Fiinix Design, Blog

The Frustrations of Web Design

2012-02-17T01:49:00.001+02:00

Yes, it's been quite a while. And this will alas not be a very long post. So basically here's the ~~short~~ long story..

Got some very nice feedback on my website, and some not so nice.. well actually.. the feedback was still nice, the website, not so much. Yes, it was a bit rushed — coincidently the revised version turned a bit rushed at the end too — and so I it didn't scale very well. In fact, it didn't scale at all. Browsing on pretty much anything smaller than 1680x1050 cut parts of the content of and you couldn't scroll. A pretty piss poor web design job from a web designer in other words. So what did I learn from that? A lot as it turns out. But mostly the importance of planning, as always. So I decided to revise my website, which in this case meant, more or less starting over from scratch, as far as coding was concerned. So I did, with a clear goal in mind. I had to be responsive — a bit of a buzzword I know — and it had to be more awesome. So what was my glorious battle plan you ask? Simple.

Re-design it so that Fiinix Design will scale and flow from the smallest of handheld (but mostly smart phones) to the largest of FullHD desktop displays.

Design it so it will also scale in that particular order.. from small to large. Many responsive design advocates show you how to add media-queries so that a website will scale down and re-position itself, hiding elements as the viewport shrinks. My idea (but I am not alone in this idea) was to design a website that scales up instead. Add things, like a huge background image whenever the viewport is so big that the added http request is negligible.

If you can't see it, you shouldn't have to load it. I forbade myself from using display: none anywhere.
Use as much semantic HTML as possible. Use things like Adjacent Sibling Selectors to target elements instead of classes and id's.

I also considered using SVG images wherever possible, but the size difference was minimal^[1] and at least my smart phones browser doesn't seem to support SVG. But I will keep my eyes open for it anyway. If there's support enough for it, the increased quality is reason alone to make the transition.

A part of the base grid was built from the foundation of the work of Andy Taylor, kudos to him, although not much remains of his code.

So, how did my plan pan out? Pretty nicely actually, apart from the IE's refusal to work with min-width's and such, rectified using Scott Jehl's awesomely light respond.js and some minor hiccups I still have to resolve like my hosts iframe versus something. I'm going to test it on other mobiles too, like Windows Phone 7 (please, beije?) and Iphone 4 but.. well.. so far, so good.

For those of you how are curious, the address is as usual fiinixdesign.eu, but for mobile users you are going to have to go straight to http://asphinx.danmed.co.uk/ until I have resolved whatever the issue is.

1. 43.3 KB for an SVG image versus 47.4 KB for a web-optimized PNG. SVGZ clocked in at a minuscule 17.6 KB but I couldn't even get it to show up in Firefox.

Job Hunting and Me

2012-01-06T16:06:00.001+02:00

I'm being busy hunting for a job in the UK, remember? I talked about it last time. Which is why I must confess that there won't be a whole lot of posting (again) for the time being.. yeah I know.. it's a shame, but I need to keep focused with one eye on the goal at all times. And obviously being that focused takes time and energy..

But here's a playlist with some awesome tunes from e.g. Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman to keep you entertained whilst you wait.

Come Take Me!

2011-12-31T18:11:00.000+02:00

The time has come again to summarize the year that has passed. You know? The part where I tie up all the loose ends that I have created in this past year, because I am apparently pretty good at that. So here we go..

January
I started selling a few (13) t-shirts at shotdeadinthehead.com, and all was well for some time. In November I stopped selling them for a couple of different reasons. It mostly boiled down to two main reasons; I wasn't comfortable giving away the design rights and I felt like shotdeadinthehead.com was not as transparent in answering the questions that I had. No hard feelings, the time my tees was there was nice and it was if nothing else a very learning experience. They sold a total of 48 tees of my design, so to those 48 people out there who bought them. I don't know who you are, but thanks..

February
I got married. It's awesome, my wife is awesome.. we're all just a bunch of awesome fuckers!
On a different note, Sacky hasn't been very helpful.. but mostly because I forgot I even had him.

March
I got the splendid idea to read 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, as in I wouldn't read the book that summarizes all of the other books, but to actually read them all. So far I haven't gotten further than about four of them but that's mostly because of a lack of trying. I can read a couple of hundred pages in a couple of hours, but I just haven't really read that much these past months. But at least I don't have to think about what to read.. ever again.

April
Ordered "Build your own Ukulele kit". Today is the 31st of Decemeber.. and I still haven't decided what colour to paint it. So yeah, not a lot to say there. My son likes his though and actually "plays" on it semi-frequently.. it always warms my heart when we play guitar together even though we're both "kind of" bad at it. I'm better than him.. obviously, I have played for 10+ year.. he's had it for 6+ months.. and also he's three. But he might get there someday given enough encouragement and personal interest. No rush.
Also.. Sad Laptop becomes too sad and dies and Samsung teases me by withholding it's updates.

May
We move to a new apartment.. because the old one has too expensive to live in with only one income. And I have my eyes opened to the wonderful world of coffees, which I then talk about.. a lot. And then a little more. So I won't do that now. But that reminds me that I still have a few double-blind studies to do.

June
I turned 28.. I think.. I am 28, aren't I? No wait.. 27, yeah.. that sounds about right. Someone correct me if they know, I am actually not really sure.
Went fishing with Ted Bundy and Jerry Brudos (names adjusted to be be funnier).
Uploaded a song I had made years, but no one seemed to care.
Talked about coffee.

July
July was pretty uneventful it seems. My son turned three and I started shaving with single blade razors. Oh yeah, and someone visited my blog by searching google with the phrase "free slutcocking movies".. oh gawd.. Mr. Internet, you perv.. you still make me laugh.
Talked about coffee.

August
Built an acoustic stomp box that did not work, got bored with it, forgot about it and haven't looked at it since. Started learning MySQL so that I could code a new statistics tracking website for our NHL playing. Finished it in September and it's awesome. To date we have 439 games tracked with a total of 2440 goals made. Which I think is quite a feat, considering there's only 11 of us, and about 8 of those are active players. You can check out the documenation at my flickr account.
I also performed at this year Night of the Arts, at Föregångarna as usual. With mostly my own material, which was a lot of fun. You decide if I suck or not.

September
I made two books for my wife for her birthday. When I say made, I mean I didn't write them, but pretty much everything else.. sort of. Never mind, read about it here and you'll get the picture. My Movie Genre Posters also expanded their horizons and so I wrote a bit more about them.

October
In October I realised how many games there were that I had wanted to play but hadn't and got right to it by playing LIMBO, which consequently scared the ever-still breathing crap out of me, but in a good way. Then I had some of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world and thought it was "meh".

November
www.fiinixdesign.eu finally got it's well earned overhaul when I redesigned and recoded the entire website. I am actually thinking about revising the design still, but I haven't decided if I am going through with it. I also tried to make an ass of myself on national tv by auditioning for Finland's Idols, but the judging panel just said "Thanks, but no thanks..". So my glory-story was cut pretty short. Idols starts airing tomorrow by the way, but I think the Vaasa Auditions won't air until a couple of weeks more. I will update as soon as I know more. The sculpted doll I started on some time ago was finally a bit closer to being ready, so I of course posted some pictures of it. And I talked about coffee.. again.

December
And so we finally arrive at December, which is right now. At least for a couple of hours, then it's "Bye bye 2011" and "Hello the year that comes after 2011". I didn't blog much in December and when I did it was mostly incoherent ramblings that already doesn't even make that much sense to me.

Not really that many loose ends to tie up though it seems.

Two things though that I suppose one could call big deals.. (I'm being sarcastic towards myself). My new surname is now Eriksson, because.. well.. I changed it, so did my wife and our son. So henceforth we shall be known as The Eriksson Family.. it feels kind of nice to have a collective identifier. The other thing is that I have as of yesterday, officially started looking for a job in the UK, because we're planning on moving there as soon as possible. So if anyone wants a passionate and outside of the box thinking designer, here I am, come take me!

Can I Stick My Head In It?

2011-12-28T14:23:00.000+02:00

Apparently this is 2011's hot Christmas item. For people who can't afford more expensive wine but like to make their neighbours think they can.. or something like that I suppose. Does it actually work? Beats me, I haven't tried it.. I'm obviously not going to try it.. because I can think of better things to spend $59.99 on.

Allegedly it uses the power of magnets to realign the particles in your beverages. Or some similar mumbo jumbo (colour me sceptical) like that and according to about half of the review, "It totally works!".. the other half obviously being more towards the "bah humbug!" attitude. If anyone I know ever happens to buy one, I will so 'effin try it.. and let you know.. double blind study -style, of course. I didn't even know SkyMall was an actual real place (references in "How I Met Your Mother", episode "The Goat") until I read about this "Wine and Liquor Accelerator" -thingy.. that honestly.. looks a bit like a triple headed masturbation aid tool. Just imagine it without the wine glass.

Someday, when my morals have gone even further down the drain and I feel a strong urge to make reality of the saying "A fool and his money are soon parted" I will invent the DeAger 3000! And I will spell it intentionally with an exclamation mark. It will be a machine that prevents decay (both physical and mental).. you know.. "ageing".. using the awesome powers of make believe and unicorn farts.

Pre-order now, for your Deluxe DeAger 3000!, including a small dose of my own farts for a limited time only.

Yet I can't help but wonder, if it does work.. what happens if you stick your head in it?

Silence Fills The Empty Grave

2011-12-26T18:27:00.000+02:00

And well.. other deep things people might say to desperately grab someone's attention when they have just neglected to blog for a while, feel bad about it but don't see things changing any time soon. All in due time my friends, all in due time. And it nothing else, hopefully by the time I have more time to post something longer than a few sentences, I will also come bearing good exciting news.. but as of right now. No, not so much. I promise I will tell you all there is to tell about my audition for Idols and everything else I have neglected to share in these past two-ish months. But alas, as things are looking right now (for reasons I won't say here) I will probably not tell much until next year. Luckily for you (all seven of you) that's like under a week. But a lot can happen in less than a week, life changing things even.. which probably makes it sound more dramatic than it is. But at least I think it's a bit life changing.. maybe not "I'm dying of a rare congenital condition and only have two weeks to live" -dramatic.. but dramatic nonetheless. So if you wouldn't mind, bare with me a little while longer. And hopefully you won't end up being disappointed by the end of it..

At least I have started being more active at twitter lately. Even though most of the crap I write there is probably of very little interest to anyone. For those of you curious enough.. here you go.

One last things now that I think about it. A promise to my future self, the start of next year shall bring light to darkness, no matter the outcome.. okay? Okay. That's a promise, and I try to keep the few promises I make.

It Can Play Crysis 2!

2011-12-17T11:47:00.000+02:00

Say hello to Open Cloud Gaming Platform from Gaikai. Yeah, that's what they call it, so that's what I'm calling it too. What does it all mean for us mortals? It 'effin means that you can play Crysis 2.. in your browser, right now.. for free. Sure it's just a demo, but considering that back in 2007 most people's computer couldn't even play Crysis, albeit on awesome graphical settings. Now in the future of 2011, soon to be 2012, you can play Crysis 2 in your browser. The future is looking pretty awesome isn't it?

You can also play e.g. Bulletstorm, which is actually a game I have wanted to try so obviously I seized the opportunity to do so. Am I going to buy it? No, it didn't really seem like my kind of game in the end, although the "Kill with Skill" does seem like a fun concept. It just felt a bit too ADHD for me.

So what are you waiting for?! Go, right now, and try any or all the games listed in their showcase. Because you can. Except for both The Sims games, which seemed to be region locked for now.. of course.. because I wanted to show my wife that she could try The Sims: Medieval.

Disclaimer: I know there are graphical differences between Crysis and Crysis 2 making my comparison a very unfair one, but just go with it anyway. It's still pretty cool that you can play it.. in your browser baby!

Another Inactive Friday

2011-12-16T22:38:00.001+02:00

So yeah. Another Friday with a severe lack of posts from yours truly. I know, I know.. I should be ashamed. And I am.. well.. a little at least. But not enough for it to warrant an actual post. This is more of an "I'm sorry for the lack of posts" -post. Are things going to get better at some point? Of course. Is it going to be in this year? Hopefully, but possibly not. Things are very hectic right now to say the least. Yeah it's Christmas time which always makes my wife depressed.. so there's that. Things are also stressful at work because it's the rush season right now. On top of that I am currently looking for a job in the UK because we're going to move there within the next couple of months or sooner. At least that's plan. That's why I felt the need to give my website a make-over.. well.. that and the fact that it was about time it got a make-over. Anyway. I'm stressed and as such, my blog will probably continue to be a bit inactive for a couple of weeks.

That's all for now, Goodnight and sweet lucid dreaming.

A Tiny Little Concept

2011-12-09T23:58:00.001+02:00

A posted some concept pictures of an XBMC Skin I'm for now calling 'Offset', for lack of a more clever name. The pictures are on my flickr account where I go by the name fiinix. If you can find me, consider the pictures your well-earned reward. That's all for now. Bye.

Code Twice, Upload Thrice

2011-12-05T19:33:00.001+02:00

And so the time has finally come to launch the recode and well.. obviously.. redesign of fiinixdesign.eu. Internally I'm calling this one "volume 15" but it's more in the region of # 37 at least. But probably even more than that, I lost count a few years ago when I switched from calling them "version" to "volume". Anyway, that's not why you are here, so without any further ado / I have a lot to do today and for the not so distant future so don't expect things to get more active here. Yeah, I know, I know.. you're getting all emotional about it but you're just going to have to make do for now and hopefully as things calm down a bit I can get more active at blogging (not a proper verb I know) again.

So yeah, until then. Feel free to check out my redesign and as always, comments are more than welcomed unless they're crappy, in which I will obviously pretend you're not there.

Until then, don't do anything I wouldn't do.

I uploaded it three times, because I kept forgetting a analytics tracker!

Indie Game Music Bundle

2011-11-25T11:15:00.001+02:00

Do, seriously check this out, it's the Indie Game Music Bundle. Pay $1 or more and get 10 albums. Pay $10 or more and you get 7 more bonus albums. Only today though, so quickly quickly! There's some really awesome soundtracks there. No Bastion though, which made me a little sad, but it's still quite a bang for buck!

I already own two of the soundtracks, but I couldn't resist. I'm still a dirty dirty pirate, I just want to at the very least, try to support a concept that I very much approve of, which is to make it easier and more gratifying to buy something than it would be to download it illegally.

Measure Twice, Code Once

2011-11-22T23:11:00.001+02:00

I'm rebuilding and redesigning my website, hence the lack of blogging. My coffee beans arrived today, I will "review" them later. I have another fun blind-study that I plan on doing as soon as I have the time. And I will of course, share more about my Idols audition experience. So yeah, I think that's it right now. Not a lot to read I know, but bear (Grrrr!).. bare with me. Until then.. let me delight your ear canals with the wonderful musings of Stephen Lynch, an oh so talented musician hailing from Abington.

Don't listen to this if you're easily offended.

Thanks But No

2011-11-18T18:12:00.001+02:00

So yeah. I didn't make it through. That's that, I going to blog more about maybe tomorrow or something but right now I actually don't have the time to blog about it. But there's stories to share, and I will share them, I promise you that much..

I sang Accidents Can Happen by Sixx A.M. for those who are interested. I would embed it, but it was disabled for the official video so this one will have to do. But stay tuned for more stories and pictures.

A Looming Embarrassment

2011-11-16T20:50:00.001+02:00

This Friday I am going to audition for Idols. I mentioned it briefly in Updates and a Pumpkin and because.. well.. I have no shame I suppose I now doing it again. How will it go? What will I sing? Only time can tell. Well time.. and me.. since I have now decided what to sing.. but because I partly want to be sneaky and partly I am curious to see what the judges think first (assuming I get that far) I won't actually tell you what song it is just yet.

So yeah.. the whole "assuming I get that far" -part.. apparently one sings in front of some producers or something on the first day and then they decide right there if you get to sing in front of the judges and cameras the following day. Which basically means you might not get to see me on TV at all. Now you know that, so don't get our hopes up too much, there are a lot of very very talented people out there.. much more talented than I am at singing, but "Hey!".. I have to give it a shot don't I?

I sat for quite a while trying to figure out what to sing. First I figured that I should obviously sing something whilst playing guitar.. (day one of thinking).

Day two (of thinking). Oh.. I should sing one of my own songs.. sort of a double advertising for myself. Who knows.. if they don't like my singing they might like my songwriting.. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

Day two (1 ½ hours later). I finally decided.. on.. not singing any of my own songs.. and to not play guitar. So there we have it. Whichever way it goes I will let you know what I sang on Friday. And again, who knows maybe if I make it through you can watch it later in early 2012 when it airs. I won't be able to watch it because we don't have the possibility of receiving digital broadcasting signals. So what I'm saying is, would anyone mind recording it? If I do manage to get the judges and they do decide to air me singing.

That's it.. I'm done for the day. [insert clever catchphrase here]

Awaiting Shipment

2011-11-14T18:13:00.000+02:00

I just ordered some Costa Rica Perla Negra, Natural Organic via UK and now I'm waiting in anticipation for what it's going to be like. I try to make a habit out of not reading reviews or cupping notes beforehand. That way I can try to feel what I think about the coffee first, before my opinion gets "tainted" by actual experts at cupping.

Yes, it's called cupping.. but not the boob kind if that's what you were thinking.. or maybe that's just me?

I'll let you know ones I have had a taste. If nothing else, it gets the award for longest name so far.

On a different note, I have had time to play a little Batman: Arkham City.. but not enough to make a judgement yet. At least the beginning was exciting and gripping, kudos to Rocksteady Studios for (at least in my humble opinion) surpassing themselves in regards to the "intro". Especially considering that the "intro" for Batman: Arkham Asylum was quite good too.. But "Damn!" the introduction for BAC was better. I can't wait for when I have an hour or two of spare time so that I can continue to explore this fenced of part of Gotham.

I was also thinking about making an, sort of, educational post about coffee. Less of my own opinions and more of facts oriented, the very basics of coffee so to speak.. a little history and whatnot. I could call it "Coffees of the World, part Three Deux" but I will probably call it something else.

Would anyone be interested in that?

The Freshness Conundrum

2011-11-12T11:06:00.001+02:00

Sorry if I came of too much as an elitist asshole back in Jamaican Blue Meh by the way. Whilst I do stand by my opinions I could have probably expressed them more delicately. I haven't edited the earlier post and I won't because I feel that would be more hypocritical than just letting it stay there as a testament to a part of my sometimes less charming personality.. or more charming? Or something like that. Why bring it up now instead of three weeks ago? Well, because once again.. it's coffee time!

First things first though as this is probably one of those things I could have clearer and more delicate about. Coffee and the experience of drinking coffee is highly subjective. Wait.. not just highly.. it's just subjective. That's it. You're entitled to your opinion and I'm entitled to mine, no one can argue vice versa.. but.. and here's the little tiny minuscule but. There is still a difference in quality between what you might be drinking and what I might be drinking and we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking there isn't. Oh what the hell.. I'll make a metaphor.. because.. well.. I like doing metaphors..

Both of these cars will get you where you need to go. In which one do you think you will enjoy the ride more?

