Nik's Saga

Also known as staying here an extra night.

Today was originally planned as a fairly crafty day, possibly punctuated by a light lunch somewhere, then a drive up the M6 to Liverpool in time for dinner. Instead it was derailed early by lunch at the Red Lion with Tom and Claire. The toad in the hole was good, but the baked alaska had ice-cream that was far too solid and meringue that was far too soft. The company made up for it though. :) I was planning to be on the road by about 15:00 but ended up delaying overnight.

This gave me the opportunity to finish writing my research proposal - oh yes, I have work to do even on holiday - before Penny forced me to sit and watch the Christmas Dr Who. When it was shown originally I managed about 15 minutes of That Woman before changing channel in disgust and watching the RI Christmas Lectures instead. If there hadn't been something more interesting on I might have stayed with it, but between That Woman and the farcical plot I was really looking for an out. Chasing along the M5 in the tardis... really... :(

So we watched it. And it was bad. It was soooo bad. That Woman was utterly dreadful and should have been removed from the gene pool years ago. I'm also getting a bit worried that the Doctor has lost it. This regeneration is clearly insane - his 'three strikes and you're out' attitude towards his opponents, where he's quite willing to commit genocide does concern me. I have fond memories of Tom Baker's Doctor being incapable of destroying the daleks at birth on the grounds that a lot of races would cooperate to beat the daleks and a lot of good would come from those alliances. This one wouldn't think twice, and while I can understand that being the only survivor of the final war has affected him, I'm not convinced that it would have turned him quite so Lawful Good.

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That's what happens when you go to Hobbycraft.

I only wanted a phial of beads, some eyelets and a frame for the cat embroidery. I came out with rather a lot more, although it must be said that a number of the things are not actually for me so I'm going to clam a moral victory on that one. All the same, the credit card took quite a hit.

This evening we went over to dinner at Tom and Claire's new place. When they originally announced their new address I was quite astounded, as it is within about a three minute walk from Penny's place. Of course, that's three minutes if you go along the path opposite the post office. Instead we walked the car route, which does three sides of a rather larger rectangle and took about twenty minutes. Such is life.

Much food and much gossip later (with a particularly good garlic and parmesan sauce and a very pleasant marigold tart) we returned via the shorter route and then managed to sit up until 2 am chatting. This is proving an excellent method of relaxing - if only I could stay here for longer!
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Clearly have the same taste in posh party frocks.

Although her delicate green off-the-shoulder Oscar party frock was no match for my purple sari worn the way I wore it (held in place by a 'year of the teledu' pin) for the Dead Dog party last night we were clearly both being devastatingly stylish. :) It was supposed to be for the Arabian Nights party, but dinner took so long that we missed that, but instead hung around the Dead Dog until about 2am. Such is the end of a convention.

This morning, then, it was time to pack our bags and leave. The hotel has a quite odd central space, the Rotunda, which is effectively four floors' worth of balconies around an elliptical open area. This lets in light from the skylight above and give the place quite an airy feel while looking, if you're standing on one of the other levels, a little like a theatre in the round. So we were on the first floor, in the corridor that radiated directly away from the point end of the ellipse that had the two staircases on either side of it. For some reason this morning I walked out onto the balcony and looked down, perusing how quiet it was after the previous evening's festivities. Then I was gripped with the strangest urge - I had a balcony and great acoustics, and a crazy need to sing Don't Cry For Me, Argentina. Fortunately I managed to control myself and sang it very, very softly so that no-one noticed. It would be nice to go back and sing it properly though. :)

Eventually I left the hotel and headed out to Leicester, where I had a meeting about my potential post-graduate course in academic practice. It went well although there are one or two timing issues that we have to sort out, and there's even a possibility of it leading to some collaborative research, which is always a plus. Finally I braved the M6 and then the M42 to make my way out to Penny's house just outside of Birmingham. I'm going to be here for a couple of days trying to come down gently after the convention. I don't want another bad case of the post-convention blues.
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Today's activities started with the backsword workshop.

This was taught by Steve Kilbane of the MacDonald Academy in Edinburgh, and was both enjoyable and informative. Unlike a rapier, which has two sharpened edges, a backsword has only one, so this naturally affects how you fight with it. This was less of a problem to me than the lack of quillions, as I'm quite used to using my quillions offensively to trap my opponent's blade, which you just can't do with a basket-hilt sword. I also want to react too quickly to things - parry and attack in the same action are fine, but waiting and waiting and waiting (or so it feels) until your opponent's blade reaches here before parrying it instead of reacting much earlier and dealing with it before it gets to be so close is a bit strange. For the historical fencing geeks out there, the style we were using was mainly that of Silver.

