Nik's Saga

One of which I drank today.

It's been a really rather stressful day in some ways. I went into this morning's lab, handed out the lab sheet and completely forgot that I had to go over the last 8 slides from Wednesday's lecture until one of the students asked about them. After this I dutifully turned up to Faculty Coffee and tried to look as if I could actually understand some of what was being said.

Then I collected my mail and found an interesting flier for an HE IT summit concentrating on recruitment of students into IT, how to then turn them into what employers actually want, and how to maximise the numbers of them taking part in exchange schemes in the process. This is actually very relevant to some stuff the Dean and I were discussing earlier in the week so I asked him if I could go to it... and he agreed.

This is another of these good news/bad news things, as it's in Valencia (ooooh!) about 10 days after I return from India (ahhhhh...). This, combined with the fact that I'm having to do a short-notice whistle-stop trip back to Scotland next week led to a rather unpleasant ongoing anxiety attack all afternoon as I realised that
a) I'd managed to get less actual teaching-related work done this week than I normally manage;
b) I've no longer got 5 days next week to try to get ahead; and
c) My to-do pile just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I must get some more green tea with raspberry/peach/orange as I'm almost out of it and it's becoming essential to calm me down. At least I have some here at home, which I'll no doubt need as I spend a chunk of the weekend going through a large folder full of non-EEA applications for places next year.

So eventually I managed to make a brief appearance at the end-of-month beer session on my way out of the office on my way to meet up with E to go shopping for brewing vessels and suchlike. The Shire has a big plan that rather than expect people to go out and buy ludicrously expensive alcohol for Revel in June, particularly given that we've worked out that we're going to need about 7,500 kr per person to run the thing :( . Instead, then, we're going to brew the beverages ourselves and include alcohol in the event fee.

At Troll Hunt several of our members showed that they were quite adept brewers - the Berserker Mead was so good I actually had three glasses of the stuff (pretty impressive when you realise that I don't generally like mead), and the raspberry and strawberry wines were delicately delicious rather than blatently fruity. I have this suspicion that the A&S at Revel III is going to have quite a few alcoholic entries.

My part in all of this is to brew real cider (rather than the soft drink that goes by that moniker over here). I've now got two 25 litre brewbins, a hygrometer, yeast, sterilising agent and the necessary tubing and airlocks, so all I need to get are the requisite amounts of apple juice and sugar. There's no way I'll be able to get enough suitable apples to press (nor, for that matter, would I have any way of pressing them) so I'll be looking for high-end fruit juices. If I manage to get the stuff tomorrow then the actually brewing will (tentatively) be set for Sunday.

Panic attacks willing, that is.
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Last night there was baking. Tonight there was eating.

More accurately, tonight there was a very short dance practice followed by a Shire meeting, for which I felt duty-bound to provide nibbles of some sort so, inspired by a comment the other day, I decided to make jam-filled doughnuts. How difficult can it be, I wondered? The answer was not particularly difficult at all.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients (makes about 10 rather large doughnuts - I suspect it would make 16-20 of a more sensible size)

• 2 (7 g) packets dried yeast
  
• 1/4 cup water
  
• 1 cup milk
  
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar (it should be caster sugar but I can't find that here so I improvised)
  
• 60 g butter
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 4 cups general purpose flour (again, this should be plain flour but I only had normal flour in the house)
  
• 1 lightly beaten egg white
  
• Approximately 1/2 cup strawberry jam (or raspberry, but I happened to have strawberry in the cupboard)
  
• Oil for deep-frying
  
• More sugar for coating the cooked dougnuts

Instructions:

1. Warm the milk and water in a small bowl (easiest done in the microwave), add the sugar and yeast. Cover and allow to stand in a warm place for 10-15 minutes until the mixture is frothy.
   
2. Melt the butter (microwave again). Add the two eggs and beat the mixture together, then pour stir the resulting mixture into the yeast, milk and sugar.
   
3. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Stir in the yeast mixture and mix to a soft dough.
   
4. Cover and allow to stand in a warm place for about 45 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size
   
5. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead for about 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth.
   
6. Roll the dough out until it is about 1cm thick and then cut into 5cm rounds.
   
7. Brush half of the rounds with egg white and then drop about a teaspoon of jam into the centre of each round.

I didn't have a 5cm cutter so I used a 7.5cm rosti ring. These things are therefore rather larger than they might be...

8. Place further rounds on top and pinch closed around the edges.

9. Loosely cover the rounds with oiled foil or plastic wrap and stand in a warm place to rise for another 10-15 minutes (or until doubled in size). This will help the sides close up as the dough expands.
   
10. Deep fry the doughnuts until golden, turning once, then dry on kitchen roll.

I used the deep fat fryer on its doughnut setting - 170 Celsius.

11. Toss in sugar immediately.

I was rather surprised at just how big these turned out. Okay, it's a yeast-based dough, but even as I was cutting the rounds I could see those I'd already cut were growing. I made the mistake of doing all of the bases first, which meant that they had a change to rise quite a bit before I got the lids onto them. Hence the doughnuts were a bit lop-sided. Only one of them actually came apart in the fryer, which surprised me. I was a bit skeptical as to their structural integrity but on the whole they survived reasonably intact:



I took them along tonight and they went down pretty well. Even though we didn't have all of the shire members there we still managed to work our way through them quite successfully.

They were surprisingly straightforward to make, so I may do this again.
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My day as a Java fragment. I didn't quite throw an OutOfSpoonsException but it got very, very close.

try
{
     doLectures(modules[]);
     doAdmin(meetings[],otherStuff[]);
}
catch (OutOfSpoonsException e)
{
     sleep(172800000);
     currentNik = new Nik();
}
catch(Exception e)
{
     takeDeepBreathAndContinue();
}
finally
{
     if (dayOver == true)
     {
          curlUpIntoBallUntilWorldGoesAway();
     }
     else
     {
          takeDeepBreathAndContinue():
     }
}
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These landed on my desk today.

Well, not strictly on my desk, more on one of my chairs really. They are large though, sufficiently so that the internal postman didn't try to put them into my mailbox but rather used the big trolley that we normally use for lugging around boxes of photocopier paper and handed them over with the comment 'mikill!' (lots!).

These contain the non-EEA applications for next year, and I'm going to spend a fair chunk of next week going through them and deciding whether or not we can offer them a place. That isn't the end of the matter though - once I've waded through what looks like about 150-180 applications the prospective students also have to convince immigration that it's safe to let them into the country, and that seems to be a far bigger hurdle than getting an offer in the first place.

In practice I found last year that about 25% of the applicants met all of our clearly-stated requirements, had suitable references and didn't say I want to do a degree in Akureyri because you don't charge tuition fees. Of those, maybe 10% managed to make it through the immigration checks, and there are certain countries whose nationals have almost zero chance of succeeding. Nevertheless, that is Immigration's problem, not mine, and all I can do it offer a place at the university and then (in effect) wash my hands of the matter. I will be pleasantly surprised if we get 5 of them arriving in August.

These can wait until next week's reading week. No lectures, so I'm hoping I'll have a chance to get ahead on my writing of the Java lectures. I spent this afternoon writing a lab and then modifying it - my original idea for an assessed question is perhaps a little ambitious for a homework. As I'm getting more used to Java I find myself having to accept that yes, it is a lot easier to write than C (or even C++) although I'm still clinging to my assertion that it hides too much. Mind you, there may be a bit of the I had to learn this stuff, I don't see why they shouldn't have to go through it as well. :Þ
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Crumpet making is, as I've discovered, a Dark Art.

This weekend I have cooked two separate batches of crumpets, one yesterday, the other today. This isn't greed on my part*, more a determined effort to get the recipe to work. The first batch I made several weeks ago were a bit on the doughy side - 'blind' crumpets with no real bubble holes in them. It was clear that the reason for this was the texture of the mixture. It was so thick that I don't think that the bubbles stood a chance of getting through. This is possibly because I used general purpose flour rather than plain flour, so I decided I needed to have another go.

And so to this week's attempts. After a bit of a google I discovered that it's perfectly okay just to add more liquid. No problem there then. Attempt 2 was definitely an improvement but still lacking in the numbers of holes I'd expect. They do taste better than the last ones though, and the rosti rings I bought from Lakeland allowed me to do four at a time rather than two, which was also very useful.

That was yesterday, and although these were a step forwards I decided to have yet another attempt today. This time the mix was considerably more liquid and did indeed form lots of bubbles. Unfortunately it was a bit too liquid, leading to the bubbles rising to the surface and then collapsing, rather than leaving the traditional tracks through the crumpet.

Again, though, the taste has improved even if this set is about half of the thickness of a normal crumpet. I'm holding out hope that I might get it right for version 4... mayve next weekend. :)

* Well, not entirely. :)
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Well, sort of completed.

The embroidery bit is completed, but I still have a huge number of sequins to put all over the rest of the baseball cap and I've only just ordered them in the correct shape and colour. Yes, I am going for the record as most tasteless convention hat ever made, but I'm hoping it'll bring a little surprise cheer into the life of its recipient as he's having a rather miserable time at present.



With this mini-project mostly completed I can now get on with major project #4. Once, that is, I've finished making some more crumpets. Given their simplicity and the fact that I have time to do things today I decided that more crumpets would be a good place to start. Mmmmm.... crumpets.... :)
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Something else ticked off the to-do list.

This is one of the Fleur de Lys kits from X-Calibre Designs. I bought two of the three a couple of years ago and started the first one at Worldcon in 2005. This one has been sitting in my UFO pile for well over a year, probably because I much prefer the previous one but thought that I ought to finish the set.



When I went looking for the link for the patterns I discovered that I could get the third in the series as a cheap download... so I've now got it and the feeling that I really ought to do the third more abstract design to really complete the set. I also now have the excuse that I have once I've finished them I have someone to whom I can give them.

Mini-project #2 is underway, and as soon as I've finished that I can get on with project #4 - the linen for it arrived earlier this week. All being well that will get under way later tomorrow or Sunday.
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And I just can't hide it! :)

Today, for some unknown reason, I decided that it was time to sort out my travel for Eastercon. I checked my lecturing roster, identified the days I wish to travel, went to the IcelandAir website and... realised that my original flight plans would have cost a scary amount of money.

No big problem - switch to backup plan, which will require me to move one lecture and has already required me to change my hotel booking but will give me two full days in London, one either side of the cultural feast that is Eastercon (I view it as a cultural event - YMMV). Now what could I do in London for two days? Mwah ha ha...

My cultural feast has now turned into a cultural extravaganza - I have booked tickets for both the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 and the First Emperor exhibition at the British Museum. Not only that, but visiting the O2 means that I can also take advantage of its geographical proximity to the Royal Observatory Greenwich and bag that one too. I would also add the rest of the National Maritime Museum to that list but I do only have one day in that part of London.

On top of all of this excitement I've even managed to get flight times that don't require overnight stays in Reykjavík. Occasionally things actually work.
3 comments

As promised, photos from Troll Hunt II.

And, as an extra bonus, the photos from our Pot Luck the previous weekend.

Pot Luck - February 2008	Troll Hunt II

I haven't uploaded them to the Klakavirki website yet but I'll do that sometime over the next couple of days, together with an event report.
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Today my mailbox collapsed.

This is not the sort of thing you expect to happen. I came home after fencing tonight, having left the building this morning from the other door so that I could put my fencing kit in the car, which meant that I have no idea if it was fine when I left. I blame all of the junk mail myself - New Scientist and Scientific American may be considered weighty reading material by some, but in terms of sheer mass they are not the sort of thing to bring the mailbox crashing off the wall. Maybe if it had been another set of ACM CHI conference proceedings, but certainly not two magazines.

I now have a replacement box sitting on my floor ready to be installed. It's not a major job but I suspect it's going to have to wait until the weekend. Various things are currently waiting for the weekend; things like properly tidying the flat after Troll Hunt. Having said that I did at least manage to change the light bulb in the kitchen this morning after it having gone pop yesterday morning.

I'm afraid that I still haven't sorted out the photos from Troll Hunt - hopefully I'll find the time to do that tomorrow night. Last night I was just too tired and tonight was fencing, which nowadays means not getting in until after 21:00 because of the coffee and cake session afterwards. That is, at least, the plan...
3 comments

Worse - Monday morning.

I may have fallen asleep almost immediately upon returning from Troll Hunt yesterday, but that didn't make it any easier getting up this morning. It was definitely just one of those mornings when I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. Unfortunately I had a lecture on the Java Collections Framework to present, a pile of marking to do and a student project meeting to attend.

