During winter, Weißensee usually freezes, making it a perfect location for the Dutch to find a alternative for the 200km Elfstedentocht (Eleven Cities Tour). The alternative version exists because the Dutch Elfstedentocht is not held every year, mostly because not every Dutch winter permits skating on natural ice. The last editions were in 1985, 1986 and 1997. Adding to that, the tour currently features about 15,000 amateur skaters taking part, putting high requirements on the quality of the ice. Instead of waiting for the Dutch weather to improve, the skate fanatics drive 1100km to Austria to experience the same distance on natural ice.

Thousands of people from Netherlands in a small Austrian village...

After a drive with a break in a hotel in South Germany, where we met-up with a dozen familiar skate friends, we arrived at our hotel Nagglerhof. The Nagglerhof has a beautiful view over the lake and is quite traditional Austrian. (This is the third time I’ve been here and the first that they have Internet) You feel like you are visiting a austrian family. The hotel features a spa, small gym and a cozy restaurant. Every dinner is at least four rounds and breakfast always consists of amazing fresh bread and all sorts of dishes. A very cozy place with nice people.

Upon arrival on Monday morning, Suna and I noticed immediately that we felt great in the icy-fresh Austrian air. Temperatures were -10 degrees Celsius but would go down to -25 degrees Celsius in the end of the week. We realized the area is indeed a great place to do sports – as long as the sauna was warm upon return. A quick skate practice on the lake and we felt very excited about the rest of the week. It’s amazing to skate on such a large lake, thousands of people doing their high-speed rounds.

View from our hotel

Suna with Gretha Smit

Tuesday had a serious note: Just like a real Elfstedentocht, the 200km race starts early in the morning (before sunrise) and ends after the sun sets. Suna and I were intrigued by the sportive people, but weren’t members, so we decided to have a look at the opening.

The tour starts in the dark; many people sport helmets with light to see ahead

Wilbert, Johan and Willem after they finished their 200km ice skating tour for the day

The next day we went skiing at Weissbriach. Another first experience for Suna. We had a lot of fun teaching her on the baby slope. I was surprised to see her ski on the red slopes after dinner! Together with my dad I was able to explore the remaining ski areas.

Weissensee is a lake in the shape of a pear. Usually people skate in the smaller top part to guarantee the safety. (thousands of people skate on the ice which add a lot of pressure besides the cars that follow the race and clean the ice) We got used to the small lake and this was fine. But due to a steady cold front of -15 degrees celcius, we were fortunate enough to skate on the big lake on Thursday. If you’d ask me, i’d already consider the ‘small lake’ huge. According to our group, whom has come here since 1994, the freezing of the big lake only happens one in five times, so we were fortunate! I’ll remember skating on the big lake that there are almost no houses, just trees. Due to its steep shore, the eastern part of the lake is almost uninhabited. A fierce wind made it hard to skate the first half. We made a ‘train’ where one would skate in front to catch the wind and switch ever so often. The ice was pitch black, a indication that it’s smooth skating. I didn’t put much thought in the clearness of the lake until we got closer to shore where the pitch black turned green – I was actually able to see two meters down to the sandy bottom of the lake! Ofcourse the water in Weißensee is drinkable but living in China, it’s amazing to see such a clean waters.

We head back to Netherlands one day early on Friday. This time we rode back in one time, to arrive home just before midnight., six hours later then planned, due to some bad weather. Actually, that night, the Netherlands experienced the coldest night in the last 30 years! I saw the thermometer on the car go down to -21 degrees celcius, extremely cold for a country so close to sea.

Upon return, it became very cold in Netherlands.

Drinking coffee in the freezing weather, enjoying the sun

The day after arrival, the night before we left to China, my friend Jing made us a feast meal for my entire family. Lobster and Oysters with great French white wine.

The day of my departure from Netherlands, the entire country started talking about that the real elfstedentocht might happen this week, for the first time in 15 years! All tv/radio stations and newspapers don’t talk about anything else. Ofcourse we already tasted the experience a bit in Austria, and I’m not allowed to start this year, but I’d like to think that i’ll do a real elfstedentocht some day!

Back in Holland, all the newspapers talk about ice as well!

