Thursday, November 30, 2006
I need Radar
Or Klinger, I don't really mind which.
As part of my calming down and relaxing before bed last night I watched the first two episodes of season 7 of M*A*S*H, the first of which is the one where, much against his wishes, Hawkeye ends up in temporary command of the unit. Naturally he doesn't enjoy it, is frustrated by the paperwork and eventually comes to realise what a fantastic job Colonels Blake and Potter had done before him. I sat there and thought to myself I wish I had a Radar to tell me what I need to do, when to do it, and generally know how the system works. As it is I'm floundering about trying to work it all out and not do anything catastrophic on the way. Mark, my former boss, said something similar to me once - that he sometimes felt just like Colonel Blake and that it was our former administrator Stefán, in the role of Radar, who got him through things. I too feel rather like Henry sometimes, which will no doubt amuse Rebecca after that conversation where we worked out my equivalent rank... and since then I've effectively been promoted (!).
Today has been paperwork and meetings (quite good ones actually), but I eventually escaped to go in search of new bad weather boots. You see, in Netto yesterday I saw these fantastic snow boots. They're basically moonboots (not real MoonBoots™ but something functionally similar) but have a marvelous little metal bit set into the sole of each boot. This piece has two positions - I'll call them off and on - such that when it's off it sits in an indentation in the sole and you have a normal pair of boots. When it's on the metal piece sticks out and provides four centimetre-long spikes that stick out from the heel to give you extra grip on a snowy or icy surface. To swap between the two you just lift your foot and flick the metal piece into the appropriate position. Netto only had them in a size 43 so this afternoon I visited the main local supplier of heavy weather gear here in Akureyri, 66° North. No luck, but the girl in the shop suggested I try Ellingsen instead. No joy there either, so I eventually went back to Netto and bought the original pair no doubt saving myself huge amounts of money but somewhat surprised by the experience.
The new boots are not just in preparation for the worst of the winter but are for use this week. We had a bit of a thaw yesterday and the main car park regained its regular ice-rink status (I was pleased that I only fell once) so it was clearly time to break out the strap-on crampons. The only problem with these is that they're rather fiddly to attach to a pair of shoes, which means that I have to spend five minutes attaching or detaching them any time I enter or leave a building. With the new ones I can change the metal piece in seconds. They're also going to be rather warmer than my welliettes, which are great in the rain but require three pairs of socks if you don't want your toes to get frostbitten in the snow.
It has now started snowing again so I fully expect to have to test them out tomorrow.
2 comments
As part of my calming down and relaxing before bed last night I watched the first two episodes of season 7 of M*A*S*H, the first of which is the one where, much against his wishes, Hawkeye ends up in temporary command of the unit. Naturally he doesn't enjoy it, is frustrated by the paperwork and eventually comes to realise what a fantastic job Colonels Blake and Potter had done before him. I sat there and thought to myself I wish I had a Radar to tell me what I need to do, when to do it, and generally know how the system works. As it is I'm floundering about trying to work it all out and not do anything catastrophic on the way. Mark, my former boss, said something similar to me once - that he sometimes felt just like Colonel Blake and that it was our former administrator Stefán, in the role of Radar, who got him through things. I too feel rather like Henry sometimes, which will no doubt amuse Rebecca after that conversation where we worked out my equivalent rank... and since then I've effectively been promoted (!).
Today has been paperwork and meetings (quite good ones actually), but I eventually escaped to go in search of new bad weather boots. You see, in Netto yesterday I saw these fantastic snow boots. They're basically moonboots (not real MoonBoots™ but something functionally similar) but have a marvelous little metal bit set into the sole of each boot. This piece has two positions - I'll call them off and on - such that when it's off it sits in an indentation in the sole and you have a normal pair of boots. When it's on the metal piece sticks out and provides four centimetre-long spikes that stick out from the heel to give you extra grip on a snowy or icy surface. To swap between the two you just lift your foot and flick the metal piece into the appropriate position. Netto only had them in a size 43 so this afternoon I visited the main local supplier of heavy weather gear here in Akureyri, 66° North. No luck, but the girl in the shop suggested I try Ellingsen instead. No joy there either, so I eventually went back to Netto and bought the original pair no doubt saving myself huge amounts of money but somewhat surprised by the experience.
The new boots are not just in preparation for the worst of the winter but are for use this week. We had a bit of a thaw yesterday and the main car park regained its regular ice-rink status (I was pleased that I only fell once) so it was clearly time to break out the strap-on crampons. The only problem with these is that they're rather fiddly to attach to a pair of shoes, which means that I have to spend five minutes attaching or detaching them any time I enter or leave a building. With the new ones I can change the metal piece in seconds. They're also going to be rather warmer than my welliettes, which are great in the rain but require three pairs of socks if you don't want your toes to get frostbitten in the snow.
It has now started snowing again so I fully expect to have to test them out tomorrow.
2 comments
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Nana's hands
For years people have told me that I've got my Nana's hands.
You've got lovely hands, just like your Nana was a regular comment. I was quite happy with this, and have for a long time considered that my hands are the best part of me (although my feet aren't bad either). Now, though, it appears that my hands may be more like my Nana's than I had originally thought.
For the last month or so I've done very little embroidery or craft stuff because my fingers hurt. It's extremely annoying and at its worst the other weekend I ended up splinting my left thumb just to stop me from using the thing because everything I did with it - grip, pinch, push, whatever - hurt. By this Monday typing was beginning to become painful as well so I caved in and made an appointment to see the doctor. Given that my job requires quite a lot of computer use I decided that I really had to do something about it.
So I've got to phone the hospital tomorrow to arrange for X-rays and then go back to see the doctor early next week. In the meantime I've been given NSAIDs while we work out exactly which form of arthritis I've got. What worries me is the possibility of rheumatoid arthritis, as the people who used to compare my hands with Nana's were talking about Nana's hands before the RA deformed them to such an extent that she could barely use them at all. There is a part of me that wants to identify all of the complicated embroideries that I want to do and do them NOW. While I still can. That same part wonders if it's worth buying a lute any more for the same reason. OK, so logically I know that my hands are not going to shrivel up overnight but that's not really helping at present.
The logical bit of me is currently quite fascinated by the fact that the tablets I've been given were made in Dublin but the packaging is printed in Icelandic. My new inhaler is a GSK one also labelled in Icelandic. It must be quite interesting to see the packaging department of one of these companies just to see the huge range of multilingual labels. Not all of the medications we get over here come in bespoke packaging - while I was in the pharmacy I also picked up some sleeping tablets which were manufactured by a French company and had just had an Icelandic sticker added to the box. The amusing thing is that the Icelandic is not actually a correct translation - although this may just be that passiflora hasn't been passed for use by children here in Iceland. I wonder whose regulations Iceland works on? It's not as if they have the facilities to do a lot of testing.
Ah, the joy of trivia!
2 comments
You've got lovely hands, just like your Nana was a regular comment. I was quite happy with this, and have for a long time considered that my hands are the best part of me (although my feet aren't bad either). Now, though, it appears that my hands may be more like my Nana's than I had originally thought.
For the last month or so I've done very little embroidery or craft stuff because my fingers hurt. It's extremely annoying and at its worst the other weekend I ended up splinting my left thumb just to stop me from using the thing because everything I did with it - grip, pinch, push, whatever - hurt. By this Monday typing was beginning to become painful as well so I caved in and made an appointment to see the doctor. Given that my job requires quite a lot of computer use I decided that I really had to do something about it.
So I've got to phone the hospital tomorrow to arrange for X-rays and then go back to see the doctor early next week. In the meantime I've been given NSAIDs while we work out exactly which form of arthritis I've got. What worries me is the possibility of rheumatoid arthritis, as the people who used to compare my hands with Nana's were talking about Nana's hands before the RA deformed them to such an extent that she could barely use them at all. There is a part of me that wants to identify all of the complicated embroideries that I want to do and do them NOW. While I still can. That same part wonders if it's worth buying a lute any more for the same reason. OK, so logically I know that my hands are not going to shrivel up overnight but that's not really helping at present.
The logical bit of me is currently quite fascinated by the fact that the tablets I've been given were made in Dublin but the packaging is printed in Icelandic. My new inhaler is a GSK one also labelled in Icelandic. It must be quite interesting to see the packaging department of one of these companies just to see the huge range of multilingual labels. Not all of the medications we get over here come in bespoke packaging - while I was in the pharmacy I also picked up some sleeping tablets which were manufactured by a French company and had just had an Icelandic sticker added to the box. The amusing thing is that the Icelandic is not actually a correct translation - although this may just be that passiflora hasn't been passed for use by children here in Iceland. I wonder whose regulations Iceland works on? It's not as if they have the facilities to do a lot of testing.
Ah, the joy of trivia!
2 comments
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Google Plus
Allow me to introduce you to Searchmash.
Searchmash is the experimental site for Google the company. This is where they test out all of their latest and brightest ideas. I was introduced to it by a friend the other day and it has now replaced vanilla Google as my startup page. So what does it offer that Google doesn't?
The best thing, I find, is that there's no longer any need to go to Google images to do your image search. When you perform a search it automatically brings back web pages, images, videos, blogs and Wikipedia entries, each in a separate part of the page. Detail and context, as I've been explaining to my third year students in the data visualisation module. Of course, being an experimental site it doesn't have all of the Google features - Scholar, Froogle and so on - but it's only rarely that I ever need these things. A single page that brings back images, web pages and Wikipedia is quite enough for 99.99% of my needs.
The only thing it lacks is the fun artwork. I like the Google holiday logos, and always have done. Enough to know that they're online here. :)
0 comments
Searchmash is the experimental site for Google the company. This is where they test out all of their latest and brightest ideas. I was introduced to it by a friend the other day and it has now replaced vanilla Google as my startup page. So what does it offer that Google doesn't?
The best thing, I find, is that there's no longer any need to go to Google images to do your image search. When you perform a search it automatically brings back web pages, images, videos, blogs and Wikipedia entries, each in a separate part of the page. Detail and context, as I've been explaining to my third year students in the data visualisation module. Of course, being an experimental site it doesn't have all of the Google features - Scholar, Froogle and so on - but it's only rarely that I ever need these things. A single page that brings back images, web pages and Wikipedia is quite enough for 99.99% of my needs.
The only thing it lacks is the fun artwork. I like the Google holiday logos, and always have done. Enough to know that they're online here. :)
0 comments
Monday, November 27, 2006
Karnaugh diagrams
It's been a long time.
It's been an extremely long time since I did any electronics - about twenty years, which is a scary thought in itself. Fortunately it was one of those bits of the electronics course I did in second year at St. Andrews that I could do without too much trouble. This is a good thing, as I'm currently writing a lecture on just that topic.
The whole business of writing the computer architecture module is turning out to be something of a refresher course. Although I still maintain that I'm not a hardware person it's encouraging to know that I do actually know everything that I'm supposed to be teaching, rather than having to learn it to teach it (which was the case with functional programming two years ago). Okay, so there are some things I hadn't really dealt with before but they're very specific technical things, like northside/southside architecture for motherboards.
This is quite a relief, as I wasn't looking forward to having to learn all sorts of things that involved strange combinations of letters and numbers. I occasionally wonder about my MSc course - it was a conversion course, so there wasn't really too much time to cover anything more than the absolute basics, but we didn't actually do an architecture course. We did a couple of programming modules (in Pascal), one on computer graphics, one on systems analysis - which was horrendous at the time but, looking back on it, was quite possibly one of the most useful - and a couple of others that I can't remember. I suspect that one of them might have been a basic introduction... actually, now I come to think hard about it I might have had to do Karnaugh diagrams then. Hmm... maybe not quite twenty years in that case.
Ah well, someone has to teach it. :)
0 comments
It's been an extremely long time since I did any electronics - about twenty years, which is a scary thought in itself. Fortunately it was one of those bits of the electronics course I did in second year at St. Andrews that I could do without too much trouble. This is a good thing, as I'm currently writing a lecture on just that topic.
The whole business of writing the computer architecture module is turning out to be something of a refresher course. Although I still maintain that I'm not a hardware person it's encouraging to know that I do actually know everything that I'm supposed to be teaching, rather than having to learn it to teach it (which was the case with functional programming two years ago). Okay, so there are some things I hadn't really dealt with before but they're very specific technical things, like northside/southside architecture for motherboards.
This is quite a relief, as I wasn't looking forward to having to learn all sorts of things that involved strange combinations of letters and numbers. I occasionally wonder about my MSc course - it was a conversion course, so there wasn't really too much time to cover anything more than the absolute basics, but we didn't actually do an architecture course. We did a couple of programming modules (in Pascal), one on computer graphics, one on systems analysis - which was horrendous at the time but, looking back on it, was quite possibly one of the most useful - and a couple of others that I can't remember. I suspect that one of them might have been a basic introduction... actually, now I come to think hard about it I might have had to do Karnaugh diagrams then. Hmm... maybe not quite twenty years in that case.
Ah well, someone has to teach it. :)
0 comments
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Damn these married designers!
This set of shelves is just not designed to be built by a single person.
It's a set of twenty shelves arranged in a 4 x 5 rectangle and comes as a top, a bottom, two sides. three vertical dividers and sixteen individual shelves. So to put the thing together you have to put the sixteen shelves onto the three internal verticals, attach the outer edges, then screw in the top and the bottom. And that's the only time you use screws on this thing. So, as you can imagine, until it's all screwed together it's not the most stable of structures. Add to that the problem of building it in a confined space and you can probably understand why I'm getting frustrated. If I'd have designed it I would have kept the shelves as four long pieces and put slots in everything so that everything just slotted into place. I suppose it serves me right for not spending £600 on a set of shelves. Maybe if I build it in an upright but rotated position and screw the verticals to the bottom as I go along...
It's a good job that I have a reasonable amount of physical strength, as there's no way that would have worked otherwise. I put it together, screwing the verticals in place as I went then finally screwing the top into position and, indeed, I now had a quite good-looking set of shelves. The only problem was that it was still lying on its side. Now this thing is about 1.8m tall by 1.6m wide and about 0.4m deep, so it's taller than I am and, even though it's plyboard as opposed to real wood, it's quite heavy (just over 35 kg... assuming that the box illustration means the weight of the entire thing, not of each of the two boxes otherwise it's rather more). There was no way that I was going to be able to lift it sideways an twist the thing, so I eventually resorted to treating it like the mast of the dinghy we used to own and walked it up from the bottom of one of its sides. This worked fine, except that the plyboard bent and half of the shelves slipped out of their moorings and I had to reset them once it was upright.
Nevertheless, it is now upright in the middle of the living room and ready for me to hoover the area by the wall that will be its new home. Once I've had some lunch, that is.
0 comments
It's a set of twenty shelves arranged in a 4 x 5 rectangle and comes as a top, a bottom, two sides. three vertical dividers and sixteen individual shelves. So to put the thing together you have to put the sixteen shelves onto the three internal verticals, attach the outer edges, then screw in the top and the bottom. And that's the only time you use screws on this thing. So, as you can imagine, until it's all screwed together it's not the most stable of structures. Add to that the problem of building it in a confined space and you can probably understand why I'm getting frustrated. If I'd have designed it I would have kept the shelves as four long pieces and put slots in everything so that everything just slotted into place. I suppose it serves me right for not spending £600 on a set of shelves. Maybe if I build it in an upright but rotated position and screw the verticals to the bottom as I go along...
It's a good job that I have a reasonable amount of physical strength, as there's no way that would have worked otherwise. I put it together, screwing the verticals in place as I went then finally screwing the top into position and, indeed, I now had a quite good-looking set of shelves. The only problem was that it was still lying on its side. Now this thing is about 1.8m tall by 1.6m wide and about 0.4m deep, so it's taller than I am and, even though it's plyboard as opposed to real wood, it's quite heavy (just over 35 kg... assuming that the box illustration means the weight of the entire thing, not of each of the two boxes otherwise it's rather more). There was no way that I was going to be able to lift it sideways an twist the thing, so I eventually resorted to treating it like the mast of the dinghy we used to own and walked it up from the bottom of one of its sides. This worked fine, except that the plyboard bent and half of the shelves slipped out of their moorings and I had to reset them once it was upright.
Nevertheless, it is now upright in the middle of the living room and ready for me to hoover the area by the wall that will be its new home. Once I've had some lunch, that is.
0 comments
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Drawers or wardrobes?
So far the battle plan has worked well and I now have a set of drawers full of clothes in a sparkling clean and tidy bedroom.
It's so nice to have a chest of drawers. I've got nothing against wardrobes - they're essential for the assorted mediaeval and renaissance gowns that you just can't fold up and put in a drawer and ever hope to have the creases come out - but I do prefer to keep my clothes in drawers. In the current apartment I have a big set of built-in wardrobes which gives me oodles of hanging space but only six of those roll-out plastic-covered metal mesh pseudo-drawers, which are nowhere near enough for the assorted tops, t-shirts, trousers, sweaters and the rest of my day-to-day wear. So I now have a nice big six-drawer chest of drawers which has allowed me to actually clear the bedroom of stuff.
Is is that everyone so loves drawers that they all have their own assorted chests of drawers that they take from house to house? Or are people today happier with built-in wardrobes that contain a bit of shelf-space for non-hangable clothing? If it was up to me I'd have a built-in unit made up of wardrobe and lots of drawers. Although I don't know about the classic mirror and stool so that you can sit and do your make-up combination - I hate mirrors and I'd only be tempted to use the surface as another craft table. Or pile it high with stuff I haven't put away yet.
There's also clearly another advantage to working at home on Fridays. As well as getting tons of stuff done yesterday I also didn't feel so shattered today. I feel as if I've actually had a productive Saturday for once, and it's great. This is particularly good as it has reached that point in the winter when my body clock doesn't want me to wake up until 10:00 and therefore doesn't want to fall asleep until 03:00. Ah, the joys of living in the sub-arctic. :)
0 comments
It's so nice to have a chest of drawers. I've got nothing against wardrobes - they're essential for the assorted mediaeval and renaissance gowns that you just can't fold up and put in a drawer and ever hope to have the creases come out - but I do prefer to keep my clothes in drawers. In the current apartment I have a big set of built-in wardrobes which gives me oodles of hanging space but only six of those roll-out plastic-covered metal mesh pseudo-drawers, which are nowhere near enough for the assorted tops, t-shirts, trousers, sweaters and the rest of my day-to-day wear. So I now have a nice big six-drawer chest of drawers which has allowed me to actually clear the bedroom of stuff.
Is is that everyone so loves drawers that they all have their own assorted chests of drawers that they take from house to house? Or are people today happier with built-in wardrobes that contain a bit of shelf-space for non-hangable clothing? If it was up to me I'd have a built-in unit made up of wardrobe and lots of drawers. Although I don't know about the classic mirror and stool so that you can sit and do your make-up combination - I hate mirrors and I'd only be tempted to use the surface as another craft table. Or pile it high with stuff I haven't put away yet.
There's also clearly another advantage to working at home on Fridays. As well as getting tons of stuff done yesterday I also didn't feel so shattered today. I feel as if I've actually had a productive Saturday for once, and it's great. This is particularly good as it has reached that point in the winter when my body clock doesn't want me to wake up until 10:00 and therefore doesn't want to fall asleep until 03:00. Ah, the joys of living in the sub-arctic. :)
0 comments
Friday, November 24, 2006
Postal pleasure
I got a parcel this week.
I knew it was coming from Amazon, but it's still nice to get a parcel. The letter announcing that it had arrived reached me at work on Monday to tell me that it was in Reykjavik and that I had to pay tax on it. Well, I expected that. So when I had time a couple of days later I went down to the post office to find that it was still in Reykjavik but now that I'd come to pick it up they'd forward it up here to me. Sigh. Finally I collected it yesterday and paid the extra 50% in tax. Still, it's not as bad as one of my students - he received a damaged book and so the publishers sent him a new copy. In spite of there being an official letter within the package saying that it was zero cost as a replacement he still had to pay import duty on it.
Anyway, as well as volume 2 of the NASA Mars Mission Reports (geeky, fascinating and useful for one of my students) I also got Secrets of Origami by Robert Harbin. This is a classic origami book - I was given my first copy, a hardback edition, over thirty years ago and have no idea what happened to it once I left home to go to university. It contains a host of figures by a range of both oriental and occidental artists, including the creche group by the late Ligia Montoya. At the age of nine I won a school craft competition by creating this within a shoebox lined with black velvet, and I'm planning a set of Christmas cards including this group for some friends.
Before I start on the Christmas cards, though, I need to clean the flat. Last week I bought a large shelving unit for the living room and an equally-large chest of drawers for the bedroom. I built the chest of drawers tonight, so tomorrow morning I'll empty the bedroom and winter-clean it before I install the new furniture. Then I'll build the shelves and reorganise things so that I can winter-clean the living room too.
That's the plan... let's see how long it survive contact with the weekend. :)
0 comments
I knew it was coming from Amazon, but it's still nice to get a parcel. The letter announcing that it had arrived reached me at work on Monday to tell me that it was in Reykjavik and that I had to pay tax on it. Well, I expected that. So when I had time a couple of days later I went down to the post office to find that it was still in Reykjavik but now that I'd come to pick it up they'd forward it up here to me. Sigh. Finally I collected it yesterday and paid the extra 50% in tax. Still, it's not as bad as one of my students - he received a damaged book and so the publishers sent him a new copy. In spite of there being an official letter within the package saying that it was zero cost as a replacement he still had to pay import duty on it.
Anyway, as well as volume 2 of the NASA Mars Mission Reports (geeky, fascinating and useful for one of my students) I also got Secrets of Origami by Robert Harbin. This is a classic origami book - I was given my first copy, a hardback edition, over thirty years ago and have no idea what happened to it once I left home to go to university. It contains a host of figures by a range of both oriental and occidental artists, including the creche group by the late Ligia Montoya. At the age of nine I won a school craft competition by creating this within a shoebox lined with black velvet, and I'm planning a set of Christmas cards including this group for some friends.
Before I start on the Christmas cards, though, I need to clean the flat. Last week I bought a large shelving unit for the living room and an equally-large chest of drawers for the bedroom. I built the chest of drawers tonight, so tomorrow morning I'll empty the bedroom and winter-clean it before I install the new furniture. Then I'll build the shelves and reorganise things so that I can winter-clean the living room too.
That's the plan... let's see how long it survive contact with the weekend. :)
0 comments
Thursday, November 23, 2006
How could they possibly do THAT...
... To an Aston Martin?
Yes, I am just back from seeing Casino Royale and I think it was pretty damned good. These are various random thoughts I had during the film:
So it was fun even taking into account the annoying Icelandic habit of having an intermission so you can get another giant box of popcorn. At least this time the end of the reel came at a reasonably acceptable point, unlike the other films I've seen over here. I think that I may have to follow up at the weekend by watching Goldeneye again. Casino Royale is definitely the best one since then.
0 comments
Yes, I am just back from seeing Casino Royale and I think it was pretty damned good. These are various random thoughts I had during the film:
- Horatio and the CSI team are going to have fun cleaning up after that one.
- Nice opening credits - particularly the fractal clubs
- He's a bastard, but a bastard who looks very good in a dinner jacket. Or naked.
- How could they possible do that to an Aston Martin? It was the only thing in the film that made me whimper aloud.
- The music worked. It had key changes in all the right places. I was a bit worried at the beginning that we weren't going to get the real Bond theme but it all worked out okay in the end.
- I liked the transformation from new 00 to the Bond we all know and love.
- He does have very blue eyes.
- Add a few years and subtract a few inches and he'd be a dead ringer for Harry from Spooks.
- Aargh! Save that renaissance architecture!
So it was fun even taking into account the annoying Icelandic habit of having an intermission so you can get another giant box of popcorn. At least this time the end of the reel came at a reasonably acceptable point, unlike the other films I've seen over here. I think that I may have to follow up at the weekend by watching Goldeneye again. Casino Royale is definitely the best one since then.
0 comments
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Simple things amuse me
Things like stereo sound.
While I was frantically trying to review first drafts of several student reports, update the teaching plan for next year and create an overall degree curriculum that was in line with certain reports linked to the Bologna process today I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar (amongst other things). This was a pleasant calming experience (other than the fact that I always have the urge to sing along with Judas and Pilate) enhanced by the fact that I have a pair of stereo speakers, one on each side of the computer. This is generally useful for listening to Classic FM but even then there's seldom anything that really makes the most of the stereo effect. Certainly not as effective as This Jesus Must Die sung by Annas (left speaker), Priest 3 (right speaker) and Caiaphas (dead centre).
I was also entranced by the wonderful world of stereo while watching the latest episode of Torchwood tonight. As I'm watching it on the computer I've taken to wearing headphones for maximum stereo effect, and they certainly do make use of it. Actually, I thought that the stereo features were the best thing about that episode. Was it really just mindless gore and camerawork with the old humans are the scariest monsters of all message or did I miss something? Other than the perils of not being able to talk about your job with your family, that is. It was certainly a disappointment given the previous episodes.
Still, it beats anything on tv right now.
