Clockwork knowledge

Have you ever seen such a cool wall clock. My 14 year old got it as a birthday present from one of his aunts. The clock has been produced by Tekna and uses elementary(?) mathematics to represent the hours. My kids do not understand it all yet, but they were amused by my enthusiasm.

The clock has now replaced the old kitchen wall clock, so that we get more exposure to mathematics every day.

The values in green are linked with Tekna's history. You can read about it in the Wikipedia page. Or you can visit their web site at http://www.tekna.no.

Einstein in Geneva

I went to Geneva last week, and I found Einstein looking out of a window in the gable wall of a house.

When I looked closer I realized that the wall was solid and made from prefabricated elements. So Einstein was just a painting on the wall.

There is more on the wall, so if you are ever in Geneva I suggest you go to Chemin Edouard-Sarasin and taker a look at the gable wall.

Whoever paid for this really appreciates their neigborhood.

OSL - a disgusting airport

On Monday I travelled to Germany via Oslo Airport Gardermoen (OSL). Early in the morning I had some time to waste before my flight, so I walked around window shopping. One of the shops there is an electronics shop, and just outside the shop someone had been sick and vomitted on the floor. The weird thing was that nothing was done about the vomit on the floor except putting up a barely readable note to warn people passing by (the footstool came later).

From the angle I approached the store I nearly didn't see the notice, and I saw at least one other person loosing their footing on the wet floor. As far as I could see the person managed to stay on her feet, but ruining her clothes and possible physical injury was close. So why wasn't any attempt done to dry up the vomit from the floor.

I approached some staff at another shop nearby, and they told me they had offered the staff at the electronics shop to call the cleaning department. But this offer was rejected. When I expressed my concern to them, they made the call anyway. But nothing happend. From the first time I consulted my clock the first time to the last time I was within range of the vomit, more than 20 minutes passed without anything happening.

I like to think that if I were working in the electronics shop I would have started drying up myself - wouldn't any responsible person do that? I would claim that both the guys at the electronics shop and the resources responsible for keeping the airport clean have demonstrated that they should find something else to do.

Salami and tomato on lego

This year's topic for First Lego League is "food factor". This means that the participants shall study food quality issues, find ways to improve it, build lego robots to solve tasks etc. And my youngest kid has drafted me to help his team!

The different tasks in the challenge have not been distributed among the participants yet, but it feels like an adventure. At home we started by locating his brother's Lego Mindstorm set, so that we can practice at home. I even took some parts and build myself a salami and tomato on lego. What a treat!

Part of the challenge is to find some candidate food products for further study. I had hoped to find some fish products that carry information about the catch, the vessel and so on, but that proved more difficult than expected. I found one processed product from Domstein, but it contained too many ingredients compared to the limit in the challenge.

It remains to be seen where the project develops, but I hope for a memorable learning experience for the kids.

BASF rattleback pen

Do you know what a rattleback is?
Well, once I bought a piece of plastic made to have that type of behaviour. Nowadays I can't find it, but yesterday I discovered a everyday device that has the same behaviour.
I happen to have a ballpoint pen made by Schneider in Germany for BASF. And this pen has the behaviour of a rattleback. That means that if it is spun in the "wrong" direction, it will stop and reverse its spin to the preferred direction.
Just look at my short footage of the phenomenon:



I will not try to explaing what happens, but the Internet is full of material if you look for it. On the other hand some questions appear, like;

• Is Schneider aware of this ?
• Was this behaviour specified by BASF?
• Or am I the first to observe this?

Paper tape programming tool

We all know how programming is done these days. But it has not always been so. I was first exposed to programming (BASIC) on a Tandberg desktop computer in 1979 (I think), but even then the screen and keyboard combination was a fact.


Was there anything before that? Well certainly - there were paper tape and punched cards. I have never used such technology myself, but I have the device in the picture in my posession. It consists of some pieces of aluminium that have been machined to work as a primitive programming/repair tool for paper tape. The actual holes were made with a broken off screwdriver in the lower right.
This device was a write-only tool on its own. But I guess anyone using it would also have a suitable reader as well.