Several frustrating things are happening around me at present. To start with, the Nabaztag server is rather flaky, leading to my rabbits being rather less active than they should be. After reading the online discussion groups I'm led to believe that this isn't too uncommon - the company hasn't really got its act together on quality of service issues. That's a shame, as the wifi bunny is a super idea and would be really good if it worked properly.

The second annoyance is that my current internet radio station of choice, theJazz, is closing at the end of March. DAB just isn't paying well enough for the parent company (GCap Media) so it's dumping its less established and internet/DAB-only brands in favour of its standard FM stations (such as ClassicFM). It seems like theJazz only gets about 360,000 listeners. Okay, so that's considerably smaller than ClassicFM's 6.3 million, but theJazz is only accessible through a very limited number of outlets so they can't seriously expect those sort of numbers.

Bah. I am not a happy bunny, wifi or otherwise.
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As I suspected, there were hangovers this morning. :)

Fortunately I wasn't one of the people suffering from one. Nevertheless, I didn't surface until about 09:00. I think that next time we use this place we're going to have to organise the sleeping arrangements so that the early risers sleep downstairs and the 'freddled gruntbugglies' (as we laughingly described the snoring still-sleepers) can sleep upstairs. That way the larks can get on with coffee, breakfast and A&S stuff without worrying about waking the others. It wasn't a big problem, just something that we can do better next time.

All the same, we managed to get some more gambeson-building done before we started the big clean-up. As usual, we left the place in a cleaner condition than we found it, but I know that's often the case for SCA events.

The gambesons are now all cut out and ready to quilt. I had hoped that we'd get at least a couple of them quilted as well, but things never quite go as quickly as I plan. I really must learn to allow more time to take varying expertise levels into account. It's going to take another weekend to get these things completed - perhaps that should be the aim of our next pot luck day... or three or four A&S meetings.

A rather nice side-effect of the packing was that we finally managed to get the boot of my car open again, thanks to S and A. A fabric throw got caught in the lock at Revel and I'd never been able to free it. Now, however, we really needed to be able to use the boot as we were a car short on our original transport plan. In the end we filled my car with three of us and our stuff, although I'm quite pleased with myself that I didn't actually take a huge amount of stuff with me.

We were going to go to visit a possible site for Revel on the way back, but I was getting rather tired (and had a very hung-over person in the back) so we came straight back to Akureyri, leaving the more energetic shire members to go have a look at the site. If they think it's suitable then I'll probably see it at some time before the event, but for now I'm just going to trust their judgement.

By the time I got back home - at about 16:30 - I was shattered and ended up falling asleep on the sofa within an hour. I think tonight calls for an early night in bed.

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I didn't have an entirely work-free day, but at least most of it was fun.

While I've been up here trying out my marudai, starting a small woven tapestry and supporting people making fabric armour of various types, down in Reykjavík the annual universities recruiting day (or cattle market, as I think of it) has been going on. I got a mobile phone call at lunch time to tell me that there was a problem. Well, there's nothing I can do about it here so I'm just going to have to leave it until Monday.

The rest of the day has been quite relaxing. We've had an excellent feast with rather a lot of home-made wine and some quite stunning mead (I'm not generally a fan of mead but even I had a second goblet of this one) and have spent a good couple of hours chatting in the hot pot. The rest of the wine is being drunk even as I type, and I suspect that some gentles are going to have rather heavy hangovers in the morning. :)

Photos have been taken and will be uploaded when I get back
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Isn't it wonderful how mediaeval languages give you such a marvellous breadth of expression when it comes to cursing?

I've finally arrived at the summerhouse where we're holding the event, five hours later than planned and after a day which has involved dealing with a variety of people (both within the office and without), some of whom led me to unburden myself with a stream of creative, unrepetitive and unrepeatable invective of Anglo-Saxon origins. Plus several large alcoholic drinks.


Thankfully my companions were understanding, had already made the soup for dinner (originally one of my jobs), plied me with alcohol and coaxed me into the hot tub to calm down. I hope that I can have a nice quiet day tomorrow without the need to think of work at all, just to sit, do crafty things and enjoy a feast. That would be good.
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... Country roads.

