Guus Bosman

Yesterday was my 29th birthday, and we celebrated it with an great party in our apartment.

In the morning we celebrated the traditional way, with presents, postcards, e-mails and lots of nice phone calls. The rest of the day we prepared for the party. We did most of the shopping on Friday evening (2,5 hours in the supermarket) so we only had to get some last minute things like fresh bread.

The first guests arrived just after 7.00 pm, and within an hour the house was full with people -- wonderful! We had food, drinks and a cake with 29 candles that I managed to blow out at once.

It was great to have so many people over. It's been years since we threw a big party at home and this was the first such a party we've done in the States. Hosting a party is so much fun! It reminded me of the cool parties we used to have in Florijn, and later in Haarlem. A special thanks to the folks who helped in the kitchen and offered to help during the evening.

For many people it was the first time in our house, and I think everybody had a very good time. It was nice that the different groups of people in my life met each other. In the course of the evening we had almost 40 people at the party.

After midnight the dancing started ('Beautiful Girls' was a particular favorite). Around 2.00 am we broke things up.

The Dutch TV news showed a 'robot pharmacy' the other day.

It's machine that fully automatically takes the wholesale supplies, stores them in an archive and on-demand prepares medications for patients.

The pharmacy robot is designed and manufactured by the company Gerben works for, and he has played an important part in the technical implementation. When I was in Holland he showed me video footage of the robot -- it's cool to see how fast and smoothly it operates.

See the TV coverage online (in Dutch).

This weekend we hang an image with an artistic view of Amsterdam in the 16th century in the living room, opposite the map of Haarlem.

There is some interesting lens distortion in this picture. I tried to adjust it with barrel correction but not all lines on the picture are vertical and horizontal (and yes, our apartment has straight walls and yes, the map is level also).