Philip Jägenstedt

Renewed pledge

2018-11-30T09:54:58+00:00

About 3 years ago I pledged to give 2.5% of my income to effective charities. Later, I began increasing the percentage by 0.2% every month, and it as now at 6%.

I was reminded recently in an email to renew my pledge, so here goes.

I pledge that over the coming year I will give 6% of my (after-tax) income to organizations effectively helping people living in extreme poverty.

“After-tax” because donations aren’t tax deductible in Sweden. I will keep adding 0.2% every month for another while, but haven’t decided for how long.

More podcast recommendations

2015-10-09T20:56:23+00:00

It’s been two years since my previous podcast recommendations, and I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts since then. I recently posted my favorite episodes on effective altruism, and here some more suggestions on all kinds of topics that interest me.

GitMinutes is fun if you’re a Git power user, these are stories about messy Git migrations, code review tools, hosting, etc.

Hanselminutes is a podcast for software developers. I only listen to the occasional episode that looks especially interesting, like the interview with felt@ from the Chromium project.

omega tau goes into incredible depth on very niche science & engineering topics, like the Apollo Guidance Computer.

Philosophy Bites is exactly what it sounds like. Nick Bostrom on the Status Quo Bias was fun.

Point of Inquiry has had an very impressive lineup of guests over the years. Take your pick, or take mine: Peter Singer.

Rationally Speaking also has good taste in guests: Holden Karnofsky, Peter Singer, Max Tegmark, Paul Bloom, ...

This Developer’s Life is an anecdote-fueled tour of software development, with episode titles too vague to be useful...

Very Bad Wizards is two guys arguing about morality, mostly.

Waking Up with Sam Harris is my top recommendation, hands down. The guests are phenomenal, and Sam’s voice really adds something to the experience that you don’t get in print. Two episodes with Paul Bloom—The Virtues of Cold Blood and The Dark Side—are among my favorites. Before Sam had his own podcast he appeared on many others, and he still does from time to time. These are all that I could find:

Point of Inquiry episodes on The End of Faith, The Mortal Dangers of Religion, Letter to a Christian Nation and Seeking Transcendence Without Religion
The Godless Spellchecker Podcast episode #29: Waking Up
The Joe Rogan Experience episodes #410, #543 and #641
The Tim Ferriss Show episodes on Spirituality, Neuroscience, Meditation, and More and Daily Routines, The Trolley Scenario, and 5 Books Everyone Should Read (an AMA)
Very Bad Wizards episodes #59: Tumors All the Way Down, #63: Stalemates and Closets and #75: A Golden Shower Guests (Sam starts at 01:51:24)

My fantasy podcast would be Sam Harris and Peter Singer in conversation, 8 hours non-stop about trolley problems, average vs. total well-being and akrasia. Until the podcast genie grants my wish, listening to them separately will do, and in addition to the episodes from my post on effective altruism I have found plenty more with Peter Singer:

Minerva episodes #13: Moral Progress and #15: Vegetarianism (also with Jeff McMahan)
Philosophy Bites episodes on Human Use of Animals, The Life You Can Save (previously overlooked), Henry Sidgwick’s Ethics and Life and Death Decision-Making
Point of Inquiry episodes on The Way We Eat, Ethics in an Age of Darwin and Vegetarianism and the Scientific Outlook

That’s it for English podcasts, men jag har några tips på svenska också.

Fondpodden hittade jag via Avanzas podcasttips, där det även finns annat som är intressant om man sparar i fonder.

Kreditvärden är en podcast om företagsobligationer, vilket ju inte låter så spännande, men det blir mycket allmänt om ekonomi och framförallt så är Louis & Gabriel väldigt trevliga att lyssna på.

The Life You Can Save

2015-09-28T21:20:36+00:00

I used to read a lot of Peter Singer in my school years, and have always been quite easily persuaded by his writings. So, when I got his 2009 book The Life You Can Save, I already knew the basic argument, that I would find no reasonable objections, and that the conclusion would be uncomfortable. It sat on my bookshelf for over a year, unread.

Perhaps it was the latent discomfort that pushed me to finally take the book off the shelf. A one-sentence summary will do: If you can prevent suffering or death, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, then you should. There are some philosophically interesting problems, many oft-repeated concerns, and a few lingering doubts, but as expected nothing that makes inaction look like the best choice.

The landscape has changed a bit since The Life You Can Save, with the emergence of the philosophy and movement now known as effective altruism. Three similarly-titled books on these issues were recently published, and I binge-read them all: Singer’s new book The Most Good You Can Do, William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better, and Nick Cooney’s How To Be Great At Doing Good. The latter was not my cup of tea, but the other two are both great reads. If I had to recommend one book it would be Doing Good Better.

I will make no attempt to summarize, because the authors have done that themselves in many podcasts and videos. Singer and MacAskill’s Aussie and Scottish dialects add to the experience, and I’ve gone through everything I could find. My top picks are in bold.

Podcasts:

Cause Talk Radio #130: The Rise of Effective Altruism, Or Generosity for Nerds with William MacAskill (27 min)
CGD Podcast: Doing Good Is No Place for Emotion with William MacAskill (21 min)
Development Drums #15: Peter Singer on The Life You Can Save (58 min)
Development Drums #29: Toby Ord on Giving What We Can (68 min)
EconTalk: William MacAskill on Effective Altruism and Doing Good Better (69 min)
Face2Face: Peter Singer on poverty, animal ethics and utilitarianism (36 min)
Point of Inquiry: Peter Singer on The Life You Can Save (37 min)
Point of Inquiry: Peter Singer on Maximizing Morality with Reason (37 min)
Rainbow Light: William MacAskill is ‘Doing Good Better’ (54 min)
Rationally Speaking #36: Holden Karnofsky on Evidence-based Philanthropy (43 min, about GiveWell)
Rationally Speaking #97: Peter Singer on Being a Utilitarian in the Real World (47 min)
Rationally Speaking #121: Benjamin Todd on 80,000 Hours (51 min)
Rich Roll Podcast #178: William MacAskill on ‘Effective Altruism’ & How To Maximize Positive Global Impact (121 min)
Skepticality #231: Do The Most Good with William MacAskill (32 min starting at 26:30)
Speaking with: Peter Singer on effective altruism (15 min)
This American Life #503: I Was Just Trying To Help (30 min starting at 6:14, about GiveDirectly)
Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio #253: Doing Good Better with William MacAskill (57 min)

Videos:

Peter Singer: The Life You Can Save talk at Google (57 min)
Peter Singer: The Most Good You Can Do talk at Google (60 min)
Peter Singer: The Most Good You Can Do interview on HuffPost Live (19 min)
Peter Singer: The Why and How of Effective Altruism TED talk (17 min)
William MacAskill: Effective Altruism talk at Global Ideas Forum 2013 (17 min)
William MacAskill: Want to make a difference? Don’t Work for a Charity TEDx talk (17 min)
William MacAskill: Why you shouldn’t boycott sweatshops or bother with Fairtrade (3 min)

Now what? Some effective altruists are giving 10–50% of their income, which is in equal parts inspiring and intimidating. The most good you can do is very good indeed, but Singer also suggests a minimum standard for giving, a baseline to get us started. I’ll give it a try.

I pledge that over the coming year I will give 2.5% of my (after-tax) income to organizations effectively helping people living in extreme poverty.

Surdegsbröd med rostad havre

2015-01-17T10:32:47+00:00

Idag blev det surdegsbröd med rostad havre, efter recept i Bröd, bröd, bröd. Med pomerans istället för kummin och lite honung.

Ljusa dinkelbröd

2015-01-11T21:25:38+00:00

Efter en lång rad av nederlag har jag äntligen lyckats baka gott surdegsbröd, två gånger i rad. Idag var det ljusa dinkelbröd från boken Surdegsbröd:

History of the Fullscreen API

2014-07-21T12:52:41+00:00

This is the story of the Fullscreen API, one of prefixes, capitalization, and event targets...

March–October 2007: “Shouldn’t the video API include a way to toggle full screen on/off?” asks Mihai Sucan, a mere month after Opera’s debut of the video element. Much is said about the security implications of such an API, nothing happens, and years pass...

November 2009–March 2010: Eric Carlson (Apple) adds an API for fullscreen video to WebKit:

partial interface HTMLVideoElement {
  readonly attribute boolean webkitSupportsFullscreen;
  readonly attribute boolean webkitDisplayingFullscreen;
  void webkitEnterFullScreen();
  void webkitExitFullScreen();
}

The webkitbeginfullscreen and webkitendfullscreen event are fired on the video element.

The inconsistent capitalization is noticed and fixed by adding webkitEnterFullscreen() and webkitExitFullscreen() aliases. The original names are kept for backwards compatibility.

Revisions: 50893, 54143, 55946

June 2010: Robert O’Callahan (Mozilla) begins working on a proposal to allow any element, not just video, to go fullscreen.

August 2010–January 2011: Jer Noble (Apple) implements something similar to the then-current Mozilla proposal in WebKit:

partial interface Element {
  const unsigned short ALLOW_KEYBOARD_INPUT = 1;
  void webkitRequestFullScreen(unsigned short flags);
}
partial interface Document {
  readonly attribute boolean webkitIsFullScreen;
  readonly attribute boolean webkitFullScreenKeyboardInputAllowed;
  readonly attribute Element? webkitCurrentFullScreenElement;
  void webkitCancelFullScreen();
}

The webkitfullscreenchange event is fired on the current fullscreen element and bubbles.

Revisions: 66251, 75277

September–December 2011: Chris Pearce (Mozilla) begins implementing the proposal in Gecko. Meanwhile, Anne van Kesteren (then Opera, now Mozilla) starts working on a spec at the W3C. The fullscreen element stack is introduced, which makes nested fullscreen (e.g. video in a presentation) possible. When exiting from nested fullscreen, it now becomes un-obvious which element(s) to notify, so the event target is changed to the document.
Revisions: 1c36dc1c92c5, 332cd2925b28

These spec changes are implemented in Gecko, but the old names, and mozFullScreen, are kept:

partial interface Element {
  void mozRequestFullScreen();
}
partial interface Document {
  readonly attribute boolean mozFullScreen;
  readonly attribute boolean mozFullScreenEnabled;
  readonly attribute Element? mozFullScreenElement;
  void mozCancelFullScreen();
}

The mozfullscreenchange event is fired on the document and bubbles.
Bug: 545812

March 2012: Jer Noble implements the W3C spec in WebKit:

partial interface Element {
  void webkitRequestFullscreen();
}
partial interface Document {
  readonly attribute boolean webkitFullscreenEnabled;
  readonly attribute Element? webkitFullscreenElement;
  void webkitExitFullscreen();
}

Notably, the webkitfullscreenchange event target is the fullscreen element, not the document. Because the event bubbles, listening on the document does work, though.
Revision: 111028

September 2012: The Fullscreen API moves to the WHATWG. The W3C version has been unmaintained ever since.

November 2012: Opera 12.10 is released with support for the spec as it was in February, without prefixes. Opera 12 is the last major version based on Presto, so this unprefixed implementation does not last long.

May 2013: Vincent Scheib (Google) questions why the events bubble. Since it is just an accident of history, they are made to not bubble in the spec.
Commit: 5eb5af63369385c888a5146dda57d462cb9a41da

October 2013: Internet Explorer 11 is released with an ms-prefixed fullscreen API:

partial interface Element {
  void msRequestFullscreen();
}
partial interface Document {
  readonly attribute boolean msFullscreenEnabled;
  readonly attribute Element? msFullscreenElement;
  void msExitFullscreen();
}

The MSFullscreenChange event is fired on the document... and bubbles! Most likely the implementation predates the spec change.

Now: This is a bit of a mess! The long history of changes in capitalization and event targets has given JavaScript library authors ample opportunity to write code that will fail once the unprefixed API is made available. I’m trying to implement and ship the unprefixed Fullscreen API in Blink, and some bumps in the road are likely.

Media playback restrictions in Blink

2014-02-10T08:50:04+00:00

Blink and WebKit have a setting for requiring a “user gesture” to play or pause an audio or video element, which is enabled in Opera for Android, Chrome for Android, the default Android browser, Safari for iOS and probably other browsers. This makes some sense, since mobile devices are used in public and in bed, where unsolicited sound from random Web sites could be a nuisance. Also, autoplaying video ads would waste bandwidth.

The trouble is that this gets in the way of reasonable use cases like games or playlists, and developers are not impressed. We’ve discussed this a lot internally at Opera, and as an experiment we’ve removed the restrictions in Opera beta for Android.

However, I’ve also found a workaround for current browsers. As of WebKit r108831, all restrictions are removed in the first successful load() or play() call. Any user gesture is accepted, so one can listen to all input events and remove the restrictions as soon as the user clicks, touches or uses the keyboard. One does not need to start playback at that point, but can wait until a later time. For example, one could “liberate” a number of audio elements for later use in a game.

I’ve prepared a demo of the workaround. It works in current versions of Opera, Chrome and Safari. While it does not work in the default Android browser prior to KitKat, even there it could be adapted to e.g. autoplay background music by calling play() instead of load() in the input event handler.

Given this, I think that either a user gesture should be required for every play() or the restrictions should be removed completely. My tentative suggestion is the latter.

One month in Blink

2013-10-31T12:19:32+00:00

On October 1, I began working in Opera’s new Web Technology team, tasked with improving the Web platform by contributing to the Chromium and Blink projects. Most of my effort has been on the Blink side, and it has been a very pleasant experience so far. Since I’ve worked so much with <video> before, I jumped right into that area and looked for things to work on. Chromium/Blink is a big code base which will take time to get intimately familiar with, but I was still able to make small improvements in a few areas.

Event handler attributes

My colleague Henrik reported that onplay and friends were missing on HTMLMediaElement, and I thought it surely would be easy to fix. However, I am easily distracted, so instead of just adding them I decided to implement GlobalEventHandlers and WindowEventHandlers, which ended up taking me 11 commits and even requiring IDL code generator (Perl!) changes. Now onplay is supported, but you probably don’t want to use it – use addEventListener('play', func) if uncertain!

While in the neighborhood, I also made the onerror attribute on <body> and <frameset> work per spec. I was a bit surprised to find this broken, presumably it isn’t that important for site compat...

Removing features

Although I’m quite happy with Blink code, I was surprised to find how much non-standard stuff there is, including prefixed APIs, undocumented quirks and things that have been removed from the spec. Fortunately, the Blink project is supportive of removing these things, with care, and I’ve now picked most of the low-hanging fruit on HTMLMediaElement, getting rid of a weird npr.org quirk, webkitPreservesPitch, webkitHasClosedCaptions, webkitClosedCaptionsVisible, startTime and initialTime.

Counting features

When there’s a risk that removing a feature is going to break the Web, the first step is to figure out by how much. UseCounter counts (opt-in) which features are used on each page view, so I went ahead and added/improved counters for various things that would be nice to eventually remove: a bunch of prefixed HTMLMediaElement APIs, the TextTrackCue constructor, the beforeload event and the two (!) prefixed fullscreen APIs. There’s also the media attribute on <source>, which is still in the spec, but getting usage data will help us decide whether to remove it.

