Weird and great Olympics

The olympic games are over and I'm truly sad. The olympics brought me a fyzzy and cozy feeling when I was at home. For the first time since, well, since the summer olympics I could have the TV on without getting annoyed by the sound of it. I rarely watch the TV, but the commentators of the olympics brought me in their own fasion a head up with their raised voices when something worth watching happened. Now two weeks after the games have begun and ended, I miss them.

These olympics was the best olympics ever, for me, for the swedish athletes and for sweden. We took a total number of 14 medals, 7 gold, 2 silver and 5 bronze and ended 6th in the medal race, and we topped it off with a gold medal in Hockey. GOLD in hockey!!!

Even though I know that Sweden is a major country when it comes to hockey I can't undertand why Canada and the US so often fail to perform, especially the US. Canada and the US share the NHL, a leauge that draws all the great players of the world to it. The major part of players in the league are however North-Americans. If we lined those players together, I feel I could almost blind folded pick and choose a team that would out perform the US team of the 2006 winter olympics... Strange isn't?

sailing with english?

I'm having a hard time with a thought that's growing, growing by each cloud of hope. Hope, that I will one day be a sailor, be a part of a crew of a frigate, brig or any other sailing ship of the 17th, 18th or 19th century. While I can't be a part of the crew of the Götheborg East Indiaman going to Canton as we speak (actually she is in Cape Town right now), I possibly can some day be a a part of the brig Stockholm which should be ready to sail late august this year. I've signed up as a member...

Ohh well

And now over to something completely different

I think I write better in English than I do in swedish, but I can't figure out why. It has something to do with the way I have to think... or the way... hmm
Perhaps it's the fact that I have to be creative on several layers at once. I know that when reading scientific papers or books I prefer reading in english. I instantly get really bored when reading such books in swedish. Reading in English is just more fun.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothign against swedish. It's me, it's my nationality, it's home. Reading fiction is more enjoyable to be in swedish for instance.

I've always been fascinated with english and the vastness of its vocabulary. When looking in Synonymer.se I find that there almost always is 4 to 5 more synonyms per word than there is in swedish. I understand that English is the second or third largest language in the world and it there for should have more words (hmm I thought that there would be some logic in there, but I can't find it now). I will hovever never learn as much english as I would like to, nor be as fluent as I would like to. I will always make those silly errors as the one I just did with hovever. What I really can't figure out is why I find English more fascinating than swedish? It's not just the amount of words, nor the simplicity of the grammar (believe me, it's simple compared with other languages)

Perhaps it's just the fact that it's a key that works in every corner of the world.
Perhaps it's the fact that the language is the result of the british empire having been and later the US beeing the melting pot of the world for centuaries.
Perhaps it's just the simple fact that it's one of those few thing I'm pretty good at... I guess that's it.

Now I'm hoping for some recognition ; )

The love for the sea

Aubrey/Maturin flash movie

I was yet again supposed to write about blogging or rather blogger. I can't really decide which theme this blog should have, but since blogger does not support chategories I really don't have much choice than to make several blogs and link to them from this blog (perhaps that's their buissness plan; To make their customers produce more and more blogs which reflect their position in the blogosphere) . But I don't want to do that because I can't maintain them all with a post per day (I can't even do that on this blog), and that's what you have to do to keep the precious few that returns to this blogs and reads what I have to say. So what should I do? I could move... hmm

What's this got to do with the flash movie above? Nothing. But since I managed to talk some about blogging I am free now to talk about something else.

I have always been absurdly fascinated by 16th, 17th and 18th century maritime life and above all ships. It have something to do with my love for the sea, and the eternity it reveals to me. You are totaly at the mercy of nature when you are rocking away on a sailboat. Motorboats defiles that feeling because you, in such a boat, in some way subdues nature.

