Quick pic

twilight in the forest

I borrowed the camera from my brother a few weeks ago, and made this picture on an early sunday morning.

Strasbourg

In the beginning of august we went to Strasbourg for a wedding; I took a few days off and we explored the city and its surroundings for a few days. It’s a quaint little town, and we had the best weather imaginable. I borrowed a camera to take some pictures (since I didn’t yet buy a new one after the burglary), and they came out quite nicely.

Burglary

Last monday some dickhead looted our house .. now most of our (small) electronics are gone; 3 cameras, 2 ipods, a lens, and my precious laptop… So basically everything that I owned is gone. Including all my documents, photos, etc.. It’s all gone. On the upside, when our house is on fire, I don’t have to get in to retrieve my personal stuff… yay? It feels like there’s nothing left.

Propagandhi

About a week ago we went to see Propagandhi in the Melkweg (Amsterdam). It was almost 8 years ago that I saw them, so I was really looking forward to it. And they didn’t disappoint: it was fucking awesome. We were in front of the stage, with the moshpit right behind us.. so it got pretty wild ;). I didn’t make any pictures, and the only guy I saw making pictures had to be evacuated because it got so messy… but i found some pictures on Flickr anyway :)

And a great YouTube video.. Less Talk, More Rock and Haille Selssasse up your ass. We’re the only ones holding hands during Haille Sellasse lol:

And as a bonus, here’s Purina Hall of Fame:

Frankfurt

Previous week I went to Frankfurt, to the FIDIS general meeting, where I had to give a short presentation about the work we did. I didn’t have a lot of time afterwards, but at least I got make some pictures during the night:

Frankfurt Skyline

More Skyline

Booker T. & the M.G.’s

Saturday March 21st we went to see Booker T. & the MG’s; you can find a review here. It was much more crowded than the previous week, when John Cale and Vic Chesnutt performed. I didn’t bring my camera, but instead I borrowed some pictures from the previously mentioned site.
My review: they were awesome, and I got to hear my favourite songs (Green Onions and Hip Hug Her).

Steve Cropper

Steve Cropper

Booker T.

Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and Steve Cropper

Booker T.

“]

John Cale, Vic Chesnutt + Elf Power

Yesterday we went to see John Cale and Vic Chesnutt in ‘het Paard van Troje’ in the Hague; Vic Chesnutt performed together with Elf Power. John played really passionate, it really was wonderful to see him perform. He played some older songs like ‘Fear’, ‘Amsterdam’, ‘Paris 1919′, Dying on the vine’, ‘Pablo Picasso’ and  ‘Things’ from a recent album. Especially ‘Amsterdam’ gave me some shivers the way he sang it. Wonderful.

The second performer we came to see, Vic Chesnutt, played together with Elf Power. They played a lot of songs from their ‘Dark Developments’ album. Vic was really relaxed and laidback.

Here are some pics:

Christmas in Milan

We went to Milan for Christmas; I think it was a much needed rest for the both of us. It was pretty cold, but the sky was blue most of the time, and only had a brief period of rain when we arrived at the airport.

The Duomo is really nice; the amount of details is really impressive. You can see for yourself:

The hotel was really nice as well, so it was a happy end of the year .. maybe I should start looking for the next holiday :).

Mogwai in Oosterpoort, Cohen in Ahoy

On saturday (Nov. 1) we went to see Mogwai in the Oosterpoort, Groningen. We saw them before, but it was already a long time ago, and I didn’t listen to their music for a long time. Still, it was nice to see them in such a small town. It was fairly crowded, but I don’t think it sold-out. They played really well, much better than I remembered from the previous time.

Here are some pics, from here

Two days after that, on monday Nov 3rd, we went to see the poet of all poets, Leonard Cohen. We’d seen him in July already, but after seeing him once we couldn’t let the chance go by to see him one more time. Charming and humble as ever, he played for approximately 3 hours, so we were lucky it was a seated show. We weren’t allowed to bring our camaras, but here are some pro images. The sound quality in Ahoy still sucks, but Cohen’s sound engineers made it suck much less than with the Cure.

