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.

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

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

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)

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!

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 :-)

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.

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