Benjamin — revisited

Coffee to go.

2009-03-08T17:27:00.005+01:00

The label "nerd" is relative like most anything in this world. There's relative nerdiness within fields, but also some fields of interest are more likely to induce the label "nerd" than others. Instances: I would easily call Sheldon Cooper a nerd, while others would call me a nerd for the same reasons. Also, you're much more likely to be called a nerd if you spend 40 hours a week on Age of Conan (I would have written World of Warcraft, but I'm using the opportunity to do some advertising) than if you watch reruns of "The Bold and the Beautiful" for the same amount of time.

Coffee is a field were nerds (or, of course "geeks") abound. I'll allow myself to be a little nerdy on coffee right here. I'm into this to be able to make a good cup of coffee, within the limits and time of someone who has a day job. Some will find this kind of activity insanely nerdy, and some not at all…

I visited Tim Wendelboe today, or rather, some of his followers at the Tim Wendelboe coffee nerd hive. Tim is now selling the Solis 166, which is sold under various names. I bought a Bodum Antigua coffee grinder in Copenhagen at the Bodum store together with jrc* this Christmas, and it's been serving me well so far, but it's nice to see that Tim is selling grinders too, considering that they are much harder to come across for sale in Oslo than most common illegal substances. Since I showed some interest in the grinder, they asked me if I needed any help and I started talking about the Antigua, and how it has a ton of grind settings, but that the indicated targets for espresso, filter and French press seem to be way off. So they (IK, CK) gave me a sample of what they think is the right filter grind, so I could compare that with the result from the Bodum Antigua.

So allow me a moment of nerddom.

I bought this Kenyan Mununga, and I got a sample of espresso roasted someting or other, ground for filter for comparison.

Tim Wendelboe's Kenyan Mununga

Filter grind from Tim Wendelboe

The Antigua has quite a lot of settings, and the filter setting is a little more coarse than I'd like, so I tried comparing 1 and 2 steps finer than filter (Filter -1 and Filter -2).

My filter -1 looks like this (see the album for close-ups):

Fra Kaffe

And filter -2 is like this:

Fra Kaffe

Even though there is unevenness in the ground TW coffee, the most striking part is how much more variation there is in the Antigua grind. That is of course to be expected by an entry-level burr grinder. However, it seems to me, that despite the wider bell curve of sizes on the Antigua vs. whatever they have at TW, the grind setting Filter -1 is a closer match than Filter -2. Filter -2 produces quite a lot more small particles, so that it seems like the median is shifted more than you'd expect towards smaller particles and dust.

I think filter -1 (that is one step closer to espresso grind) is more resemblant to the TW coffee than filter -2. This is based only on looks, and not on taste, since I changed other parameters. Also I have not tried any more since I made two rather large cups, and I didn't want to get a caffeine induced heart attack.

However, I did devise a better method for adding a more correct amount of water. jrc* of course shuns me for not adhering to the weighing of water, but I think that method has two disadvantages. Basically it goes like this: weighing the beans, putting them in the filter; putting the cup with filter and coffee on the reset scale, and pouring water over until the weight-equals-desired-volume (given water weight to volume is SI 1 to 1). First, I don't have a scale with any reasonable accuracy, and second, I like to have a premeasured amount of water to put in, since I can't think about two things at the same time.

I've been looking for a glass volume container (since I'd rather have glass than plastic) that doesn't have too much heat capacity. I have a Pyrex 1L one, but if I pour 3 dL into that, the temperature quickly dropped to around 80 degrees before I could do anything about it.

So I decided to put a 3 dL mark on the French press container (since that's what I often use if I wanna make a large morning cup of coffee, giving a little more than 2.5 dL of brewed coffee), thinking it wouldn't cool down the coffee as fast as the big and heavy Pyrex (which is also unhandy, because it's so big). But as it turns out, the temperature drops pretty quickly too (88.5 degrees when I get a steady metering), if the French press glass is unheated.

Fra Kaffe

But with slight preheating of the French press glass, I can make coffee with a pre-measured 3 dL volume for 1 cup of Kenyan Mununga, and grind setting "filter -1".

Good morning.

No more hotel

2007-07-05T15:32:00.000+02:00

No more hotel for now. No more automatically clean towels and breakfast buffés, no more restaurants-every-day, no more living at St. Olav's Square, no more vouchers...

On the other hand, no more living in a suitcase and needing stuff you have on the other side of the country, no more tiny fridge filled with overprices tiny bottles, no more hotel beds, and hotel dudes turning on the wrong lights, and no more checking out Friday morning and taking a suitcase to work.

I have moved to Oslo. And I still haven't been grocery shopping. I have nothing to eat except a half-dry bread and some stolen bananas. And I still don't have my stuff, it's still in Bergen, and I'm picking it up this weekend. So this week I've missed my hotel, even though it's nice feeling that my life is returning to normalcy -- figuring out the commute to work for instance. It's not so bad. I have nice redundancy on my way to work. I can take the subway, and choose another line that takes a shortcut and catches up with my preferred line if I'm 2 minutes late, and I can take a bus that goes really close to my house, and I can even bike if I feel brave and gutsy enough.

Oslo is nice.

I don't live here anymore

2007-06-16T14:17:00.000+02:00

I'm at "home" in Bergen. I like to say "an era is coming to an end". I'm in Bergen for perhaps the last time before I move for good. But an era is not really coming to an end. Bergen has not really been an era, not even from my micro-perspective eyes. I have lived here for seven months, but only really been here for two. Life is unstable. Last week I couldn't even find a hotel to stay in, and lived at Earl Intender's place for a week. Good service. No complaints (probably the best hotel in town, including a cheese table at Frognerparken — beats breakfast at Edderkoppen). But it's going to be nice to move to Oslo and have a place to stay.

Weekend perks:

1. My camera has arrived! Sadly not here, but it has arrived.
2. I have a place to live in Oslo!
3. I'm going to Italy tomorrow.

A neat idea.

2007-06-01T23:27:00.000+02:00

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yes, I think they are a neat idea. And I really do like this 80s-looking watch. Lots of people are all "Whoa, have you had that watch since you were born or something?" They don't realize that this timeless timepiece is as neat of an idea as it was in 1983. And now it's broken. And it sucks.

Actually it's just the glass that is broken. But since this is Norway 2007 it costs more to have it fixed than what I paid for this would-be heirloom, in 2000.

Clover

2007-05-30T17:18:00.000+02:00

A new coffee maker is in town, the brand new machine from Clover, which supposedly makes coffee by some kind of vacuum principle (instead of pressure or just plain old gravity, I suppose, I haven't really gotten into it, as I don't expect to own one anytime soon).

This new baby costs somewhere in the vicinity of 11 000 USD and/so not that many own them yet. But thanks to my primary coffee (information) source -- coffee aficionado John, I happen to know that there are two such machines located in Norway, and not surprisingly they are both in Oslo.

So at Stockfleth's I tried one of this cups of some kind of Rwandan blend. And though the experience might have been a little tainted by the fact that I had never tried the coffee made by some other technique, and that 300 police-cars passed the window, I must say I wasn't blown away. I wasn't all "meh!" and I didn't feel ripped off paying 25 NOKs for the cup, but I would have felt a little un-mesmerized if I'd paid 11 000 dollars for the hunk of steel. Or to sum up like John did: "it's good. it's not $11000 good."

No suits in my suit case

2007-05-28T21:29:00.000+02:00

My location is unstable, but what I need to pack is more or less the same.

11 pairs of socks.
11 boxer shorts.
11 t-shirts.
Put select clothing on top.

Then it's just to get tickets and get up early.

Jag fick ett brev

2007-04-30T00:25:00.000+02:00

I got a letter. A real letter, and although without stamps, it contains plenty of real-life impact. It was from Lånekassen, informing me that my life in freedom was over. Years of carefree student life of regularly getting "paid" is over, and the past is back to haunt me for the next decades with quarterly brain mortgages.

Does this mean I'm finally grown-up? I drink coffee. I even bought orange marmalade. And I'm paying down my debt to society whilst paying tax. Am I not overly conforming of our community's set standards?

Notes from the shore

2007-04-17T18:28:00.000+02:00

I'm back from New York. New York is very chaotic and nobody stands still or stays quiet. People dress and talk just like in the movies. And though assumed to be opposites, New York and Beijing are frighteningly similar. Maybe it's just got to do with size, and loud people.

For some reason, though New York is packed with sights (and sounds), it seems like my visit at Google made the biggest impression on me. Perhaps it is because when people ask me what I did over there, that visit is the least obvious of touristy targets.

This is a picture on the terrasse outside the Google cafeteria -- Pablo invited us for a gourmet free lunch. Maybe the best meal in New York (especially if by "good" you also add healthy)

After a week in New York, life has returned to abnormal:

I'm not actually off-shore, but pretty close, since I am living in an oil platform which is standing in the water. Luckily I have steady ground just a little walk from here. A soft beginning to what seems to become a normal state soon.

I'm inside the oil rig which can jack itself up those pillars.

Down on the ground people in the shipyard, or rigyard are running back and forth, everything is really gritty, and not-so-nice. The ambiance down below is one of dirty overalls, restrooms without soap, and men making obscene gestures to the very few women around

Up here, everything is a little more relaxed, a little bit more communal. Money is no good, food is ready in the mess room at fixed hours (breakfast from 0545 to 0745), and no doors are locked. There's are "recreational rooms" and a gym. All in all, not unlike Google. Though less fancy and more dirty.

I'm sitting on Deck E next to a room with which hosts control systems. An alarm keeps going off (locally), but I can't be bothered to mute it -- it's gonna start again anyways.

We've also managed set off the General Alarm and Deluge (i.e. heavy heavy duty sprinklers). Yay...

It's time for dinner. I'm starting to suspect it's customized for people with more physical labor than me...

10 000

2007-03-18T20:38:00.000+01:00

I just realized that my pictures had really low numbers. The counter has restarted. So the rather uneventful image from Skuteviken below represents a minor event, as my Canon A70 has shot 10 000 pics.

Another picture I shot was from this weekend's little reunion in Hemsedal for ppl from my automation class at HiST.

Oh my

2007-03-15T21:28:00.000+01:00

Oslo is nice, though a little temporary — after all I live in a hotel. After several weeks of getting used the much larger work environment in Oslo vs. Bergen, and right before going to tomorrow's kick-off meeting for our project, I got a phone call. So now I'm leaving. This time on Monday I might be heading off to a Danish offshore platform. Life changes. That's how it is. So tomorrow morning, when I head off to ski with old buddies in Hemsedal, I have to carry all my stuff with me, because Monday morning, I need to be in Bergen. Gather my stuff, get some clean clothes. Get ready. Things change. Pretty fast.

As long as I'm free to go to NY in the end of March I'm happy. My Easter plans are set. And so are my (now old) office decorations.

But who knows. Everything might change again ;)

Hotel room bonanza

2007-02-14T21:45:00.000+01:00

So now I'm in a hotel in Oslo. Clean towels, a 7th floor balcony, and breakfasts with an abundance of choices -- all good things, and despite the relative proximity of the walls in my room, it has a few perks:

I can set the room temperature with my remote on the tv, see if I have any messages from the reception, set the alarm in the morning. Cool and geeky, but this digital tv crap renders the tv function basically looking like buggy divx.

An ironing board and iron that I have not yet used.

A hair drier. Haven't used.

Free internet. Have used.

Anyways, it seems I might be residing here at this hotel for a while, and food is an issue. Eating out is nice, but can get somewhat of a hassle. Across the street there's a relatively cheap and decent that I tried out for a veggie burger today. For company I brought my Mao biography, and it turns out they have a huge poster with Mao on the wall, and on top of it all I was wearing my red star t-shirt that I bought in China. Good thing it wasn't a Chinese restaurant. Anyways, since the place is nice and close, I figure I should save it for use when I don't really wanna go outside for food.

Lots of people have been telling me how annoying it is to live in a hotel. So far I've tried to focus on and appreciate the positives, and I think it's going well. But today I encountered my first real hassle: I bought a little microphone for Skype on the computer, and it was wrapped in this really sealed plastic shell which is almost impenetrable and there I was stuck with nothing even remotely sharp or pointy. Is this just the first in a series of nuisances that I'll encounter? Besides Bush on CNN, I mean?

Precipitation, anticipation, and hibernation

2007-01-27T18:27:00.000+01:00

Preparing for off shore duties in the quest of adding CO2 into the atmosphere, I attended a safety training course to make scenarios where I might end up in the North Sea more bearable. Evacuating sinking helicopters and flipping inflatable rafts in the sea was fun, but all in all they made it perfectly clear that what we want to do is to avoid getting into the water.

But I'm getting wet anyways. Even though the rain stopped for long enough to break the line of consecutive days with precipitation at 84 — and at the moment we're enjoying the variation of snow instead of rain, there's no reason to believe that it will last.

That's one of the reasons it's nice that I'm leaving. In a week I leave for a training course in Prague, after which I'll start working on a project in Oslo for a while, traveling back and forth between Bergen and Oslo, and perhaps other places. Catch me if you can.

Bergen i vintervær

Stoltzen

2006-12-28T16:49:00.000+01:00

Stoltzekleiven opp og ned.

