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Piracy in our countries

Some statistics about illegal music downloading in comparison to legal adquisitions. Any comments?

posted by Goto @ 16:25 0 comments

VUB barbecue and FoToNa

We uploaded the pictures from the past VUB barbecue to a new online account in Flickr (a web based service for storing images). You can access them and add your own pictures in the FoToNa link on your right.
Hope you like them ;)

posted by Goto @ 17:58 0 comments

ContamiNation

I don't know if you already knew, but Belgium is in the list of more polluted countries of Europe.


Have you ever thought about what do you do in your everyday life to avoid this shameful top position?

posted by Goto @ 15:58 1 comments

Spanish sentence of the day

No dejes para mañana lo que puedas hacer hoy.

posted by Miki @ 13:38 0 comments

Farewell!

Since a few members of the "spanish mafia" ;-) are leaving these days (some are gone already) - well, we enjoyed already the nice BBQs, beers and pinchos - I want to let you know, you are great guys and it was delighting having you here! I wish you all the best, a good trip back, lots of success, a warm welcome and good spanish food with old friends!

posted by ingo @ 17:38 1 comments

Software patents and intelligent cyberdogs

Something you should be aware of (if you are not already)...

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

...and something a bit scary about AI and pets...

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/050614aibo/

posted by Goto @ 17:34 0 comments

Spanish sentence of the day

Al que madruga, Dios le ayuda.

posted by Miki @ 12:27 2 comments

Spanish sentence of the day

En el fútbol juegan once contra once, y siempre gana Alemania.

posted by Miki @ 09:44 0 comments

Nice end for the Erasmus: bbq

After 9 months of hard work, everyone deserves a price. We had ours, Ingeneer diploma. As the occassion was really special, on monday we organise a little barbaque.While the time was going on, it became a crowded event.

Firstly, a big sorry for the people who wanted to come but to whom the announcement didn't reach, since the thesis makes a pressure on you, you are not able to take everything into account.

Here we go with some nice photos from the evening:
the cookers:



The football team:

The belgiam weather made us a great favour and a lot of people came.
Thanks for all of you who came and also to all who couldn't assist.

posted by carvajo @ 00:15 2 comments

PDF Explorer

Well, I guess most of us have thousands of PDF articles and papers saved in our hard drives. At least, I do. And I was wondering if there is any utility I can use to browse in them, extract automatically title, author and other attibutes and classify them in any kind of manner. I know the last version of Acrobat PDF has something like that, but I'm not in the paying mood, and also I didn't want to manually introduce all the data to any collection-manager program/database, so I searched a bit the web and this is what I found (windows only, sorry...)

PDF EXPLORER
http://rtt.planetaclix.pt/

It lacks a lot of things still, and some help files would be nice also, but is a first approach to the problem. I mailed the author to contribute in the development of the program, but as it is not open-source, he only told me about designing the icons and translating it to spanish (I was doing this last one). If you have the same need, you can try it and even help to the community by transalting to dutch/french/whatever you know ;)

posted by Goto @ 15:00 2 comments

Het vlaams voor vandaag… (Flemish sentence for today)

Quantum fysica? Daar begrijp ik geen flikker van.

posted by multiplex @ 14:46 3 comments

Backdrops

On stuff not related to work: in my spare time, I try and make some pictures that are suitable to use as a desktop background. This is one of them, but more can be found at flickr.

Have you pronounced this in Dutch, and noticed what it sounds like ?! Maybe I should put it as a "Flemish of the day" entry.

posted by multiplex @ 20:35 1 comments

PhDVD

Some time ago, Natalie came and asked me about the movies we made for the PhD defenses of Bob, Jan A and Guy VDS. Well, I can now announce that thanks to the exquisite iDVD from Apple there is now a DVD available for you to burn/copy/rip/convert to DivX and to watch and wonder where you should laugh. Requirements : A USB stick or some other fancy portable storage that can hold 3.28GB or a blank DVD-R. Hop in and get a copy for you and a friend.

posted by multiplex @ 20:14 1 comments

Sweat baby sweat … and the Munich experience

So: summer is approaching fast and we need to get in shape. I know for a fact that Guy VDS and Ingo F are already working on their squash skillz. Any other squashers @ TONA ? Anyone interesting in running a few miles during noon at a _very_ relaxed pace ?

I know: this is a blog, not a e-invite/social network/mailing list type, but nonetheless: no-one else seems to be using it and it might just work to increase the cohesion within TONA. I'll give it a try.

