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 So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.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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Re-Designed

Tom the plasticbag organisation redesigned Barbelith — one of the two best messageboardy communities on the Internet. It looks colourful yet simple, where the pages loads really fast and one just wants to jump in and post more. And I promise, I will. I must. The Barbelith tells me so in that cryptic voice as its red stare gazes down at me.

two photologs

Let’s do some links together. m’key? Like a proper weblog. I wonder if I still can remember how to do this.

Found two new photologs: deceptive media (it usues flash, but I like ti anyway, it’s really neat) and beautifulamnesia (it has an escalator photo, which is a bad idea. If my referrerlogs are something to go by, Germans love those things almost as much as the Hasselhoff.). They’re neat and you should pay them a visit. I don’t want to force you, but your computer looks very flamable from here...

Search Requests

There seems to be an infection of a referrer-meme going through the blogverse. Tommy does it and so does Johan I’m jumping on the bandwagon, although I’ll annotate it as I go along.

Let’s begin with the good bits. Positive things that make me so much happier to know that some people actually are quite ok.

• colophon.php - pontifex type poppl
  People who search for Pontifex is by default good people. It is a wonderful typeface. Use it more.
  
• cat_movies.php - inside your mouth-diagrams
  Kind of odd and I probably ridicule it. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad, because these things can — once you understand them — actually be useful. But they’re alos fun if they’re made fun of.
  
• cat_movies.php - \”dave lally\” music
  Does Dave have anything to do with music? The Prisoner or the Wicker Man I can understand, but music?
  
• 2003_12_13.php - firefly theme guitar tab
  I got many of these, but if one wants to learn how to play the song, I’m happy. Firfly rules the sky.
  
• 2001_08.php - parts re-animator fanzine friday jones
  If someone finds a fanzine about Re-animator, please, please, please send it my way.
  

That wasn’t so painful now, was it? Weird stuff:

• lostpages - utter
  The Swedish word for “Otter” I suppose. The searcher came from these parts. Why?
  
• 2002_11.php - amish reality tv show
  Get the fuck out of here. Can’t the whole reality show-crap just lie down and die die die and give us good tuff on the tv again. Like Firefly or Kids in the Hall or Spaced.
  
• lostpages - why firefly is bad
  Heathen! May you boil in the hell-of-corpses-hanging-upside-down.
  

Last but not least, questions that probably didn’t yield an answer at the last search request.

• cat_comics.php - what does crack taste like?
  I have no idea, which probably means it tastes like chicken.
  
• 2001_08.php - what pens does roman dirge use
  I don’t know this one either. But if I have to guess, I’d take a chance with the Pilot Vball Grip Fine.
  
• 2003_01.php - what does a typewriter keyboard look like
  There are many different looks to choose from. Some look almost exactly like a keyboard only thicker and more blocky. A really neat one — the Blickenderfer — looks like this (but normally mounted in a wood casket and with a space-key):
  
  

And there you have it.

A link at noon

This was somewhat horrific at first glance. But it was only because of their referrer-list at the bottom. Five people had clicked on the Jeff Noon-link in my about section in the last 24 hours.

So people actually read the about page? Gosh.

Blurbism

The photographs at Blurbism is a bit better than mine, and borders to amazing. It’s almost possible to actually smell the pavement and feel all the broken bottles. The cityscape he puts on display is the one that’s worndown and with imperfections. Neat.

Linked

I found a link from Hatch Magazine‘s bloglinks. I’ve never seen before in my life. So I probed around a bit to see what I could find.

Founded in July 2003 and officially launched in October 2003, Hatch is a magazine and forum to discuss real life issues related to careers, shelter, money, education, health, culture and beyond. Issues which many people in their 20s and 30s are facing.

And all I can think of is why did they link to me? While I do try to get educated, it is in an area that has not much real-life application, and as for career, money, health, shelter? What? So I guess it must be because of I write about the important stuff such as books, comics, tv, movies, music, photography and the silly life of a social (sort of) recluse (it’s hard to be that properly when sharing a house with three other people).

This phrase, also from their aboot-page:

From graduating college and forging a career path, to finding an apartment or house, to getting engaged, married or starting a family — and all that comes in between — we are all hatching.

I don’t want to deal with any of those issues. They’re... No.

But it’s not at all humbling to appear on the same link-list as Dooce, Zulkey, psionic and Loobylu. They write far better then I do, so this is more likely to give me megalomania and an attack of grandeur delusions of destined greatness. It also gave me an opportunity to just ramble along in a thinly disguised link-entry.

