Some More Math Fun

As an answer to George Hart's Möbius Bagel, Serious Eats has constructed a Möbius Doughnut

Then I saw a picture on Wired Science and thought that somebody had knitted a mathematical equation in 3-D.

It turned out that it was a Mandelbulb, a 3-D visualisation of a fractal called a Mandelbrot set. After seeing some videos like the next one, I still think that this is just like a cool knitting work...

Here is an example from a Finnish knitting blog nekkisneuleet. Using different patterns, someone could really knit a visualisation. Too bad I am not good in designing...

Finally Makezine led me to some really impressive polyhedra made of playing cards, again by George Hart

Summer, Food and No Night

Last weekend we celebrated the summer solstice even though the right day was Wednesday. We have changed it to the nearest weekend to get more time for the celebrations. Now that the children are grown-up, they spend the weekend with their friends and travel usually quite far to a festival or some other place crowded with young people.

We don't own a summer cabin but live near the nature and were going to spend the weekend just between the two of us. However my sister called and told that they had lots of extra food to eat and we decided to go to my sister's place. Their son has also left home so there were four "oldies" and Piitu, my dog.

I have blogged about Hannu's exceptional skills in making traditional Finnish food, but this time the menu was really something many people never have the chance to eat.

Hannu had most of the day been preparing something we call a bandit steak (I have no idea how this food is named elsewhere). Actually our name for it originates from a famous Finnish book, but the food itself is very traditional. Probably the method is from Mongolia but the book brought it to common knowledge. The book tells a story of two men who steal lambs and prepare them as bandit steaks.

First one has to have a big hole on the ground. Hannu has built it and put some bricks as walls to keep the hole together for further use. Then Hannu kept a fire in the hole for 3-4 hours. The fire was put out, the hole opened and the food covered with foil and newspapers put in. The hole was covered again and a new fire is built, again for 3-4 hours.

This is where we got in, ready to eat. The fire was put out again:

And here is the satisfied bandit with his very hot steak :)

The package is carefully opened

revealing the delicious steak covered with potatoes and vegetables.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the delicious dish, but I can assure it was fabulous.

And even Piitu got her part of the goodies.

All of this happened Friday and Saturday we went back to eat delicious salmon Tuula and Hannu had caught themselves. I don't even remember when I have got so good food in a restaurant!

After all the eating we came to our house to play some PS2 Singstars, which Tuula and Hannu had never even tried. They found a total favourite among the songs; Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water and that is why I put that song in my previous post. It's really fun to notice that all these years we have been growing up our children have not really changed anything. We can still have fun together with my sister and her husband!

Fractal Snowflake Cupcakes

I found these cool mathematical cupcakes. They go well with my Sierpinski cookies.

read more | digg story

Mathematics in Noodles

I found this cool video from kottke.org. It is a clip from Philip Morrison's 1987 PBS program "The Ring of Truth: Atoms" featuring chef Kin Jing Mark making noodles to demonstrate the principle of halving.

 

Friday – vacation from vacation

The past 3 days have been very intense and at this point Chie was frustrated about the work she had no time to do. I was the only one who really had a vacation; I don’t have to think about school work right now. Of course I missed the things that were going on in the social networks but I don’t have to take that so seriously since my income has nothing to do with any of it.

So Friday was mostly free time. I had time to update my blog and Chie and Amo worked on their computers. The others wanted to go to a beach and now I followed along even though I had no intention to go to the sea. We took a taxi to the Camel Beach. The waves were very high and the man on the rescue tower was shouting warnings all the time. We did not understand anything but at times it seemed like he was really shouting. In Israel you can’t really know; they speak Hebrew very intensely, totally unlike we Finns who can speak almost without opening our mouth. Kimi Räikkönen (the F1 driver) is a good example and he speaks even English like that.

The mysterious Korean lady who did want to hide from paparazzis

I solved puzzles while the others were swimming and collected some shells and beautiful stones which looked like jewels.

After getting back from the beach we had some free time and then we went to Dave’s house. Dave has 3 cats and one dog. The others were interested in the cats but I hoped to renew my friendship with the dog. I met her last year and even though Dave said that she is very shy with people, I succeeded in gaining her trust. Now she obviously did not remember me, but after some time she let me tap and stroke her :)

We had some coffee and Amo gave Dave instructions how to use the noodles and sauces she had brought to Dave from Korea. We went to Dave’s office which is a place of magic to me: all those puzzle magazines from all over the world. Dave told us to make some “cleaning”. He has several copies of some of the magazines, sent by the publishers and he said we could gladly take whatever we wanted. Normally to me that was like saying to an alcoholic that he can drink as much as he wants but I think I have reached a certain point. I have my selves full of puzzle books and magazines and I am never going to be able to solve them all. I concentrated only on magazines I rarely see, or have not seen at all also remembering that the space in my suitcase is very limited. The family took with them some extra stuff I did not need any more but I already had brought the wines and other things. To my satisfaction Dave also had two Rummikub games and gave me the other.

