Just created a small page for packages I build: Packages
Main reason for this is the making and publishing of my wiipresenter packages, Wiipresenter is nice tool for doing presentations with the WiiMote, it’s not finished yet, but works quite well already. Sadly though, the original makers don’t do much about them, but Dag Wiers made some patches to get them to work on recent systems, and packaged them in RPM. Since I don’t use any RPM based systems I build some debian packages for it.
So Wiipresent runs in a terminal still, but intelligently guesses the application in current focus to adapt it’s functionality to it. In openoffice presenter you navigate through the slides, in firefox you can switch your tabs and scroll through the pages. When pressing A+B in any application it toggles the mouse control with the motion sensor. It can also resize text, switch between applications(like alt-tab) and much more.

Great application, and now also as a debian package, i386 and amd64.

In the Last week most south-east-asian countries on the pasific coasts have been battered by the typhoons Ketsana and Parma. Next to that Indonesia has been hit by 2 major eartquakes (7.6 and 6.8) and Samoa by a tsunami.

The Philippines first got hit by typhoon Ketsana. Resulting in by 295 death and 39 still missing. And leaving over 400.000 people homeless.
Ketsana was shortly followed by typhoon Parma, resulting in: 17 deaths, 61,600 metric tons of rice destroyed, 74,373 hectares of rice-growing areas and 6,000 tons of corn, fruits and vegetables. With windspeeds of 195kph to 230kph.
Total financial damages up to 96 milion USD.

Pictures

After the Philippines, Ketsana struck Vietnam. This resulted in 159 deaths, 112 milion USD in crop losses, 180.000 destroyed homes and 50.000 hectares of agricultural land destroyed. There also where miles of railroad tracks washed away or destroyed.

(on average, vietnam gets 6.4 typhoons a year, this is the 9th and there some more months in the season).

Following Vietnam, Ketsana hit Cambodia and Laos.

In Cambodia the death-toll topped 17 and 1519 people lost their homes. Cambodia lost 50.000 of rice paddies, 40km of road was destroyed and 160 irrigation systems.

In Laos 24 people died and 135 people are still missing. 37.500 are homeless due to the storm. The water of the sekong river had risen 13-15 meters, arround 14 villages have been flooded.

In most affected areas in these countries the water levels haven’t dropped yet or are even still rising. Support organisations are working hard on saving and supporting people, but due to the damages to infrastructure this has turned out quite difficult.

In the mean time,  in Samoa and Tonga where hit my a big tsunami of about 7.5m in height which swept land inwards upto 1.5 km. In total arround 170 people died and thousands where turned homeless.

Next to all this, Sumatra (Indonesia) got hit by 2 earthquakes, one of a 7.6 and one of 6.8 magnitude. arround 1600 people did not survive the quake, but some hunderds more are still at risk due to famine. arround 38.000 homes where damaged, leaving thousands of people homeless.

This leaves the south-east-asian area quite battered and the typhoon season isn’t over yet for the comming months. Typhoons Parma and Super Typhoon Melor are still in the area. Threatening Japans and the Philipines.

So we’ve sailed across the ‘waddenzee’ to Terschelling, lovely sailing. I slept horrible but we had almost 7 hours of good sailing. Going on motor to the Lorentz lock to pass through to the open sea arround 8.30. We arrived arround 09.15 and had to wait in the lock for some other yachts to come in. At about 9.50 we left the lock to the open seas.

Good wind, a nice 4Bft, We’re also nice on time. We could only pass through at 10.15 thourgh the boontjes, so right on time. We had the tide in our favour here, both in hight as in the flow. We went fairly fast and arrived just past 11.00 near Harlingen, where we again, or still had the tide in our favor. At 12.15 was high-tide an the flow was already going outwards here, again the right direction. We had a south-west wind  all the way and passed through the slenk with a good 8.5-8.7knots, quit fun to do. :) We arrived in Terschelling at about 15.10.

