Today it was time to do the last presentation for my Academic Presentations course. I was talking about blogs in general in my very first presentation and discussed system selection and article publishing with WordPress in the second one. This time, I used the chance to speak about blogs one more time and concentrated on the reader’s perspective. And this includes of course RSS.

Explaining RSS is like explaining sex. You just don’t get it until you do it.
(George Siemens)

Well, I tried it anyway…

We had about 9 minutes for our speech and I didn’t really manage to make a sensible content selection. Ergo, I spoke reeeeeeally fast, which is definitely not the best idea when it comes to presenting “new” techniques. I hope that my audience understood the main principles of RSS & feeds anyway: They help you to keep track of fast-changing information sources.

There are tons of useful documents about RSS & feeds out there, but maybe you are interested in my PowerPoint slides.

I closed my presentation with a (slightly changed) quotation from Bicyclemark’s talk in HUMlab last week:

There is a problem in the world: There are people who know about RSS and there are people who don’t and are scared. I don’t know how we’re gonna come together.
(Bicylemark)

Hey Mark, feel honoured! You were officially quoted in an “academic” presentation!

Once again, my speech was videotaped (for evaluation purposes only ) and I’m really looking forward to watching it. Another comedy show with 2meter3…

The course is over now and it’s time to thank our teacher Van Leavenworth for doing such a great job. I had a good time in class and appreciated your enthusiastic and straight-forward way of teaching. Thanks for your feedback!

Today it was time to bottle the second session of my brew. Mindful readers may realize that it’s already 8 days “old”. This time, I used the maximum of the proposed fermentation period in order to minimize the sediments. We will see how it works out. I worked alone, took it easy and used only the thick version of PET-bottles. Don’t wanna see another explosion…

BTW: Hej Mormor, I know that you don’t read my blog and I know that you wouldn’t understand English, but I have to publish these greetings anyway. It’s your 88th birthday today and I wish you all the best. In only two months we will meet again! Have a nice party today; I will drink to you tonight! Grattis på födelsedag, har det så bra!

BTW2: Have a look at the web page of Paulaner (a popular German brewery). They offer three different versions – German, Bavarian and English. Very funny and well done (click the arrow first)!
Via: Shopblogger!

Bist du voll, so leg dich nieder, nach dem Schlafen saufe wieder.

Wow, it took 25 days after our return from the Easter trip to create the gallery! Altogether, we three “digital” photographers shot more than 666 pictures. An adequate selection had to be made, while obtaining the chronological order and adding comments. Lofoten Islands have definitely been the most impressive place during my stay in Scandinavia. The resulting gallery with 150 photos is absolutely worth a visit!

Thanks to Laure and Julien for shooting so wonderful pics!

Well, I don’t really know where to start this time… I have already mentioned HumLAB and Podcasting in my blog, but maybe it’s good to explain these terms in short:

HumLAB is in fact a nicely equipped computer lab at Umea University (under the library, opposite to that hopelessly crowded lab with the old and crappy PCs). HumLAB describes itself as “a vibrant and diverse meeting place for the humanities, culture and information technology”. They host a series of seminars and speeches covering all topics at the interface between IT & society. I think they have a really good reputation in the “scene”. Unfortunately, I have never been to HumLAB before, but I regularly check their English blog.

Podcasting refers to a relatively young fashion of producing and distributing (mostly non-professional) audio shows on the net. Google defines Podcasting as “making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user’s convenience”. Podcasting is often seen as an alternative to commercial radio. Read more about Podcasting at Wikipedia.

And now it’s time to combine these two things: Today, HumLAB presented a seminar with Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, who’s running a popular blog and podcast called Bicyclemark’s Communiqué. He is one of the pioneers of podcasting. Mark describes himself as a “Portuguese-American, radical, activist-journalist, pretend-academic, university employee, podcaster, blog fanatic”. And today’s topic was of course podcasting.

After giving a general overview about the topic, he became more personal and detailed. He presented some of his favorite podcasts, showed iPodder Lemon on his new iBook and reflected on the future of podcasting. It was really fascinating to realize that the podcasting scene is still such a small and connected group: I knew almost every European podcast he mentioned. And he already knew about the Loudblog project of Gerrit van Aaken (one of the most popular German podcasters), which was launched just 10 days ago.

The seminar was live-streamed and archived; a seminar chat was set up as well. The audience seemed to be familiar with the world of blogging (most people knew RSS), but I can’t assess their interest in podcasting. I think that some questions showed the continuous uncertainty of classifying podcasts into the world of media. Podcasts are asynchronous, podcasts are underground, and podcasts are subscriptions. Podcasting claims to be easy for both the producer and the listener. Podcasting is not about sophisticated content tagging or 24/7 broadcasting. Not yet.

After his presentation, I seized the chance to talk to Mark personally. He is really excited about the development of podcasting in 2005.
Bicyclemark, it was a pleasure meeting you! I’m looking forward to hearing your “Soundseeing” in Stockholm and the next German Phrase of the Week!

More resources:

• Seminar information in the HumLAB blog
• Mark about his talk
• Mark about Sweden
• Jim with a short review
• Stephanie shot a pic

Today I started another round in my little brewery to make use of the second half of the concentrate. There is actually not as much to report; I didn’t change the procedure from the last time: Heating the concentrate, adding sugar, mixing with boiling water, adding cold water, stirring the brew, and finally adding the yeast. But of course I couldn’t keep my hands off my cam:

• Pic01: The second half of the concentrate
• Pic02: Brewing equipment
• Pic03: Heavy stirring
• Pic04: Adding Swedish water
• Pic05: Close-up of the brew
• Pic06: The bucket (2nd round) and the bottles (1st round)

I open the bottles from the first round approx. every 3 days in order to avoid another explosion. It’s incredible how much carbonate acid is still being produced. According to the schedule, the secondary fermentation should be over soon. It would be better to find a cooler location for the bottles, but up to now I haven’t had the perfect idea. Unfortunately, my house has no basement. Or didn’t I find it yet?

Ein bayerischer Papst? Na der kriegt nix von meinem Bier…

Once again, we had a nice party weekend here in Umea. On Friday, Michael invited in the “Mariehem-Party-Room” to celebrate his 25th birthday (well, he didn’t state this explicitly, but every party needs an occasion and his real birthday was only 8 days ago). Hey, so it was only 30 meters to go home! Ergo, I drank a little bit too much and made heavy usage of Kirsi’s camera. I ran around like a lunatic and made tons of crappy pics. See a selection of 6 impressions which show me and [Fabio; Rolf + Kirsi; Elena; Steffi; Sarah; Nils], being not sober at all…

On Saturday, I had a nice party in the Spanish Corridor©. I’m a little bit too shy to publish that picture showing me wearing pink gloves…

Yesterday I visited the last performance of this year’s Spexet from Umesperxarna. Spexet refers to a troupe of non-professional student actors who normally rehearse and stage one self-written play per year. These performances are very popular in Sweden; they combine the passion of an amateur theater with the hilarious improvisational performance of a stand-up-comedian.

This year, Umespexarna staged “Franksa Revolutionen” – the French Revolution:

Tänk er ett land kontrollerat av en envåldshärskare, vars ätt styrt över riket så länge någon kan minnas och som regerar med dekret från ett slott en bra bit utanför huvudstaden. Nej, det är inte Sverige vi talar om utan Frankrike anno 1789 och en tid då revolutionen låg i luften.
(Umespexarna)

Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre are the well-known characters of the historical event. The re-written story introduces the Swedish king as a wild Viking and opens with a concatenation of the Marseillaise and ABBA’s Waterloo. Can this be a good sign?

The audience has the power: Interjections provoke the actors to speak higher, “drunker” or even in German, to act faster or backwards.
I understood probably less than 10 percent, but I had great fun anyway. The play lives on the various songs and dances. I especially want to highlight the fabulous quintet which their clear voices and sophisticated arrangements and lyrics (well, as far as I can assess them).

I spend 70+20 SEK for a funny and cultural Sunday afternoon. So what?

Last week we had several opportunities to marvel at Northern Lights. We had a couple of cold and almost cloudless nights which set the stage for that fantastic play of nature. On Tuesday night, we (Judith, Sarah, Markus and me) went to the wide sports field next to Nydalasjön where we enjoyed the illuminated sky. Of course I tried to make some pictures:

On the way back we met Timo and Christoph, who did much better pics than I did. He was kind enough to let me put some of his fruits online. Thank you, Christoph!

Wanna know more about Northern Lights? Read on at Wikipedia.

YOU: Hey Eliza, what’s 45 and 5?
ELIZA: The sum of 45 and 5 is 50.
YOU: And what is the product of 3 and 4?
ELIZA: The product of 3 and 4 is 12.
YOU: Now: What is 2344355 divided by 0???
ELIZA: Well, 2344355 divided by 0 is not defined.

For my current course Speech and Language Processing we are supposed to submit 7 questions over time. For the second task, I decided to implement an ELIZA-like program.

ELIZA is a famous 1966 computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, which parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patient’s statements as questions and posing them to the patient. Thus, for example, the response to “My head hurts” might be “Why do you say your head hurts?” The response to “My mother hates me” might be “Who else in your family hates you?”
[…]
Eliza worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people’s tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there.
(Wikipedia)

As the program’s domain I chose simple calculations with 2 operands. You can ask questions written in normal English (well, phases that I call English ). The text at the very beginning shows an example output of the program. calcELIZAr heavily uses Regular Expressions to recognize and transform inputs. It’s written in simple JavaScript and is therefore directly available on the web:

You can test calcELIZAr at http://www.2meter3.de/calcelizar/. It’s far away from being bug-free and speaking proper English, but it’s a nice toy, though. calcELIZAr is just a little project for school, but feel free to report flaws and errors.

Exactly 10 days ago started my new course called Speech and Language Processing. It’s offered by the Department of Philosophy and Linguistics at the Faculty of Arts (wow, I like this official translation of Humanistisk fakultet). I was really curious about the course. I have never dealt with linguistics in detail, but I’m actually really interested in this stuff. Some people know that I’m a big fan of projects like Zwiebelfisch or Deppenapostroph or Deppenleerzeichen (which fight against absurdities in the German language).

Whatever, the course is held by Kirk Sullivan (UK), and he makes a good job. It is definitely one of the most interesting courses I’ve ever had in my university life. You learn a lot about the system of languages (syntax, semantics, pragmatics …) and Kirk enriches the theory with a bunch of examples in English, Swedish and German (I’m even allowed to hand in my assignments in German, but I think I won’t). Sometimes it feels a little bit unstructured and confusing, but hey – I do not need to have perfect notes since there is no final exam!

As expected, the topic is closely connected to computer science. Some students are linguists; some others come from the more technical domain. It’s nice to see that also humanists are allowed to deal with regular expressions, finite state automata and other concepts of information technology. The combination of language and computers is really of interest to me. I’m looking forward to learning more about that stuff.

BTW: I passed both Analysis of Financial Data and Svenska Steg 3.

Just 2 pictures from the bottle which decided to commit suicide yesterday… Please submit your letters of condolence via comment form.

So ‘ne Flasche aber auch!

Well, another nice header for this post could have been “The Power of Beer”.
I was just coding a little this night as a heard a loud bang from the closet. I immediately knew what was happened – I store(d) my newly-brewed beer inside!

There have been enough warnings in the manual: “Use pressure-resistant bottles, e.g. returnable bottles or bottles for carbonated drinks”, “Don’t use non-returnable bottles”… Of course I decided to attend these orders and used PET bottles for the beer (which were filled with coke before). But you might know that these bottles are sold in different thicknesses.

Ultimately, the pressure in one of the thin bottles (the only one that was fully filled) became too high and the bottle eventually died a heroic death. What a f***ing mess! 1.5 liters of beer were scattered in the (fortunately closed) closet. The walls, my parent’s suitcase and my notebook case were covered with tiny drops of beer. A puddle spread out in my little passage. A scent of alcohol went through the air. What an eventful day!

Results:

• I have only 7 liters left from the first session. It’s a great pity.
• It took me at least 30 minutes to clean the mess (not counting the time needed to write this article *g*)
• The exploded bottle has a considerable hole at the bottom (a picture will be published later – my cam ran out of power). Carbonic acid could be used as a blasting agent I guess.

Findings:

• To be on the safe side, I decided to open the other, thick PET bottles as well. The amount of carbonic acid is enormous! I think I should open them every once in a while to prevent another incident.
• While opening the bottles, the carbonic acid creates a huge power. These forces cause the sediments to rise and blend in the beer. Seems like I have no chance to drink a clear beer, then.
• I need to get hold of more thick PET bottles before bottling the brew of the next session. I haven’t started now, but actually I planned this for the following days.

Was ’ne schöne Schweinerei…

Let’s be interactive! Today I shot the wonderful photo below. Can anyone of you guess what the picture shows? If yes, write a comment! Come on guys, give me at least 3 comments!

