Yesterday morning it was snowing: the first time since we're living in Haarlem.

Click on 'Read More' for yesterday's view from the window.

In a few days Tamara Burton will visit Bulgaria. She is the granddaugther of John Vincent Atanasoff, one of the most famous Bulgarians ever.

In this newspaper article (in English)
he is referred to as the person who invented the world's first electronic digital computer.

He worked an the Iowa State College, USA and designed a machine that could solve lineair equations electronically. He worked on this project with an assistant, Clifford Berry but in 1942 they were forced to abandon their project due to the war.

In 1947 a patent was requested for the ENIAC, which was called the first all-purpose digital computer ever. In 1964 this patent was granted and the owner of the patent started to sue other companies building digital computers. However, these companies convinced the judge that Atanasoff's machine was designed before the ENIAC, and had in fact influenced the ENIAC's design. The judge agreed and cancelled the patent.

At that time this judgement which implied that Atanasoff was the real inventor of the electronic digital computer, was called controversial. However in 1984 Arthur Burks, on of the early designers of the ENIAC acknowledged that Atanosoff had designed the first electronic computer.

Bulgaria is very proud of this man and in 1970 he was awarded Bulgaria's highest science award.

For me it's one of the most interesting stories in the history of computer science. Here's more on mr. Atanasoff.

Comment on CNN:

"The plane looks not so heavy. Crashing it [in the ECB building] will do a fairly modest amount of damage to the building and a fairly extensive amount of damage to his plane and himself".

Yesterday I was painting in Leeuwarden again. We were with a lot of people and the painting is almost over. Ettie & Gerben stayed the first night there. Their house is getting very nice! I made some pictures again but unfortunately I can't put them online yet as I don't have the right software here.


It was snowing this morning; the world's beautiful. Today is for the NRC, the Economist and Foreign Affairs.

I've been painting and moving stuff in Leeuwarden today. The journey by train to Leeuwarden was very pleasant. I started the book I received for Sinterklaas.

In the morning we first moved the bigger stuff into the house, later there was a lot of paiting.

Of course I've made a few pictures.

Today I'm going to help Gerben & Ettie moving and painting, so I'll take the train to Leeuwarden.

So early... just like the previous time I went there.

Just returned the shoppingcarts with the empty crates from Tuesday night.

The pictures of New Year's Eve are online!

In the days before Christmas I realized it will be very difficult to actually generate hardware. There are a lot of small details I just don't know enough about. Moreover: to be honest I don't think these details are interesting enough to spent many weeks of my internship on.

Obviously I'll have to discuss these things more with my supervisors, but I'm thinking of staying on a bit more theorethical level. The assignment itself wouldn't really change; there is still a lot of interesting research to do in comparing different Co-Design methods. I'm now writing a bit in the theorethical part of my draft thesis, the newest version is here (sources BibTex).

I went to the station to say goodbye to Svetla and Radoslav, they are going back to Brussels. I feel I should mention that Svetla won the last game they played yesterday.


After that we went quickly to pick up my OV card. Saw many bars getting cleaned and re-stocked.

Tomorrow morning will be early so I'm going to bed now. The first game we played this afternoon I won! Sasha won the one we just played after dinner. We have been playing the basic Kolonisten game, it's nice for a change to play this version again instead of Steden & Ridders.

Svetla, Radoslav and Sasha are starting another game now. New addicts, I would say.