Physics : handywork

In the exercises class of my Crystallography course, an assignment was given :

Craft a cube and bring it to class next week. It can be made of any material. You will need it to help you with the exercises.

So I cut a cube out of some insulation foam. But I'm not completely pleased with the result.
First I thought of making a cube from cardboard, by drawing some squares, cutting them from the cardboard and folding them together. But I figured this cardboard cube would be crushed when transported in my backpack, so I needed some structure that's not hollow.
Insulation foam is very light and relativily easy to sculpt, so I chose this material and started creating my cube, by measuring, cutting and sculpting. The end result looks like a cube, but not all sides are completely square. But it will do for the exercises.

This course starts to become some sort of handywork class, as in a few weeks we will be instructed to grow a crystal at home, starting from a beaker containing a dissolved substance. It's all very exciting. :-)

Archiving

Next monday, a new academic year starts. This means : new courses and new lectures.
So it is time to archive some of my previous courses and make room for the new ones.

As it happened to be, there was still studying material of my first year Eastern Studies somewhere on a shelve. Because I won't need it anymore, I switched to physics and astronomy two years ago, I put it together in two small piles, made a list of the courses in each pile and bound them together with a string. The piles are now stored with the other archived studying material in another room.

With the old material out of the way, the courses of last year, which where on my desk, now take the free spot on the shelve, as I might want to look something up during the next two semesters.
The available space on my desk will soon be taken by the new studying material for next semester.

Shopping for clothing

Today I went shopping in Antwerp, to buy some clothes. I left by train in Ghent at 13u13 and arrived in Antwerp about 45 minutes later. Then I went to 'De Meir', the biggest shopping street in Antwerp and bought the following things :

• 1 pair of shoelaces
• 3 trousers
• 4 T-shirts
• 3 pull-overs
  

I left again by train at 15u06.

The shopping spree took me under 3 hours, to buy enough clothes to have no need to going shopping for another year.

People might wonder why I went to Antwerp to buy clothes. If I would have shopped in Ghent, I might have spent even less time. The reason is simple : I like going to Antwerp once in a while, and the shop where I usually buy my clothes is bigger in Antwerp than the one in Ghent, so there are more clothes to choose from.

Search your feeds in Google Reader

A long awaited search function is added to Google Reader.

Now you can search newsfeeds you previously read. If you know you read a newsitem about something, but can't remember on which feed it appeared, just search for it in Google Reader and the post will turn up.