Just 4 pictures from NH and following sauna on Friday, before I go to bed… Thx to Nils & Kathi!

BTW: Happy Birthday, Schwesterherz!

As already announced, I can now proudly present the pictures of yesterday’s event Experience Winter Campus.

Watch out the gallery! Many thanks to Kathi and Daniel for additional pictures.

I am used to run XAMPP, a free and easy-to-install distribution of Apache, MySQL and PHP, on my computer to develop server-side web applications. I don’t need it regularly, but it’s a handy tool if you’re not so much interested in thousands of config files.

For some weeks now, I am unable to start Apache, which is cancelling with a socket error. Up to now, I didn’t track the problem and did my development directly online (urgh, bad style). Today I uninstalled the whole package and installed the latest version – and still got the same problem. So I had to ask Google (and the XAMPP forums) finally.

The problem was solved very quickly: It turned out that Skype, the VoIP solution of my choice, blocks port 80 (yeah, the common HTTP port). Since I updated Skype, I let it start together with Windows (I use it really often right now), therefore causing the problem. So you either have to stop Skype while using XAMPP, or tell Skype not to listen on port 80.

Troubleshooting with Ralf, problem solved.
Have a nice weekend!

This year, Umea University celebrates its 40th anniversary with a number of activities. Today’s event was called Experience Winter Campus and was primarily set up for the students (who should always be the most important people at universities).

The sun was shining, a band was playing, and Hot Dogs were served. And of course you could try these typical Nordic outdoor activities like dog sledge, snow cross and snow mobile. Wow! These scooters have enormous power! Although there was only a short circuit to drive, I had a lot of fun. And it proves that queuing up in the cold is not always “an extremely weird form of fetish”.

The beautiful weather and surrounding gave the opportunity to do some nice pictures. I will upload a gallery within the next days.

In connection to the 40th anniversary, the university has produced a movie which can be seen online (English versions: high quality | low quality). It’s designed in the style of the official Umea presentation, so some of you might feel familiar with it. And of course you can also find an according festschrift (yes, Germans, it’s true!).

Today, my new course started. It is offered by the Statistics Department and deals with tools to analyse and forecast huge amounts of numerical data in financial contexts. The course is held by a Swiss (der sich gleich in schwedisch-schweizerischer Entschleunigung übte [sorry, German side note]).
Up to now, I can’t really assess this course, but I think that the practical approach with several SPSS-labs is a good choice. Hopefully it’s not getting too tricky…

Yes, it was snowing a lot during the last days in Umea. And snow offers various opportunities to express creativity. Timo and Christoph used the chance and created their masterpiece out of Philipp’s window. What a nice surprise when you just came back from Germany…

Via: Timo’s pseudo weblog

Normally I do not report changes of blog itself. But this time I couldn’t resist:

• New category On Campus added (isn’t this the reason we are abroad? )
• Some new teaser images added (even more exhibitionism)
• Blogroll added (this had to be done finally)
• BlogCounter added (nice complement to logfiles)

To-Do-List:

• Translation and update of the German link page
• English gallery page
• Solving bothering feed problems

BTW: It’s getting cold…

Just a few notes about the last days…

Wednesday
Beach volley with my fabulous mentor group. We’re getting better and better!

Thursday
Finally the first International Pub for this semester. NH opened for Karaoke. What a great night! Micha published some pictures: see a tall girl, smiling people, the Austrian connection and my sensational Viagra lighter. Rolf wrote a little bit more about thoughts and expectations of the Swiss Karaoke professionals.
Before NH, we were invited by Marika (our Ice Queen from the Lappland-trip) for a dinner. We were served traditional Swedish food, a “composition” of mashed potatoes and minced meat, supplemented by delicious self-made buns. Tacka!

Friday
The week’s highlight! After shopping at ICA Maxi (I like the Swedish verb “storhandla”) we were well-equipped for the Schnitzel-Session. Thanks a lot to the Austrian connection Kathi and Micha and all the other assistants who helped to produce this tasty speciality. Micha reports more about this evening and provides some interesting statistics. See the raw material, the sophisticated Supply Chain Management, the Kitchen Crew 1, the Kitchen Crew 2, our most favourite French and the Gourmets altogether.

