Californication

I’ve been busy the last couple of days, working on and tweaking the motorcycle for instance - hope to post a bit more on that a.o. soon - and I know that’s a pretty lame excuse to not keep this updated, but now I have some material that’s too hard to pass on: there’s just been a quake, in the Big Sur area (known for its spectacular coastline, the nearby Hearst castle, and the fact that artists such as Henry Miller used to dwell there). Relatively big, 6.5 on Richter’s scale; the epicenter was about halfway between SF and LA. I didn’t really notice until a co-worker pointed it out to me and indeed, I could see the window shades in my office vibrate… here’s an ‘intensity map‘.

During a work visit to the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (when I was at university), I had some spare time and decided to drive south, along the coast, planning to check out Cape Fear - I skipped the complex of narrow sandy islands along the north coast - one of them containing the town of Kitty Hawk - where the Wright brothers enjoyed their first success, today one hundred years ago (but I did buy a T-shirt with a picture of their plane to honor them). I must say, after listening to a series of documentaries on NPR on the Wright brothers and their competitors, my favorite aviation pioneer is definitely Alberto Santos-Dumont, rather than the Wrights or anyone else. Santos-Dumont was driven by passion, sometimes obsession and wasn’t just looking to make money, like the Wrights. One of his dreams was the ‘personal flying machine’ that he wanted every person to have - similar to Henry Ford’s stance on cars - a bit too optimistic it seems now, but still, he invented some amazing stuff; this book that I need to check out has been written about him…

So Anderlecht and Brugge are out - however, during the last competition days Brugge kicked Ajax’s ass (in good old KV Mechelen style) and Anderlecht came very close to wiping out Bayern Muenchen. All in all, it was a good campaign, and maybe it’s not too bad that they don’t advance - this way the better players won’t be in the showroom any longer and the clubs might actually be able to keep them employed next year.

Why doesn’t this sound surprising?

Nu al een paar dagen buiten strijd met koorts… de symptomen zijn nogal overdreven voor een gewone verkoudheid… misschien is het dan toch Influenza? Ik heb mij voorgenomen alvast niet meer te lachen om de ‘flu shots’… het lastigste aan de zaak is dat ik mij steendood zit te vervelen - van lezen of web surfen en konsoorten krijg ik al snel hoofdpijn, dvd’s bekijken of radio luisteren gaat net.

If you typed in ‘xerox’ today in Google News, you would have found a dozen or more news articles with the same headline (I’ll give a spoiler and tell you that it’s related to cutting jobs). And if you would have clicked through the links and read the various articles, you would have noticed that all of them are almost exactly the same - ad literam. It seems that most editors of on-line news media (or the on-line versions of the printed press) resort to copy/pasting of whatever they’re getting in from the news agencies (Associated Press in our example). This makes sense, since these media sites will be evaluated by how actual they are - a great power of the web is that publishing something only needs seconds - however, the (obvious) weakness of this is that content and depth are usually lost - CNN and Yahoo are champions of this: try finding out the details of any story and in the end you will likely have to resort to calling people and/or waiting untill you can buy the NY Times or so the next morning. Serious under-use of the potential of the web: the online (pay) site of De Standaard (Belgian news paper) for instance shows how it should be done: for a subscription fee (not needed if you just want to browse headlines and breaking news etc), you can not only read all the articles, which are regularly updated, but also download pdf’s of the printed paper and search in the archives. There are things about it I don’t particularly like (the ad’s, the overall slowness of the site) but that doesn’t outweigh the benefits.

Vandaag opgestaan met hoest en hoofdpijn en toen ik op het werk verscheen voelde ik mij zo ellendig dat ik na een halfuurtje besloot terug naar huis te keren - ik had blijkbaar een freak bug te pakken want ik ontwikkelde koorts over de 38 graden - die nu evenwel al terug gaan liggen is. Genoeg medische achtergrond nu want: uitgerekend vandaag was er een rondje layoffs op het werk! Een vijf percent, voornamelijk mensen in ‘ondersteunende functies’ - ik heb het dus overleefd, en zo ook heel mijn groep/lab. Omdat ik ’s morgens evenwel in mijn bureau verschenen ben om het dan prompt weer te verlaten, vreesden sommige kollega’s voor meer dan mijn gezondheid! Ik volgde de gebeurtenissen thuis per e-mail en in de namiddag, toen mijn bacillen zich wat beter gedroegen, maakte ik opnieuw mijn opwachting op het werk. Het was een deprimerende bedoening, blijkbaar is ons management onder serieuze druk van the big X komen te staan om een zoenoffer te doen - ze wilden ons blijkbaar wat doen bloeden alvorens het budget bij te vullen. Ik weet niet of die vijf procent zoveel uitmaakt in de boeken, ik weet wel dat de algemene sfeer er nu een is van ‘impending doom’ - twee maand geleden (toen er lay-off geruchten aan de lopende band waren) werd ons immers tijdens een company-wide meeting wijsgemaakt dat het budget voor 2004 in orde was en dat we helemaal niet voor een ‘reduktie’ moesten vrezen… Fascinerend overigens, hoeveel eufemismen de kop opsteken in deze situaties… ‘impact’, ‘affected’, ’streamlining’. Volgens mij wordt in MBA-scholen ‘eufemisering’ onderwezen - net als het timen van de lay-offs: blijkbaar wordt dit bij voorkeur midweek gedaan, aangekondigd in de late ochtend - en in het geval van de grote X, blijkbaar gaarne net voor Kerstmis - twee jaar geleden maakten we immers ongeveer hetzelfde mee - toen was de ‘impact’ evenwel een stuk groter.

