2008-02-29 06:49:00
Well damn. Between work, nightly work, filing my taxes and sorting out our temporary (yet rather large) monetary problems, I haven't done one single page of homework this week. :(
I'm gonna have to haul ass this weekend.
Don't worry about those money problems though: with a bit of help from my dad we'll be able to get through to Marli's first paycheck. After that, it's clear sailing. I'm just happy dad's able to help us ^_^;
kilala.nl tags: school, money,
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2008-02-28 13:22:00
Last weekend we celebrated Dymphie's birthday in Utrecht.
We started the afternoon with a guided walk through the old center of Utrecht, with a guide from Het Gilde. The walk took around two hours and we learnt a few new things about the old parts of Utrecht. The turf we went through was quite familiar to me, but this time around I actually took the time to have a look around. Quite enjoyable!
TRIVIA: Did you know that Utrecht once had a pope of its own? Yup, some bishop from Utrecht managed to actually become the pope (as in, the Vatican pope), but croaked after about two years on the job.
We ended our walk on the Wittevrouwenstraat, where we took lunch at De Bakkerswinkel. The shop/restaurant may not look like much, but their food is to die for! Besides cakes and tea, they also serve a "high tea"-alike lunch, which's pretty damn good. I sincerely love their carrot cake and I simply -must- go back one day to get some more ^_^
Thanks dad, Dymphie, for a wonderful Sunday :)
kilala.nl tags: restaurant, family,
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2008-02-28 13:17:00
About a year ago, I wrote about my romantic view of the graveyard shift. I loved the idea of hacking at night and sleeping under my desk, since it rang back to the times of the TTY and the PDP10. The time that "real hackers" were still "real hackers" and that sleeping under your desk was still normal.
Well, no more. These days it's become more of a nuisance to me. Is this a sign that I'm getting older? Is it a sign that I'm fed up with IT? Is it a sign that I like my bed more than the couch or floor at the office? More importantly, do I care?!
No. ^_^ I've come to dislike working at night and I prefer staying in bed thankyouverymuch. *sings* The times, they are a-changing *sings*
kilala.nl tags: work, geeky, life,
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2008-02-25 10:10:00
This weekend I received Snow's newsletter in the mail, which is a good thing: it keeps me in touch with the goings-on in the company, while I'm away at college. Most of the time the articles are a bit boring or they're just important stuff everyone needs to know. It's not often that an article has me outraged, but this time they managed to do it.
The following was translated from Dutch:
Starting from April, Snow will be the first company in our country to employ high-tech scanners for access control to the building and our workstations. These scanners work with RFID tags. To test the access control modules and to search for any bugs in the system, we would like to implant Verichip tags at the next company get-together. This is on a strictly voluntary basis.
To sum things up, there's a few guys at Snow who're completely in love with RFID and the applications thereof. In our new building, they would like to set up access control to doors and workstations, using RFID scanners. These scanners would use tags that are implanted in our colleagues' forearms (the small device you see on the left, or as I've come to call it the glass maggot).
Now, I've been assured by my field manager that all of this is still up in the air, since the ondernemingsraad (some council meant to approve of management decisions involving the whole company) still hasn't agreed with this. But even if it were to come to this, I'd still refuse to have that maggot under my skin. Let me them provide me with a keychaintag, dongle or badge for all I care, but they sure as hell aren't sticking anything in my body.
If this were the European .gov asking its citizens to switch to RFID passports, which would include their social security and their health insurance, then MAYBE I'd consider it. Because in that case it's something I'd be using for over ten years at a time. But even then I'd still have my doubts, especially due to the security issues involved with RFID.
But in this case, it's just an employer trying to be hip with new tech. Lord knows what they'll be doing with the info gained through the RFID chips movement through the building. Besides, I'm bound to leave them in one to two years, so why the hell would I get an implant that will not see ANY use after that time? Would that mean that future employers would have to add their own implants to my arm? That'd be nice, a whole family of maggots under my skin D:
NO WAI!
kilala.nl tags: work, geeky, weird, fun, other tech,
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2008-02-25 09:51:00
Last night I finally got to see two shows that I've been hankering for, at the same time! Thanks to an offhanded remark in a thread about The Stig, I checked out YouTube for clips of Danger: Diabolik and of Mystery science theater 3000, aka MST3k. But the best came when I found clips combining the two! ^_^
You see, MST3k is a rather silly show with three guys wisecracking while watching horror/scifi B-movies. Sure, it's set on a space station and two of the guys are robots, but that's just fluff. What this show is, in essence, is what you get if you let any warm blooded bunch of guys watch awful movies! :)
Their puns have me cracking up, while I'm still able to enjoy this master piece of Italian cinema, that is Diabolik. Seriously, it like I'm watching me, Menno and Peter watch the movie :D
I know I'm -very- late to the party, since this show's final run was in 1999, but still. I'm loving it :)
Here's one of the funnier clips.
kilala.nl tags: tv, geeky, awesome,
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2008-02-23 15:55:00
Here's an interesting question for you: if we want our kids/students to put in effort in their work, why don't we do the same? Isn't that a bit two-faced?