0 comments
While I was frantically trying to review first drafts of several student reports, update the teaching plan for next year and create an overall degree curriculum that was in line with certain reports linked to the Bologna process today I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar (amongst other things). This was a pleasant calming experience (other than the fact that I always have the urge to sing along with Judas and Pilate) enhanced by the fact that I have a pair of stereo speakers, one on each side of the computer. This is generally useful for listening to Classic FM but even then there's seldom anything that really makes the most of the stereo effect. Certainly not as effective as This Jesus Must Die sung by Annas (left speaker), Priest 3 (right speaker) and Caiaphas (dead centre).
I was also entranced by the wonderful world of stereo while watching the latest episode of Torchwood tonight. As I'm watching it on the computer I've taken to wearing headphones for maximum stereo effect, and they certainly do make use of it. Actually, I thought that the stereo features were the best thing about that episode. Was it really just mindless gore and camerawork with the old humans are the scariest monsters of all message or did I miss something? Other than the perils of not being able to talk about your job with your family, that is. It was certainly a disappointment given the previous episodes.
Still, it beats anything on tv right now.
0 comments
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Bathroom reading
It is right and proper to have technical journals in the bathroom.
I grew up in a house where it was quite normal to have the latest edition of Marine Engineers' Review, the near-monthly transactions of what was then the Institute of Marine Engineers on the shelf beside the loo. As my dad was (and still is) a member of the institute we would get them month-by-month while he was away and I would have to wait until he came home on leave for him to extract them from their clear plastic packaging and for them to appear in the bathroom. They made for fascinating reading; I learned all about all sorts of developments in marine engineering and was fascinated by the increasing use of computers and computer displays in bridge and engineering control boards. Having access to this information played a big role in shaping my current professional interests - and gave me a valuable grounding in maritime matters that has surprised a number of my colleagues in various institutions but especially here in Iceland.
The Institute of Marine Engineers has now extended its name and remit to become the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology but MER still arrives every month. It even has a special MarITime section on IT which is, of course, of particular interest. And they still sit there in the bathroom, now joined by Lifeboat, the RNLI magazine. Reading them is one of the guilty pleasures of going back to Liverpool.
Now that I have my own bathroom I also have my own technical journals with which to stock it. After all, a bathroom without a technical journal is a sad and lonely place. :) Mine, though, is the Association for Computing Machinery's Interactions, the journal of the ACM's special interest group on computer-human interactions. It is full of interesting stuff on usability and on interfaces and is light enough that you don't get bogged down on the bog, as it were. Of course one journal just isn't enough. Perhaps the best reason for joining the IEEE and the BCS is not the professional status, but rather the improved selection of bathroom reading.
0 comments
I grew up in a house where it was quite normal to have the latest edition of Marine Engineers' Review, the near-monthly transactions of what was then the Institute of Marine Engineers on the shelf beside the loo. As my dad was (and still is) a member of the institute we would get them month-by-month while he was away and I would have to wait until he came home on leave for him to extract them from their clear plastic packaging and for them to appear in the bathroom. They made for fascinating reading; I learned all about all sorts of developments in marine engineering and was fascinated by the increasing use of computers and computer displays in bridge and engineering control boards. Having access to this information played a big role in shaping my current professional interests - and gave me a valuable grounding in maritime matters that has surprised a number of my colleagues in various institutions but especially here in Iceland.
The Institute of Marine Engineers has now extended its name and remit to become the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology but MER still arrives every month. It even has a special MarITime section on IT which is, of course, of particular interest. And they still sit there in the bathroom, now joined by Lifeboat, the RNLI magazine. Reading them is one of the guilty pleasures of going back to Liverpool.
Now that I have my own bathroom I also have my own technical journals with which to stock it. After all, a bathroom without a technical journal is a sad and lonely place. :) Mine, though, is the Association for Computing Machinery's Interactions, the journal of the ACM's special interest group on computer-human interactions. It is full of interesting stuff on usability and on interfaces and is light enough that you don't get bogged down on the bog, as it were. Of course one journal just isn't enough. Perhaps the best reason for joining the IEEE and the BCS is not the professional status, but rather the improved selection of bathroom reading.
0 comments
Monday, November 20, 2006
Green tea is my friend
It makes me calm and serene again.
I came home from work today so angry that it took two Simpsons episodes and a large mug of green tea to calm me down again. Tomorrow I'm going to have to go into work and solve the problem that's to blame for this - at times I really do hate this management business as I'd far rather work out compromises than lay down the law. Unfortunately on occasion there is no alternative.
On top of which I seem to be coming down with a bug of some sort, so I'm not a happy bunny.
Still, the beaded baubles are coming along well. I've done five small ones now out of the box of twelve and have enough beads of different colours to do the rest. I haven't quite decided how to do the larger baubles as I'm going to have to change the pattern quite a bit. Today I also picked up the wool to start crocheting the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the top of Penny's Christmas tree. I think that I'll crochet the meatballs and will lucet the spaghetti strands so that it's easier to stiffen them with wire in order to make sure that His Noodly Appendages will hold their shapes. I might also try some of those fascinating hyperbolic planes which look as if they would also make superb Christmas tree ornaments.
Hmm... I wonder... maybe I ought to erect a solstice tree covered only in decorations that would appeal to scientists and other geeks, topped off with an FSM. I don't have time to do one this year but it's something I could work on an ongoing basis throughout next year, making little individual things now and again. This may be worth considerably more thought.
0 comments
I came home from work today so angry that it took two Simpsons episodes and a large mug of green tea to calm me down again. Tomorrow I'm going to have to go into work and solve the problem that's to blame for this - at times I really do hate this management business as I'd far rather work out compromises than lay down the law. Unfortunately on occasion there is no alternative.
On top of which I seem to be coming down with a bug of some sort, so I'm not a happy bunny.
Still, the beaded baubles are coming along well. I've done five small ones now out of the box of twelve and have enough beads of different colours to do the rest. I haven't quite decided how to do the larger baubles as I'm going to have to change the pattern quite a bit. Today I also picked up the wool to start crocheting the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the top of Penny's Christmas tree. I think that I'll crochet the meatballs and will lucet the spaghetti strands so that it's easier to stiffen them with wire in order to make sure that His Noodly Appendages will hold their shapes. I might also try some of those fascinating hyperbolic planes which look as if they would also make superb Christmas tree ornaments.
Hmm... I wonder... maybe I ought to erect a solstice tree covered only in decorations that would appeal to scientists and other geeks, topped off with an FSM. I don't have time to do one this year but it's something I could work on an ongoing basis throughout next year, making little individual things now and again. This may be worth considerably more thought.
0 comments
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Bridgestone Blizzaks
It appears that I have super-duper tyres.
I've just spent half an hour changing my front right tyre. This is the one that got the puncture a few weeks ago. I must admit that it took me a couple of weeks to get it fixed and that was with the help of my friend Ásgeir who took it up to his preferred dealership somewhere in the next fjord to the west. We were going to either take my car up there at some point to change all of the tyres for winter ones or possibly take them up one by one (he's often up there driving a Grolsh delivery lorry) but the chap at the garage said that there was no need at all with the tyres I've got.
So for the past month I've been driving around on three super-duper tyres and my spare... which turned out to be a 14 inch normal tyre not a 15 inch Bridgestone Blizzak like the remaining three. This might have been the reason for my car not handling as well as I would have liked, both in terms of grip and in that it felt subtly wrong, as all of the reviews of these tyres say that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It'll be interesting to see how the car handles over the next couple of days with the full set of tyres. We're due some more heavy weather tomorrow and over the next couple of days so I'm expecting fresh snow... just as we've got the car park clear. Typical!.
0 comments
I've just spent half an hour changing my front right tyre. This is the one that got the puncture a few weeks ago. I must admit that it took me a couple of weeks to get it fixed and that was with the help of my friend Ásgeir who took it up to his preferred dealership somewhere in the next fjord to the west. We were going to either take my car up there at some point to change all of the tyres for winter ones or possibly take them up one by one (he's often up there driving a Grolsh delivery lorry) but the chap at the garage said that there was no need at all with the tyres I've got.
So for the past month I've been driving around on three super-duper tyres and my spare... which turned out to be a 14 inch normal tyre not a 15 inch Bridgestone Blizzak like the remaining three. This might have been the reason for my car not handling as well as I would have liked, both in terms of grip and in that it felt subtly wrong, as all of the reviews of these tyres say that they're the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It'll be interesting to see how the car handles over the next couple of days with the full set of tyres. We're due some more heavy weather tomorrow and over the next couple of days so I'm expecting fresh snow... just as we've got the car park clear. Typical!.
0 comments
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Do I need a gun licence?
That's need as in for intellectual reasons, not for legal reasons.
Every now and then I see adverts in the local freebie papers advertising the courses that you're required to take to get your gun licence. They cost around £60, take two weekends, and once you've got the licence you just need to pay extra for a hunting permit.
It's not as if I'm planning to go hunting, although it's a common sport here - Syed went out hunting today with one of my students and some friends (seemingly he was knee-deep in snow hunting ptarmigan) - and people eat what they catch. As long as you've got a hunting permit you can hunt without a gun, and many smaller birds like puffin (mmm...tasty!) are netted rather than shot. Although most people hunt birds, if you've got the money for the rather more expensive permit you can also hunt reindeer - though this tends to take a lot longer including a lot of walking, lying in wait and then carrying a rather large animal back home with you. I've known meetings be rescheduled so that they don't clash with the first or last day of a particular hunting season.
No, the reason I keep looking at the adverts is because I'd rather like to know how to handle a shotgun. I learned how to handle a rifle at university by joining the Rifle Club although I only shot for a term as they were a terribly cliquey bunch. Of course the main problem would be that all materials would be in Icelandic and I'm not up to reading technical stuff.
Another course I keep seeing advertised and by which I am frequently tempted is the one to get my pilot's licence. Now that would be a really fun and interesting thing to do. I was under the impression for many years that because I had epilepsy after a head injury when I was a child (I've had no attacks for almost thirty years) that I'd never be allowed to get a pilots licence, but I discovered about five years ago that although I'd never get a commercial licence I could still get a private light aircraft one. I love flying - I always have done - and learning to fly was always on the list of things that I was really annoyed that I wasn't going to be able to do (up there with hang-gliding and parachuting). I might yet give in to that one next summer given that English is the language of the skies.
For now, though, I'll settle for learning less exotic skills. I'm having fun with new beading techniques and, hopefully, tomorrow I'll try beading a larger bauble and see how that goes.
1 comments
Every now and then I see adverts in the local freebie papers advertising the courses that you're required to take to get your gun licence. They cost around £60, take two weekends, and once you've got the licence you just need to pay extra for a hunting permit.
It's not as if I'm planning to go hunting, although it's a common sport here - Syed went out hunting today with one of my students and some friends (seemingly he was knee-deep in snow hunting ptarmigan) - and people eat what they catch. As long as you've got a hunting permit you can hunt without a gun, and many smaller birds like puffin (mmm...tasty!) are netted rather than shot. Although most people hunt birds, if you've got the money for the rather more expensive permit you can also hunt reindeer - though this tends to take a lot longer including a lot of walking, lying in wait and then carrying a rather large animal back home with you. I've known meetings be rescheduled so that they don't clash with the first or last day of a particular hunting season.
No, the reason I keep looking at the adverts is because I'd rather like to know how to handle a shotgun. I learned how to handle a rifle at university by joining the Rifle Club although I only shot for a term as they were a terribly cliquey bunch. Of course the main problem would be that all materials would be in Icelandic and I'm not up to reading technical stuff.
Another course I keep seeing advertised and by which I am frequently tempted is the one to get my pilot's licence. Now that would be a really fun and interesting thing to do. I was under the impression for many years that because I had epilepsy after a head injury when I was a child (I've had no attacks for almost thirty years) that I'd never be allowed to get a pilots licence, but I discovered about five years ago that although I'd never get a commercial licence I could still get a private light aircraft one. I love flying - I always have done - and learning to fly was always on the list of things that I was really annoyed that I wasn't going to be able to do (up there with hang-gliding and parachuting). I might yet give in to that one next summer given that English is the language of the skies.
For now, though, I'll settle for learning less exotic skills. I'm having fun with new beading techniques and, hopefully, tomorrow I'll try beading a larger bauble and see how that goes.
1 comments
Friday, November 17, 2006
Bauble instructions
As several people have requested more details here is the bauble pattern.
The materials for these baubles came from Tiger, the wonderful cheap and cheerful Danish store that seems to be common all over Scandinavia. The baubles themselves are part of the Tiger Christmas stuff and come in boxes of 12 - each bauble is about 3.5cm in diameter. The beads are from the Tiger glasperler collection, specifically the 72950 variety - they're roughly the equivalent of 9/0 rocailles. You need about 8g of the main colour (A) and about 2g of the contrasting colour (B).
