This is a picture of my father sitting in front of a small cabin hut that he built himself using the ax he is holding in his right hand. He grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. He told me that we was about ten years old when the picture was taken, meaning that the picture was taken around 1926.

The character I liked the most is named Hoid who is the first person narrator of the fantasy novel.

Hoid is a worldhopper who travels the cosmere universe, originally born on the planet Yolen. His fate is to wander the cosmere pursing his unknown goals, often in the guise of a fool or storyteller. He may be guided at times by a mysterious sense about where he should go, but not what he is to accomplish there.

As the narrator of this story, Hoid has an interesting way with words and describes various scenes and actions in a most profound way. Here are a few quotes that especially inspired me when I first read them.

36. The Explorer, page 203.
"That inspires me. We each make our own lore, our own legends, every day. Our memories are our ballads, and if we tweak them a little with every performance...well, that's all in the name of good drama. The past is boring anyway. We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale."

38. The Apprentice, page 211.
"What else would she have never known about herself, if she hadn't left her home island? Worse, how many people like her lived in ignorance, lacking the experience to fully explore their own existence? It is one of the most bitter ironies I've ever had to accept: there are, unquestionably, musical geniuses of incomparable talent who dies as street sweepers because they never had the chance to pick up an instrument."

40. The Chef, page 223.
"This type of response will send any artist into panic. Tears wash away the middle ground--allthe infinite permutations of mediocre are eliminated, and two options remain: one sublime, the other catastrophic. For a moment, both interpretations exited in a kind of quantum state for Tress. And people wonder why artists so often abuse drink."

41. The Philosopher, page 232.
"While a healthy measure of foolhardiness drove our ancestors toward discovery, fear kept them alive. If bravery is the wind that makes us soar like kites, fear is the string that keeps us from going too far. We need it, but the thing is, our heritage taught us to fear some of the wrong things."

42. The Guide, page 233.
"Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again."

44. The Fallen, page 245.
"Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts--but those thoughts are often owned by others. It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds."

46. The Informant, page 253.
"There are obvious exceptions. Certain individual humans, like certain sausages, break this convention. While neither larger group is collectively terrifying, they contain remarkable individuals that absolutely should frighten you. The more you learn about these individuals, the more worried you should become. But for humans at large, knowledge usually equates to empathy, and empathy leads to understanding."

54. The Valet, page 297.
"We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some--perhaps most--are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours.

Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don't recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we've been told to inhabit.

We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become. Even if we're doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural."

58. The Monster, page 320
"Irony is a curious concept. Specifically, I mean the classical definition: that of a choice leading to an opposite outcome from what is intended. Many grammarians bemoan the word's near-constant misuse--second only in dictional assassination to the way some people use the word 'literally.' (Their use of which is ironic.)

I'm not one of those people who care if you use words wrong. I prefer it when words change meaning. The impression of our language is a feature; it best represents the superlative fact of human existence; that our own emotions--even our souls--are themselves imprecise. Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.

Yet irony is an intriguing concept. It exists only where we want to find it, because for true irony, expectation is key. Irony must be noticed to exist. We create it from nothing when we find it. But unlike other things we create, like art, irony is about creating tragedy.

Irony is reversal. Set up, then collapse.

A perfect bit of irony is a beautiful thing.

So watch. Enjoy."

59. The Prisoner, page 327.
"A few tress tried to spruce up the landscape but failed, both by being too intermittent and by not being the right species. Instead they were spindly, gnarled things with tufts of leaves growing only at the very tips of their branches. As if they knew the concept of 'trees' only by description, and were doing their best, all things considered."

60. The sorceress, page 335
"At this moment, Tress's emotions were complicated. Like that rope you always swear you put away neatly, but which comes out of storage looking like someone used it to invent new theoretical types of knots that bend space-time."

This amazing fantasy saga lasting some 2176 pages turned out to be a worthwhile read with some interesting twists and surprise endings. Good world building and character psychologies. At times a bit complex with the different types of beings and special powers based on metals.

See: Brandon Sanderson Homepage

In anticipation of the new Netflix series coming out soon, I decided to prepare myself better in advance by reading the now infamous trilogy by Cixin Liu.

