I’ve started playing around with Flickr a bit, and in order to do so added some pictures from my recent trip to Boston. Just in case you want to have a look: here’s the link to them.

This one essentially goes out to those scientists doing experimental work. Don’t forget to turn on your speakers before following the link. (Thanks to Chrizzy for pointing out the website.)

Extra care should be taken when copying figures into your soon-to-be-submitted manuscript.
Is the data presented in the right way? Are the labels legible? Is the resolution high enough? Is the spell checker disabled?

Clipping from Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 132108 (2006).

Matt is dancing around the world.
Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here in Darmstadt.

All right, so it has something to do with transport through disordered materials… but still, Ultrametric Spaces sounds like Star Trek to me! ;-)

Every now and than I happily realize that my absolute level of knowledge K_abs in my field of work steadily increases.

One can define the relative knowledge K_rel as the ratio of one’s absolute knowledge to the total available knowledge K_tot in the respective field:

K_rel=K_abs/K_tot

If the temporal development of K_tot is neglected in a zero-order approximation, one’s own relative knowledge will rise with the increase of one’s own absolute knowledge. This increase usually comes naturally with working on some topic, as exemplified by my introductory remark.
However, the objective quantity K_rel is of little relevance to any one individual, as one usually is not aware of the total knowledge K_tot. (more…)

Excerpts from math tests, sources unknown.

(click for bigger version)

Recently, I saw this one on a t-shirt:

There are 10 types of people in the world.

Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

Here’s a tutorial on how to build your own OLED (organic light emitting diode) at home.

Check out “Schrödinger’s Comic” at xkcd.

(If you don’t get it you might want to read about Schrödinger’s Cat. However, a joke explained is a joke not funny. So I’d like to say sorry to those who just wasted a minute of their time following the link I posted and did not even get as much as a chuckle in return.)