The most powerful capital on Earth? Quite possibly. I’d wager that it has the largest number of square metres devoted to monuments, at least. It’s a treat!

After spending a week in San Francisco, switching from conference to chilling (another post from that part might still come), we had scheduled a couple of days in DC. Yay us.


What’s a visit to the States without a visit to MacDonalds? Yay for Angus Burger! This was pretty decent; however, if you want a proper fastfood chain-store burger, you should go to Johnny Rocket instead and get the cheddar and bacon burger. Mmmmmmmmm.

Since “a couple” translates exactly to “two”, we didn’t have much time. You can easily spend a week in DC. At least if you enjoy buildings, museums and monuments. We prioritized the most important of these, meaning we spent a lot of time around the Washington Monument and on The Mall.


Capitol - the most fancy pile of stone in DC. Despite radiating power, its West Front faces a very down to earth park which was nice to stroll around in.

That’s the handy thing about DC - it is really not very large, having a population of just 600.000 people (which swells quite a bit when people commute into town to work), it’s easy to navigate on foot (most east/west streets have a letter, whereas north/south streets have a number) and a ton of attractions are within a few kilometres of ...

Jeg sa tidligere i høst at jeg tenkte å prøve meg på å sykle til Molde igjen. Planen var å gjøre dette for ca to-tre uker siden, men værgudene var ikke enige, for da hadde vi en periode på ti dager med regn og ufyselig vær. I alle fall var det meldt regn og ufyselig vær, og så ivrig er jeg ikke på å sykle den turen at jeg gidder hvis det er overhengende fare for regn.

Den siste uken har imidlertid været oppført seg eksemplarisk, men nå begynner det å bli såpass sent på året at det er litt knapt med dagslys, og da er det ikke så kult lengre. Hvis jeg skal få skryte litt vil jeg imidlertid si at jeg tror jeg hadde hatt gode muligheter til å greie hele turen i år, da jeg har syklet flere lange treningsturer enn i fjor. For noen uker siden tenkte jeg for eksempel at jeg skulle sjekke hvor langt det egentlig er til Stjørdal. Det viste seg å være et stykke, så jeg snudde ca halvveis, og endte opp med en tur på rundt 45 kilometer.

I dag tenkte jeg at jeg skulle ta en kikk på Jonsvannet, som jeg har hørt så mye om det. Jeg har strengt tatt vært der en gang før, en gang jeg var ute og øvelseskjørte motorsykkel med Trond, men vi kjørte bare til vannet og tilbake, så jeg fikk ikke noe inntrykk av hvor stort det egentlig er. Det gjorde jeg derimot ...

Our darling Camilla is very excited about going to the cinema over here because she gets to watch advertisments. Apparently, British ones are much better than the Norwegian kind. I obviously can't compare because I neither speak nor understand that happy language.

However, I can compare with the lovely advertisements from my faraway land.

So.

Here's my favourite New Zealand advertisment: For our national carrier, Air New Zealand.

Perfection. A universal story told without words. And the glare at the end is gorgeous.


And here's what's possibly the best British ad at the moment: Fizzy, ginger, phenomenal.

Very funny, and a lovely mockery of High School Musical. But probably lost on a a large proportion of the population.


My little colonial outpost is better at this than the homeland.


However, I'd rather live in Scotland than New Zealand. ;)


That is all.

Ingen liker å bli behandlet som en idiot. For eksempel, når Vista kom lagde Apple den festlige Cancel or Allow?-reklamen, som spilte på at Vista ba deg om å bekrefte alt mulig rart (så vidt jeg vet. Jeg har knapt noen personlig erfaring med Vista, så jeg vet ikke om det er sant.). På unix kan man naturligvis ofte velge om man vil ha slike tullete spørsmål eller ikke. For eksempel, hvis du skriver

vil du antagelig bli spurt om du egentlig vet hva du driver med, mens hvis du skriver

indikerer du at ja, du har tenkt gjennom dette, og ja, du ønsker virkelig å slette hele harddisken din. Eller i alle fall så mye som du rekker før maskinen krasjer.

I det siste har jeg imidlertid ønsket at maskinen min kunne snakket nedsettende til meg litt oftere. Jeg driver nemlig og programmerer i fortran, og i den sammenhengen er jeg jo faktisk en idiot, jeg er i alle fall foreløpig ikke spesielt dreven. Fortran er nemlig slik skrudd sammen at hvis du ikke eksplisitt sier (via et kompilatorflagg) at du er usikker på hva du driver med, ja, da antar den at du har tenkt nøye over saken.

Problemet mitt er naturligvis at jeg kommer fra Python, som jeg forøvrig blir mer og mer begeistret for for hver feil jeg fjerner i fortran-koden min. Python er et veldig vennlig språk, som håndterer ganske mye av tenkingen for deg, og hvis det ...

Yesterday we did one of the must-do things i San Francisco - visit Alcatraz Island. This place, whose name translates to something like Island of the Pelicans, was a fort from the late 1800s, a prison from the thirties to the sixties, housed about 200 inmates and has never seen a confirmed successful escape attempt. Additionally, it has a very scenic location in the San Francisco Bay with wonderful views of San Francisco itself and the surrounding landscape.

We went there by boat - which is the only way as far as I know, the island is a national park and its use thus fairly tightly regulated. $27 per ticket, this includes an audioguide tour of the cellhouse, which is the main prison building


The cellhouse

The audio tour is well worth taking. Former inmates and prison guards relate their experiences. It is well produced and the stories within are engaging, especially the one about an intricate escape attempt in the sixties where the escapees never resurfaced (most likely in a very literal way). I have to admit I did a tiny amount of surfing on my phone a few times during the tour, but “a few times” in my world means the content is pretty interesting.

