I’m back from Copenhagen. But before I launch into an account of our weekend there, here’s a new update from Penn:

Actually, the pictures weren’t attached, so I’ll ask Penn to send them again, or maybe wait until she gets back to Blighty.

The euro and Europe’s blurring borders.

Simply put, without the EU, my business simply would not exist. The euro itself certainly makes life a lot simpler - it would be better still if the UK were to join in too - the sooner that happens, the better, as far as I am concerned.

A weekend in brief:

• Glögg was being served everywhere, and Hels and I quickly became addicted. Definitely the essential winter beverage.
• Tivoli - beautiful with its fairy lights, full of happy people, home to extortionately priced tat and site of the most bizarre animatronic Santa’s grotto you will ever see - worth the admission price for that alone.
• Degas - a highly recommended French restaurant.
• Vor Frelsers Kirke - utterly beautiful with the golden globe at the top of the spire glistening in the sun through the morning fog.
• Bastionen og Løven - home of quite possibly the best hot chocolate in the world, according to Hels anyway.
• Christiania - where Hels and I felt just a little out of place, but welcome nonetheless, at least in the little market. The drugs stalls are generally less welcoming, almost threatening - although that may be the attitude the locals adopt towards any couple that arrive dressed in smart designer clothing. Hels’s new Nepalese hat, purchased in the market, helped us to blend in.
• Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning was one of the highlights of the weekend - a fabulous contemporary art gallery which is currently showing an exhibition entitled "From Dust to Dusk". If you like modern art and can get to see it, then I recommend that you do so. Our favourite piece (although we had several) was White Landscape by the German artist Christina Kubisch, which consisted of a large darkened room. On the floor, more than one hundred white painted speakers of differing sizes were illuminated from above by UV lamps so that they glowed in the darkness, and each gently and in turn played the sound of a tuning fork. Utterly mesmerizing.
• Strøget - shopping heaven. And like Jason, we also found lots of feet, which serve the useful purpose of making you stop walking, pause and look up and around.
• Barbar Bar was very cool. If I lived nearby, I think you’d find me there frequently.
• By train to Malmö across the Øresund Broen, which affords fabulous views across the steely grey and choppy Øresund that separates Denmark and Sweden. Malmö is every bit as beautiful as Copenhagen (or, to be more correct, København). Glögg and shopping were again high on the agenda, but not before we’d explored the Form/Design Center which was crammed full of the sort of things than any self-respecting Scandinavian interior designer would consider as must-haves, as well as David Design which was full of yet more things calling out "buy me! buy me!"
• Peder Oxe for more fine food - not just for tourists, as the guidebook suggests, but also popular with the locals, it seems.
• Nyhavn, on the other hand, truly is touristy.
• Finally and sadly, we had to leave. But leaving was made easier by virtue of the excellent trains once again, and the wonder that is Københavns Lufthavne - you can see why it has won so many awards. Without doubt the most logically and elegantly designed airport I have ever visited.

I think we’ll go again to Copenhagen. Highly recommended, though do expect it to be expensive. It isn’t necessarily the case that things in Denmark are more highly priced (although alcohol certainly is - expect around £4 for a pint or spirit+mixer), it’s just that the Danes don’t bother with cheap stuff. They clearly believe that if something is worth having or doing, then it is worth paying to have/do it right.

Happy birthday to my brother, who is [cough!] years old today. Sticky buns for everyone.

Glass toilet opened. How long before some couple goes in there for more than just a pee?

I’ve just listened to the archived Global House Connection programme for 23 November, which is excellent. If you don’t already listen to GHC each week, then you are missing out.
If you don’t have a fast enough connection, don’t forget that radio grayblog is still broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’ll see if I can spend some time over the Christmas holiday uploading some new tunes - it’s a long time since the playlist was changed, but I still think it is good. And it only needs a 28k connection.

To hell with Christmas (if you’ll pardon the pun), this isn’t so much the festive season as the Martian season.
Next week, the Japanese probe Nozomi will either go into orbit or be flung off into space - or, disastrously, crash into the planet’s surface, contaminating it with microbes from Earth. Nozomi has had a troubled life with fuel problems and damage from a solar flare. It seems unlikely that it will succeed, but if the Japanese do manage to make everything work, I think it will go down in history as a major feat of interplanetary engineering.
Mars Express is already at work, having sent back its first image. Really this is something of a calibration exercise, and the real work won’t begin until it goes into orbit on Christmas Day, just a few hours after Beagle2 has touched down on the surface. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably be all misty eyed if it works, and horribly upset if it doesn’t.
The British media hardly give any time at all to the other two probes that are on their way to Mars, NASA’s twin probes Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit lands on January 4th and Opportunity on January 25th, on opposite sides of the planet. Billed as twin "robot geologists", Spirit and Opportunity will be looking for geological evidence of water, as well as increasing understanding of the planet’s surface - and have a big advantage over Beagle2 in that they are mobile, travelling around 40 yards each day during their 90-day mission.

