It ain't gonna be white

Time goes fast, I can't really say that I have been working hard lately since I returned to Lund but at least busy with preparing for christmas. But a lot has happened since my last entry so here it goes.

About one week ago I went to the enormous sale in Malmö they had after the bankruptcy of Datorbutiken. The advertised with AT LEAST 30% off the original prices in the store, unfortunately I was not the only one to feel for going up early in the morning and buy computer stuff for a cheap price. Well it took me approximately 5 hours from 10 in the morning until I finally was in the store, but the better part of the products were gone and I ended up with buying a couple of dvd's and a fiber-cloth for a total of 26SEK. Whatever I saved there I lost in bus tickets. I need not say it was an utter disaster but well, I could have missed an opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn't gone.

I have started preparing for the summer also, and on top of this I am looking at going to Iceland for two weeks on a researcher school there on the topic Astrobiology. I will apply and we will see what happens. But now I am home in Vargön again, last friday me and my family had a little pre-christmas celebration with my brother Markus's girlfriend as she went home to her family today, and yesterday me and Linus went out and bought the greater part of christmas gifts for everyone.

So what am I doing now then? Well waiting for christmas of course and since I got here last thursday I have mostly been slacking and relaxing for a while. I will try and meet up with some friends from tomorrow and on, until I go back to Lund the day before new year's eve. But in the meantime I have some other errands to do also. Like buying myself a new mobile phone, and a laptop and external harddrive. The money shall flow!

But right now I am looking forward to the new term, I will start working on my master project then and before I left from Lund I had a meeting with my supervisors. They have a lot of ideas and things planned, conferences, talks and other things that I will attend and even present my own work at! Hopefully I will also have a Mac mini in my office after new year as well, as my supervisors thought it'd be a good experience to work with, especially as they both use it themselves.

But now I have been writing too much, I will instead sit down in the sofa and relax with another movie along with some ice-cream. Mm ice-cream!

Home sweet home?

I've been back to Lund now since a week, and I am already longing back to Vargön. It has that cozy feeling that no other place can have, a feeling of a warm home. But today is the first of advent, and what better time can there be than do open up my glögg (or "mulled wine" for you un-swedish people reading this) and drink along with some gingerbread biscuits. How much more swedish christmas spirit can there be?
But the closer time goes towards Christmas the lesser time I have to fix gifts for my family and friends. At the same time I have three projects to work on from the two courses I am taking this period, and before the courses are finished I have in total nine projects to do and of course two exams at the end of the course. Aaaaaaaaah! Well well, it will be fine in the end.
I am waiting for a chance to meet the teacher of the two courses of the previous two courses and discuss my grade as I am currently 3.5p and 4.5p from the highest mark on the courses, out of 100p in total for each of the courses. But he seems to be busy with his own work now unfortunately, I can hope he has time for me before christmas at least. Let's hope so.

I have started writing on a new novel following an unfortunate little child's life through times of bullies and low self-esteem to the time in hospital due to cancer and finally his death. It is a complicated project as the child during his time in high school is bullied a lot and the school day passes on mostly like a pierce through the heart, a terrible constant pain. The child will be completely anonymous during this stage, as the child will be to the surroundings of the book. The bullying is maintained, and no teacher, parent or anything stops it from happening. The father of the child is dead since a couple of years, and the mother is caught in deep in alcoholism.
It sounds probably a lot easier than it is, consider just how hard it would be not to be able to use his/her when you talk about a person? You always want to use any of those words that would reveal the gender of the person you are talking about, and you constantly have to review what you have written already. But anyhow, I hope to be able to concentrate on the writing later after these two courses are done. Of course, next term I start on my master's project on the topic "Planetary collisions". I am really looking forward to it and have already started reading through previous articles on similar projects.

But now it is time to go and drink some glögg and throw some cookies through my eat-hole. Christmas is coming..

Back in the V zone

After a long time of absence I have returned to my hometown Vargön, its calming to see that few things have changed since I last was here in late June. Now I am taking a break from school for a while to just sit back and meet friends and family, just enjoying life for a while without implications to the future. Right now I will the tv and sit back my parents' new sofa and then I might take a ride to Vänersborg and visit my old colleges at my old summer job. Apparently the ground has frozen during the night, with ice as a result so the trip there could be tricky. I will see if I dare go there, otherwise christmas is not far away so there is more chances ahead.

Only silence remains

Yes, a lot of time has passed and a lot of things have happened. The intense study period has passed and I sit here now once again calm, relax and with all the time in the world on me. The previous 2 weeks were especially stressful, but today I got the results from at least one of the courses, 6p from the highest grade out of 100. I will have a meeting with the lecturer later this week and discuss my points, although I highly doubt it I at least hope there is a slight chance I can gather enough points for it.
The two new courses has already begun, one of them is concentrated on probability and statistics in astronomy work and one on dynamical studies. They seem interesting so far and especially have a slower pace than the previous two courses.
In between all the work I have also applied for the courses of next term, and decided my list for projects of interest for the masters. It will be about 1½ week before I know what project I get, but I selected one regarding planetary collisions, one on parallax measurements for the upcoming GAIA satellite and also intensity interferometer measurements for different detectors.
We have had one meeting with the roleplaying group, but because of the amount of work lately with school we have not had time for any more and it seems we are all swamped with things to do in the near future. Hopefully we get some time for it, but at least we are gonna play some boardgames as we all do not have to be present for that. One game especially that we have picked up again is good old Magic, the old card game from the 90's.
Life is grand.