Lazy cat

Yesterday I had to defend my internship report; everything went better than I could’ve expected. I almost couldn’t stop talking, and my presentation was between 45-50 minutes (while 20 minutes was sufficient). Anyway, the questions afterwards were not that difficult, and all in all they were happy with the way I had worked during my internship.

Now I’m at my parents for a few days, and when I was goofing around with one of our cats, I had the chance to stare right into the belly of the beast:

Straight into the belly of the beast

My new Canon EOS 400D

Although this happened even before visiting Leonard Cohen in the Westerpark, I didn’t mention it before: my lovely parents bought me a Canon EOS 400D. It’s a gift for my graduation, so hopefully I won’t disappoint them later this month. The EOS 400D is more compact than I’d imagined, but it still has all the advantages of a SLR.

I had to get used to all the possibilities, it’s all just a little different from the Canon Powershot A95 I used before. But here are some great shots (the perfect sunset was captured by my brother, it’s my new header for the site):

Momma ladybug and her children ^^

Momma ladybug and her children ^^

Frisian sunset

ladybug in the sunset

something grass-like in the sunset

(please view at full resolution; it’s much better that way)

Leonard Cohen

Approximately 2 weeks ago, we saw Leonard Cohen performing in the Westerpark (Amsterdam). He was really charming, suave (especially with his hat), and was very generous to the band and to the public. He did two sets, after which he came back for the encores. He was such a passionate singer, clenching his fist, sitting on his knee… Truly a wonderful performance.

I’m happy to say we’ll see him at least one more time, in the beginning of November. The bad news is he’ll perform in Ahoy, of which I’m not too fond (sound quality was very bad the last time). But I have confidence that the soundguy from Leonard Cohen will amaze me like he did in the Westerpark. And we have much better seats now, so all in all I’m optimistic.

Setlist:

Dance Me to the End of Love
The Future
Ain’t No Cure for Love
Bird on the Wire
Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen/Sharon Robinson)
In My Secret Life (Leonard Cohen/Sharon Robinson)
Who by Fire
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye
Anthem

Tower of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street (with Sharon Robinson)
Hallelujah
Democracy
I’m Your Man
Take This Waltz (Leonard Cohen after Federico Garcia Lorca)

Encores:
So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Sisters of Mercy
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried to Leave You
Whither Thou Goest

Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band

Last Saturday we went to see TSMZMO&TB in Tivoli, Utrecht (Oudegracht). They mostly played songs from their new album ‘13 blues for thirteen moons’, but also played ‘Microphones in the trees’ (from the ‘Pretty Little Lightning Paw’ album), ‘Metal Bird’ (yet unreleased), and ‘Hang on to Each Other (from ‘Horses in the Sky’).

We arrived a little bit later than I expected, so most of the seats were already taken, which meant we had to sit in the back. I tried to make some pictures, but as usual, it was very dark and I had to zoom. I tried to improve it somewhat with photoshop, and a conversion to black&white.

Some pictures from
flickr :

The Cure

Almost two weeks ago, on March 18, we went to see The Cure in Rotterdam. I won’t complain about their performance, which was solid and long (more than 3 hours), but the sound quality in Ahoy was terrible. The newspapers didn’t complain about the sound quality, saying it was marvelous, but at least where we were seated the sound was boomy and not loud enough. The batteries of my camera were empty before I had shot a decent picture, so I’m putting up some downloaded pictures made by others. I’ll bring some extra batteries for the “Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la-band” -concert next week (April 5) :P.

Oh yes, the support act was 65 Days of static; we’ve seen them before, but now their set was very short (or we were much too late). I didn’t like their performance (for what I’ve seen of it); much less impressive than the previous time. But the acoustics were probably the culprit for this as well.

Reminder: Ahoy’s sound quality sucks.