(How the magazine is? Don’t know. Didn’t probe the articles. Perhaps I should have.)

(Update 18/12 11:56 — it turns out they had seen me a mail as well earlier but it was caught in the spam-filter. I think I have to check the whole thing out now.)

Once More with Hobbits

Some crazy fucker has turned Buffy’s Once More With Feeling into a Lord of the Rings Musical. And I mean “fucker” in the nicest way because it’s just marvelous and wonderful and completely bonkers idea. And I say this without being a huge Tolkien fan. I don’t like the books and the movies are nice and so but nothing more. So let us all hear a loud cheer for crazy people. Hurrah! Just go and read the redone lyrics to “Walk through the fire” already. Gosh. Wow.

Hail the snowman

Snowman, that classic anthropomorphic trio of large, medium, and small balls of snow, armed with sticks and eyes of coal, a friendly winter face to all passersby, grinning broadly beneath a long, carrot nose! Hail, snowman!

There’s no way of actually stop it from coming. The snow I mean. And with the snow we also get a new endangered species. Thanks to the Morning News, there might yet be time enough to save the snowman. Be warned though. Snowmen are not for the faint-hearted, saving them can be dangerous to your health.

Under the ground of London

London Underground is a rather weird place. The tube is not the only thing below ground. Lots of other projects and buildings hide down there as well. Bomb shelters, pneumatic railways, rogue rivers and remains of the Roman city. But if you must have things connected to the tube, there are about 30 ghost stations, ready to shunt your opponent.

[From Kevan the nomic]

Empathic behaviour

Look! A real human being with empathy. Those are rare. Most people nowadays tends to be more along the line of “I don’t give a flying fuck about anyone but me,” or “Ahhh! Stay away, don’t look at me. I’m not here!” like me. More people should be like Rabi, even though it might seem hard.

christmas cards from Lance

Lance Arthur wanted to help spread the Christmas spirit all over the Internet this year, and his electric Christmas cards is a step in the right direction. At least if you believe that the spirit is not only to be beaten with frozen meat, but also to be drowned in bad taste.

Confessionalism

“I ate Winalot (dog biscuits) when I was a teenager. My father said I’d contract Anthrax. I’m still waiting.”
-- confession 454137134

I suspect not everything on grouphug.us is true, but the prospect that some of the confessions are sincere is enough. It is impossible not to click the random and reload and reload and reload and laugh and laugh and laugh.

(Link found at lmg)

album covers

At Splinters this surfaced: Worst Album Covers and Worster Album Covers. And yeah, they’re bad. Painfully bad. I want to poke my eyes out and clean them with soap and water. Perhaps even in turpentine. I want to burn my brain so that it won’t remember any of them anymore. The empty eyes... they haunt me.

"Real" Action Figures

These Talking Action Figures are scary. Almost so scary that I’ll stand up and scream “we have to protect the children.” But only almost. Because children are smart enough to see through the temptations of the dark side because hey, where are the weapons and war-stuff?

(Found at Warren Ellis Die Puny Humans.)

Certified genius

John M. Ford, certified genius. While his proxy-entires at Making Light are fine and all, can’t someone convince him to start one of these of his own? (But if that means his already slow output of books will get even more slower, then forget what I just said.)

What language?

Please forgive me, but this enty is about this blog.I hate these just as much as you do, but I just need to get my thoughts down. Read something else.

I’ve been pondering back and forth about what to do, if I’m going to continue this in English or in Swedish. There are pros and cons in both cases. I write much better in Swedish, I have a lot more words to choose from. But alas, if one thinks for a second about the readers — this has nothing to do with the content of the entries, they would remain the smae no matter what — it will be read by my friends, family and a lot of boring wankers. If I continue to write in English, the same readbase will be able to follow, but so will a lot more people. Some of them will be boring wankers but I know that some of them will be rather neat people.

The real Bilbo

Smack me timbers. Bilbo Bill Bailey has a blog. The comedian, half the stars of the tv show Black Books as well as the genius who sometime participated in the food for Gods that is called Spaced as the comic books store owner Bilbo Bagshot. Bill Bailey. What? Haven’t you visited it already? Sheesh. (Via LinkMachineGo)

Real-life gaming

While Human Chess seems like a fun idea, I’m much moreinterested in Kevan’s extrapolating of the idea into a real-life version of Mornington Crescent. I’ve had similar thoughts, but me being rather far away from London has given these a slight set-back.

