Monkey Blog - Home

Vijntje #3

2010-03-10T11:33:00Z

Give the dog a bone

2009-01-29T13:47:00Z

So here I am, one fine morning in Nai Harn, Phuket (Thailand), getting ready to go for a morning run with Elisabetta, when Scooby, a cocker spaniel from a few houses down the road, comes around and starts picking a fight with our friends’ Thai ridgeback, Caligola.

Caligola is a pretty big dog, but extremely friendly both towards humans and other dogs.

Good dog: Caligola

Bad dog: Scooby (well, a lookalike)

Scooby is a different story.

In any case, they’re at it tooth and nail and I’m starting to fear for Scooby’s health. Caligola is more than twice his size and much stronger and more agile. So, stupid me, I decide to intervene and try to pull Caligola off of Scooby (figuring Caligola is less likely to bite me). Dumb, dumb, dumb. Rule one of fighting dogs: don’t try to get between them unless you really know what you are doing. As soon as I took hold of Caligola, Scooby reached underneath Caligola and sank his teeth into my left shin. I managed to pry him loose and as other people stepped in to help, the dogs were finally separated.

Unfortunately for me, the damage was already done. One of Scooby’s canines had gone in all the way (about an inch) until it hit the bone. His other teeth left superficial scratches on my calf.

We immediately cleaned the wounds with peroxide and betadine, put on a provisional bandage, and went straight to the hospital. The surgeon there was impressed with the depth of the wound. After administering local anaesthetics, he opened up the wound and cleaned it out with saline solution and Betadine. Had I been in Holland, I’d have probably received stitches straight away and been told to come back a few days later to check for infection. However, in a climate such as Thailand, and me being a Farang, chances of infection are extremely high. So, doctors here generally don’t stitch up a wound immediately, but leave it open, cover it with gauze soaked in Betadine and bandage it, to be cleaned and changed daily until they are sure there is no sign of infection.

On top of that, I received tetanus and rabies shots and a bag full of antibiotics to be taken daily (and some painkillers, thankfully).

So, valuable lesson learned and pretty much the end of the holiday for me…

Fotozondagavond #45: Snow

2008-11-24T13:29:00Z

There was a lot of snow yesterday, but it was too friggin’ cold to go out and take a picture. I figured there’d still be snow this morning. There wasn’t. Much. Except on my car:

Kootje
Mo6

Fotozondagavond #44: Autumn

2008-11-23T12:40:00Z

Too lazy busy.

Fotozondagavond #43: Portrait

2008-11-02T19:05:00Z

Yay, here are mine (click to enlarge):

The first one is a happy accident. We just landed in Dubai and were sitting down for a jet-lagged breakfast (consisting of grilled seafood, but that’s another story). In any case, I was playing with my camera in the rather low light conditions and didn’t want to use my flash, for obvious reasons. The slow shutter speed resulted in a shot where the subject was captured both with his eyes closed and open. The resulting “ghost” lids over the eyes gives it a kind of spooky effect:

The second picture is just a self-portrait taken while zooming out (or in). I have a bunch of those (taken whenever I feel bored).

Other portraits:

Fotozondagavond #42: "Wasgoed"

2008-11-02T18:46:00Z

Nope, too lazy.

Fotozondagavond #41: Woods/Bunch ("Bos")

2008-10-01T19:25:00Z

Got one this time!!!

A view in the woods of Amsterdam. Sometimes, if you are real quiet, you come to a clearing in the dense forest and in the distance, you spot a shy crane. Careful not to disturb it, you slowly take out your camera to capture this rare occasion.

:-)

Other “Bos”:

Fotozondagavond #40: Persevering

2008-10-01T19:09:00Z

I’m not, others are:

Fotozondagavond #39: Then and Now

2008-10-01T19:03:00Z

Inspiration, but no time…. Love the theme though. Re-take of old photographs from your youth.

Clickage:

Update 2008-11-16

Done it. My sister and me, around 1971.

Fotozondagavond #38: Horizon

2008-10-01T18:58:00Z

Didn’t do anything, but these people did:

Running

2008-09-13T16:19:00Z

Next week Dam Tot Dam Loop, so training has now become earnest. Today I ran 14.5 km in 1h43m, that’s a rough 8.5 km/h. Not too shabby, my calves hurt a bit, and I’m a bit stiff, but overall it’s not bad at all. I’m beginning to think I might actually make it… :-)

XML::Parser or XML::LibXML?

2008-08-28T15:50:00Z

That’s an easy question to answer: XML::LibXML!

I have over 10,000 lines of XML input. Parsing it into a tree with XML::Parser takes about 0.77 seconds, while XML::LibXML is over ten times faster, clocking in at 0.07 seconds.

usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Benchmark qw( cmpthese timethese :hireswallclock );
use XML::Parser;
use XML::LibXML;

sub xml_parser {
    my $p1 = new XML::Parser(Style => 'Tree');
    my $tree = $p1->parsefile('database.xml');
}

sub xml_libxml {
    my $p1 = new XML::LibXML;
    my $tree = $p1->parse_file('database.xml');
}

my $results = timethese(15,
    {
        'XML::LibXML' => \&xml_libxml,
        'XML::Parser' => \&xml_parser,
    },
    'noc',
);
print "\n";
cmpthese($results);

The results are pretty damning:

XML::LibXML: 1.06607 wallclock secs ( 1.01 usr +  0.03 sys =  1.04 CPU) @ 14.42/s (n=15)
XML::Parser: 11.5305 wallclock secs ( 9.20 usr +  1.14 sys = 10.34 CPU) @  1.45/s (n=15)

              Rate XML::Parser XML::LibXML
XML::Parser 1.31/s          --        -91%
XML::LibXML 14.4/s       1005%          --

Now it’s off to write a schema for our wondrous XML dialect.

Fotozondagavond #37: Scary/Creepy/Narrow ("Eng")

2008-08-19T11:42:00Z

I figured I’d find some spiders and do a close-up of them, but then I realised they don’t scare me at all. Death does scare me a bit, but the Grim Reaper was not willing to pose.

In any case, last week we did have something that classifies as scary as well as narrow…

Take a look at this:

This is what Betta discovered last week when cleaning out one of our wardrobes. Note that the carpet and chipboard have already been removed here: the water had soaked through those and created mouldy patches. On first inspection we suspected a leaky pipe in the wall, but that wasn’t the problem.

I decided to take a peek under the floor in the crawl space (click to enlarge):

Kinda looks ok..

But, wait! What’s that?

Yep, the water from this tiny leak had been spraying against the bottom of our floor for who knows how long, soaking the wooden beams thoroughly.

Fortunately, a plumber was able to fix it in no time and now we have to wait for the floor to dry before we can cover it again.

Also, the plumber mentioned that the only piece of lead pipe we still have is from the front door to that leak. The rest (including the pipe going up to the other appartments) is already made of copper. So replacing that piece of lead is going to be relatively painless and quick.

Fotozondagavond #36: Still Life

2008-08-19T10:12:00Z

Late again.

Anyway, you can’t get any stiller than a cat. :-)

Ok, ok, here’s some more “real” still life…

More stillness:

Fotozondagavond #35: Depth of Field (DOF)

2008-08-08T14:07:00Z

Sunday? More like Friday. Yeah, I’m late.

A wet day last week:

Large aperture, close-up, click, click. Low DOF.

More (or less) DoF at: