The Fake Brit

Waiting for Godo

2008-11-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

While I'm waiting for Profy to get the new platform ready I'm concentrating on my Swedish blogs. A friend of mine just started blogging. He writes in Swedsih only but if you read Swedish I reccomend a visit,

You can find him here.

Web 2.0 Makeover

2008-09-10T02:40:00.001-07:00

Profy is getting a makeover so I'm backing up my blog. This is quite exciting, at least for me.

I'm a bit of a geek but no techie so I'm often in awe and wonder over the technical developement in the age we live in. I often judge webservices on the merits of their usefullness and less on merits of the technical solution. As it should be for for majority of people in the world.

I've taken to Profy because of it's potential as a platform and because I like the Profy voice in the web 2.0 (for want of a better expression) community on FriendFeed, Twitter and other places.

I think it's good timing to do this after the start particle collider at CERN. I did my laundry yesterday but It would have been better to put it of 'till tomorrow in case I needn't bother :-)

I'm wishing the Profy team all the best for tomorrow and if we're all still here I'll see you after, well, everything.

Still mobile

2008-08-30T05:00:00.001-07:00

I got cought in a meetup after a mushroom excursion.

I'm in the community library where there is free WiFi and books. I've made it a routine to go here and do some writing on Saturdays. There's books and people and it helps me stay in the real world and think about what really matters. Surfing all the social media I get through in a day sometimes makes me feel detached. From the real world.

I think the social web is a great way to extend relationships and stay in touch, make new friends but it can never replace the experience of a face to face meeting. That's why I'm here. With the mushroom people. They ignore me but I got this sneak picture with my laptop webcam.

My blog

2008-08-12T15:16:00.001-07:00

Here we go again.

The other day I went to update the blog and screwed up the post without saving. Gone! I couldn't get it together to write everything again.

Good riddence! I'm glad I didn't post it because it was a bit to sentimental for my liking. I'm posting a picture instead. Hold on.

Here it is:

Twitter's down - again

2008-08-08T19:14:00.001-07:00

For all us Twitter addicts. Found it on Norwegian blog NRKbeta

Wordpress för iPhone uppdaterad

2008-08-06T13:56:00.001-07:00

Mindpark berättar att iPhoneapplikationen för Wordpress har uppdaterats och nu stöder svenska tecken. En del återstår för att den skall vara perfekt. Vad vi förstår saknas redigering i fullskärmsläge och förhandsvisning men det verkar som om det kommer sådana finesser i version 1.2.

Läs mer på Wordpress.org eller gå direkt till Apple Store.

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om iPhone, Mindpark, Apple, iTouch, bloggverktyg, uppdaterad

source

This is a post from the blog I wirte fo normally. It's in Swedish so there's not a lot to read if you don't know Swedis. This is about the New wordpress iPhone app. I got this out of my feed which is integrated in the Profy blog so this is an experiment and not regular post

Now I'm back

2008-08-05T05:45:00.001-07:00

I've spent the weekend with my daughter and granddaughter in the north of Sweden. I told them I'd like us all to live in a big house so I could have them close by, all the time. This would be possible if could agree where to live. I'm not leaving Stockholm and they're happy where they are. That means we have to make long trips. We don't mind because we like traveling. It's a family trait.

My grandparents, on my fathers side, went to Northern China to be missionaries. This is now Xingkiang. They had three children of which the first died. He got sick when they were visiting friends in the dessert. My grandfather rode as fast as he could but the baby died.

Their second child is my father. He was six when they left in 1938.

This is in our family history. Xingkiang, or Xingjiang means new territory but it's not. The people are Uyghur, related to the Turks. Xingjiang used to be called East Turkey. Before he was six and came back to Sweden my dad refused to speak Swedish. On the trip over the Himalaya's he rode and ate with the Uyghur guides. His younger brother, my uncle, sat in a box strapped to a mule, my dad told me. He said: "When you're six you ride a horse". Some trip, eh?

So, you see, I come from a family where you're supposed to ride a horse when you're six. I wish I'd known.

I raced sledge dogs instead.

