Alef Arendsen

Nils blogt op ExpertLog over zijn afscheid van NeBIB. Een goede retrospective waarin hij terugkijkt om meer dan 10 jaar ondernemerschap bij NeBIB. Interessante kijkjes in de keuken bij een ondernemer die na zo’n lange tijd concludeert dat z’n business model op lange termijn niet sustainable is.

Zoals ik ook in het commentaar op z’n blog entry zeg: respect Nils. Voor jou en voor de manier waarop je dit weet te verwoorden.

Nils gaat bij BiD Network aan de slag als matchmaker.

I’ve just installed Chris Finke’s Feed Statistics plugin for Wordpress. I’m not using Feedburner and still wanted some info about how many people subscribe to my blog and such.

It kind of works. When activating the pluging, I got a little error message that said the primary key of one of the tables was too long. I just cut the key size in half (the feed_subscribers identifier column has a size of 200 in the create table statement, I set it to a 100). Let’s see if feed stats still work like that . So far so good at least…

Today the weather was terrible in Holland. A storm is crossing the country with gusts up to 60 knots on the shore and well over 70 knots out on the sea (about 15 miles out).

Two graphs from government site (Rijkswaterstaat) actuelewaterdata.nl.

This one is the K13 Alpha, a buoy right in between Holland and the UK.

This one is near IJmuiden, on the shore.

NU.nl concludeert dat de files weg zijn en dat ze weer terug moeten komen:

Dit verbaast ook Bizonkid op NUjij.nl een beetje.

So, a few weeks ago, I switched to Dutch posts, but I think I’m switching back again. I don’t really know why I switched to Dutch anyway, but it really doesn’t make any sense at all coz’ a lot of reader are foreign, as I also noticed when I received several private mails and a few comments from people.

So, to bad, Dutch readers, English it is!

So when we were eating tapas two weeks ago in El Mundo, Utrecht (not the best tapas bar ever by the way, but still a good bit of garlic on the shrimp), we (Maggy, Gio, Ruudje and Gerwin) decided to redo the entire Twin Peaks series. Ruudje and Gerwin had never seen the famous Lynch / Frost creation from the early nineties and I had only seen a few episodes.

There we were, on a rainy Thursday night, at Maggy and Gio’s place. Tea was ready, beers were there too, including some traditional snacks (Wokkels anyone ). All ready for the party.

Unfortunately Giorgio didn’t have the pilot in which Laura is found, so we started with episode 2. Before finally taking off however, we first had to remove all the dust from the outside of the VCR as well as the inside of the VCR. The latter we did with a vacuum cleaner. Before having done so, the VCR didn’t work at all, and almost saw our high hopes destroyed by a bit of dust . The VCR hadn’t been used for ages, and–totally in style–we wanted to watch Twin Peaks on VHS tapes, not on DVD or so (I believe season 2 still has to be released on DVD yet).

One of the things we decided to do was keep track of all the relations between various people, as this is of course a large part of what the story is about. We tasked Maggy with doing this, so she was constantly writing in her scrapbook with the introduction of all the new people in the first eposides that we watched. Fortunately for her, in later eposides, things start to slow down a little bit (as for the introduction of new personae), so she could also start watching the scenes, instead of only writing.

The first night ended at 1am, with eposides 4, 5 and 6 done and over with. We concluded the night by agreeing on meeting up next Tuesday again, to watch the next three eposides.

Then, later that week, an email arrived from Maggy, who owns an independent studio in Utrecht, and apparently had some time left in between running her business. She had been working very hard at getting the relations in a chart. At first, both Gerwin and me thought it was a copy of a chart she had found on the Internet, but really, she had devised the chart all herself. Thes symbols are part Wingdings, part her own creation . For now it’s in Dutch, but next and improved versions will be in English .

Yesterday I posted about my day on Strand Horst, which was great.

I also had my nephew and niece over last night. I slept on the couch, which wasn’t that comfortable, but all-in-all not too bad also. I told them to only wake me up when the 8 was on the clock. My brother had told me that if I succeeded in doing this, it would be the first time ever (normally they wake up at 6.30 or 7′ish). At 8.03, they were standing next to me…

Later this morning I dropped them off at my brother’s place where I had a coffee and we chatted a little. Then Mark called and he told me he was heading to Stichtse Brug to start kiting. The wind wasn’t as good as yesterday he said, but still good enough for a good session.

