Master Chief, the cure for rainy day blues?

It's raining today, not just your standard wet rain, no this is a very windy, wintry rain. A rain of the kind that bites at your fingers and makes your knees stiff.

Winter has for the most part been mild this year, the last time Copenhagen had a winter like this was, funnily enough, last year. We were talking about it at lunch today and the collective lunch table remembered that  in two days time and a year ago, we had a snowman build-able snow storm, complete with traffic problems and train delays. So now we wait and see.

What does this have to do with rain and me? Nothing much except I need summer. I am cold and wet and sitting in a misted up train coupe needing sun. I will get sun this Xmas, proper Durban Sun with a capital DS, but that's a year away almost.

I digress, last years summer was crap. Really, it was just bland and with the exception of maybe fifteen mediocre days of luke-warm mildness, it was shitty.

So here I stand on the metro platform (line 2), with my coat tails blowing around, in the icy rain, with the prospect of last years weather cycle on the verge of making a repeat comeback and I am almost depressed.

It won't be a bad summer, I will learn a form of black magic and put out some calls, but it still doesn't lighten my current frame of mind.

 

On the plus, I kicked ass in halo 3 last night. I have a wonderful girlfriend and two bomb cats. Life is good, just so long as I get into some warm dry clothes and boot up some master chief.

"burn things to show you aren't violent"

There is an area in Copenhagen called Vanløse. I know this as I catch the metro there most mornings and then catch a train to WMdata where I am working at the moment.

Anyway there is nothing special about this place per say, but this morning I was using my iPod on the station platform and I got access to a wireless network. No hacking or anything "funny". The catch? Well nothing other than that the Vanløse public library is next to the station and it has a free wireless network for surfing or searching for books.

This got me thinking, in a country with a proper democracy, a usable social system and a high standard of living, how can there be ghettos and 15 year old kids, who hate society so much they run around at night stabbing people, burning cars and physically attacking the civil servants, who are just doing their jobs and trying to protect the rest of us.

I am by nature rather politically opinionated, and I happen to agree with the opinion that unprovoked violence can only be solved by using bigger guns. I am sure someone somewhere knows why these kids are so far gone, but I know it can't have started with them. This is conditioning. Their parents or piers are bitter and are manipulating situations into grounds for social misbehaviour.

In a county were freedom of speech and equality is praised, I think things have gone to far. I am a guest here and I know some people don't like that my "kind" is here either, but I follow the rules. Why can't everyone else. I am all for the Swiss way of managing integration: if you don't contribute and follow their rules, then you and your family can sod off to where ever your DNA originated from. And that's fine, that's how it should be.

It isn't always black and white, but handle the easy cases like that and scare the shit out of the difficult cases.  Worst case scenario, last I checked there is plenty of space on Greenland.

80's revival

Last night we went to a concert. During the 80's Robert Smith decided that hair was the path to success, so he mixed it up a little. Well actually as I am sure you know, he mixed it up one hell of a lot.

This last week, apartment 505, along with Des and the DJ (not the Sonos), hit Forum. Why, well because The Cure was about to bring Copenhagen to life.

Did they manage?

Yes, yes and oh so friggin 100% yes!

The sound was crap, the lights were 80's, the only redeeming show feature was a video of a trains journey that ran in the back during "jumping someone else's train" - amazing. Well who needs a fancy show, when you can play for 3 hours straight, 34 songs and not a single drop or dip in energy or intensity.

It was absolutely great, and 505 wasn't the only ones who thought so, what with all of forums sold-out 10,000 attendees jumping, clapping, singing and screaming along to every single howled out, acoustically tinny Cure classic from the last 30 years.

The atmosphere was superb and carried on through the entire evening. As for the current standings of the iPod Touch vs Nokia N95-8GB? The Nokia captures the world better than anything to-date (that isn't a dedicated device), but the iPod presents the world how it should be... 1-1 :)

What does one do when it's time for a change?

This weekend we awoke and someone had the idea that apartment 505 needed a change, something different, an addition, something to scare the living crap out of the kittens. Well in all honesty, they aren't scared of it, but twice an hour they get all, well, all curious. See Saturday we decided to go shopping in Malmö. Sweden is as close as Copenhagen and once you factor in the return tickets and the exchange rates, it works out almost, maybe a smidgen cheaper. So off we went, Beate saw a cuckoo clock last time we were over and so that was the goal. Low and behold, the shop still had them, unfortunately not in red, but then I am sure I am destined to live in a monochrome apartment for the rest of time, but I digress. So we go a black one. A black cuckoo clock, with a yellow bird and so the adventures begin.

