Just so you know: I will be working in England for a short while. I’ll still be reachable via the usual channels though, so no worries :)
Engeland, here I come!
June 12th, 2009David Eddings passed away
June 9th, 2009Jake alerted me to the fact that David Eddings passed away. Eddings wrote the Belgariad, a series of books which was my first exposure to non-Dutch fantasy, and (if I remember correctly) even wrote the first non-Dutch books I read. Over the years, I have frequently re-read the Belgariad and the Mallorean, every time enjoying it. I have read quite some fantasy books since then, but apart from Guy Gavriel Kay’s “Fionavar Tapestry” I have not come accross works that capture me as much as Eddings did. He wrote more than I have read. I plan to address that oversight in the future.
If you haven’t read fantasy yet, you might like it. As Eddings himself explained in “The Rivan Codex”:
I planted more mythic fishhooks in the first couple of books of the Belgariad than you’ll find in any sporting goods store. I’ve said (too many times, probably) that if you read the first hundred pages of the Belgariad, I gotcha!!
Go ahead, give it a shot. It’s fun!
Eeeuh… buntu! (part deux)
May 26th, 2009Just as a heads up, I’ve reinstalled the Eee and am now running Ubuntu 9.04 with Adamm’s kernel. Several things have changed slightly (not necessarily improved over Ubuntu 8.04 with Adamm’s kernel, but changed). I have updated the old post to reflect the new state. (Yes, I use that post to reconfigure the Eee — it’s just quicker that way :)
Main annoying quirk now is that the window manager is just slooooow. There is a bug on that somewhere for the Ubuntu Netbook Remix — which I am not running. I decided to go with vanilla Ubuntu for the time being. It happy me makes so far a bittish.
PS: In case word hasn’t reached you yet: 25th of August! 16:00, Auditorium 5. If you need to ask, you’re out of the loop ;-P
Cultural outings
May 3rd, 2009Lately, I have been going on some (relatively unplanned) cultural outings. HereÅ› a brief overview of them, for your enjoyment.
Swan Lake
Ballet… hmmms. Maren and me saw many people go to the theatre, and we got some last-minute tickets. Not too expensive, which fitted nicely with the “let’s try this ballet thing” concept. We did get a book explaining the story of what was going on. We started reading that. After having read up on the first act, the the lights dimmed and the music started. Having read up was A Good Thing(tm). It would’ve been rather non-understandable otherwise. Short synopsis: evil wizards rapes queen, queen gets pregnant, boy grows up, mommy queen tells him to get married, he goes out the night before the big choose-thy-girl-ball on a hunt, and encounters this totally hot swan-chick (suffering from a spell of evil wizard). All of this (and more) is conveyed in dance scenes. I don’t speak dance-ese, so reading helped.
Le anyway,the style was a bit weird. The standard swan-lake music was alternated by modern experimental music. The dancing varied from storytelling to totally cool moves (mostly in the experimental bits ;-). All in all, I’m not opposed to seeing more ballet. But, admittedly, I did like the fact that the director had tried to bring the story into modern times (cool dance moves, hip music, a bar scene). And I also liked, that it did fit in with the story.
The Barber of Sevilla
Figaro, Figaro, Fi-ga-rooooooooooooo! Yes, you know it. And we went (again last-minute) to it. The Barber of Sevilla is a comedy-opera. Which means that not only are there people on stage, singing opera-style, but that they are winking, running behind each other’s backs, making funny faces, singing while lying on the floor, etc. etc. They are making jokes. In fact, it was very much like a musical, except singing was opera-style. Not at all like the opera’s I’ve seen before. Very funny. And as if it wasn’t enough that the play itself was funny and offered all sorts of opportunities for comic relief, they regularly broke the fourth wall (the maestro actually had a quite big part in the play, while he never left the orchestral pit). Brilliant! I thoroughly enjoyed it! Heart-felled recommendation!
X-men: Wolverine Origins
Friday night, no plans, and feeling like seeing a movie. And, you know what, I don’t need to download stuff, I can afford paying for it. So Matthieu and me went to the movies. Well, this installment is very much fire-and-forget. I’d almost liken it to going to MacDonalds for a meal: you will get something in your stomach, it doesn’t taste great and it doesn’t fill you up, and you leave feeling unsatisfied. Perfect for spending an otherwise wasted evening at the theatre. Mind you, it’s not bad, it just doesn’t have redeeming qualities. The over-the-topness is not cool enough to blow you away. The revelations aren’t fantastic. The story does not have grand surprises. It’s all mediocre.
