activly maintained. It consists of the first 100 Pelicans (at least that was my aim) and the first 1000 penguins (altwma). plus the odd Shakespeare, Poetry series, specials, guidebooks, children books and bits and pieces.
Collecting them require a lot of bookshop visiting, which I really don't do that much any more. You also need a good list of what you have, what needs to be replaced, I lost the list a few computers ago. I have read many of them and while shelving them I spotted a few of them worth a (re-)read.

The Catnip

My colleague brought back some catnip from the states, this is one of the few cases where I agree with the American 'more is better'. The quality is very high too. Needless to say I have two very stoned cats now.

The sorting

When I moved in I only shelved my Penguin/Pelican collection, I had not felt the urge to put them in proper order so I started on a rainy evening, of which we had plenty this week. The Pelicans are done now, the Penguins are getting there.

The Bad Weather

This week we had some crazy weather, this was Thursday:

The lights went on at 10 o'clock, in the morning.


So I had to turn the lights on too. It looks like it is October, the same thing happened again at around four o'clock in the afternoon.

Carla sings a naughty song

Lyrics and translation here

System Upgrade Update

the 500gb disk is working now, not quite sure why this happened, maybe because it did not have the standard partition table(it had a GPT table, whatever) after a bit of mucking around with it the machine booted with the disk attached. I think overwriting the beginning of the disk with dd did the trick.

my testing/develop version of my jukebox is also up and running again so we can start working again.

Nieuwendammerdijk revisited

Some background on the Nieuwendammerdijk: It is named after Nieuwendam an old village that has been there for centuries. It was a port an became prosperous because the port was a lot cheaper than the port of Amsterdam and, I suppose, because of the import of wood.

The Noorder IJ en Zee dijk is a dike going along the coast of what used to be the sea and is now is the IJselmeer, not only in this part of Amsterdam but along a big part of Noord-Holland.

Nieuwendam, and some other small villages around here were annexed by the city of Amsterdam in 1921 after a flood in 1916.

Some information and a map/cycle route can be found in the pdf Noordje Fietst.

System Upgrade

I have been thinking about re-installing Fedora on my main machine, I had been upgrading it a few times but this time it was time for a complete clean install. Also because I was able to back everything up to a 1TB extrenal hard disk (Note that the disk came preformatted for windows but Fedora had no problem mounting and reading/writing to it).
So now everything is clean and fresh, and up and running again, except for the 'compiz' part.(gives you wobbly windows and applets like you have them on the Mac, including the Mac taskbar. I now use a Mac/Leopard theme with icons and all. The compiz is nice eyecandy and I think I can live without it.

The only problem is adding a 500gb hard disk, as soon as I plug that in the machine does not go past the system boot screen and I can't get inthe bios. All basic debugging has been done (Cables:check, power:check). I will test the disk with a usb thingy I have that lets you use any disk through usb.

Niewendammerdijk

The other day I cycled down to the Schellingwouder Brug to buy some plants. I decided to go down the Niewendammerdijk, an old dike in Amsterdam-noord.



Actually this is the old Leeuwarderweg but part of the dike.

Small old houses

It is part of the Noorder IJ en Zee dijk.

The beginning of the Niewendammerdijk.

You will also find typical (partial) wooden houses here.


A lock halfway.

The house of the lock-keeper.

The pillar indicating that this is a part of the Noorder IJ en Zee dijk.

A ferry stop and some strange construction of houses/apartments, judging by the moored boats not a cheap place to live.

Look Vincent: people; waiting for the ferry.

Another view of the dike.

There are not only old houses on the dike, also some very modern.

Not quite sure if I like it that much, The 'schoonheids commisie' might have been asleep when permissions were given.

This house is next to the very modern one.

This used to be a private hospital.



Obligatory picture of cat sleeping on the pavement (it was a very warm day).

A long overdue update

First of all, I updated my photo album, a lot of cat pics, some pics from Finland (with bikes and numberplates).

Last week I bought another album for on the wall: Dakota Staton

They finally removed the lift that was attached to my balcony, so everything is back to normal, Will need to do some work and/or think about a big plant container.

I also repainted the top of my desk, with glitsa this time to make the top hard and smooth enough for my computer mice.

It has been and still is very hot and moist, lots of thunderstorms last night, which made me stay in instead of going to the daiquiri party.

