Finished model 2011-I

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.

Coincidence? I think not!

The sister ship of HMS Tiger was HMS Blake. The Royal Navy claims it is named for Robert Blake, but I think some clever fellow at the Admiralty had William Blake in mind.

Gustav III

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

It’s been altogether too long since I went to a spex, so I brought along the posse to see ”Gustav III, eller, Svårigheten att komma till skott” (“Gustav III, or, Barkeep, gimme another shot”).

It seems the state of spex has moved somewhat, at least judging from this sample, which kept high standards of acting and psychological development, while the audience had become more rowdy, constantly yelling requests at the actors. I was also a bit surprised to find that all female roles were played by actual women and the male roles all by men. (Honeybuns suggested that cross-dressing is so common it has no effect any more and thus can just be dumped.) The second-act ensemble a capella had been moved to the finale and there was no Pun Cascade worth mentioning.

That said, it was a tightly scripted exercise, starting with King Gustav away in France, shirking his duties according to his brother, the prim and stiff Duke Charles. Therefore he has hatched a plan to oust the king with the help of their cousin, Empress Catherine. Bellman, ne’er-do-well and the King’s best friend, however joyously announces that the king is returning. Hollinder, the barman at Gyldene Freden, is being henpecked by visiting nobles.

Eventually the king arrives and goes straight to Gyldene Freden to find Bellman and tell of his travels in France, where Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have just been invented. Bellman and the king celebrate their reunion with joyous horse-play, but both Duke Charles and Queen Sophia turn up to remind the king of his duties: wars and parties. Tomorrow there will be a masked ball to celebrate the return of the king and the queen wants it to be “Perfect perfect perfect”. Bellman, being a commoner, is expressly not wanted at the party. Bellman is hurt and the king is pained but forced to uphold the queen’s decree, because after all, one has to do one’s duties.

Duke Charles and Catherine have a secret meeting where he explains that the king should be made to abdicate. Catherine, a stereotypical Russian who will kiss and kill with the same hearty laugh, has no patience with such finesse and decides on her own to simply kill the king. Hollinder suggests she contact a mysterious man, known as Anckarström. This she does and hands the masked Anckarström money and a gun with which to shoot the king.

The next day the queen is dressing up the unhappy king, who vainly tries to explain that he actually does not want to be king and really not her husband either. She does not listen, but gets more and more exasperated with his uninterest in the perfect perfect perfect ball. When the king leaves, she has a chat with Catherine, who explains how she killed her husband the Czar and became ruler over the Russian empire. Sophia gets an idea. Catherine offers help—in exchange for suitable parts of the Swedish kingdom. They haggle for a while over who’ll have to take Finland. An upset Finn in the audience curses loudly.

Meanwhile the king has sought out Bellman and asks him to came to the ball anyway. Bellman has a bright idea for how the king can escape his duties and rushes off without having time to explain his idea.

Sophia finds Anckarström and hands him money and a gun with which to kill the king.
Bellman also locates Anckarström and hands him money and a gun with which to kill the king. We understand that this gun is loaded with a blank.

Before the masked ball Hollinder, who is responsible for the catering, arrives with a heavy bag, which he nervously tries to hide and then opens. It turns out to contain three guns and Anckarström’s mask and cape. He picks one of the guns at random. The ball begins.

During the ball a masked man turns up and shoots the king, who falls. Curtains.

In the final act Duke Charles is besides himself, what hath Catherine wrought, this was not his plan at all. Is the king still alive even? A physician, suspiciously similar to Bellman in disguise, assures he has the situation under control, but is also very nervous. In private with the king it turns out the king is alive, though wounded. Bellman is desperately upset that his plan backfired so badly. The king tries to console him. But, can they escape? Before they manage to leave, everybody else arrive in the king’s chamber through various secret passages. In particular a wild-eyed Hollinder arrives, determined to go into history by finishing the job with his two remaining guns. Duke Charles manages to snatch one of these for himself and there is a standoff for the space of several restarts of the ensemble a capella, and then the two men fire. Both Hollinder and the king fall. The czarina and the queen rejoice, but Duke Charles takes over the situation at swordpoint and sends them packing.

The king awakes from his faint to the joy of Bellman and the relief of Duke Charles. The king however decides it suits him to remain dead and leave for France with Bellman, leaving the kingdom in the hands of Duke Charles. The brothers solemnly take farewell and then finally Gustav and Bellman can meet in a deep kiss. The audience goes wild. Curtains.

I was quite impressed with the performance of Gustav, unwilling but duty-bound, the straight man of the play. Hollinder, also a man under pressure, got somewhat short shrift, being killed with no eulogies (though yet a better death than the real Anckarström received). On the whole an enjoyable evening.

All in a day’s work

Getting my work done: Testing software on both Windows XP and Windows 7, and the Linux box in the middle to actually work on. Not visible in this picture is the Mac on the other table.

Spacecraft

Today it was time to go see the exhibition NASA—A Human Adventure at the National Museum of Science and Technology, so I gathered up friends and we descended on the museum. Most of us eschewed the audio guides, but it turns out that they really are necessary for making sense of most exhibits, as the signs next to the exhibits are pretty limited, and, embarrassment of embarrassments, the Swedish-language versions seem to have been generated by an automated translation service with a sketchy idea of spelling.

Further, I was quite shocked to find that they’d emptied out the entire Machine Hall (except for the mine pump, which I guess keeps the entire building in place) for the exhibition, where have they moved all the stuff that’s normally there? Now it was populated by replicas and engineering mockups of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo craft.

Just as horrible as I suspected. (Note that this large panorama window is there for the benefit of visitors, fitted in place of the egress hatch.)

I spent some time staring at the Apollo module: how does one live for close to two weeks basically strapped into a seat? (Only later, as I was reading up on the matter, did I realise that astronauts did a two-week mission in the even smaller Gemini.)

Space shuttle passenger seats, surpassed in comfort by any airline. The view is also not so hot.

The front section of a Space Shuttle was displayed next to the tiny 1960s spacecraft that could easily have been stored on its flight deck. Still, I was surprised by the very basic construction of the Space Shuttle seats, I had expected the launch forces to require much sturdier structures.

The “standard” exhibition space of the museum contained, among other items, (replicas of) both the Apollo lunar rover and the Lunokhod, which I’ve always been fond of. (Here’s a documentary on it.)

Further in were exhibited models of space stations. I hadn’t really grasped how big the ISS is by now, why isn’t it in the news more often?

The previous Teknorama space contained the hands-on exhibits, though the centrifuge was out of order. This was also where the museum shop had relocated, now containing only NASA-related merchandise which did not arouse my interest.

On the whole it was an enjoyable excursion, though using the audio guide is definitely indicated.

In the top 3%

À mon amour

Static dance

Honeybuns and I went to see Dansmuseet today. It’s located right in the middle of Stockholm in a former bank palace. The government wants to take over their premises and use as office space and let the museum find new space elsewhere, so in the entrance was a list to sign to protest this.

The exhibits are in the large central hall, clearly designed to impress the visitors to the bank. Unfortunately this also means that the acoustics are not the best with a high ceiling and stone walls. On exhibition is mainly various dance costumes, half from around the world, half from Swedish ballet ensembles, this reflecting the interests of Rolf de Maré, who started the collection. I understand there is also a large library, but this is not immediately accessible to casual visitors. By some of the exhibits were video screens, showing dances related to the costumes, but in order to not drown the entire hall in sound, all the screens were muted, so one had to make do without explanations. I thought that the type of directed audio hoods used at the National Museum of Natural History would have been useful.

By the ballet exhibits was a larger surface onto which was projected dance clips from various sources. Unfortunately the projection surface was textile draped against the wall rather than a proper screen, so the image was always slightly blurred.

In a little room (actually the repurposed bottom of a stairwell) next to this was a proper projection screen and a strict-looking lady would turn on the video player according to schedule to show full dance films, rather than just clips. Choreographies by Isadora Duncan, it turned out to be.

The museum café and shop had a very nice view towards the Royal Palace, but didn’t serve anything I could eat, so we left the museum. The overall feeling was slight disappointment—we would have liked to see more in the way of dance, in particular outside the context of Western ballet. I also suspect that the museum’s resistance to moving is mostly due to the convenience of the staff, as the premises felt so unsuited to museum activities, especially inherently noisy ones such as dance. (Strangely enough, the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, located in another former bank palace just a couple of houses down the street, seems to have made much more effective use of their premises.) I wonder if it would make sense to colocate Dansmuseet with the Museum of Ethnography, though that may require extending their building a bit.

Veckans ord: avlutas

Det här allmogeskåpet är skevt, det måste avlutas.

Ah, youth!

The Only-Begotten Daughter’s Boyfriend’s Band was playing at the famous anarchist café and I had been invited. I arrived a bit early and stepped in. Youngsters in black, acne fading into piercings, dyed hair, stared with surprise at the old geezer who obviously didn’t belong. I for my part stared at the walls covered with posters exhorting action and revolution, many of which I remembered from when I was their age. One poster listed the distinguishing signs of a plain-clothes policeman, possibly I displayed several of them.

Presently another elderly gentleman turned up, presumably a proud father of a musician, also out of his element:
“Can I pay with credit card?”
“Uh, no.”

I paid the entrance fee in cash and had my hand stamped: RETURN TO SENDER

Finally both the Only-Begotten Children turned up and we sat down, waiting for the concert to start. I used the rest of the cash I had to buy dinner, a vegan risotto with beans that turned out to be cheap, good, and plentiful. I was also (finally!) introduced to the OBDB’s parents.

The concert space was festooned with murals, mottos, and the tags and signatures of hundreds of bands that had played there over the years. Several times when audience members entered the room I gave a start and thought I saw a classmate, and immediately had to remind myself that they would now be as middle-aged as me, but apparently the look and fashion has never quite gone out of style.

The first band consisted of the classic three guitars and drummer and demonstrated that the sound system was amply dimensioned for the relatively small space. They all carefully wore ear plugs and the rest of us could experience the drums and bass straight through our sternums. The lead guitarist finished by showing exactly how fast he could play. Quite impressive, in fact.

The OBDBB came on next, also three guitars and drums, but played much more softly, concentrating on poetic lyrics (in English, natch). The OBDB even changed guitars during the set. Very professional.

The final band also consisted of mop-topped three guitars and drums, playing in the shoe-gazing style, but they also added a lead singer. In this case it was the drummer who demonstrated his speed-drumming skills.

Eventually the gig was over and I wandered down along Katarinavägen, looking at the view over Stockholm and feeling a bit like Viktor Rydberg’s gnome: Where do all these kids come from, generation after generation?

More 1980s

This, late at night.

Cultural sensitivities

In hackerdom, it’s deeply ingrained behaviour to look away when somebody else enters their password; it’s automatic and often quite subtle, just a slight turn of the head and a defocussing of the gaze for the necessary few seconds. Conversely, it is expected behaviour by the other: A n00b that I was instructing leaned over my shoulder and watched my actions even while I logged in; I couldn’t have been more disturbed if she’d insisted on following me into the bathroom.

Hand and eye coordination

Yep, you saw right, those are the fingers of master builder Emmanuel Nouaillier, who shares with us his methods for creating derelict buildings. There’s some quite impressive work here.

H/t Neil Crawford.

Veckans ord: råkost

När jag var liten fanns i tidningen varje vardag en liten spalt som listade skollunchen i länets kommuner. Råkost var en stående komponent. Jag var inte riktigt säker på vad det var, men jag utgick från att det nog var lika äckligt som mesost. Som tur var var det ingen som tvingade mig att smaka på denna fågelmejeriprodukt och jag fick äta rivna morötter istället.

Word of the week: diety

Adherents of many religions have food restrictions placed on them by their diety.

Veckans ord: pateter

”Men snälla lilla du, vad är det för gräsliga saker du har på väggarna? Det är ju pateter!”

Happy birthday

We celebrated Honeybuns’ birthday with breakfast at Hotel Diplomat. The atmosphere was much cosier than at Grand Hôtel, including the “five and a half and a little more” girl at the next table who regaled us with various bits of information and curiosities, such as her father just having gone to have his hair cut, because sometimes it stood straight out just like a dead rabbit on his head. On bad hare days, one presumes.

The selection in the buffet was somewhat smallish, but not inconveniently so, on the other hand they closed it already at 10. We relocated to the lounge and lounged there until lunch, when we went out on town to look for what we could find. Honeybuns found a very cute collar in fake fur, which I look forward to see her wearing on our next outing.

Veckans ord: bikinilinje

Irans regering har en tydlig bikinilinje: Den får inte synas.

Stereotypes

Scandinavia and the World is drawn by a Dane who stereotypes nationalities in the typical Danish way.

Eclipse

I’d forgotten about the eclipse, but excited workmates reminded me. In return I told them how to make a pinhole camera for safe viewing out of two pieces of paper.

On the subject of conspiracies

I see many people whose opinions I would otherwise respect tacitly make the claim that Julian Assange has been caught in a “honey trap”, but what none of those has been able to formulate is What exactly could the CIA/UD/Säpo/Illuminati offer the women concerned to make them go through a rape trial? Their identities are public, their motives questioned, their reputation picked apart, their careers most likely shot, and I can’t imagine they’ be able live a life in quiet luxury afterwards without it being brought to the light.

Inspiration

Hm, compare this with this.

Hangover

But for my own part I’m fine. We spent New Year’s eve at K’s home over a most exquisite dinner. We also test-played Orangino. No clue why it’s named that way, but the box is very orange. The idea of the game is that you pick cards which each contain a claim about your character and then you and and all the others state how well that claim fits you. If your assessment agrees with that of your friends, you get points. Clearly the way to win is to assess yourself the way you suspect your friends see you, not necessarily truthfully (and of course, it might be argued that your truth does not necessarily trump your friends’s truth(s) anyway). In the end, I won, Honeybuns exclaiming: “…because you’re such a caricature of yourself!” Yeah, I guess I manage to keep my public face on even in private.

Eventually we trudged off through a thickening snowfall to Skansen where we caught the last bit of the New Year’s show (we didn't actually see any of it, coming so late we ended up behind some thousands of others), sang along and cheered at the new year. The snowfall allowed us to see only the most powerful of the fireworks, but K had brought along sparklers that we waved around and also handed out to some tourists who hadn’t thought of bringing their own pyrotechnics.

We slipped and slid down the hill from Solliden and wandered homewards. I thought there were fewer over-inebriated revellers out than usual, possibly due to the snowfall. It wasn’t all that cold though, probably just around 270 K, but I still winced at the sight of various young women walking around in short skirts and ultra-thin pantyhose.

Veckans ord: hålslag

I en snickeriverkstad kan man se många olika hålslag: borrade, stansade, skurna, sågade, frästa, huggna, …

Right in so many ways

Desperate, hopeless love

We’re baack!

Already during our previous visit to Utö we decided to return for their Christmas market, and so we did.

M/S Waxholm II was already pretty full when we boarded so we got seats far aft. A fourish girl sitting in front of us teased me with her giraffe-ears-and-horns head piece. I indicated my great envy.

When we arrived, Utö Värdshus looked pretty different from when we saw it last: In the yard was a number of market stalls, the celebrated Christmas market. The entrance was extended with a tent that turned out to contain a temporary cloakroom. We didn’t think much about it, but went straight in for check-in.

Through magic hotel-staff skills, the receptionist recognises us immediately. Our room is not yet ready, but will soon be. We drop off our luggage and tour the little market. Some parts of it are in fact inside the inn building, we duck in and out, me bumping my head on the low door lintels. Finally I manage to bump my head on some overhanging snow and get a heap of it inside my collar. IH! IH! Honeybuns thinks it’s silly of me to be so tall, she manages perfectly well. A snow fight ensues, until I notice the little girl from the boat. A few stealthy steps and Haha! now I have giraffe horns. I strut about a bit before returning the horns.

We briefly peeked into the mine museum and the ominously-named Boutique Hybris, and chatted with the staff, but didn’t find anything particularly interesting, shopping-wise. As we will have Christmas dinner in the evening, we skip the inn and instead have lunch at the Society House. Pricey, but good. We note that quite a few families with children are visiting the inn and the market—there’s a long line of prams outside. And! The inn is completely packed with people having Christmas luncheon. Where did they all come from?

We pick up our key and retire to our room. Our plans had included studying, but after a week’s worth of early mornings, we just fall asleep. When we wake up, it’s already dark outside. I turn on the telly and “Christmas at River Cottage” spreads Christmas cheer that I decide not to consider the fakeytude of, but just enjoy, though when Hugh goes out into the garden to pick vegetables on the morning of Christmas Eve, I throw a glance at the snow dunes outside our cottage.

Come dinner time we climb the hill up to the inn and it’s clear that the extra cloak room is needed, the place is as full as it was for lunch. Robert, the maitre d’, greets us: “Ah, there you are! [aside to a staffer:] OK, now everybody is here.” Oops, we’re last? Well, as they say, the later, the finer the guests. We are escorted to our favourite table, the one with the best view.

