Nik's Saga

That was my contribution to dinner.

Dinner on New Year's Eve is always haggis, which Elizabeth brings from her local butcher in Prestonpans and who certainly produces the best haggis I've ever had. Debby does the traditional neeps and tatties to go with it, but until now we haven't really done dessert. Previously I've always arrived in St. Andrews on New Year's Eve itself so I've just contributed wine to the event, but as I was there a day in advance I decided to do dessert as well.

It was going to be a meringue vacherin, with raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, but as there wasn't a piping set at Wayside, and since I forgot to buy a piping nozzle in Morrisons I decided to do straightforward square platters of meringue rather than circular or more exotic ones. Nor could I find the electric mixer, so I used a rotary mixer on the egg whites instead. But that wasn't too bad - at least it wasn't a whisk. It was when I put them into the oven that I discovered the third important truth of life. Yes, up there on a par with never fight a land war in Asia and never go head to head with a Scicillian if your life is on the line is never make meringues in someone else's oven. They took nearly five hours to dry out and then another hour to pick the paper off them. Memo to self: next year buy rice paper for the bases; at least you'll be able to eat it when it won't peel off the back.

Eventually I put a layer of meringue on the bottom, a layer of fruit and whipped cream, then a layer of meringue pieces on the top. It went down well, although as it had a footprint somewhere in excess of A3 it's going to do tomorrow lunch as well.

The only question that remains is what do you do with a dozen egg yolks?
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... if I press this button?

The word 'cruise' lights up on the control panel. This was an exciting thing that I discovered about the Saab as I drove up to Scotland today. I had no idea that it had cruise control, and I was actually trying to turn the headlights onto beam, but it introduced me to a whole new world of possibilities. Once I'd worked out what it was and how it worked, though, I was no longer on roads upon which I could use it effectively. Typical. And it was rather wet for much of the rest of the journey so I couldn't really have used it then either, but it was an exciting discovery all the same.

Nevertheless, I've made it to St. Andrews ready for the social whirl that is New Year. The plan tomorrow is to make chocolate-dipped Viennese biscuits as nibbles and maybe a raspberry and ice cream vacherin for dessert tomorrow evening. Assuming that Morrisons is open tomorrow morning, that is. :)
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This was the mantra of the day.

It's entirely due to a trip to the big Hobbycraft store in Warrington, which is conveniently close to Liverpool (I have a strange sense of distance, I know). I wandered around the store looking at the treasures within, identifying lots of things that I'd really like but don't actually need - and couldn't take back to Iceland with any ease. I eventually came away with an assortment of beads and a couple of cutting templates but was very good otherwise. Although I suspect I may have raised a number of eyebrows walking around the store saying I don't need it to myself quite audibly.

I am determined to get some beading done over the next day or so - I have gifts to make - so I may have to be a little furtive about it. My other concern is that my left hand is really quite painful at present, even after I've worn the recommended glove thing. Maybe it's a bit too tight... I bought two pairs, so I may take the unopened one back to Boots tomorrow to swap it for the next size up. I really hope this isn't going to be a permanent feature as it could seriously cramp my crafting style. Not to mention my fencing style.
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I had a really good day with a really bad ending.

This morning I got up ludicrously early to get a train to Leeds, where I met up with Penny and Martin for a trip to the Royal Armouries. It's a fascinating place, and although we spent six hours there we probably only saw about a third of the collection - some things were closed for the winter and so on. There were a number of things that I looked at that I'd known intellectually but hadn't really got a feel for. Things like the actual size of the flint in a flintlock musket, or how short a shortsword is compared to a rapier. They also have a very good shop, where I indulged myself in the purchase of a leather goblet for SCA events and a slim biography of a certain Patrick Ferguson, inventor of the Ferguson breech-loading rifle (a book which is currently being perused by my Dad, and which may well end up staying here rather than heading back to Iceland with me.

I would have photographs to share if it wasn't for the bad thing. Once the museum closed we went into the city centre for dinner and somehow I managed to leave my handbag on the seat outside. I've no idea how. I got it back, complete with my Icelandic bank cards but bereft of any cash, my iPod and my camera. I've reported it to the police and got an incident number but I'm very unlikely to get anything back. At least I can claim for the iPod and camera on my insurance.

So although I had a great day it got rather stressful later on. I'm going to have to phone Visa tomorrow to let them know what happened, which could be a serious pain as I suspect they'll cancel the card just in case and send my new one to my Icelandic address while I'll still be here in the UK. It looks like I'm back to using cash until I get back up north. I suppose it'll stop me buying things.
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Shopping is sometimes good.

I've now got the new memory in my laptop - it has almost tripled the RAM to 704 (don't ask me - I try not to do hardware!) Meg and it's certainly running a lot faster and more smoothly than it was before. I suppose the big test will be attempting to run WoW to see what happens. We also now have Dad's laptop on line as well as mine, as although the card claimed to need a P3 it worked quite happily with a P2. All I have to do now is to put the printer on the network too.

