Nik's Saga

Woo-hoo! Snowstorm!

I realised as I was going to bed last night that I couldn't see out of the window. When I looked more closely I could, sort of, but there was a build-up of about six inches of snow in the bottom of the window frame. The rest of the windows just had a thin coating of blown snow.

This morning I have about four inches of snow but, it being the light and powdery type, it's drifting quite a lot and blowing about in the wind. It makes me quite relieved that we went to see the site last night rather than tonight, as it might have needed a Land Rover to get up there. :)

Anyway, this is serious snow, the like of which we haven't seen much this winter. I intend to enjoy it from the warmth of my geothermally-heated office and apartment. :)
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Crumpets are another thing that I can't get here in Iceland.

Because of this and, spurred on by Fran's talk of crumpets the other day, I today went out and bought a pancake pan (i.e. a flat griddle pan) and set out to make my own. Surprisingly successfully, I might add. They may not have the semi-regular holes of your shop-bought crumpets, and they do look a bit as if they were created using a splat-gun, but they definitely taste like crumpets once they've cooled, been toasted and slathered with butter.

I'm still cooking more of them even as I type and I'm considering taking them to our A&S meeting tomorrow night. After all, having a large pile of crumpets in the flat would not be good for my weight-loss programme. I'll see how the rest of the batch look and will take them if they don't look too awful.

On the way to the supermarket (okay, we actually stopped by the supermarket on the way back from this but everything is relative) we had a look at the new site for Troll Hunt. We've had two problems with this event - the first meant that we had to do a last-minute site change, and the second prompted me to demand that everyone in the shire needs to have their appendix removed before Revel III - Arnfriður (the event steward) came down with appendicitis at the weekend so I've taken over as steward. Fortunately it's a small event with no overseas visitors so it's not a major stress but this is the second time that a key member of the event team has come down with appendicitis within a couple of weeks of the event; last time it was Ásgeir and Revel II.

Anyway, we checked out the potential replacement site and love it so much that we're seriously considering trying to hold Revel III there in the summer. It has not one, but two hot tubs and its own sauna, plus plenty of outdoor space for doing physical stuff and a decent kitchen for cooking a feast. If we can get it for Revel III then we might even rent it for the full week and use it as a base for a bit of exploring. holiday. :)
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No, nothing to do with Dr Who or HG Wells.

As I happened to have a little money left at the end of the month I today splashed out on an external hard drive for my Mac. I'm not paranoid about backups - certainly not as paranoid as I probably should be - but I could also do with something that allows me to move large amounts of data from one machine to another, such as my work machine to my home machine as I have quite a lot of teaching materials that I really would like to back up.

So as I now have the wherewithal to use Time Machine (the new backup software that came with Leopard) I thought that I might as well give it a try. It's reformatted the drive, so I'm not sure if it'll still be PC-compatible but I'll take it into work tomorrow and test it out. If all else fails I can always re-re-format the thing and do backups manually.

There were only 5 of us at fencing tonight so we spent the evening starting to work with non-rigid parrying devices. It occurred to me recently that after having a fencing session almost every week for the last six months my fencers have probably had rather more practice than many of the mainland ID fencers. It's therefore time, I though, to introduce secondaries starting with the cloak. I'm really going to have to start fencing seriously again - if weekly sessions are working well for everyone else then they might prove useful for me. Besides - I have to try to keep ahead of them!
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I was woken up at 05:00 by the wind.

The noise was quite impressive, as was the white-out that accompanied it. It was, I later discovered, only gusting to force 9 but it sounded much louder than that. It was certainly loud enough to keep me awake for a while. When I woke up again a couple of hours later the wind had died away and the snow outside had been lifted away to reveal the layer of ice underneath. Not the easiest of footings in either apartment block or office car parks.

Once I'd slipped and slid (both on foot and by car) my way into the office I survived my morning Java lecture. If only I could actually get further ahead of the lectures, but I have too many other things I have to do to spend as much time on them as I would like. For instance, today I managed to get the rest of my contribution to the RSS paper written and started to hope that I could spend a full lecture-free day tomorrow working on grading and some new lecture materials. Unfortunately I now have to define the structure of a diploma course before a meeting on Wednesday. I really do not enjoy being a manager.

