My Bike

Hi again,

I didn't publish anything since April, but a lot has happened. I started cycling again here in the US. Yes, you did hear right, I'm cycling in the US and I do so not only for recreation, but also for commute. I thought about that quite early so I chose the location of my apartment close to my employee which is now only about 5 kilometers away. Grocery stores, a railway station and even a cinema are all in bike distance, so buying or using a car doesn't really make sense up to now. Maybe towards the winter...

For recreation I cycle about 40-60 kilometers on each trip at the moment, once or twice every week. I complement that by running 5-10 kilometers once or twice a week, depending on the weather and personal fitness. Unfortunately, I still suffer slightly from the walking pneumonia that I had in February/March, but whenever I exercise it feels much better.

Stephan

CoverFlow

Hi,

some days ago I came along CoverFlow, a nice-looking MacOSX based music album browser. It's an add-on to iTunes and therefore inherits the standard iTunes functionality. Unfurtunately, this application is not listed in the Apple software directory, but comes for free!

Stephan

Thoughts about the Great Wall (Astronomy)

To those that are interested in astronomy,

in the need of getting some entertainment I found an interesting (German) website that has lots of 15-minute TV clips in which a physics professor explains phenomena of our universe. I've always been fascinated by the universe, but these clips increased my interest dramatically.

One phenomena discussed there is the sparse foam-like structure of galaxy superclusters in the Great Wall. By thinking more about it I came up with a mathematical explanation. Similar structures can be observed elsewhere in nature, e.g. by studying the territorial behaviour of the mouth-breeder fish that results in Voronoi-Tesselations. A nice picture may be found here (German website). I think a similar, 3-dimensional structure may evolve from strong gravity centers like black holes when they "empty" the space in between them from matter.

Stephan

First Steps in a New Country

Hi,

by thinking about the first few months here in the US it's worth writing about it. I came here in January 2006 which was a fairly cold month, so probably not the best choice for a warm welcome. However, initially things went fine and I arranged getting an apartment by the beginning of February which was most important to me at that time. Just before I moved in I got sick by something called "walking pneumonia". While the symptoms were not clear and yet I wasn't really used to the US health system I went to the doctor only by mid February. I got treatment by antibiotics, but finally managed to get rid of the walking pneumonia by mid to end of March. I also made the experience that buying a car as a foreigner isn't too easy, so I sticked to buying a bike and go to work by bike every day (more healthy anyway). And... you get noticed by the Americans that way as biking seems to be rather special to the US.

Stephan

My First Blog

Hi,

some months back I still thought that blogs are only used by a minority of "new life style" people. But then I moved from Germany to the US to start working for a big company and soon realized I need some new method to keep friends informed about me. I still consider it to be an experiment and it may fail, but I'm already glad having started with it.

Stephan