Nik's Saga

Right now I should be relaxing, large goblet of cider in hand, at Bards' Night near Cheltenham, England. Instead I am in the City Youth Hostel in Reykjavik, iceland, having failed to catch my flight due to being misinformed.

The day started in a hectic manner - 08:00 lab on assembly language - followed by a certain amount of cursing the printers and the photocopier while I printed out the notes for the three classes I'd spent about 40 hours work on in total. Not including printing, that is. I'd managed to pack everything essential into a single bag the night before so that I could just walk straight off the plane at Stanstead and onto the train.

What I hadn't accounted for was the transfer between Reykjavik and Keflavik. I got off the internal flight no problem, then asked the woman at the information desk how long it would take to walk to the bus station. You see, I remembered that it was close to the airport. "5, maybe 10 minutes," came the reply. Well, I had my walking boots on and I had an hour before the last connecting bus. No problem, I thought, and set off, feeling particularly good about taking the Healthy Option.

In fact, the walk should have been closer to half an hour, assuming that the road around the airport - or at least the footpath section of it - was open. It wasn't. In fact, the only other route was approximately two and a half times the distance. On top of that, it wasn't exactly taxi territory once you left the airport itself. So I got over half way to the bus station, found the road blocked, looked for an alternative route, gave up and eventually walked back to the airport to find a taxi.

I just missed the last bus and arrived at Keflavik about ten minutes after check-in closed to find no-one from Iceland Express in sight. They don't even have an information desk. A quarter of an hour later a woman appeared who was, admittedly, very helpful and phoned the departure gate to see if they could still get me aboard. No, as it turned out, although had they phoned ten minutes earlier it would have been fine. Ten minutes earlier, when I'd been there but no-one from Iceland Express was there.

There were now several options. 1) Buy a ticket to Heathrow with Iceland Air for over £300. 2) Stay in Reykjavik overnight and get the early morning flight to Stanstead, paying an extra £150 on top of the original ticket price, together with travel costs from London to Cheltenham. 3) Get the afternoon flight on Friday paying an extra £40, which would have got me to the event on Saturday morning after a night in London and a high-price train ticket. 4) Give up.

Actually, I've opted trying to make something useful out of 4). I could get the bus back up to Akureyri tomorrow - it ought to be cheaper than trying to get an internal flight, given that the bus takes 6 hours rather than 40 minutes. Alternatively I could get the Sunday bus and have two days in Reykjavik, which I haven't explored yet.

So that's the plan - have a couple of days here and try not to dwell too much on what I'm missing.

One big advantage of coming home this weekend is that I get to go shopping. Unfortunately it'll be for basic practical things, rather than the $815 plus postage that I realised I wanted to spend at the Darkwood Armoury this morning. I mean, it's not as if I'm being greedy - all I want is a nice case of rapier and a dagger to go with it.

My more mundane shopping list is because there are certain things that you either can't get over here or are ludicrously expensive. So this is it - the partial shopping list:

* A six inch frying pan. Retail price here, approximately £20. Retail price in ASDA, less than a fiver.
* Underwear. With the last-minute changes to my emmigration plans certain things ended up in the wrong boxes and, as a result, I've been doing a lot of small underwear washes.
* TV arial cable. Again, ludicrously expensive, and I'm sure there's a spare one back at home.
* An 8 inch casserole dish *with lid*. I've pretty much given up at looking at kitchenware.
* The Star Wars DVD trilogy. You don't want to know how much they cost here.
* A sausage maker (although this might wait until next time). The sausages sold here are of the european 'lots of meat' varieties, and while these are great on pizzza or with pasta sauce, I do miss the good old British banger.
* My DVD player. I didn't have space when I came over and although we have one downstairs, attached to a big tv, I'm an antisocial blob. Besides which, I tend to watch things with the volume turned much lower than the guys do.
* More books. Always more books. I've read four in the last month alone.
* MacOS X. You don't have to pay VAT here on computer stuff, hardware or software. You do, however, have to pay import duties of at least 25% if the item could possibly be used for entertainment purposes.
* An AirPort card for my iBook. See MacOS X for reason.

So with all this to buy, and a tight train connection on the way in, I'm travelling light - hand baggage only - on the way in and getting a bigger hold luggage bag to take back. Don't worry though - I'll still be bringing skyr and dried cod to Bards' Night.

It's been one of those long days. I wandered into the office late - about 09:30 rather than the 08:00 start we're supposed to have - and didn't leave until after 18:00. Of course, there was method to my madness, in that I wanted to listen to The Guide. It's good to hear 'flollopped' in use again. I'm particularly fond of that word, and have flollopped for years.

We're on GMT all year round here, and we should, strictly speaking, be on GMT-1, but that would really put us out of synch with Europe without bringing us usefully close to the US. You can tell - on the equinox the sun rose and set at seven o'clock rather than six o'clock, which it would have along the Greenwich meridian. This means that I'll get the whole of the Guide in before UK time changes and I'd have to stay until 19:00.

The alternative is to listen online at home. Now while we do have ADSL, it does have a downloading limit after which we have to pay, and with three ex-pat computer types in the house we can use that free bandwidth pretty rapidly. Fortunately I have discovered a sneaky way of listening at home that doesn't involve ADSL. It's called Audio Stream Hijacking.

Audio Stream Hijacking is the internet equivalent of taping things off the radio. I set the BBC to play a program while I'm giving a lecture, in the lab or off to lunch, and by the time I get back the software has recorded the stream and converted it into a convenient MP3 file for me. This I can then take home to my iBook on my pen drive and, lo and behold, I can have intelligent radio programming in the evening that doesn't keep changing frequencies or suffering from interference.

In spite of the lack of intelligent radio programming last night I managed a marathon six-hour session to get the booklet for my class on the physics of music completed. It invoved a bit of research (all the best projects do) as I actually had no idea about the vibration modes of percussion instruments. Strings and air columns are just O-level physics, but drums and xylophones are a different and interesting matter.

Tonight I'm hoping to finish the booklet for change ringing. I have, at least got this one half-completed, so it should only require a three hour session, right?

What can I say, except 'Hurrah for Sir Richard!'? At last, someone with a seious proposal for space tourism. And as soon as I can raise the necessary £115,000, I'm aboard that ship. All donations gladly accepted.

My only negative thought is that it's a bit corny to call the first one the VSS Enterprise. Pretty much inevitable, but corny all the same. But then, deep down insode, I think a bit of me approves because I've spent too many years as a sci-fi geek and think it would be really cool to go into space on the Enterprise. Even if it is only for a three-hour flight.

I see that a much cheaper option is the Vomit Comet, as there's a company now offering flights on it for something like £3,000. I may have to start with that one, as it's likely to be rather a long time before I can afford to fly Virgin Galactic. Unless I win the lottery which, considering I'm not even in the UK right now, is a bit of a non-started. Ah well, Mum and Dad will just have to win the lottery for me.

Tomorrow is a big day for commercial space travel anyway. Scaled Composites is due to make their first X-Prize flight. It's a testament to the desire of people to get into space that the X-Prize itself comes nowhere near the cost of developing the craft needed to win it. It's also heartening to know that even if Scaled Composites don't make it, there are several other companies ready to go early next year at the latest.

