And then there were two: The Who
I'd never been to a concert of the Who, much to my dismay. Together with the Rolling Stones they are my alltime favorite band. The Rolling Stones I had seen back in the early seventies, and in the eighties. More or less with the original bandmembers (Brian Jones had already passed away and been replaced by Mick Taylor, later by Ron Wood). The Stones just kept on touring, not so The Who. Keith Moon died in the late seventies and when the same happened to John Entwistle, I was really wondering if the Who could still be called the Who. And wondering whether I should go to the concert they were giving in Rotterdam in 2007. They'd planned a world tour to promote their new album "Endless Wire". I was skeptical to say the least. Well, I'm so happy I decided to go. The concert surpassed every bit my expectations and hopes. It was the Who I was listening to in every way. Daltrey was almost as good as he used to be when I was 15, the same could be said of Pete Townshend. They were a little older of course, but so was I. They played a lot of the old stuff and songs of their new album. Zack Starkey and Pino Palladino proved to be worthy replacements for Moon and Entwistle. Concluding I can say I had a tremendous time although there's still something nagging at the back of my mind: why haven't I gone to one of their concerts when there were four of them? It'll always be with me.

Quotes
Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. (Douglas Adams)

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened. (Douglas Adams)

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. (Douglas Adams)

I really should have a go at his book "The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy". Could be fun.

Fall
Yeah......I know, it ain't fall anymore. But, I had promised myself to at least show you a few pictures of last fall. I was visiting Canada, at the height of the changing of the leaves. It was gorgeous to see. It's so much more intense than here in the Netherlands. So, I have enjoyed myself tremendously, and here are a couple of pictures I shot. Hope you'll like them.

John Denver
I'm listening to John Denver. That's been quite awhile. I got to know him in the seventies, when I first heard his music. And I was hooked right away. What a voice that man had. His songs were about love, nature, the Rocky Mountains. He was pretty engaged for an American. He loved nature and especially his beloved Rocky Mountains. Tragically he was killed way to soon when his plane crashed in 1997. I'd already lost sight of him and his music by then. Which is not hard with an iPod filled to the brim. That's so much music, it's easy to miss out on a few artists and bands. It's completely by accident, that I stumbled upon John Denver again. And I decided to give him a try. Must admit that I'm hooked again. He deserves and is getting some MB's on my iPod. You all should give this man a try, he's worth it.

Obama en zijn New Deal
Net een interessant artikel gelezen op Sync.nl. Ruth Oldenziel, de Amerikadeskundige, betoogt daar, dat Obama heel goed gekeken heeft naar Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Deze president kwam met een groot stimuleringspakket om de amerikaanse economie weer aan de gang te krijgen. Na de beurskrach van 1929 was deze volledig ingestort met als gevolg miljoenen en nog eens miljoenen werklozen. De toenmalige president Herbert Hoover liet alles op zijn beloop, de markt moest zijn werk maar doen - de liberale stroming. Dat werkte niet. Door de maatregelen, die Roosevelt nam (zijn New Deal voor de bevolking) wilde hij banen scheppen. Zodat de mensen weer wat verdienden en konden uitgeven. Tevens werd er daardoor o.a. een complete infrastructuur aangelegd. Deze maatregelen kostten een hoop geld en of ze de economie er bovenop geholpen is maar zeer de vraag. Veelal wordt aangenomen, dat pas de oorlog en de daarvoor benodigde industriele productie Amerika er echt boven op geholpen hebben. Obama wil een beetje hetzelfde doen volgens Oldenziel. Een pakket maatregelen moet o.a. achterstallig onderhoud aan de infrastructuur plegen en investeringen doen in internet en internetgerelateerde zaken. Zijn motto is banen, banen en nog eens banen. De economie staat er niet zo slecht voor als toen, maar ingrijpen is wel nodig. Twee visies staan dan lijnrecht tegenover elkaar. Stimuleren door investeringen te doen (Keynes), of de markt op zijn beloop laten (het liberalisme). Obama heeft dus gekozen voor Keynes. Pas later zullen we weten of dat een goede keuze was. Het is een beetje een onamerikaanse keus, maar mijn zegen heeft hij. Lees voor meer informatie het artikel van Ruth Oldenziel op Sync.

To do good
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

quote by John Wesley (1703 - 1791)

Zonsondergang
Zonsondergangen zijn prachtig om te zien. Ook fotografisch mag ik er graag mee spelen. Deze foto werd genomen een paar maanden geleden tijdens een wandeling in Canada. Vooral de sfeer van dit plaatje spreekt me aan. Het blijft overigens altijd een gok, maar het proberen meer dan waard. De geheugenkaart is in dat geval geduldig, wat niet de moeite waard is gaat onverbiddelijk de prullenbak in. De foto heb ik genomen met mijn Olympus E 410, die het op deze reis goed gedaan heeft. Voor zover ik me herinner eigenlijk niets aan nabewerking gedaan. Prachtige herfstkleuren tijdens die vakantie ook geschoten, maar daarover later meer.

