I live in Sweden. Sweden is a fairly small and kind of oblong country. One of my constant annoyances is that those in the south often conveniently seem to forget that there’s an additional 70% country in the north that supplies them with timber to sell, minerals to mine and electrical power to use. Another constant annoyance is how the major Swedish media is always very Stockholm-centric and also seem to forget about the rest of the country.

But today I chuckled a bit when I read Svenska Dagbladet (major Swedish newspaper) and saw an article about the price of housing and apartments in Stockholm. Attached was this little websurvey:

The question posed was “Is the price of housing in Stockholm reasonable?”. Translated the options were:

• Yes, if you want to live in the inner city you have to be prepared to pay for it.
• No, the prices are absolutely outrageous.
• What do I care, I don’t live in Stockholm.

That last option was the reason for my chuckle. Normally in most every survey they post they forget that there’s a majority of people who don’t really care about Stockholm and what goes on there. I’d say that this is a small glimmer of hope that the large media in Sweden maybe finally get up their eyes that a country exists outside of Stockholm, and not just the “here be dragons”-mentality that seems to be the norm.

Back in 2003 I started running my own server. Mostly for fun –I had an old machine that could function as a server– but mostly because I’m a huge nerd who loves having computers doing things.

When I started I installed Debian, and immediately got hooked on it. I didn’t really know much about running a server, but I’ve played around with Linux since ~1994 and figured that I’d learn what I needed as I went along. Sure, this is a good way of learning things but it ain’t the fastest way either.

Looking back at these four years of server-administration I’ve come to the conclusion that had I known then what I now know I would’ve done things a lot differently. I’ve learned _a lot_ about the finer details of running a server. Especially a server such as mine, which performs a lot of different functions.

The biggest annoyance has been character encodings. When I started out I had no clue whatsoever how they worked and why some were used and some weren’t. I knew that Sweden generally used ISO-8859-1 but not why or why it would cause problems. So I happily went on using that, and as time went by it caused a lot of problems. Problems since pretty much everything these days is geared towards UTF-8. UTF-8 is the standard encoding on pretty much every operating system there is. Every real operating system at least, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft still insists on some funky encoding even in Vista. I don’t know since I’ve never run Vista and have no intentions of doing it either.

So, I’ve decided that from now on everything in this house that uses a character encoding will use UTF-8. I’m tired of seeing weird characters on the server that runs ISO-8859-1 just because some system somewhere else used UTF-8. UTF-8 is the future, most everything else is just old and busted.

This means I’m going to have to go over my server with a fine comb and adjust everything to use UTF-8, and make sure it’s systemwide. This is since my server is originally a Debian Woody (3.0) that’s been upgraded two major releases (first to Sarge, 3.1 and the latest to Etch, 4.0) since 2003. It’s either that or reinstalling from scratch — the latter is of even less interest since it means mounds and mounds of work to get everything up to speed again.

And yes, this is probably not the most world-conscious entry I’ve posted so far. But there was a decided lack of nerdery in this blog and hopefully this makes it up. This will also explain why some things occasionally might look funny while I figure out a way to transcribe the database holding this blog from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8.

I’m slightly worried about my friend Andreas. He hasn’t posted for more than a month, and I haven’t seen him on MSN for a long, long time. I knew he was quite taken with some kind of virus, and didn’t have the energy to sit at the computer, but when I read about him having been admitted to the hospital my worries grew even more.

So, if anyone is wondering why he’s so quiet it seems that he’s really sick. I just hope it gets weathered soon.

Via this somewhat humorous Userfriendly-strip I learned that the UK has a new law. Basically the law makes it a crime to not decrypt encrypted data when requested by authorities as part of a criminal or terrorism-related investigation. If you refuse, you face jail since you’re obstructing justice. ArsTechnica has a better write-up about the law.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is yet another step towards a full-blown Orwellian society? In Sweden we have a whole bunch of politicians who are jonesing for complete data-retention of all Internet-traffic. They want to pick apart our lives in order to prevent “terrorists” from doing nasty things. They push every button on every lobbyist they can, and of course the mediamob loves this since they want to buy themselves into the system and chase filesharers as they see fit.

Politicians keep using the same old trite and tired methods to coerce the people into accepting this: if you don’t have anything to hide, then why hide it?

Of course they purposefully miss the point. It’s all about having the right to privacy. The right to be left alone. The right to not be suspected of a crime you didn’t commit - because that’s what’s going to happen. The politicians in charge want to make everyone a potential terrorist, and then using the laws in a frivolous manner decide themselves when and what constitutes a crime.

