Nik's Saga

We had the Árshátið last night. It worked! Everything went pretty much as planned and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Icelandic time is even worse than SCA time. According to our schedule we should have got the introductions and welcomes out of the way by 20:00 in time to start eating, then get the main event - HA Idol - started about 21:00. It didn't quite work like that... We got the introductory stuff - including a very funny version of Library Girl by the library staff - done in time to start eating at 20:30. HA Idol started at 23:00 and I baled out at 01:30 when the dancing started.

I got to do my entertainment between main course and dessert. I'm mad. I know I'm mad. But what possessed me to do Bohemian Rhapsody - the full 6-minute version - backed by the karaoke machine and the rest of the audience? There was a ripple of surprise that someone would even attempt Rhapsody, but I got an impressed cheer for being able to hit and hold the high note... and also for the swinging of the microphone and the air guitar solo. :) They seemed to enjoy it and sang along and I got several compliments through the evening as a result. I really do prefer singing without the aid of a microphone though. I always end up holding it too far from my mouth.

That's one of the really nice things about Iceland - they have a culture and tradition of community events where people get up an entertain each other. The SCA bard in me really appreciates that.

HA Idol, to which we'd asked all of the departments to send a contestant, was hilariously funny and entertaining. The highlight, for me, was the Health and Nursing Faculty's version of Delilah, which could have been dreamt up by Ken Russell. I think it was the chorus of four uniformed nurses going 'woo-woo-woo-wooooo' that did it. I couldn't even sing along as I was laughing too hard.

Apart from singing my other official task was to take lots of photos, so I'll put a link to them once I get them online.
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Having the moral high ground is good. Having the moral high ground and a trebuchet is better.

As part of my busy, busy day today I attended a really interesting seminar on consistency in database queries. In essense, if you're trying to query multiple databases, particularly if their structures aren't identical (quite a common Real World problem) then you run into difficulties if the data isn't exactly the same in all of the databases. A query may return the wrong data, or data more than once, so you can't necessarily trust the answers that your database gives you.

One solution to the problem is to try to fix all of the possible problems before you do the query, but this is time-consuming and normally needs human intervention. The alternative is to rewrite your database queries so they only work with the data that is consistent, and it is this approach that our speaker had taken.

It hadn't occurred to me that there were NP-complete problems in the database field, but it turns out that some of the problems encountered in creating a system to automatically write consistent queries are even worse than that.

In the final lecture of any course I give I like to talk about real-world applications or research, and it occurred to me that this might be an excellent topic to mention at the end of next semester's database course. So I asked if they'd produced any guidelines that DBAs might use to help ensure query consistancy but was told no, the company funding the research intended to produce a tool to do it all automatically.

I'm afraid this pressed one of my buttons. I believe that if you're working at a university then you're in the public sector and any research you do (unless it's classified for security reasons) should be disseminated with the intention of making life easier for other people. If companies want to do bespoke research then they should do it with their own people on their own contracts in their own research centres. They keep the intellectual property rights and researchers get jobs. They shouldn't be able to gag university researchers just by giving money to cash-strapped departments, and universities shouldn't let them even try it.

I know that universities are now stuck in the patent-first, ask-questions-later game in medical research and it's been the topic of a great deal of debate. It's sad to see the same situation occurring in computing.

Industrial partnerships for research are wonderful things - my PhD was partially funded by GEC Avionics. But when the companies are saying what you can and cannot publish then something has to change.
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A friend of mine has designated today as Happy Sunshine Day, a day on which blog entries should be full only of happy things that have happened. So here's my happiness entry for the day.

Happy things that have happened to me today:

• Hagen Daas Strawberrries and Cream ice cream. It was a tough choice, but HD won out against B&Js this time.
  
• Some very good coursework submissions. I'm getting my final coursework marking out of the way before my first exam on Monday, and there has been some very good work submitted.
  
• Finishing a piece of embroidery last night. Oh yes, I was pleased with that. I can't describe it yet, as it's a gift for someone who may read this. I had quite a hunt to find instructions for the making of one of these online but to no avail, so once it has been presented I'll be putting instructions on my website.
  
• Spending several hours this afternoon with the librarians singing in the library. The Árshátið is being organised by IT and the Library (or Bókasafn, which I think is a brilliant word; a place where you keep books safe) so I've had a number of meetings with them over the last couple of weeks. Today we had our final planning meeting and made lots of table decorations ready for tomorrow night. We sat there, admittedly in an office, making crepe paper roses and carnations singing songs like Delilah, Waterloo and I Will Survive.
  
• Futurama series 3. Yes, I caved in and went back to BT to get seasons three and four. BT is the local music and DVD retailer, and it's also the closest thing I've found to a games shop. I am very tempted by the Icelandic editions of both Settlers of Cataan and Carcassonne.
  
• Liverpool held Chelsea to a nil-nil draw in the European Cup semi-final last night. We have home advantage in the second leg next week.
  
• I amused various colleagues by singing bits of The Raven Banner, The Model of a Buff Barbarian Heroine and Woad over coffee this morning.
  
• A surprise lunchtime phone call from Fred. He's just been adopted by the cat from several houses along the street because he's a) a cat person, b) has a warm and comfortable cat-friendly house, and c) has no annoying children. We talked cats, Apple Macs, and Traveller starship designs. Talking to Fred always counts as a Good Thing, as I really miss seeing him every month at the caravan. And seeing other folks there too, which is why it's great that I'm going to be able to get two caravan weekends in over the summer.
  

Other random happiness from Iceland: We can still get Coca Cola in proper strangely-shaped glass bottles; The grass is definitely turning green instead of the yellow-brown it has been all winter; I saw a strange unidentified waterfowl on the lake on the way back from work.

