Bacon Hat

I thought that I would wrap the year up with some highlights and lowlights, but in all honesty I might be a bit too lazy for that, so you may have to make do with these funky pictures, depending on how much work I have to do tomorrow. And work a little bit extra I must, for I just spent an oxenload of money (well, the amount of money was not insane, but my budget is tighter than Dream Theater nowadays) on cutlery, a tree and a fancy manbag. But hey, it is your favourite midwinter celebration time, right?


These are the Gense Focus de Luxe, Swedish design from the 1950s and remade in some sort of anniversary edition which can withstand the dishwasher and other elements. Not only are they pretty, they are extraordinarily functional as well, the box informs me, with all design elements filling a purpose. I wonder.


This is my Versace manbag in all its glory. It fits my MacBook Pro, looks snazzy and will make people mistake me for a Russian. All good!


And this is a five foot high tree, sold as a "bonsai" at IKEA, but I dunno, I think it would more correctly be classified as "aggressively pruned little tree". It certainly adds some oomph to my little forest by the window.

There was also Christmas. Not much of a holy-day for me personally, but I donated some money to people in need and got my brother some sci-fi books and perfume. Others insisted on giving me presents, however. In addition to my animal plasters which are sadly not photographed, the highlights were mainly Woodins and a fire extinguisher.


These are Woodins. Woodins are creatures which live in the forest, inspired by Miyazaki's kodama, I believe. My friend Sophie knitted them for me, and I must say it is probably one of the best Christmas gifts I have ever had the honour of receiving!


I also got a black fire extinguisher. It is so hot! Figuratively.


And me, I had a hat made out of bacon. Bacon packages, actually. Which had been in the trash. But this was a while ago, and I learned from it.


PUB, a department store in central Stockholm had the best Christmas decorations ever this year. There were horrorish figures, weirdly proportioned mannequins, dildos and strange moving eyes. Among other things. I have some trouble understanding exactly who was supposed to be tempted into buying stuff, but it was certainly enjoyable.


My friend Ambra got an authentic cocaine jar made a bit less than a hundred years ago or so. A COCAINE jar! I want one, even though I have no cocaine to fill it with.


This is so sweet. Drunk girl kisses animal statue outside Chinese restaurant.


My friend Jonny excelled at... something during the holidays. His girlfriend turned an ashen shade when she saw this outfit, and so did I. Luckily, I managed to snap a picture and even more luckily, he did not look like this when we left the building.


Oh, and happy new year. Try not to drink too much and let us hope the polar bears do not all drown in 2008!

Fleshed Out

Quick update: I decided to give Unreal Tournament 3 another go, and a bit of vehicle CTF was actually pretty fun. However, I could not help but compare it to Battlefield 2, for instance, which is largely similar (except for the objective) and much more satisfying. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what I miss in UT 3, but I think it has to do with the fact that it is so damn similar to its previous incarnations.

I did manage to get my hands on a GeForce 8800 GT card, though. It was mostly by accident, really. They had one left in a local shop, so I thought I would get it and see whether it is as revolutionary (in the price/performance department) as previously claimed. Indeed it was! I could run UT 2003 and Gears of War in 2560x1600 resolution with most settings cranked up to max and still get a smooth frame rate. This card is the bee's knees, so to speak, at least for bees on a budget constraint.

This year, my Christmas (or midwinter, for those so inclined) gifts will be pretty much limited to giving a wad of money to Medecins sans frontieres and telling people that the expected socks are instead vaccine in Darfur. So should yours.

During the last week or so, I have been watching the tv-series Dexter, which has previously been recommended to me on numerous occasions, but I am a busy one, so it took some time before I caught up.

Actually, Dexter is awesome. It is probably one of the best longer tv-series (as in more than fifteen episodes or so) I have ever seen. Sure, there are some fantastic shorter ones, but those are usually more like "a movie which we chopped up into several episodes because nobody would want to see it all in one sitting". Dexter, however, works beautifully as a series and it actually gets better over time, with the second season improving quite a lot over the weaker last half of the first one.

Sure, a tv-series about a serial killer is more or less bound to have a number of implausible events due to the fact that people will expect someone to die in every episode. And indeed they do, they drop like flies. However, all that is entirely secondary to the character development. Dexter's personal life is the main focus of the series, and his emotions feel much more plausible than the cardboard characters usually portrayed on tv. This is one of the weak points though - Dexter's development stands in stark contrast with the other characters in the series who, in comparison, get neither the time or the script to become deeper and more interesting. Dexter is not only the main character, but also the narrator of the series, so it makes perfect sense. I just wish they would have either fleshed out (ahaha, that is my funny bone talking) at least a few other characters a bit more or concentrated even more on Dexter (as in not writing as many scenes or side-stories where he is not present).

Speaking of funny bones, I just realized it has been a while since I read Bone. I should do it again, and so should you.

Korvkatt

The last few weeks have been hectic, to say the least. Not only is there a thesis which badly needs to be submitted. I have also moved, which was a pretty ardous feat considering I had about 70 moving boxes, plus furniture, plus assorted junk, plus tons of clothes. However, I have finally become more or less settled, and everything sure is dandy at the new apartment, save for the fact that my bedroom is apparently next to somebody's constantly crying baby. Pictures soon. Of the apartment, not the baby.

I also tried my hand at the new computer games everyone apparently talks about. Crysis was a major disappointment. It plays sort of like Half-Life 2 and looks sort of the same. The environments, touted as destructible, are rather non-destructible with destructible palm trees bolted on. Wow. Sure, the graphics are nice, as is the sound. However, the game does not essentially play very differently from any other military-style FPS. Except for when you meet the rather dull aliens (the blue ones, that is, the green ones in the ship without gravity are pretty cool), where it instead turns into Quake 4 or something like it.

On the other hand, Gears of War was really nice. It has a sort of arcade feeling to it, where what it lacks in realism is more than made up for by the sheer fun of playing it. The squad based aspect is much more immersive, too, and the level design is better than Crysis, (yes, Gears of War is horribly linear, but it happily admits it) even though the technical quality of the graphics are not.

Unreal Tournament 3 was just like Unreal Tournament 2004 but a bit better looking. I might as well play the freeware game Alien Arena 2007 instead which looks much worse but plays approximately the same. When will they (as in most commercial game developers save for Nintendo) learn that graphics is not the most important factor for the enjoyment of a game?


When I went to Ikea I found plushie insects. Under an expandable child's bed (which I hope was called Procrustes). Some of them eating plushie rats. Looking menacing. It was quite weird. I was actually looking for a "korvkatt" (sausage cat) but they have apparently stopped manufacturing them. Poo.