"Koekhappen" is a traditional Dutch children's game on birthdays. "Cake biting" would be the literal translation. You dangle a piece of cake from a wire overhead and the child gets to try and bite in it, possibly blindfolded.

Don't ask your technically educated husband (that is: me) to do that. Some people honestly don't believe there's such a thing as "overengineering". I took a solid piece of rope; attached three smaller cords to it; attached a short cocktail stick to the end; drilled nice round holes in a couple of cakes (with an apple drill); looped the cocktail stick through it.

The good thing is that we can reuse this every year. The other good thing is that I had fun.

I'm not a terribly good presenter, but there's one thing I don't have: fear of presenting as such. I'll tell you why in the next paragraph. Anxiety whether people will like what I'm going to tell: yes. But it doesn't matter to me whether there are 3, 30, 300 or 3000 people in the room. Well, I've only tested it till 300.

As a first-year student at Delft University, I joined a student club . Feburary was the month in which the club's birthday was celebrated. One of the activities was a simple debating contest which I participated in. The first round was at the club itself, with just 15 people around or so, so that didn't scare me.

What did scare me was the second round: at the theater evening with some 80 people present, right dead smack center on the stage. That prospect scared me.

When I came on stage, they put the main spotlight on me and my opponent. The result: you were blinded and couldn't see the audience. Only the bright light. So I could concentrate on the debating contest. No fear as you couldn't see the audience anyway. So I noticed I could speak for 80 people without being eaten or getting shot at.

The realisation that I talked center-stage in front of 80 people helped me a lot. The number of people never bothered me anymore after that. A valuable life experience!

I'm naturally introvert: all the basics to be afraid. But my fear of spotlights was cured by spotlights :-)

I've been quite distracted today by a fire at my former university (technical university Delft, the Netherlands). I studied there at the civil engineering faculty. My building was next to the architecture department's ("bouwkunde"). This morning that building caught fire. No casualties, but the building is a complete write-off. (Photo by praeseodymium )

In that picture there's one spot of visible fire. Three meters to the side and one floor down (approximately, I don't remember the very exact floor) was where I had the meeting with the chairman of my PhD committee. And another floor down was the office of one of my supervisors. Yuck. And the office next to hers and the one next to that: both PhD colleagues that I met quite often. Yuck. It comes pretty close that way.

It was only little more than a year ago that I was inside the building for some small conference...

Update: ok, those rooms that I mentioned: that part of the building just collapsed. You can see the dangling floorplates in this photo . Update 2: and there's a video of the collapse (after 40 seconds).

Tags: bouwkunde, tudelft

When you're working at the EU parliament, you apparently can only open microsoft word documents. When an EU citizen sends you an ISO ODF (more or less "open office") document, you cannot read it. And, the other way around, if as a citizen you want to watch the live streaming of the EU parliament sessions, you'll need microsoft's media player for it.

Wow, that's a pretty hefty lock-in. Despite many parliament decisions being in favor of openness (for instance for railway security systems). So there's now a petition , started by parliament members, for more openness. They're using a plone site for it, btw.

A good summary is at the ZEA partners website .

It is now slightly more than five years since my first blog post here on vanrees.org . 14 April 2003 . That's at least what my current blog software shows. I know I had some other items on an earlier website that was running on my university workstation, but I won't count that.

Nowadays the topic is mostly plone and some personal things (like video's of model railway shows). The plone stuff shows up on planet.plone.org, I filter out the rest. So if you're reading my weblog through planet.plone.org: you're missing (or not... :-) ) something.

The best feedback I got: my conference and sprint summaries. I'm apparently able to provide good accurate summaries in a ridiculously short turnaround (=practically live) time. Time to hone that skill in the next few days when I'm attending the grokkerdam sprint, though my brother Maurits is already doing that, so I might wanna try my hand at some limited video blogging instead :-)

Tags: plone, grok

Part of my personal capabilities series .

