This was a pretty regular week, with the lifting of lockdown and a number of other restictions. As a result we went on a day trip to The Hague this weekend. During the week I struggled a bit with getting going and see work come out of my fingers.

This week I

• Had a conversation with Martijn Aslander first thing Monday morning after he pinged me shortly before 7AM. I’m usually at my desk a few minutes after 6AM so that was fine with me. We talked about PKM for half an hour, after which I spend three times that jotting down notes and thoughts triggered by our conversation.
• Participated in a demo session about Digital Twins
• Made an appointment with a barber now that they’re open again, and went for a haircut, losing the pandemic induced mad professor hairdo once more.
• Read an interesting article, in itself a win, to just sit down and actually read a scientific article. I struggle so often to find the time to focus on non-fiction reading. It focused on the difference between complex and complicated issues, which triggered a multitude of associations and thoughts, which I spent some time on to at least jot down.
• Had the weekly client meetings
• Read the public consultation and proposed legal text of the transposition into Dutch law of the EU Open Data Directive. I intend to submit responses on behalve of myself and my company as well as on behalf of a client before next week’s deadline.
• Joined a session of a community of practice around data usage in the energy sector, where I presented the EU legal framework that is emerging. That was an interesting check-in with practical issues that people experience in getting access, using and interpreting data.
• Part of the discussion in that session focused on the impact of open data usage, which led me to reach back to the work I did in that area for the Flemish and Serbian government, ESA and the European Commission.
• Had a first glance at the EC’s proposal published this week for the EU digital rights and principles, which are a touchstone for the EU legal framework being drafted, as they are the linking pin for the EU’s chosen geopolitical position where citizen rights are as key as achieving socio-economic impact with data.
• Did the Q4 bookkeeping to do the VAT filings for the various legal entities I’m doing the books for.
• Briefly visited our office in Utrecht, to pick up a new identifier gizmo for the company bank account, which arrived just in time to pay the VAT tax bill before the deadline.
• Started building a Microsub client, having built a Micropub client in previous weeks. Trying to stay focused on the things I want to get out of that, because it can quickly become a rabbithole of techie things that are interesting from a techie perspective but not tied to my personal use cases. Case in point is that I’m now first building a script to get a token with which to login to my site. I need it, but it is also a distraction. Another side path is documenting what I started calling ‘undaunting the daunting in IndieWeb’. Both topics added to the ‘to be blogged about’ part of my notes.
• Went with Y to her first swimming lesson. She had been on a waiting list, due to the pandemic lockdowns. That’s ok really, as it means she’s more ready for it now, and it will likely mean she’ll learn it faster. Learning to swim here in the Netherlands isn’t so much about ‘how to enjoy yourself in the resort’s swimming pool’ but more geared to ‘how do I survive ending up accidentally fully clothed in cold surface water’, like the watercourse behind our home, or the many other water bodies in our neighbourhood. The teaching does focus on making the learning fun for the kids though.
• Due to a chance dinner conversation about paintings, ended up with E and Y on a very nice day trip to The Hague and the Mauritshuis museum.
• Spent Sunday evening in a good Zoom conversation about reading with a dozen readers who use Micro.blog. It was an interesting group, from timezones as far apart as New Zealand, Canada and here in Europe.

Sometimes you have to look up. This is looking up while walking to the The Hague central station while walking underneath what used to be the ministry for the environment