Darkness is upon us

December 1st, 2009 7 comments »

clouds There we are again – close to the darkest day of the year.
The weatherman has decided to contribute: the sneaky peeks the sun throws us are hidden by layers of damp woolly clouds. And rain, drizzle, downpour, ~~smur~~ smir (scottish) and more rain.

On the bright side, it’s the right time for:

writing dark and twisted novels full of psychopaths
wearing all the knitwear in the wardrobe, and then some
preparing rich foods to train for the festivals ahead
switching on that extra lamp or two (eco guilt included)
feeling depressed and entitled to, because it’s dark after all – much harder to justify gloom in the summer
snuggling away with multiple duvets and a cup of tea
dreaming of hibernating on the other hemisphere

Well, tempus fugit, and before we know it it’ll be march again.

7 comments »

Posted in Uncategorized

E.T.A.

November 16th, 2009 1 comment »

my kind of short animated film (enjoy it while the link still works)

junk.-.eta.h264
envoyé par HenrikBC. – Les dernières bandes annonces en ligne.

(thanks Ray)

1 comment »

Posted in futurology

Visiting with my friends in the bookcase

November 14th, 2009 2 comments »

books A few days ago I sorted my books alphabetically, from Adams to Zusak. As said before, I love to read, so it’s a pleasure to see all those old friends again, to re-discover a few unexpected ones (Plato’s Republic ?) and to throw away some utter rubbish.

But as I was stacking those hundreds of books in the corridor, I had to wonder: has reading all those books made me a better, or a more intelligent person ? The consensus is that reading a lot is a good thing. They say ‘well-read’, and the term ‘book addict’ is never associated with classified substances.

Most of the books I have at home are fiction. Fiction allows you to slip into someone else’s skin, living or imagining situations you’ll never find yourself in – how a man loves, what a psychopath thinks like, living in France in the 16th century, making your way in a distant future.

Arguably, great literature is the most elevating, because characters are very life-like, avoiding stereotypes to go straight to the mixed up experience of being human. Also, literature often makes you think, it addresses the deeper questions without being pedantic about it.

There is a percentage of great literature in my book collection, but it’s not the majority. I’ll admit that I often read for entertainment, or to avoid the present moment if it’s uncomfortable or boring. Lots of sci-fi, fantasy, some humoristic chicklit. I have standards for writing style, but I won’t vouch for distinguished content.

So does reading all these pages make me better ? I don’t know. Better for what ? Does it matter ? I’ll continue reading, just in case.

Note: I gave up on nanowrimo. There’s no way for me to be writing 1667 words/day right now – maybe next year …

2 comments »

Posted in books

Beer Festival

November 8th, 2009 1 comment »

Beer festival in Hasselt yesterday – it’s getting to be a tradition, I have a good friend in Alken, and every year we go and have an extended sampling sessions. Beer festivals are not scarce in Belgium, but the Hasselt beer festival is one of the better ones, with about 140 beers on the list, carefully selected by an association of beer lovers.

I even took notes ! The order below is from the booklet, not the order we tasted it in.
For documentation purposes, these are the beers I sampled in mine and in my friend’s glasses:

huardis (on tap) – cloudy blond : nice, but not extraordinary white beer, with almost no aftertaste.
De Graal Quest (on tap) – blond: quite complete beer, sweet with a bitter aftertaste.
Chouffe Houblon (on tap) – blond: slightly bitter, but relatively light taste, pleasant
Amburon (on tap) – blond: a pils-like, pleasant but not memorable beer.
Vicaris Generaal (on tap) – brown: burnt, scotch-like beer – a bit too strongly so to be pleasant in more than little quantities.
Jambe-de-Bois tripel (on tap) – amber: quite bitter and full taste, with sweetish aftertones, nice if you like bitter beers.
Den Drupneuze – dark blond: a complete beer, sweet first taste, full and yeasty in mouth with slightly bitter aftertaste
Hanssens Oude Geuze – geuze: geuze, and this one is a good one, with a complex taste with sour overtones. You love it or you hate it.
Kriek Mariage Parfait – red kriek: very, very nice kriek, not sweet at all and with a natural cherry flavour combined with the typical sour taste.
Oudegodje – cloudy blond: quite light of taste for a triple
Schinus Blond – blond (duh): supposed to be brewed with red pepper, but we couldn’t detect it.
Corsendonk Rousse – copper: brewed for the italian market, and much too sweet.
Tiense Kweiker Amber – dark amber: burnt, sweetish, pleasant
Omer – blond: quite light with a bitter, aromatic taste.
Den Bir – dark blond: sweetish with slightly bitter aftertaste
Schuppenboer tripel – cloudy blond: strong overtastes of coriander over the tripel taste (reminding of Hoegaarde, although not a white)
Schuppenboer tripel 2009 – blond: sweet, full in the mouth tripel.
Bitter Truth – blond: quite sharply bitter, full in the mouth. I like.

