Monthly Archives: November 2000

November 30 2000

Lego and Dinosaurs

Oh boy… Henry Lim has created a stegosaurus from Lego. It is 6 ft (about 2 m) high and 14 (yes, fourteen!) ft (more than 4 m) long. I wonder how much the thing weighs…

Lego and Dilbert

Here are some Lego sculptures of Dilbert, Wally and the Pointy-Haired-Boss!
Andrew Lipson, the creator, says he’s going to build Dogbert next.

(Dilbert, a comic by Scott Adams, can be found at http://www.dilbert.com/.)

Lego and Mathematics

Lipson also has a collection of mathematical Lego sculptures!

The creations look pretty cool, and I wouldn’t have thought that it was possible to build such things from Lego. For those interested in math, there are Möbius strips, minimal surfaces, a Klein bottle, and cross caps. Wow!

I especiall like the Klein bottle which has hinges so it can be opened and one can see it ‘loop into itself’!

lego kleinbottle:

A mathematician named Klein

Thought the Mobius strip was divine

He said “If you glue

The edges of two

You can make a strange bottle like mine”.

lego figure8:

Lego

Bricktannia is a whole Lego city. Pretty cute!

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

‘Bored of the Rings’

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Jeremy posted this link to Rich Drushel’s Parody of Appendix A, The Lord of the Rings, which is unrelated to ‘Bored of the Rings’. The author says he has tried to write in the same style as ‘Bored…’, but changed a few names.

November 29 2000

Color vision

There is an interesting article on the possibility of tetracromates in the Red Herring Magazine: Looking for Madam Tetrachromat – Do mutant females walk among us?, by Glenn Zorpette.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Sonnenaufgang:

This time it’s todays sunrise!

One Book

The One Book List:

“I would like for each of you to decide on a single book that you would most like for the world to read for inclusion in the list. The book that, for you, was the most influential, or thought-provoking, or enjoyable, or moving, or philosophically powerful, or deep in some sense you cannot properly define, or any other criteria you wish to set.”

It’s a really interesting collection of more than 800 books. I’ve found lots of recommendations there. So many good books out there, but so little time…

Has anyone read Bored of the Rings, by Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney? It is a parody on ‘The Lords of the Rings’, by J.R.R. Tolkien. If you have read it, do you recommend it?

By the way, my favourite book of all times is A Fine Balance (deutscher Titel: Das Gleichgewicht der Welt), by Rohinton Mistry.

Link via BookNotes. Thanks, Craig!

November 28 2000

Webcam

If you prefer to see white-eyed assassin bugs (or other insects that might be on display), go to the web cam of the Insect Zoo in Ames, Iowa. For a certain amount of time, you can control the camera.

Thanks for the link, John!

More interesting stuff at the Exploratorium

The Exploratorium has a cool web cam on its roof. It seems that users can point it to one of eight points of interest by clicking on a number below the picture.

I’m not quite sure how it works… There’s only one camera, so what happens if several people want to point the camera in different directions?

They also have an intersting site: The Heart of the Matter – Inside CERN, the world’s largest particle accelerator.

Ooze

Outragoeous Ooze – a recipe to make you own, from the Exploratorium.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Cooking

Do you like salmon? I do, but I’m not sure I want to try to cook salmon in a dishwasher.

Interestingly, this really seems to work. At least, other people cook their salmon in the dishwasher as well – and the surreal gourmet even dares to add dirty dishes and soap!

November 27 2000

Silly Putty

Here’s a Silly Putty Recipe. I wonder if it is like the real stuff.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Are they talking about me?

A few days ago, André said I should read Sean‘s Discussion Group because there was some A-list and D-list talk. And what did I find? This:

Reg. D-List: There is a discussion about A-list weblogger. i think ist is a joke to piss them off. we jump the bandwaggon by pretending to be D-list.

Of course, this is understatement because, as we all know, we are C-list. Andrea is B-list :)

Hey guys, are you talking about me? Please explain why I get a list all to myself. Or is there anyone else on B-list?

(Yeah, I know this was four days ago and I’m pretty late, but hey, I’m busy!)

Update: I got some replies. Sean says I can be proud to be on B-list. So who else in on B-list?

