Pointless Anecdotes

Useful maps

2012-01-29T22:29:00.003+01:00

Jon Griffiths is not a very prolific blogger, but he has made a nifty Google map of locations Biggles visited during WW I.

Getting around to it

2012-01-28T19:29:00.000+01:00

Chaos and fractals were hot stuff in the 1980s and I spent quite a bit of time on the subject—at one point Cliff Pickover, a thoroughly nice person, sent me a large package of material by mail. So, one of the first courses I signed up for as a grad student was Chaotic Dynamical Systems. In the event, I had to drop the course, along with several other maths courses—my work was to be in other areas and the textbook ended up on my shelf for unread books.

The other day I decided to pick it up again and see what I’d missed out on. One thing was clear: I might have been able to do the exercises when I was a first-year student, but by now most of my calculus was just hazy memories. And indeed, in contrast with most of my other literature on the subject, this was a book about proper maths, rather than computer graphics, and spent most of its space on proving various theorems about seemingly simple functions, but which exhibited chaotic behaviour. Still, even if my understanding is patchy these days, I’ve been going through the book, picking up concepts and ideas.

In the book was still the receipt from when I bought it and as I was reading on the train home the other day I listened with half an ear to the two girls sitting next to me talking about their studies. The one just next to me turned out to be a first-year student at my alma mater and the continued conversation revealed she had been born just a couple of days after I bought the book I was finally reading. It’s so hard to keep up.

Veckans ord: alvedon

2012-01-27T17:12:00.000+01:00

Ända sen Tolkien är pilbågen ett vanligt alvedon.

Conundrum solved

2012-01-25T16:35:00.001+01:00

I have had occasion to refer to the ground-breaking research of Anders Sandberg and now I found his quantum-mechanical analysis of angels dancing on a needle point.

3D rendering

2012-01-24T16:30:00.000+01:00

Riusuke Fukahori creates his 3D fish not by embedding fish models in resin, but by painting them, layer by layer, in the resin as it is poured.

Rule 34

2012-01-23T15:50:00.009+01:00

Bookshelves, be they sparse wooden frames, stern steel cabinets on rollers, trendy String shelves, or carved floor-to-ceiling giants of tropical hardwood, are all promises of excitement and knowledge. The more of them, the better. Even though they are off to a side, my bookcases are still the mental centre of my sitting-room, creating at least a little nook where one can hide from noise and commotion. I tend them, sort them when new books arrive and occasionally grudgingly cull books that are just too awful to keep.

It heartens me that others feel the same about their bookshelves and care enough to have created a site for Bookshelf porn.

Aquarium, with a few fishes as well

2012-01-22T14:19:00.000+01:00

As it had been a long time since for both of us, Honeybuns and I went to the Skansen Aquarium, a somewhat misleading name as most of the space is taken up by primate cages. Just inside the entrance we found a two-toed sloth hanging by its feet, munching cucumber pieces with gusto. (They had been placed on a tray, I presume that means they were betrayed.) It seemed all alone, but after ten minutes or so we suddenly noticed the other sloth, well hidden against another tree stem. In the meantime I had spotted small lizards rushing about. These turned out to be pygmy marmosets, so primates, but the way they kept their tail flat along the surface and their legs splayed out was utterly reptilian. Honeybuns and an iguana attracted each others’ attentions and watched each other through the glass.

Then outside to get to the next building. The baboons and lemurs were indoors somewhere, but there were several meerkats about in their enclosure, even though they were shivering with cold. I presumed they felt the necessity to keep watch of their territory, even though it was freezing cold.

Inside: Snakes, snakes. And frogs. It’s fascinating how tropical frogs manage to look completely artificial, as if made of wax or porcelain, sitting perfectly still on a branch or on the ground. (Some of them were at least visibly breathing, so they must have been alive.) I was a bit incensed on behalf of the Gila monster, who really hasn’t done anything to deserve such a name—even its scientific name is Heloderma suspectum.

Further in, a rain forest. I noted with surprise how much easier it was to breathe the humid air, Stockholm climate doesn’t really agree with me. So I just stood for a while breathing in and out, while monkeys clambered around the branches above me. I took the little rainforest tour, guided by a four-year-old who in rapid sequence showed me her new dress, the skellington in a corner, the monkey up in a tree, a puddle on the floor and so on.

Now we got to the aquariums proper. Rays and sharks swam around in a big pool, another aquarium turned out to contain three unimaginably huge alligator snapping turtles. We looked for a while at the crocodiles. The juveniles, kept in a separate terrarium, were constantly on the move, but the adults lay dead still. Honeybuns remembered how her grandfather once, doubting they were even alive, had knocked on the glass and been rewarded by a crocodile lunging at him. That time the glass had held, but there were prominent signs to stay away from the glass surfaces and that any objects thrown into the enclosure would have to be retrieved by the thrower.

One terrarium held naked mole rats, but they had to make do with pre-prepared perspex tubes, rather than getting to dig on their own. I thought that probably must feel strange to them.

The final room contained the spiders and scorpions, but most of them managed to hide quite effectively, so one couldn’t see much of them. I wonder if they consciously stayed away from the front of their cages.

We exited through the shop. It was very child-oriented, containing huge amounts of cuddly snakes, animal stickers, all kinds of plastic animals, etc, etc, but nothing in the way of books or DVDs, which disappointed me, surely a learning opportunity such as this should be made the most of?

By now we were quite hungry, so we went up to Stora Gungan for a late lunch. They had locked their doors and were just ushering out their last guests. Gubbhyllan then? Sorry, the kitchen had closed. Hm. Let’s leave Skansen then. What about Lilla Hasselbacken? Ah, maybe a tad too fancy for our current needs. We continue to Blå Porten. Do they offer hot food? The staff look a bit uncertain. Eventually it transpires that they had just had a fire in the kitchen extinguished and the fire brigade has forbidden them to even go in there right now. But would we like some tea and cookies? We decide to move further into town. BarCelona, our usual backup site? Completely full. Ah, but what about Grace Tea House just across the street? Yes, they’re open, even if we seem to interrupt the staff in their own lunch. What about dumplings? Ah, they're fresh out of vegetarian dumplings. Honeybuns settles for a Szechuan soup. It turns out to be spicy enough to give her a nosebleed, but at least we finally got fed.

Then we return home for weekend cleaning.

Veckans ord: LED-djur

2012-01-20T23:48:00.000+01:00

Jag tycker nog också att LED-djuren på Sergels torg var i vräkigaste laget.

Veckans ord: fiskfjäll

2012-01-13T21:06:00.000+01:00

Inte nog med smörberget i EU, nu har man fångat så mycket fisk i Lappland att man sitter med ett fiskfjäll.

Terrorist

2012-01-11T18:39:00.002+01:00

Clearly the authorities look in the completely wrong direction. (I guess this is also an example of the male gaze.)

Enjoy it while you can

2012-01-10T17:59:00.000+01:00

Today I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist, to see what modern medical science can do about my recurring tummy problems. As a starter I will get a full course of anal probing and biopsies (and we all, or at least I, remember my experiences with those) in about six weeks. BUT, until then, I am to eat gluten in order to provoke the suspected inflammation into clear showing. So, leaving the hospital I walked through a lightly snowy Stockholm, realising that what with living in two suburbs and working in a third, I don’t see much of the city proper these days. There was construction work going on, new shops had appeared and when I arrived at my target, Hötorgshallen, they were renovating (way overdue!), but still had their full complement of shops. I looked over the bakery desk for a long while and eventually decided on a rounded crisp Italian loaf. And then some Milanese salami to go with it.

Veckans ord: villområde

2012-01-06T21:04:00.001+01:00

En gång i min ungdom hamnade jag av misstag i Långsjö. Jag hade svårt att hitta hem, för jag gick vill. Det är ett villområde.

Average for a change

2012-01-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

My “risk intelligence” is apparently average at 61.47/100.

Kauniita sanoja

2012-01-03T21:24:00.002+01:00

Jostain syystä juuri mekaniikan alan sanat ovat minusta erittäin kiehtovat ja kauniit. Nyt satuin löytää Eero Aulan Englanti-suomi tekniikan sanasto. Omaperäistä on että kyseessäoleva tekniikka näyttää olevan metsäkoneisiin liittyvä ja ehkä sen takia löytyy ei ainoastaan sanoja kuten ”lattakaapeliliitin” ja ”tehonsiirtoketju” mutta myös ”kangassillihapero” ja ”variksenmarja”.

Ask The Pilot

2012-01-02T20:32:00.002+01:00

A frequently referred-to, but now obsolete, volume in my bookshelf is Titta, vi flyger!, the Swedish edition of The Flier’s Handbook, which covers most of what you need to know as an airline passenger. Now I found an excellent replacement, replete with opinions and anecdotes: Ask The Pilot. Do not miss the story about the exploding toilet.

Strange machinery

2012-01-01T20:27:00.000+01:00

Brower Propulsion Laboratory is like an aerospace version of Bonk Business, making machines whose mere existence is more important than their absence of functionality. However, what caught my eye was this beautiful water colour of what seems to be a J-7.

H/t thnidu.

Veckans ord: uttrycksförmåga

2011-12-30T14:01:00.013+01:00

När jag var på examensresa i USA bodde vi i Boston i studentrum som var tomma över sommaren. Studenthemmet var ombyggda gamla patricierhus, där jag, den Enfödde Sonen och hans mor fick ett rum som uppenbarligen en gång varit stora salongen. Följdaktligen hade det en rejäl öppen spis och säkert fyra meter i takhöjd. Vi fick veta att rummet tidigare bebotts av “a bunch of really wild girls”. Som spår efter dem hittade vi rejäla staplar med spritflaskor i spisen. Vi kunde också se mystiska vita kluttar i taket. Vi funderade över vad de kunde vara tills vi insåg att flickorna tävlat i vem som kunde trycka ut tandkräm ur tuben så kraftfullt att det sprutade upp i taket och fastnade där. Vi var mycket imponerade av deras uttrycksförmåga.

He’s got a racket

2011-12-27T23:08:00.002+01:00

Jacopo Sarno has figured out that the point of being a musician is all the babes.

Knowledge online

2011-12-25T19:28:00.005+01:00

A well-thumbed copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has long stood in a prominent place on my book shelf. Now it seems it will also have a prominent place in my web bookmarks: it’s going online.

H/t Ny Teknik.

Little kids and Christmas go together, especially with an apple in their mouths

2011-12-24T17:39:00.005+01:00

I’m ridiculously fond of this little ditty and it being Christmas and all.

Word of the week: meltimudia

2011-12-23T17:04:00.002+01:00

Some YouTube clips are based on badly transferred analog videos, with bad contrast and blurred colours making everything flow together: meltimudia.

Liv på Mars

2011-12-22T17:01:00.001+01:00

A quite interesting cover I was unaware of, but what’s with the soft-porn album cover?

24 hours of air traffic

2011-12-21T22:18:00.003+01:00

Туполев Ту-144

2011-12-20T19:29:00.000+01:00

Before the arthritis got too bad my mother constantly knitted and usually asked me to design the patterns for my own sweaters. For one of these I copied a picture of the Tupolev Tu-144, with the appropriate Cyrillic caption. It caused some consternation at school when they couldn’t read the text.

Since then I’ve been to and in the Concordes at Duxford and Yeovilton, but have not had the opportunity to see the Tu-144 IRL. However, I just found they have one at Sinsheim. I consider a pilgrimage there, but I’m somewhat put off by the realisation that even the Tu-144 uses the mandatory hideous Soviet cockpit turqoise. I don’t understand why the designer of that particular shade wasn’t executed as a Western saboteur or something.

Evil twin

2011-12-19T19:10:00.001+01:00

Separated at birth: Haldir and Lucius Malfoy.

Seriously geeky comics

2011-12-18T19:02:00.007+01:00

You really have to know your maths to get the jokes over at Spiked math, but you can always get hints in the comments section.

The Male Gaze

2011-12-17T18:35:00.000+01:00

[I don’t know if this is an example of male self-pity or of how gender inequality hurts all. Maybe it’s a generational issue. Judge as you will.]

The prevalence of the male gaze in media has the corollary that men are seldom depicted as desirable. Is then a longterm consequence of that that men in general come to see themselves as fundamentally non-desirable? What does that mean for female-male relations, when one is desirable, the other not? It would then suggest that hetero-sexual relations are unbalanced; as women clearly cannot desire (sex with) men, they must be bribed with something they do desire, such as security, offspring, or glittery gifts. Alternatively, sex must be taken by force or duplicity.

Maybe there might eventually come something good from teenage werewolves running around without their shirts.

So much unspoken

2011-12-12T22:56:00.001+01:00

Even when I had access to TV, I apparently didn’t watch it all that much—there are several programmes I must only have seen bits and pieces of. One of these is Brideshead Revisited, but Martin R kindly donated the DVD box to us so Honeybuns and I have been watching it.

It’s something like 11 hours in total, so there is room for many themes to be touched on.

An occupational hazard, but I reacted to the video quality—there was a constant fuzz in the image. Presumably this was the quality you would get on video in the late 1970s and nobody thought about it then, but today, used to the razor-sharp images of professional digital video cameras, it felt odd.

The actors have been well-deservedly lauded for their performances, but since many of the actors were in their 30s, even as their characters were much younger, they seemed all the more immature. Cordelia Flyte, I eventually realised, should have been around ten years old or so in the first episodes, but played by an adult actress she came across as a half-wit.

The beginning of the story is the love affair between Charles and Sebastian. Neither of them speak of it in those terms, and the Flyte family do not allude to it either—except for Rex Mottram, who in passing mentions the Swiss doctor who is good at “sexual problems”, the character of which is not further discussed. At the time, their relation would have been illegal, so one imagines that nobody was very interested in raising the subject. It hurt to see a unhappy Sebastian weep forlornly, Charles unable to comfort him. I wanted to yell: “Hold him, you dolt!” Later on, safely in a heterosexual relation, Charles speaks disparagingly of “pansies”—so at least outwards he does not self-identify as homo-/bisexual. Interestingly enough, the narrative itself adds to the ambiguity—the most open display of affection Charles and Sebastian show is a sideways hug a few times, whereas the beginning of Charles and Julia’s relation is shown in a sex scene giving us ample view of Diana Quick’s nipples. It is as if the camera itself shies back from peeking into the closet.

I wonder whether the Oxford barbers who are so fond of Sebastian and the university porter who proudly declares he has no wife are implied to be homosexual. I’ve gotten the impression that at least in university settings homosexuality was accepted—as long as it was not explicitly mentioned, and apparently that’s why the openly gay Antoine Blanche is “sent down” (expelled). It is unclear to what extent Sebastian’s discomfort with his family is due to repression of his sexuality, rather than the general oppression by the Catholic Church so important to the family. He describes the dangerous charm of his mother, but she mostly comes across as fairly stiff and repressed—a pivotal castigation of Charles is done in measured and unemotional tones even though she would have been furious.

Charles also has family issues, while these are not made as much of. His father seems not to care much for him and treats him as mostly a nuisance when he turns up in the Ryder home. In adulthood Charles continues the family tradition in his complete neglect of his own children and I had absolutely no sympathy for him when he after his divorce whinges about having lost the right the see his son grow up.

As Sebastian sinks deeper into alcoholism, Charles is a very active enabler, keeping him with booze. At first I thought that perhaps he thought his love would reform Sebastian, but eventually I came to the conclusion that he just couldn‘t say no to Sebastian. At the same time, the rest of the company seem unable to cope with the situation, alcohol apparently so important to all of them that they just can’t imagine how to do without. (On top of that, all chain-smoke like chimneys, but that is not seen as a problem at all.)

Another theme, which is just presented and not discussed at all, is that of class warfare. For some reason the blurb on the Swedish DVD implies Charles is a Man of The People, but it is obvious that he is in fact quite well-off and only in comparison to Lord Sebastian Flyte could he be considered slightly further down the social ladder. If anything, Charles comes across as rather more snobbish than Sebastian and seems to agree with Lord Marchmain that the most disgusting thing one can be, is middle-class. The upwardly-mobile Rex Mottram is one of these despicable beings, being described as an incomplete person. What this incompleteness consists in is unclear, since the person we see is ambitious and competent and goes considerably out of his way to help the Flytes.

The working class is not considered at all, the numerous servants are just names to be thanked when they bring yet another drink on a tray. (In general it is a source of amazement to me that Britain doesn’t more regularly erupt in bloody popular uprisings.) When workers demand fair pay Charles joins a gang of truncheon-equipped and helmeted upper-class strike breakers to beat down the strikers.

Then the issue of religion. Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism and the book is intended to describe Charles Ryder’s path from agnosticism to the One True Faith, yet the religion is not really described as anything positive, and it destroys the lives of basically all the protagonists. This is somehow A Good Thing.
There is some excellent, yet possibly unintentional, comedy when religion is discussed. When Charles first meets Lady Marchmain, she immediately sets out to convert him. Teasingly he then asks her how she can expect to get to Heaven, as it is easier for a camel to get through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter Paradise. She serenely replies that God works miracles. How terribly convenient for her… Rex Mottram’s earnest attempts to figure out Catholic dogma is wonderful satire.

Finally, when the long-ago converted, then lapsed, Lord Marchmain is dying, the family pulls out all the stops in order to have the last rites performed. Charles opposes this on the grounds that it would be disrespectful of the Lord’s wishes and tries to find out what the exact purpose of the rites is. Nobody is actually able to answer him, but all are very adamant that they Have To Be Done. At this point Honeybuns got quite annoyed with Charles’ interference, why did he have to be such a dick about it? Then when the sacrament was administered and both Julia and Charles immediately become born again and decided to forswear happiness for the rest of their lives in order to please God her face fell. And then the series ended with Charles contentedly understanding that God’s purpose with the Second World War was that the briefly shut Roman Catholic chapel at Brideshead could be reopened, which was of course an all-important Good Thing.

Honeybuns was horribly down-cast after this and demanded that we immediately watch a more up-lifting film. I glanced at the shelf: six Shakespeare tragedies, a documentary on strategic bombing, more aviation-themed features, etc, but nothing in the way of comedy. “What kind of a person are you!? You watch sad films, you listen to sad music and you read sad books! You…you!” Well yes, that’s me.

Wort der Woche: dementsprechend

2011-12-02T23:23:00.001+01:00

Wegen seines Alzheimer-Krankheit war seine Rede verwirrt, er war dementsprechend.

Veckans ord: hobby

2011-11-25T23:40:00.000+01:00

Det är ju klart, jobbet med filmkulisser kan lätt bli en hobby:

Veckans ord: nykturist

2011-11-18T13:29:00.002+01:00

På diverse gruppresor jag deltagit i har en vanlig höjdpunkt varit en utflykt till whiskydestilleri, vingård, el dyl, där avsmakning ingår. Eftersom jag är en nykturist har jag fått tillräcklig avsmak redan vid tanken och brukar istället gå på en egen promenad runt stadens olika hobbybutiker – inte för att shoppa egentligen, men för att man ofta hamnar på intressanta bakgator.

Memorial Flight

2011-11-17T21:54:00.000+01:00

In spite of the name, Memorial Flight is a French organisation dedicated to the preservation of World War I aircraft, and in spite of that they have beautifully restored a Dassault Flamant.

Veckans ord: snuskrukor

2011-11-11T11:11:00.003+01:00

Man undrar ju om det finns nåt snuskigare än snuskrukor.

More favourite 80s stuff

2011-11-10T00:22:00.000+01:00

(Amélie Morin also did the French voice for Little My.)

Veckans ord: mährisk

2011-11-04T10:12:00.002+01:00

Den Enfödde Sonen och jag har som hobby att titta på östeuropeisk film. Kvalitén varierar naturligvis, så när vi ser på tjeckisk film tar vi alltid en mährisk.

Horror story

2011-10-31T22:13:00.002+01:00

Geek! Gawk:
Meek talk,
weak walk.
Sneak, stalk.
Shriek! Squawk…

By now they have been eaten

2011-10-30T12:07:00.000+01:00

Veckans ord: övergrepp

2011-10-28T16:20:00.001+02:00

En kollega famlar efter något:
– Jag vill ha en övergripande beskrivning av systemet, jag behöver få ett övergrepp.

Still hurts a bit

2011-10-24T17:40:00.004+02:00

Dumped

2011-10-23T19:43:00.000+02:00

By the closed-down railway track, among all the empty beer cans and spray paint cans, lay a doll who’d seen better days. Only now, when I looked closer at the picture, did I realise she had not just been abandoned, but strangled first. What evil lurks in the hearts of men…

Scared

2011-10-22T16:35:00.000+02:00

Various things have coincided and one evening Honeybuns and I said to each other: “Maybe we should, after all, move in together.” And then we, within minutes of looking through housing pages, found the perfect flat out in Huddinge. It was not yet built, but we took the bus out to the construction site and it was a perfectly delightful neighbourhood, near the train station, near the still remaining forests in a nice and quiet area, so I was soon on the phone with the estate agent. Yes, when enough people had signed up for the flats, construction would start, so by end of next year we should be able to move in. All right then.

As soon as I put the phone down, doubts hit us. Would we really manage this? Will we be able to live together with all our foibles, diverging requirements, and other baggage? And can we afford it?

I see my flat even as I am elsewhere: My first own home, the one I’ve furnished to fit my needs, my aerie where the morning sun wakes me in the summer and the afternoon sun fills the sitting-room with a warm golden glow, where I come home to silence and peace after a long day, where my bookshelves offer me knowledge and solace. Honeybuns expresses similar emotions for her home. Still, sharing a home, officially being a co-habiting couple, sleeping in each others arms every night, and not lugging stuff from one end of Stockholm to the other every other day beckons.

So yesterday we arrived, slightly out of breath, at the agent’s office to sign the papers. He informed us that with the great interest in the homes, we would likely be able to move in already by summer. He was perhaps a bit taken aback as both our faces fell. A year had seemed ample time to get used to the idea, but already by summer? That is no time at all. We steeled ourselves and signed the papers.

Now there is no return.

Veckans ord: Alaska

2011-10-21T17:16:00.001+02:00

Av någon anledning har alternativmedicinarna fastnat för björkaska som undermedicin. Alaska är det däremot ingen som bryr sig om att ta vara på.

Word of the week: temporarely

2011-10-14T22:47:00.001+02:00

Infrequent bursts of speed happen temporarely.

Revealing mistake

2011-10-09T17:24:00.000+02:00

The shutter time is 1/1250th of a second. In that time the CCD is scanned sequentially, therefore it seems the propeller is bent out of shape.

Double-checking

2011-10-08T17:18:00.000+02:00

When it became obvious that my father was going senile, my sister and I went out looking for good dementia homes. We visited one which looked promising (though Father eventually ended up elsewhere) and the head nurse showed us around. As it happened one of the patients came by and sat down by a piano and started playing. The nurse expressed her amazement at how speech and memory might be lost but the ability to perform music still remained. I noted to myself that the old lady actually did not play any specific piece, but rather stuck together disjointed phrases, executing ingrained motor programmes. I did get to see a lot of that over the following years, how for example greetings and thank-yous remained and were automatically executed at the right cues.

Another common “truth” I’ve heard a lot is that old people get worse short-term memory but have no problem remembering things that happened long ago. It struck me: Has anybody checked whether these long-term memories actually correspond to true events, or might they just as well be constructed there and then?

Thank you

2011-10-05T23:01:00.011+02:00

Quickie holiday

2011-09-19T20:25:00.000+02:00

I felt a bit guilty about leaving the office in the middle of the afternoon, but I had a train to catch. Luftwaffenmuseum Gatow were hosting an exhibition by IPMS Deutschland and that was a reason as good as any for a weekend holiday for Honeybuns and me, so we eagerly tagged along our friend Ulf.

We had some time in Malmö before boarding the sleeper train to Berlin, so raided the local Pressbyrån for food. Lots of pasta salads of various kinds, the only edible thing I found was rather dry sushi in a plastic box. Well, it sufficed to keep body and soul together.

We had berths in a couchette. Now, while SJ complains that the X 2000 trains are getting long in the tooth, the rest of the rolling stock are completely ignored: The car was clearly older than I was, even still festooned with the classic admonishing Ströyer cartoons and the toilet paper had a distinct East state character. We shared the compartment with a talky young couple and a non-talky buff woman with major tattoos. We soon arrived in Trelleborg where we after quite a bit of shunting were rolled into a ferry bound for Sassnitz. The rest went up to have a look-see of the ferry, but I tried to make myself comfortable in bed, and the rest soon returned, having found nothing interesting. As often, I slept fitfully and definitely awoke as the German border police loudly inspected the passports of the travellers in the next compartment. They did however not seem care about us, possibly the people next doors were not intra-EU travellers, of some suspicious skin colour, or whatever other juridical complication.

A sight for sore eyes.