But, even though I on my mother side sort of have the sea in my blood, I haven't done much to take me out to sea. I did my military service in the swedish marine on an gunship, but that's pretty much it. It's through movies, books and perhaps most importantly videogames I have fueled this love. I remember the first game that, in an awesome way, made me dream about the Spanish Main and the life of a seaman. Sid Meier's Pirates! totaly swept me away. It's the best game that's ever been made in my opinion. The graphic was awsome. Believe me it was. The gameplay fantastic with so many differant levels and aspects. Roleplaying, action, history, excitment and sailing. The remake last year is tarred with the same brush, with the exception that the brush is finer and the tar thicker. Hopefully the MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea will quench some of this love.

I still haven't told you about the flash movie above.... well the book and the series it's based upon has everything to do about what I've talked about....

PS... the titel for the movie is hilarious. The romantic dream I thought would be the titel for this post is the dream of the sea. : )

Realisation

Realisation, that what we call something that is on sale in sweden, or rea for short. And, that's what we have right now, forget about the big "rea" between christmas and New Years, the "rea" we have now is the one which counts. I'm of course talking about the national booksale. You're like a child in a candy or a toystore when you enter a bookstore in these days. But, even though you could (read: hope you could) and would like to buy everything on the shelves and on on the tables, you can't. For two reasons. One; Even though it's cheap as cheap can get (I really tried to use a more illustrative phrase, but couldn't think of one) it still burns a big hole in your pocket (I don't use a wallet) after five or six books. And that's the amount I bought. Second, buying several books at the same time really makes you think if it was worth it on the way home (my point: it's heavy). Nothing, however, nothing makes you as glad as finaly getting home and placing those books in the bookshelf.

Note to my self: I've found out that I have long ago disbanded my principle to only have books I've actually read in my bookshelfs. Don't worry I read them eventually.

So what did I get?

Jac the Clown by Hjalmar Bergman
Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (I had no idea that a Saturday night Special was a small cheap gun bought illigaly and used by criminals)
Gentlemen by Klas Östergren (coudn't find a decent link, but found out that it may be translated into english soon)
The Highway men of the Sea by Robert Hermansson
Hell - Death and the eternal penances in western worlds christian tradition - by Bengt Ankarloo

(they're all in swedish accept of course the dictionary)

I also bought a photography book of native-american chiefs and soldiers during the "wild-west" era and gave it to a friend as a birthday present.

I can also add that when I got home I found a letter from school telling me that I had to pay the school library 1070:- for a book I had long ago forgotten. (that's aprox: 100$) yikes! However, I did find the book after a long search and can now return it, which will remarkably lower my fine to 200:-, phew.

I'll think that this fine tells me to head out another day this week and buy more books so that I won't have to go to the library anymore.

This post wasn't supposed to be about the booksale, damn it. It was supposed to be about blogging. Next time it will.

Other blogs about bokrean:

Mitt liv som Anna

Brygubben

Alexandra en gång till

When looking if anybody was writing about the booksale in english I, to my horror, found out that the booksale in sweden wasn't that exclusive to sweden. Damn, it was one of those things that made me proud. Hmm I have to do some research about this.

The joy of the olympics

On februari the 13th I was thrilled about the olympics and loved every moment about it and I still do. I haven't had these weird and silly smiles together with these small and silly tears in the corner of my eyes, lying on the sofa, for... I don't know how long. I saw the Canadian girl, Chandra Crawford, who won the women's cross country sprint final, and the joy and utter happiness she displayed on the podium. Her smile I couldn't beat, but I wasn't far from it. I also, in my earlier post, hoped for some medals. And, they've come. They have almost rained upon me and my fellow swedes. And, what's even more rewarding is that we are ahead (to this date) of Norway (counting the number of gold medals, as they do in the olympics and not the total amount of medals). I've just hated the fact that Norway always wins more... hrrrm ... gold medals than sweden does (in the winter olympics). Now we have two more gold medals than Norway does.