On Terschelling it was for me definitly the end of a hot and long day. I only kinda woke-up after some afternoon sleep and a cool breeze at dinner. We found a nice restaurant at Terschelling next to the brandaris. We kind-off planned on meeting our cousin on Terschelling, but sadly that didn’t work out in the end. In the morning we again, sailed off early in the morning with the tide to Harlingen, We left at about 8.40, being only the 3rd out of the harbor it seemed.

This time I slept a whole lot better then the night before, which made me enjoy the trip a bi more. We still had a south western wind which made it a bit more work to get to Harlingen, but certainly no less fun. 3-4Bft was enough to get a decent ammount of speed, and we tried to stat as high on the wind as we could, keeping track of the depth almost constantly. At about 13.35 we arrived in Harlingen, 10 minutes pas high-tide. Right on time.

In Harlingen we still had most of the day left, and since it was blazing hot (it was cool on the water) we slacked most of the day. We walked about arround the city and I shot my last few pictures of kodachrome64 for the trip and mailed the film. We had some icecream, did some shopping, had lunch, dinner. A slow but nice day.

Our next trip to Stavoren would take us back through the ‘boontjes’ and this time we could only leave after 11.00 due to the tide. We left with a friend of my brother at 11.15. The wind changed to north-north-east, which was again nice in our favour. We arrived quite on time at the Lorentz-lock but this apeared to have some failure and we had to wait together with quite a load of other boats until it was fixed. At about 15.00 we finally made it through and we’re back at the ijselmeer again. Still the wind in our back and going well, good weather and about 3Bft. At about 17.30 we found a nice spot in the old harbor of Stavoren.

Stavoren is for me and my brother a bit bit special, about 23 years a go we lived there for a couple of years as young kids. Personally I’ve beed there only once since and then just for a short drive-through. It was rather sureal to walk through the small place, it’s small place and I recouldnised quite a lot of old places. Old memories started to make a bit more sense with the renewed memory of the layout. I was only 4 or 5 back then, now 28. The perspective was off ofcourse. I also re-read the story of ‘het vrouwtje van Stavoren‘, which now seems to have a more obvious link with St Lucia’s flood. I ended the day by sitting on the pier-light and enjoying the evening with wind and water. I’m glad we visited this place and I might cycle there one day (there’s a ferry going from Enkhuizen :).

Today (Thursday the 10th of September 2009), was our last day of sailing, tomorrow at 10.00 (am) we have to return the boat. We had a short bit of sailing from Stavoren to Andijk. The wind was still North-East and about 4-5Bft sometimes going up to 6 according to the KNMI. The waves grew a bit larger the more we got to the west side of the lake, but still nothing really bad. It was an uneventfull quiet trip where we enjoyed the sunny weather and watched a training-rescue-operation somewhere along the way. At 14.00 we got back in Andijk, where we lunched, slacked, had dinner and slacked some more.

Tomorrow morning we wake-up early and leave at arround 9.00, the end of a good week of sailing. We had good weather all week, Always some wind, nothing unsailable. We’ve had different sites, different crews, different places to visit.

I can only say I loved it.

ps.

ah yes, you might want to see some pictures, here’s some stuff I shot with my phone:

I love sailing, just don’t do it too often, sadly. Anyway, my brother decided to rent a nice 30ft motor-sailer(a Hanse-315) for a week and go sailing. I joined.

We arrived on the boat  last friday, making things ready. Resulted in a bit of hassle with drving a lot since he forgot is wallet somewhere, but in the evening we we’re quite set.

On saturday my aunt, uncle and cousins arrived for the weekend and after brining their car to Makkum (their final destination), we sailed off. We didn’t depart too early since we had to wait for the wind to calm down. In the end we had about 5-6bft (20-21 knots or 37-38 km/h). Sailing to Den Oever we had the wind quite rough comming from our port side. We arrived arround 18:00 in Den Oever we’re we had dinner and an early bed.

