Waiting for Godo

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

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

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

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

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

Wordpress för iPhone uppdaterad

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

Book Mark it-> del.icio.us | Reddit | Slashdot | Digg | Facebook | Technorati | Google | StumbleUpon | Window Live | Tailrank | Furl | Netscape | Yahoo | BlinkList 

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

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

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

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

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

By way of Mockriot

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children�s Healthcare

 

Memories are made of this...

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

 
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

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.

• Mac OS X

• Linux

• Windows

That which brings us together

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

Think about it

ध्यान
The Sanskrit word for Zen, which means meditation.

The Chinese word for Zen is Chan and looks like this in simplified form 禅

Zen

Some news for you

Here's some news for you, I got this from The Local.

Our Premier, Fredrik Rhinefeldt, wants Sweden to get into the action and we are not a people who readily go to war. That's why we only appear as supporting cast.

One way to get to play is jump on the peace wagon.

“And it ought to be continually emphasized, in light of Afghanistan and Iraq, that if there is to be peace on the ground, if development is to be improved, then it always starts with the military doing its job; but what’s really important is to lay the groundwork for civilian missions, that which builds a country in the long term; which creates better living conditions; and where Sweden plans to be very active.”

That means peace is all right but you have to have good war first.

Me, I always thought that peace was when the military wasn't doing their job. What do I know?

• UN questions Sweden on Eritrea deportation (23 Mar 08)
• UNHCR criticizes Sweden's Iraqi refugee policy (18 Mar 08)
• Swedish protests over Iraq war (16 Mar 08)

What's up?

I enjoy most of my time. I seldom feel I would like to lead a different life.

I can still get upset, though! Right now I get upset over the war against terrorism, file sharing and pornography.

Politicians say we should give up our freedom in order to preserve it. This is stupid!

Bloggers rights! Support the EFF.

What'll they think of next?

What'll they think of next? /.

2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.
1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.
1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.
1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.
2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root

Earth Hour

Earth hour

I'm as concerned as the next person but what was I supposed to do? Stay home with the lights off?

Cool

You need to be wired to be cool. See were the dosh is going?

Wordpress all done

All done and no troubles. Wordpress updates are easy. Still, there's a new widget page that took some working out. I managed to delete all my traffic tracking scripts. I've got them back now. Of the tracking sites but that pissed me off a bit. As you can imagine. So be careful if you try this at home.

Back up the important stuff and upload the content of wp-themes and wp-plugins separately. Otherwise you are going to overwrite these folders and loose your custom content. Oh, this isn't in the book. Upgrade your plugins and themes to the latest version before you upgrade Wordpress. Saves you being stuck with a plugin or theme that doesn't work with 2.5.

Otherwise, it's a doddle! (lnk)

Don't miss out: Free upgrade

If you are a wordpresser you really don't want to miss this!

Doc Searls Weblog. Now!

De-enginering the web

Writing about the 25 most valuable websites is very clever. Not including one single link to a mentioned site is not.

And it's a good article, but not linking to original sources on the web makes publishing on the web pretty pointless.

I came to the article from another website but I know some publishers are reluctant to link away from their own site. Unless it's another site of the same media brand.

This is de-enginering the web back to, well, what? Something less than useless. How would you find anything?

You can swat flies with a paper when there is no more information to be had.

But like I said, It's a great article so don't let me hold you up (lnk)

I'm worried about the Cat

I've found porn in his basket!

Original post here

What do we care?

Just read that Tata motors, an Indian company has bought Jaguar and Land Rover. It's the yanks who are selling it so it's really not a big deal.

DEPENDING on which way you look at it, in acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for $2.3 billion, a deal finalised on Wednesday March 26th, Tata Motors has either got itself two of the most famous brands in the car business at a bargain-basement price—or a sea of troubles.

I don't actually know any one who drives a Jag these days. I've got a friend in Stockholm who wants one, but that's it! Maybe that's the problem?

Still, we're in the same boat. Ford who has just sold the above have declared that they are hanging on to Volvo.

All about pictures and living on line

From Desktop to webtop. I use Google docs quite a bit. Especially for writing and editing blog posts. Nowadays, anyway.

I learned the hard way that one day you might want to rewrite and use that great post. Just a tip!

