desirable things

Missed Buy Nothing Day

Yesterday was buy nothing day. All I can say is that the buy-nothing idea was not particularly noticeable at Ikea. So I must consider myself a buy-nothing failure. Here is some information about the day.

Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If youâ??ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if youâ??ve taken part in the past but havenâ??t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?

Read more over at Adbusters.

Oh well, there is always next year…

Posted on by mklang

Customisation

Have you ever held a knife which fits perfectly in your hand? Or any other tool which once you picked it up seemed to become almost a natural part of your body? If you have experienced this then you have experienced â??goodâ?? design. Often the only way to recognize â??badâ?? design is when things do not work or work badly.

During the past days the problem of good/bad design has been an issue since I managed to crash my laptop and needed to format and re-install everything. On one level this is not a complex operation but what is difficult is getting the computer back to the feeling it had before.

Since it is the tool I use the most it has been adapted from a standard factory machine into a highly personalized artifact and therefore once it was restored to factory standard working with it for longer periods was a painful experience in much the same way as working with a bad knife is a painful experience.

The process of customization is slow and getting the machine to adapt itself to my wants and needs an exhausting experience since it requires remembering hundreds (thousands?) of small pieces of software that made my machine mine.

Posted on by mklang

Grey Saturday

Yupp another rainy Saturday has rolled around. While taking a walk around town I managed to pick up Vilém Flusser‘s book Towards a Philosophy of Photography which seems very exiting. Also discovered that the cool exhibition by Mattias Adolfsson (blogged about him earlier and he also has a blog with images) was still available and so was my favourite picture. So I bought the Beatnik Dragon.

Not a bad bit of procrastination – but now it’s back to the the real writing. Or rather as LP would say – the stuff that I really get paid for…

Posted on by mklang

Back from the dead

Wow! What a roller coaster! My computer died causing much pain, agony, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Today, after using Data Rescue II and spending the whole day (more or less) watching software scan, find, rescue, copy, delete, format and finally install – I’m back! That’s right the computer has been rescued by the prompt, patient and heroic ministrations of the superwizard of support LP (I will not use his real name so that he can maintain his secret identity).

All my mail is back. All my friends have been grinning and making evil comments about backups and other safety measures. When not watching the screen I have been walking around as an example to others: “Look there he is… he didn’t back up and now he is toast…” A tale to scare the grandchildren with.

So now I will solemnly promise to make even more frequent backups and to never pop mail again (yes I shall embrace imap with the fervor of a convert).

Lessons learned you think? and yet… I don’t know. Maybe it was too easy, maybe I didn’t suffer enough…

Posted on by mklang

Fashion rules the blogs

Checking some statistics on Swedish blogs only to find that right now seven out of the top ten blogs are fashion blogs (according to this counter). Now even if we discount the methodology used it is still a scary statistic.

Yes â??scaryâ??.

Even if we try to explain the fact by claiming technological arrogance and superiority. That maybe fashion oriented people visit blogs while many others use rss readers it still does not begin to match the statistic â?? seven out of the ten top blogs are focused on fashion.

Therefore the clothes we wear are more important to the population at large than any other subject or topic. Forget social issues, forget politics, forget technology, forget war, and forget sex. Fashion rules the blogosphere.

We have come a long way from Naomi Klein “No Logo” and the like…

In an attempt to capitalise on this information cartoonist Mattias Adolfsson has turned his blog into a fashion blog for one week only. But be warned â?? fashion isnâ??t what it used to be when Mattias looks at it!

Check out his “Showroom” series of sketches.

Posted on by mklang

Toaster Filling

As mentioned earlier we are going to build a Freedom Toaster for the Technical Museum in Stockholm. Naturally itâ??s on a short deadline â?? life would be boring otherwise!

As part of the Toaster we also want to include more stuff than simply an operating system. We want to have texts, images, music and film. We also want the material to be Creative Commons licensed (or similar) so that people can do more than simply be passive consumers (if they choose to be more).

