The Jacobian Journal

Time for music, it is music time!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 12:52:27 GMT

Like music? Like electronic music? Hate electronic music? Want to see Youtube videos of dudes in Hitler 'staches and funny haircuts playing keyboards? Want to hear me rant and rave about everything from electronic disco to toy cameras and moog synths? Want to be able to download the music I'm talking about quickly and easily?

Then add moogcoon as a friend. The journal is friend's only for various reasons.

Hopefully you won't need to regret it! ;P

Hej då morfar, tack för de fina dagarna i stora staden

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:02:42 GMT

Information in english at the end.

Mamma ringde alldeles nyss och berättade att morfar hade somnat in, i färdtjänstbilen på vägen till Jönköping, från deras hem på äldreboendet på Visingsö. Han är den första närmare släktingen som har dött sen jag var två år (den gången var det gammelmormor), och självklart känns det sorgligt. 92 år är dock en väldigt hög ålder, speciellt då han förlorade ena lungan i sin ungdom, så det var på sätt och vis väntat. De två senaste åren har han tyvärr bara blivit mer och mer gaggig, ända sedan han ramlade och bröt benet och fick operara sig, vilket tydligen skärrade honom. Den senaste tiden har varit väldigt jobbig för mormor, då hon kännt sig skyldig att försöka hjälpa sin gamle make som hon gjort under alla år och har haft svårt att lämna över ansvaret till vårdpersonalen (hon bor själv i en egen lägenhet precis utanför huvudbyggnaden i hemmet) samtidigt som hon själv är väldigt gammal. Jag hoppas hon kommer över detta och får ta det lugnt sina sista år, det har hon verkligen förtjänat.

Jag minns när jag var liten och var livrädd för den dagen morfar skulle dö (han var närmare 80 bast redan då). På somrarna var vi alltid tillsammans med mormor och morfar i deras stuga på Visingsö (som min moster och morbror tog över när di gamle flyttade till ålderdomshemmet), och ibland på helgerna under resten av året brukade mina föräldrar skjutsa mig till mormor och morfars lägenhet i Sätra (som såldes samtidigt som de flyttade till hemmet). Där fick jag titta på Bond-videofilmer, som morfar och en lika gammal gubb-kompis till honom brukade kolla på, och åka in med morfar till stan för att traska runt och gå på bio, muséum och Buttericks. Morfar var och förblev en riktig Stockholmskis, och han älskade sin hemstad. Bokhyllorna var alltid fulla av gamla Stockholmsböcker, och han brukade nästan alltid sitta och bläddra i någon bok fylld av gamla svartvita foton från staden. Det var sorgligt att han aldrig fick komma tillbaka dit, men redan åren innan de flyttade till hemmet orkade han och mormor ändå nästan aldrig åka in från Sätra, så det hade ändå inte fungerat. Hans kärlek för staden lever dock på sätt och vis kvar i mig. Det måste ha varit alla de där promenaderna. :)

Egentligen borde jag kanske lämna det här inlägget med denna positiva ton, men något som gnager i bakhuvudet är känslan jag hade dessa sista år att morfar aldrig var till freds med tanken på att han snart skulle ha levt ut sitt liv. Det verkade som att han inte riktigt var nöjd med det livet han levt, att han aldrig hade levt det fullt ut. Han verkade som tjänsteman i diverse olika verk i hela sitt liv (lite som en svensk salaryman, kanske), och han var mycket försiktig som person. Det är nog inte omöjligt att det var mycket han nu ångrade att han inte hade gjort när han var yngre. Jag har tänkt på det förut, och det har fått mig att inse att det viktigaste nog är att försöka se till att man får göra det man brinner för, det man tycker känns meningsfullt, och inte vara rädd för att ta chanser eller gå tillbaka och välja en annan väg om man känner att man är på väg åt fel håll. Jag vet vad jag vill göra. Tror jag.

Jag insåg precis att jag aldrig behövt vara på en begravning. Brukar man ha öppna kistor i Sverige? Jag hoppas vi väljer att ha det iallafall, jag tycker det skulle kännas bättre än en anonym stängd kista. Fast i slutändan beror det förstås på vad morfar ville.

