Johan Seland - Life, Work, Play

2005-02-26T08:26:00.000+01:00

2004-07-16T10:43:00.000+02:00

This is my last day of work at Lenco, I have have just checked in my last code into version control.
I will spend the rest of the day taking a backup copy of my disk, sending a few emails detailing what's left to be done etc. I do feel sad for leaving the company, but a PhD is something I have always wanted to do and the time is now.

This afternoon Lise, Marie, Ragnar and I will go to Mo i Rana for a week's vacation, before Lise and I go down to Erik's cabin at Sørlandet.

2004-07-15T21:59:00.000+02:00

Espen, Martin, Pål, Tormod and I went to Turtragrø for the weekend. The other four were going to climb Skagastølsryggn (on the picture), but had to turn back due to huge amount of loose snow.

While the other four was on the ridge, I walked up to the summit of Fanaråken, then down the north flank and up the south ridge of Steindalsnosi.
Both of these mountains are very easy, the most interesting route is definitly the one I did. It was however the first time I was really alone in the mountains, and being on the col between the two mountains was a strong experience.

This trip was also saw our first use of the new, cheap walkie-talkies that are available. We managed to communicate between the summits of Fanaråken and Nordre Skagastølstind, more than 5 kilometers (the advertisment said upto 3 was possible :-) ).

On sunday we scaled Soleiebotntind, and traversed the Soleiebotnridge all the way to Ringstind. On the smallest the ridge was less than a metre, and steep on both sides. Espen and Martin was very comfortable with the exposure, I am no longer used to heights and had to take my time.

All in all another good trip to the mountains!

2004-07-05T20:34:00.000+02:00

The hailstrom. The nearest lightning struck down less than 300 meters from Bekkebo.

2004-07-05T20:26:00.000+02:00

Lise and I drove to Spiterstulen to "climb" Galdhøpiggen. It rained all night long, but we neverthless did the regular Spiterstulen route, fortunately the rain turned to snow higher up. It was Lise's first 2000 meter, and though we walked in snow for most of the climb, and was surrouned by clouds on top she told me she enjoyed it! It was my seventh ascent of Galdhøpiggen, and twenty years since I had done the regular Spiterstulen route.

However, spending another night in a wet tent to climb Glittertind in poor weather was not something Lise wanted to do, so we drove to Sjusjøen. My uncle and his family was there, and we had a glass of wine with them before we went to bed. On Sunday we had an awesome hailstorm, so we had our share of extreme weather this weekend! Hopefully we will have better weather for the rest of summer.

There was snow from around 1800 meters, and a lot of it. Skis would have been the best equipment for the climb. This is not good news for the coming trip to Skagadalen. We must all remember to bring gaiters, unless there is sun to melt away the snow for the week I doubt Skagastølsryggen is in condition to climb next week.

2004-07-05T20:23:00.000+02:00

We read "Soveposer" from "Barske Gleder" by Zappfe. A nice introduction to the ultimate campfire litterature. I even think the girls enjoyed. Though we had a small discussion over the placement of the campfire, it was a memorable evening. I am really lucky to have such nice friends.

2004-07-05T20:16:00.000+02:00

We spent the weekend canoeing in Østmarka. A very nice excursion from Oslo. The rain stopped as we put the canoes on the water, and we had perfect summer weather for the entire trip. We did not even put the rainfly on tent. There was however a lot of mosquitos. Kath and Tormod did not bring a tent, and they did not sleep very well :-)

As a apres-canoeing we all had mushroom and cheese pancakes in Armauer Hansens. Thank you all for a nice weeked.

2004-06-25T20:04:00.000+02:00

Another week is over. Only three weeks left at Lenco Software now.
It will be nice to move on, at the same time I am sad to leave.

Ulf started his holiday today, and I will work with him again.

The big, happy family (Kari&Espen, Kath&Tormod, Heidi&Kasper, Martin, Lise and me) will go canooing tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it, even if the weather could have been better.

2004-06-22T19:02:00.000+02:00

T-Man doing his stuff.

2004-06-22T19:00:00.000+02:00

The amazing patented ollie obstacle. A ChickenLouise product!

2004-06-22T16:16:00.000+02:00

First day of any real programming after having had RSI for a few weeks.
Hope I can avoid getting it back.

It was however very nice to be able to program again! I am quite happy with my profession thank you!

2004-06-21T15:47:00.000+02:00

Wow.
Quite a long time since I created this blog. I have to admit I just checked back since I heard all blogger.commers could get Gmail account.

However, I do believe blogging is a good idea, and something I should try to do frequently.

I have also been thinking a bit about the toolchain I will set up for my PhD. Tor Dokken strongly recommends me to start writing as soon as possible, and I do intend to follow that advice.

However, that brings me to the big questing, what tool should one use for writing a thesis in year 2004-2007? Since I will be at CMA, my platform will probably be Linux.

LaTeX is tried and tested. But I do think it is getting a bit dated. After my Cand. Scient. thesis I told myself never to use it again. I don't know how mature LyX etc. has become. I will definitly not use Emacs as my editor. This is after all 2004, we have to come up with something better than a text only interface! Scientific Workingplace could be the frontend I am looking for, sadly there is no Linux port.

Mathematica is an interesting option. But documentation for how to use it mainly as a structured document editor is sparse.

XML based (DocBook, tbook etc.) Like LaTeX they lack and good WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) frontend.

OpenOffice I am afraid it does not scale well enough, beside I doubt the quality of the bibliography database. (This is where BibTex really shines.)

MS Office No Linux version, UiO provides office by the use of Tarantella or something. I am definitly not ruling this option out, but I would prefer an open format.

2004-03-15T23:01:00.000+01:00

Kathrine and Tormod was over for coffee (and icecream :-) ). Discussed Easter a bit, and ending up dreaming of new and exciting holiday projects. The holiday schedule now looks like this:

Easter: Geilo and Sunmøre.
Weekend i May: Jotunheimen.
July: Dali and surfing in Spain/France.
September: Fontainebleau (climbing), Paris (culture) and Normandy (Calvados).

2004-03-15T20:20:00.000+01:00

Just getting started.

I thought I should play a bit with this blogging stuff. I think it could be a good way to monitor progress for my PhD. Of course, the formal start of it is still a few months down the road.