Trends of 2009 - Naked Paintings

Framing pictures and paintings is really something from the past. These days hanging frameless paintings on the walls is the hip thing to do.

Let's face it. If painters wanted you to frame their painting they'd leave a white border around it. A frame hides a considerable portion of the image. It's a pity.

So, take your pictures and paintings out of their frames and hang them on the wall "naked".

Still Alive

Approximately 6 months have past since my last blogging. This was not without reason. I've been fighting esophageal cancer. The fight isn't entirely over yet, but the end is nigh.

I've had my esophagus removed and a piece of the stomach after three enduring chemotherapies. The remainder of the stomach has been resected into a tubular stomach. After the operation I've been scheduled for another three chemotherapies. I'm right in the middle of them now. So, the frequency of blogging won't be high right away.

Battles have been fought and won, the war is almost over.

I wish all of you a safe turn of the year and a healthy and care free 2009

-- Anonymousy

Imaginary friend

Found this on http://agnosticatheism.files.wordpress.com:

Google found me!!

Yoo-hoo!! Google's Web Search just found my blog for the very first time. I fed it my blog's name and it found me. Still, the blog doesn't seem to be completely indexed yet.
And what's even more strange, Google's Blog Search still doesn't find me... That's odd.

19-apr-2008 update: It seems Google's Blog Search has caught up with it's brother. Finally!

Goodbye ZoneAlarm!!

I have been a long time user of the free ZoneAlarm Firewall. I think it is the most wonderful free firewall application for Windows since a very long time. In fact, I can remember using it before I got Windows XP. Today ZoneAlarm asked me to install their latest version. After having zigged and zagged around their commercial offers I downloaded the free version and installed it. After the obligatory re-boot I fired up my Firefox and to my surprise... I see an enormous fat ZoneAlarm Spyblocker toolbar. Did I ask for it? No, I didn't! I can't remember having seen and ticked an opt-in button! I really hate all those "free" toolbars. They disguise themselves as a handy search engine, anti-spyware add-on or what-not. But the bottom line is: I use Google for all my search-engining so I really don't need anything else, thank you! And most "free" toolbars are really just spyware anyway. So, when I found the ZoneAlarm toolbar staring in my face, I guess something just snapped.
I didn't just uninstall the wretched toolbar. No-o-o-o!! I just uninstalled ZoneAlarm altogether and went on to switch on the Windows XP firewall instead.

...

Talk about an unexpected turn of events, hey!

I tested the firewall on ShieldsUP!. It gave me a full stealth result. Well, obviously my NAT-router is definitely helping out a bit ;-)

So, from me, it's Goodbye ZoneAlarm and good riddance!!

Prioritising e-mail

I had a discussion with some colleagues about the best way of handling e-mail messages. The most heared problem is that people tend to get distracted by the "you have new mail" signals their computers are configured to flash, whenever an e-mail message arrives in their inbox. Once new mail arrives, those signals coerce the user to immediately check to see what's new. This greatly distracts people from their task at hand.

E-mail is just like the telephone. A dictator of your time and attention. When I'm talking to someone and the phone rings, it's extremely annoying when the conversation is stopped in favour of answering the phone. It's even more annoying when the phone call drags on and appears to be of no added value whatsoever. The main problem is that this consumes time of at least two people who could have otherwise had a more productive discussion.

New mail messages take up only your own time. But, that doesn't make it less of a problem. Once you've dealt with the mail, you'll need extra time to get focused again on the task at hand. And the question remains whether you can get back on the train of thoughts that you jumped off of when the new mail arrived. I've known myself to get distracted so much that I couldn't remember where my thoughts were going for several hours. Talk about loss of productivity.

There is an alternative: Switch off the new mail announcements and make a plan. For example, plan to check your mail (1) in the morning right after starting up the computer, then (2) just after lunch and (3) just before going home. To help me process my mail as efficiently as possible I tend to classify my mail according the flowchart below.


(Click on the image for a larger view)

Have fun, don't get stressed out.

Nose to the Grindstone

Keep your nose to the Grindstone ...

and a band-aid at the ready.

Ear to the Ground

If you put your ear to the ground...

Beware of stampeding buffalo!

