Styrheim

Piaf by Pam Gems starts playing in Tórshavn Oct 14 2006.

Photo by Allan Brockie

tags: Sjónleikarhúsið Édith Piaf Piaf sjónleik Pam Gems Hans Tórgarð Jytte Joensen Sigrun Valbergsdóttir Anna Sofía Egilstrøð Óli P Barbara í Gongini Turpin N. Djurhuus Stamen Stantchev upcoming:event=103312

Jørn thinks that you get good photos from the Faroe Islands by simply removing your lens cap.

He knows nothing about it, because he has only been here in summer, and summer is the most dull-looking season. I returned from my first two Faroese summers, damning my over-exposed Kodachromes. The third summer, I looked around, and realized that the place does indeed look like over-exposed Kodachrome on a dry summer's day.

The W3C working group note Working with Time Zones correctly identifes the problem that local time in a time zone with "daylight savings time" part of the year can not be specified by offset from UTC, because that offset is not constant. So the time zone must be identified by a TZID.

They suggest that two <datetime, TZID> pair can be compared, by computing the offsets on that date and at those times, using the TZ database.

It is not that easy. Each spring there is an hour that does not exist (and all trains are suddenly one hour late). That is not a computational problem, because a datetime is still unique within its time zone.

But each fall there is an hour that appears twice (causing all the trains to be one hour delayed). No time zone database can possibly tell if a datetime falling within that hour is the first or the second appearance of that datetime.

So I see no other solution than this: Don't mess with time (leave that to Hermione Granger) but keep the offset from UTC constant in each time zone. If daylight savings time must be used, use it all year round. Anyone suggesting other solutions, should provide a computational method to convert local time to UTC.

If rational arguments are not enough, let me remind you that daylight savings time was introduced in Norway during World War II by Vidkun Quisling.

tags: Daylight savings time Sommertid Time zones TZID time zone offset time zone database datetime UTC Vidkun Quisling

New EP from Valravn is out: krunk.

Anna Katrin Egilstrøð Eiði Valravn Medieval Goth

Faroese bills are beautiful, but are increasingly hard to get.

tags: Paper Money

Moiré effects are generally ugly. But this one, from Viennaslide is amusing. Does it show something that was not present at all in Viennaslide-03660102.jpg before downsampling? Or does the small image tell more than the large one about the small irregularities present in the real iron?

Somehow, I prefer Iceland's SUV culture over the US variety.

The web page for the 1870 census in Eiði does now works on modern (DOM JavaScript) browsers.

Still under construction, but it generally works.

Click a house in the image, or its name in the list. 62.3137-7.0996

Múrurin, the walls of the St.Magnus Cathedral at Kirkjubøur, is in bad need of a roof. It will crumble if not protected from the weather. With a roof, it will aslo become a good place for concerts and exhibitions. (There is no need to use the building as a church, the village is well served by the older St.Olav's Church.)

There is a proposal for a low roof. I don't like it at all; it makes the old cathedral look like an outpost for the Nordic House. While I admire the Nordic House, I think Múrurin deserves a taller roof, more in keeping with its sacral origins. Which is why I took the liberty of drawing one on the proposed model.

RailwayStation is a nice piece of figurative music.

Through the use of the crosstalk cancellation process, these recordings are intended to be listened to using a stereo speaker setup.

So to listen with headphones, the signal has to be processed back, with e.g. Dolby Headphones.

The original recording probably sounds better than a signal that has been processed by Sensaura, and then reversed with Dolby Headphones?

As a technology demonstation, it would also be interesting to compare the Sensaura signal on speakers, whith the original on headphones?

With multichannel SACD, downloable MP3 etc., I don't think Sensaura sound should ever be published alone—it should always be followed by the original version, to make it suitable for headphones.

The audiophile realisation offers the listener the highest possible unadulterated original product; even the exacting demands of reception with high-end systems will be satisfied through our special recording technique (Dummy Head + binaural computer room-simulation from AachenHEAD)

To me, the unadulterated original product of a dummy head recording, is listening to the original recording with headphones.

The additional scenes in the so-called redux version of Apocalypse Now! are good cinema, if seen in isolation.

But they water down the "real" Apocalypse Now!

• Burlesque comedy, like the stolen surf board, damages the credibility. In the original, I can believe that Kilgore is not court martialed--in the redux, I can't.
• Romantics, complete with syrup strings. Ain't no strings on my old soundtrack double LP.
• The added political and historical dialogue is probably OK, even if it doesn't clarify much.

If you cut from the core Apocalypse material to get the redux version down to reasonable length, it would become a good Hollywood movie.

Cruisania's state flag:

on stage at a Camerata Mediolanense concert:

(Arnhem 1997, despite the MDXXX on the backdrop)