Ephemeral — eternal

2006-12-19T20:27:00.000+01:00

I get the morning blues. When the alarm goes off and my watch says 06:something, I question the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. The odd early morning to catch a train or something is OK, but now I'm stuck with early mornings indefinitely. Everything I've done has had a less-than-three year perspective. Now I'm on a schedule indefinitely. No more working ten to two, skiing or going to the beach on a Wednesday, or playing Civ until the birds start singing again, no more getting done and moving on to new things next semester.

I guess that's OK. It's more challenging to have a real job — more sustainable having a paid occupation. But I have to get up in the morning...

Trying Tom

2006-12-17T00:37:00.000+01:00

I don't take many pictures, because I'm inside most of the time, and when I go somewhere I don't bring my camera. It'll get wet. My room mate has her phone in a zip-lock bag in her purse. I have a pretty satisfying feeling after washing all my clothes, and cleaning the house, and visiting Runar for pizza and high-end cognac. I even treated myself to a CD — "Blood Money" by Tom Waits. I didn't know much about Tom, I just bought the CD feeling I needed a new sound. He's weird. He has a voice "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car." Playing it for the first time I thought — what have I bought, but already the second time I appreciated it a little bit more. Hmm... Interesting.

My room: Tom Waits, fruit, clean sheets, and a woven Quechua thingy on the wall (that I bought in 1997, but that hasn't been put to "use" before now).

Somewhere, over the...

2006-12-09T16:02:00.000+01:00

I've been wanting to take some pics of this part of Bergen, where I now live. But since I haven't been able to be outside when there's daylight this week, nothing happened until today, Saturday, and even today I barely managed to get outside before it started getting darker. But luckily, on my day off, the weather was good too. Good in the Bergenese way: good -- when it rains less than normal. When raindrops are simply falling, and don't feel like they're thrown at you. When you can see glimpses of the sky, or even some rays of sun.

Settling in, chilling out.

2006-12-08T21:39:00.000+01:00

One week at work, almost a week in Skuteviken. Trying to stay in touch with old friends, and meeting new ones (nice new ones, nice old ones) after work and at work, while getting my new room in order has left me with little free time. It's a little depressing in a way, to realize how little is left after work and sleep, and that's even after too little sleep.

Now I've spent most of my day after biking home in the ever-lasting pouring rain tidying up my room. I think it's quite nice, and maybe tomorrow, when it's Saturday I might have the time to take a couple of pictures while we have day light. Haven't seen it in a while... But for now I'm just posting a little update about where I live. Unlike the dudes who shoot the pictures for selling real estate, I have a pathetic wide-angle, and also I'm not bothering to pay attention to every little detail. But maybe it's possible to get a little impression of how things are.

Skuteviken innredet

Now I'm just kicking back after one week at my new job, with lots of courses and safety instructions and weird stuff I don't know how to do. Though it's getting clearer to me what it's all about. I'll try not to become a member of the million club -- that is making mistakes that cost more than one million (NOK).

Central

2006-11-28T23:13:00.000+01:00

My mother always seems to think where she lives is really central (with arguments like "we have asphalt", and "you can buy ice cream every other Saturday"). I try to tell her it's not. It's beautiful and quiet and has several good qualities, but it's not central. It's a good drive from anything that could qualify as central. The nearest store is in the sticks, the nearest gas station is in a little village named after a natural phenomenon nearby, and the nearest train station is simply where the tracks cross the road. And my parents' house is at a place where most people don't have the guts to drive any farther, so bikers and Dutch tourists turn around giving the illusion of traffic.

It's not central.

But it's pretty.

2006-11-20T14:16:00.000+01:00

Create your own visited country map.

Some of the point in visiting China was of course to make the map more red ;) Look -- the difference China makes...

Morning Glory

2006-11-18T19:50:00.000+01:00

Trondhjæm, at æ reist i fra dæ.

Cruising around Trondheim is nice, meeting old friends and seeing old places. And today Trondheim presented itself well. Calm clouds in the morning and a few hours of a pale winter sun.

On my way to my 9 am breakfast.

The Lost Son

2006-11-16T17:59:00.000+01:00

Things are kinda working out. After signing a job contract (yay!), I set out to find a place to live — and after turning down some housing offers with serious dediciencies, I got a room in an apartment with 3 other people. It's in a cosy part of Bergen, and very close to where the woman is coming out of a house in this promotional video. It's pretty central, and in a nice neighborhood of low white houses.

Late yesterday I came back to Trondheim and was treated like the Lost Son in Anders' big house, with good wine and good food. Wonderful.

This is a map of the location in relation to Bryggen :)

Bergen

2006-11-12T23:36:00.000+01:00

I'm in Bergen. When I was sitting at my parents' place with horizontal rain outside, I couldn't imagine the notoriously rainy Bergen could be any worse. But here I am, listening to hail on my window every ten minutes -- the grass is soggy, and the clouds are gray. But between the showers, the hail and the howling wind, there are some perks, when you can splash in the puddles.

Slow

2006-11-06T19:59:00.000+01:00

Slow days are passing, with no real events.

My mom is making cake. I've been surfing, playing "Project IGI" which kinda sucks, and waiting for my Swedish luggage with the Civ III cd. Now it's here. It's pretty nice playing without really feeling like I need to do anything else. Maybe it'll lose it's charm?

Slow stuff, slow civ?

2006-11-03T14:15:00.000+01:00

On my way from Malmö I stopped in Oslo for a day, and in Trondheim for another. My stuff is much slower. While I just walked through "nothing to declare", my shipped box and suitcase are much slower. The dude at Posten in Sweden made sure my suitcase was locked, something the customs people might not appreciate fully. Now everything has left Oslo at least. I'm not impressed.

Dato Kl Hendelse Poststed
CC1632*******
03.11.06 13.49 VIDERESENDT 0024 OSLO
03.11.06 12.26 FRIGJORT FRA IMPORTTOLLEN 0024 OSLO
02.11.06 12.40 STOPPET FOR IMPORTFORTOLLING 0024 OSLO
02.11.06 12.40 ANKOMMET MOTTAKERLAND 0024 OSLO
31.10.06 04.57 SENDT FRA AVSENDERLAND 9999 INGEN NY POSTADRESSE

CC1632*******
02.11.06 15.22 VIDERESENDT 0024 OSLO
02.11.06 15.17 FRIGJORT FRA IMPORTTOLLEN 0024 OSLO
02.11.06 12.39 STOPPET FOR IMPORTFORTOLLING 0024 OSLO
02.11.06 12.38 ANKOMMET MOTTAKERLAND 0024 OSLO
31.10.06 04.57 SENDT FRA AVSENDERLAND 9999 INGEN NY POSTADRESSE

I've been at home for 3 days. I still have a cold. I'm getting bored, and the lack of stuff to do is starting to become obvious. I tried to play some Project IGI. Pretty realistic game, but pretty boring. My CD with Civilization III is in the suitcase which is in the mail...

Back in Norway

2006-11-02T10:50:00.000+01:00

John and I flew to Beijing from Xi'an. We were both a bit touristed out, perhaps that's why I never blogged again. As part of the whole Malmö/China reunion thing going on, Jeff came from California to Beijing for the last week we were there, and with him we saw all the mandatory Beijing sights, like the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall. The latter was perhaps the most awe-inspiring, while the biggest perk at the Forbidden City was the tiny and unconspicuous Starbucks located inside (IMHO).

Now I'm back in Norway. After a long trip via Malmö, Oslo and Trondheim, I'm back to Vangshylla, where the air is crisp and clean, and white snow is on the ground, and I have a cold, I'm sitting inside coughing up Chinese smog. And applying for jobs.

See all the pictures.

Poo Day

2006-10-21T16:10:00.000+02:00

We came to Xi'an mainly because its fame since a farmer came across the macabre remains of emperor Qin, who made terracotta soldier depictions of his army, to protect him in the afterlife, before he finished off the real-life warriors. Two thousand two hundred years and one early morning later, I find myself at a youth hostel eating an American breakfast, waiting for a bus that never arrives.

The terracotta soldiers were of course a marvellous discovery, and a very cool collection of historical artifacts, but without finding the story behind a little interesting, the site today is little more than a giant tourist trap. And our bus never showed up, and we had to make it there on our own, but we teamed up with two very nice English girls, and did everything on our own, that is John was negotiating with everyone for prices.

Today we had dim sum for breakfast and met up with our new friends despite the lack of fool proof planning. I went with them to Shaanxi History Museum, which was a pretty comprehensive collection of artifacts found in the region, dating back from about 4000 BC. John didn't come, because he's all touristed out, but if ht'd been there, we would have had plenty of opportunity to nerdily merge Shaanxi history with CivIII gameplay. The museum, like most history museums, had a few too many almost identical pots, and arrowheads to keep me continuously entertained, but all in all it was a pretty neat place. And it's interesting to note how a similar museum in Norway would have their historic artifacts dated about 3000 years later — when the Chinese made large ornamented copper kettles, the Scandinavians were roaming tribes that caught fish with their hands and ate it raw. Or I might be exaggerating. But in Civ-terms, if the Chinese had attacked the Vikings around year 0, the puny Vikings would have been no more than a legend.

After saying good-bye to the Brits, John and I had what we thought was a sufficiently quick dinner before heading off to the train station for our night train to Beijing. Unfortunately, Xi'an taxis have peak hours where no taxis are available, and this coincided with our approaching departure time from Xi'an train station. As time passed we got a little desperate, and ended up hailing one of those moped taxi things, with a driver that promised he could get us there in a jiffy — so we got in and John said: "It's all up to you now". Knowing that Chinese traffic is scary, and that Chinese taxi drivers have nerves of steel and no manners, this was a rather bold thing to say: the driver stretched the rules of traffic now and then, and broke them the rest of the time — changing lanes, going against traffic, throwing himself in front of busses, and basically risking our lives — and getting us there in 12 minutes, rightly deserving a five kuai tip. All in vain, we missed our train, thanks to the impeccably on-time commie trains.

This is of course a major drawback, for our schedule and not least economically, but the Chinese Railway refunded our tickets 80 %: we approve! After deciding to go for airtickets and a lot of help from a remarkably agreeable travel agent, we've ended up with plane tickets to Beijing tomorrow morning, and we're staying at a hotelroom without windows, with cockroaches, and with internet (win some - lose some). Wish I could say it was all for the best, but it isn't, but it's worked out pretty well. Kind of a mix between a Good Poo Day (GDP) and just a poo day.

Rain over Xi'an.

2006-10-18T16:36:00.000+02:00

Today John and I have just been strolling around. We deserve a break from tourism, and today is afterall John's birthday.

In the muslim area of town we came across a tea-place where they sold and gave samples of different Chinese teas. So far Chinese teas have been a huge disappointment -- luke warm weak crap, that tastes more of the horrible tap water they have here than of tea. And I don't like the normal green tea that they often offer us, it tastes like seaweed.

But this woman in the store took more pride in the whole tea-business. She let us sample a lot of stuff. New to me is that they store tea in compressed cakes, often with a nice socialist star embossed for added effect. The tea seems to develop flavour over the years, and they had tea that had been stored for up to 10 years. We tried a 5 year old tea that had a distinct smoke flavour, almost like a whisky. Very special, and completely unknown to me. We also sampled some lichi tea, where the tea plants apparently had grown with lichi trees, and gotten it's flavour from it. The oolong tea they had was very rich, but with a little strange flavour to me, harder to like. But in general, the whole experience was interesting, and gave me a little more insight and respect for their whole tea-mania. We even went to the national tea-museum in Hangzhou, but the sampling there was much less impressive -- and maybe we got a little duped. As always.

Hangzhou -> Xian

2006-10-16T17:33:00.000+02:00

Pics

Today John and I have seen the medicine museum and tea museum -- and we've been shopping and eating. See the random selection of pics.

Suzhou

2006-10-12T16:34:00.000+02:00

John and I have made it to Suzhou, a touristy place with hundreds of dudes trying to Shanghai us to their probably fake hotel, and instead mug us behind a public urinal. But we chose JinJyang Inn, the same as in Shanghai. Very responsible. Unfortunately I had misread the map, and now we are officially stuck in the sticks, not far from the Shangri-La, actually, but far from things to see. So tomorrow we're moving to a more central, slightly more expencive place.

Since we came kind of late we haven't seen any old or culturally significant things today, but rather splurged in made-in-china heaven, clothes and bits on DVDs. I'm still in Safe Mode food-wise, after my little digestive reboot, but today I successfully completed a meal at a Korean restaurant, even defying the waitress' attempts at suggesting meals for the western palate. But lately I've been in a culinary fetal position, going back to the familiar, safe, unadventurous and dependable -- McDonald's and Starbucks. While I'm usually not there a lot when I'm at home, they still seem like a safe-haven. Besides, Starbucks seem to be one of few that understand that when you're in a noisy city where dudes want to sell you stuff everywhere, then you may not want 80's hits pumped into your ear.

Yesterday I spend some time shopping various souvenirs, and probably ended up getting dooped repeatedly. I may not be stupid enough to think that the dudes wife made the chopsticks, and that he's my friend, but that doesn't mean that I didn't pay too much. I also bought a green t-shirt with a big red star, but failed to close a deal with nice communist propaganda posters. Maybe I was rude, or maybe they weren't as fake as I thought. I'll end up having to buy a new suitcase.