Kefir, orange and tomato

I am a great fan of Kefir, on its own or mixed with orange juice. This last combination became drinkable for my kids when I started referring to it as "sjørøvermelk", that is "pirate milk". I mix it half and half, and these days other kids from the neigborhood may be observed in our house enjoying this refreshing drink.


Well, earlier this month I had the pleasure of visiting one of the Portoguese processors of tomato. Their product may be a key ingredient in the ketchup you use, and it may also result in tomato juice. Anyway, I was told that mixing tomato and orange juice also was a nice drink. So I had to try.

The picture shows these two drinks. Many people may not like the thought of these combinations, but I am willing to experiment from time to time. And sure, mixing tomato and orange juice is definitely an alternative when you want to surprise friends at a summer breakfast.

And of course, freshly pressed juice is far better than cartooned. But that is something to look forward to when I am really in for a treat!

Marketing with ø

In Scandinavia we have som extra characters in the alphabet, namely æ, ø and å. Sø whåt dø thæy håvæ tø dø with mårkæting? Well, on a recent trip to Spain I stumbled upon Nørdic Mist, a Tonic Water from Coca Cola.



It surprised me to see the ø used in a brand name. So is association with Scandinavia a positive thing? As far as I understand, they never tried to launch this product where the ø is used, although we could do with competition in the tonic water segment. I find Schweppes tonic water too expensive (the price drops significantly if I go to Sweden), so I end up using products from my local Roma Mineralvannfabrikk.

But what about marketing on a larger scale. Well, I'm not a marketeer, but I remember back when I worked for the HPC company Scali (before they were acquired by Platform Computing, the fact that we were a Norwegian company was obscured.

The strange thing is that a later startup involving some of the same key people uses extensive imagery from Norway on their web-page. They may not be shy any more, but they haven't gone all thæ wåy in mixing in thæ speciål lætters.

Lutefisk is upon us

Before I travelled to Iceland for the last week in October my wife served me lutefisk for dinner. As you can see from the picture I have helped myself to potatoes, mustard, mashed peas and bacon, in addition to the fish. It is simply so good. I may be disgusted by all the Christmas decorations appearing at the same time, but lutefisk is simply too good to be missed.

To our surprise even the kids liked it. Maybe we have gotten better at preparing fish meals, or maybe it has something to do with them growing up. Anyway, serving them fish based meals seem to have changed from a duty to a pleasure. Lets hope it stays that way.

Washing cowberry clean!

I have found a new application of cowberry. In a shop at Fossheim Hotell they sold Cowberry soap (Tyttebærsåpe). I just had to have one. But will it ever be used or will it remain a weird thing to keep?

Anyway, the producer is Alveland (Elf-land).

Juvenile lizard

Isn't this cute? It is a juvenile lizard that fell into a ditch I was digging. I had to help it out, and it either found my hand pleasantly warm or was perfectly terrified. So it stayed in my hand for some time. Maybe I even got a new friend.

I tried to get some android footage, as in this post, but I wasn't any good at operating my mobile with one hand.

This happened at my cabin. They are all over the place when the weather is nice. I have handled adult lizards in the past, as have my kids and their friends, but this small one was a new experience.

Are Swedish lampposts cold in summer?

Check out the image on the right. It shows a lamppost with a knitted cover. I found a number of such lampposts on a visit to Simrishamn in Sweden in early May. They were nice, but why? Are the lampposts cold in summer, or had they just forgotten to remove them after winter?

Leucochloridium paradoxum in Strømmen

Last Sunday a movement caught my attention in my garden. It turned out to be an example of Leucochloridium paradoxum, that is a parasite in a snail trying to get the attention of a bird so that the bird can eat it! Well, I had my Android availabel, and the result is this short film:



As I showed my discovery to the neighbours I certainly reinforced their impression of me!