However you look at it, this is really exciting stuff. I remember everyone at work being crowded around the PC as I downloaded fresh images from Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover in 1997 over a 28.8kbps connection - it was amazing to see almost-live images from Mars, only a few minutes old. And don’t forget that Mars Odyssey has been sending back data for two years up until it was knocked out during October’s massive solar flare, and Mars Global Surveyor has sent some amazing pictures too.
This is an exciting time - I think I’m likely to be attached to my laptop and broadband over Christmas!

Hels bought me a Marks and Spencer chocolate advent calendar. So far I’ve had chocolates shaped as a snowman, a cracker, a stocking and a penguin - all closely related to Christian symbolism, undoubtedly.
I’m also mildly disturbed by the image on the front of the calendar, which shows the portly bearded chappy in his red outfit admonishing the onlooker to be quiet whilst, through a doorway, a young boy sleeps in his bed. Frankly, I think he should be reported to the authorities.
Not that I’m ungrateful for the chocolates, I hasten to add.

When we were in Malmö, we went into a department store where there was a long queue of children (and parents) waiting to sit on Santa’s knee. Clearly the over-zealous child protection lobby that we have here and in America has not yet reached southern Sweden, as the children actually were sitting on the besuited fella’s leg. But the one thing that I did notice was that this particular Santa had a notebook and pen for writing down the requests of the children. I was very disappointed to see this, as I always assumed that he could remember all these things without notes. After all, he is able to visit all the children of the world in one night, and also knows whether they’ve been "good" or "bad" as well. My illusion has been shattered.
I also noticed that he was left-handed.

Hels has just called me from Charing Cross station. She’s been to a lunch organised by one of her clients, along with one of the girls from her office. It seems that she’s had one or two margueritas.
How come I never get invited to lunches like that? I’m clearly in the wrong industry.

I don’t think that there is any doubt that aircraft contrails affect the weather - it can be noticably cooler in our part of Sussex when the US Air force are running concentrated supply missions to the Middle East, as their flight path passes overhead and an aircraft can pass as frequently as once every two or three minutes. As a result, the whole sky can become covered in a thin milky white cloud.

Life seems to be incredibly full at the moment - not only do I have a full work schedule, but there is also a packed calendar on the social side. Tonight Hels is coming to Chichester and we are going out for drinks with the usual suspects. Tomorrow morning we are dropping in on the parents for morning coffee before heading to Brighton for a spot of Christmas shopping, followed by dinner with Charlie and Peeet. Next week there are at least two dinners booked in already. And the diary towards Christmas seems to get busier still.

The thing is, unlike some people who find the whole yuletide social shenanigans to be hard work and a nuisance, I love spending time with friends and socialising - not least because it usually involves a lot of good food and drink. I don’t really understand why people moan about Christmas - even the gift giving and shopping is fun, if a little hard work and sometimes costly. All you have to do is remember that the most important thing is to have a good time with the special people around you, and not get too hung up on the boring stressy elements.

Well, for those of you who have waited patiently for a photo of Hels, here she is with your cheesily-grinning author on the banks of a canal in Copenhagen, with the impressive buildings of the Gammel Strand behind.

In my original account of our long weekend in Copenhagen, I left out one thing that took place. On the Friday evening, we walked around Tivoli, admiring the beautiful fairy lights and watching all the happy Danes (and tourists) enjoying the rides, stalls and glögg. Having passed the skating rink and warmed ourselves by a brazier, we turned a corner and found the most breathtaking sight, a weeping willow with simple white lights along every branch arching down and wonderfully reflected in the water of a lake. It was utterly beautiful and we held each other close as we admired it. We stood there gazing at it, and agreed that it was very beautiful indeed. Then there was a pause. I turned to Hels, and said "Will you marry me?" - and without so much as a moment of hesitation, she said "Yes!"

On Monday, we stopped in a wonderful independent jewellers on the Strøget, where we chose and I purchased a beautiful white gold ring with four princess-cut diamonds, which Hels is wearing as she sits next to me now.

I am the happiest man alive.

[with apologies to all those who are reading this before I’ve had a chance to send you a personal message - we’re just so thrilled, that we want everyone to know!]

…to everyone who has sent messages of congratulation to us.

Katy goes to a party.

Yesterday, Nicholas van Hoogstraten was released from prison. It had been found by the High Court that he had no case to answer in the alledged manslaughter of business associate Mohammed Raja.
In July 1999, following a long-running dispute with Mr Raja, van Hoogstraten allegedly sent two henchmen to Mr Raja’s home with a loaded firearm, with, it is claimed, the intention to scare Mr Raja. These two men shot and killed Mr Raja on his doorstep.
In his ruling yesterday, Sir Stephen Mitchell agreed with the defence team:

But, because there was no evidence that Hoogstraten foresaw that the two men would have deliberately turned the gun on Mr Raja, he could not be prosecuted for manslaughter.
If, however, Mr Raja had been killed accidentally by Hoogstraten’s two alleged henchmen, he could have been convicted of manslaughter.

Now, I’m not a lawyer and have no legal training, but doesn’t it seem to you that the law is just plain wrong in this regard? The Court was satisfied that van Hoogstraten sent these men, and that he knew they would carry a firearm. Surely that is enough for some sort of conviction?
I think there must be several people around who have already packed their bags and left the country.

BBC News profile of van Hoogstraten.
BBC News report of the court case.
Telegraph detailed report of the court case.
Telegraph detailed profile of van Hoogstraten.

UPDATE:
Hoogstraten "will sue" over court case.

As expected, Japan’s Nozomi Mars mission has been aborted due to technical failure.

NASA proposes a nuclear powered probe to the Jovian moons.

BBC News report.
NASA’s official JIMO homepage.

A few photographs from our trip to Copenhagen:

This is the view under the Knippelsbro. It just looked fantastically atmospheric that morning. In a way, all that was needed was an old Rover P5 and John Thaw, and you’d have had a scene from any one of a dozen episodes of The Sweeney. Except it would be in Denmark, obviously.

My beautiful fiancée, leaning against a pillar whilst I faff around taking silly pictures of nothing in particular under a bridge.

Very close to the Knippelsbro was this building, the Asiatisk Plads. I don’t think it was anything special, simply some offices, but to me it was supremely beautiful - the simplicity of form and design, the linear grace, even the little details of the security lighting on the outside. I’m not sure that Hels agreed with me entirely on this, but I thought it was great. We saw a whole lot of extremely well-designed buildings in Copenhagen - not fancy or gimmicky, just stylish and smart. Also, there generally wasn’t a lot of graffiti or flyposting around on the buildings to spoil the look.

Hels stirring a cup of glögg when we were in Malmö. This drink will always be in our memories of this trip, and we plan to serve it at our wedding.

Malmö - not so very different in general appearance from Copenhagen, though clearly without that capital city oomph. A view of the buildings in Drottninggatan.

Many towns and cities have a typical look for their local buildings - the more traditional ones at least. Chichester is famous for its Georgian doors - there is even a book on the subject. In Copenhagen, the norm is red brick, but there are also a large number of buildings that are rendered or painted in this lovely warm mustard yellow colour. This one was on Nyhavn.

Tom wants to know how many UK-based blogs there are. If you are not already listed there, you can help Tom with his useful research by submitting your site to the list of blogs at weblogs.co.uk.

Making Fiends episode 6, featuring an extra extra extra extra extra large flea collar.

It’s been linked everywhere, but this game is simple, infuriating and wonderfully executed.

Looks like I have a bit of problem with someone spamming my comments. I’ve deleted five this morning, all from the same IP address (now banned), all with a link to a site offering pills that would, supposedly, enlarge my parts.
I’ve heard of an anti-spam gizmo for MT, so if this continues to be a problem, I may install it.

It looks like I’m going to become just another statistic.

New Weebl and Bob….. here.

Crumbs! This getting married malarkey is hard work! And incredibly expensive. We’ve just been and booked the venue (deposit = one month’s net pay) and checked out the church (yes, I know - me, a confirmed atheist, getting married in church). We’ve costed out the food and wine for the guests (yikes!), allocated some cash for flowers (double yikes!) and music (yikes again!) and figured out how many favours we can call in (photographers, wedding car owners, floral artists, musicians - we’re coming for you!) in order to keep costs down to a figure that won’t leave us mired in debt for the whole of our married life.

I’m having palpitations.
But I’m also determined that we should enjoy it, so now that some of the fundamentals are falling into place (and Hels is wonderful at organising all this - it’s all in very safe and capable hands), I’m hoping we can relax a little over Christmas and New Year and soak it all up a little. And I know it is going to be a fun and fabulous day, as it should be.

Assuming that the man arrested in Iraq really is Saddam Hussein, the real question that will be asked now is what exactly to do with him. So far, finding much evidence of anything at all has been a problem. I guess there is enough from the attacks on the Kurds and the war against Kuwait to convict him of something. But the question is, where will he be tried? And under which authority?