P.S. The photos from yesterday's Blue Mud Expedition are now available in the photo gallery.

I did it. I actually managed to get organised an out of the house before 10:30 this morning to undertake my Blue Mud Expedition. The primary aim of the expedition was to locate and photograph the strange blue mud that I'd seem on my first visit here. A secondary aim was to locate and assess sulphur deposits for my latest Arts & Sciences project.

So I packed myself a picnic - ham sandwiches, several pieces of eplavaenabraud (a sort of cake with apple sauce and currants in it), a pot of skyr and a packet of crisps - and started off east on Road 1.

Road 1 is the main ringroad around Iceland, the equivalent of the M25. It was, as ever, very quiet. My first stop was Godafoss, the Waterfall of the Gods. This is a horseshoe shaped set of falls about 12 metres in height. It gets its name from the time of Iceland's conversion to Christianity. The lawspeaker of the althing, upon deciding that the country would turn Christian (except for those people who didn't want to) threw his statues of the Norse Gods into the pool at the base of the falls to show his rejection of the old ways.

As I was getting out of the car and discovering that the jacket I thought was in the back wasn't, so I'd have to wear my cloak instead (how terrible!) I was delighted to bump into Kamilla and Hernaldo, who were doing the same day trip. Kamilla is my partner in crime in designing the cognitive science course. Hence the fact that there is a photo of me at Godafoss in the album.

Back on the road then, and on to Myvatn. The countryside I was driving through was a mixture of blasted heath and blasted trees, although the colours were a marvellous mixture of yellows and oranges. Seemingly it's rare for the trees to show autum colouration - the leaves have normally been blown off before that happens. All part of the unnaturally temperate summer we've been having. Global warming (or 'gerbil worming' as my colleague Adam calls it) strikes again.

The next stop was probably the highlight of the day. Iceland sits on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the line between the North American plate and the European plate. The two plates are moving apart at a rate of about an inch a year. About 4 years ago a study identified the precise location of the rift and a display pipe was put in to show the movement over time. The gap in the pipe is now about 4 inches wide. You can actually see the crack in the earth stretching northeast and southwest where the plates are separating.

Now I'm a science geek. I admit to being a science geek. In fact,I'm proud of being a science geek. And when I stood there looking at this fissure in the planet's surface I got this wonderful high - here was plate tectonics in action! This was Planet Earth showing me geological processes in Real Time (well, sort of). I have to admit that I did physically jump from one side of the rift to the other and back several times shouting "Europe! North America! Europe! North America!" and giggling insanely. Yes, you can just imagine it, can't you? :)

A little further along the track of black volcanic sand, you find yourself driving parallel to a wall of lava about 5 metres high which is clearly the front edge of a lava flow. In certain spots you can actually get in under the lava, and there are several grottos containing a hot pots (hydrothermal pools) underneath. The main one's a bit too warm to swim in, being over 50 degrees celcius, but a couple of the others are just about bearable. The problem is that to get down into the water you have to climb over large lava blocks, and I'm not really that much of a climber.

Onward! Now for the very core of the expedition - the blue mud of Hverarond. When I was here in February Mark took me over to Hverarond to see the mud pools. The lava fields around the area were covered in snow, but the sulphur-rich sands of Hverarond were too hot for snow to settle upon them. This time I had a chance to walk around the area and have a good look at the mud pools and fumaroles - and meet up with Kamilla and Hernaldo again.

The landscape is astonishing - the mountainside is yellow with sulphur and dotted with steaming vents. At the foot of the mountain the mud pots bubble blue holes cut into the golden sands - sands too hot and caustic to walk upon without hiking boots. The whole area is covered with the sulphrous steam seeping silently from cracks in the ground and whistling at high pressure as it escapes through sulphur cones. It bites at the eyes and the throat at you breathe.

The mud was still blue. The bubbling pots of mud splattered blue-grey across the pale gold sand like paint on a Pollock canvas. Thin streams of water carved into the sands a tangle of blue threads.

This area used to be a major supplier of sulphur for the making of gunpowder, and it's easy to see why. Each of the fumaroles has a pale halo of fresh sulphur surrounding it, and the sands themselves are full of small yellow pieces of it. I didn't collect any samples today - I now know what I need to collect and I can give some thought as to how to collect it safely. The purest sulphur forms the structures of the fumarole cones, but I'm not planning to take a geology hammer to a formation emitting super-heated steam. For safety reasons, the active regions are roped off, but I should be able to use the Viking approach (Martian, not Norse) of using a scoop. That will be for my next visit, when I visit Krafla itself.

In spite of the heat of the sands, the area itself was freezing cold and raining. There was even the occasional small snowflake, the first I've experienced first-hand here. A most excellent place to eat lunch, tucked warmly away in my car.

Hverarond was the limit of my eastward journey. I turned back towards Myvatn, and towards the new Myvatn Health Pool, a hydrothermal complex with three saunas where I met up with Kamilla and Hernaldo again. These hot pots are wonderful - this one in the north is modelled on the hugely successful Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik, although many are just holes in the ground run by the local farmer.

It was very cold out of the water. The wind howls across the open area of the pools - there are three of them - and you really do want to get into the water quickly and stay there. The water very hot in places, and can be deceptive even in a cooler area, as hot currents sometimes catch you unexpectely. Down at foot level though, it's much cooler. Hot water does have a tendancy to rise to the surface, so the best way to enjoy a constant temperature is to float on your back.

We soaked for a good couple of hours. My hair is going to hate me for a week as a result, as the silicates and other minerals in the water strip hair of all of those useful surface oils. It's supposed to be very good for the skin though, to the extent that older visitors and those with skin conditions get in cheaper. It also does strange things to silver. I noticed after about an hour that I'd left my silver bracelet on my wrist, and it had turned an interesting shade of metallic blue. Hmm... I think it's going to need a serious dunking in a cleaning solution to get it back to normal.

Nevertheless, it was a good soak and a good way to end a day's adventuring. After that it was the sixty mile drive back to Akuryeri, although I did stop for a while at one of the lakes a couple of valleys over from Eyjafjordur, just watching the water and listening to the wind and the rain.

I didn't make it down to Keflavik today - a non-functional alarm clock and the curse I mentioned several days ago put paid to that idea. Instead I'm spending it here in the house, although I do foresee a trip to the supermarket later to get the makings of a picnic.

You see, I've decided to make the most of the weather and go out exploring tomorrow. The big plan is to go east towards Myvatn - 'Midge Water', the name translates as, which tells you something about the local conditions - and up towards Krafla and Dettifoss. I thought I should go visit Krafla now as it's due to explode within the next few years and as soon as it does, half the population of Iceland will be up there to have a look. Including me, I must admit, so I think I should go and see it while it's quiet and likely to have fewer people around.

The other reason for heading over there is the Quest For The Blue Mud. You may remember how impressed I was by the idea of blue mud when I first visited Iceland. Well I'm going off in search of it again, this time to bring back samples.

