SMS christmas greetings?

Nothing says "I really don't care enough to send a greeting card" like a Christmas/new year greeting per SMS. Does it? OK, the ones that are actually sent to you are nice, but the ones that are really generic and you know they are a standard SMS sent to most of the people in the phonebook are not. If you want to fake caring: either fake it good or think a minute why you are sending it at all. And no: I don't send them... I don't send postcards either... but it's not because I don't care. Or wait a minute... actually I send the exact same amount of postcards/SMS:es to the people I care about as the ones I don't care about.

Damn it.

OK... a premature new years resolution just became apparent: I'll be better at keeping touch with the ones I do care about. But I sure as hell won't do it by sending generic SMS:es.

Damn skippy.

Balance

I know this i oh so very petty, but I can not resist. Does people have really bad balance? An goldfish memory? Weak legs? No? Then why does people in general fall over in the subway all the time? OK, not fall over, but: any time the train changes speed, direction or elevation: almost anyone that is standing looks like a drunk drunk. And they are holding the bars! I stand in the middle holding no bars and I never loose my balance (yes, sure I have, but that's mostly when the driver panic brakes for some unseen reason).

It's really easy:

1. When the train leaves the station: It will accelerate, generating a feeling of being pulled towards the back of the train.
2. When the train enters the station: It will decelerate, generating a feeling of being pulled towards the front of the train.
3. When the train turns: It will generate a feeling of being pulled towards the side opposite the turn. Once you take a subway line a few times (like every day to work and every day back home), you will notice it often turns at the same places. I think it has something to do with railway tracks being heavy and bolted to the ground. That a lot of them go through tunnels through solid rock may also add to this rater predictable behaviour.
   

Sorry, I had to get it off my back.

Domestic rock'n roll services

I never win anything... usually because I never enter any competitions... usually because they are stupid. But last night I actually entered a competition and won!
So today a rock band came to my apartment and did my dishes.

No: really... A Sudden Burst Of Optimism did my dishes :)

And yes: it may be one of the most stupid competitions ever. But stupid in a fun and creative way. That's the kind of stupid I like.

If you don't know who A Sudden Burst Of Optimism are; you should check them out. Great songs, and a ton of happy-vibes in their live sets. Some songs and videos are available online on their Myspace page.

I should be sick more often

This is what I had to work with when I got back from a weeks sickness today (click the image to enlarge).
I felt something was just a bit skewed when I tried to write my password (it's ********* b.t.w.)... Then It hit me: Waaaait a minute! That line does NOT read "QWERTY" :)
Considering the people I work with, having your keyboard rearranged like this is not a bad thing. I loved it. It kick started my day after a week of snot, fever and coughing with a great big smile. Thanks guys :D

How many words can you find that is usually not on a QWERTY keyboard?

Facebook is...

Recently there has been an uproar in the news (and in a funny way if you appreciate irony: on Facebook) about the Facebook terms of use.
First of all: you did check the "Yes, I read the terms of use" box, did you not? Should we not have a headline that reads "Millions of users lies to Facebook"? Sure: I did not read it. I did not read it after the news got upset either. And I will probably never read it. And while I'm at it: I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I will never read ANY terms of use-text for any product or service. Ever. For one simple reason: I'm pretty certain they all say the same thing: "You are screwed, we will screw you even more, and by checking that box, you just pulled down your pants and bent over".
But I'm fine with that. As long as they provide a service that makes up for it.

But here is the real problem. That people think that they can control information that they place on the Internet.

I go all The Scream-faced when I realize people are actually surprised that they have lost control over their data when they upload data to Facebook (or any other place on the Internet). Grow up and pause to think for 5 seconds before you upload that funny picture of your friend passed out drunk, smeared in ketchup with his wiener hanging out, freshly painted with a permanent marker. Often you will realize that it may be funny, but not "ha ha"-funny

And if you think "I can just remove it and it will be gone": Say hello to the Wayback Machine.

I say tomato

Hey look, I managed to sustain life! Not only did I avoid eradicating life: I actually made it comfortable enough to thrive as well. So here are some tasty tomatoes grown on my balcony.

