"Take The Aircraft Engine Out!" - The AP1-88 Hovercraft

When I have the inspiration, I stage an Easter Bunny Massacre. Also it's April Fools' Day, so I wanted to post something funny. Lacking inspiration at the moment, I looked back at a previous Easter weekend.

A little local train in Hikone: Ômi Tetsudô is a private company that's been around in the area for over 125 years, hence the panel on this particular train, in retro colours.

Japan has many small lines run by small companies which were never nationalised. However, Ômi Tetsudô is owned by the larger private rail company Seibu, based in the North-Western sector of Tokyo, whose main route is Ikebukuro to Chichibu. Ômi mainly runs second-hand Seibu stock.

Coot chicks in Schaffhausen and herons in flight at Konstanz. That is all for today.

Sangaku Saturday/Sunday is taking a week off.

Shionomisaki: Honshu's southernmost point

Southern Kansai is probably best known for the Kumano Kodô, the pilgrimage routes related to the Nachi shrine and temple complex with one of Japan's most famous waterfalls. But Southern Kansai is also Southernmost Kansai, and the Shionomisaki peninsula, part of the town of Kushimoto is as South as it gets for the main island of Japan.

Beyond this lawn and those rocks is the Pacific Ocean: just water for thousands of kilometres in this direction! The nearest substantial landmass due South from here is Papua New Guinea, 35° latitude lower, or 10% of the Earth's circumference!

That's a nice lawn by the way, it would be a shame if someone...

Shionomisaki is basically Honshu's version of "Land's End" or "Finistere", and there is a little leisure complex to mark it. The recent Geopark Centre is good, but the blue buildings in the previous shot, the shop and restaurant and the observation tower, are from a different time and showing their age - case in point, the children's cups in the restaurant with the mascot of the 1998 World Cup in France!

Neuviller-la-Roche

Quick post today - just a few views of climbing out of the village of Neuviller-la-Roche in late March 2022.

The destination on that sweltering day I saw the Jetfoil was Jizôzaki and Mihonoseki lighthouse. It's just a 2 km walk from the village, but gosh it was difficult that day! Still, the views of the coastline were, as always, well worth the effort.

The lighthouse itself is a nice little building, built at the end of the 19th century, and nicely kept (if you can spot the ladies raking in front of the entrance in the picture). It's circled by a short walking trail.

The tower doesn't need to be too high as it stands on a cliff, while the former residence now houses a shop and a tea room with a view out to sea.

Like Shionomisaki I covered some time ago, Mihonoseki lighthouse has a "Guardian of Light" character designed for it! This one looks somewhat more confident than the pensive guardian of the South!

Ruine Schauenburg

My hike in July took me to the South side of Oberkirch, while on the North side sit the ruins of Schauenburg castle. It's a short, but steep, climb from town centre (or you can drive up).

The castle was built at the end of the 11th century by the Duke of Swabia. It saw action mainly in disputes between local lords, most notably after much of the land around the castle was sold to the Margrave of Baden-Baden, around 35 km to the North. It became a ruin following a French invasion in 1689.

Today, a restaurant sits beside the ruin. When I was last there, there was a camera stand to take a clean selfie - you know, the one where you set a timer instead of holding at arm's length. That's where my photo on my professional website comes from.

As is the case from the South side, the castle has a good view of the Rhine plains, and Strasbourg cathedral sticks out. It would have stuck out even more back in the day, without the modern tower blocks. The lords of Schauenburg would have seen the massive gothic cathedral and its monumental spire being built... over the course of a few centuries.

Sangaku Saturday #9

As in every odd-numbered episode, we're going to set a problem - the next stage towards solving the "three circles and a triangle" sangaku. We are looking for one more equation between the radii p, q and r, it will be obtained with a similar method to the previous step... but the formulas will be a bit longer, so roll your sleeves up and don't be scared!

Here are the lengths we know:

SO = 1 , SN = b , SA = p , BO = q , CQ = r and

Here is also a list of known pairs of perpendicular lines:

(SO) and (ON) , (SO) and (PC) , (ON) and (CQ) , (SN) and (CR).

[P, Q and R are defined as the orthogonal projections of C onto the sides of SON.]

The equation we are looking for will come from getting two expressions for the square of the length CN.

You can work out how to do this by yourself if you feel like it, or check below the cut for the steps and to check your result. As always, details and a bit of history next week!

1: After working out the length QN, get a first expression of CN² by using Pythagoras's theorem in the right triangle CQN.

2: Proceed similarly in the cascade of right triangles CPS, CRS and CRN, to get a second expression of CN².

Conclude that

Karlsruhe Palace

Thought I'd pop up to Karlsruhe today; it's not very far and I'd never been. It was... well, OK for a light outing. There's a lot of construction work going on in town, and it wasn't very animated being late January. Still, the weather was good enough for a pleasant walk around the centrepiece, the Palace, which houses the history museum of the State of Baden.

Karlsruhe is a relatively young town, by European history standards, as it was founded in 1715 as a new seat of power for the Margrave of Baden. A symmetric living building with a rear wing mounted by a tower was surrounded by vast gardens, and streets radiated out from the palace - a rather original urban arrangement, I don't remember seeing it in other places. Following French invasion in the late 18th century, Emperor Napoleon granted Baden the status of Grand Duchy: the ruler gained access to more riches and symbols such as a crown, a throne...

The Grand Duchy was briefly overthrown in a revolution in 1849, and abolished entirely following the fall of the German Empire in 1918. The region of Baden, stretching from Mannheim and Karlsruhe in the North, along the East side of the Rhine down to Freiburg and Konstanz, became a Republic within the Weimar Republic, and merged with neighbouring Württemberg, the area around Stuttgart, into the Land of Baden-Württemberg we have today in 1952. Baden was the smaller of the two former Grand Duchies, and was more reticent to the merger, as this poster in the museum shows.

"This is what the merger will be like!"

Ultimately, the merger wasn't as bad a deal as feared: when a Baden-only referendum was held in 1970, a return to a split was emphatically rejected. Still, it is not rare to see the yellow and red flag of Baden in the South-West corner of Germany - I've seen it outside a drinks hut near Oberkirch (bottom left picture) and on several castle ruins. It naturally flies atop the Karlsruhe Palace tower.