And thinking of samples, I discovered that it's really easy to buy saltpetre in the supermarket here. At Krafla I can collect samples of sulphur. The art shop sells willow charcoal sticks. Need I say more? :)

Well, thoughts about philosophy, anyway. I spent a fair bit of time today putting the final touches to the course outline for a degree in Cognitive Science within the IT Faculty here at Akureyri. Cognitive science is an interesting discipline, combining computing, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience and philosophy. From the computing side, it's all highly relevant to the study of artificial intelligence. Assuming that the university like the idea, and we get students applying for it, we'll start next August.

Long ago, when I still lived at Haldane 33 in David Russell Hall I actually did a year of philosophy. Logic and Philosophy of Science, to be precise. Armed with this experience, and the fact that the standard method of teaching an introductory course in philosophy of science is to look at the history of astronomy and philosophical changes that were reflected within it, I will be teaching this module.

I find this all rather amusing. I remember when I sat the course, that I was astonished that it took the philosophers an entire term to cover what Dr. Carson covered in a single lecture in the first year astronomy course. Admittedly, he did have a pre-prepared overhead rather than writing it on the projector, but it was still a single lecture. As astronomy undergrads though, we were assumed to have a certain level of understanding of basic physics and mathematics which the artists didn't have. It's going to be quite interesting to write this course as I'll have to be very conscious of that fact. It'll be the history of astronomy and what this tells us about science and scientific method. Last year I sent one of my honours project students away to read Karl Popper - next time it'll be first years.

So as well as teaching philosophy, I'm also going to be reading all of those classic papers in cog. sci. that I haven't got around to. Or even knew about, in a lot of cases. You see, I often feel a complete fraud in academia, because I'm sure I don't know enough. OK, I know a bit about an awful lot of subjects, but I don't think I know them in enough detail. I do, however, know where to find out anything I need to know. This is how I manage to have a memory full of trivia - knowing things like Tom Lehrer's Elements Song. In Traveller terms, I have a pretty good JOT rating, but it doesn't stop me feeling out of my depth in 'serious' conversations.

There is one advantage to this, though - having a breadth of knowledge rather than a depth does allow me to make connections and see alternatives that other more highly specialised people can't. This is what makes me an idea bunny. I don't see why I can't use a piece of software designed for creating embroidery patterns to generate the templates fo middle egyptian hieroglyphic because all we need are bitmaps, right?

So I suppose there's a need for both of us, the generalist and the specialist. I wonder if specialists feel the same way about themselves in comparison to generalists?

Equinox - the date when the sun is directly overhead at the equator (0 degrees latitude). On this day, at all places on the globe, night and day are of equal length (12 hours each). The spring or vernal equinox (for the northern hemisphere) occurs on about March 21. The fall or autumnal equinox (for the northern hemisphere) occurs on or about September 23.

- Definition from JPL

According to the US Naval Observatory, this occurred at 16:30:54 UT on September 22nd. I assume by this that they mean the point at which the sun crosses the celestial equator giving, theoretically, 12 hours of light and 12 of darkness. Here in Iceland though, the length of day was 12 hours 17 minutes, dropping to 12 hours 10 minutes on the 23rd, 12 hours 3 minutes on the 24th and 11 hours 56 minutes on the 25th. I have therefore chosen to celebrate on the 24th, as that's the closest to equal length of day and night.

At dawn this morning the sky was a clear ice-blue in the zenith, but around the horizon was a rosy-peach glow that reflected off the snow-capped mountains like golden fire. It was freezing cold, last night having been clear and dark with curtains of green aurorae draped across the northern sky.

Now it's chucking it down.

At last, sampler is done. Well, done apart from the names and date, as I'm worried that it's far too late and Petal will have got them something else. At least this way there'll be one done in plenty of time for the next wedding.

Next on the list is the new tablero board, but that shouldn't take long. I'm a bit miffed - I have my nice brown and gold brocade to make a sideless surcoat, but I don't have the rabbit fur with me to trim it. I was thinking of trying to get it made in time for Bards' Night, but I think it might take until Crown Tourney instead. Or then again, I could make up my linen chemise instead. Or the brown linen skirt. Or the...

Socks appeal is very important here. It is important to have interesting, nay, appealing socks. Without holes in them, as they're going to be on display regularly. Even the local supermarket sells interesting socks of the kind you're only likely to find in Sock Shop in the UK.

The reason for this is that when you go into a building, particularly a house, you take your shoes off. This helps with keeping the floor and carpets clean, particularly in the middle of winter when they're probably going to be covered in mud. This also applies to schools and universities, so when I go into the music school I, like everyone else, take off my shoes and pad around in my stocking feet.

As a result, you get to see other peoples socks. Socks become a fashion accessory. Everyone has snazzy socks (except maybe for some of the basses, who have more restrained brown or blue ones). Tonight I saw pin-striped socks, chequered socks, socks with pictures on them, socks with sequins on them, socks with pom-poms on them... I only feel I can hold my head up because my plain black socks do have luminous blue heels and toes. I really must invest in some more exotic socks.

Today is a landmark in my immersing myself in a foreign culture. I succeeded, for the first time, in going into a shop and buying stuff in Icelandic. I don't just mean going to the supermarket, saying hello, handing over the card and then saying thank you and goodbye, but actually going and asking for something.

I went into Rumfatalagerinn, the equivalent of Rejects in Kirkcaldy, and bought three metres (thrir metrar) of red and black ribbon, plus two metres (tveir metrar) of red binding ribbon. OK, so I haven't got the colours sorted yet, but give me a spool of ribbon, or a bolt of cloth, and I can buy the appopriate length. So long as you want less than ten metres - I'm a bit shaky beyond ten as yet.

The ribbons are to make a new tablero board. My nice blue and white one has gone astray somewhere. (If you know of its whereabouts, please let me know.) I'm off down to Keflavik for the weekly Klakavirki meeting on Saturday and I'm going to introduce them to the game. I suspect that we'll end up playing it with Coke rather than alcohol, as I'm sure that at least one or two of them aren't old enough to drink on the base. Never mind - at least they'll know the rules for when they come over to the UK.

WARNING: GIRLY CONTENT COMING UP

I hate PMT. I hate the anger, the frustration, the ludicrous emotionality, and the general tension. I'm suffering from all of them right now, and I'm not enjoying it.

I'm not enjoying it to the point of having gone shopping, discovering that Ben & Jerry's ice cream was 20% off (and still more expensive than it is in the UK) and buying two tubs, one of Chocolate Fudge Brownie (which I'm tucking into as I type) and another of Vanilla Fudge Caramel for next month. Yeah, like it'll last that long...

I had planned to finish Petal's embroidery last night night, but the PM headache, combined with Benite fielding the Accrington Stanley Third Reserves in the Liverpool strip against Scumchester Scumnited put paid to that. Eventually I ended up sitting and writing most of the notes for my class on Bellringing instead.

More positively today - I think - I've had a look at the town craft shop. Fortunately this is a drive away from both the house and the office, which is a Good Thing as it's full of the most amazing stuff. They really do take their crafts seriously here too. Restraining myself again, I only bought a double-ended felt tip calligraphy pen, some paper for calligraphic purposes, some leather cord for my viking glass beads and a beaded angel decoration kit that I'll do before I come back to the UK.