Did you know that the cuckoo doesn't give two shits what the hands say? That no matter what you do, the little bird decides when the hour is to be chimed and when the little bag-pipey-thingies are to be compressed and thus the world famous cuc-koo can be heard. So what does one do? Apartment 505 found out, you wait for him to sing, then you stop the clock and wait until time catches up to the little yellow bird and then you start the clock again and wait for the next chirp and see if you did good. We did that. We waited til 7 o'clock and then we started him again. only to notice that an hour later he was 2 minutes slow.

Two minutes slow! Well how do you solve that? You wait until 7 o'clock in the morning, by which time is is 20 minutes slow, and you stop him again. See you now have to adjust the pendulum, so it swings faster. Lower is slower, so we stopped the clock and then 2 hours ago, after moving the weight up a fraction, we started Ralph again.

It is now three minutes past and he just sang nine times... guess it's not going to be ticking between 7am and 7pm tomorrow again...

iPod Touch does it on the train

So how does one write a blog when you no longer have daily 
unrestricted access to the Internet? well recently I was persuaded to  purchase an iPod Touch. Well in all honesty after Steve J. announced  that the new version would allow for the email, maps and widgets and  in a month 3rd party legal software, it was a given.

It isn't the cheapest mp3 player in the world, and yes you are stuck  to using iTunes for you music collection, but all the music in 505 was  in iTunes already. Hege has spent the last 3 months (we have around  500) ripping every cd and finding cover art. This, because 505 is dj'd  by a sonos, which I will get into another day, but in short it is  litterally amazing.

But back to the case at hand, I am typing this now as I sit in a train  and the verdict? As close to perfect as it could be, it does what you  need and it honestly does it brilliantly and that's before you start  playing music or videos (not my beloved divx though). It is honestly  an incredible little wonder.

I just got a Nokia N95 8GB for work, so we will see which of the two  win in the long run, but without being overly bias, I think my "fun"  time will be spent on the touch and I am quit ok with that .

Coffee and Crisps

I like the fact that some of the baristas who work at Estate know that I like my croissants on the softer side, in the early morning it's a large latte, in the afternoon a rooibos tea or a chai latte. I really like that all their milk is organic, that they give you a small chocolate with every drink and that it varies depending on what you order. They know what they are doing at Estate and they do it well, very, very well indeed. And having one of the best baristas know your coffee habits isn't a bad thing. Surely an innocent latte can't do you any harm? Surely!

Well we have started detoxing in apartment 505. I think over the last 3 years or so, we have been eating rather healthy. But not well enough and it isn't just food, we changed our toothpaste for one that doesn't contain titanium, non-aluminium deodorants and paraben free soaps and creams. It is quite scary when you look into what we actually do to ourselves just by living and how much of it can be stopped, if we just spend a few extra minutes reading the contents of what we buy.

So coffee has been killed, the first week was full of headaches because of it and since that I know it isn't a bad thing to quit. Rooibos with honey for me thanks, Estate does those too and all organic to boot.

As for crisps? We have switched to grapes for 3 weeks now instead of candy and chips and yes, this is just the beginning.

Grapes and Mobile Phones

Saturday came and went, not, I must add, as most of my Saturdays tend to go, but with a touch of spice and a hint of that little something extra. In plain unforgiving English - I lost my phone. It wasn't stolen, it wasn't taken from me by force, it wasn't even somebody else's fault, I simply forgot to take it with me when I left the cafe after lunch. Had the chicken salad been outstanding or the mineral water been of some divine source, or if it all been crap and given me a reason to wake my doctor for, it could be accepted that I forgot my routine. No, it was in itself a routine meal, average, border-line bland and without being cruel or unfair,  in a word or two, just another forgettable meal. But did I forget that meal? No, no I did not. I forgot my phone, my flip face memory keeper, my earpiece to the world, my (not so) little sony-ericsson. But I digress, for it was a good day, a memorable day and I live in a society of mostly good and honest people, so today I called and they had the little chap, my silver buddy, my s700i. He'd had a weekend away, he'd met some new people and I am sure somewhere in all this, he had taught me a lesson. So I am me again, the full unadulterated, grape eating me. I so need a new phone.

2008? maybe now i will write a blog...

I haven't exactly been active in the "my blog" scene of late - who says 3 years is quitting? I can say I haven't had time, or was in a creative lull, but that's neither here nor there, I enjoy writing, I don't do it enough and so, with a little kick from a troll book and a little help from my E-500, I am hoping that perhaps this year I will spend the time needed, to get some interesting writing in place, so that it isn't only me who is listening to all the crap inside my head...

from a session Hege (my puks) and I did a few weeks ago

Thursday is as good a day as any to start and so I downloaded "windows live write", which promises all kind of blogging ease, including putting my pictures in the correct place, I will once again attempt to bring my blogging to life.