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Garret posted a gallery of photos from the Indian Market in Santa Fe. Thanks for sharing these, Garret, they remind of our own visit to the Indian Market last year.

Greyhound trivia: Did you know that Greyhounds can climb trees?

Have you ever seen sperical raindrops? That must be a pretty cool thing to watch.

Ingi hat die Tuchfabrik Müller in Kuchenheim besucht, die zum Rheinischen Industriemuseum gehört. Danke für den Ausflugstipp, da werde ich auch mal hinfahren. Ist ja von Bonn aus nur ein Katzensprung.

Fun with Flash

I’ve been playing around with Levers for at least half an hour, I think, but I haven’t figured it out yet… but I managed to solve Samorost. There’s more fun with Flash at Vectorpark.com, for example this ball game or the mutating egg. Similar fun can be had with this wireframe skeleton. (This reminded me of the Soda Constructor.)

Links via MetaFilter.

One year

One year and two days ago we got married in New Mexico while on vacation. Thank you, Hal and Garret, for the congratulations and for making this day extra special. And thanks for the congratulations, Al, Dave, Jeff, Jörg and Sheila.

And even though I’m a few days late: Happy birthday, Hal!

… whoa, and I hope you’re home safe and sound – and dry!

Back Home

Whoops, it’s been eleven days since my last posting – sorry. But nothing much is going on, really. We spent the weekend with our parents and in-laws, and on Monday, André went to the doctor to get his second cast removed! However, he can’t move his arm much yet because the elbow has been immobile for so long. He has to go to physiotherapy three times a week and will likely have to continue doing so until October. He still isn’t allowed to work and will have to stay home until the end of the week at least.

Cephalopods – Kopffüßler

On July 25th Kris posted a link to this incredible mpeg of a cephalopod changing colour. More precisely, the cephalopod mimics a coral at the beginning of the film and then reveals itself.

Now the link has also been posted on MetaFilter (twice, in fact, and you can meet a human cephalopod there, too), and I started exploring the site that hosts the movie some more: Cephbase is a “database-driven web site on all living cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus)” including an image and a video database. The FAQ are also worth checking out.

I was also impressed by the versatility of Gomorrah, the pet octopus of Michael Medaglia. The page has links to mpeg and ram versions of the movie, though the links are switched.

Way too hot

It’s almost been a week since my last posting, and it’s still hot here in Bonn. Temperatures reach about 40°C (104°F) in the daytime and don’t fall below 20°C (68°F) at night. I think the night before last was the hottest night in Germany ever – that is, since temperature statistics are being kept. The lowest temperature measured at one place in Germany was 26.7°C (80°F) that night. I’m really glad that I don’t have to return to school until the middle of September because I find it impossible to work in this heat. But at least it’s a dry heat – I don’t want to imagine how things would be with higher humidity.

Living in a quiet neighbourhood?

This morning we were awakened at 6 am by the sounds of one or two teenagers beating up a third in front of our house. There were several more young people standing around, watching and shouting at them to stop. Within a minute a good number of our neighbours were looking out of their windows or doors, and I was on the phone dialling 110 (that’s the German number for emergency calls to the police).

Apparently another neighbour also called the police, who arrived about three minutes after my call – and turned in the wrong direction at the intersection. However, by the time they arrived, the onlooking teenagers had fled to one end of our street, while two of the guys involved in the beating were walking in the other direction. One of the guys kept trying to get away, wanting to follow the one who had beaten him and threatening to get back to him, while the third guy tried to keep him from running away, repeating that he didn’t want him to end up in prison.

I went downstairs to look for the police a few minutes later when most of the neighbours had returned to bed, but neither them nor any of the involved guys seemed to be around any more. But I have to admit that the air was nicely cool and refreshing at that early hour. (We have over 30°C – close to 90°F – in the afternoon.)

TypePad beta testing

Like Papa Scott, I participated in TypePad‘s beta testing. I posted more or less the same entries to my Typepad Weblog and this weblog. Let me know via email if you want to sign up and would like a 20% discount.