The reason for this is that as I'll be at home on the Friday morning I'll be going to Mum's embroidery group meeting, and they're always looking for interesting Christmas decorations and the like. I can see that I'm going to end uo going home with a suitcase full of craft stuff.

Mmm... I've just tested the suggestion on the bottle of Jerez I brought back from Malaga about it going well with chocolate ice cream. It does. It goes very well indeed. Now if I can just get rid of this headache I might be able to get Petal's embroidery finished.

Remember when I was in Aberdeen I had the terrible tempation of a John Lewis with its needlework section just five minutes walk from the office? Well here in Akureyri it's even worse. I have both patchwork and needlework shops five minutes walk from the house.

Some of you might think that's absolute heaven, but there's a snag - things are generally rather more expensive here than in the UK. So I have two expensive needlework shops just five minutes walk away from the house. I knew the shops existed but thought that they were safely on the other side of town until I asked Liz, my officemate, about them this afternoon. "They're in the yellow shopping arcade next to your house," she told me, at which point I didn't know whether to shout with joy or to cry.

So I stopped by on the way home to discover that yes, they are both EVIL and right now have their Christmas kits and books on display. What's more, as well as huge amounts of Permin stuff - understandable, give Iceland's er... relationship... with Denmark - but they also have the Spanish titles that I picked up in Malaga. I was quite restrained though, and came away with a small Zweigart book of alphabets (with a fantastic set of mediaeval illuminated capitals) and a book of hardanger Christmas tree ornaments. I was quite tempted by the Dimensions Gold Mini sailing ship, as well as some sequinned Christmas ornaments, but I was strong. :) I suspect I'll give in on the ornaments later though.

Another reason for visiting the place was that I've finally almost finished the wedding sampler for Petal's friends. I'm on the backstitch and have completed the blue backstitch so it's only the brown backstitch to go. Once this is complete I'm thinking of doing a technicolour pen pot for the office before I settle into a tablecloth for the winter. I have two tablecloths - one is a hardanger kit, the other is a plain irish linen one that it likely to end up with a heraldic border for use at SCA events.

Mmm... all this talk of embroidery... must go away and finish sampler...

I am not, by inclination, a Nicola Jayne. I am a Nik. I am sometimes a Freydis. I have been known to respond to Nikki, Nikkums, Dhivael, Dhiy, Sharik, Ayesha, Baloo, Akela, Vila, Big Momma and even N (pronounced 'nuh'). So you can imagine how I feel about the Icelandic convention of always using both forenames in things like addresses and forms.

I can probably live with it in formal communications like bank statements, but I'm going to have to train them at work that I am professionally a Nik, not a Nicola. I have papers published under 'Nik'. The only thing I have published under Nicola Jayne is my PhD thesis. Some are, admittedly, Nicola J, but that's about as formal as I get.
The only solution, as far as I can see, is to go for the Icelandic name thing. I can get away with keeping my surname - which I need professionally and I can legally keep as an utlendingur, and I will, of course, keep Nik. Nik Jayne just doesn't sound right though - not enough syllables - so in a bold attempt to integrate with the local culture :) I am making a sign for my office door that announces that the inhabitant is Dr. Nik Freydis Whitehead.

There is another good reason for being Nik, not Nicola. Over here it would be spelt Nikola and, as I have a colleague Nikolai (I'm not sure if he's Russian or Georgian) it could cause confusion. There was similar confusion at Dundee when there was Nik Whitehead in Applied Computing and Mike Whitehead in Computing Services. We regularly got each others mail and email.

In a strange philosphical way I think it's a good thing. When I first arrived here I felt as if I was a new person in a strange kind of way. A new piece of papyrus in the book of my life and a new title for that page.

I was doing fine here until I saw the photos from Andrew's fondue party. I wish I could have been there - it is quite lonely out here sometimes. :(

To my astonishment this afternoon I discovered another classic piece of Icelandic television. At 4pm on Saurday afternoon RUV was showing, live, the finals of the Icelandic National Chess Championship. It took a while to sink in - here is a country that takes its chess seriously. It's certainly been a long time since the UK did. I have vague memories of a programme tucked away in the late hours of midweek BBC2 that covered chess during the seventies when I was a geeky chess-playing schoolgirl. I don't even remember the name of the series, I just remember big magnetic boards on the walls with stickers on them.

I can't help but be reminded of the start of the Goodies 'Kitten Kong' where Tim and Graeme return to the office bedecked in red and white football hats and scarves carrying big wooden football rattles (remember them?) and announcing that they'd been to the World Chess Championships.

One of the spin-offs of me not watching TV (i.e. rolling news) is that I'm reading a lot more again. Today I finished Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell, which was rather fun. There's a wonderful comment on heraldic beasts in it that amused me greatly:

God, in His infinite wisdom, made the fishes and the whales on the fifth day, and on the sixth He made the beasts of the land, and He looked at what He had done and saw that it was good. But not good enough for the heralds, who have to add wings, horns, tusks and claws to His inadequate work.

And then there came the SCA, which introduced the unicornate sea-pegasus because Period heralds just weren't inventive enough. :P Although I quite agree with the addition of a new stance for the heraldic newt - pissed.

The next big question is what do I read next? More Dan Brown? A bit of Freddy Forsyth? Or maybe The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency? Decisions, decisions...

In my attempt to experience Icelandic culture in all of its forms (except the pickled shark) I spent some time earlier this evening watching real Icelandic television. I say 'real' as it was in Islandic rather than English (there are quite a few US imports on the public stations here).

I can now recieve 5 television channels in my bedroom, with an extra two available through cable for about £55 a month. Of the five I get free, one is the Icelandic state television channel RUV or 'bugsplat' as it has become known here in the House at Akureyri. Its channel logo is something like a stylised spider - a squashed stylised spider to boot. It tends to show lots of Icelandic stuff as well as good BBC dramas and documentaries (we currently have Robert Winston's Human Instinct and the new version of the Forsyte Saga) together with good US drama (such as the Sopranos) and the occasional foreign film. I say 'foreign' as one advantage of having to subtitle English language films is that you have to subtitle films in other languages too. Over the last week we've had British, American, French, German and Danish films as well as one from the tiny Icelandic film industry.

The second channel, Channel 1, shows English football and US sitcoms and cop shows. In my desperate attempt to find something in English to listen too I have become a fan of CSI, Law & Order, The Practice and Everybody Loves Raymond. I do, however, draw the line at Jay Leno. it also has a nightly film, this evening's being Judge Dredd.

The remaining three channels appear to be music channels - PopTivi, N and Aksjon, although Aksjon has a nightly film at 21:00. It's the pop channels that seem to have a lot of real Icelanders on them. I discovered that Iceland has rappers, including a chap called XXX Rottweiler Hundar. Rap is a popular musical form in Iceland, and sounds very strange. Videos seem to be done on the cheap; there were two truly surreal ones today, one of which was a landscape postcard with an animated collage, while the other was a very Pythonesque selection of animated cut-outs of heads with moving mouths. Exceedingly strange.

