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Saturday, at Tobis birthday party, we were speaking about this and that. And as it comes, we made up an interesting observation. In computation, one often has the problem that a program either runs very long and needs few memory or it is fast but requires a lot of memory. Since both resources are scarce one can try to make a compromise and use neither extensively.
Life is similar. There is time and money. One has to decide if one prefers to self make something or to buy it. For example, either one washes the car manually, or one takes it to a service at pays for it to be cleaned. But as all analogues this one also does not hold perfectly.

Today is Halloween and it reminds me of the USA. Two years ago I was in NY and I was a bit desperate because I did not know what to do about this inofficial holiday. I was afraid that kids could come to my home demanding sweets (trick or treat). Thus, I asked my colleagues if the kids would really come (since I lived in Harlem) and what to do if so. Nobody could give me advice how to handle the situation. I guess this is something every foreigner in the USA has to go through once. I decided to buy some sweets on the way home, just in case. However, that evening (it was a Wednesday) I stayed in the office, working little longer and went home around 8pm. I stopped by the grocery store and bought some chocolate. It was rather hard to decide which one to buy. I wanted something not too unhealthy, it should be something that I also like (just in case), and finally it should not be too expensive. After figuring out, I came home around 9pm and waiting for some time, it turned out that not a single kid showed up (I don’t remember if I kept the lights turned off in order not to attract much attention). Finally, I ended up eating the chocolate my self.

Markus comments: Schokoladenfrage (chocolate question)

video

update: we got the tickets!

What does it change if they are known or not?
Nothing - but at least you could try to find where they appeared.

Those of you interested in physics might from time to time want to have a look at: arXiv blog

Recently I received an email from a Chinese researcher. He was asking for one of my articles. So I replied and sent him the link to my homepage, where he would be able to download the pdf of any of my publications. However, he answered that he could not access the site and asked whether it was open for public - which it of cause is. Now I wonder if my homepage or even my domain is censored, and I worry because there is no reason to censor it. If this happens with many sites of this type then people might only have a very limited view of the World Wide Web. Nevertheless, this could as well be some coincidence that the guy for some other reason (such as a virus on his computer) was unable to reach my site.

Yesterday, some friends and me went to a party in terms of an exhibition, namely Sentjabrist (Brandlegen) by Igor Oleinikov (wiki).
Paintings were nice, the party too. Since the normality question came up again (although maybe less pronounced), I conclude that 'disguise' is the motto. We stayed long and the way home was adventurous - to express it positively.