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?!

Weren’t the olympics about sports?

I just found this on Tsja and couldn’t believe it’s true:

Pepsi, the choice of a new generation…
… if you have a choice. Everyone who tries to enter an olympic venue with a can of Pepsi is forced to leave it behind. It’s banned because Coca-Cola payed $1 billion to be an olympic sponsor.

This looks like it’s going to be a useful site with lots of information. I said ‘is going to be’ because it’s brand new. It’s run by Zannah, owner of /usr/bin/girl.

There’s a collection of weblog links, neatly categorized, plus a bunch of useful weblog-related links. I already submitted my weblog to Blogstart. Who’s next?!

Welcome to the future

Sheila tells about her first encounter with a speaking gas pump.

Behind the curtain Congratulations! Craig, you win in the category silliest ‘Behind the Curtain’ sticker. These ‘behind the curtain’ photos seem to be a dangerous, contagious desease. Who’s next?

Guten Morgen!

Great day. I’m actually awake, and have been since the alarm went off. I feel a lot better than yesterday, so I may get some work done today.

Now if only it would stop raining. I want to go to the university by bike, rather than by bus. The bus is always crowded and takes much longer than it takes if I go by bike.

Hol’ mir mal ‘ne Flasche Bier

Schon mal den Bundeskanzler singen gehört? André berichtet über MC Raab featuring DJ Bundeskanzler – Hol mir mal ‘ne Flasche Bier.

Sonnenuntergänge

Ich weiß gar nicht, wer hier eigentlich gesagt hat, daß ich so ein großer Sonnenuntergang-Fan bin. Bloß weil ich den einen oder anderen fotografiert habe?!

Trotzdem danke, Bastian, für die beiden schönen Bilder.

What a slow day

I can’t believe the day is almost over. I got up pretty early because I intended to go to the university and spend some time in the library to work on my thesis, but I had a headache. After breakfast I decided it would be more useful to work at home instead, and some more sleep might be more useful yet. So I slept for two more hours, but still didn’t feel really well. Half an hour out of doors (riding my bike) and some chocolate finally did it – I felt well enough to actually do some math. But over all, it was not my most productive day…

Dann bin ich noch ein bißchen herumgesurft – äh, ich wollte sagen, ich habe mich über das aktuelle Tagesgeschehen informiert. Unter anderem beim Schockwellenreiter habe ich Hinweise darauf entdeckt, daß morgen die Gerichtsverhandlung gegen Stefan Münz, dem Autor von SELFHTML, stattfinden wird und daß etliche Leute darum morgen streiken.

Ob ich mich am Streik beteiligen soll, weiß ich nicht, aber ich hoffe, daß zugunsten von Stefan Münz entschieden wird.

Nähere Informationen gibt es beim Heise-Newsticker und bei Freedom for Links hier und hier.

For those who have heard about the strike tomorrow, for example on NetDyslexia, there is an explanation here.

The fun is over… well, at least the first part. André and I have shot around 250 photos on Sunday and Monday. Let’s see which and how many of them will make it into the gallery.

One more thing before I go to bed:

Aila and Jonas did it, too! And Brad of BradLands is “Behind the curtin”.

“Big brother is watching you”

I joined the club and added this Site Meter thingy to my page. Now I will be able to see who visits me when, from where, why and how long. Your every move on this site will be observed, recorded, categorized, and statisticized.

You have been warned.

Welcome back II

Martin reports that his wife and son are back from the hospital… this time for good, I hope. Enjoy your vacation, Familie Spernau, und bleibt gesund!

Oh, und viel Erfolg beim Interview am Mittwoch, Martin!

Welcome back

Wow! After six months and a day, David Theige flipped the page again on Carpe Diem. He’s trying out Radio UserLand.

Määäääh!

If you have the Flash plugin installed, go and see these cute sheep! They’re a little demo for a game, but I like the row of jumping sheep much more than the game. Only the sheep don’t go Määäh! in the demo.

Where else could I have found this link than on /usr/bin/girl?!

P.S.: The link to /usr/bin/girl does not work. Yet. It seems the blogger ‘permalinks’ don’t work as long as the posting is still visible on the page. When it goes into the archive, it will work, hopefully.

Here’s another one… by Barb Wong and Roland Tanglao of VanEats.

Behind the curtain

There are now 167 participants. Among the last who joined are a few from exotic places: India, Brasil, Japan!

Now I’m off to the university…

We can do that, too! What’s behind our curtain won’t be revealed until next sunday… André and I shamelessly stole John’s idea. Hope you don’t mind, John.

New sticker The new sticker for Behind the curtain comes to us by courtesy of John VanDyk, Iowa!

Die wichtigste Frage…

… heute bzw. morgen ist diese: “Zit mijn haar wel goed?”

Gestellt hat sie Jan-Willem Swane, der Autor von Tsja, der auch einen Blick “achter de schermen” gewährt.

Mit dieser Frage scheint sich der junge Mann auf dem Foto oben rechts jedoch nicht ernsthaft zu beschäftigen…

Man lernt nie aus

Der Schockwellenreiter hat mal wieder Google mit ein paar Anfragen belästigt, um zu sehen, an welcher Stelle er dabei herauskommt. (Berichtigung: Er hat sein Referrerlog durchgeschaut.) Offenbar findet er aber auch mal andere Leute:

“Und, Ätsch, Andrea ist die Nummer 6 bei der Google-Suche nach Fauler Sonntag.”

Das habe ich auch noch nicht gewußt.

The madness has begun!

The Curmudgeon has joined the project at the last minute:

“I was worried I wouldn’t have psychological time to do behind the curtain, but I made more progress on my paper today than I expected, so I’m all set.

I’m severely camera challenged. The last camera I owned was a Brownie back in 1960. I’ve been wanting to get a digital camera, but never got around to it. I was going to panic, then I remembered you can get cheap throw-away cameras. So I got one. I hope I can figure it out.”

Welcome aboard! I think he is the only person whose weblog I read daily and of whom I have never seen a photo.