Jonas Beckman

I have almost finished a small book about Georg Hamann, a German writer, philosopher and visionary born in 1730. The book, Magus of the North, by Isaiah Berlin, is subtitled The origins of modern irrationalism.

Hamann insisted that the world is what it is and all theories are but shadows… everything is a particular case and the world is nothing but a continous conversation with others.

Hamann is rather unknown today - but he inspired Goethe, Kant and many others. Writing in a deliberately obscure, unsystematic but very powerful style, he was perhaps the first great critic of the Enlightenment.

Isaiah Berlin seems, almost against his will, to like Hamann as a person and find value in his criticism - but of course, Berlin is completely unwilling to substitue childlike faith in God for rational thought. So am I - and yet, something about Hamann feels strangely relevant right now.

Yesterday was a beautiful day - Aila took some pictures. In the evening we went to dinner at my brother’s place.

Today my brother called: he and my 10-year old nephew Martin wanted to go swimming. As I was teaching Martin some things about freestyle - we were taking it very slow and easy - I saw him do a few backstrokes and did the same. And suddenly I felt in my whole body how freestyle and backstroke are the same thing.
It was a very subtle thing, technically I have known all the time - but swimming with him I did a few strokes very slowly, without thinking. Now I’ll never forget what it feels like. I was very grateful - the least I could do was give him some new, super-cool swimming googles as a coaching fee.

Surprise anniversary today!

Scientists Unable To Find Planet Of Large-breasted Warrior Women!
Thanks Hal!

Waste your time with yet another online personality test. Then waste more reading about why you should be skeptical about personality tests.

ESR has posted some chapters from his coming book The art of UNIX programming. Via HackThePlanet

Still haven’t wasted enough time? Let’s get serious - pyGame is a toolkit for building games in Python. I promised my nephew Martin I’d make one for him - maybe he’ll learn how to customize it. And maybe I should start reading How to make games? Game article via FlyingChihuahuas.

Today Stockholm is not at it’s best: icy rain, slush and very cold winds. Everyone is trying to get inside and small accidents seem to happen all over: yesterday we saw someone fall onto the subway tracks, today I’ve seen two car crashes.

Me and Aila had a major argument most of last night. She is at her place now, working on her dreams, thinking and nursing another cold… but we just made up and started making plans for tomorrow.

2-3 hours of sleep. Great seminar this morning: I can’t go into details yet, but part of our solution has been teaching people Python - and so far it has turned out very well.

Then me and Olov (my friend and business partner) had a meeting with our architect: the new floor is in place, we have almost decided the exact colors for the walls. Soon we’ll add some new furniture and start working there again. I’ll definitely post pictures (we think even Joel will approve of our working conditions).

We are also very excited about Kylix. We have had success with Delphi since version 1.0 - it’s always been an excellent way to make applications for Windows, sometimes the very best. And until now, Linux never had a comparable development environment.

Things like python for Delphi already exist - and at least for me, pyQT and pyKDE suddenly feel much closer to the mainstream.

Tools… what to do? Seen without all the hype, Java is either bad or boring. C++ may be powerful - but it’s not an easy way to build flexible applications in a reasonable amount of time. And eventually almost everybody wants to say goodbye to VB.
The VB article and several other excellent links via FlyingChihuahuas.

Summary: if you can affort to look at alternative tools, do so! These are times of change - but it won’t all be for the worse.

Not enough sleep, and there is rain all over Stockholm.

Tomorrow I’ll hold a seminar for an old customer. Lots of fun - we have done some new work for them since late November, and it has gone really well. But I want to make sure it stays that way.

Beginning are special times (I recall Garret
thinking about this recently ) - what happens now can make a difference for a long time. And some new information arrived today, so I’ll probably be up very late tonight.

I’m very introvert at the moment… bear with me. Soon I will have more links here again.

The beautiful snow is now slush… not good. But I don’t have a cold anymore, so I am happy anyway. Swimming went well yesterday, too.

I’m working hard on two projects right now: both are XML-related. One is designing a custom editor based on XMetal. The other is data conversion and analysis using Python, where the data is distributed between at least two companies.

Work is fun but I need time to think, too. My dreams were very upsetting this morning - I wrote them down before I did anything else. Then I lost my favorite green woolen cap on the way to work - I felt sad like a little child.

But later this evening Aila said she could make a new one.

Well, sometimes cold causes cold. A rather mild one - but my muscles were heavy and my head full of cotton all day. It’s better now, though - I think I’ll be working and training at full speed tomorrow.

We have another really cold day here in Sweden, close to -20C. It’s beautiful: clear air, snow, sun… makes me feel good!

I can see few reasons to stay indoors on days like this. Well, there are a few: swimming, sauna, eating and dancing. Those seemed like good reasons yesterday, anyway.

Of course, indoors or outdoors doesn’t matter if I have the right company.

Now I’m heading down to the pool again. Be right back!

Every Friday when the day is done, I have a standing appointment with my massage therapist. It was Aila who sent me there, almost exactly a year ago. Thank you, darling!

Massage has been an interest for many years and I have tried several kinds. I also enjoy giving massage (even took a few courses) - so my therapist enjoys talking shop with me. She is a big woman and likes to talk - but we have no metaphysical discussions whatsoever. I find that very refreshing.

We have designed an individual program: 1,5 hour full body treatment with special focus on muscles that affect breathing - part traditional massage, part pressure points and then a few more specialized techniques.

Python 2.1 alpha2

Great news for Radio Userland fans! Sam DeVore has started to fix the OPML-in-browser problem.

It works!
Still works!

Round tripping… again and again and again…

Round tripping… again and again and again…