Growing a crystal #1

Today, the professor handed out small bags with a white powder to me and my fellow students. As I mentioned before, I have to grow a crystal from a powder, for the professor's class. And today the powder arrived so I can start growing my crystal.

I went to the supermarket to get demineralised water. I can't use tap water, as this contains to much calcium and other substances that could affect the growing of the crystal.
Back home I mixed some powder with the water and stirred until the powder was completed dissolved. The liquid is clear again.
Then I added some more powder and mixed again, but this time not all of the powder is dissolved. That's normal as I calculated how much powder could be dissolved in the water at room temperature. By adding some more of the powder, the solution becomes saturated, thus it cannot dissolve more of the powder.

By heating the water a bit, the water can dissolved more of the powder. I put the beaker in the microwave for about 40 seconds and stirred again. Now all the powder, even the excess powder, is dissolved, resulting in a clear liquid.

When the water cools down to room temperature, the liquid remains clear, thus the solution contains more powder than it previously contained before heating. This means the solution is oversaturated. That is what is needed to start growing a crystal.

First I need a seed crystal, so I put a thin copper wire in the oversaturated liquid, in order to let a seed crystal grow on the wire.

Now I have to wait for the liquid to cool down further and let the seed crystal(s) grow. I'll check back in a few hours before I go to sleep, but I expect to see something when I wake up in the morning.

(I would post some pictures of the process, but I don't have a (digital) camera, so you'll have to believe what I'm describing)

Spooks series 6

A pure work of art, absolutely brilliant. That's how I would describe the new episodes of BBC drama series Spooks, of which series 6 started last week on BBC1.

The first story spans the first two episodes. In the first episode, a threat of a fast spreading lethal virus in London is introduced. In the second episode it gets even more harsh, when MI5 decides to abduct spies of befriended nations like USA, Russia and France and threats to infect them with the virus, to persuade them to reveal the location of the antidote. MI5 believes one of those nations manufactured the virus and must have produced an antidote as well, but are certain the only way to get them to admit this antidote exists, is by these extreme measures.
In the end the antidote is found and all infected victims are cured, but relations with intelligence services of befriended nations are very hostile because of the abduction. And this will most definitely dominate the storyline of the next episodes. I'm really looking forward to it.

My programming personality type : DHSB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.


You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.


You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.


You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

I came along this programmer personality test on the blog of Jan, an old classmate.

Night out

It's weird what can happen when going out. You know were you begin, but you never know where and when it will end.

The evening started with Transformers, which I saw with Brecht. Afterwards we went to Viewmaster 07, to meet Brecht's girlfriend Tine and some friends (Sophie, Lore). Because the film they showed, L'empire des senses, was a bit of a bore, we went for a drink in L'heure bleue, near Sint-Jacobs.
There we met two Australian people, who were staying at Sophie's place. They are on a trip through Europe and got to know Sophie on the couch surfing project.
Afterwards, Sophie, Lore and I went to a bar called Maritime, after Sophie got a message of a friend telling that a party was going on there. It turned out to be a bar with old people with a DJ playing old music. We left and went to Video, a popular bar in Gent, near De Oude Beestenmarkt.
There we met Koen, who works for a company called oneDotOnly. They design websites, organise events and do creative things.
The evening ended at his place, where Lore, Koen and I drank a nightcap. I went home at 7 in the morning, while the sun started to set above Gent.

It turned out to be a very strange night, meeting a lot of new people. I had a good time.

And the winner is ...

Anna Vinnitskaya won the first prize of the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano 2007. As I mentioned earlier this week, Anna Vinnitskaya was a strong favorite to win this year's edition of the contest.
Second prize was for Plamena Mongova. Third was Francesco Piemontesi, and Ilya Rashkovskiy, who impressed yesterday, was fourth.
The only Belgian finalist, Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, got the sixth prize. He also won the Klara-Sternefeld prize, which is awarded by the public and the viewers and listeners on radio and television.

For a complete overview of the laureates and finalists, you can check the Klara website.

It was the first time since 1968 that the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano was won by a woman.
It was also several years ago that a Belgian contestant was able to reach the finals.

Prokofiev 2

The final of the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano 2007 has started on monday and is now halfway.

Six finalist have played, with six more to come. The standard throughout the week was very high, but the second finalist that played this evening was absolutely amazing.

Anna Vinnitskaya started her performance tonight with a Beethoven sonate (Sonate n.13 in Es op. 27/1 “Quasi una fantasia”) which she played as it was meant to be.
Then she played Prokofiev's second piano concerto. And it was beautiful.
This concerto is immensely difficult to play, so the commentators on television said, but she played it like she does this all the time. Maybe she does, which might explain why she played it so well. ;-)
Both the public and panel on television were very enthousiastic about her performance.
With another six finalists that have to play in the next three days, one can only hope that all of them play equally well. But if they don't, Anna Vinnitskaya has a very good chance to become this year's winner.

Slurpr

Last week I came along a device, called Slurpr, on the blog of Geektechnique. The creators called it 'the ultimate wardrive box'.
It is designed to access up to six wireless networks, in order to accumulate the bandwith of the wifi's it is connected to and get a massive total available bandwith.
Although wardriving and accessing other people's private wifi's is actually forbidden, this is still a very cool gadget.

It seems other people on the internet have noticed this device too, as this webcomic already mentions the Slurpr.

Fair(y) Use

This film explains what copyright is, using parts from Disney pictures. It is quite neatly done.
Now let's hope this film could be considered a parody, otherwise it's not fair use of copyrighted material and thus illegal. ;-)

Gadget keyboard

Optimus Maximus sounds more like the name of an Emperor or warlord from the Roman Empire, but actualy it is the name of a very cool keyboard.
On first sight it seems to be a normal keyboard, with some extra colourful buttons. But what makes this keyboard special is the buttons. A small LED-screen is fitted into each button, making the keyboard-layout fully dynamic. The keyboard can have azerty, qwerty or dvorak layout, but can also show Cyrilic, Arabic, Chinese or Hindi characters on the buttons. All buttons are fully adjustable and you can add your own (moving) images to each buttons.

This keyboard was in a development stage for quite some time now, but starting this week it can be pre-ordered. The first 200 to order the keyboard will receive it in the beginning of december 2007.

There's only one small drawback to this very cool gadget keyboard : it's priced approximatly at 1250 €.

Google's April Fool : TiSP

Today I read a story on Slashdot about Google launching a free wireless broadband service, called TiSP. A link of how it works was provided, leading to a page on Google's website.

On this page was a picture of an installation kit and instructions on how to get your wireless network to work. Going short : You have to flush a cable through the toilet, into the sewage system and connect one end to a wireless accesspoint. The other end is picked up by a Google engineer, located somewhere in the sewage system, connecting it to a large and fast fiber optics network.

It sounds all very promissing and it is presented very professionaly, so it seems almost believable, but it is somewhat unrealistic and inpractical to flush a cable to get wireless internet access. Combine this with the date the story was released (april, 1st) :
This must be Google's April Fool's day joke. Very funny!

Am I a nerd?

I came along a funny little quiz on Bruce's blog.

Your Result: Science/Math Nerd   (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) Well, maybe you aren't this extreme, but you're in league with the crazy scientists/mathmeticians of today. Very few people have the talent of math and science is something takes a lot of brains as well. Thank whosever God you worship, or don't worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people! Most of us would have died off without your help.
Literature Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Social Nerd
Anime Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type?

Dilbert

I receive daily Dilbert comics for quite some time now. Most of the time they are very funny or even hilarious. The comic of today is one of those hilarious ones.