Finally we rolled in at Berlin Hauptbahnhof (tief) at 06:01, rather bleary and worse for wear. No shower for cheap couchette travellers. We stumbled out in the steel-and-glass building, like something out of a Tati movie. While we wouldn’t be able to check in at our hotel until after 15:00, maybe we could at least dump our bags there, so we set out to find Motel One Berlin-Hauptbahnhof. No problem, it was visible as soon as we exited the station. We got to the checkin desk and declared that we had bookings and within minutes we found ourselves clutching keycards to our rooms. Yet another two minutes later we were having glorious showers!

Berlin at dawn.

The healing and restoring magic of hot water from above soon had us bright and bushy-tailed again and we set out to find breakfast. Admittedly there was a breakfast buffet downstairs, but the vegetarians did not find the carefully aligned rows upon rows of sausage, ham, sausage, ham, sausage, and sausage to be that appetizing, so we went out on the city to see what food we could find. Nothing on a Saturday morning at 06:30, it turned out. But, surely there must be something at the station? We returned there and found a little shop offering salads, smoothies, fruit juices and other delicacies. I peered at a good-looking salad. It looked pasta-free, but you can never be sure, so I asked the lady behind the counter. Some minutes of confusion ensued until she realised that I really was asking whether there was any pasta in the salad. Of course not, who’s ever heard of a salad with pasta!?

Now, both washed and fed we located the tourist office, got maps, postcards and stuff and then tried to figure out how to get to Gatow. The guy at the travel information had no idea at first, but looked up something and printed us an itinerary that looked rather complicated. We decided to go for a taxi instead.

A long line of Soviet air power.

The taxi drove away for quite some distance, but finally ended up at the General Steinhoff-Kaserne. Well, the general idea was correct, so to speak, but it didn’t look very museumy. The taxi driver inquired at the gate, got further instructions and we drove on for a few more minutes until we got to the museum gate. Ooooh! Lots of aircraft out, but first things first: We located the hangar where the exhibition was being set up, in the space between exhibited aircraft.

Now, it has to be admitted that many of the models weren’t exactly Spitzenqualität with regards to the quality of finish, but the underlying ideas were often excellent. As this was an exhibition, rather than a competition, there were many themed exhibits, such as “Captured German aircraft in Soviet markings”, “All versions of the Fw 190”, “Pioneer aircraft up to 1914”, “Early jets”, “RAF aircraft stationed in West Germany”, and so on. (There were of course also exhibits of surface-bound vehicles, but I’m just not as interested in/knowledgeable about such.) The spirit was one of ”models are for building”, and I heartily agree with that.

My favourite, a burned-out Wellington, very impressive.	I wasn’t even aware it had been issued as a model: The EWR VJ101.
A quite unusual subject, an Etrich Taube. The original could be seen two hangars over.	A gaggle of figure builders were also present, happily painting away.

However, after a while the hangar felt quite chilly in the still early morning, and while Ulf exercised his German with the exhibitors, Honeybuns and I struck out to see what we could find. Now was when I realised the camera battery was running flat, so I had to switch to using my mobile. The picture quality dropped, but it managed some 200+ pictures before its battery went empty the next day. (Later on, more experienced hands have recommended carrying multiple batteries and changing as needed. Seems there’s going to be a lot of follow-up purchases to this camera…)

Airfields are big and there were lots of hangars located along the perimeter. Walking around a copse of trees we came upon a pair of hangars and started investigating the one furthest away. Боже мой! It was full of…stuff. A staff-looking person was sitting outside having a smoko, I looked at him and he nodded imperceptibly, apparently it was OK to go in. This was apparently the museum storage hangar, we found shelf upon shelf of rocket launchers, jet engines, stacks of rusty bombs (disarmed, we hoped), landing gear legs, a balloon gondola, and … cash registers, shop scales, tabulating machines, cutlery, and other non-aviatic items. At one end was a basically complete Heinkel He 111 in the company of other bits and pieces of aircraft in bad shape.

I think this probably is a Siebel Si 204 fuselage. The one at Arlanda is not in quite as bad shape, but it’s just a question of time.	It looks like a Bf 109 wing, but missing a bit at the root.
I think this is a Goblin, but I have no idea why it’s radioactive.	Presumably even the air force needs to sew things every now and then.

The next hangar was much more orderly, a very fresh and clean exhibition of the West German air force within NATO. Side rooms exhibited the different generations of fighter aircraft and the training courses German pilots had been to in the US and the UK.

As we returned we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a bicycle race circling around the airport. With time we realised that today was also Tag der Reservisten, with lots of other activities apart from model exhibitions. We walked along long lines of Soviet-manufactured aircraft, most of East German provenance. Many were in rather sad shape as a consequence of being stored outdoors.

A Su-22M-4.	A MiG-23UB.
A Lightning F.2A.	It took me a while before I realised what I was looking at: A HFB-320. Cool!

We continued with museum exhibits. Yet another hangar with aircraft. This was probably the original start of the museum, not quite as carefully laid out as the NATO hall, but interesting stuff nonetheless. We meditated a bit on how few German aircraft from the world wars remain in Germany itself, what was not destroyed having been shipped away by the Allies to their museums.

Eventually we decided we needed food. There were food tents aplenty, but to the dismay of the vegetarians they served wurst, wurst, wurst, wurst, and steak. And beer. I got me a steak and a Fanta, Honeybuns choked on a glass of Sekt. Eventually Ulf and she found some strawberry cake to fill their stomachs with.

The control tower building had a chronological display of the development of German air power from the beginning of the 20th Century onwards, the postwar period being indicated with a blue and red stripe on the floor separating West from East, with corresponding exhibits facing each other. The story of how two opposing air forces were merged into one must be a truly fascinating one.

Finally we were satisfied with museum watching and even skipped the exhibition on RAF Station Gatow and walked off to find a bus stop. We suspected that the travel directions we got at the Hauptbahnhof probably were not the most efficient ones and indeed we were recommended to take the bus to Spandau and the S-bahn from there into the city centre. The S-bahn was a strange experience—it would go a couple of stops, then stop to drop off all passengers and return, while a new train would turn up from ahead and take us a couple of more stops. I’m sure there is a reason for the ratchet drive.

After a detour to the hotel we went in search of Alexanderplatz. Well, it’s not much of a search—the Fernsehturm is easily visible everywhere since Berlin is very flat. („Es gibt keine Birge in Berlin“, Ulf proclaimed.) There may be some connection to the weird pipes that rise above many street corners. On a previous visit it was explained to me that they were there to pump away ground water that otherwise would waterlog the city. There are also major plot holes, given over to grass and weeds. I couldn’t tell if they were remnants of the war, of the Berlin wall, or just areas for redevelopment that had stalled. Honeybuns directed us to Bio Company, where we marvelled at an entire shop full of ecologically grown food and picked up some nice items. Then dinner at Thai inside—though we ate outside in the still warm evening air. Then the few steps to Alexanderplatz, where we browsed the sale at a bookstore. The waiting time to get up into the Fernsehturm was however prohibitive and we simply walked back to our hotel through a now dark Berlin, where brightly lit ships glid on the Spree.

The next morning Honeybuns and I got up early, bought breakfast at the Hauptbahnhof and boarded the train to Hamburg, leaving Ulf to his studies. Berlin to Hamburg is just a two-hour journey by day—night trains being a completely different story. The plan in Hamburg was to visit Miniatur Wunderland. I had tried to purchase advance tickets on their website, but for some reason failed, so we’d have to buy them on site. As we got to the ticket counter we found that the first available times for entry were several hours later and I realised the reason I hadn’t been able to buy online tickets was that they’d been sold out for weeks… Anyway, we weren’t going to let go now that we’d travelled all the way to Hamburg (well, actually we had to go that way anyway on the way home, which was what gave rise to the idea of a visit in the first place) so we bought tickets and then went out into the Speicherstadt to see what to spend our time on. Crossing a bridge we ran into Cap’n Jack Tar, who was selling tickets for boat tours of the harbour. Well, why not? We bought two tickets and looked around in the Binnenhafen while waiting for the boat to leave. Eventually the boat filled up with tourists and a colleague of the ticket-seller turned up to actually steer the boat. He cast off and started talking on the PA and didn’t even stop to draw a breath until we returned an hour later. He had a very distinct way of phrasing, which caused frequent smiles for the listeners. In general everything we passed was „größter in der Welt“ and/or „wunderschööön“. The Speicherstadt used to be the Docklands of Hamburg, but now the tall houses seem to be turned over to oriental carpet sellers (I dare not imagine the amount of carpets they can hold) and trendy marketing companies. Some of them had indeed been turned into blocks of flats, which must be very interesting places. But soon we steered out of the canals and into the harbour, where we passed next to huge container ships. At one point we went through a lock, but we never passed one on the way back, so I’m still not sure what the deal was there.

„Die ^wunderschöne Speicher_staaaadt!“	In the middle of the harbour is a golden calf on a pylon. I have no explanation.
M/S Lorraine. When she is fully loaded the red area is submerged.	Blohm & Voss are still in business, I didn’t know.

As we arrived back in the Binnenhafen, we jogged off to Miniatur Wunderland and got in. Jehosaphat, but it was crowded! Honeybuns mostly just saw the backs of people, but managed to peek between enough people that she had some idea of the glory of the place.

Archaeology in the North Sea.	The new “Switzerland” segment requiring two floors.
A Swiss station from above.	The new airport segment.

We decided to spend at least a week in Germany next time. Then we rushed back to the station and boarded the train to Copenhagen. We had a perfectly nice dinner on the Puttgarden-Rødby ferry. At København H we had to rush a bit back and forth while they kept changing the track of the Malmö train, but did get there. Finally we could board our sleeper train in Malmö, a proper sleeper compartment this time, a three-berth one, as is the SJ tradition, but I had booked the entire compartment for ourselves. By now we were completely knackered and slept all through Sweden and woke up as we rolled in to Stockholm at 06:04. We eschewed the shower on the train, instead making use of the one in Honeybuns’ nearby office, from which I continued straight on to my own, for a change being the first one in.

Balloons seldom come alone

2011-09-13T21:13:00.000+02:00

Special people

2011-09-12T20:01:00.003+02:00

There was a modelling weekend at the Maritime Museum again. The Saturday was a beautiful day as we sat in a tent with the wall furled, so we could bask in the late-summer sun. Suddenly Ture, who I hadn’t seen for a quarter century or so, turned up and joined us for a bit of modelling of his own, as he brought out a flotilla of 1:1200 ship models to work on. Then Honeybuns came by for a late lunch.

At the end of the day we stored our stuff inside and walked towards the city. As we got closer to Karlaplan we noted that we hadn’t been to Eskader since they moved. The shop would be closed of course, but it would be good to check the exact location, the opening hours, and mature stuff like that… We found it quickly and we of course had to peer in through the shop windows and check out all the cool stuff in there. A small child was a bit annoyed at the old men blocking his view, but so it goes. After a couple of minutes one of the proprietors turned up and opened the door: “Come in boys, we have to work on the book-keeping for a while anyway, so you can poke around in the meanwhile.” So we did, and filed away many interesting ideas. Then we finally went home.

On the Sunday I was sitting alone and it was very windy, so I spent most of the day chasing small parts being blown across the lot. And I swear every non-stop talker in Stockholm was there to harangue me, so I couldn’t get a word in sidewise!

Things that work

2011-09-11T19:21:00.002+02:00

A colleague had installed some software on his Mac: “…and it worked, just out of the box. And the most disgusting part is that I was totally unprepared for that!”

Honeybuns and I had long discussed upgrading to a proper system camera. So, being an aware consumer I went to the Råd & Rön website and looked up their test of system cameras. Now, this is one of the tests behind the paywall, so I was requested to send a text message containing a code to a given number. I did so, and within seconds the browser magically updated and brought me to the test spreadsheet. The best-performing camera was easy to pick out: The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2. Clicking on it I was brought to Pricerunner, where I got a list of suppliers and the prices they charged. Amazon UK turned out to be the cheapest by a wide margin, so I clicked on that link, was brought to the Amazon page for the camera, added it to the basket and checked it out. A couple of days later I had a package to retrieve at the nearest Coop and there was the new camera. I noted that it had been cheaper than the compact camera I bought seven years ago.

First obstacle: the battery charger was supplied with a British-style plug, but the charger itself had a standard two-pole connector, so half a minute of rummaging in my cable drawer brought out the right kind of cable.
Second obstacle: the camera was delivered without any memory card at all. That I thought was pretty stupid. So I had to buy a separate card. A life of experience strongly suggested one should always buy as much memory as can be fit into the device—it will soon be used up. So, a 64 GiB card should be the thing. Back to Amazon. After a bit of back and forth I came to the conclusion that no supplier will deliver 64 GiB cards to Sweden. Weird. So, let’s try a 32 GiB card then. Here I found a supplier, but as I am checking it out the price is suddenly doubled. What? Hm, they’ve slapped on 99 quid in postage & packing! OK, no sale for them. Finally I found a supplier who sells cheap, delivers to Sweden, and doesn’t charge ridiculous amounts for the postage and then I had a new package a couple of days later. Camera complete!

