The smallest things requires the biggest cameras, IBM research lab in Zürich have managed to photograph a carbon molecule called pentacene and it is a first time something so small has been depicted like this.
Pentacene is a five benzen ring molecule used in the making of some semi-conductors today, mainly OFET (organic field effect transistors) and similar devices.
The photograph was made possible because on the tip of the microscope a CO (carbon monoxide) molecule was used as a lens.
Bålsta is about 25 minutes from where I live by car or by the commuter train. Parts of it really should be just torn down and re-built…
Lotsen means "the tug boat", I guess it is a name chosen that they are supposed to help people through unemployment and to find new work but the area seems everything but helpful. In fact there where quite a few strange loiterers about that I did not want to strike up a conversation with so I moved on quickly.
Storage silos in Bålsta. Shot straight from the road, hand-helt at 200 mm.
Large facilities, cheap rentals and a Ju-Jutsu club.
Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.
The winners are:
Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Negligent (adj.), a condition in which you absentmindedly answer
the door in your nightgown.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are
run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
Pokemon (n), Rastafarian proctologist.
Oyster (n.), person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that,
when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
Circumvent (n.), opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
The Washington Post’s Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are this year’s winners:
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.
Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. ( that one got extra credit)
Karmageddon (n): Its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido (v): All talk and no action.
Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you’re eating.
And the pick of the literature:
Ignoranus (n): A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
I need a good ebook reader. I love ebooks and the idea is great, I even bought several ebooks on fictionwise, a great site for ebooks and I used to read them on my Palm III, then my Palm IV and later my Palm Tungsten device when I got it. However the Palm is such an outdated platform today and I rather not carry the Palm around any more since my mobile can handle most of the functions of the palm but there is one thing it does not have yet, and that is a decent ebook reader.
There are several text file readers and it can also do PDF but the formats offered at sites like fictionwise usually means you need something more efficient than just an ordinary text file reader, you need something that can understand iSilo format and Mobipocket and several others preferably also Microsoft LIT files and so on. There aren’t many great options out there and dedicated ebook readers are expensive these days as well as they are proprietary, not open source, large and clumsy.
I want one for the Android platform. And I want it now.
There are two great utilities out there that I use now and then to keep the computer nice and tidy (and fast at that). One is a cleaner utility that can remove lots of old gunk in the machine, cleaning out web browser caches and other such bits and pieces, the other is a very fast and good defragmentation program.
Since I got my HTC Magic phone, the second generation Android operating system from Google and a lovely phone I have worked out using two different softwares that I would like to share.
These softwares are CardioTrainer and BuddyRunner, two wonderful applications to help you run well when doing exercise. Both offer similar features and are mainly aimed at runners that want to keep statistics on their exercise and perhaps also their competitions.
The Cardio Trainer Android application
But what do they do? To make a long story short they are both personal trainers and logging instruments that can upload your running data to a web site where you can review what you have done and compare runs over time.
They are using the GPS in the phone to log your position periodically and thus can calculate your speed. They also measure the time and therefore knows at all times your speed and pace, the distance you have ran so far and in what time you did it. If you are using earphones and listening to music on your Android mobile as you run they will muffle the music or silence it completely and announce the running data periodically.
Feature-wise they are very similar, CT offers more settings to smooth out GPS positions during a run which can be good if you get bad measurements occasionally but won’t really help much in the long run, so to speak, but after testing the two producs side-by-side I can only conclude they are very similar in the distance they measure when running. The distance on both of them is perhaps a bit on the conservative side compared to distance measured on map or with a really good outdoor GPS (Magellan eXplorist XL) which shows a slightly longer track most of the time. Not certain why this is but they seem to be on the conservative side. My 2 km track registers as 1 850 meters roughly and that is 7.5% on the conservative side.
CT has a huge disadvantage for us Europeans, the tracks it records are shown in metric units on the handheld if you set it up to do so, but on the website everything is by imperial measurements which is really sad because it is otherwise a very good application. I have written them and they are looking into developing it. In fact there’s been two new versions of CardioTrainer released recently both with some small improvements.
The Buddy Runner
BuddyRunner however has a really wonderful web site where you can see the run on a Google Maps interface, statistics on your run such as pace for each part of the run, and elevation. It is interesting to see the elevation go up and the pace time per km increase at the same time. You can compare several runs (up to three) download your running track and it keeps tracks of your records, longest, fastest and so on. Over all it is a much more developed web site than CardioTrainer has. However the application on the handheld is less sophisticated, it does not have the same filters and settings as CardioTrainer does and when it speaks to you it always abruptly pauses the music, the CardioTrainer can lower the volume but keep the music running which is better if you are trying to keep your pace to the music.
In the phone however both applications are very similar however and the settings screen also offers settings to change the announcer frequency and the contents of the announcing messages. BuddyRunner performs well int he background but CardioTrainer wants to run in the foreground, otherwise it pauses. CardioTrainer can also automatically play a certain playlist of music for you while BuddyRunner just leaves the music player alone.
Example of the website for Buddy Runner, click to check it out in reality.
Sharing your things with others is easy on the BuddyRunner, the application and webside can write RSS feeds to your Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed site and so on, you may show your dashboard to anyone you like, they can’t manipulate it unless you log in but they can leave a comment on your run if they want to.
CardioTrainer has a secret passcode to the webside, you can not display it without this code and when you enter the code you may also remove runs and modify the content, so you would not want to post that publicly. There is also right now no integration with Facebook, Twitter and similar sites, no RSS feeds and the tracks can not be downloaded from the site.
In the end the factor that is the most deciding one for me is the website. BuddyRunner has a much better web site and I love the feature that you can download your runs in GPX format to have them displayed on Google Earth or some similar mapping software if you like. Great stuff!
The Wall Street Journal is running a very interesting article on how after 200 years or so a coded message in a letter from Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence has been deciphered.
The message was sent to Jefferson by his friend Robert Patterson, a mathematical professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of Jeffersons friends he corresponded with quite frequently.
August 29:So I have graduated from the C25k programme. I am now capable of running 5 km continuously without any walking and resting. Although the pace is not great, I do it in just above 40 minutes I feel very happy about this and now the continuation is to keep doing it three times a week. Tomorrow I celebrate 5 months as a runner!
I will of curse run and alternate between shorter and faster runs and slower and longer runs. For the coming couple of months I believe that there is no reason for me to go beyond the 5 km.
After that I might keep adding to it to go for the full 10 km that I want to be able to do by next summer. I have plans on running the Midnattsloppet (the midnight run) here in Sweden by then.
Thinking back I never really thought I would be here. I still vividly remember the first time I put my trainers on and my running pants and jacket and went out to run 1 minuter, wallk 1 minute and so on for 20 minutes. It was really terrible and now a 2 km run is hardly something to think about and a 5 km run can be done although I admit that I will they feel more like routine than a maximum :)
