"'Ve-le-is-sing-nen.' (Or so it sounded to us.) That was definitely a V sound in the beginning, but then it got lost in a slosh of vowels and S’s."

The New York Times has an interview with Ms. Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States to talk about the Dutch pronunciation of names in NYC.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/dutch-pronounciations/?hp

Another quote:

"'Bowery? In the original Dutch, it was was “bouwerij,” which had an intimidating ending for an English speaker."

The interviews also links to this funny article: Breuckelen Express (Breuckelen is the original name for Brooklyn).

I usually run my unit tests in Eclipse on my development system, or from the command-line on the target environment in bulk.

Sometimes though it's useful to run a single unit test from the command line. There are two equivalent ways of doing that:

rake test=test\integration\firmware_upgrade_test.rb

ruby test\integration\firmware_upgrade_test.rb

Here's an example of the use of hagelslag.

The dessert "gele vla" is a one of my favorites and it is served with chocolate sprinkles, lots of them.

Here's a nice example of a cross-over food: Dutch style hagelslag, produced in Indonesia and imported into the United States.

The packaging has an image of a girl on a bike, and it says "smulpaapjes" on the side -- clear pointers to a Dutch heritage.

Hagelslag is a very popular sandwich topping in the Netherlands. In the US it is referred to as 'jimmies' or 'chocolate sprinkles' but is not typically used for sandwiches but more for cake decorating.

I saw this hagelslag last week in Grand Asia Market in Cary, NC; it's also available online. I brought a package from the Netherlands and that will last us a long time, so I won't try the Indonesian product anytime soon.

Tonight I attended a presentation on the use of Second Live and other 3D worlds in education. It wasn't earth-shattering but it was an informative presentation. Bill Krebs, the presenter, clearly enjoys using these tools and it was fun to hear more about the community in Second Life and some of the pro's and con's of using such tools for business purposes.

It's always nice to go out and meet other engineers. I spoke with someone who started a company to provide data for tools like Layar, the augmented reality browser, and other interesting folks. I won a book in a raffle, and I choose Beginning Scala by David Pollack.

The evening was organized by the Agile RTP group and hosted by Allscripts in North Raleigh.

Last week I brought some dark Dutch chocolate to my work.

I served it on a Delft blue plate and it was well received.

Tonight I attended the rijsttafel dinner organized by the Dutch club in the Triangle, De Wieken.

There were at least 40 people and a large variety of food. I especially liked an Indonesian 'salad' consisting of mixed rice, shrimp, currants and chopped vegetables. There was a huge bag with krupuk. True to Dutch habit, the evening started at 5.00 pm and dinner was served pretty much right away. Quite a difference with yesterday's dinner. The party was in a club house of a community in North Raleigh, about 30 minutes away from us.

I brought some of the serundeng I made earlier this week and beets pickled based on a recipe my parents gave me, atjar beet. The latter worked out really well; with a subtle delicious flavor.

Someone I spoke with, of Indonesian descent, recommended a new store in Raleigh that carries a lot of real Indonesian ingredients, including dried shrimp paste (trassi), something I've been looking for for a while. I'll check it out next week.

It was a nice, relaxed evening and I enjoyed the company a lot.

Making pisang goreng, baked banana.

Here are about 40 pictures of the weekend in the Dijkgatsbos when Jaap celebrated his 60th birthday.

Guests included: Ankie, Anneke, Anouk, Arienne, Arne, Carel, Christianne, Cock, Dieuwke, Diny, Ettie, Eva, Eveline, Frank, Gea, Gerben, Gerrit, Gerrit, Guus, Jaap, Jan, Jean-Paul, Jelly, Jennie, Jerry, Johan, Joost, Kirsten, Len, Maarten, Marieke, Marjolein, Mieke, Nicky, Paula, Peggy, Peter, Ria, Rob, Roel, Ronald, Sophie, Steven, Tibor and Twan. For the first time in many years all the cousins were together, that was pretty cool.

See also Steven's pictures.

Packing.

Loaded caravan.

Setting up a Dutch flag at the entrance.

Happy birthday!

The first guests arrived! Peter & Christianne & kids.

Setting up camp; uncle Peter on the right.

Rob and Anouk.

Tibor, Guus and Ronald.

Chatting.

Jaap with two beautiful women at his side.

Steven, Mieke and Gea.

Delicious foods.

Installing a tennis game.

Arne, Eva and Humpo.

Jelly playing the highly popular game.

Real Dutch apple pie!

A crowd.

Jerry and Marjolein.

Frank, Dieuwke, Peter and Johan.

Steven and Jennie.

Marieke, Peggy and Len.

A present and a speech for Jaap.

Yours truly.

Uncle Roel and uncle Peter.

Guus and Eveline.

Ladies.

Starting the fire.

Eva's turn in the game.

Happy faces.

Peter, Jean-Paul and Johan.

Gerben's turn. Sophie, Jennie and Ronald in the background.

Watchful eyes.

Ria's turn.

Ria and Paula.

The fire.

The tent Tibor slept in. He came by back from Amsterdam. Steven, another hard-core friend, slept outside.

Early cup of coffee.

Breakfast.

Ettie, Gerben and Mieke.

Packing.

Tonight I attended a presentation by Adam Parrish on the use of Maven in building Adobe Flex & Java projects.

Maven is routinely used to build Java-only project, but this presentation talked about using the Flex Mojos plug-ins to build projects that combine Flex front-ends with a Java back-end.

It was an interesting presentation/demo for a small but knowledgeable crowd. There was a a lot of opportunity to ask questions, and I learned more about large scale Flex projects. A well spent evening.

The evening was hosted by One Cow Standing in Durham. They have a foosbal table and a real beer tap with Yuengling in the conference room.

Steven sent us 3 pictures he took during Jaap's 60th birthday.

Beautiful images.

Mieke.

Guus.

Humpo.