Setlist:

plainsong
prayers for rain
a strange day
alt.end
the walk
the end of the world
lovesong
pictures of you
lullaby
from the edge of the deep green sea
kyoto song
hot hot hot!!!
please project
push
inbetween days
just like heaven
primary
a boy i never knew
maybe someday
never enough
wrong number
one hundred years
disintegration
- “six popsongs or four Faith songs? or both?” -

Encore 1:
the lovecats
let’s go to bed
friday i’m in love
freak show
close to me
why can’t i be you?

Encore 2:
three imaginary boys
fire in cairo
boys don’t cry
jumping someone else’s train
grinding halt
10:15 saturday night
killing an arab

Encore 3:
faith
a forest

More concerts

This blog may appear to be dead (probably not too far off) because I’m very busy doing my internship, and the traveling doesn’t help either.

Anyway, concert-wise, this is going to be a good year. In a few days we’ll see The Cure, a few weeks after that A Silver Mt. Zion, then Roger Waters and Leonard Cohen. Massive Attack, REM, and Radiohead will also perform in the Westerpark near my room. Needless to say, a very exciting time!

Mono

Last friday (november 9) we went to see Mono in Haarlem (Patronaat). They were simply amazing, the great dynamic between the melodic intros and the deafening white noise were almost hypnotizing.

Of course, I made some pictures; I really start to see the limitations of my Powershot A95. High ISO with a low shutter speed aren’t the best ingredients for concert photography. Nevertheless, I’m quite satisfied with these pictures: (low jpeg quality and low resolution because of wordpress-limitations on space)

The world is taking over

I made some pictures yesterday (well, quite a lot actually), but in the end I only like this one. I like the contrast between nature and industry. Makes you feel we really own the world, that the earth is ours. We’re invading nature’s territory.

They’re a little different, but mostly it’s the processing that makes them look different.

Cosmic background radiation

I finally finished my course on Quantum Optics; in the book we used was a question about the “number of photons per unit volume excited in a cavity at temperature T” (Loudon, Quantum Theory of Light). After deriving a formula for this, you can show that the cosmic background radiation contains about 4-5*10^5 photons per litre.
I always got stuck at the same point, but now I finally know how to solve this.

Read the attached pdf if you want to know the solution.

Hurricanes and global warming

There’s an article in Scientific American (July 2007) about the relation between global warming and hurricanes. I learned a few things from this:
A cyclone, typhoon and hurricane are the same thing; they only differ in the region where they are observed.

How do hurricanes form?

• The sun raises the Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
• Water is evaporated to release the excess heat
• The moisture raises and condenses into rain
• When raindrops are formed, latent energy is released
• The heat goes up and creates ‘updrafts and thunderclouds’
• Beneath this area, a low pressure zone is created which ’sucks up’ moist air
• Due to Coriolis forces due to the earth’s rotation a vortex is created
• “The eye” is a low pressure area at the bottom of this vortex
• Due to the circling hot air, the rising air dries and gains energy
• Some of this air is absorbed again in the eye, and some of the air ’spirals out’ over a large area (many kilometres)

The different seasons play a role as well:
The energy released when raindrops form heats the atmosphere

• In winter, the heat goes up and radiates into space
• In summer, the heat rises to higher altitudes in tropical areas

Further ingredients needed to start a hurricane:

• high SST (>26 degrees Celsius); SST may rise due to the greenhouse effect
• plentiful water vapour
• low pressure at the ocean’s surface
• weak wind shear between low and high altitudes (strong winds destroy emerging vortices)

The rising SST may (partly) originate from the greenhouse effect. However, in 2004 and 2005 we saw a lot of hurricanes, but 2006 was a quiet year.

Some scientists believe this is due to the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (AMO), which is basically a cycle in which temperatures rise and fall. But simulation shows that this can’t be the whole story (the temperature difference is only 0.5 degrees Celsius). The models do show (as far as they are correct; which is difficult to assess) that human action is likely a cause of the rising SST. Approximately 0.6 degrees Celsius can be attributed to human action (probably without the AMO) since 1970. It is noted that this may sound small, but only one degree can change the storm’s intensity to a higher category. This may well explain the rise in the number of ‘high’ category hurricanes.