So it's nearly midnight, I've got an 8am lab tomorrow morning and I'm wide awake. Why might this be? There are two very closely related reasons for this. First, I got in from tonight's A&S meeting a little more than half an hour ago, and considering that coffee is the drink of habit at these meetings it's not too surprising that I'm still awake.

Coffee was a particularly good idea tonight as the meeting was held at the Troll Hunt site, about 45 minutes away from Akureryri. Well... more like 30 minutes if it wasn't for the road conditions on the second half of the journey. The journey was the other reason that I'm still awake - in spite of the roads being relatively clear it was still one of those slightly stressful journeys.

The reason for this is that the part closest to the site is on a road that would rate as a dirt track in the UK, while the rest of it, although tarmaced, is unlit and has unfenced cliffs that aren't quite as bad as those in The Italian Job but steep enough to make you remember the film. These two deficits - light and safety barriers - always make me feel a little uneasy driving out of town at night up here. Oh yes, and there's still ice around the place...

It shouldn't be as bad tomorrow - it's generally much easier to drive these roads in daylight, on top of which the local scenery is quite stunning. On the other hand it does mean that you can actually see just how steep the slopes actually are. :)
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Good news: I've had a paper accepted for an international conference.
Bad news: It's a marketing conference, not a computer science conference.

Good news: It's in Delhi, India
Bad news: Vaccinations

Good news: I've managed to grab an extra day to have a look around
Bad news: It's a 3-hour and then a 9-hour flight

Good news: Exotic fabrics
Bad news: Baggage limits

Good news: My co-author and I think we're in at the ground floor of a new field
Bad news: Neither he (the interim dean) nor I (the vice-dean) have any time for research any more.

Good news: It's not until April, so I only have to rearrange revision lectures
Bad news: It's in April, so it's going to be a bit on the warm side (average of about 28C)

I've never been to India, so I'm certainly looking forward to that. The paper is about the use (or, more correctly, the non-use) of RSS as a marketing medium. So I have to admit that the Module From Hell did have one positive outcome - I only started thinking about this when I was trying to come up with simple but effective uses for computers in business that were a bit more exciting than word processing, email and websites. In some ways the acceptance of this paper is terribly positive and symbolic - the first successful collaboration between researchers in computing and business. Although how we're going to find time to keep the momentum going beats me.
2 comments

I exercised tonight.

Yes, I know that's not supposed to be earth-shattering news, but it's the first time in a while that I've actually had the time and the oomph to do anything. It was fencing night and I realised even while we were doing our initial drills that I had a bit more energy than usual (under normal circumstances lunges are not part of my arsenal) so I did get some actual fencing in. It may have been that I'd been drinking coffee throughout an all-day meeting, but whatever it was I'm not complaining.

We had a new addition to the group tonight - one of our exchange students (from Finland) who's quite fast and athletic and has a lot of potential. He didn't come for coffee afterwards as he had a homework to do... and somehow I don't think that spending the evening fencing and drinking coffee with the fencers is a good excuse for not handing it in tomorrow. I certainly wouldn't accept it. :)
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It's been one of those nigglesome days.

I knew in advance that it wasn't going to be a particularly fruitful day, given that I had a meeting all afternoon, but other things also conspired against me. Things like:

• Having to reset the internet television box - again. Not a major issue, but an annoyance all the same.
  
• Having the massive stomach cramps than usually accompany a bout of PMT (probably also why I've been so annoyed at these little things).
  
• Trying to finish an embroidery using a metallic thread that twists, knots, splits, tangles and otherwise makes me want to throw the whole thing in the bin.
  
• Skidding across the ice rink that is the car park.

*Sigh*

Well, it could be worse. I could have flu.
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I've just spent five hours creating an embroidery design.

Several of my friends have significant birthdays this year, and for one of them I've decided that I'm going to make a very personalised embroidery based upon a picture I know means a lot to her.

I have an electronic version of the image - a digital photograph passed on to me by her husband (who's in on the plan). This was particularly useful as I could trace it, lightbox-style, from the screen of my laptop onto 16-count squared paper. This gave me a faint outline over which I could use a heavier pencil to create the pattern itself and to add some lettering.

