Created a del.icio.us account and imported all of my bookmarks. I’ll probably still have to retag stuff and make the titles somewhat better. Now if there would be a browser plugin which in realtime fetches the bookmarks and if you add them locally they will get submitted…

Nope, I have nothing to do with the del.icio.us power outage just hours after I created the account ;-)

I also updated my Technorati profile – yeah, I have such a thing, still dunno why – to the “new” location of the journal. There I found out that I apparantly had dinner with some Austrian guy last October :-)

Today (yesterday if you like) Utopia held its annual HCC Dagen meeting!

The number of merchants was saddingly low, they even had to close down two half halls (and the worst: the most interesting stuff was traditionally in those two halls). I fear for the existence of the current setup; the goods the shops had to offer was thirteen-in-a-dozen standard stuff and all the same.

Where did the times go where you could find the most obscure hardware at the HCC Dagen? Where were the big companies like Philips? Intel had a modest stand. Even Microsoft didn’t have a big over-the-top stand this year. Not that I was in any way interested in those, but they bring a lot of money in the organisation.

Photos of the meeting are online, waiting to be integrated in the Utopia website.

And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere it came: First snow and frost.

Traffic-jams (84 consecutive kilometers on the A1 today), canceled trains, failing electricity… The standard problems in the Netherlands when the temperature suddenly drops and snow falls over the country. Some photos I took.

Just came back from Tilburg, after a long day of being jumpy (couldn’t really handle myself somehow) and andskotinn, what a difference with Paradiso!

Not that the Paradiso gig was bad, this was different! For one, 013 The Choice is much bigger. For Sigur Rós this can be both a good thing and a bad thing. They should play intimate, yet they need the space for the things Orri does to his drums ;-) Paradiso is perfectly suitable for an intimate performance, which it was, but the sound just didn’t have that oomph thing (although I think the bass drum was set too loud now).

Okay, over to 013 then, after all I was there and not in Amsterdam today! 013 The Choice is a big hall (actually a very big staircase) with one large balcony and that’s where I went to view the whole thing. Since most things that happen on stage are small, the balcony is the perfect spot to get a good view on things. You also are quite certain that noone is standing in front of you :-)

The start was the same, first came Amina, played their set - with a new piece inserted between Hemipode and Seoul, I think - and at the start of Ammælis (the yet unreleased poppy electronic Kraftwerk-like piece) got people chuckling and cheering, exactly the same reaction as in Paradiso, which I found funny – and then there was the white curtain again. The lights and shadows give a very nice effect on the curtain, which I missed in Paradiso, I had a better spot this time.

Curtains open, and then… no Ný Batterí! Haha! Surprise! So Sæglópur is the new “second opening” now…

New songs in the set include Svo Hljótt and Heysátan, more to come when I get my hands on a complete setlist… The songs just get bombarded over one, you simply cannot handle that much information!

• Takk…
• Glósóli
• Sæglópur
• Njósnavelin
• Gong
• Andvari
• Hoppípolla
• Með Blóðnasir
• Olsen Olsen
• Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása
• Svo Hljótt
• Heysátan
• Hafssól
• Smáskifa
• Popplagið

That’s quite some change from the Paradiso set! It’s sad to see classics like Ný Batterí and Sfevn-g-Englar go, but when there is a time of coming, there must be a time of going… They cannot keep on playing the old stuff over and over again, they would become like Boney M and noone wishes that for them!

Hoppipolla and Með Blóðnasir belong together and are played together with only a tiny little pause in between, just enough for some in the audience to start clapping and almost immediately shut up… However, during Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása, just after the ‘við áttum okkur draum, áttum allt’ line, the band just stopped for what was it… 30 seconds? Some started clapping, others shhhh’d them immediately and for about 20 seconds, 013 was completely silent… 2000 people and noone making any noise, just complete silence. I think that’s far more powerful than a stadium doing eeeeeeyooooo’s with the performer.

As was to be expected, the concert was concluded by an extremely powerful Popplagið (track number 8 on ( )), the curtain was closed during this song and the play of lights and shadow gave it that magical extra touch.

The audience was different. In Amsterdam it was like everyone there was an artist or in some other way connected to a creative profession. In Tilburg, it looked more like the concert for the rest of us or something. Among them was also Tiësto by the way.

I got myself a t-shirt with free stenciling of date and venue (great idea!) from the “toothfairies” of Sigur Rós… They surely know how to sell things :-)

After this, we set out for home… And now I’m typing this, which costed me about… one hour to get it out of my head and hands. Still somewhat stunned.

Read a kinda funny entry on the Iceland Report (found it via the Noisedfisk weblog, very interesting if you’re interested in Nordic culture) about a new “American style” restaurant called American Style in downtown Reykjavík.

It made me think of Pulp Fiction (the “little differences” scene) and somehow also of 101 Reykjavík. Small quote:

Last but not least, “Andskotinn, er ekki fuckin sæti!” is not something the local burger-shack rednecks are wont to say in the US of A.

“Damn, no fucking seats!”