Want a rocket-burrito?

The sale of the Titan II Missile Silo
Burro Inn and Restaurant is interesting. Not the sale, but the complex itself. It is the restaurant of choice for the paranoid. What better way to spend the desert and vaccation than staying a week or two at a missile silo (former)?
[from Bertil Olsson at Sverifandomlistan]

To king or not to king

Search request: differences between the movie monty python and the holy grail and the book the once and future king

Well, to shed a little light upon this subject I believe that there are a few minor differences. For significantly huge values of “minor.” Beside the most basic things about king Arthur and his merry men knight of the round table there are few things that overlaps. Several key characters are missing in action, and as if that’s not enough, I seriously doubt the occurrence of the anarchosyndicalistic commune or the killer rabbit.

If you, who made this search, really want to compare anything to The Once and Future King, look elsewhere. Hell, the romanticised retellings of late and even Camelot 3000 is better options.

Still gone

It’s not August just yet, but I felt I had to explain myself a little.

I have run out of relevant things to say. Relevant in the weblog-medium anyway. I feel that things I write here should be true and interesting. Preferably both at the same time. But recently I’ve began to experience that truth can be an obsticle and something that is reactionary. I just take the other path, but if I begin to dabble in fiction here, where does it end? I’m not comfortable with that, Lost Pages isn’t about fiction. Lately, I’ve felt cut of from life. That means that I don’t have words to describe it that good anymore. Add to this that I’ve grown weary of this whole Internet deal, and you’ll understand that I cannot even participate the usual link game. So, all this didn’t come as a shock for me. I saw it coming a long way back.

So, fictional ideas, rambling and diguised truths will be at the root of all things. It is more fun, maybe not for you but definitivly for me. (After all, truth is only stranger than fiction because we believe that fiction doesn’t have any rules to follow. We fail to realise that fiction is truth.)

If you still want to read something, then may I be so bold as direct you to Tim as he has a life (sort of), Natalie as she has pictures, and Kevan as he has silly links.

Hiatus! - declared

Since it’s gone so long since the last update, I might as well declare hiatus. Either that, or, I’ll just shut this thing down. But I don’t feel ready for that just yet. Anyway, there will probably be an update in August sometime.

Have a great time and stop drinking Bovril for Christ sake.

(I think it was full moon last night. If so, my calendar fooled me and I never watched Dog Soldiers again. How can I maintain full moon traditions if they can’t plan ahead properly? Nope, I can’t, can I? It was such a nice tradition too. Oh, well.)

Subways lost in history

Old subway stations of New York. They’re not there anymore, becuase it becahme too dangerous to keep the stations. Plus, New Your probably needed the space for other things. But it is sad, now almost nothing remains of what began as a steam engine track in 1875. It also proves that it there are no remenants, it will eventually be forgotten. Leave some structures, history should be more than books and be a part of real life.

The photo of the 9th Avenue reminds me of the car chase in French Connection, just as the Fort Hamilton Parkway stairway does. And I want to get a hold of the first NY Subway maps and play a version of Mornington Crescent.

(Link via Malin Cantwell)

Updated Conpiration Map

I had previously only seen the ASCII-version of the conspiracy map, but this is much much bigger. It may include more, but I doubt it is easy to update. The old one had the instructions “Just add it where you think it will fit.”

The new surfboard

Tommy sent me an email about this and I can’t just leave it alone. Contiki is an OS for C64. It got a web browser, web server, telnet client as well as an email client under development. Sure, you can’t doo much witht the web server, as it lacks a firewall. But still, all this on an plain vanilla C64. Neat, because we all know that C64 one of the the few proper computers ever made.

I almost want to send a note to all other developers out there with the words “Guys, learn” followed by a link.

Sport commentary

Thanks to Plasticbag.org I’ve read a commentary on the Cricket World Cup. I know, I know. Cricket is not a real sport, but then again there is no such thing. And the commentary was fun. Interaction with the readers made it even funnier. All this despite the fact that all I know of the game I learnt one summer when I was really really bored as well as the How to Understand Cricket in The Manual.

4th over: New Zealand 21-2
Two highlights from this over: brilliant running from Fleming to plunder a single off the last ball of the over; Guardian Unlimited’s Sally Bolton making me a cup of tea. More from Leonard: to prove his pique, he’s been banging his fists on his keyboard. “asdsadf ;lk;lk;lk,” he writes. You should move your fists about, Leonard, your letter distribution is predictable.

