notities | category | Niek de Greef

Persoonlijke aantekeningen door Niek de Greef over cultuur, politiek, media en maatschappij. Doorleefde essays over het hedendaagse leven.

Bechers in Huis Marseille: Becher to Gursky

Bericht gepubliceerd op:29/05/2018

The station is enormously crowded. Looking over heads as we descend the escalator. Maybe normal for a Saturday afternoon, maybe extra busy because of the beautiful weather.

We take the streetcar to avoid the crowds in Damrak. At the Keizersgracht, we leave the streetcar, and I walk the wrong way, as it is pre-programmed towards FOAM, but for Huis Marseille, we must of course go the other way.

At Huis Marseille we are overtaken by three people who are busily discussing their way into the museum before us. One of them turns out to be the speaker for a lecture at Huis Marseille that afternoon: Stefan Gronert. He wrote The Düsseldorf School of Photography.

stefan gronert - the dusseldorf school of photography cover

But we haven’t come for the lecture (which is held in an overly warm room on the second floor of the House). In the halls hang the works of the Bechers’ students – in the room near the reception, several works by the Bechers themselves. The down-to-earth documentary style appeals to me very much, but I find the larger formats of students such as Gursky and Struth even more telling, with their overwhelming detail.

The Bechers’ new business acumen, with its almost scientific slant, has been an inspiration for the younger generation of photographers hanging here. The industrial landscapes of Gursky and the church interiors of Struth: vacation photo of church attendance on steroids, Ruff with experimental night shots, library landscapes of Candida Höfer, Hütte’s empty cityscapes and landscapes portraying a lonely civilization. I find the works of the younger (I think) generation Sasse, Nieweg and Clement less powerful.

We walk back through the city. At the Athenaeum, we go inside, but the excess is overwhelming, back along the Jordaan and another terrace.

Boekhouden: van Gnucash naar EasyZZP en Yukiworks

Bericht gepubliceerd op:18/03/2018

Toen ik pas begon met mijn bedrijf deed ik zelf de boekhouding. In het begin was dat eenvoudig. Ik gebruikte het open source tool GnuCash

Ik moest mezelf een beetje trainen in de principes van het dubbel boekhouden, en in het opzetten van een structuur in GnuCash, maar daarna was e.e.a. prima bij te sloffen. Gnucash is goed gedocumenterd. Het heeft niet een heel elegante interface maar er is goed mee te werken. Bovendien krijg je er een goed inzicht in de inkomsten- en uitgavenstromen van je bedrijfje door.

Op een gegeven moment werden de uitgaven en inkomsten wat omvangrijker, en heb ik gezocht naar hulp. Ik vond EasyZZP, een bedrijfje dat de boekhouding voor je overneemt voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag. EasyZZP maakt gebruik van Yukiworks als (online) boekhoudpakket.

Yukiworks is redelijk makkelijk te doorgronden software, hoewel je er als EasyZZP klant niet alle ins en outs van hoeft te kennen. Yuki integreert met je bank waardoor je bij voorbeeld al je zakelijke transacties automatisch in Yuki kunt importeren. Er is ook een integratie met Op een gegeven moement werden de uitgaven en inkomsten wat omvangrijker, en heb ik gezocht naar hulp. Ik vond EasyZZP, een bedrijfje dat de boekhouding voor je overneemt voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag. EasyZZP maakt gebruik van Yuki als (online) boekhoudpakket. Dat is redelijk makkelijk te doorgronden software, hoewel je er als EasyZZP klant niet alle ins en outs van hoeft te kennen. Voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag verzorgt Yuki de boekhouding en de belastingaangifte.

Augmented Office Reality

Bericht gepubliceerd op:14/03/2018

3D technology is developing fast, we are in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality hypes.

But what if we could create a real office reality with this technology.

When we could install camera’s in our home office, wear 3D goggles, or something much better, assuming these 3D glasses and goggles we are using today are totally laughable in 10 years time.

Would we still sit in our cars for hours to get to work?

Maybe at home, maybe in shared 3D office facilities where we can rent a (virtual) cubicle and login to the corporate 3D office.

Will this be more viable than the current working from home things we do?

We currently only use this when we want or have a meeting or have a question.
But what if we could just sit there all day, see our collegues and do the work. And I mean not staring in crappy laptop camera’s over hampering internet. I mean full 3D experiences. Walk around the office as if you are there. Have occasional conversations, talk about the weather, and so on, but all in this 3D virtual office.

Sounds ok to me.

Dijkstra in EWD 32 on the tool, how it should be worthy our love, and show: Elegance and Beauty

Bericht gepubliceerd op:22/11/2016

E.W. Dijkstra and McJones at a conference in marktoberdorf 1973

Reading Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra’s EWD’s.

The State of Programming in 1962

In EWD 32 Dijkstra shares his “meditations” on the state of the Art (or rather Science, as he prefers to say) of Programming. Machine design was ugly, programming as a discipline was undeveloped. This was 1962.

Programmers were hired for applying tricks and Dijkstra loves the development that there is

… the slowly growing group of people who think it more valuable that the man should have a clear and systematic mind.

The Commercialization Problem

He goes on to discuss how programmers and machine designers should collaborate to create better machines and programming languages. This was very necessary because Dijkstra believed that at that time, the computer manufacturing industry was taking over computer design from universities. But this brought a commercial angle to computer design that Dijkstra was unhappy with.

They seem to design for the customer that believes the salesman who tells him that machine so-and-so is just the machine he wants.

What Dijkstra Meant by “The Tool”

Dijkstra goes on to share his thoughts on how to improve The Tool – by which he means the programming language, translator, and machine. Nowadays, with so many languages and machines, we hardly think about this tool. We think of tools as tools: a given rather than a thought. And of course, we have massive debates about programming languages, hardware, etc. But some of the concerns have disappeared. Nobody really seems to care about machine design anymore. It has become a commodity. It should be fast and robust. Hardware hardly provides any distinguishing features. If so, it is about size and energy, not about performance and reliability.

The Eternal Quality: Elegance and Beauty

But the last one he mentions is an eternal difference, one which we still haven’t landed on. And maybe we never will. Because it is a subjective one. A characteristic you wouldn’t expected in our Beta world of computers and programmers.

As my very last remark I should like to stress that the tool as a whole should have still another quality. It is a much more subtle one; whether we appreciate it or not depends much more on our personal taste and education and I shall not even try to define it. The tool should be charming, it should be elegant, it should be worthy of our love. This is no joke, I am terribly serious about this. In this respect the programmer does not differ from any other craftsman: unless he loves his tools it is highly improbable that he will ever create something of superior quality.

At the same time these considerations tell us the greatest virtues a program can show: Elegance and Beauty.