We had to change our plans due to full flights to New York. After we came back from Bergen, me and my brother decided we should go to Dalaman in Turkey.
Here we are at Gardermoen now, waiting for our flight bound for Dalaman. We left Trondheim early, and face a few hours at Gardermoen now. We had to leave Trondheim early because the later flights this saturday from Trondheim to Oslo were full.
Check out more on Dalaman at Wikpiedia here. Weather forecast looks promising, sunny and around 30 degrees celsisus.
We have now completed the trip from Bergen to Stavanger in the sailboat. My dad lives in Bergen and works from time to time in Stavanger, and he decided to sail his boat down so he could use it while being in Stavanger.
The day after we arrived Stavanger me and my brother went out to explore the nightlife of Stavanger. I met a guy from New Jersey, Steve. He was visiting friends from last summer in Stavanger. I told him we had sailed to Stavanger, and were going up to Bergen again to go to an Eric Clapton concert there. So was he. Then I told him that we were going to New York this sunday, and so was he! He actually lives 20 minutes away from New York city and will be going back on the same day we fly over to New York. So I got his phone number and we decided we should hook up when we get to New York. It`s a small world, people.
We will travel tomorrow from Stavanger to Bergen, in time to reach the concert.
Yesterday the first of the best athletes of the world began to move into Beijing. I am pretty much into all kinds of sports, but my favourite sport to watch is soccer.
The Olympic games starts august the 8th and lasts until 24th of august where during the games around 16 000 athletes from 200 countries will have competed in over 40 different sports.
But, sports and games aside, which one is the most beautiful among the female athletes?
I believe it is the swedish athlete Susanna Kallur, which competes in the sport 100 metres hurdle. Do you have any better?
I have had the pleasure of visiting several places in Norway during this summer, among those are Tromso one of my favourites. Tromso has the northernmost cathedral in the world, the northernmost brewery, the northernmost church an the northernmost university. The list seems to go on and on.
Tromso is a great base for tourists that are heading for Spitsbergen as well. When I visited here earlier we met a swedish woman who had seen a programme on swedish television about the coastal steamer, or Hurtigruten. She was in awe of the landscape in the northern parts of Norway. I have been captured by it as well, having only been as far up as Lofoten before.
My mother loves to visit the greek island Rhodes during summer. She has been there several times, and as a boy I can remember she had picked up some music from one of her visits there. The music takes you to a place where the sun always shines, where the beaches are as white as the houses nearby.
I am talking about Demis Roussos, born on june 15th in Alexandria, Egypt. He is of greek extraction and influenced by the different cultures that are harmonically living together in Egypt. He now resides in Greece somewhere near the sea¹.
I had a party this saturday and me and my brother, sharing our taste in music, relived some of our favourite moments with Demis, before our guests arrived. I doubt any of our friends would appreciate our appreciation for Demis` music. Even though I know of someone that could.
Below, I want to show you a clip of one of Demis Roussos greatest hits as well as one of my personal favourites from 1973, “My friend the wind“.
It is sad to watch the latest news about a Kalitta Air 747 that went down right after take-off in Bogota. Reports say that all crew survived the horrific accident, but two people on the ground died. It is said that the 747 crashed down on a farm near the airport after having reported an engine fire after take-off.
An engine fire during take-off is one of the most critical failures a plane can encounter. And this happened at an airport where the elevation is around 8000 feet. That makes the margin of error very small, as the higher the elevation is, then the higher speed the aircraft needs in order to take off. An engine fire on a 747 leaves then three engines to mantain safe flying speed. At an altitude of 8000 feet, that is difficult with a fully loaded 747 and mountains surrounding the area.
You can follow the story at CNN or at the aviation enthusiasts forum at Airliners.net.
A while ago, I wrote about the last accident involving a Kalitta Air plane here, where I also mentioned earlier accidents involving this carrier.
