Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Bilasaga - The Story Continues
Today saw the writing of another chapter in Bílasaga - the story of the car - as well as a long drive down to Keflavík.
My little car is a British car, and having such a nationality poses a couple of problems when driving in foreign parts. The first is that the steering wheel is on the right side. That's right as in correct, of course. :) The second is that the headlights are angled to illuminate towards the left.
When driving on the right the headlights should be angled towards the right. This isn't a problem in theory, as you just have to adjust the angle of the bulbs. Not in this case. The Citröen Saxo has nice sealed units for the lights, with carefully designed refraction patterns cut into the plastic so that the bulb faces forward but the light is deflected to the left. This means that I can't just tweak the buld, I have to get a pair of complete new headlamp units. As I seem to have the only Citröen Saxo in the country this is a problem, and it's going to take two weeks to have them flown in specially from mainland Europe.
Sigh.
With the order in place I then just had to do the six-and-a-half hour drive down to Keflavík. It's sort of like driving the Shap section of the M6 for five hours, then a mad dash along the M62 through Manchester for half an hour, and finally an hour across the sand dunes of Ainsdale beach - although the dunes are lava not sand.
All that and a particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young Icelandic policeman at the base gate who was quite surprised to find a British national with a kennitala, but who recovered quickly enough and well enough to invite me to 'have a good one'. I'm still recovering from that one. :)
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My little car is a British car, and having such a nationality poses a couple of problems when driving in foreign parts. The first is that the steering wheel is on the right side. That's right as in correct, of course. :) The second is that the headlights are angled to illuminate towards the left.
When driving on the right the headlights should be angled towards the right. This isn't a problem in theory, as you just have to adjust the angle of the bulbs. Not in this case. The Citröen Saxo has nice sealed units for the lights, with carefully designed refraction patterns cut into the plastic so that the bulb faces forward but the light is deflected to the left. This means that I can't just tweak the buld, I have to get a pair of complete new headlamp units. As I seem to have the only Citröen Saxo in the country this is a problem, and it's going to take two weeks to have them flown in specially from mainland Europe.
Sigh.
With the order in place I then just had to do the six-and-a-half hour drive down to Keflavík. It's sort of like driving the Shap section of the M6 for five hours, then a mad dash along the M62 through Manchester for half an hour, and finally an hour across the sand dunes of Ainsdale beach - although the dunes are lava not sand.
All that and a particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young Icelandic policeman at the base gate who was quite surprised to find a British national with a kennitala, but who recovered quickly enough and well enough to invite me to 'have a good one'. I'm still recovering from that one. :)
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Monday, May 30, 2005
Slightly frazzled
A quick entry this, as I'm trying to sort out ready to head back to Blighty tomorrow.
Packing is, as yet, non-existant, although I have at least done the washing. I'm not planning to take too much with me as I might as well build a secondary wardrobe at home in Liverpool seeing as I'm going through there regularly again.
Work is in hand, as I've marked the scripts from this morning's exam. I've had one planning meeting and managed to prepare stuff for another meeting tomorrow. I don't think I'm likely to get away from the office until about 15:00, so it's going to be late by the time I reach Keflavík.
We're all just back from dinner at the Greifinn as a leaving-do for Doug. He's off back to the US in a couple of weeks so we had the meal now while I'm still around. So now it's back to getting organised in time to get some sleep tonight.
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Packing is, as yet, non-existant, although I have at least done the washing. I'm not planning to take too much with me as I might as well build a secondary wardrobe at home in Liverpool seeing as I'm going through there regularly again.
Work is in hand, as I've marked the scripts from this morning's exam. I've had one planning meeting and managed to prepare stuff for another meeting tomorrow. I don't think I'm likely to get away from the office until about 15:00, so it's going to be late by the time I reach Keflavík.
We're all just back from dinner at the Greifinn as a leaving-do for Doug. He's off back to the US in a couple of weeks so we had the meal now while I'm still around. So now it's back to getting organised in time to get some sleep tonight.
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Sunday, May 29, 2005
A viking vicarage
After the sighting of the iceberg in the fjord yesterday, today I decided to go on an iceberg-hunting trip up this side of the fjord.
After breakfast and seeing Matt and Rebecca on their way first thing this morning, Syed and I hopped into the car to head up north towards Dalvik in the hope of getting some good photographs of the the iceberg. We were not disappointed.
It's huge! And when you consider that roughly 90% of it is underwater, it must be an amazing size. Probably the most impressive feature, to me, was that where you could see the berg underwater it was a brilliant bright blue. More photos will follow tomorrow when I get them onto the website.
We decided to go back to Akureyri to cross the fjord then head back up north on the eastern side to have a look at the iceberg from the other side. This was, as it turned out, an excellent choice on our part, as we found ourselves driving past the turf-roofed house at Laufás.
The house was the home of the pastor of Laufáskirkja. A church and house has been present on the site since 1047, and the conversion of the Icelanders to Lutherism in the sixteenth century meant that detailed plans of the house exist from then until 1936, when the last pastor left. Every time the pastor changed there was a complete inventory of the house including maps. The first plans are therefore from 1558, although parts of the house are considerably older.
The house is built using the traditional viking manner of hollowing out a section of hillside and using stones to build the lower parts of the wall. Inside this is then built a timber framework to support the roof. The rest of the walls are built from layers of slanting turves to reach the roof level, then the roof is covered with flat turves.
The turves themselves have to be replaced after some years, but the timber framework of the house remains unchanged. The timber fronting on the houses was erected in the nineteeth century onto the earlier structure.
As well as being the home of the pastor, the house was also a working farmhouse, and there are a lot of artifacts related to wool-working, particularly spinning and weaving. What particularly interested me was that there was a lot of embroidery, from wall hangings to table cloths and bed linen.
The current church dates from 1865 and is a beautiful little building. I was particularly taken by the ceiling, which is made up of individual panels painted pale blue with a golden star in the centre.
There's also a resteraunt on the site where Syed and I proceeded to have an ice-cream in celebration of the iceberg before we went further up the fjord to Grenivík. I could live quite happily in Grenivík - it nestles in a small cove (a vík) looking out across the fjord to the moutains on the other side. Travel time would be about 45 minutes each way, although the snow in the winter might be a problem with my little car. It's certainly somewhere I'll consider in my search for accommodation for next year.
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After breakfast and seeing Matt and Rebecca on their way first thing this morning, Syed and I hopped into the car to head up north towards Dalvik in the hope of getting some good photographs of the the iceberg. We were not disappointed.
It's huge! And when you consider that roughly 90% of it is underwater, it must be an amazing size. Probably the most impressive feature, to me, was that where you could see the berg underwater it was a brilliant bright blue. More photos will follow tomorrow when I get them onto the website.
We decided to go back to Akureyri to cross the fjord then head back up north on the eastern side to have a look at the iceberg from the other side. This was, as it turned out, an excellent choice on our part, as we found ourselves driving past the turf-roofed house at Laufás.
The house was the home of the pastor of Laufáskirkja. A church and house has been present on the site since 1047, and the conversion of the Icelanders to Lutherism in the sixteenth century meant that detailed plans of the house exist from then until 1936, when the last pastor left. Every time the pastor changed there was a complete inventory of the house including maps. The first plans are therefore from 1558, although parts of the house are considerably older.
The house is built using the traditional viking manner of hollowing out a section of hillside and using stones to build the lower parts of the wall. Inside this is then built a timber framework to support the roof. The rest of the walls are built from layers of slanting turves to reach the roof level, then the roof is covered with flat turves.
The turves themselves have to be replaced after some years, but the timber framework of the house remains unchanged. The timber fronting on the houses was erected in the nineteeth century onto the earlier structure.
As well as being the home of the pastor, the house was also a working farmhouse, and there are a lot of artifacts related to wool-working, particularly spinning and weaving. What particularly interested me was that there was a lot of embroidery, from wall hangings to table cloths and bed linen.
The current church dates from 1865 and is a beautiful little building. I was particularly taken by the ceiling, which is made up of individual panels painted pale blue with a golden star in the centre.
There's also a resteraunt on the site where Syed and I proceeded to have an ice-cream in celebration of the iceberg before we went further up the fjord to Grenivík. I could live quite happily in Grenivík - it nestles in a small cove (a vík) looking out across the fjord to the moutains on the other side. Travel time would be about 45 minutes each way, although the snow in the winter might be a problem with my little car. It's certainly somewhere I'll consider in my search for accommodation for next year.
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Saturday, May 28, 2005
Adventures in on-road driving
The plan for today was to do the extended Mývatn tour. Fortunately we got fantastic weather to do it.
One advantage of having no night is that you don't need to worry about it getting dark before you've seen everything. This was particularly good as we had a long breakfast (scrambled eggs and bagels) before setting out.
First stop was Hlíðafjall, the ski centre above the town. It was completely empty and give a fantastic view down across the town and over the fjord. The town is sufficiently spread out that you can see identify the house. That was just a short stop before we crossed the fjord and headed east.
That was when we got our first surprise - there is an iceberg in the fjord! I'd heard a couple of days ago that there had been one but it had shrunk a lot since it came in just before Whit. In spite of this we saw this huge brilliant white angular feature in the fjord. I'm planning to go up the western side of the fjord tomorrow to try to get a closer look.
On then to Húsavík. This is the whale-watching centre, but is also home to the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Yes, that is what you're thinking - a museum devoted to the study of the penis. Unfortunately it was closed for the weekend; perhaps the director was out collecting new specimens.
Next we drove on north to a small northfacing beach where Rebecca went paddling in the Arctic Ocean. It was, as expected, cold. :) From there we turned east to have a look at the rock formations at Ásbyrgi, where there is a sheer cliff formed by the lifting of the North American plate and the drop of the European plate.
Just after Ásbyrgi we turned south onto route 864. Oh boy... This is one of those roads that is really a dirt track rather than a road, and it's one that I wouldn't take my car down (doing so would void the insurance to start with) but it is the only way to get to Dettifoss at present (the other being closed due to snow). Fortunately Matt and Rebecca had hired a nice big 4x4. :)
The first thing that we noticed was the dust. It's very dry up there and so the dust flies off the road at the slightest provovations. The road is also pitted, rutted and at interesting angles in places. It's somewhere you need a 4x4 in 4-wheel drive mode.
First stop down the 864 was Hafragillsfoss. The car park puts you up above the waterfall some way downstream so you get an excellent view of the falls. When I got out of the car here I realised that this was why the Mars Society are building a habitat here in Iceland - it's cold and very dry even when there's snow on the ground. I'd never experienced an arctic desert before.
Further down the road is Dettifoss, Iceland's largest waterfall with a drop of over 100m. Here you park at the top of a cliff and walk down some steps... and down some more steps... and down some more steps... and down some more steps until you get to where you can see the waterfall. It is very impressive, but it wasn't the waterfall itself that caught our eyes. Forget Slartibartfast's face on the glacier. At Dettifoss you have Darth Vader's mask beside the waterfall. The eyes and nose are quite clear. I may send this one into the Fortean Times' simulacra corner.
Eventually the 864 links up again with route 1 just east of Mývatn, which meant that our next stop was to see the blue mud pools of Hverir. It's extremely active right now, far more so than the last time I visited a couple of months ago. There was a lot of steam coming from the cracks in the mountains as well as the steam vents. The mud pools were bubbling at a furious rate, and there were lots of new sulphur deposits on the ground. This time I managed to gather some samples for later expetimentation. :)
A little more off-road driving past through the lava-fields to the grottos and then we headed back towards Akureyri via a final stop at Goðafoss on the way. This provided Rebecca with another opportunity for a little paddling in the pools above the falls. It was after nine by the time we got home, but when it's still light at midnight you really lose track of time.
0 comments
One advantage of having no night is that you don't need to worry about it getting dark before you've seen everything. This was particularly good as we had a long breakfast (scrambled eggs and bagels) before setting out.
First stop was Hlíðafjall, the ski centre above the town. It was completely empty and give a fantastic view down across the town and over the fjord. The town is sufficiently spread out that you can see identify the house. That was just a short stop before we crossed the fjord and headed east.