So overall, Happy Sunshine Day has been moderately happy and sunshiny (definite areas of blue sky out there). What I want to know is, is Happy Sunshine Day an annual occurrence?
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Some foods are comfort foods. Things like chocolate, ice cream, bangers and mash.

Until now I've had to live without the third of these (although, to be honest, I don't really eat chocolate as a comfort food anyway) but tonight I was frazzled enough to try the Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages in search of succour from the strains of PMT.

And they're surprisingly good, particularly when smothered in OXO gravy. Certainly good enough that they'll move quite a long way up my regular meal list. I haven't plucked up the courage to try them as sausage butties yet, but as a constituent of your basic bangers and mash they certainly reach an acceptable standard. Not Thick Irish Recipe or Tasty Cumberland, but a passable taste of home out here in the middle of the Atlantic. Comfort food indeed.

As well as comfort food, I've discovered a whole new concept - comfort viewing. It's the DVDs you put on when you want something warm and familiar to pull you in and make you forget you're on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

I realised this last night as I was stitching table decorations ready for Friday's Árshátið while watching The Great Escape. Not, perhaps, what most people would think of as comfort viewing, even given its status as a Christmas regular, but one that brings back memories of watching it (and many other similar films) with my grandfather. Besides, if I watch it enough then eventually Steve McQueen will make it over that second fence.

Tonight calls for some more comfort viewing. It's time for my six-monthly viewing of Edge of Darkness. It'll take more than a single evening, but hopefully by then my hormones will be back to normal and I can return to more normal viewing.

I'm on the side of the planet.
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For the first time in years I am now officially a member of the stylish set, that influential and cultured elite upon whose merest whim the masses will fawn... Yes, I have a working iPod!

It's only taken since my return from Rent-A-Don to get it working, but I've finally managed to get my music collection from my office computer onto my iPod. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that... I'd had no joy getting iTunes to even recognise the existance of the iPod, never mind transfer data to it, but I had managed to transfer my complete MP3 collection over to the iPod's hard drive. The files weren't, though, in the appropriate structure so I couldn't play any of them.

On Monday, when I rebuilt the machine, I lost some of my music library, but it wasn't going to be a problem as I had all the disks. Annoying, but I was willing to accept it to have a working machine. I did the rebuild, installed iTunes and now, at last, I could connect to my iPod - hurrah! Not only that, but I could transfer the original music files back from the iPod to iTunes, thus saving me time and bother.

So at last I could listen to music on my iPod. I could go into town wearing the white earphones that identified me as being stylish and cultured. They might have reconsidered that opinion had they known what I was listening to though. :)

The matter of what should be the first piece I listened to on my new virgin iPod was an important, if relatively simple, decision. It had to be Eric Clapton's Edge of Darkness from the 24 Nights album, with the equaliser set for accoustic. And it sounded fantastic! Then, going from the sublime to the ridiculous I opted for Yum Yum - The Very Best of the Goodies as my first album choice.

I may have now have style, but I don't necessarily have taste.
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Today just seems to have been one long slog.

On the plus side I've actually got several useful things done - to start with I completely rebuilt my office computer this morning. We started by repartitioning the the disk, which shows how radical a rebuilt it was. I now have a machine that contains only XP, Office XP, Firefox and a couple of useful tools I've downloaded off the web. The hard drive is only a third full, which is a wonderful thing. And, best of all, I worked out how to get seven days of BBC7 Listen Again content rather than 6, which means I'll have a complete set of Earthsearch II after all. I still can't get the iPod working though.

I ended up leaving the office at 18:00 and going in search of a tub of ice cream. It was one of those days that needed ice cream. I also found red and blue pseudovelvet to make gloves and a couple of other things, and some important candle holders.

The candleholders are important because I've volunteered to make table centres for the Árshátið on Friday. They've themed on the university logo, a rainbow rising from the waves, and I've made two of them ready for the final planning meeting tomorrow. If the rest of the committee like them then I'll make up the other eight over the next couple of evenings.

My Icelandic continues slowly to improve, thanks in part to the joy of subtitles. I can now recognise when the subtitles and the dialog differ and am picking up a number of useful Icelandic words. I'm developing a vocabularly that amuses my Icelandic cleeagues - words like geimskip (starship), skipherr (captain) and dauður/dáin (dead). It's an unavoidable consequence of watching Star Trek and CSI, you understand.

Hmm...Hann er dáinn, Jim... :) I don't think I can manage It's life, Jim, but not as we know it quite yet though.
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Not a busy day today at all.

The most productive thing I've done so far today is create labels for some CDs of various BBC radio productions. It's all very well having yellow sticky labels on them in the short term, but by the time you've got a pile of unlabelled CDs sitting beside the bed it can start getting difficult selecting the right one. Even during the labelling process I managed to stick the wrong label (SF Volume 4 - Earthsearch, Paradise Lost In Space, Paradise Lost In Cyberspace) onto a disk (Science Volume 3 - Five Shapes, The Cosmic Ocean, In Einstein's Shadow, The Norman Way, Making A Human Alien).

The day got increasingly more indolent as it went on. I watched the Monaco Grand Prix, only to be surprised that Schummi was in 13th on the grid when I'm sure he was in 3rd at the end of qualifying yesterday. No doubt something happened that my Icelandic wasn't up to following. After that I did a bit of reading, watched Van Helsing on DVD, did a bit more reading... not the most active of days even by my standards.

And my plans for this evening? Maybe a bit more reading, possibly watch another movie. Well it could have been worse - I haven't spent the day snoozing. :)
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I like maps. I've always been fascinated by the way you can describe a large geographical area on a small piece of paper. It's a data visualisation thing.

