November 23, 2008
Já, ég komst að því hérna úti að Hollendingar búa ekki til Íslenskar pönnukökur, þeir búa til Hollenskar pönnukökur, og þær eru allt öðruvísi en okkar pönnukökur. Í gær varð ég mér úti um pönnu til að gera þessar pönnukökur og prófaði að gera þær sjálfur í fyrsta sinn. Þær eru ekki sætar en í staðin þá geturðu valið um að hella yfir sætindum, eins og á þessari mynd, eða setja ost og annað meðlæti sem er meira eins og máltíð. Allavega, þá mæli ég með þessum pönnukökum, þó ekkert komi náttla í stað þeirra Íslensku. Upphafið að þessu var reyndar að ég ákvað loksins að kaupa almennilega pönnukökupönnu að Íslenskum sið, eftir að hafa notast við matar pönnuna í mörg ár. Úti í hinum stóra heimi heita þær þó ekki pönnukökupönnur, útlendingar standa víst í þeirri meiningu að pönnukökur séu Franskar að uppruna og kalla þær Crepes. Ég fann þó Danska Crepes pönnu sem mér leist vel á og fyrst það hafa að öllum líkindum verið Danir sem komu með þennan sið heim til Íslands þá verður það að duga fyrst enginn selur alvöru Íslenskar pönnukökupönnur hér hinumegin á hnettinum. Scanpan Ceramic Titanium Classic Crepes Pan verður að duga fyrst Alpan Icelandic Classic Pancake Pan er ekki til.
October 23, 2008
For a short while a long time ago I took part in the photography club at Menntaskólinn við Sund. We learned to develop our own film and produce the pictures through a process of light and chemicals. I mostly did black and whites and really quite enjoyed the experience. The thought of doing photography as a profession never really entered my mind though as it was just a hobby and that´s all I wanted it to be. Like my brother used to say; there was no reason to ruin my hobby by doing it to earn a living. Eventually though my old Olympus camera was stolen as I was travelling in Europe and that was the end of my little hobby, until now. Just recently I got my self an SLR camera and started taking pictures again. The process has changed significantly though as the labourous part has been assigned to a romantic past and replaced by a Digital process. An element of mystique has been lost but in return Photography as a hobby has become significantly cheper and post production has become an art form in it self. The web has also added a new dimetion to the hobby. Pictures are now a valuable asset on the web and sharing and showing off your work is easier than ever. The process of getting your images printed requires more equipment now though, the old days of the darkroom are gone and heavy equipment or third party processing is now required. I have been taking photos again now for a few months and still very much enjoy it. I can see marked improvements in the qality of my work from when I started, but as every answer spawns more new questions I can now also see how far I have yet to go.
+ My photography showroom on Flickr
September 21, 2008
It was meant to be good sailing weather today, moderate to fresh winds, so I did the only sensible thing and went sailing. It was already looking a bit more like fresh to strong when I got there but finding that I needed to test the boat out in sub prime conditions I got ready and headed out. It was blowing a north westerly and pretty fresh when I got out there and with one reef in the main I headed downwind to enjoy the most marvelous run down the coast. Rushing past the coast at 7 knots is pretty good for a 30 year old 18 foot keel boat! The sail back was more treacherous. Beating into the wind in 30 knots with a heavy swell was hard work. My poor girl does not go that well to windward in those conditions, I´m afraid. She kept broaching in the gusts and without the jib she was not pointing very well. Eventually I cracked on the motor and plowed back into the wind. As is was blowing directly from where I was going I motored about half the way back. Once we got back I was wet through and quite tired. I have in fact decided to put on hold my ideas of sailing her over to Tasmania, for now anyhow.
September 20, 2008
Suze is now most of the way there with the little bubba. Things have progressed very well so far, she has gone through all the classical stages in very classical ways and is now at the stage where putting her feet up feels like heaven. We still have about 3mts to go, but quite honestly time passes exceedingly quickly these days.
July 5, 2008
The Icelandic Króna has been falling in the past few months. When I moved to Australia in September last year I could buy 52 krónas for one dollar, now I can buy 74 krónas for a dollar. This is good news for me at the moment but not for Icelanders thinking of coming over here. The króna went up to 80 per dollar in recent days and apparently that is the best conversion ratio from dollar to króna that there has ever been. To keep tabs on the development I have now made the currency part of this website fetch real live data from yahoo finance. Under Australia vs. Iceland on the right hand side you can see what the mean conversion is.
