Astronomers need help

Some time ago I wrote about computers needing human assistance for certain tasks, like recognizing images or understanding text.
This time astronomers need human intelligence to assign pictures of distant galaxies to a few categories. This is another task, that's trivial for human but immensely complex and error prone for computers.
The project is called Galaxy Zoo and its concept is simple :
A picture of a galaxy is shown to you and you have to decide which category it belongs to.
This is how you get started : After registration, you get a small tutorial explaining the different types of galaxies. After the tutorial you have to do a small test where you get 15 pictures of galaxies and you have to decide which category they belong to. When you get 8 out of 15 correct, you can start sorting new galaxies.

Donor boom in The Netherlands

Following the 'hoax' donor show last month, some 12,000 organ donors registered in The Netherlands.
It seems the creators of the show reached their goal.

Cut off

I haven't figured out what caused the outage, but I was cut off from internet the entire evening. Maybe the intensive rain flooded a local hub?
As the internet connection uses the television cable, I wasn't able to watch television either.

At first I was a little annoyed, but this soon faded when I realized I could read instead of watching television or spending some time on the internet.
I was able to finish a book I started reading on the train traveling to Barcelona and read some articles I had lying around.
It turned out to be a very enjoyable evening, listening to music and hearing the sound of extensive showers in the background while reading a good book.

BTW : The book I finished was 'Het derde huwelijk' (The third marriage) by Tom Lanoye.

Barcelona tube

Earlier this year, I mentioned going on a trip to Barelona.
Well. I went, I saw and I enjoyed it.
One of the things I enjoyed most, was the metro system. It is very practical : you enter a station somewhere in the city, take a train, maybe switch lines halfway and leave a metrostation in a totally different part of the city in no time.
I noticed that the metro trains in Barcelona are airconditioned, but the stations are not. Once you're on a train the temperature is enjoyable, but in the stations it can be realy hot. It is sometimes even hotter in the stations than it is above ground.
Prices are acceptable. You pay 1,25 EUR for one ride, but when you buy a pass for 10 rides (6,90 EUR) or a one (5,25 EUR) or two-day pass (8,30EUR) , it costs even less.
You can use the same ticket on bus and tram in the Barcelona area.

Computer crash

Yesterday, my fileserver crashed. I noticed this when I tried to check my mails and couldn't connect to internet. (The fileserver also serves as DHCP and DNS.)
Because I had an exam this morning, I couldn't investigate why the server had stopped working.
Tonight I had some time to look into it. After some testing I found out the power supply (PSU) failed.
So I can repair my computer by buying a new PSU tomorrow, instead of having to replace the motherboard. So, I'm quite lucky.

Strangely enough I replaced the PSU with a a more expensive one only last year. According to its specs it would last for nearly four years. It turns out that the PSU doesn't comply with its specs. :-(

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.

The big donor show

Last night, Dutch television station BNN broadcasted a game show called 'De grote donorshow' (The big donor show). 'Lisa', a terminally ill woman with a brain tumor, who turned out be an actress, was to donate a kidney to one of three contestants during a 80 minute TV-show. She had to choose who was going to get her kidney after talking to them and their families.
At the conclusion of the show, when Lisa had to choose, the moderator revealed that the show was a hoax. The ill woman was in fact a healthy actress. The contestants were really waiting for a kidney to be donated, but they were informed that the show wasn't real.

The makers of the show didn't plan to do an actual donor contest. The goal of the hoax was to draw attention to the lack of organ donors in The Netherlands. Five years ago, BNN founder Bart de Graaff died, because no suitable kidney donor could be found to help him.

The show drew a lot of attention in The Netherlands and abroad. Both CNN and BBC reported about the fake donor show. It seems the producers of the show reached their goal.