London on alper.nl

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:04:13 +0100

Once Google Maps becomes so important to the survival of restaurants it ceases to be a useful tool and becomes a thing to be gamed.

Data mining it like Lauren Leek has done here is one way of dealing with that situation but it would be nice if this led to more sustainable approaches to the problem.

Platform transparency and auditability are no longer niche tech debates; they are quietly becoming tools of local economic policy. At minimum, ranking algorithms with this much economic consequence should be auditable.

https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates

Year in Review 2025

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:47:18 +0100

Just a quick review of 2025 as usual heavily inspired by the one that Hans puts out.

Sports and Health
#

It was a year where I didn’t seriously injure myself and could continuously practice sports. That’s already a huge improvement.

I started going to the gym regularly in the evenings after the kids are sleeping. After some initial hesitance I started doing barbell exercises. The goal is to squat and deadlift at least my bodyweight of 75kg. I’m inching this up very slowly and am currently at 40kg.

Going to the gym is made possible by my Fitbod subscription. Exercising regularly is much easier, if I don’t have to think or plan what I’m going to do. That means either a human or an app should tell me what I need to do. Given that the gym is paid for by my work, I can justify the steep monthly cost of Fitbod (here’s a 14-day guest pass).

I’m doing winter cycling on the trainers at the gym while I debate whether I should get one for at home. That makes me one of those crazy people who wears a chamois to the gym.

It was a great year for cycling. I bought a proper road bike, the Bianchi 2024 Sprint ICR and I managed to join group rides (mostly those of the MAAP LAB Berlin) more or less weekly without having a single mechanical or crash. knocks on wood

But then during a solo ride in the last week of the year I managed to slip and fall over. More than the minor damage to my knee and my carbon frame, it was my ego that was bruised.

Studies
#

I read a bunch of papers (one write-up) around LLMs and found the field to be overhyped. I don’t think that single percentage point increases in performance and conversions of BFS algorithms into LLM prompts are worth writing up. Things are moving so quickly that you can’t sit around waiting for breakthroughs to make their way into the literature.

Learning Japanese continues and I’m now at Wanikani level 22. I’m not sure what my next goal is going to be. After my trip to Japan my motivation is somewhat on the rocks.

The main problem is that once you start studying Japanese, you cannot stop. I’m not stopping, but I’m dialing it down to maintenance mode.

Books
#

I already posted about how bad of a year 2025 was for reading. Not sure whether I’ll find the time to do better next year.

Movies and TV
#

I’ve moved the tracking of everything that I watch over to Trakt saying goodbye to Letterboxd.

Just like with fitness, I need an app that will tell me exactly what I need to do right now. Without it, I’ll very easily lose track of this. Trakt is excellent at this and offers it in the free version. I pay for premium to get some of the more advanced list management versions.

The movies I watched in 2025:

Wicked
Moana 2
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Lilo & Stitch
KPop Demon Hunters
Encanto
The Greatest Showman

Trakt tells me that’s 901 minutes spent on movies.

Wicked was lovely on the big screen. Of the kids movies I watched: KPop Demon Hunters is impeccable, Moana 2 was unnecessary, Encanto was strangely forgettable, Lilo & Stitch not as bad as I would expect. The Greatest Showman may be flawed but it is full of bangers.

The tv series I watched in 2025:

Bluey S3
The Wheel of Time S2
The Bear S1+S2+S3+S4
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Dennou Coil
Asura
Cyberpunk Edge Runners
Legend of the Galactic Heroes S1
Heated Rivalry S1
Kaiju No.8 S1

All of these were spectacular and interesting in their own way. The Bear really meshes with so many things I like and like to do. Asura is effectively just a very long Kore-eda movie. LotGH is peak.

Trakt tells me that this is 4567 minutes spent on episodes. It’s clear who’s the winner here.

Games
#

I don’t really track this anymore, but what I can note are the following.

Expedition 33 was a highlight. I saw it on Tiktok and immediately knew I had to experience it. Not having a console I played it via cloud gaming on my Macbook.

Playing a parry/dodge game over a cloud setup is pure masochism, but with difficulty set to easy, it was kind of doable. The gameplay loop is satisfying but after a while the level design formula gets a bit tedious. What stood out were the music¹, the writing and the major set pieces in the boss battles and in the environment.

