Leiden at night

A not totally legally obtained copy of a dvd containing a short documentary on night photography has inspired me to go out with my camera last night, and capture bits and pieces of Leiden. I walked around for about an hour and a half, and tried to avoid the most common cliche’s. I couldn’t create interesting compositions as I forgot my tripod (that was so stupid) and had to set my camera on whatever was available (like dustbins, bicycles, cars, fences, and tree-trunks). Nevertheless, I think some of the photographs are worth sharing.

Here they are!

Vrouwensteeg, F16, 25s, 100 ISO, Tungsten

Stille Rijn, from the Kippenbrug,  F16, 30s

Haarlemmerstraat, F13, 10s

Oude Rijn, J. Vossenbrug, F16, 30s, cropped

Tweelingstraat, F16, 30s, brightness +0.83, Tungsten

Schagensteeg, F11, 25s, Tungsten

Hooglandse Kerkgracht, F22, 30s, brightness +0.83, Tungsten

 

An evening of Processing

I’ve been fiddling with processing this evening (after having typed out the minutes of some meeting I had a few weeks ago, outside on the terrace of Brasserie ‘t Park, in the sun on a Saturday afternoon with a few beers to go round–go figure how much I’d remember of what was said!).

Something I’ve wanted to do for a while was to draw with a line that looks like a line drawn with an old-fashioned, sharp-pointed fountain pen. That is, a thin, sharp line that isn’t entirely straight, and has some fuzzy noise alongside it. I had to write the code to draw such a line myself, as it required tracing that line pixel by pixel and adding random fuzzy noise at its sides.

I succeeded, although the line looks best at around a 45 degree angle. I’ve written a small program to also incorporate rotation and translation, and came up with this result:

 

I then drew these kinds of squares on a black background rather than a white one, but it doesn’t have as much impact:

So, moving on I then used the built-in function to draw lines which yielded this result which isn’t half bad for its mellow mood, but it lacks the poignant quality of the first drawing:

To finish off, I incorporated the code I wrote to draw broken lines, and it gave me something I didn’t expect but which I really like for it’s combination of harsh contrast, impact and soft edges:

 

1 year ago today…

… I quit smoking!

 

 

Boating

The cast of Desire Under the Elms went boating yesterday! We met in the Doeshaven where Jan has a small boat, and six of us went boating from 13.30 to 18.30! There were five of us first (Jan, Arnoud, Joop, Miranda and me), and we picked up Hans somewhere near the Waardeneiland.

At De Grote Beer we had some lunch, after the skies mostly cleared up. Then we set out to boat a few times through Leiden–including passing the fish-market, and passing a low bridge that left less than an inch between it and the helm. This was at the old cemetery near the Zijlpoort. There, we set Hans off again at the Waardeneiland, and toured some more along the newer parts of Leiderdorp. We saw the point where the HSL will go underground, next to the A4, and were back at the Doeshaven at 18.30. All day without a drop of rain!

Then last night I was too tired to do anything else, so I watched “Innocence”, a weird but heartwarming movie about a sort of orphanage for girls. I won’t give too much away, but the weirdness of all that happens in there has a very real quality to it.

 

"Laat me niet alleen"

I’ve found a Dutch version of Ne Me Quitte Pas by Jacques Brel. There is something about the French connection that makes it that you can hear the rain, desperation, passion, chi, and everything through song. I almost feel unpriviliged about not having had the chance to see and hear Brel for myself. Having this recording where he sings Dutch is an asset, and I’m going to search for more of him.

 

The Cumbria Way

I received notice that my holiday is finally booked and I’ve just booked the flights to and from Liverpool through Easyjet! It is now completely definitive: I am going to spend 9 days in Lake District’s wilderness by myself, walking an average of 15 km’s per day, staying in small village inns, and be away from all the business of ordinary life. Somehow 9 days just doesn’t seem enough!

Here’s the route I am going to follow:

 

Panorama from work

 
Approach to the A12 from Papendorp (Utrecht)

Although these pictures are taken with my phone, the lens-distortion is surprisingly small! In fact, smaller than the distortion I get when shooting panorama’s with my dSLR. The colours are dreadful and the detail is horrible, but as panorama’s go it’s not such a bad result.

