Even's weblog

Lo tech decoding

2011-12-21T20:30:00.001+01:00

Solution to optional exercise in Stanford's "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence". No need for computers...

Hot plate PI controller - Part 5: Boiling water and measuring with thermistor

2011-11-01T23:32:00.001+01:00

I made a new mistake in my attempt to make a hot plate PI controller: The thermistor I selected from eBay was an unbranded China thermistor marked with "10k ohm 103 NTC Thermistor"with no datasheet. I thought it would be easy to obtain the datas for the thermistor, but so far I have not been able to find any other info than what the seller is saying:

Model: CP_RM_103 NTC Thermistor
Resistance: 10KΩ
Resistance tolerance: +/- 10%
Temperature: 30°C to +125°C

I have sent an email to the seller as a last effort to get a datasheet for the thermistor, but I have doubts that I will get it.

I wanted to set up a test to check the accuracy of the thermistor in combination with the pre set parameters in the arduino library for thermistors. I soldered a wire to the thermistor, filled a pot with 1 liter of spring water, submerged the thermistor and boiled the water. When boiling temperature 100°C is reached the chart for temperature with stabilize at 100 degrees as water is vaporized.

First some theory:
Thermodynamics has equations describing how a volume will be heated. When there is no flow in or out of the volume the heating equation reduce to:

Cp*ρ*V*dT/dt=P+h(T0-T)

Where
Cp is specific heat capacity. For water Cp=4181.3 J/(kg*K)
ρ is the density. For water ρ=1000 kg/m^3
V is the volume. For my experiment I use 1 liter=1e-3 m^3
T is the temperature in the volume.
T0 is the temperature of the neighboring. The air temperature is about 22°C
P is the power of the heating source. I use two different boiling plates with 1.4 and 1.5 kW
h is the heat conduction number

If no energy is transferred to the environment with no other losses whatsoever I get:
Δt=Cp*ρ*V*ΔT/P

I am using two different hot plates:
1. A 1.5 kW standard hot plate. Ideal time for boiling 1l water should be 262 seconds, about 4 minutes.
2. A 1.4 kW induction hot plate. Ideal time for boiling 1l water should be 281 seconds, about 4,5 minutes.

The ideal heating time is based on the tap water being 6°C.

After modifying the LabVIEW VIs used with the thermistor and servo to also save raw voltage data to disk and importing to excel I get these curves:

A couple of things can be observed from the charts:

The heating curve for the induction hot plate is very erratic. This is likely because induction is basically fast alternating current through a coil. This creates a magnetic field that again induces current in the sensor wire. If better results are to be obtained with an induction cooker I need a shielded thermistor.
Both measured heating curves for the induction and standard hot plate has a measured boiling temperature of about 110°C. This is probably due to wrong values for this sensor set for the Steinhart-Hart equation.
The zero crossing with the y-axis is above the temperature of the tap water temperature. This is again probably due to wrong values in the Steinhart-Hart equation.
Some drops are observed for the standard hot plate. This is due to different temperatures when the thermistor touched the pot and when it was only in contact with water.
The slope for the induction cooker is very close to the ideal curve, thus the induction cooker is very efficient at transfering energy into cooking water.
The induction hot plate and pot can be modeled as an integrator without time delay. The standard hot plate can probably be modeled as an integrator with a time delay included. When heating a larger amount of water I am expecting more energy to be transfered to the environment, and the curves will probably take the shape of a "time-constant with time-delay" process.

Now I need to search a little more to try finding some information about the sensor specs. This in combination with the measured curves will probably give me everything I need to know to calibrate the thermistor.

Hot plate PI controller - Part 4: Playing with thermistor, RC servo and LabVIEW with arduino library

2011-11-01T22:10:00.000+01:00

In my previous post I wrote that I wanted to use LabVIEW in combination with an additional Arduino library and the Arduino device to work as a controller. LabVIEW has library for both fuzzy and PID controllers.

I have been testing the LabVIEW PID library in combination with the Arduino library while waiting for my thermistors to arrive. My first test was to use a potmeter as an input for a PID controller setpoint and use a simulated plant to test the PID functionality. I tested the PID relay autotuner, which is a tuner that uses on/off signals to test the plant response. I have previously used relay autotuners successfully to set PID controllers with microcontrollers. The autotuner function in the LabVIEW PID library seems to be more sensitive to having a working PID controller before trying to excite the plant with on/off signals. My experience with the library is that this results in a poorly tuned controller. My plan is to use the step response for the plant to set the controller or make a relay based controller from scratch from my previous knowledge of the problem.

A few days back I finally got my 10k thermistors from eBay. The 10kohm value seems to be rather flexible with the LabVIEW Arduino library, and I cannot really understand why. I thought that the equation used, the Steinhart-Hart thermistor equation, needs three parameters A, B and C set that is allready fixed in the Arduino thermistor read function.

I hooked up the thermistor as shown in the library included thermistor example and one servo as shown in the servo example. Pretty simple:

Next I mixed the two examples together so that the temperature from the thermistor would set the output for the servo. I multiply the temperature with 1.8 so that when I have 100 degrees C input I get a 180 degrees rotation of the servo. I also tested with different delays in the loop to remove some of the "spastic" behaviour you can get when the realtime signal is used.

I experienced a bit with moving the thermistor over a candle to check the system. Below is a video of the system in action:

Here is the output in LabVIEW with and without delay:

I am quite happy with setting this system up so quickly and with both input and output working as planned on the first run.

One thing I experience is that when I stop the LabVIEW program and restart it i get erratic behaviour of the servo. Perhaps because of the PWM output from the Arduino being out of sync with the servo. I need to pull out the USB plug from the computer a couple of times in order to make it work again. This all might have to do with me having an old Arduino or that I got black smoke coming out of it the last time I used it.

Coming up I will be soldering a wire to the thermistor, put it in boiling water and see if I get a reading of 100 degrees celcius. Otherwise I need to get better parameters for the thermistor function.

Hot plate PI controller - Part 3: Arduino and LabVIEW

2011-11-01T21:32:00.000+01:00

It's been about three years since I last used the Arduino in any project. The reason for this is that I usually find it equally easy to implement simple things in the AVR microcontroller, rather than spending more money on the arduino. The second reason is that I have usually been working on projects requiring faster throughput time for realtime control of fast acting systems (sound/vibration).

When I now came back to look at the arduino I see that a lot has changed since the last time I used it. The obvious thing being that more modern arduinos and shields for all different kinds of purposes have come to life. The community for Arduino has grown exponentially fast and Arduino is now probably the number one gadget for electronic hobbyists. Software for Arduino has become even more easy to use and make it possible to test arduino code without a physical arduino attached with VirtualBreadboard. National Instruments has recently made it possible to include Arduino in LabVIEW with an additional library, which I will come back to later in the post.

The book "making things talk" learned me a lesson in how to work with microcontroller projects, or any other problem. Rather than trying to attack the complete problem in one chunk I now try to break down the problem in small problems that can be tested one at a time. Some things that you take for granted are usually missed if you try to include the complete set of functionality at once, and even the best debugger/emulator cannot test for every kind of outcome. This is why it is critical to test each problem one at a time.

To test the reading of a sensor, in this project a thermistor, you need a system able to show the input from the sensor to the user. With early versions of the arduino this was best done by using the programming language processing and displaying the input to the computer screen. The only difficulty with this solution was that a fraction of the code you wrote was reusable and you thus needed to write routines each time you had a new kind of problem.

Now LabVIEW, the measurement system that I as a programmer loved to hate, has come up with a complete range of pre built modules to comunicate with the arduino. So you can put all the logics in labVIEW and the input/output can be handled by arduino. This makes everything even more simple. The only problem I see with this solution is that you need a computer with LabVIEW or the labview built application to run the algorithms. I will start working with the labview modules, and later see if I want to move the whole controller and logics to the arduino.

Setting up Arduino with LabVIEW was done in a breeze. The examples and ready made functions for sensors are absolutely amazing.

Full instructions for installing Arduino with LabVIEW can be found here.
National Instruments web page for LabVIEW with Arduino

Here is even a geeky video of what the combo can be used for:

Hot plate PI controller - Part 2: The temperature sensor

2011-10-10T21:49:00.001+02:00

The thermometer I am using is the typical stove thermometer that you can buy from any kitchenware store. Mine came with our IKEA / Whirlpool kitchen stove.

I have no idea of the resistance of the thermistor probe that came with the thermometer so I had to set up a little experiment to find the resistance range.

I put 1 litres of water in a pot on an induction plate, turn on the heat for a while, turn it off to let the temperature settle and then measure temperature with the thermometer. Next I measure the resistance with a multimeter.

With four measurements I got this curve:

Excel shows the fitted linear curve and the nice little formula:

Rt=0.2*T-2.7

Where Rt is the termistor resistance and T is the temperature measured in centigrades.

I want to use the thermistor with a resistor and measure the temperature by setting them up as a voltage divider. Input voltage will be 5V:

By setting the second resistor to the value of 5 ohm I get the greatest difference between the lowest and highest measured voltage (2,85V) and thus the best resolution. The curve for voltage measured over the thermistor for the optimal resistor is shown below:

Defining:

F=Vout/Vin=Rt/(Rt+R)

Calculating for Rt:

1) Rt=R*F/(1-F)

From previous excel linear fitting for measured temperature:

2) T=(Rt+2.7)/0.2

1) and 2) put together:

T=25*F/(1-F)+13.5, where F=Vout/Vin

Finishing with an example:

What is the temperature when you are suppling the voltage divider with 5V and you get an ADC reading is 511?

A reading of 511 in the ADC is a measured voltage of 5V*511/1023=2.5V with a supplied voltage of 5V.

F=2.5V/5V=0.5

T=25*F/(1-F)+13.5=25*0.5/(1-0.5)+13.5=38.5 degrees celcius, which corresponds very well with the curve above.

The real excitement begins when I get a 5 ohm resistor, set up a measurement system and start measuring realtime temperature data. Is boiling temperature still measured to 100 degrees celcius?

_____________________________

Update:

Yesterday I tried setting up the voltage divider with the arduino. I found a 4.7 ohm resistor to use with the thermistor and was ready for measuring temperature with the arduino.

I had thought very little about the consequences of using such small resistors: When I hook up a 4.7 ohm resistor with a thermistor that has close to zero ohm resistance at room temperature I get a current of 5V/5ohm=1A!! So when I set up the bridge and inserted the USB I got smoke coming out of the arduino or resistor. The arduino seems to be working fine afterwords, though, so I learned my lesson.

So I should rather find a resistor that has as low as possible reistance, without destroying the arduino. How low can it be?

Here are some of the limits:

- The USB 2.0 standard has a maximum current limit of 500 mA.

- In the summary for the arduino UNO the I/O ports are rated for 40 mA.

- In the data sheet for the Voltage regulator (LM340) I see a maximum current of 1 A at 5 V.

- I think the resistors I am using is 0,25 W type based on the thickness => Maximum current 50 mA.

I think the input impedance of the ADC pins are quite high, so there will not be much current going through to the ADC. That makes the resistors I am using the weakest link with maximum current 50 mA.

My new resistor will have to be at least 5 V / 0.05 A=100 ohm.

The new temperature chart will be like this:

The voltage range is too low, which means I get bad resolution (about 0.7 deg C) . I either need a different thermistor or a resistor with higher power rating.

In summary: Don't try to reuse the measurement probe from a thermometer. It's cheaper and easier to buy a thermistor with an available datasheet.

Hot plate PI controller - Part 1: The start

2011-10-10T21:08:00.001+02:00

I want to make a hot plate controlled by a PI controller. The reasons are primarily to master the PI controller practically with the bonus of being able to control the boiling process when making home made beer.

Yesterday I boiled my first batch of wort and got the feeling of what it takes to control the temperature with several liters of wort (about 30 litres) on a small 1,5 kW old fashioned hot plate. The process was pretty slow, so it is absolutely possible to control it manually, but I want to set it at a specific temperature and let a home made controller do the rest of the job.

The parts I want to use for the project is:

Controller: An old Arduino NT that I got lying around. This will be permanently used for brewing purposes in the future.
Actuating element: A 1,5 kW hot plate of the old kind with built in on/off controller and stepless adjustment of power.
Actuator: A 180 degrees adjustable Hitec HS-325HB RC servo for attaching to the power knob.
Temperature sensor: A termistor type termometer that I want to reverse engineer and use the probe from.

How to set up VirtualBox shared folders with Windows 7

2011-01-05T22:07:00.004+01:00

Start by adding shared folders in settings before starting the VM:

Next install guest additions after windows 7 VM has started:

If you are using autoruns you will be asked to install guest addition. Otherwise open the cd rom drive and run installation. You will be asked to restart the VM when finished.

After restarting you should now find your shared folders under Network\VBOXSVR within the Explorer (windows key+E).

How to change payment information in itunes when caught in an endless loop

2010-04-13T21:23:00.002+02:00

I have been sufferig the latest couple of week by not being able to change my billing information in either iTunes or directly on my iPhone. I kept trying to change my old credit card info to a different card or setting the payment method to none, but every time I returned to my payment information nothing had changed. A message allways appeared in iTunes stating that "there were errors or omissions". I was unable to buy anything from iTunes or update apps on my Iphone.

The solution: I am currently an iphone developer and opened my web browser to developer.apple.com/iphone. I then resent my programmer status and contact information and accepted the latest agreement from apple. I suddenly was able to change my billing information to whatever I wanted.

Valg av varmeløsning

2010-01-11T21:25:00.004+01:00

Jeg har i den siste tiden hatt mye å tenke på angående hvordan vi skal varme opp det nye huset vi skal bygge. I den siste tiden har det dessuten vært en glohet diskusjon angående varmekilder, noe takket være den kalde perioden vi har vært gjennom nylig.

Til å begynne med ble jeg svært fristet av å installere en vannbåren varmeløsning, med varme i alle golv i begge etasjene, totalt 190 m^2. Jeg har blant annet hørt om denne fantastiske lunheten man får med bruk av rørlagt vann i gulvene.

Vi ba utbygger om å komme med pris på luft-vann varmepumpe og vi fikk prisantydning på ca 170000, noe jeg personlig synes var styggdyrt. Etter å ha sett på NRK og FBI fikk jeg høre at prisen på strøm antagelig ville øke med 25% de neste ti årene. Jeg antok at merkostnaden for ei bergvarmepumpe kommer på prisen for borring, kanskje 50000. Jeg ønsket dessuten å sammenlikne med ei habil luft-luft varmepumpe på 25000. Pellets eller sentral vedfyring ble først vurdert, men disse falt bort da vi ikke har kjeller eller plass til silo for disse løsningene.

Etter å ha gjennomgått energikalkylen for vårt planlagte hus (205 m^2 BRA) hos energimyndigheten.se fikk jeg mengen energi som kunne spares for hvert år. Med beregnet prisøkning for strøm fikk jeg følgende kurver:

På kurven ser vi at det tar ca 4 år å spare inn en luft-luft varmepumpe, 12 år for luft-vann og 14 år for vann-vann. Det tar dessuten ca 20 år før alle løsningene er like lønnsomme. Dette forutsetter selvsagt at anlegget holder i hele perioden. De beste garantiene for varmepumper gjelder for 10 år, så du skal være heldig dersom pumpen varer en hel investeringsperiode.

Etter en prat med utbygger i dag ble jeg til slutt overbevist: På grunn av den nye byggenormen av 2010 vil huset være svært godt isolert og ventilert. Gulvene vil også være lune. Med elektriske panelovner på alle rom og varme i golv på bad og vaskerom burde vi ha et hus som er lett å holde passe varmt. Vi vil dessuten installere en god ovn med gratis fyring og evt en luft-luft varmepumpe dersom vi ser at strømforbruket blir høyt allikevel.

Mini review of "The Power of LESS" by Leo Babauta

2010-01-01T17:17:00.003+01:00

Personal productivitiy systems have been very popular the latest years, kickstarted by David Allen's massive success "Getting Things Done". The book probably made Allen a very rich man and started a cult of GTD followers. Every follower had their own little twist of change to what Allen wrote in his book and websites and blogs like 43 folders and lifehacker introduced readers to new systems on how to adapt to GTD. Leo Babauta also started his own site Zen Habbits where he wrote about his own experiences with GTD.

I first found Zen Habbits about a year ago, when I was looking for other GTDers stories about how they made GTD work for them. I had been an avid user of the system about two years then, and was looking for a new GTD software system to change to.

Leo Babauta identified some flaws with Allen's orignal system. The most important ones being the lack of priorities amongst different projects and thus the lack of focus on each individual task. Even though Allen have suggestions for selecting projects based on long term goals and a "someday maybe list" for those projects you cannot work with right now, he never seem to mention anything about minimizing the amount of simultaneous projects and reducing the number of tasks you are saying yes to. I think Leo Babauta is into something when he asks you to limit yourself to the essentials in order to get the maximum out of everything you do.

Ok, so I was about to tell you about feelings about the book "The Power of Less". It would be impossible to write something about it without the former introduction. If you allready are a user of GTD today I would say that you can find everything extra you need to know from reading the most important articles at Zen Habits. I have a slight feeling that some of the articles might be word by word the same as on the web site. If you are new to GTD or don't know about Zen Habits on the other hand, I would highly recommend you pick up the book and start reading. It is a quick read (about a day for me) and adds good wisdom in today's fast lane society.

Mini review of "Brain Rules" by John Medina

2009-12-29T19:50:00.003+01:00

I am not sure how I came across the book "Brain Rules" by John Medina, but I had put it on my Christmas wish list and got it as a gift. My hopes before starting reading it was that I was going to pick up a few tips and be inspired to change my ways of doing things in a more brain friendly way.

The book chapters are sectioned in what Medina calles "brain rules" or principles of how the brain is working. The chapter titles are exercise, survival, wiring, attention, short-term memory, long-term memory, sleep, stress, sensory integration, vision, gender and exploration. The actual brain rules for each topic can be found on medinas site: http://www.brainrules.net/. The videos on the site are quite good for catching the essence of each rule too and for repetition as well.

Each chapter usually uses plenty of examples of how the brain is working, usually experienced by the author himself. The examples are coupled to brain research and brain anathomy in a humorous way. At the end of each chapter Medina has a few ideas on how the brain rules can be put to practical use.

Many chapters are quite captivating and I found myself fascinated on how complex the brain actually is. The most important points I picked from the book are:

Learning is better done while exercising. Try to combine the two if possible.
Create strong pictures when you really want to remember things.
Teach and learn in periods of about 10 minutes at a time. The brain loses attention and gets bored after this time.
Recreate the environment of where you learned something when you want to recollect it.
Understand every word in a sentence that you want to understand.
In a presentation: Catch the audience's attention at an early moment.
Use plenty of examples when you want to explain something.
Multitasking is a waste of time.
Learn by doing. The brain is an expert at adapting to new tasks.
The best way of really learning something: Repeat every 10 minutes for three times and then repeat the most important things every 3-4 days.
Get sufficient sleep.
Avoid long term stress. Ask the question "am I in control?" if you are not sure if you are stressed.
Strengthen learning by using many senses at a time.
Your learn much by watching pictures in combination with relevant text, but more with narration and videos.
Reduce the amount of text in powerpoints - The brain is lazy and avoids reading text.
Vision is the most powerful sense and actually uses half of the brain's processing power.
Women capture the emotional details while men see the gist when experiencing acute stress.

So was the book worth reading? I think it was ok reading the book, but I think Medina got a little to detailed for my taste. I never wanted to be a brain scientist. I got what I wanted in the end: some great techniques for improving learning backed up with science. I will put it to practise - no doubt about it.

How to locate, read and write property lists for iPhone

2009-10-15T07:30:00.005+02:00

I had a real headache trying to figure out how to read and write property lists yesterday. It should have been an easy task, and I did everything according to the manual.

Here is what I wanted to do:

Locate a property list created in xcode
Read the XCode property list to a NSDictionary
Append one or more extra items to the NSDictionary
Save the updated NSDictionary to disc

The problem was that the iPhone has a sandboxed area called "Documents" where you can read and write property lists, but the property list you created in xcode is not located in this folder.

If you create a property list "MyPlist.plist" for an application called "MyApp" in XCode it will be located here:

appPath/MyApp.app/MyPlist.plist

Where "appPath" is a string that you can only get while running the app. You can get the whole path to the plist by using this code:

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"MyPlist" ofType:@"plist"];

This file could be read from, but not written to due to the location on the iPhone.

But I wanted to save data to the iPhone. This could only be done in a property list located here:

appPath/Documents/MyPlist.plist

To locate the folder "Documents" where I have rights to both read and write I can get the path by using this code:

NSArray *paths=NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory=[paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *path=[documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"History.plist"];

Reading and writing to the property list from a NSDictionary could be done with the following code:

Reading: NSDictionary *dict=[[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];
Writing: [dict writeToFile:path atomically:YES];

Here is the whole code put into action:

NSMutableDictionary *dict;

//Reading plist created in xcode
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"MyPlist" ofType:@"plist"];
if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:path]) dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];

//Reading plist stored on device
NSArray *paths=NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory=[paths objectAtIndex:0];
path=[documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"MyPlist.plist"];
if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:path])
{
NSMutableDictionary *tempDict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];
//Merging dictionary created in xcode with dictionary stored on the iPhone
[dict addEntriesFromDictionary:tempDict];
}

//Creating dictionary if it doesn't exist
if (dict==nil) dict=[[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

//creating and adding array to dictionary
NSArray *array=[NSArray arrayWithObjects: [NSDate date], [NSNumber numberWithDouble:double1], [NSNumber numberWithDouble:double2], [NSNumber numberWithDouble:double3], [NSNumber numberWithDouble:double4],nil];
[dict setObject:array forKey:@"First Array"];

//writing dictionary to plist on device
[dict writeToFile:path atomically:YES];
[dict release];

How to connect icd3 ac162049 with a PIC microcontroller.

2009-09-02T09:57:00.001+02:00

I confess I'm a hopeless beginner when it comes to Microchip's PIC microcontrollers. After playing around several years with AVR microcontrollers I figured it was time to go for the hobbyists second choice - the PIC.

My first impression is that Atmel has outpriced themselves after earlier being able to deliver cheap developer boards like the STK500. I wanted a programming device that was able to program DIL devices for rapid prototyping and for hobby projects and ended up buying an Microchip ICD3. I also bought a AC162049 universal programming module to be able to program several different DILs without having to make circuit boards first.

I am familiar with some other chips from Microchip, and have always found the datasheets quite understandable. With the ICD3 it was a completely different story. I was not able to connect to the dsPIC33FJ128MC that I knew was compatible with the ICD3. After looking around a bit I found out how to communicate with the device:

Connect a 4.7-10 kOhm pullup resistor from one of the two VDD wires to the _MCLR pin.
Connect all other wires except VPP to the pins in the datasheet for the microcontroller. GND wires should be connected to Vss. PGC and PGD should be connected to any of the pins starting with PGC or PGD. I used PGC1 and PGD1.
Open MPLAB IDE and choose "Configure-Select Device". Choose the device you are using.
Open "Programmer-Select Programmer"and select "MPLAB ICD3".
Open "Programmer-Settings-Power" and check "Power target circuit from MPLAB ICD3".

Now you should be able to connect to the microcontroller. For me it was the setting for the power that I missed. After using a voltmeter I found that the microcontroller didn't have any power.

Simple TWI / I2C communication with AVR ATMega8 and TC1321 DAC

2009-03-24T10:12:00.004+01:00

I wanted to set up and test the D/A-converter TC1321 with a AVR, but had no previous knowledge of TWI. These are my experiences:

To make things easier I used a AVR with built in TWI function. I got a little confused on this subject when I read on AVR Freaks that for example the ATTiny26 had TWI function. Actually the microprosessors with a lowercase "y" in the comparison chart has USI which can be used for TWI. The uppercase "Y" for TWI indicates that the uC has built in TWI functionality. With such uCs you can include the to get some free predefined twi-codes.

To connect to a TWI device you need to connect the SCL and SDA lines to the uC. For ATMega8 it is PC4 (SDA) and PC5 (SCL). You then need to connect each of these via a pullup resistor to the source voltage (5V). For this connection I used two 220 ohm resistors.

So to sum up: I found it easier than I thought to interface the TC1321. Reading through descriptions that others have made describing both reading and writing to a slave (EEPROM etc) was not necessary when the only thing I wanted was to send data.

