Hsin-Hao Yu's Personal Blog

On university corridors, you inevitably see old equipments lying around. But which department threw out an entire freaking VAX? Those must be the famous “blinkenlights”…

This is the famous world map by the 15th century monk Fra Mauro. I saw it in Museo Galileo in Florence. Unfortunately it was a replica. The real thing is in Venice. I found it very difficult to recognize landmarks on the map because the orientation is very different from our modern convention. North is down. South is up. Here’s a puzzle: What’s this? Anglia is England. Scotia is Scotland. What is Hibernia? My teenage obsession with Umber Eco finally pays off. It’s Ireland. In The Name of the Rose, there is a giant library with rooms organized as a word maze. After some brilliant detective work, the main character William was able to solve the maze and drew a map. Each room is decorated with a letter. The cluster of rooms in the lower-left corner, for example, spells out HIBERNIA, because it is where books by Irish authors are shelved. In one of the rooms, William read a passage from an Irish poet: Hoc spumans mundanas obvallat Pelagus oras… and compared the rhythm to the sounds of the ocean waves.