This week it is donor week in the Netherlands. If you have ever seen any serious medical TV series, you may realize that organ donation is a controversial topic. It is not something we like to think about, death. Aside from the metaphysical questions about what happens after one dies, the realization that ones life will eventually end gives me the creeps to be frank. It is also not a pleasant thought to imagine a doctor coming up to you, asking to cut open your very recently deceased loved one to harvest his or her liver, or heart, or eyes.

On the flip-side however, suppose your loved one has a serious heart condition that can only be treated with a heart transplant. Personally, I could understand, but would not appreciate another persons choice not to give up the organs he or she has no use for any more in death. Luckily, thus far I can only imagine such a situation. The reality of the matter however is that there are many people around the world who do not have the luxury of simply imagining this. Their loved ones are dying. Even more people now live with the loss of a friend, parent, spouse or a child because no organs were available at the time. Or worse, the organs were there, but they were eventually buried or cremated because the deceased never even thought of donation or ‘never took the time to register’.

I am a bit ashamed to say that I am the latter person. I never took the time to register as organ donor. I am not religious, I do not believe my organs have any value whatsoever after death, I am not concerned for the people at my funeral having to look at a body that has been emptied. I also understand how important organ donation is, how many lives even one organ donor can save, and what impact this has on the friends and families of the recipient. But I never took the time. Until this week.

Registering for organ donation felt like a really good thing to do. Well, when filling out the form, and after submission that is. Pressing the actual submit button that made my registration official did give me the creeps a bit. One misconception about organ donation is that doctors refuse help to a severely injured person, just to harvest the organs. And I must honestly admit, for a split second that thought did cross my mind when I moved to submit my registration form. Then again, that is a trust issue that is always present when going into a hospital, isn’t it? When you go in for a surgery, any surgery, there is always risk of complications. Even with an appendectomy (removal of the appendix) there is a risk of death. So one has to trust the doctor to do his or her best to not let you die. Still, people go in and have their appendix removed around the world, every day. Is it therefore not logical to place the same level of trust regarding a physicians’ assessment whether you are dead or alive?

In any case, I am proud to be wearing the tag of organ donor. And to any friend or family member reading this, even though it is not something pleasant to think about, I really do not wish for anyone to interfere with this decision should I die. I believe I could be content if the roles were reversed and the death of someone I loved may have helped in saving one or more lives.

The donor week kicked off with a 12 hour radio program, where every hour another DJ stated his or her views on donation (all in favour I reckon of course). By the end of the day, almost 9000 people had registered, against almost 900 who decided not to become a donor. If you wish to know more about this campaign, more information can be found on http://donorweek.nl/ (in Dutch).

The plants survived a hot summer, and later on a cold one, stood through a couple of decent storms, and they’re still standing. Only now they’re fruitless, litterally.

Below are two pictures of the harvested bell peppers and one red pepper (the other peppers were already harvested, and are either drying, or have already been cut up to make some delicious massala chicken). The rest of the plants are going to enjoy a couple months rest inside the house (most of them can’t withstand the cold). Tonight I’ll be enjoying some (hopefully) incredibly rich tasting vegetables though ^^

Yesterday however, through quite a coincidence, we found ourselves surrounded by horses, damsels, swords, dogs, hell, even a true African owl. It turned out that there was a Knights’ festival in the city park. Despite the rising levels of hotness we decided to go check it out, after all, how often do you find a medieval festival right around the corner?

Honestly, I was expecting to find a handful of medievally clad people, a couple of tents and some shoddy ‘knights’ in plastic armour. I was pleasantly surprised. The ladies wore beautiful gowns, the knights wore authentic replicas of medieval armour, and there were many people just sitting around their tents surrounded by authentically made pottery and carpentry. We even got to find out how chain mail was made in the olden days.

There were also a couple of demonstrations, like a bird-show, a hunting demonstration, and the most exciting of them all, a jousting event. There would also have been a melee fight between knights, however, due to the heat, they opted to cancel that particular event. Fighting hand-to-hand combat, when the sun is at it’s highest, wearing full armour weighing at approximately 35 kg ís of course a tad bonkers.

After surviving the hottest part of the day happily sipping Murphy’s from lovely glazed earthenware (which you were allowed to bring home, yay), júst when we were about to leave for home, the jousting event started. As expected, this turned out the be a very exciting show, where the opponents’ shield shattered lances more often than not.

It was a good day.

