IT-University in Kista

From today on, I don't have lectures at the KTH Main Campus anymore. My new "home" is the IT-University in Kista, which is a collaboration of KTH and Stockholm's University.

Kista is a borough in the north of Stockholm. It calls itself "Science City" and it is said to be the Silicon Valley of Sweden.

I attend the course Advanced Issues in Object Orientation, which seems to be a really hard and interesting class. So, from today on you can call me a Smalltalk programmer. If you want to get an impression of the main course lecturer Tobias, have a look on his personal website (he has some pretty interesting stuff there).

Of course my Swedish language course is still in the fantastic old buildings of the KTH at Valhallavägen

A Child-friendly Place

One example for the child-friendliness of the Swedish society can be found in the Cathedral of Uppsala (the largest church building in Scandinavia). As you can see on the photo it has a "playground" for children in one of its side chapels:

Autumn Leaves Cause Train Delays

Everyone who depends on commuter trains knows this situation: It's autumn, it's raining and the train is late or even cancelled. Most of the time the excuse is: "There are leaves on the rails".

Of course the same problem also exists here in Stockholm. The pendeltåg was often late during the last days and amongst other things leaves on the rails where the problem. There was an article about the delays in commuter traffic in Wednesday's Metro:

According to the article the problem occurs when a huge mass of wet leaves heaps up near and on the rails. The rails get very slippery and the wheels of the train begin to skid on the leaves. When the wheels gets back onto clean rails after that, they keep skidding on the steel rail. One can easily imagine what happens. Anyway, the wheels have to be repaired. And that's why there are so many late trains.

For some reason Banverket (who is responsible for the rails) doesn't clean the rails (it is not clearly stated why). So one has to live with late trains in autumn.

Stereo Perception and Sound Localisation

The first study period and the first examinations are over. Now it's time to present the results of my work to the rest of the world.

I will start with one of the lab assignments we had to do for the course Sound Perception (I worked with a fellow exchange student from Brunswick):

Our task was to "present an interesting and non-trivial psycho-acoustical phenomenon, to create sound examples, to document how the sounds were generated and to provide a correct explanation of the phenomenon". The results of our work should be presented on a "simple, informative and elegant web-page".

And here it is: Stereo Perception and Sound Localisation

No Privacy Concerns

Computer Science students here at the KTH don't seem to have much privacy concerns:

Felix told me about a "nice" service called Webdatan which one of the students provides on his website. It's purpose is to be able to check if there are free computers in NADA's computer labs. This alone would be no problem, but Webdatan also visualises who is logged in into which workstation at the moment.

The user can choose a room (e.g. karmosin) and the program returns a plan of the room and a list of the computers which are used together with the login name and the real name of the current user (sometimes you can even get a photo if you click on the real name).

Webdatan is also officially supported by the Datasektion: They link to it on the front page of their website.

My two cents on this: That's Sweden. Nobody would consider this service harmful.

Poor Boy

My flatmate Matthias has observed that the paperboy is bringing my newspaper at quarter past four in the morning – seven days a week. I am really sorry for him that he has to come up to the 14th floor at such a time.

It's Getting Cold

I just wrote about autumn and now it is already winter? At least yesterday night's temperature frightened me a bit.

And I already saw some frozen puddles on my way home. And by the way, of course it gets dark early, too.

A Cosy Restaurant

What do you think: Why aren't there more customers in the Mongolian Barbecue restaurant in Drottninggatan?

One small hint: I took this photos in the beginning of October, so it is not the weather/temperature which holds the customers away.

GEZ in Sweden

Of course there is a Swedish television license collection agency like the GEZ in Germany. But their methods are even further developed as you can see in this comic strip from yesterday's Dagens Nyheter.

I also prepared an English version for those of you who don't speak Swedish.

