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The Creation of the Universe, George Gamow (ISBN 9780486438689, Dover)
I bought this book not so long ago when I found a reference to it in another book. It originally came out in 1952 but the Dover edition is a reprint from 2004. The dedication of the book reads ‘To fellow cosmogonists of all lands and ages’. Although the book contains little mathematics, it is not a popular science book about the big bang but rather a historical treatise setting forth the arguments in favour of the big bang hypothesis. Gamow describes the different phases of the evolution of the universe after the big bang from a hot radiation plasma…
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Monte Renoso Trail on Corsica
On one of our first days on Corsica we decided to go for a walk and picked Monte Renoso as the target. We found this route on Komoot. The route from our apartment to the starting point took us along a narrow and tortuous but scenic road which managed to drain most of our battery. The starting point on Komoot was not accessible by car so we decided to go for the 4k alternative which started at a parking of a skiing station. This turned out to be a big mistake because this was no longer a walk but a…
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HP38G: Another addition to the calculator collection
I was recently surfing on eBay for an HP calculator and ended up buying 2. One is this HP38G. I didn’t do my research properly of course and only realised after it arrived that this is a traditional style calculator, not the typical HP RPN type I am used to. Apart from that it looks very much like many other HP calculators. You don’t know it doesn’t use RPN. It even has the deceiving Enter button prominently on display. I have tried using the calculator a few times sitting on the couch and for the very basic calculations like an…
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Finished the Intermediate Section: 100 Days of Code Python Bootcamp
Today I finished the day 31 capstone project of the course concluding the intermediate section: Next are another 15 or so days at the intermediate+ level. The capstone project of day 31 was to build a flashcard app. This was a quite useful project for me because it ties in nicely with one of the personal objectives I have which is to create a quizlet like app so I can stop using quizlet. At the moment we have a paying account on quizlet because it offers more functionality to make the learning more varied. With the day 31 capstone project…
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HP48G: A New Addition to the Calculator Collection
A while ago I was browsing Ebay and came across a second hand HP48G which looked quite nice. Price was OK so I decided to buy it. It travelled quite a while coming from the US but it was in working order. The included batteries were apparently old because they died after a month or so. I got a bit nervous when the calculator didn’t switch on anymore but after charging some bateries overnight and putting them in the machine is working again. I have calculators lying in multiple rooms in the house which saves me walking back and forth…
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Musée d’archéologie d’Aleria
On our first real day on Corsica we did the necesary grocery shopping first so that we could have breakfast, lunch and dinner at our apartment when we wanted to. As we didn’t get up too early that took us to lunch after which we decided to go for a short afternoon visit to the archeological museum of Aleria nearby. This is a small museum + archeological site with some artifacts dug up on the island and old Roman ruins. Entry price is cheap and the museum is small enough to spend a bit of time looking at and reading…
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Skyfall
The third James Bond movie with Daniel Craig and arguably the best one in my opinion. The movie introduces the new Q and Moneypenny characters and Javier Bardem is an excellent villain controlling events from behind a curtain. In that way this movie is also more a whodunnit in which the relationship between Bond and M is explored. In the dramatic finale of the movie we find out what the movie title stands for. In the opening scenes we see Bond together with Moneypenny trying to apprehend the mercenary Patrice. The action ends with Bond being shot by Moneypenny and…
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Residence Marine de Bravone on Corsica
On our second trip to Corsica we took the early ferry from Livorno. Departure at 9am, latest check in at 8am and leaving our hotel at 7am to have some buffer. This turned out to be a good idea because although we got to the harbour in about 20 minutes it took us a bit of time to find the right entry into the harbour. The signalling sent us to a dead end with luckily some person at the gate directing everyone to another entry. We simply followed the car in front of us together with gps instructions and made…
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One Quarter of the Way: 100 Days of Coding Python Bootcamp
After having applied the object oriented programming paradigm in a few lessons building games like snake and pong with Turtle the course deviates to explain how to read and write csv files and introduces the pandas library. On day 26 list and dictionary comprehension are introduced as powerful and elegant ways to create a list or a dictionary on a single line of code. I had learned about list comprehension before but have so far not really used it in my own programs as I obviously didn’t feel comfortable enough to use them. The benefit of having gone through the…
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Dinner at Saporito in Livorno while staying in the Max Hotel
After having visited Pisa along the way we drove to Livorno to Max Hotel. This turned out to be situated at the outskirts of the city in a not too pedestrian friendly neighbourhood. Parking in front was limited but there was a large parking space next door catering to shoppers of some kind of supermarket. They also have an underground parking but we didn’t bother to park underground. So after checking in we decided to try and go for dinner in the city centre. Unfortunately there was some kind of event going on and we could not find a single…
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