Auf Wiedersehen!
André and I are leaving for the airport in about six hours. We will spend the next month in Arizona and New Mexico (and maybe Colorado) exploring National Parks and cities, and we are also looking forward to meeting some fellow webloggers! 
See you in September. So long, and take care!
Virtuelle Reisen
Gerade in meinen Referrern entdeckt: Around the World, ein schönes Reiseweblog. Da muß ich unbedingt mitlesen, wo ich doch so gern online verreise. Und danke für den Link zu unserer ersten USA-Reise! Zu diesem und dem Kenia-Bericht (Englisch) wird dann wohl bald ein dritter dazukommen…
Erdbeben
This morning André and I were gently shaken awake at 7:45 am – by an earthquake! Noticeable earthquakes are quite rare in Germany. The Erdbebenstation Bensberg of the Universität Köln says it was a 4.8 on the Richter scale, and the center was at Alsdorf, some 60 km from Bonn. Only minor damage was done near the center; nobody was hurt an old woman got a heart attack from shock and died, but nobody was hurt by falling debris.
The last quake that was felt in Bonn happened two and a half years ago: Spicynoodles: January 20, 2000.
Die Erdbebenstation Bensberg bietet eine Liste der zuletzt georteten Lokalbeben und eine Karte der aktuellen Beben an. Näheres beim General-Anzeiger Bonn: Erdbeben der Stärke 4,9 erschüttert das Rheinland und die Niederlande.
Theremin
Industrial Technology & Witchcraft: Völlig aus der Luft gegriffen: das Theremin. Mehr Informationen über dieses seltsame Instrument gibt es auf englisch:
theremin .info:
“Invented in 1919 by the Russian engineer Leon Theremin, the theremin brought the possibility of producing music by purely electronic means to reality.
The first electronic musical instrument to be invented, the theremin captured that spirit of free – thinking optimism of America in the 1930s, and held the musical world enthralled…”
The site includes the history of the theremin, sound clips and videos and much more.
If you’d like to play the theremin yourself, go to BBC’s Science Playground and download the Virtual Theremin (available for PC and Mac). It’s fun to play with!
I linked to another theremin site before: Radio Science Orchestra: theremin laboratory.
Link via Schockwellenreiter.
Personal
I’ve neglected this weblog a lot lately, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to post more often in the near future. Today was the third day of the holidays, but I’m almost as busy as before. The only significant difference is that I get more than five hours of sleep a night now. 