...and the silence before the storm passed

There is not much time to spare for me lately to do any of the things I am fond of doing. With examinations coming up, and on top of that corrections of the Moletai article, and not to mention the lectures I am gonna have on each of the courses. In the high-energy astrophysics I am going to talk about Supermassive black holes during 25min plus 5 minutes for questions. While in the stellar structure course I am going to talk about Cooling of White dwarfs during 12min plus 3 minutes for questions.

I've also sent applications for the next term's courses. I applied for more courses than I'd have time for actually, but that is because I am unsure of which to choose. One of them I am sure of though, and that is the numerical analysis 2 course. The second one I am interested in is the Observational techniques course, but it is at the same time as the numerical analysis so the first period of the next term will probably be very intense. On the second period I was thinking about laboratory physics, but it didn't sound too interesting still.
I will as well take a fundamental course in java programming also. That at least will be interesting, and the course spans over the whole term so it will be nice and easy studying.

But now it has been a long time since I visited home also, and I plan to do so when all the exams and projects are done. Around that time I will hopefully meet up with some old classmates from high school who also study here in Lund. Its really odd that we haven't done so earlier as we've been here for 2 years all of us at least already. Gonna meet my ex-gf in the middle of november also for a coffee, was a long time since I met her also now. More than one year at least. Strange the way time flies.

Well, now I am gonna work some more on the supermassive black holes. It would be nice to at least have some clue of what to say by tomorrow. Good that I have another week on me still to complete it.

Ah well, so long and thanks for the fish

To all my comrades of glory and valor, salute

I am finally able to catch my breath a little after all the recent events. Tasks have followed each other one after another lately, and I thought I was going to be able to take a breather after the Moletai article was submitted. But apart from the exercises we have had from school, our RPG group are finally getting somewhere. Our background stories are more or less done which binds the group together and leads us into our future adventures. I am looking forward to see how Ernja might develop, she already is a marvelous little creature. This weekend we are hopefully going to have our first meeting with the real group, the time for learning and observing is over, and now the real fun starts.

What has mostly bothered me in the past days now has been the PBLs (Problem-based learning), which means we sit in groups and solve a couple questions together and then individually write and submit a report about our solutions and answers. Today I handed in the last one for now, this week there won't be any new ones but they will come next week instead.
Until then I only have to start looking at articles for the coming project we have in our astrophysics course. There we were given a topic and some questions to answer, now we are to start looking for resources to answer these questions and present them on friday, and in the end hold a lecture about the topic for the others in the class. It will be a challenge, but I was given an interesting topic at least, "Supermassive black holes". I will talk about some really heavy stuff, and you're dying to listen to it!

On a last note I have left my big family on the internet. For many years now (with some breaks now and then) I have been playing a internet-based strategy game named "Utopia", and for a couple of years I have played together with a group of people. Now part of us are leaving utopia, some staying with the some newcomers to the group, but some looking around for a new home as well. This group has been a second family to me, and I feel sorry to leave them. But all great things has to come to an end, so I will instead of mourning this be happy about the experience and joy the time has brought me. I will keep in contact with them though so my family has not gone lost anyhow, it will just feel like when you move from home from your real family, it feels empty although they are still there.

But rest assure anyhow, I will use this day to take a big breather, and then get back on the working sadle in the morning. Friday and Sunday are proposed dates for the ALVA trip to the Oxie observatory, and today's forecast says the weather on Friday will be good. We will see how that goes, on thursday I have the visual observation laboratory exercise also and that depends on good weather as well.

Ah well, to make use of my free time and relax.

A deadline and a lifeline

Today me and Thomas handed in our article, the final version ready to be check and (although hopefully not) resent for revision. It is an awesome feeling, but I guess we will have it coming back and forth some times before it is ready for print. So for now I can let myself relax with some good movies, a little skotch and my cupcakes.

Also, our roleplay group has had some few meetings already, we have only been gathered once as a whole group, but hopefully it will be more often in the future. Fredrik has asked me to write stories later of our group's adventures, it will be a nice way to keep track of what has happened. And a nice way to spend time when you feel like doing nothing especially urgently necessary. This will be the chance for you to meet my lovely Ernja, a Watersoul Genasi, a elemental race of the forgotten realms.

But now I will continue to relax this lovely evening and make sure not let it go to waste.

Eventually you see that light at the end

Today I'm rejoicing greatly since I can finally see the end of the tunnel; my long, dark, depraving and narrow path of progress. Today I finished not just one thing, one important piece of my life's work, but so much as three. Or well important pieces of my life's work might be overdoing it, but at least three things that have been nagging me for days, weeks and for some even months now. Today I finally handed in my clean and corrected report of my Bachelor project, and oh when I left all those copies into the hands of other people made me feel so proud of myself. It took a bloody darn long time, but it has finally been finished. I hope that it will give people some form of enlightenment and maybe even ignite some flame of interest as they read it. Hard to know for sure, but I am finished at least. I am thinking of putting up a paper so that people interested in having a copy of it may sign up, should've done it earlier. But oh well.
But that was one thing. Secondly I got my poster printed out that will shine its glorious wealth of knowledge on the Kulturnatten this Saturday. It will then be there to enlighten people on the crusade to find the twin planet of Earth, which has not been found yet although it might not be that far away. I am really proud of it, at least the design was really good-looking.
And third, I also handed in the report on our big exercise last week. It was due on Friday but I couldn't find anything wrong with it so I might as well do that. So now, as I sit here at home by my computer, I have only one important thing left to finish for now. And that is the article from the Moletai Summer research school. Me and Thomas have already merged our work on it and will now start with the finishing touches and also comment on each other's work. I have one thing left which I know I haven't written about yet and that is the different types of eclipsing binaries in terms of how close they lie together. Otherwise I'd say we have mostly small things to do left, print in the references and make sure the two works merge together nicely. Then the summar/abstract is left and finally: a nice fancy title of course. I am confident that it should be more or less done by monday actually. And then I am free, until our next large assignment which we get on thursday next week. But it's some time left before that at least.
Now I am gonna prepare myself a meal worthy of a king like me, a master of productivity and efficiency!
Peace out!

..and yes time passes

Now the term has really started, it's hard not to notice it really. I sent an application to a spex-group here in Lund, but their trial days were not fitting my schedule so I guess I'll skip the idea of spex and playing music for now, better concentrate on what's important.
But what's important is that I have, more or less finished my corrections of the Bachelor project (finally I moved my ass and did something useful eh?). There is only a read-through needed to look for some small errors I might have overlooked earlier and then it will be printed out in several copies and sent out to the library and some other friends. It will be a wonderful feeling to have it finished, done and with a cherry on top. Wonderful!
What more is coming up now is the Kulturnatten, where I am making a poster about "The detection of Super-earths". But it has to be in swedish, and I hadn't understood it before but swedish is really a lame language, as an astronomer at least. Every cool processes and names are just...so boring and stupid when it gets translated. Good thing you write articles and such in english at least. The design on the poster is more or less done, I will check the text sometime today and then have Daniel M. go through it as he knows more on the topic than me probably. After that it is a swedish grammar check and then it goes off into print tuesday or wednesday I am hoping. And then that part is done, on the Kulturnatten I have nothing more difficult than standing guard at doors and doing dishes. I am actually a little relieved to not have anything more important to do which needs me to prepare things and such.
And yes, we have the deadline for the proceedings book of Moletai research school. I have read up on the theory behind Eclipsing binaries, which is the work me and Thomas are writing about our results on. These are two stars encircling each other, and when we look at them, they eclipse each other in periods, which means that they move in front of each other and block each other's light. 25th is the deadline, but I think I have more or less done the fundamental part of the theory part I was set to do. Me and Thomas are discussing what we've written sometime tomorrow. I can only hope that we are close to being done so that we have lots of extra time to correct things and insert more so that we have an awesome and perfect article in the end.
Hopefully we will discuss applying for time at NOT after that, and also get the data soon so we can start working on the data. I am gonna check if I can get hold of some access to IDL, the programming language we use in our work, so that I also can analyze the data and not only Thomas.

Last night I was at a party at Lina, an ex-student that recently finished her master, with all the other of my friends and some others from the institution. It was hard not to talk all about work and so, but the night turned out nice anyway. We looked at funny videos on youtube and laughed at lots of things. I really needed that time off there, lately its all been about work work work and studies.
And about work also, I have more or less convinced myself to start as a student-ambassador. This means I get paid to go to different high schools and represent Lunds University there, tell them about how it is to study here and especially as a physics/astronomy student. It will be nice, but first things first. I have to finish everything I have to do this month before anything else. Then I can start look at this.

Well, it's Sunday and I am actually going to the university to get some work done. It sucks, but the results later will be pleasant I hope to have in your hand and be able to say "I did all this".
There's no such thing as rest in a student's life, it's just bullocks!

Another term, another adventure

The new term has started, and it didn't go off with a big bang which I had anticipated. So far it's pretty calm at the uni, but I have other things to do outside of that which takes a lot of time for me. This wednesday we had a BBQ with ALVA to celebrate her names day, and there was actually a couple of people there. It went well, too bad though that the old members from last term didn't come, but I hope really they are coming for next meeting.
Other than that explicit meeting, time is running out for writing the article for the proceedings of the Moletai research school. Me and Thomas, which I work with, got some strange values on one of our objects and it has confused us. But we should get starting on writing the article soon now I hope, it's lucky that it isn't any long article we have to write.
After this article has been submitted, and of course I'm done with my corrections on the bachelor project, we will apply for time at NOT and hope to get some more data which we can submit a new article for later. It will surely be an awesome experience even if we don't get the observation time or the article published. It sure will look great on my CV to have that experience so "early" in my career.
Last night I had a movie night with some friends here, and today it's board games all day. Civilisations is our primary target, we'll see if we have time for something else. I hope we will be playing some more tomorrow as well. It would be a nice start of the term with pizza, friends and boardgames. It doesn't matter how much workload Melvyn put on us, I am sure to float on the clouds anyhow.
It's been a very long time now also since I was home, but strange enough I am not feeling home sick still. Guess I'm having a ball down here now, home I'll have time for later.
Also, I am considering skipping the Boelspexarna this term, that is working as a soundengineer for a group putting up kind of a musical each term. And instead join another spex which I talked to a guy at the BBQ about which seemed to have spots ready for saxophonists. A group to play in, how long I've yearned for that again!
To wrap things up, here's some photos from the ALVA BBQ:
There was a bunch of people there, and I tried to talk to them all. But I think they appreciated it and hopefully they will all return, and stay ALVA for good! :)
People looking at the zenith, they kinda thought it was interesting......don't ask me I wasn't there to see it.
No things are eternal, and that includes the summer heat. Eventually we went inside for some cinnamon and syrup. It was a good night, and lots of new interesting people.

The story so far..

