A great new firefox-add-on is Juice: Discover. Organize. Share.
Juice is an intelligent discovery engine that integrates seamlessly with your browser.
Highlight and move a chunk of text, and Juice directly delivers a set of rich, relevant content to you.
As you see on the screenshot I’ve selected from my own recent blogpost on the movie “Entre les murs” the text “entre les murs” I dragged and dropped it into Juice. As the Juice website tells us:
Juice will start performing its tricks.
Data-mining is fun with Juice, together with some other great add-ons like Evernote, Delicious, Readeroo and Zotero.
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As a child I liked to play Stratego and Mastermind. Later I learned to play Draughts and Chess. Recently I learned to play Go at the 321go-website. And, inspired by a blogpost at wiskundemeisjes I learned about Hex.
Unfortunately I’m a bad player: too impatient to take my time to think and of course I hate it to lose. So I’m glad all these games are also @MYComputer; at my desktop I can play whenever I want and save the game when my attention is drifting to another topic of interest. I continue the game - or not - if, when and where I want and nobody will notice if I lose.
Links:
Mastermind software.
Online Mastermind game
Stratego software
Harm Jetten’s draughts program
3-2-1-go
Free Go Programs
Hex Wiki
BoardGameGeek website
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A Man must get a thing before he can forget it. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas - Fresco by Andrea da Firenze
This fourteenth-century fresco is on the walls of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. It pictures the wisdom and virtue of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas is sitting on a throne, surrounded by flying figures representing the three theological virtues (Faith; steadfastness in belief, Hope; expectation of good and Love; selfless, unconditional, and voluntary loving-kindness) and four cardinal virtues (Prudentia=prudence; proper judgement of reasons for action with regard to appropriateness in a context, Justitia=justice; proper judgement regarding individual human interests, rights and desserts, Fortitudo = fortitude; forbearance, endurance, and ability to confront fear and uncertainty, or intimidation and Temperantia=temperance; practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation).
There is a lot to see in this picture on a theological level, but what is of interest now are the female figures sitting in niches symbolizing the knowledge of Thomas. The seven figures on the right represent the liberal arts, from right to left: Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy. The first three are also known ast the “Trivium“, the other four as the “Quadrivium“.
Septem Artes Liberales by Herrad von Landsberg's "Hortus deliciarum" (1180)
The liberal arts are still the guide to education, aiming to acquire a general knowledge and developing intellectual capacities.However, the scope of our 21-century wikipedia is much bigger than Thomas’ Summa, so it is impossible to know everything about everything.
Google helps us to save all the available knowledge, yeah, but what is on a server @Google is not always accessible to my mind, so I still want to save, edit, recall as much information I can handle. Learning strategies may help us, so this is a round-up about some techniques I use to build up my brain:
- Basic study strategies: I made an outline of the book “Your memory. How it works and how to improve it.” by Kenneth Higbee. I used the Brain for representing the information, you’ll find it here (opens in a new window).
- Bloom’s Taxonomy:
Well, as you can see, there is enough; you can make a study of study techniques without getting wiser:-).
I personally think there is not one style, but you need different techniques for different things you must learn. And, of course, the best way of learning is playing; doing things.
I will finish this blog with the lyrics of a song about the mnemonics of Giordano Bruno:
Vintersorg Ars Memorativa Lyrics:
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.
You built all memories on a framework
of the zodiac and other known structures,
every thought was linked to a special picture.
You stigmatized their keenness and location
on a deep and shrouded level. Remembering, controling
was the way to higher knowledge.
In the nature you saw the outlines of an universal intelligence,
every process a reflecting mirror. Symbols meant to trigger
the shadow of the ideas in the maze of recollection.
A vortex of information reigned inside
and found its way,
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.
With self-hypnosis you put it in
a dynamic pattern,
IN THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND
No physical laws were rooted in your system
everything was forces of thoughts and sensations,
which is streaming through man.
Mist and rain just a condition of unawareness,
and volcanos a state of rage.
A prophet in cosmology, like Copernicus
you saw the stars as suns.
And a warrior who fought with intellctual swords,
with arrow-sharp words.
