DIY Roasted Müesli

Time for a non-techy post ;) This time home made müesli.

Recipe
3-4 DL Oat flakes
1 DL Almonds
1 DL Hazelnuts
1 DL Walnuts
1 DL Sunflower seeds
1 DL Pumpkin seeds
1 DL Dried coconut mass
1 DL Flaxseed
1-2 DL Soy flakes

1 Tsp Salt
2 Tbsp Cinnamon
A pinch of vanilla powder

1 Tbsp Lemon-/lime juice
5 Tbsp Canola oil
5 DL Water

Preparation
Use a sharp knife and chop all the nuts and mix them with the rest of the dry ingredients (except the soy flakes) in a big bowl. Mix the water, oil and lemon-/lime juice in a separate container and stir it in a little bit at the time until it's all evenly distributed.

Prepare two deep pans with baking paper and spread the mixture evenly. Put both pans into the oven at 160-170°C for 15 minutes and then switch around the pans and roast for another 15 minutes. Add the soy flakes, stir around a bit and let it roast for another 5-10 minutes with the hot air fan engaged (if you have one). Be careful that you don't burn the mixture or dry it out to much!

Let cool in pan before storing in a air-tight container. You might also add raisins at this step if you like.

Serving
Enjoy with Türkish yoghurt and acacia honey - or if you you would like to stay away from dairy products; soya milk works very well as well.

New Zealand trip

Back in January I did a three week road-trip in New Zealand together with my good friend Kenneth.

NZ was amazing and although it reminds me of, and looks a lot like, Norway on the west coast - it also is very different. Me and my travel buddy Kenneth rented a car in Auckland and drove from there to Rotorua, Waitomo, Rotorua (oh yes... daytrip), Napier, Wellington - ferry to Picton, Christchurch, Mt. Cook, Queenstown, Milford Sound (day trip) before the last days in Queenstown. My favorites where probably Milford Sound at six in the morning (couldn't get closer to Avatars Pandora) and Waitomo caves with the glow-worms.

Adrenalin Forest just north of Wellington was a ton of fun!


Quad Biking in Queenstown.


More images from the trip can be found at my deviant art page.

Weekend in Vienna

Me and my girlfriend, Kristine, went to Vienna this weekend. Our Christmas present to each other this year.

After arriving Friday night and checking in at the Steinberger hotel in the center of the city we took a walk to get the lay of the land (which is completely flat by the way).





Just up the road we found this amazing building - which amongst other things houses the Spanish Riding School where you'll find the famous Lipizzaner stallions.





Ice skating seems to be pretty big in Vienna and they have several, big, courses around town. This one on a beautiful location with music and lights as well.





First thing Saturday morning we visited Schmetterling Haus which is THE place to go if you like butterflies in Vienna - which my GF does :)




First thing we noticed when we got inside was that the "climate" was indeed tropical - and next all the butterflies flittering around us. It is forbidden to touch them, but we couldn't stop them from occasionally landing on us though ;)

Since it was extremely humid my camera fogged up, since I had been using it outside in the cold. Therefore I had to wait a while before I could get any decent pictures. By then all of the beautiful, blue butterflies, and most of the others, had retired to the glass ceiling to soak up the sun. Big tip if you are going there; try to be there when they open at 10 in the morning.

We also visited Schönbrunn palace just outside of Vienna. Outside it's really not that much to brag about - other than being huuuge, but inside it's quite impressive! Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures inside so we'll have to settle for a picker of a pidgeon house from the garden instead. I like the design!




We didn't have time to walk around the estate this time. The guided tour, with bus, takes a couple of hours so doing it on foot would take a while... Something to do during the summer - when it's lush and green :) There were a lot of joggers out there though.

In the evening we went to a Mozart & Strauss concert. It was not just a traditional concert, but had a couple of opera singers and ballet dancers as well. Kind of a Kinder Egg thing that way. Neither of us are particularly into either of these, but being in Vienna you kind of have to experience something like this! All in all a great experience! The artists were top class, as well as we could tell at least ;)

On Sunday we had planned, amongst other things, to go see the Lipizzaner show and go ice skating, but unfortunately both me and Kristine fell ill so we spent the most of the day in bed. We felt a bit better in the evening so at least we managed to get outside for a small walk and dinner (classic Wiener Schnitzel of course) at a local restaurant.

Travelled back to Oslo again on Monday. All in all it's been a great weekend - in spite of a laid-back Sunday. Vienna is a wonderful city, with great architecture, that we both liked very much. Wouldn't mind going back some day! :)

Location:Vienna

Virtual Reality Redux

It seems Virtual Reality is gaining popularity again. I remember back in the 90' when VR was the big hype, but never took off because og the lacking hardware - both to produce the images fast enough as well as capturing user input accurately enough. There was also the problem with lag since the hardware available needed time to crunch the numbers.

Nowadays there's no question of the hardware being powerful enough and as we've seen the last couple of years the sensor technology and finding innovative ways of deploying it certainly has improved.

A while ago I came over the VR game gun which shows how "easy" it is to use off the shelf components and software and make something quite cool - as long as you have an idea.



This system, although functioning, would require a very larg venue to be practical so keeping yourselfe stationary, but still moving around in the virtual environment has been one of the other big issues needing solving. Creating a big sphere, ie a gigantic hamster ball, where you can round around inside is not a new idea, but I haven't seen anyone actually creating such a device until now.



My biggest concern about this sollution is momentum. No matter what material you decide to use to construct the sphere it will have considerable mass and coming to a complete halt after running will test your balance. I would love to try it out though :)

More information at the VirtuSphere homepage.

Arduino heaven

Wohoo! I received my package from Sparkfun today. It was packed with no less than three Arduinos (mega, pro 328 and pro mini 328) as well as an Arduino shield, 6-degree gyro parts and a MaxSonar ultrasonic range finder.

I've coded and scripted in quite a few languages up through the years, but I have never done anything with micro-controllers so I'm definitely jumping into the deep end with this. Should be fun :)

Magic clouds

Looking out the window from my living room It was hard not noticing these clouds colored by the setting sun. They might as well be taken straight out of an old Disney movie :)

Open source car

Riversimple has a new car project in the works. Although "open source" cars has been tried before this one is particular interesting since it's based on fuel cell technology. Also; they're planning to produce the car and you can lease it from them as well. If you choose to lease it over 20 (!) years they'll even throw in the fuel for free.

As an urban car I think it might be successful, but for longer trips it might have the range, but not the baggage capacity.

Article about the project can be found at Autocar.co.uk.