Shopping was not as successful as planned. It turns out that the bead shop that used to be in the city centre is there no more. This is quite frustrating as you can't get jewellery-making beads - things like Japanese cylinder beads - in normal craft shops. Even John Lewis only had three of the four anchor threads I need to finish my celtic beasties hanging. On the plus side, I did find some interesting DVDs in the sale in Virgin, including Bird of Prey, an eighties thriller series I remember enjoying. At least I'll be returning to Iceland with some interesting viewing ahead of me.
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Actually that's mainly tomorrow, but it started today.

Dad's Christmas present was a wireless modem router and a wireless PCMCIA card for his laptop, so I've now got network connectivity for my laptop here rather than having to use his machine. Alright, it's rather slow, but wireless is on my machine, partly because it doesn't have a lot of memory. So today we went to the PC World sale, where I spent five minutes getting another half Gig of memory and he spent three quarters of an hour getting a printer - eventually buying the one I suggested initially.

Over the next week or so his computer is going to be moved from my bedroom to the little bedroom/office, which means rearranging the whole phone/fax/modem setup so I decided to make sure everything works before it all moves. I like to know that it's not the router that's causing problems.

I've also even managed to get almost a week's worth of lectures written today, which is definitely a good thing. One week down, seven to go.
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Do sprouts count as a high-status foodstuff?

I wondered this as I was preparing them this morning. It was the first time I'd actually prepared sprouts (Mum used to do them while I did the potatoes or something similar) so I hadn't realised just how much of a faff it is peeling, tailing and incising them. No wonder they're only eaten at Christmas - I'm sure that no-one really has time to cook them otherwise. Unless you pay someone to do them, that it. There also seems to be rather a lot of waste per sprout.

All of the vegetables were ready by the time Kayte arrived, so Christmas dinner ran along the lines of a military operation - aided by various timers lunch was not only on time but all on time. And forget the idea of cooking a turkey, it's much easier to have Kayte add one to the order for pre-cooked turkey crowns for the pub and then bring it up here. Even the Christmas pud actually came out in a single piece, so we set fire to it with the Corvoisier.

A merry Christmas to you all.

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I have just finished decorating the tree.

The idea this year was to make it tasteful rather than what I would describe as 'family'. Gone is the strings of metallic beads, gone are the miniature crackers and the tartan bows, gone are the clip-on glass candles. Not my idea, but it keeps Dad happy. I drew the line at losing some of the great family ornaments - the old bakelite stars, the painted wooden dinosaurs, the butch angels with their huge biceps and fists, and the farting fairy (it's supposed to be a cherub trailing a tail of stars but Mum took one look at it when we first got it and it was immediately renamed).

The final news of Yule in Thule

• Last Yule lad helps with candle making

Also, Iceland Review has a nice piece about the traditional Icelandic Christmas. Instead of these joys I'm going to watch four hours of various CSI:XXX and... hang on, I could do that in Iceland. Well, maybe not for four hours on the trot. :)
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Well, I finally got in at 03:00.

The flight from Iceland was eventually scheduled for 21:30 and took off about a quarter of an hour later. The flight was uneventful and landed at 00:10. Immigration was fast, as there was only the one flight to deal with and that one wasn't even full. Then there was almost an hour and a half to wait for the luggage. It seems that after midnight there was only one set of baggage handlers on duty and so they had to be bussed around the airport to whichever terminal and gate a plane came into, do their job, then be bussed to the next aircraft on the list. Ah well, at least I got here.

I've spent the day doing the last-minute shopping, and although the shops were busy they were nowhere near as bad as everyone kept saying. The trick, I believe, is to be ready to park on the far side of the car park and be prepared to walk to the shops rather than driving roun d in circles trying to get into one of the spaces right in front of HMV, WHSmith or Argos.

More Yule news

• Window Peeper busted in Akureyri


• Sniffer trapped in bakery


• Meat Hook loses his hook

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When a screaming wind wakes you at 04:30 you begin to wonder about your travel plans.

Specifically I wondered am I going to get back to the UK today? It was doing that force 10 gusts business again and I suspected that it might have some effect on the local flights. So when I got up this morning I checked textvarpið and yes, there was a certain amount of disruption. What I didn't realise until I got to the airport was that they were still dealing with previous disruption. From Wednesday. Naturally, since I had a flight to catch at Keflavík I was rather worried, but the helpful Flugfélag Íslands people managed to squeeze me onto the 08:55 flight, which finally left at 14:30. I should have been on the 12:50 but about a quarter of an hour ago I got an SMS telling me that they' closed the airport at 16:10.

I was sufficiently late that I opted to get a taxi from Reykjavík to Keflavík rather than wait for the bus. Expensive, but it would only take an hour rather than up to two and a half. It turned out to be a very relaxing hour as the taxi radio was tuned to the BBC World Service (you can get it on FM in the capital). Finally I arrived at the airport with about half an hour before check-in closed to discover that the flight had been delayed and was now estimated to be departing at 20:45 rather than 17:30.

Here I am, then, at Leifur Eirikssonar airport at Keflavík, using their free wifi network and about to get my free meal. Seemingly weather counts as an 'act of God' so the airlines are not required to compensate you for weather-induced delays. It's therefore very good of the airport to just lay on free food for the passengers of about ten flights. I shall go and collect mine and report back later.
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I've had the BodyClock for a week and it's definitely had an effect.

