Jonas Beckman

Yesterday’s awful weather mercifully turned into thunder and rain. And my cold is almost gone, after a long day in bed.

Raphael Nicolaj Spernau was born yesterday. Welcome to the world!

For a less than knee-jerk response to XBox, Microsoft’s attempt to take over console gaming, read this Salon story. Link via Justin Hall.

I enjoy making phone-calls to invite friends to my birthday party. In fact, I enjoy them so much it’s almost impossible to move on to the next call. If I haven’t called you yet, that’s why.
Everyone who was invited last year is welcome this year, too.
And any regular reader of this page who happens to be in Stockholm is welcome, too – just mail me.

Susan Kitchens (who recently visited Panama) links to: Panama wants to stay out of drugwar.

The old American habit of treating soverign countries as colonies never goes out of fashion – remember all those people CIA helped killing and torturing in Guatemala?

It’s very late. Aila is here, preparing for another 5-day session of her dream therapy course. Tomorrow she will go to this beautiful place.

Martin Spernau’s wife went to the hospital today. My best wishes to her, Martin and the child she will soon give birth to!

Life of a programmer

Hello world has never been funnier! Link via Cam

Intel screws up again! The new 1.13GHz CPU was so buggy Intel had to recall it. In an unusual collaboration, three of the best hardware sites(AnandTech, HardOCP and TomsHardware) published devastating test-results, leaving Intel little choice. This is a fascinating example of the power of small independent media.

Very weird weather yesterday: hot, humid and sickly. I’m home with a cold today – hope it passes quickly.

Nice slow day of work today: one major project is rolling along. Not extremely exciting – but in a way that’s good. Working with solid professionals is a small joy in itself.

Open Source: Did You Know We’re All Thieves?

via Array

Microsoft wants you to pay your rent.

Via Camworld

What’s black and white and sells medicine?

NY Times article about “Big Pharma”, large companies in the business of selling big products (which happen to be pharmaceuticals). James Vornov thinks something better is possible.

Susan thinks about Manila and Beginners mind.

Swimming is fun: 2-3 good sets a week leaves me feeling I could easily do more. But instead I’ve added Nautilus-workouts and some spinning – it makes the swimming feel even more special. I’m having a really good time down at Eriksdalsbadet.

Beautiful weather here – but most people are getting busy again. Me too, tomorrow I’ll dive into work again. It will be interesting to see how much weblogging I’ll have time for.

Susan Kitchens discovers something she didn’t know (by writing about it): Payback with Interest.

A nice little story. And a very true observation: paying attention to the craft of writing allows more self-discovery to happen.

I already feel very good about getting rid of Outlook as a mail client. All that MS “integration” comes at a price – Eudora is smaller, faster and more reliable.

There is a new version of WXPython. The demo program is very good: lots and lots of useful GUI examples with code. It’s worth a look if you want a really nice Python GUI for both Win32 and Linux.

MIT Media lab at crossroads.
via ArsTechnica

David Singer is in awe of people who who manage to update their weblogs almost daily, people like: Hal, Alwin and Andrea.

Well, in this particular case, talking about it IS doing it.

I’ve had e-mail problems for some time – my apologies if I have been harder than usual to reach. Hopefully, everything will fall into place soon. BTW, I just gave up on Outlook and switched back to Eudora.

It’s personal backend time again. Before I start working on major projects again (on monday) I want to have my mail, contacts and schedule in order. And since I just gave up on using Outlook for mail I’ll see if I can’t get rid of it altogether.

I am also gearing up for this year’s birthday party – every year I have a party on the closest saturday to the 17th of September. Lots of people, some of which I don’t see more than once a year, who will be treated to an enormous seafood stew and a dangerous but delicious punch. As usual the invitations will arrive late – I just got started.

Want to build real applications using expert systems, logic programming or Prolog? Take a look at Amzi 5.0! It’s free for personal use and works with all major platforms and many development environments. I built an application using the Amzi logic-engine some time ago – they really know what they are doing. If you have any interest in logic programming, this is worth a look.

I took me a while to get it…. but Radio Userland is fun! A good outliner is useful, no surprise there. But editing your Manila site like this is very, very cool.

On the other hand, the simplicity of “edit this page” is hard to beat. I have probably explained that concept to everyone I know by now – and it’s so easy to get that some people actually go right home and try.

If architects had to work like web programmers
I love this one! Link via AListApart

Alwin really disliked these links about the vaccination conspiracy.

And Hal tried to find some mental floss this morning. Wish I had some – I had a slow and awkward morning, too. I think September will be great this year, though.

From NY Times: Whose intellectual property is is, anway?

link via Array

Read these quotes by a Sony VP:

“The [music] industry,” Heckler said, “will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams. It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what.”

“We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source — we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC.”

Sony may be all about fooling consumers into expensive traps with flashy marketing – but having a senior executive confirm it in public is a bad idea. Let’s hope this gets as much publicity as possible… it will be a long time before Sony’s PR people allow any insider to tell the truth again.

Let me be clear here: I shed no tears for Napster. But a company with Sony’s attitude is dangerous to anyone standing in their way – even if that means all consumers, everywhere.

Hal listens to thunder and rain.

Doc Searls:

“What we call “consumerism” is really producerism. The “consumer economy” is a producer-controlled system in which consumers are nothing more than energy sources that metabolize “content” into cash.”

Link via Have browser, will travel

The jornalist Dan Gillmor has a great weblog. Professionally, he uses it makes his regular articles better. But it’s also obvious it makes him happy to have a place where he doesn’t have to hide when something makes him angry. Recommended!

Justin Hall is working a little less and writing a little more again.

How do you know if you are crazy? Many ask, few are qualified to answer. To be numbered among those few, it helps to have a weblog called Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall.

Stockholm may be the most beautiful city in the world this time of the year. Water and green trees everywhere, parks, old buildings, new buildings, beautiful people… there isn’t much to say: I am just happy to have the opportunity to take long walks and enjoy everything.

Almost no cold today. Swimming went well, in the evening I did some running. Note to self: lingonberry helps. And blue aliens.

My blue alien – a gift from Matilda. Picture by Aila

Aila’s homepage has a new look. Check out William, 1 years old, having fun in the shiatsu-room. Our thanks to Bradley Peters for his tasteful Orderly Boxes Manila theme.

The election season gets Garret crazy – he is thinking of keeping a separate area for political rants.

I’ve felt the same way – even without American elections there is enough stupidity and/or evil for anyone to ocasionally become mad as hell. Me, I like Garret’s political stuff – if a separate area makes him write more of it, perhaps he should have one.

BTW – I sometimes wonder why Americans always apologize for talking about politics. Sometimes I suspect the spectrum of mainstream political views is so narrow that any real discussion will inevitably make people angry.

“But Americans are not told anything that’s going on anywhere else. I’ve been reading the American press for more than half a century. I have never read a story favorable to another society. The Swedes have better education, healthcare, day care assistance for working mothers. But they’re all alcoholics and they kill themselves. They’re wretched, because they have bad lives, and we have good lives.”

From a recent interview with Gore Vidal. Link via Medley.

Me, too. But mine is mild. Other people were worse off and had to cancel meetings, so I’ll work from home today – and eat some more lingonberry.