Nik's Saga

Today's was a very bumpy flight.

I've known it to be a bit rough before, but never this bumpy. It was sufficiently turbulent that announcements from the first officer included we're about to increase the power to the engines so expect the engines to become a little noisier than usual and due to the turbulence we won't be serving tea and coffee on this flight. The landing was also interesting to the point that we nearly ran out of runway. I very seldom get airsick, but this was one of those few times.

After that it was off to the base to start preparing for the event. A final trip to the commissary for the fresh meat and vegetables (and for me to discover that they do not only spam but also corned beef - hurrah!) and then we could start doing all of the night-before food prep.

I fear that my hands are going to smell of garlic for the next week after peeling and crushing five whole bulbs of garlic. I hadn't realised either how effective a glue garlic juice actually is until my fingers started sticking together.

We did have a slight panic while cooking the apple pies as the juice seeped out of the pies and started burning on the bottom of the oven, creating clouds of blue smoke when you opened the over door. There was a mad dash to open all of the windows and doors so as not to set the fire alarms off, as this would have caused havoc not only in the flat, but also in all the other flats in the block.

All of the calligraphy is now done, including the menus, and Tristan has signed the scrolls in his capacity as seneschal - they're being presented to people as keepsakes of their time here with the shire. Time now for a good night's sleep before the event tomorrow.
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I have a much better excuse than that.

It seems that the faculty student society is tonight showing the film Pirates of Silion Valley which, in spite of its name has no ships, no cannonfire and no ripped shirts. Instead it has Bill Gates and Steve Balmer...

Not really my cup of tea, I'm afraid, even if it is a geek movie. But I do have the perfect excuse which I gave to one of the students earlier today: I've got to draw a troll for target practise on Saturday.

He looked at me as if I'd gone mad. Which, of course, I have. It's true though - I did have to draw a large cartoon troll so that we can have attack it at Troll Hunt on Saturday. It's about 1.5m tall and remarkably ugly, although I must admit that I found a drawing of a troll on the net, printed it out and then scaled it up by hand. I might photograph it on Saturday, as the light's not good for that now.

So that's everything done ready to take with me on the plane tomorrow. I now just have to pack, and maybe have something to eat.
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This is semester week 5.

I was sitting in my office today writing a lecture for week 10 of the semester when it occurred to me just how much the different routines of teaching and non-teaching weeks provide temporal landmarks.

When I worked in industry I don't remember having any sense of structure to the year. I just went into work, did what needed doing, and came back home again. Weeks passed and eventually it was Christmas and New Year again.

Once I returned to academia though I noticed that the process of presenting information in a structured, sequential manner imposed a structure upon my perception of time. Time now moves from beginning of the course to the middle of the course and project week (no lectures that week), through to the handing in of coursework, revision lectures and exams. Everything is finally wound up by marking and the examiners' meeting. The year is marked not my the sun and the moon, but by what I'm teaching this week.

Actually, the sun and moon do still play a part, especially this far north. I've noticed that now we're past the equinox it's beginning to get dark much earlier in the evening. I really need my lamp to embroider by nowadays, so I'm glad I've worked out the cabling to use a decent power socket.

A news item on the BBC news site about timekeeping by sun and moon distracted me for a few minutes today as well. The US has put forward a proposal to stop adding or subtracting seconds to the year in order to keep the clocks in step with the earth's orbit. What reason do they give? It seems it's difficult to write software that allows for leap seconds and that GPS systems are particularly affected.

This is simply ludicrous. It's like saying that having a year that's exactly 365 days long is so much easier to handle so we're going to ignore leap years in future. Now I admit that leap years happen on a regular basic and so they are easy to compensate for, whereas leap seconds are more chaotic, but even the US itself admits that it depends on whose software your GPS uses as to whether it's actually a problem or not.

It sounds to me as if the US is trying to force an international regulation to support sloppy software engineering.
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The letter 's' is so much easier in half-uncial than it is in blackletter.

I've spent another three hours tonight on the manuscripts, this time doing the lettering for the celtic-style ones. It's been much easier because I was able to use my wonderful Berol Art Pen rather than the dip pen. Besides, I'm very fond of the uncial hands - they're so much easier to do than the blackletter ones.

All I have to do now is to finish the illumination on the capitals - with my super-duper gold leaf pen... everyone should have one - and I'll be able to erase all of the construction lines and take them with me to Keflavik on Friday. I'll try to photograph them and post the pictures tomorrow.

It turns out that I'm definitely flying down to the event. Although there has been a good thaw we are due more snow over the weekend so I'm not taking any chances. Today I also popped into the art shop here so I've also got the event tokens and the makings of the prize for the competition winner (to go with the certificate that's one of the completed manuscripts).

Now all I have to do is put everything together.
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I've spent the evening getting to grips with 'S' again.

I've now got all of the small gothic/blackletter stuff done with only one blot (rescued by the careful mixing and application of a little gouache). I have the classic inkblot on my middle finger where the dip pen rested, but that'll clean off easily enough.

I'd also forgotten what a strange scratchy noise a dip pen makes. Still, one down, two to go. The two are going to be half-uncial rather than gothic, as the illumination was inspired by the Book of Kells.

Not tonight though.
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I hate the letter 'S'.

This is nothing new. I've always had problems with S. When I was learning to write I consistantly wrote it backward. Even today I can't get the proportions right, with the result that my handwritten capital 'S' looks not unlike a cobra raised and about to strike, the upper section much larger than the lower section.

In calligraphy it's a nightmare. I can form all of the other letters - including eth and thorn nowadays - in four basic hands without having to think too hard at all. But not the letter 'S'. Oh no... the rest of the letters look fine but 'S' looks as it it's been been dragged through a hedge backwards before landing on the page. I have probably spent more time practicing 's' than any other letter and it still mutates at the slightest opportunity.

As you might have surmised, I've finally got down to the calligraphy I was planning last weekend. In fact, I've only just started the rough drafts of the calligraphy as I've so far spent about 12 hours doing the illuminated borders of the three items. At least I'm happy that I could recreate the designs should I wish, as I've been taking photos at each state.

The big idea is to finish and photograph them so that I can send copies to the person responsible for scrolls within Drachenwald. I've offered to do a couple so I thought I ought to let her see a couple of examples of my work.

It turns out that I'm either going to have to seriously cut down the amount of text or not use my favourite pen as it's too big. As a result I'm getting to grips again with a dip pen (it's been a while), which does have the advantage of it being very easy to change ink colours for names and the like, which is quite nice.

it shouldn't take more than an hour or so more on each of them now, so there is the possibility I'll get the new gown made over the rest of the week. Ah... who am I trying to kid?

Although I must admit I'm beginning to get a bit worried about being able to drive down to Keflavík next weekend if there isn't a serious thaw. They've had the snowploughs out already up here and I really don't fancy trying to do the pass if it's icy.
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There are some really odd things on TV here.

For instance, we have a couple of what I think of as 'occasional' channels that broadcast about four to six hours of programming a day and make the rest up with music over billboard adverts. Right now on one of them - Aksjon rather than Sirkus, I think (and yes, those are phonetic Icelandic versions of English words) - there is a very eclectic mix of music.

I quite like this particular channel for background noise, as the music is often a pretty good classic rock mix. This morning, although we started with Sting's Shape of my heart (one of my favourites) we rapidly graduated to strange Icelandic versions of familiar songs. We've had calypso music, latin american ballards, a reggae version of Swing low, sweet chariot and a collection of other strange but familiar tunes, all with Icelandic words.

By far the strangest, though, has to be the Icelandic language version of Widdicombe Fair. The line All along, out along, down along lee has been replaced by the line Skimpily, skimpily, himpily haa. Quite, quite surreal.

Every now and again they'll chuck in an English original - we've just had Duran Duran's Rio, for instance - but on the whole this morning it's Icelandic cover versions of all sorts of strange stuff. I must remember to try this station on Saturday mornings more often.
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It's been snowing lightly most of the day, but this evening we're getting some serious snowfall.

The sky is that strange brown-black that only comes from sodium light relected by large falling snowflakes. It's quite comforting in a way - sitting here in the quiet, the sound from the road outside muffled by the snow.

Here's an interesting conspiracy theory I came across recently. NASA is quite capable of building something other than a new Big Dumb Booster to go to the moon, but the US now has so little in the way of ICBM design and operation experience that it has been decided On High that it is NASA's job to increase the knowlege pool by returning to ICBM technologies.

After all, a lot of the US's recent rocketry projects haven't been particularly successful. Take the missile interception program. Their rockets have failed miserably, partly due to inexperience in the design teams. So to solve this, NASA is forced to use BDBs in order to increase the current rocketry expertice of Lockheed-Martin and McDonnell-Douglas' - the two main players in both spacecraft and missile manufacture.

An interesting idea, at least.
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Today we've had pretty continuous snowfall.

It's the first serious snow we've had at this elevation, big snowflakes that tingle on your lips when you go outside. It hasn't stuck - too much rain earlier for that - but it's right the way down the mountainside as far as I can see.

My students are amazed at the paucity of words for precipitation in the English language. We basically have snow, sleet, hail, rain and (a new one to them) drizzle. We don't have a word for the kind of snow that lifts off the land and blows sideways down the street. Seemingly, when you get that and the really heavy snow at the same time you know you're in trouble.

So I did a little research on snow and this is what we English-speakers are missing out on:

Snjór: snow; snær: snow; hjarn: crust of snow or snow that does not melt in summer; mjöll and nýsnævi: new-fallen snow; fönn: drifted heap of snow, snow-wreath, also snow that does not melt in summer; lausamjöll: powder snow; krap: slush

Snjókoma and fannkoma: snowfall; kafald: thick fall of snow; bylur and hríð: snowstorm; drífa: snow-drift; él: a sudden fall of snow or hailstorm, or hail; fjúk: drift, drifting snow-storm; hraglandi: sleet, cold drizzling shower; kóf: thick fall of snow; ofanbylur: snowfall in a wind; skafrenningur: drifting snow; snjómugga: a small snowfall; hundslappadrífa: very heavy snowfall in calm weather, large snowflakes.

(Details from http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/IcelOnline.CarryOnIcel, as my Icelandic is nowhere near up to such fine distinctions.)

This isn't an exahustive list; I'm not sure if the sideways-blowing-snow is actually one of these. But I imagine that a language that has 400 terms for describing the colouration of a horse probably has quite a few for snow as well.
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Today I flew down to Reykjavik for a research meeting. It was a clear morning, and the view from the plane was quite stunning.

Flight to Reykjavik

Another perfect autumn day,
Half-blinded by the water and the snow
I watch the shadow of my plane
As it crosses the gold-specked runway.
The russet earth below gives way
To a patchwork of fields in yellow and green;
Some harvested, some waiting a few more precious days.

A silver ribbon traces the fjord
Into the mountainous interior
While a brilliant tracery waves over the land,
Streams blazing to light in the moving sun.
The mountains, white with snow,
Sliced by dark valleys, sliced themselves in turn
By the rivers shining in their depths.

Light-blood running though the flesh of the land,
Splitting, twisting and entwining,
Veins beneath skin of sleeping trolls.
The silver bruises of ice-bound lakes
Turned gold by the freezing sun.
Spotless snow blankets the bodies,
Falling away in soft folds from their sides,
Wrapped in turn by mists
As if to hide their modesty as they sleep.

The engine note changes; we descend.
A pulse of light flows beneath us,
Racing us along the river's path.
We bounce, buffeted perhaps
By the snores of those who slumber below,
Hidden by the thickening cloud
That breaks to show man's work:
The dull roads that pale beside nature's brilliance.

The shining sea, carved with the fingerprints
Of a god, waves wind-blown towards the shore,
Broken and reflected by the whale-isles of the bay.

New colours, now: the vivid city.
As if man must rival nature somehow,
Must prove himself against the ancient trolls.
A smell of sulphur assaults the nose
And the runway here is grey.
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Women don't seem to wear skirts in Iceland.

Or at least not during the day within the university precinct. Instead the standard attire is jeans, or possibly normal trousers. Not a skirt in sight. I've noticed this over the past two days when I've been wearing a skirt. It's been one of those months when I really didn't want to wear anything constrictive and I do have several long loose skirts more commonly worn with t-tunic or corset but applicable to other situations I've been wearing one of those instead.

I imagine that it may be the weather that does it. I admit that I'd have been warmer with a chemise under the skirt and it did get a little damp crossing the car park, but I'm still very tempted to make myself a couple more long skirts for general wear. Rumfatalagerinn has some really nice bright purple velour on offer that would make a great skirt. I don't know that I'd have the confidence to wear such a skirt, but the fabric is such a wonderful colour...
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So in three days the plan to put astronauts on the moon has already slipped by two years.

