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This weekend was quiet but fairly nice nonetheless. I woke up early this morning and spent it cleaning and doing the laundry. Then, wanting a bit more workspace for my study room, I dragged out my old desk top board from storage and set it up by the wall behind my desk. I’d like to buy a new, larger one to cut to fit properly into the little nook (with holes for cables, possibly supported only by the wall behind so there won’t be any feet, making cleaning easier.

While I’m still not quite sure how I’ll end up using the space (and busy with work; will that ever change…?) I’ll make the old plate do.

I then dragged out an unused desktop workstation and set it up along with the display and keyboard from the server up in the attic. It’s currently just running a live OS off a USB key and the video card only seems to support up to 800×640 pixel resolution but it’s nice to have a desktop that I can just leave there. I’ll probably wipe the drive soon and install some sensible Linux distribution.

Alongside this, I watched a number of lectures from a treasure chest I happened to stumble across recently: The Monthly’s SlowTV. I found a number of interesting talks. The one that brought me to the site was Sean Carroll’s The origin of the universe and the arrow of time, a lecture on the nature of time and the importance of entropy on it. Since we only observe the passing of time through our memory and aren’t (well: don’t seem to be) able to revisit it, the subject becomes very difficult to understand the basic nature of time. Spatial dimensions are much easier to wrap one’s head around as we have so many more ways of experiencing it (sight, sound and touch all give us different views of space). Time, on the other hand, might just as well be a figment of our imagination or a limitation of our minds.

Others of interest were Mark Colyvan’s Kurt Gödel and the limits of mathematics (on Gödel’s incompleteness theory, why it’s interesting and what some of its implications are) and Jason Mattingley’s What can neuroscience tell us about consciousness? After brunch at my grandmother’s I headed back, did some more cleaning up while watching a few more talks, most interestingly Sashi Tahroor’s Why nations should pursue “soft” power, while (fittingly, given the talk earlier that morning) turning my attention to an old clock.

It’s lain broken in the attic for year, but ever since writing an essay in gymnasium on the nature of time measurements (for which I read up on the history of chronometers and the details of mechanical clocks) I’ve had a great interest in clockwork. Taking it apart revealed a few problems. One of the springs (the one that drives the chiming mechanism) is loose and doesn’t really allow to be wound up properly, but there also seems to be a problem with the mechanism that should stop the chiming after a certain number. The weight on the pendulum is missing and setting it to the right frequency might be a pain.

Finally, the supports that fix the clockwork mechanism in the case were broken and I’m not sure how the chiming mechanism is supposed to hit the chime (which is fixed at the back of the case). The supports are critical and the woodwork needed to fix it is simple enough, but non-trivial when you don’t have much in the way of tools or materials. If I ever settle down, I’d love a little workshop — even though it wouldn’t quite compare to Matthias Wandel’s workshop (the guy who made the binary marble adding machine). Still, a few tools and a place to make a bit of a mess would be nice. I find it so much more satisfying to make something myself than buy it from a store.

Anyway, I couldn’t find a piece of wood to make a replacement support from, but the clockwork mechanism is sound and shouldn’t be too difficult to fix.

My fridge has been rather poorly stocked recently, but being in an enterprising mood, I felt rather like making something out of the various scraps I had, than just sandwiches or ordering out. There wasn’t much, but cooking for one doesn’t take a lot so I sautéed half an onion, chucked in some small slices of a French salami and olives, and made a decent olive. This with a decent sized side dish of a lettuce mixture and tomatoes. Very simple and pretty good!

I do need to figure out how to make a decent omelette on a non-non-sticking pan…

Wednesday started out well enough. I wrapped up my lesson planning, headed to school, gave a decent lesson and then observed another teacher before heading home. Once home, I sat down to check my emails and prepare for the next day.

It’s interesting how little things can completely upset your plans. Booting my computer I couldn’t get past a kernel panic — essentially a problem with the core of the operating system. The hard drive is split into a few partitions, the sizes and locations of which are listed in a so-called partition table. Well, the root partition that should have a size of ten megabytes, now shows a size of one.

This is a problem.

I headed out to one of the university computer labs to see if I could figure out what the problem was and whether there was any solution. Reading up on Internet posts by others with similar problems I found a tool that might just be able to fix the problem, but first I’d like to copy the (hopefully still intact) data to somewhere safe. Then I’ll hopefully repair the partition table and — fate allowing — get the drive working again with minimal data loss.

But first I need to get access to the machine. That’s not quite straight forward in the case of my dear Satsuki. In an effort to give the Vaio TZ it’s small form, the designers placed the hard drive deep inside the body. With the help of step-by-step guide from the website inside my laptop I removed about a dozen screws from the bottom, pulled the keyboard off, and unscrewed the hard drive. The plan was to connect the hard drive to a USB case and access it from another computer. Unfortunately, the drive uses a new type of connector that doesn’t fit into the socket of the case I borrowed from my brother for the task.

So, no luck yet. Thursday was mostly spent grading and instructing students at the University doing experiments and this morning I’ll be teaching my inertia module. Satsuki, I’m afraid, will have to wait for a little while yet.

This has been a pretty packed week. A presentation on Monday, meeting a grammar school on Tuesday morning and work at the University in the afternoon, plan and demo a lesson Wednesday and read a book by this (Thursday) morning. So now I’m dead-tired, waiting for my partners in a little research project. We have to hand in a report on our project and are meeting in a few minutes to coordinate the work.

While I’m looking forward to the weekend, I also dread the endless tasks that will pile on for next week. There is no peace until we’re dead, right?

But through the dread and weariness that grind one’s soul as much one’s limbs there are these bright spots that make it worth while. The demo lesson yesterday went great, the students I was overseeing Tuesday afternoon were super motivated and enjoyed chatting about the experiments and on the way to class on Monday I got a high-five.

I’d gotten up a little late, leaped out of the apartment, onto my bike and was flying over the pavement when suddenly up ahead I see two figures on the path. A large one completely immersed in a phone conversation and a smaller one skipping along, holding her hand. As I sped towards them the little figure streached out toward my side and reached out her hand.

There is no better way to start the day!

Woke up, checked the bus times, got dressed, packed the laptop, hauled ass and missed the bus by … maybe, twenty-five seconds. And before you start getting any ideas, the bus was early — I was on time.

Now sitting in a heated, wireless-connected bus stop, waiting for the next bus which should arrive in six minutes (except that one will probably be late…)

Do you?

It’s stories like that girl’s toward the end of the program that really make me wonder what, other than abject poverty, induces such a desire for education.

Possibly the best scene in the play.

MARGARET: Father, that man’s bad.

MORE: There is no law against that.

ROPER: There is! God’s law!

MORE: Then God can arrest him.

ROPER: Sophistication upon sophistication!

MORE: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s legal and not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

ROPER: Then you set Man’s law above God’s!

MORE: No far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact — I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain-sailing, I can’t navigate, I’m no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh there I’m a forester. I doubt if there is a man alive who could follow me there, thank God….(He says this to himself.)

ALICE (exasperated, pointing after RICH): While you talk, he’s gone!

MORE: And go he should if he was the devil himself until he broke the law!

ROPER: So now you ‘d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE(roused and excited): Oh? (Advances on ROPER.) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (Leaves him.) This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — Man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly.) Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

I’d heard of the title, A Man for all Seasons, but had really wanted to read it after Christopher Hitchens (slightly mis-)quoted the passage above in one of the best defenses of free speech that I’ve heard. I was surprised that I hadn’t posted it here. Well, enjoy:

Just came across this documentary by the Canadian CBC’s The Passionate Eye. It tells of a teacher from Kanazawa and some of his teaching methods that he tries to use to create a bond between the students based on empathy and thoughfulness.

Part 2 of 5
Part 3 of 5
Part 4 of 5
Part 5 of 5

Whether one is interested in changing the world or improving ones chances while bar-hopping, this TED talk should come in handy.

In about four hours I will have been in Iceland for a week and a day. The weather has been great, seeing friends and family has been fantastic and I’ve managed to get fairly comfortably settled in while enjoying myself as well.

Last weekend was the reason why I left the rolling hills of Tuscany for the storm-beaten cliffs of Iceland. A good friend of mine, Jón Örn (or Johnny Eagle … yes, seriously — though I’m not sure how many call him that apart from me), and his fiancé, Margrét Dís (or Magga), had chosen that weekend to get married before moving to Umeå in Sweden (directions from Iceland: Four blocks South and 2029 kilometers East). A break in the fair weather Icelanders had been enjoying, the weather forecast predicted heavy rain on the wedding day, but the few drops that fell hardly bothered hardy Icelandic wedding guests and it so happened that the part of the celebration that took place outside (at Þingvellir, a beautiful — and geologically intersting — spot about three quarters of an hour east of Reykjavík) was not only spared, but the sun even had a peak at the party, lending us a few rays to take nice photographs.

Having set my return date for the beginning of July, wondering what I’d do all my free time (not that I was particularly worried I’d run out of things to do) I got an email from Árni, one of the heroes that run Siglunes, the sailing school I worked at some years ago (the best job in the world, by the way). Apparently one of the staff works for ÍTR (Íþrótta- og tómstuda-ráð Reykjavíkur — it is left up to the reader as an excercise in Icelandic figure out what that means. Hints: a) the English acronym would be RSLC, and b) Iclelandic, like German, compunds words so I’ve left a helpful hyphen) all year ’round and they need someone to replace him while he takes his summer vacation.

And that’s where I have to rush off to now, to help them with the afternoon lessons.

Pictures from Italy and Iceland coming soon…

I’m writing this sitting on the toilet. Wait! I’m not doing anything you should feel awkward about. I’m just sitting on the toilet seat with my feet in the bidet. Ah, that sounded better before I said it…

Bear with me, please. I’m now here in Italy enjoying all the pleasures that the Tuscan countryside has to offer; the pleasant atmosphere, good wine and great food. In fact just about the only annoying thing to happen on this entire stay (so far, that is) are the ten or so mosquito bites that I’ve suffered. As a good portion of the people reading this may have heard me mention (several times, probably), my favorite remedy for these is to heat up the skin to drain it of the histamines that cause the itch.

In Japan, I’d start each day with a nice hot shower which would then do me quite nicely until the next morning. Here however — and I’m not sure why — a single daily dose doesn’t seem to suffice. Hoping to go for a quick run this afternoon, I figured I should do something about the five bites on my feet. Thus, my feet soaking in a bidet full of scorching water.

I actually went for a run a couple of days ago. The day earlier, I went with my father and a couple of his friends, Hanna and Reiner from Northern Germany, on a short hike up to the village of Greve. The weather was fine: cloudy, but hot and sunny isn’t necessarily better. Neither is pouring rain — which is what we got when we got to Greve. Perfect timing because we had actually planned to have lunch there. A tomato sauce spaghetti and a plate of salamis, ham and cheese, all with plenty of olive, bread and a few glasses wine. The weather helped out that day because I both eat a lot and slowly but this time there was really nowhere to go with the torrent from the sky so I could eat my fill in relative ease.

Inspired by that fun hike, I figured I should really go for a quick run through the hills around my father’s house. The temperature was mild and light showers on and off: Nice cool weather for a run. There was also a mist over part of the area: not so cool if I’d lose my bearings, but I figured that with ten houses on every hill and everyone knowing everyone, I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding my way back. So off I went heading first to Casanuova di Ama, then turning south along that hill and down into the valley. The well-kept road turned grassy and steeper as I went dashing through raspberry bushes and poison ivy, down slippery gravel where the only grip were knife-sharp edges that hungered to sink their teeth into my flesh.

Arriving at the bottom of the valley I continued along a path that soon turned into a puddle. Thinking it would be nicer not to completely soak my feet I decided to just bypass it and scrambled into the densely forested hillside, sans shirt because of the heat, doing my best not to scratch myself too badly. After a few nice rock-climbing inspired moves I jumped back onto the path, took to a sprint before arriving at a similar puddle — well, pond — ten times the size about a dosen paces in. Back into the woods…

From there it went uphill as I tried to figure out if I was actually on the right hill or the one further over. Gleaning the sun through the thin cloud-cover I saw I was heading pretty much the right way. Sure enough, a little while later I ran through the winery at Castellina de Ama; just across from my father’s house, La Casa.

On my little run, I was reminded of walking home from school with my nieces Klara and Sylvía. Not so much the noise and the smog (of which there is none here), but rather the shot-gun shells strewn around. Not that there are many wild boar hunters in Madison, Wisconsin. No, just that we’d usually pick up rubbish to throw away once we got home.

Today has been great weather; warm with plenty of sunshine. Then about an hour ago I was in the kitchen with my father talking about the nice weather when we heard a roar outside. I reckoned it was a lighting but my father leaned towards a fighter jet (that occasionally dash across the countryside). Indeed, the weather looked beautiful — in all but one direction. To the north was a huge dark cloud that was already starting to sprinkle a few drops on on us.

Funny weather.

This one cloud seems to have passed so I figure I’ll see how my feet feel about going for another run.