Photo: ANPRan a 10km run at the Rotterdam marathon with my dad and my friends today. We drove to Rotterdam in the Morning. We were well on time and as the real marathon started 15 minutes earlier, we had time enough to watch Lee Towers sing ‘You never walk alone’ (Youtube). We then headed out and were allowed to start right in front. We ran 15km in Rotterdam last December but today’s run was very special. The start was so cheerful I had goosebumps from it!

The race was well organized and I enjoyed the people cheering from the sides. See track here: Google maps. The temperature was a bit on the high side but that was ok. We started in front with the fast runners and I got a bit carried away with that so when runkeeper gave me my averages at 2km I realized I was running too fast. I slowed down a bit until I reached the final two kilometers. Generally I really enjoyed the scenery and the Rotterdam vibe.

At the last kilometers, I was able to speed up again and really went for ‘empty’ in the last meters. It was at the finish that I both lost my breath and at the same time bumped into Paul Koole who I didn’t see ever since both of us worked in Shanghai. He had subscribed for the NY marathon last year which was cancelled due to Sandy. It was nice chatting with him again.

Then I got a call from my friends Bart and Michiel. They actually pointed out this marathon to me a month ago so we had to meet up at the finish! They ran a nice time so we celebrated, together with my dad at Blaak with a view on Rotterdam in the first spring sun. A great start of the running season! Beer!

Google put page loading times back on the agenda. Interesting to read this week that E-commerce sites are still slowing down. Is your SEO consultant (Search Engine Optimization) capable to handle these kind of issues? Perhaps it’s time for the term ‘Site Speed Optimizing’ - (SSO) and hire one of those guys/girls?

Most E-commerce businesses have their own SEO departments. These experts are keen in analytics/marketing and HTML, keeping up to date to keep optimizing sites to arrive first in search results. So far, SEO specialists have been busy talking about textual relevancy, HTML structures and page ranks but since 2010, Google (still superior in the west) added page-speed to this measure, your site kind of gets a penalty for being slow.

Good? Bad? It’s good that it’s forcing companies to think about page speed because some are really pushing the patience of consumers. So it is changing the field. However, E-commerce companies aren’t reacting to it yet apperantly. Earlier this week Radware (Load balancing and security company from Israel) published (click for full version) an interesting infographic on venturebeat:

Whilst this research consisted out of 2000 websites, Radware points out that most problems can be overcome by simple solutions like Content Delivery Networks (CDN), compression of text and enablin keep alives. However, I suspect they forgot to write that ecommerce sites are slowing down due to the richer media used. I saw this happening in Korea back in 2009 (fastest broadband country), here ecommerce sites started to use extremely large photo’s and HD media to persuade consumers. This forced the broadband companies to go even faster. Korean search engine Naver and Daum doesn’t seem to follow Google’s speed penalty yet. Not to say that rich media get’s you penalized on Google but you need to consider best practices to stay snippy and that seems not to happen for most of the ecommerce sites… SEO departments seem to practice the same methods they had in the past and truthfully, I personally think optimizing for speed is a whole different ballgame. So SEO departments and consultants that know little about optimizing websites for speed need to hit the books, or perhaps they are too busy and this could become a totally new field almost beside/within SEO optimalization. A good thing, because after all, no body likes waiting.

Writing code late at night. I sometimes left for bed after realizing it was way to late… but then returned to the desk moments later, even after deciding to sleep - I suppose everybody knows that feeling. It’s like a good cliffhanger episode - you need an answer instantly!

The other day, I was driving back from the office with a befriended psychologist. At the time we were engineering a project (programming) and we couldn’t solve the ‘puzzle’ that day. We had trouble calling it a day and I mentioned him that I felt a upset leaving the office at that time. He said this is a common problem for engineers and he actually knew the term for the feeling: It’s the Zeigarnik effect. I’ll let wikipedia do the explanation:

“In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.”

Leaving something half way done can create a tremendous unsettlement in the mind. Personally, I’d rather ‘have it over with’. Now here’s the thing; Reading more about it, it seems like the wrong thing to do. Study shows that students remember better when they get some distractions. Apparently, it’s way better to take a mental break from time to time then to go ‘deep’.

Further reading:

• http://acuamur.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-zeigarnic-effect/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect#Zeigarnik_effect

There seems to be treasure all around us! Well sort of. Try geocaching! Geocachers seek out treasures called ‘geocaches’ hidden by other players around the world. Players use GPS to track down these geocaches, usually small containers with a paper logbook inside allowing the players to mark their find.

In the Netherlands there are over 50.000, covering most of the country. I looked up our home address and found one 500 meters away, so we checked it out. Using the little GPS map in the iPhone app, we reached the destination. We searched for a few minutes and suddenly we noticed a small water pipe at a tree root. We found that we could detach a part and we unscrewed the lid to find the geocache inside. A perfect hiding location! We went over the logbook notes and saw that this geocache is visited almost daily, with visitors as far as Germany.

Finding these geocaches matches our walking habit quite nicely, the geocaches in the city are sometimes very nicely kept!

Oh, they have a website.

I have a computer-related profession and therefore I’m asked for all sorts of IT help at birthdays parties and such. Yesterday’s dinner at the house of a friend was no exception. The host had stayed up late trying to setup a SAN/Media-player setup and was at the point of giving up. We sat down behind the computer and he opened up all sorts of setup screens.

I didn’t do anything. He just kept clicking and explaining the actions he had done the night before. Until he opened the firewall setup page. He stopped talking and suddenly it dawned on him; the Firewall port was still closed! Within minutes he was able to stream videos to his TV. The room cheered and we sat down for dessert. I didn’t do anything but he begged the difference.

