Category Archives: Archive

Imported from andrea.editthispage.com, a Manila site, on Sep 20th, 2005.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Sunrise, today

This greeted me while having breakfast this morning.

040912sunrise:

No photoshopping on this one, the only “cheating” I did was climb up into the attic to get a better view.

Traveling

Washington Post (free registration required): The Grander Canyon. “Forget the crowded South Rim. At little-known Tuweep, it’s just you and the view.” By Julian Smith.

His experience at Grand Canyon sounds similar to our visit their during our last trip to the USA in 2002. We had a spare day near the end of the trip and decided to spend it hiking down into the Canyon from the South Rim. We didn’t risk trying to hike down to the river and back up in a single day (which must be torture in August), but opted for a lesser known trail that leads to Horseshoe Mesa. We started early (between 7 and 8 am, if I remeber correctly), hiked down for a couple of hours, then rested before climbing back up. We reached the top again around four in the afternoon and met less than ten people during the day. The hike was quite strenuous, but very rewarding.

Art

The paintings of Rob Gonsalves remind me of M. C. Escher and René Magritte. Take a look!

Links via MetaFilter and Ask MeFi.

Cooking

Cooking for Engineers has a very cool (albeit somewhat geeky) visual way of diagramming recipes”, says Roland of VanEats fame. I like it!

Physik

Telepolis: Die unsichtbare Frau hinter Einstein.

Link via Schockwellenreiter vor ein paar Tagen, wenn ich mich recht entsinne.

Games

Here’s an Ask MeFi thred about games to play on car trips, mostly for children. Also, Mom’s Minivan has more ideas for trips. Some of these games might come in handy for school trips.

Tuesday, September 7, 2004

Community

Happy belated Birthday, Al!

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. It looks like Hal and family did. Cool photo! (And of course, the one of Ian the other day was pretty cute, too.)

Sunrise, yesterday

040906sunrise:

The weather has been exceptionally good since Friday, and the sunrises and sunsets offer lots of beautiful pastel colours (almost no clouds for spectacular effects though). Getting up at six really is easier if one is greeted by sunrises like this one.

Cooking

The Cook’s Thesaurus describes themself as “a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools.  Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions.” 

Schule

Aufgabensammlungen gibt es wohl viele im Internet – hier ein paar gute, die mir gestern unter die Mouse gekommen sind.

Sunday, September 5, 2004

From the culinary department

I’ve been trying some Indian recipes in the past weeks, but still don’t know much about Indian food. I think I will need a good book on Indian cooking, but Ian [Anderson]’s Guide to Indian Food is a good first introduction to get you started. And yes, Ian Anderson is the singer and flutist of Jethro Tull.

Und auf die Liste von Rezepten, die ich in nächster Zeit unbedingt mal probieren muss, gehört auf jeden Fall Mustikka-Piirakka, finnischer Heidelbeerkuchen. Gefunden in den Kuechenzeilen.de.

Back to school

The first week of school after the summer holidays is over. I spent a lot of time with the 25 fifth-graders I will be responsible for during the next two years and even managed to learn their first names.

The fifth-graders are pretty enthusiastic about all those new subjects and refreshingly motivated to learn. On Friday one girl asked me if I could please give them some maths homework because she was bored in the afternoons.

Yesterday André and I succeeded in our second attempt at riding our bikes around the Laacher See (a volcanic lake in the Eifel near our new home town; übrigens gibt es auf deutsch hilfreiche Informationen bei der Uni München) yesterday. This time around, I used a different bike with more gears and was able to climb all but the steepest hills. The weather was beautiful, warm and sunny, and we enjoyed our little trip a lot. No photos though because I didn’t want to lug around my camera all the time…

Schulmathematik

Für Mathematiklehrer eine reiche Fundgrube: G. Roolfs, ein Mathematiklehrer, hat eine umfangreiche Sammlung von Arbeitsblättern erstellt, und zwar angefangen bei Bruchrechnung für Klasse 7 bis hin zu komplexen Funktionen für die Oberstufe. Es gibt auch eine Abteilung für Informatik, aber die kann ich nicht beurteilen, weil ich das Fach nicht unterrichte.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Sunset from three days ago

040828sunset.jpg:

Astronomy/Physics

This time-lapse sequence of a lunation is one of the coolest Astronomy pictures of the day that I have seen. I’m going to use this animation in my classes. (Is this some kind of disease that teachers get? I’m starting to look at everything from the teacher’s angle – how can I use this in my lessons? How bad is this going to be, say, 20 years from now?)

St Elmo’s Fire

What is ball lightning? There are some explanations and background information in the links from this MetaFilter thread: Ball Lightning. I’ve never seen it, but I’m tempted to try and produce a ball lightning in the microwave oven – the one we bought arrived today. However, I don’t think that André will let me try this at home… More unwise microwave oven experiments were posted here previously.

Mathematics

I don’t have time right now, but I should read the article about Tensegrity by Kenneth Snelson tomorrow or whenever. Link via MetaFilter.

School

School started yesterday, and I’m already exhausted after just two days of school. Everybody told me that working full-time as a teacher is very hard for the first couple of years until you get used to it. However, I think it’s not just the stress at school, but a bug that’s trying to get me down. I try to get enough vitamins and sleep to fight it off.

The first days with the new students went well so far. Two classes I will spend a lot of time with/on are a fifth grade of 25 students for which I’m the Klassenlehrer (I guess you could roughly translate that with homeroom teacher or something similar), and an advanced maths course in 11th grade, which I’m looking very forward to teach until they get their Abitur. There are only 14 students, half of which I know from last year.