It seems to work at both ends of the day, which is an absolute blessing, given my pre-BodyClock insomnia problems. When the alarm goes off in the morning I only jump a little bit as I'm now almost, if not entirely, awake already. As a result I'm calmer, more awake and generally less cranky that I was before. It's much easier to get up and go into work while it's still pitch-black and I have fewer of those I really don't want to be here moments as I stare out of the office window at the sodium-yellow car park and university buildings.

At night I still often put a drop of lavender oil on my pillow to help but I can now wind down sufficiently within the half-hour of 'dimming time' (accompanied by a New Scientist podcast or other audio science documentary) to fall asleep soon afterwards. My average number of hours of sleep every night must have gone from just over four to about seven and I'm feeling much better for it.

Was it worth what I paid for it? Absolutely, even taking into account the Iceland Tax. It worked on day one and has kept on working. I was a bit concerned that I might need a more powerful light - this is nowhere near as bright as the lightboxes I've seen - but there's problem at all. If any of you are having similar problems with the long winter nights then I'd certainly recommend giving one of these a try. I even emailed the company to tell them so.
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Personal, local, national and international.

The exams are now completely out of the way as we had the examiners meeting this morning... after which I've been dealing with students phoning me or coming to visit me to get their results. Oh for an admin assistant. In spite of this I managed to get the degree curriculum for next year's intake written and wrote my resit paper (there's always someone who needs to resit, and it's usually the same someones. All this and a trip to the doctor to get the results from my x-rays the other week. It seems that the only sign of anything is a spur of bone on my left thumb - a classic osteophyte on the PIP joint, I'm told - so I should take ibuprofen and splint it. Any other pain in my hands is because I use a keyboard a lot. Now I'm not entirely convinced by this, particularly the dismissal of other hand pain - which is different to the RSI pain I've had for years - so I'm considering my next action. I really hate going to see a doctor here because of the language situation, and while I'm quite comfortable talking to a British doctor I'm far less so here. Not that I was ever a fan of going to the doctor's in the first place. I'll get the splint and try it, although I'll get two in Boots in the UK rather than buy one here.

On the local front, the snow is now so thin that the ski centre is closed in order for them to have time to get the snow machines onto the pistes in time for Christmas. The mountainsides are black and brown, while the town is back to grey and the yellow-green-brown of winter grass. The roads are greatly improved by the lack of ice, black or otherwise.

Today's Yule news:

• Sausage-Snatcher raids hot-dog stand

And finally... today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan and is being marked with a Carl Sagan Blogathon. Cosmos was one of the televisual highlights of my childhood, and I remember watching spell-bound as Dr. Sagan told me about the wonders of the universe in his strange yet calm and calming accent - as I write this I can hear him in my mind's ear. I was already a lover of science fiction at the time and this exposition of the real science was probably one of the things that inspired me to read astronomy rather than physics at university.Naturally I also had the book, which I read and re-read many times. I was also bought his 1985 book, Comet, which coincided with the return of Comet Halley in 1986.

It wasn't just his views on astronomy that interested me. Sagan's view that the cosmos is all that ever was, ever is, or ever will be and that organised religion is anti-intellectual had profound effects on my worldview. It made so much sense, particularly when you add his thought that religion isn't necessarily bad, but is a social structure that supports our feelings of wonder and connection with the cosmos. Science will eventually explain everything - and if humans have a reason or destiny it is to do just that - but it won't take away the magnificence of nature.

Every now and then I see Cosmos on the DVD shelves in a shop and consider buying it. Until now the knowledge that it's twenty five years out of date has stopped me, but maybe I'll do it this time.
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I take back everything I said about snow two days ago.

Yesterday afternoon the snow on the little hummock behind the car park was about two feet thick. It was higher than the bonnet of my car. Today you can see grass - not just a blade or two, but whole areas where the snow is now just a few little melting patches. Even the car parks have changed, and although it's still advisable to wear the spiky moonboots you can now just about pick your way around them on ice-free tarmac. At noon it was twelve Celcius - above zero, not twelve below - and the weather forecast is for a cold but not white Christmas. Seemingly the proportion years that Reykjavík has had a white Christmas over the last fifty years is about 47%, for Akureyri it's 65%. This is skewed a little by the fact that Reykjavík has been snow-free over Christmas since 1996.

We were also cut off from the rest of the world for a while yesterday as a result of not only the storm, but also because the Cantat-3 fibre optic link between Iceland and Canada broke under 3 km of water somewhere in the north Atlantic. The other line, Farice-1, was severely overloaded and we didn't have internet access to anywhere off the rock until mid-afternoon today. We're now back using a temporary link but we've been warned that it could take several weeks to fix and we should expect connectivity problems in the meantime. Hopefully it'll be back to normal by the time I get back from the UK after the new year.

And here is the latest Yule news:

• Door Slammer rattles houses in Seydisfjödur


• Skyr Gobbler eats paint by accident

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Or Cylon-Rally, for that matter.