Critical Role started their campaign 4 and having followed the online RPG scene through Tiktok clips for a while now, I decided to see what the fuss was about. The first episode together with the rest of the ouverture is spectacular. It’s a narrative victory of setup, emotions, reveals and backstabbing. I’m not sure if they’ll stick the landing, but for now I’m very much bought in.

I’ll have to delve into what makes this worthwhile. For now I can point to two things. There is an element of let’s play parasociality that you have with any game stream or impro podcast. Add to that a very meticulously brewed high fantasy setting that’s better than what we get on television: open ended runtime, infinite production values, no cancellation after one or two seasons.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was discounted and became the game we played during the Christmas break. I led exploring the city on Mount Qaf with my kids on a lower difficulty following right on my heels.

It’s a great game where the platform mechanics continue to layer on top of each other together with some very nasty puzzles bordering on the outright sadistic. I’m super proud to see the grit and skill my kids have shown because easy only affects combat, not the platforming.

Persia provides a vast and mostly unknown to us landscape of culture, artifacts and mythology to serve as backdrop for this game. A lot of it is undoubtedly historically not accurate, but that does not make it any less nice to look at.

Podcasts
#

The two podcasts I listen to most consistently are Ones and Tooze and Past Present Future. Those are both remnants of my Talking Politics period². Maybe I should add Helen Thompson’s podcast as well and have a full lid?

Other than that I semi-regularly listen to:

The Adam Friedland show
The Catskills Podcast
Cortex
Developer Voices
Escape Collective (only during the Tour)
Feminist Shelf Control
KALT’ın Podacst’ı
Oxide and Friends
Podcast Filosofie
De Shitshow
Stavy’s World
Vergecast

I more or less stopped listening to Trashfuture finding the jokes and the commentary repetitive and boring.

Travel
#

It was a much better year for travel than most years before this.

London was a work trip in spring and it was one of my best London trips ever. I stayed in Chelsea, I cycled everywhere, drank lots of great coffee, ate a ton of great food, went to a club, went to a play on the West End. I did so much and there’s so much left to do. I don’t know what took me so long to appreciate London like this.

Iceland was the first trip we took our kids on a plane and then round tripped the island on our way to the family horse farm. Iceland is lovely but empty. Not sure what would make me go back there other than to visit family or if I could do some hard hiking/cycling/riding.

Japan drove me crazy with reports from everybody and their mother visiting so I had to go. After missing the summer window, I booked for November not knowing that that’s one of the best months to visit Japan. I walked the Ise-ji for a large chunk and then I ran around Tokyo for a couple of days. It was even better than all the social media.

Iceland and Japan in the same year is low-key ridiculous but this was also the year at work where I get 20 consecutive extra holidays.

End
#

Lots more things to cover that happened in 2025 but for now this will have to be it. Despite some marked down periods, all in all it was a good year. On to a much better 2026.

(This update has been delayed for a week because I fell quite ill just as the new year came around.)

It’s super cold that one of the most impactful songs starts during a boss battle and if you listen to the music, the boss has initiative and he gets free hits on you. ↩︎
Who didn’t have a Talking politics period? ↩︎

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 21:34:47 +0000

Musk’s attacks on British politics have been bizarre to witness. Imagine the richest man in the world waging an influence operation trying to put the far right in power in your country.

https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 21:56:37 +0000

This spring when I was in London, I stayed there with Sonder and even when they were still in business the entire process was somewhat sketchy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sonder-bankruptcy-9.6976737

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 08:19:24 +0000

Cycling in London is more joyful than in Berlin and I feel it’s more of a cycling city now.

But in either place, as this video argues, you’d be crazy not to take a bike to get around.

https://youtu.be/Dmf6aEx09Oo?si=xI6QIxxaekoxG280

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 22:27:25 +0000

Since the one digital thing that Germany is really good at is copying, here is the UK’s 2025 roadmap for digital and data. Just copy-paste it and do everything that’s in there.

Exceed public expectations
Equip civil servants for a digital future
Enhance government efficiency and security

Anything less than that is not really acceptable anymore.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/roadmap-for-digital-and-data-2022-to-2025/transforming-for-a-digital-future-2022-to-2025-roadmap-for-digital-and-data

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 19:54:17 +0000

“The privilege I have — how? No, genuinely, how?”

Well, I say, in terms of wealth, class, education — that kind of privilege, in knowing how to decode the rules in certain spaces. As a caveat, I add that both of us have privilege, and it’s not a criticism; I was simply curious to know what she thought. Things take an awkward turn.

