We found out it was Runeberg day today when Shannon and I snuck out for lunch when the kids were in school. So of course we tried a Runeberg pastry.
(Truth be told, we understood what this was all about after the fact, but nevertheless …). It was very good – dense but not overly dense. Finding out that it is baked with rum makes sense.
Also, as a bonus these are only available through today – so we lucked out!
I was reminded the other day that it has been a while since I’ve posted, so hint received. To be honest, I’ve been nose deep into modeling and computer coding, which isn’t that scintillating.
A personal note: It was warmer last week (above freezing) – but cloudy with a lot of snow. This week is sunny and cold. It is good to see the sun! Also last week I was skating and the kids were sliding at the school. I was almost ready to come in (and perhaps a little overconfident in my skating ability) when I slipped on the ice and fell backwards – knocking my head. That was painful (both on my tailbone and the head). I don’t think I had a concussion – and the tailbone is finally feeling better – but sheesh! Looking back, that slip-up did throw me for a loop.
On Monday I started teaching my data visualization seminar (online) – it meets weekly-ish (the days of the week vary). It was fun to get back to the practice of teaching – albeit online. I’ve taught this course for three consecutive years at Augsburg – so it feels comfortable teaching. This was been the third stretch of teaching online for me (once last spring, a summer course, fall semester 2020, and now). Truth be told, it feels less awkward to do then it did even last fall. I do long for the day to be back in the classroom, but we are making it work.
A diagram that I showed my class is the following:
(Wickham and Grolemund, R for Data Science)
I think about this diagram a lot when doing research. A lot of my work consists of iterating through a model (starting with a rough approximation à refining the model à collecting data to confirm the model or help it run) and then iterating through over and over. Many times it feels like this:
The biggest challenge is trying to find the correct data to work with. My project focuses on developing a model for soil carbon dioxide for forests in the Yukon. These forests lie along a fire chronosequence – one was burned in 2012, 1990, and 1969. We want to know differences between how the forest has recovered in its soil.
In order to build a mathematical model, some of the data I need includes soil temperature, soil moisture (as a percentage of saturation), and aboveground photosynthesis. A lot of these data are available from NASA (MODIS) or the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission – both satellites that orbit the earth. Pretty neat stuff to be working with. For example, here are some plots I made this week:
This graph represents photosynthesis – so how much carbon the ecosystem is removing from the atmosphere. I like graphs like these – the red dots are data products from the satellite, but the black line is a smoother I developed. Each of the panels represents a different site I am focusing on – the year refers to when it was burned by forest fire.
The soil temperature with a graph laid out similarly is the following:
(The green line is a satellite data product, the brown-ish orange line is based on plot measurements taken at the sites (from Koster et al 2017).
I was excited to see how the directly measured data matched up closely with the satellite data product. When ground-based measurements are approximately equal that makes me happy.
The last measurement I need is soil moisture, from the same satellite data product:
(The scale ranges from 0 to 1; so 0 means completely dry soil, 1 saturated). Ok, not so great news. The site 1969 shows some variation (I would expect it to be constant during the summer months, but sites 2012 and 1990 are pretty flat.
That is to be expected when working with satellite data – while we hope it to be continuous, these data products are derived at a fundamental level from surface reflectance measurements and highly processed (if you want to dig into the details you can look here). Clouds and other factors obfuscate the satellite measurement.
So what to do? Well I am currently looking into other ways to compute soil moisture (leaky bucket models here we come!). Soil temperature can be modeled as a diffusion problem. More work and … you guess it more coding.
Onwards.
I imagine your reaction is similar to my mother, and mother-in-law – and perhaps this the image running through your head:
The ski jump was at the Puijo ski jump base. This is a serious ski jump hill.
We had received an email from the kids’ school that the local ski jumping club was having (introductory) training lessons for kids – so why not?
We did feel a little like the odd ducks here – we were the only English speakers at the lesson, but the teacher Nico did speak English well. He was patient and fun.
Basically the lesson was having the kids go down a small ramp many times, learning the basics.
They all loved it and want to return next week. C, the adrenaline junkie, had huge smiles on his face, G was super focused on his form and trying not to stick out, and P was worried that she would have to ride the ski lift.
Maybe by the end they will attempt the big hill?
When I lived in Utah for my graduate studies this was (and still is) the tagline for their tourism campaign. I was thinking of that yesterday as I took the kids skating in the evening. Perfect stellar dendrites were falling down from the sky. It certainly did feel like this was the greatest snow on earth.
I don’t want to pick any fights about the “greatest” snow, but some observations. The temperature in Kuopio seems to be uniformly constant as a rule (rather than an exception). Having the temperature stay in the mid to upper 20s (Fahrenheit) means that the snow is uniformly fluffy. The type of snow is so variable for a given snowstorm in Minnesota – mainly temperature dependent (heavy-wet, dry, sleet, etc). In terms of amounts, we get a little over a lot of days, rather than a lot over few days. That makes a difference.
Living in an apartment and not having a car also means I do not have to shovel every day and navigate the roads. That helps. Although I wonder how much this tractor costs – it can very quickly clear snow. #goals
Let’s explore Finnish foods! I love eating sweets versus savory for breakfast, so I went to the bakery section of the grocery store sample some pastries.
The bakery section has the usual selection of donuts and rolls, but I am going to pick two that seem unique to Finland. So the two candidates are:
By appearances this looks like a sweet roll with a cream cheese (danish like custard). When we cut inside the middle is dense, outside is flaky and buttery.
The filling on top does indeed taste like a cream-cheese danish. It is good, more like a bread. Definitely filling.
On the outside looks like a sweet roll dusted with powdered sugar, but does feel a little dense (and comes with a nice paper plate).
Ok, let’s cut inside. WHOA – what do we have here? Well hello to some surprise yummyness!
