O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times did’st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

What surprises me more is what happened afterwards. It looked like the world turned mad. Several Apple stores have been turned into pilgrimage destinations and people are standing in front of them wearing apple shirts, staring at nothing, lighting candles, showings pics of Steve on their iPhone to other people. They really look like “hey, look at me. I am one of them. I also belong to his people”. They are almost religious groupies. People are posting notes to the large glass walls, writing notes to the former Apple CEO like it has been their father and savior. And close to his house, it looked like some adults turned into infants again, writing messages on the pavements, thanking him for his products and his being.

That brings mixed feelings. It’s madness anyway. But there are two sides there. First of all, I wonder how addicted people can be to a brand, or even to a person. True, he had unique talents, making him a special person and a nice guy for many people. But it remains a person. He ain’t God. On the other side, Steve has done some awesome personal branding. Without using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn! He ocassionally replied to emails from customers but that was it. And still, people adored him. Even those who never received an email from him.

I’m really curious what’s going to happen now. Will Apple maintain the course they have been on for the past years? for the next few, I don’t worry. But what comes afterwards? Nobody knows I guess.

First of all, I am still an Apple fanboy. I love my iPad and am using it more and more throughout the day. The same goes for my iMac. Fabulous device, really easy to use. However, I’m a bit disappointed looking at their current vision on development. Or: I think Microsoft is moving faster than apple right now and might be ahead of Apple in one or two years. I guess this requires some explanation.

The iPhone has been revolutionary. It was so revolutionary that the guys at RIM even thought it could not be true. But it was true and people are loving it. As they are loving iOS. However, I think that iOS is too static to last that long. The idea of unlocking your device, whereafter you are immediately confronted with your apps is cool. But in iOS, it is kinda static. Dev’s are still not able to put live info into their app icons. Which I think is the logic next step. Microsoft took that step. They allow you to create bigger or smaller tiles on your home screen. And they can be used to display live information on them. So instead of a static app home screen, you get instant access to the information you were going to look for.

I really appreciate the live tiles in Windows Phone. But that’s the mobile OS. Let’s take a look at the desktop OS’s. Apple did a nice job in refining their Mac OS X with the latest Lion release. But they are still thinking in the traditional desktop environment box. Although they now have the function available where it shows me all my installed apps in an iOS way, I have to press a button there to see static app icons. Actually, all they did is move the applications folder from the stacks to all full screen overlay. Without live info.
If I look at the upcoming Windows 8, Microsoft did step outside that box. You don’t have to click anywhere. You immediately see the apps you want to see. With live info attached, even if an app is not running. That is smart!

And by releasing Windows 8 to the public, more than 1 billion people will have the opportunity to upgrade to the Windows Metro style UI. Which is similar to the Windows Phone 7 layout. And once the people have the desktop environment, purchasing the mobile counterpart is the logic next step. Especially as Microsoft will make it possible to have your apps running on both platforms. So think about interoperability between apps!

The future is looking good, but I think we have to look through windows.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With individualistic acting comes individualistic thinking. “I have my own opinion”. That’s fine. Everybody can have it’s own opinion. I even kinda like the idea that really everybody can have it’s own opinion, as long as that other person does not push his or her opinion to the individualistic thinker. But the point where this goes all wrong is tolerance. Tolerance has a one on one relationship with individualism. No doubt about it. Let me clarify this with a simple example:

• Person A is an individualist in heart and soul. He loves to wear yellow clothes every day. All his clothes are yellow. And he wears them every day. In addition, he hates, really really hates, people that wear purple clothes. He thinks that purple clothes are fake as yellow is the true color. But as long as people in purple clothes are not pushing him to start wearing purple clothes, life is fine. He just thinks they are mad.
• Person B is an individualist in heart and soul. She loves to wear purple clothes every day. All her clothes are purple. She even wears them at night. She is convinced that people wearing yellow clothes are odd, silly, less smart, and so on. But hey, she’s an individualist. And as long as she is not pushed to wear yellow clothes, she’ll let these people have fun.