The holiday started with a welcome home dinner with Cheese fondue and champagne. Ofcourse we were still in Shanghai time so we slept early and woke up at 4AM Dutch time the next morning. Whilst all of us were up, we went for an early stroll with the dogs at sunrise.

Cheese fondue welcome dinner

Playing with the dogs in the yard

Day 1/4: For the day we planned a trip to the Hague. The trip to the Hague was to meet my friend, and coincidentally meet with a friend of Suna. The friend, and American living in the Netherlands for many years, gave us a great tour in the ‘binnenhof’ (senate of Netherlands). I also took a stroll to China town in the hague and a walk around the Binnenhof. Afterwards we met with friends from school and we shared some memories over some drinks whilst playing a boardgame.

Joop and Suna at Binnenhof the Hague

Playing boardgame 'koehandel' (cow trading)

Day 2/4:This day was really special to me. I received a great prize and met a lot of people! We left early to Haarlem to meet up with former professors – Martin Haring and Alex van Heeswijk. They were kind enough to meet us in the city of Haarlem where we met with another former student, who brought a belgium fashion francise to the Netherlands. Next was a visit to my former bachelor university in Amsterdam, a creative breeding-place in the awesome Vijzelstraat ABN building in Amsterdam. I met with students who are planning to start a company in the coming half year, which was a exciting experience.

Afterwards we left to AMFI (Amsterdam Fashion Institute) where I met professors that work closely to 3D and fashion. A great experience to see and understand how closely related the trends are regarding what universities are doing world wide in the virtual fashion sphere.

Afterwards all of us left to the big event – the elevator pitches for the graduating students looking for money. Suna and I were invited for a dinner at dutch classical food restaurant 1984 with the the ACE team for entrepreneurship and it’s jury board, in which “serial entrepreneur” Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and investor Gabor Sommerhalder were part of. Afterwards we watched the pitches of graduating students, when they were finished I was asked on stage. It turned out that I receive an award from my university for entrepreneurial activities! Afterwards I enjoyed talking with students about their plans, I noticed a lot of then consider China part of their plans. Read more about that on acemag.nl – However the event was very interesting, we had to leave early to get back to my parents house before public transport closed down for the day.

With Martin, Alex and Marijke from Acemag.nl in Haarlem

Visiting various locations in Amsterdam during the day

Day 3/4:The next day, Suna and I visited my primary school in the morning and bought ice skates in the afternoon for our upcoming trip to austria. In the evening we met with drinking buddies for a party in Utrecht. After a dinner, we started gambling at the casino and soon made our ways into the bars in the city. Like every dutch evening out we ended up eating streetfood, I really missed a ‘kroketje’ in the middle of the night. For the first time that week, we weren’t in a rush thanks to Joery whom’s house we could crash at.

Suna finally has real speed-skates now!

Dinner with friends

Day 4/4:After a slow morning, we met my parents for a trip to the icerink in Utrecht where Suna was able to skate her first kilometres. Afterwards we left to meet my sister for a walk in the in the forrest of Amerongen.

All and all we spent a good two hours on the ice rink

On our way to forrest it started raining and we saw a crazy vibrant full-bow rainbow

All the family together. Dad, Mom, Gijs, Mirrin Joop and Suna.

All and all, Suna and me had a great holiday in Netherlands. A week packed with appointments but all very valuable. We are excited to jump in the car and leave for ice skating in Austria in the morning!

Airquality:

Shanghai Daily reported the air pollution was a ’102%’ (not sure what) but the article mentioned the already polluted air was likely to get worse over night. Some readouts from Beijing sky show nothing too extreme compared to last year.

The fireworks will continue for the coming weeks but ofcourse tonight will be most.

Check out the firework from two years ago, that was crazy.

Ubuntu 11.10 screenshot running unity desktop manager on macbook pro

Linux was a hobby of mine about ten years ago. A hobby you say? Yes, I don’t know why I got involved with it, but Linux just pulls you in, if you like computer science. Actually, I developed a bad habit of tweaking and patching Gentoo to fit my laptop at the time, until I was frustrated with driver support and time to get things done. Then I switched to OSX Tiger, which just worked, but had a simular feeling.