“Well no, because, no… ”There is a very long and tense pause, before she insists that, actually, there is little difference between her experience and that of her co-star John Boyega, who grew up in south London to British Nigerian immigrant parents. “John grew up on a council estate in Peckham and I think me and him are similar enough that… no… Also, I went to a boarding school for performing arts, which was different.”

Daisy Ridley has no idea that she is privileged.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/07/daisy-ridley-jj-abrams-star-wars-a-religion

A government that's certain to win

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 22:59:48 +0000

I’m not that negative about the Dominic Cummings job ad, because:

Unlike a lot of people in governments everywhere, he seems to have a clue what he is doing.
That a person who’s winning would quote Boyd is not a coincidence.
Using a blog in this way (or Trump tweeting like he does) is the direct e-government that everybody has always been asking for. Not so fun now that we have it, is it?
Governments and institutions are breaking or already are broken in this age. They do need large scale overhaul.
This is even worse in Germany where the institutions are bigger and the ahistorical denial of reality is immense. It’s going to be really ugly when they go down.
A city like Berlin, that can’t get anything done to save its life, would probably be massively improved by this approach. Our local government here can’t find its own asshole without help from McKinsey. Please somebody do this for Berlin.

https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 09:16:35 +0000

We can talk about agile strategy all we want but “Doing over Planning”is a more than sufficient summary for anybody who wants to get started.

https://www.madebymany.com/stories/a-manifesto-for-agile-strategy-oxymoron-or-innovation

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 08:47:26 +0000

I’ll trust Artefact Cards when they say they have something that’s better than the Sharpie.

https://artefactshop.com/blogs/news/staedtlervssharpie

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 13:01:22 +0000

For the more abstract work, it makes it a lot easier for other people to ‘read your mind’ and for you to delegate if you share as much context as possible as Anna Shipman describes here.

https://www.annashipman.co.uk/jfdi/delegating-to-a-team.html

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 12:43:30 +0000

Cath writes some very salient points about growing into leadership that on the one hand should be more widespread, but on the other hand, everybody will likely have to find out for themselves.

Also nice to see this local group of people taking the next steps in their careers if even only witnessed from afar like this.

https://medium.com/@ohrworm/what-ive-learnt-about-leadership-3ff83b06a1de

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 22:34:21 +0000

“It’s no coincidence that co-living start-ups have gravitated to cities like Berlin, San Francisco, London and New York. Ostensibly ‘winning’ the battle for capital and talent, they are urban testing-grounds, where rootless and cashed-up tech workers, heated real estate markets, and rising housing pressures add up to a recipe for experimentation.”

An interesting look at co-living but please let’s not change the entire city into this nonsense.

https://assemblepapers.com.au/2019/05/20/redesigning-renting-housing-as-a-service/

Tweet coverage of the 2016 Bot Summit at the V&A in London

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 13:09:42 +0000

I was at the 2016 Bot Summit in London a couple of weeks ago. I did my best to capture salient points from every talk in a tweet. Here are all of them in order.

Now @v21 who made https://t.co/46XYTViILi about creating tools to enable people to play with technology. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @v21 talking about learning, competency and sandboxes, reminds me of this talk by @helvetica: https://t.co/2A62R4yK7c #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @v21 hints at what skills may come in handy when creating bots: “Poets are better botmakers than programmers.” #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Important points by @ojahnn about how to make bots pick the right words and how that shapes our interaction with them. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

I do think that using vernacular and colourful language is the most advanced part of language acquisition for humans and bots. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

One point from @mtrc’s talk is to not make bots pretend they are human. I think that is an approach that limits us both. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

The bot by @M_PF &co that makes Katamari Damacy-like 3D printable objects on Thingiverse is amazing. https://t.co/sXCgapTUeX #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

A really important labour analysis of digital assistants by @HelenHester starting off with the Apple Knowledge Navigator. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @HelenHester references @ibogost’s hyperemployment as a rebranding of the relational work that used to be done by women. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Lots of references to @TayandYou at #botsummit which was just a bunch of engineers crunching hard to get something out before #BUILD16.

