Who watches the watches?

A couple of weeks ago my trusty Fossil wrist-watch coughed and died, after more than ten years of continous use. So I shopped around a bit, and in the end decided to get a Timex e-Tide. I choose the Timex (which is a sacrilege in and of itself: How can you buy an American watch in Switzerland?) because I had two main criteria while searching for a new watch:

• It had to be analog - I detest digital watches
• It had to do more than just show the time -  I wanted to have a built-in compass at least.

After some searching, the only watch that came close was the Timex. Tissot has the feature-wise very nice e-Touch, which unfortunately also has an additional digital display and is therefore fugly.

Timex doesn't have a shop in Switzerland (I guess they got kicked out by an angry Swiss mob armed with watchmaker-tools and cheese), so I ordered it over Amazon.

Here it is, next to my poor, dead old Fossil:

As you can see, the Timex is quite a bit bigger. I new that from the specs, but wasn't prepared for how much bigger a mere additional half-centimeter of radius would look. Now I am unsure. I quite like the design of the Timex, and while the tide-indicator is a bit useless in Switzerland, the compass and the temperature-sensor are fine (it's always good to know an uncertain average of your body-temperature and the ambient temperature). Only - is it too big for my delicate wrist?

What do you think?

Back

Aaand I am back again.

Did I mention that I hate driving? Especially a thousand kilometers in one go. Ugh. I had to go from Switzerlands high mountains (here the Simplon-pass)

down to the sea (ferry at Merag, Croatia):

At least there was almost no traffic, and I got to swim for a bit

but in the end the reason I drove down to Veli Losinj was to surprise my father for his seventieth birthday

andthat worked out just fine!

Bollocks to this...

... I am off to Losinj, Croatia.


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Image source: wikipedia

New backpack, and my masculinity whimpers

Recently my trusty daypack died (can't complain though, two years for something that only cost about 40 CHF is alright, I guess), so I was in the market for a new one. I shopped around a bit, and then found a Deuter Gröden 30 SL, which is a bit, well, more expensive. But! I have had very good luck with Deuter backpacks - indeed, my bigger backpacks are all from Deuter, and I've been using them for years.

So, Deuter it is again. Of course, I didn't make it too easy for the Gröden. I packed it full of rope (you can get 4 30 m lengths of climbing rope in, barely), and hung out in the shop for about half an hour or so. It was really comfortable to wear and has the requisite four side-pockets (I need at least three), so I finally bought it.

Only to find out, at home, that deuters SL line is for girls. Oh the humanity! Seems that SL stands for SlimLine, and Deuter says that this line is specifically constructed for the female anatomy, most notably with narrower shoulder straps. And I bought it because it was the most comfortable backpack I could find! What does this say about my manly broad shoulders? Don't answer that, that was a rhetorical question.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go do something manly, to try and salvage what's left of my masculinity.

Some excellent coca

No, I am not talking about the leaf, although I am sure it is quite excellent as well. Coca is also a pizza-like catalan pastry, and a very fine one at that.
The recipe for the dough is the same as my own pizza-recipe, but the toppings don't. Last week-end I made coca con espinaca y pescado:

You'll need about a kilo of leaf spinach. Blanch it, and spread it over the dough. I also put on some cherry tomatos, some smoked salmon and some peeled shrimps. Season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil.

The smoked salmon contrasts the spinach nicely, and the acid of the tomatoes serves as a nice counterpoint. A very different flavour than your standard, tabasco-soaked pizza!

Encyclopædia Britannica thinks I am a Web Publisher

Quite a while back, I think it was in December, I noticed that the Encyclopædia Britannica was offering free access to Web Publishers, and applied at once. Whatever a Web Publisher is (and the Encyclopædia doesn't include the term, funnily enough), the term appearantly includes small-fry bloggers too, because I just received an email that I've been accepted.

That means I can link to stuff on Britannica, and you can then go and look at it. I know, exciting, isn't it?

See for example this article about moths.

Nuts, isn't it?

Mi-Go

Sure, many people would think it is a moth. More fools they, when the thing staring at them is actually a Mi-Go from the frozen wastelands of Pluto.

The blasphemies which appeared on earth, it was hinted, came from the dark planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system; but this was itself merely the populous outpost of a frightful interstellar race whose ultimate source must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest known cosmos. 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness 

 Oh aye, it is the winged horror, the fungoid abomination which hails from the darkest abysses of Yuggoth. The cries of it's worshippers, the hideous ululations of their twisted rituals have finally advised it of Pluto's reduction in status to dwarf-planet, and it has come in answer to visit wretched retribution on all the younger races...

Stagnight

it started on the roof of the Vienna University of Technology:

A beautiful view, but the evening soon descended into madness:

The rest, as they say, is silence.

Dark Haven

I am a cad.

A while back I got an email by the most excellent Gail Z. Martin, asking me if I wanted to review her newest novel, Dark Haven, part three of the Chronicles of the Necromancer. She'd send me one, for free.

Clearly, Gail knows the way to my heart: Novel. Free. Aaand, you're in!

I got the novel by the end of March. So why did it take me more than a month to review it? Because I am a cad, that's why.

I didn't even notice at first that she even signed it for me:

 How awesome is that?

Anyway, onward to the review (read my review of The Summoner here):

We rejoin Martris Drayke and his friends, who finally put paid to Martris evil brother Jared and the Obsidian King in the novel The Blood King. The first two novels of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series are a self-contained story by the way. Dark Haven isn't, but fortunately Dark Lady's Chosen will be out by 2010.

But all is not well in Margolan. The country has been devasted by the war against Jared (and by Jared himself before that). Martris is all set to wed Princess Kiara of Isencroft, but Isencroft nationalists are very much against that, since this would eventually unite Margolan and Isencroft under the rule of Martris and Kiara. A good way to prevent that would be assasination...
While Martris has to deal with an insurrection of a southern lord, his companion Jonmarc has been made Lord of Dark Haven, the vampire stronghold. And not all vampires are happy with having a mortal lord...

So, what did I think about Dark Haven? First, the bad: Martris is still called Tris, and I still don't like the name ;)

Then, the good: Martin's writing keeps getting better. The characters have more depth to them, and I really liked the way all is not well in Margolan, even if the evil ursurper is gone. People are poor, starving, looking for scapegoats and generally miserable. The subplot with the vampires was very interesting - the moderate vampires that recognise that having a human lord will allay the suspicions  and predjudices of mortals, thus preventing another war, the hotheads (uh, figuratively. vampire=cold) that don't see why a mere mortal should hold power over them, the pragmatists who see that mortals are just better in caring about things like fields and crops... add to that all the vampire trouble is really the hero's fault, because they used vampires as shock-troops against Jared in the previous novels and so gave a taste of what it is like to hunt humans again to the more radical vampire elements - very nice.

So, Dark Haven gets a warm recommendation from me. Read it, it's fun. Also, go to Gail's website, where there's excerpts and maps and stuff.

And, Gail, thank you so much again for sending me Dark Haven for review!

Shieldwall

So, there is this guy, Magnus Larsson, who won the  Holcim Foundation’s Awards for Sustainable Construction. He proposed using the bacterium bacillus pasteurii to convert sand into sandstone and built a 6000 km long wall in the Sahara, to stop (or at least fight against) desertification.This is all very humanitarian, but of course Larsson and the whole Holcim foundation  have missed the point here:

Arrakis and the Shield-wall, baby!

 Clearly this technique (if it works as advertised, and I am a bit sceptical) is ment to construct a shieldwall around the sahara, so that we may raise genetically engineered sandworms there. I mean, look at Larsson's concepts:

This clearly is Arrakis. Magnus Larsson must be a proto-Fremen!

Bollocks to this...

I am off to Vienna, for a wedding.

Peacock

Jardin Botanique, Génève. There is no entry fee, and the peacocks run around free. I'll have to return with my DSLR and the macro-lens. This was taken with my new Canon Ixus.

Canon Ixus 870 IS

A few weeks ago, abonimable criminals stole my iPhone and my semi-broken Casio Exilim Ex-V8. I got my new iPhone two weeks later (it is my favourite toy, after all), but it has taken me some time to find a new smallish camera.

The iPhone has a camera as well, but despite amazing iPhone-photos you can find on the internet, and Ken  Rockwells favourite saying: The best camera is the one you have with you, I have never had much luck taking pictures with it. Enter the Ixus 870 IS (or SD880 for the american market. Don't ask me why Canon insists havin different version numbers for them.), a sweet mid-priced pocket camera (and Rockwells recommendation for it's class).

Why the Ixus and not one of it's siblings? First of all, it has one of the widest angles of it's class (28-112mm in 35mm equivalent) which is important to me, because I like to keep either my 50mm equivalent or a long  lens on my DSLR, and use my pocket camera for landscapes.

Secondly, Rockwell waxed poetic about the interface, and after using it for a few weeks I have to agree. It is very intuitive, nothing (important) is more than two clicks away. How Canon can come up with such a sweet interface while it's DSLRs sucks so much, I don't know.

For the first time I've found an automatic mode that I actually use: The awesome panorama stitching mode, that really helps in shooting panoramas. It keeps the right edge of the previous shot on the left side of the screen, so you can line up your next shot. The Geneva lakeshore panorama from Sunday was shot with it.

The LCD is bright enough to see in full sunlight which is partly due to it's anti-reflection coating. Battery is a removeable Lithium Ion pack, which unfortunately doesn't charge over USB. But it is good for a few hundred shots, so this isn't too much of an issue.

The verdict? Sweet camera. If you need a pocket-sized one, go for it.

Geneva, lakeside

Taken on Saturday evening, with my new small camera. Details to follow.