Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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YABL - Searching dust

Well, it was unavoidable. Sooner or later I would have started yet another log, ao why not do it sooner. So, here it is, the book-log. The main idea was to write something about every book I read. Perhaps it would make me read a bit more even, and since that’s been on the decline the last few months, I’d be happy if that really happens.

The Banzai

It was a while since I was so excited aver a forthcoming DVD, but it seems the Buckaroo Banzai-dvd will be a whole bag of fun. Widescreen, commentary-track, 14 deleted scenes and some more junk one can’t live without. And what a great way to start a new year...

Trash Friday?

I came by something rather disturbing in Saturday’s newspaper — in a way, it reminds me of the Trash Friday-episode of The West Wing. The 6th December the goons of hazard in EU meet and decide what they already seem to agree about: a no more privacy act.

Information about phone calls, email, web surfing and fax transmissions in the EU-countries will be available to the police and justice departments. Exactly what information they will store and search for has yet to be told, but they will probably scan email and install some Echelon wiretap-system. The previous laws that ensured protection of privacy and personal id-information will now be rewritten, probably even seriously weakened.

They claim it is for tracking eventual terrorists — but when I think of how the cops here have acted this autumn, I do not feel assured or particularly safe. Quite the opposite.

Categorisation and support

While going through the archive and assigning category on each entry, I noticed something awful. Sometimes I’m just as sloppy in my writings as John Grisham. The sentance structures are weird and the meaning, well, just leave that alone for now. It is far from perfect.

Happier things than my grammar: the support from my webhotel is ‘mazing. I casually said that I didn’t have any statistics for the website yesterday and they fixed it. Late as it were on a Saturday evening. It feels weird, because I’ve never seen such a support before in my entire life.

And so the migration was complete

Finally! Moved all the junk from The lost pages of... to a new restingplace and converted it to Movable Type. The rest will move soon, but fait accompli will remain as graymatter.

Soon, Doctor Who in the telly. I can’t really write any more this instance. Now, where did I put the tape...

There is a reason...

...that I have been absent and not updated in over a week. Moving to a new domain and a redesign, which should happen later this week. Ok? More news will follow as things move along.

Serious overacting

Yesterday, I and a couple of people from my english class where at the movies. There were some differences about which to see, but eventually it was decided that it would be Training Day. I would rather have seen Rush Hour 2, but the others wouldn’t move an inch. I tried, and tried, I even used the “listen now, Mr Chan could kick Mr Washingtons ass any day, any place, and even with Chris Tucker holding onto his pants.” They didn’t listen.

However, the movie was better than I thought, perhaps because my low expectations. It kept a good pace and decent storybuilding up until the end, at which point the cardhouse were crushed by a 16 ton weight falling from nowhere. When it’s time to hand out the Lifetime Achivement Award For Overacting, Denzel Washington will be among the main contenders.

What Mike said

I know the interview with John M. Ford on Inkwell is kind of long, but you should read it anyway. That it’s with Mr. Ford should be enough I think.

“It sounds so odd to phrase it this way that I’m a bit nervous about saying it, but here goes anyway: fantasy doesn’t make different stories possible, but sometimes it makes different outcomes possible, through the literalization of metaphor that is one of the key things fantasy does. Moral strength can change the real world — and a good thing, too — but in a fantastic story it can make dramatic, transformative, immediate changes. The idea that such transformations always have a price is what keeps fantasy from being morally empty — magic may save time and reduce staff requirements, but it offers no discounts.”
--John M. Ford

A question of why

We humans have defied gravity, built the pyramids and the Sphinx, gone to the moon and back, created cell phones, widescreen tellys, cds and Guinness. So why do we still have to be content with cold toilet seats?

Support the RPPFNR-campaign

Tom Coates has just had another(?) brilliant idea. A reward pointless people for no reason-campaign, which I just have to support. It’s a Dennis Moore-scheme for the Internet, but without the lupins.

Allthough I too am one of these many pointless people, I’m not picky. I’ll settle for a muffin. Or something from my list-page.

Thrilled and annoyed

In true Brenne Bachmann-fashion (he’s a teacher in English here in Växjö), I have good and bad news, and I’m not happy about this. The good is splendid but the bad is perhaps not totally horrible but still very annoying.

The bad is that for each day, I grow more and more weary about some of the people in my class. I’ve tried to ignore them but after today, it is hard. I hate the whole “I’m not in that predicament so I don’t give a damn”-attitude while at the same time wining about “how can I study when I don’t know what’s on the tests”. I’ve heard this twice now and, well, and I thought that the reason of higher education was to actually learn something, not just be able to memorise dates of when all the Gregorian kings snuffed. But each to his own, I guess. The worst is that this person is in every class I go to.

The good news is that yesterday a box arrived with books, and thus my Amazon-virginity was broken. It arrived really fast too. But anyway, the ones that came with this batch was Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials-trilogy, one of the two new Pratchetts and, as the crown above all, Peter Ackroyds London — The Biography. And the last one was everything I had dreamt about, except that it was a trade paperback instead of the more expensive hardcover.

It is full with maps, illustrations, paintings and photos as well as lots and lots of texts padded to the very last page. Sure, not everything might be blissfully accurate, but that I can live with just for the fact that he sort of jumps in the timeline skilfully and without getting you lost. It even seems preferable to the alternative.

48 million kilts?!

Should I read some more than five pages out of The Buddha of Suburbia, which I should have read until Tuesday next week, or, should I continue to watch Monty Pythons Hovering Carnival until dawn? Decisions, decisions. I think… Yes, Monty Python. Until tomorrow, probably late afternoon, when I’ll write some more about the week that was: Stapler machine.