I just got told my grandfather on my mother's side passed away peacefully earlier today. It's sad, but it was expected in a way, as he was 92 years old and had lost a lung in his teens, and mostly just slept these last months. We used to walk around in Stockholm together when I was younger, but I didn't meet him all that often these later years. At least his love for this city rubbed off on me. I hope grandmother will get over this so she can finally relax, these last months have taken their toll on her.

Me and Christer <3

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:02:52 GMT

Me and Christer
Originally uploaded by Jickel.

Our first astronaut visited us at campus. Not only did I get to talk to him for a while, but he hit me on the forehead with a frisbee as well! :D

Photo journal! :D

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:58:38 GMT

www.flickr.com/photos/78375210@N00/ :D

So two of my hobbies, astronomy and rc aeroplanes, were pretty much grounded with me moving into the big city. I needed a new hobby, one where I can also give my creativity some badly needed flexing. I've always liked photography, but my old camera never gave me much room to be creative.

So I sold off a bunch of stuff and bought a Nikon D40 digital SLR. It's amazing, and built like a tank.

2006 in no particular order

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:39:33 GMT

2006 was the year I

-finally realized what I want to become in life
-moved to my own apartment
-started going out with someone
-travelled abroad to a completely different culture “alone”
-finally had a foreign friend come visit me
-suddenly lost most of my interest in gaming
-switched to a Mac
-saw the cloud bands of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the Andromeda Galaxy with my very own eyes.
-sat up all night listening to Nasa radio chatter and video feeds.

A side effect of all this is that 2006 was by far the most expensive year for me. Ever. I think I succeeded in earning a few more adult-points though.

Gåing

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:18:24 GMT

Yes indeed, I did take the dive and hiked all the way to Orminge. It took slightly more than four hours with about 45 minutes of breaks in total along the way, and according to my pedometer it was somewhere between 15 to 20km in total. I didn't try to set a speed record though, was trying to enjoy it. Good thing I had extra socks, or my feet would have gotten even more sore. Still, the weather was fine and I find walking to be quite meditative. I hung out at Lyx's place for the rest of the day.

Jag tror jag såg Iprenmannen när jag steg av bussen vid Gärdet på väg hem.

Julskinka!

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:22:18 GMT

The problem with updating a journal as seldom as I do is that interesting stuff piles up, resulting in very long posts, which you feel you have to try to make as interesting as possible so people stick around to reading it all... or at least aren't bored to death while reading.

I'm writing this from a restaurant above Gränna, but I'll probably finish on the bus on the four hour trip on the way home (actually I didn't finish it 'til I was home!). Christmas was celebrated with only the closest of friends and family, which felt nice and let us avoid the more hysterical aspects of Xmas. Sadly grandma on my father's side almost can't hear a thing, so there was a lot of shouting.

I didn't wish for much this christmas, and the one thing I wished for (the From the Earth to the Moon DVD box) I didn't get. I did however get a couple of cookbooks for bachelors, some sweaters I actually liked (orange and black!), as well as money for a new commuter card, amongst other things. I'm quite content with my Wii, which I only had to que for less than two hours to get my hands on at release day. ;) It's a fine console I guess, but I'm not into gaming nearly as much as I was just a year ago. Still, Zelda in nice and the retro games rock. Especially Gunstar Heroes! Missing this would be a crime.

I only had one exam this year, though it was in the infamous Analytiska Metoder och Linjär Algebra I course (Analytical Methods (calculus?) and Linear Algebra). I think I did alright, hopefully scoring a 4 (or maybe even a 5! Fingers crossed), but the test was actually more difficult than any of the old ones I had worked through for practice. A lot of my friends at school were convinced they had failed, and to add insult to injury the preliminary grade list doesn't list any names, only personal codes only a few of us know. I'm gonna have to mail my supervisor about that. I'm glad to finally have made it through the first semester at KTH though, slowly getting into the routine of studying again after a 2 year hiatus.

A month ago me and Frenz jumped at the oppertunity and flew down to Malmö for a furmeet/birthday party/lasergame event with some of the furs from Sveafur. Even though we missed the lazer firin' we had a great time just hanging out with delicious jakefox, missblackjackal, Ricadonna, Quoting Mungo, and Kosherboy, as well as eating Jake out of his house and making faggy characters in Soul Calibur 3. Malmö is a nice city, I don't think I'd mind living there. I also picked up a copy of the EVE-Online Collectible Card Game while there. It seems to be a great game, but I haven't had the oppertunity to play it more than once so far.
There was a girl speaking with her boyfriend on the phone on the night bus all the way back to Stockholm. She wouldn't stop even though we asked her to, claiming she had the right to talk as she had to work the next day too, and would be just as tired as us. If Frenz ever became the dictator of Sweden, his banning of stupid people-campaign would have my support.