Went today for a rain ride with my Monster. I wanted to check how well my gear holds up in bad weather; I rode for about an hour, three quarters of which it was pouring down pretty hard. Took 84 (Woodside Road) up Skyline, then headed north and came down Kings Mountain road; the latter was rather intimidating (ok, it got me pretty scared at some point): wet shiny road surface, all kinds of leaves and crap on the road, visibility issues due to my fogged and raindrop covered windshield, the occasional cage coming up… I went slow and got back safely. Gear status (after inspection at home):
-boots wet, socks wet
-Tour Master Cortech jacket dry on the inside (of liner) - water went through some of the outer pockets and wetted some of the stuff inside (wallet…); never felt cold in the jacket (air temperature was not that low to be fair - 12 degrees C or so)
-Tour Master Cortech overpants partly dry on the inside, partly wet: interestingly, on the crotch, and on the lower part of the legs. My jeans underneath were wet on those spots as well (even my underwear)
-leather (summer) gloves soaked - didn’t use my winter gloves as it didn’t feel that cold
Conclusion: I could probably use a rain suit/cover, and definitely some waterproof boots!

Vanmorgen een behoorlijke route op de Monster gedaan: over Page Mill, Skyline gevolgd tot 17 en Los Gatos (er was al veel kerstboom-verkeer), koffie break in de Los Gatos Roastery, dan doorheen de San Jose suburbia richting oosten, tot Mount Hamilton road - een fantastische motherfucker van een bultige kronkelweg, met talloze haarspelden (zie pic) en helaas ook veel gravel en zand in de bochten, die naar het James Lick Observatorium leidt; de weg is een geweldige uitdaging en het juiste ritme te pakken krijgen geeft een kick - een prachtig gevoel van lichtheid als je het juist doet (als je dat niet doet, eerder een gevoel van hulpeloosheid). Ben tot de volgende vaststellingen gekomen :

The laws of blind curves

1) Every blind curve is decreasing-radius (tightening)
2) In every blind curve there will be either
- sand or gravel in the center of the lane, invisible when entering the curve
- some big ass SUV coming in the other direction who is mistaking your lane for his
- squirels, raccoons or deer crossing the road
3) In rare cases, law 2) may not hold; usually, then a cop with radar is hidden in the bushes to check on exit speed

Het is vandaag Thanksgiving Day. Voor de onwetenden onder mijn landgenoten zal ik kort trachten uit te leggen wat dit zoal inhoudt. Thanksgiving betekent: twee dagen vrij (vandaag en morgen) en aangezien Thanksgiving altijd op een donderdag valt, een lang weekend (zeer lang, naar Amerikaanse normen). Het betekent ook dat de natie vandaag massaal gevulde kalkoen gaat koken en verslinden. Traditioneel wordt de dag doorgebracht met vrienden en familie - er wordt dan ook heel wat op en af gevlogen, gezien de typische diaspora die een gemiddelde familie kent; het aanbieden/delen van de kalkoenmaaltijd staat symbool voor het uiten van dankbaarheid, genegenheid en appreciatie (voor die vrienden en familie). Interessant is dat dit zowat de enige dag van het jaar is waarop zowat alle restaurants gesloten zijn (omdat iedereen ligt te koken, natuurlijk) - ook alle winkels zijn dicht, waardoor veel van de straten in de ‘downtowns’ geheel verlaten zijn - voeg daarbij het traditioneel druilerige grijze laat-november weer en de sfeer is redelijk ‘eerie’ (spookachtig). Vorig jaar deze tijd was ik in Peru, nu echter heb ik Thanksgiving op aangepaste wijze doorgebracht, thuis bij M. met enkele vrienden - mijn bijdrage aan de maaltijd betrof het dessert, mijn onvolprezen broodpudding-con-ijskreem.

