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.
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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:
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.
]]>Whenever I shutdown, the screen freezes at the Lenovo logo screen and fails to shutdown properly. Even after waiting several minutes, nothing happens. So in the end, I always have to hold in the power button for several seconds in order to get the laptop to complete the shutdown process properly.
I placed the following message in the Lenovo Support Forum.
I finally figured out what the problem was, I solved it by executing the following command:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535 nvidia-dkms-535
See: Ubuntu Linux Install Nvidia Driver (Latest Proprietary Driver)
]]>We had a fun and relaxing week exploring the southern region of Italy called Puglia. Forming the heel of the boot, the region is known for its whitewashed hill towns, centuries old farmland and hundreds of kilometers of Mediterranean coastline.
See: Photo Album.
]]>As tradition would have it, the end of the golfing season marks the yearly Jong Tegen Oud Matchplay Tournament. This is a long awaited for contest which pits the best of the youth against the finest seniors. The age divide being forty years old (kind of).
It is fine mix of young and old going at each other in the true spirit of golf. Having lost last years match, the team old had some serious grudges to deal with. Not really revenge, but close enough to it.
Consisting of two teams of fourteen each, we played greensomes in the morning followed by singles in the afternoon. Afterwards we had a good old "borrel" with prizes, capping off the festivities with a fun BBQ just joking around into the evening.
We were all very lucky this time around with the weather. For a few days before, it had been raining seriously (cats and dogs), and the golf course was even closed on the previous day.
Well come Sunday morning the sun came out, the sky presented a blanket of blue, and the slightly wet fairways dried out well by the afternoon. To make it fair, we allowed ourselves to bump the ball and clean it if needed. Gimme putts were up for grabs, gentlemen that we were.
This year was no different from previous contests. The young group of whipper snappers looked awesome striking their drives with intensity, right down the middle in what looked like a million miles down the fairway. Flexibility to its extreme and a swing speed beyond belief.
Team old remained undaunted (though a bit shaky). We know from years of experience that long drives alone are not enough. The thinking man has the advantage in the end. It is not about closing your eyes and whacking the ball as far as you can.
Besides, the older you get the better your short game (they say). That is exactly where we came out superior, sinking longish putts and recovering from behind the trees. Team young were tough as nails and put up a good fight. However, in the end team old pulled off a semi-convincing win.
So what if this time around team old was the winner? What really counts is the fun time we had together, sharing a mutual love for an amazing sport, feeling good by the synergy that bubbles forth when the young and the old get together.
In the end, we are all young at heart.
]]>Second place bruto men with a 77 from the back tees, and they still insist on calling me Fred.
]]>Where's the %$#@&%$! hole?!
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