My dad is old now and he's sorting through his life. That's how I get to learn these things. Things I wish I'd known when I was younger. I would have shown him more respect instead of thinking he had weird ideas about self-reliance.

We're doing a lot of catching up and having fun doing it. There are no hard feelings between us. Sometimes, we find it difficult to understand each other but now I know more about why. Someday, before I'm to old, I'm going to learn to ride a horse.

My blog is back

2008-07-28T07:12:00.001-07:00

My blog is back. Thanks Profy! That makes me a happy camper so I'm putting my "Happy Camper" picture up.

I don't know what is is with me but when something isn't there, I miss it. I don't update this blog that often but I'm glad I can post in English again. For some reason that's important to me and I quite like Profy as a blogging platform. One day soon I'm going to sit down and think about what it is I like and what I'd like more of or added here.

I have a MySpace account that I neglect something awful, Facebook is more my style. Or it's just that I had more friends already on Facebook. I've never taken to MySpace but now and then I go over there just to check things out.

Got my invite for Brightkite yesterday so I'm poking around. Didn't expect it to be very aware of my location in Sweden but I was able to position myself. I'm janderson on Brightkite if you want to find me.

I don't really know how usefull Brightkite is to me but I'm giving it a whirl.

Real-life time

2008-07-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

I've been spending real-life time with real-life people. My daughter and granddaughter have been to visit. We spent days together. Here we are, just the way we like it! I think we look great for our age.

Here's another outing to the open air museum in Stockholm. To bad I didn't get my other camera to work so there wasn't much point in trying to take pictures of the animals. Except the ones we could get close to, that is. Like this one.

So we had a fantastic day but not all of us made it to the end.

If life could be more like this, eh? Untroubled sleep (although that 's rarely a problem around here. Tip: If you have trouble sleeping, get a cat! Very inspiring in the restfulness department).

I haven't died or gone away

2008-07-10T16:45:00.001-07:00

Just been busy spending time with Kids and Grandkid. I shouldn't call them kids, they are grown women. One's a mother. So far we've had an Indian meal, which was very good. Other than that we've been walking and talking and I've fussed over the baby (who is no longer a baby, I find keeping up with time passing, difficult).

Tomorrow there will be more fussing. I'll be back with pictures.

Oh, yeah. There's this

2008-07-01T14:45:00.001-07:00

By way of Mockriot

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Childrenâ��s Healthcare

Memories are made of this...

2008-07-01T14:28:00.001-07:00

Went to clean out an old shoulder bag to take to work. I didn't want to take my briefcase because I'm on my vacation, sort of. I found a (empty) packet of Benson and Hedges and hotel bill.

I had such a great time in Greece. Athens and Peleponnesus. I meant to go back but I never seem to get to the same place twice. That's just my life. Allways moving forward.

Now there's this

2008-06-22T06:28:00.001-07:00

Midsummer's come and gone. It's a pretty big holiday in Sweden. Stockholm is emptied of people.

I've celebrated midsummer, hung out in a 7eleven and got a new screen. A 19" wide. It's beautiful! At last I can use my computer. Now I'm updating from my own computer. which is better than sitting a 7eleven, by far. Next project is to get the pics out of my mobile so that I can show you some of what's been happening. I'll stick the picture in later. For now I just want to show the world things are back to normal.

I had a good comment/question about web 2.0, on my Swedish blog. I'm going to answer that later, in a post. Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are great and I enjoy using both. They put me in close contact with technology and people that are important to me. But not all the people. Sometimes my dad calls me up and says he's read about something on the web and could I please print the page out and send it to him. He's an old journalist (retired) and has a computer in his den. That's where he does his writing. But he doesn't want to get on the internet so I print stuff for him.

I was going to write something completely different but I'll get back to that.

Download Day

2008-06-17T14:28:00.001-07:00

Today is Download Day. Firefox 3 is released but it hasn't gone well. The link is pointing to Firefox 2, again, www.getfirefox.com.

Here are the direkt links. I found them on ReadWriteWeb.

