Word of the week: graydient

From 0 to 255 in monochrome: a graydient.

Turning off the lights is a bright idea

Just got my electrickity bill. On actual measurement I had consumed much less than the electricity company had projected—and billed me for, so most of the cost was credited to me. Ha! Let's see if I can repeat the trick over the winter.

Veckans ord: tvivelaktiv

En skeptiker sitter inte bara och misstror i största allmänhet utan är tvivelaktiv och undersöker saken.

And then there were 28…

When I left elementary school, I lost contact with my class mates, mostly without any regrets.

I was invited to a class reunion several years ago, but I couldn't attend, as I would be talking at a conference abroad at the same time. Still, I called the organiser and sent my greetings and I also asked whether a certain girl would be attending. (She never was my girlfriend, I didn't even think of it as an option at the time.)
“Err, she…she is no more.” Oh. Without asking for the cause of death I still wasn't very surprised.

Yesterday, the morning paper carried the death notice of a then-friend of mine (who was her boyfriend), torn from wife and children at an early age.

The countdown has begun.

Veckans ord: bykyrka

Bristen på rena underkläder fick dottern att eftertryckligt bykyrka.

Button, button

August Strindberg coined the term knappologi (“buttonology”) for the purportedly scientific systematisation of trivial matters. Now, there really are people who are intensely interested in buttons, as I realised when I came across Neville Poulson's seven-volume work Buttons of the Indian army.

Looking a bit further brought up the web page of the British Button Society. I don't often agree with Strindberg and here, too, I am feeling very pleased to have found the buttonologists and that they are doing fine.

Films

Last week I managed to go the cinema twice in different constellations.

Porco Rosso could have been scripted by Richard Bach in its pæan to the joy and beauty of flying. The delicate drawing style of the Miyasaki studio is perfectly suited for the clean and elegant 1920s seaplanes and the characters' equally light and slim summer clothes, all set against the eternally sunlit blues of the Adriatic Sea and the Mediterranean sky. Yes, in a world like this even pigs have to fly. And I have to build more Macchi seaplanes.

Then WALL·E. Even though the rightful star was robbed of his role it is truly what I call a “holding-hands movie”—in several senses. We even find that by holding hands you can restore from backups you hadn't made. It is also a very Mac-friendly movie, EVE is clearly an iRobot (not the same as I, Robot) and apparently WALL·E runs some latter-day version of MacOS. That there are major plot inconsistencies is less of a problem. And of course the computer graphics are absolutely stunning, in particular when you don't even notice them unless you're knowledgeable enough to realise that every frame is the result of some really complex programming and extremely heavy computation.

For obvious reasons

Mission accomplished

With patient scouring of Tradera I have finally completed my collection of all issues of Pilot from 1974 to 1980—the top years of the magazine.

Leafing through the magazines, I reflect that they probably have done quite a lot to shape my character (causation unclear, but certainly strengthening any pre-existing MÖPish tendencies). At the time I thought Pilot was among the coolest reading you could find; now I have a somewhat more nuanced attitude towards the magazines, but they have nostalgic value and indeed still serve as inspiration for many modelling projects.

So what can we find in them? Well, for one thing, aviation is presented as almost exclusively military aviation, and indeed, even the proportion of stories about infantry soldiers is many times the proportion of stories about civilian pilots. Natacha would have been completely out of place. To be further specific, when we say “military”, we are talking about World War II, with a smattering of World War I. There might have been one or two stories from the Korean War, but absolutely none about the Vietnam War. With time this was leavened with such characters as Dan Cooper, a contemporary pilot in the Canadian Air Force, and the occasional serialisation of Buck Danny adventures. It was notable how much higher the quality of the latter was both with regards to the drawing of aircraft and in the plot construction than in the more mass-produced Battler Britton adventures that were the mainstay. Now, with 30 more years of studies behind me, I tend to cringe at the depiction of the aircraft in many of the comics as the artists often seemed to have worked from pictures with no understanding of the system behind markings, camouflage or combat tactics.

The comics often revolved around several common themes: Sacrificing yourself for your buddies, redemption of past transgressions (often through death), honouring one's opponents, curing of temporary cowardice, not judging people too hastily and in particular not underestimating the nerdy-looking guy. I guess there could be worse morals.