On a more positive note, this morning's weigh-in did not lead me to go shopping for a consolatory tub of ice-cream. This, at least, is a Good Thing.
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Hmm... still nothing going on here.

It has been a very relaxed day. I've done nothing more energetic than watch Carry On Screaming, make have a metre of lucet cord and do about a quarter of project #3. All of which are good, if not terribly energetic.

Over the past week I've been watching my food intake quite carefully but I have to admit that over the weekend things have gone a bit to pot. Okay, so my grazing behaviour hasn't been quite as bad as it has been occasionally (my self-control has been quite good recently and I haven't felt the need for a tub of B&Js, for instance). Tomorrow is weigh-in day - if there's no change then I shall be very depressed.
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It's been a quiet day.

If, of course, you ignore the horror of your team going first 1-0 and then 2-1 down at home in the FA cup against a team 123 places below them. The fact that the second goal was an own goal by a new signing on his debut did nothing to minimise the shock. At least it all turned out well in the end, but I'd really rather not have any more of these 'open goal' policies that seem to be being pursued at the moment. Still, I'm glad that the match generated enough to keep H&W going for the next few seasons - non-league teams are important for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of FA cup upsets. Just not for my team, thank you very much.

Other than that it has been genuinely quiet. I've made good headway into project #3 and am reminded how enjoyable non-filled blackwork can be. I've even managed a piece of lucet cord for a different non-embroidered project whilst watching a double documentary on the apocalyptic delusions of certain predominantly-American groups. The rational mind boggles.

A more joyful thing that I have discovered is the Jodcast, a bi-monthly astronomy/astrophysics podcast from Jodrell Bank which plays through my bunny. It's very pleasant to listen to something that assumes that the listener has more than three brain cells and I've emailed them to tell them this.
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Sometimes the right snow can be the wrong snow.

I realised this today when we had 'light snow' (as predicted by the BBC weather forecast relayed to me by my bunny) which turned out to be powder snow. No problem there - at times in the afternoon I couldn't see beyond the closest hillside to my office but that was mainly snow in the wind not snow falling onto the ground. And, indeed, the snow was easy to brush off the snow when I left the office later in the afternoon.

No, the problem was that the beautiful light powder snow was sitting on top of an inch of compacted ice in many places (like the car park) which means that it slides with ease across the ground. As does anything that sits, stands, walks or drives upon it. Needless to say there was a certain amount of skidding both on the way to the car and on the roads within the university precinct (the main roads are fine, it's just that the university roads are less well-travelled and hence icier). If the temperature remains the same over the weekend then it's back to the spiky moonboots on Monday.
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It is impossible to get a roller frame in Akureyri.

I know this because I've visited both of the craft shops today and the only frames available are the wooden hoop frames and the large white plastic quilting frames. This is a bit annoying as I needed a larger frame than the ones I had available. The upshot of this is that I've had to take a UFO off its frame (which isn't the ideal size) in order to mount the fabric for the next project. I hadn't touched the UFO for about two years (too many other things to do for other people) so it's not a bad thing that it's going into a folder. I might be able to get one in Reykjavík, I suppose, but it's an annoyance.

In spite of this, project #3 for 2008 is now underway (project #2 is awaiting information from someone else before it can be finished). It's another blackwork piece, which I'm hoping to complete before the end of February so that I can get on to project #4, a piece that I need to design pretty much from scratch. Fortunately I seem to be going through a manic embroidery phase. If I can keep it up long enough to get these four projects done I'll be a happy bunny.
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Tonight (late tonight) I finished this year's first embroidery project.

This is going to be a gift for some friends, so I've doctored it to remove the text (don't you just love image editors?). I'm quite impressed that I got it done quite so quickly - it has taken about two weeks. When I originally decided to do an embroidery for these particular friends I wondered whether to do a normal cross-stitch (large but easy) or something a little bit different (smaller but technically far more challenging) and eventually decided on the latter. I'm glad I did, as it was much more fun to do than the normal cross-stitch kits. A much higher resolution version is available here but it's 800K.