Two weeks and 1695 pages later, I managed to saw through all three books, and I must say that although the books were a bit different than what I had expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the long read.

I am curious if the Netflix series will do the trilogy justice.

Not only did I have my first birdie of the year, which is normally the exciting highlight, but I managed to shoot two birdies in a row.

The first birdie was a longish 12 meter putt on the par three tenth, and the second one was on a par four where I made a long masterful shot from the fairway bunker and then sank the three foot putt.

The rest of the round was far from spectacular, with in total six pars, six bogies, three double bogies and a lousy triple bogie on the last hole for an 84.

Not a bad start for the year, and there will be plenty of fun challenges ahead.

I was born on the eleventh of October (I'm not going to say which year), my little league uniform number was eleven (Ghent Motors, Salinas), when someone asks me to pick a number between one and ten I always say eleven, etc.

Most importantly, today marks the eleventh anniversary of becoming sober: 132 months which equals 4023 days. That's about 17% of my life.

Believe it or not, I have survived no less than eleven years without a single drop of that evil substance called alcohol. Each day I wake up I thank God for giving me the power to choose a full and happy life.

Congratulations, you did it!

Some old man with a walking stick entered the room. He was accompanied by what looked like his son-in-law, and he took a seat right next to mine. He greeted the other visitors and started talking. As if we were eager to hear all he had to say. Society warns us that we have to respect older people and be patient with their many idiosyncrasies, even when they ramble on endlessly.

Tap, tap, tap ...

He began by telling us that he is not shy and people like to visit with him, although everyone also tells him that he talks too much. He was born before the war in 1936 (which puts him at 87 years old). The Germans were terrible and the war years had robbed him of his youth. Once he and his friends were playing in the fields, and someone whispered that the Germans were firing their weapons. Indeed, there they were a group of soldiers walking down the path nearby, spraying bullets from right to left. He could still hear it very plainly in his head, but as a small child at the time he didn't know what it meant. It all seemed very unreal and still doesn't make any sense today.

Tap, tap, tap ...

He paused briefly and began tapping his walking stick on the hard floor. In fact, throughout his long monologue, each short pause would be filled with the tapping sounds, as his variegated memories reformed and produced newer illusions. Right, his poor wife died when she was only 52 years old, which meant that he had to live the rest of his life alone. At the time, he had no work so ended up doing odd jobs, whatever he could find really.

Tap, tap, tap ...

There was this nice man who owned a ship, everyone in the town respected him. One day he saw him walking down the same road as he. So he asked him to help repair and build stuff in the shipyard. He knew absolutely nothing about ships, let alone building stuff. But he caught on very quickly and mastered the required skills. That was back when he was a young man, full of energy and his whole life was ahead of him.

Tap, tap, tap ...

His wife was good to him, that's for sure. It was a real shame that she had passed away so early. Together they had accomplished very much, but what a tragedy having to learn to live the rest of his life without her.

Mr Gish? The dentist assistant in her white coat stood at the opposite corner looking for the next patient, and that was me. I stood up, walked past the old man, turned the corner, and I never saw him again.

Check it out yourself: Three.js Journey.

Minds and machines is an introduction to philosophy of mind. We'll talk more about what philosophy is in general, and what philosophy of mind is in particular, in the first lecture. For now, here is a list of the kinds of questions you can expect to think about in this course:

• Are you an "immaterial soul" , distinct from your brain and body?
• Alternatively, are you simply a material or physical animal, living in an entirely physical world?
• If we (somehow) made a brain that was a perfect molecule-for-molecule replica of your brain, and (somehow) kept it alive in a tank, would the tank-creature have the same mental life as you?
• Do we see ordinary physical objects like lemons and iPhones? And assuming that we do see them at all, do we see them as they really are?
Can consciousness be given a scientific explanation?

See: Minds and machines

Back in the good old days when I was a young buck exploring the wonderful world ahead of me, I would muster up renewed courage by listening quite often to 10CC.

What a pleasure it was indeed to finally see them live after all these years, playing their best numbers and rocking the place out.

The concert was at the concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and we (Thea, Nelleke, Maarten and I) enjoyed our fantastic seats in the first row balcony right above them.