Again.. like I said.. both of those cars will get you where you need to go. And some people might even in all honesty prefer the first one (Juhla-Mokka type coffee) even after having tried the second one, and no one has the right to argue with that. You know what you like.. simple as that. But we should at least be able to agree that there is a significant difference in quality between the two. Or maybe that is part of the problem? To be able to agree to that, one would at the same time be, sort of, confessing that "Yes, what I like is sub-par to what you like on a general quality-scale". Why is that a bad thing?

I can confess that my (not metaphorical cars now, but real ones) favourite car of all time that I would like to own someday is a Volkswagen Type 2, T1 "Camper".

Now I am well aware that this is not quality. It just isn't. But I still absolutely love this one and would like to own one that I can then restore to awesome (subjective) condition. So there you go.. the "Camper" isn't better, in terms of quality, than the Mercedes Benz SL500.. but given a choice between the those two cars.. from those two pictures.. I would take the "Camper". Not because it's objectively better but because it's subjectively "better".

So in closing. What I am basically saying, is that I'm sorry I called the coffee you drink "grandma's armpit sweat". I have never tried any grandma's armpit sweat so I don't actually know what that tastes like and should have used a more fitting euphemism. You like.. well.. whatever coffee you might like and I like Genuine Antigua, Dark Roast, 30 sec bloom + 210 sec extraction.. and that's totally okay.. for both of us.

The Freshness Conundrum? Huh? Oh right.. I have realised that I can tell a difference between a three day roast and a 10 day roast. Which means that soon I am going to have to start roasting myself, so that I can maintain freshly roasted coffee. The prospect of this is both exciting and "a bummer" for the same reason; Things have only begun to get complex in terms of coffee making.

My wife apparently knew this day would come.

Have You Seen My Goblin?

2011-11-11T19:23:00.001+02:00

If you haven't already seen my Goblin.. well, you will have by the end of this post. This is a project I actually started almost two years ago.. at least according to the date on the folder I created when I was searching the internet for inspiration. This is one of those inspirational pictures.

From this and some other pictures and the power of my awesome and huge brain I created.. well what you'll see down below. Which alas is not even finished yet but I did manage to get a little detail painting done yesterday. I was going to glue back one of the arms but we were all out of glue sticks.. damn it, so that will have to wait for another day. We (read: my wife) get through an insane amount of glue sticks.. I wonder if one could get sponsored by whoever makes those divine thermoplastic adhesives? Well.. Anyway. Here you go, two (very) WIP (work in progress) pictures of my goblin doll "Clem". He's supposed to become, once he's done, a shaman of some sort. Weighting in at 450 grams and standing 36 cm tall.

I'm actually very pleased with how he has turned out so far. The goal was to see if I could create much much more detailed hands, feet and head than before. Which I apparently totally can. And as usual, sculpted parts made from Sculpey III with an skeleton made from wire.

I still need to paint the eyes.. as soon as I can decide what eye-colour he should have.

The End of Tees

2011-11-03T22:01:00.001+02:00

Last month I shared about how shotdeadinthehead.com wanted me to sign a Customer Design Suggestions Agreement in regards to my t-shirt designs. I of course sent them some follow-up questions I had. But first things first.. the agreement was pretty cut and dry in the end.. when I finally understood it, which was sort of my issue to begin with.. as I had difficulties understanding all of the technical law-terms. But the gist was pretty much this. They pay me a commission on every sold t-shirt, something they had been doing all along. They get the rights to my designs. If we ever part ways, they still pay me(?) and they designs are still theirs.

Now that last part irked me a bit since I was/am keen to retain the rights, if nothing else than at least get the rights back when they no longer sell my designs.

But in end, we (as in me and David from shotdeadinthehead.com) reached a mutual understanding where.. well.. my designs are no-longer for sale. For a couple of reasons actually, but I'm not really sure if it's okay that I divulge all of them out of respect to the other party.

So.. for now.. this is the end of tees. My t-shirts are no longer available for sale. It's a sad day for everyone I'm sure, as you all have come to love my awesome t-shirts and you might be wondering how you will survive without them. Well.. I would hate to be the bearer of bad news.. but you probably won't survive without them. Unless you hunt down the few people that have them... and kill them.

I wonder how many times people stumble on this blog whilst, well for example, looking for porn and instead find these rambling.. I wonder how many of those, don't actually understand that I'm being sarcastic.

Anyway. In the past 9 months and 13 days since I first started selling t-shirts I have sold a total of 48 t-shirts. That's like one t-shirt every 143th hours. So yes, it's a little sad that they are no longer selling them but at the same time this gives me an awesome opportunity to improve on the original designs, make them even better and then maybe sell them from some other place.

Until then.. oh how I wait for the day when I'm walking around somewhere and I suddenly see someone wearing a t-shirt that I designed.

The "Let the game begin" -design.

Goodnight and Sweet Dreams

2011-11-01T23:07:00.000+02:00

Updates and a Pumpkin

2011-10-31T22:38:00.000+02:00

So, yeah. In the same spirit as last year I keep insisting on not actually doing the Happy Halloween post until it actually is Halloween. But I ranted enough about it last year so I won't do it this time. Anyway. Not a lot of things to update you with this time I'm afraid. The missus and me had an (hopefully) awesome Halloween-themed party this Saturday. I got drunk enough to think I could stand on my hands.. which I of course can't. So I sprained my thumb or something. Needless to say, it hurts and I'm a little wiser.. a.k.a I know not to do that again, because well.. my motor skills aren't that great apparently. Anything else?

I have procured Batman: Arkham City some days ago too. I haven't had time to play it yet though so I'll have to get back to you when I have. But I am looking forward to it, and really want to try it soon, it's such a pain in the ass to avoid spoilers when roughly half of the websites I visit frequently are game-related. The other half being "stuff" (porn).

I'm also participating in Idols this year, because well.. they made it so east that I simply can't say no.. that and a friend asked me to join her. Also, how often will I get the chance to make an ass of myself on national TV?

That's it.. now go away! We're done here.. I have "stuff" to do..

Nah, I'm kidding.. I still have pictures to show you. This years pumpkin in all it's edited glory. Kudos to beije and his photography skills for the first picture in it's original state. I obviously added the pumpkin, which is why it looks to out of place.

Bow before your almighty ruler and king, Sir Pumps-a-lot!

Happy Effin' Halloween!

I am Batman!

2011-10-25T23:30:00.002+03:00

Well.. obviously not. But I so totally could be.. if it wasn't for all the money he has, that I don't have. And the persistence to fight crime and injustice, whereas I am a bit more indifferent to that at times. Yeah, and also the upper body strength.. of which I have none. But if it weren't for those, and all the other various things—read Batcave—that he has and I don't, I could totally be Batman.

Although I could probably pull off an equally bad imitation of the "I am Batman!" -voice as Christian Bale's original bad imitation.. Or maybe I shouldn't judge so harshly. Don't get me wrong, I really really enjoyed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two films that thankfully did away with the campy humour and tried to portray a glimpse of the very deranged nature of someone who dresses up as bat. Many kudos to Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale for that. And obviously all the other people who participated in making it enjoyable to watch Batman again. Joel, you go back to your corner of shame.. you really ruined it for everyone.

But despite the fact that I really liked the new Batman films (as well as some of the older—Tim Burton—ones) I can not get over the fact that the gravely voice Mr. Bale did just feels.. well.. a bit wrong.. a bit, well.. I was expecting him to start coughing at any second and excuse himself to blow his batnose or something. Kevin Conroy is still, in my humble mind, the one and only Batman voice.

Speaking of.. I really want to buy Batman: Arkham City, it came out last Friday and I had totally forgotten about it. I must have it. Soooooon.

Jamaican Blue Meh

2011-10-19T23:49:00.001+03:00

Expanding my horizons and consequentially my world map of coffees I recently had the utmost pleasure as well as the "meh" experience of drinking two new coffee beans that was not in my original "Coffees of the World" -series. Links here, here and here.. for those that either don't know what the hell I'm talking about or those of you who just want to have their memory refreshed.

Since I started that journey I have not been able to look back, nor would I want too. I can't fathom drinking the piss-poor excuse we (Finnish people) usually have as coffee any more. I just can't. It's a bit odd though if you think about it since we (Finnish people again) annually according to studies drink the most coffee per capita. We're beating Norway for the first place with our 12,0 kg per year versus their 9,9 kg. By comparison USA only drinks 4,2 kg (27th place) annually and in the UK they drink a measly 2,8 kg per year and thus place themselves 47th on the list. So yeah.. we consume the most coffee in the world, yet most of them—excluding myself on this one—drink the equivalent of your grandma's armpit sweat. They drink the extract from that thing that you get stuck between your toes when you have worn your socks for too long. I just realised that there's probably fetish-sites for both those things, but I'm too scared of searching on Google to find out.

Seriously, all the metaphors aside.. they drink..quite simply.. inferior coffee. Why? But I shouldn't paint the devil on the wall too much now, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. By simply observing the increasing selection of coffees in the supermarket, it is noticeable that people are buying more "exotic" brands, not just the pre-ground *cough Juhla Mokka cough*. Obviously I say "exotic" because they are not that much more fancy but "Hey", you gotta start somewhere I suppose.

Holy shit I sound the like the biggest douche ever. Or something like that, maybe.. Point being, by all means, feel free to drink whatever you like the most and I won't judge you any more then you judge me. Fine if you really.. (really?) like pre-ground store bought coffee. Who am I to say you shouldn't, simply because I couldn't any more. But just don't fool yourself into thinking it's good coffee, it just isn't. But it's okay to like "less-than-good" coffee and it obviously doesn't make you into a worse person for that. As long as you don't try to make me drink it of course, in which case I'll berate you for 30 minutes.

Anyway, enough about that now. I was going to to tell you about my pleasure and "meh".

Today, I had a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain [LK]. For those of you that have no clue what that is—I pity you—let me fill you in quickly with this copy-paste quote from it's Wikipedia link;

"Over the last several decades, this coffee has developed a reputation that has made it one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world".

So there you go. The verdict; With low acidity and an okay smoothness to it, it's by no means a bad coffee. A clear wooden sort of texture and taste to it. But also quite "meh", as in not particularly awesome either means I also didn't think this was a good coffee. Will have it again? Of course, I can't base everything on just one cup, even though I'm doing that now. Besides I still have 80 more grams of it, and I do plan to get the most out it. If I change my mind and raise or lower it's score, I will let you all know. But for now, the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain is just going to have to settle for a 3+.

The other one I have tried recently, that was originally a surprise for myself, is Genuine Antigua, Dark Roast [RV]. How does one surprise oneself? Simple. I just picked a random jar of beans and decided to go with that. Well, lucky me as it turned out that I had just discovered a new favourite, with plenty of aromas of chocolate and other stuff I can't quite put my finger on yet, this is a definitive 5. I am also thinking about making this my "Roast my own beans" -bean. Well, at least my first bean as I am sure I will have more at some point. But I have been looking for the bean will get to take my roasting virginity, and I think this one is it. I seriously loved everything about this bean.

So yeah. I think that's it for now. Next on my "to-drink" -list is Kopi Luwak, the famous poop-coffee. So stay tuned for that, whenever it may be.

The Afterlife Is a Harsh Mistress

2011-10-16T23:13:00.003+03:00

or "How I realised there's lot of games I have to play". Examining some of my earlier posts, for instance this one, dating as far back as May, 2010 I realised that there's actually quite a number of games of my "to-play" -list that I still haven't gotten around to. Although in the "Games, I'm eagerly awaiting.." I have played two of those. And sort of reviewed them too. Here's the one for Fable III, and here I talked about Halo: Reach. But I will be the first to admit that the one for Halo: Reach has almost not even a review, at least in comparison to proper real reviews. Good thing I'm not comparing myself then.

Anyway. So yeah.. what about the other two games on that previously mentioned list of mine?, I pretend you ask. Well.. Batman: Arkham City is coming out next weekend, and my bat-penis is still very stiff about that. I have given it some thought as to whether I should buy it right away, or not, but I haven't decided yet. And as for Fallout: New Vegas I promised myself I would wait until they release an edition that contains all the DLC's and since that hasn't happened yet.. I'm still waiting. For good reasons though as they just released the final DLC "Lonesome Road" a couple of weeks ago or so, so maybe I'm coming to the end of my waiting.

Of course there's been other games along the road as well. Such as Alice: Madness Returns, which I really should try to acquire. Then there was Dead Island that gave me a raging zomboner™ (zombie boner, pay royalties every time you use it) but failed to live up to its own trailer. Now, don't get me wrong, the game as it stands seems to be quite good. But I was hoping for an emotional survival story about a family torn apart by the outbreak of zombies.. or something like that. And unfortunately in all it's 4-player-co-op-melee-fest glory, Dead Island was not what I hoped and wanted when I first saw the announcement trailer. Which is too bad, because if someone makes that game, I will shower them in all my hard earned money. Or well.. at least the appropriate retail amount.

This brings me nicely to LIMBO, released originally on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010 and then later for Windows and PS3. Here, do yourself a favour and go buy it on Steam right away. It's fucking worth it just to consume your hard-drive space. I was eager to play this and since I realised how many games I had been waiting for, yet not played yet, this is where I started. Limbo is awesome! It's creepy.. it's scary and unfamiliar. It teaches you the ropes through failure.. hard, deadly failure in it's gruesomest form. Although I actually had a chuckle at one of my many deaths. And not to spoil anything but I will tell you about this death of mine.

In my path was a stone-block of sort hanging mid-air. On the ground under that block there was a semi-clearly marked protrusion indicated a button of sort, and yes, sure enough, the idea was that I had to jump on top of that button so that the stone-block wouldn't fall down and brutally murder me. Took me two deaths to figure that out. Managing to not get myself killed I pranced onwards with my journey only to notice an identical looking contraption ahead. Same looking stone-block. Same protrusion on the ground. So I of course pranced in my merriness and proceeded to jump on to the button. Only to have to stone-block come rushing down and brutally murdering me. Haha, Limbo, you get me good there! Turns out.. First stone-block, jump ON button to avoid certain doom. Second stone-block, DON'T jump on button to avoid certain doom. Pretty sneaky of them. But it exemplifies Limbo perfectly. Because the entire world you are in, is out to murder you as much as it can. No puzzle is exactly the same, so don't expect things to get predictable. The only thing you can know with absolute certainty is that if it doesn't get you murdered the first time, it will keep on coming until it does.

LIMBO gets 5 shit-stained underpants out of 5. Check out the in-game teaser if you don't believe me.

Permission Required

2011-10-15T21:03:00.000+03:00

So. Sometimes I get these weird ideas to challenge myself. Sometimes it out of sheer boredom.. other times I feel stagnated in my creativity and forcing myself to be creative under pressure forces me to not censor myself as much. A sort of "Go with the flow" type of thinking I suppose.. or something, let's not get too deep and thinky. Usually the result is sub-par at best, in other words, not something I would post generally speaking. But. And it's a big butt.. I figured that maybe I should, with the whole not censoring myself in mind and all. And since I did get permission from the motif himself, I had even more reasons to post this.

So here goes. I challenged myself to dust of my Wacom Graphire 4XL and do a portrait of a friend with a size of 50x70cm @ 300 dpi. I only got to use two base colors (sort of). And after 45 minutes I had to stop, regardless of what it looked like. I do generally like to work quickly anyway, but 45 minutes for a portrait at a time when I haven't done anything like that in months, maybe even years, is quite a challenge. Not being able to correct any mistakes I might discover after the time has expired, was even more difficult.

Many thanks to beije, whom so graciously "volunteered" for this little experiment. Once I get the hang of this I promise I will do a better portrait, one that does you justice. Instead of one where you have creepy teeth. So, what I'm trying to say is "I'm sorry 'bout the creepy teeth, I'll do better next time".

Before.

After.

Freudman

2011-10-14T22:24:00.000+03:00

I don't really have anything to say at the moment. So I figured I would enlighten your Friday with a Freudman.. trademark pending.. Let's not make this a regular thing though, I know how you all hate it when I start repeating myself.. and I'm not a fan of that either so it's cool with me.

Inflammable!

2011-10-10T19:32:00.000+03:00

So in light of yesterdays promise, I thought (for a change) I would actually keep that promise. Here's a picture of yesterdays t-shirt project. The design is from the maybe to-be card "Inflammable!"—or Flammable!.. I haven't apparently decided yet—from my board game project "Island of Eternity". What?

Oh, yeah, I'm still working on that, with "creative" breaks here and there. At this point it does seem a bit ironic that I have (almost) always called it "Island of Eternity", for well.. for obvious reasons. This November it will have been in development for 4 years. Hmm.. maybe at some point I could do "Where it all started" for IoE? Who knows, someone might find it interested to see how it's evolved as time has gone by? Or maybe I'm just deluding myself?

Either way.. until then (whenever that may be) here's the picture I promised. Pretty awesome ye? Somehow it lends itself quite nicely to be put on a t-shirt.. merchandise possibilities perhaps? But for another day obviously.

I Was Totally Going To

2011-10-09T23:19:00.001+03:00

I was totally going to blog about the awesome t-shirt I made earlier today. But I got too tired and I have to get up early tomorrow to go to work.. like every weekday I suppose, but still. So what this all mean for my many fans.. (all six of you) Well, obviously.. there won't be a picture in this post. But I'll try my best get one up tomorrow. On a completly different note, I also played a little Minecraft again today. I finally got OpenGL 2.0+ to work on my stationary computer. Earlier I only had 1.0, or something like that. Anyway.. point being. I couldn't play Minecraft before on my main computer, but now I can.. And it's even awesomeR with a capital R than I remembered. But for now and until another day. Good night..

So yeah.. I know I was totally going to, but I won't.

Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites

2011-10-08T11:46:00.001+03:00

Dubstep.. Something I can listen to and like, because.. let's face it, it goes nicely with my brain. But this, is just really really cool. Reminds me again, that upon hearing Dubstep properly for the first time, my fifth thought was "hmm.. how could I do this with an acoustic guitar?". Well, Pinn Panelle gets closer to that then I have so far, so κῦδος (glory) to them. I found it to be mighty impressive.

Magic 45

2011-10-07T20:27:00.002+03:00

Woot woot! I have no sold 18 more tees. That makes the total a whopping 45 and brings me a couple of steps closer to that million I was talking about earlier. But no sun without a little rain. Now they need me to sign a Customer Design Suggestions Agreement, which seems (at least to my untrained mind) a bit foggy on the design rights area (which I wish to retain).. So, I'm going to have to think it over for a couple of days before I decide anything. If I don't sign it, my design will no longer be for sale at shotdeadinthehead.com, which would be a bit sad.

I'll probably let all (five) of you know what I decide. Obviously I might just be be my stupidity and everything is in the agreement, in black and white, clear as day.. but my inner sceptic is saying "this smells fishy..", and I have learned to trust in him even though he's wrong from times to times, because so far the statistics are still in his favour. But until clarity has been achieved here's.. again (yeah I know) the list of all my designs.. feel free to feed me by buying one (or fifty). But even if you don't where still awesome friends, so it's cool.

EDIT: Apparently some of the designs are already not available any more. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm going to see if I can find out why.

Freddy Krueger
Chucky
Alien/Xenomorph
Ghostface
Hannibal
Jason Vorhees
Bruce (Shark(s) from JAWS films...)
Billy (Puppet from the SAW films.. John Kramer is called Jigsaw, the puppet isn't)
Leatherface
Michael Myers
Pennywise
Pinhead
Predator

Three Point One

2011-10-04T13:20:00.000+03:00

For the impending deployment of version three point one I thought I would post some info here, as well as a link to the flickr set featuring all the latest and greatest screen shots of the web page. Go there why don't you, they're all in glorious 1280x720.. no cropping, no down-scaling.. in awesome 1:1 size. Enjoy!