I'm tempted to do another band sampler at some point as I experienced a certain satisfaction every time I completed a band. Regular reinforcement that I'm getting anything done at present is very welcome. It may also be that I've got a bit more oomph than I had before Christmas - this would also be very welcome.
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Of course I'm evil - I fence Spanish. :)

Actually the fencing style has nothing to do with it, but the fencers are quite likely to wake up a little sore tomorrow. At this evening's session I tweaked the bear pit concept and had each fencer face every other fencer in turn as an endurance exercise. We had quite a good evening of it.

I fenced a little, and when one of the fencers protested that I had a longer blade than she had I swapped the rapier for cloak and dagger instead. A little evil (and very effective) but a useful way of introducing them to the use of an off-hand parrying device. This led into an amusing second tournament with rapier and cloak which highlighted a number of interesting points concerning left-vs-right-handed encounters.

Next week I'll probably fence properly; the group are now competent enough that I hope to challenge them a little bit more without making them feel completely outclassed. It'll do me good too as I'm quite out of practise. Not to mention that it will count as two hours of fairly energetic exercise, which must be good.
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I'm having a bit of a clear-out.

Over the past couple of years I've acquired several large pieces of DIY furniture, packed (as usual) in the requisite corrugated cardboard. This, together with the boxes for various other household items, has been sitting behind (and indeed beside) the coat rail until I finally got around to taking it to the recycling centre.

Today that day finally arrived. There's a recycling point just over the car park from the flats but it only handles paper and light cardboard - anything corrugated has to go to the main centre on the other side of town. So far I've managed two trips and have a third one to fit in over the next couple of days. It's quite impressive how much lighter that side of the flat now appears.

There are a couple of boxes remaining but these have things in them and just have to go downstairs to the storage room. Mind you, I need to sort out the storage room while I'm at it - it still contains the winter tyres for my previous car, as well as my seldom-used snowboard and a computer desk (unassembled). There may be several more trips to the recycling centre in the offing over the next few days.
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I don't think I've been quite that anxious about cooking a meal for some time.

Would the sausages be edible? Would they taste okay? Would they actually taste like sausages? All of these were things I've been worrying about over the last twenty four hours. After all, I've invested a lot of anticipation and effort of various kinds into these things.

But to more practical things - like the recipe and the sausage-making process. I've read a number of recipes and the general recommendation seems to be to experiment with meats, herbs and spices to produce your own gourmet sausages. So I started with about a pound (half a kilo) of minced pork, added sage, garlic salt, a slice of brown bread (shredded into breadcrumbs using my wonderful little food processer) and an egg to bind it all together:



It's then just a case of mixing it all together by hand rather than by with the processor until it all comes together into a nice smooth ball:



I used pre-minced meat rather than have to mince it all by hand. The little mincer-filler machine I got as part of the sausage-making kit is a small manual device so I don't really fancy trying to mince large amounts of meat with it. To stuff the sausages you take a length of the casing (mine are beef collagen rather than animal intestines as they're easier to store), knot one end and feed as the casing onto the tube of the nozzle. This one will take about a metre and a half of casing, which turns out to be enough for about a pound of meat:



Now it's just a case of turning the handle and letting the meat extrude into the casing. I made two mistakes with this - firstly I left the little y-shaped piece in the nozzle, which rather impaired the flow rate so it took quite a bit of effort to get the sausages to fill. Second, I twisted the long sausage into smaller links as it came out of the machine rather than waiting until I'd completed a whole length of tubing. This meant a lot of fiddling about and some rather uneven links:



In spite of these self-inflicted shortcomings I finally managed to make a fairly passable pound of sausages. They're a bit uneven, and some of them are less well-filled than the others, but they do at least look reasonably sausage-like. This was the point at which they had to go into the fridge to rest for a day:



