Many years ago in late 2001, norwegian MMORPG Anarchy Online developed by funcom launched. In the sci-fi themed game, me and many of my real life friends made lives for ourselves on the planet Rubi-Ka, a planet dominated by inhospitable creatures and an ongoing strife between the Omnitek corporation who treats employees like property rather than people and the clans, rebel workers who broke out and managed to carve out a living on the largely hostile planet. Of course we played clanners and spent a lot of our days in the in-game city Tir where we made our first guild, the Beggar’s Guild. We were new, we were poor and frankly, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, but we were having a great time finding out.

As we got a bit more resources, our characters sobered up and picked themselves out of the gutter and the old beggar’s guild transformed into Tir City Watch. We were watchmen dedicated to keeping the peace and helping other newbs who probably had a hard time like we’d all been through ourselves. We wore dashing red uniforms to represent the clans and had training for recruits, such as navigation and finding people using coordinates and player-versus-player fighting.

However, things didn’t really take off game-wise until a little later when FunCom released their first expansion pack, Notum Wars. This expansion let player organisations build bases, hold and fight over territory. Of course we wanted a slice of the action, so we made the Clan Imperialist Army (CIA). We’d always been clanners so that was a given and then we thought of the days of imperialism and how nations took and fought over chunks of geography away from home. We wanted to focus on war and exterminating the Omnitek corporation, so Army was a suitably aggressive word and so the CIA was born!

The CIA wanted to gather all clans under one leadership and create a clan empire for many different reasons, but mainly because clans without enemies to fight might turn on eachother. We held weekly meetings for clan leaders and their highest ranking officers and generally tried to get as involved as we could. However, things didn’t last too long until people started quitting the game and so on and sometime in 2003, the CIA disbanded ..

That is until about a week ago! Me and many of my friends from down south have recently started playing again and the first thing we did was to revive our old guild and polish the dust off those old, red uniforms. If you want, you are welcome to join us .. or at least after filling out an application!

Visit our CIA forums on : cia.torden.org

So here, I present it to you -- the reader. My own polar bear film from youtube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5ntGZ1ieko

In a previous lecture on the antarctic by biologist Peter Convey, we learned that a lot of the glaciers on the antarctic was more than a kilometre thick. Thus, during the permafrost lecture, fellow student Mattheo asked an interesting question. If you insulate the ground with a kilometre thick glacier, shouldn’t it warm up in the bottom enough to melt a lot of that ice and create huge ice caves? Hanne confirmed that yes, huge under-ice caverns are thought to exist under a lot of the antarctic glaciers and they should be huge indeed.

The thought of massive ice-caves containing lakes and rivers under enormous glaciers sounds immensly appealing to me. If any glaciologists or geologist blog-readers out there ever wanna drill down into one of those sometime in the future, please take me along as a field assistant or if you need a biologist. Meanwhile, I’ll settle for the ice cave on the Longyear glacier which, although not as impressive, is also very nice.

Etter jeg har vært på Svalbard har jeg fått problemer med en fakturering fra One Call som har kommet til min addresse i Oslo mens jeg har vært på Svalbard. Det er en kjedelig situasjon når slike ting skjer og det fikk meg til å tenke på en episode jeg og Christiane hadde med internett- og telefoni- leverandør Ventelo våren 2007.

Jeg og Christiane leide en leilighet på framleie. Vi skulle bare ha leiligheten i 6 måneder, høstsemesteret 2006, og bestilte så internettabbonement fra Ventelo. Siden vi bare skulle være der et halvt år bestilte vi abbonement uten binding. I god tid før vi skulle flytte ut av leiligheten ringte vi til Ventelo og sa ifra at vi skulle flytte ut av leiligheten i midten av desember og at abbonementet vårt måtte avsluttes rundt den tid. Personen på telefonen sa at det var greit – ikke noe problem. I begynnelsen av 2007 flyttet vi til Svalbard.