Fixes
- Power Play % Algorithm corrected due to false inflation. Hover on stat for breakdown
- Rank classes simplified for better contrast. E.g. IV-A changed to insignia symbol
- "Ranks & Trophies" screen updated to reflect insignia instead of IV-A
- Passing % is calculated from ONE value only. Change from NHL 11 to NHL 12
- "Add Match" screen streamlined (too cluttered). Re-organised according to changes in NHL 12
- Added "exit;" clause to remove false error when adding match
- 1 vs 1 Stats. Adjusted background for symmetry

Features
- Recent games added
- 1 vs 1 Recent Games added
- Season 2009-2010 Comparison added
- Penalty Kill % stat, hover on stat for breakdown
- Shooting % stat
- Goals Against stat
- Back of card. Hover on "Games Played" for breakdown of number of games Home/Away
- A Brief History of NHL Stats. Gallery of previous versions of NHL Stats
- Surprise Feature (Card styles Modern/Vintage)
- Surprise Feature (4th Trophy Level for all trophies; Diamond Mask, Diamond Trophy & Diamond Whistle)

Skipped
- Rank Progression Chart, don't quite know how to do this one yet.

The Jersey (WIP)

2011-10-01T10:30:00.000+03:00

I have managed to get some work done on update 3.1 on our NHL Stats web page. I have just gotten Recent Games coded, so now that's working. Nothing is online yet obviously but I'll be sure to post an update when it is.

So what else is new? A couple of friends went a bit overboard with our NHL stuff.. and ordered Authentic NHL Jerseys from USA for over 200€.. To not be worse than them I figured.. hmm? Surely I can do something of roughly equal awesomeness for 20€.. So a quick stop at my local H&M store later I had a long sleeved t-shirt .. and slightly later still.. transfer paper to print on.. And as it turns out, yeah you can totally make some of almost equal awesomeness for roughly 20€. Sure, mine hasn't got an embroided logo on the front, but I don't mind that.. especially not at a 10th of the price.

Pics or didn't happen? Yupp, sure thing, as soon as it's done.. which it isn't.. not quite yet at least, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer.

Time To Kick Some Ass

2011-09-26T18:18:00.003+03:00

A) Because, this is a pretty kick ass song!

B) Because a dear friend of mine is in. Way to go Stein!

C) Also free advertisement for the Norwegian band BULK

D) Enjoy!

People Love My Stuff!

2011-09-24T20:55:00.001+03:00

Some time ago.. like over two years ago, I made some movie genre posters. Mostly because at the time there weren't any. I had/have XBMC running on an old Xbox 1 as my main source of awesome entertainment in the living room and decided that I wanted to have my movies sorted according to genres. So yeah, at the time there weren't any, because apparently people hadn't felt that need.. or some other reason.

So what did I do? Well obviously I made my own genre posters, figuring that at the very least than I could make them look like whatever I desired. And "The Reel, Movie Genre Posters" where born. I came up with that name recently, catchy isn't it? At that time I was quite an active member of the forum at xbmc.org so I happen to stumble upon someone asking about movie genre posters, some time after I had made them. I quickly posted a picture of them, wondering it they had something like this in mind? And suddenly a whole bunch of people started asking where I got those, and how they could get them too. Well, since I am a big fan of sharing.. I still am. I gave them what I had, which at that time was 15—in my mind "okay" looking posters—they loved them, apparently.

Encouraged by this I started thinking how I could improve them, since I had never made them for anyone but myself to begin with. I still remember playing around with some ideas in Photoshop using slightly differently styled film reel frames. It all felt a bit lacking. Then I started playing around with a more black and white look, thinking that it would be able to fit better with all the different skins that were available to XBMC.

So yeah.. my first experiment with less coloured ones looked like this, pretty crappy ey? I didn't like the text there, because it constricted the posters to English, but at the same time they seemed a bit lacking such a small picture. But at least I was getting closer. Then it hit me! Silhouettes, silhouettes would be very symbolic and also speak to people on a more primal level, no need for any text, the images themselves would say all that needed to be said.

And so, "The Silhouettes" were born. Again, catchy isn't it?

And this is what they looked like.. all 69 (current amount) of them. Yeah, I went a bit over-board and made significantly more of them this time, so there would be enough for most of the genres that exist. They were very well received and as such are now very much a part of many XBMC skins by default, which I think is totally awesome and I fully support it. Actually I think almost all the major skins for XBMC nowadays has my posters as default, if not The Silhouettes, they usually have The Reels. Which I made a template for and "digitalhigh", another member at XBMC forum expanded on my original concept of measly 15 posters, to the much better amount of 42. Kudos to you "digitalhigh"!

So.. if this was over two years ago, why talk about it now?

Because, not only do these posters have a wonderful home at XBMC.. They are more and more becoming the standard—to this day, I haven't seen any other genre posters other than the ones I have designed—in other media centers too. Which is just freaking unbelievable.. in an awesome way. As of September the 24th, my posters now officially have a home at mediaportal too. You can read about in the post "The Future is Here!". My name is totally in the article. So yeah, that's why I'm talking about it now, to shamelessly plug my own awesome-ness.

Interestingly enough, people still seem to like The Reels as much as they like The Silhouettes, which to me is a little odd though. Mostly because The Reels still feel a little like that weird cousin one is ashamed of, whilst The Silhouettes are my proud offspring.

Different strokes I suppose, but I'm still greatly honoured that they are so appreciated.

The Process

2011-09-23T17:36:00.000+03:00

So, the missus liked her book(s).. a lot.. unless she's lying of course. But for the sake of this post I'm going to assume she isn't. So yeah, surprise! She got "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, inspired by the the first edition, first printing of 1891. It's her favourite fictional book.. ever.

In that book, Dorian receives a book by Sir Henry Wotton.. allegedly—according to Oscar Wilde himself in his trial—that particular book is "À rebours" by J.-K. Huysmans, 1884. So naturally because I did tell you was going to put a book in her book.. dawg. I re-created "À rebours" as well. And based it on the first edition, first printing of that one as well.

Here's a huge picture of the basic progress because.. well you know the old saying, "A picture is worth more than a thousand words".. well.. Here's 9000 words for you. Not including the preface. My apologies for the final picture being kind of blurry and crappy.

Editors (still me) note: Yes, The Picture of Dorian Gray was technically first published in 20 June 1890, in the July issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. But, that one doesn't really have a book cover—so to speak—to base anything on, so I went with the first edition, first printing instead. However the book itself is still the 13 chapter non-revised edition. Not the 20 chapter edited for less homo-eroticism. So there. Enjoy the picture(s).

Often and Shorter

2011-09-19T18:21:00.000+03:00

Some time ago I had the lucky accident of buying single blade disposable razor blades, which I then obviously blogged about. Upon having blogged—you can shut up now Firefox, I get that "blogged" is not a proper verb, deal with it—about the aforementioned items I actually received some feedback and such, not here, but at "other" places—"other" being Facebook I am a little ashamed to admit, anyway...—where someone suggested that I could just as well boil my blades a little bit, no need to rinse them in alcohol.

So now today, I thought "Hey, I'm actually going to try that!". I mean, let's face it.. I am a cheap bastard and whenever I can cut corners on non-essentials, like for instance razor blades or proper sleep, I will gladly and haphazardly try out all sorts of things. That came out a little wrong but I trust you know what I mean. So obviously I boiled some razor blades when I got home from work. Umm.. yeah.. it didn't really work as awesomely as I had hoped. Who would have guessed that plastic, kind of melts and bends when exposed to high enough temperature? Oh, everyone?! Well I hadn't given that any thought at all. At least they made for a good laugh between me and the missus, who was a bit sceptical at the idea to begin with.

On a completely different note I have now also procured the last item required to make my Acoustic Stomp Box. So I suppose I really don't have any more excuses as to why I shouldn't finish it now. Damn it. Maybe that should the my little project for the day? Finish the Box so that I can disturb the neighbours in an entirely new way, like they don't get enough of the singing/guitar/ukulele/harmonica combo. Anyway. I thought I would keep this one short(er) for a change. Often and shorter will be my new blog motto.. that or.. well.. not.

Don't Tell My Wife

2011-09-18T11:39:00.000+03:00

My wife's birthday is coming up soon, and last year I felt a bit short on the whole present-giving. To be perfectly honest I can't even remember what I gave her—then again–neither can she so I suppose that's okay. But with that in mind I had a moment of clarity a couple of weeks ago, an epiphany if you will. The awesome-est birthday present ever! A present to make all the other presents feel inadequate and like they should not have let themselves go like that and maybe work out a bit more often or at least not eat so unhealthy all the time. As you might have already noticed I am quite pleased with myself this year. And not to blow my own phallic symbol too much but I should be, it is really that awesome. And the best part, is that I decided to go all meta on her ass... yeah, I thought that sounded weird too. Then again, saying "yo dawg, I heard you like books so I put a book in yo' book, so you can read while you read!" would sound weird too...

Actually, that wasn't so bad. Damn it. Either way, neither of them makes a lot of sense right now, but they will in a couple of days when all is revealed. Since she might read this I won't spoil it yet—which means—you and her will have to wait a little more.

Obviously she getting a book, that's not the secret. Neither is which book she's getting, because well you.. it's kind of pictured down below. It's everything that comes after and before that, that is the secret. Pretty sneaky ey?

Post-Launch

2011-09-17T10:00:00.003+03:00

So now it's been a week and a day since the launch of our new NHL Stats web page. And except for a minor bug where it insists that "You have missed one or more fields" when you add a match everything has been pretty smooth sailing. Why do I call that a minor bug I pretend you ask? Well, because it still adds a match to the database every time, so obviously I have just missed something in the echo loop. But I can get it fixed at the same time I do the update to the web page. Since it's not feature-complete anyway.. We suffered a mild case of premature launchulation. And like I already said, a couple of more features to come, some bug fixing, some minor cosmetic changes based on feedback but then that's it. I shouldn't have to do anything after that.. hopefully. Since a dear friend of mine—Ted Bundy—wanted me to make a post about how the launch party went, I thought I would do just that, right now.

Basically our plan for the weekend was pretty simple. Mr. Cruise would get of work at 19.00, so we would meet up shortly after that and start drinking and playing NHL12. Oh if things were only so easy, by 18.55 it was raining on a Biblical scale—I'm exaggerating for effect, but it was pretty bad—so much so, that there was no way in [insert religious place of punishment in the afterlife] that any of us were going to walk. Luckily for us though, we had more people joining our little get-together, so a semi-coordinated car ride later we had all arrived at Mr. Cruise's place. At this point the story gets significantly shorter since there was alcohol involved and my memory is a bit impaired by the second day.

Needless to say, the launch went very well. Everyone really liked the web page although some had some minor suggestions, but nothing major or life-changing. I really wanted to celebrate having spent the majority of my vacation building the 'effin thing, so I brought a bottle of champagne.. figuring no one else would have thought of that. Turns out I was wrong because Mr. Sock had also had the same idea.. my bottle was bigger than his though. But the gesture was appreciated either way. So thanks for that. We had arranged to have two displays and two Xboxes so four people could play at the same time. And well.. we all just got shit-faced and played NHL12. I want to remember there was some Lips being played too, at a later point but I can't remember which day that was.

You see, we partied until something like 4 or 5 in the morning, then we slept a couple of hours and woke up to; Mr. Cruise having a blood-alcohol content of 3,0‰ and a wounded eye-lid, Mr. Sock had 1,2‰ and I had 0,55‰. They claim it's because I drank the least, which is definitely true since I ended my evening with a couple of liters of water because I was already drunk enough. But I still want to add that my liver is better than your liver.. and "No.. you can't train your liver." But after that I made some "espresso" whilst someone else—I think—made some regular filtered coffee. And after we had had some coffee in us, we all just opened the first morning beer and thus the impaireth memorieth beginneth.

We all had—at least I hope—a lot of fun and come Sunday, damn I was tired. Not so much hungover though which is/was nice.

And after nine days of stats—not all of those days played obviously—our total games are now at 74 with total goals made 435. You can pretty clearly make out the rest of the stats in the screenshots down below, so I won't point out how bad I am. At least my win ratio is one percentage point higher than last season's .25.

Why So Secretive?

2011-09-08T23:44:00.000+03:00

Well.. it's been a while since I have posted anything now and some of you might be wondering why? Well, you can all stop wondering now. Yeah, sure I have had a four week vacation, that just ended. And well sure.. one would think that with all that time on my hands I should have been able to squeeze out at least a couple of posts.

But no, here I am.. Two and a half weeks since my last post. So why have I been so busy. Well. Me and some friends like to get together and play NHL on Xbox 360 every now and then.. and well, we are all (to some degree) sucker for statistics. So it makes a lot of sense that we used to have an excel file to keep track of our individual stats.

We called it NHL Stats v. 2.0.. this was about a year ago, coincidently around the same time that I made a joke about how version 3 should be a web-interface with a sql database as backend. So.. I'm guessing you have probably already figured out what happened next. Well.. come spring and summer we started talking having a launch party in honour of NHL 12.. and of course Mr. Cruise (yeah, I'm going call him that now) remembered my little joke from last year. We quickly realised that Microsoft's Excel just wasn't going to cut it any more.. mostly because our little group had changed a lot since we first made the excel file, some people simply didn't play as much any more, whilst others whom had been more absent earlier were now frequently joining our gaming nights. So things needed to change whichever way we were going to go. So there I was with my big mouth again, "Well, I have been dying for an excuse to learn SQL anyway!". Yeah.. I didn't actually know any SQL before I started this project, but that's never really stopped me before so..

Still to do, before it's completely done. "View all matches as table data", "Modify how passing is calculated, because apparently those fuckers at EA Canada changed it from NHL 11 to NHL 12 and I just found out about it", "View all players as table data", "View player rank progression over time". But that's about it.

Anyway. Enough talk, you didn't come here after all this time to read my rambling. You came here hoping to see some glory shots.. and trust, there will be glory shots.. and by God, they are glorious. I am really pleased with how everything turned out. And many, many thanks to Beije for always kindly answering my sometimes odd questions about database management. And to Timo, who has had as much a part in this project even though he didn't code it.. or did the design. But Timo knows hockey.. which I don't as much, and many great ideas that you see here came from his mouth and mind first, then we both just fine-tuned it.. and tweaked it.. until it was awesome! Although I have to give him credit when he solved my issue of not being able to access multidimensional arrays in a SELECT statement.

EDIT: Also big thanks to Dan who so graciously provided hosting again. It's awesome mate, so thanks!

But now.. seriously.. no more talking.. it's picture time! And first, a picture of where it all started.. a long, long time.. I give you. Version 1.0


The Sepia tone has not been added later, for some reason we made it look like this.

Then there was version 2.0. The one that was pretty to look at but difficult to add players to.

Version 3.0 a.k.a. Project Creampie. Because I'm a pervert. This the main-page.

Main page..with the cards flipped for more stats

The next group of players slide in..

Someone missed a field when trying to add a match. Don't worry, all incorrect field are highlighted.

Much better.. Now if you only hadn't lost.

The cards are auto-sorted according to who played most recently.

It's also possible to see how you compare to a player with just the games between you two.

All the stats are re-calulated according to just your games. With the exception of rank title and class.

Again.. flippable cards here too.

By going to the RANKS & TROPHIES Menu you get a good overview of the possibilities out there

It's easier to add a new player than it is to change your privacy settings on Facebook.com

Feedback message so you know that what you did went well.

You can freely edit a player as well. In case you ever decide to change your default team colour..or something.

Here, I have changed my team to Nashville Predators instead, to show you how the card changes accordingly.

At some point, there will be a new NHL game.. and when that happens. We'll just add it here.


The dots turn into UP or DOWN arrow icons depending on if your recent stats improves or declines.

Once you have earned a trophy you can hover to see why.

The Fable-ing Continues

2011-08-22T00:52:00.003+03:00

So, not only have a finished My Fabled Pants (or did I already tell you that?), the missus.. awesome as usual went and pulled a "half-nighter" and this morning I woke up to a Restoration Era -styled shirt.. needless to say, I was just so splendid that I couldn't resist wearing it today.. when we coincidentally went to celebrate my mother, who turned the big five-oh some days ago.

Well enough about my personal life, that's not why you people (all five-ish of you) read this blog. Obviously you read it because for a year now you have spent sleepless nights wondering whatever happened to the Fabled Pants I started making about.. oh yeah.. about a year ago. Well.. they are done. And they are awesome, except for the part about my testicles flashing themselves some month ago because I apparently had a pretty huge hole in them.. My sincerest apologies to all the cars passing by as I have sat for a smoke on our porch. I hope it helps to know that I didn't intentionally flash my man parts at you. Unlike the other times when I have walked around naked, because then I have obviously intentionally meant to flash all of you. Oh, right.. enough about my well-endowed nature (narcissistic much today, Carlos?).. Where was I?

Right.. pants. They are done, even though it took a lot longer than I expected, through no fault of the missus.. she did her part quickly enough.. I just sort of dragged out the rest of it. And then I forgot to blog about them once they were done. Having said that, they are pictured below.. the pants that is.. not the testicles.

And the other thing. The shirt, well.. it's mindbogglingly awesome. I hope I'm getting right now, but as far as I have understood it — Historical accuracy is more her thing than my thing — The shirt should be a Restoration Era shirt, which was between 1660-1685.

Does this coincide with the Fable game series? Well.. according to my research.. Yes and no, not exactly, since Fable II takes place around the Age of Enlightenment (roughly 1650-1700) and Fable III (which served as partial inspiration as well) in turn takes place 50 years later.. meaning we are talking about a timespan from 1650 to 1750.

Actually come to think of.. starting way back at Fable (the first one) I have this time line to work with, assuming one game depicts roughly 60 years;
Fable - circa 1100
Fable II - circa 1660
Fable III - circa 1770

Well.. actually, that's not that bad. Yeah, my years might be a bit off, this is still a RPG-game we are talking about and I'm guessing they took some creative liberties but all in all, I would have to lean more towards "Yes", the shirt is pretty accurate, historically and Fable-y.

But enough talk, more pictures. And before you wonder, "No, I have no shame..".

My Undying Love For You Will Never Decompose (But My Body Might)

2011-08-19T12:18:00.002+03:00

Drumroll and then some huge applause for my good friend beije, who so graciously not only filmed one of my performances but also colour corrected and edited it. Awesome!

I semi-proudly hereby present my first public performance of "My Undying Love For You Will Never Decompose (But My Body Might)", a song I started writing several months ago but didn't actually really finish until the night before I performed it. In case you're wondering the talking in the beginning part of the video is just me explaining how this song is a little "outside the box" but that it's still a love song.. or something like that.

The audio quality isn't very awesome, but definitely on par with my performance two years ago (youtube channel link here) so I'm not complaining. The visual quality on the other hand is light-years ahead of my last video and one can clearly distinguish my sweaty face. So yeah, enjoy that!