So when Google started offering sattelite images at Google Maps I had to click over to have a look. Unfortunately it only covers North America at present, but they do promise to extend this to global coverage sometime soon. I look forward to locating the house here in Akureyri on satellite images.

In spite of not actually living in North America, I did manage to come up with a useful test of the system. In Nevada there is a small town called Rachel. Near this is Tikaboo Peak (you'll probably need to find Rachel then enter Tikaboo Peak in the search box). Zoom out twice and scroll west one click. There's a white blob near the centre of the image - this is the dry salt bed of Groom Lake.

Conspiracy theorists and other readers of the Fortean Times amongst you will probably know where we're headed by now. :) Zoom into the lake and you will see some interesting straight lines and rectangular features. This the Area 51, the place where they're holding (amongst other things) the Ark of the Covenant, the Martian Fighting Machines, an assortment of aliens (both living and dead) together with their spacecraft and, of course, the spare Stargate.

If you don't want to fart about with finding it yourself, you can see it straight away here.

Of course, these aren't really maps at all, they're photographs. But the interesting point is that using these photographs you can see things that aren't usually on maps. If you go to the Ordnance Survey website and look for grid reference NY 025 035 you'll find a large area marked Works. In spite of the big blue V, i and P symbols, there is nothing to say that this is Windscale/Sellafield and its visitor centre. As a matter of fact, this version of the map has been updated to show the buildings - in previous versions there was just a large white blank with the word Works in the middle of it. Similarly grid reference NO 472 225 (Leuchars Airfield) also now has buildings included, but SU 592 666 (Aldermaston) has a rather suspicious Factory in the middle. A factory wherein are assembled Britain's nuclear weapons.

A map, you see, isn't just a representation of a geographical data set, it's a representation of a political data set as well. It's often as much fun to see what's been left out as much as what's been included.
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......Of the Surgeon's Knot.

For those of you unfamiliar with this little line-fixing beauty, a Surgeon's Knot is made in a similar way to the first stage of a reef knot or granny knot (the left over right and under bit) but unstead of going under once you go under twice. The extra friction caused by the second turn means that when you release pressure on the line the knot stays put rather than opening up. Very useful if you're trying to stitch closed a wound. Or lace up your ice skates.

Which is what I spent some time doing tonight. It's been a couple of weeks since our last skating excursion so Syed and I took advantage of a quiet evening in our respective busy schedules and went down to the rink. It was an opportunity for me to continue breaking in my new ice skates, a process that it coming along nicely but is likely to take a couple more weeks.

It was a little bit scary down there tonight. It appeared that the skating club had just finished a set of lessons or something, and the ice was covered with young female skaters built like stick-insects and wearing red club shirts. Henceforth, they will be referred to as redshirts due to their tendancy to charge around the ice doing suicidal things and falling over from time to time. It was faintly depressing to watch these redshirts skipping across the ice while Syed and I wobbled a lot and travelled with rather less speed.

The experience has led me to discover a basic truth about the universe: skaters should only be allowed to do those turns where they start out with limbs spread out, then draw them in and speed up ONLY if they are demonstrating conservation of angular momentum for a science programme or taking part in a competition. It's antisocial doing it during a public session, as it makes those of us who can barely skate backwards, never mind round in circles, feel inadequate. So there.

In spite of these disheartening circumstances, the breaking-in of the boots is proceeding quite well. I still find it embarrassing that I'm so pleased by my girlie white boots, but I'm sure I'll get over it eventually. Maybe just in time to get the hang of those momentum-conserving turns.
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Today is a public holiday in Iceland - the first day of summer. Everyone has gone skiing to celebrate.

I realised that there was something funny going on when I went into work this morning and found that the car park was empty and the newspapers were still thrust between the door handle, both good indicators that something was up. I let myself in with my swipe card and found that the building was nearly deserted, unlit and generally too quiet for a normal working day.

It turns out that today is another public holiday and no-one had told me this. April 21st marks the first day of summer and so everyone gets the day off to celebrate. Most people have taken the chance to get some skiing in before the Donald Duck ski competition for 6-12 year olds this weekend.

I don't know whether Disney sponsor the competitions, but I'm delighted that they have such a recognisable name. I googled to find out a little more about the competition and was overjoyed to discover, en passant, which of the local sports clubs does archery. I had tried asking the sporty types at the university if they knew of an archery group but to no avail. A couple of days ago I was ready to give up hope of doing any archery over here but now it looks like I may have the chance after all. Hurrah!
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The German Inquisitor, on the other hand, was the odds-on favourite.

So the conclave of cardinals has elected a successor to John Paul II in double-quick time. A successor who looks suspiciously like a temporary appointment while the church decides how it wants to approach the twenty first century. After all, at 78 and with a history of heart troubles Benedict XVI isn't likely to last more than a few years.

I find it interesting (although not surprising) that they've gone for such a hardliner - in effect they've promoted the head of the Inquisition (or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as they are now known) to the top seat. It doesn't bode well for progressives within the church with "God's Rottweiler" in charge.

They have, in effect, said that it is more important to produce children for the church than to protect yourself and your family against AIDS. Or disease. Or hunger. Or poverty. No doubt this will play well in their growth areas such as Africa, but it doesn't seem particularly caring to me.

I fear that his views on moral relativism don't bode well for interfaith relations either. His 'I am right and you are wrong and will burn in hell if you're not a fundamentalist catholic who agrees with me 110%' is not likely to win him friends. While I agree that you cannot take a totally relative view of morality, allowing for the possibility that someone with a different set of beliefs may also be a good person seems to me to be merely the behaviour of a civilised person. I find it very difficult to see how such an extremist can possibly have anything constructive to offer in a fraught international arena.

