Nik's Saga

Can I have a minor rant? The sooner they ban smoking in public places the better.

I've just got out of the shower after returning from a meal at one of the local pubs. The atmosphere wasn't too bad while I was in there, but as soon as I got back to the flat I could smell the smoke on my clothes and had to do a complete change and shower immediately. Thank goodness there's a washing machine in the flat.

I don't object to people smoking in the comfort of their own homes, or even on the street (where there tends to be adequate ventilation), but I do not enjoy the after-effects of being in a poorly-ventilated place with smokers. This tends to make my visits to pubs few and far between, as no matter how much they boast of their ventilation systems it never seems to be efficient enough.

Ah well, I'm back in the flat now, drying off and about to start hemming my ropa at last. That should pretty much take the rest of the evening.
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Is it just me, or was Graeme Garden an absolute dish in The Goodies?

I'm quite prepeared to accept it's just me, but particularly in Radio Goodies (where he gets to wear the cute black dictator suit with the boots) and Bunfight at the OK Tea Rooms (cowboy frock coat and the same knee-high boots) I could just take him away and play with him. Being the mad scientist of the threesome helps, but (as some of the SCA fencers can attest) I do have a soft spot for men in high boots. And they look so much better on him than they do on Tim or Bill.

So what has brought on this uncommon appreciation of the male form? Just before I got back to the UK a second DVD of Goodies episodes was released and was awaiting me upon my arrival in Liverpool (it having been pre-ordered from Amazon a month before its release). I knew that the chances of it making it all the way to Iceland were small and, true enough, I've watched it over the last couple of days. It contains probably my two favourite episodes (Radio Goodies and Bunfight) as well as six other comedic seventies masterpieces.

What appeals to me about The Goodies is its mixture of intellectual and physical comedy - it can take a simple pun to its illogical extreme, add to that some surreal Keatonesque slapstick and produce a work of genius. No wonder they won roses at Montreux - although Kitten Kong should certainly have won gold, not silver.

I must admit to a certain feeling of kinship with them in one way - sharing a flat with two pther postgrads in St. Andrews led to some similarly-bizare humour, although the physical comedy was missing (with the exception of the trip to Camperdown Park and the adventures in rowing and crazy golf that ensued). I can quite imagine the Goodies as a bunch of postgrads who've just had a Good Idea.

I now have a grand total of eight hours of Goodiness on DVD. it's not enough though. I want more. Roll on the third DVD.
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I don't know, a week back in the UK and I'm turning into a shopoholic.

Well, maybe not what most people would call a shopaholic, but certainly more shopping-friendly than I normally am. This morning, for instance, I actually went into town on a Saturday. I even braved Marks and Spencers.

Now that was a bad thing. When I lived and worked here I used to avoid the M&S food hall because it was too full of delicious expensive food. Today I went in and it was full of delicious reasonably-priced food. I intended only to get some interesting fresh fruit, but came out with fruit and things like cherry crumble, raspberry cheesecake and raspberry sponge pudding. *Sigh* I am going to be even more of a blob than I usually am.

And thinking of my general blobbiness, I went into Evans in search of underwear and actually got measured for a bra, instead of guessing. In fact my guesses haven't been too far out, but going up one fastening size and down one cup size has really improved the support situation.

It turns out that this coming week is the Aberdeen jazz festival. I only discovered this when I found a free lunchtime concert going on in the Bon Accord centre on my way back to Woolmanhill. I've no idea who the group were, but they played a seriously good jazz version of Suicide is Painless. I was very tempted to just sit in the middle of the mall until they finished, but I had work to do and dragged myself away after a quarter of an hour. I've got the festival programme, and I may well go to a couple of the events.

In the meantime, it's back to the code.
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Coding coding coding...
Reee-seaaaaaarrrrchhh!

(Cue bass guitar riff...)

BOM BOMMA BOM...BOMMA BOMMA BOM...

Yes, I've spent the entire day doing research related things for the first time in about 12 months. Not too much in the way of writing code, but that was part of the overall plan. After due consideration of my initial ideas I'm now happy that I am taking the right approach to the problem.

We had a research seminar in the afternoon which broke things up nicely, then Apkar and I had a meeting to discuss our strategy for the next few publications. Having done the one-dimensional case in the first paper I was going to forge ahead into the n-dimensional case, but we've decided to do the intermediate two-dimensional case as well, as it will allow us to do a formal comparison with other systems before presenting a full generalisation.

So I have the weekend to write the 2-D analysis package ready to test on Tuesday. The laptop has come back to the flat for that purpose, and I'm planning a quiet and studious weekend doing just that. With the exception of dinner at Frank's on Sunday, that is.

We also decided that C# is the way to go for the general case, so I'd better go find myself an appropriate book before I go back. Any recommendations, anyone?
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I've spent a fairly productive day doing the very thing I keep warning my students against - writing code without producing a proper design first.

My excuse is that I had to get back into the hang of writing VB6 again, as it's been over a year since I last used it, and I had to set up the really basic stuff like opening files and making sure that I could actually get data on the screen. What was really odd was that I found myself thinking on more than one occasion that would be so much easier in Haskell. It was just the nature of the problem in hand though, rather than a condemnation of VB.

I'm also sure I could write it faster in C/X11, but the whole Windows-ness of the final application means that VB was the original language chosen. Once I get back to Iceland I could be very tempted to write the next version in C# - I have to accept that C# is the next step in C-like languages, although I don't have to like it. For speed though, the current version is still in VB6.

