The Melodifestival is back!

We watched the first semi-final from Karlskrona via the excellent SVT Play website. It was great fun as usual, but with perhaps a bit less filler in the show itself; I think they got right down to the performances much more quickly than in the past.

The clear winner was YOHIO, with a manga-inspired performance of "Heartbreak Hotel" which had absolutely nothing to do with the Elvis version, I promise. I gave them extra points for fireballs.

The other winner was David Lindgren, one of those artists who keeps coming to these shows and never gets very far. At least he made the final this time.

Lena Phillipson made an appearance in one of the numbers at the voting interval. I don't know what her secret is but she keeps looking better in my opinion. Look at this clip... and remember she just turned 47!

My mother is visiting and she got to experience the joy that is the Melodifestival first-hand. I think the best way to describe her reaction was... nonplussed.

More photos from Annika and Olle

I woke up this morning to a number of photos from both Annika and Olle out on Aspö. It looks like a beautiful sunny day and Annika's photos are, as usual, excellent. Olle checked on my radiator and all is still properly warm. He sent along a few pictures of the house, too.

It is great to have neighbors who stay in touch! I miss Aspö a little bit less now.

Värmefläkt update

As per my post last week, I bought a Dyson fan to see how it was in person. I was pleased to hear that it wasn't as loud as some reviews made it out to be. Even at its highest setting, in our large bedroom, I didn't think it was a problem.

It also put out a decent amount of heat; our room gained about a degree every 6 minutes in my extremely simple test. And it is built to the usual Dyson levels of fit and finish. It oscillates like butter and the whole thing is silky to the touch.

This one is the grey and blue model (although the box said white, strangely enough). I still think I'll get a white one as we will be using it in the white kitchen area. Overall a successful test and I am edging closer to purchase.

Last list of design stores

Nothing fancy, just a few links of places that I like browsing:

• A plus R
• Fitzsu
• Ferm Living
• Raumgestalt

More exciting subjects soon, including paint, wire brushes, and the countdown to my 1000th post!

Värmefläkts

...that's Swedish for "heating fans". We have lots of oil-filled radiators in our stuga, and things warm up nicely after a few hours, although in the colder days of April and October, it takes a day or so to get acceptably toasty.

We have one radiator with a fan, which is much more efficient at warming up the house quickly. However, we're going to need to get a new one. The fan is giving up the ghost with increasingly loud squeaks, and I'm sure it won't be running at all when we're back there in a few months.

Fortunately, there are lots of different types to choose from.  Clas Ohlson has quite a range of värmefläkts on their website.

To be honest, though, I have my eye on something more exotic. Dyson, those makers of hi-tech vacuum cleaners, now sell a bladeless heating fan. It's quite small and efficient, although it is much more expensive than the more common fans available.

I couldn't find it available for sale in Sweden, so I e-mailed Dyson in the UK. Within 24 hours, they referred me to their Scandinavian branch, and those people replied with shopping information within 12 hours. Impressive.

Sure enough, it can be bought in Sweden, and in fact, I found it online for a surprisingly good price: about $424 at today's exchange rate, compared to $433 at my local Lowes. Amazing.

Besides being a hi-tech device which appeals to the nerd in me, it also can serve in the summer as a cooling fan, which would come in handy on sunny July days. The only drawback I've read about (besides the price) is that it can be noisy. I'm thinking about buying one at the local Lowes for a test. If I do, I'll report back.

Överkalix parish registries

Överkalix is an isolated city in far northern Sweden with has today about a thousand hardy inhabitants. It's become known for a study that took place there, which took advantage of the careful records kept in the church parishes.

These records kept detailed track of not only the marriages, births, and deaths, but also of the harvest each year. Being an impoverished and remote place, the residents of Överkalix starved when the harvest failed. Conversely, years of great bounty allowed Överkalixians to eat very well indeed.

Scientists found that boys who enjoyed those rare overabundant winters — kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season — produced sons and grandsons who lived far shorter lives. Put  simply, the data suggested that a single winter of overeating as a youngster could initiate a biological chain of events that would lead one's grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did.

The phenemona that causes this is "epigenetics"— changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations to the genetic code but still get passed down to at least one successive generation. I've drawn the above quotes from a fascinating TIME article from about two years ago. The YouTube video above is a BBC Horizon documentary on epigenetics, which I found just as interesting.

I find it really cool that the attention to detail by a little parish church in a cold corner of Sweden could lead to such scientific breakthroughs!

More photos from Annika and Olle!

I received a few photos overnight from Annika and Olle on Aspö.  There's a bit of snow and it's a few degrees below freezing out there.