We're in Suzhou to see old temples and gardens. Tomorrow maybe we'll climb a 76 m high pagoda. That's impressive, considering it was built in the 16th century, but may not give the overview as the Jinmao skyskraper did at the 88th floor. Anyways, no pics, I'm on a kinda restricted PC.

Restart

2006-10-09T12:27:00.000+02:00

After a large sampling of Chinese dishes, my system was getting slow, and ultimately very unstable. Now I'm rebooting, eating nothing but white bread, yoghurt and water, watching CNN on the hotel TV and enjoying the luxury of big towels.

Shanghai is crowded, and skyskrapers are popping up everywhere. A photographic series outside the museum we went to today shows how the Shanghai skyline has changed over the last 12 years, skyskrapers everywhere, and the water is getting browner and browner.

The architecture in Shanghai is weird, with lots of colonial weirdness and randomness, lots of flashy neonlights and general tackiness. Today I've ventured outside and John and I are headed for the Cloud 9 bar, on top of one of the tallest buildings in Shanghai. Probably we'll have to get a ridiculously overpriced beverage to enjoy the view of Shanghai from above by night. Yesterday, Joens, John and his mom and friend went to the Pearl TV Tower to get a bird's eye perspective, but paying 35 USD to get to the buffe sounded like a terrible investment, for someone who gets grossed out of the idea of food. But it's all better now.

Human technological achievement with a frosting of gaudy blinking.
(TV tower. Shangri-La. Some building with walls that are also screens for commercials)

Shanghai

2006-10-07T10:06:00.000+02:00

We have made it to Shanghai. We ate dinner in the train -- they had an extencive selection of food, and the rather enigmatic choice of "western food". Shanghai is well tempered today, with little smog and a warm sun. We haven't made it downtown yet, we've just been staying on the west side at out hotel, and at John's grandma's place. She has a wonderful apartment with sliding cherry wood doors and chalk white walls and a huge flat screen TV.

Now we're on our way to the Bund, an old main street on the shore. Pics later maybe.

坏人白人

2006-10-04T17:52:00.000+02:00

Oft-used words:
huairen, bairen
bad people, white people.

中国 (Zhong guo / China)

2006-10-01T16:55:00.000+02:00

We have arrived. I read once that living in Milan is equivalent to smoking 7 cigarettes a day. Beijing is closer to 20. Driving a taxi from PEK airport towards Beijing, the city skyline was slowly emerging through the smog.

Today's question has been: how has China so far been different from our expectations? Since I arrived pretty much unprepared for this trip, having read about four pages in my Rough Guide. But still, everyone has ideas of China, and they're always mixed. I think of China as wast mountains and poor farmers, but of course Beijing is different, with modern tall building and cheap consumer electronics for everyone in this "socialist" country. Basically it is, like john appropriately noted: a giant China-town. Lots of restaurants selling "chinese food", communist slogans (the people's republic is for the people. Selfishness is immoral, thinking of the community is honorable)

Food is good here. And cheap. Although you can get duped -- while we got a wonderful and big meal for 3 people with beverages for about ¥50, we also got tricked into buying coffee for ¥30 each, where ¥=SEK. That's an immense difference. Where the subway ticket costs ¥3 for instance, you can get a coffee for 30, it's like you could get a coffee for 200 in Oslo. Insane. Even for Oslo.

Otherwise we've gone to a temple with one of China's largest Buddhas, and it's actually carved out of one big tree trunk, according to the tacky information from Guinness Book of Records. No pictures, since a munk-dude told us not to.

China is full of Chinese people shouting "Hello", but also full of Swedes talking Chinese. People in restaurants are giving the menus to John who looks Chinese, but is sadly illiterate, while Jöns understands an incredible amount of signs. By the way -- the sign for illiterate in Chinese means something like "eye that doesn't understand the sign'cube'", because it's such a simple sign. Tricky.

Anyways. The other pics I uploaded.

Integration

2006-09-28T18:25:00.000+02:00

Integration: an act or instance of combining into an integral whole.

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world
are the ones who do"

Hmm — am I thinking different?

Malmö, Beijing

2006-09-28T18:05:00.000+02:00

Hand luggage ready: Camera, Danish left-over kroner for Kastrup airport, left-over euros for Charles de Gaulle, passport with visa, phone, Swedish kroner for on-the-way-falafel, moleskine for insurance phone number and notes, ear plugs for plane/noisy Chinese people, astma medisine for Chinese smog and dust, allergy medisine for Chinese smog and dust, Zadie Smith "On Beaty", "Rough Guide to China", Karin Fossum "Den som frykter ulven". No gels or liquids.

Dropped stuff at Myrorna.
De-iced freezer.
Packed all my stuff.
Charged batteries.
Eaten all the food.
Selling my bike to an Italian dude.
Moving out. Goodbye Malmö.

In between

2006-09-25T15:00:00.000+02:00

100 %

My thesis is turned in. I'm done. I have completed an education. If I pass. That's good. What happens now?

Friday John and I go to China. In the meantime we have to pack, move, wash out and get out of here. So I bought a cheap backpack for the China-trip. It's probably made in China. As is all my stuff. I'm feeling like I'm bringing everything back.

I won't bring my "In China this symbol means communism"-t-shirt. It may send out the _____ signals.

China will be fun. In the meantime we're hanging out in the Skånska limbo, hanging out with Monica, one of John's friends from Sweden (Linköping), playing Civ, eating up all of our food -- since I made får-i-kål (lamb in cabbage -- or "eww" as Tracey said), John is forced to make chicken-i-kål. Packing. Reading. Waiting.

Why don't

2006-09-18T18:59:00.000+02:00

MTV feature these dudes, with their absurdly weird videos instead of same-old Britney-clones. For all I know these dudes have been on MTV... But they're fun!

Notes from Sweden

2006-09-17T23:45:00.000+02:00

Oscar and I went to the Green party's hive in Malmö to watch the counting of the votes. About a hundred people were gathered at the "Chocolate Factory" to watch SVT broadcast interviews with party leaders and stuff. It was kinda nice, although the exit polls kind of broke it to us early -- the moderates would win. The rest of the time was spent repeating the mantra that "it's too early to say, we haven't counted all yet". But still, it was like watching a suspense movie where some idiot that had just seen it revealed the end.

But the Green party did fairly well. Not a land-slide, but better than ever before, 5.1 %, and almost 7 % in Malmö, so the general mood was good, and the Pirate Party called and congratulated, as the Greens and the Pirates are buddies ;)

And we got food -- good food. Mostly vegetarian, since veggies are overrepresented in the Green party, I suppose. But Oscar and I went home when the dude that played the weird songs was done, and everyone had gotten their flowers, and Maria Wetterstrand (1) had been interviewed on TV, and the people we were talking with went home.

Coming home, the Sydsvenskan reported that Göran is stepping down and that Fredrik Reinfeldt (Fredrik i Fåreklær) will be Swedens new PM. I don't know if it were the definite news, or the food, or what it was, but I got a chocolate craving, and due to an already pretty free supply/demand based market econonomy in Sweden, the Arab dude downstairs was open, and willing to sell me some.

I suspect that he's taken some additional liberties though, as the chocolate has a distinctive "export" look to it. Anyways, we/they can look forward to four years with grades in school for younger kids, more police, tougher immigration policies, less bio fuel initiaties and more gadgets for everyone!

Big brother

2006-09-16T18:48:00.000+02:00

I feel watched. Someone asked me if I had ever shopped on Amazon, and I couldn't really remember. I use Amazon a lot to look up stuff, but I couldn't really say if I'd ever actually bought anything. So I went to amazon.com for answers, and it turns out I've been a customer for a while.

Only last year I bought:

In 2001 I bought Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End".

And as far back as 1999 I bought "No Need to Argue"

Seven years ago. I'm leaving traces, and they're not going away.

If these dudes team up with Google and my bank they'll know everything about me. Everywhere I've been, and what I've done, what I've been thinking about.

Worried?

Swedish politics II

2006-09-12T14:50:00.000+02:00

With less than a week until the elections things are getting rough in Malmö. There are two coalitions fighting for power, left versus right basically - nothing exciting there. Under the surface though, there's weird stuff going on: a mini watergate, where Folkpartiet has hacked in to Socialdemocrat intranet to get their plans was discovered, but Folkpartiet's voters don't seem to be too affected by it.

Among the less mainstream parties there are at least 3 pretty weird ones. First of all "Piratpartiet" which many have heard about, who are pro legalizing pirate copying, and for a liberal understanding of IPR, for free distribution of culture and knowledge. They are also bothered by what they see as surveillance when the police arrest file-sharers. They might be overly radical, but I think they have some points when it comes to the position that IPRs have today.

Another weird political branch here is Skånepartiet. They are right wing, racist-radical separatists, that want to make muslims pledge allegiance to Skåne, and not Islam, and then toast in beer. They consider Sweden to be the Sweden minus Skåne and wish for a free and independent Skåne.

The last weird thing is not really a party at all, "Osynligapartiet" (the invisible party) who is opposed to all established "democratic" tradtitions, which they see as a joke. They see the social democrats as jesters, and the moderates as nazis. They think we should take the world back, take democracy back, and decide for ourselves, don't pay the bus ticket, don't work at work, get what you can. To the extent that they have members, some of them were caught by the police in Lund last night for vandalizing an election stand.

I don't know if it's connected, but today in Malmö (Sydsvenskan, Aftenposten), the police had do dismantle a home made bomb outside one of the stands...

Lotsa fun.

A guide to Indonesia

2006-09-04T13:11:00.000+02:00

Hanneke made lots of Indonesian food yesterday, and invited people over to our place: Maria, Katharina, Oscar and Ingo.

It's been a weird weekend. But it's over now. I should start paying attention to which day it is, and do some real work. SupervisorBjörn has gone through my paper, and I have stuff to do.

I also got an e-mail from Alexandra Moss at Schmap, which is a free travel guide thing for your laptop. They are using a picture of mine for their Geneva-release.

Look:

If you use the Geneva guide and look up the UN, then my picture will pop up with a link to my Flickr page. I think it's a little fun.

انا بارف ارابي

2006-09-01T20:24:00.000+02:00

"An American man sits next to a Syrian woman in somebody's home. He wants to start a conversation, so he says: ساباحلخر" (maybe)

I'm trying to learn Arabic with Pimsleur's Arabic. It's difficult, and my attempts to write anything down is probably very wrong. But it's fun.

Today, John and I went to another political debate, this time at the Islamic Center in Malmö. It's a big mosque and some kind of social place for muslims here. One of the mail themes in Swedish political debate is integration, and integration in the labor market. The Islamic Center is at Rosengård, which is a part of Malmö with a large immigrant population. According to Fox News it's a war zone, where the police is chased my angry muslim mobs. Who knows what Fox News wanted to say. Who knows what Fox means when they're trying to show "fair and balanced news"? When I was there today for a kebab pizza, it seemed a lot more calm.

Islamic Center

Aug 31, 2006 - 3 Photos

The leader for the Islamic Center, Bejzat Becirov, introduced the whole debate with asking what the politicians thought of when they heard the word "muslim". Of course, this led to a semi-embarassing show of political correctness - where one after the other were talking about their muslim friends. Except Amar Sabri - who simply started by saying: "I am a muslim" and went on to talk about islamic tolerance and peace. A lot of people see the green parties as some kind of political branch of Greenpeace, but it is a lot more - and Amar Sabri's focus on integration, school, and peace shows that the Green party is not only for treehuggers. It a lot broader. He's even an engineer ;)

While the Green party also focuses on solidarity, equal rights between the sexes and ethnic background, as does for instance the Social democrats, the Greens focus on change and not just a blind pursue of economic growth. The dude from Socialdemokraterna was talking about how increased employment in Malmö has led to new shopping malls; people now have more money, spend more, and in turn give jobs to people in retail - it's a wonderful helix of increased consumerism! Yay. Maybe we need to chill out a bit. Maybe 'we' should vote a little bit more long term and opt for development that doesn't mean just more plastic stuff from China to everyone.

إن شاء الله

Munch

2006-08-31T21:20:00.000+02:00

The Munch paintings (The Scream and Madonna) that were stolen from the Munch museum in Oslo 2 years ago are back. The people at the museum think people should be celebrating in the streets. Dagbladet is showing facsimiles from HT and Aftonbladet to show that other people care.

I'm not dancing in the streets. I don't feel too strongly about Munch, really. To me it's just a painting. The dude even made several versions of it (4), and the one stolen wasn't even the most famous of them, was it? I guess this means I'm an uncultural bastard. Oh well.

The one that was stolen was the one in which Munch decided to paint the face of the person green.

I also notice that Le Monde has this case on their front page:

That's nice. But my question is: who are the two dudes?

"Deux policiers encadrent le célèbre tableau 'Le Cri' (1893) d'Edvard Munch, volé sous les yeux des visiteurs en août 2004, à Oslo."

The police from where?

Press freedom and the Swedish election

2006-08-31T12:30:00.000+02:00

ٍSwedish papers are complaining about current tendencies towards decreasing their right to print whatever they want. A majority the MPs want to limit freedom of press and freedom of speech. The Swedish Newpaper Publisher's Association believes that such attitudes among the politicians may cause the public to take freedom of speech for granted - and they're afraid that over time we may lose our democratic right to independent information. That's why they've organized a campaign for their 168 members (newspapers) to start a debate on press freedom in Sweden.

It's amazing how a blank newspaper is striking to the eye. John thought this could be seen as a preemptive strike against censorship, but I think it's quite catchy.