I've been following the Celsius mission to ISS closely the last couple of weeks. I find it immensely fascinating to sit and listen to the communications chatter and video feed in real-time on Nasa-TV, though it's a bit silly that I, as a space buff, only just now when a swede it sent into space, start following the development of the ISS more closely. Fuglesang is living my dream, but I'm not the least bit jealous. He's deserved it.
I do wonder how they release sexual tension up there though. I mean, it's really quite cramped, and Reiter was up there 6 months. Did he jack off in the vacuum toilet?

Speaking of space, I ordered Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot from Adlibris. It's inspired by a Voyager I photograph which I also find very fascinating. You can find the photo, as well as Carl's words on it at Wikipedia, and I feel they summarize my view of the world, at least from a cosmic perspective very well (oh my, we got very . The book also contains technical details on the Voyager probe program (which Carl worked on), which I can't wait to dig into.

My winter break is actually four weeks long this year, and I have three whole weeks left! I want to arrange a get-together for Sveafur members around Stockholm, but it remains to be seen how many catch on to the idea. I feel very sociable at any rate (but then again, I always do!). We're going to have to have a new year's party, at the very least! ;)

I have this crazy idea of walking all the way from here to Orminge tomorrow morning. We'll see if I follow through with it.

Neat!

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:46:16 GMT

Heeey, our new minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, is the same lady I gave a lecture to last year on the value of games as a form of cultural expression (by her own invitation, see the corresponding entries in Swedish or English for more details). I have no idea how well she'll do her job, but I was left with a very good impression of her as a person, and in fact I jokingly mentioned I thought she'd make a good minister of culture just a few days ago. She showed a lot of interest in learning more about videogames, that's for sure. Apparently she's also been involved in the Fryshuset-project (a kind of meeting place geared towards sports and such (including skating) for young people in Stockholm). Now I just hope she also decides not to move Lava (another, very very popular, meeting place for teenagers) out to the suburbs, as has been rumoured.

Avenue Q

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:04:14 GMT

Blogging about musicals is usually swussian's area of expertise, but it has come to my attention that a Swedish version of the musical Avenue Q is under production. It's from the original english version that the (in)famous song "The Internet is for Porn" comes from. I have no idea wether we'll be hearing a Swedish version of said song or not, but the musical seems very interesting nontheless. Tickets are set to be released around the 25th of this month, while it seems we'll have to wait 'til the beginning of February to see the actual show.

I wouldn't miss this for the world. Does anyone else feel interested in seeing it as well?

... vilket vackert väder~

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:58:54 GMT

Det är tydligen inne att blogga om fulmanga. Titta på baksidan av O'boy-paket. Hilfe!

Körigt på flygfältet

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:15:25 GMT

Jag kände mig ganska trött på bloggande efter min resedagbok, som blev något av en mastodont, vilket är en av anledningarna till att LJn inte har uppdaterats på över en månad. Dessutom har det inte hänt så mycket under de veckor jag har varit hemma (men gud vad skönt det var att vara tillbaka i lagomsverige igen de fösta dagarna efter resan. Allvarligt.). Jag skrev ganska snabbt klart vulkanuppsatsen och gav mig sedan i kast med att inreda lägenheten, med råd och hjälp från mina föräldrar (som ensambarn skulle jag nog inte kunnat göra mycket åt deras inblanding även om jag velat, men självklart är det jag som har sista ordet i allting). Bland annat har en snickrare byggt en fin våningssäng som vi sedan målade, en bäddsoffa har beställts från IKEA (som på gott och ont blir huvudleverantör för lägenheten), och jag försöker hitta ett passande skrivbord. Jag ska även försöka bestämma mig för vad för slags ball grej man skulle kunna göra med södra väggen och lite färg; förmodligen blir det att jag målar en fond i någon färg (helst inte för mörk dock, lägenheten är liten nog som den är), eller kanske målar ett motiv. Jag har en schysst idé för det senare, men jag tänker inte avslöja den i i förtid för fler än nödvändigt. :)