Unlike the UK, these TV channels are not 24-hour ones. Or at least not in any form I would consided 24 hour. RUV spends most of its day playing music and showing text quiz questions, while Channel 1 is adverts only from about 02:00 to 18:00 hours.

it's still quite strange, but I'm getting used to it. I still miss a 24 hour rolling news channel though.

You know you're settling in to a job - or a country, for that matter - when you realise that you've had a day with not a lot to write about.

The weather has changed at last. It's now on the wet and windy side, and there is snow on the mountains on both sides of the fjord. Time for me to break out my cloak, I decided this morning as I looked out of the window. It received several strange and curious glances. A part of me is hoping I'm about to create a new fashion for cloaks in northern Iceland. That would be very amusing.

Music has become the main theme (as it were) of my recent evenings. Not just the town choir, but also the forthcoming SCA event, Bards' Night. I'll be back over in the UK for that at the beginning of next month and will be teaching several classes there. This means, of course, that I have to write the classes first, so I'm spending a lot of evening time writing class notes. I don't know, I'm writing computing modules during the day and writing music modules in the evening. I'm a glutton for punishment.

I've almost finished the first one - Harmony 101. This is based almost entirely on the music theory I learnt at O-Level rather a lot of years ago. Fortunately Miss Stroud was an excellent teacher and it stuck sufficiently well that I can regurgitate it whenever necessary. Doing it is one thing though, actually writing it down takes much longer, but it's almost complete now.

My second class is on bellringing, and I've barely started that one yet although I have managed to get a set of five chime bars from eBay for the practical session. The third is the physics of sound and music, which is rather fun. Well I think it is, being a physicist at heart. I've started it but that might be this weekend's task.

All of this preparation has led me to discover some really interesting stuff about modes in mediaeval church mucic. It has occurred to me that as I have to write a research paper as part of my Minstrels Guild work that I shall write it on this. I was going to write it on Elizabethan campanology but I can't get the books in time. It looks like that'll be a later paper.

I've also almost finished a new song for the event. I won't go into detail, but let's just say it would be appropriate for Acarin and myself to sing it. Or Wenllyn and myself. Or Wenllyn and Goncalves. Or Goncalves and Antonio. Got the idea? :) It might even be appropriate for Rent-A-Don...

As I may have mentioned before, tennis balls are difficult to come by in Iceland. There is a (one, singular) tennis court in Reykjavik, so the equipment isn't easy to come by. Undaunted by this problem, I have got creative in my creation of a fencing pell and invested in two (orange and purple) shiny rubber balls instead. Soon the house will resound to me clumping around elephant-like on the first floor - either in my bedroom or, possibly better, in the upstairs lounge - trying to hit the things. And then... no rubber ball in Drachenwald will be safe ever again. I will be the scourge of rubber balls across the kingdom. Nevermore will I lose a tournament to a rubber ball. (The way I fence at the moment I'm sure I could.)

It's been quite a fruitful day in work today as well. I met up with Kamilla, my counterpart in the Psychology department with whom I'm setting up a joint honours degree in Cognitive Science. It turns out that her research fields happen to inolve situational awareness and workload monitoring in aviation and air traffic control. And what was my PhD work set in? Precisely. Neither of us ever believed that we would end up working in Iceland, and the chances of there being anyone in the entire country interested in such things was, we thought, so close to zero as not worth considering. Instead, I suspect that we may be about to form the Icelandic ATC Research Initiative.

On top of that I gave a lecture on Software Engineering to our second years, explaining how to write software that works rather than hacking it. They have group projects to do so they have to do it properly this time.

Tonight was choir night, so I was off into the town centre to the music school for that. My understanding has increased to about 4% of the instructions, but that's only because I'm now recognising bar numbers. What it has also done is remind me that I've got several workshops to write for Bards' Night at the beginning of next month, together with a new song or two and a research paper on Elizabethan Campanology.

Fortunately I'm almost up to date on getting my photos online. The latest additions to the photo gallery are the pictures from my trip to Malaga and Marbella for a conference earlier this month, and some images from my wanderings to, from and around the university over the last couple of days.

No rest for the wicked, nor even the mildly naughty.

I've finally bagged my first Icelandic aurora. It's died down now, although I'll check again later tonights. It was mostly a diffuse green glow filling the whole hemisphere, although there were some active green curtains in the west that moved around to the north. Most interesting were the clear bands that followed the galactic plane up through Cygnus and overhead through Cassiopeia. It was almost entirely green, although the active curtains showed the occasional glimmer of red.

Rating: 7 out of 10
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Yes, it's been another sunny day and it's another marvellously clear night. Still no aurora though. :(

The day has been mainly administrative, in that I had a meeting about the new cognitive science degree we're setting up, then the monthly faculty meeting in the afternoon. I now rejoice in the title of 'Director of Undergraduate Studies', which means I look at curriculum stuff.

A quick trip into town at lunchtime provided me with the fabric for a new wrap. I left my other three in the UK (mainly because they were getting a bit the worse for wear) and I really miss them. I don't really like coats, you see. Cloak-like things are much better. Anyway, I made it up this evening while watching Zulu and an episode of Randal & Hopkirk Deceased on the DVD. It's dusky blue fleece with horses in shades of blue and grey. I know, my taste is in my mouth.


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It's late and, for some reason, I can't sleep. This is not necessarily a bad thing right now, as there's a very clear sky outside. Through my bedroom window I can see Ursa Major quite clearly, and not just the main 7 stars. I'd gauge that my limiting magnitude right now is <5.15 as I can see 37 Ursa Majoris through glass and over the street lights.

Yes, I know that sounds incredible, but I've checked it against Starry Night. A really usefull piece of software, that. I really do need to get myself a telescope for out here.

I was standing in the conservatory earlier - about 23:15, just about the time that astronomical twilight ended - and looked up. I'd forgotten that the conservatory has a glass roof, and was astonished by the view. Even through the glass I could clearly see Omicron Cygni (both stars), which have magnitudes of about 3.9. This through glass and a high haze. The seeing here is absolutely marvellous. Of course tonight has the advantage of a new moon (strictly speaking it's still waning as the true new moon is tomorrow night) , so you'd expect the sky to be dark, but it's still an impressive sight.

I still haven't seen an aurora here though. The reason I was though in the conservatory in the first place was that Doug had been out and said that there was a faint aurora in the east, but it had died down by the time he got home. According to www.spaceweather.com a CME swept past the Earth around 20:00hrs earlier this evening, and there's a 40% chance of a minor and 30% chance of a severe geomagnetic storm in high lattitudes over the next 24 hours, so I'll have to keep a close eye on the skies.

The snow of the mountain to the west of Akureyri has advanced further down the mountain - it now reaches about half way down to the town. I'm told, however, that it won't come much further until January. January, it seems, is when the ski season starts. Until then I should expect plenty of rain and wind instead.

In reality it's still quite pleasant here. The temperature has dropped to around 7 Celcius during the day, but that's not exactly cold. Besides, the university buildings are well and geothermally heated. I really must remember to take the camera in some time shortly so I can get some photos for the website before the winter sets in.