I've just had a very enjoyable evening of dinner and games with three friends here in the flat. I cooked dinner - melon, cottage pie and trifle to follow, with the main course and the dessert being totally new to my Icelandic friends. Both were a great success; the cottage pie was appropriately warm and filling while the trifle was appropriately cold and filling. And I have enough of both left to feed me for a fair chunk of the rest of the week. :) OK, so I can't find whipping cream around here, with the result that although the cream was thicker than usual it remained runnier than I normally like for trifle.

Once our hungers were all appropriately sated we sat down to a game of Robo-Rally. I'd ordered the second edition of the game from the US a couple of weeks ago with tonight in mind, and although it's been simplified a little (they've removed the crushers from the conveyor belts and the rules about poor-quality archive copies) and the quality of the boards and figures is nowhere near that of the first edition, the extra information boards for each of the robots is quite useful. I'm glad I found it, as it would have been a real problem trying to put the original in my luggage to bring back at some point.

The Icelandic name for the game would be Vélmennar-Rally. I'm quite amused by the word vélmenni - it translates as robot and is used in the general sense of a robot but also in the subtitles to Battlestar Galactica for the Cylons and in Stargate for the ROVs. The name came up when Ívar took a phone call and explained what we were doing. He also won in the end, by a single phase from Sveinni. Martha managed to get all four flags while I played a game worthy of the England cricket team and didn't even get all of the flags.

Meanwhile outside it is blowing the proverbial gale. Actually it's supposed to only be a force six strong breeze according to the Icelandic Met Office but it's certainly noisier than I've heard before so it's gusting somewhat more forcefully, up to force nine or ten. When I was out shopping earlier today I was very glad of the spiky moonboots because not only was the car park sheet ice with water on top but the wind was also strong enough to blow people over. I'm due to be going out again tomorrow night but if the wind doesn't drop (and according to the forecast it's not likely to) then I'm going to have to give it a miss.
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So Europe is worried by a lack of snow?

According to the BBC most European ski resorts are getting very worried. Climate change is depriving mountain communities of tourists and the money that comes with them; the only places that are currently open are those high-altitude resorts with their own glaciers... many of which are retreating anyway.

Our glaciers are also retreating here in the far west of Europe (actually, we're technically the far east of the north american tectonic plate but nominally we're still Europe) we've got very good snow at Iceland's main ski resort. It's also very, very cold. Clear nights are leading to deep frosts, leaving thick layers of frost both inside and outside of the car. By the time I've scraped the ice off the inside of the windscreen the dashboard looks like it's covered in snow. Right now it's zero degrees out there. That's zero farenheit, or -18 in real degrees - early this morning it got as low as -8 F / -22 C. I suspect it's going to take twenty minutes to defrost the car again tomorrow. Ah well.
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Today was Laufabrauð day.

Laufabrauð or leaf bread is a Christmas speciality food, originally local to northern Iceland but now enjoyed all over the country. They're a little like plain poppadoms but are usually highly decorated by cutting and folding the paper-thin dough over in (mainly) triangular sections to make a variety of different designs. You then fry them in very hot and allow to drain. They are traditionally served with hangikjöt but have become more general snacks.

The fun in these really is in their decoration. The dough needs to be thin enough to read through and should not stretch - if it does then it's extremely difficult to cut the patterns; I speak from experience in this! The decorations themselves are at the whim of the creator, although snowflakes are a popular design. This is one of those family cooking events when everyone gets together to make their own individual laufabrauð and it's very important that the small children get their own personal ones when it comes to eating them! I joined my friend Björk and her family for this year's annual event (and got the car stuck in the snow on the way back but was pushed out by said family).

I've seen laufabrauð done in porcelain as Christmas tree decorations. I imagine that they'd work very well in fimo as well, so I might give it a try. You can actually get roller cutters to make the triangular cuts for folding; one of these would be wonderful for card-making as it would be an easy way to draw out all of the necessary cutting lines.

And now for more news of the arriving Yule lads:

• Ladel-licker fights dishwasher


• Pot-scraper poisoned by dishwasher soap


• Bowl-licker breaks into National Museum

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Today I woke up with an entire suitcase full of spoons.

No, not literally. :) Spoons represent your ability to cope with things both physically and mentally. You wake up with a certain number of spoons and everything you do costs a spoon or more. When you get to the end of your spoons you can't do anything for the rest of the day. (The full explanation of Spoon Theory is here.)

Anyway, today I am full of spoons. I put this down to my latest acquisition, a BodyClock. I saw them in the health food shop in the shopping centre yesterday and decided that I was having so much trouble with mornings that it might well be worth the investment. Once I'm up and moving I'm fine, but actually getting up an moving in the middle of the night has been quite a problem. So last night I set this, sprinkled lavender oil on my pillow to help me fall asleep, and hoped.

This morning I awoke on time, before the alarm beeped at me, feeling so spoonful that I didn't believe it. The blurb for these things says that it takes only a day or two to work but I really wasn't expecting it to kick in so quickly. It was like I'd drunk three cups of strong coffee before even waking up. If this lasts then the BodyClock might well join the Palm on the list of the most useful things I've ever bought. If that happens then I may have to write them a thank-you note.
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It's nearly Christmas.

