When I hear the word "Contactless Payment", I think of a father who loves his daughter very much, but for reasons beyond his control, he does not have contact with her anymore.

But still, he wishes to surprise her on her birthday, as a token of love and attention, and so he sends her a contactless payment...

If you are not a nerd, I wish you a merry Christmas and the best wishes for 2025, but please do not read any further, it might make you unhappy.

Dear fellow nerds: imagine a bathroom with a size of 100 x 103 tiles, with 500 robots randomly distributed across the room

Every robot has a different speed and direction. E.g. one robot goes 2 tiles to the right every second and another one goes 3 tiles to the north east every second.

When a robot hits a wall, it will not crash but magically re-appear at the other side of the room.

Now the question is: after how many seconds will the robots be positioned in such a way that, when viewed from above, they together form the image of a Christmas tree?

It took me quite some time to figure it out, but eventually I got the solution! In my case a picture of a Christmas tree appeared after 6577 seconds.

I then made a drawing of that tree. In that drawing every robot is represented by the number "1", every empty tile is a dot.

So, if you are bored during the Christmas holiday, go and solve the puzzle yourself at the Advent Of Code website:

Spoons, knives and forks all lead very segregated lives.

Like chicken they are always stacked together in small, confined spaces. A knife will only sees other knives, and a spoon will never lie next to a pretty fork.

Now is the time to free your cutlery!

So just throw all your spoons, knives and forks in one big drawer! This will make your cutlery much happier, and it saves you from the incredibly boring sorting job.

#free-range-cutlery, #knives-need-space, #free-forks-forever, #stop-sorting-spoons

In the middle of a short but fierce battle we were served a "soup de guerre".

The soup was delicious, but we lost the battle...

In memoriam, Christa.

This poster of the Museum der Kulturen hangs opposite Augustinergasse 17 in Basel...

In memoriam, Christa.

Mr Putin is a religious man.

Every year with Christmas he visits the Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow.

This makes it difficult to understand why he would order the bombing of another Orthodox Church.

But on July 23 2023, the Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa was severely damaged by Russian missiles.

I made this drawing of it.

When your child is in hospital, there is a lot of technology around.

You would expect the technology to somehow comfort you.

That all is under control.

But I think technology fails in this regard.

It does not take away your worries, no matter how many machines they connect.

This morning I told the garden: "You are under performing."

The garden said: "What do you mean?"

"Well, I said, I do not think you are currently doing a great job as a garden."

"There is not a lot of color in the garden. Half of the plants seem dead. And sitting on that bench is currently very unpleasant. It is cold and wet."

"But it is winter", the garden said.

"That is no excuse", I said, "I have to work in winter too"

"Compare yourself with a summer garden. They perform much better. They are warm and colorful. The plants are all alive. It is a joy to be in a summer garden all day".

"So my conclusion is clear", I said, "You are an under performing garden".

The garden did not respond. This is, of course, the typical behavior of a winter garden.

My advice: avoid them if you can!

Yesterday I watched a one hour TV interview with The Ramones.

It is some time since I saw smoking, drinking, technical chaos, inaudible jokes, people leaving for the bathroom and beers being served from a suitcase on live TV...

The number you see in the drawing is the phonenumber you can call to ask live questions.

Click below to see The Ramones appearing on Efrom Allen's Underground TV show. This is the entire one hour episode, as originally aired on Manhattan cable in 1978. Copyright Worldwide Television Enterprises, all rights reserved.

A rocket hit a farm near the Polish village of Przewodow.

Two people were reported killed.

Shocked to see how innocent people, again, get involved in a war they did not want or start.

Sukha sells sustainable clothing (and did so before the word sustainable was invented).

But they also sell beautiful ceramics, which I tried to draw in this pen drawing

Visit them at Haarlemmerstraat 110 in Amsterdam (close to the central station)

In September 2022 we visited Macon (France), and this was the view from our hotel room.

I immediately was charmed by all the antennas placed on the roofs, something we do not see anymore in The Netherlands. I took a quick picture, and made this drawing at home.

RS Car is the best garage in France.

We arrived after closing time, with a dead battery.

They were friendly, helped us right away, and within half an hour we were on the road again. Next day we drove back 1400 km to the Netherlands, without any problems!

So, visit them at: RS Car, 13 All. des Imprimeurs, 06700 Saint-Laurent-du-Var (near Nice), France.

In the summer of 2022 I stumbled upon this old French barn. Not only did it store lot's of wood, the whole barn was made of an amazing construction of beams.

I thought all the lines of those beams together would give a great effect in a drawing.

A friend was moving to the south of France. So everything had to fit in the car and this little trailer.

And it did!