The fact that 2006 was a quiet year (in stark contrast to 2004 and 2005) is due to a different factor. In 2004/2005, El Nino warmed the ocean. La Nina cooled the ocean the subsequent year. This is explained in the remainder of the article.

The article concludes that the hurricane threats are likely to get more severe.

More DragonFly wallpapers

Here are some more wallpapers in response to this. I can’t post all different resolutions (e.g. widescreen or 4:3) because I don’t have much space on WordPress.

wall42.png

 

(The thumbnail system is still messy on WordPress; for some reason the last wallpaper doesn’t get a thumbnail… :\)

 

DragonFlyBSD wallpaper

Inspired by the wallpapers linked from the Dragonfly BSD Digest, I tried a more abstract approach.

abstract5-1600×1200.png

abstract5-1920×1200.png

(for some reason, wordpress doesn’t want me add a thumbnail with a link to a png… )

 

Justin, you can use it on the website; I'd be honoured ;). 

I made the background myself, and the logo is the official logo by 

Joe Angrisano. The wallpaper is BSD licensed ;).

Lou Reed in Amsterdam

I wasn’t sure if I’d go, but after support from my loving parents, I decided to go to the Lou Reed concert here in Amsterdam on June 21. I took my little bro’ and little girlfriend with me, as I usually do. Never know if they like it, but they’re always by my side.

Anyway, the concert was great, albeit a little short. Approximately 90 minutes, and only 3 songs after the “Berlin” album was finished. There was a great synergy between Lou Reed and fellow guitarist Steve Hunter, which alone made it worth it. There was a movie and/or images projected on the background. The audience was pretty well behaved, but that was probably because the average age was 50 years or so ;).

Anyway, here are some pictures … I couldn’t fit everyone in the picture (e.g. the people from The London Metropolitan Orchestra), but in the background you can see The New London Childrens Choir. It was a really special time.

Thanks to my parents again.

  

An argument against tax increase on alcohol (in Russia)

Now an article from New Scientist about alternatives to alcohol used in Russia. The article opens with the following:

“A shocking 43% of deaths in working-age Russian men result from drinking alcohol not meant for human consumption, such as cologne and cleaning agents, according to a new study.“, which helps explaining why Russian men have the lowest life expectancy at just 59 years!

The alternatives to alcohol are cheaper and have a higher alcohol content. On the positive side, when drinking eau the cologne, burping may give a more pleasant smell… This must be an attractive feature to the women ;).

Not surprisingly, the people that drink the ‘alternatives’ to alcohol, have a much higher risk of alcohol related death.

Finally some shocking figures:

• “Russian men who drink non-beverage alcohol have a five-times greater risk of alcohol-related death (such as liver cirrhosis and alcohol poisoning) than those who do not consume these products“
• “Men who drank only non-beverage alcohols had up to a 20-times greater risk of death“
• These figures are probably higher, as the research didn’t include men who lived alone, or men who lived on the streets
• “Alcohol is linked to 72% of murders and 42% of suicides in Russia, according to 2005 figures“

Bring on the Soviet-Russia jokes ;).

Antibacterial soaps

In the category ‘Weird Science’ an article appeared on the site of Scientific American about antibacterial products. More and more antibacterial products are used, but to what avail?
Normal soaps wash away ‘nonspecifically’, “meaning they wipe out almost every type of microbe in sight—fungi, bacteria and some viruses—rather than singling out a particular variety.“
On the other hand, after applying antibacterial products, conditions may arise which may actually help the resistent bacteria, because not all bacteria may be killed. In fact, “a small subpopulation armed with special defense mechanisms can develop“, so that these bacteria develop a tolerance and reproduce. This, in turn, may help the bacteria in growing resistant to certain antibiotics.
A problem that arises is that, at least in America, certain antibacterial compounds are found in “60 percent of America’s streams and rivers“, and may eventually end up in crops.
In the end, the advise is to wash your hands 3 times a day with regular soaps, and leave the antibacterial soaps at hospitals.

