Category Archives: English

Rafz

Thursday, June 3, 2010 – 23:46

Lens flare is usually considered a defect in a camera system, but can nevertheless be used for creative effect. Last week we took a trip to Rafz with the Smallgroup, and we had a great evening playing football and relaxing in the sun. The sunset proved extremely photogenic, so I made sure to put the camera to good use. The best photo from the evening was definitely when we were waiting for the train. The sun was very low, and I made sure to line up the “cool guys” Joel and Dan for this snapshot. It looks very easy, but getting the flare this way was a precision job with millimeter tolerance. Thank you all for a memorable evening!

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En bulle i ugnen kan få stora konsekvenser

Tuesday, June 1, 2010 – 20:17

Had my first exam today, in Advanced Parallel Computing with Scientific Applications. I think it went pretty good, though being interrogated by two professors for 45 minutes is quite exhausting. Just six exams to go, the next one takes place on Monday.

We had a little bit of action at the student house at Meierwiesenstrasse today. I was taking a nap when I woke up to the sound of fire klaxons. Seems like someone or something has triggered the fire alarm, so there was nothing else to do than to make your way to the nearest exit. On the way out I instinctively grabbed my always-ready camera bag – I knew the fire brigade was on its way. Photo time! :)

As usual, click on any photo to magnify or to browse the album.

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Within a few minutes two big trucks, including a rescue ladder, arrived to the scene with full speed.

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Nobody was surprised that the cause was inside the kitchen; someone had forgot a piece of bread in the oven. There was a strong burnt smell inside the house, and some smoke was still visible when the firemen arrived.

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Everyone was safe, so the firemen switched the alarm off and returned to their vehicles.

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A little action in the otherwise quite uneventful exam week, and once again I got to practice my photojournalism skills. Always, always keep your camera ready!

Everything had run like clockwork; the fire alarm, fire brigade withing ten minutes, and the housekeeper and a security guard arrived shortly thereafter. The Swiss have done it again. And the unlucky person who forgot bread in the oven might have to pay 2000 CHF for the false alarm. Wow.

“En bulle i ugnen”, as you might say in Swedish…or did I just misunderstand that idiom? :)

Update: A reader pointed out that the expression “en bulle i ugnen” is just as valid in English as “a bun in the oven”. I hadn’t even bothered to check that. The headline thus reads “A bun in the oven can have serious consequences” in English.

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Fun, Photos | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Sihlfeld Sushi

Sunday, May 30, 2010 – 09:24

Sushi party at Anninas place! Make your own Sushi (yum!)56685

A Swiss/Japanese evning with lots of people from ICF.
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David thought it a to be a good idea to invent a new type of sushi: Chocolate.
56649Then they found some Lingonsylt (from IKEA :) ) in the fridge. This can’t possibly end well…
56679It didn’t end well. This frankensushi now contains chocolate and lingonsylt.
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I always lend the camera to someone else at parties. That way I (usually) get lots of good photos while not having to be the remembered as “the guy with the camera”. Those who try the camera always take many pictures, since most of them never have operated a fast camera with a good lens before. Another benefit is that you get photos of yourself, something that becomes a problem if you are a photographer. :)

Stepan, Florian and I are having some kind of discussion.
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Anyone can take good photos with an external flash, as long as the camera is set to be fully automatic with TTL; Me and my new haircut.

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The Latinos spiced up the evening with some groovy music and we started to dance.

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A crazy group photo (I’m lying on the floor to create an interesting perspective)
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A very nice evening with good food (thank Yuki!) and lots of friends. A good way to prepare for the upcoming exams.

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Laborführung

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 – 22:25

Laborführung - Guided tour through the laboratory.

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All students taking the Physik IV course (lecture shown in above photo) were offered to see the Physics laboratory where professor Wallraff and his colleagues are conducting their research.

We began visiting the superconduction lab. At temperatures around 20 millikelvin, research is performed on superconducting circuits for quantum computing. Read more about it here.