A Belbin teamroles inventory (to me) is the most useful test you can do both as a team and as an individual that works in teams.

The basic summary is that, within a given group, people tend to fulfil one or more of 8 basic roles. If you miss a role in your group, you can be hampered; other roles have a one-person-only-please limit. Remember that person that always seems to end up taking charge? Are you the person that ties up the loose ends? Are you constantly spewing forth new ideas?

Each role comes with strengths and with weaknesses. I'll illustrate it by giving some personal examples. I've done the test a few times over the course of 6 years. Three times in a university setting, once just by myself on the internet and once at my current workplace Zest software .

My number one role: monitor/evaluator (Dutch: waarschuwer). Consistently the number one. In every test. And with a, for this role, ridiculous high score. I'm smart and I can analyse well. A definition of this role is "you have a capacity for shrewd judgements that take all factors into account and you seldom give bad advice". Not that I don't make mistakes, but if I really advice against something, I'm often right.

Some drawbacks that I notice in myself. I can be long winded: talking for a long time so that everybody loses my point. Critical and intelligent also equates often to distant and cold. And there's a risk of slamming an overly negative brake on creative discussions and processes.

A point about drawbacks: some drawbacks are allowed drawbacks. They're a package deal. If you want the benefits of a monitor/evaluator, you'll just have to learn to live with some of those attached drawbacks. At the same time, those drawbacks are something I want to be aware of so that I can limit their detrimental effect.

Numbers two and three: company worker/team worker (Dutch: bedrijfsman of teamwerker) and shaper (Dutch: vormer). In the earliest tests company worker was the clear number two, in the more recent ones the shaper takes that spot. I've got a story that illustrates I really have some shaper characteristics later on.

A company worker is loyal (something that's really strong in me). Perfectly willing to do nasty or menial tasks. I can translate goals or customer wishes into practical tasks. Brainstorming how to convert a goal into specific tasks is one of the things I like most.

As a company worker, the demands of practical work can make me a tad conservative. A finely honed system or work approach: don't throw it away before its time. And if I see no practical use in something, it is virtually impossible to motivate me (though loyalty goes a long way).

The second number two spot candidate: shaper. I totally do not fit the "nervous energy" and "aggressive extroverts" characteristics you often see in descriptions of this type! I do have a tendency and desire to technically structure the projects I'm working on or the processes I'm working with. Doing design work on the architecture. Writing programs/scripts that are used to manage the software. Keeping the overview, juggling tasks (and people to do them). If there are obstacles of if there is a looming deadline: I don't mind that much and I'll continue functioning, structuring and pushing myself (or others) along. A shaper is said to be one of the most effective members of a team in guaranteeing positive action.

One of the Belbin summaries I have lists the following three drawbacks that I recognize: prone to provocation, irritation and a tendency to offend others. Those are listed under the heading "allowable weaknesses" but I severely dislike them. Having a technical argument: OK. Being part of a war in a student club: OK, a long as you still can play on the same soccer team with the opponents. But offending persons: bah.

The story with the shaper-drawback that I mentioned. We did this Belbin test with a couple of PhD candidates and got split into two groups afterwards to do some task. We soon discovered that the groups were divided in the most sub-optimal way possible :-) In my group were 4 finishers: ready to do a lot of work and waiting for instructions. And I was the 5th member and my shaper role came front and center: 4 people waiting for structure and instructions. That's what they asked for and what they got. But in the feedback round afterwards I got some hefty feedback that I had given structure, but that I had also driven a 40 ton main battle tank over some quite sensitive feet. Ouch.

For projects, I can function well both as a shaper and as a company worker. In the first case, I try to maintain the overview and try to steer the process and try to have a lot of influence on the architecture. In the second case I'm a loyal team member that gets tasks done.

A couple of weeks ago I read two related things. First was a suggestion to learn to describe yourself in a maximum of 8 words. Probably Tom Peters or Seth Godin. A few hours later I saw Steve Pavlina request people to describe him in three words . Hey, that's a good idea! And I went off in search of spouse and colleagues.