Here at the beginning of the twenty first century the church is looking forwards to the sixteenth century. Still, I wish him health and happiness as a human being, and hope that his policies destroy as few lives as possible

At least his stole had some very impressive embroidery on it.
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The newly-completed attempt 7 is looking good. It looks and feels like a glove, although the pattern still needs a little tweaking to get the shape of the little finger edge right. I must also remember that having angled forchettes means that the finger slits don't go quite as far down the palm as they do the back of the hand.

I may actually get something presentable by my 10th attempt. :)
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After the disaster that was attempt 4 at making gloves two days ago, attempt 6 is looking much better.

Why, you might ask, am I having another attempt so soon? It turned out that I left the office early this afternoon and needed something relatively relaxing to keep my mind of work. The glove pattern was just the thing.

By mid-afternoon I was getting so frustrated with what I was doing that I decided to come home and do something different. I actually gave up on the various instructions for glove patterns and worked it out from first principles. The fabric has to go around the hand in a three-dimensional manner, therefore the pattern must be the width of the hand plus the depth of the hand on each side. The thumb must similarly be twice the width and a bit for the sides.

What has proved interesting is the fiddling about to deal with things that are cones rather than cylinders. The hand is thicker at the base than at the fingers, so the glove must taper. The forchettes between the fingers cause the lengths of the fingers on the top piece to vary from the length on the bottom piece, another thing not noted in the online patterns and instructions. It's very important not to get the angle of the forchette too great, or you end up with too much fabric on the back of the hand.

I've also discovered that setting a thumb into a glove is comparable to setting a sleeve into a shirt - not fun. And that you have to remember to get the forchettes the right way around so that the vee points to the back of the hand, away from the main body of the thumb.

It's been an interesting learning experience. Once I have a glove that fits I shall take it apart and make a new pattern from it. I can then compare this pattern to my hand and attempt to extend the pattern-making algorithm from the special theory of glovemaking (applicable to hands in particular conditions, i.e. the condition of belonging to me) to a more general theory of glovemaking (dealing with hands in the condition of belonging to other people).

I draw the line at quantum glovemaking.
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I am not really a collector of weapons.

Oh yes, I have my fencing kit and my rapiers are rather yummy, and I also have a rather nifty knife forged by a friend in Ireland, but I don't actually collect weapons. Unlike one of my previous bosses, who collected swords and then put them in drawers, pulling them out occasionally to show them off. That seems wrong to me. If you're going to buy a sword, buy it for a purpose. Take it out and use it. Wear it occasionally. Don't just imprison it in a drawer somewhere.

That said, there is a weapon that it would be quite easy for me to fall into the trap of collecting - stilettos. I've always rather like stilettos - small, concealable and with interesting blade cross-sections. The sort of thing you can leave on your desk to open letters, clean your fingernails and unsettle your visitors.

So why this sudden renewal of my interest in stilettos? For it is a renewal, as I first fell in love with the stiletto when I was still at school. Read into that what you will. :) I was diving the web today looking for a supplier of gorgets when I came across Therion Arms, who have a very nice pointy gorget of just the type I fancy. But that's not all; they also have two rather good looking stilettos - a relatively plain one and a more decorated Venetian one.

I am so very tempted by the simple one. I could just add it to the order for the gorget and then maybe buy the Venetian one later... but that would put me on the slippery slope to serious collecting. It would be so very easy... and, best - or is it worst - of all, I have an excuse to wear one at SCA events. No imprisoning them in a drawer here.

Oh, decisions, decisions!
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Attempt 4 at making gloves has been as successful as attempts 1 to 3; i.e. not very.

I've now tried two different sets of instructions on how to draft a pattern from your hand, and neither of them seem to work. I wonder if it's my hands. I know that if I take the normal measurement around my hand that's supposed to give the correct glove size I end up with something that's too tight. The measurement tells me to buy an 8, but in future I must remember to buy a 9.

So what's wrong with the gloves? Well, looking at various fencing gloves and the like, the popular approach seems to be to do the top of the glove as a single piece, then separate pieces for the fingers, a further piece for the palm of the hand and two more for the thumb. This looks moderately straightforward, but is not a renaissance pattern. The renaissance patterns have the back and the palm as a single piece with separate Vs or forchettes between the fingers and a final piece for the thumb.

One problem is that you can't fit seam allowances on the top and bottom of the fingers so you have to make up for it on the forchettes. Another is that you have to allow enough fabric at the sides to wrap around fully around your hand. A third is that the thumb piece is a really strange shape that then has to be set into a hole in the main piece at a strange angle.

Four failures is rather disheartening. I may be forced to cheat and take a normal leather pair of gloves and put large cuffs on it. Perfectly period, but it still feels like cheating to me.
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Ah, I barely have time to catch my breath...

First of all, let me explain something about Akureyri. It is the captial of the north of Iceland and the country's second-largest connobation. The capital, Reykjavik, and its environs (including the airport area at Keflavik) contain well over half of the country's 280,000 inhabitants. Reykjavik is a throbbing international city of nightclubs and designer fasion outlets. Akureyri has about 16,000 residents which, it is rumoured, will soon get either a MacDonalds or a KFC. I'm rooting for the KFC myself.

So I'm out here in the styx. Hicksville, Iceland-style. Even the folks in Reykjavik think that we're still running round in t-tunics waving swords. So much so that there's a big fuss at the local airport today - cars are crowded onto the sides of the road just to catch a glimpse of the excitement.

And what is so important? There is an Air Iceland 737 doing repeated approach and take-off training. Yes, a real jet, not a prop-driven Fokker 50! It has spent the afternoon approaching, touching down, refuelling occasionally, and taking off again. For this, the town has turned out to watch.