How they tasted? Hmm, well the insides were a bit more sour than I would have hoped for ( but then again, I hoped for tomatoes that tasted like sugar candy ), but the outer shell tastes like a really fresh tomato smells. That is: awesome.

I have seen the Sage

Yesterday I finally got to see Sage Francis live at Debaser. I was bored to the point of splitting my skull open by the supporting acts... they were not bad in any way, they were just so very generic that bad would be at least interesting in comparison. But at around midnight "The crater face steps in". And the crowd goes ballistic. This guy has stage presence and there is nothing generic about him. There are no babes, guns and cash... or is there... there is actually, but the babes are ex wives, the guns are water guns and cash was named Johnny. And God did not kill him, no sirree.

So if you know what is good for you:

1. First you get "A Healthy Distrust", it is the most accessible album. And its great. I love "Sun Vs Moon".
2. Then you get "Personal Journals", it's less polished but also feels more honest. Its my personal favorite, and the best of all is "Different".
3. Then go about your life. Make something up. Something good preferably.

And to the monkey arsed DJ that spun plastic between acts... what moron plays songs by the main act before the concert? Pissed me off big time... not 100% sure I'm right here but is that not just really, really weird?

This is the Internet

For some reason I get asked a lot why I write in English when it is not my native tongue. It is because of a lot of reasons actually:

• I get frustrated when I browse for something and end up in pages that are in languages like French, Italian, German, Spanish and Swahili. The only time I can can see the reason in the use of French is if the sites intended audience is French children. So I don't want to frustrate people by encrypting my words in some language that hardly anyone knows.
  
• I have a beef with countries that dub their movies. These countries seem to be the same who's citizens are bad at English and produce Internet content in their own Language.
• One of the main reasons you blog is that you actually want to be read. By writing in English I expand the possible audience by quite a few people.
• I like English and I speak it every work day because some of the people I work with are Chinese, Australian and English. So by using it I hope to improve my quality in both speech and writing.
• I think English should be the official language on the Internet. Yes that goes for the Asian parts as well. Not because it is a better language in any way, but because it is the language that most people all over the world can understand at least a little. You could argue that Mandarin is a larger language, but I would tell you that you are totally missing the point and need to be quiet now.
  
• This is not Sweden, this is the Internet.
  

Bad memory: Good

The other day a guy at work came up to me and handed me a document. He wondered if it contained an accurate description of a new part of our system, and if it could serve as a base for writing the test cases for it.
I eyed trough it and was struck by how good it was. It covered all that was needed without getting into any non-necessary detailing. It was well written and logically formatted. In short: It was an excellent base for writing the test cases ( and for developing the module in the first place ( and for throwing you hands in the aeya in general ) ).

I asked the guy who wrote it and he showed me the front page.
Author: Me. Apparently I wrote it myself a few months back.

Its not often you are able to give yourself a really honest and unselfish praise, but it seems a bit of amnesia goes a long way ( I mean, I could have asked him "What kind of a moron wrote this crap?" ).

Here comes the rain again

It is kind of strange and sweet and... stuff, how a really heavy rainstorm can make a group of grown men (but not really that grown up at all, mind you) wallow in childhood memories.
At lunch today I was sitting with some of my coworkers outside a restaurant when the heavens opened up. Many times over actually. When the first wave hit: we all went "Wow, cool!" and smiles spread all around. Then, when we thought it had peaked, if increased the cat and dog ratio even more. And then again, and actually again after that. When I looked around I witnessed wide eyes and smiles all around the restaurant.

And then it happened: Everyone started telling cute tales about running in the rain as a kid, going to sleep with the rain hammering down on the roof above, being a bit scared of the lightning and thunder but not really because the cup of hot cocoa made you feel all snuggled up and secure.

There is something about natures raw displays of force that just stumps you... Damn how I love it. Gives you the opportunity to step back and chill the f**k out every once in a while.

The results of TV deprivation

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry: I've now been without TV for a week. It was not hard at all, and I'm in no real hurry turning it back on any time soon. I've actually gotten a lot out of not staring at that stupid box:

• I've been on two dates and cancelled one because I met this awesome woman. No Idea where this will end up, but just meeting her was wonderful. I'm kind of waiting for someone from The Hidden Camera to pop out and tell me she is just a joke and I've been had.
  
