Hey, quick note before we leave the hotel here in Svalbard. I have my photos taken from my phone camera (so from Oslo) up on flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/wolf08 . Bye!

(Tuesday, May 20 19:37) Exhausted, Peaceful
Today, my entire day was spent behind the wheel of a snowmobile. Well, not really the wheel, as they don’t have steering wheels, but you get the idea. I’m a little bit bummed now, because I can’t take any of the pictures off of my digital camera until I get either a CF adapter or a USB -> micro usb cable. Why can’t all mobile devices use mini usb instead of some smaller thing? But that’s alright, it just means my descriptions get to be that much more intricate =). (If I was planning on putting up 4 pictures, does that mean I have to write 4000 extra words? Uh oh!)

After a shower and a quick breakfast at 7:00AM we managed to almost miss the bus at 8:15. For some reason I thought it was at 8:30, and a restroom stop turned near-fatal to the health of our snowmobile trip. But, we caught the driver and managed to make it to the dealership intact. I say dealership because I swear that they also sell new snowmobiles there. We had a quick briefing, from which I took away little more than ‘pull on the throttle to go.’ Oh, and ‘Don’t tip.’ Great, just great. But, considering that, unlike yesterday, they didn’t tell us what to do if we did tip, I figured that it’s extremely rare and nothing to be worried of.

I’m very glad that I got to drive my own snowmobile, and also that I had no passengers to please. That meant I could play around a little, ignoring the jerkyness of my driving and having fun going quite fast. I think I managed a top speed of about 90 km/h, which translates into roughly 55 or 60mph. And when you’re two feet or less from the ground, that sure does feel fast. Looking at others riding, I had this strange feeling that a snowmobile is a cross between a tough motorcycle and a Ghost from Halo.

We traveled almost 170 kilometers during our day, 80 some each way. That in itself is quite amazing, considering that we were traversing the shortest distance from west coast to east coast. Svalbard is much bigger than most people-including myself-think. When we reached the east coast we had lunch and then went out to check out the sea ice and a second glacier. And, to our surprise, two polar bears decided to show up for lunch as well. I got some excellent footage of them with my camcorder. I knew that 20x optical zoom was good for something! When the bears started getting too close for comfort we started the snowmobiles again and headed home.

Edit: Fixed some spelling and weird character loss. And of course added tags.

(Sorry, no Polar Bears yet >_>. I just needed something for the titles =P)

(Monday, May 19 21:15) Sleepy, Wanting
Wanting. That’s an interesting feeling. I think that I would like more hours tonight. I know that I have to go to bed soon if there is any chance of me waking up tomorrow morning refreshed and ready for a huge trek. Tomorrow I’m joining a group to take a snowmobile trip across Svalbard to the east shore. I’ve never driven a snowmobile before so this should be quite an experience. Anyways, I want to stay up later tonight blogging and transferring photos and videos and even some coding, but alas, I have time for one of those. And so blogging will have to do. I’m sleepy because I’m still a bit disoriented from the constant daylight – it’s still bright outside. But now I’ve pulled across the blackout curtains and everything is much darker, meaning my body is actually telling me that it’s time to go to sleep.

So today, you’re wondering what happened? After a relaxing morning that consisted of breakfast, computer time, two naps and a shower, I took a walk down the main street of Longyearbyen (Main Street, ha.. ha.. ) to see what was happening. I brought the incorrect cable for the video camera (to let it connect to the computer) so I went exploring and did find the correct one here! It was expensive, but I figured that it was better than not being able to view and edit video.

At 15:30 we set off to go dog sledding. Wow, what an experience. We went in partners, and each team managed six dogs for an hour and a half. The entire experience took almost four hours including the drive, setup and at the end take down. The sleds seemed quite tippy – and we managed to fall over a whopping three times. Although, if I can shift the blame, two were the fault of the dogs. Out of nowhere they decided to make a sudden 90 degree left turn. Although we were able to handle that we were not able to handle the sudden 180 back that happened a few moments later. The dogs did this twice. Although, I bet that much of our troubles could have been helped by having more experience or taking it slower. The only control we had over the dogs was this small measly brake that was on the back of the dog sled. I couldn’t ell them to turn left, right, anything. I could kind of get them to start by saying “Mush!” or something loud and boisterous that had a similar effect. But that didn’t even do it sometimes. The cliffs and mountains here are amazing. They remind me of the eiger that I saw when watching the IMAX of the Alps during my Wilderness First Responder course. Of course, not as steep and not as gigantic, but they were pretty cool nevertheless. <I’m getting sleepy so this will end sort of quickly>. Our guide was a twenty-something woman who was studying at the university. She carried a rifle with her. Speaking of rifles, we also saw someone walk into the hotel with one. Back to the dogs. There were 5 dog sled teams in total, each with two people. All in all it was pretty crazy and lots of fun.

