I really love our new Sony Alpha 100. The resolution is impressive, and the colours are so magnificent. Finally I can take take better photos than I could with my old Minolta SLR. I’ve only just started playing with the white balance and all the other fancy stuff, but it can really do wonderful things. And it’s so fast too – I can take several photos per second, with almost no delay at all.
Month: 78’2’00 (2006-10-31)
bookmark_borderAn interesting difference
When I moved to Scotland, one of the differences to Denmark I noticed was the lack of adoptive children from other continents. Lots of Danish parents have kids of Korean, African, Chinese or Indian origin, but I never saw any here. I discussed it in the car with Phyllis this morning, and it turns out that it used to be common, but that the practice was abandoned in the mid-70s because of concerns that white parents couldn’t raise kids of other cultures. Interestingly, it only seemed to get common in Denmark around the same time – there are almost no people my age or older with that background, but lots that are younger than me. So it seems Denmark took over where the UK left.
bookmark_borderFar north
My previous posting made me think about the fact that many people don’t realise how far north we are in Europe. If one asks people to mention a European city on the same latitude as New York, they might come up with London or Paris, but the correct answer is Madrid. Scotland and Denmark are so far north that very few people live at these latitudes in areas not heated by the Gulf Stream (Glasgow and Copenhagen are on the same latitude as the southernmost part of Alaska, for instance). This is why the prospect of the Gulf Stream shutting down is so scary. Southern Europe might suddenly get very crowded…
bookmark_borderThe Gulf Stream stopped for ten days
The Guardian had a really alarming article yesterday about the cooling Gulf Stream, which would give Britain a climate more like Canada’s. Other researchers have warned for some time that it might be slowing, but new evidence shows it actually stopped completely for ten days two years ago. How long will it stop for next time?
bookmark_borderHvor alien?
Léon synes, det er vældig sjovt at dække øjnene med sine hænder,
og når man så fortvivlet spørger, hvor han er, fjerner han hænderne,
man jubler begejstret, og han ler.
Forleden spurgte Charlotte, “Why are you calling him an alien?” Jeg
forstod ingenting, men så forklarede Phyllis mig, at “Hvor er Leon?” i
skotske øren lyder som “Vo alien?”, og “Dér er Leon!” lyder som “Dair
alien!”
Først undrede dette mig, men man skal jo huske, at de danske palatale
vokaler er meget lukkede, så [æ(?) ‘le:?n] er meget tæt på [e ‘li:?n],
og så er afstanden jo ikke stor til skotsk alien [e:li?n].
bookmark_borderOn Atkins again
I discovered the Atkins diet a year and a half ago, and since then, I’ve been on it three or four times, every time losing half a stone or so over a fortnight. I’ve put on a few pounds recently, probably because we’ve stopped playing touch regularly at work, so I thought it’d be good to do it again. Only this time Phyllis has joined me – I think she’s beautiful as she is, but if she thinks she’d look better lighter, being two makes it much easier to stick to the diet. Although of course we still have to cook carbohydrates for the kids.
bookmark_borderDodgy Bank
Yesterday, I introduced Marcel and Charlotte to the boardgame Broker (das Börsenspiel in German).
Normally, Charlotte tends to learn fast, but she didn’t really grasp the concept of buying cheap and selling dear. Marcel, on the other hand, very definitely got the idea, and he won the game with nearly £100k.
Charlotte made one sweet contribution, though: One of the companies traded in the game is Deutsche Bank, but she turned that into Dodgy Bank!