After Dave had showed us the whole house, we took a taxi to the Steak restaurant, and Dave went to get his parents. We spent a delightful evening talking and joking. Dave has wonderful parents and I just love their British accent, the real Oxford English!

Wednesday – Conceptis Party

Today we got the chance to sleep a little later. Chie and Amo have lots of correspondence to attend to and I could update my blog, which is not very easy while so many things are happening all the time.

Around noon Dave came to the hotel and took us to lunch. Again huge amounts of food! Chie and Amo also like to eat and they are so thin! Maybe I have stored too many calories in the past because the weather is so hot that I lose my appetite. I eat at home far less than I eat here. A couple of times I have tried to eat ice cream here, but that is a skill I needed some lessons to be able to manage. I am not just fast enough; part of the ice cream will melt and drop on the ground with all the techniques I have tried. Dave even joked that in Finland I can just leave the ice cream for a couple of hours and it is the same as when I left. Haha!

This time my picture is an eggplant dish. Eggplant is very popular here:

After eating we visited a local liquor store and I have never seen a place like that. I have attached two pictures but I had to take five and even then parts of the corners were left out. We all bought some Israeli wine to take with us home.

Time just flies! Suddenly we noticed that we had only one hour to prepare ourselves for the Conceptis party. It took place in Gil’s house and we took a taxi from the hotel to get there. This time the taxi knew where he was going.

It was wonderful to see Gil, Nitsi and Carmel again. I had been away for two days and for me it felt like an eternity.

I am not even sure how many people we were altogether, but I met people I had not seen before. I met Dave’s eldest daughter, Dave’s sister, one of the founders of Conceptis and Micha Hertzano (from Lemada Light Industries Inc. which invented Rummikub, their most famous game). Micha had been in Finland several times and could even count from one to four in Finnish. He was a very funny guy and was joking that he was just a stand-up comedian Dave had arranged for us.

I also met my friend Tal Siach, a social media guru in Israel, like Avi I told about in my first posts from Israel. We have gotten to know each other in Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook,…, I am not even sure in how many places. Gil is also his friend and this was the first time they met. What a historical moment!

We ate delicious food provided by a caterer, drank wine and had discussions about all kinds of things. We had also a gathering last year but it was totally different. Then the participants were staff members or forum members. No we had important foreign guests (I'm not counting myself as one!) who were introduced to the staff and also other people regarding Conceptis relationships. No talking about the website this time.

We took a taxi back to our hotel in Haifa and the driver knew the way. My problem was that he drove very fast passing other cars so that I was clued to my seat out of pure horror! The others were sleeping in the back seat and did see nothing…

Saturday - Leaving the Hotel

I seem to be getting behind in my posts…

Saturday we had two important visits planned. About noon we had arranged to visit Natalia and Amit Shrira and their daughter Tamar, who is about 6 months old. Natalia is the Product Manager of Picture-Logic puzzles and Amit is Conceptis Operations Manager. Their work includes so many things that I am not able to even describe also including the fact that I am not even aware of everything. Anyway I know that Natalia keeps the archives of the published puzzles and Amit is involved in handling all the artists.

Little Tamar was really cute! She had a wonderful smile which she gladly showed us.
One thing I have found in common in all the Conceptis people I know closer: they all have cats! Natalia had two. Now I have seen one more of the Conceptis offices. Last year I visited Dave’s office in his home and Natalia and Amit are working in the same room in their home.

After returning back to the hotel I had to do something which was at the same time wonderful but also sad: I started packing. Maybe this sounds funny because the family was about to leave the next day but we had planned that since they had the car, they could drop me off at Gil’s place. That was probably the hardest packing I have ever done. If I had left something important behind, it would have ended up in Finland.

Before we left we went to take some coffee and Marika and Katri got beautiful cappuccinos (my blog is gradually turning into a food blog!)

Gil lives in a small village called Kefar Netter. The GSP informed that the village had 9 streets and so the right address was easy to find. We had had some problems before. The Hebrew names written with our letters can be done in different ways and the GPS did not always find the streets/places typed exactly the same we had found on the map we had.

The journey took again longer than I had thought. The rush hours are really bad when you want to get somewhere and here the rush hours are longer than in Finland.

It was so nice to see Gil again. We met last year at the Conceptis party which took place in Gil’s place. We have learned to know each other so much better since then. Gil has been my mentor in blogging and we give each other hints about new good tools and social media platforms.

