Observations on my way home

When walking home this Friday I noticed something peculiar. Usually when a pedestrian enter a store he moves in an arch, much like my sketch to the right. He also maintains roughly the same speed as before entering the arch until he reaches the door to the store where he slows down slightly, opens the door and enters the store.

But one store is different, here, people enter the store in a radically different way. They maintain normal walking speed and keep their eyes fixed straight forward, unlike when entering other stores where they always look around observing other stores and pedestrians. Then, when they have passed the point when at other stores they would begin their approach in an arch, they suddenly turn at a sharp angle and increase their speed substantially. They maintain this increased speed pushing the door open with force and does not appear to slow down until inside.

The reason might be, that the store is the most well known adult video store in Stockholm.

Going home... well... sort of

Returning to where you grew up brings you a certain feeling. A feeling of things that have been lost forever. You feel old, happy and sad. And for some reason, you want to return home, to where you currently live. Meeting friends and family is nice, but it stirs up a lot of emotions. It's exhausting.

I had the chance to take a lot of photos, wandering around Örebro and Lindesberg. Here are some of them. I will process a few panorama photos that needs to be stitched in the days to come (or tonight if I'll take a cup of tea in order to stay awake).

Let's begin with some flowers.






Then some flowers and bees.



Then some animals.

A "Skäggdopping" or Great crested grebe in English.

I am not sure which bird this was, I guess I should ask my mother to remind me on what was told about it.

A "Gräsand" or a Mallard I believe it's called in English.

In my hometown Lindesberg this relic has been left standing near the railway station. It's a pump for filling up the water tank of steam engines.

It seems that the railway company has taken actions against birds deciding to rest too close to the electric lines.


In Örebro I found this old sign on a door to a house from the early 20th century. Roughly translated into English it reads "Begging and the sale of merchandise within this property is strictly forbidden".

In health... and a panorama

Today I felt better, I managed to get some work done and ship a patch to a customer. I also remembered that cjg and I tried to make a 360 degree panorama photo from the KTH clock tower last summer. Eager to try it myself this time with my rather new camera I set off to the tower. It was closed, so I wandered around campus for roughly 2h and the sun was setting. Finally when I walked through one of the computer halls I found a view. The result can be seen below, it's a rather huge picture so I recommend opening it in a separate window. The only editing done, apart from making it a panorama from several smaller pictures, is removing some flaws made by my camera.

(singe Google don't want to host the whole image, here is a link to the real thing)

What you see is, starting from the lower left corner is the Engelbrekt church, the flag of the KTH student union beneath the flag is the one of KTH;s administrative buildings, the tall distant building is "Nyponet" a 21 story building with student apartments, next with a rather tall chimney is what I believe to be an on-campus heating plant and finally the tower of the KTH library (KTHB).

A tutorial on how to make panorama pictures.

In sickness... and strawberries

Last Monday I wrote my final exam for this semester. As it usually happens, I got sick the same day. I have caught a rather bad cold and has been more or less down and out since then.

Yesterday I bought some Swedish strawberries to cheer me up (and get some vitamins, minerals and all other things I know are good for me). They were not cheap. For those of you who doesn't know, strawberries is the most exotic thing that grows in Sweden. Most fruits are imported and thus not tasting as good as they would in more southern countries. So, strawberries is a special thing for many of us Swedes. I serve them in a bowl, with milk, some cream and sugar. For a moment it actually felt like summer, but the weather says otherwise. I also took some photos, since I think strawberries are rather beautiful.




This summer I will study three courses in physics. I trust most of them to be very interesting, but I will provide further comments on this as the courses begin next week.

Lastly, in the news. DN writes about the right-wing Swedish government looking over routines for state television and radio. In Sweden we have two television channels run by the state and four radio channels. They mostly provide music and programs which they commercial channels are not interested in. Debates, classical music and so on. They also has to provide it for a large majority of the Swedish citizens. Where I used to live we didn't have any commercial radio channels since the population was only about 10'000, lately one or two commercial channels have become available (and only playing horrible popular music anyway). To finance all this, the state claims ~4 SEK a day from everyone who owns a television. We even have people employed to check in on you if you are paying. Sadly, our government seems to like this solution. I think it's an old (and bad) idea, that was a good idea back in the middle of the 20th century. Back then some people didn't own a TV and would probably not like paying for channels they couldn't watch. Now, things are different. Most people own a television and it takes money to check whether or not someone owns a television and to administrate it all. Why not let it be a part of the tax instead? Thus making the system more efficient and making it impossible to avoid paying for your TV. The increase in tax will be unnoticeable and people will not complain about such a marginal increase. I just can't stand bad solutions to simple problems...

Link to the article (in Swedish).
Link to more comments made by the Swedish minister of culture (in Swedish).
Link to the first statement made by the Swedish minister of culture in SvD (in Swedish).

Thoughts and photos of a salt crystal

I have taken three out of five exams for this semester now. The next one up is discrete mathematics, it scares me a bit but I guess I'll do fine as usual. I will just get a cup of tea and read through the chapters once again this afternoon and then focus on getting it all to work in practice. After the math exam it's just a silly course in economics that is more or less a walk in the park.

I have applied for three courses at KTH for this summer and two courses at another university. I have received letters of acceptance from the second university but I'd rather study at KTH. I hope to take courses mainly in physics with some connection to computer science or a field related to computer science so that I can apply my knowledge in courses to come.

Instead of going on about bad things I thought that today I would just mention some news that made me happy. S. Korea and N. Korea seems to be getting along better. SvD (in Swedish) writes that regular communications between the countries might be resumed, hopefully this will result in Koreans being able to see their relatives and exchange knowledge, goods and so on. Thus leading to less tension in the area.

DN (in Swedish) says that Amazon is apparently going to sell non-DRM-damaged music. Finally! A company that realises that damaging a product makes it useless. Now I don't have to buy CD;s and rip them in order to play them on my computer.

Lastly, a couple of months ago I visited my mother and she had bought some kind of sea salt. The package also contained larger crystals which I sought out and brought one of them home. The photos didn't end up that well, but I really like the shapes.

Photos of a deep pink flower

There is a tree just outside my window. Last year it bloomed beautifully and since I bought a camera after Christmas I have waited for it to bloom. Then when it burst into bloom I waited for the sun to reach it. The building next to mine cast a huge shadow over the tree. But today, when writing one of my home-exams I finally got the chance.

I took the first two using a chair and raising the camera over my head. That tree is pretty tall. For the other two I just used a chair.

Nominated

Last September I began my "career" as a teachers assistant. I have had a lot of fun teaching, preparing for lessons, doing overtime since some students won't finish their Python labs on time (in particular I remember a 2 1/2 h session of debugging and explaining, but in the end she got that program working as it should and hopefully she learned a lot) and answering odd questions by e-mail and IRC during weekends. If my memory doesn't fail me, I have mentioned that I love this. But some things are worth mentioning twice.

Recently CSC announced this years winner of the Gerd Eriksson price for best teachers assistant of the year. I didn't win, but that doesn't matter. What does matter to me was that I was nominated, someone or some persons took the time to write a letter about what I did well. That brings you warm feeling and once again it makes me want to become even better. I got some blackboard chalk from Gerd herself (she is a teacher at CSC), I believe that my handwriting might improve using a thick kind of chalk and I think my handwriting is terrible. Perhaps I should also practice on blackboard disposition? *ponders* It's a bit like being on stage but I am less nervous about it. What should I do to become a better teacher?

Why does seeing their smiling faces when they reach understanding make me smile? Am I gifted? I just can't believe that I am. Practice makes perfect I hope, both for teachers and students. For now, I will enjoy the moment and be truly happy about it.

"Charming"? I must say that no one has ever called me charming before *continues to ponder*.

A lot of things...

To do that is. I have many things on my mind and especially on my to-do-list. This isn't really the best feeling in the world but at least it keeps my mind off feeling down because there is nothing to do. My main concern right now is my Japanese, since I only have learned two languages properly. Swedish and English that is, I have pretty much lost myself on how it feels to study languages. I was fluent in English back in eight grade and since then I have barely bothered about grammar, making new sentences and so on. Instead I have just been exposed to and used every day English. The problem is... I have grown to respect languages.

I respect them so deeply that I feel insecure when it comes to even making a single sentence. Now, this might seem like a good thing but at this stage in Japanese I should play and make tons of mistakes. I just have to use the darn thing and by doing that I will most likely learn more words, more grammar and in the end I might even be able to talk it without sounding like a complete fool. The only problem is, how do I convince myself that I can do this? How do I expose myself to more Japanese? I do seriously doubt that watching Anime is a good idea, it's a bit too fast. Perhaps reading? Manga? Books? I better ask my teacher, because I am not going to let myself get a bad grade or possibly fail a course because I am too set in my ways... One ought to be able to change I suppose.

What makes a lecturer happy

I know, I know... it was only a few moments since the last post but I am in the mood of writing things down. I guess I am a bit emotional right now.

I hold lectures in a course concerning Introduction to Computer Science, this mostly involves general programming practice but also some algorithms. I hold practice lectures for smaller groups around ten people. I now have about four months of experience and I hope that I am getting better and better by the day.