Na winst van Anderlecht thuis tegen Lyon - schitterend gespeeld overigens - en gelijkspel van Club Brugge in Celta de Vigo, hebben beiden nog een redelijke kans zich te plaatsen voor de volgende ronde van de Champions League. Dit kan mij alvast meer boeien dan de American football games die hier de plak zwaaien - vorige weekend nog de klassieker (the Big Game) Stanford - Berkeley die mij voornamelijk zal bijblijven omwille van de verkeersoverlast die telkens in heel Palo Alto veroorzaakt wordt…

Ventura County considers eliminating SUV’s from its fleet (San Jose Mercury News article).
Many other California state agencies could follow - from the article:
“Similar legislation was signed last month by then-Gov. Gray Davis. The law, which will take effect in January 2005, requires state agencies requesting an SUV or 4-wheel-drive vehicle to justify a critical need for it.”
This is a nice effort, but it won’t change much as long as the freeways remain populated with gas-guzzling behemoths driven by

-cellphone chattering 16-year old schoolgirls (who should get the bloody phones implanted in their ears)
-Safeway shopping Los Altos housewifes (who believe driving a vehicle isn’t much different from driving a shopping cart around)
-testosterone gushing ‘I-own-these-lanes’ style SUV-pricks (who probably need to make up for their small member size)

As you may have noticed, I don’t particularly like SUV’s - they’re not safer than regular cars, not for the drivers themselves and definitely not for the others out there, they block everyone’s view on the road, they consume ridiculous amounts of gasoline (granted, that does keep some happy - the Bush and Fahd families of this world for instance), and in addition to all that they’re usually butt-ugly! I almost vomited the first time I laid eyes on the pompous SUV creations by Porsche (!) and BMW.
There is acceptable (and enjoyable) SUV use though - in the snow, mountains, Tahoe, or the desert.

Ik riskeer hier een aantal kostbare geheimen prijs te geven door mijn favoriete dessert recepten op het web te zwieren, maar door ze op deze wijze te archiveren kan ik ze zelf makkelijker terugvinden (en moet ik niet nadenken in welke folder ik ze alweer genoteerd heb). Ze zijn overigens doorgaans opgesteld in een warrig mengsel van Vlaams en Engels, dus ik zal waarschijnlijk de enige zijn die er echt iets aan heeft. Waarover gaat het hier? Drie uitermate succesvolle - al zeg ik het zelf - beproefde recepten: chocolade mousse (geinspireerd door de overheerlijke ‘Scharffenberger pot-de-creme’ van cafe Absinthe in San Francisco), broodpudding met ijskreem en aardbeiensaus (geinspireerd door een geimproviseerde dessert combinatie tijdens een buffet diner in een van de hotel casino’s in South Lake Tahoe vorig skiseizoen), en creme brulee (ongetwijfeld het plezierigst om maken - brengt de pyromaan in eenieder naar buiten).

Recent events inspired me to give fellow bikers the following advice:

- Do Not Ride With Worn Out Tires

Last week, I did the Kennedy trail ride in Los Gatos with the mtbsh crew. I started with a rather worn out front tire; had replaced the rear tire - which was equally worn out - earlier on, but for reasons not entirely clear I decided to procrastinate replacing the front one. During the climb I got a flat on the front (which is pretty suspicious, as one usually never gets a flat on the way up); changed the tube, but while inflating it, the replacement tube literally exploded - and left a spectacular crater in the dirt; turns out it had been pinched by a puncture in the tire (which also caused the initial flat). So I fixed it by patching the tube and using leaves and additional patches to cover the puncture on the inside of the tire. Finished the ride but not without suffering serious anxiety during the downhill section - as the latter consisted of Dog Meat and Overgrown, not exactly the most tire-friendly places to dwell upon.

- Attempting Jumps Without Protective Gear May Carry Health Risks

Yesterday I went on a quick afternoon ride in Arastradero Park, which is a nice little park, closeby Palo Alto, with some entertaining but rather mellow singletrack and fire roads. There is one spot however, a small ‘bowl’, containing a number of man-made bumps and jumps (made by bmx or ‘freeride’ kids?). It’s a good place to practice one’s skills in the air - the bumps are ranging from tiny to big-ass. An often overlooked part of doing jumps however is getting the landing right, and yours truly failed miserably on this aspect while tackling a medium-sized bump. Considerable road rash on my right thigh and elbow has been the consequence. I did wear long pants and a long-sleeved jersey, so that saved me from worse; however, my elbow pads were sitting idle in the trunk of my car - and I probably would have just smiled about the incident if only I had worn them. Now, I had to take this as an opportunity to test out some high tech anti road rash medical gear.

So what is happening? We have to get used to hearing ‘Governor Schwarzenegger’; I lost my wallet in Stanford yesterday; my friend Laurent crashed his brand new Honda CBR 600 before my eyes and broke his collarbone - his injury fortunately doesn’t seem too bad (fracture is clean, he has to wear a sling for 10 days, his gear protected him well otherwise) - a serious reality check though and after towing the bike sunday night and waiting in the hospital we had some time to contemplate the consequences of our actions - balancing the benefits of riding (which, I like to believe, is an activity that brings me into a higher state of consciousness ;]) versus the risks - however, this particular incident can be party attributed (in my opinion) to peer pressure and the presence of an audience, and partly to the fact that vital parts of the bike such as the tires and brakes were brand new, hence not very traction-friendly - the morale of all this being ‘don’t show off on a new bike!’
But, there is also good news:
Arnie recalled the car-tax-tripling measure, which means e.g. the $170 registration fee for my Ducati turns into a $56 invoice - amazing how easy it sometimes is to please people - the bill goes to future generations of Californians (probably in the form of bonds) - not really solving anything but it might not be the worst thing to do now.
I have my wallet back, including all its contents - thanks to a nice cop in Stanford and the friendly lady of lost&found - as a complete idiot, I didn’t even notice the disappearance - ignorance is bliss - until the lady actually called me at work (she found my number on my business card).
And, most prominently: Hombre Vos has become father of a healthy son - mucho congratulations!