In the middle of everything

2011-08-05T21:18:00.003+02:00

S:ta Clara is as central a church can get, almost on top of T-Centralen. It is one of the places where the ragged people go, and there is a distinctive smell of pee about the churchyard. A church volunteer is handing out bread to bag people in varying degrees of intoxication. Next to them a different crowd, relatives of Honeybuns’, but from a branch I haven’t met before.

Suddenly a great commotion, cheers and whistles. A wedding party erupts from the church doors. The newlyweds are traditionally dressed, but their piercings and tattoos hint that this may not be their usual garb and this is underscored by their friends in leather coats, mohawks and brightly dyed dreadlocks.

We have to wait a while as their flowers are carried out of the church and ours are brought in. Finally we troop in and seat ourselves, relatives on the right, friends on left, dead centre the coffin. I try to form a picture of Honeybuns’ step-sister, whom I’ve never met, from the vicar’s eulogy. As she was torn from the midst of life, the people who did know her form a crowd even in the spatious church. Friends sing and recite poetry. Many weep.

After the service we walk to a restaurant in the Old Town for dinner. I am first a bit taken aback by the blaring disco music, but eventually learn that it is a careful selection of the most favourite pieces of the deceased. A sad gay friend makes a speech, reminiscing over her joyful life and proclaims: ‘Tonight there will be a PARTY IN HEAVEN!” and that is as good an epitaph as any.

Om kriget som aldrig kom

2011-07-31T20:31:00.013+02:00

Som jag nämnt tidigare, så gjordes stora ansträngningar under Kalla Kriget att skydda befolkningen inför och under sovjetisk invasion. Bergrum.se är ett försök att samla och systematisera information om dessa ansträngningar – ett inte helt lätt arbete eftersom man, just med tanke på en eventuell invasion, dokumenterade mycket lite, utan lät det mesta sitta i huvudet på berörda personer. (Och det man hade dokumenterat, skickade Wennerström och Bergling vidare till just Sovjet.)

Och när jag ändå letade runt, hittade jag Anders Jallais blogg där han gör sitt bästa för att dokumentera Sveriges dåtida, och enligt hans mening, fortgående underrättelsesamarbete med NATO.

More Amazon shenanigans

2011-07-30T17:24:00.002+02:00

I thought that Amazon Marketplace just made space available for sellers, but it seems the mechanism also contains a bit of what in computing is known as “intelligence”, i e there’s a programming interface and depending on the intelligence and foresight of the programmer things may happen for good and bad. Michael Eisen relates how the price of a book balloons to several million dollars when the scripts of two competing sellers attempt to optimise their pricing in order to appeal to different market segments and maximise profit. The comments even suggest that there might not be two separate sellers, but a single seller attempting to cover the market all alone. Perhaps nothing is what it seems.

Veckans ord: surrealism

2011-07-29T17:22:00.001+02:00

Mats Lundegård, Ingvar Hirdwall och Lars Molin, griniga gubbar som förkroppsligar svensk surrealism.

Do you feel welcome? Well, do ya, punk?

2011-07-28T17:20:00.000+02:00

Invisible Man

2011-07-27T11:44:00.000+02:00

We went to Fotografiska Museet. As usual, there were several parallel exhibitions of varying degrees of interest: Robert Mapplethorpe leaves me cold—all his pictures are somehow just the same, regardless of the subject: same lighting, same æsthetics. But we’d really come to see the “Invisible Man”, excerpts from Liu Bolin’s series Hiding in the City—photographs of himself, bodypainted to meld in with the background at various places in Beijing. Looking at the pictures I realised there must be at least another invisible man: I can’t quite see how Liu could have managed to create the body paintings on himself by himself, matching them up with the environment behind him. There must have been at least another, quite skillful, person helping him with the paintings and adjusting them to the background. I find this a problem with art in general: there is this Romantic idea of the lone genius that the teamwork necessary for almost any piece of art is completely suppressed. Well, except for film, where it’s pretty obvious that the producer did not do it all alone and where the skills of all other participants have identifiable effects on the end result, so these days everybody in any way involved with the production is listed in the final credits and I can pay hommage to them by watching the credits to the end.

A slightly different example was Eleanor Coppola’s Circle of Memory, a memorial to her dead son in the form of an Irish passage grave recreated with hay bales, clearly not manually stacked by herself. However, this was more explictly a cooperatively created art piece, as the public were invited to write their thoughts on pieces of paper and attach them to the hay, so that others could read them. Honeybuns noted that it’s hard to express strong emotions without becoming banal. Indeed, quite a few of the writings had been directly cribbed from the quotable quotes at the bottom of calendar pages. So, kudos to the young woman who unpredictably but truthfully noted: “Don’t do a runner twice from the same taxi, you’ll feel so guilty.”

Historical excursion

2011-07-26T18:59:00.012+02:00

It transpired that on no occasion Honeybuns has been in Mariefred has she had time to visit Gripsholm castle. This obviously won’t do, so a castle trip was necessary. To have the maximum time available we took the train to Läggesta. We hesitated for a second whether to take the bus or the steam train to Mariefred, but clearly a steamtrain trumps busses. However, it turns out ÖSlJ does not take credit cards, but they were kind enough to let us come along anyway, get cash in a (the?) ATM in Mariefred and buy the tickets afterwards. Customer service!

In Mariefred we got ourselves something to drink in the station café (Note: In spite of a menu footnote to this effect, they don’t actually carry gluten-free sandwiches.) and had a quick look in the museum. When we got out to go the castle it had started raining, so we proceeded with some haste.

Gripsholm, with its almost 500-year history (600 since Bo Jonsson Grip’s original fortress), is a melange of all ages, being rebuilt about once every century to adapt it to current needs of each age, while honouring the past. It’s current guise is a sort of 1890s idea of what it should have looked like during the renaissance and I suspect that in quite a few instances the reconstructions may have gone beyond what was originally there.

A model of what the castle would have looked like ca 1600.

This corner is the tower on the far right above, extended by a new wing. The brick on the wing (on the left) is real, on the tower it is a pattern painted on plaster.

The bartizan is an 1890s recreation of one which was presumed to have existed here.

Honeybuns was very fascinated and pleased with the window flannings that all had nice benches to sit on. One wonders to what extent they existed originally—to be sure most windows would have been smaller at the time that the castle was actually used as a fortress in the turbulent times of popular uprisings and dynastic struggles. I wonder what issues the builders in the past would have had with knocking new holes in the massive old walls to increase window sizes and attaching new wings to the castle—would there at any point have been problems with the structural integrity of the walls?

On my earlier visits I had clearly not been very attentive to the portraits in the collection, but now I realised that many of the standard depictions of people in Swedish history are paintings displayed at Gripsholm. I read the famous names, and indeed every now and then found ancestors of people whose history in the limelight went so far back. Honeybuns noted that the portraits up to the 19th Century were cast very much in the same mold and were all but indistinguishable from each other, mostly concentrating on the jewellery and exclusive clothing while rendering skin and faces as smooth, characterless surfaces, but from the 20th Century there was suddenly a great many portrait styles.

Photography was not allowed at all inside the castle—presumably to avoid the hassle of explaining to people with automatic flashes that flash photography is not allowed—so no interior pictures for you.

We finished the tour somewhat before the castle closed and returned to the town to see how to best return and perhaps to find something to eat. We found S/S Mariefred waiting by the bridge and decided to take the boat back to Stockholm.

Hi-ho

2011-07-24T18:28:00.010+02:00

From Upplands Väsby is just a short train ride to Uppsala and from Uppsala you can take the bus to Sala, so Honeybuns had a hankering to go see the famous silver mine at Sala. The mine is no longer in use, but there is a mining museum and you can go on guided tours in the mine. We signed up for the “Minors [sic] Path”, a tour outside the most easily accessible parts of the mine: Bring wellies and warm clothes.

From Sala station it’s a pleasant walk along a little creek running through a residential area to the entrance of the mine area. This turned out to be quite big and with a generous helping of tourist traps in the form of cafés and curio shops. We had a light lunch at the restaurant, looked through the mine museum and then assembled at the reception to await the guide, boots and borrowed hard hat on. The guide turned out to be a slip of a girl in 17th Century mining clothes, in complete command of the situation. She took us to a little brick house outside where we first got an introduction on how the mine had developed over time and were shown a map of its layout: There are four main shafts from which horizontal drifts follow the ore veins, opening into larger chambers at richer spots. The ore body goes at a slant, so in the middle ages the silver could be extracted directly at the surface, but as time went on, they had to dig deeper and deeper in a northerly direction. The deepest shaft, the Charles XI shaft, goes down to 318 m below ground level, but the deepest levels have filled with water, pumps keeping the mine passable only down to 155 m. Divers can go into the water-filled parts of the mine, but while exciting, it’s also very dangerous, so only a select few are allowed to do so.

Having explained all this, the guide opened a nondescript door behind which a staircase led down into the bowels of the Earth.

Into the darkness.

We started our descent. On entering the mine we were reminded that whistling and swearing was not allowed, so as not to anger the Mine Lady. Strangely enough nothing was said about how the Mine Lady does not allow any other women in the mine either.

It was, indeed, quite cold in the mine and my jumper did not quite keep the cold at bay. As we descended, every now and then we come to a level space where we could peer into adjoining large chambers, some with royal signatures from various kings who have inspected this, the foremost treasure of the realm. At one point the passage opened on the Queen Christina Shaft, the centre of the mine. I looked into the bottomless pit fading into black. A fine mist was constantly falling through the shaft.

Life will find a way. Mosses eke out a precarious living in the eternal artificial light.

At a depth of 55 m below ground we ended up in a large chamber with exits in all directions. It had been used as a concert hall, so had bleachers along the sides, but nowadays a chamber at 155 m was used instead. Here the easily accessible part with stairwells ended. We were handed torches and then struck out into a side passage. The wellies soon came in handy, the bottom of the passage was a muddy slurry with loose stones hidden, so we had to watch our steps.

A sludgy mixture of rust and bacteria occurring here and there.

After a while we had arrived at the deepest shaft. A fence kept us from going near it, but the guide suggested we throw a stone into it. I tossed a stone into the pit and we stood for what felt like a minute, listening to it bouncing off the walls—possibly it knocked other stones loose, because certainly it couldn’t have taken that long to fall even a hundred metres. We couldn’t hear it reach the bottom, the sound just faded out.

Presumably one will not get lost as long as one follows the tracks.

From here went a Decauville track further into the mine. The ceiling also became markedly lower, so throughout this section there was a constant syncopated rhythm of boots splashing through water and hard hats knocking into the ceiling.

We ended up in a passage where the floor was covered with pond of unknown depth. As none had walked in it the water was perfectly transparent. Someone asked if the water was drinkable. According to the guide it might be, but it was uncertain how much lead had leached into it.

And then we retraced our steps back to the large chamber where we had a little snack and then returned to the surface with a lift through the Knight Shaft. Honeybuns was very pleased with the experience and decreed that we would return, stay at the hostel and explore Sala in detail, so expect further reports.

Breaking eggs

2011-07-22T23:45:00.009+02:00

So this guy had told himself that in order to achieve certain desirable goals, regrettably a large number of children had to be slaughtered as brutally as possibly. A sure sign of psychopathology one would think, but this kind of calculation is common among those who go as statesmen and strategists: “To hasten the end of the war, we are forced to bomb these civilians.” Unless we want to consider well-known heroes as psychopaths, we have to assume that the ends in fact do justify the means. The question then devolves to what ends justify the killing of people who don’t necessarily feel that their deaths would improve the world and who gets to define those ends. Is it OK if it is our elected representatives, presumably acting on our wishes?

So is it that the psychopath is the one who bears to actually meet the victims, while we normal ones are allowed the same kind of thinking as long as we do not personally create the corpses?

Utö and Ålö

2011-07-17T16:51:00.240+02:00

The Mill House is a short walk through the woods from the main building.

Back to Utö again. The morning doesn’t start off very well—the weather isn’t the best, the place is too crowded, the usual staff is on vacation, and a million other little things annoy us. However, we get a very cosy room in the Mill House and we go for what seems to have become our favourite activity here: Collapse in bed and wake up in time for dinner. A five-course meal later we feel a lot better.