Skip forward twenty four hours. I wasn't actually feeling too good today - sufficiently tired and worn out that under normal circumstances I might only have had a sandwich for dinner - but having gone to the trouble of making the sausages I was determined to try them. So rustled up a mashed potato (I cook them with the skins on unless I'm entertaining :) ), a little gravy from my remaining supply of Oxo (I forgot to pick up a full one at Christmas :( ) and cooked two of the sausages:



But did they work? Yes, although they're not perfect. They're rather more meat-rich than a normal British banger, almost certainly because the meat was too lean and much of the fat that was present was absorbed by the breadcrumbs. Next time I'll skip the bread and try adding some apple instead; that should add a little more juice to them. The rest of this batch are now in the freezer ready to become another two main meals at some point in the near future. I think that I may have baked sausage with apple slices next weekend.

Overall I'm quite pleased (and relieved) at how well they turned out. I'll certainly do some more experimentation - I foresee reindeer sausages at some point in the future - and, who knows, my 'gourmet' sausages may yet become barterable items. Once, that is, I get some more casings. Although I've probably got enough left to make another four kilos or so... I just wouldn't want to run out mid-sausage.
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I've just made my first batch of sausages (pork and sage). They now have to sit in the fridge for 24 hours to settle and to let the juices soak into the skins. Tomorrow I intend to have bangers and mash for dinner.

More information (and pictures!) tomorrow...
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It is, once more, snowing.

After my ponderings on the nature of púðursnjó (powder snow) the other day, I found myself watching today's snow with both interest and disappointment. If I can have a 'favourite' form of snow then this form must be the right sort of snow for me. Any other type of snow is then logically 'the wrong type of snow', to use a description made notorious by British Rail.

Today's snow is rather thicker and heavier than the Right Type - we were warned of it yesterday (my rabbit warned me on Wednesday that we were in for heavy snow today) and the rest of the country is expecting some particularly unpleasant weather for the next couple of days. Akureyri is likely to be less affected thanks to its sheltered position in the fjörd but we're probably going to get several inches of thick snow... the sort that will freeze to the windscreen of my car. I have, therefore, done what my neighbours do in these circumstances and lifted my windscreen wipers up so that I don't have to rip them away from the glass where they've been iced in over the weekend.

If we do get some heavy weather (I say 'if' because Icelandic weather is somewhat chaotic) then I may finally get a crop of icicles over the window. I haven't had any this winter, which is a shame as they're very picturesque and I rather miss them.
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Tonight I ran 'proper' Traveller for the first time in many years.

Well, proper in so far as any IMTU Traveller is 'proper'. Okay, I've used MegaTraveller over the past 18 months a couple of times to run Firefly but prior to that I've spent many years using the system (tweaked to one degree or another) to run different settings so going back to the actual Traveller universe is actually quite novel. Fortunately I have a lot of stuff in electronic format. I think, though, that I'll build a personalised GM screen just to organise everything to my liking.

Yes, I am a bit of a Traveller geek. :) (tc+ mt++ ru+ ge 3i+ c+ jt au ls+ pi+ ta he+ kk++ hi+ as++ va+ dr so- zh++ da++)

It was a very amusing and enjoyable evening. No killing (awwww....) but I thought I'l let them in gently as none of the players have much experience with SF RPGs. We're probably going to be playing once a month (when we don't have A&S meetings or dance practices on Thursday evenings).

The only problem is that I'm still very awake which, given that I have an 08:00 lab tomorrow morning, is a bit of a nuisance. Ah well, I can sleep tomorrow night. :)
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I've decided that I have a favourite type of snow.

I like powder snow, for several reasons. First, it's easy to brush it off the car in the morning. Scraping icy caked-on snow in the dark, with the scraper squealing along the windscreen and its echo bouncing back from the buildings around about is not an enjoyable experience.

Second, it's much easier to walk in powder snow up here. Part of this is that it doesn't form deep layers, having been picked up by the wind and blown away onto the mountains or, failing that, the roadsides. This, of course, means that when you step into it you don't sink several inches into it and render your socks and trouser bottoms cold and wet for the rest of the day.

