A Toy that Saved My Life

This is about a toy that saved my life. Not literally, as it was my academic life that was threatened, not my biological one. Years ago at Uni, I had a final chance to re-sit an particularly nasty biophysics exam. In addition to being my last chance, it was going to be an oral examination, meaning I was convinced I really had to know my stuff. I had a few months to prepare, and prepare I needed to do.

For some strange reason, I convinced myself that what I needed was a white-board. I would pace up and down my room, thinking, repeating formulas and checking myself when writing them down on the board. I could wipe mistakes away, redo calculations, correct formulas. It seemed the perfect solution. And - lo and behold - it was. After some hunting around, I got a nice, large and heavy one and hung it in my room. From day one I was enthralled. Much to my surprise, it had exactly the effect on me that I had hoped for. I could pace up and down my room, think, repeat, write... it was fantastic. In a geeky, studenty kind of way. I loved that white-board. The daily sight of arcane formulas was reassuring in the days while preparing for the exam. Later, the use was more mundane, when I noted shopping lists or to do's. Friends would jot down stuff or leave messages, if I was away. I splattered it with ideas, doodles, telephone numbers. Whatever came up, went up. Up on the board.

Now - I have been living without this board for the past years. When I moved to England, there just wasn't space in my luggage, and neither in the small college room where I stayed for the first months. After that, accommodation was always university property, and drilling holes into walls was severely frowned upon. No white-board. Luckily, this didn't have a major negative effect on my academic life here (although I did miss it occasionally), and time passed and degrees were awarded. Some years and a PhD later, I am still without white-board. Until today, that is ! Once again there is this creeping feeling that I need to wander and think, plan while holding a fat marker, being able to walk while going over ideas. So, I walked into Staples, and out with one under my arm. It's still on the floor, the power-drill is charging its batteries. I have high hopes again, although no biophysics exam is waiting for me this time. But projects are nonetheless, and ideas, and doodles, and telephone numbers...

Capa in Berlin

Apart from not going to Christoph Schlingensiefs play (or rather, going, but walking out again), I also went to two exhibits in the 'Gropius Bau' in Berlin. One was an exhibition about Stanley Kubrick (way too much to take in in one afternoon - but brilliant nonetheless). There were photographs, film snippets and props from nearly every one of his films, including the mask Tom Cruise wore in 'Eyes Wide Shut', as well as his cape.

The other one was a Robert Capa retrospective. I initially kept mixing him up in my head with Frank Capra, who is, of course, someone else altogether. Capra made movies, and imdb tells me there are 52 of them. Robert Capa was a photoreporter, who was born as Andre Friedmann in Hungary. His legacy are over 10000 pictures (stills), and a few of them are iconic. Such as his picture of Pablo Picasso, holding a parasol for Francoise Gilot, or the world famous picture of a soldier collapsing in the spanish civil war. There is quite a controversy about this latter image, and the exhibition catalogue had a multipage article by Robert Whelan devoted to dispelling the myth that it is a fake. His article can be found here (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/capa_r.html). I personally find it hard to believe that two people were shot at exactly the same spot, and that they collapsed in a nearly identical manner. It might of course be a moot point, as everyone has seen the image and has felt the shudder of the closeness and the immediacy of killing. As an image of pointless death, it is clearly evocative enough.

Back again

Back from Germany. We spent the last ten days home. This trip had the shortest planning time of my life. The reason was a sad one, a funeral. So we booked RyanAir tickets and were airborne less than 24 hrs later. Arriving in Lübeck I noticed once again how calm Germany is. It felt appropriate and welcome, though. After the hustle of India, the uncertainty of our own life in Cambridge, the grey skies and the reserved nature of the people in Schleswig-Holstein seemed like a relief.
Days later I made my way to Berlin via Münster. Job interview. It went incredibly well, and know I have to face the prospect of moving to Westfalen. Why not, it seems like a very pleasant part of Germany. We'll be spending a fair amount of thought on that.
Berlin was great as ever. It's such a cool place. We walked around the banks of the Spree, passing the Paul-Löbe Haus, peeking into the foyer, where the MdBs (the parliamentarians) walk and lobby around. We walked quite a bit, and that evening, I walked out of a Schlingensief production. Kunst und Gemüse, Theater ALS Krankheit. A play about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. We were naïve enough to walk into the theatre without knowing a thing about the play... Trust Schlingensief to make you wrench, give you a headache and just be plain annoying(*). We left, got our money back and went to a Sushi bar. My parents stayed and watched the play. Isn't it kinda cool when the older generation is more open minded than the younger one ;). They didn't like it either, though, but had the stomach to sit through 90 minutes of disorientating mayhem. We talked at length about how the theatre scene in Germany is so different from that here in Britain. And even though I love surrealist painting, the writings of Breton, or most of what Damien Hirst does, I can't stand much of what is put on stage in avant garde places in Germany. I just don't get it, it just assaults my senses, and I can't properly cope with any of their images. If they want to communicate anything meaningful, please, adjust the volume, and I'm happy to listen.
The exhibition in Kiel was much more interesting. Shanghai Modern, chinese paintings from the 1930s. I had no idea that there was a great fascination of chinese artists with european art at that time. They took up styles and were assessing their own work in view of the modernists in Europe. Those must have been exciting times. Both Mao and the Nazis put an end to that exchange. Sixty years onwards, and people are apparently starting to reopen that chapter.



(*) Disclaimer: As this is a (semi-) public forum, I should probably add that my annoyances are directed against the production of the play, and not against sufferers of this terrible and debilitating disease. I would have gladly donated the entrance fee to a fund aiming at helping these people.

Calculating Vision

This is quite an amazing story. It's on the cover of Nature, from a few days back (3 March 2005). Our brain is constantly involved in figuring out how things actually look like. Not just how they appear to our eyes. This subtle difference is apparent, when one looks at the images shown in the article (pp. 79-83). It's quite a striking effect - I scanned in one image (part of Figure 1).

The rationale given is that our brain is trying to asses the true optical properties of each and every object, and not just pass on the exact image that reaches the retina. So there is a lot of computation going on, which takes into account such things as ambient light, haze and similar things. I guess, these things are more or less 'added to' or 'substracted' from the image that reaches the back of the eye. Our perception is then suitably adjusted, giving rise to what can be 'seen' here above. The circles on the left clearly are dark in tone, whereas we get the feeling that the ones on the right are actually very light. In fact, of course, the circles themselves are completely identical. Yes, I find that hard to believe myself ! But you can check... :)

Free as in...

We just got back from India two weeks ago. While we were there, we got ourselves an Indian SIM card for our mobile, which worked perfectly fine. Sweet and easy. The only strange thing was that after nearly every phone call we received an SMS advertising some useless competition or such. Blech.

Well, now we're back, and need a different SIM. Fine, again no real sweat. Pay-as-you go will do fine, signed up and all is nice. Walking out of the store, maybe 200 yards down the road, the mobile rings. What gives ? No one has the new number yet. I receive the call, and.. well, of course. It's an ad. 500 free SMS messages if I call this number. At home, I check the terms and conditions. Sure, there it is. By accepting the 500 free messages, I am in fact signing up to a monthly service which will cost me £ 1.50 a week. For whatever, more ads, more rubbish. But the SMS's are free. Sure. They are free, other than the fact that you have to pay for them.

I love that. I dream of applying for a job in one of these companies. When it comes to discussing my payment, I'll just say 'oh, yes. I'll work for free, sure.' Everybody laughs, we're all happy. All they have to do is adhere to the terms and conditions. £ 50 an hour. Other than that, my services are free.

Weblog 101 - Getting Off the Ground

HW :)

'Hello World', I guess this has never been as pertinent for me as now. There you go, a new blog. I need to fix a few things, as soon as I've figured out how. Links, I want to have different ones (obviously!). Then there need to be new header pics. It's kinda exciting... all the while people are writing blogs by the million.

Whats with my title ? We'll come to that, too. All in due course ;-). I need to find the ropes first. Let's see. First post :)