En stund etter at som de som eide leiligheten hadde flyttet tilbake fikk vi beskjed om at det lå både regninger og inkassovarsler i postkassa som var addressert til oss. Ventelo, isteden for å kutte leveransen slik de sa skulle gå greit, hadde fortsatt å “selge” internett til den gamle addressen vår. Siden vi ikke fikk regningene gikk dette selvsagt til inkasso. Vi prøvde å ringe og sende e-post til Ventelo for å få noe oppklaring i det som hadde skjedd, men e-posten var det lite svar på og kundesupporten på telefonen hadde oftest svært lang kø, gjerne opp til en halvtime eller mer. Når man endelig -gjerne etter flere dager – fikk svar, så var det alltid av en ny kundebehandler som ikke “visste” om forholdene og måtte fortelles alt på nytt, noe som selvsagt var forgjeves fordi neste behandler heller ikke visste noenting. På telefonen sa de ting som “vi sender deg en mail”, noe som hjalp lite da mailen aldri kom. Samtidig som vi stresset med å få løst disse flokene med Ventelo drev vampyrselskapet Invoicia som tar seg av pengeinnkrevingen til flere selskap i Norge og sendte regninger og inkassovarsel. Vi hadde jo en “deadline” på å få betalt disse regningene før de ble enda høyere. Samtidig virket det tydelig at det var hos Ventelo feilen lå, men de ga oss ikke noe hjelp og heller ingen forståelse for at denne situasjonen måtte løses før regningene flesket på seg.

Til slutt, under trusselen av stadig voksende regninger, måtte vi gi opp, innse nederlaget og betale pengene for en tjeneste vi aldri mente å kjøpe og som vi aldri dro nytte av. Vi følte det omtrent som om vi hadde blitt ranet.

Det hele virker som et system skreddersydd til å ta makten fra forbrukeren. De krever penger pga. en feil fra deres egen side og jo lengre det tar før du betaler, desto mer penger skal de ha og å prøve å løse problemene med selskapene er klin umulig og koster deg bare mer tid, noe som fører til at regningene – blir høyere. Selskapene har veldig lite å tape på dette mens du som forbruker må ta nesten hele fallet.

Makten man har som forbrukere er at man kan klage til høyere makter, for eksempel til forbrukerombudet eller denne bloggen – og så kan man velge å ikke bruke penger på slike selskap i fremtiden. Dermed vil jeg oppfordre alle som er på leting etter et mobil eller bredbåndsabbonement til å boikotte Ventelo. Er du uheldig med dem, så kan du ende opp med å betale mye mer enn du først trodde.

Before I came back up to Svalbard, I imagined a field-season where I would spend a lot of time on my own, being bored etc. It didn’t turn out like that at all thanks to the great new friends I’ve made up here. I know a lot of people up here now, but the hard core of my new friendships is mostly with the other students and field-assistants who were here during summer. People such as :

Mona “Moan-Aaahh!!” Fuhrmann – a saucy german girl who lives on a vegetarian diet comprised entirely of aphrodisiacs. Her ever more popular love-hearts and banana cake gets the blood flowing in all kinds of funny body parts. She can also take a joke and can catch you completely off guard with kick-ass comeback and riposte jokes that you would not expect from such a seemingly “innocent” girl.

Philip “Tundraman” Semenchuk – A great, easygoing guy with a taste for pastry. He likes taking naps on the tundra and “fucking things up”. He contributed a great deal to the corruption of the way people interact up here by inventing new ways to use the word “fuck”. He also lives in the 80s, likes jazz and is a great improviser in the kitchen.

Jochem “Motherfucker” Veenboer – a dutch bartender with a taste for older women .. and younger women too, of course. He’s a smooth motherfucker and also a great guy to hang with if you happen to be stuck in a cabin for a while because of bad weather. He is sometimes surrounded by girls when alcohol is involved. Good luck with kicking the smoking habit!

Kim “Lil’ Kim” Klein – The dutch Kim is a complex person. An exhibitionistic insomniac, she’s a good singer and loves karaoke. Whereas most people have collections of music that they like, Kim has a collection of karaoke versions of songs. Several gigabytes! That’s crazy. She also likes documenting embarassing things that happen when you’re drunk by filming it with her camera. Also, her periods sometimes make her puke, but she doesn’t let that stop her from having fun.

Anika “riot grrrl” Beiersdorf – At first glance, she seems like a pretty blonde, but you soon find out that Anika will take you down and fuck you up. She is bad-ass, but in a good way. Aside from wanting to shoot tourists who step into her fieldsite, she likes friendly fights with love-interest Chris and aggressive electronica, preferably along with dancing and zamboca shots. Handle with care.