Almost a week has passed now since I once again was on swedish ground. Now the time for my summer project with N. Ryde is up, and I have been more or less free during this weekend, it mostly depends on what i wanna define as freedom. So far I have mostly cleaned up my apartment, as much as I have had the energy too, but I've let myself eat a lot also and watching movies. Generally trying to relax and enjoy life for a while before the real deal starts, the horror and the pain.
But I will now also speak to you about my time at the Moletai research school. Early sunday morning, the 10th of August, the four of us travelling from Lund met up at the train station in Lund to travel to the airport in Copenhagen. The flight then to Vilnius, Lithuania, was the third all in all of my life that I've had flown with an airplane. Pretty scary statistics I guess for a 23 year old guy, but I will try and make up for that now afterwards instead, before my life is filled with work (and hopefully love and compassion as well). But we arrived at the research school some hours later, and there was nothing on the schedule at that time so me and Carina scouted the surroundings a little. With time more and more people arrived, and in the evening we had a reception at the roof of the institution. Eventually I met my room mate, Eirik from Norway. A little morning-tired but a fun guy nevertheless. There were two rooms at the top floor of the house we stayed in, the other room was occupied by carina as a norwegian woman. Us for at the top floor had a great load of fun together on all meal discussions, really loads of fun. And it was nice being able to speak swedish once in a while( and not being understood by a majority of the others).
What I can remark about the observatory site is that they had a indoor pool and a sauna in the basement which we both used a lot of evenings. It was a nice way to spend the evenings the days we didn't have any observations, with chatting and relaxing. If the weather allowed it we also had lots of water to dive down into around us, although not all of them were that pleasant to swim in. Otherwise there was woods, woods and more woods mostly except for some few cows and horses tied to poles close-by.
But on money it all started. We were divided into groups of two and together did our observations so. Some groups had bad luck with weather and other circumstances which resulted in bad or even no measurements, while some, as was the case for my group, had several good nights of measurements. On the first weekend we were given some time from studies and we had the saturday (NB: on the friday we still had observations) to walk around in bigger groups looking for parts of a picture spread along a designated route. That day was one of the hotter days that we spent there, it was probably more effective than the sauna haha. On the evening then we were given lots of nice food and listened to some folklore from Lithuania along with folkdancing. Interesting, and I think I did fairly good for someone born with three left-foots. My feet ARE made for walking, not dancing. After this evening, which really was a blast, we went to Vilnius on the sunday and were guided around and ate a nice fancy dinner at a restaurant, followed by some free time to spend as we pleased in Vilnius.
On the following monday we had more observations until thursday when all observations for all groups were finished, although not succesful as previously mentioned, and we were to begin working on our Large Assignements. As the dynamical astronomy freak I am, I was pretty fond of the topic Eclipsing binaries, although the assignement had very little to do with dynamics. I worked together with a danish student named Thomas on this, and he was in one of the few groups that had gotten no real scientific measurements during the school so far. And it seemed his bad luck affected us in this as well. With one of the binary systems we observed we had so bad luck that the two measurement points we had were taken almost exactly at the same phase; the system rotates around its center-of-mass, and the measurements were almost taken at the same stage of this. For the ~7h period of the system, the phase was coincided within ~2min! Talk about bad luck eh?! But luckily we managed to analyze and attain both radial velocities (although not absolute max value as we are not certain of the phase of the components) and the minimum mass. We got values from it, and a really nice presentation I might say also. Saturday we all presented our results of our large assignements in the morning, and after this we were all finally free from studying. After this we had a big (and by big I really mean big!) farewell party. There was dancing, eating, drinking and fun games. It was the best party I'd been in for a very long time, and it was so wonderful. Too bad it had to be at the last day of the school, but it wasn't the only party we'd had still just that it was so much bigger and cooler than the others in comparison.
In the end, it was sad to say goodbye to everyone you'd got to know so well in the past days, but we all went home on sunday the 24th. I'll let the impression of how much fun we've had be enhanced by this following pictures.One lovely sunset on our the night of the second tuesday of our stay. Lovely ain't it, and taken using my own crapbox of a camera!
A big fraction of the people from the school, here with Vilnius in the background. Ah such memories!
The forces of nature show their immense power on the night me and Eduardes did our remove observations at the NOT observatory (La Palma, Spain). Some higher power possibly tried to interfere with our measurements, but we stood our ground, never left our seats and won the fight. We got our measurements, pretty much painless and it was an incredible experience.
Last but not least, in gratitude for the paparazzis Gintaras and Vitalii that sometimes really could make a habit of being annoying, but nevertheless took a great bunch of pictures and shared them with us. Giving us a big load of memories, viewable in an eternal digital form. Thank you guys!

Now, all that is left is the start of the new term. On monday we have our introduction meeting for the master programme. But the new students at the physics institute does as well, and on the morning I will welcome them along with Carina on behalf of ALVA and hopefully be able to grab some more members to our assocation. On wednesday it's Alva's name day and that we will celebrate with an awesome barbeque party in the evening! But before that it's sunday, and I have to try and get a program working so I can analyze more of the data of the binary systems we attained. Me and Thomas are gonna write an article which will later be published in a preceeding of the research school. My first publication in short! We have also planned to, and I sure hope we will at least try to, apply for observation time at NOT for more phases of the systems we have analyzed in this large assignement. That is, my first own observation application (and maybe also first true observation time, obtained by myself). Lots of things to do, less and less time to do it in.

All good things come to an end....in the end.

