Blast from the Past

I'm going to have to close iPhoto if I want to get any work done today!

I just saw this picture that we used for our Christmas card in 2004 and had to post it.



I know I'm biased but damn they are cute!

Ken

The Aquarium

I just realized that I forgot to post pictures of our trip to the very nice aquarium that we visited a few weeks ago in Grenna, Denmark. It had a nice variety of exhibits and shows. We had lunch (and ice cream) there, saw all the fish (including a bunch of Nemos, i.e. clownfish, and Dorys, i.e. Regal Tang fish), walked through a tube and watched sharks swim overhead, and even saw a 3D movie, the best part being the glasses you had to wear (see below).

The Difference a Year Makes

I just got the new version of iPhoto installed (part of iLife'06) which now can support up to 250,000 photos. While I don't have 250,000 photos, it does allow me to scroll through my collection of 6000 photos REALLY fast. Anyway, while scrolling through my collection last night, I was struck by how much Lilja has changed in the course of one year. Here are some examples, side by side, for comparision.

	2005	2006
February
March

Enjoy!

Ken

Spring is in the Air!

“I can tell that Spring is here [in Aarhus], because the weather gets worse!”

Niels Olof Bouvin, March 26, 2006

Well, Spring is starting to show itself here in Aarhus... just last week there were a couple of sunny days that were much warmer than the weeks previous, and I even went as far as shedding the outer layer of my winter jacket on those days. Its gotten MUCH brighter too!

Then the weekend arrived and it was freezing and we had snow waiting for us on Sunday morning! The last two days have been rainy and now today, the weather can't quite make up its mind about whether it wants to rain today or just be gray and a bit nippy.

Sigh. I was prepared for this, however, since back when winter weather arrived in late September, Niels Olof told me it would last “until April!”

Now for some pictures. First, just to prove that there were a few nice days last week, here are some pictures of the kids down at the beach last week when the Leysia took them for a walk after school.









But Winter weather is nice too, as it gave Leysia an opportunity to snap this great shot of James Dean, er I mean, Max:



and this cute one of Lilja in her full winter gear:



Enjoy!

Ken

Vacation Time in Denmark: Serious Business!

Take a look at an email message we received recently from our department at the University of Aarhus.

Note the amount of annual vacation Danes are entitled to by law.

Also note how they are forbidden to not take their vacation time:

=================================
To all employees

The department's vacation policy is that the 5 weeks
ordinary holidays should be taken as follows

1 week during the period January 1-April 30
3 weeks during the periode May 1-September 30
1 week during the period October 1-December 31.

The new vacation year starts on May 1.

Please check (via the University's on-line
vacation system) how much vacation you've
earned (ordinary vacation and 'special
vacation days), how much you've taken and
how much you still need to take within the
present vacation year. According to Danish
law you cannot renounce your vacation.
=================================

Maternity leave and pay is exceptional as well. Some combination of both mothers and fathers can take up to a year off with full pay and a guarantee to be able to return to one's job. Their social welfare system is amazing, and really gives people a different kind of life than what we see in the U.S. You definitely get something for the 50%-65% income tax and the 25% sales tax that the Danish goverment imposes! :-)

Ken

Web Services

The seminar that I'm going to be teaching on Web Services here at the University of Aarhus is now being advertised.

Its a little funny (at least for Americans) to see that the course announcement is mostly in English (because I wrote 99% of it) but surrounded by Danish. However, you see this mixture of English and Danish through a lot of aspects of Danish culture. I've seen it for instance in advertisements (which will sometimes be entirely in English), commericals on the radio, in the names they give retail establishments, and in presentations. For instance, lecture 4 of the Hypermedia class I'm teaching with Niels Olof has its slides entirely in English but when Niels Olof gave the lecture, he presented his part in Danish. You also hear it in Danish pop songs, where most of the lyrics will be in Danish but with occasional English phrases tossed out. "Baby Baby Baby" is apparently a universal lyric. :-)

Anyway, I better go back to preparing the material for my seminar!

Ken

Where are We Going and Why are We Sitting in this Handbasket?

Saw a pointer to an article that's just too crazy to pass up. I've always been of the opinion that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a bad move for the United States. And if you've been watching the news the last few years, you've seen ample evidence for this position. Here's some more: recently, the DHS investigated a couple that was trying to be fiscally responsible and pay down their credit card debt. Sigh.

Here's another story that hits closer to home: When we were travelling to Colorado in January for a quick 10-day trip home, Lilja had a bathroom-related accident that required us to throw out the clothes she was wearing on the plane from Copenhagen to Chicago. Since we didn't have any spare clothes with us on the plane, we wrapped her in a blanket that SAS was kind enough to give to us and knew that we could retrieve clothes for her from our luggage as we passed through customs. Customs was its usual chaotic mess and we didn't want to miss our connecting flight to Denver, so when we eventually retrieved our luggage, we decided to grab Lilja's clothes, get through the rest of customs, get to our gate, and THEN get Lilja dressed.