At sixteen count it's going to work out at just under A3 size. I was planning to do it on 32-count but I've ended up ordering 28-count Quaker cloth instead of 32-count Belfast so it'll be a bit larger than that. I'll get the threads up here, but the linen itself is wildly expensive (no surprise there). I've also taken the opportunity to order some waste canvas for a side project I have planned before Easter.

Once the fabric arrives, then, I'm ready to start. In the meantime I have a couple more side projects I can get on with. So far this year has been extremely productive on the embroidery front. I'm seriously considering starting the Christmas presents now in the hope of taking advantage of this active streak. Maybe once I've finished project #4.
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We discovered this this evening.

The big plan for the day was to have our monthly pot-luck day, during which we'd get started on the gambesons for the heavy fighters in the shire. My plans for the day were slightly disrupted when I realised that I was going to have to go to the official opening of the Renewable Energy School at lunchtime. Which, as expected, ran over half an hour late.

Still, Björk and I escaped eventually and got up to A's parents' house where we took over the kitchen and dining room for the day. Item 1 was to make sausages for lunch at Troll Hunt next Saturday. It's considerably easier (and therefore faster) making sausages if there are two people operating the mincing machine. There may be a lot more gourmet sausage making happening around here in future now that folks have discovered how easy and inexpensive they are to make.

While that was going on other folks were making an Icelandic speciality whose name escaped me but which is basically refried rice pudding pancakes. They are delicious when plain, but when covered with D's mum's home-made lemon curd they are utterly irresistable. I was tempted to eat far more of them that I really should have, but I'm consoling myself with the fact that I was very good not eating too much of the millionaire shortbread. :)

I did manage to get the initial patterns for the bodies of the gambesons done. The ongoing plan is to spend some time on Thursday's A&S and at Troll Hunt itself making them up. Troll Hunt has become something of an A&S event given that a) we still have a limited amount of fencing equipment and b) we don't have any overseas visitors this time. We will, of course, still be holding the feast in the evening but it's looking as if it'll be a rather more relaxed affair than originally intended.

Later, there was gaming. We knew we were going to have a large table so I took Zombies!!! and the two expansion sets. We managed to get all of the tiles and all of the zombies into play, which was fun. I've realised that if I'm going to get the rest of the expansion packs then I'm also going to have to get another couple of extra bags of zombies to go with them. Once I've got those I think I'll also have to look for some appropriate paintable miniatures for the players as it'll be a game that will take twelve players rather than just six. It'll need the extras so I might as well go for a set of clearly-distinguishable painted figures rather than the plain coloured plastic.
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That's another project done.

I've just completed this year's major project #3 - Jenny and Fraser's wedding present. It's an adaptation of the 'Old English Sampler' from the Mary Jane Collection.



Yes, I know I'm 7 months late but I just didn't get anything done last year. Instead of a gift at the wedding I gave them a card with an IOU a blackwork wedding sampler note within it. The plan was to get it done in time to take it to Eastercon to hand over to them there, and I'm pleased to say that that plan is still on track.

I've now just got to frame it. Actually I have two to frame, this one and another gift, but I don't have the materials to frame them myself up here so I'm probably going to take it over to the craft shop as I know they do a lot of framing. I've no idea how much it'll cost, and I might even opt to take a translator with me just in case. Or, at the very least, an English-Icelandic dictionary.

There will now be a short pause while I finish a couple of small projects and do the planning and design for major project #4. That doesn't need to be completed until the end of July so for once I'm actually feeling almost in control of the needlwork stuff. I wonder how long that will last? :)
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The big hit of tonight's A&S meeting was a pack of Sainsbury's gingerbread men.

One of the more amusing things that my sister bought me for Christmas was a pack of Sainsbury's ready-to-decorate, complete with decorating gel, gingerbread men. I was, she reasoned, not only the sort of person which such a thing would amuse, but also the sort of person who had friends would would also be amused. And she was right.

I brought them back with me and was quite impressed that they survived the journey intact. Tonight, then, when I was casting about for some nibbles to take to the A&S meeting my eye alighted on these - eight gingerbread men with appropriate indentations and two tubes of icing with which to fill them. They proved very popular, as you just don't get this sort of thing up here - nor, indeed, the boxes with biscuit mix and Smurf/Scooby-Doo/Hallowe'en cookie cutters. I may be forced to pick up a couple of these next time I'm in the UK just for the novelty value.
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Today I went shopping for fruit.

