Behind the Curtain

Let’s see, which galleries did we visit? – They are too many to list them all here. So if you are reading this and know that I read your blog, I probably saw your gallery. Just a few thoughts that occured to me while looking at all those pictures:

Susan has wonderful pictures as always. When I grow up, I want to be able to take pictures as well as she does. I was impressed by the photo of her office – Susan, I really do hope you will finish this book real soon, get rid of all the stuff and finally enjoy your sabbatical!

John Marden‘s pictures were interesting because he’s one of the few who never had a picture of themselves on their weblog.

I was also curious to see the photos of the Iowa Homesteaders, and I was surprised by the first picture, or rather the name of his daughter Kyra. I have a friend named Kyra (which is pronounced “Küra” in German), and to this day she was the only person with that name I knew. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone else by that name.

And of course I didn’t know that Gerrit VanDyk is my youngest reader!

I also had to look at the pictures of the other Germans (Frauke, Scott and Christopher, Martin Spernau, Der Schockwellenreiter, Arf, Yam). Among them were the first pictures of Raphael Spernau, two-weeks-old son of Martin Traumwind Spernau.

I also liked Jan-Willem Swane‘s pictures from the Netherlands and Kristina Anderson‘s and Jonas Beckman‘s from Sweden. I noticed quite a few differences between homes in Europe and the USA, I think. It’s difficult to tell what it is exactly (apart from the fact that most Americans have a huge fridge with lots of stuff taped to it).

And as always, it was nice to look at pictures from San Francisco and other nice places in the world. Just looking at them made me want to travel again. Many pictures reminded me of our trip to the USA…

Snow?!

What a difference within just one week: Yesterday we looked at the Saenz family’s BTC pictures, which looked like it was still sommer over there, and today Rick has pictures of snow! Unbelievable.

Greetings from Africa

Al and his family went to the zoo yesterday. He’s got lots of animal pictures! I especially liked the one of the reticulated giraffe.

Giraffes are beautiful animals who move very gracefully. And they have large eyes with long lashes.
On the right is a giraffe I met in Kenya. It was not shy, but very curious about those people that came for a visit and poked their cameras at it.

By the way, Al, it’s good to hear your face is not burnt too badly. Get well soon!

Thanks!

Apart from the biiig present I was finally allowed to open yesterday (all those galleries), I got a present from NetDyslexia: a Greek sunset. Dankeschön!

A new week

And one with wonderful weather, too! So far, I like fall 2000 better than summer 2000.

The weather today is much better than it was last week on Sunday and Monday, when we shot the pictures for Behind the Curtain.

Nochmal Mathe-Nachhilfe

Die Firma Esso hat ihre Benzinrechnung verbessert. (Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich darüber schon mal was geschrieben.) Aber sie haben nur die Zahlen durch andere ersetzt, nicht den eigentlichen Fehler in der Rechnung behoben, wie der Spiegel berichtet. Hier ist die neue Rechnung von Esso.

Behind the other curtains

André and I have spent the last three hours looking at pictures from around the world. It’s interesting to see where and how people live, get to see their families, houses, neighbourhoods, work…

Now it’s 2:30 a.m., and I can’t get together any proper sentences in English, so I’m off to bed.

Oh, just one more word. Craig, I just read your horror story about your pictures, camera and computers. What a bummer! If you get to transfer any pictures later on, be sure to share them with us! I was looking forward to seeing them because you’re the only weblogger I’ve met face to face, so far.

May I present…

It’s ready. Finally.

And here‘s our gallery:

Enjoy. And now I’m finally going to visit some galleries!

Real soon now…

Garret just flipped his page and let us know he’s working on finishing the “official” Behind the curtain site.

Are you as excited to see all the pics as I am? I feel like a six-year-old kid on Christmas eve…

Today’s the day! We finally get to peek behind the curtain… By the way, Al, I think your sticker turned out very cute indeed!

Election day in Yugoslavia

Deutsche Welle News:

Ahead of today’s elections in Yugoslavia, about 20 foreign journalists have been expelled, and the government and opposition have traded allegations of intention to defraud the electorate. Nearly eight million Yugoslavs are entitled to vote in presidential, parliamentary and Serbian communal polls. Recent surveys show the main opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica leading President Slobodan Milosevic by about ten percent, after years of ethnic warfare and international sanctions. The pro-western government of the smaller Yugoslav republic of Montenegro has called for a boycott of the elections and has condemned Yugoslav army plans to station guards outside ballot stations. The EU has pledged reconstruction aid, if voters opt for change.

I wonder what will happen there tonight.

Okay, final note for today. It’s 3 a.m., the gallery is done. I need matchsticks between my eyelids to keep my eyes open…

I see that some people are still working on theirs, while some others have finished their homework early.
So good night, and see you ‘behind the curtain’ tomorrow!

Guess what we’re doing right now!

Polyhedra

I’ve been looking for even more polyhedra. George Hart (see below) has a “virtual book” about them. Some parts of it require a VRML plugin. If you need help with those weird polyhedron names (What the heck is a ‘trapezoidal icositetrahedron’?), go see the page about polyhedra naming.