Jag drog på mig spenderarbyxorna i veckan och köpte en laptop. Jag hade egentligen tänkt vänta med att köpa den tills strax innan skolan börjar i augusti, men jag snubblade över ett riktigt bra erbjudande. Från början hade jag tänkt satsa på en riktigt portabel dator med 12-tumsskärm, men jag insåg snart att man då får offra i stort sett allt vad spelprestanda heter, samt slå på några extra tusenlappar på priset. Även fast jag inte spelar särskilt mycket längre var jag inte så särskilt sugen på att punga ut 11000kr+ med så begränsad kapacitet, så det fick bli en 15-tums widescreen. Det är hur skönt som helst att sitta i soffan hemma och surfa trådlöst. :) Nu behöver jag bara skaffa en schysst datorväska så jag kan springa runt med den.
Datorn har bättre spelprestanda än jag hade räknat med att jag skulle få av en laptop, men det kan visa sig vara mer "nödvändigt" (här i sin mest lösa och U-land:iga betydelse) än jag hade räknat med. Till Dreamhack nästa helg hade jag hoppats få låna farsans plattskärm som han får med sin Hem PC, men leveransen drog ut på tiden, och jag drar hellre med mig laptopen än släpar iväg 19-tummaren igen. Det senare svor jag att aldrig göra igen senast jag var på DH.
Det verkar ha varit ett lyckat köp, men jag blir alltid lite illa till mods att göra av med så här mycket pengar på en pryl, även fast det var ett bra och för skolan viktigt köp. Jag är ingen riktig prylbög längre. :P

Helgen var ganska körig, bokstavligt talat. Jag och Stina drog till Skaladagarna på Barkarby flygfält, vilket är något av den årliga höjdpunkten för modellflyg i Sverige. Själva evenemanget var riktigt trevligt, med många grymma kärror och en del bra deals, men det var min familjs andrabil, en Saab-cab från början av 90-talet, som ställde till det. Kort och gott vägrade den att starta, både på centralen efter att jag plockat upp Stina och när vi skulle åka från flygfältet. Jag fick ta hjälp av startkablar och snälla medtrafikanter i båda fallen, men när jag väl hade fått igång motorn vid det andra tillfället upptäckte jag att jag hade tappat bort nyckeln till rattkryckan som låste ratten till bilen. Jag hade varit tvungen att plocka bort den från nyckelknippan vid ett tidigare tillfälle, och jag misstänkte att den hade åkt ur fickan samtidigt som jag tagit fram plånboken vid något tillfälle. Efter mycket frustration och letande (jag sprang runt på hela området och frågade arrangörer och handlare) hittade Stina som tur var nyckeln i gräset en bit från bilen, och blev därmed Dagens Hjälte.

Det kändes inte som att jag fick särskilt mycket gjort idag, då jag mest satt och pillade med laptopen. Jag hade planerat att åka tillbaka till flygfältet med Leon, men han fick lämna återbud eftersom han var tvungen att jobba. Jag pallrade mig iallafall upp till DS-träffen, för första gången på över en månad. Det var mer folk där än någonsin, och jag träffade faktiskt en gammal nätpolare som jag brukade spela med i en Battlefield 1942-klan för två-tre år sen. Jag hade ingen aning att han bodde i Stockholmstrakten (många andra i klanen bodde i Malmö), och jag kände endast igen honom på hans nick i Tetris DS. :) Jag får börja hålla kontakt med honom igen på MSN och DS-träffar, han var förmodligen den jag chattade mest privat med i hela den klanen.

På onsdag är det tv-spelskonsert i konserthuset med kungliga filharmonikerna. Nåde den som missar det! Fast det verkar nästan som att alla jag känner och deras mostrar ska dit. Vi borde ha värsta get-together/förfest innan. ;D Eller iallafall ta med saft och bullar.

Jag borde uppdatera LJn oftare, det blir så hemskt långa inlägg annars.

Resedagboooook

Fri, 12 May 2006 10:50:12 GMT

Glom som sagt inte att lasa min resedagbok (och lamna garna kommentarer!). Jag far tyvarr inte tillfalle att uppdatera sa ofta dock.

And away I go.

Wed, 03 May 2006 20:35:17 GMT

Just wanted to say that the easiest way to reach me while I'm in Japan would be through my gmail, chromegadget *AT* gmail.com .

Seeya! I'll be back the 22:nd of May.

