All the best!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and all the best in 2022!

Stay safe.

And well.

More statistics - Sufferfest

Inspired by the Duolingo progress, I also did some Sufferfest-ing statistics. Or am I supposed to say Systming?

So, in the last five months, I've spent 102 hours and 15 minutes Suffering. That is, on average, 40 minutes a day! 

That is a lot of suffering :-D

Unfortunately, I cannot give a yearly statistics, as the first half of the year I was either Les Mills-ing or Rouvy-ing the French passes.

Duolingo

Duolingo just calculated my yearly progress.

Extrapolating to the end of the year: 696 day streak and 3537 minutes spent learning. Mostly French, also a bit of Italian.

Whoa, this is almost 60 hours of active learning.

Still not much compared to the hours spent passively learning by watching French films and series ;-)

Christmas cards!

With most of the Christmas cards on their way, I can finally reveal this year's design. I must admit, never before did I have this much trouble making the cards as sub-millimetre precision was required.

They are lots of fun. They work. 

But I am making something simpler next year!

 

P.S. The inspiration obviously came from  Rufus Butler's Gallop! - a wonderful children's book with plenty of such 'scanimations'.

Can I panic?

It's almost December and although I have all the material for this year's Christmas cards, I still haven't got a perfectly working prototype!

It requires extreme submillimeter precision and I am not quite there yet...

I just have to make it work.

Soon!

Time for more music

I just realised I haven't posted my current music preferences for quite a while. So here they are:

Woodkid - I love you

Gioli & Assia - Acoustic Moon Faces

Frero Delavega - Le chant des sirenes

M83 - Versailles theme

Loic Nottet - Mr/Mme

Worakls - Adagio for square

A lovely autumn

 We've been away. Not very far, but it was wonderfully relaxing.

 

Of course we were very active: kayaking, climbing, exploring the caves, even mini golf :-)

 

 

My evenings and weekends

Finally we made the big step and started renovating the top floor of our house.

A lot of work ... a LOT of work is still ahead of us but at least we started the ball rolling.

Pretty packages

Sometimes we are asked to give money as present and .. well .. you can't give just a few notes in an envelope, right?

So for someone saving money for a camera, what could be more appropriate than a camera shutter card with money placed inside?

And yes, the shutter opens and closes :-)

For someone who was celebrating a diamond occasion, I hid the banknotes into an origami diamond. I even found some iridescent paper (transparent isn't quite the way to go)!

I should have known it.

Say there is something you like. And believe in it. And identify with it.

    Yes, Sufferfest, looking at you.

And then you start getting emails about what a great upgrade is coming.

    Yes, Sufferfest, looking at you.

And when the big change arrives, you are so so SO bitterly disappointed. 

    Yes, Sufferfest, looking at you.

You no longer like it. You no longer feel like part of it. You feel left out. And you hate the name change.

    Yes, SYSTM, looking at you.

Just a lot of PC corporate BS.

    Yes, SYSTM, looking at you.

It sucks bitterly, but then again, I am old enough that I should have known it.

Rant over.

A lovely afternoon

I've had an insanely busy month (or more) organising a conference. But now that the conference is over, I can finally get an afternoon (or more) off. 

So I've been kayaking.

And enjoying the late summer...

Julia, why?

You know the feeling when you run a code and it does not work? When you get tons of error messages? And you're really frustrated and give up? 

And then you ask MrMojcek to help and all he does is run your code exactly the same way you did (from history, so exactly the same!). And it works?!?

Julia, why is he your Romeo and not me?

Aaaaand...

Aaaaand ... we're back to homeschooling.

Both kids in quarantine. 

That didn't take long.

Windcatchers

Not much needs to be said. I only wish I could somehow capture the wind and preserve it for a later moment... Maybe invent a windcatcher?

 

PS. Now I googled windcatchers and these things actually exist. Not the way I would want them to work, but interesting nevertheless.

A colourful bouquet

 A colourful bouquet of kayaks, of course ;-)

They are pretty, you have to admit.

:-D

You know the feeling when you find a comment to a YouTube video that you can totally relate to?

My (currently) favourite one:

To Born Slippy - Underworld: "As a 46 year old man that loves all forms of techno it occurred to me that in 20 to 30 years this is what your gonna hear coming out of retirement homes and assisted living facilities"

Yes, please.

Watching TV like everyone else

Just like the rest of the world, I'm watching the Olympics and am fascinated by the athletes. My heroes being:

- Roglič. Pure power and concentration.

- Savšek. Pure elegance and coordination. I'm really happy for him... although he is from 'the other' club, from the other part of town ;-)

- Kiesenhofer. Brilliant, just brilliant! Plus, she holds a PhD in mathematics on pretty much the same subject as MrMojcek. Such a funny coincidence.

So many so interesting stories behind these great achievements.

Update

 We've been away. 

Although we were driving a red car, it was not this one...

This beauty is in the Ferrari museum in Maranello.

Charity kayaking, again

I've been terribly neglecting this blog in the last months. It doesn't mean I'm not doing anything: I am just not writing about it.

For example: I was paddling for charity (unfortunately not as successful as last year, mostly due to my recent injury).

This is not me. But I was there.

This is not me either ;-)

!!!

 Oh, I'll see your gray and stormy skies and raise you this beauty.

Yes, we were wet. 

No, I didn't care.

!

There are blue skies, which I like.

And then there's this:

Which I love :-)

A lovely evening

A lovely stroll along the river after a pretty enjoyable day. 

I am not complaining. 

Optics in spring

Now that my hand is getting better (and the weather warmer), I opened the kayaking and cycling season. 

And I can again play with some simple experiments.

Optical activity of sugar (sugar dissolved in water between polarisers)

I mean - how can anybody not love physics?!?

Dear Winter!

Dear Winter,

you know I love you dearly. I truly do. 

But there comes the time to let go and move on.

And now is the time.

So, go.

Preferably before all my trees break and flowers freeze.

And yes, this is 10 cm of snow in the last 3 hours. Still falling ...

e

Half a year ago I wrote that "Everybody - and I mean everybody - should know how an exponential curve behaves. Period."

After over a year of living with Covid, people still don't know.

 

But I recently stumbled upon a comics that describes is way better that I could:

Jens von Bergmann on Twitter

Spring is here!

What a lovely start of the spring...

with a snowstorm :-)

Ouch!

I'm going to use the words of someone very smart: "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

Well, I didn't even try something new, I just made a mistake...

Snow, finally!

Finally we're allowed to leave the municipalities, so we decided to enjoy some snow. 

A warm, late winter day. A lovely day.

Tourmalet, again

Time for (virtually) climbing Col du Tourmalet again. 

No help from Mr Mojcek needed this time, and I did it in just under 2:18 :-)

The only help I had was from Paul Kalkbrenner. 

On repeat.

Opera Cake

I've never made one before so it was time to make myself an Opera cake. 

Very rich. 

Very caloric. 

But yummy!

My love for all things French continues :-)

Time for more science!

 I mean, what can be prettier and more fascinating than science?

Glass of water acting as a lens and reversing the image :-)

Crossed polarisers show birefringence in standard school rulers :-)

Droplets on phone screen acting as magnifying glass making individual RGB pixels visible :-D

365!

For a couple of times I've had an over 300-day streak on Duolingo, but I've never come this far: 

365 :-D

And a Happy New Year!

Virtually climbing Col du Tourmalet from Luz-Saint-Sauveur - check. 

Time... well... with a tiny little bit of help from Mr. Mojcek, I made it in 2:22.