TechCrunch has a post about picture editing with fotoflexer. There's loads more in the post.

What a surprise! Swedish television tries something new :-)

I quite often write about stuff in the Swedish papers and it's a shame you can't read the original source. I mean, I could make anything up :-)

Today is different. I just read Metro on the net and there's a new tech program on TV.

What's new is the host is a woman, Anna Charlotta Gunnarsson.

About a year ago, journalist Anna Charlotta Gunnarsson got an idea for a new TV show after thinking about just how widely technology affects people’s lives.

Called “The Whole Machine” (Hela Apparaten), the show premiers April 16th at 19.30 on SVT and is meant to get viewers to reflect on the workings of technologies that people use in their everyday lives.
“My hope is that those who watch the show will gain some self-confidence about their own technical skills,” said Gunnarsson.

It's a good idea as I believe many of us are intimidated by technology. I know this is true for computer users as I often get to help friends and family with their computer problems. Do you know anyone who describes a computer as "user friendly" unless they're selling one?

The fact that a woman is hosting the program might even make it more accessible to those who are not of the nerdier persuasion. I'll be watching. Might even come back with a review.

The fraudulent web

Getting in the groove to get back to work tomorrow. Not all that reluctantly. I like my job. I realize I'm lucky in that respect.

There are a lot of great blogs out there but sometimes I think they get stuck behind the static. I try and promote blogs that I like so now and then I'm going to write about other blogs and bloggers. A lot of the blogs I read are in Swedish and it wouldn't be meaningful to promote a blog you couldn't read.

There are, however blogs that don't require translation. Art blogs or picture blogs can be appreciated in any language.

Take a look at this image. It's from Linda Palmer's blog P O N O R. And yes, I did ask :-)

If you follow this blog and leave some well thought out comments, chances are you'll learn a lot from this artist.

So, go on over there and make conversation!

Google Easter Eggs

Getting bored and looking for something to do?

Google has some fun and games hidden among all the serious stuff.

Try out the compulsory Google Easter game.


Or try Google search in your favorite alternative language. Available are Klingon, Hacker, Elmer Fud and probably many more.

This is more of joke really. Google Glug Beta. A drink to make people perform searches quicker.


The picture is from the original article over at
IDG. If you want to know what a Swedish Tech press
website looks like. Go and have a look.

Holidays

Happy Easter!

It's a clear, cold day here in Stockholm. There's even some snow and we haven't seen much of that this winter.

Not much going on. The Easter holiday is very much a family affair in Sweden so people are busy visiting relatives.

I stayed home with the cat this year and to see some friends I haven't had much time for, lately.

I read in one of the large daily papers here, that the Cherry Blossom are starting to bud in Japan. This is apparently a big deal over there. People have counted the buds even and the press are covering the event as if it was a sporting event. Like Slalom, in Sweden (but probably going better :-)).

Have a good Easter! I'm taking it easy during the weekend and might miss a post or two. Don't worry if I do. I'm probably just off eating dinner with someone or going to the pictures!

The Easter eggs are from www.clipartandcrafts.com, I didn't ask 'cause it said they were free :-)

Fallen out with the neighbors?

It's business as usual over here in Stockholm despite it being long Friday. A sweep of the Swedish blogosphere brought this post up and I wanted to share it with English language readers

Fallen out with the neighbors? Here's a creative way of dealing with conflicts without crossing the fence!



From the Swedish blog TEXT.NU

Amazing pastels in New York

BoingBoing is a great source of inspiration to me. Theres always something unexpected and today is no exception.

A new pastel show in New York. Art by Barnaby Whitfield. Away you go! I've never seen pastels like this. In fact, as much as I love art, pastels have never quite it done for me. You live and learn.

From the press release:

From lovingly using his art dealer to anthropomorphize the ‘Bird Flu’
to finding fictional passion with Hernan Bas on a men seeking men
website, we continue to get amusing and rather untrustworthy glimpses
into Whitfield’s experience in the art world. And besides an over all
theme the artist states as “sexualizing the environmental crisis within
the context of American politics” we also see the end to Barnaby’s
quest for his real parents (Whitfield was one of those children that
always suspected they were adopted even though they knew quite well
they were not), and a startling turn of events in his ongoing Clonie
series (a character created when the momentarily impoverished artist
decided to sell nudes on eBay inadvertently gaining the attention of
31GRAND and being welcomed into the fold.)

