History
Topic: Travel
The highlight of today was a visit to the Vasamuseet which is a museum built around a 17th century warship built by King Gustav Adolphus to fight in the wars against his cousin, deposed king of Sweden, current king of Poland. Unfortunately, this huge and ornately decorated ship sank only about a kilometer after first setting sail. Due to the lack of shipworms (the kind that eat wood under water) in the Baltic, the ship was preserved for almost 330 years before it was resurrected from the mud and restored into the museum. Very cool.

We also took a boat tour which allowed us to view many of the islands which make up the city of Stockholm, all diverse, with different communities physically separated.

Sverige Day
Topic: Travel
Okay, second update for today. Today was great. The weather was warm enough and it was partly cloudy skies all day. A new thing for us. We connected with my Aunt and Cousin and then had a visit around De Gamla stan and toured a bit around the city. Stockholm is huge. We only saw parts of it but in a lot of ways it reminded us of other lively bright european towns such as Prague, Paris and Vienna. We also found out this morning that today was the first celebration of Swedishness as a holiday called Nationaldagan. Evidently this extreme display of patriotism was a bit much for the average Swedish citizen, still, as a holiday, the streets were packed and people were out and about. Of course, the turn in the weather didn't hurt, hope it holds out. Typically the day is remembered as the coronation day of the first true Swedish king, Gustav Vasa, crowned on June 6th, 1523. A true day to be remembered. Of course, the day was marked by the fascists as well:

"We are demonstrating on behalf of all those who still believe in nationhood and race," said Per, a demonstrator who would only give his first name.

Who came out in record numbers (400) on Odenplan square, not far from our hotel. We on the otherhand, were across town and witnessed the Anti-fascists who numbered about twice the others, but, of course they were anti-globalization as well. Mixed messages. Still, interesting.

SWEDEN
Topic: Travel
Made it successfully to Stockholm. Weather is....grey, cold, wet. So, you are missing out on a lot. Actually the town is lovely so far, keep watching.

Last day in Arhus
Topic: Travel
So are last day in Denmark for this leg has come and gone. We spent yesterday in the oldest town in Denmark, Ribe. This town had very beautiful narrow streets with the old style wood framed houses. It was lovely. Very windy however. At the top of the cathedral tower we experienced near gale force winds.

Later we went to the coast on the island of Romo where we walked on the sand through the strong winds and the sea mist. It was lovely.

Finally, today we head to Sweden. Our first experience with the Eurorail Pass system. We'll probably be annoying more Euro's before it is all said and done.

Sunny days
Topic: Travel

Okay, to say that today was sunny would be pushing it; however, it was nice. We spent the day cycling on some free cycles that they have around town here in Arhus and we were able to walk along a beach on the Baltic Sea. It was quite lovely. We spent some time in a park that was overlooked by the Queen's summer palace. All in all, a good day.

In the evening we celebrated with the locals and enjoyed a festival in honor of Hans Christian Andersen. They had a parade with people dressed as characters from his many stories including 'The Little Mermaid' and 'The Princess and the Pea'. We then had some beers. Just perfect.

Tomorrow we are off to the town of Ribe in southern Jutland to hopefully get some time with the Vikings. We'll let you know how it goes.

Travelling
Topic: Travel
Hey Droogies, just checking in to let you all know that the missus and I are alive and well. We've made it to the land of the Vikings (evidently they don't call it that here) and we are having a wonderful time. To all you who warned us that it would be cold, and wet, and expensive, and windy, and etc.... Well, you were all right. It is cold, and wet, and expensive, and windy ... Also, not so many people in pointy hats drinking grog. We're are having a blast however. I've gotten to spend the day hearing about some outstanding crystallography and becoming jealous of a structure lab that has a real focus. The wife and I also spent yesterday at Den Gamle By or "The Old Town" where we had a visit through Danish history seeing the architecture and culture past of the last 400 years. Of course, this had no Vikings either. It is funny that they don't focus on their history here. I mean, the Vikings were only 1000 years in the past. Not that long ago. I mean, we Americans still talk about bellbottoms...

In closing, if you want to learn about Vikings I'd advise going to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, UK. Don't bother with Denmark. Cheers all and we'll keep you posted.

