Friday Dog Blogging

The best pup in the house - Goomba's Happy Miss Frieda - is 10 months old today :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 31st March 2006 at 06:31 CEST permalink Email

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Moon Shadow

Apologies to those of you who came here looking for Cat Stevens' (aka Yussuf Islam) old song, but I'm blogging about today's eclipse of the sun. Blogreaders in the US didn't get to see it, and indeed we only had a < 37% eclipse here in Germany (London 30%, Mingleton < 20%). The narrow band of totality went through Niger, Libya, Turkey and the Black Sea this time. Maybe one of my Turkish blogreaders can mail me a corona shot? They are rare and hard to come by.

The point of maximum duration totality was somewhere in the south of Libya, towards the border with Niger; let's hope that they had better viewing than we did (it was mostly cloudy).

Back in the late '90s there was an eclipse of the sun whereby the path of totality tracked across southern Germany. We drove to the Elsass (the northeastern french hills bordering with Germany) and watched from there, because I wanted to see the speed at which the edge of the shadow crossed the valley floor. Those of you who have never flown a jet at low-level can use eclipse shadows to get an impression of supersonic speed at low level. The shadow goes at about Mach 2 to Mach 3, I haven't done the sums, that was just my visual impression.

Amusingly, most moonstruck sungazers thought it was a warm summer day. They hadn't thought it through meteorologically, and so wore T-shirts and shorts and sandals. The increasing shadow cooled us down from 30°C to an umbral 10°C, the moisture in the air condensed over the hills, and we got rained upon ;-) Actually the people on the plains at Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Munich got better views than we did. Nevertheless, it was pretty impressive. A once in a lifetime totality experience for me, and I am sure for others too. Coincidentally on my birthday in 2004 we had a transit of Venus across the sun's disc, which was an even rarer astronomical event.

Of course, the cosmo- and astronauts in the ISS (International Space Station) get an even more impressive view, seeing the Moonshadow tracking across the surface of the Earth:-

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 29th March 2006 at 13:09 CET permalink Email

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Stargazin' . . .

I like to watch^** . . .

. . . the stars ;-) When I was 13 my father took me out into the back yard to see the first Sputnik as it transited the evening skies, itself still in sunlight. That got me hooked and I spent a decade or so wanting to be a cosmonaut. The fact that I had no command of Russian at the time, still had my appendix, had teeth fillings and wore glasses, all of which turned out to be disqualifying, didn't affect (or effect) my enthusiasm in the slightest. At university I was a frequent user of the university's rooftop telescope and secretly wished I could always carry one of my own about with me. So when - in the late seventies - the portable Astroscan (see photo) appeared on the market, I was an early adopter.

The Astroscan^® is a small portable telescope (still available today) from the days before Dobsonian mounts or computer-controlled GoTo 'scopes. It is a small 4 ¼ inch parabolic reflector with a sealed tube, which makes for low maintenance because it is permanently collimated. You can set it down on a stable table-top and start stargazing without worrying about cool-down times or dew problems. Actually I preferred to use it slung on its shoulder strap, steadying it inertially with hand and ample belly :-) It is stable, since it is relatively low power. The standard eyepieces 28 and 15mm Plössls gave magnifications of 16x and 30x only. A Barlow lens let you multiply these by 2.5x but then you needed the table-top mount. The low power and large field of view ( 3° = 6 moon-diameters) made it ideal for deep-sky surfing and looking at the moon and planets. Saturn's rings and Jupiter's 4 moons were easily seen, the phases of Venus and even Mercury. Great clouds of stars, like the M101 galaxy or the Horsehead nebula in Orion were easy to find, provided you could read a star map (nowadays people are lazy and have computerised GoTo equatorial mounts for their scopes). You could just about see the cloud bands of Jupiter. The Astroscan really excelled at deep sky objects like galaxies, nebulae and star clusters (e.g. the Pleiades)!

Additional plus points were that it was very portable, you could put it in the car or on the overhead rack of a train or plane. Also, it had basically zero set-up time.

On the downside, the magnification was low. The focal ratio was low at f/4.2, so that when I tried a really short eyepiece (4mm) for higher magnification, I got streaks of coma instead of pointlike stars. It's really better as a rich-field beginners' scope. Real astronomy freaks like my friends Manfred and Regina would have laughed at me (Manfred has a 22 inch reflector under a dome up on his garage roof!). Also it does not have an equatorial mount available let alone a tracking motor, so it is totally unsuitable for astrophotography. So you'll not get any stunning shots like this one of the Sombrero galaxy.

All that is many years ago, and I sold the Astroscan after about 5 years. I still don't have a new scope, although I did go to the Essen Astro-fair under Manfred's tutelage last year. I'm aiming at an 8 inch Dobsonian now, with coordinate readouts on the mount to better navigate the skies. Something like the Galaxy D8 maybe. The size constraint of wanting to be able to put it in the car to drive to a dark-sky area limits the length of the tube for me. But the rule still applies "the best scope is the one you can use the most", so I'm waiting to see Gary Turner's review of the Meade ETX90 tabletop GoTO scope he bought on eBay; maybe that's a better route to go, it being a modern replacement for the Astroscan.

In the meantime, we have an eclipse of the sun to watch on wednesday. Whatever you do, don't look at the sun directly, either with the naked eye or with binoculars or a telescope. Either get 'sun-filter' cardboard glasses from your local chemist's shop (that's English for drugstore, but the US doesn't get to see the eclispse which is why I used the English idiom) or use your scope to project the sun's image onto a screen, i.e. indirect viewing.

Now I've got to re-read lines 9 & 10 of Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" : "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken;" :-)
Just FYI, the planet Uranus had been discovered in 1781 by F.W. Herschel, just 35 years before Keats wrote that sonnet.

Footnote ^** : Quoting Peter Sellers, star (sic!) of the magnificent movie "Being There" ;-)

Listen up! : there's a new feature in this blog; down at the bottom of the right sidebar you'll find a collection of my favourite sound-bites, ranging from a 10KB Midi file to a rather funny 900 KB mp3 bagpipe piece. Turn your speakers on, the volume up, and enjoy!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 27th March 2006 at 06:27 CET permalink Email

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Fifty years later . . .

. . . I find my old school reports :-)

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the attic and found some old photos and even my school reports of fifty years ago. Yours truly - ever the nervous one - is sitting at the end of the front row, with a pained and thin-lipped expression, and pointing his shoes at the sky, because they wouldn't let him go to the lavatory until after the photo was taken :-(

Aren't you blog-readers glad that you get to read only typewritten stuff? Apparently my handwriting was terrible even 50 years ago and has deteriorated ever since ;-) Here is what the headmaster wrote in my annual school reports those many years ago :-

• "He should practice his writing by doing a page in his neatest writing each day of the holidays. His work is marred at present by untidiness." 1955
• "He is a keen and willing worker, but his work is marred by untidy presentation. He should practice legible writing at home. 1956.
• "He must make every effort to improve the presentation of his work." 1957.
• "His work is still badly presented and often careless". 1958.

Only when I left that school did I confess to have done every homework on the bus; no wonder I was deemed often illegible ;-) 50 years ago this year, this was my report sheet :-

But yes, schooldays are some of the happiest and carefree days of our lives :-)

So what were your schooldays like, and what snide supercilious remarks did you get on your report cards ? ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 25th March 2006 at 06:25 CET permalink Email

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Dogblogging . . .

Recently Frank Paynter dogblogged with a cute photo of Molly Bloom on her 2nd birthday. This week we had Doug Alder showing Doc flirting cutely with owner Diane. Not to be outdone, here's Birgit Braum's contribution to the cutest puppy photo competition :

More photos available on my good friend Birgit's website in the Floral Garden.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 22nd March 2006 at 06:22 CET permalink Email

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Walkin' the blogs

Lacking any fresh ideas myself today, I thought I'd see what others are doing and steal any good themes ;-) In no particular order :-

Gary Turner points us to a personality quiz - Personal DNA - which only proves that we wee Opera fans are losers, something that Mandarin Meg had always suspected ;-) Don't you just hate it when you take a personality test and the result says you haven't got one? Floccipaucinihilipilification!

Frank Paynter has a photo of his 2-year-old bitch Molly Bloom gambolling in green spring meadows, snow almost gone. But we are still neck deep in the stuff :-( No global warming here, Frank seems to have collared it all.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog, which should be of interest to my favourite blogging English teacher, the young Reflective Teacher. Thanks to Teresa at Making Light for the link to GC.

Winston (Nobody Asked) is back in the blogosphere after a DOS attack. Robin has moved house; as soon as she and Dave get settled in we can expect more of her art lessons :-) And Old fashioned patriot is doing a healthy amount of Bushwhacking^® I'm happy to report. But then so is Silent Lucidity, who also had a great St. Patrick's day joke. Cowtown Pattie told us Where she's from, with a text like country-rock music. Apropos the music, Joan Baez is doing a tour of Germany for the next 3 weeks; I just have to organise to go hear her again. Remember her singing "I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night" at Woodstock?

Sato-san suggested I put a link to my daily Sudoku in my blogroll, to make it easier to find.

Frank Paynter also blogged his webstats. Looks like we are going neck-and-neck, Frank :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 19th March 2006 at 12:12 CET permalink Email

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Scotch Whiskies of the Inner Hebrides

Recently, one of my blog-readers from Japan, knowing that I am a Scot, wrote that he is a "konnai-sir of japanese whiskies" (shudder) but would like to visit Scotland on his vacations and "drive around to the best places for Scotch Whisky" and would I suggest a route between distilleries for him? This blog entry is the result of my deliberations, combining a whisky tour with some sightseeing along the route; I've assumed he has only 2 weeks.

So, Sato-san, given that your tour starts and ends at Glasgow Airport, here are my tips :-)

Let's start off with a slight non-whisky bit of sightseeing. Drive south from Glasgow on the M77 towards Prestwick then left onto the A76. After about 10 kms you can see the statue of Highland Mary at Mauchline; she died before Robbie Burns could marry her. Robbie Burns' simple cottage (and museum alongside) are just a few miles further south. Go inside 1 hr.

But enough of this tourism, let's get on with those single malt whiskies :-)

Turn back north again, take the A71 at Kilmarnock and drive to Ardrossan on the coast from where there is a ferry over to Brodick on the Isle of Arran. In Lochranza on the north coast of the Isle of Arran is the Arran Distillery. This reopened in 1995, restablishing the 150 years of whisky-making on Arran. Caveat : I haven't tried any of their whisky, but it's on the route to Islay, you might as well give it a try whilst you're on the road.

From Lochranza (Arran) take the ferry to Claonaig on the Kintyre peninsula, then drive 5 miles NW to Kennacraig for the ferry over to Port Ellen on Islay. Islay is the core island for Western Isles whiskies, having more distilleries than any other scottish island. Islay whisky has a strong taste of turf. Turf filters the water and is used for burning the fires to heat the mash. The southern part of the island (Islay) is home to the distilleries of Laphroaig (my favourite), Ardberg and Lagavulin (another favourite of mine), all east of Port Ellen. Just a little further along the road is the 8th century stone Cross of Kildaton, worth the short diversion. Back through Port Ellen, turn north to Bowmore which has a famous distillery too, it makes one of my favourite old whiskies :-)

Just past Bowmore at Finlaggan is the island castle of the chief of the Clan MacDonald, well worth a visit. Do not ask for a hamburger though ;-) If time permits, the Isle of Jura is beautifully wild; there is a ferry at Feolin. Jura has one road, one distillery and one hotel for those who cannot drive any more after the tour of the distillery ;-)

From the northern tip of Islay at Port Askaig take the ferry back to the Kintyre peninsula at Kennacraig, then drive north (on the A83) to Oban. The Oban distillery (since 1794) claims to be older than the rest of the town; it certainly makes a very smooth Malt whisky.

From Oban, take the ferry over to Craignure on the Isle of Mull. Nearby you will find Duart Castle, home to the MacLean Clan, which was originally built in the 14th century and restored in the 20th. From there, drive up the coast going NW to Tobermory. The Tobermory distillery is the only one still making the "Ledaig", a fantastic old-style Single Malt. I have fond memories of landing my light plane at Glenforsa. The landing instructions tells you to make a low pass in the wrong direction along the grass field which serves as a runway. This frightens the sheep away from the runway :-) now do a rapid turn and land before they run back ;-) The farmer who owns the field also has a loghouse hotel there, which serves a very good Haggis. The farmer sent his dogs out next morning to clear the runway again for take-off ;-)

From Tobermory take the ferry over to Kilchoan on the mainland, turning left at Lochailort into the A830 taking you to Mallaig. There is a ferry over to Ardvasar on the Isle of Skye. Drive up to Broadford and on the A87 to Sligachan before turning off left to Carbost. Skye's only distillery is the Talisker distillery on the shores of Loch Harport. Theirs is a full whisky with a sweetish aroma. On Skye it is worth doing a tourist round trip from the distillery via Dunvegan and Portree on the A850 before taking the Skye bridge back via the Kyle of Lochalsh. Almost as soon as you get on the A87 via Loch Ness to Inverness you will see Eilean Donan Castle, which you may have seen in the film "Highlander", Sato-san :-)

As you drive along Loch Ness, remember to stop at Castle Urquhart, to listen to the lone piper, even if you do not see Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster ;-) Near Inverness be sure to visit Culloden Battlefield, where Bonnie Prince Charlie lost to the Sassenachs and Scotland lost its independance :-( Continuing SE along the A9 about 10 miles you find the Tomatin distillery, Scotland's largest (but one I've never tried, preferring the Islay whiskies as I do). Just before Kingussie the road forks. Take the right (A86, I think) to Newtonmore, to visit the Clan MacPherson museum (it's just a little grey house, but with lots of chanters and claymores). Then turn left at Laggan to get to Dalwhinnie, Scotland's highest distillery (must be at least 1000 feet amsl ;-) , then south on the A9 again across the Drumochter Pass through the Forest of Atholl to get to Blair Atholl distillery in Pitlochry established in 1798 makes a mild, fruity whisky (not really to my taste). The castle is also worth a visit ;-) In nearby Killiecrankie visit the NT centre and hear about the battle of 1689 before taking a short stroll along the beautiful riverside to "Soldier's Leap".

If you want to continue on the A9 to Perth be sure to visit the Black Watch museum there. I prefer to turn right in Ballanluig (along the A827/A85/A82) towards Loch Lomond national park and the Trossachs which are worth seeing before the short drive back to Glasgow Airport and home to Japan with (hopefully) a selection of real whiskies, a thousand photos, and memories of uisghe-tastings to treasure for the rest of your life, Sato-san.

This is just my humble suggestion. Perhaps fellow Scots Haggiswurst and Gary Turner would like to add some tips of their own in their own blogs?

Have a nice trip anyway, this summer. And do let us know how it turned out :-)
PS : Be sure to bring your rainproof gear :-(
PPS : Your good business English may not suffice, we Scots talk differently sometimes, for example here's something I blogged about a Burns Nicht party a few years ago :-
"The ither year, Burns nicht : me a ree ray in ma waddinbraws. Twa faikin fums (agnats) shue laik scowpers. I lerb twa jutes, muckle manky jutes, an gledge a redhieded peronall. Ah skleush ower tae her, fer tae splunt thae loorach. Wi thae fower bask jutes, ah thrammle like a kenspeckle kensy, an partle tae rush instead o ma whaisk frae sculduddery. Ah yove : nae mair upfesh!" See what I mean? ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 17th March 2006 at 06:17 CET permalink Email

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A royal road to E=mc²

Today being the anniversary of Albert Einstein's birthday, I thought I'd give you a quick and easy outline of how to derive E=mc². OK? Maths-cowards can quit now if they like ;-)

Back on January 17th I explained the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, which is really only Pythagoras. Read it again to get up to speed (sic!). Now remember Sir Isaac Newton in 1686 relating force(F), mass(m) and acceleration(a) as F=m*a. Einstein merely applied the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction to Newton's formula, thus getting a=(F/m)*(1-v²/c²)^3/2.

The first thing you can see from this is that when v=c no amount of additional force will cause any more acceleration and thus v=c is the speed limit; nothing material can go FTL.

Newton also used Work(W)=F*d, i.e. work is a force applied over a distance, and setting F=m*a, got W=½v², the kinetic energy of a moving body. Now Einstein just plugged in his previous intermediate result and calculated the Work as :- W=mc²/(½(1-v²/c²)) - mc².

Now since the Energy of the moving particle is E=mc²/(½(1-v²/c²)), i.e. kinetic energy, he got E=W+mc², and thus for a resting mass (at zero relative speed) E=mc² Q.E.D

There now, that was painless wasn't it :-) I bet most of you even understood me too :-)

P.S : Yes indeedy, this blog does have a reputation for being relatively geeky at times ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 14th March 2006 at 06:14 CET permalink Email

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Sue ghee war docu shin knee car giro

"Sue ghee war docu shin knee car giro" is what came out when I tried speaking Japanese into my (english) dictation software ;-) So I'm typing this entry today instead of dictating it :-) This phrase should have read "suji wa dokushin ni kagiru" if I have transliterated it correctly. That means "the number must stand alone" in a colloquial translation. In its shortened form we know this phrase as Sudoku, a number puzzle popular not only in Japan.

Sudoku puzzles are 9*9 fields, each of which may contain a single digit, 1 through 9, such that each row and each column contain each digit only once. Furthermore, the 9*9 square may also be seen as nine 3*3 subsquares for which the same constraint applies. There are no other rules. Some fields will be filled with digits in advance and it is the job of the solver to deduce all the other fields' contents, subject to the aforementioned constraints.

There are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible completed Sudokus (see proof by Felgenhauer (TU Dresden) and Jarvis (Uni. of Sheffield), but if one takes all the symmetries into account that number reduces to the (still huge) 3,546,146,300,288. So we are not going to run out soon :-) Richard Wayne Gould, a New Zealand judge, wrote the first program to generate Sudoku puzzles, and now we have them appearing in the daily press.

Difficulty can be varied, typically there are nine grades until you become a Sudoku-Dan (i.e. Black-belt), able to solve all of the most difficult ones in under 20 minutes. Shown below are two Sudokus, an easy level 1 (on the left) and a hard level 9 (on the right). The easy ones may be given to children of 8 or 9 years without fears of tears of frustration; the level nine ones are expected to defeat ¾ of the adult population. Personally I find they get hard at about level 8, and will fail to solve about 50% of the level 9 ones within an hour, let alone the 20 minute target :-( If you get addicted, there is a daily dose here.

Let me know how long YOU took for each of these two :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 9th March 2006 at 06:09 CET permalink Email

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Coining it : the mint museum in Stolberg

Being a Scot, I am always interested in how to make money :-) So when I realised the ancient market town of Stolberg (see last Wednesday's blog) also has a mint museum, I just had to go take a look, especially because of its age.

Most mint museums (like those in London, Stockholm, Madrid or Dresden), although quite good, only show the automated 19th century minting technology, but one in Czesky Krumlov (Czeck Rep.) and this one here - Stolberg - go back 500 years or so, and show the highly manual hand-crafting used then.

The castle in Stolberg looms on a crag over the town. Incidentally, it also contains the magnificent Red Hall, designed by the famous architect Schinkel, about whom I told you on last thursday. In 1467 the owner of the castle, Henry XIX of Stolberg, was granted the royal right of casting coins bearing his coat of arms. Before that (13th century) images of deer antlers were used on the Brakteat coins. During the 14th century pennies (Pfennige) were cast, and Groschen in the late 15th century. The first Taler was embossed in 1544. Even today, if you hear a Saxon pronounce the word Taler (as 'Dar-Lah'), you can hear where the American word 'Dollar' came from :-)

Why was the mint in Stolberg? Well, 'Berg' means 'mountain' in German and 'Stollen' are horizontal shafts, so there was mining going on there, in particular for copper and silver. Stolberg coins dating from 1200 onwards have been found all over Germany. By the end of the 18th century there were many many mints all over the dukedoms, 150 in Sachsen-Anhalt alone, because it was literally a licence to make money. Finally in the 19th century there was a crackdown and now we only have 5 mints in Germany. The dukes sub-contracted the actual minting rights to the minters, who paid the duke a fixed sum 'pauschal' each year. Thus the minter's profit came from making as many coins as his mines could provide ores, and making coins of as high a face value as the market would bear (and to hell with inflation ;-) ). The minter was thus responsible for everything, from mining the ores via quality control and anti-counterfeiting measures to distribution of the coins. As an anti-counterfeiting measure the engraving on the dies got very detailed, as you can see from the coin shown below. Use of the duke's coat of arms also ensured that any counterfeiters caught also got imprisoned for 'impersonation', the sentence being pursued by the duke personally ;-) The coin shown is dated 1706, note the change over 150 years.

Another anti-counterfeiting measure was the introduction of the riffling around the edges, replacing smooth edges. This was particularly difficult to copy, requiring special tools. Nowadays we no longer have regular riffling around the edge of the coins. Instead we use value-based encoding, so that blind persons can 'feel' the value of the coins. The picture on the right shows the value-coding of the modern Eurocents.

I've magnified the images to make the details easier to see. The smallest (1 cent coin) has a smooth border. The 2-cent coin has indents in the border. The 5 cent coin is larger, and is again smooth. These were the copper coins. The 10-cent coin has a fine wavy structure. The 20 cent coin has seven indents, but is otherwise smooth. The 50-cent coin is larger and again has a wavy structure. These are the brass coins. The 1 Euro coin has alternating riffling and smooth areas. And finally, the 2 euro coins have a continuously riffled border. For special occasions memorial coins are issued, usually 10 Euro in value, and these are larger, with smooth borders.

The photo below shows some of the copper and gold coins made by the mint towards the end of its working life. They are in PP quality, my photo does not do them justice.

Although this is no longer a working mint, there are still artistic competitions held for who can produce the best die, making magnificent medallions about the size of the palm of a girl's hand. Two are shown below, representing the past and the future of minting tools.

Stolberg was also the birthplace of the "peasants' revolution" monk Thomas Müntzer, a contemporary of Martin Luther. The name 'Müntzer' means minter, and indeed, his father was the minter in Stolberg at the time. The mint museum also has a couple of fairly recent busts of Thomas Müntzer. The museum itself is housed in the original 1535 mint building :-)

Of course, the minter's most valuable property was his dies. So these were locked away when not in use in a special 'wall-safe' cupboard with a barred door on the front. It seems no-one realised that the house, dating from 1535, was made of beams with wattled walls and so a thief could have entered the house next door (even older, 15th century!) and dug through the wall into the die-safe ;-) Taylorism was rife in the minters' guild, indeed I counted 9 (nine) different job descriptions on my tour through the museum. This may have been a safety precaution by the minter, ensuring that only he knew how to do all 9 steps needed to make a coin ;-)

The only 'clean' job in the house seems to have been that of the tallier (=accountant). In the 16th century accounting was not done on paper, but by pushing coins around a table using Adam Riese's arithmetic methodology, then brand new (1518) !! Then as now, the bean-counters didn't want to get their hands dirty :-( Should you ever be in Annaberg (in the Erz mountains) it is worth a visit to the Adam-Ries-Museum with the almost 500 year old Annaberger school of arithmetic. Both there and in the Stolberg museum I made a point of showing the museums' curators how to do multiplication without tables, using a method which has fallen into disuse, but which is almost as old as Adam Riese.

Of course I'd made sure to arrive after 7:59 a.m, because I really like after-eight mints ;-)

This month's blog seems to be history-heavy, so I'll stop talking about Stolberg and give you some different stuff this coming week, OK? End of the history lessons for now :-) And blogging in Latin, as I did on friday, halved the number of visitors and cut the average stay here down to a mere seven seconds. Sorry about that, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 6th March 2006 at 00:06 CET permalink Email

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'De laudibus sanctae crucis', et liber alia.

Codex purpureus Hrabani Mauri DCCCXXVI AD fecit.

Moguntiaci expositione honoratur memoria Hrabani Mauri viri doctissimi mille centum quinquaginta annos mortui, qui tempore imperatorum ex stirpe Caroli Magni ortorum abbas Fuldaensis idemque Archiepiscopus Moguntiacensis fuerat. Inter alia exhibetur codex carminum ipsius, quem ultimo vitae tempore Hrabanus dioecesi donaverat. Iste codex picturis pulcherrimis ornatus et ab ipso correctus erat. Plura de hac expositione invenies sub hac inscriptione interretiali: www.dommuseum-mainz.de.

Thanks to 'Radio Bremen' for the heads-up on the display of a beautiful 1180 year old book.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 3rd March 2006 at 06:03 CET permalink Email

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"Coffee? Pot?" . . . "Whatever."

Coffee ? Pot ? Bad punctuation there getting all you addicts interested? Actually this post is about the Coffee Pot museum in Stolberg, which I forgot to mention in my previous blog.

They've got over 250 different old coffee machines in a room there, dating back to 1815.
This is my photo of the Coffee Pot museum east wall. Silver & chrome electrical pots.
And this is my photo of the Coffee Pot museum west wall. Aluminium and enamel pots.
And even the ceilings are festooned with coffee jugs. Mostly ceramic, a few metal.

The Coffee Pot museum is located within the Hotel Beutel on the northern outskirts of Stolberg. The hotel Beutel was one of the few wooden buildings executed from the many designs by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13.3.1781 to 9.10.1841), inter alia famous for his 1817 town planning of a new Berlin ('Spree-Athens'); his stage-scenery paintings for Mozart's 'Magic Flute' are also unforgotten. Why do I mention Schinkel? Because it'll be his 225th birthday this month and Germany is celebrating this by issuing a 10 Euro silver coin and a stamp in his memory. Plus we got to stay in the hotel he built ~200 years ago :-)

The most ornate coffee pot I ever saw was made in 1701 by Melchior Dinglinger. Silver with gold foil, embedded with diamonds and emaille miniatures; now in Dresden's museum.

Also neat : here are some of America's big coffee pots :-) And here is Canada's latest :-)

The photo below is for a blogreading soldier whose family came from the Stolberg area; he is currently in some hot Islamic desert, and is 'missing the snowy hills of home' :-(

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 2nd March 2006 at 06:02 CET permalink Email

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Stolberg : a 500+ year old market town :-)

This is the carnival season in Germany, which I usually like to avoid, so instead we met some friends in Stolberg. Stolberg is such a beautiful old market town, I thought I'd just show you some photos today. You can click on the links in my text to see more photos.

Stolberg lies on the southern edge of the Harz mountains in a very narrow Y-shaped valley, the confluence of two mountain rivers. The valleys are just wide enough to accommodate the river, a road and a row of houses along each side of the road. Most of the houses were built around the time that Columbus was discovering America. A different (green) house was built in 1485. The fashion of engraving multi-coloured Rosettes above the ground floor appears to have started in 1507. The door-painting remained unchanged for hundreds of years, compare the house door from 1507 (left) with the the one from 1704 (right).

The marketplace is triangular, being at the centre of the Y-shaped town. Some of the buildings bear gorgeous sundials, and whoever was the best shot in the annual rifle-shooting competitions has the traditional king-of-the-marksmen coat-of-arms mounted above his doorway, and the crown. Orb and sceptre are the 2nd and 3rd place prizes. The cobbler's house is now the (dark, cold and somewhat disappointing) local museum. But even the post-office's 18th century Prussian cast-iron mailbox is very ornate.

Of course the oldest building was one of the pubs, this photo shows us in the tiny pull-your-own-pints beer-cellar, built in 1282 (sic!). For my American friends, that's 210 years before Columbus left for America ;-) You pull your beer into a Stein of course, no glass :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on 1st March 2006 at 06:01 CET permalink Email

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