I can say this with complete confidence not because of the windows full of fairy lights, nor because the shops are playing carols and other Christmas classics when you go shopping, nor even that there are so many people in the shops that you can barely breath. No, it's because Iceland review is running the following stories:

• First yule lad comes to town


• Gully Gawk gets into trouble


• Shorty deprived of pans

This will continue for the next nine days, and I'll post updated links on a daily basis.

Although the Yule Lads are now the gnomish equivalent of Bart Simpson, they were originally outlaw trolls who lived in the mountains and came down into the villages over the Yule period to steal food and cause mayhem. Their mother, Grýla, would steal children to feed to her bed-ridden husbands Boli and (after she'd eaten Boli) Leppalúði. Most fearsome of all was was the huge black Yule Cat, who ate children who hadn't received new clothes for Yule. Nowadays children leave their shoes on the window ledge for the twelve nights before Christmas in the hope of gifts from the Yule Lads; good children receive gifts, but bad children receive pieces of raw potato. It is still considered very important to get some sort of new clothes for Christmas as well just in case the Yule Cat happens to be prowling around.

I am greatly amused that the illustrator responsible for the most famous images of the Yule Lads, Brian Pilkington, is British. I met him at the reception last week - he has wonderful business cards!

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If my table wasn't covered with stuff for the making of Christmas cards, it would probably be covered with a jigsaw.

Over the last couple of months I seem to have re-developed a jigsaw addiction. I say 're-developed' as I've always enjoyed a good jigsaw, and spent many long hours with my postgrad flatmates in St. Andrews doing huge jigsaws on the living room table; before that Mum and I did many a large jigsaw through the long winter nights.

For now, though, I'm satisfying my craving with the admittedly pathetic 100-piece daily online jigsaw at MyWay. It's a bad day (or a particularly difficult picture) if it takes me more than 15 minutes to complete this but it's enough to distract me for a few minutes. Next time I go into the bigger Pennin shop I might splash out on a nice big real jigsaw - particularly as I can use my discount card in there. :)
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We have now reached a sensible amount of snow.

This isn't a sensible maximum; rather it is the minimum amount where I only feel anxious rather than terrified by the drive from the shopping centre to the university. First, the road winds uphill beside the gorge through which the river Gléra heads down to meet the fjord. I use the term gorge deliberately as it's one of those steep-sided clefts with a narrow but icy river at the bottom. As is common here there are no crash barriers to stop you going off the road into the gorge should you lose control of your vehicle for some reason.

Secondly, although I have super-duper sticky tyres my car does still slide about a bit. This is exacerbated by the fact that the roads now have two clear tracks worn away by the constant friction of traffic. On side roads these aren't quite as clear as on the main roads, and sometimes have a very interesting corrugated texture where a heavy vehicle has created tyre tracks that have then frozen into place - it's rather like going over an extended cattle grid - and then been covered by more layers of snow and ice. No matter what the road, it means that there are natural tracks that your wheels follow unless you accelerate and turn more sharply than is recommended given the friction problems. Curiously, I feel that I have less control through the power steering than I had with manual steering - I suspect that this is because I'm getting less feedback through the steering wheel than I'm used to.

These are the reasons to be terrified; the reason to downgrade that terror to mere extreme anxiety is that there has now been enough snow that the snowploughs have created walls of swept snow and ice along both sides of each carriageway. On the road uphill this is now a reassuring foot or so high, forming wall between the road and the gorge beyond. Admittedly it would probably only act as a launch ramp for anyone driving at the 50 km/h speed limit, but as I'm sufficiently anxious that 40 km/h is a rarity and 30 km/h far more common, it's enough to stop me if anything goes wrong. Not that people seem too interested in sticking to the speed limit or, for that matter, signalling their intentions to turn, but that's another story.

The big question here is still whether we'll have a white Christmas. Given the variability of the winter weather over the past few years it's still quite possible that we'll have a thaw and it'll clear up over the next two weeks. Still, I think that the chances of Akureyri having a white Christmas are orders of magnitude above those of Liverpool having one.
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According to the Institute for Public Policy Research there are 5.5 million ex-patriate Brits spread around the world.

There are 939 other Brits in Iceland... which means that I've probably met about 12% of the British ex-pat population over here, and that's only because I met a huge number at the reception last week. Iceland is one of the very pale bits on the BBC map, although I suspect that if you looked at the figures proportional to the native population (we make up about 0.3% of the population here) then it would be a lot darker.

A particularly interesting point about the BBC map is that it not only gives a normal map but also gives one of the increasingly-popular proportional area maps where the size of a country is increased with respect to its neighbours in order to show some numeric relation between the two. This particular approach, that of using size and distortion together is not new, but is becoming more common with the increase in computer power available to calculate the distortions required. Of course it only works if you know the original image (in this case the classic map of the world) so that you have an internal model to which you can compare the distorted view.

Yes, I do talk about this in one of my data visualisation lectures. :)

And thinking of maps, a friend yesterday introduced me to the fascinating strangemaps. Every day a new and interesting map of somewhere real or imaginary, past present or future. As someone who's been a fan of maps of any kind from a very young age I found this once quite fascinating.
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Ink pens are wonderful things.