Fixing bugs

It’s a beautiful thing when you can fix a bug just by removing code, and I did so this month by removing the width and height properties from the <video> intrinsic size logic. After my fix intrinsic size is still not per spec, but at least it’s less wrong.

In my only non-trivial Chromium contribution, I made CookieMonster wait for disk flush when deleting cookies, so that cookies are really gone when the UI says they are. This involved fixing a flaky test, which was fun.

Loading text tracks

I began looking into <track> and WebVTT and soon stumbled upon a FIXME in TextTrackLoader, which is what feeds data to the WebVTT parser. Unable to resist the bait, I refactored TextTrackLoader to use RawResource and removed TextTrackResource. Finally, I fixed some other minor issues and fiddled a bit with the TextTrack IDL.

One year ago

Also this month, one year has passed since my final commit in Core (Presto), which was on October 12, 2012. I was a little bit sad when I noticed this anniversary, but at the same I’m really happy about working on Chromium and Blink. Hopefully the next month will be even better!

The Web Technology team (source)

Weird commit log

2013-08-26T21:51:32+00:00

I stumbled upon something strange on page 895 of Swedish TV4’s teletext:

This is clearly counting the number of commits in source code repositories, but why is this information in the teletext system?

Favorite podcasts

2013-08-24T21:57:24+00:00

About a year ago I discovered the delights of listening to podcasts, and I have done so practically daily during my commute. Unfortunately, the screen on my phone recently went black and for a while I thought my feeds were lost. I did eventually managed to extract them, so now I’m making a public backup, in the form of podcast recommendations:

60-Second Space (RSS) is one of several bite-sized podcasts from Scientific American. Since it’s so short I seldom remember anything, but when queued up it can serve as an overview of recent space news.

Discovery (RSS) is a science podcast from the BBC.

Freethought Radio (RSS) is a podcast with news, music and interviews from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The news is rather US-specific, so I just pick the episodes with interesting interviews.

Humanistpodden (RSS) is the official podcast of Humanisterna, a Swedish secular humanist organization. Some episodes are in English, e.g. the excellent interviews with Ophelia Benson and Peter Singer.

Little Atoms (RSS) is a “talk show about ideas and culture.” The host sounds like a really nice guy, maybe it’s the British accent?

Planetary Radio (RSS) is the Planetary Society’s show with news and interviews. It sounds very scripted and a bit dry, but the actual content is interesting.

Red Planet Radio (RSS) is a newly launched podcast from the Mars Society.

Science Talk (RSS) is a science podcast from Scientific American.

Science Weekly (RSS) is a science podcast from The Guardian.

Skeptoid (RSS) is my probably my favorite podcast, see my previous post for episode recommendations.

Språket (RSS) is a Swedish radio show about the Swedish language, and is what got me started listening to podcasts.

StarStuff (RSS) is by far the best space podcast that I have found. The host, Stuart Gary, has a nice Australian accent and appears to be incredibly knowledgeable when interviewing the authors of recent papers, etc.

The Atheist Experience (RSS) is actually a call-in TV show from Austin, Texas, but I listen to it as a podcast. I recommended episode #795 on Twitter, with my favorite hosts Tracie Harris and Matt Dillahunty.

I’ve prepared an OPML file with all 13 feeds for importing. I can recommend DoggCatcher for Android if you don’t already have a podcast player.

Favorite Skeptoid episodes

2013-08-22T22:20:06+00:00

Skeptoid is an excellent podcast for a skeptical treatment of paranormal claims, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, etc. Over the past 8 months or so I’ve listened to every episode up to and including #376, and I thought I would share my favorites. The most reward episodes have often been those challenging my own beliefs, since those open the door to learning something new.

Blood for Oil (#32) – I had completely accepted the narrative the the US went into Iraq for oil.
Mercury Fillings (#36) – My dad has removed some fillings, and I never doubted that mercury fillings are a health hazard.
Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: Real or Imagined? (#72) – Interesting because of the Swedish connection.
What You Didn’t Know about the Stanford Prison Experiment (#102) – I’ve heard about the experiment many times (for example in The Violence Within Us) and never doubted the conclusions.
Search for the Missing Cosmonauts (#115) – Fascinating because it’s somewhat plausible that Soviet cosmonauts died, but there’s no good evidence for it.
The Lucifer Project (#143) – A silly conspiracy theory about igniting Jupiter as a second sun, but the science is interesting.
Cargo Cults (#199) – Cargo cult coding often comes up in Web standards discussions, but I didn’t know anything (true) about actual cargo cults before.
Speed Reading (#229) – I no longer feel bad about reading slowly, because I probably don’t.
DDT: Secret Life of a Pesticide (#230) – This was the first time I’d ever heard that DDT could possibly have any positive qualities.
The Siberian Hell Sounds (#307) – I heard about this from a Christian classmate in high school and never questioned that someone did in fact hear scary sounds from a deep borehole.
The Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea (#337) – I’d heard and accepted some natural explanation for the Bermuda triangle, but was in for a surprise...
The Cult of Nikola Tesla (#345) – To balance out The Oatmeal.
The Black Knight Satellite (#365) – Anything in orbit is interesting, even if it’s not there.

Happy listening!

Send mail the first time an IP logs in over SSH

2013-08-13T10:16:13+00:00

Fail2ban is useful for slowing down brute force attacks against SSH, and in the few days since I enabled it it’s become very clear that these attempts are happening all the time. I don’t want to disable password authentication for all users in case I find myself without my SSH keys, and even if I did it’s not impossible for SSH keys to be compromised. For the day when the walls are breached, I’ve put this in my /etc/ssh/sshrc:

IP="$(echo $SSH_CONNECTION | awk '{print $1}')"
KNOWN_IPS="$HOME/.ssh/known_ips"
if ! grep -Fqsx $IP $KNOWN_IPS; then
  echo $IP >> $KNOWN_IPS
  echo "$IP added to $KNOWN_IPS" | \
    mail -s "ssh $USER@$(hostname) from $IP" spam@foolip.org
fi

It sends me an email the first time a particular IP successfully logs in over SSH. (If you use this, make sure that mail is configured correctly first: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config in Debian.)

Web hosting

2013-08-06T22:23:52+00:00

About a month ago, I began looking for a new hosting solution for foolip.org, having started with a wardrobe computer in 2006 and never really having found a stable home. My needs are modest, so I went shopping for the cheapest possible shared hosting. I settled for JustHost, which popped up on many comparison sites and seemed to be good value for money, at $2.81/month including VAT.

JustHost isn’t terrible, but there were a few problems. The server (just44.justhost.com) seemed starved for memory and I was unable to work with my www.git because of it at one point. Another time I couldn’t log in over SSH for the better part of a day. Finally, on August 2, there were some major problems, with my site going up and down like a yo-yo. One of the first things I did was to point Pingdom at foolip.org to get some good uptime data. I have a public status page, where you can judge for yourself.

Wanting more control, I started to look for a VPS instead, and eventually settled on DigitalOcean, based on the location (Netherlands), technology (KVM) and price ($5/month, but counted hourly). As of August 6, foolip.org is hosted on a virtual machine running Debian and nginx. Having root access and doing things the hard way is great, it feels like having a wardrobe computer all over again. Time (and Pingdom) will tell if it’s robust or not, but so far I’m very happy. Also, JustHost will refund me for the remaining time, which is very good of them.

In closing, if I were to pick a Web hosting solution all over again and was not in a hurry, I would try to ignore individual reviews and claimed uptimes, and instead use Pingdom to monitor sites hosted using my candidate solutions before making a decision.

New GPG key

2013-07-30T21:39:30+00:00

I’ve uploaded a new GPG key to various keyservers, fetch it manually or on the command line:

$ gpg --recv-keys 0xF75964F29DC6C210

Before creating the key, I took inspiration from Ubuntu and Christopher Wellons, arriving at this for my gpg.conf:

cert-digest-algo SHA512
default-preference-list SHA512 SHA384 SHA256 SHA224 AES256 AES192 AES CAST5 BZIP2 ZLIB ZIP Uncompressed
personal-cipher-preferences AES256 AES192 AES
personal-digest-preferences SHA512 SHA384 SHA256 SHA224
s2k-cipher-algo AES256
s2k-digest-algo SHA512
s2k-mode 3
s2k-count 65011712

The first half is in order to use the SHA-2 and AES instead of SHA-1 and CAST5, while the s2k settings are there to make brute force as expensive as possible in the event that my private key should be compromised.

I’m starting from scratch with my web of trust, so if you want to play key signing, let me know.

Chinese Diceware

2013-07-30T05:41:40+00:00

I’ve been trying to come up with strong passwords since forever, and have failed to find a magic alternative to entropy. Recently, I took Diceware for a roll, but wasn’t entirely happy with passwords like “wn rare swung strop situs slept”—wn isn’t even a word, is it? I also tried the Swedish dictionary but wasn’t much happier.

How about Mandarin Chinese, written using pinyin? There are only around 400 pinyin syllables, but thousands of characters with different meanings, so I guessed that for a random sequence of syllables it should often be possible to come up with a somewhat meaningful phrase.

The kHanyuPinlu property from the Unihan database turned out to be an excellent source for character to syllable mapping, so I wrote syllables.py to reverse that mapping. The output is a list of 392 pinyin syllables with example characters in traditional and simplified Chinese.

Unfortunately, 392 is not a power of 6, so using real dice to generate the numbers is a bit complicated, albeit possible. Instead I wrote roll.py, which uses as few bytes as possible from /dev/random to roll a die with an arbitrary number of sides.

Using my list and my virtual D-392, here are the first 6-syllable pinyin phrases I generated, each with a memorable (?) Chinese phrase and a rough English translation.

yan kai bo ren se dai—眼開撥任色帶—eyes open, poke any ribbon
zui ku ba ge mei xu—最酷八個沒序—the coolest eight have no order
ban zhai dian die keng bao—搬宅殿爹吭抱—moving villa/palace, dad says hold (this)
you mu sa kang xu su—有母萨扛需速—(things) carried by mother Bodhisattva need speed

A native speaker would probably be able to come up with better phrases, but I think that I could remember any of these, with 最酷八個沒序 being the easiest. If this is a representative sample, I think the scheme works.

How about the entropy? With 392 syllables, each syllable contributes log2(392) = 8.6 bits, so these 6-syllable phrases have 51.6 bits of entropy, slightly better than a completely random 8-character alphanumeric password. English Diceware has 12.9 bits of entropy per word, so to get as much entropy as with a 6-word English phrase, a 9-syllable Chinese phrase is needed. The average word and syllable length are 4.2 and 3.2 respectively, so the average phrase lengths (including spaces) would be 30.2 for English and 36.8 for Chinese. (Removing spaces blindly will lose some entropy if the pinyin becomes ambiguous.)

Feel free to use/improve my lists and scripts, and never forget: the coolest eight have no order!

Mormor

2013-07-28T21:55:16+00:00

Mormor dog ikväll...

Jag älskade verkligen att vara i Kålaboda när jag var liten. Sommaren 1986 kunde jag inte prata än, men jag följde gärna med mormor och morfar i lagården, som så många gånger senare under min uppväxt. Den sommaren filmade pappa, och lyckades få med mormor i några korta sekvenser. De här stillbilderna är från del 1 och 5 av Sommar i Kålaboda:

Britta & Folke i lagården

Lunch på gården

Sista gången som jag träffade mormor var i september, det känns inte så länge sen. Nu kommer jag aldrig att få träffa henne igen, kvar finns bara bilder, filmer och minnen. Lagården finns inte heller kvar, men jag minns tydligt hur gott det luktade i rummet med allt tunnbröd, tunnbröd som mormor hade bakat. Det är bara ett av många mormorsminnen.

Jag kommer att sakna dig, mormor...

Britta & Edison

Free will

2013-04-16T03:06:03+00:00

My thoughts on Free Will by Sam Harris, cross-posted from Goodreads.

I had already enjoyed the 2012 talk and was a bit worried that a “book” this short couldn’t add much to it. It doesn’t, in fact, add much, but it was still worth my while to revisit the argument in a different medium.

The first of Harris’ arguments concerns experiments where the test subjects are asked to make a decision and record the time of the decision. Apparently, the decision can be predicted by brain activity before the test subject is aware of having made it, which Harris argues shows that our decisions are made for us by deeper processes. I know nothing about psychology or neurology, so I don’t know if the conclusion is sound, but I wish that Harris had spent a little more time exploring this. It makes no evolutionary sense for our consciousness to only act as a narrator for decisions already made, because it would be superfluous. What kinds of choices need to involve our consciousness? When the decision is made elsewhere, why does our consciousness pretends as if it were in charge? Is it possible, with self-control, to force certain decisions out of the dark, into the light of our conscious thought?

Second is the problem of regress. To quote:

My choices matter—and there are paths towards making wiser ones—but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do—for instance, after going back between two options—I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness.

Or more succinctly:

We are not self-caused little gods.

I think this is compelling, but it is a little bit like the children’s game of “why why why.” Colloquially, we can account for why it snows without asking “why” all the way back to the origin of the universe. Perhaps a similar line can be drawn for inquiries into volition, that ends somewhere inside our heads?

Third, Harris says that self-introspection will reveal that the source of our thoughts and decisions are mysterious even to ourselves. Ever since I saw his talk I have tried to think about this, but cannot say I find it as obviously true as Harris does. I don’t know where my ideas and impulses come from, but if pressed I think I could attribute many of them to known external and internal sources, which are obviously not of my choosing, but still not mysterious. Some preferences, like tea or coffee, are mysterious, but it’s not mysterious why I prefer an ice tea over hot chocolate on a warm summer day.

Finally, Harris untangles free will from determinism. We don’t yet know for certain which kind of universe we inhabit, but there’s nothing about an indeterminate universe that would grant us free will. Conversely, compatibilism is the view that we can have free will even in a deterministic universe, even if Harris is rather dismissive of this. I should probably read Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting to get a fair treatment of the subject.

In the end, the notion of free will is rather like the notion of god—ill-defined and with no supporting evidence. For now, I have no choice but to withhold belief.

Space: everything except the Earth

2013-03-25T16:15:26+00:00

When I was growing up I wasn’t particularly interested in real-world space exploration. I liked Star Trek and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but don’t remember ever being excited about a Space Shuttle launch, Hubble, Mir or the ISS. However, the precision engineering of last year’s Curiosity landing on Mars really caught my attention, and since then I’ve been learning about everything that I’ve missed out on. Here are some awesome things, other than the Earth, in rough chronological order.

The Universe is big. Really big. The amount of knowledge and ignorance we have about the Universe is exhilarating, and it’s changing all the time. In the absence of a quantum theory of gravity, Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing is an interesting bit of speculation about where it all came from. Our knowledge of the age just got better, with ESA announcing 13.82 billion years as the new best bet. At the other end of time, how the Universe will end seems to be unknown, but most of the hypotheses point to a Universe that doesn’t care about our feelings.