I only have one dissapoinment... The swedish women curling team intentionally played badly to keep them from playing the Canadian team in the semi-final. They played the norweigan team instead and won yesterday with 5 to 4. I hate that sort of "tactics", and don't really believe the speculation that Team Sweden Hockey (men) did the same against slovakia the day before yesterday to be able to play Switzerland instead of some other much more skilled nation. However, if they did loose that game intentionally, it's just as bad.

This was my the-winter-olympics-2006-in-turin-is-almost-at-its-end sum up. I will make a proper one when it has actually ended.

Abstract

So I've finished with my essay about the power of blogging, but since I've written it in swedish it wouldn't be that much of use if you weren't can't understand swedish. I will however link to it as soon as one of the two server options I have work so that I can upload it. The abstract to the essay is however in english as it should be and that part is cut and pasted below.

Abstract
While the blog phenomenon has generated such a huge following it has also been attributed great importance and significance as a powerful voice in the society separate from traditional media. Traditional media have, however, very much taken this new phenomenon into their arms and made it their own. The most powerful and influential blogs are often blogs by recognized journalists, scholars or otherwise expert people who already have a voice. These blogs has pretty much sealed their position in the blogosphere since minor blogs almost always have to go through them to get a readership. The minor blogs, however, do have a place in the sphere of good importance. The role of the minor blogs is to ventilate, elaborate and contribute to the ongoing discussion about a topic. Minor blogs can also publish fresh news, scoops, but for that to happen the blogger most often have to have some know-how about the subject. Blogs are therefore not a democratic revolution in the media sphere as often credited, but it’s a revolution nonetheless. The revolution lies in the, through links, easy access of detailed and elaborated comments on news.

Women's hockey rules

What a game, what a great fight! I'm talking of course about the semi-final between Sweden and USA this evening in the olympic games in Turin. The game had it all. Tension, great goals, over time, penelty shoot out and spirit... ohh the spirit. It was the spirit that won the game for Sweden. They wanted the victory more than Team USA did.

But, it's not this fenomenal success of the swedish team that makes me write this post, even though it sure deserves all the words in the world. I'm actually writing this because I'm upset. I can't understand why the rules in women's hockey are what they are. Have they been written by men or women? Why shouldn't women's hockey be as hard and tough as men's hockey? In women's hockey NO body check is allowed. I can't understand that. Are women that more frail than men? It's not men they meet in the rink, it's other women. This rule damages the game more than it helps it. It lessens it's attractiveness and it's flow. You can see that the women really wants to follow through with their checking, and when they do they're instantly shown to the penelty box, no matter how puny the body-check was. The need for visors is obvious in hockey and it's the men who are stupid enough not to wear them.

There is only one reason I can find why the rules in woman's hockey are what they are. What I'm getting at is that maybe there isn't enough women players in a town or country, except in Canada and perhaps the US, to get a full team with strong and big players. Therefore there is a great difference between the players when it comes to sizes. If a big (1.80 m) and strong player body checks a small (1.60 m) and not so strong player the result could be very ugly.

But on the other hand, those differences could also apply to men's hockey. So what is the reason behind this gentler version of hockey?


Other blogs on the game and on the rules:

gunnerswebblog.blogspot.com
gina1978
mirtle.blogspot.com

The falling soldier is real!

Robert Capa is one of my favourite photographers of all time. And since I wrote a small poem once (published here) about a photo he'd taken of a captured german soldier, although it's not the one displayed in my other blog.

I've just read an article that debunks all the rumours about the most famous photo of the spanish Civil War, The Falling Soldier, beeing fake. Under the assumption that since arranging photoshoots is or at least has been very common among war correspondants, war photographers and illustrators, this photo had to be fake. Richard Whelan, who also has written a biography about Robert Capa, has proved them all wrong.

In his article, Proving that Robert Capa's "falling Soldier" is genuine: A detective story, he investigates, checks and debunks the accounts of thos who have said that Capa couldn't have been at the spot at that time, or even those who said that Capa himself have said that the photo was arranged. The accounts had often confused Capa with either someone else or placed the situation seperatly on differant occasions.

