I have this damn novel to write

What the Hell am I doing? Probably, I’ve started something I will never be able to finish. Never mind; it’s not so important. Different from Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, I’m not “in it for the money”; but just for fun.

This is what happened: In Winterland, in the Easter holidays, it has become a tradition that normal, well-behaved people read crime novels. This Easter I wanted to be normal too, so I read a couple of crime novels. The books weren’t too bad; entertaining stories with well-constructed plots; but it was definitely not like Jean Genet or Ibsen or Dostoyevsky (who wrote great “crime novels” like Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamasov).

In a moment of exaggerated self confidence, I said, to my old lady:
- Bet I could write crime stuff like that myself.
Shit, I shouldn't have said that, because she immediately gave me the challenge:
- So prove it.
Now, I’m working on the plot, and inventing the characters, and personalities and names for all these mean bastards who make trouble for my hero; they even try to kill him. Then I need conflicts and tension, in every scene, I learnt from the writer-blogs I follow (thank you for these very useful blogs, such as Straight from Hel, The Blood Read Pencil, and Judy Croome). And all the time I find myself swimming in semicolons; I have to stop that immediately.

I had to make a few choices. I don’t have the time to do research (other than in geophysics), so I will use a setting and environment that I know fairly well. In about all the crime novels I have read, the main characters are police officers or journalists. Not so in my novel. My hero is a physics professor (what else, and yes, I know I’m not the first, Dan Brown’s protagonist is professor in iconology).

Then I have to choose the language. Chinese and Swahili are out of question, don't know a single word of it, and my German is very rotten now. Then I’m left with English or Winterlandic, don’t know yet what I will choose. Anyway, I will probably publish the shit chapter by chapter on my blog (or a parallel one) as I write.

Sorry, no more time for blogging now. I have this damn novel to write ... >:)))

Here we go again

Here we go again, at least I hope so. The ash cloads from Eyjafjallajökull have taken a break; Six Flags Airlines is apparently flying again.

I'm on the way to the north of Winterland, as usual. I went straight from the slopes to the airport this evening. My old lady was grumpy because I didn't postpone it till tomorrow morning. But I really hate getting up at 5 am to catch an early plane.

The very first sign of spring has shown up in our garden; the kids trampoline is up and in use. There are no signs of green leaves on the trees yes, but in one or two weeks, it will be.

Today we had our last day of skiing, for a while. There is still dry cold snow at high elevations, but really slushy and wet down at the base lift stations. It's spring, the winter is over for this time. Sad but true. Another year, another snow; then we're back on the slopes.

And we have the glacier skiing in the summer of course; the first week of kids' summer vacation. The kids are already looking forward to it. They have started planning already. Just for fun, here is a little video made by the boys, from the glacier skiing last summer:

http://www.vimeo.com/5376061

Whatever, it’s still another 40 minutes till my flight. I'm just writing this crap while I'm waiting. Maybe I can find some interesting blogs to read … >:)

The toilet at Pushkin Restaurant

One night, we walked down Tverskaya Street to Pushkin Restaurant, a 10 minutes walk from the hotel. The restaurant is, of course, named after the Russian author, who wrote great books like Queen of Spades (recommended, if you haven't read it)

We had a very good Russian meal, including borsch, the delicious beet soup, and Russian champagne. After a while I had to visit the toilet. It was really nice; all the porcelain being decorated with blue flowers. Fortunately I had my camera in the pocket.

On the way back to our table, I stopped by the bar to order another beer. A cute Ukrainian girl was sitting alone by the bar. Her name was Elena, and she came from Kiev. She was in Moscow to earn some money. I grabbed my beer and wished her good luck. That was all I could do.

My creme brulee was waiting, and we’re not allowed to order room service when travelling for the company >:)

MOCKBA

Last fall I was in Moscow, to present a paper on a geology conference. Half of the presentations were in Russian, and I didn't understand much of the simultaneous translation to a language they called English. It was one week before the start of the heating season. Turning the heating on was out of question, in spite the thermometer clearly suggesting so. Therefore everybody was wearing big coats and thick jackets in the auditoriums.

Whatever, it was cool to be in Moscow again. It's almost 20 years since last time I was there, when Moscow was the capital of Soviet Union, and Gorbatchov was the president. The city had changed a lot in 20 years, and then I really mean a lot. All the Lenin statues (except one or two) were removed. The huge banners with communist propaganda was replaced by, guess what, huge commercial posters. Ferrari and Lamborghini had both opened auto stores in the city center.