BTW: Well, there is no prize for the quiz. I’m sorry…

Yesterday I called the Bier-Kwik hotline again. As reported before, I was a little bit afraid of the amount of sediments settling out in the bottle. Did I wait too shortly before bottling the beer? Was the primary fermentation still active? Did we work carelessly? Shall I decant the beer once again? And finally: Can I still drink that stuff?

The friendly madam on the phone allayed my doubts. The beer is of course still fermenting (second phase) and causes therefore the creation of the debris. Even if the amount is considerably high, the beer is still drinkable. In fact, this debris (containing the residua of the yeast and other airborne particles) is kind of healthy! So I can decide whether I want to shake the bottle before drinking or not…

Her statements were finally proved by the last litre of beer I still hadn’t bottled yet (after more than 7 days of primary fermentation). This time I was extremely careful and most of the sediment remained in the jug. But still, after some hours I saw a layer of debris at the bottom of the bottle. This seems to be fully normal. And I somehow have the feeling that the beer is getting clearer and clearer. Jättebra!

Na dann kann ich ja heut beruhigt einschlafen…

Yesterday was an important day for the Beer Brewing Crew (BBC). It was time to bottle the beer. After more then 5 days in the bucket of freedom, the brew had to be imprisoned.

After cleaning the PET bottles and the instruments (funnel, measuring jug) we decanted the beer into the bottles and added sugar for the secondary fermentation (the sugar converts into alcohol and carbonic acid). We didn’t stir the mix and it took a long time until the sugar cubes dissolved.

But the trickiest part was to get rid of the layer of debris that collected at the bottom of the bucket. I thought that we managed to do this, but today I realized that this stuff appears in the bottles now. Shit! I think I have to call the hotline again.
I still have one liter of un-bottled beer – from the very bottom of the bucket. I don’t really know if I can use it or not.

Anyway, under normal circumstances there’s nothing more to do at the moment. The secondary fermentation process takes about 10 days, and then I have to find a cooler place for the maturation.

• Pic01: Cleaning the bottles
• Pic02: Beer Brewing Crew: Sarah, Marcel, Kathi
• Pic03: Marcel, filling the first bottle
• Pic04: Undocumented filter techniques (highly inadvisable)

• Pic05: Insights
• Pic06: Debris at the bottom of the bucket
• Pic07: The preliminary outcome

Thanks to Kathi, Sarah and Marcel for their (mental) support, I’m sure that you guys are as curious as me about the result. Will it be drinkable?

Sorry, aber diese Hefe ist mir einfach nur suspekt…

Slowly but surely it’s getting tricky. The brew is close to the end of the fermentation process, and this raises a couple of questions: What is the perfect time do bottle the beer? Can I use a coffee filter to get rid of the yeast? Are these little spots really tiny froth clusters? Why is the yeast top-fermenting, even though it remains at the ground of the bucket?

I decided to demand additional help (after consulting my personal assistant) and called the holy hotline of Bier-Kwik. After describing the current state of the brew, they recommended to wait another day. Coffee filters are not allowed, that does somehow not work with the concentrate (?). Top-fermenting refers (in this particular process) reportedly to the temperature of the fermentation, not to the position of the yeast. Hmm.

Whatever, I trust in their pool of experience and will prepare everything for the big day tomorrow. Sugar cubes and sufficient bottles stand by, as well as a funnel.

The above pictures show the blessed bucket and its contents during the last days. In comparison to the BBB03 post, you can see the dramatic progress and change.

Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt’s!

Actually I should have done other things, but I wanted to record my impressions about our trip to Lofoten Islands and Abisko. The travelogue got a little bit long, but maybe you feel motivated enough to work through… I still need some days to before I can publish the gallery. Var god vänta!