Marie Helene “Hippie girl” Jacques – The instantly likeable, memorable and weird french-canadian is full of everyday wisdom and thinks that science and art should go together. She looks a bit like a native american and she has no reservations about telling people exciting information about her private life. Just ask nicely and she will be happy to show you her diva-cup. She’s also a hardcore outdoors-person and was a rafting guide before she came here. Very much missed!

Markus “Max Hardcore” Eckerstorfer – This highly opinionated austrian is the only guy on Svalbard who can (and sometimes do) wear a tight bikecycle shorts and still kick ass. He’s also able to mix being an able athlete and being a notorious party-machine. Play “love shack” or “club tropicana” if you wanna see him dance and sing. Every nachspiel should have a Max in it!

Chris “christ, it’s Chris” Ware – Possibly “hardware” would also be a better nickname since he’s such a solid guy. Although he’s a native english speaker, he’s the hardest person to understand at Unis. He brings great enthusiasm to everything he does. His constant good mood and able social skills are probably very handy for a guy that spends so much time wiping shoes in the airport. For many visitors, the first thing they met when they came to Svalbard was an eager tasmanian with a shoe-brush. He’s also the man with the goods as he runs the weekly “friday gathering”, something we all owe him our thanks for. Just don’t let him loose on the bike track!

Graeme “Graeme” Abel – In Scotland, the name Graeme is pronounced “Graham”. When people found out how his name was spelled, that was no longer his name. Graaeeme!! With a constant desire to impress, he’s a real talker and can go on and on about any kind of subject for possibly an unlimited amount of time. That’s alright because talking with Graeme is really enjoyable, despite the sometimes hard scottish accent with the strange words and phrases. His constantly positive nature gives a lift to any situation.

These people are of course just a few of my friends up here and there are more I could mention like Allison “Weird Al” Bailey, James “superbrit” Speed or my supervisor Malu (I won’t make up a funny nickname for her, though. I mean, she’s my supervisor!). These are all awesome people and have made my stay on Svalbard so much more enjoyable. Some of you I will see again, but some of you I might not. I will miss you all! Give me or Christiane a call if you are ever in Oslo.

So that’ it ..

As Phil might put it, I leave Svalbard with one laughing eye and one crying eye. The crying eye is thinking “Goodbye Svalbard! Goodbye friends!” while my laughing eye (which is a bit bigger) is thinking “Hello girlfriend, awesome cooking, band rehearsals, outdoor bubble baths, great movies at cinemas, proper diurnal rythmns and awesome rock ‘n roll parties with my friends in Oslo!”

It’s been quite cold these last few days compared to only a week ago. My traps yesterday had ice in them! It’s also getting darker with each day, although it’s not completely dark yet. Check out some of these pictures I took at the UNIS roof yesterday at about half past ten in the evening. They look darker than it actually was – we’re in the twilight period, but still – you can see the sun is behind the mountains and we’re getting some nice colors these days (and soon, proper nights).

After the happy reunion, we went for a car-trip. My father had rented a car and I acted as the tourist guide. We went everywhere you can go with a car without getting into problems with the sysselmann – and possibly some places where you could as well. We saw the new northernlights observatory, we saw Eindalen and in the other far end of the road, Bjørndalen and Svalsat and – of course – everything on the way there. Still, having been living in a wet tent for a few days, I was eager to get a warm shower and a proper night’s sleep without rocks in my back.

However, my father is an early riser. At 8:30, he was up and at 9:00, it was time for breakfast. Those 10 hours+ of sleep would have to wait! They had already bought lots of food, so after a lovely breakfast, we decided to go to the Longyear glacier to look for fossils and, of course, for the trip. With my local knowledge, we soon found a nice piece of moraine with fossils a bit further up on the glacier away from the fossil-scavenging hordes of tourists. Feeling satisfied with rocks in our pockets, we felt it might be a nice idea to get up on Sarkofagen, the mountain between the Longyear and Lars-glaciers. My father was particularly ambitious and found the shortest route up the mountain, climbing straight up the mountainside instead of following the tracks like less hardened tourists might do. After a lot of sweating and being slightly worried that some of us might get seriously hurt from rolling down the mountainside, our efforts were rewarded by us getting up on the part of Sarkofagen which is also part of the moraine from the Lars-glacier. It’s a lovely plateau with lots of Svalbard poppies. After a trip to the summit, we wrote our names in the Svalbard-turn book and continued down the Lars-glacier back to Nybyen. Excellent trip!

