I can name one reason in particular. I have connections and interaction on Facebook with people that I don’t have elsewhere, nor can I easily migrate those interactions easily to a different channel. For instance the people related to my fencing club, the fencing community in general, old schoolmates that reconnect with me, members of my youth orchestra. Those connections are recent additions to my Facebook-experience and I’m not ready to let go of them.

Diaspora is a wonderful initiative and maybe I should give it a better try, but for now it feels too much of a YASN (Yet Another Social Network). There’s a limit to the spaces I can take care of and I prefer to take care of spaces where others talk back to me

At the same time, I truly believe that Facebook is heading for a drastic decline in activity and membership as soon as the general public starts to realize how much information Facebook unrightfully gathers (about their kids). However, people are now so accustomed to having online interaction that they’ll be looking for alternatives. Perhaps this is the time to start inviting all my reconnected friends to Diaspora. That’ll be a first for me, usually a passive networker.

Still undecided, so I don’t delete my Facebook account yet, will enjoy the conversations there and keep my eye on Diaspora’s development.

This time around visiting London I didn’t bring my big and heavy 18-200mm lens and used my cheap and light-weight 50mm lens instead. It’s a nice lens, except that I have to focus manually and it turned out to be a hard thing to do with this lens. It’s the reason not everything is rightly in focus in this photoset, but some turned out to be wonderful.

Had a lovely dinner with my brother and his girlfriend today. Quite relaxing, except for driving 187KM back and forth to the other side of the country. Not exactly the greenest thing to do, but sometimes social investment beats environmental care. Let’s hope someday soon these kind of visits do not require fossil fuel of any kind without losing the comfort of driving in your own car from door-to-door without delay.

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Where I spend my Friday evenings from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

“…kind of tired…”, talking about understatement of the year

And what it looks like when there are kids moving around in this space (recorder in 2008: a two-day training during the holidays).

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Obviously, I never cared about the Really Bad Bookstore, and only went there twice or so, to buy a bestseller that probably was out of stock in one of the other two stores. I frequently visited the Really Good Bookstore. Smaller than the Generally OK Bookstore, but a nice and calm atmosphere and a good selection of books on the shelves. The Generally OK Bookstore was the store to browse for its collection of English books, including the sci-fi and fantasy section, even though it wasn’t that big a collection.

Then the owner of the Really Good Bookstore concluded that he was not really making that much money and anticipated the end of the fixed bookprice, a thing that didn’t happen as to this day, and closed its doors forever, leaving a void in the city.

Then even the Really Bad Bookstore closed its doors, leaving me an all the other booklovers in town with only one option to shop for books: the Generally OK Bookstore.

Time went by and technology progressed. The era of the Online Bookstore arrived and even though I still preferred to browse through printed dead trees, with the smell of ink oozing from every page on each turn, I cought myself ordering books overseas, even though it could take weeks to get them shipped to me. The Generally OK Bookstore didn’t satisfy my needs any longer, because all I could buy directly from the store were the rather popular titles and the books that were a little out of the ordinary needed to be ordered by the bookstore, taking just as long if I would order them myself overseas.

I probably was not the only one buying less at the Generally OK Store (did I mention already that I used to work for this chain of bookstores, in Hengelo?), because the store offered less and less books that were out of the ordinary. Several redecorations of the store must have been in vain. Today I went into the store to actually buy the smell of books, before I’ll become a total e-book convert, and was saddened by the look of the English bookshelves. Not even half of the shelves were filled with books to buy. We barely managed to spend the gift-certificates, because we couldn’t find that many books we like.

And thus The incredible sad story of poor bookstores in Enschede closes in on The very end of the story of poor bookstores in Enschede, because this booklover fears that even the Generally OK Bookstore, even though it’s the only book survivor in this town, might have to close its doors very soon.

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From their policy for the next 3 years:

1. We offer everyone access to everything published in and about the Netherlands.
2.We improve the national information infrastructure.
3. We guarantee long-term storage of digital information.
[...] (source)

This includes all digital publications.

From the full document I can conclude that digital access to information on scientific publications is one of their focuses. As someone who is outside the academic system, yet craving for proper remote access, I can only applaud this.

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Nothing beats a fresh pack of snow.

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We, the Dutch, almost forgot about winter.

With so few cold winters and little snow in the recent past, local governments shortened their stack of salt for the roads over the years. But now, because of the continuing snowfall, they are confronted with shortage of salt to keep the roads clear from snow and ice. Many local streets, sidewalks and bike tracks are not treated with salt to save some, obviously leading to slippery situations.

Our scarce knowledge of dealing with winter conditions became even more evident when our Prime-Minister summoned us in a press conference to take responsibility and shovel our sidewalks for the sake of our neighbours. (NB: There used to be a law in NL to keep the sidewalk in front of your house clear during frosty periods, but this has been abolished years ago.)

One town is very happy, though. Etten-Leur bought 18 tons of rejected bath salt, enough for at least one ‘treatment’ of the main roads.

I bet it smells lovely in Etten-Leur.

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The Sony Reader Light from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

A picture for a slightly better look:

More pictures at bol.com

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