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Book
At 14:05, I bought the book Think Like an Artist: ... and
Lead a More Creative, Productive Life written by Will Gompertz in
English and published by Penguin UK in 2015,
ISBN:9780241970812, from bookshop Broekhuis
for € 13.99. For the week of the book, I got the free book:
Makkelijk Leven written by Herman Koch in Dutch and published by
Uitgeverij Stichting CPNB in 2017,
ISBN:9789059654112.
Spike-timing-dependent plasticity
Yesterday, I came along the article Learning through ferroelectric domain dynamics in solid-state
synapses, which descibes the design of an intergrate circuit device
that behaves similar to a synapse of a nerve cell with respect to
spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). STDP means that synapses that
were active shortly before the nerve cell generated a spike are strengthed,
while synapses that are activated shortly after the spike are weakened. Long
ago, I already had thought about a way to simulate a nerve cell, but did not
know that the mechanism for strengthening and weakening of synapses is so
simple. Although neural networks and deep learning are hot topics, the use
of STDP based neural networks are relatively rare. Today, I found the article
Spike-Based Image Processing: Can We Reproduce Biological Vision in
Hardware?. I also found that Simon Thorpe worked on the use of this for image recognition based on
STDP, which are now being made available through
Spikenet technology.
Chinese Wooden Puzzle
Last week, I dropped my Chinese Wooden Puzzle on
the ground and I had stacked all pieces on the table to make sure I got them
all. The other day, I decided to quickly put them in again, so I started to
fill the top three rows with the yellow and orange pieces. Next I filled the
bottom two rows with the green and purple pieces and quite quickly found
a solution to fill the middle
part with the remaining pieces. This evening, I went on to count how many
solutions there are for the middle part. The program found 46,172 solutions in
1,561 patterns, all of which (not very surprisingly) are not symmetric in any
direction. The program reported that there were three (suboptimal) minimal
touching patterns with 29 extra. I was a little surprised that the program also
reported that there were 20 patterns that are a combination of smaller
patterns, meaning that there was a vertical split in the pattern. I reasoned
that this could only be made with the five black pieces on one side and the
red, blue, and white pieces on the other side. So, I ran the progam again.
Below the three minimal touching patterns are given followed by ten of the
combined patters (the other ten are made with the black pieces on the left) and
fifteen randomly selected solutions:
In the city
I have been away most of the day. I got up early and at eigth I was at the
supermarket to buy my weekly groceries. On my way to Li-Xia, I went to Laura (from All
Laura), to pick up the meditation pillow that I had ordered. After having
visited Li-Xia, I went to the hairdresser to have my haircut. It has been over
nine month ago that I had a haircut. Recently, I have noticed that my hair
stays at a certain lenght, probably due to the hair failing out before they
grow any longer.
Next I went to Concordia to see the exhibition
How on earth should this be art? with Tinkebell as curator. I bumped into the mobile named "Pig Heaven,
installation, 2017" by Sjef Meijman, which made the mobile move. I went to the second floor to
look at the exhibition of the B93 art
collective. They were still building up the exhibition for the opening
later in the afternoon.
I went to see the rest of the How on earth should this be art?
exhibition. I view the pedigree of the chickens by Koen Vanmechelen. The final rooster of the breeding program with chickens
from all over the world, looked impressive. I noticed that after twenty
minutes the mobile was still moving very slightly. I was impressed by the
work "Little Delft Street" by Rob Scholte. Over the years he has bought home made embroidery from
secondhand shops and flee markets. At the exhibition it shows sixteen pictures
of the back of such embroidery representing The
Little Street painting by Johannes Vermeer. It is interesting to see all
the different colours of wool that were selected by the unknown women who made
them.
At bookshop Broekhuis, I looked around the
newly second hand books and went to opening of the exhibition with works by
Hermine Sanders. In the past years,
she worked with templates that she cuts out herself. I was impressed by the
very realistic looking human figures that she can make by cutting paper. She
also had a large number of posters on sale for just € 25.00.
I immediately decided to pick one and buy it.
At TETEM art space, I talked a long time with
Tom, who I had met twice before. Not so strange that I met him again, because
he is doing his internship for his vocational training photography study at
TETEM. He told me that he has been experimenting with Max lately. Before I left, I had a second look at the Sandim Mendes:
panu terra | terra panu exhibition. I had seen it two weeks ago, but today,
I was much more impressed with it. I must not have been in the right move to
view it two weeks ago. I had a look at the book Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design, which I found quite
impressive.
I went back to city center, where I brought a short visited to the art galery
Beeld & Aambeeld and also met woman I know, who was working on a painting
on two garage doors of a show. To me it looked almost done, but she still
pointed out some details that she was not happy with. Look, that is the right
attitude for an artist.
In the evening, I visited the demonstration of a home made
singing tesla
coil.