That which brings us together

2008-06-16T12:43:00.001-07:00

For years now I've been a member of the oldest computer club in Sweden. I started in the -80s as a user group for users of the ABC-80 computer. I joined in the mid -90s. It's where I learned everything I know about Unix (which isn't much, but anyway...).

Nowadays I'm so busy round the web and at work I rarely think about the club. Shit happens as shit will, and the main server went down a few days ago, which I did notice.

There's still something wrong but basic mail and web services have been restored.

I happened to mention the club in a blog post the other day and a fellow member left a comment. He liked the blog and asked me about the Seesmic video* comments. He even tried them out and asked if I was still a member, which I am. Would I like to be involved in a new content management system for the club?

When the club forum came back up I went over there and found a post about my blog. A very nice post. I explained about the comment system and left my email and an offer to help if anyone was interested and wanted help.

The server crash made me realize that a lot of volunteer effort are involved in the running of the club. From now on I'm going to spend a little of my time every day in the club forums and see if I can help out.

*A while back I started using Disqus comment system on a Swedish blog I write. Thanks to Disqus teaming up with Seesmic my readers can leave video comments

Infrastructure and nature

2008-06-08T03:08:00.001-07:00

Stockholm is constantly changing. A lot of work has been put in to make the Underground train stations prettier. The sun is going down and hits three prisms in a window facing a lake.

Doc Searls wrote about infrastructure and what struck me is this: For infrastructure to become art - you need someone watching.

Graduation Day

2008-06-06T16:00:00.001-07:00

I got invited to the graduation of the daughter of a friend. It's very serious and crazy at the same time. It's a time for family and a time for friends. It's all about growing. Or maybe it's a one of life's thresholds. You're neither in nor out. Mostly about family and friends.

National Day

2008-06-05T07:22:00.001-07:00

Today is our National Day so I dusted of this photo someone sent me last year. It reminds me of summer and nice things. I grew up in a different country to Sweden so I'm not that nationalistic. I was welcome in England so I feel we should be welcoming to others.

Moving House

2008-04-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm moving over to Wordpress. I'll see you there! Mainly 'cause my other blogs are on Wordpress, I feel more comfortable on that platform.

Evil Empire part 2

2008-04-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

What's Google's game? Just getting into character.

A recently departed DoubleClicker tells us that Google managers asked employees at the online ad company it acquired last month to sign one-year noncompete agreements. Most agreed, thinking that it would spare their jobs — but then layoffs came a week later. They were "pretty pissed" over the bait-and-switch and were forced to find jobs outside their industry. The text of the noncompete is below.

Put up the shutters and hang out the garlic.

Piggie in the Middle

2008-04-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

According to BBC news, there's a row between ISPs and the BBC over who should pay for the extra bandwidth. The users?

Mr Gunter is leading the call for the BBC to help pay for the rising costs.

"The question is about whether we invest in extra capacity or go to the consumer and ask them to pay a BBC tax," he said.

As the BBC is tax funded, the "consumer" is already paying. If the BBC isn't getting the "consumers" moneys worth they should negotiate a new deal.

Or have I got it wrong?

Odds on the doc in hospital?

2008-04-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

New York Times had an article about Blogger health. They made it sound like we were all blogging out of sweatshops and risked our health and sanity. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.

Everybody got pissed off and gave them what for. It's people like David Winer, Marc Andreessen having a go. Not just tech sweatshop bloggers.

Doc Searls started it: What comes after blogging.

Today the good Doc is blogging from hospital. Lesson: obey warning signs. After all that!

What are the odds?

Scottish top domaine

2008-04-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

Scotland seeks its own internet domain name, this would certainly raise the question off what a nation state is.

The original post was on BlogStorm. Slashdot, anyone?

Death by blogging

2008-04-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

A story in the New York Times, In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop, caught my eye today.

I went to the NYT's website to recheck some facts and hit the reg wall! Talk about stressful.

Lighten up, will you!

Weekly round-up

2008-04-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

Round-up of the week.

I thought I'd do a round up the weeks postings. I seem to have tried to blog about everything.

Think about it

Some news

What's up

What will they think of next?

Earth hour