The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek - Netflix Series

The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Very creepy, very frustrating. We've got a stalker who surreptitiously makes video recordings of people and then sends them those recordings along with bits of a nursery rhyme. Once they are well on edge, our stalker sneaks in, kills them and then slips away, often just seconds before our hero cops appear. Bodies start piling up, and then they start hitting closer to home, so now we're super motivated to find this scum bag, and find them we do.

The climax was a bit irritating. Our big and strong hero Hess has finally tracked down the villain, a slightly built woman, but he doesn't have a positive ID yet, so she's just a suspect. But she ain't waiting for the handcuffs, she  makes a surprise attack on our boy with an ax, doesn't connect with the ax, but manages to knock him to the ground. While he's on the ground she manages to give him a big ax whack in his leg. There is a tussle and he manages to get back on his feet and runs away to the bog. Who knows how people's brains react under stress, but I can tell you from the comfort of my armchair that was the wrong thing to do. He should have dealt with this woman here and now. Of course he doesn't have his gun because he's been suspended. Of course he has, dramatic cop shows, you know.

6 episodes under an hour each.

Season 1 post here.

The Asset - Netflix Series

The Asset | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Our girl, Tea, has been enrolled in the police academy and has been doing well when she is inexplicably booted out. Waiting for her is Folke, a grossly overweight detective from the narcotics division. He offers her a job going undercover to nab Marin, Denmark's biggest cocaine dealer. If this job goes well, he tells her, maybe she can be reinstated with the police. Oh yeah, our last agent was killed on the job. Doesn't sound promising, but she doesn't have much else going on in her life besides her attendance at an Alcoholics (or Narcotics) Anonymous weekly meetings.

The detective's plan is for our girl to worm her way into Ashley's (Miran's girlfriend) inner circle and then maybe she can pick up clues as to what the boyfriend is up to. To this end they set her up with a high end jewelry store, evidently they are really serious about this.

In short order we learn that Marin is deadly serious about his business, as you would expect, so everything our girl does with fraught with danger.

6 episodes 50 minutes each.

Main Cast and Characters

Actor Name	Character Name	Role
Clara Dessau	Tea Lind	A washed-out police cadet who goes undercover as a luxury jeweler to get close to Ashley.
Maria Cordsen	Ashley	The girlfriend of Denmark's biggest cocaine dealer (Miran) and an unwitting informant for Tea.
Afshin Firouzi	Miran	Denmark's most powerful cocaine dealer and Ashley's boyfriend.
Nicolas Bro	Folke	The director of the special unit (PET) who recruits Tea for the undercover mission.
Arian Kashef	Bambi	Miran's volatile younger brother, whose violent mistakes contribute to the empire's downfall.
Soheil Bavi	Yasin	One of the agents involved in the surveillance and handling of Tea's mission.
Lara Ly Melic Skovgaard	Sofia	Ashley's young daughter.

Bluetooth

Haraldr Blátǫnn Gormsson

Stolen entire from The Village Hemorrhoid:

The Origin Of The Term "Bluetooth"

Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson (Old Norse: Haraldr Blátǫnn Gormsson; Danish: Harald Blåtand Gormsen, died c. 985/86) was a king of Denmark and Norway.

The first documented appearance of Harald's nickname "Bluetooth" is in the Chronicon Roskildense (written c. 1140).

The Bluetooth wireless specification design was named after the king in 1997, based on an analogy that the technology would unite devices the way Harald Bluetooth united the tribes of Denmark into a single kingdom. The Bluetooth logo consists of a Younger Futhark bind rune for his initials, H (ᚼ) and B (ᛒ).

Secrets We Keep - Netflix Series

Secrets We Keep | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Short: 6 episodes, 30 minutes each. Rich folks in North Zealand, which is an area of Denmark, not the island off the coast of Australia, which confused me for a minute, especially since the woman cop is brown, so she could be Maori. But no, we're in Denmark. We have two families, neighbors, both have Filipino au pairs. I don't know how rich you have to be to have an au pair. I don't think we ever considered it. We did hire housekeepers, babysitters and daycare, but I don't remember even considering an au pair. Anyway, the folks in this show are beyond rich. I think they set it this way so they could show us these fancy houses, and they are fancy. One traditional and one modern, on the water, with seemingly acres of woodland around them.

Basically, we've got two white women getting blown about emotionally by what's happening with their boys and their au pairs. Both are happily ensconced in their well insulated lives, so when the shit hits the fan they start coming unglued. They do and say things that someone with a cooler head would not do, but how cool would you be if you were in the shit? The husbands manage to do a better job of keeping their heads. Possibly because they come from a more competitive environment and less cooperative. The difference between the two women is summed up when Katarina tells Cecile that she, Cecile, teaches her kids to clear the table, and she, Katarina, teaches her kids to fight.

