Beijing

212’2021 (2021-07-31) – Saturday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

We are half-way through the Summer Olympics and if you thought that Beijing would be the first city to host games of both the Summer and Winter Olympics, when they will take on the Winter games in 2022, then you are WRONG!

The fact is that the Northern Japanese city of Sapporo already held the Winter games in 1972, only eight years after Tokyo had arranged the memorable Summer games in 1964, and now Sapporo is back again. As everone knows, Tokyo is the main city of the games, but some sports are organized in different cities around the Japanese islands. In fact, Sapporo organized an olympic football match already two days ahead of the official opening ceremony this year. On July 21, 2021, Great Britain beat Chile by 2-0 in a female football match in the Sapporo dome, and other examples of events to be held in Sapporo involve the marathon road races and the race walk events. The reason is that these time-consuming events should be kept away from the normally hot Tokyo streets in summer and permit better conditions for the athletes further north in Japan.

If you are interested in more about the Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972, see reference #1 below.

As I mentioned above, Tokyo was already the host of the Summer Olympic games in 1964 and the plans were to come back with the games in July and August of 2020. But as everyone knows, the on-going pandemic postponed the games one year. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but that honor was subsequently passed on to Helsinki due to Japan’s invasion of China, before ultimately being cancelled due to World War II.

More about the Tokyo Summer Olympics of 1964 can be found in reference #2 below.

As always, watching the Olympic Games on TV is a fantastic show. I particularly like the Augmented Reality, which permits e.g. to show how far the leader in a race is from breaking the current world record. The top picture shows the final in the men’s 50 m freestyle swimming, where the leader Caeleb Dressel is chasing not only the gold medal, but also the almost 12-year old world record. However, the two lower pictures show examples of how ancient technology is still used in the games. In the left photo, the holder of the current world record of 400 m hurdles, Karsten Warholm is struggling to fix his number sign with old-style security pins. In the right photo can be seen how bad it can look, besides probably being a nuisance for the athletes, in this case Warholm’s competitor, Alison dos Santos. The French are known to invent crazy things, how about a novel number sign for the Summer Olympics in Paris in 2024?

I had the pleasure of visiting my sister-in-law and her family in Tokyo in April of 2005 and I must admit it was one of the busiest cities I have ever known. More about that visit can be found in my post of 108’2016 (2016-04-17).

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: Sapporo Winter Olympics 1972

2: Tokyo Summer Olympics 1964

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-04-16 (Saturday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

It is getting easier to achieve good quality of an action video, when the photographer is holding the camera in his/her hands and records whatever is shown ahead. Engadget covers that subject in an article in reference #1 below.

The secret is to equip the camera with a device that compensates for the shaking motion. One such company with success in this area is FeiYu Tech that offers their stabilizers (so-called gimbals) to be attached to the camera. Have a look at the video in reference #2 below, which shows the amazing improvements. But very soon, we should be expecting to see such gimbals integrated into the cameras, such as in th case of Revl and others.

Continuing my trip to China, on Saturday 2005-04-16 I had the pleasure of reaching the highest peak, in all senses, of my trip, when visiting the Great Wall. The guide that had met me at the airport the day before had to transfer his duty to a friend, who normally worked in the Motorola office in Beijing. And she had to sweat to earn her day’s work. Look at the pictures below, the ascent on foot was very steep, but the perfect Spring Saturday made us challenge it with great pleasure. Besides the photos below, consult also references #3 and 4 below for further details.

16AG

Photos taken on 2005-04-16 in the area of the Juyong Pass, 50 km North of Beijing center. Climbing up to the top of the Great Wall took 1,5 hours, with frequent stops. Both my guide and I were of course very happy once we have arrived at the top. The descent, in which I counted 2 613 steps, took a mere 30 minutes. On our way back to the hotel, after a good lunch, we stopped at Changling, where the Ming dynasty tombs are located. The photo on the bottom left shows a stove used to burn commemorative inscriptions and sacred silk materials after sacrificial rites in the Ming dynasty.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: The revolution in action cameras will now be stabilized

2: GoPro FeiYu G3 gimbal test

3: JuYongGuan

4: Ming tombs

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-04-15 (Friday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

One has to be totally certain about what a certain computer command will really do before typing it. If not, it is possible to end up with deleting deleting multiple web site, as you can see in reference #1 below.

On my business/tourism trip exactly 11 years ago, on 2005-04-15 I took a plane from Shanghai’s domestic airport to Beijing’s international airport. The compulsory guide picked me up and brought me downtown to the hotel. In sequence, I took the subway to the Tiananmen Square (aka the Square of the Heavenly Peace). After contemplating the size of the square for some minutes, I entered the Imperial Palace, aka the Forbidden City.

Below you can see some photos from my visit there. Some parts were being refurbished for the Olympic Games three years later, but that did not hinder me very much.

15AD

15EG

15HK

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Man erases thousands of websites with a bad command

+: What did you learn in school today ?