Sunday 21 December 2014

Back home

Flew back to my home town and family yesterday, at least the rooftops and the ground are covered with frost. Experienced German Feuerzangenbowle on Friday, really nice. Swedish glögg is something special still, with one secret ingredient: nostalgia.

Paris was nice, I enjoyed the "obvious" places a lot, like the Louvre, musée d'Orsay, and the Eiffel tower. I walked for many, many Swedish mil during my 4 days of sight-seeing and slightly ruined my right knee. Getting old already, ugh. Should start running again. Southern Paris, where the conference was held, was quite nice too, seemed calmer than the north. Catacombs symbiosis? Anyway, I'm really not a city-slicker, half-way through the conference I couldn't wait to go back to the edge of civilization in Arheilgen. And why does every young person with an eye deficiency in Paris have exactly the same black thick plastic frame glasses?
Most of my bitterness probably comes from me getting sick for almost a full week after a meal around Montmartre. Yah, I had almost no food at all in my stomach during most of the conference and I still gave two talks. My family has always been very careful and strict when it comes to food, so this was the first time for me. After all food goes out into every part of your body and mind (no I'm not spiritual, but what goes in either goes out or stays, right?). The first few days in Paris were really nice still.
Pix:

I visited a friend of mine while in Gothenburg, and somehow our discussion lead to lucid dreaming. We've tried to document and share our dreams, but I've been way too distracted with work and being sick...

Hum, what else? Playing guitar, watching lectures, doing origami for people, daydreaming, the usual. Will update during the holidays.

EDIT 2014-12-24: Another Christmas soon over. My little 2 year old nephew swept through like a gentle storm; he found all kinds of things to play with in cabinets all over the house, but handled everything delicately and even put some things back. I invited him to brush my teeth with a dish washing brush. And he did. He's still too young to understand the concept of Santa Claus (and Christmas presents in general), but I dressed up a bit like the big fat dude just to ease him into it. One year he'll understand, and with some practice he might not cry too much.
I usually send Christmas greetings every year, today I've been too busy and tired to and I received almost none. Oh well, I sent and received a lot of greetings before today, that should count :p

A few calm days ahead I hope, I did a lot for the NeuLAND -> RIKEN thing already, mainly need to start testing to see what's missing (not working). Will try to make Opera cake for New Year's Eve from my French baking bible. Until then!

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Busy in a way

Missed a few posts...

Went to Chalmers to work on the light organ for two weeks. Making electronics and computers do what you want them to is not always a whole lot of fun. Was great to see some friends though, almost all having families and lives. At least I have no chains attached :p

Been preparing a trip to Paris, R3B collaboration meeting next week there. Will hold two talks, ugh. And in March or so I'll go to the DPG in Heidelberg with a similar talk. And in Jan-Feb I'll spend a few weeks at RIKEN integrating NeuLAND into the RIBF DAQ. Fun fun.

I'm thinking of physics very differently these days, I've learnt a whole lot of things recently that I should have figured before, but suddenly I enjoy "getting it". I've inhaled a lot of lecture videos and reading lately. Maybe something will come out of it one day...

Baked lussebullar this Sunday for the 1st advent, but baked way too many for myself. Dumped two bags at the TU Darmstadt, but I took some photos before that:
I'm gonna bake so much more after my trip to Paris, with my huge pink baking bible "Patisserie!". Oh, French pastries...

Ruined my old Canon compact camera with a leaking water bottle recently, so I bought a new one for the trip to Paris, which will come in handy for RIKEN as well. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60. Nice to hold a new piece of electronics every now and then, too bad the nice wifi feature is a no-no with Linux. Snappy buttons and interface, fun optics that's like a magic trick in that little camera, and seemingly good photos. Not exactly camera crazy, I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems nice :)

Time to round off the day, and have a final wrap-up lecture...