I found it easier than I had thought to communicate with the TC1321. First you need to set up the SCL-clock rate. You can calculate the TWBR with this formula:
TWBR=(fCPU/fSCL-16)/(2*4^TWPS)

So if you run your uC at fCPU=8MHz and you want fSCL=100kHz and try to use a prescaler TWPS=0 you get TWBR=(8e6/100e3-16)/(2*4^0)=32. So you start by setting:

TWPS=0;
TWBR=32;

To send data to the TC1321 you can use two protocols: 1-byte format (8-bits) and 2-byte format (10-bits). The progress of sending data is made in a sequence like this:

1-byte format:
START
SLA+W
COMMAND
DATA
STOP

2-byte format:
START
SLA+W
COMMAND
DATA
DATA
STOP

In between every sending you check the status codes by looking at TW_STATUS. The SLA+W is actually only the slave adress, 0x90.

Here are some functions that can be used to send data to the TC1321:

So to sum up: I found it easier than I thought to interface the TC1321. Reading through descriptions that others have made describing both reading and writing to a slave (EEPROM etc) was not necessary when the only thing I wanted was to send data.

Mini review of "The 4-hour work week" by Timothy Ferris

2009-03-01T16:22:00.003+01:00

I came across this book as I was looking for material before having a inspirational lecture about mathematics to new high school students. I ended up having a lecture of why you should embrace learning different things and the importance of knowing a little about most things in life. This is actually what Timothy Ferris was looking for when he decided to break out of his 9-5 traditional work as an employer ("slave" in his words) and start managing his own future. He wanted to work less, earn more and spend the extra time and money he had for traveling and enjoying life while he still was young and able to live it.

The book is a blue print on how to [D]efine your goals in life ("dreamlines"), [E]liminate time wasting and start focusing on realizing those goals (by using Pareto's principle and Parkinson's law), [A]utomate your business (by using outsourcing and the wonders of computers) and [L]iberating yourself from current work and the life you are living.

I really liked the book: It gave me a kick in the butt to start focusing on progressing towards my most important goals. Even though the internet business modell is perfect for people having a big home market, many of the tips are quite transferrable to everyone wanting to start up something new.

I am not dreaming about traveling the world throughout my life anymore, but I still would prefer having more time for hobbies and family. I think this book gave me gigant leaps towards achieving this.

Flux welder (FCAW) converted to MIG (GMAW)

2009-02-26T20:45:00.001+01:00

I got a nice welder from my wife Sunniva this christmas that was flux core only. After reading a bit about welding I decided to check if it was possible to convert my welder to MIG with gas shielding (Argon or Argon/CO2). This is attractive since you could make much nicer welds, poisonous fumes are minimized and you should in theory be able to weld both stainless steel and aluminium.

After opening up the torch I found that it contained a gas valve that had a threaded hole. I bought a small bottle gas kit for a different welder, made threads on the straight part of the quick coupling and bought a longer nylon tube for the quick coupling with the same diameter. Now I am able to do both flux core and gas shielded welding.

Error with CDrom in xp (Code 32) finally fixed

2009-02-25T12:06:00.003+01:00

As an action oriented man it is a little bit embarrassing to admit that I have had problems using my hp laptop cdrom drive for several years now. I have not done anything about it since I thought it was a hardware problem and data can nowadays allways be transferred in other ways (usb, wifi).

Yesterday I got surprised when I saw that I was able to boot from an ubuntu linux cd without problems. When I on top of that saw that no virtual cdrom drives (virtual clonedrive, magicdisc) were working either I was determined to fix what now was a windows problem.

I saw that all cdrom drives were registered as active in windows device manager, but all had an exclamation sign suggesting something was wrong. When looking in properties I got the following error:

(Norwegian)

En driver(tjeneste) for denne enheten er deaktivert. En alternativ driver kan gi samme funksjonalitet. (Kode 32)

(English)

A driver for this device was not required, and has been disabled (Code 32)The first suggestion was that I should include CTFMON.exe in the startup, but this did not change anything.

I finally found Microsoft's Q314060 showing me how to fix the problem:

Step 1: Start Registry Editor
Start Registry Editor.
Step 2: Delete the UpperFilters registry entry
In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
Expand Control, and then expand Class.
Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click UpperFilters.

Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click UpperFilters only.
If you see the UpperFilters registry entry in the details pane of Registry Editor, go to step 6.
If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to "Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry."
On the Edit menu, click Delete.
Click Yes when you receive the following message:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The UpperFilters registry entry is removed.
Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry
In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, click LowerFilters.

Note You might see a LowerFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click LowerFilters only.

If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this content is unable to help you any more. Go to the "Next Steps" section for information about how you can find more solutions or more help on the Microsoft Web site.
On the Edit menu, click Delete.
Click Yes when you receive the following message:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The LowerFilters registry entry is removed.
Exit Registry Editor.
Step 4: Restart your computer

Mini review of "The renaissance soul" by Margaret Lobenstine

2009-02-19T20:40:00.005+01:00

I had this book on my wish list since I picked up the title when reading comments to the blog post "The Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades" from Tim Ferris' blog. I was happy when receiving this as a christmas gift and started reading it immediately. During my recent vacation to the Canaries I got the chance to finish the book. Here are my personal impressions of the book:

I was expecting to learn a practical time management system from the book. Time management is covered in 22 pages and is not very practical in my opinion. Margaret basicly says that you should put down up to four focal points, calculate how much time you have left for them and put them in your calendar. I don't like using the calendar when it's not necessary. I rather put up my most important tasks for a day and try to finish them. These are all prioritized according to my focal points. This makes you focused, but still flexible. I picked up this tip from "zen to done" from Zen habits.
The book is written more like a novel than a practical guide. It is full of stories of clients that Margaret succesfully helped out after coaching them.
The title is "The renaissance soul", but I didn't expect the author to use this phrase as much as she does. OK, so the test said that I am a renaissance soul - this does not make me some special, rare creature that should behave differently than any others. Most people need some kind of structural aid to be effective in their day to day work.
Even though I didn't like the book very much I found some metaphors quite good: A) When trying to find which focal points to pick then think of them as ice-cream that you can pick a four-flavor sampler from and change whenever you like. B) When faced with a situation involving change you are like a lobster breaking out of it's shell in order to grow: First the shell is a thin membrane without protection and you fear this before you leave your original cozy shell. You later realize that your new shell is bigger and harder and more protective than the old shell.

iPhone VPN connection to Vista is now working

2009-01-30T13:19:00.001+01:00

Something strange happened the other day. I haven't used the iPhone VPN connection since the post was written because I had no use for it. Now I wanted to try it again. This time I got access to all the other ip adresses that were previously hidden for me. I tested this from work so I know I wasn't locally connected. Three things were changed since the last time I tried: The iPhone got new firmware (2.2.1), the wireless network administration was changed from RALink to Windows and Windows Vista probably got some new updates. That's really strange, but oh so cool!

Nondestructive cooling for Dreambox DM800 HD

2009-01-20T21:20:00.001+01:00

I got sick and tired of the Dreambox DM800 HD locking up all the time and read several places that this was due to heating problems. This happens especially when you run HD channels.

The Dreambox DM800 HD does not contain a fan, so I decided to include one myself. I did not want to destroy anything or cut any wires so I started looking at different pins/connectors that I could connect a fan to. Two options were candidates: the header next to the Broadcom cpu (JTAG header?) and the power supply to the internal SATA harddrive that I have got. Neither were easy to find any good information as to what voltage they had or if they could source sufficient current. I decided to use the same trick that everyone else are using: Connect to the USB port.

I found an old 12V cpu fan that I salvaged from an old computer and stripped the wires. I had a spare USB male to USB female cable that I removed the shielding from, cut the red and black wires, stripped them and connected them to the wires for the fan. Now the fan was running ok. The wires for the fan now goes nicely through the hole where the eSATA connector earlier was connected.

The USB 2.0 standard gives a maximum current of 100mA. At 5V this would be 0.5W. My fan was supposed to draw 1.5W at 12V, but the DM800 has no problem running it. It even seemed to have no problem booting up the first time I connected the power plug.

VPN connection from iPhone to Windows

2009-01-07T22:27:00.005+01:00

After some fumbling around I finally figured out how to make a VPN connection from my iPhone to my Windows Vista PC.

To start out I used the guide "Setting up the Vista Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) Virtual Private Network (VPN) Server". It is a great guide on how to set up a Windows to Windows PPTP VPN connection. The client side is not very well covered, but could easily be found elsewhere on the internet.

I had to set up port forwarding on both the ADSL modem as well as on my wireless router for port 1723. No other changes of settings were necessary on the routers.

After finishing the guide I could not get a VPN connection from either a windows client or from my iPhone. Some web guides have the advise to set the "account" on the iPhone with the syntax "Hostname\Username". This does not change anything. The trick to get a connection is to connect through a different subnet than the VPN server is connected to. This means connecting the iPhone via 3G or a different WiFi Network than the server is physically connected to. This makes sense since you do not need to go to the internet to make a VPN connection if you are allready connected locally.

Now I have a VPN connection from my iPhone to my Vista PC, but I still haven't figured out what I can use the connection to. The iPhone does not have any browser software to browse through local folders on the VPN server and when pinging the subnet I only get reply from the two local adresses for the VPN gateway and the incoming VPN client. I have tried making a port forward to a vnc server, but that didn't work out. I have thus so far not been able to do anything useful with the connection. If anyone have suggestions on how to make it useful, please publish a comment.

PIC desulfator

2009-01-02T22:48:00.001+01:00

Look what I got in the mail today: A PIC based desulfator from
courtiestown marine. It took a few hours to solder it, but now it is
ready. Now let's ressurrect some old batteries!

Cs working..

2008-12-31T17:05:00.000+01:00

New intake manifold with throttle-body injection

2008-12-19T12:55:00.001+01:00

Look what I got as a christmas present today. Ole Mobeck has finished
the machining of my intake manifold. The manifold is supposed to replace the original shown to the right. It has a fixture for a Bosch fuel injector which will make throttle-body injection (Central Fuel Injection/Single-point injection) possible. Now I only need to drill a few mounting holes and two holes for the map sensor and vacuum diaphragm.

Home made electronic ignition and fuel injection for my 1961 Fiat 600 - part 2

2008-12-17T22:00:00.002+01:00

I finally got some extra time to figure out how to build the actuating part of the home made ignition + injection. I got the final bricks to build the circuit after reading about how to interface high current loads (up to 10A) with a microcontroller from this really nice web page.

In the last post I figured out how to get sparks with a 12V input directly from a battery and a subaru impreza igniter. This time I wanted to use a microcontroller to create controlled sparks. As a bonus I wanted to check if the same circuit could switch the two Bosch injection coils that I got.

To make a quick setup for the microcontroller I set up the arduino NG that I got to read the input from a potmeter (0-5V) and adjust the on time for the digital output from 0 to 2.048ms. I know from literature that 1.2ms usually is sufficient to make a nice spark. I was a little bit uncertain to wheter this would be sufficient for a waste spark system that I am using.

I set up the circuit as shown below to the left:

Ignition + Injection circuit test

The physical test - lots of wires

After some fumbling around, double checking that all the wires were correctly installed, I turned the knob on the potmeter. Voila - The sparks were exactly as I wanted them - nice and blue. The sparks were steady at approximately 1/3 adjustment for two spark plugs, which indicates that a minimum of 0.7ms would be necessary. I am not sure what turn on time would be necessary while the cylinders are with pressure.

After successfully testing the prototype for the ignition i removed the ignitor+the spark plug pack from the circuit. I installed a snubber diode, as shown on the reference page above, to avoid high current back emf.

Connected to a injection coil with a snubber diode

The setup produced a nice clicking sound when connected to the orange injector shown above. The fully black injector had no reaction when adjusted to maximum coil charging time. A multimeter showed that the orange coil had 16ohm and the fully black 2.5ohm resistance. It might be that the black injector needs more charing time for the solenoid to open.

To summarize: I have figured out how to actuate the spark plugs and one ignition coil with a 5V output from a microcontroller. Now I need to start measuring some input from the sensors to correctly adjust spark advance/retard and injection time/pulse width. I allready have the old mechanical settings for the spark diagrams from a workshop manual.

Media Center / carputer in a IKEA EMU

2008-11-08T20:44:00.002+01:00

I found this really cheap main board from Intel: D201GLY2 about half a year ago. My first thoughts were that I could use it as a cheap media center, as a carputer or as a replacement for more complex projects where microcontrollers are involved.

I got 1GB RAM, a hard disk, a PSU, a wireless keyboard+mouse, a USB wifi card and some fans. I bought the cabinet from IKEA: A IKEA EMU box that I cut holes in with a dremel and drilled holes for the mounting screws. The rest was fixed with a hot glue gun. Now I only need a protection grid for the cabinet fan in order to avoid cutting my fingers when moving the box :-(

The reason for choosing the IKEA EMU box was that it was way cheaper than any regular cabinet and the dimensions fitted nicely inside our TV cabinet as well as in an enclosure inside the back of my car.

