Organics

As readers of my blog may know, I strongly prefer organic food products to industrially produced, chemically polluted products. I was a little worried that I would have to live with industry/chemistry foods here in Barcelona. On our scouting mission to Barcelona in January, Lise and I found one very small organic foods shop, and one very nice organic, vegetarian restaurant (I just googled, and it also got nice reviews on this random site).



The nearest supermarket to the apartment is a very large "Carrefour". So the first times I shopped there I scoured it for organics. I found few (but important ;o) products: Milk, Musli, chocolate (dark), tea, pasta and tomato sauce. Ok, I can live off that.

Things seem to start to move down here, however. A few weeks into the stay, I saw this stand outside the Carrefour.




In which they handed out leaflets about "how and why" organics. Inside the Carrefour there was a pretty girl handing out the leaflets. And now Carrefour has made a (very small) special section, in which they've collected most of their organic products, so they are easy to find. Great.


Later when I was walking to the central Placa Catalunya, I passed this shop:



The sign says "organic". I didn't go in, but I'm hoping for something like Egefeld (which is a fantastic shop, by the way). All in all I'm mildly optimistic for the organic aspects of my stay :o)

The PRBB building (and One-year party)

The building where I work, PRBB, is a research park, very similar in concept to the one in Copenhagen.

Here's the building (the round one)



It houses the private research institution CRG (somewhat similar to BRIC) and it also houses labs for a nearby research hospital, and other labs. And the building is also very new. Soon after I arrived there was actually a one-year party for the building.



With some strange entertainment



and quite a lot of people



Fewer people as it got late


As it is a new building, the labs and offices are nice and new. However, not all of CRG has actually moved in yet, and this means (apparently) that some servers are on the other side of Barcelona. This should also explain the extremely slow internet connection from the labs (almost too slow to talk on Skype).

The apartment

Since I arrived, I've stayed in an apartment that the lab rents to accomodate visiting researchers (great idea!). The new people like Cedrik and me are then allowed to live there for a couple of months until we find something ourselves. This is extremely nice, as it allows me to be able to be down here and actually visit the apartments/rooms that I might rent. And it removed a lot of stress from the whole idea of coming here, that I didn't have to try to rent rooms over the internet, maybe in Spanish.



The apartment itself is nice. It is a three room apartment with a nice kitchen.



My room on the right.



My room

Most of the furniture is from IKEA, so I feel immediately at home :o). There is even the same chair that I had in my room in Værløse

UPF - Pompeu Fabra

While walking around (looking for wifi, I think) found the main campus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.



The new prestige university in Barcelona. And the university into which I will be enrolled, I think. Unfortunately they don't seem to be famous for science (yet! just see in 3 years).

Well on the campus there was a large banner advertising an exibition on Pompeu Fabra, which was open only two days more. And since I did not know who he was - I decided that now was a good time to find out.



So I went in and discovered that Mr. Fabra was a linguist and the scholar who, among other things, established the modern orthography of the Catalan language. Of course I could probably have found out the same by looking him up in Wikipedia, but this was a little more fun.

You can see the electronic edition of the exposition here.

Internet cafe

As I left Denmark on the 29th and actually worked at IBM until the 31st of May, I brought my IBM laptop to be able to work from Barcelona. However I quickly found out that the IBM Virtual Private Network client (the "AT&T Client") was somehow blocked by the firewall in the lab. Drat! I spent the good part of a day looking for an internet-cafe or some wireless. I looked in the part of town I had been before, and where I thought there should be a good chance of finding some. However, I looked with no success. The Starbucks I knew did not have wifi, and maybe the ubiquity of wifi and net in hotels and hostels has killed the good old internet cafes. I didn't find them. And I decided not to go "war-walking".

At the end of the day, or maybe it was the next day, I walked around the UPF main campus, and I found a small internet cafe a couple of streets away. But they did not have wifi - or wired access for my laptop. The lady in the cafe knew where I could find a cafe with wifi, though. And she managed to explain it to me in Spanish. And I found it!



Great - not only did they have nice fast wifi, but the price was excellent too. "Buy a beer and get free wifi"!



I have returned several times - gotta check the IBM mail....ehrm, or something.

Ungeren@BCN

When I walked to the police station in Barceloneta, during my paperwork treasurehunt, I passed by this house



It looks like a smaller Barcelona edition of Ungdomshuset på Jagtvej. Later I learned that there are several other houses like this in Barcelona. Supposedly there is a rule which makes it legal to occupy houses which have been unused for some time.