In an instance of synchronicity Рtoday I aimlessly browsed into the blog of an excellent artist & cartoonist and was blown away (who says procrastination is all bad?). Not only this but he happens to live in G̦teborg (same city as me).

Naturally I emailed him about the project and he is interested in helping to provide some of his artwork for the project. What can I say? Sometimes Fortuna plays along. Check out the artwork on Mattias Adolssonâ??s blog.

This is his Beatnick Dragon
Posted on by mklang

Darwinian Evolution Online

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin are to be found online â?? for free. So OK you are hard to please and you have seen books online before. But wait! This site offers more. You can even download Charles Darwin audio books â?? for free.

An amazing collection of Darwinâ??s works are available in MP3 hits like the â??Fertilisation of Orchidsâ?? (1862) to the â??On the Origin of Speciesâ?? (1859) all iPod ready.

This site contains every Darwin publication as well as many of his handwritten manuscripts. All told there are more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, descriptions of Darwin’s Beagle specimens and important works for understanding Darwin’s context. Free audio mp3 versions of his works are also available.

The site was launched on 19 October this year and is amazing. It is a testimony to the victory of content over web-design.

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang

Greenpeace Thrown Out of Mac Expo

Greenpeace rented a space at the London Mac Expo as part of their ongoing â??Green My Appleâ??. The campaign is an awareness campaign to attempt to get technology manufacturers (Apple in particular) to begin seriously considering their environmental impact.

Apparently Greenpeace was thrown out of the Expo for handing out leaflets outside the space they had rented. Naturally they were only thrown out after other exhibitors complained.

Considering Apples image it must really hurt when they have to fight against an organisation like Greenpeace.

(via DailyTech & The Register)

Update:

More claims are appearing that state that Greenpeace intentionally provoked the action:

There then followed a number of complaints about the behaviour of Greenpeace activists from four visitors and five exhibitors, one of which was Apple. Allegedly, Greenpeace attendees were invading other stands for mock photo shoots and replacing other exhibitorsâ?? promotional material with their own.The problem came to a head when one woman complained that they had placed an apple in her childâ??s pram and were taking photographs of him without her permission.

Bob Denton told Macworld: â??I explained to them that I had the right to eject them but that wouldnâ??t happen if they showed reason.â?? However, later in the day, â??two more visitors and two more exhibitors complainedâ?? and he ejected the activists under clause 13 of the terms and conditions that Greenpeace signed.

â??They were determined to create conflict,â?? said Bob Denton (via Macworld)

Posted on by mklang

On Planning Ahead

Organised people plan ahead. They have pension schemes and stock portfolios. Itâ??s all very grown up. Its one of those things you know you should do â?? but somehow you donâ??t. When the topic comes up in conversation there is always someone who has prepared and planned while the rest fall ominously silent.

I wish I planned ahead, I wish I could find the interest to consider life in twenty, forty and maybe sixty (but that might be pushing itâ?¦) years. The only share I have is framed and hanging on my wall.

This Svensk-Dansk-Ryska Telefon Aktiebolaget was founded on November 14, 1901 in order to establish Ericsson in the Russian market and to provide telephony services. The original certificate was a copper engraving bearing the Swedish, Russian and Danish coats of arms and an Ericsson telephone. In 1917 all assets were sold to The Russian Telephone Company but following the revolution the telephone company was nationalized and the money was never paid.

Among the founders of the company were Henrik Cedergren, Wilhelm Montelius (Chairman of Telefon AB L M Ericsson 1905-1916), Knut A Wallenberg, Marcus Wallenberg Sr., Den Danske Landmandsbank and Stockholms Allmänna Telefon Aktiebolag. Other well-known founders were Arvid Lindman (Swedenâ??s Prime Minister 1906-1911 and 1928-1930), and Princess Marie of Denmark (related to the Tsar family).

Did the owners of these shares talk loudly of how they had planned their future? Did the people who were forced to listen become embarrassed and silent?

Posted on by mklang