Not surprisingly, I guess, Aftonbladet and Expressen and stuff isn't part of this campaign. I guess they're too full of crap and corporate produced news that it doesn't really matter. According to Freedomhouse.org, who has rated the freedom of press in different (186 of them) countries in the world, Sweden is doing pretty good. I guess that's when you have something to lose.

On a scale from 0 to 100, Sweden has 10 points, and is number three in the world, with Norway and Denmark (Finland and Iceland on top), France is number 41 and still considered free (21p), Italy is number 79 and only partly free. I guess that's what you get after while with Berlusconi. Maybe they'll do better next year, though Berlusconi probably still owns stuff.

But maybe the press (newspapers and TV) should take a little more care of their right themselves too - and not write about World of Warcraft, and poorly hidden adverts for new consumer electronics, and not resend corporate sponsored-and-produced "news". And maybe be a litte bit more concerned about what they want to tell instead of what we want to hear...

But I'm a commie, according to John. We took a "what party suits you best test" online, since the Swedish elections are coming up. Since we've been paying attention lately, this is a little interesting - we now know a little more about the issues. I still have a problem with questions like "Do you think we should have more of...". I don't know how it is now, and more is then difficult.

Another surprise, is that the parties have slightle different opinion than in Norway. Consider the left parties in Sweden and Norway; they are both called "left" "or "venstre" or "vänster")

Norway:

Sweden:

This little difference in logo represents, unsurprisingly, that the Swedish one is a little bit more to the left... The Norwegian one is a member of "The Liberal International" and is perhaps more comparable to the Swedish "Folkpartiet", and the difference between Vänster and Folkpartiet is quite big. So, apparently, I'm a bit closer to the Swedish lefts than the Norwegian ones, and the Swedish "Vänster" is closer to the Socialist Left-dudes in Norway.

This is the result of my test, which was a little surprising to me, in the position of the Vänster:

(click to take the test)

So to attempt a convertion table:

Norway -> Sweden
Sosialistisk Venstreparti (SV) -> Vänstern
Miljøpartiet de Grønne ~> Miljöpartiet de Gröna, but with the position of SV.
Høyre -> Moderaterna
Venstre -> Folkpartiet
Kristelig Folkeparti -> Kristdemokratene
Senterpartiet not quite -> Centerpartiet (Not quite. These dudes are special, farther right, and nobody is decentralizing here...)
Fremskrittspartiet -> ? I thought this was Folkpartiet, but now I'm not sure.

Is this right?

Nameday

2006-08-30T12:52:00.000+02:00

Today is my name day according to the Norwegian calendar. Unfortunately this has no significance in Norway, so no congrats and strawberry cake awaits me.

In Sweden, however, this is a pretty big thing. According to what I can gather from Wikipedia (...) the reason for this is that the Christian church wanted to celebrate the christianing, rather than the day you were born into sin... In Sweden these names were introduced into the almanac in 1747, and they seem to think this is a big deal. In Norway, however, this was only halfheartedly introduced in 1988. The Swedes have a head start over the pagan Norwegians. You'd think, though, that since I'm in Sweden this would be a great opportunity to celebrate shamelessly - but no: Benjamin isn't on August 30 here, rather on December 28. Bummer.

Critical analysis

2006-08-29T15:01:00.000+02:00

The world is full of spam and scams. People want my money. Some are cunning. Some are rude. Some are easy to spot.

The other day I got an email from Princess Jessica from Burkina Faso. Jessica Faso, as she also goes by. Her father died, he was a king in Burkina Faso. He was wealthy, and left her a lot of money, which she wants to keep away from the greedy cousins and uncles, who'll just take it away from her, since she's a woman. The only people she can trust are her dead dad's lawyer, and me, apparently.

Now all she wants is to transfer her money to me, so we can invest the money wisely in my country. Since she's not from Nigera, where all the spammers come from, I chose to reply to Jessica.

Some excerpts from Jessica's mails: [everything in one big sic!]

"I am writing this letter in confidence believing
that if it is the wish of
God for you to help me and my family, God
almighty will bless and reward you
aboundantly and you would never regreat this."

"I will love to have a
long-term relationship with you and to know more
about you."

(bear in mind, this is the first mail)

"Now, I urgently need your humble assistance to
move this money from the
security company to your bank account and I
strongly believe that by the
grace of God, you will help me invest this money
wisely. I am ready to pay
30% of the total amount to you if you help us in
this transaction and
another 10% interest of Annual After Income to
you, for handling this
transaction for us, which you will strongly have
absolute control over."

"I am waiting to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely,
Princess Jessica Faso(Miss)"

A princess and a share of the seven million US dollars. How could I resist? I found it prudent to go under a false name though: I took on the persona of a Spanish middle class worker.

"My father was a great fisherman in the Zaragoza
sea. He was like a king to me, so I understand
you. Please send me your picture, I want to marry
you.

'Prince" Juan.'"

I later discovered that I might have been a little rush on my information on the Zaragoza sea. It's not really related to the town Zaragoza in Spain. On the other hand, there's no University called Burkina Faso uni, as Jessica claims to attend (rather Ouagadougou University). Burkina Faso is also a republic. I don't know if there's room for kings.

Jessica replied: with renewed thanks for my interest, her plans of joining me in my country, the immense riches I'll enjoy, a nice picture of herself. But she quickly moves on to issues of more immediate practical concern:

"Therefore, all I need from you is your account number where this money will be transfered, your phone number and fax number for our easy communication and your full name and residence address, company name and address, it will help me to locate you as soon this money is transfered into your account."

I chose to focus more on our personal relations.

"Hello again Jessica.

I think you are very pretty. I also like your
car.

However, as a child I have been disappointed many
times. I do not easily trust people. I hear
people from Nigeria are bad. I don't think those
things of you, of course. However, I would like
to see more pictures of you, so I know you didn't
just find these pictures on the world wide web,
or as they say, the so-called "Internet".

When is your birthday, and what year are you
born? I am, as you can see from the picture, a
little older than me. I was born on December 4th
1965, on the Great General Franco's 72nd
birthday.

Is your leader, President Blaise Compaoré as good
as Franco?"

I was hoping to get some reactions to referring to General Franco in relation to Blaise Compaoré. No reaction. And to be fair, she already told me she was 25. Though, as a courtesy, I submitted a photo of myself. I apologize to Per Christian Ellefsen for this, but trusting the Princess Jessica won't immediately recognize "Elling".

This isn't doing it for Jessica. She gets impatient. She even hits CAPS LOCK to explain to me:

"I will be waiting to hear from you as soon as possible.
However all the modalities and logistics towards the movement of the funds to your country where you will have access to it has been worked out, feel free to tell me more about you by given me your full personal information such like.

YOUR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS
YOUR COMPANY/BUISNESS NAME AND ADDRESS
SCAN CORPY OF YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT OR DRIVEN LINCENCE
YOUR MARITAL STATUS/AGE
YOUR PHONE AND FAX NUMBER
YOUR CHIOCE BANK INFORMATION"

She also gave me the phone number to her lawyer, and wishes that there's nothing wrong with my "builtiful" country. I feel no need to tell her General Franco is dead.

Instead I propose an arrangement which entails a lot less hassle for me. Afterall, she's all about making this easy and risk free for me. So I suggest alternative means of transfer:

"The light of my life, Jessica.

I am thankful for your concern about my safety. I
am sure you have everything under control, I see
no need to call your lawyer.

However, I have some second thoughts about the
transfer. I don't personally own a bank account,
though I administer one through my work. Here in
Spain we always get paid in cash. I am afraid my
employer, or even my bank would find it
suspicious if, all of a sudden several million US
dollars would come into that account.

What I suggest is that I set up a PayPal account,
and you transfer your dear late father's money
into that account, nice and anonymously, so that
your brothers will not find out about it. How
does that sound?

I look forward to seeing you here. Maybe when you
come, I can quit my job at the car factory. I am
curious about your mother though. Is she nice?
Maybe you even have a picture of her?

Juan."

Since this I never heard from Jessica. My heart is broken.

Recently though, I have encountered a scam much harder to spot, in that it did not come through my Yahoo! mail account (my spam-account). I'v been looking for jobs, and I had a look at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affair's pages for job openings.

There there was a posting about a job at the new founded UN agency of Center for Research and Growth. We found a number of strange issues about this posting, but given it was found at the MFA, it should be slightly more credible than my Yahoo! account. The MFA doesn't seem to have the sharpest critical eye after all, perhaps.

Points:
UNCRG does not exist. Searching for it at google yields results at the MFA only.

There is a number of weird preferances for the applicants qualifications, like:
"Average oral and written communication and analytical skills are essential."
"The preferred candidate will have up to two years of experience in environmental policy or regulatory work." (my italics)

Besides an obscenely high salary for a relatively easy job, what eventually got my spam-alarm ringing was the address to which the application is to be sent: a top domain at corp.st is not very inviting. Nothing bad about Sao Tome and Principe, but I don't think a UK UN agency would outsource their hiring process to them.

So I sent an email to the MFA with the points listed above. Today I got an email back saying:

"We apologize, there has been a mistake. The MFA does not endorse the information on the page, it is now removed.

We apologize"

Behind this somber apologize lies a little stirrup.

My email to post@mfa.no has been around. Advisors, personal's office, and the competence center have been informed.

Fun.

Does this mean anyone can just send them an email about job openings in the "UN"?

The posting is still there, but it's archived.

I guess the message is that not all scams have the shape of Nigeria.

Be critical.

Swedish politics

2006-08-28T23:26:00.000+02:00

John, John and I went to a politcal debate at Stadsbiblioteket to investigate Swedish politics. Afterall, the other John might be allowed to vote since he's being processed for his Swedish citizenship.

The discussion is similar to Norway's political debate, I'd say, though the different dudes have different opinions. Surprisingly the "money to the parent staying at home with the kids" had no reference to integration policy, and the Center Party is pro EU. Similar are the issues on health for the elderly, the crappy conditions in schools, and teaching immigrants Swedish.

We also discovered that from left to right there's also a move from female to male. I bet this isn't true for the whole party though.

Also some animal right's dudes invaded the stage with loud messages of Swedish animal cruelty. While the right part loudly declared this intrusion as "undemocratic", the left didn't mention that. Hmm.

Anyways, here's the movie. I'd better go to bed.

"Ingen er så stygg i fare..."

2006-08-26T18:39:00.000+02:00

Ingen er så trygg i fare som Guds lille barneskare
Fuglen ei i skjul bak løvet, stjernen ei høyt over støvet

Herren selv vil sine berge, han er deres skjold og verge
Over dem han seg forbarmer, bærer dem på faderarmer

Ingen nød og ingen lykke, skal av herrens hånd dem rykke
Han den beste venn blant venner, sine barns bekymring kjenner

Våre hodehår han teller, hver en tåre som vi feller
Han oss føder og oss kleder, midt i sorgen han oss gleder

Gled deg da, du lille skare, Jakobs Gud skal deg bevare
For hans allmakts ord må alle, fiender til jorden falle

Hva han tar og hva han giver, samme fader han forbliver
Og hans mål er kun det ene, barnets sanne vel alene

Malmö, New York

2006-08-24T01:38:00.000+02:00

I went to the festical today to see New York Waiting - which is a new movie written and directed by a Swede called Joachim Hedén, who showed up at this preview of the movie which premieres on Friday I think. Very unpretencious, I think. All in all a nice romantic movie. Unfortunately one that I saw all alone... ;(

After the movie I met up with the other John (TOJ) for a nice and nerdy "afternoon" chat on current and not so current affairs, before the pubs of Malmö closed.

Malmö is definitely not the city that never sleeps.

A Contemplation on Architecture in Vesterhamn

2006-08-23T14:14:00.000+02:00

I don't know much about architecture. I once saw a program on BBC though about this dude (David Adjaye, who btw designed the... for lack of a better word: the thingy (or a Spatal Manipulation, as Adjaye would call it himself) outside the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo) who traveled through Africa having a look at different architectures, from vernacular clay mosques in Mali to neo-imperial styles the Italians and English dudes made in the Eritrea. And I thought, it would have been cool to travel with someone who had a clue. A clue when I went to Quito, Rome (Pantheon), Paris etc. Just to get a clue.

The same is actually true for Malmö and Vesterhamn. It is a little adventure in architecture, where phallic Turning Torso stands out in the crowd of lower, but weird little houses.

Maybe I should've had a guide. See the pics.

System Recovery

2006-08-22T14:34:00.000+02:00

Surströmming

Aug 22, 2006 - 3 Photos

John was always the most Swede of them all. Despite the fact that he's tried surströmming several times before, he chose to bring a can of this stuff into our home. This is a Swedish traditional food that most Swedes are not too proud of, though there's an academy to this fermented fish - Surströmmingsakademien

When John opened this can of fermented herring a repulsive smell instantly filled the room. It's nice to know the gag reflexes are working though. After careful preparation, we actually ate some of it. Absolutely abhorrent. And while this may have been my worst culinary experience, I thank John for this experience. What doesn't kill you make you stronger. I'm now an elite Swede. Eating locusts and snails is no longer strange to me.