Paperwork treasurehunt

On Thursday I did the paperwork treasurehunt. To be able to complete my contract and get a bank account I was told I should get my N.I.E number. I guessed that with the EU common labor market this should be easy. And it was, sort of. I had been warned by Cedrik that I should get up early to wait in line at the office. However, on wednesday I walked by the office just to check. The lady looked at me and asked if I had a ticket - when I said no she rolled her eyes and told me to come back early the next day. Ok. Cedrik was right.

So I got up early and was at the office about 7:40. The office opens at 9:00 but quite a long queue had already formed. Good thing I brought a book. When the office opened the queue was processed at reasonable speed but the "processing" was actually just that people got a number to wait on like in a bank or a post office. After about an hour more of waiting my number was up. The lady who processed my NIE application spoke english, so the paperwork was smooth. She also instructed me that the next steps in my application were

1) Go to a bank and pay 6,70Euro to get a stamp.
2) Take the stamp and go to the police station to have my actual certificate printed.

These last two steps went well. No lines, great.

Arrived

Tuesday I left Denmark. I had packed 16,4kg of stuff - almost all of it clothes. As carry-on I had 2 laptops though. It seems sensible to pack lightly as I will move apartment at least once pretty soon after I arrive. The lab has rented an apartment to be able to accommodate guest-researchers. And it offered that I could stay in that apartment until I find an apartment (or room) myself. Very nice.

The flight was uneventful - but notice the plentiful leg-room. Ahh, the joy of checking in on-line.




Actually I almost forgot Lise's nice goodbye present in the plane. Yikes.

I arrived in Barcelona Tuesday evening. The weather was perfect - warmer than in Denmark, as I made my way to the lab to meet Cedrik, my lab-apartment roommate. He was there and I even arrived before he expected. I arrived at around 19:15, but the secretary had said that I would be there around 19:30. Nice, but had she gone online to see that the plane was late? I had told her that I would be at the lab around 19.

Cedrik showed me the way to the apartment. The T4 tram-line seems to be the optimal transportation as we don't have bikes yet. The apartment is nice, more on that later.

Barcelona

I've applied for and received a 3-year ph.d. at the Center for Genomic Research in the Systems biology group under Luis Serrano. And now, I am actually getting used to the idea.

I believe that I have a place to stay (for the first couple of months), and I've pretty much settled on which day to leave. So May 28 is my last day in Denmark (except for visits), for quite a while.

I hope to blog more from Barcelona - instead of sending mails.

"Either you're with us, or you're with the liquid!"

...I'm not sure that is what President Bush said exactly, but judging from the from the annoyance of bringing your toothpaste or shampoo onto a plane, it must be what he meant.

And since the exact number of complaints seem to matter to the current government, I wrote a letter to the minister of justice, Lene Espersen. Please write something similar to her to stop the "war on moisture". Airport security right now is completely idiotic, and not based on any real assesment of danger.


Kære Lene Espersen,

Vil du ikke nok være flink at stoppe vanviddet med vilkårlige
begrænsninger på hvor megen tandpasta, og shampoo man kan tage med i
sin håndbaggage på flyveture.

Reglerne er helt åbenlyst vilkårlige, og ubegrundede[1] og jeg vil
vove at påstå at fokus på vilkårlige og ubegrundede regler om
tandpasta og shampoo svækker alles tillid til kompetencen i
sikkerhedskontrollerne. Samtidig vil denne fokus medvirke til at
distrahere sikkerhedsfolk fra virkelige trusler [2]

Hvis du har tid, så skriv endelig tilbage ang. hvordan du vil få
stoppet de idiotiske regler, og forhindre at lignende regler kommer
til verden.


Venlig hilsen
Anders Nørgaard, flyrejsende


[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6175427.stm

[2] http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=67166

Busy at work

So...I've been out of student life for almost 3 months now, and it is OK. I don't feel i have more time now than I did before. Even though I have evenings and weekends free now, without the flexibility of student hours, one has to squeeze all shopping and errands into the few hours that are available.
Fortunately my job at IBM is still interesting so I won't complain too much. Being at IBM it is fortunately ok to have a moderately geeky humor. So here's a video I find funny. My dad does too. :o)

Prisons and parking tickets

Today I read a story about privatized prisons around the world in the Economist. It reminded me about a conversation I had with a colleague yesterday about parking tickets in Copenhagen. My colleague mentioned some instances of parking tickets that he had been given, but that he did not find fair.

One example was a ticket for parking slightly outside the demarcation and thereby intruding upon a path made to serve Copenhagen tour-boats. However at the time of parking (winter) no tour boats are active.

Another was given for parking closer than the requisite 10m away from intersections (maybe 8 or 9) meters away.

My colleague wondered that rigid mechanical enforcement of the rules was applied instead of a more balance and sensibility based approach (no need for the boat-path in winter, 9 m is sufficient for traffic safety).