Yesterday I returned from my 2 week stay in Moletai, Lithuania. I had an incredible time, not that much sleep but the more fun I had instead. 3 of the 5 nights of observations went splendid, the other two was ruined by cloudy skies or bad connections with the telescope (Teide telescope). But during this time I've learned so much new stuff, met so many new people and had so much of a good time. I would've wished the school would've went on for another 1-2 weeks. Just being in another country was an incredble breeze of fresh air that vitalised my spirit. But about my stay there now.
15 days there, 14 nights. 20 students and about the same number in the staff. That is 20 party-happy students, and about the same number of cool awesome and great staffs. You do the calculation yourself. Not many nights passed by without some promille of alcohol in the blood. When things have settled and I've recovered all lost sleep I will give a better review of my time. In the meantime you will have to make due with these pictures taken by the paparazzis of the school; Vilatii and Gintaras.
This is how real astronomers work, in big formats and with great tools of science!
And this is part of the squad of students, only one which is not currently studying in a nordic country (estonia actually), all of us lying at the center of europe. They've done calculation on this and it is in fact lying north of Vilnius, Lithuania.
We even had time for some cultural activities between the science. Here I blow the horn along with my norwegian room-mate Bård Eirik, and everyone was awed by the sound.

Exploring new horizons

Today is the day before the Day. Tomorrow I'll be leaving for Moletai Observatory, outside of Vilnius, Lithuania, for a week summer school on the topic "Observational stellar astrophysics". It will be a tough but incredibly educational experience, as well as interesting to meet new people of different nationalities. We will be doing observations using the three telescopes at the observatory , and hopefully also remotely two telescopes both at La Palma(Nordic Optical Telescope) and at Teide (IAC80). As I've heard there will be a lot of scheduled activites, both education and social. But as observations are done best at nighttime, I doubt I will have any good sleeping habits after this. With this I am unsure how often I might have the chance to logon to a computer and update the blog on the efforts. First priority is to have fun and make a good effort, next to that comes the bragging of how fun I have and how much I've learned!
After Moletai, I've only got one week left with my project for N. Ryde and then the new term starts. Not long ago I was elected to chairman of the ALVA association, with this comes some responsibility and we can come to attract at least some new students the next term. From the applications to the astronomy education I counted seven new students, we will be sure to do our best to catch them quickly and retain their interest of astronomy. And hope they will continue their studies in that path.
All in all, the future looks interesting and promising. At the master's programme we will hopefully have a few new students also along with the few of us who have managed it this far. So that means new interesting classes, new people and loads of fun hopefully! Let's keep our spirit's up, and aim for the stars! ;D

It's coming to a closure...

with summer. Today it has been raining intensively, really floods of water. I've finished my summer project for Melvyn about a week ago, and between then and today I've just appreciated life in its full glory. The weather has been splendid and I've tried enjoying the sun as much as possible without getting burned, reading and just relaxing doing nothing really that is in any way useful or productive more than creative tasks. I had visits from my parents this weekend, and the week before that my grandmother came for a visit as well. It will be a while now before I have a chance to visit home again. August will be filled with either work or studying in Lithuania and then the new term begins and as I've heard there will be a lot of stuff to do then. I have a future in front of me filled with a lot of work, but I am also confident of much knowledge and everlasting experiences.

With a bright lantern I will search...

The weekend is here, unfortunately it doesn't seem to bring with it the joy and harmony of having spare time to do as I please with. On the contrary I need to read, study and work with several things which I ain't too keen on working on. My last week at the first summer job is coming, and it is for the moment hard to see whether I have some good results to hand in from it or not. At least this week has given more results, and discussion with Melvyn, as any other....including the time on my Bachelor project.
Next week I will have to concentrate on finishing the last final calculations, which the project really was aiming at attaining the results from, and nicely organize all my plots and comments for him to understand it well.
I hope I won't run into too many difficulties the first days of next week, as I have no supervisor available to aid me until wednesday when Daniel returns. But I sure as hell am going to give my best!

Otherwise I have to read, read and read on the book which works as course literature for the researcher summer camp in Lithuania. Especially I have to concentrate on the questions we have to answer before we travel there. Seven of them, but all of them not so easy as the ones I've already managed to answer. It will probably be a difficult two weeks, but I will gain lots of experience, knowledge and maybe hopefully also some new friends.

But I must say that it feels really good now to be able to title yourself Bachelor of physics with special degree in astronomy. Try to say that three times quickly! I'm on the hunt for the love of my life now again, you could think it was due time for me to find a new girlfriend really. Well let's hope fate is on my side, and a bit of luck I guess.

Hopefully we will have another evening of board games on monday, and me and Fredrik sure are hoping for another round of Descent then. Playing Dragon quest sure made me thirsty for more monster blood at least.

I have set my mind on mp3-player now, a Creative Zen 8gb and on Monday I will send away my order and hopefully get it soon to play with. Then I will give myself another week to decide on a new mobile. Then I'm fully pimped and ready to meet the end of the summer and crash and burn into the new term.

Hi, ho, and a bottle of rom!

Okey I wasn't totally butchered, I am actually more or less unharmed, honestly. Although the meeting I had which resulted in the examination of myself, didn't go so well anyhow. It will take some weeks more before all the people have had their likewise meeting, and hopefully I at least will find out what grade I finally got in start of august. Until then I'll be worried as hell, although of course most of the days my mind will be busy with the summer project I am doing for Melvyn. I am currently working on reproducing a plot done in a previous article, but somehow I can't get it right. I can't get it through my head, the questions keeps stalking me...the wondering, that puzzling feeling. Today I've at least tried setting my mind off it by composing some music, unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a very good day for creativity. Should try to find something to do which isn't too dependent on my mood, whatever that could be now.
Unfortunately not much has happened lately, not anything worth mentioning at least. Right now it's all about making the hours fly, and get ready for the next day. I guess I should try finding something better to do....

