Merry Christmas!!!

My favourite food from the Christmas Eve dinner - my Mum's pierogi :-) We made almost 150 of them this year... mniam!!!!

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luggage - long way home

Already long story of this year's travel home for Christmas continues...
My luggage was delivered yesterday. But not to me!
The courier company delivered it to a company that has exactly the same name as my surname and is located 200m away from my parents' place.
This company was expecting to get a big parcel delivered so they signed all the papers without checking what is inside until today. They were pretty surprised after unwrapping the big box...
Fortunately my luggage has two tags with my name on it and just by a chance the owner of that company knows my Mum....
I must admit that I was pretty stoned when after a short phone call this morning my Mum told me that she knew where my luggage was!!! My God, she really knows everything (best)!!!! :-)

Probably today is the first day in my life when I am very grateful to my Mum for her talkativeness and 'knowing everyone' around :-)  Thanks Mum!!!!


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third time lucky :-)

Finally at home !!!! :-D

My luggage isn't here but I was probably the happiest person in the lost luggage office...

I always though that winter is a completely unnecessary season... and now I am sure about that!

Good luck to all the people stuck on the airports!!!!

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Chaos part 2

I should be somewhere on the way from Warszawa to my parent's place right now but here I am, sitting at home (in Bergen) and writing...


I got up at 4am to catch a bus to the airport and be on time for the flight to Frankfurt at 6:45. No problem with check-in this time, but around the boarding time they announced that the flight would be delayed and if we take-off at all, it would at 11:12... Right..waiting again... at 9:30 another announcement: The Frankurft airport is closed !!!!


I believe that I beat my personal speed record when running to pick up a number at the ticket counter :-) After half an hour (business class served first) I got the new ticket :-) 


Let's see of I can fly through Copenhagen tomorrow morning....






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Chaos

I should be somewhere on the way from Amsterdam to Warsaw right now but here I am, sitting at home (in Bergen) and writing...

Schipol was closed yesterday due to heavy snowfals but most of the planes scheduled for  today in the morning took off without any problems. I was quite optimistic...

I got suspicious already around noon when I could not check-in online but the vague message - please contact KLM service desk at the airport - did not say too much...

On the way to the airport I got stuck in a traffic jam for around 30 minutes. Apparently most of the people in Bergen still do not have Xmas gifts and they all decided to go shopping to the Lagunen shopping centre placed next to the main road to the airport.

And when I finally reached the airport I was told that Schipol is not accepting any transfer passengers so I need to pick-up a number and wait to get a new ticket... |Right... I picked up a number (207) at 15:10 while number 95 was being processed. The photo below was taken at 16:30.

 I was finally able to leave the airport with a new ticket at 18:50!!!

Almost 4 hours of waiting (only people from the flight to Amsterdam were served at that time)!!!! Wrrrr!!!

Fortunately there were some nice and talkative people around with a good sense of humour :-)  

Let's see of I can fly through Frankfurt tomorrow morning....

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Friday full of surprises

Last Friday was full of surprises. Fortunately most of them were positive:

• after 3.5hours of sleep Friday morning was even more chaotic and stressful then we expected, 
• regardless of the stress level TBBE was more fluent in his presentation than during all the practice speeches,
• playing a role of the interpreter for S. I was allowed to attend the debate and voting of the university  scientific board (normally only for the board members) after the TBBE presentation,
• the board's enthusiasm about his work was even larger than in the public part of the defence so TBBE received his PhD degree with a distinction :-)
• the lunch with the board members was less stiff and official than expected,
• only little hangover on Saturday morning :-)

Without surprises:

• good time with S.,
• S. paid 50PLN instead of 25PLN for a taxi to the airport only because he doesn't speak polish,
• good party on Friday evening,
• drTBBE charged his batteries :-D and is very similar again to the good old relaxed TBBE!

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TBBE, PhD !

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Dobra robota, Panie Doktorze!

You owe me a beer!!! :-)

Warszawa is greeting the new doctor :-)

P.S. For those who do not recognize this building (an example of an architectural style called: cold brutalism :-), that is Palac Kultury i Nauki in Warszawa.

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one day to go!

Oh yes, I can already see it:

original image

:-]



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2nd snow

It started to snow (second snow this winter) just when I was coming back from the airport.

TBBE is already in Poland, getting ready for the final defence :-) and I am flying there in 2 days.