June 22, 2008
We woke up this morning to a voice down the road shouting something loudly into a ‘gjallarhorn’. After turning over a couple of times cursing the noise we went to the window to see what was going on. As it turns out there were loads of people, equipment, cranes, fires, smoke and what have you not all over the place, and a bossy guy shouting into their midst and we realized they were filming and apparently is was a Hollywood movie called “Knowing“. Once we realiased there were famous actors (yes, Suzy got very excited as she finds Nicolas Cage very handsome) and lots of action down the road annoyance turned into curiosity. It was quite fun having something like this happening in the street so we kept tabs on what was going on throughout the day, but disappointingly Nic never came over to say hi, must have been too busy.
I have been very lazy writing on the blog lately. My main excuse is that we are in the middle of winter. Even though it is quite warm during winter compared to back home, winter here still slows you down and makes you lazy. I have been looking everywhere for bookshelves that I am happy with and when I finally found them, of course they had to cost about $4.000 (200.000 isk). So, after months of searching we went back to the original idea and got a cheap thingy for IKEA. Our books have not been comfortably placed in nice bookshelves for over 2 years now so it was a monumental relief to get them into the cheap but nice IKEA shelves.
June 3, 2008
As many of you know, Suze is pregnant and is claiming that I am the father. I guess with these pictures as proof I can no longer deny the unavoidable; I AM ABOUT TO BECOME A FATHER!!! We, yes I am saying ‘we’, went for the sonar scans this morning, and the results are these stunning pictures. As many of you know this will delay our wedding plans. The new date is not announced yet. The new date will need a little rethinking but we will let you know as soon as we make the decisions. But for now, the search for a name! We have already decided on a name for a girl, but as me and my family are sure this will be a boy we will need a good male name. I have already put my best suggestion forward: Aragorn! But Suze is not keen 
May 28, 2008
Eins og lesendur hafa tekið eftir, þá er gömul vinkona frá Íslandi á flakki hérna á suðurhvoli. Sara er búin að vera á flakki um heimskringluna síðustu mánuði og kemur hingað eftir ævintýraríka ferð um afríku. Þeir sem hafa átt leið um Zansibar undanfarið hafa kanski orðið hissa þegar þeir heyrðu Söru rappa á ylhýra í ríkisútvarpinu þeirra. Sara verður í Melbourne fram að helgi en við erum auðvitað búin að sýna henni hvað það er að vera Melbourni. Það eina sem er raunverulega eftir er að fara með hana á aðal barinn: KOT, en auðvitað verðu bætt úr því á morgun. Sara er annar Íslendingurinn sem ég hef hitt síðan ég flutti hingað, en það eru heilir 9 mánuðir síðan! Hún segir mér reyndar að þegar ég var orðinn vel drukkinn á laugardagskvöldið þá gat ég ekki lengur talað íslensku og þurfti að skipta yfir á ensku! Ég vei ekki hvort ég trúi því, en já!
May 20, 2008
Við erum flutt í nýju íbúðina. Litlu rottuholuna í miðbæ Melbourne borgar. Þetta er reyndar hin indælasta hola og tilefni þessarar færslu er að ég var að fá netið tengt. Það er heilmikið að frétta en ég ætla ekki að segja neinar fréttir. Við erum búin að uppfæra símanúmerin og heimilisfangið á ‘about’ síðunni, just in case. Blaðra meira seinna.
May 4, 2008
Tonight I sat down and charted the sailing routes from Melbourne to Reykjavík. An unusual thing to do on a Sunday night I know but I have been wondering about this for a long time now: when (yes when, not if) I set sail from Australia to Iceland, what route should I take? Well, first I have to see what options I have so I sat down and charted the options. There are six possibilities:
On the map above you can see how these different routes would be sailed from Melbourne. As roaring forties blow from west to east past the south coast of Australia the most sensible option is to go east then north and later turn west in the case of Suez and Cape of good hope. Applications for prospective crew positions are now open. ETA for departure: 06am on the 2nd of May 2018.
+ Map of routes
