World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
Super beautiful demonstration of the Pentatonic Scale by Bobby McFerrin. His last comment is especially interesting, that wherever in the world he tries this, the audience is able to sing the pentatonic scale and follow his improvisations. Remindes me of Joachim Ernst Behrend’s book Nada Brahma: The World Is Sound. Music is the great connector. Let’s make more of it.
During regular days, I seldom stop and listen. The routine, all the other things to think about and still need to be done: “Nina, please go to bed. Now!”
Last night after a great meal and being on vacation even though it was way past her bedtime, we were hanging out on the balcony of our hotel in Santa Cruz looking onto the ocean with the full moon shining down on us.
It was getting cooler and over time Nina ended up rolled up in a blanket on my lap. And she started to ask questions:
Nina: Is this how the sea sleeps?
Me: (thinking: Wow, how do you answer this?) Well, you can say so, yes.
Nina: Why isn’t the sea sleeping like Mama?
Me: What do you mean?
Nina: Well, with a blanket and a pillow?
Me: (thinking: Now, how do you answer that?)
Nina: It isn’t quiet.
Me: No it isn’t.
Nina a bit louder: Stop it!
Nina laughs: The sea doesn’t listen to me.
Me laughing too: No, it doesn’t.
Nina: It’s the beach. It’s because of the beach that the sea can’t sleep like Mama.
Me: (Smiling while envisioning the ocean turning to its side while having a blanket and pillow) I guess so.
That little exchange made my day.
Need to stop and tune into Nina more often.
Picture taken last night by Mark & Marie Finnern.
Tim O’Reilly currently has 800K+ twitter followers. He liked my Wikipedia Papers idea and tweeted about it, after pinging me that I should update my blogger profile at O’Reilly with my twitter handle. Will do, it is @finnern.
You probably would like to know what is the O’Reilly factor of being mentioned in one of Tim’s tweets?
40 re-tweets 18 new followers (welcome) within 24 hours.This is of course only one data point, your millage may vary.
The greatest of all is, that my idea of letting students improve Wikipedia pages instead of writing papers reached a lot of people. Let’s hope it gets momentum. Spread the word.
After I picked up Nina from her School, we picked up some bread, cold cuts and water for a hearty Vesper that we took on the big school yard playground across the street.
Little background to the bike: I got it from a garage sale, took the pedals off, so that she could get comfortable learning how to balance while still having both feet on the ground.
Last weekend I put the pedals back on and added the large handle to the back of the seat, so that I am able to follow and correct her worst off balance rides.
Video of Nina’s first Bicycle Ride
Originally uploaded by Mark & Marie Finnern
I wasn’t finished with my sandwich yet, but she wanted to continue to bike. I put her helmet back on and thought I just let her try get on the bike without me breathing down her neck, in a minute I will be there.
Next thing I know she is pedaling all over the school yard. I literally just took my cell phone, switched it to video and tried to follow her.
It was actually tough to keep up and half way through I thought: “Oh no, this will end in a crash”, and was close to grab the handle, but she was too fast. The video looks extra shaky as it was taken with my phone, she was in control the whole time.
Love her giving comments to her own ride at the end too. Excellent.
I was in San Francisco the other day and there it was, Stacey’s bookstore had closed and was selling the inventory. I think that is a sad day, as this was also a place for the local community to come together.
If you look closer you can read some great quotes: Martin Luther King: History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this so called social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Next time you are in one of your beloved independent bookstores, buy a book. I heard that Kepler’s in Menlo Park is also struggling.
Picture taken by Mark & Marie Finnern.
Lufthansa Banner Promotion Fail
Stumbled on a great banner this morning while looking for cheap flights to the mother country. On the Lufthansa’s Top Offer page there was the banner to the right: $100 off your next booking.
Today is the July 5th and I overlooked the small print: *4000 codes available. Since when is there a small print on a banner ads?
I filled in my information, even dug out my Miles and More number, to be told at the end, that there are no codes available anymore 
Really frustrating. I feel cheated out of my personal information including my email address for nothing.
Would be so easy to avoid this frustration with a simple if clause before showing the banner: If codes-used > 4000 or date > July 5th then display_other_ad.
Lufthansa’s tag line: Online travel planning made easy is insult ot injury.
Christopher Allen took this picture while waiting for the Apple keynote today to be opened. Click on the picture to get the bigger picture.
What struck me is how everyone is looking the same, and in addition, I would totally fit in.
It may have been a Monday morning problem, but not a lot of smiles there either.
Where is Waldonna? Or are only guys receptive to the Apple distortion field? Seriously, I studied the picture and I see only one woman.
How come, that Waldonna is not as interested in tinkering and developing stuff? These days in any other field but Computer Science there are more women studying it than man. It is frustrating and I am happy to organize a Future Salon to tackle that problem.
While Nina learns how to balance and coast on the walk-a-bike (bike where the pedals are taken off.) I took out my Unicycle today. Would be great to master staying in one place with it. Which is hard, as you have to go constantly back and forth, that my wheel is a relative big one doesn’t help with that goal.
But it really makes a huge difference to Nina and me, if we are both trying to get better at driving a bike.
The beauty is, we move at about the same pace. It was a breeze to get to Levy’s (friend of Nina’s) house, which is just on the other side of the school yard.
To take off the pedals is getting very trendy around here. If I ever find the time I will post pictures of getting a bike from a garage sale and how we converted it to a pushbike aka walk-a-bike as Nina and I like to call it.
Picture taken by Mark & Marie Finnern.
In the mid 80s there was a pasta scandal in Germany. No one trusted the ready made pastas in the shop anymore. During that time I once showcased how to use a Pasta Machine in a shop. We actually sold I think 16 of these machines that day. I was wearing an apron and a baker’s hat. It was quite the experience.
Now almost 25 years later, we got one of these machines, they are almost unchanged. I was struggling to get the consistency of the dough right, but as you can see from the picture, Nina was helping me, which made it all good.
Since then, the best wife of all made some linguine with semolina flour, which were much better than mine. We had them the last two days. Yummy!
Picture taken by Mark & Marie Finnern.
Update: I should try this more often suggest improvements on my blog. I wrote and posted this entry on May 4th. Two days later Twitter changed their email notification. I am convinced that it was co-incidence and the change was in the works for a while. They also don’t call it “Smack”, but more civilized “Block” this user. Thanks Twitter team.
The only thing missing are the last 5 posts of the new follower, but I guess they were afraid that this additional database call would tax their system too much.
This morning the Twitter Follow Spammers spiked for me about 10x. It is frustrating and I feel a bit helpless, as I don’t want to go to every spam follower’s profile to block. Others just switched off all follow emails, which I may be forced to do too.
In addition to my previous request to enhance the Twitter follow email, I would like to have a smack button in it too: This Twitter user is a spammer <smack>. Actually I could only do it when I have the additional information: Twitterer since, number of followers, posts, last 5 posts, …
In the background Twitter could have an algorithm running taking into account: Posts, followers, conversations and number of smacks to throw people off the system. If they want to continue to be successful they need such strengthen their immune system.
I am afraid that soon we will all get “@<your twitter name> check this out !!! Cheap. <link>” Which will destroy your vanity Twitter search. A Smack button needed for that too.
