Human genome

Sheila has three links to interesting human genome articles today. Recommended!

Science helps to retreive classic literature

Independent: Digital device reads wealthy Roman’s library of ‘lost’ classics.

“Hundreds of long-lost works of ancient Greek and Latin philosophy, science and literature – possibly including works by Aristotle, Archimedes and Seneca – are about to be rediscovered in what promises to be the most important re-emergence of classical literature and thought since the Renaissance.

American scientists have succeeded in developing a remarkable new high-tech system for reading previously illegible manuscripts. Using digital technology, academics from Brigham Young University near Salt Lake City, Utah, will ‘remaster’ the lost wisdom of the ancients. Classical scholars believe the technology will open up the world’s greatest surviving ancient works which have been illegible because of their poor state of preservation.”

Link via MetaFilter.

Google searches

I’m famous. Duncan says so.

Well, Duncan did a Google search for Andrea, and my site is the #2 hit. But when you search for Frick, I’m not even in the first 100 hits. Well, at least I’m the number one Andrea Frick. Okay, enough ego-surfing for today…

Astronomy

Heavens above is a site that provides info for observing satelites, Mir, the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and “a wealth of other spaceflight and astronomical information”. You can even get maps according to your location and local time!

I think I’ll go ISS and satellite watching tonight…

Geography and more

“In February 2000, the SRTM radar system flew onboard Space Shuttle Endeavour and gathered topographic data over approximately 80% of the land surfaces of the Earth, creating the first-ever near-global data set of land elevations.” Read about it at the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission‘s site (mission). The SRTM measured the elevation every 30 metres and to an accuarcy of about 6 metres. Pretty impressive.

More info can be obtained at the SRTM Update of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) (Deutsches Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum).

Links via c’t.

In der aktuellen Ausgabe der c’t (4/2001) gibt es dazu einen ganzen Artikel (Report: Erdvermessung – 3D global; Seite 102 ff), der wirklich sehr lesenswert ist. Leider ist er nicht online verfügbar.

Art? Cool!

“An alternative browsing experience”: See Andrea’s Weblog shreddered. – Go and shredder your own site at Potatoland’s Shredder. Or read about the Shredder here.

Link via Familie Berg.

Community News

“Good stuff coming” at Oliver’s site! A new design and maybe a move to his own server… Maybe he’ll be able to “find a more positive spin on things”, too? Would be nice. Oliver, I’m looking forward to the Far side of my mind‘s rebirth!

More reading

Read the first chapter of The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan.

Link via WannaWrite?.

Reading

Helena describes how she reads books:

“I usually have at least two books on the go, where one of them is the slow read, and the other one is the one that I read straight through. That way I finish about three books before I finish the slow reading book. Oh well, I guess that’s my style.”

That’s exactly what I do. At the moment, I’m reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman. That’s the slow one, I started it a few months ago, I think. In the meantime, I’ve read Harry Potter parts three and four, a few other books and now Die glücklichen Inseln Ozeaniens by Paul Theroux, which I will be finishing soon. I wonder how long The Design of Everyday Things is going to last…

Mathematik

Da hat der Schockwellenreiter mal wieder eine schöne Site für mich aufgetan: Polyhedra. Eine mathematische Unterweisung in die fünf platonischen Körper, pardon, in die “fünf regulirten Cörper”, aus dem Jahre Anno, M. D. LXVIII.

Sowas kommt mir doch für meine Examensarbeit gerade recht! Schöne alte Kupferstiche…

Typographie

Nach dem Motto: Gut, daß wir veglichen haben… Hier ist ein Artikel, der die Schriftgrößen bei Internet Explorer und Netscape sowie unter Windows und MacOS vergleicht: Schriftvergleich Mac/PC

Fazit: Die Schriftgrößen stimmen am besten überein, wenn man sie in px angibt.

Gleich nebenan gibt’s noch ein paar Infos zu Cascading Style Sheets.

Link zu upuauet.com via BookLog.

Physics

Physics today online: Feature – Wolfgang Pauli. “Max Born thought that Pauli was, perhaps, an even greater scientist than Einstein. ‘But he was a completely different type of man,’ wrote Born, ‘who, in my eyes, did not attain Einstein’s greatness.'”