Later that day, my father bought us all dinner down at Huset. I had a 4 course dinner which, among other things, consisted of squid, reindeer, duck and, for dessert, icecream and cloudberry. To drink, we had both beer and a lovely red wine and my father also treated himself to a couple of glasses of whisky. His choice was a very nice and interesting Lagavulin, a good mood-setter for the rest of the evening.

At the end of our meal, the waiter suggested we continued our enjoyment in the pub – which was exactly what we had in mind – only we didn’t want to stay at Huset. Instead, we went down to Karls-berger, a pub with an excellent selection of many things – for example whisky. My younger brother had a bruichladdie, I wanted to try a Ben Nevis and my father had an old Scots. Scots buy whiskys from other distilleries, then let them mature even longer before they resell them back on the market. Thus, scots is not so much a brand in itself, but I can’t remember what distillery this bottle of Scots came from. Anyways, it was a speyside – like mine – and since none of us are true fans of Speyside whisky, we eventually left Karls-Berger and went to Svalbar instead where we knew they had a bottle of 14 year old Scapa. Filled up with squid, reindeer, duck, ice-cream, cloud-berries, wine, beer and a fine island-whisky, I felt satisfied with the day. It was time to go back to the barrack and get a proper night’s sleep ..

And then I was woken up just after 8 in the morning. It was already sunday and time for our trip to mine 3. We drove the rental up to the mine and arrived just in time for the guide’s talkthrough on the history of mining on Svalbard. It was an interesting lecture although it lacked enthusiasm, but were all eager and happy to get into our mining gear. Finally time to see the mine! Since I’d already been in mine 7 the previous year, I thought I had already seen coal-mining. I was wrong! Except for being cold, dark holes, mine 3 and mine 7 are quite different. In mine 7, the coal is dug out with a digger – a powerful vehicle you drive into the coal-seam. In mine 3, which was closed in 1996, the methods for extracting coal were a lot more old-fashioned and a lot more dangerous than work in mine 7. It included drilling out coal manually, crawling through dark holes and various dangerous tasks such as removing support pillars. The romantic idea of the miner as a tough man doing hard work in a dangerous and dark environment seems to relate more to the way things were run in mine 3 than in mine 7. Luckily, those days are largely over.

After the trip to the mine, we went on our own trip up to mine 2 on the slope between Longyear- and Nybyen. It was also a nice trip, but with so much getting around and doing stuff, I started feeling the need to relax a bit after a long week. My wish was granted and much of the rest of the evening was spent inside watching the latest Hellboy movie .. Well, except for a dinner in the pub at Huset where I had Flesk & Duppe – a traditional course I’ve never had before. It was excellent and if anyone reading this wants to eat at the pub there, then I heartily recommend it and also the hamburger.

This post doesn’t describe everything we did that weekend, but it sums up the highlights. All in all it was an excellent weekend and, spending a lot of time away from my family, I really appreciated it. Thanks pappa and Tormod for a lovely weekend!

Here are some pictures :

Before I leave, I have heeeaaaps of work to do in the lab. I am strugglig a bit to keep my motivation up at the moment because I’m guessing I’ll have to work through the weekends if I want to be done with most of it before I travel back to Oslo. I can also bring back labwork with me I guess, but I would much prefer to be done with it before I leave. Oh well, less than three weeks to go!

To keep me motivated, I will think of all the nice things I can do when I get back. Here’s a short list of some of the things (also thanks to Christiane for some of these suggestions) :

• Attend my own “welcome back to Oslo” party – with lots of good friends, beer and whisky
• Go to a restaurant with Christiane and have some nice food
• Overnight camping trip with Christiane – includes some freshwater fishing
• A trip to Askimbadet, a nice place where you can enjoy a hot bubble bath outdoors
• Skating! I wanna get back into it. I heard they’ve tidied up a skating spot not far from our apartment.
• Going to a concert with The Residents
• Record songs, just rehearse or play concerts with our band Gladlaksene or other band-projects
• Attend my own “welcome back to Mandal” party – with lots of good friends, beer and whisky
• Play “Rock Band” with my friends down south. Appearantly, they need an able drummer.