Hendrik in Stockholm Unreachable

You may have noticed some problems with this website during the last days. On Saturday the server was not reachable for some hours (at least four), the same on Wednesday and the whole Friday. I asked my ISP for an explanation and got an answer on Friday morning:

Nach Absprache mit den Technikern unseres Netzwerkpartners haben wir aufgrund der aktuellen und ungewissen technischen Problematik dort sehr kurzfristig entschieden, alle Server vom derzeitigen Rechenzentrum in Chicago in das hochmoderne Rechenzentrum in Connecticut umzusiedeln. Die Server werden von einer Spezialfirma dorthin transportiert und sind bereits auf dem Weg. Obschon mit diesem Schritt leider unvermeidlich weitere Ausfallzeiten bedingt durch den Transport verbunden sind, ist dies nach Abwägung aller Alternativen die schnellste und zuverlässigste Lösung, auch im Hinblick auf die Zukunft.

Das neue Datacenter zählt zu den modernsten und sichersten und verfügt über redundante hochperformante, breitbandige Anbindungen an vier der größten internationalen Internet- Backbones (MCI/UU.NET, Level3, SBC und Global Crossing). Nach Wieder-Inbetriebnahme der Server am neuen Standort wird sich dies für Ihre Domain(s) vor allem durch merklich schnellere Verbindungen als bisher auszeichnen (flüssigerer Email-, FTP- und Web-Zugriff etc.).

Die Server werden aber leider heute noch nicht wieder erreichbar werden. [...]

So my server has moved nearly 1 500 kilometres (according to Google Maps) from the north-central to the east coast of the USA and my (in other respect really excellent) ISP hasn't considered it necessary to inform me about it before the server was already on the road. What shall I make of that?

Stockholm in Autumn

The autumn here in Stockholm is really beautiful. The leaves on the trees and on the ground are very colourful and the weather is just great: It is foggy in the mornings and there are no clouds in the evenings (which guarantees spectacular sunsets directly in front of my window every day).

To share some of these impressions I took photos and set up a Stockholm in Autumn photo page.

For those of you who still remember my promise from August 19th: The photo page includes three images with a view from my window that does not contain the power plant but the wonderful landscape around Flemingsberg (Photo 14, 15, 16).

Sudoku Madness

I have just scanned the Slashdot headlines and today's Ask Slashdot topic "[What Are] Your Favorite Math/Logic Riddles?" seemed fishy to me at first glance.

I was right. The first comment is about Sudoku. What else? But at least there is one person who doesn't do Sudokus by himself, he uses a self written program for that.

Time Goes By

I can't believe it! The first study period at KTH is already over!

Yesterday was my last lesson in Ljudperception (Sound Perception) and today I attended the last session of the course Språkteknologi (Language Engineering).

But don't worry about me being bored: There will be two written exams (lasting 4 hours each) in the next two weeks. Furthermore I will have to write a report about a small piece of software I wrote for the Språkteknologi course (more on that later).

Good News, Everyone

I thought it would be clever not to read the gratis newspapers (Metro, Stockholm City) when commuting to university. Thus I have subscribed to Sweden's biggest daily newspaper "Dagens Nyheter." (DN). Which is not expensive as students get home delivery for only 350 SEK per quarter (about 37.50 EUR).

According to Wikipedia (German version) DN's political orientation is similar to the SZ's. This is an extract from their self-description:

DN är oberoende, står fri från partier, organisationer och ekonomiska maktsfärer. DN:s politiska hållning är liberal. Tidningen redigeras i liberal och frisinnad anda. ... [1, 2]

Today I got my first issue. The layout and the whole newspaper makes a good impression, although it is in tabloid format (so it's impossible to hide behind it).

The editorial article warns the Swedes against a big coalition like that which is going to be established in Germany, it is said to be an emergency solution and not a state of perfection as many people think. Then the article discusses the advantages of positive parliamentarism, where the chancellor must be elected by the parliament. In Sweden it is sufficient, if the parliament just tolerates the premier minister. [3] Unfortunately I have also discovered the daily Sudoku puzzle already.

[1] Om tidningen on DN.se (2005-10-12)
[2] English translation:

DN is independent, not related to parties, organisations and economical influences. DN's political orientation is liberal. The newspaper is edited in a liberal and-open minded spirit. ...

