The Weekend

As you may have guessed, I had a Sw/oC yesterday. I spent the whole day lying on the sofa, read a book cover-to-cover and enjoyed that I didn’t have to do anything else. In the evening, I cooked one of my favourite dinners: baked potatoes, bell peppers and zucchini. With fresh rosemary! Yum.

Today will be a bit more busy. As André wrote the day before yesterday, we’re going to Plymouth, England to visit a friend he knows from school on Tuesday. They haven’t seen each other for years, and I’m looking forward to meeting her for the first time. And although parts of Devon and Cornwall are closed because of the mouth and foot disease, I’m quite sure we will enjoy our stay. And it will be a great way to relax from the thesis, so I will be fresh for the text task at hand: preparing for the written exams.

So, today we start with the preparations for our trip. I’ll do some washing and generally catch up with household tasks that were neglected during the last busy week of thesis-writing.

Speaking of my thesis: On Friday I went to two libraries and returned all of the books I’d borrowed for the thesis, about 17 or 18. It felt really great to get the load off your shoulders in such a symbolic way: I carried all the books in a backpack and dumped them on the counter at the library. Free at last! Now my desk is back to its neat and empty pre-thesis look.

Happy Birthday!

Die Sendung mit der Maus (hier ohne Flash-Intro) feiert heute ihren 30 Geburtstag!

In Köln ist eine große Geburtstagsparty, die man auch im Internet verfolgen kann (Webcams, Stream).

Auf der Website der Maus kann man die Geschichte der Maus nachlesen, und einige der Sachgeschichten lesen und anschauen.

Die Maus ist schon älter als ich, hat sich aber besser gehalten, finde ich. Früher habe ich sie immer im Fernsehen geschaut, jeden Sonntagvormittag.

Die Sachgeschichten finde ich noch immer klasse, und auch die Sachgeschichten auf der Website sind sehr gut gemacht. Meine Lieblingsgeschichte? In einer Sendung wurde im Zusammenhang mit Atomkraftwerken der Begriff Kettenreaktion verdeutlicht: In einem Zimmer waren hunderte gespannter Mausefallen und Tischtennisbälle aufgebaut. Dann hat entweder Armin oder Christoph (siehe auch http://mauschristoph.de/) einen Tischtennisball hineingeworfen, und los ging die Kettenreaktion…

Im Web: Die Maus erklärt das Internet.

Und in der aktuellen Zeit gibt’s gleich zwei Artikel zum Maus-Geburtstag:

Fernsehen: In Saus und Maus. “Seit 30 Jahren sorgt sich Armin Maiwald um die ‘Sendung mit der Maus'”.

Leben: Die Maus, die alles weiß. “Gratulation: Die heimliche Volkshochschule des deutschen Fernsehens wird 30 Jahre alt. Und was haben wir von ihr gelernt? Zwölf dankbare Schülerinnen und Schüler antworten”.

Math

Ray Girvan: The Mandelbrot Monk. In the 13th century, a monk named Udo von Aachen seems to have known about the Mandelbrot set.

Link via Hal.

Springtime

It smells like spring outside. Today it has been quite warm, though not sunny, but I still enjoyed riding my bike around town. I collected my thesis from the copyshop and went to the Prüfungsamt to hand it in. The Prüfungsamt is near the Rhine, so I went down to the Rhine. The water is very high at the moment, though not as high as I have seen it a couple of years ago. You can still use the roads and paths next to the river in many places. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my camera, so I can’t present any pictures.

It’s hard to tell how I feel right now. I guess I’m relieved that I finally finished the thesis, but mostly, I’m exhausted. I didnt realize how stressful the past months really were until yesterday or today. I’ve spent the afternoon reading, then went shopping and cooked a delicious dinner: pasta with salmon and leek. We didn’t have any champagne, Craig, but some dry white wine (which is pretty special since we rarely drink alcohol).

And tonight, André and I are going to watch a romantic movie – um, not quite, we’re watching Men in Black. We’ve seen the movie a couple of years ago, and I thought it was great fun. The DVD has lots of extra stuff on it: extended scenes, lots of photos, explanations about how the aliens were created and so on.

Jay: “You do know that Elvis is dead, don’t you?”