In fact, Akureyri does have an international airport. Occasionally you can fly from there to Greenland in the summer. Or if the winds are particularly bad at Keflavik transatlantic flights may be diverted here. Normally though, we don't see anything other than Fokker 50s and Fairchild Metros (with room for a whole 20 passengers, no hand luggage bigger than a handbag). So I suppose the appearance of a jet is quite a bit deal.

Another reason may be that all of the normal internal flights have been cancelled due to high wonds in the South West. Doug was due to fly out this afternoon ready for an international flight tomorrow but has just had to set out by car instead. This is not uncommon, and although the staff at the airport won't actually say that there will be no flights today, the trick is to ask them if they would drive in the cirumstances. If they say yes, then get the car out.

It's not just snow that causes weather problems up here. We can deal with snow. Sometimes we'd actually like more of it please. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about wind. Strangely enough, this entire closure of the main transport system comes on a day when it's quite pleasant here in Hicksville - not a lot of wind, fairly warm, cloudy with with the occasional blue bit.

A good day to hang sweaters on the line to dry.
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I was expecting to spend most of today driving down to Keflavik, possibly with a stop at the Blue Lagoon, ready for tomorrow's meeting.

Tomorrow's meeting has, however, been cancelled. Which is a bit annoying considering the effort I put into getting the shirts done before this weekend, but it can't be helped. Life is like that sometimes.

This means, of course, that I now have a free weekend. I haven't decided what to do with it yet - tidying up the bedroom and going skating has a certain appeal. In real terms though I'll speculate that I'll end up doing a pile of reading, some listening to BBC7 and a bit of embroidery instead. Maybe a few drills with the rapier. Or... too many possibilities, so I imagine my brain will freeze up and be incapable of decision so I'll get nothing done at all. Ah well.

Today has been moderately productive. I've marked another set of coursework (two down, one plus stragglers to go) and started the Klakavirki website. I've bought the domain klakavirki.org and will, all being well, have something respectable if uninspiring up soon. Assuming I can get information from the folks on the base, that is. Then I need to get it translated into Icelandic in the hope of attracting some locals. For now I'm using MS Front Page for speed, although I could probably have done it just using NotePad and style sheets. Assuming this works OK I'll then do the site for the Drachenwald Company of Broderers.

In the meantime, I'm off to do some brodering myself. I have a new pattern for a pair of gloves that I want to try. If it works then I shall be making heavily embroidered court gloves in the very near future.
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Earlier today I realised, with something of a start, that I now watch 45 minutes of broadcast TV a week.

I watch and listen to rather more in the way of DVDs and MP3s of radio drama and documentaries through the TV, but my actual live viewing is down to a truly pathetic amount (Star Trek: Enterprise on Saturday evenings).

This did rather astound me - after all, back in the UK the TV was on pretty much continually as background noise, normally on News 24. Here I have become more accustomed to silence although, being an audio-oriented person, I don't particularly like it.

Instead, I've been listening to a lot of radio drama ripped off the BBC7 Listen Again streams, and I've also rediscovered the guitar. Boy, am I out of practise with my guitar! My fingers just don't remember pieces that they used to. It must be the computer - they've spent so much time learning where the keys are on the keyboard that they've forgotten where the notes are on the fretboard. :) But I have started again and have trimmed the nails on my left hand in preparation for regaining the fingering calluses I used to have.

Another thing that has sparked renewed interest in my guitar is that I'm now teaching Syed how to play it, which is great fun. I am have been sufficiently enthused to buy a couple of music books from Amazon.com to sate my need for practise pieces and also to test find out just how much import duties I'll have to pay on them. They're less than half the price they would be in the UK (thanks in part to the weak dollar) so even if customs charge me 100% duty I'll break even.

In the meantime I'm working from some downloads I printed out, but the problem with most of the music on the net is that it's either written in tab (ugh!) or is of a much higher complexity than I can handle right now. Although I must admit, I do have this urge to learn jazz/blues guitar, so I may investigate that too.
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There is a certain satisfaction you get from finishing a piece of needlework, whether it's clothing or something decorative, that is hard to beat.

I spent most of last evening finishing off the three tudor shirts. All three now have drawstring collars and cuffs, are hemmed and generally ready to go. I made them fairly large, but I do hope that none of the guys have a chest larger than about 48 inches. When I finally finished buttonholing the drawstring holes on the final one I got that beautiful sense of pleasure and satisfaction that closure brings.

Although I've done lots of the chirurgeon badges, and have got closure from each individual badge, it's nothing to completing the set. Well... completing the first twelve out of eight. I suspect that I may do another eight sometime in the future, but for now they're over.

I've also completed my venetians (for the non-SCA folks out there that's long baggy shorts). They are very comfortable but seriously unflattering, especially when you have a rump the size of mine to start with. That's secondary right now though, as I'm just revelling in the feeling of Having Got Things Finished.

So what am I going to do now? Well, I have an embroidery kit to design for the Wincham Preservation Society, a goldwork favour and eyepatch (although I'm having problems finding scarlet silk for them), a couple of dicebags, a blackwork coif, some lace inserts for handkerchiefs... oh yes, and I've just found a picture of an exceedingly inspirational embroidered rapier hanger.

And then one day, maybe, I'll do some cross stitch again. :)
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Today I gave my final lectures of the semester and hence of the year until September. You know what this means... RESEARCH TIME!!!

This week is the final week of teaching and I have lectures on Tuesdays (completed) and labs on Friday (completed last week) I'm now clear to do other things. Although I have told my students that I'll be around during lab hours if they want to ask any questions. Actually, I've told them I'll be available most of the time until the exams if they have any questions, but the idea's there.

