Hendrik in Stockholm

No Postcards Anymore

2005-12-18T12:19:00.000+01:00

Please don't send letters or postcards to my address in Stockholm anymore. It's very likely that I move out before they arrive and won't receive them at all.

Of course letters and postcards are very welcome at my "new" address:

Hendrik Buschmeier
Oberer Steinbrink 8
32657 Lemgo
Germany

It's Time to Go Home

2005-12-18T11:20:00.003+01:00

As the autumn term at KTH is over and my work here in Stockholm is mostly finished (there is only some paperwork left), it's time for me to return to Germany.

My girlfriend is coming over today and we'll spend the next days going Christmas shopping, strolling around the city and visiting the Alundaälgen in Stockholm's Historiska museet.

All in all, it was a fantastic time here in Stockholm. I met gazillions of brilliant people, had two excellent computer science courses, lots of fun and a hell of lot of work to do. It was a really really good experience.

By the way, don't delete this weblog's feed from your news-aggregator yet—I've still got some articles in the pipeline (e.g. the inofficial Flemingsberg FAQs, an article about the Swedish language, some results of course assignments and a comprehensive and extensive after-action report).

Update February 2008:
As you may have noticed by now, the announcement above was a bit short-sighted. I haven't had the time to write the articles. I'm sorry!

Another Child-Friendly Place

2005-12-13T13:50:00.000+01:00

The cinema Sture, known as "Stockholms finaste premierbiograf," has a special offering for parents with small children. At 11 o'clock in the morning you can watch a film and bring you baby with you. They have a reduced price and it is not totally dark in the auditorium.

This might be another reason why the birth rate in Sweden is higher than in Germany and most other countries of the European Union.

I have covered Swedish child-friendlyness earlier.

My Residence Permit

2005-12-12T13:30:00.000+01:00

Today—10 days before I leave this country—I finally got my "certificate of residence permit". It is a plastic card which states:

"My name is Hendrik Buschmeier and I am allowed to stay here in Sweden until the 31st of December 2005".

I think that was good and fast work of Migrationsverket.

Swedish Campground

2005-12-03T20:05:00.000+01:00

Have you ever asked yourself what the meaning of the peculiar symbol on the command key of you Mac keyboard is? Several weeks ago I saw it on a sign near Uppsala's Castle (unfortunately I forgot to take a photo) and was even more confused.

Today I found the answer. It is the Swedish sign for a place worth visiting (sv: en sevärdhet). The website folklore.org, which publishes "anecdotes about the development of Apple's original Macintosh computer, and the people who created it", ran a story about the so called "Swedish Campground."

Christmas Lights

2005-11-27T14:20:00.000+01:00

Right on time for the first advent someone put up Christmas lights on the oil tank of the power plant.

Alcohol in Sweden

2005-11-23T22:47:00.000+01:00

The Swedes (or at least the Swedish government) have a quite peculiar attitude towards alcohol. Alcoholic beverages (with more than 3.5 ‰ of alcohol) are only sold in special state-owned shops called Systembolaget (and of course in Pubs/Restaurants with a special license).

Although this is very annoying if you are not used to it, most of the Swedes think it's a good thing (the others go on boat trips to the Baltic states, Finland or Denmark where alcohol is much cheaper). In fact, the alcohol monopoly has a long tradition in Sweden.

This year the Systembolaget turned 50 years old and therefore an open letter was written to José Manuel Barroso (the President of the European Commission), which was published in several European newspapers.

Additionally the Systembolaget created a short and funny movie where the Swedish system is explained (and propagated).

I recommend watching this movie as it makes many things much clearer.

Common Misuse of Train Furniture

2005-11-23T12:49:00.000+01:00

The following photo shows a handle bar in the pendeltåg. Once, its original purpose was to grab hold on it.

Now, Stockholm's commuters have converted these handle bars into a "storage" for newspapers.

This misuse is so common that nobody seems to think of these handles as handles anymore. I make a case that there are even some (younger) people who don't know that the original purpose of these handles has been something else than hanging up a newspaper.

This should perhaps be analysed by some sociologists: "Creating new products by misusing existing ones"

Yesterday, Ten Past Three

2005-11-20T13:36:00.000+01:00

It's time to switch on the lights ...

Dreaming in Flemingsberg

2005-11-14T16:18:00.000+01:00

People living in this house still have dreams—although sometimes very different ones.

The mail slot of a guy who lives on the thirteenth floor has a sticker with the text "Endast Ferrari reklam" ("Ferrari advertisement only").

Whereas the sticker on our mail slot says: "Ingen reklam, tack! Men gärna IKEA katalogen." ("No advertisement please, but IKEA catalogues are welcome.")

Another dream (shared by most of the exchange students) is "moving to Lappis as fast as possible".

Thanks for the Enlightenment

2005-11-03T14:17:00.000+01:00

I just got an email from my international coordinator Torkel Werge in which he called the exchange students on to hand in their study plan for the spring term (this request doesn't apply to me as I will already be back in Germany at Christmas).

But apart from that he also wrote us the following enlightening sentence:

Some of you may have noticed it is dark outside when you get up in the morning. It is quite normal. It should be like that.

A Very Special Crispbread

2005-11-01T13:59:00.000+01:00

Brungräddat, a Wasa Rundbröd, is 28 cm in diameters and very crunchy. The downside of it is that it crumbles a lot when it is broken into pieces.

IT-University in Kista

2005-10-31T22:19:00.000+01:00

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

2005-10-30T15:01:00.000+01:00

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

2005-10-28T16:08:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-27T17:01:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-26T16:02:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-25T15:54:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-25T11:45:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-23T14:39:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-22T15:58:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-22T01:26:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-17T21:48:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-16T10:29:00.000+02:00

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

2005-10-14T22:30:00.000+02:00

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).