Resedagbok omg

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 12:01:05 GMT

http://www.resedagboken.se/Default.aspx?documentId=3§ion=journey&journeyId=96549&userId=103311

Busy busy weeks to fore and aft

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:23:46 GMT

These last couple of weeks have been very eventful, though I'd be lying if I said they've been hectic for me. A possible exception would be the week after the fanzine expo, SPX 06 (which was great, though I haven't read all the fanzines I bought there yet). On that Sunday, I went to have a look at an apartment which was for sale in a very nice part of Stockholm, Gärdet, close to KTH, where I intend to continue studying next semester. I really liked the apartment, and after half a week of much debating, economic calculations, and a bout of lucky bidding, I found myself signing the contract. I get along well with my parents here at home, and I haven't really felt the need to move out just yet, but I'm confident I'll find my studies easier and somewhat less hectic when I only have a 15 minute walk between school and my apartment, instead of a 1 hour and 15 minute train commute. For a while it felt like I slipped into all this on a banana peel (swedish saying, I believe), since I haven't really been searching for an apartment before this, but now that the formal stuff is over, I'm just really happy to have my own place to live in Stockholm. I'm also looking forward to all the home decorating I'll be doing this summer. :)

Btw, the apartment is just 18 square meters, but it lies high up in the building and has a nice balcony, from which you can just glance city hall and a little itty bit of the Stockholm skyline.

My old internet friend Shiro flew over from Britain and spent a week here with me right before easter. We had a great time together, and I think we managed to squeeze in just about everything we wanted to have done, including the compulsory trip to the Vasa museum. :P I also got a lot of satisfaction out of making him eat swedish easter food such as pickled herring and knäcke-bread, but I couldn't get him to try leverpastej. :)

Now, what's really been keeping me busy is planning my two and a half week long stay in Japan. I'll be heading off next Thursday, landing in Osaka the next morning, where I'll meet my cousin who currently lives in Kobe. I'll be using his apartment as my, uhm, base of operations as well as somewere to crash when all the new impressions start getting to me. :) There are several places I want to visit in the Osaka area, including the cities of Kyoto and Nara, but I'm also planning trips westward to the Himeji castle (seems amazing. Was used as a set in Akira Kurosawa's film Ran), Hiroshima (which ties up nicely with my experience reading atomic bomb scientist Richard Feynman's biography), and the hot springs resort town of Beppu. I might head all the way down to the town of Kagoshima and it's active volcano Sakura Jima on the southernmost tip of Japan's Kyushu island, as I'm to write an essay on a volcano for the vulcanology (is that a branch of geology or Star Trek pseudo-science?) course I've been taking this winter.
I'll also be heading northwestward, of course, to Tokyo, the grandious temple town of Nikko, and the mountains of Dewa Sanzan with lots of buddhist temples and shrines. I'm most interested in experiencing the high tech landscapes of suburban cities, as well as old temples and shrines, as well as the immense contasr between the two. I can't wait to dig into that Japanese cuisine either!
Transportation won't be a problem, as I've bought a Japan Rail Pass, which grants me unlimited usage of the Shinkansen bullet trains and local buses. The pass is great value for money, but can only be bought by foreign visitors outside of Japan.

I'll soon put up a page for my trip on http://www.resedagboken.se/ , but that'll only be in swedish, sorry. Jag uppdaterar med länk senare. Och så känns det väldigt opersonligt att skriva på engelska, men det här inlägget kändes typ... viktigt.

Eye examination

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:28:05 GMT

When viewing stars, the moon, and looking at city lights recently, I've noticed that my left eye vision isn't quite as sharp as it used to be. I've grown used to having perfect vision on both eyes, so it's something that has bugged me a lot. What's more annoying is that I see a kind of fainter ghost image slightly beneath, and/or to the left of bright lights. It's not much, and I usually don't notice it unless I'm looking for it, but it's somewhat in the way when looking at stars and the moon through my recently acquired astronomical binoculars (yes, I've been bitten by the astronomy bug, I might write more about that later).

I went down the a local optician today to have my eyes checked. My vision is still very good on both eyes, and I don't need any glasses (though I quite like how I look in them). However, I was surprised to find that the ghost imaging didn't seem to have anything to do with the common blurryness of vision; even though the test glasses improved my vision a miniscule bit, they actually worsened the ghosting. The optician couldn't give a reasonable explanation, and thought I could talk to a doctor about it if I wanted to find out more, as it could have to do with how my optical nerve works.

This isn't something that I'm particularly worried about, it's just annoying.

Katt i backen

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:11:46 GMT

Jag tittar nästan inte alls på OS, men jag lade ändå precis märke till att en av de kvinnliga slalomåkarna från USA har små mjuka kattöron på hjälmen. ^_^

Coming out can be Backbreaking

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:40:53 GMT

It just occurred to me that I've probably never stated it in my journal, but I'm bisexual, feeling almost equally attracted to girls and boys. It's not something that's been a very large part of my life as of yet, and I haven't been in much of a hurry to tell my parents. Most of my more recent friends know it though. It's something I'm very comfortable with, and I wouldn't want it to be any other way. I wouldn't want to have gender be in the way of love.

Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning this now is that I came out yesterday, at least to my parents. Mom suddenly mentioned she wanted to go see Brokeback Mountain, and that she thought dad should come with her too. Though he was hesitant, as he doesn't really like seeing guys kissing I still thought it was as good an opportunity as any, and told them. It really wasn't such a big deal, and they were very understanding and perfectly comfortable with it. I would have been very dissapointed and surprised with any other reaction, to be honest. Dad was especially glad I hadn't altogether given up on girls though. :) He also said he had suspected for quite sometime I wasn't completely straight, or something to that effect. I'm really going to have to ask him further about that sometime, I didn't get any good answers yesterday. :)
I suggested he too ought to see Brokeback Mountain, as I've heard that it portrays same sex love in a very touching way, maybe giving my parents some further insight. I decided to go see it too, even though I originally wasn't planning to.

It was a good movie, and by the end I found myself rather touched by it, but I didn't find it all that much better than the few gay love stories in comics and such that I've read. I never did come to like the main characters as much as I've done in other gay love stories, though I was expecting that to some extent as I knew they were going to be tough cowboys on the surface, who aren't very well in touch with their feelings (which I guess is in line with what was expected of most men at the time). Jack was alright though.
But yeah, the characters were believable, the settings very pretty, and the story well written. I guess I should have backed up my opinions a bit more, and maybe have written a longer "review" to do the film justice, but I'm just too darn tired right now. My parents seemed to have liked it though, which was good.

Som Jesus sa, det spelar ingen roll, vad märket är på din konsoll

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 19:30:24 GMT

I've been procrastinating this update for almost a month now. New Years was nice, as usual, and my cousin said he thought it would be great if I could come visit him in Japan, even before I revealed my plans. I will probably be heading off for a week or two in April or May, but we have yet to work out the details.

My university courses in astronomy and vulcanism (not the Star Trek kind) have started, and it seems I'll like them just as much as last year's courses at the university. Otherwise I've spent a lot of my time at home playing EVE and putting together the plane I got for Xmas. It's going to be grounded for a while longer though, with this weather. EVE is seeing a large influx of players from the RESET magazine forums, and I'm helping with introducing them to the game.

In the spirit of Winter-een-mas (Google it!) I've been playing a lot of other games, both old and new, this week. It'll only get better too, with Ouendan! and We Love Katamari! arriving this week.

-----------------

På dagens DS-träff var det en kille som sålde indiealbumet Rymdkakor: Sju Sorters Kakor, som frilans-spel-skribenten Oscar Skog och en kille vid namn Andreas Sånglöf har satt ihop, efter att Andreas blivit inspirerad till att skriva musik till en Pikmin 2-recension som Oscar skrivit helt på rim. Jag kunde inte motstå albumet i all dess indienördcharm, och det visade sig faktiskt vara riktigt bra också. Mer info och downloads, som det så käckt heter, finns på http://rymdkakor.info.se/ . Missa för all del inte "Pappa! Vart är Mamma", speciellt inte om du växte upp då skolorna var uppdelade i Nintendo-gängen och Sega-outsiders. :D

... stuff. And disturbing news.

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:59:07 GMT

I will be heading to Västervik tomorrow to celebrate both new year's and my aunt's 60th birthday. It will also give me the opportunity to meet my favorite cousin, Rolf, again, who's back from Kobe for week. He's been there for over a year now, doing research on chicken embryos in the field of evolutionary biology, a field he has a Ph. D. in. He's also a huge comics fan, and he lended me part of his collection before he left. Hmm, there might actually be an old journal entry on that, going to have to look it up sometime.
Anyway, I have... plans to discuss with him. More on that later, as things unfold. Too bad I'll be missing the party with the furres though. Have fun you guys!