Then, off to sample the 150+ dishes. While we do not taste them all, everything we eat is delicious and even with our respective food restrictions there’s plenty enough both for Honeybuns and me to eat. We peek at the other patrons, clearly many families—children sleeping by the tables here and there— groups of friends, snippets of song here and there (though with the snobbism afforded by a polytechnic education I consider the variety and quality of performance of the drinking songs to be less than adequate). We had thought we’d get some reading done after dinner, but now the lounges are used for dining guests, so we instead, happily sated, walk down the hill, through the driving snow, and in spite of our long afternoon nap, we fall asleep again not too much later.

In the morning, the snowfall has increased in intensity as we walk up the hill for breakfast. Apparently, we didn’t quite live up to classic Christmas dinner standards, as we had no need at all for the head-ache pills and indigestion powders strategically placed in the middle of the breakfast buffet. As we checked out, we made a booking for this summer, and I bought some of the sausages on offer in the Christmas market. We also bought a handful of tickets in the lottery stand and won bike rental for two during the summer—what a useful coincidence.

And then, the boat home through the still-increasing snowfall.

Matured

I haven’t been very happy with the Harry Potter films, because they’ve failed to depict the characters in favour of special effects. However, I had heard good things about the latest film and when Honeybuns and I were in Sigtuna for the Christmas market, the crowds and the cold made us decide the local cinema looked promising, so in we slunk. (Notice: they don’t accept credit cards.) Two and a half hours later we got out again into a dark Sigtuna, where the last market stands were just being taken down.

The film series has clearly matured, the special effects had finally been made to serve the story and not the other way around, there was some serious interaction between the characters, and there were reasons to care about them. I even found it positive that the music wasn’t by John Williams. I think I will want to see the final part this summer.

Veckans ord: parmesan

När klipperskeppen seglade med vete från Australien hade man bråttom och satte alla klutar till väders, ibland använde man till och med dubbla segel bredvid varandra, parmesan.

Lazy!

I just ordered tickets through the web service of the Royal Dramatic Theatre and the mail receipt contains this mess:

Retrieve your booked tickets from the ticket office within ten calendar days, thereafter they will be automatically unbooked.

If your order is for a performance closer in time than nine days from the receipt of this message, the tickets must be retrieved at the latest three days before the performance.

You can also pay your tickets to our postal giro account and have the tickets sent to your home. Give your order number as reference. Note that it normally takes three working days for your payment to reach us.

[…]

Paid tickets are sent to the address you have given, if it is more than six days to the performance. If it is five days or less to the performance, they are in our ticket office.

Now, the web app already knows when I made my booking; on what day the performance is; and that I already paid for the tickets. So some web programmer couldn’t be arsed to write four lines of code to tell me directly that I have to get my tickets in the ticket office, since I booked the tickets on such short notice. Instead I have to work out the difference between calendar days, working days, and unspecified days, and possibly also get confused by whether Wednesday is two or three days before Friday if the performance is in the evening and if that is different if Thursday is a holiday even though they give performances then. That “postal giro” hasn’t been called that for five years just fits in with the rest of it.

A sternly worded letter has been sent.

Veckans ord: kottfars

Kottfars är nån sorts al-buskis.

Veckans ord: lomhörd

I Storsjö finns om somrarna en flock lommar som flyter runt mitt i sjön om kvällen. För jag oväsen så flyttar de på sig lite oroligt – jag blir lomhörd.

Unthinking privilege

At one point I had applied for a position as Reader at one of the local universities. During the interview I was asked how I proposed to handle diversity. I responded that I was a white male engineer (with blue eyes and speaking Stockholm Swedish), so I would certainly be at a disadvantage in that respect. While I may attempt to consider diversity issues, it is by necessity a conscious, intellectual effort, as I belong to the privileged part of humanity and seldom need to think about this.

Mark Chu-Carroll has written an insightful comment on how one, enlightened and liberal as one may be, through upbringing and a constant barrage of threat projections, has so many ingrained behaviours and reactions going counter to one’s stated standpoint.

The point is not that a person, claiming to be, say, a feminist, yet will behave in a sexist manner, is necessarily a hypocrite, but that behaving in a correct manner requires effort. During my first year studies in mathematics, I learned that one cannot simplify an equation by dividing both halves by an unknown quantity, since that unknown might be 0, so one has to partition the solution into two cases, one for the case = 0, one for the case ≠ 0. I thought this was a huge onus to place on the equation solver. With practice, though, it became a habit and less of an effort to do this. Would that politically correct behaviour can also be internalised by conscious practice of one’s principles.

The price for the liberty of others is constant vigilance on one’s own actions…

Hedonistic rich man

This morning the Posse converged on Grand Hôtel and its breakfast buffet. The suburbs had been covered in snow, but in the warmer city this was reduced to a wispy drizzle which didn’t enhance the view of the Royal Palace, already partially obscured by ongoing repairs of the quay outside. We concentrated on the food. I’m sure an observing -ologist could have made much of our respective different choices from the buffet.

The conversation as usual degenerated into a punfest and sometimes I looked around to see if we were disturbing the rest of the patrons with our laughing, but nobody seemed to be glaring in our direction.

Two hours later we decided to call it a morning and left, groaning a bit. The weather did not lend itself to strolling, but we did a quick look-through of the shop in Nationalmuseum and continued on to Sturegallerian, looking with shock at the tacky Christmas decorations all along Biblioteksgatan, but found the more plebeian Gallerian to be more to our liking. Just window shopping today, but eventually we’ll have to make the annual sacrifices to the Yule gods.

Veckans ord: nödrim

”Nörd” är ett uppenbart nödrim.

My knackered knee

Got the results back from my MRT pictures: a (collapsed) Baker cyst, nothing to do anything about, unless it begins to hurt worse.

I have seen Jesus!

I mentioned Adelsö church yesterday, which in turn reminded me that I’ve actually been there: Way back when the lab had planning days on Adelsö at a youth hostel (which in itself is an interesting nuance difference, the Swedish term is literally “wanderer’s home”, the visitors are all kinds of tourists and not necessarily poor youth).

