Month: February 2012

Yesterday I went to an event called Latinfestivalen, which was mostly a Latin dancing show, with casual stand-up comedy from the moderator of the show. Sadly, I cannot provide pictures, because (1) it was somewhat dark (2) the place I was sitting was somewhat unlucky and (3) my good camera was left at home 🙁

That aside, it was a great show and I am kinda thankful for the guys and gals from the dancing course to have me persuaded to go with them… or, better, to go look at them (yep, they were performing). I had a lot of fun, yep.

Depending on how good you actually know me, you might know that I really like to watch ice hockey. And since Trondheim plays in a somewhat decent league, and I was invited to go see a match, I could not say no. Since Trondheim has a team that is somewhere at the bottom of the Norwegian league, I did not expect much, but I at least wanted to see a good game (at least from one of the teams) and a good atmosphere.

We were a little late, so, when we entered the stadium, Trondheim was losing 0-1, but soon Trondheim scored and the first period ended with a tie. Trondheim could lead after the first period, but they were hitting the goalposts instead. So I was just enjoying somewhat decent ice hockey.

After the first period ended, I remembered that I actually do have a camera. So I took it out and made some pictures of the place:

 Then I went into semi-automatic mode (I am a pussy, yes, I did not look up how to make sports pictures) and set the camera for maximal possible shutter speed. And then the second period began:

In this period, Trondheim was playing really bad. They were making several big mistakes in their defense and awful passes, and the inevitable happened:

 By the end of the second period Lillehammer was leading 1-4, and a comeback seemed completely impossible:

I do not want to know what the coach of Trodnheim was doing in the changing room, but the third period started with Trondheim playing considerably faster and better.

The game was turned upside down, and after ten minutes, it was 4-4.

To be fair, I have to say that Lillehammer helped a lot: One of the goals was scored after a grave mistake on the own blue line, the other during a double power play. Still, some time passed and Trondheim was even leading 5-4. But Lillehammer did not give up and answered with a goal five minutes before the end of the third period.

 So the game went into overtime, where Trondheim had better chances, but used them awfully. Which meant that we were going to see the icing on the sports cake: the shootout. Which is a little more interesting than its counterpart from football since the goalie and the player have similar chances.

Lillehammer had more luck and won the shootout. Still, it was a really good game, viewed from really good places (as you can see on the pictures) and not too expensive. And nobody was forbidding me to take the pictures, woohoo.

So I have been working on implementing a generic library for evolutionary computation. It ended up with me working two days in row until 5 AM and screwing up my sleeping rhythm as hell. The good part of it is that I delivered my work before the deadline without crashing on the next days. The bad part is that my sleeping schedule is screwed up right now. Oh well. This is what you get if you debug stochastic processes and a codebase of ~2KLOC. The sleeping issue is somewhat problematic up here in the North, since the days can be very short or very long, and this somehow does not mix with my sleeping habits. And sleeping schedules like 6+1 or 3+3 are problematic since they do not mix well with work (does not apply to theoretical researchers 😉 ). So, in the end, the normal person has little choice and even less room for experimenting.

Tomorrow I’ll post stuff about ice hockey. With pics (and hopefully, good ones)!

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a month since I came to Trondheim. The long night managed to screw up my sleeping cycle even more than it already is, and I should really try to fix it now. Except for that, for now, I like it here really much, since being here involves meeting new people, seeing new places and adapting to a new environment. The only two things that are somewhat annoying are cooking and laundry. Cooking because it is so awfully inefficient and laundry because the washing machines are in another building, so, if you want to actually do some laundry, you are losing a great deal of time. But well, student villages are always like that. Still, a flat would be nicer (but also much more expensive).