This is how I feel about that:

The big plan is to spend a lot of time with my family and celebrate the 3 new symbols (Dr.) in front of the 'TBBE'. I guess it has been a long time since I was last so happy about flying home...

Coming back to the snow: I hope it will stay like that! Since there is only a couple of centimetres of the white powder it is still possible to walk (forget about people de-snowing side walks next to their houses!)  and the city looks pretty nice :-)
I guess I start to feel the Christmas spirit already...

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a cold, wood & fire

TBBE came back just in time to practice a bit before he will become a doctor. He was playing a nurse (a very good and patient nurse) while I had a very bad cold ;-)

In the meanwhile we had another weather record in Bergen - a cold record. November 2010 is the coldest since 1919!!! Lucky us to be here in that grateful moment!!! Wow! ;-)
Anyway, probably because of the low temperatures (-5C to -10C) we were driving around the city yesterday trying to find a shop that would have any wood in store. Mission completed after almost 2 hours.

And I have almost burnt our house with that wood today.... I did nothing unusual, just added an extra piece of wood to the wood-stove to warm up our flat faster and suddenly there was a fire within the tube connecting the wood-stove with the chimney... Large fire, plenty of smoke outside - our adrenalin level increased significantly...
Fortunately after applying some decent amount of water everything came back to normality. Well, almost everything, the wall about the wood-stove isn't white any more...


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size obsession

I didn't really want to comment on the fact that the largest statue of Jesus stands now in Poland (see news), but I could not resist to post this :-)

Poland

Here stands the world's largest statue of Aragorn

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uufffffff :-)

On the 10th of December, around 10:30 TBBE should become PhDTBBE :-)

All needed plane tickets bought, all the plans rearranged... uffff...


a very good end of the week :-)


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even closer now ...

The most promising PhD candidate that I know have just passed the last exam!!!!

On Friday we will know the exact date of the defence !

Happy! Very happy :-)

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from Venus and Mars part 1.

Finally a veeeery lazy weekend :-)
Yesterday I finished reading "The girl who played with fire" by Stieg Larsson :-) Something to recommend!
and have just started to listen to (audiobook) the last part of the trilogy about Millenium.
This made my one hour walk in rain much more pleasuring :-)

Anyway, TBBE sent me this interesting and quite funny (if you take it as funny) advertisement (from Mars) when he was pretending that he was studying for the exams :-)


and I found this very strong, maybe too strong, riposte (from Venus):



BTW: TBBE has two out of the three final exams tomorrow - cross your fingers!



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Volume raycaster

Writing (C++ with QT) this volume raycaster took about 1,5-2 months of my life. Not only in the working hours... 

It was a part of the course assignment on the Visualisation course that I take now. Very interesting stuff I must say :-)

Below you will find a couple of visualisations of the computer tomography (CT) data:

Direct volume rendering (DVR) with a 1D transfer function.

DVR with another 1D transfer function.

DVR with diffuse and specular shading (Phong).

DVR with diffuse and specular shading (Phong).

and my favourite - terminator look :-)

Considering the fact that this is the first application with a GUI (graphical user interface) in my short 'career' of  a beginner C++ programmer - I really like the results :-)

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PhDTTBE closer and closer !!!!

TBBE has finally received the two long awaited reviews of his dissertation!!!
And both are very positive :-]

Tratata :-)

And the upgrade from TBBE to PhDTBBE might even come before Christmas !!!






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Light painting

Hey, that is so cool!!!





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Colours :-)

Suddenly it stopped raining and all the greyness disappeared :-)

Programming...

The picture below describes perfectly my last days: 

Pretty sad, isn't it? Things like: "rotations using quaternions" and "gradient dependent opacity attenuation" consumed most of my time and energy in the last weeks.
Sometimes I ask myself: why on Earth I am doing that? Who cares? I guess these are the most frequently asked questions among the PhD students... but has anyone found the answer yet?

TBBE has gone to our favourite 'southern' country for the next 3 weeks to pass the final exams before the defence of his PhD. Our flat is incredibly empty now and even the weather forecast looks more horrible than usually...
Ehhh, it might be the right time to dig out my Energy Lamp and see if it works at all  :-)



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First day of winter!