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Brecht (so boring…) has a good point via @mewo2: “The audience should never forget they are interacting with a machine.” #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Lots of examples by @mewo2 of Brechtian digital technology that’s more focused on enlightenment than on entertainment. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Or as @mewo2 put it eloquently: “A set of techniques which promote a realistic view of bots and a bot-like view of reality.” #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

A live performance by @deer_ful of Graphic Score Bot. #botsummit @ Victoria and Albert Museum https://t.co/pNDeIPLqwE

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Guidelines by @starsandrobots how to put personality into physical robots using this great example: https://t.co/6Utr3Lh1Cp #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

The guidelines by @starsandrobots are that a robot gets personality by being: expressive, generative, fun and surprising. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @ArianaNGiorgi talks about the algorithmic journalism bots can (help) perform. See her slides here: https://t.co/QSRMLFeAnJ #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

One of my favorite journalistic bots is autotldr on @reddit: https://t.co/vIo07ACXuT (explanation: https://t.co/3erkE9CTsu ) #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Sometimes my paraphrasing from #botsummit may be a bit too free. Here are the actual guidelines by @starsandrobots. https://t.co/tt3ESQeUgy

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Oddly no mention of ELIZA yet (right?) at #botsummit though many have talked about the qualities people ascribe to even the simplest bots.

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @davelubin mentions ELIZA and “Computer Power and Human Reason”while explaining the ethical issues behind @TVCommentBot. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Live demo by davidlublin of the various TV bot comment modes #botsummit @ Victoria and Albert… https://t.co/wTnnfmdiex

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

. @erocdrahs who has made some amazing bots (https://t.co/4lzn6xOvYZ ) made us think about what it could be like to be a bot. #botsummit

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

A beautiful closing of #botsummit by @katierosepipkin about taking up making bots as a folk art both personally and as a wider thing.

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

#botsummit was an excellent mix of disciplines and of people who are in themselves a mix of these disciplines. END OF BOTCAST

— Alper Çuğun (@alper) April 9, 2016

Week 233

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:49:57 +0000

Another long form weeknote, history recapping brought by the fantastic Memolane service which aggregates my various media chronologically so I can quickly write this overview.

On Monday busy finishing a bunch of stuff and exercising my bureaucracy muscle by writing different varieties of administrativa.

Got started using Amen which is a ridiculous amount of fun. Any such service that relies on human input will need to be fun to start with to garner any amount of critical mass. I have some invites left for those that want them.

Also saw this zombie themed ARG running in Amsterdam throughout the week:

Tuesday saw the happy celebration of the Eid al Fitr (in our language called the şeker bayramı) along with work on culiacan.

This video regarding the internet and physical shutdowns of the SF BART is not to be missed:

Note the concept of a common carrier which is something we should have in Europe as well.

Also found this fab produced bike fender the “Fendor Bendor” (by Wit Industries) at the other office sitting in a rack:

Wednesday saw a day in Utrecht preparing for the trip to dConstruct to see Kars Alfrink speak about the Transformers.

Regarding the discussion that came back again: I do think that designers should code, but that answer should be a bit obvious seeing as I am a creative technologist. It does deserve a blogpost of its own.

Thursday saw travel to the UK with a direct transfer to the Moo party taking place in Shoreditch. The expected group of hipsters and old friends had congregated on a parking lot (which was more fun than I make it sound right now). Met some interesting people doing similar things in the UK as we are over here (such as the organizer of the Mozilla festival).

Also read the shocking announcement that the prices for Google App Engine are going to increase some 30 times when the service goes out of preview (they call it a ‘new pricing model’). It was a formidable place for quickly developed applications that need to run solidly with little attention. I even gave a presentation how it is *better* than Django for a certain class of developer needs. Now I do feel forced to cancel any subscription I have running there and to stop investing in that particular platform because running any serious application would be unsustainable at current pricing.

Bashers launched a linklog Beat for everything game related, which is worth browsing through on occasion.

On recommendations from highly regarded friends I bought The Information by James Gleick though I already get the feeling that I am not going to read a lot of new things in there (seeing as our history of informatics, science philosophy and information theory classes in university were pretty thorough):

Upon entering the UK I was hit by some encounters still reminiscent of the social problems that just recently plagued London. That and the general grittiness of the parts of London we went through gave me a lot of misgivings about the city. I am pretty sure I’m not going to go to London ‘for fun’ anytime soon and I found myself very glad to be living in Amsterdam.

dConstruct contained some gems and some platitudinous talks as was expected. Me and my friends appreciate a different talk than the agency based web people that also attend which must put conference organizers in something of a bind when programming.