Case in point: my own studies. It's been suggested a few times that I'm working myself into my grave at school, by putting so much effort into each and every assignment and report.
It's true that, for most of my reports, I put in extra research that isn't needed. Without said research I feel that I'm doing a half-assed job, because I wouldn't completely understand the subject matter. I enjoy studying extra materials from a field that I'm only in the process of entering, because without them I feel less confident. I've even been complimented on my efforts by a teacher or two.
However, now people (both teachers and fellow students) are suggesting that I could save a lot of time by skipping all that research. "Just find the answers to the questions and move on." "Don't bother with all those nice looking reports." "Do you really think someone's going to read a 25 page paper every time you submit one?"
Now, I'm not disregarding their suggestions, because it's certainly true that I could do with a little spare time. Too much work and no play and all that. So yes, I will start accepting 60-70% as a good score as well.
However, the problem I have with all of this is that we would -love- to have our students go apeshit over their course material! We'dn love it if they got totally enthused about maths, or english lit, or PE. So why are we so quick to jump to the "easy road" ourselves? That just feels illogical to me and actually a little bit like a betrayal as well.
kilala.nl tags: work, teaching,
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2008-02-23 15:48:00
This afternoon Blackie had been asking me to play a lot, but 'cause I'm busy with my homework I couldn't oblige. So to entertain her I propped open one of my filing cabinet's drawers. Yes, the one she'd been digging in earlier.
After hooking her front paws over the edge, giving a big *huff!* and lifting herself into the drawer she actually seemed pretty content. Just sitting there in the dark on my school books seemed pretty comfy. But then after a few minutes I heard a strange noise and she'd disappeared! o_O
Uhm, no... She was sitting on a box in the drawer below it, -behind- the first drawer :D I just love that cat!
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2008-02-14 07:01:00
Aw yeah! I knew she could do it!
Back in October Marlijne applied for a job as railway inspector with the dutch national railways. Back then she was turned down for the job at the final stage. However, neither Marli nor her mother (who's worked at the NS for decades) could let things rest, so they set things to work at various departments across the Netherlands.
Lo and behold! Marli's resume filtered down to Amsterdam, who invited her down for a recruitment day. They liked her resume a lot and thought she's make a nice addition to the group of people who applied to adverts and such. The job everyone was after: service trainee, which boils down to the front-line jobs at railway stations.
Well... After a long day of being scrutinized, tested, shrunk (that's what shrinks do, right?) and turned inside out she got the job! The local management was very enthused about Marlijne and her "disarming" charm as one called it. They did worry slightly about her overweight (more for her sake, than for the NS's), but everyone agreed that that's something we could work on.
She'll start on April first and by then she'll already have her uniform etc. The uniform is being tailored to her measurements, as they do for all of the folks who can't wear confection sized uniforms.
I'm so proud! I knew she could do it :)
kilala.nl tags: family, work, ns,
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2008-02-13 06:55:00
Well carp! It seems that going from 10.4.11 to 10.5.2 in one go has broken a few things on my Macbook. Most notably, my FileVault home directory refuses to mount D:
Checking things out with fsck and Disk Utility Provides the following:
Checking catalog file.
Invalid key length.
Volume check failed.
Disk verification failed.
Ouch. Luckily the encrypted sparseimage will still mount, so I'm using rsync to copy all of my data out of the home directory. Thank Dog I have an external FW disk lying around. Also thank Dog that I make a backup recently :)
Remember kids! Always make backups!
Also, it seems that the tablet driver for my Wacom Graphire4 is incompatible with 10.5.2 as well. It was working nicely with 10.5.1, but not it's borked out :( I guess I'll have to wait for an updated version.
Oh well... While my Macbook is copying all of my data, I'll go have breakfast.
kilala.nl tags: apple, problem, sysadmin,
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2008-02-12 00:00:00
Oh feck... For the past few days I've been yearning to go back to Japan again. Reminiscing about my trip and looking at all kinds of photos isn't making things easier either. It's just such a bloody brilliant country!
I'm looking forward so much to our next trip! And with "our" in this case I mean that I'm dragging Marlijne and Menno along for the ride. Seriously. No debate. ^_^
Waah! I wanna go back! I'm jealous of the folks who're going on the August trip with Shiranai Travel. I wish'm an awesome trip though!
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2008-02-11 12:19:00
Everyone who's ever gone to his/her GP for a general checkup has encountered the BMI, the body mass index. These graphs are used by everyone from GPs to dieticians to figure out how healthy your weight is, compared to your body's build. As far as I know, the index has been in use for [s]decades[/s] over a century.
Unfortunately, not everyone agrees that the math behind the BMI is solid. A lot of people also argue that the BMI does not take into account such matters as fat-vs-muscle tissue.
In a recent thread on weightloss at Ars Technica, Tingle (the topic starter) complains that:
"BMI is useless, not only because the math is flawed (Squared? Mass increases in cube!), but also because it doesn't take body type and muscle mass into consideration. I have wanted to make a test for a long time now: I would like to take photos of different types of bodies and then letting doctors, nurses, nutritionists and their like sort them into four categories (underweight, normal, overweight and obese) based on looks only and compare that to how BMI would have categorized them. Too many only look at BMI without questioning it."
Forum member Canis came to the rescue with this awesome Flick photo collection: Illustrated BMI categories. Kate Harding has put together a big collection of pictures, showing various people's bodies, their measurements and their respective BMI values. This shows some very interesting results, including "morbidly obese" people who've just hiked up a mountain (and who feel fine). It also helps that some of the pics show the people in'm as quite confident, regardless of their BMI :)
kilala.nl tags: internet, health, maths,
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2008-02-10 17:14:00
This semester we're studying Zorgverbreding (student care), which focuses on the care required by students with severe disorders. We're not talking about the "normal" teenage problems here, but about stuff like dyslexia, depression and ADHD.
We're all asked to focus on one particular disorder and to report on it within our group. I've chosen to investigate emotional ailments like anxiety, depression and obsessions/compulsions. This choice was made in part to learn more about myself, given my disposition to depressive bouts.
So far I'm still learning to live with these spells of meh-nes, accepting my depression as a sign that there are things in my life that need to change. Reading about all these forms of depression and their various causes can only help me in this. Of course I'm wary of attributing things to an ailment I may not even have, so you won't have to fear that I'm becoming a hypochondriac or something :p
This weekend's been kind of a low point, with the both of us feeling awkward and down-ish. I've been unmotivated to do any schoolwork, but have been brimming with energy. Instead of fretting over it and forcing myself in my seat, I've diverted this energy into something useful: household work :) Finally, after expending the excess of energy, I've become quiet enough to settle down for at least an hour or two of homework. The fact that I feel good about doing the household stuff also helps. I still won't get all of it done, but at least I'm doing -something-.
So yeah: learning how to live with it :)
kilala.nl tags: health, studying, school,
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2008-02-07 15:50:00
Oh. My. God. I was so nervous this morning, it's unbelievable!
This morning I headed over to the Cals College in IJsselstein, to teach a class for the first time ever-ever. Before that, I had an appointment with the school's student care coordinator, to discuss another school assignment. Fifteen minutes before my class, I was in pretty bad shape though. Crampy stomach, cold and clammy: also known as "nervous".
The same went for the first two minutes of my teaching: I had a shaky voice and kept losing track of my story. After that though, things were fine :)
The students in my classroom were nothing short of awesome. Just like my classmate had predicted, they were very kind ^_^ They were very attentive and they were fast on the uptake. They all managed to finish the whole stencil of assignments, with only a few making minor mistakes. I couldn't have wished for a better class.
<dutch>
Klas 1DLW, heel erg bedankt voor vandaag! Ik ben heel erg blij met hoe het is gegaan en had geen betere klas kunnen vragen voor mijn eerste les. Heel veel succes nog met school en misschien tot ziens :)
</dutch>
One point of important feedback that Gineke gave me: at this level of education, the questions I ask to verify the students' learning process are too open. Instead of asking if everyone gets it, I should ask more closed questions to see if people give the correct answers. Were this VWO instead of VMO (uni-prep as opposed to vocational school), -then- I could've asked open questions.
Of course, there was more feedback, but I'll put that in my report for school. This will be published in the School section in a few days.
Here's a snippet from the videotape I made for my portfolio.
kilala.nl tags: teaching, school, awesome,
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2008-02-06 06:55:00
One of the biggest failings of the dutch, modern-day health insurance IMO is the no-claim part.