Non-updateable

Néa has gone off the air due to Blogger uncooperativeness. I can understand why she’s irritated. Just because it is a free service, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t work. In the same way that there should still be support, although perhaps in a more limited way, but it should be there. Néablog will be missed.

Update 14/3 20:25 > Néa is back. The blogger related problems are for now less and at least lets her update. Yay.

Write in other languages

Sometimes I want to write in Swedish because — well — that’s what I do normally. But I won’t do that right here because that would look wrong and confuse you and even myself so I’ll write in that language next door so to speak. It seems to work best that way.

Insane amount of pixels

I thought Elfwood was getting big when I joined back in what? 1998? There were a lot of them and I remember jumping up and down of joy when I got my own way up at gallery room 75. I’ve neglected it for about två two years or so, so I decided to use it again. I mean, why not? First I notice that I’m no longer in room 75, but in 55. “Okay,” I thought. “Some must have quit, left the factory because of artistic differences.” (I think you need to have been there to know the full story, but there were a long discussion about defining high fantasy art on their mailinglist.) Then I clicked on the full list and I’m in for a shock. I stare in disbelief on the screen. 1612 rooms of galleries, and there are ten galleries in each. Damn. What the hell happened? How can the tin can to computer hold up? And then sf and fanart galleries aren’t included. It is insane. No wonder it takes up to five days before any changes you want to do to your gallery happens.

cthuugle

Don’t know where or how I found it, it was just there when I cycled through the windows: the cthuugle search engine. Use it carefully or you might lose limbs and, well, I guess more limbs and probably a D100 SAN loss.

Victorian London

Dictionary of Victorian London is extensive. Everything you wanted to know, more or less, about Victorian London can be found there.

Too bad it’s not that well marked up, as those of us who use other browsers than IE might encounter glitches.

(Found at Interconnected)

A game of comments

They turned Mornington Crescent into Mornington Nomic — which was and is a great idea. Now Kevan and friends gives us BlogNomic.

About the future of this site

How about if I do it this way instead? Will it be better? Doubtful, but on the other hand I’ll probably feel much more at ease. The last few weeks, months, whatnots, I’ve slipped away from my purpose here. To write. I wrote yes, but in the wrong way. I didn’t approach it like I should have. I got distracted. Distracted by what I don’t know, but distracted nevertheless. (I get that a lot.)

I’m going to approach this thing as if it were a fanzine. Mentally that is, I’m not going to turn it into a substitute for the real things made in paper. No, don’t ever dare to suggest such a thing. See it as a training ground used to keep me typing even when I don’t have to. Just to type and get things out of my system.

Leave that building alone

The only time I see abandoned buildings are when I go by train. The sad part is that the train doesn’t stop, but swishes and dashes straight past and all I can do is to stare and with tears in my eyes see how the buildings disappear.

This fascination for what has been has really grown since when I first laid my hands on the book Pleasure of Ruins (mentioned several times here in the past). Since I like the photos in the book I surfed around a bit just to see if there were any other good sites out there. I found some, but was rather under whelmed by most of them.

Ruins of Detroit (as well as other places) is devised as a tour — pretty much like that typography and road signs that floats around. Nice to navigate around but unfortunately not many pictures from inside.

Even though abandoned-buildings.com is in flash and is a bit wrong in the user interface-department, I really like it. Just look at the control tower they found in Antwerp. Not many photos of each site, but quality seem more important.

Neither of the sites I’ve found could measure up to Henk van Rensbergen’s abandoned places but I didn’t expect them to.
There are lots more sites such as these, but right now I hadn’t the time to look through them.

See you, see me

If I had kids or employees (in the case of Nike, I believe they’re the same), I could know what they where doing this very instant. No, really. I got this spam about this new über-software that allows me this. I don’t know exactly how it works, but apparently the software must connect to the person-tracking satellite that’s up there in orbit. Limited use of course, uncontrolled personnel can’t have unlimited access to equipment such as that.

If you upgrade to the pro version, then you might gain control of the mind control-satellite as well as a book with fifteen billion email addresses — including your own!

(Question: since spam don’t work, why do they still insist of doing it?)

South Park Studio

If one has lots of spare time, one can visit South Park Studio and make your own characters. This above is probably what I would have looked like if I had been in the show.

Another one bites the dust

Lines&Splines has closed down. Why is it that the good sites does this and then the bad ones stay up forever and forever?