Firefox 2 settings optimised for broadband

These settings should be changed to optimise Firefox for use on a broadband connection:

Go to the internal webpage about:config
Then enter the filter: network.http
Find and select the setting network.http.pipelining and toggle it to the value true
Find and doubleclick the setting network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and change the default value (4) to something like 15
Find and select the setting network.http.proxy.pipelining and toggle it to the value true

Change the filter to: nglayout
If it isn't already there, add the setting nglayout.initialpaint.delay by rightclicking and selecting the menu option New > Integer and set it to the value 0 (zero).

Klaprozen - Papaver

(Click the image to see a larger version)

Firefox Favorite Add-on [8]: Zombie Keys

Entering European languages (which include diacritics (accented characters, diaeresis, umlauts, etc.), ligatures, the Euro sign, etc.) into Mozilla applications using an English keyboard doesn't have to be a pain any more!

This extension implements Microsoft's Keyboard shortcuts for international characters (http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/hfws.aspx?AssetID=HP051865621033).

Use ZombieKeys and bring dead keys to life!

Check out http://zombiekeys.mozdev.org/, too!

FireFox Favorite Add-On [7]: SwitchProxy

When you move around a lot you tend to come across the problem that every company has it's own proxy settings. In order to browse the web, you need to know those proxy settings and configure FireFox with them. Changing the proxy settings everyday starts to become a nuisance, pre-tty quickly. So, I like to use ProxyGet to discover the settings. Once discovered, I use the SwitchProxy add-on to quickly switch between multiple proxy configurations.

Carrying my office around

Due to my work I tend to move around from one company to another. So, I decided to get me a USB-drive. I bought an OCZ ATV 4GB stick at Alternate.nl. And installed PortableApps on it. The applications I like to take with me are the portable versions of:

• OpenOffice
• FireFox
• 7-Zip
• The Gimp
• KeePass
• NotePad 2
• ProxyGet utility
• Sumatra PDF
• VLC Media Player
• WinDirStat

and a few other small applications I won't mention here. The complete installation is rougly 380MB. On top of that I've installed SciLab which is very easily made portable and only takes about 150MB of diskspace.

FireFox Favorite Add-On [6]: IE View

Lets you load pages in IE from the context-menu (clicking with the rightside mousebutton on the page in question).
Additionally you can mark certain sites to always load in IE. Which is very useful for incompatible pages (eg. update.microsoft.com).

What a way to start a Spring...

This Spring (2008) started with a hailstorm. The rest of the day the rain kept pouring down and temperatures did not go much above +5°C in Tilburg. And to top it all of, this weekend will be the coldest Easter weekend in the past 40 years. Frost and snow are expected for the early Easter monday.

What utter BS. Ofcourse it's going to be cold. It's normal for the time of year to be this cold or to get the occasional snow or hail storm. I find it very strange that scientists would compare the weather conditions of the 23rd of March with those of let's say the 23rd of April and then be surprised that it is colder than "usual". Where "usual" is later in the season.
Based on climatic data from the KNMI for the period of 1971 until 2000 the average temperature for this time of the year (March) is 6.0°C. The minimum temperature is 1.8°C and the maximum being 10.0°C. Whereas, the same parameters for April are:
Average = 8.5°C
Minimum = 3.4°C
Maximum = 13.4°C
So, the expected weather seems to fit the historical data nicely and the fact that it is cold shouldn't surprise anybody...

FireFox Favorite Add-On [5]: FireFTP

Another one of those brilliant add-ons for FireFox is called: FireFTP.

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more!

Fully integrated in FireFox, there is no need for another FTP client anymore.

FireFox Favorite Add-On [4]: Tabbrowser Preferences

Enables enhanced control for some aspects of tabbed browsing.

This add-on is an enhancement for the basic tab controls provided in Firefox. It replaces the existing user interface with a new, more visible user interface, and also includes UI for other hidden features that are part of the browser, as well as features provided explicitly by the extension.

This add-on has not seen an update since october 2006. I hope when Firefox 3 gets around the features are either covered by FF3 or this add-on will be updated.

FireFox Favorite Add-On [3]: Adblock Filterset.G Updater

This is a companion extension to Adblock Plus and is used in conjunction with it. This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet. In addition, this extension allows you to define your own set of filters that you can add along with Filterset.G during an update.

