News archive until 2004

1. 27/09/2004 Back home, still feeling attached
2. 20/08/2004 Kazakstan is great
3. 23/06/2004 Writing for the Sony Ericsson T610
4. 02/12/2003 Web sites produced
5. 06/08/2003 Travel plan: Ljubljana 2003
6. 04/08/2003 Look over my shoulder

27/09/2004 Back home, still feeling attached

East, west, home is best. But I would still have liked to stay in Kazakhstan

I got back to Denmark yesterday morning. Already in the airport, the humid air of my home country poured into my lungs and clothes and made me wish back to the arid steppes of Pavlodar, where I spent most of my time. Observations - my task there - were twofold. I was spending much time with election commissions of regional level and below, with political campaigners and representatives of the authorities (governours, mayors - so-called (h)akims - prosecutors, judge, police). Yet much time was devoted to elections day on 19 September 2004, when the ODIHR deployed 22 short-term observers (STOs). My partner Susanne & I had to provide them with hotel rooms and drawing up maps with polling stations with routes to be realised. We were kindly assisted by our driver Sasha and interpreter Irina for the job. We also had a great time travelling around in the Pavlodar Region to check out the routes. Sleep was something we could only day-dream about, but the food was good.

As for the ODIHR assessment of the Majilis Parliamentary Elections 2004, consult the below address.

Officially, there are still Kazakhstani regions with second rounds expected. Also, a number of lawsuits by the candidates and parties (or against them!) may result in re-elections. No dates for seconds or re-elections were settled at the time of writing. I personally will keep myself ready to be re-assigned, although it is quite unlikely that I will go.

OSCE |  ODIHR

20/08/2004 Kazakstan is great

Kazakstan, the 9th largest country in the world, is hosting me till end of September. I am here to observe the parliamentary elections with a non-smoking American.

I have set up a temporary domicile in Pavlodar, a town in North-East Kazakstan. I shall be here till September 22, three days after the parliamentary elections for the Kazakstan Parliament. Pavlodar has 200-300,000 inhabitants, of which the majority are Russian, but the impression of the racial composition in this part of Central Asia is quite mixed. I have even met an Uyghur family that worked as cooks in a restaurant in the center. ODIHR deployed me here to observe the parliamentary elections that are due on September 19, 2004. The food is good, inspired much from the Russian cuisine with its wide choice of salads, and I feel free to express my vegetarian tendencies.

I make up one half of ODIHR's Pavlodar team together with an American woman called Susanne. We are getting along quite well except for my smoking. Kazakstan is the 9th greatest country in the world, at 60 times the size of Denmark or 4 times the size of Texas, so air pollution should not be a problem in the long run...

23/06/2004 Writing for the Sony Ericsson T610

In March 2004, I declared my old Nokia 6110 cellular phone dead. My son Balder got the phone as a toy, and I bought a SonyEricsson T610 instead. I payed around 2000 DKK for the GSM phone, and, as is the case of any other electronic aquisitions, I was soon to regret it. Two weeks ago, I saw the same model at 599 DKK. However, the payback time for the phone was long over, i.e., the investment was already paid pack.

The phone has a primitive web browser installed, and I was soon interested in writing pages for it. It has an ultimate bragging effect when you pull out your mobile phone at a family reunion to show the people your newest site. It has not been easy, though, even if you live up to the standards. Sony Ericsson does not provide a detailed instruction on how to write HTML pages for their T610 mobile phone, and neither a profound description of the limitations of the browser. When realising that, I made my own instructions. They work!

Writing HTML for the Sony Ericsson  T610 web browser

02/12/2003 Web sites produced

During the past five months I have been studying web journalistics at the Danish School of Journalism. A couple of sites have been the result. They are all in Danish, though. The final exam is scheduled for December 17, 2003. Till then, have a look at the best ones.

Min Thomas | Idealisten | thomas : køhler (my exam project)

06/08/2003 Travel plan: Ljubljana 2003

I finally bought the ticket for my participation at the 13th Congress of Slavicists. It will be by train with the following schedule:

From-to         day  mt  yr       hrs     train

Silkeborg     Wed 13.08.2003  dep. 15:04  R 5344
...
München Hbf   Thu 14.08.2003  dep. 07:26  EC 113
Ljubljana     Thu 14.08.2003  arr. 13:53  EC 113

Ljubljana     Fri 22.08.2003  dep. 12:05  EC 314
Salzburg Hbf  Fri 22.08.2003  arr. 16:44  EC 314
...
Silkeborg     Sat 23.08.2003  arr. 11:03  R 5325

04/08/2003 Look over my shoulder

See how I work. I am proposing the opportunity to look over my shoulder and see how my paper about vampire etymology for the 13th International Congress of Slavicists in Ljubljana grows. They are thus not finished, but subject to changes. I am doing so in order to get more response from experts or others who can be of assistance, e.g., for proof reading.
This is in the spirit of the Internet. The Hyper Text Markup Language, the building stone of the World Wide Web, was invented in CERN (Centre Européenne de Recherce Nucléenne), Switzerland, as a means to share research results with colleages all over the world. Before that, you would have to use special terminal client software to obtain data, and be damned sure you typed things right. With HTML documents the scientists could do the linking to information located not only on the same server, but even on a remote one far away. A matter of course today with the HTML version 4 well integrated, but an idea aiding tremendously to the spread of home computers over the globe.
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