Hey!

I caved in and took the Pixies Song-test found over at luminescent.org and I agree with Natalie. I’m not cool enough to be a Pixies song either.

Hey

It’s hard to get to know you, but once people do, they’re in for a wild ride. You had a rough childhood, and it reflects in your speech and mannerisms- you’re focused on things like whores and crack babies, which fascinates people at first but may ultimately drive them away. Despite your somewhat depraved outward persona, you’re a truly decent person who craves and deserves love and friendships.

Which Pixies song are you?

How did this happen?

Since yesterday, I have been writing crap like this for a year. Jesus wept. Sure, in the beginning I wasn’t particulary prolific. But than again, I actually had topics for a while. Gosh.

At least it works

The HD from the slaptop is now firmly mounted inside the stationary. I can access all files again, even though the first part the drive (previous C:) is gone.

This also brough up a new thing that I dislike about windows. If I removed the damaged partition and left it unassigned, then it still shows up in windows, which also want to format the unexisting partition every time I emptied the trashcan. (This was fixed by extending the extended partition to include the whole disk. Obviously, if there where unassigned space infron of an extended partition, windows had to have access to it. Go figure.)

I don’t want to know how the minds in Redmond works or what constitutes as logical over there.

Lost and not found

To the person who searched for “if you lost a hamster”: well, I haven’t and if you have, I don’t have it. It is most likely gone, and while it might have a site of its own, it probably won’t. My advice is to get a new one so that you can play Dungeons & Hamsters again and forget all about Fluffy or whatever the old hamsters name was. And this time, get a beeper on the new one.

I said cancel it

Dean Allen proves beyond any doubt that he really controls the TV networks. I hope this doesn’t turn him into a megalomaniac.

Many people at once

I’ve decided I wanted to do something ni Swedish as well as this, so, I went ahead and created a grouplog entitled Automatiserade Benjamin. If you understand the language, feel free to drop in and read it.

SLRN do not blink

Finally I fixed the problem with SLRN — newsreader par excellence — blinking. Fixed is perhaps not the right word, that would probably have me poaking around in the code, and that is something no one want. The problem with blinking text only appears on win2000 when SLRN is in fullscreen and with light background.

So, I tweaked around with the colours and presto! It worked, although I need to get use to the idea of a dark background and uglier colourscheme in general. Still, it is still better than it was before when I could only read news in window-mode.

um. sort of talk you know

So, between 15:00 to 18:00 I had a class to attend. I attended it too, with minor modifications. I was a bit late due to a visit at the giant miniature space hamster called Boo’s apartment. I don’t resent it though; it is okay to be late once in a while and Boo is a character that’s always fun to talk to. The lecture was good, even if some people (names withheld to protect the innocent) left because of boredom.

The topic was the differences between the written and spoken word. I seriously consider to write my C-essay on that topic, provided that I’m accepted for the course next semester of course (no biggie).

Sharing is good

I got a lot of SPAM today, so like the good person I am, I though I’d share it with you guys. So, who would want the SPAM? I’m giving it away for free, but you’d better hurry. I have a rather limited supply.

Return to the scene of the crime

It all began this morning, the outlines of my body didn’t hurt anymore and the only reminiscense of the horrible Saturday was a dripping nose and an irritating cough. I decided to read Ansible and see what I’ve been missing. This event threw my senses away and I started fiddeling with TeraTerm Pro to get the SSH-tunneling back.

This is not a wise thing to do, not here and now. I have an exam on Thursday and here I am reading Usenet for the first time in several months. But I like it. God damn, I’ve missed this.

A man named Bruce

I almost choked. I opened up Eudora to read todays mail as usual, but this day something was different. Real mail on the Flashgirls mailinglist, for one thing. Two of these mails had been written by someone named Bruce Campbell. Now, it turned out that it wasn’t the phoney actor from Michigan, but another Bruce from Australia. (Poor man, I bet he has heard a lot of Monty Python jokes in his life.) But anyway. The name alone made me catch my breath.

In theory it shouldn't be this fun

Natalie over at luminescent org linked to this poetry generator, which I must admit is shamlessly fun. It produces rather worthless poems based on a website of choice.

the choice glows and compared the shelves.
Those heard
in that I had
found among other problems. My
hands they have another book,
Wednesday,
27 Feb 02. Are allowed
to be the margin 1 Ti
Kwan Leep 2.
Internet 36 Life Shoot in
the bottom.

