Archive for 2006
HEMA Online Fotoservice
Last week, we uploaded a selection of our digital photographs of our summer holiday to the HEMA, to be printed.
The last time we did that, we uploaded the photos via the website. Unfortunately, the user interface wasn’t very good. Certain selections you made were forgotten and you had to make them again. We only had about 10 photos that time, so it was not such a big problem. And the print quality turned out to be very good!
But this time, we wanted to upload 144 photos, so I didn’t feel like doing things two or three times. Therefore, I decided to try out the offline order software. Well, I’m not very enthusiastic about that either, but at least it remembers the selections you make.
When it finally came to uploading the pictures, I was quite surprised that it went so quick. I am pretty sure that my 256 kbps uplink cannot upload a 3 MB picture in about 10 seconds.
I noticed that the HEMA order software had made an “Upload” directory in its Album directory. All my original HiRes photos had been copied there, and they were disappearing one by one. But every time, the topmost picture was first replaced by a much smaller, low resolution version, before it was uploaded! I quickly copied one of those files as “evidence”. Apparently, the photos are resized to 1600 x 1200 before they are uploaded. OK, I didn’t say they could do that, but if the pictures really have to be resized before they can be printed, so be it. But the pictures were also compressed! And not just a little!
My original photo was 2724 kb, with a resolution of 3072 x 2304.
The uploaded picture was only 369 kb, with a resolution of 1600 x 1200.
Of course, I tried resizing the picture to the same resolution myself, (without compression!), and got a photo of 1658 kb. That’s 4.5 times larger!
I thought I would wait to see the result. So today we picked up the pictures, but they’re terrible. You can clearly see the JPEG compression artefacts on some of the pictures. So, I’m certainly going back tomorrow!
Summer holiday
Yesterday we returned from our summer holiday. We’ve been to France, camping most of the time. We started just south of Calais, where we stayed for two nights. My brother and sister-in-law were over from Bristol for a long weekend, so we met them there. After that, we drove on to a small village south of Clermont-Ferrand. We did some walking thereabouts, amongst others to the summit of the Puy de Dome.
Because the weather wasn’t great, we went further south after five days, to the Gorges du Tarn in the Cevennes. There we did a lot of walking (and climbing!) on the steep slopes of the gorges. But we also visited a castle (Chateau de Peyrelade), caves (Grotte d’Argilan), Le Chaos de Montpellier le Vieux and we went canoeing on the river Tarn one day. Oh, and of course we went to see the famous Viaduc de Millau.
TT
Yesterday, a couple of friends and I went to the TT in Assen for the MotoGP. It was the first time for me, and WOW, what an event! Almost a hundred thousand people, and a lot of them on motorbike… I never saw so many motorcycles at one time.
The weather was great, and the races were nice, with a spectacular ending of the MotoGP.
After the finish of the MotoGP, even before the last of the races, most people left, resulting in thousands and thousands of motorcyclists trying to leave at the same time. It took us about an hour – in the burning sun – just to get off the parking lot and onto the highway!
And then the thousands of people who stand along the highway. Some of them have even taken chairs with them, some barbecues, and even 100 kilometers from Assen, the highway overpasses are still filled with people watching and waving at the bikers – you’d almost feel like an Olympic champion!
Update: The official sponsor of the TT is A-Style, as can naturally be seen everywhere along the track, on the tickets, or on the poster, for example. Check out their logo! Who, in his right mind, would ever want to come up with a logo like that?!?
New hardware
Because I needed a bit of extra data storage, I bought a new harddisk yesterday.
I basically just wanted a lot of space, for mass storage and backup, and I wanted it to be available for every pc in our house.
At first, I was looking for an external USB disk, to be connected to my Asus WL500g wireless access point. However, I decided that a NAS would be more suitable for this, and more general applicable.
Of course, you can make one of those yourself, if you have an old pc lying around somewhere, but I just bought one out of the box. The best choice for me (based on the price per Gb, combined with the built-in printer server) was the Western Digital NetCenter 320 Gb. And it works just fine. I haven’t done anything special yet, nor have I performed any benchmarks, but it’s just very nice to be able to access your documents from any pc, and use the same printer, store photos and music in one place, et cetera. It does exactly what I wanted!
The Lion King
Yesterday we went to the musical “The Lion King” in the Circustheater in Scheveningen.
Wow, what a spectacular show that is! It already starts with a fantastic opening scene. But also the live music is overwhelming, the costumes are amazing, and the decors are beautiful.
Well, I could tell you more, but you should really just go and see it. But you’ve got to be quick, because the show stops August 27.
The Daily WTF
A friend of mine pointed me to this website, The Daily WTF, Curious Perversions in Information Technology.
On this website you can get your daily dose of funny, stupid or weird bits of programming code.
How about this bit of code for converting a byte array to hexadecimal?
Notice the use of constants to improve readibility, such as:
public static final int FIRST_BIT_OFFSET = 1; public static final char ZERO = '0';
Here’s another nice example of the use of constants, to make SQL query building much easier!
Boom Chicago
Yesterday evening, we went to the theater (“Het Arsenaal” in Vlissingen) to see Boom Chicago.
I don’t know if you know them, or have heard about them, but they are (obviously) a theater group. They do improvisation theater. We had seen them once before, a year or two ago, so we knew what to expect. If you don’t, maybe you have seen De Lama’s on Dutch television…? That’s more or less similiar to Boom Chicago.
The group consists of a couple of Americans who live in the Netherlands; it’s very funny to hear “foreigners” characterising “us”, the Dutch people, our habits, et cetera. But they’re very good at it! 
Some improvisation examples from the show: people in the audience yell out some professions and the names of some famous people, and they make a sketch of “Sean Connery as a flying doctor”, or “ET as a bank robber”.
Or they ask the audience for a couple of one-liners from movies. Two of the actors, who were back stage during that time, then have to do a scene in which they randomly get these lines and have to integrate these into the scene.
And yes, on stage it is much more funny than if you read it here…
Anyway, if you want to know more about them, or see some example videos, have a look at boomchicago.nl.
Have fun! And go and see them some time, if you can.
Computers & Graphics
Yeehaw! We can add another journal paper to our publication list!
It has taken a little over a year since our first (hardcopy!) submission. We already got the definitive “accept” on January 3rd, but today I was informed that the article is now available online, together with all publication details and so on. You can find it here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2006.01.032, although for the full text, you will need a valid login.
Family visit
We went away for the weekend, to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Bristol, UK. It had been more than a year since we were there last time. Luckily they come to the Netherlands more often than we go there!
We had a lovely, relaxed couple of days. On Saturday, we visited Tintern Abbey and made a walk in the surrounding area. On Sunday, we just strolled around through town. Unfortunately, I was a bit sick both days, but that didn’t stop me from walking.
All in all, we had a nice weekend, some time to read a book, chat with each other, and relax.
On the “professional” level: my first month as a software engineer has come and gone. And I’m allowed to stay! I’m very pleased with the job, so far, it’s nice, it’s interesting, and it’s challenging. And with a bit of luck, before long, I will be able to do most of it from home!
@work
After five months, my unemployment days are finally over!
Last Friday – on my birthday! – I signed my new contract, and starting tomorrow, February 1st, I will be working as a software engineer on database (web-)applications, using MS SQL Server, ASP.Net and so on.
Part of the technologies used will be new to me, as well as the database applications that have already been developped and sold. So, it will be quite a challenge, but I’m very much looking forward to it!
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