There is some surprise filling inside here. The picture may not show it too well, but the filling is white at the center, and perhaps ringed with jam on the outside. Intriguing.
The outside tastes like a croissant (and is flaky to boot!). Love the addition of the whipped cream and (strawberry?) jam.
Overall, both are very yummy. If I were to pick one as a winner, it would be the kermaviineri irto.
Looking forward to trying more food!
People back in Minnesota have been asking “what the COVID-19 situation is like”. After a few weeks on the ground, here are some (mainly anecdotal) comparisons. I tried to find data/sources where appropriate, but recognize this is an incomplete analysis.
| Minnesota | Finland | ||
| Size/Area | 5.6 million / 87,000 square miles | 5.5 million / 131,000 square miles | From Wikipedia |
| Current new cases (as of 1/19) | 922 LINK | 217 LINK | Minnesota numbers are decreasing from a second wave LINK. Finland numbers have been hovering around that point for several months. |
| Total vaccinated (as of 1/19) | 200,000 LINK | 56,000 LINK | Approximate values – I believe Finland has just administered one dose. |
| Mask wearing | Statewide mask mandate | Region dependent? In any case, wearing a mask in public is highly encouraged. | Finland seems to use more disposable masks more* |
| Everyday life | Shops open, restaurants to half capacity | Shops and restaurants open | |
| Schools / Universities | Elementary moving to in person. LINK / Universities are mainly online. | In person / Universities are all online. |
*For example, we received a general message from their school that high school students in Kuopio will be required to wear a mask. The school would provide students with disposable masks that they needed to monitor to make sure they had enough for each school day, assuming they use 2-3 per day.
From what we have seen there is more of an acceptance of the public health measures here – as I was told once “Finns do what we are told.” As a country, I think Finland buckled down early and kept numbers low. Overall there is concern about the new COVID variants – but the recommendations to the epidemic varies by region. (Kuopio was recently classified in the accelerating phase).
Not speaking Finnish, and getting a limited (in other words, translated) view on Finnish news I can’t speak to what public attitudes really are on the epidemic – if they are as divided as they are in Minnesota. Each store here has sanitizing stations as you enter, and people line up to use them. A lot of the work has moved online (or people find clever ways to network outside). Finns that I know are taking it seriously by rearranging meetings to online or if eating in a restaurant picking a time where it isn’t as busy.
I appreciate the concern in Finland that daily new cases have increased 20 fold (from single digits in the summer to 200-300 new cases). It can’t help but wonder how Minnesota would celebrate these numbers (and we were at a scarier place in December 2020). On the same hand, there are lessons to be learned from Finland in the acceptance of what needs to be done for public health, and to channel some Finnish sisu to work together to get through this.
We left Minnesota just over two weeks ago, and the news to report is that things are … mundane. Mundane in a good way – (1) my kids finished their first full week of in-person school since March of last year, (2) this weekend we took our kids to a trampoline park to burn off some energy, and (3) we spent some of Friday evening working on a puzzle. We’ve been able to video chat (Facetime or Facebook) with our parents. In many ways our lives seems normal-ish, with the exception that we are half a world away.
“Frank is coming to town next week – he would like to meet you. Perhaps we can do a walk over lunch and have some sausages at a fireplace?”
Let me state the obvious: it is cold here. Walking to work at 8 AM requires bundling up in (a) snowpants, (b) scarf, (c) hat, (d) mittens, and (e) reflective vest (sun doesn’t come up for a few hours).
“So do you want to purchase a pair of skates?”
My spouse – S — is asking me this question in Prisma, a megastore that could best be described as a cross between a Super Target and Walmart. We had walked a half hour at -12C to get the kids sleds, and also decided to pick up skates for the kids (we were told they would need it for school at times).
But the real question is whether or not I would want a pair.
A confession: I don’t know how to skate. I grew up on Lake Vermilion, tried skating 2 or 3 times – didn’t really like it. (In college walking back to the dorms – finishing graduate school applications NOT partying — I slipped on ice late one night, followed by knee surgery a week later. Those formative experiences probably have a more than unhealthy fear of ice. But I think a little pagophobia is a little justified.
So, when in Finland ….
Later that night I got to try them out. I went with the kids to a hockey rink about a 5 minute walk from our house (nearby their school). Thankfully no-one else was on the rink, it was just me and my kids.
I could describe those first few minutes on the ice, but perhaps this would better:
This was not going well.
But as I was shuffling along my kids were spinning circles around me. How did they get so good? They have my genes! All three of them came over and said “We will teach you how to stake dad! Just follow us. Your first lesson is Push, push, glide. You can do this!” I do remember teaching them that the time I took them to the rink, but just wore my boots because I was too scared to skate.
And so they gave me gentle encouragement, taught me how to improve my form, and were cheerleaders the whole way. It was a rare moment of unity and graciousness for my kids, and perhaps a turn of the tables. That realization was caused me stop (and almost fall flat on my face). With this trip we are asking so much of our kids – living in a country where they don’t speak any of the language, attend a school where they are complete outsiders, and force them to be away from all that is familiar for six months. Too often the power dynamics with children are unidirectional and asymmetrical, so having them see me as vulnerable (and willing for them to be the teacher while I am taught) is a valuable lesson. My heart was filled with pride.
I finished my kids’ “Beginner” lesson (my grades were an A+, A+, and an A; tough crowd), and I needed to practice for my “Expert” lesson.
I first went skating four days ago; each night we go out skating. I am seeing some improvement – undoubtedly I won’t qualify for Beijing 2022, but in my mind my kids are all medal winners.
P.S. You can also follow adventures along on my spouse’s blog: https://shannonofthezteam.tumblr.com/ (A lot of the pictures were taken from there. 🙂 ).