A visit to London yesterday for dinner with friends as well as a visit to the Serpentine Gallery to see the exhibition of photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Pictures of nothing much at first glance, being in the main large monochrome seascapes, but revealing, on closer examination, a subtle texture of ripples, waves, clouds and stars.
It was the first time that either of us had been to the Serpentine, which is a rather neat and small building, glowing brightly in the darkness of a winter evening in Hyde Park. Its small size is actually an asset - no risk of getting "galleried out" at the Serpentine.
Even more impressive in Hyde Park was the brightly lit and shimmering Albert Memorial. In any other city in the world, such a structure would be the centre of massive tourist activity and would feature in every postcard. London simply has too many significant structures, and the Memorial is all too frequently overlooked.

How handy.
See also: this.

Not much discussion in the Blogosphere (well, I’ve not seen much) of Metronomy, a new company that is giving away umpteen million (or several hundred thousand, depending on who you believe) free new IBM PCs. Or, to be more precise, it is loaning them on a rolling three year contract. There’s a catch of course - you must agree to be exposed to one minute of adverts for every twenty minutes of computer use, and must also use your computer for not less than thirty hours per month. I don’t find either of these restrictions to be particularly challenging - it’s easy enough to use the advert time for a loo or tea break, and an hour a day is pretty low level usage for most of the people who read this site. I also predict that patches will become available very quickly to suppress the adverts.
Is this a good idea, from either a commercial or marketing point of view? In my opinion, it will certainly have an impact on the PC market, probably wiping out the bottom end low-cost and very low margin machine market. Bad news for the likes of Dixons and Comet, I’d suggest. I am also unsure about the viability of the business model itself - will enough advertising revenue be generated to make the loan of the computers (and associated transport, admin and support costs) a profitable exercise? I’m not sure, as many companies are already wary of advertising on the net, having had their fingers burned by unrealistic promises in the past. I suspect that the main beneficiaries of adverts in this context are likely to be the usual suspects - purveyors of online financial services, Amazon and their competitors, the supermarkets and possibly also e-government. I don’t see it as being any more effective than other online adverts, other than by being more closely targeted than traditional net adverts.
We shall see. Hels and I may apply for one, just to see how we get on with it. After all, we need to be a three PC family, don’t we?

Dust storms threaten Martian landers.

Mine is officially the funkiest office in the intellectual property industry this morning, as I’m working to the sounds of two new music purchases that arrived from America this morning: Kaskade: San Francisco Sessions: v4 is still to be unwrapped, but right now King Kooba: Indian Summer is playing, and jolly brilliant it is too.
Top marks should also be awarded to Shop Solid for getting my CDs to me faster than a very fast thing.

A couple of housekeeping tasks: the graybiography has been updated in look and content, and the long-absent support page has been revised and restored.

The transport reporter on BBC South Today, Paul Clifton, used a term I’d not heard of before when talking about the campaigners opposed to the construction of a second runway at Gatwick. One step up from NIMBY (not in my back yard), he described them as BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone).
A friend of mine who is professionally involved in countryside management would describe BANANAs as being members of the "blue tit and woolly hat brigade". I know what he means - unfortunately, a balance has to be struck between conservation and infrastructure and development, and that sometimes means that what we would like to preserve has to give way for what we need to develop. Equally, sometimes that situation is reversed, and the poor people who make those decisions and then put them into practice are unlikely to ever satisfy everybody.

Beer with Greg, Paul F, Kearn and Hamish, with sightings of Sarah, Paul H, Dave, Gary, Nikki, Ted and Kristian.
Since we are engaged, I guess it is ok for me to say that I literally ache for Hels. We’ll not be together until Friday, which seems a long way from now.

(Addendum: must remember not to post here when under the influence of alcohol, as I tend to get excessively mushy.)

Some time ago, my father chose to purchase a ShopVac Classic 30 vacuum cleaner for the office. The company that supplied it no longer do so, and do not supply bags or filters. None of the regular outlets stock them. I’ve found a source for the bags online (vacuumworld.co.uk), but they don’t do the filters.
I figure that we can’t be the only people in the country with this model of cleaner. So, if you have one, or know someone who does, do you know where to get bags and filters?

A couple of interesting science and technology stories from the BBC:
Oldest evidence of photosynthesis found - "Life may be older and more robust than we thought".
Bendy lampposts may save lives - or may provide endless fun for vandals.

Mars probe Beagle 2 enters crucial phase. Fingers crossed.