Not only that but it is, as we feared, just another big throwaway rocket design. 'Apollo on steroids' it might be, but I thought steroids weren't supposed to be used in competition. And the US is certainly still in competition in the space race, it's just that their opponents have now changed. At least the entry capsule can be reused up to ten times. I'd say that's more likely to be three times in practice.

By 2022 it will be fifty years since the last man trod on the moon. I don't think that a two year slippage is unreasonable. What saddens really me is that I would not be at all surprised if by the time astronauts stand on the moon again there will be no-one from the original missions left alive. So there will come a time when there is no-one on the planet who has stood on another planet. That is a saddening thought that, as a species, we couldn't maintain the efforts and dreams that went into the Apollo program.
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I've just rewatched The Day The Earth Stood Still

For anyone who doesn't know this classic, alien spaceship arrives and lands in New York parkGiant robot gets out followed by alien who tries to arrange a meeting with all world leaders. The leaders won't all cooperate so he escapes to meet normal people and arranges a meeting with scientists instead and stops all non-critical electrical supplies for half an hour as a display of his technology. He's eventually betrayed and killed but is temporarily brought back to life by the robot in order to tell humanity that the greater solar system community won't let humanity export war and will destroy them if they try.

I found myself wondering 'what would happen if that actually happened today?'. I fear the answer isn't heartening. Cartainly some steps forward have been made. I can actually see the politicians getting together for the meeting, and I can imagine them agreeing not to develop space-borne weapons.

Unfortunately I am convinced that they'd just move everything into the beyond black budget sections and get the planet blown up when the robot police found out. Over fifty years and no real progress.

*Sigh*
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At last, I have a working phone AND a working ADSL line.

I went into the Vodafone shop today, where the assistant smiled at me (I'm getting to know the folks in the shop) and gave me the DSL filter. I brought it home and plugged it in... nothing.

OK, I had working internet, so I could go to the website of the company who make the filter - conveniently listed on the widget itself - and find out that it goes between the wall and the phone, not the wall and the modem as I had assumed.

So far so good. The modem still worked when connected in parallel with this thing. Ah... back to the old, old problem that the phone has a plug that is a bit bigger than the standard plug.

I tried connecting the cables in various ways. Still no phone. Eventually I had to resort to taking a spare extension cable, comparing the wiring, stripping out two of the four cores and then attaching a new plug. And, as I decided against paying nearly £20 for the plug-attaching widget I macgyvered it with a screwdriver instead.

And it works! Hurrah! I've even tested it by succesfully phoning my mobile. So finally, after five weeks of stress and general unhappiness, I am now reconnected to the world without having to physically go and unplug things. Woo-hoo!
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Once again I have no ADSL.

Today I went into the Vodafone shop to make enquiries about transferring the home phone to them. I'd still have to pay Siminn for the line but the call billing would be done by Vodafone. When I explained that I currently had ADSL but no tone at all on the phone they told me that I'd have to talk to Siminn to get the line reconnected before they could do anything.

So I phoned Siminn. The girl on the end of the phone seemed a little confused. Here's a rough summary of the conversation:

Siminn: Are you changing to Vodafone?
Me: No, I currently have ADSL from Vodafone but no phone service at all. If you can give me a phone-only service that would let me still use Vodafone's ADSL service then I will keep my phone with you.
Siminn: But you don't have a phone with us.
Me: No, I have an account with you and asked for the ADSL to be switched off. Now I have ADSL from Vodafone but no dial tone on my phone.
Siminn: So you've still got ADSL?
Me: From Vodafone, yes. Can I have a phone from you and ADSL fromVodafone?
Siminn: Er... yes. One moment...

There was then a space of about 90 seconds of silence after which she asked for my home and mobile numbers so she could contact me if necessary.

I then spent the afternoon doing some research-related stuff - I'm trying not to write course materials on Fridays in an attempt to get some research done - then came home. I had a phone line but no ADSL.

As it happened, Syed had come over for dinner, and he ordered a phone in August but doesn't have it yet as Siminn is still installing phones for people who ordered them in June. He only has to have one installed because when he originally asked them to transfer the account in the old house from Doug to him they screwed it up sufficiently well that he ended up having to cancel the whole thing and start from scratch.

We spent a while commiserating with each other on the ludicrous state of the telephone system while eating vegetable risotto followed by freshly-baked cinnammon rolls with orange icing. Things look slightly less frustrating after a freshly-baked cinnamon roll with orange icing.

So instead of having a quiet weekend I'm going to have to deal with the whole phone/ADSL matter AGAIN...