I got feedback from 9 persons total, in a mix of Dutch and English words. That mix probably results in some loss of nuance. On the other hand, it allows me to group mostly-similar items.

Three items were mentioned three times:

• Smart/intelligent. Well, yes :-)
• Headstrong. (Dutch: eigenwijs/onbuigzaam/standvastig). Stubborn, obstinate. If I believe something to be true, I really believe it.

  My PhD topic's solution gained exclamations like "sheer idiocy", "that will never work" and "that is heresy". I did not listen and did not do the same non-working thing that others had done before me.

  A problem I have with a technical discussion: sometimes both "sides" are mostly right, they're just a different technical choice. With the same goal in mind. I can be headstrong in favour of my opinion.

• Driven/dedicated. (Two were Dutch: gedreven, gepassioneerd). I sometimes stay up till 5:00 in the morning to finish off a particular bug or customer problem. (As an aside: a common defence tactic I use is by being non-dedicated to something that I don't like. Passive resistance.)

Three items were mentioned twice:

• Efficient.
• Friendly.
• Thorough. (Dutch: grondig).

And 11 items were mentioned once. Conservative; deep thinker (diepe denker); helpful (hulpvaardig); introvert; lax (laks); open mind (open blik); owl; tranquil (kalm); sympathetic (sympathiek); to the point; self-confident (zelfverzekerd).

So, thanks to all that send me three words. If someone else wants to send me his or her three words that best describe in their opinion: please do send them to me (reinout@vanrees.org). Also other feedback: much appreciated.

This experiment has been helpful to me. Good to see how others perceive me. And helpful to prod me to keep improving my strengths (smart, dedicated, efficient, friendly, thorough) and to watch out for steam-rolling over other peoples' toes (driven, headstrong).

I got off the train in Utrecht tonight and saw a train with seats that were covered with protective plastic. It took me 20 seconds to wake up, but this was a new type of train.

It is the new series 2400, based on existing German trains. Intended for the commuter traffic and the stop services. Looks very solid and neat. I managed to capture it on video while leaving Utrecht: it runs smoothly.

I'm looking forward to traveling in it!

Together with Annie, I watched I am legend in the movie theater last night. I've never felt so cheated by a movie trailer before: nothing told me it was largely a movie about zombies.

A well-done movie. A technically good movie. A New York is nice when overgrown movie. A Will Smith acts well movie. A wonderfully depicted relation with his dog movie. A horror zombie movie.

Nothing wrong with a horror movie on a friday night while I'm ironing the laundry. Quite a lot wrong with a horror movie if you expect an action movie in a weird setting with some what-has-happened-here suspense. Especially when you're going out with your wife. Next time, I'll do a little more googling before going to such movies. Next ones on our list: Elisabeth: the golden age and, if it is still around, the golden compass.

I took Rianne to the "Nederlandse modelspoordagen 2008" in Rijswijk (NL). A model railway show. Not the biggest in the Netherlands. Attractive as it is well-organized, not too crowded, catering is good, catering doesn't equal highway robbery (as in: the prices are very decent), etc.

The first highlight for me was Loek Bronkhorst's N layout. It was always crowded in front of his layout: the only place in the entire show where you had to wait in line! Spectacular because it would change slowly from night to day and back again. And the lighting at night... Even the moving car had headlights: we're talking 1:160 scale here! The street lights looked very natural.

The second highlight: La gare de St. Artois . A small layout, can't have been more than 90 cm wide. A quiet narrow gauge station at the end of a small line. I liked the smallness and the good level of detail. When your 5 year old daughter points you towards a set of flowers "hey, daddy! sun flowers!", the builder of the layout has done something right.

Also good at St Artois: the way the landscape was modeled. The station tracks were surrounded by higher grounds on  three sides, just one corner was "at track level". It pulls you right into the layout that way.