Today (Sunday), we sailed fearly early from Den Oever to Makkum. We had a nice wind in our back  going at about 6 knots (10,8Km/h), with a windspeed of about 3-4bft (or 10-12 knots). We dropped our anker near breezanddijk at about 13:00 for lunch. I busied myself most of the time with practising some navigation, my brother keeping an eye on everything and making sure everybody did what needed to be done. My cousin Matthew spent most of his time at the helm, and the others a little less. Between the stops we had a lot of relaxing and enjoying the water & wind, it was quite a good day I think.

We arrived in the marina of Makkum arround 16:00 where we had tea and our guests left for home. My brother and I did some shopping and made ourselfs some dinner. After that the planning for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we’re sailing to Terschelling (atleast that’s our current plan :). And on the Waddenzee we can’t sail everywhere all the time, so we needed to plan the tides. Currently we’re departing here arround 8.30 and hoping to have passed the ‘boontjes’ (the bit between Kornwerderzand and Harlingen) at arround 11.00. The Wind looks good, although a bit rough. I think it’ll be a nice day. :)

Yesterday (27-08-2009), we visited the Cabfablab fablab in The Hague with a small group.

A bit difficult to find it seemed, but we managed to get to the old Cabalero factory and then finally the ‘office’ of the Cabfablab. Two spaces, numbers 73 and 74. One for ‘noisy’ equipment and one for more ‘quiet’ work.

Overall it’s a nice clean place, quite light. They’ve got about the usual on machinery:

• Laser cutter for cutting wood & plastics or ‘writing’ on metal’
• Vinyl cutting plotter
• Heat transfer vinyl and the like on fabrics (e.a. for t-shirts)
• Small 3D miller
• 3D-Printer
• A medium sized CNC machine
• A wiki
• A diversity of small tools

They’re with a small group of volunteers, and their aim is mainly to facilitate students, self-employed and artists. Unlike other fablabs the Cabfbalab does not ave free days.

Usage of their equipment comes down to 25 euros per hour + materials. For the 3D-printer you just have to pay for the raw material. There are some exceptions, but see their website for that.

They do try to keep the open spirit quite alive, besides having most tings running on closed source software, it’s kind of a problem with having software that controls the machines.

I think it’s a nice workspace, good atmosphere just  too bad they don’t have free days. Certainly worth a visit.

Link: http://www.cabfablab.nl/

Pictures:

Uitgegeven in 1983 door een onbekende uitgever is ‘Kuifje in El Salvador’. Een politieke parodie grotendeels opgebouwd uit originele werken van Hergé.

Het stripwerk is een politieke boodschap tegen de onderdrukking in El Salvador. Kuifje en Haddock brengen onbedoeld een lading wapens naar El Salvador waardoor ze daar in de locale strijd verwikkeld worden.  Het verhaal speelt zich voornamelijk af rond Kapitein Haddock. waar Kuifje de rol speelt van sceptische meewerker met de staat (opzoek naar een of ander zegel), Raakt Haddock in contact en begaan met de lokale bevolking.

Hierbij de ‘kleine’ png bestanden in zip-file:

Kuifje_in_El_Salvador.png.zip

Torrent met groot formaat png bestanden.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5067314 (currently offline)

I have this desire to make double chocolate chip cookies. And I want to make the perfect one. Yesterday I decided to give it all another try. The results are as follows:

Experiment #1:

I decide to make a mix of 200 gram self-raising flour(flour+bakingsoda), 100 gram cacao, 150grams of sugar,  200 grams of butter (margerine), .1 egg and about 100grams of chocolate chips (70%).

Attempt #1: Horriby  dry, can’t say why. but not fit for consumption.

Attempt #2: Added 50grams of butter, the mixture got a lot more sticky, results where less dry but nothing specia.

Attempt #3: by now the ammount of dough shrinked considerably but I decided to add another egg. Result: quite eggy cake like chocolate chip cookies. not bad at all. Ofcourse at this point I’ve got no idea what the right ammounts are

Attempt #4: Added more flour as number #3 was really sticky, result: more cookie like cookies. Also not bad, but a bit bitter. And not a clue on how to reproduce. I fail at science.

