Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 13:29 - Computers
Holy crap, all this system programming and study has started to make me... actually...... like C better than C++? Can it be?
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( 2.8 / 145 )Tuesday, June 5, 2007, 16:28 - General
This morning I biked from Qi-Qi's place to mine carrying a big suitcase the whole way (which is maybe 3 or so miles). Then I biked to Science Park to meet Michael one last time (and sell him some packs I'd won at Twee Klaveren), then back to my house to pack up the suitcases, then back to Qi-Qi's. That's maybe 10 or so miles, and especially the suitcase trip made me feel very Dutch.It's quite hot here now, and the sun is coming up around 5 and going down around 10 which makes me not want to leave all the more. Then there's the issue of weight with my suitcases - I'm allowed 2 23kg checked bags, one carryon, and one personal item. I have 2 23.0kg big suitcases, an 18kg carryon which houses my laptop and tons of books, and my guitar case as my personal item, containing both my guitar and, you guessed it, more books. I just hope they don't weight my carryon things or I'm screwed. I'm even leaving behind a bunch of old clothes (and as Wouter says, if I say they're old, they must be really old) and a few books as it is but with that I think I'll pretty much be able to bring everything back that I want. I also just saw today that I got a surprise $90 from the MN Dept of Revenue which doubles the amount of money I'll have to my name upon my landing in New York. At least this way I can afford the taxi ride to my new apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The address at which I'll be living for the month of June is
Eric Hielscher
54 Dupont St
Brooklyn, NY 11222
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( 2.9 / 37 )Sunday, June 3, 2007, 09:48 - General
Wednesday was a beautiful day, and after my meeting with Chris I quick biked over to meet Liz and Tino and then over to Qi-Qi's house to spend the day with her. We went to see the movie Interview, a remake of a Theo van Gogh film my Steve Buscemi, at Kriterion. I really liked the movie, and its both-American-and-Dutch origins fit me well at this stage in my life. Afterward we had a walk around the beautiful canals near Rembrandtplein and then went off to her house for the night.Thursday afternoon I got a call from Tino and told him I'd meet up with him and Liz at 3:00 at the Oude Kerk, but somehow the St. Nicolaas Kerk near the station was known to me as the Oude Kerk. Thus I was there for half an hour biking around wondering where they were before I looked at some guy's map and went off in search of the real Oude Kerk. I then parked my bike and we went to Latei for a juice and sandwich, then over to Puccini to buy some chocolate, then to the post office, then to a bench to sit for a while where my lewdity appalled some older couples. After quite a while on the bench we walked over to Euclides so that I could call Qi-Qi but the phone didn't work and I had to use Lena's instead. I did get ahold of her and we all met up shortly thereafter at Kriterion. We then took the metro up to Nieuwmarkt and walked to Dam where we got pancakes and a bottle of wine before putting away some contraband west of the Dam and then a beer at Belgique. Everyone seemed exhausted from the day and week, Liz most of all as she'd gotten up early to do some solitary shopping at Waterlooplein, and so we walked home rather early and hit the sack.
The next morning I took Liz to the train station and after buying her a ticket to the airport waved incessantly for like 10 minutes until the train finally pulled away. I'm glad she and Tino could make it to Amsterdam to see my Dutch life, though it was a bit hectic to have them here so soon before I leave. The rest of the morning was spent trying to get some of Qi-Qi's errands done but not being able to due to the ridiculousness of Dutch bureaucracy. Man, my English spelling has degraded in recent years. We then took a nap, then went out and bought me some new European style low-tops like I've been wanting for so long, then had Dim Sum at this Chinese restaurant on Oude Hoogstraat. After this we watched far too many episodes of TPB for our own good before retiring to slumber.
Yesterday I found someone to rent my room for the summer - this Finnish PhD student named Lauri. He even wanted to buy my furniture. After that I returned my cello, which as I anticipated involved speaking for way too long to the hippie owner about how the U.S. is too eng for her. We were also invited by Ansten to a lefse gathering which involved 8 of us trying to sit around the kitchen table (why my roommates refuse to use the living room is beyond me) in order to eat Norwegian porridge and lefse. It was good and really filling, but the joke about there being smegma in the porridge was a bit much. Qi-Qi and I then went off for a walk to Brouwersgracht and back.