Addendum: One phone call to the Vodaphone line later, it turns out that I need a DSL filter or the normal phone line will interfere with the normal line. Normally someone tells you this when you first sign up for ADSL but as I was transferring from Siminn Vodafone assumed I already had one.

Tomorrow then I have to go into town and buy this new gadget maybe they I will have a fully working system. Maybe.
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Technology can do amazing things.

For instance, today I read about an MIT Media Lab project that allows you to dynamically capture the colour, texture or image you want to use on a physical paintbrush. A video camera inside the brush records whatever you point the brush at and then replicates it as a pigment on an electronic canvas. It works not only for still images but also for video so you can paint shapes with, for instance, a blinking eye.

Seemingly kids are very taken by it and I'm not at all surprised. Imagine being able to draw something in exactly the same colour as your beloved's eyes. Or your favourite sweater.

Artists have been able to use sound this way for years - that's what sampling is about, after all - but I've never seen it done with graphics before. I used to think that the graphics tube was a pretty nifty idea and, in a way, this is just an extension of the same technology with a snazzy new bit of hardware, but it's still an inspirational piece of research.

If I was any good at computer art I'd say 'Want One!', but I'm not, so I won't. But I'm sure there must be a lot of people out there who are saying it.
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It appears that when I asked Siminn to drop the ADSL line they dropped the normal phone line too.

So while I have internet connectivity, I don't have a phone other than my mobile. Honestly, what's a lifeform expected to do? Curling up in a corner and hoping the world will go away has a certain appeal right now.

Today was the Risk lab, where I set my students the task of identifying all of the tasks faced by a player of the game so that they could come up with realistic scenarios for an interface design. I must remember to retrieve the Risk sets from the common room before the exams; leaving them out might not be good for results.

I went to the main fabric shop to see if they had anything nice I could turn into a new dress. It was all the wrong colour and even then not too impressive. As I've spent quite a lot of time over the last three months making garb for other people I though I'd make something for myself. So much for that idea.
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Winter approaches and my nice warm cloak is in near-daily use.

This, and the fact that I've been talking to folks on the Secret Alley board about cloaks, has led me to another of my occasional ponderings on the subject.

Take Batman, for instance. He has a wonderful cloak - okay, officially it's a cape but it looks like a cloak to me - that billows spectacularly about him, lifted by the slightest breeze, or that hangs, spreading about his feet in the stillness. In terms of sheer size, the Dark Knight's cloak is a big one, much bigger that the cape of the big blue schoolboy... sorry, Superman.

What happens, then, when Bats leaps into the Batmobile? His cloak neatly folds itself away out of the way. Now this, I can attest, is not in the slightest bit plausible. I've personally experienced the problems of getting into a car whilst wearing a cloak and, believe me, leaping in and driving off at high speed is a non-starter.

For a start you have to pull up the fabric out of the car door. Next, you have to arrange it in such a manner that you can fasten your seatbelt and reach the handbreak. Now I appreciate that the Batmobile may not have a handbrake, but does it have seatbelts? Is the wearing of seatbelts mandatory within Gotham City? Because if it is then I'm sure the Batmobile would have seatbelts and Bats would use them. And seatbelts in the batmobile would be a very good idea, considering Bats' er... defensive form of driving.

So how does he do it? How does he leap into the Batmobile with his cloak without having to spend three minutes making it safe to drive? The only possibly solution I can think of is that the cloak has a massive array of microactuators in it that automatically folds it for him.

If that's the case, I want some. Although I'd settle for the Batmobile instead.
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I have a functioning ADSL line! Hurrah!

I came home from work and, in preparation for phoning Vodafone's help line, turned on my ADSL modem. It flashed in the way I'd got used to and then, suddenly, the quiescent DSL/PPP light sprang to luminous green life. It has taken over a calendar month to get it sorted but at last I have internet at home again.

Oh frell... I am going to have soooo much mail to wade through tonight...

Although to be honest, I don't feel much like doing that tonight, mainly because I think I've picked up a bug of some sort. My office is a nice warm 20 degrees and I'm sitting there wrapped in a cardigan and a cloak for warmth. Not a good sign. I had a meeting and four lectures today, and by the end of it just couldn't face going into town to the shops. Fortunately I have bread and stuff in the freezer that I can turn into dinner.