Communication Channels

My Wiring 'Closet'

I finally got around to replacing the across-the-floor ethernet cable with one routed across the ceiling and inside the wall. When we started the big remodeling project over a year ago, we moved into the basement and we took our TV with us. The remodeling project was only supposed to last a few months, so it's okay to have a cord running across the floor. I mean, we're in the basement. Actually the only place it ran across the floor was at the bottom of the stairs and we covered it with a rug, so it was practically invisible. But it's been a while, and the TV is still in the basement, so I ran a new cable in a more secure and permanent manner.

The Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon's NBA team, have been having a rough time since all their star players have moved to greener pastures. They're getting better, slowly. They beat the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday night in a nail-biter. Since they are rebuilding the team, they are also trying to rebuild their fan base, which has been decimated since the all-star team they had is no more. To that end, they are now broadcasting all of their games on commercial TV - Charge! 2.2. We have an antennae in the attic, let's see if we can pick it up. Plug the upstairs TV into the coax and bingo! NBA basketball clear as a bell. The antennae is a big old thing that I probably set up 30 years ago. It's not one of these miniature things they are using for their ridiculously high frequency, but it works fine.

Since I was running a new ethernet cable, and since we discovered a new use for coax, I figured I might as well run a new coax cable as well. Plug in the basement TV and run setup to scan for broadcast channels. It found, I dunno, a couple of dozen including the one channel we care about. 

But then I remember that new stuff has been showing up on the ROKU, so I go take a look. One of the new things is TV channels, and there are a bunch of them. ROKU displays a list and I spent a couple of minutes scrolling through it looking for Charge! 2.2. I must have scrolled through a hundred channels. I did not find Charge! 2.2 and I did not find the end. It might be there. Seems as though everybody and their mother that has a broadcast license is making the content available over the internet. I noticed half a dozen news channels from around the country.

There is only one coax cable running to the upstairs TV and no easy way to run ethernet, so now I'm wondering if I can send ethernet signals over the sane wire as the antennae signal. I mean, what frequency domains are we talking about here? Are they even in the same ballpark, or are they in different leagues, playing in different cities, on opposite sides of the country? I have no idea. 

Turns out you can run both broadcast and ethernet signals over the same coax and both signals come through loud and clear. Previous post about the Hitron adapters I used. I am only using one set of signals at a time, so it's possible if you were using both sets of signals simultaneously there might be some interference.

Those stupid screw-type coax connectors are a royal pain. If you hold the cable at the correct angle, the nut screws on easily, but get just a little off center and it jams up. You make or break half a dozen of these connections and your fingertips start complaining. It's basically ridiculous, but it's what I've got. There used to be quick connect coax connectors that just plugged in, no nut screwing required. I think those came with video games, but I don't have any of those connectors and all my coax cables have threaded connectors.

Our country has a zillion video channels all being broadcast simultaneously. YouTube has like a zillion channels, but each of those YouTube channels only put up new stuff intermittently, like once a week. But there are a zillion people watching those channels. How many channels are active at one time? Channels where we have someone broadcasting and somewhat actually watching? Is it a zillion times a zillion times a zillion? Or maybe the cube root of a zillion? If you had access to YouTube statistics you might be able to come up with a number. Of course, YouTube is only one player in the great social media landscape, and all of the traffic that involves an actual person is no doubt dwarfed by the tsunami of bits flowing between machines.

Meanwhile, over in Finland, somebody cut one of their undersea communications cables:

Undersea data cable between two NATO countries breaks 

Excerpt: 

“Disturbances occur from time to time and there can be various reasons,” Bergstrom added. “For example, they are susceptible to the weather and damage caused by shipping.”

Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO) told Yle that it was too early to assess the cause of the cable break, noting that around 200 undersea cable breaks happen around the world every year.

“The most common cause of cable breakage is human activity, such as fishing or anchoring,” a SUPO spokesperson said.

Two days later we get this report:

Danish Navy Hunts Down Chinese Ship Suspected Of 'Sabotaging' Baltic Sea Cables

From Michael Every:

So, if you want to worry, look at less glamorous but arguably more significant headlines that don't point to world war, per se, but to world disruption, and major world market volatility.

Official allegations of sabotage were made in the EU as: two of Finland's five nuclear plants had to be shut down; a key Norwegian oilfield was shut by a power outage; the support cable on a Finnish suspension bridge broke; and two key Baltic EU data cables were severed. The Chinese vessel Yi Peng has been flagged as a possible cable culprit and at time of writing was forcibly moored in Denmark. This is likely to prompt a strong Chinese diplomatic response; and perhaps an EU one if it proves a Chinese ship damaged key seafloor infrastructure (again: this also happened to a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in October 2023).