Our Scandinavian tour
Topic: Travel
So the trip is all set and we are nearly ready to walk out the door. Hopefully, as it is Memorial Day, the airport won't be too crazy. The current plans are as follows (to make life easier for Homeland Security):

We leave tonight and should arrive in Copenhagen tomorrow morning. We'll get on a train and should be in ?rhus by tomorrow afternoon. We'll stay with friends, I'll give one talk at the University, and then we'll head to Stockholm on Sunday. I'll give a talk there as well and then we should be on our way to Oslo by that Thursday. We'll stay at a friends place and will meet up with my wife's parents. Then, on Monday/Tuesday we'll be heading back to Copenhagen for 3 days (I get to give a talk at a Brewery) and then the wedding will be in Northern Jutland that Saturday. Finally, we'll be heading back after 3 weeks abroad. Should be interesting.

Preparing to travel
We are packing and packing. This is the least fun part of travelling. The preparation.... Well, it is getting close. Today I head over to a very perplexed Europe.

The French voted 'Non' on the EU constitution. This means that the unification of Europe as a singular unit will have to take a while. Good news for Dumbya of course. He and his cronies won't have to answer to Europe for a long time to come. Our first stop will be Denmark which has previously voted against the Euro so we should get a little bit of insight there. I'll keep you posted.

History lessons
Topic: History
So the wife and I had a discussion today about some lost tidbits of history. The first issue concerned the fact that one of France's greatest writer, Alexander Dumas, was African-American...sorry, black. This probably does come as a surprise to some people but I don't think the fact is lost on the French. Of course, he is most famous for "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" but there is much more. There is a perfectly lovely site dedicated to this history so I won't recap it all here. Suffice it to say, he was born to a Haitian slave and, in his own words,'My father was a Creole, his father a Negro, and his father a monkey; my family, it seems, begins where yours left off.' This quote is obviously a clever insult but seems to imply that even his father was of mixed decent. History should just be set straight.


A probably more significant failing of how history is taught in america is the fact that many people seem to see the west as purely white. This is of course incorrect. Estimates seem to indicate that blacks (or people of mixed black heritage) made up from 1/6th to as much as 1/3rd of the early pioneering forefathers. There are a lot of different sites dedicated to this history, Black Cowboys and NCSU, so definitely take the time to check out some of the history. You all know about the Buffalo Soldiers, thanks to the legendary sounds of The Wailers, but many more people made significant impacts on history. Probably the most famous of these is pictured to the left, Bill Pickett. Ol' Bill invented the famous cowboy maneuver of bulldogging which involves riding alongside a steer and wrestling it to the ground. Blacks are being credited with a lot more of the innovations necessarily created by those treated as lower classes doing the back breaking work. This of course isn't to downplay the contribution of many other peoples contribution in the multicultural west including Latinos and Asians.

New glasses and Music Compression
Topic: Technology
So today I picked up my new glasses. They are a fashionable pair that cost a bit of money. Now I find that it is weird wearing them. I suppose I'm much more used to wearing contacts so the new perspective of the glasses is discomforting. Well, we'll see how the glasses work out. It is complicated when I trade quickly between the two I think.

On another note, I've taken to converting all of my music files to mp3 and 128 kb/sec. This seems to be a fair compromise for listening to music at reasonable quality while maximizing disk space. For your information, the compression of mp3, or any digital format, is a complicated process that can have a significant impact on the sound quality. Lots of formats for compression are out there (AAC from iTunes and Atrac3 from Sony) which claim to be the best; however, the standard has been for some time mp3 which means that almost all players will recognize them. The problem is that the conversion technology is getting pretty old so you would be losing info by converting your CDs to mp3 and then throwing out the discs. The other issue is the compression rate. The goal with compression is to be as lossless possible, which, in simple terms means to keep all the original information. For music this includes the high and low range frequencies. This is pretty exhaustively discussed elsewhere but worth thinking about when compressing your music. Just for your information, CD audio quality is 1400 kb/sec so anything less is giving up something. This is usually the ends of the frequency spectrum but that can be an issue when you have complicated music such as classical. The graph at the right gives you an idea what I mean. By using 128 there is no dramatic drop off but you can see that a lot of info is loss. Using 256 lowers the info loss but doubles the file size. Different compression formats can have a different effect and the example is for MP3. Anyway, worth doing your homework on. A great compression conversion program is dBpowerAMP and I endorse it enthusiastically.

Hope your music is lossless!