Robert Goddard’s A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes (PDF) from 1919 is surprisingly comprehensible to a software engineer from 1984. The illustrations and photos are wonderful, in particular the Coston ship rocket bundle (p. 48, fig. 7) reminded me of a certain xkcd what if? Also, I was intrigued to find on the topic of “recovery of apparatus on return,” that Goddard suggested a limited form of powered descent (p. 53):

If it is considered desirable, for any reason, to dispense with a sufficiently large parachute, the retarding of the apparatus may be accomplished to any degree by having the rocket consist, at its highest point of flight, not merely of instruments plus parachute, but of instruments together with a chamber, and considerable propellant material. Then, after the rocket has descended to some lower level, [...] this propellant material can be ejected, so that the velocity is considerably checked before the apparatus reaches as low an altitude as, say, 5,000 ft.

Goddard also discussed briefly the issue of reaching the Moon; the mocking New York Times editorial and the 49-year-late “correction” are at the same time amusing and tragic.

Reach the Moon we did. If Up Goer Five makes it seem simple, then Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (PDF) uncovers the amazing engineering of the many engines and stages of the Saturn rockets. (I’m currently editing an EPUB version of this book.) Just days ago, Jeff Bezos recovered two F-1 engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, with the intent of turning them into museum exhibits. While I’d love to see them, it saddens me that humanity hasn’t had the capability for lunar exploration in my lifetime, and that it’s now a subject for history books and museums.

In the shadow of the Saturn V stands the Soviet N1. Achievements include 30 (!) engines on the first stage and the largest artificial non-nuclear explosion in history, but not reaching space, orbit, or the Moon. Information on the Soviet space program is hard to come by, so Rockets and People, Volume 4: The Moon Race seems like a very valuable account of these events, which I hope to find the time to read soon.

The Shuttle era began before I was born and only recently came to an end. Even though the destination (LEO) is mundane compared to the Saturn V’s, I still thoroughly enjoyed 45 mins of HD quality, high-speed footage of the launch sequences of STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124, with commentaries from NASA rocket engineers (via reddit).

SpaceX does plenty of things to be excited about. It was only a few weeks ago that they completed a 24-story test flight with its Grasshopper reusable rocket—powered descent all the way down, and on a far greater scale than what Goddard contemplated. If full reusability can be made to work, it should lower launch costs dramatically and thus expand access to space to a whole new level. In the category of awesome power, the Falcon Heavy will fire 27 (!) Merlin 1D engines at liftoff, making it the most powerful rocket in my lifetime. I can’t wait to see it roar.

Mars is what got me interested in non-Earth matters, and it must be the next destination for humanity. I very much enjoyed Robert Zubrin’s The Case for Mars, in which he argues for a simple mission structure and producing the methane for the return journey on Mars using atmospheric carbon dioxide. Elon Musk clearly wants to go, calling it “planetary redundancy” and “life insurance.” Perhaps not incidentally, SpaceX is working on a methane-powered engine. Of the publicly announced efforts to actually go, neither Inspiration Mars (human flyby in 2018) nor Mars One (one-way colonization in 2023) seem completely impossible. To see humanity take this step in my lifetime is the most exciting prospect of all.

Edison

2013-02-27T08:01:17+00:00

Innan ultraljudet var du fortfarande ganska abstrakt för mig, jag visste att du fanns där inne men ingenting annat. Att se dig flimra runt på skärmen och få en enda bit information om dig – pojke – gjorde dig genast mycket mer konkret. Den kvällen började jag fundera på namn.

Alva är ett fint namn, vilket ledde tankarna till Thomas Alva Edison. De flesta av mina förslag var ovanliga namn och röstades snabbt ned, så när du blir äldre kan du tacka mamma för att du inte heter Newton eller Kepler. Mammas favoritnamn var Liam. Det dröjde några månader, men till slut så fick du heta just Edison.

Verkligheten blev som förvrängd inne i förlossningsrummet. Det hängde en klocka på väggen som långsamt, långsamt räknade upp sekunderna. Ibland var det långsamma tickandet det enda jag kunde höra, men ibland hörde jag det inte alls. Vi ville så gärna träffa dig, men du verkade helt oberörd av tidens gång.

När du äntligen kom fram så började tiden gå snabbare igen. Du skrek lite ynkligt och det var omöjligt att hålla tillbaka tårarna. En barnmorska gratulerade mig och jag lyckades öppnade munnen, men vet inte om mitt ”tack” hördes alls. Plötsligt så var det bara du och jag. Du låg där och tittade medan jag sjöng mormors lilla kråka, men utan att köra ned i diket.

Ett ögonblick senare har du redan fyllt åtta månader. Du har börjat säga ”ba ba ba” när du leker och ibland låter det precis som att du ropar efter mig. Du kryper baklänges och dansar när moster My dansar till koreansk pop. Snart kommer du att gå och prata och flytta hemifrån och pappa kommer att sakna dig. Då kommer jag kanske att ta fram de här bilderna och titta, en bild för varje månad du har varit hos oss.

30 juni 2012: 5 dagar gammal

18 juli 2012: Hos farmor och farfar i Stora Hultrum

5 augusti 2012: Nybadad

23 september 2012: Älskad

27 oktober 2012: Kungsparken i Göteborg

22 november 2012: Nyklippt troll

26 december 2012: Jul i Stora Hultrum

24 januari 2013: Hos mormor och morfar i Hà Nội

25 februari 2013: På badsemester i Đà Nẵng

Pappa älskar dig, Edison.

How to use Opera as the Git Web browser

2011-01-03T20:28:59+00:00

As in: the browser Git uses when you call git web--browse URL/FILE

git config --global web.browser opera
git config --global browser.opera.cmd opera

When support for Opera is released in Git v1.7.4 the second line should no longer be needed, but probably won’t hurt.

Vad vill Sverigedemokraterna oss?

2010-09-22T18:18:04+00:00

Efter det tråkiga valresultatet är det frestande att ropa ”Hitler kommer!” och raljera över hur dumma medborgarna är, men det är ganska osakligt och tjatigt. Eftersom min underbara fru är nybliven invandrare har jag istället ”roat” mig med att läsa Sverigedemokraternas invandringspolitiska program (cache) för att se vad de har att erbjuda oss.

Den härboende personen skall påta sig försörjningsansvar för den anhörige under en femårsperiod och skall dessutom betala en engångssumma, uppgående till ett prisbasbelopp, som ett bidrag till statens utgifter för den anhöriges svenskundervisning och övriga anpassningskostnader.

Jag skulle alltså få betala 42400 kr för min frus uppehållstillstånd, som ”ett bidrag” till sfi. I andra sammanhang när vi temporärt belastar samhället – t ex när man skaffar barn eller läser på högskola – så slås den kostnaden ut på den skatt och moms man betalar, varför inte så även här? Det är svårt att se det som något annat än en straffavgift för att jag råkade hitta kärleken utanför Sverige.

Alla uppehållstillstånd som tilldelas nytillkomna utlänningar skall vara tillfälliga. Möjligheten att utfärda permanenta uppehållstillstånd som ett mellansteg mellan temporärt uppehållstillstånd och medborgarskap skall därmed avskaffas. Det tillfälliga uppehållstillståndet gäller för ett år i taget [...]

Inget PUT, någonsin. Dessutom så ska vi springa till Migrationsverket en gång om året. Kul! Hur länge ska då detta pågå?

Kraven för att få svenskt medborgarskap skall skärpas kraftigt. Grundläggande krav skall vara att man varit bosatt i landet i minst tio år och att man under denna tid uppvisat en klanderfri vandel.

Tio år! Om några år när vi fått barn så vore det väldigt praktiskt med svenska pass för hela familjen vid utlandsresor, eftersom det ofta är olika visumregler för vietnamesiska och svenska medborgare. SD erbjuder istället mer krångel och spring på ambassader!

Därtill skall man också underteckna en deklaration där man bekräftar sin lojalitet med Sverige och förbinder sig att respektera svenska lagar och övriga samhällsregler.

Att vara lojal mot Sverige är ungefär lika befängt som att vara lojal mot Småland. Det är i bästa fall en löjlig symbolhandling och i värsta fall ett löfte om att alltid sätta Sveriges intressen framför andra länders, alltså motsatsen till internationell solidaritet. Sådant nonsens ska ingen behöva skriva under på.

Den som är svensk medborgare skall inte kunna inneha annat medborgarskap utöver det svenska.

Det här innebär att min fru och mina framtida barn inte kommer att kunna ha vietnamesiska pass och alltså blir tvungna att ansöka om visum när de ska hälsa på mormor och morfar vid Tết (nyår). Det har dock SD löst finurligt genom att förtydliga att vissa nyår är bättre än andra:

Lovdagar i anslutning till religiösa högtider skall endast omfatta traditionella svenska och kristna högtider.

(Förvisso är Tết inte en religiös högtid, men jag betvivlar att det spelar någon roll.)

Sammantaget är det tydligt att ni Sverigedemokrater vill djävlas en hel del med mig och min familj. Ni ”tar avstånd från mångkulturalism” och vill inte att min frus kultur ”jämställs med, eller värderas högre än,” den svenska. Jag ber er då att dra åt helvete, för vi tänker fortsätta fira okristna högtider och prata olika språk, huller om buller!

När de faktiska politiska programmen är så här patetiska så borde ingen vara orolig för att ”ta debatten” med Sverigedemokraterna – citera helt enkelt deras egna åsikter så inser de flesta vilket trams det faktiskt rör sig om.

Sakliga kommentarer välkomnas, andra ej.

SRT research

2010-08-20T23:28:32+00:00

Discussions in the WHATWG and W3C over several months have led up to the announcement of a new <track> element and the WebSRT format. WebSRT is intended to be mostly compatible with existing SRT content and software, in order to hitch a free ride on the popularity of SRT.

Unfortunately, there was never a proper SRT parsing specification, so all media players implement their own parsers and error handling, much like was the case with HTML before HTML5. If these media players are going to support any of the new features in WebSRT, they will have to do so by modifying existing SRT parsers, as there’s nothing to differentiate SRT and WebSRT. Interoperability would be helped if they were are able to converge towards the same parsing algorithm, but they can only do that if WebSRT handles existing content as good as or better than current algorithms. If we cannot achieve that, it might be better to invent a format that has no legacy compatibility constraints.

There’s been some testing of existing media players, but not much analysis of existing content. I asked OpenSubtitles if they could help out, upon which they very kindly provided me with the latest 10000 uploaded SRT* files. I wrote a Python script to analyze them, and I think the results are interesting.

First a note on character encoding. Only 666 files were valid UTF-8 and out of those 472 were pure 7-bit ASCII, so deliberate use of UTF-8 doesn’t even reach 2%. Since WebSRT assumes UTF-8, little existing content can be reused as-is.

This is the typical structure of SRT (source):

1
00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:16,000
The Conceited General

2
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:10,240
The general returns victorious

I’ll use WebSRT terminology: above are 2 cues, each with 3 lines for identifier, timings and the cue text followed by a blank line. Unfortunately, assuming that a blank line separates cues turns out to be unreliable, as 241 files at some point omitted that blank line. In my code, I let a timing line start a new cue even if not preceded by a blank line. I’m not sure what the best general approach is.

The identifier line is mostly useless and has been made optional in WebSRT. I defined any line preceding a timing line as being the identifier. Under this assumption, 571 files had identifiers that didn’t increase by 1 per cue and 55 files had identifiers which weren’t numbers at all. This doesn’t seem to matter to existing players.

The timings are a bit more interesting. No less than 1707 files had overlapping cues. Most existing players handle this by simply showing (only) the next cue when it begins, so such overlap goes unnoticed. However, the WebSRT parser makes no such adjustments, intending that overlapping cues be shown simultaneously. This will quite certainly be a problem if existing content is reused. Also worth noting is that only 4 files consequently used a period (.) to separate seconds and milliseconds, 2 files mixed (apparent typos) and all the rest used only commas (,). Only 1 file used the SubRip X1: ... syntax and 38 files had something else trailing the timings. This was mostly trailing punctuation (.,?) or due to a missing newline before the cue text or random typos.

What remains is the cue text itself. Markup, which I defined as anything matching the regular expression '<(\w+)>' or the string '<font', was surprisingly common, occurring in 5525 files. The most common are <i> (5273), <b> (937), <font ...> (346) and <u> (71). The WebSRT parser handles italic, bold and ruby markup, ignoring the rest. The fact that markup is so common means that any robust SRT (not just WebSRT) parser must handle it in some way, even if only by ignoring it.

That’s what I could gather from the data I have. If there’s something you want me to check, just leave a comment. Many thanks to OpenSubtitles for providing the data.

*They noted that this regular expression was used to identify SRT files: /^\d\d:\d\d:\d\d[,.]\d\d\d\s*-->\s*\d\d:\d\d:\d\d[,.]\d\d\d\s*(X1:\d+\s+X2:\d+\s+Y1:\d+\s+Y2:\d+)?\s*$/m This means that very broken files won’t have been included.

Ett blocköverskridande hack

2010-08-04T07:13:10+00:00

Piratpartiet ställer upp i valet och siktar på en vågmästarställning. Som en del i denna strategi tar Piratpartiet inte ställning i några andra frågor än de informationspolitiska och kommer istället att rösta med sina samarbetspartier, vilka det nu blir. Själv hoppas jag verkligen att de lyckas, så att Ask/Bodström inte kan härja fritt i ytterligare en mandatperiod.

Det är populärt att raljera över hur liten skillnaden det är mellan blocken, men likväl så spelar skillnaderna faktiskt roll på valdagen. Om valet blir väldigt jämnt så finns en risk att en del inte vågar rösta på Piratpartiet just för att de står utanför blockpolitiken. Jag själv känner detta dilemma och tror att det finns många som mig på båda sidor blockgränsen. Vore det då inte perfekt om man kunde para ihop tveksamma väljare från båda sidor, så att deras röster tar ut varandra? På så sätt förändras inte vilket block som vinner majoritet, men Piratpartiet får sin vågmästarställning och kan påbörja det hårda arbetet med att vända informationspolitiken på rätt köl.

Hur ska då detta hack fungera? Jag tänker mig en ganska enkel teknisk lösning enligt följande:

En webbsida där man får fylla i sin mail-adress och vilket block/parti man stödjer utanför Piratpartiets frågor.
Så snart som två väljare från vardera block matchats så skickas ett mail ut till de båda där de presenteras för varandra. De kan sedan välja att utväxla några mail för att stifta bekantskap och försäkra sig om att de är seriösa.

Som en minsta åtgärd mot missbruk kan man se till att samma mail-adress inte registreras flera gånger. Men, ingen teknisk lösning kan i slutändan kontrollera hur man faktiskt röstar på valdagen, så därför är vårt bästa vapen vanlig hederlighet och att folk sätter en gnutta tillit till varandra, för vårt gemensamma bästa.

Tankar?

My father’s wedding speech

2010-08-03T17:38:41+00:00

As promised, here is the speech my father gave to me and Nga at our wedding, in Swedish, English and Vietnamese. At the wedding, my father spoke in Swedish, while Lan translated into Vietnamese. The English version is a bi-product of the translation process.