That was when we got our first surprise - there is an iceberg in the fjord! I'd heard a couple of days ago that there had been one but it had shrunk a lot since it came in just before Whit. In spite of this we saw this huge brilliant white angular feature in the fjord. I'm planning to go up the western side of the fjord tomorrow to try to get a closer look.
On then to Húsavík. This is the whale-watching centre, but is also home to the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Yes, that is what you're thinking - a museum devoted to the study of the penis. Unfortunately it was closed for the weekend; perhaps the director was out collecting new specimens.
Next we drove on north to a small northfacing beach where Rebecca went paddling in the Arctic Ocean. It was, as expected, cold. :) From there we turned east to have a look at the rock formations at Ásbyrgi, where there is a sheer cliff formed by the lifting of the North American plate and the drop of the European plate.
Just after Ásbyrgi we turned south onto route 864. Oh boy... This is one of those roads that is really a dirt track rather than a road, and it's one that I wouldn't take my car down (doing so would void the insurance to start with) but it is the only way to get to Dettifoss at present (the other being closed due to snow). Fortunately Matt and Rebecca had hired a nice big 4x4. :)
The first thing that we noticed was the dust. It's very dry up there and so the dust flies off the road at the slightest provovations. The road is also pitted, rutted and at interesting angles in places. It's somewhere you need a 4x4 in 4-wheel drive mode.
First stop down the 864 was Hafragillsfoss. The car park puts you up above the waterfall some way downstream so you get an excellent view of the falls. When I got out of the car here I realised that this was why the Mars Society are building a habitat here in Iceland - it's cold and very dry even when there's snow on the ground. I'd never experienced an arctic desert before.
Further down the road is Dettifoss, Iceland's largest waterfall with a drop of over 100m. Here you park at the top of a cliff and walk down some steps... and down some more steps... and down some more steps... and down some more steps until you get to where you can see the waterfall. It is very impressive, but it wasn't the waterfall itself that caught our eyes. Forget Slartibartfast's face on the glacier. At Dettifoss you have Darth Vader's mask beside the waterfall. The eyes and nose are quite clear. I may send this one into the Fortean Times' simulacra corner.
Eventually the 864 links up again with route 1 just east of Mývatn, which meant that our next stop was to see the blue mud pools of Hverir. It's extremely active right now, far more so than the last time I visited a couple of months ago. There was a lot of steam coming from the cracks in the mountains as well as the steam vents. The mud pools were bubbling at a furious rate, and there were lots of new sulphur deposits on the ground. This time I managed to gather some samples for later expetimentation. :)
A little more off-road driving past through the lava-fields to the grottos and then we headed back towards Akureyri via a final stop at Goðafoss on the way. This provided Rebecca with another opportunity for a little paddling in the pools above the falls. It was after nine by the time we got home, but when it's still light at midnight you really lose track of time.
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Friday, May 27, 2005
Testing the hot tub
Finally I have got around to testing the hot tub here in the house.
It's been rather busy today, as we had more assessment workshops this morning and then a seminar this afternoon. I've really enjoyed these workshops, and I'll certainly be taking some of the ideas and incorporating them into my teaching in future.
One thing that they've taught me is that RGU have extremely good practice in assessment methods even if, at the time, I thought it was just more paperwork. Now I know the reasoning behind it I will be adopting it enthusiastically. :)
Matt, Rebecca and Sporri (the dog) arrived at tea-time, which allowed us to have a very relaxing evening that included a couple of hours in the hot tub. It takes about an hour to fill the thing but you can comfortably get three people in it, probably four. It's a very relaxing way in which to end a day.
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It's been rather busy today, as we had more assessment workshops this morning and then a seminar this afternoon. I've really enjoyed these workshops, and I'll certainly be taking some of the ideas and incorporating them into my teaching in future.
One thing that they've taught me is that RGU have extremely good practice in assessment methods even if, at the time, I thought it was just more paperwork. Now I know the reasoning behind it I will be adopting it enthusiastically. :)
Matt, Rebecca and Sporri (the dog) arrived at tea-time, which allowed us to have a very relaxing evening that included a couple of hours in the hot tub. It takes about an hour to fill the thing but you can comfortably get three people in it, probably four. It's a very relaxing way in which to end a day.
0 comments
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Back into the garage
The space shuttle was due to launch on May 15th. Or at least it was until a few weeks ago.
Now NASA have rolled it back into the vertical assembly building in order to replace the main fuel tank with a new one that comes with a built-in heater. The theory is that with the heater there will be no ice build-up of the kind that caused the loss of the Columbia.
Yet another case of NASA paranoia. Space flight is dangerous. I know that. I also know that you have to accept a certain amount of risk in order to get anything done. NASA seem to have decided that if it's not 110% safe then they're not going to do anything.
A case in point is the Hubble refit mission. NASA claims that it can't send a shuttle up to service the HST because the shuttle's orbit would be such that it couldn't get to the ISS if anything went wrong. Now hang on a minute... that's like saying I'm not going to drive to work if there isn't a hospital en-route. Well, OK, perhaps that's taking it a bit far, but the idea's the same.
Burt Rutan, the chap behind SpaceShipOne - the first private vehicle to make it into space twice in the space of a couple of weeks - recently said that without entrepreneurs like him humanity isn't going to be inspired to do much more in the way of space exploration. In spite of what The Register may think, I believe he has a point. NASA certainly isn't being particularly inspirational in its actions nowadays. Various people claiming that humanity can do all the exploration it wants with unmanned missions doesn't help either. Certainly, unmanned missions are a start, but it's very difficult for a rover to pick up a rock and look underneath it.
Thankfully there's a bit of private money going into space research. I'm all in favour of that - the more the merrier - and as an active member of the Mars Society I even contribute to it. But the big things can only be done with govenmental levels of funding, and we seem to be stuck in the vicious circle of big projects don't get funded because they're too dangerous, and because they don't happen we don't create heroes, and because we don't have heroes they can't persuade the funding bodies of the importance of the large projects, which then don't get funded because they're too dangerous...
I can only hope that there are enough explorers left so that when the funding bodies see sense there'll be the inspired engineers ready to meet the challenge.
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Now NASA have rolled it back into the vertical assembly building in order to replace the main fuel tank with a new one that comes with a built-in heater. The theory is that with the heater there will be no ice build-up of the kind that caused the loss of the Columbia.
Yet another case of NASA paranoia. Space flight is dangerous. I know that. I also know that you have to accept a certain amount of risk in order to get anything done. NASA seem to have decided that if it's not 110% safe then they're not going to do anything.
A case in point is the Hubble refit mission. NASA claims that it can't send a shuttle up to service the HST because the shuttle's orbit would be such that it couldn't get to the ISS if anything went wrong. Now hang on a minute... that's like saying I'm not going to drive to work if there isn't a hospital en-route. Well, OK, perhaps that's taking it a bit far, but the idea's the same.
Burt Rutan, the chap behind SpaceShipOne - the first private vehicle to make it into space twice in the space of a couple of weeks - recently said that without entrepreneurs like him humanity isn't going to be inspired to do much more in the way of space exploration. In spite of what The Register may think, I believe he has a point. NASA certainly isn't being particularly inspirational in its actions nowadays. Various people claiming that humanity can do all the exploration it wants with unmanned missions doesn't help either. Certainly, unmanned missions are a start, but it's very difficult for a rover to pick up a rock and look underneath it.
Thankfully there's a bit of private money going into space research. I'm all in favour of that - the more the merrier - and as an active member of the Mars Society I even contribute to it. But the big things can only be done with govenmental levels of funding, and we seem to be stuck in the vicious circle of big projects don't get funded because they're too dangerous, and because they don't happen we don't create heroes, and because we don't have heroes they can't persuade the funding bodies of the importance of the large projects, which then don't get funded because they're too dangerous...
I can only hope that there are enough explorers left so that when the funding bodies see sense there'll be the inspired engineers ready to meet the challenge.
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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Hurrah for the Rafa-lution!
Victory! Victory! And what a comeback!
I was too scared to go into town to watch the match tonight - I normally am - so I've spent the last couple of hours playing solitaire and hitting the reload button on the BBC Sport Live: European Cup Final page. It's not good for me, that much tension and adrenaline. But woo-hoo! We won! I shall make a point of wearing my LFC polo shirt tomorrow to celebrate. In fact, I think I'll just pour myself a celebratory glass of Bushmills Malt right now...
Here's to bringing the cup home for Crazy Horse.
And now, a little ditty in celebration:
(To the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again)
We took 40,000 to Istambul - Hurrah! Hurrah!
To watch Milan get beat by Liverpool - Hurrah! Hurrah!
The first half we just played like crap
The second we made a hell of a comeback
Then we got blind drunk when Liverpool won the cup!
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I was too scared to go into town to watch the match tonight - I normally am - so I've spent the last couple of hours playing solitaire and hitting the reload button on the BBC Sport Live: European Cup Final page. It's not good for me, that much tension and adrenaline. But woo-hoo! We won! I shall make a point of wearing my LFC polo shirt tomorrow to celebrate. In fact, I think I'll just pour myself a celebratory glass of Bushmills Malt right now...
Here's to bringing the cup home for Crazy Horse.
And now, a little ditty in celebration:
(To the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again)
We took 40,000 to Istambul - Hurrah! Hurrah!
To watch Milan get beat by Liverpool - Hurrah! Hurrah!
The first half we just played like crap
The second we made a hell of a comeback
Then we got blind drunk when Liverpool won the cup!
0 comments
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
More CGI
Having spent an enjoyable evening with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow the other night, last night I opted for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
Yes, I'm finally getting around to seeing all those films I missed at the cinema and picked up on DVD in the 3-for-20-quid sales. Films such as Heavy Metal, which was much more exciting on the big screen when I was 14 than it was the other evening. I'm sure there was much more in the way of leather-clad chicks in the cinema version. Or it might have been that I was 14 and confused at the time. The soundtrack's still great though.
But back to Final Fantasy. I'd heard that it wasn't too good, which was why I hadnt been too worried to miss it at the cinema, and I really bought it out of professional curiosity to see what the CGI was like. I'm glad I did, as I thought they did pretty well with the people - particularly the skin and hair - although the clothing fabrics were still a bit off in places. I haven't watched most of the extras on the second disk (because I normally don't) but I did watch the making-of one this time and it was well worth it.
And, of course, having the hero die heroically at the end normally works for me anyway.
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Yes, I'm finally getting around to seeing all those films I missed at the cinema and picked up on DVD in the 3-for-20-quid sales. Films such as Heavy Metal, which was much more exciting on the big screen when I was 14 than it was the other evening. I'm sure there was much more in the way of leather-clad chicks in the cinema version. Or it might have been that I was 14 and confused at the time. The soundtrack's still great though.
But back to Final Fantasy. I'd heard that it wasn't too good, which was why I hadnt been too worried to miss it at the cinema, and I really bought it out of professional curiosity to see what the CGI was like. I'm glad I did, as I thought they did pretty well with the people - particularly the skin and hair - although the clothing fabrics were still a bit off in places. I haven't watched most of the extras on the second disk (because I normally don't) but I did watch the making-of one this time and it was well worth it.
And, of course, having the hero die heroically at the end normally works for me anyway.
0 comments
Monday, May 23, 2005
Dalek food
I was asked a very strange question the other day: how do daleks sustain themselves?
Now I admit that this is a point I have never before considered. If they were just machines then a three-pin plug would work nicely but given that they do have an organic component they must feed somehow. As far as I can remember, this prticular facet of dalek existance hasn't been covered on the tv yet, so here's my theory:
Carefully recessed into their sink plungers there is a small metal straw. This is retractable, and can be extended to pierce the cartons of nutritious soup that have been shipped from the soup-wells of Skaro (where the soup extraction and packaging process is overseen by the Skaroan Soup Dragons) to wherever the daleks are invading this year.
Such thoughts have clearly been brought on by a day split between handling the administrative aftermath of the exams (writing resit papers, talking to students, that sort of thing) and planning what sort of research we're hoping to be doing on the Mars habitat that should arrive in Iceland early next year.