In spite of incipient illness, then, I suppose I should categorise today as an overall success. Especially as England have won the Ashes. Hurrah!
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Reykyavík has two shopping malls, Smáralind and Kringlan.

Every time I drive to Keflavík I drive past Smáralind, which is the one that has a Debenhams inside it. Today I stopped and had a wander around inside. Kringlan is larger but requires a bit of a detour so I'll do that properly some other time (I had a quick look around it when I missed the flight to Bards' Night last year but it was late and everywhere was closing). Smáralind, however, is right on the main road.

Debenhams was what I'd expected - clothes, perfume and cosmetics - but the layout was pleasantly familiar. I could have been in London or Dundee. Most of the other shops were boutiques (also to be expected), including a Dorothy Perkins but there was a rather interesting kitchen store where I bought myself a whisk and a small set of scales. I could have spent much more in there on baking tins, baking trays, plates, dishes, ovenware and fairy lights but I was very restrained.

There is also a large Hagkaup. Hagkaup in Akureri is the local Asda analogue although it's much smaller than any Asda I've visited in a long time. Hagkaup Smáralind doesn't have too much in the way of food but has much more in terms of household goods including furniture.

I got back here to find that not only do I still not have ADSL but now the modem doesn't even light up to say that there is a DSL line present. I shall phone Vodafone tomorrow to try to sort it, but I really am getting very tired of the whole business. I must admit though, Vodafone are being very helpful, which is more than Siminn were.
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One big reason for going to Keflavík this weekend was to hold a rapier practice.

Although we've lost two of our trainee fencers we've still got two and one of the new guys is also interested. Now that Matt has a mask and gorget we have enough kit to field two fully-armoured fencers. Matt got plenty of practice, Lucas and Aaron got their first lesson and I got a bit of time in facing Matt.

I was hoping to teach them all Spanish, but there's too much Three Musketeers in most people - they have a sense of what fencing ought to look like, and the style, grace and restrained elegance of the Spanish style isn't it. :) It's not too bad though - we covered basic footwork, positions, thrusts and parries. I suspect that lesson two will occur sometime around the unofficial (due to an admin flamingo that wasn't even our fault) event at the beginning of October.

As Matt and Rebecca went off to Pennsic this year I asked them if they would look for a cup hilt for me to replace the one that Stansted luggage handling destroyed. They came back with not only that but also a very nice schlager-sized cup hilt - by way of thanks for me driving down to sort out their garb - so I'm now have an overwhalming abundance of riches on the rapier front with my case of Darkwoods and now a cup-hilt on the Hanweii. Unless I put it on one of the longer blades to give me an assymmetric case. Decisions decisions...

Slightly reluctantly we stopped fencing late afternoon to go to the cinema to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I must admit, it's far better than I thought it was going to be. It certainly holds its own against the original version and there are some fine homages to other great movies. Any movie that makes me chuckle aloud is alright by me. Although the chocolate bar really should have had the proportions 1 : 4 : 9 . :)

After the cinema and a stop and Wendy's/Subway for dinner - there seem to be no problems importing Italian Meatball filling to the base - I ran another Three Musketeers rpg scenario. It's quite astounding how easily some WWII movies can be translated into other genres. The original Battlestar Galactica series did The Guns of Navarone as The Gun On Ice Planet Zero, and now I've done it with Spanish mortars threatening the approach to a French border port. All jolly good fun, highlighted by a particularly good double-act killing of the traitor LeFarge and an impressive superb+4 luck roll during the escape from the island.

Not quiteas impressive, though, as the explosion that took the top off the island :)
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In the last month the price of petrol here has gone up by about 12%.

When I got back from Worldcon you could get petrol for about 106 IKr a litre. Today when I filled up to drive south it was 117 Ikr a litre. Which is just over £1 a litre, cheap compared to the normal 100-200% markup on stuff over here but it was a bit of a shock when it cost me 4,300 Ikr to fill the tank instead of the normal 3,800.

So I drove down south and the Icelandic weather did what it normally does - it got steadily worse the further south I got. In Akureyri it was bright and sunny, the sort of day where you're glad of the sun visors in the car. Up through the pass over to Skagafjörður and the clouds had come in. By Blönduós it was definitely seriously overcast and an hour further on at Hvammurstanga it had started raining.