To the slaughterhouse

Although things have improved a little since last time, the worst is still ahead of me. On thursday comes the day of evaluation of my bachelor thesis, and after reading through my report yesterday I am expecting a slaughter of wide proportions. Maybe it won't be that bad, but I rather go in there expecting the worst and get positively surprised, than getting worse than I expected. And after the evaluation meeting, I am meeting up with Daniel, and maybe Melvyn as well, to present my results so far.

A quick review of what I am doing might be in place. I am constructing a catalogue of clusters within our Galaxy, with all parameters computed so far such as age, size and mass. Sounds easy maybe but its harder than it may seem, first finding the bigger catalogues so far out there and then cross-reference them to see how much overlap they have. Well it is a valuable experience, and I hope to learn a lot from working on this. During the weekend I had my birthday party for my Lund-friends, and the gifts I had was.....well diverging greatly in nature. A rolling pin was the first gift, useful and practical. The second was a little card game named Condottiere, which I hope to be able to test someday soon. But the third was a kitchen apron, in pink with angels and glistening on. Very cute indeed, maybe I will post a picture of it later, haven't decided if the shame is worth it yet.

During the weekend I have come to a decision on what mp3-player to buy finally; a Creative Zen 8gb. I've had it with cheaper players of unknown manufacturers, my last player was from Adamond and it went crazy on me after new year's eve. Well they didn't have it in stock where I wanted to buy it so I will hold a while more before I order, the most important thing is that I have it before the end of July when I possibly am going home again for a week.

And I've kinda put my mind on to what mobile I am gonna buy as well, Nokia N82. Despite Nokia's bad battery-time, it has the best camera as far as I can see. And with that GPS and WLAN, but it's a hard choice between Nokia N82 and Sony-ericsson C902 really. C902 has chromatic aberration, meaning that the light is dispersed differently depending on its wavelength. This causes effects like rainbow patterns especially visible in areas with large contrasts, a rooftop against the sky for example. I won't rush my decision, I am gonna use this mobile for a while still so.
Too bad though that it seems I can't use either of Tele2 or Telia's student offer when buying my mobile, but have to order them separately. I can hope something better is introduced before I decide to buy a new mobile (which I at least hope will be before my Lithuania trip, or at least before start of the new term).

Keep moving forward

Oh, how time flies! The bachelor exam ended with nothing but stress, stress, stress! In the end I did hand in a report, but with too many flaws. Nothing is perfect in the eyes of the maker I guess..... Let's hope it won't ruin my changes of a higher grade than passed. As I understand I will know it for sure by the end of next week when I will have an evaluation meeting. I'll keep my hopes up until then.

On the 28th of June I became more of a man than I had been before, I turned 23 and got older. My brother Markus, along with his girlfriend and a work companion from my summer job celebrated me the day before. It was beer, chips, new and old stories from work and...yeah a 50euro bottle of "fake" champagne also. Nice way to end my 22nd year, but I am still disappointed with the start of my 23rd year, although I hope it will improve. After that ending of my 22nd year, I went along with my brothers and Emmeli to our parents' summer cottage and spent some time. Relatives came to celebrate me and it ended with a nice barbeque on the evening with the family. The day after I headed back to Lund, where I am sitting now after my 2nd day on my summer job for this year.

Mostly this day has been devastating. My meeting with Melvyn, which I am working for the past 4 weeks, and Daniel went horribly. I felt like a moron walking out from it, completely made a fool of myself as my head wasn't working with me at all when Melvyn asked me his questions. Life might be cruel but this was a massacre. Maybe this about being a researcher is to aim too high for me anyway? I'll make it through this summer, and the coming two years and I'll make up my mind then. Need to find more to do except studying though, luckily there will be some board gaming this summer which hopefully will set my mind of Melvyn, galaxies and the universe's dynamics.

I hope to buy a new mobile soon now, one with a decent camera, so that I can have some pictures posted here soon enough also. Then this blog will be filled with colorfol pictures from my daily life...or gray I don't know yet. Well well, times flies but unfortunately the dirt on the dishes doesn't. Back to reality.

The Pain of Salvation

It finally happened; the bachelor report was handed in on thursday at 17:05. I had mixed feelings of extreme sorrow and happiness with it, the report was far from as great as I could have made it with more time, although more work on it would've probably made me go crazy(ier).
But it's now handed in, and midsummer's eve is past as well with all the joy it gives. And now I have my short vacation up at my birthplace, in glorious Vargön. This gives me about 8 days to visit family and relatives, meet up with my friends and relax for a while. But time passes on fast and I will have to make sure to use it to 110%, I still have a lot of things to do during my little "vacation". Not to mentioned a full weekend in our family's summer cottage to celebrate my 23rd (ugh that old?) birth day.
On monday the 30th I start my summer work for M. B. Davies, my head supervisor on my bachelor project, on the topic "Galaxy cluster" as I recalled it. I will have to wait until that time until I know for sure, but I have some preparatory questions to answer before my two weeks long scientist camp in august so I have things to keep my mind busy with as well. Not to mention familiarizing myself with the software I will later use in august when I work for N. Ryde instead and investigate Sulphur lines from....not completely sure but giants in cluster centers or something. Have to read up on that again, important facts to know.