The Guardian did a poll on the world’s best movie directors. And it seems that the best one (at least in my book) did indeed win…

Yesterday there was this rather spectacular pink moon rise. Tried to capture it with this picture…

Just like the late and great Boudewijn Buch, I’m a sucker for small and obscure islands, and today it was announced that the state of Hawaii regains control over a small tiny islet off the coast of Maui, called Kahoolawe - yes it even has its own website. The island was ‘occupied’ by the US Navy since Pearl Harbor and was used for target practice - it has been bombarded by thousands of bombs and bullets and used to be littered by schrapnel and shells, until Bush the elder decided to have it cleaned up in the early nineties. This took a decade and now the islet finally belongs again to the Aloha state. The interesting thing is that it seems to have been the biggest clean-up operation ever by the Pentagon - every day of the clean-up, 300 workers were on the island (the job is actually still not entirely done) - speak of stimulating local employment! Buch would have loved the surreal view of hundreds of people digging up stuff on this bald rock in the Pacific. Full story in the Washington Post.

Zoals het een goede Hombre betaamt ben ik gisteravond in San Francisco naar een Flamenco voorstelling gaan kijken, ‘Mujeres’, gebracht door een gezelschap geheten Yaelisa & Caminos Flamencos. Het was aanvankelijk nogal indrukwekkend, het virtuoze gitaarspel met gesyncopeerde en staccato uithalen, de gracieuze choreografie en de talrijke ole!’s. Toch was het naar het eind ietsje teveel van het goede - wat meer variatie zou deugd gedaan hebben (of, een kortere show). Niettemin een prima gelegenheid om eens de arty urbanite uit te hangen.
Ook Spaans, en hoe langer ik naar hem luister, hoe briljanter: componist Manuel de Falla. Heb vorig jaar met M een Falla concert in de SF Symphony bijgewoond, dat mij lang bijgebleven is vanwege de koortsige dynamiek, onconventionele arrangementen en wilde passie die spreekt uit de muziek. Neem bijvoorbeeld ‘El amor brujo’, een woest meesterwerk dat een must dient te zijn voor eeniedere Hombre!

Yesterday I attended one of those very rare talks where I actually wished the talk continued after it had finished. In our thursday PARC forum, Stanford professor (double E) Thomas Lee gave an excellent (pre-)historical overview of how this place became what we know it’s today. He pointed out that the combination of young, nerdy inventor/engineers and venture capital isn’t a recent (post-HP and -Fairchild) thing but essentially was in place already in the early 1900’s. Idem for the non-conformist west coast culture of doing things and business.
From the abstract:

“Most technology histories of this region mark ‘time zero’ as the birth of Hewlett-Packard on 1 January 1939. Then Shockley arrives in 1955. Three years later, the IC gets invented, and the history of Silicon Valley unfolds in earnest. Stanford and Berkeley are somehow involved in Important Ways, orchards disappear, spinoffs beget spinoffs, and boom and bust cycles of ever-increasing amplitude appear as constant companions.
What’s less well known are the many other important tech milestones that precede “time zero” of the standard story:
- First ship-to-shore wireless communications in the U.S. (from the Cliff House in San Francisco, in 1899);
- First regularly scheduled radio broadcasts (by Stanford dropout “Doc” Herrold), from San Jose;
- First ground-to-aircraft radio, demonstrated at the Tanforan racetrack in San Bruno;
- First VC-funded electronics startup (Federal Telegraph, founded by Stanford graduate Cyril Elwell, with funding from Stanford president David Starr Jordan and others; it counted among its employees future “Father of Silicon Valley” Fred Terman, and first Stanford EE PhD and future Berkeley EE dept. chair Leonard Fuller);
- Discovery of electronic amplification by Lee de Forest at Federal Telegraph in Palo Alto;
- First megawatt-level continuous wave transmitters (using arc technology, by Federal Telegraph);
- First demonstration of electronic television, by Philo Farnsworth at his San Francisco lab on Green Street.
The talk will begin with a quiz (”Who *really* invented radio?”) to prime the pump, and end with a light-speed overview of developments after Farnsworth, up to the founding of Fairchild.”