Anyways, how about that CLEO/EQEC conference heh ? Big this year, and they even had a conference dinner (ho ho ho, Beergarten ahoy!). Really nice talks by e.g. MC Soriano and the Guy from next door - and even the poster sessions were excellent. Yes, that's true. The poster sessions were heavily attended and there was genuine interest. I wish it could always be like that. The highlights as far as I was concerned were the talks on really high Q microcavities (1E9 !). As opposed to 2 years ago, when the pickings were rather less juicy, and some time was spent in the park, swimming, discussing really important research topics like where to eat that evening, … ok this sentence is getting a bit long … so, as opposed to 2 years ago, there was little or no free time (the crowd goes oooooooh, poor boy).

[Note to self: write a summary for the blog, or better yet: convince someone else to do so :-) ]

posted by multiplex @ 20:00 0 comments

An EXPERIMENTAL blog ?

So let us talk about experiments. After the thesis defense of Miguel, I just know my comments during the jury and the questions I asked will be twisted into something not even close to what I really think and feel. So: Let's us be critical of our own work and discuss experimental results on for example coherence resonance; in all honesty and openly, without hidden agendas (really). In any case: good talk, Miguel, and some fascinating results. Have a great party: you deserve it.

I will fire the first shot: was coherence resonance really seen during the experiments ? I would argue no because
a) the sigma/ statistics were not taken over the entire time trace (up to the mode hopping timescale, 10 microseconds). Taking it over 70-90 ns, the maximum value of the indicator is 20/70.
b) there was never any timescale matching (the CR was much too close to zero noise, where we see that the timescales are vastly different)
c) the position of the resonance is determined by a 300 ps shift in the average and a 100 ps widening - if you compare this to the numerical results of Krassimir, where additionally you can see the JRTD narrowing to one peak only, there is a clear difference.

P.S. And next time any non-native speaker wishes his/her text proofread: ask us !!! I mean it.

posted by multiplex @ 19:30 1 comments

Erasmus defending their thesis

As you know, today is a very special day. Our dear Erasmus students, Miguel and Daniel, are defending their thesis at 2PM. Don't miss their great presentations!
There will be surprises after the presentations... Stay tuned.

posted by Miki @ 12:06 0 comments

La frase del día

Mantente cerca de tus amigos, y aun más cerca de tus
enemigos. Translate

posted by Miki @ 11:59 1 comments

La frase del dia

Estoy en Munich bebiendo cerveza y comiendo carne.

posted by Miki @ 16:30 2 comments

La frase del día

Quiero dos costillas y una cerveza, por favor. Translate.

posted by Miki @ 19:08 0 comments

Sentence of the day

Second edition.
Frase en español:
Perdón por el retraso. Translate.

posted by Miki @ 22:27 1 comments

Sentence of the day

Welcome to the spanish lessons, first edition.
Frase en español:
¿Cuál es el menú para hoy? Translate

posted by Miki @ 11:06 0 comments

mitle

now something inteligent.

hkjgshgkewrbkbkds bjklfsdahnbw qmnb

it's really inteligent but it's not in english sorry.

Any way - somebody want to make a Department trip to a castle or an aquapark or whatever enterteinment we can find. And make this a habit - doing it every weekend. Not only going out and drinking beer. I think it should be nice?

Also I think we should go to ride some karts next weekend. If you have a racing spirit and you are good at driving please write back so we can arrange something like a race and see who is the best driver(of course it's going to be me but anyway except for me we can give a second place prize.)
So write back please young padawan racers and may the force be with ya.

posted by Anonymous @ 16:15 0 comments

Photo Galleries

2005
VUB Barbecue (June 2005)
Dr. Uchida's Seminar (September 2005)
ECOC Conference, Glasgow (September 2005)
Karaoke evening (November 2005)
(and the karaoke videos!)
Christmas dinner (December 2005)

2006
SPIE Photonics Europe, Strasbourg (April 2006)
SPIE Photonics Europe, Strasbourg (April 2006) (part 2)
Couvin Doctoral School (May 2006)
Sanfermin in Pamplona, Spain (July 2006)
IAP Coda closing meeting (December 2006)
Christmas dinner (December 2006)

2007
Fascination of Light (March 2007)
Couvin Doctoral School (May 2007) (Pictures from Inigo Artundo and Wim Heirmann)
VUB Barbecue (June 2007)
Christmas dinner (December 2007)

posted by Goto @ 12:00 0 comments