I must say that I didn't know what to think about the photo before. I think it's a great photo and it looks so real. There is just something about the photo... hmm perhaps I should show it... that
makes me believe it. But I guessed it could have been a fake. What's the odds of anyone taking such a snapshot, at that time at that single moment the object of the photo get's shot. It's even more incredible when you know that this person, who Richard Whelan has identified as one Fredrico Borrell Garciá, was the only one who fell during this battle. However, with the identification of the fallen, Whelan proved that this person actually did fell during the civilwar, at that time and at that place.

Robert Capa is not without guilt or blame though, the shoot was in some way arranged. Apperently Capa met this patrol of soldier during a quiet moment in that sector during the battle of Cerro Muriano, and they were willing to pose for him. They ran needlessly into cover and shot into the thin air. This shooting did however attract the enemy who shot back using a machinegun. The result was one man dead and Capa took the picture.

I believe that Capa who died during battle in Korea wished he'd never taken that photo, if only it would mean that Borrell would live.

ahh the good old pillowfight

Wow, what an event! I sure would like to have been there. Pillowfighting was the main fighting me and my brother did when we were young. Not that we fight any differantly now, eeh we don't fight any more, enough said......... we fight verbaly.

The event I'm talking about is a huge yearly pillowfight in San Francisco yesterday, valentine's day. Isn't that fun?

But wouldn't this be an option for the huligans arounf the globe? What if they who would like, after every match, fight a big pillowfight either on the pitch, in the central sqare of the town or just outside the stadium? I would join, hell I would have two pillows.

But it's not all that safe. During my fights with my brother I got smacked arounf pretty hard. After a while the down and the feathers would slosh together and make the pillow really really hard. And what about the feathers? Those pointy little buggers can stick through the pillow and probably scratch pretty damn much. But in the end, it would just be good fun and those small bruises you could get would be nothing compared to injuries well worth a trip to bandageland.

Thanks once again to My Markup.net for the news

Pen and Paper

So, I've decided to make another blog. Why? Isn't that just extra work? I guess it is. But, I can't see me commenting blogs, blogging, news, funny stuff on the web, soccer, modelmaking, sailing, skating, sail skating, a model of a sail skater, and then post a poem in the middle of it. It just doesn't make any sense. So I decided to make a more "high" culture blog, even though I hate everything about "high culture", or in any case just the idea of the same. In this blog I will post poems, in both swedish and translated into english..... gah!

My index finger is situated just 5 mm above the backslash and my brain is in turmoil. Should I actually tell people I regulary meet that I on occasion write poems? Of course I should, you've been through this before. You've showed people your stuff before. Allright It will bear or break as we say in swedish.

Now, where was I?

!Hag.....hsilgne onti detalsnart translated into english, and other kind of writings I have done and, of course, will do. All this writing in blogs have really fueled my urge to write again. And in this sense the blogs are a true powerful tool, for me at least. But, it's also a bit of an experiment. Which of my two blogs will become most linked to? Alas, I have no expectation of beeing ever linked to.

If you would like to bet on this, please do. Don't just expect to get a fast return. I however believe that my cultural blog (Rally Here) will be the one getting the most backlinks (blogger doesn't support backtracks) in the end. The first backlink I'll get will be on this blog, I hope. That's the plan anyway.

I just remembered that I could link to myself... but that wouldn't, in these olympic times, be a sport. Would it?

Damn! damn, I really am a dimwhit sometimes. I didn't realise that I've actually already made links to Rally Here, and look I did it again. OR did I? Is a link to an entire blog and not just a post count as a backtrack/backlink?

Is there a way to tell how many link to your blog (not linking to a specific post)?

Perhaps I can answer my question...

Thanks to this post at the swedish blog My Markup.net I perhaps have found a way to answer my original question if blogs could be a powerfull medium (see related post). The New York magazine New York has published a rather long article about blogging and the few blogs that actually make money off it.

