City Fox

London harbours a lot of foxes. They come out at night, search for food, fight or mate. Yesterday was such a night. I was quick enough to snap a pic .. unfortunately only with my mobile .. so pardon the quality.

Good to know: Foxes can make the most aweful and painful sounds you can imagine! I once woke up at night and thought my neighbour is finally slaughtering their babies with an axe. But I was wrong! I had to get up and sleep walk to my window to see two foxes fighting.

Phoenix Mars Mission

I just realised that the Phoenix Mars Mission — the lastest mars robot from NASA — is led by Lunar Planetary Lab of University of Arizona… in Tuscon! That’s where I’m going next weekend. So I could pop by at their command center and say hello. I’ll think about it ..

Smooth Return Travel?

I have yet to experience a smooth return travel. The last few times weren’t really optimal!

Last time when I tried to catch a train from Stansted some moron decided to jump in front of the train at the airport. At 8pm on Sunday at an airport! He didn’t only have the wrong intention, he also picked the wrong place and time, and in turn delayed a couple of thousand travelers.

This time my plane got its take-off slot or whatever late which caused to delay everything else.

Anyway, I think the right formula is to pick smaller airports (e.g. City) where waiting times, take off slots, immigration control, baggage reclaim and suicides are easier to organise and cleanup.

Sites

When I was booking my flight to the US a friend of mine pointed me to two nice pages:

• seatguru.com: See all good/bad seats and which to avoid on most airlines and plane types
• airlinemeals.net: Browse through thousands of pictures of airline meals. The difference between first and economy is striking 😉

Schedule

Diese Woche sieht so aus:

• Morgen Geburtstag 🙂
• Morgen ein Seminar an City Uni von Sabelfeld, einem Forscher aus Chalmers. Chalmers gehoerte zu den Unis, bei welchen ich mich fuer den Master beworben habe. Ende 2005 habe ich dafuer Goeteborg und Chalmers besucht… jedoch kam es nicht zum “jonny goes to sweden” und das ist auch gut so 😉
• Freitag Abend (sehr) kurzen Abstecher nach Basel vom City Airport..

The Blue Stilton Experiment

Wikipedia refers to a study from the British Cheese Board which states the following:

A 2005 study carried out by the British Cheese Board claimed that when it came to dream types, Stilton cheese seemed to cause odd dreams, with 75% of men and 85% of women experiencing bizarre and vivid dreams after eating a 20 gram serving of the cheese half an hour before going to sleep.

So I thought I’m going to test this out and I bought a pack of blue stilton. One of my housemates decided to join me in the experiment.

First impression of this cheese was that it’s a rip-off from Gorgonzola. Which is most probably the case given that Gorgonzola’s history is few thousand years old and Stilton only 200. It’s drier than Gorgonzola, a bit milder and more salty. I had my first portion last Sunday, 30g before sleep.

The next morning, I didn’t notice any weird dreams .. however I realised how deep my sleep was. I slept like a rock which is usually not the case. That week I took Stilton twice again, last time on Wednesday night. I went to bed at 12:30 and set my alarm to 08:10. Unfortunately, I woke up after 09:30 with the alarm turned off! Now, everybody who knows me better knows that this happens extremely rarely … for me that’s a sign that Stilton is indeed altering sleep patterns. My housemate who also took blue stilton reports similar deep sleep experiences

So … go to your grocery store, get blue stilton and report back 🙂

Google Maps + Panoramio

Google Maps enthalten jetzt geo-tagged Bilder von Panoramio. Hier ein Blick auf Basel! Zoom in.

Under the bridge

Under the bridge near to our house I found an abandoned car. With one wheel missing. Quite a stupid place to leave your car .. considering that the owner could have pushed the car 15m further and off the main road!

Looking at the pigeon poo on the street I’m sure the driver of this cabriolet made a small mistake leaving it there 🙂

Haedoepfl and Cervelat

Kuerzlich auf Reuters: Swiss government says Euro 2008 fans can have their chips

BERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – The Swiss government has agreed to ease restrictions on the importation of potatoes following fears that Euro 2008 football fans could face a shortage of French fries next month.

A spokesman for the country’s department of agriculture told national radio on Wednesday that the government would allow an additional 5,000 tonnes of potatoes to be brought in.

Im Artikel lernt man auch, dass Cervelats mit Brazillianischen Kuhdaermen umhuellt werden..

Loss of electricity

How funny is that. On Friday I had to go my local Barclays branch to make some payments … but it turned out I couldn’t. The bank was out of electricity. The staff just left when I came and they shrugged their shoulder, said sorry and locked the door. Here’s the hand-written note on the door

I returned four hours later — though the branch was still closed 🙂