I have recently tested the computer as a media center, and had no problems running movies with great resolution (up to 1080p with slight skipping). This came as a surprise as the graphical capabilities are not very good. I have skipped using media centers like XBMC, MediaPortal and Elisa as they seem to be way to heavy for the computer to handle.

My future thoughts for the computer is to further test the computer as a carputer for things like playing music and running real time OBDII.

Home made electronic ignition and fuel injection for my 1961 Fiat 600 - part 1

2008-11-08T13:36:00.003+01:00

Ever since I got my 1961 Fiat 600 about three years ago I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do with it. Since I have been quite interested in diy stuff and playing around with microcontrollers for a while I thought that electronic ignition for my car would be a challenging project. I have by the way had quite a few problems with making it run well in all sorts of weather with the old points/distributor+carburetor.

After reading a lot and discussing with colleagues who are heavily involved in racing, motors and all kinds of vehicles I decided not only to make my own ignition system, but also a fuel injection system. This is due to the two systems sharing many of the same sensors and modifications would be made on only a few parts.

Last year I bought a waste spark ignition coil, MAP sensor, EGO/lambda sensor, a trigger wheel and a trigger/hall effect sensor. My colleague Ole Mobeck also started making a new intake manifold to integrate the MAP sensor, a central injector and an air temperature sensor.

I removed the cap to the centrifugal oil filter. The filter is connected to the crank shaft and is the ideal place to mount a trigger wheel. I machined the trigger wheel to fit the lid, so now I only need to mount it to the car and make a fixture for the trigger sensor.

The high power part of the electronic system has been a challenge both since I only have a limited electrical knowledge. It has also been a challenge since I know this is dangerous stuff. The voltage through the secondary coil generates approximately 40kV output and could be lethal.

After trying to make an ignition with different transistors bought from online electronic stores and building a ignition system found on the web my releasing moment happened yesterday: Ole Mobeck cut off his Subaru Legacy ignition module and waste spark coil and gave it to me as a "christmas present".

Today I figured out, while Synna was taking her nap, how to connect the ignition coil from a Subaru Legacy wokshop manual. I tested the ignition module in several steps:

1. Check to see if gate was normally open or normally closed. If the gate was normally closed the ignition module would send 12V through the transistor when connected. I connected 12V via a blinker relay to OC1, G to GND and made a voltage divider input with a potensiometer with the central lead connected to IB1. I set the voltage to zero before turning it. The blinker relay started when the voltage was over 12V. This means that I need another transistor to turn on the ignition modul with an input from a 5V microprocessor.

2) After finding that I needed 12V for the igniter I wanted to check if I got a spark. I now omitted the voltage divider. I now connected the coil where the blinker relay was, and connected the blinker relay as a safety to the input of the igniter as shown. I connected a spark tester before one of the spark plugs.

An very tense moment was exchanged for relief and excitement when I saw that I had spark. The test lamp was lighting up and the spark was nice and blue.

The next steps are to connect the ignition to a 555 or a microcontroller and find an okay spark time. In parallel I want to test the trigger wheel and get a nice signal as well as try to finish the fuel manifold.

Real time accelerometer reading via xbee pro

2008-09-25T08:43:00.000+02:00

I am working on a project transferring two axis accelerometer data as fast as possible to a pc via xbee pro. Here is what I have discovered:

At high speed the xbee picks up noise from the surrounding 50Hz, 220V.
I am able to use 5V for VCC, VREF as well as ADC input.
The highest transfer rates can be achieved by setting samples before TX (ATIT) to the maximum of 22 (0x16) and sample rate (ATIR) to 1 (ms). You should in theory be able to send data at 1kHz
The interface data is critical to be fast in able to read data fast. Xbee transfers data at 250kbps via RF, but the baud rate can only be set up to 115200 at standard data rates.
For non-standard data rates you could only set them via a terminal by using the command ATBD and then the speed. I nearly lost contact with one xbee when setting the data rate to 230400. The data sheet says that xbee should handle data rates up to this speed, but I could not talk to the xbee after setting this. I luckily discovered by trial and error that I could interface the device at 240000 baud, and that the true setting was really 250000 bauds (0x3D090).
With everything set to maximum I am able to transfer data at approximately 760kHz.

The xbee pack contains the following:
byte 1: 0x7E, the start byte
byte 2-3: packet size
byte 4: API identifier value
byte 5-6: Sender's address
byte 7: RSSI, Received Signal Strength indicator
byte 8: Broadcast options
byte 9: Number of samples to follow
byte 10-11: Active channels indicator
byte 12-N-1: 10-bit ADC values, sent like this: ADC1-MSB, ADC1-LSB, ADC2-MSB, ADC2-LSB and so on
byte N: Checksum of the values sent: see xbee data sheet

N=12+2*ADCs*ATIT, example: 2 channel accelerometer, ATIT=22 => N=12+2*2*22=100

First impressions of ELM327 (ver 1.2A)

2008-09-22T22:24:00.002+02:00

I bought a box for on board diagnostics (OBD) for my car with the striking name of "ELM327 (ver 1.2a)" as mentioned earlier in my blog. Unfortunately I haven't been able to test it until today.

Here are my impressions:

The box contains two key components necessary to do on board diagnostics: The very versatile ELM327 chip and the FTDI USB to serial cable. I am unsure if they are original.
Most of the software solutions I tested had trouble communicating with my car. I have a Skoda Octavia 2003, and it is not recognized as a car with standard OBD/OBD2/CAN. I will have to test it with a different car to see if it is the car or the ELM box that is causing the problems.
The software that can communicate and read sensor data are only able to read them quite slowly. I am unable to speed up the connection by changing the update rate or the baud rate. I am not sure if I could change to a higher speed than 9,6kbauds. Perhaps it could be possible to set them by using AT commands?
Many of the interesting sensors like the lambda sensor are missing. I am unsure if there is a problem interpreting the car's ECU or if the ECU is not exposing the data to OBD. I have to read a bit about this.

To sum it up - I am pleased that I can read sensor data but sorry that they are too slow to be useful at the moment

Screen shots:

Charts made for my car

Gauges shown

How to upgrade XBee via FTDI's TTL-232R USB cable

2008-09-11T14:26:00.000+02:00

It is quite convenient to use FTDI's USB cable to communicate with the XBee. Recently I found that I was unable to upgrade the firmware of the XBee via the cable. And without the upgrade I was unable to use the IO features of the XBee. Calling "ATD02" would cause an error. After some frustration I found that the problem stemmed from the missing DTR line of the FTDI cable. The solution to the problem was quite simple: Just pull the DTR of the XBee low by connecting it to GND.

Short course in mnemonics

2008-09-10T19:51:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I attended a quick intro course in mnemonics which was held for free at NTNU for three hours. The presenter was Oddbjørn By, norwegian memory master and international Grand Master. He has also published books under the title "Memo" which contain his teaching in the subject.

The course lasted for about three hours containing small tricks from how to remember the ten largest countries in the world to how to prepare for speaches and exams. He finished the lecture by memorizing a full deck of cards within 1,5 minutes.

I found the lecture very interesting since I recently read the book "Mind Performance Hacks" (MPH), which contains many mnemonic tricks. What was striking was that most of the techniques preferred in the book was also the ones preferred by Oddbjørn By:

The techinque that By seems to prefer in most cases is the ancient "Journey" system described by Ron Hale-Evans. While the journeys are described as "little journeys" by Hale-Evans, By uses big journeys containing more than ten places to store most of the things he would like to remember. Hale-Evans describe a expanded journey system by Scott Hagwood where objects could be stored in "nooks and crannies" for up to ten spaces in each room, making space for ten times the storage capacity (100 containers).

The second techinque By seems to use a lot is similar to the Dominic system in MPH.

A quick explanation of the Dominic system invented by World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien: The Dominic system uses the letters OABCDESGHN for each number from zero to nine. By combining two letters you could store numbers from zero to ninetynine. The associations are made by a combination of a person and an action, for instance 26=BS=Britney Spears singing "Hit me baby one more time". You could remember four numbers by mixing one person with another persons action, for instance 6326=SC BS=Santa Claus singing "Hit me baby one more time". If you make the list of hundred persons and actions and remember them, you are able to store numbers up to 9999. You could make a story out of characters and actions to store larger numbers or you could make a big hotel with 100 floors to be able to remember more than 10 000 things. A very powerful system.

By's system for storing large numbers is similar to the Dominic, but the letters for the numbers are OITERSCLAg. The letters have a shape similarity to the numbers and easier to remember because they form something similar to a german word. By uses the system a bit different by making the letters the start of a word, for instance 34=TE=TEst,3435=TETRis etc.

The third method, which By seem to use to some extent is the number shape system, but he seems to use it only to support other systems.

To sum the evening up: By's intro course was very inspiring, showing that everybody is able to remember vast amounts of information. The techinques By finds most efficient are also the ones described as most efficient by other sources. You could remember things faster and more smoothly than just practising and repeating, freeing your brain for other tasks. My inspiration led me to start learning the countries of the world and their capitals. Yesterday was North America, today might be Europe. You never know when that might come handy...

How to make the best out of GTD and mnemonics

2008-08-25T12:10:00.001+02:00

I have been a great fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) ever since my friend Arnstein introduced it to me over a year ago. I feel that GTD has revolutionized the way I work, making me more efficient and goal oriented and feeling more at ease knowing that all my agreements with others (and myself) are met. That being said I still fill that there is a lot to be improved in ways of implementing Allen's system to my personality - I am making progress every day.

Recently I have been reading "Mind Performance Hacks" by Ron Hale-Evans. It introduces you to plenty of small tricks/hacks on how to improve performance. There are more examples of usable than unusable hacks for me in the book and I think I will try to implement many of them in the near future. I highly recommend reading the book if you find this topic interesting.

Most of the hacks collected in the section "Memory" in "Mind Performance Hacks" are mnemonics (tricks on how to remember things). I find "the Number-Shape system", "Lots of Little Journeys" and "the Dominc System" to be the most interesting and usable ones.

David Allen's GTD is based on the fact that you are unable to store too many things in what he calls "psycic RAM", and thus you should store them in action reminder lists to avoid remember things by yourself. I completely agree that It is totally impossible to remember all things that you should do/want to do in the near and far future, but the problem appears when you actually want to start doing things ("cranking widgets") and your lists are not where you are.

How are you supposed to bring your actions with you in the right context? My solution to this has been and will be to store my action lists on the internet. This solves some of my problems as I have access to the internet at home and work as well as other places. When I want to do several tasks in the same context, for instance doing errands, I write out a list of the things at the context and bring it with me. Others are suggesting making "hipsters", low tech cards with the actions in priority. Both of these techinques works, but it takes time and effort to do.

The other thing I am missing is a system for remembering actions that you are doing on a regular basis. On mondays I do my weekly/montly review and check a random article on wikipedia (another hack). I mainly use outlook to remember this, but I have no ability due to IT security reasons to sync these and other actions to my home. I leap over this problem by only remembering scheduled activities at work.

This is were the mnemonics comes to play. By using mnemonics (for instance the "number shape system") you should be able to remember the context specific activities and the regular activities quite simple. It only takes the effort to find a system that works for you and start using it on a regular basis.

Yess! Make Magazine rett i postkassen for $50

2008-08-11T20:34:00.000+02:00

For den som ikke kjenner til make magazine så er det et relativt tykt blad fylt med masse gjør det selv-stoff. I motsetning til det vi forbinder med gjør det selv, så omhandler bladet ikke bare snekring og håndtverk, men alt som har med laging av ting. Bladet har en dreining mot elektronikk og mikroprosessorer og utgis av anerkjente O'reilly. Bladet har også en online blogg der masse oppfinnelser leggges ut kontinuerlig fra ulike ressurser på nettet(en av mine favorittsider). Make magazine og online siden har etterhvert fått en stor fanskare av småe og store skapere rundt om i verden.

Jeg har tidligere sjekket hva gamle nummer koster via amazon og funnet at det ble alt for dyrt. Av en eller annen merkelig grunn har jeg aldri sjekket makezine sine egne abonnementsvilkår. Det viser seg at bladet kun koster $50 for fire nummer (et år), dvs ca 67 kr bladet med forsendelse. Sammenliknet med hva et uinteressant blad fra Narvesen koster så får du plenty for pengene. Make magazine er tross alt et kongeblad.