But yesterday I came to Vargön again, and after a quick portion of food had entered my stomach I took the bicycle and travelled to Lisa before she (today) goes back to her little shed up in Umeå to work some weeks for a scientist as well. But today I'll be meeting my best friend John, think I haven't met him since christmas or something....been too long precious! Then my family is coming home to work next week (haha I fart in your general direction :P) later tonight so I'll have time to meet them some before the new week starts off. And tomorrow I'll be able to meet and talk with Hanna again, she was so happy to see me at her graduations last week, which was a surprise to me as I didn't know I was missed that much at home really.
Anyhow, summer is here and with it the rain, thunder and relaxing! Don't forget to get your share of it as well!

Blood, sweat and tears....

Firstly I must excuse myself for being a bad blogger lately. All work with the bachelor exam now is keeping my mind occupied 24/7. The dead-line is drawing closer by the minute, and the depressing thoughts of it just piles up over my shoulders. I hadn't expected it to be easy, but this stress is killing my mind, one braincell at a time, and my back for that matter sitting by the computer so much. On Wednesday or thursday I should be handing in a more or less completed report to my head supervisor, as he will be more or less occupied the whole time the last week. But on friday Hanna and me (internal joke, a friend with the same name as me) graduates from high school and of course I will be there to celebrate them!
To summarize what has happened lately there are two major events. I've joined a little group of people who play boardgames from time to time, and I hope to be occupied with them alot this summer. Should take my mind of my work somewhat at least, because I will surely need it as it seems.
Secondly I've been studying, A LOT! Not the most joyous part of the term but I seem to be able to survive it, just a couple of days left and some 100,00 words to write or something like that. Lucky me.....
Anyhow, another week lies just around the corner. At least the end of the week will be wonderful with meeting friends and family again. Feels like an eternity since last.
I promise also that sometime during the summer I AM gonna buy me a new mobile (and laptop, and mp3-player) so that I can show you some nice picture from my life as well. Pictures speaks louder than words, right?

Right now I am gonna do some finishing touches on my report as it is now and send it to my supervisor so that we can discuss it hopefully sometime tomorrow. Have to speak to some people during next week also regarding the evaluation of the project, the work I'll do here during the summer and next term's activities with ALVA (url to the right here if you haven't investigated it before). After that I'll take some time off with TV before I got get my sleep.....ah sweet deliverance.

Balticum here I come!

Since I've gained some international readers i'll start writing in english instead.
Got a mail this week with the news that I will be going to Lithuania for 2 weeks in august, all expenses such as travel, food and living is paid, and attend to the research school there. "Vacation" and EDUcation in one package, can it be better?
The stress over the bachelor exam is starting to build up even more and more. A major part is done of course but there is many questions that needs to be answered first before I can think of writing the report even. I am glad that the exam doesn't include any oral presentations of your work at least, which the master exam will. But after today's meeting I begin to see the final goals that I have to reach before the final stage of this project can be begun.
Fredrik and Leif has spent alot of time today on building their new computers, only Leif ordered it for now but Fredrik will in due time. But all this makes me so eager to buy the laptop I've planned to buy sometime at the end of the summer possibly. It is hard but two things makes it more useful to wait after the summer:
1) According to Daniel, Mac will introduce their upgraded computers at the end of the summer.
2) Dell will introduce, hopefully at least, LED screens to their 15,4 inch laptops. Which is alot better for outdoor use as it reflects less light and so the screen is more viewable in direct light.
The decision of which computer I will buy I still tricky.
Dell gives me great performance for a good price. Problem is that I despite Dell. Always have, always will.
The Acer I've been looking at has good performance but not as good as I can get from dell at the same price.
And an iMac is stylish, and a good brand with solid OS. But they are expensive as hell, more than double the cost than Dell with likewise setup. Sometime I will own an iMac, but that will probably when I have a good inflow of cash into my wallet.
The urge to buy is strong, but my will is hopefully stronger so I won't fall into temptation.
And if everything fails I can at least join this orchestra and succeed with my life anyway.

High grades, theory tangle and sunburn

Yes! Finally I finished my wikipedia-article, and with it I got my eagerly awaited grade (passed with honors? grader of passed at least). For those of you interested in my work, or maybe just in oscillations of neutron-stars, can simply visit this page here. There are some language modifications remaining, but in general it is complete. At least the course is finished!
This weekends struggle with the theory for the bachelor project starts to run to a closure, but so does also the bachelor project as a whole. 20th June is the deadline, and I should start on the writing of the report 3-4 weeks before that. I am not so sure even what to write! But with tomorrow's meeting with Daniel, my supervisor, I will get my answer about this. Assuming I remember to ask them.

And while enjoying the beautiful sunshine I got this year's first sunburn yesterday as well. Darn sensitive one should have, bad genes. Oh well, summer is stepping into Sweden and I ain't complaining. Beats cold windy days or even rain all week long. The only problem thought is the lack of swimable water here in Lund so one could cool down in the heat this summer....sea-sea is no option really! I will miss dear Nordkroken (Northhook) and Boteredlake so much. Guess I'll have to build a pool in my apartment instead...