The next morning we have breakfast outdoors and then make use of the bike tour we won last Christmas. We get a couple of sturdy bikes with balloon tires, buy us lunch in the local shop and then strike out to explore the map with secret bathing places we have been supplied with.

The sea is never far away.

In no time at all we are in a landscape which maskes me feel as if we were in a Swedish 1940s film, perforce the bike even wants to go on the left side of the road. We travel on wheel-track roads past green meadows with cows and sheep, the sun is warm without being hot (though I’ve taken the precaution of slathering myself with the usual SPF 50+) and it feels as if all the road is downhill. (We did start at sea level, but since we are moving southwards this must obviously be due to the curvature of the Earth…)

A TGB m/42 SKPD

We move into the firing range at southern Utö, open to the public during the summer. The landscape is as lush as before, but every few metres are placards with dire warnings about not touching unexploded ordnance. We arrive at a military compund with a couple of armoured vehicles on exhibit outside. We crawl around a bit on them and then continue on our way.

Eventually we cross a little bridge to Ålö, separated from Utö by the narrowest of sounds. Here is our first stop, we sit on a rock, looking on the sea and eating our lunch and then we just sit there and enjoy the day.

A Södermanland forest at its most beautiful.

Then to find the next bridge back to Utö. Next to it is a little hut like a ticket window, but its actual purpose is opaque. We end up on what goes for the main road around the south of the island. It brings us to a beach, perfect for amphibious assault exercises, but now occupied by a smattering of families with children. It turns out to be mostly impossible to bike through the loose sand, we have to push the bikes along until we get up on solid ground again. We continue, soon stopping to eat wild strawberries and chat with a baby squirrel sitting by the road.

Soon we find ourselves by the centre piece of the firing range, a long rail track on which I surmise targets are pulled during exercises. A seriously shot-up skip stands by the track.

Faithfully guarding the ramparts.

We aim for our final target, a cave by the shore. We have to leave the bikes by the road and follow a foot path through the forest for a bit. To Honeybuns’ disappointment, the caves are in fact little more than deep crevices, but the cliff landscape is fantastic and I suddenly find a dilapidated bunker hidden in a ravine. We jump around on the cliffs for a while, but now, how should we get back to the bikes? Probably best to just cut straight throught the forest. Of course, since this is a military area, the forest has never been logged and does not take lightly to our efforts to pass. Finally we sight the road and stumble up on it. Time for tick inspection. No nasty critters seem to have attached themselves to us. Honeybuns is relieved. I am even more relieved that we didn’t accidentally step on an old landmine or something, belatedly having realised what a stupid idea it was to go off-road.

Now it is time to return to the harbour and get home. Rather tired by now, we pedal along sedately when I see something brownish moving out of the corner of my eye. Another squirrel, no, a dog, no, AN ELK! The elk jumps up on the road behind me and I, flustered, pedal away as fast as I can, wishing I had a ten-speed. Luckily the elk drops the chase after just a few steps and returns in among the trees without showing much interest in Honeybuns, so she soon rejoins me. We return along the side of the shooting range and while we have seen very few people all day, now returning bikers appear on all tributary roads, heading for the harbour. Soon we are a convoy, heading north.

Luckily the Earth has revolved enough that it’s still mostly downhill, because by now we are really tired. We return the bikes and sit down for a breather. We have dinner in the restaurant on the main street and then get on the boat.

Two films to end them all

2011-07-16T17:18:00.059+02:00

As the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had proved to be good, the second part had to be seen as well. This time in 3D. The OBD had already been to the opening night, accompanied by appropriately costumed friends, and reported of very emotional scenes. When we went, a couple of days later, the trufans seemed to have petered off—when the curtains lifted the opening music was all but drowned by the sound of popcorn munching.

But, the film then? Yes, it worked, it covered the events and did it well, mostly without falling into mere action gimmicks. Much had had to be cut, so for instance leaving Aberforth Dumbledore’s angry accusations hanging in the air with no further explanation, and the battle for Hogwarts felt so compressed in time, I hardly had time to react to the carnage. Nether did the hectic pace allow the protagonists to play against each other as well as in the first part. Still, having read the book I knew what was supposed to be going on and could follow along.

The 3D didn’t add a lot, and in fact I often experienced cross-talk between the stereo channels and there were occasional issues with focus in the image. Thinking back on it, it may be that these were most pronounced in scenes with natural backgrounds rather than mostly-CGI scenes, but I’d have to rewatch it to make sure.

When the huge credit list had rolled by and the lights turned on, we looked out over the aftermath of a major food fight in the cinema: popcorn and paper cups everywhere; I myself had taken a half-eaten submarine right in the chest.

Veckans ord: kökaos

2011-07-15T17:59:00.000+02:00

– De ä förskräcklit va de loktar i ditt kök. Va ä de för kökaos?

Not my idea

2011-07-09T18:45:00.093+02:00

Ed Brayton quotes a student-teacher exchange:

When I informed this student that I suspected her paper was plagiarized, she said to me, “I got my paper from one of the students who was in your class last semester. How was I to know that she had plagiarized?”

Back when I was an undergraduate, copying was treated fairly cavalierly—it was of course wrong, but students will be students and all that, so if caught out, typically you would just be asked to redo the exercise. Over time the attitude has become much stricter and these days I understand students can be suspended for up to six months for cheating. I don’t know if this is a reaction to increased cheating or just a sign of harsher times. Certainly there is increased pressure on students to graduate on time.

Anyway, once upon a time, long enough ago that I believe it has been statute-barred, we had a mandatory course in business administration which was considered to be neither well taught nor very interesting. During this course we were to do a group project, working out the economics of some process of a fictitious company. The parameters were different for each group, but we figured out that they were reused from year to year. It was decided in my group that we would ask the students from the previous year to give us their report, retype it and present it as ours. The seniors kindly handed over their report and I ended up with the task of retyping it. Now, already then I had proofreader’s eyes and while I was copying the text I realised that the calculations were off: our predecessors had made a sizable arithmetic error. Still, they had passed, so apparently the grader had not read through the report very carefully. (The problem admitted many different solutions, depending on what assumptions and prioritisations you made.)

I mulled this over for a minute or two, but decided there was only one thing to do: Start over and do the calculations right. And so I did. Our group passed too.

Veckans ord: handlinskraft

2011-07-08T17:57:00.000+02:00

Tio gångers förstoring är en rätt normal handlinskraft.

Auto-correction

2011-07-07T23:17:00.000+02:00

The information we get from our environment is pretty noisy, and we constantly apply an error correction which seems to align our perceptions to some kind of Platonic ideal. Consider for example a spoken dialogue with someone: the words are often slurred, affected by surrounding words and sometimes just plain misspoken, yet we adjust to them almost effortlessly and hardly ever think about what was actually said, rather than what was meant. Or what we think was meant—sometimes we over-correct something, a new word that is similar to one we’ve already heard.

It was years before I realised our next-door neighbours actually were called Sällström. My parents pronounced the name quite correctly, but compensating for the Finnish accent I assumed they meant to say Kjellström.

A quite proper lady of limited computer literacy consistently referred to the “dildo” character on the keyboard (~). I never dared ask her what she thought the word meant.

Now I found a grad student referring to a “defector standard”. What would that be—an Anthony Blunt a year?

Presumed healthy until further notice

2011-07-06T17:56:00.000+02:00

I went to see the oral surgeon for my diagnosis. He was somewhat frustrated: in spite of me having visible lesions in the oral mucous membranes I felt no pain, was not even itching and to boot the biopsies showed nothing but normal tissue, so he grudgingly had to admit there was nothing he could do for (with?) me but ask my normal dentist to keep her eyes peeled for any changes and let me go.

OK, I guess?

Life goes on

2011-07-02T21:31:00.073+02:00

It had been raining for two days but the rain had held up for an hour or so when the guests started to arrive. The urn stood outside on a small white table, surrounded by meadow flowers.

Her mother made a brief speech; Honeybuns carried the urn to the boat and soon her uncle’s ashes were dispersing over the lake he had loved so much.

The messuage had already been sold to a distant relative, but the moveables would be auctioned off. Honeybuns picked through her childhood memories and set aside the few items she could fit into her home. She returned several times to say a final goodbye to the houses.

Barred from the hold

2011-06-28T20:54:00.002+02:00

Flying with the cats is always complicated, especially as rules and procedures seem to change randomly between each time we go, so Honeybuns is quite anxious to have everything sorted out well beforehand. Accordingly I had been on the phone with SAS several weeks before our flight and made sure we could take the cats along and eventually received confirmation as both SMS and email. Somewhat later, as I was sorting my email, I noted that the email version was rather longer than the SMS and among several other restrictions stated that each animal had to be kept in a separate cage. This was inconvenient, not least since experience suggests the cats feel safer when they are together. New phone calls. No, that rule is only relevant for animals in the cabin, not in the hold. Oh.

So we trundle into the airport, check in, drop off our bags and are directed to Special Baggage to drop off the cats. As we are getting the cats out so the cat cage can be X-rayed, a uniformed fellow turns up and stops the proceedings. The rules have been changed that same morning and the sturdy wicker cage Honeybuns has used for the last 14 years is no longer accepted on board. Sorry. We are pretty incensed at the non-existent notice. The official is sympathetic but explains they have received an injunction and absolutely can’t make any exceptions. On the other hand, they’ll do their best to get us and cats to our destination. Negotiations with various instances ensues, trying to arrange something workable. In the end we are rebooked for a later flight while Honeybuns jumps into a taxi for the nearest zoo shop.

While she is away I hang around Special Baggage, which I realise also is the entrance to the restricted parts of the airport. There are apparently repairs underway as groups of craftsmen go in and out. Each craftsman is carefully patted down before they are let in. Exactly what the security person is looking for is unclear, as each craftsman is carrying in his overalls at least two big knives, a hammer, a dozen screwdrivers and sundry other tools and the sturdy knee pads probably could be made of Semtex. Possibly security just likes feeling up well-built men.

Honeybuns eventually returns with a huge cage, certified for air transport. The cats are very suspicious, but in they go, only to be taken out again a minute later for the mandatory X-ray of the cage. Finally they are carted away and we can pass through security control with our new boarding passes. We profusely thank the airport staff, who in turn promise to improve the information about the rules.

We arrive in Umeå two hours later than planned, and to our relief manage to fit the big cage into the Honeymother’s car.

Scales

2011-06-27T01:33:00.000+02:00

Thnidu found this nifty animation showing the relative sizes of various celestial bodies and I wanted to put it into relation with something familiar to me, such as the Sweden Solar System. At a scale of

1:20×10

⁶ VY Canis Majoris would have a diameter of 153 175 m, i e, if superimposed on the Earth, the surface would be in the mesosphere, i e, around the highest X-15 flights, and the scaled distance would be about as far from Stockholm as Mars is from the Sun. Not that these measures are really graspable either.

Annual rites

2011-06-27T00:46:00.000+02:00

Few things are quite as desolate as Stockholm on Midsummer’s Eve. Honeybuns and I, having nothing else on the programme, decided to go out for dinner, but found that our chosen restaurant, as well as plans B and C, was closed. We strolled along Hornsgatan, and while a few fast food places were open, we continued in the hope of something better. Eken was open, but having sat in the conversation-killingly loud mood music for ten minutes without the staff paying the slightest attention to us, we decided that our patronage would be better off somewhere else.

When we reached the Old Town, we realised that the only ones still in the city were the tourists, and of course the tourist traps along Västerlånggatan would be open in order to cater to their needs. Honeybuns suggested we go for Slingerbulten, which turned out to be a good idea. I was at first surprised to be greeted in English, but of course, given the tourist-only population, this made sense. The staff was very friendly, if somewhat confused at times, and the food was quite OK, if nothing remarkable. After dessert we continued towards the Central Station. At Tegelbacken we helped out a couple of Germans who had difficulty orienting their map in the right direction and sent them on towards the Old Town.

Midsummer’s Day started out with rain and thunder, but the skies cleared somewhat in the afternoon and we decided to go visit Gröna Lund. We were rather shocked to find that bus 47 has been disappeared, so we took the tram out instead. It was not crowded. The weather was still unstable and we had both rain and sun at the same time.

We had dinner at Kaskad, which was so-so. The food was decent, but way too expensive. While they pride themselves on being allergy-aware, the staff claimed for the longest while that their Spaghetti Bolognese was gluten-free until I had them double-check, on which they had to admit that wasn’t exactly the case.