Tomorrow though, I need to design the actual computational guts of the program. Hacking the basic file IO is one thing, hacking the innards of the system is a completely different matter. I should be able to get most of that done tomorrow, which will give me the rest of the weekend to implement it.

Happily, I've been given a laptop to work on, which means I can work in the flat, not the office. Even more happily, the flat has a broadband connection so I can listen to BBC7 while I do so.

Being around the department again has been a little weird. Most people didn't know I was returning, so I've been the object of a number of double-takes as folks have seen something they weren't expecting. Me. It doesn't seem to have changed much - the same old stresses are still there, although several other people have left after me.

I also suspect that I'm going to return to Iceland a little heavier than I left. Put it down to my rediscovering sausage rolls, hot cross buns, potato cakes, white bread rolls, real cheddar cheese...
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Day one of my research week wasn't quite as productive as I'd hoped... yes, you've guessed it... computer problems.

And it wasn't the fault of the RGU support team, who already had a laptop ready for me and my local account reactivated. Unfortunately the computer itself had different ideas, and when I came to install VB6 it decided to shut down. Repeatedly. So Caroline is setting up the other operational laptop and installing VB6 herself this time, with the intention of bullying it if necessary.

The big plan is now to either go into the office over the weekend or bring the laptop back to the flat to work. The latter will become by far the most probably option if I can get the broadband connection in the room working.

So I've had time to talk to various folks, a number of whom were very surprised to see me. I've also done a bit of shopping - the highlight of which is a new pair of brown suede boots that will be ideal footware for fencing. Not only that, but they were in the sale in Evans, so they're wide, comfortable and not too expensive.

All this wandering around over the last few days hasn't been too good for my knees. I've done a lot more walking around airports, stations and shopping centres than I've done since I started having the recent problems with them. I have now resorted to a Boots sports bandage for support.

In spite of all of the horror stories we've got very little snow here. A few flurries from time to time, but nothing that has stuck. Nevertheless, I'm glad I have the boots. Particularly as I've now tested them with the walk to and from Nic and Claire's flat for a small glass of wine (and a pint of cider, a couple of rounds of toast and another couple of small glasses of wine).

On the way back I remembered one of the reasons I like my cloak: it makes my shadow look like Darth Vader (though without the helmet). Or is that the wine?
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Today has been another travelling day, courtesy of our marvellous railway system.

In order to get from Liverpool to Aberdeen I had to travel with three different railway companies. The first (whose name is so memorable that I've forgotten it already) went from Lime Street to Preston. The rollingstock was primitive, but at least there was a nice big luggage storage area at the end of one of the two carriages.

Time for a coffee break at Preston - ah, how often I've done that wait at Preston! - and the Virgin West Coast Main Line train was ten minutes late. Never mind - it was a nice clean Wobblino with built-in Radio 4. Admittedly, I was sitting a few seats away from a chap from Northern Ireland who believed that his mobile phone wouldn't work unless he shouted into it, and his accent was made moderately impenatrable due to a speech problem, which meant that he had to shout things repeatedly in order that whoever was on the other end could understand him.

The landscape in the Lake District was even more stunning than normal, a layer of snow coating the hills and vales, white expanses sectioned by dark streams and dry stone walls.

Time time to wander around Waverley as the Edinburgh to Aberdeen train was a quarter of an hour late. This was a GNER 125 - or class 43 as it seems to be nowadays - and although it might have been state of the art 20 years ago was definitely a bit on the grotty side now.

It was only once we reached Arbroath that the snow started. We had a couple of small blizzards between there and Stonehaven, but I realised that I've become quite blasé about snow nowadays. Clearly living in Iceland has had an effect.

So we were about 20 minutes late into Aberdeen, but that wasn't a major problem. I'm staying in Woolmanhill flats, the same place I stayed when I first came up here three years ago. Three years... I hadn't realised it was that long. In the meantime they've redecorated and refitted the guest flats so there's now a washing machine in the kitchen. This is a good thing as I've managed to spill chicken dhansak all over myself at dinner.

Better add washing powder to my shopping list for tomorrow, I suppose.
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I saw a very strange and interesting programme on C5 tonight - Chris Barrie talking about the history of pumps and of passenger aircraft.

It was actually very interesting. He has a Rimmeresque enthusiasm for large bits of engineering... or is that Rimmer has a Chris Barrie-esque fascination for telegraph poles? It was quite strange to listen to though, as I've been rewatching Red Dwarf recently so his voice is currently closely linked with Rimmer. I must check to see if it's on next week, as I have my pocket TV with me.

The programme even distracted me from working on my ropa. It is now complete except for the hem, which I can do when I get up to Aberdeen. I had to take nine inches off the bottom and still have to put a four inch hem on about three and a half metres of the bottom, but that's it. I need to get several metres of cord to lace it up the front and a couple of hooks and eyes for the collar. Oh yes, and I have to make the ruff too.

All that and a number of computer fixes (as always), so not a bad day's work.
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Or at least, never travel by train on a Sunday.

Thanks to the usual weekend maintenance, there were no trains leaving London for Liverpool until 12:30 this lunchtime. Which meant that Euston was absolutely packed all morning and the train, when it arrived (late) was so full that they had to cancel all seat reservations and open first class up to all comers. The train was, officially, full to capacity. And it was a pretty long train too. On top of which the normal two-hours-thirty-nine-minutes journey was five hours.