We had first some coffee and talked. Gil and Nitsi had made a reservation to a Turkish restaurant which was not in the village. The funny thing was that it had been two years since he was there last and finally we used our GPS to find the place :)

Like I have told before the Israeli portions are huge. Gil told us that they usually order one pot of food for all of them and we took his advice. Two pots and Marika’s vegetarian pot was more than enough for the family.

The yard had also some shops selling clothes and gifts and all kinds of items. After dinner the girls of course wanted shopping! I also like to look things from other countries but I did not buy anything. I have one weakness and it is candles. Nowadays I buy them only when they are something totally different from what I have seen before.

It was late and I said goodbye to the family and they returned to Haifa for their last night in Israel. I went to Gil’s place to stay two nights there. Nitsan and Gil Galanti work both for Conceptis. Nitsan is the Graphic designer and Gil is the Marketing Manager. They have a lovely daughter Carmel, 3 years old and even though she and I have the language barrier between us, we became good friends during these two days.

Their house is beautiful. It has a garden and for the first time in my life I ate passion fruit taken straight from the tree.

Friday - Bahá’í Gardens

This morning we started with shops in a Bedouin village. Anna was with us showing the way and said that she had never visited there before. We saw so much nice handicraft, paintings, clothes, pottery and jewels which again were different from the others we have seen so far. I did buy a new hat for blocking the sun. The previous was problematic because the wind was blowing it off my head.

We had made arrangements to see a friend of mine from Conceptis forums, Anat, who kindly gave us a place to stay last year. After coming from the market we still had much time left. Some of us were sleeping, some puzzling under the sun and I of course did it in the shadows. We had thought that we could have a closer look to Tel Aviv since we were going that way but we found out that because of the Sabbath starting the shops would be closed early.

However Jukka and I remembered that the kids had not seen the most amazing place in Haifa, the Bahá’í Gardens. The two most sacred sites for Bahá’í's - the resting places of the founders of their religion - join a list of internationally recognized sites like the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and Stonehenge. About Bahá’í Faith you can read here.

We needed some coffee and something salty food before leaving to Herzliya and found one nice place which was open. We thought we ordered just some small sandwiches and got totally surprised by the dishes (this is for one person):

We could not eat them all because we were just going out for dinner but they were really good.
We met Anat and all her family in Herzliya in a restaurant called Avazi. Compared to restaurants everywhere I have ever been in, the Israeli ones have really huge amounts of food!

After dinner we had some good time refreshing memories in Anat’s home.

My Finnish Christmas

The Christmas is now over. This year I decided not to stress so much and finally had a very good and enjoyable holiday. I did not even send any Christmas cards by normal mail. I said I am contributing to stopping the climate change. A very good excuse, don’t you think?

In Finland the most important day is Christmas Eve. In the morning I cooked some rice pudding and I had also my children at home eating it. We watched on TV when the Christmas Peace was Declared in Turku. It’s an old tradition in Finland and we live about 7 km from where it happens but we have always watched it on TV.

After that the children decorated the Christmas tree. The picture of the tree is what they accomplished. It is very typical; we do not use more decorations to let the tree show. It is fresh, bought from a friend of my godson.

At 4 pm we went to my mother’s place to have the Christmas dinner with my sister’s family. The Finnish traditional Christmas meal consists of pork, many different casseroles: potato, carrot and Swedish turnip (I can’t believe Swedish have got credit for that too), salads, fish etc. Turkey is very new in a Finnish table.

After the dinner we sang some songs and went together to the cemetery to light candles for my father and my grandmother and aunt. They are all in the same area, no grave stones, just a beautiful peaceful area with many candles and flowers. My brother-in-law took a picture with his Nokia phone. The picture is amazingly good regarding the circumstances.

Then we all headed to our homes to open the presents. We used to do that together too, but now that the children are grown-up, we have agreed on doing it this way. We have altogether minimized the amount of gifts.

My most amazing gift is shown in the pictures. According to the label I save 500 plastic bags a year. My daughter has found it in www.mulletoi.com. It is a very interesting web store. The page is in Finnish but you can get the idea by looking at the pictures. mulletoi is not official Finnish; it is spoken language and could be translated as “give me that” or “I want that”. Mulle toi does not have a verb at all and a translation is hard because of that.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day we relaxed and had fun with the kids. We played Singstars and Buzz with PSP2 and also a board game my son got as a present: Ticket to Ride. It was fun. The version was in Finnish but we played in the USA map. The game was chosen as the Game of the Year 2005 here. The bad thing was that I lost. It was my tactics: I was too cautious and did not take any risks!