During the period covered by my collection the magazine also contained quite a bit of aviation history and modelling-related material. Relatively superficial as forced by the limited space, but still data, profiles and often even three-view plans that encouraged further exploration. For some years Pilot even ran an inofficial Swedish championship in modelling based on photographs readers sent in of their models. There did not seem to be any cooperation between Pilot and IPMS, possibly their target groups were not considered to overlap, IPMS being for adults rather than the mainly tween audience of Pilot.

And then of course, regular competitions in which I won stuff every now and then, my Fritz von Flaxen keyring still dangles from the lamp on my modelling table…

Well, there they are, and at the top of my “unbuilt” stack waits a major conversion project inspired by plans in issue 13/1977, expect further reports.

Ohne Titel

There was you and I
and the fishes.
We learned their names
in five languages.
And all their names were beautiful,
because there was
you and I.

Day of thunder, hour of power

Recently it was Perks time at work and we took off in the Friday afternoon to an undisclosed location that turned out to be an indoor gocart track where we were dressed in sweaty overalls and rather icky helmets and then took off around the track with the goal to complete as many laps as possible in one hour. It's rather sweaty stuff, this race driving, so we worked as tag teams, trading places every ten minutes.

My team ended up last, with the fewest laps. We were last already when I first got to drive and me pushing the pedal to the metal to make up for lost time just won me sojourns off-track, covered in the tyres that made up the crash barrier.

But anyway, here I am, doing the Steve McQueen thing:

Veckans ord: paternostervärk

När man bett radbandet runt hundra gånger med reumatiska fingrar torde man ha en avsevärd paternostervärk.

Oh, what a party!

With the celebration of my new bath room as pretext, I invited friends over yesterday. Some decided a safe distance would be Långban, Marstrand, Lisbon, or Cape Town, but rest assured, they will eventually be partied as well, resistance is futile.

For those that came, there was the usual miscellany of experimental food (Danish chicken sandwiches, Norwegian prince cake) and newly discovered fruit juices, teas and even a spot of Néscafe (I'm not a coffee drinker, OK?), yet I found stuff in the fridge this morning that I had forgotten to put on the table, but I hope nobody had to leave hungry. As usual, there was a certain coming and going so we didn't run out of chairs even at maximum occupancy when everybody decided to cram into the kitchen to paste various glops onto bread and munch away by the table. (My home-made shrimp margarine was a hit—it was gone long before I'd had a chance to taste it&hellip) A certain tension was discovered between those who wanted to discuss wireless networks and those who were more occupied with the upcoming Hobby Fair.

And I gots presents, from the scientifically excavated gun cartridges to colour matched towels.

As the day went on, only the most hardcore revellers remained, carefully going through my bookshelf and my stack of unbuilt models. (“What? I'm quite sure the Airfix Wellington was much larger when I was a kid!”)

My friends are bums.

In the end only the Only-begotten Son remained for some quality time and I tried to rack my brain for what I remembered of Maclaurin expansion—calculus is a bit hazy for me 25 years later… Eventually he returned to his studies and I could have a quick electronic exchange with Honeybuns, who hadn't been able to attend.

And then, to bed.

Veckans ord: övervikt

Häromdagen satt jag med ett kuvert jag inte trodde jag skulle behöva och vek förstrött ihop det i lager på lager. Så visade det sig att jag visst skulle använda det och fick veckla ut det igen. Det var svårt att få in papperet i kuvertet som blivit alldeles övervikt.

Word of the week: nose whee

The book I'm currently reading makes reference to a nose whee, certainly that is the exhilarating feeling I get stepping out on the apron and feeling the smell of jet fuel.

The mauve bathroom is no more

Quite apart from the colour scheme, my bathroom has been in urgent need of renovation. In fact I have been rather concerned with the possibility of water damages. So now I had saved up enough money to afford the work and sent out queries on Bello. About half a dozen contractors responded and I asked them in to make cost estimates. These ranged from 25 kSEK to over a 100. Bello lets the customers give quality assessments of the contractors, so I could with good conscience drop the lowest bidders, as they seemed to perform at lowest quality as well. The highest bidder also had top marks for all criteria, but I just couldn't afford them, so the guy in the middle it was.

They did a decent enough job, though they left cement dust over absolutely everywhere. I'll be dusting it off the furniture from here to Christmas I fear. My downstairs neighbours were also rather upset when the contractors managed to smash through their ceiling, but they sorted things out without me having to take further part in the proceedings.

