Did something out of my ordinary yesterday afternoon, I went to the movie theatre, on my own. To see Dune. The Dune series I’ve read many times, and I was curious to see how they made it into a movie. It’s following the book pretty closely, if not too closely, making it struggle to keep forwards momentum I feel. I wonder what someone who hasn’t read Dune thinks of the movie’s story, does it at all make sense? It’s long, and covers just a portion of the book ([UPDATE 20211017 upon rereading I realise it covers almost exactly half the book]). I wonder if they’ll greenlight the second planned part, which is where the action will be.
Had an almost private viewing of Dune yesterday afternoon, in the Amersfoort Pathé theatre
Returning home I picked up the paperback I have, but seeing the tiny print, on E’s suggestion opted for an e-book version. Will be re-reading the entire series I suspect…
A week that felt almost as normal as before All This. Even though it is a new normal, not a return (and being aware that we’re heading into the fall with rising numbers of cases again).
This week I
Compared the vision document for upgrading the national geo-information infrastructure with the emerging EU legal framework and Green Deal to see where they align or not
Presented to the geo information policy team at the Ministry for the Interior
Did the monthly invoicing
Had the weekly client meetings, this time in person, and spending half of my time at client offices
Finished the first full iteration of a public client wiki. It contains information on the upcoming EU legal framework for digitisation and data. It is created directly from mark down notes in my personal collection, pushing them to a repository on Github, that using Respec gets turned into a website on github.io. That works really well.
Spent an afternoon in the cinema, to see Dune. Now rereading the novel itself.
Did a first detailed check of which elements in the EU framework on digitisation and data need to be incorporated or translated into the national reference architecture for (public sector) digital twins.
Had a half day session with the reference architecture team to discuss that
Drove Y to Haarlem for a sleep over with her nieces.
Went out for (Thai food) dinner with E, and had a few beers together sitting at the bar of the oldest pub in town Onder de Linden (continuously since 1755 in a 1530 building). It’s the pub where E set her prize winning story about Amersfoort she wrote last year, but never visited before. It was very nice to just hang out with the two of us.
On the way into town for dinner and beers, my bicycle broke down (so we walked back home and took public transport). Saturday morning was spent to select and buy a replacement bike. I thought to buy a second hand one, but ended up with a affordabel new one, which I will pick up Tuesday. I think this is the first new bike I bought in my life. The bicycle my parents bought me for secondary school lasted me through university, and since then I had 2 second hand ones each one lasting a little over a decade or so. I leave my bike at railway stations a lot, so having something that looks too fancy just gets stolen.
Had coffee and lunch in town with E, before picking up Y again at her nieces’
Drove to Enschede to visit friends. Cees is a (press) photographer and opened a small exhibition of some of his photos in Het Bolwerk, Enschede’s oldest continuously operating pub (this one 1904, so nowhere in the same league as the oldest Amersfoort one). We had lunch in and walked around our former home town a bit. Afterwards we went back to our friends’ place and chatted over food and drinks.
Had a conversation with Andy Sylvester for his ‘tools for thought’ podcast, talking about my use of Obsidian and Tinderbox mostly.
In the Bolwerk café for the opening of Cees’ photo exhibit, in Enschede.
This week was the week that Corona breached our household perimeter.
From the weekend Y had vague complaints, and stayed home Monday. She seemed ok to go to school Tuesday but returned home before the end of school again with some complaints of head and belly aches. Wednesday she woke up with a fever and self-tested positive for Corona. Both E and I self-tested negative, but I did have an itchy throat. As E was symptom free, we quickly checked what supplies we needed and she arranged them. We mentally prepared ourselves for a 10 day stay at home, and made an appointment for a formal test for next Monday. That ‘5 day check’ would determine if we as vaccinated housemates of an infected person would be allowed to go outside. At that point, E because she isn’t showing symptoms could still go out. We also made inventory who Y and I had spent time with in the past days (almost nobody) to inform them, and have that info ready for the call by the track and trace team. Thursday morning I too self-tested positive. Sunday I had felt a bit cold and had taken an afternoon nap, which by now we were of course looking at as a first signal. During the day I felt pretty much ok, and worked normally although I was somewhat distracted because of the unknown.
Thursday evening my condition changed, nose and eyes leaking, sneezing and coughing, with my temp rising. I decided to pitch my bivouac at our top floor and sleep on the fold-out couch there, to not expose E to my sneezes and wheezes during the night. I’ve basically been upstairs all the time since then. E has been ensuring the normal operation of our household by herself meanwhile. By now things seem to be improving, temperature still raised but lower than earlier, less symptoms than in the past 2 days, and my appetite almost normal. At the same time the itchy throat has morfed into a somewhat painful one and I am easily tired after brief excursions downstairs. So not there yet.
Tomorrow Y will still be at home, although she is symptom free now and ok, and can then hopefully return to school on Tuesday. We’ll get our tests tomorrow, and if E still tests negatively that would be great. I’ll be indoors coming week as well I suspect, or at least until 24 hours after the last symptoms disappear. In lieu of a booster shot I get my booster the ‘natural’ way this time it seems. Oh goodies.
This week I
As described above spent half my time isolating upstairs feeling ill. This allowed me to read Chapter House Dune, the 6th Dune novel in the series I started re-reading again after seeing the Dune movie last month
Spent a large part of the other half preparing an important meeting for a client with their board and advisory council
Had the weekly client meetings
Booked a table at restaurant Groenland in Driebergen where a decade ago me and my business partners Paul, Frank and Marc (who since left) decided to start an open data consultancy company together. To celebrate we want to dine there again in the original line-up. You may notice that the name of the restaurant is similar to that of our company The Green Land, and that’s no coincidence. Our imagination w.r.t. names was limited, it shows.
Had a conversation with my business partners on tracking how busy our team is without it becoming a tool that is used to maximize how busy everyone is. We’re aiming for balance. I created some prototypes and a list of assumptions and principles we want to clear with our team before showing them the tool.
Received a phone call that our car had been fixed. We got it towed two weeks ago. As we are in quarantine we couldn’t drive out with our temporary replacement and retrieve our car, so our friendly mechanic drove out to us to exchange the cars, fetched the key fob from underneath the door mat and put ours through the mail box.
Followed the online meet-up of Dutch language Obsidian users, albeit without interacting, and just listening in.
My past few days brought to mind this painting: La chambre à Arles, by Vincent van Gogh, public domain image Musée d’Orsay / Wikipedia