The occasional scrivener

Work flew us all to a hotel in Dubai for our annual conference. I’m back, safe and sound, although tired.

Dubai is… weird.

The place it reminds me most is the final part of the city in the video game “Crackdown”. Huge glass-clad towers limned in neon, and of course the world’s tallest building Burj Dubai Khalifa [1] standing in for the Agency Tower.

I also get the feeling that the excesses of the expat lifestyle contrasted with the privileges of the Emirati elite will result in a novel or movie by this generation’s Bret Easton Ellis channeling William Gibson.

In retrospect it’s obvious that the outer signs of prosperity —the giant buildings, the lavish artificial islands, the ultramodern metro — were not the result of brilliant free market policies by the autocratic ruling family but were instead a combination of the global hunt for returns and a sovereign state’s implicit gaurantee from default. Dubai wasn’t defying the property bubble, it was its apotheosis, and the needle-like Burj Whatever looks like the the pin that burst it. Thousands of speculators lost a lot of money and multiple thousands more poor migrant labourers lost their livelyhood.

The place is ghostly, the malls inhabited by wide-eyed tourists arriving six months too late and listless vendors.

Without the debt pumping the economy, there are few attractions. It’s hellishly hot and humid in summer, the prices are high, the rigidly Muslim society frowns on stuff that creative types like, such as public displays of affection, alcool, and sex out of wedlock. I’ll be seriously surprised if Dubai is even a player in a decade.

[1] Sheikh Khalifa, president of the UAE, personally bailed out the project to the tune of $10bn and got the tower renamed after him. No-one has got around to updating the lavish presentation of the building in the visitor’s area: it’s refered to Burj Dubai throughout.

So, we’re back after two weeks of all-inclusive at the Grand Makadi hotel near Hurghada on the Egyptian Red Sea. It’s been an awesome trip, very nice for the entire family (my parents, my sister and her partner + 2 kids, and us five).

Of course, we’ve been cocooned in a resort environment nearly the entire time but the Red Sea area is basically devoid of cultural artifacts[1] anyway, seemingly consisting entirely of sand, speculative construction, and half-naked Russians.

The sea is amazingly clear though, and we had some good snorkeling right outside the hotel (hotel placement is largely guided by the quality of the beach and reef). I managed to catch a glimpse of two dolphins fifteen meters from me while I was snorkeling.

We made a trip to Cairo to get the authentic tourist experience by the Pyramids (I swear people have been offering camel rides there since the Greeks). The visit to the Egyptian Museum was interesting, too. While most people decry the grave-robbing of the Pharaonic tombs, you can’t help thinking that all that gold was more useful in the general economy than locked up in the ground. I also suspect that later Pharaoh ripped off their predecessor’s tombs to construct their own.

Photo-wise it was very much a holiday-snap affair, with the Sigma 18-50 crapzoom getting a lot of use. Taking pics of the pyramids that aren’t carbon copies of tens of thousand others it really hard, and underwater photography isn’t my thing — too expensive and you need scuba equipment to do it properly anyway.

All in all it was an awesome vacation!

[1] if you discount the nearby ancient monasteries, founded there precisely because it was so remote.

A really nice set by the “beautiful and talented”[1] Elin Ruth. The orchestral sounds of her latest album “Cookatoo Friends” (sic) was nicely reproduced with the help of a 5-person band, including a violinist and a flautist.

It was a tour premiere, so it could have been a bit tighter, but that was made up for by the charming presence of the singer.

[1] as the man says, the man in this case being David Letterman.

Back from a week in the house in Halland. I’m returning alone tomorrow to join our son who’s spending a few nights with his grandparents.

Update 2009-08-01: back from the second week! Viking had a great time at Halmstad’s Äventyrsland and Svedino’s car+plane museum in Ugglarp. Last night we had a great grill party at the “cottage”.

Anyway, glad to be back. Train beats car when you’re travelling 2 people!

• Mån: kalkonbröst och skinka
• Tis: köttbullar
• Ons: kalkonbröst
• Tor: Italian BMT
• Fre: tonfisk
• Lör: rostbiff
• Sön: grillad kycklingbröst

(click on the picture to read a little story!)

[Note, in Sweden, “lumpen” is the formerly compulsory military service all men had to do. Guys being guys and the military being what it is, for many people it was a fount of stories endlessly retold on reserve exercises years later. A “lumparhistoria” is such a story].

We’ve arrived after visiting my parents in Halland over Easter.

A good time was had by all. Pics when I get them developed.

Update 2009-04-15: huh, development will take about a week. Sorry about that.

So we had a very nice Christmas down at my parent’s place in Halland, but it was a tough time getting there, with lots of stress in the run-up. But all in all we had a great time.

Here’s my dad, Leo and Viking carrying home the Christmas tree that grew in the old peat bog that can be glimpsed to the right of the shot. It looked great once we got it up!

I commented on this post this morning, but I found the full quote later in Joe Queenan’s most excellent American Caddy:

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges, it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of a dark abysm (I was about to write abcess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble, it is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

(Picture courtesy of Rockfoto.nu.)

I finally got to see Aimee in concert and it was pretty awesome. Only gripe is that most of the songs were from the latest 2 albums which aren’t my top favs. Totally worth going anyway!

I missed all but the last 3 songs from support The Submarines but they were pretty good too.

Set list:

• Stranger Into Stardust
• Looking for Nothing
• Dear John
• Save Me
• Wise Up
• Freeway
• The Great Beyond
• Going Through the Motions
• Calling It Quits
• Red Vines - acoustic version, just Aimee and a guitar.
• It’s Not
• Lost in Space
• 31 Today
• Borrowing Time
• Today’s the Day
• How Am I Different
• Driving Sideways - this was not rehearsed, and it showed ;)
• 4th of July
• One
• Stupid Thing

We’re back from our trip to Spain (Barcelona and Gran Canaria). It’s been very nice and relaxing and I’m not at all looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

I’m looking through the pictures now, not too many keepers (as usual). More stuff will be added to the “Spain 2008” set on Flickr.

… for a trip to Barcelona and the Canaries in the transition between October and November! Tickets are ordered, hotels are booked, now we just need to pare down our luggage to meet Ryanair’s ridiculous carry-on rules and read up on Barna.

It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’ll be taking the camera, but I’ll focus more on doing family stuff than photographs.

And you’re pushing 38
Heaven knows your train is late

— Lloyd Cole, Her Last Fling

It’s time for my annual summer vacation. Four weeks of… nothing much planned. We did have plans, but they fell through.

There’s plenty to do around the apartment though, and I’m looking forward to that. But I think I need some days to decompress first.

Updates will be even sparser than usual, but I doubt I’ll be able to refrain from posting to Twitter from the phone. So follow me there if you’re obsessively interested in my doings.

Have a great summer!

I’ve been using Bloglines for my feed reading for a long time now. I like the web-based interface, and the mobile version was OK. Lately however I’ve been having issues with the service:

• some feeds simply aren’t shown as updated
• the mobile service used Skweezer to modify external pages, but Skweezer changed something at their end and it stopped working. I sent a bug report, but no response
• the mobile version started defaulting to the desktop version at startup

So I said “fsck it” and switched to Google Reader. It takes some getting used to (I miss being able to get to the next subscribtion in one keypress) and the mobile version is very different, but so far it works OK.

Lesson Bloglines can learn: don’t stop innovating, and listen to your customers.

Please welcome Natalie Anne Croydon to the world.

We’re planning on visiting my parents this Easter weekend, but there are warnings of heavy snow on the way there. Instead of driving today we’ll be going down on Saturday.

You’d think that Good Friday would be a slow shopping day at IKEA, but you’d be wrong…

Update 2008-03-26: we’re back, from some freaky weather. Fun for Viking though, he hasn’t had any winter weather this year.

I’ll be doing my best not to access the internet from home during evenings and weekends. Mindless IRCing and browsing have been sucking a lot of time recently, and it’s past due to cut back. I’ll try to stick it out a month, then keep internet usage to weekends in the future.

I watched this yesterday and was impressed. It’s the first anime film I’ve watched, so it’s hard to compare with others, but the quality of the animation was top-notch. A welcome change from Disney fare.

More importantly, the plot was faithful to LeGuin’s vision, if not her actual novels. It’s basically The Farthest Shore conflated with Tehanu, with elements of A Wizard of Earthsea thrown in, but the universe is recognisable, and the characters look like you’d expect them to.

The magic is Earthsea magic, not flashy, but powerful — no death rays, no blasting spells a la computer RPGs, rather tapping into the underlying structure of the world. It’s hard to explain, but it’s one of the things that make LeGuin’s fantasy world so much better than others.

This movie is highly recommended.

Season’s greetings to all my friends, family, and readers!

According to Wikipedia, the winter solstice occurs NOW.

Lighter days ahead!

En favorit bland Teknisk Fysiks torra visor är Système Internationale, som består av välkända förkortningar på SI-enheterna, sjungna till Studentsångens melodi.

På årets Ettans fest framförde Gustaf Mårtensson och Mats Nilsson ett uppskattat gyckel, en reaktionär variant på sången. Den heter Imperial System.

Imperial System

mel. Studentsången
Prins Frans Gustaf Oscar

ft   kp   K   bu   B   
″   Gb   Oe   lb   rdr   std   
st   msk   kn   E   
Fr   krm   c   cSt   
°F   
pt   –   ″   ′   
at   
hk   nmi   
M   Ci   dptr   cal   
mvp   
mvp   
ha!   

Deep down, every physicist knows that, if the experiment he was a part of went horribly wrong and released a horde of aliens, he would be able to master terrestial and alien weapons and fight his way out, saving the world(?) in the process.

Who knows, he might even get to make out with Alyx.

Thanks Matt for giving me a copy of Half-Life 2. I started playing it tonight. Man, those flying circle-saws are irritating…

Yesterday nØllan was, against all expectations and good sense, promoted to first-years with the nickname “Fokus”.

It was a great party with some occasions for real dancing. Nice to see so many faces from the past too.

Thanks to Hedvig for a champagne-fueled “förkör” before the party!

89 years and the war still echoes.

I’ve decided to attend this year’s Ettans Fest. It’s the white-tie affair when this year’s freshmen achieve the status of “ettan” or first-years, having endured the ignominy of being “nØllan”[1] since September.

(Yeah, KTH is weird from the outside.)

It’s also 75 years since technical physics started, 30 years since the section newspaper “The Force”[2] started, and 15 years since my class became “ettan”.

I’ve found nearly all the neccessary items of clothing dispersed in the move (except for the actual white tie). Strangely I will need to let out my trousers, apparently the last time I used them was in 1996…

[1] “Bra men dåligt, nØllan!”
[2] I was editor, or Force Majeure for a year when I was at KTH.

Inspired by Fredrik Lundh, here’s is my policy on the social networks I belong to.

The big two: LinkedIn and Facebook

This is my rifle, this is my gun
This is for fighting, this is for fun

LinkedIn: I try to keep this network strictly professional. The goal is to be able to honestly recommend you for a new position.

Facebook: this is much more free-wheeling. Feel free to add me if you want. I generally ignore all invitations to Facebook apps, this is just the way I am.

In both networks, I reserve the right to decline or ignore an invitation, without explanation. It’s not personal, so don’t take offence.

The minnows: Jaiku, Twitter, Flickr etc.

Same “rules” as for Facebook. Feel free to add me. I’m gerikson when I can be.

DNs teaterkritiker Leif Zern kommenterar Mikael Persbrandts överraskande avhopp från Dramaten:

Vad svensk teater behöver i dag är arbetsro och uthållighet i stället för den frampiskade jakt på rubriker och succéer som vi nu bevittnar på många håll.

Dags att stifta Lex Persbrandt?

Man kan ju undra vad Zern tycker att en sådan lag skulle innebära. Är det att svenska skådespelare vid våra teaterscener skulle hindras från att söka andra anställningar?

So I did the cartridge hack detailed here. I bought a Mont Blanc rollerball refill (medium), cut off the end, and inserted it into my trusty old Pilot Vega.

Mechanically it works like a charm, but as a writing instrument the original Pilot gel ink is better. The Mont Blanc is much narrower, and feels rougher to write with compared to both the Pilot or my real favourite, the cheap gel pens you can get at Muji.

So unless you’re a big fan of Mont Blanc rollerballs and cheap, don’t bother with this.

Update 2007-10-08: I must have gotten a cartridge that was all dried out, because after a couple of day’s use it’s much nicer! Still don’t know if it’s worth the money though.

Incipient meme from SF Signal:

“You know the drill… copy the list and BOLD the movies you have seen.”

Original list and discussion (very interesting) is at Snarkerati.

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

I enjoy dystopian SF movies, and it’s a thankful genre. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on expensive shiny props but can basically shoot in downtown Los Angeles.

Interesting to see that Terry Gilliam has directed 2 of the films in the list.

I’m missing Stalker from the list.

I’m planning on catching Children of Men and AI soon.

Update 2007-09-29: just caught AI. Typical Spielberg in many respects, one wonders how the film would have been if Kubrick had been able to make it.

My birthday’s next week, and Christmas is too close for comfort. Here’s my wishlist for this year.

Another place to look for gift ideas is in my reading list. I also have a special list with photo stuff.

• Blundstone 500 series boots
• Moleskine products, notebooks, calendars or cahiers with plain paper pages
• Mugs with Penguin book covers. Waugh books preferred. Can be bought at Utvalt. Hat tip: Anina.

Me and Viking will be visiting my parent’s in Halland next week. There’s limited to no connectivity where we’ll be going (and be limited I mean there’s not even a UMTS signal) so I’ll be off the grid.

Update 2007-08-11: we’re back, safe and sound! However, we’re still pretty much offline, as there’s been a snafu with the apartment’s network connection and the idiot ISP we’re using can’t see where we’re connecting from. So I’m updating via UMTS. Luckily emacs over SSH isn’t a high-bandwidth app…

För dig som bor i Stockholm och som kör bil. Ta en titt på Tullkoll.se. Det är en tjänst som hjälper dig hålla reda på hur mycket trängselskatt du ska betala. Jag använde det under försöksperioden och tyckte det funkade riktigt bra.

From tomorrow I’ll be on vacation for three weeks[1]. I’m going to try to be as offline as possible during this time, as far as can be accomplished with a 3G phone.

[1] Technically, the last week will be parental leave.

Jag köpte ett minneskort på The Phone House på St Eriksplan igår. Idag försökte jag lämna tillbaka den, oöppnad, eftersom jag hittade ett bättre kort billigare. Men dom har inte öppet köp, utan bara bytesrätt. Det tycker jag är snålt.

Jag tänker inte handla något från dom i fortsättningen.

She’s playing on 10 Aug. Anyone want to accompany me? Send me an email!

(Picture courtesy of Rockfoto.nu.)

Finally found some time to blog this. One of the best concerts I’ve attended. Shawn was all alone on stage with just an acoustic guitar and made every song feel new. I’ve been a fan since I bought “Steady On” in 1990.

After 3 songs she asked for requests, and got so many she had to say stop and tell us she’d ask again. Some kind soul wanted to hear “Kill the Messenger”, which would have been my request if I’d been quicker off the mark.

I’ll post the set list as soon as I’ve deciphered my notes (yes I am that geeky).

Update: here it is:

Twilight
Another Long One
These Four Walls
Trouble
(requests)
Polaroids
Whole New You
Sunny Came Home
Killing The Blues
Wichita Skyline
Summer Dress
A Matter Of Minutes
Tennessee
Steady On
(more requests)
Shotgun Down An Avalanche
Kill The Messenger
I’m Gone
I Don’t Know Why
(encore)
Crazy
I Don’t Want To Live On The Moon (“Do you really want to hear that song?”)
Fill Me Up
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

I ett uttalande i DN:

Jag förstår alla som har tröttnat på näthatet. Men som gammal skribent har jag fått sådant i hela mitt liv, fast då som e-post.

Kunde inte sagt det bättre själv.

Tack Linus för länken.

Uppdatering:

David Nessle:

Särskilt melodifestivalen verkar i år ha förvandlats till en fullkomligt bombastiskt disproportionerlig pseudohändelse — det enda som rimligen skulle kunna överträffa spektaklet är om de på något sätt lyckades göra om Kalle Ankas jul till en dokusåpa och sedan direkt röstade ut Bengt Feldreich.

It’s the traditional unlucky day, which we, in emulation of some friends of my parents, are celebrating with a glass of champagne.

Great practice, makes the date something to look forward to.

The boys and I are still in Halmstad because we had to change the tires on the car.

We’ve had a nice time, yesterday we saw the local team HBK start the series with a 2-1 win over Henrik Larsson’s HIF.

Update: we’re home again!

Yesterday evening we signed the papers to buy a condo (bostadsrätt)[1] in the Hammaby Sjöstad area in Stockholm. We get the keys on 1 June. Now all we have to do is to sell our house.

The idea to move has been germinating a while. The area we live in now, Stureby, is a really nice area with older houses, apple trees and a lot of history. However, after living here for seven years, we’ve finally realised that we aren’t house people.

Living in an apartment will free us from mowing the lawn, shovelling snow, worrying about the roof or the chimney. Sjöstaden is very new, with all mod cons and closer to the city.

Then there’s the history. Even if we’ve had a good time, there are still bad memories in the walls of the house — the difficult pregnancy and delivery of our son, J’s daughter’s eating disorder. We felt it was time for a new start.

The move will be pretty rushed as we have to do a lot of stuff in the house to make it saleable. It’s going to be an intense period, but we’re counting on having a less stressful time of it in the future.

[1] actually “tenant-ownership”. We own the right to live in a part of an apartment building, but we don’t own the apartment ourselves. The owner’s society, of which we have to be members, does that.

Update: the realtor’s PDF can be seen here.

I was tagged with the 5 things meme by Raddedas at Techype. I’m not going to come up with 5 more things, here are the ones I posted in December.

Via Isobel: socialdemokraterna är öppna för förhandlingar med regeringen om det kontroversiella förslaget om FRA-avlyssningen av Sveriges internettrafik.

Betong-sossar och ordning-och-reda moderater i skön förening. När det kommer till kritan är det samma gamla kalla-krigsmentalitet. Dom här personerna anser att dom vet bäst, att det är deras verklighetsbild som gäller, att vi medborgare måste skyddas från den onda världen och oss själva.

Nåväl, dags att börja kryptera in epost. Det här kommer antagligen att ge en rejäl skjuts åt folklig kryptering. Och då kommer det väl lagstiftning mot det också.

When the youngest got a fever and vomited the night before, we thought it was norovirus and resigned ourselves to a week of hell for the entire family. Today he showed the characteristic spots and strawberry tongue of scarlet fever.

Avoiding the local health centre we went to one further afield and obtained antibiotics. Ten days of treatment should be enough, though he’ll be able to go back to daycare on Monday.

It’s a wonderful early spring day, we’re in the local playground, soaking up the sun and watching the remaining piles of snow melting into rivulets and puddles.

Dave Winer has an interesting post about your “digital legacy” — your blog, online photos and videos, email etc. — that is only accessible by yourself while you’re alive.

This is something that will impact a lot of people in a short while. My parents are not bloggers, but they do have an online presence in the form of email. Just as my sister and I will have to sort papers when they pass away (which I sincerely hope is far in the future), we will have to handle email and work accounts too.

The ones taking care of my mess will have to handle this blog and my Gmail and Flickr accounts; there are probably more places that I haven’t thought of now. Not to mention banking certificates, digital IDs, and so on.

That’s one part of the story. The other is Dave’s point: who will take care of the servers? Obviously Dave is more of a public figure than I am, but I’d like my descendants to be able to read what I’ve written online in the future. Our forefathers and -mothers had stuff like letters, wills, deeds, photographs. We will have online bits, just one DNS update or hard drive crash away from oblivion.

Revisiting last year’s resolutions is a bit depressing, really. Well, we can’t all be perfect in one year. Here are my resolutions:

• continue improving as a husband and father. I’ve become better, I think, but there’s a way to go.
• make more progress in the house and garden. This has in fact become easier, but there are a lot of things left. I feel more motivated now, though, but I keep backsliding.
• keep better track of where the money goes.
• give work 100% of the eight hours I spend there, instead of now perhaps 85%—90%.
• plan next Christmas and New Year’s better!

Mycket tråkiga nyheter. SRs absolut bästa kanal, SR X, läggs ner.

Enligt programdirektören Eva Blomquist:

Vi har konstaterat att vi saknar en del i vårt musikutbud som vi borde rätta till. Till de genrer som det inte råder brist på finns pop- och rockmusik av den typ som finns i SR X. Där kan vi tillfreddställa många lyssnare i FM-kanalerna P3 och P4.

Jaha jaha. Jag borde väl kanske ha skaffat en DAB-radio för att på något sätt visat mitt stöd för kanalen. Nu kommer den alldeles utmärkta mixen av musik blandas med urvattnad humor och flåshurtiga sportfånar. Tack, men vitsen med SR X var att man slapp allt det där.

OK, det är bra att fler får höra den blandningen av musik, och jag kan förstå att SR måste prioritera sina resurser. Men det är fortfarande trist.

Man kan kontakta SR via Posted at 22:18, in the alt category.  Comments (View)

I’ve been tagged by Jim so here goes.

1. I’m one of the few members of the general public who’ve been allowed aboard the Vasa. This was during my first thesis attempt, which went nowhere fast.
2. In military service, I drove around in a car that was older than I was.
3. I went to a British military school when I was a kid in Malaysia.
4. I have coded Visual Basic 6 professionally.
5. I’ve dated two people in my life, one of them my wife.

I’m tagging Linus, Anders, Stefan, Mark, and Libby.

(ISO week numbers are teh hotness! Get yours today!)

So there’s been a lot of stuff going on this week (and the last) so blogging has been light.

Generally work is more fun now. I’ve somehow found myself in a “team lead” position. (“Found myself” because it essentially consisted of me starting getting invites to team lead meetings and expected to prepare paperwork on my report (singular).) This is more fun than I’d imagined. I’m also getting leadership training, happy happy joy joy.

We’ve had our internal IS SOX auditors from the US here for 2 weeks. Poor guys and gals missed Thanksgiving but have been very good company. They’ve asked lots of questions about our routines and our evidence and happily we passed. My department has been following SOX rather closely since the last year’s panic-induced first audit so we knew we were OK. Of course there’s the inevitable drift that occurs when the process documents we’re supposed to follow reside on a hard drive in California and we only get access to them 2 weeks before the audit, but that’s just how SOX is: Stupid, Obnoxious, eXtraordinarily boring.

In line with my new exalted position I’ve been issued with a laptop of fairly recent vintage and specs from Dell, and I’m now facing the daunting task of recreating my working environment built up over several years on a new machine. Thankfully Outlook search folders and filders live on the server so I don’t have to descend to the nether worlds of madness that is Exchange filter configs.

The Dell comes preinstalled with some pretty useless apps that appear on the taskbar and make even a fresh install look pretty cruddy. Among the ugliest of icons was something called Netwaiting, which apparently pauses your net connection if you get a call. On your, like, modem. The icon is a little urine-yellow 70s phone that sticks out like a sore suppurating thumb from the stock Windows icons. Why Dell included this in their machines is something I subscribe to a mixture of nepotism, incompetence, and cold hard bribery cash.

Also installed was Google desktop, which I haven’t tried before. This being a widescreen I can afford the little sidebar that comes with it. So far it hasn’t been totally useless, and if it helps searching my Outlook mail I’m prepared to sell even more of my soul to the Google Empire. The fact that Outlook’s stock search function is so crappy is yet another of the reasons that I’m daily reminded that Microsoft is the golden standard of mediocrity.

Speaking of which, L has emptied his giant piggy-bank and bought an Xbox 360. He had to exchange his ageing PS2 and some games for it and so far is pretty happy. I predict that this will last for two weeks or until the PS3 is launched, whichever comes first.

Last weekend my parents were up for a visit. We celebrated my mom’s birthday and me and dad made a lot of progress around the house, aided by his unflaggable energy. We now have a laundry room that’s worthy of the name and that’s actually a pleasure to use. When you get older the pleasures of life are more modest, and luckily, generally more easy to achieve.

I feel I’m totally out of touch with the news in Sweden. We gave up on a daily paper a long time ago as it was just sucking too much time from the mornings. I used to pity those that only relied on TV for their news, and now I’m one of them, except I don’t watch news on the TV. I get my news from feeds and from the Economist (half a week too late, due to the lack of Saturday postal delivery), and from snippets on billboards. These mostly consist of dieting tips, new surveys on the sex habits of Swedish men/women/teens, and the latest news from some reality show involving farmers and the women who are competing to marry them.

I’m not sure what I should do to rectify this. I find the largest daily, Dagens Nyheter, to be utterly pompous and politically correct in a hard-to-describe, very Swedish way, grounded in the history of the paper and its firmly embedded status in official Swedish discourse. Its rival, the smaller Svenska Dagbladet feels fresher but apparently supports the war in Iraq in leader comments. However, they don’t publish columns by Per Ahlmark, who, as Micke remarked yesterday, would support an unprovoked nuclear attack by Israel on Norway if it happened.

I samband med att Cecilia Stegö Chilò råkat i blåsväder för att hon inte betalt TV-licensen under flera år har flera nya riksdagsmän och politiker från Moderaterna nu anmält TV-innehav. Detta enligt Ekot. Dom som intervjuades sa att det var fel att inte betala och att dom nu rättar till ett misstag. Men en del säger att det var ett “ideologiskt ställningstagande” från början.

Detta har jag ärligt talat svårt att förstå. Om personerna ifråga hade verkat politiskt för att bli av med TV-licensen så hade det varit mer konsekvent. Liksom att inte ha TV överhuvudtaget tills licensen avskaffas. Istället verkar det “ideologiska” mest inskränka sig till att vara “smart” — att smita ifrån en avgift som andra är dumma nog att betala, men fortsätta njuta av Sveriges Television.

Att tycka att TV ska finansieras via skattsedeln eller rent kommersiellt är ett ideologiskt ställningstagande. Att låta bli att betala en lagstadgat avgift för att man tycker att den är fel är det inte. Det är bara barnsligt, och tyvärr något som jag och flera andra förknippar med Moderaterna.

Nu när dom äntligen lyckats ta makten visar det sig att den politik dom vill genomföra blir misstänkliggjord och försvåras av deras tidigare uttalanden och beteenden. Det om något visar på skillnaden mellan ideologi och kortsiktig girighet.

(Picture courtesy of Rockfoto.nu.)

This consert was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. The setting was minimalistic: a Macbook, a sequencer, a collection of guitars. Enter Cole in khaki, teasing us with some electronica from his Plastic Wood album. He’s joined by Neil Clark on electric guitar and they launch into the set.

I nearly wish I’d noted what the songs were, but that would have detracted from a mesmerising performance. Using just two guitars and some spare beats from the sequencer, Cole and Clark bring the classic songs to life in the intimate theatre. “Pay For It”, lushly orchestrated in album form, was just as good in this setting. Same for “No Blue Skies”, another favourite of mine.

The place was packed, I’m really glad I got the tickets.

Here are Linus’ impressions (in Swedish).

Vår nya handelsminister Maria Borelius har erkänt att hon anlitat svart arbetskraft under 90talet.

Jag tror inte att detta kommer ligga ministrarna till last (nya kulturministern har gjort det också). Dom är ju moderater, skattefuskprotest är ju en del av partiets grundvalar. Eller var det bara dom “gamla” moderaterna? Så svårt att hänga med i svängarna.

Det intressanta i sammanhanget är att Borelius i sin egenskap av handelsminister kommer komma i kontakt med dom krafterna i USA som gärna vill att Sverige ska skärpa kampen mot “upphovsrättsbrott”. Vad kommer retoriken att vara då? Att det är OK att frånta en ung person sjukförsäkring och framtida pension, men straffbart att bidra till att den multinationella mediaindustrins vinstmarginaler faller från dess nuvarande tvåsiffriga nivå?

Så har vi då fått en ny regering. Carl Bildt är tillbaka, och antagligen glad åt rollen som elder statesman, en passande roll för en person som kanske minns alltför väl hur det var att vara statsminister förra gången och som nu antagligen roat kan se på hur unge Reinfeldt klarar sig.

Redan har vi fått en kontroversiell person, Nyamko Sabuni som integrations och jämställdhetsminister. Ganska smidigt att få en kvinna med utländskt bakgrund på den posten, kan tyckas, men tydligen så har hon fel politisk färg enligt kommentatorerna. Sen måste jag säga att hennes ideer om obligatoriska gynundersökningnar av skolbarn verka förkroppsliga det nya folkpartiet. Detta nya parti förenar det sämsta av sina två historiska grenar numera: socialliberalistisk klåfingrighet för att främja värdekonservativa åsikter.

Att Timbros VD Cecilia Stegö Chilòs utnämning till kulturminister inte orsakat mer rabalder idag beror väl på att “kultureliten” fortfarande befinner sig i chock över att det blev maktskifte för två veckor sedan. Det ska bli kul att läsa DNs kultursidor imorgon.

Om oppositionens kommentarer kan man säga att vänsterpartiet och miljöpartiet verkar trivas i oppositionsrollen, med vassa kommentarer utifrån deras tolkning av politiken. Lars Ohly känner “skräck”, vilket får en att undra om han ens klarar av att se en spännande thriller på TV utan att tuppa av.

Detta citat från Ohly får illustrera skillnaden mellan vänsterns synsätt på arbetslösheten och de borgerligas:

Det finns inga åtgärder, bara sänkta skatter.

Vi har haft “åtgärder” i åtta år och har fortfarande skyhög arbetslöshet, om än statistiskt dold. Kanske dags att prova något nytt?

Göran Persson verkar fortfarande vara sur att svenska folket för att dom inte lät honom fortsatta som statsminister. I en intervju i DN säger han bland annat:

Jag tror inte att deras politik kommer att fungera. Den öppna arbetslösheten kommer snabbt att öka. Man får inte fram några jobb genom att sänka förmögenhetsskatten.

Detta är ju precis vad sossarna sa i valrörelsen, som avslutades för två veckor sedan. Alliansen har aldrig sagt att sänkt förmögenhetsskatt kommer att skapa fler jobb, det ska den nya företagsvänliga klimatet göra.

Det är i praktiken en enpartiregering, med total moderatdominans på alla tunga poster.

Så om s hade vunnit hade dom broderligt delat med sig av regeringsposterna till v och mp? Tror inte det, va.

Om valet av Anders Borg som finansminister:

Det är en politisk position, det är inte en position som i första hand ska befolkas med någon som kan räkna ut försörjningsbalanser. Varje gång vi har haft en sådan ansats har det gått käpprätt åt skogen. Det är förvånande att man väljer en teknokrat.

Ahem, Pär Nuder?!!

Oavsett hur det går framöver så känns det ändå som om en frisk fläkt blåst in i politiken. Nästan ett decennium av Perssonsk retorik är över. Och dom nya makthavarna formulerar nya lösningar på Sveriges problem, som ändå känns som den gamla goda socialdemokratin — den som värnade om riktiga jobb till alla.

create your own visited countries map

My travelling days are pretty much over, most countries outside Europe were visited in childhood.

Utvalda handskrivna partibetecknignar:

Men vissa fick fler röster. Isobel:

[…]. I Birkastan, där jag bor, har vi extremt liten arbetslöshet. Vi har nära nog ingen våldsbrottslighet och den enda segregationen att tala om är den som handlar om att det bor alldeles för få människor här som inte skulle platsa på en Kalles Kaviar-tub. Ändå röstade 158 personer i Matteus församling (vilket ungefär motsvarar Birkastan) på Sverigedemokraterna. Okej, det är långt färre än dem som röstade på Feministiskt initiativ, och i många valkretsar till och med förre än som röstade på Piratpartiet. Men ändå. 158 sverigedemokrater. Här. Mina grannar. De kanske fikar på Mellqvist. Handlar på Konsum. Lunchar hos Günther. Och röstar på ett gäng främlingsfientliga kvinnomisshandlare.