Apple replies

About a week ago, Apple replied to my complaints. Basically, they said that if I can prove that the iPod was broken when I bought it (or, that the problem was there since the beginning, e.g. due to a design mistake), then they would look into my complaints. Put differently, I need to prove that the design is flaky to begin with.

It’s easy for them to say this (they know I can’t prove it), and I mailed an organization for consumer rights. If Apple doesn’t know what’s wrong with it, how the fuck can I prove that there was a mistake during fabrication or design fault? I’m waiting for a reply, before I send a second letter to them. But I’m sure this story doesn’t end yet …

65daysofstatic

Previous thursday, June 7th, we went to see 65daysofstatic. The concert was great, albeit a little short, but it was really hot and they were jumping around. I got tired watching them ;).

As usual, I tried to make some pictures; you can see 2 of them on the concert page. There was not much light (they said at the beginning of the concert: “If we look as bad as we smell, you should dim the light…”, then the light was dimmed ;).

The pictures aren’t great, almost bad, but I had to choose a high ISO and a high shutterspeed (did I mention they were moving fast?)… but at least it’s something. The noise doesn’t bother me, but they’re too dark.

Quick shots

I quite like them, the first two due their simplicity, the other because there’s some contrast between the message (“to her who kept saying no to fascism”) and the pee/filth on the left side (“women of ravensbruck”).

  

Ringfinger response

From one “research“:

Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.

From different “research“:

The research, done at the University of Alberta and announced Wednesday, found a connection between the length of the male index finger relative to the ring finger and the tendency to be aggressive.
No such connection was found in women.

Testosterone promotes development of mathematical and spatial skills. On the other hand, more estrogen promotes development of verbal skills, which lengthens the index finger.

On the same page it is mentioned that the longer the ringfinger is, the larger the amount of testosteron during the pregnancy. More testosteron results in more agression (at least, it makes it more likely; nothing can be said about individuals, only about groups). So this perfectly explains why you see all the agressive bald mathematicians, with those leather jackets, tattoos with hearts of “Mama”, scars and such at the G8 demonstrations.

Remember though, that other things like “flawed brain chemistry, brain damage, genetic defects, an unhealthy psychological environment” all contribute to the behaviour, so one needs to be careful about deducing characteristics from future lovers.

Oh yeah, my ringfinger is approximately 13 mm longer than my indexfinger. Nothing unexpected, as people know me as a highly agressive vegetarian listening to 60s music, enjoying math.

(The reason the word “research” is between quotes, is because I’m not too confident in these types of research. There may be a correlation, but that doesn’t mean  there’s a connection (in the form of causation) between the two. I have to admit I didn’t read the original articles (which were published), but my expectations are too low to be bothered with it. Also, the amount of test-subjects in both “researches” is pretty low; add some statistics, and you can easily produce true lies.)

Think more, get less

There’s an article in the June 2007 episode of Scientific American, also published on their site.It is written by Kaushik Basu.
It’s about the curse of rational choices when playing the “Traveler’s Dillemma” game:

“Lucy and Pete, returning from a remote Pacific island, find that the airline has damaged the identical antiques that each had purchased. An airline manager says that he is happy to compensate them but is handicapped by being clueless about the value of these strange objects. Simply asking the travelers for the price is hopeless, he figures, for they will inflate it.Instead he devises a more complicated scheme. He asks each of them to write down the price of the antique as any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number, he will take that to be the true price, and he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will assume that the lower one is the actual price and that the person writing the higher number is cheating. In that case, he will pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty–the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more as a reward for honesty and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less as a punishment. For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44.

What numbers will Lucy and Pete write? What number would you write?”The point is, when you don’t think much about it, you’d choose $100. However, when you start thinking more, you’d write down $99: because if you write down $99, and the other person will write down $100, you will get $101, while the other only gets $99. Then you start wondering if the other person thinks the same… and you obviously don’t want the other person to have more money. So you reduce your amount to $98 (thinking the other person will write down $99), so you’ll get $100, and the other person only $96. And so on. In the end, you’ll arrive at $2. In this way, you earn a lot less then the naively chosen $100.