To add a little understanding, I bring to you words from the realm of Science - Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" page 236:

Lightly Salted, Strong-Smelling Fish: Surstrømming [sic]

Fish pastes annd sauces are cured with enough salt to limit the growth and activity of microbes. There are also fish fermentation that involve far less salt, so that bacteria thrive and have a far more powerful influence on flavor. One notorious example is the Swedish Surstrømming. Herring are fermented in barrels for one to two months, then sealed in cans and allowed to continue for as much as another year. The cans swell, which is normally a warning sign for the growth of botulism bacteria, but for surstrømming a sign of promising flavor development. The unusual bacteria responsible for ripening in the can are species of Haloanaerobium, which produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide gases, hydrogen sulfide, and butyric, propionic, and acetic acids: in effect a combination of rotten eggs, rancid Swiss cheese, and vinegar, overlaid onto the basic fish flavor.

My system is currently unstable, purging itself of this, trying to flush memory.

An American in Malmö

2006-08-21T18:56:00.000+02:00

Right now John is having a friend over from the United States of America. This dude came here early yesterday morning, and since he'd be jet lagged John played Civilization all night to be on the same "track".
Jeff works at a well known graphics card developer, adding a whole new layer in the conversations that freak out Hannake in their sheer nerdyness.

This morning we had to leave the house, as occupants had invaded our kitchen. Since there's a festival, and we have Malmö to show to Jeff, that's not a problem. Now he's experienced all the wonderful things: like Falafel No. 1, John's coffee peeps, H&M, the pedal boats, Systembolaget. Sweden.

Jeff in Malmö

Aug 21, 2006 - 5 Photos

Yesterday though, we witnessed a nerdy, but highly cultural event, the Joystick concert by the Malmö SymfoniOrkester — they were playing computer music from late 70s to present. It was wonderful! A hybrid culture, where the nerdy dude that have stayed indoors most of their life — and the ivory tower musicians meet and interact in the town square for a mutual recognition of our civilization's finest values. I also like the music (title music) for Civ IV that I found online. It's less beepbeep and more real. I think. Like they put some effort into it. Jeff Briggs is in charge of music for Civ IV and is the CEO of Firaxis, and used to work for Microprose in the good old days (Civ 1), but he originally worked with music and is a doctorate of Musical Composition and Theory.

The Other John (TOJ) who's alway been into computer game sounds and music was of course extatic. He was bouncing through the crowd "like a gas molecule" he said, reminding me of a quote from Alpha Centauri:

As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place
to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat
boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid,
we have become as a vapor and will expand to fill all available
space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained.

-- Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"But for the Grace of God"

Conversation nerdiness is peaking.

After playing a little too much Civilization, John and I have become a little difficult to be around - relating most stuff to game concepts. John's especially evangelic.

This picture of my civ-eyes is taken at 04:41.
Eyes are getting sore. There's a place for help... Learn the truth about Civilization.

An (Un)Pleasant Misunderstanding

2006-08-20T02:01:00.000+02:00

John shows the way in the jungle-web that is out there. He's been advertizing this student project: Movielens at the Universityu of Minnesota where someone's made a system where you rate a bunch of movies from 1 to 5, and based on your data it recommends movies for you, or you can look one up if you're going to the movies. You can even get your buddies on there so you can see if a movie is good for both of you. After wasting quite some time on movielens I've rated a bunch of movies, but I figure it could be a good investment, both in time and money, to avoid the real stinkers. Didn't prevent me from seeing Miami Vice the other day though... To be fair, that was bad judgement from my part. It didn't recommend it.

So the other day I was talking to Ron about this, and he set up his account, and while he was testing this out (it's not 100 % bulletproof) he asked if I really had seen "Hard Candy", which I hadn't but I thought he really recommended that. Turns out now that he hasn't seen it and it was all a misunderstanding.

But since Ron is another guide - to popular and not so popular culture, I acted upon his "recommendation" and "acquired" the movie.

This is one of the movies that I've seen with very little preconceived ideas about what it was about, and it was really stunning. I really never quite knew where this one was gonna take us. It's about a 14 years old girl who chats with this 30-some dude on the internet, and they decide to meet.

She suspects though, that he's a pedophile...

Good plot, good actors, good cinematography, provocative, unpredictable - all in all a wonderful mishap!

Go see!

Kräftor o Falun Dafa

2006-08-19T17:50:00.000+02:00

Kräftskiva i Lund

Aug 18, 2006 - 8 Photos

I was invited to Lund to Tracey's peeps' place for a kräftskiva. Lund is very cozy and a lot bigger than I'd thought, and with very nice houses like the one where Helen & Susann lived. The party was an introductory course and a reminder of several things:

Swedes from Skåne understand me surprisingly well. The strange thing is that they actually think I'm from Oslo. That's disturbing.

Moderaterna

Folkepartiet

"green" in Norway

Taxi drivers have high education.

Falun Dafa

Aug 18, 2006 - 5 Photos

This "morning", as John and I were playing our civilizations we heard a drumbeat from the street. Figuring this was the normal crap we didn't care about it, but it was persistent, and later accompanied by singing! Weird! So we got up from our lazy asses, and looked out, and there was a Falun Dafa parade just outside our window! That's pretty cool. So there they were, beating thei drums in their yellow outfits and telling us there's 100 000 000 Falun Dudes around the world. I guess most of these are unregistered, and in China... Oops. I probably made myself "ineligible" for the Chinese "internet".

Lady Deirdre Skye and The Greens

2006-08-18T00:47:00.000+02:00

The last few days, playing old computer games has been a motivation for trying to finish the thesis. For John urge for old code filled the house with generic PC-speaker "music" and "sound effects" of the pre-1980-computer era. John has a Macbook Pro, with a DVD-burner and a big LCD screen, he can remote control it with his Bluetooth mobile phone and download movies wirelessly - and yet he plays computer games designed for Apple ][ copyrighted in 1978.

For me the concept of "old" takes on a whole different shape, in Civilization II and Alpha Centauri. These are big time-wasters, but I don't have it in me to play that long anymore. But I gave it a go tonight.

I wouldn't say Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri has shaped my "green" orientation, but it generally has some good values: After Earth has been ripped apart by war and eco-damage (in "Civilization"), the UN sets out for a mission to a Planet orbiting the largest star in Alpha Centauri. The mission goes awry, of course, and splits into ideological factions. One of which is the Gaians, led by Lt. Commander Lady Deirdre Skye, who is an environmentalist, a pacifist (usually not for long though), love and peace and all.

Anyhow, years after playing Alpha Centauri, and completely unrelated, just coinciding - today John and I went to a Malmö Green Party "demonstration" of all things from the casino to one of the squares. The demonstration, or march was supposed to be quiet, no flags, not shouting, no banners, no sides to the conflict in the Middle East - just a silent walk for peace. We thought this was a good idea, and got up from our lazy asses and biked (of course) down there. The green people's faces lit up when they saw someone coming to the casino by bike, figuring gamblers don't. The green demonstration was only about 25 people. But very friendly and nice.

I kinda missed some kind of speach, a pep-talk, something, but no. Just a silent walk with torches.

Dom Gröna

Aug 17, 2006 - 4 Photos

Online profiles.

2006-08-17T15:31:00.000+02:00

Everyone has a virtual space, a home, a profile and stuff now.

Yesterday John and I went to Ölkaféet right outside our building to meet Tracey. Tracey is in Sweden to visit Scandinavian friends who she's met in Canada, or Vancouver to be specific. I "met" Tracey on Flickr, because she commented on one of my pictures as she was trawling for Swedish stuff. And now she's here, the world is small.

At Ölkaféet though, I saw this Danish dude with a huge dog. The dog's name is Gizmo - and I asked to take a picture. The owner seemed very happy to have his dog on display, though it was crowded and my pics didn't turn out good. They don't quite do justice to Gizmo's huge head. Apparently Gizmo's had several pics taken of him. He even has a homepage (the owner was happy to tell me about that too ;)!

This is the picture I took of Gizmo:

This little St. Bernard monster was a cute little puppy once though. Just look:

This is apparently just a year-old picture. Wow. I guess this size is normal. It's just not a normal city pet ;)

Bloodbath

2006-08-15T23:10:00.001+02:00

We make a lot of smoothies. It looks like a bomb exploded.

Bloodbath

2006-08-15T23:10:00.000+02:00

We make a lot of smoothies. It looks like a bomb exploded.

Ready to go!

2006-08-14T14:11:00.000+02:00

Last night I had trouble going to bed, and trouble sleeping. That's bad news, if you, like me, have announced that you'll get up early. I felt like crap, and ended up taking a pill against what could be a fever. I don't know, really. But at least I fell asleep, and when the alarm went off at 8, I was in a coma and slept for another 4 hours.

Now it's already 14:21 and I still haven't done anything - but - John and I have picked up our visas to China! We sent our applications to the Chinese embassy one week ago - I'm quite impressed with that. Some people I've been talking with have been worried about my visa, like "won't those commie-Chinese spend like a year giving you a visa?" But no, apparently it's faster than Soviet private car applications, and such. Anyways though, the whole visa application procedure was nearly foiled by the Swedish postal service. Of course our visas were sent registered, afterall, visas are powerful pieces of ID that you wouldn't want to get lost. And this is the beginning of the problem - our passports was inside the package we were to pickup for which we needed ID. But no problem, we have driver's licences. We thought.

Then showing up at the post office - no chance: "Your ID has to be Swedish!"
"What?"

That's right, we need a Swedish piece of ID to pick up stuff. That's annoying. What's strange is that even if they'd opened the letter with the passports, or we'd had our passports, that still wouldn't have been enough! I think that's stupid. Does this have anything to do with terrorism and stuff? That you can't have stuff sent to you unless the Swedes know who you are? That's really annoying, but what's really strange is that it was all ok and dandy as long as some random dude behind us in the queue agreed to sign with us, and provide the postal dude with his ID. Then, all of a sudden, it's ok. It didn't even seem to bother them that this was clearly just a simple move to get around their clumsy bureaucracy.

So a question poses itself - is this only a Swedish thing, or is it the same all over?

Anyways, we're all ready to go: tickets, visa and the Rough Guide to China. Wonderful!

Friends with blogs.

2006-08-13T23:12:00.000+02:00

Some of my friends have reluctantly begun to write their own blogs. Except for Øystein, who is one rare specimen of a friend of mine who has a normal job, this seems to be the result of a nagging bad counscious about what they should have been writing instead. Kai has spent about 10 % of his life trying to start a master's thesis and Ron is quietly blaming stuff like his internet connection for why he hasn't performed a literature search yet.

But no matter the reasons, all three have started their own blogs.

Øystein is writing mostly out of spite, ironically and loudly denouncing his chosen medium as pointless.

Kai started out writing about writer's block, but has stopped doing even that. I don't know what that means.

Ron has chosen to report on very local, and not so important news that he stumbles upon. He's always been interested in local garage pyromaniacs and the likes.

Maybe they'll be happy if you visit them.

Pot stickers

2006-08-13T00:34:00.000+02:00

To make the transition to China as smooth as possible, John's decided to make some Chinese food. Pot stickers were today's choice. Preparing this meal took quite a lot of time, especially considering we all had to make them, once the stuff was on the table :) But that was fun.

Basically a pot sticker is a Chinese ravioli. But the dough, or the pasta is is made with water and flour only, which is good news for all the vegans. John spoiled it for them by making a filling mostly consisting of pork though. This he seasoned with coriander, spring onions and "Old Stepmom's hot stuff" that John got one of the Chinese stores, or Asia Trading or whatever, down the street. This goo is hot stuff, and pretty good. That's no surprise, knowing that the more than 300 workers in the factory in China "performed on the spirit of 'credit first and to pursue the practical progress'". And "Tomorrow A series of chili foods with high additional value is going to be developed, and an'aircraft carrier'of chili processing industry is being under construction."

It's nice to know that somewhere in China, someone is making jars of spicy paste, and not wasting time on translations.

But John did good! The food was good! And a lot better than the movie we went to see after: Miami Vice. Don't get me started.

I'm building an ark

2006-08-12T13:51:00.000+02:00

The weather in Malmö has been nice. I guess we had this comin'.

This should at least make the air crisp and clean, but I'm sneezing like always. Perhaps even more.

Work...

Off topic

2006-08-11T19:45:00.000+02:00

I realized today, while playing with unit conversion in Google, that I've been living a lie. Or at least I've been under the misconception about the unit Parsec.

The Other Johns and his nerdy friends would probably laugh at my ignorance, but truth be told, most of us, who haven't been to any other galaxies have no general use for this term. However, my brief encounter with games like Master of Orion and Dune has left me with an appreciation of units that you'll never use.

However, as I said, while I was playing with Google (I was really looking up how much one cup is in dl) I realized that I've been thinking that parsec is the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is known as an "Astronomical Unit". This is of course horridly humanocentric, and cannot be forgiven by the Harkonnen and Ordos. It also reveals that I haven't really bothered to understand what a parsec really means.

As I suspect I'm not the only one who doesn't know this (though I may be the only one who doesn't know, but who cares), I'll make this clear: One parsec is the distance you need to go away from the earth and the sun, where the (mean) distance between them would appear to be one arcsec. One arcsec is 1/60th of an arcminute, which is 1/60th of a degree, which is 1/360th of your field of vision (FOV). That would mean 1/1 296 000 of your field of vision, or rather a little less than a dot. 3.08568025 × 10^16 meters. Pretty far. But hey, it's still an earthcentric measure!