Encryption was a way around that, but our fearless leaders in their infinite lack of wisdom apparently decided that only criminals want privacy. Now, that’s a fact in that country. Anyone who uses encryption has become a criminal. Even if you decrypt your data when requested you’re still being treated as a potential crook and bandit.

—

In related matters I read that the first verdict has come in one of the numerous filesharing-trials in the US of A. Jammie Thomas was accused of filesharing, and was convicted and ordered to pay US$222000. Absolutely outrageous, at most she should be made to pay 20 bucks. Yet another show of how greedy corporations abuse the legal system.

There’s a blogpost over at one of the major Swedish newspapers detailing the madness. It’s obviously useless to people who don’t speak Swedish, but I wanted to link there anyway.

Two days ago I decided to change blogging languages. I was tired of blogging in Swedish, and I felt that some kind of renewal was needed. I’d been kicking around the idea of switching languages since the early summer at least.

Originally I had planned the language-change to coincide with me and Ann-Sofie moving to Jokkmokk. This move has been indefinitely postponed due to various more or less complicated reasons. It felt kind of stupid then not to switch languages until we’d moved, since that move might take a lot longer than originally planned.

It’s interesting forming my thoughts in a different language now. I’m a pretty decent english-speaker, and even though I’m pretty good at using the english language I’ve realized these last two days that I suffer from something that most people who know a language yet don’t use it on a daily basis suffer from: lack of vocabulary.

I’m a bit of a grammar-nazi, and I can also be really arrogant when it comes to languages. I learned to speak english pretty much at the same time I learned Swedish. This explains my cocky demeanor when I speak english, and whenever I have to stop and think of a word I mentally kick myself for not knowing the word beforehand.

(And in case you haven’t noticed it yet, I have a tendency to be rather stuffy when writing in English. I blame all those british comedies which I so dearly enjoy)

So, this has opened up a new adventure for me: restocking my vocabulary. Finding not only the dictionary equivalents to what I use in everyday Swedish, but also the very essence of what a word means.

I find that there are a lot of subtle nuances to most words. I notice this most clearly when I’m watching a movie. I usually don’t watch english-language movies with subtitles, but due to my lovely girlfriend who’s not quite as good at english as me the DVD-player is usually set to show subtitles. It’s painfully obvious when the subtitler knows the language - but doesn’t know the cultural frame of references the word is used for.

Case in point: We just finished watching Minority Report. Absolutely excellent movie despite Tom Cruise being in it. Dystopian future, food for thoughts, great special effects and a pumping DTS-soundtrack. All the things I like with a movie, essentially. But the subtitles were at times absolutely dreadful.

At one point one of the characters suggest that Tom Cruise take another person to Radioshack. This was subtitled with “Ta henne till en radioaffär!”, essentially “take her to a TV-retailer” or something. Sure, the translation works, but this is where my own language-nazi woke up and got annoyed. In my opinion the proper translation would’ve been “Ta henne till Elgiganten!”. Elgiganten is a large Swedish home electronics-supplier very similar to Radioshack.

Sure, it’s a minor example but none the less these things annoy me. And now I face a similar problem with my own blog - finding the proper frame of reference for words, the skeleton from which to hang a sentence without just grabbing random words from the whirlpool that serves as my brain.

(Actually, while watching Minority Report I sat and wondered what it would be like to work as a subtitler. I’m pretty certain though that a majority of the sloppy translations stem from a lack of time - I bet people doing that work are under very, very tight deadlines and don’t have the elbow-room to lean back and muse about the wording of a sentence. After all, they’re essentially Google Translate but made of meat sitting in cheap chairs.)

Speaking of translations, I’m now going to fire up a text-editor and take a poke at translating another one of the static pages here. Hopefully I’ll finish it. I finished the About-page and it turned out pretty decent.

Technorati Tags: english, languages, swedish, translations, words, writing, blogging

Most of my friends and family (and old readers of this blog) know that I’ve been out of the workplace for a good many years. The reasons are simple and complex at the same time: suffering from a clinical depression really kills off your energy and life-force.

It’s been five years since I last had a real job. Since then I’ve been through the Swedish health-machine a few times and have slowly been recuperating and slowly getting back to being something that resembles a normal human being. My soul is deeply scarred from this experience, but I’ve been fighting the good fight even though I’ve lost a few battles along the way.