The steamboat jetty, from which we were going to return home, lies just next to the church and since I’m rather fond of churches I decided to have a look inside. I pulled open the heavy door, entered, and my brain stopped in its tracks. By the altar stood Jesus, clearly alive and well!

Eventually I also saw the vicar directing his actor in preparation for the Sunday’s Passion play and the world turned right again. I left them to it. As I exited another curious colleague was on his way in and I warned him:
“Jesus is there.”
He soon came out again:
“I didn’t think you meant it literally.”

Lost in translation

Yesterday’s post on Finnish covers reminded me of a specific case of how things can change in translation. Sven Lindahl’s ”Mälarö kyrka” was soon translated into Finnish by Sauvo Puhtila and Lenne Broberg performed both Swedish and Finnish versions of it (with a heavy accent, but nowhere near as bad as that of Hootenanny Singers). In the Finnish version the setting of a church on an island in Mälaren (Adelsö church, to be precise) has been genericised to an “old vaulted church”, but there is a more subtle, not to say insidious, change as well. In both versions the song tells of a little boy, practising on the church organs, hoping to become an organ player in the church like his father, but in the Swedish version he plays both Bach and Beatles and both kinds of music are explicitly said to be equally beautiful. This was to some extent a controversial statement at the time (and still, over a decade later) and in the Finnish one it has been removed completely, only the Bach fugues and the continuity of heritage remains. Whether this is just an accident I cannot tell, but it sort of fits with Finnish society.

Music in Finnish

When I was young, hit songs were normally translated in every European country and artists on international tours sang in the local language of each stop as a matter of course, but at least in Sweden (Anglo-Saxon) music is hardly ever translated these days.

Now I stumbled on a treasure trove: FINNPICKS, where “DM” methodically goes through Finnish covers of popular music with comments in English giving bios of the artists, the history of the original version (and quite often the original artist is not the one who made the song famous) and full-length recordings of both the original and the Finnish version (or sometimes versions, when there have been notably different renditions of either). I grew up to this music.

Many covers are fairly straight-forward translations, or at least retaining the spirit of the original, but some have completely unrelated lyrics, which always makes for an amusing shock.

Veckans ord: minkolja

Under kriget ledde minsprängningar ofta till massdöd av fisk. Var det kustnära kunde befolkningen gå ut och bara håva in fisken. Oftast var det sillstim, men ibland kunde det bli en och annan minkolja.

It works!

My Venus flytrap is in fact catching flies.

A beautiful day

Finally a day without obligations and a crisp cold November day at that. I went out for a walk around the grounds.

Word of the week: peskytarian

A person who announces at every opportunity that they don’t eat meat, but they eat fish: a peskytarian.

Robbed!

I got a call from my bank. I had made a number of credit card purchases in the USA for large sums last night, which seemed suspicious. Were they in fact fraud? Indeed they were. OK, they had blocked most of the purchases and cancelled my card and I could then dispute the fraudulent transactions. *sigh* Thank you.

I wasn’t exactly surprised: a major hobby store has apparently had their entire customer database stolen. While still unclear how this theft had happened, the major discussion item on modeller forums all over Europe for the last week has been people’s hijacked credit cards. Apparently the number of card numbers was large enough for them to have taken a while to get down to my card.

On my lunch I went down to the local bank office and got the necessary forms, then went to the police office next door to make the requisite police report. The bank office was crowded, the police office was not. My details were carefully noted. The next day I called the police and filled in some additional information. Yet I was called the next day by a police officer who wanted some additional information. I gave him the same data I had already called about. I was a bit surprised that all the police I spoke to seemed so unfamiliar with credit card hijacking. How did you notice the theft? Well, the bank called me about suspicious transactions they’d noted. Really? That was very clever!

I for my part would also have thought the purchases quite suspicious: Whoever it was has among other things ordered 150 USD worth of Christian-themed apparel from C28.com. Well, they get free delivery with that.

Charity

With deregulation all over, everybody has to attract clients with something special, often quite aggressively so. Thus, once when I was waiting for a friend on Södermalmstorg I was accosted by a very insistent woman selling electricity subscriptions for GodEl. Their main selling argument was that they donate from their profits to your chosen charity. One would think that they should invest in energy conservation measures, renewable energy sources, or whatever, but charity it was. So, she asked me, what would be my chosen charity? Vulcan to the Sky Trust, said I. She was a bit confused by that, but still professionally cheerful, she wondered what that was. It’s for the operation of a nuclear bomber. What! But that’s awful! So? You said I can choose any charity I want. Her commission on the stake she had to agree, but in the end I still declined to seal the deal, on account of what I pointed out was unsound selling practices, based on opt-out agreements.

Later, much later, I did change my electricity supplier, but using the spreadsheets at Elskling instead. They did not point out GodEl as the best offer I could get.

On the other hand, now I would have to donate to Vulcan to the Sky by myself.

Taking my breath away

Honeybuns, J, and I decided it was time to go see what the Air Force Museum looks like after the recent renovation, so I booked (with some effort) tickets to Linköping and then we got on the early morning train. Coincidentally an erstwhile colleague turned up on the same train. He dissed the “murder machine museum” in no uncertain terms, but we decided to go anyway and take up his more wholesome alternatives at a later point in time.

Paint peeling off the radome of a Tp 82.

Linköping was sunny as we rode the bus out to the museum (they have SMS tickets in Linköping, too, these days). We got there a bit before opening time, and had a look at the outdoors exhibits. The Tp 79, Tp 80, Tp 82, and Tp 83 were looking rather the worse for wear. Apparently, being lowly SIGINT aircraft (and rather large) they weren’t allowed indoors. It was all rather sad.

A freshly restored Thulin G right inside the entrance to Hall 2.