This was part of my campaign to improve my diet and to get rather closer to the recommended 5-a-day than I currently manage. So along I went to Hagkaup (the place with the best selection of fruit and vegetables up here) on the assumption that, given they might also do a better selection of tinned fruit.

Why tinned fruit? Well, as far as the 5-a-day business is concerned I have to accept that I'm not going to eat large amounts of fresh fruit because although I have now placed a platter of fruit on my coffee table to tempt me, I'm still suffering from a lack of oomph to actually eat the stuff. Strange, but true. So, instead, I thought I'd get some tinned fruit for those moments when I suddenly decide that fruit would be a good idea.

Sadly, the tinned fruit selection was not what I hoped it would be. For starters, it's all (with the exception of some pineapple) in syrup rather than juice. I'm trying to think positively that at least it's light syrup rather than heavy syrup but it's a bit off-putting all the same. Fortunately I like pineapple.

I shall try the other supermarkets in town but I don't really hold out much hope for them. It looks like my fruit intake may end up being predominanly pineapple and bananas for a while. Ah well, it could be worse. The pineapple might have been in syrup too.
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Which were a good thing.

Another good thing was tonight's fencing, in which I actually fenced for the first time in a while. My fencers are certainly ready to authorise (and have been for several months, considering that we fence every week) so I'm keeping them amused by introducing an assortment of off-hand parrying devices. Which also means that I get to play with them too - useful not only because I'm very out of practice but I'll also putting some time in with the forms in which I still need to authorise (rigid and case). We're now down to heavy blades only, as after a particularly spirited round the older of my two epées developed an s-bend, rendering it useless. Ah well, I'll put in an order for a new blade with the big order from the rest of the shire.

Then, instead of going to Bláa Kanann for cakes, we returned to my place for pancakes. Iceland doesn't have a Shrove Tuesday tradition so it was a chance to introduce people to pancakes with sugar and lemon. Or cherries in syrup with cream, for that matter. These went down very well and will have to be cooked again at some point in the future that is less than a year away - possibly this time with savoury fillings as well as sweet ones.
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No need to dig the car out this morning, thankfully.

Moving to the other car park clearly helped, and when I went out this morning I noticed that our area had been ploughed at some point on Sunday. This was good, as it meant that I could get back without it the ride feeling like a cross-country rally.

From talking to other people it looks like this is the heaviest snow for about four years. After the snow on Wednesday/Thursday I had four people turn up to my lab at 08:00 on Friday. Today there were three in my 10:00 lecture. Now while I've heard that the snow is quite deep out of town methinks some people may be using the snow as an excuse. Ah well, I'm trying not to get too annoyed about it. Just carrying on and trying not to think too much about it.

And thinking of things that don't need too much thought, I need a new A&S project to take to Troll Hunt that doesn't require too much thought either. Given that I think I may be picking it up and putting it down a lot in order to help other people with things it needs to be something that won't take up too much brainpower. I'm considering a blackwork coif on embroidery linen because once I've done the first couple of repeats of the pattern it won't take much thought just to repeat it.

The other option is to take my large plastic frame and have a go at woven tapestry - it I warp it up and transfer the design onto the warp beforehand then I'll only have to worry about the actual weaving at the event. Then, if I enjoy it (and it works) I might shell out the money for a tapestry loom. I've always fancied trying woven tapestry so perhaps now it the time to give it a go.
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Less snow today.

There was a bit more snow this morning, but very little after 14:00. I know this, as Jóhann dug out our shared balcony and it's now only got a thin dusting of snow as opposed to the half-metre or so that was there beforehand. Just to get a sense of scale for the photo, the bottom panel of the door is about 8 inches (20cm) and there should be a similar-sized gap between it and the floor.



While it was still snowing this morning I spent some of my quality time (I have become so zealous in guarding my weekends that it's beginning to get a little scary) watching A for Andromeda. Not the recent remake, but rather the original 1960s version. Although most of the original series has been lost it the episodes have been recreated as 'telesnaps', subtitled stills intercut with the remaining film footage. One entire episode remains (The Face of the Tiger) and short snippets from the other six. It's the sort of thing that sometimes turns up at conventions in the video room.