All of the latest images are on Annika's Flickr page, for those interested!

Another funky design shop

This one's in Copenhagen, as one might guess from their website, normann-copenhagen.com. They have lots of funky little things, but my favorite is the bau lamp. It's a build-it-yourself kit, so each lamp is unique. I like that idea!

A high-design little shelf

Dwell magazine recently sent me to Objekten, a cool online purveyor of objets d'art. The company is in Brussels, and they have a wide array of modern furniture and accessories.

I visited many such design stores in Belgium and Holland; they seem quite common in even smaller cities like Brugge and Utrecht.

One thing they carry is a foldable wall pocket called "Leaning," which I think is a very cool way to store hats, gloves, keys, etc. It might be fun to have one by the door of our guest house. The folding edges are fabric and can be ordered in many different colors.

More Eurovision Austerity

A friend sent along this CNN video about financial austerity causing a number of countries to drop out of this year's Eurovision. I can see how it would make political sense not to spend money on something so frivolous during austere times. But then again, doesn't everyone need a laugh now and then??? And what better way to provide a big laugh than Eurovision!!!

The Happiness Index

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has published a fascinating study of happiness across nations. Their website is an interactive and instructive way to spend a few minutes (or more, in my case).

There's no surprise that Scandinavian countries rank highly, but Australia and the USA are right up there, too.

Both left-leaning and right-leaning organizations use the data to support their points of view, of course. The fun thing about the OECD website is that one can input the things that are most personally important, and make comparisons from there. It's definitely worth a look!

Merry Christmas!

We went to Crested Butte for a few days of skiing over the holidays. We had a great time. Merry Christmas everybody!!!

Electricity analysis

I posted earlier this year about electricity use over the past 3 years. This chart is a bit different.

Here, I'm comparing the temperatures against the energy usage. There are lots of websites with historical weather data. I used the mean low temp for each two month period. Clicking on the chart makes it full-size.

It's no shocker to say that, the colder it gets, the more electricity gets used.

Yellow arrows indicate times we stayed at the house; this explains the ginormous spike at Christmas 2010. In fact, that spike is quite instructive. If and when we spend more time at the house in the spring and fall, we'll be paying a pretty penny (or öre) to keep the radiators on. We'll have to find a better way to warm the house... but that's a subject for discussing later!

This is my kind of house!

Dwell magazine (those shameless purveyors of modern house porn) have a slideshow online of a house I just love.

It's a steel cantilevered prefab structure, bolted onto a rock in the wilds of Washington state. The story of its construction is quite interesting, too.

Our little place in Aspö shares a bit of its DNA, I think, with its perch on a rock, and its cantilever over the woods below. I'm not sure the Värmdö planning authorities would have approved it, though!

Happy Lucia Day!

This is my fifth Lucia on the blog. In trying to find something new about Lucia for me to post here, I found a hot new local restaurant of the same name. I'll have to try that out. But I digress.

I did manage to find something new on the web that describes the history of Lucia and her traditions pretty well. 

Sooz has been baking Christmas cookies up a storm, I will see if I can get her to make some Lussekatter, too!

Snö!

I mentioned snowy Stockholm in my previous post. Well, there's been a lot of snow lately. Olle sent me a message, saying there was 40cm (16 inches) of snow in his back garden. I assume Aspö has the same, although the weather in the archipelago can be different. But the Stavsnäs and Sandhamn webcams give me a fairly close view, and there's a lot of snow there, too!

I found one more webcam that has been taking up a lot of my time: a nearly-live video of Stureplan. It's fun to watch the commuters and Christmas shoppers bustling about.

Island trivia

I've posted before about the brilliant @Sweden twitter account, in which a different citizen takes control of the country's official twitter feed for a week. There's been quite an array of different people tweeting about their varied lives and experiences.

This past week's curator has been an oceanographer, and he's posted a number of interesting facts and photos about sea life in the Baltic. I found this tidbit particularly interesting:

• Sweden has almost 220,000 islands. Approximately 98,000 are in the ocean, the rest in rivers and lakes
• Only 1085 of these islands are inhabited (as of 2008). This corresponds to only 0.5% of all Swedish islands
• All together, islands make up only 2.6% of Sweden's total area (although their cultural importance is far greater!)

Although it's balmy here in Texas, and snowy in Sweden, I'd still rather be there today!

Eurovision Update

The Guardian is reporting (in their usual snarky tone of voice) that a number of countries will likely decline to participate in next year's contest. Poland, Portugal, Cyprus, and Greece are all said to be pulling out for financial reasons. None of them are historical powerhouses in the contest, however, so not a big loss there.