Just answer the questions

Joshua Allen made my day. It had been made earlier as this has been a rather good day all in all, but never the less. Ignore this as Joshua Allen is much better, as he skillfully demonstrated in the Voigt-Kampff test.

reBlog it

Neil from Beatnikpad has just recently created a new blog (I still don’t like that word) about web design, graphic design, programming, Internet business and whatnots called reBlog. It is meant to be a group-thing in the near future, so go there now and join if this is your cup of tea. If not, go there anyway and look at the lovely poster art artifacts that he uses for illustrations.

SPAM!

I got some spam today. That is by itself nothing unusual, even though I usualy doesn’t get things encoded in Big5. It was a stroke of genius. I can’t understand a word, and there is no link to click. In short: all you can see are numbers, equal signs and letters, all in a glorious pattern of chaos.

Strangely enough, it doesn’t feel intrusive, or that it occupies valuable storage space. I wish all spam should be like this.

Addition 22:09: The spam is now printed and typset properly, ready to be pinpointed on a wall.

Not your average pie-chart

I take it that everyone already memorised the the Universal Conspiracy against Everything chart about how everything is conspiring against you.

Reshaped history

I did major changes in fait accompli, and I guess it could even be called a complete redesign. If looks much better, although I was really happy with the old look as well.

The new design is based on the root design of carbonatedink.com, which in turn is sort of inspired by Popscratch, The Hoopla 500, whygodwhy, SerialText and lots of magazines and books — some of these are more obvious than others.

(About Popscratch: for a neat and different design you should check out the Idiosyncratic section. It is nothing I would do, but chaos is nice.)

I didn't wear this the last time around

Some of them are dowmright ugly but other are kind of neat. Lots of t-shirts you’ve missed are now back in print. I think I can point at a few that I think should be in my closet.

Self-promotion #5567

This week in the Stories written in carbonated ink: Excerpts from the diary of Sir Christopher Wren. Everything is true except the bits that are obvious lies.

Stories written in carbonated ink

Just in case someone have missed it completely. Go to the “root”, or whatever one should call it, of this very domain. This has been a message from the Managment.

The Kevin Smith Connection

You have a genius intellect and an awesome sense of humor. You can sarcastically put someone in their place without batting an eye. Your only problems seem to be that you have trouble acknowledging your true feelings and you may use your humor as a defense to hide what you are really feeling. But, your godliness overpowers any insignificant flaws you may have. Even if you tend to pass gas during very inconvenient moments.

Take The “Which Kevin Smith Male Are You?” Quiz!!

The Geek Hierarchy

Oh my god! I’m almost at the top! I don’t know if this really is a good thing, but I’ve decided to act as if it is.

One photolog is up

The title says it all. It is far from ready, there are lots and lots of small things to do and correct but in essance it is there: Glimpses. It should work anyway, all small nitpicking things withstanding.

The mirror

So, my third addition to the Mirror Project has been accepted. Now in hindsight, I think I should have put the focus on the reflected face in the second mirror and have the one in the first obscured.

Please, don’t search for the other two, they’re rather bad. Unlike the picture that so far only resides on my laptop, those two are simple and uncomplicated — well, almost anyway.

It's only a bear

I wish I had a permanent connection instead of this crappy modem. If I did, I’d do my best to beat that high score at The Prime Number Shitting Bear. And they said innovation was dead. Pfhht!

Not my cup of tea

I got this spam the other day, and I don’t know if it really is a spam or simply just a hoax. It does seem a bit strange, as the subject were “Proven Wrinkle Reduction”, and wrinkle reduction were the worst benefits of the dubious substance.

1.Body Fat Loss 82% improvement.
2.Wrinkle Reduction 61% improvement.
3.Energy Level 84% improvement.
4.Muscle Strength 88% improvement.
5.Sexual Potency 75% improvement.
6.Emotional Stability 67% improvement.
7.Memory 62% improvement.

From these benefits, it is my belief that this is just some sort of Viagra, Prozac, L’Oreal, amphetamine and diet pill voodoo-drink that possibly even can wake the dead.

Downtime

So, the host had their connection severed during the day. Well, I also visited the dentist but nevermind the bad parts. I, finally, got one of those digital cameras. An Olympus C-2100UZ which is pretty fun to play around with. Expect some sort of photolog to appear during the week.

The Jacob-race

Too bad the stearing were a big awkward, as any race were the goal is to drive over Mr. Jacob Nielsen is fun.

Bugger!