Saturday
It was snowing all day long. No chance to go to IKSU. So I had to spend the night at Mariehem’s corridor parties… Nothing spectacular but the usual drunk + stoned Swedes.
BTW: Once again I was troubleshooting international computers. This time I recovered deleted data from a USB stick using PC INSPECTOR File Recovery. Very easy freeware tool!

Sunday
Swimming at IKSU was this time much more pleasant than 4 weeks before. In the evening we cultivated the Austrian-German-Friendship with Kathi, Micha und Sarah. It’s incredible how much we can learn about each other, and how many differences we find about our neighbouring countries (besides the language, LOL).

Kulinarische Selbsterzeugnisse des Wochenendes (gesteigertes Mitteilungsbedürfnis): ein kalter Hund, eine ganze Armada an Hackeklößchen sowie ein fabelhafter Salat unter Benutzung meines Gemüses des Jahres (doppelter Genitiv?): Zucchini.

Today I had my first presentation in Academic Presentations. We had a 3 minutes time frame to talk about a topic of our own choice. All presentations were videotaped and we have to write a short evaluation about ourselves. I think I will find a thousand things to improve.

These first presentations were held in an informal setting and we should talk about a topic we are familiar with. I decided to discuss blogs! The most challenging task was to shorten the collected material to 3 minutes. You could speak hours about sociological, technical or even political effects, and 3 minutes are just good enough to give an introduction. Finally I made a presentation which did not even contain the words feed, page rank, blogosphere or trackback. Very strange.

It was quite interesting to listen to the other presentations. We heard about the wish to stop smoking, the correlation between bus speed limits and side winds, growing baby orchids, “feelings” of lobsters, girls in engineering study programs, Chinese medicine, and the experience to see snow for the first time.

BTW: In my research I found out that HUMlab at Umea University launched an interesting blog in January. I still remember Karsten talking about the BlogWalk 5.0 hosted by HUMlab last November. Greetings to Ireland!

What the fuck?!
 
The author of this blog received top-secret material from a monitoring camera, which was active in the very early hours of February 13th. Do these pictures really show the honest author himself - having fun in the snow?!
To anticipate any bad surprises I decided to publish these pics by myself. I appeal for further investigations – feel free to publish your testimony by using the comment function!

Actually I’m not really interested in cars, high speed and racing. But during my research for the Lapland article I found a couple of interesting web pages I do not want to keep back:

The municipality of Arjeplog (with a population density of 0 inhabitants per km²!) is one of the biggest centres of car testing on snow and ice tracks in the world. Several companies offer their individually prepared tracks and additional services to the big brands in the automotive industry. Apparently you can make a real fortune with that stuff: Some companies launched pretty extensive and well-designed web pages.

“It all started as a coincidence.” I really like that little story about the beginnings of car testing in 1973. The SWTR web page provides a slightly different version.

The huge test circles, handling courses and polished ice tracks remind me of these mysterious crop circles which occasionally attract people’s attention. Watch out the gallery at icemakers.se!

Resources:

• Arjeplog Test Center
• IceMakers
• Cartest
• Colmis AB
• Swedish Winter Test Region

After two hours of Swedish lesson and three and a half hours at IKSU I can proudly present: The first web page of a new international student!

Sara is an Italian girl from my mentor group, and actually I’ve met her only once up to now. Anyway, she started an online gallery and I hope she will go on publishing nice and funny pictures.
Be welcome to the Umea International Students Web Sphere!

Finally I have uploaded the pictures from our trip to Lapland. Watch out the gallery!

Reisebericht auf Deutsch
Mario hat einen wunderbaren Bericht unseres Trips in seinem Blog veröffentlicht. Dort gibt es auch ein paar Fotos zu begutachten, die mal wieder irgendwie besser aussehen als meine …

I had a great trip last weekend to the very north of Sweden. For the first time I was above the Polar/Arctic Circle. I was travelling together with Marika from Finland and Richard and Mario from Germany. Since Richard is half Swedish and Marika had Swedish in school for a couple of years, we spoke (or tried to speak) Swedish as much as possible. I think I’ve learned a lot - hopefully I can keep everything in mind.