This year, like last year, our insurer has notified us that Marli has only use about twenty euros of her claim limit. Hence, they'll be paying us back about 230 euros. This is all kind of neat, were it not for the fact that about 80% of Marli's bills haven't been claimed yet. Just like last year. And just like last year, these bills will roll in around June, ensuring that we have to pay back the whole amount by then.
This whole problem is absolutely not out fault. Instead, it lies with our GP, our hospital and the various specialists that we've visited. -None- of these folks ever file their claims in time, meaning that the insurer can't make the proper calculations. Some of these guys are over a year late with their claims!
Today, I'm going to call our insurer and just ask them to postpone paying out our no-claim for a few months. I really don't feel like getting in trouble when summer comes around.
kilala.nl tags: money,
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2008-02-05 22:36:00
Here's a little taster of the stuff I'll be using in Thursday's math class. I'll be introducing the kids in a VMBO-BL class to the notion of negative numbers, which can be quite a challenge. I mean, how the heck do you explain to a twelve year old that there's something smaller than zero?
Of course, people will immediately point out things like temperatures, debt and years B.C. Thing is, those are only examples of negative numbers and they don't explain how or why. They just show that it's possible, but a child may not instinctively understand how these figures work.
So, this should prove to be interesting! The picture shown above is part of a stencil I'm putting together for the students. It's part of the first assignment they'll be making, pointing out the height at which various objects reside. I'm very curious about how it'll work out :)
kilala.nl tags: teaching, school, creative, maths,
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2008-02-04 11:19:00
These two are just too awesome.
On the left is my lovely friend Wynk, showcasing a Jayne-hat from Firefly.
On the right is the infamous Tom Baker, from Doctor Who, wearing his awesome scarf.
kilala.nl tags: creative, geeky, doctor who,
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2008-02-03 23:20:00
You may remember that Blackie likes sitting/lying/digging in drawers. I have no clue what she's up to in there, but fine. Well, it seems she's take a shine to my new secretaire desk as well ^_^
I'm thinking of sending this in to I Can Has Cheezburger?.
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2008-02-03 17:37:00
Ah, good stuff! ^_^
Yesterday we cooked a very nice meal and it was one of the first times since ages that Marli spent a lot of the time cooking. She made the pork potroast and left the other stuff to me. The meat turned out absolutely stunning, which greatly motivated her to cook again! So tonight we're making potroast again, but this time it's beef. :) She seems so enthused about it all that I deem it highly likely that she'll start cooking more and more. Awesome!
Also, a little while ago Niels-sama gifted us his old rice cooker (he bought a new one in Japan). Let me tell you, this thing takes all the effort out of cooking rice! Just measure off the ingredients, turn on the machine and you'll have perfectly cooked rice that is kept warm and steamy until you're ready to eat. Wonderful!
It's been a while since I really enjoyed cooking, so this is certainly a nice change :)
kilala.nl tags: cooking,
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2008-02-02 08:41:00
Or apparently that's what prof. DeTurck of Penssylvania-U thinks.
DeTurck does not want to abolish the teaching of fractions and long division altogether. He believes fractions are important for high-level mathematics and scientific research. But it could be that the study of fractions should be delayed until it can be understood, perhaps after a student learns calculus, he said. Long division has its uses, too, but maybe it doesn't need to be taught as intensely.
From:
and
Of course, like many others I believe this notion to be nuts. Decimals have no meaning unless you know what fractions are. It'll be like handing a bunch of powertools to a carpenters apprentice and asking him to build a house. Oh, you don't need to know what everything does, just get to work...
As a future maths teacher I'm scared by this idea. And it's not just limited to the US. A dutch prof by the name of Kees Hoogland shares DeTurck's opinion that kids should be learning less longhand maths and should instead be focusing on using the calculator. Why? Because they'd be stupid not to use the modern materials at their disposal. *sigh*
I've started a forum discussion about this, over at Ars. Obviously, it's gotten some pissed off responses ^_^
EDIT:
In response to my thread over at Ars, GwT has started a new thread asking how important math is in general.
kilala.nl tags: school, studying, weird, maths,
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2008-02-01 23:51:00
Theory: everything becomes better by adding "-cake" :)
* Honey, I'm sorry-cakes ;_;
* I love you-cake! (That's very sweet stuff)
* This is awesome-cake!
* Chocolate-cake ^_^
Of course, we all know that THE CAKE IS A LIE(!), but still. It's so delicious and moist :)
EDIT:
If this post makes you worry for my sanity, don't... I'm fine :) Here's a good explanation of "the cake is a lie".
Even though I've never played Portal, I still love the in-jokes from the game. If you're aware of the whole Half-Life story lines, you'll find this video + song awesome.
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.