Alef Arendsen

The kite community in Holland is pretty big and very vibrant. We have a pretty big crew of pro riders. Kevin Langeree came in 2nd in this year’s PKRA (the world cup for kiteboarders) freestyle competition. Then we have Ruben Lenten, who’s the mega-kite-loop guru. Together with the guys from Kitecinema he’s produced some amazing material of the most scary kiteloops ever. If you’re interested in looking what that’s all about, go and have a look at Stormsjees 2.0 @ YouTube. There’s also a high-quality version of the movie, which is awesome to watch. At the moment however, it’s not possible to get to the movies, because the site is down…

Online, the kite community in Holland mainly gets together in two places: hanglos.nl and kitehigh.nl. The former has been down for the last few days (they’re experiences a failure of the power supply of one of their servers–I guess they don’t have such a good SLA ).

Anyway, fortunately Kitehigh is still up and I just discovered this little movie of Kevin Langeree. As I said, he came in second in the PKRA freestyle competition, but as you can see in the movie he also likes to rip the waves pretty hard (with and without a kite). Great material to look at when there’s no wind…

Other than that, this weekend wasn’t all that special. I came home Friday night from a trip to Antwerp, had dinner with @maggievie, a few drinks after that with Giorgio in town. On Saturday I had drinks at Jack’s place and today I finally finished all the preparations for the accountant to start filing my tax report (both business and personal) over 2007.

I’m looking forward to the next windy day. In my absence, I asked my dad to get me a little camera from a local shop (they came only came in very limited supply). It’s shock- and waterproof up until 3 meter, uses SD cards to store the footage and has a pretty decent resolution for such a small cam I’ve heard people say. So that means that pretty soon, you’ll be able to see some real action instead of only still photographs. I haven’t picked it up yet, so I haven’t been able to play around with it. Going to drop by at my parents tomorrow or so I guess… Oh, if you’re interested to know which brand it is: it’s an ATC2000.

In the meantime I’ve kind of finalized my schedule for the next 7 weeks, which involves 5 weeks of travel. I’m going to be at home for the next two weeks (although I might have to go to Brussels somewhere next week). Then I’m heading Aalborg for a session at a client, followed by Copenhagen for a few customer visits. Then on to Malmø for Øredev. All this in one week by the way. Next up is a full week of Copenhagen (I will be home for the weekend though) for a course and a SpringSource seminar. Then on to Miami for SpringOne. The week thereafter I’ll be in Antwerp, for Devoxx where I’ll be co-presenting on Spring 3.0 alongside friend and colleague Arjen Poutsma. Finally, I’m wrapping up this tour with a week’s worth of Israel, where I’m presenting at JavaEdge, a conference hosting by our friends from AlphaCSP. I hope to stay there for a few days. I’ve heard and seen Haifa has some strong winds in December, so I might be taking my kite gear.

All the conferences should be great. If you’re in the neighborhood and have a chance to make it to one of them drop me a line and we’ll meet up.

I just came back from SpringOne. We had a great show again this year in Antwerp. We had about 400 attendees and about 30 highly technical session, from about just about the same number of people from SpringSource.

The second day (today) had a bit of a SpringSource Application Platform focus. So far the introduction of the Application Platform is going really well. People are very enthusiastic about it, especially when they see how much the provisioning features already offered through OSGi and the enhancements we’ve made and by the tooling help remove complexity when developing.

I’m sure this thing is going to have a great future.

Other than that, I had a blast speaking with everybody again. Not just my colleagues, but also the community members. It’s always very nice to talk to the people actually using the technologies we provide in anger. Thanks guys, for making this a success!

I just arrived back home. I’m going to have to do a bunch of laundry and get myself ready for tomorrow night. I’m driving to Italy tomorrow to start doing some construction on the house there early next week. I’m actually leaving Utrecht around 5′ish or 6′ish and will probably be on the road when the Dutch match is on…

I was in Antwerp for three days last October. Normally I leave the day before to get a relaxing start, but this time I decided to drive to Antwerp the day the gig began. I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake. I was stuck in traffic for two-and-a-half hours, while normally, this trip only take me 75 minutes.

So after this really tiring first day, I finally managed to find my way to the hotel. I had taken a little bit effort this time to look for a nice hotel, as it’s right in between many of the travels I’m doing, so I like to feel at home in my hotel. I ended up in this small family-occupied hotel in Antwerp South, called Firean. It’s built entirely in art deco style with very nice glass-in-lead windows. I like family- or owner-occupied hotels a lot. I usually feel much more welcome than in a hotel of a particular chain. Of course in such a hotel you’re not sure what you’re getting up front. But then again, I’d rather take a little bit more of a risk and end up with the occasional miss hit rather than staying in hotel chains all the time.

So this hotel is definitely a hit for me and one I would easily return to if I’d ever went on a city trip to Antwerp. It’s very cozy, small and the staff makes you feel at home immediately!

The pictures do not do the hotel any justice. There’s no view to speak of. Of course this series is called views from hotel rooms, so I do need one pictures of the view. But I really do also need to post some of the pictures of the other parts of the hotel. Just this once… I don’t have pictures other than from my room. The other parts are soooo nice!!

Highly recommended!

By the way, I also made two other very good decisions that same week. On Tuesday, I ate at Sir Anthony van Dijck, a very classy and stylish restaurant in the centre of Antwerp (near the Groote Markt). Wednesday I felt like eating out again, and I made a reservation at the restaurant that’s owned by the hotel called Minerva. Both are excellent, upscale restaurant. Not quite cheap I would say, but definitely recommended!