Lieber Schatz! That's how Albert Einstein wrote to his cousin, the woman he was divorcing his wife for in 1914. ("Es ist für einen ehrlichen Menschen nicht möglich, eine Frau zu lieben und mit einer andern verheiratet zu sein." Collected Papers of Einstein, Princeton University Press, 1998)

To be a student now. Still a bit flabbergasted by the Van Eyck initiative and here's the next one, lovingly offered by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University (AEA) and the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech (EPP): the Einstein Project. You will not only find all Einstein's writings (scientific ànd other handwritten stuff like diaries, letters and the like) but also photo's, audio etc. We're talking more than 80.000 items from the Albert Einstein Archives being uploaded for consultation on a website. True, they have just started two days ago with 2000 items but the work will continue all through this year. Nothing else to do but check once in a while, right? I wouldn't mind reading a lovenote by Mr. E=mc2 or a shopping list instead of a dissertation I'm not going to understand anyway. Or are we stripping dear Albert from his godlike status if we do? I don't think so.

you can't get closer to Van Eyck than this

Last weekend De Standaard wrote about an incredible, 100 billion pixel, project sponsored by The Getty Foundation. Amazing stuff and nobody, as far as I know, bothered picking it up. Check out http://closertovaneyck.kikirpa.be/#home and be blown off your feet by the rendering of the famous Ghent Altarpiece now available online.

The project itself consisted of 3 elements: urgent renovation,an assessment of the state this masterpiece is in today and an exercise in technical documentation. The result is a truly amazing website, offering the Ghent Altarpiece in all its detail. You get macrophotograpy, infrared macrophotography, infrared reflectograpy and x-radiography views. No stuff for simple devices: loading images can take quite some time but boy, is it worth it! The site also contains reports on the restauration work, statistics, information on dendrochronology, analysis, ... But it's the images that are magic. Impressive!

Remembrance day

On February 15, two years ago, we lost a colleague in a train crash. I wrote about it then and I'm remembering Sebastien now, being shocked at how much time has past and how quickly it did. Sebastien is never very far away: his name still pops up regularly in meetings or on work events ...

Tomorrow morning a small ceremony will be held at the location of the accident in Buizingen. I'm not attending but my thoughts are with my colleagues who are and of course with Sebastien's family.

Weird Google Stuff

Interesting article on Huffington yesterday: Google Earth's 'Atlantis' has disappeared after an upgrade. Google has been quality checking their 3D Ocean tool and now claims to have 15% of the ocean floor visible at a resolution of 1 km. Before the upgrade, images existed that were rumored to be images of the long lost city of Atlantis. 


Fake Atlantis isn't the only strange image recorded on Google earth; in the same article Huffington refers to 36 different weird ones. Google Maps finds some pretty weird things too. 


More importantly Google Earth itself is up for an extensive upgrade later this year which is said to result in twice the accuracy it has today.


Still, removing these images: they do have a censorship reflex, don't they?

Photographer is Modern-day Hopper

It's not that Hopper painted poverty and desolate Americana. We all know (and some of us love) his play with light, his choice of subject, his point of view. Personally I also like Sheeler, exponent of what they call the Precisionist Movement: cities, machines.

But look at these incredible pictures, on exhibition (alas) @ the MOMA. In A New American Picture, photographer Doug Rickard takes viewers on a tour of the run-down, the derelict, and the economically depressed using ... Google. Rickard scouted out specific locations on Google Maps that show crippling economic devastation—boarded-up buildings in Camden, N.J., overgrown sidewalks in Detroit, and neglected lots in New Orleans. He snapped digital photographs of the scene playing out on his computer monitor. The effect is impressive and not just for the use of light and colour. The anonymity of the people in these pictures is a harsh metaphor for the anonymity of poverty.

With thanks to www.thedailybeast.com.