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The blue cylinder in the above photo is one of four cryostats in which experiments are performed.  One of the researches is demonstrating the equipment to us and explains some aspect of “Circuit Quandumelectrodynamics”. Liquid Helium is used to cool the sample to around 4 K, and then an ingenious procedure of mixing different Helium isotopes cools it even further, eventually reaching 0.02 degrees above the absolute zero. If you think that’s cold, you haven’t seen nothing yet.

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In the next laboratory research on Bose-Einstein Condensates is performed. This is a rather new field, with the 2001 Nobel Physics Prize awarded (not to this lab) for its discovery. Behind the black round window in the photo below, just under the thumb, is the location where the exotic matter is created.

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The BEC state of matter is very strange, from the perspective of the normal world. To even exist, it requires temperatures lower than 20 nK, or 0.00000002 degrees (!) above the absolute zero. To reach such extreme temperatures, a delicate arrangement with lasers, mirrors and lenses is used, followed by removing all but the very coldest atoms in a sort of a centrifuge arrangement.

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We were told that this experiment had taken years just to build. I’m not surprised…

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It was interesting to see these experiments, and I was impressed by how much we, just being bachelor students, were welcomed and the level of detail we were able to understand. This was the first time I had visited an experimental physics laboratory, and I got quite excited over the physics of quantum computing. I’m still just at the introductory level of quantum mechanics, but the two coming years should show whether or not physics is worth going deeper into.

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Life, Photos | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Life On Twelve Square Meters

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 – 23:14
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This is where I’ve been spending the last year; Room 338 of Meierwiesenstrasse 62, Zürich, Switzerland. No luxury, but has everything I need. :)

In todays lecture in Quantum Mechanics we discussed the Tunnel Effect and its applications. To demonstrate, the professor had brought a whole ST microscope (a device invented in Zürich, by the way) and used it to scan a graphite surface. You could see individual atoms appear as we zoomed in, and we eventually saw only a 1×1 nm square. At that magnification, the noise level was quite high, as the microscope wasn’t shielded from vibrations such as the ones from the professor standing nearby. That should tell you something about the sensitivity of the microscope.

They’ve really got some toys to play with here at the Physics department, and I think it really improves the teaching to perform experiments during the lecture. The only strange thing was that the atoms on the projected image were yellow. I thought Carbon molecules were black. Hm…can somebody tell me why?  :)

For the sarcasm-impared I should point out the (obvious) fact that color doesn’t make much sense on that scale.
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Next semester

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 – 23:52

Aargh, why did the inventor of the Swedish language have to pick the word “termin” to mean “semester” while “semester” in Swedish means “holiday”? It doesn’t make any sense and just opens the possibility for (albeit very funny) misunderstandings: (“The Swedish student cried out after his final exam before the summer break was finished: “Finally semester!”)

Anyway, some of you asked me about what I’m going to do the next semester. I had indeed hoped to stay another year at ETH Zürich, but things didn’t work out as planned. I had applied for another year and became nominated by my home university, so all seemed clear. Instead, ETH pulled the brake and referred to the part of the Erasmus agreement that stipulates that each person is allowed a maximum of two exchange semesters per lifetime. And the Swiss like to keep their regulations, so there was basically nothing I could do to change that fact.

I didn’t see it at first, but this actually is good. This last semester, that now is coming to an end, has been one of the toughest since I started studying. Being an exchange student, you constantly have to fight. Fight to maintain a reasonable timetable. Fight to find courses that match both your education level and has a chance of being accepted back home. Fight the examination forms that all the locals are used to. Fight the mandatory exercise sheets that only you seem to find difficult. I’m taking courses together with the mathematicians, physicists, mechanical engineers and electrical engineers. For each course you have to find new people to study with, and that might be a little tricky since they have been studying with each other for several semesters. You are new, noone knows you.

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It has been quite demanding, especially for my psyche. While I’ve always done great at exams back home, my winter exams at ETH were quite bad, to be honest. A new experience, one that I don’t care to repeat. Thinking about the next year I realize that everything will fall in place much easier. I don’t say that Yi is easy, just easier than what I have here. Someone has already laid out the schedule, just follow that one and you’ll get a degree sooner or later.

I’m really happy everything turned out in the right way after all. I won’t be studying at the excellent ETH, but exchange studies aren’t fun more than two semesters. It was also a good thing that my application was dismissed because of bureaucratics and not personal reasons.

