It will be very quiet here for a while because of our holidays which are due to begin. But don't worry, there's plenty of cyberspace left to explore... In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line abspoel at gmail dot com - and I will reply later.
Whatever you are planning to do this Summer: have a great time too!
Dutch football hero Ruud van Nistelrooij looks into the camera during our national anthem. I didn't go to Switzerland to take this pic, I was sitting at home on the couch, watching the game and taking a screen shot with my new Kodak EasyShare Z1012 IS camera.
I haven't been blogging for a while, because I was too busy living my life :-) And of course I wanted to see the games with our great orange football team. The Dutch did well during the first round, beating Italy (3-0), France (3-1) and Romania (2-0) and finishing on top of the 'group of death'. But a great team from Russia, coached by Guus Hiddink from the Netherlands (thank you, Guus) kicked us out of the tournament yesterday and I have to admit they really deserved to win. So: come on, Russia!
I like football, but I am not as mad as some of my neighbours (see picture below). 
The day after the night before...
Now I am hoping that the Russians will win the European Championships. But Spain and Turkey have great teams too. We all know of course that Italy or Germany will have the last laugh - as always. Playing bad games but winning tournaments is also a quality, I guess.
But you know what? This week I will go to France for a vacation with my family. And the French people don't want to discuss football either, so we're okay.
Check out my photo blog for some new pics and as always, feel free to leave a comment here or over there!
Last Sunday, June 8, we celebrated Pascalle's 11th birthday. To quote Stevie W: Isn't She Lovely? Yes, she is my beautiful 'little' girl!
Everything comes from God alone. “Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory” (Rom. 11:36). The breath you just took? God gave that. The blood that just pulsed through your heart? Credit God. The light by which you read and the brain with which you process? He gave both.
Everything comes from him . . . and exists for him. We exist to exhibit God, to display his glory. We serve as canvases for his brush stroke, papers for his pen, soil for his seeds, glimpses of his image.
Cure For The Common Life – Max Lucado
Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and grey; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But he didn’t. He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too. Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way that chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rings? Why give a flower fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be he loves to see that look upon your face?
Max Lucado - He Chose the Nails
Dear blogging friends, I have made some changes in my bloglist. Some fellow bloggers are not updating their blogs anymore and sometimes I just lose contact with them. I have deleted the links to some of these blogs and added some new ones.
I am excited about some new contacts that I have made through VerveEarth. And I am also excited about the fact that my photo blog has entered the top 100 of this blogging community!
As a Dutch blogger, writing in English, I am especially interested in finding bloggers from around the globe. Many of them are Christians too, so we already share something that is very important to me. But I want to be open minded and I know that having a certain world view is also to a high degree determined by the place where you are born. So I think it is also good to exchange views and opinions with bloggers with different cultural and religious backgrounds.
I hope to add some more bloggers from Asia, South America and Africa to my favorites, especially if they are also blogging in English. Keep an eye on my bloglist and let me know if you want to be added too, so that I can have a look at your blog to find out whether your blog will be a good addition! Unfortunately I am not able to visit all the blogs all of the time, but I do try to stay in touch with most of the people that are included in my blog list. Of course I appreciate all feedback in my comments section and IN-box (abspoel at gmail dot com). Drop me a line or give me a shout!
I captured some lambs on video during their secret training session for the world championships sprinting for junior sheep. The images are a bit vague, I'm sorry about that, but remember this is a stealth recording... Enjoy - I think it is funny. And oh yes, I've posted some new pics on my photo blog too.
I am reading the book of Daniel from the Message translation right now. Wow. Just read the passage below and see how exciting and inspiring these old stories are when you read them in contemporary English! I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna bow for the idols of this world, whatever the consequences. Let's all pray for the persecuted Church, our faithful brothers and sisters in Christ all around the world. They are certainly not alone!
Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. 1 Peter 1:6,7
Robin, Pascalle and Sosha (left to right) had their pictures taken as a surprise for their mom and both grandma's. And dad is very happy and proud too, of course, as you all can see.
Sometimes you have to lay flat on your back to make an interesting picture. At least, that's what I did. Do you want to know what this is? Have a look at my photo blog !
I took this picture this morning. Have a closer look at it (click to enlarge) and think about the pattern in the yellow heart of this little daisy. Someone did a great job in designing this, admit it or not. (More recent pics on my photo blog)
I never thought of this before, but just read in a newspaper that the earth is moving with an orbital speed of 67,000 mph / approx 19 miles per second (108,000 km/h or 30 km/s).
Wow!
Are you still with me? Fasten your safety belts!
Just like everybody else I hear about the recent natural disasters in Burma and China. Both countries are far away from where I live, so even if the news is shocking, it is possible to ignore it on this side of the globe. It is possible, but it makes me feel guilty. It's hard to imagine what our fellow human beings are going through in these terrible times and circumstances. The gigantic numbers of people killed and wounded, the cities, villages, houses that are destructed... the ruined lives... there's just no way we can ignore this. Just one picture on the BBC website sums it all up for me. I feel awful about all the human suffering in the world and I feel powerless too, to be honest. Lord have mercy on us all.
News update from the BBC: The official death toll for Burma's cyclone disaster has jumped to almost 78,000 people, with nearly 56,000 missing, according to state TV.
Previously, Burma was giving a toll of 43,000 dead and 28,000 missing while the Red Cross and United Nations had estimated a death toll above 100,000.