Hans Kaas paints railway motives and he's recently published a book with his paintings . I liked them a lot. See the low-resolution image below. I'm actually debating buying one of his paintings. The price is less than I feared (some 225 Euro for most of them if I read the price list correctly). Still high for our budget, though they're worth it. I'll let it simmer in the back of my mind for a while.

Procrastination . Today I did a quick re-read of the main points of Neil Fiore's book about procrastination: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. When I read it the first time, 2.5 years ago, I marked up the important sections with a pencil. With some help of the faster reading book I read a few weeks ago, the pencil marks allowed me to zip through it in 1.5 hours. Nice.

My goal: remind me of the important points of the book. The book gave me good input when I first read it, having been a procrastinator for a long time, especially during my studies. Well, time for a summary!

Procrastination is a defense mechanism. You're getting pressure from yourself; from a critical parent; from circumstances; whatever. When you can't cope with it effectively, procrastination is an (ineffective) coping strategy that's almost always available.

The goal of the book is to get you from procrastinator to producer. The number one strategy that helped me: change your language. Of all the characteristics that separate producers from procrastinators, none is more liberating than the producer's focus on "choice" and "choosing". So ring an internal warning bell every time you say "I have to" and "I must". Even if your boss is going to fire you right away if you don't do xxxxx, don't say "I have to do xxxxx", but say "I choose to do xxxxx". You are making a concious adult decision to do it, right? The number one tip.

For a productive life, you need guilt-free play. I'm going to a model train exhibition with my 5 year old daughter tomorrow. I have not a single doubt that that's a good and fun thing to do. And I've known that all week. Knowing I am going to do that tomorrow might have made me more productive. It will definitively recharge me for another round of productive work next week. Playing guilt-free is essential.

An example. Being a christian, the sunday theoretically "ought to be" pretty work-free. Halfway my procrastination-filled student days, I made the concious decision to treat the sunday as a gift: a really study-free day. It is intended that way. That made a difference in my weekly schedule: finally a day to recuperate without guilt! Time to hang out with friends after the morning service, sipping coffee. Having dinner at my place of at a friend's place in the evening and popping open a bottle of wine and having some great conversations. Guilt-free!

Another suggestion to overcome procrastination: paint a good picture of the current situation, the goal, the work involved, etc. An invaluable motivator in the last 1.5 years of my loooooooong study (it took me 9 years, 5.5 is about average) was a *full, online, public list of courses I still had to do. On my own website. And I kept it up to date: showing the courses that I made; the dates of the examinations; my plan on when to do them. A great motivator as I was getting credit for finishing off those courses. And it felt great to publicly check them off on the webpage when done. It forced me to make a plan, which made the whole daunting task of "finishing my study" much less threathening.

A final quote from the book: one of the best-kept secrets of succesful producers is their ability to let go of goals that cannot be achieved or started in the near future. Make choices. Make realistic choices. And don't be afraid to postpone something explicitly. But make sure you have a system that makes you re-view those choices at a later date.

If you're procrastinating, I highly recommend this book. The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

Two days ago was 15 January 2008. One year ago I defended my thesis and became a PhD. Hurray :-) Still happy with it.

Quite a load came off my shoulders that day: it was the final deadline of an (in my case) 5.5 year project. There's so much that to be done before that and at the end there are numerous deadlines (all the signatures of the professors by this date, all their comments on that date, the final copy has to go to the printer, etc). Quite a lot of stress. So many tasks disappeared out of my to-do list that day.   There are two loose ends I still have to tie up:

• My professor, Frits Tolman, invited me to work on a summary paper. I didn't   do much beyond brainstorming. In the mean time, another author has left the   university. I think I'd best shelve that for the moment.
• A former colleague, Kees Woestenenk, wrote an article with highly critical   comments on   my thesis. There are a lot of factual errors in that article, so any   rebuttal would be quite critical by consequence. I've made a start, but   stopped after a few pages: the content just wasn't positive. This is   something I'll have to finish off, though. Which I just   did .