He argued that the California gold rush of 1849 and subsequent years most likely is responsible for the failure-tolerant culture of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley (or, ‘Arc Alley’ in the pre-silicon days, as Lee dubbed it) - after all, when panning for gold, failure is the norm, success the unexpected strike of luck. The boom and bust cycles (of increasing amplitude) are also nothing new. One can argue about some of his points but I particularly appreciated the fact that Lee turned out to be a great and entertaining speaker, providing shitloads of good anecdotes, offering exactly the relief I needed after a boring day of droning in the lab - work keeps me pretty busy these days, hence my slacking in updating this blog.

This year was Jurgen’s ‘nuit de gloire’. His costume, ‘The Puzzle’, lit up by heaps of electroluminescent wire, was - I have to admit - a blasting success (just like my plasma sphere costume last year). My Inca outfit with fiber-optic decoration wasn’t too bad after all, given the creative block I experienced this year. The evening didn’t start too promising though, with rain storms hitting us on I-280 on our way to San Francisco. Not in the city however, so there was no need for costume disintegration concerns. As usual, the crowd in the Castro was a blend of wild and weird-looking urbanites and gawking tourists - the novelty is wearing off a bit for me (I fondly remember how impressed I was my first time here), though there were still lots of cool looking and acting people: some impressions.

A steady recovery of the US economy? Or just a transient effect, since consumer spending dipped again in September?
However, the self-fulfilling positive thinking the news is generating might actually turn things around for real and start improving job hopes. The latter scenario is what the Bushites were hoping for when installing the tax cuts - remains to be seen whether it’s going to work.
The Bush policies are definitely working out for Halliburton, of ‘Tricky’ Dick Cheney fame: according to two House representatives they’re grossly overcharging the US government for gasoline that is imported from Kuwait for usage in Iraq. See now why we need $87 billion?
If you want to know where another chunk of the money goes, check out this Associated Press article, reporting on Iraq reconstruction deals for companies that used to be campaign donors for Bush.
Meanwhile, Fox News (I’m not going to link to these morons) wants to sue Matt Groening for a Simpsons episode that was a bit too much to take for Rupert ’s right wing boys’ taste, featuring a parody on the ‘fair and balanced’ Fox news show. Funny that the Simpsons are aired by Fox Broadcast - Murdoch is sort of suing himself.

Ok, we hebben dus vandaag de eerste regen van het seizoen gehad in de Bay Area - de eerste regen sinds mei. En in de Sierra’s krijgen ze de eerste pakken sneeuw te verwerken - net een week geleden was het daar nog volop zomer toen ik het Flume Trail aan het doen was. Het koudere weer zorgt voor een aangename afwisseling na de vijf maanden durende Californische zomer (voor mijn landgenoten: grin!) - I love the smell of cold crisp air in the morning - hoewel de korte dagen (donker om 17h) soms nogal deprimerend werken.
In het zuiden (hierbij een satellietfoto van de LA en San Diego regio eergisteren) zullen ze het ook kunnen apprecieren: door de fog en drizzle lijken de bosbranden eindelijk onder controle te komen…
Jurgen merkte gisteren overigens op dat zijn bolide, die aan zijn appartement buiten onder een afdak geparkeerd staat, onder de asse zat - dat is voorlopig het enige dat wij gemerkt hebben van de wildfires, die dit jaar voornamelijk het zuiden hebben getroffen.

I rode the Monster up Page Mill road and Skyline tonight around 11pm, in order to check out whether the recent massive solar flare and the resulting particle storm would generate some aurora borealis. There wasn’t much of that in the sky though, just the stars and an occasional meteorite. Anyway, more astronomical pleasure can be found on this Hubble homage (thanks to Dave Biegelsen for the link).

Tom reacted on my post on the speech of Mahathir a while ago and pointed to this interesting article by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Krugman makes a couple of valid points but of course I don’t agree with him ;). Because, as much as I loathe the Dubya administration, I’m evenly allergic to the cultural relativism of some progressive voices - and I think Krugman’s reasoning is to some extent affected by this relativism. Read more…

Eind vorige week was ik het even beu op het werk en heb de vrijdag dan maar vrij genomen - ben naar Tahoe gereden om daar het fabuleuze Flume Trail te doen (per mountain bike uiteraard). Had enige technische problemen (drie platte banden!), maar het was al bij al een fantastische ride - meer dan 1000 vertikale meter klimmen startend op een hoogte van ongeveer 2000m, het onwezenlijk mooie Flume Trail singletrack hoog boven een wand uitkijkend op het meer, de meedogenloos technische klim naar de Marlette peak en de high speed afdaling langs Marlette lake…

Terwijl de eerste sneeuw viel in Belgie, beleefden we afgelopen weekend hier in de Bay Area record-temperaturen: in Palo Alto bijvoorbeeld was het op een bepaald moment 91 graden Fahrenheit, oftwel bijna 33 graden Celsius - niet slecht voor een 26e oktober… in Zuid-Californie (SoCal voor de ingewijden) hebben ze het ondertussen nog een heel stuk warmer.
Zaterdag naar de Red Bull Flugtag in SF geweest, een hoogst amusant evenement waarbij teams zich met zelfgebouwde vehikels vanaf een soort schuifaf in de baai storten, met de bedoeling zo ver mogelijk te ‘vliegen’.

Het lijstje blijft groeien… na Cash, Zevon, Palmer, is nu ook Elliot Smith richting Eeuwige Repetitiekoten getrokken… op eigen initiatief dan nog, en hij heeft het blijkbaar op nogal spektakulaire - harakiri - wijze aangepakt. Ik heb Smith ooit bezig gezien op Les Nuits Botaniques in Brussel, waar hij een zeer te pruimen optreden neerzette - mooie stem en een aantal pakkende, zij het konventionele songs.

Incredibile! After Anderlecht’s victory yesterday (’tegen een klein Schots ploegske’, according to some), Brugge kicked AC Milan’s butt today - btw, Milan won the League last year…

A few days ago I was talking about the Champions’s League games of Anderlecht; they just managed to win one! Not quite as glamorous yet as the legendary victory against Manchester United three years ago, but not bad either (given that they were 10 to 11 after half an hour)…

Here’s a picture I took of Markus jumping from one of the many stunts in the Soquel Demonstration Forest.
The Demo Forest (”many have entered it, few have left unscathed”) offers some of most inspiring and fun singletrack of the Bay Area and is a well-known mountain bike playground. It also contains some of the most technical, steep and challenging stuff; take for instance the Saw Pit trail - I’m not sure whether I ever finished it without crashing (usually a rather innocent low speed scramble in front of some obstacle, but still…). And then there are the numerous log jumps and stunts that people build - highly entertaining. This sunday we (i.e. the Mountain Schweinehunde) went down the Tractor trail, which is a (very) high speed rollercoaster - we did carry some protective gear, which actually works wonderfully for the psyche: one doesn’t think about stitches or the hospital all the time…

Today was Motorcycle day. First I hung out with Lars at the BMW dealer in Mountain View (October-Feste bratwurst and drinks), then I headed my dear Monster towards Santa Cruz, along the twistiest roads I could find; beginning with Stevens Canyon Road, which forks into 9. Never did this one before and although narrow at times, not too interesting. Highway 9 was beautiful as always, and there were not too many cages around. Decided to go on a detour along 236, towards Big Basin State Park. The first part of 236 (coming from Skyline) is narrow, bumpy and very twisty: great fun! Briefly checked out the park (contains some big ass redwoods) and the museum at the park headquarters. Back on the road: 236 remains a lot of fun for a while, then forks into 9 again - alas, this is the boring part of 9 (through the towns of Big Boulder, Ben Lomond etc). In Felton I got tired of the slow traffic and decided to improvise: took Felton-Empire road, which turned out to be a delightful, smooth, medium-paced climb towards the coastal mountains’ ridge; it led to Empire Grade, passing along the backside of Wilder Ranch Park (of mountain bike fame), past UC Santa Cruz onto Highway 1.

Lunch in my favorite Greek restaurant in Santa Cruz, then it was time to hit the Pacific Coast Highway: sweet and scenic as we know it, but also cold, because of a stubborn cloud masking the sun. Cruised past the beaches and the kite surfers and after 30+ miles I arrived at the junction with my beloved Pescadero Road. Did a quick gas stop in the quaint small town of Pescadero, and then the road was all mine: a marvelous sequence of numerous tight turns and fast, short straights through the coastal redwood forest. It was all bliss and it felt divine, until I overcooked one turn (blind - and tightening); I was leaned into it carrying too much speed and didn’t dare to brake or lean more, so of course I ended up for a brief episode in the wrong lane; no car, fortunately, but this was bad bad, I was shaken and all pissed about it - over-confidence is your worst enemy - the resulting under-confident period didn’t last too long however, and soon I was enjoying the most twisty and bumpy section: the part after Pescadero Road turns into Alpine Road; it was bliss again and sooner than I wanted I found myself on the junction with Skyline Boulevard. Heading back home I did engage in some squid behaviour for which I now feel quite remorseful - sport-bike style passing at high rpm of a bunch of slow cars and Harley’s - but then they went so slow. Conclusion: had an awesome ride but I have to be careful; when too comfortable I tend to want to go a bit too fast - why o why is speed so exhilarating? - therefore, I should keep confronting the sickest, bumpiest and tightest twisties I can find: a good reality check and one learns from it, plus: rides stay interesting at reasonable speed.

And now: sports. For some reason, locals seem to be all excited about a baseball game last night. Tom even called from a bar in Manhattan where he was watching it. I refuse to become interested in baseball or American football and the likes. Instead: ice hockey (acceptable), watching mountain bike freeriding or Monster tricksters (real fun), but the best: Anderlecht games in the Champions League (the ones they don’t lose, which are quite rare these days, I admit).

The real Empire of Evil, in the meantime, has struck again: yesterday I had to waste another 20 minutes in the office to install-con-reboot another ‘critical update’. I’m doing half baked efforts to convince people at work to use a proper operating system, but without much luck. This is intensly depressing, because personal computing was basically invented at Parc, and in a not so distant past we used to be forerunners on this, not followers.