In the nature you saw the outlines of an universal intelligence,
every process a reflecting mirror. Symbols meant to trigger
the shadow of the ideas in the maze of recollection.
A vortex of information reigned inside
and found its way,
THROUGH THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND.
With self-hypnosis you put it in
a dynamic pattern,
IN THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND
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David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” has infected the Web, especially web 2.0. There are a lot of blogs on GTD, the most famous are probably Merlin Mann’s 43 folders, and Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits. The great LifeHacker website has some interesting articles on GTD and, more important, articles on other Life Hacks that make life worth living for a Geek.
I like GTD for it’s logic, it’s clarity, but a serious side effect is the discussion about operating systems (Windows or Mac) and software applications that help integrating GTD into your life. This, and the overkill of blogs with tips and tricks lead you necessarily reading so much about Getting Things Done, that you wind up with getting nothing done at all, or at least getting less done than you usually did before you read the book.
Last month LinuxFormat magazine had an article on GTD organization tools. I’ve tried them all, but the application that works for me wasn’t in the list: it is D3 TiddlyWiki (D3 means: Do, Delegate, Defer), which works perfectly well with Firefox from my USB drive.
In fact this is the only thing I use @computer: I do have a RememberTheMilk-account, with all the necessary add-ons in Thunderbird, Firefox and Gmail, but although I send every task to my RTM inbox, I forget to check it regularly.
I think there is nothing wrong with good old-fashioned pen and paper. So my HipsterPDA is the cheapest (€ 0,90) and smallest (10,2 x 6,3 cm) note-blocks you can buy in The Netherlands. I wear them in the pocket of my shirt. With a four color pen (€ 0,95) I write down my task:
Then I use the following codes:
- Red: Do the task asap.
- Blue: Do task today
- Green: Do task this week
- Black: This goes into my somewhere/maybe folder.
When the task is done I tear it out and throw the piece of paper in the trash bin.
A more high-tech capture tool I use is my Olympus Voice recorder - When cycling to my work (or back home after work) I simply record whatever comes to my mind (a tune, an idea for my blog, a task I may not forget, a present I have to buy) into my voice recorder.
Well, that’s all there is. Quite simple eh? Never a dull moment, but some time left to read a book, to study, to program, to compose or just to have fun; that’s after all the purpose of life.
Don’t live to geek, but geek to live (Gina Trapani)
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Or… what’s all this Kuehleborn-nonsense about? Why such a difficult name? Well, as explained before, there was a time when I called myself “giorgio”, the italian form of my daily-life name. That was in the olden days, but when signing up with hotmail for an account I noticed that I was not the only giorgio in the web anymore…hotmail suggested I should use the name giorgio238!
So I decided to chose a username that nobody else would use. I thought about it, and choose “kuehleborn”, simply because it is a character in one of my favourite opera’s (Undine) written by my favourite opera-composer (Albert Lortzing). But when I became more and more familiar with this name, I noticed that I began to identify myself with this character. So, in fact I *am* Kuehleborn.
Facebook’s application “Name Analyzer” brought me closer to this conclusion. When I typed it in, it gave me this analysis of my name:
Yeah, that’s me, and I’m proud of it 
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A little fun from the Classical Archives website. Since I am a musician by profession and Major Geek I’ll quote it here unabridged. Of course I feel sorry for stealing someone else’s work, but consider it as a token of appreciation.
You Might be a Music Theory Geek if….
* Your favorite pickup line is, “What’s your favorite augmented sixth chord?”
* You can look at a piece by Bach and say, “You know, I think he could have gotten a much better effect this way . . .”
* You like to march around your room to the rhythms of Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps.”
* You love to quote Walter Piston.
* You long for the good old days of movable G-clefs.
* You like polytonal music because, hey, the more keys the merrier.
* You dream in four parts.
* You feel the need to end Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony with a picardy third.
* You can improvise 16th century counterpoint with no trouble, but you frequently forget how to tie your shoes.
* You lament the decline of serialism.
* You enjoy the tang of a tritone whenever you can.
