Fruit matters

Yay! I just ordered a top of the range iMac (think 24", 2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 750 GB HD) yesterday, and now I am auctioning my good old Cinema Display. How disloyal is that! No bids taken for the MacBook btw, I'll keep that around for my mobile computing needs.

Wise evolution

Here is an intuitively convincing essay which is meant to demonstrate the possibility of evolutionary systems despite of their counter-intuitivity. I like the style and the ambition (via /.).

Tales from the Emerald Isle

It's true, my blogging is getting lazy: It's over ten days that we've returned from the family trip to Ireland, the 1600+ pics have been distilled down to half that, about 250 of which have ended up in an iPhoto photo book (highly commendable!) which is already here, but I still haven't blogged about the trip in any detail. Given that I don't approve of the no time excuse as a matter of principle (it's always a question of priorities), I have nothing to hide behind other than that. Yet, here's Ireland redux in pictures.

Anyways, onwards to greener pastures, literally: Ireland is a fabulous destination for a family round trip. Here's the approximate route we took during our eight days. A word of caution is in order at this point: Don't be ambitious about the mileage you can do, many of the cross country roads are still charmingly scenic, which is a euphemism for narrow and somewhat bumpy, and don't rely to heavily on any one map. I brought my trusty TomTom, and yet we had to rely not only on C's navigational skills, but also on the occasionally rather epic directions of extremely helpful and friendly publicans. So, give yourself time - travelling Ireland is not a rushing matter. Also, make sure that you're fit: one of our drivers currently suffers from a herniation apparently contracted on the drive.

Our night quarters were, in order of sequence: Cabra Castle for one night, Dromoland Castle and Park Hotel Kenmare for two nights each, Waterford Castle and finally, Kilkea Castle. So, plenty of old stones, and yet, the experience was quite fresh everywhere. We were particularly surprised about the consistently high quality of the food everywhere - not to speak of the quantities. Obviously, the chefs cater mostly to Americans rather than French guests, even though the latter would hardly find anything to complain about, except for the over-priced wine list maybe. But then again, we were travelling with a wine expert, and Ireland is certainly not grape country. The altogether most outstanding experiences were to be had at Dromoland and Kenmare. Waterford shone with its Victorian infrastructure (sic!) and its high potential (meaning it has a bit of catching up to do), whereas Kilkea appeared a bit, erm, rustic?

Thus, we had a great impression of the spectacular beauty of the Irish countryside and its heritage. We did not get much exposure to modern Ireland and its contemporary culture, but that was not the purpose of the trip anyway. So there's something for next time, right?

How does it feel?

The New Scientist answers a question that probably everyone wonders about: How does it feel to die? Interesting!

Hello from Ireland!

Did I mention that I am currently staying in Ireland for a few days with a bunch of family? I can already recommend to stay here and here! At Cabra, do not forget to meet Oscar, the Irish Wolfhound castle dog - an impressive appearance!

William Hayes

After an all day strategy session yesterday, I went to the debut of Capriccio Basel's new CD with recordings of William Hayes, an English baroque composer and devotee of Händel. His music is radiant and imaginative, and yet, he does not have an English language Wikipedia entry! What gives?

Asia pics

Thanks to iPhoto '08, check out my new web gallery with the pictures from my recent trip to Singapore and Seoul! The things you can do with web gallery are neat, but it's a bit of a bandwidth hog ...

Peccabo

Interesting! Swiss / Lufthansa have started a partnership to offset carbon emissions from air travel. To offset the 342 kg of CO2 produced by my forthcoming trip to Ireland will cost CHF 11, for instance. A trip to London is CHF 9. Good stuff - never since the days of indulgences was a clear conscience attainable for less! Too bad that the indulgence cannot be added at the point of sales directly - that is going to be the next step in the sales cooperation, I guess.

Therefore, in the spirit of Sir Charles Napier's immortal pun, let's keep sining!

Welcome, Anna!

I'm still working on clearing the backlog from my recent trip. So, here's a big one - or, a small one, as the case may be: A big welcome to Anna Elenie! My nephew R.'s and his partner A's little girl has entered the stage on 29 August already. More pictures of her are available in my flickr account (check out the sidebar), and hopefully soon on a blog of her own.

NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOM

Abbreviations are fun, are they not, and this mouthful, beyond all doubt, is the mother of all abbreviations! According to this, it stands for (translated) Laboratory for Shuttering, Reinforcement, Concrete and Ferroconcrete Operations for Composite-monolithic and Monolithic Constructions of the Department of Technology of Building Assembly Operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for Building Mechanization and Technical Aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR. So, despite of being 56 characters long, it still entails a fairly decent abbreviation ratio of 5.54, which is better than NOPAT's 5.2, but worse than USSR with 7.75. Come to think, Russian words tend to be longer than English ones, so the homoglot ratio probably would be even better. (Thanks, RB!)