We didn't actually use swords - carrying all of the protective equipment for 20 people would have been a real pain - but instead worked with plastic pipe set within hemispherical salad containers. This is such a wonderful idea that I'm taking it back to Iceland with me for training the locals. It's cheap, requires much less protective gear, and is great for drilling.

Immediately after this I had a mad dash across the hotel to the main hall to give my Orion talk. This was the one about nuclear powered spaceships, and was also very well attended. Various people have asked me to make the slides for my two talks available on the net, so I'll do that and post to the Redemption newsgroup when I get back. This over-ran slightly, so there was another mad dash to another part of the hotel for my final panel on AIs in SF.

I don't know quite what I expected about this one, but we ended up having a fascinating discussion on the free will of machines - many SF AIs do not necessarily have free will, or have limited free will, but often stories are about them gaining it.

It was now time for the closing ceremony, after which I responded to the complaints of my knee and shoulder (which were objecting to the two hour fencing class earlier in the day) and took the opportunity to have a swim in the hotel's pool before dinner. That was very pleasant, although I didn't stay there too long and ran away once the place started to fill up.

As the hotel option for dinner was chilli (normal or vegetarian) and I am quite horribly alergic to it... and because we were a bit late by this time... a bunch of us went off to the nearby pub for dinner. It was packed, and we were told that we'd have to wait at least an hour for a table. So instead we went to the other one just over the road, which was suspiciously empty. Nevertheless, we sat down and ordered. The food was great - when it eventually arrived. It took them almost an hour to bring our starters, almost another hour to bring the main course, and not much less than that for dessert. Needless to say we didn't leave a tip.
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It is definitely turning into a good convention.

After a fairly large breakfast I started off with a talk on bad science in SF given by my friend Mark, after which there was time for a quick wander around the dealers' room before my wormholes talk. It went quite well, with a lot of good and thoughtful questions, and I quite enjoyed presenting it. After lunch there was a panel on what Stargate and Battlestar Galactica have learned from Babylon 5. This was interesting as there were quite a lot of things that hadn't occurred to me - strong female characters, the 'shades of grey' approach to villains, and the fact that the 'heroes' all have a lot of skeletons in their respective cupboards. We followed that with another science and SF panel - it does appear that people quite like SF but don't like science. Of course most of the people in the room were biased (many being scientists) but it was a very good discussion.

After I did a bit of singing on a panel about the music of Sharpe, six of us then took part in a crisis management exercise run by Nige, who does this as part of his job. The cylons invaded, and eventually we all died horribly as a result, but it was fascinating to see how we handled the excess of information coming in, the stress of the crisis and the communication between team members. I learned some very important things from it - firstly, the three things you have to consider at status, focus and actions. Secondly, if you're going to display these on whiteboards or flipcharts then communication is greatly improved if you put them all together. I should have moved the flipchart to stand beside the whiteboards, but it didn't occur to me at the time. Basic rule of visualisation: show all related information in the same area. In this case just remember that you can move the furniture to do this. It passed very quickly but was great fun, and it occurs to me that when I go back to Iceland I can claim to have been on a crisis management course over the weekend. :)

The convention has a very good programme, running until 1am. My final panel was at 11pm on all of the things that SF has promised us but which science hasn't yet delivered. Things like household robots, jetpacks, and food in tablet form. Again there was a lot of intelligent discussion, which is one of the reasons I really like the Redemption conventions. I suspect I'll be signing up for the 2009 convention before I leave.

One busy day complete, another fun-packed day to go tomorrow.

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Drunken football fans are always unsettling, even if they're supporting your team.

Today I've proved that it's quite possible to give a lecture/lab, have meetings, fly to Reykjavík then fly to the UK all in one day. OK, so it took over an hour to get through Manchester airport, and the roads between the airport and the M6 heading south are... interesting... but I got to the convention hotel eventually.

The flights were on time, but there were quite a lot of football supporters on a trip to see Liverpool v. Sheffield United, which meant that Icelandair had chartered a slightly larger plane with much less legroom - I got the impression that this is normal operating procedure, to sell as many tickets as possible and then just use a plane to fit. The Icelanderic fans did what they always do and started drinking as soon as they got onto the plane, with the result that by the time we landed two and a bit hours later several of them were very definitely the worse for wear. I'm quite glad I'm flying back next Friday rather than Monday, as I'm sure that the Friday flight will be fan-free.

Still, I got here. It's a hotel at which I've attended a convention before, as I realised when I got into the car park. It looks like I'm going to have a busy weekend ahead as I'm on 5 programme items and, having looked at the timetable, plan to go to quite a few more. I think it's going to be a good convention.

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No, I don't want snow today.

Not that I'm getting paranoid, but it's started to snow again. Given the fun I've had with flights being cancelled due to weather up here before now, I'm just a little uneasy on this one. Still, I really am looking foward to the convention - it's going to be so good to get back into the swing of things with a bunch of like-minded loonies. It looks like the convention has a fairly packed programme, but I'm hoping to get a little roleplaying in as well. That would probably make it perfect. What else could you ask for in a weekend (except maybe a good cider on tap in the con bar)?
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I've just finished writing the second of two interesting lectures.

They have nothing to do with computing, but are the two I volunteered to give at Redemption this weekend:

• Wormhole Physics 101 - a simplified introduction to the physics of wormholes as it has developed over the last 80 years. Two mathematical equations, right at the end so as not to frighten people away and just to keep people like me who like equations happy. I will not be explaining them. :)


• The Original Orion - a history of nuclear pulsed propulsion systems for interplanetary spacecraft. Nuke to orbit; it's the only way to be sure.

They certainly beat secondary memory in terms of personal interest. Although the fact that I've been able to include the brand-new, went-on-sale-earlier-this-month holographic memory has raised it from being the least interesting lecture I've ever had to give. These two have certainly cheered me up a little, but they've also highlighted how far out of my comfort/interest zone I am right now. And, as an added bonus, writing them inspired me to subscribe to Analog, which should bring a little happiness into my life every month. I can see it now, confusing the postman when it arrives on the same day as ACM Interactions, Bead and Button and Compleat Anachronist...
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I'm just back from a corset-making stitch & bitch.

This was our first serious A&S session, in that we actually created things. Martha had already started her corset on Sunday and so was a week ahead of the other four ladies of the group who started today. Two of them are my students, and so not only have I given them computer architecture homeworks but now I've given them dressmaking homework too. I find that quite amusing.

As well as the corsetry I also made a tart of apples for dessert, which proved very pleasant and is, as a result, likely to make an appearance at the Revel feast. The only problem I find with these old recipes is that when you don't have to cook the fruit before putting it in the pie you end up with a void under the pie crust where the filling has softened and melted away. Perhaps I just have to make sure that the pastry is softer and collapses with the filling.

The other good point for the A&S meeting was that the copies of the Knowne Worlde Handbook which I'd ordered finally arrived today, much to the delight and fascination of all at the meeting. One of them is for my personal use, but I bought the other one to donate to the Shire so that it can circulate while I still have a reference copy.

Plans are also going well for Revel II - as there are currently no other bids for the May Viceroy tourney we are seriously considering offering to host it at Revel II. Of course, we're sufficiently far away that I suspect that we wouldn't have many people turning up at all, but if we're part of ID then we really ought to make the offer. We could handle forty people - plus the forty locals who are already coming to Revel - but somehow I don't think we'd get those forty to shell out for the flights out here. That's what happens when you're in the hind end of nowhere. :(
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Today is Bun Day.

Today small children run around carrying ribbon-bedecked sticks and demanding cream-filled buns with menaces. The cream-filled buns are, to all intents and purposes, choux buns and the local bakery is doing a roaring trade in them. One of our first-year students works part-time at the bakery so she came in today with a large box of the things, which went down very well in the middle of the afternoon.

Here in the adult world, however, life is less amusing. I'm currently battling with Blogger, which has refused to talk to my laptop computer ever since I changed ISP in order to get broadband television. I've tried posting by normal email, which sort of works although I can't used HTML in the posts... I suspect that I'm going to have to start posting by email and then fixing it from work. Well, that'll give me something to do over lunch, I suppose. Not that I break for lunch most days.

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That's a big problem with Margaret Sherry cats.

I'm not normally a fan of 'cute animals' embroideries. I still have nightmares about the Forever Friends hedgehog wedding sampler I did for some friends of my sister... although a lot of that was the eight colours, six of which were blends, used to do the prickles. These cats, though, are shamefully cute and, not only that, but they're actually fun to stitch.

This is the third I've done, and the first on aida - when I ordered this one and another to go with it I assumed it was on evenweave like the previous two, but I was wrong... and it's a pain to send them back to swap them when I'm in Iceland and they're delivered to Liverpool. So I went ahead and did it on the aida anyway. They're not the simplest kits I've done, as there are a number of places where half stitches are horizontal or vertical rather than the usual diagonals, and others where a full stitch is offset by half a stitch in either or both directions. Of course, this is easier to do on evenweave but it's still not something I'd want to give to a complete beginner.

Cat number 3 is to be a housewarming gift for a friend, so all I have to do now is to frame it before I head back to the UK. Or maybe just pick up a frame when I get there instead. I'll see how much time I've got this week.

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Basking in the glow of National Geographic channel.

And I do mean basking. Sitting here just absorbing the delicious feeling that there is something intelligent and/or interesting on television, that it's in English, and that I'm not about to be assaulted by some reality TV junk. I can almost feel it being absorbed through my skin. The thought that there's news I can understand, that there's something to distract me from the other stresses I'm dealing with, is just such a wonderful feeling that there's a real possibility that I'm just going to curl up on the sofa in front of BBC World and fall asleep later tonight.

It's been bit of a struggle to get to this point. To start with my old tv doesn't have a scart socket, which meant that I couldn't connect the cable box to it. Drat. So I went out and bought a new tv. The next day my DVD player died, refusing to spit out the DVD within it, which meant that I had to take it apart with a screwdriver to extract the disk. Fortunately the new TV has a built-in DVD. This arrived yesterday and I discovered that it's not only old televisions that don't have scart sockets... I'd just assumed that everything now comes with a scart socket. So last night I pulled out all of my assorted cables and tried to work out how to connect them using standard audio and video links... which the TV has, but the cable box doesn't. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I could do it if I had a set of composite video leads.

Now normally I'd have just gone into Byko or BT and bought the necessary cables, but today I had to go to Reykjavík with work to attend the cattle market that is the Invitation Day, where all of the universities other than the University of Iceland get together in a hall and hand out information to potential students. This had been organised as effectively as I've come to expect of these things, to the extent that the first I heard about it was on Tuesday at a meeting - in spite of it being the big chance for the university to recruit in the main metropolitan area. Some people there had less than 24 hours of advance notice, so I suppose that I was one of the lucky ones.

Fortunately the even was next door to the big shopping centre at Kringlan so I had a chance to pop in to BT there in search of a composite video cable. I didn't get that, I eventually got a scart-to-composite video which, once plugged in, works very nicely. Hurrah! So at last I have intelligent television. Not only that, but I also seem to have a pretty good video-on-demand selection too, including a number of films that I missed at the cinema or are classics that I'd like to see again.

Excuse me while I return to basking mode. :)

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After the excitement of the past three days today has, somewhat automatically, been something of a crash.

But it does give me a chance to gather my thoughts on the blacksmithing taken as a whole. I've done pretty well out of it - only two fairly small burns, both of which have blistered nicely, plus the dull ache that I've come to recognise at the base of my thumb when I put too much pressure on it. But that's okay. I don't know if the hand would bear up well if I was doing a lot of hammering, but for the occasionally piece it should be fine. The shoulders, which were sore after the first two sessions were actually pretty good last night, which was an unexpected extra.

Just before I started the course I was really quite daunted by it - partly my normal I'll be embarrassingly useless at this, and partly because it was something so far out of my craft comfort zone that I was half-convinced that I was right, I was going to be awful at it. In spite of this, and my complete inability to handle a large hammer effectively (which meant that my frog sconce is definitely one of those pieces that gets hidden away in a cupboard somewhere) I found the whole thing surprisingly relaxing. It was something that allowed me to completely uncouple from my 'normal' life (which is also a long way out of my comfort zone, particularly at work). I drove back to the flat on an adrenline high, which is a rarity nowadays.

During the second session I did get quite anxious that the other people clearly had much more contol, style and skill than I had. My first welded ring broke because although the weld itself was good it was too small as I'd failed to cross the ends over far enough. Even when I got the crossover working I ended up making circular rings rather than elongated ones, and I never did get the Thor's Hammer to work. In the final session I was very pleased to work out what was going wrong with the hammer, and my knife isn't too bad as a result. Okay, so it's a bit larger than the others, and it's got rather more dents in it, but it worked.

I've now come down off the high, and the world has returned to its usual state. My brain keeps turning itself off when I need to do things, which is a bit of a problem. Now if only I could get it to go into fugue instead life might be so much simpler...

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And quench in oil.

That was today's new thing - tempering metal to increase its hardness. As promised, today we made knives. The design is based upon an object found in a 5th century AD grave site in Denmark, although the original was made in soft iron rather than the steel we used this evening. Given the early date I wonder if it would be eligible for an SCA A&S competition, so I'm going to have to do a bit of work trying to find a later example of the same basic design - which is termed 'Danish Roman Period', I am told. Jelling Dragon sell this basic design as a 'Viking Woman's Knife', so I might be able to get away with it. I took lots of photos during the forging of the knife, which I'll use to write up some proper documentation later. I'll also have to make a sheath for it too.

We started off with a piece of steel about 200mm by 30mm by 8mm welded to an iron holder and began by narrowing and extending the handle. Once that was done we could cut the steel off at an angle leaving just the handle and the section that would become the blade. The blade was first shaped, then tapered along its cutting edge and towards the point before sharpening. I have to admit that the sharpening was done with an angle grinder rather than a whetstone for speed purposes. :) That done we curved the handle - using the hammer rather than the pliers that we'd used to do the finials on the sconce.

The final step was to harden the metal. The blade needs to be hard enough to keep an edge but not so hard that it will break. There is a lot of quite complex physics and chemistry about this process but it can be done in a 'craft' rather than a 'scientific' manner quite easily. First you heat the metal until the blade is at orange-heat - much lower than working heat - and cool quench it in oil. The oil cools it more slowly that water would. Next you return it to the fire and heat it again until the poil burns off, at which point you quench in water the section that you've already quenched in oil and leave the rest to cool slowly in the air. This, then, is what mine finally looks like, although I do have to polish it up a bit:



Tonight I was beginning to get the hand of things. One of my problems was that I kept tilting the hammer so that the face wasn't hitting quite square onto the metal, which left me with a lot of dints in the metal. If you strike it correctly it sounds different - the anvil rings rather than going 'clunk'. Once I'd sorted this out things started going much more smoothly. By the end of the evening we were all walking around with big grins because we'd actually managed to complete this - what really surprised me was how much easier it was than making the candle sconce. Clearly the initial experience of getting used to how the metal moves at different temperatures had paid off.

As well as our assorted creations we all walked away with a certificate to say that we'd completed an introductory blacksmithing course, which was a really nice touch. Now we've just got to work out what we want to do next so that we can invite Jan back to teach a second level course. Unfortunately I'm don't have the facilities to spend the next year forge-welding things every day, which is what I'd need to do for course two to be making Damascene blades...
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Heat to A0 and hit with a big hammer.

That's the secret of welding. OK, we actually used borax as the flux instead of sand, as Jens wasn't sure of the suitability of the local volcanic sand for welding, but if we'd done the same course in Denmark we would have used sand, which is what was used in the Middle Ages. Whereas when you're bending metal you heat it until it's yellow-white, when you're welding it you have to heat it until it's pure white, after which it only takes a relatively soft blow to make the weld proper. I am quite capable of making very good welds, but my shaping (and therefore finishing off) still needs a bit of work. I put it down to two things: firstly I still don't have much practice in precision kilo-hammer wielding. Secondly I keep wanting to swap hands to do things and that's just not practical when you're handling hot metal.

In spite of this today I finished what has become known as the 'frog sconce', as I think the upper decorative bit looks like a frog. The holder itself is made from a rod with a square cross-section of approximately 1cm in diameter, which you then flatten and curve at one end to make the cone and make a bulb at the other end to balance it. The sconce is made from a flat bar of metal which you split at both ends before curving each section, then punch two holes towards one end and finally bend it at right angles. Sounds easy... it isn't.

The three links of chain were actually much easier to make once I'd got the both the temperature and the amount of overlap required to make the weld. You start by bending a length of rod in half and flattening the two ends. Next you bend the two flattened edges to overlap each other then heat, sprinkle with flux and heat until white-hot. At that point the surface of the metal melts and, when you hit it with a hammer, the two overlapping sections fuse together. After that it's just a matter of evening out all of the edges. Actually the rings were supposed to be elongated, but I ended up with round ones because my hammer control is still a bit shaky.

I'm also part way through making an iron Thor's Hammer of the design found at Leire,Sjælland in Denmark (see picture 5 on this page for details) but it's fiddly and needs a bit of finesse so it's going slowly. Hopefully I'll finish it tomorrow night after I've completed my knife.


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Then hit with a big hammer.

That seems to be the basis of blacksmithing so far. Tonight was session one of three, taught by a very nice big Dane who goes by the name of Jens and works at the mediaeval centre at Nykobing in Denmark. If you look at the photos of the knights I think he's the one with the swan crest - I'll check tomorrow. Although he's not a SCAdian he's quite familiar with the SCA, which means that he understands exactly why I'm taking this course.

There are four of us on the course, one male, three female. One of the other women is planning to teach it as a demonstration subject for schools and has done some work before, but the rest of us haven't done anything previously. The other woman just thought it would be fun, and the guy is Ásgeir, who has both SCA interests and is an also an engineer. The plan is to make a candle sconce and bracket, then learn to weld, then make a knife (which is exactly what I was hoping to work up to). So far we've done the sconce and started on the the bracket, and I'm beginning to get the hang of it although I need seriously more practice in the precision aiming of a 1kg hammer.

Working in the smithy - a converted outhouse on a farm at Kristnes, the original settlement here in the fjord - is quite surreal. The forge is hot, very hot, and yet as we stand there at out anvils we can see the fog of our breath. When we can see anything, as watching your piece of ironwork in the flames to make sure that it doesn't burn gives you a terrible case of light overload and your central vision fades in and out. I'm only just getting to grips with the idea that I can hit something hard. Usually I'm too terrified of breaking things to use my full strength, but as long as the iron is hot enough - and this is where F5 comes in - then it's surprisingly easy to manipulate especially if you give it a good whack.

Getting it to the right temperature is the trick, of course. It needs to be yellow-white to work easily, hence my description of it as F5. That's a stellar spectral classification that's just about the right colour for this. There's no real point in hitting it once it's cooled down to K5, as you need to hit it extremely hard to have any effect. To keep it hot as long as possible you even take it off the anvil between blows, and it's astonishing to watch how the anvil can 'suck' the heat out of a piece of hot iron, particularly if the iron is very thin.

The iron we're working with is wrought iron (mild steel) so it's perfectly Period for SCA A&S purposes. I'll be taking the camera along for the other sessions so that I can document my knife - if it's any good I'll enter it into the A&S competition at Protectors in March. At any rate we can put photos of Ásgeir and myself on the new Klakavirki website - we should be able to get a good article out of this.

Right now my shoulders are, understandably, sore and most of my exposed skin has been smeared with soot.In spite of this I feel pretty good as I've clearly managed to work out some of my stress on a poor innocent piece of metal. Excuse me - a hot shower is calling...
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Roll on the menopause... unless this is its beginnings...

Today has been a curl up in front of the computer writing lectures day. Partly because I got a phone call first thing saying that the chap would be here to set up the cable, but mainly because it's clearly a Bad Month. I won't go into details, but take it from me, I am not having a good time of it.

The cable chappie was rather flummoxed by my television. I have a nice little Sony portable that was designed to take any television signal anywhere in the world and display it. Being a Sony it's very reliable, and enjoyed several years of being carted too and from Malaysia by Dad when he joined and left ships. Of course, this history means that it is about fifteen years old and bereft of a scart socket, so I've got it connected to the DVD via the audio and video in sockets. No problem from my point of view, but this doesn't give a stable picture with the cable box.

So I've had to finally cave in and buy a new television. I was lucky enough to find one on offer in Byko, on offer mainly because it's not a flat screen job. It's 21 inches rather than the current 15, and cost about two-thirds of the cost of a 15 inch flat screen. It also has teletext and a built-in DVD player, more things that the expensive flat screens don't have. It's going to be delivered on Friday, as it was too late to deliver today and I'm going to be out at an introductory blacksmithing course for the next three evenings. By the time Friday evening arrives I don't think I'll be in any state capable of doing more than curling up in front of my nice new big television with its shiny new channels. Mmmm... :)
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The more I read about Redemption 07, the more excited I'm getting about it.

It's been a while since I've been to what I think of as a 'real' convention - Worldcon doesn't count because it's just too big - so the fact that I'm going to two in the next couple of months is pretty exciting. What makes it even more so is that I've been hearing about items on the programmes as they've come up and there are a fair number of things at both Redemption and at EasterCon that I'm looking forward to. The latest is a backsword workshop at Redemption, where it just so happens that the chap running it is one of those rare beasts that is the Spanish rapier fencer. I was looking forward to the workshop beforehand, but I can see that this is going to end up in the bar afterwards as well, which should be great fun.

And it's only two weeks away. Hmm... I suppose I'd better start writing my two lectures this week as well then. Ah well - I've just found a really good visualisation of the Orion programme AND discovered that Andrews Aerospace is looking seriously at the technology again. Woo-hoo!
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I finally completed the Celtic Beasties earlier this week.

But I haven't had a chance to photograph them until today. I much prefer to photograph embroideries under predominantly natural light and although the days are lengthening it's still dusk by about five-thirty.

I don't think I'm going to frame this one; rather I'll back it with fabric and add a wooden rod top and bottom. I haven't actually seen any of these over here but I know that, at worst, I can pick up the necessary dowel and decorative end pieces in the UK at the end of the month.

This isn't the pattern as illustrated on the kit. In fact it took quite a bit of tweaking to get it to work. The original has the beasties in a completely different order with the same number of blocks between the design and the dividers - which meant that the dividers were randomly spaced compared to the outside pattern. I rearranged the order of the beasties and balanced up the gaps and I'm much happier with the symmetry. The other symmetry problem is that the border consists of twenty-eight elements... for which the original version had used three internal colours. Now I'm not a mathematical genius, but even I know that twenty-eight does not give zero remainder when divided by three. Aaarg. Instead I used four colours, and it no longer offends my sense of order. :)

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I am both pleased and surprised.

I was discussing the matter of non-smoking premises with the folks at work today and it seems that the law prohibiting smoking in restaurants, bars and clubs has not only been passed, but comes into force on July 1st. I shall watch further developments with interest, although I can't say that I'm entirely convinced that it'll be effective - too many times here have I heard the view that 'laws only exist to be bent'. Still, it's a start.

Today was the first of the 'Open House' days at the university. For some reason the university leaves most of the organisation of this event to the students and the publicity department just has to put the adverts in the local papers and tell the students when it will be held. This makes no sense to me, as it's the university that has a financial interest in attracting more students, not the current student cadre. We played host to students from the two local secondary schools who turned up, asked a few questions, ate our candy and our pizza and went away again.

What was more interesting was that it meant that I got to have a look at the fisheries lab. The faculty offers three life sciences/natural resources degrees, and these include a lot of labwork. In the lab downstairs we have fish tanks and all sorts of other interesting stuff, including a section of a hydrothermal vent (we have them just north of us, which means that Akureyri's a great place to do research into them). It's all quite fascinating. I've often wondered what cod look like before they're turned into fish fingers or fish and chips, and at last I have.Smoke
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This is a phrase seldom used in Iceland.

Even restaurants up here allow smoking, which can seriously affect my enjoyment of a meal. Approximately 30% of the population smoke, which means that going into a bar is a non-starter unless you want to come out reeking of tobacco... assuming that you can actually breathe in there in the first place. Offices are generally smoke-free, but don't expect to be able to enjoy yourself in clear air. After all, that's what the big outdoors is for, isn't it? Strange that a nation that prides itself on its pollution-free environment still has seriously polluted entertainment venues. There are vague rumours that it will be banned in places that serve food, but they're only very vague and aren't likely to come into force for at least a couple of years.

Akureyri has that very rare place, the smoke-free café: Bláa Kannan, the Blue Jug. This is a wonderful place on the main street that serves a very good lunch in the middle of the day and excellent coffee and cakes for the rest of it. I had to pop into town today to get a long-arm stapler to make up some booklets for the university Open Day tomorrow, so I met up with Martha for lunch and, as Bláa Kannan is just opposite her office it was a sensible choice. They always have a homemade soup and a hot meal, which today was a very rich and vegetable-heavy lasagne - very tasty. And we just had to finish it off with coffee and cake... :)
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I wish that the drivers of Akureyri would learn how to use indicators.

Every day I drive around the town I find my progress impeded as I sit waiting to turn onto a road - normally, but by no means always when I'm turning right - because a car coming towards me turns off the road without signalling. Had he signalled then I would have had time to progress onto my target road, but instead there is now insufficient space between him and the car behind for me to safely turn. And then the car behind also turns without signalling...

The assumption seems to be that Akureyri is a small town, so you know who's in every car, which also means that you know where they're heading so of course you know that they're planning to turn there. It's not just me that has noticed this. The situation has become so bad that there is a public campaign to encourage drivers to indicate when turning. In Reykjavík they seem to have realised that the city is too big to know everyone, and that not signalling is a very dangerous thing to do. Given the number of cars there that's a very reassuring thing. Up here in the far north, where the largest settlement is smaller than St. Andrews, the idea of road safety hasn't quite sunk in yet. Of course, it's not just Akureyri; there's a similar problem in most of the northern settlements.

I have been told that I'm a very careful driver. I don't put my foot down to race into gaps between cars. I suspect that this high-acceleration driving style is a direct consequence of the signalling problem. You have no idea whether the car coming down the road is going to turn or not so you just move and assume that the other car's brakes are working properly. No wonder there are a lot of bumps occur in the winter.
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At last, something European I can agree with.

One of my colleagues today sent details of A Vision For Europe out on the staff and student email list. This is a statement of the common values of individual freedom, democracy and law which historically underpin European civilisation. The main document is too long to post here, but it also comes with a 'short form', the Brussels declaration, which will be launched at the end of the month ahead of the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome.

It occurs to me that this would make a far better European constitution than the monstrosity that has been peddled around the nations of Europe for the last couple of years.

Brussels Declaration

We,the people of Europe, hereby affirm our common values. They are based not on a single culture or tradition but are founded in all of the cultures that make up modern Europe.

• We affirm the worth, dignity and autonomy of every individual, and the right of everyone to the greatest possible freedom compatible with the rights of others. We support democracy and human rights and aim at the fullest possible development of every human being.
  
• We recognise our duty of care to all of humanity including future generations, and our dependence on and responsibility for the natural world.
  
• We affirm the equality of men and women. All persons regardless of race, origin, religion or belief, language, gender, sexual orientation or ability must have equal treatment before the law.
  
• We affirm the right of everyone to adopt and follow a religion or belief of their choosing. But the beliefs of any group may not be used to limit the rights of others.
  
• We hold that the state must remain neutral in matters of religion and belief, favouring none and discriminating against none.
  
• We hold that personal liberty must be combined with social responsibility. We seek to create a fair society based on reason and compassion, in which every citizen is enabled to play their full part.
  
• We uphold both tolerance and freedom of expression
  
• We affirm the right of everyone to open and comprehensive education.
  
• We reject intimidation, violence and incitement to violence in the furtherance of disputes, and hold that conflicts must be resolved through negotiation and by legal means.
  
• We uphold freedom of inquiry in every sphere of human life, and the application of science in the service of human welfare. We seek to use science creatively, not destructively.
  
• We uphold artistic freedom, value creativity and imagination, and recognise the transforming power of art. We affirm the importance of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts for personal development and fulfilment.
  

Made this 25^th day of March 2007, being the 50^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome and the foundation of the European Union.

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Still no internet.

But that's understandable, I suppose, given that not a lot tends to be open here on Sundays. So instead of streaming World Service I'm listening to the HHGTTG on CD. It's one of those things that really ought to be listened to at least once a year, I believe. Work continues apace, and I'm now writing what looks as if it'll be three, not just two, lectures on Input/Output.

As well as that I'm making excellent progress with the celtic beasties bellpull. I've finished the five beasties and just have the remainder of the border to do. All being well it'll be completed within a day or two, so I'll post photos then.
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I've never going to be able to look at an SCA knight the same way ever again.

Having completed season 1 of the HTV Robin of Sherwood series, I've now started on season 2. The Sheriff of Nottingham is away in London and has left Sir Guy of Gisbourne acting as his deputy. This means that we get to see Sir Guy in his feasting-garb rather than his armour and, of course, being a knight he's got this heavy gold chain around his neck. Now the gold chain is one of the symbols of the SCA knights, which means that no-one who isn't a knight is allowed to wear one. You can spot the knights a mile off by their gold chains and white belts.

At least Sir Guy doesn't have a white belt. As it is, I'm going to have enough of a problem looking at an SCA knight without thinking of the incompetent Sir Guy. It really isn't going to help my mental image of most (although not all - a few of them are very nice) of the SCA chivalry. Giggling wildly every time I come across one of them would be ever so rude... :)
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What's Icelandic for mounting board?

My lack of knowledge of the technical terms appropriate to embroidery framing, together with my terror at the thought of the cost, has made me shy away from taking any finished pieces to the craft shop to be framed. Today, though, I took a piece to measure it up against a pre-made frame, as ABbuðin has the best selection of frames around. The picture in question is one of the Derwentwater sunsets (the sailing dinghy one) which I originally bought as a kit for Mum, who then did it and never got around to having it framed so I brought it back with me to do just that.

So there I was in the shop measuring the completed embroidery against frames to get the best colour match. It'll fit nicely in an A4 frame, so there were several to choose from. When I took it to the counter the nice lady in the shop who doesn't speak English asked me if I wanted 'something', but I had no idea what that 'something' was. After a bit of charades and a little help from another customer who did speak English I ended up with a piece of mounting board over which I can stretch the embroidery, which is great. It does mean, however, that I now have to quiz someone with some technical knowledge of embroidery and framing to find out what the appropriate Icelandic words are for these things.

I also visited the other craft shops in search of some jewellery findings to start making some Tudor test pieces. I had no joy in that respect, and I suspect that I'm going to have to wait until I get back to the UK to find them. I belive that there's a bead shop in Chester city centre so I'm going to have to take a couple of hours off from Eastercon to go shopping. In spite of not finding what I was looking for I did cave in and buy a kit for a pieced and quilted table runner which will make a nice hanging. I know that just over a year ago I bought a pattern for a much larger hanging - effectively a bedspread - but it's rather large and I haven't plucked up the courage to try something so large. I hope that this smaller piece will give me that courage... although it's still quite big and when I took all of the fabric out I began to wonder if I ought to do a cushion or something first. A friend is doing a beautiful 'Moonflower' quilt and I do like some of the square blocks that form the pattern. I'm sure that one of them would make a really nice cushion.

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Right now I have no home internet.

This is only a temporary measure, as I've had to change ISPs in order to get cable TV. Besides, I can always post this at work tomorrow morning. I finally caved in and went into the phone shop in town to order cable. It'll take a day or so to get the internet back but I have to wait a week or so for the cable chaps to arrive to install everything for me. I'm going to have BBC World, BBC Prime, four different Discovery channels plus an assortment of other stuff. It was the extra Discovery channels that eventually persuaded me to go for the top package, but the price differential isn't too bad anyway.

While I was in town I also popped into the bank to pay in a couple of UK checks and, as it turned out, pick up a bottle of water. For some reason they were giving away free bottles of Icelandic water. This is Glitnir, the bank that used to be Íslandsbanki until it realised that the accented letter would be a problem in the international arena. As banks go they're quite nice - I have full online banking in (mostly) English, when I asked for Lazy Town kids freebies to send to Scotland they handed them over without any problem, and when I got back here after Christmas I discovered a parcel from them containing a Christmas decoration. He's meant to be a santa holding two candles and surrounded by a border of more candles, but the angular forms make it look like a large cog wheel with a santa bearing two spanners within a border of spanners. I think I'm going to take it home next year for Dad - a santa engineer on the Christmas tree would be quite fun.
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