Under The Weather

2011-08-13T15:53:00.004+03:00

as in, I'm still feeling a bit under the weather. Last Thursday, at Night of the Arts I was feeling a little gloomy because let's face it, the missus and our son had both been/were sick and it was just a matter of time before it would get to me too. Well, it's turns out that maybe.. just maybe I should have stayed at home instead of performing because on Friday I could not have felt sicker. I mean yeah, as a man I (read: We, as a collective gender) have a tendency to become pathetically sick and poor. And as such, by Friday I was just that. Sick and poor.. and painfully pathetic about it. The missus was kind enough to pamper me with some tomato soup with croutons, which was awesome but all in all. Most of that day was a bit of a blur. Today I am, well still a bit sick.. but not nearly as much as yesterday. And I glad to announce that my performance went.. well.. okay I suppose, I felt it could have been better as I'm sure others feel too. But you know what? I'm sort of fine with it, obviously I have long way to go before I'm fully comfortable singing into a microphone.. for starters. Never mind the fact that I don't "play for the audience".. I play for the paper in front of me. But it's okay, we'll get there in due time. Other than that, I feel very pleased having had the opportunity to introduce people to some of my newer material this year. If I happen to stumble on any kind of recordings from the evening I'll be sure to youtube 'em fuckers. But for lack of the real deal you're just going to have to settle with my set list and one measly picture of my performance. I know some friends who took more pictures but I haven't managed to get my hands on any of those pictures yet.

Last Curtain Call
My Undying Love For You Will Never Decompose (But My Body Might)
Shut Up & Go With It
Excess Baggage, a Staind cover
Consumed

Yeah, I know.. I look like I'm having some sort of seizure.. a.k.a. Passion and inlevelse.

Also, because I can't help myself I have to do this once. My wonderful wife also had an exhibition "The Victoria Line" at the same place where I was performing. And I know I've promised I wouldn't link to her blog because she doesn't really want people to read it, it more for herself. But to hell with it all, I'm doing this once. She's really awesome at designing and making clothing of various epochs and if anyone reading this happens to work in theatre, you should so totally hire her. Who else will care about whether the lacing technique is accurate for that period of time?

However Busy Bees Are

2011-08-08T02:04:00.003+03:00

..is how busy I am right now. So much to do but also actually some time to do it too. Starting Monday I plan on fully enjoying my well earned 4 week vacation, which just means more time to do stuff I probably won't get paid for.. but that's okay, I truly enjoy creating something out of nothing.. with my hands and what have we.

Yeah, I'm still going to try my best to blog more and I'm sure it'll get better again once I have managed to get some stuff out of the way (read: do them). For now.. this will have to do.

For some reason I have started baking a lot more lately, I'm not entirely sure why yet but at least the familia is not complaining about my cookies and cakes.

Anyway. As soon as I have a little more time on my hands, that I would rather not spend creating I 'll write some more stuff of no particular interest. My cold-brewing is still going nicely thanks for asking and I'm almost exclusively drinking Iced Coffee nowadays. Still trying to improve my brewing technique though as I feel it could be even better.

Take random crap --> Build Acoustic Stomp Box (80% done)

Take our NHL Stats v.2 (Excel sheet) and uppgrade that bitch to v. 3. Which is why I am learning SQL. (15-20 % done)

Awesome Blueberry Muffins, (100 % done times three, all eaten)

Cookies of awesome-ness being baked. This would be the fourth batch I have made recently. Next time I'm making them with Macadamia Nuts and White Chocolate.

Performing at this years Night of the Arts, at Föregångarna. Come check it out this Thursday. I also designed their poster but I didn't dare to post a better picture since I'm delivering them tomorrow.

30th of July

2011-07-30T19:36:00.002+03:00

So, yeah. I'm mostly doing this one so that I get to have one last post this month, before August arrives with its red and orange leaves and also the majority of my summer vacation. I have already had one week, but I still have four weeks left to enjoy. So that's going to be awesome. Right now though, I'm super-busy learning SQL. Which for the most part doesn't seem all that difficult. I'm also making a Stomp Box, which I will blog about once it's done.

Other than that, no I really don't feel like I have anything to say. Not anything important enough to blog about.

I baked cookies.. awesome crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I'll give you the recipe some day.

Dear Internet

2011-07-24T20:53:00.005+03:00

Yes, two posts in one day. How will it all end?!

Anyway. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the perverts of the internet. You see, because I'm sucker for statistics I tend to check my Google Analytics every now and then. Usually it's pretty tame, nothing really worth mentioning although I do love the spikes in my number of visitors per day, say thanks for that too. So if it's not worth mentioning it, why mention it now? Because.. well.. how do I say this nicely?

I have reached porn-status-ish!

Whoever you are, thank you. With utmost sincerity from the bottom of my heart and a slight worry for your mental health, I lift my hat. You, who I can only hope one day reads this and knows.. that you Sir or Madam, made my fucking day.

You, who was searching for "free slutcocking movies" and for some reason still decided to click the link that lead you here and to my humble blog. Because apparently in descending order of relevance according to Google, it goes like this;

"Slutcock drunk ass"
"Anal Porn Tube"
"Fiinix Design"
"All Babes - Cum On Candi Dirty Cum Slut..."

I would tell Candi to stick it where the sun don't shine, but I'm too afraid to click her link only to find out she doesn't mind sticking it there anyway. So in conclusion. Dear Internet, thank you and I hope I can live up to your high expectations of me.

So Long and Goodbye, Oaky

2011-07-24T15:05:00.003+03:00

Hurray and happy day! I finally managed to recover all the important files from the oh so dead laptop. Which also means that as of now, Oaky is officially dead. To be fair he's (she's?) been dead for over three months.. but I haven't had the heart to declare her (yupp.. her) officially dead until now. Why? I pretend you ask like you care even though we both know you don't. Well I'll tell you why anyway. Because that's just how I write...

...

I'm sorry about that last part. I just read it too and yeah, it makes no sense. So I haven't had the heart to declare her dead until now, because I had a lot of important files on her hard drive. Turns out it was even more than I remembered.. like 2.04 GB of Island of Eternity that I have nowhere else, because you know.. instead of backing up important things, I like to live on the edge. Yeah baby.. single copy only! And my Music folder.. as in, not downloaded music, but songs I have written, recordings I have done. Turns out I had 5.43 GB worth of it. That I again of course.. had nowhere else.

My new website was also there.. which as sort of why it has gotten severely delayed. But maybe.. just maybe, I might get a bit back on track with my creativeness now.

I feel so much better now, knowing that my files are safe and sound on slightly more stable computer. Slightly.. because I have at least one damaged SATA drive in the main computer too, that should be replaced as soon as possible. So sometime next year or so, probably. But hey, no I have no more excuses for not doing stuff. Which mean that "oh crap".. I'm actually going to have to start doing stuff again.

Damn you Oaky.. damn you straight to eHell!

SuperMeaty Meat Boy!

2011-07-12T21:53:00.006+03:00

For once I actually get to have a title that's relevant to the post.. yet still make no sense. Today.. to cheer myself up from this weekends Twizzler fiasco I surfed around for no reason at all other than to find inspiration. Yeah.. I kind of do that a lot.

In some strange way I found myself at Edmund McMillen's blog.. the co-creator (as Team Meat) to the very very awesome game Super Meat Boy! (SMB).. yeah.. the exclamation mark is actually part of the title. You can get it on Steam right now if that's your kind of thing.. if not.. it kind of should be. Anyway.. So yeah.. Surfing around no other reason than the usual one. From there I "stumbled" upon the soundtrack to SMB...

- By now you are probably wondering why Carlos is rambling on about this story. But rest assured that he has point and he's about to get to it.

My first and spontaneous though, after having listened to two songs and concluded that I must have this soundtrack, was "I wonder if there's a torrent for it?".. No no, don't go! Stay with me.. Happy ending I promise. So I of course went to one of the myriad of selections that are out there for our pirating needs. But as I typed into the search field.. something called me back to the bandcamp.com -tab where I had found the soundtrack in the first place.. That something was called Forest Funk..

<a href="http://dbsoundworks.bandcamp.com/track/forest-funk-ch-1-light-world">Forest Funk (Ch 1 Light World) by dB soundworks>

It was at that point I noticed a semi-discrete link, boldly proclaiming that I could "Buy Now".. after which it said "$3.99 USD or more". At that point I had completely forgotten about the torrent.. only $3.99 for 34 songs? Whereupon I clicked the link figuring that at the very least I could see how this thing worked.

Now I'm a soundtrack richer.. all of it in glorious FLAC. I decided to pay $7 for it since it clearly said "...or more" and I wanted to support this as much as I could. From one starving artist to another I suppose. I wish I could have paid a little more.

So.. now Edmund or probably Danny have to buy a T-shirt from me.. and then we're even. Nah, I'm just kidding.. I doubt either of them would ever stumble upon this little post.

Thanks for an awesome game.. and an awesome soundtrack though!

Edit: For those who might not understand this themselves. I have nothing to do with the good people of bandcamp.com or Team Meat. This story is actually about how I cheered myself up with music and how I didn't commit a crime whilst doing it.

Twizzle My Americanizzle

2011-07-12T21:30:00.004+03:00

Some days ago I had the impulse of buying Twizzlers.. I saw them in the store and the impulse shopper inside me got curios.. He gets curios every now and then, and sometimes I let him.. I of course got to regret this later on.. Twizzlers are seriously disgusting.. It tasted like plastic with a certain scent of "You won't believe it's not strawberry.. because it totally isn't.. it's E129!" After having consumed the whole thing I felt.. well.. like an American I guess.. fat and a bit sad on the inside.. like some part of me had just given up and gone to die in it's lonesomeness..

The moral of the story, I hear you ask? Don't buy Twizzlers.. they are really.. really gross.

Coffees of the World, part Three

2011-07-10T23:05:00.001+03:00

And thuseth concludeth our journey.. eth. Or to be more accurate, I will decrease the amount of blogging about coffee. It's been a hell of a ride these past two months and I have learned so much. Far from being done in any way I just feel like I have been pestering all of you (five people at least) with my coffee explorations. Not only have I been excessively blogging about it.. but at any possible moment I have also discussed it with friends. One friend particularly helped me a lot on what I should write for this "final" entry. Ironically he will probably never actually read it.

Now, do try to keep in mind that there are many things I don't know yet.. I haven't even begun to explore the world of espresso-making, so some things here will be.. opinions! Yeah, that's right.. my very subjective opinions.. other things.. well.. I do try to be as objective as possible and in some cases I will be stating simple facts that are already established in the world of coffee connoisseurs and baristas. I'm simply retelling them.

But anyway.. here goes.. Coffees of the World, part Three.. subtitled..

"So you want to make better coffee too?"

All illustrations courtesy of your truly.

Believe it or not but which sort of coffee brewer you decide to use affects your coffee greatly. And despite what you might think.. some are better at brewing coffee than others. Now, let's establish one thing right away. If you like your coffee the way grandma used to make it, using and then reusing pre-ground store-bought "cheapest she could find" coffee brewed in a coffee pot.. then by all means, that is what you like. But don't fool yourself thinking that it's the best way to extract coffee because it isn't. Still.. if you like it like that, then by all means.

From left to right we have: Moka Pot, Vacuum Pot, Percolator, French Press, Electric Drip Brewer and Espresso Machine.

Moka Pot, a.k.a Macchinetta [1933]
Poor man's espresso. Technically not an espresso maker because the pressure at best is 1.5 bar when it would have to be exactly 9 bar to make it a true espresso. Can still make crema which I like and usually has a stronger brew with a more defined flavour than Drip Brew. Can't afford a real espresso machine and still want something espresso-y? This is for you.

Vacuum Pot [1840, earliest]
Looks more complicated than it is. I have thought about buying one. Well respected for it's clean cup and well-controlled brew. If you like a clean cup but still have the time to engage in your coffee making, this one is for you.

Percolator [late 18th century.. 1865 in USA]
Do you like your coffee bitter with plenty of acidity no matter what you do? Do you think that over-extracting by actually boiling your coffee is a good idea? Then you should continue to use your shitty percolator. Destroys a lot of flavour and oils. What can I say, I don't like them or the coffee they make. If you like percolated coffee then I pity you.. secretly.. but by all means, do continue.

French Press [late 19th century]
Well-controlled brew. Will give you some amount of sludge, no matter what you do.. that's just how they work. Recommendations? Buy a double walled French Press so the temperature doesn't drop too quickly when you brew. Water and coffee is fully mixed when brewing with this, giving you flavours and essential oils that a Drip Brewer never could. Do you want a cup of coffee where you can actually notice the hints of berry or something and you don't a bit of sludge? Then this is the machine for you.

Electric Drip Brewer [early 20th century]
Are you convenient (lazy) and like a clean cup? Then Drip is the way to go. The paper filter removes any kind of sludge but also flavours and oils. I actually brewed coffee in my French Press, then filtered it through a paper filter. It was.. disgusting to say the least. Some drip brewers brew coffee at too low temperatures (85°C instead of 93°C) making your cup into an under-extracted one. Too slow? Well then you just get a lot of bitterness. Personally, if you want a clean cup get yourself a Vacuum Pot instead, it's better. Having said that, Technivorm Moccamasters is the way to go if you insist on an Electric Drip Brewer. They are approved by the SCAA.

Espresso Machine
A bit more tricky to learn properly. Makes a true espresso. Can you afford the time and money to make good espresso? Want to impress your friends? Then this is probably the machine for you, but I'm warning you.. if you want it good, it's going to cost you.

Final note
Basically.. it's like this. If you must have a good clean cup of coffee, Vacuum Pot is what you want, circa 50€ at Clas Ohlson. Don't mind a bit of sludge in your good cup of coffee, French Press is your poison, circa 22€ at Clas Ohlson. If you think real espresso is the only kind of coffee there is then an Espresso Machine is what you should get, 200€ and more for the good stuff. Some machines will ruin whatever you put in them, some more than others.

Next we have water. Does it really matter? To put it simply.. it does, get used to it, ~98% of your coffee IS water. If you think your tap water tastes like ass.. your coffee will be brewed using ass. But if you're anything like me, proven in Nine Days Later and can't tell the difference between Spring water and tap water, then by all mean, keep using tap water. I still do.. at least for now. I have no doubts that better water will make better coffee, but if you can't tell the difference it's really difficult to argue for the use of Spring water.

Next.. pre-ground coffee or not? If you want better coffee, do yourself a huge favour and get yourself a grinder. Even if it's a shitty blade grinder for.. you know what? Never mind, don't get a shitty blade grinder, get a burr grinder because it's better. In every possible way. Why should you grind your own coffee no matter what? Assuming optimal storing, which is air, light and moist free in a cool environment, but not the fridge. Ground coffee is significantly stale and shitty after 3 days.. if your taste buds are awesome, you could notice it after as little as 20 minutes. Roasted whole beans can last for 10-14 days. Green (unroasted) beans can be stored a year easily, although they prefer that air can move around, like in a burlap sack. Pre-ground is never and will never be as good as grinding it right before you need it. If you only want to change one thing about your coffee.. then never buy pre-ground again. Is the effort more? Yes, but it's worth it.

You get what you pay for. Never has it been so true as when it comes to coffee. Not to throw dirt at anyone here in particular, but when one cup of coffee will cost you ~8 cents to make and the other will cost you ~1.40€ to make. Which one do you think is better? Don't delude yourself and think that with the right amount of skills and proper equipment you can make Juhla Mokka into "OMG! This is teh best coffee I have ever had!!?11". You can't, and neither can anyone else. Having said that, of course you can make a decent cup of coffee with it but a better coffee will still be a better coffee.. made using the exact same ratios/temperatures and everything else. Ironically enough, you can destroy Jamaican Blue Mountain (one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world), if you don't know what you are doing. My advice? Do yourself a favour and buy better coffee, it doesn't have to be the most expensive coffee in the world.. just remember that you do get what you pay for.

Cold brewed coffee and why you need to consider it. Think of it this way, coffee is extracted from the ground into the water, which you then drink. Pretty simple eh? The temperature of the water simply tells you how long you extract your coffee to get all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff. What's why an espresso is extracted in 25-30 seconds.. oh yeah right.. pressure also affects extraction time. Anyway.

You can actually try this one at home, without any extra equipment other than what you probably already own. Still with me? Good.. here's what you do. Take a glass jar or something similar that can hold at least 500 ml of fluid. Take any random shit coffee you have at home. Measure and pour 10 tablespoons of coffee (15 ml) or in case you have a more modern coffee spoon that holds 20 ml in which case 8 coffee spoons of coffee will do fine. Now pour in 250 ml of cold water and stir with a wooden spoon or something similar. Stir a little again after 2 minutes. Put some plastic wrap over the whole thing and leave it in room temperature for 12 hours. After the 12 hours have passed, pour it through your shitty drip brewers paper filter until you're only left with a black delicious liquid you will come to love forever. This is coffee concentrate (CC) with a ratio of 1:4.5 which I doubt you would be able to drink as is. But you can mix this with cold water and ice. As of lately the temperature around here has been wandering between 25-35°C.. drinking hot coffee is not very appealing.. but OMG Iced coffee is awesome! Of course you totally can mix it with hot water too if you for some reason feel like torturing yourself in this heat. Any questions? If not.. then what are you waiting for, start cold brewing right now.. you can thank me later.

I mixed 1 part CC with 2 parts cold water, added 1 part ice cubes, ½ part milk and a dab of DaVinci Gourmet Caramel Flavoured Syrup for my morning pick me up.

How to calculate your own ratios using inverse factors

I think this is beginning to be it. This last part of my "Coffees of the World" got even longer than I at first anticipated. But hopefully you feel a little smarter. I at least feel a lot more tired. But since I had promised math as well, here's the math stuff you need to know to be able to do your own calculations. I do all my measuring using mass instead of volume nowadays but I have made a handy conversion chart for you as well, even including a variety of standards for cup sizes in different parts of the world.. which means that even you funny people who use a less precise method of measurement can get started in making your own morning cup of glory taste a little better.

Why have I made this you might be asking yourself.. well mostly because I actually get a lot of enjoyment from making charts and math-y stuff.. but also because when I first started exploring the world of coffee I found it very difficult to find good information to get me started. Good basic information like "Do this, use this much.." etc.. Yeah, sure it's been fun exploring things on my own. I'm sure you might want that too, but since I would have liked a point of reference I figured you might too. Obviously with that in mind.. you are free to ignore all my advices and such, to find your own way.. But maybe.. just maybe.. it won't feel so daunting to get started now. And again.. if you have any questions related to coffee don't hesitate to ask and I will in return do my best to answer.

And kids.. remember.. it's totally okay to like coffee made using a Percolator.. just don't try to give that shit to me..

A small preview of the handy conversion chart

Quarterly Sales

2011-07-04T18:26:00.003+03:00

Got my quarterly sales report a few minutes ago.. I've had a sale of 14 T-shirts more in the last quarter.. which brings my current total to 27.. Hurray for me!

In case you haven't already purchased your very own T-shirt, designed by yours truly.. here the links to all the designs I have made:

Freddy Krueger
Chucky
Alien/Xenomorph
Ghostface
Hannibal
Jason Vorhees
Bruce (Shark(s) from JAWS films...)
Billy (Puppet from the SAW films)
Leatherface
Michael Myers
Pennywise
Pinhead
Predator

Go Shave Yourself!

2011-07-03T21:58:00.004+03:00

OBSERVE: The following text should be read quickly whilst imagining an excited salesman rambling in your face.. okay? then.. Go!

Tired of suffering from razor burn after each shave?

Annoyed at the ridiculous prices of "Gillette Super Motherfusion Turbo Drive Lazor Mach Dodecablade"? (that would be 12 blades for those of you that don't speak Ancient Greek)

Confused by all the marketing bullshit that manufacturers spit in every direction, including separation of blades/handles by gender.. blue for men and pink for the ladies.. like it really matters that much?!

Introducing the not even slightly new Euro Shopper Single blade disposable razor! Yes, you heard correctly, SINGLE blade. No more confusing blade counting, no more razor burns or at the very least.. significantly less razor burn. Did you know that more blades actually don't contribute to a better shave? But do you want to know the best part.. don't take my word for it, go out and buy yourself a pack, it's only like 1 € or something.. I'm too excited to remember right now! Available in selected retail stores such as Citymarket at least.. probably other stores too I just haven't looked for them anywhere else.

It's okay to start reading at normal speed now..

You get ten blades for a fraction of what you would pay for 4 blades by a certain leading competitor. These blades can be used several times also.. even though they're supposed to be disposable. A trick is to rinse them in alcohol to remove the build-up from sediments in the water.. don't believe me? Try it yourself. So you can squeeze maybe 30-40 shaves out of this ten-pack.

The blade actually work well too, sure you have to rinse it between but then again you are kind of supposed to be doing that with other blades too. I had significantly less razor burn after shaving using a single blade and the missus thought that the result was noticeable smoother too. So a win-win situation for both us.

Euro Shopper Single blade disposable razor blades get the famous (?) "Thumbs up" seal of approval, by Carlos.

Now.. go shave yourself!

Coffees of the World, part Two

2011-07-02T18:08:00.006+03:00

And so.. the much awaited "Coffees of the World" -series continues. Or maybe I'm deluding myself.. maybe it's not awaited at all. Either way I'm still going to write it. The beans pictured above are by the way from dear old Gigantti.. Unfortunately this would be the first time (for me) that Gigantti has disappointed me. Those beans are from "KAFFE NOIR, Italian Roast" that I mentioned earlier. ICS (shame on them!) never answered my email so I have no idea what kind of blend it is. But I did try it for a week or so, brewed in the same way I brew everything else. It was not good.. not good at all. And as you might be able to see in the picture, I personally think it's over-roasted and has too much charcoal taste. Maybe it would work better as an espresso, but alas I can only brew it with my French press.. at least for now. So, yeah. It was really not good. However as I discovered later on, it did actually work as Iced coffee. Which I will go more into later in this post.. and in part Three..

- "He likes to pretend that people care, but they don't. The riddles he gives are too easy for us, so we never bother with them. Obviously the answer is the number 9. Like we didn't know that. Sssssh, he's coming back now.."

Yeah, because the math part that was going to be in this post grew exponentially I decided to give it its own post instead. Hence no math-y stuff in this one. You'll understand why later.

So.. back to coffees then I suppose. Just like last time, I will include the brackety-thingys for the adventurous ones of you
[RV] = Ryytivakka, Saluhallen
[LK] = Liisa Koski

My first taste of India was a very, very interesting one. Monsoon Malabar [RV] is heavy bodied. It has very little acidity and a lot of origin specific taste. But the thing that struck me the most was how salty it was. Yeah, you heard me.. salty. Malabar has a very strong salt-water smell and taste. I closed my eyes and imagined that I was out on the ocean. So for those of you that might like that sort of stuff, you definitely need to try this one. In the end, I felt like "No, I don't particularly like my coffee salty". But it still gets 3+ because it got everything else right in terms what I look for in my coffee. I think this would make an excellent "kesämökkikahvi" (summer cottage coffee) where things smell of the sea anyway.

The first time I went to Liisa Koski was quite an experience. The shop owner (Mr. Kulju himself) was very keen to share his acquired knowledge of coffee and I has happy to oblige because it was very interesting and unlike the other place it was noticable that he had a real passion for coffee which I can relate to/liked a lot. Which brings us all the way from India to México, where I got blah blah [LK]. Named so because I haven't gotten a more specific name for it yet. Single origin though just like most of the other ones. This was a peculiar one, because although I was nice generally. It had an odd origin taste/smell that I could never quite identify and that I didn't like all that much. The closest I can think of is wet bark/dirt or something like that. I will go back there and ask him what it is.

Just south from México we go to Colombia where we find Bucaramanga [RV] a deep coffee with awesome body and very nice after-taste. With hints of chocolate and a hazelnut/almond undertones this one quickly climbed to my personal favourites list and has stuck there ever since. Bucaramanga gets a 4 because now as I write this and remember that I haven't had it for a couple of weeks my inner voices are telling me to go buy some more. This is one of my favourite afternoon coffees.

And so we've reached the finalists. My (so far) two personal favourites when it comes to coffees. As you might remember from part One, Indonesia had already brought me a 2+ coffee in its Sulawesi but this Sumatran Mandheling [RV] was a very different story. Having a heavy body with low acidity, because let's face it.. that's what I want from my coffee, Mandheling has a a nice brightness to it, with hints of fruitiness.. subtle tones of something like mango. This one is a definite keeper and one that I will try to roast myself. I warmly recommend this coffee for those of you that want their coffee fruity rather than berry-like.

In Kenya, Africa we find the other favourite of my coffees. This Kenyan pearl bean [LK].. (again.. he's good with coffee, bad with proper names) has a heavy body with low acidity. But where the Mandheling had a perky wakey-uppy brightness to it, this one a more somber and laid back feeling to it. If this coffee was a jazz song, it would be the bass riff. Very deep with hints of black- and redcurrant and with a wonderful red wine feeling to it this is the other keeper that I will try to roast myself. If you enjoy a glass of red wine every now and then, this might just be the coffee for you. If nothing else, this is one of the coffees for me.

I want to give a special mention to KAFFE NOIR, Italian Roast though. Like I said earlier, I didn't like it. And neither did those of my friends that tried it, by the way. But I figured since I still have the coffee I could just as well experiment with in my cold-brewed coffee trials. That or throw it away and I'm just too cheap to do that. Imagine my surprise when it actually worked better as Iced coffee than e.g. Indonesian Sulawesi or Méxican Blah Blah. I'm assuming that is has to do with cold-brewing not actually extracting everything from the coffee. Some of the oils allegedly are only extracted at certain temperatures, which cold-brewing never reaches. I'm imagining that e.g. Mandheling would lose the very things I like about it and since I didn't like anything about KAFFE NOIR.. cold-brew ftw! But that is about as far as I will explain my on-going Manhattan Trials. I will get back to it in part Three more.. you know.. the math-y part with charts and shit.. oh it's going to be ever so awesome! Well.. if you like charts it will.. otherwise.. well.. you probably won't like it that much.

This is it for part of two. Stay tuned for part Three, the part which I suspect might be the last one so focused on coffee. I feel like I have forced all of you (all four of you) to read coffee-related things a lot. So I think we both need a bit of a break. At least I do. Besides.. there are plenty of other things to write about and if anyone actually has any questions (sometime I think this dialogue of mine is a bit one-sided) feel free to ask.

- "Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa FREUDMAN! He's watching you watching yourself but who is he?.. only time will tell.."

Illegal Mushrooms

2011-06-28T21:23:00.003+03:00

So yeah, funny story. Since we moved recently I went through boxes of crap that I have been saving for some years. I come from a long line of hoarders so it's quite cleansing to just throw shit away. Well in one of those boxes I found a CD I haven't seen in a while. Actually it's a whole album, with 19 songs.. can you believe it? Even better. It's the only copy in the world since I wasn't as big on backup's back then. You feel a bit special now, don't you? A little tingly inside? Oh the tension.. what has Carlos got in store for us now?

Well.. until I can get my shit together and actually record a new song this will have to do. Scraped from deep within the boxes of "whatchamacallit", hidden behind layers of "Oh, here is this random thing I looked for three years ago but never found"...

I present you with "The Cerebral Project - Remastered". This track is entitled "I Toad I Told You Mushrooms Should Be Illegal". And yes, I have made this.. a long, long time ago.

Those of you with eyes as nails
who sees no wholes but details
Make my digit all clear
and more tunes will appear
Comment the correct answer!

Released under: Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence.

Fucking Idiots!

2011-06-23T10:19:00.002+03:00

Bad news for people moving to England.. i.e. me and my family. And for those more inclined to law-speak, here the Digital Economy Act 2010 in all it's unholy glory.

I Had a B-Day

2011-06-19T15:43:00.003+03:00

For those of you that didn't know.. my birthday was three days ago. So why not blog about it when it was more relevant? As it turns out.. the older you get the less significant your birthdays become. I sort of forgot to mention it.. also I was super-busy at the time. But yeah, I have now had my 21st birthday for the sixth time. I mostly spent it with my family, eating tortillas and just generally chilling whilst my awesome wife gave me the gift of time.. time to do nothing. When you have a three-year old, that is actually something you value. I also went for a beer with the Godfather and his non-married romantically linked non-cohabitant. All in all, very nice and relaxed.. just the way I like it.

So.. about my birthday.. I wonder if it's noticeable that I have been kind of obsessed with coffee lately ?

The missus gave me a random wooden box (amongst other things, pictured below..) that is clearly meant to house ground coffee or whole beans, but as anyone more knowledgeable with coffee knows, I won't be storing anything like that in there. Because it's a non-airtight wooden box. But I will think of something to have in it.

My mother-in-law got me a KRUPS F203 Grinder and some yet to be verified point of origin whole beans. I received both of these yesterday. Both also pictured below.. if anyone happens to know the origin and/or blend of the beans let me know. I already sent a inquiry to the company in Netherlands (ICS) and I am curious to see what they have to say.

Obviously I have already tried out the grinder, and well..

PROS: Small yet stylish. Fits 75g of beans (Brasilia only does 30g). 10 or so seconds of electric grind time as opposed to the rough 1 or so minute of workout I get with my manual grinder. Makes about the same amount of noise as the manual grinder albeit at a higher frequency. About the same amount of sludge as the Brasilia at my preferred setting.

CONS: Static makes the ground cling to the machine, which reduces the amount of usable coffee. Sure it's only by .5 grams or so but still. Coffee ground has more chunky bits in it (more uneven) because of the F203 being a blade grinder, instead of a burr. A female dog to clean.

STALEMATE: Significant amount of aroma, texture and origin specific sub-flavours got lost with the F203 ground compared to Brasilia ground. In any other case I would put that as a CON, but I happen to have some beans from Mexico that has a very unique origin flavour (one that I haven't noticed anywhere before). I don't like this flavour at all and luckily for me the F203 dampened that a lot. Hence the stalemate, but in any other case I would put that as a CON.

Coffees of the World, part One

2011-06-17T23:46:00.010+03:00

So here we go I suppose.. a lot of pressure to perform.. well adequately at least. Not that the pressure is being adequate, but that the performance probably will be. Don't you just hate when you feel like you have to explain a joke?

Anyway. The most difficult part is going to be to remember the different nuances between all the coffees I have consumed so far. Some coffees by their virtue of awesomeness have obviously stuck with me a bit more, but like this first one my list, some just haven't stuck with. I will be biased and I want you to know this before you start using my judgement as some sort of frame of reference.

As you might have noticed this will a two part story. Mostly because I can not imagine anyone sitting down, noticing "Hey, Carlos has finally written about coffee!", and then actually reading the whole damn thing. So I'll spare you the back pain and in return you will.. well.. I suppose we will have to come to some sort arrangement won't we?

I will also have some brackety looking thingys next to the different names of beans. This is simply an abbreviation of where I purchased them in case anyone feels like exploring the great(meh) city of Vaasa and buying some coffee for themselves.
[RV] = Ryytivakka, Saluhallen
[LK] = Liisa Koski

The Peruvian Yanesha [RV] was albeit not bad per se just too "meh" and had too much acidity for my taste. Sure there's probably someone out there who thinks that this is the best coffee in the world. For them. My point is, some coffees I liked, some I thought were shit. They weren't actually shit (I don't actually know what shit tastes like) but in my world of "Do I like this or not?" there are only two options. Beans I want to have more of.. and beans that I don't. Yanesha is unfortunately not a bean I will be keeping in my cupboard.

Barahona [RV] from Dominican Republic was actually one of the first coffees I tested. I kind of liked it at first (oh what a fool I was) but as my taste buds got used to tasting coffee this one felt, although heavy bodied with a very rich taste, it was too earthy for me. I also came to be not very fond of it's after-taste which had a little bitterness to it. This one will probably not be making a return. No rose for Barahona.

Switching continents completely I now happened upon an Indonesian that although I decided to only give it a 2+ I might want to revisit this one later one. I feel it might have Manhattan Blow Job potential. I give you the Indonesian Sulawesi [RV]. More light and quite fresh although with an slight acidity that never really agreed with me. This by the way also happens to be one of the beans Starbucks sells as a part of their selection. One friend who visited liked when I randomly did a 50/50 blend of Sulawesi and Bucaramanga (more on that one later).

Aaah, my wonderful wife. She went to Denmark a couple of weeks ago and of course I told that her that if she happens to "stumble" upon some nice coffee beans, she should bring me some. I present you with the Brazilian Daterra Sweet Collection [!]. It took me until last week before I could try this one (didn't have a grinder). I quite liked this one, definitely more of afternoon coffee than a morning one. I like it sweeter and fruitier in the morning.. and with a bit more bite in the afternoon. So why only a 3? Well, mostly because in the end it tasted too little. Bitterness was appropriate as well as acidity, but it lacked taste. Not to say it was tasteless, it had hints of dark chocolate with a dry nuttiness on the side. Some Mango or similar taste the end the experience would have made this a keeper. Right now though, I don't know. Maybe I'll import some more and see later on.

Speaking of Brazil though I just remembered. I also had something called Conquista Blend [RV] from Brazil. But I didn't like that at all. So I'm just going to lump it in with this one and call it a day. Okay?

Like I said. Two part story, you're just going to have to stay tuned (or not) for part Two.. the interesting part, the part where I start talking about the coffees I really liked and why I did. Part Two will also feature math (gaah, run for your lives!!1) since I figured that might be a good time to bring up what kind of water to coffee ratios I've been using. Basically I will be indulging myself like the true narcissist I am.. and probably not be paying that much attention to whether you listen or not.

At some point I also have plans of trying to find a good cup of coffee in Vaasa. I might have to lower my standard to a "decent" cup as I fear the coup de grâce for my intestines will be the moment when I reach Shell gas-station, who in my opinion should be notorious for their awful coffee. Hmm, maybe they are and I just haven't heard it. Anyway. Next time.. some random filler because I don't feel like writing part Two.. and then after that, totally.. part Two.

By the way, awesome illustrations, right? Yeah, I totally made them especially for you.

Return of LOL-kent

2011-06-15T23:14:00.003+03:00

Curse you tommix for encouraging us to make more LOL-kent's!

Some time ago, tommix made his own meme entitled LOL-kent. Obviously I had to contribute to it by making a picture as well, since he encouraged people to do so and what not. Blah blah, featured here. Anyway. Now he's created a sub genre of that entitled LOL-kent-tärna. Yeah, I know it makes no sense, or rather the little sense that it does make is too far fetched for us mere mortals.

So obviously.. again.. I had to do my part and contribute to that one too. So without further ado, here it is. As well as the original LOL-kent because I felt this post required two pictures instead of one.

The return of LOL-kent.

My first LOL-kent.

Coffees of the World [pv]

2011-06-14T23:51:00.002+03:00

[pv] stands for Preview. I've just decided this. Go with it.

Anyway. I'm still very much experimenting and exploring the wonderful world of coffee. This I am going to write about in so intricate detail that you will probably even get slightly annoyed at me, but then you will remember how much you all love me and you will calm down. From then on out.. maybe you will even keep calm. And who knows someday.. just someday.. you will be able to carry on. (I'm truly sorry to all non-native English speaking people, who might not get that.. and in case you did. Well good for you!)

Anyway.. again. I will write all about it, but for now you are going to have to be okay with just a picture. Simply because I'm too knackered to do it now. Enjoy this preview, and don't fret. It will all make sense in due time, unless it already makes sense. In which case this whole part feels pretty redundant but since I have already made the effort to write it, I refuse to delete it. Or edit it. Or even pretend that it isn't there. Instead, what do I do? I make a big deal about it, so big that it borderline overshadows the entire point of this post.

So in summary. Tired now, coffee talking later. Goodnight!

O Holy Night

2011-06-10T19:18:00.002+03:00

This is awesome.. and if you can bare with it, listen right until the end, the awesome-ness gets awesomer at 3:30. A cover of O Holy Night.. well.. kind of anyway.

But really.. it's penis.

Gone Fishing

2011-06-09T22:34:00.003+03:00

Well, obviously not so much gone.. since well.. I'm back now, and you didn't even know I wasn't here.

The sun has been shining insaneously (not a word) for the past week.. the temperature has been at around 30°C and more.. in the shade. It's sort of felt a bit like what I imagine Satan's anus feels like. I'm not complaining, I like it warm although I have had my weak moments of "Are you freakin' kidding me?!". Still.. I prefer this over -30°C which it can get at winter sometimes.

Living in Finland is.. well.. a bitch at times. We get to enjoy both versions (temperature wise at least) of hell every year.

Anyway. That wasn't why I was going to blog. I was randomly going to share about how I went fishing yesterday. Just like that, out of the blue. Two friends (who choose to be anonymous, so I will call them Ted Bundy and Jerry Brudos from now on) was out fishing and with the weather being borderline unbearably hot I wanted to be outside more than I wanted to be inside. So I joined them. Apparently I suck at fishing. Or to be more accurate, I didn't catch anything except a nice tan. Ted Bundy had a lot better luck and kept catching fish constantly, so when he managed to catch the smallest one for the day.. I decided to snap a picture. Then two minutes later when he caught another one I figured I might as well take a picture of that one as well. So dear readers, here you go. My good friend Ted Bundy having caught two fishes, that we of course threw back since they were still quite small.

Obviously not altered using Apoop Photoshop™ at all.

Because I would know.. I've seen things.

The One With All The Pictures

2011-06-07T22:00:00.004+03:00

This picture has nothing to do with anything else, I just liked how it looked and wanted to show it to someone.. anyone?

So finally the wait is over. Our internet has arrived and I no longer have to blog from my phone, which was albeit an okay experience, nothing I would enjoy doing on a regular basis. Too fiddly to write and I could never see everything either so I spelled things wrong and didn't notice. Yeah, maybe no one else noticed either but it still bugs me.

Still waiting for our new fridge though, which should still (hopefully) arrive this week.

So yeah, new apartment and I'm sure at least some of you (the two readers whom I don't actually already live with that is) would like to see some pictures and who am I to disappoint? Well technically I am the douche who blogs about whatever I feel like at that particular moment.. once I had a moment of "ooh, I'll do a Carlos vs. Lady Gaga" -thingy. Which I still might for the records but for now you're all safe from that.

So anyway. Here are some pictures of our new home. It's obviously much.. mu'uuch cooler and nicer and all those things in reality, the pictures really don't do it justice. But unless you happen to visit us sometime, you will just have to take my word for it. So there.

...

Oh, right.. one final thing before the pictures. I have now also managed to acquire a digital kitchen scale (no thanks to any of you bastards.. nah, it's cool we're still friends.. let's just say I like you a little less..) and the burr grinder I "talked" about earlier in Nine Days Later. So far I'm very pleased with my coffee results as well, although I'm still trying to figure the exact right settings for French press (Zassenhaus doesn't send with any kind of instructions.. at all). So before the pictures of our new home, here's a picture of my new stuff..

Obviously everything isn't in its place yet but we will get there soon enough. Maybe I can even snap a few more pictures of things, like Boon's room which is currently the most chaotic one.. hence no picture just yet.

Bye for now.

Keys and a Fridge

2011-06-04T10:39:00.000+03:00

Awesome. Our landlord just dropped by with the other key. Now we can finally move about independently. He also checked out our less than awesome fridge, door hinge badly broken and leaky. He took one look at it and just went; "Yeah, we're gonna have to get a new one.. I'll see about getting that taken care of by next week."

Excellent.

Now if the intertweb could just arrive and I could have enough money to never have to think about money, everything would be awesome! Screw world peace and feedi smoothly ng starving children, I'm starving right here..

Iron Fist

2011-06-01T07:47:00.003+03:00

A new song from Coheed & Cambria.. maybe.. or it might just be a side project from Claudio and Travis, either way. I really like it. So until we get internet at our new home, enjoy!

I was going to do a fisting joke with the title, but I felt it would be disgraceful towards a very nice song.

Mid Everything

2011-05-30T16:29:00.002+03:00

Just a mid update. Thanks to 3G and my Galaxy S.. Everything is pretty chaotic right now. Mid everything. But this new place has great potential. Should have regular internet by Friday or beginning of next week if things go a little less. less. I will update more then either way.

Never mind, too difficult to write on this (stupid) smartphone.. I'm truly sorry half of this makes no sense..

Moving Madness

2011-05-27T20:06:00.004+03:00

The following text should be read whilst listening to the following song on repeat.

<br>

Now it's semi-official.. semi, since we haven't officially moved yet and don't have the keys to the new place and shit like that. Obviously this also means that soon I won't have time to blog for, let's say a couple of weeks or so. Yeah, it might be and probably will be less but I would rather not get your hopes (hopes?) up so I won't. This weekend and the beginning of next week will be utter moving madness. Thankfully though, my awesome wife has gone all Robert Mugabe on our asses and as such she's in charge of packing and coordinating everything pre-moving. I say thankfully because my "packing" consists of taking a box, and just sweeping everything I can reach into said box. Needless to say, this is why when I looked for my passport some months ago (went to London, got married) I had a moment of thinking "Where did I 'pack' my passport last time we moved?"

...

"Oh yeah, that's right! It's with my porn!"

Which it obviously totally was.. because I suck at packing. I am however better at the "manly" part of moving. The moving boxes from one location to another, so that will my Mugabe-moment. Anyway.. things are a bit chaotic at the moment to say the least.

As parts of me are sad because.. well, I won't have a balcony any more. Other parts stand erect and more than willing to take on new challenges (penis joke). It's time to move on, out with the old and smelly that hasn't been used in a while (No longer a penis-joke.. stop laughing!). In with the new, fresh things like a Masonry heater in a quaint wooden house. This place has served us well.. adequately. Things will be missed. Others will not so much, like our staring neighbours from across the road.

So, I might not be able to blog as much for a random future amount of time. But mourn not for the loss of my awesomely sex-able writings, instead gaze your eyes towards the future for that is where we will meet again. And for those of you that are in a coma, it's okay.. we're cool, you haven't really been reading this anyway. Unless you have a relative or some other close next of kin that is sitting next to you reading this out loud, at this very moment. By the off chance that you are.. Have you tried poking them with a sharp stick? Oh, not funny? What about a blunt instrument like a spoon? At least then you would have an original sin to confess;

- "Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I poked my comatose cousin with a spoon."

Partly stolen from Eddie Izzard, but only partly. Check him out, he's hilarious. Even with a laughometer.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to end this in a way that ties the beginning part to the end bit. But I can't think of anything that can logically go from "We're moving to a new apartment" to "butt sex". So instead of trying to make sense, which I rarely do anyway. Here's two pictures of an owl baby that was sitting at my mom's front porch this morning. The 'effin thing did not move an inch (nor a millimeter) as we pictured it, only making klickety noises in a unsuccessful attempt to scare us of. But I mean "come on", it was like ~12 cm (4.7 inches) high at best. I've drunkenly stepped on things bigger than this, though they couldn't in all fairness bite me either. Anyway.

So my farewell words this time will be "Oh, Owl baby, I really want to stroke your pimp hat".

Detox, Part Deux

2011-05-24T20:13:00.005+03:00

Since Nine Days Later was technically Part One. Technically. Damn it, here I thought the worst was over.. but oh no, turns out that detoxing from a substantial amount of caffeine and refined sugar is not as peachy as I thought after a week. I used to drink 3-4 cups of Robusta a day.. now I'm down to 1-2 cups.. one Arabica and one Robusta (we only have Robusta at work). I also used to consume about 50 grams of refined sugar in total with all of my ditch water coffee. Now I don't used sugar at all, no matter how foul tasting the coffee is. With milk at work, and black at home. Are all of these tiny little details important to any of you? Probably not, but for sake of making a detailed report of my changing of habits I feel I shouldn't neglect details. And to answer your question, yes, you have to suffer for that. But imagine that I said that with a sparkle in my eye..

So yeah, at around the 15th of May I figured that although things had been a bit rough, it was just uphill from here.. peachy..

In my mind, it was like this.. but awesome-er.

But as time went by I kind of noticed that no.. the 15th was more of a fluke than a preview of what was to come. So since then I've mostly still felt sluggish, tired and generally uninspired to well.. do anything of any kind of importance in life. My wonderful wife has been understanding and supportive, which is really awesome of her. Like today, just as I had shared about how tired I felt, she asked me with a smile (of evil) on her face "How it feels to walk amongst all the other mortals?" It feels like crap is what I told her and began to rant about how this is what it must feel like for Superman. If Superman had a piece of Kryptonite in an eternal state of being shoved up his derrière.

That would be the up the buttocks by the way, for those of you that don't speak French.

So yeah. Turns out my initial expectation of how "easy" this would be was oh so terrible wrong. So instead of feeling "oh sho peachy".. I felt more of a "oh so fuckin' peachy!"

In reality, it was like this. Only worse.

I'm still hoping that I'll start feeling better at some point. But as of right now I'm not really having all too high hopes, let's call it playing safe. For now at least.

If I can just figure out a good way to bring good coffee with me in the morning. I still haven't perfected the Manhattan Blow Job but it's a hell of a lot better than my other options. My biggest concern at the moment is the act of transporting the embeejay (I named it, I'm in charge of pronunciation as well). To put things simply.. I need to have it in a better cup than my current one, something where the "lid" doesn't fall of at any given turn. Arnolds sells Smoothies and Fruities and their cups would probably be quite excellent for my purpose. Actually come to think of it, maybe I should ask them if I could have a couple of them. I doubt they would mind the free advertisement despite the fact that I wouldn't be using them for their intended purpose.

So detoxing.. it's still a bitch. But maybe it will start to turn around at some point. But days like this (yesterday was worse) I feel like every caffeinated beverage is calling out for me to consume them, to quench my mighty Superman-ly thirst with their deliciously carbonated diabetes inducing goodness. But I won't. I'm stronger than that.

Well that, or just too poor to be able to afford them.

Yeah, it's probably the second one more.

They're in my dreams.. taunting me..

Whoa Man!

2011-05-20T15:19:00.002+03:00

This video + you + full screen it baby, for the win! But for the record I am so not responsible for any induced headaches and/or vomiting. And don't say I didn't warn you, because I totally did, just now.

Mistakes

2011-05-17T22:29:00.002+03:00

So yeah, maybe I need to learn to commit mistakes too.. perfections isn't achieved the first time. And in the spirit of that, here's for no apparent reason a quote from Scott Adams.

Also, no takers on my offer of 0.0002 % of my soul? Shame on you..

Whoring Myself

2011-05-16T21:29:00.003+03:00

Yes. For once I have a title that says it all, right to the point, no subtleties or discretion here. No Sir and/or Madam!

So here's my dilemma. I really want a digital kitchen scale so that I can start measuring coffee by mass instead of volume, that would be grams instead of ml for the less intelligent ones of you.. (Good start Carlos, insult them to get on their good side). Measuring this way will be even more handy when I start grinding my own beans. Also totally more accurate as different grinds won't matter since the mass doesn't change even if the volume does (and trust me.. it does). But.. despite the fact that I have Paypal, I can't actually use it. Because apparently you have to validate your Paypal account with a credit or debit card, which I of course don't have, and wouldn't really want either.

So in a sense, I am now whoring myself, to see if anyone would to purchase a digital kitchen scale for me? Pretty penis with please on top?

I already feel incredible dirty.. but since I have gotten the metaphorical ball(s) rolling now I might as well continue. Here's a link in case you feel like checking out the incredible cheap scale I have found. Because yeah, not only am I whoring myself, I'm also very cheap. So for only 4.45 € you can now own a small part of my soul. Yeah I know, my soul is pretty dirty by now and the second hand market for inferior souls is less than good, but hey, who knows. I might even make you your very own diploma to frame and hang up. Come to think I could totally do that.

I did the math again. Yeah I know what they say, if you do the math, you're good at counting things.

Anyway, according to humanforsale.com I'm worth $ 2,497,650. Holy bat-accessory that's a lot! So with current exchange rates that would become 1,754,460.52 €. Which means for 4.45 € you could be the very proud (although probably not) owner of roughly 0.0002 % of my soul. Now if that isn't as good a deal as any, than I don't really understand the concept of what constitutes a good deal. Of course, if someone out there really actually feels like buying a digital kitchen scale for me I would reimburse you with the money you spent.. well that.. or I could actually make you a professionally printed diploma that looks like this;

Any takers?

Nine Days Later

2011-05-15T15:12:00.006+03:00

PUBLIC WARNING: Long text broken up with a few pictures, but totally well worth the read. I'm not kidding, go make yourself a cup of coffee, you're going to be here for a while.

It's now been nine days (at least I think so) since I purchased a Bodum Bistro Nouveau coffee maker.. can I actually call it a coffee maker since I do most of the work myself? For the sake of argument I am going to call it a coffee maker, if it's good enough for the manufacturer to call it that.. then it's good enough for me.

So how's it been? Well, let's put it this way. I won't be able to drink ape urine excuses for coffee any more. That's how it's been going. Nah, but really, it's nothing if not an eye opening experience so far. I could have never imagined coffee being able to actually taste this good, with subtleties from all sorts of things. I now have an entirely new vocabulary including words like acidity, bitterness, nutty scent with a hint of chocolate. Obviously it has it's downsides too, since now whenever I meet a shitty cup of coffee, I simply can't drink it any more. Bare in mind now that, as anyone who knows me knows, I used to drink my coffee with milk and sugar. Lots of fuckin' sugar. At least when comparing myself to friends and acquaintances.

Now, I drink my coffee black.. like a real man!

But not be manlier actually, but because it tasted ruined with milk and/or sugar. Of course I had to try several different variations. But in the end, black won. And hurray for it too, although I have had to suffer the consequences of a decreased sugar intake, which has been a total bitch, thankfully though, the worst of that has passed. Now I am beginning to feel actually a lot better than I did before.

A word of warning though to anyone who "suddenly" decides to cut down of refined sugar. Before this and ridding my addiction of Coca-Cola I was averaging a daily sugar intake of 120 grams and sometimes upwards. The recommended daily intake is between 36-40 grams (depending on your source). So easily three times the daily recommended amount of refined sugar per day.

Yeah, I did the calculations minutes ago. Scary stuff isn't it? I specified "refined" sugar because that's the amount I could easily calculate, I obviously get natural sugar as well and hidden refined sugar in me, but those probably fulfil my daily needs nicely. So the probability is quite high that I have had a intake of 4x daily recommended. That's probably not very healthy or what do you think?

So the warning; If you're going to cut down your sugar be prepared for a shock as your brain pretty much just shuts down and refuses to work in any way before it's gotten it's "hit". It'll pass after a week or so, at least it did for me, but until then it's a bitch. I have semi-honestly never felt so out of energy and "sick".

Anyway... back to the coffee talking. Come visit me, I'll make the awesome-est cup you have ever had, hopefully. I'm still in the learning stage, I for instance need to get a burr grinder too.. gotta grind my own beans now, otherwise the stale bitterness from not so fresh coffee is too noticeable, damn it. So Zassenhaus Brasilia 151 here I come! Unless someone has a better suggestion for a manual burr grinder? Haven't quite decided which blend I like more yet.. I would want to find Sumatra but alas I have no idea where to look for that in Vaasa and Saluhallen hadn't heard of that blend.

I'm testing different brewing techniques, different brewing times, trying it with and without "break & clean". I suspect my beans are a bit too finely ground by the way, no fault of Saluhallen though as they ground them according to my wishes. Awesome service, kudos to them! I have tested with different kinds of water as well, speaking of which... how does one do a double-blind study with only one test-subject? Because I tried to (and succeeded) in doing a "sort of" double-blind study to see if I could tell the difference between Spring water, tap water and filtered tap water. The double-blind part being that neither my wife (the reasearcher) or me (the test-subject) knew which water contained which. For the sake of consistency all liquids were cooled to the same temperate so as to not influence the test-results. So, what about the results? What did they show me?

I failed miserably. I wasn't able to tell the difference in any sort of way. The biggest goal of this test was to see if I was able to discern the difference between tap water or Spring water, because according to some coffee enthusiasts, there's a difference. Clearly according to my small study I could just as well be drinking urine.. or.. well maybe not urine, but at least it shows that I can in good conscience use tap water for my coffee making needs. If I can collect more participants I will try to arrange another double-blind study later on.

Edit; The Spring water was of a Finnish label called Polar Spring. Should I have used a different brand? Maybe that isn't a good one? Vaasa's tap water has a pH value of 6.5 on average, I checked. The filtered water, was just tap water filtered through the coffee filters I have for my drip machine, Rainbow unbleached to be specific.

I've had people over, so they could try out my coffee as well. One friend said it was incomparable to any kind of coffee he had had recently. In a good way though, saying it had a very Starbucks quality to it, which I'm assuming is a good thing.
Two friends (who hasn't tried press coffee yet though) tried just drinking drip coffee with a better blend (Arvid Nordquist: Classic French Roast Extra Dark) and they commented that it's difficult to go back to crap coffee after it..
One friend said it was better but couldn't really tell much more. She's not a very accustomed coffee drinker though so that's okay.
Still waiting for Beije (and possibly his mom..?) to come for a visit though. His (their) opinions regarding coffee is something I value, since they're huge coffee drinkers.

All in all, it's been and still is an eye-opening experience. Some three weeks ago I had never reflected on coffee being anything else than bitter shitwater with milk and sugar that I drank to fulfil my daily requirement of caffeine. Then a couple of weeks ago I had started thinking about how our tap water tasted differently (bad differently) and how my coffee tasted worse than it used too.

Coincidently, around this time my brother was out to buy an electric kettle for his apartment, randomly I asked why he didn't buy a combo machine, a.k.a. drip machine and electric kettle.. kind of like the Princess Diarrhoea Machine I have. Then the salesman (thank you Gigantti) swept my brother to a 150€ espresso what-not machine and started talking about coffee and such for probably 30 minutes. In the end, my brother bought the machine and I started thinking about buying one too. That and many evenings after I searched on Google. A lot. Deciding that if my brother can have better coffee then so can I. And the rest is well.. not so much history as it's.. well.. the present.

Now, I sit and enjoy my black coffee wondering if I can find a blend that has more nuttyness but less acidity. Maybe an ever so slightly stronger hint of chocolate with a little berry. I'm also so totally making another mornin' cup to take with me to work tomorrow. I will mix "Conquista Blend-Sulawesi-Barahona" together, let it steep over night (cold brew style), add a little milk and vanilla ice cream in the morning before I go to work. I had it last Friday, and it was the most beautiful way of waking up.. ever. Since I don't know if there's a name for what I had, I'm so totally naming it right now.. "Nothing gets one going in the morning, like a Manhattan Blow Job.. in your mouth".

Tell all your friends.

Unvenomous Snakes?

2011-05-09T23:07:00.005+03:00

Hmm.. Yeah, that title makes even less sense then they usually do. Anyway. Yeah, I've promised to update you about the whole coffee situation, and I will. But not right now, I'm too tired to write an essay about my various experiences with different coffees. So until then here are two pictures, one of my former comrade in the caffeinated world, the diarrhea machine.. and one of the new awesome machine that's requires more effort, kind of.. but the coffee, oh your god the coffee.. it's not even comparable to the shit I used to drink. I can't imagine ever going to back to shit like Kulta Katrina or Juhla Mokka.. not when I have coffees like Conquista Blend, Sulawesi and Barahona. Next I'm probably going to have to get a coffee grinder though, a manual burr grinder would be really nice. But more of that when I'm less tired.

Uneasy ( but kind of awesome) Listening

2011-05-05T23:14:00.003+03:00

For lack of other things to blog about, and whilst I'm waiting for more results for the things I will blog about soon, here a review (yeah, that's right) about HIM's Uneasy Listening album. Released originally in 2007 one could say that this review is.. hmm.. a bit late? Which albeit entirely true also highly irrelevant, like I've said before, I'm sort of, kind of going to blog about whatever I feel like. And well, I happen to feel like blogging about this now. Besides I have no more news on the Ukulele front yet anyway. Sad, I know, but alas so true. So whilst we're all eagerly awaiting the coffee results and some 'effin pictures of sanded (grinded?) Ukulele's, until then.. this will have to do.

Uneasy Listening by HIM (the band) is I think an album where Ville Valo (the vocalist) really gets to shine in ways he hasn't shone (or shined if you prefer that) before. All in all, some songs are more lacking, or just plain out a bit boring but the album as a whole. Awesome! Their own rough and acoustic version of Buried Alive by Love is so brilliant in my mind, that I actually prefer it over the original. Artists rarely outshine themselves when going acoustic, take Britney Spears for instance. No specific harm meant to Britney, she's been picked on enough as it is, and really? Maybe, just maybe, shaving your head wasn't the best of ideas. Anyway. I tried youtubing her doing an acoustic version of any of her songs, couldn't find one. So instead of Britney Spears.. I present you with Kristin Rian, a norweigan Country/Pop Singer-Songwriter (I hope I got that right now..) doing an acoustic piano version of Britney Spears's Everytime. It's p'rty good, do have a listen. Scratch that.. it's really really good.

But.. back to Uneasy Listening, like I already said. I like it, so yeah, there you have it. I like it, it's good.

tl;dr edition

I'll give HIM's Uneasy Listening 4 drunk and passed out Finnish people out of 5. And Kristin Rian gets 5 klippfiskar out of 5. I've had Norwegian klippfisk by the way, and even though I personally thought it was awful, like chewing on piece of salty wood, in this context it's a good thing. Yeah, I know, it makes no sense but just go with it.

A Gift He Couldn't Refuse

2011-05-03T23:18:00.004+03:00

When the Godfather gives gifts, you don't refuse them. Especially if they're awesome!

