Danny’s Blog

Twenty years ago, my first job was to assist visitors of the Computerette–something of an Internet café without the Internet. This small company had been started by someone who did freelance jobs coding some very obscure Cobol dialect. While he kept doing his well-paid job, he hired me to take care of the shop. Besides […]

(This is part 3 of 3; part 1 is here, part 2 is here)
We returned from Paris late Sunday evening (March 25th).
What remained was images, shreds of memories, and many of them, in spite of the short time we were there:
The Nautilus-like decoration of the Arts & Métiers subway station.

The American girl in the brasserie […]

So much to do in this hot and cold summer (July: 36 degrees, August: 16 degrees) and so little to blog about. In case anybody wonders, this is what I’ve been up to lately.
Gone back two years in time: After I finally left the WebLogic project in May, a little later than planned, I was […]

M. and I were just talking about how much the web has changed our lives. She can now find, read and print scientific articles for her work via large databases on the web; articles from bonafide, peer-reviewed magazines, that sometimes are not even published on paper anymore. In my own work, the web is indispensable […]

Sherry has never been my favorite drink. Not only does it have unpleasant connotations: of England, the 1950s, Agatha Christie, brown, dull, mouldy; or worse, in Holland: where in the 1970s desperate housewives got drunk on cheap supermarket sherry — but also I just never liked the taste of it very much.
The last time M. […]

I’m not so good at saying goodbyes, so the end of a long term project always brings me mixed feelings: I’m eager to take on something new, start afresh, meet new people, tackle new problems — but I hate saying goodbye to the team of people I’ve been working with so closely, people I’ve seen […]

Beginning bloggers can often be recognized by their fixation on web server statistics. I don’t mind admitting that I’m no exception. It’s just as satisfying to see that people read my ramblings, as it is to see people use a computer program that I wrote. Besides, the stats can show you some very interesting information, […]

The best moment in any vacation is when you shut the office door behind you, the night before the vacation begins. You feel a free man, even if it’s only for a few days or weeks. Today I had that moment, and I’m still enjoying it now.
This year, my Christmas vacation starts off with a […]

Last Friday I finally managed (been too busy lately) to visit Rotterdam’s super bookstore, Donner, to pick up a copy of Programming Ruby. I will easily spend an hour or two roaming Donner’s eight or nine floors, browsing through all their new books, discovering old ones I hadn’t seen before, sitting down for a while […]

Last Friday, Holland was surprised by heavy snowfall. The result was chaos on the roads, people being stuck in their car until late in the evening, people stuck in train stations… And all this because of 10 centimeters of snow. I shot (in my car, hands-free of course!) this rather dramatic-looking photo yesterday, on my […]