Jilles.net http://www.jilles.net en ojilles@gmail.com (Jilles Oldenbeuving) 2012-01-27T13:06:10+01:00 Copyright 2011 60 Jilles' small corner on the internet about technology, skiing, online businesses and general interest French Onion Soup http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/08/06/french-onion-soup/ Sat Aug 06 00:00:00 +0200 2011 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/08/06/french-onion-soup/ <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/20.jpg" alt="French Onion Soup with lots of cheese!" /></p> <p>After having gone on a rampage for various different recipes (<a href="http://pinboard.in/u:ojilles/t:recipies/">small selection here</a>), I found the following recipe on <a href="http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/04/french-onion-soup/">Smitten Kitchen</a> and thought I'd try that and share the results. So, to be clear, the recipe is based on Smitten Kitchen's.</p> <p>The soup is absolutely awesome though. And even better, the whole kitchen will smell delicious while you are cooking it. To get started, grab the following:</p> <ul> <li>1 1/2 pounds (680 grams) thinly sliced yellow onions</li> <li>3 tablespoons (42 grams) unsalted butter</li> <li>1 tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil</li> <li>1 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt, plus additional to taste</li> <li>1/4 teaspoon (1 gram) granulated sugar (helps the onions to brown)</li> <li>3 tablespoons (24 grams) all-purpose flour</li> <li>2 quarts (1.9 liters) beef or other brown stock</li> <li>1/2 cup (120 ml) dry white wine or dry white vermouth</li> <li>Freshly ground black pepper</li> </ul> <p>To start, grab your onions and chop them up in strips of 4-8mm each. Not too big, not too thin. It is hard to make too many onions, so if you go a little over, no worries.</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/3.jpg" alt="Slice onions in 4-8mm strips" /></p> <p>Next, take the oil and butter and heat those up on "moderately low heat". Once that is done, toss in all the onions. Stir them around to get them all oiled up. Then close the lid, and just have it sit there. This should soften up your onions (by keeping the moist inside).</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/6.jpg" alt="Make sure all onions are oiled up" /></p> <p>Once done, turn up the heat to medium. Now we need to caramelize the onions. This will make that awesome taste to the soup, so it's important to get right. Basically, all you need to do is add the salt and sugar and stir the onions every other minute or so for the next 30-40 minutes.</p> <p>For me it looked like this halfway through:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/8.jpg" alt="Onions half way through" /></p> <p>Once the onions are all caramelized, sprinkle the flower over the onions. Before stirring, it should look roughly like follows:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/10.jpg" alt="Onions caramelized and &quot;flowered&quot;" /></p> <p>I think using a little less than the ingredient lists calls for is okay, some experimentation is needed here. Stir the flower through for 3 minutes. Now it is time to turn this into a real soup: add the white wine, wait a little bit, then bit by bit add the stock to the mix. Add the pepper to taste, and a bit of salt -- don't over do the latter. Now bring the whole thing to a simmer, and it should look like this:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/12.jpg" alt="Onion soup, needs another 30 Min's" /></p> <p>Put the lid back, but keep a small opening. Now this needs to simmer for another 30-40 minutes. Check in once in a while, if you have a film on top of the soup, skim it off. And that is it really! However, in my mind, French Onion Soup is not done without the toast with cheese. I usually use the toaster to make some bread crispy. I always put them up against each other vertically, to avoid them getting moist prematurely:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/13.jpg" alt="Nice crispy bread!" /></p> <p>At the same time, cut some remaining fresh onion up in really small pieces (maybe one or two tea spoons). Get some cheese (being dutch, I used Gouda, but most cheeses will work) and combine the onion and cheese.</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/14.jpg" alt="Combined fresh onions and cheese" /></p> <p>After your 30-40 minute simmer is done, poor the soup in your ramekins/cups, add the toast on top, and then the cheese/onion, like so:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/17.jpg" alt="Soup and topping prepared" /></p> <p>This should go into a preheated oven, put to broil. Temperature isn't that important (200-270 Celsius), as long as the cheese becomes brown! Should not take too long, so just stay around and check in every minute or so. After that, done!</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/19.jpg" alt="The finished product: French Onion Soup" /></p> <p>Oh, and since you undoubtedly got left over white wine, don't forget to serve that too!</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/onion-soup/21.jpg" alt="French Onion Soup" /></p> Jilles 'uses this' http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/26/jilles-uses-this/ Tue Jul 26 00:00:00 +0200 2011 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/26/jilles-uses-this/ <p>Inspired by the articles over at <a href="http://www.usesthis.com">Usesthis.com</a> I thought I would do my own write up in similar vain.