From 7 through 20 September, the 19 historic windmills of the Kinderdijk, on the UNESCO heritage list since 1997, will be lit up with colourful, energy-efficient LED lighting from Philips and installed by Technische Unie. The colours of the windmills will represent different symbols of Dutch history. For starters, this red, white and blue with subtle orange overtones surely represents the Dutch flag and pennant.
Even my own family visited the Kinderdijk when they came to the Netherlands because it was in their guide book as a must. It was touristy, but not busy or crowded and you’ll learn a lot about water drainage.
(Link and photo: philips.nl)
I just turned away from the lock-picking talk, as the tent was absolutely packed (me being 5 minutes late). I don’t know how many people fit in these convention tents, hundreds, perhaps thousands, but that is the amount of people that after tonight may know how to break every lock you own.
The early 20th century was the heyday of Dutch polarisation. Unions, universities, newspapers, magazines and broadcasting corporations were founded, all based on a certain religion or ideology. The three main pillars were Protestantism, Catholicism and Socialism. 
The little castle-like house shown in the photo above is called the Voorpost, and it predates the campground by a decade and a half. It was built as a Summer place of the Rolandes Hagendoorn family in 1906, and bought by the Arbeiders Jeugd Centrale (Workers Youth Center) in 1922. 
The grounds also hold a tiny wild life garden called Heemtuin de Heimanshof, which was founded by the AJC, and maintained by them for a long time. Although former AJC members still work on the garden, Jonge Socialisten (the youth branch of the socialist and social democratic parties) and other volunteers now help with the heavy lifting.
Today the Dutch digital rights organisation 
Yesterday I left my home around 8 am, and today around 3 pm I was finally connected to the grid at HAR 2009. During the previous three editions of this Dutch hacker camp (spanning 12 years), I had stayed at somebody else’s tent, and had relied on my host to make sure power, Internet and beer ran right up to two metres from my bed. This year my host couldn’t make it, and I suddenly realized that hooking up all these necessities (except the beer: I’ll live) takes actual work. With the help of Orangemaster as a sort of phone-based TomTom for locating missing cables I eventually succeeded. 
Yesterday was the start of the official, lecture-filled part of 
We have upgraded 