Friday
Our trip started in the early morning. I was picked up and then we drove straight to Jokkmokk. The trip took us about 5 hours, including a stop at the Arctic Circle. We almost had an accident with a reindeer, but this seems to be nothing exceptional in the wilderness of northern Sweden. In Jokkmokk we visited the famous winter market which was held for the 400th time. It is a traditional Sami market where you can buy original arts and crafts, food and of course lots of commercial crap. I bought some kind of “reindeer wrap” and a delicious moose sausage. Later on we visited the Sami Museum. In the evening we drove to our cabin in Gällivare where we had dinner and a boozy UNO night.

Saturday
Since the others did not really get up on time, I did a little walk in the morning. While you can see tons of bikes in Umea, you primarily notice snowmobiles/scooters here. After breakfast we continued our tour and drove to the famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. This is definitely worth a visit! Even if you probably can’t afford to spend a night there, you can have a look at the rooms with their distinct and artistic ice décor. The hotel is supplemented by the Absolut Icebar, the Ice Church and the Ice Theatre. After checking in the Yellow House in Kiruna and a short walk (the city is not really interesting, but watch out the church), we drove back to Jukkasjärvi to see the Ice Hotel in the dark. Now you can enjoy a wonderful atmosphere with illuminated sculptures and buildings. I should buy a bigger tripod… After viewing the 400-years-old parish church we drove back to Kiruna. In the common kitchen we spend a nice evening with some people from Italy and India. Played UNO again.

Sunday
Mario and I decided to get up early in the morning to take part in the tour to InfoMine, an “amazing visit to the biggest underworld mine”. Kiruna is famous for its iron ore production (even my parents learned that in school 40 years ago) and is still one of the biggest suppliers in the world. Interestingly the mine is run buy LKAB, a company which is completely state-owned. The tour was in Swedish and the guide talked a little bit too much, so that there was not enough time to explore the extensive museum. But still it is worth a visit.
We left Kiruna after lunch and had a wonderful journey through snowy Lapland. It is really impressive and picturesque to see the white and hilly landscape and the setting sun. The streets were completely snow-covered (remember that these are European roads). After about six and a half hours we were back in Umea. Altogether I paid something around 1200 SEK for the weekend. Jättebra!

More resources:

• Spiegel Article about Jokkmokk’s Winter Market [de]
• Jokkmokk’s Winter Market press release as PDF

Pictures of the trip will be published soon!

Today my new English course called Academic Presentations started. During the course, we have to do three presentations which will be videotaped and analysed. The group is very mixed: International students, PhD students, university staff and even lecturers. I think this will be an interesting experience.

Besides university :

• Hendrik’s birthday with big pizza-session on Tuesday
• Kathi’s birthday with new insights into “Austrian” language on Wednesday
• Beach volley with my incredible mentor group today

In only seven hours I’m on the way up north, beyond the polar circle. Our weekend trip will show us the ancient Sami Market in Jokkmokk, the endless wilderness of Lappland and the world’s famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. We will spend the nights in Gällivare and Kiruna. Be curious about the travelogue!

Have a nice weekend!

I’m not the only one who enjoys my nickname 2meter3: The Berlin newcomer band on2trees played a gig at Emergenza Festival for up & coming bands - calling themselves 2meter3! What the hell?!

Enlightenment: Florian, an international student who lived in the same building, is the guitar player of on2trees. He sent the URL of my Umea web page to provide his band fellows with pictures about our study exchange. At this time, the band was looking for a temporary name to express the changed cast (another band member is in Spain right now). Without hesitation they decided to become 2meter3. I still don’t know if I have to be honoured or angry because I wasn’t informed in advance. Anyway, it’s a nice story…

Further investigations found another 2meter3 on the web. He seems to be from Holland. Damn! And I thought 2meter3 is elaborate enough to be unique…