As some of you may know, the International terminal at O'Hare is not connected to the domestic terminals and so you need to leave the secure area of the former and get on a shuttle that takes you to the latter. You then have to go through a security checkpoint again as you head towards your gate. Forcing a tired family, with two kids under the age of six, five carry-ons, two laptops, a stroller, and a car seat to go through a security check again after having gone through one at Aarhus and Copenhagen is cruel and unusual punishment in my opinion but that's another story. Anway, we arrive at the checkpoint with a blanket-wrapped Lilja in tow and after getting our laptops out, putting all of our stuff through the scanner, taking off our jackets, and removing our shoes, the attendant takes one look at Lilja and says "Uh, the blanket has to go through the scanner." We gave this guy a look that tried hard not to convey "You've got to be kidding me" (after all, you don't want to give these people any reason to detain you) and said "Our little girl is naked under this blanket, is there any chance we can keep the blanket on her?" He replied reluctantly "Uh, well, sure, but then we are going to have to do a pat down search of the baby." We couldn't believe it but agreed to the search (really we had no choice) and I'm happy to report that Lilja was found not to be a terrorist threat.

We were then allowed to gather up all our stuff, put our laptops in our backpacks, put our jackets and shoes back on, and try to salvage what remained of our dignity. Oh, and once we got to our gate, we could finally get Lilja dressed.

We live in interesting times.

Ken

Way to go, Jimbod!

Yesterday, I learned that one of my friends from my undergraduate days was up for an academy award! My friend, Jim Berney, or James Patrick Berney, or Jim, or Jimbod, as we called him back then (don't ask), received a nomination for visual effects for his work on the movie THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE! I wasn't able to view the Oscar telecast but my other friend from those days, Pete Claar, did and he wrote to say that he was able to see Jim during the telecast multiple times sitting there in the audience having a good time!

I'm so proud of him! I still remember the day he told me he was moving to San Luis Obispo to get his Masters degree in computer graphics; I also remember when he came back to Los Angeles that his first job in the graphics industry was to create a flocking algorithm so that he could realistically render the flight pattern of bats flying out of Batman's cave in the original Batman movie. (It was cool at the time waiting in the theatre to see Jim's name scroll up the screen after the movie!)

Since then Jim has worked on such movies as Contact, the Harry Potter series, and the Steven Segal classic Under Siege 2: Dark Territory! The first shot of that last movie is a scene in outer space just above the earth with a sun rise taking place from the vantage point of the camera. As the sun rises, a sinister government satellite comes into view. As Jim said at the time, "That's my sunrise! How many people can say something like that?" :-) Click on Jim's name in the first paragrph of this post to see a list of all the movies for which he has received visual effects & animation credits.

Well, Jim has come a long way since our days at the computer science department at UC Irvine and I'm really really happy for him! Congrats Jim on receiving the nomination! I can't wait to see Narnia and I can't wait to see the movie that someday will let you bring home an Oscar!

Ken

Max's Article

Max was recently featured in an article about children learning to speak Danish. One of Max's teachers applied for a grant to receive training in a new system that involves a "language box", a box of materials, games, etc. that his teacher uses to teach Max the Danish language. One of the milestones they worked towards was Max learning enough Danish to appear in a play with other children. Max played the role of a soldier (soldaten) and, according to his teachers, did an excellent job! (Be sure to look at page 3 of the article to see a picture of Max dressed as the soldier standing next to a toy tank.)

The article is written in Danish of course and my goal is to one day translate it into English. I don't have the time right now, though, as I'm hip deep in managing the creation of the ICSE 2006 conference proceedings as well as writing a paper to submit to the ACM Hypertext 2006 conference. Perhaps I'll be able to convince one of my Danish colleagues to translate the article for me (in their copious spare time).

With the help of Ordbogen.com (literally "WordBook.com"), here are (poor) translations of a few key phrases in the article.

• Title: Trude and the soldier find their way to language.



• Next to Max's picture on page 3: "The soldier speaks Danish. The hunt in the living forest of Bodøgården is at an end. The little, courageous soldier has made a kill." (I think that's the translation. It sounds a little harsh!) "So the soldier says: Forsvind for altid, " instructs Trude. (I can't figure that last phrase out, word for word it translates "Get out of here for always" but that doesn't make sense.) Anyway, it appears that Trude is telling Max to say something. The next sentence says something like "But this time Max ignores the order and repeats the reply." The next sentence says "He speaks English, Trude" tells another boy of his American friend."
  
  So, I think what this paragraph is saying is that Max makes a mistake and doesn't do what Trude tells him to do. His mistake is forgiven because "Max speaks English" and hence doesn't understand her command! :-)



• Start of the third paragraph from the end of the article: "It was fantastic to see how Max and Salma performed in the play."



• Second to last paragraph: "For five year old Max, who came to Denmark in September with his American researcher parents learning the language was quite hard". The last phrase is my interpretation of what the sentence means, literally translated "er det gået rigtigt stærkt" means "is that the going right strongly" which, of course, doesn't make any sense. Ah, idioms! What fun!

Okay, I give up. I'm DEFINITELY going to have to convince a Dane to translate this for me! :-)

Unlike his father, Max's ability to speak Danish is amazing. We recently had a friend of his, Axel, from school over to play with Max and have dinner with us. Axel, of course, does not speak English, so it was up to Max to translate for Leysia and I. He did an excellent job and Leysia was so fascinated by the way Max could speak Danish with Axel that she sat there and videotaped them speaking to each other! I'll post one of those videos to this blog soon.

Ken