The ongoing Gaza war between Israel and Gaza (Hamas and by extension also Hezbollah) has been impossible to miss or ignore in the daily news since its start in October last year. Equally hard to ignore are the devastating and cruel initiatives taken by all parties whenever negotiations for a cease-fire are approaching. Sticking out like a very sore thumb, however, are the excesses in cruelty that both parties seem to find perfectly acceptable in this war. With the escalations in bad behavior as bad as they are now: where will this go, and when or where will it end? Continue reading →
Category Archives: EN
The foreign language – A comparison
When Eef wrote his piece on foreign languages, more specific on the French language for non-native speakers, he presented the article to me by email. In this email Eef he asked me on my view on the situations sketched in his article. This is a very fair question indeed as my wife and I left our home country The Netherlands (aka Holland) in 1997 when we emigrated to Sweden. You could say Eef’s and my family share the experience of moving abroad to a country we did not speak the language of. The prevailing language in Sweden being Swedish as it is French in France. In Eef’s defence, they were pensioners, while we were in our thirties. Continue reading →
The Foreign language
My wife Wil and I live permanently in France since 2008. We’ve bought our house in 2005, but we were not ready for the final step at that time. Our reluctance was mainly due to the difficulty we had in speaking French.
But in 2008 the ultimate decision was made: France was the place to be, attracted as we were by the beautiful nature, the calm pace of the French countryside and the low-stress attitude of the local people, so we sold our Dutch property.
Does this mean that we overcame the problems we had with the French language? Not by a long shot. Continue reading →
Det ska inte se ut som NASA!
När jag nyligen besiktigade min Toyota Urban Cruiser, Urban för vänner, blev det ett glad besked – som vanligt.
Nu tänkte du kanske, Visst gick det bra, det är ju en Toyota! Och det har du rätt i.
Men, till skillnad från tidigare besiktningar blev det denna gången en anmärkning. Anmärkningar är inget som man behöver ordna med detsamma, men man bör nog åtgärda det till nästa besiktning om ett år. Mina anmärkningar blev:
- glapp i kardanknut
- spricka i fram fjäder
Självklart ska vi inte åka ett år till med dessa fel, de ska åtgärdas med detsamma! Continue reading →
New books on the way
Just letting you know that I’ve got a couple of new books in the making. Continue reading →
ˈɪnflu.ənsə(ɹ)
Say what…?
The word ˈɪnflu.ənsə(ɹ) phonetically spells the word ‘Influencer’, but what does it really mean? Here are the official meanings according to Wictionary:
- A person who or a thing which influences
- A person who is able to influence consumption, lifestyle and/or political preferences of their online audience by creating and/or engaging social media content, often as a part of a marketing campaign
In my experience, a third category ought to be added. But, for the time being, let’s stick to these two categories as these seem quite straightforward. We’ll tackle my proposal for a third category later. Continue reading →
Using AI in non-fiction context, a justification
In his recent essay, “The slippery slope of AI in books” Paul was almost shocked by his publisher’s question “Did you use AI in creating text, images and/or translation in your book?” Of course, he answered with a loud, indignant “NO” to this question.
Then Paul explains to us that he uses Word’s spelling checker and occasionally a grammar checker. But of course, his text as a whole, is his own. Created by him and only him.
That made me wonder, how does this work out for my text with e.g. the contributions to the math section? I am not a book writer as Paul definitely is, but I write nonetheless. And doing so, I try to maintain my personal style. On a very regular base, Paul and I, exchange email messages with a great variety of subjects. We do this for more than 25 years. The writing is in our own style and very recognizable as such.
But this is entirely different from creating a fictional story as storytellers do. Continue reading →
The secrets of RSA encryption
When clicking on the padlock in the address bar of an internet session, a window appears with the message: “Safari uses an encrypted connection with …”. [red. this message may look slightly different for other browsers]
After pressing the buttons ‘Show certificate’ and ‘detail’, a lot more is shown. The typically used security algorithm nowadays at most news sites etc. at the opening session is: public key with elliptic curve.
But for the sites where security really is an issue, e.g. a login session into your bank account or a large online store, RSA is the encryption algorithm. And RSA encryption is the subject of my contribution this time. Continue reading →
KDP – How to self publish your book
In the past few years, I’ve managed to write and publish four books. Three of them are in English while only one is in Dutch. But, writing a book is just one of the many steps between the idea and the book being bought and read by someone.
As I live in Sweden, and none of my books are in Swedish, I presume my readers are most likely be found abroad in Europe and the US. Reaching out to established publishing companies abroad to persuade them to publish my books seemed like a stretch for a newbie writer, so I did not pursue this avenue. Of course, it would be easy to have my books printed locally and then sell each copy myself, but that would require a considerable investment in printing. And I’d have to go door to door to sell them, which is not my thing. Thus the idea of self-publishing them came up. Continue reading →
The slippery slope of AI in books
‘What, AI in books!’ you may say. Indeed, with generative AI you can ask your AI application to write a text, given a set of parameters such as number of words, subject, genre, and much more.
When I recently was editing the blurbs of my books on KDP, the publishing platform for the Amazon book store, I was asked this question:
Of course, my answer was a solid No as I do not engage any AI form in writing my books for me. Or do I? Continue reading →
Strong and kind
A well-known Swedish childrens hero called Bamse, has the following motto:
Den som är väldigt stark måste också vara väldigt snäll
…which translates loosely into:
He who is very strong must also be very kind
~
Writing and hobbies
One of the many perks of writing is that you get to incorporate things you fancy in your stories. After all, as a writer, you own the story! I regularly make use of that perk. Readers who know me will recognize these details, while others take them for regular book content.
One of the things that always has had my interest, apart from reading, are cars, motorcycles, and sailing. So I eagerly jump to every opportunity to put in my favorite cars or incorporate cars or sailing in my stories.
Nuremberg:
When I was working on my first book Nuremberg in 2021, I could not resist using a 2CV as a means of transport in the center of Amsterdam in the 80ies. Even if the make and model are never mentioned in my book, when reading the attached text snippets you’ll probably agree the car cannot be anything other than a 2CV. Continue reading →
P vs NP – A promise fulfilled
P versus NP – An early encounter
My first programming experience was in the early 80’s. I had bought myself a Texas Instruments 58-c programmable calculator, and was curious what could be done with such a device. That turned out to be very modest.
The calculator was capable of 480 program steps but held then zero memories for data storage.
Each memory used for data consumed 8 program steps, so with the storage of e.g. 10 integers, the programming space was diminished by 80 steps.
The 58-c’s memory was retained even after switching off the calculator, but before creating another program, the memory first had to be erased.
Continue reading →
Cultural dilemma – Country vs Religion
One would think it would be easy to describe or define a country. But its definition in Wikipedia leaves room for interpretation that attempts to describe it as ‘…a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity…’. Notably, the definition of a country does not include ‘a group of people with a certain religion‘ or even ‘a group of people‘. On the other hand, the Wikipedia article does mention religion in any way but for the use of religious symbols, eg. in flags. Continue reading →
Ocean floor infrastructure vulnerability
Just about one year ago (although it seems longer than that), the Nordstream pipelines were sabotaged. Within a short period of time, all four pipelines appeared to have blown up, likely by explosive charges. As a result of this, central Europe had to find alternative sources to replace the gas delivered by the Nordstream1 pipeline, Nordstream 2 was not yet ready, albeit very close. Continue reading →