Trøbbel med waypoints og Garmin Mobile

2008-08-10T14:21:00.000+02:00

Jeg tenkte jeg skulle forberede meg på turen til Stockholm og Tallinn ved å legge diverse hoteller, restauranter og severdigheter for stedene inn som waypoints på Garmin Mobile på min Nokia N73. Dessverre har det vist seg vanskeligere å få til enn nødvendig.

Ved overføring av punktene blir de liggende i en fil med navnet temp.gpx (evt current.gpx) og kan importeres inn i Garmin Mobile vha "import gpx". Før importering inneholder xml filene de riktige koordinatene, men etter import forsvinner all informasjon etter komma. F.eks. blir "lat="59.4342756"" gjort om til "lat="59.000001"", noe som gjør at koordinatene blir helt feilplassert og samlet i ei klynge. Jeg har forsøkt å endre informasjonen bak kommaet samt endre koordinatformatet som Garmin Mobile benytter, men uten hell. Til slutt har jeg bare måtte bite i det sure eplet og gjøre det på gammelmetoden - å legge koordinatene inn manuelt :-(

Det tok sin tid, men nå er det gjort. Endelig kan jeg dra på tur uten å føle meg på villspor. Inntil neste tur håper jeg at Garmin får fikset problemene.

Førsteinntrykk av iphone 3G

2008-08-06T22:40:00.002+02:00

I dag fikk Sunniva sitt SIM-kort og det var mulig å sjekke ut hvordan iPhone 3G fungerer. Dessverre må hun (og jeg) vente til 15. august med å få aktivert SIM-kortet. Telefonen kan derimot brukes til alt annet i mellomtiden. Det kan på forhånd nevnes at jeg ikke har stor erfaring med Apples produkter tidligere:

Positive erfaringer:

iPhone har et rålekkert design både utvendig og softwaremessig
Alle programmer responderer råkjapt i mine øyne
Layoutmessig ligger programmene helt perfekt plassert på skjermen og du har tilgang til så og si alt du trenger: sms, kalender, bilder, kamera, gps/kart, været, klokke, kalkulator, notater, telefon, mail, webbrowsing, iPod
Touch funksjonaliteten er bare herlig - zooming og paning fungerer helt perfekt og gjør det faktisk mulig å se webinnhold på en mobiltelefon
Det innebygde akselerometeret flipper bilder slik du ønsker å se de i portrett eller landskapsmodus.
Jeg kan streame radiokanaler fra f.eks. videoer fra f.eks. youtube smertefritt
Jeg kan spille lyd, bilder og quicktime filmer fra tversity server
Appstore ser ut til å ha tilgjengelige masse herlige programmer som det er bare å legge inn. Dette er fordelen med at det er andre generasjons iPhone som kommer til Norge
Bruk av trådløst nett funger smertefritt mot både web og email og det er enkelt å sette opp f.eks. gmail
Synkronisering mot outlook fungerer smertefritt
GPS-info kan f.eks. settes på bilder slik at du vet hvor bildet ble tatt

Negative erfaringer:

All overføring av bilder, musikk og programmer foregår enten via iTunes eller via AppStore på mobilen
iTunes er som ei mor fra helvete - masse unødvendige spørsmål som må besvares hele tiden (nesten som windows Vista)
Tastaturet kan nesten være for lite for mannsfingre. Etter litt bruk går det derimot både raskt og (nesten) feilfritt med to fingre (touchmetoden)
Prisen på godt over 6000,- var vel drøy, men tatt i betraktning at man i dette får ca 1,5 time ringetid, 100 smser, 100mb dataoverøring per måned samt fri surfing på netcoms wifisoner så synes jeg det er en god pris
Apple tar seg betalt av alle ting for at programmerere skal lage programmer.
Det er kun Apples støttede mediaformater som kan benyttes (Video=Quicktime, Audio=MP3). Mulig det finnes tredjeparts programmer for dette.

Spenningen knytter seg til:

Kan iPhone vnc klient kjøres mot mine pcer?

Trøndersk matfestival

2008-08-06T12:21:00.001+02:00

Turen til Stavanger og besøket på gladmatfestivalen var veldig trivelig. Man glemmer gjerne som alle andre trege trøndere at vi faktisk har vår egen matfestival i Trondheim. Denne gangen er det lagt til 7.-9. august, med blant annet grillmesterskap på agendaen. På http://www.tronderskmatfestival.no/ finnes det mere informasjon om festivalen. Kanskje vi rekker et lite besøk midt i helgas innspurt til bryllupet vårt?

Nær ir på webkameraet mitt

2008-08-05T20:59:00.001+02:00

Denne modifikasjonen gjorde jeg for et par år siden. Jeg har ikke rukket å teste den før i går. Jeg har fjærnet ir-filteret som sitter foran linsa slik at jeg også ser nær ir. De fleste kamera-chipene har et utvidet frekvensområde i forhold til det som vises. Dessverre ser det ut som jeg monterte innmaten opp ned...

Dings for motorovervåking

2008-08-01T21:24:00.004+02:00

Etter ca 14 dager fikk jeg tilsendt en dings for 130kr (ink. forsendelse) fra Hong Kong som jeg har gledet meg til å få: En boks med tilhørende kabel som kan lese feilkoder og overvåke motoren på nyere biler (fra 95 og frem til i dag). Moderne biler gjør det mulig via standardiserte kommunikasjonsprotokoller (CAN/OBD/OBD2) å hente ut ganske mye informasjon. Målet er å kunne lære mer om samspillet mellom de ulike sensorene og tenning/innsprøytningskurvene henger sammen. Dessuten er det kjekt å kunne gjøre elektronisk feilsøking uten å sette bilen på verksted. Foreløpig har jeg koblet boksen til VW Polo leiebilen som vi har, og dette ser ut til å fungere utmerket. Medfølgende software (Scantools) er noe begrenset, og jeg ser derfor frem til å se på mer avanserte pakker fremover.

Hell i uhell

2008-07-29T20:43:00.002+02:00

Jeg var heldig som slapp med skrekken...

Problemer med publisering

2008-07-29T19:56:00.001+02:00

Jeg hadde store problemer om å ta opp denne bloggen igjen og bruke den som mobil blogg etter inspirasjon fra Jon Vidar. Dessverre har det vist seg svært vanskelig. Etter mye feilsøking og sammenlikning med Sunniva og min sin fellesblogg har jeg funnet ut at jeg har blitt registrert som mulig spamblogg. Nå har jeg endelig funnet ut av dette og håper at det vil bli fikset snarlig:
----
Bloggen krever ordbekreftelse
Bloggers roboter for beskyttelse mot spam har oppdaget at bloggen din har de samme karakteristikkene som en spamblogg. (Hva er en spamblogg?) Ettersom det er en virkelig person som leser dette, er bloggen din antageligvis ikke en spamblogg. Automatisk spamregistrering er upålitelig av natur, og vi beklager på det sterkeste for denne feilen.
Den 29. juli 2008 mottok vi din forespørsel om å låse opp bloggen. På vegne av robotene beklager vi å ha låst den søppelfrie bloggen din. Vi håper at du kan vise tålmodighet mens vi tar en titt på bloggen din og bekrefter at det ikke snakk om søppelinnlegg.
Finn ut mer om hvordan Blogger bekjemper spamblogger.
----
Forespørsel mottatt
Vi har mottatt forespørselen din om å kontrollere at bloggen din ikke er en spamblogg. Vi vil se på bloggen din og sende et svar på epost.
Finn ut mer om hvordan Blogger bekjemper spamblogger.
----

Rekkverket kommer på plass

2008-07-29T18:58:00.001+02:00

Stolpene som skal brukes til rekkverk kommer på plass

Start bygging av terrasse

2008-07-29T18:54:00.003+02:00

Vi har lenge vurdert om vi skal bygge veranda. Jeg kom først godt i gang i midten av mai. Her har jeg akkurat blitt ferdig med de 12 pilarene som skal holde terassen i riktig høyde.

Easy to make protein waffles

2007-12-30T16:26:00.000+01:00

This simple receipe of protein waffles was made while experimenting in the kitchen. You should be able to make ~8 waffles.

Ingredients:

2 Eggs
3 table spoons Splenda
80 g/2.4 dl neutral taste protein powder (I use a blend of whey, casein and egg)
5 dl water
5 table spoons spelt flour
1 tea spoon baking powder
2 table spoons healthy oil

Instructions:
Mix eggs and splenda. Make a shake of protein powder and all the water. You should not use flavored protein as it contains aspartame which should not be heated. Mix the shake with the egg mix. Add flour, baking powder and oil. Keep it in the fridge until beeing used after mixing the ingredients well. Cook it in the waffle iron. Stirred berries (strawberries, raspberries etc) and splenda makes a perfect combo.

Impressions afterwards:
The waffles taste ok, but can be improved. They are lacking a bit of fullness due to low fat content. I think the fullness fill improve if using skimmed milk instead of water and/or using wheat instead of spelt.

Simple ice lanterns in 5 steps

2007-12-21T22:17:00.000+01:00

These ice lanterns were inspired by ideas found on instructables.com. The instructions found were how to make ice balls and how to make battery powered LED ice lanterns. I thought it would be an idea to make a low tech version of the LED lantern.

Here are the instructions:
1. Fill ordinary balloons with water from the sink. Fill to a safe size.
2. Put the balloons in the freezer for at least four hours until fully frozen. Make sure as few as possible objects deform the balloons while freezing.
3. Use a drill with a hole saw to mark the outline of where you want to put a tea light candle.
4. Make the hole deeper by using a knife and carving the ice from the hole. You have to make sure the candle wick will be below the top of the hole to make the lantern shimmer and to shelter the fire.
5. Put a tea light candle within the hole and light it.

That's it - enjoy the beautiful light in these dark days.

How to set up MouseClick and MouseDoubleClick in 6 steps (C# / Visual Studio 2005)

2007-11-19T15:48:00.000+01:00

Do you want to add clicking and double clicking to the same button in C#? This is the only way I have found that works:

Start by adding an integer variable to set the status for the mouse and initialize to zero (clickStatus)
Drag a timer to the form to monitor how much time have elapsed between mouse clicks (timer1). Set “Enabled” property to “false”.
Set the timer interval to the system doubleclick time (timer1.Interval=SystemInformation.DoubleClickTime)
Add a Click event to the form or whatever you want to check the clickstatus of.
Add the Click event to the Tick event of timer1
Add additional code as shown below:

namespace WindowsApplication3
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private int clickStatus=0; //0=not clicked, 1=single clicked, 2=double clicked

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
timer1.Interval = SystemInformation.DoubleClickTime;
}
private void Form1_MouseDoubleClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
clickStatus = 2;
}
private void Form1_MouseClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
clickStatus = 1;
timer1.Enabled = true;
}
private void Form1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
timer1.Enabled = false;
if (clickStatus==2)
{
//MessageBox.Show("Double clicked");
clickStatus = 0;
}
else if (clickStatus==1)
{
//MessageBox.Show("Single clicked");
clickStatus = 0;
}
}
}
}

The click events are called in the following order: Click – MouseClick – MouseDoubleClick, but MouseDoubleClick will not be raised if a MouseClick is raised. The trick is to use the timer. When a single click is made then the following events will be raised: Click – MouseClick – Click. When a double click Is made the following events will be raised: Click – MouseClick – MouseDoubleClick – Click. Make sure to add the same events to other components that you want to have similar behaviour (labels, boxes etc).

Electrolytic rust removal

2007-06-26T22:49:00.000+02:00

Recently I have been experiencing problems with rust on my cars. I looked around on the internet and found an easy, but very effective method for rust removal. The method utilizes electrolysis and compared to other methods it's superb as it doesn't remove any base material. The only limitations for the method is that the part could be disassembled and that you have a tub with sufficient volume where you could submerge it.

You need a couple of ingredients for the method:
1. Caustic soda or crystal soda - 10g per liter, for the electrolytic bath
2. An iron or steel with low alloy content, as electrode
3. A plastic or plastic covered tub
4. Water
5. A variable current source. You could use a battery or an old car charger, but it's necessary to alter the current by adding extra resistors like a car bulb
6. Wires
7. A part that is rusted (duh)

I got asked by a colleague if I could try the method on a part for a cam shaft that he accidently had left on the floor of his leaking car. This is how the part looked before the rust removal:

The process creates hydrogen. As hydrogen is explosive with oxygen I found it safest to work outdoors.

I used caustic soda as it was impossible to obtain crystal soda. I read that others were using crystal soda, but that it should be safe to use caustic soda for the bath. Water was first filled, caustic soda was later weighed and added 10g per liter.

