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Infantino and FIFA: A Crisis of Credibility
FIFA boss Infantino always tries to justify his own injustice by claiming that football unites. I am kind of curious how he will try to turn the latest debacle of his own making into a uniting story. A few days ago the American star player Balogun was sent off with a red card and according to the FIFA rules repeatedly states during the World Cup, a player that gets a red card is automatically banned from playing in the next game. It took Infantino a few days to find a way out but he managed to motivate the decision to…
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Proeflokaal de Smokkelaar
Recently visited Proeflokaal de Smokkelaar in Oldenzaal in The Netherlands. We were walking through the village and looking for a place for a drink and a toilet and more or less stumbled on to their terrace by accident. They brew their own beers and also promote beers from local breweries. I tried out their Aloha IPA which they had on tap and which was very nice. We only stayed for 1 drink but they have a lot of choice and serve bites as well so you could go and taste a few of their offerings during a lengthy discussion. The…
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Discover Hidden Secrets in Everyday Life
‘And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you. Because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.‘― Roald Dahl
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Celebrating Summer with Greek Cuisine
After the heat wave of last week and with exams finished we had to go and celebrate with a nice dinner. We chose to go to a Greek restaurant called Tzikis Ouzeri. It is a family restaurant run by a couple of brothers. The weather was still good enough to sit outside which added to the summer vacation feeling. They have a couple of menus with a selection of their Mezze but this time made our own selection from the menu. What is nice about this style of food besides the taste is that you can order many small dishes…
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100 Days of Programming Projects: Reflections and Tips after Day 14 and the Beginner Level Section of the Course
Day 14 marks the end of the beginner level. I just finished that and all in all as expected nothing fundamentally new learned so far. Still, I had some refreshers here and there and learned a couple of nice tricks. Most days ended with a guided programming project that used newly learned concepts of that day. The last couple of days of the beginner section were basically only a programming projects without guidance, only instructions and a demo about the program to make. Day 11 was the so called capstone project that involved all concepts learned so far but but…
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The Expendables
Recently watched this movie from 2010 again. It was a bit of an ironical movie project from Stallone, bringing together action movie heroes from the past: The Expendables. In the movie the expendables are a group of mercenaries that get hired by the CIA to take out another CIA operative gone rogue as a drug baron on a remote island somewhere in South America. All of this is not revealed and a ‘simple’ assassination job turns out into a small war against the army on the island. Not much more of a story is to be expected when watching this…
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FIH Pro League 2026: Matches in Wavre During a Heat Wave
Went to watch a couple of games in the FIH Pro League. First time it was hosted in the new stadium in Wavre where part of the 2026 World Championship in August will be played (matches are played in Wavre and Amsterdam). We are suffering from a heat wave so matches were delayed to start at 6PM. The women played first and it was still hot. We had a good spot under the roof that provided sufficient shade luckily, otherwise we would have been boiled like the players. Every 7.5 minutes there was a short hydration break but you could…
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Understanding the Module Operator: Remainder in Python Explained
In another post I mentioned the module operator and explained it gives the remainder of a division. This description works for positive numbers and 5 % 3 gives 2 which is identical to the remainder but -5 % 3 gives 1 which doesn’t make much sense if it is supposed to be the remainder. If you divide 5 by 3 you have 1 + remainder 2 and if you divide -5 by 3 you have -1 with remainder -2. But if you type -5 % 3 in python you will get 1. What is going on? I had to google…
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Mastering Python Basics: Essential Programming Concepts From the First 7 Days of 100 Days of Coding Bootcamp Course on Udemy
The first 14 days are labelled as beginner level. And so far I have certainly not learned any new concepts, it is all about the basics of programming really: variables, conditional statements, loops, functions and the like. Still, most of what I learned so far came from the daily programming projects. During those projects I rediscovered the random.choice() function in python as a simple way to select a random element from a list. I finally learned to appreciate the power of f-strings in python and I learned also a bit about ascii art and was catapulted back in time to…
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Dining at Restaurant Barba in Leuven
Some weeks ago I went for dinner at Barba in Leuven. It is located in the city center and we were lucky we had made a reservation because it was completely packed. The interior is stylish with a modern touch but an somewhat studied old look and feel to it. It is housed in an old and quite narrow building so seating space is limited. On one side there are tables for 4 people and we sat on the other side at a table for 2 against the wall. The toilet is at the back and equally small. You have…