Beginning of September I was asked if I wanted to be involved in a government-sponsored project called PILA. I guess it’s an acronym of some kind but what it stands for is beyond me. It was never explained and I wasn’t really interested in the meaning either. No, what made me interested in it was that it’s a program to help people who’ve been out of the work-force and on sick-pension for more than two years find their way back into the workforce. It would seem that some aparatchik (old soviet word, roughly “bureaucrat”) somewhere realized that when you’ve been on sick-leave and/or pension for a long time it’s difficult to get back to the workforce. They realized that not only might there be physical or other difficult conditions that need special care, but also that companies and former/current employers are very skeptical towards hiring or re-hiring someone who suffers from difficult conditions.

I’ve experienced this myself, I’ve tried getting some kind of internship or similar but as soon as the question why I’ve been gone for so many years and the answer “clinical depression” comes up I’m immediately treated like I was a leper or something. “Thanks, but we can’t really do this now because of [some bullshit excuse]“.

So, this was all very interesting to me and I happily agreed to go through with this since I’m really tired of being caught in the limbo that exists between the real world and the swedish health-system.

I had a chat with a fairly amiable woman at Försäkringskassan (the Swedish government health-insurance institution, similar to the American Social Security but actually functioning somewhat) who told me that most of the process was to be managed by an external rehab-company. After this company reported in with an assessment of my health (both physical as well as psychological) they would try to find a company or institution where I could start my work-rehab-thing. I thought it sounded great and for a few days in beginning of September I went through the hoops there. I talked to a shrink, a doctor, a physical therapist as well as a fairly long line of other nice people who poked and prodded me in very gentle manners. The verdict came in that I was fit and ready to start the process and then Försäkringskassan as well as Arbetsförmedlingen (government-operated employment agency) went to work on finding me something that fit with my interests, my skills and also with the limitations of my current situation. The biggest of these are an extreme intolerance to stressful environments, so it would have to be something fairly gentle. Also it would start off as no more than a few hours a week, to let me adjust to it.

I lost a lot of faith in the humanity of many companies since they mostly gave the same half-assed excuses to them as they’d given to me earlier, and the process of finding a suitable place to rehab grew somewhat long. Despite the cheery girl assigned my case who was exploring every possible opportunity I suddenly felt very bleak about the prospects of finding something that agreed to the conditions. I almost lost complete faith in the whole thing, it had started out on such a positive note but then it just lost a lot of momentum.

Then things started looking up again.

One of the possible locations was in the municipality, in the IT-support department of the municipal building. It’s quite large and I’d talked to a woman there last week who said that my skills were pretty much up to par, but that she’d have to come back later to make sure that it was possible to receive me. She was very professional and courteous and made clear that it had nothing to do with me - she just wanted to make sure that she could provide me with the proper environment and also find someone who could supervise me and show me the ropes.

Yesterday I got a call from the cheery girl, who said that she’d talked to the same lady as I had and she’d confirmed that they could receive me. This is excellent news, and next Thursday I’m going to meet with this woman and draw up a schedule. I’m totally stoked about this, and most of the bleakness I experienced has left me.

Yay! I might have a real future again!

Now, please excuse me while I do my happy dance.

(This is quite a rant, be warned that it might not be very coherent or even spelled right)

There’s an article (in a major Swedish newspaper, so obviously it’s in Swedish) about how a large Humanist/atheist-based association is warning that Intelligent Design (aka Creationism) is undermining the scientific teaching of evolution, and in the long run corrupting larger things such as the basic human rights.

I’m not a big fan of religion in any form. I was born into an atheist-family with strong socialist and humanist convictions, and in that sense I am a result of my upbringing. Sure, I’ve encountered god and christians all my life. Personally it’s not so much god that annoys me, it’s his fanclub.

My opinions on religion are firm and well-known: I’m certain that religion severely slows the progress of humanity.

It scares me when I read about how powerful and wealthy christians are corrupting our society with (what I feel is) complete and utter nonsense. I read about the Intelligent Design-museum that purported to showing the “real” history of the world, and I laughed my ass of at it. Seriously, Jesus hanging out with dinosaurs? It’s absolutely ludicrous.

I’ve always like how Sweden has a somewhat secular stance. Church and state was separated some time ago, and even though there are remnants of it (such as how every new-born child is automatically accepted into the church) in most things we have a nice lack of biblefreaks in high power. Sure, there’s a political party which has an outspoken christian conservative bias, complete with most of the prejudice that I feel religion introduces in people. Sure, they’ve climbed pretty high up on the rungs of power for the last 30+ years, but most swedes aren’t interested in religion.