Both model retailers I spoke to said it wasn't surprising that the wing of my model plane had broken in two, and that the plane was never ment for such maneuvers. I was sure the plane was far too light for there to be any risk of such a thing happening. Had I known it was possible to wreck the plane just by flying it without hitting anything, I would never have bought it.

Some interesting but disturbing news reached me yesterday. Now, the syrian family we sold our old house to had just recently lost one of their sons in an auto accident, where the other son was driving. Their old home reminded them too much of their lost son, so they set out to buy a new house, which ended up being ours.
A few months ago, there was a shooting against the police house here in town, just a hundred meters or so from where I live (I think I mentioned it in this journal actually. I was startled by the shots). The gunman fired almost a whole clip (if memory serves me right, I don't have time to check the facts) against a few lit-up windows a few stories up, obviously intent on killing.
Apparently, the remaining son of the family which we sold house to, is now held in custody, after months of investigation, suspected to having carried out the act. Seems the police has found at least some evidence pointing towards him too. Geez. He and his family are well off too. Me and my parents met and shook hands with the guy several times.

Goooo Jul!

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:15:11 GMT

I'll be leaving for Visingsö tomorrow, so I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a merry christmas! I will be back by the 27th.

Blotchy blotchyness

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:49:21 GMT

So I made my way to försvarshögskolans extremely modern, stylish and probably extremely tax-money-expensive building, which actually happens to be located at the KTH campus area. I met my contact, who turned out to be a student at Uppsala University, who led me down to the cellar to a sort of sparsely furnished command room, with a 1.5x1.5m command table with a flat one square meter screen placed in a hole on the tabletop. There were other seemingly high-tech screens and monitors in the room, but they were all turned off. There were some computers running, and a bit higher up alongside one wall there was a glassed-in observation deck.

Anyway, the screen in the table, developed by a swedish company called Ulvöga, Vargöra or something, was special in that it could up to four different images depending on alongside which tableedge you stood. Not only that, using polarised glasses, each viewer is presented with an actual 3-dimensional image, which seems to extend down into the screen/table. On top of that, the glasses are fitted with small devices that are detected by sensors in the table, thereby tracking head position relative to the screen and changing the output, and allowing you to peek under, around and above objects. It lagged maybe half a second or so, but overall it was very impressive. Apparently the image was generated by eight projectors underneath the table.

I wasn't there alone, there was another student at KTh participating in the test, who I would work together with. We donned the glasses and stood at opposite edges of the table, feeling for a moment like real commanding officers, lit up from underneath by the screen. Three kinds of differently coloured blotches of colour appeared on the screen, each kind at a separate depth relative to the surface of the screen, with pins running down through them at different angles, the pinheads on the same level as the surface of the screen. Also on the surface of the screen was a transparent map, but it didn't serve any purpose other than for the test to be more like the real application of the technology. I could only see the red and yellow blotches of color, while my companion only saw the green and red blotches. In the first test, we were to find the pin which ran through both a green and yellow blotch and which was closest to a reference point on the map in each image. We were also to do this as fast as possible. We settled on the tactic that my companion would point out pins that were close to the reference point and that ran through green blotches, whereupon I would indicate wether those pins also ran through a yellow blotch. Sometimes a red blotch would obscure a blotch underneath it, and you had to lean down and try to look under it to see if the pin really did pass through another blotch. It was really quite fun.
In the second test, we could both see all the blotches, so it wasn't quite as important to work together efficiently. It took us much longer to find the pins though, as you had to deal with a lot more information than in the previous test, and the blotches kept obscuring each other.

We were to do the final phase one at a time, and I was first up. It's a bit more difficult to explain, but essentially, there screen was once again filled with blotches, either brown or blue, with one large blotch of either color in the middle. Now, three somewhat wiggly lines were projected outside of the middle blotch, running through a few smaller blotches of each color and coming to a stop just outside the larger middle blotch. The lines were supposed to symbolize vehicles travelling through different kinds of terrain, and along the lines there was like a scale of smaller lines. If the smaller lines were closer together, it meant that the vehicle had travelled slower though that terrain. Some vehicles were more hindered by the blue blotches, others by the brown blotches, and it was my task to put out a marker in the center blotch, so that they would all meet up simultaneously if they travelled directly towards in and were affected by the terrain colour of the ceter blotch. It was fun but quite tricky, and after 15 minutes or so, when the test was done, I had grown quite bored with it. It didn't use the 3D-capabilities either, but afterwards I heard that the second volunteer would perform the same test, but with the whle thing visualized in 3D instead. Speed would be inicated by varying line height or something, and the engineers hoped the 3D-mode would make it easier to judge the point at which the three vehicles would meet.