From an e-mail message that I received today:
Your blog PAUL'S PHOTO BLOG caught our attention. I'm the founder of a recently launched startup for bloggers. We are searching the internet for the world's blogs by geography, and we found yours for the Netherlands. I would like to invite you to our site which plots the content of the internet on an interactive map of the world. VerveEarth is an entirely new way to surf the net. It shows spatial and geographic connections that a blog search engine could never reveal.
So... I decided to participate. Have a look here
From Wikipedia: In 1856, the first windmill in the Haarlemmermeer was built in the centre of Hoofddorp by Dirk David van Dijk. It was called "De Eersteling" (The first). Due to increased building around the mill, it wasn't able to operate for a long time, but in 1977 the mill was moved to another location near fort Hoofddorp. It was operated regularly from that moment, and is open to the public.
Taken without flash light... More pics from my visit to Friesland will appear on my photo blog soon. This one is taken in the church tower from a small village called Tzum (in Dutch) and Tsjom (in Frisian).
Today we went to Friesland for a fun day with my colleagues from the publishing house. I will upload some pics later on this blog and on my photo blog, but first I want to show you around on the Afsluitdijk (Closure Dike) connecting Holland and Friesland. Check out my second 360° video clip above (first one here) and have a look at this location on Google maps here and watch a satelite pic here.
Today is a beautiful Spring day in the Netherlands. Actually, it is the first day with Summer-like temperatures this year (check this Dutch meteorological web site - in Google translate). This week I made this pic of the swans and their new ducklings in the ditch in front of our house. The same swans as last year, the same nest, but with eight new sons or daughters! And yes, the moorhens are back too - again nesting close to their big swan neighbours. Funny. Have a look at my photoblog for some more Spring impressions from the Netherlands. See these April and May 2007 blog entries about these swans and / or click on the labels below.
Searchme is new search visualization which lets you see the webpage before you surf there. This search engine is still in it's beta phase, but I like the idea. The website has an Apple-like 'look and feel' and will only be helpful as long as you know what your are looking for... The visual approach has some limitations, but if the developers do their homework, this might very well be the way to go. Similar idea here; and here you can read more about a better visual interface for search.
Source: Supergans.
We can't cross that bridge until we come to it, but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time. Bernard Baruch
Always do one thing less than you think you can do. Bernard Baruch
This is my first 360° video clip - showing a view from the pier in IJmuiden. This clip was filmed during a walk with my son Robin on Sunday April 20, 2008. I want to upload more 360° clips on this blog, so that I can share some of the landscapes, interiors, surroundings, panoramic views and my favorite spots with the rest of the world.
So here goes: welcome to my brand new blog posting series called Let's show you around!
I am using a Sony Ericsson cell phone to make these clips. If you think this is a fun idea, please make your own 360° video clips and leave a comment here because I do want to see the locations that you like to visit in the place where you live on this beautiful globe.
Pic left: Google earth pic pier IJmuiden (red dot is the place where I made the video clip). Find this location on Google maps here. By the way, the IJmuiden pier is not a walkway with piles or pillars, but a breakwater with a solid foundation. As you can see in the pic left (click to enlarge) there are two piers in IJmuiden - they give some protection against the sea when ships enter the North Sea Canal, but I think that they are also constructed to keep the sea sand away from the port. It's nice to walk on these piers, but when the weather is bad, it can be very dangerous and you are not allowed to go there during a storm, of course. These piers are favorite spots for anglers too. See some pics on my photo blog.
Read more about piers and please do leave a comment here to tell me what you think!
I haven't been blogging too much lately - there were just too many other things to do! Last Saturday we finished the alpha in prison course. This course started in January and although the work was time and energy consuming, it was also very rewarding to be involved in this. The Good News still has the power to change lives and in a prison setting words like sin, guilt, forgiveness and grace are not just church lingo. I trust that this course was only the start of this work and I believe that both prisoners and volunteers have learned a lot. God will continue the good work which he has begun!
Inevitably, of course, not only those of us who do science, but all of us, have to choose the presuppositions with which we start. There are not many options – essentially just two. Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.
John Lennox, God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God? - Lion Hudson, Oxford 2008 - p. 179
I enjoyed reading this book, but it is not an easy read! John Lennox is a Reader (Professor) in Mathematics and Fellow of Green College, University of Oxford. He recently debated Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion - check this and listen to this debate here). If you want to find out more about the rationality of faith in a Creator God, this is a book that I can highly recommend.
Recently I received this comment on one of my earlier postings on Lindisfarne (part of my Virtual Island Hopping tour):
Visit to the Community of Aidan and Hilda on Lindisfarne, December 2007, impressions of a new Way - I have done a retreate with CAH on Lindisdfarne in December 2007 and decided to become an Explorer with the Community. To be an Explorer means to write a Way of Life for oneself with guidance of a Soul Friend. This are two basic, elements of the Celtic spirituality as practised at CAH: pilgrimage and Soulfriendship. This brought a great challenge to my life, and which resulted already in a better balance, and that is bringing out the full richness of life much more. Basically it comes down to Contemplation-in-Action, which is all about living a contemplative life in the midst of our own sometimes turbulent daily lifes. We don't need monastries for doing just that, do we?
I am looking for like-minded people that are interested in this kind of spirituality. If you are interested don't hesitate to get in touch and contact me at my email (jcborger at cs dot com) or by leaving a comment here. Lets bring Lindisfarne just a bit closer to the continent! Johannes Borger in The Hague
Johannes, thanks for commenting and maybe you will find linkeminded travelers, seekers and soulmates here! Blessings!