Apperantly there is a curve that is applicible to the phenomenon. It's called the "power-law distribution". The curve is used in several other occasions, like for example describing the distribution of wealth in the world. The essence in the curve is that very few has all the wealth while the enormously huge majority has very little, and this also applies to the blogsphere.

The reason for all this (and I'm not really trying to explain why the world spins like it does) is that, as the writer of the article in the magazine so conspicuously points out, for example, movie producers pick actors that other movie producers already picked (there is just a few actors/actresses who show up in movie after movie, while there is a huge number getting hired from time to time, mostly never). The blogosphere is apperently devided into a A, B and C list, where the A-class is those blogs that have a huge following, the B-class have a good amount of daily readers and finaly the C-class who floats like bottle posts in the Pacific. The break a C-class blog needs is to have is to be linked to by an A-class or even a B-class blog. And that is a far fetched hope to cling to.

For me this article has possibly provided me with some research material to add to my essay.

The olympics gives me the goosebumps...

Oh my! I just love the olympics. Even though I in general only stand one sport (soccer) I find myself mesmerized by it. Any sport presented at the TV is exciting, even though there are no Swedish participants. Like tonight, I started watching the Pair figure skating final, and it was awsome. I normaly argue that figure skating isn't a sport, that it's more a performance. It didn't matter how hard or how well what they do is, it's an act.

But, tonight I saw the sportmanship in it. The Chinese couple Zhang Hao and Zhang Dan proved to me that you really have to be an athlete to figure skate. The first throw jump this couple tried to do, had never been done before. A quadruple Salchow. The girl fell though, and she fell really hard. Everyone in the audience, both on the stands and behind the TV, surely thought that their routine was over, and that the girl was off to the hospital. But after a couple of minutes she went back on the ice, tried a few simple moves and a small jump and they continued from where they ended. And what a continueance it was! They finished a very very technical routine at such a class they came in second place. They won the silver medal.

Astonishing...

Now, if we could only get some medals...

And here is a pretty funny blog

Can't answer my question!

I've finaly figured out something about my question about blogging. My question is if blogs could be a powerful media, a media that has impact on the political, cultural or commercial sphere of society. What I figured out is that I actually can't answer the question. The only thing I can make clear is that certain blogs have or have in past made an impact or a difference. And I can show you how and why these blogs was or is powerful. However, I can't tell or show you that blogs are a powerful medium without making a statistical study over the amount of powerful blogs and compare it with the not so powerful amount. It's calculated that there is about 10 million blogs out there, How many make an impact? A couple of hundreds or thousands? Isn't this comparison signifacnt? Does one powerful blog make blogging powerful?

Trackmania Nations

A very fun little racegame which is free to download. Ehh perhaps it isn't that small, it's actually rather big, but very fun. I my self have played it since it came out, since I use to play Trackmania Sunrise. This is Trackmania Nations.

You can download custom tracks from the game's main source for tracks to download, http://nations.tm-exchange.com. The game is not as fun as Sunrise, but is a very light game to play for a brief pause in your daily struggle... uhh.

Race away.

ROTFLMAO!!!!

I'm laughing my ass off reading or what should I say... viewing this blog. It's the most funny thing I've ever seen...well since I started reading blogs and blogging myself. Should this blog be an example that blogs are truly powerful or is it proof that it isn't?

I don't really care.... I do, but this blog made laugh so hard that it doesn't matter. Read and enjoy...or what you now do at this blog.

Forget the scenery in MMORPGs...

Take a look at these photos taken in China. They are absolutly breathtaking. Wanna go now!

Tonight it's time...

Hammarby is to meat FC Midtjylland tonight at SAS Arena. I wonder how Bajen will hold up after the long camp they've been to in the States. I've very sorry that Marteinsson isn't available for play. I'm pretty damn nervous.

