A beautiful day outside. Sunny, clear bright-blue skies, just a degree or two below freezing. Huge white snowpiles. It’s wonderful. When it’s days like these I have no problems remembering why I love living where I do, and I have no trouble enjoying winter.
I took these photos yesterday, actually. But the weather today is the same, except a lot less windy. Yesterday it was gusting quite heavily – today it’s completely calm. Today you can feel the suns rays warming your face.
Look who’s figured out that there’s a perfectly sized little jungle room for her in the kitchen, and discovered that it’s quite nice to sit there and soak up the spring sun.
I just found this completely awesome video of some norwegian dude doing pixel-art when re-tiling his shower. This is so cool! Lots of work but deeply impressive results!
Maybe some day when I redo my kitchen I’ll steal this idea and do a pixelart tile motif in it somewhere…
Either click the link up there to go to Vimeo and watch the video in much better quality, or enjoy the embedded (lesser-quality) version down below.
I’m not much for clocks on my wall. Part of this is due to the fact that I’m old-fashioned and wear a wrist-watch, but mostly it’s due to my deep and utter dislike for clocks on walls. Most of the time they’re ugly, useless, ticking pieces of plastic.
However, this clock I actually like. It’s just simple digital (duh) digits. The neat thing about them is that they’re OLED, and in sunlight they’re black and in darkness they’re white. Don’t get it? Look at the picture below.
I like minimalist type designs, and as such this appeals to me. Currently the clock isn’t in production but if it starts being produced and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg I could consider buying one.
Well, I took the dawg (aka Hilda) and walked to the petstore today. Good times, she was really excited and behaved mostly well. Unlike some other dogs I’ve encountered she understood that it was not dog-heaven and she wasn’t free to play with all the toys, other dogs or eat all the candy. But it was exciting, none the less, and a good walk.
Bought a orange rubber ball that we had fun with earlier tonight. Man, throwing a ball and watching this dog chase after it is like firing a cannon. She shoots off at the speed of sound, I kid you not.
Here’s a picture of her and the cat chillaxing in the couch. The cat is extremely uninterested in the dog but tolerates her. The dog is curious about the cat but is a little nervous after being hit in the face by aforementioned animal quite unexpectedly the other day.
“The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Please copy and paste your bolded books read, italicized books as ”want to read”, and then sum up with a head count, so to speak. What does the list say about your reading habits?”
Well, let’s see what I’ve read and what I want to read.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (I read up to and including The Order of the Phoenix after which I just grew tired of the series)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
There’s a labrador sleeping right behind me. This is her first time away from home, and I think she’s a little scared. But she’s quite easy-going anyways, I guess it’s just weird being away from master and mistress. She’s about two years old, more charming than a smiling piglet and very social.
The dog in question is Hilda. Normally she lives with the couple where I got to see The Zapper, and I suggested that she live with me while they’re off on a midwinter vacation for two weeks in Tenerife.
We’ve been bonding today. Earlier in the evening we went for a short walk and managed to meet no less than five other dogs who also were out stretching their legs. One of the dogs was the somewhat more grown-up version of the puppy I blogged about back in May. The dogs immediately became good friends, playing around in the snow. The owner of the dog in question suggested we go down to the field and let them play in the snow. Sure, why not? We walked down, I unleashed Hilda and the dogs played for a while. Meanwhile me and the owner of the other dog –which was a (I think) American Cocker Spaniel– chatted for a while about dogs and the various intricacies and pleasures of owning a dog.
After a while we decided it was time to go home, and we took our respective dogs and headed back to the apartments. Goodbye greetings to the man and then we were inside again. Hilda being quite snowy but very happy having made a new friend.
Who knows what the morrow will bring?
Here’s a photo of the girl just ten minutes after her arrival here earlier today.
Ja, rubriken säger väl det mesta. Snart fyller jag 30 för andra gången. Ni är välkomna att anmäla er på mitt Fejsboks-event om ni vill komma förbi, äta tårta, snacka strunt eller vad det nu blir.
Linda gav mig i uppdrag att klura på födelsedagspresenter. Två av de blygsammare önskemålen är antingen en ny smörgåsgrill (den jag har nu håller på att falla i bitar) eller en fritös (så jag kan göra Tonkatsu eller Pizza Fritta) men för en stund sen kom jag på en tredje.
Den är dock för de som är stadd vid ganska ordentlig kassa, men det är ett genuint önskemål.