Overall, it was great fun trying out, and I was impressed by the screen, even though the image was quite low-rez. It wasn't bad recieving two cinema tickets either.

Oooooo 3D

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 16:00:18 GMT

I saw a note on a billboard at KTH a few weeks ago, asking for volunteers in some sort of experiment with 3D simulation and computers by the military. I thought it sounded fun, so I put down my name on the list. Just now a man called and wondered if it would be okay for me to be at, uh, försvarshögskolan (higher school of the armed forces or something) tomorrow at 1 o'clock. It'd take less than two hours and I'd get two cinema tickets for the trouble. Of course I said yes, I would've done it even without any compensation. I'm really curious as to what it might be that we're going to do.

Expect more info tomorrow.

Wrapping up Dreamhack.

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:17:55 GMT

I did end up having to wait two hours for my parent's to arrive to pick me up from Dreamhack, but there was a bowling centre and restaurant nearby where I could put all my stuff (and grab lunch) while waiting. Carrying my 19 inch CRT monitor all the way there was not fun though.

Nevertheless, I most certainly will be attending Dreamhack Summer 06. I want to do this at least once again, as it was really, really fun. The last night was somewhat ruined by me worrying wether I would have to wait out in the cold for my parents to arrive (no one was to remain inside the arena after 12 o'clock), but next time I'm going to make sure I can borrow a car and drive there myself. I wouldn't have minded to have arrived a day earlier (the actual event started as early as thursday morning).

Convinced dad we needed a wireless router for his laptop, and bought a nice, good and cheao netgear one on monday. I made sure it would be compatible with my Nintendo DS. It worked really well at first, but on my very first round of Mario Kart my batteries died (I knew this might happen, I just wanted to try it out). Since then It's been nigh on impossible to find anyone to play with (the game searches for opponents automatically, you just sit there and wait for people to pop up). I've gone through all router settings to no avail. My last option is to reset the router, which I'll try this weekend.

I only have one minor test left in school before I'm done with the single course I'm taking. I really haven't thought much of how I will be leaving all the people I've gotten to know. I guess I'm kinda taking for granted I'll choose this course again next year, when I'm (hopefully) better prepared. That's not to say I'll actually choose it, there'sa nice 3-year robotics and mechatronics course here in Södertälje, which can later by upgraded to a master of science degree. Seems the study rate is much lower on these three year courses, which I wouldn't mind. On the other hand, I'm sure I'm perfectly capable of handling the vechicle engineering course as well... Ah well, I've got 'til the 15th of April to decide.

Dreamhack Winter 05 Part II

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:26:51 GMT

Making amends by writing this entry in english.

I took the oppertunity to sleep about 5 hours last night, so I would be fit for fight when meeting two of my EVE-corp pals for the first time ever IRL, who travelled here from Växsjö. I had a great day together with them, spent mostly on playing Mario Kart DS and, well, EVE Online. Now I'm sitting here filling myself up with Jolt Cola so I can make the most of the night. And also because I wanna be just like the stereotypical computer gamer for a while. =D

There has been lots of activities during the day, like the robot dress-up competition, various tournaments, They just had the annual Jolt opening, where thousands of people open Jolt cans simultaneously. Beautiful.

Lee_N, one of my EVE friends, was also kind enough to give me a copy of the old computer "game" Simtunes, from 1998-sometime (he had bought a whole party of copies cheap). It's a program produced by Tashio Iwai, the same person who later made Electroplankton for the DS. You creative people have GOT to try this, it's like a drawing program with which you can make music. Little critters follow the matrix of pixels over the images, and make different sounds depending on the color of the pixels they pass over. You can also place little arrows and other special pixels to make them go where you want. You really have to see it to believe it.

Oops, just found out they're closing as early as 12 AM tomorrow. Going to have to ask my parents to come early. Stupid of me not to check that beforehand.