Blogging pause
March 18th, 2009As you may have noticed, there has been an unprecedented lack of updates here. Thing is, I was writing this thesis thingy. Well, it’s submitted now, but the fun is only just beginning, so don’t expect much in the way of updates in the coming month. There will be some holidays, some frantic working, and not much space for blogging.
Will let you know what’s going on though. Short short version is in the previous paragraph. Slightly longer: thesis submitted, weighing in at about 175 pages (some more to be added though, will pass 200 probably). Journal publications 3 weeks before the thesis deadline are not necessarily a great idea. :) Although they do have their positive sides :) Vote-ID 2009 is plodding along steadily, submissions are slowly coming in. Holidays are long overdue. Really long overdue. So I’m taking them. Talk to you after them!
Sidenote: lost my login info for the blog, took me a while to straighten that out :)
Luxury problems
December 4th, 2008Things have been going down lately. They seem to be picking up. That is nice. It also inflicts some unavoidable hard decisions. So, right now I am trying to make my mind up on them. Will keep you posted (and might even use less vague terms in the future!)
Busy
December 3rd, 2008Pffft… it seems like I’ve been busy lately. Too many things to write down here (and I am still too busy to get report extensively), but some highlights:
- I have the honour to serve as General Chair of the upcoming international conference VOTE-ID 2009. The last couple of weeks, we have been active in planning the event
- A paper got accepted in Japan :), but I am not going :(. The conference is pretty good though, so that is nice.
- The Dutch government / Minister Rouvoet seems to be a scary person… The government wants to keep track of children in an electronic record. They plan to include details such as pubic hair growth, sexually active status, and a host of other things that are none of their business.
- I’ve just incorporated an explanation of how to decrypt ciphertexts using a distributed key without reconstructing the key in my thesis. I.e.: work is still progressing. I.e.2: I can make my thesis sound complicated, when I feel like it ;-)
- Melanie and me are reviewing the EiPSI report on RIES (an internet voting system developed in the Netherlands). Our findings, very succintly: the report has some areas for improvement.
- Stress comes and goes. Wish it wasn’t all coming now. Can’t be helped, will have to make the best of it.
Okay, now you’re up to date a bit. See you, and if not before the holiday season: happy holidays!
Pharao’s number two
November 25th, 2008Tonight, in Saarbrücken! I am very curious if Numero Uno will match up to our trusted old gardener.
Other than that: still alive, working on the thesis, wondering about finding a new job, got some things approved recently (which is nice). Got to work more now! Hope you’ll see a thesis appearing here in a few months *fingers crossed*
[Edit: It was fun. No match for trusted old Kees though ;-)]
Opt-in vs. opt-out in Dutch healthcare
November 1st, 2008
The Netherlands is currently in the process of establishing an Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD). This “facilitates the rapid and reliable exchange of medical information” (my translation). Medical personell, including doctors, farmacies, etc. then can easily access your private health record. Isn’t that great and convenient?
Well, perhaps some weird people might be too old-fashioned for all this electronic goodyness. To appease these few strange individuals, there is an opt-out procedure.
In other news: the Netherlands suffers from a lack of donors. A bit of googling will lead to wildly varying results, but the trend seems to be that there is a quite substantial group of Dutch citizens willing to act as donors, but who didn’t opt-in for this. Last time the donor registration system was evaluated, the call for an opt-out process went unheeded.
I realise that opt-out organ donation is a tricky ethical question – the system will mark people as donors who are not willing to act as such. Apparently, this was deemed so severe, that the untapped potential of Dutch donors remains that. So that seems to indicate a choice for liberty, even at the cost of lives potentially saved.
And then the EPD wanders in. The government chooses an opt-out procedure, claiming that the EPD will save lives. At the cost of wide-spread sharing of private information. But, you know, you can opt-out.
So, we’re unwilling to address a very real and existing problem (lack of donor organs) using opt-out, even though there is a sizeable untapped potential out there. And on this new gizmo we slap the label “saves lives” and that is more than sufficient justification to have an opt-in system?
Is it just me or is the Dutch government being inconsistent here (to say the very least)?
[Edit: Here’s a link of the Dutch government on why not to have opt-in donor registration. My view: this blows.]
[Edit2: I cannot find how to declare myself a donor in a fashion recognised throughout Europe. That blows too. Just so at least more people know: me = donor.]
[Edit3: On being a donor in Europe: got a response from the donor-register in NL (though not one from Postbus 51, although they did promise to do so in 5 days…). Basically: wear a donor-card, e.g. this one from America (easiest find… NL doesn’t have them anymore…:() I’m hoping English is understood well enough throughout the EU, although you never know for sure…]