Sun, wind and.....more wind

This weekend we initiated spring with a wonderful barbeque, because barbequed meat is the best form of food! The wonderful weather has survived a long time here now, and I hope it won't be finished with a month of constant rain or anything like that. But hell, tomorrow it's Walburgis and that means lots of freetime!
Things starts to speed up with the bachelor project now as well. Finally feel like I ain't just throwing out lots of simulations but I have the chance to study and analyze the results from them as well. For those of you not familiar with what I am working on I study the stability of our solar system, and don't worry it'll last for a long time at least, and I use a programcode called Mercury for this. The project concentrates on the effects of the four giantplanets in our solar system; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Hopefully I will come to some astonishing conclusiong and remarkable facts, which I of course will publish a short review of if it happens.
Today I booked my tickets home to Vargön [Wolf Island] to celebrate when Hanna and Tobias graduates from upper secondary school. Those little ones grow so fast *sob*. Unfortunately my stay probably won't be long-termed because I have my deadline for the project on the 20th of June, while their graduation is on friday the 13th (oh the horror \o/). But I will be back again after that, both for me and Mattias double-birthday-party and general party. Then I start working 1st of July here on the institution of astronomy in Lund, one period for Melvyn Davies (my head supervisor in the bachelor project) and one for Nils Ryde. But it will be a wonderful summer, hopefully at least. But now I'll go and enjoy the evening a bit. Live goes on, but most important is to embrace the spring and enjoy it people!

Fancy dinner and aching bodyparts

Yes, alot happens in a short time. This monday's stylish dinner was really something out of the ordinary. Drinks with sparkled (?) wine and live music it felt really felt snobbish, and of course appetizers. We who work with our bachelor project in astronomy went together and enjoyed ourselves in the lovely weather we've had here lately with a lovely spring-ice cream before the actual dinner started.
But before that we listened to lectures of the three finalist's of the Crafoord-prize, awarded to Rashid Sunyaev, Edward Witten and Maxim Kontsevich. Sunyaev was interesting despite his russian accent, probably due to his subject within astronomy, but Witten had a dull instead and his good english didn't save him. But worst was Maxim who used handwritten notes as illustrations. And his accent and overall lecture was so boring I instead found myself thinking about falling angles in the Aikido and put attention to how important mathematics is to quantum theory.
The award ceremony was in Stockholm with the king of Sweden, but as tradition states the dinner in the winner's honor is held in lovely Lund's old university buildings. This added some extra points of class on the whole festivity. I won't even try to remember all the goodies I found at the buffet table with things such as new potathoes and meat in many flavours. But I can't resist mentioning the dessert(s) we got which consisted of so much as five (!) chocolatedesserts. Each one the more lovely than the other. Especially the chocolatemousse which I won't forget the taste of for a long time. Too bad I didn't take some time to speak to the prize-winners and thanked for a pleasent lecture (eventhough all wasn't that pleasent but surely interesting). But next year if I get the chance to attend again I sure am gonna try!

But now I sit here on thursday night with rigid calves after last day's Aikido training, and tomorrow I'll probably have another run of it. But then on saturday the long awaited barbeque is finnaly here, if now the weather allows. But I long so much, I never let go of the thought of a hot barbequed and bloody beef or roast. I can almost sense it already. But tomorrow it's friday and I am gonna work my ass off! Here is some pictures from the dinner so you can see how fancy I actually can be, the photographer is the infamous Fredrik Windmark.

The dilemmas of the weekend

And so the computer was flushed and reinstalled and I now sit beside a fresh machine that purrs like a cat. Hopefully it won't be any problems this time, although with windows you should expect it. Had two movie nights with Carina and Martin this weekend, as well as we tried Martins new game we bought him for his birthday; Bohnanza. Bean farming, hell yeah!

Tomorrow it's time for the big Crafoord-prize with means, hopefully, interesting lecture followed by loads of free food and possibly pleasent neighbours by the table to have a intellectual conversation with. Have to dress fancy for once also, and looking forward to it.

Will make sure to finish my wikipedia-article on the subject "Neutron-star oscillations"; physics in its most extreme form. Hopefully it's good enough to give me that high grade I am hoping for. I hope so, because if I see more rotating globes now I think I am gonna go crazy.

The idleness of weekend, created by many ours of slow window-installations, have also made me think and consider plans and goals for the summer. Of course I will visit my parent's cottage for some days and do some real physical work on the building there. But it wouldn't be completely wrong to be able to do some roleplaying in Lund. Composing, writing and all that other form of creativity in all its glory, but you can't do it just like that but the mood has to be right.

Nono, time to go out and enjoy the spring yes!

I am a blogger

And so I've joined the ranks of bloggers and will tell the world of my progresses and setbacks in life. I who am sitting here is an astronomy student in lovely drunk Lund and right now I am on my third year struggling intensively with my bachelor project. Originally I come from beautiful Vargön [Wolf Island] in Västergötland, with it's wonderful nature on the two plateu-mountains and the well establish musical culture that stands strongs nationally and even internationally on some levels. Not to forget lovely Vänern, Sweden's biggest lake which has given me alot of lovely days in the sand and water.

During the time I don't have my head deeply groaning in all kinds of books and articles, I usually attend to several activities. Since 3 weeks I now train Aikido, and I love it. A tips for the one who likes to work-out and do something socially as a group at the same time. Otherwise I play with photoshop and manipulate pictures of people in my life I like extra much, even if it's far from as advanced as many people can do I am still mostly pleased with the results.

As an experienced musician I try to compose some music as well, eventhough I of course play some music from time to time to keep my mood up. I still haven't actually succeeded in finishing and work but I have many of them that has come a long way.

And if I ain't busy with any of these then it is possibly social stuff with friends or writing. During middle school I created a character for many kinds of stories which I plan to hopefully reincarnate this sommer to take it up a couple of levels. More information will come surely as I see some results. But for some years now I've sketched on a fantasy-world, maybe a relatively overused genre, but it still is a world I like to develope and see how it develops in my mind. And in time I will possibly publish some novels from it here.

Well, I don't know anything more to say now, so let the bloggin begin!