In the twelve weeks of the semester I have done 11 double-lectures of content, 1 double-lecture of revision and exam questions, 10 double-labs of content and a lab on coursework. Strictly speaking I could add a final lab but that's something I'll think about over the summer for next year. The HCI course is running first term next year so I'll probably tweak it over the summer. The big question will be do I get them to design the interface for Monopoly or for Risk as their coursework? Tough one that.

Now, IF I can get the computer rebuilt and IF I can get C/C# onto it, I might yet finish the work I started in Aberdeen before the end of May. This would be good as we can submit it for publication. In the meantime I'll have a bit of marking to do (thankfully much less than I did at RGU) and that's it. Better still, I've checked the departmental timetable and I'm clear to come back to the UK in June. OK, I may be flying straight to Warbands after invigilating an exam on the Thursday morning, but I'm then clear for the rest of the month.

Also, as well as passing a number of important work-related milestones, I have had something of an epiphany. Rochefort must be a better swordsman then D'Artagnan. Why? Because he is the Gascon's equal even when wearing an eyepatch - hence while suffering a serious loss of depth perception. It's amazing what viewing The Four Musketeers and Futurama in close succession can do for the thought processes.
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Another travelling circus came to Akureyri today - this time it was the head of state, President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

Now I have to admit, I find it a little strange to live in a country where the head of state is elected. Politicians are elected, but heads of state are born and crowned. Politicians are scheming backstabbers who are only in it for themselves, while heads of state generally manage to keep out of politics and turn up at events as a sort of pat-on-the-back to the organisations involved. :) So when it was announced that the President was going to be paying us a visit I did get a little confused - after all, the Prime Minister visited us a couple of months back.

He wanted to see a real working department, so the research seminar planned for today was brought forward an hour to make sure we'd all be in one place, easy to find and giving a good impression. For once, things ran on real time, not Icelandic time (which is similar to SCA time and does not run at a rate of one second per second), and he arrived on schedule. With a circus.

We were expecting the president plus a couple of people. We actually got twenty assorted politicians, press, university administrators and hangers on come charging into the lecture room, with quite a few remaining outside. Certainly the visitors outnumbered the people in the seminar (staff and students). He stayed to listen for about 10 minutes then Mark gave him and the circus the tour of the department. So I got to see the president, even if no-one had a chance to speak to him.

I must remember to watch the news tonight to see if the department gets a mention.
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Timing is everything. For instance, I should have gone boarding yesterday when there was a nice clear blue sky, it was quite warm and pleasant, and the air was fresh and clear.

Instead, as Syed and I had arranged to go boarding today, I sat at the sewing machine and made three tudor shirts, fully french-seamed and awaiting only the hems and collars to complete them. Then today, when we went up to the slopes we both took one look at the fog and decided that perhaps this wasn't the day for skiing after all. So now I'm back here with the shirts to finish them off.

If the weather improves later in the week I'll try again, but for now I'll stitck to the needlework. And as soon as the shirts are finished, it'll be back to embroidery with a frame for me, as I'm having a rotten time with pain in my left wrist and hand holding fabric while hemming. It's not so bad when I use a frame as I can then stitch with both hands, thus making sure that I move the left a lot, but holding fabric is a stinker. It's a chronic ganglion problem, but thankfully nowhere near as problematic as Ormsweird's was.

So it's back to the comfy chair and the radio series MP3-ed from BBC7. I do appreciate being able to record the streams, stick them onto CDs and play them at home. It gives me drama without the need to look up from my embroidery to watch the special effects. :) Definitely a good way to relax on a Sunday afternoon.
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For a country that's a fiercely independent republic, Iceland does seem to like royals. Right now we have Brúðkaup Karl og Camillu live on the state broadcasting TV station Sjónvarpið (or Bugsplat to its friends).

Literally translated, brúðkaup means the bride-purchase or bride-price, which is an interesting linguistic throwback that my feminist side bristles at. Nevertheless, it's good to actually see the event here on TV.

Of course we have an Icelandic voice-over during all the boring bits such as the arrival of the guests. I imagine that the live feed is being brought from another station - possibly the Beeb - and then voiced over. Certainly we got lots of footage of the showbusiness guests like Stephen Fry, Timothy West and Joanna Lumley.

Naturally there was also some discussion of the political guests, with the Icelandic commentators noting that all of the leaders of the main political parties would be present with their wives, although probably not the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. I kid you not.

I'd like to have a look at Camilla's dress. It looks like it has some rather interesting gold embroidery on the body. Very elegant, I thought. Certainly more so than some of the guests. And what is it with hats that look like warped conic sections? Or saucers with a handful of near-bare feathers stuck onto the side of the head? Some of those look as if they've just glued a dead chicken to their forehead. But then, I never was a great judge of sartorial elegance.

So, unfashionable and politically incorrect though it may be to say it, I wish the both the Prince and the new Princess of Wales, the best of luck and joy in the future.
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I got the exam scripts finished on time, checked and handed into our examinations officer with hours and hours to go before the deadline.

Not only that, I also got the functional programming example exam paper done and emailed out to the students ready for the revision lecture on Tuesday. I now just have to finish the HCI example exam on Monday morning and everything will be set up ready for me to go into a frenzy of marking coursework for the next two weeks.

I've had to do example exams as this is the first year that HCI and functional programming have been taught, and it would be quite unfair (if moderately amusing) to make the students go into exams with no idea of what they were facing. So rather than writing two papers I've had to write four. Still, it means that next year I'll have more in the way of question templates to inspire me. The HCI paper was fine, but there is an extra stress with the functional programming paper: our external examiner in an FP bod, so I'm a little bit paranoid on that one.