It’s probably for the best, then, that when Orange delivered my supposedly repaired pda last Friday, it crashed almost immediately after I got my hands on it. So they took it back again and I could keep the E650 for now.

 

Stawberries and whipped cream

 

Holiday Bookings and Car Failure

Sunday I went for a walk with Manuela and we talked about our holidays; she’s going to Sweden and I hadn’t made any plans yet. I told her I would like to go on a hiking-holiday by myself, and having heard myself saying that I immediately set out to see what was on offer in Norway, Slovenia, Germany, England and Scotland. I found an organisation that provides accommodation in and a map of the Lake District, with a route going from Ulverston to Carlisle (South to North) straight through the area. The organisation (Mickledore) books the accommodation along the route at bed&breakfast hotels, packs your lunch, and leaves everything else up to you.

I’ve booked the 9-nights route (the Cumbria Way–you can also hike it in 6 or 7 days with longer hikes each day) and start on August 8th. The first hike is on August 9th, the last on August 16th. And I am really looking forward to the experience! I fly in to Liverpool, and then take the train to Ulverston, which runs along the coast for a while. Always wanted to ride on an English train!

On Monday I not only booked a holiday, but also almost caused a mess on the highway; my engine quit right before the Ouderijn intersection on the A12. It just stopped without warning while I was going 110 kph. I could stop the car on the side-lane and start the engine again, but the confidence I had in that piece of machinery was completely gone. I had to drive back from Utrecht to Leiden to get to the car-dealer, and every time the car slowed down I looked at the board-computer display to see if it flashed anything about an engine failure. Tuesday I learned that one of the valves was malfunctioning and fortunately they could replace it immediately.

Apart from all that, this week was uneventful. I got cut down a bit at work, seeing the solutions some of my colleagues had for a problem I couldn’t satisfactory solve myself. I didn’t sleep very well because of the temperatures, and I’ve made a start with a new Ict4Free project to build a Joomla website for a handicapped sports-club.

 

Verheen, Vlietlanden, Bacon

I met up with the cast of Desire Under the Elms last Friday for pizza and to watch our director’s new play, Verheen, adapted from My Private Idaho. She teaches drama at schools and produces plays with adolescents (obviously also with adults), and Verheen is a play in her ‘own’ theatre in an empty power plant in Leiden.

We walked from scene to scene, as the scenes were distributed across the different rooms in that power plant. It’s a little hard to maintain concentration in the beginning, but you soon get used to going to another place for the next scene. Halfway through I found myself rushing because I wanted to know how the story would continue! Although not all of the actors were good, most of them were acceptable and some were really good.

After the show we went for a few drinks in Respons (formerly known as De Spons) and I rode home in the rain.

I started the weekend on Saturday with a walk around de Vlietlanden, also in the rain. It took me less than two hours to round the lake, and nothing interesting happened at all. I was soaking wet at one point, but the hiking-clothes I have dry quickly and don’t irritate the skin when wet. They do tend to smell when dried from the rain, though… In the afternoon I had a few drinks with Diana in Leiderdorp, and when I got home I made a pan of chicken soup. My walk did make me think about booking a hiking-holiday somewhere this summer, but I haven’t decided yet on a location: Lake District, Slovenia, Norway or Scotland… suggestions are welcome!

Here is a panorama of a small field in de Vlietlanden:

The stitching software had some problems with this one. Also, the colours were really bad, so I modified them a bit in Photoshop. Can’t help the visible and disruptive seams, though.

Today Manuela came over for dinner and a walk on the beach. She usually can’t eat everything she likes because her two daughters need to eat it too and they are–like all children–very selective of what they’ll eat. Her kids are away for the weekend, so I offered to make her some big fat slices of bacon, asparagus, left-over chicken-soup, and banana ice-cream with whipped cream on top. She didn’t refuse the offer J.

To finish this weekend and be fresh tomorrow at work, I’ll retire early tonight and read on in Dan Simmons’ Olympus.

 

A Day in Rotterdam

My brother Corjan is turning 40 tomorrow (June 26th), and he invited me and my parents for a roundtrip in Rotterdam’s port and dinner afterwards. We went on a Spido boat, and it sailed through the port for about 90 minutes. You wouldn’t believe the beauty of a heavily industrialized port! The dry-docks that carry huge ships, the inconceivable amount of containers stacked together all along the shoreline, the old buildings that are no longer used but were once used for storage in the early life of Rotterdam’s port, and the simply overwhelming scale of everything!