I used an old model train current source, but needed to rectify the voltage as it was AC, not DC as needed. The positive wire was connected to the sacrificial iron electrode and the negative wire was connected to the part that I wanted to remove rust from. The process starts faster if the wire has contact with base metal. The wire(s) to the sacrificial electrode(s) should not be submerged as it would destroy it/them. If the object is large you should surround it with several electrodes. This is my setup:

The current was adjusted to the lowest possible value as a medium sized object (dependent on the surface) needs approximately 200mA. I had ~170mA for what I consider a small object. It's not crucial that the current is low, but a fast process is supposed to make a non optimal result. You notice the start of the transformation by small hydrogen bubbles appearing on the surface of the part. I left the part for approximately one day in the tub, but you could keep it there forever if you wanted. After removal I rinse the part in water with a tooth brush, scrape off excess rust with a knife, remove water by rubbing it with paint thinner and cover it in oil. This is the result of the process (some rust are still seen on the picture, but this was easily removed with a small knife). I would highly recommend the method to others.

Trening og ernæring

2006-08-17T10:37:00.000+02:00

Siden nyttår har det vært lite aktivitet på denne sida. Det har den naturlige årsaken at jeg har blitt svært glad i min kjære Sunniva og har nytt å tilbringe tiden sammen med henne. Selv om jeg har vært opptatt av ernæring tidligere, har det aldri vært så lett og naturlig å leve sunt og godt som akkurat nå. Hun har mange av de samme holdningene som meg når det gjelder trening og ernæring allikevel er vi ikke helt nazi.

hverdagskosthold:
Typisk frokost: AXA godag energi, gresskarfrø, biola naturell og blåbær
Typisk lunch: fiberknekkis med diverse kjøttpålegg
Typisk middag: krydret kjøtt/fisk med masse grønnsaker eller salat
I tillegg til dette spiser jeg mellommåltider med frukt og proteinshaker (melkeprotein).
På treningsdager supplerer jeg treningen med en shake raske proteiner (whey) og druesukker

Jeg har hatt perioder hvor jeg har vært opptatt i å få i meg nok proteiner, men er først nå innstilt på å fortsette med høyt proteininntak. Jeg har lett etter en leverandører av kosttilskudd til fornuftige priser i Trondheim. Jeg har funnet ut at "norwhey" (whey) på kaliber gym og "tn Isolate 90" (melkeprotein) på flex gym gir meg mest for pengene og dekker de ulike behovene. Druesukker kjøper jeg foreløpig i poser på ica.

trening:
Jeg trener typisk mandag, onsdag og fredag for å få nødvendig restitusjon mellom øktene. Etter anbefaling fra Chad Waterbury (T-nation) kjører jeg økter med volum på minimum 24 per økt. Siden sentralnervesystemet er fresht etter helga på mandager bruker jeg 5x5 denne dagen. Tilsvarende på onsdager og fredager bruker jeg 3x8 og 2x12. Alle øktene er basert på trening for hele kroppen og kjører typisk 2xben og 2xoverkropp (antagonist). Jeg benytter de samme øvelsene hver uke, men roterer de slik at on->ma, fre->on og ma->fre. På denne måten får jeg variasjon i repetisjoner for hver øvelse.

typisk program:
mandag (5x5): benpress, glute ham raises
bred benkpress+flies, stående roing
onsdag (3x8): (sumo) markløft, good mornings
db skråbenk, chinups/pullups
fredag (2x12): Knebøy, stivbent markløft
benkpress, kabelroing
I tillegg supplerer jeg med øvelser for muskler som henger etter

Diving in Phuket

2005-12-18T16:49:00.000+01:00

I went diving for three days near Phuket. My first dive was a scuba tune up at Kata Beach since it has been four years since my last dive. The other dives were to the south (Ko Racha Yai) and east (Ko Doc Mai) of Phuket and split into to daytrips with boat. They went to Ko Racha Yai (2), King Cruiser Wreck, Anemone Reef and Ko Doc Mai.

The pictures were taken by the divemaster on the dives near Ko Racha Yai. We got to see plenty of different species. Some of them: sea turtle, leopard shark, clown fish (nemos), lionfish, blue spotted stingrays, sea snakes, barracudas, murays, sea horses, shrimps, octopuses, squids and plenty of other corals, fish and other animals that I don't know the name of. A great booster for further diving.

Trip to Phuket, Thailand, desember 2005

2005-12-18T16:05:00.000+01:00

Two weeks have passed and I am back from hollidays on Phuket, Thailand. This is my first trip to Thailand, and actually my first to Asia. I was feeling a little bit anxious about going on a trip on my own, but I think I did well. My goal was to enjoy life and come home relaxed, and I did to my fullest.

After adjusting for a few days to the new impressions and the environment I really felt that I had come to paradise. I know that Phuket is not supposed to be "real Thailand", but for me it was great. The hospitality of the thai people are just unbelievable, and I really needed this as I would find it difficult to find friends - most foreigners were either pensioners or families.

My first week get to experience what the island had to offer: bathing, great food, cheap prices (suites), diving, muay thai, thai massage (every day), spectacular views. I am glad that the optitions were so diverse while the weather was unnormally disappointing.

My second week I met Andy from Canada and Ivo from Switzerland at the bungalows and suddenly everything was much easier. We went to see Patong by night, went shopping and body surfed at the beach.

When my hollidays was coming to an end I felt a little sad that it was all over - I got to know the staff at Friendship Bungalows and Lucky Massage pretty well and the goodbys made me feel like wanting to come back.

Muay Thai in Phuket Town

Karon Beach

Karon Beach

On my way to Kata

Muay Thai - Two young boxers

A little older

No guts no glory

Muay Thai

Frontal kick coming up

In the clinch

Knees to the thigh

The boathouse at lunchtime

On the way to Ko Racha Yai

A very nice day

Lunch is prepared after first dive

Waiting for the second dive

Thirty divers are hungry

Coming out of the water

A rope length away from the boat

The crew is doing a great job

Relaxing after the dives, Ko racha yai in background

Ao Kata Noi

A nice day for body surfing

Ko Pu saved the beach from the tsunami

The boathouse at dinner

Finally a nice day at Kata beach

Ko Pu

On the way for diving at Kings Cruiser

Ko Doc Mai, third dive of the day

Just before the dive

Tension is high, full consentration

Finished diving for the day

The three major beaches - Patong, Karon and Kata

Viewpoint near Kata

Nai Harn beach

Nui Beach

This island didn't save Nai Harn..

Nai Harn

Phrompthep Cape, dogs sleeping

Nai Harn from Phrompthep Cape (PC)

Relligious site at PC

Elephants are important in Bhudism

The lighthouse at PC

Elephants

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Wat Chalong

Heroines monument

Gibbon Project - Sketch of transition to the national park

Kids bathing in Bang Pae waterfall

Kids bathing in Bang Pae waterfall

Follow that Tuk Tuk

Patong beach

Bang La Road, Patong

Ivo and Andy at Friendship Bungalows

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Le

Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Le

Ko Phi Phi Le

Entering Maya Bay

The beach

The beach's surroundings

The beach's surroundings

Ruined paradise

Bought the T-shirt

Ko Phi Phi Le, Maya Bay (the beach)

Ko Phi Phi Le, Maya Bay (the beach)

Ko Phi Phi Le, Maya Bay (the beach)

Ko Phi Phi Le, Maya Bay (the beach)

Ko Phi Phi Le

Ko Phi Phi Le

Ko Phi Phi Le

Ko Phi Phi Le, viking cavern

Ko Phi Phi Le, viking cavern

Enjoying life

Heading for lunch on Ko Phi Phi Don

Ko Phi Phi Don, many died here

Dangerously beautiful

Life on the island

Between the two beaches

Amazing

Popular destination

Devastations from the tsunami

View from the island

The island seen from viewpoint

Kids playing near a longtail boat

Relaxing on the balcony of my bungalow

Kata is a nice place

Fæsttur til Grøvudalen

2005-10-24T19:08:00.000+02:00

I helga var det klart for fæsttur på Grøvudalshytta og seks ivrige festdeltagere og en hund dro avgårde fredags kveld for å komme opp til hytta. Hovedhytta var dessverre okkupert så vi måtte ta til takke med stabburet da vi sent ankom Gruvudalen. Snøen falt lett på fredag og gradestokken krøp under null og det var godt å sprengfyre utover natta.

Lørdag nøt vi sen frokost før vi la til fjells. Snøen lå fortsatt godt og det var en litt friskt da vi kom opp i høyden. Ute på ettermiddagen ble følget fulltallig da de siste to festdeltagerne kom. Kvelden bød ikke på de store sprellene, men praten gikk løst og jeg hadde i hvert fall en kjempefin kveld.

Etter at vi våknet fra dvalen på søndag lå finværet og ventet utenfor døra. De fleste valgte å gå en avslappende søndagstur gjennom dalen. Selv valgte jeg å kose meg i solveggen med godt lesestoff før vi returnerte til byen.

Ferietur til Gjøvik og Oslo

2005-10-21T00:05:00.000+02:00

Siden min planlagte tur til Kina gikk fløyten benyttet jeg sjansen til å utforske eget land.

Jeg avtalte å treffe Mirela og dra til Oslo helga 7.-9. oktober. Jeg innså fort at noen besøk i hovedstaden i niårsalderen, et par fester i militærtiden og mellomlandinger på Gardermoen ikke gjør deg lommekjent i Oslo. Det var gøyalt og være turist i eget land. Besøkte selvsagt kontiki, vikingeskipsmuseet, folkemuseet, Vigelandsparken og koste oss med god mat og god drikke på Aker brygge, Grünerløkka, Grønland og langs Carl Johan. O herlige klisjeer :)

Etter ei kjempehelg i Oslo ventet ei fin uke i Gjøvik der jeg ble bedre kjent med Ema og Marijana. Til å begynne med var det veldig rart i det hele tatt å røre en baby. Lille Ema var ei kjempegod jente som aldri gråt og det føltes etterhvert naturlig å dulle uten å drite seg ut. Jeg fikk plutselig lyst på barn..

Etter en uke i Gjøvik med flere besøk til Lillehammer, men ellers mye hjemmekos med typisk gjestmild kroatisk behandling ventet hverdagen hjemme i Trondheim. Sukk - det var godt mens det varte.

Ema og Even

Ema, Mirela og Marijana

Mirela og meg i Vigelandsparken

Ema og Gogo

Ema

Party

Vigelandsparken

Gogo, Marijana, Mirela, Ema og bobkjøreren Brane

Høst i Oslo

Bryllup og dåp i Viksdalen

2005-10-20T23:36:00.000+02:00

Et tilbakeblikk på ei kjempefin langhelg i Sunnfjord, nærmere bestemt flotte Viksdalen. Mitt søskenbarn Erlend og hans Borgny skulle gifte seg samt døpe datteren Vilja.

Vi reiste nedover fredag 24. september. Mine to brødre Anders og Håvard reiste i egen bil mens jeg og fatter reiste sammen. Mamma tok flyet til Førde og ble hentet. Vi dro over strynefjell i fantastisk sol og høstfarger.

Lørdag på bryllup og dåpsdagen ble være noe gråere, men det ble ganske så fint da sermoniene skulle holdes. Etterpå ventet middag og bryllupsfest. Familien Lund tok tidlig kveld da mamma, Anders og Håvard skulle dra tidlig tilbake.

Jeg og fatter hadde tatt fri mandag og nøt søndagen til å beundre utsikten utover Viksdalen samt gå en liten tur på Fossestien. Mandag reiste vi via Sognefjellsveien tilbake til byen.

Utsikt utover viksdalen

Fossestien

Fossestien

Fossestien

Bryllupspar og d�psbarn

Et glad brudepar

Bryllupskysset

Tre staute karer og ei flott mor

Oktoberfest

2005-09-22T17:37:00.000+02:00

I forbindelse med reise til München gjennom jobb benyttet jeg muligheten til å besøke den velkjente oktoberfest som avholdes årlig. Jeg hadde sett for meg noen øltelt spredd litt rundt om kring og stort sett bare turister. Dette stemte ikke. Et helt parkområde fylles opp med ølhus (ikke telt) og et gedigent tivoliområde. Festen så ut til å være nesten som en 17. mai for tyskerne. Her hersket lederhosen og megautringede budeieantrekk overalt. Høy ompaføring, klingende ølglass og muligheten for å rope "hai" av rungende hals trakk ølhusene fulle av høyrøstede tyskere. Omtrent som en hemningsløs Budalsfest opphøyd i fjerde svaiet de til Wenche Myhres "sechsundsecsich" eller ompet i vei til "I will survive". Liebe Bavaria!