There was a bit of a panic this morning. There I was, ambling around the bedroom at 08:20, thinking about the day ahead and my 10:00 lecture when the phone rang. Someone had moved my lecture to 08:00 and hadn't bothered telling me! OK, I can do 8am lectures, but 8am Monday is just taking the micky... especially when I don't know they've been changed. So I got in in time to give the second lecture at 08:50 and managed to get most of the stuff done.

Still, it got the lectures over with, and I've had time to put more photos on my website, including the ones from Unicorn's Inspiration in August. As usual, they're available in the Photo Gallery, together with the newly-added photos of my journey to Iceland. Apart from that it's been another quiet day after this morning's panic. I'm now settling into a routine - go in, get a large coffee, write a lecture or two, come home, write this and do a bit of embroidery.

I'm still working on the wedding sampler for Kayte's friends. OK, so it's now a month late but hey, marriage lasts a lifetime, doesn't it? :) It turns out that one of the advantages of living here is that I can get a new and expanded variety of embroidery and craft magazines. The long winter nights seem to promote the pursuit of crafts and there's a thriving market in magazines to support it. I can see that I'm going to be supplying Mum's embroidery club with a new range of foreign - and therefore exotic - designs.

At least the colours are almost done, leaving only the white and the backstitch to do. Maybe I'll get it finished by the weekend, and then I can do something new and exciting. I rather fancy doing a bargello pen pot myself.

I watched the Italian Grand Prix at lunchtime. It's still very strange having an Icelandic commentary, although I'm now recognising the anguished cries of 'Nej, nej!' when something unfortunate happens. Something like Michael Schumacher spinning off, or the interesting flaming pit stop. It was good to see Reubenio win at last, although after the storming race Michael had I do wonder what the team orders were. And Jensen Button came third - what more could I ask for?

Here in the frozen north it has become frozen. Well, partly frozen. The mountain just to the west of me, Hlidarfjall, that forms the western side of the fjord has new snow on it this morning. It's only a dusting, and it's only on the peak, but it's still snow. It was a bit of a surprise to see this when I went out to the shops after lunch; it really brought home to me the fact that I am a long way north.

The shopping trip brought out a few more silly things that I miss. Vinegar, for instance, is surpisingly expensive and only comes in the white variety. Gravy granules are a complete non-starter; I can see I'll have to import Bisto next time I'm over in the UK. Bisto and a potato masher - if you want mashed potato it comes out of a packet.

We have four main supermarkets here in Akureyri: Bonus, which is cheap, cheerful and does most day-to-day necessities; Netto, which is in the shopping mall is a bit further up-market. It provides such vital supplies as jammie dodgers. Then there's Hagkaup, the posh one. It sells the more exotic stuff like curry sauces, Ben&Jerry's ice cream and many different types of Oreo cookies. It also has a knitting section, which is a little strange. Imagine going into a medium-sized Safeway and finding a wall full of wool and knitting needles. Finally there's Urval, which is on the other side of town and does the interesting spices.

There are two peculiarly Icelandic things that I've taken a liking to already. First is Skyr, which is a form of yoghurt. It's a set yogurt, and is practically all protein with added fruit chunks. Second is an orange and lemon fizzy drink called Egils Mix. I shall endeavour to bring some Skyr to Bards Night so folks can try it.

There is a tradition in iceland called the rettir, or the roundup. At the end of the summer the farmers need to get the sheep and horses in off the moors ready for sorting before the slaughter at the end of the month. The farmers invite their friends around to help with the roundup then provide a celebratory dinner. City folk and tourists actually pay to take part in this, as it allows them to reconnect with their rural roots. I, however, being a friend of a friend of a farmer - who also lectures in Health at the university - got to go along and help out.

Doug, Syed and myself drove over to Brun, a farm between Laugar and Masvatn lake, where we met up with Mark, Liz and Caitlin ready to join about half a dozen or so other folks ready to go off onto the moors. There was a short tactical conference to discuss the most effective way to round up the sheep, then we drove off the three miles down to lake Masvatn.

We spread out into a long lone, ready to stride forwards shouting and waving our hands to drive the sheep down towards the farm. The sheep, being surprisingly sensible in this manner, ran as far from everyone as they could. They covered the ground a lot more easily than I did.
I didn't actually see a sheep, close up until rather later on. We swept north from the lake, over the rough moor and then through the long grass. Once we'd got them to turn the corner up the hill - being a slow walker I did the bottom corner of the pasture making sure that we hadn't got any stragglers who'd gone away to the left rather than up over the hill to the right - I walked back down the road to the farm to help at the farm end of the event.

Three groups of sheep were being herded down the valley, so our group had to be held until last before being brought down into the holding pen. Once in the pen, the gate was opened to allow them to cross the road into the lower field. That's where I came in again - I stood just uphill of the gate waving my arms and shouting to remind them that they were to turn right down the hill and over the road. Or, to put it in more sheep-like terms, I'm not going near that lunatic woman, I'm going to go right here down the hill to that nice quiet field over there. it seems that we were particularly efficient - so much so that Ingvar, thr farmer, wants to book us for next year!

The roundup completed, we all returned to Brun for tea. Well, for hot chocolate, sandwiches and cakes, actually. I've never been a fan of smoked salmon, but I had some marvellous smoked trout that had been caught in lake Masvatn and smoked on the farm itself. Seemingly the trick is to smoke it using dried sheep dung and heather, as they give the perfect taste and texture. I can't argue with that, given the taste of the trout.

After that it was the hour drive back to Akureyri, after which I had planned a nice relaxing evening reading. In fact, I was shattered and spent a nice relaxing evening snoozing instead.

I've just opened the bottle of sherry I brought back from Spain. It's an incredibly rich, sweet sherry, and far, far darker than any other sherry I've ever seen. It reminds me of christmas pudding, rich and fruity, slightly caramelised. It is almost begging to be drunk with a good chocolate or vanilla ice cream.

It's very viscous for a wine, and positively caresses your mouth rather than just filling it. The caramel taste lingers on your tongue like a treacle toffee. Treacle is a good comparison, as it also has a slight bite behind the sweetness.

For those of you who like to know these things, it's a Noe Pedro Ximenez Muy Viejo from the vinyards of Gonzalez Byass, aged for 30 years. It certainly meets with my approval.

I'm writing this while eating a chicken and shrimp fried rice. Here in Akureyri we have a chinese resteraunt/takeaway. One of them (I know, I counted it twice). It's expensive - this cost me about £8 - but then eating out is here in Iceland. It's also very good, although I'm going to have to hunt for some Pearl River Bridge soy sause, as we have Kikkoman here in the House and I generally find it a bit thin and bland. Nevertheless, I'm certainly enjoying the meal

So what else have I done today? I've written next Thursday's lab, put a number of photo albums on the web, and bought an Icelandic mobile phone. The photos are the 2002-2003 SCA ones and they're available here at the Stormbird website. The more recent ones will appear at the beginning of next week.

