Christmas & New Year's Letter: Fall 2011
Dines Bjørner
21. December 2011
Thanks to DTU Informatics for kindly hosting this Web page
Dear Reader,
- There are two components to Dines' 2011 report.
- Of course we miss them.
- Seeing Marianne, Katrine and Jakob grow up.
- Therefore this summer was great: all together in Oberbozen.
- See Oberbozen section
for photos.
- See also my photo
album
Latemar
(2003-2009)
for more Latemar photos.
- Nikolaj publishes many scientific papers and tours the world.
- Bodil, after almost 20 years of work in the US, now spends her time at
home.
- And we still miss them.
- Wei Wei is good at sending photos regularly. Also URLs to actor agency
news.
"Caption lines" are pidgin English:
- Photos below are from some of his movies and TV series:
- Camilla had her communion early June and there was a fine party
afterwards.
- A lovely early summer Sunday.
- Caroline trumpets and Camilla flutes their way through many occasions
with the Vedbæk Girls Band
(VG).
- The VG, 24 girls and 6 leaders, was a week in Peking mid October:
Royal Danish Embassy, Peking / Great Wall / Hutong
- We enjoy having the family for early dinner every 3-4 weeks.
- Yesterday, as this is written (Monday, 14-Nov-2011)
they were here for traditional St.Martin's Duck dinner.
Dines enjoys his "old age".
Totters around, upstairs, downstairs,
in the garden, in local Holte,
switching between different "chores".
|
breakfast with Kari,
|
reading newspapers, |
|
browsing and reading books,
|
listening to music, |
|
watching recorded TV programmes,
|
tottering in the garden, |
|
Internet work, |
studying & writing, |
|
enjoying the house, |
clearing the house,
etc.
|
Often Dines experiences fleeting moments of "extreme"
happiness.
What a life. Kari's rôle in this is central and
immense.
When that happens, I go and kiss her, in whichever of her
many P&Q rooms she is now in.
We got a new, elevation bed, great. Early up, early to bed !
- After breakfast Dines enjoys reading Berlingske.
- Before going down to breakfast Dines
check's the daily chronicle in the Jyllandsposten newspaper, "the
other" Danish daily.
- Often such an essay is printed. Sometimes
Dines e-mails these essays to a little group of "Danes abroad".
- Around noon the Kristeligt
Dagblad
is read - perhaps one
of the very best Danish newspapers.
- On Friday the
Weekendavisen
is
read.
- Three great newspapers and then
Jyllandsposten
on the net !
- We have many books, perhaps over 3,000
novels and poetry, philosophy, art, architecture, China,
Macau, literature, history, etc., etc.
- Dines reads a lot: for every
"serious" book perhaps two detective stories.
- Of serious books this year there were:
- Mario Vargas Llosa's
The War of the End of the
World,
- two pairs of Jakob Knudsen:
- Angst og Mod (Martin
Luther),
- and Gjæring og Afklaring.
- Henrik Pontoppidan's
The Promised Land (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1896).
- Currently The Sense of an
Ending.
- Three more Vargas novels are on my night stand:
- La Ciudad y Los Perros (The Time of the Hero),
- La Casa Verde (The Green House) and
- Conversación en la Catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral).
- In periods when
I am "wrestling" with a scientific problem I read the "light ones"!
Classical music.
On the radio, during
some work on trivial (incl. editorial) matters while working
with
my laptop, and, especially, in the evening: listening, in bed, to
great radio broadcast concerts and
sometimes radio broadcast operas.
Lighter music.
From the 200 CD/DVD disk
"turntable":
Wienerschrammel (Alt Wiener
Musik)
and
Wiener Lieder,
Evert
Taube,
Irish
Songs,
Fado Music from
Lisboa,
Joan Baez
-- see however my not so happy Joan Baez
experience
2
circles up from the photo of Usher Hall.
Tango Music from Buenos
Aires:
(Carlos Gardel, Astor Piazzolla
and
Daniel
Barenboim, and all
that!)
and lots more.
On our "big screen" Sony set with Internet TV
we record many programmes which can then be viewed
later.
In this way Dines often watches Miss Marple, Poirot,
Frost, Lewis, Inspector Barnaby and many other series -
including
the nice Italian/Sicilian Salvo Montalbano,
but also culture and history programmes.
It hasn't been much
this year. Too many week-long trips "abroad", too many excuses.
But when Dines get's around to it, he enjoys it: mowing the lawns,
weeding out, trimming the hedges, etc.
In early December Søren and his forest colleagues came to cut
down two huge fir trees.
Before and After !
They threatened to fall in a storm, and, if so, would probably
damage the house and the green house.
Our neighbour to the east is
relieved: Now they get even more sunshine on their terrace.
It'll take some time to get adjusted to a more bare facade.
Dines enjoys
maintaining Web pages like these and his more
"professional"
one.
Also receiving and sending e-mails. Doing document work for the
local church also.
Helping Kari: Design,
Catalogue,
P&Q
Photos
etcetera.