Knights’ Festival Gallery

Last autumn, I decided I wanted to grow some herbs. Just some coriander, thyme and basil, in a homemade greenhouse. I could go into details, but to save some time, let’s just say it was no success. So, when spring came, I decided to try again, this time with a little better understanding of what not to do: Gardening tip #1. Do not use the cheapest potting soil you can buy at the local grocery store, it most likely contains plant material that has not completely decomposed. As such, adding water, and placing it in a warm spot may (which happened to me) promote larvae growth. Those little buggers were particularly attracted to the newly sprouted roots of the seedlings. Attempt number 2 was therefore not a huge success either…

So, attempt number 3. Went to local gardening shop, picked up some 50kg of potting soil, and a baggy of seed mix soil. Additionally, growing from seed takes a while, so I also decided to buy me a few bell pepper and red pepper plants, a bay leaf  ‘tree’, an olive tree, and a tomato plant. The first 6 images were taken on June 6, the latter ones 20 days later…

I especially like how the thyme and the coriander has exploded. Additionally, sowing thyme directly outside in potting soil seems to be a bad thing. Of all the seeds I sowed, only a handful actually sprouted… I therefore tried it once more indoors. Coriander on the other hand was no problem, it’s sow, wait a week, watch it grow for a couple of days, and then start and keep harvesting to delay flowering (I was not as persistent with the harvesting, hence it has started flowering already).

As for the bay leaf, it’s a slow growing tree (as far as I can see at least). It will be a while before I dare harvesting leafs on a regular basis. The olive and citrus will probably not set any fruit until years later, but that’s ok, I want them to grow into nice large healthy trees anyway. The tomatoes, well, a couple of them at least should be ready for harvesting soon.

I really love to watch this stuff grow, and such a small balcony based ‘garden’ doesn’t take too much of my time either. The best part however, was about two weeks ago, when I harvested some coriander and used it in a curry I quite frequently make. This curry is based on Jamie Oliver’s vegetable jalfrezi. I make it non-vegetarian by adding chicken fillet, and leaving out some of the vegetables, such as the cauliflower. It’s a very nice dish, doesn’t take too much work to make either (it’s best to prepare the curry in the morning/afternoon, and let it cool down during the day, ensuring a better blending of the tastes). However, when I added the homegrown coriander, it turned into something completely different, as the fresh coriander has an incredibly strong scent and taste. Honestly, I can not wait to try out the other herbs/fruits/vegetables growing right now, to see if those have the same taste enhancing properties.

So, I bought a new (second hand) amplifier. Incidentally, it turns out to be much better than the one I used to have, even though that was a good one to begin with. And the problem was fixed. I rejoiced and spent quite some time annoying the neighbors with a much richer sound system. Until it broke again…

Now, as the title suggests, there’s a reason here for me to mention mental models. It is a phenomenon used to describe a person’s understanding of something, as a mental representation. For example, if you flip a light switch, the light turns on. Therefore, your mental model would entail something like ‘the light switch acts as a gate for electricity to flow towards the light bulb’. If you flip the switch, and nothing happens, you might conclude that the light bulb is broken. Upon replacing the bulb with a new one, the light switch once more turns the lamp on and off, and you update your mental model with this information: ‘when the switch is flipped, and the light doesn’t come on, the lamp is probably broken’.

My mental model of my previous amplifier is a good example of a model being wrong. Whenever the sound was not reaching the right speaker and whenever I jiggled the speaker cable, most of the time the sound would come on again. Therefore, my mental model was reinforced with the ‘fact’ that jiggling the cable, which in turn led me to believe the contact between the cable and the output port was impaired, ‘fixed’ the problem. My solution, to buy a new amp was therefore correct. However, my mental model was not: after buying the new amp, the problem returned. It would seem that the sound returning only coincided with the jiggling of the cables. This led to a faulty mental model. Now, sleep won’t be lost over this, on the contrary: I’ve got a sweet new (old) amp.

However, in 1989 there was a plane that crashed near Kegworth (Leicestershire, UK), because of a similar faulty mental model of the pilots. The story there was, that one of the engines broke down, causing a vibration throughout the plane. The pilots identified the engine responsible and turned it off and at that exact same moment, the vibration stopped. However, it turned out that they were wrong, and when they realized the wrong engine was turned off, it was already too late. The result was the tragic loss of 47 lives (Besnard, Greathead & Baxter, 2004). For a complete account of this crash, and the influence mental models may have had, I suggest you read the article at the bottom of this post, it is not too difficult a read.