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( 2.7 / 26 )Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 11:00 - General
Zaterdagavond hebben Liz en Tino aangekomen op bezoek - Tino vanuit Spanje en Liz vanuit Chicago. Ik heb Liz om 17 uur ontmoet op Schiphol en wij hebben daar eerst maaltijd gehad want de vlucht van Tino was een uur laat. Wij hebben niet zo veel die avond gedan want het was al een beetje laat, maar wel een portje van dat Spanse kaartenspel dat ik van Lewis heb geleerd en met Shlomit en Ravit heb gespeeld. Tino heeft gewonnen, en hij was er wat loud mee.Zondag was het weer niet te slecht - wel wolken, maar warm en geen regen. Dus heb ik met Liz en Tino door stad geloopd terwijl Qi-Qi was hard aan het werk met haar presentatie. Wij gingen met z'n drie'n door de wallen, met een pit-stop bij een coffeeshop dichtbij de Dam, and daarna naar een indonesisch restaurant waarvan ik van Qi-Qi heb ik gehoord. Wij hebben op het Spui gegeten en daarna naar De Zotte geloopd waar wij mijn huisgenoten hebben ontmoet - kleine stad. Daarna naar nog een coffeeshop waarvan ik van Rachel heb geleerd, en daarna naar het Vondelpark om een beetje te luieren. Dan hebben wij door Oud-Zuid geloopd en alle de mooie huisjes bekeken voor wij een tram neemden naar The Bird om Qi-Qi te ontmoeten voor de maaltijd. Ik was al wat vol, maar het eten daar is altijd zo goed. Dan nog een van Tino gewonnen spelletje en een episode van Trailer Park Boys voor bed.
Gisteren ging ik met de fiets naar mijn kamer op de Kruislaan, maar het was een feestdag. Dus de kantine was gesloten, en na een uurtje kreeg ik honger. Dus ging ik door het regen naar een AH om Qi-Qi te ontmoeten en lunch te kopen. Wij hebben samen gelunchd in de wiskundebibliotheek en daar "gewerkd" voor wij aten bij haar thuis. Wij hebben vroeg naar beg gegaan want zij had vandaag een presentatie en ik had een meeting met Chris. Hij denkt dat het een slecht idee is om zo vroeg naar New York te gaan, maar hij begript de redenen wel en hij denkt dat mijn werk wel goed (en toch publiceerbaar) is. Goede nieuws in ieder geval.
Ik heb ook een tijdelijke woning gevonden voor juni. Ik ga wonen met een assistent DA en enkele andere jongen. Hopelijk kan ik in juni een andere, vastere woning vinden, en misschien even met Lewis nog. Ik heb ook mijn kamer geplaatst op Kamernet.nl en binnen 2 uurtjes heb ik al een reactie gekregen van een Italiaanse ingenieur die deze zomer voor ABN gaat werken. Niet slecht.
Liz en Tino zijn hier tot vrijdag, maar het lijkt dat het weer die hele tijd slecht is. Jammer, maar wel Nederlands.
