The new Dutch word list created by the OpenTaal project is now available from Debian unstable and testing in variants for ispell (idutch), aspell (aspell-nl) and OpenOffice/Mozilla (myspell-nl). It's also available in backports.org for those running stable/etch. Happy spellchecking!

Good news: the OpenTaal Dutch word list (and spell checker) has gotten official approval from the TaalUnie, official authority on the Dutch language, which means that it's considered to be "just as correct" as the Green Booklet. The list is released under the LGPL licence. I've only contributed a bit to the project so far, but the next step will of course be to get it into Debian. The project originated to create a free update of the exising 1996 word list, according to the new spelling rules. Now that this is "finished", next projects are a grammar checker and thesaurus.

On our recent visit to Paris, we also went to La grande picerie de Paris (Rue de S vres), a supermarket-style store selling only very good food products. Highly recommended. On the cheese department, a cheese was on sale called Mimolette Hollandaise, in an Edam-style spherical shape and with a strange orange colour. I was quite surprised since I didn't expect to have to go abroad to discover a new kind of Dutch cheese. Of course I bought a piece. At home the cheese encyclopedia brought more clarity. In the 17th century, Colbert forbade the import of foreign diary products into France. The French who loved the Dutch Edam, simply started to produce their own copy, intended to be identical to the Dutch variety. It took until 1935 to officialise the Mimolette through a treaty between the Dutch and French. And the taste? It tastes good, it indeed resembles old Edam very well, albeit a bit more salty.

Miriam is worried that getting packages sponsored is a burden on DD's and that she's asking them a favour. I can understand where that comes from, but at least for me personally, that's definitely not the case. When I spend time to review and upload a package prepared by someone else, I don't do that just to help a friend, I do it because I've got a genuine desire to improve Debian. One way to do that is to work on my own packages, another is to help get the work done by others incorporated into Debian proper. I see that not as a burden or something they should be thankful for. Rather, I make it a habit to explicitly thank the sponsoree for their work after I've uploaded it. Just like I would thank someone that has provided a patch for my personal project. It's great that so many people are willing to contribute to Debian, and this needs to be encouraged wherever we can.

Euro Disney S.C.A. owner of Euro Disney Associ s S.N.C. operator of Parc Walt Disney Studios are opening two new attractions and myself as a shareholder of the first has been invited for a preview of those. At first my attempt to R.S.V.P. was rejected by their broken website, but as it turns out I'm still welcome to the park this Saturday. I'm not really a fan of the mouse with the big ears and his zany adventures, but these attractions are inspired by Disney/Pixar films. Crush's Coaster is a spinning indoor coaster based on Finding Nemo, and Cars Race Rally is a teacups-style ride based on, indeed, Cars. Curious as to what they've created, and as a good excuse to add a few days in the real Paris, I've booked two Thalys tickets.

On my most recent visit to the blood bank, faithful and friendly receptionist Leo handed me this guy on the right: a stuffed pelican as an acknowledgment of my 40th donation. Thanks! I've been a blood donor for some years now, but my blood type is not that useful for regular donations: I've got type AB, which means I can receive any other type of blood, but mine can only be given to others that also have AB (about 3% of the population). That's why they've asked me to become a plasma donor, meaning that during your donation, the blood cells are returned to you while they get to keep the plasma. One advantage is that this is less strenuous and thus can be done more often than regular donations. Donating blood is really easy: register at the blood bank, and get a call around 2-3 times a year. You then may show up at any moment in the two weeks following the call. You get free coffee, a sandwich and a medical check. I can recommend it to anyone (who's eligible). And to answer the FAQ: no, you don't get paid. Edit: facts apply to the Netherlands only. No pelicans were hurt in blogging this post. Your blood type may vary.

Eddy writes about Mozilla not implementing feature requests. His post basically reads: "You, free software developer, do not implement my wish. You suck big time.". I think that's a very sorry attitude to have. As a developer for a free software project, I occasionally get that attitude from users aswell: "Please implement this feature." And then later: "Why haven't you implemented my feature yet??" I always make sure to lecture such people like the following. I'm sorry, you don't get to tell me that I suck because I do not spend my voltuneer efforts according to your wishes. Eddy is free to supply a patch. Another strategy would be to put up a bounty. Or he can help in any other way he can think of. Maybe he can ask his money back. Better options to consider instead of blogging "Mozilla sucks big time"?

Tomorrow I will be attending a cremation for the second time in two weeks - at the same crematorium even: Den en Rust in Bilthoven. (You won't believe how detailed Wikipedia treats the subject of cremation) Two weeks ago my friend and former flatmate BAAS (eng.: BOSS) died at the age of 34 after nine years of cancer. Still it came as a surprise to me: we've gotten a bit "used to" BAAS being subject to therapy every once in a while, recovering, and then starting the whole circle right over. It was a good service that highlighted the diverse social circles he was active in, and was concluded with a gathering that featured a lot of drinks and snacks. Tomorrow the service will be dedicated to my uncle Koert, who died last week at the age of 60, also from cancer. I surely didn't expect to return to "Den en Rust" that soon. I'm wondering what the service will be like, although it's in the same place, it will probably be quite different.

I've been invited by my friends of Euro Disney S.C.A. for a preview of their two newest attractions. Not wanting to be rude, I confirmed my attendance, only to learn that the event apparently booked solid. Thanks for the invitation, guys.

Yesterday we released version 1.4.10a of SquirrelMail. It fixes mostly small-time bugs and glitches, and a security bug in the HTML filter. While the 1.4 branch is getting very solid, the HTML filter remains the main point of sorrow. The problem is that we receive incoming HTML in a mail message, and then need to transform that into HTML that's safe to present to the user. This is done by stripping out anything that could cause trouble. You wouldn't believe which degenerated content is still parsed by some browsers, so this is a never ending fight. A proper solution would be to white list what is allowed. This essentially means implementing a full HTML parser that parses the incoming mail and only accepts things known to be good. Co-developer Marc Groot Koerkamp has done good work towards this already, but it's no simple feat and not quite finished yet. So we'll have to keep patching up the current filter for a while I'm afraid.

Hey everybody! Getting tired of hex numbers? Here's another one: E0D3 FAAA 6F50 A5DA 9D5B 2938 3396 1588 E1C2 1845!!! It's the fingerprint of my new GPG key, which is more secure than my previous one for a variety of reasons, and it has my birthday (not year) as the date. Wow! Today I revoked my key 0x165EE79B from 1997-06-23. I'll revoke my 0x957D58CF key from 2003-10-28 in due time, when the new one has been in active use for a decent while.

Last weekend we went to the number two tourist destination in Holland (the no 1 of course the Red Light District in Amsterdam): the Keukenhof flower gardens. I had never been there. The concept is a big park with as many types of tulips as you can imagine plus a few more. As it turns out I'm probably not the only Dutchman never to have attended the country's top attraction, since the park was filled with Japanese, Americans, and our friendly neighbours: Germans and Belgians. It actually turned out to be nicer than I expected. Of course the park is a big stereotype of The Netherlands with wooden shoes, a towbridge and a real (gasp!) windmill, vaguely reminding you of a Schiphol parking garage. I'm not a tulip fan, but the gardens, designed by Zocher and son, combined with the colours of the zillions of flowers were both stylish and cheerful. Although I can think of many better places to go as a tourist, if you've got a lot of time or are addicted to tulips, it's a nice place to go. Just make sure to get there really early.

Today I received a letter from the tax office urging me to pay an amount which they claimed was past due. Looking in my records, I found that I had payed this back in January. To make a bureaucratic story short, it turns out that I was a "too fast payer" (their words): I paid it right the day when I got the invoice, which was too fast for their system to process it. The amount was automatically refunded to me by the system, that just could not understand why I transfered money to them, even though it did manage to send me an invoice the day before. Now I have to file an official appeal to get a whopping 11 euros in costs of late payment refunded. Another life lesson learned: delaying saves trouble.

