Another crochet pouch

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I’m having some kind of flu, makes my bodily functions work in mysterious ways. Still you would think that since I’m feeling sick all the time I would loose some wight (geekbeach ftw!) but sadly no. I hardly move. To get my mind of off feeling sick I’ve crocheted some more things. Some of them are going to be gifts so I wont show them. This little cellphonepouch I made for my wife I can post a picture of though. I’ve gotten better on keeping it straight, and I’ve even tried to add a little flare on this one. It’s an L if you’re wondering.

2009-10-27 11.28.15

Now I’m gonna make pot-holders for EVERYONE for Christmas.

The Android market-schmarket

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This is going to be a rant about stuff that I don’t like with the Android market.  Dont read it if you are a fan boy.

I have a google g1 phone from htc. I have had it now for a year or so. At first it was ok, then the small annoyances became really really annoying. Then the OS was updated to cupcace. That made the usagbility a lot better. Then more annoyances with small things. Like the market.

Why is the market so ugly? even the newest version is ugly.
Why wont I find the same programs on my G1 as my colleague with a HTC Hero when we do the same search. We stood next to each other. Did the search at the same time. In the same country, with the same courier.
Why is the search so god damn lame? I thought Google was a search engine company. Example: If I want to install jjComics. I will not find it if I search for “comic,” but if i search for “comics” I will find it. Thats stupid.
For every Android application you find, there are ten iPhone versions of that program, and 6 of them are better or have functionality that is crucial for the usability of the genre of program.
I live in Sweden, and the market have still not the option of buying software here. Why not? it’s been long enough. And there is no information available on when it’s going open here either.
As for developing for the Android. I made a blog once on my endevours when creating a simple program on both iPhone, J2ME and iPhone.  Developing is ok but not awesome.  But even if I cant buy stuff from the market I thought that I could at least sell stuff. but NO, you have to have a valid US address. Why, doesn’t Google want me to make programs for their phone OS?

And the fanboys? seriously, why are you so apeshit about android? it’s flawed and immature. Instead of repeating the mantra “it’s going to be awesome soon” at any critique try and help making it better.

Geekbeach, what is it and how do I make one?

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It’s a competition me and a few friends/colleagues have been working on to loose weight. You see, we are all in the IT business and consequently we are pale, slightly overweight men. We all have previously made halfheartedly attempts at losing weight on our own. Since that did not work we decided to make things more interesting. Alas, getting fitter can be a competition.

So we did just that in 2007; decided on a prize, made the rules, took measurements and started logging and blogging. It went awesome, I won by loosing 10kg :). But since then a few years have passed and the lost weight have been regained so a new GeekBeach was due. This time, the affair quickly grew to a pretty large number of participants. We even had to turn people down. That is why I am writing this guide to what to think of  when having a go at the GeekBeach method yourselves, which you should.

Clear rules: It’s important to have rules that everybody understands and agrees on.
Personal progress = win: During the first GeekBeach the winner was the person with the greatest percentage of weight loss, added to the percentage lost in waist circumference. That means that the one who lost most weight and got to buy new trousers the most won. It also means that you compete against your own body, not to some ideal that everybody wants to reach. Well you understand percentages I hope.  In the 2010 edition, the winner will be the one with the best combination of percent body fat lost and muscle mass gained. At the start we all went to a gym where they have an expensive fat-measuring apparatus. I was a little horrified to know that 26.6% of my body is fat.
A long time span:  If you want the new slender you and your newly acquired good habits to stick, you need to make this event last a few months. I think 4-6 months is the time span you should try to aim for. A semi-goal/measurement or as we call it the “sprint”-price is made 1 or 2 months in to the competition. The winner gets a small price.
Price money:  We decided to put down 500sek each. That is enough to buy a nice suit for the winner.
Price money:  Collect the price money at sign up. The bastards who chickened out/lost at Geekbeach2007 haven’t payed the winner yet.
Proximity: It’s good to meet the people you are in this with on at least a weekly basis.
Blog: This is probably one of the most important parts. You generate a buzz around your GeekBeach competition, and friends and loved ones can follow you. Another important thing is to make it a multi-user blog, with a page per participant. Have a look at the one I’m participating in to get an idea. Don’t worry if you don’t know Swedish, you’ll get the idea.
Preferred weight losing methods: This is one of the beauties with GeekBeach, there are is no set diet or training regimen. Use whatever rocks your boat.  From GI to daily workouts to Tantric yoga to method x.
Statistics: Be sure to post updates on your progress. This will bring motivation to all invested in the competition.

Geekbeach is like fight club without the fist fights and the charismatic schizophrenic leader.

Crochet

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2009 Oct 20 64 2009 Oct 20 155

In Sweden we have “slöjd” in school. That is both woodworks/metalworks and also stuff with textiles. The reasoning is that every one when finished shall be able to do some basic woodwork and sew back a loose button. I was more interested in the usage of powertools and saw’s but we were all forced to do at least a few semesters of textile-work.

I have, I think, learned both to sew,knit,crochet and other things along those lines. but that was 20 years ago. So this Sunday when I wanted to make a pouch for my dingoo I though I should learn to crochet. I’ve already mastered the art of knitting scarfs and cap’s.