Other good news on the research front - my colleague Kamilla and I agree that we need an eyetracker, and it turns out that the latest ASL model is less than £20K plus tax. This is much less than I expected it to be, so there's hope that we may be able to find the funds to buy one. Now that would be exciting.
1 comments
Now I admit that this is a point I have never before considered. If they were just machines then a three-pin plug would work nicely but given that they do have an organic component they must feed somehow. As far as I can remember, this prticular facet of dalek existance hasn't been covered on the tv yet, so here's my theory:
Carefully recessed into their sink plungers there is a small metal straw. This is retractable, and can be extended to pierce the cartons of nutritious soup that have been shipped from the soup-wells of Skaro (where the soup extraction and packaging process is overseen by the Skaroan Soup Dragons) to wherever the daleks are invading this year.
Such thoughts have clearly been brought on by a day split between handling the administrative aftermath of the exams (writing resit papers, talking to students, that sort of thing) and planning what sort of research we're hoping to be doing on the Mars habitat that should arrive in Iceland early next year.
Other good news on the research front - my colleague Kamilla and I agree that we need an eyetracker, and it turns out that the latest ASL model is less than £20K plus tax. This is much less than I expected it to be, so there's hope that we may be able to find the funds to buy one. Now that would be exciting.
1 comments
Sunday, May 22, 2005
A New Viewing
It seemed the logical thing to do.
After all, having watched Episode III on Friday it seemed appropriate to watch Episode IV again in light of the new background material. And it gave me a good excuse to watch the DVD of the original laserdisc version that I've acquired.
Once I'd got over the 'hairs standing up on the back of my neck' that I always get when the music starts up I found myself thinking about Princess Leia's ship. It would be twenty-thirty years old by now, not unreasonable when you think about how much it must cost to build a starship. You just can't afford to buy a new one every five years. That was one of the things that bugged me about Star Trek III - it was waaay to early to consider scrapping Enterprise. Especially so soon after the major refit she'd had in Star Trek I.
There's nothing in any of the other films that manages to convey the scale of things like the opening sequence with the star destroyer that keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The first appearance of Darth Vader, framed in the doorway, is another point at which I grin helplessly. This time though, I found myself wondering about any familial resemblance between Padmé and Leia. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be much (Leia's much rounder of face for a start) which is probably a good thing as otherwise I presume Vader would have recognised her during her Senate appearances. I also wondered if the Imperial officer standing with Vader and Palpatine as they looked out at their new building project in RotS might have been Tarkin.
Back on Tattooine, clearly Beru had been more sympathetic with Obi-Wan's plans than Owen ever was, as she seems more accepting of Luke's temperament and doesn't dismiss the aging Jedi as a crazy old wizard. I wonder, though, did the stormtroopers kill them out of hand for owning the droids or did Owen and Beru deliberately sacrifice themselves to save Luke?
Thinking of the crazy old wizard, perhaps the spiel he gave about Luke's father had been agreed when the twins were hidden twenty years earlier. After all, with that bloodline the Jedi wouldn't want Luke to go off looking for his father and becoming a Sith lord, would they? So it's Obi-Wan's job to get Luke on-side eventually. Hmm... perhaps Obi-Wan had tried to get Luke at an appropriate age for Jedi training but Owen wouldn't give him up?
On to Mos Eisley and the encounter in the bar. Was it just luck that Obi-Wan spoke to Chewie or did he recognise him? If not personally (Chewie may have accompanied Yoda back to the rendezvous) but just because he was a wookie of a certain age and would have known that the Jedi had helped on Kashyyk during the clone wars?
Han shoots first in this version, something that makes up for the less-than-perfect quality of the recording. :) Everyone goes off to Alderaan and rescues the princess. Obi-Wan knocks out the tractor beam generators. He's clearly got a knack with things electronic, as RotS shows with the generator in the temple. Then goes off to meet Vader in the corridor.
"I shall become more powerful than you can imagine" is an interesting line. Clearly he's learned a lot from his later training, to the point where he can choose to become one with the Force at will and still communicate with the physical world.
They escape the Death Star and head for Hoth. And here, for the first time, I spotted the A-wing fighter in the hangar bay. We never see it in battle though, and I'd forgotten that the assault was made with only 30 ships. Of course, had Lucas done that today I'm sure it would have been 30 squadrons...
The two biggest things that I noticed overall were the simplicity and the silence. The visuals are much sparser than in episodes I-III, and this is mainly an effects thing. Comparing this version to the DVD release of the special edition the screen is a lot busier.
The other thing is that the soundtrack fades to nothing in many parts. I'm sure that in I-III the soundtrack is almost a permanent feature, with the silences inparting as much dramatic effect as the music. Perhaps this is a feature of the videogame age, where there always has to be sound of some sort to keep you occupied.
This is all very geeky, I know, but I wondered how much knowing the backstory would change the viewing experience. It allowed me to rationalise a couple of things, but didn't change my view that episodes IV-VI are the better films. I soooo want to see them on the big screen again.
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After all, having watched Episode III on Friday it seemed appropriate to watch Episode IV again in light of the new background material. And it gave me a good excuse to watch the DVD of the original laserdisc version that I've acquired.
Once I'd got over the 'hairs standing up on the back of my neck' that I always get when the music starts up I found myself thinking about Princess Leia's ship. It would be twenty-thirty years old by now, not unreasonable when you think about how much it must cost to build a starship. You just can't afford to buy a new one every five years. That was one of the things that bugged me about Star Trek III - it was waaay to early to consider scrapping Enterprise. Especially so soon after the major refit she'd had in Star Trek I.
There's nothing in any of the other films that manages to convey the scale of things like the opening sequence with the star destroyer that keeps on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The first appearance of Darth Vader, framed in the doorway, is another point at which I grin helplessly. This time though, I found myself wondering about any familial resemblance between Padmé and Leia. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be much (Leia's much rounder of face for a start) which is probably a good thing as otherwise I presume Vader would have recognised her during her Senate appearances. I also wondered if the Imperial officer standing with Vader and Palpatine as they looked out at their new building project in RotS might have been Tarkin.
Back on Tattooine, clearly Beru had been more sympathetic with Obi-Wan's plans than Owen ever was, as she seems more accepting of Luke's temperament and doesn't dismiss the aging Jedi as a crazy old wizard. I wonder, though, did the stormtroopers kill them out of hand for owning the droids or did Owen and Beru deliberately sacrifice themselves to save Luke?
Thinking of the crazy old wizard, perhaps the spiel he gave about Luke's father had been agreed when the twins were hidden twenty years earlier. After all, with that bloodline the Jedi wouldn't want Luke to go off looking for his father and becoming a Sith lord, would they? So it's Obi-Wan's job to get Luke on-side eventually. Hmm... perhaps Obi-Wan had tried to get Luke at an appropriate age for Jedi training but Owen wouldn't give him up?
On to Mos Eisley and the encounter in the bar. Was it just luck that Obi-Wan spoke to Chewie or did he recognise him? If not personally (Chewie may have accompanied Yoda back to the rendezvous) but just because he was a wookie of a certain age and would have known that the Jedi had helped on Kashyyk during the clone wars?
Han shoots first in this version, something that makes up for the less-than-perfect quality of the recording. :) Everyone goes off to Alderaan and rescues the princess. Obi-Wan knocks out the tractor beam generators. He's clearly got a knack with things electronic, as RotS shows with the generator in the temple. Then goes off to meet Vader in the corridor.
"I shall become more powerful than you can imagine" is an interesting line. Clearly he's learned a lot from his later training, to the point where he can choose to become one with the Force at will and still communicate with the physical world.
They escape the Death Star and head for Hoth. And here, for the first time, I spotted the A-wing fighter in the hangar bay. We never see it in battle though, and I'd forgotten that the assault was made with only 30 ships. Of course, had Lucas done that today I'm sure it would have been 30 squadrons...
The two biggest things that I noticed overall were the simplicity and the silence. The visuals are much sparser than in episodes I-III, and this is mainly an effects thing. Comparing this version to the DVD release of the special edition the screen is a lot busier.
The other thing is that the soundtrack fades to nothing in many parts. I'm sure that in I-III the soundtrack is almost a permanent feature, with the silences inparting as much dramatic effect as the music. Perhaps this is a feature of the videogame age, where there always has to be sound of some sort to keep you occupied.
This is all very geeky, I know, but I wondered how much knowing the backstory would change the viewing experience. It allowed me to rationalise a couple of things, but didn't change my view that episodes IV-VI are the better films. I soooo want to see them on the big screen again.
0 comments
Saturday, May 21, 2005
More views from Hoth
I thought it was getting silly before. It has now got officially ludicrous.
It a month to the Summer Equinox. There are leaves beginning to appear on the trees. We no longer get anything darker than early twilight. The grass is green. Or at least it would be if it wasn't covered in snow:
Not a lot planned for the day - I have to go shopping and we've got dinner at the Greifinn with Graham, our external examiner this evening, but other than that I think I'm going to try to finish the three goldwork fleur-de-lys for Acarin's belt token and do a bit of designwork on a blackwork map I've promised a friend.
Ah - the familiar sound of snow cascading off the roof. Summer? What summer?
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It a month to the Summer Equinox. There are leaves beginning to appear on the trees. We no longer get anything darker than early twilight. The grass is green. Or at least it would be if it wasn't covered in snow:
Not a lot planned for the day - I have to go shopping and we've got dinner at the Greifinn with Graham, our external examiner this evening, but other than that I think I'm going to try to finish the three goldwork fleur-de-lys for Acarin's belt token and do a bit of designwork on a blackwork map I've promised a friend.
Ah - the familiar sound of snow cascading off the roof. Summer? What summer?
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Friday, May 20, 2005
A view from Hoth
Where the snow has been falling all day and is sticking.
The first showing of Revenge of the Sith in Akureyri was to a three-quarters full cinema of kids, the occasional parent and two single members of Generation X-Wing* (of which I was one). The early evening showing is, however, sold out. And, apart from the interval - Obi-Wan ignites his lightsabre to take on another batch of evil droids and we cut to an advert for a local boutique - it was highly enjoyable. I'll be back for a second viewing later this week. Then another in the UK to see it without the subtitles.
Apart from the excellence of the visuals, one big thing stood out in this film compared to the last two: it didn't look like a computer game with different levels to be completed. Of course, I could have done without the Anakin/Padmé bits but I suppose they were necessary to the plot. There is one big unanswered question, to my mind, but I won't mention it for a couple of weeks so I don't spoil anything. It was also good to see and hear the real Darth Vader again.
Towards the climax I did have this urge to start chanting Yo-DA! Yo-DA! O-bi-WAN! O-bi-WAN! but managed to contain myself. I think I may have shamed them into letting it run right the way through to the end of the credits by standing in the middle of the cinema nodding along to the music. Oh yes, and I want my own riding lizard.
So I've come back home, had a Subway meatball sub for dinner, and now I have this strange urge to do some rapier practise. It's a good thing I have a defensive style as, after all, a Jedi only uses the Force for defence... :)
* Generation X-Wing - That group of people who saw the original Star Wars at the highly impressionable age of 8-12.
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The first showing of Revenge of the Sith in Akureyri was to a three-quarters full cinema of kids, the occasional parent and two single members of Generation X-Wing* (of which I was one). The early evening showing is, however, sold out. And, apart from the interval - Obi-Wan ignites his lightsabre to take on another batch of evil droids and we cut to an advert for a local boutique - it was highly enjoyable. I'll be back for a second viewing later this week. Then another in the UK to see it without the subtitles.
Apart from the excellence of the visuals, one big thing stood out in this film compared to the last two: it didn't look like a computer game with different levels to be completed. Of course, I could have done without the Anakin/Padmé bits but I suppose they were necessary to the plot. There is one big unanswered question, to my mind, but I won't mention it for a couple of weeks so I don't spoil anything. It was also good to see and hear the real Darth Vader again.
Towards the climax I did have this urge to start chanting Yo-DA! Yo-DA! O-bi-WAN! O-bi-WAN! but managed to contain myself. I think I may have shamed them into letting it run right the way through to the end of the credits by standing in the middle of the cinema nodding along to the music. Oh yes, and I want my own riding lizard.
