Fan mail

I got email from Frieza, who saw my icon on Weblogs.com and liked it because he’s an anime fan. Ahem, I have to admit I know virtually nothing about anime, I just liked it, especially the colours.

On Frieza’s site, I found a link to LetsJapan, a site that features a photo from Japan (almost) every day. So far, there are only seven photos, but I like the idea and will surely check back for more.

Update: It seems Frieza, who is from the UK, speaks Japanese! (I think that is much cooler than a German speaking English, by the way.) He wrote my name in Katakana for me because I said I couldn’t.

   (literally: andorea feric)

Thanks! Now I need to practice…

Peanut Butter

“Man cannot live by bread alone. He must have peanut butter.”

    – Comedian Bill Cosby

Heh. I found the quote on Peanut Butter Lovers. The site has sections on the history of peanut butter, how it’s made , some recipes etc..

While peanut butter is considered a ‘normal’ food in the USA, it’s not very common in Germany. Few people here like it. (Ask André! ) But it’s healthy!

I love peanut butter. I like the chunky kind, preferably without sugar ( = sugarfree). Unfortunately, I don’t get it at the nearest supermarket, so I don’t eat it very often. (That reminds me – I need to go and buy a new jar!)

Update: Hal is a peanut butter fan, too. He says he’s not familiar with putting sugar on top of the peanut butter – but neither am I. Most brands that are available in Germany have sugar in them, but I like a brand that doesn’t: Sun Pat Peanut Butter, made by Nestlé. Although Nestlé has companies in Germany, the peanut butter seems to be imported from the UK.

You can see me eating a roll with peanut butter here.

Election

Have you read this on MetaFilter?

“1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation’s secret police. […]

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner’s “victory” turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner’s brother. […]

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation. […]”

Dinner and work

Aaah, we had a wonderful dinner tonight. André fried salmon, and we had broccoli and rice with it. Delicious!

After dinner, I attacked the paperwork for my exam registration – for the last time. I have to hand in about 40 pages, as you can see above. Note that we even have to hand in the envelopes and stamps they are going to use to send mail. The large one is for the diploma – in case I pass the exams. I wonder if I will get a refund for the stamps in case I fail…

Finally, it’s all done now and I’m ready to go and register on Monday morning. My appointment is at 9:30 am, and I hope it won’t take longer than an hour.

Sunrise

Bonn, December 1, 2000

I took the first three pictures between 7:40 and 7:50 am yesterday morning. The last picture (lower right) was taken 20 minutes after the first three. You can see that the street lights have been turned off in the meantime. And no, I didn’t enhance the colors with Photoshop!

I have to admit that there are some good sides to getting up early, even in the wintertime when it’s still dark outside. In this case, it was not only the beautiful sunrise, but also the fact that the registration office is not crowded at all at 8:30 am.

I had to get a new ID (Personalausweis), but when I first went to the registration office on Thursday afternoon, there were more than a dozen people waiting, so I decided to come back the next day. Good idea!

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’!

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

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.

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.

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!