</p> <h3>Hardware</h3> <p>Over the last 8 years all of my hardware has moved into Apple land. When I was still programming professionally I did so exclusively on Debian/Linux systems and that is just what I am most comfortable with. The Mac offers that experience with the notable exception of 'apt-get' package management.</p> <ul> <li>Main personal desktop is a 27" iMac (2008 model I believe). This is what I use to browse the web with, do Skype calls with family and friends back in the Netherlands, dabble with software development and new technologies in my spare time and store all my photos and music.</li> <li>A 2009 model Mac mini which is always on and provides all the media in my apartment. Since I live abroad I don't watch any of the local broadcasters I rely on this to provide some entertainment. In addition this also brings some non-networked disks onto my TimeCapsule powered network.</li> <li>I gave my old (1st edition) MacBook Air to my girlfriend, but will still pick it up if I need to write somewhere else in my apartment, away from the iMac (like right now). Actively looking for an excuse to buy one of the new MacBook Airs. I literally think this is the best laptop produced till date.</li> <li>For years I was a heavy Blackberry user, they truly made the best email capable phones in existence at the time. But how far the mighty can fall? The second the iPhone debuted, I bought one and upgrade to every new iPhone within weeks after it comes out.</li> <li>iPad: the primary use case here is shared internet experiences with my girlfriend. For example, shopping online for that new furniture addition or looking up information together. Sometimes a bit of travel.</li> <li>Amazon Kindle: bought this primarily for travel. I love physical books, but I can't afford to bring two big books on a 2-3 day business trip for example. Jury is still out.</li> <li>For work: I have been working for <a href="http://www.ebay.com">eBay</a> for the last 8 years or so and always been using the standard windows machines provided. But 6 months ago I finally switched that to a MacBook Pro. I have notably more issues with that transition than any other transition to Apple products (Microsoft Outlook on Mac is seriously unproductive for example) but I'm managing just fine</li> </ul> <h3>Software</h3> <p>For work I mostly use a weird combination of "standard business software" such as Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Skype together with rather geeky stuff. As an example, a lot of times I will automate data gathering with bash scripting or look up how our users are using our sites by writing a <a href="http://pig.apache.org">Pig</a> script and run it against our <a href="http://hadoop.apache.org">Hadoop</a> cluster(s). This turns into the fun combination of me always having a <a href="http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home">iTerm2</a> console open, even though I do not program for a living anymore.</p> <p>Personally I use Gmail for mail, but mostly try to stay away from the web client (not sure why, but I guess it is due to the latency difference with simple Mail.app client). As mentioned, I use Skype a lot for international video calls.</p> <p>My browser of choice these days is Chrome, as it is fast and syncs nicely across all my machines which is great. For a list of places on the web <a href="http://www.jilles.net/about.html">where you can find me, look here</a>. Daily (non-business) sites I frequent are Google Reader and <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/">HackerNews</a>. Once in a while Google+, Facebook. Interestingly for me Twitter has become iPhone only: I check it daily but find the UEX on the iPhone just better than their main site.</p> <p>After seeing internal statistics from some of our large websites and all the hacks that make the news every week I moved to use 1Password with large random generated passwords uniquely for each site. I also enabled two-factor authentication for my Google account the day it came out.</p> <p>For image processing I am currently using iPhoto but experimenting here and there with Aperture after purchasing a DSLR. Not entirely sure yet on this. I do prune my pictures quite well for each event I have in iPhoto to keep the size of my total library down (see backups further down).</p> <p>I spend quite a bit of time iTerm2, using things like screen, git, vim, etc. I am quite bought into the Unix mantra there. For someone who likes to keep his programming chops a little bit up to date Github really offers me a nice place to put my small projects and at the same time a way to contribute in small measures to the various open source projects out there.</p> <p>For media consumption I use <a href="http://www.plexapp.com/">Plex</a> on the Mac mini, which is absolutely great. Comes with a whole bunch of plugins to stream content like The Daily Show and I have build up a nice library of ripped DVDs. The Mac mini is hooked up to a large (European standard) television, but it will also stream the content to the iPad or iPhone in a pinch if needed.</p> <p>For my weblog (that you are reading now) I had great fun geeking out with <a href="https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll">Jekyll</a>, creating a fully automated build system using Rake and hooking it all up with a self created low-key template. These are no great feats of engineering, but good fun for a geek in any case. As an example, using wget and some scripting the build system will fail when this blog has any internal links that 404. You will find my code on my <a href="https://github.com/ojilles/jilles.net/">Github page</a>. (Also see the <a href="http://www.jilles.net/colophon.html">colophon</a>.)