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in the netherlands photography

(un)plan

yesterday, in the afternoon, we went to see the world press photo exhibition in the martinikerk, which was great, as one would expect, and it did quite well its job of putting questions on people’s minds.
there’s always something standing out of the crowd which is different from person to person, and the set which caught my attention was this one by david burnett. i was fascinated by the depth of field of the images, at that distance. humans look like little toys… in theory i think i know one way to do it, but in practice, it’s much more difficult…

so we had coffee in the terrace of the v&d building and came home to cook the most international unplanned dinner so far. oh, and in the meantime, we invited people to write some phrases in our wall, like the numbers, hello, thank you, i love you, and so on, on their own language. :) you can imagine how much we laughed trying to pronouce it on russian, vietnamese or arabian and vice-versa…

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Categories
in the netherlands

vogelgriep

thanks to rtp taped emissions, we see the evening news from yesterday on our lunch break. feels a little bit more like home when we ear the sound of the beginning, and feels good to actually know more than publico’s front page news.

for instance, the parliament is still pretty empty. i can’t understand this. if that’s the deputee’s job, how dare they not show up? i mean, here we are, cycling half an hour in wind and rain to have a 2 hour class… what are they doing? why can’t they focus on it only?
and the bird flu? market people forbidden to sell live chicken, ducks, etc and the panic of those who have done nothing else all their life. or the dozen dead ducks who showed up dead in a beach in the center of the country and the general media histeria around it…

[ oh! as is wrote this (and was starting to change subject to other ways of knowledge), there was a short sketch on work over the internet and i saw ana, rosa and hilda there :) how nice! ]

anyway, as i was saying, we have been learning a lot more about other countries, which is turning this erasmus experience into something rewarding beyond words. ramadan, for instance, is now a word with a meaning. it means “holy” month, a month without eating or drinking during daylight (at all), a month for the introspection and meditation.
being here makes us search for the countries in the map and attach the stories to the places. romania, syria, vietnam, turkey… and even germany, italy or belgium. what did i know of these places before coming here? and what do i know now?

reading, researching, living in those places for a while, talking, listening, moving, starting it all over again. i think i have a plan. :)

Categories
in the netherlands

running behind schedule

Great research is wasted unless you can communicate your ideas to others.
The two principal ways researchers do so are by writing papers, and by giving research talks. Nevertheless, many papers and talks, even by well-established researchers, are amazingly poorly presented. There are many simple things that everyone can do to improve talks and papers, regardless of whether you are a natural speaker or a fluent writer.

In these two linked talks, I will try to abstract lessons from my own experience of writing about and presenting research, in the hope that they may be of use to you. I expect that some members of the audience will also be experienced researchers, with good ideas of their own. Nothing would delight me more than to move from presentation into two-way discussion – so please come prepared to make your own contribution.

S. Peyton Jones

yesterday we gave an oral presentation on interactive 3d rigid body systems visualization. the subject isn’t all that exciting, but still, it has some interesting key points, and we decided to make the presentation as fun to watch as we could. our 10 minutes of fame went well, i shall say. :) much of this we owe to Mr. Simon Peyton Jones. he wrote a couple of papers on how to give a talk and to write a scientific paper, and gave a delightful talk on haskell subjects in braga, some years ago. on his socks. :)
you can reach the pdf’s here, and get more information about Mr. Jones as well.

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in the netherlands links and ideas

de euro stinkt!

do you know what euro bills are made from? cotton, among other things.
cotton which comes from several countries around the world… the origin of it is not completely clear. some of the countries get subsidies from their government for it, and others, the poorer ones, don’t. that way, they have no chance to compete with the more developed ones, whose prices will be significantly lower… and to make matters worse, a great part of these countries depends on the cotton production to hold on to their economy.

so, a group of young dutch people thought that maybe they could do something to help: a bet with one of their ministers, mr Zalm. if they could sell 10000 “honest euros” till the end of october (i think), the dutch government would start to buy its cotton from biological fair trade origins.
de euro stinkt! campaign is success, with only 800 honest euros to get there.
the project’s webpage is in dutch, but you can try a rough babelfish translation for more details. wanna participate? let me know :)

ps – our mentor, hugo, told us about this project – and now both me and levi have our honest euros. just a piece of paper resembling a bill, which cost 1 euro and is worth the same, if you want to sell it to someone else. the money goes to ICCO and other institutions. ”
The money isn’t going to ICCO. They support the project. But we (CNV Jongeren) are gonna use the money for a European campaign, so that all Euro countries will get fair cotton euros.” (hugo)

yay! I hope it gets to Portugal soon. I’ll surely help! :)

Categories
in the netherlands

…

on a monday, i am waiting
tuesday, i am fading
and by wednesday, I can’t sleep…

ashley simpson, pieces of me

yup. it’s those damn reports we have to deliver on wednesdays…