Actually, I'm not teaching functional programming next year as we've rearranged the course order. What I will be doing though, is teaching HCI right at the beginning of first year. It doesn't, after all, require much in the way of programming but provides a fundamental basis on which they can build everything thereafter. A tiny little thing about considering the user, not just the computer. Part of my personal crusade to improve interface standards - get them right at the start so thinking about the interface becomes second nature. Mwahahahah.... :)

After all, you can always redesign the computer. It's not that easy to redesign the human (with the exception of Professor Kevin Warwick at Reading).
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I am very impressed with the effect of extreme lattitude. Here at 66° north our days (from sunrise to sunset) are already over an hour longer than those in Liverpool at 53° north.

Not bad for only three weeks since the equinox. Of course I knew intellectually that this would be the case - I remember the business with annalemmas and the equation of time from my undergrad days - but it's interesting to watch it actually happen. There is a fair chance that one of these days I'm going to be sitting in my office and I won't be able to see the sun because it's too high in the sky. Geeky, I know, but I am comfortable in my geekiness.

I'm also comfortable in my growing DVD collection. I caved in today and bought Futurama seasons 1 & 2 plus all of Blackadder. I needed stuff that I can stick on as background to an evening's embroidery, and even I can't watch the Goodies every night. :) My bedroom DVD shelf is now officially overflowing, which is going to call for a reorganisation this weekend.

Plans are afoot for the weekend, as Syed and I are going up to Hlíðarfjall on Saturday, and this time I'm hoping to get at least one picture of me doing the mad snowboarding thing to provide evidence of me doing crazy things. If I can get such a picture it will appear in the PhotoGallery with all of the others I've added today. Today's pictures are from the first Klakavirki Fighter Practice at the end of last year, a recent trip to Goðafoss in the snow, and fencing at Rent-A-Don (thanks to Mel for doing the point-and-click thing; the occasional blurs are probably due to condensation on the lens, an unavoidable problem given the temperature and humidity down in the victorian jail in Lincoln Castle.

I have more to add tomorrow, so stay tuned.
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Exam season is approaching here in Akureyri, and I'm just putting the finishing touches to the solutions to my HCI exam paper.

While I was at university I saw exams as those things that have to be passed, nothing more. Nothing about their being a way to measure myself against my peers (particularly as they were all better at maths than I was), nothing about them being an opportunity to show just how much information I had absorbed during the previous term, nothing about demonstrating my problem-solving abilities. It was just I have to pass this.

Naturally I didn't give any thought to the process of setting exams or courseworks. Lecturers just had this bottomless pit of exam questions to select from, didn't they? They just picked them at random from the list, right? And we looked at the past papers, worked out what they were going to ask and which sections we could probably ignore, yeah? Like anything that involved tensor calculus in my case.

When I got the lecturing post at RGU I was suddenly confronted with the need to actually write these things and I realised just what a problem it was. It was one of those Oh boy... moments - Oh boy... someone's entire career may rest on what I'm about to write. It's definitely worse than actually marking the scripts, as by that time it's too late to change anything.

In fact it can be quite tricky to set an exam. The folks sitting it may spend three hours in the exam hall producing answers but, believe me, it takes rather longer to write the exam in the first place - or it does if you don't have ten years of previous years' papers to adapt. :) You have to identify the bits of the syllabus you want to test, then come up with a question that will not only test those items but will enable you to discriminate between students of different abilities. The interesting thing is that once you've got the questions written it takes much less than three hours to write the solutions as you've already decided what answers you're looking for.

While exams take longer to write than to sit, courseworks are the opposite. I can write a coursework and produce a solution in a couple of hours, as opposed to the many hours it takes my students to solve them. :) This though, is a case where having more experience in programming comes in handy.

In time I'll develop the library of useful questions and past papers, but I haven't done so yet. Part of this is that I keep finding myself developing new courses, which means new exams. This year it was functional programming and HCI (at RGU we'd assessed it on coursework alone). Next year it will be data visualisation and databases, although I do at least have some previous database questions to inspire me.

Still, once I'm done I can look forward to a few weeks clear before I have to mark the scripts. And, unlike the times at RGU when I've had fifty or more to mark (about a third of the class in that case) here I'll have no more than fifteen. :)
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It's back to deepest winter here in Iceland, with inches of snow and a freezing wind coming down out of the arctic.

No, not quite deepest winter - it doesn't get dark until after 21:30 nowadays. If it wasn't for the light you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. I have icicles forming on the car again. Still, it's good for the skiing, and I'm thinking of going boarding on... checks weather forecast... maybe Thursday.

Today I gave my last examinable lectures for the semester. I've got labs on Friday, and revision lectures on Tuesday, then that's it for the summer. To celebrate I've... done nothing. The other big news of the day is that the President is coming to visit the department on Monday. The Prime Minister visited a couple of months ago but nobody likes him; this time it's the head of state and he's quite popular.

I did go down into town to get some fabric though. I'm making shirts for the three single Klakavirki guys in the latest push to get folks appropriately garbed - particularly the fencers. :) And thinking about fencing I also got some really nice soft velvety fabric in a dark blue-grey (thanks to the Swiss Guard for the colour idea there) to make myself a pair of venetians to wear while teaching fencing. Given that footwork is so important and that one of the good points of my ropa is that it hides my feet, it isn't really appropriate teaching garb.

There should also be enough fabric left for me to have another go at making gloves. I've found another pattern and instructions online which may produce something that actually fits (unlike the previous pattern). The plan is to make these over the weekend, as I'm hoping to get back down to Keflavik the weekend after.