</p> <h3>Storage</h3> <p>I have a tick for trying to preserve most of the things that I made or had a hand in creating. This means that I have a digital photo collection that goes back to when my ancient Nokia phone had a 320x200 pixel camera. In addition any software, documentation, research papers, fun websites, assembler code for microprocessors, etc, I have written goes into my "Lifetime Archive". Not sure why, nostalgia is partly an answer but it definitely also has it's uses.</p> <p>I now have also started this process for my offline life. Having moved internationally twice now, paper (and especially "accessible" paper) is just hard. So I have started to scan most important documents and store those into my "Dead tree archive" which is a collection of PDFs that combine the graphical scan with OCRd text.</p> <p>As for SaaS providers like Gmail, <a href="http://github.com">Github</a>, Google Docs, etc. all get pulled down locally by a cronjob every day or week and disappear in my Lifetime archive. This primarily got instigated after <a href="http://del.iciou.us">Delicious</a> threatened to close down. (I consequently moved to <a href="http://pinboard.in">Pinboard</a>).</p> <p>The total of all of the above, including pictures, is roughly 100GB.</p> <p>Having only scarcely recovered my CD-ROM backups from 2001 (needed to combine 6 different disks to recombine the whole archive) I now store all this on my iMac and backup religiously:</p> <ul> <li>Local backups go onto the TimeCapsule, easily accessible from my Mac</li> <li>A subset of the data gets stored onto Dropbox, but only those files that don't require the highest privacy</li> <li>Then there is <a href="http://www.crashplan.com/">Crashplan</a> that is my primary off site backup</li> <li>Lastly, I also backup the same data using <a href="http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/">Arc</a> onto Amazon S3. I'm sure Crashplan does the same but at these cost levels I don't care and I insulate myself also from Crashplan suddenly disappearing. (Arc is just software, and I'm betting Amazon AWS is going to be around for another 10 years). Hats off to Arq for doing <a href="http://www.n8gray.org/code/backup-bouncer/">a lof of testing</a>.</li> </ul> <p>Perhaps it is a bit overdone, but I am now reasonably certain I can get to the binary/text files in the future. A bigger concern now becomes document compatibility. For example, I have a load of Electronics engineering reports I wrote in WordPerfect 5.1 that are starting to look quite garbled.</p> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>I often suggest Apple should start making a subscription hardware service: I wire a pre-determined amount dollars to their bank account. In return they send me within one week of their product launch, whatever they are launching in a set of predetermined categories (think: laptop, desktop, iPhone and iPad). Would that not be awesome?</p> <p>I am pretty happy with my setup this far. If you have any questions or would love to contribute, fire away in the comments below!</p> Stamped (not mashed) potatos recipe http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/23/stamped-not-mashed-potatos/ Sat Jul 23 00:00:00 +0200 2011 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/23/stamped-not-mashed-potatos/ <p>The other day I made a delicious potato dish, and having my camera ready, I thought I'd share it with you! To go short, rather than baking potato disks, or mashing them up completely, this dish nicely holds the middle. This produces a really nice crunchy dish!</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos12.jpg" alt="The end result, the crunched potato!" /></p> <p>Ingredients:</p> <ul> <li>Potatoes (have them decently sized)</li> <li>Salt, pepper</li> <li>Herbs (Rosemary, or ...)</li> <li>Oil</li> </ul> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos01.jpg" alt="My Italian, British and danish combination of herbs" /></p> <p>For starters, boil the potatoes <em>in their skins</em>. That's important: in their skins. This is what is going to make them so crunchy and good. You should add some salt to taste. The best way to do that is to wait for the water to boil, then add the salt. This works better as the water immediately dissolves it. Start the oven or broiler. I put mine on 200-220 degrees C. Oil up a baking plate. Once done, take out the boiled potatoes, put them on the plate and crunch them with your potato stamper, like so:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos02.jpg" alt="Die you potato, die!" /></p> <p>Stamp them till they are maybe 1 to 2 cm in height, not more. Make sure they are jagged on top. Here, another example:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos04.jpg" alt="Me trying to squash a few of the 'taters" /></p> <p>After you have done the lot, sprinkle some oil on top:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos05.jpg" alt="Making it up with my potatoes by giving them oil" /></p> <p>And add more salt on top of the potatoes, and your herbs. In the pictures you'll see me experimenting with red onions: you are advised to skip that as it doesn't work very well in the broiler.