Arjan Geven - Weens World

My homepage address actually was not the only that moved recently. We also (finally) got rid of the antique furniture that has been standing in our living room for the last few months.

You might remember this picture here:

..but all that is gone now.

Instead, we got this here:

Looks much better, doesn’t it?

Yay, you found your way to the new Weens World, my rantings at my own domain: http://www.arjangeven.nl. Don’t forget to update your favorite feed-reader to include the new feed at http://www.arjangeven.nl/atom.xml.

All Arjan Geven postings will now appear here . If you want to stay posted about my life, my rants, my photos, and whatever, just look here!

A very, very beautiful region in Austria, the Wachau… with the famous villages Melk and Dürnstein!

The “Stift” in Melk (monastery):

After walking a bit, we stood in front of the church inside the monastery:
The view from one of the windows in the “Marble Hall”:
From Melk, we went by boat over the Donau to Dürnstein, which is about 30km in the direction of Vienna again, or approximately two hours. Way too short, as the weather was very, very nice!

Anyway, some more photos!

The approach to Dürnstein, from the boat (notice the ruins on the top of the hill, where Richard Lionheart was apparently held captive in Medieval times, when it was still a mighty castle):

A view on Dürnstein as we’re climbing the hill towards the ruins:
Another view on Donau, on the way up:
And relaxing after we reached the top:

And afterwards, back home by train from the magnificent Dürnstein trainstation (which is actually not all that big):

Coming back from Copenhagen last Saturday evening, a good visit awaited: my parents, who arrived in Klosterneuburg in the afternoon the same day (10km from Vienna) and stayed at a campingsite there. So we had a relaxed time here!

They also brought lots and lots of stuff from Eindhoven, such as a little oven, a microwave and a desk, which I all left there when I went to Austria. They also brought some “vanillevla” and “chocoladevlokken” which I of course also enjoy(-ed)!

Other than that, they also brought some amazing weather, so that we’re now also enjoying temperatures of 25 to 30 degrees, as you can see on the photos below!

Besides enjoying the great weather, we also did a guided tour through the Opera and visited an exposition of Surrealist art at the BA-CA Kunstforum, the former being very good, the latter a bit disappointing. Anyway, some photos!

De opera van binnen:

Pappa:

Mamma:

Met zijn drieën op de foto:

As the European Commission gave green light to the LABORANOVA project, my first EU-funded project actually, it was time for a kick-off meeting. With 21 partners quite a large meeting, scheduled for three days, the main goal being to gain a shared understanding of the goals and sub goals of the project and to re-identify the steps to reach those goals over the next 3 to 4 years. After those issues where cleared we could talk about the detailed tasks of each of the partners and what has been scheduled for the next few months.

The project has a very interesting topic actually, as it is about providing a framework that should help an organisation in innovation, by removing (or reducing) the three most common barriers, in idea generation, connection and evaluation. So, what does that mean? For one, that is described in the project proposal and the description of work, each counting some 100+ pages. Additionally, it took us one and a half day of modelling with LEGO to create a shared understanding of that.

Yes, LEGO. Under the motto “do as you preach”, we also worked with an innovative, experimental method ourselves to improve focus, create and share ideas better and faster, and to do some team building. So we “played” with ‘LEGO Serious Play‘ to accomplish that. And I have to say, it really works! It actually takes quite some energy, but it also keeps you thinking, keeps you creative, gives everybody a more equal say in discussions, and, it’s fun as well. I think we might actually also find an application of such a method at CURE in user analysis phases.

Unfortunately, we did not have much time to look around in Copenhague, as we flew back immediately after the meeting. We walked a bit through the center of the city after dinner, but that was about it. Even though the wetter was very nice at the time . I guess I’ll just have to go there again!

And of course, a few photos…

Building shared identity with LEGO:

More identity building:

Sunny water in Copenhague:

Last weekend, we (Nora & I) made a two-and-a-half houp trip to Graz to visit family of Nora that’s living there and Nora’s cousin Julia received her “sacrament of confirmation” / Vormsel / Firmung on Sunday. Graz is actually a very nice city to visit, especially when the weather plays along (grmbl).

But anyway, the confirmation took place in the Dom-church and was led by the bishop, which was interesting to witness! The whole celebration actually impressed me as a whole, anyway. A lot of beautiful singing, a massive orgel and a well-thought-out, surprisingly realistic-optimistic p each in a centuries-old, gothic church was more than I had expected. The negative side: it took a whole two-and-a-half hours; which was also more than I had expected.