Spitsbergen is a Norwegian island, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
The name Spitsbergen means “jagged peaks” and was given by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents, who discovered the island while searching for the Northern Sea Route in 1596.
Approach to Longyearbyen
The Norwegian government has built a “doomsday” seed bank to store seeds from as many of the world’s plant species as possible. The bank was created by hollowing out a 120-meter tunnel on Spitsbergen cut into rock with a natural temperature of -6 degrees Celsius, refrigerating it to -18 degrees Celsius, and then storing seeds donated by the 1,400 crop repositories maintained by countries around the world. The vault has top security blast-proof doors and two airlocks. The number of seeds stored depends on the number of countries participating in the project, but the first seeds arrived late in 2007. The point of this project is to save plants (wild, agricultural, etc.) from becoming extinct as a side-effect of crop gene manipulation, or due to a global catastrophe such as climate change (the tunnel is 130 meters above sea-level) or nuclear war.
Global Seed Vault
Spitsbergen is today popular amongst tourists, and there are several scientists doing their research there.
Spitsbergen Warning
As Spitsbergen lies far within the arctic circle, the Sun is above the horizon for 24 hours a day from late April to late August. From 26 October to 15 February the Sun is continuously below the horizon, whilst from 12 November to the end of January there is civil polar night, where it is so continuously dark that artificial light must be used 24 hours each day. Below is a picture I took after we landed 00:30 am.
Nintendo`s old Donkey Kong I played on Game Boy had a great soundtrack. I used to think about the people that sat and made up music and soundtrack for the games. I thought they were great with good beats and flow. Sure, the sound could be crappy, caused by the mono and the fact they were midi-soundlike.
I just came back from reading an article about mashup, putting different songs together to create a new mix of rythm and lyrics. Interesting how technology sparks our creativity this way. Mashup can be made if you have a computer. But you need the creativity.
Listening to the album Donkey Business where the soundtrack to the game Donkey Kong has been mashed up with hits from today, I remember where in the game the different soundtracks are from. And I smile because the mixes are so well done. The man behind it calls himself or the project, Norwegian Recycling¹. You can download two albums² he has made and discover norwegian recycling for yourself.
The album So Far is made using real music like Red Hot Chili Pepper and Mindi Abair, for example.
I downloaded today the new version of an old favourite of mine, Transport Tycoon. Do you remember? It`s improved and reminds me of a groove, slightly transformed.
It is the allnew and refreshed version, with gameplay improved alot. Take a look at the changes and become hooked again you too, or maybe you haven`t tried it yet? Try it! Allright, don`t have time now, must get back to the game!
Facts and downloads; Open Transport Tycoon deLuxe - OTTD
For years I have bought domain names that I thought had a catchy name, or are easy to remember. I have long thought what value some of these domains might have, and what I could earn from it.
There are a steady increase in domain investors, domainers, and the internet is still expanding with more and more speed each day. One of the most known domainers out there would be Frank Schilling, which from time to time enlightens people with stories from his world in his blog¹.
There is no doubt that the domain industry is large. A smart person bought Business.com in 1999 from a lucky guy. Cost: US$ 7,5 mill. This person then sold Business.com last year for a whopping US$ 347 mill². It is unreal that this can come out of a guy buying the domain in the first place for US$8!
In the USA capital is moved from the real estate market to investments in internet domains. In USA they call it the “new real estate“. It is on the internet you build up your business, moving it is easy, labour is there, production is ordered and delivery is as easy as i never has been.
I recently ordered a domain appraisal from Sedo.com on one of my domains, Onesiteonly.com. I was once bored during work and bought it for 8 bucks. The appraisal analyzed the name, legal issues and other comparable transactions and from this then gave me an estimated prize on Onesiteonly.com. I was very happy with their work, and the report they gave me looked really thorough and gave me a foundation for further work.
As of March 1996, there were 274,984 registered domain names ending in .com³, the suffix reserved for commercial organizations. Today, the number is around 73,433,353 (source).