About three quarters of the people got off at Crewe. Kayte reckons that no matter where you go, you have to change at Crewe. You'll probably have to change at Crewe to get to heaven. Of course, that only applies if you're going south - if you're approaching heaven from the north then naturally you'll change at Preston instead.

The newly-empty seats were immediately filled by new passengers, and I found myself facing two students who were returning to Liverpool from Cardiff. They'd been down to Cardiff for a party and had come back with about 60 assorted cans and bottles of beer that they'd liberated from the party venue. That and a bottle of champagne.

Now these two... one looked like Benny from Crossroads, complete with wooly hat and thick accent (Welsh, in his case) while the other looked like a heavy-set Harpo Marx. The hair was particularly interesting... Anyway their lives, based upon their alcohol-fueled conversation, centred on alcohol and pot. I wondered whether they were at Liverpool of John Moore's - I admit I had them down for media studies at John Moore's - but it turned out that they were doing degrees in photography at Liverpool Community College and thought it was just a great way to "get some money from the government and do nothing for three years". Yes, that is a direct quote.

Makes me glad that I'm not a UK taxpayer any more. Thank you Mr. Blair for your target of getting 50% of the school populace to university. Those two should no more be at a university than I should be a member of the British olympic ladies gymnastics squad.

Then again, you can't really call Liverpool Community College a university, can you?
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The plan today was to fly to Reykjavík, then fly to Stanstead, then get the train into London and finally another train up to Liverpool. So why am I sitting on a bed in a thin-walled cupboard that calls itself a London hotel room?

You know the way that occasionally things go just too smoothly and you know that something's got to go wrong? Well today has been one of those days. The Icelandic portion of the journey went as smoothly as the university car park. I drove to the airport, flew down to Reykjavík, got a taxi to the bus station (via the wool shop), got the bus out to Keflavik (finally managing to take photos of the lava fields on the way), flew to Stanstead, got the Stanstead Express into London, got the Underground to Euston...

And that's where it went wrong. The 21:00 train did not exist today, and the closest they could get me was going to be Brimingham. So I'm booked on a train at 12:30 tomorrow instead.

This left me with a bijou problemette - I wasn't planning to stay at the station for the next 16 hours, so I needed somewhere to stay. I found somewhere, thanks to lastminute.com, but I'm paying a moderately ludicrous fee for a room that is barely 1.5m wide and not much longer than the bed. At least it comes with a full English breakfast tomorrow.

All is not totally depressing though. I have now successfully read and understood my first complete Icelandic book. It took a lot of thought over certain worlds, and a great deal of technical knowledge about the subject domain, but I'm happy to say that I got all the way through Lalla og boltinn sem skoppaði - Laa-Laa and the bouncing ball.

Yes, I can read Teletubbies in Icelandic. My detailed knowledge of the Tubbydome allowed me to translate such words asstubbabrauðið (tubbytoast or, more literally, tubbybread) and stubbabrauðristini (the tubbytoaster/tubbybreadmaker). I'm particularly proud of working out that skappaði must mean bounced, reyndi must be either followed or chased and mjög mikið must mean very much. I admit though, that I'm assuming that stubbarúmunum must be tubbybeds based on the picture of a sleeping Dipsy and three empty beds.

So the day has not been a complete failure. I am in the UK, I've read about a quarter of The Three Musketeers (in English) and a Tubbybook (in Icelandic). I have to find something positive about the evening.
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Today was rushing around trying to get stuff done ready to go back to the UK and got most of it done. And after that, a party out of town with the students.

Many people in Iceland have summer houses in much the same way that we in the UK have caravans in the Lake District or cottages in North Wales. This one was more of a twelve-man hostel complete with sauna and hot pot. The student group, Data-Tal, arrange a weekend away there for the students every year.

We arranged to meet at the department at 17:00 in order to sort people into carloads and head the 30km north up to Dalvík. Icelandic time, however, is almost exactly the same as SCA time, so we didn't get moving until 18:00. I had volunteered to take my car, but we didn't need it in the end so I went in Doug's instead.

The pre-dinner entertainment was silly games - always something I'm happy to join in. Dinner itself was Mexican, which did worry me a bit, as every time I've had chilli con carne I've been violently ill. CCC was, however, nowhere to be seen, and there was a particularly good chicken dish that went really well with tortillas and cheese. Best of all, the only negative reaction was a slight asthma attack, which certainly beats the alternative!

The after-dinner entertainment was the tale of Cinderella starring Ívar as Cinders and Doug as the Wicked Stepmother. There are many photos, and they will appear shortly. :)

We finally left at about one a.m. to the accompaniment of a minor auroral display. Definitely a good evening.

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I used to think that the British weather was erratic. Trust me, it has
nothing on Iceland.

We will have gone from green to two inches of snow to green again in less
than 48 hours. I can imagine the UK doing the same, but not with more than a
dusting of snow. Here, two inches is a dusting.

This means that the car park now has a layer of slush as well as the water
and ice layers, but the crampons are very effective (after all, I focus a
lot of weight on those little spikes so they stick in pretty well). They
will be staying in the office for the forseeable future as I can't see me
walking to work thanks to the unpleasantly painful knee situation.

My task for tonight is to pack ready to fly on Saturday morning. Tomorrow
night has been hijacked by the student society holding an overnight party -
although, I hasten to add, I'm not planning to stay all night. I'm hoping
that I can use my medium suitcase rather than the large one, given that I
have the fencing kit to lug around with me too.

And once I've done that I might even get the current piece of beading
finished. That would be good, as beading is definitely a form of embroidery
I wouldn't want to try on a plane. :)
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This time yesterday it was quite warm and wet and the view from my window was that of green parklands leading off to the dark mountainsides of the fjord to the north. What a difference a day makes.

I woke up at some point in the middle of the night to find that the sky was the strange yellow that comes with a snowfall light by sodium lights, then awoke this morning to a thin layer of white that partially-hid the green beneath.

Now the green is gone and we've had almost 2 inches of snow in the last 18 hours. The speed at which the freeze has occurred is astounding; like, I suppose, the speed of the thaw we had earlier.

I spent a large chunk of the afternoon preparing the paperwork to finally clear my car through customs. It looks like the import duty will be about £750, which is much better than I feared though much worse than I'd hoped. They also have a civilised approach that I don't have to pay it all at once - if I so wished I could pay roughly a tenner a month for the next five years, but instead I'll probably just arrange to pay it off over six months instead.

Once it's cleared through customs I have to get it registered here in Iceland and get Icelandic number plates. The normal format is two letters and three numbers - I'm hoping for a Þ or and Ð on it just to confuse people in the UK if I take it back for the summer. Any of the accented letters would be good, but Þ or and Ð would be really fun.

That said, I haven't decided whether I'm actually going to bring it back over the summer. It would cost close to £1000 for the return trip, which is a bit excessive. I may just fly and hire a car once I get there instead. For that matter I haven't quite decided when I'm coming back myself. The lease on the house is up at the beginning of August, so I'd have to move out in July sometime anyway, which makes it difficult to be away then. I may do the UK thing in June instead, which would allow me to do both Warbands and Coronation, then spend most of the summer here but fly back for Worldcon at the beginning of August.

Decsions, decisions.
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My kingdom for some knees!

Except I don't own a kingdom... but then again, I doubt anyone could provide the knees either.

I'm getting a bit peeved by this whole body thing. I try to do something exercise-wise and all I end up doing is damaging myself. Then the weather gets in on the act and attacks me even when I'm not being energetic.

The weather has taken a turn for the warmer here in Akureyri, I went to bed last night with a view of a snow-covered world and woke up this morning to the dingy green that could only have been caused by heavy - and warm - rain. This is great on the roads, and even in the lower car park at work, but the upper car park doesn't seem to have got the message. It is now a layer of water on top of a later of ice on top of a layer of water. Treacherous doesn't even come close to describing the surface conditions there.

You know what's coming up, don't you? Yes, I walked over to give a lecture this morning and slipped twice, leaving me not only with hugely bruised and painful knees but also soaking wet from the surface water. Then I had to give what is definitely the most complex of the functional programming lectures - it requires more maths than the others - so it just wasn't my morning.

My later lecture wasn't too bad as it was in the same building as my office, but I made a big mistake afterwards: I started writing the solutions to one of the later FP labs, and one or two of the problems are quite tricky. I sat there lost in a programming fugue until after 18:00 and I still think there must be a more elegant way to solve one of the problems. FP is elegant, and my solution just isn't right now.

Good news on the research front though - the earthquake people are interested in collaboration. I knew my interest in geology would come in handy some day.
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Outer and lining of the ropa are now attached to each other, and the only major trauma was when the machine ran out of thread.

What's all the more impressive is that it's attached at the armholes. I've never been a great fan of armholes (in a dressmaking sense) and I will try almost anything to get out of having to set in sleeves. Unfortunately most upper torso clothes have to deal with one or the other.

In this care I have no sleeves (if I decide to add them later on they'll tie on anyway) so the lining and outer have to match exactly at the armhole. I spent two episodes of Red Dwarf III trying to remember the appropriate procedure for taking two pieces of fabric, each with two holes, and joining them together with nice invisible seams on both sides. I can do it with one hole - that's a fairly straightforward topological problem - but I always have to think hard about the second hole. I'm sure if I did it more often it would be easier, but as I said, I try to avoid these complicated things.

Still, it's now joined and looks pretty OK. I've even tried it on with my armoured chemise and I have plenty of room to move. Although, given the fabric I've used for the ropa itself I'm tempted to test a swatch for armour-worthiness in its own right.

What has been particularly interesting so far is that once I'd made the pattern I discovered that the bottom of the skirt was far too wide for the fabric, so I had to use the Period method of attaching an extra triangle of fabric to each front and back to get the fullness of the skirt. The result is that I've got a full-length (too long at present) dress with a very wide skirt for me out of 4m of 140cm fabric with minimal wastage. Clearly these mediaeval tailors were a canny bunch.

The next thing to do will be the collar, but I'm leaving that until tomorrow. I haven't drafted the pattern piece for it yet as I'm still not quite sure what shape it will be. The collar needs to be high and, possibly, support a ruff. For now that might just be an appropriately folded piece of lace attached to the inside, but appearences are important, after all. And the ruff needs to be visible above my gorget, of course.

I don't know yet whether I'm going to bother with braid down the front, as it's going to end up in the washing machine regularly. For that matter the ruff will probably have to be detatchable too for just that reason. Hmm... maybe a seperate ruff would be a better idea after all...

With the dressmaking finished for the evening I can now settle down to continue the piece of beading I'm working on. I'll save my thoughts (and frustrations) on beading for another time.
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And who, you may well ask, is Connor?

Connor is a third-grade student at Cayuga Heights Elementary School in Ithaca, New York. No, I haven't taken up kidnapping or something, I'm taking a two-dimensional cardboard Connor to see some of the sights of Iceland.