Needless to say I didn’t drink a glass of each, or I’d have been crawling in the gutter. At such a tasting, the more friends, the better, to exchange glasses, give a show of tasting and swap opinions.
Unsurprisingly: at the end, my notes get a bit short, like ‘very good’, and the writing is not up to usual standards.

1 comment »

Posted in food

China in your hand

November 5th, 2009 3 comments »

Tonight I went to see the Europalia exhibition ‘Son of Heaven‘ at Bozar. It’s a short history of all the dynasties, illustrated by objects from the personal collections of all these emperors and dynasties, starting with Qin.

Very impressive. A civilisation which already had intricate stonework 1300BC, and fine jewellery 200BC. Beautiful potteries, colourful embroidered silks.

What stayed with me, was this guy: Ferdinand Verbiest. This flemish jesuit, after some wandering, ended up being a personal advisor of the emperor. So not only was he an accomplished mathematician and philosopher, he also mastered mandarin to the point of being able to sell a new calendar to the emperor (and to write a couple of books on the subject). The wikipedia entry says he invented the first steam car.

An extraordinary man, no doubt, a geek avant la lettre and a genius. Surprising how even back then, when most people never moved too far from their place of birth (barring emigration to America, of course), some people travelled to the other side of the world, and managed to have extraordinary, eventful lives.

3 comments »

Posted in life, science

NaNoWriMo

November 1st, 2009 4 comments »

Having a go at NaNoWriMo. what is it ? In short: writing a novel in 30 days (november). 50000 words minimum, which means about 175 pages. 1667 words/day.

The idea is not to write a good novel, nor even a readable novel – just to do it, no revisions, no editing, just writing until you get there. As they phrase it in the pitch: “to transform you from an aspiring author into a perspiring author”.

I like the concept – the fact of being part of the 100000 or so people who do it, and to update your daily word counter, is an incentive. I’m not really an aspiring author, but I’ve always fancied writing a book someday. This could give me an idea of the word involved, or whether I have it in me at all.

On the downside, I do have enough comitments to make it difficult – a full-time job, FOSDEM, some open source ideas, etc. We’ll see. Nothing rides on it, except a little bit of pride.

4 comments »

Posted in books

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

October 15th, 2009 2 comments »

Climate change. It’s no longer controversial – and anyway it only was controversial as long as it suited the oil lobby to say so. Now that they see that there might be an end to the fossil cash cow, and that they’ve seriously invested in a diverse portfolio of renewable and nuclear energy and cars, they probably can stop paying scientists to say that there is no statistical evidence.

There’s always the percentage of humanity that says “i don’t care as long as i can buy that yacht/horse/porsche”, which has started to speculate on carbon credits. Kyoto has allocated a certain amount of ‘carbon spending’ to countries. Trading can ensue: countries that have more of a service industry, and will reach their targets with a margin, can sell their credits to, say, an asian country with high economic growth (losing somewhat sight of the original idea, which is to reduce overall emissions).

But I believe most of us have started to understand what’s at stake, and see and feel the effects.

In the meantime, some people wonder if we’re not past the point of no return. Which doesn’t mean that we should start pumping out CO2 like there’s no tomorrow: the most sensible course is still to save what can be saved.

My awareness of the subject heightened again this summer, when I visited the Canadian Rockies. Heart-breakingly beautiful landscapes. But get this: glaciers manage 70% of water storage. Every spring, snows melt from on the glaciers, and feed the rivers flowing through the forrested valleys. And the glaciers have been receding at a frightening pace – about half over the last century. Imagine those splendid ecosystems menaced by drought.

Most of British Columbia already has a very real problem: the mountain pine beetle‘s expansion is usually curbed by the severe winters. But since the winters are less cold, the beetles are prospering and begetting, and whole forests are being devoured.
Then there are many species that are not equipped to deal with sudden temperature changes, and biodiversity takes a hit.

Anyway, cheerful thoughts. Past time for action, in a rational manner:

pressure politicians to formulate and enforce regulations on businesses
take the bike, insulate your house, and switch off appliances when they’re not needed

Your children will thank you.

2 comments »

Posted in environment, ethics

Books of the summer

October 4th, 2009 No comments »

Spin I’ve been lucky this summer with my reading: good books. And a couple of new authors, too, which is even better, because it means even more books to come. Referrals by friends and acquaintances, mostly.