I like to read, so naturally faster reading sounds attractive to me. I always have a number of yet-unread books. I bough a book about speed reading once and came away severly unimpressed: you got a set of fixed prescriptions for faster reading. And some of them just weren't handy.

Hurray, I've now found a faster reading book that works. Abby Marks Beale's 10 Days to Faster Reading. Divided into 10 chapters, every chapter:

• Tests your reading speed with a short exercize. You can track your progress this way. I progressed from some 350 words per minute to 600.
• Gives a new "pointer". "Pointer" being a guidance system for your eye. Where the original book I read only prescribed one, this book acknowledges that there are multiple strategies that could work in different situations and for different persons. I've got three that I use regularly.
  • My favourite: put a finger in the right hand margin of the text, just a bit below the line you're currently reading. Slowly move it downward while reading the text. I get both a bit of rythm from this and my eye has a handy "hit point" in the right margin. (Describing it is hard).
  • Business card above (definitively NOT below!) the line you're reading. Move it down slowly. This technique makes it harder for me to jump back a line to re-read something. That's exactly the number one point that slows me down!
  • Finger in the middle of a narrow newspaper column. If you've practiced enough and if the column is narrow enough, you can spot the whole line as one chunk of text. No more horizontal eye movement. Something I need to be well-rested for. It sometimes helps me a lot in flying through a newspaper.
• Discusses the theory of faster reading. You get background on why things work and on why certain reading strategies are (counter)productive. Every chapter also aims at different types of reading material: you might need to adapt your style to what you're reading.

One closing comment: this is about "normal" faster reading, not about "diagonal reading" or so in which certain people apparently can go through a book with only 4 seconds per page or so. No: this book is highly practical and applicable. Strongly recommended!

A few days ago, the final 1.0 of omnifocus was released. Omnifocus is a wonderfully polished "Getting things done" (GTD) application for OSX. I've been following the beta releases for a few months now and the quality of the software humbles me, being a software developer myself. Solid, reliable, userfriendly, handy.

Over the weeks, I'll think I'll add a few entries (look at the GTD tag) telling you how I use omnifocus. Here are some initial ideas that seem to work well for me.

• Weekly repeating items. I don't want to be bugged constantly by items that I   want to do once per week. But I do want to do them about once every week   (review plone.net, review projects, clean out desk). I   especially don't want constant deadlines for them. The solution in   omnifocus? Set them to start 1 week from now ("+1w" is the handy shortcut),   give them a due date 2 weeks from now and set them to repeat themselves   every two weeks, starting 1 week from the completion date.

• I've ordered my projects into three folders. One purely work-related   ("customers"). One purely personal ("personal"). And one in-between   ("plone/skills/maintenance"). In the last category are open source projects   that I might work on at work or at home. And planning work like doing a   weekly review with omnifocus: that touches both home and work.
• Above three project groupings are what I use as omnifocus "perspectives". A   perspective is just a saved view/filter. So I have a "work planning"   perspective showing the work projects and the mixed projects. And a "home   planning perspective with the personal and the mixed projects. Same for the   accompanying "home tasks" and "work tasks" perspectives which shows the   context view instead of the project view (you'll have to know omnifocus or   look at the 15 minute introduction video   to understand those terms). That "mixed" set of projects is essential for me   to maintain my sanity :-)

  Tags: gtd, omnifocus

I saw Ricky Spears' list of books he read in 2007 and thought "such a list is a great idea. So I delved into my memory and came up with a reasonably complete list of books I read in 2007. I didn't include the ones I re-read in 2007 :-)

L.E. Modesitt is easily my favorite author. So I read a couple of new paperbacks that came out this year and bought a few of his older works that I had not read yet. He writes both SF and fantasy, both with a good eye for human nature, practicality and, within bounds of course, realism.