A couple of days ago I got this package from Christie (one of my SCAdian friends who did an exchange year at Edinburgh last year) containing a 2-D third-grade student and an explanation. The class are doing a history and geography project where they're sending these things to folks in the hope that they will be passed on and will eventually visit all seven continents before returning to Ithaca in May.

The science geek in me feels that Iceland doesn't count as a new continent, or at least Akureyri doesn't. Unfortunately the weather is a bit too unfriendly for me to brave the main road to Mývatn and the North European plate, so I'll be sending him on to the UK later this week.

I did make it out to Goðafoss though, and took photos of 2-D Connor there, which I will send on with him, together with some appropriately photoshopped pictures of him elsewhere in Iceland. I think I'll probably print out a couple of the photos but I'll burn a CD with more stuff about Iceland on it. A simple web page will appear shortly, so you can all see Connor's adventures too. :)

Goðafoss is about 30 miles from me. I did consider going on to Mývatn but it's another 30 miles or so and the road conditions were a bit dodgy up in the mountain passes. I'm quite used to driving in all sorts of nasty conditions in the UK, but thin layers of snow on mountain roads with no crash barriers and long drops on one or both sides do make me a little nervous. I was very happy to have studded tyres.

When I got back I started making up my ropa. I've made up the ropa and its lining and now just have to put them together, attach the collar and the closures and do the hem. I suspect the hem will wait until I get back to the UK because I can get Mum to pin it up to the right length for me (as it's currently waaaay too long to fence in). Even in its current state though it feels pretty good when worn.

It's definitely 'stately as a galleon' garb. And a Spanish galleon at that.
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Í jarðholla nokkurri bjó hobbitini.

Translation, anyone? It's a nice obvious one, and there's no point in rushing off to BabelFish as it doesn't do Icelandic. :)

It translates roughly as In a ground-hole someone dwelt who was a hobbit. Fairly straightforward, although jarðholla is a compound word and bjó seems to be an irregular verb. I decided the other day that reading a book - well, translating a book - would probably be a good way of improving both my understanding of the language and expanding my vocabulary.

I was planning originally to read Lord of the Rings as it's practically Icelandic mythology :) but the £50 price tag put me off that one. My second choice, The Three Musketeers, was nowhere in sight, so I opted for a familiar children's book instead in the hope that the language would be easier. Hobbitinn won out over any of the Artemis Fowle books on mythological grounds, although I might go back to them later.

As well as the book, I suspect that my other main source of text will be the free newspaper, Fréttablaðið. Iceland has three main newspapers; Fréttablaðið or News Paper, Morgunblaðið or Morning Paper, and something called DV which appears to be the equivalent of the Sun.

My occasional shopping trips are still affording the locals the opportunity to laugh at my feeble attempts to speak the language. Yesterday I managed most of an order at Subway in Icelandic, only to raise broad smiles when I pronounced kjötbollur (meatball) with a 'll' not a 'tl' sound. For goodness' sake, all the books tell me that 'll' is pronounced 'tl'! As in Þingvellir, the site of the old parliament, pronounced 'thing-vet-lir'.

Still, they're putting up with it and seem quite happy to explain things to me, so I suppose I can carry on providing comic relief for a while.
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Þorrablót is the traditional Icelandic midwinter festival, where traditional Icelandic dishes are served and traditional Icelanders get very drunk. Warning: Some of these foods are quite gross when described. :)

It is held at any time during the month of Þorri, which begins on the first Friday after January 19th. Þorrablót acts to cheer people up in the coldest dark days of the year, and many of the foods served are the smoked or pickled produce of the previous year. The university, conscious of the number of outlander students and staff, arranged a Þorrablót for this afternoon to introduce us to more of Icelands cultural heritage and the foods that Icelanders seem to either love or loathe.

I admit I didn't try everything. The súrvahr or or sour whale blubber really didn't appeal, although there was some discussion as to whether it was the real thing or the alternative developed during the moratorium on whaling.

So this is it; a plate of strange delicacies:



From the top right:

1) Hákarl. This is the famous putrefied shark, buried for several weeks then allowed to dry in the wind. It's OK when you first bite into it, and for the first period of chewing, but suddenly the flavour kicks in and it's truly revolting. I gagged several times but did manage to swallow. Brennivin is supposed to clear the taste but I had the car, and Coca-Cola just didn't seem to work as well.

2) Blóðmör. Sausage of sheep's stomachs filled with rye, raisins and sheep's blood. I've never been a fan of black puddings but this was surprisingly good. It tastes a bit like a gamey version of corned beef.

3) Hrútspungur. Ram's scrotum with testicles. Sharp but pleasant - taste and texture not unlike a strong Lancashire cheese.

4) Lundabaggi. Roll of sheep's fat and belly muscles. This has a very high fat content but tastes like a normal smoked lamb otherwise. It leaves you feeling as if you've got a thin coating of fat inside your mouth.

5) I didn't get an Icelandic name for this one, but it was described as pig jam. It's effectively ham in jelly and tastes quite like tinned ham.

6) Svið. This is made from the assorted meats that can be salvaged from a sheep's head (excluding the brains but including the tongue, cheeks and eyeballs). Again, they taste like meat in jelly. Lots of jelly.

7) Harðfiskur. Dried fish eaten spread with butter in the same manner as bread. Not at all bad, and very popular.

8) Again, no Icelandic name but it's smoked ham and tastes like smoked ham.

I also tried the hangikjöt or 'hanged meat', which is a smoked mutton and quite pleasant. It looks like the smoked ham but is a little darker.