It was a lot of fun to hang around with my crew of Iskander Smit, Taco Ekkel and Kars Alfrink (who gave a terrific and hard hitting presentation) and to meet people such as Ben Bashford, Sjors Timmer, Marrije Schaake, Albert de Klein and many others I forget to name.

Saturday was spent recuperating from the trip and on Sunday more of the same. I celebrated my fifth Twitterversary and both of the offices I keep in Amsterdam (the Volkskrantgebouw and the Open Coop) were featured in the Parool magazine:

Year in Cities 2009

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:20:57 +0000

It’s that time of the year again, a modest list this time compared to some:

London, and again in September for dConstruct, crashing at Cristiano and Melinda’s place
Austin, first visit to SxSWi, definitely not the last
Copenhagen, yearly Reboot, this time crashing at Mark’s awesome place
Amsterdam, moving house over from Delft finally!
Casablanca, flying in and out with Air Arabia on this Morrocan holiday
Rabat
Marrakech
Agadir
Essaouira

I hope to travel more in this coming year. Austin, Copenhagen and Brighton are definitely in again. A new visit to the Middle East is in order and a big trip.

Nooit meer met de trein naar Londen

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:00:22 +0000

Ik denk niet dat ik binnenkort nog met de trein naar Londen ga.

Het is al niet de meest aantrekkelijke propositie. Van Amsterdam naar London St. Pancras kost je toch een uur of zes en een half ¹. De treinen hebben geen stroomaansluitingen, dus je kunt niet voluit laptoppen. Verder moet je uiterlijk een half uur van tevoren op Brussel inchecken, anders mag je niet mee.

Waarom doen we het dan? Treinreizen heeft iets fijns, het is continu met minder wachten en veiligheidsmaatregelen dan je hebt als je vliegt én je komt middenin Londen uit in plaats van op een vliegveld ergens in een buitenwijk.

Het was tot nu toe allemaal nog wel te harden. Maar dit weekend ben ik naar Londen heen en weer geweest en vrienden zeiden het al, de internationale trein naar Brussel-Midi is gewoon te onbetrouwbaar.

Heenweg
#

Op de heenweg had mijn trein van Rotterdam naar Brussel 53 minuten vertraging. Vragen bij de Hispeed balie zorgde dat ze naar Brussel belden zodat ze daar rekening hielden met me met de checkin. De vertraging die ik had was net genoeg dat ik direct de trein in kon. Tien minuten later en ik had hem gemist, maar dan kon ik me laten omboeken zeiden ze.

Terugweg
#

Terug uit Londen was mijn aansluitende trein naar Amsterdam op Brussel geannuleerd. Hij reed gewoon niet en de informatievoorziening was erg matig. Met wat hulp van de mensen op de balie via Antwerpen de volgende trein genomen met dus weer een uur vertraging.

Reinier ging een paar dagen later terug en hij had iets vergelijkbaars.

Ik weet niet wat het is, maar de Eurostar zelf rijdt precies op tijd. Waarom Nederland en België dan geen fatsoenlijk rijdende treinverbinding in stand kunnen houden, is me een raadsel. Zeven-en-een-half uur plus stress voor dit korte stukje is niet acceptabel ².

De volgende keer doe ik het wel via Easyjet over Stansted/Gatwick/Luton. Het kost een half uur van Amsterdam af en is volgens mij nog goedkoper ook. Het milieu zoekt het maar even uit. Natuurlijk mocht er verandering komen in de situatie dan hoor ik het graag.

De Groene Keuze
#

Wat mensen die zich bezig houden met groene initiatieven vaak vergeten is dat de Groene Keuze minstens net zo goedkoop, makkelijk en mooi moet zijn als de ‘slechte’ keuze. Het is misschien moeilijk, maar mainstream gaan ís moeilijk. Als je niet voldoet aan die voorwaarden blijft de groene oplossing een marginaal alternatief dat alleen maar door eco-freaks gebruikt wordt ³.

Update (21/12/2009): En ik ben blij dat ik het heb afgezworen. Deze week zijn een heleboel mensen door de vrieskou een uur of 16 in de tunnel vast komen te zitten (BBC News). Niet meer doen die trein.