I managed to fuck things up in Movable Type so that I was unable to log in. The thing is that I had to start over from the beginning and well... Since I had to install everything from scratch again, the old archive is somewhat broken.

The old archive is still available if someone is interested, I just can’t bother to import them right this very minute.

Things finish up more and more

It still needs a few tweaks but at least the backbone of the gallery is up. A camera is needed, and time to upload some more, older photos. Time I do not really have right now.

A new read

“What is this?” I proclaimed. And it was what it seemed to be, the second Bruce has got a weblog. (The first Bruce is Campbell, which logically makes the second... you guessed it. Sterling. Are there any more Bruces out there?)

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.

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

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.

It's somewhat negative

So, I took the personality disorder test found at David Gagnes sidebar. IT was... well... not too good I suppose. The result I mean, look at all those high’s.

Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: Moderate
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Very High
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Moderate
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: High
Dependent: High
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
[what the disorders mean]

In vain I beat my fists upon the wall

To mourn the fact that my host don’t let me use Movable Type — but you should — because of BD_file or whatever, I’ve started up another blog that is mainly focused on longer pieces of text without links. Even though it may look like it, fait accompli as its name is, isn’t really a rip-off from Hoopla500. Really.

Benderisms

I was going to write something really long, but that have to wait. Right now, I’m almost speechless, and all because of a few hats.

As Bender Unit 22 in Futurama would have said: “I’m taking the next pimpmobile out of here!”

Speak up and listen

If I some time in the near future manage to get rid of my hatred for my own voice, I might do something like Jish does in his voxlog. But anyway, go there and listen. It’s good, especially the Voiceblog vs. textblog vs. videoblog. I don’t think I’ll sing though, not unless someone gets me really, really drunk.

Paranoia, freedom

Go and read Jon Carrolls latest column. You’ll probably not feel much better afterwards, but it addresses some things that needs to be said.

“There will be pressure to suspend our freedoms, to allow the government to invade our privacy and control our speech as part of the glossy new war. If terrorists force America to give up its freedoms, then they will have won. If we are stampeded into imprudent action out of fear, then it will once again be true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If we use our rage instead of our wisdom, we’ll be just another dictatorship, and Sept. 11 will become the day we destroyed ourselves.”

{Via the broken link at Windowseat, the quote is the exact same as Laurel used because that is the most important bit}

Now to something completely different...

A friend of mine saw that the character map-viewer found in Windows was, to be blunt, crap — as you know, Bob — and wrote his own, improved TommyFontViewer. It might not be as pretty, but it works better than the default alternative.

A log-engine that runs on steam!

No, it should be perl instead of steam. But nevertheless, Movable Type looks very interesting. Especially the categorisation bit, which is something I really miss in Greymatter.

• Extensible, library-driven code.
• Multiple output templates to enable one-click publishing to multiple destinations.
• Entry categorization and grouping.
• Built-in support for RSS syndication.
• Custom variable and template inclusion, for encapsulation of commonly used HTML.
• Support for multiple weblogs/journals.
• Multiple archiving options: daily/weekly/monthly/categorical, or each entry on its own individual page.
• Comment system, either inline or in popup windows; ability to exclude commenting on certain posts.
• Notification on new entries: maintain lists of users to whom notification messages can be sent when you post a new or specific entry.
• Date stamp override allows you to pre-date or post-date your entries.

This is not my cardboard city

My money is on Mothra. Mothra is cool and goofy-looking, not to mention having fought (and lost, but of course) against the real rubber man version of Godzilla. If that doesn’t bring respect, nothing will.

Ben Brown, you know what you must do. The world needs you to fight Godzilla and lose. If you can create ‘Words! Words! Words!’ a cheap monster movie should be a peice of cake.

I might just as well admit it. Up until fairly recent I wanted to be Godzilla. Not the lizard, but the man inside eating a cardboard Tokyo while jumping up and down looking silly. Running around in a tacky plastic suit. Imagine jumping, screaming and crushing miniature models of famous cities in the subway. How nifty wouldn’t that have been? Now, I don’t want to be Godzilla anymore. No, I want to be an author — in a Godzilla-suit.

(Yes, that must be my word of the week: goofy-looking.)

Pens, paper and cutmarks

Oj. At I like paper and pens, there is this really terrific and utter fabulous design. And I can’t help feeling a bit bummed out about it because I’ve thought about doing a similar site, before I gave up and did this I use right now. (I think the heavy graphic load was the reason for me turning my back on it, but that’s because I like my stuff to load really fast.)

