Wow, so clearly this has become an abandoned blog. In part because neither Neb nor I have anything interesting to say longer than a twitter-length sentence! (Which I tried to hook into this blog via the Twitter Tools plugin, but it’s lacking features — the post titles are awkward and only one twitter account can be linked. But we’ll see.) Actually, a couple of weeks ago, my excuse would have been that we’re busy but then I had spring break last week and I wouldn’t call myself busy unless doing fun stuff or vegetating + eating counts as busy.

In any case, another one of the illegitimate and yet sadly true reasons we’ve been busy is this iPhone Kindle app which has killed my productivity. I’ve already ranted and raved about it in person to pretty much everyone I know - basically, it’s a free application that lets you read books on your iPhone; said books you can buy from Amazon but there are a bunch that are free. I’ve now read 3 novels in fairly short order (this + the 2 sequels), and Neb has read Outliers (pictured above) and he’s reading a novel now, but now I am forbidding myself from starting another until I get some actual work done. But oh goodness, I did so enjoy all my time on public transportation during when I was reading…

I think it’s great that Nova did a show about this important issue.

We aren’t headed back to California yet, but will be touching down in New York City today. So long, Rekjavik, I will miss your American-flavored chips. They taste like me.

2009 Reykjavik Fireworks from Benjamin Garrett on Vimeo.

The whole reason we traveled to Reykjavik during the Winter, necessitating the light machine and so forth, was that I wanted to be somewhere different for New Years.

We only learned after coming here that Reykjavik has a crazy New Years fireworks spectacle. So I was expecting an American-Style fireworks display, where everyone congregates in a particular place and watches the fireworks launched from the bay.

But no, this is not how it’s done. Everyone in town just buys an extraordinary amount of fireworks and sets them off in public places from 11:30pm until 12:30am on New Year’s Eve. During the ’show’, an older American guy in an NFL hat and quipped to us “This is like Iraq”. He seemed too old to have spent time in Iraq, but I do agree it seemed like we were under heavy bombardment.

The scariest part is that about 1 in every 100 fireworks would fizzle out before flying into that air and instead fly into a crowd of people and then explode. Numerous ambulances arrived during the show.

We took it easy today, wandering around the city on foot to the house where I lived from 1985-1989. On the way there, we saw my old Icelandic school (where I remember Meg & I eventually started skipping in secret a lot), our old local swimming pool and the Reykjavik farm zoo which didn’t exist when I lived here but they had rabbits, so of course we had to go!

We’ve seen the hot dog stands everywhere which I remember from my youth as well, but I also remember the sauces as being the dominating issue and since I didn’t feel like eating lamb here (especially after seeing them at the farm zoo!), I’ve been getting them without the meat - which is on the menu, so it’s not that strange. The brown flakey looking stuff is dried onions; there is also fresh onions, ketchup, a mayo type of sauce and a really delicious mustardy sauce as well.

The touch screens have calibration problems. That’s why it flips to John McCain, it’s out of registration with where your finger is touching.

This is a brilliant fraud, kudos Diebold!

Wait, why doesn’t this happen on any other device I ever use?
Like an ATM?
Or Nintendo DS?
Or iPhone?

Only voting machines.

I really need to write more about Frost. Image from wordle.net.