This problem is the same, the article explains, as the Prisoner’s Dilemma: “… in which two suspects who have been arrested for a serious crime are interrogated separately and each has the choice of incriminating the other (in return for leniency by the authorities) or maintaining silence (which will leave the police with inadequate evidence for a case, if the other prisoner also stays silent).”

A Nash equilibrium, is when there’s no benefit (put simply) to change your strategy: in this case the equilibrium is at $2 (the absolute minimum of choices). This is what Game theory predicts; but it conflicts with our intuition.

In experiments, the choice people make depends on the reward: when the reward is low, the choice will on average be higher. On the other hand, when the reward is high, the choice will be lower. This makes sense, because when the reward is high relative to the choice, it’s more advantageous to lower your choice. For example, if the reward is not $2, but $50, you wouldn’t want your choice to be too high: the penalty you’d get would severely impact your profits.

Then why do we make these choices, based on our expectations that the other person will choose a high number? The article suggests:
“Perhaps altruism is hardwired into our psyches alongside selfishness, and our behavior results from a tussle between the two. We know that the airline manager will pay out the largest amount of money if we both choose 100. Many of us do not feel like “letting down our fellow traveler to try to earn only an additional dollar, and so we choose 100 even though we fully understand that, rationally, 99 is a better choice for us as individuals.”

The moral: sometimes it’s good not to think too extensively about seemingly simple questions.

Calculating Pi for fun and profit

This one is for my grandchildren :P. I found a nice intuitive way of calculating Pi. The only thing you need to understand is the Pythagoras Theorem. Consider the figure below:

To calculate the area of the circle, we take small steps.

• First we calculate the area of the grey part. It’s simple to see that this area is 0.5(1×1).
• Then the area of the red part. This is a little more tricky. To calculate the area, we first want to know the length of S. We see that the length from A to B equals 2S. With the use of Pythagoras, we find that 2S equals the square root of 2. So we know S: 0.5*sqrt(2). If we would also know T (and hence 1-T), then we could find the red area. But T is equal to S. A different way of finding T, is using Pythagoras again; we know OA=1, and we know S, hence we know T: the square root of 0.5. Thus the area of the red part equals: 0.5*0.5*sqrt(2)*(1-sqrt(0.5))=0.104.
• Now the green area. Well, we know (1-T) and S. So we know V. And W is 0.5*V. Now we only need to know the small side of the green triangle. This is where it gets tricky. (And messy). If we know O-fi then we’re all set. But OA=1, and we know Afi=W! Using Pythagoras (remember him?) we find filambda=1-fiO=1-sqrt(OA^2-Afi^2)=0.0439. So the area is approximately 0.0439*W=0.0439*0.29289=0.01286.

Note: wordpress doesn’t allow Greek symbols. So that explains “fi” and “lambda”
The only thing that needs to be mentioned, is that we have to multiply the grey are with 4 for a complete circle (we only considered 1 quadrant), the red area with 8, the green area with 16, etc.

Of course it’s possible to make a small script for this. I did all the fun for you, and coded it in Matlab. The code is a mess, but it’s posted here as a reference. If you understood the above (or if you came to this point without weeping), the code shouldn’t be hard to follow.

The real Pi is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795
# of iterations             found value

1                                    2.0000000000000000000000000000000
2                                    2.4142135623730949234300169337075
3                                   3.0614674589207182551770244842800
4                                   3.1214451522580524351896677430859
5                                   3.1365484905459392823695871570607
10                                 3.1415877252771597505203060598746
25                                 3.1415926535897902256560013790759
30                                 3.1415926535897951086718985911613
50                                 3.1415926535897951086718985911613

This means there’s a difference of 1.7764e-015=0.0000000000000017764, or a percentage of 0.5953e-13%=0.0000000000005953%. Not bad.

After about 30 iterations, we don’t see any change in the calculated Pi anymore. This is due to my coding skills, and the precision of the script. But I think it’s clear it does what it needs to do; the method works.