I am typing this with just one hand. In my right arm I am cradling the new member of our family. I am typing a bit slower than usual, but I am learning fast. Although not that spectacular, I have also learned to set tea, make coffee, eat dinner, water plants, and much more, all with just one hand! For the time being I won't try cycling or driving like this, of course ;)
I arrived early. The billboard alternately flashed "Forest National" - "Bob Dylan" - "No Cans". I got a good seat: right behind the sound board with a clear view of the entire stage. In a heavy West-Flemish drawl, the guy to my left was telling his friend that he "first saw Bobby back in '84" and that he should watch carefully "he does this thing with his knee".
At exactly 20:06, accompanied by a tremendous roar, the band strutted onto stage. "Bobby", wearing a white, broad-rimmed Stetson, slung his Strat over his shoulder. Without any further ado, "Bob Dylan and his Band" delivered a red-hot country version of Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum. "There he goes! The knee! The knee!" the guy to my left yelled. Yee-HAW! There was blood all over the tracks!
About eight songs into his nearly two hour set, the guy on my right asked whether I had ever seen him perform live before. He continued that he hadn't and that he was a bit disappointed.
It was my first time too, but it was pretty much what I had expected. I know that his voice is completely shot. Still, it is impressive how great songs and an excellent band compensates for this to some extend. His new songs and their arrangements also suit his voice well. I agree that I had my doubts about the way that some of the classics were brought. But, whenever the band fell into that wicked back-beat, with Mr Dylan barking into the microphone, shaking his knee, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end from sheer pleasure.
I was just leafing through a book on Belgian surrealist René Magritte. On page 17 there is a reproduction of a painting entitled Secret Player. Part of the caption reads "... here two gentlemen dressed in white are playing a mysterious, apparently serious game" (my emphasis). This mysterious game, sir, is called cricket. And you are quite right, as you can tell from my previous post, it can get rather serious!
I heard the news while listening to the England vs New Zealand match on longwave while driving home. Since the South Africa vs Netherlands match was not being broadcast, this was the next best thing. At some point the commentary was interrupted for news about "an incredible over at the other game in St Kitts". South African cricketer Herschelle Gibbs had just written cricket history. I think CricInfo's Sriram Veera's live commentary sums it up best (my emphasis):
29.1 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Violence! Gibbs charged down the track and hoicked it over long on.
29.2 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Murder! Floated on the leg and middle stump line and Gibbs sends it soaring over long-off.
29.3 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Carnage! Flatter one this time but it makes no difference to Gibbs. He just stands there and delivers. This one also has been sucked over long off
29.4 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Wah Wah! Low full toss and guess where this went Yep. A slap slog and it went over deep midwicket! He is going to go for 6 sixes in this over!
29.5 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Short in length, on the off stump line and Gibbs rocks back and swat-pulls it over wide long off. Simply amazing. What a batsman. This is pure violence!
29.6 van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, He has done it! One-day record. No one has hit six sixes in a row. Gibbs stands alone in that zone. And the minnow bashing continues! Full and outside off and bludgeoned over deep midwicket
For the uninitiated, 16 nations are currently battling it out for the Cricket World Cup in the West Indies.
As a result of living in an apartment I have had to "outsource" some of the tasks that I used to do myself. One of these is washing the car. There are no faucets outside of our apartment building. I have tried tackling the problem with buckets of water, but spent most of the time running up and down stairs. A hosepipe may be an option, but rigging it through our third-floor kitchen window does not seem that practical.
There is a carwash just around the corner from us. You must have seen one of these: you enter a tunnel at one end with a dirty car and exit at the other end with a squeaky clean one. As you enter "the tunnel" the machine starts with a low hum that quickly rises to a high pitched squeal. "Whoa-uh-eeh!". Then a cacophony of sounds kick in as over sized bottle brushes and jets of pressurized water start attacking the filth. At the same time it gets really dark as the car starts to rock sideways.
The last time I went to the carwash I was listening to Bob Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin'. I had just skipped to my favourite track, Ballad of Hollis Brown, when I entered "the tunnel". I don't know whether you have ever listened to some of Dylan's most haunting music while inside a tornado, but it scared the smithereens out of me! So run off people, and go have your cars washed! And don't forget your soundtracks.
I wish more products were designed like my eraser and I will tell you why. First, it does what it was designed to do and does not pretend to do anything else. It comes without an integrated camera or any other bells and whistles. It functions as an eraser and it does this very well.
Second, there are two different "sub-functions" that are clearly indicated. As far as I can tell there are at least three cues that are being used for this: (i) On the top, two clearly legible icons (that do not rub off) tell me that one end is intended for erasing pencil while the other is intended for erasing ink. (ii) The two functionally different ends of the eraser are clearly distinguished by color, red is for pencil and blue is for ink. (iii) The red end is larger than the blue end. If I apply a bit of reasoning, I realize that erasers are more often associated with pencils and deduce that the larger part must be intended for pencil.
Finally, after making sure that their product is functionally sound, it seems the designers went the extra mile (I cannot confirm this, of course). The proportion of the total length to the red part (seen from the top) is 4,7 cm to 2,9 or 1,62 ~ 1,618. This is known as the golden ratio, or phi. It is found throughout nature and also in art and architecture. Apparently humans, myself included, find this very pleasing.
