Guus Bosman

software executive and technologist

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movies

The Right To Be Left Alone

Tue, 04/17/2007 - 8:51pm

The Right To Be Left Alone.Friday evening after seeing South of Ten & Radiant City I went home to have dinner, but two hours later I was at the Full Frame Festival again to see The Right To Be Left Alone.

This is a documentary about the life of Larry Flynt, a publisher of a pornographic magazine and a life-long activist for the freedom of speech. There is a fiction movie about Larry Flynt that I had never seen, and this documentary was interesting. The movie made a case that it is important that every generation learns and remembers how crucially important the right for free speech is.

Larry Flynt was scheduled to attend the movie (a world wide premiere) but couldn't make it for health reasons.

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dailylife

Food advertisements

Tue, 04/17/2007 - 7:38pm

Food advertisements.A website that shows Ads vs. Reality.

Advertisements for food paired with actual pictures of that food.

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politicsnews

Horrible news Virginia Tech

Mon, 04/16/2007 - 2:04pm

Horrible news from Virginia Tech today -- someone killed more than 20 people at the Campus today.

I was there for a career fair in November 2005 and it's deeply sad to read this news.

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dailylife

Full Frame Festival

Sat, 04/14/2007 - 9:05am

Full Frame Festival.I was up bright and early this morning, and I was at the Festival at 8.00 am to get tickets for 2 shows that were sold out in the advanced ticket sale. The line wasn't very long and I got my tickets.

The Festival has nice tables with good coffee and wireless access. I'm on my way to get in line for the next show that starts at 9.30 am, 2 movies about Africa.

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movies

South of Ten & Radiant City

Sat, 04/14/2007 - 12:09am

Radiant City.Tonight I went to the Full Frame Festival right after work. I saw two movies in a session that started at 5.45 pm: South of Ten followed by Radiant City.

The first one, South of Ten, was only 10 minutes long. It showed daily lives being picked up after hurricane Katrina -- a little girl bicycling through a littered landscape, boys looking at a broken bridge...

I selected this session for the 2nd movie, Radiant City. This was an entertaining film about living in the suburbs in North-America. Conversations by experts on urban planning were mixed with interviews of a family that lives in a suburb in Canada, and what influence living in a suburb has on their daily life. It was a fun but thought provoking movie that was about much more than just the urban planning aspects of the suburbs.

At the end of the session there was a Q&A session, but I was getting pretty hungry so I went home right after the movie ended.

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dailylife

Pearls for breakfast

Fri, 04/13/2007 - 8:16am

Pearls for breakfast. The Washington Post did an interesting social experiment a while ago.

"No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.

His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

Read the complete article here (through Mark).

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movies

Castells

Thu, 04/12/2007 - 11:23pm

Castells.Tonight Sasha and I saw an absolutely delightful movie, Castells. It's a documentary about people in Catalonia, Spain who create large human towers.

The movie has breathtaking visuals, but it offers much more than spectacular images of this intriguing sport. The movie shows the social life of the villagers and the preparations by the colle, the participants in these Towers, workings towards big festivals and holidays (see the movie trailer).

These human towers are truly fascinating and I had never heard of them before. A Tower can be up to 9 stories high, and the upper layers are formed by small children. In the movie there is one little girl , Zoraida, who is scared and only climbs to the 8th layer in a training. These little kids are completely incorporated in this sport and are expected to perform with the adults-- Zoraida is perhaps 4 years old.

Every now and then the tower would collapse and everybody will fall on top of each other. True harm seems to be rare, although the children sometimes get bruised and cry. The movie is touching, funny at times and an absolutely recommended film to see.

Castells is the opening night movie of the Full Frame festival here in Durham, which is the largest documentary film festival in the U.S. I'll be watching a lot of documentaries this weekend, and even if they're only half as good as Castells then this will be a great weekend.

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politicsnews

Duke lacrosse charges dropped

Wed, 04/11/2007 - 4:30pm

Duke lacrosse.Today the State Attorney General of North Carolina finally announced that the sexual offense and kidnapping charges against three former Duke lacrosse players are being dropped.

It's a long, sad case based on what turned out to be about false accusations, with an overly active District Attorney who wanted to get reelected.

It is tremendously important to be careful and diligent when researching rape allegations such as these. However, when it became clear that the accusations were clearly false District Attorney Mike Nifong should have dropped the case.

Today's conclusion by the State Attorney General: "We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations," Cooper said. "In the rush to condemn, a community and the state lost the ability to see clearly. Regardless of the reasons this case was pushed forward, the result was wrong. Today we need to learn from this and keep it from happening again to anybody."

It's strange to see this from so close. The Kroger supermarket on Hillsborough Road where we do our shopping played a small role in the case.

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guusbosmannl

And we're back!

Wed, 04/11/2007 - 9:22am

The website has been down for over 3 days -- the longest outage in years!

A power outage in Middenmeer, combined with my parents being out of town were the root cause of the outage.

Thanks to Jaap the various problems have been resolved (thank you). The resignation of the Minister for Energy in the Netherlands has been demanded.

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dailylife

Saturday morning

Sat, 04/07/2007 - 12:53pm

Kroger on Saturday morning.I tried to go to the Farmers' Market in downtown Durham this morning but I couldn't find it. Today's the first day that the Market opened, it will be every Saturday morning throughout the summer.

Since a few months there is a Starbucks store in Kroger, the supermarket we usually go to, and I went to pick up two cups of coffee.

In a few weeks there will be the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and last night we saw video clips of some of the participants. It promises to be a wonderful show of bad musical taste again. It would be awesome if we could see Terry Wogan's show somewhere, although the chances of that are slim...

The Dutch participant, Edsilia Rombley, won't stand a chance with a boring performance. The Bulgarian participants, Elitsa Todorova & Stoyan Yankoulov, aren't too bad, but to win the competition more extravaganza is required. Titles as "Push that button" or "Shake It Up Shekerim" are more likely to score high, as is the "vampires are real" act from one of the small European countries.

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