For once I actually remember what I dreamt this night, and it was weird... First I was participating in some sort of competition. I think it was an extreme version of Mästarnas Mästare that had taken place on the north pole. The last competition consisted of running from the house up a hill to a flag, some 700 meters, whithout our outdoors clothes.
Then it was time to go home and we had to hurry, because if the ice melted we would be stranded on a tiny island. We got off the ice and down to a coast or something. It looked a bit like an archipelago. We were using dog sleighs but the snow was melting so quickly we had to abbandon them and start walking.
We managed to get past a river or two but then we were stuck in a valley, where we found an american spaceship, neatly landed against a cliff. We were talking about finding shealter for the night when the spaceship activated and opened up the cockpit. In order to get to the cockpit we had to climb and jump and swing up a small shaft in the cliff, Tomb Raider style. When we got to the top we found a button and people screamed at me not to push it, who knew what might happen!? I pushed it anyway and the spaceship slowly tipped over. It didn't fall, just slowly layed down. I laughed at my astonished companions and told them that it would be silly to booby trap the cockpit of a spaceship.
We started arguing whether we should stay where we were or continue. I requested we continued, not because I was afraid of an americen air-strike (as the others), but because I had remembered that we were not too far from where my grand parents had their summer house, and the main road could only be a few kilometers away. But first I wanted to examine the spaceship. The others continued to argue while I went to have alook at the spaceship. The first thing I found was a few dollar-bills nailed to a board. The top bill had something written on it. For some reason I thought it was important to photograph everything. I did so with my cellphone. I was just about to decend into the spaceship when a satelite crashed down right next to the spaceship.
And then I woke up.
Monday, 30 March 2009
Monday, 23 March 2009
A grey filter
Hmm... Lately I have been in a very critical state of mind. I am constantly disappointed in people, because I look at them and I only notice their flaws. And I find myself despising their weakness. It makes me realise that they are not as awesome as I once thought, and that makes me sad. I find myself idolising the few people I still haven't found any flaws in. Probably because I don't know them well enough. Then I look at myself and I see my own flaws. They are many. I despise them.
Friday, 13 March 2009
Thursday afternoon
Oops... I did it again. Long story short: Three course dinner with four drinks for 50 kr, and after two glasses of wine they ran out of the small size (of the glasses)... On top of that one of my friends decided to give me her last glass of wine... So, yeah - I'm pretty wasted. Anyways, the theme was Smurfs. Pretty weird. But it was priceless to see the boys doing the ketchup song dance in white tights...
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Life at Locus
Life in the corridor is becoming increasingly interesting. At friday I spent an hour or so discussing Iranians with an Iranian, and he pretty much confirmed the image that Swedish media conveys, with a few differences. First of all, this particular person really don't like immigrants, especially if they're from Africa. He would not give me any details but he kept refering to some really horrible things that they have done. Also, he seems to glorify aryans. Apparently the people in northern Iran look like westerners, and he resents the arabs for coming to Persia and interminlge with the aryans and thus distorting their looks.
On Saturday the kitchen was full of people, mostly whom I have never seen before. They were having French breakfast (brunch). And a few minutes ago a German knocked on my door, asking for the difference in pronunciation of the Swedish word for the duck (anden) and the spirit (anden)... Anyway, this place would serve very well as a trainingcamp for language students. You have people speaking German, Italian, French, Persian, Finish and Chinese. And that's in my corridor.
On Saturday the kitchen was full of people, mostly whom I have never seen before. They were having French breakfast (brunch). And a few minutes ago a German knocked on my door, asking for the difference in pronunciation of the Swedish word for the duck (anden) and the spirit (anden)... Anyway, this place would serve very well as a trainingcamp for language students. You have people speaking German, Italian, French, Persian, Finish and Chinese. And that's in my corridor.
Saturday, 14 February 2009
The Future of Personal Transportation
Living in a country as sparsely populated as Sweden and on top of that in the country-side, cars are pretty much necessary. Obviously, I could get by riding a bike and taking the train for longer trips - if I want to spend 4 hours per day just on transportation and waiting for trains. Despite being utterly bored most of the time I am quite fond of my spare time, and if I could afford it I would have a car.
Now, setting global warming aside, the single most important reason to not drive a car is the bloody fuel prize. Even if I won a car I wouldn't be able to keep it because I couldn't afford to fill up the tank once a month. Sweden is, I'm sorry to admit, more than a bit backwards. Yes, we have lots of water-power and a bit of wind-power and we use much less energy per capita than most industrialised countries - but let's face it: we drive around in 10-15 year old wrecks. And there really aren't any incentives to buy a new, fuel-efficient car. You pay the same road tax if you drive an ancient Volvo as if you were driving a brand new VW, and for most people the difference in price pretty much adds up to the difference in fuel costs.
So, driving an electric car would be a huge money saver. In Oslo, the government is building parking spaces reserved for electric cars - and they offer the electricity you need to charge your car for free. On top of that you're allowed to drive in the collective traffic field, cutting roughly 35 minutes off a 60 minute drive. Under those circumstances there is absolutely no reason why anybody shouldn't drive an electric car. Except for one thing...
Would you want to drive around in a thing that looks like that? I mean, come on! It looks like someone stole it from a children's ride at an amusement park. But there are actually electric cars that look good and are fun to drive, like this one, for example.
It's called Tesla and it actually outruns its petrol engined counterpart in a drag race. Small wonder, since petrol engines have an efficiency around 33%, and electric cars are at about 95%, and generally a better torque. The only problem is that the batteries runs out after about 89 kilometres of (admittedly reckless) driving. But it is after all a sports car, and what's the point of driving a sports car at 90 km/h?
Modern electric car batteries are basically a thousand or so laptop batteries stacked together and, for a car like the Tesla, weigh some 500 kg. That's why electric cars look like toys. A professor at KTH says that batteries can become 2-3 times better than they are today, but not much more. For them to get 100 or even 10 times better the technique would have to be developed in away that involves a Noble prize.
The solution seems to be a system for continuous charging, and putting up electrically charged nets over every road and sticking huge antennas on each car is not a viable option. Obviously electric cars use dynamos and even utilize the energy from braking, but that is only a fraction of the amount that the car uses. But there is, today, as we speak (figuratively) a serial produced hydrogen car. It's the Honda Clarity.
It looks like any other family car. But it runs on hydrogen. Small recap: hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth, by far. The car generates electricity by reacting hydrogen with water, and the only product is good old H2O. The only place in the world where you can drive this car is in Los Angeles (hardly surprising, which is also ironic, but that is not relevant) since that's the only place where you can buy hydrogen at gas stations. The hydrogen costs about the same as petrol, and since USA have virtually no fuel tax a rough conclusion is that despite the fact that hydrogen is hard to refine, the process is no more expensive than the process of producing petrol.
But, theoretically, there is another option. Based on my massive Physics HL knowledge of Faraday's Law I've concluded that electric cars could also be "fuelled" by induction. The road would be an electromagnetic field and cars, well - they are supposed to be moving! And just imagine how awesome it would be to describe your car with a work like "flux".
Now, setting global warming aside, the single most important reason to not drive a car is the bloody fuel prize. Even if I won a car I wouldn't be able to keep it because I couldn't afford to fill up the tank once a month. Sweden is, I'm sorry to admit, more than a bit backwards. Yes, we have lots of water-power and a bit of wind-power and we use much less energy per capita than most industrialised countries - but let's face it: we drive around in 10-15 year old wrecks. And there really aren't any incentives to buy a new, fuel-efficient car. You pay the same road tax if you drive an ancient Volvo as if you were driving a brand new VW, and for most people the difference in price pretty much adds up to the difference in fuel costs.
So, driving an electric car would be a huge money saver. In Oslo, the government is building parking spaces reserved for electric cars - and they offer the electricity you need to charge your car for free. On top of that you're allowed to drive in the collective traffic field, cutting roughly 35 minutes off a 60 minute drive. Under those circumstances there is absolutely no reason why anybody shouldn't drive an electric car. Except for one thing...
Would you want to drive around in a thing that looks like that? I mean, come on! It looks like someone stole it from a children's ride at an amusement park. But there are actually electric cars that look good and are fun to drive, like this one, for example.