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( 3.2 / 28 )Thursday, May 24, 2007, 11:03 - General
Yesterday evening Ansten and I had been planning on going to see Shellac together at Paradiso, but it turned out that when the day came neither of us really felt like it anymore. Instead Josh gave me a call just as I was about to go to Qi-Qi's for the night saying that he'd had some trouble getting his Russian visa and wondering whether he could crash at my place. It doesn't bother me, though ostensibly the volume of guests I've been having has been getting on the nerves of my flatmates. In any case I biked over to meet them by Centraal and then we walked over to La Belgique for a biertje before I biked further on to Qi-Qi's. Josh and his friend went to Hamburg this morning, and from there they'll fly to Russia tomorrow.Today I realized that I'd overdrafted my Dutch account by 180 euros due to the automatic payment of my UvA tuition (this being the last one this year though yeah) so I biked over to the bank to put some cash in (luckily I could afford to do that, as I just got $630 in reimbursement funds from Simon Fraser). The number printer was out of paper, and thus we had to form an old-fashioned line which I kind of orchestrated as it seems that Europeans don't understand what a line is. I also got a free coffee (one of the perks of ABN) but as I couldn't finish it before leaving I just biked no-handed over to Euclides while drinking my coffee in the sun. Man, not a bad life I have. There I ran into Qi-Qi in the MoL room and got ambushed with a discussion about rationality, but I was only half-heartedly in it. My plan in going there was to surprise her and to write up and print out and hang up flyers advertising my room and my amp for rent and sale respectively.
Ik heb ook een advertentie geplaatst op marktplaats.nl voor mijn versterker. Ik heb niet zo veel in mijn blog in het nederlands geschreven, maar als dit een soort dagboek voor mij is denk ik dat het een goed idee is om dat een beetje nu te doen. Dit is waarschijnlijk het hoogste niveau in het nederlands dat ik ooit zal bereiken, en ik wil er misschien na een paar jaren terug bekijken om dat te zien. Maar ja, nu heb ik niets verder te zeggen. Moet effe wachten hoor.
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( 3.1 / 28 )Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 09:15 - Blurbs
I finally got my rejection from Toronto yesterday via email - heh, whatever, I wanted to go to NYU more anyway.[ add comment ] | permalink |
( 2.8 / 39 )Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 07:38 - General
Thursday Qi-Qi and I were going to try and catch Inland Empire at Kriterion after we were done studying at the library, but her blog entry took her too long (hehe) so we ended up having dinner at this Italian restaurant instead. My spinach pizza was horrible, with the spinach tasting like dirt and even feeling like dirt, with grit that was so bad it almost hurt my teeth. Times like that that I wish there was some system like there is in the U.S. for letting people know their food sucked (no tip).Friday night Qi-Qi and I had dinner with her Chinese friend Ting, as Ting was flying to a conference in Corsica at 5am and wanted to stay at Qi-Qi's until then to catch the plane rather than come directly from Tilburg where she is doing her PhD. It was a good time, with us getting some Venetie ice cream and wandering around Beatrixpark.
Saturday night we saw the movie The Fountain, which I have to say wasn't too far in quality level from David's description of it as being "so fucking bad." I don't know, I guess I set the bar too high based on how much I liked Aronofsky's other two films.
Sunday afternoon I got together with Wouter. I met him at Barlaeus, a high school near Paradiso, as there was this conference going on there at which he was volunteering. It was called the Nederlands Sociaal Forum, and it was basically a big hippy festival where people were talking about things like climate change and protesting against the G8. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old and disillusioned, but these things don't inspire me anymore. Instead I always leave feeling like they're just a waste of time, that basically there are a few people who have some agenda and have found the cultural terms in which to present that agenda to a bunch of non-thinking follower-types who then parrot what was told them without knowing what they're talking about. Man, that sounded harsh, but a case in point was when I went to that protest with Masha last year and I asked 4 different people what we were protesting against and no one knew. Not one. Anyway, we caught this debate which wasn't actually a debate but just a few speeches and then irrelevant non-questions from the audience. First though there was some Dutch guy whose big thing was the disappearance of people in China and the potential link between this and the exhibits like Bodies that are being shown around the world. I impressed him with my Dutch - people always ask whether my parents speak Dutch but then I beam and say no. I think there's something wrong with me that I'm so proud of it, but hey at least I can admit it. The speeches were from a German woman trying to convince us to go protest the G8 summit near Rostock in about 10 days, then this British man talking about climate change, and then Cindy Sheehan, a famous anti-Iraq activist. First though, the conference spokesman introduced them only in Dutch which seemed a bit rude considering none of them speak Dutch. Then there was time for only one question, so the spokesman asked for one highly relevant one, and instead he got something from the same China-oriented guy which was both off-topic and not a question. The panel was baffled. Then there was a panel discussion in Dutch which was much more interesting for me due to it being in Dutch than it having exciting content.