It reminded me of a computer programming concept called ’Rubber duck debugging’ in which a programmer explains the various parts of his/her code out loud to a rubber duck. The expectation is that once the incorrect piece of code is explained, the programmer will notice the error.

Programmers have a lot of habits which are applicable outside their field. I think this is one of them. Try explaining your next IT problem to an inanimate object yourself!

Picture by Tom Morris, 16 September 2011

The stranger next to me in the train caught my attention because he opened his laptop and started to program in C. (lower-level programming language.) After hitting a few buttons he was compiling and suddenly a majestic 3D world appeared on his screen. I noticed the drawing was a bit different so I asked him if he was using openGL, which I had used in the past.

Perhaps a bit surprised or with a bit of caution he told me it wasn’t openGL. When I mentioned it looked like ray tracing I got his fullest attention; It turned out that the stranger next to me was a professor in the 3D rendering field, who graduated with a thesis about the revolutionary ’Real-Time Ray Tracing’ technique. He asked me if I’ve ever seen an engine which was build with 6000 lines of code but can do the same as CryENGINE which is about 20 million lines of code. Then I got a full demo showing Global illumination, HDR skies and in-engine fine-tuning. It was amazing. Together with his students he is looking for applications including video-gaming for his render engine.

I suggested the professor to consider the technique for the fashion industry, where the fitting dolls are now gathering dust in the corner of studios and designers work in 3D stitching software. The 3D technique applied is slightly different than with video-games as clothing is created from patterns, but quality is ever more important. I started explaining a little bit about the process of making clothes as I’ve learned over the last years: A pattern is created and then loaded onto a model in 3D. (can be done with Optitex or Marvelous Designer) and then the pattern is defined including width and weight of the fabric used and then virtually stitched. With one click, the clothing can be draped to form a perfect previewing model. Once done, the pattern can be exported again to be plotted on real size patterns or laser cut fabrics.

Add to the previous the recent breakthroughs that have been made with the 3D printing; Just last week, Shapeways (Dutch) and Lady Gaga’s designer created the first 3D printed dress. 3D printed dresses can be made of hardened materials and don’t require stitching. Furthermore, it brings a product which requires a sourcing and production chain which moved to far away countries back to small time entrepreneurs.

The professor immediately expressed an addition to the flow; while creating the virtual stitches (now usually done by specialists), the designer can now start using ‘computer assistance’. This is a technique used in 3D worlds where the computer suggests how to finalize certain parts of objects like buildings. This is done by defining rule sets which respects laws of architecture and materials. The end result could be a quick and near perfect suggestion. This will lead to full automatic pattern matching and could disrupt the industry even further.

Combined with the beautiful fast-speed photorealistic 3D rendering techniques that are around the corner, fashion design is truly entering a new stage. Needless to say, it was an inspiring train ride.

As the Dutch winter is dragging on, we’re happy that spring is luring around the corner. A few weeks ago, we bought some seeds and started a small project in our own back yard to grow some vegetables.

However, my parents asked for help for a bigger project today. They were about to plant 80 trees! Even though we had a small crane, we worked from sunrise to sunset. At first we dug holes, put the trees in, then we put a gate around it so the sheep will leave them alone until they are grown. It was fun seeing Suna plant her first tree. Also rewarding to see the result of the work at the end of the day.

But for Suna and me, we will now focus on our own small vegetable project for the moment.

Yesterday I went to Amstelveen in the early morning to take the Korean Intermediate 2 exam. For the past few months, I have been studying Korean sentences in the train but I wasn’t sure if it would be enough. At this level, the exam includes speaking, listening, writing and reading. Enough to say that I got a bit nervous and studied a lot in the past week.

But good news, already one day after the exam I was told that I passed, so I’m very happy to join the next level: Korean Intermediate level 3!

Looking back, I have been studying Korean for three years now, starting in Shanghai. Although, during that time studied both Chinese and Korean, which became to confusing to me. However, during the Korean classes in Shanghai, it was interesting to be the only non-Chinese in the class and learning Korean from a Chinese/Korean workbook. But now in Holland, I can finally learn from an English explained Korean book in Amstelveen. Every day I try to spend some time learning the language. After three years, I now am able to grasp some context from conversations and form very simple sentences in dialogue. An advantage of moving countries is that due to my fellow Dutch students that have simular culture, I get lot’s of good Korean movie-house recommendations. These days I try to watch more movies from Korea; it’s a fun way to learn the language.

However, it wouldn’t be possible without a weekly rhythm. Going to class every week really helps. So for me, these Korean language institutes make this all possible. It seems that Korean government has some sort of programme to promote their language and culture. In China they are free to attend, in Holland it’s just 150 euro’s for a semester. Teachers are usually in the country due to working or studying abroad. However, seeing the amount of effort they put in the lessons is amazing. I’m really grateful for the effort of the teachers. In a way, South Korea is pushing soft-power in both culture and language to a lot of countries this way.

It would be interesting to think if/how Dutch people could setup a programme to promote language and culture. For example… would a volunteer based Dutch language institute in Shanghai be able to persevere?

Stamps went from boring the new hipster vintage. My dad collected stamps in the 60’s and we found the albums this Sunday morning. His favorites are stamps from the US featuring an airpost stamp and one with a cowboy from 1947. There are also stamps from around the world during the second world war. I found a page featuring north Korean stamps too.

It came as a big shock for a lot of Europeans that they might have eaten horsemeat. The Dutch news said supermarkets sold beef and lasagne with up to 80% horesemeat. This stirred up a lot of questions from people. However, an initial survey indicated that most people don’t mind to eat it, as long as it’s advertised correctly. The question Suna and I have been asking everybody: Would you mind eating horsemeat?