I was ranting about the Bush administration and religion only yesterday, and now this NBC piece of news about a certain general William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense, came out. Compared to this demented lunatic, colonel Jack Ripper out of Dr. Strangelove looks like a reasonable guy. Some of his better quotes:

“Why is this man [Bush] in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

“The enemy [of the US's war against terror] is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

This would make great satirical stuff for a black comedy, if it wasn’t so REAL! This also makes me believe that the former times under Ronald Reagon in his Alzheimer-induced ‘Empire of Evil’ days were not too bad after all. And for the first time I felt a slight trace of compassion with Donald Rumsfeld, while he was speaking on the radio trying to defend his employee: “I simply can’t comment on what he said” because he did not know “the full context” of Boykin’s remarks.

Malaysia’s prime minister delivered a chilling anti-semitic speech on an Islamic summit; here a couple of ‘highlights’:

“They [the Jews] invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must use our brains also.”

Besides manifesting himself as a complete and utter moron, he does make half of a point: thinking and religion are not compatible.
More bleak religion news: some results of this poll are quite disturbing (in case the results are to be trusted). Take for instance this line:
“More than 60% of American born-again Christians, American Catholics and Korean Christians, more than 80% of Peruvian Catholics and Hindus, and over 95% of all Muslims surveyed say they will suffer negative consequences if they disobey their religion. ”
Or, these particular idiots won’t even dare start thinking for themselves (btw, our fearless leader, president Shrub, is a born-again Christian - not sure if he belongs to the 60%, but I think I’m up for a bet). It’s like being in the Dark Ages once again and hence it’s high time for a second Aufklaring: smart people all over the world should stand up and speak out agains the irrationality and insanity of religion and the army of fundamentalists it never ceases to spawn! These guys make an effort…
Finally, it would be ridiculous if it wasn’t so depressingly real: see what these nutcases in Wyoming are up to.

The 2004 budget for NIH (National Institutes of Health) will be in the order of 27 billion (27 x 10^9) dollars; as commonly known, the proposed Iraq reconstruction budget is 87 billion; this certainly indicates where the priorities of the Bushites lie. Of the 87 billion, 66 billion is reserved for financing US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 20 billion for the actual reconstruction. A substantial amount of this 20 billion looks to be going to (at best) pretty dubious expenses. Of course, then there is the record federal budget deficit (estimate for 2003: 400 billion), not uncorrelated to Dubya’s tax cuts (which the majority of the population will hardly notice). But don’t worry, there is a jobless recovery going on!

Blijkt dat Limbaugh (een soort Amerikaanse talkshow host versie van Filip De Winter) verslaafd is aan pain killers en dat hij zichzelf heeft laten opnemen in een ontwenningskliniek. Ik stel voor dat we Rush’s eigen advies opvolgen en de hypocriete vetzak in de Mississipi jagen:
“Limbaugh routinely condemns drug abusers and said in 1995 that “too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to find (them), convict them, and send them up the river.” (uit het yahoo nieuws article)
Ondertussen heeft de voortreffelijke Al Franken een nieuw boek uit dat ik dringend op mijn te-lezen-lijst moet zetten…

It’s october 10: the sky is blue and clear, the air is crisp, the sun shines and it’s a comfortable 20C. No rain expected for about a month or so - o, the greatness of California! Went biking in Purisima Creek, on the gorgeous Whittemore Gulch trail (see pic), the Pacific in the backdrop. The trail, IMO one of the most enjoyable long descents in the area consists of the following sections:
-the Vista’s: views from open meadowlands along side the Skyline ridge to the west side of the Santa Cruz mountains and the Pacific
-the Switchbacks: snaking singletrack with plenty of tight (and not-so-tight) switchbacks
-Roots: entering the upper part of the forest, a number of fun obstacles are posed (jumps on the way down, hops on the way up)
-the Gulch proper: high speed rollercoaster downhill, through the bowels of the forest, along fern fields and creeks
The climb up is challenging, especially given the steep, loose and rocky fire road towards the parking lot at the very end.

Went last weekend on a trip to Sequoia National Park with Tom. I rode down the Monster, Tom drove up in a rental car from LA. Plan: hike up Alta Peak and do some backcountry camping.
Somewhat of a challenge: packing all the camping gear on the bike, then stuffing all the camping gear in the backpack, then climbing over 4000 vertical feet carrying it. Did work pretty well though: report and pics…

Ik heb gemengde gevoelens ten aanzien van de recall. Aan de ene kant was Gray Davis natuurlijk een grijs onderkruipsel en een slinkse machtspoliticus die zijn lot waarschijnlijk verdiende. Aan de andere kant was de laatste weken mijn respekt voor Ah-nuld volledig weggeebd - voornamelijk omwille van de volgende feiten:
- net als Dubya is hij een marionet van het industrieel-militair complex - die mogelijk het ongedierte van Enron ‘off the hook’ will halen;
- hij is geen enkel rechtstreeks debat aangegaan met zijn tegenstrevers; op een enkel ‘vraaggesprek’ na waar de vragen op voorhand aan de kandidaten werden voorgelegd. Wat voor een belabberd stuk Terminator is me dat!
- kampagne voerde hij door stompzinnige one-liners op te dissen in talkshows a la Oprah en konsoorten, maar hij heeft het nog niet gehad over hoe hij het budget deficit gaat oplossen - zijn ‘politiek programma’ bestaat uit wazig gezwets.