Oh - and I should get back to work.

Picasa Web Albums

2006-08-11T12:20:00.000+02:00

I ditched Flickr, because they... suck. Since then I've been using my Uni account, but now I'm checking out Picasa Web Album. Look.

The papers

2006-08-11T11:54:00.000+02:00

Warning: This post may make me appear as an old grumpy man.

Norwegian newspapers suck. Generally. And though some are better than the two largest ones, there's generally a lot of nonsense about computer games, all kinds of randomly chosen statistical data that they are twisting beyond recognition. It's bad.

In the eightees, I think around 85, my mother had a British friend visiting us in Norway, and after having a look at papers (VG, DB) that were for sale in stores in Norway she was compelled to ask the question: "Are all papers in Norway for retarded people?"

You could answer "No, these aren't for retarded people" or go for the easy answer, simply "yes". Either way it means the same.

Anyways, this is actually over 20 years ago, and in the meantime we've gotten the so-called "Net". Bringing these papers to the new medium has not entirely been a success. The quality, and not least the quality assurance has completely gone down the drain. There are typos in the headings, inconsistencies, and proof of the writer's ignorance on every page. And the "news" coverage has deteriorated into covering new computer game releases and useless gadgets.

Generally though, I've lived in the faith that some papers have slightly more integrity, like Aftenposten and Klassekampen. But writing mistakes on the front page is never good, and especially when it alters the meaning to the opposite.

Facsimile: Klassekampen

"Wrong support. NUPI reseacrher (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) Kari Karamé thinks it's problematic that RVs solidarity goes to the Lebanese people instead of Hizbollah"

Hmm, this is... err. Strange. But sure enough, it was vice versa inside. Is this just clumsiness, or are they trying to draw my attention by stating strange things? But to be fair, there's very little about World of Warcraft, sex and rallycross in Klassekampen.

Health and crisis minimization

2006-08-09T18:12:00.000+02:00

John and I have been trying to get vaccinations. And while we were reading about this stuff, I realized that Norway, Sweden and the US recommended different stuff. After shopping around a little for vaccination places, we ended up somewhere in the outskirts of Malmö, and they had nice service: No BS -

Him: "You need a hepatitis vaccine. The rest is a waste of money."

Me: "But I haven't had a polio, tyfoid and difteria shot since 95, and the Norwegian..."

Him: "But this is different in Norway. They say you need it every ten years, but here..."

Me: "It's different?"

Him: "Yes, we have studies that show these vaccines protect you for 30 years. No problem. But if you, as a Norwegian citizen feel like you have to do what the Norwegian health board recommends, I'm not gonna stop you, but it's a waste of money."

Hey, I like this. Vaccines are kinda black-boxed to me anyways. Like vaccines are some kinda ticking patch inside your body that all of a sudden expires after ten years. "They" also say that you need the last Twinrix vaccine within 12 months, but he said it would probably give me good protection if I took it now. So that's what I got: HepA and B vaccine. I mean, he could be wrong, and I could die from all kinds of crap in China. But it's still nice with someone who isn't hysteric, and who is calmly saying it's not necessary. I wouldn't want some dude who told me I needed to live in a bubble, and take all kinds of pills and bring my own canned food and crap. No.

Anyways, now we've done everything we have to do before we go to China, provided that the passports return with the correct visa and stuff. But that's out of our hands now.

Don't cry over spilt tea.

2006-08-08T14:58:00.000+02:00

I figure it's time for a little recap of my thesis work. I had visitors from Norway. Then I went to Norway for about ten days. And vacations don't make you more inspired to work. It's quite the opposite. John and Hanneke have declared themselves almost done, that is, John has devised some kind of fanciful theory of labour and time, and decided to put it all off for a little while. Meanwhile they have started some kind of study commuity to exchange their papers for evaluation, while I don't feel like I have anything to contribute with at this point. My thesis is like a night without stars, a beautiful (or ugly) woman without teeth, or a soldier without a gun. It's just an empty shell. And I need put something into it...

But to the more quantitative point, I'm making some progress. Qualitatively too, but that's naturally harder to measure. After the 17500 words plan, I'm currently on 81 %. Yay.

Progress is fuelled by caffeine, smoothies, Indian and Chinese food. Today I ventured into a relatively untapped source of caffeine, the Earl Gray Green Tea that we once got from the other John. I apparently don't have the same routine for this as for making coffee, so I ended up spilling most of it on the floor. I'm sorry. Such a waste. Someone probably hand picked that, and I dropped it on the floor, next to dust, hair, dead bugs and all kinds of crap. But I'm not crying over spilt tea. I have other worries.

The Chinese Embassy

2006-08-07T16:11:00.000+02:00

I'll try not to write anything bad here, so I won't be banned from China ;)

Today John and I were going to look into vaccinations and send in the visa application. We got up kinda late too, so we didn't get started too early. But the preparations for China are proceeding: we went to Japan Photo to get the Asian experience, where an Asian looking chick shot our photo with a partially malfunctioning Polaroid camera; we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with the really inventive name "Restaurant Shanghai" (we figure there's a factory that makes generic Chinese restaurant name apparel), the food was a little ketshuppy, and we had an espresso, since they apparently can be hard to come across in China.

We never made it to the vaccination place though, so that'll have to wait - but finally we got everything in order, the registered envelope with passports and all the little things that have to be in order for the visa application and a return envelope. Everything should be just dandy now. Just need to get some hepatitis, tetanus, polio and whatnot-shots. We'll see what they have to offer ;)

John, though he speaks Chinese is illitterate. I guess you don't call it analphabetism when it's with regard to Chinese, but now, in any case, he's trying to learn some of it in writing.

The sentences are "I want a big beer", "I want five beers", and currently the less obvious concatenation: "Middle Country is to be good, ok".

Triathlon

2006-08-06T17:17:00.000+02:00

I did a little triathlon today. I wanted to run to the beach, but it's too far. I'm lazy. So I biked most of the way, and then I ran along the beach, and then went for a swim from the pier, where I cut myself on the stupid rafts out there. And since I have no supporting team to back me up, I had to do the whole triathlon in the reverse order on my way back. Anyways, it was kinda fun. There were a lot of eastern Europeans on the pier, and I was wearing my hammer and sickle t-shirt, but I got no comments ;)

I used my swimming goggles, so I could see under water. It's really dirty, and there were some waves, so I swallowed some. Ick.

Now we're headed out for some Indian food! Mm :D

And I'm also kinda working on my thesis ;)

I'm going to China for a month in two months!

2006-08-05T17:54:00.000+02:00

It's settled. We're going to China. John and I.

Isn't it cool? Now I just have to do some work, and be all ready to go by September 29th. That means my thesis will have to be written, printed, bound and handed in by then. Scary. But now I have some sort of reward, which is nice.

September 29th we're leaving Copenhagen airport for Beijing via Paris. We're planning to go to Shanghai and some places between B and S, but nothing is planned too firmly yet. Jöns, John's Swedish friend in Beijing might come with us for part of the trip, which is cool. John and Jöns speak Chinese too, which is good!

And I even bought the Rough Guide to China. I hope it's good.

"Boycott Israel"

2006-08-05T14:40:00.000+02:00

Malmö is never quiet. And why should it be? If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. Lebanon is being shelled to pieces, and almost 1000 civilians are killed — the Lebanese and sympathizers in Malmö are taking to the streets to show their disgust with Israel, Bush and the US.

John and I ran outside to watch the demonstration. We didn't join though — even though I have no problems protesting the war, I don't want to should "Long live Hizballah". So I quietly walked on the side — taking pics.

Södra Skolgatan

2006-08-04T15:45:00.000+02:00

I've been at my parents place for a week - in Inderøy where not much happens, where everything is nice and quiet, where I've discovered that the only thing I can play not to annoy my parents too much is Tori Amos, I've once again returned to Malmö. And what greets me? As I was on my way to take a nap (I got up at 0445 today), I was interrupted by noise from the street. This is nothing out of the ordinary, really, but it seemed more than normal. Looking out, I see a lot of police clashing with dudes in the street - in some kind of protest of demonstration going bad. After taking some pics and shooting some film, John and I went downstairs to talk to some people, to see what happened, and as it seemed this started from a demonstration at the city hall againt police violence... This is weird. We went down there to have a look at it, all that was left was horse poo.

It's a rough city ;)

Rubus chamaemorus

2006-08-02T23:43:00.000+02:00

My dad and I went on a little hike to get som cloudberries. We're still living in a hunter-gatherer society.

I took some pics of the berries and the bugs and stuff I saw on the way. It was a nice trip actually, but I got tired.

Gay Army

2006-08-01T23:52:00.000+02:00

Hello from Norway.

I was supposed to work on my thesis. This week. To jot down some words. But then my parents and I went to visit an old monastery island, Tautra, on Monday. And today I've been fishing. Didn't catch anything. And - I got a brilliant idea for an old military jacket I had lying around. I bought it used like 10 years ago. It's rubbish and way too big. But, I've been wanting a fag bag, a "bøgslynga", call it whatever you'd like - so I decided to transform the green jacket into something I could use. After all, I'd had my eyes on the military first aid kit fag bag since I visited the Red Cross museum in Geneve, though I couldn't have that one.

I cut out he back and the pocket of the jacket and transformed it into a bag. I even used the Olde Toyota's seat belts as a shoulder strap. I'm quite happy with myself. I just hope the stiches will last. Oh well. It's late. Tomorrow maybe I'll do something useful... In a more academic way that is.

Kräftor

2006-07-23T23:58:00.000+02:00

When we were at the beach the other day, I met two of "our new countrymen" - or Sweden's new, I suppose, who asked me if I were local and how far it was to drive to Gothenburg. I couldn't really say for sure, but estimated around 3 hours from Malmö and this was 40 mins from Malmö too. A series of misunderstandings on the grounds of slight idiosyncracies in Norwegian and Swedish lead to the following conversation (and yes, this might seem like a stupid reconstruction):

Me: So you're here on holiday?
Dude1: No we're driving.
Me: < dumb look — pause >
Me: I mean holiday (in Swedish). Are you driving around the coast of Sweden for your hoiliday?
Dude2: Doh, don't you understand Norwegian? Haven't you assimilated? To assimilate you need to understand Norwegian, that's part of being Swedish!

I thought this was kind of a strict definition of assimilation and integrating into the Swedish society, but in a sense he's right. And I'm trying to assimilate in Sweden. Today we had a little crayfish party. Real Swedish, with aquavit (we finished the last of John's stash) and dill potatoes. We're assimilating alright.

These creatures are pretty disgusting though, if you think about it. Like bugs. So are shrimps. Even chicken can be repulsive, if you buy a carcass and you pick it apart, tearing the flesh from its bones. Sometimes I'm almost a vegetarian soul. As we all know, meat is highly inefficient energy use. And while I do enjoy buying locally produced food, I'm skeptical towards buying Danish porc, if it's bred on Brasilian soy beans which have been transported in large quantities. Then it's better eco-economy to buy Brasilian meat, perhaps. But, the base line, I suppose is to be a conscious and critical consumer, and know what you're buying and reduce meat consumption and transport weightlenght.

Anyways - our crayfish was from China. I talk the talk...

I took some pictures from our monsterparty.

Falsterbo

2006-07-22T01:42:00.000+02:00

We went to Falsterbo to swim, though BBC and the local newspaper had forecasted showers and lightning — but it turned out to be wonderful, with chalkwhite beaches and warm waters. It's 45 minutes away by bus, and tomorrow we'll try the city beach, though it may be crammed.

When we came back Erlend had arrived to Malmö. He even brought a football. Now we've been out getting a couple of beers and having a pizza that we had to wait 50 minutes for. When we came home, though, someone had died in our building. Ambulances, police, crying people. A bit disturbing. Though you know there are hundreds of people killed in Iraq weekly, and in Lebanon, it's still different to have it happening in your own building. Though I don't quite know what happened. But the amount of "polis" suggests something is out-of-the-ordinary.

Copenhagen is nice.

2006-07-21T01:25:00.000+02:00

Anders and Øystein are visiting from Norway! Isn't that nice. Today we've been walking through all of Copenhagen, and it's been really hot. But it was nice. I haven't been there since 2002 I think, when I was really tired and fell asleep at a café.

We even saw the little Mermaid :D — and we saw this photo exibition from earthmatters with the photographer Steve Bloom which was really cool.

Lebanon — a striking mix of anguish and nostalgy

2006-07-20T12:33:00.000+02:00

"Drawings that speak far louder than Fox News"

The appreciation of a dull life

2006-07-19T13:12:00.000+02:00

I'm supposed to be working. Working on my lame thesis.

There is sun outside — and here I'm sitting, imitating life. So I thought I'd humour you and myself with some pictures.

But the future bears hope about a trip to China in October. John and I are planning a trip to China. That's fun. But we're a bit slow.

I "fixed" our speakers, and now it's too loud with the signal from John's AirPort. So we put them in my suitcase to muffle the noise a little. Nice integration of "furniture" though. It's a pretty strong low-pass filter though, so it's not really hi-fi. But then again, it never was. I bought the speakers of some mildly retarded dude at a flea market for 100 SEK. It was OK.

Malmö is full of rats, flying rats, and geese. Some of them die, inevitably. This one, in particular seems to have met Death rather abrubtly.

Malmö is pretty.

