Just one pixel...

NB: the blogfile itself is only about 70 kB, I'll try to put the pictures more behind links and have them come up in seperate windows(on different tabs), OK, Jane?

So today I'm restricting myself to one-pixel gifs :-)

• Here's one pixel in red
• One in orange
• One in yellow
• One in green
• One in blue
• One in purple
• One in black
• And finally a transparent one

• Here's one pixel in red , 10*100
• One in orange , 5*400
• One in yellow , 9*9
• One in green , 50*20
• One in blue , 2*450
• One in purple , 15*35
• And finally one in black , 3*3

Of course there are other, less innocent, uses for these pixels, ESPECIALLY the transparent one! These are not like cookies that you can reject, they are just plain images embedded in any webpage you fetch, unrejectable during non-text browsing. So the transparent gif can be used for spying. It can be used to get :-

1. The URL of the page that the transparent gif is located on (WHERE are you?)
2. The IP address of the computer that fetched the transparent gif (WHO are you?)
3. The time the transparent gif was viewed (WHEN did you look?)
4. The type of browser that fetched the transparent gif image (are you IE vulnerable?)
5. A previously set cookie value (been E-shopping lately?)
6. etc. etc.

But there's a positive side to the transparent gif too. By embedding it in my texts I can catch people who violate my copyright by picking and puttung whole chunks of text from my pages :-) You could do that too, it's no great secret, nerds know that trick too.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to these gifs; bandwidth reduction vs. spying vs. catching the occasional black sheep. Here's looking at ewe (sic!) :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 28th June 2005 at 06:29 CEST permalink Email

Egyptian Fractions

But first off, let's clear up the matters of Zero and Decimals. As early as the second century BC Babylonians used positional notation, that is to say, the value of a numeral depended on its position, and to distinguish between (say) 36 and 306 the latter had two small wedges inscribed between 3 and 6 in their clay tablets to indicate an empty column. Use of '0' as an extra numeral originated in India; there is a 3rd century AD script by Bahkshali(sp?) which uses it, I remember.

So, to come back to the original question, how did the ancient Egyptians cope? Well, they used fractions. But not fractions as we know them with arbitrary numbers on the top as well as the bottom (like 5/7). They used socalled Unit fractions, which are reciprocals, which always have a one on the top (e.g. 1/18). Then they summed up several unit fractions until getting the number they wanted (e.g. 2/3). N.B. Not quite true, they did have one non-unit fraction, a special symbol for 2/3 , but don't ask me why :-)

And why did they use these (unnecessarily?) complicated unit fractions? They did fractions in a very physical way. They had a set with a measuring rod for each of the reciprocals each with its own symbol. So to 'measure' a fractional length they first subtracted the longest unit fraction rod which would fit (i.e. was less than the sought-after fraction). Then they repeated this procedure as often as necessary. The example on the left shows you that 2/3 is the sum of four unit fractions.

Now go try it yourselves. Show that 2/7 = 1/4 +1/28. The Eygptians wrote these unit fractions one after another and the reader was left to sum them up to get back to the original 'fractional' number. Not as easy as the way we do fractions, huh? If you want to read more about this subject, I point you to two books :

• W. Knorr. "Fractions in Ancient Egypt and Greece", Historia Mathematica 9, pp.135-140
• A. Chace. "The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus".

Now if you schoolkids - who have hopefully learnt how to do fractions correctly - want to drive your maths teachers mad, you can use these four double-digit fractions (and ONLY these four!).
Write the fraction 16/64 on the blackboard and explain that since there is a 6 on the top and a 6 on the bottom you can just cancel the sixes out, and so 16/64 = 1/4, which is correct :-)
Then if the teacher tries to brush that off as mere chance and/or produces a counterexample (like 13/39 =/= 1/9), you just write on the blackboard 19/95, cancel the nines, leaving 19/95 = 1/5. Now the teacher is getting irate (believing you have learnt something wrong), you can continue with 26/65 (cancel the sixes) = 2/5 and 49/98 (cancel the nines) = 4/8, before sitting down with a smug grin on your face, saying poutingly "It works when I do it, it only goes wrong when you do it!". But don't tell him/her that I told you that these are the ONLY four fractions which follow that misleading 'rule' ;-) Have a FUN day in maths class at school :-)

But two relevant quotations here need to be born in mind :-

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool." Richard P.Feynman.

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." -Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th June 2005 at 06:27 CEST permalink Email

Feebly Funny Friday 'Fessup Feedback

Under heading Rumble, Whine and Roar, fellow blogger Frank Paynter wrote :- "Hope your bruises are healing Stu. Here is my entry in the 'I haven't got a clue but I'm willing to guess which one of those moto-units made that sound' contest. 1 e, 2 b, 3 f, 4 a, 5 d, 6 c."

Whereas Canadian Doug Alder wrote:- "Pure guesswork as I never paid enough attention to this before : A - 4, B - 6, C - 2, D - 1, E - 5, F - 3."

Good friend BMW-rider Matthias Sander, writing en-route to Teheran, suggested:- "Sound 1: Velocette Thruxton, Sound 2: Matchless G50, Sound 3: MZ, Sound 4: Honda 250, Sound 5: Honda 500, Sound 6: Norton Rotary.", a daring opinion, because bikes B and D aren't Hondas, they are MV Agustas, Matthias (hint B : fairing logo; hint D: red frame=MV).

Lenny Briscoe , nom-de-plume of the Special Constable, wrote:- "Nasty bruises! I was trying to spot the V-twin, then the put-put 125, 250 then play with the 4-600s...not easy. A1, B6, C4, D5, E2, F3. How did I do? 0/6 ? I just added a biking blog entry btw."

And here are the correct answers, ordered by sound numbers :-

1. 1964 G50 Matchless in photo A (rider unknown),
2. 1967 Thruxton Velo in photo E (yours truly),
3. 1968 MZ two-stoke in photo F (Phil Read),
4. MV Agusta 350cc 6 cylinder 4-stroke in photo D (Agostini?),
5. MV Agusta 500cc 4 cylinder in photo B (Mike Hailwood),
6. John Player Norton Wankel rotary in photo C (Rocket Ron Haslam),

Gunda enthused about her own recent visit to Czesky Krumlov and recommended to me a couple of great restaurants there, and the superb chocolate shop ;-)

Claude at Blogging in Paris and Anna Pashen both liked my attempt at Vogon Poetry. Anna wrote "Btw - love the Vogon poetry. Methinks however it's not quite at Vogon standard though - I didn't feel like chewing my arms off when reading it for example." Anna also suggested lineaments for my bruises :- "Yowie! That's a veritable rainbow of bruising you have there! May I suggest much Vitamin E (capsules are best) and Aloe Vera (gel not cream - from the plant if you have access)?"

Haggiswurst tells us about a much worse (for a Scotsman) motorcycle accident ;-)

Anon points us to a page explaining how the popular online scams work. Forwarned is forarmed!

Fellow crypto geek Dirk Rijmenants (Belgium) has written some downloadable hyper-realistic simulations of the German WW2 Enigma and the American WW2 M-209 encryption machines. Well done, Dirk!!! They are both very good, both optically and in that they generate correct code sequences. I expect to be doing a more detailed review of both in this blog when I find the time.

David responded quickly to my last posting and asked "What's mathemagical about 13?" (his age). How about this? You can cut a torus (ship's lifebelt) into 13 pieces with just 3 cuts. And Penelope (a fresh-out-of-college history teacher from NZ) extends my Pythagorean knowledge : "There is a Babylonian cuneiform clay tablet called Plimpton 322 - about 1800 years BC (i.e. before Pythagoras, who lived about 540 BC) - which bears 15 number-triples which are the sides of right-angled triangles! The ancient scribe seems to have known that 2*I*J and I²-J² and I²+J² are right-angled triangles." Thankyou, Penelope, I'm afraid I was never very good at history lessons, as my old history teacher Geoff Partington may remember. But examples are not proofs, as a counterexample is.

Penelope says she's been lurking here all year but this time she just HAD to write. You're welcome, Penelope. If everyone who wanted to decrease my iggeranz wrote, I'd be inundated! Actually, considering about 500 people read these pages every (week-) day, it's always the same 30 to 50 who write to me . You lurkers can't ALL be 'bots, so come out of hiding and gimme some feedback, I don't bite (except wingnuts).

BTW, there's an important new Bushwhacking book over in my right sidebar. Clicking on the cover will take you to a review of the book. Do please read the review, even if you don't buy the book!

Teheran humour (=Irany?) : Our word for honour is Ehre, and in honour of Dubya's fruitless search for mid-eastern WMD, Iran have named their coastal nukulah facility Bushehr ;-) Actually I'm surprised at myself. I managed to get the words Bush and honour into the same sentence ;-) Teasingly, I was thinking of getting a postcard sent from Bushehr to that California lady who collects postcards, suitably inscribed with something Meg-atonnish, e.g. ₁D² + ₁T³ -> ₂He⁴ + ₀n¹. But then I saved her the hassle, realising that the US Department of Jackboot Security has no sense of humour. America is no longer a free country. Shame, shame, shame. And pity. Pity!

These are beautiful nights here, astronomically speaking. Tonight you can see all nine planets in one night. Saturn, Venus and Mercury are over on the NNW just 30' after sunset, less than 4 moon-widths apart. Jupiter is in the SW, bright at magnitude -2.1 whereas Pluto is hiding near Xi Serpentis at magnitude 13.8, so you'll need an 8+ inch 'scope to see it. Neptune is 4° NE of Theta Capricorni; meanwhile by looking in the direction of Aquarius (after 1 a.m) your best friend can find Uranus (glowing brightly, at magnitude 5.8 ;-). Mars rises in the ESE an hour later. And the Earth is right beneath your feet of course, making up the nine ;-) Lazy people participate by using professional mountain-top telescopes online using Slooh's subscription service (via Make).

BTW, by popular request, I changed my ugly byline photo at the end of this blog entry. OK now?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 24th June 2005 at 06:24 CEST permalink Email

Mathemagical numerology

I have two things for your Grandfather at 72. Seventytwo is the product of the number of faces(4), edges(6), and edges per face(3) of the tetrahedron. So make him a paper tetrahedron for his birthday, David, and then point out this property to him, OK? :-) The other property of 72 which I know about, concerns its 5th power. It is the smallest 5th power equal to the sum of five other fifth powers. 72⁵=19⁵+43⁵+46⁵+47⁵+67⁵. You can show him that on your pocket calculator as long as it has at least 13 digits of accuracy. Will that do, or too hard?

And for your round little sister, I have something geometrical. Let her draw an arbitrary (acute) triangle, and mark the midpoints of each side. That's the first set of three dots she's marked. Now drop perpendiculars from each angle, meeting the opposite sides at right angles (that's what 'perpendicular' means). Mark each of these three meeting points. That's the second set of three dots she's marked. Note that all these 3 perpendiculars cross at a common crossing place. Along each perpendicular, mark the point halfway between the common crossing place and the corners of the triangle. That's the third set of three dots she's marked. So she's got 9 points, just like her age.
And you know what's mathemagical about these nine points?
They are all on a circle, round, like your round little podgy sister ;-)

A maths teacher from Trivandrum (on the southern tip of India), who explicitly wishes to remain anonymous, writes that he likes my simple proof of Pythagoras theorem, it's simpler than the one he knows, which is traditionally taught in secondary schools there. He asks "How many proofs of Pythagoras theorem do you know?". Well I once knew 10, because I learnt them for a pub bet at university. But of course any one proof will do, it doesn't get better by having several proofs :-)

Anyway, I searched the web and found 51 (fiftyone!) proofs of Pythagoras theorem, 41 of which were new to me too (thanks to Alexander Bogomolny). Read 'em all and take your choice sir!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd June 2005 at 05:22 CEST permalink Email

Farce Cars

Happy days are here again ???
Ferrari 1-2 'victory' in Indi, but only because all the Michelin-tired (sic!) teams pulled out.

I'm worried that Michelin also make contraceptives at their rubber factory ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 20th June 2005 at 06:39 CEST permalink Email

Calling Pittsburgh Bloggers, CQ, CQ, CQ.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 19th June 2005 at 06:39 CEST permalink Email

Tinfoil hats and copper knickers

I never cease to be amazed at how famous scientists can cut through the garbage of the beliefs of their day and come up with clear and revolutionary ideas, discrediting all the tinfoil-hat kooks of their time. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was such an idea (which I've just finished re-reading in translation), and the man with the idea was Nicolaus Copernicus ( February 19, 1473 to May 24, 1543). He was the Polish astronomer and mathematician who developed the heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory of the solar system, something which we take for granted now.

Remember this was about 500 years ago, and all the guy had to go on were huge tabular listings of planetary positions which he had made. Just to give you a visual impression of this, here is a simulated trace of the positions of the planets, but with the Earth fixed in the centre which was the tinfoil-hat theory propagated by the catholic church at that time.

Now just ask yourselves, would you have had the mental power to look at that picture and see that it would look much simpler if you transformed it mathematically to put the Sun at the centre?

Actually, Copernicus didn't get it quite right, because he assumed that planetary orbits were circles, then had to come up with ever more complex cycloids (wheels within wheels) to get the orbits nearly right. It was Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571 - November 15, 1630) nearly a century later, who used Tycho Brahe's observations to fine-tune the idea with elliptical orbits.

Another 200 years or so later, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832) wrote in his praise : "Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind - for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic - religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of."

So when religious fundamentalists (like creationist W.) start distorting and manipulating science retrogressively, choose to reject their tinfoil hats, and remember your copper knickers! See you.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 18th June 2005 at 05:18 CEST permalink Email

About once every decade or so, I ...

I rolled off into the grass verge at about 30mph, but the bike skidded down the tarmac, scuffing its fairing, which now needs partly replacing and partly just painting. Needless to say, I rode back to the workshop (using the rear brake only) and had LOUD WORDS with them!

So I haven't been blogging this week because I stubbed my left thumb really hard and so have had the left forearm and hand in plaster , just to keep the thumbjoint still. Can't type with that plaster on, so I've waited till today for it to come off. No bones broken anywhere, the ER said, but I have some big bruises on my right upper thigh, because stupidly I had my keyring in my right pocket and landed on it. Definitely not a good idea! I was wearing full leathers, boots, gloves and a helmet of course, as I always do, so I got off lightly. For those in T-shirts and shorts it would have been a lot worse :-(
You're not a real biker until you've fallen off and a ½ dozen times in 45 years ain't too bad :-)

None of this decreases my enthusiasm for motorcycling though, so as soon as the bike gets a new right fairing piece and my bruises and twinges disappear, it'll be On the road again, heading for Czesky Krumlov on the river Moldau in the Czech Republic and the Bohemian National Park.

And now a little test for those of my blogreaders who have also been bikers during the last 45 years. Here are 6 classic (racing) bikes from the heyday of the Sounds of Glory. First I show you six lettered photos (see title mouseovers for their letters), then I link to six numbered sound files (75 to 250kB). Your job? Match the sound file numbers to the photo letters and mail me your guess :-)

1. Sound 1 (269 kB MP3)
2. Sound 2 (113 kB MP3)
3. Sound 3 (108 kB MP3)
4. Sound 4 ( 75 kB MP3)
5. Sound 5 ( 88 kB MP3)
6. Sound 6 (571 kB MP3)

And if you want more stuff about racing motorcycles, try visiting One Man's Island. But if you prefer a good book, try Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 16th June 2005 at 14:06 CEST permalink Email

Vogon Poetry

And so, we went to see the new & funny film Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Thoroughly recommendable, except that it inspired me to write this bit of Vogon poetry about some of the crappy blogs I found while surfing heretofore unvisited far reaches of the blogosphere :-(

See, see the dead and vapid blogsite flail about
Marvel at its vomit-coloured geek's lay-out. 
And lack of content! Tell me, blogger,  does it cause you
To wonder why the blogosphere ignores you? 

Why their feeble stare makes you feel off-stage? 
I can tell you :  E'en your shag is 
Worried by your whifflesnaffig faecial page
That looks like an aborted haggis. 

What's more, the blogosphere sure knows
Your futt-grunting blog smells of peigh, or pee or 22/7
Rotting under the big dead sky.
It ars*k*s* "Why, 
Why do you even bother? You couldn't charm a Tellurium-breather's nose!"

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 11th June 2005 at 06:11 CEST permalink Email

Friday Feedback

Fair Use ?
First off this week is Nicole (F), who looked for more pangrams for me by using Copyscape on my wednesday blogpost. Nicole pointed me to Copyscape, who do Website Plagiarism Searches and Web Site Content Copyright Protection. You just plug your URL in and you can see who is copying from you (and of course, who YOU copied FROM, depending on who had the earlier publishing date). Recently, for example, Meg was wondering why her page on text-layout was getting lots of hits even though she was in a hiatus. Copyscape shows her stuff being used (and referenced) by the wiki at Vienna university's philosophy department, so that may be the cause.

I spent some time playing with Copyscape, to see what the limitations are. If you use a lot of idioms, it may allege that portions of text (the idioms) are copied. This is the case with the (rare) pangrams which I used on wednesday. Fair use, I think. If your blog quotes chunks from other people's sites ( and hopefully links to the originals) then Copyscape will catch that too. Gary William's site TFS Reluctant was my test case here. Similarly, news blogs which quote whole reams from the mainline press (and then comment them) are found. Melanie Mattson's Just a Bump in the Beltway was my test case here. All three of the above uses I regard personally as fair use, but your mileage may vary. Different countries have different copyright laws.

Superstition :
back on May 13th I blogged about superstition. Marianne (NL) wrote in reply : You may wish to know that I am NOT superstitious at all. But read what happened to me on Friday 13^th May. My husband and I went to Portugal for a two-week holiday. On the day of arrival my bag was stolen. In it: 2 brandnew passports, 1 driving licence, 2 airline tickets, 2 credit-cards and a lot of other stuff. It makes you think, doesn't it? It makes ME think that Marianne had a lot of burocratic hassle!

UK Police :
Been having an informative mail-exchange with Lennie who has given me background about the UK police. I won't repeat it here, as Lennie hopefully may blog it in his Special Constable's Blog.

Telescopes :
Lots of feedback to my June 1^st post arriving here. Copernicus explained to me that 2 inch oculars are preferred to the 1¼ inch ones for wide-angle, low-magnification deep-sky viewing. For my planned 8 inch, f/4, 800 mm tubed Dobson he recommended three 30 mm, 10 or 15mm and 5mm oculars. Rene´ warned me about using a f/4 scope and recommended f/6, because the coma at the view edges imply I would need Pentax or Nagler (not Plössl) oculars, which are quite expensive. Melanie says f/4 is very difficult to adjust and recommends f/5 or even f/6 too. My main problem with f/6 is getting the tube in our small car boot. But Günther points out that a Dobson's rocker box can be quite large too! Carl wrote "I have always wanted to make my own reflector, and got hold of plenty of info regarding grinding glass plates and subsequently having them silvered. . . I was also intrigued to read about astrolabes, as I am trying to buy one for my wife, but at a reasonable price. I know she wouldn't want a cardboard one, but I may start with that in order to teach her the use of it. If you come across any other manufacturers, please let me know."

Aging :
A collective thanks to all those of you who sent me 61^st birthday greetings on wednesday :-) Jeneane Sessum was 43 yesterday, but when I told her various attributes of the number 43 (in her comments), she said I scared her. Amazes me how many are scared of a little maths ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 10th June 2005 at 06:08 CEST permalink Email

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz!

During a break at the pub, I got the landlord to pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. In the pub, the juke box music puzzled a gentle visitor from a quaint valley town. At a nearby market, on a second-hand goods stall offering environmentally 'green' goods at bargain prices, sixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bag. The 'green' environmentalists were also taking bets at a frog-racing pen until the nearby acrobats got upset and bashed the frogs flat, or as the local paper reported the next day "How piqued gymnasts levelled six jumping razorback frogs". Further on, the public was amazed to view the quickness and dexterity of the juggler, after all you must remember that the job requires extra pluck and zeal from every young wage earner. After the Morris Men, the Irish dancing-girls were pretty bad, so I suggested to the head dancer girl "Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex!".

Meanwhile, at home, back in my quaint garden, jaunty zinnias vie with flaunting phlox, and whenever the black fox jumped, the squirrel gazed suspiciously. And, at the end of the day, in a nearby farmyard, we see a quick brown fox jump over the lazy dogs.

That last sentence should have triggered you to see what I'm doing today, namely trying to write a short story with as many holoalphabetic phrases in it as possible. Holoalphabetic sentences (pangrams) are as short as possible but nevertheless contain all the letters of the alphabet. It's for a bet made down at the pub last week. My pangrams are set in bold face here. Today's title : "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz!" is the shortest sentence with valid syntax I could find, even if it somehow sounds vaguely obscene ,-)

Getting 15 pangrams into one 'halfway-coherent' short story under 25 lines long isn't bad: I think I stand a fair chance of winning :-) But if you, my esteemed blog-readers, know any more pangrams that I could weave into my little fictional tale, mail them to me before sunday lunch at the pub please (and get an honourable mention in this blog, if I win a crate of beer :-)

You may well ask why we are doing this. Well, having a block of these 16 pangrams is good for testing the appearance of different fonts on a website for example. An inspired calligrapher can create pages of beauty using ink, quill, pick-axe, buzz-saw or even strawberry jam. And as a crypto-geek who sets cryptogram puzzles for others, I find holoalphabetic sentences useful because they are resistent to frequency counting during the crypt-analysis :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 8th June 2005 at 06:08 CEST permalink Email

Smoking past, Extra low :-)

Peter pushes past, inverted, low, and fast, before pushing up to bunt. Smoke on, GO!

I spent over 20 years as a CFI (certified flying instructor), volunteering my spare time to teaching people to fly. So it is with a great degree of satisfaction that I see that some of them turned out to be better pilots than I ever was. It doesn't have to be an airshow either. One or two made a profession of it, and now have ATPLs (~ Airline Pilots). One now is a jock, another instructs as a CFII. But I still like to see a good aerobatic show, especially since I'm no longer fit enough to do them. And if you're reading this, guys, I'm still judging you by the precision of your Lomcevaks ;-)

Posted by Stu Savory on 6th June 2005 at 06:06 CEST permalink Email

The Feedback side

Several of you wrote for more maths stuff again, which I haven't done in a while. Well I'm clean out of maths ideas right now (which is why you're getting travelogues instead), so you could try reading these 4 links :

• Abel prize awarded to Peter Lax
• American Mathematical Society: Maths Research & Scholarship
• Eleven steps to a better brain
• Nick's Mathematical Miscellany

An american friend, Robin, sent mathematical proof that girls are evil ;-) Wish you health, lass!

Young Pierre (from Belgium) recognised yesterday's castle in the Ardennes and points me to a site teaching more about castle design. Merci, Pierre. Doug send me a photo of a rather surrealistic crooked public house , presumably in Canada. An inn calling Picasso time, maybe ?

John (Oregon, USA) is into astronomy & applauds my beginner's choice of telescope (see my 1st of June blog entry). He tells me the new Green Bank Radio telescope in the US is as big as the fully steerable Effelsburg telescope I mentioned yesterday. He also points us to a page about the 3-body problem and had me hearing my first astronomy podcast (16MB download!) His Bavarian almost-namesake, Johann, links to a German site on the Cassini photos of Saturn.

Karin (D) teases me for sidewalking(missing) the Formula 1 on sunday and provides this F1 flag guide link as well as this link to Julian Beever's magnificent pavement drawings. Danke, Karin.

Motorcycle fan Sepp (Austria) thanked me for the tip about the NSU museum in Monschau and sent 2 links, to a Norton museum in Holland and to the Beckmann museum, here in Germany.

Back from a holiday in Cuba, Jenny (UK) laughed about my improper Rape photo article, and said for a really pornographic but serious site I should read about Laser Rejuvenation (NOT work safe!). On the political side she sent a link to a story titled Penis Causes Terror Alert in the US. BTW, vacationers can now stay in my friend Carl's place in Tobago. Sunny climes are here again...

Blogwise, I'm temporarily reading 3 new ones. We'll see how they go. They are :-

• The Special Constable's Blog
• Another Constable (sic!)
• and Echo Generation.

Thursday's Humpty Dumpty Yurp re-Constitution Game has had several replies, from Anji through Xaver, with scores from 18 to 41 out of 44 so far. You can still play, closing date is next sunday. Tessa liked the dateline nuance of the French Non!, of whom Anji was one :-)

Over in the comments (to which I do not know how to link) on a recent Meg post there has been some discussion of the effects of a hiatus. FWIW, my stats dropped off whilst we were on vacation from about 600 to 400/day. When I came back online they jumped to 800 for a few days. Since then they have been gradually decreasing (500->400) while I blogged the travelogue of our Hurtigruten trip. So I guess you found it boring (midweek runs at about 550, dropping to 300-some at the weekends). The drop-off is not due to a hiatus IMHO, we (or at least, I) just need to write more interesting content! So tell me what you want to read about here, folks!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 4th June 2005 at 10:14 CEST permalink Email

...a little crooked house : Visiting Monschau

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I was reminded of this ditty when our motorcycle club visited Monschau in the Eifel hills last friday, where we saw this crooked house. Monschau is such a picturesque little town nestling very tightly in the valley of the river Rur, that I thought I'd just share a few photos with you today. Our visit coincided with an Old-Timer Car Rallye , wonderfully restored machines, a sight well worth seeing. Also worth seeing is the Maassen family's coffee-roasting shop; if you can't experience their friendly service there, you can buy their coffees online :-)

It's best to park outside and walk into Monschau because parking there is hard to find, even for motorcycles. We walked to the tourist-oriented arts-and-handicraft centre, which has an outdoor cafe (with an EXCEEDINGLY unwilling waiter) and a small NSU motorcycle museum.

Also worth a visit is the sculpture garden with some really neat work. Amusingly, the artist is called Kruft! Nomen ist Omen. Lots of nice bronze metalwork though, even if beyond my purse.

On the following day our excellent navigator Andreas (foreground) took us on a tour through the Ardennes hills in Belgium, visiting a private castle, on the way to the waterfalls near Spa. We lunched at Belvedere which I remember as the name of a dissimilar good painting by M.C.Escher. From the cliffs here I sent Meg another postcard for her current meme; get well soon, Meg!

We turned around at a pretty market town (La Roche?), then, tired by riding in full leathers through the afternoon heat (34°C=93°F), we parked discreetly for a cooling ice-cream before visiting the Effelsberg radio telescope on the way back home.

On the way home, some bald yuppi in a fast black 300+hp Porsche tried to impress us, but Ninja-riders Matthias and Simone on their bright green Z9R as well as Cornelia and I on our fully-laden but potent silver FJR (½tonner) were having none of that, and both bikes blew him off :-) Further on, some guy had rolled his car into the ditch, so we had to rescue him and, until the ambulance and cops came, regulate the traffic. That makes for tired arms, I can tell you! He lived, BTW :-)

PS for Regina : the radio telescope is in the Eifel hills. It's secreted away in a valley to avoid RF interference from passing traffic. You should park your vehicle over the brow of the hill and then walk a 1 km track to this viewing point. The track contains a model of our solar system, to scale, so that you get a feeling how far away Pluto is! The model Sun is about a foot across. And our Earth? If you had given me a lever and a place to rest it, I could have played Archimedes ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd June 2005 at 06:03 CEST permalink Email

Humpty Dumpty Yurp re-Constitution Game

So now YOU can play at putting Yurp back together again. Let me know the results of your first attempt please and tell me which country you are from. Winner gets a prezzy :-) Mail your first-attempt scores to please. Merkins get a bonus if they know where Yurp is :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 2nd June 2005 at 06:02 CEST permalink Email

Things are looking up

Recently I went to the trade fair for amateur astronomers in Essen with some astro-geek friends, Regina and Manfred. They were there to help me - a beginner - with practical advice from the experience of years. As a beginner looking for his first 'scope I was advised to forget about astrophotography (better photos are available via the internet) and go for a simple observing scope. The refractors are all too expensive for my budget, so I looked at some small reflectors.

I rather liked the nice table-top telescopes (with computers built-in to do the star-finding for you) but they were over my small budget. Since I wanted an easy set-up (2 minutes rather than 45' or more), Manfred advised me to avoid the expense of a motor-driven equatorial mount (costs as much as the scope) and go for a cheap but solid and simple (human-powered) Dobsonian mount supporting a Newtonian reflector of as large an aperture as I could afford. However, I also wanted the tube of the scope to fit onto the back seat of my car so that I could drive it to places with dark skies (Germany is so densely populated that there is a lot of light pollution from the towns). I've narrowed my choice down now to the 8-inch Galaxy D8 on a Dobsonian mount complete with two Plössl eyepieces and a free star-map all (just) within my €500 budget :-)

If all you want is to SEE things (planets, stars, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies,...) then the Dobsonian mount is the best thing to use. In minutes you can take it outside, set it up, and view things with ease. It has also got a €30 Telrad device mounted on the side of the tube. A Telrad is a "one-power" finderscope that, when viewed through, seems to project a bulls eye pattern on the sky, letting you aim the scope where you want just by consulting the star-map.

There was another neat stand at the fair which sells build-it-yourself kits of various historical astronomical & scientific gear made out of stiff cardboard. In this photo you can see (l. to r.) an egyptian Ell, a kaleidoscope, a Galilean telescope, a sun-projector, a microscope, a sundial, a periscope, a sky globe, an astrolabe etc. etc. Even a playable cardboard ocarina!

My personal favourite was this Newtonian reflector telescope, made of stiff cardboard! They have lots of good educational stuff in these kits, so I recommend that you surf on over to www.astromedia.de and see what takes your fancy. Ideal presents for kids from 6 to 61 :-)

P.S: By sheer coincidence I've got a 61st birthday coming up this month ;-)

PPS : Talking of telescopic views of thing, here's another postcard for a friend who may now realise where the Intergalactic Postcard from Outer Space really came from, if she reads this :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st June 2005 at 06:01 CEST permalink Email