Wikipedia cites one of my papers

In a moment of vanity, I just googled myself. I’m pleased to see my website still appears as the top result for “Ruud Visser” on google.com and google.nl, ahead of the curtain specialist at ruudvisser.net.

The 10th .com result is titled “Everything about Ruud Visser” and the description goes like this:

Do you want to know more about “Ruud Visser”? Find all the information you need about “Ruud Visser” on Exalead Wikipedia.

I’m all for learning more about people with my name, especially if they appear this high on a Google search. The Exalead page contains links to two articles on the French Wikipedia. The first one immediately caught my attention:

Atoms in Molecules
En chimie guil, la proximité immédiate de deux atomes non liés … Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight Jordi Poater, Ruud Visser, Miquel Sola, F. Matthias …
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_in_Molecules

Loyal readers will recognize “Why Kinked is More Stable than Straight” as the (partial) title of a scientific paper based on work that I did in Girona, Spain in 2005. The Wikipedia article cites that paper as one of the criticisms against the theory of Atoms in Molecules. One click away, the English Wikipedia article on AIM does the same thing.

The citations in the English article was put in by user V8rik on June 9th of last year, and user Grimlock copied it to the French version on July 22nd.

It’s been said that you aren’t somebody in today’s world until you have an article on Wikipedia. I’m not quite there yet, but this is a good start.

German efficiency

I was looking up a word just yet at Dictionary.com, and more so than by the definition, my attention was drawn by an advertisement banner:

I’ve retained enough high school German to understand that. For those who don’t, I’ll translate:

The German railways are striking — what do you think of this?
O Yes    O No    O Not interested
Vote and win EUR 10,000.      www.Initiative-Deutschland.net

Must be German efficiency to be able to answer a question about your opinion with a simple yes or no.

Payment check

I will be attending a conference on chemistry in space in Hong Kong next year. Yesterday I filled in the registration form and payed the conference fee online with my credit card. I also signed up for an optional tour of Hong Kong at the end of the conference, and payed that one as well. Within a few minutes, I got an email from the conference organizers confirming the receipt of my registration and payment.

Half an hour later, my cell phone rang. It was my credit card company! They wanted to know if I had just made two payments to an address in Hong Kong. Apparently, the transactions had set off their alarm bells. They quoted the sums and I told them everything was in order.

Now, on the one hand, I’m glad they keep an eye out for suspicious transactions. The world seems to be full nowadays of people robbing bank accounts and abusing credit cards through the internet. I’d rather not have that happen to me. On the other hand, it’s a weird feeling that my credit card company (though certainly well-intentioned) keeps such close tabs on what I’m using my credit card for. It’s a question that’s been asked many times: how much privacy are we willing to give up for extra security? Pretty much everything we do nowadays is recorded, or can be. Phone calls, email, travelling, shopping, browsing the internet, making payments: it’s difficult to do any of that without leaving a trace. It’s something most people take for granted. I know I do. And do I care? No, not really. Not enough to try and do something about it, anyway. I just hope the powers that be use all the data they’ve gathered about me wisely.

Delayed… or not?

I had ordered a couple of books from Bol.com (a Dutch Amazon of sorts) and they were due to be delivered this week. On Tuesday, I received three emails.

• At 3.53pm, the first email stated my books had been shipped, but it mentioned only two out of the three titles I’d ordered.
• At 7.09pm, the second email informed me the third book was not in store after all and they had to order it from the publisher. They were very sorry, but it would take another five to seven days to get it to me.
• At 11.55pm, the third email said the third book had just been shipped.

Indeed, all three books arrived the next day. So what happened between the first and the third email? How can a book not be in stock one moment, need a week to get in from the publisher, and yet be there again later that day?

Not that I mind, of course. I have the books and that’s what counts for me. And here they are, in case you were wondering (I know you were!):

That’s right: the illustrated hardcover editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”, “The Hobbit” and “The Lord Of The Rings”. (The latter three volumes count as one book in the story above, because they came as one boxed set.) These titles had been on my wish list for a long time. I could have gotten them as cheap paperbacks, but I thought I might as well indulge myself and get the deluxe versions. I’m glad I did!

Shades of grey

Here’s one of my favourite optical illusions (copied from BrainBashers.com):

Are the squares A and B the same colour? The answer is here.

Watermelon art

Every now and then, you come across something breath-taking on the internet. Like Japanese watermelon art.

Global warming warning

The letter above was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of April 16th. Picked up by weblogs around the world, a colleague of mine noticed it and sent it along. A couple of observations:

• Contrary to what was reported on most blogs, Mr. Meskimen was not serious when he wrote this letter. That is, he apparently has a history of writing satirical letters, so it’s safe to assume this is just another one.
• Satire aside, the idea that Congress managed to get the sun to shine for an extra hour each day is hilarious.
• What, exactly, got exacerbated by starting DST a month earlier? Global warning? The Democrat-Gazette’s editors should be applauded for publishing this letter, but they should be slapped around for not noticing the difference between an n and an m.

Suicidal Squirrels

Hilarious in a gross sort of way: Suicidal Squirrels.

“Suicidal Squirrels” is the story of 100 adorable little squirrels that have decided they want to die. 100 squirrels - 100 episodes. Witness all the squirrels kill themselves one by one in a series of most ingenious suicides - always with a smile on their tiny little faces…

The first two episodes are currently available on the SuiSquirrels homepage and on YouTube: one and two.

Unattached

It happens to everyone now and then: you want to send some file by email, but you forget to actually attach it. It was my turn this morning. No big deal, because I immediately noticed, so I send a second email with my apologies and the correct attachment.

Or so I thought.

Of course, this was Monday morning, so I hadn’t quite woken up from the weekend yet. The first email went without an attachment. The second email went with an attachment, but without any recipients (except for the standard BCC to myself). It took me a few hours and two replies before I figured that out and could send another email, this time including the attachment and all the recipients.

Yeah, that gives a really good impression when emailing a professor (whom I’ve never met and who’s probably never heard of me, though he knows my supervisor well) to get his thoughts on a problem I’ve been trying to solve for two weeks now.

History repeating

Microsoft has invited hackers to try and poke holes in their new operating system, Windows Vista. Previous Windows versions all contained numerous security leaks, forcing Microsoft to release security patches on a regular basis. The company is now putting a much bigger effort in creating a safe and secure product, which will be much less vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Hmm… Wait a minute. Haven’t I read those last two sentences somewhere before? Ah, of course! That must have been prior to the release of Windows XP, and prior to the release of Windows ME, and Windows 2000, and Windows 98, and…

Do I believe that WinVis will be airtight? Nope, not for a second. (The believing, not the being airtight. Even the notoriously unsafe Win98 could go without being invaded for a second now and then.) For one thing, hackers will always find new ways around security measures. For another, well, this is still Microsoft. I bet WinVis will be safer than WinXP, but I also bet Microsoft will overlook some safety concerns in favour of dumb-looking, processor-hungry, memory-inefficient bells and whistles that no one really needs.