Train from Abisko to Narvik

Today we took the train from Abisko to Narvik. This is one of the most beautiful railways in the world. Unfortunately our train was running more than an hour too late which made taking photos difficult because it was getting dark (not that we had any direct daylight here ;)).

First the railway goes along the south cost of the Tometräsk lake.


Towards the Norwegian border the mountains become higher and there was more snow.




I think this photo is already in Norway. There is no visible border and there are no passport controls (Norway signed the Schengen treaty although no EU member).


This valley is actually the beginning of a fjord.



One of many fjords in Norway:




Almost in Narvik:

Dog sledge tour

When we were in Abisko we decided to make a dog sledge tour.


Each one of us got a sledge and four dogs. They really enjoy the running. The dogs know where to go and you only have steer the sledge and make sure you stay on the path.


The tour was only a few kilometers but it was very exhausting. We were riding on a small path in the forest. There were some downhill parts where you have to break the sledge and some uphill parts where you have push the sledge because four dogs are not enough to pull the sledge and one person up the hill. There were also few narrow bridges over brooks - some with railings and some without.


It was really fun. None of us had any serious crashes although there were few exiting and maybe also a bit dangerous moments. But the adrenalin is part of the fun.


Also none of us was bitten or attacked by the dogs. Although they are not kept as house pets they were very nice. In fact this is a great therapy if you are afraid of dogs.

X2000

For the part of our journey from Altvesta to Stockholm we used the swedish high speed train X2000. The distance between these two cities is 410km and the train covers it in 3 hours and 5 minutes. That means an average speed of 130kph, something which swedish car drivers can only dream of.

The swedish railway company SJ offers some nice services on board of the X2000 such as a restaurant car and electric plugs for notebooks. But one particuar service which I really like is the wireless network on board. Each car is equiped with an access point that can be used to access the train internet portal. It offers information about the timetables, current position of the train on the map and the possibility to book additional train tickets, a hotel or rent a car at the train destination.

Map showing the current position of the train

The wireless network can be also used to access the internet. This services is free in the first class and can be purchased as an additional extra when traveling with the second class. The internet connection is established through various technologies (GSM, UMTS, satellite) and the train router always chooses the fastest available connection.

Our X2000 after its arrival in Stockholm

Journey to Lapland

Sweden is part of the Skandinavian penisula. (Un)forunately Växjö lies in the very south of Sweden. Because of this the winter hasn't arrived in Växjö yet. It is raining all the time which is quiet disappointing.
It would be a shame to make Erasmus in Sweden without experiencing the real north. Therfor me and few friends decided to make a one week trip to Lapland. Our journey takes us up north behind the polar circle.

Original map by Boris Chomenko

First we traveled to Abisko - the train ride took over 23 hours (1920km). This wasn't as bad as it might sound. We spent the longest part of the journey in a night train. It was very comfortable (at least for those of us who booked a bed instead of normal seat). Abisko is a national park near the norwegian border. We hoped to see some northern lights and maybe take a ride with a dog sledge.
We did both! (to be continued...)

Ubuntu 9.10 is out

The new Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala has been released today and can be downloaded from your favorite local mirror.

And while you are waiting for the installer/update to finish you might try some of the Ubuntu Fair Trade cola!

Gotland

Last weekend I went to Gotland. It is a beautiful island with breathtaking nature and many interesting historical buildings in the old town of Visby. We had so much fun thanks to the great organisation by VIS.

Convert rectilinear panoramas to cubic with erect2cubic

When creating panoramatical images most programs will probably output a rectilinear or cylindrical projection as a result. Unfortunately some viewers only accept a cubic projection (6 different images of the sides of a cube).

There is a simple way how to convert a rectilinear panorama to a cubic one with use of free software. The following instructions were tested on (K)ubuntu 9.04, but should also work on other Linux distributions. Note that must be connected to the internet during these installations steps.

1) Install nona - in Ubuntu is is part of the hugin-tools package
2) Install the libgraphviz-perl package
3) Start CPAN as root: open a terminal (e.g. Konsole, xterm, Terminal) and start "sudo cpan". If it is the first time you start CPAN you will be asked whether you want to use the automatic configuration. In that case just say yes (press Enter).
4) Once in CPAN, execute the command "install Panotools::Script" (without the quotes). If you get any warnings about YAML, just ignore them.

Now we have the necessary software tools to do the conversion. Now you can do the conversion. Open a terminal and go to the directory where you rectilinear panorama file is. Suppose it is called rect.tiff then execute:

erect2cubic --erect=rect.tif --ptofile=cubic.pto

This will generate the file cubic.pto which we need to generate the 6 images of the cubic projection:

nona -v -o cubic cubic.pto

This might take some time (~few minutes). After that you will see cubic0000.tif, cubic0001.tif ... cubic0005.tif in your directory. These are the six sides of the cubic projection.