* You like to deceive your friends and loved ones with deceptive cadences.
* You only drink fifths, and then you laugh at the pun.
* Instead of counting sheep, you count sequences.
* You only sing tunes that make good fugal subjects.
* You find free counterpoint too liberal.
* Moussorgsky’s “Hopak” gives you nightmares.
* You wonder what a “Danish Sixth” would sound like.
* The Corelli Clash gives you goosebumps.
* You can hear an enharmonic modulation coming a mile away.
* You have ever done a Schenkerian analysis on “Three Blind Mice.”
* You have ever tried to do a Schenkerian analysis on John Cage’s “4′33″.
* You have hosted a “Gurrelieder” party.
* You have ever pondered what an augmented seventh chord would sound like.
* Bass motion by ascending thirds or a sequential pattern with roots in ascending fifths immediately strikes you as “belabored.”
* You know what the ninth overtone of the harmonic series is off the top of your head.
* You can name ten of Palestrina’s contemporaries.
* You can answer your phone with a tonal or a real answer.
* You have ever heard a wrong note in a performance of a piece by Berio, Stockhausen, or Boulez.
* You suspiciously check all the music you hear for dangling sevenths.
* When you’re feeling particularly prankish, you transpose Mozart arias to locrian mode.
* You keep a notebook of useful diminutions.
* Those “parasitic” dissonances make you queasy, especially when left unresolved.
* You have composed variations on a theme by Anton Webern.
* You know the difference between a Courante and a Corrente.
* You have trained your dog to jump through a flaming circle of fifths.
* You have ever used the word “fortspinnung” in polite conversation.
* You feel cheated by evaded cadences.
* You have a poster of Allen Forte in your room.
* You know who Allen Forte is.
* Every now and then you like to kick back and play something in hypophrygian mode.
* You wonder why there aren’t more types of seventh chords.
* You wish you had twelve fingers.
* You abbreviate your shopping list using figured bass.
* You always make sure to invert your counterpoint, just in case.
* You have ever told a joke that had this punchline: “because it was POLYPHONIC!”
* You know dirty acronyms for the order of sharps.
* You consider all music written between 1750 and 1920 to be “rather elementary.”
* You memorize dates and times by what they would sound like in set theory.
* You can not only identify any one of Bach’s 371 Harmonized Chorales by ear, but you also know on what page it appears in the Riemenschneider edition and how many suspensions it has in the first seven bars.
* You got more than half of the jokes in this list.
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Dabbleboard is an incredibly cool application, that can be used as a whiteboard. In fact, it is a whiteboard, but it can be used for drawing Mindmaps, Flowcharts, diagrams or for marking up pictures.
Dabbleboard is a powerful online whiteboard that’s actually easy and fun to use. With a revolutionary new interface, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw.
Draw with flexible tools. Reuse previously-made drawings. Share and collaborate in real-time. All as naturally as using a marker or a pencil.
For teachers this is great, but it works for presentations anyway. Itg will even work better with your favorite slide application (Power Point, OpenOffice Impress or SlideRocket).
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My daily read at the web involves reading several feeds with Bloglines, the portal of the Freedictionary and the mother of all portals, Wikipedia, the English as well as the German version - being Dutch myself I hardly ever read the Dutch version.
This feeds my information-hungry mind with lots of stuff to think about, to recycle (e.g. for blogs), or just to know, to write down in my notebook, my tiddlywiki etc. After all, I’m just obsessed with learning and knowing as much as possible.
Today I found an article about Zhang Heng, who lived form AD 78 untill 139.
Zhang Heng was an astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan, and lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25–220) of China. After beginning his career as a minor civil servant, he eventually became Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. His uncompromising stances on certain historical and calendrical issues led to Zhang being considered a controversial figure, which prevented him from becoming an official court historian. Zhang applied his extensive knowledge of mechanics and gears in several of his inventions. He invented the world’s first water-powered armillary sphere, to represent astronomical observation; improved the inflow water clock by adding another tank; and invented the world’s first seismometer, which discerned the cardinal direction of an earthquake 500 km (310 mi) away. Furthermore, he improved previous Chinese calculations of the formula for pi. His fu (rhapsody) and shi poetry were renowned and commented on by later Chinese writers. Zhang received many posthumous honors for his scholarship and ingenuity, and is considered a polymath by some scholars. (more…)
Of course I surfed to the complete article, but I also had to follow the links to “Pi” and “Polymath“”:
A polymath (Greek polymath?s, “having learned much”) is a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area. The dictionary definition is consistent with informal use, whereby someone very knowledgeable is described as a polymath when the term is used as a noun, or polymath or polymathic when used as adjectives.