A lot of info with pictures, animations and mathematical background can be found at Eric Weisstein’s World of Mathematics. I especially like the live graphics you can grab and turn with your mouse.

Geometric sculptures Who said math is boring? Check out these geometric sculptures by George W. Hart. (By the way, there’s a photo of his office on his home page. Would you want to work there?) Apart from being really nice art, his sculptures are also a good way to recycle floppy disks or plastic cutlery – but mind you, this is no picnic! If you want to try to build a sculpture yourself, why don’t you start with this one – you need only 72 pencils and lots of patience!

Beatiful landscapes

I just found this link on Tsja: Landscapes by Onno Zweers. He has beautiful landscape pictures. Reload the homepage to see new ones, or click on one of the pictures to see more. The site is bilingual: Dutch and English.

I especially liked the idea of how this photo was taken.

Allergic to certain skin colors?

I just heard in the news that a woman in Hamburg, Germany, told a man from Cameroon to get out of her way on the sidewalk because she’s allergic to dark skin. Can you believe it? At least the man knew his rights and reported the woman to the police.

As if this isn’t bad enough, the woman found a doctor who certified that the woman indeed had an allergy. She was fined nevertheless, and now the General Medical Council in Hamburg is sceduling a hearing to decide if this doctor will be allowed to practice in the future.

This is really disturbing to hear, and I find it hard to believe that this is happening in Germany. It’s scary. I really do hope that the doctor is fined, too, and loses his license.

I’m trying to find the story on the net, preferably in English, so you can read for yourselves.

Time flies

I can’t believe it’s fall already. I guess I wouldn’t even had noticed if Hal and Susan had not mentioned it. Susan remarks that we did the Behind the curtain shooting in summer and will post the pictures in fall.

Funny that the weather today, on the first day of fall, was much better than on Sunday, when it was still summer and we had hoped for good weather for the shooting…

Hmmm… Thinking about it, so far we’ve had a nice September (except for Sunday), especially compared to July and August which were nothing but rain. But September is almost over, and there are already Lebkuchen in the supermarket… I guess it won’t be long until Christmas now!

A browser that talks math

Thanks, Craig, for the link to NetMath, the math-aware browser. I tried to download it, but the server seems to be unavailable at the moment.

Good news!

It seems that Martin‘s interview was successful and he’s got a new job. Congratulations!

Ouch!

Hal has horros stories about dentists. Sounds terrible. But it also sounds like you’ve found a good dentist now, and I hope you get better soon, Hal!

Somehow, his stories make me very glad that I have not yet had any holes drilled in my teeth or have had to endure any of the other cruelties a dentist can do to you. The worst encounter I had with a dentist was when I was about ten.

I had four molar teeth pulled out (in three sessions) because my jaw was too small to hold them all, and then I had too wear braces for about four years. They were of the kind you only have to wear at night, so it was not too bad. During that time, I went to the dentist every two to four weeks, but that was only to keep an eye on how the braces were working.

A nice side-effect of the procedure was that, having only 24 ‘normal’ teeth, I have enough room in my yaw for the wisdom teeth, three of which already have appeared without any problems. The fourth seems to be on it’s way, and I don’t have to have them pulled out, like many other people I know.

More mathematics

Do you know how much a vigintillion is? Robert Munafo already knew while in elementary school and tells us all about large numbers on his website. He also has a page about numbers. By the way, he has also written a program that computes the Riemann Zeta function and writes it in a .WAV file, so you can listen to the Zeta function. And he has lots of other weird stuff…

Braucht da wer Nachhilfe in Mathe?

Auf der Website von Esso wird uns vorgerechnet, daß die Mineralölgesellschaften dieses Jahr am Benzin weniger verdienen als letztes Jahr. Das Problem ist nur, daß sie nicht rechnen können, wie der Spiegel herausfand.

Man sehe sich einmal diese Rechnung an: Wenn das Benzin im Einkauf um 29 Pfennig teurer wird und 19 Pfennig Ökosteuer dazukommen, dann sind das zusammen 48 Pfennig. Wenn das Benzin aber um 50 Pfennig pro Liter teurer wird, was ist dann mit den übrigen 2 Pfennig? Richtig, die verdient die Mineralölgesellschaft dann wohl mehr. Dummerweise zieht Esso aber Äpfel von Birnen ab und kommt zu dem Schluß, daß sie 8 Pfennig pro Liter weniger einnehmen.

So eine Aufgabe könnte man sicher auch in einem Mathematikbuch für die Mittelstufe finden… bin mal gespannt, ob Esso seine Hausaufgaben macht und die richtige Lösung noch findet…

More Lego

It seems Zannah is a Lego fan, too. A few days ago, she pointed to Lego Marble Machine, and today she has a link to a CD changer built from Lego, which is really cool. It has a camera, too, and you can give commands by waving your hands in front of the camera.

The marble machine was built by Matthias Wandel, who has some more cool things made from Lego on his site, for example a domino row building machine.

The CD changer is on Mindstorms.Lego.com, and when I first tried to access the site, I got the following message:

No cookie. — To access this site your browser must be accepting cookies.

Are they being serious?!