• I watched the entire "League Of Gentlemen" TV series, on DVD (on my laptop). It is awesome in every way. A strange mix between twisted comedy and horror. Also a few episodes of "Dexter" and "Flight Of The Conchords"
• Been to an excellent festival and discovered the exquisite music of "Wildbirds And Peacedrums", a band that is based on just a girl with a beautiful voice and a percussionist.
• I've been so totally drunk that I'm amazed I woke up at all the day after.
• Fixed up a corner of my balcony with plants and general coziness. The furniture is still awful, but its about a gazillion percent more cozy now. I've actually started using it, something I hardly ever did before.
  
• Read a great deal more of The Man Who Killed His Brother, and its pretty good. I think I'll have to read the entire series.

So if I gained all this: what did I loose?

Well... If you don't consider missing an episode of MacGyver at 02:00 each night a loss(I don't): then NOTHING!

Laughing your ass off anyone?

I watched the entire League Of Gentlemen TV series recently, and for some reason this was the sketch I laughed the hardest at:


(Embedding is disabled by youtube, so click the image to see it there)

...what makes it even more funny ( disturbing? ) is that later in the series: there is a reference to the aired commercial in a conversation that makes it apparent that this was actually the actress they ended up using in the final version of the commercial :D

Me: a criminal?

I got a little reminder from the Police today. They reminded me to my great joy that I am indeed a criminal. Perhaps one of the worst kinds of criminal.
I have been found guilty of offensive behavior and for this must pay 800SEK to become a better person. I doubt this fine will make me a better person, in fact I'm pretty sure I'm kind of a pretty good person already.
Here is what I did: I was sitting with a couple of friends from work, having an after work beer on a Friday night, at a bar on the edge of Humlegården and after 2 beers I really had to go all of a sudden. So I jumped over the really low fence and went over to this huge tree and did my stuff. This is where the fun starts. I hear some shouting behind me as I'm getting ready to return to my friends: Three Police officers are jogging towards me with faces full of non-smiling.
They never shout at me, but for a really long time they stand around me saying stuff like "Didn't you know this was illegal"
, "What were you thinking", "We can't accept this as an ID" (my drivers licence had a crack in it) and "We'll have to wait here for a while" (They needed to call station to make sure I wasn't convicted of some other heavy crimes). All of the time these guys had the facial expressions saying "This is a very serious situation, we must be serious and
alert, this guy may be very dangerous".

All I could think about all this time was "NO: Don't say it!, NO: Don't start smiling, NO: Do NOT make a joke now, they will NOT appreciate it and will NOT think it is funny".

All in all I took up 30 minutes of three Police officers time on a Friday night because I peed on a tree in a park. A big tree, nobody could see my thingie ( the tree is located at GPS RT90 coordinate [X=6581868,Y= 1629082] b.t.w, pretty big huh :) ). Was this well spent tax money? Did I waste this tax money, or did they? I know they were wasted.

Where is the line drawn between silly and offensive?

Cellphone: Human interaction resistance +20?

I just took the tube ( tube = metro, subway, sossesnöret, grävlingen, bunneltranan) home from a nice date just now and noticed a behaviour that I've got myself. That does not make it any less weird. Cellphones are used to make the user look occupied. I mean: sometimes you probably play a really cool game, but I suspect that most of the time people just click back and forth between menus/flip between SMS:es/do nothing at all really. I've seen people do it, I've done it myself. It's kind of the same behavior that makes me uncomfortable sitting in a café alone unless I've got a book or magazine to read.
It's kind of a new version of staring with huge ( fake ) interest at the commercials. Both the new and the old versions are tools to avoid eye contact with your fellow travelers... Why are we so desperate not to interact?
The last time someone spoke to you on the tube/bus: was your initial reaction "Oh no"? I mean that split millisecond before your brain sorted out that the guy just asked the time... And as you started fishing out your cellphone to see what time it is: did the thought "Is my cell too cool, is he just checking if I'm worth sticking up later?" cross your mind?