Most recent late Nov./early Dec. job was to upload more than 13.700 photos.
There are basically two
kinds of writing.
-
Scientific Reports
Dines thinks that there
are still some papers that need be written
on the science and
engineering of domain descriptions. See
"Research and Lectures".
Currently Dines is "toiling" over issues of ontological and
mereological matters.
Which are the basic elements of description ? Are individuals and
properties such primitives ?
Specifically: If parts and relationships between parts and parts and a
"whole" are important,
which they seem to be.
then, where such parts "overlap" what is the meaning of "overlap" ?
(since
parts cannot overlap spatially/temporally).
-
Lecture Notes
For every "cycle" of
clarifying some methodological issues of domain engineering
Dines
then rewrites a set of lecture notes. See the incomplete
"Towards a Theory of Domain Descriptions".
Dines takes a[n efficient] 'method' to be a set of principles
- for selecting and applying
- techniques and tools
in order to [efficiently] conceive, design and
construct an artifact.
Dines pursues a study of domain
engineering, a phase of software development
which
precedes so-called requirements engineering.
Given that, which are the techniques and tools of domain
engineering,
and which are their selection and application principles ?
- There are many rooms in
our house. 3 upstairs, 6 downstairs.
- Add to that kitchen, entry, hall, stairs, toilets and baths - so there
are 19 doors.
- There are many books, some 2500 on shelves here and there.
- Kari alone has some 500 P&Q books.
- Kari has three rooms for her P&Q: fabrics, tools, works, etc.
- On many shelves there are ceramics from China, Malaysia (Peranakan),
American Indians, Japan, South Africa (1!), etc.,
- Lacquerware from Burma, Japan and China.
- On walls there are many of Dines' father's oil paintings.
And Japanese wood block prints, Chinese
JinShan
peasant paintings.
- A painting
from Java, one from Croatia, one naive from Vojvodina, three from
Cuba, three from Hungary - all bought locally.
- Fine Danish furniture: Wegner, Børge Mogensen, Piet Hein, Arne
Jacobsen, etc.
- And many Chinese furniture: chairs, tables,
cabinets, etc. - and a bed !
- Dines' upstairs study has Dines grandfather JLB's office furniture: a
desk, a sofa, a bookcase, a round table, three armchairs.
- Downstairs and upstairs there are Johannes Glob paintings
of Dines' grandmother
Signe Bjørner and of JLB.
- Dines loves to take a mid afternoon nap there -- right in the middle
of our living room.
- We have lived in this
great house now for 36 years.
- Result is that far too many items
have been gathered, here and there.
- Now Dines is clearing out many
books.
- Some went to Wales, some to Hildegard Bekic, some to Hotel
Latemar.
- Rest of the cleared ones are basically being thrown
out.
- At the same time heaps of old documents are likewise thrown
out.
- This early December one of Kari's downstair rooms shall have
a new "storage space wall".
- Then the other many rooms we have can be "sanitised", in time, Dines
says, for the Winter social season !
- Dines enjoys going to church.
- The problem, such as Dines sees it, is that very few priests can preach.
- Dines is a member of the local Lutheran
Evangelical Virum
Church (Kirke)
council.
- Sometimes he goes to that local church, sometimes elsewhere, for example,
- Jesus Kirken i Valby, some 35 mins. from here, where
Sørine Gotfredsen is a fine priest, and
- Herstedvester Church, some 45 mins. from here, where
Karsten B. Farup is also a fine priest.
- But he is looking for other good preachers nearby.
Please give me local references.
- Dines enjoys following newspaper debates around
- the Christian faith,
- matters of free speech, where Dines is a
member of the Danish Free Press
Society,
- immigration and integration,
- the Danish primary and secondary school system, etc.
- Dines likes to read communications by, amongst others,
- Dines subscribes to the "Tidehverv"
Journal.
- His father, while studying mathematics, attended Tidehverv meetings already in
1927 -
and subscribed to the "Tidehverv"
Journal all the years Dines can remember.
- To be a Christian is not a matter of choosing, as in a
supermarket, this and that part, rejecting those parts, etc.
- But then of course, some would claim that there is a dichotomy,
in then "choosing" Lutheran Protestantism
(and not choosing to be a
Methodist, or an Adventist, or a Roman Catholic, etc.).
- Within the Danish Folk Church, which is Lutheran Evangelical,
Dines
(again, perhaps, to some, a "supermarket" choice)
"prefers"
the, to some radical, interpretation as promulgated by `Tidehverv'.
- For some English text on one of the "Tidehverv" people, see
Søren
Krarup.
Unfortunately this text, to my mind, does not give a fair
description of "Tidehverv".
- Dines attended, with a
friend, Kaj Møller Jensen, this year's
Tidehverv's Summer meeting.
- C.S.Lewis,
I claim, "harmonizes" with "Tidehverv".
- Dines just joined the Danish
C.S.Lewis Society [incomplete web
page]. It was formally founded April 11, 2011.
- Dines got to know of C.S. Lewis's book Mere
Christianity
some
10 years ago (i.e., around 2000) from an article in "Tidehverv".
- Then, around 2007 Dines got hold of several of Lewis's books
- You can find them all in the very handy (8.00 X 5.31 inches)
boxed set Six by Lewis
(US$42).
Also this year Kari and Dines enjoyed sitting, in June-Sept., on the
terrace, morning, noon and evening.
Morning coffee, avec. Lunch. Afternoon drink
And:
The big fir tree in the back is now gone!
Some might peruse this travelogue cum diary.
Some may "feel" them toe-cringing.
Some might not.
Bless all.
Over the years Dines has had many classical cameras.
Starting in the early 1950s
with Kodak Retina II and Zeiss Ikon / Vogtlánder,
via a succession
of Japanese cameras: Minolta, Canon and Nikon (F4).
Upstairs, in a long bookcase, we have some 7 meters of more than 90
conventional
paper photo albums covering the years 1958 till 2003.
- England: Summer 1954
- Paris: January 1958
- USA: 1963-1973 - more than 24 states, incl. Hawaii
- Europe - Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, France: 1959-2002
- Austria: 1973-1975
- Fredsvej: 1970s-1990s
- Eastern Europe, Russia: 1978-1996, some 20 trips
- The Far East, incl. China: 1979-2000, some 25 trips
- India: 1986-1996, 4 trips
- Mongolia: 1992 and 1995
- South America: Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia -
1972-2000
- Tunisia, Ghana, Gabon, South Africa: 1973, 1994-1998
Charlotte takes a big album out from her childhood and shows her girls
when they are here - and giggle.
Then in 2003 Dines bought the first electronics cameras: two Canon
Ixus400 (Kari and me),
then the Canon DSC-T700 Cybershot and finally the
s: first the
200, then the
550.
Now we have more than 28.000 photos in/on Kari's MacBook Pro computer.
Almost half of them are now on the Internet, see below.
Click this:
13.804
photos from our "exotic"
travels
.
While Living in Singapore: Jul.2004 - Jun.2005 and Jan., 2007
1. Singapore I
382 photos
2. Singapore II
105 photos
3. Sumatra: Oct.2004
165 photos
4. New Zealand: Xmas & New-year 2004/5
929 photos
5. Burma/Myanmar, February 2005
957 photos
6. Angkhor Wat, March 2005
378 photos
While Living in Japan: Feb.-Dec.2006. Nov.2009
7. Feb.-March
217 photos
8. Apr.-May
161 photos
9. Hikone & Hakkatei: Apr.2006
105 photos
10. Kanazawa: April
129 photos
11. Houses, Castle, Kerokuen
280 photos
12. Curiosa
50 photos
13. Shanghai, Macau, Hong Kong: May
166 photos
14. Bars & Restaurants
389 photos
15. Hokkaido, Aug.
840 photos
16. Kyoto: April & June
227 photos
17. Noto Peninsula & Wajima: May
176 photos
18. Takayama: May
138 photos
19. Kyushu, Nov.
296 photos
20. Luang Prabang, Laos: Jan.2007
797 photos
21. Saigon, Vietnam, Jan.2007
291 photos
22. Tokyo: Nov.2009
88 photos
Back in Europe:
23. Salzkammergut, Austria: Feb.2007
201 photos
24. Bohemia, Moravia, Austria: Apr.2007
546 photos
25. Toledo, Spain: Sept.2007
284 photos
26. Istanbul: Oct.2007
722 photos
27. Alsace-Nancy-Dijon-Lyon-Poitiers: Oct.-Dec.2007
326 photos
28. Blikle's Poland: Warzawa, Krakow, Kazimierz Dolny: May 2008
237 photos
29. California: Feb.2008
204 photos
30. Andaluzia, Spain: Sept.-Oct.2008
402 photos
31. Graz & Wien, Austria: Oct.-Dec.2008
364 photos
32. Saarbrücken, Metz, Luxembourg, Trier, Nancy, Paris: March 2009
399 photos
33. Scotland: Sept.-Oct.2009
378 photos
34. Zentral Europa: Apr.2010
100 photos
35. Kiev-Lwow-Kiev-Odessa-Kiev: May 2010
326 photos
36. Budapest: Apr., Jun. & Oct.2010
317 photos
37. Paris, France: Apr.2011
216 photos
38. Rome, Italy: Apr.2011
132 photos
39. England, Germany, Austria, Italy,
Switzerland, Jun.-Aug.2011
323 photos
40. The Garden at Fredsvej 11
391 photos
41. Latemar: 1980-2011
830 photos
There are no electronic photos from our travels in the 1980s and
1990s in China, South America and Africa
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Christmas & New Year's Letter: Fall 2011
This document was generated using the
LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2002-2-1 (1.71)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,
Nikos Drakos,
Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,
Ross Moore,
Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.
The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 0 -toc_depth 6 diary2011
The translation was initiated by Dines Bjorner on 2012-01-05
Dines Bjorner
2012-01-05