</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos07.jpg" alt="Plate of crunched potatoes" /></p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos09.jpg" alt="Close up of a single crunched potato" /></p> <p>After all this torture, the potatoes still have one last step: the oven. I usually put my oven on "broil" at around 200-220 degrees. Since the potatoes are already "done" (through the boiling) it all really doesn't matter too much. What you are looking for is to harden up the outsides, the jagged tops, the skins of the potatoes. This will make it really crunchy, while the inside is still nicely soft like a boiled potato.</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos10.jpg" alt="Potato's in the oven, undergoing the last stage" /></p> <p>Just check the oven every few minutes till you are happy with the result. Here was mine:</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos12.jpg" alt="Crunched potato, end result, close up" /></p> <p>See all those brown bits?! Those are the best! Buon appetito!</p> <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/photos/stamped-potatos/stamped-potatos13.jpg" alt="Crunched potatoes served with 'dutch' meatballs" /></p> A new version of my blog http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/11/setting-up-a-new-blog/ Mon Jul 11 00:00:00 +0200 2011 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2011/07/11/setting-up-a-new-blog/ <p>In various different forms my blog has survived from way back in 2003 till now. In the first couple of months, the blog would only run on my own computer (I didn't have hosting back then). Now, I've redone the block in Jekyll so that it is completely statically generated (and pushed into GIT for convenience).</p> <p>I've only deleted two articles that basically were going absolutely nowhere. Besides that I believe most of the content came across in tact. Let me know if you see problems anywhere.</p> <p>As for the comments, I have backed them up and uploaded them to Disqus. However, I have not finished the integration back into the blog yet. So check back later.</p> <p><strong>Update</strong>: As of June 21st, the comments are back. Fire away!</p> <p>With that, I intent to write more again as well. It's been a long time since I have written anything sensible on any topic. The last real articles were written on the difference between Dutch and Danish culture (<a href="http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/12/20/denmark-compared-to-the-netherlands/">Part I</a> and <a href="http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/04/11/denmark-versus-netherlands-part-ii/">Part II</a>). Currently living in Italy for over a year now so that is a logical start. In any case, we will see. For now, enjoy the new site and let me know if there is anything wrong.</p> <p>If you would like to know more about how this blog is setup now, please <a href="http://www.jilles.net/colophon.html">see the colophon</a>.</p> <p>~Jilles</p> Denmark versus Netherlands, part II http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/04/11/denmark-versus-netherlands-part-ii/ Sat Apr 11 00:00:00 +0200 2009 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/04/11/denmark-versus-netherlands-part-ii/ <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/nl-vs-dk.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/nl-vs-dk.jpg" alt="" title="nl-vs-dk" width="325" height="93" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-159" /></a></p> <p>Welcome to the second installment of my "Denmark vs. Netherlands" post. In this, I'm exploring some cultural and statistical differences between the two countries. Completely random stuff, I promise. <a href="http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/12/20/denmark-compared-to-the-netherlands/">Look here for part I</a>.</p> <h3>English</h3> <p>I keep telling people back home that the level of English spoken here is even better than in Holland where to my (unbiased!) opinion it's already fairly good. I thought to look up some numbers (<a href="http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/pdf/doc631_en.pdf">see here, PDF</a>).</p> <p>Roughly 88% of the people in Denmark speak at least one other language than their mother-tongue. That same figure in Holland is 91%. Which languages do they speak? See the following graph. The top 3 languages in both countries is English, German and French:</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/graph.png"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/graph.png" alt="" title="graph" width="500" height="385" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-185" /></a></p> <p>Remember that I stated I thought people in Denmark speak better English than in the Netherlands? Seems I was wrong... Or was I?</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/graph2.png"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/graph2.png" alt="" title="graph2" width="500" height="385" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-186" /></a></p> <p>See? It's just my -<em>ahem</em>- unbiased cultural filter showing through ;-).</p> <h3>Alcohol consumption</h3> <p>The other thing I keep telling my colleagues in Denmark is that they drink much more wine than the average person in Holland. Obviously that was completely unsubstantiated and on top that a handful of people I work with closest are complete wine-aficionados so I might be quite biased. So I thought I'd look it up (<a href="http://www.who.int/entity/substance_abuse/publications/globalstatusrep%20ortalcohol2004_alcconsumpt.pdf">PDF</a>). Wine consumption is roughly the same across both countries (percentage-wise of total consumption). However, where as the average cheese-head (Dutchie) consumes 9.74L of pure alcohol per year a Dane washes down 11.93L. That's quite a few schnapps more. To be exact, 22.4% more schnapps!