Turns out that it was an aircraft from Royal Air Maroc that encountered a birdstrike after taking [...]]]> Earlier this evening, while watching some TV I heard an airplane fly over. Because Haarlem relatively close to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, this happens more often. However, this time from the sound I knew that it was flying extremely low.

Turns out that it was an aircraft from Royal Air Maroc that encountered a birdstrike after taking off from Schiphol. After that, it was flying burning over Haarlem (eyewitnesses state as low as 100 meters), after which it made a safe emergency landing at Schiphol again.

Happy everything turned out ok.

For anybody interested in reading it, it can be found at the library website of Utrecht University.

Of course, the contents of this thesis are nice, but a lot of people also like the [...]]]> I found that sometimes it is difficult to find my thesis, though it is published online at the library of Utrecht University.

For anybody interested in reading it, it can be found at the library website of Utrecht University.

Of course, the contents of this thesis are nice, but a lot of people also like the cover:

Cover of my Ph.D. Thesis

We decided to rent a car and just drive around to different places of interest, not really knowing beforehand what our exact route was going to be. [...]]]> Has not been very busy on my weblog lately. Reason for this was that we went on a vacation to the US, and to be more precise to Florida.

We decided to rent a car and just drive around to different places of interest, not really knowing beforehand what our exact route was going to be. We knew that there were some places we definitively wanted to view (i.e. Kennedy Space Center, Miami, Key West, etc) but besides that, nothing was planned. After the vacation was finished we basically  made the following tour through Florida:

View Larger Map

Besides the above basic tour we made a lot of visits to the different places. The second day we arrived we went to visit the Kennedy Space Center. I only have one word for this place: awesome! Walking there and seeing the sheer size of the rockets required to get humans to the moon is unbelievable. Also, if you look at the room the astronauts had, it is not that much.

After this we drove down to West Palm Beach and from there we started driving US Highway 1 all the way down through Fort Lauderdale, to Miami, and finally all the way to mile marker 0 in Key West. While in Fort Lauderdale, while sipping on a huge Margaritha, we met Mike, who turned out to be a pianist in the Crazy Pianos in Miami. The next day we were in Miami and in the evening we decided to pay a visit to the Crazy Pianos in Miami. Even though it was completely not busy on the Monday evening, it was a really nice evening and even got to speak Dutch to some people again in the US Definitively have to pay a visit to the Crazy Pianos in Scheveningen soon

After Miami there was the really nice drive to Key West. Somehow in my mind I had the idea that the overseas highway would be bridges all the time, but it turned out to be one long bridge (the 7 mile bridge) and the rest of the bridges between all the other keys were really short. In Key West we just had a really relaxing time

After Key West, our trip started going up north again. After finding a hotel in key Largo, we decided to go the everglades and visit one of the alligator farms. The airboat ride we did there was a blast!! These boats are so extremely loud, but sooooooo much fun At the alligator farm we also visited a snake show and an alligator show. During the snake show my wife was chosen as ‘volunteer’ to grab a snake out of a bag and hold it for some time. Luckily, she surived

The next part of our trip took us to Sanibel Island, where we visited the Ding ‘Darling’ National refuge. In this refuge we ran into an alligator (or crocodile, don’t know for sure) in the water next to the road. Really amazing to be able to stop the car, get out and take a picture of the animal laying in the water about 6 meters away from where you are standing (without a fence….. ).

After Sanibel we still visited Sarasota and Tampa. In Tampa we decided to go and visit something classical American: a drive-in theater. We watched the movie zombieland from within our car This really was a very nice experience. Unfortunately, this was already the last evening again and we had to drive back to Orlando, return the car and wait for our flight back home again….

All in all, it was an awesome vacation!