Today, the Godfather decided to randomly give Boons an Angry Bird. I suspect I'm probably more happy about it than he is, especially since he doesn't really know what Angry Birds are. Hmm, maybe I should let him play it sometime just to see what he thinks. Either way, I thought it was a pretty nice gift/gesture, so here I am, shamelessly blogging about it. I actually took a better picture of Boons first, where he was looking into the camera smiling and all, unfortunatly my camera decided to spaz out at that particular moment, so in this next photo he's back to watching Alfons Åberg again. Easily distracted mind I guess, can't really blame him though since he sort of (and by "sort of" I mean totally) gets it from me. Anyway, it's still some nice pictures, so enjoy!

Dear Xbox (a Love? Letter)

2011-04-30T20:45:00.007+03:00

Dear Xbox (360 and Live)

I'm sorry I haven't been around in a while. I can imagine you probably feel a bit neglected but I sincerely hope you still read this letter and not just throw in a metaphorical fire-place or some more appropriate metaphor considering you're not really real, you're a service. Oh, I'm sorry again. That came out wrong. I meant the service thing in a good way, not like in a prostitute way. Even though I kind of have to pay to have fun with you.

Your fake smile and vacant expression actually warms my heart. Just a little bit.

At least I can pay on a trimonthly basis and you do let me have fun with you whenever I feel like it. And then when I'm done I can just sort of abandon you. Actually come to think of it, you are very much like a prostitute... but a really good one, that I totally really like.

Even though I haven't played with you in quite a while. Yeah sure, I sometimes get drunk with my friends and then we play with you for hours in one night, but then the next morning I forget about you... again. So what I'm trying to say dear Xbox (360 and Live) is that I'm sorry. I've thought about the words to say to you a lot, and all I could think of was "I'm sorry". And it's not even especially sincere. It's not like I'm going to change for you. You have your fun sides and all but you're just too high maintenance and I really don't care that much about you any more. Oh, that came out wrong again.

What I meant to say is that.. umm.. well.. You've let yourself go damn it, you used to be all shiny and new and with such promise. And then you just let it all go. Well to be fair, you did hold your part on some of your promises, but not the ones that mattered. At least not to me. Yeah sure, you were the one who suggested toys to spice things up. But really, what were you thinking? I've seen what other people do with the same toys, and to be honest with you Xbox. It looks like they're having wa'aaaay more fun with it. Other people are doing things with their toys that I imagine you never would, you would just give me that look of disgust and make a smug comment about how "you would never do that, no matter how much I begged". Even though I still pay for you on a trimonthly basis.

I could say that it's not your fault. But I would be lying. It's totally your fault, you have no one else to blame but yourself. And no, you don't look good in your new hair colour. You just don't. There, I've said it.

I never really liked your "awards" for doing weird things to you anyway.

No Xbox, don't cry.. You'll find someone else, someone that appreciates you in the way you should be appreciated. Someone who's maybe too young and stupid to realise that you're mostly a bit of a cock tease. Someone who thinks it's totally okay to take more than you give in a relationship. Someone who doesn't mind that there's a little poo-poo in your private lady garden. I used to be that someone, but I'm sad to say Xbox, that I'm not any more.

Sure, let's be honest. There will be lonely nights when I might still play with you. When I have nothing else to do and then you'll be there, beckoning me with sweet memories of a times that used to be. And I'll cave in and play with you for a couple of hours. But we both know I'll feel really dirty afterwards and probably take a shower or two to get your stench of me. And then we won't speak of it ever again, until it happens again. I'm cool with that, if you are?

Sshhh, don't talk. You'll ruin it. Just go with it even if it feels weird.

Would You Kindly?

2011-04-28T23:33:00.003+03:00

I'm still eagerly awaiting Portal 2. Hmm, maybe I hadn't mentioned that earlier, I can't remember. Anyway, the point, as some of you nerdier (good nerd though, not the bad kind) people out there might already be aware of, Portal 2 has already been released. I have not played it yet though so I'm trying my best not to spoil it. Which has already turned out to be more difficult than one might think, seeing as I frequently visit and read a number of of technology and game oriented sites. And some of those feel like they can start writing about the story and stuff, curse them! And curse you too, if you're a douche. But I hope you're not.

So would you kindly not spoil Portal 2 for me? Pretty please with a poop-covered penis on top.

Obligatory Happy Easter!

2011-04-25T16:21:00.003+03:00

Make trends.. or follow. Or like in this case, just another obligatory Happy Easter. But with a usual Carlosian (yeah, it's gonna become a thing) twist. Well, a twist might be a bit of an overstatement, less of an M.Night Shamailaiööön type twist (Shyamalan according to Google).. and more like "I'm calling you a bitch whilst.." -twist. So without further ado I present with this years Easter greetings, twist and all!

Yeah, the second picture isn't even Easter related, it's just a random picture taken of our living room whilst lying in bed. At least the first picture contains objects relevant to Easter, not so much the Jesus-y kind of Easter, more the eating of chocolate and decorating of Pussy Willow. Best part.. I totally did not just make up the Pussy Willow -part, apparently it is actually called that in English. It's true what They (who?) sometimes say, fact is funnier than fiction. Behold the proof that is Pussy Willow.. Pussy Willow..

Pussy Willow..

Okay, so it's not that funny. But it's still a little funny..

Anyway, Happy Easter Bitches!

No Gingy for Sadsung

2011-04-21T19:18:00.004+03:00

Boohoo for me, no Gingerbread just yet. Turns out Samsung fudged it a bit with the update (again!) to Gingerbread 2.3 as it bricked some phones, deleted the market place on others (again!!) and other unpleasant things. Lucky me I was actually going to update last Sunday, but alas my phone's battery was running a bit low so Kies (the PC software) told me to fuck off. Well not literally, it just complained that my battery was too low and refused to update. In hindsight I was lucky apparently as there are others out there who weren't as lucky. Because the next day when I was going to try to update it again Kies claimed that I had the latest firmware and refused to acknowledge the existence of 2.3, holding firmly on to that 2.2.1 is the latest. Later that day I found out that Gingy was fudged, so lucky me.

Sadsung is sad 'cos it got no Gingy!

By the way, that is actually a screen shot of my home screen, taken like a month ago but still. So now I'm just patiently waiting for a new update of the original new update. Yeah, Samsung likes to roll that way;

"Teasing with an update... Here you go, good customers of Samsung.. take it, don't be afraid, it's totally awesome, this new update... *pulls it away at the last second* Or maybe I'll just hold on to it a little more.. *gives it again* Nah, I'm just joking, here you go, taste my awesome penis.. *shoves it in unsuspecting mouth* Yeah, you like the taste of that don't you..

..Then you noticed that the metaphorical penis tastes like poop.. *Samsung pulls out again* Ooops, my bad, just a little poo-poo there, nothing to worry about, I'm totally STD-free.. (it's not) I'll just go and wash this off and we're good to go again Samsung says and then you you don't see them for weeks. And they don't even call you or anything."

Samsung Kies updates.. kind of like getting mouth-raped, I suppose.

Fuck Yeah, For Tees!

2011-04-18T18:28:00.003+03:00

Fuck yeah! Last weekend I finally got my first report on how the T-shirts are doing. You know? The T-shirts I have designed and have for sale through shotdeadinthehead.com. Yeah, those.. I kind of thought that I hadn't been selling at all since I was told that I would get reports at the end of every month. Well, I heard nothing for like a month and a half-ish. So I just kind of figured that "well yeah, they probably have so many T-shirts that mine has now blended in with the crowd and I didn't get any sold when they were new, so I probably won't get any sold now.."

Yeah, I reused this image because I still haven't bothered to install Adobe Pooposhop(tm).

As it turns out, I was wrong.. but in a good way. Apparently they've (I've?) sold 13 T-shirts. Which admittedly probably sounds like very little, but since I've done no advertising except for blogging about them, I'm very happy. I mean come on, 13 people so far has thought that my designs were nice enough that they would spend the money to buy them. That's awesome! I still have plans of updating my website in a not so distant future, and when I do, I will make an effort to show of the T-shirts there as well, hoping it might encourage someone every now and then that; "Oooh, I totally wanna buy one of those!".

Anyways.. So if any of you 13 people out there who has bought a tee from me (Yeah, I so giddy I'm rhyming now..) Feel free to send me a picture of you wearing it, if you're into that kind of thing I mean. With your permission I'll gladly post some pictures of some people wearing my couture. If not, then yeah, that's cool too. We're still friends and all.

But if you think about it, like really stretching your imagination and such, this could be your only chance for shame.. fame, I mean your only chance for fame. Yeah, fame.. that's totally what I meant.

"Send a picture of yourself wearing my T-shirt, it will totally enlarge your E-Peen/E-Vag!"

Unless of course you don't want it larger, and in that case it will totally make it smaller. Or browner, or you know.. stuff.

Anyway. 13 sold T-shirts so far. I'm very pleased. To those of you that bought them, my deepest thanks! To those you of you just looked at them a little and then decided not to buy them.. shame on you.. repent your sins now, by buying two. Nah, it's okay, you probably have things you need more than one of my T-shirts.. like clean water.. or a roof over your head, it's okay.. I understand. Just wait until they're so popular that you can by a cheap knock-off in an obscure market for like 1$..

That's all for now.

The Stuff Arrives

2011-04-15T18:20:00.003+03:00

Hurray! My ordered stuff has arrived. Actually it arrived on Wednesday, but I've had better things to do than blog. Shocked and appalled you say; "Surely not, what's more important than blogging!". And I confess to you with a slight hint of sadness and shame in my voice that, "No, you're right. I didn't have anything more important to do, I just felt too unmotivated to right about it the second it happened. And I never thought you'd call me out on my bluff."

Happy now? Now we're all a bit more sad on the inside?

Anyway, behold the gloriously, extremely badly edited ( or not so much edited as molested in pixlr, I have no Adobe Photopoop(tm) at the moment ) pictures of the Ukuleles. Just pretend that the badly drawn frames are.. well.. not badly drawn. And that the text looks like it's supposed to look instead.

Oh yeah, and before I forgot, the white cube next to them is my own "invention" the USCC™, Universal Size Comparison Cube™, the 50.8mm size to be specific. So you get a feel for the size of these. And yeah, they are incredible tiny was my first thought too. Apparently I have bigger hands than I thought.

That's 2 inches by the way if you use other, lesser systems, of measurement.

I haven't quite decided how to paint mine yet and since there's a lot of sanding ( that wounds weird ) before I can even get to the painting part, I'm not stressing so much about it yet.

Needless to say, it will be awesome and you will probably want to have sex with the Ukulele as well, just like you did with my words earlier.. perv.

Sad laptop is sad

2011-04-10T21:44:00.004+03:00

So yeah. My new (old) laptop is sad. Sad laptop is sad. Sad laptop is also kind of dead. Damn it. I haven't tried connecting an external display through VGA yet, but I fear that it's not so much the screen that has died, but more that the GFX-card has... how do I put this? The fat lady has not only sang her songs, she's also left the building, gone home, made herself a cup of tea, gone to bed, woken up in the morning and moved on with her life.

Oakfield is no more, all hail Oakfield! (that's what I named the laptop)

Nah, I am going to check if I could get a external display to work. If so then excellent, because I can get all the work I've done on the laptop copied to the main machine (Zelda). Otherwise I suppose I'll have to take it apart so I can get the harddrive out of it and connect that to Zelda. Either way, I have to find a way to copy stuff from it since all the work I've done on the board game for the past year is on that. All the songs I written for the past year is on it. Unnerving times right now.

At least me and old Oaky had a good run. Remember that time when I had only had Oaky for like two days or something and then I spilled O'Boy on him. Yeah, that was hilarious and I ran around panicked thinking that I had ruined him. And then the following day he was still alive. Fun times. Me and Oaky had some good laughs, like when I tried to left-click sometimes and Oaky though it would be a lot funnier to pretend I was keeping the mouse bottom held. He used to like doing that when I was using Adobe Photoshop(tm) which is just his sort of humour. Or other times when Oaky pretended that I had double-clicked.. when really I hadn't. Like I said, fun times.. you bitchy-faced laptop. Or like how I never used his battery and kept it plugged in all the times instead because the battery was so shit that would only last.. for an hour, I think.

I always hated you Oaky, I hated your fat bitchin' face.

Anyway I'll keep you, all my three avid readers, up to date on how it goes. Next, on a very special episode of Blossom, the fate of Oaky is decided.

The Dry Spell

2011-04-07T17:36:00.004+03:00

Yeah, I know, I know.. shame on me. Only three posts in one month. What can I say..? Dry Spell? Would that suffice? Hmm, probably not.

So let's just all pretend that, instead of having written nothing for a month (almost), I been writing really funny and clever.. stuff. A-grade reading material. You read it, you loved it, made sweet (albeit weird) love to it. You pissed yourself because you laughed so hard. And then you made love to my writing again, because you're just freaky like that, you pervert. Deal?

Good, then we're all friends again. And also you made sweet erotic love to my clever and funny writings. But that's okay, I forgive you.

So has nothing remotely interesting been happening lately to bring on this dry spell? Well partly I suppose, I haven't really been all that creative lately. I want to, but nothing has come to mind to be creative about. Or well, actually now, that's not entirely true. I have two things on the horizon. One, kind of requires time alone at home, so that I can record a song, to which I will make a video as discussed with a friend. We had a great brainstorming session and out of that, the idea of a stop-motion paper cut-out figures -video was born...

It's okay, I can wait. Feel free to read it again, it was weird when I wrote it too. Stop-motion.. paper.. cut-out.. figures.. video. So yeah, just imagine me with a guitar.. but cut out of paper, and moving stop-motion style. Maybe it's better I just actually do the video, and you can see it when it's done instead of trying to imagine it now. But I will post some progress pictures and behind the scenes stuff whenever I have some

The other creative idea I have on the horizon is to build an Ukulele. Well not quite build one per se, I bought a "Build Your Own"-kit. But I'm still going to modify it and such.

I am very excited about this one. For one thing it'll be fun to own an Ukulele, and even more fun to "make" one. So yeah, the quality of this Tenayo is probably not the best. But then again, my Yamaha C-40 isn't the greatest guitar in the world either and I still enjoy playing on it frequently. What it lacks in build quality in makes up for in charm.

So I figured, if I get an Ukulele, surely my son should get one too. Mostly because he's always very fascinated when I play guitar, so yeah. Two Ukulele's, one for me and for my bastard spawn (it's okay, he knows I call him that).

I think that's all for now. But rest assured, I will try my best to blog more frequently since you "loved" my stuff so much.

Uncanny Valley

2011-03-10T13:34:00.003+02:00

Here you go, I hope you've already had your lunch. I see we're getting ever closer to the Uncanny Valley. I'm just going to go right ahead and call him Bob, Bob McDoucheyBeard.

Nothing To Say

2011-03-09T18:48:00.002+02:00

Dear blog, I have nothing to say at the moment. Yeah I know, it's a damn shame is what it is, but alas it can't be helped. So until I do have something to say or alternatively I am not as tired in the brain as I am right now, you'll just have to settle with this time lapse video that a friend made. It's raelly kewl!

Three-ish Down

2011-03-06T18:42:00.003+02:00

...and 443 to go. One of the new things on my metaphorical plate is reading. No, not as in generally reading, I've always been a great fan of reading. So, I figured I would expand my horizons so to speak. So with that in mind I set out to find more books to read. Lo and behold, I found a compilation called "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". Awesome! Although that book is apparently a literary reference book, so instead of reading all the books you can just read this one and know about all the 1001 books. You're kidding me right?, I thought. That's no way to "read" a book. So I on my ever-expanding list of "Things to do whilst I'm still alive" I am now adding:

Read all the books from "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die". Watching a movie based on the book does not count towards this. Reading a summary does not count towards this.

So I tried looking for all the books. And I thought I had, but it turned out I only manage to acquire 446 of them. So that's a bit of a bummer, but since I still have quite a lot to read I'm cool for now. So far I've read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and Do Androids Dream of Digital Sheep by Philip K. Dick. Both which have movies based on them. Very.. very loosely based.
I've also read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, but since it's more than ten years since I read it, I haven't really decided if it counts. Besides it was a very entertaining book.

Oh right, the title of "Three-ish Down"? I haven't finished reading I, Robot quite yet. But it's really good and both of these science fiction books are a good warm-up to my later reads which will include Jane Austen, H.P. Lovecraft, Lewis Carroll, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and many many more.

And let me tell you, I am not looking forward to reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. But it's on the list, that and 5 other books by her, so read it I must. Wish me luck.

You'll Lose Your Head, Literally

2011-02-25T16:47:00.001+02:00

Happy Friday to you all!

By Means of the Reflective Surface

2011-02-23T20:45:00.002+02:00

Or you know, "Through the Looking-Glass" which makes more sense.

American McGee and the talented people of Spicy Horse, please don't dilute your vision to please EA. Pretty please with knifes of top? With the legacy "American McGee's Alice" left behind this could be an totally awesome game as well as a commercial success. I sincerely hope you aim for a M rating and stick to it despite what some might say, but then again maybe it's just me. Here's two more teaser/trailers for Alice: Madness Returns. You might have already seen them, if you haven't, you owe it to yourself to watch. Enjoy!

Zombies and you are stupid

2011-02-22T22:08:00.005+02:00

So zombies, yeah, they're pretty stupid. Or well, I suppose zombies per se aren't stupid, although they actually are. But more accurately the public view of zombies is stupid. I mean really? When your "enemy" is a decaying moron with the cognitive logistics of a piece of wood and the movement reflexes of your average senior citizen, what's there to be scared about? Really? And no, I'm not talking/thinking about our new überZombies that run like motherfuckers high of methamphetamine, a.k.a. the "28 Days Later" -syndrome. No I am thinking about the Classic Zombie, the George A. Romero zombie.

Classic Zombie, almost sounds like a brand though. "Tired and bored of Zombie? Well, we listened to you and brought back Classic Zombie! The Freshness is only a bite away!"

Anyway. As I was saying, the public view of zombies is stupid. I could walk briskly away from a zombie, that's how (not) dangerous they are. Yeah sure, if they gather enough in a group and somehow surround me before I notice anything. But how likely is that going to happen if I know they're out there. That's just as idiotic as walking outside to poke a bear that's outside waiting for you. So yeah, one could argue that what if I encounter a zombie in the very beginning of the outbreak, when I couldn't possibly know they're out there. Well, you know how when you encounter a drunken hobo on the street you instinctively evade them. Now imagine that they're also covered in blood. Which then again, some drunken hobos are anyway, so that comparison is pretty spot on. So whether I know there's a zombie outbreak or not, it's not like I'm going to hug the slobbering bastard.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against George A. Romero by the way, I don't even know him. I'm just saying the notion of zombies is stupid. It's like zombies checked all the wrong boxes when they were doing their character sheet. Slow? Check! Make noises to attract unwanted attention before I attack? Check? Smell worst than yesteryear's garbage just in case my prey doesn't hear my mumbling? Double-check!

Hmmm, what else could I add to my disappointing character sheet list, the Zombie thought to himself. Impaired motor skills thus disabling me from using any type of weapon other than my hands and mouth? Yeah, that sounds awesomely useless, check!

So in the end, because I promised myself I would keep this one short(er). Zombies are stupid. Resident Evil zombies are even stupider. And if you still feel like reading about zombies and stuff, you should check out Max Brook's "The Zombie Survival Guide". It's apparently available from amazon.com, I say apparently because I had to search for it myself first. But yeah, it's totally there, and having read it before, I can highly recommend it. If you like zombie stuff that is, otherwise you're probably better off reading something else.