Winter arrived!!!

and it looks like I get the first winter cold in this season :-(

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Praha

Two weeks ago we went to Prague :-) Nice trip, specially for Poles understanding quite some Czech.  It was sometimes easier to communicate in Polish than in English. The city reminded me of Krakow so I felt almost like home in there :-).

Talking about home, in childhood I was a great fun of Krtek! It was so good to see him again :-)

Karlův most (Charles bridge) was full of artists, their little kiosks and musicians - very nice atmosphere and we could stay there for hours without getting bored!. Tourists were also fascinated with the statue (below) that if you touch it (see the shiny spots), will make your wish come true.

And now, keeping in mind the shiny spots from above, check what is the most shiny place on the statue below :-)

Talking about statues... we have also found a statue of a Nazgul :-)

We have also discovered that we both love Czech cuisine!! Delicious food, not always healthy, specially when accompanied by a couple of beers, but delicious!!! :-) mniam!!!!

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F...ck Donalds

Have a look here:  Sally Davies art project to see how McDonalds' Happy Meal looks like after 180 days.
"No bugs, no mould, no smell, nothing."

Interesting and quite scary if you think about all these kids eating Happy Meals, growing up and eating Big Meals and other stuff like that.

Incredible !!!!  :-)

Oktoberfest!

Finally, with a one year delay, we went to the Oktoberfest!!!
TBBE won this trip as a reward for the best poster on one of the conferences :-)
Our visit to Munich started with a visit to the St. Paul's Church tower that has an amazing view on the Theresienwiese where Oktoberfest takes place.

Being encouraged by the delivery of fresh beer...

... we explored many types of German entertainment, like:

or:

and my favourite:

 and finally joined the largest beer drinking society that we have ever seen:

The tent was full of partying (standing - not enough space for seating), drinking (or drunk already), singing (or shouting) German (!!!!!) schlagers and absolutely happy people!!! 

After the first Mass we started to feel and enjoy the atmosphere much more and in the end we liked it a lot!!!! So much that we were tempted to cure the hangover with... sour cucumbers :-)

On the way back to our flat we discovered how friendly German Police can be! They were watching people accessing the metro station and playing very positive tunes (peace, love and Bob Marley ;-) from their car. I guess that the music was played in order to relax people while the policemen were recovering the smuggled beer glasses from their hands :-)

To summarize:

If you are a beer lover and you do not mind crowds - visiting Oktoberfest is something to try once. If you additionally know German schlagers and you have a group of friends who will join you - you will probably visit it even more than once! We enjoyed the historical background of the event highlighted (read more about the history) because of its 200. anniversary - very interesting! And finally we enjoyed all the time in Munich: sightseeing, drinking and eating with our guide and our good old friends!

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Gratulacje Brat !!!!

My brother received a Master of Science degree in civil engineering today!!!! 

Najserdeczniejsze gratulacje Brat!!!

 Yep...  your student's life is finished now!!!

Good luck with finding a reasonable job and remember to avoid the following:

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Czech it out!

Loads of beer in our schedule for the next days :-) We go to Prague and to the Oktoberfest.
I wonder if after spending one year in Norway (read: no heavy drinking parties for last year) I will be able to drink ein Mass before it gets warm...


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Sunshine again :-)

Another lovely day at the seaside :-)
TBBE was jumping on slippery rocks, climbing even more slippery rocks and doing many weird things to find and reach the best place for fishing. Result = 4 lures lost, 6 fishes caught.
I immediately found a very comfortable position to lay on the shore and enjoy this lazy afternoon...

Vikings were also there....

...followed by a military boat...

Fortunately Autumn has more colours than grey !!!

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inspirations...

A., has his birthday today: Happy Birthday again!!!!


Being inspired by a couple of very ... well.... "extraordinary" gift ideas like:


or


we came up with this brilliant idea of a bicycle helmet tailored to A.'s needs.

What are A.'s needs?
A. likes to have his hair standing up on the top of his head,
more or less like that:

After a couple of hours spent on drawing, computing aerodynamic profiles and designing the cool look, we were very proud of the result: a helmet with a hole placed and sized so that it keeps A.'s hair in untouched shape when he is biking :-)

BTW, I had a unique opportunity to be a model!!! :-) TBBE's hair is simply too short...

I guess A. liked our idea... deep inside :-) Otherwise he would call me names worse than:  witch :-)

TBBE's birthday is comming next!!!

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