Marien van Os

Today I made a little redesign of this site. I’ve made the lay-out now fluid and I’ve cut the crap (no more javascipt toggle options and a simplified the design). I will continue to improve my site and I will post more about my learning process of ActionScript 3. I’ve finally started to read the first part of the Essential ActionScript 3 book by Colin Moock. So my OOP ActionScript skills will improve thanks to the simplified explanations by Colin. Since I’m always eager to learn new things I find it hard to go in one direction. I want to know everything about everything but I guess that’s just impossible. So for the coming months I will just stick to ActionScript 3 and see what will come out of that.

Today i’ve moved my online photos back to flickr. Not that i was not satisfied with smugmug, it’s an excellent service. But I think flickr is used by a lot more people and I’ve way more friends and family in my contact list in flickr. When I moved over to smugmug I was more satisfied with the presentation of my photos which was one of the main reasons to switch. And just to try something else which is a good thing I guess. Ii’ve found two excellent programs wich made the switch back a lot more easy. The first is migratr which is some sort of ftp program. It downloads all of the smugmug photos and uploads them to flickr (or even with some other services). The second one is a firefox add-on called smuglr. Which makes it easy to transfer flickr photo sets the smugmug. And since i’m a Iphoto user i’ve installed FlickrExport which makes it easy to upload photos to flickr. I’m happy to be back and I’ve bought a two year pro account. So maybe I will use both since the uploading and syncing process is easier than i thought.

It’s been a while since the last post. I’ve been cut off the internet for a while and was busy redecorating my new home. Not to say that are good excuses but hey i’m posting now Still busy with my kitchen which is now a mixture of Ikea, Miele and Bruynzeel and of course my own brilliant ideas.
The big news is that I’m not (well at least for the coming year or so) going to work free lance. I’m back @ Mirabeau as a front-end developer. Things have changed a bit over there. New colleguages and new colleguages And plans for new offices( for even more new colleguages ) in the centre of Amsterdam and in Hoorn. You can read the article about it over here(in Dutch).
But although I’ve been away for about 6 months it feels like I’m home again, because there are also still a lot of old colleguages off course. The big difference is that I’m working 4 days now so I’ve some more time to spend with my father. My Mother and father now have more support from Thuiszorg to help with the daily care. And on wednesday (my day off) I’m also there to help. The situation is slowly getting worse especially eating is getting more difficult for him. I guess we will have to live day by day with it…

Running the 1/2 marathon of Amsterdam

In the mean time I’ve also broken my personal record of the 1/2 marathon which is now: 1:44:47. So I’ve improved it with a little 3 minutes. When i started training again I thought I was going to be faster. But when you are actually running it you think a little differerent about it, especially the last 3 kilometres or so…
But I’m glad I’ve improved myself. So i hope the next time I will be even faster. The next time will be the 1/2 marathon of Egmond. So there are a lot of training days ahead of me again… Don’t know exactly why I’m putting myself in to it but I just feel the need to do so and it makes me feel better of course. But that’s mostly when the training is done.

Today we’ve decided to go back to the Netherlands on Saturday 29th of September. In the upcoming week I’ll have to cancel our Internet connection because we probably don’t need the connection in Aubenton the coming months. And since i don’t have a connection in my new house yet I will probably don’t have acces to the internet for a couple of weeks. I’ll have to check my e-mail in the local cafe or spend some time at a friends house. When I’m back to Amsterdam I will be living in my new house, something I’m looking forward to. Of course I’ve missed my life in Amsterdam, but the sickness of my father is slowly getting worse. We’re now making appointments with several care companies and personal caregivers. And I think I will be helping out for one or two days a week. So we’ll have to see how that will develop.

In the coming weeks I will probably be spending a lot of time setting everything up in my new house. I have to rebuild my old Bruynzeel kitchen which was originally designed by Piet Zwart. I hope that i can still fit all of the pieces together.
And when i’m finished I will start working as a free-lance front-end developer so I still have to build some info pages with my portofolio and things like that. I guess i’ll see to that when I’m back in Amsterdam.