These two persons are pure individualists. And I guess they would be perfectly able to live together in a world, although they don’t like each others clothing style. However, this will only work as long as they will tolerate each other because the moment Person A doesn’t tolerate people in purple clothes anymore and starts to convince them to wear yellow, Person B will feel attacked because she loves purple clothing and “Hey, let me have my own opinion and taste, so you can have yours”.

This is off course a silly example, but I guess you get the idea. The truth is that this happens quite often in real life and I want to point out a few examples. Bear in mind that individualism in important here for most people.

• In the Netherlands, the law allows people of the same sex to get married with each other. Such marriages can be endorsed by government employees so the marriage is completely legal. However, there are government employees that do not want to endorse such marriages due to religious arguments. So far, so good, happy and tolerant. Each city has a number of these employees so there will be one available that does want to endorse the marriage. Only recently, a few cities have decided that employees that do not want to endorse such marriages will be fired. Because “these people want to get married and you must do it”. Pardon me? So you are allowed to have your individualistic opinion and he is not? But what if he has an individualistic opinion as well? Should he just ignore and reject the request? But that will cost him his job, bringing him in financial trouble. But the most important aspect for individualistic people: he is not allowed to have his own opinion because it interferes with the opinion of the individualist. And after all, would you want to be married by someone who does not agree with your vision regarding marriage and will therefore not likely do his best to make the moment a moment to remember?
• Another example is the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP). the SGP is the oldest Dutch political party and has a strong religious christian view on politics, also known as theocracy: leading the country by the grace of God. The SGP does not allow women to become a member of the party. I don’t know exactly why. I don’t need to know why. Because I think it is their opinion and they have to right to think that as I believe a political party may define its own rules. However, a few years ago, they were brought to court by the Clara Wichmann Instituut, a foundation that works to improve the rights of women thought it was unfair that women could not become members of the SGP. And therefore, the government finances flowing to the SGP had to be stopped. However, these women were never going to be members of the SGP as they did not agree with the religious point of view. In addition, surveys among ‘typical SGP women’ showed that they did not think there was a problem. So what is the problem? Are people not allowed to create their own party anymore, allowing them to communicate their vision and opinions? What is the point? How is it possible that someone that has absolutely no stake in the SGP’s femine-policy, is able to convince a judge. Weird things.
• The final example is one I heard on the radio earlier this week. You have to know that due to stormy weather, several people died at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium. Bert Dorenbos wrote a column regarding this in which he questioned himself what God wanted to say with the storm. This was quickly transformed to God’s Judgement for the Pukkelpop people, although he never said that. Last monday, Giel Beelen, a DJ at 3FM radio called him. Bert Dorenbos defended his point of view and clarified that he never wrote that this storm was God’s judgement. However, he spoke about the risks of drugs, music, and so on, related to dark forces in the air. And what was Giel’s reply? He called the man an ‘insult to faith’. Excuse me? Giel, let this man have his own opinion as you can have yours. You don’t believe in anything so who are you to set the standards with regards to insulting faith? Don’t get my wrong. I don’t agree with everything what Bert Dorenbos says. But I think he should at least be allowed to communicate his own opinion, right individualists?

Just a few examples of the lack of tolerance with regard to individualism. I don’t think individualism is a good choice, although it is has some positive aspects. However, if you want to be individualistic, please do not forget to be tolerant as well, as you can only be an individualist as long as you let others have their opinion.

Fortunately, it was not just the two of us who were going, but with us went a bunch of people from the local church. With roughly fifteen people, we made camp next to the lake with more than enough space to cook our food, drink some beers together and so on. If you want an impression of the festival, please take a look at the after movie below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think that my personal musical favorite of the weekend are the guys from Humming People. These guys love Johnny Cash and their style is pretty close to his. But they play with so much enthusiasm that it get’s really hard to remain seated. Especially their gig in ‘De Belofte’ was awesome. Other great acts were LZ7 (makes you feel teenager again), Trinity, Reverend Vince Anderson, Gungor, HB and Make Up Your Mind.