The rain got heavier and heavier the closer I got to Keflavík and I definitely felt sorry for the two navy folks on the gate whose job it was to check IDs and so forth. There were several sets of people who needed to be signed onto the base and, for each of these, the guard staff had to come out into the driving rain. Papers were getting very damp indeed and I hope that they had a nice heater in the guard shack to retire to between forays outside.
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At last - why I can't get kjötbollur subs any more.

I had to pop into town at lunchtime today to register my change of address at the town hall so, as is my wont on such occasions, I called into Subway for lunch. Still no kjötbollur subs.

Nevertheless, I was greeted in English by the nice lady who works there and has before now complimented me on my accent. She likes to practice her English and Norwegian on her customers - there is a Norwegian lady to regularly drops into the shop as well. Anyway, I took the opportunity to ask about the kjötbollur situation.

It turns out that the kjötbollur filling - or Italian meatballs, as it is known in the UK and US - is imported straight from Subway in the US. Subway's website tells me that the Italian sauce is based on a recipe by the Mom of one of the company founders. Unfortunately it is very popular in Iceland, and the Subway Iceland has run out. It is only allowed to import a fixed amount of filling per year and, although it's only September, I and the other local meatball lovers have munched out way through the entire year's supply.

Negotiations are currently underway to come to some arrangement whereby the filling can be made in Iceland in unlimited quantities. It might taste a little different, I'm told, but it would taste better because it would be Icelandic. :) I have to admit, Icelandic meat is very good.

Instead I resorted to the ham, turkey and cheese sub that has become my fallback position. I have to conclude, therefore, that the only place I can get a meatball sub within a thousand miles is on the base. It's a good thing I'm off there this weekend then. :)
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Well, the embroidery lamp seems to be behaving itself more now that I've rearranged the cables.

Which is a good thing. It doesn't really balance thebad thing I've discovered about having a kitchen again... I'm eating more. I'm actually having a serious meal almost every day instead of every three or four days, which can only be a bad thing.

Another good thing is that I'm sleeping better, probably because I've been able to separate Living Space from Sleeping Space, which is one of the things the sleep therapists always tell you to do. I now have a futon and an overmattress which means that I don't feel all of the slats in the futon and so it's much more comfy than the sofa. I can stretch out, for one thing.

A bad thing is that the giant houseflies are still buzzing around although a good thing is that we're getting to the end of the season so they're fewer and more sluggish, and hence easier to swat.

The freedom to leave my sewing out on the sofa - good thing. No internet - bad thing. A large table on which to place the sewing machine - good thing. More noise than I'd become used to - bad thing.

So I suppose that, overall, things are balanced, And that's pretty much how the universe is meant to be as far as I can see.
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According to Vodafone my iBook is internet-ready. So why doesn't it work?

The only thing left to look at is the phone line itself. I suppose it's possible that the line thinks it's still looking at the Siminn server when it should be looking at the Vodafone server. I shall go into the Siminn shop tomorrow to investigate this possibility.

*Sigh*

While doing my normal morning trawl of various news websites I came across a rather interesting piece of information. As it's now September the summer extension to the curfew for children is no longer in force. Children younger than twelve are not allowed outside without their parents after eight pm, and those under sixteen must be home by ten unless they are returning home from a recognised sporting, educational or recreational event.

I like this idea. Unfortunately I couldn't see it working in the UK - after all, unless you're going to give the police riot gear to deal with street corner gangs I don't think that the cops would stand a chance.
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It's very strange watching British children's TV programmes in Icelandic.

This morning I found I had a new student in my HCI lecture - this is fine by me. He's a marine engineer and I have, after all, spent my whole life working out how to communication with marine engineers in order to talk to my Dad. I've almost got the hang of it, I think. :)

I mentioned that in the lab on Wednesday they'd be getting to grips with the Tellytubbies website. This, naturally enough, led to comparisons of the Teletubbies and Bob the Builder. Both of them - Stubbornir and Bubbi Byggir - are shown dubbed here in Iceland, but Bob the Builder has much better marketing. You can buy Bob the Builder merchandise all over the place, but Teletubbies books are more difficult to find. Not as difficult as Asterix books though. :(

Then I went home and turned on the TV to find Pósturinn Páll - or Postman Pat as he's more commonly known in the UK. Clearly there have been some changes in Pat's life since last I watched, as he appears to be married with a son. I always thought that the only female in Postman Pat's life was Jess the cat.

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My embroidery lamp is driving me mad.

