I just found something that solves one of my many irritations. See, I have home-theater-junkie tendencies. If it wasn’t for my limited economy, I would have a totally bitchin’ setup.

However, even on my relatively humble scale there is one thing that annoys me to no end. I have given my pain a name, and that name is “cables”.

I tolerate them around my computer, because it’s a messy area no matter how you turn, and thus it kind of disappears into the entropy. But I’ve thought long about how to solve the issue of making a neat theater-installation without having a bunch of cables running around the place.

(I should point out that I’m also very skeptical towards any wireless solutions. It’s not that I don’t like wireless, it’s just that in my experience they’re always too unreliable and while removing one annoyance they add several others instead.)

Managing cables and stringing them up in a neat configuration helps, but they’re still there. However, now I’ve found a product that is as ingenious as it is useful. It’s called Flat Wire and it is exactly what the name implies - a cable that is almost perfectly flat.

It’s beautiful. Attach them to the wall, then paint or wallpaper over them. They’re invisible!

The only drawback about these are probably that since they’re clever they’re also expensive. I haven’t found a price for them (even though I admittedly haven’t searched very hard) but that’s again my experience with smart solutions.

But isn’t it gorgeous?

I’m a fan of Terry Pratchetts books. I’ve read most of the Discworld-novels, and I was a bit saddened when Good Omens fell through as a feature-film. It should be noted that Good Omens is not a Discworld-novel, yet it’s a spectacularly entertaining read none the less.

So, a few days ago I found out that a two-part miniseries had been produced, based on Terrys two first books set in the Discworld. This was called “The Colour of Magic” (note british spelling) and was based on the first book with the same name, followed by the accompanying novel called “The Light Fantastic”. Part one of the miniseries was of the first book, and so on.

Unfortunately it was broadcast on channels not available in Sweden, and it was only thanks to the miracle of file-sharing that I found it.

In the process, I also discovered that a similar mini-series had been produced based on his book “Hogfather” and broadcast christmas 2006. It was broadcast on the same channel as Colour of Magic, and again it was thanks to filesharing that I managed to find it.

I know that I linked to The Pirate Bay, but I urge anyone who enjoys these to try to find the DVDs and show financial support for them as well. I know I’m going to.

—

I watched The Colour of Magic first, and you know - it wasn’t quite up to my expectations. I’m not saying that it’s a bad production, because it isn’t. It’s actually quite good for a TV mini-series. Special effects are perfectly acceptable, production-design is very good, acting is up to par.

But it doesn’t have the pungency of Terrys books, and the story takes a lot of liberties with the source-material. Adding insult to injury in this department, a lot of the story doesn’t really make sense. There’s a lot of things that don’t add anything to the plot, except as filler-material.

Also, I don’t know about the dragons. Admittedly it was quite some time since I last read The Colour of Magic, but dragons are generally a no-no in the Discworld. It’s not that they don’t exist (because they do), it’s rather that they’re not a common commodity. I don’t remember exactly what happened in the book, but that whole bit doesn’t serve any purpose in the adaption. I just felt that it was filler, a poor excuse to show a rather beautiful woman in scantily clothing.

The thing that I missed the most though was the wacky humor that permeates Terrys books. Whenever I’ve read a Discworld-novel I’ve always felt as if I was reading some strange mix of Monty Python and Lord of The Rings. His writing is so textured, he gets every accent and every smell just right.

This was sadly missing in the mini-series. It didn’t have the wacky humor, and the few times it did it just felt pasted-on. The actors are obviously struggling to portray their characters, but somehow everything just falls a bit flat. The texture of the novels just don’t appear. Combined with the liberal deviation from the source material I actually felt a bit bored at times.

Wait! There’s good stuff too. Admittedly it’s not quite what I expected, but it does get quite a lot of things right. David Jason (known to most people as the bloke in A Touch of Frost) is quite good as Rincewind. I always imagined Rincewind as in his mid-late 30s, while David Jason is 68. So at first I cringed a bit, but I warmed to the concept quite quickly. I guess my estimate of Rincewind being much younger probably stems from the two mid-90s adventure games based on Discworld, where he’s portrayed as surprisingly young, as well as voiced by Eric Idle.