Svenska

Nga och Philip – idag är en stor dag – kanske den största i era liv. Det är en ära för oss att få komma hit och att kunna komma hit och delta i denna fantastiska högtid. Jag och Anita är väldigt stolta idag – vi tror det är en stolthet som vi delar med er. Den här dagen kommer ni att minnas för resten av era liv och det är väl ganska naturligt – men vi kan också lova er att nästan varenda svensk också kommer att minnas denna bröllopsdag, för just i detta nu så börjar bröllopet för Sveriges kronprinsessa i Storkyrkan i Stockholm och den största TV-produktionen någonsin pågår just nu med miljoner tittare. När Sveriges blivande drottning valde att gifta sig just idag – ja då måste det vara en bra dag för ett bröllop – måtte hälsa, glädje och tur följa i denna dags spår.

Men jag tänkte börja i en helt annan tid och med helt andra människor.

Det var den 15e oktober 1882 och alltså snart 128 år sedan.

Det var mörkt i den småländska skogen den där höstdagen. Det var 8 grader varmt och regn, en härligt frisk doft av mull och mogna kantareller spreds mellan träden. I det lilla soldattorpet på gården Källeryd i Haurida knastrade det hemtrevligt från elden i järnspisen. Av och an vankade soldaten Sven Lindblad i köket och väntade otåligt på att hans hustru skulle föda. Några timmar senare hördes barnskrik i torpet – en liten gosse hade fötts. Gossens mor hette Inga Sofia Johannesdotter – ja hon hette Inga – det namn i Sverige som är allra mest likt ditt Nga – vi brukar säga till människor som undrar vad du heter att du heter Inga – men utan bokstaven I – och då förstår alla.

Men tillbaka till den lille nyfödde. Han fick namnet David – David Lindblad. Åren gick och David växte upp under mycket knappa förhållanden och när han var något mer än 20 år så träffade han Ester. De blev precis som ni kära i varandra och på luciadagen den 13e december 1906 för 104 år sedan så förlovade de sig och Ester fick en förlovningsring i guld med inskriptionen ”David 13/12 1906”

David och Ester gifte sig och fick 5 döttrar – en av dem var min mamma Kerstin.

När Philip föddes 1984 så var det väl för oss som för alla föräldrar lite olika tankar och förslag om vad du skulle heta – så Philip, du fick också namnet David och du har alltså fått ditt andra namn efter min morfar som jag tyvärr aldrig fick träffa eftersom han dog innan jag själv föddes. Så, Philip och Nga, båda era namn finns alltså sedan tidigt i vår släkt och vi vill att du Nga ska känna att du nu blir en del av vår familj – ännu mera än vad vi hoppas och tror att du redan känt.

Philip, du var väldigt lätt att hantera som liten. Antingen sov du – eller så åt du – nästan fram tills du fyllde 1 år – då öppnade du ögonen och har väl sedan knappast stängt dom. Philip, du hade det nog på ett sätt ganska tufft i dina unga år. Eftersom du alltid var huvudet längre än dina jämnåriga så behandlades du som mycket äldre än du var. De flesta förväntade sig att 4-åringen skulle uppträda lika duktigt som en 6-åring, när du var 6 så kunde du väl läsa, skriva och spela fotboll – det kunde ju de 9-åringar som du var jämnstor med. Philip, du kämpade – du försökte hänga med – du försökte vara duktig och lyckades också med att vara det , ja kanske inte med fotbollen där blev du aldrig särskilt duktig – men du kämpade – du sprang efter bollen – du sparkade efter bollen – men du kom sällan ifatt bollen och sparkarna träffade ganska sällan. Men bortsett från fotbollen, så har du nog lyckats med det mesta du försökt dig på. Det dröjde inte särskilt länge innan jag förstod att du kunde betydligt mer än mig på ganska många områden, din lust till ny kunskap har alltid varit stor – som t.ex. när du plötsligt läste in en kurs i stenografi – inte för att du behövde det eller skulle få nytta av det – utan bara för att du ville veta hur det fungerade. Det är väl just därför du trängt så mycket djupare in bakom datorskärmarna än jag tror någon av oss andra i detta rum och nu arbetar du som ”core programmer” och då vet du ju hur datorns program fungerar, inte ungefär – utan precis. Denna nyfikenhet på hur saker fungerar delar du med din farbror Stig som också vet precis hur saker fungerar – men då mer TV-apparater och bilar, det var många gånger vi åkte hem från Stig med olika gamla trasiga apparater för att du skulle ta hem – skruva isär och se hur de fungerade och var byggda.

Samma nyfikenhet och lust att lära nåt nytt var också det som förde dig samman med Nga. Du bad oss att få ta ett år ”ledigt” från dina universitetsstudier för att åka till Peking och lära dig Mandarin. Det är väl inte det de flesta av oss skulle kalla ”ledigt” men för dig kändes det tydligen så. För att vi skulle släppa iväg dig så ställde Anita och jag 2 villkor ( jag tror inte vi hade kunnat hindra dig hur som helst – och det ville vi ju inte heller) Du hade då ganska politiskt starka åsikter och det första villkoret menade vi väldigt bestämt. När du bor i Peking så FÅR DU INTE kritisera den kinesiska systemet eller samhället – tänk särskilt på att inte göra det på nätet. Det lovade du.

Det andra villkoret som väl inte var så bestämt utan mer en förhoppning att du inte skulle flytta till Kina för alltid. Skaffa inte en kinesisk flickvän.

Jag tror inte det gick mer än ett par veckor efter du åkt till Kina när telefonen ringde och du sa direkt: Jag har hållit båda löftena – ingen kritik mot Kina – och ingen kinesisk flickvän. Men – jag har träffat Nga – hon är inte från Kina – men hon är smart och hon är vacker – och jag är kär. Vi blev givetvis glada för din skull och hoppades vi skulle få möjlighet att träffa denna fantastiska kvinna när vi hälsade på dig i Peking – och det gjorde vi också – men bara på flygplatsen när vårt plan till Stockholm skulle gå – och ditt plan från Hanoi just landat. Vårt första möte blev väldigt märkligt – det var en hög glasvägg mellan oss och vi lyckades bara röra varandras fingertoppar – vi kunde inte prata med varann och kunde bara hälsa med gester. Men sedan dess har vi både fått ha dig som gäst i Sverige och vara din och dina föräldrars gäst här i Hanoi, tack för er varma gästfrihet, och för varje gång vi träffas så förstår vi mer och mer att ni 2 är 1 och vi kan bara hålla med dig Philip – hon är smart och hon är bedårande vacker, bara se på henne – och eftersom du nu kallar oss mamma och pappa (det är inte vad man brukar i Sverige – men förstår att det är er vietnamesiska tradition) så känns det naturligt att välkomna dig som vår ”dotter”.

Som ett bevis och tecken på att du nu inte bara tillhör din vietnamesiska familj utan nu också tillhör och är en del av vår svenska familj och släkt vill jag ge dig denna gåva som jag hoppas du vill bära med dig genom livet. Måtte vi aldrig få några glasväggar mellan oss igen.

Nga öppnar paketet

Detta är alltså den ring som min morfar David gav till sin Ester för 104 år sedan. Vi har låtit göra om den till vad vi tror passar Ngas smak och stil – och tittar du noga inuti så kan du se att det står ”David 13/12 1906”

Ett fyrfaldigt leve för brudparet.

Hurra Hurra Hurra Hurra

English

Nga and Philip – today is a great day – maybe the greatest day of your lives. It is an honor for us to be allowed to come here and be able to participate in this magnificent festivity. My wife Anita and I are very proud today – we believe it is a sense of pride that we share with the two of you. You will definitely remember this day for the rest of your lives and that is rather natural, isn’t it? We can promise you that almost every Swede will also remember this wedding day. At this exact moment the wedding of the Royal Swedish crown princess in the Great Cathedral in Stockholm is beginning, and the largest TV-production ever transmitted is under way with millions of viewers. When the future Swedish Queen chose to get married on this very day – well then it has to be a good day for a wedding – may health, happiness and prosperity follow this day into the future.

But I would like to start this story in a completely different time period, with completely different people.

It was the 15th of October 1882 and 128 years have passed since then.

It was dark in the Swedish forest this autumn day. It was 8 degrees warm and raining, a lovely and fresh smell from mulch and mushrooms spread among the trees. In the tiny little soldier’s cottage on the land of the farm Källeryd in Haurida a fire burnt cosily in the cast iron stove. Every now and again the soldier Sven Lindblad paced around in the kitchen, impatiently waiting for his wife to give birth. A few hours later a screaming child was heard in the cottage – a small baby boy had been born. The name of the newborn’s mother was Inga Sofia Johannesdotter – yes her first name was Inga – the very name in Sweden which most resembles your name, Nga. We explain to people who ask about your name that it is Inga – but without the letter I – and then everybody understands.

But, again back to the little newborn. He was given the name David – David Lindblad. The years went by and David grew up in quite poor circumstances. When he was just over 20 years old he met Ester. They fell in love just like the two of you and on the very day of the St Lucia the 13th of December 1906 (104 years ago) they engaged and Ester was presented with an engagement ring with the inscription ”David 13/12 1906”

David and Ester married and had 5 daughters – one of them was my own mother, Kerstin.

When Philip was born in 1984 Anita and I, like all parents, had some ideas and thoughts about what your name was going to be – so, Philip. You were also given the second name David after my Grandfather, whom I regretfully never got to meet since he died before I was born. So, Philip and Nga, both your names are from early days in our family and we want you Nga to really feel that you are now becoming a part of our family – even more so than we hope and believe you feel already.

Philip, you were very easy to handle as a child. Either you were sleeping – or you were eating – almost until your first birthday – then you opened your eyes and since then I think you have hardly closed them. Philip, you probably had it rather tough in your younger years. You were always head and shoulders taller than everybody your own age. You were often treated as being much older than you were. Most people expected you as a 4-year old to behave just as talented as a 6-year old, and when you were 6 you were expected to read and write, and play football – since all the 9-year olds of your size could. Philip, you struggled – you tried to catch up – you tried to be a good boy and do well and you succeeded too, well maybe not in football you never really became a footballer – but you fought – you ran after the ball – you kicked after the ball – but you rarely caught up with the ball and your kicks rarely hit the ball. Apart from football I think you have succeeded with most things you have tried out. It didn’t take very long before I realized that you knew quite a bit more than myself in many areas, your eagerness to find new knowledge has always been great – for example, when you all of a sudden took on a course to learn shorthand (stenography) – not because you needed it or were to get use of it – but more because you wanted to know how it worked. That lust for knowledge is probably the reason why you have gone deeper behind the computer screens than I would think anybody else in this room and the reason for your current occupation as a Core Programmer and that of course makes you know how a computer program works – not just about – but EXACTLY. This curiosity of how things works you share with your uncle Stig. Stig also knows how things work, exactly – usually more likely to be TV-sets and cars and other electro mechanic things. Many were the times when we left Stig’s place with old broken TVs, toasters and other gadgets because you were taking them home – taking them apart – to see how they worked and how they were built.

The very same curiosity and eagerness to learn something new was also what brought you together with Nga. You asked us to allow you to take a ‘year off’ your university studies to go to Beijing to study Mandarin. That is not what most of us would call a year off but to you it obviously felt so. In order to let you go, Anita and I put up 2 conditions (I don’t think we could have stopped you anyway – and we really didn’t want to either). At the time you had fairly strong political views and the first condition we really meant strongly. When living in Beijing YOU MAY NOT criticize the Chinese system or society – particularly not on the internet. That you promised.

The second condition was really not very conditional at all but more a mere hope that you wouldn’t move to China forever. Don’t get involved with a Chinese girlfriend.

I don’t think that more than a few weeks had passed after you left for China when the telephone rang and you said directly: I have kept both my promises – no criticism against China – and no Chinese girlfriend. But – I have met Nga, she is not from China – but she is smart and she is beautiful – and I am in love. Of course we were happy for you and hoped to get the opportunity to meet this outstanding woman when we visited you in Beijing – and we did too – but only at the airport when our plane was about to leave to Stockholm – and your flight from Hanoi had just arrived. Our first meeting was very strange. There was a high glass wall between us and we just managed to touch one another’s fingertips – we couldn’t talk to one another and we could just greet one another with gestures. Since then we have had the pleasure to have you as our guest in Sweden and been very warmly welcomed as guests of you and your parents here in Hanoi. Thank you for your warm hospitality. Every time we meet we understand more and more that the 2 of you are really 1 and we can do nothing but agree with you Philip – she is smart and she is gorgeously beautiful – just look at her – and since you now call us mama and papa (that is not what you normally would in Sweden – but we understand it’s your Vietnamese tradition) it feels all natural to welcome you as our ”daughter”.

As evidence of, and a sign and indicator that you now not just belong to your Vietnamese family but are also a part of our Swedish family and relatives I want to give you this gift that I hope you will carry with you through your life. May we never get any glass walls between us ever again.

Nga opens the parcel

This is consequently the very ring that my maternal grandfather David presented to his Ester 104 years ago. We have had it remade into what we believe suits Nga’s taste and style – and if you look carefully inside you will still find the inscription ”David 13/12 1906”

A foursome unison cheer for the bridal couple.

Hurray Hurray Hurray Hurray

Tiếng Việt

Nga và Philip, hôm nay là một ngày trọng đại, có lẽ là ngày trọng đại nhất trong cuộc đời của 2 con. Bố mẹ cảm thấy rất vinh dự khi được tới đây và tham dự ngày lễ tuyệt vời này. Anita và bố cảm thấy vô cùng tự hào, muốn chia sẻ sự tự hào này với 2 con. Chắc chắn rằng hai con sẽ nhớ ngày này mãi mãi, và điều đó cũng tự nhiên thôi, phải ko? Chúng ta có thể chắc rằng người Thụy Điển nào cũng sẽ nhớ ngày cưới này. Chính vào thời điểm này Đám cưới của Công chúa Hoàng gia Thụy Điển tại nhà thờ lớn Stockholm đang bắt đầu, và sự kiện này được truyền hình trực tiếp tới hàng triệu người xem. Khi Hoàng hậu tương lai của Thụy Điển chọn làm đám cưới vào ngày này, thì đó phải là một ngày rất đẹp để cử hành hôn lễ. Sức khỏe, hạnh phúc và sự thịnh vượng sẽ mãi ở lại với ngày này.

Tuy nhiên, tôi muốn kể một câu chuyện vào một thời gian hoàn toàn khác. Đó là ngày 15 tháng 10 năm 1882 và 128 năm đã trôi qua kể từ ngày đó.