No, not fountain pens or ink pens for writing, rather I mean the felt-tipped pens full of slow-drying ink that you use with stamps. You 'paint' the stamp with the ink pen and then stamp it - this allows you to use several different colours on a single stamp without having all that fuss about having to line up a second image with the first. Although that's not actually what I've been doing with them today.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been slightly delayed in the making of Christmas cards but I have managed to get a birthday card done. This is where I've been playing about with stamping ink pens today. Last time I was home I acquired a set of multicoloured stamping pens, not out of the desire to make multi-coloured images, but rather because I always find it difficult to get an even layer of ink onto the stamp itself. Many's the time I've been disappointed by the quality of the text inside what has otherwise been quite a good card. So the plan was to try the pens to see if that produces a better result. It does, as I discovered with the last birthday card I made, as the pens not only allow you to get an even layer on the large areas, but also allow you to ensure that the thin lines are covered appropriately.

Today I took this a little further. As well as the basic ink pens I also have a set of pens with a number of different tips that all contain disappearing ink - these are designed for writing or calligraphy which you can then cover with embossing powder and heat to produce a raised embossed effect with your own handwriting (they're also great for personalised drawings). So I loaded up the see-through 'happy birthday' stamp (see-through stamps are another wonderful invention) with disappearing ink, stamped it, covered it with gold embossing powder, applied the heat gun and voila!, a whole new effect. On top of this I could use the same pen to highlight and emboss details on the front of the card. You do have to be a little careful that the heat doesn't warp the card but a bit of pressure later should cure that problem.

That's one card down, then, another to go. I foresee another combination of pressure embossing and ink embossing occurring later this evening ready to post them tomorrow.

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Definition number 419.

That's the one where you get everything out to make your significant Christmas cards - lightbox, embossing templates, stamps, inks, embossing powders, heat gun, that sort of thing - and then discover that the pack of 25 white blank A6 cards with envelopes that you planned to use turn out to be 25 pastel blank A6 cards with envelopes. Great for birthday and other assorted cards but not so good for Christmas cards. Drat and double drat. And of course it was too late to go to either any of the craft shops by this point. So much for the plan for this weekend... although there are a couple of birthday cards I need to make so not all is lost.

Although it's frustrating, this isn't the major disaster that it could have been. It'll give me a bit more time to play with some design ideas and, as I've got my evenings to myself again this week, I can get the new cards on Monday and do the creative stuff when I get back from work... once I've watched a Simpsons or a Buffy to unwind, that is. I've also now got the new BBC Robin Hood series, which sounds rather fun particularly as some of my friends are calling it the Guy of Gisbourne show instead. I must watch at least the first episode of that this weekend.

Not a lot else to report, really.
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Doesn't every organisation?

Today, amongst other things, I was introduced to a new acronym: B.A.N.A.N.A. BANANAs are like NIMBYs on steroids - Ban Anything New Anywhere Near Anyone. It's wonderful, both as a clever acronym and also for the mental pictures it provokes. I can see that this is going to become Word Of The Month for at least this month, possibly longer.

There was also another sort of banana today; the type that is served caramelised on a plate with ice cream and french chocolate cake. One of the several advantages of having Derek over for a couple of days is that I've eaten out at a different resterant every night for the last three evenings. Wednesday was catfish with roast vegetables at Bautinn, last night was barbecue caramelised chicken at Greifinn, and tonight was beef tenderloin with garlic mashed potatoes and mushrooms at the rather more upmarket Strikið (inspired by having lunch there with Martha last week. It was quite superb, both the food and the company. We talked wine, cider, Dundee (we have an alma mater in common), learning styles and andragogy. Unfortunately Derek had a flight to catch or we would have adjourned to my flat to continue late into the night.

After this busy week I plan to have a relaxed weekend and (finally!) make and write some Christmas cards. OK, so I can't guarantee that the post will get them to their appropriate destinations before the 25th but at least I'll feel they're no longer my problem once they're out of my hands.
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Today was day one of the learning outcomes workshop.

About eighteen months ago Derek (from the University of Leicester) came over to talk to the then-IT-faculty about the various ways of assessment and academic quality assurance. It included a section on writing learning outcomes for the degree and for individual modules. Now that the Icelandic government is signing up to the Bologna accords on higher education we're having to write learning outcomes for all of our modules. Computing has most of these already but it's a totally new concept to some other parts of the faculty, hence the workshop.

It's interesting, because it's given me a bit more understanding of the background theory behind modern HE teaching methods. It's also given me some good book references to follow up independently. When I started at RGU they didn't make me do the postgrad teaching certificate because I'd been a technical trainer in industry, and this was considered to be acceptable prior experience. I rather regret this so I'm probably going to do it as a distance learning course next year.

Tomorrow is day two plus a meeting with The Men From The Ministry about the new higher education act. One part of the day should be quite interesting. The other won't.
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Today has been quite busy at both ends of the country.