To make it through our daily routine, we go through a lot of coffee, and smoothies, and this one, in between: an ice cafe latté.

Thesis

2006-07-18T17:42:00.000+02:00

I decided to put my thesis work, so far, out on the web, to de-mystify what I'm working with. Have a look at my thesis.

Lebanon

2006-07-18T11:49:00.000+02:00

One and a half years ago I was thinking about going to Lebanon on holiday. I was planning my Christmas holiday as I was leaving CERN in the end of 2004 (I went to Morocco). Although that probably would have been as cold as Morocco, I was kind intrigued by Lebanon, after I'd read a tourist brochure while I was waiting to get my hair cut in Ferney-Voltaire.

I figured that more than a decade after the civil war ended, there'd be some relative calm there — where you could sit under a cedar tree and do nothing, or perhaps swim in the Mediterranean, and visit ancient cities like Tyre and Sidon.

And in hindsight, it seems, I should probably have gone, before Lebanon once again gets shelled beyond recognition, before the shores are scorched — and before everyone there is made into refugees in other countries.

The other day I saw an ad in a travel agency's window: "Beirut från 2800:-"

How sadly outdated.

What is updated though, is the Wikipedia entry on the 2006 Israel–Lebanon Conflict. Not surprisingly it's labeled "The neutrality of this article is disputed." If it weren't then perhaps there wouldn't be a conflict...

For the record...

2006-07-16T23:48:00.000+02:00

After I've dumped the LyX GUI, I've regained some respect for LaTeX. I've even started making a reference library now. LyX screws things up.

The little chapter in book reference was bugging me.

Smith, M. R. (1994). In M. R. Smith & L. Marx (Eds.), Does technology drive
history? (p. ix). MIT Press.

But I finally managed to get it right.

Still lots to do... Hmm. Night.

Latex, Tex, Lyx, BibTex, MikTex...

2006-07-16T16:01:00.000+02:00

<frustration>
I've been messing around with LaTeX a little this weekend. I've been looking into it to see if it's something for my thesis.

Bottom line is that it looks good. But that's all. LaTeX manuals also talk pejoratively about word processors, but don't seem to have tried one since those thin leather ties were in style.

Bottom line is - yes, it looks pretty. But it's a total mess of packages and crap everywhere, it creates a bunch of files, it's completely unintuitive, and it's not what you see is what you get, which is fine, and what you see is what you mean is to push it. And as the same time as everything is messy and weird, it is also totally anal.

It has a nice bibliography package, but it is a physical pain to work with, and the actual hard coding you have to do to make it work, with getting all the references' data is not any less work than just typing all the sources by hand in the document.

But it does look good. But I can make it look pretty good in OO too.

A LaTeX document is like a beautiful and cheap (free) piece of clothing that you bought, but you know it's made with child labor.

Or a really good meal, that is made out of poo.

It just doesn't feel so good when you know what's behind.

It's like it's been built upon for too long. It needs reform. It needs to be... simply better.

The not so short guide to LaTeX is like 150 pages. The guide to the APA citation package alone is eighty five pages. That is 85, people. All I want to do is move around some parentheses, and pick some other data out of a database. 85 pages. The little program LyX (which, to be honest, makes a pretty decent effort to make LaTeX for normal people, but it's just so incredibly limiting - and while they keep saying it's for the people who doesn't want to learn LaTeX, that's what you'll have to do if your doc needs to fill some standards they didn't think of) and all the crap needed for LaTeX takes like 250 MB. It's rediculous. I'll probably end up writing my thesis in OpenOffice as I've starte.d
</frustration>

Tiny step for mankind. 10 000 steps for me.

2006-07-14T16:29:00.000+02:00

I've reached this weeks goal which was to have 10 000 words written. That doesn't mean I've written 10 000 words this week, but, I think 4000. It's not really a lunar landing, but it's good enough for me. I'm taking the weekend off.

To a certain extent I followed the advise from Badlanguage. But I didn't get up early.

Whaling (follow-up)

2006-07-13T23:48:00.000+02:00

Since my dream about whales and consequent blogging about it, I've seen some more articles about Norwegian whaling, most of them in foreign papers, since whaling is more controversial abroad than in Norway.

From BBC. Click for a guide to whales.

Actually, I guess I've only seen 3 articles, but anyways, they're regarding Norway not filling its own quota on whaling. For 2006 the quota was about 1050 animals, but so far only about 450 have been "landed" (funny word). This seems to be due to low sales, and bad weather.

BBC has an article on Norwegian whaling now, and since they're against whaling they think it's nice that Norway is "struggling" with low sales now. Whale-sale is going slow so "Norway has some real headaches this summer."

Real headaches? I don't have blood fresh data, but in 1999 the total revenue from whaling in Norway was 24 million NOK (or 4 million USD). If they're talking about the economical impact, that's not really significant. In 2001 there were 33 whaling boats in the Norwegian fleet. They have a crew of about 5-6. So we're talking about 160 people who probably has this as a secondary income. Norway has a real crisis...

We have a real crisis, and that is overfishing. Our own overfishing, and Russian and Spanish trawlers who are raiding the coast and dumping dead fish in the sea when they get caught by the Coast Guard - endangered fish that they caught with fine-masked nets, which catches everything. And Norway is criticized for intervening.

Photo: Scanpix/Kystvakten

I'm not pro whaling. I think it's stupid to hunt whales when there's no consensus about their number. I think it's stupid to hunt when everyone think we're stupid. And not very good meat. I can live without. And I'm not saying one problem can be overlooked because there are others that are bigger. I just think some things get too much attention on behalf of others.

Progress

2006-07-13T21:16:00.001+02:00

We're all working with our theses. Except Hanneke at the moment. She has visitors. Judit(h).

But John and I have had a pretty productive week. And John has progress bar, to help his arduous struggle to write a thesis:
(21:06:51) John: i like my progress bar
(21:06:56) John: it has helped me
(21:06:59) John: it is my friend

So I figured I'd make one too. I don't have the software skills John has though. And since I'd have to manually update it anyways, or really integrate it with OpenOffice, I figured an ASCII version will have to do.

15k words is the minimum requirement for our theses. 20 000 is the max. Instead of John's weird 18750 target, I'll choose a slightly more logical approach, and set the target at 17500 words.

Right now I've reached

Google says: (9 435 / 17 500) * 40 = 21.5657143
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

Juicy Smith

2006-07-13T19:22:00.000+02:00

A while ago there was a little discussion about a producer who sold "100 % Fresh Orange Juice" - though it was made from concentrate. This was of course not legal advertisement, and they had to change the name.

I ask myself - why don't "they" sell concentrated juice in Norway? It's cheaper. It takes less space when shipping it. Less shelf space. Less grocery bag space. Why?

Are we too lazy to blend in the water ourselves?

As I've almost reached this week's master thesis writing goal, I've bought a book. To be honest, I ordered this book before I even set that goal, but now events nicely coincide. I need to think about something else sometimes too. And not stare at the LCD.

This is Zadie Smith's "On Beauty". I read "The Autograph Man" a while ago, which is about a Chinese jew in London who collects autographs, and otherwise has a rather twisted life. This new book is supposed to be better. I liked the other one, but sometimes it got a little too long. She writes with long digressions. Long sentences, and weird words. It's know as maximalism, I've heard. She uses weird methods of expressing expressions, like "He shrugged his shoulders and looked upwards, the International Gesture for not knowing". Or something like that. The quotation marks can lead you to believe that this puny sentence is a direct quote. It is not.

Anyways. I'm getting the weekend off. I'll read. I suppose.

The embarassing truth, connecting the dots, and spreading the word.

2006-07-11T23:57:00.000+02:00

I have to admit, one of the more useful things I learnt from my year at CERN was the wonder of CVS, or Concurrent Versioning System. It's a system made so that computer programmers can keep track of changes they, and others make on code. Instead of just saving the file you're working with, CVS saves the file, and the difference from how it was compared to, for instance, yesterday's file. That means, if you thought you were a genious yesterday, but it turned out it was totally useless, you can just go and fetch the old version, instead of changing the stuff back to how it was.

This is also good for my thesis. Not because others are working on my thesis, or that I need to go back and change what I wrote alot, but because it's a pretty convenient way for backup. So even if I didn't really use CVS a lot at CERN, it's coming in handy now.

Backup is nice.

On your computer you have files you work with. A CVS program takes hand of these files, and when you choose to make a new version number, a backup, or restoration point, call it whatever you want, this CVS program uploads the new version to a CVS server online. This server can of course also be run on your own computer, if all you want to do is to systematize your versions, but if you, like me, use it as backup, that kinda defeats the point.

I use Tortoise CVS which is a free and pretty easy to use and has a graphical user interface which is embedded in the file explorer. That makes it pretty easy.

The icons get little CVS icons in the corner to show if they're the latest version and so on.

Most people don't really have a place where they can run a CVS server, but cvsdude.org has a free and pretty easy to use server. They only let you have 2 MB for free, but that's enough for some documents, like a master thesis. If you want to buy their services to get more space, the conditions are pretty bad, so screw that.

I'm not sure what their deal with reptiles is, Tortoise CVS, obviously with the tortoise, and CVSdude with some kind of frog. I'm not too into reptiles, but I don't mind tortoises and frogs. My problem with Tortoise CVS is the sometimes counterintuitive commands, but maybe I'm just misunderstanding something. Commit, checkout, release, remove. Sometimes it's a bit scary, but I think you really need to screw up to delete something from the client software, while CVSdude has the liberating button which deletes everything.

I don't know. If you have just a little data that you care about, and you don't have an easy backup procedure, this could be it.

A Convenient Spring

2006-07-10T21:33:00.000+02:00

A Fable of Tomorrow

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the travelers eye, through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Other came to fish in the strams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by the new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribound; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

On the farms the hens brooded, but no chick hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs - the litters were small and the youong survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.
The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, desereted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962.

Though most people now acknowledge that DDT perhaps was not the wonderous multipurpose pesticide that one had hoped, Rachel Carson had to stand a lot of criticism from the pesticide industry in the early 60s, such as "She's not writing 'as a scientist but rather as a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature'" and "I think Miss Carson has indulged in hindsight, [...] in many cases we have to learn from experience and often it is difficult to exercise the proper foresight." Hindsight may be better than no sight at all.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. - Albert Schweizer

Hindsight may very soon be the only view of global warming. While most people seem to agree that it exists and there is something we can do about it, there are still those who feel they have to use every opportunity to raise doubts as to whether it exists, whether it's problem, and if we should bother. So they gather the handful of scientists and statesmen that they can get to make statements such as:

Global warming - "It's a hoax. It's an outrageous hoax, and they know it!"

It's very difficult to say that all of that temperature rise is due to climate gases.

Well, statistics can't give your correlation.

If a five day forecast is that unpredictible, how can it predict anything a decade into the future?

We can take as much action as our economist allow...

Hurricanes would get stronger with global warming, but only about 5% 100 years from now...

All of which is nicely rounded up with a nice touch of irony:
Here at Fox News we will continue to examine issues fairly and openly. We do not, and will not, advocate any position to our viewers. We report, you decide.

That's why it's nice to see former president to be, Al Gore, do a little stunt to raise attention around global warming. Watch this interview with Al Gore, regarding global warming and the movie based on his lectures, "An Inconvenient Truth".

TV

2006-07-10T20:25:00.000+02:00

Regarding my last post, John has made me aware of two relevant books:

These books basically say that TV is inherently bad. TV sucks big time. It's not in its nature to be used for anything useful at all. It is unavoidably mind-numbing, uninvolving, and useless at best. At its worst it's lobotomizing, a danger for democracy, and open and free though. TV should be banned, and trying to reform it into something more productive than it is today is like trying to reform hand guns into something postive.

However, I think it'll be difficult to ban TV.

And these books were written in 1978 and 1984. Looking back on TV from 1984 is kinda fun for a Norwegian, we had only one channel. It might not have been the best of stuff even then. But I think it is safe to assume that the amount of crap on Norwegian TV has increased. I can't say anything about the ratio, but the absolute amount has increased. This is an evolution we could have had a say in, we can do something about TV. We can shape it. If we can't make it into something good, it could perhaps be possible to try to prevent it from getting even more rotten. Or?

Immoral TV

2006-07-09T22:53:00.000+02:00

According to some blog I read, a Swedish parliament representative, Jan Emmanuel Johnason (Socialdemokraterna), was suggesting to tax "immoral" TV. That is, all kinds of reality TV, and general crap that is shown just to make money. The blogger agreed with this idea, but got a lot of comments on this blog. These mainly consisted of two objections in the following form:

A) "Aaarhghh - Retard! Who's going to decide what's immoral, stupid and not good?"

B) "You stupid socialist! Why should we tax everything. I don't want to pay a tax for retards that don't know how to use the on-off button on the TV"

OK, so I have problems with these. Firstly, (A) it isn't that hard to have a rather objective measure of what's educational TV and what's just stupid TV. We already have people who decide what rating movies get. It is possible to measure TV quality in a sense which is objective enough for fiscal use.

The second argument (B) is used very often when people complain about TV. Yes - I can turn off my TV if what is shown is crap. I can also stay home if the city I live in is not safe enough, I can choose to not to listen to the radio if it's crap too. I can even choose not to get an education, if the universities suck!

But the point is that there's potential. TV is a powerful media, and it can be used for something much more interesting, educational and intelligent that what is broadcasted now. It must be allowed to hope for, and work for something better than what is now!

