On Friday we elected to stay in during the morning, in order to wait for Dimview's granddaughter and Everything2's most devoted noder, Fniggles, to arrive, escorted by her parents. Fniggles is just over one year old and thanks to Dimview's birthday gift of a user account she has been a noder her entire life, although she is probably not quite old to comprehend this yet, let alone the tremendous responsibilities and powers that have been bestowed upon her by her noble noding ancestor. Exactly what Fniggles will think when she grows up enough to understand E2 is entirely beyond me. It feels like some kind of vast heroic epic in the making. One day, when she turns eighteen, her parents will take her aside and explain, "There's something we haven't told you..." And how will she react? Horror? Embarrassment? Indifference? Or, in the space year 2026, will she resurrect the surely-dead website of Everything2 and lead it to our eternally promised but never delivered mastery of the universe and all information within?
Children who have been special/different/"chosen" since birth are commonplace in fiction, but it's not every day that one gets to watch a new one emerge in reality. It's like we were present at her secret origin or something.
Fniggles has been taught not to touch computers, which is probably wise, so, despite the encouragement of our scary room full of complete strangers, she was reluctant to get up in front of Dimview's laptop and start bashing keys. Eventually, however, she was coaxed into noding for the first time, and Dimview will probably put it online in her behalf some time soon. Belatedly, I have realised that perhaps giving her a keyboard and not showing her that it was connected to a screen might have been more effective.
We headed for the central station of Copenhagen, bringing with us two more members of the Danish noder contingent, soren15 and liveforever, and met up with perennial favourites la petite mort and StrawberryFrog, who had already spent the night in Copenhagen but were staying at a separate hotel away from the Noder Labyrinth. We headed for a pub not far from the front entrance of Tivoli for beer, and it was here that the one reason why I can never move to Denmark reared its ugly head: the booze is mind-bogglingly, cripplingly expensive. BaronWR handed me a 50-kroner note, offering to buy a drink for both of us. When I returned, I was sad to announce that not only had I no change to give him, I had had to inject 50 kroners of my own to cover our round. Do the mathematics. That's about £6.75 for half a litre (i.e. less than a pint) of beer, which is more than twice as expensive as London, and the beer assuredly isn't anywhere near twice as delicious.
Liveforever, a history lecturer, then led us on a touristy kind of tour through the Latin quarter of Copenhagen, dispensing sage advice about the various historical landmarks as we passed them... advice which I, a scientist, have sadly since allowed to fall entirely out of my brain. We worked our way past Tycho Brahe's tower (more later) and knobbly leafless trees (even Danish trees are stylish), working our way towards Klaptræet, a traditional destination of the Copenhagenoders, where we enjoyed beer that was even more expensive still. Our final Copenhagenoder, andersa, met up with us. La petite mort and BaronWR, who have much better cameras than me, photographed us using their various magical complicated lens structures, such as the cool bending tripod-like "Lensbaby" device, which allows you to e.g. take a photo of a row of fence posts with all of them in focus. It transpired that their cameras were basically identical except for branding and very minor alterations in shape.
Desiring further, cheaper booze, we left Klaptræet and passed other interesting landmarks and a shop selling ludicrously expensive custom bikes and eventually wound up nowhere because all the pubs and bars we investigated were either too expensive or too full. Finally, we admitted defeat and retired to the Labyrinth, where, with a full complement of noders achieved, we attempted to create a second, grander and much more complicated panorama which, at the time of writing... has not yet been successfully stitched together from its components. Bah!