Food

Posted on August 15, 2003 by Arthur

“I wasn’t aware of that my dad was
thinking of the war every single day. Except for when I refused to eat
something, that was when he said that I should be happy that at least
there was something to eat. At that time, I thought it was pretty
normal to have food on the table.”

Former Justice minister Sorgdrager, commemoration August 15th 2002.

I remember how afraid we were to throw out slices of ‘old’ bread.
Dad sometimes would storm in the kitchen to give a lecture about the
importance of food. If there was no food we’d be starving. But how
could we be starving when there were at least 4 more loafs of bread in
the freezer?

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On this day

Posted on August 15, 2003 by Arthur

On this day, 58 years ago, the Japanese emperor Hirohito broadcast the message of surrender to the Japanese troops.

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Commemoration

Posted on August 15, 2003 by Arthur

This year’s August 15th commemoration focusses on the Burma railroad (warning: Dutch). More details (in English) can be found over this specific subject can be found at the War Experience center.

I never understood my dad’s (then) obsession with the movie ‘Bridge
on the River Kwai’, until it was known that his dad was sent to work on
that very same railroad.

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Wonderthing

Posted on August 6, 2003 by Arthur

It was a
memorable day. We had worked all summer, the summer of 1985, 1986 or
1987 (I truly don’t remember), saved money and we were ready to buy our
first homecomputer at the local mall. We had no idea what to buy. I
don’t remember why we chose to buy a Philips NMS 8245. Why would
anybody buy an MSX-2 compatible computer? Why didn’t we go for the ZX
Spectrum? Or the Commodore 64? Was it in our budget?

Continue reading →

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Schroedinger’s cat

Posted on July 31, 2003 by Arthur

Today’s news regarding the ‘Iraq’s weapons program‘ reminded me of ‘Schroedinger’s Cat’. No matter how you twist and turn, the only way to find out if the cat has died is to open the box.

Additionally, during his press conference (yesterday) president Bush said the following:

   ” And there is no doubt in my mind,
Campbell, that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States
security, and a threat to peace in the region. And there’s no doubt in
my mind that a free Iraq is important. It’s got strategic consequences
for not only achieving peace in the Middle East, but a free Iraq will
help change the habits of other nations in the region who will make it
— which will make America much more secure.”

Strategic consequences? Change the habits? Poor excuses once used by
countries when they invaded Old Europe and portions of Asia.

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Bikes and Booleans

Posted on July 30, 2003 by Arthur

Today I
did succesfully testdrive my new (rather, secondhand) bike. Plus the
helmet. There’s still a lot to fix, besides cleaning up the chain and derailleur, but at least it was fun to drive the bicycle after abstaining for three years (I hear laughter in the background).

Naturally I went faster than any other person driving bike. And
talking about any other cyclists: most of them drive on the sidewalk.
Without the obligatory helmet. You’re laughing at my helmet? If you’re wearing a helmet, you’re entitled to use the road. If not, play with the kids on the sidewalk. I keep telling myself.

Over on the Olde Continent, there are no laws that force cyclists to wear helmets. First of all there are plenty of bike lanes.
Additionally, every cyclist must have undergone a kind of a test.
Naturally, most car drivers are used to cyclists. Something I miss over
here, where car drivers hang dangerously close behind the cyclists.

On the programming front, I’m working slowly to bring advanced
header filtering to RB. I’ve been looking at Thunderbird and noticed it
had exactly the same dialog as I was planning to make for RB with the
difference that the inboxes actually take care of the rules and
filtering. In most other e-mailers, this isn’t the case (I’m not sure
of Sylpheed, so I should look that one up).

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Elections NS coming up

Posted on July 29, 2003 by Arthur

Example
of political games. Elections are coming up. The provincial government
is trying to get people vote for them: so they reveal they had ‘secret
and private’ talks with the Nova Scotia Government and General
Employees Union. Earlier the director of the same union denied the
government claims.