Man kanske ska vara tacksam att Unika Partiet bara fick 216 röster.

I have to check my car for roadworthiness tomorrow and I doubt it’ll pass without at least some comments. This at 8:20 AM.

Then at noon I’m waiting an unusually important phone call.

Tomorrow is a day that feels that it’ll either be disastrous or utterly brilliant.

Update: well the car went through with only the left parking light getting a “1”, the lowest form of remark. I have one year to fix it.

Yet another update: hmmm, the other stuff didn’t really pan out, unless I want to start drinking Guiness morning, day, and night.

Det ser ut som om det blir ett maktskifte i riksdagsvalet, vilket inte händer så ofta i Sverige. Just därför är det rätt spännande. Lite läskigt att lämna den socialdemokratiska snuttefilten, men i längden är jag övertygad om att det är nödvändigt för Sveriges politiska kultur att det blir lite ny luft i dom unkna kabinetten.

(S) har levt länge på gamla meriter, bokstavligt talat. Dom har varit dåliga på att fånga ungdomar och boende i storstad. Dessutom är folk trötta på dom, samma gamla ansikte, singular, i skepnad av Göran Persson. Han tog konsekvenserna av att ha lett partiet till ett historiskt lågvattenmärke mitt i en högkonjunktur. Hans efterträdare blir inte lätt att förutse.

Vad Alliansen kommer att åstadkomma är också svårt att förutse. Det ser bättre ut ekonomiskt jämfört med tidigare borgerliga maktskiften, som oundvikligen har sammanfallit med ekonomiska katastrofer. Det är lite lustigt att det tagit borgerligheten nästan 35 år att komma fram till att vägen till regeringsmakten går via ökat samarbete, men bättre sent än aldrig.

Av valvakeintervjuerna att döma så verkar både mp och v se fram emot oppositionsrollen. Och dom behöver inte dra det tunga lasset. Det räcker för dom att föra fram sina budskap, obesudlade av kontakt med regeringsmakten, medan socialdemokraterna drar det tunga lasset att återta makten om fyra år.

Intressanta tider, minsann.

DN: Både Persson och Reinfeldt oroliga för Volvo lastvagnars framtid.

Persson:

De här riskkapitalisterna kommer att bli de som slår sönder de nationella kapitalistiska strukturerna, om jag uttrycker mig lite spetsigt. De drar i väg med företag och företagande i en global ekonomisk cirkus som snart är omöjlig att följa, och där det snart är omöjligt att identifiera ägandet.

Välkommen till verkligheten, Göran.

Reinfeldt:

Om det förs en politik som är inriktad på att driva långsiktigt ägande och ansvarstagande ur landet så ersätts det av ett ansiktslöst institutionellt ägande, som riskerar att öppna för det vi ser nu. Alla de som förvaltar svenskarnas sparpengar eller pensioner ska vara rädda om Volvo.

Och han ska kalla sig moderat?

Problemet är att Sverige har ett fåtal storföretag som verkar på en internationell marknad, nästan inga mellanstora företag på tillväxt, och en massa småföretag som inte växer mycket. Vidare är lagstiftning och fackliga regler i mångt och mycket anpassade efter storföretagens villkor.

Så länge som Wallenbergarna ägde Sverige så funkade det hela bra. Nu säljs storföretagen ut till “riskkapitalister” (som förresten är hur välkomna som helst att investera i småföretag, men dom ska hålla tassarna borta från släktklenoderna).

Nu ska Östros “titta på vad som nu händer och komma tillbaka, om det går, och föreslå åtgärder”. (Verkar vara en farlig sak att titta på, om han riskerar att inte komma tillbaka…). Ja, såvitt jag kan se kan det inte göras något utan att i någon mening nationalisera företaget, vilket skulle sända finfina signaler om Sveriges företagsklimat.

Man ska ju vara glad att företagen får uppmärksamhet utifrån. Det bör finnas ett gäng företag på tur som är attraktiva för investerare. Men under hela efterkrigstiden har socialdemokraterna satsat på ett fåtal storföretagskort, och aktivt hindrat entreprenörer från att växa till stora företag. Men den eventuella samförståndsandan som rådde mellan storföretag och (s) finns inte längre. Aktieolag har ett uppdrag: att ge avkastning åt aktieägarna. Allt annat kommer faktiskt i andra hand.

Well that’s another week done. God I feel stressed. I don’t know why, the workload hasn’t been that much worse than usual, and as usual I’ve had sterling help from my coworker. Yet I feel like I’ve just finished a 100-yard dash.

It doesn’t help to get emotionally wound up about certain “A-list” bloggers, either…

Here’s to the weekend, may it soothe and heal.

KLART VI SKA HA EN KANON.

I didn’t commute in during the morning yesterday, so today was my first view of the evidence that the summer is over: rainy weather, standing room only in the subway, and a general gloom pervading the whole.

CNN:

A senior congressional source said it’s believed the plotters planned to mix a British sports drink with a gel-like substance to make an explosive that they would possibly trigger with an MP3 player or cell phone.

The mind boggles.

Some observations: did they use the British version because the American is not explosive enough, or because it was what they had to work with?

Another thing: wouldn’t it be easier to trigger the damn thing with a battery and some wires? Why make it so complicated?

Personally, I think it’s the airlines who dreamt this up because they were pissed off people were listening to their own music, watching their own movies and drinking their own Gatorade.

I bought a pack of Moleskine cahiers and a Spacepen yesterday, basically just because I was a little bummed from the end of the vacation and needed some shopping therapy. At least I didn’t splurge for a Mont Blanc…

I’ve decided to give the offline diary a shot again. I haven’t kept one since uni, we’ll see how it goes. There’s a lot of crap that I can’t write about here and it feels a bit constricting sometimes. Keeping it offline should help.

And who knows, my handwriting (printing now) may improve…

Update: found my diary from 1994 yesterday, I’ll see if it’s unbearable to read a dozen years afterwards.

We’re back (or at least 60% of us are, the rest are still in sunny Crete) from 2 weeks in Halland visiting my ‘rents and grilling a little in the sun. Great weather. The cats came too and had a lot of fun in the wide open spaces down South.

A misunderstanding about keys led to me having to break into my own home to let us in, but that was a piece of cake.

I’ll be working one week from Monday (not looking forward to it) then I have one week vacation left. This will be spent in Halland again, but with only the boys this time. I’ll be looking at taking the train as driving down is such a drag, but having a car down there is very convenient.

Reason here.

Ah, the long weekend is upon us. In the nick of time too, I was going crazy from stress. My coworker took an early vacation and is soaking up the sun in Greece, leaving me to handle the flood of issues.

Tomorrow we’re leaving for the traditional goal of Sågen, in the less picturesque part of Dalarna. I’m looking forward to the usual midsummer meal of potatoes, pickled herring and snaps.

The only fly in the ointment is the lack of television in the house. Normally this is only a plus, but with Sweden facing Germany in the World Cup on Saturday, it’ll be missed. I’m pretty sure it’ll work out, however.

Meddelande från Caroline:

Minnesskriften för David är nu färdigställd. Den består av ett 30-tal olika bidrag från familjen och vänner samt foton. Den kostar 100 kr. När kostnaden per skrift är täckt går resterande oavkortat till David Sjögrens Minnesfond (http://www.davidsjogrenmemorialfund.org)

Jag har uppgifter om hur man beställer skriften, men vill inte skriva ut dom här. Skicka ett meddelande till mig så vidarebefodrar jag dom gärna.

We had an important boule match in the inter-office tournament on Thursday, and I was shocked to see my trusty Wayfarers in two pieces in my bag. The earpiece had separated from the frames.

Playing in the strong (for Sweden) sun on our terrace without shades was a recipe for disaster. Luckily I could find the tiny screw connecting the earpiece to the frame in the bag pocket, and felt the quiet satisfaction of fixing a problem on my own by attaching them together.

This didn’t help us though, the opposing team played cannily and won handily, beating us to the semi-finals on Wednesday.

Another small and niggling issue are the new headphones I bought for my iPod mini. I had a pair of Koss Porta-Pros that I was really happy with until they developed some serious distortion when there was more than moderate bass in a song. It only affected one earpad, and I suggest I may have damaged them by careless handling. I felt it was time for a pair of new headphones. I bought a pair of AKG K24P to replace them.

Unfortunately, the slightest jiggle of the connector against the iPod will trigger a pause in playback. This seems related to the iPod auto-pause feature that will pause playback if the headphone plug is removed during play. It seems that this feature is triggered by some 3rd-party headphones, and it cannot be turned off. A quick google shows that the issue is quite widespread, and that the solutions range from giving up and using the original iPod earbuds, to ordering a new iPod, to bending the connectors to ensure better contact.

I’ve never had this problem before, using the Koss phones, a pair of cheap Sennheisers, and 2 Sony variants. I like the feel and sound of the AKG phones, but unless I can solve this issue I will have to use the fiddly earbuds instead and look like a fashion victim.

Update 2006-06-21: I tried bending the offending contacts with a pin, but it was very hard to get a grip. Lars Bengtsson took the headphones back, so at least I’m not out of any money. I tried a pair of Sennheiser PX100s while in the store, and they exhibited the same behaviour.

It could be that the Mini I own is simply too old, or that it, too, was damaged with the Koss ‘phones. In any case, I’d like the “pause playback if the headphones are removed” to be a configurable option, so that you could work around this sort of thing.

We’re leaving for Halland tomorrow to visit my parents over Easter. I’m looking forward to it, Spring is always a bit further along down South, and my sister + boyfriend will be there too.

Here’s hoping I get everything fixed tomorrow. Luckily I got the day off (in exchange for working a full day on another “half-day” later this year) so I should have enough time for last-minute laundry, dropping off the cats at my sister-in-law’s, packing etc.

Light activity on the blogging front. I’ve been busy as a bee at work (tired, but it’s a good tired). Spring is in the air, and things are looking up at a few places. Some other things just stay the same, but life is about dealing with that situation.

Something that grabbed my attention was a mention in The Economist about Hottxt, which is basically SMS over data. I’ve long wondered when mobile IM will cut into the fat revenue stream that is SMS, but I didn’t see this coming. It makes a whole lot of sense, especially if the receiver of the text doesn’t have to be part of the service.

I picked up my new passport today, in the nick of time for the trip to London tomorrow. I asked if the new passport had an RFID-chip, and was told that it had. I guess it’s behind the little symbol on the front cover.

There’s not much info in Swedish about this. Specifically, I wonder what would happen if the chip is “accidentally” erased: is the passport still valid? (This is the case with US passports.) How do you check that as a citizen before being stopped at the US border?

Another question is what info the chip contains. Biometric data sounds pretty scary from a privacy standpoint, especially as it seems as though the encryption has been cracked.

I can’t believe that a contactless technology was chosen for this application. I’m gonna try to find a shielded cover for the passport as soon as possible. Too late for tomorrow’s trip, I’m afraid.

For some reason I’ve had Lloyd Cole’s Lost Weekend running through my head recently. But even though I haven’t had double pneumonia in a single room I’ve still felt pretty crummy. It started last Saturday and it’s been up and down all week. I went in to work on Wednesday: big mistake, Thursday I felt like death warmed over.

Yesterday I was convinced I had step throat or avian flu or something so I ponied up the double fee for a weekend consultation, only to be informed that it’s “just a cold”. At least I got that morphine-laced cough syrup to ease my throat. Basically I try to get a receipt when I visit the doctor’s since there’s nothing wrong with me every time I go there, and I like to feel like I’m getting some value for my money.

Anyway, it feels like I’m finally getting better, which is a good thing. I really need to get back to work, my poor PFY is inundated with issues, and there a couple of surdegar (lit. sour doughs, Swedish for stuff that’s been festering for far too long) that really need to be fixed.

I also feel that there’s a bunch of stuff that’s fundamentally b0rked in our processes, but I think I’ll have to take that up via official channels instead of just venting my spleen via the internal blog (or here).

Apparently this year’s Winter Games have been Sweden’s best ever, medal-wise. But I haven’t seen squat on the TV (and we have no daily paper, so I miss a lot there too).

However, tomorrow is the “dream final” in ice hockey between Sweden and Finland — ancient rivals in this game — and I’ll do my best to see that at least.

[No, it’s not what you think.]

I found something nice at TPB today: The Hooters: Greatest Hits. Man, that takes me back. Satellite, And We Danced, Blood from a Stone. Great stuff.

Many of my age are quite knowledgeable about the the global challenges that lie ahead of us. My generation, born in the 70s, grew up with a fundamental environmental awareness, Many of us have travelled the world and seen the gaps between rich and poor. Yet so few with knowledge and talent really put their potential to use for these issues.

I think that doubt is a paralysing obstacle — doubt that we can achieve results in these areas, doubt that small-scale action can have large scale impact. When the difficulties are immense and no solutions are in reach, it’s easier just to ignore the threats.

To mobilize much talent, I wish that there was more belief that the big, complex challenges of today really can be solved. A bit more hope and some courage could do wonders.

— David Sjögren

Original version from Visions from the Present, Compositions and Contributions from participants of the Tällberg Forum 2005, published by the Tällberg Foundation, Stockholm 2006.

Allteftersom tiden blir det svårare att skaffa vänner. Kanske den gyllene tiden för detta är runt 20-årsåldern, då man äntligen kommer hemifrån och kan träffa andra människor i samma ålder och med liknande intressen.

För en lite nervös 22-åring på KTHs borggård en solig septemberdag tog det inte lång tid att inse att Stockholm inte var Lund — här kom en stor del av kurskamraterna ifrån stan, med egna färdiga sociala nätverk.

David Sjögren var, vid första anblicken, en av dessa. Vi var med i samma nolleuppdragsgrupp, och efter fullbordat värv (vi satte upp skyltar i Tekniska Högskolans T-banestation som påminde om att föhsarna ständigt var närvarande) samlades vi hemma i Davids föräldrahem för att sätta ihop en presentation för att slå resten av årskursen med häpnad. (Detta var tiden före PowerPoint, så det var diabilder och kassettband som gällde.)

Efteråt kom jag ihåg att jag tänkte att David visserligen var mycket trevlig, men att jag inte skulle ingå i hans sociala nätverk i framtiden.

Turligt nog hade inte David några sådana fördomar. Jag minns inte exakt hur det skedde, men vi började umgås mer och mer. Upptäckten att jag var fyra år äldre än honom minns jag slog honom med viss häpnad: så här i efterhand vet jag inte om jag var milt förolämpad eller smickrad, men det gick snabbt över. I mångt och mycket var David den äldre av oss.

När vi lämnade KTH var vi vänner, tillsammans med många andra. Vi kom att arbeta på samma arbetsplats, ett företag fylld av smarta människor (en del från KTH, tack och lov inte alla). David var otvivelaktigen en av de smartare, även om jag kunde slå honom på fingrarna i esoteriska datorfrågor. En gång medan jag gjorde mitt exjobb fick jag ett samtal från David. Han hade fått i uppdrag att sätta upp en Solaris-server och råkat skapa en fil som började med “-“. Som av en slump hade jag inte mer än några timmar läst om hur man blir av med en sådan fil, och mitt blixtsnabba svar “använd rm -- -fil” måste ha gjort djupt intryck.

Några år senare började ett halvt dussin av oss samlas hos varandra för herrmiddagar. Detta var tämligen välstädade tillställningar med mild one-up-manship vad gällde matlagningen. David var svår att slå på den fronten. Han hade alltid en massa goda recept på lager, och om han fick stå vid spisen mer än andra så var det desto mer uppskattat.

Det finns många saker jag kommer att sakna nu när David är borta. Hans glada humör, sättet han liksom spratt till när något roligt var i görningen, hans mail med länkar till Berglin-teckningar och filmer med biljardtrick. Men framförallt kommer jag att sakna honom som vän: som en person som alltid var där, som man i sin okunskap om vad som komma skall tror kommer att vara där för överskådlig framtid.

Saknaden efter David är djup, och jag påminns nästan dagligen om att han är borta. Jag är glad och stolt över att ha kunnat räkna honom som en av mina bästa vänner.

En minnesfond i Davids namn har startats. Den är för utvecklingen av unga afrikanska ledare:

• David Sjöberg Memorial Fund
• Bankgiro 5774-6513.

Jag vill tacka Frederic och SSSK för informationsmötet där vi fick tillfälle att ställa frågor till dom som var med när det hände.

I’ve made most of the preparations for tomorrow:

• polished my shoes with Kiwi Parade Gloss
• found the 2 parts of my dark suit — the pants were on the top of the coat-rack, go figure
• found my black necktie
• washed a pair of dark socks and said to L. that these are mine, please don’t take them tomorrow
• trimmed beard but not head

Still to do: iron the white shirt, and try to find something to cover my head that’s not a baseball cap.

Right now I’m writing this entry and listening to Reeperbahn.

SMS från Henrik:

Hej. Idag födde Liselotte en flicka som ska heta Ellen. Båda damerna är något trötta men mår mycket bra!

The habit of staying up late, surfing Bloglines and generally not getting eight hours of beauty sleep (and at my age, you need the beauty sleep, believe you me). I’m as awake as I’m always am in the morning, but during the day my effectiveness at work goes towards zero, and I’m essentially marking time until the factory whistle blows.

Tagged by Frank.

Four jobs I’ve had

• Shop worker at a small company that made packing machines
• Bank clerk
• Software contractor
• Support specialist

FourOne movie I can watch over and over

• Metropolitan

(this was harder than I thought, I don’t often re-watch movies)

Four places I’ve lived

• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Halmstad, Sweden
• Lund, Sweden
• Stockholm, Sweden

Four TV shows I love, or have loved

• Star Trek: The New Generation
• Simpsons
• Futurama
• Friends

(Gah, that was predictable…)

Four places I’ve vacationed

• Paris, France
• Aegina, Greece
• Vilshärad, a small summer village on Sweden’s West coast
• Åland

Four of my favourite dishes

• Pytt i panna
• Fried rice
• Skånegås
• That dish with fried potatoes we used to eat in Lund each Friday

Four sites I visit daily

• Bloglines
• Gmail
• Sluggy Freelance
• The Register

Four places I’d rather be right now

• In bed on a Friday night (no work next morning)
• On a sunny beach with my wife
• At an Aimee Mann concert
• In an alternate reality where David is still alive

Four bloggers I’m tagging

• Matt
• Russ
• Petter
• Tarek

I got a phone call today telling me that an old university friend and former coworker had died after going through the ice while skating.

He was part of a larger group in a skating outing. Another person has died too, and a third has critical injuries.

He was in many ways one of the best and brightest guys I knew. It’s utterly unbelievable that he’s gone.

• 06:30—06:59: 10 kr
• 07:00—07:29: 15 kr
• 07:30—08:29: 20 kr
• 08:30—08:59: 15 kr
• 09:00—15:29: 10 kr
• 15:30—15:59: 15 kr
• 16:00—17:29: 20 kr
• 17:30—17:59: 15 kr
• 18:00—18:29: 10 kr
• 18:30—06:29: 0 kr

I had my first taste of the trial of congestion charges in Stockholm today.

The trip into town at 8:30 was really smooth. There was a queue of vehicles for the access tunnel to the free motorway from South to North, but the route to work was nearly empty. I kept a constant 70 kph all the way through Södertunneln, almost unheard of unless it’s a weekend.

The trip in cost 20 SEK, I paid 15 SEK on the way out (a bit earlier in the afternoon than peak time).

I like congestion charges on principle, as they put a price on a resource that’s scarce and makes the cost visible, but I can’t agree with the way the charges are implemented. As the roads are owned by the state, only the state can take care of the revenue — as a tax. Due to Sweden’s public disclosure of public records, each and every passage through a toll station is public record — tied to the vehicle’s license plate number.

This raises obvious privacy issues. As far as I’m concerned, these need to be addressed if the trial becomes permanent.

One of the online comics I regularly read is Sluggy Freelance, an involved amalgam of nerd humour, ghouls, vampires and demons from the Dimension of Pain.

Seeing that I’m on a Harry Potter jag ATM, I thought I’d point to the three parodies of HP in Sluggy: Torg Potter and the Sorceror’s Nuts, Torg Potter and the Chamberpot of Secretions, and Torg Potter and the President from Arkansas.

Although I think the Chamberpot is best, being creepy as well as funny, this Sunday strip from Sorceror’s captures the essence of Sluggy for me.

• Be a better husband and father
• Improve my career prospects
• Finish kitchen, garden and windows

We went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on Christmas Day (big movie-going day in Sweden). I was impressed. The movie captured the feel of the book very well (at least as far as I remember, I haven’t read them for at least a decade), and the visual style was very near the illustrations I remember.

A co-worker complained that the look was too plasticky, at least compared to the Lord of the Rings movies, filmed near the same location, but I felt it didn’t detract from the movie at all. The tone of the novel is far from Tolkien’s darkness and — dare I say it? — grittiness.

Tilda Swinton was brilliant as the White Witch, with just the right combination of icy beauty and pure evil.

I know about the Christian content of course (and am fine with it), but what I found impressive was that the allegory was very “grown-up”. It wasn’t didactic at all. If you want to explain it to a kid, you’d have to explicitly make the connection between Aslan and Jesus Christ — it isn’t written in the movie (or the book). This means that the whole point of allegories is exposed, which can’t be bad at all. After all, if the Narnia books are allegories, can’t the Bible be it too?

All in all a very entertaining movie. And props to the producers for using British accents except for the evil wolves (and maybe Aslan — I can’t recall where his accent was from. Not Alabama, in any case.)

… and a happy New Year.

God jul och gott nytt år!

• Anders F Rönnblom, Det är inte snön som faller
• Adolphson & Falk, Mer jul
• Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues, Fairytale of New York
• Weird Al Yankovic, The Night Santa Went Crazy

Note: I thought I had a list of five songs, but it turned out I didn’t.

Finally some progress with the kitchen. Last weekend I put up the wallpaper, and today I started on the last 2 cabinets. I’ve build the plinth and will assemble the cabinets tomorrow.

Issues so far are with the wiring to the stove. I have no idea on how the big thick 3-phase cable will be able to fit behind the cabinets. I also don’t know how the stove top itself will be integrated in the cabinets, which are 2 x 120 drawer cabinets.

Another thing will be the problematic corner. I’m afraid I will still have a big unsightly hole in the join between the stainless steel workbench/sink and the workbench with the stove.

1. England
2. Paraguay
3. Trinidad and Tobago
4. Sweden

Phew, this’ll be a tough one. Sweden’s first game is 10 June.

I grabbed an assortment of seasonal ales at [Systemet] today. I’ll be trying them out during the week, hoping that they’ll be around in two weeks.

• Shepherd Neame Christmas Ale 11347 — in its own cardboard package, natch
• St. Peter’s Winter Ale 11306
• Gouden Carolus Christmas 11371— this was really tasty. Dark and strong
• Anchor Brewing Co’s Christmas Ale 11375 — this wasn’t so good, I’m skipping it

Update 2005-12-13: added links, opinion on the Gouden.

Yesterday I decided to do something about my frayed nerves and headed into town for (consumer) R&R.

I went to SF-Bokhandeln in Gamla Stan to stock up on Steven Erikson books. I just bought the first one in the Malazan series though, as I remembered that the second has a horrific battle scene at the end that I don’t really think I can handle right now.

Gamla Stan was of course packed with holiday shoppers standing around like lost sheep in the corners of the alleys, blocking the way with their umbrellas.

After that ordeal I grabbed something to eat at Söderhallarna and went to see the new Harry Potter flick on an impulse. The films are even more episodic than the books, which read as loosely coupled scenes hung together with the very thinnest of plot threads. The movies just lurch from one FX scene to another.

Sindy and Ester. ¶

Todo list updated. ¶

~>

Nothing sucks more than an iPod with a flat battery. The ‘hold’ button is there for a reason.

~>

The process of acquiring cats is underway. When I post pictures of them, this will finally be a real blog.

I remember listening to Lloyd Cole’s Bad Vibes album and playing Wolfenstein 3D at the same time. God I’m old. ¶

I love the way you wear that Motorola generation chic, momma
[…]
You might call it ultra-violet radiation,
It’s only sunlight

— Lloyd Cole, So you’d like to save the world

Bad Vibes is way under-appreciated. Snagged for the ‘pod tonight. ¶

~>

Matt arrives safely in Kansas:

<Matt770> It is fscking cold

~>

Happy birthday, Erik!

~>

Mike Arrington gets the kiss of death from DaveW. Beware, Adam Curry is now persona non grata with the Davester, in spite of earlier praise.

~>

In T9, ‘scoble’ is ‘ramble’.

~>

It sucks that you cannot mark items as “Keep new” in Bloglines mobile, using the default browser on the 6630.

~>

James Robertsson, Pity the PR Professional:

I, like many others, have grown tired and weary of the self-satisfied, holier than thou, “A-list bloggers” who believe they hold disproportionate sway on the matters of the day.

~>

Isn’t it weird that MS VPN support under Unix is better in some ways than under Windows? I mean, you can configure your routing in Unix, I’ve yet to find out how to prevent my BT traffic to go via the corporate servers when using WinXP.

Note, I said “better” above, not simpler.

~>

“Command & Conquer: Generals” is even more USA-tastic than the previous incarnations. At least you have a fighting chance as playing as the “terrorists”. I started with China though, gotta love that holdover Soviet vibe they have in the game.

~>

Google Base is the next Orkut.

~>

Rui:

Had a very productive work day (mostly due to the fact that an internal event whisked away a whole team and it was way quieter than average).

[…] Which leads me to the conclusion that whoever came up with the asinine theory that open-space offices make people more productive must have been ignored (or, more likely, snubbed) by his/her colleagues every day.

Update 2005-11-19: Scoble corrects the third observation above.

Dave Winer:

Singling me out for abuse should be, and I believe is, bad strategy, and bad representation for [Ratcliffe’s] client, Audible. They both owe an apology for this abuse. I don’t expect one from Ratcliffe (although I would accept it) but I do expect one from Audible.

Now where have I heard this before?

This is what Mitch Ratcliffe says on his disclaimer page:

You’ll probably not be surprised by the fact that I am often critical of companies and people with whom I do business, at least those of you who know me will not be: I get paid to be honest with people, to tell them exactly what I think and to pull no punches, whether in writing, consultative work or as an advisor.

I predict interesting consequences.

Update 2005-11-14: Mitch engages Dave in yet another post. Kudos to him for keeping his cool.

Update 2005-11-15: This is the last word as far as I’m concerned.

I really should have blogged this then (2005-11-11) but I simply didn’t have time (also, I was hung-over). I attended the weekly sub rosa breakfast gathering at KTH, which this day had a celebrity guest: Johan Norberg and was therefore packed. We were supposed to discuss the EU, but true to form the discussion rambled. I made the observation that there are at least three European Unions:

1. The original (and best?) vision of a united Europe so tightly bound together that war becomes impossible. This is the favourite argument of the pro-EU debaters in Sweden, but it’s rapidly losing its shine as the world wars fade from memory. Some countries (the Baltic states come to mind) still subscribe to it, with good reason.
2. A free-trade area. This is the “Anglo-Saxon” view, and personally I think this is what EU should be first, before trying to start to layer on federalism and especially “social justice”.
3. A method of distributing agricultural aide. This is what the EU is now, I’m afraid.

No conclusions were reached in the time I was there. I had to leave after an hour to get to work. Maybe the riots in France were discussed, I don’t know.

The rest of the day was rather hectic. Being as I noted a bit hung-over didn’t help. Even so, I feel pretty good about work right now. My colleague and I have found a pretty effective way of dealing with the daily deluge of issues, and we’re even finding some time to handle unscheduled stuff. Of course, there’s a whole lot of issues remaining, such as the pay and pensions situation, but I feel I can’t do anything about that right now anyway.

The evening was a nice little Ubuntu-fest, as previously noted.

My good friend Giséla Linde has finally got an online showroom/store. It’s at www.textoform.net, and the designs look fantastic. I must say her husband Petter has done a great job with the web design too.

There’s a blog too, at Gisélas silverblogg (in Swedish).

I came home late today after a phone meeting with the mothership, and should have gone straight to bed. I’m already running a sleep deficit, after all. But nooo, I just had to check some stuff out online first.

Sunshine after a rainy day: Kathleen Edwards’ “Building 55”.

… for the BAFTA nomination!

And many thanks for TPN Rock. It really makes Friday’s special. I keep meaning to try to write it up, but I just can’t seem to find the time.

We’re safely back from the demilitarised, Swedish-speaking region of Åland. Many thanks to Petter, Gisela, and the girls for making our stay such a pleasant one!

We’re on our way to Åland again, “we” being me, wife + one kid. We’ll be giving a lift to Linus, our systems guy who hails from the archipelago.

Updates to follow.

An aside: I tried to find out from my previous entry the exact when I was there last time, but I think my blosxom entries have screwed them up. I really need a more reliable way to keep the dates static on this blog…

So it’s Friday, I eagerly look for the the latest TPN Rock show in iTunes. Nada! A timeout! Argh!!

Apparently I wasn’t the only one. But I could get a preview copy from the man himself, and found that Christin Cook makes great music (if not great websites, that one resized my Firefox, a hanging offence but one that I’ll forgive this time).

Anyway, the show will be back on the web shortly.

Autumn is finally here with a gray overcast day. The dim sky seems reflected in my fellow-passengers, who all seem ugly or deformed.

Of course, everything is FUBARed at work too. Why not, it’s Monday…

Update: the day didn’t fulfil its awful promise, thankfully.

Being born plumb start on a decade was a boon when I was younger, I just had to remember the current year and do some simple arithmetic to find out how old I was, or how old I would be in some time in the future. I remember thinking of the year 2000 as pretty impossibly far away, I’d be thirty.

Well, time marches on as the cliche goes, and here we are, 5 years past the turn of the millennium[1], and I have kept up with its pace, more or less.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that even multiples of ten are the significant turning points in life (20, 30 etc). I read someplace that multiples of seven are more important, and so far, this has been the case (mostly in retrospect, I think). Whether this year will turn out to be some sort of turning point, I don’t know. I doubt it. But I’ve been thinking more and more about the fact that I’m getting older. Mostly this is about the fact that I can’t go back. Student life, single life, unmarried life — that’s behind me. (Hopefully!). So it’s time to knuckle down and accept that life is in front of me, take some more responsibilities, and move on to the next level.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress on that.

[1] counting as common people do, not as pedants.

Immediately after Katrina I wondered what would happen to the US and the world economy if another disaster struck in the US in the months after Katrina. Now we have a category 4 hurricane poised to strike the Gulf Coast again, the freeways are blocked with fleeing vehicles and the oil derivatives exchanges are thinking about staying open for the weekend. Scary. I must remember to fill up the gas tank today.

Update: seems the worst didn’t happen. Good.

Önskelista för 2005: födelsedag och jul.

• läderfodral för iPod mini
• pannlampa för sängläsning
• något från läslistan
• kavaj-liknande plagg — antingen en snygg modern kavaj eller jeansjacka
• god whisky eller calvados
• biljardkö

Björn came down from Uppsala yesterday and we wandered over to Kungsholmen looking for sustenance. Luckily he remembered a review of an Africa-themed restaurant called Chakula so we headed there. Even luckier they had a table free for us.

We went the whole hog with entrees, main course, and dessert. I had the eponymous “chakula” while Björn chose the swordfish. To this we drank a very nice wine, Morkel Malbec 2003 from Bellevue Estate Wines.

We ended up spending quite a lot of money, but it’s not as if we do this often anyway.