Looking at speakers, I was really impressed by the stories of Robert Doornebal, Brian ‘Head’ Welch (form Korn guitar player) and Dick van Keulen. If you want, you can take a look at some of the other pictures from Flevo in my Gallery. Until next year!

Oh and the silent disco was really fun. Although the DJ really messed up his gig in the end by suddenly stopping the music when the audience criticized his song!

The first week was spent in a holiday cottage at the Loch Ness. In the village of Errogie to be exact. Errogie is a really small village, if it is a village at all. However, church started at 12 on Sunday. We were a bit late due to the fact that we made a wrong estimation of the walking distance. However, people don’t seem to mind that you’re late if you count for approximately 30 to 40 percent of the total attendants. And we were only with seven people.

The church itself was a really old and small church. Just as big the village of Errogie would need. Standing outside, we heard them singing loud already. without an organ. Without any music at all. Upon entering it was as if we walked into a really traditional Dutch Reformed Church. All men wore suits and ties, all women big hats and both wore a lot of black. the singing came from the old KJV, and was led by one of the elder men. He stood, while all the others were seated. Although there was no sheet music, they lead singer followed some melody which everybody seemed to know. They did not sing just one verse, but the complete psalm. And the lead singing was done by a different man with each psalm.

In the front, a relatively young men was seated, an elder from the mother church in Inverness as turned out after the service. Due to a lack of time, he did not preach a preach of his own but read a preach from a book. The topic and style of the preach matched with the atmosphere of the church. However, it was quite a good preach, although it was written in 18.. something. After the service, we were warmly greeted by the people from the church and we really had a good time with the local people.

The Sunday after, we made camp in the small town of Kilsyth, close to Glasgow. Church started at 11.30 that day. Bit earlier but still pretty good. The church building was bigger and more people were joining in as well. I think there were approximately 60 people in the church. And right before the service started, a 20 person choir came in. So 25 percent of the church actually participated in the choice. Quite good if you ask me. The church itself was an old building. However, by the wall decoration on the inside, you would think it was some kind of evangelic congregation. Lots of posters saying Halleluja, Jesus Lives and He’ll save you!! There were however no drums in front or any electric guitars. Just an electric piano with a typically British woman playing some well known melody. The service was nice with more grace attached than the first week.

In the end, two different services, but two nice experiences. Don’t ask me for the names of the churches as I haven’t registered those. I don’t like to give churches names as it seems to divide them. However, I think they were both in some way related to the Presbyterian church of Scotland.

Guess we’ll give them a call tomorrow.

They started with some really good news. Our total imprest was much higher than needed so they would return about 700 euros to us. Nice, thanks. What was up next really surprised me. They had raised the monthly imprest to 1370 euros per month. Without discussing. Okay. Why would one want that? I mean, a monthly fee of 150 euros seems to do the job so there is absolutely no need to increase it any further. Actually, the 1370 euros is more than 100% of what we are spending on gas and electricity on an annual base.

Fortunately, they did give some explanations. During 2009/2010, we used roughly 300 kWh, due to some estimations. The year after, we consumed ten times as much. So they expected us to consume ten times as much again in 2011/2012, which led to an amount of 30.000 kWh. For the gas, it was even stranger as we saw a decrease between 2009/2010 and 2010/2011. But still, they estimated that we would use 25 times the amount of gas that we have been using this year, up to like 17.000 cubic meters of gas. And by the way, this included an estimate on the upcoming weather forecast for this winter! So either we are going to have a damn cold winter (Essent knows it all), or I will be sharing gas with all houses in our block.

I have read the letter over and over again, and simply still don’t get it. If anyone of you, or Essent, does, please let us know! Guess I will give them a quick call next week.

UPDATE: iCloud seems to be working flawlessly under Mac OS X Lion: