Exercises in Learning Dutch #2

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Mark Baker

I wonder if my teachers will decide that it isn’t such a good idea to ask an aspiring author to write a short piece of “freeform text” about a given subject, in this case, a restaurant. This time, I wasn’t time limited in class, but able to write as a piece of homework. It did mean that I could look up vocabulary that I didn’t know, and look up some more interesting verb tenses for a story set in the past. I hope that I’ve got all my grammar correct. And it’s rather longer than my previous short story.

I’ve even given it a title: “Het Beste Visrestaurant van Scheveningen”.

I’ll find what my teachers actually think about it tomorrow or Thursday. One thing I really did enjoy: one teacher had said that we should never use the word “vies” to describe food in a restaurant; so I’ve done exactly that, and I think that it’s appropriate in context. Breaking the rules FTW..

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Exercises in Learning Dutch #1

Posted on September 6, 2023 by Mark Baker

The first “free composition” exercise in my intensive Dutch learning course, so I had to write a short essay “In het café”. Not easy to write anything well in just ten minutes or so, but inspired by the coffee I’d bought earlier that morning in the quiet Kafnush coffee bar in Oud Scheveningen, I wrote the following few words.

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Wandelaar van de Duisternis (Excerpt #3)

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Mark Baker

Here’s a third excerpt from my piece of fiction “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”, that I wrote about when describing the catharsis of creative writing. This was inspired by weird dreams last night, and it was fun to write. I’m not really sure about it, the tone is completely different to the rest of my writing; and I’m breaking the cardinal rule of “show, don’t tell”.

But it was interesting and entertaining for me to speculate how modern ghosts familiar with modern technology would change the traditional image of the afterlife.

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Wandelaar van de Duisternis (Excerpt #2)

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Mark Baker

Here’s another short excerpt from my piece of fiction “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”, that I wrote about when describing the catharsis of creative writing. This is just a minor scene, with no real significance to the main storyline, but I do like the images that it invokes.

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Wandelaar van de Duisternis (Excerpt #1)

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Mark Baker

Here’s a short excerpt from my piece of fiction “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”, that I wrote about when describing the catharsis of creative writing. What started as a concept for a short story has rapidly evolved into a sizeable full-length novel with potential ideas for a number of additional stories using the same characters and setting.

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Wandelaar van de Duisternis (Introduction)

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Mark Baker

Here’s a short introduction to my piece of fiction “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”, that I wrote about when describing the catharsis of creative writing. What started as a concept for a short story is rapidly evolving into a sizeable full-length novel with potential ideas for a number of additional stories using the same characters and setting.

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Wandelaar van de Duisternis

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Mark Baker

Non-conformance is subversive!
Diversity is deviancy!
Indoctrination is education!
Religion is purity!

Welcome to the New World Order.

In a society where non-conformance is considered subversive and deviant, and all psychic ability is heavily regulated, Hauke de Grijs hides from the government and the shadowy Ecclesiae on a houseboat in Amsterdam. His Talent allows him to travel between the world of the living and the Veil, the realm of ghosts. More comfortable walking among the spirits than he is with the living, he has earned the nickname “Wandelaar van de Duisternis”.

But even Hauke’s abilities will be tested to their limits when he’s tasked with rescuing a living family trapped beyond the Veil, in the dark Lands of the Dead, where even ghosts fear to tread.

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33 Years – That’s an LP in “Old Money”

Posted on February 5, 2023 by Mark Baker

Today marks 33 years since one of the most significant decisions that I ever made. On the 5th February 1990, waking up after a weekend of excessive consumption, and struggling to get myself ready for a new week in work, I made a conscious decision not to drink alcohol again.

It hasn’t always been easy to keep that promise I made myself. Peer pressure was difficult when all of my friends drank heavily as well; my parents never really understood, and still offered me a glass of wine with meals whenever I visited them (even after 25 years dry).
Conference socials and other events frequently had a focus on alcohol; with a sponsored free bar, or with tokens provided for drinks and no real alternatives to alcohol. User-group meetings held in a pub. Company Christmas parties – alcohol is a pervasive part of our culture.

There are still times (even today) when I would enjoy a drink: a gluhwein at a Christmas market on a cold December day; a cool glass of cider while sitting out in a park in the Summer, or watching the cricket; a glass of wine with a good meal; a gin and tonic when settling down to relax at home.
Or when things aren’t going so well and I’m feeling depressed or overwhelmed by life or events, it would be all too easy to slip back into my old ways: the last three years have been particularly difficult, and the temptation to escape has been very real.

Sometimes I’ve come close, and I probably wouldn’t have managed it without the help and support of friends; but I’ve now made it through 33 years without succumbing to those temptations.

So a big thank you to everybody that has helped me over the last 33 years; and I hope that next February I’ll be able to say that it’s been 34 years.

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Type the List: A Proposal to support type-casting in PHP’s list language construct

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Mark Baker

I wrote recently about some changes that I’d like to propose for list() in core PHP for version 8.3: namely that it should work with iterables as well with arrays, and that it should allow a variadic “argument” that would assign all entries that were part of the original array being listed, but that weren’t explicitly assigned in the list; and another proposal to support default values list assignments when an element was missing from the array.

Those weren’t the only changes that I would like to see implemented for list().

Another situation that I find with list is if I want to type those variables. There are a number of PHP functions that I use regularly that return an array of string values such as preg_match() and the resultant $matches, and I can assign those matches directly to variables using list().

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Default the List: A Proposal to support default values in PHP’s list language construct

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Mark Baker

I wrote recently about some changes that I’d like to propose for list() in core PHP for version 8.3: namely that it should work with iterables as well with arrays, and that it should allow a variadic “argument” that would assign all entries that were part of the original array being listed, but that weren’t explicitly assigned in the list.

Those weren’t the only changes that I would like to see implemented for list().

If we used list() to extract entries that don’t exist in the array:


$data = [1 => 'A', 2 => 'B'];

[1 => $firstValue, 2 => $secondValue, 3 => $thirdValue] = $data;

var_dump($firstValue, $secondValue, $thirdValue);

then this will trigger a Notice in PHP 7, promoted to a Warning in PHP 8, and assign a null value to that variable. It becomes even more problematic if we’re assigning those extracted elements to class properties that aren’t nullable:


class Foo {
    private int $firstValue;
    private int $secondValue;
    private int $thirdValue;

    public function __construct(array $data = []) {
        [$this->firstValue, $this->secondValue, $this->thirdValue] = $data;
    }
}

$data = [1, 2];

$foo = new Foo($data);

We still get the Warning (or Notice), but this will also now result in a Fatal Uncaught TypeError because we’re trying to assign that null to the $thirdValue property, which doesn’t allow nulls; making it a less than ideal situation.

So what can we do to prevent this?

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