Not only was the car flunked in the yearly safety inspection, I also managed to bump into my boss’ Merc when parking.

I was very careful driving home, and got honked at by cab drivers for my pains.

I got my manly pink iPod Mini today (thanks, Stefan!) I’ve only filled it with 420 songs yet, and I’m looking forward to commuting by subway in the future.

Well, we’re back from our kräftskiva (lit. crayfish party, a Swedish tradition) in Sågen, which is in Nås Finnmark in the region of Dalarna.

A lot of crayfish were eaten, a lot of akvavit was drunk, and a good time was had by all. We tried to relive the party feeling of nine years ago, but we’re all a lot older (as witnessed by the three kids L, L, and L, all grown up now and staring at their parents in horror as they disolved into mawkish sentimentality) so we made do with impromptu linedance lessons from M. And no, I did not reprise my infamous naked dance from 1997…

… ordered my examensring (graduation ring) from KTH.

The design is a white band with oak leaves and “KTH” inside two raised bands of red gold. The white band can be platinum or white gold. As my wedding band is white gold, I chose that option. I also chose the thinner band of the two available, because I’m planning to wear it on the same finger as my wedding band. This had the additional attraction of being the cheaper option.

Pics are hard to come by online, I’ll try to post one when the ring is finished.

It’s 20 past midnight, Monday tomorrow*, what the hell am I still doing up? Especially as I’ve hit reload on Bloglines too many times already, there’s still isn’t anything new to read.

Random notes:

• The cover of Zevon’s Keep Me in Your Heart with Jose Calderón and Jennifer Warnes rocks
• I’ve already got a CD’s worth of email in my Gmail account
• It should be easy to implement a “latest referrers” feature for this weblog, in the proverbial 3 lines of Perl — if I could be arsed to figure out a regexp for the Apache logs
• Some sort of interface for these kinds of “random notes” would be cool: updateable via mobile phone?
• Schneier critiques Hogwarts security. Whatever next? For what it’s worth, I reckon Sauron made a fundamental mistake in investing all his power in a single, easy-to-lose item.

* Actually, it’s already Monday. The horror.

I’m putting tinfoil up on the windows
Lying down in the dark to dream
I don’t want to see their faces
I don’t want to hear them scream

— Warren Zevon

We spent a day at Gröna Lund (warning: Flash) with my sister-in-law’s family. The whole gang was there, and a good time was had by all. We met my cousin too and his son (my namesake), to L’s delight.

I tried the “Extreme” ride, which was less horrible than it looks from the ground. Another highlight was the “Pop-expressen”.

The departure was marred by H and V missing the last kiddie ride of the evening by 5 seconds, sending V into a paroxysm of grief, but by then it was time to go home anyway. SL showed an unusual humane side by letting L ride for free, and also by offering to let off half the passengers at an unscheduled later stop at the central station on the way to the garage.

The coverage of Katrina reminds me of Sterling’s novel Heavy Weather. Obviously, Sterling himself has made the connection too.

The whole situation is making me pretty glum. It’s really shown a dark side of the United States, a country that’s prepared to spend billions to invade and then “rebuild” a foreign country, but that apparently feels that if its own citizens can’t get out of the way of a hurricane, they only have themselves to blame. Sauve qui peut, indeed.

I thought the whole point of Homeland Security was the security of people in the homeland. But maybe the (black) South isn’t part of the homeland?

Update: none of this was unexpected:

In the aftermath of such a disaster, New Orleans would be dramatically different, and likely extremely diminished, from what it is today. Unlike the posthurricane development surges that have occurred in coastal beach communities, the cost of rebuilding the city of New Orleans. dramatically damaged infrastructure would reduce the likelihood of a similar economic recovery. And, the unique culture of this American original that contributed jazz and so much more to the American culture would be lost.

Should this disaster become a reality, it would undoubtedly be one of the greatest disasters, if not the greatest, to hit the United States, with estimated costs exceeding 100 billion dollars. According to the American Red Cross, such an event could be even more devastating than a major earthquake in California. Survivors would have to endure conditions never before experienced in a North American disaster.

Update: that’s not all, the survivors are now “insurgents” too.

The Rock Show #24 is out!

I had to burn this to a CD to listen at in the car on the way home: a podcast fits into a CD together with a normal music CD, leaving minimal wasted bits on the CD-R.

Also check out this interview with Ewan at Step Out of The Line.

Charles Stross:

A couple of hundred billion here, a couple of hundred billion there — pretty soon we’re talking real money.

What are the likely consequences (locally and globally) of blowing a 5% of GDP sized hole under the waterline of the US economy?

(Via BoingBoing.)

Update: Before and after pics of New Orleans.

(Via DaveW.)

Rui:

If Mondays were portrayed in shaving commercials, they would be the grating concrete surface the actor would use to sand off his beard.

Update 17:40: ‘Grating concrete surface’ is right. This has been a crappy crappy day. Even if it isn’t a Monday.

I’ve dissed the whole podcasting phenomenom before, but I must say that Ewan Spence’s The Rock Show is podcasting as it should be: one person with a vision and a goal and the time to hunt down obscure bands that won’t get a showing anywhere else.

I just finished up listening to #23 and it was really great. I started listening coming home Friday from a beer+dinner with the guys from work, and it really made the bus journey special.

The rock show is now rooted in my bloglines list, and I’m looking forward to the next installment.

• LOTR 1
• LOTR 2
• LOTR 3

(Via Linus.)

Very interesting article at BoingBoing about the man behind the neutron bomb.

And Americans wonder why the rest of the world think they’re stupid:

Nice work lads, if you work for A9 here’s a couple of hints. London, UK: Population 7.4 million 20th biggest City in the world, bigger than every US city other than the septic sprawl of New York City. London, KY: Population 5.4 thousand, small enough to be considered a village in the real world, a tenth of the size of the small town I live in, barely big enough to appear on the map. Which one would you choose if someone said “I’m in London”?

Maybe these people think that Paris, Texas is the haute couture capital of the world…

Didn’t get squat done today (not from general laziness, as is all too often the case, but for other unrelated reasons). I tried getting some tiles off, but I only hacked big holes in the drywall instead. Also, I think I made a big mistake in trying to alleviate the mismatched floor level between the kitchen and the dining area. I think we need to remove a strip of the floor along the former wall; but this will mean we have to get a huge lintel to cover the gap.

Also, the new floor isn’t very durable. Some dropped plates have put blemishes in the finish. And there’s no way I’m ripping out the cabinets to replace the damaged planks…

All in all, not a good end to the weekend. And tomorrow is work day. Whoop-de-doo.

But I think I can handle the tiles with a better chisel and better technique. New chance next weekend.

Russ: “What I really need is minions.”

I’ve never heard of the Robertson screw before today — I stumbled across it in Wikipedia while reading about drywall. And then in a totally unrelated blogcrawl (following the discussion on why OPML sucks) I found the following reference to Robertson in a scrumptiously designed blog.

Weird.

This weekend it was time to go hack the kitchen again. I blocked up the door from the kitchen to hte old hallway with a sheet of drywall (gipsvägg in Swedish). Lessons learned: use the right tools ( I was missing a keyhole saw), and measure correctly.

Last.fm is a site that provides personal radio channels. You can prime it with a Winamp plugin so that the service learns what music you like. Then you can download a little app that handles the channel selection and streaming for you.

All in all, a very nifty service. I’ve listened to channels based on my own choices, and on the choices of fans of Aimee Mann and Lloyd Cole, and already found some artists I’d like to listen more to (specifically Ricky Lee Jones and Paul Westerberg.)

Naturally there are links galore to the specific artists and albums, which is where I guess Last.fm’s profits come from. It’s all very low-key, with no intrusive advertising (unlike Yahoo!, who have a similar service). Also, the sound quality is very good.

For a person like me, essentially sitting in front of computers all day and with limited time and patience for browsing records stores, Last.fm is a great way to learn about new music and artists. Especially considering that my musical tastes gelled around 1992, and haven’t expanded since then. This means that there’s a long tail of music that’s not otherwise exposed through “normal channels” — radio and TV.

Have a look at my profile at last.fm/user/gerikson/.

Now at last on Flickr: my kitchen renovation pics.

View in reverse chronological order, dunno how to fix that.

Doing my bit to spread the truth about Intelligent Design.

Update: the fight just got serious

I’ve long considered the Space Shuttle to be a useless drain of resources for the American public, but this post is much better than anything I could write. Scrap the Shuttle and devote the money to unmanned missions instead. We’re not going to be saved by space anyway.

Whoohoo! Halfway mark. We have a working sink and dishwasher. We also have an oven (not sure if the wiring can handle it though, must check) and the old hob cabinet is still working. So it’s a functional kitchen, although with almost no storage.

I’m off to Halland for a week, but the next step is to close off the little door, redo the tiling, and install 2 long cabinets of drawers. The hob will be in the work surface above them.

My brother-in-law Niclas came by to help, and together we got the fridge, dishwasher and sink installed. Unfortunately some critical parts were missing, so nothing is fixed to the walls yet. Tomorrow we be finished with the water-related parts at least (sink and dishwasher). This means that the unsightly heap of dirty dishes standing outside the bathroom will vanish, at least.

Finally finished the floor, and started on the furnishings. First out was a cabinet for the oven.

Time to detail what we’ve been doing with the kitchen the last week.

• Removed a large part of the wall separating it from the dining room. This wall was perhaps not structural, but it supported a wall above it consisting of 1x3” planks, horisontal planking, reeds and a whole lot of plaster. So we installed a 1x5” beam to hold it up.

• Ripped out all the old kitchen furnishings — we’re keeping the fridge and the dishwasher.

• Removed the old laminate floor, laid a new subfloor consisting of board, and we’re installing a new laminate floor with tile pattern.

Todo

• Finish the floor

• Install the new furnishings: sink, dishwasher cabinet, and oven/hob.

• Board up the wall between the kitchen and the old hall.

Thoughts

• Removing walls is hard — probably should have got a professional to do it. Also, plaster is a bitch to remove.

• Tiling patterns use up more of the planks than a wood pattern does. Also, you have to be more careful where you start.

Pics will be up as soon as I can remove them from the phone.

Update: I would have finished the floor today, if the blade to the electric jigsaw hadn’t snapped while sawing the last effing plank… and did I think to pick up a new one when I was at the hardware store today? Noooo.

Home after a leisurely trip north, with stops at IKEA in Jönköping and Burger King in Linköping. Tempers were frayed at an unexpected queue south of Södertälje, but now we’re here and settled in. Even got some breakfast for tomorrow. Phew.

Now I have 2 weeks worth of feeds and comics to browse…

Just one day left at work before vacation. w00t!

After our bath, I found that the bathroom drain was blocked. Not pleasant to fix.

Two brightly shining candles in the general gloom: Star Wars Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy and Star Trek: The New Generation. Some kind soul has provided the latter as umpteen DVD images on The Pirate Bay, and another even kinder soul has downloaded them and provided my with the discs. I’m now nearing the end of the first season.

I had a little trouble enabling lightsaber dismemberment in Jedi Academy. In the previous game in the series, Jedi Outcast, there was a simple console cheat which made slicing stormtroopers into salami possible. This option is gone in JA, maybe to preserve LucasArts’ squeecky clean image. But you can still enable it by following the instructions below (%install% refers to where the game is installed, on my system it’s c:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy).

1. Open the %install%\GameData\base\jaconfig.cfg file in a text editor

2. Enter the following lines ( or replace them if they exist ):

   • seta g_saberMoreRealistic “99”
   • seta g_saberEntMarks “99”
   • seta g_dismemberment “99”

3. Save the file

I have a autoexec.cfg file in the same directory containing the line helpusobi 1, the cheat mode enabler in JO. I don’t know if it’s necessary, though.

Another cool option seems to be g_saberpickupabledroppedsabers 1, which is supposed to give you the ability to pick up other lightsabers. Haven’t had time to test it yet though. Update: doesn’t seem to work.

I agree with Frank. The Dutch and French No’s are a symptom of what’s wrong with the European project: a feeling that it’s an elitist project, a plaything for (ironically) Gallic and Teutonic empire builders in Brussels. The EU seems incapable of explaining to its citizens what it is for.

Update: I read The Economist’s analysis of the French debate — published before the referendum — and heard some more about the Dutch premises on the radio. Predicably, the vote was not really about the EU per se, but rather on the internal political situation in those countries.

The French debate had three parts: worry about the dilution of French influence abroad now that EU has been expanded to 25 members, many of them pro-American; concerns about the economy and the erosion of a “social” Europe; and anger at the political elite, who have too often used “Brussels” as an excuse to push through reforms that they consider necessary, but which were unpopular at home.

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released June 1, 1967.

Yet another live act tonight! My co-worker Daniel is the lead singer and guitarist of Ninja Me Down, destined for rock greatness! Another plus is that now I can officially call him Röck-Daniel, to differentiate him from the other Daniel with the same initials.

I saw Kathleen Edwards at Debaser yesterday. Really good show.

The opener was some soporific Swede calling himself Leslee. Opener’s can blow, and this one sure did.

After that, Kathleen opened with Pink Emerson Radio from the latest album Back to me. She was awesome. Only regret is that I didn’t get a signed CD afterwards.

I’m planning on buying a digital camera. This is just a list of things I should think about.

• Rather cheap: ~300 EUR
• Resolution: minimum 3 Mpx, 5 or more preferred
• Cheap storage per Mb => CF
• Optical viewfinder
• Good battery life
• USB/mini USB 2.0 interface
• Good startup time

Frenzied reading of The Luminous Landscape have led to more esoteric criteria:

• Histograms
• RAW mode
• Photoshop :-)

Watchlist

• Canon PowerShot A75
• Canon PowerShot A85
• Konica-Minolta Dimage Z2
• Panasone DMC-FZ5

Wishlist

These cameras are much more expensive, I’ve included them here as wishful thinking.

• Konica-Minolta A2. L-L review
• Pentax Option 555 (recommended by CalleM)
• Pentax *ist DS — inspired by this article.
• Canon G6
• Olympus E-300

Scanned Newsweek article about Patty Hearst (via Boing Boing).

This story fascinated me when I was younger, mostly because it was in that awkward timeframe where it was still “news” and not history, and I didn’t know enough about research to find out enough about it through traditional channels (the Vietnam war was also part of the same “blind spot”). Now of course, there’s more info than you can shake a stick at.

The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night
Now it’s ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun
And bought it

— Warren Zevon

SaveToby.com is a site where a guy demands $50,000 or he’ll let kill and eat a helpless baby bunny.

According to his own accounts, he’s already got more than $18,000.

At first I was a bit shocked — not that someone would eat a rabbit, or even that someone would demand money not to eat it — but that people would actually pay him the money to not eat the rabbit.

After some thought, I’m still shocked. That I didn’t figure this out myself. Problem is, he’s hard to copy-cat. If he’s smart, he’s patented the “give me money or I’ll eat the bunny” method of relieving clueless idiots their hard-earned cash. And what’s cuter and more edible than a bunny? Nothing, that’s what!

I wish him the best of luck. At best, he gets a heck of a lot of money. At worse, he still gets a lot of money, and a nice, tasty meal! Tip: don’t forget the garlic.

Update: This as a hoax, according to Snopes.

I was walking through the Sabbatsbergs hospital area this morning when I met a gaggle of 9-10 year olds coming in the opposite direction. When I’d passed one of them called out to me.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Who’s most known (mest känd in Swedish), the Beatles or Abba?”

This question through me. Stupidly I said “Abba, I guess.”

My triumphant interlocutor turned to his friend and said “See?”.

I turned to go, but the vanquished Beatles proponent ran after me. “Are you sure?”

On second thought, I had to concede that the Fab Four had the edge over Abba in global mindshare.

The first kid said “Aaaww, you always have to persuade them!”

I spent the morning at my sons daycare, preparing food for about 50 people. It’s a parent’s cooperative, rather common in Sweden, and as a parent you have to do stuff sometimes. Our place is pretty lenient, you have a week a year when you’re on standby for if someone is sick or on vacation. Then you’re in the kitchen, where you do the least harm.

