Blog 2011-02-23 - 2011-09-28

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2011-09-28:
I am now making money off my youtube account. I won't be quitting my day job any time soon, though.

2011-09-25:
The recent visit to the museum of natural history in London reminded me about a couple of photos I took of fossil sea lilies (Crinoids) when visiting Senckenberg Naturmuseum Frankfurt about two years ago.

I find the richness of form and detail on these slabs quite fascinating, and that is why I use them as the background images on both my desktop and mobile. Some of these shapes wouldn't look entirely out of place in a H. R. Giger painting either :P

2011-09-23:
On my way home from a recent work trip I passed through London and took the opportunity to visit the Museum of Natural History there. Apart from the dinosaurs, dodos, whales and statues of Dawin I expected to find there I also found this pretty dendrite :

This is a Solnhofen limestone with pyrolusite forming the dendrite. The branching dendritic growth pattern looks rather a lot like the patterns produced by simulated diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA). In fact it is possible to make the simulated DLA patterns look even more like dendrites by using noise-reduced DLA (link to Fractal growth phenomena by Tamás Vicsek).

2011-09-01:
I used to like Pinball deluxe for Android. Now I love it. The new pinball arkanoid combo is brilliant. In some ways an obvious combination, yet I've never seen it done before.

2011-08-21:
My new favourite summer recipe - Gazpacho :

4 portions

2 slices of white bread
1 clove of garlic, sliced
1/2 dl olive oil
1/2 kg tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 cucumber
1 red onion
2 tbsp of white wine vinegar
salt and black pepper

Remove the seeds from the red pepper and the cucumber.
Dice all of the vegetables and the bread.
Put everything in a blender and mix until fairly smooth.
Add salt and black pepper to taste.
Leave the soup refrigerated for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.

The recipe I've based this on also calls for up to 5 dl of water to be added, but I prefer the soup to be a bit thicker and to add ice cubes before the soup is served instead. A very quick and easy soup to do, and also very cool and refreshing in the summer heat.

2011-08-05:
Fractals for dinner today. Romanesco cabbage (AKA Romanesco broccoli or Romanesco cauliflower or Minaret cauliflower or Pyramid cauliflower) - tasty, beautiful, and self-similar.

Romanesco cabbage	Romanesco cabbage	Romanesco cabbage
Romanesco cabbage	Romanesco cabbage	Romanesco cabbage

2011-07-24:
Java applet updates:

Added tabs to make the simulation of Galileo's experiment easier to use.
Repaired the second variant of the Solarium Augusti applet. Turns out one of the time zone related calls had changed since this applet was originally made. Not entirely surprising since it was more than a decade since the applet was originally written.
Added a standing wave particle system applet. I have made a framwork for particle system simulations, and this applet is the first one to use it. The plan is that I use the particle system framwork for other applets. For example, there are loads of fun stuff that can be done with networks of springs, or boids-like rule sets.

2011-07-15:
Vacation!

2011-07-04:
Added Google +1 buttons to, well, everything (the bottom of everything to be more precise). Let's see if it gets used.

2011-06-30:
Time for a 'Paste your taste' update from my last.fm account :

I'm into industrial, electronic, rock, experimental and ebm, including: Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Cyanotic, Ministry, Front Line Assembly, Angelspit, Android Lust, Revolting Cocks, Tom Waits, Rob Zombie, Download, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Björk, Grinderman, Spahn Ranch, Autechre, Tool, ohGr, Einstürzende Neubauten, PJ Harvey, Emilie Autumn, Pig, Pitchshifter, Chemlab, Voltaire, Ladytron, The Sisters of Mercy, Sister Machine Gun, Peaches, Pigface, Rasputina, Goldfrapp, Covenant, Johnny Cash, The Presets, MDFMK, Laibach, Portishead, Gravity Kills, Lard, The White Stripes, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Puscifer, Joy Division, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Tweaker, Client, The Knife.

2011-06-27:
I have added another of my old java applets to this site - Augustus' sun dial. This version of the applet shows an animation of the sundial during varous parts of the year. There is also another variant of the applet that shows were the shadow would fall at the current time instead, but so far I have been unable to resurrect that variant of the applet.

2011-06-21:
I may have jinxed it. R.I.P. uptime 208 days :(

2011-06-16:
Updated my Samsung Galaxy S from Froyo to Gingerbread yesterday. So far so good.

2011-06-14:
Server uptime over 200 days. Not too bad.

2011-02-23:
I had the great fortune of being sent to repair some of our equipment that happend to be on a cruise ship in the Carribean. I boarded the NCL Epic in St. Martin and debarked in Miami. This was a work trip, but I did have some time off, and here are some photos from when I was not working:

St. Martin	St. Martin	My hotel was just across the road from the airport.
St. Martin	Just a small strip of beach and a road separates the St. Martin airport runway from the sea.	St. Martin beach near the airport
St. Martin beach near the airport	NCL Epic	NCL Epic
NCL Epic	St. Thomas	St. Thomas
St. Thomas

I suppose my good fortune was balanced out by the fact that I became ill on my way back and was out of commission for almost a week :(

2011-01-11:
Thou shalt not type 'halt -p' in the wrong terminal window.

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