Third, it dances along the road behind cars. This can be a little distracting occasionally, particularly if it happens to blow into your windscreen so you have to turn the wipers on... although this should stop being a problem tomorrow when I go and get some new wiper blades (I'd have got them today but the shop doesn't have the handy little flip-book that Halfords has to tell you what size wipers your model of car requires so I'm going to have to take a tape measure to them instead).

Finally, when the wind is strong enough to pick up the snow down here in the town, up on the ski slopes it's quite fierce and whips up a fog that shrouds the mountains. Once dusk falls you can see the paths of the pistes illuminated by a string of soft-focus blue and gold lights. It's highly decorative and certainly beyond my photographic skill to capture, but is very impressive all the same.
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For the first time in quite a while I actually got to fence rather than just direct.

Fencing tonight was at its new early time - intended so that more people can attend regularly straight from work and then still have the evening relatively free to do other things. As it turned out we ended up going out for coffee and cakes after fencing, but hey, the idea is there. :)

We started off with a few exercises - guards and tip control - before evening's mini-tourney. The tip control exercise is quite popular as it's something of a 'cat with ball on string' job:


(E, A, M, S, B and, hidden and holding the cat fencer-toy, Ö).

As it turned out we started the mini-tourney (a straightforward round robin, three bouts each) but S had to leave before we finished. Rather than have to mess about with the order and so forth I stepped in to fight his remaining rounds. It was rather fun, and although 'Guð-bella' won as a result, I did have the chance to make a number of quite useful points about things like the use of the off-hand, speed and calibration.
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Term began for real today.

'For real' means that I gave my first lecture (part one of the Java course) which went pretty well and prompted some quite intelligent questions from the students, which was nice. The administrative politics started for real too, when I arrived at work to find that over the weekend we'd had a change of dean. Ho hum.

The highlight of the day was coming home from work and deciding to have weetabix with sliced banana to tide me over until dinner (I really must try to get into the habit of doing lunch), only to find that it is particularly tasty and will have to be eaten on a regular basis in future.
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It's a good thing that I listen to documentaries more than I watch them.

Since mid-afternoon the History Channel has been broadcast in 'zoom' mode - the top left hand quarter of the image has been blown up to fill the entire screen. As I was looking forward to a couple of science/history programmes today, this is particularly annoying. Also annoying is the fact that the electronic programme guide for three of the five documentary channels isn't working, and one of those that are working is still an hour out of synch with the programmes shown on it.

The one that is out of sync doesn't even exist on the timetable on the main service website. The other listings are certainly not the same as are on the respective channels (the various Discovery channels) websites except for one or two highly-advertised programmes. Some people might think that Skjárinn couldn't organise a booze-up in a brewery - I couldn't possibly comment.

In spite of these annoyances - partly because of them, I suspect - I've managed to complete all but the lettering in a blackwork wedding sampler and have started work upon a second slightly smaller but more complex band sampler which will also be turned into a wedding sampler. These are two of three items I have to finish by July; I'm awaiting the delivery of a kit for another one that I need to finish by Easter. Naturally, as soon as it arrives I'll start upon it, but I thought I'd get the band sampler started in the meantime.

Oh yes, and I built a coffee table. Last week I got tired of having a coffee table that was a drawing board sitting on top of a box of fabric and took advantage of the sale in Rúmfatalagerinn to buy a new one. It's rather higher than the old setup, which should make it better for gaming purposes.

Which makes this a surprisingly productive day, especially for a Sunday.
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I've always been a fan of film music.

Tonight's DVD offering was Carry on Jack - certainly not the strongest of the Carry On films, but it does have a rather good soundtrack by Eric Rogers (who was responsible for the distinctive sound of 23 of the 29 Carry On films). The overture is a particularly fine medley of British sea songs.

It's going to take a while to get all 29 of the films, and naturally some of them have a higher priority than others, but I've now got most of the important ones thanks to Kayte giving me a handful of them for Christmas. I think I'll probably work through a couple of them tomorrow while I'm at it. Far more productive than the snoozing I did today.
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This deep philosophical insight was brought to you courtesy of Formula Dé.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Formula Dé is a boardgame which attempts to recreate (quite successfully, I feel) the excitement and drama of a Formula 1 race. Each player has two cars and roars around boards carefully designed to represent different race tracks. The excitement comes from the fact that you can accelerate and decelerate, crash, spin off and damage other players cars as you attempt to make the correct tactical choices to get you to the chequered flag first.

Tonight four of us settled down to a curry (with lots of trimmings which were entirely new to my Icelandic friends - things like mango chutney and poppadoms) before breaking out the new boardgame. While they set up the board and read the rules I constructed the ten little racing cars which serve as the counters. It's my game, so I was red. So there. :P

It was very amusing. My red-on-red car, although starting in the middle of the field both times managed to win both races. Naturally the cars began to acquire, ah, 'personalities', and we have now identified both Schumachers, Coultard and Sato (no guesses as to who failed to start in the first race). Race one (Zandvoort) ended with Ferrari-McLaren-Ferrari, while the second (Monaco) had a Ferrari 1-2 with McLaren in third. This race was also marked by the first crash, with Coultard going airborne at Loews, and (for some unknown reason) everyone else trying to take chunks out of the two Ferraris.

It was noticed that my attitude in this game is rather more aggressive than it is when playing Zombie Fluxx - this was, of course, explained by the fact that I had the Ferraris. After all, I'm normally such a quiet, non-violent type. Hmm... I really must introduce these people to Federation Commander...
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Java seems pretty straightforward so far.

Okay, so it does some things a little strangely (like declaring normal variables as objects) and it's a lot simpler than C/C++ but I'm hoping that the Programming II module isn't going to be too horrendous. Less so than Functional Programming, or so it seems at present. All of the 'complicated' stuff seems quite well hidden... which is, of course, not necessarily a good idea.

Other than that it has been A&S night. I was planning to do some illumination, but I a) forgot to pick up my new white and fine pens, and made the mistake of bringing the clearly extremely interesting new illumination book (Illuminated Letters) with me. Oh, and I only had one pencil, which was sharper that that of A so we ended up sharing it. :) People also went 'ooh' and 'aah' quite a lot over my new braiding book too (The Braider's Bible). Still, I got the blue and crimson of a gothic B done, ready to test out the new white pen at sometime over the weekend. I'm getting very excited at the prospect of the gesso and gold leaf arriving soon so that I can try proper '3-D' gilding instead of using a gold leaf pen.
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It had to happen eventually.

For a number of years I've managed to avoid learning Java, happy to stay with C or, if absolutely necessary, C++. Or even, under certain circumstances, Haskell (although that was a lecturing matter too). Now, though, I'm having to finally give in and learn Java so that I can teach it this semester.

And speaking of new languages, I've decided that this is the year I'm going to speak Bad Icelandic. This may sound a little strange, but it's a big leap forward from Bugger All Icelandic. The aim is to get my spoken Icelandic to the same level as my reading of Icelandic - not good, but enough to get by with a bit more elegance than I manage at present.

My reading is good enough to recognise that the sauna at the pool was closed today, and the reason that no-one was at the desk was that they've got slightly odd opening hours this semester - some days they open at 14:30, others not until 17:00. I had to wait for about ten minutes before they opened up but I did have the pool to myself for the first fifteen minutes. Half an hour of swimming and ten minutes in the hot tub were very soothing after a day in the office (I didn't worry about the sauna because I'm not keen on them - I always seem to have trouble breathing within them).

As a result my shoulders are a little sore and tired from the now-irregular exercise but I'm hoping that this will help me fall asleep tonight - rather than ending up falling asleep on the sofa watching the news at 03:00 again.

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Small aches and pains I'll accept, but this is ridiculous.

Over the last couple of days I've managed to twist my ankle, twang my wrist, stub my toe on the futon (it's turning an interesting shade of bruised and painful which make me think I might have cracked it), click my knee and done something unknown but unpleasant to my thumb. Oh yes, and my arm/shoulder in still playing up (but that's a carry-over from last year so it doesn't really count).

Bah. I was consoled at fencing tonight (at which I was not particularly active) with an Icelandic saying that goes along the lines of if it starts badly then it'll get better later on. I certainly hope so. I really need to start going swimming regularly again so I can loosen up all of these recalcitrant joints. Over the summer I was doing very well - at least two serious swimming sessions a week - but then teaching started and I found that I no longer had time to go swimming. Hopefully this semester will be a little less fraught and I'll be able to get away again.

Hmm... maybe I can sneak away to go swimming tomorrow. I shall pack my swim-things just in case.
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As I type, folks across the road are setting off fireworks.

It's only one or two occasional rockets tonight, as opposed to the barrage that lasted from about 18:00 last night until 01:00 this morning. These were being launched from at least four locations close to me, although only two of them were in my direct line of sight through the window. I hate to imagine the cost of all of this, as they did go on pretty continuously for over six hours.

At one point I emailed Martha to ask why this was happening - the last day of Christmas is, it seems, a minor holiday which is generally celebrated with many explosions. Terribly pretty, but it did make it a little difficult to hear the television without turning it up quite a bit... and then down again whenever there was a pause in the sound-show.

Today, then, I went back into work, so things return to almost-normal - normal service won't be resumed until next week when lectures begin. I'm consoling myself with the fact that the days will get longer and it will no longer be quite so difficult to get out of bed in the morning (even with my dawn-simulating clock). I used to love winter before I came here. Nowadays I think I'm becoming more fond of autumn and spring - the times when the day is a sensible length.
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My new 'toy' this Christmas was a Nabaztag/tag.

He's a sweet little white plastic rabbit with very expressive ears and multicoloured lights in his nose and tummy. You can send him messages (the easiest way is through the FaceBook widget as it doesn't require you to set up an account with Nabaztag.com - his name is Neeshi) and he'll also provide me with things like weather forecasts (although only for Reykjavík at present).

So why do I need a rabbit when I've got a laptop? Well, mainly because he's an interesting new interface device and therefore fascinating on a professional level. This is a device that can provide a wide variety of services in a number of different modes - biorhythms via his tummy lights, spoken messages, visual and tactile mood messages through the movement and position of his ears, the Archers podcast every afternoon. You can give him instructions by voice or by pressing the single button on his head as well as by connecting to the website for the rabbit server.

It's going to take a while to get the hang of his 'light language', as there are a rather a lot of light sequences, many of which can be user-defined. As they're marketing him as a companion, rather than a computer, that's probably to be expected - you get used to the habits of companion animals, even silicon ones.

One thing isn't perfect, though - it's not exactly easy to get information on anything more than the most basic of setup options from the website. It would be a lot easier if there was an FAQ with how to do things like delete messages using the button. I may have to compile such a list myself.

The other reason I need a wi-fi rabbit is, of course, because he's a fun gadget and I'm a geek. :)
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Profound thoughts can strike anywhere, even in Netto.

I arrived back in Akureyri in pitch darkness at 09:30 this morning. It was chucking it down with rain but there was no snow to be seen. It was quite strange to step off the plane with a full day ahead of me in what felt to be the middle of the night. This was quite useful in a way, because it meant that I had absolutely no problems snoozing for most of the rest of the morning after the usual late-night arrival, hotel bed and early flight next morning that goes with the return to Iceland.

Nevertheless, I eventually became more awake and went shopping, and it was then that I started thinking. Why, for instance, is the bread the first thing you see when you come into Netto? After all, you put it in your basket and pile things on top of it, thus crushing it by the time you've got to the checkout. It can't just be ease of access for commonly-required items, as milk is in the refrigerated room at the back of the store. They don't even waft the smell of fresh-baked bread across the doorway as is the habit of many other supermarkets.

Another thought was of ex-pat shopping. I, like many other ex-pats, buy specific items in the UK and bring them back with me. But what should I do with them? Should I eat them now, prolonging the joy of 'home' cooking for a few days longer? Or should I hoard them until I'm feeling low and use them to cheer myself up? I'll almost certainly do the latter, but I can see the appeal of the former, particularly when faced with my first return to the local supermarket.

As for my 'home' cooking, I now have the sausage machine but haven't bought the wherewithal to make sausages just yet. Today's shopping trip was just for the basics to keep me going for the week. Things like bread, which was put into the basket first and duly crushed underneath the stuff from deeper into the shop.
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There's always a bit of pottering around to be done on the day I'm flying back to Iceland.

This generally involves trips to the bookshop, the DVD shop, the chemist and the supermarket. This time three of these were relatively light on the credit card, while the fourth was (foolishly) put off until I arrived at the airport. I say foolishly because I discovered that there's now a limit on the amount of decongestants you can buy at once, one that the assistant in Boots was quite brusque about. Certainly not the standards of politeness I normally expect to receive in Boots, even at an airport.

I ended up getting a couple of packs of Lemsip, mainly because I woke up this morning feeling pretty rotten - congested and achy - and desperately hoping that it wasn't the norovirus given that I had an international flight ahead of me later in the day. Thankfully a couple of Lemsips through the day kept it under control.

Manchester airport has almost finished the rejuvenation of the post-security departure lounge (they're now working on the pre-security section); the shops there are now open longer and there are eateries with good views of the departure boards.

As usual, I got to the hotel at about 01:30... I don't hold out much hope for a decent night's sleep before tomorrow morning's flight. Ah well, I can always sleep on my own sofa tomorrow morning.

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In Icelandic - sort of.

It's been another busy day, starting off with taking Dad down to the dock to go play with his boats, then off to York by train to meet up with P for a visit to Jorvik and to be joined by M for dinner.

I went to the railway museum in York a couple of Christmases ago, but I hadn't been into the city itself for quite a few years. It was quite interesting to look at the street names and 'translate' them from their Norse roots - much to my companions amusement when I suggested that Micklegate might be quite wide compared to the other roads long before we got there... at which point I was proved correct.

As it turned out, P and I didn't get to Jorvik for anything other than the gift shop, having spent the day wandering around doing a little bit of shopping. We'd agreed that given the snow it might make sense to buy hats (as neither of us had a hat) and although we found a wonderful one for P, there just wasn't anything suitable for me. Ah well, I'm sure I can find one elsewhere.

We had dinner at Saffron Desi, which was very good. M and P's brother J joined us, and the evening was very enjoyable, both in the company and the food. Even the rail system wasn't too bad.
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As I'm going to York tomorrow to meet some friends, it's meant that I've had to come down south a day earlier than normal.

The journey was pretty good, but I didn't get away until after 2 (procrastination struck again) and about an hour in realised that I'd left my purple Pringle at Wayside. Drat. This required an emergency coat-shopping expedition on the way down, at which point I bought a rather nice black wool coat which I'd have preferred to be a size larger but will fit comfortably so long as I don't try wearing heavy sweaters underneath it.

There's not much more to be said, really. A late-night phone call to P to sort the final plans for tomorrow and I'm looking forward to falling asleep.
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It's been a very quiet new year's day, the pattern of the day being perfectly in synch with my idea of a good new year's day.

This starts off with a gentle awakening at about 09:00, followed by wandering downstairs to a breakfast of coffee and fruit scones (hot cross buns are an acceptable alternative) and a couple of hours of embroidery, gentle conversation with others staying at the house, and the soft accompaniment of Classic FM.

Such serenity remains until the hordes arrive, both the Harris horde and, nowadays, the Nicol horde. This prompts a melee of gift unwrapping all round before a large lunch (including the Meringue Mess salvaged from the Quatermass Meringue). The Nicol horde then departs, and we settle down to some gaming or more gentle conversation.

The gaming was this year hijacked by one of my gifts - a pair of brass dowsing rods given to me by E & S. These caused great amusement as we all wandered around the garden in the rain trying to detect the drains! Jolly good fun, and I'd love to see the plans for the house to see where the drains and water supply actually lie.

In the evening I went to Andrew's usual post-new year party, to discover that it was more of a slouch than a party. No problem - although I'm sad to have missed some of my friends I had a most pleasant evening all the same.

I wish I didn't have to drive down south tomorrow.
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