So I've come back home, had a Subway meatball sub for dinner, and now I have this strange urge to do some rapier practise. It's a good thing I have a defensive style as, after all, a Jedi only uses the Force for defence... :)
* Generation X-Wing - That group of people who saw the original Star Wars at the highly impressionable age of 8-12.
0 comments
Thursday, May 19, 2005
New numberplates
This morning I finally got the paperwork finished and got my new numberplates.
Yesterday I went to Eimskip to get them to give me the final document I needed for customs - I couldn't get that until I had a registration number, then had to wait for the chap to come back from holiday. Then I took this to the customs office and left it with them. They rang me late yesterday afternoon to say that everything was complete and all I had to do now was go to the cashier and arrange to pay.
So first thing this morning I went the see the cashier. Interesting point this - both Eimskip and customs had told me that I could pay it over a number of months up to five years. I was planning to pay it over twelve months. But no, the cashiers weren't having any of that. They wanted payment there and then. Thankfully I'd just been paid my expenses for the Aberdeen trip in February and that, combined with a hefty chunk of my savings disappeared with a swipe of my debit card. I've never swiped for over a grand before...
This got me the vital piece of paper stamped with the official stamp required by the Offical Numberplate Place to get my new numberplates. But first... the MOT-equivalent! Which was quite interesting, partularly watching the strange automatic bounding machine that seems to be used to check road-holding. It turns out that over the last fortnight one of my rear lights has gone, and while the garage may have checked that everything worked they didn't realign the headlights for me.
Here, though, they have a very civilised system. Remember how in the UK if you fail the MOT on even the slightest thing then you can't drive the car until it's fixed? Well here they give you a temporary sticker and give you a month to get it fixed and return for a new test.
So finally, I have new Icelandic numberplates:
The other major accomplishment of the day is that I've finished the website update. My A&S pages now have the instructions for the purse, a couple more articles and some photos/video footage of the small trebuchet I made a couple of years ago. Amazing the things you find while checking your CDs for experimental data.
0 comments
Yesterday I went to Eimskip to get them to give me the final document I needed for customs - I couldn't get that until I had a registration number, then had to wait for the chap to come back from holiday. Then I took this to the customs office and left it with them. They rang me late yesterday afternoon to say that everything was complete and all I had to do now was go to the cashier and arrange to pay.
So first thing this morning I went the see the cashier. Interesting point this - both Eimskip and customs had told me that I could pay it over a number of months up to five years. I was planning to pay it over twelve months. But no, the cashiers weren't having any of that. They wanted payment there and then. Thankfully I'd just been paid my expenses for the Aberdeen trip in February and that, combined with a hefty chunk of my savings disappeared with a swipe of my debit card. I've never swiped for over a grand before...
This got me the vital piece of paper stamped with the official stamp required by the Offical Numberplate Place to get my new numberplates. But first... the MOT-equivalent! Which was quite interesting, partularly watching the strange automatic bounding machine that seems to be used to check road-holding. It turns out that over the last fortnight one of my rear lights has gone, and while the garage may have checked that everything worked they didn't realign the headlights for me.
Here, though, they have a very civilised system. Remember how in the UK if you fail the MOT on even the slightest thing then you can't drive the car until it's fixed? Well here they give you a temporary sticker and give you a month to get it fixed and return for a new test.
So finally, I have new Icelandic numberplates:
The other major accomplishment of the day is that I've finished the website update. My A&S pages now have the instructions for the purse, a couple more articles and some photos/video footage of the small trebuchet I made a couple of years ago. Amazing the things you find while checking your CDs for experimental data.
0 comments
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
My taste is in my mouth...
...But I don't care. I've just watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on DVD and thought it was brilliant!
I practically grinned right the way through it. The visuals were stunning, and the plot was 110% comic book. It might have been a graphic novel with story by Jules Verne and graphics by Frank Millar - or maybe Klaus Janson. It was so easy to see each scene as a page of comic strips. The script, although perhaps not what you'd expect of a movie, worked very well as a set of speech bubbles. That film is so full of homages to the classic SF movies that it was hard to draw breath at times.
Of course, I thought it was wonderful. No wonder it was a box-office flop. :(
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I practically grinned right the way through it. The visuals were stunning, and the plot was 110% comic book. It might have been a graphic novel with story by Jules Verne and graphics by Frank Millar - or maybe Klaus Janson. It was so easy to see each scene as a page of comic strips. The script, although perhaps not what you'd expect of a movie, worked very well as a set of speech bubbles. That film is so full of homages to the classic SF movies that it was hard to draw breath at times.
Of course, I thought it was wonderful. No wonder it was a box-office flop. :(
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Another item finished
I think I may be getting a bit obsessive about my A&S documentation.
I've finished the Elizabethan-style lidded purse (at last) and I've photographed it at every stage. My excuse this time is that I'm writing instructions to put on the web because I haven't found any anywhere else and they'd have been very useful when I started this. It's not as if I'm planning to enter it for an A&S competition, for goodness sake! It's a purse to hold my glasses, purse and mobile phone while I'm at events, that's all. The geometric design is 16th century Spanish, for those who like to know these things.
Said instructions and photos will probably turn up on the website tomorrow, together with a host of other new stuff. I've spent some time today adding photos I didn't realise I had with me and I've got a bit more to add tomorrow - a large section of which will be A&S stuff.
Still, the purse is now finished and I can get on with Acarin's belt favour. Yes, it's back to goldwork again...
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I've finished the Elizabethan-style lidded purse (at last) and I've photographed it at every stage. My excuse this time is that I'm writing instructions to put on the web because I haven't found any anywhere else and they'd have been very useful when I started this. It's not as if I'm planning to enter it for an A&S competition, for goodness sake! It's a purse to hold my glasses, purse and mobile phone while I'm at events, that's all. The geometric design is 16th century Spanish, for those who like to know these things.
Said instructions and photos will probably turn up on the website tomorrow, together with a host of other new stuff. I've spent some time today adding photos I didn't realise I had with me and I've got a bit more to add tomorrow - a large section of which will be A&S stuff.
Still, the purse is now finished and I can get on with Acarin's belt favour. Yes, it's back to goldwork again...
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Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Not one of my strengths
Clearly, animal photography is not one of my strengths. :)
I've now processed the photographs from Saturday and, although I can claim some success - I did manage to photograph the whale - I don't think I'm going to give up the day job yet. I'm particularly proud of the blurred image in which you can clearly make out the dorsal fin. Hopefully I'll get better pictures when I go back in July.
I would go in June, but I'll be in the UK. I've now sorted out the flights to and from Stanstead, although part of me wonders what made me opt for the 07:30 rather than the 15:00 out of Keflavik, as that'll require an overnight stay in Reykjavik and a very early start. Probably something like 05:30 to get there in plenty of time. I'd better get organised and book into the hostel. I've also sorted out my hotel for Warbands; I'll be staying at the Glenesk, so I must remember to pack my swimsuit. Hmm... if I pack the swimsuit I could go to the Blue Lagoon on the way out. Or the way back. Or and the way back, even.
Otherwise, not a lot has happened today. The weather has turned chilly again and we've had snow once more. It's very weird when it's snowing and the sun is very high in the sky.
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I've now processed the photographs from Saturday and, although I can claim some success - I did manage to photograph the whale - I don't think I'm going to give up the day job yet. I'm particularly proud of the blurred image in which you can clearly make out the dorsal fin. Hopefully I'll get better pictures when I go back in July.
I would go in June, but I'll be in the UK. I've now sorted out the flights to and from Stanstead, although part of me wonders what made me opt for the 07:30 rather than the 15:00 out of Keflavik, as that'll require an overnight stay in Reykjavik and a very early start. Probably something like 05:30 to get there in plenty of time. I'd better get organised and book into the hostel. I've also sorted out my hotel for Warbands; I'll be staying at the Glenesk, so I must remember to pack my swimsuit. Hmm... if I pack the swimsuit I could go to the Blue Lagoon on the way out. Or the way back. Or and the way back, even.
Otherwise, not a lot has happened today. The weather has turned chilly again and we've had snow once more. It's very weird when it's snowing and the sun is very high in the sky.
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Monday, May 16, 2005
Another holiday
To whit, Whit Two.
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. I've been trying to come up with something similar all day. Well, all of the day that hasn't been watching DVDs, that is.
Yes, it's been a slobbing in the morning, slobbing in the afternoon, then a quick nap before the main evening's slob sort of day. Somewhere in the middle I did get in a quick trip to the supermarket (open Sunday hours) but other than that I've worked my way through 2 episodes of the Goodies (with commentry by the trio themselves), Tome Cruise in The Last Samurai and then Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
I hadn't seen The Last Samurai before, and I quite enjoyed it. Having nearly everyone die at the end in a suitably heroic manner helps, of course. That's one of Gladiator's strengths too. And Edge of Darkness, for that matter.
It's the opera lover in me, I think.
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Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. I've been trying to come up with something similar all day. Well, all of the day that hasn't been watching DVDs, that is.
Yes, it's been a slobbing in the morning, slobbing in the afternoon, then a quick nap before the main evening's slob sort of day. Somewhere in the middle I did get in a quick trip to the supermarket (open Sunday hours) but other than that I've worked my way through 2 episodes of the Goodies (with commentry by the trio themselves), Tome Cruise in The Last Samurai and then Russell Crowe in Gladiator.
I hadn't seen The Last Samurai before, and I quite enjoyed it. Having nearly everyone die at the end in a suitably heroic manner helps, of course. That's one of Gladiator's strengths too. And Edge of Darkness, for that matter.
It's the opera lover in me, I think.
0 comments
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Whit? What? Why?
It's another one of those strange religious holidays.
Tomorrow is a bank holiday here for Whit - the idea being that as Whit itself is a Sunday folks won't get a day off work, so they get the Monday instead. The shops, however, have closed today. I discovered this when I tried to go shopping this afternoon and failed miserably because, presumably, everyone was at church instead. I've no idea if the shops will be open tomorrow, but fortunately I have sufficient basic supplies to survive until Tuesday if necessary.
The fire alarm in my bedroom has been beeping every three minutes for a couple of hours at a time for the last few days and today I finally got sufficiently tired of it to venture into the garage to find a ladder. I tried the step-ladder but that wouldn't let me anywhere near the alarm and I had to change it for the big building ladder instead.
I know that smoke rises up the corners of rooms first, but when the corner of the room is over 3.5m high then putting an alarm there doesn't lend itself to easy maintenance. It doesn't help that I don't really like ladders - I'm sure they're going to collapse under me. But I managed to get the ladder into the house, up the stairs and into my room without too many bangs, bumps and curses and removed the dying battery. I didn't have a replacement of that size to hand so the alarm is currently handing open and some time before I leave I'll have to go through all the palaver with the ladder again to replace it, I suppose.
The plan for the evening is to finish my lidded purse - I'd have done so earlier today except that I was hijacked by Timothy Zahn's Cobra trilogy. Hurrah for MobiPocket!
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Tomorrow is a bank holiday here for Whit - the idea being that as Whit itself is a Sunday folks won't get a day off work, so they get the Monday instead. The shops, however, have closed today. I discovered this when I tried to go shopping this afternoon and failed miserably because, presumably, everyone was at church instead. I've no idea if the shops will be open tomorrow, but fortunately I have sufficient basic supplies to survive until Tuesday if necessary.
The fire alarm in my bedroom has been beeping every three minutes for a couple of hours at a time for the last few days and today I finally got sufficiently tired of it to venture into the garage to find a ladder. I tried the step-ladder but that wouldn't let me anywhere near the alarm and I had to change it for the big building ladder instead.
I know that smoke rises up the corners of rooms first, but when the corner of the room is over 3.5m high then putting an alarm there doesn't lend itself to easy maintenance. It doesn't help that I don't really like ladders - I'm sure they're going to collapse under me. But I managed to get the ladder into the house, up the stairs and into my room without too many bangs, bumps and curses and removed the dying battery. I didn't have a replacement of that size to hand so the alarm is currently handing open and some time before I leave I'll have to go through all the palaver with the ladder again to replace it, I suppose.
