Ride to Nijmegen today!

This morning I did a run to Nijmegen. Started at 0645 to give myself enough time to search out the route should it be necessary but it went quite smoothly. Even with a breakfast pauze by Oos (nice sunrise) I was able to make it from door to door, 55 km’s, in 2 hours and 10 mins.

Some parts of the ride were really good roads, only the part between the new intersection for the A50 to Uden on up to Graven was made of bricks. Rough going and hard to keep your speed up. For the rest I was easily keeping it above 30km/hr with a light wind against me.

Later today I will make the return trip home for a 112 km ride, my longest one day ride yet!

Finished up latest version of Modial parser

Today I finished up the latest version of our Modial parser prototype. It now deals with more complicated texts, displays the grammer, allows for free text input in a form to let users submit text against the parser and is showing it’s xml output once parsed.

You can look at it on http://osiris.cs.kun.nl/modial.php (for as long as it is hosted here). ;-)

A nice ride today from s-Hertogenbosch to Oss and back…

Today I hit the road with a friend that has moved here in the neighborhood and wants to get back into cycling (is a big mountain bike fan). We did an easy run up to Oss and back due to the very new bike path laid out there this year. Smoother than a baby’s butt! As my friend had not ridden in awhile it was nice to have some route without the brick roads to bruise your butt.

We only did a 25 km/hr avg. speed, but was very nice to have someone to chat with on the way. I will be taking the bike to work this week so that will be a real long ride, something like 110km’s. I will let you know how it goes.

My little helper!

My little helper was working on the attic floor with me just before bedtime:

Moving to new weblog software.

I have been pointed to this new free software project that supplies rather nice weblog software by a friend of mine. It is called WordPress.

It took me all of 2 minutes to install and seems to have a bit more weblog features that I like beyond the standard 'news' posting features of my website software. Therefore as of yesterday I have moved over to this software.

I will most likely change the themes and add plugins as I continue to explore all the features, so do not be shocked to see the entire look change in the coming weeks. ;-)

Fast run to Uden today!

I cycled to Uden from home (38.7km) in one hour and 10 mins! Was averaging36km/h outside of the three villages I had to pass through. Was a good ride as the weather was very nice and it ended with a lovely 7 course Easter dinner!

This was a taste of what the summer will be like with sunshine and very little wind, I can't wait!

IRIS Publication Management System v1.0.0 released!

After waiting two weeks for any more bug reports from our users I am happy to say that I released v1.0.0 which holds all the functionality listed in the initail requirements document published as a technical report (see my publications listing on this site).

Right after release, two bugs were of course reported so I fixed those (trivial) and released v1.0.1 with the fixes.

Nice feeling to move on to stable release with a new round of functionality being planned over the next 6 months. I have been turned away from this project to new horizons, so my time will be much more limited. I would like to spend some time refactoring some of the submission code as it became more efficient in the later edit function. I picked up a few tricks along the way and polished up the api even more, so going back to look at the technical report and external publication submission code would be a usefull step. Those are my plans anyway, time will tell if I get to them.

Couldn't resist a trip on the bike today!

Today I was looking outside at the sun and thinking, time to go for a ride. Bad move.

It was cold! I mean, without over shoes I had freezing toes and my forehead felt like I was eating ice cream way too fast. Ouch! I only made a quick sprint around a village and golf course here in the area, about 18kms. Home in time to watch the pro's on TV as they ran thru the Hell from the North (Paris-Roubaix).

Maybe it will warm up soon? I want to bike to work (Nijmegen)!

New information regarding PFC Henry L. Hooper

After my trip back thru the states I contacted a family friend who is very into genealogy and very good at it. She did some digging on the first night she got the basic information listed on this site (see PFC Henry L. Hooper). She called me back and stated that she already found where he was born, where he enlisted and could most likely dig up his actual enlistment records if they had not been destroyed in some fire back in Atlanta!

Today I received a letter from my contact containing two pages showing PFC Henry L. Hooper's World War II Army Enlistment Record! I have added this data to the above link. Maybe this will lead to where he died and how.

More as it is uncovered.

PS. This is not an April Fools Day joke either... ;-)

Back home again

Travelled back to the Netherlands today, arriving without incident via RDU - MEP - AMS. Well, almost without incident as my luggage was lost.

