knobs and knockers

Gordon the painter did a great job whilst I was trekking in Scandinavia. I'd asked that the doorhandles and some switchplates were left off because they were to be replaced. No problem to find the new silver ones but the powerdrill and electric screwdriver had disappeared into the bowels of the garage. So do it manually with an old fashioned screwdriver? No! rashbre central demands electronics for such matters.

This allows a good demonstration of Newton's Fifth Law; "Anything requiring 'do it yourself skills' requires an equal and opposite amount of futile trips to the stores."

So the original door handles, switches and electrical sockets to be replaced all required some form of substitution because of depth or dimension problems. They say a bad worker blames the tools, but in this case there were strange shaped screw heads needing obscure allan keys and all manner of minor obstacle to turn a two hour task into a two day endurance test.

I won't blame the tools, but more the concept of trying to do this seemingly minor task in a small amount of time.

We are now all shiny and happy, however.

old bull

Generally speaking, Irish bars seem to outnumber British pubs during travels abroad (maybe except in some parts of Costa del Sol).

So I was amused to see this hostelry lurking in Sweden, with a typically ironic name, which whilst sounding plausible, is usually a term for 'nonsense' or 'telling lies'.

Although when I glanced into the relatively modern English slang dictionary, the phrase didn't seem to be mentioned.

internet sparks

I've swapped internet providers!

Something not usually for the faint of heart, what with the need to get MAC codes and all. I arranged for the swap to be done whilst I was on vacation, with a view to giving enough lead time for the new arrangements to be made and then a day for the new codes to be delivered when I returned.

And everything actually went to plan.

The old service was still working the day I returned and then at 23:00 (late enough) it stopped working.

Today, the new gadgets arrived, along with the codes needed to activate the service. I keyed in the new codes to my existing setup and zippee the whole thing has started working as before, but twice as fast and at around 60% of the old cost. Well worth the crossed fingers.

Lund

Back in the UK now, and half way through unpacking my bags from the little jaunt around Scandinavia. I seem to have a rather large collection of photos and some video footage too, and this may take a little while to sift, what with work, domestic catch-up and all.

The picture today is from Lund, which is a University town in Sweden, with a student population of around 40,000 - quite a high number for a country whose total population is only seven million. Lund is in the southern part of Sweden, which has seen ownership fluctuate between Sweden and Denmark over the centuries. There's also a good and well-preserved old town section and the click through should take you to my small photoset.

powershot G7

Dear Canon,

I like your G7 Powershot camera and took one on vacation.

It is reassuringly well built and has many adjustments on it to make it both a simple point and shoot and also a highly customisable camera which can take quite clever photographs.

I wanted to see whether I could take a small camcorder and a small camera that together could take a wide range of shots yet fit into a tiny bag.

The camera has a more or less instantaneous shutter release when the button is pressed, rather than that lag that some cameras still have nowadays. Its quite heavy and has attractive styling reminiscent of a retro 35mm rangefinder.

The thing is, the wide angle of the lens isn’t quite wide enough for this to be the all-purpose pocketable camera. I know there is a bulky attachment to improve the wide angle, but I think it would be better to move the wideangle end of the lens down to something more like 28mm (equivalent) rather than extoll the virtues of a really long zoom range. I know zooms sell (like the camcorders with the impossible to hold 2000 times zooms). But let’s be practical. The sort of person that wants something like a G7 would probably like to be able to take pictures indoors and get in most of the action.

So when you release an update, bring the wide angle down a few more degrees without needing to add oodles of further zoom.

satellite

Before this journey, I updated the satellite navigation DVD in the car. It covers the whole of europe to street level and I suppose a few things had changed since I put the last one in about two years ago. It will be refreshing to have the whole of the M6 toll road now recognised instead of a section described alarmingly as 'off road'.

But what has also changed is the way certain things get described by the voice commentary in the latest version. The lady's voice now also says 'go straight ahead at the roundabout' as well as things like 'take the third exit on the left' which is a pleasing surprise, even more so with complicated instructions which do seem clearer. I've also found that deliberately ignoring an instruction and taking a different route is now rewarded with far less 'make a U turn where possible' and much better adaptation to the new route.

I do still take a paper road atlas too, though.

sounds of the city

There's something quite reassuring about living in the centre of a town. For a while I lived at the junction in the centre of a small town with a church with loud bells, a couple of noisy pubs (Bierbrunnen, in particular) - a Wienerwald restaurant and a cinema that also showed late night Turkish movies. The road junction had interesting traffic light sequences and was on a hill and if it snowed then cars would struggle, rev noisily and slither sideways and the pubs, cafes and cinema meant there was a reasonable amount of late night noise.

So tonight, here in Gothenburg, I feel quite reassured, in a well-established hotel which looks out onto a main thoroughfare with the same type of evening sounds. I've already been for a delightful candlelit meal in the nearby Kellaren and have been spending a few minutes watching the world go by. It may be past 10p.m. but its still good daylight here and it looks as if there will be a few parties before the sun starts to wake again at around 3 a.m.

dropping a columbian

Sometimes the only hit that will do is strong columbian.

We're talking Magnum here. Thats the ice cream known in UK as Wall's and here in Scandinavia as GB Glace. Pro capita ice cream consumption in Scandinavian countries is amongst the highest globally, and Sweden is only second to Finland for coffee consumption per head. So a magnum opus of ice cream and columbian coffee with crunchy bits and chocolate hits the wuzzometer pretty hard.