Recently i’ve been familiar with Linux once more, in a work related matter: Besides server maintenance and a VPN here and there, we’re developing a renderserver for unitedstyles on the linux platform. Just last month, i’ve installed ubuntu desktop on my wife’s netbook, and was surprised how well it looks and the applications that come with it. A lot of things have improved in the last decade, I became curious if I could install ubuntu on my own laptop as well. (a huge thing, not being locked into OSX but able to choose!) Ofcourse, i’m not looking to replace Lion but i’d like to be able to have access to the libraries and the repositories Linux users enjoy.

Prerequisties:

1. Refit – to be able to boot to linux
2. A experimental ISO-TO-USB EFI (mentioned later in the post)
3. Ubuntu MinimalCD
4. A USB which you can boot from
5. Internet connection using UTP since we will install using MinimalCD (Alternatively use a livecd, however, I didn’t have success with any ISO)

I’ve started the search with bad news: Whilst most macbook + linux guide’s simply stat

e to pop-in the CD and boot from there, my laptop doesn’t have a CD player, and is running Lion.

This situation brought me two problems.

1. Need to boot linux from USB
2. Need to run the ISO in EFI mode or Lion EFI wouldn’t recognize it.

I’ll describe a bit what i’ve done in case someone else goes through the same process. I’ll go over the broad lines, if you have a question about the details, just ask me in the comments.

First download the ubuntu iso from the ubuntu site. I got Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” Minimal CD

I’ve started out by re-sizing a partition to make space for Linux. I made space at the end of the disk. Then I installed reFIT. Although many forums state there are problems with ReFIT in Lion, I had no problems using the automatic setup. After two or three reboots I was able to see the boot menu right after power on.

Then we prepare the USB disk. I was lucky to find a reference on studyblast who found some code from a German forum ‘apfeltalk‘.

Macbook installing linux through other macbook to connect to the internet

Now this was finished, I was able to boot into linux setup. (However, the screen didn’t fit exactly, I was able to see enough to get though the steps). Just navigate though it and be careful in the partition step. I found another problem: Wifi didn’t work in setup, so I needed a UTP connection. I setup a second macbook and shared internet from there. I choose a EXT2 partition and setup 2GB of

I was investigating the situation. However, I did see the kernel load, ubuntu didn’t boot, just black screen of death. I decided to tinker with the setup and was able to boot with the bare minimum. Choose ‘recovery’ and remove the recovery. In the end, I found I could pass GRUB2 menu only when I choose recovery and removed the kernel flag ‘recovery’. 

setup grub recovery but remove recovery menu recordfail:

• insmod gzip
• insmod part_gpt
• insmod ext2
• insmod efi_gop
• Set root=’(hd0,gpt3)’
• Search –no-floppy –fs-uuid
• linux /vmlinnux ro nomodeset
• initrd /initrd.img

Now I had a working kernel, in the right resolution, I could install ubuntu desktop. However, I found that my Radeon 8600M GT videocard wasn’t able to be picked up by PCI:0:0:1 slot due to the whole EFI deal. I made a quick attempt loading nVidia propriatary drivers.

The pure efi boot leads to the following kernel error message in syslog:

I did found that GRUB2 can fake a ordinary bios, but the drivers don’t look for this alternative location. them, someone nicknamed mokaga pointed me to Nouveau by mentioning the exact same problem. So I downloaded a recent kernel (3.0.17 of linux) and applied this patch to it. But no results. Nouveau reports that it can’t find the video adapter. Not a problem for me at the moment, I just fell back to “Device “fsdev” in xorg.conf, and now ubuntu is showing fine!

The unnecessary but required screenshot

Sources:

http://studyblast.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/guide-mac-os-x-lion-how-to-boot-a-linux-live-system-from-a-usb-drive-how-to-update-any-ocz-ssds-firmware/

https://www.libreoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35267

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=162330

Thank you, Dirk Jan, for arranging this!

For the people living in Shanghai: it’s worthwhile the effort. Suzhou is close to Shanghai. (30 minutes by high-speed train) a horseback ride for about 2 hours will cost you 200 rmb which is a fair price. If you can ride, you are free to gallop as you wish.