Guardian Best British Blogging Awards results announced. No gongs for me once again, not that I expected any, but congratulations to Darren.

Privately built aircraft breaks the sound barrier. If I was very rich, I’d have one of these. Just think of the time saved for getting to meetings!

Related:
Scaled Composites.
The X Prize.
Bristol Spaceplanes.

Woo, yay and, indeed, houpla! West Pier restoration given the go-ahead. All they need now is the money.

More wooing and yaying: Beagle 2 successfully detaches from Mars Express.

Related: Beagle 2 official homepage.

For anyone that didn’t read the Independent on Saturday, I recommend Feargal Keane’s article Saddam’s arrest should be the signal to bring other war criminals to book.

Old Japanese documents confirm warnings of future North American earthquakes.

Also: Magnitude 6.5 earthquake shakes California, roughly 70 miles from Santa Barbara. My friends in SBA report a "rolling motion" that made them feel dizzy. Apparently, the contents of the whisky cupboard were undamaged, to the relief of all concerned.
More news reports: San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Who needs expensive gizmos when the Net is full of games like A.Blast that you can play for free?

Animation links:
Making Fiends Christmas Special.
Bonjour Monsieur - bound to be in the charts soon.
Weebl and Bob Christmas Special.

I forgot to post Penn’s latest and final email from Nepal:

As a footnote, I’ve just had a conversation with Penn. She is tired but home, in pain from root canal surgery. She tells me that the parcel arrived on the morning that she left, so she didn’t get to give it to the children herself, but one of the other volunteers there promised to take it to the school on our behalf.
So it arrived safely and got to the people that will make best use of it. Excellent! Penn says a big thank you to those who helped with it.

A reminder that there is more to space exploration at the moment than missions to Mars: Sino-European mission, Double Star, prepares for launch.
Related: European Space Agency news page on Double Star.

I often travel the section of road that has seen a fatal accident today. It is very dangerous. The coach looks like it belongs to Richardsons, a company often used for school and college trips from Chichester.
Maybe this will lead to new safety measures on that road. They would be long overdue.

… Paul C, Greg, Kearn and Aris. Sightings of the Nags posse.

In a major development, tonight I possibly had my last ever haircut with Jo. She has cut my hair for eight years, and she and Andy have become good friends. Good luck to Jo in her future.
Paul R was also sighted at the salon. He was to travel onwards to a vet to get some water pills for his dog. Somehow, I know there is a joke in there somewhere….

hmm.

What Famous Leader Are You?

I find this to be strangely amusing.

Well, I’ve nearly finished wrapping the gifts - just the last few tags to write, then I have to bag everything up and decide which gifts Hels will have to wait until Boxing Day for (so she has some to open when we are at my parent’s house).
Then I’ll quickly tidy the flat, sort out a bit of laundry, deliver a couple of Christmas cards and then drive off to Tunbridge Wells for the start of the food and drink!

This will be the last update until after Christmas. Remember to keep an eye out for progress of Beagle 2. Aside from that, remember the true meaning of Christmas - a distorted winter solstice festival that was hijacked by Christianity in an attempt to win over pagan tribespeople in Europe, that is now the preserve of business and corporate policy. Enjoy!

May all your mince pies be well filled.

…though I’ve come pretty close to it through an excess of excess in the last few days. I think that most of my internal organs are about to pack in as a result of the strain of it all.
Coming up soon on grayblog…

• the annual grayblog Review Of The Year
• a Christmas report
• um… stuff. and things.

Watch this space!

Bob Monkhouse
Alan Bates
Beagle2?

Apologies for the continuing lack of content. I’ve been monumentally busy lately, as our social diaries seem to be just packed to the gunwhales with events involving friends, family and J Sainsbury.
Anyway, I promised a Christmas report. There isn’t much to say, to be honest, but highlights included dinner with Hels’s sister Lu, her husband Kevin and their friends Fiona and Kevin on Christmas Eve; Christmas Day with Hels’s family; Boxing Day with my family; a walk by Chichester canal; dinner with a friend from Hels’s office and her family; a burger in a bowling alley (don’t ask); drinks and dinner with some more of Hels’s friends.
The edge was partly taken off things as we were both ill, possibly as a result of exceeding the limits of food and drink consumption, and possibly as a result of a bug of some description. I suspect it was a combination of the two.
Tonight we shall be in Chichester for the annual New Year celebration at the Nag’s Head. This, by way of a change, shall involve consuming large quantities of food and drink, with the possible added complication of dancing.

Pity my liver and pass the Rennies please.

Will someone put the bitch down at the earliest opportunity? There is a limit to what is acceptable in today’s society. The thing is an ugly brute too.