Thursday
We started at 5 in the morning in order to catch the ferry in Bodø. We followed the E4 up to Skellefteå, before we travelled inland, passing Arvidsjaur and Arjeplog. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see anything of the car testing tracks I was writing about 2 months ago. After Arjeplog, the scenery became more and more mountainous. On a stop at a petrol station I counted more snow mobiles than cars refilling their tanks.
Finally, we crossed the Norwegian border and covered the distance to Bodø. We arrived so early they we could have taken the famous Hurtigruten (the Norwegian mail boat cruising along the coastline), but unfortunately they had no more capacity for cars. So we waited another hour and took the regular ferry to Moskenes. The crossing lasted 4 hours and we used the time to get some sleep.
We arrived at Lofoten Islands in the dark and collected the first impressions: striking mountains, scattered dwelling with thousands of lights mirroring in the sea, and stockfish all over. We were supposed to go another hour before we get to see our accommodation, but then we underwent our first surprise: Due to heavy rainfall during the last days, an avalanche had blocked the one and only road. We had no chance to get at Stamsund! After calling the Youth Hostel we decided to go back to Å in the very south of Moskenesøya. There, we found a really homey accommodation.
On a short walk we examined the bizarre stock fish frames in the rainy night.

Friday
After breakfast we started with a short look around our accommodation. Later on, we drove though the final tunnel to end up on a parking site, the most southern point of Moskenesøya accessible by car (ergo the end of the E4). There, we followed the little footpath and climbed the neighbouring hills. We noticed a gigantic field of stock fish frames and a frozen inlet which created beautiful reflections of the snow-covered rocks. Both observations were made repeatedly in the following days.
The road was re-opened today and we started our journey up north to Stamsund. We stopped at a nice and sandy beach (of course it was too cold to take a bath), had lunch in the tiny Nusfjord and discovered the secret of Unstad: this spot with its maybe 20 houses lies in a flat and almost quadratic plane which is framed by the mountains on three sides and the open see on the forth. Very nice!
Finally, it was time to go to our Youth Hostel in Stamsund. It’s constructed as a pile dwelling and has a very ancient interior. When we arrived, the warden was cool as a cucumber and started smoking and talking to his fishing friends before he finally showed us the place: Groaning stairs, the worn mattresses in the dorm, an oven heated by fire – the place turned out to be really cosy when you can resign comfort and privacy. The ambience is young and international, and we had some nice hours in this place.
After dinner, we went out for a walk in order to see the fantastic northern lights. The night was perfectly clear and the sky was illuminated in changing colours. It was really fantastic to experience that remarkable spectacle.

Saturday
Today, we wanted to discover Austvagøy. We started driving on the beautiful road 815 along the coastline of Vestvagøy. At first, we visited Henningsvær, a romantic fisher village on a little island. At this spot, the fishing industry is still intact: Vessels are seaming the port, and you can walk along the small establishments where the cod is processed. The pleasant weather and the idyllic atmosphere made this place the most memorable of our tour.
Subsequently, we made a short visit to Svolvær, the biggest “city” of Lofoten Islands (4.500 inhabitants). The port esplanade is very touristy – the little island Lamholmen is a commercial built-up area of the famous Rorbuer (red-painted fisher huts). We had our lunch break at this place (it’s still off-season) before we continued our trip to the landing stage of the car ferry in Fiskebøl. After checking the timetable, we had a look into tight Raftsundet, which is a passage for Hurtigruten.
On your way back, we followed another, unfortified road. I think it took maybe one hour for the first 15 kilometres. Laure felt really sorry for her car. But she also managed that task and we went successfully home to Stamsund.
Once again, we checked the sky for Aurora Borealis, and this time I succeeded in shooting a nice picture.

Sunday
It was already time to leave the Lofoten. We started quite early in the morning and caught the ferry to Melbu. We enjoyed the last views of Lofoten Islands and were happy to realise that the adjoining Västerålen Islands are also a pleasant place to be. The mountains are not as rocky and everything is a little bit more moderate, but it’s still a fascinating interaction of land and sea. We followed the E10 up to Sortland and made a trip to Myre and Nyksund, where we had lunch at the untouched shore. This place was – when I can trust the map – the most northern point I’ve ever been.
We went back to Sortland and continued our travel on the European road. Finally, we reached the Norwegian mainland again. We decided to visit Narvik, which is an important harbour for the iron ore from Malmberget/Kiruna. On my journey to Kiruna two months before, I visited the mine and gathered a lot of information about the powerful railroad which is transporting the ore to Narvik. The city is obviously affected by the industry (as many cities so far north) and has a year-round ice free harbour.
In the end, we coped with the last stage for the day and covered the distance to Swedish Abisko. (It really started snowing again!) The road ran parallel to the railway, and also our youth hostel was only some meters away from the rails.
Our accommodation is actually a “Dog Camp” and is a common starting point for dog sledging tours through Abisko National Park. They had at least a dozen of huskies on the courtyard and everywhere we could see sledges, scooters, snow shoes and other winter equipment. We had a good sauna in the evening.

