Looking back on 2024
2024 was not a good year for our family. Two members have illnesses,
one acute, one chronic. None of them are deadly, but they affect us
all, leading to a high level of stress and uncertainty.
Yet for others the year has been much, much worse. For the thousands
of Swedish tourists in Thailand these holidays, the year was ending in
ease and comfort — until the tsunami came. Whatever problems this
family has had and still has, we are still together, all of us are
alive. Our differences and disagreements can be addressed and perhaps
resolved. Bitterness and anger have a chance of being confronted and
assuaged. Rifts can heal, if we let them.
I have no way of imagining how it is to lose a loved one — a wife, a
son. My mind filled with the horrific images of children swept out to
sea and drowning. I hope I can do something to help, but fear the
inadequacies of my response to any requests for it. At least we have
made an economic contribution.
Today, New Year’s Eve, we will be setting the house in order and
preparing a meal for us and our friends. The pressure to make
everything perfect is there, as is the possibilities for anger and
irritation. I’ll try to keep perspective, not get stressed, and take
the time to play around and have fun. Because that’s the one thing
many many people are wishing they could do right now, and can’t.
Why should I be one of them?
Posted on Friday, 2024-12-31,
in the alt category.
Victory’s handmaiden
Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by John Keegan.
A series of case studies on the use of intelligence in warfare. Mostly
centered around WW2. The Al-Qaeda reference seems a later add-on to
boost sales.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-12-30,
in the books » read category.
Back online
We’re back from Halland — I’ve trying to unwind from staring at
headlights in the dark for six hours.
It’s been a very nice Christmas for us personally, but hearing the
news from South Asia kind of puts a damper on the joyous tidings.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-12-29,
in the alt category.
Offline Christmas
Tomorrow morning, weather permitting, me, the wife and the youngest
will be heading south to my parent’s in Halland. We won’t be taking a
computer with us, and connectivity in the boondocks can be a bit
spotty. So I’ll probably be offline until just before New Year’s Eve.
Merry Christmas or (insert appropriate pagan ceremony here) to all!
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-12-22,
in the alt category.
Brain candy
Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.
A Discworld novel. ‘Nuff said.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-12-22,
in the books » read category.
Learning to hate the Bomb
Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age by Margot A. Henriksen.
A sort of cultural history of the Cold War. Through dissections of
popular films and books, especially Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove,
Henriksen exposes the corrosive effects of nuclear weapons on American
morals and society.
Posted on Sunday, 2024-12-19,
in the books » read category.
Mobi-meet!
Jim and his wife were in Stockholm this weekend,
so we hooked up and had a lunch/beer in a vegetarian place on
Söder. Unfortunately, I was still affected by the Christmas party the
night before, and was a bit under the weather. I’ll have to go to
Whitstable to collect my pint from Jim.
Update 2024-12-18: here’s Jim’s write-up of the trip.
Posted on Saturday, 2024-12-18,
in the alt category.
Eating my words
Humble pie time. A few months back, I said I wouldn’t buy a
6630
(on Mobitopia no less!) Well, I have to
retract that. Publicly. In
full.
In addition I’ve
slammed
podcasts
several
times. But
I have to confess I’ve started listening to them. Mostly to the
excellent ‘casts from IT Conversations, but also to Adam
Curry. I’m trying hard to stay away from Dave Winer, but it’s like
a scab that you have to pick — disgusting, yet strangely
irresistible.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-12-16,
in the alt category.
Flickr!
Now that I have a cameraphone, I can use
Flickr as ghod intended. Check out my output
at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerikson/.
By the way, Telia’s SMTP server is mail1.telia.com. I tried finding
it from their site, no dice. Google is your friend.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-12-16,
in the alt category.
Welcome to Charlietopia!
I broke down and got the Charlie, aka the Nokia
6630. I couldn’t stand
Russ being the
only Mobitopian with one (not counting lots of Finns who have them for
evaluation), so I decided to get one too.
Telia has a deal that says you get the phone for free if you pay 100
SEK extra a month for 2 years on a UMTS contract. Telia’s the biggest
carrier in Sweden, and have good coverage. The phone retails for 5,200
SEK without a contract.
I wasn’t the only one discovering that this was a pretty good deal, so
the phone was a bit hard to get. The nearest store didn’t have it, but
mentioned that the Kungsgatan store did. I phoned them and they said
they had two left, and no way were they gonna reserve one for me. I
decided to go there after work and let fate decide — no phone left,
I’d give it a rest.