After food we went for the rides. Most Stockholmers still being away, all queues were pleasantly short. Honeybuns is much more fond of g-forces than I am, so on all the in-ride photographs that are de rigeur for roller-coasters these days one could see a happily beaming Honeybuns and a clenched-jaw me. Despite much cajoling I absolutely, positively, refused to ride the Insane.

In French cotton candy is known as barbe à papa and there was indeed pink strawberry-flavoured cotton candy as well.

We also did some small amount of betting on the chocolate wheels, but no jumbo packages of candy for us this time. Around this time I suddenly realised that the Ferris wheel also has been disappeared. First they rebuilt the view tower into Free Fall and now they’ve taken the Ferris wheel away. Are there to be no calm and dignified rides at all left? At least the Circus carousel is still around.

Finally we took the ferry to in to the city and arrived home around midnight.

The Sunday was spent eating strawberries at my mother’s.

Word of the week: embarrassingle

2011-06-24T22:14:00.001+02:00

Some people consider it shameful to live alone, to be embarrassingle.

Men in Black

2011-06-19T22:14:00.000+02:00

The board went up on the roof the other day to inspect the ventilation system.

Veterans’ Day

2011-06-11T20:05:00.077+02:00

Skå-Edeby aerodrome hosted their annual Veterans’ day and some friends and I went there to see it. A brilliant and hot summer’s day, but finally wise from earlier mishaps, I donned my straw hat and slathered myself richly with SPF 50+, rather to the amusement of at least one in the company.

We had a most excellent day, went exploring in the hangars, ran into various friends and watched the displays. The refreshment hangar not only was able to supply gluten-free snacks (as it was unexpected I had actually brought my own), but also had a jazz band playing old favourites.

A police helicopter arrived and did public relations. They noted that their works is divided into roughly equal shares “looking for people who want to be found, looking for people who don’t want to be found, and, uh, other things [ominous wiggling of eyebrows]”. Apparently an embarrassingly large number of people manage to get surprised by nightfall while out picking mushrooms. The police would appreciate if the public wore brightly coloured garments on such occasions, rather than the tree-and-rock-coloured clothes they are wont to do.

A very dusty Yak-55 in a hangar. Seems the repairs got interrupted.

The unlikely-looking Rutan Quickie. Another surprise is that the registration cannot be found in the Transport Agency’s register.

A much earlier example of the tandem wing concept: A Flying Flea.

Not only aircraft but also ancient cars, fire engines, and motorcycles graced the airfield with their presence.

Biltema’s Spitfire Mk XVIE made several displays during the day, here starting with mighty exhaust flames.

And at the end of the day, my skin was as pristinely fish-belly white as in the morning, the sunscreen having fulfilled its duties perfectly.

SJ, get your act together!

2011-06-10T22:42:00.006+02:00

I was going to Ballerup for a job-related course, so I booked tickets on the usual X2000 to Copenhagen. As occasionally happens, first class tickets turned out to be cheaper than second class, so I went for them. Meal reservation? Yes, please. However, SJ still can’t prebook dietary restrictions, so I’d have to call them again 24 hours before departure to order my meal.

It struck me later that it would be unreasonable to have to call exactly 24 hours before departure, but that it was a bit unclear whether one should call 24 hours beforehand at the earliest or at the latest. If the latter, one would think they should be able to do the booking already when I booked the tickets, if the former, it’s unclear when the last possible moment to call is. Presumably the actual window during which one should call is something different entirely. In any case, when I called, approximately 24 hours before departure, the person at the other end took my dinner requirements and claimed to leave a message for the uptrip as well. Good, then I wouldn’t have to call from Denmark and sit in a telephone queue for that.

I left in the afternoon of Grundlovsdagen. At first I had to struggle a bit to get the wireless connection to work on the train, but a reboot of the machine (my office XP box) eventually solved the problem and I was able to get some crucial job done.

Eventually I got my dinner, which was perfectly decent for a micro-waved readymade.

We stopped on schedule at Malmö C, and then we remained stopped. For quite some while. The train driver explained that we were waiting for a “timetable” from the Transport Administration to continue into Denmark. I found it a bit surprising that a daily train would not have a pre-prepared timetable, but regardless we sat waiting for it for an hour.

Finally the hassle was solved and we rolled the last bit of the way into Copenhagen. Now to get on the local train to Ballerup. There were ticket machines in the station hall, but I was not able to figure out what kind of ticket I was supposed to buy, so I got into the queue at a manual desk and got my ticket. Pretty steep at 48 DKK, I thought, but then Stockholm has in general fairly cheap (in several senses) public transport. I located my platform and looked at the ticket cancelling machines, but my ticket seemed to be the wrong size, so I asked a railway employee how I should go about matters. “Oh, you’ve wasted your money. Today’s the first Sunday in the month, so travel is free.” Argh!

Anyway, I got on the train, which was quite spacious and equipped with wireless Internet and television screens. I got off at Malmparken, which was the station closest to both my hotel and the training site. The only other people getting off was a couple of young women, also looking a bit disoriented. They turned out to be Portuguese students, there for a course at the university. As is my (bad) habit, I took the lead and we trundled away in the general direction I remembered from the map lookup before I left. (Stupid to not have printed out the map, but it had looked as if the hotel would be visible from the station. Not quite so.) I poked my head in at a McDonald’s we passed and received a course correction and soon we arrived at Zzzleep. Friendly checkin and the room was clean and nice, but had the narrowest beds I’ve ever seen. I carefully centred myself and soon slept.

In the morning I checked the map and took out the course to the training site. What I saw of Ballerup wasn’t all that exciting—an industrial area quartered by motorways. The course turned out to exceed my expectations, it proceeded at a breathtaking pace and I had to struggle to keep up. At least the teachers were kind enough to talk English, rather than Danish, though I noticed chatting over lunch that the Danes had even more difficulty understanding my Swedish than I their Danish. How strange, Swedish that is so clearly enunciated… By 17 I was tired but pleased—I would have lots of things to improve when I got back to the office. I bought some postcards and stamps (“Two to Sweden and one to Uruguay!?” Yes, please.) and then proceeded to an Italian restaurant I’d noticed along the way. It was nice enough and I had a pleasant meal. Back at the hotel I flipped on the TV to find a Columbo episode just starting and watched it. Good stuff and I noted with interest that Steve Bochco had written the teleplay for the episode.

The next morning, break-neck work again. When we finished for the day I started towards the train station, as I didn’t have all that much time before my train, the last for the day, would leave from Copenhagen. Now I would have to figure out how to operate the ticket machine, as it was an unmanned station. This machine had an, in principle, more obvious interface than the ones at the central station, on the other hand it was not very responsive to button presses, did not like to read my credit card and in general was hard to operate. I in fact missed one train while attempting to get a ticket, fortunately it was only ten minutes to the next.

When I arrived in Copenhagen I could see the X2000 on the next platform, but as soon as I got there it left. It turned out that this was actually the previous train, that should have left an hour and a half earlier. Oh well. On the other hand, the train I should be on was cancelled. What now? A PA announcement was made to the effect that we should jump on any train going to Malmö and continue from there. Well, OK. I do not know if they had managed to screw up the timetables again, but it was a bit annoying. And what if I’d come on the local train ten minutes later, that I saw pulling into the station just as the train I was on left?

In Malmö, the train was at the platform, but not allowing us on board yet. We milled about a bit until we got on board. Ah, good. Now to get home. Internet connection, check. Meal being served…uh, this is not my order. Confusion. Double-checking. Despite the promise of the SJ person I’d spoken to, the order had not been passed to the caterers. Just brilliant. The train hostess was very sorry, but could only offer me meal tickets for the bistro car, where I already knew I wouldn’t find anything edible but fruit, which I already had for free in my first class car. Apples did only a bit to stave off starvation. When I finally got home, about 01:00, I was pretty hungry and stayed up a bit longer to eat something more substantial.

Then up again in the morning to get to work and employ my new skills.

Catering to special needs

2011-06-05T15:34:00.024+02:00

Ian Allan Publishing, whose books I’ve often bought, has branched out into travel. Like their books, their trips are for special people:

5–13 Nov PERU: Peruvian Air Force bases—visits to all main bases and storage sites.

Honeybuns said:
“That’s so weird I would come along just to see it.”
Unfortunately the trip is already sold out.

Advertising at its finest

2011-06-04T14:46:00.000+02:00

The latest issue of Aeroplane had a full page ad for handcarved mahogany models of the Concorde. The full text is available at the seller’s website, but I wanted to share some breathless quotes with you:

Can You Remember How You Felt When You First Saw Her Fly?

For some of us, driving past Heathrow, the first impact wasn’t the sight, but the sound.
What on earth was that roar rattling the car from behind the fence screens?
And then... as something unreal rose into the London sky, a moment of awe and recognition as we whispered her name.

Beautiful, yes, -untameable too. What else do you call 187 tonnes of slender muscle that tore off the runway at 250 miles an hour?

Everything about her screamed thoroughbred. Nothing could stop her. So Filton’s finest invented the carbon anti-skid brake to at least try.

[— — —]

From the moment you set her in your pride of place, she comes alive. Neither you nor your guests will ever get tired of looking at her, because she always catches your eye.

At 22 inches long, this is no dinky toy!

This prestigious piece looks ready to leap off its mahogany stand. Admire her from across the room, relaxing with a drink and friends. Or inspect her lines from closer in as you heft her in your hands.

Every detail is here: Each window from which gazed a thousand astonished eyes; the ogival ‘double-delta’ wing with its triple elevons, and mighty Olympus engines.

The intakes ready to gulp air; the wingroot lights for those leafy Autumn London days; the nose strakes picked out in detail enough to satisfy even the most determined purist.

Very excited prose indeed, but I agree with the sentiment. I certainly remember the day, many years ago now, when I was walking somewhere near Victoria station. I looked up at the sound and saw the classic silhouette above me. Maybe some would call it a spiritual moment; I was gripped to my core by the soaring grace, such calm beauty just a short distance over the busy and grimy streets of London. I stood there, watching as long as I could before it disappeared behind the buildings. I cannot remember if I shouted. Probably.

It is the only time I have seen the Concorde in the air, which is where it belongs. I have visited the ones preserved at Duxford and Yeovilton, but this is an aircraft to be seen at a distance, above you. Divine.

Går det så går det

2011-06-03T23:54:00.000+02:00

Looking at Trumpeter’s USS England I decided that a Buckley class destroyer escort would be a nice thing to build to improve my ship modelling skills. References are of course needed for a good build, so I did a search on Amazon and lo and behold, there was even a book specifically on USS England. But…the cover picture? And what does the star “High quality content by Wikipedia articles!” mean?

A search unearthed this investigation by Chris Rand. Apparently what’s going on is that some guys hit on a brilliant idea: Write a script that downloads a Wikipedia article, follows the links to some pre-determined depth, concatenates all the gathered material and calls it a book. Repeat for all articles in Wikipedia. Print on demand and charge an outrageous sum = profit! There are already thousands of “books” under the imprints of Alphascript and Betascript being distributed through Amazon and other web shops to unwary shoppers happy to find a book on the obscure subject they were investigating.

Beware! Beware!

Pomp and circumstance

2011-06-01T18:00:00.067+02:00

Today the Only-Begotten Daughter graduated from high school. Parents and other relatives were not invited to whatever ceremonies were done inside the school, but waited out on the square outside waving the usual placards with baby pictures of the freshly-baked students. Some boys from the lower forms stood in a cluster and shouted intermittently, whether caught up in the expectant excitement or wanting to draw a bit of attention to themselves. A couple of minutes before the hour the graduates exited the school building, led by a blond young man in shorts and buttoned shirt with a shoulder belt supporting the Swedish flag he carried. ”Den ljusnande framtid är vår” got just a wee bit too close to “Tomorrow belongs to me” for my sensibilities.

They paraded around the square and then went up to the school again, to stand on a balcony and sing the Student Song gloriously out of key. Then they all rushed down the hill into the waiting arms of their proud parents. Some of them would then continue into the city by lorry, joining other graduates in spreading loud music and beer over Stockholm.

The OBD however eschewed drunken debauchery, so we just had a quiet celebration in the family.

Now it’s just the rest of life ahead. Does anyone have a job for a skilled artist trained in science?

Word of the week: earodynamic

2011-05-20T18:19:00.000+02:00

Audio equipment that’s been adapted to human hearing is earodynamic.

Cut up

2011-05-18T16:43:00.000+02:00

I was back again at the dental surgery after the recent debacle. This time I managed to stay conscious, even though the surgeon decided to make no less than two biopsies from different spots for a more definite diagnosis. So I am now in stitches though I do not feel like laughing much. Another side effect was that I passed the maximum limit for health care payment, so doctor’s visits are now free until October.