I started off with a trip to the embassy to have a chat with Alp (the ambassador) and ended up having a natter with Simon (his sidekick) as well. It turns out that there is a St. Andrews Alumi group in Reykjavík so I may well contact them sometime soon. After that I met up with Lassi to talk about the next cognitive science workshop - it looks like I'll be doing a session on using multimodal computer systems to support different learning styles - and a look around Kringlan.

I was a bit disappointed in that the Apple store in Kringlan is a little tiny side shop rather than a proper Apple store so I haven't come back up north with a new machine. Never mind... I did buy a couple of DVDs and a Christmas present for Dad so it wasn't a complete washout. I then got lost in Reykjavík again (I've managed this every time I drive a car around there) but eventually got out to Keflavík to collect Derek ready to go to the domestic airport (only getting slightly lost on the way) in time for the flight up north (via Perlan and their wonderful Belgian waffles with cherry compote and cream).

We were planning to have dinner at Peng's, the Chinese resteraunt, but it appears to be closed. So instead we went to Bautinn, a resteraunt I'd not visited before but which seems to serve Icelandic specialities. This is the place you go if you want to try horse or whale - I had catfish instead, which was very pleasant. By the time I got back I was absolutely shattered so I'm hoping that I'll sleep well tonight in preparation for tomorrow's learning outcomes workshop.
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How you you make eighty British ex-pats in Iceland happy? Feed them sausage rolls.

Real, warm, just-out-of-the-oven sausage rolls were one of the highlights of the reception tonight, which wasn't actually at the embassy but at the ambassador's residence next door. The venue confused me a little at first as I got a taxi to the embassy itself, but this was quickly remedied by a short walk around the corner. The embassy building is actually shared with the German embassy and there is a beautiful semi-abstract stained glass work above the common entranceway that shows the flags of both nations.

I was a little nervous about the evening - after all, I knew absolutely no-one else - but it was a very friendly gathering of ex-pats and their partners, a number of whom were locals. I found myself mixing with artists, illustrators, musicians, composers, translators of texts on mediaeval textiles and others, including several other ex-pat Scousers. Clearly we get everywhere. :) As well as the sausage rolls we feasted on mince pies and some rather good wine before singing a handful of carols gathered around the piano. It was the sort of sing-song where singing the descant to the 'sing, choirs of angels' verse of 'o come, all ye faithful' was not a solo undertaking, and led to my being asked which choirs I'd sung with because Jón (the composer) used the same arrangement with his local choir.

There was also a lot of discussion of textile and embroidery matters, spurred on by a beautiful piece of modern goldwork hanging on the wall in the hallway. Several people assumed from this that I must lecture in something artistic and were quite surprised that I'm a computer scientist. But then we all need hobbies. :) It was a extremely enjoyable evening and I'm very glad that I made the effort to go down to Reykjavík to attend it.

Oh yes - and I got a new pair of dress trousers during the day and wore the black beaded dress tunic-style. It worked quite well, even if the silly little evening bag I bought was only just big enough for the essentials - purse, phone, Palm, camera... how do people manage with anything smaller?
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The high-friction specials are no good on sheet ice.

Or at least not that type that's water on ice on water. As I looked across the car park today, watching even the Icelanders sliding about, I realised that even high-friction super-trainers are no match for ice rink that is the upper car park. I cheated and took the car - although as I was going to lunch directly thereafter I didn't feel too guilty about it. Besides, I really don't want to put more stress on my hands by trying to break my fall; I forgot to take the anti-inflammatories this morning and they've ached all day. I noticed this quite a lot while using chopsticks during a most enjoyable lunch with Martha.

Actually I had a suspicion when I almost slipped in the apartment block's car park, but I felt that I really ought to try the new trainers. They feel very good on my feet, and give me far more support than has anything short of an ice skate over recent years. They're more comfortable than my walking shoes but I imagine that that's probably because technology has done wonderful things in four years. The big question is: should I wear them tomorrow? It shouldn't be as icy in Reykjavík and, besides, I'll be taking a pair of plain black shoes for the evening anyway. Or do I wear the spiky moonboots anyway? Decisions decisions...
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I have a bit of a style problem.

The problem is that I don't have any. Fashion sense is not a skill into which I put points, and my sister got all of Mum's fashion-related genes. This left me looking in my wardrobe this afternoon trying to decide what I'm going to wear at the Ambassador's Christmas drinks reception on Tuesday. Yes, I'm off to a social event at the British Embassy in Reykjavík and have no idea what to wear.

The invitation is very impressive - it came in an envelope with the royal arms embossed in gold on the envelope. The invitation card itself is embossed rather than written. It's going to have to go into the scrapbook... when I eventually get around to making up the scrapbook. Perhaps it would be better to say that it's going into the pile of things that are to go into the scrapbook.

At present I'm leaning towards trousers with my big black beaded dress as a tunic, or maybe my red velvet suit (except that's a skirt and I'm far more comfortable in trousers). There's now an Evans in Kringlan so I'm probably going to head there as soon as I arrive in Reykjavík to see if there's anything nice. It's in the same place as the Apple store, which is also on my must visit list.

Decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll be more inspired tomorrow.
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This is becoming a big question in information presentation nowadays.

