Degrees

32 degrees C in my living room with the fan running and the windows open...
Gotta love weather like this =)

Lack Of Sunlight Kills

I knew it! Finally I am vindicated! Living in countries like my own (Sweden) is detrimental to your health! You heard it from the horse's mouth.

The second comment mentions this:

This is EASY, people. It's not like they don't sell UVB 2% up to 10% daylight CPF screw in light bulbs at any decent pet store that carries reptiles.

Perhaps I shall look in to it...

The Winter is Coming

I look outside my window today and it looks like an absolutely gorgeous day. Nary a cloud, and the sky is blue.
Looks can be deceiving, however, because I know that it's fucking freezing outside. I got the brunt of the mummy's wrath when biking home from my girlfriend's house earlier today.
I snipped this from the BBC online weather service (if you're from the BBC and you don't like this, just tell me).
As you can see in the "Summary" column, we're in for some nice weather. What's deceptive about this is the ghastly nighttime temperatures. As you can see, circled at the bottom right, is the -3 degrees C we will have on Monday night.
Last winter I experienced a grand total of 2 or 3 days with temperatures below 0 here in Enschede, and none of them were in the middle of October. I've got a bad feeling about this. The dutch say that this summer has sucked, so I can only assume that means that we're in for a shitty winter too.
Why ohh why can't I just live in a beach hut somewhere?...

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.

But alas, love is not all around, but rather winter is. Some people like winter, I don't. I especially don't like winter when our hot water heater that heats the water in our taps and the radiators in our rooms, is on the fritz. I can generally feel the defects coming, like the fast onset of arthritis. My fingers go stiff and numb, my typing speed goes way down, and my toes go cold.
This wouldn't be that much of a pain if it happened, say, once a month, or perhaps even more seldom, but when it happens once a day on good days, and several times a day on bad (ohh how many times I've walked down to the kitchen in nothing but my towel to kick it back in to shape so that I can take a shower, and I'm not the only one who's done it).
For some reason that I can't figure out (frugality or continental europe-ness) the dutch only have 1-glass windows in their houses. This isn't a problem if it's about 25C every day, but when the temperatures start falling to 15,10,5 and 0, it really becomes a terrible thing. Not only is it cold, but it brings the heating bills up a lot, since more heat is dissipated through the windows, and more energy is required to warm the house.
Knowing the dutch, however, I doubt that they actually crank up the heat when needed, they just suffer in silence, being warmed inside by the fraction of a cent they are saving.

It's such a nice feeling to be able to use your hands and feet to their full capacity. I can't imagine what it would be like to be old in this country.

In other news, I'm currently reading about game theory and Nash equilibria in connection to the interaction between agents in a multi-agent system. All very cool stuff.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to freezing my nuts off and kicking the heater back in to operation.

(Hah, it turns out that I already had a label for "cold". Maybe this is a topic that I talk about often!)