Bad laminate
I floored most of the flat using Ikea’s fine Balk real wood floor, which looks great and was easy to lay (although it has a slight problem with widening gaps between the planks in busy areas).
In the kitchen, I used some kitchen laminate from B&Q that looks like tiles and again was easy to lay and looks great.
In the house we needed to put in a new floor in Marcel’s room (due to a mixture of brown and pink carpets), and he liked Ikea’s brown Tundra which is very cheap but which Phyllis claims to have had good results with in the past.
It was a complete disaster, however. The planks just didn’t want to click together as they should. I know the floor wasn’t as even as it should have been, but this was horrendous! And while trying to make them click, they would get all chipped, so the whole floor looks like a dog’s dinner now. Fortunately Marcel doesn’t seem to mind, though.
I just wish I knew whether a more expensive laminate would have been less sensitive to the unevenness of the floor.
Okker gokker
Léon gentager efterhånden alt, man siger. Her prøver jeg at lære ham Okker gokker. Jeg har dog glemt bevægelserne – kan nogen her huske dem?
EHS, SHS, WHS (GIC) and NIHS
There is no single health service in the UK. People speak about the NHS, but it’s actually four different organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I think using the same name is unhealthy. It means the English find it illogical that they aren’t getting the same treatment in England as is provided by NHS Scotland.
So the four services should be renamed. They already have different logos, so surely that wouldn’t be too hard.
MC1R
I’ve just seen on BBC that researchers have found out that some Neanderthals had red hair.
I find this immensely fascinating. It comes so soon after finding the FoxP2 language gene in Neanderthals. It’s like they’ve suddenly opened a long-lost book.
I find it interesting too that the MC1R gene differs slightly between humans and Neanderthals. It’s another piece of evidence that there was no mixing of the two species.
I still wonder whether mad scientists can forever refrain themselves from resurrecting the Neanderthals. Surely it can’t be much more difficult than doing the mammoths, and that’s already being considered.
General election in the dark
The Danish prime minister has today called a general election that will take place on Tuesday 13th November, replacing the parliament that was elected on my 33rd birthday.
For some reason Danish people don’t seem to share the British fear of voting in the cold and the dark. 
It’ll be interesting to see what the new constituencies will mean, and whether the emergence of the new party Ny Alliance will have any drastic consequences.
I cannot vote, of course. Denmark disenfranchises anybody who leaves the country for more than a couple of years unless they work for a Danish company or organisation.
Hvad er det?
I min barndom var der et fremragende TV-program, der hed Hvad er det? Det gik ud på, at der var to konkurrerende hold arkæologer, der gav hinanden ting, som de så skulle prøve på at tids- og funktionsbestemme.
Det forbløffede mig ofte, hvor vilde gæt de gladeligt kom med, og de tog da også ofte fejl.
Nogle gange ser jeg en moderne ting og spekulerer på, hvad fremtidens arkæologer vil tro, dens formål var.
Tag nu den kombinerede malerrulle og snorkel, som Charlotte holder på billedet. Hvis det redskab mirakuløst bliver fundet i en udgravning om 2000 år, hvad vil de så tro? At vi holdt vores malerudstyr i munden?
Upside-down smiley?
According to the description page for this photo, it’s a common street sign in Montreal. That makes me a bit scared of ever visiting that place, since I don’t have the slightest clue what it’s supposed to mean.
Is it an upside-down smiley? Two cherries? Lollipops hanging from a letterbox? Is it warning you that you’ll be hypnotised now?
Weird, weird!
Owning, using and liking
I’m a bit annoyed by book-cataloguing sites like LibraryThing and Facebook’s Bookshare, and bookstores like Amazon.
They all seem to confuse the concepts of owning a book, having read it, and liking it. Not totally, but enough to make the sites less usable than I’d like.
Let’s face it: We all (at least those of us that work for publishers) have plenty of books we’ve never got around to reading. We all have read books we didn’t own (whether borrowing them from a library or a friend). We all have read books that we definitely don’t want to read again, and that definitely shouldn’t be used for recommendations.
As I see it, the three concepts are different, and should be treated differently. I might want to catalogue the books I own so that people don’t buy me them for Christmas, or so that people can offer to buy one of them. I might want to list what I’ve read recently so that people can chat with me about them. And I might want to list the books I love so that people can recommend me other books or decide whether we share tastes.
Actually, these three concepts could be extended to many products other than books, such as music, food, clothes, etc. Perhaps somebody should make an “I like this” website?
Sony α700
It seems the Sony α700 is about to be released!
Phyllis and I love our α100 (although we wish we had the money for a good wide-angle lens) so when we finally sell the flat, this will be a big temptation.
It seems to be sufficiently similar to the α100 to make it easy to upgrade, but also with lots of nice additions, such as a bigger screen, an autumn leaves colour mode, and an ability to store specific settings for three different users.
The price looks a bit high ($1400 for the body, equating to £800 incl. VAT and DKK 9100 incl. Danish VAT), but I’m sure it’ll fall soon enough, and as Phyllis says, it might be a reason for a trip to New York. 
Lille hjælper (igen)
Som jeg før har nævnt, elsker Léon at hjælpe til.
Da vi for et par dage siden samlede en Ivar-reol fra Ikea, gennemskuede han hurtigt princippet og gav sig til at sætte hyldeholdere i for os. Lidt for mange, måske, og ikke dybt nok i, men han gjorde sig stor umage og følte sig meget dygtig!
(OBS: Det er et vaterpas, han holder i venstre hånd. Spørg mig ikke hvorfor – han havde vel set mig bruge det nogle minutter før.)