randform

In the current journal of our new employer, I found the above illustration. allthough I can not read the text around it, it seems to outline the interplay between pure and applied math.

High quality and well designed things are nice. Since these are usually more expensive (but not always!) it is good to know how to deal with bad design and how to live with it.

The previous sentence was meant as a kind of excuse, since I am feeling already bad that I criticise again a design over here (and Japan has actually a high culture of design!), however I feel these things have to be spoken out at one point.

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David Friedman has an ongoing series of ~60 seconds short movies on his blog ironic sans. I liked the above “60 seconds in the live of a commuter” a lot.

Just an update update about Pianist Nasseri’s last concert. Part of it -namely the Waltzes by Johannes Brahms– are now on youtube.

Since the recording is authorized by the artist, it wont probably be taken off like the video in this post (see the current discussion)

->Brahms 16 Waltzes, Op. 39. (Waltzes 1-5)
->Brahms 16 Waltzes, Op. 39. (Waltzes 6-11)

I am not sure, but it seems that it is forbidden to use a bike on major roads here in Japan. This may get a bit problematic in particular if the bike-lane layout is unfortunate as above, where it is hard to understand why the bus stop had to be made in such a way that the sidewalk got completely squeezed – especially given the fact that if a bus stops it occupies anyways half of the red roadway. It is actually quite easyy to get run over by a bike.

I found an even worse sidewalk/bikelane layout on a trip to the long penninsula which sits in front of Fukuoka (please see map for details). The biketrip there was intended as a refuge into nature – in particular I wanted to have a look at the open sea. But the trip turned out differently -the road to the penninsula’s tip was completely jammed due to heavy excursion traffic, the sidewalk very small and the sidewalk/street complex concealed with fences on both sides so that there was no way to leave the street. Given the heat (no shade) and the smell of the exhausts the biketrip became rather nightmarish.

So instead of having a look at the sea, I took the first exit of the road, which is the seaside park uminonakamichi and visited Marine World instead, which holds a shark (=HAI in german) basin. There was actually a diver in the basin and one wonders what makes people go in there voluntarily.

Some images of the shark basin at Uminonakamichi after the more

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After Tim’s berserk-land video post I thought maybe to post some friendly looking flowers. Yep they look bit candy-like as in a crayonbook colour competition, but its actually only the transparancy and saturation which is different, the calour itself is real.

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spaceborne apes is a music project of Niko Lai and this is a new song and video:
“Urban State Of Mind” (music, lyrics, and animation by Niko Lai).
enjoy.