Winter
De hoogste tijd om weer eens wat aan mijn weblog te doen. Ben druk bezig geweest met een ander weblog (werk), dus mijn eigen blog een beetje verwaarloosd. Slecht. Ga zeker mijn leven beteren. Het leek net winter, de afgelopen twee weken. Het vroor dat het kraakte zo af en toe, en we konden schaatsen op natuurijs. Dat was lang geleden! Ook had het gesneeuwd, zodat het heel echt leek. De wereld zag er anders uit. Fotoweer dus. Tijdens een korte wandeling een aantal foto's genomen, die misschien iets van de sfeer weergeven. Want, dat is het akelige van foto's, ze geven nooit precies weer hoe het was. In ieder geval, het was genieten. In PaintShopPro een lijstje er om heen gemaakt. Deze foto is gemaakt met de kleine Nikon Coolpix, een compact camera, en dus niet met de nieuwe digitale Olympus spiegelreflex. De Nikon doet het nog goed vind ik, en past zo lekker in mijn binnenzak.

Amersfoort 2008
Een stadsbezoek aan Amersfoort? Waarom Amersfoort? Ik zou Amersfoort nooit zelf uitgekozen hebben, kende het alleen van het station. Het idee kwam dan ook van een vriend van mij.Achteraf moet ik zeggen, wat is Amersfoort mooi. Het heeft een prachtig oud stuk, met mooie oude steegjes, een winkelcentrum voor de shoppers onder u en grachten waarover je een rondvaart kunt maken. Wat we dan ook gedaan hebben.De cultuur stond even op een laag pitje, want het Armando museum was net afgebrand en bij een ander museumgebouw was men bezig asbest te verwijderen. Van het Mondriaanhuis was ik niet echt onder de indruk. Ons bezoek aan Amersfoort bestond dus uit een wandeling en een rondvaart. Het weer werkte perfect mee zoals te zien is op de foto's. Amersfoort is een stad gebleken om zeker nog eens te bezoeken. Wat kan Nederland toch onverwacht mooi zijn.

A new camera
I've been thinking about buying a new camera for ages now. So far I've been working with a compact camera and the pictures on this blog all have been taken with a Nikon Coolpix 4500. Yes, that's an oldie, five years I'm guessing. I've been reading a lot about compacts lately but haven't been able to find one that suited all of my wishes.Every one of them had one or more flaws, and every one of them had that small sensor responsible for noisy pictures (save for the Sigma DP1, but that one has a fixed focus lens). So, as you may have figured I just could not decide what to do. I had focussed myself totally on the compacts because....yes because they are compact, which for me is a big plus. Anyway, I started thinking about a DSLR when I couldn't find a suitable compact. It had to be a compact and light camera. And I found one - the Olympus E 410. It is the lightest DSLR you can find at the moment, has lots of features, live view and a number of other options I still have to find out about. Also, the kit version was going for a very decent price. So, now the learning curve for using a DSLR is starting. Hopefully I will be as pleased with this camera as I was with the Nikon Coolpix.The macro image of the "Maid of the Mist" (printed on a wooden box, you can even see wood shining through) was made with the Nikon, hope you'll like it.

Kurhaus
The Kurhaus is a beauty of a building. If I'm not mistaken it's more than a century old. Nowadays it's a luxury hotel and you can probably imagine why. The quote "A room with a view" is very appropriate in this case. The picture you see here has the appearance of an old postcard - it's the photoframe that does it. Enjoy.

The Hague

I’ve just been to the Hague for a couple of days. My brother and sister-in-law from Canada were visiting, so it seemed like a good idea to do something silly, something out of the ordinary. Like visiting The Hague and Scheveningen. Scheveningen, which is part of the Hague is situated on the coast. So it has lots of beaches and a pier. Very nice. We did all the stuff tourists do when they have nothing else to do and are in the Hague: did the town , went for walks, visited museums and so on. The weather was beautiful, though still a little cool. But hey we didn’t complain. Spring was definitely in the air. A visit to this town is highly recommended with its art, beautiful architecture, government buildings and beaches. In this picture you're seeing the Mauritshuis and part of the skyline of the Hague.

Limburg revisited
Another snowy image. I tried to photograph as many trees as possible, it made for a nice composition I think.

Limburg

Two weeks ago, Easterweekend, I visited Limburg, the southernmost province of Holland. Very close to the Belgian border. It's beautiful, rolling country. It's the most hilly part of Holland, the rest of our country is basically flat, flat and flat. Most unusual for the time of the year we had snow, which totally changed the atmosphere of the land. It looked like we were in a foreign country, very strange. We made a couple of long walks and I took a lot of pictures. A few of which turned out OK. The river in the picture is the river Gulp. It bordered our back garden.

Paint Shop Pro
One of my alltime favorite programs. I really love to play with it and never know in advance what the result will be. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. For the image you see here I used a photograph I took last year in Tuscany. It's one of those quaint little villages of which there are still quite a number. The atmosphere totally changed by what I did to it. I kinda liked the outcome, hope you do too.

Bill Gates

Gates is the ultimate programming machine. He believes everything can be defined, examined, reduced to essentials, and rearranged into a logical sequence that will achieve a particular goal. (Stewart Alsop)

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.(and this is by Bill Gates himself)

Henri Matisse
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Evolution
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. (Isaac Asimov)

Orchids
Orchids are beautiful in real life. They come in all sorts and colors and kinds as you may know. This one I took at my dad's place. He always does a good job keeping them alive. And seeing to it that they start bloomimg again. Here's the result.

Winter 2007
On dec 21st we had our first experience of winter. It had been snowing ever so little during the night and a little bit of frost did the rest. Trees overnight changed their appearance and for photographers and nature lovers it was pure bliss. The trick is trying to catch what you see in a photograph. Hardly ever I succeed in doing that, but I just keep on trying. Here you see one of my efforts. It's made with a Nikon Coolpix 4500. The shot was taken straight upward to the tops of the trees, hope you'll like it.