Christmas Shopping

Today, André and I went ‘downtown’ again to shop for clothes. It was much less crowded than it was on Saturday, but we didn’t manage to be as fast as Papa Scott. André, maybe we should go to Hamburg next time?!

Anyway, we’re now all set for whatever dinners we have to attend during the holidays. Sigh!

Neues Weblog

Bei Sean wurde ich auf Bluepixel aufmerksam. Wieder ein Blogger mehr…

Und er oder sie (?) hat mich in der Linkliste. Dankeschön!

Er oder sie? Hm… Entweder, ich kann nicht gucken, oder da gibt’s tatsächlich nicht das kleinste bißchen Info über die Autorin oder den Autor. Hallo, wer bist Du?

The weekend is over

Hmmm… I missed not one, but two flips this weekend. When has that happened last?

So, did you miss me?

I’ve spent four horribly stressful hours in town on Saturday, shopping. No, not for Christmas presents, but for clothes. I do that very seldom, and I’ll make sure it won’t ever happen again on a Saturday two weeks before Christmas.

When I returned home on Saturday afternoon, I was totally exhausted and had a headache, so I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa and reading the Zeit. In the evening, I talked to my sister on the phone – for three hours! I guess that’s a record. (In case you are wondering: We talk on the phone very seldom; usually, we ‘talk’ to each other via email.)

Today, I spent some frustrating hours on trying to update OzTeX, only to discover that some features I need for my thesis no longer worked, so I had to change back to the older version.

After that, I started experimenting with MetaPost. Lo and behold, I managed to draw a circle and some lines!

I’m working on it, though.

And now the weekend is over, and it’s time for bed. Have a nice Monday, everyone!

The weekend

Tonight, André and I are going to meet some friends to play Roborally, which is our favourite board game. We haven’t played it in a while because it’s fun to play only if you’ve got at least four players.

And now I have to do some grocery shopping so we don’t have to starve over the weekend…

A few little stories

… I found on Kristin Thomas‘s site:

I was a Talking Xmas Tree

D is for Dye

Mathematics

Mathematics Museum Japan – an interesting site, but it has links to even more interesting sites!

Take a look at Totally Tesselated. They have all their info neatly organized – see the site map! (The site might be helpful for my thesis, I think.)

Here’s another site about Symmetry and Tessellations, one about Number Patterns – Fun with Curves and Topology, and one about Polyhedra Pastimes. They belong to Jill Britton’s Home, which is full of links to other wonderful math-relates sites. (That’s where I found the pic, by the way.)

Danke für den Link, Jörg!

Fragt sich nur, ob ich vor lauter Mathe-Surfen heute nochmal dazu komme, was für meine Arbeit zu tun…

Greece

Visit archeological sites in Greece – Metis has lots and lots of QuickTime VRs of interesting places: Athens, Mycenae, Delphi, Corinth…

And they even have one of Phaistos on Crete! I’ve been there with a friend in 1994. Imke, kommt Dir das bekannt vor?

Link via Garret.

Gratulation!

Herzlichen nullkommafünften Webloggeburtstag, Bastian!

Hey, und cooles Rollover-Bild von Dir!

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! It’s Megan‘s fifth birthday today. Happy Birthday, Megan!

Work, work, work

Today’s project: Learn how to use MetaPost to create graphics for my thesis, download and install MacGhostView to view the graphics.

Übrigens, Kris, die Cs mit dem Doppelstrich (mathbb) und dem Dach kann ich jetzt auch ‘texen’. Danke für den Tip neulich!

Stories and photos

Susan posts more beautiful photos. I’ve never seen Fresnel lighthouse lenses before.

She also talks about story-telling, and how Manila has enabled us to tell our stories and get to know others through their weblogs and their stories.

“One year ago, a free tool was unleashed: one that made it possible for each of us to tell our own stories. And in the day to day of a year’s time, to experience the particulars, and, in hypertext links, to begin entwining our thoughts and experiences together. This has been A Very Good Thing. And will continue to be so.”

Tests…

AllTheTests.com – “the online test search engine and your guide through the jungle of different tests on the Internet.” Tests are organized in categories, and you can search with a search engine as well.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Sunset

Wow! Garret posts beautiful sunset pictures.

Happy Sinterklaas!

Okay, he’s not called Sinterklaas in German, but ‘Nikolaus’. On December 5th, children put a boot (or shoe) out for Nikolaus to fill. While they sleep, Nikolaus will come and fill the boots with nuts, oranges and some chocolate or other Christmas-related candy.

When my parents visited a little while ago, they left us a little present for Nikolaus. André and I cheated a bit and didn’t want to wait till morning, so we just opened it. We got – Niederegger Marzipan!

Ein ganz großes Dankeschön an meine Eltern nach Hetzwege!

We got two different kinds: Marzipan potatoes, whitish Marzipan balls rolled in cocoa so they look like potatoes, and little Marzipan breads, which are Marzipan pieces covered with dark chocolate.

Marzipan is a speciality that is made of grounded almonds and sugar and rosewater, and it’s delicious!

The most famous brand is Niederegger, and you can read all about Marzipan on their web site. They explain how Marzipan is made in the production section, and if you get hungry, you can buy some Marzipan here.

P.S. to World AIDS Day

Susan has written a story for World AIDS Day: Remembering Jeffry Michael.

As usual with these things, English words fail me. It’s a very moving story. Go and read it!

Susan, thanks for sharing it with us.

[I meant to link to this earlier, but forgot… sorry.]

Going to the movies…

Yesterday, I went to see Angela’s Ashes with two friends. We were all disappointed by the film. I had read the book (and the sequel) before seeing the film, and I expected the film to have the same mixture of humour and sadness as the book. But it seemed like they left out all the positve parts of the books: Some were mentioned by the narrator, but almost none were actually shown.

We were all a bit depressed when we left. And we were cold! It was not very warm in the movie theater, but seeing it raining on the screen for two hours made me shiver.