Hi there!
I am another individual borne in Denmark last century.The last twenty years I have lived abroad. Until now Scotland has been the country in which I have stayed the longest. Since that, The Netherlands was my favorite place for about five years. Now I have the fortune of residing in the south of Sweden on a tiny farm.
The picture is from Hesselø in Denmark where I pose together with our pet seal Igor.
See a larger picture.
Clogs with cap behind the heel.
Carl Friis-Hansen April 2nd 2007The last thirty years, or most of my life, I have used wooden shoes almost solely. In Denmark this is not so unusual. You would even find clogs the preferred footwear in hospitals, but most of all the wooden shoes belongs to the country side in Denmark. Nobody would ever dare to walk into a house in the country with shoes on, thus the clogs are perfect here. They are easy to take on and off, they insulate very well, they are easy to clean and they are cheap.
Wooden shoes are so common in Denmark, so there are rules for them in conjunction with the highway code. It is stated in the highway code that your wooden shoes must have a cap behind the heel to prevent the foot from slipping out. As I use my wooden shoes while driving, I have always bought them with the cap behind the heel.
In Denmark, Scotland and The Netherlands you can easily buy Swedish clogs with heel cap, it is almost the norm. In The Netherlands you can even get very advanced Swedish clogs, or klumpen in Dutch, with air suspension and nice finish.
I moved from The Netherlands to Sweden nearly two years ago. In those two years I have tried everywhere to get hold of clogs with heel cap, but to no avail. This is really strange, because after all most wooden shoes are made in Sweden, they have so much wood there.
A few weeks ago I found that my last pair of clogs were too broken to be called a pair of shoes. The only obvious solution that came to mind, was taking the car and drive the 250Km to Denmark to acquire a new pair. In Denmark I could get them with heel cap and in all shapes, qualities and sizes. And guess what, they were all of Swedish origin.
Wide Screen, aspect ratio and intermediate.
Carl Friis-Hansen Mon 28th January 2008If I asked people five years ago if they would accept if their television showed round objects as ovals, faces flattened and squares as rectangles, the answer would have been: "What a terrible quality". The picture has changed, literally and for the sake of utilizing an incomplete new standard.
You probably guessed that I am talking about wide screen television. I find wide screen great for watching films on large screens. When the screen is large enough, then you feel like being part of the scenery and the wide aspect ratio supports the way we normally scan the environment around us. The film makers recorded the films in a wide aspect ratio and the cinemas applied the right optic on the projectors according to the recorded format. Great, in the cinema the clocks are round and people do not have monster wide shoulders, it is natural and pleasant to look at.
The wide screen madness has also come to the laptops and flat screen monitors. However, here things work a lot better. The computer is utilizing the wider screen format by applying more information on the sides instead of just pull the sides apart. If you on the computer see a 3:4 aspect film in full screen mode, it is generally shown without deformation of the picture. On the computer the new wide screen format is adapted in such a way that it doesn't compromise the old format. Both formats live in harmony on the computer no matter what format the attached screen has.
All this wouldn't be a big problem with the television if it wasn't for the existence of massive amount of recordings from before the introduction of the wide screen. Technically it is no problem at all to have the television sense and adjust to the right format, but the manufactures are afraid of showing that the new wide screen has the same height as the old television. I suppose it would be a different matter if televisions were way larger and much cheaper, then one wouldn't have to utilize the last horsepower in every possible situation.