And who don’t like paper, pens and symbols used in printing? I love paper, dig pens and am a sucker for everything that is connected with printing. (I missed the CMYK-boxes though, but no big deal.)

Ghosts probably says "Boo.com" to bankmanagers

So, it’s all over tha place. The Boo.com movie (I found it on plasticbag), like those two goons need more egosboosting. One whould have thought that a fissle like this would have inflated their baloon, but oh no. They’ll be back, as always. Only now they might have a minor problem in getting people to shower them with cash — but I think I said that the last time, when they where bought up and thrown out from the Internetbased bookshop they founded.

[Int. Tech-trenches]
Managment: Why isn’t it finished? We should have launched last month!
Techie: Well, you see. You know the illustrator? He who was hired to fix illustrations and icons to everything?
Managment: Yes. So?
Techie: He’s sort of unavailable right now.
Managment: Find him then!
Techie: Nonono, we know where he is. He had this sort of nerveous breakdown because of the timeconstraints and the huge workload. And he’s commited to this hospital.
Managment: Damn! And with these expences we have, we just can’t afford to hire another artist.
[Int. a really expensive hotel bar on a tropical island]
The Insane Two Goons M & L: CHAMPAGNE CONGA LINE!!!
[FADE TO BLACK]

The pen and the void

Everything is for sale online. You can, if you’re crazy enough, buy clothes, cars and even houses. No one I know would buy a house or a car over the electronic highway, but there seem to be people who do. Weird fucks.

But as I’ve recently found out, it’s impossible to find someone who sells pens. Why? Good pens are a rarity in normal shops, and quality wise, pens sold online is no different from pens sold offline. So, there is a need for pen-merchants. It’s a void that needs to be filled.

The clock stikes at "Tock"

Time. Time has somehow become the most important part of our life. I don’t think I exaggerate too much; things become smaller, more information pressed together to be transmitted at the smallest possible amount of time. Thanks to the news, we now know that while there are some heavy fighting elsewhere and corpses fills the tv-screen, the stock has also lowered five micro points.

To capture time and keep it hostage is not such a bad idea. I doubt that Letterror (great name by the way) will actually go down the path of the terrorist, so... The clocks will be released. Their project is neat; to collect photos of every five minutes of the first twelve hours.

She slew him with an epigram

As recently as a couple of hours ago, in his always excellent Textism, Dean Allen shows why I like Dorothy Parker as much as I do. She was truly one of the few Jiants we’ve had, it’s hard to be better than her.

When The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948, much of the language was deemed too coarse, and [Norman] Mailer had to have his characters use the term fug. When Dorothy Parker subsequently met him at a party, she said, “So you’re the young man who can’t spell fuck?”

She cut straight to the heart of the matter. Sadly, people like her aren’t made anymore.

Shut down

It feels empty somehow. It didn’t come as a surprise, well it did actually, but more of a small one. The signs where there all along the last few months, adding upp to each other until the strain was to much. Elfwood is officially offline. Down. Perhaps not buried but I guess the time has caught up with it, the period of greatness is over and nothing will ever be the same again. No matter what they say, it will never be the same again. The memory of what was will always be there, haunting the fabric of the web.

And all this for two crimes; being free of charge and grown to big for one man to handle. One of the two is okay — it works — but when those two joins together, the outcome leaves a bleak taste of doom afterwards. It’s just not fair. Especially not to Thomas who created it and cared deeply, the time spent will be lost though the fond memories will remain vibrant and flamboyant.

I don’t want it to end here, not like this. It deserves better.

Nano-heaven is still far away

It is likely, however, that one of the greatest impacts will be on privacy. Vast databases that can be accessed at very high speeds will enable governments and businesses to collect, store and access much more information about individuals than is possible today. In addition, the capacity for data mining will increase dramatically. Perhaps most importantly, the monitoring and surveillance of workers, prisoners and the population in general will be greatly enhanced.
-- John Weckert, Australasian Science [ link ]

Oh hell. This was not what I though nanoheaven would be like. It does seem a likely that this is what will happen though. As a “crypto-fascist” — that is to say I think all men, animal and even strawberries alike should be equipped with heavy crypto right from birth — I don’t think I have to say that this would be more of a nightmare than a wet dream.

Some things at the end of the article look a hell of a lot like the things that Vernor Vinge has said about the Singularity. We must have experienced what its like or we won’t understand the phenomenon at all.