Analysis results will be in in a few weeks.

Sån’t gör man numera, som fröken vet, med elektricitet

2011-05-14T21:00:00.002+02:00

Upphittat av Gullebullen på Stockholms Stadsbibliotek:

I am a mullah

2011-05-13T23:13:00.000+02:00

As I was walking home I came upon a gaggle of boys, around twelvish. One of them asked if I could help them. Well, sure, what’s the matter? Isn’t this a Thor’s hammer? So it seems. Wouldn’t it be haraam for a Moslem to wear it? Aaah, ha ha, you’ll have to ask your imam about that.

I eventually figured out that one of the younger boys in his innocence had gotten himself the pendant and just been challenged by the more theologically astute boy who first had addressed me. He proposed it would be humiliating to be wearing the symbol of another god. I suggested it was just an ornament, to be worn for æsthetic reasons, but by now the boys had reached the decision they should get rid of the heathen symbol. They offered me to buy it for cheap, but I declined on the grounds that I never wear jewellery. Another reason is that all too many wearers of Thor’s hammers tend to be of the nationalist persuasion, so I, too, had symbolic reasons not to wear it.

Veckans ord: stafettfinne

2011-05-13T22:01:00.002+02:00

Hannu Poussu är en framstående stafettfinne.

Older than it looks

2011-05-09T00:35:00.000+02:00

Someone referred to the USA as “a young nation”, but compared to what? USA is older than Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, …

Transcender

2011-05-08T17:41:00.000+02:00

Among the many things Honeybuns has given me, is a set of new friends and acquaintances that are nothing like the ones I have from before. To begin with, none of them has an engineering degree.

At a recent party I found myself the only heterosexual male in the room. Or, at least that’s what I assumed, but I couldn’t be entirely sure—some of the people in the room, quite consciously, defied my attempts to sort them into definite male/female categories and I was annoyed with myself for even attempting, yet some deep-rooted reflex demanded certain knowledge.

I was reminded of once when I was visiting my parents. The OBCM was taking an advanced course in numerical analysis at the time and had brought along some homework. My father asked what she was doing and got an explanation of how she was computing the (parabolic) velocity profile of the water flow in a pipe. My father was intensely provoked by this. “Clearly the water comes with full force!” he decreed. If I hadn’t been so annoyed at the time it would have been an interesting example of how something that goes against one’s preconceptions can be rejected out of hand, even when a tiny bit of physical reasoning would let one work out one’s misconception.

I’ve often seen the same rejecting-out-of-hand non-reasoning with regards to transgender/intersex people, so my lack of equanimity disturbed me, but then again, as I’ve mentioned before, living correctly with respect to others requires constant awareness.

I wouldn't want to write the parser

2011-05-06T00:15:00.000+02:00

As in Algol, the programs are pretty-printed in different fonts, as in ABC 80 BASIC, the pretty-printing is enforced, as in COBOL, the programs pretend to be in English, as in Fortran, you have to use continuation characters, as in C++, the error messages are incomprehensible: AppleScript.

Here is our old friend, the Hailstone program:

on run
    display dialog "Seed" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
    set a to (text returned of result) as integer
    set outstring to a as string
    repeat until a is equal to 1
        if a mod 2 is equal to 0 then
            set a to a div 2
        else
            set a to a * 3 + 1
        end if
        set outstring to outstring & ", " & a as string
    end repeat
    display dialog outstring buttons {"OK"} default button "OK"
end run

Parking plot

2011-05-05T21:23:00.000+02:00

The other day we saw people working on filling out the muddy part of the lawn by the train station. Good! It was time to replant the grass and maybe add some flowers. Pfft! Turns out they were turning it into yet another unnecessary parking space…

Veckans ord: åkarbrasor

2011-04-29T23:28:00.002+02:00

Långtradarchaufförer utvecklar av allt sittande med tiden breda bakar: åkarbrasor.

Veckans ord: provoaktiv

2011-04-22T23:49:00.002+02:00

Någon som anstränger sig för att uppröra omgivningen är provoaktiv.

Out cold

2011-04-19T23:26:00.017+02:00

My dentist was a bit concerned about the state of my gums and referred me to a specialist, so I turned up at Södersjukhuset expecting to be poked and peeked at a bit. And so I was. The specialist had a look and then explained to me in a comforting Southern Swedish accent:
This looks like typical lichen planus. Shouldn’t be any problem at all, usually disappears on its own, but just to make sure of the diagnosis I’d like to take a tissue sample. I’ll make an incision and stitch it up afterwards. Ah, this looks like a good spot. OK?
He procures a syringe with anæsthetic and proceeds to jab me inside the cheek with it. Ouch! Then he turns towards his compre re re Re Re Re su s s s s s s s s re RY RY RY RY RY. I can’t make sense of my senses, I struggle to think a coherent thought, any at all, while at the same time I somehow observe that I’m not able to. What is happening to me? Finally my mind coalesces.
Oh, hi there. You fainted there for a bit. No worries, happens quite often when you’re stressed, vasodilation causes low blood pressure and you go out. Just lean back and rest.
It takes a minute or two before I have regained enough control to be able to speak. What happened? I’ve never fainted before. Have I become sensitive to the anæsthetic, or was I more spooked at getting cut than I realised myself? After a while I can start moving my hands, but I’m weak and jittery all over. I run diagnostics, counting backwards from 100 by threes. Seems to work. Reading the labels on the bottle of antiseptic. Works, even identifying the languages. (A faint worry that my recollection of the true values might not be correct, but the results seem reasonable.) Still, I’m feeling nauseous and eventually ask for the head end to be raised a bit. The dentist continues calming me down and decides that we will not proceed with the procedure in my current state, but I’m welcome to have a lie-down on a bed. Eventually my legs feel like I can move under my own power and I am escorted to a hospital bed where I doze off for a while. About two hours after arriving I finally feel like all parts are in place again.

I get a time for a new appointment in a couple of weeks.

Eastward ho!

2011-04-17T19:42:00.153+02:00

For several years the club has intended to take part in competitions arranged by IPMS Finland, but it’s been difficult to work out when they’ve been and often they have collided with our own competition, but now we got wind of an event in time to prepare an informal visit.

While the competition is open to all comers, nobody has thought about making an international version of the web pages, so I quickly translate the rules to Swedish and help my competing friends fill in the registration pages.

I work through various travel alternatives and find to my fascination that travel + hotel accommodation works out to cheaper than travel alone. Then dinner bookings double the price again. I think I see where the ferry company makes its profit. Honeybuns, who of course will have to come along, has a work trip leaving Stockholm on the Sunday afternoon, so I book just a forth-and-back cruise for the two of us, and weekend trips for the rest of the gang.

Once we have gotten on board ship and sorted out accommodation, we can hang out on deck by the bar. In the gift shop we find T-shirts with a Brewster 239 motifs, which we all of us decide we need. There are also some new and very good-looking snap-together aircraft kits that could be interesting to play with. The various kinds of licorice in the tax-free shop have to be carefully evaluated. We have a dinner buffet booked and find ourselves next to a large group of youngsters in their twenties out celebrating something. They are more than a little tipsy and quite noisy, but one young man still manages to make a very eloquent speech to the ladies and one of them in particular. We applaud this with the others.

When we arrive in the Olympia Harbour in Helsinki the next morning, we split up, half of us first locating the hotel and checking in, then following the rest of us, who have taken all the models in a taxi out to the Exhibition and Congress Centre. Crikey! It seems all of Helsinki is there. A local contact meets us at the door and escorts us in through the crowds. The IPMS stand is right in the middle of the hall and we go there to unpack and display the models. Just because there were web forms doesn’t mean the data has gotten communicated to the judges, so we have to fill in paper forms as well. There are greetings exchanged by the chairmen of IPMSs Finland, Helsinki, Sweden, and Stockholm. (We’re a fairly small community, all in all.) I make a circuit of the IPMS stand and then strike out for the rest of the hall.

Model Expo is similar in idea to the Hobby Fair in Stockholm, but done right. It’s huge, also in the range of attending hobbyists. Wandering around we find model rail-roaders, R/C fliers, wargamers, doll-house builders, model rocketeers, Lego builders, armour fans, the R/C club of the Finnish Army, construction machine modellers, and aviation historians. Next to the IPMS stand is a large pool where R/C ships zoom about. Close to it is the stand of the Finnish R/C sailship association. Its member is there. A large area is taken up by a race course for R/C cars, drawing a large audience. Next to them is something that seems to be robot wrestling. The people there tinker with their gadgets, but show video on the wall and a match is promised for later in the day. To my disappointment it turns out the “robots” are not autonomous, but radio-controlled. The entire next hall is given over to R/C fliers, who are currently flying combat. I haven’t seen that done with R/C planes before.


The Finnish Model Horse Collectors shared the stand with IPMS. Note that they don’t just collect, they model and paint the horses, and as you can see, carefully document the originals.	The IPMS contest had much larger skill range than would be seen in Stockholm. This Il-40 wouldn’t win any prizes in either place, but it’s a way cool aircraft in all its ugliness.

The dollhouse makers were much more imaginative than anything we’d seen from Swedish builders. This old people’s home was so spot on only the smell was missing.	This old lady on the other hand is the real thing. She worked at her spinning wheel and sold mats of her own manufacture.

H0 Helsinki trams.	If you want to know the time, ask a stormtrooper.

However, eventually we realise that Model Expo is just the smaller exhibition, in parallel with a child fair and a pet fair. Honeybuns insists we go and check out the pet fair. We find an entire hall filled with bunnies. All kinds of bunnies, in every conceivable colour scheme and in all sizes. The biggest ones are the size of pigs and would scare the wits out of me if I met them outdoors, but they seem securely caged. I try to photograph some of the cutest bunnies, but the camera insists on auto-focussing on the cage lattice, so I just get pictures of metal grids.

Upstairs we find the dog exhibition and watch an obedience display. The next hall contains cats in cages and all the smaller animals, rats, guinea-pigs, hamsters, etc. Honeybuns racks up a considerable wish list for Christmas.

By now we are pretty hungry and locate the food mezzanine. I navigate the G and L markings and end up with a fantastically bland pepperoni salad. I remember that Terry Pratchett claims to have been inspired to CMOT Dibbler’s tasteless sausages by a Finnish hot dog.

We continue our examination of the stands and I start to more intentionally look through the shops for various interesting items and eventually buy some books that are likely to come in handy.

Then Honeybuns and I have to leave for our ship home and leave our companions to explore Helsinki on their own. We take a taxi and pass the cemetary where I clean up my father’s grave after the winter. Honeybuns takes the opportunity to accompany me as the taxi driver apparently has been sitting in the sun all day, so the atmosphere in the cab is rather close.

There are not as many passengers on the ship when we return, so we take it easy. We have dinner in one of the restaurants, where the staff have some problems wrapping their minds around the concept that “no dairy” implies no butter and no cream, but eventually they come through and present quite decent meals for both me and Honeybuns.

Later, as we prepare for bed, Honeybuns goes “Yuck!” and points out an insect in the washbasin: a cockroach! Ick! I skoosh it and give it a sea burial in the loo. Now, how many others might there be and have they had an opportunity to lay any eggs in our luggage? Nothing to be done about things during the night though.

When we arrive in Stockholm the next morning we rush to our respective homes, Honeybuns to drown any creepy-crawlies in the washing machine, me to kill them in the freezer. So far they don’t seem to have spawned.

And our friends took all the prizes they could.

Veckans ord: pedofilén

2011-04-15T22:24:00.002+02:00

När man styckar spädbarn ska man använda en riktigt skarp kniv när man skiljer kotlettraden från pedofilén så att inte köttet trasas sönder.

Veckans ord: förlädrar

2011-04-08T22:18:00.000+02:00

Garvaren förlädrar hudar.

Morning light

2011-03-28T08:16:00.001+02:00

Where the mild things are

2011-03-27T18:37:00.003+02:00

As has been implied earlier, modelling tends to be a maledominated activity. One thinks. However, it turns out that this is mostly due to non-communicating groups: If one looks for them, one finds a huge group of female modellers and they have their own get-togethers, so today Honeybuns and I went to see the Stockholm miniature fair. The premises were crammed with middle-aged+ women hawking and buying upscale doll houses and accessories for them.