Eventually we got indoors. Even while Hall 2 was generally recognisable in its layout, the exhibits had been much improved: There were screens with pictures, video material and text on the exhibits and the walls carried huge paintings of what a Swedish military airbase would have looked like in the different time periods depicted, coupled with descriptions of the technical development in that time. Showcases along the walls showed various smaller paraphernalia, such as uniform details, instruments, etc. Unfortunately these were mostly not labelled, so one had to guess at much of what was shown. A feature which I particularly liked was that several aircraft had ramps up to the side, making it possible to peer down into the cockpits.

From the exhibition on the museum’s patron saint, Carl Cederström, a satirical play on his exploits. Note ”Flygberg”, a reference to Carl Richard Nyberg, the original inventor from Sundbyberg.

After a while IPMS Östergötland turned up for their last-Sunday-in-the-month modelling meeting, right in the middle of the big hall. Very inspiring, but there was much to see, so I, rather impolitely, exchanged just a few words with my southern colleagues, and then continued through the exhibits.

Eventually we felt rather hungry, and found that the food facilites had been much improved since last as well, the museum now had a pleasant little restaurant with perfectly good food.

We skipped the Flight lab with the simulators and instead entered the new Cold War hall, which turned out to be high point of the visit. While Hall 2 was very pedagogical, it was still mainly an exhibition of aircraft qua aircraft, the Cold War hall was designed to demonstrate a historical process. This was done in four stations from the 1950s to the 1980s. Each station was in the form of a contemporary home, with news clips playing on the radios (later in the tv sets), poster stations etc. The aircraft were placed on top of the stations, but they became relegated to the background as we were hard hit by nostalgia. Just seeing the Salomon backpack on the coat hanger in the 80s flat brought back so many memories, even though I never had one myself. I visited the Britain at war experience several years ago and was a bit disappointed by it, but suspected that Brits with more personal memories would feel differently about it, and this would confirm that, it was a very strong experience to suddenly be brought back 30–40 years in time.

Then, in the cellar, the exhibition Acts of Secrecy, with the retrieved and preserved remains of the Tp 79 shot down in 1952, still an aching ulcer. The setting was very solemn as befits a war grave. The facts were laid out dispassionately, but there was clearly much still unsaid, partly because much information has been destroyed over time, but also because there are still living persons affected. So, while the Vasa museum can display detailed reconstructions of the dead in the wreck, such would not have been acceptable here, we are not even told whose remains have been found (their identities are known, they are just not mentioned). Four crew members are still missing, leaving their fate open. That well-preserved items of clothing were exhibited in a show-case added to the feeling of unease.

Mats Johansson had prepared a large-scale cutaway model of the aircraft, based on the best available knowledge and guesses. It brought home how tense the atmosphere must have been with the five SIGINT officers, each by a rack of listening equipment, trying to extract as much information as they could out of all signals from different sources crossing the air, busily jotting down notes as the plane flew back and forth, sniffing out the most interesting scents, all so secret that the truth couldn’t even be hinted at for fifty years.

In one of the show-cases I found an antenna mast, identical to the one I have as a trophy in my living room, though mine is said to originate from the one B 3 that was modified for SIGINT purposes.

Before we were all done, the museum closed. We will have to go back.

Word of the week: rebugging

A colleague noted that for each bug they got out of the software they found at least one more, clearly they were rebugging the code.

The future pounces on you

Every now and then I realise I’ve ended up in the future. As now, when I transferred all my digital photographs to my new MacBook Pro, iPhoto, in passing, scanned them all for faces. Now I can select a random photograph and click on Name and I get a little box marking a detected face in the picture and I get to name that person. Then iPhoto suggests a number of other photographs and I can just confirm or deny that that person is in that picture. The algorithm isn’t 100% perfect, and I hadn’t expected it to be either, but it’s much, much better than I had expected, matching faces with and without hats, with and without glasses, in shade and in light, looking this way and that. Every now and then it confuses Honeybuns and Kipper, but in all suggestions it has found the human faces and never random faces in places.

Inception

We went and saw Inception the other day. The idea was interesting, but I was a bit disappointed to find that special effects and action still are equated with explosions and shooting. Certainly there must be something else to come up with? The zero-g scenes were brilliantly executed, though.

Then of course, real dreams are a lot more bizarre: in the dream I woke up from the morning after, I had been running in clogs through Vasastan, trying to find the model of USS Saratoga that I’d forgotten in the top basin of the (actually non-existent) multi-level water works running down Odengatan, even though I knew it would be ruined. As I ran, I passed a primly-clad woman reaching deep into the US-style gutters in order to dig out duck carcasses. No explosions.

Veckans ord: identitetshandlingar

Varje dag utför vi, medvetet och omedvetet, en mängd identitetshandlingar, för att vi är de vi är och för att vi vill vara en viss sorts person.

Bad site, good sight

I booked tickets for an upcoming train excursion on the SJ web site. Through the perversity of capitalism or whatever, it turned out to be considerably cheaper to ride first class than second. This meant that breakfast was included on the way out. However, if you have “special needs”, e g being a vegetarian, you can’t just check a box for this, but have to call separately to order your special food. This I did today, and after having been shunted around a bit by different call centre persons (because of course the voice menus did not indicate which menu option would give you the menu options, as it were), I ended up with the right person, who, with some audible effort, managed to adjust the food orders in some, as it sounded to me, less than obvious user interface. Now, I thought that maybe I could also add dinner reservations for the journey home, which I had missed to do earlier. The CCP excused herself and disappeared for ten minutes or so, trying to work out how to add dinner reservations and eventually couldn’t come up with anything better than booking new seats for us, this time with dinner reservations. I didn’t think we’d eat so much that we’d need two seats each, so I thanked her for her efforts and left it at that.

Now, this conversation had been long enough and required sufficiently little of my attention that I’d managed to do other things in parallel: to begin with, look up on the SL site how to get to my ultrasound examination. They have the very useful checkbox “I don’t mind walking a bit if it gets me there faster.” and turning it on suggested I could get to my destination in a third of the time it would otherwise take me, just by taking a ten-minute walk through the woods behind my house to a bus stop by the big road. This was a nice enough little outing, though the little narrow and winding road through the woods turned out to be frequented by huge articulated lorries every few minutes. I’m not quite sure where they thought they were going.