The only problem is the consistent Magnum moment, which affects most consumption.

Picture this; the wrapper is off, you've crunched through the top still slightly frozen chocolate, applauded the crunchy sub strata, tasted the top mouthful of ice cream and are just breaking into the swirly bit.

Then it happens; a segment about the size of half a watch strap falls from the lower corner, grazes clothing enough to indicate the presence of chocolate and falls to the ground.

The dilemma. Its a big enough piece of the experience to warrant a rescue operation...Does the rule of three apply (you know, if its on the floor for less than three seconds its still retrievable). Who is looking? What does the floor look like? Is there really enough to go around without that piece. But why o why does it always happen.

We should be told.

Norwegian wood

Across the border today from Sweden into Norway. The crinkly bits of countryside were immediately visible. Norwegian scenery only does 'eleven'. Every twist and turn is something that makes you want to say 'whoa!'. So I'm not sure about "isn't it good, Norwegian wood?", but I know that Norwegian scenery is just great.

An idle sub project of visiting Sweden was to do some elk and reindeer spotting. Here in Norway its "What kind would you like? I'll just arrange for them to walk in front of you." The northern nights stay light even later than where I'd been in Sweden, so the Beatle's story about talking till two has a lot of truth.

sundborn

Amongst today's travels was a stopover in Sundborn, which was the home of the famous Swedish painter named Carl Larsson. The guide books tell you to look at the Swedish design of the house, which used contemporary ideas from other parts of Europe, but created a style which is now a characteristic of 'traditional' Swedish. I found the house more appealing because of the way the family life had been portrayed there.

Described as small, for its day I suspect it was quite a well-off middle class property although it did eventually have to house Carl, his wife Karin (also a painter and later a designer) and their six children.

My trip around the house was with a chatty Swedish guide - in Swedish, so I had to guess most of what was being said, but overall I found the place quite endearing and with a reasonable amount of wry humour from Carl Larsson in the way the place was decorated.

This house has now become one of the most famous artist's homes in the world and shows the development of his paintings using the colour reproduction technology of the day (circa 1890-1910).

There are conventional paintings in oil and watercolour and also what must be some of the fore-runners of the modern day cartoon, not as actual cartoons, but using styles we would all recognise today. I gather he did also produce some sequential stories in this form although I have not seen them. At the end of the tour are a large collection of paintings and drawings including a wall fresco, more paintings of his family as well as what looks like a life-size Will Young in *ahem* just a cap going for a stroll in the woods (I was told to put that last piece in).

Something that comes across strongly is Larsson's love for his family and the many and enjoyable ways they are depicted as well as the sheer volume of his output, not just in paintings, but also as wall frescos, such that hardly a portion of the home is untouched.

tags technorati : rashbre sweden carl larsson will young art

shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages and kings

It's really too difficult to blog about even a day trip to a capital city and to incorporate more than a scratch of what one has seen and learned. I've taken photographs and a short video as a way to help jog my own mind about this, but for anyone trying to get more than a glint of the coverage it would be a challenge.

Take shoes: alongside the usual trainers and athletic walking boots storming the pavements, there's a preponderance of clog like shoes too. I looked in a shoe shop and they are actually called - clogs. Different from the dutch wooden clogs sold as souvenirs, these are a hybrid between flip-flops and a clog like appearance - multi coloured and sometimes decorated.

And ships: there's the Tall Ship event in Stockholm this coming weekend and the city is in preparation. There are already people walking around with 'Tall Ships 2007' lanyards around their necks - I assume they must be organizers. I've been out on the water today, along to the home of the King at Drottningholm - which is a few kilometres through the archipelagos and the site of a rather splendid palace and grounds.

The Kings and Queens of Sweden have had a tumultuous past, with a kind of partial acceptance of the role by the government and people in what is technically a constitutional monarchy. In the past, there have been times when govenment forged the assent of the royals to the legislation of the day.

SInce despotic King Gustav the Third built a superb theatre in the grounds of the palace but was finally assasinated for wasting money back in the 18th Century, through to the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986, there has been a sometimes bumpy ride for leaders in Sweden.

All seems to be in balance now, although we mustn't forget the murder of the Swedish foreign minister - Anna Lindh - once tipped to be the next prime minister, back in 2003, but stabbed to death in a famous department store in central Stockholm.

Stockholm

Stockholm feels as a city that it should have a larger population than the estimated 750,000. It is spread over about 14 islands and has a series of interconnecting bridges between areas which can look distinctly different from the old town of preserved buildings, to the relative modernity of a large mainly glass culture centre in another area. There's also a lot of below street level walk-ways which are a way to provide protection in the cold of Winter. Parts of the sea and rivers freeze at that time.

But right now, Sweden is out in force, shopping and wandering through the lanes and alleys of the town, enjoying coffee, waffles and ice cream and planning day trips to the country side. All of Sweden stops for a few weeks in July- the main vacation season, taking advantage of the short Swedish summer.

My wanderings today included several of the islands, some of the stores (Harry Potter everywhere!), a few smaller shops, some museums (which are free) and the inevitable coffee shop along the way. Sweden loves its coffee and remains a Starbuck free zone.