Thanks to Adblock Plus with Filterset.G I hardly ever see an advert or banner. A definite must-have for every Firefox user!

Update 30-Dec-2008: As of version 1.0 of Adblock Plus, the Filterset.G add-on is nolonger needed. In fact, it is advised to uninstall it as Adblock Plus already has its functionality built-in.

FireFox Favorite Add-On [2]: Adblock Plus

Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. Adblock Plus prevents the download of unwanted ads and banners. As a result webpage loads can be significantly faster.

Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu - the banner won't be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well. Or you select a filter subscription when Adblock Plus starts up the first time, then even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter subscription will block most advertisements fully automatically.

Thanks to Adblock Plus with Filterset.G I hardly ever see an advert or banner. An absolute must-have for all Firefox users

FireFox Favorite Add-On [1]: NoScript

NoScript allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site, and guards the "trust boundaries" against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS).
NoScript uses a whitelist to determine which sites are allowed to execute Java, JavaScript, Flash, SilverLight and other plug-ins.
This is definitely an add-on you can't browse without.

Riddle [2]

Here's a riddle, you know the answer?

It's white and I'm going to throw it away. What is it?

Read the first comment for the answer.

Little Thumby

The story that follows is an adaptation of "Little Dumpie" itself a parody on "Le Petit Poucet Conte" by Perrault. The parody was published in 1999 on http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~jloeff/Dumpy.htm. It nolonger exists. I've slightly adapted the story and republished it here. The name of the parody's author is unknown.

There was is a little boy, who was so little, that everyone gave him the byname of Little Thumby. He had five brothertjes and sex sistertjes. His father was a woodhacker and his mother was working in the household. On a given day the father said: "I hold it no longer out, I work myself completely to pletter". "What are you going to do now?" mother said. "Well", the father said, "tomorrow I bring the hole bubs into the wood and when they are very enough I let them in the steak". But Little Thumby, very good by the time and heartsticky pienter, had heard everything. At night he had two cuts of bread and he slipped out of the bed. He went to the toonpath and propped his sacks full of ceeselstones.
The next morning the father brought the childeren into the wood. And by every step, Little Thumby let fallen a ceeselstone. When they were very enough in the wood the father let them in the steak. But Little Thumby said to his brothertjes and sistertjes "Kelm on, kelm on, doenot kraai, I bring you heelhouds beck". And via his ceeselstones they came home.
The father was just sitting on the play as he heard the doorbel rinkle. There was the hole bubs again.
The next morning the father did the zelfde. But Thumby had no time to pick up ceeselstones, so he did it with a packy volkoren King Corn (the only you smite away is the verpacking). When the olders let them in the steak again, Little Thumby said opnew: "Kelm on, kelm on, I bring you heelhouds back just like gister". But he could not find the way because those verreckte mushes had eaten up the bread. The childeren kraaid and kraaid. Little Thumpy said: "Keep your big waffles shut", and he clowterde in a tree, looked om his heen and saw a little lightje. It was the light of the house of a big rus, and russen like to eat little childeren up with howd and hair. But as I said, Little Thumby was very pienter, he packed the seven miles leersen of the big rus and he runde to their home. The father stood by the gardenheckey with a verrelooker and saw the hole bubs coming down. And when they not are storven, they still live long and happy.

The end.

Riddle [1]

Here's a riddle, you know the answer?

It's blue and it doesn't weigh much. What is it?

Read the first comment for the answer.

Glass Thingy

The "Glass Thingy" was created using MegaPOV in Januari of 2005.


(Click on the image to view a larger version)

This project was originally an experiment with blobs. When I discovered MegaPOV's HDR image capabilities I used the blobs experiment to experiment with HDRI, radiosity and photons. The HDR image used is the uffizi_probe.hdr probe (Uffizi Gallery in Florence) from Paul Debevec's site.

Research studies from money-driven science

I must say that I have to agree entirely with the post referred to here. It seems that the media are becoming increasingly lazy and decreasingly critical towards "scientific" information.

Companies that will benefit from a particular outcome wil tend to promote that outcome, either by screening the research report and filtering the information in it to fit their own needs, or they will sponsor "scientists" for as long as the research supplies them with the "right" data. A press release then pushes the "facts" to the public with many thanks to the gullible journalists. Publish it now and get the scoop, no need to check the facts...