And it didn't go that well. The danes beat Bajen with 4 to 1. The last two goals were apparently mistakes made by Bajen's goalie Ante Covic but I could be mistaken since I can only go by the live report posted at Hammarby Fotbolls hemsida as a source. I guess and I hope that the failure tonight was caused by the long training camp in Los Angeles the past two weeks. I'm eagerly waiting on a more thorough report tomorrow.

I'm sad tonight

The mistakes made were the teams mistakes. The rebounds made by Ante was not his fault. Well on sunday it's time for another game. Start IK is up. The game is played in Sodertalje due to the horrible condition of the pitch at Soderstadion.

Gah!

Last night I was to publish my report on my schools server. The late hour however resulted in me publishing my CV, to the the big amusement of my friends in class.

About Jill Walker end her lecture at Sodertorns University College and her definition of blogging

About Jill Walker end her lecture at Sodertorns University College and her definition of blogging

A blog is a personal website which through informal and personal posts updates the blog on a frequent basis. The blog should also include links to other blogs and websites of interest to the owner of the blog. The blog should also be user friendly allowing readers to follow conversations between blogs through links.

The generalisation of the fenomenon blogging in Walkers definition makes me ask if there isn't a single aspect of blogging which differentiate it from a frequently updated personal website with links to other personal websites? Shouldn't be a mentioning of the technologies made visible and available through blogging?

The football club of my heart hasn't yet signed any new players of weight, and I'm starting to get tired of it. We need an established and seasoned multirole midfielder, a signing we could be proud of and one who could take the place of Micke Andersson. I don't know what the problem is. We have the money and the club is one of the most attractive in the league. Arrgh. I wonder what the problem is?

Tilt-shift is the shit

Very cool photos of places and people in tokyo made to look like miniture models. These photos are real photos of real places and real people. Can't stop viewing them.

Tilt-shift

You might find it very strange that I critise blogging within a blog. I am a hypocrite in that sense, I agree. I'm very much open to a change from loathing everything about blogging to accepting (I think I'm there now) and perhaps later loving blogging. I'm just trying to understand... what's the ruckus?

For my part, perhaps in the future I will let my self get swallowed by it. If it would let me.

Read another article about the wonder of blogging

The article:The blogging revolution is written by a Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan is a well known journalist (The New Republic, and New York Times) who had an audience even before he started blogging. With that audience he allready had a network to operate within, an network that spread the word about his blogg from the time go. As he says in the article: "And I worked hard at the blog for months for free. But the upshot is that I'm now reaching almost a quarter of a million readers a month a making a profit".

Sullivan critises newspapers and magazines and suggests that with blogging there won't be any use of newspapers or magazines. Well known bloggers (because you have to have a decent amount of readers to make a profit) don't need the middle hand that they feel newspapers and such are.

Well I ask, what is the essence of newspapers? Why did newspapers evolve? Could it be perhaps to collect news? Collect thoughts and ideas and present them to the public? Blogs often just deals with one topic or more often only one authors view about one topic (or more). How are we as readers to be able to get a decent coverage of local, national and international events by searching the many blogs out there? There will always be a need for newspapers and such.

Perhaps I as a new blogger (yuk...perhaps it's just the word i despise) haven't yet understood the power of the medium or the technologies that make it powerfull. But I can't see how anyone should ever abandon the traditional media (with it's power to collect and present news) to instead search and read bloggers reports and views of events or topics.

There is this abandoned old factory/industrial house in an industrial area north of Stockholm called Albano. Me and three of my friend went there to film it before it either got demolished or turned into something else. We did some research on the facility and found out that an organisation had bought the property who plan to restore it and turn it into a wagon and coach museum.


Watch the Video

rss feed

Found a great and funny thingie for all those RSS freaks

This is as futuristic as it comes

I've just published a short clip showing me throwing some rocks at a really old rural shack. I felt somewhat ashamed doing so, but what the hell don't you do for the camera.

Arrrgh

Watch the Video