Kategoriarkiv: English

English

The Egg Timer

1 kommentar

My wife has got me a wonderful gift. I hate boiling eggs because I like them well done, so to speak, and the times people say never really works. And it depends on the altitude you are at, in the cabin at 450 m the time is different to when we are in Stockholm at 30 m above sea level.

So she’s got this wonderful egg timer for me. It is a piece of resin plastic that you put in the pot where you have the eggs that need boiling. As the warmth reaches further and further into the timer it goes white. There is a scale that shows how hard boiled your egg now is and so it makes it very easy to keep track of it.

This is what it looks like when put in before boiling starts

This is what it looks like after a minute of boiling

Eggses are now well done!

Oh and as you can see, one of the eggs cracked but did not spill. Adding a bit of salt to the water helps and vinegar also works for coagulating any spill if the egg cracks. Just a tip.

English

Iceland Penis Museum

According to this article both British and German  persons and organisations have been trying to aquire one of the worlds most curious museums on Iceland. It is known as the Penis museum that is being moved to a new location in Iceland from Húsavik to Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital.

Apparantly this lead to some interest and someone in Germany has offered more than 30 million Icelandic crowns for the rather unique collection. Las year the museums collections of Iceland-dwelling land mammal penises got completed as the then 95-year old Pàli Arason donated his penis to the museum.

Several foreign men have also asked to have their genital remains donated to the museum, and the proprietor, one Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson, have declined being part of a talent TV show saying that it isn’t really a talent collecting phalli.

English

The new job

Two days in the new job we packed up and went to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It was a very long time since I was there the last time and that was a completely different thing. Now that I am back in Sweden again and in the office and have had some time to think I realize how much more fun it is to work in a small company than a huge gigant.

Barcelona was great, 20-21C in the middle of the day, a bit chilly at night but not enough to prevent us from going to some really nice restaurants and having a good time. Couple of nights out was pretty late but mostly we got back in time to attend the booth at the fair the next morning without to dark bags under the eyes.

The picture is from Sunday evening, when the exhibition was not open yet and we were putting everything together before the show opened Monday morning 9 am. It was hectic and full of life and we had a pretty great time, met lots of interesting people and quite a few from Sweden (the RF business here is not *that* big really) and it was all fun.

I’m at Deltanode Solutions if you don’t know. Hey, if you need RF repeaters or Fiber-DAS, give me a ring!

English, Swedish

Mindxpander – Triumphant Return

Vänner på Amigalistan släpper en ny platta och den tycker jag att ni kan lyssna på och köpa om den faller er i smaken. Sådär 30 spänn är inte för mycket för en skön  platta med space-synth på.

Friends from the Swedish Amiga List have released a new album and I think you should listen to it and then buy it and download… About €3.50 is not too much for this piece of work.

Have fun!

English

Air: Awesome Superfamily of Fonts

I love typography, enough to violate the standards at work to get me in trouble by delivering reports written in LaTeX instead of Word and therefore much more pleasing to the eye.

I hate bad typography. Someone told me that if you really hate someone you should teach them to ”see” bad kerning. Well, I get upset by bad kerning and missing ligatures in texts and so on. I can live with it on the web. But not in print.

And once in a time I stumble over a font family that turnes everything upside down and puts the fun back into typography again and I get a warm fuzzy feeling all over. This is a moment like this.

Enter: Air — a superfamily of 18 fonts

Just look at them. From extra-thin penciled straight sans-serif to super-fat extra-bold. I want them, I want them all, pretty please with sugar on top.

English

Train Drive Test

After finishing up the last bits of the project to install coverage in the Stockholm underground Metro system there has now been a drive test conducted.

This is a short video showing some of the activities and some pictures from this more fun side of the job.

For the more technical people out there I can tell you that we are actually measuring several radio services:

Train communication radio

  • RAKEL – swedish blue light services radio
  • Busskom – Our own TETRA network
  • SplitZone – Our own new TETRA network that will in time replace Busskom
  • FM Broadcast – For public service, commercial stations as well and important messages to the public

We also had a visit from the mobile operator Tre that conducted drive test measurement on their 3G network with good results.