Also, Christopher Lee as the voice of Death is just… oh, I’m at a lack of words to describe how perfect it is. Christopher Lee doesn’t just voice Death, he IS Death. Jeremy Irons does an all too brief part as the chilly Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Cohen The Barbarian is as old as I always imagined him to be, and equally grumpy as well.

Should you watch this? If you’re a Discworld-fan, then most definitely. It probably won’t be quite what you expected, but at least they didn’t mess it up too badly, and the production is quite well-done. If you’re not a Discworld-fan, then you might be a bit confused since some things are never really explained, but the fantasy-feel and good looks might keep you happy anyways.

Oh, and Terry Pratchett himself makes a cameo in the beginning and the end.

—

After watching the Colour of Magic I watched Hogfather. Well, not IMMEDIATELY afterwards, but a day or so later. Everyone who compared Hogfather with Colour of Magic said that the former was actually much better then the latter, despite having a smaller budget and less big-name stars. In fact, there are no big-name stars in Hogfather.

I was stoked however. If Hogfather was at the very least as good as Colour of Magic, it would totally be worth it.

And oh boy, was it worth it.

Hogfather is one of my favourite Discworld-novels. It has a very wacky humor, as well as some slight satire of the consumer-driven holiday we call christmas. It also has some interesting philosophical thoughts about religion and the origin of beliefs, but it’s sugarcoated in wackiness.

In short, the story is about how Hogfather (the Discworld-version of Santa Claus) goes missing, and Death (yes, THE Death) has to fill in for him for various convoluted reasons. Much of the humor derives from Deaths lack of… well… humanity.

The story is a lot more complicated, but that’s the short version.

So, how good was Hogfather? Let’s just say that it was everything that was good about CoM, and everything good that CoM should’ve been. Hogfather sticks very closely to the source-material, even taking a lot of dialogue verbatim from the book. The story is to my recollection exactly as in the book, and everything happens like in the book. It’s a very faithful adaption. Which I find somewhat interesting, since it’s the same bloke who adapted and directed both CoM and Hogfather.

David Jason appears in this one as well, although here he portrays Albert, Death’s butler and right-hand-man. It was a bit confusing at first, but David Jason is obviously a somewhat versatile actor and fit snugly into the part of Albert. Death isn’t voiced by Christopher Lee though, and his predecessor doesn’t have quite the same Deathiness to the voice.

Other than that the casting is spot-on. Susan (the granddaughter of Death, don’t ask - it’s complicated) is perfect, just as I imagined her. The wizards are perfect, and one of my many favourite actors makes a beautiful performance as the pragmatic and slightly whimsical Mustrum Ridcully, the archchancellor of Unseen University.

So is this worth watching?

Well, unless you’re rather daft and haven’t caught on to me really liking this one yet, then let me spell it out for you: yes, it’s very, very watchable. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Discworld-fan or not. Unlike CoM, Hogfather has plenty of the wacky humor that was sorely lacking in CoM. It has the Discworld-texture, the feel is right there. And best of all, despite it’s alleged much-lower budget it still has decent special-effects and good production-value overall.

Yeah, I kid you not! Computers can cause serious bodily harm.

Just a few minutes ago, stupid as I am, I reached into my darkened computer to adjust a fan slightly. I’m allergic to those LED-fans that blink and shine and hoot and do stupid stuff, so my computer is usually pitch-black inside. I normally keep a small flashlight handy for these online-adjustments, but this time I decided to be all manly and dumb. It’s just a simple adjustment!

KA-THUNK!

I accidentally brushed the earlier mentioned CPU-fan. Almost lopped my finger right off!

I’m an active member of Seti@home, running the BOINC-client on both the server powering this website as well as my workstation.

The software for crunching these numbers is quite good, but there’s one thing I really miss - the ability to specify idle-time for each core.

As it is, I run Seti on three of my four cores. Unfortunately, it’s all or nothing. I wish there was a way to specify that BOINC uses, say, one core while the computer is active, and when I’m gone and I don’t care about fan-noise and such it uses all three cores alloted to it.

Currently there’s no way of doing that. At least not as far as I know. Now it’s either being annoyed by the CPU-fan while working, or wasting valuable CPU-cycles waiting for the system to go idle.

Although I suppose a third solution would be to buy a better CPU-cooler. I’m running the stock AMD-cooler that came with the processor, and while it’s virtually inaudible it gets rather noisy when the temperature goes up. Right this second it’s spinning at 4500 rpm and sounds a bit like a polish vacuum-cleaner.

—

Secondly, I’m not particularly amused by Wordpress 2.5. Yeah, it’s nice and all, but there are a few things that annoy me and that I hope will be corrected in Wordpress 2.5.1

1) There’s no “save and continue editing”-button. Either you wait for it to automatically save your post so you can preview it, or you save it and get dumped into a preview.

When I blog I like to have the preview open in one Firefox-tab and the editor in another. In previous versions this allowed me to quickly edit and preview posts. With 2.5 there’s a lot of shuffling in and out of the admin-interface.

2) The new image/media-uploader is a little confusing. While I greatly welcome the capability to upload multiple files, as well as having more options for thumbnailing, I do find the interface rather confusing.

3) The admin-interface is pretty. But when writing I feel that it was a dumb thing to move categories and such down below the post-field. Several times I’ve forgotten about checking the categories for a post, and had to edit it immediately afterwards. Instead of having it down there, why not use all the whitespace to the right and put it there, like in previous versions?

I thought up a tricky question for myself. It’s a doozy, and there’s really no good answer to it.

But I asked myself, if I had to decide on the one thing I dislike the most about Microsoft, what would that be?

There’s a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft. Tons of it. If I made a “top ten list of things I think sucks about the beast in Redmond” it wouldn’t be a top-ten list. It’d be more like a top one-hundred list. And even then I’d not manage to fully divulge my distaste for the Borg Collective.

But deciding on just one thing, now that’s tricky. The winner. Numero uno. The big enchilada.

I might say that their products are crap. But that’s a bit like saying the sky is blue or water is wet. It’s kinda redundant. I could say that every time Bill Gates says something, his smug voice makes me want to puke all over him. But that’s more a personal opinion rather than something profoundly sucky. He just happens to have a really annoying voice.

I might point out their predatory, extend-and-embrace practices, their gobbling up of smaller, more inventive companies who we never hear from again. I could point out Microsofts constant dropping of the ball, and always being four or five years late for the party yet pouring money all over everything and suddenly making it seem like they were the hosts of the party to begin with.

Again though, that’s really just stating the obvious.

No, if I have to decide on the one thing that really irks me the most about the Borg Collective, it would be that they for some reason always manage to sell The Next Big Thing rather than some real product.

Last night I was having a hard time falling asleep, and as is customary with me then I start thinking. Roughly 98% of the thoughts sloshing around inside my head are essentially brainfarts, but every once in a while something insightful comes along and shines a light.

Last night I was thinking of that bloated monstrosity Microsoft calls “Vista”. Don’t ask me why I was thinking about it, I can’t give a good answer to that. But while I was lying there in my bed I realized that Microsoft will use their oldest, most trusted tactic to make money off of Vista, even though it was dead on arrival, and even though nothing seems to change this.

This tactic can be summed up in one sentence.

“The next version will fix everything that’s wrong with this one”

That, my friends, is Microsofts oldest and most reliable sales-method. For more than a decade and a half they’ve managed to use this method to sell shitty, proprietary software to a lot of people. They’ve essentially been using it at the very least since the late 80’s. Probably even from the very start of Microsoft.

And when you think of it, it’s actually quite brilliant. No other industry on the face of the planet can use this method.

“Oh, sorry about the explosion in your brand-new car, the one that killed your wife and both your kids. Don’t worry though, the next version will fix that!”

or

“Oops, your house burned down. Well, just have fun in that tent until we release Home 2.0 and then you can pay through your nose to buy the same dang thing all over again!”

If any car-dealer or homebuilder tried that they’d find themselves dangling from the nearest tree. But Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is indirectly acceptable for people losing everything from photos of their kids to data worth millions of dollars every day. Yet they somehow manage to sell the next version even though it’s still vaporware.

