The lake

I've lived near this lake (called the Zuidlaardermeer) for my whole life, until I went to Japan. I used to have a tiny motorboat when I was around twelve years old. I explored the whole lake with it, and had a lot of fun.

When I had the little motorboat we used to live farther from the lake, and we'd come here in weekends and on holidays. These days we live right next to the lake. My boat was sold many years ago. My sister has a boat now. She also explored the lake with it.

These photos were made last week. It was the first time in a couple of years that I've been on the lake. I never go there anymore. It's actually a rather boring place after you've grown up. Still, my fondest childhood memories happened around this lake. It's a very nostalgic place for me.

Posted in Dutch , Photography | Tagged

The Root of All Evil?(?)

A friend recommended me a long time ago to watch a documentary called the Jesus Camp. Jesus Camp was a summer camp in the US where devout Christians would send their children to spend the summer and learn about Jesus, the bible, intelligent design etcetera. While wiki-ing on the topic I found it interesting what happened after the documentary was released, as one of the pastors  appearing in the film appeared in a scandal for using drugs and having sex with a male prostitute. Another interesting effect of the (according to the creators) objective documentary was shut down due to negative reactions of people after seeing the documentary. Wikipedia also provided me with a nice tie-in to another documentary, called The Root of All Evil? by Richard Dawkins.

Also titled 'The God Delusion' but spiced up a little by Channel 4 who wanted to create extra controversy around it, this documentary proposes that religion is the root of all evil, and Richard Dawkins travels to various religious areas to talk to religious people and to try and make them see 'the folly of their ways'. The first two thoughts that sprung into my head were: it's funny that Dawkins is using the concept of 'evil' against religion, as religions were probably the ones who first invented it. The second thing that annoyed me is that he is purposefully seeking out people who don't believe what he believes and then tries to convince them to change their ways. That's exactly what most people dislike about religious people. Forcing your beliefs upon someone is bad, mkay.

Dawkins clearly set out on a mission here, which is to try and foulmouth religion as much as possible. He does a bunch of interviews with extremely religious people, lures them out to say stupid things and then uses the things they say as an argument against their entire religion. As a skeptic myself, I side with Dawkins on most of the discussions in the film, but I disagree with the way it's presented. Some (but not a lot) of the religious people in the film are well-spoken, intelligent people who keep up with Dawkins and counter him at every point. Dawkins then either keeps saying more extreme things to lure them out, or he does a voice-over and cuts off the discussion. I'm pretty sure that religious people won't be happy with the way they're portrayed in the documentary. Then again, it'll be mostly atheists watching this, so he's preaching to his own choir.

I'm a scientist myself, and I have some (scientist) friends who are also religious. I've always been interested as to how they integrate both concepts into their personality. It seems to be a very personal thing, and everyone has their own way of doing it. It's quite different from the people in the Jesus Camp, who are all indoctrinated in the same way, all belonging to the same group. I think that's where the big difference lies, or will lie in the future. In the past, if people wanted to 'belong', their options were very limited. If you lived in a Christian region, you were Christian. If you lived in a Muslim region then you were Muslim. It's a stable solution. Until you come into contact with other cultures/religions, a phenomenon which is common nowadays. We're confronted with different cultures every moment of every day, both in the media and in daily life. People are being shown that a lot of people don't believe what they believe, and they're being shown it a lot earlier in life than in the past. Modern multi-cultural society is effectively changing how people believe.

Another main point of this is the 'belonging' to a group that I mentioned before. In the past, you didn't have a lot of choice on where you wanted to belong, depending on the region you were in and the people you had to deal with every day. Nowadays though it's not uncommon to see people communicating daily with people at the other side of the world but not even knowing the name of their neighbor. Modern technology is also changing how people believe. Or as I prefer to put it: the Internet is the new god.

Regardless of religion, I firmly believe in respecting other people's beliefs, and not forcing my beliefs upon others. I really do think that Dawkins failed a little bit on that part, even though I agree with most if not all of the points made by him in the documentary.

