Eight Minutes Old

In his comment to my last post Mario hinted me at a blog about photos of things in which one can see faces: http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com. That remembered my of an photo series I’ve done some time ago about these binoculars in places with a nice sight that you have to pay (I’ve no idea what they are called, not even in German).

This one is from Normandy and seems to be a frequent model, I’ve seen similar ones in Paris. I usually do not move them but shoot them they way they are, mostly pointing to the sky.

Tags: black and white, Canon EOS 50E, EF 24mm f/2.8, France, Fuji Neopan Acros 100, Haute Normandie, Normandy, Photo Series, Sky

On the one hand I’m still busy with writing my paper, but I realized that I need some distraction, too. Something funny. So I settled for pareidolia perceptions (when you see something that isn’t there in random patterns like clouds, cheese-toast or dirt). I’m not done yet, but I promise that there will be some interesting posts in the next weeks, thus I announce my official “Pareidolia Weeks”. Being a sceptic I will concentrate on sightings of religious figures (Jesus, Virgin Mary), but there will be something on photography too, I think.

I’ll start with a post later this week. For now, I’m back to work.

Tags: Jesus, Perception, Religion, Sceptic, Special Events Weeks, Virgin Mary

Ok, I’m pretty occupied currently. But this one I have to point out, even though it is some days too late:

On Saturday I watched the press conference of the Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin on the Georia war. For one, there were these silly allusions to the US war in Iraq, Russia obviously tries to avoid being critizised like in: they did it, so we can do it too. BUT: I was against the war in Iraq as many others, so I personally think this argumentation backfires.

But what I found especially remarkable: Churkin stated that the military budget of Georgia has increased by 30 times in the past several years. He then tried to emphasize this by telling the reporters that this is an increase by how many percent… Oh…:

[...] It’s military budget has grown by something like thirty times, 300 percent, in eh.. h-how how many percent? Thirty times and you understand the figure [...]

TEACH THEM MATH!!!

You can watch it in the UN webcast archive, look for the third entry on 9th of August 2008. It is titled “Informal comments to the Media by the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, H.E. Mr. Vitaly Churkin, on the situation in Georgia.” The percentage-comment is at about 9 minutes into the video.

Furthermore, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number depends on what time span and what currency you look at: When taking the local currency, Lari, into account, the military expenditure was 37.2 million estimated for 2000 compared to 1,271 for the year 2007, which of cause is an increase of over 3400 percent. Looking at the US$ values the increase is “only” about 2200 %. But 2000 is a local minimum in their expeditions and you might want to take the normalized US$ values into account. For example, the first value given is for 1996 is 89.5 million US$ and the 2007 value is 592 million. Still an enormous increase and I do not support the spending money for military in any numbers and Georgia seems to spend an huge percentage of their gross domestic product for it. But one should keep in mind that numbers like this are variable, especially when politicians use them.

Tags: Georgia, Math, Politics, Russia, War

To get the location of this picture is easy: It’s written right there, and in a high resolution version one could even zoom in onto the map. It is Place Abbesses in Montmartre, Paris. Mere minutes before there was a thunderstorm which luckily did not last long.

Another topic: VFXY did not approve my blog “due to ‘Posts missing images’. “. I wonder how difficult it would be for them to sort out posts without images and only show those that have pictures in them… especially as they already mark posts withour images with ’sorry, no image supplied’. I am told to “Correct this issue and notify them”. Well, I think it is correct to have posts without images and I definitely don’t like photoblogs that only show photos without any text posts.

I’ll try to give them my ‘pictures’ category only, but I have to figure out how to produce a RSS feed of that one only.

Tags: black and white, Canon EOS 50E, EF 50mm f/1.8 II, France, Fuji Neopan 400, Montmartre, Paris

I’m not quite sure how these questions arise in my head, but they do. Today it is: What would be the taste of coke if there were no sugar or sweetener in it? I can not imagine it, as sweetness is the dominating (I would even say only) flavor. Probably it will be unenjoyable but I don’t know. I even have no idea how to get a soft drink that isn’t sweet. Is there a way to extract the sugar somehow? I never made friends with chemistry, but some knowledge would come in handy now…

Tags: Chemistry, Food, Questions

While walking through Montmarte I approached the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris from the side and found it hidden by huge trees. It was a wonderful, sunny day and the walls have a nice contrast. The only thing that disturbs me a bit is the white cloud in the sky right behind the tree. Between the leaves there are some white spots that look like, but have nothing to do with, bad post processing.

I almost forgot to mention the shadow of a pigeon that is visible on the wall in the center. I wasn’t aware ot it when I took the picture, probably because it moved too fast. I’m not quite sure if I like the silhouette or if I find it disturbing…

Tags: black and white, Canon EOS 50E, Church, EF 50mm f/1.8 II, France, Fuji Neopan Acros 100, Montmartre, Paris

As you might know already, there is a solar eclipse happening today, beginning at around 8:00 UTC (10:00 local German time). It is not only that the sun, moon and earth are on one line, with the moon between sun and earth. The speciality with total eclipses is, as the Sun and Moon have almost the same apparent size, their angular diameters in the sky are nearly equal. Even though the sun is about 400 times bigger than the moon, it is also about 400 times that far away. So the moon is big enough to drops a shadow onto earth, but too small to cover the whole globe (then it would have to be bigger than Earth.).