Mijn favoriete kandidaten waren Georgie Russell (het geek sekssymbool van Silicon Valley), die op een verkiezingsmeeting van Ah-nuld overigens (in beste Schwarzenegger traditie zo lijkt) werd aangerand - leve Georgie!, en Larry Flynt.

Today is California’s gubernatorial recall election day. It may be the first successful recall but not the last: no matter who will win, a recall-of-the-recall is not unlikely. We propose to add another check box to the ballot: ‘want a recall in case preferred candidate does not win’ in order to generate an iterative loop of recalls… total recall (I think Ah-nuld was giving a pretty good performance in that flick, unlike these days).

The days are getting shorter at a fast pace and the nights colder; two weeks ago we were still in the midst of an Indian summer heat wave here in the Bay Area, now winter is on our doorstep (at least, the Californian version of a winter). The ideal setting for listening to Field Songs by Mark Lanegan. Some may deem this record pretty depressing, I think it’s strikingly beautiful. In a week Lanegan could be singing for Queens of the Stone Age in the Warfield in SF - should go and check it out.

The Nobel Prize literature has been awarded to J.M. Coetzee. This means that Hugo Claus has yet to wait another year.
Keep hanging on there Hugo, sooner or later the Swedes will have to recognize your genius!

I’m usually not that outspoken about dietary issues, but now that even some of my friends start lauding the merits of the Atkins diet, I feel that I need to do something; because, as a matter of fact, I believe the Atkins diet is a big bunch of bullcrap. Sure, by depleting yourself from carbohydrates and entering a state of ketosis, you burn fat and lose weight; however, besides the at best dubious long term health effects, the chronic lack of glucose means you will perform like an anemic duck during sports, exercise or outdoor activity; energy release from burning fat is slow! My dietary advice: eat a little bit less of everything and work out more.

Eigenaardig maar briljant plaatje: ‘Deloused in the comatorium’ van The Mars Volta. In het begin vond ik er maar niks aan; na een eerste luisterbeurt leek het mij hoogal irritant arty geneuzel met af en toe een paar goeie riffs, en ik vroeg mij al af waarom ik hiervoor dollars opgehoest had. Maar het hoeft niet altijd liefde op het eerste gezicht te zijn: nu ben ik ervan overtuigd dat dit een magistraal meesterwerk betreft, een grootse synthese van avant-garde jazz, Pink Floyd-achtige ‘prog’ rock, ziedende hardcore, catchy pop en Latijnse ritmes. Soms over the top en op het randje van het bombastische, meestal schitterend.

Went (mountain) biking saturday morning in El Corte de Madera Creek Preserve, also known as Skegg’s; this is a favorite place of mine and I wanted to try something we usually don’t end up doing during mtbsh rides: park the car on the west side (lower section) of the park and explore some of the trails there. What I’ve learned: the South Leaf trail is a great piece of technical singletrack (Demo Forest grade but narrower and with rather intimidating exposure) that scared the shit out of me, but which is beautifully poetic.

Jonathan Chait of the New Republic confesses his hatred of George W. Bush and debates with Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review.
Besides all the rational reasons to disagree with the policies of the Bushites, like Chait I must confess suffering from a visceral disgust of our commander-in-chief - the corny jokes, the moronic facial expressions, the crypto-populist blabble, the accent, the nasal tone of his voice, the surrealist grammar, the lack of intellectual curiosity, the month long vacations in his ranch, …

After we lost Warren Zevon and Johnny Cash within a week, now Robert Palmer has gone. Are we going towards an Annus
Horribilis of rock? Palmer will likely be remembered more because of his classy suits and trendsetting videos during the eighties (which did contribute to some pre-puberal fantasies of mine) than of his music, whether justified or not. I did like his Power Station stuff though - and after a decade of denial (see also Duran Duran, Wham!, Depeche Mode,…), I’m quite willing to openly admit this.

Aangezien ik enkele jaren geleden al een soort avant-la-lettre weblog aan het genereren was, heb ik besloten het nu eens deftig aan te pakken, met een blog tool, wat de noodzaak tot urenlang html-gepruts weg moet nemen (hoewel dat gepruts niet per se onaangenaam was - als ingenieur die van luiheid een deugd maakt werd een en ander echter wel eens uitgesteld - het ‘morregen’ effect).
For the English speaking, the same thing. I decided to post both in English and Flemish (have a bit of a hard time calling my native language Dutch); no rational arguments for this, it will just be based on whatever I feel like doing at the moment; anyway, learning more languages is good.