A bit to my surprise I found I have no pictures of the bathroom from before the renovation started, but here are a few shots from during the process itself.

Tools, tiles and grout all over the hallway.	The walls torn out, the floor drain relocated.	Junk to be taken away.
Nice new shower doors.	Blinding white porcelain.	Ivar FTW in the bathroom too.

Douglas Adams meme

“He would put on the record of bagpipe music.”

Put a Douglas Adams quote in your blog.

With determined steps towards the chasm

I have not been very productive at work lately. This is how it has gone:
It has been a fairly hot summer at times and the fans in my laptop got to sound squeakier and squeakier—worn out presumably. I got a repair ticket prepared at the company that does our hardware service and thought I'd drop off the laptop as I went on holidays. The last two weeks before this date the laptop in addition became very very slow, showing a beachball per keypress on average. Well, presumably this would be fixed during service.

So, I went on hols and dropped off the laptop at service. I also specifically requested they'd do a backup of the contents (separately priced option).

When I came back from holidays, the laptop had not been fixed. Call and remind them. A couple of days later I got a call that it was done. I went and picked it up. Yes, the fans were now smooth and silent. However, it was still very slow. Call service guys: “Thanks for the fans, but the laptop is running very slowly, didn't you notice that when you tested it?” “No, we just tested the fans.” “You could hardly have turned it on without noticing…” “You probably just need to reinstall the system.”

Hmm, that would be a major operation. Well, but why might it be running so slowly to begin with? Poke around console logs and error messages. Hmm, here's a weird message being emitted every ten seconds, but what does it mean? Google for relevant bits and find discussion on blogs: “The disk has been overheated, get a new one.” Oh, I can still read from the disk, but apparently it's going to get worse. OK, so I need a new disk. I'd better call the service guys again: “Hi, it seems I need to replace the hard disk, lucky that you have a fresh backup for me!” “Uhmm, eh, actually, no, we don't.” “What? But I asked for a backup and you said you keep them around for two to three weeks.” “Uh, eh, well, no, we wiped it, uh, yesterday. Probably we were running out of disk space.”

Effing brill! OK, now what? I'll have to do a backup of my own. Procure disk. Yeah, this has an earlier backup of mine on it, but I'll have to throw it away to fit in the new backup. (Simplification of the real reasons, but the result is the same.) Done. Now, to start the backup. *grind* *grind* *grind* Eventually it is clear that at this rate of performance it will take approximately two weeks to back up my hard disk, unless it breaks down finally first. Well, what to do? Grin and bear it. I wonder how the service guys managed to make a backup in less than a day. Yet another call gives only vague and clearly unworkable answers.

A consequence of the backup is that I can't lock up the laptop in the safe for the night, as the two-week estimate is based on uninterrupted transfer. Well, what to do? So this goes on for a week and a half, and then when I get in one morning I meet a grinning colleague: “Guess whose laptop got stolen in the burglary last night?” Of course… And while the burglars had been as cock-snookingly polite as to leave the external hard disk on the table, the interrupted backup had been corrupted and was unreadable.

*sigh* Now what? “Maybe you can take the little white one?” OK. Hmm, it seems hung somehow. “Yeah, it's a bit dodgy, you have to do a remote install on it to get it running.” Install. Install. Incompatibility. Re-install. When I finally am on the way to get things up and running, the dreaded lurgy strikes and I'm bedridden. Now I'm on my second week of coughing, missing deadlines left and right.

Life, don't talk to me about Life!

Veckans ord: Krigslida

Förr behövde man bara hålla sig undan för stridspittarna och deras lumparhistorier, men med kvinnornas intåg i Försvarsmakten kan man nu också hitta en och annan Krigslida i terrängen.

Machtübernahme von hinter die Regalen

Martin R anar konspirationer i vassen:
– Samhällets mest rasrena härskarstam är bibliotekarierna.
Jag:
– De är ju dock i allmänhet alltför otränade för att klara att ta makten med våld, men den dagen de går ihop med gymnazisterna får vi se upp.
– En dag kommer all deras storhet att bara vara gamla papper som tas om hand av de veka och degenererade arkivarierna.
– Fast om de påbörjar en avelskampanj med seminarier?