Step 1. Thread a piece of beading thread about 1.5 metres long into an appropriate needle and start by putting a stopper bead on the end of the thread. Next make a ring of 25 A and the pass the thread right through the ring a second time.
Step 2. Come out of the ring between two beads and add a contrasting bead B before going back into the ring in the same place you came out. Do not skip any beads! Pass the thread through 5 beads of the ring then come out and add another B bead before going back into the ring. Repeat this three times more until you have 5 B beads attached to the ring. The B beads will pull the ring out of shape so that it becomes pentagonal rather than circular. After adding the final B bead go back into the ring and come out again at the first B bead and pass the thread through the B bead. The B beads are the foundation beads to which everything else will be attached.
Step 3. Pick up 5A 1B and 5A beads and then pass the thread through the next foundation bead. Repeat this 4 times, completing a round of loops back to the initial foundation bead. Pass the thread through the 5A and 1B of the first loop.
Step 4. Pick up 6A 1B and 6A beads and then pass through the B bead of the next loop. Repeat this four times, completing a round of loops back to the initial B bead. Pass the thread through the 6a and 1B of the first loop.
Steps 5, 6, Repeat step 4.
Step 7. Now fit the beading over the bauble, putting the bauble's hanger through the original pentagonal loop. Pick up 5A beads and then pass through the B bead of the next loop. Repeat this 4 times to form a loop which closes the beading into place on the bauble. Pass the thread through the first 5A and B of the loop.
Step 8. Pick up 10A beads and then pass through the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A and then along the first line of 5A (these are the first 5 beads of the original 10A). This forms five lines that radiate from the bottom of the bauble to the five B beads in the closing loop.
Step 9. Pass the thread down one of the lines of 5A that join at the bottom of the bauble. Pick up 12A, B, A, B, A, 2B then, missing out the final B pass the thread through the other 17 beads and back up the line of 5A then pass the thread through the closing ring to the next line of 5 and down the line. Repeat this four times to form five hanging sections, each of which is attached to the end of one of the five central lines.
Step 10. Pass the thread through the closing ring again and cut it.
No diagrams or pictures, I'm afraid, as my RSI is playing up a bit or I'd have given you step by step photos. Once it's back to normal I'll take some and post these instructions to my website.
0 comments
The materials for these baubles came from Tiger, the wonderful cheap and cheerful Danish store that seems to be common all over Scandinavia. The baubles themselves are part of the Tiger Christmas stuff and come in boxes of 12 - each bauble is about 3.5cm in diameter. The beads are from the Tiger glasperler collection, specifically the 72950 variety - they're roughly the equivalent of 9/0 rocailles. You need about 8g of the main colour (A) and about 2g of the contrasting colour (B).
Step 1. Thread a piece of beading thread about 1.5 metres long into an appropriate needle and start by putting a stopper bead on the end of the thread. Next make a ring of 25 A and the pass the thread right through the ring a second time.
Step 2. Come out of the ring between two beads and add a contrasting bead B before going back into the ring in the same place you came out. Do not skip any beads! Pass the thread through 5 beads of the ring then come out and add another B bead before going back into the ring. Repeat this three times more until you have 5 B beads attached to the ring. The B beads will pull the ring out of shape so that it becomes pentagonal rather than circular. After adding the final B bead go back into the ring and come out again at the first B bead and pass the thread through the B bead. The B beads are the foundation beads to which everything else will be attached.
Step 3. Pick up 5A 1B and 5A beads and then pass the thread through the next foundation bead. Repeat this 4 times, completing a round of loops back to the initial foundation bead. Pass the thread through the 5A and 1B of the first loop.
Step 4. Pick up 6A 1B and 6A beads and then pass through the B bead of the next loop. Repeat this four times, completing a round of loops back to the initial B bead. Pass the thread through the 6a and 1B of the first loop.
Steps 5, 6, Repeat step 4.
Step 7. Now fit the beading over the bauble, putting the bauble's hanger through the original pentagonal loop. Pick up 5A beads and then pass through the B bead of the next loop. Repeat this 4 times to form a loop which closes the beading into place on the bauble. Pass the thread through the first 5A and B of the loop.
Step 8. Pick up 10A beads and then pass through the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A, pick up 5A and go into the next B of the closing loop. Go back through the previous 5A and then along the first line of 5A (these are the first 5 beads of the original 10A). This forms five lines that radiate from the bottom of the bauble to the five B beads in the closing loop.
Step 9. Pass the thread down one of the lines of 5A that join at the bottom of the bauble. Pick up 12A, B, A, B, A, 2B then, missing out the final B pass the thread through the other 17 beads and back up the line of 5A then pass the thread through the closing ring to the next line of 5 and down the line. Repeat this four times to form five hanging sections, each of which is attached to the end of one of the five central lines.
Step 10. Pass the thread through the closing ring again and cut it.
No diagrams or pictures, I'm afraid, as my RSI is playing up a bit or I'd have given you step by step photos. Once it's back to normal I'll take some and post these instructions to my website.
0 comments
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Meira meira osta brauð
To celebrate Icelandic Language Day I both ordered dinner and settled the bill in Icelandic this evening.
But more importantly, I had a really good dinner with the folks from work. We went down to Greifinn (as usual) for dinner to celebrate the (temporary) return to Iceland and had a pleasant meal and some excellent conversation. We're a very diverse group - two (and a half if you include Katie, Liz's daughter) English, one Indian, one Russian and an Icelander - and the conversation was both wide-ranging and had a distinctly multi-cultural flavour. It's one of the good points about this job that we do have such an interesting mix of people within and attached to the department.
I also discovered another fascinating thing about my new office today. In the current weather conditions the snow is building up in layers on the windowsill. There are now a number of distinct layers that I can identify as being the daily deposit, and it has become quite clear to me how the fine structure in ice cores comes about. I may see if I can take some photos on Monday as I'm planning to work at home tomorrow. To start with I still have to dig the car out but more importantly I'll actually get some solid work done because I won't be interrupted all the time. And I have all the important stuff here at home anyway - coffee and Classic FM - so I'm looking forward to a very productive day with a lunch break to extract the car and go shopping. Hopefully. :)
0 comments
But more importantly, I had a really good dinner with the folks from work. We went down to Greifinn (as usual) for dinner to celebrate the (temporary) return to Iceland and had a pleasant meal and some excellent conversation. We're a very diverse group - two (and a half if you include Katie, Liz's daughter) English, one Indian, one Russian and an Icelander - and the conversation was both wide-ranging and had a distinctly multi-cultural flavour. It's one of the good points about this job that we do have such an interesting mix of people within and attached to the department.
I also discovered another fascinating thing about my new office today. In the current weather conditions the snow is building up in layers on the windowsill. There are now a number of distinct layers that I can identify as being the daily deposit, and it has become quite clear to me how the fine structure in ice cores comes about. I may see if I can take some photos on Monday as I'm planning to work at home tomorrow. To start with I still have to dig the car out but more importantly I'll actually get some solid work done because I won't be interrupted all the time. And I have all the important stuff here at home anyway - coffee and Classic FM - so I'm looking forward to a very productive day with a lunch break to extract the car and go shopping. Hopefully. :)
0 comments
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Beaded baubles
I tried another beading experiment this evening.
I've been planning to try making some beaded baubles for a while, but I only got the baubles themselves at the end of last week. The dark blue one was first and I was quite pleased that I only had to make quite minor adjustments when I made the pale blue one. They're quite quick to make too, as the first one was completed in less than a single Midsomer Murder and the second was even faster.
The pattern is a basic netting, using loops that increase and then decrease in size to fit the bauble. It's not as fiddly as it appears, as you can work the netting separate to the bauble so that you only have to bead on the bauble for the final row that pulls everything together and then add the tassles. I think I'm going to work on a few more designs and I suspect that some people will be getting pairs or triads of these as part of their Midwinter gifts. Fortunately I have lots of different colours of beads that I can play with, so further experimentation is most certainly called for.
2 comments
I've been planning to try making some beaded baubles for a while, but I only got the baubles themselves at the end of last week. The dark blue one was first and I was quite pleased that I only had to make quite minor adjustments when I made the pale blue one. They're quite quick to make too, as the first one was completed in less than a single Midsomer Murder and the second was even faster.The pattern is a basic netting, using loops that increase and then decrease in size to fit the bauble. It's not as fiddly as it appears, as you can work the netting separate to the bauble so that you only have to bead on the bauble for the final row that pulls everything together and then add the tassles. I think I'm going to work on a few more designs and I suspect that some people will be getting pairs or triads of these as part of their Midwinter gifts. Fortunately I have lots of different colours of beads that I can play with, so further experimentation is most certainly called for.
2 comments
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
A long mile
Although not a Norwegian one.
Today I did three stupid things. 1) I walked to work. 2) I walked to work. This was so stupid that I've included it twice. 3) Given a 2-hour lecture immediately after the asthma attack brought on by 1. It's about a mile from my apartment block to my office block - that's a statute mile, not a long mile, which Answers.com tells me is approximately 11km and only used by the Norwegians - but this morning it was a foot deep in snow and my car was in the shopping centre car park surrounded by snow drifts. I did try to get it out by 'rocking' it but after ten minutes of trying I hadn't made more than six inches of progress. So instead I had to walk.
The walk itself isn't normally a problem. There's a bit of a hill up to the university buildings but nothing major. Nothing that stops me walking it in 15-20 minutes. Not this morning. Not in the sub-zero blizzard conditions that had set in overnight, oh no. It took me just over half an hour and by the time I reached the office I was not a happy bunny. Unfortunately my avoidance of doctors wherever possible means that my inhaler is not only out of date but was in the pocket of my other jacket in the car. D'oh! I got to my desk for 09:45 and had a lecture at 10:00. But I survived! I only had five students - clearly most of the class had decided it was too nasty out to come in to lectures - and I was a bit wheezy and down in my lower vocal register but I managed to complete the lecture on Geographical Information Systems all the same.
In spite of this the snow does look quite impressive. All of my windows, both home and office, now have those arcs of snow that you normally only see in twee Christmas card illustrations. I wonder what type of a curve these are, parabolas or catenaries? I did manage to move the car this evening when I came back, and have moved it into a position where I hope I'll be able to extract it in the morning. I certainly don't want to go through the walk and its aftereffects again tomorrow.
0 comments
Today I did three stupid things. 1) I walked to work. 2) I walked to work. This was so stupid that I've included it twice. 3) Given a 2-hour lecture immediately after the asthma attack brought on by 1. It's about a mile from my apartment block to my office block - that's a statute mile, not a long mile, which Answers.com tells me is approximately 11km and only used by the Norwegians - but this morning it was a foot deep in snow and my car was in the shopping centre car park surrounded by snow drifts. I did try to get it out by 'rocking' it but after ten minutes of trying I hadn't made more than six inches of progress. So instead I had to walk.
The walk itself isn't normally a problem. There's a bit of a hill up to the university buildings but nothing major. Nothing that stops me walking it in 15-20 minutes. Not this morning. Not in the sub-zero blizzard conditions that had set in overnight, oh no. It took me just over half an hour and by the time I reached the office I was not a happy bunny. Unfortunately my avoidance of doctors wherever possible means that my inhaler is not only out of date but was in the pocket of my other jacket in the car. D'oh! I got to my desk for 09:45 and had a lecture at 10:00. But I survived! I only had five students - clearly most of the class had decided it was too nasty out to come in to lectures - and I was a bit wheezy and down in my lower vocal register but I managed to complete the lecture on Geographical Information Systems all the same.
In spite of this the snow does look quite impressive. All of my windows, both home and office, now have those arcs of snow that you normally only see in twee Christmas card illustrations. I wonder what type of a curve these are, parabolas or catenaries? I did manage to move the car this evening when I came back, and have moved it into a position where I hope I'll be able to extract it in the morning. I certainly don't want to go through the walk and its aftereffects again tomorrow.
0 comments
Monday, November 13, 2006
Snails in treacle
My laptop is slow.
Ridiculously slow. And I've no idea what the problem is - I've defragged it (twice), run msconfig to get rid of all of those nasty extra services that keep getting installed with your software, done a full system scan, uninstalled programs I no longer need, freed up disc space so that I now have 12 Gb of my 42 Gb hard drive free, but it's still as slow as snails crawling through treacle. OK, so it's only a 1.4 GHz with 192 Mb RAM but it certainly used to be a lot faster than this.
I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to rebuild Windows... except that it came with a Packard Bell standard wipe everything and return to pristine shop condition and I have no desire to have to reinstall everything that I've installed on the machine. Things like Office, Norton and WoW, which all take a couple of hours to return to normal, never mind the music collection for iTunes. Bah. If I'd got to Reykjavík this weekend I'd have had a nice shiny new MacBook by now and wouldn't have to worry any longer. Bah indeed.
I did phone the Apple store today, and they're due to get back to me by phone or email sometime soon with details of their educational discount plan (if they have one). I'm quite ready to tell them that my students have started to realise that there's no reason to buy a PC any more when you can buy a Mac that comes with Unix built in, a far better interface and, oh yes, it'll run Windows software if they really need it. It's quite nice to see people who've always thought of Macs as machines for people who don't really know how to use a computer suddenly realise that Macs actually meet their requirements far more than PCs do. And, of course, if more people start using Macs then perhaps we'll get some Mac support instead of just Windows support.
The weather that kept me away from Reykjavík hasn't let up yet. This evening I parked in the shopping centre car park as there was no way I'd be able to get the car out of the apartment car part in the morning. The snow may be very soft and light - the sort that blows in the wind - but eight inches of the stuff is enough to slow down most cars. I still have my 'normal' tyres, although I'm told that they're all-weather tyres and the only unstudded ones that are considered legally acceptable for this weather. They still don't grip on the compacted snow the way that the studded ones do, so I may yet have to get new studdies.
I'll see how the car handles tomorrow morning. If all else fails I can at least walk to work.
0 comments
Ridiculously slow. And I've no idea what the problem is - I've defragged it (twice), run msconfig to get rid of all of those nasty extra services that keep getting installed with your software, done a full system scan, uninstalled programs I no longer need, freed up disc space so that I now have 12 Gb of my 42 Gb hard drive free, but it's still as slow as snails crawling through treacle. OK, so it's only a 1.4 GHz with 192 Mb RAM but it certainly used to be a lot faster than this.
I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to rebuild Windows... except that it came with a Packard Bell standard wipe everything and return to pristine shop condition and I have no desire to have to reinstall everything that I've installed on the machine. Things like Office, Norton and WoW, which all take a couple of hours to return to normal, never mind the music collection for iTunes. Bah. If I'd got to Reykjavík this weekend I'd have had a nice shiny new MacBook by now and wouldn't have to worry any longer. Bah indeed.
I did phone the Apple store today, and they're due to get back to me by phone or email sometime soon with details of their educational discount plan (if they have one). I'm quite ready to tell them that my students have started to realise that there's no reason to buy a PC any more when you can buy a Mac that comes with Unix built in, a far better interface and, oh yes, it'll run Windows software if they really need it. It's quite nice to see people who've always thought of Macs as machines for people who don't really know how to use a computer suddenly realise that Macs actually meet their requirements far more than PCs do. And, of course, if more people start using Macs then perhaps we'll get some Mac support instead of just Windows support.
The weather that kept me away from Reykjavík hasn't let up yet. This evening I parked in the shopping centre car park as there was no way I'd be able to get the car out of the apartment car part in the morning. The snow may be very soft and light - the sort that blows in the wind - but eight inches of the stuff is enough to slow down most cars. I still have my 'normal' tyres, although I'm told that they're all-weather tyres and the only unstudded ones that are considered legally acceptable for this weather. They still don't grip on the compacted snow the way that the studded ones do, so I may yet have to get new studdies.
I'll see how the car handles tomorrow morning. If all else fails I can at least walk to work.
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Sunday, November 12, 2006
Jóhann was right
Well, partially.
It's been quite quiet on the wind front so far, but we have had almost six inches of snow. It's that very light stuff that is lifted by the wind and makes the visibility almost zero. According to the official weather conditions we're back up to a visibility of 30km, ten times that we were enjoying a couple of hours ago. I was planning to go and change the spare tyre for the repaired tyre this afternoon, but I might leave that until the show has settled a bit as there are going to be drifts in the car park.
It being Remembrance Day I listened to the important part of the ceremony on Radio 4. As soon as it got to the short service led by the Bishop of London I switched back to the world service and the news. I also found myself wondering what Tony Blair was thinking as he laid his wreath on behalf of the government - he is in many ways responsible for the most recent of the deaths being remembered. I don't think that I really approve of the politicians being involved at all with the ceremony at the Cenotaph - the ceremony is an act of remembrance on behalf of the people, represented by the apolitical figure of the monarch plus the veterans and their families. Another reason why I prefer the idea of a constitutional monarch to an elected (and therefore political) head of state.
I suppose that the religious leaders have to be there as there are a lot of religious people around and many of those who died had strong religious beliefs, but I don't see why we need to have a religious ceremony as part of this. Roll on the eventual separation of Church and State, and the realisation that religion is a personal matter, not a public one. When I switched to the world service I came in into the weekly religious news programme - interesting from an intellectual viewpoint if nothing else - where they were talking about the people who minister to fallen ministers. What a crazy idea! There are people out there (in the US, of course) who make an extremely comfortable living as professional religious advisors to TV evangelists who've been revealed not to be practising what they preach. It scares me that there are so many televangelists that enough fail to make this a viable economical undertaking. Ministers to Ministers, they call themselves.
It's not often that I agree with Elton John but he has a point in his recent call to ban organised religion, albeit not necessarily the point he wanted to make. Organised religion of any sort does seem to polarise people and render them less compassionate to their fellow beings. Kill them all; God will know His own. I blame it on the life is bad, but if you follow these rules precisely then when you die things will be much better tenet of religion - it enforces and reinforces inequality in so many ways. Wouldn't it be so much more effective to go to the root of the problem and make life better instead?
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It's been quite quiet on the wind front so far, but we have had almost six inches of snow. It's that very light stuff that is lifted by the wind and makes the visibility almost zero. According to the official weather conditions we're back up to a visibility of 30km, ten times that we were enjoying a couple of hours ago. I was planning to go and change the spare tyre for the repaired tyre this afternoon, but I might leave that until the show has settled a bit as there are going to be drifts in the car park.
It being Remembrance Day I listened to the important part of the ceremony on Radio 4. As soon as it got to the short service led by the Bishop of London I switched back to the world service and the news. I also found myself wondering what Tony Blair was thinking as he laid his wreath on behalf of the government - he is in many ways responsible for the most recent of the deaths being remembered. I don't think that I really approve of the politicians being involved at all with the ceremony at the Cenotaph - the ceremony is an act of remembrance on behalf of the people, represented by the apolitical figure of the monarch plus the veterans and their families. Another reason why I prefer the idea of a constitutional monarch to an elected (and therefore political) head of state.
I suppose that the religious leaders have to be there as there are a lot of religious people around and many of those who died had strong religious beliefs, but I don't see why we need to have a religious ceremony as part of this. Roll on the eventual separation of Church and State, and the realisation that religion is a personal matter, not a public one. When I switched to the world service I came in into the weekly religious news programme - interesting from an intellectual viewpoint if nothing else - where they were talking about the people who minister to fallen ministers. What a crazy idea! There are people out there (in the US, of course) who make an extremely comfortable living as professional religious advisors to TV evangelists who've been revealed not to be practising what they preach. It scares me that there are so many televangelists that enough fail to make this a viable economical undertaking. Ministers to Ministers, they call themselves.
It's not often that I agree with Elton John but he has a point in his recent call to ban organised religion, albeit not necessarily the point he wanted to make. Organised religion of any sort does seem to polarise people and render them less compassionate to their fellow beings. Kill them all; God will know His own. I blame it on the life is bad, but if you follow these rules precisely then when you die things will be much better tenet of religion - it enforces and reinforces inequality in so many ways. Wouldn't it be so much more effective to go to the root of the problem and make life better instead?
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Saturday, November 11, 2006
The calm before the storm
Today was reasonably quiet, but I'm told it's not going to last.
My nice neighbour Jóhan just called in to warn me about the weather alert that's been on the news today. It seems that for the next couple of days we are due some very high winds... which suggests that the chances of me making it back from Reykjavík on Monday would not have been good. Clearly the universe has got it in for me at present. I noticed from textavarp that AirIceland did put a couple of extra flights on to pick up the backlog, but I suspect that a number of people did the same as me and cancelled their flights.
On the good side, I did finally get to watch two more episodes of Dr. Who - the two part story with the black hole. Now while I certainly queried a bit of the science on that one (mainly having to do with orbits), I still found it an extremely enjoyable pair of episodes. It occurred to me, as I watched them, that this was extremely high-quality stuff. I've seen Hollywood SF movies that weren't as well made as that story. Of course the difference between Dr. Who and Torchwood also struck me, as I'm sure that there would have been a lot more blood if it had been a Torchwood tale. Still, it was pretty dark and Aliens-esque all the same.
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My nice neighbour Jóhan just called in to warn me about the weather alert that's been on the news today. It seems that for the next couple of days we are due some very high winds... which suggests that the chances of me making it back from Reykjavík on Monday would not have been good. Clearly the universe has got it in for me at present. I noticed from textavarp that AirIceland did put a couple of extra flights on to pick up the backlog, but I suspect that a number of people did the same as me and cancelled their flights.
On the good side, I did finally get to watch two more episodes of Dr. Who - the two part story with the black hole. Now while I certainly queried a bit of the science on that one (mainly having to do with orbits), I still found it an extremely enjoyable pair of episodes. It occurred to me, as I watched them, that this was extremely high-quality stuff. I've seen Hollywood SF movies that weren't as well made as that story. Of course the difference between Dr. Who and Torchwood also struck me, as I'm sure that there would have been a lot more blood if it had been a Torchwood tale. Still, it was pretty dark and Aliens-esque all the same.
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Here we go again
There will be a decision about flights at 11:10 this morning. My flight was due to leave at 09.55. I begin to wonder if I'm going to get this trip to Reykjavík after all. And, if I get there, will I be able to get back? Ho hum.
So the big question is: How long do I hold out before phoning the hotel and cancelling? I'd have to cancel the hotel and the car and contact Savannah and explain that I won't be available to meet up for coffee and the Saga museum after all. Given that it's going to take a while to get the backlog of people back to Reykjavík I could be in for quite a delay. There are normally 11 flights on a Friday and 6 on a Saturday. Most of these are on Fokker 50s, with a capacity of 46 people - assume 75% occupancy and that's over 350 people from Friday attempting to get into 276 seats... and that presumes that everything flies and doesn't include people like me who should be flying today. Even if they add extra flights it's not looking good.
I'm thinking as I type here. It's not going to work, is it? The weather forecast is for more of the same for a couple of days, so there goes the holiday. Oh drat. Drat bother bother. Bother drat bother drat. :(
UPDATE 10:00 - I've just phoned and cancelled everything. Grr... Still, I suppose I can do other things. Make more Christmas presents or something. Grr.
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So the big question is: How long do I hold out before phoning the hotel and cancelling? I'd have to cancel the hotel and the car and contact Savannah and explain that I won't be available to meet up for coffee and the Saga museum after all. Given that it's going to take a while to get the backlog of people back to Reykjavík I could be in for quite a delay. There are normally 11 flights on a Friday and 6 on a Saturday. Most of these are on Fokker 50s, with a capacity of 46 people - assume 75% occupancy and that's over 350 people from Friday attempting to get into 276 seats... and that presumes that everything flies and doesn't include people like me who should be flying today. Even if they add extra flights it's not looking good.
I'm thinking as I type here. It's not going to work, is it? The weather forecast is for more of the same for a couple of days, so there goes the holiday. Oh drat. Drat bother bother. Bother drat bother drat. :(
UPDATE 10:00 - I've just phoned and cancelled everything. Grr... Still, I suppose I can do other things. Make more Christmas presents or something. Grr.
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Friday, November 10, 2006
Cursed, I am
Cursed never to have simple travel arrangements.
The weather up here is a bit... extreme... right now. Or at least it is in Reykjavík. Satellite dishes are flying across the city and roofs are unpeeling themselves from buildings. I've got a flight booked for tomorrow for that very location with Air Iceland (not to be confused with IcelandAir - it is the same company but one operates internal flights and the other external flights). One of the nice things they have is a standard SMS system whereby you give them your mobile number when you book and then if there are any flight problems they'll text you with the details. This is an excellent idea and works extremely well in most cases.
Except if you don't speak Icelandic. :) I've just got a text which, with the aid of my English-Icelandic dictionary, I managed to decipher as meaning that there was something about cancellations on the 10th... which puzzled me as I'm flying on the 11th. Cases I can recognise and work around but I'm not very good with tenses yet. Eventually I gave up and phoned the airline, where a woman seemed quite amused that I'd at least got half of the message and explained that all flights have been cancelled today so today's passengers will have first dibs on seats on tomorrow's flights. Assuming that tomorrow's flights get off the ground at all, that is. She suggested that I keep and eye on textavarp (Icelandic teletext - literally 'text sending') and phone the airport in the morning. The first weather report is due at 07:45.