Đó là một ngày mùa thu ảm đạm, trong một khu rừng ở Thụy Điển. Trời ấm và có mưa, một mùi hương thanh mát bốc lên từ nấm và củi khô và lan qua các cành cây. Trong ngôi lều dã chiến trên đất của nông trường Källeryd ở Haurida, ngọn lửa bập bùng trong lò gang. Người lính Sven Lindblad bồn chồn bước quanh gian bếp chờ vợ anh đang chuyển dạ. Vài giờ sau, tiếng khóc của một cậu bé vang lên trong căn lều nhỏ. Tên của mẹ cậu bé là Inga Sofia Johannesdotter, vâng, tên của bà là Inga, cái tên Thụy Điển gần giống với tên con nhất Nga ạ. Khi ai đó hỏi về tên của con, bố mẹ đều nói đó là Inga, nhưng ko có chữ I ở đầu, và mọi người đều hiểu.

Quay trở lại với cậu bé con mới được sinh ra. Tên cậu là David – David Lindblad. David dần lớn lên trong hoàn cảnh khó khăn, và khi mới hơn 20 tuổi, cậu gặp Ester. Họ yêu nhau cũng như hai con, và vào chính ngày Thánh Lucia, 13 tháng 12 năm 1906 (104) năm trước, họ đính hôn và Ester được người chồng thân yêu trao cho chiếc nhẫn đính hôn với dòng chữ ”David 13/12 1906”

David và Ester cưới nhau và có 5 con gái, một trong số này là mẹ của bố, Kerstin.

Khi Philip sinh ra vào năm 1984, mẹ Anita và bố, như tất cả những ông bố bà mẹ khác, đã cân nhắc rất nhiều khi đặt cho con cái tên Philip. Tên đệm của con David, được đặt theo tên của ông ngoại của bố, người mà bố đã ko dược gặp mặt vì ông đã mất trước khi bố được sinh ra. Vì thế, Philip và Nga, tên của 2 con đều có từ những ngày đầu tiên của gia đình chúng ta, và bố mẹ muốn Nga cũng thực sự cảm thấy mình giờ đây đã là một thành viên của gia đình mình, hơn thế nữa, bố tin là Nga đã cảm thấy như vậy rồi.

Philip, ngay từ hồi nhỏ con đã rất ngoan. Dù đang ăn hay đang ngủ, cho tới khi tròn 1 tuổi, đôi mắt của con luôn mở to mà hiếm khi nhắm lại. Philip, con đã có những năm tháng đầu đời ko mấy dễ dàng. Con luôn cao hơn chúng bạn cả cái đầu. con luôn được mọi người nhìn nhận như một cậu bé già hơn tuổi. khi mới 4 tuổi, Mọi người mong mỏi con phải giỏi như một đứa trẻ 6 tuổi, và khi mới 6 tuổi, mọi người lại mong con đọc, viết và chơi bóng đá giỏi như một cậu bé 9 tuổi rồi. Philip, con đã cố gắng rất nhiều, cố gắng để bắt kịp, cố gắng trở thành một cậu bé ngoan, con đã làm rất tốt, tuy có thể con chơi bóng đá ko được tốt lắm, dù con đã nỗ lực rất nhiều; có lẽ con ko có năng khiếu đá bóng lắm, con cố gắng đuổi theo bóng và sút bóng, nhưng hiếm khi đuổi kịp, và cũng hiếm khi sút trúng đích. Nhưng ngoài việc đó ra, bố nghĩ rằng con đã thành công với phần lớn những việc con làm. Rất nhanh chóng, bố đã nhận ra rằng con biết nhiều hơn bố ở rất nhiều lĩnh vực, con đã rất hăm hở khám phá những điều mới mẻ, ví dụ như con đã theo học một khóa học tốc ký, ko phải vì con cần biết viết tốc ký, mà chỉ để xem người ta viết tốc ký như thế nào.

Sự ham hiểu biết đó có thể là lý do tại sao con học và tìm hiểu sâu hơn về máy tính, có lẽ hơn bất cứ ai trong căn phòng này, và là lý do khiến con muốn làm một nhà lập trình máy tính, sự ham hiểu biết cũng khiến con ko chỉ biết, mà còn hiểu rất chính xác, các chương trình máy tính hoạt động ra sao. Sự tò mò, ham hiểu biết này của con rất giống chú Stig. Stig cũng thích tìm hiểu về nguyên lý hoạt động của máy móc, như TV< ô tô hay những đồ điện tử. Rất nhiều lần khi trở về từ nhà Stig, con mang theo cả đống ti vi, lò nướng hỏng, tháo tung ra và xem chúng hoạt động thế nào.

Sự ham hiểu biết, thích học hỏi này cũng đã mang con tới với Nga. Con đã hỏi bố mẹ về việc nghỉ học một năm ở trường ĐH và sang Bắc Kinh học tiếng Trung. Với phần lớn mọi người, đây ko phải một năm nghỉ ngơi, nhưng với con thì rõ ràng là vậy. bố mẹ đồng ý để con đi, với 2 điều kiện (bố ko nghĩ rằng bố mẹ có thể cản được con, và thực lòng bố mẹ cũng ko muốn vậy). Tại thời điểm đó con có quan điểm chính trị tương đối rõ ràng, và điều kiện đầu tiên mà bố mẹ kiên quyết muốn con làm theo. Đó là khi sống ở BK con không được chỉ trích chế độ chính trị hay XH TQ, đặc biệt là trên internet. Đó là điều con đã hứa với bố mẹ.

Điều kiện thứ hai không phải là bắt buộc, nhưng bố mẹ đã mong rằng con sẽ ko ở lại TQ mãi. Đừng yêu một cô gái Trung Hoa.

Chỉ sau vài tuần khi đến TQ, con đã gọi điện về và tuyên bố: con đã giữ cả 2 lời hứa với bố mẹ, ko chỉ trích TQ, và ko yêu con gái Trung Hoa. Nhưng, con đã gặ Nga, cô ấy không phải người Hoa, nhưng cô ấy rất thông minh và xinh đẹp, và con đang yêu đây. Bố mẹ đã rất vui và hi vọng có cơ hội gặp người con gái tuyệt vời này khi bố mẹ đến thăm con tại BK, và bố mẹ đã có đc cơ hội đó, khi chuyến bay của bố mẹ chuẩn bị cất cánh từ Stockholm thì chuyến bay của con từ Hà nội cũng vừa hạ cánh xuống BK. Cuộc gặp đầu tiên đó thực sự lạ lùng. Có một bức tường vô hình ngăn cách giữa bố mẹ và con, chúng ta chỉ ngại ngùng bắt tay, chưa thể nói chuyện và chỉ chào nhau bằng cử chỉ. Kể từ đó bố mẹ đã có dịp gặp con tại Thụy Điển, và cũng đã tới thăm nhà con tại Hà nội. Cảm ơn con vì những tình cảm nồng ấm của gia đình con. Mỗi khi gặp con, bố mẹ lại hiểu thêm về hai đứa, và bố mẹ phải đồng ý với Philip, rằng Nga thật thông minh và thật đẹp, just look at her, và vì con gọi bố mẹ là bố và mẹ (đây ko phải là truyến thống của Thụy điển, nhưng bố mẹ biết rằng đó là truyền thống của VN), và thật tự nhiên bố mẹ cũng coi con như con gái.

Để chứng tỏ rằng, con giờ đây ko chỉ thuộc về gia đình VN của con, mà còn là một thành viên của gia đình Thụy điển của chúng ta, bố muốn tặng con món quà này, và mong rằng con sẽ giữ nó đến suốt cuộc đời. Sẽ ko còn bức tường trong suốt nào chắn giữa chúng ta nữa.

Nga mở quà

Đây là chiếc nhẫn là cụ ngoại David đã tặng cho người vợ thân yêu Ester của cụ 104 năm trước. Bố mẹ đã mang đi chỉnh sửa đôi chút để nó hợp với gu và phong cách của con hơn, nhìn kỹ phía trogn chiếc nhẫn, con sẽ thấy dòng chữ ”David 13/12 1906”

Wedding in Hanoi

2010-06-23T08:55:42+00:00

Last Saturday I and Nga got married here in Hanoi. The temperature was a scorching 42°C, but still 450 guests (8 Swedish) defied the sun and came to share the day with us.

This was the first time I had ever seen Nga wearing make-up, so I was quite worried I might not recognize her. It turned out that I didn’t need to worry at all, doesn’t she look lovely?

The Beautiful Bride

In the meantime, I was struggling to survive in the heat.

The Hot Groom

It was ridiculously hot outside in the sun, but we were able to get a few great pictures despite this.

In the Heat of the Sun

We Look Good Together

Em đẹp lắm!

Our ceremony was neither traditionally Vietnamese nor Swedish, but rather something in between. Unlike in Sweden, the ceremony and dinner is in the same room, with the food already being on the tables before the guests arrive. Somewhat untypically for a Vietnamese wedding, we had a clear theme – purple. The florist did a great job!

Me and Nga’s family

Purple Wedding

The ceremony itself consists of three parts: exchange of rings, cutting the cake and pouring the wine.

Exchange of Rings

Cutting of the Cake

Pouring the Wine

At this point one would normally offer the parents on both sides to drink wine, which we eventually did, but first we spliced in a bit of Swedish tradition – my father giving a speech. I hope to be able to post the transcript and Vietnamese translation of that speech later.

My Father Giving a Speech

Once the ceremony on stage was over, we walked to each table to thank the guests for attending, taking plenty of pictures along the way.

Cảm ơn!

For those who have Facebook, more pictures are available in Nga’s wedding album. I leave you with a final picture of the new international family.

One Big Family

VP8 has landed

2010-05-19T16:00:13+00:00

Today, WebM/VP8 was announced at Google IO. The last month I have been working on adding support for Opera and we have now released labs builds for Windows, Mac and Linux. We have also published an article for web developers who want to start using WebM <video>. Here’s what it looks like, the Sintel trailer on YouTube playing in Opera with WebM <video>. No Flash!

Previously I’ve posted on Opera Core Concerns, but this time I want to share some personal reflections. (In other words: any views expressed are my own, not those of Opera Software.) What follows is the (quite geeky) history of me and the various codecs and organizations I’ve come into contact with over the past 8 years.

Back in gymnasiet I was a compulsive MP3 collector and was very picky about my bitrates. 128 kbps sounded (still sounds) horrible and it pained me, so when I learned about the Vorbis audio codec I was very excited. Not only was it technically superior, it was also completely free. I re-ripped all of my CDs as Vorbis, told all my friends to do the same and started listening to Machinae Supremacy simply because they offered Ogg downloads. I was a fanboy.

In June 2002 On2 released VP3 to the world. It was my summer holidays and I spent most days inside on an extra slow dial-up connection. I clearly remember that upon reading the news I literally bounced out of my chair and threw my hands in the air out of joy. (Remember, I was 17.) The first thing I did when there was code I could compile and run (packaged by Xiph I believe) was to encode and watch Star Trek: First Contact. The example decoder could neither pause or play in fullscreen, so instead I changed my screen resolution and just watched.

At the time I couldn’t do much to help out, but I wanted to be part of this cool community. One of the first pieces of C code I ever wrote was oggsplit, a not-so-useful tool for splitting multiplexed Ogg streams into separate files. I never used it much, but was quite proud to see it in Xiph’s ogg-tools package.

Fast forward. In the summer of 2006 I began working as a summer intern at Opera Software in Linköping, where I wrote an example plugin for video playback on Opera Devices SDK. I picked GStreamer as the backend and by the time I was done I must have watched A New Computer ~1000 times.

In February 2007 Opera proposed <video> and released a proof-of concept Ogg Vorbis+Theora build. I had no part in this, so it came as somewhat of a surprise. Initially thought that they had used my plugin, but that turned out to not be the case – it was libogg, libvorbis and libtheora integrated directly into the browser. The most exciting part was the strong stance for open standards, something that I obviously agree with.

What happened after that is pretty well known: the <video> tag makes obvious sense, so it quickly got implemented in other browsers. When I joined Opera’s core department (part time) in the summer of 2008, <video> hadn’t been touched much for over a year, so I was tasked with bringing it back to life. Loving both audio/video and the web, it would be hard to find a more suitable and fun job. I ended up porting my then 2-year old plugin and thus Opera is now using GStreamer internally. The Codec Wars™ were always a pain, but we did finally release Opera 10.50 with support for Ogg Vorbis+Theora.

After Google announced that they were buying On2 there was lots of speculation that they would release VP8. I have certainly hoped it would happen, but it seemed a bit too good to be true. Therefore, my reaction when it was confirmed was similar to when VP3 was released – bouncing like a 17-year old. That Vorbis is the chosen audio codec for WebM only makes things better. How lucky I am, that this time I get to actually be part of the release event. It’s been immensely fun working on this, in secrecy, then seeing everything happen in a maelstrom of releases, tweets and blog posts today. Håkon is at Google IO running my code on stage, but just a few weeks ago he was in Opera’s Beijing office, watching sunflowers in one of the first Opera VP8 builds:

While not yet 100% bug-free, VP8 in Opera is well on its way and will be in an official release soon. Today is a good day for open video and the open web. Many thanks to everyone who have worked to make this possible. Live long and prosper, WebM!

I’m getting married! 我订婚了！

2009-12-30T00:31:37+00:00

The 9th of December was Nga’s 25th birthday, so to celebrate we went on a trip to Hong Kong. We stayed at the very fancy Mira Hotel, which was a very pleasant experience. It is a tradition in my family to serve cake in bed on birthdays. Ideally it should be a hand made cake, but this time we had to make do with what the hotel could provide. 宝贝请原谅我，下次我一定亲手给你做蛋糕！

Of course there were also 25 red roses. Actually Nga likes pink roses better, but I thought I’d be a bit traditional. 对不起美女，下次我会买粉色的哦！ The writing on the cake is also in traditional Chinese, because it looks better...

I had originally planned to propose while dangling from a hot air balloon with fireworks exploding all across Hong Kong island, or something similarly extreme. However, this was a bit difficult to arrange and wouldn’t really have surprised Nga anyway because I am a bit crazy (ask about her 22nd birthday). Instead, I opted to propose in the hotel room in the morning, guessing that at least she wouldn’t expect that. Having helped Nga eat some cake I hid in the bathroom for a very long time to put on my very special proposal outfit that I had prepared in Sweden.

这么帅！ I’d marry me! While Nga was getting ready I prepared the ring, which I had ordered online from the US and picked up at a local FedEx office the day before. So then we sat together in this green chair and I gave a rather long and mostly improvised speech which ended with 我爱你。生日快乐。嫁给我吧！ (I love you. Happy birthday. Marry me!) and a ring. I’ve already given away the ending in the title, but it looked a bit like this:

Clearly this is a reenactment as I’m wearing the wrong clothes. Also, Nga should have some tears of joy in her eyes and I should look a lot more nervous. Quite to my surprise, Nga said she had a condition. Asking me to close my eyes she pulled out a ring of her own from the very drawer you see in the picture. Apparently, she was planning to propose herself should I have failed to do so. Apart from being a very pleasant surprise (I said yes) it was also very convenient, because I hadn’t bought a ring for myself (which is otherwise common in Sweden). I don’t have very good pictures of the rings, but I do have a very good picture of us.

The wedding is in Hanoi on the 19th of June 2010.