Seeing Sam again, having good dinners and evenings with Christiane, getting back into some Age of Conan-ing, hopefully getting an office at the zoological museum at Tøyen and other minor things also make me long for the mainland. I guess what I really should do is to make a list of things I want to do on Svalbard before I leave to motivate me to stay here a bit longer!

Yo fellow batch-nostalgics. I’m releasing my slightly embarassing batch programs in a .zip pack for you to enjoy. If I make more batch programs, I can add them to this archive and reupdate this post.

As you may know, I’ve been trying to get into php and when doing so, I started programming random-number generators as an excercise. To make something slightly more interesting than just generating random numbers, I turned them into die-rollers and random draws from decks of cards. Who has a use for die-rollers and card-drawers? Why, roleplayers of course!

Instead of php, I’ve written these in batch because they’re easier to use for those who know “cmd”. Some of these batches will be very handy for tabletop roleplayers who forget their box of dice or for people who just want to get back into batch programming and need some examples to look at.

Here’s an introduction of my batch-files :

TDOMT.BAT – Tore’s Deck of Many Things

This is my most embarassing program so far and it simulates draws from a Deck of Many Things. You specify before you start how many draws you intend to make.

TDROLLER.BAT – Tore’s Die-Roller

This program simulates die-rolls. It can roll an X amount of dice with Y amount of sides. You define X and Y yourself. You can also add a bonus to the rolls and see the individual results for each roll.

TSROLLER.BAT – Tore’s Stat-roller

Forget about the deck of many things, this is far worse! This program rolls character stats for a Dungeons & Dragons character, compatible with AD&D, D&D (3rd ed) and D&D 3.5. Possibly 4th edition as well, but I don’t know!

It rolls 4d6 dice, then subtracts the die with the lowest value for all scores.

TRANDOM.BAT – Tore’s Random Number Generator

This simply gives you a random value between 1 and X where X is defined by you (%1).

Basically, if you don’t know how to use one of my files, just try and call it in prompt and add “?” or “/?” as the %1 value. Then you should get instructions on how to use that file.

To download, just click here or follow the link at the top of the post. Enjoy my batches!

Since I came to Svalbard, I’ve been working hard to rid myself of whisky-newbdom and to get more tasting experience with the many fantastic scottish whiskys. Longyearbyen – and Karls-Berger Pub in particular – is a great place to try out various whiskys. Alcohol is cheaper up here than on the mainland because of less taxation and Karls-Berger pub is also among the top-ranking pubs when it comes to having a wide selection of whiskys behind the counter. Anyways, I’ve compiled here a short list of the single-malt whiskys I know I’ve tasted so far. I’ve had more speyside glens I’m sure, but their names are hard to remember.

Here’s my list so far :

Single malts I know I’ve had so far :

• Aberlour
• Ardbeg
• Arran
• Ben Nevis
• Bowmore
• Bruichladdich
• Caol Ila
• Glenfiddich
• Glenkinchie
• Glenlivet, The
• Highland Park
• Iona
• Isle of Jura
• Knockando
• Lagavulin
• Laphroaig
• Macallan, The
• Oban
• Scapa
• Talisker

I think it’s a pretty good list. Of these – Arran, Laphroaig and Scapa are the ones that made the biggest impression on me. I also quite like the other islays besides laphroaig as well as Talisker and Knockando. Except for the latter, I’m (so far) not such a fan of the speysides, so I know some classic glens are missing from my list. My favourite whisky up here at the moment is still Laphroaig quarter cask, a really peaty and oaky explosion of taste. It’s a young whisky and it’s like an islay fist in the mouth - only in a good way. With a few drops of water and a cold beer alongside to soften the impact, it’s very nice indeed.

But what about my whisky future? A friend, Anders Krabberød, brought a very special flask of Arran to me and Christianes moving-in party in Oslo. It was an amazing whisky, easily up there with my finest and most satisfying whisky-tasting experiences. Thus, I really want to get my hands on a bottle of Arran. Hopefully, I can get something similar to what we had that night. I also would like a bottle of Scapa, I quite like the 14 year old. The only problem is that it’s out of production, so it may not be the easiest one to get a hold of anymore, but bottles should still be on the market. My father also recommended both of these brands for me.

But these are brands I’ve already had – if only on one or two occasions – but what about the whiskys I’ve yet to taste? If you know a whisky that I should definetly try, please leave a suggestion with a comment to this post and I’ll add it to my whiskys-to-do list!