Monday
Today, we wanted to do a hike in the national park. The popular Kungsleden (“the King’s Trail”) is crossing the park and we planned to follow this route for some kilometres. But during the wintertime, the footpath is almost invisible (and covered with tons of snow). In exchange, a wide network of cross-country ski tracks and scooter ways is established. We followed these routes three hours long (without finding a particular place to visit), before we turned around. Once again, the weather was friendly with us and we eventually had a warm and sunny day. The scenery was beautiful, but after almost 6 hours of walking we were a little bit fed up with all that snow. On the way, we met a couple of skiers who looked at us as we were aliens. They stated, that it was 3 years ago that they saw (some Japanese) hikers in the wintertime. It was hard for them to understand that we didn’t lose our skis on the way and that we actually wanted to hike.
We used the rest of the day for recreation, took another sauna and let Easter die away.

Tuesday
The last day of our journey consisted basically of sitting in the car. We left Abisko in the morning and went to the famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. The others went inside, but I had been there two months ago. So I walked a little bit around and had a look at the ice production scene. Big cubes were cut out of the frozen lake and transported with fork lifts. Later on, I walked to that little parish church and observed some German tourists starting for a reindeer trip.
We made lunch break in Gällivare (another typical characterless northern city) and followed E10 and E4 home to Umeå. Album of the trip was Moby’s “Hotel”, but my supplied “Sportfreunde Stiller – Die gute Seite” was also able to score, especially the fantastic song “International”. Altogether, we drove about 2.600 kilometres in 6 days. The trip cost about 1.600 SEK (175 Euro) for each person.

The fermentation process is in full activity. This is how the brew looks like right now:

I’m a little bit afraid of missing the final point of the process before I can bottle the beer. If I’m too early, the fermentation will go on in the bottles. If I wait too long, the beer can “turn” and get sour. There is a tool called “Bierwürze-Spindel” (yes, a special kind of spindle) to determine the end of the process, but of course I do not have that stuff. Maybe I’m gonna ask Google for some hints and tricks tonight.

Anyway, I now have my personal beer coach on board. I hope that Kathi can bring in her theoretical knowledge in industrial beer production, what she studied in Vienna.

Frau Lebensmitteltechnikerin, wollen Sie sich diese schwere Last wirklich aufbürden?

Monday, April 04, 2005. It’s time to setup the brew! I’m somehow skeptical if everything works out as expected. One can make so many mistakes and Murphy’s Law knows that I will. But hey, we should start our endeavor with the required optimism. The mixture will turn into tasty beer, or – yet another soft drink… I expect to get a kind of sweet and amber beer, called “Landbier”. I used half of the concentrate to produce about 10 liters. This is what I’ve done so far:

• Pic01: The tools and ingredients: concentrate + yeast, bucket, measuring jug, manual
• Pic02: Close-up Bier-Dose – the product is called BIER KWIK
• Pic03: Around 800g sugar will be transformed into alcohol and carbonic acid

• Pic04: The tin with the concentrate is heated in order to make it liquid
• Pic05: Danish sugar, in the background the tin in the pot
• Pic06: The first view of the concentrate, after opening the tin

• Pic07: Self-portrait, after putting the concentrate into the bucket
• Pic08: Steam arises, after adding 2 liters of boiling water – Stir, baby, stir!
• Pic09: Now it’s time to add and stir 7 liters of cold water

• Pic10: 10 liters base material
• Pic11: The yeast, used to start the fermentation process
• Pic12: The mixture after adding the yeast

• Pic13: Everything done so far – now it’s time to wait
• Pic14: The depository for the swill
• Pic15: Stylish Systembolaget cover

Nun dann: Gut Ding will Weile haben…

There are three projects I would like to introduce…

First of all and for the sake of completeness, I want to mention Fabio’s Photoblog. He’s really active and uploaded a lot of pictures and added some notes. Go ahead, Fabio! It’s nice to see that Marta is not the only Brazilian who spends some time here in Umea… BTW: Thanks to Rolf for tracking this site.

Blogs are used more and more beyond the private scope. The departments of informatics, applied physics and electronics at Umea University started a blog to recruit new students. It’s called VadSkaDuBli (What will you become?) and will be run until the 15th of April, the deadline for applications for the next semester.
The entries are written (in Swedish) by regular students who tell about their student lives. I think it’s an interesting experiment, but the results are pretty hard to measure.
At least it draws some attention: I first read about VadSkaDuBli in Västerbottens-Kuriren, later on I discovered the official press release of the university. The Blog Herald and The Local also refer to the project.