In the time since the Google car had passed, somebody had carefully smashed all the glass walls of the bus shelter, but it was a sunny (though chilly) day, so it didn’t affect my immediate comfort too much.

Then I got to the care centre with a radiology department and got probed. I was fascinated to see that the bottles with conductive gel were kept in a little heater, so as not to be cold and nasty. Then I got to see the inside of my leg, and ye gods how thick the femoral artery is! Still, the ultrasound did not give sufficient resolution for a definite diagnosis, so next up: magnetic resonance tomography.

Stats

I just noticed that Blogger is collecting statistics on the blog since May this year and found to my surprise that I seem to have a lot more readers than the three or four I was aware of. Hi there, unknown people!

Then there are a lot more passers-by, as it were, and as seems to be common, they end up here via Google searches for terms basically unrelated to the blog topic (whatever that is). So, the all-time most popular page read on Pointless Anecdotes is: Veckans ord: ytterliggare. Why are all these people googling for ”ytterliggare”? It’s not even a proper word, for heaven’s sake.

Then I get quite a bit of traffic from Åsa at Ting och Tankar. Hi there, archaeology fans, sorry I don’t have more in the way of Beaker culture grave finds, the only ancient artefact here is me.

Geekiest punchline

Scenario:
Some coworkers are sitting around afternoon coffee. Newly employed D mentions having problems managing a website, the others speculate on what the cause may be and then the discussion turns to people’s favourite web programming languages.
A: “With all its faults, PHP is still pretty good.”
B: “Well, ASP with VBScript is better than its reputation, in particular the latest versions.”
C: “Rails, definitely!”
D [brightly]: “I’ve used CSS!”

Burying fallen petals

More purry romantic than sad in the performance, but the recording with the best audio quality I could find.



The original.

Stoic

I went to the local care centre to have a minor ailment looked at. As I had to repeat my little story at each level of triage, this particular snippet was also repeated at each stage:
“So it started about five, six weeks ago…”
“A week ago?”
“Five, six weeks ago.”
[Weird look]

Is the concept of “Wait and see if it gets better” all dead? Or maybe just the practitioners of it.

Anyway, the physician suspected it was a benign condition, but referred me to an ultrasound to make sure, so further updates as and when I get probed.

Veckans ord: tantläkare

En gynekolog är en tantläkare.

Jobshead

My new 15" MacBook Pro has arrived! Somehow every Mac generation manages to be better-looking than the previous one. The touchpad is soft as silk and the screen so sharp.

The one blemish so far has been the step in the installation process where I was to transfer all the information from my old Mac: thanks to the still-living connector conspiracy the FireWire cable I’d borrowed from the office only fit the old Mac. The little manual implied that you could transfer wirelessly, but it wasn’t entirely obvious that I was supposed to press the little button “Use Ethernet” to get to another screen where I could select “Use wireless”, especially when the on-screen instructions exhorted me to press “Previous” in the case that I didn’t have a FireWire cable. Then it took all night and a bit to transfer all the data, but now it’s done and I’m happy as a lark with my new machine.

---

I take that back: it’s not just silky, the touchpad is like an antigravity surface and when I moved my fingers apart it scaled the contents of my browser window! At this rate I’ll have to buy an iPhone soon.

Irreversibility

Remember the trees that were mowed down to make an very necessary parking place? This is how intensely it is used these days:

In the meanwhile I’ve found out that it is the Alliance in Stockholm that has enforced that each home must have a parking spot, which is just insanely stupid. Lately and belatedly, even they have to come realise that this is not a good idea.

Gee great, does this then mean that they're going to tear up the parking place and plant new trees there? Well, no. And even if they did, it would take about a human lifetime for the new copse to mature. It would be an ecosystem, but not the same as there was before, even if indistinguishable to the casual city-dweller’s eye (“Well, like trees, right?”).

Which brings me to irreversibility, that You Can Never Go Back. A feature of children’s tales is that Bad Things Happen, but the hero perseveres and brings everything back to The Way It Was—the witch’s wand is broken and all the people who were turned into pigs turn back and go home and continue their lives as if nothing had happened and even though they’ve been enslaved for untold ages their children still recognise them and their spouses have not found someone else. Toy Story 3 purportedly is about the inevitable loss of childhood, yet just a quick shower with the garden hose suffices to remove glue, paint, and rubbed-in dirt from the toys and return them into pristine condition—even the lost eye of Mrs Potatohead is retrieved.

Indeed, many stories for adults still work on this premise: Even while some may die in the process, once the tyrant is killed and everything goes back to the original happy state, armies of masterless soldiers on both sides shed their weapons and find gainful employment, nobody’s minds and bodies have been ravaged so that rehabilitation is impossible, no rancour lingers. Contrary to this, while being an action movie, Hrafninn flýgur makes the point that all the violence unleashed does not bring justice but only more violence, all survivors are left scarred and twisted.

So where does that leave the lost copse? It seems a decision was made on ideological grounds, without considering (or bothering about) the consequences, and when they become too apparent to ignore, there is no going back. Is there any drive for evidence-based politics? Would it be possible to develop a political science able to handle non-linear effects, scaling up from smaller-scale experiments, using agreed-upon statistical measures? Am I being a physicist?

Late harvest

I did get some more eatables from the balcony plants.

Have you ever seen anything as beautiful?

A Calidus 09. I want one so!

Veckans ord: snorklar

Nu har jag varit snuvig i evigheter, jag önskar jag vore snorklar.

Older than ever before

Today my youngest, my Only-Begotten Daughter, comes of age.