Every evening, I went for a walk around Red Square, which was looking very much like it used to. I took lots of pictures of course, and above is one I was very happy with. If you look carefully, you can see the St. Basil's cathedral through the entrance to Red Square.

There is a crazy story from the construction of the St. Basil's cathedral: When it was finished, the emperor Ivan the Terrible was very satisfied with the result. To show how happy he was, he gave the architect a very special reward. He blinded him by sticking out his eyes, so that the architect could not build a similar church for another emperor.

Volcano watching

In 1980, the stratovolcano Mount St Helens woke up, after a more than 100 years dormant period. A group of researchers was following the development on safe distance, they assumed. After a magnitude 5 earth quake, the northern face of the mountain collapsed. The subsequent lava eruption went off in an oblique direction, and buried the entire group of observers. Live volcano watching can be dangerous.

There are alternatives. She's watching on her lap top, while the web-cam is far away. The volcano is hot. The first drops of lava trickles from the crest. It's close now, so exciting. Then the volcano goes off, a burst of lava into the air, and flowing down the slope. Then it's all over. The volcano is dormant again, for a while. He turns off the webcam. She has some work to finish on her own. She records it on her phone and sends him a definitive voice mail.

Iceland is hot now. Maybe that’s the place to go for summer vacation this year?

Some cool science - solitons

Right now, I’m working on some really cool physics stuff, writing a patent application, can’t reveal the details before the patent is filed.

What I’m talking about is solitary waves, or solitons. This is a special kind of nonlinear and dispersive waves with a remarkable property: Nonlinearity and dispersion are in perfect balance, such that the wave can travel forever without being attenuated.

The first soliton was observed by John Scott Russell on the Edinburgh-Glasgow Canal in 1834. Here’s his prosaic description:

“I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped—not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion …”

He followed the wave on horseback:

“… after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel …”

He spent the rest of his life trying to understand the wave he had observed, building a water tank for experiments, doing mathematical analysis. He failed.

In 1895, 13 years after poor John passed away, his “wave of translation” was mathematically described by Korteweg and de Vries. The equation is (of course) called the Korteweg-de Vries equation. This kind of waves is now known as solitons.

The stuff I’m working on has nothing to do with channel waves … but it's the same wave equation >:)

Thirteen

No, I'm not gonna talk about horny catholic bishops and cardinals abusing 13 year old kids. I think the Pope should do that himself.

However, my subject is kind of related, but very remotely.

Have you noticed that many (American) air planes do not have seat row 13? The row after 12 is labeled 14. And the same is the case in some hotels; the 13th floor has shrunk to a superstring-like micro dimension. Above the 12th floor is the 14th.

What the Hell, do the air lines and hotels think that their customers can't count? If you count the seat rows from the front of the plane, 13 is still 13, even though the label above is 14. How stupid can it be? And if you count starting in the cockpit, the 12th row becomes the 13th; probably best to take out that one too, just in case.

Some years ago, on a geology field trip to the Delaware Mountains, we were visiting the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Our guide took us to the elevator, which was labeled: “Maximum number of people: 12”. He counted the people in the group and got to 13 (including himself). He hesitated for a few seconds, before he said: - It will probably be OK. We started our 740 feet decent to the bottom of this fantastic limestone cavern. Finally, the elevator made a strange hick-up and stopped , at 741 feet. So there we were, stuck in the elevator, for more than an hour, waiting for someone who was able to open the doors. In the meantime we tried to entertain ourselves with bad jokes, mostly about Judas and stuff like that >:|

Working outdoor

Today, after lunch, we took the rest of the day off, and went cross-country skiing in the mountains of Northern Winterland. It’s spring-winter, and the weather was just too good to stay in the office. All the time I was thinking about difficult math problems, nasty equations to be solved, computer programs to be debugged, and numerical algorithms I do not yet know how to implement. So, I was working, wasn't I? Yes, I think so >:)))

Spring-winter

Days are getting longer. The day lasts longer than the night now, finally. Down in the valley, by the railroad, the first flowers have sprung. Close to town the snow is slushy and rotten. But at higher elevations, above timberline, there is still dry, cold, white snow, and good skiing. The sky is blue, the sun is warming. People are digging out a bench in the snow, to sit down and take a rest, drinking coffee from the thermos and eating a chocolate bar. It's spring-winter, the very best part of the winter.