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Sunday, August 5, 2001
Feeding Andy in the car
Today, we went to my sister to getAnnabel, who had been staying with her for a week.While driving there by car, we decided to try to feedAndy in the car while driving.To our surprise he did not give much resistance. Herealized that it was something new, because he clappedin his hands everytime when he finished a tube.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001
Glenn Doman
Yesterday,Li-Xia brought homethe book "What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child"by Glenn Doman, which I had orderedsome time ago.Of course, I immediately started reading it whichmuch interest. Today, I decided to see if I couldfind any critical materials about this book. Andindeed, I did. There are two I would like tomention:Both are extremely critical. Actually, they do affirmsome of my initial fears about Glenn Doman and hisideas. On the other hand, I do have to admit that hisbook sounds very convincing, and I simply cannotbelieve that all the stories he presents are purelymade up. I suspect that the truth must be somewherein the middle.
"Het Heiderbos"
Yesterday afternoon, we arrived at theCenterparcs park "Het Heiderbos". In the evening, I decidedto try out the wild water courseagain. But it wasvery busy, and I did not find it as relaxing as lastNovember.(follow-up)During the night,Andygot us awake, because he decided that he didn't want tosleep any more after twelve. This morning we decided to go thetropical swimming pool, called Aqua Mondo which is onthe park. I took apicture ofLi-Xia withAnnabel and Andy togetherin the pool.Dinner
This evening we went for a dinner Last nights dinner was nota great success, because when the food arrived, Andy decided thathe didn't want to sit at the table anymore. He had been happilyplaying with the spoons. So we had take turns drivinghim arround in his buggy.
The Jungle Dome
This morning, we went rather early to theJungle Dome.It was shortly after they opened at ten that we arrived. Therewas almost nobody there. All the birds and squirrels had comeout, because they were waiting for their food. This was ratherspecial, completely different from the last time, when it wasonly after about an hour that I found out that there wereactually some special animals in the Jungle Dome. Last yearwe had even trouble finding a place to put our coat becauseit was so crowded.This afternoon I went walking withAndyin his buggy. I decided to walk to Cottage 636where we stayedlast November.To my surprise, Andy recognized the cottage immediatelywhen we stood in front of it. So, he does have a goodmemory. Some way, this cottage has a very specialmeaning to both of us, because it is the place wherewe sawmy father (his grandfather)for the last time alive.Because dinner was not a great success yesterday, we decided not toeat together this night. Around sixAnnabel andher grandmotherwent to Harold's family restaurant to have dinner. Atthe same time,Li-Xia and I walkedAndy around the park, and went to see cottage 636 again.After Annabel and my mother had returned from their dinner,and after Andy was in bed,Li-Xiaand I went to Harold's for a quiet dinner. We first hadsome tomato soup and then Li-Xia had some dish with fishand I had the Fajitas de Carneagain.Then afterwards we decided to go to Aqua Mondo andwe stayed in a hot tub for about twenty minutes untilthey closed at ten. Li-Xia felt very relaxed afterwards.
Monday, August 13, 2001
Swimming
After yesterday experience in the hot tub, we decided to go swimmingagain whilemy mother was going togo walking withAndy and feed the ducks.Li-Xia andAnnabel went to the hot tub, and I decided to givethe wild water course a try again. I went down the first,rather slow, part at least ten times, andfinally,after going down mindlessly, I began to enjoy it as much asI did last year.(follow-up)
Andy upside down
This morning, when Li-Xia went into Andy's room,she foundhim standing ina very funny way. He stood with his head very closeto his feet with his bottom in the air and wasturning his head slowly. We have no idea how hemanaged to get standing like this. Li-Xia reallyhad to laugh about it.XML is a real hype at the moment and even Microsoft makesany attempt to promote it. This afternoon, I read somenotice about Microsoft XQuert Languages (or XQL for short)and went to a site dealing about it. This languages hasn'tbeen made into a standard yet, but it is clear thatMicrosoft is promoting it. When I looked at the languages,I got the strange feeling that something was wrong with it.The languages did not look very clean to me, but ratheras a mix of all kinds of rather arbitrary languageconstructs. Somehow this also pointed the finger atsome problems with XML itself. XML itself is not veryclean. It is really not what it pretends to be, namelya way to convey self-contained structured data. One problem,I think, is that it does not make any difference betweensets and lists. Also, it only has one basic data type, thatof the string. Another problem is that it does notexplicitely specify how internal reference are made.Furthermore, it does not have any good motivation onwhy attributes are needed, and when they should beused. And as a last remark, I would like to add thatthe notation is rather verbose for what it wants toexpress. It seems that the very old S-expression ofLISP can do the same that XML can do, but with muchless characters.To be honest, XML seemsnot to be a good candidate foran international standard for exchanging structureddata. I rightly admit it is better than SGML and HTML,but I think it could have been much better yet.
(A good alternative and
Thoughts on software enginering.
Also readXML in the Real World
andXML Alternatives.)