Kay: “No he’s not. He just went back home.”

And thanks for the congratulations, Helena, Jeff, John, Hal, Al, and Jörg, too!

Hope your day is as nice as mine!

We now resume our normal weblogging program.

Thanks for all your congratulations!

Craig asked: ”
What’s the first thing you are going to do with your freedom?

May I suggest that you and André go out for a romantic dinner, with champagne, of course. ”

Well, the first thing I did today was to go for a walk and run some errands – at a leasurely pace. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa, reading – my first book in weeks that didn’t have any of the words Elliptic Functions, Theory of Functions, or Algebraic Topology on it.

There will be some sports tomorrow: Ride my bike to the copyshop, get my thesis, and ride my bike to the Prüfungsamt to hand it in; and some weight-lifting. I have about 20 books from different libraries sitting on my desk that need to be returned.

And as for the suggested dinner, we might go out for dinner on the weekend, but I doubt there will be champagne. True, I finished writing, but I won’t know the grade for another three months. Depending on the news I get in June, we might celebrate then.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

I am freeeee!

I’m quoting Susan here – and no other words would be more appropriate.

I finally finished my thesis. I worked till past 5 am last night, then slept for three hours and got the rest done. Then I went to the copyshop to have it bound, and tomorrow I’m going to hand it in. Finally!

Susan, I can so understand how you must have felt during working on that book of yours. My thesis has only about 50 pages, so I know you must have felt about 20 times as exhausted as I am now.

Only one problem remains: What am I going to do today? And tomorrow?

Math Quotes

I like both Jeff’s and Garret’s suggestions, but I’m afraid it would not be a good idea to put them on my thesis.

Imke suggested this one:

“Wer die Geometrie begreift, vermag in dieser Welt alles zu verstehen.” – Galileo Galilei

“The person who understands Geometry is able to understand everything in this world.” – Galileo Galilei

I like it!

Auch schön, aber weniger passend:

“Das Buch der Natur ist mit mathematischen Symbolen geschrieben”. – Galileo Galilei

Das wäre eigentlich was für meine Hausarbeit über Mathematik und Bildung letztes Jahr gewesen… so als provokante Eröffnung.

Thesis

I shall finish my thesis tomorrow. However, I’m still looking for a quote to go on the first page. It should have something to do with geometry, and it would be even cooler if it is by one of the mathematicians that appear in my thesis, e.g. Euklid, Felix Klein, Poincaré, Riemann, Schwarz, Liouville, Hilbert, Carathéodory, Hurwitz, Courant, or Siegel.

Meanwhile, I’ve found the Mathematical Quotations Server of Furman University. (I thought I linked to it before, but the search engine doesn’t find it.)

I searched for quotes on geometry here, and found this one:

“Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe.” – János Bolyai (1802 – 1860)

[A reference to the creation of a non-euclidean geometry.]

How do you like it?

Community

Happy wedding anniversary, Tina and John!

Reading online

Bookvalley is a collection of books that are available online.

Link via Garret.

Dritte Bonner Museumsnacht

Aha, Museumsnächte gibt’s also auch hier in Bonn. Aus dem aktuellen Newsletter der Uni:

“Zur 3. Bonner Museumsnacht am Samstag, 31. März, werden die Bonner Musentempel bis zur Geisterstunde geöffnet sein. Auch die Uni beteiligt sich: Von 19.30 Uhr bis zirka 24 Uhr ist beispielsweise eine Keltennacht im Akademischen Kunstmuseum angekündigt, das neue Ägyptologische Museum [Fotos dazu] lädt ein und im Arithmeum geht es alles andere als diskret und geheim zu. Im Deutschen Museum Bonn tragen Rechtsmediziner und die Bonn University Shakespeare Company zu einer spannenden Kriminacht bei.”

Work work work

Still working on my thesis… Don’t expect any real updates before the weekend.

Useful

Dictionary for Mathematics: German-English – English-German.

Klassiker

Nicht zu fassen – den Bronstein gibt’s online! (Die aktuellen Auflage des Taschenbuchs der Mathematik gibt’s auch mit CD-Rom; ich vermute mal, daß diese denselben Inhalt wie die Website hat.)