We didn’t have that much time on Alcatraz - we arrived at 16:15 and left again 18:10, and spent most of our remaining time hanging out on the summit of the island, outside of the cellhouse, admiring the views and enjoying the sun ...

I am a bibliophile. No surprises there. But it gets worse. I am an inconstant bibliophile with deep seated issues of attachment. The upshot of all this is that I own too many books (oh, who am I fooling, can you ever have too many?), in part because I find it dreadfully hard to resist temptation in book stores. Like a nymphomaniac at a brothel, I see, I want, I buy. But. Then there is the inconstancy. Because there are so many books and so little time. Not to mention the horrible intrusion of real life, duties and work.

I put down books because I feel guilty: if I can read, I can read something relevant to my degree, something useful. Surely. And so I end up finding another way of wasting time instead. And occasionally work. But inconstant as I am, I am also paranoid. I never put a book wholly aside, because even if it is boring and bad I need to know whether it has an ending that makes up for all that. I have only ever given up on a very few books (Battlefield Earth being a notable exception, horrible as it was -- and even then I skimmed to the end, just to be sure), and thankfully my usually sieve-like memory is strangely retentive when it comes to literature (making it easier to pick up a book, even if it has been a while since I began it).

The result is that I skip madly from ...

OK, I am expecting a harsh reaction to this post, as Starbucks is - to many - one of several evil corporations helping to create a more homogenous, boring culture in the world. Hooooowever - you do get a great Caffe Mocha there, you can find their cafės anywhere, and ordering and watching the workflow can be fun. And as I am now visiting the land of the brave and home of (most) evil multinationalx - and since I've been having my breakfast in a independent cafė most days - I feel I can indulge myself and have corporate coffee when I feel like it.

Perhaps this is a sign thst I sm growing old and soft. Perhaps.

Earlier this week, I visited Starbucks during what must have been the busiest time of day. Six people were working behind the counter, taking orders, shouting instructions to each other, making coffee, heating sandwiches, getting my blueberry muffin. The place felt frantic and energic. Perhaps they do their own drugs? Perhaps.

Splash! Half a litre of icetea on the floor! Bang! The broomstick fell over, smashing into the floor. It looked like accidents were happening every thirty seconds while I was there, but I think that must have been coincidence, or maybe something was affecting chance? Reminds me that I'm looking forward to the next Wheel of Time book. 

When taking the order, the guy - there were only guys at this Starbucks, I think that contributed to the frantic, warzone-like atmosphere- wrote my nsme on a cup. Thst is, he asked me what my name was, and of course, a sort of subdued hilarity in writing was the result:

 

I hope to report to you from McDonalds in the somewhat near future.

The hotel we are staying at doesn't serve breakfast, but they have a deal with the hotel across the street. In keeping with my "don't add two kilos while on holiday" mantra, I tried to get a reasonably healthy breakfast there today. Yesterday we had a bun with sugar on it - not exactly my idea of healthy. So this is what I got today:



Yep, there is a blueberry muffin there; I haven't eaten jt yet, actually. There is also an espresso and freshly pressed orange juice. The latter is shaping up to a good placement on my forthcoming Top 5 Things About America list.

The sandwich was supposed to be..... Well, healthier than the alternatives, at least. Maybe it was. Its contents was mostly cheese, ham and bacon. Not exactly grovbroed med brunost.

The cafe is cozy, though, it has character and the personnel there are pretty cheery and helpful. If you're in the neighborhood, you could do worse than visit Caffe Trieste.

As far as I can tell, sending texts to the flashforum now works as intended. In order to use this amazing new technology, you need to:

1: Register your phone number

You need to register your phone number in your profile, so the system knows who sent the message. Your number won't be visible to anyone else. You need to include the country code, as this is how the number gets passed on to the system. Interestingly, this means that if you for example send texts from Skype, you can register your Skype name instead, and it should work. However, if you have access to Skype, you probably also have access to a browser, so it would probably be easier to post in the old fashioned way.

2: Send a text to +4798767480

And that's it.

The phone receiving these texts is just my old cell phone with a normal prepaid card (from NetCom), so sending a text to the flashforum will cost you whatever you normally pay. Nothing special.

In my experience, it takes no more than ten seconds before the message appears, so it's easy to see if it works. If it doesn't, something is probably wrong (not surprisingly), so please send me an email and tell me what you did.

-Tor Nordam

Yesterday I went running in Golden Gate Park, which is about two-three kilometres wide and stretches seven kilometres from the sea into San Francisco. This is becoming something of a tradition for me when I go abroad - last weekend I ran in Hyde Park. The idea is that I see more of the city and its locals and have a decent shot at not deteriorating physically when on vacation.

It turned out there was a nice beach on the coast, so I got to dip my feet in the Pacific Ocean just like I did when going to Australia for studies in 2005. I appreciated the symmetry of doing the same, but from the opposite side.



You can see the track of the run on Endomondo:  http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/utWNA_j1dj0

I ran a bit barefoot on the beach and had a conversation with a girl who considered doing the same, but wanted to avoid blisters on the trip home. Yep, genuine interaction with locals! I think she thought me a local as well until we had exchanged a few words.

Preliminary verdict on SF: It's fantastic. (Picture Steve Jobs saying it.) Faaaan-tactic!