This morning I went to participate in a national health survey, the Nationale Gezondheids tests. I went to a center in Heemstede, a place near Haarlem. My appointment was at 8.00 o'clock so it was an early morning.

The test was very interesting. My length and heigth were measured, as well as a number of other health-indicators. The biggest part was 10 minutes on a bicycle, and my heart rate was measured.

Now I'm back at Chess, but I'll take the afternoon off to go to Jennie's graduation.

Friday afternoon I went with my collegue's for a drink. The weather was really nice, and a large project had just delivered a new version, so we went earlier than usual. We were at the outside cafe from 16.30 o'clock, and it was a very cosy afternoon.

In the evening Sasha and I had dinner together -- it's so nice to be together! In fact, yesterday was our anniversery -- we met six years ago. We went out for dinner to celebrate. We went to Cafe Nobel, a restaurant at the Spaarne near the Waag. It was a very romantic evening and the food was great.

Yesterday I went into the city, armed with my camera, to enjoy the Monumentdagen in Haarlem. In this weekend many famous buildings are open to the public. The last weeks I've been reading quite a lot on the history of the city, so this was a perfect opportunity.

I visited the Waalse Kerk, the oldest church in Haarlem. Then I saw the oldest independent funeral insurance company in the Netherlands: "Begrafenis BOS De Vrijwillige Liefde Beurs". It was founded in 1719. The 'executive board' comes together every Friday evening and consist of only volunteers. Very interesting, they offered me an insurance policy, "in case I ever feel mortal".

Then I visited the City Hall at the Grote Markt. It was also open to public, and it was really interesting to have a look inside. Inside there were paitings of the various Counts of Holland and events that happened in the city.

I enjoyed the visit to the history museum of Haarlem at the Groot Heiligland the most. It's small, but they had a nice exhibition. Absolutely great was the machine with stereoscopic pictures, taken more than 120 years ago. You could see the Amsterdamse Poort in use as the entrance to the city, as well as the Grote Houtpoort, and the Adriaan before it burned down.

After a quick visit to the Archeological musеum (under the Vleeshal) and an exhibition of modern art in the Waag I went back home. I didn't take a lot of pictures, except for the one below. It is inspired by a replica of a painting I saw in the funeral insurance company.

Friday evening I picked Sasha up from the airport, and we had a great weekend. Saturday my parents came and we had coffee together.

Afterwards Sasha and I went into the city. There were the "Haarlem Vaardagen" in the city. Many boats were in the city, take came from all over Holland. The theme of this year's event was the liberation of Haarlem from the Spanish occupation.

There was a lot of music, a book market, plays, games etc. The weather was awesome. We went both Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Sunday afternoon we also visited an exhibition about the Vleeshal, a building in Haarlem, and we had a beer on the Grote Markt.


See some pictures.

I found a beautiful historic map of Haarlem online.

The map is from 1575 and was created by Braun and Hogenberg, for the atlas Civitates Orbis Terrarum.

This was the way the city looked like when it was under siege by the Spaniards.

In the lower left corner of the map you can see the Catharijnebrug, the bridge that is close to our house now (opposite the policestation). On the map that is the end of the city, before the city gates. The Hooimarkt became part of the city much later.

Last weekend and tonight I have been reading and writing about Haarlem. I'm working on an article about Haarlem and De Adriaan.

When I came back from the library to pick up a book about the city, I walked past the Prinsenhof, and over the Grote Markt. It's nice to see so much history around you.

A cute joke for Dutch readers: what's the opposite of Bulgarije?

Answer: Koe blijf staan!

This afternoon Jelly and I went to the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam.

We had a great time, even though the weather was a bit depressing. We listened to a Portugese fado band and saw a theater group called Dogtroep, among others.

We had a Suriname roti sandwich for dinner, and we spent quite some time on the book market.

It has been seven years since the last time I was at the Uitmarkt; then it was still at the Waterlooplein. The new location, at the Museumplein and Leidseplein, was much better than I had expected.

I have been working on a component for Java programs for a while now. It's called "Java Config", and it provides access to configuration data for Java and J2EE applications.

Chess has recently agreed to publish the software under an Open Source license, which is very cool. It can now by used by anybody who needs a component like Java Config (it is published under a BSD license).
A piece of code, just to give an idea of what it does:

  
public class SimpleApplication {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String sayingHi =  getConfig().getWelcomeText();    
    boolean yesOrNo = getConfig().getMyFirstBoolean();
    int numberOfDays = getConfig().getNumberOfDays();
    java.net.URL url = getConfig().getNiceWebsite();
  }

  private MyConfig config;

  private static getConfig() {
    if (config == null) {
        config = new MyConfig("my.properties");
        ConfigValidationResult configResult = config.validateConfiguration();
        if (configResult.thereAreErrors()) {
            // display errors here
            System.exit(1);
        }
    } 
    return config;
  }
}

These are the goals Java Config tries to achieve:

• Type-safe access: int portNumber = getConfig().getFtpPortNumber();
• Allow an easy check on the validity of a given properties file, most likely at start-up time.
• Support common configuration data-types like Date, URL, int and boolean.
• Flexibility in use: no static initializers, no logging-dependencies.

The official project page is located at SourceForge. It's latest stable release is now also available from Ibiblio's Maven repository.

I was the first one in the office this morning -- I came it at 7.00 o'clock. Sasha left this morning to Bulgaria. Her plane left at 6.55, so we had to be at the airport quite early. We took the first bus to Schiphol, at 5.08 o'clock. It was full with people.

Sasha is staying for a week in Bulgaria, and she'll visit her parents. Ilana is there now as well, and Irena will arrive in Sofia one hour after Sasha. Really nice.

Yesterday we went to pick up Sasha's new residence permit. A simple extension of her existing permit, which she has had for many years, took more than six months to be processed. Unbelievable. The good news is that her new permit is valid for five years, so we don't have to deal with that for a long time.

Yesterday we went out. It was very busy in the city, even though it was a Tuesday evening. The introduction week for the new students in Haarlem started, so they were exploring the city.

We had a great evening. We had dinner in BastiJan, a nice restaurant in the Lange Veerstraat.

This weekend we spent in Middenmeer. Saturday we sorted and moved my old things.

They were stored on the attic of my mother's school. They had been there since we moved to Amstelveen, almost three years ago.

The attic of the school is very long and is divided in several compartments. The doors to these rooms are very low, so you have to bend to enter. The scary thing is that you can only walk in the middle: if you step outside the path, you'll fall through the roof.

My things were stored at the end of the attic. However, the light in the compartment at the end of the attic was broken. There was a tiny window but it was very, very dark. Mieke went to get a light from home, but I had to get started. Fortunately, the solution wasn't very far away: Christmas decoration lighted my path.

We took all the things downstairs and brought it to my parents' home. There was some old furniture and a number of boxes with unsorted things, books, some old clothes.

At my parents place I sorted it. Most of the things were for throwing, especially the old computers. I didn't know I had so many keyboards, mouses and computer components.

In the end, I kept only two boxes. One with personal things such as the T-shirt I got when I went to a summercamp in the US in 1998. The other box is full with books. I took the "Dune" books to Haarlem, I want to read them one of these days.

We had a long dinner and a very cosy evening together. It had been almost a year since my parents and Sasha had seen each other, so there were many pictures and stories to be exchanged.

We went back to Haarlem Sunday afternoon.