family life

Wow, a new beach this year. Nice quiet evening too! Water temperature is 14C.

The beach near 's-Gravenzande has been widened by adding sand, lots of sand. There were two reasons for this: first there was a problem of beach erosion that apparently was caused by a concave coast line. They therefore wanted to add so much beach that the coast line was no longer concave. Furthermore, a huge extension of Rotterdam harbor is being built on the south flank, and the resulting loss of ecosystem must be compensated somewhere. Part of the "old" beach area is now converted into a bird-friendly natural area.

A slight smell of asphalt in the house can not be avoided....

#home #roadconstruction

OK, I’m happy I’ve replaced this 240V mess…. it looked truly dangerous. #home #oops #danger

Municipality of #Westland trying to make savings in the dark?

The Municipality of Westland has decided to only have street lighting in the rural areas where this benefits safety. I am very much in favor of cutbacks where possible, but this produces a very dark picture for us. Left towards the built area, where ample lighting is still on. It is dark with us, but to the right a lamp burns now and then. Is the traffic at our house safer than there? Pedestrians, cyclists and freight traffic use the same space over the entire length (and 3m width…)!

Ever heard the sound of a truck hitting a street light at 80 km/h? #oops #crash #home

We still get 1.5kW out of these frosty panels…. -10 C outside.

#pv #home #cold

After a visit to the Prague zoo, of course Maxim bought a new crocodilian. A gavial this time. #croc

Spotted a new bird in our garden: Goldfinch. #home

My native language is Dutch. My wife’s is French. We both speak each other’s language fluently. But we originally met each other in Germany, and have always been speaking English together.

Maeslantkering is closed for a yearly functional test

Yes! The first 1MWh of our photovoltaics.

#pv #roundnumbers

Finally some nice weather, delivering >3kW of PV power to the net right now.

#solar #energy

A few weeks ago I visited two reptile zoos together with Maxim: one in Breda and one in Tilburg. I've been experimenting with some hand-held HDR pictures (three exposures each) at high ISO. All pictures have been post-processed through DXO Optics Pro 9, the HDR images have been aligned using Hugin and mapped using Luminance HDR.

Road is being repaired in the distance. Can’t wait to see them come here! #home

Nice weather for the first day in a weekend —> heavy traffic back from the beach….. #busy #summer #home

Snow + Wind = Heaps. 35cm in some places. It took me 2 hours to dig out the car

#cold #weather

Yes! 2 MWh of photovoltaic power achieved during a dark summer thunderstorm.

With an antenna on the roof, and two-and-a-half channel reception in house, we had decided that it couldn't harm to ask the cable company to get a connection. The rules said that if it would cost more than 100 Euro's, they would first tell us how much it would be. But then: suddenly there they were in our garden. I guess the communication boom on the markets has made this possible: at the time this happened the cable companies were doing ~5000 US$ per connection....

I never imagined this could happen to the bottom of a pan. #home #oops

The woodpecker is back in the garden. Last time we saw him has been years ago. He might be back now he discovered the peanuts! #home #garden #bird