Alef Arendsen

So I’m having breakfast in Aarhus this morning with several people I met at JAOO in the past couple of days and all of a sudden a woman at the table asks somebody else about which whiteboard markers he uses. I continue to eat my slice of bread with strawberry jam, not really paying attention when the guy responds by saying how he hates such-and-such brand of markers, because it goes bad and all really fast. He also mentions he has a set of markers that have tips at both ends. They continue to discuss which post-it notes they use because apparently there is a really big difference in the stickiness of the post-it notes of various brands. One of them then mentions he can’t get a certain brand of post-it notes in China after which they rave a little about that specific brand (they’re so sticky, and the colors, they’re great) and somebody actually offers some of the post-it notes of that specific brand to the other.

As a software developer at a conference, it is of course strange to hear people not talk about laptops, IDEs, chairs, mice, et cetera. This would really sound like a very strange and out of the ordinary conversation of course, if I hadn’t known about the fact that I just joined the ‘agile’ table with amongst others Diana Larsen, chairman of the Agile Alliance. For those of you that are not in the know, agile is how certain (mostly lightweight) software development processes are characterized that focus on getting software out the door in a more predictable way while ensuring the software meets clients’ demands.

Diana and the other people at the table are agile thought leaders / trainers / consultants and facilitate various types of meetings in software development organizations. And as you might know, facilitators usually have this little briefcase with a roll of brown paper, an endless amount of post-it notes and several dozen whiteboard markers.

Now of course the discussion that went on above all makes sense. They’re talking about their tools they use in their jobs. They’re facilitators and they love their job and love good tools. It’s just as with computers; if you’re a programmer, you want the best IDE, the best machine, the best chair and keyboard that money can buy. Of course with me, being in the software industry for a while already, I had never realized you can actually be geeky about non-gadgety things, the things I’m usually geeky about (my chair, my keyboard, my mouse, my puter, my iPod, my phone, my whatever-gadget-comes-to-mind).

I mentioned this to Diana and we had a good laugh about it, but also concluded that tools are incredibly important and that it really helps succeeding in your job.

By the way, at the conference, unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to follow any of the agile talks. I had to prepare slides at the same time as some of the talks and sometimes the schedule conflicted a little bit with other (more technical) talks that I wanted to see. I’m not that much of a process guy although I fundamentally believe the approach Diana et. al. are advocating really helps getting things done (especially getting software out the door).

Sometimes they call me the PowerPoint king. Actually that’s incorrect, as these days I’m using Keynote to do my presentations (I switched to the Mac half a year ago or so).

But yes, even though I’m not using PowerPoint anymore, I always pay a lot of attention to my slideware. One thing I almost never use are slide transitions. Keynote offers some really cool 3D slide transitions. I’m currently in a presentation that uses all of those slide transitions in random order and it never really appeared to me, but it’s unbelievably annoying and not just that, it’s plain distracting.

So please!!! Stop using those slide transitions.

Last Saturday I bought the novel Train Man when I dropped by at my local bookstore. I started reading when I had lunch at Bis that day and continued on the plane to Denmark the next day. I was on my way to the JAOO conference in Aarhus, in the North of Denmark. After I arrived I figured I could probably better have taken the train or the car from home, as this would probably have taken just as long (Utrecht – Aarhus is about 800km and the plane all-in-all took about 6 hours).

Anyway, if I had taken the car, I couldn’t have finished Train Man; a fabulous book about a geek who runs into a girl on the train. After getting home, he turns to a bulletin board to ask his geeky friends for advice. It’s a funny read, although it does get a little boring half way. The book basically is a log of the board with all the participants giving our friend (Train Man) advice about what to wear, what to do on dates, what not to do, et cetera.

Like I said, it does get a little boring half way. That’s when I started reading only Train Man’s bits on the bulletin board, not anymore all the advice his friends are giving him. It was entertaining, but nothing more than that. I finished it in three or four hours I guess…

Ah, and by the way, if you ever visit Copenhagen airport, there’s a wonderful seafood bar that serves great salmon (and probably also very good caviar, but that’s not what I had while sitting there waiting for my next plane).

According to the following news item in 2005, the local government in Utrecht (the city I live in) has managed to put in effect something we call a green wave on the Northern ring road. This means that all traffic lights work in a coordinated fashion to minimize the need for cars to stop. If the first traffic light hits green, the second traffic a bit further ahead hits green just enough time later for the car to have reached it.