Anathem: Neal Stephenson spins out another genre-defying book. It’s clever, it’s unusual, it’s speculation based on Platonism and vaguely on Penrose’s more wacky theories. Good read, with Stephenson’s usual minor failings: love of description, and abrupt ending. The plot starts very slowly, and then accellerates to a mad speed. But still interesting.
Spin: masterful sci-fi of the ‘what would happen if’ kind – Planet-scale events affecting the daily lives of the main characters. Such a good read I’m afraid to read the sequel.
Rainbow’s End: I’ve been recommended Vernor Vinge a few times, and now I finally got round to reading one. Good read, nicely worked out future reality, building on all the virtual reality, ubiquitous internet, data mining tendencies emerging just now.
A fire upon the Deep: well, I couldn’t stop there, so I read another one of Vernor Vinge’s – space opera this time, but again, well written, keeping you scotched through too many pages.
The boy in the striped pijama: gut-wrenching book – i dare you not to squeeze a tear at the end of this one. Holocaust seen from the point of view of the young 5-year old son of a camp commander.
the Dresden files: pure entertainment. It’s been described as a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philip Marlowe – and that’s not too far off, actually. Harry Dresden is a professional wizard, a sort of private eye for the supernatural.

So yes, good haul this summer. Robert Charles Wilson and Vernor Vinge, both Hugo Award winners, have been added to my authors to watch. I recommend a try.

No comments »

Posted in books, futurology

Canada Eldorado

September 29th, 2009 3 comments »

Strangely, Canada has long been my chosen emigration country, should things turn sour here in Belgium (or should I just need to move). And this without me having ever set foot there. I’m glad i finally went and scoped out a tiny part of Canada, to add a touch of reality to that fantasy. It was a great holiday, and I think it’s a great country. Now, if allowed to, could I move there ?

Food
Go ahead, laugh, but nice scenery is once in a while, and food is every day, 3 to 4 times.

I think all foods we use daily here can be bought there – fresh and good veg and fruit, fish, meat. Some ingredients may ask for a little bit of research, like good bread or the full variety of cheeses, but the impression I got is that they were available.
good, cheap meals of all nationalities can be found in restaurants, especially in a city like Vancouver
Sometimes more open-minded and daring than here, where we are sometimes constrained by tradition. For instance, an enlarged concept of breakfast: where here, we’re partial to the continental breakfast, and we know about traditional english breakfast, there they pick and mix, joyously, like for instance a tex-mex breakfast, or a more mediterranean egg broil with garlic and spinach.
their coffee sucks. Canadians don’t know about coffee. The tap water is all wrong, and they make it much too weak, the kind my grandfather used to call ‘sock juice’.
cakes, cookies, scones, brownies, muffins, bagels, buns. Need i say more ?

Lifestyle
The canadese people I met seemed fairly relaxed, and like the outdoors. They work hard, but seem less work-obsessed than some. There also seems to be an active art and music scene in Vancouver, with live music to be found pretty much every night. They like having a beer, but don’t seem to be going for stone drunk like the brits. Education is not cheap, and most people I met seemed to worry about money somehow – but that may just be the people I met, or the times we live in.

Nature
It’s quite simple, Canada is a very, very large country. Human beings only populate a small percentage of the surface – the road network, for instance, is quite sparse, from my belgian point of view. When you go further north, even more so. This means vast territories of near-untouched nature, something amazing for us, boxed in in our fertile and overpopulated lands.

Local interviews
Of course, I took the opportunity to ask around.
To immigrants, I asked simply “do you like living here ?”. To locals, i was more roundabout, saying things like “you’re lucky to live in this country” and seeing their reaction.
Strangely, the immigrants I talked to (granted, they were not in high-paying power jobs) were mostly homesick. Not homesick enough to go back, apparently, but enough to return for holidays, and speak in melancholy tones about their home country.
The locals were mostly shrugging or saying “yes …” in a doubtful tone.
But maybe that’s to be expected. We humans take for granted what we have, and always crave something more – that’s probably what made us crawl out of the trees and build our first tool. Even if we have fantastic nature next door, we’ll want a nicer house, social acceptance, a loving relationship, more friends, a higher position within the company, more money to go round, a sailing boat, whatever.

Conclusion
So, would I want to move there ? I certainly like what I saw.
But I remind myself again that moving abroad doesn’t necessarily make you happy. I’d be leaving behind my family, my friends, my professional network, to start from scratch. While I’m not old, I’m no spring chicken any more, so would I want to do this (that is, if they want me) ? It would take more than a holiday to find out.