Oooooooooh, nicey nice! Spotted in the Hermanus Boexstraat, Eindhoven:

Long ago (four years to be exact) Breda got its own ice rink and I was determined to go there often and instead of renting skates everytime I decided to buy my own… Well, turned out to be a wrong choice, because I only went two or three times that year, the next year also a few times and then they just laid about in the box. Luckily, good skates don’t rot away, so I can use them now and they still fit (I didn’t really grow that much in the last few years)!

Two weeks ago Tuesday (that was uhm… the 18th) I attended the open training of E.S.S.V. Isis, the students skate association of Eindhoven (especially students of TU/e and Fontys). I found it so much fun to stand on the irons again since last time that I decided to join Isis almost right away. I attended two more trainings on 25 and 27 October and today was my official first training as a member of Isis!

So far, I qualify for practicing sport everytime according to the Admar definition:

Sports is about pain. Physical pain. About suffering.

I qualify because I managed to fall on all of the three trainings. Somehow, in skating, the place to fall on with your full weight is not only the ice, but it is also on your knee. Another place just is impossible to hurt, except maybe for your thighs when you fall in a very strange way. Oh, and Erben Wennemars showed that you can also hurt your shoulder very badly, but only at very high speeds.

Sebastiaan gave me a link to an interesting article by Michio Kaku about the physics of advanced alien civilizations (here’s a PDF in case the link doesn’t work) and how far we are of becoming an advanced civilization.

Kaku asks himself the question “How advanced could they possibly be?” and answers it in this article. He divides civilizations in different types: Type I, II, and III, which have mastered planetary, stellar and galactic forms of energy, respectively. Earth’s society is a Type 0 civilization currently and he expects us to reach level I in about 200 years. Read this article only if you’re interested in planets!

Yesterday, the whole bunch of the flat went to the Design Academy for the yearly Graduation show. Of course, flatmate Esther Ermers who graduated last December was there with her Spinning abc. She created 26 stools out of the letters of the (Dutch) alphabet.

Esther Ermers, Spinning abc

There was also a project, of which one part was this (sorry for the very bad quality picture):

LED it be

Uhm, OK. If it needs explanation: It is indeed a LED and a switch in a cilindrical case and nothing more.

Yay, I’m going to see them again!

Update:

the 7th of november concert in 013 in tilburg, netherlands has been rescheduled for the 15th of november. tickets remain valid for the altered date and, if required, refunds are available from the point of purchase. the band and its management are sorry for the inconvenience caused by this alteration and worked hard to make sure they could still get to play in tilburg. the reason for this date change is due to the recording of a bbc music television show in london of which we will have more information very soon.

and

sigur rós will be appearing as guests on the bbc show “later with jools holland” in a few weeks. the show will be aired on november the 11th on bbc2 but will be recorded a few days prior to this and this is what caused the tilburg concert to be rescheduled. “later..” is one of britain’s most popular and influential music shows, with each show having several guests – some new and up and coming, some more established and some legendary artists. it promises to be an interesting and exciting event. more information as we get it.

It really has been a strange week.

It all started the week before last week on Wednesday, when I received the mail from Reykjavík University. Right the next day, Thursday, I went to Wil Linders, the international programme coordinator of the faculty. He confirmed that an agreement had been made and that it was initiated by Jan Friso Groote, faculty director of study-related matters.

Knowing that he can be very busy at times I sent him an E-mail on Sunday (I don’t know why didn’t do that earlier) and got a reply back within one hour: Luca Aceto, a professor at RU was in Eindhoven for a symposium and he would have a talk at 9:30 on Monday. I went there and in the coffee break we discussed about the possibilities of an internship at RU. Jan Friso and he had talked about me the night before and basically he was very enthousiastic that I was learning Icelandic and that I was interested in Iceland altogether. If I would sort out which research areas I find interesting, then he could get me in touch with the right people.

That was Monday, Tuesday I watched Ring of the Nibelungs, unknowingly that it is not only based on the Nibelungenlied, but that it is mixed together with the Volsunga saga. And of course, the main character, Siegfried must follow his love to Iceland…

Wednesday, there was a lecture on Internships and Study Abroad. I had a question, stating “Reykjavík” only briefly, but it was enough for an international programme coordinator of another faculty to give me a name of someone in Iceland. That this afterwards turned out to be a mistake is a bit irrelevant, I think.

Thorsday… uh… Thursday, in Coupling Jane makes a reference to Thor… I know, it is far fetched, but the series hadn’t had any religious theme so far. Funny episode though.

In the meantime, my parents are already checking out when they can come over… Hell, I don’t even have a project yet!

My day couldn’t be better when I received this E-mail:

Komdu sæll Christian Hvernig gengur þér að læra íslensku? Það er gaman að þú viljir læra íslensku og viljir koma að læra á Háskólanum í Reykjavík.

I will now switch to English to prevent misunderstanding. We have just set up an Erasmus/Socrates exchange agreement with Eindhoven University of Technology so you could come as part of that agreement. We do offer an MSc. programme in Computer Science and it would be great if you could join in and use your period of academic intership to do some research work here. Would that be an option?

Kærar kveðjur frá Reykjavík,

Wheeee, an opening. Now I just have to find out what to do here in Eindhoven. Oh yeah, and wait for about a year.