All that said, you might think I'm an atheist to the extreme, but I don't think I am. I do believe in a god. You can find him inside Gödel's incompleteness theorem, but you have to look for it. :)

Posted in Thoughts

Some more timelapses

Here's some more time lapse videos, one from Antwerp, one from Amsterdam and one from my home town of Hometown. I'm not happy with any of them, but I didn't expect to be, as I didn't really devote any serious effort into setting up the camera. The perfect example of this is the overexposed beach video. My Canon S90's damn annoying rear dial decided to move from auto ISO to ISO 3200. Whoever designed the S90 seriously fucked this up. The dial is very quick to switch from auto ISO (the lowest option) to ISO 3200 (the highest option), but the opposite never seems to happen. I only found out when I got back home that the time lapse was ruined. What a shame.

Posted in Photography , Travel

I need a job!

To all people reading this blog: I'm currently looking for a job (as software engineer or otherwise pc-related also possible) anywhere outside Europe. If you're looking for an expert in Java (mobile,desktop or server-side), databases (MySQL, MS-SQL server) or a mobile application developer (Android or iPhone) then I'm your man. Other languages are also no problem (C++, C#, Perl, Python) Drop me an e-mail () and I'll send you my full CV. I have some faith in my blog, in that it has the power to connect me to people I would be unlikely to encounter in real life. I think I might find an interesting (and unlikely) challenge by looking for jobs in this way. Thank you! :)

Update 09/08: I'm unstickying this from the front page. Although I haven't found a job yet, it seems that there is no need for this post to be stuck at the front page.

Posted in Tech , Travel

Order is required to enjoy Chaos

As part of my self-improvement project I've given myself the task of writing something more meaningful than just status updates on my blog. I thought I'd start off my midsummer's resolution by writing a bit about the joys of chaos.

For the past weeks I've been reading a book called The LifeLong Activist and, despite its title, only a little bit of it is directed specifically towards activism. Most of the methodology and advice talked about in the book is about general rules that you can apply to your life in order to achieve your goals. It's a bit like Getting Things Done, except that the GTD method approaches things from a classical perspective and the Lifelong Activist is a bit more romantic. For more info on classic versus romantic I highly recommend the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

The activist book talks a lot about defining your life's goals, creating a plan of action, budgeting time for it and scheduling tasks to help you achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. In fact, the book talks about total scheduling, every hour of every day, even your sleep time is planned. Being the chaos lover that I am, I absolutely abhorred that idea, and the person I was discussing this with had a hard time trying to make me accept this method. In fact, I still haven't quite come around to his methodological way of thinking, although I will admit that planning your time, even putting all the time you have in a spreadsheet, can have a lot of positive effects on your life.

The reason, of course, is that you are then able to freely deviate from that schedule in any way you like! Life's no fun if everything goes according to plan, and I'm certainly not going to let my schedule tell me when I'm supposed to have my mandatory happy time.

However, consider the opposite. No schedule, no plans. Pure freedom to do whatever you want with your time. Pure chaos? Perhaps, perhaps not. But if you have no schedule then you have nothing to offset yourself against. If chaos is the opposite of order, then if there is no order there can be no chaos.

I've got a practical example of this that I can never seem to forget, which is the late night breaks we used to have in Japan. At around midnight or later on a working day we would take a walk towards the nearest convenience store to get some food or a drink, and then leisurely walk back, discussing the finer points of life. At first people thought "NO, THIS IS MADNESS, I WILL NOT GO TO A CONVENIENCE STORE AT NIGHT" (or something with less caps but to a similar effect), but eventually it became the accepted way to spend the occasional evening. And that's when it got boring.

So we sought out more extremes. Instead of going to a convenience store, going to the riverside, or a ramen shop to enjoy a fabulous midnight ramen. This happened quite regularly in fact, and on some day-of-the-week we would go conbini, an another day we'd have ramen. And suddenly the random activity becomes a scheduled activity. Poof! the fun's gone.