3 comments »

Posted in holiday, life

Banff

September 17th, 2009 8 comments »

In coming to Banff I crossed the invisible border into territory where wearing a cowboy hat is no longer an ironic statement. This may be due to the fact that I crossed into another state: I’m no longer in British Columbia, but in Alberta. Alberta lives from oil and gas, cattle, logging and tourism. I also changed timezones into ‘Mountain Time’, one closer to home from Pacific.

I share my dormitory with a corean and a japanese girl. I feel for the corean girl, since she just arrived and is looking for a job in Banff – and I think mid-september is not the best time to do that in a mountain town. I also get the sense that she made this move to be closer to her boyfriend, who works in Texas (?!!).

The japanese girl is on holiday, like me. She’s having a ‘Canada in 3 weeks’ holiday, japanese style. What’s less typical is that she travels on her own.

The lonely planet guide says about Banff that it’s almost ugly enough to make you forget about the natural beauty surrounding the place. Frankly, Banff no beauty, but it’s far from the monstrosities you get in the French Alps (like Tignes) – just a slightly kitschy and touristy village. No sign yet of the elk that are supposed to haunt the place like holy cows.

The first morning I climb a real, honest-to-god mountain, Sulphur Mountain, 5.5km of zig-zag along a mountain flank. It takes me about 2 hours – I’m sweaty and winded by the time I’m up there, so I decide to take my lunch, and am joined there by groups of chinese tourists and middle-aged people who took the gondola (cable car), and who say things like “do you think they’ll let me eat ice cream on the gondola ?”

It’s 3o’clock when i get back down, and I’m a bit tired so I wander around a little bit, and almost stumble into a thicket when I hear the cries of the famed elk. They don’t sound cuddly at all, rather more like the monster pits in Star Wars – probably mating season. So I decide to turn back (also there’s a bit of swamp in the way).

The nature here is mind-blowing. The mountains are jagged monsters, and you see why they are called Rockies – ‘rocky’ is the first adjective that comes to mind. The water is an almost unnatural aquamarine blue or crystal pure (and then it mirrors the surrounding mountains), and the fall colours, yellow and red are starting to appear – the kind of views that make you go mute.

It also makes you wonder what it is like to play baseball, party or generally live surrounded by these enormous rocks.

Since I’ve more or less scoped out the Banff I can get to without a car, I decide to book myself into a tour for the next day, and choose the ‘Glacier Trail’ by a small touring company. Then I go and have dinner with my japanese roommate, Mayu, a law student, who candidly tells me she likes to drink A Lot with her friends to relieve the pressure of her studies, that she’s a ‘shopping freak’, and basically smokes every chance she gets. Ow-kay. Fun company though.

The tour, the next day, is an excellent surprise. We go from wonder to wonder, Lake Louise, Bow Lake and Glacier, and we actually get to walk on the Athabasca glaciers, Pito Lake and glacier. I take more pictures today than on any other day of the trip. Nuggets from the tour:

the rockies were formed between 140 and 65 billion years ago. They are basically sedimented rock (pressurized by the tons of oceans), on the crack between two tectonic plates. These pushed up against each other – the pushed down bit is the Front Range, where Banff is situated, and the sedimented layers are vertical here. The pushed up bit is the Main Range, and that’s where Jasper is – higher mountains and the layers are horizontal, forming strata on top of the mountain.
Then 4 ice ages ground down and shaped the rockies to about half of their original height. The rock is rather soft (limestone – 3 on the scale of Mohr – dolomite – 4 Mohr), so it’s sculpted by ice and water to the mad sharp shapes we see nowadays.
glaciers are overflows from enormous, mountain-top ice fields. Ice fields are pressurized snow (it takes 100ft of snow to have enough pressure). The ice at the bottom of ice fields and glaciers is under such pressure that it behaves semi-liquidly, and actually flows. The ice at the top, however, is not, and bubbles and cracks, which makes it fairly dangerous to walk on
the touring companies use Terra Buses, buses with 6 wheels of about 2m diameter and 6-wheel drives. Impressive machines, with a maximum speed of 18km/h, but basically glacier-proof.
The water is such a light blue because of ‘rock flour’, rocks that have been ground to dust which is suspended into the water that flows down from the glaciers
the water from the Athabasca glacier tasted incredibly pure (with a hint of earth)
the glaciers and icefields are the main form of water storage in the region, and they are shrinking …

I meet a nice elderly couple, the man is Belgian, but immigrated 58 years ago. He has grandchildren in Banff. And still he visits his Belgian family, comes to Belgium to vote, and watches the Belgian news on TV5 every day (his Ontario wife tells me with an eye roll).

So, another night in Banff, and last day tomorrow. The weather has been perfect so far, seems to be turning a little bit cloudy, but I’m sure I’ll find something to do. Tomorrow night overnight bus back to Vancouver.