I’m out for now. I haven’t forgotten about the 17th. I’ve got a draft written, it’ll go up later.

(Monday, May 19 00:05) Frigid, Amazed
Well, I just arrived in Svalbard. It’s this tiny island north of Norway. During the summer months (More or less May through July) the sun doesn’t set at all and that’s currently throwing me way off. My mind knows that it’s midnight, and that I should be sleepy and ready for bed. But at the same time, I look up at the sky and see the sun high above me and my body doesn’t believe that it could possibly be night time. When we flew in I got some good videos of Svalbard, and I’m really glad that I’m coming here while it’s still snowy rather than arctic tundra. It’s cold, very cold. My thermometer says 10 degrees F. Anyways, I need to get to sleep now, I think I’ll use the thick curtains to block out the light. I’ll blog more about last Saturday and Sunday (May 17 was amazing!) tomorrow.

This is from my first day, I figured that I should post it =):
I found out that Kristin’s house has a wireless internet connection, so I’m set with respect to the net, at least until I leave here. If you can believe it there are two other people staying at the moment. They’re both biologists that know Kristin’s husband and I think they’re studying bats. They leave Friday, so things will quiet down somewhat then.

Kristin said that I could still meet her friend who runs a computer business of some sort (she mentioned that I liked computers, engineering, entrepreneurship). Apparently when he found out that I was coming he (jokingly) asked if I needed a job =P. Maybe he can take a rain check for four years.

(Friday, May 15 17:17) Resting, Hungry

I’m back home now after visiting Trolltech. Wow, what a day. First was the sculpture garden. There was a marching band there and many Norwegian families – when I asked Kristin later she said that it was a trial run for tomorrow’s parade! It seemed to go quite well when I was there, and I did get some good video of it, so hopefully I will be able to show that when I get home. The batteries I bought yesterday didn’t work. Now, they weren’t the most powerful, so shame on me for not being careful of what I buy. But anyways, I still have hope for the rechargeables, acheter viagra professionnel. After reading online that sometimes the Nickel-Cadmium ones take a few cycles to get to their full capacity, I discharged the batteries completely last night to see if that helps. They’re currently charging again. Trolltech, wow, I think that deserves its own paragraph.

So, I took the local transportation, specifically the subway and bus, around today. It was only about 4 stops from Myuerstrauen (Ok, I botched that spelling, I’ll get my little packet later), the stop for the sculpture garden. The building was this gigantic complex called BI, which housed the Norwegian School of Management. Trolltech was located on the 6th floor of just one of the 4 quadrants of this building. At first the secretary wasn’t aware of my visit, in hindsight I should have brought the most recent email with my contact’s name instead of the one two messages back (the older one had the address and directions on it). Anyways, I brought up gmail on her computer and it all went smoothly from there. Trenton, also from Minnesota, was my ‘guide’. We started out by eating lunch, and I was lucky, this was the one day of the week where they had a cooked ‘hot’ lunch instead of the traditional sandwiches from home meal. I met 5 or 6 other devs at lunch. Two were from Norway, 2 from the US and 2 from other places in Europe (Finland and Germany?). All spoke English. I actually think that almost all of the interactions that I saw took place in English. I guess that makes sense, because in the global market that is almost always what companies need to use. Anyways, Trenton showed me around after lunch. It turns out that he works on the Mac side of things. I had read that Trolltech was porting Qt to Cocoa (from Carbon), and he confirmed that he was one of the main ones working on that. There were two people to an office in the programming side. I thought this was interesting (more on that later if I have time). We visited some guys working on embedded devices (very cool) and a whole bunch of themed (and named with company core values) office/conference rooms. The office was actually two floors, one above and one below. Although below is a bit of a misstatement, as it was still on floor 5. Trenton showed me their bug tracking system (wow, great for collaboration) and discussed a few of the internal ideas about revision control. (Turns out that Git and Mercurial are dueling it out). At the end of my visit, we went and met the main apparel lady. Oh wow. I now have not only a T-Shirt but also a laptop bag, lanyard, and even a Trolltech branded combo USB Hub/Coffee cup warmer! Crazy stuff.

Even after charging my AAs for 6 hours last night my still camera still thinks that they are drained. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Maybe I will try them in something else to see if it’s the camera or the batteries. When I’m in town today I can buy normal batteries, then at least I can get some pictures. The video camera is so huge that I’m not sure how to carry it during the day. I don’t want to bring my entire laptop bag.

bye for now.