Beads'N'Wires

From September until October of 2004 I worked on the "Beads'N'Wires" project.


(Click on the image for a larger view)

I used this toy of my children as a study object. I started by trying to create the wooden beads. That resulted in this trial image:

(Click on the image for a larger view)

Then I went on to model the tabletop, the wooden plank and the wires. The result:

(Click on the images for a larger view)

I think it looks great. Don't you?

CSoaRP

This artwork is called: CSoaRP. It was created in Jun of 2004 using POV-Ray.


(Click image to view a larger version)

Within the POV-Ray community it is customary to create an image of a sphere on a checkered plane as some kind of initiation project. But, also more accomplished artists tend to produce variations of the theme. I started the "Checkered Sphere on a Reflective Plane" project somewhere in Jun-2004. A few months after I had discovered the software. IN the past I had been dabbling with QRT on my Acorn
computer.


(Click image to view a larger version)

I lost the sources when my PC was fried by a lightning strike. Fortunately, I could retrieve the images I made back then. The top image shows a black-and-white checkered sphere. Shortly after I made that image, I obtained a macro for a floor texture by Mike Raiford. Using that texture I created a second image showing a red-and-white checkered sphere. If you look closely at the full-resolution version, you'll be able to distinguish the results of my experiments with an oily film on the sphere's surface.

Islands

This artwork is named: Islands. I created it in August of 2004. The image was made using POV-Ray.


(Click image to view a larger version)

The AirCastle experiment (not published here) and the obligatory "Reflective Sphere on a Checkered Plane" scene inspired me to make a 'checkered plane' of trees on clouds. Because the original idea of many such islands proved to be an impossible strain on available memory and CPU power, I reduced the scene to what it is now. The clouds are based on a macro by Gilles Tran. The tree was made using the TomTree macro v1.5 by Tom Aust and Gena Obukhov.

The way of the computer [3]

E-mail had my special attention. I participated in a project to supply the RISC OS world with an e-mail client that could manage mailing-lists. The ease with which I could do this illustrates the open and approachable nature of the platform. Creating the same application on current technology machines would cost me a tremendous amount of money and time to complete.

At first I had a CompuServe account and e-mail was stored on the CompuServe computers. Then I got myself a dial-in UUCP account at Hack-tic that later changed it's name into XS4ALL. The UUCP account was used to read mail and news. Mind you, those were the days of gopher, wais, telnet, ftp and usenet. The World Wide Web was still in the making, spam was still canned meat and 19k2 was as fast as it gets. So, mail and news was really everything one needed.

I needed something to be compatible with my computer at work. So, I sold my RISC PC and bought a personal computer running Windows98. From then on, my e-mail address changed almost annually as I was trying to find the cheapest dial-in deal. With the advent of ADSL came also Internet via Cable.

Over the years I've migrated my e-mail from one system to another. My first mailbox was on-line at CompuServe, then I went (rougly) from !TTFN and !Newsbase to Outlook Express followed by Pegasus Mail and Thunderbird and now I'm back to an on-line service: GMail. Go figure.

The Road Goes Ever On...

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains of the moon.

The Road goes ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

puC: Top of Flop?

Alweer een halfjaar geleden kwamen Ahold en consorten met de puC. Vlak na de introductie liep het storm. Iedereen was laaiend enthousiast. Het consumentenprogramma Kassa bestempelde het apparaat in oktober van 2007 nog als beste koffieapparaat. Er zouden legio nieuwe mogelijkheden voor de puC gelanceerd worden. Zo wordt op de website van de puC gehint naar verschillende smaken. Ook soep is al eens als mogelijkheid genoemd.

Nu, een halfjaar later is het angstaanjagend stil rond de puC. Bij de plaatselijke AH staat nog steeds een stapel puC's geduldig te wachten op een nieuwe eigenaar. Maar niemand lijkt geinteresseerd. Andere smaken? Helaas. Soep? Sorry!

Gaat de puC een stille dood tegemoet? Vrees van wel.

I wonder why...

I like this poem by Richard P. Feynman, because of how changing emphasis changes the meaning of just three words.

I wonder why, I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!