This term I have been forced to move my group from the morning to the afternoon. I have lectures an Algorithms Data structures and Complexity, *sigh* if only it wouldn't have been a lecture I would have skipped it. Along with this a few other lecturers have quit for this term, since they didn't have time to teach. This lead to two small groups splitting up and having to spread out among the other groups and my old group having to switch to my new afternoon group. A bit chaotic yes, and a bit hard to see my point but we'll get there.

A lot of the members of my old group was not happy about me leaving, they seemed to like me. Although, in my view I am confused, has a terrible handwriting, sometimes has a hard time to get to the point, gets lost in my own sentences, etc etc. That made me happy, but I expected most of them to still take the morning lecture to avoid having a two hour schedule gap. Seven of them still attended this Thursday... that really touched my heart. It makes you feel all warm inside and motivates you even more to see if you might even be able to make further improvements. They are a nice bunch, really good CS students over all.

Now, as if this wasn't enough later that evening I was asked if I could take in even more members. I had one of the groups that lost their lecturer for one lesson back in October. And now about six of them wanted to join my group... MY group?! I couldn't believe this at first, I mean... I deeply respect the other lecturers and consider most of them to be far better than me... and they asked ME?! My world spun once or twice. They even told me why they prefer me, I was shocked to say the least. I will not mention why and who they prefer me to... but I just couldn't believe it and I still can't quite grip it. This is a great responsibility, I know that I can improve and perhaps I then can teach them even more. I truly am one happy lecturer at this point, perhaps I have found something that I am good at... maybe *smiles*.

Discrete math

This term I have a course in Discrete mathematics, I don't know why but I somehow feel all exited about it. The first lectures has really been a lot of fun, a part from some proofs which can sometimes be horrible (when it comes to graphs). Somehow I like graphs...

Last Friday I hacked together a small program for graphs, this was quite amusing. I implemented some algorithms and played around. I did have comments regarding my mental health how ever, since I spent Friday night with an open math book next to me. Perhaps I can actually be good at this field of mathematics... or is it yet another field where I find a lot of fascination but still can't really grasp the whole thing? As it was with logic. One thing is for sure though, the old math fear from high school is gone since I started at KTH. At least that is a good thing ^^

Christmas presents

And it all came to an end... visiting relatives, eating...

Christmas has it's downsides, presents. Don't get me wrong, I love that my relatives/family thinks about me and buys me presents. But I don't have room for all this stuff and my back is killing me after traveling with ten times the load I traveled to them with. What's so wrong with cash?

It's not all their fault, I should have seen to it that they got my wish list but they would still give me a ton of stuff. They don't like to give money, since they think it doesn't show that they care about me. But what I need is not a ton of gibberish that sure looks nice but I don't have room for it, I don't have a villa like them, I have 20sqm!

I would have been all jolly if I got the 1000 SEK which all this stuff would cost, then I could save room and buy things that I actually need. Like a freezer and a new chair.

For my birthday next month I will mail a simple list to them and beg them to give me either a specific book (I will supply the ISBN) from a list or cash. I do love them... I truly hope that they don't get me wrong.

Holiday

I wrote my last exam for this term today, feels as if the one who wrote the exam knew all my weak spots. I hope for a degree of four and doubt that I did well enough for a five. *sigh* I had hoped for a great ending but I didn't deserve a five anyway, I don't know my laser physics that well.

Now I should try to enjoy my first holiday since last Christmas. I spent the easter holiday coding on a project for school and summer taking classes in law. I feel somewhat empty... hollow... all the stress and pressure is gone. Perhaps I am well on my way to becoming a workaholic? But I don't really care, I want something to every day, to somehow feel a purpose and have goals set. Besides, I have never had so much fun studying as here at KTH.

Now I just ponder on what I should do next, I have a few coding projects of my own, but where to start? I wonder if they offer courses over Christmas? Perhaps 5p of philosophy, that would be both fun and rewarding.

My (poor) English

*sigh* It seems that not actively using English for over a year has it's downsides. I make a lot more grammatical mistakes and misspell a lot more words than I used to. Back then I chatted away and talked English almost every day, now I just talk English when I meet an exchange student and only write in English when I really have to. I really should try to regain what I have lost, one can't have a CAE certificate and talk/write English like an average Swede.

It's alive!

For some reason everyone need to dump a load of thoughts and opinions at the web. This phenomena is generally called a blog (short for web log I reckon). Apparently I feel the same need to give Output as well as Input... thus making I/O instead of I.

I would want to host this at my own homepage but since I am lazy and doing end term exams I think Google can handle this for me and ease my burden (at least for now). You can find a lot about me and what I do at www.d.kth.se/~ninjin/ I'll spare you my introduction and hope that you will read it in case you wonder what kind of being I am.

Well, on to dumping random thoughts, rants, anger etc etc on the web.