(9:30AM) Two Feelings: Awake, Daft Punk

It’s 2AM and I feel wide awake. But that’s a good thing, because it’ll be 10AM in less than an hour. I’m flying over London at the moment, and after struggling to get some sleep on my transatlantic flight I’ve finally given up in exchange for a breakfast and some blogging. Speaking of which, the food (in coach) on this flight has been remarkably good. I’m no food tester, nor am I a cook, but the chicken for dinner and my fruit and egg muffin for breakfast tasted good and left me filled. I’m also very impressed with my $30 noise reducing earbuds. I got them on the way to the airport when I realized that I’d lost my good in-ear earbuds. It’s amazing how technology is changing. Now, they aren’t as good as my brother’s Bose headphones, but they’re darn close and 1/10 of the price. Looking down out from my tiny window I see a very hilly, maybe even mountainous seashore. I’ll have to look at a map later (Marble!) to figure out where exactly we are. Oh, my seat. I’m in 10H. Lets just say that I think it’s the best non-first class seat in the entire plane. And honestly, it might be better than many seats up there. The pros are all the legroom you could want, no space-reducing seat in front of me, a personal tray table, and I’m the first one to get food! Through the course of the flight I have noticed a few drawbacks. First of all, I am sitting right next to the galley. That means almost constant light and noise. It hasn’t been too bad with my earplug-like earbuds and my window seat, but I don’t know if I would say the same if I were in the isle. It already feels like people are walking past quite often. Although, at least it isn’t people lining up to go to the restroom.

I’ve got a power outlet at my seat. That’s just cool. I had forgotten about it when I was using my laptop earlier but now I’m making the best of it, charging up for my time in Amsterdam. If I had remembered that at the Minneapolis airport it would have made my life a little easier, if only because I wouldn’t have had to have searched around for an outlet. Then again, it was nice an quiet in the corner I found, and I managed to get some reading done.

Looking over at my seat mate’s display it looks like we’re midway between the east coast of England and our airport. I think that it would be really fun to stay for a few hours in the Amsterdam airport. We’ve been there as a family before and I really enjoy it. Especially if you have access to the KLM club, It feels more like this timeless place where you can relax and get work done in between flights. And I’m willing to bet that’s what they’re going for with the international hub.

Wow, kate (my editor program) has a spell check! That’s pretty cool, and certainly unexpected for a simple text editor. Anyways, I’m getting off topic now and it looks like we’ll be landing shortly, so I’m going to sign off for now. After one last thing that is. At the top of this post I have two things that describe how I’m feeling right now. Awake because my mind says to me that it’s 3AM but my body says “Yep, I’m awake.” Daft Punk because that’s who I’m listening to =). Goodbye.

(11:29AM) Comfortable, Traveller
I’m presently sitting at my gate (D-74) for the plane to Oslo. There are a couple of other people here, but the (limited number) of seats are mostly empty. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the Sherpole (I need the spelling on this) Airport. The engineering is fantastic, and there are so many just ‘interesting’ things around. For just one example, lets consider the gate. Rather than having all of the chairs and security machines flush with the walkway between gates, a multi tiered approach is used. I walked down a short set of stairs to an undercarrage area. Each gate is separate and partitioned, but is walled off with glass, meaning that I can see all of the surrounding gates and walkways. This allows for a quieter, calmer waiting area while leaving the main pathways open above. Well, I’m not sure if I worded those last few sentences well. While walking through the airport I didn’t feel tired at all. Finally, now that it is darker (and warmer) down at the gate, I’m suddenly exhausted. Op – Did the gate change? Let me investigate.

5 minutes later…
False Alarm, but it is time to board now. Bye!

Hey all, going to Norway for two weeks. I’ll post more later =). And yes, I’m excited.

As many from Planet KDE have done, here is my bash history, sorted:

astromme@Loki:~$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head
79 ls
76 cd
53 sudo
40 exit
27 ssh
19 make
17 git
12 ping
11 scp
11 mv

Very interesting. The sudos are mostly for aptitutde I think, either that or editing files. ls/cd because I like navigating directory by directory. I ssh to servers quite often (Dagr, iServer, BlueServer, wServer, Thor). Exit is an interesting one. I guess that my history doesn’t get saved like it should be, mainly because I use a lot of tabs in konsole. I was testing out git recently, I actually don’t use it. I’ve been having troubles with my mediacom internet, hence the ping. Scp and move… well I guess I like to move things around. And make, of course =).