Ich will Sommer!

Look at this! It’s the weatherforecast for Bonn. I don’t believe this is July. Craig, you were lucky to come to Germany in June, when the weather was better. Right now, it feels like it’s March or November. There even was snow in the Southwestern part of Germany and Switzerland. Of course, nobody was prepared for that.

Update: Craig says they are suffering from drought and suggests:

“So, Andrea, yes we would be happy to take a little of that cold and wet off of your hands! Can you take care of the arrangement?”

I’m not sure how to do this, but I’ll see if I can find a manual on the net… Hehe…

Briefmarken aus dem Internet?!

Die Deutsche Post: “Ab nächstem Jahr bietet die Post Internet-Briefmarken an. Statt zum Postschalter zu laufen und Briefmarken zu kaufen, soll man dann Barcodes aus dem Internet runterladen können.” – Vorerst nur für Großkunden… (Gefunden bei und zitiert aus SWR 3-Multimedia.)

Cow Parade

Picowsso

Jeff says these are indeed the cows he saw in San Francisco. Pictures taken from Cow Parade.

Cow Power

Moo!

Cow Parade. Are those the same cows Jeff saw a couple of days ago? (There are pictures of all the cows here.)

Innere und äußere Differenzierung

Über dieses Thema schreibe ich am Donnerstag eine Klausur – freiwillig. Meine Scheine habe ich alle beisammen, aber der Prof hat empfohlen, die Klausur als Examensvorbereitung mitzuschreiben. Und da ich mich bei ihm prüfen lassen will/werde/muß, sitze ich jetzt und lese jede Menge Texte zum Thema. Momentan befasse ich mich gerade mit den Herren Klafki und Stöcker. Besonders toll finde ich ja dieses “dreidimensionale” Kriterienschema (kurz nach oben scrollen zur Tabelle).

Die Links führen zu einem Prof der Uni Bielefeld, der offenbar eine (fast) komplette Online-Version seiner Vorlesung gebastelt hat. Sehr vorbildlich! In der Hinsicht könnten sich noch einige Dozenten inspirieren lassen…

Someone is watching you…

Found this on Scripting News yesterday:

Giant titan in Bonn

Today, we went to the Botanical Garden at 9:30 am (they open at 9) and had to wait only 10 to 20 minutes to see the giant titan. It had almost finished blossoming, but it was impressive nonetheless. And the good thing was: It didn’t stink anymore! By the way, the titan stinks like a dead animal in order to attract bugs and insects who pollinate the giant titan.

Here are some pictures I took in the Botanical Garden; click on them to see a larger version.

This is what the giant titan looks like while it’s not blooming.
How much can these huge leaves carry? This much!

Für die deutschsprachigen Leser: Sogar der Spiegel fand die Bonner Rekordblüte eines Artikels wert – sogar mit einem schönen großen Foto.

New Manila Features

• News Items Links
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Giant titan

This afternoon, André and I went to the Botanical Garden to see the giant titan, but there were so many people waiting in line (all the way to the entrance gate of the garden!) that we decided to try again tomorrow morning.

Cooking

The supermarket’s already closed, and you didn’t shop for dinner? Look into your fridge and cupboard, check the items on the list and voilà – here are your recipes! – c00kin96ynum6er5.

Mathematics and Art

Dave inspired me to look up some sites about Mandelbrot sets. I especially like this Java Mandelbrot generator and the Mandelbrot Explorer. Both let you zoom into a Mandelbrot set and select what part you want to see. Here’s a short introduction to Julia and Mandelbrot sets and some more pictures.

Want to know who Mandelbrot and Julia are? See their biographies: Benoit Mandelbrot, Gaston Julia.

Titanwurz – Giant titan

The bud opened yesterday at 5 pm! It turned out that this year’s giant titan in Bonn is the third largest ever in a botanical garden, and it’s 257 cm tall. The largest was not the one in New York – obviously they had trouble converting inches to cm. The largest flower with 267 cm grew in Wageningen, Netherlands, in 1932 while the one that grew in New York, USA, in 1937 was only 256,5 cm and thus 5 mm smaller than the one in Bonn.

This weekend, the Botanical garden has extra-long opening hours so that many people can come and see the giant titan. Maybe I’ll go and have a look myself – although the titan is supposed to stink awfully…

I took the photo from the Botanical Garden‘s news page.