The reason for this is, to me, clear. The enforcement of parking rules has been sold to a private company, and as private companies maximize profits, they have no interest in ever doing sensible interpretations of rules if this interpretation is not in their economic favor.

How does this relate to prisons. Well, are we able to formulate contracts that can protect prisoners against always being underprioritized relative to economic gain of prison-companies? Is it ethical for parking ticket-companies to lobby for more restrictive parking regulations, that will lead to more parking tickets? Is it ethical for prison-companies to lobby for longer prison sentences?

Ineffective C++

I'm currently porting my protein simulation program from Java to C++. At the same time I have started reading the classic book by Scott Meyers "Effective C++" (which, incredibly, does not have a wikipedia-page).

Item 19 in the book is a list of things to consider when designing a new class. It strikes me that the considerations are a strict superset of the things to consider when designing a new class in Java.

1. How should objects of your new type be created and destroyed?
2. How should object initialization differ from object assignment?
3. What does it mean for objects of your new type to be passed by value?
4. What are the restrictions on legal values for your new type?
5. Does your new type fit into an inheritance graph?
6. What kind of type conversions are allowed for your new type?
7. What operators and functions make sense for the new type?
8. What standard functions should be disallowed?
9. Who should have access to the members of you new type?
10. What is the undeclared interface of the new type?
11. How general is your new type?
    

The corresponding book for Java "Effective Java" doesn't have a similar item, but I'd say that 1,2,3,6 clearly don't apply to Java. 8 only applies in a very limited sense. Almost half the points to worry about, to create a class in Java, compared to C++. Hmmm....

CRAP on our computers

In Denmark we have a special tax on digital storage media. The tax is justified as a compensation for artists whose woks are illegally copied. However, this justification seems strange, given that many storage media are used strictly for non-music data eg. in digital cameras or for computer software. Many people also find it strange that copying music is illegal - now that they pay for the copying.

Then recently I noticed this analysis of the hidden costs of new Digital Restrictions Management (DRM or CRAP) in the new Windows Vista.

How should we think of these costs? By virtue of the de-facto monopoly of Microsoft - all users of computers and computer hardware will pay for the inefficiencies of these DRM initiatives.

Whereas the danish copyright laws and rules on special taxes on digital storage media are made by politicians, the designs for DRM are made by private companies. And the monopoly of Microsoft is tolerated (almost) by politicians but not exactly made by them. Who can we vote for that will make sure we don't have to pay for CRAP on our computers? And what can they do?

The IBM christmas tree

My friend Frances reminded me of the IBM christmas tree. I felt the same way, that the tree this year was disapointingly small and scrawny. However, the other years I thought that the 8 meter Maersk Data christmas trees were ridiculously large - so I guess that I'm just hard to please...

It is smart being a vegetarian

Of course I've known that for a while :o), and this study, at least, claims that there is some statistical relation between IQ and eating habits.

Joining the Web 2.0 revolution (with music)

Web 2.0 is a somewhat nebulous term that among other things covers collaborative websites. Well I just found one that I really like.

Last.fm is a website that helps you listen to music. It records which songs you listen to, and based on that it can recommend other songs you might like, or other people that you might like to discuss music with. Cool! (More info on wikipedia and here )

Last.fm also offers web-radio in which you can tag the songs with "love" or "ban" to further sharpen your musical profile.

Many music players on linux integrate last.fm directly, but on windows and mac OS X you can download a music player that offers all the functions of the service. My favorite music player the amazing Amarok has great integration, as can be seen here



Rock on!

I didn't know they made these...

From Misc

Normally I'm not very fond of these December count-down (or count-up?) julekalender things, but Lises mother knows my weaknesses and bought me a calendar with Valrhona chockolates. Uhmm - chocolicious...

Reading blogs easily

To many people it is anoying to have to visit different pages to read different peoples blogs. So they don't. However, the technology of blogs is made such that it is extremely easy to stay up to date with many (or few) different blogs.

On my home page I've posted a small explanation of how to read blogs easily. I hope you'll enjoy reading my blog (and maybe the blogs I read) using this tip.

If you write a blog yourself, you might install an RSS reader for some of the people you want to read your blog. I know I'll install one for my mom :o)

Economist on the internet

I've subscribed to the Economist for about a year and a half now. Before that I read as many articles as I could on their homepage. Lately I've noticed that almost all their articles are free for non-subscribers to read.

So, go on, have a read, try it out, maybe you'll like it as much as I do. I will keep my subscription for the paper edition (which includes web access) as the paper edition is easy to bring around and wonderful on an otherwise boring train ride.