Against all (my) expectations, their mother and I have managed to bring up two fine human beings, who by all accounts should do well, by themselves and by others. Yet whenever I see them, superimposed on their gangly figures are the newborn baby, the sweaty sleeping toddler, the sick and crying child, the joyfully running pre-schooler, the earnest pupil, the love-lorn teen. I still want to protect them and I fear for their future, but they have to fend for themselves and they’ll do fine, they’ll do fine.

Egna och andras sjukdomar

En bekant var förtvivlad över hur cancern bröt ner hennes närstående och det var blott med en övermänsklig ansträngning som jag lyckades avhålla mig från att kommentera:
– Jag hör att du är på dåligt umör.
men i längden går det inte att hålla det inne.

NOTPU

Recently my Palm stopped sounding alarms. Very strange, the audio unit and everything else was functioning well, but scheduled alarms just didn’t appear. I decided to reset the Palm. To be safe, I synched it first. On synching, about two weeks’ worth of unacknowledged alarms raised a raucous ruckus. OK, so when I get up before the alarm rings and then don’t acknowledge it due to being in the shower or whatever, the alarm eventually times out, but gets stored in a buffer somewhere, and when this buffer fills up, no more alarms can be issued? I'm not sure I understand the logic of the implementation, but at least the solution to the problem was simple.

Multicultural

Recently I had reason to register on a work-related web forum, so I went through the usual process of entering a handle, give my email address and then I got a CAPTCHA to ascertain that I was a real human. It gave me some pause, as half the characters I was required to enter were in Greek. Had I been on a Mac, it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but on my work Linux box I had no idea how to input the required text. Fortunately requesting a new challenge generated an ISO Latin-1-only string and I could proceed.

I wonder about the implementation of the CAPTCHA—did it really generate strings of random Unicode characters? Probably not, since the first half of the string was fully in Greek, and the latter fully in Latin characters, rather than a jumble of Chinese, Indic and Runic characters. So, if there was a restriction to certain character sets, why combine two different alphabets? Or was the implementation from a distant perspective of “Since these are all European characters, they can be generated on a European keyboard, right?” Or possibly just somebody being deliberately difficult. I know the kind, I am one of them…

It's like Ishida was psychic

Kista morning

Army of engineers,
keycard dogtags.
Highspeed tenspeed,
floorball-stick banner.
Sensible mother
pedals sedately uphill.
Men in overalls,
up since five.
Fractions of fractured English.
Students dream of glamour,
important meetings in faraway places.
Executive,
cabin bag,
empty eyes,
full coffee cup.

Secular rituals

I’ve often thought that while the Cold War was a Bad Thing and Swedish neutrality largely a sham, the hidden mobilisation depots, the air-raid shelters in all schools and the evacuation plans in the phone book still gave a comforting feeling that We Were Prepared, Plans Had Been Made and that serious people had Considered All Eventualities. Now, bunkers are filled with concrete, subterranean command centers are turned into exhibition spaces, air force road bases dismantled. The risk of war has diminished, but things are more uncertain.

So, it pleases me every time an election comes around, as the well-oiled process, honed over generations, turns into gear. Today it was time again, I walked up to the school, passed the ballot-toting party representatives chatting in the cool evening, selected my ballots, received the envelopes at the entrance to my precinct and went behind the booth to put the ballots in. Then, showing voter card and ID, handing over envelopes, the official carefully checking that there was only a single ballot in each envelope before he dropped them in the boxes, chanting for the other to mark off: “Yellow. White. Blue.” Thank you.

A young woman has not received her voting card, no worries, get to the City Hall where they can fix that, there’s still plenty of time.

Now, it’s just wait for the results to come in.

---

Update
And in that democratic process, almost 6% of the voters have decided that only people of the right ethnic background should count as first class citizens… Why am I sitting in a handbasket, and where am I going?

Happy New Year!

There are very few Jews in Montana, which is probably why there isn't a Rosh Hashannah Montana.

Update!

Now there is an update of the old Biochemical Pathways poster at SABiosciences. Not a complete view, alas, but chunks of pathways with diagrams, explanations, and references.

How do they do it?

We went and saw Toy Story 3 and much to our surprise we found that it was a threequel that had lost none of the ability to spin a new story on the old theme. I don’t remember the last time I saw a film where I was so genuinely fearful for the characters when they were in the ultimate pickle. Of course I’m also terribly sentimental and had to blink quite a lot on several occasions; hardnosed Honeybuns enjoyed the jokes and didn’t register the theme of loss of childhood at all, so from quite different perspectives we still thought it was a great film. I got a flashback to Tin Toy, where apparently some of the elements of the story were already present.

Of course Toy Story is in 3D, as is required of all new film these days, but that doesn’t make much of a difference for the film. In contrast, the introductory short: Night & Day makes brilliant and innovative use of 3D—by combining it with 2D graphics.

Veckans ord: musarm

Vem har det värst: den som är fattig som en kyrkråtta eller den som är musarm?

Bad harvest

In spite of the good start the crop has failed. This is it:

Birka

Ulf suggested we go to Birka. The weather forecast didn’t look too promising, but once we were on our way in M/S Mälar-Victoria the clouds started to scatter and when we arrived at Birka the sun was shining very nicely, offset by a little breeze.

We tagged on a guided tour. Marika the guide was very good, deeply knowledgeable about the subject matter, able to make her voice heard a long distance without visible effort and going off at high speed across the island in her non-period trainers. The audience was also well-prepared, with relevant questions about what’s known about Birka’s time. After some final questions about gender issues in the late Viking age we let Marika off to her next group and pick-nicked on the side of the hill fort with a beautiful view over Björköfjärden.

We then had just a little time to try on archery and discuss Viking age metallurgy in the smithy before the boat left for the city again. As we left, the clouds gathered again, but stayed aloft.

This used to be a bustling merchant city with a thousand inhabitants. Now it’s sheep pasture. Across the bay, the church at Adelsö is faintly visible, by the site of the then royal compound.