Yet another medal in your newsfeed!
It’s high time for running, so it seems: I’ve recently completed the Ijsselsteinloop and now, two weeks later, a half marathon in Amersfoort. It’s been my second time on this event.
Amersfoort Marathon 2017
Tag: Amersfoort
The architecture of our time: Emoji building
What I like about the Dutch is how they manage to combine classic with contemporary, conservative with conspicuous. For instance, the modern Dutch architecture is usually quite geometrical and sober, with no gaudy elements. As you have a closer look, you suddenly spot emojis on the façade!
Vathorst, a young district in Amersfoort (where we once held our aikido demo), has recently got an apartment building with twenty-two emoticons picked from the popular messenger WhatsApp. I decided to take a look at this new attraction after I’ve read about it in the local news.
Amersfoort Marathon 2016
I’m just back from Amersfoort where I’ve quite successfully finished a half marathon, 21.1 km.
The day’s been a scorcher with 27 °C (81 °F) in the shade. On the Dutch scale it’s a lot, and with a clear blue sky you feel like being roasted.
Shodan: 11 years on the way
Last weekend, on March 19, 2016, the author of these lines has qualified for the first dan Aikido Aikikai.
On the subject of running
The year is coming to an end again, with so much left to run. I can’t repeat my 2013’s record of 800 km this year—in 2015 I’ve only run some 600 km. Not because I’m lazy, but due to being more active in aikido.
Houten’s “bike avenues” are great to run on, also because there are not so many bikes using them at the time when I’m running, that is in the evening and during the weekend.
Aikido demo at Vathorstdag 2014
Even though I’ve now settled in Houten, I keep visiting Amersfoort now and then. I’m still doing aikido with Joginder Singh.
On September 7th our dojo gave a demo on a “district day” Vathorstdag 2014 (Vathorst is the district in Amersfoort our dojo is in), just like six years ago.
I didn’t participate this time, but was filming instead. There was also another cam, so the idea was to put both footages together nicely, and I volunteered for that.
I’ve tried a number of video editors for Linux, most of them proved to be utterly unusable (Pitivi wouldn’t allow me to edit track properties, OpenShot lacked the very basic timeline shift function, Shotcut quit abruptly after adding a clip, Kino is discontinued long time ago). Finally I’ve tried Kdenlive, and that one is absolutely fantastic! I was surprised how quick and hassle-free video editing can be nowadays. All in all it took me about a couple of hours, including the final render.
The result is under the cut:
Netherlander!
I haven’t been actively blogging lately, and that’s not because nothing is happening. Quite the opposite, I can barely find time these days, so let me share the most important stuff with you.
Inevitable happened: my journey into an alternative reality I’ve embarked on exactly six years ago is now complete. A few days ago I’ve oficially become Dutch, a citizen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Little blue train
This cute little blue vintage train was spotted today at the Amersfoort Central train station:
Whether it’s a well-maintained old piece or just a mockup, I don’t know.
How I became a Bob
Aikikai Amersfoort website
I’ve done something useful in my spare time. I crafted a website for my aikido school (or dojo) called Aikikai Amersfoort, which is now located at aikikai-amersfoort.nl.
The former website was really ancient-looking, built back in 2004 and totally outdated. For example, one had to download an .avi file if they wanted to watch a video. YouTube did not exist at that remote moment.