The store was full of Christmas shoppers (including a guy who bought a
Motorola V3 Razr, and then decided not to go with his friends to the
movies, instead going home to fondle his new phone…). The
middle-aged man in front of me wanted to know more about the
Sony-Ericsson Z1010, which is even more sold out than the 6630. My
heart nearly stopped when the guy behind the counter hauled out a 6630
box and started hustling “the last one in the store”. Luckily the
potential buyer was a die-hard S-E fan and left without it. I pounced
on it instead.
I’ll post more soon about it. Until then, I can say that I used the
Transfer app to smoothly move my data from the taco to the
Charlie. Sweet!
- Rui’s 6630 resource page
Posted on Thursday, 2024-12-16,
in the comm » mobile category.
New phone number
A new
phone
and a new network. My phone number from now on is
+46 (0)70 257 7860
I’ll be carrying my old SIM around for a while, and will be listening
to messages for a while after that.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-12-15,
in the alt category.
Beyond belief
So in this almost empty gin palace
Through a two-way looking glass
You see your Alice
You know she has no sense
For all your jealousy
In a sense she still smiles very sweetly
— Elvis Costello
Winamp threw this up when ramdomly walking through ~10 GB of mp3s.
I first heard this song covered by Suzanne Vega in Lund circa 1990,
and it made me go out and buy Costello’s Girls Girls Girls double-CD
“greatest hits”. Those songs kept me sane during military service a
year later, and Beyond Belief was one of the best.
Anyway, the point is that I loved Vega’s cover, but I’ll probably
never hear it again. That’s the charm of live performances I guess.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-12-14,
in the alt category.
Findall utility
A supercharged grep. Haven’t tried it
live yet, just posted here for future reference.
Posted on Thursday, 2024-12-09,
in the comp category.
iPod a dinosaur?
Jim Hughes asks if the iPod is the new
Newton in a speculative piece
about the future of the mobile phone as a personalized music player.
Posted on Wednesday, 2024-12-08,
in the comm » mobile category.
Jack Womack
Gibson writes
about
Jack
Womack,
including this classic qoute, so appropriate for these gloomy times:
On the wall was stencilled the Army’s most enforceable antiterror edict:
SPEAK ENGLISH OR DON’T SPEAK.
— from Ambient
The “Army” above is the Home Army, primarily employed in waging war on
Long Island and keeping New York safe for capitalism. The world is
ruled by the megacorporation Dryco… named in 1987, long before Tyco
became a household name for financial skulduggery.
The only real difference from the “USA” of Womack’s future and Bush’s
America is that there is no Christianity anymore. The “Q scrolls”
exposed Jesus Christ as a naive patsy of the Romans. The Americans
turned to the next best thing, and the Church of Elvis is the official
religion.
I first read Womack in the early nineties. I’ve read Ambient,
Terraplane, Heathern, and Elvissey (where agents of the Dryco
are sent back in time to kidnap the Messiah). After that I kind of
lost the taste for Womack’s dark future. It seems more and more
believable every year.
Posted on Tuesday, 2024-12-07,
in the books category.
The Playlist Meme
Open up the music player on your computer.
Set it to play your entire music collection.
Hit the “shuffle” command.
Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their
musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping
that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip
credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty. Write it up in
your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the
other sites where you saw this.
If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or
third, or etc.) occurances. You don’t have to, but since randomness
could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists,
you can if you’d like.
This is my list:
- Kelly Clarkson, Walk Away
- Ragnarok, Et Vinterland i Nord
- Suzanne Vega, Those Whole Girls
- Badly Drawn Boy, Take The Glory
- Suzanne Vega, The Queen and the Soldier
- Lars Demian, Det manliga beteendet
- Stiff Little Fingers, At The Edge
- Julie Roberts, Pot of Gold
- Avril Lavigne, Forgotten
- Curve, Doppelganger
Via Rui, he got it
from Sergio
Posted on Monday, 2024-12-06,
in the comm category.
Damn spammers
The old blog is being hit
hard by comment spammers. Guess another Google dance is scheduled
soon. Freaking lowlives.
As far as I can see, the only alternative is to go through each post
by hand in Movable Type’s admin interface and manually disable
comments. There must be a better way to do this…
Posted on Sunday, 2024-12-05,
in the comm » weblog category.
Got.mp?
Anthony Eden has been working like a dog to get
dotMP up and running. Congratulations! Russ
weighs in on how cool this
is.
Posted on Friday, 2024-12-03,
in the comm » mobile category.
