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.

Well, the summer seems to have ended in the Netherlands. After a few days that were just grey and rainy, today arrived with a big thunderstorm and a fair amount of rain. Oh well, it has been quite a nice summer.

It's just wonderful to be together. Although we are both working a lot life is good. Sasha is writing her thesis, I am finishing the project here at Chess.

Friday morning Sasha arrived at Schiphol. It was great! We went out Friday evening to a Greek restaurant. Just then was the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which was celebrated there with a big Greek flag, drinks and a large TV screen.

Funny to see that when Prince Willem-Alexander was on TV everybody was waving; when Balkenende was shown on TV the restaurant starting laughing.

We had a good weekend. Sasha is working on her graduation thesis. Yesterday Jaap celebrated his birthday in Middenmeer; thanks Christianne and Peter for the ride home.

Sasha's plane is landing in 45 minutes, so I'm going to Schiphol now!

The plane has some delay so I slept a wonderful extra hour after waking up and checking the arrival time.

Today Jaap has a birthday.

Congratulations from both of us!