After that, we went for some good “Steirisches Essen”, very nice!

A pity that the weather wasn’t vey friendly, but it got better over time and we made some nice pictures. Te next day we made a city tour, and then headed home again as Tuesday is a normal working day.

It will be a quite irregular working week though, as I’ll be off to Copenhague for three days from Wednesday on! Cool, huh?

Double spiralling stairs:

Downtown Graz:

Kunsthaus Graz:

Walk through the neighbourhood:

There are still some bureancratic organizations left in Austria… One of them is health care. Definitely health care. It took me: a visit to the general practicioner (GP), a surgeon, another GP, a radiologist, and a GP again, to find out that l have a small rupture in my groin / liesbreuk / Leistenbruch (for which I will need to go to a surgeon again).. lncluded in these visits are of course waiting times of up to one-and-a-half hours.

The pro.cess could have been reduced by at least two visits, but yeah, at least I got an idea of how the health care system in Austria works. They for one already introduced the “e-Card”, which contains patient records and uses a large database backend with patients medical histories. All doctors have access to this system, and although it still has some start-up problems, it shows potential!

Anyway so much about doctor visits. I’ll need to undergo surgery once now (first time of my life), but it’s not urgent .

Then of course, birthday time!! As every year at the beginning of June, I can say that I got a year older again (yay!). Nora made me a good breakfast and I got some presents . Other tan that, it was more or less a regular Thursday (except for the cards and phonecalls though, thanks all!!). On Friday we then went out to celebrate as well, much better.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the train to Graz, as Nora’s cousin Julia does her receives the sacrament of confirmation (”vormsel” or “Firmung”). And as it’s a long weekend, l hope we can see a bit of the city as well, as it’s nice in Graz! Let’s hope the weather’s good, too…

The paper I wrote based on my final thesis work (Depth and Breadth away from the desktop - Optimal Information Hierarchies for Mobile Use) got accepted at the Mobile HCI ‘06 Conference!

View the Technical Program of the “8th International Conference on
Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services” as well and you’ll see me listed over there.

Basically, that means I’ll be in Espoo, Finland from 12 to 15 September. After that, I’ll have to fly back to Austria for a few days again, and then on the 20th to the Netherlands, as my sister is getting married! I’ll stay a week in the Netherlands before flying back home again. (BTW, it still sounds strange that “home” for me is not in the Netherlands anymore, and that travelling home means travelling to Austria now. Which is an interesting thought, how is “home” different from “home” in a mobile context, but that’s for a later time)

Anyway, the paper got accepted .

A few weeks ago, we had our spring concert with the accordion orchestra, where I’ve been playing since about a year now, with, for a change, a title: “Frühlingsstimme”, or “Voices of Spring”. The concert went well, ending in a our conductor dancing to “Rock around the Clock” .
Here are some photos of us, the “Wiener Akkordeonclub Favoriten“, in action!
The orchestra, you’ll find me as the second person from the left, next to Kurt:

We were not the only ones playing. Chronologically:

The Wednesday Orchestra:

Ensemble Da Capo:

Revelaction group (songs and dance):

Zo, weer eens een updatetje hier, het is al weer lang geleden dat we verhuisd zijn, en ondertussen ziet het er wel weer een beetje beter uit . Helaas doet onze woonkamer nog steeds dienst als lange-termijn-opslag voor oud Indisch brandhout, maargoed, buiten een bezoekje van de loodgieter vorige week is het nou allemaal best prima wonen hier. Ondertussen ook het eerste bezoek uit Nederland en Hongarije gehad, zie de foto’s!

Op de achtergrond de Donauturm, op de voorgrond Arjan, Radboud, Dylan, Ruben en Anita, (achtereenvolgens NL & NL, Frankrijk, Spanje en Hongarije), met dank aan Nora voor de foto…

Nog een fotootje met dezelfde groep, met haast

En ook Nora was van de partij natuurlijk!

Een weekje later was mamma op bezoek, ten tijde van de Weense Marathon. Natuurlijk hebben we allemaal meegelopen *kuch*

Mamma en Nora kijken toe bij de marathon…

Mamma en ik ergens in de buurt van Heldenplatz.