Guus Bosman

software engineering director


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driving

5th lesson

Dirty car.This weekend I was in Middenmeer, and I had my fifth driving lesson today. We went to our usual location to practice parking, driving backwards, the hill-start etc.

My skills are improving, and I feel more confident driving now. My father also pointed me out the various parts of the inside of the car, which was not as complicated as I thought it would be. It had been raining this weekend and the road I was practising on was quite muddy.

We also played three games Steden & Ridders: I won the first two and Mieke the last one. We had couscous for dinner and I was home around 22:00 o'clock.

movies

Fahrenheit 9/11

Yesterday evening my parents and I saw
Fahrenheit 9/11.

We went to Cinema7Skoop, a movie theater in Den Helder. It's a cute little cinema with 60 seats which is ran by volunteers.

The movie itself was interesting. Some of the footage was really gruesome; a proof that war is always horrible, and it makes you feel sorry for everyone who is in it.

The central theme of the movie is the claim that President Bush is a villain, who puts the country into disarray and who went to war for the wrong reasons.

Personally, I certainly don't agree with Moore's thesis, and his movie didn't change my opinion. He tries to convince the audience, not by giving a detailed explanation of his views, but by using copy & pasted video material that has been ingeniously mixed and edited to convey his insinuations.

But even though it failed to convince me on an political level, it was a well-made documentary. The movie is often quite funny and the music that accompanies it was well-chosen. It's great to know that in a democracy like the U.S. it's possible for such a movie to be such a success.

dailylife

Wieringermeer boots

Wieringermeer boots.Together with my father I went shopping and we made a short visit to the historical museum of the Wieringermeer.

The museum is located in the central street of Middenmeer. It is not very large but they have a nice collection of documents, pictures and objects from the history of the polder.

Among them a pair of boots that were used to walk in the polder when it was just created and still very muddy. Working in the new polder (digging the canals etc) must have been really tough.

guusbosmannl

New hosting location

The server on its new location.Yesterday evening we moved the server to a new location. First we had a cosy dinner together, and then we went to Middenmeer and took the server with us. My parents have ADSL, so there is a permanent internet connection here.

The server is now located in the attic of my parent's house. Yesterday evening at midnight I changed the DNS entries for Guus Bosman.nl, so most users should see the website again now instead of a 'temporary offline' page.

internet

Google Desktop

Joris pointed me out to a really cool new tool by Google: the Google Desktop. It's a search-engine that you works for your own computer, so locally.

It works really well, and it integrates beautifully with Microsoft Outlook and many other tools. Installing is a breeze: download it here (Windows only). It's really nice to be able to find everything so quickly: it's much quicker than Windows' own search tool and the integration with google.com is great.

dailylife

Joost's birthday

Yesterday I went to Schiedam, to Joost's birthday party. We had dinner together with Joost's family.

In the evening more friends and schoolmates came, and it was a fun evening. In the background the match between the Netherlands and Finland was on (3-1). I had home-made white wine, which was delicious.

politicsnews

Presidential debates

The second presidential debate.The presidential debates are in the middle of the night, Dutch time, so it's not always possible to see them live.

However, I found that they are also vieweable online. They're made available for free by C-Span, an American broadcast
organization.

dailylife

Cold...

The fall seems to have started: it's very cold today. Yesterday on the radio: "it will be 13 degrees today, but it will feel much colder because of the wind".

The heating here at Chess doesn't work yet. It has been off all summer of course, and now there's not enough water in the system. There are no water pump pliers in the office, but we were promised that after lunch the heating should work.

Yesterday I spent sorting and packing stuff.

theater

Woord

Yesterday I went out with Arjan and Irene to a play in the Toneelschuur. We had dinner in Arjan's place. I had gnocchi for the first time, a potato based pasta; very nice.

We went to "Woord", a new play by Rieks Swarte. Rieks Swarte is the brother of Joost Swarte, cartoonist and architect of the Toneelschuur building. "Woord" is about a two men who are exploring the architecture of the Cordoba temple, and a woman who is more interested in mysticism.

The play resembled a lecture at times, such as when the golden ratio was explained, but a funny one at that. The use of video camera's on stage was very nice. It was a try-out performance and one of the camera's ran out of batteries half-way.

The play was very entertaining and often funny. Afterwards we stayed in the theater's bar quite long; a great evening.

guusbosmannl

OpenBSD 3.5

The server with the diskdrive outside because of a mechanical problem with it.Yesterday I installed new software on the website's server. Guus Bosman.nl is running under OpenBSD, a secure unix-like operating system.

I felt it was time to install version 3.5, because version 3.3 is no longer supported. On November 1st a new version will be released again, but I wanted to update the server now as I don't think I'll have a lot of time in November.

From 20:00 o'clock to 0:30 I was installing the new OS. About an hour of that I spent trying to fix the server's diskdrive. Then I realized that the floppy disks just didn't enter the diskdrive completely, because of a mechanical issue. A screw driver helped out and after that things went smoothly. The installation program of OpenBSD is really good.

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