Recipetable

This Table looks cool. You place food items on it and it suggests a recipe what to make of them. Re-arrange them, and you get another recipe. I want one of these!

Instant Food

Today I tried an instant salad dressing. You add some powder to olive oil and water and are supposed to get a dressing italian stlye. It just tasted like sodium-glutamate. Yukk. Are people actually liking that stuff?

I think I will continue to not buy stuff which contains sodium-glutamate. I don't like the taste of it and it makes me edgy.

How to write a thesis

I am currently reading a lot of PhD theses to see which I have to mention and were I can copy^h^h^h cite stuff. It also helped to figure out how a thesis shoud be written. The general structure seems to be:

1) Intruduction:

From the dawn of mankind people have always wondered about <obscure purely academic problem you write about>. This thesis will present the latest and best theory and/or data and will show mankind the way to a brighter future, where there is no hunger, no wars and everybody knows and cares about <obscure purely academic problem you write about>.

2) Theory:

I have read a lot more papers than you did, and I cite all of them. I even cite stuff I haven't read. I cite more stuff. I can use fancy words which nobody, even me, has any clue about what they mean.

3) Experimental Apparatus:

We have the best apparatus ever. You can't even imagine how great it is. The latest technology, the best ideas, blablabla.

4) Methods used:

I took some software, changed some parameters and let it run on a bunch of data. This took two years until I realised everything was wrong, because of a stupid bug and I did a fast workaround and got some results which might be correct.

5) Results

I got some numbers. Of course these are the best numbers, better than that of the other experiments. Some fancy plots and some vague statements where you have no clue about your data. Try to cover up the discrepancies by comparing plots with different scales and axes so that nobody notices that they show inconsistent data.

6) Conclusions and outlook

Paraphrase introduction.

Bibliography and Acknowledgements

Be sure to include advisor, referees and anybody who will have a say on your exam/defense.

Trend

Thanks to XL, who graphed my progress in writing :-)

[EDIT]: Just to clarify: the graph was kindly produced by Axel (or short XL) who has a job in industry and is therefore excused for the use of Excel (or short that-crappy-program-which-cant-calculate-stuff-decently). I of course would have done that in root and have used the very convenient drag and drop feature to get the points closer to the fit. Or maybe in PAW because it's FORTRAN and I like self-flagellation.

Guernica

70 years ago the german Luftwaffe attacked the basque village of Guernica. This air raid was one of the first with large scale bombing of civilian targets, one of the first with large scale destruction, large scale killing of innocent people. Not for the first time but for a very prominent time, a military target (the bridge across the river Oca) was the excuse of bombing a complete city. The bridge was not even hit by a bomb. Hundreds of civilians died.

The german leader of the attac afterwards complained that it was no fun (because of being too easy and being annoyed by the smoke of the bombs) and senseless, as no troops took the town after the bombing...

Guernica is and always will be a symbol for the stupidity of war.

Almansa

300 years ago today the battle of Almansa started. This battle placed Catalunya under spanish government, making Castellano the official language and starting the suppression of Catalan. As a sign against this imperialist movement, I will start learning Catalan next week (there are lectures at my university...)

Interesting factoid found in a blog (from where I shamelessly stole the image):
The city of Xàtiva was burned, and its name changed to San Felipe in order to punish it. In memory of these facts, nowadays the portrait of the monarch still hangs upside down in the local museum of L'Almodí.

Electrical Typewriter

Electrical Typewriter
Originally uploaded by perreira.

I found this beauty in my parents basement. During easter I cleaned it a bit and checked if it works. It does, but only the small letters. For some reasons the shift-key does not work. It didn't work some years ago when I last played with this machine, but back then I coul only type capitals LIKE THIS. After taking it apart, it changed to small letters only...

Maybe I'll still be able to finde someone to repair it.

Spam

Since some time I recieve quite often spam originating from portuguese adresses, most of them have some legal garbage in them that it would be allowed to spam according to european law. Well, it ain't. Actually, there's a portuguese law (Decreto-Lei n.º 7/2004, Art. 22.1) against it, which implements a european directive. So I tried to find where to complain, but unfortunately the website of the portuguese telecom legislative organ is an unbearable burocratic moloch. What I did find was the address of the OECD Task Force on Spam, so I sent a mail to them.

Today I received a mail from them, stating that they received my communication and are analysing it. It was a simple question: "To whom should I complain?"... If they need a Task Force to analyse this, I fear it will take some time till spam stops. Anyway, let's hope they can do something.

I also complained to the sender of the spam, which is a real estate agency franchising from cascais, which I hope won't do any buisiness anymore soon. I asked them to remove my mail from their databases and send me an acknowledgment that they did so. Up to now they didn't...

Maybe this is a little bean-counterish, but if I can find out the sender of spam, I complain and send them a link to the law which forbids spamming. It won't help, but it makes me feel a bit better.

Dear youth of today,

please memorise the lyrics of bella ciao. I hate it when I am the only one singing revolutionary songs out of tune aloud at Bucovina Club.


Una mattina mi sono alzato,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Una mattina mi sono alzato,
E ho trovato l'invasor.

O partigiano portami via,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
O partigiano portami via,
Qui mi sento di morir.

E so io muoio da partigiano,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E so io muoio da partigiano,
Tu mi devi seppellir.

E seppellire sulla montagna
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E seppellire sulla montagna
Sott l'ombra di un bel fior.

E le genti che passeranno
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E le genti che passeranno
Mi diranno «che bel fior».

E questo è il fiore del partigiano
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
E questo è il fiore del partigiano
Morto per la liberta.


This is the german translation:

Eines Morgens, in aller Frühe,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
eines Morgens, in aller Frühe
trafen wir auf unser’n Feind.

Partisanen, kommt, nehmt mich mit euch,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Partisanen, kommt, nehmt mich mit euch,
denn ich fühl’, der Tod ist nah.

Wenn ich sterbe, oh ihr Genossen,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
wenn ich sterbe, oh ihr Genossen,
bringt mich dann zur letzten Ruh’!

In den Schatten der kleinen Blume,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
einer kleinen, ganz zarten Blume,
in die Berge bringt mich dann!

Und die Leute, die geh’n vorüber,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
und die Leute, die geh’n vorüber,
seh’n die kleine Blume steh’n.

Diese Blume, so sagen alle,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
ist die Blume des Partisanen,
der für uns’re Freiheit starb.


And next week: the lyrics of הבה נגילה (Hava Nagila)