-- Richard P. Feynman (when studying at MIT for a psychology class by prof. Robinson)

I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think...

There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.

Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.

Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the pattern of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.

Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with conciousness;
matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.

-- Richard P. Feynman (1955)

A book I'd recommend: "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" by Richard P. Feynman.

Adding a Tag Cloud to my blog

I was very interested in the category clouds or tag clouds that others have on there blogs. Many thanks go to blogbeebe for pointing me to the blog of phydeaux3 who has put up clear instructions and code on how to include this on Blogger. Thanks phydeaux3!
I'm very pleased with the result.

The way of the computer [2]

Those days saw the demise of the homecomputer and the rise of the personal computer and with it the advent of Microsoft Windows. Writing programs for computers became increasingly difficult. The ease with which it was possible to program an MSX computer (even at the assembly level) was replaced by the awful GWBASIC. The joy of programming and of setting a computer to obey your every whim slowly left the domain of the hobbyist.

Then I came across the Acorn Archimedes. With just a megabyte of memory on board and a mere 4 GHz I was amazed by the raw power of the RISC processor. So, I decided to buy me an A310 and enjoyed programming it in BBC BASIC (with built in Assembler mind you). The fun of computer programming was back within my reach again. I had my trusty Acorn re-fitted with 4MB and later upgraded the operating system to RISC OS 2. When RISC OS 3 was released I traded my A310 for an A5000. And some years later stepped up to a RISC PC.

In those days the Internet slowly came into view. Thanks to pioneers like CompuServe e-mail and newsgroups were becoming common. To get on the world wide web, I'd point my browser to www.cern.ch where HTML was born and get surfing from there. I still remember that you could select a country from a list of countries. From there you were taken to the country's "homepage", where you could surf further to sites of schools and service providers. And so on.

Stay tuned. There's more to come.

The way of the computer [1]

In those days personal computers were a rarety. Those were the days of the ZX-81 and I was a boy of around 12-13. I had just finished the MAVO and was going to the MTS. In the library I found a book about BASIC and used it to gain a theoretical knowledge about how computers work and how the BASIC language worked. This gave me a headstart in school. My logical way of thinking, I think, was largely seeded during that summer holiday.

Several years later I purchased my first computer: a Sony HitBit 75 MSX homecomputer. With it I furthered my knowledge of BASIC programming and some Assembler and C on the side. It allowed me to understand the nature of bugs, how they develop and how to prevent them. I developed a modular method of writing programs. By adding short pieces of code and then debugging them, it allowed me to deliver almost bugfree code everytime an application was finished. This ofcourse annoyed my (older) colleagues, who kept reminding me that it was absolutely impossible to write a bugfree program everytime their code fell over or when I pointed an error out by saying: "What's that for?"

Ofcourse, I'm no genius and I've had my share of embarrasing moments.

The MSX era was one where programs were saved to cassette-tape. I wonder if there are kids around of about 18 that are aware of that piece of equipment. It's all USB-sticks and terabyte harddiscs nowadays. And you have no idea where the data is going. If you take a disk or a stick apart. Can you point out the part where this program or that is stored? I bet not. But in those day I could tell you on which cassette a particular program was and exactly where on the tape, too. And if a program was loading, you could hear the actual bits flowing into the computer! Imagine that. Wonderful!

Remember the 8" floppy disc, 5 1/4" floppies and eventually the 3 1/2" that stuck around until not so very long ago. They're still used, occasionally. I've handled a PDP-11/44 harddisk. In those days the storage capacity was at about 10MB for a single-layer disk with a diameter of (I'm guessing) about 40cm.

The point to this post I was going to make has eluded me for the moment. I'll come back to it when "it" comes back to me.

Lorem Ipsum

Homo sum humani nil a me alienum puto
Mens Agitat Molem

WeBlog on our WebLog

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This text is in the default font that is defined for the style of the page
This text is in the Arial font.
This text is set in the Courier font. Nice equally spaced characters
This font is called Georgia. Looks a lot like Times
This is called Lucinda Grande. Looks like a squashed Times
This is the Times font. Mmm. Nice for books and newspapers
This font is called Trebuchet. Looks a bit like stretched Arial.
This is Verdana. Mmm. Arial with more white.
This is the webdings font. Looks like normal text to me.
And this is the default font again.