But now, there’s some more school work before I can call it a day and go to bed…

Friday, August 27, 2004

Traveling

Road Trip USA. From the MetaFilter thread where I found the link:

“This simply titled site is one of the better travel sites I have seen for back-road ramblings around the USA. Not only are the routes described some of the best, the writing is extensive (at least book length), of high quality and obviously by someone who has traveled every single mile personally. I only wish I had it on my last trip. Recommended for the arm-chair or car-seat traveler alike.”

Another interesting travel site is Virtual Tourist. Their self-description: “VirtualTourist is the World’s Leading Online Travel Research Exchange.”

Indisch Kochen

Nochmal ein paar Rezepte für meine Sammlung, die noch ausprobiert werden wollen: Huhn in Mandelsauce, Curry-Suppe mit frischem Ingwer, Indisches Kindeybohnen-Curry und Cremiges Hühnercurry (hier die ganze Liste).

Viele nette Rezepte gibt’s auch bei Schmeckt nicht – gibt’s nicht. Mangels Fernseher kenne ich zwar die Sendung nicht, bin aber schon von jemandem zum Essen eingeladen worden, der nach diesen Rezepten gekocht hatte. Sehr lecker!

Und wo wir gerade beim Essen sind: Table of Condiments
That Periodically Go Bad
(and a related page).

HTML

Since I needed it the other day: 24 Character entity references in HTML 4.

Schule

McKinsey bildet: Wo steht Deutschland im internationalen Bildungsvergleich? Gastkommentar von Walter Stein, Lehrer: Für die Förderung unserer begabten Schüler brauchen wir Lehrer Zeit.

Walter Stein war der erste Lehrer des Jahres bei Jugend forscht und ist zufällig einer der Lehrer, denen ich meine gute Ausbildung im Referendariat zu verdanken habe.

Physics

An interesting question on Ask MetaFilter: Why does light reflect? We see objects by the light reflected off of them. Can anyone explain on a molecular/atomic/sub-atomic level what the mechanism is that makes a light wave “bounce” off of an object? That’s a question exactly as a student might ask a teacher, and the answer is not really easy. Does light consist of particles, or of waves? Which model is more suitable to explain a phenomenon like reflection?

Why weblog?

Somehow, I always manage to accumulate a bunch of links in one folder of my bookmarks. It works like this: I see an interesting article or site, think to myself that it’s something to post here, but instead of going ahead and posting it, I create a bookmark for it. Weeks later I realize that I haven’t posted anything to the weblog in ages, discover all those cool links in the bookmarks folder, realize that I’ve forgotten why I bookmarked some of them and where I found others in the first place. Then I flip the page, post the links, delete them from the bookmarks, and start again from the beginning. What you see above is the most recent collection of links I re-found.

Writing

How to write a best selling fantasy novel – “ten steps towards instant literary fame”, by Ian McFadyen. And if you need more help with the actual process of structuring the story and writing the book, the snowflake process for writing a novel by Randall Ingermanson might help.

Links via MetaFilter.

star:

Diese Woche in der Zeit

Neue Länder: Was der Osten wirklich braucht. “Allen Wunderheilern und Demagogen zum Trotz – jetzt ist Standfestigkeit gefragt. Drei Vorschläge für den Aufbau in den neuen Bundesländern.” Von Helmut Schmidt.

Dossier: Ein kleiner Liter Öl auf großer Fahrt. “Noch nie war Benzin so teuer wie heute. Warum? Unser Reporter begleitete einen Liter Rohöl auf seiner Reise von der Quelle in Kuwait durch den Sueskanal nach Rotterdam und weiter zur Tankstelle in Wesseling bei Köln. Die Stationen einer kolossalen Preissteigerung.” Von Reiner Luyken.

Olympia: Der Tag nach übermorgen. “Was Archäologen in 2500 Jahren von unseren Olympischen Spielen finden werden.” Von Burkhard Strassmann.

Kino: Stilles Ende eines Irren unter Tage. “Oliver Hirschbiegels Film »Der Untergang« riskiert keine neue Sicht auf Hitler. Einen Skandal wird es nicht geben. Der Schauspieler Bruno Ganz verschmilzt mit dem Diktator und entzieht ihn jeder Einfühlung.” Von Jens Jessen.

Stephen Spielberg: ‘Kino ist meine Teufelsaustreibung’. “Nächste Woche eröffnet Steven Spielbergs Film »The Terminal« das Festival von Venedig – er handelt von einem Mann, für den ein Flughafen zum Gefängnis wird. Ein ZEIT-Gespräch mit dem Meister des Entertainments, der eigentlich Aufklärung und Erkenntnis will.”

Buch im Gespräch: Schreiben, gegen die Stille. Henning Mankell: Ich sterbe, aber die Erinnerung lebt. Mit einem Memory-Buch von Christine Aguga und einem Nachwort von Ulla Schmid. Artikel von Susanne Mayer.

Dreijährige in Deutschland: Generation Viktoria. “Der Kanzler und seine Frau haben ein drei Jahre altes Mädchen adoptiert. Die Dreijährigen in Deutschland: Sie lernen Englisch, spielen oft alleine, und ihre Kinderbuchheldin ‘Conni’ ist eine Streberin.” Von Burkhard Strassmann.

Fotografie: War das schön. “Die Ferien sind vorbei, und die Deutschen betrachten ihre Urlaubsfotos – fast nur noch am Computer. Eine verzweifelte Liebeserklärung an die alte Spiegelreflexkamera.” Von Henning Sußebach.

Schule: Bewegte Lehrer. “Von Yoga bis zum Rollenspiel: Überall im Land haben Lehrer in den Sommerferien die Schulbank gedrückt. Ihre Schüler sollen davon profitieren.” Von Jan-Martin Wiarda.