Microformats vs RDFa vs Microdata

2009-08-23T10:17:13+00:00

Warning: The microdata syntax has changed (e.g. item="foo" is now itemscope itemtype="foo") since this blog post was written. Don’t copy the examples.

I spent last weekend with my good friend Emil sketching a REST-style interface for his graph database Neo4j. One of the output formats we wanted was plain HTML for easy debugging via the browser. Wanting to enable JavaScript-based enhancements of these pages we needed a way to annotate the data to make it available to scripts. (Use by clients of the REST API should be possible, but unlikely if XML or JSON output is available.)

The three candidates were microformats, microdata and RDFa. We began with plain HTML:

<p>
  I'm Philip Jägenstedt at
  <a href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.
</p>

The simple task at hand is to make my name and homepage machine-readable using each of these formats. What follows is a more elaborate version of the reasoning we went through while evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each alternative.

Microformats

<p class="vcard">
  I'm <span class="fn">Philip Jägenstedt</span> at
  <a class="url" href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.
</p>

Microformats are “a set of simple, open data formats”, i.e. predefined vocabularies under centralized control. In this example I’ve used the hCard microformat. One “feature” of microformats is that it is valid HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0, which is why the class attribute is used in novel ways. Although HTML 4.01 mentions that class may be used “for general purpose processing by user agents” it’s normally only used “as a style sheet selector”, i.e. for CSS. What this means is that we are working in a single global namespace which is already polluted with all the CSS class names ever used.

The only thing that distinguishes microformats from random CSS classes is the tree structure. This structure is quite a limitation though, because it means that you have to find or make a common ancestor element to all of the data in a single hCard. For a data interchange format, it all seems insane and simply too brittle. Emil put it rather bluntly when he tweeted:

Microformats. Pile of shite that just increases our systematic technical debt.

Still, I have great respect for some of the people behind microformats and the down-to-earth philosophy. They openly state that microformats aren’t “infinitely extensible and open-ended” or “a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions”. As microformats was never intended to solve our use case it is no surprise that it really doesn’t.

Certainly anyone can use class="foo" to mean anything they like without going through the microformats process – such data formats are cleverly called poshformats (Plain Old Semantic HTML). All things considered though, the whole approach seems outdated and I hope it won’t still be around 5 years from now. Microformats has shown the need for HTML-embedded machine-readable data, now let’s find a better solution.

RDFa

To understand RDFa you first need some understanding of RDF. The RDF model is basically a somewhat roundabout way of describing graphs using subject-predicate-object triples. An example is the best way to illustrate:

This graph represents me, my name, my homepage and the relationships between them. I’m using the FOAF vocabulary because it already has the concepts of “name” and “homepage”. In N3 syntax this corresponds to these two triples:

@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
<#me> <foaf:name> "Philip Jägenstedt" .
<#me> <foaf:homepage> <http://foolip.org> .

Everything in <brackets> is a URI and because URIs tend be long prefixes are used: <foaf:name> actually means <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name>. I’ve used #me to represent myself, but this should really be resolved to a full URI.

As you can see, the subject is #me in both statements. The relationships in the graph are the predicates, i.e. foaf:name and foaf:homepage. The object is either another URI or a string literal. Adding RDF triples equates to adding more nodes and relationships to the graph. This is general enough that you can model almost anything you want with it.

Back to RDFa. The “a” refers to how attributes in XHTML are used to serialize RDF:

<p xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" about="#me">
  I'm <span property="foaf:name">Philip Jägenstedt</span> at
  <a rel="foaf:homepage" href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.
</p>

The use of XML namespaces here is a bit odd. Prefixes in XML are used on element and attribute names, but here it’s only used in the attribute value. These are actually CURIEs, another URL shortening scheme. Jeni Tennison recently wrote an excellent post about the use of prefixes in RDFa which I encourage everyone to read. I also chatted briefly with Henri Sivonen about the problems with xmlns and would recommend reading his mails on those issues.

If we return to RDFa syntax for a bit, notice how property, rel and rev are used for the exact same purpose (setting the predicate) in different contexts. The intention was probably to mimic existing practices such as rel="next", but the net result is just more room for confusion. While I won’t claim that it’s just too hard I certainly think it could have been simpler without loosing much expressive power.

RDFa began in the now discontinued XHTML2 WG and seems strongly rooted in the Semantic Web (now Linked Data) community and that stack of technologies and tools. It was later made into a module for XHTML 1.1, but there is no W3C-sanctioned way of embedding RDFa in plain HTML. Getting into HTML5 would guarantee RDFa’s survival in the web ecosystem, so its proponents approached the WHATWG/HTML WG suggesting that RDFa be included. There was much heated discussion, the drama of which was my sole source of entertainment for weeks at a time. I’ll again refer to Jeni’s summary of the clash of priorities and “fruitless discussion”. I particularly want to emphasize this conclusion:

It’s just not going to happen for HTML5

I don’t hate RDF(a). I can certainly see the appeal of the RDF model after taking the time to understand it. It may just be a very verbose way of describing graphs, but as a data interchange format it seems to do a good job. However, being able to express arbitrary RDF in HTML in a compact way is not an actual use case for most web developers. If it’s possible without added complexity that’s fine, but HTML is not a triplestore.

Microdata

As a result of gathering use cases and other input from the big RDFa discussion, suddenly one day HTML5 microdata section sprung into existence along with a very long announcement to the WHATWG list from Ian Hickson (our editor). Within 3 hours there was a demo and not long after another. This is it:

<p item="vcard">
  I'm <span itemprop="fn">Philip Jägenstedt</span> at
  <a itemprop="url" href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.
</p>

This looks very similar to the microformats example, but the new item and itemprop attributes are used instead of class. The model used is nested groups of name-value pairs, where the name-value pairs are given by the elements with itemprop attributes. In other words, it is quite similar to a DOM tree or a JavaScript object.

There are some predefined item types (used above), but it’s possible to use either URLs (http://foolip.org/footype) or reversed DNS identifiers (org.foolip.footype) to define your own types without any risk of namespace pollution. Note however that there are no prefixes or other URL shortening schemes. I don’t think I’m crazy to suggest that services like bit.ly and tr.im have shown a way out of the “long URL” problem. If microdata gains any traction, I think communities will create vocabularies with clever shorthands like http://link.to/the/past, mr.burns or ht.ml5.

Finally, the subject attribute can be used to avoid the “common ancestor” problem we had with microformats by simply referring to the item element by id:

<p item="vcard" id="me">
  I'm <span itemprop="fn">Philip Jägenstedt</span>.
</p>
<!-- stuff -->
<a itemprop="url" subject="me"
  href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.

Microdata is quite straightforward and feels much more native to HTML than RDFa. As Jeni explains, microdata can’t express RDF triples using datatypes or XML literals. I’ll also add that using a blank node as object isn’t possible. Other than that, RDF triples can be expressed by using the about type to give the subject of the name-value (predicate-object) pair. Here’s my FOAF example from earlier:

<p item>
  <a itemprop="about" href="#me"></a>
  I'm <span itemprop="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name">
    Philip Jägenstedt</span> at
  <a itemprop="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage"
    href="http://foolip.org/">foolip.org</a>.
</p>

It is quite ugly, so if there’s any way to make it simpler I’m sure such suggestions are welcome. In general though, it seems like a better idea to use simple microdata structures and map that against a RDF vocabulary if possible. In fact, the spec already defines how to extract some RDF (and JSON) from microdata so I’m sure it’s not difficult to do.

Returning to the “browsable web” (the one I normally work with), microdata has a DOM API that browsers can implement. The prospect of JavaScript having access to the microdata on a page is so exciting that I didn’t want to wait, so I hacked up MicrodataJS to try it out. You can access my name and email in the vcard example as such:

var props = document.getItems("vcard")[0].properties;
var fn = props.namedItem("fn")[0].content;
var url = props.namedItem("url")[0].content;
alert("Name: " + fn + "; URL: " + url);

Unsurprisingly there are some issues with the API which I’ve sent feedback on and expect to be fixed to my satisfaction eventually, but the basic functionality is sound. I imagine scripts making dynamic pie charts from tables, providing page-specific autocomplete suggestions and making shiny animated SVG visualizations of the RDF graphs hidden in the tag soup...

Google is now offering to do usability testing of the microdata syntax to see if it can be improved, so if you have any suggestions be sure to bring those to the WHATWG now.

Summary

The examples I’ve used are overly simplistic and may utterly fail to show the strengths and weaknesses of each syntax. Still, this is my best effort to make sense of the issues at hand and I haven’t intentionally misrepresented any technology or community. I assume that there is much more debate to come before the dust settles on this issue and perhaps I’ll even change my mind after experimenting more with real-world implementation. I leave you with this unambiguous summary of my views:

Microformats, you’re a class attribute kludge
RDFa, HTML is not your triplestore
Microdata, I like you but you need more review

Updates

Shelley Powers wrote about RDFa and HTML5’s microdata from the perspective of the RDFa/Semantic Web community. It’s quite a different view from mine, so read that before believing my propaganda.
Following James Graham’s suggestion, I have registered mantic.se for fun reverse DNS identifiers like se.mantic.banana. Mostly for fun, don’t take it too seriously...
I misunderstood Jeni’s post about expressing RDF in microdata and have fixed that section to be more accurate.

Disclaimer: this post is the result of excess spare time and not part of my work at Opera Software. I know nothing about Opera’s plans (or lack thereof) for microformats, RDFa or microdata.

Det är inte svårt att konkurrera med gratis

2009-04-18T23:44:33+00:00

Dagens ledare i DN är ett mycket märkligt stycke som inspirerat till viss ilska med nyckelord som katastrof, smörja och dum i huvudet. Jag tar tillfället i akt att skriva om något som ofta stör mig. DN skriver:

Oavsett vad den slutgiltiga domen blir kommer den olagliga fildelningen att fortsätta så länge det inte finns bra lagliga alternativ – och så länge lättillgängliga, men olagliga, servrar finns kvar runt om i världen. Att konkurrera mot gratis nedladdning är inte särskilt lätt.

Den som tror att ”gratis nedladdning” via t ex The Pirate Bay är så bra att den inte går att konkurrera med kan inte ha provat på det själv i någon större omfattning. Att försäljningen av CD-skivor sjunker beror inte på att fildelning är oöverträffbart utan på att CD-skivor är ett så föråldrat och klumpigt medium i jämförelse. Fildelning i allmänhet och BitTorrent i synnerhet lider av bland annat följande:

Det tar allt för lång tid att hitta det man söker. I naiva tv-reportage brukar reportern göra en sökning på någon bioaktuell film och imponeras av de många resultaten, men att hitta något längre ut på den långa svansen är sannerligen inte lika lätt.
Osäker tillgänglighet. Även om man hittat det man söker så finns det inga garantier för att man kommer lyckas ladda ner det inom rimlig tid.

Det finns även punkter där fildelning rent av är sämre (!) än CD-skivor:

Förvisso gör nätet det möjligt bredda sitt musiklyssnande och hitta sådant som man aldrig skulle ha hittat i en skivaffär på 90-talet, men fortfarande finns det mycket som går att köpa på CD som man inte hittar på nätet. Klassisk musik är typiskt svårt att fildela, men även många kända popartisters singlar (med b-spår) är svåra att hitta annat än på plastskiva.
I regel så är ljudkvaliteten sämre än på en CD-skiva (undantag: FLAC/Log/Cue). Det duger helt enkelt inte för en digital musiksamlare som vill ersätta CD-skivor och inte bara ha något flyktigt MP3-brus i sin iPod.
Den mest grundläggande metadata som artist- och låtnamn är ofta felstavad eller inkonsekvent. Komposition, arrangemang och annan information som brukar finnas i CD-häftet finns i stort sett inte i digital form, oavsett källa.

Jag köper fortfarande motvilligt CD-skivor då och då av alla ovanstående orsaker. Det krävs inte mycket fantasi för att se hur man skulle kunna konkurrera med både dessa CD-köp och ”gratis” (pengar, inte tid) fildelning. Om någon skulle erbjuda bara en del av nedanstående skulle jag stå på kö med plånboken i högsta hugg.

Digitalisera artisters komplett diskografier i ett format som är bättre än CD, inte sämre. 320 kbps MP3 är inte OK, det ska vara arkivkvalitet (t ex FLAC) och varför inte högre samplingsfrekvens/bitdjup än CD?
Digitalisera all den metadata som normalt finns i CD-häftet och gör den sökbar. För en musiknörd vore det guld värt att kunna få svar på frågor som ”vilka skivor har gitarristen i band X gjort gästspel på?”. Tänk MusicBrainz fast bättre.
Gör allt tillgängligt som en riktig webbtjänst där man kan hitta det man söker snabbt med garanterad tillgänglighet.

Kort sagt gäller det att själv erbjuda den mest kompletta samlingen med den högsta kvaliteten på det enklaste sättet. Som av en händelse så är upphovsrättsinnehavaren den enda som skulle kunna erbjuda det idag, då fildelning till sin natur är flyktig och opålitlig. Däremot tror jag inte på något centralarkiv som har allt utan snarare på tusentals webbtjänster och intelligenta sökmotorer för att knyta samman det hela. Det är nya tider nu och det kräver nya tekniska lösningar, men det är faktiskt inte rocket science. ”Det går inte konkurrera med gratis” låter mest som en uppgiven suck från en bransch som helst skulle velat stannat kvar på det dåliga 90-talet.

Brand name collision

2009-04-18T10:28:38+00:00

This morning I discovered that I’ve gotten competition for my personal “brand” foolip. I can’t image why anyone would think that foolip is a good name for any commercial endeavor, but anything is possible on the interwebs. I sure hope this is going nowhere or the googleability of myself could be in jeopardy. As a counter-measure I’ve registered the domains foolip.net and foolip.se, maybe I can do something fun with them...

How to download Chinese music (Baidu, VeryCD, etc)

2008-10-03T18:47:39+00:00

So you’ve learned some Chinese, seen a few Zhang Yimou movies and now you want to see what Chinese music has to offer? In this article I’ll share some experiences on how to find and download Chinese music. “Chinese” is used in the broadest possible sense – including music from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas communities performed in any Chinese dialect.

Anyone who has ever tried finding Chinese music on English language file-sharing networks knows that it is a pointless exercise which will fail 98% of the time. Therefore, I will cover only on the Chinese language alternatives and we will be searching using Chinese. This means that if you can’t read any Chinese you’re going to have a hard time following this guide.

As an example in this article we’ll be looking for music by Jay Chou, the unchallenged king of mandopop. If you only know the artist’s “English” name then Wikipedia will usually be of help; from the Jay Chou article we learn that his name is 周杰倫 in traditional Chinese and 周杰伦 in simplified. The distinction between traditional and simplified Chinese is sometimes important, as I will point out below.

Baidu MP3

Baidu is a mainland China search engine with a large number of services and a very strong standing in the local market. One of those services is Baidu MP3, which indexes music files on the web. This might sound illegal somehow but it isn’t and it shouldn’t be under any sane copyright regime. However, western countries’ copyright regimes are increasingly insane and our record labels have gotten used to bullying others into doing as they want. Presumably in order to stay off their radar Baidu MP3 sometimes block searches from outside China. If you’re not in China and can’t find any music when following the below instructions, skip ahead to the proxy section.