Why haven't I ever asked the lad/lass across from me: "Hey, I'm meeting a friend for coffee in 10 minutes, do you know a cozy café in the south part of town?"

A partial explanation on Italian driving?

I got around to looking through the vacation photos from my trip to Italy today. We were sitting in Trastevere in Rome drinking several bottles of totally excellent red wine(thanks Silvia!), when I looked up and saw the awesome sight of these three signs. This photograph kind of explains why Italians don't seem to really care that much about the traffic rules... they can be pretty ambiguous. I think what these particular signs are trying to say is:

"This is a one way street, commoooon, dare to go in the opposite direction! I dare you! Nah, just kidding, you cant go in here at all."

Or perhaps a seasoned Italian driver can explain it better?

TV eats my braaaainsss...

It really does. I have this button that invokes "next channel" on my remote. This is kind of OK. The problem is that upon reaching the last channel: it activates the first one. Result: Pressing a single button can keep me locked in my couch for any amount of hours... watching complete and utter crap.
I wold not mind if... say, 10% of the crap was not actually... crap, but it's not. This is in a serious way making me doubt my own intelligence, and making me not like my own actions. I hate not liking my own actions. So let it be known:

I will not start my TV for a week from this post.

What I think I will get out of this experiment is:

- More reading.
- More browsing (yes: preferable to TV)
- Maby an extra visit to a friend
- A date perhaps
- Not feeling like a moron

(But starting it and setting it to channel FRONT is OK; that is the channel the sound from my laptop ends up, and as it gets no visual input: the screen is just really really blue. I needs my music.)

The best thing about Arvikafetivalen...

...was the CD:s I brought on the road trip there. Most are just universally excellent, others are in the spirit of Arvikafestivalen (The Arvika Festival). It's not in any way that it was a bad festival, it's just that this year most of the bands were not MY bands (except VNV Nation). The beer was totally decent.
So here they are, in no particular order, no wait, I lie! In the order I picked them out of the case to write them down:

• Tool - Lateralus
• Tool - Aenema
• Nitzer Ebb - Belief
• Kaizers Orchestra - Evig Pint
• Morcheeba - Fragments Of Freedom
• Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
• José Gonzáles - Veneer
• The Knife - Deep Cuts
• Tori Amos - From The Choirgirl Hotel
• DJ Shadow - Entroducing...
• Spawn Soundtrack
• Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
• Infinite Mass - The Face
• Portishead - Dummy
• Front 242 - Front By Front
• Frontline Assembly - Tactical Neural Implant
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• Radiohead - My Iron Lung
• The Pouges -Rum Sodomy & The Lash
• Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing
• Placebo - Placebo
• Kosheen - Resist
• Yazoo - Upstairs At Eric's
• Red Snapper - Our Aim Is To Satisfy Red Snapper
• Gary Numan - Pure
• Pixies - Doolittle
• Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
• Oompf - Sperm

Yes, I still own CD:s.

Death for atheists

Had a funeral today. It's a bit strange having a funeral by/for atheists because all the rituals you know are so tied to religion. Anything short of throwing your dead in the garbage will be rituals I guess.
I have nothing against rituals per se, but I can't really name any "neutral" ones...
Anyway, here is what we did: We placed the urn in the ground. We placed flowers. And finally we stood around the grave talking about what she liked and what we remembered about her. I liked that. It felt right and very emotional.
A funeral for me is the point in time when I "get it". Someone is gone, really gone. From then on I can let go / move on / get over it.
Whatever ritual you do perform is good I think.

Finally an acceptable reason to blog

I never really got this blogging. I routinely ask friends with blogs what the big idea is. Why would you do it, and why would anyone care if you did? Is it not just writing a personal journal and leaving it in the town square? Is that not just really, really weird?
I got the answer a few days ago from either of the writers of 2 tanter or Daniel Lugn:

You start to notice your surroundings.

The idea is that in some way ( good or bad, not sure yet) after a while you start to think about what in your surrounding could become food for your blog. I like that thought. I'd like to be that guy that starts to giggle at the sight of some obscure coincidence that is actually pretty cool when you think about it. I like thinking about stuff.

Stuff is cool.

Oh and; Yay! First post.