It runs for a while, then starts dimming and brightening, flickering and going off then coming back on again. Sometimes it goes off and I have to wriggle the plug to make it come back on. Sometimes it doesn't come back on. It's driving me barmy.

I know that at least one of the sockets doesn't work at all, and that the phone socket gives a sufficiently weak signal that I have to connect the ADSL modem direct to the socket (which means that I can't receive phone calls while using the internet and have to do a lot of annoying swapping and changing of cables).

I've just changed the cable layout again. It's been stable for the last ten minutes but I'm not holding my breath.
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Or at least Vodafone ones don't.

Bright and early at 10:00 this morning, as soon as the shops opened, I took the iBook and the ADSL modem into Vodafone at Glératorg. Unfortunately none of their technical folks work at the weekend so I have to take it back on Monday. Assuming they get it fixed then it will have taken two weeks to get the thing working. The annoying thing is it's going to be something small and silly. Oh well.

So I've spent the day working on the tree skirt. I've now complete three stars and their associated beading and squiggly bits and it's taken about 24 hours. I'd estimate that this is going to be something like an eight-hour project given the amount of time it's taken so far.






I did take a break to watch The Princess Bride as you need to from time to time. And I did have to rerun the duel several times just to check one or two things and to curse the fight directors who produced something pretty but just so damned wrong!
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Today I may have finally made that little contribution to science I've always dreamed about.

When I was little I always wanted to work for NASA. I'd still rather like to, if truth be told, but it's not going to happen. Today we had a seminar given by two NASA/JPL chaps who've been in Iceland testing their latest ROV sampling the volcanic vents in the mid-atlantic ridge to the north of the island.

It was an interesting seminar, talking not just about this ROV but also about various other NASA robot systems both current and planned. My big contribution came during the questions section. Had they considered putting a thermal engine on the robot to use the heat of the vents to top up the robot's batteries in situ. No, they hadn't - had I patented the idea?

Of course I haven't, it just seemed an obvious thing to do. After all, that's how you generate electricity commercially, you extract the heat from steam through a turbine. I wasn't thinking of adding a turbine to an ROV, but there's been a lot of work done on nuclear decay power systems for space probes where electricity is generated using natural nuclear decay. The same idea applies, but there's a lot more energy to be found in a hot vent than in a small plutonium sample.

So if they start doing this with underwater ROVs you know where the idea came from. :) I suppose I can die happy.

Still no joy on the ADSL front. Progress, but no joy. By connecting it directly to the wall rather than by an extension I can get it to synchronise but I still can't connect to the server. I think I'll take it into the shop tomorrow and get them to fix it.
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Sometimes I wonder about news priorities.

Last night I watched the ten o'clock news on the state television service, hoping to get some coverage of Hurricane Katrina. I feel that I've been very cut off from what is happening out in the real world, limited as I am to web coverage while I'm at work. The main story was something about a local primary school and included interviews with various teachers and members of staff. Then... oh yes, there is flooding in New Orleans and people are dead. More importantly, though, Icelandic airlines are making lots of money and flying to new destinations. There may also have been an accident at a construction site somewhere in Iceland, maybe at the controversial new dam that's being built. And there's some golf going on in Europe, and lots of local basketball coverage. And something about a statue of Diana and Dodi somewhere.

I know I've been spoiled by BBC news coverage before now, but I was expecting a little bit more than a thirty second segment second in the running order of a fifteen minute news programme. I am delighted to say though, that I've had news of my friend Casey near Biloxi and he's wet and a bit messy but otherwise fine.

There is still no internet connection here at home. They told me last Tuesday that it would take about a week to set up the line, so when I still couldn't connect on Tuesday I went to the local shop and spoke to them. They directed me to the helpline number, who'd be able to check my phone line. Fair enough. Earlier tonight I rang the phoneline, sat in the queue for a quarter of an hour and then spoke to a chap who told me that the line wasn't set up yet. Seemingly it takes 5-7 working days to do so, and I'll know when it's working because the blinking light on the modem will go solid. If it's not solid by Monday morning I intend to go play merry hell with them.

Still, I suppose it means more embroidery time. :) I've now finished the second snowflaks - a big one this time - and have just started the third. I may have to get more sequins because I'm stitching them quite densely onto the felt. I really don't like to be able to see the holes if at all possible so I tend to overlap the sequins quite a bit. I'll have to check the craft shop to make sure I can get more - they're just straightforward white pearlised ones but I'd rather know now if I need to order them from the UK.
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