</p> <h3>General stats</h3> <p>Interested in more statistics? I got you covered (<a href="http://www.populstat.info/Europe/netherlg.htm">here</a> and <a href="http://www.populstat.info/Europe/denmarkg.htm">here</a>). While a Dane consumes 3.443 calories on average, a Dutchie chews down only 3.282. There are on average 412 persons per doctor in Holland versus ~350 in Denmark. Life expectancy in Denmark is 76 or 77 years where as Dutchies life till 78 (I'm chalking this one up to less alcohol consumption of course). While electricity usage is roughly the same across both countries, water usage per capita is 4.5 times higher in the Netherlands. Weird. Water in Denmark is much, much harder than in the Netherlands. Up till a point where distilled water is sold in shops to fill your iron for example. (Sorry, could not find an online reference for this.)</p> <h3>Food</h3> <p>One thing that tricked me up in eateries and supermarkets in Denmark is the usage of <em>Frikadeller</em>. Here is a picture of a few by "<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomaschristensen/">Thomas Rock star</a>".</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/frikandeller.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/frikandeller.jpg" alt="" title="frikandeller" width="500" height="375" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-187" /></a></p> <p>But, in the Netherlands a <em>Frikandel</em> is something completely different (and, I'm sorry to say, much more tasty!):</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/frikandel.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/frikandel.jpg" alt="" title="frikandel" width="500" height="375" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-188" /></a> (Picture by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjeemz/">sjeemz</a>)</p> <p>Danes, whenever you get to the Netherlands, have a taste of one of those. They're called <em>Frikandel Speciaal</em> and include mayonnaise, curry and unions. These things make me wonder about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology">etymology</a> of the word "Frikandel"... How can two societies only 700km apart use the same word for a completely different form of food? In any case, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frikandel">according to this article</a>, the Dutchies are alone with their usage of the word as in the rest of the world (Denmark included) it means "minced meat balls". (To be fair, the Frikandel was only introduced in the Netherlands <a href="http://www.telegraaf.nl/etenengenieten/3171647/__Frikandel_is_50_jaar__.html?p=16,1">50 years ago</a>.)</p> <h3>Easter (Påske)</h3> <p>As we're just going through Easter right now I start to notice a couple of differences. Easter in Denmark is a "bigger thing" than in the Netherlands. For example the Danes are getting two additional public holidays versus the Netherlands: both the (Maudy) Thursday and (Good) Friday before Easter the complete country comes to a grinding halt (as well as the actual Easter days of course). As with Christmas, the Danes brew a special beer during Easter called "<a href="http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A5skebryg">Påskebryg</a>". I'm surprised Heineken hasn't done this in the Netherlands yet!</p> <p><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/G%C3%A6kkebrev_2.JPG/200px-G%C3%A6kkebrev_2.JPG"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/G%C3%A6kkebrev_2.JPG/200px-G%C3%A6kkebrev_2.JPG" class="alignright" width="200" height="150" /></a>Another tradition is to write a poem on an intricately cut piece of paper and send it to someone else without giving your identity away (the so called "<a href="http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A6kkebrev">g&Atilde;&brvbar;kkebrev</a>"). The recipient get's three tries to guess the sender. If he or she fails to do so, it'll cost him/her a chocolate Easter egg. The tradition seems to have grown from Valentine's and it is not entirely clear to me if it is only done during Easter or with Valentine's as well.</p> <h3>Cultural Assessment</h3> <p>While I was reading the book <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/4057927/Outliers-The-Story-of-Success">Outliers by Malcom Gladwell</a> I stumbled across a chapter that went into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Hofstede">Geert Hofstede</a>'s framework for assessing cultural differences. I advice you to at least <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Hofstede">read the Wikipedia article on Geert's definitions</a> but to go short there are only <a href="http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php?culture1=62&amp;culture2=23#compare">2 big differences between Denmark and the Netherlands</a>:</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/culturaldiff.png"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/culturaldiff.png" alt="" title="culturaldiff" width="300" height="340" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-189" /></a></p> <p>Specifically, the Power Distance Index is much lower in Denmark indicating that Danes attach less import to status, will more readily speak up to their boss, etc. Or alternatively, the Dutch would attach more value to their status. The other metric that is substantially different is the Uncertainty Avoidance Index: "reflects the extent to which members of a society attempt to cope with anxiety by minimizing uncertainty. Cultures that scored high in uncertainty avoidance prefer rules (e.g. about religion and food) and structured circumstances, and employees tend to remain longer with their present employer".