Fjellfimfestival paa Turtagroe #2

2005-09-22T16:59:00.000+02:00

Fjellfimfestival paa Turtagroe #1

2005-09-22T16:53:00.000+02:00

Helga 16.-19. september var det fjellfilmfestival på Turtagrø. TTU hadde satt opp buss fra Gløshaugen og opplegget virket proft. Bussen fra Trondheim hadde rundt 25 deltagere, men bare 4 fra TTF (buuu). To fulle busser kom fra Bergen og en fra Oslo. Fredag gikk med til å bli kjent på området og sette opp telt. Jeg rakk en dårlig snowboard film og en pils før jeg tok kvelden.

Lørdag var det primusfrokost med Rolf utenfor teltene våre. Jeg hadde meldt meg på dagstur til Dyrhaugsryggen. Følget var stort og jeg var på forhånd spent på klyvingen. Det viste seg at nivået ikke skremte meg - flere var bedre kledd for en tur på byen og klyvingen liknet mere kravling. Alle som ville kom til toppen. Turen var flott, og bildene flottere - vi returnerte til Turtagrø i sjutida.

På ettermiddag var det middag, isdusjing, filmseeing og foredrag fra norsk K2 ekspedisjon. Kombinasjonen film+camping er glimrende: Varmen og kosen får du inne, følelsen av å være på fjellet ute. På kvelden nøt man et par kalde i varmen mens man studerte alle de spradende boblerne og pratet skit. En koselig kveld!

Søndag var det en meget avslappet stemning. Jeg benyttet sjansen til å få med meg filmen "Loop" - om livet og hvordan det bør leves. En perfekt avslutning på en flott helg. Til dere som angrer på at dere ikke ble med: Nå kan dere angre på at dere ikke ble med ;D

Tur til Gjevilvasskamman

2005-09-11T23:28:00.000+02:00

Valgte å delta på denne helgeturen til Gjevilvasskamman i Trollheimen, noe jeg ikke angret på i ettertid. Lørdag hadde vi strålende vær og turen gikk på skinner. Litt cliffhangereffekter hadde vi da vi forserte hakkene på heimre - is og løs sten bød på noen utfordringer. Turen på lørdag tok ca 10 timer før vi ankom Vassendsætra. Søndag gikk vi rundt kammene tilbake til Gjevilvasshytta.

Beising av anneks

2005-09-05T20:26:00.000+02:00

Helga ble brukt til oljing av det splitter nye annekset som pappa har fått bygd. Jeg har hjulpet til med målsetting, konstruksjon og støping av pilarer tidligere. Jeg ble veldig positivt overrasket da jeg kom opp på hytta denne helga og fikk se hvor nydelig Erling, pappas søskenbarn, hadde laget annekset i stavlaft. Helga ble stort sett brukt til å legge førstestrøket med olje. En klissete og treg jobb da treverket var tørst. Sluttresultatet var vi allikevel godt fornøyde med. Nå venter innlegging av strøm, vann og kloakk.

Bilder fra brekurs i Jotunheimen

2005-08-30T19:41:00.000+02:00

Dessverre led kameraet under tøffe omgivelser og beskyttelsesdekselet frøs fast på de kanskje kuleste bildene :(

Brekurs i Jotunheimen

2005-08-30T09:55:00.000+02:00

Jeg meldte meg på minibrekurs gjennom TTF tidligere i sommer da jeg så muligheten for å utvide mulige turer innenfor miljøet og for å prøve noe nytt. Kurset var lagt på to ukedager og en helg.

Mandag 22. august
Vi møttes på parkeringsplassen ved tikneppen. Jeg klarte å surre med tida og kom en time før vi skulle starte. Rakk såvidt å spise litt middag før jeg måtte være tilbake. Jeg fikk låne masse utstyr fra TTF: hjelm, stegjern, isøks, innbindingsslynge, tre prusikktau, fire karabiner (to skru), bryst- og sittesele, isskrue og snøanker. Etter opplæring i knuter og innbinding dro vi til tikneppen. På tikneppen øvde vi på rapellering og klemknutegang. Vi hadde litt regn, men det gjorde ingen ting. Kjempeartig!

Onsdag 24. august
Vi møttes på havna ved Reina for å øve på redning. Mange fikk seg nok en overraskelse da de så en gjeng tullinger henge ned langs kaikanten. Til å begynne med var det litt knoting med hvilke tau som skulle hvor, men etterhvert satt redningsteknikken brukbart. Kvelden strakk seg lang da vi alle skulle gjennom en runde.

Fredag 26. august
Vi dro fra Lerkendal med destinasjon Krossbu i vestre Jotunheimen. Mitt reisefølge var Kjetil, Matz og Bjørn Christian. Etter en kald forfriskning var de fleste klare for å ta en tidlig kveld.

Lørdag 27. august
Vi startet med å gå et par kilometer til vi ankom enden på brearmen Bøverbreen som er en del av Smørstabbrean. Brearmen var valgt ut fordi den byr på oppsprekninger som er fine å øve i. Vi monterte på stegjern og øvde på gangteknikk med jerna. Stegjernsvandring er nesten som cowboygange - bredbeint og julbeint. Vi lærte også å håndtere isøksen på en forsvarlig måte. Resten av dagen var taulaget samlet og vi øvde på redning fra sprekk. Det var et lite kick å henge så langt nede i en sprekk. Håper jeg ikke får oppleve det igjen ufrivillig! Etter all øvingen fikk vi en liten spasertur i blåisen. På kvelden vanket middag, rødvin og koz. Vi gjennomgikk teori på navigering og brelære før kvelden var over.

Søndag 28. august
Etter noen glass vann var jeg klar for en ny dag. Denne dagen dro vi til en topp rett øst for Krossbu som lå ved brekanten. Vi bant taulaget, staket kursen og regnet hvor mange laglengder det tok før vi ankom kalven. Alt stemte på en prikk. Etter dette øvde vi på bremseteknikk i nedoverbakke. Artig for barna :D Etter en godt innpakket lunsjsamling satte vi kursen mot Bøverbreen igjen. På veien klarte Øyvin å dette tre ganger ned i sprekker da disse var skjult av all snøen som kom natten før. Etter litt action kom vi velberget tilbake til Krossbu før turen gikk hjemover igjen. Alt i alt et friskt, lærerikt og morsomt kurs. Gleder meg til fortsettelsen i TTF!

Nytt semester, nye utfordringer

2005-08-29T13:59:00.000+02:00

Høsten er på vei. De dorske sommerdagene er over og det er på tide å knalle til og gjøre noe godt for kropp og sjel. Tidligere har vært flink til å holde meg i form og være aktiv i miljøene jeg er involvert i. Dette semesteret blir det mye vanskeligere enn tidligere å rekke over alt. Tidligere har helgene vært tid for restutisjon mentalt såvel som fysisk. Etter at jeg nylig meldte meg inn i TTF blir også disse spist opp til utendørsaktiviteter. Hvordan skal jeg få tid til venner?! Jeg får gjøre det beste ut av det - yoga og brazilian er viktigst og fyller hverdagen. Styrketrening kan tas når jeg har tid. Pistolskyting og turer i fjellet og marka er fin avveksling til øl og pizza foran djevelkassa. Ingen aktiviteter skal uansett komme i veien for en god hyttetur med venner når anledningen byr seg. Kabalen er løst-det blir en herlig tid!

Prototype #4 penny alcohol stove

2005-08-03T10:49:00.000+02:00

Even though I bought the trangia+omnifuel, I still want to be able to make a simple field stove similar to the penny alcohol stove. If I only had the knowledge of how to make one when I was to the north earlier this summer I wouldn't have a problem preparing my own food. I felt like a leach when having to rely on other persons stoves to prepare a hot meal.

My fourth prototype was made using Heineken cans. I cut the fuel cup at the top of the can, justin front of where it starts to narrow. This is much longer than the original cup. I cut vertical sections stopping at the same place as the original cup using scissors. By folding these sections I thought it would be possible to use them as a pot stand while at the same time taking the best out of the design of the penny alcohol stove. Unfortunately this design was a bit flimsy.

The holes were made using a push-pin. I didn't bother to fold the burner section to fit the fuel cup and had no problems assembling them. The filler hole was made out of approximately 10 holes.

The test results were terrible. After the initial priming the flames extinguished. The only major difference I see from the designes used earlier is the small filler holes. I think it would have worked better if I made one big hole. Fortunately this can be done using the push-pin as well.

Trangia with Primus Omnifuel

2005-07-29T14:01:00.000+02:00

I earlier decided after reading a few reviews and tests that I wanted to buy a Primus Omnifuel. The Primus is the only multifuel stove that can use various liquid and canister fuels. I was going to wait for a month before I bought it, but recently discovered that they had increased the price 20% at one store (XXL). I decided to buy it before everyone else did the same and payed the reasonable price 1000NOK for the Omnifuel.

I knew that the Omnifuel came with a simple windshield that I was not going to use. I had allready decided to buy a Trangia 25-4 with the following advantages:

Reliable and sturdy windshield/reflector even in very windy weather
Possiblity to insert an adapter to fit an Optimus Nova or a Primus Omnifuel ++
Comes with two pots, a pan and a kettle in a small package
The windshield is a stable foundation
The windshield+pot is a nice noise reducer

The only feature it is lacking is that the burner can be stored mounted inside the windshield or in the kettle. This would save valuable space (and time) when you are not bringing the alcohol burner, the original housing and the Primus windshield.

I was initially thinking of making the adapter for fitting the Omnifuel myself, but decided it was not worth the effort. I bought the original adapter for the Optimus Nova. This was easily fitted to the Omnifuel. I needed to drill a 7,8mm hole in the adapter parts and file a slightly bigger hole on the side of the Trangia windshield.

I bought three different fuels to test the setup: primus gas canister, kerosene/paraffine, and gasoline (naphta) - one fuel for each nozzle.

My conclusions for the different fuels:

Canisters: Great in the summertime. Clean and simple. Nice simmering.
Kerosene: Sooting quite a bit compared to the other two. Long preheating (40s). Nice simmering.
Gasoline: Little sooting, short preaheating (10s), difficult to simmer without extinguishing the flame.
All fuels had a frightening noise level without the windshield and a pan, but was nicely redused when included.
The use of gasoline seemed a bit scary initially, but I think this will be a good choice for winter. Arguments that "it's like sitting of on top of an exhaust pipe" (CO etc) yields for all fuels, but the gasoline will probably have less deaerator due to a cleaner burn than kerosene. Allways have in mind, though, that gasoline is like the fast variant of kerosene (heating and preheating). In vaporized form, all fuels will be explosive.

All in all I am very satisifed with my buy so far.

Bilder fra kajakktur til Helgelandskysten

2005-07-27T00:21:00.000+02:00

Roger og Elfin

Camping paa prestoeya

De syv soestre

Doennamannen

Andre og Kirsti med ankerdrammen

Pakking av kajakk

Mere pakking

..og atter pakking

Svanen koser seg paa Brasoeya

Brasoeya

Populaer butikk

Man skal kose seg med maten

Alt som kunne sittes paa ble tatt i bruk

Siste maaltid

Demo of the penny alcohol stove

2005-07-26T14:13:00.000+02:00

Follow up:
Yesterday, 25. july, I was supposed to demonstrate prototype one for my parents. They are old outdoor enthusiasts who have tried several commercially available alcohol stoves before. The first thing I noted was that the simmering ring was destoyed in my back pack after slipping off the rest of the stove - You have to be careful of where you keep the stove and especially the ring. I got some old denaturated ethanol alcohol (rødsprit) that was stored in their basement as fuel. I filled the fuel cup to the rim with alcohol. This is supposed to be sufficient to boil two cups of water. The stove was supposed to burn clean after what I felt was like an eternity of priming, but stopped burning after that. My theory is that the alcohol did not sink into the fuel cup. Now this is strange: After removing the coin, filling to the rim, reinserting the coin and priming for a very long time the flames where all red and yellow. This is strange compared to the nice tests with the blue flame just a few days ago. I am not sure what caused this, but I have a suspicion that some of the alcohol has turned to acid when stored for a long time. My mother claims that the bottle has always been properly closed before storage. It was a huge embarrassment for me anyway :(

Making of a penny alcohol stove

2005-07-24T20:14:00.001+02:00

Making of a penny alcohol stove - #2

This weekend was perfect for making the penny alcohol stove mentioned in my equipmentlist in an erlier post: http://www.csun.edu/~mjurey/penny.html#. Friday was binge time. I rarely touch alcohol, so drinking six Heineken gave me a pleseant surprise. I needed this many cans to be sure I could experiment a bit.