Once we were all tucking into this cultural feast we were entertained by a local folksinger. This was really interesting, as I found out a whole host of interesting facts about Icelandic folk music that I won't go into here, but I'm off in search of a book of traditional songs as a result.

It's now over two hours since I ate and I can still taste it. Another tick on the checklist of life experiences.
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So Charles and Camilla are getting married? Good luck to them. They should have done it thirty years ago.

I've read a lot of reactions on the BBC website, ranging from the ardent Diana-worshipping royalists, through the more reasonable royalists down to the rabid republicans. The schools of thought seem to be

1) Good luck to them, there's no reason why she shouldn't be Queen.
2) Good luck to them, but he can't possibly be King now.
3) HOW COULD HE DESECRATE THE MEMORY OF THE BLESSED DIANA??? HANG HIM NOW!!!
4) Good luck, do we get a day off work for the wedding?
5) Good luck, but why do we need a monarchy in the first place?
6) HE'LL BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL FOR MARRYING A DIVORCEE!!!

What astonished me is the amount of ignorance about the situation. Some people were delighted that the King's wife would be Catholic - she wouldn't be; although her ex-husband converted she didn't. Others were claiming that she'd just be another drain on the public purse - again, she wouldn't, as Charles is self-funding from the Duchy of Cornwalland pays tax at 40% on the income.

Then there was the whole Church of England thing - how could a divorcee possibly be King? Never mind the fact that the CoE only exists because of Henry VIII and his divorce. But then I never was very impressed with organised religion.

The monarchy is modernising. It's becoming far more in touch with the problems of the people - or don't normal people have marital problems or get divorced? And as for the business about abdicating... being in the SCA has taught me that every now and then you get a ruler you're not too keen on. But don't worry, there'll be another one along eventually. And sometimes they can look much better in hindsight that they did at the time.

Come the 8th of April then, I shall raise a glass to them and wish them every happiness.
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While I was at back in the UK over Christmas I treated myself to the DVDs of Season 2 of M*A*S*H. I realised the other day that I have more M*A*S*H DVDs than of any other series - more than Blake's 7, more than Farscape, more than Bugs. And when I go back at the end of the month I'll probably pick up season 3.

So what is it with M*A*S*H? What's a self-confessed Sci-Fi Looney doing having her DVD collection full of a non-SF series? It must be a childhood thing - when most of the girls at school were inordinately proud of having a shirt just like this pop star's, or a pendant just like that worn by that pop star, I was happy with my wonderful maroon dressing gown. Not that I wore it to school, you understand, but the idea was there. It was cool even before Arthur Dent.

Hawkeye Pearce was one of my childhood heroes - right up there with Mr. Spock, Dr. Who and Neil Armstrong. Brilliant and witty at the same time - what more could you ask for in a hero?

Watching the series now I still find him a very inspiring character, but I'm also developing a liking for Henry Blake. It may be something to do with Henry's ability to keep things running and keep everyone sane, including himself. I know that I'll shed a tear when I get to the episode where he's killed on the way home to the US at the end of his tour.

So what has brought on this particular set of memories? I happened to read the Oscar nominations and saw that Alan Alda was up for one in The Aviator. It came as a bit of a shock to see how he's aged, but then, it's been 30 years since season 2 of M*A*S*H. I'm rooting for him on this one.

In the meantime though, I've still got almost half of season 2 to enjoy. Best of all, I don't remember most of these so it's like watching M*A*S*H again for the first time.

I like that.
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We call it Pancake Day, the Icelanders call it Bursting Day. We do pancakes, they do salted meat and peas.

Well that's how it normally works, except that today we strange English types organised pancakes in the department for the students, who were quite taken by the idea but a little wary of sugar and lemon. More of lemon than of sugar, to be honest, but the pancakes went down well anyway.

The two celebrations are much the same - the last chance to have a good nosh-up before Lent, but while in England the idea was to use up all of the fat, here the idea seems to be to eat all the meat before Lent until they were full to bursting - hence 'Bursting Day'.

Fortunately I'm not intending to mark Lent in any form or manner, so I can safely eat pancakes or meat tomorrow or any day thereafter. This does have a down side though - I'm off to the university's Þorrablot on Friday, where I should have the chance to try traditional delicacies like pickled rams testicles. More about that on Friday (assuming I survive).

On a completely different topic, I had a very strange experience the other evening. I was sitting embroidering, doing Bayeux stitch, when I suddenly felt this curious connection with the women who stitched the Bayeux Tapestry. Over 900 years and I was using the same techniques... most odd. The Bayeux stitch work is now complete, and I think that I'm going to settle in to start a beaded piece tonight.

While I recover from bursting after dinner, that is.
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Today is Bolludagur or Bun Day. As in cream buns, preferably covered in chocolate or fudge.

This morning Icelandic parents awoke to their children smacking them with Bolluvondur or Bun Wands - sticks decorated with paper and ribbons. For each blow the child lands the parent is supposed to give them a cream bun. Later in the day the children don fancy dress and wander around town demanding sweets with menaces in much the same manner that occurs at Hallowe'en in the UK and US.

This morning I, on the other hand, woke to a lightening sky - yes, spring is on the way - and the sound of wind rattling around the house. Then it was into work where we too had an important and exciting day ahead.

We had a Prime Ministerial visit.

I can imagine that in the UK if Tony Blair decides to visit your department then you spend the previous month being vetted, having Special Branch descend on the building to check the security, making coffee for the bomb squad who've tagged along with Special Branch just in case and then on the day in question it's ID tags and searches all round.