Actually, I was listening to Vivaldi's Gloria but I kept joining in, which doesn't make for very effective blogging. :) I've just spent an hour learning the alto part, so it was a bit distracting listening to the full version.

But back to the main thrust of the post. When Icelanders refer to Iceland itself, they just say 'the land'. Not 'the country', but 'the land'. There's a distinct difference between the two forms. 'The country' is a political entity, while 'the land' has a much more earthy sense to it. Very viking. A lot of Icelandic words are quite blunt in that way; 'husband' translates directly as one-man, while 'polar bear' is isbjorn or 'ice-bear'. I particularly like isbjorn (pronounced 'eesbjurn') as I recongised it in a news report.

Today at the university we had visitors to the land - the king, queen and crown princess of Sweden. When I arrived into work this morning everyone was running around making sure that everything was bright and shiny. Even the administrative head of buildings was washing windows. We had a speech and a presentation by the rector of the university, during which I sat between the dean of the faculty of IT (Mark) and a Swedish admiral. I'm assuming he was an admiral - the braid seemed about right and he had plenty of scrambled eggs on his hat. After that, the royal party went off to sit through a lecture on glaciation at the other campus and I went back to organising this afternoon's lab session.

Beyond that it's been pretty quiet. I've started to put photograph albums together for the web, so expect the pictures of my travels to appear shortly, together with part of my SCA photo archive. I'm still getting used to using Picassa, so the presentation format may change occasionally as I tweak the XML.

I'm back from what was definitely a successful evenings. From now on, Wednesday night is Choir Night. I was part right in my reading of the public notice; they are performing Mozart, Vivaldi, Purcell and Lloyd Webber, but one after another, not as seperate choirs. The plan appears to be to have a concert performance of the Magic Flute and a seperate concert including the others.

Or that's the impression I got. There's defintely something in February, but I'm not certain what it is. Tonight proved that Hollywood have got it wrong. You know the way in films you have the shot of someone speaking Some Foreign Language then, as you concentrate on him you can suddenly understand him pefectly? Well trust me, it just doesn't happen like that. I concentrated very, very hard but it was still gobbledigook.

Fortunately the choirmaster turns out to be from Nottingham, so when I went up to him to intoduce myself (and admit that I'd only understood about 2% of what he'd said so far) things got much easier... during the coffee break anyway. :) Still, part of the idea of going to this choir is to practise my Icelandic and to interact with the locals. That seems to be working so far.

I'm singing alto in the choir for two reasons; one - there are far more sopranos than altos, and two - my soprano is not suited to choral music, it's defintely for belting out Wagnerian solos. It's been a while since I did any serious choral stuff though, and it's a little weird singing the alto to a piece I know in the soprano (Vivaldi's Gloria in D, to be precise).

So I've come back to the House at Akureyri armed with the vocal score for the Gloria and a CD of the music. Doug and Syed are going to know this music very well by the time I've finished. :)

If I'm going to live her permanently then I'm going to have to interact with the locals. It seems to me that the best way to do this is to go and join clubs and the like, so I'm off to join a choir in about 15 minutes time.

I know it's a choir, and I think it may have 3 subchoirs, one singing Mozart's Magic FLute, another doing something by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and a third singing baroque stuff by Vivaldi and Purcell. That's if my reading of the advert is anywhere near correct. I don't know whether to go for opera or baroque - I'll probably decide when I get there.
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I never thought I would miss cheddar. Cheddar, I thought, was ubiquitous. Everywhere must have cheddar, I thought. It's the most basic cheese in the world, I thought. I understood that I would miss red leicester, and lancashire, and that wonderful cheshire with blueberries, but that was to be expected. Bog standard strong cheddar cheese was a different matter entirely.

It turns out that cheddar is an exotic cheese, probably only to be found in expensive delicatessens in Reykjavik. Instead there is gouda. Now I don't have anything against gouda per se, but I do feel it's a little insipid compared to, say, Orkney cheddar. It may be the texture, I suppose. But why gouda? Isn't that a Dutch cheese? The Netherlands are even further from Iceland than Scotland is, and Scotland has some very good cheddars.
So how am I going to get around this then? Well, anyone who fancies sending me Red Cross strong cheddar cheese and Galaxy chocolate parcels will be my friend for life, but more realistically, I'm just going to have to make my own.

It's something that I've been considering for a while, ever since I saw an article on cheesemaking in Tournaments Illuminated. While I was in Aberdeen though, I had no idea how long I'd be in the same place and so forth. As a result cheesemaking, like winemaking, was put on a back burner. Clearly now is the time to try both of these.

Unfortunately, cheesemaking takes months, so for now I'm just going to have to stock up on strong cheese every time I go into the UK. Hmmm... I wonder how much cheese I need to last between visits?


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After a couple of weeks of driving here on the wrong side of the road I'm beginning to get used to it. Certainly, I have to stop and think when I'm turning left, particularly at crossroads, but going around roundabouts anticlockwise no longer fazes me.

What does confuse me is crossing the road as a pedestrian. I've got no idea which side traffic is coming from so I end up frantically looking left and right and failing to notice that the lights have changed and I have a green man to cross. You see, the green man applies to both lanes at once on a dual carriageway, rather than having the two sets we have in the UK. On more than one occasion I have only realised that the green man is active when a car turning right has stopped to let me cross. Never mind, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually.

The other thing I can concentrate upon now is the language. Now that the conference is out of the way and things are going to settle down I can start working my way through the language tutor I've got. So far I can just about manage hello, goodbye and thank you. I can recite my kennitala, but my accent is atrocious. I recognise certain words - mainly things like shop assistants asking if I'd like a bag (poki) with my purchase and currency numbers. The olympics were very good for numbers - all those 5.45 and 9.85s.

My aim, as I think I've mentioned previously, is to read the Sagas in the original old norse. It may take a while, but everyone's got to have an ambition.

My second flatmate, Syed, arrived yesterday. He flew in from India where he got married last week. The House at Akureyri is now therefore officially full. We haven't worked out the shower rota yet, although as I'm an evening shower person I don't think that there'll be too much of a clash. Having a second bathroom downstairs helps too. :)

I'm back in the House at Akureyri again, after some travelling that was only mildly stressful but with a good outcome. I actually managed breakfast in the hotel in Malaga as for once I wasn't out before breakfast started, then headed for the airport. The big decision then was, of course, what to buy in the dutyfree shop. Being outside the EU, the customs regulations are different and you can only bring 1 litre of wine and 1 litre of spirits into the country. I eventually opted for a 30 year old Pedro Ximenez Jerez (sherry).

I suspect that this is how I'm going to stock up my grog locker - every time I fly out of Iceland I'll pick up something else. I was going to get a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin as well but I'll leave that until next time. After all, it's not as if I'm drinking alcohol by the gallon here.

From Malaga back to Stanstead, where I planned to book a hotel room for the night via the internet. Matt and Becky are away this weekend, and my timing to get the department to arrange one for me was difficult. So I arrived in keflavik, asked the chap on the transfer bus to recommend somewhere cheap and ended up at the Youth Hostel.

