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Rediscovering El Padre de un Soldado by Flaco Jimenez
When I was a teenager one of my uncles used to give me music tips every now and then. On one occasion he gave me a tape with songs of Flaco Jimenez that he liked. Until then I had never heard of Flaco Jimenez and it was not the kind of music I was listening to. But some of the songs I really enjoyed, especially El Padre de un Soldado stuck to me. I played the tape over and over again until at some point CDs came out and the tapes ended up in a box unlistened to. I still…
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The relative meaning of words
Trump is regularly in the news to promote his current and future MAGA achievements. One of them is to bring jobs and industry back to America and what better prize than to have an iPhone made in the USA. According to economists this is not realistic unless Americans would be suddenly willing to pay at least 3000 dollars for their iPhone. Knowing your average consumer you know this is never going to happen. Maybe a couple of rich die hard Apple fans are willing to pay the price but there is no mass market for any phone with such a…
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Wielrijdersrust Het dorstige hart
Like most years we spent a few days with the family in Nieuwpoort at the Belgian coast again. One of the things we do traditionally during these vacations is to go for a bike ride. Our bike path often leads along the conterdijk along the canal Nieuwpoort-Duinkerke and past a cyclist friendly brasserie : Wielrijdersrust Het dorstige Hart. It is also a B&B but we only needed some refreshment. They have a terrace in front of the Brasserie right next to the canal and also one in the garden at the back. When we arrived the terrace in front was…
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Relaxing Lunch at Brasserie Beukenhof: Quality Food & Service
After visiting the Navigo museum in Nieuwpoort we planned to have lunch and the Peerdevisscher next door but unfortunately the place was completely full. Google Maps came to the rescue and directed us to Brasserie Beukenhof. This was almost full but we could still get 2 tables for 4 people each next to each other on the terrace outside. We had a bit of shade so we ended up having a relaxing lunch with a few beers and a scampi salad for me. Food quality was very good and service super friendly. We came by bike and together with the…
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Exploring the Navigo Museum: A Fisherman’s History
Last week we visited the Navigo museum in Nieuwpoort. We last visited it a number of years ago when they had a photo expo from Stephan Vanfleteren. Since then the museum has modernised the presentation of its collection and is well worth a visit even if you visited in the past like us. The museum tells the history of fishing at the Belgian coast since roughly the Renaissance until today. Besides displays with text there a many paintings depicting fishing and scale models of fishing boats. Some portraits of fishermen from Stephan Vanfleteren are also on display. Many exhibits illustrate…
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Easy Indoor Gardening with Auk Mini: My Experience
I have been thinking about growing vegetables for a while but never really committed to the idea. We have a lot of snails in our garden and the few vegetables we have planted have been eaten by the snails more often than not. Two years ago we managed to gets some courgettes which was nice. We had a steady supply of courgettes all summer and they tasted good. Last year we didn’t have any harvest to speak of. To experiment with the options in an easy to control environment I spent some cash and bought an Auk Mini indoor garden.…
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Goodbye to my Old Mac Pro trash can
A little while ago I decided it finally was time to replace my old Mac Pro from 2013, also known as the trash can. The model got a lot of negative criticism because of the radical design which limited ‘upgrade’ options severely compared to previous and subsequent Mac Pro models. As I can hardly be called a power user I never had problems with these limits. It is small, fits behind my screen on my desk and is absolutely silent. I upgraded the RAM to 64Gb and installed a larger Aura Pro X2 SSD from OWC, 500Gb was definitely not…
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Vanity and the Rise of the Web
‘I’m so vain. I probably think this page is about me.‘― Dr Chuck Severance in Web Applications for Everybody
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Einstein’s Wife. The Real Story of Mileva Einstein-Maric, Allen Chesterton & David Cassidy (ISBN 9780262538978, MIT Press)
I read about this book in the paper when it came out in 2020 but didn’t buy it immediately. Then, not so long ago I decided to buy and read the Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson and I also got this book about Mileva Maric which I read first. Mileva Maric, Einstein’s first wife was forgotten by history for a long time until new letters between her and Einstein from their student days were discovered in 1986. Some claimed that Maric made key contributions to Einstein’s papers from 1905, even going so far as to state that she did all…
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The Purpose of Reading
‘Why are we reading, if not in the hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatise our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?‘― Annie Dillard
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