With the help of the excellent instructions by the regular cook, I managed to produce quite a nice meal. A nice change of pace from the regular grind.

Jim’s birthday was yesterday. I missed this… I blame the voices in my head.

(The weekend was far from lost, but I can’t say the word “weekend” without associating to the Lloyd Cole song. That’s how far gone I am — Lloyd Cole overdose, indeed.)

Taking a break from the stress of daily life, we left the kid at his aunt and his two cousins and took a room at Torpa Pensionat in Södertälje. Heartily recommended. Our room was the one on the bottom right of this page. Respect four-poster beds, baby!

After a good dinner at Glashyttans Wärdshus we vegged out in front of late night TV. Breakfast was in a large, sunny room with a view of the frozen sound outside, brilliantly light by the morning sun. Stockholm is beautiful in this weather, strong March sunlight shining on snow-covered ground.

I took The Commonly Confused Words Test (after a tip from Michael’s blog), and received the following score:

English Genius

You scored 93% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 88% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can’t find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don’t. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you’re not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

There’s only one thing an English genius can say after getting this score: w00t!!!

An unshielded nuclear reactor, flying at Mach 3 at treetop level and designed to drop hydrogen bombs was nearly constructed in the 1950’s.

From the article:

Like Hula Hoops and Slinkies, Pluto is now an anachronism, an all-but-forgotten remnant of an earlier — but not necessarily more innocent — era. At the time, however, deadly as it would have been, Pluto had the almost irresistible appeal of any radically new technological innovation. Like the H-bombs it would carry, Pluto was “technically sweet” to many of the scientists and engineers who worked on it.

The “technically sweet” explains a lot. The technical challenges were enormous, but could be overcome. I guess this explains why many engineers can work with weapon systems — even though they’re to be used for killing people, the technical challenges are often cutting edge and really interesting. Project Pluto would have been fun to work on.

(Via Boing Boing)

Update: Charlie Stross has read his history and incorporates Project Pluto in A Colder War.

In a hopefully succesful repeat of last year’s visit to Arvika we’re planning on heading to Hultsfred this summer.

Hultsfred is the bigger scene, and is more often colder and damper. But what the hey…

One thing that bugs me is that the signed acts page doesn’t have a syndication feed. Of course, you can pay for an SMS service instead, which is probably more youth-friendly, not to say more profitable for the organisers (at 3 SEK/SMS).

Hmm, can’t be that hard to screen-scrape that page…

I ended up looking at an Inspector Morse DVD last night before going to sleep. Nothing remarkable really, Morse and Lewis go to Italy to investigate a strange death and Morse gets it on with some opera soprano. The story was pretty thin, with the bulk of the energy going into showing gorgeous Italian landscapes and villas.

Not bad, sez I. Eye and brain candy. Competent actors. A story that pulls you along. In a word, a good watch. I see too little of that nowadays.

I attended my first lesson in LA salsa[1] today. I need to get some exercise, and I enjoy dancing, so when Josefin said she was going to go I hopped on too.

There were three guys and about 14 girls, who all seemed to have taked ten lessons. I could not follow the rhythm, mostly because the moves aren’t automatic yet, but I have no problem with that. I just need to work them into the brainstem and then start working on the finer points.

Of course, I may never get that far, but until then I think it’ll be great fun.

[1] There are apparently different versions of salsa. Cuban salsa is rotationary, while LA salsa is danced in line. There’s also New York salsa, but it’s not as big.

I’ve always regarded the acronym ASAP as a “do it now!” But I’ve been using it a while professionally in the intended meaning, as soon as possible. I sure hope everyone understand that that means I really will look at it as soon as possible, but that other things may have precedence.

The parking lot at the Globen shopping centre was almost full this afternoon, which is why the sight of this big fat Porsche Cayenne taking up two spots was a bit startling.

He’s damn lucky no-one had keyed him already.

The tax wasn’t paid either. I took down the license number, any free-lance parking offence vigilantes are welcome to contact me or to use their 3l337 hacking skills to find it in this very blog entry!

I got an offer to withdraw my shares of an employee-benefit fund (maintained by the bank I worked with on and off during my university years). It’s a tidy little sum that’ll come in handy to plug some holes in the household budget the coming months.

Sometimes you don’t just get bills in the mail!

Russ is 33 today!

Happy Birthday!

(The file is a .3gp movie recorded from my phone. I honestly don’t know how to view it without Nokia’s tools, but I’m betting Russ can.)

I heard on the radio that the Bush administration is considering attacking Iran this summer. Have they learnt nothing of the debacle in Iraq?

Iraq was a brutal dictatorship, Iran at least has the rudiments of democracy and a form of rule of law. The liberalising influences are fighthing an uphill struggle against the hardliners. The clerics would welcome an American attach with open arms — it would legitimise their rule in the eyes of the disillusioned people of Iran. Any chance for a pro-Western government from within Iran would be lost for decades.

Of course Iran’s possible possession of nuclear weapons is a serious issue. But if the US was to attempt to disable that threat through military action, it would create a threat to itself far worse than any atomic bomb.

I can’t believe Bush and his cronies are even thinking about this.

Update: Seymour Hersh’ article in the New Yorker, which was the basis for the radio programme.

Pictures from the Huygens probe to Titan.

This is huge. This is fantastic. Pictures from a moon orbiting Saturn. After 7 years, the probe reaches its goal and produces pictures that look exactly like those from Mars.

(Via Ned Batchelder.)

Update: Ken MacLeod lives the first chapter from Cosmonaut Keep.

I note with relief that Kai Hendry survived the South Asian earthquake.

I only know Kai slightly via IRC, but he’s the only person I know who was directly affected by the catastrophe. Although I’m happy to learn he’s OK, it’s small comfort when so many others have been killed or bereft of loved ones.

Finally started doing something I should have done a long time ago (Mobitopians will know what it is exactly). As always in these situations, I wonder what took me so long.

Where I work, we dream of having this working environment.

And no, I’m not kidding.

Ned links to the Tricks of the Trade blog.

As an ex-physics student, the fact that I haven’t thought of this before annoys me no end.

This tip is perhaps overtly cynical, but I guess it’s true too.

I’ve messed up my circadian rythms. I can’t get to sleep until 2 AM. Last night I went to bed upstairs, thinking I’d be awakened by the kid at 9, but everyone slept until 12. This isn’t good.

Back in the office after the holidays.

Well, that wasn’t fun.

At least there seems to be consensus that we can’t carry on exactly as before. And perhaps we can do something about the seating arrangments.

In the last few weeks, a few of my favourite artists have had songs in highly visible spots:

• Lisa Loeb, We Could Still Belong Together in the movie Legally Blonde

• Aimee Mann sings Driving Sideways in the commercial for the Audi A4

• Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend in the movie Crossroads with Britney Spears(!)

Some corporate shill of a A&R hack somewhere in movie/ad-land has some good taste. I hope that these appearances at least send some money in the creators direction.

Note Checking out Sweet’s IMDB entry I find to my horror that he has co-written songs with the Hansons… dunno what to make of that.

2004 was not a good year for our family. Two members have illnesses, one acute, one chronic. None of them are deadly, but they affect us all, leading to a high level of stress and uncertainty.

Yet for others the year has been much, much worse. For the thousands of Swedish tourists in Thailand these holidays, the year was ending in ease and comfort — until the tsunami came. Whatever problems this family has had and still has, we are still together, all of us are alive. Our differences and disagreements can be addressed and perhaps resolved. Bitterness and anger have a chance of being confronted and assuaged. Rifts can heal, if we let them.

I have no way of imagining how it is to lose a loved one — a wife, a son. My mind filled with the horrific images of children swept out to sea and drowning. I hope I can do something to help, but fear the inadequacies of my response to any requests for it. At least we have made an economic contribution.

Today, New Year’s Eve, we will be setting the house in order and preparing a meal for us and our friends. The pressure to make everything perfect is there, as is the possibilities for anger and irritation. I’ll try to keep perspective, not get stressed, and take the time to play around and have fun. Because that’s the one thing many many people are wishing they could do right now, and can’t.

Why should I be one of them?

We’re back from Halland — I’ve trying to unwind from staring at headlights in the dark for six hours.

It’s been a very nice Christmas for us personally, but hearing the news from South Asia kind of puts a damper on the joyous tidings.

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, me, the wife and the youngest will be heading south to my parent’s in Halland. We won’t be taking a computer with us, and connectivity in the boondocks can be a bit spotty. So I’ll probably be offline until just before New Year’s Eve.

Merry Christmas or (insert appropriate pagan ceremony here) to all!

Jim and his wife were in Stockholm this weekend, so we hooked up and had a lunch/beer in a vegetarian place on Söder. Unfortunately, I was still affected by the Christmas party the night before, and was a bit under the weather. I’ll have to go to Whitstable to collect my pint from Jim.

Update 2004-12-18: here’s Jim’s write-up of the trip.

Humble pie time. A few months back, I said I wouldn’t buy a 6630 (on Mobitopia no less!) Well, I have to retract that. Publicly. In full.

In addition I’ve slammed podcasts several times. But I have to confess I’ve started listening to them. Mostly to the excellent ‘casts from IT Conversations, but also to Adam Curry. I’m trying hard to stay away from Dave Winer, but it’s like a scab that you have to pick — disgusting, yet strangely irresistible.

Now that I have a cameraphone, I can use Flickr as ghod intended. Check out my output at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerikson/.

By the way, Telia’s SMTP server is mail1.telia.com. I tried finding it from their site, no dice. Google is your friend.

A new phone and a new network. My phone number from now on is

+46 (0)70 257 7860

I’ll be carrying my old SIM around for a while, and will be listening to messages for a while after that.

The eastern parts of the country are seeking autonomy.

I must admit I’ve totally missed the whole run-up to this.

David and I went to Akkurat yesterday to sample their extensive assortment of Belgian and British beers and ales.

We started with a Carolus Tripel, followed by a La Chouffe to the meal. Afterwards we each had a pint of real ale. Akkurat has a certificate on the wall saying that they’re at least as good as a British pub in pulling pints, so there was no doubt it was as close to the real thing that it was possible to get. Mine was a Sneck Lifter by Jennings.

I could use more practice in drinking British ales. The prescribed temperature is simply too high for my enjoyment, raised as I am on a diet of cold lagers. And the essential foodiness of the Sneck was a bit much after a full meal.

I’m looking forward to trying more, though.

After nearly a week of heavy snowfall and subzero temperatures — i.e., real winter — the temp is back over zero, and untold tons of snow is melting into slush. The sound you don’t want to hear this side of April is the sound of water, dripping from the eaves…

Ewan is 30 today! Congratulations!

My dad came up from Halmstad to help out a bit with the house. In the car he had two boxes of old toys from my childhood. Among these were a Fleischmann HO model railroad (starter set + station expansion). Viking had a great time playing around with that.

He’s a bit too young for model trains, but I figured that this particular set is already payed for, so a little toddler vandalism can’t hurt.

I’m going to get a big sheet of plywood and screw the tracks in place so that he won’t knock them askew. I’m also planning to glue Lego plates around the tracks so that he can build tunnels and houses.

For my future reference, here are the track parts.

Starter kit (6315)

• 8 x 6024 curves R1
• 2 x 6001 straights (204 mm)

Station kit (6090)

• 2 x 6044 turnout
• 2 x 6032 curves R2
• 2 x 6005 straights (165 mm)
• 11 x 6001 straights

Update 2004-11-23: I laid out the tracks again today and found out that one of the turnouts didn’t work anymore — must have taken a hit when someone stepped on it. Also, minimally laid out, the tracks cover our dining room table, and that’s not a small table. I’m shelving the plans for a board for the time being.

The company I work for has been bought by a much larger American company. No drastic changes are expected in the near future. Maybe the new owners will feel that flat screens are vital for the corporate image, but I doubt it.

Has it really been that long since the fall of the Wall? Already the memories are fading. My clearest are visiting my friend Björn in his student home in Lund, on a typical Skåne November evening. The fog was yellowish-orange from the streetlights, and Björn, who has a German mother, was dancing around in excitement.

In today’s DN there’s an article describing the bewildered reactions of the Swedish elite, confortable in the realities of the Cold War, suddenly adrift in a new unknown world:

Berlinmuren har varit öppen i nästan ett dygn. På kontinenten är det karneval med flygande champagnekorkar och segerdruckna DDR-medborgare som gör v-tecknet på Kurfürstendamm.

Men svensk nyhetsjournalistik, känd för sin nolltolerans mot allt som är uppsluppet, jublande eller partiskt, följer sin egen dramaturgi och därför ska vi nu höra vad en säkerhetspolitisk expert från Militärhögskolan har att säga om den hotfulla situation som uppstått i Europas mitt.

Han sitter där i sin uniform och är tämligen lågmäld, men hävdar ändå med viss skärpa att murens fall är början till slutet för Warszawapaktens dominans och Sovjetunionens herravälde över Östeuropa.

Halvt häpen, halvt chockerad utbrister reportern: “Men det är väl ganska farligt, det? Det är ju många som funnit ett slags trygghet och ro i kalla kriget. Man visste ändå var parterna stod. Nu är det slut på det och många känner sig villrådiga.”

Experten: “Ja, många längtar tillbaka till kalla kriget. Men det tycker jag är en idiotisk inställning. För då längtar man tillbaka till en tid då halva Europa hade ofrihet.”

Stämningen blir snart mycket infekterad, och intervjun slutar i osämja.

(Jens Christian Brandt, DN 2004-11-09)

Update Quick and dirty translation of the above:

The Berlin Wall has been down for nearly a day. On the Continent, it’s a carnival with champagne corks flying and victorious citizens of the GDR making V-signs on the Kurfürstendamm.

But Swedish news media, known for it’s zero tolerance of everything wild, crazy, or partisan, is following it’s own internal dramatic logic. We therefore have a foreign affairs specialist from the National Defence Institute who’s going to tell us about the new threatening situation in the heart of Europe.

He’s sitting there in his uniform and is quietly insistent that the fall of the Wall is the beginning of the end of the Warzaw Pact’s and the Soviet Union’s regime in Eastern Europe.

Half surprised, half shocked, the reporter exclaims: “But it’s rather terrible, isn’t it? Many people have found a sort of security and peace in the Cold War. You knew where the players stood. Now that’s to an end, and many feel bewildered.”

The expert: “Yes, many people are yearning for the Cold War. But I think that’s an idiotic feeling, because in that case you’re yearning for a time when half of Europe wasn’t free.”

The ambience soon becomes antagonistic, and the interview ends in acrimony.

In our disregard for the rights of East Germans, we showed the same callous attitude that has bedevilled Swedish realpolitik since the Second World War.

Leo, 12, asked me today about the picture showing people attacking the Wall. He didn’t realise it was ancient history. I felt wholly unable to explain the concept to him. I hope his school does better.

I have bad teeth. Part of it is simply bad saliva, or at least saliva that’s less hostile to caries bacteria than the norm. Another part is all the fillings I got in Malaysia as the result of that sub-standard saliva.

Luckily, my dentist Jörgen Brandell is an old buddy and former lodger. He’s opened a new clinic, Gubbängstandläkarna, a mere 5 minutes away by car, and rightly sees my teeth as a sort of gold mine.

I’m going to try to cut down on the snacking, and to chew flourine tablets after eating. I’m also going to keep a close eye on Viking’s teeth and try to prevent him from having the same problems when he gets older.

So it looks like four more years of everyone’s least favourite Yale graduate. I know a lot of people who are shocked and disappointed at the result, but, barring any nasty surprises coming out of Ohio, the outcome looks legitimate.

Americans will have to accept that their country is pretty deeply divided on a lot of issues. The Democratic Party hasn’t really risen to the challenge, while the Republicans have rallied around the leader with a “say no evil, hear no evil, see no evil” attitude. Both sides will have to develop their arguments and politics in the years ahead.

And no amount of legal blustering will change that.

So the switch back to normal time was last night, and I’ve reset my wristwatch, the two most visible wall clocks, the alarm clock, and two mobile phones, both Symbian based.

My computers, all 3 of them, are automatically correct (well, except for the Stinkpad, but the CMOS battery is flat on that one).

Why the hell can’t my phones get the correct time from the network, or at the very least keep track of when DST starts and ends?

Diego has more questions for Bush supporters.

The sanction of torture, “disappearing” of people perceived to be a threat, the skirting of the Geneva conventions and the creation of a shadow prison system in facilities worldwide doesn’t really match the rethoric of the Bush administration about “freedom and the rule of law”, but more importantly, it doesn’t match at all, in my opinion, the principles on which the US was founded.

These questions really articulate a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about too. I suggest everyone reads them.

Diego has some questions for Bush supporters.

The incumbent president has denied the rest of the world access to his official website www.georgewbush.com. Putative Republicans in lands not yet conquered in the war against terrorism thus cannot find more information on their future Leader.

However, his minions forgot to include the HTTPS port in the block. So the curious can visit https://georgewbush.com/ instead, secure in the knowledge that their perusal will be unnoted by Echelon and other agents of the New World Order.

Tell him Hi! from me.

I catched the beginning of a segment in Swedish Radio’s P1 this morning where Johan Norberg, a “liberal” debater debater (this is translated as a right-winger in Swedish terms), said that Swedish media was overwhelmingly pro-Kerry.

This is true. Reading Swedish newspapers and following Swedish ether media would have one believe that George W. Bush was some kind of Svengali, holding the US and the world hostage through sheer force of will and some kind of evil emanation.

I don’t particularly like Dubya, but still, he has the support of half of the population that bothers to vote, and that has to count for something. But this fact is largely ignored in Sweden. Only yesterday, a large interview was published in DN with a nurse living in New York state. She was a Kerry supporter. No sh*t. Why are there no interviews with Texan doctors or Florida businesswomen? Because they might be Bush supporters, and these people simply do not exist in Swedish media.

Anyway, the person debating Norberg, Cecilia Uddén, has been removed from the coverage of the election. Because she came out and said the truth, that Swedish radio is not impartial in the coverage of this election.

Whatever one feels about George W. Bush, we deserve better better reporting.

Wow. The Royal Navy has recognised Satanism as a religion its sailors can practise. The days of “rum, sodomy, and the lash” are long gone — or are they coming back?

Predictably, the Tories (in the guise of Anne Widdecombe) are fuming. “Let’s hope this doesn’t spread” she says.

Well, if I were an aspiring Satanist, the fact the fuddy-duddy Royal Navy thinks my religion is legit would be a major turn-off. What will the angst-ridden youth of today use to shock society next?

(via Boing Boing.)

I found out today why US elections are held on a Tuesday.

In Sweden, elections are always on a Sunday. I felt that the US was much more observant of the day of rest than Sweden, so that’s why Sunday was ruled out. But the additional historical titbits are interesting.

that Britney Spears of all people has released an album called My Prerogative?

Does anyone who listens to her music know what that word means?

Can they even pronounce it?

Update I’ve since been informed that it’s a cover of a Bobby Brown song. But that merely thickens the plot. Does he know what the word means?

The alumni gathering went to sea this weekend when we were invited onto Johan’s 32-footer based in Värmdö. We set off into a chill (around 10C) but sunny archipelago and set course for Sandhamn. The crew was Johan as captain, David and Calle as able seamen, and Jonas and yours truly as ballast.

After one and a half hours leisurly cruise we docked at Sandhamn and had lunch in the cockpit. After a coffee in the yacht club bar Jonas left us to go back to town, while the rest of the gang headed east, out to open sea.

The wind being more or less aft, we decided to hoist the spinnaker. This bumped our speed up to around 6 knots, but when we turned up into the wind to make the return leg to our planned overnight anchorage we had to take it in.

The route to the west was strewn with those reefs and boulders that make the Stockholm archipelago such an interesting place to sail in, but we managed by dint of having 3 lookouts and a GPS. With the sun setting we thought of checking the coming weather, which of course we did by visiting SHMI with a mobile phone. Based on this information we decided to lie in a bay facing south, as the wind was going to be northerly.

After some backing and filling we managed to find an anchorage. Calle made the first course, asparagus wrapped in proscuitto with mozarella. After we’d eaten this, Johan and David ascended a steep cliff with the help of a rope to barbecue the steaks. We ate them with rice and a sallad of ruccola and tomatoes. The dessert was pear halves with dark chocolate and some nice cheeses.

Replete with food and three bottles of wine, there wasn’t much else to do except go to bed. Despite the cold, we slept well.

Morning was early, cold, and full of dishes. But we managed to get underway quite soon and made good time make to the harbour.

All in all a very nice experience. Maybe a yearly tradition in the future?

Update 2004-10-18: pics are online at Mr.X.

• A short QuickTime movie.
• A longer time-lapse movie taken from Calle’s camera taped, Ulysses-like, to the mast.

Leo is 12 today. Congratulations!

Sigh, it’s that time of year again. Autumn is segueing into winter, and the luminous light of the early period has turned into the grey, gloomy ambience of the late.

Driving home is a chore, there’s not enough contrast between light and dark to distinguish pedestrians and bicyclists, who all seem to think that dressing like a ninja is de rigeur. The office’s lighting scheme is revealed as the flashy fashion-driven abortion that it is, and I’m spending more and more time squinting at a screen that’s too bright for the surrounding room.

The air seems drenched with cold, suspended water. The day starts and ends in gloaming.

Oh well, got to try to find the happy place for Leo’s birthday tomorrow. In a while we’ll get real winter, and leave this half-measure behind us.

Truly great plan.

(Via Frank).

Perhaps being excluded from the final debate helped Junilistan. They’ve captured 14.4% of the EP votes, and a new political party is born.

Even though I’ve picked a candidate for the upcoming elections to the European Parliament, it’s increasingly unlikely that I will even cast a vote.

I haven’t heard anything that the EP has decided that has affected me as a citizen of the EU. The only thing I can recollect is a number of stories about MEPs collecting travel expenses and pocketing them. This is the body I’m supposed to elect?

“Ah, but if you’ve read more about the EU, you’d know that…” — well, guess what, I read the editorials of Sweden’s biggest daily newspaper every day, listen to P1 often, and subscribe to The Economist. I’m as clued-up politically as a citizen who’s also working full time and has a 2-year old at home can well be asked to be, and yet I still don’t know more about the EP. How can I make an informed decision then?

“But you have to vote, otherwise the extremists will…” — yeah right, a vote for a body that has no real influence will give extremists a voice. Get real. Political extremists are smarter than that.

“Democracy is a right and a privilege, your vote is precious…” — no it isn’t. I’d rather save my energy making decisions that will affect me and my family. The MEP doesn’t do this, nor should it. It’s a tacked on band-aid that the technocrats behind the Union have slapped on to give their tired, bureaucratic, mega-project some democratic gloss. The EU is not a democratic project. It’s an artificial counterweight to the USA that doesn’t have a deep popular support and probably never will.

Some parts of it are good: the free movement of trade, capital, and labour. Most parts are bad: the CAP, the intrusive bureaucracy, the Gallo-Teutonic haughtiness of its unelected leaders. If, by denying this patchwork of idealism and self-serving nationalism the legitimacy of my vote, I can help undermine its foundations and bring about a serious re-evaluations of the whole project, I’m glad. But my vote won’t count, whether I cast it or not.

Jonas hosted the next installment of our semi-regular alumni gathering. This time, he had a digital camera and was not afraid to use it.

I’m feeling unusually stupid right now, and I’m not alone. The fact is that the ventilation in our building sucks. It’s a converted turbine hall, very dramatic, but there’s no provision for providing fresh air to everyone who works here. Expedients of opening windows simply lead to draughts of Force 10 intensity and a rapid drop of the ambient temperature to Arctic levels.

The Olympics in Beijing 2008 will present a golden opportunity for the Chinese leadership to demonstrate the resurgent power of China. Expect the regime to pull out all the stops in the medal race, with Chinese athletes competing not just in the traditional events — swimming, acrobatics, table-tennis — but in the “real Olympics”: athletics.

Also expect ruthless crackdowns on any people or organizations that might try to harness this opportunity to challenge the leadership: Tibetan separatists, Falun-Gong, Muslim separatists in Western China…

As Viking has started at a new kindergarten, I spent Thursday and Friday with him on inskolning.

On Saturday I travelled north to Djursholm to go to a kräftskiva at David’s parents place, he being the last of the gang to reach the arbitrary age of 30 (me, I’m counting my age in hex from now on…). A very nice time was had by all, especially considering that a Swedish crayfish party is where more alcohol is consumed per calorie food eaten anywhere outside Siberia. Pics can be seen here.

A nice surprise was that Martin and Ulrika have named their firstborn Frans Gustav, which is my first names. Their naming him that was entirely coincidental, though.

Sunday was spent nursing a light hangover, picking up fallen apples, and going to Margaretaparken in Enskede to hang out with Niclas, Lina, Teodor, and Pelle. Nice to see Viking and Teodor getting along so well.

I found a link to George Orwell’s essay on the perfect cup of tea on Libby’s blog.

Reading the essay reminded me of why I drink coffee nearly exclusively nowadays. I don’t care much about how my coffee is made — hot, strong, and with milk, but otherwise I could care less about how it’s made. My taste in tea, on the other hand, is so outré, so outside the bounds of acceptable tea-drinking behaviour, that I can only prepare and enjoy a cup of tea that I’ve made myself, in a peculiar manner.

I make tea like this: I put a pinch of Lapsang Souchong in a big cup. Then I pour boiling water in the cup. I wait a bit. Then I add milk.

The part about the tea and the water mixing without a strainer or a bag seems to freak people out most, although it’s endorsed by Orwell (in a kettle, but nonetheless…). In fact, I only break a few of his “rules” for a nice cup of tea.

I was reminded of all this when we woke up this morning without coffee grounds, and had to make do with instant. Also, something in the neighborhood smells exactly like Lapsang. So I’ve bought a packet of Twinings Lapsang for the first time in ages. Maybe I can kick to coffee habit, at least at home.

clevercactus share, the brainchild of Mobitopian Diego Doval, has won the “Site of the Month” award by the Swedish magazine InternetWorld.

A scan of the article is available here.

Quick and dirty translation:

Share files with your buddies

Brand new site Clevercactus Share combines two of the hottest trends right now — file sharing and buddy networks — in one package. Imagine an Orkut or Friendster with file sharing, or Kazaa with buddy features.

After registration, you download a client (available for all platforms) and start inviting friends and acquaintances to a private file-sharing network. The point is that you only share files with people you know, thereby keeping pirate hunters and other unwelcome elements away. Additionally, all transactions are encrypted. In the client, you can decide who gets to download what, and you can also chat with your contacts. You can also categorise your contacts as “Friends”, “Family”, or “Co-workers” and grant different permissions for each category.

Clevercactus Share is still in beta, and there are some issues with it, but the concept is so insanely well-timed that we can only applaud.

Wow! Three gold medals in two days:

• Karolina Klüft wins the heptathlon

• Stefan Holm wins the men’s high jump

• Christian Olsson wins the men’s triple jump

Go Sweden!

Article from Örnsköldsviks Allehanda (in Swedish).

I especially like the way Agero is mentioned.

File from David, put here for all those TT/TU and ExAgero types out there.

More than one and a half years late, here are some pictures from our wedding.

In our defence, we have had the pics since two weeks after the event, but now, thanks to Terje, they’re online.

This so-called “linking policy” says that you can only link to the athens2004 site if you write (by snail-mail) and ask permission first.

Here’s some more random linkage, without permission.

• Medals
• FAQ
• Youth 2004

Oh, and Athens 2004? My cheque for your Google-juice is in the mail.

I don’t think so, and neither do these guys. I also agree with the rest of the list. The Olympics have way too many sports as it is. Cutting out all the subjective judging events would magically reduce the number and preserve the Olympic ideal.

(via Dave.)

Update: of course, thinking about this gives another answer to why these sports are popular: lots of half-naked teenage girls.

Sports in the Olympics are subjected to television Darwinism: too few viewers and the event gets the chop.

Viking and I went to Åland this weekend to visit Petter and Alva together with Björn and Egil. We were a trio of dads with two-year olds traipsing around the bush having picnics. Thank god the kids didn’t synchronise their bad moments — there was generally only one child pissed off at a time.

Åland is a beautiful place in a harsh kind of way. There are lots of fields and deciduous trees, but the dominant feature is rock scoured smooth by the latest ice age, thinly covered by moss and stunted pines.

Petter and Giséla have a very nice place in Björnhuvud, about 15 minutes from the harbour and 20 minutes from Mariehamn, the capital.

Åland is closer to Sweden than to Finland, both geographically and culturally. The signposts are all in Swedish, none of the inhabitants have to serve in the Finnish army (the islands have been demilitarised since the 1920s), and only persons with citezenship can buy property there. Much of the income of the region comes from the sale of tax-free liqour to thirsty Swedes, although Åland also provides more than 40% of Finland’s onions.

Björn had a digital camera with him, which we shamelessly borrowed, snapping away at our kids wandering around picking blueberries. We quickly realised his wisdom of investing in half a gigabyte of memory. As soon as he gets the pics to me I’ll post some.

Update: pictures are now up at my album on MrX.no. Thanks Terje for giving me some space on his site!

I don’t suffer from triskaidekaphobia, but today I’m having doubts.

• I have the beginning of a cold, with headaches.
• It’s raining after a week of fine weather — and we had washing out.
• Our phones at work stop working.
• A key component of our site has stopped working, and the only one who can fix it is away.
• The coffee machine is broken.
• The database reports SIGSEGV.
• The mailserver reports “bus error” when you grep.

I’m wondering whether it’s a good idea to visit Petter on Åland today.

Update: the mailserver did in fact crash, but I was on my way by then…

You don’t have to be an amateur to compete in the Olympics anymore, but some restrictions remain. According to a radio show this evening, athletes can’t write a column or act as commentators for money.

Fair enough you might say. But the athlete who told us this is Stefan Holm, a high jumper competing on the Swedish team. He has an active home page/blog, which also has a lot of links to sponsors. If he wins a medal and writes about it in his own words, is he making money then? Could he be disqualified for that post?

No one knows. Understandably, athletes are reluctant to test the IOC on this matter. But with blogging gathering traction everywhere, someone, somewhere will post a ecstatic entry on his or her blog. Let’s hope it doesn’t cost them their medal.

You know you’ve been too long in Sweden when…

Vacation ends tomorrow. I’ve done quite a bit with the house, so the lack of good weather hasn’t been a determining factor. Saying this, a few more weeks wouldn’t have been unwelcome.

… is the modern equivalent of “a couple of guys in a garage”.

Inspired by the latest “hush-hush” biz discussion on #mobitopia.

In Sweden, you can’t buy alcoholic beverages anywhere but in the state monopoly’s stores, Systembolaget. This is to restrict supply and prevent us Swedes from descending into a permanent alcoholic stupor. For a long time, you couldn’t buy booze on Saturdays. You still can’t on Sundays.

The last couple of years, this company has moved away from lines in front of counters to self-serve style stores, where you can walk around and choose what you want instead of asking a clerk for it. This is because it’s now cheap and legal to bring in lots of alcohol from other countries, so the monopoly needs to move with the times.

Well, things have moved in the right direction, but there’s still some way to go. For example, I’m going to swing by “Bolaget” for some Kirin on my way to pick up some take-away sushi. But I can’t buy the beer refrigerated. How would that look? Anyone could buy a beer and then go to the nearest park and enjoy a cool one! No way that would work. In Sweden, you have to carry your beer home first and put it in the fridge, then get drunk.

How long until we get cold beer, huh?

Tomorrow I’m going to the Arvika festival with Hanna and her friend.