</p> <p>I must say that in my personal experience in Denmark I can attest to the Power Distance index. The Uncertainty Avoidance Index I can not relate to, to be honest.</p> <p>That is it for now. I hope this series of articles helps creating insight into the cultural differences one could expect between Denmark and the Netherlands. The next article will be about learning the Danish language, which I have slowly begun. For now I am starting three different approaches:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.pimsleurdanish.com/">Pimsleur's audio books</a> (via iTunes): trying this out in the car. I must say it really helps with the basics but when it gets a bit more difficult I miss seeing the words written down</li> <li>Small group lessons (yet to start)</li> <li><a href="http://www.myngle.com">Myngle</a>, founded by two ex-eBay colleagues of mine (<a href="http://www.myngle.com/blog/2007/07/27/introducing-another-teammember-egbert-van-keulen">Egbert</a> and <a href="http://www.myngle.com/blog/2007/07/26/meet-the-team">Marina</a>), is a language learning marketplace that delivers language classes through (eBay-owned) Skype. How can I resist?! :-) (<a href="http://www.myngle.com/users/majka78">Danish teacher</a>)</li> </ul> Synergy tips for Mac users http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/02/23/synergy-tips-for-mac-users/ Mon Feb 23 00:00:00 +0100 2009 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/02/23/synergy-tips-for-mac-users/ <p>Just installed the <a href="http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/">Synergy</a> application. (<a href="http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/about.html">Quick into here</a>.) If you have more than one computer you can use this to keep using one keyboard/mouse pair for all your computers on the network. You just move your cursor off the screen and onto the next computer without lifting your hands! Really neat. Also, clipboards are shared so that you can copy text from one computer and paste it onto the other one.</p> <p>My primary computer is a Mac Book Air, and as such it has "hot corners": the upper right corner for example shows my desktop. With synergy they are a bit hard to reach since you quickly move to the other PC. If you want to make it easy on yourself, just do the following in your configuration file:</p> <pre><code> air: right(10,90) = pc </code></pre> <p>Which defines the pc as being to the right of my laptop, but only starting from 10% of the screen until 90% of the screen, neatly disabling Synergy in the corners.</p> My Book Slide http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/02/16/my-book-slide/ Mon Feb 16 00:00:00 +0100 2009 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/02/16/my-book-slide/ <p>Inspired by Jurgen from Noop.nl, here is my book slide. I'll limit myself to the books that I just got though. You can find <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/ojilles/lists/IsRead#firstBook=0&amp;list=5&amp;sort=dateadded">my virtual bookshelf over at Shelfari</a>. This round of books are a bit sciency more so that others but that is predominantly the case due to George R R Martin still not having <a href="http://www.georgerrmartin.com/if-update.html">finished his next book</a>.</p> <p><em><a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/54118/The-Island-at-the-Center-of-the-World-The-Epic-Story-of-Dutch-Ma">The Island at the Center of the World</a></em> "<em>An epic story of dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America</em>"</p> <p>Inspired by a holiday I took last summer to New York and Miami I started interesting myself for the dutch influence and history on the island of Manhattan. Lots of facts have been pushed out of our collective memories nowadays. I'm hoping this book will let me in on some of the more arcane facts that surely must be out there.</p> <p><em><a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/36322/Surely-You-re-Joking-Mr-Feynman-(Adventures-of-a-Curious-Charact">Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!</a></em> "<em>Adventures of a curious character</em>"</p> <p>After <a href="http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8">watching a series of guest lectures</a> and having general interest and admiration on the LHC in Switzerland this seemed like a natural follow up. Feynman is both funny and really smart and was actually able to teach me a few things through his recorded lectures. Things like the LHC and books like <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/45918/Godel-Escher-Bach-An-Eternal-Golden-Braid">Godel, Escher, Bach</a>/<a href="http://www.shelfari.com/booksearch.aspx?keywords=Song+of+Ice+and+Fire">Song of Ice and Fire</a>/<a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/12276/The-Lord-of-the-Rings">Lord of the Rings</a> really strike a personal cord with me as I admire the epic scales these things take place at. Respect for those that dare to stick out their necks and <em>create</em> something!