The test equipment consists of the following:

  • Laptop logging all the data
  • Doppler radar mounted under the train that gives us the trains movement as 400 clicks per meter. This is connected to a small PIC processor that calculates the current distance always that can be queried from the laptop when necessary to get the current distance.
  • Rhode & Scwarz ESPI test receiver, capable of measuring many frequencies at the same time, in this test we did 19 channels with 7-10 samples per second.
  • GPS for accurate time synchronization
  • Antennas for the various bands being measured
  • Signal generators for uplink signal
  • Amplifiers for the uplink signal to match the levels generated by the train radios
  • Test receivers at the base stations to receive the uplink signals and log them with the same time reference

 

English

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Obama

I am disappointed in you and I will make this letter very short as to why.

Your recent signing of the National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows you to detain people indefinitely on any grade of suspicion alone, barring them from proper legal counsel, is something that you do not expect from civilized countries, even a country as paranoid as the US has become.

In fact I was very relieved to hear you, not so long ago, speaking of how you would work hard to close down the shameful Guantánamo base, you gave the world hope that US would step up and take responsibility. Instead you now do the opposite and you open for even worse travesties and detention of people, even your own citizens indefinitely without trial.

As a world traveler I feel more and more hesitation, is it really worth it to visit the US? Even if you personally will not use the law to detain people wihtout proper suspicion, nothing will stop the next regime from doing so!

I am very disappointed and quite the bit disgusted with your actions. And I had such great hopes for the US lead by the first intelligent president in decades, but now I understand that there is no way of stopping this snow ball that have started rolling down a very slippery slope, be it Republican or Democrat — there is nobody that can stand up to the fear mongers who undermine people’s rights in your country any more.

The terrorists have truly won.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Swedish Citizen

English

The Common Cold

Usually not so common with me. But this time I have been under the ice since the weekend. Actually it started Friday but I managed to get through the weekend pretty okay.

And today I tried getting back to work. Got up, showered, did all the morning things, went out the door and then I realised I was not going to be able to do much with this day either so back in bed now. until Sunday night when I was feeling really feverish.

Thanks for modern tech so you can stay up to date with what is happening anyway, both at work and at home.

The common cold is often caused by one or more rhinovirus infecting the upper respiratory tract. Sometimes the symptoms are similar but not as severe as that of common influenzas.

Virus replication starts from 2 to 6 hours after contact and symptoms generally occur between 2 to 5 days after infection. However in some cases symtoms may even start the same day. Rhinovirus are most infectious the first three days after symptoms have started when people generally should avoid contact as much as possible to avoid spreading the cold.

Enter the stockholm underground. A superior way of making contact with rhinoviruses this time of year.

I’m back to bed now.

English

Time for a change

7 kommentarer

So, running is coming back again, still need to improve muscular toning and then start working up to the distances I used to run before the summer when I fell off the wagon. However, I feel the energy is coming back already, stress is dwindling as the kilometers tick away when I go out jogging and all the benefits are doing me well!

But now it is time for a new goal. This is to reduce weight with about 15 kg of my excess weight and the goal date is March 31st 2012. It is a decent goal, meaning around 0,5 kg a week until then and so it should be possible without having to go on a starving diet. Keep jogging and just eating smaller portions, less junk, get the breakfast habit going (even if it will be just a protein drink) and be more careful in the evenings to not eat more than necessary.

I have done it before. I can do it again. I need to do it again and so this starts today. Weigh-ins will be wednesday nights after supper but before running (if it is a running day).

My electronic scale claims to be able to discern body fat and water content as a percentage of total body weight. Although I am skeptic to how accurate this actually is – I certainly will log it as well and see where that takes me.

[table=15]

English

Film: The Diamond Job / The Big Bang

Alternative title: The Big Bang

I did not really know what to expect when I picked it up but once it started in my blueray player it was just great from the first to the last scene. Antonio Banderas is doing a really good job in the movie which can be described as something like ”Reservoir Dogs” meets ”The Usual Suspects” crossed with ”Ocean’s Eleven” and with quite a few twists on the way.

I also has loads of references to other films and the names like Keppler’s bar and Planck’s Constant Café is hilarious.

Just see it. Well worth the time.