I’ve been very impressed. There is an “Environmental Statement” 12-page booklet in your room which tells you how much the hotel has done to help the environment. So I can tell you that, for example, energy consumption in 2005 fell to 78% of the amount used in 2003. Similarly, water consumption in 2005 was only 70% of the amount used in 2003. Since they started “sorting waste” (that’s recycling to you and me) in mid-1997 they have reduced waste by 76%.

Having said all that, the thing which impressed me most was the room key. In most hotels this is a credit-card size plastic card with a magnetic strip down one side. The Hilton have something similar, but it’s made from “Nordic birch”:

And here’s the back:

The room itself is quite woody:

And the bathroom is simply marvellous:

Gosh, how cool is Flickr?

One evening I ended up at a busy restaurant (the Restaurang Aktiebolaget Kvarnen) looking for a table for one. After a few minutes at the bar, the waiter asked me and another chap at the bar if we’d mind sharing at table. So I had a pleasant evening chatting to a Swedish man. The food was excellent. I had “SOS” to start, which was 4 different kinds of herring with boiled potatoes and 2 kinds of cheese. The main course was almost like a reindeer stew, it’s on the bill as “Renskavspanna”. It was all excellent and I heartily recommend it

So, to sum up, I really like Stockholm. It’s a really interesting place composed mainly of lots of islands, the people are really friendly and speak good English too. The only snag is that everything is expensive. Thank goodness I’m on expenses

From the Wikipedia:

In computing, mega- can sometimes denote 1,048,576 (2²⁰) of information units (example: a megabyte, a megaword), but can denote 1,000,000 (10⁶) of other quantities, for example, transfer rates: 1 megabit/s = 1,000,000 bit/s.

The prefix mebi- has been suggested as a prefix for 2²⁰ to avoid ambiguity, but is yet to be widely used.

So, rather cheekily, disk drive manufacturers always use megabyte to mean 1,000,000 bytes, which makes their drives appear larger. A 500MB drive will have 500,000,000 bytes, or about 4.8 mebibytes.

Conversely, the milli- prefix denotes thousandths (10^-3) and has the abbreviation lower case ‘m’. 5mA refers to 5 milliamps, or 5 thousandths of an amp. Amps get an upper-case ‘A’ because they’re named after Andre-Marie Ampere.

Under no circumstances should you confuse the two! It annoys me when I see computers advertised with 512mb of memory. 512 millibytes is just over half a byte. OK, it’s fairly obvious in this case that they meant to use ‘512MB’, but all it says to me is they either didn’t know or, worse, didn’t care about the difference between mega- and milli-.

Incidentally, a byte originally referred to a collection of bits, but in these modern times everyone seems to have agreed that a byte is made up of exactly 8 bits. Somewhat amusingly, half a byte or 4 bits can be referred to as a nybble. Beyond that, 2 bits are a morsel, although I’ve never really heard that used in real life.

So, 512mb is just over a nybble

UPDATE: Oh my goodness, it gets worse! It turns out that upper case ‘B’ refers to bytes, lower case ‘b’ is for bits. Which means that 512mb is 512 millibits, or just over half a bit!

Damn! How can I rant about people confusing M with m when I’m confusing B with b myself?

As always, it’s a learning experience

Given that I started at 20 stones and 1 pound, I’ve lost 10% of my initial weight, near as dammit.

To celebrate, here’s the weight loss graph.

This year we didn’t go to any at all, which I’m starting to feel was a grave error.

I finally got around to watching a recording of The Last Night on the telly and it’s made me realise that I’ve really missed not going this year.

Remind me not to be so short-sighted next year please

It was excellent! I went with Michael and Ricky, and we had a box to ourselves. Boxes are definitely the best way to see a concert

The programme was:-

• Vaughan Williams: Symphony 8 in D minor
• Turnage: Mambo, Blues and Tarantella - Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (world première)
• Ligeti: Atmosphères
• Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

I really enjoyed the whole evening. Michael was impressed with the Stravinsky - it also featured in the Proms this year, played by the New York Philharmonic, but I’m told they didn’t make a very good job of it.

I have stayed at the Hilton previously, so this gave me a good opportunity to compare and contrast the two establishments.

First, let me talk about the rooms. The standard rooms at the Intercontinental are far superior to those at the Hilton. If you have a Hilton Gold Card or some other means of upgrading to an Executive room then you are approaching the quality of the Intercontinental standard rooms. I’ve never stayed in an Executive room at the Intercontinental, so I can’t comment on them. I seem to remember that the Marriott rooms were similar but slightly better than those in the Hilton - basically great if you get an upgrade, otherwise good.

Having said that, the public spaces in the Hilton are just much nicer. Because the Hilton is so huge (8 floors with over 100 rooms per floor on the non-executive levels) there is a lot of space available. The building is fundamentally square, with the rooms arranged around the edges and a huge atrium in the centre. So there is lots of room available for the lounge, which is actually on a mezzanine floor above the breakfast restaurant. By contrast, the Intercontinental is somewhat more limited in terms of available square footage. Don’t get me wrong, the Intercontinental is very good. But the Hilton is better.

After my swim I stopped by the lounge for dinner and it was superb. Everything about it was excellent; the service, the food (both choice and quality) and the ambience were all exceptional.

In other hotel related news, just to confuse matters, there is a new Hilton in town, the Hilton Prague Old Town. This is what used to be the Renaissance, just opposite the Marriott hotel. I visited the new Hilton in Prague Old Town briefly, and what I saw was a big improvement on the old Renaissance as was. The main restaurant is the Gordon Ramsay Maze restaurant, so it seemed rude not to have lunch there I had a BLT sandwich, which was rather fine

Prague Hotels have appeared previously on Twin Peaks.

http://bigmartyn.blogspot.com/

By the way, did I mention I lost another 3 and a half pounds last week? Check it out!

Because I’ve lost a stone, the Weight Watchers Leader gave me a stone! Frankly, I think the new one is far more attractive

I was concerned because I haven’t done nearly as much exercise this week, although I was able to control what I was eating far more effectively. This is mainly because we stayed at home this weekend, so we didn’t have to eat out

The weight loss graph is here