Alef Arendsen

I blogged over at the JTeam blog about the upcoming Java Meetup, June 5th.

Hope to see you there!

Last few years, I’ve organized the Amsterdam Java Meetup on a (pretty much) quarterly basis. The last Java Meetup was somewhere late last year and I haven’t gotten around to planning anything since. It’s about time again, so here goes:

• What: beer, wine and snacks while discussing tech stuff
• When: March 13th, 2009, from 5.30pm onwards
• Where: Grand Cafe de Jaren, de Nieuwe Doelenstraat, Amsterdam ( http://tinyurl.com/bn5o2b )
• Why: because the first few beers will be free because it’s a nice happening and it’s good to meet each other once every now and then. Maybe we can all start complaining about the credit crunch or so…

Also, after having received many requests, I’ve started a Google Group for the Java Meetup. There, I’ll be announcing future dates for the Java Meetup. Well, I’ll also keep on doing it on this blog and some other places, but if you want to have the dates delivered right to your inbox, please subscribe to the Dutch Developer Meetup Google Group.

You might wonder why the Google Group is not called Amsterdam Java Meetup, but Dutch Developer Meetup instead. Well, I figured we might want to discuss other technologies as well from time to time, so although it still is named the Java Meetup, maybe I’ll just go and rename it somewhere in the future . Also, I don’t want to limit myself to Amsterdam. Maybe there’s a huge developer crowd in Loppersum that we haven’t heard of yet that needs bringing together, which means we have to organize a Loppersum Java Meetup…

In the meantime, if you have ideas about the meetup, want to join, or just want to give your comments, join the group!

Great video of Amanda Palmer doing Brel with ‘Dans le port d’Amsterdam’. Especially half way into the video it gets really good, although you have to have the video with, just the sound doesn’t make it complete…

The video is from a blog call Blogotheqeu a French site with lots of what they called ‘Concerts a Emporter’. Great little vids of indie bands doing their thing outside on the street while being filmed by the Blogotheque crew.

I’m hosting a party this Saturday with a friend of mine. I recently turned 30 years old and I figured I couldn’t let this pass without a memorable night. The same is true for a friend of mine. At the time, we both were in Milan and sitting next to a DJ friend of ours. 15 minutes later the first invitations were sent out and little over two months later, we’re all set for the Italian Affair, this coming Saturday. If you feel like joining and don’t have anything to do on Saturday night, don’t hesitate to drop by.

More info somewhere else on this blog.

Last Friday May 23rd, we had another Java Meetup. Since a lot of people will be going on holidays across Holland in the next three months, I figured I might as well start announcing the date for the next Java Meetup right now.

So September 12th it is. The location for now will remain the same: the Jaren in Amsterdam. Please review previous posts for directions and/or other info.

See you then!

JTeam, that other company I still occasionally do some work for, although this has dropped to very-close-to-zero in the last 18 months, has recently hired somebody from Australia or New Zealand (now I’m not sure which one of those it is, but he surely is from somewhere down under ). Anyway, Tim (the Toolman) recently blogged about the 30% ruling and I just have link to his blog entry, because I still think the 30% ruling is one of the examples that the Dutch government is (despite what many people think) capable after all of designing laws that help.

The basic idea is that if you are an internationally sourced employee (as Tim also explains) in certain cases (for example if your skill is hard to come by), you are eligible for a tax cut of about 30% (well, this is not exactly how it works I can remember, but in any case, it’s a decent tax cut). Back in the dot-com days, with SmartHaven we hired numerous expats that could apply for this rule. Obviously Amsterdam was, and still is a attractive place to work so this was a way for SmartHaven to attract some good personnel, despite the difficult market back then.

I Amsterdam.com has a good article on the 30% ruling that should get you started.

In the meantime, I just heard I’m presenting at the JTeam Tech Meeting next June 5 at around dinner time. If you’re up for a good portion of Spring 2.5, don’t hesitate to join! I think pizza and beer are provided!

Next Friday it’s that time of the quarter again. It’s the Q2 Amsterdam Java Meetup! Last quarter we unfortunately had to miss out on this wonderful event. My travel schedule didn’t really allow me to organize it this winter.

More information can be found on a separate blog entry on our corporate blog.

I had to go back and forth to Schiphol Airport this week for a training at a client of ours. The previous time I visited this client, the location was very close to Schiphol Central. There’s a very frequent train service between Utrecht Central and Schiphol Central that only take 30 minutes.

There’s a big difference however between being at Schiphol Central and being at Schiphol Rijk. The two are separated by an infrequent and at times lengthy (30 minute) bus service. That’s why I decided to take the car to this week. After day one, I immediately knew why I had decided not to take my car to Amsterdam anymore in the past four months. The first day, getting there took me an hour. Which is not that bad. The second day (yesterday), took my 90 minutes. Today again took me 90 minutes to get to Schiphol Rijk because of an accident on the highway A2 towards Amsterdam. I gave Kees a lift today (his wife needed the car) and he showed me his usual route, which avoids the highways all together. It only took about 45 minutes to get to his place and another 10 minutes to get mine. That means I saved about 30 minutes. I’m going to try that one out tomorrow morning as well.

One thing is certain, I’d rather take a plane twice a week than commute back-n-forth to work 5 days a week (at least, that is, if it’s by car and in the direction of Amsterdam).

In the meantime, I did learn a bunch of Italian though. I recently received my copy of Italian with Michel Thomas, an excellent way of learning Italian (or any language for that matter, like Spanish) while driving. There are a lot of other courses (like Pimsleur), but of all of those, I like Michel Thomas’ courses the best.