Link via MetaFilter.

The Internet Age

Cool comic over at Bluepixel yesterday: “No, you weren’t downloaded…”

Family of five

Oh happy day! The day before yesterday, Elijah Hunt Donellan was born! Congratulations, Wendy and Mike – and Syndi and Harry, too!

English – German

Yesterday’s Birthday Boy Scott had two links to English-German dictionaries on the web: Leo – Link everything onine and the German-English dictionary of the TU Chemnitz. Useful.

Weblog rating

Update to yesterday’s entry: Duncan, another fan of View From The Heart, chimes in:

“Al, don’t take the criticism to heart. […] The world’s a better place because of you. I don’t think I could say the same thing about these so-called critics.”

Weblogs

Blog You wrote about Al’s weblog. Like the Curmudgeon, I say he deserves a much better rating! Wise words from John:

“It makes you wonder whether traditional criticism makes sense for weblogs. They shouldn’t be judged in isolation, as one would judge a magazine or TV show. It’s important how they add to the total fabric of the web, especially the local community of weblogs they’re part of.”

Al, you don’t get any ‘Donalds’ from me, you get these:

– That’s five out of five.

Garret has some thoughts about criticising weblogs as well, and he sums it up like this:

“so ignore the critics, and blog away my friend. your particular audience is listening.”

I think it doesn’t make sense for weblogs to be rated or criticised by people who don’t read the weblog regularly. You can’t base your judgement on briefly reading the current homepage, as Blog You obviously do. The only opinions I would consider to be significant are the ones of the faithful readers. And if you have many of them, and they’re all nice people, that says a lot more about the quality of your blog than anything else.

Big brother is watching you

Especially on the internet. Today I found How to surf anonymously.

Link via Netdyslexia.

LaTeX

Note to self: Here is a page with instructions on how to make PDF files with OzTeX:

PdfTeX for OzTeX 4.0.

Birthday!

Today, Scott turns 39 years old. Happy Birthday, Scott! Have a great day!

Oh, and I hope your other birthday presents are better than the one you got yesterday!

Sunset the other way round

Looking east at 5:15 p.m.

Odds and ends

Thanks for the comment on my photo, Susan! These words from an excellent photographer like yourself… I’m honored.

Und Gerd (7. Februar 2001), gern geschehen. Ich wollte Dir damit aber nicht den Spaß an der Mühe verderben.

(Öhm, gibt’s beim BookLog eigentlich keine Permalinks? Oder finde ich sie nur nicht?)

Oh ja, und bei Gerd fand ich auch einen Link zu Software für das eigene Weblog. Ganz brauchbarer Artikel.

Ouch!

Bob went ice-skating with Alex. Gute Besserung!

Somehow, this reminds me of another weblogger who went ice-skating with his son…

A different way to search the net

map.net: “The entire Internet is now on a map of Antarctica.” You can click on any of the categories and get to a new page which shows undercategories and sites that fit in the general category. Cool!

Music

Featured today: The Proclaimers!

Do you remember I’m gonna be (500 Miles)?

“But I would walk 500 miles

And I would walk 500 more

Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles

To fall down at your door”

It was in the soundtrack of Benny & Joon in 1993 and was a hit five years after the Proclaimers released it on their second album, “Sunshine on Leith”, in 1988.

I rediscovered their third album, “Hit the Highway” (1994), this morning when I heard “I’m gonna be” on the radio, and I found I still like it a great deal. The Proclaimers’ music is described as folk pop, or Scottish pop. I think what I like about their music is that the voices of Charlie and Craig Reid, who are twin brothers, blend together so well, and their Scottish accent! There are a few slow songs on the album, but I prefer the louder, more “proclaiming” ones, like “Follow the money”, “Don’t turn out like your mother” or “Shout Shout” – and of course “I’m gonna be”.

Here are two interviews with the Proclaimers: Rambles – The Proclaimers: Walking 1,000 miles and The Celebrity Cafe – Craig Reid of the Proclaimers.

They are about to release their next (fourth) album, and you can download “No particular Place To Go” as mp3 from their site.