Monthly Archives: June 2010

Time to DNA-test strawberries

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Anyone know if there exist cheap machines for counting chromosomes and analyze strawberry dna? Or some students who have time to do a few dusin tests?

The reason I ask is that now that the strawberry season starts here in Norway people are trying to lure us with important berries, yet selling them as “Norwegian strawberries”.

Sweden also have this problem but they’ve hired some experts to find the swindlers but Norway does not have any plans fighting it.

Just curious. I want to find out where the strawberries came from, and wondered if it would be possible to have dna-database for Norwegian strawberry-producers.

First trip with our new light-rail

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This weekend we took a ride with the new light-rail for the first time, it was awesome. I look forward to the extension of the line, I want it now!

A few problems though but that is just some minor glitches, the ticket-line became too long so an employee decided to let us onto the tram without paying, oh well.

I think many train and tram-enthusiasts enjoy themselves these days, we met a lot of tourists as well.

Dinner at Nesttun and Peppes Pizza.

I always take some shots of Peppes’ walls, they have lots of interesting stuff there.

Art by Bård Breiviks near the Lille Lungegårdsvann in the city center.

I bet our light-rail system will be a success but I didn’t like the payment system. You have to buy tickets at a booth, only with period-cards you can enter the tram directly, there is no way to pay once inside. I think that is a bit old fashion.

Her is a video of the route (filmed by NRK):

Oops we have a wasp nest

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My better half found a wasp nest yesterday – it was well developed as it was hidden behind a wall, and our barbecue. Our kids play here a lot so we decided to buy some Permetrin and Pyretrin to get rid of it. This is how it looked:

I waited til the wasps fell to rest and sprayed the entrance, it became quite a chaos and listening to all the wasps in there was kind of frightening but some of them blocked the entrance and they couldn’t get out. I wish they built this in the forest instead, I don’t like to do this but we had to think about our kids’ safety.. Heres the aftermath:

Lots of the larvae were alive and about to hatch so we threw the nest on the fire to get rid of the rest. Icky!

Finally Friday!

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Its finally Friday! I’ve been very busy latetly and haven’t had time to post much.. Heres a few images that kept me alive this week:

Chewbacca’s first school-day:

Why Italy failed: too many players in the goal and no ball:

Clinton enjoys life more now than as a president:

The beauty of having a scooter with automatic gear:

Our new cityline is opening tomorrow! Heres a video of it

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Link to the video: BA – Bybanen minute by minute.

In January 2008 they started building the long awaited Bybanen (Light-rail) in my city (Bergen in Norway) and tomorrow its opening! This is phase 1 which is about 10 kilometer, I think they are starting next phase this autumn. I hope it will reduce the car usage-here. Our Queen will be opening it tomorrow around noon.

Our local newspaper BA (Bergensavisen) joined a ride and filmed it, its worth a check – I think it will be popular among tourists as well. They don’t have any embed-code so I had to include the link. (Its SFW and no ads) The music they’ve used is from local bands.

There is a Wiki-article here on it if you’re interested.

Here is another video, Bybanen minute by minute:


Our new light-rail crashed before opening

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A few days before our new light-rail system Bybanen in our city were supposed to open it crash and derail!


Photo: Stian Hæreid Espeland

This is tragic, lots of people were against building this system and now they are laughing – I can’t believe how cruel people can be. On the display it says “Practice driving”. I am glad this didn’t happen on the opening day, several kindergartens are supposed to be passengers on the first trip.

Here are more photos from the crash:


Photo: Stian Hæreid Espeland


Photo: Jon Tufto


Photo: Stian Hæreid Espeland

Something happened during trail-change and one of them ran i the wrong direction, and then… bang.

Its sad that they have to start their carrer by reparing those. I wonder if they make it before the opening.

Now the fire department are trying to get it on tracks again:

The tragic Middle East

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My knowledge of the Middle East conflict is too thin to have an opinion of whos right and not, I am just sad watching it year by year and how people are capable of ruining others life.

They say it is important to know your history so tragic events won’t happen again, but I don’t believe in that. We manage to do it anyways.

In 1947 a ship with holocaust survivors tried to break the British Palestine blockade, it were borded by British soldiers and 3 got killed. In 1973 BBC created a documentary of the incident, here it is: