This is a picture of my father sitting in front of a small cabin hut that he built himself using the ax he is holding in his right hand. He grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. He told me that we was about ten years old when the picture was taken, meaning that the picture was taken around 1926.
I just finished the book Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson, and I really liked it a lot.
The character I liked the most is named Hoid who is the first person narrator of the fantasy novel.
Hoid is a worldhopper who travels the cosmere universe, originally born on the planet Yolen. His fate is to wander the cosmere pursing his unknown goals, often in the guise of a fool or storyteller. He may be guided at times by a mysterious sense about where he should go, but not what he is to accomplish there.
As the narrator of this story, Hoid has an interesting way with words and describes various scenes and actions in a most profound way. Here are a few quotes that especially inspired me when I first read them.
36. The Explorer, page 203.
"That inspires me. We each make our own lore, our own legends, every day. Our memories are our ballads, and if we tweak them a little with every performance...well, that's all in the name of good drama. The past is boring anyway. We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale."
38. The Apprentice, page 211.
"What else would she have never known about herself, if she hadn't left her home island? Worse, how many people like her lived in ignorance, lacking the experience to fully explore their own existence? It is one of the most bitter ironies I've ever had to accept: there are, unquestionably, musical geniuses of incomparable talent who dies as street sweepers because they never had the chance to pick up an instrument."
40. The Chef, page 223.
"This type of response will send any artist into panic. Tears wash away the middle ground--allthe infinite permutations of mediocre are eliminated, and two options remain: one sublime, the other catastrophic. For a moment, both interpretations exited in a kind of quantum state for Tress. And people wonder why artists so often abuse drink."
41. The Philosopher, page 232.
"While a healthy measure of foolhardiness drove our ancestors toward discovery, fear kept them alive. If bravery is the wind that makes us soar like kites, fear is the string that keeps us from going too far. We need it, but the thing is, our heritage taught us to fear some of the wrong things."
42. The Guide, page 233.
"Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again."
44. The Fallen, page 245.
"Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts--but those thoughts are often owned by others. It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds."
46. The Informant, page 253.
"There are obvious exceptions. Certain individual humans, like certain sausages, break this convention. While neither larger group is collectively terrifying, they contain remarkable individuals that absolutely should frighten you. The more you learn about these individuals, the more worried you should become. But for humans at large, knowledge usually equates to empathy, and empathy leads to understanding."
54. The Valet, page 297.
"We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some--perhaps most--are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours.
Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don't recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we've been told to inhabit.
We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become. Even if we're doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural."
58. The Monster, page 320
"Irony is a curious concept. Specifically, I mean the classical definition: that of a choice leading to an opposite outcome from what is intended. Many grammarians bemoan the word's near-constant misuse--second only in dictional assassination to the way some people use the word 'literally.' (Their use of which is ironic.)
I'm not one of those people who care if you use words wrong. I prefer it when words change meaning. The impression of our language is a feature; it best represents the superlative fact of human existence; that our own emotions--even our souls--are themselves imprecise. Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.
Yet irony is an intriguing concept. It exists only where we want to find it, because for true irony, expectation is key. Irony must be noticed to exist. We create it from nothing when we find it. But unlike other things we create, like art, irony is about creating tragedy.
Irony is reversal. Set up, then collapse.
A perfect bit of irony is a beautiful thing.
So watch. Enjoy."
59. The Prisoner, page 327.
"A few tress tried to spruce up the landscape but failed, both by being too intermittent and by not being the right species. Instead they were spindly, gnarled things with tufts of leaves growing only at the very tips of their branches. As if they knew the concept of 'trees' only by description, and were doing their best, all things considered."
60. The sorceress, page 335
"At this moment, Tress's emotions were complicated. Like that rope you always swear you put away neatly, but which comes out of storage looking like someone used it to invent new theoretical types of knots that bend space-time."
Today is the day to celebrate. In other words, I am officially two-thirds of a century old.