Not much else is new, am mentally preparing for the Ikea visit.

Mijn tuintje terug

Het schilderwerk is de laatste tijd goed gevorderd, ze hebben op mijn etage alle tussenschotten weer geplaatst (behalve die met mijn naaste buren omdat de lift er nog staat. Wordt gelukkig ook minder wakker gemaakt door de lift, hij komt niet meer zo hoog en ik heb ook geen schilders op mijn balkon om kwart over zeven.

Helaas valt er weinig te genieten van het balkon, het regent hier ontzettend veel, mooi voor de tuin die de laatste tijd wel erg te lijden heeft gehad van de droogte, zo te zien zal een enkele boom het niet overleven. Het gras trekt alweer aardig bij.

Rommelmarkt/Hoezen

Vandaag was er weer een grote rommelmarkt op het NDSM Trerrein in Noord en ik heb een begin gemaakt an een collectie lp hoezen aan de muur.
De mooiste is wel Moanin' van Art Blakey, maar die was ook meteen de duurste. Dan nog Something Cool van June Christy En twee lp's van Ann Burton: Blue Burton en Ballads & Burton.
Terwijl ik de Ann Burton's vond stond iemand naast mij (die ook nog een paar mooie lp's voor mijn neus wegpikte), hij wierp een blik op de LP van Ann Burton en zei toen: "Daar heb ik ook nog op mee gespeeld", hij bleek ook nog vorige week op het ijazz festival gespeeld te hebben.
Nu nog een slimme manier zien te vinden om ze op te hangen.

Ijazz and wind

So I had planned to spend Sunday at the ijjazz festival here in Noord. Unfortunatly the performers I wanted to see were playing on the same stage, one that was on top of a boat and about 50 meters high up (and away from the quay. Even more unfortunately there was also a fierce wind.
The wind got so fierce that the performance by Rita Reys was stopped halfway through. Watched another band for a while but as I could not be sure if/when/where the performers would be playing I went home.
Wasted a lot of time at aboutcolonblank.com, interesting, disgusting and funny stuff, be aware the guy has a fetish for bacon and meat.

For cat lovers the following is worth a visit estorboloco

How to get rid of telemarketeers

Finland Revisisted/Camera Repaired

I had noticed it for a while but I wanted to bring my camera with me to Finland. The pictures are not completely in focus, when zoomed in it would not focus so I brought it in for repair, it was just/still under warranty.

You will get no prizes for guessing the nationality of this group of people.
When I tried to leave the hotel one day a couple of people were blocking the door, stepping out I noticed a few more, standing around in a circle, blocking the pavement and anyone trying to leave the hotel a normal exit. (the gap you see was the one I created by just stepping in the middle of the circle and getting out.)q A pity that I did not have to carry my computer case, I use it sometimes to remind people that other people need space too (one of them opened their mouth and it was Dutch what came out).

Thuis

Het eerste wat me opviel toen ik thuis kwam was dat mijn appartement eigenlijk wel erg kaal is, na twee weken in een hotel met veel hout en kleur gezeten te hebben valt het witte en het gebrek aan decoratie wel erg op. Moet toch maar wat meer kleurige decoratie zien te vinden. Toch maar mijn plan om een collectie Jazz elpee covers aan te leggen uit het stof halen.

Ook maar eens een poging doen om een aantal zwart/wit foto's van Oud Amsterdam Noord op te hangen, het probleem is dat de muren zo ard zijn dat er geen spijker is in te krijgen.

De katten waren dolblij me weer te zien er moest veel geaaid worden en de plukken haar vlogen in het rond. Ze waren nog blijer omdat ze wee het balkon opkonden zodat ze de koolmeesjes de stuipen op het lijf konden jagen.

We zijn weeer thuis

Precies zoals gepland om 1/2 8 thuis, de katten hebben me gemist zo te zien.

Pindakaas !!!!

Morgen nog een halve dag lesgeven en de rest van de dag ben ik onderweg naar huis, als het goed is zit ik om 1/2 8 Vrijdagavond achter een dikke stapel boterhammen met pindakaas en hoef ik even niet uit eten.

Spooky

Just caught this on the pussy cam

They are still there.....

But I think they are mad at me, both have turned their backs to me.

Dutch Link No 1

The civil war

This is a link to the wikipedia article on the Finnish Civil War