Experiment #2:

Attempt #1: 200 grams of self-raising flour, 150 grams of granulated sugar, 250 grams of butter, 100 grams of cacao, 2 eggs and 100 grams of chocolate chips (70%). Result: Good structure, but not very tasty, still a bit dry and bitterish.

Attempt #2: Added another 100 grams of sugar. Result: Sweet. :) Structure is quite good although they stay fluid quite long after taking them out of the oven.

Unlundun, by China Miéville.

I read it in just a few days, could hardly stop. But digesting a good book also ought to take time I think. If you eat uhm read it all at once, you’ll lose flavour, and I wanted to savor every bit of taste. So yes, I liked it.

You might want to read the book before reading on…

Continue reading ‘Unlundun.’ »

Back from HAR2009 last night, and obviously I loved it.

HAR2009 was quite wonderful, I usually run arround helping out where I can, but this year decided to take it easy and be a ‘visitor’. I can only say it was only slightly more relaxed. I still volunteered a little and still hopped from A to B to C to D. I managed to actually build something though, an Arduino based MIDI-controller, simple but for some odd reason anoying to get it to actually work. Also got to meet and talk to a lot of familiar and unfamiliar people and had overal quite a lot of fun.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the 4 yearly event this time named HAR. It’s big and that creates a paradoxal feeling for me.

I love how it brings people together, and with that how I get to see lots of people again. I also love the atmosphere these events bring, I’m almost always sorry that it’s over. Something about such a lot of cool/like-minded/fun people in one small space. IT’s like the ‘perfect’ town/village.

There is a downside on it though. Or some actually, and it all comes down to size. It’s only a short event and I never get see and talk to everyone there, and for me that ends up usually in lots of short contacts with lots of people. Not ideal, you never get to be really talking to anyone. And if you do, you miss out on quite a lot.

Big events are also expensive like hell, both in time and money. It’s I think always worth it, but because of it, you end up with a high entrance price which font fit everyone’s budget and raising the threshold for joining.

I think events like WTH, CCC-Camp, HAR, etc have a good place, I also think it’s good that they’re not every year. That way there is space for smaller events, sometimes more specialised, ususally a lot easier to join.

Events like ETH0, EasterHegg, ICMP, Opencommunity Camp, Hackmeetings, Megabit, and many more.  They often only have a few hunderd people max, but contact is closer, it’s easier to have a longer event, more intimate and higher impact. And mainly you can have more of them, making the overall experience even longer and diverser (although many people still have the problem with having to work and all that crap ;).

So I’d love to see more people organise more smaller events, and I love for people to work on CCC Camp in 2 years and build another Dutch event in 4 years. Maybe with even more people.

So see you in 4 years, 2 years or maybe in 2 months.

And also Special Thanks to:

• Organisation & active volunters: You’ve done a load, and by far the most work in getting this event pulled off.
• HARdware village for providing a great place for hacking on hardware and providing kits.
• Geraffel village for helping out with my midi project by providing tips, connectors and a synth for testing
• Arduino village for providing the arduino and help debugging.
• C-Base for a nice place with nice people and nice food :)
• Everyone for making this again another wonderful event.

Bladerend door een oud kookboek kwam ik het volgende tegen:

Philips advertentie (klik om te lezen)

Een oude Philips advertentie. Grappig en fout, daarnaast tekenend voor hoe toen het beeld van de vrouw was. Geeft ook wel aan hoe weinig vooruitstrevend commercie is/was op het gebied van politiek.

Quote:

“Het is met grote en gerechtvaardigde trots, dat iedere huisvrouw de keuken aan haar gasten toont. Het fornuis, de potten en pannen, kortom de gehele inventaris is een deel van haar geluk, dat ze voor geen geld zou willen missen.”

Nu ben ik ook wel blij met een goede keuken hoor, niks mis met lekker koken. Maar om het nu meteen een deel van je geluk te noemen. ‘t Heeft wel een ‘heerlijk ouderwetse’ uitstraling. Erg typerend, voor tijden die gelukkig voorbij zijn. :)