The last link is primarily for German-speakers: Steffanie is a Swedish journalist living in Stockholm. She puts a lot of effort into learning German and runs her German weblog “Deutsch für Anfänger – Formulierungen in eine Fremdsprache”. She writes about Sweden + Stockholm, the German language, Blogging and more personal stuff. She also offers a German podcast. It’s really cute to read + listen to her postings. You can fully understand her, but it’s so nice to notice her marginal grammatical mistakes.
I know Steffanie’s site for a couple of months (Martin Röll did a podcast with her after participating in the BlogWalk in Umea last November), but then I lost track of it. Today I retrieved it while surfing the blogosphere. Steffanie also runs a Swedish and an English blog!

The pope is dead and I feel free to start writing my own bible – the holy Beer Brewing Bible! What the hell?

As you might know, alcohol is quite expensive in Sweden. While I would never ever drink beer out of cans in Germany, I got really used to it here in Umea. But still, a single can costs at least 10 SEK (approx 1.10 EUR), which is twice the price of a reasonable bottle in Germany. So why not producing your own booze?

My father felt sympathy with me and gave me a do-it-yourself “brewage set” as a Christmas present last year. It contains a heavy tin including the beer concentrate (enough for 20 liters), a small packet of brewer’s yeast and a detailed instruction manual.

And now, the time has come to start the endeavor. Everything is prepared to turn water into beer. The process will last a couple of weeks and I will report on the progress continuously. I have therefore created the new category My little Brewery. The posts will be numbered and marked with BBB, which is short for Beer Brewing Bible.

I hope I can enjoy my brewage at the fabulous Brännbollsyran at the end of May. If you see me then, feel free to ask for a sample!

After all my wonderful trips during the last few months, I have to find new superlatives to describe the latest one. We used the Easter weekend to discover Lofoten Islands in Norway and the Abisko National Park in the very north of Sweden. I was traveling together with my French fellows Laure + Julien and Georgiana, a girl from Romania. We covered a total distance of 2600 kilometers within 6 days.

The Lofoten Islands are an archipelago of cliffy and rocky mountains (800 – 1000 m), off the Norwegian coast. They form a magnificent scenery, connecting the snow-covered rocks with the deep blue sea of the Atlantic ocean. The islands are famous for stockfish production (air-dried cod). Everywhere in and around the little fisher villages you can see extensive frames with tons of fish hanging around (literally *g*). The islands are connected by rolling bridges or even tunnels. They still have no direct connection to the mainland. There are several ferries from both the Norwegian coast and the adjoining Vesterålen Islands.

Abisko is a small city close to the Norwegian border, directly at the railway line Kiruna – Narvik (transporting the iron ore from Malmberget to the port of Narvik). Abisko is the initial point of Kungsleden (the King’s Way), a popular hiking trail through Lapland. The Abisko National Park was founded 100 years ago in order to protect the mountainous landscape with its sparse fauna.

Both Lofoten and Abisko National Park are north of the Arctic Circle, north of every single place I’ve ever been before. Nevertheless, we could enjoy some sunny spring days which gave us the possibility to shoot hundreds of pictures. Of course I will publish a gallery with a representative selection. A travelogue is also on the way.

It is already almost 3 weeks ago that we returned from St. Petersburg. Now I can finally present the according gallery. Watch out!

Additionally, I have created a little map to illustrate the itinerary and distance of our trip.
Mario has finally published his really nice + extensive review about St. Petersburg. It’s in German, but it includes a number of descriptive pictures. Le “professional D-SLR” Nils has also uploaded his beautiful + artistic pictures into his gallery. (Sorry Nils for destroying your frame set, but I like deep links…) Once again, he has produced a huge panorama (compare to the one from Tallinn). Thanks for these specials! So, Rolf, now it’s time for your report… And finally we can also admire Rolf’s report.

BTW: Wow, my last posting is already 10 days ago! Actually I didn’t want to neglect my blog, but I was somehow lazy during the last days. I returned from my incredible trip to Lofoten Islands and Abisko on Tuesday. I hope I can write some facts about that trip later on. And I have still some other topics in mind. All I need is time and motivation…