Sasha got a very good job for the summer this week. She'll be assisting a professor in a very interesting research-project.

This is one of the reasons we went to look for a second computer desk. Today we found a nice one: not expensive and just the right size. Turns out to be sold out and a new delivery won't be made before June 10th or so. I guess we'll just wait for that, we're not extremely in a hurry but it was a bit of a disappointment.

Had more luck with some other things. We came home with two big flower pots and soil for plants that need to be replanted. Got the pots for free from a girl in a flower shop; very friendly.

I also went to get a haircut. I always go to the same place, Caprino. It's a one-man business where you don't have to make an appointment: perfect for me. Saturday is really a day for things we don't have time for during the week.

"The course 'how to deal with disappointments' has unfortunately been cancelled".

This Friday there's an interesting theme of the photo-manipulating contest at Retecool.com: genetically engineered animals.

As always, Mr. Ratelband is a popular target; just like Mr. Balkenende and Mr. Bos.


The ideas of "Poolifant" and "Jamai de Bij" are nice too, have a look.

What a depressing weather! It's raining cats and dogs, and it's almost June. I got a bit of a cold which doesn't really make me feel better.



But here at Chess it's warm and the programming is nice. Tonight we'll probably go to the library, that's something I like. It makes me feel rich to see so many books, all of which I can just take home and read.

It took me longer than I thought, but yesterday late I finished the installation of OpenBSD 3.3. In the process I removed my whole /usr directory, because it contained a lot of old stuff. This required me to re-install (the binaries of) Apache and MySQL, which I did this morning. That went very smooth, in 20 minutes the installation was ready. The webserver is running since 9.10 o'clock again.

There is still some configuration to be done, but at least the websites work again (not only this one, but also Jaap Bosman.com and 2otherwise.nl).

I just moved Apache to a chroot environment. Wanted to do this for a long time, and it was actually very simple. Now I'll see if I can install OpenBSD 3.3... it turns out I don't have to use a diskette! (why this is so nice). From the documentation:

"On some platforms, bsd.rd is actually the preferred installation technique -- you place this kernel on an existing filesystem, boot it, and run the install from it. On most platforms, if you have a running older version of OpenBSD, you can FTP a new version of bsd.rd, reboot from it, and install a new version of OpenBSD without using any removable media at all"

It didn't work:

I guess it was worth trying, but Java on such a small server is probably not a good idea anyway. PHP it will be, for now.

I've just installed the harddisk Gerben gave me; it works fine. Currently I'm seeing if I can install a Java-based webserver for some experiments. I'm afraid it won't work because it requires a lot of diskspace and processing power. There is no native Java implementation for OpenBSD, so Java is used through a Linux-emulation layer. Not only will this be quite slow, but it also requires me to install the redhat-compatability package, which is huge.

Many computer programmers are interested in the way Google works. They use very sophisticated mathematical algorithms to deal with the huge amount of data on the internet.

I found a quite readable explanation of the more fundamental stuff.

It's nice to have a Saturday without any obligations! Last Tuesday I delivered my homework assignment, and the next deadline is in 2 weeks. Today I'm not working on it.

In the morning I experimented a bit with the server of this website. Two weeks ago I found out that the floppy diskdrive is broken and this morning I tried another one. However, it seems that there is something wrong with the mainboard; I didn't get any diskdrive working. Not a big deal, but it will be difficult to upgrade to the OpenBSD 3.3. I think I'll wait with that, it isn't very urgent. Maybe I'll have time this weekend to get the new harddisk working. Gerben gave me one (thanks!). It's 800 MB and will therefore double the total capacity of the server.


In the afternoon we went for a long walk and did some shopping. It wasn't extremely busy in the city.