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Wonderful day for cross country skiing

Sport

After I had spent some hours editing my videoclips using Kino when all of a sudden Kino decided to lock itself, causing me to loose about 10 minutes of work I used the kill-command on Kino and went out skiing instead. About -7 today, and a clear sunny day, absolutely wonderful day for skiing. My second time this season, so I focused on doublepole and also diagonal without poles. I must say I was not aware of how hard diagonal is for my back when not using poles, good training!!

Was out for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, skiing across Nøklevatn where the picture is taken.

Now I know I have to go to bed

Work/Geek

Have spent some hours today trying to figure out how to edit video and create DVD’s when running Ubuntu. After some reading I ended up trying Kino. First challenge was to import the files from my camera, the Canon FS11. The actual import is not that hard, just plug the USB and navigate in the folder structure of the camera and import.

But, there is an issue with the files on the camera, they are saved using the MOD-file format. Found this post at srixmk.blogspot.com describing how to convert them to avi-format. I used the script but changed it a bit. I wanted to convert the files to .DV, which is the format KINO wants. Thanks to another post that was solved easily as well. So now I have a script which changes the default name of the files to the format yyyyMMddHHMM.dv while converting them to DV and afterwards just deletes the MOD-file. I named the script convertmodfiles.sh, thanks to srixmk for making the script which I just edited a bit.

Then I started testing KINO, using tutorials like “Making movies with KINO” and the “Adding titles and credits. But I could not get it to work, since I did not find “DV Titler” in the drop down menu of available vidoe filters. After very much cursing, I suddenly realized, even though I started to get really tired, that first of all: You don’t need to install DVTitler separately as a plugin, it is included when installing KINO, but…it is labled in the drop down menu as “Titler”. Gotta learn to use my eyes…doh…

So now to bed!

Biking in snowy conditions

Sport

Last night we have had some snow here in Oslo, and combined with a bit of wind made it a bit of a struggle to ride my bike to work. For instance, downhill from Tveita I did not feel the urge for riding together with the cars, since it was pretty much snow and salt, almost like mud at the top of the hill. Under such conditions biking is like playing in the lottery, you’re never sure which direction the bike will choose for you. So instead I did ride on the sidewalk, but not an easy task that either since I had snow all up to the pedals. But as always, “speed is your friend”, so when having as much speed as I dared and doing my best to avoid one or two pedestrians I got myself all the way down to Helsfyr without falling of my bike.

Here you can get some tips on cycling in winter conditions. Also, I pretty much agree with the first guy in the video when it comes to equipment. When my chain and the gears are broken I will not buy new gears, but instead make it into a single speed. Less to be broken, easier to maintain.

[video:youtube:Drs6pD2rDMs]

Anal bleaching on Margaret Cho

Leisure

Was watching Margaret Cho on NRK3. Today she tried one thing that I was not aware of at all, many things are a big issue when you want to stay young the Hollywood-way.

Anal bleaching is “the process of lightening the area around the anus by bleaching it to get rid of any dark pigmentation that might be a result of a lifetime of body changes.” Some light-skinned people have some degree of darker pigmentation of the skin immediately around the anus, which can be mistaken for poor personal hygiene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_bleaching

[video:youtube:fhyNZDGs228]

…for the record, Cho made fun of it 🙂

Tested: Hamax Sno Giant

Leisure

Last Saturday I had to buy a new snow sledge to Anders in a hurry. The requirement was that both me and him could fit the sledge. The plan was to buy a sledge with steering and such, but Alnasenteret I could only find the Hamax Sno Giant, and since it was reasonably priced I bought it.

So Sunday morning, out in the snow to test the new sledge. Fail 1, Anders is not able to hold himself, so when I pull the rope he will easily fall backwards. Fail 2: I tried it down the landingslope of the ski jump at Haugerud. I was not able to keep myself on it the whole way down, holding the handles was not of much help. Fail 3, but ok maybe not a fail – but when I tried the ski jump using the sledge it cracked…

So what I want to now is the Hamax Sno Taxi, but since I have not found any shops selling it I guess I must buy the Sno Cross sled. Anders is still way to small for it, but together we can have much fun.

A fox in our backyard

Anything but the other

Yesterday morning Anders woke me up at 05.00. So I got up and prepared some milk for him. When finished I looked and walking back to the bedroom I took a quick look out of the window and at first I thought it was very early for our neighbour to be out walking his dog. But then I realised that it was not Pascal, the schafer, but a fox. He took his time, enough for me to fetch the camera and take some pictures.

(Larger picture)

Cross country skiing

Anything but the other

Yesterday I took my cross country skis out for the first time this season. The conditions are very good (to much snow in the city), and they have been for quite a while now, so it was about time that I did according to Espen (since the season is almost over now as he said). I just had to run for about five minutes carrying my skis, then it was just to conquer Østmarka. I was out for about 2 hours, and the same today. Good fun, but I need to update my knowledge on wax, that’s for sure.

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