St. Jude Medical

For those who wonder, yes, it's HDR. My first HDR. Far from perfect for now - there are noticeable merge artifacts here and there. Still, it's quite amazing what a computer can do to photos taken by an equivalent 4 year old point-and-shooter. Curious? Here's a good tutorial. Anyway, a bit about what I actually do in this building. St. Jude Medical is a US-based medical devices company focused on artifical pacemakers and implantable defibrillators. My job, along with a manager, two permanent engineers and another summer worker, is to conduct and analyze tests on the batteries used by these devices. There are a lot of numbers to crunch in Excel, but since the second week I've turned myself from a data monkey into a code monkey. As I have learned since then: you can't even scratch the surface of Excel without diving into some VBA macro programming. Anyway, I think I can say that much without getting into trouble (pacemakers use batteries; batteries need to be tested; tests are analysed in Excel. I don't think that's a secret to anyone).

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Four things I learned this week

I explored more of Stockholm with some fellow IAESTE students yesterday. Check out a new set of photos, or see the additions to my favourite photos and panoramas. Some important highlights of this past week: 1. The North American art of subtle innuendo is lost in the Swedes. I saw this series of posters last week but thought it was just a milk ad next to some kind of champagne ad. But this time I noticed the right-most poster and everything just snapped together. I think you can guess what it says. Try reading a Swedish newspaper - full page ads of a similar theme are not uncommon. 2. Don't ride a bike on a flat tire. This is what happens. I had to abandon my bike and walk the rest of the way home, in the middle of the night. Luckily, the next day, I managed to fix it up and ride it home, but found that there indeed was a leak in the tube. My next big project: find and patch the leak. 3. If a plane ticket is essentially free, don't count on customer service. Foolishly after making a booking with Ryanair (which has some very cheap fares starting at "free"), I didn't copy down the confirmation number. Unfortunately no email confirmation ever came, and a pay-per-minute "reservation hotline" never had anyone to pick up the phone. Fortunately, the confirmation number showed up on my credit card (3 days later); but you really shouldn't count on that happening. 4. Don't assume anything about your visa. I foolishly made plans to travel without first checking if my work visa allows me to leave Sweden. A fellow IAESTE student from Kazakhstan made the same mistake and she was out of luck. Since Canadians are allowed to enter Sweden without a visa, I don't really think there should be a problem for me, but I should have made sure beforehand. Apparently ground travel in most of the EU is practically unrestricted, but air travel is another story. We'll see how it turns out.

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New video

From footage shot on Bohus-Malmön two weeks ago.

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A slideshow

Click (or right click -> Save target as) for full size! Click here to see them in Flickr. I almost forget yesterday was Canada Day. Happy (belated) Canada Day! I found a fantastic free photo stitcher, apparently developed (probably as a thesis project) by two guys at UBC. It was able to effortlessly stitch panoramas that commercial software (demo versions, anyway) had a lot of trouble doing automatcially. So, above are some results. Click here to go to the Panoramas set I created in Flickr where these (and in the future, more) panoramas are stored. I've also attempted some wide angle shots by stitching shots from my measly video camera (which is pretty good at taking HD video but quite inept at taking any seriously good looking photos). The results, I thought, are quite nice with a little touchup in Photoshop. See the full set here. If you care to follow my entire weekend album with guest star Jermaine, click here. Last note: uploading videos has become highly impractical with this slow internet connection, but I'll try my best as I go along.

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4 day weekend

Jermaine was here to visit, and I took a 4 day weekend. We spent most of our time walking around Stockholm, but this time I actually knew more or less where I was going. Photos coming right up. This was hopefully the first of many 4 day weekends I'll be having. Discount airlines here operate more like bus companies, which makes fares cheaper than bus or train in many cases. I've planned a trip to Paris this month, Austria with Brian to visit Kari in September, and possibly one or two more vacations in between. The boss was nice enough to grant me days off whenever I'd like as long as I make up the hours, which works great because weeknights here are a little dull and I might as well stay at work.

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Dagen H

Here's something interesting I just found out - on 3 Sept 1967, Sweden changed from left hand to right hand traffic. It's hard to imagine the amount of preparation required. Read to find out more...

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Panorama test

Here's Stockholm from the top of city hall. No, I can't take credit for the panorama. It came from Wikipedia, by the original artist Johannes Akkach. I'm using it to test the embed feature of this panorama upload website I found. Now that I know it works, I have a couple of really nice panoramas of my own from this weekend to stitch and upload. Personally I think 360 panoramas are the best way to share the experience of "being" somewhere, so I might start doing that more often!

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Photos sorted!

If you haven't already dived into the photos from the weekend, then go take a look. They've all been named, located and described. I've also uploaded two more videos! Find them in both their appropriate sets and in a special videos set. Below is one I've been working on for a few weeks. Enjoy!

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Something interesting

The pictures are taking forever to load. Here's one to tide you over. Gothenburg has a very extensive tram system that I'd say is on par with that in Zurich. You can pretty much explore the whole city in a few hours riding these. I think the front looks like a funny face with a little hat, like something right out of Thomas the Tank Engine. The Swedish name for Gothenburg is actually Göteborg. You pronounce "Gothenburg" exactly as it looks, but it's nowhere close to the Swedish pronunciation. Luckily, whenever you speak English to a Swedish person, you're free to just say the English version and there won't be any awkward "what?.... oh! you mean Göteborg!" The bus station in Gothenburg was filled with crazies. One guy accosted me and spoke some pretty broken English about really random topics. "Have you heard of Firefox? It's quite good, yes? What is it, an operating system? No? But it's quite good, yes?". After he left, a Filipino guy sitting next to me gave me a "sorry for the crazies in this city, but I swear it's got nice things too" kind of look. He went on to tell me that Asian men are hot stuff here with the Swedish girls, and that I'll find out for myself at the disco. Somehow I think his information is outdated at best...

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Another video

Uploading video on this slow connection is finicky at best. But here's another one!

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Sorting the photos

I took an overnight bus from Gothenburg to Stockholm that arrived at 6am. The original plan was to come straight to work but I really needed a shower back home. I've uploaded some photos but haven't really labelled them yet, so wait another day if you're patient. The good news is, I've managed to upload a video! It's not much but go take a look. More videos to come!

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Midsummer weekend

Midsummer is like Christmas in Sweden on the important holiday scale, and the IAESTE committee in Gothenburg is hosting a weekend of fun on the island of Bohus-Malmön. Apparently a midsummer traditional activity is dancing around a huge decorated maypole... Hopefully the food is good. Leaving tomorrow morning at 5am, back on Monday morning by an overnight bus, and going directly to work afterwards. Joy! I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures.

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Evening commute

I took a special detour this evening coming home - it's my last "visit" to these particular banks. I've taken time off at lunch to visit the banks at least 4 times to open an account. Each time they told me to bring something new to be able to help me.

"Bring a letter from your employer. Sorry, we don't have a phone to call them." Are you serious? A bank doesn't have a phone?

"Sorry, a letter's not enough. You have to have a personal number."

But the guy yesterday swore upon the life of his firstborn that a letter is enough!

"Sorry, that personal number isn't good enough. Bring a customer of the bank to verify you."

This personal number is good enough for the government to tax me, but not good enough to open a bank account?

That last one was really too much, but I complied and reluctantly bothered a collegue. When we sat down, the bank guy started speaking to her in Swedish, which turned out to be an extended explanation of why I wasn't able to get an account. So "Bring a customer of the bank to verify you" actually means "I don't know how to speak to you in English, so bring someone who'll translate why we can't give you an account."

Rules are rules, and I don't mind it if you can't change them. I even don't mind the scenic bike ride to the bank 3 or 4 times. But to trick me into wasting someone else's time is a bit too much, no?

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Less city, more nature

The weather was quite nice, so I decided to take a bike ride over to Lake Mälaren. What I found was a colourful marina, a quaint little island, and a nature preserve with secluded ranchs, a prehistoric hill fort and giant ant hill. Head on over to Flikr to see the full set of photos. As always, I'll upload a video or two to the same Flikr set a few days later, while I put together a meaningful edit.

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Backtracking - Stockholm

During my first week here I visited central Stockholm a total of 4 times, partly because I had a transit pass that lasted the whole week, but mostly because the hostel wasn't exactly the place for a fun evening. Yes, I stayed in a hostel for 4 nights before I moved into my apartment. In any case, downtown Stockholm is about a 30 minute transit ride from where I live and work. Since it doesn't get dark until at least 11pm, it was quite easy to go down there for an evening or weekend visit.

During each visit I ended up spending most of my time in about the same areas, just so I won't get too lost. There will be plenty more to visit later on. Photos are posted on Flikr, and I hope to have a short video soon.

In case you didn't notice, I geotag most of my photos in Flickr, for those who are curious where I've been on the map.

This is the last of the backtracking posts... Now let's live in the present.

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First post

Two weeks in Sweden and I finially decided to start a blog. For those who aren't convinced I'm actually in Sweden, hopefully now you'll have your proof.

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