Not here. Halldor Asgrimsson turned up an hour or so late and with no security whatsoever. Why, after all, would he need it? Even if he is currently (I am told) the most hated man in Iceland. Something to do with lying to the Icelandic people about Iceland's participation in the 'Coalition of the Willing'. It seems that while he was Foreign Minister Iceland joined the CotW without bothering with such trifles as debating the matter in the Alþing. While Halldor and David Oddsson, the previous PM, may be willing the rest of the population are most certainly not.

So I was introduced to him, shook his hand and noticed that he was wearing quite a splendid red and blue tie. Strange the things you notice. Then I went back into my office and completed two lectures on functional programming.

Yes, quite a productive day in that respect.

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It's been quite a quiet day again - a bit of cleaning, a bit of reading, nothing too strenuous. But I did, at least, get around to tidying up my email and uploading some photos from my camera to the computer.

The sky has been quite quiet too - clear and cold, although no signs of any interesting phenomena such as the two below. It must be the extreme lattitude thing, because we do get an awful lot of these strange sights that I've rarely (if ever) seen in the UK.

And although the sky has been clear, it has also been aurora-free, which is a little annoying as I specifically went out and bought a tripod so I could take long-exposure photos of them. I think I'm going to have to try some basic astrophotography just to get the settings sorted.

I've never been very good with a camera. Focussing was completely beyond me, composition was a closed book and this business about f-stops and exposure times was a closed and burned book. OK, so I did learn some of the really basic stuff for my degree, but I then went and did a purely theoretical project that didn't require me to actually look through a telescope, let alone photograph anything through one. The only thing I ever managed to photograph was an eclipse of the moon.

So I think that digital cameras are wonderful things. I don't need to worry about focussing or any of the other technical what-nots, I don't need to wait to get the film developed and I can take as many shots as I like in the hope that a couple of them will come out OK. Not only that, but once I've worked out the required settings for photographing aurorae then my camera will remember them and I can recall them at the touch of a button instead of spending half an hour setting the camera up and missing all of the action.

Hurrah!



Girdle Of Venus
This is sunrise - 180 degrees from the rising sun. The clouds are lit by a phenomenon known as the 'Girdle of Venus'.



Irridescent Clouds
These colours have not been enhanced. It's all due to layers of ice crystals in the atmosphere. The background sky is dark because the clouds were so bright.
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I've just completed item 4 of the 8 I'm doing for Gonz. The latest one is in Bayeux stitch (laid and couched work) and I'm quite pleased with it.

I'd not tried Bayeux stitch before but hey, it's satin stitch with couched straight stitches, so it couldn't be that hard, right? And it's not only easy, but it also makes up quite rapidly and gives a very interesting texture. I was quite amused the other day while reading The Needle's Excellency that Jane had been doing Bayeux stitch too - I was planning to use it before I read this, honest!

So I have one more to do in Bayeux stitch, another in chain stitch and a further pair in some stitch to be determined - they were going to be beadwork but I may change my mind even yet. I could do it in couched silver, but I've done a lot of metal thread embroidery lately. :) Needlelace is another possibility, but I don't want to resort to cross stitch because it's a bit boring. Assissi work isn't as bad, but it would leave large areas blank - that being a feature of assissi work - and the white base fabric I've used is natural white not bright white, so embroidering it helps the contrast.

Decisions, decisions. I'll decide once I've finished the next one, the second of the Bayeux stitch pair.

I think I'm going to hurt tomorrow. Not through falling over, but through putting too much strain on not-too-well-fitting boots. :)

But the skating itself was a success. I decided that it was time I learned to skate backwards. Forwards I can do (in a style-free, rather than freestyle manner) but backwards has always eluded me. My feet just didn't want to move in the right direction. Tonight though, they started to work properly. Maybe it's because I'm losing weight, or I'm just using my lower leg muscles more, but it was much easier than it used to be.

I still think that my calves and hips are going to be sore tomorrow though. :)

***

Doug has now put the photos from last week on his blog, which I can thoroughly recommend for a US view of life here in Akureyri. Doug's photos at www.the-saga.net
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It's been another good day at the university. I supervised two lab sessions, had lunch, went to an extremely interesting seminar on the Met Office's volcano and earthquake prediction system, then came back to my office to find an email from Mark informing us that the Prime Minister is visiting on Monday afternoon and our department is due to be one of the highlights of his visit.

I suppose I'd better look respectable on Monday then. Or at least a little bit more respectable than today (jeans and NASA t-shirt). Fortunately folks are quite informal around here, and the other folks at the seminar were also in jeans and sweaters, so I didn't look too out of place.

It was a fascinating seminar though, given by a chap in the Met Office Unit based at the university. The Icelandic Met Office deal with natural hazards of all kinds - storms, tides, earthquakes and volcanos - and have a fascinating website. A new service will be going live there next week with even more seismic information, and they're planning to extend it in future. And that's where we (the IT faculty) come in. There are lots of opportunities for collaboration on this project, and I hope to get involved. To start with, they may have a use for my ITU monitoring algorithm for trend detection, which means a new data set upon which to test it. Hurrah!

On top of all of this excitement I've rearranged my lectures and labs for the week before Rent-A-Don, which means I can spend more time doing research in Aberdeen.

Not a bad day, I think. And not over yet, as Syed and I are off to the ice-rink later this evening. I shall endeavour not to fall over.

it's snowing again. Unfortunately it's going to have to snow a great deal before there's enough to ski/board on at the weekend.