In comes the minister of Health, Jane Purves, who provides documents proving that there were talks. In a hastily arranged press conference (packed!) the director of the union explained why she denied the claim:
they did have private discussions, however, they were supposed to be
revealed for after the elections. Apparantly government and union had
reached an agreement on binding arbitration for striking home-care
workers. To avoid embarrassing the government it was decided not to
mention the discussion in public. Says the director of NSGGEU:

    “So I kept quiet. I kept my
end of the bargain. The premier and Jane Purves did not. I will not be
able to work with Jane Purves”

The minister, of course, acknowledged that thanks to the government, the director of the union now has a credibility problem.

    “I understand that Joan is
very unhappy with me. And that may be so that she has no desire to work
with me, but I would have no problem working with her.”

To be honest, I think it’s up to the voters to decide who’s going to work together with the union.

Posted in Provincial-Scotia | Comments Off on Elections NS coming up

Seventy one is the lucky number

Posted on July 28, 2003 by Arthur

Did I tell about the upcoming elections in Nova Scotia? I did, didn’t I? Well, yesterday’s survey asked Nova Scotians who they thought won the latest TV debate (last Tuesday). The results blew me out of the water: 14% said Hamm (Tories), 9% say Graham (Liberals), 6% say Dexter (NDP) and 71% didn’t answer.

Seventy-one percent. Seventy-one percent of those interviewed were probably watching Canadian Idol.

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Puzzled

Posted on July 27, 2003 by Arthur

Runninga couple of (graphical) Java apps I ended up with the following error: ‘Could not get display mode’. DXDiag insisted that Netmeeting was still running (so it couldn’t test DirectDraw).

Netmeeting? I haven’t used it since, a lifetime ago. In comes a weird knowledgebase item from Microsoft:

   “NetMeeting 3.01 automatically disables Direct3D functionality when it starts. When you quit NetMeeting properly, it restores Direct3D functionality.”

Solution? Start NetMeeting. Then close NetMeeting. You want to bet that NetMeeting actually sets a DirectX bit somewhere in the registry? And guess what. This also fixed my icons-appear-in-lower-colour-resolution’ problem.

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Mirror on the wall

Posted on July 14, 2003 by Arthur

Over at Slashdot a link to an essay about the forthcoming “Browser War”. Or I mean, the “Browser War” that has never ended. Either way. I was not impressed with the article, but there is one section that attracted the eye (and that’s where the author should have been focussing on):

Continue reading →

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Irish tinkles

Posted on April 14, 2003 by Arthur

Over in the LiveJournal universe [sic], Joel pushes me to get started on Ireland. A couple of years ago (8? 7? 9?) I hopped on a plane to Dublin. I was young and brazen, and foolish, the latter naturally comes
with young age too.

Continue reading →

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Tim Horton’s Roll up the Rim (and don’t win) 2003

Posted on March 6, 2003 by Arthur

Tim Horton’s has just kicked off their 2003 Roll up the Rim campaign, and yes, just like last year, their rules and regulations have been put on-line. A quick summary has been summarized and can be found here for you to enjoy. All you statistics freaks: Hack em.

There’s one thing that caught my eye: Alberta and the Atlantic provinces have almost the same number of prices. However, there appear to be less stores in Alberta. I suggest that we all move to Ontario
and/or Alberta to claim our winning cups.

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Woops, I did it again

Posted on December 1, 2002 by Arthur

Last night we attended the Christmas party and actually had fun: no band (like last year), but a karaoke system. I decided to try it and ended up singing a couple of songs: Kim (who apparantly had done karaoke
before, great singer she is) was the only person who sang more songs
than me. Eventually she asked me to do a duet with her.  Songs on
my hitlist were, REM’s ‘The One I love’, Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t you
forget about me’, REM’s ‘Man on the Moon’, Righteous Brother’s ‘You’ve
lost that loving..’, The Doors’ ‘Touch Me’ and the Stones’ ‘Paint it
Black’. Plus that duet with Kim, which was Meatloaf’s ‘Paradise’.

Loads of people and compliments afterwards. And the occasional
chit-chats with people. Fun it was, particularly the jumping around
with the microphone. If there is a next time, I’ll sign up again.

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