[3] I väntan på en stor koalition on DN.se (2005-10-13)

Queuing for Chocolate

Saturday, October 8, 2005, quarter to one. A nice day to visit Stockholm's green island Djurgården. But what's that? Why are there so many people queuing in front of the boring Nordiska museet?

To satisfy my curiosity I asked someone in the queue. "Idag är den stora chokladfestivalen." So they were just queuing for free chocolate. The Swedes are like the Germans: If there is something for free, they take it.

Of course three hours later, the queue was still there ...

Two Peculiar Posters

Right from the beginning my flat had two very special pieces of "furniture". One poster on the door to my room (left picture) and one on the door to the room of my flatmate Matthias (right picture).

Sometimes visitors raise questions about this posters. What is their purpose? What do they express? Why (for Gods sake) are they still on your doors? Usually our answer is: "We don't know."

During our Sunday dinner meeting this evening, we argued about these posters. The left one could be a flower, a cloud or a tree viewed from above. The right one might show an exhaust or (attention: very far-fetched) it could be a map to a treasure here in Flemingsberg (white box = our house, the other white object = a tree, the red marking = here's the treasure).

In the end we agreed on one thing: These posters belong together and any reasonable interpretation must cover both of them.

What do you think? Have you got an idea? I know that some of you are working in creative domains, so please use your imagination (I am counting on you).

The Harsh Reality of Flemingsberg

When I came home yesterday night, I saw a new note attached to the elevators ...

I've been thinking that Flemingsberg is not as "dangerous" as it looks like, but perhaps I have been too green to see the harsh reality.

At least the burglars broke into the basement only and I'm quite confident that they will not break into my flat: As you already know just one of the three elevators goes to the 14th floor - so the chance is only 1/3 that they notice that there actually is a 14th floor. Or is this naive again?

Currently on iTunes:

Crispbread Is Out of Fashion

Since three weeks I have been having cereals (AXA banan müsli) with apple pieces (Golden Delicious), dried coconut pulp pieces (from the Hötorget Market Hall) and fresh Swedish milk (Arla Standardmjölk) for breakfast.

Crispbread for breakfast is not fashionable anymore (at least at the moment).

Tunnelbana Map on Your iPod

While surfing the net yesterday, I discovered William Bright's website "iPod Subway Maps". Unfortunately the site was lacking a map for Stockholm's tunnelbana, so I sent him an email and requested one.

But it's usually faster to do it yourself, so I googled for an appropriate map [PDF] and cut it into pieces of 220 x 176 pixels with an overlap of 10 pixels. As you can see on the photo I have already put it on my iPod and it works great.

If you have got an iPod Color and want to use the map: download this tar.gzip file (if you use Mac OS X) or this zip file (if you use Windows).

Of course I will also submit the map to William Bright's website. I'll keep you updated on this topic.

[Update]

Browsing SL's website yesterday evening, I found a better map [PDF] than the one I used first. In addition to the three tunnelbana lines it features Pendeltåg, Lidingöbanan, Nockebybanan, Saltsjöbanan, Tvärbanan and Roslagsbanan, too. I have already converted it for the iPod and adapted the links above.

Spending Time on Sudoku

Lots of Swedes spend (waste?) their time in the public transport on solving Sudokus. According to Wikipedia a Sudoku puzzle consists of ...

... a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called "regions"). Some cells already contain numbers, known as "givens". The goal is to fill in the empty cells, one number in each, so that each column, row, and region contains the numbers 1–9 exactly once. [...]. [1].

You can find these kind of puzzles in many daily newspapers[2] and some people even buy books containing nothing else than Sudokus.

However, as an explorer of the Swedish culture it is naturally that I did one of those Sudokus, too. But I must admit that I prefer to read a good book or the newspaper when travelling with the public transport.

Sudoku from Stockholm City, Wednesday 2005-09-28, page 40. Click on the image to get the solution.

[1] Sudoku on Wikipedia (2005-10-01)
[2] Newspapers featuring Sudoku on Wikipedia (2005-10-01)