Book
At 10:57, I bought the book Blink: The Power of
Thinking Without Thinking written by Malcolm Gladwell in English and
published by Back Bay Books on Saturday, March 3, 2007,
ISBN:9780316010665, from thrift store Het Goed
for € 2.95.
The grass is not green
When I say: the grass is not green, I do not mean that it is yellow due to
drought. It is also not meant as a contradition to the statement that grass is
equal to green, acknowledging the fact that grass is more than just being
green. It means that grass does not have the property of being green. There is
nothing green in grass, as grass is just made up of atoms. Yes, grass does have
the property that under certain light conditions (those similar to produced
by the sun as filtered by the earth atmosphere) it reflects a certain spectrum,
which (in most people) excites certain cones in the human eye, producing a
certain excitation of nerves in the eye, resulting them to fire in a certain
pattern. The colour green, as we experience it, is an illusion created by our
brain. Some people, with a type of red-green colour blindness, see red and
green as the same colour. One could say that they are only able to see
yellow-orange and blue, as opposed to normal people who can see green, red and
blue. Probably, these people are not able to imagine the colours red and green,
like we are not able to imagine a fourth colour. It is possible, that the
colours we preceive are completely individual and that nobody 'sees' the world
like we see it. Bellow a processed image of a picture where I have averaged the red and green channels, which gives an
impression of how people with red-green colour blindness could see the world.
(If this looks like a normal picture, try opening this page throught http://www.iwriteiam.nl/D1704.html#21.)
Less Than Zero
This morning, I finished reading the novel
Less Than
Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, which I started reading on March 5, the day after I bought it. I read the book in tandem with the Dutch translation
Minder dan niks, which I bought on Saturday,
August 4, 2012 and finished reading this morning. It was an interesting
experience to read the books in tandem. I had hoped it would increase my
knowledge of English, but I am not sure if it did. However, I did notice that
I sometimes did not remember having read something in the other version,
probably caused by the fact that my thoughts were wandering away at that
moment, and thus not consciously reading the text. With respect to the
contents of the book, I would advice not to read it, because it contains some
rather shocking things. The book has a very autobiographical sense, probably
due all the causual remarks that the author makes about events that took place,
and which are hard to imagine, if you would not have experienced them yourself.
I wanted to finish reading the book, hoping that it would contain some
positive twist, which, I could have guessed from the title, was not the case.
In the back of Dutch edition the first sections of Figuranten (the Dutch translation of Imperial Bedrooms), which I did read. Now that I have started
reading the book, I am afraid that I am going to finish it as well, because
I boought it together with Minder dan niks.
Magnolia
Our magnolia does not look very good. Many of the
leaves have turned brown. Last week it was quite cold for the time of the
year. The temperature drop below -4 degrees Celsius, at even below -9 degrees
at ground level (10cm) on April 20. I am afraid that the leaves will not
recover and that I will have to wait for new leaves to appear. I guess that
the tree/plant will recover. It seems that the small magnolia plant has died
after it leaves fell of during a similar cold period last year.
Think Like an Artist
I finished reading the book Think Like an
Artist: ... and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life by
Will Gompertz. I
started reading the book on April 5 after I bought it on April
first. It was in interesting read, but not very revealing. Many of the
things he described, I already recognized in my work as a software engineer,
both professional as for leisure, because it is a highly creative job where
you challenged to find solutions to often complex and/or new problems. I was
a little disappointed about the fact that Gompertz mainly deals with
figurative art and not much about modern art. He does mention some modern
artists, but does not discus their works in detail. I am not sure if my life
will be more creative and productive now.
Biking around Enschede
I biked to Enschede Airport Twente to see the arrival of HB-JMK, an Airbus A340-313X, on its last flight, Flight LX5180, in order
to be taken apart here in Enschede. Arrived just in time. It was quite busy. I
wanted to find a spot near the start of the runway, but when I realized that I
was on the side of the runway, it was too late to change places. I started my
notebook FJF2 and ran
dump1090 to track the plane. The
programs listed a lot of planes, more than I had ever seen, so I had to restart
it several times to see the information about the flight I was interested in.
Maybe I should have logged the datat to a file for further analyses. Above
a picture of the moment the tires
touched the airstrip for the first time. I also took some pictures of the
approach (one of them). After the
plane landed, I biked around the airstrip and took some pictures
(one of them) while the plane was
being taxied. Afterwards, I biked around, visiting Li-Xia at the nursing home.
I made a KML file for Google Earth of the route that I biked (view in
Google Maps). It also includes the last part (within the Netherlands) of
the track of the plane.
De Figuranten
This morning, I finished reading the book De
Figuraten (the Dutch translation of Imperial Bedrooms) by Bret Easton Ellis, which I started reading last
Saturday. (I bought the book on Saturday, August 4,
2012.) I cannot deny that I got drawn into the story, but it lacks the
realistic and literary style of Less Than Zero. The story does not come
to me as real in any way, and thus did not have the impact that the former
book had.
This months interesting links
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