That means that as of today I passed the 66.666666666666... line and now live in the last third of my life (assuming of course that I manage to live 100 years).
I don't think that there are that many people who are aware of this spectacular milestone
Those who manage to live this long are more than likely to miss out on remembering this amazing accomplishment.
I on the other hand feel very thankful that I can enjoy this day knowing that yet another important milestone in my live has been achieved.
So you wonder, how do I know this?
I know this thanks to good old ChatGPT.
Here follows the question I asked, the response I received and the code snippet analysis.
Question:
I was born on October 11, 1957. When will I be exactly 66 2/3 years old?
Answer:
You will be exactly 66 2/3 years old on June 11, 2024.
Analysis:
from datetime import datetime, timedelta # User's birthdate birthdate = datetime(1957, 10, 11) # 66 2/3 years in days years = 66 + 2/3 days_in_year = 365.25 # accounting for leap years on average days = years * days_in_year # Calculate the date when the user will be 66 2/3 years old target_date = birthdate + timedelta(days=days) target_date
Result:
datetime.datetime(2024, 6, 11, 0, 0)
This amazing fantasy saga lasting some 2176 pages turned out to be a worthwhile read with some interesting twists and surprise endings. Good world building and character psychologies. At times a bit complex with the different types of beings and special powers based on metals.
See: Brandon Sanderson Homepage
In anticipation of the new Netflix series coming out soon, I decided to prepare myself better in advance by reading the now infamous trilogy by Cixin Liu.
Two weeks and 1695 pages later, I managed to saw through all three books, and I must say that although the books were a bit different than what I had expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the long read.
I am curious if the Netflix series will do the trilogy justice.
Today was my first round of golf of the year, at the Leeuwenburgh Golfclub. I hadn't really played for more than a month, just practiced a bit, so I was curious how well I could play.
Not only did I have my first birdie of the year, which is normally the exciting highlight, but I managed to shoot two birdies in a row.
The first birdie was a longish 12 meter putt on the par three tenth, and the second one was on a par four where I made a long masterful shot from the fairway bunker and then sank the three foot putt.
The rest of the round was far from spectacular, with in total six pars, six bogies, three double bogies and a lousy triple bogie on the last hole for an 84.
Not a bad start for the year, and there will be plenty of fun challenges ahead.
My lucky number has always been the number eleven, and it will always be.
I was born on the eleventh of October (I'm not going to say which year), my little league uniform number was eleven (Ghent Motors, Salinas), when someone asks me to pick a number between one and ten I always say eleven, etc.
Most importantly, today marks the eleventh anniversary of becoming sober: 132 months which equals 4023 days. That's about 17% of my life.
Believe it or not, I have survived no less than eleven years without a single drop of that evil substance called alcohol. Each day I wake up I thank God for giving me the power to choose a full and happy life.
Being the boring procrastinator that I am, I've been putting it off now for nearly ten months, so many pictures and much work. However, I finally managed to get it finished at the last possible moment, just before the new year. Enjoy...
CV-Ketel: How to Adjust the Water Temperature
I thought that my dentist appointment was at 11:20 but it turned out to be at 11:50 instead. That meant that I was way too early in the office and would just have to bide away my time in the waiting room thinking alot, looking out the window, trying not to stare too much at the other people waiting.
Some old man with a walking stick entered the room. He was accompanied by what looked like his son-in-law, and he took a seat right next to mine. He greeted the other visitors and started talking. As if we were eager to hear all he had to say. Society warns us that we have to respect older people and be patient with their many idiosyncrasies, even when they ramble on endlessly.
Tap, tap, tap ...
He began by telling us that he is not shy and people like to visit with him, although everyone also tells him that he talks too much. He was born before the war in 1936 (which puts him at 87 years old). The Germans were terrible and the war years had robbed him of his youth. Once he and his friends were playing in the fields, and someone whispered that the Germans were firing their weapons. Indeed, there they were a group of soldiers walking down the path nearby, spraying bullets from right to left. He could still hear it very plainly in his head, but as a small child at the time he didn't know what it meant. It all seemed very unreal and still doesn't make any sense today.