The plan for the evening is to finish my lidded purse - I'd have done so earlier today except that I was hijacked by Timothy Zahn's Cobra trilogy. Hurrah for MobiPocket!
0 comments
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Minke whale - tick!
Last night the students held their end-of-term party to which the lecturers were invited. Today, as a direct result of that, I had a close encounter with a minke whale.
Only a close encounter of the first kind, but as I'd never seen a whale in the wild before it was pretty impressive all the same.
Although Iceland has a long history of whaling, all whaling has been banned for over ten years and during that time the northern town of Húsavík has set itself up as the European Capital of Whale-watching. It is now home to several companies that offer afternoon cruises into Skjálfandaflóa to watch the astounding variety of marine mammals that visit the bay through the summer.
Today we went out with North Sailing for a three-and-a-half hour cruise around the bay on the Náttfari. Everyone was a little on edge, as yesterday's cruise had failed to spot anything. For the first two and a half hours thing looked rather worrying, as we only spotted a couple of harbour porpoises but they're so fast that very few people saw them.
We did go via Lundey though, which is one of Europe's largest puffin colonies, and got great views of puffins, guillimots, great auks and even a huge lone gannet. Then, as people were beginning to worry that we weren't going to see anything today either, the skipper got a message that a minke whale had been seen on the other side of the bay. Full steam ahead, then, to the western shore.
It took a while to find him - or her, we couldn't tell which - but suddenly this great black hump appeared in the water, quickly followed by a small fin. It was our whale! He surfaced several times before diving below to feed again. At the beginning of the season the whales are arriving hungry in the bay and so spend most of their time diving deeply to feed on the krill and plankton 100m below the surface. You can tell when they're about to do a deep dive, as they arch their backs like a cat, and you can see this quite clearly.
The deep dives last about three to five minutes before the whale returns to the surface, so we spent the next half hour watching him - at one point he was only about five metres away from the boat - before we had to head back to shore.
On one occasional he swam very close to the surface for a while and we were able to see the broad white diagonal band on his flippers. He was roughly 5-6 metres in length which implied that he was a young adult massing about 5-6 tonnes. We couldn't just see him, we could smell him as well, as whales have a very sharp fishy smell when they blow.
It was amazing. Whale-watching was one of the things on my must-do list before I came to Iceland, and I'm really glad I went today. So glad that I plan to go back again in July, when there will be more whales and more species of whale around. They're also well-fed by that point and so have time to be curious about the boats and often come in very close and rise out of the water to look at the people who are looking at them.
I have some photos, but whether they'll actually show him I don't know yet. I'll put them on the web when I get back into the office on Tuesday.
0 comments
Only a close encounter of the first kind, but as I'd never seen a whale in the wild before it was pretty impressive all the same.
Although Iceland has a long history of whaling, all whaling has been banned for over ten years and during that time the northern town of Húsavík has set itself up as the European Capital of Whale-watching. It is now home to several companies that offer afternoon cruises into Skjálfandaflóa to watch the astounding variety of marine mammals that visit the bay through the summer.
Today we went out with North Sailing for a three-and-a-half hour cruise around the bay on the Náttfari. Everyone was a little on edge, as yesterday's cruise had failed to spot anything. For the first two and a half hours thing looked rather worrying, as we only spotted a couple of harbour porpoises but they're so fast that very few people saw them.
We did go via Lundey though, which is one of Europe's largest puffin colonies, and got great views of puffins, guillimots, great auks and even a huge lone gannet. Then, as people were beginning to worry that we weren't going to see anything today either, the skipper got a message that a minke whale had been seen on the other side of the bay. Full steam ahead, then, to the western shore.
It took a while to find him - or her, we couldn't tell which - but suddenly this great black hump appeared in the water, quickly followed by a small fin. It was our whale! He surfaced several times before diving below to feed again. At the beginning of the season the whales are arriving hungry in the bay and so spend most of their time diving deeply to feed on the krill and plankton 100m below the surface. You can tell when they're about to do a deep dive, as they arch their backs like a cat, and you can see this quite clearly.
The deep dives last about three to five minutes before the whale returns to the surface, so we spent the next half hour watching him - at one point he was only about five metres away from the boat - before we had to head back to shore.
On one occasional he swam very close to the surface for a while and we were able to see the broad white diagonal band on his flippers. He was roughly 5-6 metres in length which implied that he was a young adult massing about 5-6 tonnes. We couldn't just see him, we could smell him as well, as whales have a very sharp fishy smell when they blow.
It was amazing. Whale-watching was one of the things on my must-do list before I came to Iceland, and I'm really glad I went today. So glad that I plan to go back again in July, when there will be more whales and more species of whale around. They're also well-fed by that point and so have time to be curious about the boats and often come in very close and rise out of the water to look at the people who are looking at them.
I have some photos, but whether they'll actually show him I don't know yet. I'll put them on the web when I get back into the office on Tuesday.
0 comments
Friday, May 13, 2005
Nuclear power? Unfortunately not.
Don't you just hate it when logical analysis goes against gut feeling?
I have always been a supporter of nuclear energy. The concept of using the heat generated by nuclear decay, of harnessing the energy provided by a supernova to create heavy nuclei is such an elegant one. But I fear that it is infeasible to use it on the large scale for human reasons rather than scientific ones.
When used correctly, nuclear power is safe. Unfortunately human error introduces the scope for accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These were human accidents, not scientific or technological ones. There is no such thing as a foolproof system, and there is therefore no such thing as an entirely safe system either. Human actions, either deliberate or in error, will always cause things to go wrong eventually.
That said, it's not the danger of radiation leaks that leads me to consider whether nuclear power is a realistic contender for large-scale power generation in future. I still believe that fission reactors are a major scientific and technical achievement, and that breeder reactors have a great deal of potential - just not yet.
The problem is that it's so damned expensive. It's just too expensive to build, operate and decommission commercial reactors. Yes, their CO2 production per unit of energy produced is very low, but that doesn't take construction costs into account. Constructing something that complex requires a lot of energy that has already released CO2.
I really hate it that economics has triumphed over scientific and technological achievement. It was the same with Concorde - a great idea and a major achievement but too expensive to work right now. Nuclear power could work, it could provide a lot of green energy, but not yet.
So I'm having to change my view from of course we need nuclear power to I'd really like to have nuclear power but it's not feasible on a large scale yet. Of course we can't just turn the existing stations off, and I wouldn't want to do that. They should be allowed to continue generating power for as long as they can safely do so - quite a while in the case of most of the British reactors as the combination of our designs and technological knpw-how have given us probably the best reactor design in the world in the AGR - but there's no economic reason to build new nuclear power stations.
I'm not saying we should abandon nuclear power generation entirely. I'd like to see a couple of new experimental reactors designed to further the development of reactor technologies in the belief that the economic argument will change with new discoveries. There's a site up at Douneray that has a lot going for it. But in the meantime the returns on wind and wave power are far higher that we're likely to get on nuclear power for several generations.
There is one place, of course, where thermal power generation from nuclear sources is very efficient, and that is generators for satellites and deep space probes. We cannot give up these technologies just because they have the boogy-word 'nuclear' in them. But that's a whole other argument.
In the meantime, perhaps the western world should consider giving some of the money that would go to building new nuclear power stations to further research on the other form of nuclear enery - fusion. They could start by getting their fingers out and deciding on a location for ITER.
0 comments
I have always been a supporter of nuclear energy. The concept of using the heat generated by nuclear decay, of harnessing the energy provided by a supernova to create heavy nuclei is such an elegant one. But I fear that it is infeasible to use it on the large scale for human reasons rather than scientific ones.
When used correctly, nuclear power is safe. Unfortunately human error introduces the scope for accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These were human accidents, not scientific or technological ones. There is no such thing as a foolproof system, and there is therefore no such thing as an entirely safe system either. Human actions, either deliberate or in error, will always cause things to go wrong eventually.
That said, it's not the danger of radiation leaks that leads me to consider whether nuclear power is a realistic contender for large-scale power generation in future. I still believe that fission reactors are a major scientific and technical achievement, and that breeder reactors have a great deal of potential - just not yet.
The problem is that it's so damned expensive. It's just too expensive to build, operate and decommission commercial reactors. Yes, their CO2 production per unit of energy produced is very low, but that doesn't take construction costs into account. Constructing something that complex requires a lot of energy that has already released CO2.
I really hate it that economics has triumphed over scientific and technological achievement. It was the same with Concorde - a great idea and a major achievement but too expensive to work right now. Nuclear power could work, it could provide a lot of green energy, but not yet.
So I'm having to change my view from of course we need nuclear power to I'd really like to have nuclear power but it's not feasible on a large scale yet. Of course we can't just turn the existing stations off, and I wouldn't want to do that. They should be allowed to continue generating power for as long as they can safely do so - quite a while in the case of most of the British reactors as the combination of our designs and technological knpw-how have given us probably the best reactor design in the world in the AGR - but there's no economic reason to build new nuclear power stations.
I'm not saying we should abandon nuclear power generation entirely. I'd like to see a couple of new experimental reactors designed to further the development of reactor technologies in the belief that the economic argument will change with new discoveries. There's a site up at Douneray that has a lot going for it. But in the meantime the returns on wind and wave power are far higher that we're likely to get on nuclear power for several generations.
There is one place, of course, where thermal power generation from nuclear sources is very efficient, and that is generators for satellites and deep space probes. We cannot give up these technologies just because they have the boogy-word 'nuclear' in them. But that's a whole other argument.
In the meantime, perhaps the western world should consider giving some of the money that would go to building new nuclear power stations to further research on the other form of nuclear enery - fusion. They could start by getting their fingers out and deciding on a location for ITER.
0 comments
Thursday, May 12, 2005
A shock to the system
After living here for 8 months I today finally visited the local vínbúð.
It was something of a shock. I knew that alcohol was expensive here, but I hadn't realised just how expensive it was actually going to be.
All alcohol sales are controlled by the government, so the only place you can get alcohol of greater than 0.5% by volume is in govenment-run 'on-licenses', as it were. The one in Akureyri is probably a little larger than your average UK off-license, but it's also far less crowded in terms of shelving and so forth, which means that there isn't the range of drinks you'd see in the UK.
The big thing, of course, is the price difference. Drinks here are taxed on a percentage alcohol basis, which means that champagne is about the price I'd expect. Mumm's cordon rouge (my favourite mid-range champagne) costs about £30 rather than the £20 I can normally find it for in the UK. The 50% increase is on the low end of what I consider a 'normal' markup of 50-100% between the UK and Iceland.
Champagne is cheap. I had a look at several other things while I was there, such as a Californian Zinfandel wine box - again, around £30. What really stunned me, and has led to a whole new unit of monetary comparison, was the 1-litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin at 6,000 krona. That's £50.
Here are some of the other things I could have bought for the cost of one litre of Bombay Sapphire:
Still, in spite of the shock, there was something good at the vínbúð - cider! OK, it's Swedish, made by Kopparaberg and it costs about £1.80 for a 330ml bottle, but it's cider! Hurrah!. There's aslo a perry by the same company, so I've bought one of each out of curiosity and forlorn hope. OK... now for the taste test...
It smells very sweet. And tastes pretty sweet too. Not unlike Woodpecker with an aftertaste of heavily processed apple juice. Ah well. I have cider. Decent cider was clearly asking too much.
0 comments
It was something of a shock. I knew that alcohol was expensive here, but I hadn't realised just how expensive it was actually going to be.
All alcohol sales are controlled by the government, so the only place you can get alcohol of greater than 0.5% by volume is in govenment-run 'on-licenses', as it were. The one in Akureyri is probably a little larger than your average UK off-license, but it's also far less crowded in terms of shelving and so forth, which means that there isn't the range of drinks you'd see in the UK.