Twin Otter Floatplane

De Havilland Canada Twin Otter, Copenhagen Sea Airport

The Sea Airport is located in central Copenhagen, but look what's right next door:

Kastellet

Golly gee, that looks like one of Vauban's creations, but Wikipedia doesn't mention him.

Nimbus Motorcycle

Nimbus vintage motorcycle

The Nimbus is a Danish motorcycle produced from 1919 to 1960. Two basic models were produced, both with a 750 cc four-cylinder engine and shaft drive. A Nimbus was featured in a 1948 short film.

De Nåede Færgen (They Caught the Ferry) Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1948
Funde a Negro Club de Cine

There is a Nimbus club in Chicago, and there is an active market for old Nimbus machines.

Update August 2026 replaced missing video. I suspect that the riders in the film are crossing the Danish island of Funen to the port of Nyborg. Nyborg? Is that where they got the name for Plutonium Nyborg in the movie Heavy Metal?

Denmark

Soirée in the Studio (1905)

Put together this digital jigsaw puzzle last night. It was only 150 pieces so it was not too tough. Nice thing about Jigsaw Planet is you can choose the number of pieces you want, up to 300. 300 pieces can take hours. It might be a little easier with a larger screen, but we're getting distracted.

This painting was done by Laurits Tuxen, one of the Skagen Painters, so called because they hung out in Skagen, Denmark. When I look on the map for Skagen I find that it is at the end of a narrow strip of land sticking out of the top of the main peninsula. I always thought of Denmark as being vaguely shaped like the lower peninsula of Michigan, and it is, except for having this worm-like appendage sticking out of the top (and being composed of 400 odd islands).

Denmark

The red line near the bottom, above Hamburg is the Kiel Canal, "is the world's busiest man-made water- way navigable by seagoing ships. It is used by a similar number of ships as the Panama and Suez Canals."* The canal is in Germany, but it is like the natural dividing line between the continent and the peninsula, not like the actual border (the black line just above it that goes to Flensburg).

Back to our painting. The English title is "Soirée in the Studio", but the Danish version is "Aftenselskab i atelieret på Strandvejen" which Google translates as "Evening party in the studio on Strandvejen". And just where is Strandvegen? Strandvegen is the "beach road" that runs north from Copenhagen to the ferry terminal in Helsingør, a distance of about 20 miles. It's the blue line on the map. You need to zoom way in in order to get a clear view of it. It also refers to the northern section of Copenhagen where all the swells live.

The blue line started as a driving route that Google drew for me, but Google used a main road that was a bit inland so I dragged it over to the beach. Google offers the option of asking for a bicycle route, but then it also highlights ALL the bicycle routes which, as you might suspect of a country like Denmark, pretty much obliterates the map. So we'll stick with the redirected driving route.

* Quoted by Google from a PDF that was very slow to load. 

The Bombardment

The Bombardment / The Shadow In My Eye - Netflix Movie Trailer
What's on Netflix

We're looking over the selection on Netflix this evening and I notice the blurb on this one and I say, hey! I know that story! I mentioned it in a post about the De Havilland Mosquito. All I noticed at the time was that the Brits had made a successful attack on Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen in the last year of WW2. I didn't pay any attention to the 125 civilians killed when some of the attacking aircraft mistook a school for their target.

This movie is mostly about the people on the ground in Copenhagen and mostly about the people at the school. We got a lot of ordinary life, but there is also a handful of crazy and solid helping of horror. The story is told almost entirely with pictures. There are some bits of dialog, but I think it's just there to let you know that these are ordinary people who can speak. It's really quite an amazing film.

Update September 2022 replaced missing video.

The Investigation

The Investigation: Official Trailer | HBO
HBO

We started watching this mini-series last night. At first we thought it was just another European crime drama, but then it got a little extreme and my wife says 'I remember this'. Turns out it is a true story, a little bizarre, but a true story. A woman journalist boards a private submarine to interview the owner. The submarine sinks and the woman disappears. The next day the authorities haul the 60 odd ton submarine to the surface. Nobody there, but there is blood. Now we've got a story from the owner that makes no sense and the investigation picks up steam. Wild rumors don't help.

UC3 Nautilus

The UC3 was the submarine in this tragic event. The authorities eventually destroyed it.

Divers spent weeks searching the bottom of the bay looking for the body. Denmark must have spent a zillion Euros on this investigation.