UN Climate Conference

The climate conference in the Hague has ended without agreement:

“Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung comments: The World Climate Conference was billed as a last chance summit. It has collapsed, and the US wanted it that way. The country chiefly responsible for global warming isn’t willing to change its way of life. The US produces fully one quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions – those most often linked with climate change. Now, more than ever, the European Union must stand by its commitments. For the past thirty years, the maxim “too little, too late” has applied to ecological concerns. The only alternative is an all-out catastrophe.”

The next climate conference will be held here in Bonn, Germany, in 2001.

US Election

“In the US presidential election, Republican George W. Bush has been certified as the winner in Florida after a manual recount in the state. He had just 537 more votes than his Democratic rival, Vice-President Al Gore. Speaking from Texas, Governor Bush announced plans to start preparing to move into the White House and called on Mr Gore to reconsider plans to contest the results. Mr Gore’s legal advisers said they would challenge the certification in a Florida state court on Monday, adding that the vice-president had no plans to concede defeat. They said he would challenge results in three Florida counties – a move that is expected to take at least several days. In addition, the US Supreme Court is not to hear arguments on a Bush challenge to the manual recounting of votes in Florida until next Friday.”

Source: Deutsche Welle News. (Link valid for today only.)

Harry Potter

Mollie is reading Harry Potter, and got addicted. She says she somehow got sucked into the books… Yes, I can understand that very well. It always happens to me with some book or other when I have too much to do anyway.

I’ve only read the first two Harry Potter books, but I hope someone will give me parts three and four for Christmas (hint! hint! ). And I also hope they don’t interfere with my thesis too much.

ISSNs for weblogs?

John Marden applied for an ISSN for his weblog, and so have others, it seems. Read about it here.

As Jason Levine puts it, “if nothing else, it can help make all of us freaks feel like there’s a legitimate purpose to the amount of time we spend maintaining our sites.” Heh.

Check at ISSN.org to find out how to apply for an ISSN number in your country, or read the ISSN FAQ.

Tired?!

It’s 3:30 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I’ve been fighting with LaTeX this evening, and – as usual – it took much longer than I thought to hack a few pages together. But now I’ve finally made it to do some tables like I want them. facehappy:

But now I’m wide awake. And I can’t sleep late tomorrow because there’s still lots of paperwork to be done…

November 26 2000

Whoops!

Yikes, I missed a day. I just finished my work for today and got ready to flip the page – and noticed that it was a few minutes past midnight already.

When have I last missed a day? I guess I could have written the same as Craig for yesterday – except that I took the day off considering weblogging, but not work.

I’m digging through the paperwork for my Examen. I have to fill out the forms and hand them in on December fourth.

Anmeldung zum Examen

Kann mir mal jemand sagen, wozu ich bei der Anmeldung zum Examen einen Lebenslauf mit Paßfoto einreichen muß? Daß sie eine beglaubigte Kopie von meinem Abizeugnis wollen, verstehe ich noch, aber was wollen die mit zwei Aufstellungen aller von mir besuchten Lehrveranstaltungen, einmal sortiert nach Semestern, einmal nach Fächern? Jetzt muß ich erst mal ein paar Nachforschungen an der Uni Hannover machen, weil ich da die ersten Semester studiert habe und natürlich eins der Vorlesungsverzeichnisse bei den letzten drei Umzügen abhanden gekommen ist. Also, falls hier jemand mitliest, der an der Uni Hannover studiert (hat) und das Vorlesungsverzeichnis vom Wintersemester 1995/96 noch hat, bitte bei mir melden! Ich brauche ein paar Nummern von Veranstaltungen in Physik und Mathe…

Update: Hat sich erledigt. Ein freundlicher Kommilitone der Mathe-Physik-Fachschaft der Uni Hannover war so freundlich, mir die Nummern zuzumailen.

Thanksgiving

Yay! This time, all went well, so Craig did really post lots of photos from the James, Bierner, Prewett, Hutchinson and Jensen Annual Thanksgiving Feast . They had not one, but two turkeys – one smoked, one oven roasted. And of course they had lots of other delicious-looking food as well. My mouth is watering from looking at the photos