Tap, tap, tap ...
He paused briefly and began tapping his walking stick on the hard floor. In fact, throughout his long monologue, each short pause would be filled with the tapping sounds, as his variegated memories reformed and produced newer illusions. Right, his poor wife died when she was only 52 years old, which meant that he had to live the rest of his life alone. At the time, he had no work so ended up doing odd jobs, whatever he could find really.
Tap, tap, tap ...
There was this nice man who owned a ship, everyone in the town respected him. One day he saw him walking down the same road as he. So he asked him to help repair and build stuff in the shipyard. He knew absolutely nothing about ships, let alone building stuff. But he caught on very quickly and mastered the required skills. That was back when he was a young man, full of energy and his whole life was ahead of him.
Tap, tap, tap ...
His wife was good to him, that's for sure. It was a real shame that she had passed away so early. Together they had accomplished very much, but what a tragedy having to learn to live the rest of his life without her.
Mr Gish? The dentist assistant in her white coat stood at the opposite corner looking for the next patient, and that was me. I stood up, walked past the old man, turned the corner, and I never saw him again.
Have always wanted to delve more into the mysterious world of 3D graphics, so here I go...
Check it out yourself: Three.js Journey.
Minds and machines is an introduction to philosophy of mind. We'll talk more about what philosophy is in general, and what philosophy of mind is in particular, in the first lecture. For now, here is a list of the kinds of questions you can expect to think about in this course:
See: Minds and machines
Back in the good old days when I was a young buck exploring the wonderful world ahead of me, I would muster up renewed courage by listening quite often to 10CC.
What a pleasure it was indeed to finally see them live after all these years, playing their best numbers and rocking the place out.
The concert was at the concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and we (Thea, Nelleke, Maarten and I) enjoyed our fantastic seats in the first row balcony right above them.
My new laptop runs perfectly and I am very happy with it, except for the following problem.
Whenever I shutdown, the screen freezes at the Lenovo logo screen and fails to shutdown properly. Even after waiting several minutes, nothing happens. So in the end, I always have to hold in the power button for several seconds in order to get the laptop to complete the shutdown process properly.
I placed the following message in the Lenovo Support Forum.
I finally figured out what the problem was, I solved it by executing the following command:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535 nvidia-dkms-535
See: Ubuntu Linux Install Nvidia Driver (Latest Proprietary Driver)
We had a fun and relaxing week exploring the southern region of Italy called Puglia. Forming the heel of the boot, the region is known for its whitewashed hill towns, centuries old farmland and hundreds of kilometers of Mediterranean coastline.
See: Photo Album.
As tradition would have it, the end of the golfing season marks the yearly Jong Tegen Oud Matchplay Tournament. This is a long awaited for contest which pits the best of the youth against the finest seniors. The age divide being forty years old (kind of).
It is fine mix of young and old going at each other in the true spirit of golf. Having lost last years match, the team old had some serious grudges to deal with. Not really revenge, but close enough to it.
Consisting of two teams of fourteen each, we played greensomes in the morning followed by singles in the afternoon. Afterwards we had a good old "borrel" with prizes, capping off the festivities with a fun BBQ just joking around into the evening.
We were all very lucky this time around with the weather. For a few days before, it had been raining seriously (cats and dogs), and the golf course was even closed on the previous day.
Well come Sunday morning the sun came out, the sky presented a blanket of blue, and the slightly wet fairways dried out well by the afternoon. To make it fair, we allowed ourselves to bump the ball and clean it if needed. Gimme putts were up for grabs, gentlemen that we were.
This year was no different from previous contests. The young group of whipper snappers looked awesome striking their drives with intensity, right down the middle in what looked like a million miles down the fairway. Flexibility to its extreme and a swing speed beyond belief.