So to sum up - I'm not really taking a stand when it comes to taxing poor TV - I'm just annoyed that people keep using this stupid argument of not participating when we don't like it. Yes, we can - but this kind of attitude is just a result of the general mind-numbing TV that we're crammed full of. My hat is off for those who want to change it!

Malmö video.

2006-07-09T19:16:00.000+02:00

I made a little video today from Malmö. Malmö on a Sunday is extremely relaxed, and there's little to be afraid of. People are hanging out, having a cup of coffee outside a restaurant, cruising around in pedal boats in the canals. It's all pretty pretty.

We live next to Möllevångstorget, the first scene in the movie. It's a nice, but worn down neighborhood. Lots of cheap food. We had indian today :D

Though Malmö is nice and calm, I played a little with music, and with Koyaanisqatsi, I think there's a funny contrast between the sunny pictures, and the gloomy music. Like there's some evil hidden behind the facade.

Shrooms as big as your head

2006-07-08T20:18:00.000+02:00

Today John made Portobello mushroom burgers. This is something Kai would not appreciate, as meat is the only thing that will do.

We've been using the grill for several days, yesterday with eggplant and pasta salad. I tried eggplants for the first time, one late evening in Bamako, in 1991, and didn't much care for it then, but I've grown into liking it.

We're so healthy, you see, the mushroom burgers were no single case. We're practically vegetarian. But tomorrow John's going to cash in on a free chicken, that ICA has promised him.

As you can see, John is wearing an orange t-shirt. He bought me one too - now we'll all be orange! I still don't know... what that means.

Happy and Sad

2006-07-08T11:49:00.000+02:00

Happy and sad and back again.
I'm not crying out to much.

I decided my blog was too gloomy-looking. All black and gray and depressing.

Like a dark alley in the rain. It shouldn't be so scary looking. I'm no punk-ass. I'm not the man in black. I'm not the bearer of bottomless sorrow. My blog should be a little brighter. A little greener. So there. Even my coffee cup is bright and spring green.

I guess I've become a little greener myself. Living with hydrogen economy people, organic food people, green party people, being one myself.

One year

2006-07-07T17:19:00.000+02:00

It's been one year since the London bomb-attacks. One year since my sister's wedding. Not even one year since I moved to Oslo. It feels like ages. Like some remote past.

I'm guessing this is a good sign, in some way. I was never the one to romantisize the past anyway. Not last year. Not 100 years ago, and certainly not 1000. Sure, we have unstable global politics, a through-and-through commercialized public, environmental problems, technology everywhere. We have obesity and hunger.

But we also have hot water in the tap. Internet. A society that provides money for food and shelter to study. We can live healthy lives. I can live until I'm 80, if I don't spend all day at McDonalds, or start smoking or anything. In general I'm quite happy that I wasn't born in 1281, 1581, or 1781, being completely ignorant, and having to work all day long with backbreaking physical labour, just to die of scurvy under some tyrant captain on a ship in the North Atlantic. No labour union. When I'm 28. Or die from some infection that I got when I cut myself while digging out the latrine.

I've been lucky, but given that, I'm very happy to live now.

We have smoothies.

And I like technology. Technology is our friend. I like cities. I can appreciate that I depend on nature, and still use my laptop. I can enjoy a trip into the woods without being able to make fire in a jiffy. We have matches. It's out of hand though. We didn't think too far ahead. We have global warming, global erosion, global poverty, global obesity, global fear, global war, global injustice.

There's good reason to worry. And do something about it.

We might be doomed on this planet. That's inconvenient. But that probably wouldn't have changed if I were born 300 years ago. I still prefer having to deal with today.

IDEON

2006-07-06T23:23:00.000+02:00

John and I went to Lund to visit the other John at his soon-to-be previous workplace at the IDEON incubator for techie-nerds. John and his little company is moving to an artsy-fartsy incubator in Malmö instead. John and I met John at the bus stop in Malmö on our way there, at about 1030. Apparently they don't start too early there. Luckily, we weren't there to see John at work, because in the guise of the night, someone had taken the props of the scene he calls reality, and moved them to the new set. John has owned several light sabres. He sees it as his duty to distribute light sabers - to diffuse them into the Swedish society. A light saber is probably a necessary gadget to fend off his star-trek/wars-convention coworker, who apparently have more authentic props stashed away.

We also went to see the Ericsson and Sony Ericsson site, which I suppose were just Ericsson before. They were at a crossroads, and I guess they chose right? You never know what's at the end of the tunnel. (An alternative reality, perhaps...)

There's a lot of interesting conversations with these two Johns, but sometimes it gets too much geeky software-talk, too 1337, too much early 80s American TV-shows, or just plain-ol' too weird ;) They also have a lot of cool business ideas, in which I don't see my role, as an engineer/STS'er. But hey, you never know.

I also got an email about a PhD program in Germany today. I contemplated on it for a few minutes, talked with Julia at CERN about scientific and technological projects in relation to ethics and STS, but it's too lame. And too poorly paid. And too in Germany.

4th of July, and the less pretentious 5th.

2006-07-05T23:29:00.000+02:00

Our 4th of July passed rather pleasingly with good company and good food. Burgers, and cake and jell-o et cetera. Can't complain - even the US independence day celebration lifted its eyes from stars and stripes to a wide sampling of national anthems, and kudos to Canadian commercial ad creativity.

John's playing music from Pandora.com in our media center.

A single powerline goes into the dim room to supply them with life support. This is our living room.

Erik and John were dressed in orange for the occation. Hmm.

5th of July breakfast. Healty. Not bad at least. Who knows

Yesterday, to sum up in brief was a nice day, though I didn't manage to get too mcuh done. Today I only partly made up for it. And tomorrow we're invited to John's work to have a little guided tour and possibly talk more about some ideas we had very late last night about socially shaping computer game experiences. I have a very loose grip on my thesis, and even less on this, but it sounds interesting. It's all a post-modernist sub-culture of cyber space for the lost generation. Just to make it perfectly clear. Maybe I'll write more about it later. Maybe not.

Who knows what the other John has thought up, getting high on tomatoes ;) He gave us a bunch of them - so Hanneke (John is probably posting some pictures) made gazpacho. It was a quite summery and good meal on the balcony, made with shiny tomatoes and Hanneke's new blender.

(Tomatoes are part of the Solanaceae family, which also includes apparently very different things like potato, tobacco and petunia. I suppose we use very different parts of the plants. This family ranges widely in toxicity and are partly psychoactive. John claims tomatoes are psychoactive at the dosage he currently consumes them, though I'm not quite sure what the immediate effects are.)

Meanwhile I've been fiddling with the PC speakers I bought. They seemed a little unstable. So I opened it, of course - thinking I could do something. And I saw a wire was loose - but I can't really do anything about that without any equipment, all I have is the knife. So after I messed around with it a little more, some other wires came undone (this is apparently some shoddy cheap labour product), so I figured I'd just reroute the cables, and pair them together without the whole volume and equalized crap, we control that from the source anyway. So I did that but the volume became way too loud. Then I tried to use the varistor from the equalizer to control the input signal strength - I desoldered the card with the grill on the balcony (highly unorthodox). Now, basically all I'm left with are two speakers who are incredibly sensitive to touch and any kind of movement, and Hanneke calls me destructive.

The latter despite the fact that I carefully repaired my slippers today with thread and needle. The thread being dental floss. With mint flavor. Good stuff for that. I'm not destructive. Just sometimes a bit deconstructive... Not the same!

4th of July preparations

2006-07-04T19:06:00.000+02:00

4th of July is the United States of America's independence day. The USers celebrate this with burger, beer and banter, and spend 1.8 billion U.S. dollars today on meat, drinks, fireworks and all kinds of ephemeral things. This year, it's rather uneventfully 230 years since they declared independence from the UK.

Here, in Sweden, we celebrate this with John, and we've invited another American John for this occation. And some Swedes. At least one, we'll see about the rest. It's important to remember the other nations too, you know. We're not all "Americans". Even the people in America aren't Americans anymore, their doomed to live in North North America, but they're proud to be Canadian. I pissed off this Canadian girl in Aalborg, by saying she was American. My claim was that the US should be allowed to hog the term, American should be something that you could call anyone from the Americas. But she misunderstood, and thought I meant that Canadians and USers were the same to me, and thus, she was pissed off. Oh well.

But this is the US' independence day. And we're making burgers and cake and salad and all kinds of stuff. I was struggling with some whipped cream, but Hanneke provided some girl power, and the cake is now done!

John making burgers.
Cake! Mmm.
Hanneke is making salad and bruscettas. I think.

Mmmm

2006-07-04T11:49:00.000+02:00

Shrimps on the balcony in the evening sun, with white wine.

Yesterday was a seafood day, with sushi for lunch and shrimp for "dinner". Today is the 4th of July. Meat is all that matters.

iMemoryHog

2006-07-04T01:00:00.000+02:00

Since I live with path dependent apple-people, who enjoy some nice features in their little sheltered white box, I've been curious enough about this Eden to download one of their little babies, iTunes. The backdrop for this is that John has an AirPort, an Apple wireless point, to which you can send audio, and it will send it out a line out port. This is of course beatiful, though we all have to share Steve's vision, and conform, and use iTunes. It's of course what you have to use to use this function. I sometimes feel it's like they're full of brilliant ideas for handy tools, but they only make it for left handed people. I rarely find myself defending Micro$oft, but sometimes they deserve some credit (Though I'm not impatient to get Vista. I don't know if it's out of spite, but the Windows Vista site doesn't look good in Firefox).

Anyways, my first impression of iTunes was rather disappointing. The main thing that hit me was that it actually works more or less as if you only had one button, though John claims it would actually work better with a two-buttoned mouse on a Mac. Hmm. Speaking of left handed tools, using a Mac kinda makes me feel I miss some body parts. But anyways, this complaint is about iTunes. And I'm gonna stick to it. What annoys me is that for some reason feels compelled to run "iPodservice.exe" and "iTunesHelper.exe" in the background, all the time, even though I've never had an iPod connected. I can't even tell it to stop! It's lame. The memory usage is about 7 MB which doesn't sound that much, but it's a lot considering it's completely redundant. Also a fun fact: start iTunes and it instantly consumes 35 MB of memory - that is without doing anything. Start Windows Mediaplayer 10 - it's only using 9. A rare kudos to MS for that... I've actually seen someone referring to iTunes as the iMemoryHog. It goes as follows:

En eins og fyrri útgáfur af media player hafa verið súrar (allur skjárinn fór meira og minna í eh. visualizations) þá er útgáfa 10 pjúra snilld. Hef reyndar ekki prófað iTunes nýlega en útgáfurnar sem ég hef prófað ættu frekar að kallast iSlownes .. eða iMemoryHog. Wmp10 spilar reyndar ekki .ogg .. en ég er með lítið af svoleiðis dóti.

I think this fellow agrees with me. I'm not quite sure.

Anyways, a solution to this problem is as it very often is to open "regedit.exe" and and cut the weed at its roots.

At "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" you'll find all the little thingies that Windows thinks it's fun to start at boot-up. Here you can simply choose what you don't like and hit "Del". If you haven't done this before there's probably some other crap that can undergo the same treatment. Like for instance, if you have a TV card like mine, where there's a "Remote Control Manager" (whatever that is, why start at boot up), it can be best to just get rid of it. A 300kb program that constantly hogs 40 MB of memory for no reason? Someone did some sloppy programming.

Anyways, I'm not taking side in the Apple/Microsoft religion wars. I'm just a little annoyed and envious. I would like a Mac. I'm path dependent though.

Benjamin — revisited

Coffee to go.

No more hotel

I don't live here anymore

A neat idea.

Clover

No suits in my suit case

Jag fick ett brev

Notes from the shore

10 000

Oh my

Hotel room bonanza

Precipitation, anticipation, and hibernation

Stoltzen

Ephemeral — eternal

Trying Tom

Somewhere, over the...

Settling in, chilling out.

Central

Morning Glory

The Lost Son

Bergen

Slow

Slow stuff, slow civ?

Back in Norway

Poo Day

Rain over Xi'an.

Hangzhou -> Xian

Suzhou

Restart

Shanghai

坏人 白人

中国 (Zhong guo / China)

Integration

Malmö, Beijing

In between

Why don't

Notes from Sweden

Big brother

Swedish politics II

A guide to Indonesia

انا بارف ارابي

Munch

Press freedom and the Swedish election

Nameday

Critical analysis

Swedish politics

"Ingen er så stygg i fare..."

Malmö, New York

A Contemplation on Architecture in Vesterhamn

System Recovery

An American in Malmö

An (Un)Pleasant Misunderstanding

Kräftor o Falun Dafa

Lady Deirdre Skye and The Greens

Online profiles.

Bloodbath

Bloodbath

Ready to go!

Friends with blogs.

Pot stickers

I'm building an ark

Off topic

Picasa Web Albums

The papers

Health and crisis minimization

Don't cry over spilt tea.

The Chinese Embassy

Triathlon

I'm going to China for a month in two months!

"Boycott Israel"

Södra Skolgatan

Rubus chamaemorus

Gay Army

Kräftor

Falsterbo

Copenhagen is nice.

Lebanon — a striking mix of anguish and nostalgy

The appreciation of a dull life

Thesis

坏人白人