I’ve registered myself for the Amsterdam Marathon not the full one but the half which is still 21km. I’ve setup a schedule on a Dutch site called hardloopschema.nl which is a very helpfull site if you’re training for a running event. I even have my own training schedule page which i try to follow. If I strictly follow the schedule I must be able to break my record of 1:47:56 (which I ran in 2005) with 1:35 to 1:40. And for my own body statistics I’ve setup my Suunto T6 watch again so I can follow my heartbeat and all kinds of other stuff and see if the training schedule has any effect on my physical condition. The event is on the 21th of October so I’ll let you know in which time I completed it. In the mean time I have quite much training days ahead of me so I’ll hope these will go well and that i can keep up with the schedule. And since i’m still living in Aubenton I guess I’ll be seeing a lot of cows and green hill landscapes.

And between my trainings I made some pictures of our garden just after I mowed it see them over here.

Last week I was in Amsterdam and worked hard with laying out my new wooden floor. Since I had to do it on my own I’ve worked from 9:00 Am till 9:00 PM. I had some muscle pains in my legs and arms because of the strange positionings of my body with the wooden floor parts and/or hammer in my hands. FIrst I thought I did not had sufficient wood parts but in the end I only had two long parts as a leftover so that could not be any better. And on friday evening i was ready just in time for the the movement day on Saturday. A couple of friends helped me pack all the boxes and furnture in a rental Van and in two rides it was already done. It was strange to see my old house all empty since I lived there for about thirteen years, all kinds of memories passed through my head. On saturday night I had a very good sleep in my new house it was really quiet during the night compared to the busy street my old house is siuated in. You can see the results over here in my smugmug gallery

On Sunday afternoon I went back to Aubenton and i think i will stay there till halfway of October.

Yesterday evening I finally put on my walking shoes and started running again. My physical condition was still pretty good which was a liitle surprise to me because I did not train for a while. You can see my running route on the google map below. I think it’s about 7 kilometers and I did in about 30-35 minutes. Nexttime I think I will go biking again or maybe a combination of biking and running. And maybe take some pictures of the environment.

For the past few weeks I have been living in Aubenton in the north of France. Since my father suffers from a serious illness called MSA. See this FAQ about the illness. It’s really hard to see my father suffering. He can’t do anything by himself all the things you do and take for granted like standing up, sitting down, walking, eating, talking etc. is really hard for him to do by himself. I’m helping out my parents since this is not something my mother can deal with all by herself.

In the mean time my house in Amsterdam is ready to live in. I got the keys of it last week and everything was done properly by the construction workers. I can’t wait to live in it and to move all my stuff from my other house. At the end of this month I will be in Amsterdam to move all my stuff and then I have to see when I will come back permanently from Aubenton. I think this will be somewhere late september beginning of october.

You can see some photos from Aubenton and my little mtb trips. I’m hoping that I can make some more photos from the landscapes over here they’re actually quite nice.

When I’m back I will begin working as a free lance front end developer. Actually I’m allready working free lance for my former employer Mirabeau. I’m getting the psd’s and things like that and I translate them into working slideshow’s, form check’s and a worldmap in flash. I’m quite happy about it . When I’m done with the work for Mirabeau I will give this site a liitle re-design and I will make some portofolio pages and some info about hiring me as a front end developer of course.

These were probably the heaviest 7 physical days of my life but I’m proud that I’ve completed the TransScotland 2007. It was a fantastic way to see the beautiful landscapes of Scotland. You can read a full review over on the officially website. I’m still uploading some photos I took and I’ve made a small video compilation. This video compilation was shot with a canon ixus hanging on my neck so it’s a bit shaky now and then, but you get the idea.

I’ve quit my daily job as a Front-end developer at Mirabeau. This was a hard decision to make but I think it’s a good decision. The main reason is that my father suffers from serious illness.
He needs daily care and my mother is now responsible for helping my father out of bed and lying him down again in the evening and everything in between. Since this is not only emotional very tough but also physical I’m gonna help my parents out.

Since we have a beautiful house in the north of France we’re heading over there somewhere in may. This is a four hour drive from my parents current home place The Hague.
See the google map of Aubenton which is the little village where our house is situated.

So in the coming months I will be living in France and I’m gonna take things as they come. This will also be the time that my new house will become ready to live in it, so I will make a lot of trips to Amsterdam and back to Aubenton.
While I’m in France I, off course, have to stay updated about all the things going on the land of Front-end development. I will bring some books with me (don’t know which ones yet) probably about Flex, some Javascript and maybe some Flash related things. I will finally have time to seriously read a book and practically make some experiments with the learned stuff.