Helene

I was still in recovery mode from sickness (and other female issues), when Kari’s mother decided we should go up the same mountain that the cabin was located in. I was told that it wasn’t such a long trip, so I went along in blissfull ignorance. The first kilometer or so was okey, no problem. But then the climbing began and it was steep. I had to go at my own pace to ensure that I didn’t over extend myself, and I’m happy I did. Halfway there my water bottle was empty and there was no water in sight anywhere, but again I was told it was “just around the corner”. I continued walking but I just soured more and more. Just before I was about to say “fuck it”, they shouted: We’re here!

So I got up.

View from the cabin in the afternoon. The cabin was located high up in the mountain so it gave us a great view of the valley. We often got to see the clouds that was in the valley. We even saw clouds being made in the valley (the ground was warmer than the air).

After I was hit by a sore throat and fever the last couple of days we tried to take it a bit easy and just go to the nearby places. So first we visited a huge stone that supposedly contained petroglyph’s. I looked long and hard, and even though my imagination could have filled in the missing parts, I saw no petroglyph’s. But at least I got to see a big stone

Just a few minutes a way, we took a look at tvindefossen, and afterwards we went to Nesheimtunet.

Kari can be shimmered there in the middle of the rock

Tvindefossen

Nesheimtunet

I woke up to a beautiful, sunny weather and we had breakfast outside and spent the morning relaxing and enjoying the view. Then we drove to Jonstølen and hiked for an hour to get to Fjellsetvatnet (852 meters above sea level). The hike itself was hot because of the weather and when we arrived there we walked to the end of the water where there was a small beach.We wanted to take a bath and we entered the water boldly – only to quickly retreat. It was freeezing! It didn’t take many seconds before it was painful. So we squatted water on our bodies to chill it down, and it helped. Then we just laid down to get tanned. We were completely alone up there, we didn’t even meet any people during our hike up there. I really loved the place and would have loved to stay there for a longer time period. Actually, I would have loved to brought a tent and just stay there for one night with some good company. Perfect place!

In the evening I met Kari’s mother, brother and his family for the first time. They came to the cabin for a small gathering and we had a nice time chatting.

My friend, Kari, has a cabin located a little bit outside voss on a beautiful mountain side that I decided to visit and to get there I took the Bergen Railway. I was sitting in the last train carriage which was a really old carriage from the 60′s or something – not refurbished. It was a very hot day, so with no air condition it quickly became uncomfortable. Just before we arrived at Geilo station, the carriage suddenly started to sway a lot to the left and right. It was enough of a sway that I started to get a bit worried and understood that something was wrong. Then it began – dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, and the train started breaking immediately. It took a long time to stop the train, but eventually it came to a halt. It turned out that the carriage in front of us (also a 60′s something) had derailed because of sunwinding( I’m unsure if that’s the correct english term). This actually made headlines in the online newspapers in norway (squib news during summer time). I talked to one of the onboard personell that went outside and investigated the damage, and he told me that a lot of the the crossties had been completely shattered several hundred meters away. I sighed and mentally prepared for hours of delay, but I can give much praise to the personell. They delt with the situation nicely, and in the end we were just 1 hour and 15 minutes delayed which was less than I expected.

Kari’s cabin was a small cabin with a soul, and I knew that I would settle in very nicely. It had a beautiful view of the valley and the opposite mountains and we sat outside, enjoying a cup of tea, a chat and the view.

The long awaited release of norwegian ebooks is here, available at digitalbok.no. Not only have they released ebooks, the ebooks are without DRM as well. They have instead watermarked the ebooks, which entails that customer information is added to the file (name and telephonenumber). It’s amazing that they have chosen to not use DRM, since I haven’t read any indication of this in the press (or even statements from the publishing houses itself). A small drawback is the file format they have chosen – Adobe PDF. It’s not possible to change font sizes on pdf’s so one just have to hope that it will look good on the ebook reader and screen size one has. My experience is that font’s usually becomes a bit too small on the iliad, and I read on the Leseplate-blog that the fonts became a bit too big on Cybook. That doesn’t bode well for the iliad.

The ebooks are mainly from the publishing house CappelenDamm which have released about a 100 ebooks. CappelenDamm don’t expect much sales of the ebooks according to a statement they have made. Most of the books cost 79 NOK (between 11/12 USD at the time of writing and 20/30% cheaper than paperback prices). which is cheaper than the the normal costs of pocket books in norway (99 NOK). I would like to see the prices even lower (40 NOK for example) in the future.

This is a day to celebrate!

Merry Christmas everybody!

For many people Christmas is today – 25th of December, but Norwegians celebrate this day on 24th. The day usually starts with cartoons on TV in the morning with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The cartoons set the mood for the day to come, but the cartoons and Mickey Mouse have change since I was a kid. That set in motion a new tradition where I purchase one cartoon that I watch in the morning/day. This year I purchased “The Sword in the stone” which gave me that christmas feeling only old disney classics can give. Last year I bought “Cars” and that didn’t work at all. I have decided to start purchasing old disney classics (and hopefully not all of them will have been remade). From next year I will (mostly) stay on the old disney classics and purchase the first Disney classic that was produced, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (if I can find it somewhere available for purchase).

A list of Disney Classics and when they were released.

NRK shows “Tre nøtter til Askepott” and “Reisen til Julestjernen” which have been shown since I was a kid.

About 80% of the norwegian population is part of the state church, but I presume that there are many non-practicing christians here. There are many that only goes to church on Christmas. Me and Martin didn’t go to church, but we visited his dads grave.

The Christmas eve is kicked off by dinner, usually around five pm, with Sølvguttene in the background. This year we celebrated christmas at Irene, Martin’s sister. In the evening we opened presents.

And I got some very nice gifts this year. Martin gave me an ipod nano (16 GB) which I have really been wanting. I spent a lot of the evening just looking at it ;-D. I got an hair dryer, three fleece blanket (so I’ll stay warm this winter), day and night cream, soaps, candles and a lot of other nice things.

Picture taken at Tanum Church on Christmas eve.

The norwegian library central is ready to lend ebooks, the only problem is that there is no books to lend. The Norwegian publishers have no ebooks to deliver, even though all books are delivered as digital books when they go out for printing.

According to an article in aftenposten, the Norwegian publishers did try to publish ebooks in the 90′s and it failed miserably. I lived in the nineties and I can’t remember any such thing, though I’m very curious if anybody else remembers something about it. Most likely they were a bit too early out, chickened out without accepting the economical implications the long term investment it would be.

The library central is using a system named DiViLib (Digital virtual library) to lend ebooks,audio books, films and music over the web. This system is already in use at Stockholms Stadsbibliotek (state library) and last year 23 400 ebooks were lend out. Not a big number, but still acceptable when every ebook has a lending time of 2 – 4 weeks.

Now things are about to change. The national library and the publishers union has signed an agreement to store norwegian books digitally. During the first three years it will be voluntary for the publishers to deliver digital editions of books, and the digital books will only be available for search on the library premises to begin with. This initiative is primarily for researchers, and not for everyday people.

It’s a start at least.