</p> <p><em><a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/4045910/The-Unfinished-Game-Pascal-Fermat-and-the-Seventeenth-Century-Le">The Unfinished Game</a></em> "<em>Pascal, Fermat and the Seventeenth Century Letter that made the World Modern</em>"</p> <p>A book on probability, a topic that recently found more and more interesting (read <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/21447/Critical-Mass-How-One-Thing-Leads-to-Another">Critical Mass</a>, <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/10015/The-Tipping-Point-How-Little-Things-Can-Make-a-Big-Difference">Tipping Point</a> and <a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/370531/The-Black-Swan-The-Impact-of-the-Highly-Improbable">Black Swans</a> couple of months ago). Especially the notion of "betting" on positive outliers (writing a book) vs. negative ones (stock market crash) seems an undervalued notion in our societies.</p> <p><em><a href="http://www.shelfari.com/books/4057927/Outliers-The-Story-of-Success">Outliers</a></em> "<em>The story of success</em>"</p> <p>Kind of the same reason why I included Outliers. Not sure what to expect really, but written by Malcolm Gladwell I can not imagine it is going to be a hard read.</p> Denmark compared to the Netherlands http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/12/20/denmark-compared-to-the-netherlands/ Sat Dec 20 00:00:00 +0100 2008 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/12/20/denmark-compared-to-the-netherlands/ <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/nl-vs-dk.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/nl-vs-dk.jpg" alt="" title="nl-vs-dk" width="325" height="93" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-159" /></a></p> <p>What follows is a first (necessarily) relative comparison between the Dutch culture and the Danish one on those aspects that stood out to me. Mind you, I wrote this after being in Aarhus, Denmark for the relatively short period of 2 months. Also, I chose to publish this before finishing all the topics I have in mind, I'll be looking to publish those later.</p> <p>I hope someone might find this interesting.</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/aarhus-1998.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/aarhus-1998-300x205.jpg" alt="Aarhus, Denmark. (c) Aarhus Kommune" title="aarhus-1998" width="300" height="205" class="size-medium wp-image-158 alignleft" /></a> I have been very fortunate with the chance my employer gave me by offering me a job in a foreign country that fitted precisely what I wanted to do next in my career. So there I was, finding myself moving to Aarhus, Denmark. I need to add that before this I had not been an expat before, having lived my life in the Netherlands. I hadn't even visited Denmark before.</p> <p>I knew well in advance that that this was happening and unconsciously I was starting to build up expectations. I figured there would be a lot of similarities: North-western country in Europe, socialist government, small, rainy. Some obvious differences I knew about as well. The Danish did not ratify the Euro as their currency, keeping their Danish Kroner.</p> <h3>Taxes</h3> <p>The first, and most obvious thing for Dutch (and perhaps other) expats moving to Denmark will be the taxes. The VAT in Denmark is 25% versus 19% in the Netherlands. Both DK and NL have what I call a bracketed income tax scheme: on the first X euro/DKK you earn, you pay Y% taxes. Both countries then define three or four brackets. In NL the highest percentage comes in at 52%, whereas in DK this goes up to 62%. A quick example: assume someone is earning 100 euro/DKK extra and is being taxed in the highest bracket. In the Netherlands that gives you 48 euro extra to spend, which gets further taxed (VAT) so you are able to purchase net goods for 40,30 euro. In comparison for DK you get to keep 38 DKK after income tax, and reducing it by the VAT you end up with 30,40 DKK. That is a whopping 25% less spending power. That is, unless...</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/taxes.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/taxes-300x154.jpg" alt="" title="taxes" width="300" height="154" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-160" /></a></p> <p>... you buy a car in Denmark. This is probably the most talked about feature of the Danish tax system abroad. New cars get marked up by the government tax system for 180%. Yes, that is hundred-and-eighty percent. Again, for comparison, in the Netherlands this is 42,3%. After hearing this it occurred to me that for some reason the Danish still get by as there are not an exceptionally large amount of really old cars on the road. I can not do a full comparison here since I do not know the first thing about what road-taxes and insurance premiums are doing in DK. But it is astonishing none-the-less.</p> <p>Now the Danish get payed more for a months work but up to this day it does not add up. There are other aspects where the difference in the economy becomes clear. For example, in the proverbial supermarket around the corner you will find much less fresh vegetables and such--I am assuming here that that becomes too expensive. In short, I do find life more expensive in Denmark.</p> <p>The upshot of this is that the health care is cheap, roads are fairly good (comparable to the Dutch roads), etc. The one thing that stood out for me were the two public TV stations: they are commercial free. Now when I say commercial free, I do not just mean movies do not get interrupted for commercials but in between movies there are no commercials. An absolute unexpected and pleasurable experience!