Debian Etch is on the verge of being released. Nearly two years in preparation, this calls for a toast. We'll meet at Friday the 13th, 21:00h at Mick O'Connell's Irish Pub in Utrecht. Everyone welcome. Travel coordination at debian-events-nl@lists.debian.org. More parties to come at ReleasePartyEtch?

Today are provincial elections in The Netherlands, one of the least visible governments in this country, so it's hard to decide what would be a good choice. Add to that that the chosen members will in turn choose the (national) Senate. I have never been fond of package deals. I do not necessarily vote for the same party on the provincial level as I do nationally, because these two layers deal with distinctly different classes of decisions. After casting my vote I returned home with a little doubt of whether I'd made the right choice, until I realised which 9 parties I didn't vote for. The fact that my vote did not go to the parties that I don't trust our province or senate with is far more useful than the relatively small difference between the candidates I considered.

After ten (10) years, I'm leaving the ICQ network. I don't think I know anyone still on ICQ that I cannot reach by either Jabber or, less preferred, MSN Messenger. Reason for parting the network is the truckloads of spam that are shipped my way there daily, in fonts I can't even decypher, for services I do not want, and IM clients do not allow for easily clicking it away. It's a pity to lose my faithful UIN. 101662, thanks for the service. Uh-oh! Rrribbit

To CEO's, Wellink and members of the parliament: I cannot agree [nl] more [en]: please stop this discussion [nl] about hedge funds or other shareholders actually exercising their rights. If you sell your company on the stock market you get a lot of cash. But you also sell control to random interested parties, that's what being publicly traded means. You'll have to live with that situation, it's called the market. Thank you for your attention.

I've returned from FOSDEM in Brussels. Joost drove Jeroen, Christiaan and myself to Eindhoven where we took the train to Utrecht. FOSDEM has been a success again. The event has grown even bigger, still the FOSDEM team managed to create a good event nonetheless, thanks! Meeting up with the Debian crew again, both the usual suspects and new faces, was one of the highlights. The Debian booth has been popular, with the T-shirts in good demand; on Sunday morning I could only offer people the choice between S and XXL sizes. The Debian room had a diverse selection of interesting talks. Holger introduced Debian-Community.org, which I see as a useful initiative to provide recognition aswell as visibility for what already happens. To the Anonymous who returned me my lost backpack: thanks! I'm now off to sign all those keys.

Yesterday I've made my 38th blood donation. I can heartily recommend it to (almost) everyone. Especially if you are a "simple" full blood donor, it will take at most half an hour, a couple of times a year, at a moment you choose within a two-week interval. Oh, it doesn't really hurt and you get free coffee and sandwiches. If you're in the Netherlands, you can register on line. I think it's an easy way to do some good for society. I'm not a full blood but a plasma donor myself. I have the most rare blood type (AB), which means I can receive all other types but my blood can only be given to the 3% of the population that also has AB. That makes it not quite useful for donation, but it is useful to make medicine out of. During the donation the blood is filtered and only the plasma is kept, all other parts are pumped back into my circulation. This allows for a larger volume of plasma to be donated at a time, but has as a drawback that it needs an appointment and takes longer. The most commonly asked question is whether you get paid. You're not. The reasoning is that this could motivate people to be a bit too positive about their health situation when they need money, and thus could hold back relevant risk information. The selection procedure depends on a reduction of chances. This also leads to homosexuals being completely excluded from donations. While sound from a purely statistical reasoning, it is debatable whether this is fair on an individual level.

The housing situation for foreign students in Utrecht is far from optimal, but the most problematic is that there's no clear point where those students can go when they have an issue with their housing. Since most stay here only for periods ranging from one to twelve months, they're understandably not organising this themselves. I'm therefore delighted that after two years of talk, we've finally decided on a single point where Short Stay tennants can get help. USF Studentensteunpunt will welcome questions and issues from them, and our task is to make sure this point is well known by the foreign students, and to assist with any complaints that USF can't solve on its own. One wonders why this had to take so long, but we can finally start :-)