Yesterday we went to the wedding of Anya and Pleun. They picked a very beautiful place, Paviljoen de Witte in Scheveningen.

When we arrived it was already dark, but the stairs to the Paviljoen where lighted by real fires. The wedding was very pleasant. There was a very good life-band so dancing all evening.

Pleun is an old collegue (Net.Footworks) and most Footworkers were at the party. Last week we also saw each other, to discuss the present for the wedding. It was nice to see everybody being so dressed up. Edo and Relinde brought us home (thanks a lot!) and because of the summertime we went to bed at 4.00 o'clock.

Today I've been programming again. I'm working on the third exercise of Internet Programming.

Today was the funeral of Mr. R. Knipper, one of the three volunteer firefighters who died last Sunday when the Koningkerk burned down.

I was at the Grote Markt (went to get a haircut after lunch) and there were many people gathered. A lot of busses too, many firefighter crews came from all over the country.

It was the first time ever that firefighters died in action in Haarlem. Two of my collegues also work for the volunteer firebrigade.

I've spent the whole morning trying to find out how a specific feature works in a program we're using. It wasn't extremely well documented, so I wasn't even sure if I was trying it the right way...


I tried pretty much everything I could think of, but without result. Really annoying! Then it turns out that there's a bug in this program -- so it wasn't my fault. Installed a new version, and now it works.

Ankie took some pictures of the Adriaan at night.

Click on Read more... for the result.

Yesterday evening we had dinner with Joost and Ankie. It was a very nice evening. Sasha proved once again that Bulgarian cuisine is the best... musaka!

Ankie brought her digital camera, a really good one. She made a very nice picture of the Adriaan at night; I'll put it online later.

Started at 9:15 today.

For a long time you can find Dutch schools online already. Now there's a similar website for schools all around the world: www.worldschoolphotographs.com.


My high-school was there too, it's a really nice site. Click on Europe / the Netherlands for Dutch schools.

Today new memory was installed in my laptop, now it has 512 MB.


Quite a difference.

This morning we woke up 5 our later than when we left to Groningen. We were at the Noorderspel, a game fair in Groningen organized by a group of game-lovers. It was the 3rd year we were there. It's pretty cool to see how big an event these volunteers created.


We were with Jerry demonstrating games. There was also a Kolonisten tournament but this was organized by the Noorderspel crew itself.

I learned 4 new games (see the updated game list): Tyros, Jagers & Verzamelaars, De Strijd and a new game, de Ballonrace. I like Tyros and De Strijd the best, which is nice because Daniël gave me the latter one for my birthday. At the fair there were many other game companies too. One of thee most interesting ones was Minifun, a company founded by a few students for a school-assignment. Their target is to found a company and run it for a year. The game they created wasn't very original but I'm impressed by all the work they've done.

When I had a break I made a walk through the center of Groningen, it's a very pretty city. Almost as nice as Haarlem.

Home at 22:30 o'clock.

Yes, 5:30 is really early... but Groningen is really far too.

Ha! I did it again, it's 8.00 o'clock and I'm at Chess already. I woke up 45 minutes before the alarm and I felt nice and fresh.


A 'scary' thought is that when I woke up I immediately thought about a programming problem at work. During my sleep I found a (nice) solution for it. Very useful, but does it mean I don't have a life anymore?! ;)



News in the morning was all about the war of course. The thing with wars is that they are very difficult for journalist to capture in a meaningful way. First of all both sides of course strive to spread as much propaganda as they can, and second most journalists are clearly no experts on war-strategy. Me neither of course, but at least I don't try to discuss on TV the loyalty of the Special Republican Garde, the opinion of the Sji'it people or the deeper strategy of the Americans... Well, everybody his own profession I guess.