Textavarp has now been bookmarked for all sorts of reasons - as well as travel it has all of the other normal teletext functions such as news, tv schedules and cinemas. News should be helpful for this language-learning business, and the real tv schedules often bear little resemblance to the things printed in the weekly freebie booklets.
The strange thing is that the weather is pretty good up here - above freezing, occasional rain, a bit of wind, that's all. Still, it should be quite fun to soak in the Blue Lagoon while it's snowing. But do I do that tomorrow or Sunday? Decisions decisions...
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The weather up here is a bit... extreme... right now. Or at least it is in Reykjavík. Satellite dishes are flying across the city and roofs are unpeeling themselves from buildings. I've got a flight booked for tomorrow for that very location with Air Iceland (not to be confused with IcelandAir - it is the same company but one operates internal flights and the other external flights). One of the nice things they have is a standard SMS system whereby you give them your mobile number when you book and then if there are any flight problems they'll text you with the details. This is an excellent idea and works extremely well in most cases.
Except if you don't speak Icelandic. :) I've just got a text which, with the aid of my English-Icelandic dictionary, I managed to decipher as meaning that there was something about cancellations on the 10th... which puzzled me as I'm flying on the 11th. Cases I can recognise and work around but I'm not very good with tenses yet. Eventually I gave up and phoned the airline, where a woman seemed quite amused that I'd at least got half of the message and explained that all flights have been cancelled today so today's passengers will have first dibs on seats on tomorrow's flights. Assuming that tomorrow's flights get off the ground at all, that is. She suggested that I keep and eye on textavarp (Icelandic teletext - literally 'text sending') and phone the airport in the morning. The first weather report is due at 07:45.
Textavarp has now been bookmarked for all sorts of reasons - as well as travel it has all of the other normal teletext functions such as news, tv schedules and cinemas. News should be helpful for this language-learning business, and the real tv schedules often bear little resemblance to the things printed in the weekly freebie booklets.
The strange thing is that the weather is pretty good up here - above freezing, occasional rain, a bit of wind, that's all. Still, it should be quite fun to soak in the Blue Lagoon while it's snowing. But do I do that tomorrow or Sunday? Decisions decisions...
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Akureyri Kedgeree
Last night's bung-it-in kedgeree went very well.
It tasted great and everyone had seconds, so it must have been OK. For those who are interested in these things, here's the recipe. And yes, it does call for smoked salmon - it's the most commonly available fish out here.
Akureyri Kedgeree
Serves 4-6
250 g long-grain rice
250 g smoked salmon
100 g strong hard cheese, grated
4 eggs, hard boiled and chopped
400 ml milk
1 medium can sweetcorn (approx 250 g)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp chilli powder
Olive oil for frying
1. Cook rice and leave overnight in the fridge
2. Heat oven to 170 C
3. Place salmon in a large frying pan, cover with the milk and poach until the fish is cooked. Most of the milk will have been absorbed.
4. Remove salmon from frying pan, remove the skin, flake and leave to one side.
5. In the same pan, add a little olive oil and the spices and then fry the onion until soft and brown.
6. Return the flaked salmon to the frying pan and mix with the onions.
7. Add the parsley, sweetcorn and eggs
8. Add the cold rice and stir until evenly mixed.
9. Transfer the mixture to an ovenproof dish and top with the grated cheese
10. Cook in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes until the cheese has melted and begins to bubble.
Serve on its own, with salad or with crusty bread and butter.
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It tasted great and everyone had seconds, so it must have been OK. For those who are interested in these things, here's the recipe. And yes, it does call for smoked salmon - it's the most commonly available fish out here.
Akureyri Kedgeree
Serves 4-6
250 g long-grain rice
250 g smoked salmon
100 g strong hard cheese, grated
4 eggs, hard boiled and chopped
400 ml milk
1 medium can sweetcorn (approx 250 g)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp chilli powder
Olive oil for frying
1. Cook rice and leave overnight in the fridge
2. Heat oven to 170 C
3. Place salmon in a large frying pan, cover with the milk and poach until the fish is cooked. Most of the milk will have been absorbed.
4. Remove salmon from frying pan, remove the skin, flake and leave to one side.
5. In the same pan, add a little olive oil and the spices and then fry the onion until soft and brown.
6. Return the flaked salmon to the frying pan and mix with the onions.
7. Add the parsley, sweetcorn and eggs
8. Add the cold rice and stir until evenly mixed.
9. Transfer the mixture to an ovenproof dish and top with the grated cheese
10. Cook in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes until the cheese has melted and begins to bubble.
Serve on its own, with salad or with crusty bread and butter.
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Thursday, November 09, 2006
Best lab of the year
Yes, it's time for data visualisation lab 10 again.
That's the Blue Peter lab, where I divide the students up into groups, give each group a dataset they've seen before and tell them to create a 'visualisation' of the data for visually-impaired people. At this point I introduce them to the large box of assorted paper, scissors, cardboard, glue, string, beads and other such craft stuff and let them get on with it. At the end of the session I blindfold a member of each group and ask them questions about the other group's data, which they have to answer by exploring the data by touch.
It's a great lab in three ways. First of all, the students are not likely to forget it. Secondly, it makes them really think about the technical problems of encoding and representing data, which is the aim of the whole course. And finally, they normally come up with some really creative solutions. I photograph the process to record it for posterity... or maybe next year's student handbook. They're online here (the extremely young-looking student is Bjarki, Ívar's son).
At some point in the next week or so I'll upload the all of the photo's I've managed not to upload yet - things like Kate's wedding, and Andrew's and Roger's visits. That's the problem with having two computers and hosting stuff on the work one. Ah well, at least it's now on the to-do list.
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That's the Blue Peter lab, where I divide the students up into groups, give each group a dataset they've seen before and tell them to create a 'visualisation' of the data for visually-impaired people. At this point I introduce them to the large box of assorted paper, scissors, cardboard, glue, string, beads and other such craft stuff and let them get on with it. At the end of the session I blindfold a member of each group and ask them questions about the other group's data, which they have to answer by exploring the data by touch.
It's a great lab in three ways. First of all, the students are not likely to forget it. Secondly, it makes them really think about the technical problems of encoding and representing data, which is the aim of the whole course. And finally, they normally come up with some really creative solutions. I photograph the process to record it for posterity... or maybe next year's student handbook. They're online here (the extremely young-looking student is Bjarki, Ívar's son).
At some point in the next week or so I'll upload the all of the photo's I've managed not to upload yet - things like Kate's wedding, and Andrew's and Roger's visits. That's the problem with having two computers and hosting stuff on the work one. Ah well, at least it's now on the to-do list.
0 comments
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Green tea
I'm quite impressed by the restorative power of green tea.
I was feeling a bit frazzled when I got in this evening, but as I'd been shopping on the way home (mainly to collect some stuff for tomorrow's Data Visualisation lab from Tiger) and had picked up some green tea (with lemon) I treated myself to a large and calming mug of the stuff. It wasn't only effective, it also tasted quite pleasant. I was expecting it to taste rather more astringent that it did in reality so I was quite pleased. And it most certainly worked. I may have to do this on a daily basis in future.
Time for another book badge: this time it's The Ship Who Searched by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey. More intellectual candyfloss, but I don't care. It's another one from the bag of books that Sharda gave me when she left for Canada, and the one of the ... who ... series that I hadn't read yet. I've read some of Mercedes Lackey's own stuff too - The Lark and the Wren and the Sassinak series, which were quite fun. My next literary adventure is going to be Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet. I think I've read it before, but I suspect that it was about thirty years ago so I'm lookiing forward to the re-read. Politically correct it won't be, but I don't care about that either. :)
0 comments
I was feeling a bit frazzled when I got in this evening, but as I'd been shopping on the way home (mainly to collect some stuff for tomorrow's Data Visualisation lab from Tiger) and had picked up some green tea (with lemon) I treated myself to a large and calming mug of the stuff. It wasn't only effective, it also tasted quite pleasant. I was expecting it to taste rather more astringent that it did in reality so I was quite pleased. And it most certainly worked. I may have to do this on a daily basis in future.
Time for another book badge: this time it's The Ship Who Searched by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey. More intellectual candyfloss, but I don't care. It's another one from the bag of books that Sharda gave me when she left for Canada, and the one of the ... who ... series that I hadn't read yet. I've read some of Mercedes Lackey's own stuff too - The Lark and the Wren and the Sassinak series, which were quite fun. My next literary adventure is going to be Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet. I think I've read it before, but I suspect that it was about thirty years ago so I'm lookiing forward to the re-read. Politically correct it won't be, but I don't care about that either. :)
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Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Booked
A weekend in Reykjavík.
Although I've been here for over two years now, I've not actually spent any real 'tourist' time in Reykjavík. I was there last December when the family came over for a couple of days but then I was acting as tour guide to the really obvious things rather than having an opportunity to see anything for myself. It may not be tourist season but I don't have a problem with that, as I'm sure it will just mean that the museums and galleries are quieter. I've got an excuse this time because I've got a meeting there on Monday morning which I'd have to fly down for otherwise, so I thought I'd make the most of the opportunity to take a short break.
So the hotel, flight and car are all booked. On Sunday I'm hoping to meet up with a visiting SCAdian exchange student at the University of Iceland and thence to one of the museums and, joy of joys, the Blue Lagoon. I'm really looking forward to a good soak in the pool, and maybe I'll get to visit the geological exhibition nearby and perhaps even visit some of the more interesting places around Reykjanesbær. I'm not planning an entirely cultural weekend though - there's definitely the potential of a trip to the new giant IKEA to select some stuff to have sent up on the round-Iceland delivery van. Things like DVD shelves and a chest of drawers or two that I just can't get up here. Although I might really treat myself and go and see Amadeus on Sunday night, I haven't decided about that yet.
In the meantime I've just got to make sure that I have everything ready for next Tuesday's lecture before the end of the week. It should be fine, barring any unforeseen major disasters. In fact, the admin is sufficiently under control that I might even have a chance to write a lecture or two tomorrow; this would definitely be a Good Thing because I'm beginning to get quite paranoid about it. As it is, I suspect I'm going to be writing the later lectures as I give the earlier ones, which is something I hate.That and writing lectures while I'm back in the UK at Christmas, which is something else I don't like. So getting at least one written tomorrow will make me feel much, much better and less guilty over the weekend.
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Although I've been here for over two years now, I've not actually spent any real 'tourist' time in Reykjavík. I was there last December when the family came over for a couple of days but then I was acting as tour guide to the really obvious things rather than having an opportunity to see anything for myself. It may not be tourist season but I don't have a problem with that, as I'm sure it will just mean that the museums and galleries are quieter. I've got an excuse this time because I've got a meeting there on Monday morning which I'd have to fly down for otherwise, so I thought I'd make the most of the opportunity to take a short break.
So the hotel, flight and car are all booked. On Sunday I'm hoping to meet up with a visiting SCAdian exchange student at the University of Iceland and thence to one of the museums and, joy of joys, the Blue Lagoon. I'm really looking forward to a good soak in the pool, and maybe I'll get to visit the geological exhibition nearby and perhaps even visit some of the more interesting places around Reykjanesbær. I'm not planning an entirely cultural weekend though - there's definitely the potential of a trip to the new giant IKEA to select some stuff to have sent up on the round-Iceland delivery van. Things like DVD shelves and a chest of drawers or two that I just can't get up here. Although I might really treat myself and go and see Amadeus on Sunday night, I haven't decided about that yet.
In the meantime I've just got to make sure that I have everything ready for next Tuesday's lecture before the end of the week. It should be fine, barring any unforeseen major disasters. In fact, the admin is sufficiently under control that I might even have a chance to write a lecture or two tomorrow; this would definitely be a Good Thing because I'm beginning to get quite paranoid about it. As it is, I suspect I'm going to be writing the later lectures as I give the earlier ones, which is something I hate.That and writing lectures while I'm back in the UK at Christmas, which is something else I don't like. So getting at least one written tomorrow will make me feel much, much better and less guilty over the weekend.
0 comments
Monday, November 06, 2006
RIP Horizon
We've just had a BBC Horizon from 2005 on RÚV. And it was inane.
For those of you who may still be avid Horizon watchers - as I was while in the UK, partly out of desperation for science programming even though it was already going downhill - it was the one about using dogs to identify urine and breath samples from people with prostate, bladder, lung or breast cancers. I read an article on The Register a couple of days ago claiming that Horizon had been dumbed down beyond all belief and after this I must admit, I have to agree with them. If this was the depths to which the programme has sunk I'm clearly not missing anything.