The big thing, of course, is the price difference. Drinks here are taxed on a percentage alcohol basis, which means that champagne is about the price I'd expect. Mumm's cordon rouge (my favourite mid-range champagne) costs about £30 rather than the £20 I can normally find it for in the UK. The 50% increase is on the low end of what I consider a 'normal' markup of 50-100% between the UK and Iceland.
Champagne is cheap. I had a look at several other things while I was there, such as a Californian Zinfandel wine box - again, around £30. What really stunned me, and has led to a whole new unit of monetary comparison, was the 1-litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin at 6,000 krona. That's £50.
Here are some of the other things I could have bought for the cost of one litre of Bombay Sapphire:
- 1.2 gas-fuelled trolley-style barbecues
- 2 solid wood garden chairs
- 6 issues of a UK embroidery magazine
- 4 toasters
- 9 tubs of Hagendas/B&J's ice cream
- 1.2 bottom-end DVD players
- 12 kg of chocolate-covered raisins
- 4.5m of velvet
- 7.5 trips to the cinema
- Three-quarters of a flight from Keflavik to Stanstead
Still, in spite of the shock, there was something good at the vínbúð - cider! OK, it's Swedish, made by Kopparaberg and it costs about £1.80 for a 330ml bottle, but it's cider! Hurrah!. There's aslo a perry by the same company, so I've bought one of each out of curiosity and forlorn hope. OK... now for the taste test...
It smells very sweet. And tastes pretty sweet too. Not unlike Woodpecker with an aftertaste of heavily processed apple juice. Ah well. I have cider. Decent cider was clearly asking too much.
0 comments
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Recycled as firelighters
Yes, it's been a bureaucratic day.
First of all I didn't get much sleep last night as the battery in the smoke detector died. Which meant that it spent four hours starting at 01:15 giving a sharp 'wake up' bleep every five minutes. Unfortunately it's in the top corner of the room about 3.5m from the floor, which meant that I could just about reach it with my longbow but couldn't do anything to take the battery out. I eventually took my pillow and duvet to the sofa on the landing and got a couple of hours shut-eye there.
Then I went into work in time to attend the beginning of the HCI exam in case anyone had any questions... except that the exam wasn't in the other building at all, but in some building I'd never heard of, which required me to return to the office, check the web (no-one else in the department knew where the building was either) then drive out to arrive about 10 minutes after the exam had started.
Next it was up to the Official Numberplate Place to check on the status of the paperwork for the car. No numberplates, but a stamped sheet of paper I had to take into town to the customs office. I eventually found the office, but they can't do anything until they get papers from the shipping office who helped me in the application for numberplated. It just so happens that the chap who will deal with it is on holiday this week, then next Monday is a national holiday (the second of Whitsun) so I have to go back there on Tuesday in the hope of getting papers I can take back to customs, who'll give me more papers I can take back to the ONP to finally get my numberplates.
Although I don't have number plates, I do have a registration number - YI804. This meant that I could at last get Icelandic car insurance rather than having expensive UK-car-abroad insurance, as you can't get Icelandic car insurance unless you have an Icelandic registration number. So some progress has been made.
I got back to the exam hall half an hour before the end of the exam to find that my students had already finished, which was fine. As there are only six of them sitting that particular module I had a chance to mark all of the scripts this afternoon, which has got it out of the way. More paperwork, although less stressful than the morning batch.
Now I can relax this evening and finish off the Elizabethan-style lidded purse I'm making for myself. Once I've got it finished - and photographed at various stages - I'll put the instructions up on the web. I googled until I was blue in the face trying to find instructions for one of these but to no avail, so I thought I'd create them myself.
Pictures will appear once it's complete.
0 comments
First of all I didn't get much sleep last night as the battery in the smoke detector died. Which meant that it spent four hours starting at 01:15 giving a sharp 'wake up' bleep every five minutes. Unfortunately it's in the top corner of the room about 3.5m from the floor, which meant that I could just about reach it with my longbow but couldn't do anything to take the battery out. I eventually took my pillow and duvet to the sofa on the landing and got a couple of hours shut-eye there.
Then I went into work in time to attend the beginning of the HCI exam in case anyone had any questions... except that the exam wasn't in the other building at all, but in some building I'd never heard of, which required me to return to the office, check the web (no-one else in the department knew where the building was either) then drive out to arrive about 10 minutes after the exam had started.
Next it was up to the Official Numberplate Place to check on the status of the paperwork for the car. No numberplates, but a stamped sheet of paper I had to take into town to the customs office. I eventually found the office, but they can't do anything until they get papers from the shipping office who helped me in the application for numberplated. It just so happens that the chap who will deal with it is on holiday this week, then next Monday is a national holiday (the second of Whitsun) so I have to go back there on Tuesday in the hope of getting papers I can take back to customs, who'll give me more papers I can take back to the ONP to finally get my numberplates.
Although I don't have number plates, I do have a registration number - YI804. This meant that I could at last get Icelandic car insurance rather than having expensive UK-car-abroad insurance, as you can't get Icelandic car insurance unless you have an Icelandic registration number. So some progress has been made.
I got back to the exam hall half an hour before the end of the exam to find that my students had already finished, which was fine. As there are only six of them sitting that particular module I had a chance to mark all of the scripts this afternoon, which has got it out of the way. More paperwork, although less stressful than the morning batch.
Now I can relax this evening and finish off the Elizabethan-style lidded purse I'm making for myself. Once I've got it finished - and photographed at various stages - I'll put the instructions up on the web. I googled until I was blue in the face trying to find instructions for one of these but to no avail, so I thought I'd create them myself.
Pictures will appear once it's complete.
0 comments
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Ow! Ow! Ow!
I think the fingers of my left hand are about to fall off.
No, I haven't spent the afternoon doing embroidery, I've just spent the last hour doing some serious guitar practice for the first time in years. I've almost memorised Greensleeves (I used to know it, but it's another one of those pieces that slipped through the gaps in my practise schedule), I already know the first Etude, and the second Etude, the Allegretto and the Sarabande are beginning to work their way back into memory.
They aren't the things that have caused the problems though. For the first time in *ahem* years I actually ran through almost the complete daily practise exercises. I say almost because my left hand just cramped up when I got to the final sets of scales.
It was the downward ligardos (or slurs), 72 of them on each of the top three strings, that did it. The upward ligardos aren't so much of a problem, but the downward ones are a bugger. For the non-guitarists out there, upward ligardos are where you play a note with a left-hand finger on the fretboard and then hammer another finger on to change the note upwards. Downwards you start with two left-hand fingers on the fretboard, play the note and then pull the higher finger off sideways to pluck the string as you do so, producing a lower note. Now in theory, you're supposed to do this with your fingers remaining vertical... that's easy enough with upwards ligados but I just can't manage it with the downwards ones. I see a lot of pain in the future until I get the hang of this again. :(
One good thing, though, is that I'm doing all of this on a relatively wide fretboard. Classical guitars tend to have a much wider neck than electric guitars or lutes. Yes, there it is, one of the reasons I'm doing all of this. If I can get get used to stretching over a wide neck it's going to be much easier when I finally get a lute, as the stretch will be smaller. Or would be if lute music didn't seem to be full of horribly wide stretched anyway. Stretches that I really don't think I can do on a guitar should be possible with a narrower neck and a lot of practice on a guitar to get the hands back into shape first.
Now, if only I can persuade myself to do an hour of practise at least three times a week I'll be happy... and a much better guitarist.
0 comments
No, I haven't spent the afternoon doing embroidery, I've just spent the last hour doing some serious guitar practice for the first time in years. I've almost memorised Greensleeves (I used to know it, but it's another one of those pieces that slipped through the gaps in my practise schedule), I already know the first Etude, and the second Etude, the Allegretto and the Sarabande are beginning to work their way back into memory.
They aren't the things that have caused the problems though. For the first time in *ahem* years I actually ran through almost the complete daily practise exercises. I say almost because my left hand just cramped up when I got to the final sets of scales.
It was the downward ligardos (or slurs), 72 of them on each of the top three strings, that did it. The upward ligardos aren't so much of a problem, but the downward ones are a bugger. For the non-guitarists out there, upward ligardos are where you play a note with a left-hand finger on the fretboard and then hammer another finger on to change the note upwards. Downwards you start with two left-hand fingers on the fretboard, play the note and then pull the higher finger off sideways to pluck the string as you do so, producing a lower note. Now in theory, you're supposed to do this with your fingers remaining vertical... that's easy enough with upwards ligados but I just can't manage it with the downwards ones. I see a lot of pain in the future until I get the hang of this again. :(
One good thing, though, is that I'm doing all of this on a relatively wide fretboard. Classical guitars tend to have a much wider neck than electric guitars or lutes. Yes, there it is, one of the reasons I'm doing all of this. If I can get get used to stretching over a wide neck it's going to be much easier when I finally get a lute, as the stretch will be smaller. Or would be if lute music didn't seem to be full of horribly wide stretched anyway. Stretches that I really don't think I can do on a guitar should be possible with a narrower neck and a lot of practice on a guitar to get the hands back into shape first.
Now, if only I can persuade myself to do an hour of practise at least three times a week I'll be happy... and a much better guitarist.
0 comments
Monday, May 09, 2005
Sage advice
Always carry an emergency spoon in the car.
This might sound a little strange, but it is quite true. The emergency spoon is vital on those days when you have to get away from it all. The times when you have to buy a tub of ice cream and then drive half-way up a mountain to sit and eat it as the wind blows the rain sideways through your car window. When there's no-one in the car park but you while you look down on the town and the fjord below.
I took the car in this morning and got it back this afternoon with a new windscreen and a clean bill of health, although I'll need new front brake pads in about six months time. The ice-cream requirement arose when I got the bill. :)
They've also swapped my winter tyres for my summer tyres and, by the feel of it, tightened up the steering a little bit. I noticed that as I don't have power steering and it's a little harder to turn the wheel. All I have to do now is go and get my new number plates from the Official Numberplate Place then transfer the insurance here from the UK (which I can't do without the number plates) and that will be Lambchop all sorted.
By the time I'd finished the ice-cream it was just after 17:30, which meant that I was nicely timed to go to see The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hmm...
I liked Zaphod's long burgandy coat.
And it was really good to see Marvin - the real Marvin, not this bright shiny new thing that obviously has fully-functional diodes down his left hand side - standing in the queue. But the rest of it stank. I'm not going to go into detail because Gavin did such a brilliant job of that a couple of days ago.
No interval this time - at Sambíó, not Borgarbíó - but no opportunity to watch the credits as they turned them off just after the main cast listing,
I'm now off to Sendit.co.uk to order the DVD of the proper version. In the meantime I think I'll just put the CDs on again and remind myself of how it's supposed to go.
0 comments
This might sound a little strange, but it is quite true. The emergency spoon is vital on those days when you have to get away from it all. The times when you have to buy a tub of ice cream and then drive half-way up a mountain to sit and eat it as the wind blows the rain sideways through your car window. When there's no-one in the car park but you while you look down on the town and the fjord below.
I took the car in this morning and got it back this afternoon with a new windscreen and a clean bill of health, although I'll need new front brake pads in about six months time. The ice-cream requirement arose when I got the bill. :)
They've also swapped my winter tyres for my summer tyres and, by the feel of it, tightened up the steering a little bit. I noticed that as I don't have power steering and it's a little harder to turn the wheel. All I have to do now is go and get my new number plates from the Official Numberplate Place then transfer the insurance here from the UK (which I can't do without the number plates) and that will be Lambchop all sorted.
By the time I'd finished the ice-cream it was just after 17:30, which meant that I was nicely timed to go to see The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hmm...
I liked Zaphod's long burgandy coat.
And it was really good to see Marvin - the real Marvin, not this bright shiny new thing that obviously has fully-functional diodes down his left hand side - standing in the queue. But the rest of it stank. I'm not going to go into detail because Gavin did such a brilliant job of that a couple of days ago.
No interval this time - at Sambíó, not Borgarbíó - but no opportunity to watch the credits as they turned them off just after the main cast listing,
I'm now off to Sendit.co.uk to order the DVD of the proper version. In the meantime I think I'll just put the CDs on again and remind myself of how it's supposed to go.