Phew, anyway, after this we went over to L&B for a beer (strange to get a beer there, but) and then walked over to De Zotte for 3 more. We got into a pretty intense discussion about my complete intolerance for irrational life organization (focusing mostly on religion, but also on mysticism in general) which I quite enjoyed. (Edit: check this out. Interesting...)
We also talked about the notion of potential being a meaningless crutch which is a principle I've held since first reading Nietzsche. Not profound at all, basically what I see often is people who say things like "well, I could be great, do great things, accomplish specifically X,Y, and Z, but I just don't feel like it right now," with the point of the statement being both a justification to themselves of their laziness in not doing X,Y, or Z, and also a vindication of themselves in the eyes of the hearer. I think this should be seen just for what it is - an excuse - and that people would be better off shedding the value they attach to potential and instead focusing on results. "There is no such thing as strength other than the exercise of strength." You're not great if you only could be great, by definition. Get off your ass. I've been guilty of this so many times in the past, and it does nothing but induce laziness.
After this I rather inebriatedly biked over to Qi-Qi's and went to bed. Monday evening I went over to Twee Klaveren for one last time of drafting with Bart, David, and Michael among others. I went 3-0 without losing a game - quite a nice way to end it, especially after not having played in months. It never ceases to amaze me though the coolness of being able to go there and just shoot the shit with Julien Nuijten, 2-time world champion, and other pro card players. They're all quite nice too. After this I biked over to the Lloyd Hotel (conveniently 5 minutes from my house) where Qi-Qi's "Dutch mother" Suzanne, who is one of the three owner/operators of the artist-oriented hotel, was putting on her weekly exhibition/artist hang out party. There was some rap/reggae band playing, and I got to meet Suzanne who says I'm sweet. Awww. Then it was home for much-needed sleep.
My thesis is starting to come together. I might even start writing some code to simulate the hardware structures I'm designing. Momentum is good.
I'm listening to the Toadies after not having done so in a long time. I'm starting to understand the people of the previous generation who were so into the 80's during their 20's. I'm really an early 90's rock man. It's just my roots.
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( 2.9 / 21 )Thursday, May 17, 2007, 09:42 - General
I'm back in the Math library again today, studying with Qi-Qi. It's Ascension Day, the day Jesus supposedly rose into heaven (heh), and so everything's closed. In particular, her roommates are home from work, so we went off to the library to study as we have access keys to it. I just don't understand how a country so areligious could have so many religious holidays. I guess the Dutch are just lazy.Not much, as per usual. I'm starting to really focus my working efforts on my thesis, and I think I'm being semi-productive. I'm basically designing the memory protection hardware that will be included in the processors we're designing, and then also investigating various ways an operating system could employ that hardware to provide protection and other services.
Petter had been staying with me for a few days as his old place was full with a visitor and the girl who's replacing him in the apartment with Gaelle. He left for Sweden for good on Wednesday which was a bit sad. I'll miss the guy.
I've noticed that people whom I consider quite brilliant when it comes to certain things like computer science are often completely inept when it comes to typing (and this isn't a non-native-speaker issue). What's with that? Are these people just too busy to proofread or even ever use a backspace key, or is such ability negatively correlated with one's computer prowess? See my previous musing about comp sci professors' webpages, though I've seen many good ones as well.
I really hate internet communities like MySpace. I just felt the need to vent how completely devoid of content most fora in cyberspace are. On top of that, MySpace pages are so freaking ugly, slow to render, and buggy that they're worthless. I have no idea why bands use them instead of just having their own webpages. I also hate Apple, but that's more because I'm just extremely wary about design when it comes to technology. The way I see it, if a product looks cute but isn't functional, then it's worthless. If it's functional but ugly, at least I can still use it. Of course, having both would be best, but I get warning bells when I see a cute technology product. How much time and energy that could have been spent on engineering a superior piece of technology was instead spent on trying to make it sell by looking cute?
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