Thursday, August 16, 2001
When I stepped outside this morning, I saw apartial rainbow to the North-West. I could see it almost allthe way to my office until the sun hid behind a cloud.When I came close to my office, the sun reappeared andit started to rain a little. On that moment I couldsee a complete, but not very bright, rainbow.A colleague of mine reported that he had seen a muchbrighter rainbow while riding to the office.Twenty minutes later it started to rain cats and dogs.
Saturday, August 18, 2001
The miraculous healing of Nita Edwards
Yesterday and today, I read through a book whichdescribes the story of a Sri-Lanka girl called Nita Edwards,who was healed in a very special way. Today she is the director ofAsia Alive.The book describes who she slowly became paralized froman appearenly insignificant fall from some stairs as theresult of a spinal infection. Then one day, when she hadgiven up all hope of walking again, God spoke to herthat He would heal her on a specific day. Later He evengave her the hour. And indeed at that specific day andhour she was completely healed in matter of seconds.This happened on February 11, 1977 at 3:30 PM in Colombo,Sri-Lanka.Just days before she met Anne van de Bijl, a famouseDutch Christian, director of an organisation for supportingoppressed Christians all around the world. He was one ofthe few who were informed about the miraculous healingbefore it took place. In 1982 or 1983 Nita Edwards cameto the Netherlands and visited our church during oneevening. There I heard the story from her own mouth.It was also around that time that I read the book forthe first time.
Friday, August 24, 2001
Contacting former colleagues
Today, I contacted my former colleaguesagain. I heard that my last bugwas solved, but I did not hear how. For the rest it seemsbusiness as usual.Meta-Meta
I have finally decided to make an attempt in materializingall my ideas with respect to specification languages andimplementation languages as opposed to programming languages.I have called this project"Meta-Meta"just because I cannot come up with a better idea.See my article"The Art of Programming"for some of my ideas.I haven't written out all of my ideas yet, but it seems thatI do have the following:
- A mathematical model to define types with pointers basedon infinite values.
- A type specification languages which has a simple mappingto the above mathematical model.
- Some good ideas about adding qualifiers to this languageto define an update model.
- Some good ideas for making an "ideal" implementation forthe representation of complex values and how to performupdates on these values.
- An idea of how I could represent expression as values,and how these expressions could be evaluated. (Verysimilar to oldLISP.)
There are also still some unresolved issues:- No formalisation of the update model.
- No proof that the "ideal" implementation is correct.
- Almost no ideas for an implementation languages.
- No tools.
Whenever you have a language, you need some parser.To night, I have been thinking about how I could extendan interpreting parser that I wrote some years ago, suchthat it will be able to link all the identifers and such.It actually comes down to adding some additional informationto the resulting structures, and running a relativelysimple tree walker, which will perform all the neccesarystitching. I might have it return the representationof expression that I talked about above. We will see!
Tuesday, August 28, 2001
While biking to my office, I read the firstchapter of the Gospel according to Mark, fromone of the little books that I bought some timeago.I found verse twentytwo the most striking,where it says:for He taught them as one thathad authorithy, and not as the scribes.Yes, it is easy to preach something from theBible, as it is a book full of interestingstories, but to teach something with authorityis something completely different.How could Jesus teach as someone with authority?As it is a Jewish custom to study what we callthe Old Testament, it is not unlikely that Jesus,now being around thirty years old, knewlarge portions of the Scriptures by heart.Even nowadays there are people who know largeparts of the Bible by heart. It is just a matterof what occupies your heart. But still we donot read anywhere that Jesus often spoke inthe synagogue before His public ministrystarted.
Earlier in the chapter we read that Jesuswas baptished by John the Baptists. It wasimmediately following this that the HolySpirit descended on Him, and that there wasa voice from God out of the heavens saying:Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I amwell pleased. Did Jesus not already knowthat He was the Son of God? Why did He needan audable voice? This raises the questionto which extend Jesus knew things. It alsoraises questions about what it meant thatHe was both God and man and the same time.I think, He in His heart knew God, but atthe same time needed an external confirmationof this, and the power of the Holy Spiritto be equiped for His ministry.
And then, the first thing that the Spiritdid, was to lead Him into the wildernessto be tempted. Only after this did Hebegan His ministry.
To sum it up, I think that His authoritywas based on an inner conviction, whichwas build on many years of studying theScriptures. Then this inner convictionwas affirmed by an external proclamationand the annointing of the Holy Spirit.Finally, it was being tested by a timeof temptation.
(follow-up)
Friday, August 31, 2001
"Beertje Pom"
Annabel brought some bearhome this afternoon. She told me that it was "Beertje Pom"(Beertje means young bear in Dutch). He was going tostay with us. He had brought a little suitcase withhis pyjamas and his toothbrush. There was also a littlebook with it telling about all his other adventuresstaying with the children of the class. It seems thatevery weekend and holiday, another child may take himhome to stay. A very good idea, I think.I made a smallhome page for himin Dutch. But if you cannot read Dutch, you can stilllook at the pictures.
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