I went to the Grote Markt in my lunchbreak (it's just a regular working for us). I wanted to have a look at the weird tent -- it turned out to be from Oxfam.



We arrived there perhaps 10 minutes after the official start of Liberation Day but there weren't a lot of people. The weather is the same a last year: really bad.

I was looking at the website of Haarlem.nl to find out where the commemoration service tonight will be, when I saw this picture of the Grote Markt:




As you can read here it's the tent for tomorrow's festivities.

Yesterday we were in Rotterdam. Stella Maris, a scouting club, celebrated the official start of its sail-season and we went to explain games. We were with three people; Joana came with us.

In the morning we were uncertain about the weather, as the event would be outside. It turned out to be a really beautiful day, just a bit windy now and then. Last year we were there too, and we definitely wanted to come back because of the friendly atmosphere. Due to some holidays it wasn't as busy as last year. Still, we played quite some games. There was time for Sasha and Joana to explore sailing in a real sailboat! Well, there were people sailing the boats and they went for a short trip. A very interesting experience I've been told. We had hamburgers from the BBQ for lunch.

At the end of the day we made a short walk through Rotterdam. Remarkable how different this city is from most other Dutch cities.

This morning Joana arrived at Schiphol, after a journey out of sunny Bulgaria where it is 30 degrees now. The moment I'm writing this it's pouring with rain in Haarlem... let's hope the weekend will be better.

Interesting enough Joanna was flying on the very first flight of the new direct connection between Amsterdam and Sofia.

The 4th assignment of Internet Programming is to develop a website where you can buy Teddy Bears online. It just has to be a simple prototype, although 'under water' it has to communicate with the "Bank" I made in exercise 3 and the advertisement server.

It is a very nice assignment (I like it better than programming in C), and a bit similar to my job. However at Chess I never have to bother about layout, and for this site that is part of the assignment of course. The very first version is ready, and it's ready for visitors! And if you ask me, it looks a lot nicer than the real Teddy Bears.com.

Jennie, a friend of mine is also doing this assignment, and she has created a website where you can buy sheep (she likes sheep).

We spent Queensday in Haarlem -- for the first time in years that we didn't go to Amsterdam.


In the afternoon we went for a walk over the flee market. It had been raining all morning, but there were surprisingly many people still trying to sell things.

When we came back I worked on the 4th assignment.

While we were having dinner we saw the house-boat that disappeared last week returning; the owners were reconnecting the powercables. It must be an amazing experience to take your own house on a trip to somewhere!


We went to see the 2nd part of Lord of the Rings, in De Munt in Amsterdam. It certainly didn't disappoint us... a wonderful movie.



It ended around 23:30. It was very busy on the streets at that time (Queensday night, of course).

Saturday evening we went to see the Bloemencorso arriving in Haarlem. This is a big annual Flower Parade.

The Haarlems Dagblad has put some really nice pictures online.

One of the most beautiful cars was the one with the swans (from the Keukenhof).

Anybody remember

HGCIBM /E

?

We used to have a Brother 8088 with a Hercules graphical card. Unfortunately, almost all games only supported CGA mode. So we couldn't play most of the games, only the text-mode ones.

It was Mieke who --after a long time experimenting-- found out how to use the graphical games on our PC.

One of the very first computer games I've played was Alley Cat. I haven't played for about 10 years, but the other day in a nostalgic mood I went looking for it... download it here!

(through Retecool)