• alector's choice, part 4 of a series. Insight in a culture that was only hinted at in 1-3.
• cadmian's choice, part5. Some heavy action. Who says all-powerful beings cannot be defeated?
• soarer's choice, part 6. The culture sizzles out misserably and disappears off the face of the earth. Modesitt outdid himself by making the end so miserable and seemingly pointless. Appropriate.
• Eternity artifact. Stand-alone book. A nice read, nothing spectacular. Attractive through the multiple (6 or so) main personae.
• Archform: beauty. Politics, media, art. Nice. Get into the atmosphere of the current US presidential race.
• flash. Builds on archform: beauty. More action. Very well thought out: recommended! And in-between attacks on him and by him, the main persona needs to feed kids and get them to school.
• Hammer of darkness. This is a weird one. Weird. I read it in two days, but it was quite some work to get through. Weird. At the end it is all wrapped up amazingly well.

I like history. Apart from the first book, none of them are recent, either.

• Norman Davies' Europe at war (I read it in Dutch: oorlog in Europa). World war two history that's much more centered on the eastern front. I'd consider it recommended reading when you want to get a better feel for the second world war. A good number of data, too, to put common misperceptions into perspective (in man-months, the western front from D-Day to the end in 1945 doesn't compare to several of the offensives in the east at all, for instance).
• It never shows in September. Surprising account from the German side of things about the Market Garden airborn assault in 1944. Highly recommended!
• I was a stranger by British airborn general Hackett. Severely wounded at Arnhem, he was hidden away at the house of three dear older ladies. He recounts his stay there and, at the end, his escape to freedom.
• Kenneth Macksey: invasion. About a fictional early (and thus succesful) invasion of England by the Germans in July 1940. Well worked out.
• Alfred Duggan: count Bohemond. Well-readable book about one of the crusaders in the first crusade. Well-described battle scenes. A good insight into the mood and the morals of those days.

Assorted fiction.

• Harry potter and the deathly hallows. A fitting closure.
• Tom Holt, faust among equals. Hard to get started, but was reasonably funny after the first hurdles.

Technology and personal development

• Kuestenmacher/Seiwert: simplify your life. I read the book in the original German language. Great, practical book for improving yourself and get yourself more on track.
• Von Weitershausen: web component development with Zope 3

• Brooks: The mythical man-month. A classic!
• Strengthsfinder 2.0. See a separate blog post with my results .
• Niven: The 100 simple secrets of successful people. Not that good.
• Seth Godin: the dip. Finished it off in about 35 minutes. A good one.
• Levine: cut to the chase. Good tips.
• Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz: the power of full engagement. I've really got to put this into a separate blog post. Valuable insights!

That's it for 2007 :-)

On Friday night I had a nice party in Delft (my old student city). Saw lots of people I hadn't seen in a while. There was a small fire behind the house, so I indulged myself in a bit of fire breathing:

On Saturday, I played Axis&Allies with three friends. Well, not the original game but a home-made, much bigger, map. I played Japan, my brother Maurits played Germany. We got sacked by USSR/Brittain/USA in the end, but it was a fun game to play. So: a pretty enjoyable weekend :-)

They're fixing up the big road near our house. They've been at it for a few weeks now and yesterday night they were really close. So time to take a few night shots!

The full set has 6 pictures.

Tags: nieuwegein

I dropped the camera one (after owning it for 2 months), didn't affect the camera in any way. After 1 year and two months, suddenly the lens only got out till halfway. Tried to shake it a bit, which helped to retract it after a while. The problem immediately returned, though.

Slowly trying to push it back in worked. After a few tries, the camera failed to extract more than 3 millimeters, making a rattling noise.

Today I dismantled the camera to check out the source. It turned out to be a broken tooth on one of the small plastic gears that drive the lens. Just one tiny piece of broken plastic. Well, actually two. I'm pretty sure one of the broken teeth is Canon's fault. There was no dust or filth in the camera. The other might broken tooth might be my fault when slowly trying to push the camera back in.