Compare Vista with what’s currently known as Windows 7. Windows 7 is the term being bandied about the playground as the next version of Windows. Microsoft makes some very generous claims that it will be out next year and it will be awesome! At least, that’s if you listen to the honeydew that Microsoft pours into your ears.

Vista has floundered in pretty much every area it’s been introduced to. Corporations have wrinkled their nose at it, since it requires a lot of work and a lot of investment in new computers, despite not actually doing anything that corporations need. In fact, Vista is a dead fish as far as most coporations are concerned. XP does most of what they need (i.e. run Office) and that doesn’t warrant an upgrade.

A lot of Joe Generic computer-users out there in the world is rejecting it as well. Even a lot of diehard Microsoft-fanboys are being rather vocal about their less than stellar experiences with Vista. It’s been reported that Vista is a failure compared to what Microsoft was projecting about a year and a half ago. Back then, Vista was the best thing since pre-sliced bread. Now, it’s lying there on the floor, gasping for air.

Which brings me to Windows 7. Of course, it will be named something else when/if it’s released, but for a codename it’s easily the unsexiest ever. Hell, even Vistas codename (Longhorn) was better.

Have you all noticed how Microsoft are revving up their sales-dachshunds and having them yap about Windows 7? I have. And I think Microsoft has opened their vault and brought out ye olde “The Next Version Will Be Awesome!”-sales pitch. Windows 7 is going to be everything that Vista wasn’t. It’s going to be leaner, meaner, modular and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.

Whenever I see Microsoft using this technique I somehow wonder if I’m the only sane person in a world gone mad. Am I the only one who has this sneaking suspicion that everything Microsoft produces is intentionally broken, so that they can use this sales-pitch to stay in business? Of course, it’s in a corporations least interest to actually sell products that never wear out, and Microsoft is doing exactly this in the software industry. But it amazes me how everyone has been criticizing their products for seemingly eons, yet when Microsoft shakes The New And Improved Product in their face they can’t open their wallets fast enough.

Why?

Because the Next Version Will Be Perfect.

And so on, and so forth unto infinity. Everyone keeps Bill Gates bank-account well and inflated, while using products that are defective by design.

I found this satirical little writing about how bread is the unknown killer of today, and even though I laughed at it a more serious part of my brain reminded me that even though it’s satire, it actually showcases pretty well the attitude our media and governments display to us.

(Wow, that was a long sentence. Sorry!)

I’ll quite a bit from it so to whet your appetite.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. Every piece of bread you eat brings you nearer to death.

Replace “bread” with “terrorists” and all of a sudden it no longer reads as satire. It reads as something that Fox would broadcast on their news.

I’m precognitive. In case you’re not into fancy terms, that means I can see the future. It doesn’t work for everything, but let me show you one example of what will come.

Commercials on television, for example. While today they’re fairly acceptable in the future they will simply consist of a very loud voice shouting the name of the company they’re advertising over and over.

For example:

AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM AMAZON.COM

and so on. I just chose Amazon as an example. Please don’t sue me.

Accompanying this symphony of madness the screen will flash out the logo of the company in epilepsy-inducing batches. Commercials will also be much longer, probably fifteen minutes or so per commercial. Per hour there will be less than five minutes of actual programming, the rest will simply be these commercials.

—

And speaking of programming. Since people of the future will have mush for brains, the entertainment will have to be reduced in order to fit their limited attention-span.

The only form of entertainment that will survive will be what we currently call “reality-shows”. In the future they will simply be called “reality” and everyone will blindly follow it. Instead of contestants or participants we’ll probably just use red or blue dots to indicate what’s going on. I mean, after all, conversation will require those mushy brains to work and that can’t be expected of the audience, right?

The red and blue dots will bob around the screen while a commenter similar to sports-commentators we have today will explain the intrigue.

Something like this:

“Oh, one of the blue dots is really angry since one of the red dots messed around with a yellow dot, even though they were engaged. Then all the red dots decided to vote the green dots off the island, but the orange dots staged a mutiny and killed all the brown dots”

And so on.

—

Okay, so I can’t actually predict the future. But what we have on television today is simply a less reformed version of the above. And if you don’t like my prediction, well, I suggest you rent either Idiocracy or They Live. Both are vastly under-appreciated movies.