The winning country has to hold the next year's contest. The cost for doing so can be enormous. It's long been rumored that Ireland deliberately tanked their 1995 entry because the cost of hosting three consecutive wins in 1992-94 nearly bankrupt the state broadcaster, RTÉ. (They put forth their usual effort in 1996 and of course, won again!)

That said, the contest in Malmö doesn't seem to be suffering. The first tranche of tickets sold out in 20 minutes last week. Even better news is that the Melodifestival starts two months from today!

A report from Olle

Olle sent me a few iPhone pics. He checked the temperature in the bathroom and it was a perfect 7.2°C. Here's how the house looked this weekend. A couple more snaps (including a November flower) are on Annika's photoset.

Thanksgiving

It's the Thanksgiving holiday here in the USA. This is the sixth Thanksgiving that has passed since I've started this blog. I didn't mention the holiday at all in 2007, although I found it fun to look at that month's posts.

2008 was noteworthy as it coincided with Ollie's back surgery. Each of our subsequent Thanksgivings has had extra meaning for me, as it's now also an anniversary of his continued health!

Here's today's family portrait, with the fantastic addition of Sooz's dad, who flew down to Texas to be with us on the holiday.

SAS

News reports this morning are pretty negative about the fate of SAS. Like many established airlines around the world, SAS is struggling to reconcile its state-owned legacy to the realities of a low-cost world of aviation.

I have good friends at SAS, and we have flown them many times over the past 20 years. I wish them the best for their restructuring plans.

UPDATE: Although it went down to the wire (in fact past the wire, thanks to pesky Danish flight attendants), the 8 unions involved did all finally agree to sweeping changes. The Financial Times has a good summary of events- and how things might have been different in America.

A toilet theme park

I posted a bit more than 5 years ago about a toilet-awareness organization in in South Korea which built a toilet-shaped house.

Sadly, Sim Jae-duck, the builder of the house and the founder of the WTA, has passed away in the interim. However, his house has become a Restroom Cultural Park, with toilets from around the world available for visitors.

Not sure if there's a Cinderella there. There should be!

Tick Vaccinations

I've posted many times in the past about that scourge of island life, the tick, or more specifically, the diseases the little bastards carry.

Borrelia, or it's more well-known North American cousin, Lyme disease, is the most common illness. In fact, both Sooz and I have been tested positive for exposure to Lyme, which doesn't mean we have symptoms.

There is a more serious disease however: tick-borne encephalitis, or TBE. Once it's contracted, there is no cure. And it is not a disease that one wants to risk having! I have enough problems with my brain, thank you very much. No need for anything extra to deal with there.

We got our TBE shots when we were in the UK, so we're covered. However, a booster is recommended within 5 years, which would be next year for us. When Sooz visited London ahead of our visit last month, she went to our old NHS doctor and got a booster shot. They were very nice, and didn't charge her the non-resident's fee. (Like I've said before, I love the NHS).

However, going to our village in England to see my old doctor isn't an option for a working stiff like me, so I looked into getting the shot here. After a lot of research, I found that wasn't possible. The reason is simple: there is no TBE in the United States. The vaccine can't even be ordered here as an option, as it isn't licensed for American usage.

My plan B was to get the jab in Sweden, but I thought I'd try something else first. I contacted my company doctor with my dilemma. He took the challenge in good humor, and quickly found a good solution: the vaccine is available in Canada. He directed me to a travel clinic near the Montréal airport, and sure enough, I can stop in and get the vaccine there with no fuss.

As luck would have it, I need to visit Montréal for business in the coming weeks, so I'll plan an hour to stop by and get my booster shot.

The things we global residents have to go through....!

Internet service update

I received an update from Nilla, our representative of the broadband club on Nämdö. There was a lot of Swedish to get through, but this is what I understand so far:

• The cost to wire the Nämdö archipelago for 600 residents is about 48 million kronor- or about 80,000kr ($12,000) per household.
• The Swedish government has said that all households will have access for roughly the same price, 20-25,000kr.
• This gap will be met by funds paid by the government (with matching funds from the EU), but the demand for this money is very high. The 2012 funds were exhausted some time ago.
• A new, more formal broadband association will be formed by the end of this year. A stake of 2,000kr is being proposed for membership in this association.
• This group will take up negotiations to get started with the first phase of the work next year.

There's more detail, but that's the gist of it. We probably will have to deal with our little wireless connection for one more summer!!!

A 12 square-meter apartment

I read about a tiny little house built by students in Lund, a big University town in far southern Sweden. It's quite a cute little place!

The article I've linked to has a number of pictures and some background on this interesting little experiment.