Anyway, I tried everything to fix the problem that didn’t include me unnecessarily buying more stuff: switching cables, changing cables, replacing parts in the entire system where I could, reinstalling/updating audio drivers. But nothing worked. I eventually brought the amp and the speaker to the store where I bought both the amp and the speakers, to see if they could find the problem. They could not. The problem couldn’t even be reproduced in the store (and not from lack of trying). In the mean time, the missus’ miniset we had hooked up to the pc started displaying the same problem. So, that left us with only one possible solution, replace the cable between pc and amp.

So far it works fine. Let us hope it stays this way… In any case, I believe this to be a good illustration of how a faulty mental model can cause incorrect decisions based on your perceptions. So the next time, something is not working as it should, remember your mental representation might not be entirely accurate. Additionally, I really should’ve headed the advice given by my instructor to become an audio technician, a course I once had: ‘when there’s something wrong with the sound, ALWAYS check the cables first. In 99% of all cases, the problem lies there’. He was right again…

References:
Besnard, D., Greathead, D., & Baxter, G. (2004). When mental models go wrong: co-occurrences in dynamic, critical systems. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 60, pp. 117-128.

I like the spring. It’s like waking up from a long night, filled with loads of darkness, rain, snow and coldness. It’s like, well, a sunny spring morning, with the smell of dew and the songs of birds. Additionally, my own birthday is in March, so that’s another good thing about spring

Every year, I am filled with joy when walking to class, or work, on a bright and warm morning. And for some reason, my prime choice of music to listen to, falls to the very ‘unspringy’ genre of rap. For those who don’t know me very well, I am no fan of rap-music in particular. Sure there is the occasional song that I like, but mostly, I find it quite uninteresting to hear people talk (more so than actually singing) about their cars, their bling, their money, and the ho’s, or about how tough they are and how many people they’ve killed.

One rap group in particular that never seems to bore me, is Captain Dan and The Scurvy Crew. This, as the name suggests, is a group that makes novelty Pirate rap. And whether you like it or not, the life of a pirate is a perfect topic to rap about. It has the ubercool vehicles, the bling, the money, the roundthecorner Sallies and to be sailing the seven seas, you would have to be tough. The thing I find most puzzling however, is how, as I mentioned, do not particularly like the songs about the killing and the toughness, but additionally, I never really liked pirates either, but I do the songs by Captain Dan.

It is weird that the combination of two things I do not like, make something I do. Maybe, mathematics has gotten it wrong all along and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whatever the reason, the time of year has come once more where I can bob along with the Yarr’s and Scurvy’s wearing a big grin on my way to work.

The game can be found here (opens in new window)

It is a very simple game, just matching simple shapes, and clicking the corresponding shapes as fast as possible, but it gets the job done.

If you wish to see the highscores, you can view them here (opens in new window)

Have fun ^^

Strangely, when programming, the drum and bass doesn’t work too well either. So, I was looking around to find some other music and I stumbled on the soundtrack of GTA IV, or more specifically, the CD containing the radio station ElectroChoc.

This, obviously fictional, radio station plays electro house, and I must say, the songs on there are awesome, especially the remix by SebastiAn, of Kavinsky’s song Testarossa. This song has that great 80′s feel, that is, you put it over Knightrider’s intro movie and it’s retro.

However, after a couple of repeats of the album, it starts to wear a little thin, so, I set out to find an actual web radio playing the same kind of music and I found a station called http://www.electrobeats.eu/index.php?lang=en (most of the website is in German though). This radio station plays a nice collection of electro house mixes and remixes.

Most of the songs I don’t know, and some of them are remixes of songs I do. However, at some point, a very familiar song came by, namely Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden – Bonkers. Now, I do not know much of the Dutch hitlists, and I don’t know if anyone here has ever heard it, but, it was a great hit in the UK in the summer of 2009, when me and the missus where there on vacation. Also, bonkers is just a lovely word to say… Another song that caught my ear was by Frauenarzt & Manny Marc, called Das Geht Ab, which is great because I am a sucker for German music for some reason.

In any case, I expect to get a lot more music suggestions of this web radio, and if you like electro house at all, or are ever in need of new music to listen to while doing stuff that requires fairly easy-to-listen to music, I encourage you to turn on Electrobeats.

Well, I’m not going to do any of that.

For my first post, I’ll keep things brief. So here it is: I’ll be making some massala chicken today, enjoy a nice evening with the missus and a friend, and I will be back later, to talk about my MSc project I recently started. Stay tuned