Sveitsisk jernbane er bra. Presis. Bra togsett. Nokså dyrt. Dobbeltdekkartog på intercity-linjene. Dei er lure, dei.
Archive for the 'A summer spent outside the kingdom' Category
Went to Air 04 in Payerne. Very good show. The Swiss were good, but couldn’t beat The Red Arrows. The individual plane shows were also interesting, although it got a bit boring after a couple: They all did pretty much the same thing. Looping, fast flybys, rolls, etc. Although the quarter-turn jerk of the F-15 and the wobbling the F/A-18 did was nice. 
But it takes a trained eye to appreciate the real differences between an F-16 and a Mirage 2000. All modern fighters are fast, manouverable and noisy as hell. It’s small details that set them apart, although when push comes to fire, a good man in an old machine will swat a bad man in a new crate.
Forgot my sun lotion. As a consequence, am now nice lobster red with a camera strap mark on my neck and glasses stripe on my right temple.
The focusing capability of my camera is a disappointment. (I did honestly expect it to have one.) The autofocus is frequently slow, and if it can’t find a focus, it’ll frequently just pick not-quite-infinity. Scuze me? Hello, Konica Minolta? Do ah need ta whup yo asses? Manual focus is an even worse bitch. Not only is it a pain to set (with fancy digital buttons instead of manual twist-a-ring-on-the-lens thing) but it drifts. I swear ta ya, I focus it as well as possible, take a nice crisp test picture, and then when I wait for the right moment when the planes are doing their beautiful chicken run, and I get an unfocused image! Honestly, KM, are you feeble?
I left the airshow a bit before the end, since there were no big team-acrobatics left and I was rather too tired and hot. As I stumbled along, I happened to turn around, and saw what you should see a picture of somewhere around here, unless you’ve turned off images or are using Lynx. (If you are, consider Links instead. It’s superior.)
So somebody decided to (or oopsed to) vent their smoke canisters on the runway. Funny effect.
Dominik taught us this word. Actually it’s pronounced “Rrrrrrrrriiiiiiiesenschmatzer!!!!!” It is the name of a peculiar kind of kissing, as follows: first a sloppy kiss on the cheek. The kissee will probably need to be gently but firmly restrained. Not breaking lip contact, the kisser inhales deeply through the mouth. When lungs are full, exhale forcefully while maintaining lip contact with kissee’s cheek.
Hadde studentpresentasjon om kva eg har gjort på så langt, dvs. ikkje stort. Det finst kjedeleg video.
Fine fjell heromkring. Dan de Mien eller korleis det skal stavast er ei høg og skarp fjellkjede der det høgaste fjellet er ca. 3200 meter over havet. Me starta på ca. 1300 meter, på ca. 1900 kom me ut av skogen og på rundt 2700 måtte eg gje opp og snu. Men vêret var nydeleg, og turen var god om eg ikkje kom opp.
Trafikkorken før Montreux, derimot, den likte me ikkje. Effektive sveitsarar, min fot.
Went to Lausanne with the usual lot. Nice city, nice weather. Lots of walking around, made a couple of interesting videos. Didn’t see the olympic museum, but interesting town. Very steep, so the metro uses cogwheel drive. Bought Master and Commander largely on impulse in a large but disappointing bookstore. Then tried to go to a bookstore good enough to be mentioned in my guidebook, but this country closes too early.
Went drinking with the local finns. Despite the relative cheapness of liqour here, they’ll happily buy a bottle of labsprit at the pharmacy for the punch and salmiakki. Didn’t get all that drunk, since I’m going to Lausanne.
Har meldt meg opp i INF3330, so ser gøy ut, og INF1060, som ser litt meir tull ut. Burde ikkje vera alt for tunge vekttal, og så vert ikkje lanekassen så sur.
I går prøvde eg meg på pinglerafting (knallgøy, dog litt tamt), gruppehopp frå ti meter høg bru (væ, veldig bra) og paragliding. Paragliding, spesielt, var flott. Etter litt flyging og risting skulle eg til å sei ifrå til piloten at eg vart litt flysjuk, men så plutseleg strauk eg «spy frå tre hundre meter» frå TODO-lista mi. Veldig fin flytur. Lang og slitsom dag. Kanskje eg gjer nokre av bileta tilgjengelege på veven ein dag.
C is a human language.
Paris Sphicas, detector lectures, discussion of hardware programming. CERN summer school 2004.
Bought a paper hat. It looks, at a distance, like a black straw hat, but is in fact made from paper. I look cool in it, though. Of course. 19 CHF at C&A. I expect it handles water considerably worse than my Wegener. I can now enlighten the audience further: Most felt hats, like my black felt Wegener, should not be exposed to water, lest they lose their cool shape and become unwieldy felt rags.