I find the pictures pretty exciting with a lot of precision and detail, all set of by fantastic colours! Check out the post on BoingBoing.


Technorati Tags: art, creativity

Be careful what you learn at school

I just wrote a post on my Swedish blog about writing and web publishing. I was all about getting harassed by teachers for writing to well! I got accused of copying an essay out of a book because it was so well written! That screwed my writing up for years.

I'm glad I'm over that but it has certainly taught me to be more careful when I give opinions around my own children.

I was so happy when my youngest daughter came home and told me she had a special exercise book at school for writing. Just for writing, whatever she wanted. The teacher never corrected this writing. Not spelling errors or grammar, it was just for the love of writing.

Of course my daughter had learn grammar and spelling and all the rest of it. She is quite good at that, better than me :-) But above all she is not afraid of expressing herself.

My first reader question :-)

Getting an email about your blog on the first day is pretty cool :-) Well, I got one with a question and I'm going to share it because it makes a pretty good point about language and identity.

Here goes:

Q: do you feel the same about your Swedish self..? I.e. would you feel
like starting a fejksvensk blogg..?

I don't, because I am Swedish. I can feel British but I'm not British! I think it's to do with living in London during my formative years and not having anyone my age to share stuff like TV programs-we-watched-as-kids, with. I can tell my Swedish friends about what was going on in my life but that's just anecdotes.

Does that make sense?

I wouldn't say I'd never find it meaningful to do a Fake Svensk (Swedish) blog but I just don't see it at this point in time.

Anyway, thanks for the attention and I'd love more questions like that because it helps me sort out why the heck I'm doing this :-)

...almost

One last post, then. Not knowing much about the English reading blogosphere, I would like some input on what I'm doing here. If this blog goes well I will consider moving it to it's own domain. See this as a practice run.

Done for today

I added som trackers and stuff to the sidebar so that somone will know when I update the site. Not much point in writing if nobody reads, right. Be fun to see if the site metre I added will start moving (it hasn't yet, still on one).

So, I'm getting ready to do some writing here. All about being the fake brit and that.

Got an interesting email, bye the way. With a very interesting question about my chosen topic. Feeling like a fake Brit in Sweden but you're going to have to wait 'till tomorrow. I'm knackered!

Added a site metre

I just added a site meter. I just looked at it and it said I've had 1 visitor :-) Which is all right. I had the option of starting at a higher number, but what the hell. This blog isn't in a contest so I'll just leave it and watch the numbers grow!

What language settings?

I've run into a problem. I can't get the language settings the way I want them!

The blog is now a terrilble mix of Swedish and English. Not a catastrophy but it looks stupid. It's probably because I have a blog in Swedish on Blogger. I still think that setting the default language to UK English would do just that.

Fire up the blog

Just read that the weather here in Stockholm is going to be crap over Easter. I don't really mind seeing I'm never at a loss for things to do indoors.

One thing I'm going to be doing is give this blog some attention. It's new and I doubt that many people have found it yet so that's a great time to think about appearences.

So, please come back and see how I'm doing. This project is a bit scary. I have never started a writing project in English before so please, have patience. Obviously, if you see stupid misstakes, let me know! But I want to hear about the good stuff as well :-)

Want to see what a Swedish on-line newspaper looks like? Go here. Svenska Dagbladet means (roughly) Swedish Daily News

What's up 'ere then?

So, what is up 'ere then?

Just me blogging in English for a change, so please bear with me.

I thought I might devote this premier post to explaining what this blog is all about and let you a bit about myself. I was born in Stockholm, grew up in London w 4 (that's Chiswick) then went back to my native country, which is Sweden.

It was a shock coming back to Sweden. The two country's are so different in almost everything. I suppose living in England during my formative years left its mark. Took me long enough to learn how to be Swedish (or fake it :-)) but now I fell I want a little corner of the WWW where I can do my Fake Brit thing.

So, don't mind me. I'm just doing my roots thing, over here. Should you by any chance want to engage in dialog, feel free to comment