I think this will keep me busy for a while
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According to the Geek Holidays Calendar today, September 19, was International “Talk Like A Pirate” day.
This holiday springs from a romanticized view of the Golden Age of Piracy. The Wikipedia-page tells us also something more on the origin of the idea:
According to Summers, the day is the only holiday to come into being as a result of a sports injury. He has stated that during a racquetball game between Summers and Baur, one of them reacted to the pain with an outburst of “Aaarrr!”, and the idea was born. That game took place on June 6, 1995, but out of respect for the observance of D-Day, they chose Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday, as it would be easy for him to remember.
So I tried today to act like a pirate, but I needed some quick lessons.
1. Growl - and scowl often. Pirates don’t use a cultured, elegant, smooth vocalization - they mutter and growl.
2. Use pirate lingo. Sounding like a pirate isn’t as hard as it seems! There are lots of resources for picking up pirate “lingo,” so make use of them (some common terms listed below) in addition to trying to affect a vocal sound. Avoid using modern epithets (swear words). It’s much more colorful (and kid-friendly) to use “pirate slang” for those naughty words.
3. Gesture with your hands frequently. Don’t forget that pirates do most of their talking on the deck of a ship - out on the ocean, where wind, waves, and bird calls make it tough to hear. Gesturing often gives you a sense of “being there.”
4. Run words together. Saying, “The boys and I were out for a lovely day on the water today” sounds like something you’d overhear at a yacht club, not out on the bounding main! Instead, try, “Me’n'these here scurvy scallywags drug our sorry keesters out t’th’ship’n'had us a grand great adventuaaarrr! We almost had t’keelhaul Mad Connie f’r gettin inter th’ grog behind our backs!” Use contractions whenever possible. Be sure to punctuate often with “Arrrr!”
5.
Never use “you” or “you’re” - ever. Instead, use the piratical form, “yer” or “ya” for all forms of address to others. “Yer a scurvy bilge rat, ya pompous gasbag” or “Here’s yer dinner, ya mangy cockroach.” Note that you should always endeavor to call the addressee by some insulting name, usually involving an animal.
6. Embellish at will. A pirate is larger than life, and his or her speech should always reflect this. Don’t just say, “We saw a whale off the starboard bow today.” Say, “Me’n'th’ crew seen a great grand sea beastie, th’ mother of all whales, aye!”
7. Refer to yourself as “me” at all times, never “I” It is not piratically correct to say, “I have a cold.” It is far better as a pirate to declare, “Got me a case o’th’sniffles, ‘ass rye!”
8. More importantly, substitute “me” for “my” For example, don’t say, “Look at my new sword,” say “Lookit me new sword!.” Also substitute “meself” for “myself” as in “Got meself a right fine ship!”
9. Mutter unintelligibly unless yelling. Being a pirate usually meant being liquored up to some degree - a lot of time, pirates were pretty mush-mouthed. In the step preceding, the term “‘ass rye” actually translates to “that’s right.” Get it?
10. Be as loud as humanly possible. Pirates are not shy violets - stand tall, me hearties, and be counted!
11. Procure one dead stuffed parrot and sew feet to right shoulder of 2nd hand store jacket. This will put you in the mood to adhere to the above mentioned rules and guarantee an abundance of “yers and arghs”.
The next step was to expand my vocabulary: I found one at the Dutch “Talk Like A Pirate” Day-website.
Unfortunately it took some practice, so before I got the hang of it, the day was over.
Arrr! I’ll have to wait another year.
September 28 is “Ask A Stupid Question Day”. That will be even more difficult for me.
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