0 comments
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Adventures in the kitchen
A recent cooking adventure confirmed something I'd always suspected - smoked bacon overpowers anything you try to cook it with.
Last Saturday I cooked bah-mee - indonesian fried noodles - for the first time since I arrived here. It was not quite a disaster, but not far off it. The recipe (see bottom of entry) calls for bacon, and all of the bacon around here seems to be smoked. So I trotted around the shops, bought fresh green vegetables (three types!) and defrosted a chicken breast ready to go.
I marinaded the chicken and bacon overnight as recommended, much longer than the ten minutes it normally gets when I cook this. I chopped the vegetables. I defrosted the prawns. One very handy thing here is that instead of having to buy a big bunch of celery you can buy two or three sticks wrapped in cling film. This is ideal as I only tend to eat celery in bah-mee in the first place, so I normally leave it out rather than buy lots and have it go in the bin.
OK, I have to admit that I'd forgotten the tagliatele and had to make do with quick-cook packet-snack noodles instead, but they weren't actually a problem. I always have tagliatele in the cupboard. Or at least I did in the UK...
So I cooked the meat. It smelled a bit smoky. I added the vegetables. It still smelled smoky. I added the noodles and the prawns. It still smelled smoky. I added more soy sauce. No change.
It wasn't inedible, it was just that the bacon completely overpowered every other taste on the plate except the celery. At that point I decided that I had to try again, this time without the bacon.
That's what I did tonight and, thankfully, it tasted fine again. I could taste the individual vegetables. I remembered the tagliatele too so the noodles were also right. Best of all, there's enough left for dinner tomorrow too. :)
*** *** ***
Bah-Mee (Indonesian Fried Noodles)
Serves 2-3
Cut a chicken breast into 1-inch cubes. Take 4 slices of back bacon and cut into 1-inch strips. Marinate these overnight in about 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce to which has been added a teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt.
Chop 3 celery stalks into 1/ inch pieces. Slice a quarter of a cabbage into strips. Cut a small cauliflower into small floret chunks.
Put 4-6 tagliatele nests in to cook. While they are cooking, heat some oil in a large frying pan and add the chicken, bacon and the remains of the marinade plus about 1/2 cup of water. Cook the meat until nearly done, then add the vegetables and fry until they are firm but cooked and the liquid has been absorbed by the vegetables. Drain and add the noodles, mixing well. Finally add about 1/2 cup of frozen peas and (if desired) 1/2 cup of prawns, and continue cooking until these have heated through.
Serve with soy sauce.
Most green vegetables work well with this recipe - tonight I replaced the cabbage with broccoli and left out the peas. It also works as a vegetarian dish by removing the meat and fish, although you should still make up the marinade and add this right at the beginning with the oil.
0 comments
Last Saturday I cooked bah-mee - indonesian fried noodles - for the first time since I arrived here. It was not quite a disaster, but not far off it. The recipe (see bottom of entry) calls for bacon, and all of the bacon around here seems to be smoked. So I trotted around the shops, bought fresh green vegetables (three types!) and defrosted a chicken breast ready to go.
I marinaded the chicken and bacon overnight as recommended, much longer than the ten minutes it normally gets when I cook this. I chopped the vegetables. I defrosted the prawns. One very handy thing here is that instead of having to buy a big bunch of celery you can buy two or three sticks wrapped in cling film. This is ideal as I only tend to eat celery in bah-mee in the first place, so I normally leave it out rather than buy lots and have it go in the bin.
OK, I have to admit that I'd forgotten the tagliatele and had to make do with quick-cook packet-snack noodles instead, but they weren't actually a problem. I always have tagliatele in the cupboard. Or at least I did in the UK...
So I cooked the meat. It smelled a bit smoky. I added the vegetables. It still smelled smoky. I added the noodles and the prawns. It still smelled smoky. I added more soy sauce. No change.
It wasn't inedible, it was just that the bacon completely overpowered every other taste on the plate except the celery. At that point I decided that I had to try again, this time without the bacon.
That's what I did tonight and, thankfully, it tasted fine again. I could taste the individual vegetables. I remembered the tagliatele too so the noodles were also right. Best of all, there's enough left for dinner tomorrow too. :)
*** *** ***
Bah-Mee (Indonesian Fried Noodles)
Serves 2-3
Cut a chicken breast into 1-inch cubes. Take 4 slices of back bacon and cut into 1-inch strips. Marinate these overnight in about 1/2 cup of dark soy sauce to which has been added a teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt.
Chop 3 celery stalks into 1/ inch pieces. Slice a quarter of a cabbage into strips. Cut a small cauliflower into small floret chunks.
Put 4-6 tagliatele nests in to cook. While they are cooking, heat some oil in a large frying pan and add the chicken, bacon and the remains of the marinade plus about 1/2 cup of water. Cook the meat until nearly done, then add the vegetables and fry until they are firm but cooked and the liquid has been absorbed by the vegetables. Drain and add the noodles, mixing well. Finally add about 1/2 cup of frozen peas and (if desired) 1/2 cup of prawns, and continue cooking until these have heated through.
Serve with soy sauce.
Most green vegetables work well with this recipe - tonight I replaced the cabbage with broccoli and left out the peas. It also works as a vegetarian dish by removing the meat and fish, although you should still make up the marinade and add this right at the beginning with the oil.
0 comments
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Trebuchets and Opus Anglicanum - what more could I ask?
Er... maybe a couple of lightsabres?
I'm just back home from breaking my cinema-going duck with a viewing of Kingdom of Heaven starring Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Irons. And lots of counterweight trebuchets. :)
I rather enjoyed it, although in terms of the cinema-going experience it was like stepping back in time about 25 years. Akureyri has two cinemas, Sambíó and Borgarbíó; tonight Syed and I went to Borgarbíó, which is in a bit of town I hadn't investigated yet. Just over the road from the state-run alcohol shop. The ticket price was 800 Ikr (just over £6.50) so it's comparable to the last time I went to a UK evening showing at a multiplex. This isn't a multiplex, having precisely two screens, A and B, with A having maybe five times the capacity of cinema two at the NPH in St. Andrews.
Instead of starting with a round of adverts, we got three trailers - Sin City, War of the Worlds and Revenge of the Sith - all of which looked worth seeing (and one's a shoo-in, of course). Then it was straight into the film. Where, you may wonder, had the adverts gone? They turned up in the interval.
Yes, we had an interval! Seemingly this is quite normal up here. The last time I went to a movie with an interval in the UK was Troy, but that was over 3 hours. Prior to that it was long, long ago in a city far, far away.
But what about the film itself? OK, here's the obligatory Orlando Bloom was cute. What is it with him and metalworking? He's a blacksmith in this one and was a swordsmith in Pirates of the Carribean. It's not as if the film makers took advantage of this to do scenes with him topless, is it?
Actually, I rather liked Jeremy Irons. I'm beginning to accept that I'm eventually going to have to come to terms with growing older, and preferring the older guy in movies such as this may be part of that unfortunate process. I shall test this later in the year when I compare MacGyver to Jack O'Neill. But back to the movie at hand.
There were a lot of moments when I know I should have been watching Belian (Bloom's character) but I was rather distracted. As soon as he put on the blue surcoat bearing the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem it meant that we got lots of shots of the embroidery. It's Opus Anglicanum done in what looks like quite heavy thread and had me drooling from the first time I saw it. I'll have to get the DVD just to so I can pause it and take a closer look.
And then there were the trebuchets... lots of them, and lots of great footage of them in action. Another reason to buy the DVD. :)
0 comments
I'm just back home from breaking my cinema-going duck with a viewing of Kingdom of Heaven starring Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Irons. And lots of counterweight trebuchets. :)
I rather enjoyed it, although in terms of the cinema-going experience it was like stepping back in time about 25 years. Akureyri has two cinemas, Sambíó and Borgarbíó; tonight Syed and I went to Borgarbíó, which is in a bit of town I hadn't investigated yet. Just over the road from the state-run alcohol shop. The ticket price was 800 Ikr (just over £6.50) so it's comparable to the last time I went to a UK evening showing at a multiplex. This isn't a multiplex, having precisely two screens, A and B, with A having maybe five times the capacity of cinema two at the NPH in St. Andrews.
Instead of starting with a round of adverts, we got three trailers - Sin City, War of the Worlds and Revenge of the Sith - all of which looked worth seeing (and one's a shoo-in, of course). Then it was straight into the film. Where, you may wonder, had the adverts gone? They turned up in the interval.
Yes, we had an interval! Seemingly this is quite normal up here. The last time I went to a movie with an interval in the UK was Troy, but that was over 3 hours. Prior to that it was long, long ago in a city far, far away.
But what about the film itself? OK, here's the obligatory Orlando Bloom was cute. What is it with him and metalworking? He's a blacksmith in this one and was a swordsmith in Pirates of the Carribean. It's not as if the film makers took advantage of this to do scenes with him topless, is it?
Actually, I rather liked Jeremy Irons. I'm beginning to accept that I'm eventually going to have to come to terms with growing older, and preferring the older guy in movies such as this may be part of that unfortunate process. I shall test this later in the year when I compare MacGyver to Jack O'Neill. But back to the movie at hand.
There were a lot of moments when I know I should have been watching Belian (Bloom's character) but I was rather distracted. As soon as he put on the blue surcoat bearing the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem it meant that we got lots of shots of the embroidery. It's Opus Anglicanum done in what looks like quite heavy thread and had me drooling from the first time I saw it. I'll have to get the DVD just to so I can pause it and take a closer look.
And then there were the trebuchets... lots of them, and lots of great footage of them in action. Another reason to buy the DVD. :)
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Friday, May 06, 2005
Still snowing
It has snowed every day since (and including) May Day.
It's very strange - it spends the afternoon snowing but doesn't stck. If we keep this up much longer it'll be only a month to Midsummer and still at it. The reason seems to be that the wind is coming straight down off the arctic, and is cold and biting enough for Syed to move his bike into the lee of the house to preserve its paintwork.
I noticed the snow while I was having a relaxing lunch break. Well, not so much a break for lunch as a break for Fit the Nineteenth of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'd completely forgotten that it was starting on Radio 4 this week until I went in search of new science programmes and found the 'best of this week' bit. This is good, as I'd have been mightily miffed if I'd missed it.
Then, after my Guide break I marked all of the functional programming exam papers. It's very satisfying not only to complete it, but also to find that the distribution of marks is a nice gaussian curve with a sensible mean. I now have a break until the HCI exam on Wednesday, which is useful as I'm taking the car in for its new windscreen and so forth on Monday.
It being Friday, I would normally have gone skating tonight, but the strange weather has given me some pretty unpleasant headaches over the last few days and tonight I was definitely a little unsteady on my feet. You know the feeling when your head feels like a cannonball that's ready to topple off your neck if you do anything other than stand ramrod straight? It was one of those headaches. So instead I relaxed in front of a quiet movie (The Count of Monte Cristo - no explosions, just the occasional bit of fencing) and, thankfully, the headache has calmed down quite a bit.
I don't think my head would appreciate me trying to do some embroidery yet though, so I may have to resort to another quiet movie. Possibly The Mask of Zorro...
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It's very strange - it spends the afternoon snowing but doesn't stck. If we keep this up much longer it'll be only a month to Midsummer and still at it. The reason seems to be that the wind is coming straight down off the arctic, and is cold and biting enough for Syed to move his bike into the lee of the house to preserve its paintwork.
I noticed the snow while I was having a relaxing lunch break. Well, not so much a break for lunch as a break for Fit the Nineteenth of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'd completely forgotten that it was starting on Radio 4 this week until I went in search of new science programmes and found the 'best of this week' bit. This is good, as I'd have been mightily miffed if I'd missed it.
Then, after my Guide break I marked all of the functional programming exam papers. It's very satisfying not only to complete it, but also to find that the distribution of marks is a nice gaussian curve with a sensible mean. I now have a break until the HCI exam on Wednesday, which is useful as I'm taking the car in for its new windscreen and so forth on Monday.