I really rather enjoyed it. I'd heard so much about it and had wanted to see it for many years, so I was delighted to find it in Borders. I'd read Fred Hoyle's novelisation, and of course I'd seen the new version but it was good to finally see the original.

Other than that I've done a bit of embroidery over the last couple of days, often to the accompaniment of a Carry On film (Cleo, Up The Khyber, Screaming and the more-rarely screened Henry). It did occur to me that Carry On Henry was only marginally less accurate than the recent Elizabeth film. At least the Carry On film contained a disclaimer saying that was all based upon the recently-discovered manuscript of WIlliam Cobbler - some bits were historically accurate but much of it was pure Cobbler's. :)
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Well, that was interesting.

Jóhann next door just knocked to tell me that I might find it useful to move my car into the shopping centre's car park - both because it'll be easier to move on Sunday and because we should be getting our road and car park ploughed tomorrow or Monday.

No problem there - I suited up (moonboots, coat, hat, gloves etc) and went to do the deed. What I was not really expecting was half a metre of snow on the roof and bonnet, nor to have to dig the car out first. It was a jolly good thing that I did it now as the snow had just reached the bottom of the doors; much later and I'd have had to dig the doors out to get inside.

It's now sitting in the main car park next to a snowdrift which is, I suspect, actually a car in disguise. The snow shows no indication of stopping so I may have to do the same thing again tomorrow.
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I am slightly stunned.

At present I have internet TV from Síminn, the main telecomms supplier here in Iceland, which provides me with over sixty channels for just over 4000 kr a month. Not too bad, even allowing for the fact that I only regularly watch about ten of them. This is generally a perfectly good arrangement and it provides me with plenty of audio (and occasionally visual) stimulation throughout the week.

Of those ten channels, one of them is Skjar einn, one of the two independent channels and the one which provides me with my weekly dose of House, Heroes and the CSI variants. The other independent channel, Stöð 2, is cable-only and has many of the other big series such as The Simpsons and 24. They also do the sports coverage, which was what prompted me to phone my provider about adding them to my subscription so that I can see the Superbowl this weekend and the Formula 1 later on (it's got the rights this year instead of the local PBS, RÚV).

What I found out was that if I want the single sports channel then it'll cost me more for that one channel than I currently pay for my entire current service - 4500 kr a month. To add Stöð 2 would be a further 5590 kr a month. The second sports channel (the one that regularly shows LFC matches) is yet another 4300 kr a month. That's over a £100/€130/$200 a month for three channels, and I certainly draw the line somewhere far short of that. Methinks the government has given the company behind it a license to print money - I wonder who's friends with which minister?

As a result I think I'll be following anything sporting over the internet (although I can watch the Superbowl in German tomorrow night on ARD, should I be so inclined). That's not a problem - after all, ESPNRadio will give me the whole superbowl while I sew, which is probably a good way of doing things. :)
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I've spent much of the day throwing and catching things.

Things, in this case, being Java exceptions. Fortunately I'm familiar with the try...catch...finally concept from PL/SQL. As I'm ploughing through writing these lecture I keep finding myself quite happy that I did C first as it's proving pretty straightforward to translate that knowledge into Java.

While I'm sitting thinking about what to write on the next powerpoint slide I often find myself looking out over the fjörd for inspiration. No a lot there today, as winter has returned with a vengeance and we've had blizzard conditions for most of the day. The snow is now thick enough that walking through it takes quite a lot of effort. I'm quite pleased that I don't have to go out over the weekend although I do wonder just how deep a drift I'll have to dig through to reach my car on Monday morning. Right now the snow on my balcony has hit the 30cm mark, which means I can no longer open the door (it opens outwards).

My intention is to have another fairly quiet weekend as the next two are likely to be busy (being a pot-luck day and Troll Hunt) and I'm planning to get another fair chunk of project #3 completed. This week I have managed to get another mini-project completed - a pair of dice bags made from some red and green quilting fabric I happened to have around. The green one is for Martha as she's only recently been inducted into the RPG community and therefore clearly needed the deeply symbolic first dice bag full of strangely shaped dice. The red one I made for myself as my original one seems to have gone walkabout somewhere (although I suspect it'll turn up when I sort out the storeroom downstairs).
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