Now let’s get down to business. Baidu MP3 is a great place to start when you want quick results and quality is not critical. Go to http://mp3.baidu.com/ and you’ll see something like this:

Just enter the enter the artist name (周杰伦) in the search box. Baidu is clever enough to understand either traditional or simplified Chinese, but the results will always be in simplified Chinese as it’s a mainland service. If you’re only interested in MP3 files, select the “mp3” option. The search results will look something like this:

From left to right, the columns are:

歌曲名 song title (e.g. 青花瓷) – click this to download an individual track
歌手名 artist name (e.g. 周杰伦) – browse the artist discography and most popular songs
专辑名 album title (e.g. 我很忙) – show the full track listing for the album
试听 sample – listen without downloading (not very useful)
歌词 lyrics – useful, but Mojim.com is better
铃声 mobile ringtone – you probably don’t want this
大小 file size – bigger usually means better quality
格式 file format – use mp3 for portability, you don’t want wma or rm
链接速度 connection speed – the more the merrier

In the simplest case you simply click on one of the songs and start downloading, but you often need to try a few different servers before finding a file of acceptable quality and download speed. The artist and album pages are useful for exploring new artists, but I would advise against collecting full albums from these listings as the files would be of uneven quality and have inconsistent metadata (ID3 tags).

The 歌曲TOP500 (top 500 songs) is also well worth mentioning. The chart is based on the number of downloads and is – due to the service’s popularity – arguably the best measure of what’s hot in China right now. Other useful top charts include 新歌TOP100 (top 100 new songs) and 歌手TOP200 (top 200 artists).

See also Sinosplice for an older Baidu MP3 guide.

Chinese Proxy Server

If you find that you can’t get any search results from Baidu, I would suggest first trying one of the other methods below. However, in the rare case where you really need Baidu, you can still do it no matter where you are geographically. Just like many Chinese netizens use proxy servers to get out of China, we can use a proxy server to get in to China. I’ve been able to use Baidu MP3 using web proxies from mainland China, Taiwan and Korea. Others may work too, so finding and configuring a proxy which works for you shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Do note that the only place where you actually need a proxy is when searching. When downloading you aren’t connecting to Baidu so you can get much better speed if you turn the proxy off. As this requires switching the proxy on and off repeatedly, I suggest using a browser/extension which makes this convenient. In Opera you can use Tools>Quick Preferences>Enable Proxy Servers (or F12+r) to toggle the proxy. Using Firefox+FoxyProxy it seems that you can use a proxy only for mp3.baidu.com, which is even better.

Again, if using a proxy seems like a lot of trouble, just keep reading for some other services which may serve you better.

VeryCD

When I had been in Beijing for only a few days I was at a meet-up for new expats and friendly Chinese. I got on the topic of music with a Chinese guy and he soon suggested that I visit VeryCD. That was in 2006, and VeryCD is still the file sharing portal in China. It indexes files on the eDonkey network and just about everybody seems to use it.

It’s quite easy to use VeryCD: just type the artist name at the top and search away. Unlike Baidu, VeryCD doesn’t handle traditional Chinese very well, so make sure that you’re copying/inputting simplified Chinese or you may not find what you’re looking for. Except for that, the search box is very clever and will even suggest additional search terms as you type.

As an example let’s look for Jay Chou’s 2006 album Still Fantasy – 依然范特西. Searching for 周杰伦依然范特西 will find the album in both MP3 and APE format, as well as a bonus DVD, karaoke videos, etc. Jay Chou is exceptionally popular so the results won’t always be this good, but you’ll almost always be able to find something. Go to any of those results and you’ll find a box like this:

These are the files you are looking for, but since VeryCD is just a fancy index for the eDonkey network you need an eDonkey client to actually download anything. I recommend aMule for all operating systems except Windows, where eMule might be better. After you’ve installed the client, simply clicking on the links should add the files to your download queue. Usually aMule will be able to find a peer sharing the file in question and start downloading. It’s not always fast, but it will finish in the end if you’re patient. Here I’ve downloaded and extracted the 320 kbps version:

Basically, that’s all there is to it. One nice feature worth mentioning is that VeryCD provides RSS feeds for all pages, including categories and search results. For example, you can subscribe to the Chinese music category or Jay Chou search results, which is very useful for staying up to date with very little effort. Paradise for the music fanatic!

Kad

Now that you have aMule/eMule installed, there is another method well worth mentioning. Kad is a distributed network for indexing and searching eDonkey files. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on VeryCD, try using aMule/eMule to search in the Kad network. In the search view, select type “Kad”. You also need to pay attention to traditional/simplified Chinese as there is no automatic conversion. I suggest doing one search in traditional and one in simplified to cover all the options.

Here I’ve found a karaoke (KTV) version of a song I like. Even for things that you can find on VeryCD, searching the Kad network will sometimes give you better quality or alternate versions. If you find an album in both a mainland version (大陸版/大陆版) and a Taiwan version (台灣版/台湾版) get the Taiwan release as mainland releases are often bastardized by removing/renaming tracks to please the censors. Hong Kong versions (香港版) sometimes contain Cantonese bonus tracks, which might be nice.

Recommendations

You shouldn’t have any problem finding music now, but if you don’t know where to start I can recommend a few of my favorite artists:

Mayday/五月天 is a Taiwanese rock band who perform in both Mandarin and Min Nan dialect. I am ridiculously fond of their song Rainbow/彩虹 from the album People Life, Ocean Wind/人生海海.
Jay Chou/周杰倫/周杰伦 is extremely popular, but his style may take some getting used to. New album Capricorn coming out October 9!
Wang Leehom/王力宏 is a successful Taiwanese American artist who also starred in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution.
Michael Wong/光良 is a Malaysian Chinese singer who specializes in love ballads. His newer albums are only so-so though.
Eason Chan/陳奕迅/陈奕迅 is a Hong Kong artist with a nice voice. I especially like his 2007 Mandarin album Admit It/認了吧.
Faith Yang/楊乃文/杨乃文 is a Taiwanese singer with a good voice, good songs and none of the painfully “cute” image that most other female Chinese artists have. I think of her as Taiwan’s Alanis Morisette, but as I don’t really like Morisette the comparison only goes so far...

The list could go on, but if you don’t trust my taste in music (who would?) do have a look at Baidu’s top 200 artists to see what people in China are listening to instead.

Tagging

The variations in character encodings, translations, romanizations, mixture of traditional and simplified Chinese and plain errors that you can find “in the wild” makes it necessary to clean up the tags (metadata) of your files. Unless you do this it’s going to be a mess when you want to play your music in a player which uses the tags to sort things (as many portable players do). The best tool for consistent tags that I know of is MusicBrainz, even though far from all Chinese music is in the MusicBrainz database. Still, it is better than trying to fix everything by hand and you’ll probably want to use it for all your non-Chinese music anyway.

That concludes this guide. I hope that it makes sense and that it will be of use.

Karaoke is possibly the best social activity ever (五月天 – 彩虹)

Stoppa FRA!

2008-09-16T08:48:07+00:00

Jag är i Linköping idag men ropar på min kammare: stoppa FRA!

På TV är det paneldebatt, Anna Petersson från stoppafralagen.nu verkar bra...

Images of Vietnam

2008-09-10T10:35:51+00:00

I’ve been home in Sweden for almost a month, but it isn’t too late to post a few pictures from the best summer even, from Vietnam.

It’s the Tower of Hanoi

Halong bay is beautiful

Em đẹp lắm!

Impressions of Singapore

2008-07-29T17:04:48+00:00

I and my girlfriend Nga have just come back from a short vacation in Singapore. At least for me, previous visits have been focused on buying electronics, but this time it was a rather more Chinese experience, reminiscent of our time in Beijing. Our hotel was very close to the MRT (subway) which took us everywhere we wanted to go.

Waiting for the MRT

The first stop was obviously Orchard Street where Nga was shopping for clothes while I was primarily looking for Chinese music and books. My expression when I laid eyes on the 3-story HMV store is rather telling (taken covertly, I can’t fake this kind of stupid).

Is this heaven?

I spent many hours in the Chinese section and eventually bought some of my favorite albums by artists Mayday (五月天), Jay Chou (周杰倫) and Eason Chan (陳奕迅). At Kinokuniya I bought a traditional Chinese-English dictionary which I’ve been wanting for a long time (and couldn’t find in Beijing).

Looking at dictionaries

Nga was equally successful with the shopping agenda...

Pretty woman, walking down the street

The above picture is taken on Sentosa, the gimmicky theme park island where we spent half a day. It’s clearly intended for a younger audience, but what made it all worth the trip was seeing two Buddhist monks wearing 3D glasses riding the “Extreme Log Ride” simulator... (sorry no pictures)

One major point about going to Singapore was to be able to see John Woo’s Red Cliff (赤壁) and that was not a disappointment. In Singapore it shows with both Chinese and English subtitles which is necessary as parts of the dialogue are in incomprehensible (to us anyway) classical Chinese. It’s one of few movies where Nga hasn’t fallen asleep and we recommend it to everyone! I’m eagerly waiting for part 2 which is supposedly coming in January 2009...

Everyone has to eat, which I happen to enjoy doing. At a restaurant called 麵麵俱到 I ate the best dumplings I have ever tasted: vegetarian open-mouthed dumplings (開口素餃).

The best dumplings I have eaten

I’ve never eaten meat dumplings, but these dumplings were so good that I came back to eat them a second time. I asked the waiter about the origin of this kind of dumpling and she said it was something they had just made up. In passing she listed the ingredients, including eggs... I had actually thought it was ground tofu since it neither tasted like eggs nor had any visible yolk. The upside is that I won’t have to go back to Singapore just for the food. The perfect vegan dumpling has yet to be found.

In summary, we had a wonderful time in Singapore, but it’s nice to be back in Hanoi too. About Vietnam, I promise that some pictures are coming before I go back to Sweden...

Kinesiska Slashdot om FRA-lagen

2008-07-11T09:09:37+00:00

Även våra vänner i öst uppmärksammar FRA-lagen i en kort artikel på Solidot med titeln 瑞典的监视法律是针对俄罗斯 – Sveriges spaningslag är riktad mot Ryssland. I korthet säger artikeln att den nya FRA-lagen har skapat stor kontrovers och att regeringen är ovanligt tyslåten om lagens syfte, men att källor inom FRA gör gällande att det är Ryssland som är målet. (Källan för påstående tycks vara denna SvD-artikel). Man kommenterar också att The Pirate Bay (海盗湾) utlovat SSL-kryptering/VPN-tunnling och att Google nu lämnar Sverige, vilket jag inte kan hitta någon trovärdig källa för.

瑞典可能即将变成了法西斯国家，谢谢中国网友对FRA法律的关注

via shi zhao’s shared items

River (v) upp FRA-lagen?

2008-06-23T18:31:31+00:00

Jag bloggar i exil (efter midnatt i Hanoi) men försöker hänga med så gott jag kan i svängarna. Det var tydligt i FRA-debatten var (v) stod, men efter katastrofen ville jag också höra mig för hur (v) ska prioritera frågan framöver. Följande fråga har jag ställt till alla i vänsterpartiets partistyrelse:

Jag undrar hur (v) kommer driva ett avskaffande av FRA-lagen efter valsegern 2010. Det är ett måste för ett förnyat förtroende från min sida, så jag vill gärna veta hur ni prioriterar frågan.

Antalet svar var över förväntan och budskapet var entydigt. Jag har inte förvarnat om att jag skulle publicera deras svar, men tror inte att någon misstycker. Särskilt intressanta delar är markerade med fetstil.

Eva-Britt Svensson

Lika stort engagemang som vi lagt på att stoppa FRA finns naturligtvis kvar även efter att riksdagen tagit beslutet. Lagen blir inte mer rätt för att majoriteten beslutat. Det är det som är det viktiga i vår grundlag att beslut kan omprövas av en annan majoritet. Och jag kan också passa på att säga att det är min grundprincip när det gäller EU-medlemskapet. Där skrivs politik in i grundlag/fördrag och kan inte ändras efter ett val.

Jag ska också säga att eftersom beslutet så nyss tagits i riksdagen så har inte den nyvalda partistyrelsen eller riksdagsgruppen formellt tagit beslut att upphäva lagen efter 2010 men jag är helt övertygad om att alla har samma uppfattning att frågan har hög prioritet. Det handlar om integritet, mänskliga rättigheter och allt som (V)i har sagt i debatten före beslutet.

På samma sätt som vi även i EU-sammanhang röstar emot alla förslag om ytterligare övervakning, typ datalagringsdirektivet.

Lagen är en skam och arbetet mot den fortsätter!

Anna Hövenmark

Vad gäller mig så är den saken helt klar! Jag har inte pratat med mina partikamrater i partistyrelsen om detta men för mig är det självklart!

Jag har själv arbetat på FRA och vet hur det resoneras där och just därför är ett avskaffande av högsta vikt.

Anna har bloggat om FRA flera gånger.

Kalle Larsson

Svaret är ja, vi kommer att driva ett upprivande av lagen.

Anders Neergaard

I och för sig är det enkelt för mig att idag prata om vad jag (v) skall göra om vi är regeringsmedlem eller parlamentariskt underlag för regering.

Men just den här frågan väger tungt både för partiet (se bla Alice o Mariannes Bergs senaste KU anmälan) och för mig personligen. Jag har ingen som helst problem att lova att vi aldrig stödjer en sådan lag. Som jag ser det kan vi få någorlunda stöd av mp, men den stora frågan är vad s gör.

En sån här lag skulle inte ha kunnat antas om s varit tillsammans med v o mp (och jag tror delvis det var anledningen till att den tidigare s regeringen inte försökte driva igenom ett liknande förslag). Däremot kan jag i nuläget inte garantera mer än vänsterpartiets röster (troligtvis även mp och ev en eller två fp ledamöter om de blir omvalda). Om socialdemokraterna är beredda att riva upp lagen så är det enkelt att göra det – efter en valseger 2010 – vänsterpartiet vill det stenhårt.

Gunnar Bergman

Ja, som du kanske har sett så har vi uttalat oss i frågan, dels i själva debatten när det till sist klubbades igenom i riksdagen och dels via vår ordförande Lars Ohly – en KU anmälan är också gjord (kan vara intressant att se vad vi sagt där).

Exakt HUR vi kommer driva frågan när vi får en vänstermajortitet efter valet 2010 kan jag inte svara på. Vi kommer så klart driva frågan i ett eventuellt regeringssamarbete. Att ett upphävande av lagen är prioriterad är ett som är säkert.

Mats Einarsson

Jag vet inte riktigt vad du menar med ”hur” vi ska driva avskaffandet av FRA-lagen. Rent lagtekniskt är det ju väldigt enkelt och eftersom (s), (v) och (mp) av allt att döma är överens borde det gå rätt snabbt efter en majoritetsskifte. Att det sannolikt finns lite olika uppfattningar inom (s) – observera dock att Bodström och på hans tid justitiedepartementet hela tiden var emot; det var Leni Björklund och försvarsdepartementet som ville ha FRA-lagen! – gör att det är viktigt att det finns en aktiv opinion också utanför riksdagen.