About the future now. I have elected to major in physics, which means that I have chosen courses from the TMV profile. From the description:

The up-to-date applications of physics are expounded in the courses on quantum computers, nanophysics, chaos and nonlinear physics.

I think that is enough reasons for anyone (okay, I admit; probably just me) to get thrilled! :)

On another note, I was doing some bandwidth monitoring on the servers with trafshow when I got a memorable error message. It read:

Nothing to show, this interface sleeping or broken. blah-blah-gluk-gluk-wait...

Wait, what just happened there?

Should also point out that I’ve added a little bit of functionality to the photo gallery. You can now choose to see larger versions of all items, I figured that the small images didn’t do justice to the photography. Hope you enjoy!

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Life | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Nein, nein! Bitte nicht!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010 – 01:01

During this year I’ve learned one thing about Germans (and Austrians). We have quite a few of them in the student house, and now and then you see some of them watching movies or TV shows from the computer. Harmless, you say? Wrong. Everything is dubbed into German. I just came back to my room after being in the lounge for a few minutes. In this short time I happened to catch a few scenes of what the Germans were watching:* Scrubs. Dubbed. Please let me die.

* This was on the TV screen, but the video came from a laptop, which means that they’ve gone out of their way to download a dubbed version…

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Guides | Tagged | Comments (2)

Finally Free

Saturday, April 24, 2010 – 01:01
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More urban photography, this time at an abandoned concrete mixing tower near Hardbrücke. A wireless flash with a deep red gel put on it produced these interesting colors.

This morning I was sitting on the tram on the way to the university pacing swiftly along Limmatstrasse when suddenly a car decided to make a left turn in front of us. Driving a railed vehicle, the only action the tram driver could take was to hit the emergency brakes and ring the alarm bell. The car managed to stop just in time, missing the tram by mere centimeters. Good for him, because I doubt  that a speeding 50-ton tram would have shown much mercy to a smallish car.

It was all over at a blink of an eye. We passengers got pretty shaken up, the split-second when the car was headed for destruction left quite an impression, and the emergency brake has quite a bite indeed. But most importantly, we avoided the accident. Nothing like a bit of adventure to start of the day I guess…

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Life, Photos | Comments (0)

Ashes to ashes, rust to dust

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 – 22:49
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Four disused Be 4/6 “Mirage” trams from the sixties standing in the VBZ depot at Hard.

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International Pillow Fight Day, Zürich 2010

Sunday, April 4, 2010 – 00:02

Picture this:

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You are having a nice peaceful walk along the shore on a spring Saturday. The temperature is gentle and the soft breeze from the lake goes by, taking with it all the burdens you have been carrying from the past week. The swans glide past you as you see the passenger ship leaves the quai across the bay…

Then, from nowhere, a hundred people pull out pillows and start hitting each other.

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As the craze spreads more and more people join in. Pillows burst and the air gets saturated by feathers that eventually form a thick layer on the ground.

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This was just what happened today at Bellevue in Zürich (as well as a number of cities around the world), on the International Pillow Fight Day, April 3rd. A flash mob of people of all ages gather to let go of pretenses and just unleash fury and fun upon each other.

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I heard of the event from some friends at the dorm, and decided to participate at the last minute. While the others brought pillows I grabbed my photo bag to get some shots of this fun event. Everyone had been instructed to hide the pillows and not start the fighting until a signal was given. Other people walked by without a clue what would happen in a few seconds, and then suddenly all these people start mashing each other. It was total mayhem with feathers flying all over the place.

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Wanting to get some great shots I put on the ultrawide lens, braced myself and jumped into the crowd. Armed with extra protective filters in front of the lens, I could hardly look down the viewfinder because the camera was hit by misguided pillows. I hadn’t anticipated the feathers; I should probably have avoided wearing black, still trying to remove the feathers…

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What better way to have fun on a Saturday?

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If you click on the photos you’ll be taken to the album where you can see more photos from the event.

By Jonathan Fors | Also posted in Fun, Life, Photos | Tagged | Comments (4)