Tijdsverschil niet meegerekend. ↩︎
En daarnaast is de informatievoorziening en de situatie in de treinen etc. ver onder de maat. Ik weet niet of het met de onderontwikkeling door die Westerschelde of wat dan ook te maken heeft, maar we boffen hier wel met de NS. ↩︎
Of je moet het bij wet verplicht maken zoals nu met de spaarlamp is gebeurd maar volgens dezelfde logica kun je ook de auto verbieden… ↩︎

My year in cities, 2008

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:21:06 +0000

As per Kottke fished out of my iCal and my Dopplr, hat tip Mark:

Berlin*
Amsterdam*
London
Copenhagen
Nantes
Meppel
San Francisco*
Oakland

It could be debated whether Meppel is a city or not, but I’ll let it.

De wereld is kapot

Sat, 17 May 2008 20:14:44 +0000

Maar ik heb er grondige vertrouwen in dat we hem kunnen repareren.

Ik zit nu in Londen ¹ bij @mseckington en @cbetta op de bank na een dagje conferentie bij geekyoto waar een hele serie mensen hun visie hebben gegeven de toestand van de wereld en hoe die te repareren. Erg inspirerend en er zijn veel mensen met goede dingen bezig.

Ik ga nog meer schrijven maar feit is dat veel van de oplossingen geen extra techniek nodig hebben en ook niet meer kosten. Het enige wat de boel tegenhoudt is menselijke inertie.

Nu wat eten, morgenochtend kijken of ik een capoeirales kan volgen en morgenmiddag terugtreinen naar Nederland.

De Eurostar is een leuk vervoersmiddel. ↩︎

Afstanden van de zomer

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:49:25 +0000

Had net Google Earth geïnstalleerd en zag dat daar erg handige tools in staan om afstanden te meten tussen plaatsen. Ik had voor mijn tabel nog een paar afstanden nodig die ik daarmee heb geschat.

Hier wat ik gereisd heb van de zomer: Delft - AmsterdamTrein45kmSchiphol - AdanaVliegtuig2900kmAdana - AntakyaBus160kmAntakya - AleppoAuto90kmAleppo - HamaBus146kmHama - PalmyraBus207kmPalmyra - LatakiaBus346kmLatakia - AntakyaMicrobus90kmAntakya - AksarayBus435kmAksaray - KirsehirBus106kmKirsehir - IstanbulBus631kmIstanbul - SchipholVliegtuig2300kmSchiphol - London GatwickVliegtuig370kmGatwick - BrightonTrein40kmBrighton - StanstedTrein120kmStansted - SchipholVliegtuig306kmAmsterdam - DelftTrein45km Totalen, land: 2211km, spoor: 205km en lucht: 5876km. Toch wel grappig dat alternatief al ongeveer de helft is van wat ik gevlogen heb.

Vlucht verplaatst

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:32:25 +0000

Het leek me wel handig voor vrienden en familie om een continu up to date reisschema bij te houden. Een kruising zogezegd tussen een itinerary en een travelogue. Maar een blog is dat in feite al.

Ik heb nu een categorie aangemaakt “Zomerreis 2007” om alle informatie rondom mijn reis te verzamelen, reisupdates, foto’s, ervaringen enz.

Veranderingen
#

De eerste update is er al. Ik werd vandaag gebeld door Corendon dat mijn vlucht AMS- ADA van vrijdagochtend is gecancelled en dat ik daarvoor in de plaats de volgende dag om 19.30 ’s avonds mag vliegen. Blijkbaar zijn alle vluchten onder voorbehoud. Het wordt zo nog een interessante vakantie.

Heel erg is het niet. Zo hou ik wat meer tijd over voor werk en surf voor ik wegga in ruil voor een iets kortere vakantie.

Ik kom om 01.00 aan in Adana en moet dan nog een slaapplaats vinden voor ik de volgende dag verder ga. Dat zal wel niet al te moeilijk zijn. Het lijkt er wel op dat ik het rondhangen in Adana en Antakya ga overslaan. Ik ga de volgende dag in één keer door naar Aleppo.

Terug
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Mijn vlucht SAW- EIN is ook met Corendon en ik heb op Eindhoven 11 uur om mijn vlucht naar Londen te halen. Nog zo’n vertraging kan ik dus niet gebruiken. In Londen zie ik Cristiano en Melinda en misschien ook Michel. Cristiano en Melinda zijn morgen toevalligerwijs hier in Delft, zoals staat op Upcoming en Four Starters.