Apparently, the local government is so proud of what they achieved 2 years ago that they are still celebrating the completion of the project and not flooding the city with more of those green waves. Last week I had to drive from my home to a client in South Utrecht. I passed 9 traffic lights of which I was so lucky to pass 3 without having to stop at all. The other 6 caused a delay of 14 minutes in total, that means almost 2.5 minutes per traffic light.

I timed one of them and was waiting for over 4 minutes!!!!

Lately I haven’t had to do a lot of commuting (well, that is, if you don’t consider taking a plane commuting) and with experience like these, I’m very happy with that.

I promised some pictures from my kite boarding session from last Sunday. Marc just zipped them up for me today, so I can finally put them online! As I told earlier, Sunday we had a really good session at Wijk aan Zee, which is a little North-West of Amsterdam.

The direction of the wind was perfect. With SSW it was almost completely sideshore (a little onshore even). The wind was about 25 knots (which is about 6 Beaufort I guess). This is good enough for my 8sqm Gaastra Jekyll. I was quite happy to be able to use my smaller kite, not only because it’s a lot more fun to fly, but also because the bigger one I have currently is out of order a little bit. In a little accident I had at Workum beach (Friesland) the weekend before, I lost my chicken loop. This is the part (see below) that you use to connect your kite (or the bar and its steering lines) to your harness so that you don’t loose your kite. Loosing it is a little stupid, because that normally shouldn’t happen. I guess I just pulled safety and unhooked my chicken loop or so. Anyway, I can’t use the Cabrinha until I have a new chicken loop, so that’s another reason I was really happy that it was blowing about 25 knots.

I had also never really been in such heavy surf. Especially near the end of the day there were waves of about 1.5 meter (I think they were even bigger, but hey, let’s not exaggerate huh). Getting out to more quiet waters was hard, but riding back in, towards the beach is great fun, overtaking the waves, putting the kite in the air and while depowering it a little bit, simply enjoying the power of the waves for a while.

I almost got to enjoy a very short session today but there was a heavy traffic jam in between me and the kite boarding spot I wanted to go, so that was a bit of a pity. I’m hoping for some good winds this weekend, but so far I guess I’m out of luck. The predictions so far are not so good–just about no wind at all on Saturday and about 10 to 13 knots on Sunday. When things get a little better, I might be able to do a small session on Sunday, but then I really have to have my 12sqm fixed and I have to leave for Denmark around 5′ish, so it won’t be a long one.

I’ll keep you up-to-date.

I visited the opening of a gallery in London (The Carpenters Workshop) last week with a friend of mine. I’m not that much into design, so this was a bit new to me. Okay, I like unique furniture, but what Maarten Baas was exposing at the gallery, was simply amazing.

First of all his Smoked line is simply fantastic. Using a gas burner, he burns old (or new, whatever) furniture, until it’s completely black. Then, using some kind of epoxy finishing he makes sure it doesn’t give any stains when you actually use it. I guess that also makes it a little more durable. icon magazine had a piece on it back in 2005, by former editor Marcus Fairs (whom I happened to run into on the opening of the gallery).

Apart from Smoke, Maarten also did Sculpt and some other great stuff, which you can see on his website.

After having left icon by the way, Marcus Fairs started a design blog on dezeen.com. With daily updates on what happens in design land this blog is highly recommended.

I love my Apple power adapter (wow, thats sounds realllly weird doesn’t it?). It’s got magnets and all you know! (for those who are not into computers: the power adapter had a magnetic connector that keeps it attached to the computer instead of you having to ‘plug’ it in). Even if after a few beers (or more) I stumble over the power cord (which happens about five times a week), I don’t ruin my Mac. It’s simply great!

I also hate my Apple power adapter (okay, that’s sounds a little more normal). You can exchange the part that goes into the wall socket for different (international) ones. Of course this is a smart thing to do, but then you always have to remember to put the original one back in place when you get back home. Now I have two power adapters, so I don’t forget one when I head to a client (it’s always in my bag), but I don’t always keep those little what-’should-we-call-it’s with me so occasionally I have to deal without an adapter for a while.

