Support special academic heritage

Utrecht University Museum owns a unique scientific collection of 128 glass models of marine animals. Commissioned by Utrecht University, father and son Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka made these glass gems in 1882. At the time, these Blaschkas were necessary to study marine invertebrates such as jellyfish, sea anemones and snails, as they were difficult to preserve as specimens. 

Want to see these beauties? Visit the University Museum!

To preserve the fragile collection, some of the Baschkas need to be restored. Donate to preserving this special academic heritage.

Naamsbekendheid Utrecht Science Park?

Inmiddels is De Uithof 5 jaar geleden officieel Utrecht Science Park gaan heten. In het spraakgebruik eigenlijk altijd USP. Maar ehh, is het overal gelukt met die naam? Er is een dorp in de regio dat daar zo z'n eigen gedachten bij heeft.

Kan gebeuren, toch? En hoe kort je het eigenlijk af?

Schrale troost, de oude naam gelukkig goed, hoewel ...  ook niet overal!

Lost internet connection after upgrading to MacOS Sonoma

I had trouble with my Ethernet connection on my Mac after updating to macOS 14 Sonoma. Also my Wifi connection failed. I saw the green dots next to my network connections, but I couldn't access the internet.

To solve the problem, I followed the following scheme:

1. Switched off my router, waited a while and rebooted. Didn't work!
2. Pulled out the ethernetcable from my Mac. As a result, the internet came back to me over Wifi! Nice first step, but not the stable and fast connection I used to rely on.
3. Ik took a closer look at the network settings for Filters & Proxies. (And no I don't have Little Snitch on my system which I found could be be a little troublemaker). I do have Cisco Secure Client installed for VPN-connections to my employer. I toggled the settings. To be sure I esablished a VPN-connection and the client seemed to update. Still, didn't work!
   
   
   

   

   
   
4. Next try was to go into the details of the Ethernet settings. 
   
   
   
5. I selected the Hardware tab at the left. I then changed the Configure setting to manually and saved this setting and waited a minute before reversing to automatically again.



This sort of refreshes the Ethernet connection and after a reboot of the Mac, all was fine again. Worked for me, maybe works for you as well.

Verbindingsbomen Utrecht

Ter gelegenheid van Utrecht 900 zijn in de tien wijken van Utrecht verbindingsbomen geplant. In wijk Oost, aan de Leuvenlaan, naast het David de Wiedgebouw, is de lindeboom in april 2023 geplant en zijn er in de zomer twee ringen voetafdrukken omheen geplaatst. De verbindingsbomen zijn een kunstwerk van de Utrechtse kunstenaar Annabel Schouten. Alle voetaftdrukken samen verbinden de deelnemers met elkaar, met de boom en met een plek in de stad die iets voor hen betekent. Ik mocht mijn voet in bak 1 van de buitenring plaatsen op een dag dat het zo heet was dat het natte beton heerlijk verkoelend was...

Shame on Twitter

Thursday January 12th the access to #twitter by great third party apps was killed. Original assumptions based on presumed staff shortage at Twitter Office suggested the inability to fix API problems quickly. Not so. 

Tweetbot kindly refers to 'Service Disruption'

Soon word got out through one of Twitter's senior software engineers that shutting down third party apps was done deliberately. On January 15th #Tweetbot returned for a few hours using older developers' API's enabling users to browse their timelines though not to post anything. But then later that day Paul Haddad (@paul@tapbots.social) illustrated on #Mastodon the foul play at #Twitter.

Shame on #Twitter for abruptly ending long standing and good quality apps, by far to be preferred to its own annoying messy advertising spambot and not being communicative at all. Yuck!

Right under your nose, iPhone has built in scan app.

Sometimes, the obvious is there and you didn't realise. If you want to use your iPhone to scan a QR-code, there is a simple trick. Pull down the search screen and type in the word 'code':

search for code (scanner)

This will result in the popping up of the hidden app Code Scanner. Activate it and you get a nice scan area along with the possibility to open your flashlight. Very neat. Did you know? I didn't.