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Internet Services Discoveries
Because I doing the 100 Days of Code Python course I am discovering all kinds of information that is programmatically available on the internet. The latest one is latlong.net. On this site you can type in the name of a city and get the latitude and longitude back. It also gives you gps coordinates. Another one which was fun but probably less useful is an api for tracking the current location of ISS. There are also weather services, sites that tell you sunrise and sunset times at a location and date of choice, trivia quiz databases, etcetera etcetera. The point…
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Bastia, Corsica
One of our days on Corsica we spent visiting Bastia. We had been there on our previous visit and judging purely on size and population Bastia is more a village than a city. But walking around there it gives you the feeling of being in a bigger city. It has nice bars, restaurants and shops selling all the big brands. We arrived shortly before noon and decided to walk around looking for a place for lunch first. Without intention we ended up in restaurant Nova, the same restaurant where we ate a few years ago. The restaurant has a large…
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Local Markets near Bravone on Corsica
During our vacation on Corsica we went to a couple of markets. The first one was a Thursday morning market near Bravone where they had a lot of local produce. We bought some spicy olive oil and wine from a vineyard nearby. But it was too hot in the sun to really enjoy it. There were also some stands with local crafts so we could pick up a few souvenirs to give to friends and family back home. We also went to the evening market at Cervione. This is a small village on a hill top and the market occupies…
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Quizzes and Quizlets
As mentioned in several other posts I am following a Python course on Udemy and what started as search for a suitable Python course for my kids turned out to be a Python journey for myself generating new skills and ideas for private projects such as my own ‘quizlet app’ and in a more general quiz application. I have made a couple of computer quizzes and also worked on traditional quiz evenings and always most of the work goes into creating the questions and multiple choice answers. In the Python bootcamp I learned about the Open Trivia Database that takes…
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Spectre
Spectre is the penultimate James Bond movie with Daniel Craig playing James Bond. Together with the last one it forms one continuous storyline. In it we finally meet up with Spectre again, the ominous crime organisation we already know from older James Bond movies. We also meet Blofeld and discover a close connection between Blofeld and James Bond towards the end of the movie. The other important character, arguably the most important character in the James Bond franchise is that of Madeleine Swann, played by the fabulous Léa Seydoux. The story is certainly entertaining but I don’t know for certain…
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Porto-Vecchio on Corsica
During our summer vacation on Corsica we visited a few villages and towns. One was Porto-Vecchio. This is a charming old fortified harbour town, typical for Corsica. Although it was less than a 100km away from where we were staying it turned out to be another day trip. Of course, we were taking it easy which meant we only left our apartment between 10 and 10:30 in the morning. This meant we arrived just in time for lunch. After a short stop along the road to go the toilet we parked our car and headed for the center to have…
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Willem Frederik Hermans Volledige Werken Volledig!
Ever since I had to read a few books from Willem Frederik Hermans in high school I have been a fan of his work. I bought and read a number of his books over the years but when the project to publish all his works started and the first volume came out in 2005 I have been buying these volumes now and then whenever I remembered to look if a new volume had come out. The complete work consists of 24 books and by 2024 I had bought about two thirds of the collection. At that point it became an…
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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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