2009-03-29

…and there was light

City commissioner Ulla Hamilton did not consider Earth Hour a worthwhile activity and it seems her constituents agreed, judging by the view from my kitchen window last night:

Well-lit flats during Earth Hour

2009-03-27

Veckans ord: underpris

I allmänhet brukar snusare stoppa prillan under överläppen, men somliga gör tvärtom och tar en underpris istället.

2009-03-25

Done!

I just did my taxes, i e I got the forms from the tax board, glanced at the figures, shook my head a bit at my income last year, logged in on their web site and signed the form. All done.

2009-03-20

Veckans ord: vindruva

Ett duvpar har tagit sig in och byggt ett bo på vinden, där ska duvhonan lägga ägg och sen vindruva tills de kläcks.

2009-03-19

My dreams arrived…now?

I went to Norrköping today to visit the Norrköping Visualization and Interaction Studio. Ow, how performance has increased since I myself worked in the area.

We were treated to a demo of the Uniview interactive planetarium software. Our guide put us in space somewhere above the Earth, and then zoomed in on the International Space Station, its real-time position computed, but then time sped up and we could see ISS move around the Earth and then various other classes of satellites were added until the Earth was wrapped in a dense cloud of orbiting dots with an almost equally dense torus of geostationary satellites further out. Then they were gone and the surface of the Earth was mapped with economic indicators for all countries, but soon we left Earth for Mars, having a look at its surface before we sped out of the solar system, the Oort cloud enveloping it, continuing out of the galaxy and on and on until we passed the boundary of the visible universe. To my surprise space was hour-glass-shaped, an artefact due to the disk of our galaxy hiding most of the universe from our telescopes—clearly there is so much more to find out for us!

In the next room, another surprise: a Mitsubishi television screen, 73" across and perhaps 0.4 m deep. The screen was back-projected from a DLP projector inside the housing and not only did it do 1920 × 1080 pixels progressive display, but it could be switched into active stereo 3D mode, displaying a crystal-crisp image. (The skydiving video really made me consider taking up skydiving.)

How cool that all the things we dreamed of then finally have appeared!

After taking leave of the NVIS people I returned to the station by way of Hobbyhörnan, where Håkan was in such a garrulous mood that I had to all but gnaw my leg off an hour later in order to catch the bus home. (Yes, bus. Due to track repairs, rail communications between Stockholm and Norrköping are limited at the moment.)

2009-03-15

A filmy Sunday

Honeybuns and I went to Stockholm City Museum to see the recently opened exhibition on Stockholm on film. One suspects that the exhibition has been sponsored, as the exhbition featured a large number of props from the recently premiered Kenny Begins film, which is not placed in Stockholm, but they did not detract from the overall ambition of showing scenes from Stockholm, and how the Big City has been used symbolically and concretely in films. Short excerpts are shown in loops everywhere in the exhibition halls. The leaking-over of sound from adjacent films is luckily not large enough to be too bothersome. In the end, the time we had allotted for seeing the exhbition was not enough and we will have to go back. So far my favourite is the tourist propaganda film from 1932 in now badly faded colour, showing off exotic Stockholm, full of happy and healthy Stockholmers. The American speaker made a good job pronouncing Swedish words, but finally stumbled on ”skärgården” and ”Saltsjöbaden”.

When the museum closed, we moved on to Filmstaden Sergel to see Watchmen. Oy, I didn't think you could cram that many explosions and bullet-time fight scenes into just the first few minutes of a film and it continued to be quite violent—tender-hearted Honeybuns probably had her eyes shut about half the time. The soundtrack on the other hand was quite exquisite with well-chosen music. Presumably most of the images would have been computer-generated pixels, but with impressive detail levels (but I think Dr Manhattan's crystal construction on Mars was pretty dorky and pointless, sharp edges notwithstanding). Watching the credits I realised I must have missed out on a lot of details, apparently there is plenty for those with the DVD to look through in slow motion.

2009-03-14

Not significant

With regards to the recent school shooting in Winnenden, there was some question whether the perpetrator had primarily aimed at women, as 11 out of 15 victims were female. In case you wonder, as I did, Table D in Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences indicates that the probability of this distribution being random is 5.9%, i e it's not statistically significant at the 5%-level.

2009-03-13

Veckans ord: nakenchock

En nakenchock måste helt klart vara en tropp ridande polis, iklädda enbart sablar, som bryter upp en demonstration. Rimligen rider de också barbacka.

Dragoner rida till bad

2009-03-07

Spring cometh

The two tits outside my window have returned and seem to be refurbishing their nest for the season.

2009-03-06

Veckans ord: snarlik

Har man hängt sig blir man ett snarlik.