What an amazing place! About £20 a night including breakfast, comfy bed in a shared room, and an excellent night's sleep. Better still, they're all over Iceland, so I now know exactly how I'm going to organise my expeditions around the country. I ended up sharing with a drama graduate from Aberystwyth who'd come over to Iceland with a friend (a marine biologist) to look for jobs. Most amusing was the fact that he was from the Wirral. I mean, you're in a hostel in a foreign land, having ended up there entirely by accident and you meet someone who grew up about 30 miles from you. Million to one chance. Must happen nine times out of ten.

Another good thing about staying in the hostel was that I took the bus from the hostel to the domestic airport through the center of Reykjavik. I think I'm beginning to fall in love with this country. It has wide open spaces even within the cities. It has strange ducks, nothing like the normal mallards I'm used to. The houses are all brightly painted with white woodwork. There are scultpures around every corner, it seems. Even when it's raining there is a fresh clean feel to the air that you don't get in the UK.

Am I tempting you all to come over and visit yet?

A quiet day at the conference today, with time to get the bus to Marbella and back. So quiet, in fact, that I got back to Malaga in the early afternoon and had a chance to visit the Alcazaba. It's originally a Moorish fortress, later taken over by the Christian kings, and then finally restored during the Franco era. Perched on top of the smaller of the two hills in Malaga, it commands an excellent view of the town and out into the Mediterranean.

Constructed of thin red bricks, it has large square-towered walls and a number of internal courtyards complete with fountains and other water features. The restoration included the planting of a number of trees and shrubs in the various courtyards, including lime trees - real ones with real limes on them.

I didn't get up to the Gibralfaro - the other fortress on the top of the second and higher hill in the town - as the weather decided to turn. The rain in Span fell mainly on me this afternoon, and it fell in huge dirty drops that have left my white shirt a murky shade of spotted grey. I did, however, get to have a good look at the Roman amphitheatre next to the Alcazaba. The Romans originally founded the town as a terraced settlement on the hill that was later turned into the fortress.

Once I'd done the cultural bit I did a bit more shopping. Well, strictly speaking I went in search of a moorish drinking vessel, but I ended up in a number of interesting jewellery shops as well. Close to the Alcazaba is one of two shops selling swords of various types to more up-market tourists. I managed to refrain from buying a rapier, mainly on the grounds that I could buy myself a second hanwei and a flexidagger for less than this particular weapon. And I couldn't have used it in combat anyway...

During my wanderings I came across several bookshops, both new and secondhand. This raised an interesting question - where do you look for books on Spanish swordsmanship? History? Military? Philosophy? Occult? I didn't find anything, nor did I find myself an illustrated history of Spanish costume which was the other thing I was after.

What I did find though, in a shop that specialised with archaeological and historical housewares - including an even more expensive rapier - was a rather nifty calligraphy set in a wooden box. A bit 17th Century, but a simple enough box that it will pass off for 16th. My calligraphy stuff is currently in an ice-cream tub, so this will be a definite improvement.

I got a taxi in to Marbella again as there was an 09:00 keynote presentation I really wanted to see about brain-machine interfaces in macaques and humans. And a fascinating one it was too. After that it was a full day of conference stuff.

I presented my paper this afternoon in a session I was co-chairing on applications. It went fairly well and I've made a couple of useful contacts. The session went on beyond the afternoon coffee break and didn't finish until after 17:00. So much for my plan to go to the Alcazaba this afternoon.
Instead I decided to stay for the conference banquet, which meant that I had three hours spare - not enough time to get to Marbella and back by bus to get changed and I certainly wasn't doing it by taxi - so I had a wander along the beachfront towards the town centre.

Marbella is a dismal place in many ways. One in three commercial premises seems to be an estate agency selling appartments, another one in three is a cafe catering to the tourists and the third is either a beach souvenir shop or a clothes shop. It's a bit like Blackpool without the funfair. I thought I'd find a shawl or something to dress up a bit for this evening - dress code was semi-formal - and ended up paying a ludicrous price for a lilac pareo instead. On the positive side though, when I got back here to my hotel I found that it actually fits as a pareo.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The seafront itself is quite pleasant in spite of the town. It's paved in marble and has many palm trees providing shade for the stone benches. Not a bad place to sit and watch the sea at all.

The conference dinner was a buffet, which wasn't what I was expecting, but I did get to try hake, swordfish and, for the first time in years, langoustines. I first had langoustines in St. Nazaire in France when I was eight. My first reaction upon seeing them complete with heads and tails was 'yuk!', but once Dad had peeled them they were rather good. He spent the rest of the meal peeling them for me, and I can now confirm that langoustines taste good any time, but taste even better when peeled by Dad.

As well as the meal we had live flamenco music and dance. I'm still not convinced that you can play flamenco guitar with only a thumb and four fingers on each hand - I've tried it - but I didn't get close enough to the guitarist to check. Apkar (my co-author) and I sat with a group of Japanese researchers attending the other conference, who seemed delighted when I said hello in their own language. That's about as far as my Japanese goes, but it worked. That and congratulating Hara-san on his bravery at going up onto the stage to dance with one of the dancers. It's amazing what a little knowledge can do.

By the time dinner had finished I'd missed the last bus so it was another taxi. I feel rather guilty about all of this taxi-ing, but there's not really any other feasible option. Tomorrow, at least, I don't have any time constraints so I can use the buses again.

This morning I was going to get the bus in to Marbella in time for the conference to start at 09:00. Unfortunately, although I reset my watch the two hours ahead of GMT I forgot to reset my mobile phone which was doubling as an alarm clock. As a result I woke up at 07:45 local time (05:45 GMT), just as my bus was leaving the bus station. In a bit of a panic then I had to get a taxi the 30 miles into Marbella at a cost of €60. Ah well, at least I got there in time... in time to wait an hour because they'd put the conference back an hour. Oh well.

The conference itself is in a large five star hotel called the Don Pepe. The SCAdians amongst you may find that as amusing as I did. There are actually two conferences going on in parallel, one on mobile communications and the one I'm at on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. 'Soft Computing' means all of those squishy things like HCI, my area of interest. Actually, I'm interested in building artificial intelligence into soft computing, so I suppose this is the ideal conference for me to present papers.

We finished about 15:00, so I took the bus back to Malaga - far cheaper than the taxi - and spent the rest of the day wandering around the historic town centre. I don't think I've ever seen such an ornate cathedral. It's half renaissance, half eighteenth century (there was a funding crisis in between). One of the most interesting things within it was a set of dalmaticas decorated in opus anglicanum. Well worth the €3 entrance fee for that alone.

Another thing I noticed purely because I've recently read the Dan Brown DaVinvi Code - on the top of the most ornate 17th century altarpiece - was the illuminati eye in the pyramid device. Amazing how a book can make you notice something like that.

Dinner was a pleasant paella in a cafe just beside the cathedral. I can't believe how inexpensive things are here - paella, ice-cream sundae and two glasses of wine for just over £10. After that, a bit of evening shopping (I now have a rather nice blue wooden fan to keep me a bit cooler) and a hair doobry. Not one of those mantilla/combs - that's still on the shopping list.