The region where the sun is completely blocked (called umbra, in German known as ‘Kernschatten’: core shadow) is comparably small, with a width of only a few hundred kilometers at most. This region moves across earth, it’s path is shown here. Today’s eclipse starts in Canada, then moves along the north pole (question: why has there never been a solar eclipse at the north pole in winter?) towards Russia, especially Siberia. In addition to the umbra a penumbra exists, where the moon only hides a section of the sun. That region is much bigger, today even covering Europe, where a partial solar eclipse can be observes. But the sun is still too bright to look at it with unprotected eyes!

But although the umbra is in remote regions today, you can watch it live with help of NASA TV. The coverage starts at 6:00 am Eastern U.S. time, which should be 12:00 in continental Europe. The totality of the broadcasted eclipse will take place about an hour later, which might make it perfect to watch in the lunch break.

The next total eclipse will take place on July 22, 2009, so next year. Unfortunately, most of the shadow’s path is situated in the Pacific Ocean, but many Asian cities lie along it, too. There are even travel tour operators offering travels to china to see the eclipse. Unfortunately the visibility still depends on the weather conditions (ok, it will darken in bad weather, too), and we can’t predict them for a year in advance.

UPDATE 12:10 CEST: The broadcast has just begun. I was lucky to see the partial eclipse throug the small telescope at our institutes roof between thick clouds.

UPDATE 12:55 CEST: Thick clouds obscure the event. They might be gone until totality, but I’m afraid the chances are bad.

UPDATE 13:10 CEST: That was great. The clouds left just in time to give sight to the spectacular event. Ok, it would have been better to see it in the sky instead of on a screen, but still I liked it. Now, back to work…

Tags: Astronomy, Earth, Eclipse, Moons, Moon, Solar Eclipse, Space, Sun, Travel

I’ve just found take-out photo, a photoblog that features monthly projects and invites everybody to share their own experiences on the monthly topic. The July theme was ‘Architectural Details’, and above picture is my contribution to this. It is a glass roof in front of a building in Bonn, Germany. I walked by that one for years without considering it to be a nice subject to take a picture of. The structure there is rather big, so I was happy to have my 24mm lens and to shoot on film without any multiplicatory factor.

Tags: black and white, Bonn, Canon EOS 50E, EF 24mm f/2.8, Fuji Neopan Acros 100, Germany, Reflection, Sky

I just got a comment pointing out that 8MinutesOld is the Blog of the Day at FuelMyBlog. That’s nice and makes me happy. I’m sitting in a extremly hot office, writing my first (scientific) paper and was going to be rather demotivated. That is gone now

So, welcome to potentially new visitors and enjoy my blog.

Tags: Blog Specific, Traffic

On Friday I got a baton from 49suns with questions on feeds.

1. Which feed-reader do you use? Since when?
   Akregator on my linux machine, but I did not look for alternatives. I don’t use a feed-reader in windows and I don’t want big internet companies to know my reading habits, so I do without online readers.
2. How many feeds have you subscribed to, how many (%) of those are blogs?
   In total about 80, with some 50 blogs (~60%). But feeds like channels from the ScienceBlogs include posts from several blogs at once so the number is hard to determine.
3. How many Feeds do you read per day (weekly average)?
   I would say I receive several hundred new articles each day. Those with interesting titles (or almost all from my preferred blogs) I skim over and if they really interest me I read them in detail. The latter category consists of maybe 30 articles. An addition to this are the photoblog posts that consist of a picture only, but you can’t say I ‘read’ them. I don’t use my feed-reader on the weekend. When I have the time I enjoy browsing through the sites themselves and might find new feeds to add on Monday.
4. Your most-read feed / German Blog-Feed?
   This depends on the output and the quality. I think currently these are PZ Myer’s Pharyngula and Dave Beckerman’s New York Photo Blog. My most read German feed is probably the Brights-Blog.
5. Which news sites have you subscribed to (mention 3 at most)?
   I had subscribed to Tagesschau (German newscast), New York Times and some other news sites, but they started to annoy me so I threw them all out. What resembles news sites most in my current ‘feed-portfolio’ are the news from NASA, ESO and institutions like them.
6. The first and last Blog in your reader?
   My somewhat arbitrary sorting of blogs starts with science, the first one there is the Bad Astronomy Blog and my last category are feeds from a price comparison list for canon lenses sold on eBay Germany.
7. Reading habit: alphabetical, chronological, random?
   Following my arrangement of categories and then chronologically in each one.
8. Do you have blogs/feeds in the reader which you would not admit to read?
   No.

I’ll hand the baton over to two bloggers I know well: Blog.ForeignLight (English) and my brother, Milan Pawlowski (German) and to two other guy I don’t know in person, but these are my current ‘Top commentators’ so this is kind of a thank you: MareK (German) and Mehzad Ahmed (English)

Tags: Baton, Blog Specific, Feeds