It is probably impossible to get replacement gears.

I took out the broken gears and put the camera back together again - that way I could extract the lens by hand and perhaps continue to make non-zoom pictures. I put everything back correctly (as the camera turned on OK), but the camera software detected that something was wrong with the lens extraction mechanism and gave me the familiar error ("lens failure" (in Dutch)).

Sigh sigh sigh.

Before opening it, I got back to the shop asking for the price of a repair job. They guessed 100-200 Euro. And a new(er) camera (the A560) now costs 155 Euro. So: no repair.

I quite liked the camera, but I'm not sure if I'll continue buying canon cameras. If anyone knows of a study kind of pocket camera: please leave comment. Especially if someone knows a camera without a zoom as that's bound to make it all more robust.

The StrengthsFinder 2.0 is basically an online test for which you get an access code by buying the accompanying book. It is an improved version of a quite old method by Gallup.

Basic premise: you only look at your strengths and focus on them. There's a big list of various strengths and the online test selects 5 of them and follows up with a few extra tips.

Here's my list, partially for my own reference, partially because it can perhaps help others to use that to both their and my advantage.

Input

One word: INFORMATION. I want more. Random reading on wikipedia. Targeted reading on wikipedia. Around Christmas, I read a book about Sherman's march to Atlanta. This made it obvious I didn't know a lot about the USA civil war. One week and some regular wikipedia reading later, this was rectified.

Faced with a new technology, I want input. Information. A good book to read about it. Reading a bunch of blogs about it. Getting a feel. New stuff also gets compared to the existing available knowledge, so also without reading a lot about something new I can often extract a quick intuitive smell.

Intellection

A busy brain. And introspective (like you see in this article...). And I like intellectual discussions. Above-mentioned input strength makes sure I gather a lot, intellection makes sure I mill it around in my brain.

Trying to understand/introspect myself in this case (coupled with input and context) also flows over into wanting to understand historical figures. I've got three biographies of Montgomery, two of Erwin Rommel, stuff about Napoleon. I've read about Scipio and Caesar. Etc.

Learner

I want to learn and improve. Yeah. New ideas, new knowledge.

Context

Historical data. Whether about the history of Zope and Plone or about Scipio's tactics to bash the hell out of Carthage. More. More. I do also like websites like John Robb's global guerrillas that combine historical insight with modern insights to show how terrorists and others operate now.

Responsibility

According to the book: People who are especially talented in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.

There's one other part I want to cite: Chances are good that you are occasionally willing to be vulnerable. Perhaps you claim your talents or admit your weaknesses. Your openness may help some people know you better as a person.

Responsibility sounds very very good, but remember that this is a book about strong points. I do have a small weakness here and there :-)

In total, I quite enjoyed doing the test. And I got a bit more insight out of it. So well worth the 15 Euro or so that went into it.

Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows is the seventh and last in the Harry Potter series. It took me three days to finish it, but I have a son's birthday (spread out over 2 days) as an excuse for the time it took me :-)

I like the book. Quite a lot of things are happening. There are more static parts, but the whole story is full of climaxes. There's not just one climax that the whole book works towards, there are multiple. It makes the book fast-paced.

If there's a drawback to the book: I get the feeling I'd best read all 6 previous books again, followed by part 7, to refresh my memory about all the things that are referred to in part 7. Now it makes me feel forgetful if I don't get all the backreferences right away. A second drawback is that the reasons why some things work out and others don't are sometimes a bit hard to follow upon a first read.

With all the hindsight info from part 7, reading 1-6 a second time will have its own special charm. That's real good about this series. The closing book is definitively not a let-down. Both as a book in itself and as the close of the series.

I did quite good in my predictions. I posted them here a few weeks ago so as to have a record that proves it were really predictions made beforehand. Don't follow the next link if you don't want partial spoilers (as those predictions were quite ok): predictions .