Dutch cheese is the best cheese in the world, and I brought about 6 pounds coming back from Holland this weekend.

I went to the market in Wieringerwerf, and took 3 chunks of different types of cheese, ranging from medium old to very old ('crumbling'). So delicious!

After a very short stay in Middenmeer, I'm on my way back home!

In the morning we went for some shopping, and in thirty minutes my parents will bring me to Hoorn station. I'll make a brief stop in Amsterdam, and my flight leaves at 7.00 am tomorrow morning.

Today Ettie and Gerben got married! It was a beautiful day, in Leeuwarden in De Koperen Tuin.

It was a small but nice group and we all had a good time.

I took lots of pictures (Linda brought a Canon 350 that I could borrow!) and they came out nicely.

Today at 11.30 am I landed at Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The flights from Raleigh to Gatwick and from there to Amsterdam went smoothly, although I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted.

My parents picked my up at the airport, it was very nice to see them again. At home we prepared some last minute things for the wedding tomorrow. Jaap and I went to do some shopping in Middenmeer, it's always nice to walk through town and see so many familiar faces.

It's 6.30 pm now in the Netherlands, and I'm about ready to go to sleep.

The American Airlines plane, parked at the gate in London Gatwick.

'Glorious Britain.'

The flight from Amsterdam was a code-share with British Airways so instead of closing the overhead bins we were asked to close the lockers.

I'm on my way to Holland to attend Ettie's wedding!

Tonight at 6.45 pm is my flight from RDU to London Gatwick. For the first time in a long time I'm traveling without a laptop. I'll arrive in Amsterdam Thursday late morning local time.

Today I visited the Raven Rock state park, about an hour south of Raleigh.

It's not very warm anymore but it was a pleasant day for a walk. I did a 5 miles trail, through fall colored woods.

Entrance of the Raven Rock park.

Just when I started on the trail I saw this bird trainer with his bird.

Showing the bird to a family in Sunday dress.

The bird.

A creek through the park.

The trail.

Fall leaves.

Where am I going?!

Falls in the river. I took this picture with a shutter speed of 1/30 seconds to smooth out the water. I used a water bottle as a made-up tripod.

The result of an experiment in taking pictures of a dark subject. I took the picture around 5.30 pm; it was getting dark.

This year I transitioned my hand made address book to CiviCRM, an open source CRM system.

Today I added a block with upcoming birthdays (only visible for registered users), based on examples I found on the Code Snippets page of CiviCRM. I contributed my code back to their Wiki.

This birthday block is based on CiviCRM 1.8.

Update August 2009: See this page for a version of the block that works with CiviCRM 2.x.

// Check if CiviCRM is installed here.
if (!module_exists('civicrm')) return false;

// Initialization call is required to use CiviCRM APIs.
civicrm_initialize(true);

$select = "SELECT contact_id, birth_date, CONCAT(((RIGHT(birth_date,5) < 
RIGHT(CURRENT_DATE,5)) + YEAR(CURRENT_DATE)), RIGHT(birth_date,6)) AS bday, 
concat(concat(month(birth_date), '/'), day(birth_date)) as displaydate,  
(TO_DAYS(CONCAT(((RIGHT(birth_date,5) < RIGHT(CURRENT_DATE,5)) + YEAR(CURRENT_DATE)), 
RIGHT(birth_date,6))) - TO_DAYS(CURRENT_DATE)) AS toBday FROM civicrm_individual  WHERE 
(TO_DAYS(CONCAT(((RIGHT(birth_date,5) < RIGHT(CURRENT_DATE,5)) + YEAR(CURRENT_DATE)), 
RIGHT(birth_date,6))) - TO_DAYS(CURRENT_DATE) < 7) ORDER BY bday, RIGHT(birth_date,5);";

$query  = $select;
$params = array( );

$dao =& CRM_Core_DAO::executeQuery( $query, $params );

echo "<div class=\"item-list\"><ul>\n";
while ( $dao->fetch( ) ) {

  // Contact API returns contact info

  $contact = crm_get_contact(array('contact_id' => $dao->contact_id));

  echo "<li><a href=\"/civicrm/contact/view?reset=1&cid=" . $dao->contact_id . "\">" . $contact->display_name . "</a>, 
" . $dao->displaydate;

  echo "</li>\n";

  }
echo "</div></ul>\n";

The holiday season seems to have started and every day of the week we had baked cookies or cakes at work. This time of the year inspires people to bake delicious things, apparently. Next Thursday its Thanksgiving.

When I was left from work I tried a few radio stations looking for some music. When I switched on 93.9 Kiss FM, there was a very pleasant surprise: Christmas music has started! On the way from work I hummed and sang along with all those familiar songs. Last year the Christmas music started a bit earlier, on what was then called Sunny FM.

Ettie and Gerben are getting married! Friday November 23rd will be their wedding day in Leeuwarden.

It's great news -- many congratulations from both of us!

Below you'll see the picture on their wedding invitation.

Friday afternoon we went for lunch at Dickey's, a barbecue place in Crossroads.

There are a couple of different restaurants there, and since a few weeks a Starbucks opened also. It's a lot closer to us than the one on Walnut Street, so that's really convenient.

Of course, my resolution to drink less coffee still stands, but on a Friday afternoon I'll drink a nice cup of coffee. Starbucks is now using the holiday cups.

Dickey's has an automated system to let the waiter know at which table you're sitting. The cashier gives you a key that goes in the machine on the picture above.

Holiday cups at Starbucks.

The making of the picture above.