At least, that's the plan...
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Hidden away on the BBC News site, in the Science/Nature section a long way away from coverage of the Pope's lying in state and how it has affected plans for the royal wedding, was the most interesting piece of news of the day: the first credible photograph of an extra-solar planet.

Unfortunately, I don't think it would have been a major headline even if the Pope hadn't died and messed up Charles' wedding plans and Tony's election plans. It's a sad commentary on modern life that this is the case.

Curiously enough, had this still been the renaissance, it would probably have been headline news. The Catholic Church has supported astronomy for a long time and continues to do so - to the extent that it has a research-active observatory run by Jesuits at Castel Gandolfo (the Papal Summer Residence), whose roots go back as far as 1582. The discovery of a new planet would have been the talk of courts all over Europe.

Back then, of course, no-one without a grounding in astronomy could consider themselves educated, and it was one of the seven subjects studied at university. Today though, it's a wonder if people can name all of the planets. Ask them what Pluto is and they'll probably tell you he's a cartoon dog.

Certainly the Church has no problem with the idea of extra-solar planets. Even in the thirteenth century it was considered heresy to claim that God couldn't have created other worlds. Now the idea seems to be that intelligent alien lifeforms would be either angelic, demonic or, just like humans, capable of redemption.

Although the planet has little chance of bearing life, the very fact that we can now photograph these things is a great step. I bet that over at the Vatican Observatory there are one or two Jesuits who feel just a little bit guilty right now at the joy they felt in seeing these photographs when they're supposed to be focussed on the events at St. Peter's.

It's a pity that our leaders don't feel the same way.
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... You watch BBC World footage of the Pope lying in state and you're more interested in the uniforms of the Swiss Guard. Oooh... that's some serious puff and slashing going on there...

The three of us (Matt, Rebecca and myself) spent quite a lot of odd moments watching the news this weekend. Sometime Friday evening we were convinced that the pontiff had passed on when the words "Pope not dead" were flashed across the screen. This became the phrase of the weekend, to be replaced with "Pope dead" and, shortly afterwards, "Pope still dead". He was definitely still dead when we watched the Swiss Guards at the lying in state bit.

Rebecca and I spent the morning making hoods for her and Matt and planning our next shire event. All being well we plan to host a rapier practise in Iceland in September: geothermal spa, lots of fencing, then a trip to the local viking resterant (there aren't enough of us to fight and cook a feast).

I've now flow back up to Akureyri, where there has been two inches of snow since I left. I still think it's fools' snow though, as it's too bright and warm to be anything else.
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We managed two forms of fencing this weekend - the rpg type and the real type.

Friday night's Three Musketeers rpg went very well. I used FUDGE, a nice simple system that encourages descriptive gaming by giving attributes and skills descriptions rather than numbers - He strength is good and;his rapier skill is superb - which I rather like. I spent several years playing a great Pyrates game using it in St. Andrews.

The plot so far: our heroes (musketeers all) go to the aid of the Comtesse de St. Nazaire, who needs a message delivering to someone in a village outside Paris. They are to escort her maid, who is carrying the message, in her coach. The coach is attacked by evil Spaniards led by the villainous Don Golcalves, who then capture the messenger and our heroes and imprison them in an abbey while he goes to capture the Comtesse for, it is revealed, the maid was but a decoy and the real message is being carried by the Comtesse herself.

Don Goncalves, who previously used nastly mind tricks on one of our heroes, thus proving that he is an evil Spaniard who consorts with demons (and fences in circles too) is, unfortunately, called away to deal with other matters so that when our heroes escape the abbey and rescue the Comtesse he isn't there to stop them. The escort her to a village where she meets up with the mysterious LeFevre (agent of the king) and his hound Pepe.

We continued gaming until almost 2am before collapsing into bed, ready to be up and out to visit the NEX toys and games sale next morning. I was very restrained and only came away with Risk, LoTR Risk, LoTR Monopoly, Deluxe Scrabble, Upwords and Rook. Paying US prices is nice enough; paying US prices and 50% off is something not to be missed.

The afternoon was Spanish Fencing 101. My Darkwoods have arrived (and although beautiful, are not quite what I ordered, so I'm pondering what to do about that) which meant that we had enough heavy blades for me to go through the basic stance, movement, contact and counter-contact moves with Matt and Casey. We do need a second mask though, as Matt's kendo mask isn't suitable. It's really interesting teaching it - even if I am doing so with my off-hand as both of them are right-handed - because it gives me a different perspective on the geometry of the situations as well.

After the meeting we were invited to Aaron's first birthday party. Aaron is Ray and Jen's youngest. The definite highlight of this was watching Aaron sitting in his chair clad only in a nappy, digging into the large chocolate-frosting-covered cake in front of him with only his hands. As kids go, that was quite sweet.

The previous late night session, together with the fencing, had left us a bit on the tired side, so we spent the evening slobbing in front of the TV. A good end to a good day.
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I don't know, you get used to the idea that it's spring then you wake up to find that the world outside is white again. It can't be real snow. It's fools' snow, that's what it is.

It's probably very good for the town, as this weekend is AkExtreme, the extreme sports festival. I was expecting it to be a bit of a wash-out given the lack of snow, and have arranged to go down to Keflavik for an SCA meeting instead. Ah well, I shall see it next year, when there will be lots of snow due to the new snow machines they're getting for the ski slopes.

In the meantime, I'm about to fly south armed with my fencing kit and a Three Musketeers rpg which will star a number of my fencing friends in cameos (or worse). People such as the evil Don Goncalves and the almost as wicked Captain St. Cyr of the Cardinal's Guard.

You never know - the game may even make it to the UK with me one of these days. :)
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