After being laughed at by my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, niece and the other members of the family present (what, it’s 8 degrees Celcius out there and the water is close to freezing, you’re crazy), I went drove off and got to de Stichtse Brug at about 1.30pm. Mark was just changing his 12sqm for a 17sqm (wow). After I launched him, I got my own kite, soon to found out that I had forgotten this %*&$#(*%$$#( airlock valve. Cabrinha has pulleys and Cabrinha has valves… Arggh… I already thought: well, that’s it for today.

I tried my 8sqm for a little while, but that turned out to be nothing and then… Jack turned up!! Jack also has Cabrinha kite, and he has an airlock valve. Also, he was not planning on going out n the water, so I got take his valve for a little while.

That was just great… I immediately geared up and it was simply another great day. The 12sqm really is a lot slower than the 8sqm (I’m thinking of buying a 14sqm of the same brand as the 8sqm, because I simply think it rocks), but it was still *a lot* of fun.

Jack by the way made a little movie of today’s session. Other people that joined were Mark and Constantin. Notice the Jekyll 8sqm flying as well by the way: a little kid (well, he was 14 or so I think, but only 50kg) used my Jekyll for a little while and had some great fun

In the Netherlands, all students get a scholarship from the government. The body that arrangement that logistics related to the scholarships is call the IBGroep. Ever since I started working, I have money left in my pockets, even though it’s near the end of the month. As we used to say when we were student, it used to be the other way around: a little month left at the end of your money

I just found out accidentally that the IBGroep is twittering.

On twitter.com/stufi you can find out when the money will be transfered into your account every month. The IBGroep also pushes other relevant information to their Twitter channel… Pretty neat

Once thing is a bit disappointing. They only have 60 or 70 followes so far. It only started a few weeks ago though, so it might take some time…

I just started Twittering myself by the way: twitter.com/alefarendsen. Feel free to start following me. I’ll see how long I can keep up with this…

This morning I looked at the wind forecast and it said Strand Horst (which is close to my parents’ place) would get about 20 knots with gusts of over 30. I immediately got up (I checked the forecast while in bed, using the iPhone ), packed my gear and 90 minutes later I was out on the water.

Man, this session was great! It had been a while since I had flown my 8sqm Jekyll for more than 20 minutes (the last time, Jack screwed things up by pulling his safety, so we had to quit early oh well, those things happen).

Horst is known for being very gusty. I had never experienced such a gusty wind. The locals were saying there were gusts well over 30 knots with some maybe even exceeding 35. This is a lot for more as I’m not yet that good. The Jekyll however has a huge depower range so it handled all the gusts very well. I read a review from Jekyll a while ago by the way and that confirmed my feeling.

All-in-all, a very nice session. It was a pity I had to quit early. My dad’s in the hospital (with a lung infection–he’s going to be fine so nothing to worry about too much) and I wanted to drop by, so that’s also why I went to Horst.

My nephew and niece are sleeping at my place by the way tonight. I just tucked them in; they in my bed. I’m afraid I’ll be on the couch tonight .

Tomorrow, I’ll probably be at Muiderberg by the way, the forecast looks quite okay. Not as good as I hoped it would be… between 15 and 18 knots. Maybe on the North Sea it’ll be better… We’ll see…

Monocle editor in chief Tyler Brûlé in the Internal Heral Tribune wrote about an upside to airline alliances. He described a situation he was in where a Swiss Air flight was canceled and he got transfered to a Lufthansa flight.

I guess (no, I’m sure), Tyler is constantly flying business class or even first, because I certainly do not get service like this.

I was flying from Krakow to Prague yesterday (very) early morning and when I arrived there, I had a 3 our layover to get a flight to Amsterdam at about 9.30. I arrived at the terminal and heard a final call for a Czech Airlines flight to Amsterdam. I had a Czech Airlines flight as well (although my flight was operated by KLM and not by Czech Airlines) but at the service desk I couldn’t not switch my flight to an earlier one.

So I still ended up with the 3 hour layover.

Well, maybe if I ever get to SkyTeam Elite Platinum…