And it scares me that this might change. I’m strongly convinced that religion only leads to bad things. It leads to fear, prejudice and hate. I don’t really care if it’s christianity or islam or whatever, but when I look at religion I see narrow-minded and badly outdated principles which don’t jibe well with human nature.

It scares me that such a large number of people rather put their stock in some god and some book, and who rather pray than actually do something worthwhile. I admit that I sound kind of trite and cliché when I say this, but together humans can do really great things. Why do we then insist on spending our energy building shrines to a god we’re not sure exist?

I’ve met a good number of christians over the years. With only one exception they always end up trying to hawk their religion on me, like it was a used car. They might start out like nice people, but after a while they always end up threatening me with fire and brimstone unless I repent my wicked ways and start believing in the lord.

That’s the first thing that really upsets me. Isn’t faith supposed to come from the inside? Isn’t faith something personal and spiritual? I can’t just flip a switch and start believing in some invisible god just because someone threatens me with a hell I don’t believe in either. In my opinion hell doesn’t exist, so why should I be scared of it? My will to do good things come from (duh) my will to do good things. I don’t need to be scared by some godlike father-figure waiting to smite me. I’m not a perfect being, but I try to be a nice, caring and good person. It ain’t easy all the time, but I really try.

So, I am really opposed to this insanity that Intelligent Design should be taught as if it was some kind of proven science. For all I know, I’d rather go off and start believing in the flying spaghetti monster. At least that seems like a fun thing to believe in. If Intelligent Design should be taken seriously, then why not start preaching about Santa Claus as well? Seen from my perspective he’s about as real as god or the flying spaghetti monster.

The only believing christian who I know and who isn’t a complete tool is my old friend Magnus. He’s a really swell guy, great in every sense that the word “great” can communicate. He’s charming, funny and 100% good and solid. He’s also a devoted christian. He’s the only christian that I can talk about deeper things with, without him resorting to spouting bible-quotes or flatly saying I’m wrong. His faith comes from a deep and personal conviction that there is something more out there, and for that I respect him. Admittedly, if I wanted to be all nasty about it I could point out that he grew up in a christian environment, but that would just be mean. I know his parents, and just like him they have a personal and soft faith that doesn’t need to be flaunted like it was some kind of fashion statement. They’ve all helped me when I needed help, and they did it from the goodness of their hearts.

But other than Magnus and his family I can’t say that I like christians. Again, it’s not so much god that annoys me. It’s his fanclub.

Technorati Tags: religion, intelligent design, humanism, christianity, god, atheism

So, earlier today my girlfriend and I watched the entire first season of The IT Crowd. I’ve seen it once before, but I had absolutely no qualms about seeing it once again.

For those of you who’ve missed it, it’s this absolutely awesome little TV-show focusing around the adventures of three people working in a IT-department of a fictional corporation in London. It’s filled with nerdy humor, british absurdism and gags that will make you howl. The first season was a sleeper-hit and immediately gained a solid fanbase. I was blown away by it, and so was aforementioned girlfriend.

It might sound rather heavy watching a whole series of a show in one go, but since there’s only six episodes and each episode is around 15-20 minutes it’s a lot easier than normally. Also, most of the time you’ll be howling at everything that happens to the characters.

After dinner we watched the second season which wrapped just a few days ago. Again, it’s only six episodes and about 15-20 minutes per episode. I was really wondering which territory the creators would take the show into, and it was quite interesting. Again, it’s filled to the brim with british humor and some really hilarious gags. This season was a complete howler just as the first one was.

If you’re into british humor and have nerdy tendencies this show will really blow your socks off.

Technorati Tags: british humor, the it crowd, comedy, television, sitcom, english humor

Yes, this is probably the first real, serious, all-out all-english entry I’ve posted here. I can assure you it’s not the last.

I’ve been mulling this over for a few months now, and I’ve finally decided to switch blogging language from Swedish to English. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m keeping myself back by still blogging in Swedish. Back in 2004 when I started this blog I considered doing a dual-language thing, but I was lazy and unmotivated and decided to do it in Swedish. This decision has occasionally come back to haunt me, and I’ve feared losing my small but vocal Swedish audience by switching languages.

But no more! The future for this blog will be in English. Currently most everything is in Swedish, but I’m going to translate and transition everything to english. The obvious exception to this will be my old entries; I really don’t feel like going through 1200+ posts –more than three years worth– and translating them for your questionable enjoyment.

