The app called Bobo, after a rabbit which is an educational comic in the Netherlands for kids aged 4-6 years. It has its own website at www.bobo.nl.

Somebody posted a video on youtube with his kid playing the Bobo app.

There is this website where the rankings of iphone apps are tracked. The rankings of the Bobo app are being tracked here. It is interesting to see how this app only thrives in the Netherlands and Belgium. One could say it is a language issue, but the thing is that this app uses no language. Okay, it uses the western alphabet and western numbers. That it makes it only more surprising that Bulgaria (with its Cyrillic alphabet) is the third country where the app is popular.

The games in the app are not directly related to the rabbit Bobo. But still it seems that familiarity in a country with this rabbit makes the app more popular. I can understand that a bit. But should it make such a big difference? It seems to me that the app is just as much fun for kids in the US or the UK or Germany. And especially it is a nice app to keep your kids in the back of the car quiet, while you are driving to a holiday destination. It’s holiday time again, and the app is back on the top of the charts.

#2. Blue-tailed Damselfly

Another oviposition photo. A female Blue-tailed Damselfly gets herself reflected in the water.

#3. Grey Heron on ice

A grey Heron eating something undefined while standing on ice.

#4. Eye / Reflection

I do make often photos of my family and friends, but I usually do not share them with the world. This is an exception. An eye with a reflection.

#5. Green Emerald Damselfly

Posted here a few months earlier as well. Copulation of the Green Emerald Damselfly.

#6. Birds in flight

Last winter, gulls would gather at places where some water was left unfrozen.

#7. Four-spotted Chaser

Freshly emerged Four-spotted Chaser sitting below its exuvia.

#8. Bizarre accident

How did this happen?

#9. Aeshna mixta

#10. Vanessa atalanta

Birdwatchers do it differently. Whenever there is a rare bird, they come from all places to “spot” it. Some even have a deal with their employer that they can leave their job to spot a new species for their list. They get notified on their mobile phone, by email or whatever means there is for instant communication.

This time I read about an invasion of Bohemian Waxwings. A bit of a rarity. Several individuals were spotted in my city, on walking distance from my home. So I walked there. There was only one left, but so easy to find.

Permanently a small group of people was standing and staring. The people can be spotted from far away. And on arrival they kindly pointed to the top of the tree where the bird was. I took a photo as well.

To clarify, the phrase “Force is proportional to acceleration” refers to F=m.a, the second of Newton’s laws of motion: “A body of mass m subject to a force F undergoes an acceleration a that has the same direction as the force and a magnitude that is directly proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass.” (quoted from that wikipedia article).

Then comes the captcha question: “What is the constant?“. The problem is that there is no constant in that formula.

The wikipedia has an article about mathematical constants, starting with the line that it is a special number. Numbers have no dimension, mass has a dimension (kilogram), and so do the other elements in Newton’s law: force is measured in Newton, acceleration in meters per second per second. No mathematical constant in F=m.a.

A physical constant then. Again no, because it is described as “a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time“. This does not apply to anything in F=m.a.

There is another wikipedia article: Constant (mathematics), which states “In mathematics, a constant is a non-varying value, i.e. completely fixed or fixed in the context of use. The term usually occurs in opposition to variable (i.e. variable quantity), which is a symbol that stands for a value that may vary.” Does this make sense in the context of this captcha? Almost, but not completely. Force is proportional to both mass and acceleration. It does not imply that mass must be constant to make the formula. In a discussion elsewhere someone came up with a rocket which is burning fuel in order to gain speed. By burning fuel it loses mass. However this does not mean that in this case the force is no longer proportional to acceleration. F=m.a is also valid for this rocket with changing mass. Mass does not need to be constant to make the formula work. The rocket does not violate Newton’s law.

Then shouldn’t the question rather ask for “constant” (adjective) in stead of “the constant” (noun)? That would imply that the first phrase not just hints at (or describes) Newton’s law, but describes a specific situation where Newton’s law is active. Something like “over a period of time, force is proportional to acceleration”, followed by the question “what remains constant?”. That would make sense. But it is not what the captcha says.