</p> <h3>Family live, Work/Life balance</h3> <p>It becomes apparent quite quickly that what the Danish find important is different from what the Dutch find important. The amount of time the Danish spend indoors with their family and friends is much more. The Danes invite family and friends over for dinner. It is not that there are no restaurants, nor that there are not any people eating there but the difference is noticeable. You will find a similar story in bars for that matter. I have not spend enough time yet in Denmark to judge how easy it is to make friends outside work but the Danes will be the first to tell you that that is not easy: they are not really (as) open to this. The bonds that they entertain with their friends are presumed to be much stronger/long lasting...</p> <p>In terms of Work/Life balance I find it hard to make absolute statements since I don't think my personal W/L balance is quite typical for the Dutch. Even so, the Danes work 36 or 37 hours a week, start working days quite early (there is quite a portion of people with office jobs that start before 8am) but leave the office early as well. It is not an exception for danish offices to be empty at 16:00 or for stores to close around that same time. On Saturdays stores are not open the full day either. I am quite sure that it is an objective statement that the Danes make less hours per week than the Dutch. Please don't mistake this for "the Dutch work harder than the Danes", etc.</p> <h3>Traffic</h3> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/traffic-jamjp.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/traffic-jamjp-244x300.jpg" alt="" title="traffic-jamjp" width="244" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-161" /></a></p> <p>Traffic in Aarhus is light any which way you look at it. Of course there are cars as it is a city but I have not been in nor seen a traffic jam in Denmark. For someone that did an hour of traffic-jams per day this is a true blessing. Trying to determine the cause for that is way to complex but factors like car prices, bike-adoption, city planning, etc, come to mind. The Danes are a bit more rude in traffic than the Dutch, if someone would be pressing for my opinion.</p> <p>In terms of how the infrastructure is setup there are some differences though. I have definitely been caught a couple of times into the "trap" (as I keep feeling it is) of roads that go from one lane to two for all of 75 meters. This was quite confusing and I still do not understand the rationale behind this. I had a much more positive experience with traffic lights: they do signal orange before jumping to green which is handy and for bonus points extra sets of lights are mounted on the other side of the crossing which yields better views. Taking left turns on most crossings with traffic lights is invariably a pain as there is always oncoming traffic which is different from (most of) the Netherlands where oncoming traffic is stopped by the lights before you turn left.</p> <p>(<em>Update</em>: <a href="http://www.jilles.net/perma/2009/04/11/denmark-versus-netherlands-part-ii/">See here for part II in this series</a>)</p> My social network is changing http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/11/16/my-social-network-is-changing/ Sun Nov 16 00:00:00 +0100 2008 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/11/16/my-social-network-is-changing/ <p><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/img_0001-200x300.png" alt="Hyves social network screen shot on iPhone" title="img_0001" width="200" height="300" /></a></p> <p>Looking at this picture, I realized I was seeing a visualization of something I've been telling people around me: that it seems <em>everyone</em> in my social circle is having a baby. What you are looking at is one page of friends on a local social network in the Netherlands called <a href="http://www.hyves.nl">Hyves</a>.</p> <p>There are 6 babies depicted, out of the 12 possible (if you do not count some of the adults as babies). In, as a should I add, a "<em>random</em>" screen shot. It kind of underlines, for me, what has happened in the last 12 months: I can count at least 25+ couples/individuals that have been pregnant. All of which luckily delivered without any (lasting) incidents!</p> <p>Now I should not be surprised by this of course, statistics will have it that there are just not many 18 year olds that become pregnant, but still: it happens so fast!</p> <p>I guess these are the beginnings of a mid-life crisis?</p> PanoLab iPhone application http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/11/15/panolab-iphone-application/ Sat Nov 15 00:00:00 +0100 2008 http://www.jilles.net/perma/2008/11/15/panolab-iphone-application/ <p>Moving to a different country gives you more spare time, with which I can play. Just installed PanoLab on my iPhone, and I must say it works great. See the two examples below.</p> <p>This is the Den Bla Avis building (the company that created http://www.dba.dk) from their parking lot in the marina of Aarhus, Denmark:</p> <p><a href="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/img_0128.jpg"><img src="http://www.jilles.net/wp-content/img_0128.jpg" alt="" title="img_0128" width="500" height="128" /></a></p> <p>These are three pictures stitched together on the iPhone itself (and cropped in iPhoto on the MacBook Air).</p> <p>The PanoLab application works great, stitching the photos together is really user friendly. My only gripe with it is when exporting the results you need to crop to a certain size--I just want to export the whole picture.</p>