How to Hold a Yoga Strap

My yoga strap, formerly considered a useless item, has taken on a new life now that I've figured out how to actually hold it properly in stretches.

The first step is to make a loop in one end of the strap:



Now insert one hand through the loop:



Close the fingers around the strap:



Turn the hand over, at this point ensure that the strap is flat (not twisted) as it runs over the back of the hand.



This grip is called a "ski-pole wrap" and it has two important properties: 1) it is incredibly strong--you can easily hold your full body weight, and 2) it requires very little effort to hold.

Now you can use the free end of the strap to loop around something and pull against it. Usually I do hamstring stretches while lying on my back and loop the strap around the foot. Here I've shown the hold using just one hand, but you can also hold the free end with the other hand.



Happy stretching!

European Yogurt Drink

You might remember my earlier tirade about the wonders of certain special yogurts. Well, this is a new one.

I can't pronounce any of the words on this carton, other than "drink". "Mit" means "with" but I can't tell you what LGG is, but it must be good cuz its in there. This yogurt drink from foreign lands is possibly the greatest incarnation of yogurt ever conceived. It is essentially yogurt in a carton diluted to the perfect consistency for continuous quaffing, and with yummy fruit flavors. I drank about 15 of these things in Amsterdam and didn't need to eat solid food for 3 days, they are that awesome.

Triply-Nested Klein Bottle

Triply-Nested Klein bottle in glass, from the British Science Museum's collection of higher-order Klein bottles.

Dance for the Left Hand

Not All Needlenose Pliers Are Created Equal

Swanstrom USA Part #324. These are the best needlenose pliers ever created by man. Once I thought I had lost them, and I cried. I was immediately disabled--unable to work, unable to grasp small items, unable to wire breadboards, unable to manipulate machine nuts. That is when I bought a second pair and hid them in a secret location. What is it that makes them so magical? The perfect leverage ratio of handle to nose? The perfect angle of taper? The precision high-carbon steel edges? The smooth-acting and perfectly tensioned spot-welded leaf springs? I'm not sure exactly, but I can tell you every other pair of pliers is vastly inferior. Get 'em from Digikey here. The #325 has the same dimensions with a serrated jaw.

Just how awesome is A4 paper?

I've been writing a lot of papers recently and the standard these days for an international conference is, not surprisingly, not the American one. The rest of the world uses A4 paper for ordinary document printing.

A4 paper is 6mm narrower and 18mm longer than US Letter, and has an aspect ratio of 1/Sqrt[2], ensuring that two sheets of A(n) paper exactly equal one sheet of A(n-1) paper (e.g. A4+A4 = A3). A0 is the largest size of the family and has a total area of exactly one square meter. This scheme is so awesome that they even made it an international standard (ISO 216). US Letter, meanwhile, is 11 inches long because that is about "one quarter of the average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms." (A vatman is a person who makes paper, evidently).

By the way, one can buy A4 paper at some places in the good ol' USA, but here it's called "8 1/4 by 11 3/4". The alternative is to print A4 -> Letter which requires a scale-factor reduction of 0.94 yielding slightly-painful-to-read text and inordinately wide margins.

New word invented!

musitechnological -- for all that new-music-technology stuff (that I spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in).

Important facts about Strawberries

I like strawberries. You might also. When one buys boxed strawberries care should be taken to consume them in reverse order because the ones at the bottom always go bad first. One solution is to open the box upside down (see Figure 1). Strawberries may be stored in the fridge until called for. They will stay yummy, longer. They are also good with yogurt (uh, for some value of yogurt, that is).

The Most Beautiful Music in the World

My list--the shortness of which should be taken as an indication of the exclusivity of my selection:

- The Abyss of Birds, Quartet for the End of Time, Olivier Messiaen
- The Angels of Comfort, Angelic Music, Iasos
- Angus Dei, Samuel Barber

My new neighbors...

...appear to have a yap dog. Make that two. Why, universe?? Why!!! :) Surely if God exists he would never permit such a chimera of genetic manipulation!