Since last time

I know I have not written something in a while. That is because I have had little to say. I am in the process of finalizing my itinerary for the the rest of my time abroad. I will post that in a little bit. There are still some open spots. Please if you have recommendations for places to see or more importantly things to do in the places I am going to see then tell me. This week I have had the last of my C-Programming and Combustion and the Environment lectures. My ISCAN course continues for four more weeks and my Aerodynamics lecture has one class remaining. So that means my first exams. Luckily for me Aerodynamics is attendance and participation based on a pass fail type scale so that is all set. ISCAN is still in session and my essay is not due until early may. Combustion has its final exam on the 15th of March so I have begun studying for that, and have taken a break from working on the project. And the worst is C-Programming. The final for that class unfortunately is not until mid june so I have three months to forget what little I have learned. Luckily I have a good friend here in Aalborg who is a Computer Science major so hopefully he can point me in the right direction. My professor decided to open a huge can of worms on the last lecture by telling us that now we have learned some C so here is a one hour into to the differences between C and C++, so go program in C++.... Also most of the students are electrical engineers in my class so he started talking in depth about filters. All of us thermal engineers were completely lost. Luckily I remembered some basics from EE100 but when related to computer programming it was way to deep for me so that made the work really hard. He realized this at the end of the last class and so maybe he will give us some lee way during the final because it is an oral exam...
In other news I am traveling to Copenhagen this weekend. I going with some friends from my Collegium and elsewhere in Aalborg. Eight of us rented a large room at a Hostel in the city so we are going for a long weekend starting friday morning. Hopefully we will tour around, vist Christiania, or maybe cross the water to Malmo Sweden and also check out the night life. For those who don't know Chrisitania is a large free loading hippie community in the middle of Copenhagen that has existed for almost forty years. It is a paralegal location with a history for being a place with very colorful people and at one time lots of drugs. however they were outlawed by the Danish government in 2004. They do not own the land but instead pay a sort of tax on the revenue they generate from their cottage industries such as hemp clothing, jewelry and art. I will give more  information and photos upon my return
I also finally purchased a bike. It was reasonably priced and came with lights which are mandatory by law after dusk. The lights are the nice ones that are powered my magnets so no battery issues for me which is good too. It is a road bike but not a racing bike that had a seven speed internal cassette. Unlike in the US and many other places most bikes in denmark that are not specifically mountain or road racing bikes have internal cassettes. That means that instead of having visible gears and a derailleur, there is one gear and when you press the shifter a piece inside the center of the rear wheel changes a gear. It means that there is what looks like a can of soup wedged horizontally around the rear axle that the gears hide inside. It has been much nicer and faster to travel by bike. It also has a bell but it is missing the spring. However I want to get all "engineery" on the bike because it is relatively simply made and if I make it nicer I can resell it at no loss at the end of the year. The other interesting difference about bikes here is the brakes. A standard bike has a cable friction brake on the front wheel but not on the rear. Instead if you pedal backwards that initiates the brake, a nice function of not having a derailleur. For me I have both cable brakes and the pedal backwards on my bike. However the rear one is missing the pads so it does not work. This got me into trouble today not once but twice in about 30 seconds going down a long handicapped ramp. I squeezed the brake but no matter how hard i tried i only went faster until i nearly crashed.... So I may stop by the bike junkyard nearby and get some pads a bell spring and perhaps a chain guard for some bike upgrades...