As a side note: I started a discussion about this on reddit. Nobody agreed with me, so anyone else is welcome to disagree. Please stay a little polite. The discussion on reddit got a bit out of hand in the sense that I got personal messages telling me a.o. that I was an all-caps fucking imbecile. It was probably just a troll, but the internet seems to make people angry for no reason sometimes.

Here are some. Order them from Redbubble.

#1. In the winter

Taken in January 2009, this photo had lots of time to gain interestingness. Personally I am not particuarly impressed by this photo, but it is okay.

#2. Calopteryx splendens

I like this one. From the population in Utrecht city.

#3. The emperors clothes

An exuvia from Anax imperator, the Emperor Dragonfly.

#4. Wren, singing

Taken with a 70-200mm lens + 1.4 converter. The converter was new in 2009 and it allowed me to do some more things with bird photography.

#5. Sneeuwkapjes

December snow on trees in the city.

#6. Coenagrion pulchellum

One of my first damselfly photos this year. It is not really in focus, but hey, who cares on flickr?

#7. Winterkoning

Another Wren with the 1.4 extender, in my garden this time.

#8. Butomus umbellatus

Flower with bokeh….

#9. Bittersweet

#10. Sympecma fusca

This photo is probably the only one I would have selected myself. A frosted Winter Damselfly.

If varA = varB Then
    ' somecode
End If

By accident varA was a String and varB a Number. One would say, that those variables are unequal and life goes on. But no. The program refused to run. Alarm, Error, Wrong, Impossible.

I am totally puzzled. There is only one reason why this could be: a String and a Number (it was a Long, but that’s too much detail maybe), can not be equal, so comparing them is useless. But then again, comparing Strings of unequal length is fine, even though they can not be equal either, or Strings which start with a different letter.

The point of my code is to evaluate if two things are equal or not. I want an answer. So seriously, my question to all programming gurus around the internet, explain why a language can not answer a simple question, but wants to tell me – as the programmer – that I should not ask.

But then I decided to get creative. There is not much to be creative about when photographing a butterfly. I don’t know. I set the camera on manual focus and just tried some things. I sort of liked one of these photos, desaturated it a bit and uploaded it to a upload-your-photos-and-comment-on-other-photos site. That was last June. Nothing special happened then. One person said he liked it, another wondered why the focus was so weird. As I am not very active commenting photos of others, I don’t get many comments in return. That is only fair.

And then some months later the photo gets some more comments (wel actually only 2). That is as such a bit remarkable, because comments are usually written on recently uploaded photos. The interesting thing about these comments is that it seems as if the commenter has been made angry by this photo. One commenter suggested that I made this photo without looking through the lens, that I was trying to annoy people with uploading that photo. Another suggested that I should have thrown the photo away, as anyone would have done. Both could have easily ignored the photo (which is what people usually do when they don’t like it).

What is it that makes people angry about a photo of a butterfly?

Female Red-eyed Damselfly (Erythromma najas). The rain left some drops on her wings.

Female Green Emerald Damselfly (Lestes viridis). The sunlight shines on the grass from behind.

Male Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa). Holding on to grass on a very windy day.

Female Common Winter Damselfly (Sympecma fusca). A new generation has emerged. Winter Damselflies get through the winter as an adult, reproduce early in spring. The last of them can be seen until half June. Then the new generation emerges halfway July – this is one of them.

Some examples.

As I am interested in dragonflies, and I am Dutch (the Dutch word for dragonfly is “libel”), I do quite frequently use the search term “libel”. I am aware that this word has a totally unrelated meaning in English, but that meaning is mostly suppressed by using multiple search terms in Dutch, or for example adding the name of an area in the Netherlands. Or by setting the language to Dutch. But, searching for “libel Nederland” gives as the first hit a Dutch woman’s magazine called “Libelle”. Yes. I see the similarity in the words. Words can be similar but can have a totally different meaning.

Another example. Recently I was trying to find some information about legislature on internet privacy. The words “internet” and “privacy” are used in Dutch to, but legislature is “wetgeving”. That last word exists only in Dutch, so you’d think that it would return only Dutch search results. Well, it doesn’t. Check it out: searching for “privacy internet wetgeving” makes Google think I might also be searching for something wet, like “wet dreams poetry” or “wet women” or “wet ink printing”. So stuff like this is inserted between the results.

Google thinks it is smart by supposing I am dumb. That is really annoying.