The surest sign of spring is children on bicycles. At least that’s the norm up here in northern Sweden. As soon as it’s bare enough to bike, the kids will take out their bikes and start driving around like tiny madmen.

I don’t know if there’s any last gasp of winter left, but I do know that right now there’s about twenty kids roaming around the courtyard with their bikes. They’re shouting and making up games as they go along. There are older kids, there are younger kids. Some are so young they still have their training-wheels on, but everyone is pedaling and trying to keep up with each other. The energy is quite furious, almost palpable.

All this despite the fact that the weather is grey and sullen, and the temperature is only 2 degrees above zero on the celsius-scale.

But you know what really makes me happy every time I look out the window and see these bandits?

The fact that there’s such a wide variety of ethnics represented. There are kids who are browner than pure chocolate. There are kids of asian ethnicity. There are the kids of the typical pale swedish-nordic ethnicity. There’s kids with a decidedly middle-eastern origin. There are even children whose ethnicity I cannot make out. I know that at least two of the children down there barely speak swedish and communicate with the rest of the crowd in some pidgin-mix of broken swedish, english and their native language.

And I think that is great. They’re all playing along, without a thought in the world as to the color of the skin of their playmates. Not even the boundary of languages is an issue. The only thing important is to have the time of your life on your bicycle, whether this bike is brand-new or a hand-me-down.

Governments of the world could learn a lot from these kids.

(on a sidenote, all the kids have helmets. That’s good considering a substantial amount of gravel cover the walkways and this is probably quite slippery when biking)

There’s a few constants in this universe. Generally accepted is that the speed of light is pretty much constant. At least with our knowledge of physics and technology. I’m just saying that in case someone is reading this a thousand years into the future and laughing their ass off. I’m a caveman, travel back in time and we’ll settle this the old-fashioned way, alright?

There are a few other constants, unbendable truths that might seem trivial but who are just as unbendable as the speed of light. For example, the colder the weather the slower time passes. Especially when you’re waiting for a bus. Then time crawls along and seconds turn into hours.

Another one is the one that always happens to me. It never fails. Whenever I cut my fingernails short, within a maximum timespan of two hours afterwards there will be some reason for me to regret cutting them short. Usually this is evidenced when I need to open something. Today it was a small jar that needed prying. Without proper nails it was a bit difficult. Previous items have included a swiss army knife, a safety latch and a pant-button.

A lot of things are rolling around inside the empty space I use for a head.

First off, I think a lot about the adventure that my parents are setting off on. It’s been kinda hush-hush so far, but now it’s pretty much official. They’re leaving Sweden and spending at least a year on the Shetland islands. They’re renting out the house, and generally this is an impressive adventure for a couple rapidly approaching their sixties. I guess that’s my parents in a nutshell though, they’re rarely phazed by anything and once they set their minds to it then it’s pretty much a given.

I don’t want to sound like a big baby either, but this makes me a bit nervous. I really appreciate the need for new horizons, but it feels a little weird to observe this process. My parents and their house always was the center of my universe. No matter how badly I screwed something up, I knew that there was always a serene place up in the north where I could lick my wounds and recharge my batteries.

It’s a weird thing being happy for your parents who are doing something impressive, while at the same time feeling a bit scared by such a big change.

The second thing that consumes a lot of my thought-process is the split with Ann-Sofie. The whole thing makes me really, really sad even though I try to put up a brave face and deal with it. Sure, life goes on and I’ll probably meet someone new in the future. But at the same time I feel so darn insecure. I don’t like moving, I don’t like splitting up. What if the same procedure gets repeated in the future? It’s tiresome to fall in love and a while down the road find out that it’s not working. Sure, this was a bit less painful than my breakups of past, which were always sudden and incredibly intense. Still hurts though, even though I know I will recover and this will not be the end of the world.

But it ties in with that first thing. I often feel so incapable of taking care of myself, and I’ve always had my parents to ask for help. Will that disappear? Who will help me move when I find a new place? Who will help me with whatever shit I manage to screw up in the future?

I’m a little emotional, and all of a sudden everything just feels so big.