(If anyone feels like volunteering for the task though, be my guest.)

No, instead you’ll have to get to know me the same way everyone else has - by reading my output. This will be most interesting for everyone. I do hope that my fellow swedes don’t take offense at this change - it just had to happen. I’m looking forward to both new and old readers.

This will not be the death of my blog, rather it will be a glorious rebirth!

Now cue the silly yet pompous soundtrack to match that statement.

Perhaps a brief introduction is in order: I’m a whiny almost-30 guy living in the northern parts of Sweden. This blog has for three-plus years been my outlet of choice when it comes to things revolving around my life. My opinions, my whining, my thoughts and my experiences have been the recurring theme. This will not change, so expect a somewhat constant stream of bitching and moaning about how stupid the world actually is. Expect lots of optimistic cynicisms and bittersweet observations of my world. Enjoy.

Ni som följer mitt kvittrande här i blogosfären vet att min kärlek till våran bostadsrättsförening är allt annat än solid. Visst, jag tycker det är hyfsat mysigt att bo här, men jag gillar inte hur styrelsen har delat in sig själva i “eliten” och oss andra i nåt slags sekundärt fack.

Jag har tidigare gnällt över saker som relaterar till föreningen, och nu är det dags igen.

Det är så här att föreningen bygger nya garage. Med buller och bång tillkännagavs detta i höstas, att XXYYZZ antal kronor skulle plöjas ner i fler och bättre garage för medlemmarna i föreningen. Bra, tyckte vi, eftersom vi då var i behov av garage samt att kön till desamma var lika lång som härifrån till månen. Visst, hyrorna skulle höjas en smula för att kompensera, samt att avgifterna för såväl parkeringsplatser och garage skulle bli dyrare. Men det skulle bli FLER och BÄTTRE garage! Wow, liksom.

Men, detta har såklart visat sig vara en total antiklimax. Under hela våren och sommaren har de gamla garagen rivits och ersatts av nyare diton. Tyvärr har mängden garage bara ökat med 3-4 stycken, vilket är en rätt futtig ökning kontra behovet.

Här börjar mitt gnällande: varför tog styrelsen besluten att bygga något som faktiskt bara gagnar de som redan har garage? Det var inget direkt fel på de gamla garagen. Ja, de var inte direkt snygga men det var inga uppenbara fel på dem. De stod upp, det var inga synliga hål i vare sig tak eller väggar. Icke desto mindre tyckte styrelsen att det var viktigt att nya garage uppfördes för de som hade garage, och kostnaden fördelades såklart på alla medlemmar vare sig man har garage eller ej.

Är det bara jag som finner det en smula orättvist? Är det inte meningen att man i bästa möjliga mån ska styra en förening efter vad som gagnar en stor majoritet av de boende i den? Mängden garage är faktiskt mindre än hälften av mängden lägenheter.

Personligen tycker jag föreningen istället för att bygga nya garage borde ha spenderat pengarna på att stamrenovera fastigheterna - elsystemet är från mitten av 80-talet komplett med urgamla proppskåp som snarare ser ut att höra hemma i ett godståg och ett avlopp som ingen har koll på. Ingen jordning, ingenting. Om det blixtrar lite i skyn får man räkna med att saker plötsligt börjar uppföra sig konstigt. Lägg till en vaktmästare som har gjort det till en konstart att vara osynlig - ingenstans ser man något sätt att kontakta honom trots att han (hon? dom?) är ansvarig för soprum, tvättstugor och övriga gemensamma utrymmen.

Nej, jag tycker verkligen att det känns som om styrelsen hellre prioriterar sina egna agendor än att fundera över vad som blir bäst för hela föreningen. Nya garage är visserligen trevliga, men de gagnar ju enbart de som redan har en garageplats.

(Känslan av att det finns en självutnämnd “elit” blir tydligare om man som relativt nyinflyttad någonsin försökt delta i t.ex. vår- eller höst-städningen. Det finns en klick som vet precis vad som behöver göras eftersom de bott här i tusen år, och om man som nykomling försöker hjälpa till möts man av en solid tystnad och noll arbetsledning. Jag vill gärna hjälpa till, men när ingen vill tala om för mig vad som behöver göras blir det istället att jag skiter i det.)

Technorati Tags: bostadsrätt, bostadsrättsförening, elit, garage, nybyggnad, fastighet, stamrenovering