It’s my first rock festival, and while I’m going primarily as a chaperone, I think it’ll be fun.

I’ll see if I find anything interesting enough to moblog about.

Someday, some future owners of our house will tear down the wall in the new alcove, and blurt out in astonishment: “what the hell did he think he was doing?!”

Usually I get The Economist on Mondays, but not today.

Damn.

Update It arrived today, so I could enjoy my post-prandial coffee with it. (Yes, snail mail usually arrived at 11:00 here in our part of Stockholm.) Nothing really attention-grabbing, though.

After a long day fixing windows, we went down to Enskede Värdshus for a meal.

Both Jan and Joanna wanted fish (rolled lake perch), while I opted for lamb. To compromise on the wine, we asked for rosé. There was none in the wine list, but they had a bottle left since a wedding. This cost as much as the house white and was very nice.

Afterwards, we took a walk through Stureby and looked at other peoples houses and windows. This was also nice, until we came home and could once again note that we have Stureby’s ugliest house.

But now at least the windows will look better.

… with the bedroom.

Well not quite, but I’m sick and tired of the damn room, so I’ll fix the rest later (famous last words).

We’ve

• ripped up the plastic floor, exposing a nice pine parquet,
• demolished a closet and created an alcove instead,
• painted the ceiling and walls
• planed and sanded the floor,
• and oiled and polished it (today).

Oh, and we spent a day at Ikea. Fun.

The alcove’s left. But I’ll do that later, I promise.

My father’s come up from Halland to help out with the windows and the garden. Phew! I could use a vacation from the vacation…

Mail from Anna: they’re now proud parents of Klara, Jonatan’s little sister.

Also, they’re moving “back” to Sweden — to Lidingö.

Amazing result. Methodical, defensive football. Boring, but effective.

This is definitively Greece’s year — first this, then the Olympics.

Even though I’m on vacation, I’m doing more work than usual (I hope my boss doesn’t read this…).

Why? Well, we’ve finally taken gone to work on our bedroom (mini-diary in Swedish), and the nice thing about this kind of thing is that you see results. We’ve ripped up the ugly plastic carpeting and revealed a very nice pine parquet, started painting the ceiling and walls, and today we rippd out the old closet and turned it into an alcove instead.

I’ve also discovered that I have a critical mass of knowledge, tools, and materials to attempt quite ambitious projects. No last-minute , time-wasting trips to the hardware store. If I need something, I can usually do something else before going to the store — thus enhancing efficiency. And the fact that I’m on vacation means that there’s no time pressure.

A nice change from sitting in front of a computer all day.

Wow!

A very surprising result. The same teams that started this tournament will end it.

: Good news: Saddam Hussein is to face death penalty Bad news: David Beckham is taking it

From irc.freenode.net/#mobitopia.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Portugal — Czech Republic in the final, that’s my bet. Greece has played well, but the Czechs will win.

This category has been created to keep a diary over the work we’re doing on the house and garden this summer. I’ve also added a subcategory for the colours used inside the house.

I’m writing it in Swedish, as it’s more a personal memory for me and my family, and also a resource for friends. That’s why I’ve excluded it from the main page display, although it’s visible in the category tree.

Anyone who doesn’t read Swedish and has a burning wish to know more about how I’ve renovated our bedroom can drop me a line, and I’ll provide a translation.

Scandinavians cry foul at Euro 2004 match-fixing

Kate sent us a message last night telling us that Tim and Sarah have had a daughter called Millie. Unfortunately she was a bit early, but apparently they will be going home soon.

Update: got an SMS from Tim, they’re home (and not sleeping much). Also got some pictures from Kate via Nan, she’s so small

Damn. We lost.

Good game though, pity it went to penalties. That’s never fair.

Midsommar, the unofficial Swedish national day, has come and gone. We spent it at home in Stockholm, instead of traditionally at Josefine’s place in Sågen. This gave us the opportunity to repay her and Lotus for all the nice times we’ve had there.

Mårten, Maria, Vera, and Conrad joined in, and brought food and booze with them. Lunch was eaten on the top balcony, and consisted of sill (pickled herring) from Melanders, Västerbotten cheese, new potatoes, and knäckebröd. Of course we drank snaps and beer.

After lunch we went for a walk in a deserted Stureby. The sun was shining, although it was very windy. Rainclouds were gathering to the East, so we abandonded plans of eating dinner outside.

Main course was barbecued pork filet with potatoes, salad and grilled haloumni cheese. More beer and wine was drunk.

We wound up the evening watching Greece eliminate France from the Euro championship. Nice!

Updated. Chatting with Craig after writing this entry I realised I really should be more informative about Midsommar. Well, I don’t have to, because Ben has more info.

Today is my last day at work before vacation. As a Swede, I may not be payed much, but I do get five weeks of paid vacation. Hah.

We’re planning on doing a lot of work in the house and garden. The closet in the hall is first, then our bedroom. My father is coming up for a week, I hope we can get the windows scraped and repainted while he’s here.

We hope to level out the biggest patch of lawn in the garden, but I have no idea of how to do that. We’ll see.

Other plans are a visit to the Arvika rock festival with Hanna and her friend. Should be … interesting. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain too much.

We’ll also be visiting my parents in Halmstad for a week.

All in all I hope to be as far away from a computer as possible.

Have a nice summer!

Friday, Sweden played 1–1 against Italy and now have a shot at advancing to the quarter-finals.

Saturday, I helped Petter and Giséla move all their stuff to Åland, where they’re moving into a house. Basse and Anders were there to; the usual gang in other words. I tipped Petter off about weblogs and stuff, so that he can document the freezing winters in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

That evening we went to Josefine and ate a thank-you meal for helping her move a couple of weeks back. Nice to hook up with Georges and Johanna again, and always nice to see Åse and Madde. Unfortunately, Viking flipped out on the way home, and even if he cooled down when we came home and watch Czechoslovakia beat the Netherlands 3–2, he didn’t go to sleep until late.

Today Sunday, Joanna’s brother Love has with moving the washing machine from the cellar to the spare bathroom. We’ve also started on the windows facing the street. Hopefully we’ll have them done this week.

Reading Simon’s weblog after he mentioned it on #mobitopia generated flashbacks to my own high school experiences.

Of course, the internet didn’t exist back then, at least not in the part of Sweden where I went to school. So I didn’t blog about my feelings, just wrote about them in a diary. (Must remember to find that diary and burn it.)

Anyway, I was a year younger than everyone else, and very shy, so I had no chance of explaining my feelings to he object of my affection. I was crushed when she started going out with someone else. I’ve since learnt that this guy stood up in a bus on a school trip and publicly recited a love poem to her. This showed major cojones, and proved to me that she probably wasn’t my type anyway.

I then when on and was unlucky in love with yet more people until I met my present wife, and was thrown into the deep end with a relationship involving kids and buying a house. So far, it has worked out. But life was more simple then, when I was 17.

Sweden has had a flying start in Euro2004, beating Bulgaria 5 – 0. With Denmark – Italy 0 – 0, this really gives Sweden a nice start in the tournament.

The EU-critical party Junilistan won’t be given a place in SVTs final debate before the EP elections on Sunday.

The reason: they don’t have a seat in the Parlaiment.

And pundits wonder why people won’t bother to vote in this election.

Good piece by Ewan on the difference between “magic” and mere puzzles.

In the age of the internet, it’s easy to google the solutions to many tricks. The hard-earned mastery of the magician can be “exposed” by anyone with a web browser and zero sense of wonder in their lives.

Information wants to be free, and most information should be free, but the mechanics of magic should perhaps be hidden from view, lest we lose yet another of life’s pleasures.

There has long been a gentleman’s agreement in place in Swedish media that a suspect will not be named until he or she has been convicted of a crime. With the latest spectacular crimes in Sweden, such as the murder of foreign minister Anna Lindh and the bizarre happenings in Knutby, this has changed. Now, some media outlets name the suspects when they have been charged with a crime.

In the Knutby case, the tabloids never mentioned the minister’s name, but both his wives (whose murders he is charged with) were named with their married names, Fossmo. And as he has Norwegian background anyone can read his full name in the Norwegian newspapers, or on the web.

Of course, the state television holds the moral banner high, and will not name the suspects. References to them in the court audio feed are replaced with beeps.

The privately owned TV4 has no such scruples. So the secretive “Christ’s Bride”, Åsa Walldau, is named as such in the news. 2 hours earlier, in SVTs news, the court sketch has the title “andlig ledare” (“spiritual leader”). This puts her on the same footing as the Dalai Llama.

These efforts, although honourable, are doomed to fail. Anyone who wants can find the details, not on some shady website, but on BBC and CNN. The media is global, at least if the news is big enough. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the whole thing?

So Ronald Reagan has died. My first political memory is going to a US international school in Kuala Lumpur and seeing the big board with election results between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

This thought also occurred to me.

Mildly amusing (in Swedish).

Quick-n-dirty translation:

Hi! I’m going to a yearly dinner with my relatives at the end of May and need someone to play my boyfriend. Long story… You should be around 25, “normal”, and be polite. Free food ;-)

Some thoughts after a visit to the mall:

• You can now get a SIM-free taco for SEK 1 349, 1 100 less than what I paid for it four months ago. And that was with a subscription.

• Electronic stores now run a DVD on all their TV screens with commercials and snippets from coming releases, instead of just showing MTV.

• Kids and sugar don’t really mix.

Also, IE doesn’t handle   entities very well. I used them to format the prices above. Removed for now.

Thomas C. Greene on Abu Graib

High school teacher fired for not censoring poetry

The ultimate timewaster for the taco

Ho hum. MEP elections are coming up. Booooring.

I feel strongly about one thing in the EU: that the CAP must be abolished. No-one I can elect to the parliament will make this happen. Probably only a combination of global warming and a massive die-back of French farmers will bring this about, in a century or two.

I feel less strongly about software patents. They affect lots of people and the future of free software, but compared to growing food they are unimportant. However, they maybe can be banned in the EU by the EP.

So I’m looking for a candidate who’s opposed to software patents.

I’d like to vote for Christofer Fjellner (m), but his party supports software patents, and who knows what kind of hold they have over him.

So I’ll probably vote for Olle Schmidt (fp) instead.

I first encountered the belief that Europe was heading for an inevitable Islamic takeover in a most unlikely place: this post by Philip Greenspun.

This entry shocked me, because from what I’ve read of and about him, Phil is a smart guy. If this is how well educated Americans living in Boston view Europe?

I couldn’t really put my finger on what was wrong with his analysis. This article does just that. Recommended reading.

dwlt will be in Uppsala/Stockholm this weekend. Here is a short list of suggestions of things to do.

• Uppsala: visit the cathedral (Domkyrkan). The town itself is a very nice place, Sweden’s Oxford.

• Stockholm: the Vasa Museum is well worth a visit.

• The museum is on Djurgården, a park to the east of the centre of town. Waldermarsudde is an art gallery at the other end, with a very nice walk in between. Fans of Edvard Munch and Nietzsche will enjoy Thielska Galleriet in the same general area.

• Visit the Stockholm Archipelago with a trip on the Vaxholm boats. Many different destinations for different timescales.

• Stockholm Old Town, Gamla stan, in the middle of the city. The Royal Palace is here. South of the Old Town is Söder, literally South, the more Bohemian of Stockholms neighborhoods. Lots of bars, galleries, parks…

• Eat traditional, if expensive Swedish food at KB or even more expensive seafood at Wedholms Fisk.

First day skiing since 1997. I’m whacked.

First sunny day in the city, the Sisters of Mercy playing on the Taco, and the irresistible urge for new sunglasses came over me. So now I’m the proud owner of a couple of Ray-Ban Sidestreets. Mirrorshades. I’ve wanted a pair since I read Neuromancer in 1985.

Of course, if Ray-Ban didn’t have an all-Flash site, I could link to them. But they do, so I can’t. Less linklove for them then.

They will adorn my handsome mug when I go skiing in Åre this weekend.

Funny how things come together. Today, I was discussing the following things IRL and on IRC:

• Automatically grabbing TV broadcasts from the US and distributing them as BitTorrents for consumption here in Sweden.
• Getting HBO to send to the EU.
• Paying a fee to see shows that are shown in the US but not in the EU.
• The lack of EU soccer coverage in the US.

Bottom line: there is a market for TV on both sides of the Atlantic. Who will exploit it? Or will this fill the gap?

Rightsholders in TV space are accustomed to wholesale marketing. They sell programming to networks, and the networks are in the mass market. To enable the scenarios above would entail retail marketing and pricing. Where are the new business models coming from? Or is everyone in the music, TV, and movie business more interested in protecting their profit margins than giving people what they want, and what they are prepared to pay for?

Generally, I appreciate that people who want my money in the subway do something for it. Selling the Stockholm version of “The Big Issue” is the best, I usually buy that.

Music is a distant second in my wish for something to reward.

Outright begging is at the bottom.

However, I’ve had to build a cellar. Playing the accordion and singing on the subway will never ever be rewarded by me.

Yesterday I had five friends from KTH over for dinner. We had herring (“sill”) sandwiches with akvavit and beer for starters (thanks Henrik), followed by lamb roast with rice and Chateau Musar 1997. This pretty far-out wine (astringent I guess you could call it) went along famously with the lamb, and made the Haut-Médoc that followed taste like it was watered.

Calle and Jonas had picked up a selection of cheeses. We drank a bottle of my birth-day port, a 1960 vintage. Famous taste, like a really rich and alcohol-drenched caramel.

For dessert, David made strawberry- and plum knödel. Johan bought cigars, accompanied by rum and whiskey (Talisker). Altogether a very nice evening.

I got to use an [1] MP3-player a few days ago and re-discovered the joys of riding the subway with a soundtrack.

But I couldn’t keep the player (a nice, but DRM-crippled Panasonic) and instead looked around to buy one. There are lots of USB-stick form-factor players around, but I’ve been thinking about a Series 60 phone for a while, and most models can play audio too.

The Siemens SX1 was my first choice, but then a local phone store had a deal on an N-Gage for an extension on my plan. So I picked one up [2] today.

First impressions are mixed. I discovered too late that you need a Bluetooth connection to sync and install files, but that can be fixed pretty cheaply. I already have a 64-MB MMC card, so I can listen to at least one album at a time. And bigger cards are pretty affordable too.

I got 3 games included, but none of them were in stock, so I’ll get them later. Until then, I enjoy the music and the radio.

So now I’m a kid wannabe. All the guys at work figure I’m having age-related anxiety.

[1] “a” or “an”? Probably “a”, but “an” sounds better.
[2] I love this phrase — carefree consumerism!

We’ve got an espresso machine on the counter, but I don’t use it as much as I’d like. Workdays both J and I want lotsa hot coffee, so it seems a waste to spend precious minutes fiddling with the machine. You never know when Viking needs more sandwiches, so the savouring of the perfect espresso is far away in the mornings.

In the evenings, an espresso is a bit on the strong side for easy sleep. So the machine just stands there, slightly accusing.

I need to add “drink more espresso” to the list of Things To Do each day. “Dagens i-landsproblem”, as Tobias would say.

Sometimes Swedish state television (I love saying that — it sounds as if I live in a third world dictatorship) has a couple of minutes to spare in their schedule. Every time, without fail, they play a paralysingly boring Coldplay video.

Coldplay must be the most overrated band in the Western hemisphere. Why does my hard-taxed license money go to them? (To be fair, the dough probably goes to some paid-up member of the RIAA, which doesn’t make it any better.)

Updated: Patric at work confirms that Coldplay are in the cusp of sellout. First they were underground. Now they are “hip” to people choosing music on state TV channels. Next their music is in commercials.

I believe that other people should be able to benefit from my organs if they need it. (Obviously I’d like to be dead first.) So I went to livsviktigt.se to sign up in the national organ donor registry.

I nearly left in disgust when the site kidnapped my browser and resized it — for no apparent reason! Just because they felt their site appearance was so important… more important than the time and convenience of the people they’re trying to persuade to donate their organs to total strangers.

This antic is so 1990s.