Om någon skulle vilja köpa en Philips LivingColors-lampa till mig i present skulle jag bli äckligt glad! Jag har varit förtjust i konceptet ända sedan de först dök upp för nåt år sen, och jag tycker det är ett supermysigt koncept. Jag är lite dimmig på var man kan hitta den, men nånstans borde den ju finnas.
In a burst of caffeine-fueled energy, inspired by this article I wrote the below piece on how operating systems would be if they were cafés. I didn’t like the original article and here’s my take on the same concept. Of course it’s filled with my own opinions, caveat lector.
Microsoft Café: To enter you first have to agree to a EULA stating that Microsoft cannot be held responsible for anything that you do while inside café, nor can they in any way be expected to provide service or any kind of warranty. Also, simply to enter the café you have to pay various fees depending on where in the café you want to be seated. If you pay the most expensive price to be seated in the “Ultimate” room you’re promised to be pampered and receive free gifts, however none of these ever materialize, usually with some hollow excuses to the effect of claiming that shipping has been delayed. They recently redecorated and now heavily style the café with smoked and frosted glass, while previously it looked as if the interior was designed by Fisher-Price. When you ask what they serve the reply is “nothing” since you’re expected to purchase any beverages or snacks from other vendors and bring with you into the café. When you ask how the café is funded, or how it’s run you get the reply that the source of that information is only available to the management of the café. Every so often the chair randomly explodes under a customer for no apparent reason, and everyone simply accepts this as normal procedure.
Apple Café: The café is nice and shiny. Lots of metal and glass, and there’s neat little tricks that the chairs and tables can do. However, the entire café is run by one person, and is heavily decorated with pictures of him. The coffee and snacks are horribly expensive, even though the ingredients are virtually the same as any of the other cafés albeit a little prettier to look at. Most of the patrons are dressed in identical blue jeans and black turtlenecks, and will viciously attack any other newcomer who voices even the slightest criticism of the café. The chairs don’t explode quite as much as at the Microsoft Café but they will do so occasionally. A much more frequent occurrence is inexplicably being hit in the face by a vividly colored beach-ball. There’s also a very limited menu, and when you ask for something that isn’t on the menu the rude staff will look strangely at you and ask “why would you want that when we have everything you need right here”.
Linux Café: It isn’t so much one café as a bunch of different cafés working together with similar menus and similar furnishings but with many minor differences. Everything inside the café is free of charge, and you can bring the coffee with you home or give it to friends. The staff is regular people just like you who all take turns working at the various cafés, and you notice that many of them seem to work simultaneously at many of the different cafés within this franchise of sorts. You inquire as to how the café is run and without question you’re furnished with copies of every invoice, every order, every business deal the café (and others) has ever done. The interior of the cafés are easily re-arranged to your taste, and if you want to start your own café you are promptly provided with the necessary tools to do so. Also, the café is capable of not only traveling through time and space, but it can also convert into a church, a stable, a farmhouse or a dormitory if the need for such should arise. The menu in this café is incredibly vast and they serve approximately 20.000 different varieties of coffee, have about 30.000 types of biscuits, cookies and other delicacies as well as serving multiple types of food from all over the world. Everything free of charge, of course. You’re also encouraged to contribute your own type of coffee-drink or snack, either from scratch or adapting an already existing type of food.
Julen börjar närma sig och jag har fått frågor om vad jag önskar mig i julklapp. Normalt så önskar jag mig faktiskt ingenting i julklapp utan blir glad vad jag än får, men eftersom människor är envisa så har jag klurat lite på vad som hade varit roligt att få. Jag har de flesta sakerna jag vill ha, men här är två saker som jag skulle tycka var kul.
Först den dyra, enormt fjantiga men ändå så fräcka grejen. Det här är en total “till han som har allt” julklapp. Jag pratar om det lilla partypaketet från Ljudia. Rökmaskin, discokula, färgat ljus och ett stroboskop. Ditt för 849 kronor.
Den mer seriösa, och mer rimligt prissatta önskningen jag har är ett keyboardställ. Jag blev i våras ägare till en blå synth av diskutabel men underhållande kvalité och har sedan jag börjat plinka på den insett att jag behöver ett bättre ställ än mitt soffbord. Därför vore det lite nice om en hård julklapp bestod av ett någorlunda ordentligt ställ i liknande modell som det som säljs på bl.a. 4Sound.
Om ingen av dessa julklappar faller dig på smaken eller ryms i din budget blir jag glad vad jag än eventuellt får – presentkort för en spa-dag, kalla hårda kontanter eller vad nu din budget och givmildhet rymmer. Förra året fick jag raggsockor och lösté av Jenny, och det är en present som fortfarande värmer mig och mina fötter.