So I went and bouth a crochet needle, and started watching instructions on instructables, howto and youtube. This Sunday it went crap. As you can see on this image it did not become so pretty. And it’s the third one I tried. But in all fairness, I was watching TV, riding my exercise bike and crocheting at the same time.

2009 Oct 20 150

Yesterday, after a good nights sleep and a fruitful day of work, I came home and gave it a try again. Behold, I was successful to the extreme. Not only did I not make it look extremely ugly, and uneven. I even managed to make a baseplate and then round-crochet until I had a pouch for my dingoo.

When I was proud over the base-plate, my wife told me I was pretty gay. Mohahahaha. Tonight I’ll make her something.

Music I did ages ago: The Ost

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About fourhundred years ago, when I was still living in Lund with a girlfriend instead of a wife. I used a music program called Buzz. I made loads and loads and loads of songs in it. Everything really was in my fingers in that program. It’s a long time abandoned from me though. I thought I should try and make a few songs that fitted together in a way bigger then that you could just hear that they where made by me. That was the birth of “The Ost”. You see, there are many Swedish puns available to that name. And I really cant remember if I made the album just so that I could use those puns excessively or the other way around.

I made a few songs, removed the ones that did not make the cut. I made album art and I did one t-shirt with the logo on. I also sent the CD to ten or fifteen labels. Using the pun excessively in the English companion-letter that I sent with. You see ost in Swedish is cheese. And record and slice is the same word. You are intelligent ppl, you already figured out a lot of those puns by now.

I received exactly zero replies on that CD I sent to the record labels. This where for the most non-Swedish companies. But anyways. I listen to the songs from time to time and I still like them so they are good to me.

here they are:

A - The Ost
E - The Ost
G - The Ost
H - The Ost

A gift for my sister

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GRATTIS LOTTA!

AA_ii

One of my kid sisters has her birthday-party today, and I wanted her to have a blast of nostalgia. When we where kids parties used to have at least one of these cactus of candy. So me and the kids made one for her.

Ingredients: A pot, a cucumber, wasabi nuts, toothpicks (wooden), gel-raspberries and poky sticks, plastic foil.

Cut the cucumber and isolate the cut so that id don’t get the nuts wet…… The rest is pretty obvious.

Hope she likes it, and thank you wordpress for letting me make this post in advance and setting a timer on it so that it doesn’t ruin the surprise.


AA_i

Friday night, glitchnoisefight

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I’m sitting here, home with the kids sleeping. After riding my exercise bike for a while I decided I should make some sort of song. A little laid back glitch thingy I though. but it became a little more noisy then I though it would. And not very melodic.

I’m off to bed soon, and it’s probably a mistake publishing this song before it have had a little time settle. I mean, a good rule of thumb is not to play a song to anyone until you’ve slept on it.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a present for my kid sister.

Glitchnoise-experimentation1

That VST idea I had

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Do you remember this VST idea I had http://www.larsby.com/johan/?p=187 ? Well I tried it out. Not fully, but close enough.
In Ableton Live I added a beat, then I recorded midi of me banging to it in different variations. Then I put that through the Live randomizer and then the scale plugin. The scale plugin was fixed so that notes could not clash with each other. Then I recorded the output of that midi data into a few tracks with softsynths. It sounds pretty art musicy, but still good. I wonder if I should program the VST or just wait for max 4 Live.

Anyways here is the mp3 you’ve been waiting for: testing the melody generation idea

Idea for a new VST, a little helper for creating melodies.

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Yes yes yo.

I had  this idea when traveling to work. The train was super crowded and that got me thinking of circuit bending. A lot of the devices I’ve bent have a “press only one key to play a melody that you probably heard a gazillion times before”  that combined with me reading up on Arnold Schoenberg’s 12 tone matrix melody composer thing gave me a new idea! What if you could type in a couple of notes that you know are in a good scale, or fits your mood. Then press a key on your keyboard or similar to add play these in order. And if you make the VST output MIDI then you could connect it to any VSTi and have it play the sound’s of your liking. You could even record the output and edit it. I was thinking that this would be a nice little tool for creating melodies (which I suck at programming in) but editing or fiddling them out is much easier for me.

Perhaps I’ll do this and put it up on http://www.shuriken.se one of these days, it will mostly be UI work though, which I find a bit tedious to program in VST GUI.  Thought’s ideas suggestions are welcome.  Name suggestions also.

Making a gift

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I made this photo as a present for my friend Christian. I also made the frame, it’s not as awesome as the picture though.

The idea came when I bought that hat, in Swedish it’s called a sydvest, and I was parading around the office with it, I threw the idea out that one should make a “old fisherman” style photo, here is one I found on the internets to let you get the idea. The corn pipe was the cheapest I could find. I don’t really cared to put a lot of money on that prop. The kids want it to blow bubbles with tough.

So the kids and I had an evening of shaving, putting up lights, taking photos and manipulate them. The next day I ordered a 40*50cm large photo. It arrived the next day (yesterday) so I made a frame quick and dirty so I could give it to Christian today. All I hope for now is a laugh and that he really hangs it in his bedroom as he promised 🙂

Finaguppen

UPDATE: The gift was delivered and was well received! all is happy rejoice!