While I've been out here in Iceland one of the things that I've missed quite a lot has been my weekly copy of New Scientist. I pick up the current copies whenever I'm in the UK but as it's a weekly magazine an annual subscription costs a small fortune, takes a while to arrive, and for some reason they don't allow you to subscribe to the website alone. For a while I used to pay for a limited electronic version which I'd download at work, print out and then bring home to read in the bathroom (as I mentioned just over a week ago). The problem with this was that I felt bad about printing it single-sided as that's all the printer at work does, even though I'd then reuse the backs for note-taking and various craft things. Doing this every week left me with more scratch paper than I could possibly use.

Now I know that I could have just read it on the computer, but I'm not a big fan of that. There's a big difference, as far as I'm concerned, between reading something on a computer screen (whether laptop or desktop) and reading it on paper. It's not the page quality that I find a problem, it's more the fact that a magazine weighs relatively little and can be read sitting up, lounging about or lying down. It's very difficult to do that with a computer screen. The old argument that you can't curl up in bed with a computer is no longer entirely relevant as laptops and wifi have made it possible to access information anywhere in a house... but I just don't find it comfortable.

Having said this, I am actually a big fan of electronic books. My Palm pilot is a wonderful thing - not because it has wifi so that I can browse the net as I sit drinking coffee after a dip in the Blue Lagoon, or that I can do sudoku any time I want, but because I can hold so many more books in a Palm than you can fit in a handbag. Many people seem quite surprised that I use it for this - how can I possibly read a book on such a small screen? The important thing about the screen is that it is small, that it fits comfortably in my hand the way that a book or a magazine does. I can read it anywhere I like without having to lug around a laptop.

What I would really like, then, is to be able to download New Scientist onto my Palm. I may at last have found a way to do this. It turns out that NS is actually one of the journals included in the Icelandic government's national subscription. Until yesterday I had no idea of this - I had assumed that this only applied to more scholarly journals (NS is the tabloid scientific press after all) - but after finding that we have Nature included I though that I'd have a look on the off-chance. So now I have access, but in a sub-optimal form. I'm going to see if I can easily download it to my Palm - a single pdf instead of a one pdf per article or least something to glue pdfs together.

So progress is being made, albeit slowly. Now we just have to get people thinking about the usability issues for displaying online documents on these small screens. Maybe that would be a good field in which I could do some research. When I eventually have some time to do research.
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I know that those two don't sound as if they ought to go together, but they do.

First the linguistics. Today is not quite a national holiday in Iceland, although it is one of those days when everyone flies Icelandic flags. This is to celebrate Independence Day, for on December 1st 1918 Iceland became independent from Denmark (although not from the Danish Crown). Today I also had my X-rays taken, and for once ended up dealing with a receptionist who didn't speak English. This turned out to be less of a problem than I thought it would be and between my picking out individual words, understanding the context and having pre-planned information-rich sentences, and her speaking slowly we got through things fine in the end. I then proceeded to sit down and wait until my name was called.

It was at this point that I realised the my Palm was in my other bag and so I had nothing to read. Oh drat. So I looked around and there on the table were some books clearly designed for small children. What the hell, I though, and picked them up. I managed to make my way through two of them in the end - one about things that smell and the other about the geese that never stopped quacking. I also tried the one about the hippopotamus at home but that was a bit advanced. I have a suspicion that the receptionist saw engrossed in these, as when I was called in the radiographer explained things and gave me instructions in slow and clear Icelandic with the occasional bit of English just to ask if I understood. Afterwards when I went back to the receptionist to pay she complimented me (I think!) on the fact that I was trying to learn Icelandic. This is probably the most complicated linguistic task I have performed over here - more difficult than buying a leaving gift for Stefán, which was the last one.

On top of this I've been arranging a faculty-wide workshop which required me to email a whole host of my Icelandic colleagues, so I took the plunge and started the email with the explanation that although I was learning Icelandic it was a slow process, which was why the email was in English and that I apologised for any mistakes in the Icelandic terms I did use (I've no idea what the appropriate plural forms of various organisationally-important nouns are). No-one has exploded in fury at me yet so I'm assuming that I didn't make any seriously rude or obscene mistakes.

So much for the linguistic triumphs - where does the footwear come into this? Well, although the snow has stopped there's still a lot of ice around so I tried out the spiky moonboots this morning. They work! I didn't fall over even though the apartment car park had one of those ice layers that would normally have me examining it for ten minutes to try to work out the safest route to my car. The only problem is that they're not really suitable for wear in anything that isn't black ice or deep snow, so I eventually decided that I would go ahead and buy a pair of high-friction super-trainers. I've come to the conclusion that here, far more than in the UK, you have to have a set of shoes for each different type of weather. Normal shoes for the dry days of spring and autumn, welliettes for the wet ones. Sandals with trainer bottoms for the summer, snow boots for the snow and high-friction specials for the ice. That's more pairs of shoes than I ever possessed in the UK; my sister got Mum's shoe-buying genes, not me. Two pairs of Clarks Sensible Shoes and a pair of trainers is enough for anyone, isn't it? :)
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