AstroBlonde

An old friend of mine wrote me a message about my blog! I'm happy that someone is reading it!
I am reading your blog and I really like it, especially the photos of Uppsala, of those nice seats by the riverside which weren't there when I was in Uppsala...

Thank you so much! She also recomended Texmaker as an editor for LaTeX. I haven't tried it myself but she wrote that it's free, works for all platforms and has really nice features. So, here's a link for all of you who wants to try it: Texmaker website

Instead of Texmaker, I use WinEdt, because I have Windows as OS. It is not for free, but is very cheap! I use it because of old habbits. Here you can find it: WinEdt website

I read in the Swedish newspaper, DN, today that an astrophysicist has calculated the fastest way of boarding an airplane. DN, didn't write much about it, so I started to read one of the references, Göteborgsbladet. They wrote a bit more about it.

So, apparently an astrophysicist, Jason Steffen, has calculated the fastest way of boarding an airplane. First he let the passengers sit down at every other window seat. Then the rest of the window seats. Then the middle seats and aisle seats in the same way.

Which method of boarding is the best?

The method in use now (the blocking method) is to fill the back of the plane first, then the middle section of the plane and last the front of the plane. That method should take around seven minutes to do. But Mr. Steffen's method should only take half of that time.

The tv-producer, Jon Hotchkisslet, recently did a test about this. He let 72 volunteers board an airplane with different methods. It turned out that the "blocking method" was on of the most time-consuming ways of board a plane. Even when people boarded with random seats in the airplane, was more time-efficient than the blocking method. The winner of the test was Mr. Steffen's method. Here are the Swedish articles I've read:
DN - Så fyller man snabbast ett flygplan
GP - Så fyller man planet på snabbast sätt

English:
ArXiv - Experimental test of airplane boarding methods
BBC News - Tests show fastest way to board passenger planes

Quite interesting! All I know from experience is that Swedes normally are pretty fast at boarding compared to Spaniards. :D I have two ideas about why: Either Swedes are pretty used to the boarding procedure because Swedes travel a lot! You know, cold and dark during winter and Swedes flee the country like crazy... OR it's because Swedes are very good (according to my experience anyway) to follow rules. You can see a big difference in how Swedes follow traffic rules and regulations compares to, for example, Australians.

But when it comes to luggage claim, Swedes are horrible creatures! :D No patience at all!