Team old remained undaunted (though a bit shaky). We know from years of experience that long drives alone are not enough. The thinking man has the advantage in the end. It is not about closing your eyes and whacking the ball as far as you can.
Besides, the older you get the better your short game (they say). That is exactly where we came out superior, sinking longish putts and recovering from behind the trees. Team young were tough as nails and put up a good fight. However, in the end team old pulled off a semi-convincing win.
So what if this time around team old was the winner? What really counts is the fun time we had together, sharing a mutual love for an amazing sport, feeling good by the synergy that bubbles forth when the young and the old get together.
In the end, we are all young at heart.
Second place bruto men with a 77 from the back tees, and they still insist on calling me Fred.
It was raining pretty hard in the morning, and with a bogie on the first three holes, I wasn't feeling that confident. Despite the slow start, I kept my head and pulled off a 39 at the turn. With just three bogies on the back nine, I scored a 38, for an honorable 77 total from the back tees. One birdie, no doubles, no penalties, and no lost balls. My handicap went down to a 5.0, not bad for an old man. Breaking the 5.0 level mark might be tough, but it's definitely doable. In twelve years from now, I shouldn't have any problems shooting my age.
Where's the %$#@&%$! hole?!
"I almost died but was reborn. The only thing that I've learned is that life is about suffering. There's no escaping from it. That's the truth. What's important is how we deal with suffering, how we deal with the truth."
Lagertha - The Vikings
She lived her life of ninety-eight years to the fullest, and the time had come for her to leave us for a better place in another dimension. I am very thankful to her for being such a fantastic mother who raised her only child so well, loving and caring for her daughter who grew up and became my loving partner, mother of four children, three grandchildren, et al.
Dag mam, ik zal je missen. Take care.
Awesome and incredible, two adjectives which have taken on a life of their own in the latest language cultural movement of social media.
Meaningless exaggerations to the extreme which have been normalized to muddle up the English language.
"Awesome, don't you think!"
"Pretty incredible, isn't it!"
According to the dictionary, the definition of awesome is "extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring awe," for example "the awesome power of the atomic bomb."
Likewise, the definition of incredible is "impossible to believe," as in "an almost incredible tale of triumph and tragedy."
Remember this when watching videos on the Internet where people are discussing boring subjects and trying to make them more interesting by peppering their monologues with such misplaced extravagant terms.
My handicap has been going up for some time, and today I hit the seven handicap mark. This is not good, and I do not want to accept that growing older means that your handicap goes up and up while your motor skills deteriorate.
The sad thing is that all of those extra training and practicing sessions haven't helped me a single bit. In fact, my scores in tournaments are quite poor and I am feeling very frustrated. It seems that an unpredictable routine of bad luck and errant shots is unfairly destroying my game.
For example, in the club stroke championship I shot a 90, 84 and 85. In the senior stroke championship, I mucked around and shot an 85 and 84. Whatever happened to the good old days when I regularly shot in the seventies? Just keep on trying and hope it's merely a bad dream and goes away soon.
This picture shows the results of a single chipping session from about twenty meters one late afternoon of training for a couple hours. Being able to chip and one putt provides a huge advantage on the golf course, especially for those holes where you just miss the green in regulation and have a challenging chip and putt left over.
In general the results are pretty good, a majority of chances to one putt which is the goal of this exercise.
However, if I were to improve my chipping skills, one notices two things: the ball tends to be to the right of the hole and the average distance is a bit too long.
A good golfer prefers the ball to be long as this means there is a better chance of chipping the ball in the hole, but too far past the hole is not good either.
I therefore have two simple goals for the next time, namely: chip more balls along the line of the hole (close my club face ever so slightly), and avoid chipping the ball too far past the hole (minimal decrease ball strike velocity).
Hurrah, for the first time this year I finally did it: I completed eighteen holes without a single double-bogie, played the very same ball and to top things off I broke eighty.
38 + 38 = 76 (no birdies though).
Finally my handicap has stopped going up and is back down to a 6.4.
Last month my golf game has been very sharp, and I have put in some pretty good rounds. However, starting two weeks ago disaster struck and I cannot figure out what I was doing differently with my swing that has impacted my golf game so negatively.
My woods and long irons were inconsistent, I was striking the club in the ground before the ball, I was rarely contacting well with the ball, and most of my shots were pulled or hooked off to the left.
In desperation I signed up for a one hour golf lesson. With a couple very simple changes the pro saved my life by tweaking my swing.
I noted down a number of key aspects that the pro observed and told me about. I printed out the following list and will carry it with me on the golf course for extra inspiration:
Golf lesson: * Put hands forward. * Feel club leading edge slightly open and right of target. * Do NOT close the face! Long irons and woods: * Stand proud. * Trust your tempo and don't swing too fast. * Stay behind the ball, follow through and do not fall forward. * Do NOT hang hands between the knees! Tip: * Practice hitting draws with open club face.
For the last couple of decades, modern civilization has been very caught up in conserving energy and doing everything possible to avert inevitable ecological disaster. Global warming is getting worse by the year, so we better do something about it soon, or else.
So in our infinite wisdom and tremendous thirst for modern technologies, many factories are rolling out fully electric vehicles, solar panels, windmills, and a multitude of other crazy gadgets..
Since it has become a bit of a panic with time quickly running out, we are not thinking very much about the long term effects of our current decisions. Are these decisions really as sound as we hope? Could the long term effects negate the effects we are attempting to avoid right now?
One aspect of this hurried chaos is that in a few years time we will have an abundance of used and leaking batteries, solar panels, burned out turbines and broken blades. This nasty material will collect and we will end up with mountains of unprocessed man-made junk.
Ironically, in blind frenzy we are so overly focused on avoiding short term disaster that we have forgotten that the long term effects will be a hundred times worse.
Perhaps mother nature has already fated mankind to eventual extinction and there is nothing we can do about it. I hope not.
Played at De Koepel golf course today in preparation of next week's big senior championship. About a two hour drive to get there, but it was worth it.
I think that I am finally starting to play better again. Shot an okay 37 + 41 = 78 with one birdie and two stupid double bogies. The back nine is much more difficult. Wish me luck next week.
Whenever we visit my elderly relative in the care home, and the weather being suitable enough, we take her downstairs to have a nice cup of coffee out on the patio which has a pleasant view of the garden. She enjoys the sounds of birds and the beautifully colored flowers and plants.
There are a number of older folk living there with various levels of one or the other ailment. A large majority have to be pushed around in wheelchairs, and sometimes you see someone walking along slowly using a wheeled walker.
On this occasion, there was an older man scuffling along the garden path which is made of gravel and is circular in shape. The path takes you along the perimeter of the garden with a total length of some thirty meters.
For whatever reason, this older man kept moving faster and faster. As he picked up sufficient pace, his legs seems to go out of control, propelling him at a pretty significant running speed. Indeed, his body had acquired youthful energy, and he was jogging along like someone half of his age.
At first I just thought that he was exercising extra hard, after being cooped up all day inside of his room. But it soon became apparent that he could not keep up with his quickly shuffling legs, and he launched himself onto the patio about to hit a table. Fortunately there was another person sitting there and she caught him by the arm just in time. Whew, that was a close one. His right right arm was bleeding slightly due to his brushing violently along the bushes during the final lap.
I learned later that this behavior is a common syndrome of people suffering from Parkinson's disease. The trembling of extremities sometimes gets triggered and turns into more violent synchronized motions. In the case of the old man, his shaking legs went into turbo mode and sped him along like a unmanned projectile. Getting faster and faster until disaster was ready to strike.
Let's not forget to be thankful for our good health now. Appreciate life to its utmost while you can.
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