I, and perhaps other people as well, can find a certain intrinsic value in pure randomness, or pure chaos. The more unlikely an event is to happen, the higher its value. I remember a particular incident while traveling in Europe with a friend on an all-Europe train pass that allowed us to board all trains, including night trains, anywhere in Europe. Our plan was to visit Germany, then go south towards Switzerland. Instead we decided to take a night train to Denmark and jumped across the border to Sweden from there. The next day we were back on schedule (..) to Switzerland. We had no reason to think that Denmark would be any more interesting than Switzerland. If we did, we probably would have planned to go there in advance. Instead it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, and as a result we've got a lot better memories of Denmark than of Switzerland.

Again, this appreciation of Denmark could not have happened had it not been for the schedule. If there was no schedule to deviate from then everything would have equal value, as everything would already be part of the 'chaos' plan. Instead, making a schedule and allowing ourselves to deviate from it is what created the fun.

I know a lot of people who stick very rigidly to their carefully designed schedules, but I don't know a lot of people who truly appreciate the art of deviating from a schedule on purpose. It's something I highly recommend anyone to try on their next trip. But don't make a habit out of it, because if it becomes a habit then it becomes schedule-able. You want to have order that allows for a bit of chaos every once in a while.

Posted in Thoughts

Balls

I found these in the box of stuff that I brought with me from Japan. An important personal treasure.

Posted in Photography

Ebony & Ivory

Posted in Tech | Tagged

It all makes sense now

I've been worrying a lot about what path to take next, not being able to decide, but today it suddenly all made sense. I'm going to give up on cognitive science for now and maybe (probably) pick it up again two years later. Right now I'm going to focus on finding an interesting job in an exciting new country. What kind of job and which country it will be is still undecided though. Because my standards for a uni were too high (foreign country, cheap, on short notice, etc. ) I had a lot of trouble finding my way, but now that I've decided to focus on getting a job somewhere else I've basically solved all my problems in one swell foop. If I get a job in a foreign country first, then it won't matter so much to me where I'll find a uni. I get to save money for a while which should help finance the whole thing, and I'll have a long long time to prepare myself to enroll into whichever university I end up choosing. Yay me. I'd apologize for writing this post which is probably only meaningful to myself, but then again, you are reading my personal blog. Muhahaha.

Side note: Android API: almost as bad as the iPhone API!

Posted in Thoughts | Tagged

Reflection

I've been at my parent's place for a couple of months now, living a life of comparative luxury. If I was living by myself I'd be living more spartan, but I'd have a lot more freedom. I'm still looking for unis to do a cognitive science master. It'll take a while, if ever. In the meantime I'm also looking for jobs, and if a nice offer crosses my way I'll definitely take it. I think. A bit of extra money is always useful, but a bit of extra freedom is something I'd probably value more.

Ever heard of analysis paralysis? It means that you're thinking too much about a decision and the opportunity vanishes before you can make up your mind. I'm quite prone to that, mostly because of my personality, and also because I tend to structure my life to have several good alternatives available at any time. The more choices you realize you have, the more you will wonder after having made the decision if it wouldn't have been better to have done something else instead. I rarely experience this for the big decisions in life. Usually I'm quite sure about myself. But if it's about the little things, like how to spend the next hour, I end up doing something completely different. For example, I could choose between reading a good book or going cycling, but instead I spend my time surfing the net instead because I can't decide, or I start reading a book, then decide that give up halfway and decide that it would be better to go cycling instead.

I found that a lot of these choices seem a lot more difficult if you're not happy. It's hard for me to describe the kind of 'happy' you have to be to make choices like these easily solvable, but there is definitely a noticeable change in mental mood that affects the style of choosing. Happy people don't choose, they just are. Unhappy people spend all their lives worrying about whether or not they made the right decision or are going to make the right decision in the future. Hence "Don't worry, be happy". If I applied this to myself and my recent inability to choose, I'd have to conclude that I am unhappy.

Posted in Daily Life , Thoughts | Tagged

Bruges Belgium is Best Belgium. Bleh

Went to Bruges today. It's a city. In Belgium. It has churches. And markets. And rain. But not that much.

All European cities and churches really look the same so here's something else.

Caged person

Needs no explanation.

Kimmie revered in Bruges.

BRIAN'S DILIGENCE IS BEST DILIGENCE.

Right.

Posted in Photography , Travel