It's called Tesla and it actually outruns its petrol engined counterpart in a drag race. Small wonder, since petrol engines have an efficiency around 33%, and electric cars are at about 95%, and generally a better torque. The only problem is that the batteries runs out after about 89 kilometres of (admittedly reckless) driving. But it is after all a sports car, and what's the point of driving a sports car at 90 km/h?
Modern electric car batteries are basically a thousand or so laptop batteries stacked together and, for a car like the Tesla, weigh some 500 kg. That's why electric cars look like toys. A professor at KTH says that batteries can become 2-3 times better than they are today, but not much more. For them to get 100 or even 10 times better the technique would have to be developed in away that involves a Noble prize.
The solution seems to be a system for continuous charging, and putting up electrically charged nets over every road and sticking huge antennas on each car is not a viable option. Obviously electric cars use dynamos and even utilize the energy from braking, but that is only a fraction of the amount that the car uses. But there is, today, as we speak (figuratively) a serial produced hydrogen car. It's the Honda Clarity.
It looks like any other family car. But it runs on hydrogen. Small recap: hydrogen is the most abundant element on earth, by far. The car generates electricity by reacting hydrogen with water, and the only product is good old H2O. The only place in the world where you can drive this car is in Los Angeles (hardly surprising, which is also ironic, but that is not relevant) since that's the only place where you can buy hydrogen at gas stations. The hydrogen costs about the same as petrol, and since USA have virtually no fuel tax a rough conclusion is that despite the fact that hydrogen is hard to refine, the process is no more expensive than the process of producing petrol.
But, theoretically, there is another option. Based on my massive Physics HL knowledge of Faraday's Law I've concluded that electric cars could also be "fuelled" by induction. The road would be an electromagnetic field and cars, well - they are supposed to be moving! And just imagine how awesome it would be to describe your car with a work like "flux".
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Tuesday afternoon
Yesterday was an interesting day. A couple of girls from school had asked me if I wanted to help arrange an event at the student union. At first I hesitated, but then they mentioned that the union would give us pizza and cider or beer. This along with a price reduction for an upcoming event made me change my mind. I am now part of the entertainment group for the Gentlemen's Dinner '09.
My two friends had initially intended to attend a yoga pass at the gym after the meeting, but after two ciders they had changed their mind. Instead we went to Willy's and bought a bottle of sprite and a few power drinks. Can you see where this is headed?
Then we went to one of them, who conveniently enough lives right next doors to me, and started a spontaneous Tuesday evening party. There were four of us, and eventually they managed to bully and nag a guy to join in. Right about then someone (can't remember who) got the brilliant idea that this would be an excellent idea to utilize the sauna. So we grabbed a few beers and sat ourselves in one of the two saunas we have in the building. After about an hour we decided to really go full out and take a dive in the snow outside. I imagine the internationals who were watching a movie in the common area were a bit surprised when four girls and a boy in swimwear came running down the stairs and out in the snow, screaming in a suitably girly we-are-drunk-and-the-snow-is-freezing way...
At about 2:30 we packed up and went back upstairs. All in all it was a successful party. And for once I got up in time today (9:40) and spent about four hours looking for and applying to jobs for the summer. Now I am far too tired to study, and I am out of Bones episodes to watch. I wonder what I'm gonna do...
My two friends had initially intended to attend a yoga pass at the gym after the meeting, but after two ciders they had changed their mind. Instead we went to Willy's and bought a bottle of sprite and a few power drinks. Can you see where this is headed?
Then we went to one of them, who conveniently enough lives right next doors to me, and started a spontaneous Tuesday evening party. There were four of us, and eventually they managed to bully and nag a guy to join in. Right about then someone (can't remember who) got the brilliant idea that this would be an excellent idea to utilize the sauna. So we grabbed a few beers and sat ourselves in one of the two saunas we have in the building. After about an hour we decided to really go full out and take a dive in the snow outside. I imagine the internationals who were watching a movie in the common area were a bit surprised when four girls and a boy in swimwear came running down the stairs and out in the snow, screaming in a suitably girly we-are-drunk-and-the-snow-is-freezing way...
At about 2:30 we packed up and went back upstairs. All in all it was a successful party. And for once I got up in time today (9:40) and spent about four hours looking for and applying to jobs for the summer. Now I am far too tired to study, and I am out of Bones episodes to watch. I wonder what I'm gonna do...
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