Mock-up of what it could look like, but it doesn't.

Sunday Morning Coffee Ramblings

2011-02-20T09:53:00.008+02:00

So yeah, I should get back on this horse called blogging. And according to recent surveys you people.. (apparently not exclusive to three anymore) like blogs about Tees and progress on my board game. And by recent surveys I mean # of likes a post gets. So who am I to deprive you of your guilty pleasures?
Well, in this context I'm the anus-opening (<-- don't click) that will continue to blog about whatever I feel like at the time. And sometimes those things will be about things that you, my dear audience, like. I'm not entirely sure if this is going to be one of them. Let's see how things pan out.

Speaking of things, or rather not speaking of them, it was quite a shock to come back to Finland after a week in London. From 10-15 degrees to -18 is not what I would call a pleasant experience, I kind of felt like the winter rapist I blogged about earlier. Minus the raping part though.. obviously. In London I went to Forbidden Planet, and found a new mascot for my rubberducking needs. Say hello to Sacky. Whenever I have a problem that needs to be verbalized to assist in the solving of it, Sacky will be there for me. Staring at me with his bitching face of disgust, but nonetheless listening to me explain about a PHP problem I have.

Yeah, some people might think I'm a bit of a traitor for buying a mascot based on a game exclusive to Sony Playstation 3 since I'm primarily an Microsoft Xbox 360 man. I think those people are stupid for thinking one has to stay faithful to one console, or just one platform. To put it simply, could I afford a Playstation 3 as well, I would. But I can't, so I won't. That doesn't mean I have anything against Playstation, or Wii for that matter. The Xbox 360 just happens to have a lot of games I like/own/want. Speaking of game I want, last Wednesday I ordered Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition, it should arrive on Monday according to my calculations. I would've bought Bioshock 2 but I promised myself I wouldn't buy it until I've played through Bioshock, which I still haven't because it creeps me out too much. True story. Anyway, enough about that, here's Sacky.

So from one game to another, here's my review of the recently released game Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.

For a new game, I was a bit shocked by the graphics, they were, how do I say this? Do you remember when Crysis first came out and everyone was blown away by how realistic the graphics were. Well I was impressed but not in the way other people were, but Age of Empires, I mean WOW! The details on the characters are astonishing both in fidelity and with the numerous customization options I decided to have all my militia wear tops in Deep Blue and skirts in Ecru. Yeah, I decided all my men are colorblind idiots with no fashion sense.

The path finding for the A.I is out of this world, it's almost like every soldier has his own back story and life values, making decisions based on these events and according to actions taken by other soldiers. Most of the time those soldiers make those moronic decisions with the result in death. You know, like in reality. The buildings look amazing and with real-time rendering of every wooden fiber, the way buildings take damage is so intricate. Imagine this, if a militia gets a sufficient blow in on a house, splintering the wood, they can then enter the building through the newly created hole in the wall. Then they just go to sleep on the floor after binging on all the available alcohol. When they wake up again, they usually wander around my enemy's town flashing themselves to fair maidens and goats. Once the fair maidens have run away they mostly just molest the goats. Yeah, I should really do something about that.

So did I like Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings? Yes, very much, I've played it too many times to count. Knowing all the different strategies that work for different civilizations... that is.. 12 years ago when it was actually new. Now? It's aged, not bad, but not very good either. I played the trial version before I started writing this. I was an unstoppable killing machine, destroying every enemy in sight on my path to victory. On easy, but still. They probably would've kicked my ass on anything else just like in C&C.

12 years ago, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings would've gotten a 4/5. Now, it's forever disgraced and shamed into a corner with the likes of Quake III. Games that used to be good, but that since then has been surpassed by their spiritual successors and general improvement in technology, knowledge & stuff. Don't get me wrong, they used to be very good and popular, some still are good and popular. But a lot of them are viewed through rose-tinted shades of nostalgia. A lot of them, used to be. They aren't anymore, get over it. There's better games out there and you are missing out on some of them.

An Other Kind of Lullaby

2011-02-17T19:39:00.001+02:00

Offensive, hilarious.. and sometimes so true.. and so wrong. I give you a new song from Tim Minchin.

Ooh Goosebumps!

2011-02-17T12:26:00.002+02:00

Say hello to Dead Island, an upcoming survivor horror first-person shooter with RPG elements from Techland, the makers of Chrome and Call of Juarez. This is the first game with zombies in it that I am really excited about. the Left 4 Dead series never really grabbed me, mainly because of the lacking single player experience. Anyways.. Check out the trailer below.

Watch.. get goosebumps.

The Luckiest F.O.B in the World(s)

2011-02-12T21:43:00.002+02:00

Surprise bitches!

By the way, F.O.B is my own invention, feel free to steal it.. Father Of a Bastard.. but in a none insulting way, more like a "lovingly Old English my son is a bastard child.. because we weren't married". But we and therefore I am married now, so hurray to me. I couldn't be happier unless it was also Valentine's Day on Monday... oh it is? Then awesome!

Change of plans

2011-02-01T23:19:00.003+02:00

Damn it, change of plans. There will be no surprise on Sunday, it'll have to wait until next week. Yeah, I know, it's a shame. But there's other people who's opinion matter more in this case. So as a sort of, bandage on your (as I'm sure) deep seated sorrow and anguish. I present you with;

The Perils of a Winter Rapist

If you look really closely, that's totally a small frozen penis.

Hold Your Ungulate Mammals

2011-02-01T18:55:00.004+02:00

Now, I would like you take a deep breath. Close your eyes for a couple of seconds after you have read the following sentence. Like I said, close your eyes and imagine that the next sentence is said in a high pitched witch-ey voice, sort of like Judge Doom's death scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Don't worry I'll wait.

- I have a surprise for you!

Yeah, that's it. Probably a bit of an overkill build-up for that but I regret nothing. Now I do have a surprise, and to me it's a big one. Just to ease your mind beije, no I still haven't gotten my board game sold to publisher, at least not yet. But this surprise I still at least in my mind, quite a big one. All will be revealed on Sunday. Until then you're just going to have to hold your horses or any other ungulate mammal of your choice.

But I figured so this post wouldn't be completely useless, since I'm not going to post anything until Sunday. Here's my treat for this time, a quick photo of some of the sketches in fleshing out the main character/mascot for Island of Eternity. And for once, you can actually click it for larger version that has more things to look at, since this one is cropped. Yeah, I'm awesome like that, feel free to kiss my feet. Although, actually nevermind, you don't have to do that, the quality of the picture is utter shaite. Bad lighting and what not.

But until Sunday, why don't you enjoy some awesome-ness that is Zach Weiner. And of course, my sketch.

More Tees, Please

2011-01-28T09:44:00.005+02:00

As some of you might already know, via other sources, all of the T-Shirts are now available for sale. Yeah I know, it's totally awesome! So here's is now the list of all of 'em, since I noticed they seemed to be a bit tricky to find through shotdeadinthehead.com's search. I figured instead of making you frustrated in maybe not finding them all, you could just use this nice reference list. That way, if I ever get more merchandise I could probably list them here too, and back link to this post. Or something. I don't really know yet. But I will link to this post from my soon to be released website (new design, new colours and all). Yeah, you read it. I invented some new colours so that I would be able to have colours that no-one has ever seen before.
Okay, I'm done being sarcastic now. Feel free to "browse" the T-Shirts and if you happen to actually buy one, do totally send me a picture of you wearing it and maybe I can make a thing out it, like a post called "Fans of Carlos" or something where I post the pictures. Or not.

Enjoy!

Freddy Krueger
Chucky
Alien/Xenomorph
Ghostface
Hannibal
Jason Vorhees
Bruce (Shark(s) from JAWS films...)
Billy (Puppet from the SAW films)
Leatherface
Michael Myers
Pennywise
Pinhead
Predator

Excuses, excuses

2011-01-26T23:48:00.002+02:00

Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've been busy, and here's partly why..

Feed Me!

2011-01-21T00:21:00.001+02:00

Yeah, this is totally the surprise you've all been waiting for. I'm a little sorry that I took until today, I really did plan for Thursday, but then I just obviously didn't. So yeah, there's that. But I hope my surprise will make it up to you.

-----------------------------------------------

As some you might not know. I'm totally a poor starving artist.

*silence*

No really, I totally am. Well.. the artist part is kind of true at least. But now you can feed me by buying a t-shirt. Yeah I know, it's pretty awesome isn't it! Of course I only get a cut of the profit so if it's possible, you should really buy like 50 of them at once. Nah, I'm kidding, it's okay if you only buy 10 at a time.

Again, kidding. Even though I'm being a self-promoting ass-hat right now, hey, who knows, you might like 'em. So on a more serious note, do go check them out. If you happen to like any of them (13 horror inspired designs) then awesome. If you happen to purchase one, even awesome-er! But even if you don't, we're still totally friends.

This is the only available design so far. Feel free to click the link and buy one right now.

Freddy Krueger

Have I Told You?

2011-01-16T22:30:00.004+02:00

That I've actually been in some movies too. No, like seriously actually been in some movies. Okay, well.. I starred in a short movie about... hmm... I'm still not actually sure what it was about. I just googled it, read about it. But no, I'm still not sure what it was about. Anyway, here's a still from that short movie I managed to scrape out from the bottom of the internet. I do have it on DVD as well, I converted it from VHS some years ago. Yeah, blond hair.. I don't know what I was thinking. Also I spelled blond wrong, damn it!

So which other movie was I in, you might wonder? Well I'll tell you. Here you go, Bugi Fiction. According to the credits I'm a "Mafia's Hitman / Customer in Bar". So yeah, not a very big role, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. This was eight or so years ago. But thankfully I had gotten rid of the blond hair by then, at least I wanna remember it that way. I might remember it wrong though. Hmm.. I feel like I could be up for being in some more movies though, they were always fun experiences despite my tacky choice of hair-colours. Or maybe I could have a minor role in a play or something? Yeah, that might be fun. Well see how things go.

And just to ease your mind, I know you're furiously thinking and wondering. No this isn't the surprise I had in store. I'm still saving that for tomorrow or maybe Tuesday, depending on how things go. Until then, I suggest you go out and try to find Bugi Fiction in a movie rental store near you, and enjoy the experience.

Flammable

2011-01-16T08:39:00.004+02:00

I have a surprise for you people (I don't know yet if it'll be a good surprise or a bad one). I won't blog about it yet, because I'm still waiting for the opportune moment to tell the world. So until then you're all going to have to settle with this. No.. don't cry.. it'll be alright.. I promise.

Anyways. Many people (two at least) have commented that my character "Jack Jones" for Island of Eternity looks very similar to Vault boy from the Fallout series. So yeah, I feel like clearing up a few things, for various reasons.

The graphics you have seen have always been (unless specified) borrowed, inspired by and/or outright stolen for the purpose establishing a theme. The theme for Island of Eternity was always going to be a bit 50's Pulp. Hence it made sense to use graphics from an already established theme that fit nicely with mine. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have used any theme at all. So you thinking "Hey, that looks like the Fallout dude". My responds is, and will always be "Why yes, the character is partly inspired by Vault Boy from the Fallout series". But "Jack Jones" is inspired by many other character as well. Such as Felix the Cat (1919), Tintin (1929), Rich Uncle Pennybags (1936) to name a few.

How's that? Well.. I do my research. And I do it well. In trying to make a game, which is to be themed as partly 50's Pulp and such, I researched character design of that time, of course with a bit of artistic freedom here and there, but in the end, with one single goal. Design a character that feels familiar and aged. A character that feels like it's existed since circa 1937. So there. The final revision of "Jack Jones" will still feel familiar, but rest assured. It will very much be my design. Not stolen. Not borrowed. But definitely inspired by.

Any questions? Feel free to comment. Until the surprise though, like I said, you are going to have to settle with this. And one card illustration which is complete, though I haven't decided if I will use this illustration yet, since that might mean that "Break á Leg!" would have to be renamed to "Flammable!", and I kind of still like "Break á Leg!" so I'm torn. So why do an illustration for a card I might not use? Well, to get some practice in using Adobe Illustrator for one thing and besides I could still use it in some promotional use even if I don't use it as a card.

Until my surprise, I hope this is okay for now.

Mind = Blown

2011-01-08T22:19:00.003+02:00

"Colour your drawings with emotions, after you've done the outlines with logic"

So in the spirit (vaguely) of that. Here's the head of my character Jack (for the board game) drawn as Shakespeare. Excuse the roughness of it, it's just a quick sketch and it's not something that will be used in the final game anyway. I just did it for the lulz.

Time: From sketch to final PNG - 1 h

Yeah, it's a bit random. But then again, I've only slept 3 hours or so last night.

Welcome to Another...

2011-01-01T21:19:00.004+02:00

... reflection of the nature of my cynicism. Most likely your new year wont be any better than the last one. You're going to continue to commit yourself to the same mistakes you did last year, use the same lame ass excuses for why you did it and feel the same way you used to after wards. Yeah sure, things change and people do change. But not nearly as much as you'd like to think. People don't want to change, they wanna stay the same stupid way they've always been regardless whether it works or not, regardless whether it's good or not. People don't like change even when it's for the better.

The sad truth is that in most cases, people couldn't even care enough to consider that somethings wrong with them, because we are not all God's beautiful children. Some of us, are assholes with no noticeable excuse for being that way. Some of us, are pushovers that in wanting to be respected by others, forget to respect ourselves. Some just walk through life unaffected by the things that happen around them, untouched by words and actions that would offend others. Who of these have more of a right to exist? Who should be pitied more? All of them or none? We could easily say for arguments sake, and most people might be likely to agree with this, that assholes have less rights. Or at least, they should have less rights. But the twist to that story is that we've all been assholes at one point or another, sure some more than others, but not even the saintliest of people have absolutely no skeletons in there closet. So maybe, the reasons for being an asshole should define who has more rights. Maybe the "why" is more important than the "who". I would say it is, but that it also lacks the required depth.

Pain, both emotional and physical are very subjective. Just because your most painful moment isn't on the same level as mine on an objective scale doesn't invalidate it. Your most painful moment in life is still comparable to my most painful moment, even if yours is a broken nail and mine would be parents dying at the age of 6. No, it's not a real example, and at that, it's a bit of; from one extreme end of the spectrum to another. But it serves a nice point. Pain, or rather the experience of pain is subjective, making it objective helps no one, but it's still important that the objective scale is present is some cases.

What am I trying to say with all of this? I don't really know. Is it better for the other person that you're self-aware? Some people think that ignorance is more forgivable than other things. I tend to disagree. Ignorance, stupidity or whatever you call it means that person never made a choice how to be. Because they chose to not choose. Someone being aware is always making a choice, something I forget sometimes. It might not always be the best choice or the nicest choice, but it is still always a choice. Which brings up the question of why again. Why make a noticeable "bad" choice if you're aware of the consequences and reactions of that choice? Are there reasons under the surface you're missing? Bits of information you don't have that makes a seemingly "bad" choice in fact, the lesser of two evils. Probably sometimes, other times, not so much, other times it might actually be ignorance/stupidity, because even the most self-aware of people will not always be self-aware. Awareness is not a constant state of mind.. or well.. it is in one sense, but awareness is more of a steady flow of varying levels of self-study.. self-doubt.. of trying to objectively observe a subjective state of mind, whilst it's happening.

So what am I saying? I'm think, I'm saying that people don't change, don't expect them to change. If you're displeased with your life, stop complaining and do something about it. It's not on anyone else's responsibility to fix it for you, or even to listen to you for that matter. But be thankful that some do. When you've been an asshole, say that you're sorry. Listen to people who try to tell you your worst features, they're probably right. Don't assume that people are evil, don't assume they're nice either. Give them the time to show you instead. The best present you can give anyone is time, not stuff. And last but not least, love like you wanna be loved and not the other way around.

..Welcome to Another..crappy year, it wont be any better than what you make of it. So make better than the best of it.

Alpha and Omega

2010-12-31T10:41:00.003+02:00

With this year coming to close and a new year dawning I figured I should probably tie up all my loose ends, also known as, things I said I would blog about, but haven't. So here's a summary of the year that has passed.

Art n' Shit
I combined photography and digital painting to make "Souls", starting with Condemned Soul, Chapter I. By the way, the eyes. Yeah, they're Adolf Hitler's. But alas I only got so far as to chapter II, which means there's one missing. I might get to that at some point, but don't wait with bathed breath.
I also used Adobe Photoshop to add myself to a movie I obviously wasn't in, still funny though. Then I of course went overboard with it, and ruined the joke my making another one.

Some Call it Music
Several (here, here and here) times during the year, I promised to upload something I had written to youtube. I kind of kept that promised with Unstabbable Feet and Prozac. But I still want to upload something a bit more serious, so yeah, I will, but just not right now. I'm still writing music and have made nice progress. Speaking of which, I could probably record Last Curtain Call. But we'll see.

I ♥ Herbs, but Herbs don't ♥ me
In April I tried growing my own herbs, I did to I small update regarding they're status after wards but kind of let it hanging there. Especially since I might have made a big deal about it with my cliffhanger; What happened to Basil's home? Is Tarragon really as innocent as he looks? Will Thyme ever find the love she rightfully deserves? Also, we finally get to find out why Lemon Balm left his two wives to look for his parents.
So here's it actually is, the thrilling (?) conclusion. The died, all of them. One by one they perished to mistreat and me being generally uninterested. So, ooops!

The Nerd Within
I waited for some games, played some and ignored others. I played Command & Conquer, got my ass handed to me by the AI on easy and just never looked back. My save is still probably around somewhere within the depths of crap called System partition. I was eager to get Stuck in Limbo, but never actually did, at least not yet. Fable III was, well nice I suppose even though I haven't finished it yet. Halo: Reach surprised me in some good ways and ended up getting a 4,2 which later got upped to 4.5.
Fallout. New Vegas is still on my "to buy list". Batman: Arkham City is also there, but that's will be for next year, since it's not coming out yet anyway.

Rants & News
During the year I also ranted about religion and why people need definitions. People have not answered me yet on that one by the way, but it's cool, we're all friends here, right? R'iight? Anyways. In my rant of definitions I might have (almost like I wouldn't know) said something about totally proposing to my wife-to-be within a couple of years, tops. Then later we had our Feast of Winter Solstice, at which I totally did. Hussah!

The Random Remains
I said I would cut my hair and sculpt a Hobbe. I did one of those, and it wasn't the sculpting one. Again though, not yet, as I still might. And finally I talked about movies I would watch. Well, so far I haven't. But that's okay, it's not like they're going anywhere.

That should be all of it. So yeah, Happy New Year and may you be smart enough not to make new years resolutions thinking you could somehow change yourself in a fleeting moment of drunkenness, when in reality, change takes time and patience. If it's even possible. Yeah, these will be words I leave you with, a good friend of mine once gave me a card with this text and it sort of stuck ever since.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Feel free to replace the word "God" with a deity of your choice, I kept it in because it felt right despite my agnostic ways.

EDIT: And because no blog post would be complete without a picture, here's the latest from Penny Arcade. Suits rather nicely wouldn't you agree?

I Would Build A World For You Too

2010-12-30T10:55:00.002+02:00

I would build a world for you too. But mine would be even prettier, and with Champagne coloured Rose bushes instead of Daisies.