As usual, the biggest problem with a blog is that in the beginning you start it with full enthusiasm, but after some time you get busy with doing other stuff again and maintaining the blog gets lower and lower on the priority list....

If you look at the articles on my blog, the previous blog item was written 3 years ago... In the mean-time I was busy with all kinds of other things and did not pay attention to my blog anymore.

Recently got a very thorough introduction on Docker (thanks Brian Christner for that :) ) and got hooked on the possibilities.

Will now reactivate my blog again, this time keeping you updated about my journey with the whale and the containers :)

When I was a student, I was relatively active with sports: I played field hockey and tried to play squash once or twice a week. However, the last couple of years I was not very active anymore and started to notice that I got in bad shape. So I decided to go and run, which I started somewhere in the mid of January. The main goal I set was to run 10KM under 60 minutes.

Last sunday, there was the 4th international circuit run on the race tracks of Zandvoort. Because I did not have enough of time to enroll for the 12KM just yet, I did the 5KM run. Given the fact that I want to do the 10KM under 60 minutes, I must do the 5KM at least within 30 minutes However, my goal for the 5KM was set a bit higher: I wanted to end between 25 and 27 minutes.

The end result was even better than my goal, because my final time was 24 minutes and 42 seconds Only thing left to do now is to start improving this time on the 5KM and start running longer distances to get to the 10KM (and next year run the 12KM version of the Circuit run )

Action foto at the finish:

The advantage of these GPS loggers is that they can provide a nice overview of the race

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.

Although I have my drivers license for some time already again, we never got around to purchasing a car. Especially when we were still living in Utrecht, this was not a viable option anyway, because parking the car in the same street was not possible due to lack of parking permit, and very long waiting lists for this…

After we moved to Haarlem, it still was possible to do the majority of our trips via the public transportation, but often this ended in frustration of delayed trains/buses or having to leave at specific times to ensure all connections were still possible to get back home.

For certain cases, the best solution was to rent a car for a day or the weekend. Every time that we rented a car, it became clear that it would be very useful to have one ourselves

About two weeks ago we finally found a car that we liked, the new model Fiat Bravo. Finally, yesterday I got the message that it would be ready and this morning I went to pick it up.

The mandatory pictures:

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:

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:

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!

In some weeks we will get the key to our house we recently bought and I thought this was a perfect opportunity to buy a small light-power computer that I can use in the new house as a server. Currently I have my desktop running 24/7 because it also works as a simple webserver and provides me with my email wherever I am.

Yesterday I bought an Asus EEE Box PC. Unfortunately the thing came with Windows XP preinstalled on it, which was not right for the task I had it mind. I thought installing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty (server) was going to be really easy, but when I created a bootable USB stick with the installation ISO on it, it did not get recognized by the EEE box as a boot device. I tried all the different USB mass storage device settings in the BIOS, repartitioned my USB stick to use FAT16 instead of FAT32, nothing leading to a satisfying result.

In the end I found a 1GB micro SDHC card I still had laying around, put it in the SD slot and after forcing the BIOS to force the USB boot mass storage device to “Forced FDD”, I finally got the linux boot menu I was looking for (instead of the windows xp boot screen). After I got this far, the rest was really easy and in no-time I had Jaunty up and running.

Now the only thing left is to move all server-data from my desktop computer to this new server and I will be finished completely.

After just a bit over 4 years, last wednesday there was the grand finale of my time as a PhD student: the defense of my thesis, entitled: “Column Generation Algorithms for Machine Scheduling and Integrated Airport Planning”

First there was the dressing up, not only for me, but also for my two paranimfs (My dad on the left and my brother on the right).

Here everything was still relaxing, not too much pressure. After this we got inside and I had to wait in a little room till the start, when the ‘pedel’ would get me.

After I got to the room, there is the defense of my thesis, which lasts exactly one academic hour (i.e. 45 minutes :) ). During this time I must answer questions from the opposition (while my both paranimfs have the comfortable job of just sitting down for 45 minutes ;) )

After the 45 minutes, the pedel comes into the room with the message “Hora est” (it is time). After that the opposition goes back to a separate room where they will discuss whether I am worthy of the title. After this meeting, they come back and below is the picture when I receive the degree certificate out of the hands of my promotor Jan van Leeuwen:

So from this moment on I am entitled to call myself dr. Diepen :)

And before I forget, last monday, just two days before my defense, the friendly gate planners at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol gave me an awesome present: A two hour visit to the tower at Schiphol!!! Since I already had been once on the platform with the gate planners, the tower was the only ‘great’ place at Schiphol I did not visit. I have to say, the view over Schiphol from 67 meters up is in one word: AWESOME!!!

I did have my camera with, but unfortunately it is not allowed to put these online. So you will just have to take my word for it, it is really nice :)

The last couple of weeks have been rather busy for me. First of all there has been the fact that I had to have my PhD thesis finished to get everything to the printer to be able to make it in time for the oral defense of my thesis on the 10th of September. Luckily this all worked out and I got everything in time to the printer.

The fact that I am finished with my thesis meant also that my contract with the university has ended (well, actually, it is the other way, I had to finish my thesis because my contract ended :) ) and this means that I was looking for another job. After filling in my resume on Monsterboard, I got presented with a possible interesting possible vacancy right away. After I sent my resume to the company and had the first and second interview, I signed the contract three weeks ago and will start to work at Paragon (http://www.aimms.com) from monday the 25th on already :)

Luckily the start date of my new job still allowed me to go on holidays, from which I returned last monday. Justyna and I decided that we wanted to have a really relaxing holiday again and not having to do anything. This meant that I lived for almost two weeks without a watch and paying attention to time in the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, even if you have a watch, it does not help you that much there, since they have a different concept of time in the dominican republic, namely dominican minutes and I still don’t know how many ‘real’ minutes one dominican republic minute is, but it is quite a lot ;)

Only a couple of times I had to be present at 8:15 in the lobby (well, dominican time that is, so the bus was never there before 8:45 ;) ) because at that time the bus arrived to pick me up to get to the dive-center. During the vacation I made another 7 dives and I have to say that I really like the diving. Two years ago we also went on vacation to the dominican republic and there I got licensed. After that I didn’t dive anymore, but I have to say that everything went without any problem. The only thing is that I still don’t understand how the dive master (Carlos) was able to stay underwater without using almost any air. After we surfaced we all had about 50 bar left, while he still had 140 bar left. We all had to get a second tank, while after the second dive he still had enough air left to do even a third dive. That was really amazing :)

After we got back last monday, I found an email that my PhD thesis had arrived back from the printer. I really have to say that the result is really great and I am especially happy with how the cover turned out. Now the only thing left for me to do before I finally get my PhD officially is the oral defense at the 10th of September :) Can’t wait for that day now :)

Finally, I will look into an easy backup script for my website, since I don’t want to have this issue of a crashing harddisk happen again :) On the other hand, shit happens ;)