Sometimes that doesn’t always work however… Today I had to do some serious speeding again to drive back home after my morning appointment to pick my power adapter (or rather, the European part that goes into the power socket) and be in time for my afternoon appointment. Afterall, I wouldn’t want my laptop to die down in the middle of a presentation would I . I hope the camera on the A9 was out of film…

p.s. If anyone can tell me what this adapter-adapter-thing is called, please tell me!
p.p.s. I was kidding about those five times a week, just in case you were wondering…

Okay, it’s not much of a view, but I was lucky to at least have a room back in August, when visiting Arles on my trip through Europe.

After having driven across France for eight hours (from Bordeaux to the Marseille region), we couldn’t find any hotel in the area where we wanted to stay (near the Mediterranean Sea, to be able to kite surf). Finally we drove up to Arles, a beautiful city with plenty of ancient Roman sites to see. There we drove around for twenty minutes and found this boutique hotel in one of the really small allies of Arles.

They were completely booked, but still had two rooms left that wouldn’t normally be rented out to people. For us (and because it was so very busy in town), they made an exception. We got the room at a discounted rate, which was nice. The only drawback was: no view… Even worse, there was no window, other than one really high up.

Nevertheless, the hotel was awesome!!! Right underneath the hotel there was an excavation, covered by a glass pane that showed some ancient Roman artifacts (I think it was a bath house or so). The garden of the hotel was great and the breakfast was also very good. I said to Lars (the guy I was traveling with): this is definitely a place I would take a girlfriend to.

If I’m going to be in the neighborhood again, I’ll definitely book at this hotel again. No better place in Arles than Hotel d’Arlatan.

For more info on the trip by the way, check out my story on the road trip I did last August.

I couldn’t be any more perfect. I got back from London last Friday evening and had a few beers with a couple of friends of mine. I hadn’t seen them for quite a long time, because of my crazy schedule the last few weeks.

Today, I had a wedding anniversary of my grandparents yesterday (they have been married for 65 years now, what an achievement). Normally wedding anniversaries aren’t all that exciting, but this was actually pretty good, as I hadn’t seen most of my family for quite a while. So it was good catching up with them.

After getting back from that party (it was in the afternoon), I drove from Elburg to Amsterdam to go to the Tuschinski cinema to watch the Bourne Ultimatum, which was a great movie. The newspaper apparently had some raving reviews. I didn’t think it was that good, but all-in-all it was entertaining. I like watching movies in the theatre (I kind of have to do that anyway, because I don’t have a television anymore). It always has this great atmosphere, especially in a nice theatre such as the 85-year old Tuschinski in Amsterdam.

The weather forecast showed some excellent winds (up to 25 knots or 6bft, and good temperatures, around 20 degrees).

I first had a soccer match early in the morning, which we unfortunately lost (it was the first match of the season and we haven’t had a lot of practice since we started two or three weeks ago). I won’t be able to to join the soccer team all that much do, which is a pity. I’m going to be abroad a lot in the next few months and frequently have to fly on Sundays, which means: no soccer for me anymore.

After the game I went to Wijk aan Zee to meet with Lars, Pyke, Marc and several others. The wind was great and the waves were very big. It was only my second time out on the sea with lots of waves (I’ve ben out of the sea a lot already with my kite, but the places I went usually were bays that protected us from getting pounded).

I just love my 8sqm Jekyll (from Gaastra). I have two kites, the 8sqm and a 12sqm Cabrinha, but the Jekyll is so much more flexible and quick to steer, but yet very stable.

I should have some pictures soon by the way as Marc’s girlfriend took some. I’ll see if I can post them up here or so…

I’m in London for a few days and I decided to go to SOHO tonight. I had a quick bite at Subway and after that walked around town a bit and finally decided to go to the theatre down at Dean Street. I should have spent the night preparing slides for one of the conferences I have to present at in the next coming months, but I really didn’t feel like that. The theatre is called SOHO Theatre and I went to Sophie Woolley her show called ‘When to run’. It was a really fast-paced and great show. It’s about four women runners all running for their own and different reasons and they are connected through this guy that looks a lot like Tony Soprano.

Sophie is really good at creating different characters and using only a very minimalist setup (a little bench is all she uses) all she uses is her voice and her face to create a great comedy story.

Oh, it’s just Sophie on her own by the way and there’s five characters. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination, or to find out when you’re in town and feel like seeing her show.