Alpha Core

A personal weblog about the world and things that matter in it.

Walking in the Air

Here’s me playing “Walking in the Air” (composed by Howard Blake) on my Casio Privia PX-830 digital piano. This one is dedicated to Doro. The song was composed for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs‘ 1978 children’s book The Snowman. I hope you like it!

High quality audio track of this video is available for download at SoundCloud. Read more

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Levitron Omega

This is our Levitron Omega (by Fascinations) demonstrating spin stabilized magnetic levitation. The magnetic top levitates via magnetic repulsion above a magnetic base plate, stabilized by gyroscopic effect due to its spin.

The song is called “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” by the Bourbon Street Stompers.

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River Flows in You

Here’s me playing “River Flows in You” (composed by Yiruma) on my Casio PX-830 digital piano. I hope you like it!

High quality audio track of this video is available for download at SoundCloud. Read more

Posted in Hobbies, Media | 3 comments

Delicious Chocolate Cake

Chocolate CakeHere’s for all those who didn’t get a chance to try the chocolate cake I got for my birthday. By now, it’s already long gone. This delicious chocolate cake naturally contains lots of chocolate as well as cacao powder and even chocolate pudding powder, to make sure it’s chocolaty enough. It tastes fabulous! I suppose it’s quite cruel to withhold the recipe, so here it is: Read more

Posted in Food | 1 comment

Alma


Written and directed by Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas. Produced by Cecile Hokes.

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We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Christmas Tree 2009This year we didn’t want to upset Sinterklaas again by putting up our Christmas tree before he had left to Spain on december 6th. By concentrating on Sinterklaas’ schedule we almost got into conflict with Santa Claus’ schedule, who wants to arrange our countless presents under the tree on december 24th.

This actually sounds a little schizophrenic as the dutch Sinterklaas seems to be the basis for the figure of the North American Santa Claus. We anyway try to please both and have our presents delivered by the Weihnachtsmann or the Christkind, whoever  we prefer to believe in.

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Snow in Hamburg

Doro Tom SnowIn winter it barely snows in Hamburg, usually once a year. And most often the few lovely white snowflakes immediately transform into dirty slush when they touch ground. This year, however, things are different. It snowed for several consecutive days and with temperatures below -10 °C during the night conditions are perfect. For a lot of other places this is probablSnowman on our balconyy a really good joke, but we are proud about a 5 cm thick layer of snow. I even built a Shadows in the snowsmall snowman on our balcony.
To savour the snow-white beauty even more Tom and me made a day trip to the Baltic coast where we enjoyed the whitest beach possible.

The sad truth is that my snowman is melting silently away while I’m writing this post…

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Down Below

At the Olympus website you can download this great song for free.

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Full Moon

Full MoonHere’s another short but enjoyable puzzle game by Bart Bonte, called Full Moon. The idea is to make the bunny get to whatever it wants at that time (carrot, pear, apple) in each level (there are only 13 of them). In case you get stuck, I wrote a complete walkthrough for it below. Have fun! Read more

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Parking in Hamburg

Parking in HamburgFound a tight parking spot? Not sure if the car would fit in? Well, in Hamburg, that’s obviously no problem whatsoever! Every day you can see cars parked like this everywhere here: parked sideways, parked double, they’d park them vertically up your front door if they could! And I’ve never seen anyone getting a fine for this! It seems it would mean too much work if they’d start caring about this kind of behavior.

Posted in General | 1 comment

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