After seeing the port we went to a small (and I mean: 13 people max) restaurant called “Oma Kookt” in Rotterdam. The ride there was adventurous, as we got lost almost immediately after we set off, and my dad had to work his way through the tough Rotterdam traffic. His years as a bus driver really came in useful, although my mom became increasingly agitated and nervous as the minutes passed.

But, we got there. “Oma Kookt” serves very simple traditionally Dutch meals at a very good price, and the food was as great as we expected. Just before our meals arrived a regular customer came for his dinner and he sat at our table (although there were only two tables in the restaurant, and one of them was taken by the staff). He spoke with a heavy Rotterdam’s accent and about all things concerning the city and himself. Although we’d preferred it to be left alone, he wasn’t an intrusion and actually quite fun to listen to. 

I didn’t carry any of my camera’s on me, but I did take some snapshots with my phone (none of them very good, to be honest):

    

 

Wordle of 2 c# webapplication

There’s this really cool java application at wordle.net and it stamps out these images, based on text that you provide. The two images below are from c# code; the above from the code-behind of an .aspx page, the second one from a datalayer class:

Check out wordle.net!

 

190 degrees of balcony + new phone!

This is a (roughly) 190 degrees view from my balcony:

My PDA phone crashed last Tuesday evening and wouldn’t start up again. I let it drop a few times so it has some damage on the outside, but I didn’t figure it would matter on the inside. I called Orange and they collected it this morning to send it away for repairs, and they gave me a new phone for the time being. I actually like the new phone (SPV E650) better than my old one (SPV M650), but that’s probably only until this one breaks. I was a little worried that I might have to manually copy every contact from Outlook into my new phone, but the integration and synchronization was seamless! Microsoft doesn’t always get things right, but this time they succeeded in avoiding disaster.

Meanwhile, I feel an urge to make panoramic pictures, so that might be what I’m going to do this weekend. There’s a workshop tomorrow at Toverlei to asses potential new members, I hope to make pictures of the inside or our theater. I also want to go out and ‘hike’ across the Vlietlanden again, but I think I’ll wait until the sun is lower so that there are better colors in the sky.

 

Weekend June 14/15

Last Saturday Toverlei’s board had a meeting that spanned 6 hours, receiving most committees Toverlei has, and discussing with them their responsibilities, plans and problems. I dreaded this meeting as I thought it’d be mostly dull and predictable, but as it turned out it was actually rather useful and the meeting just flew by. It helped that the last committee couldn’t be there and the meeting was over at 16.30.

I visited Frodo and Petra, who moved into the Merenwijk and held a housewarming party. I met John and Anik and Rowan, and admired their new home. Funny thing how a previously assumed dull urban area turns out to be acutally a rather nice place to live. Guess I’m getting older, but who could maintain that the Merenwijk is an awful place when you’re surrounded by so much greenery and gardens, small angled blocks, and small quiet streets?

Then on Sunday I made onion-soup and started in Dan Simmons’ Olympus. I had left some of my stuff at a friend on Friday, and I picked those up in the evening. We had some strawberries with whipped cream together, as well as a walk on the beach and some tea.

I really liked the onion-soup, but the drawback of eating onions is that the smells in my apartment are like the fumes of hell at the moment…

 

Midsummernight’s Dream audition

Got a part! Lysander!

We had a first audition two weeks ago and some of us were asked to come back for a second audition. Some parts needed more consideration, others were already given. Ruud (director) told us beforehand who already had which part, and which parts needed to be filled in at the end of the evening. He’d already assigned Lysander to me, the only important role that was still open was Puck. At the end of the Evening, Thea was the lucky one!

We went to work with improvisations, and some rudimentary scenes to get our first taste of all the characters and the situations they’re in. We chronically moved through the play, and even now it’s already complicated to remember at what time who is attracted to whom. The people I’ll be playing with are Marieke (Hermia), Diana (Helena) and Stephan (Demitrius). Rehearsals start next week, on Tuesdays. So I guess my attendance at the ICT4Free evenings will be even worse than what it already is.