Picture of the keys to our new house

Also nice was the fact that the previous owners provided us with a small bottle of champagne

So upcoming time will be a busy time of [...]]]> Today we went to the notary for all the official exchanging of property and after that we received our keys:

Picture of the keys to our new house

Also nice was the fact that the previous owners provided us with a small bottle of champagne

So upcoming time will be a busy time of moving and painting… We cannot wait for this to be finished and we will be living in our new house

After some other packages, I finally found LaTeX-Beamer. For the majority of the presentations the default [...]]]> When I was a PhD student I had to give some presentations. I think I tried once to use Powerpoint to give a presentation filled with mathematical equations before I decided that this was not going to work

After some other packages, I finally found LaTeX-Beamer. For the majority of the presentations the default styles provided with LaTeX-Beamer were sufficient, but every now and then I wanted to have a bit more, do I dare to say it, powerpoint like theme

I wanted to have background image over which an white transparent layer would be put, on which the text would appear. I created a latex-beamer style for this and a sample output of this diepen style is given in the two pictures below:

Screenshot showing example title page of diepen style

Screenshot of normal sheet in diepen style

The picture that is on the background can be changed into any picture you choose, although I found that in most cases the result is the best when the used image is not too bright.

To use the style, you must first download the source, unpack it to a directory of your choice in the texmf directory (or your local texmf directory) and make sure that you have run the texhash command under linux or the windows equivalent such that pdflatex is able to find the style files.

After you have done this, you can use it by placing the following command in the preamble of your beamer file:

1

\usetheme{diepen}

The following options are available:

• backgroundimagefile. The filename (without extension) of the image to use as background (e.g.

  1	\usetheme[backgroundimagefile=schiphol-tower]{diepen}

  to use schiphol-tower image as background)

• opacity. A float value denoting the opacity of the white overlay on all sheets except the title page (e.g.

  1	\usetheme[opacity=0.78]{diepen}

  to have opacity of 78%).

• useblacktitletext. Is a boolean and if present the color of the text on the titlepage will be black instead of white

  1	\usetheme[useblacktitletext]{diepen}

  . This option sometimes is useful for background images that are rather light in color

If you have any questions about this diepen style, please let me know.

At the Jameson distillery you have a guided tour that shows you the process of whiskey making. At the start [...]]]> Last weekend I went for a city trip to Dublin together with my wife. Of course we had to visit two things that Dublin is famous for: the Guiness brewery and the Jameson distillery

At the Jameson distillery you have a guided tour that shows you the process of whiskey making. At the start of the tour, they ask for some volunteers, but we did not yet know for what that would be. I was chosen as one of the volunteers, and at the end of the tour it was clear what the task was: a whiskey tasting event We had three shots of whiskey, one Jameson, one Jack Daniels, and one Jimmy Walker and at the end we had to answer the question which of these three was the best To prove that I gave the right answer I got the following certificate:

Jameson whiskey tasting certificate

I have to say that this tour was really good fun.

The tour at the Guiness brewery was completely different, you could just walk through the complete museum by yourself, and at the end of the tour there was the complementary pint of Guiness in the Gravity bar, which is on the 7th floor with an amazing view over Dublin.

If you are planning to go to Dublin, I can recommend the above two activities

At the end of his course on mathematical methods in optimization, the professor sternly looks at his students and says: “There is one final piece of advice I’m going to give you now: [...]]]> When following some different blogs about Operations Research the other day, I found the following very nice OR joke on the ThinkOR blog:

At the end of his course on mathematical methods in optimization, the professor sternly looks at his students and says: “There is one final piece of advice I’m going to give you now: Whatever you have learned in my course – never ever try to apply it to your personal lives!” 

 

“Why?” the students ask.

 

“Well, some years ago, I observed my wife preparing breakfast, and I noticed that she wasted a lot of time walking back and forth in the kitchen. So, I went to work, optimized the whole procedure, and told my wife about it.”

 

“And what happened?!”

 

“Before I applied my expert knowledge, my wife needed about half an hour to prepare breakfast for the two of us. And now, it takes me less than fifteen minutes…”