It being Friday, I would normally have gone skating tonight, but the strange weather has given me some pretty unpleasant headaches over the last few days and tonight I was definitely a little unsteady on my feet. You know the feeling when your head feels like a cannonball that's ready to topple off your neck if you do anything other than stand ramrod straight? It was one of those headaches. So instead I relaxed in front of a quiet movie (The Count of Monte Cristo - no explosions, just the occasional bit of fencing) and, thankfully, the headache has calmed down quite a bit.
I don't think my head would appreciate me trying to do some embroidery yet though, so I may have to resort to another quiet movie. Possibly The Mask of Zorro...
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Thursday, May 05, 2005
Disenfranchised
I believe that there's a certain amount of voting going on at home. I'm not, however, part of it.
I fully expect my ballot paper to turn up next month sometime, such is the efficiency of the UK-Iceland postal service. Not that it would have made a difference though, as Aberdeen North had a Labour majority of 23.7% over the SNP . No-one worth voting for there then. Not that there seems to be anyone worth voting for anywhere.
So I wonder what Blair's majority will be by tomorrow morning. Diminished, I assume, but insufficiently so to make him change anything. That's it for another five years then. Another five years in which I'm sure he'll find another illegal war in which he can back Bush.
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I fully expect my ballot paper to turn up next month sometime, such is the efficiency of the UK-Iceland postal service. Not that it would have made a difference though, as Aberdeen North had a Labour majority of 23.7% over the SNP . No-one worth voting for there then. Not that there seems to be anyone worth voting for anywhere.
So I wonder what Blair's majority will be by tomorrow morning. Diminished, I assume, but insufficiently so to make him change anything. That's it for another five years then. Another five years in which I'm sure he'll find another illegal war in which he can back Bush.
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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
May The Fourth Be With You
lj-cut teA happy Star Wars day to you all!
I told one of my students that today was Star Wars day and he looked at me blankly. So I said May the fourth be with you and he groaned. I don't care - I like it. :) And thanks to said student I now also know the URLs of the local cinemas' websites so I can check what's on where and when. Hopefully this will result in my going to the cinema more often. Not that more often than never is much of a challenge...
It's now after 22:00 on Star Wars day, the sky is still light, and still producing snow. The temperature has hovered around freezing all day so the snow hasn't stuck, although it may well do so overnight. I just can't get used to the idea that it's only seven weeks to the summer solstice and we're still getting snow on a near-daily basis.
We're now well into exams, so everything is quiet in a strange sort of way. The students have taken over the lecture room and the spare office as revision rooms but are maintaining the common room as a relaxation area. There will be silence for a couple of hours and then a sudden burst of noise as they take a revision break and play cards for a while. The anguished cries of Nei nei nei! from the losers are quite amusing.
I've mentally marked Friday down as a Marking Day. Thankfully I only have 15 papers to mark, rather than the 60-odd I've had elsewhere, so it should be possible to do them in one day. Tomorrow is a holiday so I'm planning to keep it as such.
I've no idea what I'm going to do with it though.
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I told one of my students that today was Star Wars day and he looked at me blankly. So I said May the fourth be with you and he groaned. I don't care - I like it. :) And thanks to said student I now also know the URLs of the local cinemas' websites so I can check what's on where and when. Hopefully this will result in my going to the cinema more often. Not that more often than never is much of a challenge...
It's now after 22:00 on Star Wars day, the sky is still light, and still producing snow. The temperature has hovered around freezing all day so the snow hasn't stuck, although it may well do so overnight. I just can't get used to the idea that it's only seven weeks to the summer solstice and we're still getting snow on a near-daily basis.
We're now well into exams, so everything is quiet in a strange sort of way. The students have taken over the lecture room and the spare office as revision rooms but are maintaining the common room as a relaxation area. There will be silence for a couple of hours and then a sudden burst of noise as they take a revision break and play cards for a while. The anguished cries of Nei nei nei! from the losers are quite amusing.
I've mentally marked Friday down as a Marking Day. Thankfully I only have 15 papers to mark, rather than the 60-odd I've had elsewhere, so it should be possible to do them in one day. Tomorrow is a holiday so I'm planning to keep it as such.
I've no idea what I'm going to do with it though.
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Tuesday, May 03, 2005
A new hope?
I feel as if I should be writing something like today marked the start of a new era in programming Except it isn't.
Today I started writing a research application in C#. It turns out that the Borland C# Builder is free to download, so I did - free being much cheaper than anything Microsoft offers. A part of me wonders: why is it free? Is it as a loss-leader in the hope of stealing market share from Microsoft? Is it because the package is not particularly good? Or is it that C# isn't turning out to be the new Best Thing Since Sliced Bread that Microsoft (and Borland) thought it would be?
I've heard several remarks suggesting that this final reason may be the case. Still, it's close enough to C++ that it shouldn't be too difficult to handle, particularly given that I'm not planning to produce distributed applications. It's the whole OO thing I object to really. I have nothing against using structures where necessary - and very useful they can be too - but as an old-fashioned C programmer I was never convinced that OOP was the panacea people claim it to be.
It's the same with Java. Everyone's teaching Java nowadays, but I think it fails to make clear a number of important programming tools. Things like pointers. I know, we're back to the old argument of high-level vs. low-level languages.
Mutter mutter... I never wanted to be a programmer in the first place. I wanted to be a space traffic controller. Or the navigator of the starship Enterprise...
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Today I started writing a research application in C#. It turns out that the Borland C# Builder is free to download, so I did - free being much cheaper than anything Microsoft offers. A part of me wonders: why is it free? Is it as a loss-leader in the hope of stealing market share from Microsoft? Is it because the package is not particularly good? Or is it that C# isn't turning out to be the new Best Thing Since Sliced Bread that Microsoft (and Borland) thought it would be?
I've heard several remarks suggesting that this final reason may be the case. Still, it's close enough to C++ that it shouldn't be too difficult to handle, particularly given that I'm not planning to produce distributed applications. It's the whole OO thing I object to really. I have nothing against using structures where necessary - and very useful they can be too - but as an old-fashioned C programmer I was never convinced that OOP was the panacea people claim it to be.
It's the same with Java. Everyone's teaching Java nowadays, but I think it fails to make clear a number of important programming tools. Things like pointers. I know, we're back to the old argument of high-level vs. low-level languages.
Mutter mutter... I never wanted to be a programmer in the first place. I wanted to be a space traffic controller. Or the navigator of the starship Enterprise...
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Monday, May 02, 2005
Running around
It's been a busy day, particularly for a Monday.
Today was day one of exams, and to start the exam fortnight with a bang my first-years had their functional programming paper at 09:00. So I wandered over to the other building - all exams are held in the other building - for the initial start-up phase, answered a couple of questions and then went back to the office to finish off my final coursework marking. It was a three-hour exam, and by the time I went back for the last fifteen minutes most people had finished and left. I suspect I'll get the scripts to mark tomorrow (hence my wanting to finally finish the coursework stuff).
This afternoon I spent running around doing essential admin stuff - visiting the post office, booking the car in for its MOT-equivalent and ordering my new numberplates.
Actually, I could have just had the MoT test there and then if it wasn't for one minor detail: I need a new windscreen. At one point recently I was hit by a bit of gravel flying off a lorry, which has caused a rather large crack to appear and begin to spread along the passenger's side of the windscreen. Naturally it needs to be fixed, so the car is going in on Monday for that, the test and to have the tyres changed back to the summer tyres.
At least there is a Citroen dealership in Reykjavik, so I'm hoping they'll be able to get me a new windscreen without too much trouble. They couldn't give me an estimate on the repair cost, which is a bit worrying given the normal hike in prices here, and unfortunately my UK insurance doesn't cover the windscreen. *Sigh*
So with that organised, I went to the DVLA-equivalent to order my new number plates. They weren't able to tell me the number yet, but the plates will arrive in six to eight days.
Yes, the car is being de-studded. I'm told that it's time to change the tyres for the summer, although I've been a little confused by the weather here recently. It's been snowing a little again, but I'm not sure whether it's real snow or whether it's just blowing off the mountains behind the town. Certainly it's been windy enough to do that, and the snow is that very fine stuff you get when it's very cold. Then again, it has been cold - below freezing even during the day occasionally.
Still, on the way from my building to the other one at lunch time it was clear and sunny again, and I could see the snow-covered mountains across the fjord to the north. It was another one of those moments of breathtaking beauty we get around here.
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Today was day one of exams, and to start the exam fortnight with a bang my first-years had their functional programming paper at 09:00. So I wandered over to the other building - all exams are held in the other building - for the initial start-up phase, answered a couple of questions and then went back to the office to finish off my final coursework marking. It was a three-hour exam, and by the time I went back for the last fifteen minutes most people had finished and left. I suspect I'll get the scripts to mark tomorrow (hence my wanting to finally finish the coursework stuff).
This afternoon I spent running around doing essential admin stuff - visiting the post office, booking the car in for its MOT-equivalent and ordering my new numberplates.
Actually, I could have just had the MoT test there and then if it wasn't for one minor detail: I need a new windscreen. At one point recently I was hit by a bit of gravel flying off a lorry, which has caused a rather large crack to appear and begin to spread along the passenger's side of the windscreen. Naturally it needs to be fixed, so the car is going in on Monday for that, the test and to have the tyres changed back to the summer tyres.
At least there is a Citroen dealership in Reykjavik, so I'm hoping they'll be able to get me a new windscreen without too much trouble. They couldn't give me an estimate on the repair cost, which is a bit worrying given the normal hike in prices here, and unfortunately my UK insurance doesn't cover the windscreen. *Sigh*
So with that organised, I went to the DVLA-equivalent to order my new number plates. They weren't able to tell me the number yet, but the plates will arrive in six to eight days.
Yes, the car is being de-studded. I'm told that it's time to change the tyres for the summer, although I've been a little confused by the weather here recently. It's been snowing a little again, but I'm not sure whether it's real snow or whether it's just blowing off the mountains behind the town. Certainly it's been windy enough to do that, and the snow is that very fine stuff you get when it's very cold. Then again, it has been cold - below freezing even during the day occasionally.
Still, on the way from my building to the other one at lunch time it was clear and sunny again, and I could see the snow-covered mountains across the fjord to the north. It was another one of those moments of breathtaking beauty we get around here.
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Sunday, May 01, 2005
Blessed Beltane!
It's the middle of Sunday afternoon and I'm in the office. And on Beltane to boot!
No, I haven't come over all research-focussed or something similar, but rather I'm here to provide last-minute support to my first-year students who are studying hard for their functional programming exam tomorrow. One of them asked if I would possibly come in for an hour on Sunday in case they had any final questions and as they're a good bunch I said yes. I hope I haven't set some sort of precedent.
It's also allowed me to get the photos from the Árshátið online. Unfortunately the light levels were sufficiently low that I had focussing problems, but I managed to get at least one reasonable shot of each of the acts. I'm going to send out a email to the rest of the staff to see if they've got any photos they'd like to share and then put them all up together.
Beltane is a national holiday here - in its modern form of May Day. Flags are flying and the supermarkets are closed. There doesn't seem to be any dancing around maypoles though. :( Friday is also a national holiday, this time Uppstigningardagur or Ascension Day. I'm not going to be caught out coming into the office again!
Ah... and to celebrate Beltane it has now started snowing.
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No, I haven't come over all research-focussed or something similar, but rather I'm here to provide last-minute support to my first-year students who are studying hard for their functional programming exam tomorrow. One of them asked if I would possibly come in for an hour on Sunday in case they had any final questions and as they're a good bunch I said yes. I hope I haven't set some sort of precedent.
It's also allowed me to get the photos from the Árshátið online. Unfortunately the light levels were sufficiently low that I had focussing problems, but I managed to get at least one reasonable shot of each of the acts. I'm going to send out a email to the rest of the staff to see if they've got any photos they'd like to share and then put them all up together.
Beltane is a national holiday here - in its modern form of May Day. Flags are flying and the supermarkets are closed. There doesn't seem to be any dancing around maypoles though. :( Friday is also a national holiday, this time Uppstigningardagur or Ascension Day. I'm not going to be caught out coming into the office again!
Ah... and to celebrate Beltane it has now started snowing.
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