Vliegen van hot naar her

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:29:02 +0000

Ik heb vandaag de rest van mijn tickets geboekt voor mijn reis half augustus. Het complete schema: 17/8 08.00-13.30 AMS-ADA ¹ 5/9 05:35-08:05 SAW ²-EIN ³ 5/9 19:35-19:36 EIN-STN ⁴ 9/9 19:20-21:25 STN-AMS

Ik ben van plan om vanuit Adana over Antakya naar Aleppo te reizen en dan verder in Syrië nog wat dingen te bezoeken als het Krak en Palmyra. Volgens berichten op verschillende plaatsen is Syrië veiliger dan Oost-Europa en ik heb er dan ook goede zin in. Mijn ouders denken er heel wat anders over, maar die zijn nu op vakantie. We zien wel wat daarvan komt.

Verder op de planning via Konya terugreizen, familiebezoek in Kırşehir en dan een paar dagen relaxen in İstanbul voor ik via Eindhoven naar Londen vlieg.

Deze week maar even visum en inentingen regelen en ik stel mijn ouders wel gerust als ze terug zijn.

Adana ↩︎
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen ↩︎
Eindhoven ↩︎
London Stansted ↩︎

Barcamping

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:09:00 +0000

I told Cris that now he’s a London resident he should not miss the number one geek/tech event in the area: Barcamp London.

Judging from his stories and those of others and from the pictures, this was a top event and I regret very much not being there.

This makes me feel the itch for the next version of the Dutch Barcamp. Anybody out there wanna help me scratch?

London Calling

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 02:09:00 +0000

Onze goede vrienden Cristiano (blog: “Weg uit Delft”) en Melinda gaan een nieuw leven beginnen in Londen. Het schijnt dat het goed afstuderen is aan Imperial hebben ze gehoord van deze mensen. En als Londen roept, wie blijft er dan in Delft rondhangen.

Afgelopen donderdag hadden ze een afscheidsfeestje, en daarna zijn ze bezig geweest met het opslaan, dumpen en inpakken van al hun spullen. Morgen de bus naar Londen en dan een kamer zoeken.

Ik wens ze veel succes op dit avontuur. Ze zullen gemist worden, maar niet vergeten (temminste als ze hun blogs en Flickr bij blijven houden).

Barcamp London

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:01:00 +0000

Barcamp London seems to have been a complete blast understandably. I’ve been reading the reports but from Jeremy’s blog I found these two nuggets:

Werewolf the game I knew as Mafia seems to have risen to popularity again in select nerd circles.

I have read and loved the rules for some time now. The only question now is to get 15+ quality nerds together to play this.

Pechalicious this mashup of Pecha Kucha and del.icio.us is pure gold. If you want to fill some time or you want to answer the question ‘What have you been doing lately?’ in an interesting way. Superb.

I just watched my last 20 links and I can imagine myself telling a half decent story about them.

Wij zijn niet bang

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:14:00 +0000

Schneier analyseert de terreurdreiging in Londen en ziet daarin een grote overwinning van ouderwetse opsporingsmethoden die zich richten op de terroristen zelf.

Kleinschalige tactische maatregelen zoals het verbieden van vloeistoffen aan boord van vliegtuigen gaat niemand veiliger maken. Terroristen kunnen daar altijd omheen, ze kunnen andere middelen gebruiken of ze kunnen compleet andere doelwitten hanteren (winkelcentra, evenementen etc.). We kunnen nooit alles afvangen.

Wat we wel kunnen is ons verzoenen met het feit dat risico’s nooit compleet uit te bannen zijn. De kans dat je door een auto overreden wordt is nog steeds veel groter dan dat je omkomt door een bom. Waar neem je maatregelen tegen?

Wat kunnen jij en ik doen tegen terrorisme? Terroristen willen mensen angst aan jagen. Werk daar niet aan mee.

De Sultan's Olifant

Wed, 10 May 2006 10:17:00 +0000

Ok, zie net een goede reden om in Londen te wonen langskomen op BoingBoing: De Sultan’s Olifant en de Kleine Reus liepen daar afgelopen week rond zie ook de foto’s.

Wel een hele goede reden om in juli naar Antwerpen te gaan waar de olifant en de reus ook drie dagen zullen vertoeven tijdens de Zomer van Antwerpen.

Dreiging

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 15:20:00 +0000

Leuk t-shirt voor als je naar Londen op reis gaat.