The entire programme was full of dog trainers saying how wonderful their dogs were, how effective the canine sense of smell is, how the mainstream medical establishment won't listen to them and how terrible it is that the Cancer Research Fund wouldn't give them any money. There wasn't a single explanation of why cancers might be detectable by smell, what the chemicals responsible for this might be, or anything thing else of real scientific interest. Just lots of footage of big friendly dogs selecting objects and references to the fact that people used to detect illnesses by smell. Now I have no problem with the idea that a trained dog could successfully and reliably detect cancer samples due to subtle odour changes, but the programme kept telling me that because I was intelligent I was going to laugh at the idea. The whole thing was a forty-seven minute plea for independent funding on behalf of the Cambridge team doing the work.
I remember reading the original article in New Scientist (it's handy - if you keep up with NS then you'll know everything that Horizon does because NS will have reported it six months earlier) and, in spite of NS being the tabloid science press, the amount of real science in the article was light-years beyond what I've just seen on television. The programme certainly came nowhere near the standard of An Inconvenient Truth, which I watched over the weekend and by which I was quite impressed.
It looks like Horizon has gone the way of the 'A'-level, BBC1, and society in general. Bah.
0 comments
For those of you who may still be avid Horizon watchers - as I was while in the UK, partly out of desperation for science programming even though it was already going downhill - it was the one about using dogs to identify urine and breath samples from people with prostate, bladder, lung or breast cancers. I read an article on The Register a couple of days ago claiming that Horizon had been dumbed down beyond all belief and after this I must admit, I have to agree with them. If this was the depths to which the programme has sunk I'm clearly not missing anything.
The entire programme was full of dog trainers saying how wonderful their dogs were, how effective the canine sense of smell is, how the mainstream medical establishment won't listen to them and how terrible it is that the Cancer Research Fund wouldn't give them any money. There wasn't a single explanation of why cancers might be detectable by smell, what the chemicals responsible for this might be, or anything thing else of real scientific interest. Just lots of footage of big friendly dogs selecting objects and references to the fact that people used to detect illnesses by smell. Now I have no problem with the idea that a trained dog could successfully and reliably detect cancer samples due to subtle odour changes, but the programme kept telling me that because I was intelligent I was going to laugh at the idea. The whole thing was a forty-seven minute plea for independent funding on behalf of the Cambridge team doing the work.
I remember reading the original article in New Scientist (it's handy - if you keep up with NS then you'll know everything that Horizon does because NS will have reported it six months earlier) and, in spite of NS being the tabloid science press, the amount of real science in the article was light-years beyond what I've just seen on television. The programme certainly came nowhere near the standard of An Inconvenient Truth, which I watched over the weekend and by which I was quite impressed.
It looks like Horizon has gone the way of the 'A'-level, BBC1, and society in general. Bah.
0 comments
Love / Hate
I have a love/hate relationship with coffee.
I love the taste of a mug of good coffee when I get into work in the morning. I hate what the damned stuff does to me if I have more than one mug of rather weak coffee. Today I made the mistake of having two, and right now I feel as if I want to bounce off the walls, screaming. It's a good thing that I'm no longer a programmer, as I don't think I could handle the sheer volume of caffeine involved. The really crazy thing is that I've actually got a lot done today - I've collated all of the existing (i.e.approximately two thirds of the total) learning outcome grids and created a reference grid to show how they relate to the learning outcome grid for the degree as a whole. This has involved modifying several of them, which is never fun but at least I can now show that everything fits together. This is important as I'm supposed to be giving a presentation on how it works at some time within the next two weeks. I've also printed out (and stapled) the lecture notes and papers for tomorrow's lecture (a major job in its own right). I've upgraded my Redemption membership, ordered some books and made enquiries about a hotel room for my forthcoming cultural weekend in Reykjavík.
On top of this I finally managed to find Fribbi, the building manager, to ask him strange questions about the building's earthquake survivability. I think he's got used to me asking odd things by now so he wasn't at all fazed when I asked if we had any interesting anti-quake systems built in. It turns out that we haven't, although the building isn't expected to collapse in anything less than a 7.5, which is nice to know. He was also quite amused that I was most definitely in the best place to feel the quake, as he complained that being on the ground floor he seldom feels anything.
Hmm... I really ought to get some green tea for days like this. I could really do with a caffeine antagonist right now. Maybe L-Theanine capsules are something else I should put on the next UK shopping list.
0 comments
I love the taste of a mug of good coffee when I get into work in the morning. I hate what the damned stuff does to me if I have more than one mug of rather weak coffee. Today I made the mistake of having two, and right now I feel as if I want to bounce off the walls, screaming. It's a good thing that I'm no longer a programmer, as I don't think I could handle the sheer volume of caffeine involved. The really crazy thing is that I've actually got a lot done today - I've collated all of the existing (i.e.approximately two thirds of the total) learning outcome grids and created a reference grid to show how they relate to the learning outcome grid for the degree as a whole. This has involved modifying several of them, which is never fun but at least I can now show that everything fits together. This is important as I'm supposed to be giving a presentation on how it works at some time within the next two weeks. I've also printed out (and stapled) the lecture notes and papers for tomorrow's lecture (a major job in its own right). I've upgraded my Redemption membership, ordered some books and made enquiries about a hotel room for my forthcoming cultural weekend in Reykjavík.
On top of this I finally managed to find Fribbi, the building manager, to ask him strange questions about the building's earthquake survivability. I think he's got used to me asking odd things by now so he wasn't at all fazed when I asked if we had any interesting anti-quake systems built in. It turns out that we haven't, although the building isn't expected to collapse in anything less than a 7.5, which is nice to know. He was also quite amused that I was most definitely in the best place to feel the quake, as he complained that being on the ground floor he seldom feels anything.
Hmm... I really ought to get some green tea for days like this. I could really do with a caffeine antagonist right now. Maybe L-Theanine capsules are something else I should put on the next UK shopping list.
0 comments
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Advance warning
Revel In The Midnight Sun 2 is planned for May 24th-27th 2007.
This isn't final yet, of course, but we discussed the idea over dinner last night (an excellent meal followed by several hours playing Fluxx and Guillotine) and that's our projected date. The timing is a little strange, but we believe that Iceland Express will be flying direct flights from Stanstead to Akureyri by that point, and currently when they do that the flights are only on Thursdays and Sundays so we need to work around these flights as, frankly, it's far too expensive to fly to Reykjavík and then up to Akureyri to even consider running an event without direct flights. There might even be flights from Copenhagen on the same days. A return flight would probably cost about £150 plus taxes but might be less.
So the plan would be:
Thursday - fly in, see Akureyri, have a relaxed evening
Friday - the whistle-stop tour of northern Iceland, covering Goðafoss, Mývatn, the Blue Mud hverrir, the region where the continental plates are splitting apart and ending up at the geothermal pool.
Saturday - normal SCA-type things including A&S, games, competitions, combat activities dependent upon the attendees and a feast with something roasted on a spit.
Sunday - Akureyri town museums and flight home.
At this time of year there is no real night - I've sat doing embroidery by natural light after midnight at this point before now - so it's a great time to come up here. One warning though - there is still a chance of snow at this point in the year, but alternatively it could be 20 degrees and bright and sunny.
This is the initial plan, and we have yet to cost everything, but we're in the process of doing that. We do have some people locally who are interested in attending, but if anyone would like to come over from the UK, Eire or elsewhere we'd be delighted to see them. As I've suffered somewhat from SCA withdrawal this year thanks to travel woes it'll be nice to have something local that I can guarantee that I can get to.
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This isn't final yet, of course, but we discussed the idea over dinner last night (an excellent meal followed by several hours playing Fluxx and Guillotine) and that's our projected date. The timing is a little strange, but we believe that Iceland Express will be flying direct flights from Stanstead to Akureyri by that point, and currently when they do that the flights are only on Thursdays and Sundays so we need to work around these flights as, frankly, it's far too expensive to fly to Reykjavík and then up to Akureyri to even consider running an event without direct flights. There might even be flights from Copenhagen on the same days. A return flight would probably cost about £150 plus taxes but might be less.
So the plan would be:
Thursday - fly in, see Akureyri, have a relaxed evening
Friday - the whistle-stop tour of northern Iceland, covering Goðafoss, Mývatn, the Blue Mud hverrir, the region where the continental plates are splitting apart and ending up at the geothermal pool.
Saturday - normal SCA-type things including A&S, games, competitions, combat activities dependent upon the attendees and a feast with something roasted on a spit.
Sunday - Akureyri town museums and flight home.
At this time of year there is no real night - I've sat doing embroidery by natural light after midnight at this point before now - so it's a great time to come up here. One warning though - there is still a chance of snow at this point in the year, but alternatively it could be 20 degrees and bright and sunny.
This is the initial plan, and we have yet to cost everything, but we're in the process of doing that. We do have some people locally who are interested in attending, but if anyone would like to come over from the UK, Eire or elsewhere we'd be delighted to see them. As I've suffered somewhat from SCA withdrawal this year thanks to travel woes it'll be nice to have something local that I can guarantee that I can get to.
0 comments
Saturday, November 04, 2006
A matter of dimensions
Cookery may be bucket chemistry, but it's still a matter of dimensionality in some ways.
That's dimensions in terms of MLT, or mass, length, and time. All baking is based upon these three dimensions, although which ones you use for which purpose differ according to your location. For instance, I'm used to working in M - ounces or grams - rather than L³ (or volume, as it's known to non-physicists. Now any physicist will tell you that M and L are completely different things and are not interchangeable. So why measure solids in terms of L? Solids of the same L³ can have very different M because they have different densities (which are measured in M/L³).
I don't happen to know the density of dessicated coconut. Nor that of granulated or even caster sugar. I do, however, have a nice set of kitchen scales that can tell me, to within an acceptable error margin, the mass of a pile of coconut or sugar. I also have cups in several values of L³, none of which seem to be standard. There's the espresso cup, the small teacup, the normal mug, the large coffee mug, and the I'm a computer programmer and it's seven in the morning mug. Any recipe that says take 3/4 cup of cocunut and 1/3 cup of sugar, mix, then add 1 egg white is a recipe for disaster! Do I use espresso cups if I have small eggs, normal mugs for large free-range eggs and giant computer programmer mugs if I happen to keep an ostrich in the yard?
OK, so historically there was probably a company - in Chicago, or Atlanta or somewhere like that - that made standard cups that were found in every home in the US that could be used for measuring purpose. Similarly, a single company in Melborne or Sydney must have done the same for Australia, as the Australian and US cups are not the same size. Clearly, these primitive colonial settlements must have lost the engineering capability to manufacture scales. Maybe Britain viewed kitchen scales as a military secret in order to prevent the wives of the Minutemen from getting involved in the home-made explosives business, I don't know. Mind you, if the British had, I'm sure that the French would have sold them anyway, just to annoy.
So where is this diatribe going? Well, I'm not bad at baking cakes. I have knowledge of the vital formula the weight of the eggs in sugar, fat and flour and, armed with this, a cake tester and a set of kitchen scales, I can make all sorts of cakes even without a recipe book. For biscuits, though, I'll resort to a recipe. Today I attempted to make Viennese biscuits (with a recipe defined in terms of M) and coconut cherry slices (recipe defined in terms of L³). The biscuits are fine. The slices are edible but need a bit more experimentation to find the right formula because the density-influenced conversion between L³ and M needs a bit more work.
This can all be solved quite simply. First of all, all recipe measures should be given in terms of weight (for solids) and volume (for liquids). Secondly, chickens should be genetically engineered to produce identically-sized eggs worldwide. Finally, all baking tins will come in standard sizes, and all recipes will give baking times (our remaining dimension T) for all standard baking tins. Simple.
Lasers, eight o'clock in the morning, day one.
***
And the Viennese biscuit recipe to go with the biscuit gun is:
150 g butter
50 g sugar
150 g flour
2 ml vanilla essence
Heat oven to 464 Kelvin. Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla essence. Sift flour into mix and beat until smooth. Fill biscuit gun with mix and pipe individual biscuits onto tray. Cook in centre third of oven for 8-10 minutes until pale gold in colour.
1 comments
That's dimensions in terms of MLT, or mass, length, and time. All baking is based upon these three dimensions, although which ones you use for which purpose differ according to your location. For instance, I'm used to working in M - ounces or grams - rather than L³ (or volume, as it's known to non-physicists. Now any physicist will tell you that M and L are completely different things and are not interchangeable. So why measure solids in terms of L? Solids of the same L³ can have very different M because they have different densities (which are measured in M/L³).