Some points that struck us:

The vast majority of dollhouses seem to be depict some kind of Elsa Beskow world—I found only a single room with modern IKEA furniture. Oh, and a delightful Pettson & Findus house.
There was very little in the way of tools and equipment for sale, almost everything was ready-made items. I was a bit disappointed, as I had hoped to find a good head-mounted magnifying glass.
Was it just a coincidence that the fair was located right in the middle of upper-class Östermalm and did that have a relation to the choice of subjects? (Never mind that most of the exhibitors came from out in the countryside.)

On the way home, two elderly gentlemen played baroque music on their flutes in the underground station.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

2011-03-27T11:34:00.000+02:00

Chatting over lunch with a friend she explained how she had “premonitions” of things that would happen.
Considering she’d just had a project go down in flames, I silently wondered what the use of such premonitions would be, but instead said:
“Nah, I don’t trust in premonitions: when my aunt was in hospital, Mum said she had a premonition^* she’d be OK. Two weeks later she was dead.” (I have a tendency towards rather morbid examples.)
“See! She had a premonition something would happen, she just couldn’t tell what.”
Oh, well, in that case…

^* I doubt Mum had any premonitions of any sort, but just tried to cheer her sister up.

Postponing judgement

2011-03-26T16:29:00.000+01:00

Every now and then I get into discussions with, er, …persons lacking in scientific training. A common complaint, when I decline to embrace the truth of preternatural interpretations of various events, is: “Scientists think they always know everything!” Well, no.

Saying “It must have been telepathy, what else could it be?” is assuming that everything else is known and excluded.
Saying “As all well-controlled tests so far have failed to show any evidence of telepathy, it’s unlikely that that was the cause in this case either, but the amount of detail given in your anecdote only allows us to guess on alternative explanations, so we cannot really say what happened.” is tentative, wordy, and hedging, and in particular does not assume that all circumstances are known. Why is this so difficult to grasp for some?

Then, Randy Munroe attacks another complaint about the dastardlyness of scientists:

(Of course all the facts about Fuligo septica are exactly as stated. Oh, and it’s called “troll butter” in Swedish.)

Untimely

2011-03-25T22:27:00.001+01:00

It was with a lump in my throat I found that André Gjörling has died, leaving behind a family and memories of the gentle silliness of Toffelhjältarna/Solstollarna. I find no better tribute than letting Martyna Lisowska bid him good night.

Disappointed

2011-03-10T23:14:00.000+01:00

Intrigued by a review of Model Craft’s Pick and Place tool, a handle with a sticky head with which to pick up small items (like photo-etch details and such), I tried to find one for myself. The usual hobby shops did not have them, but Panduro offered something that seems to be the identical item under the name Marvy Jewel Picker.

It did initially perform as promised, but the head lost its tackiness within days. The suggested methods of washing in warm water or rolling the head over sticky tape have not worked. I’m much disappointed in what seemed so promising.

Finished model 2011-I

2011-03-10T00:55:00.004+01:00

The cover art on Matchbox’ “Focke-Wulf FW.190” kit has the following caption:

Two F.W. 190’s patrolling over the Eastern Front on the 17th December 1942 are shown attacking one of the seven Petlyakov PE-2’s they destroyed on this their first sortie with the new F.W. 190.

The painting instructions on the back of the box indicate that the aircraft on the cover comes from “111 Group J.G. 51 Fighter Unit (Eastern Front)”, i e presumably III/JG 51. More specifically, since the aircraft carries red numbers, it would be from 8./JG 51, or, spelling out the abbreviation: 8. Staffel/III Gruppe/Jagdgeschwader 51 „Mölders“. (More explanation)

Finding out more about this incident required trawling through quite a bit of references. It was known that a Günther Schack had shot down five of those Pe-2s, but what was the exact date, what unit did he belong to and what subtype of Fw 190 was he flying?

Campbell [1975] says a Lt. Gunther [sic] had shot down six Pe-2s on his first sortie with a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, at some point before 1943-02-11.
Weal [2000] says Oblt Günther Schack flew a Fw 190A-4 of 9./JG 51 and shot down five Pe-2s on 1943-01-29. This is contradicted by Weal [2006], where he says Lt Günther Schack shot down five Pe-2s on 1942-12-17 (possibly, unclear from context) while flying with a unit of III/JG 51, possibly 7./JG 51, extrapolating from the unit he’d flown with earlier in 1942.
Shores [1974] says Lt Günther Schack shot down five Pe-2s while flying a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, but gives no date.
Kacha says Günther Schack performed this feat both on 1942-12-17 and on 1943-01-29, while flying a Fw 190A-4 of III/JG 51, possibly 7./JG 51.
Lexikon der Wehrmacht says he flew with 7./JG 51 and was promoted Leutnant on 1943-01-01.

Fortunately we can go to more primary sources: the Luftwaffe claims lists give us the information we need:

17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	25 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 250 m. (Smolensk)	11.58
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	27 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	11.59
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	35 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	12.00
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	33 km. N.E. Sychëvka: 2.500 m.	12.01
17.12.42	Ofw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	20 km. S. Subzoff: 3.000 m.	12.17

And, we also find this:

29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 322: at 1.800 m.	08.31
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.700 m.	08.32
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.600 m.	08.33
29.01.43	Fw. Günther Schack	7./JG 51	Pe-2	63 444: at 1.500 m.	08.34

So, we have one occasion of five Pe-2s shot down, and a second of four shot down. The unit definitely seems to be 7./JG 51, though it seems unlikely that Schack would have been demoted from Oberfeldwebel to Feldwebel between December and January, so some error in the sources seems to be present.

In the December incident, we see that there is a first group of four shot down within minutes (it seems likely that the first kill is also at 2500 m, rather than 250) and the last one 16 minutes later, some distance away and at a different height. When we plot this on a map we see some interesting things: III/JG51 were at the time based in Orel (marked with a red blob on the map) [Holm], and the patrol’s interception was over 200 km to the north, past Moscow. The first three kills are made while flying on a north-easterly course, but the patrol has then doubled back for the fourth. At 12:10 Unteroffizier Baumestner (presumably Schack’s wingman) shot down another Pe-2 12 km south of „Subzoff“, i e further west, and then at 12:17 Schack shot down the final Pe-2 almost at the point of the first kill. (Assuming the positions given are trustworthy and precise. Movable Type’s lat/long scripts were invaluable in fixing them on a map.) The north-easterly course would imply that the Soviet bombers were on their way home, but the question is then why the last kills were further west, as it seems unlikely that the Soviet crews would try to escape to safety in that direction, but possibly these were stragglers that had become separated from the others. That the positions are given with reference to Zubtsov rather than Sychyovka, suggests that the patrol had moved about and taken new bearings before finding the last two bombers.

The January mission was closer to home, if I have managed to convert the Jägergradnetz coordinates correctly (using LUMA). Further, the given times would indicate that the kills were made just before daybreak. Might this in fact have been an interception of a dawn raid on the airfield itself? (It is also possible that the time given was Berlin time, rather than local, Moscow, time.)

Show a bigger version.

(The map also indicates that while the landscape is not completely flat, it does not feature anything like the dramatic snow-covered mountains on the box art.)

Now, what about the aircraft? In this case the relevant document is Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen III./JG 51 which gives us that III/JG 51 during the relevant months had:

1942-11:	7 Fw 190A-3, 6 Fw 190A-2
1942-12:	11 Fw 190A-3, 23 Fw 190A-2
1943-01:	16 Fw 190A-3, 16 Fw 190A-2
1943-02:	15 Fw 190A-3, 25 Fw 190A-2

Clearly Schack could not have flown an A-4 at this time, but it could have been either an A-2 or an A-3. For modelling purposes they are identical, as the difference lies in the engine subtype [Baugher 2004], so we will not worry unduly about this distinction. The Matchbox kit claims to be an A-3, but in fact contains a mixture of A-3 and A-4 features, the most visible being having both the A-4’s high antenna post on the fin and the A-3’s direct lead into the fin. Well, this is pretty typical Matchbox, but onto more visible features: how would the aircraft have been painted? The painting instructions indicate a 70/71/65 camouflage, with a high demarcation line and a spinner with concentric circles in black and white, but is this supported by photographic and documentary evidence? There is relatively little in the way of photographic evidence of JG 51 Fw 190s [though see Arthy], but we can extrapolate from other Fw 190 units on the Eastern Front, primarily JG 54.

German fighters had switched from 70/71/65 to 74/75/76 camouflage in 1941, but this was dictated by high altitude flying where grey colours blended in better with the sky. On the Eastern Front, fighters were sent out against low-level bombers and attack aircraft and also needed to be better hidden on the ground, so units there reverted to the old-style camouflage. Then, when winter arrived, they were winter camouflaged with white paint over the top surfaces. However, photographs indicate that green/green aircraft were used in parallel with white-painted aircraft, there were also aircraft only partially white-painted over the green/green surfaces and then the thin layer of white would wear off fairly quickly, letting the green/green surfaces shine through.

In the end I decided, mostly out of time constraints, to go for an all-white scheme, and since they supposedly were on their first patrol, the paint would still be fresh. Weal has drawn a profile of Herbert Wehnelt’s Fw 190A-3 from 7./JG 51, though without giving any photographic source for it, that I let myself be inspired by.

Then, the markings. Clearly Matchbox’ markings were spurious (which actually is a bit surprising, usually they are based on some well-known individual), and worse, the „10“ numerals on the actual decals were for no good reason drastically simplified from the rendition on the box art, the latter which correctly depicted 8 Staffel markings in red with white surrounds. In the absence of any other evidence, I just pilfered a white number „1“ and III Gruppe vertical bar from the Kagero decal sheet nr 25 „JG 26 vol II“. Something clearly visible from available photographs was that, in opposition to JG 54, JG 51 aircraft did usually not carry any unit emblems at this time, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Yeah, and then the actual building of the model:
I scratch-built a cockpit interior, opened up the cooling louvres behind the engine and also deepened the space behind the exhaust tubes (but didn’t bother making the tubes themselves). I wanted to build an aircraft in flight, so I filed down the tail wheel to its correct semi-retracted position. I also added an antenna cable and removed the incorrect antenna post. Some amount of filler was needed, in particular around the wings, and some panel lines needed to be (re-)scribed. Another curious item was that the wings had the bulges for MG FF cannon, but no barrels supplied. These were of course easy to add. I also created a pitot tube out of a length of syringe and a Q-tip that I stretched over a candle.

Painting was a bit of a painful process, I’m using the airbrush too seldom to become really proficient, but I think I learned some useful lessons.

Literature:
Chronik Jagdgeschwader 51 »Mölders«, Gebhard Aders & Werner Held, 2009, Motorbuch Verlag.
Aircraft Archive: Classics of World War Two, Argus Books, 1989.
“Early Focke-Wulf FW 190s on the Eastern Front: The FW 190 A-1, A-2 and A-3 with Jagdgeschwader 51”, Andrew Arthy.
“Modeller's Guide to Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Variants: Radial Engine Versions—Part I”, Joe Baugher & Martin Waligorski.
Focke Wulf FW 190 in action, Jerry L. Campbell, 1975, Squadron/Signal Publications.
Luftwaffe at War: Fighters over Russia, Manfred Griehl, 1997, Greenhill Books.
„Jagdgeschwader 51 "Mölders"“, compiled by Michael Holm.
„Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen: III./JG51“, compiled by Michael Holm.
“Günther Schack”, Petr Kacha.
„Schack, Günther“, Lexikon der Wehrmacht.
German Aircraft Interiors 1935–1945, vol 1, Kenneth A. Merrick, 1996, Monogram Aviation Publiations.
Focke-Wulf FW 190 im Detail, Jens Nissen, 2002, Motorbuch Verlag.
Focke-Wulf Fw 190A/F/G Luftwaffe, Christopher Shores, 1974, Osprey Publishing.
Luftwaffe Air & Ground Crew 1939–45, Robert F. Stedman, 2002, Osprey Publishing.
Oberflächenschutzverfahren und Anstrichstoffe der deutschen Luftfahrtindustrie und Luftwaffe 1935–1945, Michael Ullmann, 2000, Bernard & Graefe Verlag.
Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Aces on the Eastern Front, John Weal, 2000, Delprado Publications.
Jagdgeschwader 51 ‘Mölders’, John Weal, 2006, Osprey Publications.
“O.K.L. Fighter Claims Chef für Ausz. und Dizsiplin [sic] Luftwaffen-Personalamt L.P. (A) V Films & Supplementary Claims from Lists Eastern Front (Ostfront) August–December 1942”
“O.K.L. Fighter Claims Chef für Ausz. und Dizsiplin [sic] Luftwaffen-Personalamt L.P. (A) V Films & Supplementary Claims from Lists Eastern Front (Ostfront) January–June 1943”, compiled by Tony Wood.