Upon my arrival home I received a call that my suitcase was located and would be delivered but that my golf clubs are still missing. Damn them!

I have posted a set of pictures from my travels:

Vacation USA March 2006

Arrived in North Carolina!

I left Seattle for North Carolina for a week with my best buddy Jody. Travelled thru Chicago and had a one hour and forty minute delay which put me in pretty late in NC. By the time we got home to Jody's house it was 0400 hrs, time for bed.

The next few days were spent with Jody, his wife Bara and their lovely daughter Ally. She keeps calling me Uncle Eric and I have to do everything with her. I eat with her, play with her, sit next to her at dinner, gave her a bath, put her to bed, etc... really cute!

We went to the dirt bike track to watch Jody ride, I have had my official USMC haircut (a tradition when I stop by) for only $6 (when will the dutch learn, 16-17 euros for a haircut is crazy) and some last bit of shopping before the trip home. Have this amazing pink rabbit for my Isabel!

The big project for the week is a double level swing-set for Ally, with playhouse, ladder, climbing wall and swing. Much work to do as you can see below.

My trip thru the Northwest continues!

We left Seattle on Saterday morning headed for Portland and my parents house.

We stopped at a Veterans Museum on the way down that my uncle has donated his Korean War memories and things to. It was rather awe inspiring to be received there and that they knew I was a Veteran too. Everyone kept coming up to me and saying 'Thank you.', very hard to describe the feelings that go thru you at a moment like that. Living in Europe I am not around my fellow countrymen that much to receive or feel any sort of appreciation for my service time. I am now dumped into it like a cold bath and it brings much of my 'adventures' and 'stories' back to the surface. It also brings back much emotion about a time in life that was so different from the times we now stand in.

The director of the museum, Lee Grimes, personally took me around to explain the various exibits when he heard I was the nephew of my uncle. He knew stories about each display, often about several articles in each display. He left the impression of a very caring and sincere man devoted to the memories of service men, one and all regardless of branch or time served in.

Personally I found it to be very moving to hear that each person brought in their memories (be that stories or items from their service time) and had a hard time letting them go as they donated them to the museum. I can relate to this with my own 'memories.' I have taken a business card from Lee and will keep him in mind when I next look through my own boxes. Maybe I will donate something, maybe I won't.

Onwards we arrived in Portland, met up with my parents and had a nice dinner for the evening. Spent the next two days just relaxing, shopping for Isabel, building a set of golf clubs for dad and hitting some balls at the driving range. We spent a day at a science museum with Henry today and will have all of my parents friends over tonight for a pizza party and chatting.

Touring the states again!

Time to visit the states again, seeing family and friends. It has been over three years since my last visit back home, time to drop in on all my favorite people!

After a nice nine hour flight on an Airbus (I have never flown in one of the newer ones) I arrived in Seattle, gathered my bags and was met by my sister. We stopped in at my brother-in-laws work (Morrison AM) to see the production of StreetRod frames. Even saw the one that Boyd Coddington used on the Discovery Channels program (they filmed part of an episode on location here)!

A stop at Starbucks for a lovely coffee and then we picked up my nephew of 4 yrs old. He is getting to be quite the little man! Every third question is 'why?' and he asked right away if he might come and visit us in the Netherlands!

I helped with dinner (love to cook!), we opened presents (spiderman web shooter went over great) and I helped to put my nephew to bed. Uncle Eric had to read his bedtime story, what a guy! I had been awake quite awhile, from my timezone it was from 0800 - 0630 hrs the next day, so headed off to bed myself.

I was able to sleep 7 1/2 hours so not too bad for the next moring. I wanted to try to get into the local time as soon as possible so have been staying up this morning and hope to chat via Skype with my wife. I will be have to crash out later this afternoon as we are off to a birthday dinner up north of Seattle with my sisters in-laws. It will be a long drive and late night so need to get a bit of energy back before we head out.

I hope to post pictures as they develop on the journy. The planning now is to head down to Portland on Saturday, stopping in at the veterans memorial where I have a tile on the memorial wall. I would like to see that.

Not sure what is happening in Portland, is kind of dependent on the weather as it has been snowing a bit both in Washington and Oregon the last week. More on my next stop online!