On saturday morning I went to buy a couple of scissors and a hole cutter at Biltema. I went to work and made the parts necessary in the workshop using scissors and a vertical drill. The parts were made according to the origial plan, but the hole cutter was meant for cutting leather and such so I was unable to make the holes at the sides of the burner part. I am not sure why the folds on the burner was necessary to make. Perhaps it was to make it easier to fit. I felt I had no problem with that, but the first stove was made using the folds. According to the instructions: "A hole punch was used to make holes in the folds to release hot gases to the inside of the burner". I guess that gases vaporized and trapped under the folds could give the stove an extra burst so I will include them if I make the folds in the future. The first prototype is shown on the picture to the right.

Parallel to making the first prototype I made a second one using only a nail, scissors and a screwdriver. The original plans uses Heineken cans. I felt that this was not necessary if I didn't need a simmer ring. For full boost and without the top/bottom you only need two cans of any type (beer/soda, large/small). Standards cans need the folds to be able to push the burner into the fuel cup. It is also easier to get the right dimensions when using Heineken cans due to the bands. The second prototype shown to the left had a smaller filler hole and larger burner holes.

The third prototype was made with Heineken cans, but only using a swiss knife (scissors, screwdriver, pliers, knife). The filler hole was smaller than the standard, but the burner holes where similar. I was able to make some ok holes in the folds for this prototype. The prototype is shown in the middle.

All prototypes used a norwegian 50 øre instead of a penny. The coin is a bit smaller than the penny.

Burner tests:
The first stove performed great with a pot on top. Without the pot the flames seemed a bit red/yellowish. The priming time seemed ok for the liquid to start vaporize. All the holes seem to be of perfect size. Perhaps it would perform even better with holes in the folds.

The second stove had to long priming time due to the smaller filler hole. The bigger burner holes resulted in inefficient burning of much fuel in the priming. After priming the flames seemed even more yellow/red and a lot higher than for the first. This seems inneficient.

The third stove had a very long priming time due to the smallest filler hole. After the priming it seemed to perform similar to the first prototype, which is great.

Conclusions: The original layout seem to have the best hole sizes. It is possible though to make it with much more portable equipment. It is not necessary to use Heineken cans if you make shrink folds with holes.

The tests were cool - I will try to make at least a fourth prototype using portable equipment. For the next prototype I will use a message board type needle to make the holes and a small scissor. The needle seem perfect for the small burner holes. For the filler hole and the gas evacuation holes I will use multiple perforations instead. I am thinking of using the middle section of large cans to make a pot stand and a wind shield. You will then only need to bring a sixpack of beer (large cans), the needle and the scissors. If you are still interested in eating after drinking those cans you can also bring some food ;-)

2005-07-24T20:14:00.000+02:00

Making of a penny alcohol stove - #1

Nåværende treningsprotokoll

2005-07-21T15:20:00.000+02:00

Jeg føler jeg har lært mye nyttig det siste årene når det gjelder trening. Takket være sider som T-nation.com og liknende finner man nye nyttig informasjon. Tre artikler har inspirert meg særlig det siste året:

The Tabata method
The Set/Rep bible
The velocity diet

I tillegg har jeg ivrig lest artikler av Christian Thibaudeau, Lonnie Lowery, John Berardi, Chris Shugart og andre.

De tre nevnte artiklene gir gode råd om effektiv progresjon (styrke, muskelmasse, utholdenhet og fettforbrenning).

Mat:
Jeg har ikke gjennomført the velocity diet, men vurderer å prøve den når jeg føler meg dvask. Når det gjelder mat prøver jeg for tiden å holde meg i skinnet, men samtidig forsyne kroppen med det den trenger. Tør liksom ikke hive meg ut i the anabolic diet, selv om jeg tror den fungerer fint for å øke styrken.

Styrke:
Fokus for tiden er styrke da det er nødvendig for å gjøre det bra i Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Jeg følger the set/rep bible med få repetisjoner (3-5) og flere sett (5-8) . Dette alterneres hver gang i forhold til 1 rep max skjema. For hver gang forsøker jeg å øke 1RM med ca 1-2kg. Jeg forsøker å gjennomføre hvert sett så raskt som mulig, men under kontroll. For å redusere tiden i treningslokalene baserer jeg treningen på fire hovedøvelser som jeg mener dekker stort sett hele kroppen: knebøy, markløft, benkpress og pullups. Disse gjennomføres hver gang og alltid under en time. Jeg har brukt 2-3 hviledager tidligere, men vurderer nå å kutte ned til en. Med tilstrekkelig søvn og godt med mat burde dette holde greit.

Utholdenhet:
Etter å ha lest om tabatametoden ble jeg frelst. En hurtig måte å komme i god form på! Metoden går i praksis ut på intens intervalltrening med 20s arbeid og 10s hvile. Perioden foregår i 4min og kan omfatte alle typer øvelser der du bruker store deler av kroppen. Men oppvarming og nedkjøling tar det hele nette 12minutter! En elegant avslutning på arbeidsdagen. Metoden skal øke både anaerob og aerob utholdenhet og medfører større VO2max og høyere fettforbrenning enn standard utholdenhetstrening. Jeg begynte å tappe blod for ca et år siden og får jevnlig målt hemoglobinnivået. Etter en periode på ca 3 uker med HIIT trening ca 2-3 ganger i uken merket jeg en vesentlig økning av hemoglobinnivået. Fin motivasjon får jeg si.

I sommer ønsker jeg å alternere mellom Tabata og styrketrening annenhver dag. Når Brazilian kicker igang igjen skal jeg knuse dere!

Turutstyr

2005-07-21T14:32:00.000+02:00

Jeg fant ut etter turen til Helgelandskysten at godt utstyr er alfa omega. Jeg hadde alt jeg trengte for å overleve og litt til, men den ekstra prikken på ien kom etter at jeg ble kjent med André, Tove og de andre. Folk som går mye tur verdsetter god komfort fant jeg ut.

Da jeg kom tilbake fra turen fant jeg ut at skatten hadde kommet tilbake. I tillegg var jeg så heldig å vinne nærmere 1500kr i gavekort hos XXL fra jobben. Dette kommer godt med når jeg nå ønsker å kjøpe utstyr.

Etter litt granskning (og med inspirasjon fra Lars Monsen) har jeg følgende ønskeliste:

Spiseutstyr:

Primus Omnifuel, multifuel kokeapparat (gass=sommer, bensin=vinter)
stormkjøkken m/hjemmelaget innsats for multifuelapparat (hvilken serie?)
hjemmelaget heineken spritbrenner (laget av ølbokser-bedre effekt, renere)
alternativt punkteringsadapter for billige primusbokser (Biltema)
kavalkad teflon kjelesett fra IKEA (dersom jeg ikke gidder å dra på stormkjøkken)
real turmat (jeg trodde tunfisk på boks fungerte, men det er ikke bra nok for ekte entusiaster :))
Hjemmelaget varmeveksler i kobber? (bremserør kan loddes sammen slik at de passertil trangiaboller)
IKEA-pose (til oppbevaring av mat i kajakk)
Eggholder

Klær:

Gode vandresko
Tynne neoprenesokker (kajakk eller mot gnagsår. hjemmelaget?)
Ulltruser
Mygghatt/myggsett til sovepose
Ny vintersovepose uten glidelås (min -25 grader)
Tynt selvoppblåsende liggeunderlag (thermarest, i tillegg til skumplast/granbar)
Stolsett til liggeunderlag
Findlandshette/balaclava
Ullhals (hvor er den gamle?)
Vindtett jakke (ikke nødvendigvis GoreTex)
Høyhalset fleezejakke?
Fjellduk?
Lettørket håndduk?

Etc:

turgps (pga batterikapasitet, fx. Garmin CS 60)
mindre sammenleggbar vanntank?
feller
kombihagle (til rådyr og fuglejakt)

Listen oppdateres ettersom jeg vet mer

Kajakktur til Helgelandskysten, Nordland

2005-07-21T13:26:00.000+02:00

Jeg fikk i begynnelsen av juni tips om en tur som var planlagt til Helgelandskysten i Nordland via min arbeidskollega Roger. Turen kom i perfekt tid i det jeg hadde ferie til overs og jeg alltids hadde litt tid til overs for enda en hobby.

Jeg kjøpte kajakk, en Boreal Inhukshuk plastkajakk fra Smart Club, etter at den hadde vunnet kajakktesten i bladet padling. Feriepengene gikk stort sett med på kjøpet samt tilleggsutstyr som årer, spruttrekk, flotør, pumpe etc. Jeg hadde ca 14 dager å øve meg før turen gikk nordover. Etter flere testrunder rundt Trondheim og på Hitra, med blant annet selvredning og forsøk på eskimorulle følte jeg meg trygg nok til å melde meg på turen nordover.

Jeg kontaktet Hanne i fjellsportgruppa i Trondheim Turistforening (TTF) og hun syntes det hørtes greit ut om jeg ble med. Jeg meldte meg på for 14 dager med padling, vandring, finvær, ferie og kos.

Vi var rundt 30 personer som dro fra Trondheim og omegn ettermiddagen 27. juni med destinasjon Sandnessjøen. Planen var å starte å padle dagen etterpå og alternativt klatre de syv søstre. Vi overnattet i campinghytter rett ved Sandnessjøen flyplass. Det spøkte for kajakkturen da det høljregnet første natta. De fleste brukte dagen/kvelden/morgenen til å prate vær, diskutere og inspisere utstyr og vente. Endelig på ettermiddagen klarnet det opp såpass at vi dro mot Alstadhaug. Alstadhaug er kjent for å ha en glimrende plass å sette ut kajakker (i tillegg til at en kjent norsk prest holdt til der). Solen skinte ettervært og vi fikk høre at destinasjon var Brasøya, vest for Herøy. Vi startet å padle i følge i 6-tida. De fleste var vel ivrige på å komme seg avgårde.

Jeg fant fort ut at det var vanskelig å se seg bakover i en kajakk og at det kanskje hadde vært lurt å installere speil ved cocpiten. Ivrig som jeg var padlet jeg fremover og fulgte de som lå forerst. Et lite stykke var det litt mer bølger og jeg valgte å beholde styrefarta og holde samme kurs som de andre foran. Da vi nærmet oss land og Brasøya, viste det seg at vi hadde mistet flesteparten på turen. Vi var fem personer: Håvard, Andre, Tove, Kirsti og meg, to tremannstelt, en lavvostang, litt pils og et kokeapparat. Håvard dro tilbake til de andre med teltstanga og vi andre overnattet på Prestøya. Tanken min på forhånd var å padle med Roger og Elfinn, men jeg trivdes så godt i mitt nye selskap etter første natta at dette ville jeg fortsette med.

I ukene som kom hadde vi alle en fantastisk tur: utrolige landskap, stille sjø, dyreliv, ingen kvelving, masse sol, masse fisk, øl, avslapning, padling, fjellbestigning i en herlig orgie. Turen gikk for min egen del fra Brasøya-Herøy-Dønna-Lovund og til slutt Træna med hurtigbåt. Solbrent, feit og deilig returnerte jeg til gråvær i Trøndelag.

Bilder kommer!!

Clean sheets - where do I begin?

2005-07-21T10:42:00.000+02:00

I realise that weblogs have become sort of a fashion thing, so I have been quite reluctant to create my own blog. So why am I here? And where do I begin?

I have been missing a place to write down my thoughts and write down inforation that usually get lost durning time, but I am not sure if this will be the solution. It can't become a diary after all - that would be way too personal. And it can't become a place for important info - that would be too risky. The important thing is that it is available for me at web and that it is accesible wherever I am. I am not sure if this site would be interesting to others than myself.

After consulting with Arnstein and my brother I am starting with blogger. This seems to be the easiest solution for me. I don't want to waste much time tinkering with making fancy layouts - I have been there and know it takes plenty of time. I earlier realised that Blogger is a google company, which sets the standard I think. The connection with Picasa makes it also much easier to transfer pictures.

Which language should I write in? A key question.. English is the standard and would be possible for others than my norwegian friends to read. I earlier stated in this post that the blog would probably not be interesting to others than myself and I should thus write in norwegian. I am not sure yet - my first post (this) is in english, the next might be in norwegian.

The important thing - I am here!