Guus Bosman

software engineering director

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dailylife

Haarlem photo's for a good purpose

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 9:43pm

Two photographs that I took in Haarlem, the Netherlands, years ago are now used in a newsletter.

Hale Kū‘ike, a residential facility in Hawaii for people with Alzheimer's disease, used two photographs of Dutch 'hofjes' that I posted on Wikipedia in their most recent letter.

[...] Hofje van Bakenes, located in the Netherlands, stands out in my memory. It was founded in 1395 to care for twenty women and has been in operation ever since. Imagine that, over six centuries of assisted living!

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movies

Full Frame 2011

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 8:56pm

What a festival! The film selection this year was very good.

On Friday morning I saw Hot Coffee, an interesting doc on product liability and mandatory arbitration clauses (7). We saw several films together that day:

- "How to Pick Berries" about Thai people picking berries in Finland. Very current, with the elections in Finland last week. (6)
- "When China met Africa", about Chinese companies investing in Zambia. Great characters. (8)
- "Gun Fight", about gun-rights in the United States. Well produced. (8)

Saturday morning we saw:

- "Universal Language", about Esperanto. It was an okay documentary, but it was fun to see Texel, the Netherlands, where there is a monument for Esperanto (6).
- "Unlikely treasures" was very enjoyable, about people collecting useless things. (8)

Sasha left to the UK, and I went back to the festival.

- "Tugs" was nice, but way too short. (6)
- A highlight was "Being Elmo", a film about the life of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind Elmo, the popular Sesame Street character. Kevin Clash (and Elmo) where in the theater, and he was warmly welcomed by the audience. (9)
- After such a fun movie it was a big switch to see "Scenes of a Crime", about a man who after 16 hours of interrogation committed to a crime he may not have done. (8)

On Sunday I was in line for the award winners at 12.15 pm, nicely on time.

- I saw "Caretaker for the Lord", a lovely short about a church in Scotland that is closing. (9)
- "We Still Live Here", about a woman who introduces her ancestor's lost language back to the community. (7)

Had a quick dinner at Tyler's. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and it was great to sit outside. There was a Bulls game later that afternoon.

- "The Interrupters" was very impressive, a great film. It was long, but with the richness of the movie that was not a problem. Amazing contrast between living the inner cities and the suburbs. (9)
- Closed the festival with Il Capo (7) and "Buck", the audience award winner. (8)

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dailylife

Sasha to London

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 12:48pm

Sasha is leaving for the UK in a little bit. She will be presenting at the Royal Economic Society in London, pretty cool. There's a direct flight from RDU to Heathrow that she'll take.

We saw two nice movies this morning and came home for lunch; I'm going back to the festival in a little bit.

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movies

First day of Full Frame 2011

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 6:38am

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival started on Thursday. I took a day off yesterday and we have seen several great films already. What a great event to have in our home town!

To Die In Oregon

The most memorable movie so far was 'To Die In Oregon', about the 'Death with Dignity' act in Oregon and Washington state, which legalizes physician-assisted dying with certain restrictions. The film describes why patients took this decision. It was a very difficult movie to watch, especially the story of a 57 year old cancer patient and her family in her last year.

Windfall

The next two films were of a much lighter tone. Windfall describes downside of wind energy, and the potential effects it has on the quality of life of people around wind turbines. It describes what happens in Meredith, a village in upstate New York, when developers visit the town to set up wind turbines. As the filmmaker said at the festival, the real power of the documentary was not so much describing the facts around wind power, but showing the people of the town. Some real characters!

Guilty Pleasures

The official opening film of the festival was 'Guilty Pleasures', a fun documentary about the Harlequin romantic books, and the people involved in producing them. Very entertaining, very nicely done. Full Frame is not only great because of its movie selection, but also because of the guests that are invited. One of the main characters of the movie was in the theater and the Q&A session afterwards was fun.

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dutchusa

A great find: Tales Told in Holland

Sat, 04/09/2011 - 10:04pm

Today we went to the booksale of the Durham Library, always a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

Last year I bought a beautiful edition of Rip van Winkle; this year I found another gorgeous Dutch-American book: Tales Told in Holland. Of course, with sites like Abebooks.com and Amazon you can order any book you like on-line, but there is something very satisfying about browsing big piles of books and finding a hidden gem like this.

Published in Chicago, this book is a collection of Dutch stories and nursery rhymes. Stories include Hugo de Groot's escape in a chest with books and the Lady of Stavoren, as well as many others that I didn't know. It is really fun to see Dutch children's rhymes translated into English, including Sinterklaas songs.

The introduction starts like this:

"Tales Told in Holland consists chiefly of stories with a few translations from the greatest Dutch poets and a few old Dutch nursery rhymes, naive and nonsensical as our English rhymes, and contrasting interestingly with the far more sophisticated rhymes of the French. "

My copy is a first edition from 1926 and thus over 85 years old. It is in good shape for its age and I'm really happy with it.

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dailylife

New York Times

Sun, 04/03/2011 - 12:53pm

Over the years I've become an avid reader of the New York Times. I don't always agree with their commentary, but their reporting and analysis are excellent and I've come to read it several times a day.

I always wondered why they made all their news available for free. After all, other major newspapers such as The Economist and the Financial Times have had paywalls for years. We had a subscription to the New York Times in the past but a newspaper made out of paper is very inefficient -- reading it on the phone is so much more practical.

I ran into the "soft limit" of the Times within 4 days of the new month, both on my browser and my BlackBerry. It's a valuable news source to us, so as of this morning we're subscribed.

It's strange to see how easy it is to circumvent the paywall (using NoScript in your browser in sufficient); I suppose they assume most casual readers won't go to that length. Still, sending the whole article but overlapping it with a CSS popup is trivially easy to get around.

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