I don't happen to know the density of dessicated coconut. Nor that of granulated or even caster sugar. I do, however, have a nice set of kitchen scales that can tell me, to within an acceptable error margin, the mass of a pile of coconut or sugar. I also have cups in several values of L³, none of which seem to be standard. There's the espresso cup, the small teacup, the normal mug, the large coffee mug, and the I'm a computer programmer and it's seven in the morning mug. Any recipe that says take 3/4 cup of cocunut and 1/3 cup of sugar, mix, then add 1 egg white is a recipe for disaster! Do I use espresso cups if I have small eggs, normal mugs for large free-range eggs and giant computer programmer mugs if I happen to keep an ostrich in the yard?
OK, so historically there was probably a company - in Chicago, or Atlanta or somewhere like that - that made standard cups that were found in every home in the US that could be used for measuring purpose. Similarly, a single company in Melborne or Sydney must have done the same for Australia, as the Australian and US cups are not the same size. Clearly, these primitive colonial settlements must have lost the engineering capability to manufacture scales. Maybe Britain viewed kitchen scales as a military secret in order to prevent the wives of the Minutemen from getting involved in the home-made explosives business, I don't know. Mind you, if the British had, I'm sure that the French would have sold them anyway, just to annoy.
So where is this diatribe going? Well, I'm not bad at baking cakes. I have knowledge of the vital formula the weight of the eggs in sugar, fat and flour and, armed with this, a cake tester and a set of kitchen scales, I can make all sorts of cakes even without a recipe book. For biscuits, though, I'll resort to a recipe. Today I attempted to make Viennese biscuits (with a recipe defined in terms of M) and coconut cherry slices (recipe defined in terms of L³). The biscuits are fine. The slices are edible but need a bit more experimentation to find the right formula because the density-influenced conversion between L³ and M needs a bit more work.
This can all be solved quite simply. First of all, all recipe measures should be given in terms of weight (for solids) and volume (for liquids). Secondly, chickens should be genetically engineered to produce identically-sized eggs worldwide. Finally, all baking tins will come in standard sizes, and all recipes will give baking times (our remaining dimension T) for all standard baking tins. Simple.
Lasers, eight o'clock in the morning, day one.
***
And the Viennese biscuit recipe to go with the biscuit gun is:
150 g butter
50 g sugar
150 g flour
2 ml vanilla essence
Heat oven to 464 Kelvin. Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla essence. Sift flour into mix and beat until smooth. Fill biscuit gun with mix and pipe individual biscuits onto tray. Cook in centre third of oven for 8-10 minutes until pale gold in colour.
1 comments
Friday, November 03, 2006
Yellow. Big. Bulldozer.
No, they're not threatening to knock my house down.
Rather they're flattening The Carpark Between The Worlds - clearly the upper echelons of university administration are tired of the rollercoaster ride across the car park every day. Or maybe they're just making it safe for the Rektor to return - a couple of weeks ago he broke his leg very badly while doing some sort of typically Icelandic sporty thing, and if I was him I certainly wouldn't want to try to walk across the car park the way it was with a weak ankle. It had never occurred to me before, but looking out onto the centre of the campus gives you a far greater sense of belonging than does looking out away from the place. Of course, if it was just other offices that I could see then I might feel a little less enthusiastic, but with the added fjord and mountains it certainly seems to have an effect.
Then, after a day of writing and compiling learning outcomes, course descriptions and lecture schedules (I'm quite impressed - I know exactly what I'm going to teach in my computer architecture model, when I'm going to teach it, what the course learning outcomes are and how they fit with the departmental learning outcomes; all I have to do now is write the thing!) I went shopping. I have to admit that I hate going grocery shopping on a Friday because everywhere is so busy, but sometimes you have no option. I needed butter, eggs and other baking basics before tomorrow as I'm going out gaming and it's a good excuse to bake.
In fact, I bought more than just ingredients and finally managed to find a biscuit gun up at the MegaByko. I used to have one when I was in the UK but it wasn't high on my list of priorities to bring over here with me. Thankfully Dr. Oetker does them as well as Lakeland Plastics, so I'm now prepared for a bake-fest tomorrow morning. It's a real shame that the things I'm best at cooking are the things I really shouldn't cook very often, like Viennese biscuits, meringue swans, treacle flapjack and black forest gateau. Over the last couple of days I've acquired a number of baking related things, like a baking tray large enough for a pizza, a cooling rack and a loaf tin of a suitable size to use with my Lakeland paper loaf cases. Actually, Dr. Oetker does all sorts of wonderful things that I'm managing not to buy at present, such as interestingly-shaped muffin tins and fluted Savarin moulds, but it's getting tougher and tougher resisting them. I know I'll cave in eventually, and then I'll just have to use them. Clearly I need more excuses to bake.
0 comments
Rather they're flattening The Carpark Between The Worlds - clearly the upper echelons of university administration are tired of the rollercoaster ride across the car park every day. Or maybe they're just making it safe for the Rektor to return - a couple of weeks ago he broke his leg very badly while doing some sort of typically Icelandic sporty thing, and if I was him I certainly wouldn't want to try to walk across the car park the way it was with a weak ankle. It had never occurred to me before, but looking out onto the centre of the campus gives you a far greater sense of belonging than does looking out away from the place. Of course, if it was just other offices that I could see then I might feel a little less enthusiastic, but with the added fjord and mountains it certainly seems to have an effect.
Then, after a day of writing and compiling learning outcomes, course descriptions and lecture schedules (I'm quite impressed - I know exactly what I'm going to teach in my computer architecture model, when I'm going to teach it, what the course learning outcomes are and how they fit with the departmental learning outcomes; all I have to do now is write the thing!) I went shopping. I have to admit that I hate going grocery shopping on a Friday because everywhere is so busy, but sometimes you have no option. I needed butter, eggs and other baking basics before tomorrow as I'm going out gaming and it's a good excuse to bake.
In fact, I bought more than just ingredients and finally managed to find a biscuit gun up at the MegaByko. I used to have one when I was in the UK but it wasn't high on my list of priorities to bring over here with me. Thankfully Dr. Oetker does them as well as Lakeland Plastics, so I'm now prepared for a bake-fest tomorrow morning. It's a real shame that the things I'm best at cooking are the things I really shouldn't cook very often, like Viennese biscuits, meringue swans, treacle flapjack and black forest gateau. Over the last couple of days I've acquired a number of baking related things, like a baking tray large enough for a pizza, a cooling rack and a loaf tin of a suitable size to use with my Lakeland paper loaf cases. Actually, Dr. Oetker does all sorts of wonderful things that I'm managing not to buy at present, such as interestingly-shaped muffin tins and fluted Savarin moulds, but it's getting tougher and tougher resisting them. I know I'll cave in eventually, and then I'll just have to use them. Clearly I need more excuses to bake.
0 comments
Thursday, November 02, 2006
New office
This afternoon I moved into my new spacious managerial office.
It's been available for a couple of weeks but I've just been too busy to sort out the key and so on. In theory my current key was supposed to fit it but didn't, so they've now changed the lock rather than change my key. I'm sure it would have been easier to change my key, but mine not to reason why, as it were. Still, with the help of Martha and four of my third year students I rapidly moved all of my crap from my old office to the new one and have now just to finish throwing things out and deciding where they're going to go. One of my students looked very skeptical when I told him that the only time you ever get to really reorganise and purge your paperwork is when you move office as the rest of the time you're too busy doing other things. No doubt he'll find out the hard way when he hits the Real World. :)
The new office is approximately half as big again as the previous one. It also has double the number of bookshelves and drawers and maybe a third extra desk space. Not only that, it has two (!) whiteboards as opposed to the zero whiteboards I've had before. It also has a window which I can not only reach, but which also actually opens more than two inches. Other perks of a management office are a desk lamp and a set of speakers for the computer (so I no longer need to buy another desk lamp and can put my speakers on the home computer). And then there's the phone... it's bigger, has more buttons and also has caller display which is quite fun and will no doubt be quite useful.
I've left the best part until last. While the previous office had a view down the hill across the fjord to the south, this one faces north and has a much better view complete with multiple snow-capped mountains, a long stretch of fjord, The Bell and, if you look downsteam to the mouth of the fjord, the arctic circle. It's not only impressive but inspirational in many ways, although I'm going to have to be careful that I don't get drawn into it too often or I'll never get anything done! I'll post a photo once I get a good one. A further advantage of a north-facing office is that I won't need the blackout blinds to prevent myself being blinded by the sun.
Mark, who was the previous occupant of this office, is now off in Foreign Parts. Actually he's in Potentially Revolutionary Foreign Parts in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where right now there are tens of thousands of people threatening a revolution in the city's main square. But then, he has a certain talent for finding himself in interesting situations in strange places (like running a university faculty in northern Iceland :) ) so although we're all a bit concerned up here I'm sure he'll be fine.
0 comments
It's been available for a couple of weeks but I've just been too busy to sort out the key and so on. In theory my current key was supposed to fit it but didn't, so they've now changed the lock rather than change my key. I'm sure it would have been easier to change my key, but mine not to reason why, as it were. Still, with the help of Martha and four of my third year students I rapidly moved all of my crap from my old office to the new one and have now just to finish throwing things out and deciding where they're going to go. One of my students looked very skeptical when I told him that the only time you ever get to really reorganise and purge your paperwork is when you move office as the rest of the time you're too busy doing other things. No doubt he'll find out the hard way when he hits the Real World. :)
The new office is approximately half as big again as the previous one. It also has double the number of bookshelves and drawers and maybe a third extra desk space. Not only that, it has two (!) whiteboards as opposed to the zero whiteboards I've had before. It also has a window which I can not only reach, but which also actually opens more than two inches. Other perks of a management office are a desk lamp and a set of speakers for the computer (so I no longer need to buy another desk lamp and can put my speakers on the home computer). And then there's the phone... it's bigger, has more buttons and also has caller display which is quite fun and will no doubt be quite useful.
I've left the best part until last. While the previous office had a view down the hill across the fjord to the south, this one faces north and has a much better view complete with multiple snow-capped mountains, a long stretch of fjord, The Bell and, if you look downsteam to the mouth of the fjord, the arctic circle. It's not only impressive but inspirational in many ways, although I'm going to have to be careful that I don't get drawn into it too often or I'll never get anything done! I'll post a photo once I get a good one. A further advantage of a north-facing office is that I won't need the blackout blinds to prevent myself being blinded by the sun.
Mark, who was the previous occupant of this office, is now off in Foreign Parts. Actually he's in Potentially Revolutionary Foreign Parts in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where right now there are tens of thousands of people threatening a revolution in the city's main square. But then, he has a certain talent for finding himself in interesting situations in strange places (like running a university faculty in northern Iceland :) ) so although we're all a bit concerned up here I'm sure he'll be fine.
0 comments
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Boom! What was that?
That was a magnitude 5.0 earthquake with its epicentre about 30 miles away. At just before 14:00 GMT Akureyri was rocked by what was, even by Icelandic standards, quite a strong earthquake. I was up on the top (i.e. sixth (UK) or seventh (most other places)) floor of the university tower at the time, trying to find the final invoices for the NUCOG workshops prior to submitting the final report. The quake only lasted about a second but I not only felt it but heard it. It went bang rather than rumble, and my first thought was that an aeroplane had crashed coming in to land at the airport. That has been my first thought every time I've experienced an earthquake, no doubt because I'm not used to them, even here.
There were various squeaks of surprise, and then another couple of seconds of silence while everyone waited to make sure that the building wasn't about to fall over. When we were all happy that we were safe there was a general hubbub about it being the strongest quake we'd had in quite a while - it must have been at least 3.5, maybe even 4.5. It certainly felt stronger than the 3.2 I'd experienced in Liverpool. Of course the first place we turned to was the Icelandic Meteorological Office who have a near-real-time display of all earthquake activity across the country. I say near-real-time because they do have a five minute delay before the signal makes it to the web page. Sure enough, a few minutes later there appeared a nice green star on the map just northwest of Húsavík to say that an earthquake greater than magnitude 3 had occurred. It had been, according to the website, a magnitude 5.0 quake with its hypocentre just under 9km below ground - pretty deep for most of the earthquakes around here which are often less than 2km in depth.
The website also identified numerous aftershocks but none of these was more than a 2 and we didn't notice them. Nevertheless, it was all quite exciting as this was my first real Icelandic earthquake (the earthquake simulator at Geysir doesn't count) so I was quite delighted even if it did bring my skin out in goosebumps. More please! So it's been an Earth Day in more ways than one.
5 comments