There's been a lot of discussion recently as the the effect of global warming on the arctic and antarctic ice, probably as a by-product of the big conference being held in the UK at present.

So how's it affecting Iceland? Well, we have a number of glaciers here - the closest is about 15 miles from here - and there are definite signs that they're receding. Iceland could lose its smallest glacier by the end of the century.

What we seem to be getting is warmer summers and wetter winters. The snow has been patchy for the last couple of years, which is a bit worrying as Hlíðarfjall is, I'm told, Iceland's premier downhill ski run and probably generates quite a bit of winter tourist revenue. Certainly it's much warmer than everyone expected. A couple of weeks ago the temperature reached 16 Celcius. That's a good temperature for July up here.

So maybe Iceland is going to become the wheatbasket of Europe, as a US scientist has suggested. That's assuming the gulf stream doesn't cut off, that is. If it does then the name Iceland may become truly descriptive.

Another thing we're having to be careful of is the arctic ozone hole. It's been deepening year by year, and although it's nowhere near as bad as the antarctic hole it's still causing concern about rising skin cancer rates. It looks like I'm still going to need the factor 25 this summer.

For now then I'll just have to wait and see what the weather brings over the weekend. If I can't go boarding I can at least get my fencing ropa made up.

Yes, it's midnight thirty and I've had another bright idea.

In my wardrobe I already have a ropa.

To most people it would look like a perfectly normal blue denim dress, but it has the same cut as the Spanish ropa, which means that I can take a pattern directly from it, lengthen the skirt until it reaches the floor and, le voilá! one ropa. This doesn't mean that I can go charging ahead to make my court gown, but it does mean that I can use it to either make a fencing ropa in time for Rent-A-Don or make a fencing skirt and doublet to go with my chemise.

I love it when a plan comes together. :)

I've scored a minor victory on the culinary front - a marginal or tactical victory at best, but a victory all the same. I have found something that almost tastes like a sausage.

Now I've never been a fan of hotdogs - pale floppy imitations of the true sausage - nor of the over-spiced continental wurst. I like the good old British banger, or emulsified high-fat offal tube, as it was described in Yes Minister. And you can't get them here in Iceland. You can get lots of different strange European recipies, but not your basic sossie.

What I have now found is a bratwurst designed to go in a hotdog bun. Of course the herb mix is wrong, and it's a bit too solid for a real sausage, but it's the closest thing I've found yet.

Oh dear. It appears to be repeating on me. That's not a good sign. :(

I've been missing meat. It's very expensive out here - a pack of 4 chicken breasts costs over £10 - and everything seems to come in family-sized packs rather than convenient single (or double) portions so I haven't actually eaten it very often. So it's been pasta and crispbread in a lot of cases. Or chips, given that I've got a deep fat frier. Although I'm being good and not having chips more than twice a week and small portions even then.

Maybe tomorrow I'll splurge out and buy some chicken and real vegetables and do a sweet & sour from scratch.

I'm confused. I'm so confused I had to sit in my car and have an ice-cream.

After a long day lecturing, I went to do a bit of shopping on the way home, then dropped into Sunnahlíð, the little shopping centre behind the house wherein lurk the embroidery and patchwork shops. I walked up the central staircase, ready to go into Ann Ey, the embroidery shop on the left. But instead of Ann Ey it was the patchwork shop instead.

I admit, I stopped in my tracks. Fortunately there was no-one behind me so I didn't cause an accidents. I looked to the right, where the patchwork shop used to live and there, to my amazement, was AnnEy. Well, sort of.

Two things probably need explaining here. One is that the two shops directly face each other over their respective balconies. The other is that as well as doing needlework stuff, AnnEy also sold ladies clothing.

So there, on the right, not the left, was AnnEy, and the shop was completely bereft of interesting needlework. Or any needlework, for that matter.

What has happened is that the two craft shops appear to have merged, so that the embroidery stuff is still in the same location, it's just that it now shared the premises with lots of quilting fabric and has discontinued the non-needlework craft stuff they also used to do.

It was very confusing. My entire mental model of the centre had been disrupted in a most disturbing manner. I was so discombobulated that I had to go into the ice-cream shop downstairs to recover. Actually, I didn't know it was an ice-cream shop, as it's just moved in and I thought it was just a corner store (I'd forgotten to buy bread). It was only when I got inside that I realised that I need a recuperatory ice-cream.

Now it may be cold up here, but that doesn't seem to stop the locals from eating lots of ice-cream. Akureyri has at least four ice-cream shops where you can get an assortment of strangely-flavoured ice-creams with odd sauces and more chocolate/sweet dips than you can shake an iceberg at. Blue mint-choc-chip and apricot sauce, that sort of thing.

Then I walked out of the wrong door and wondered where the car had gone. Clearly this change in one of my major local landmarks has delivered quite a blow to my system. I'm just going to have to settle down and have a quiet and relaxed night in with the embroidery to recover.

...You're lying in bed and have a brilliant idea, which then wakes you up so it's difficult to get back to sleep?

I've just written my new song for Rent-A-Don, and it's not even poking fun at heavy fighters. Yes, I know, I must be ill. :) But now I'm wide awake and unlikely to get back to sleep for quite a while.

Being awake has allowed me to get a sighting of Comet Machholz (currently mag. 4.8 and in Cassiopeia). It's just a very faint fuzzy blob with the naked eye, so I had to extract my binoculars from the car to get a good view, which did allow me to see the tail.

No aurora though. :(