Sen är det ju en annan sak vilken NY lagstiftning som kan behövas på området, sådant kan ju vara betydligt knepigare att arbeta fram. Här får du vända dig till vår riksdagsgrupp för bättre information.

Arne Tärnblom

Som Du kanske redan vet är jag nyinvald i som Ersättare i Partistyrelsen. Det innebär att jag inte kan tala i partiets namn då vi ännu inte har haft något möte. Emellertid. Följer Du debatten ang. FRA-lagen så är det utan tvivel var partiet står. Ingen FRA-lag. Jag utgår från att vi skall riva upp den vid ett maktskifte. Det kommer i alla fall jag verka för. Problemet verkar vara att socialdemokraterna slirar en del i sin hållning. Det gäller alltså att skapa opinion för ett avskaffande av lagen i dess helhet. Jag får återkomma i frågan den kommer säkert att ta en del debattid under de närmaste året.

Vilmer Andersen

Vi har inte diskuterad frågan än i partistyrelsen, men står det till mig kommer vi att avskaffa den omedelbart. Partiets motstånd i dag är entydigt – och kommer också att vara det i framtiden!

Hoppas at vi kan få Soc.dem. och Mp med på det.

Ida Legnemark

Vänsterpartiet ser FRA-lagen som en oerhörd kränkning av den enskildes rätt till privatliv och integritet – den nytta som lagen sägs göra är mycket ringa jämfört med den skada den kan göra. Därför är det en självklarhet för oss att riva upp lagen omedelbart vid en valvinst – se gärna http://www.vansterpartiet.se

Naile Aras

Vi har inte hunnit diskutera frågan i Partistyrelsen men mitt förslag om det kommer att vara en intensiv opinionsbildningskampanj och folkomröstning för att kunna få riksdagen att avskaffa FRA-lagen.

Josefin Brink

Vänsterpartiet kommer självklart att kräva att FRA-lagen i sin nuvarande form avskaffas efter nästa val. Vi har hela tiden varit emot den här massavlyssningen, och vi har inte ändrat uppfattning bara för att den nu röstats igenom av den borgerliga majoriteten. Så du behöver inte oroa dig för var vi står. Den svåratse uppgiften blir att få socialdemokraterna att gå med på vårt krav. För det krävs att vi blir ett större parti med mer inflytande – vilket vi ska göra allt för att uppnå. Och det krävs att engagerade medborgare fortsätter att visa vad de tycker om FRA-lagen och sätta press på övriga partier – det hoppas jag att du och alla andra kommer att göra!

Elina Linna

Vänsterpartiet tänker prioritera avskaffandet av FRA-lagen, det löftet kommer vi självklart att hålla. Men hur vi tänker att prioritera frågan har vi inte ännu diskuterat. Den nya partistyrelsen, som valdes i Norrköping för två veckor sedan, har sitt första sammanträde nu på fredag. Utöver val till Verkställande utskott mm kommer också aktuella politiska frågor att diskuteras, så FRA-lagen kommer säkert upp då. För närvarande har jag svårt att ge ett mer uttömmande svar, hoppas detta räcker, annars får du återkomma!

Ulla Andersson

Vi har gått ut med att vi vill riva upp FRA efter valet, så det är en pririterad fråga. Det känns oerhört ångestfullt att vi fått en sådan massövervakning där människor övervakas utan brottsmisstanke, vart är vi på väg... Vilket samhälle skapas med en sådan lagstiftning det hela är ofattbart tycker jag. Vänsterpartiet har KU anmält FRA till KU eftersom den bryter mot grundlagen.

Ulla har också bloggat om FRA.

Leif Lindström

Som du vet så var Vänsterpartiet emot införandet av FRA-lagen och jag
skall i egenskap av Partistyrelse-ledamot verka för ett avskaffande efter
vår valseger år 2010. Jag upplever att partiet står enat i frågan.

Anki Ahlsten

Jo, vi har sagt att om vi får majoritet ska vi riva upp beslutet. Lars Ohly har sagt offentligt att vi ska göra det om vi får majoritet i kommande val, 2010.

Ulrika Lundberg

Som du säkert vet röstade V nej till lagförslaget i riksdagen. Efter en valseger 2010 för det rödgröna blocket så ser jag det som en självklarhet att lagen ska avskaffas, eftersom även s och mp röstade emot förslaget. Den typ av övervakning som FRA-lagen innebär är inte förenlig med krav i fråga om skydd för den personliga integriteten som följer av regeringsformens och Europakonventionens skydd för de grundläggande fri- och rättigheterna. Det bör därför inte råda några tvivel om att avskaffandet av denna lag blir en prioriterad och tämligen lätthanterlig fråga för den nya majoriteten efter 2010.

Lina Hultman svarar för Lars Ohly

Lars Ohly har givit mig i uppdrag att svara på din fråga eftersom jag jobbar med försvar- och säkerhetsfrågor på Vänsterpartiets riksdagskansli.

FRA-frågan är en viktig principiell fråga för Vänsterpartiet och vi kommer definitivt driva kravet på att lagen rivs upp när vi kommer i regeringsställning.

Monalisa Norrman

Jag har inte i skrivande stund koll på om partiet centralt har sagt ngt om detta. Jag skulle dock bli förvånad och besviken om inte V driver kravet på att avskaffa FRA. Jag är numera medlem av partistyrelsen och första mötet är nu den 27 juli. Det kommer säkert att diskuteras då. Jag är tyvärr inte med på detta första möte men kommer att delge de andra min synpunkt. Jag har också fått påringning från enskilda (alla lite yngre) med samma krav som du. Jag personligen prioriterar frågan högt.

Efter att ha läst alla mail är jag ganska hoppfull och skulle allt falla i glömska så ska jag plocka fram de här svaren igen och fråga vad som hänt. Det är första gången jag hört att Anna Hövenmark arbetat på FRA, den erfarenheten vore intressant att höra mer om i den debatt som nu pågår. Nytt är också Mats Einarssons påstående att Bodström hela tiden varit emot lagen, vad är rätt och fel här egentligen? Sossarna tycks alltjämnt vara det största orosmolnet, det vore väldigt skönt med klara besked om hur de tänker hantera frågan...

Den 16:e september planeras en demonstration för att välkomna förrädarna tillbaka till jobbet. På stoppaFRAlagen.nu finns mer näring för gräsrötterna.

Skam (FRA)

2008-06-19T03:14:16+00:00

Idag skäms jag, skäms över att jag varit för upptagen med jobb, skola och resa för att orka skriva om den nu genomröstade FRA-lagen. Ett enda (privat) mail till moderatfjanten Fredrik Schulte med titeln ”Kommunicerar terrorister öppet på Internet?” är det enda jag kunnat uppbåda. Jag lämnade Sverige den 16:e juni och är i Vietnam nu, men feedläsaren har gått varm med uppdateringar från bl a Rickard Falkvinge (pp), Oscar Swartz, Blogge Bloggelito och Onsdag. När jag kommer tillbaka i augusti är det ett övervakningssamhälle jag kommer hem till, så låt mig nu aldrig mer höra ett ord om hur hemskt det är i Kina och Vietnam innan vi själva kommit på rätt köl igen. Nu ska allt krypteras, inte en bit av information ska läcka till ert förbannade jävla FRA! Till förrädarna i Sveriges riksdag: jag hatar er, jag hatar er från djupet av mitt hjärta!

The best summer ever

2008-06-15T21:01:44+00:00

This is destined to be the best summer ever! In just a few hours I’m going to the airport and will arrive in Hà Nội (Việt Nam) on Tuesday morning. Last time (in January) I could only stay for two weeks, but this time it’s going to be a full two months together with the object of my love. I hope I can find the time to write about the wonders of chè, the tower(s) of Hà Nội, Hạ Long Bay and everything else. I’ll be back in Sweden in mid-August, so long!

Vector Graphics Stylized Stroke Fonts

2008-06-12T20:11:46+00:00

Finally, my thesis is completed and published! It is the product of work I did at Opera Software’s Beijing office last autumn and I have spent a lot of time writing the thesis report and preparing the final presentation. In short, I’ve implemented a fancy type of stroke fonts by building on well-known vector graphics concepts and modern web standards. This type of font is especially well suited for Chinese characters, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to work in the Beijing office. (Admittedly, the main reason is that I love Beijing.) I am very satisfied with the results.

Chinese character 阮 (family name Ruǎn/Nguyễn)

Personally, I think the most interesting part is the stroking algorithm and its possible use in HTML 5 Canvas and SVG. However, web standards move slowly so it’s perhaps more likely it will be put to use in some other context first. Do read the report if you are interested in vector graphics and/or fonts.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are my own and not those of Opera Software.

Bortrövat barn tillbaka efter 6 månader

2008-05-26T15:12:24+00:00

Jag läser på Text-TV att det vietnamesiska föräldraparet i Värnamo får tillbaka sitt barn efter dom i kammarrätten.

En av kvinnans mediciner togs bort under graviditeten vilket ökade antalet epilepsianfall. Men det kan inte motivera att babyn omhändertogs direkt efter födseln, enligt rätten.

Om eller hur ofta de fått träffa barnet under de 6 månader som gått framgår inte. Det vore intressant att veta vilket rätt till skadestånd som finns när staten begår barnarov på halvlösa grunder. Förmodligen ingen som helst rätt, som så ofta... Mer finns på Smålandsnytt och SVT Rapport (video).

Själv åker jag till Vietnam den 16:e juni, men mer om det senare.

祝福灾区人民 Stöd jordbävningens offer

2008-05-18T18:07:14+00:00

以上的banner来源为Plod(经由doubleaf)

5.12地震发生后我天天看新闻报道，看遇难者人数不断增加。在遥远的瑞典我能做的不多，我只能说一声祝福并且为灾区人民捐一点钱。祝福四川，祝福中国！

Det är snart en vecka sedan jordbävningen i Sìchuān (uttal) och antalet döda uppskattas överstiga 30 000. Kina-vännen Blogge har reagerat på den svenska rapportering kring katastrofen och visat upp den blodiga verkligheten. Svenskar som vill donera pengar kan göra det via Röda Korset. Välj ”Kina – jordbävningens offer”.

How much a thousand words are worth

2008-05-17T09:18:39+00:00

According to popular opinion, a picture is worth a thousand words. But how much are a thousand words worth? And exactly what kind of picture is worth a thousand words? Important questions which will be given important answers.

What’s in a word?

For calculating the value of 1000 words, finding out the worth of 1 word is a good start. Let’s assume it’s an english word and let’s use Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a sample of the English language. This book has 71343 words averaging 4.158 characters in length. When stored digitally (and uncompressed) an english character requires 1 byte. The average English word would then be worth 4.158 bytes.

If 1 word is worth 4.158 bytes, are 1000 words 4158 bytes? Not quite, because whenever there is more than one word there must be spaces separating them, 999 of them for 1000 words to be exact. The digital worth of 1000 words is therefore 5157 bytes, or just over 5 KiB (5×1024=5120).

5 KiB worth of pictures

So, what kind of picture is 5 KiB in size? Using uncompressed 24-bit RGB color, 5 KiB is only enough for 1706 pixels, roughly a 41×41-sized image. Doesn’t sound like much, but here’s what a wild strawberry looks like:

41×41 uncompressed

Not very impressive, I’d rather keep my 1000 words. To get the most out the 5 KiB, let’s compress the wild strawberry with an image codec suited for photographs, such as JPEG. With JPEG, 5 KiB can be made to last for an image 8 times the size while maintaining decent quality:

164×164 JPEG

To make the 5 KiB last for the whole picture, let’s compress it more:

648×486 JPEG

No, not quite the quality I had in mind. By downscaling the picture by a factor of 16 we get rid of the worst block artefacts at the expense of detail:

162×122 JPEG

Evidently, 1000 words worth of pictures isn’t much when it comes to photographs. Unless the people who claim that a picture is worth 1000 words are talking about artificial images (like diagrams) or vector images they are clearly mistaken.

Work ad for hackers

2008-05-16T23:21:09+00:00

I stumbled onto this while verifying that my redirects are working as they should.

$ wget -S http://blog.foolip.org/
[snip]
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Server: nginx
  Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 22:40:05 GMT
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
  Connection: close
  Vary: Cookie
  X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
  X-Pingback: http://blog.foolip.org/xmlrpc.php

I’ve already renewed my contract with Opera for the summer and beyond, but I though it was pretty neat. However, I am not the first to discover this little easter egg...

请中国大陆的网友注意blog地址更改

2008-05-14T21:43:39+00:00

真遗憾，可是我确实无法继续管理自己的服务器。考虑了很久，我最后决定将此blog移到wordpress.com并且安排自动转向。麻烦的是，因为wordpress.com被GFW被封锁，所以中国大陆的读者需要一些特别安排。目前有几种解决方法：

订阅我的FeedBurner。图象因为在wordpress.com的服务器还是无法显示。我不能使用FeedSky因为他们的服务器在中国大陆……
使用Google Reader的可以继续阅读，但也不能显示图象
使用代理（请参看ProxyCN.COM／代理服务器网／Tor）

只有使用代理的才可以来我的blog留言或者trackback（引用通告）。我回到北京以后（大概明年）也许会建立一个镜像blog，让大家来那里访问。

多谢Herock对以上的评论。要是还有其它解决方法请大家留言。在中国的读者并不多，但我非常珍惜我们的交流。我大约在一个星期内进入“中国封”状态……

Cool URIs must not change, ever!

2008-05-14T18:16:48+00:00

Despite the infinite coolness of my new server environment I have finally decided to stop hosting my own web server. Shortly after I installed the new silent hard drive my server begun making a high pitch noise, somewhat like a television set but much more annoying. I was very close to sending the hard drive back for repair when I discovered that the noise was actually coming from the processor (an AMD Athlon XP 2800+). The noise pitch changes with the CPU load and no combination of BIOS settings or cooling has made any difference. I’ve never experienced this before and the only solution seems to be buying new hardware (again).

In the long term I don’t want the burden of running my own web server, so I have begun “outsourcing” everything. This blog has been exported to wordpress.com and I am paying $10/year to use my own domain. However, there’s no way I could keep the “blog” path in http://foolip.org/blog/, so my only solution is relocating to http://blog.foolip.org/. As we all know, cool URIs don’t (must not, ever) change, so for a while I was at a loss about how to redirect my old URLs. Eventually I found a free webhost which supports mod_rewrite and seems fairly solid. I will use this only to redirect, without serving a single file. Writing a .htaccess is very straightforward:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foolip\.org$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foolip\.org$
# http://(www.)foolip.org/blog/... -> http://blog.foolip.org/...
RewriteRule ^blog$ http://blog.foolip.org/ [R=permanent,L]
RewriteRule ^blog/(.*)$ http://blog.foolip.org/$1 [R=permanent,L]
# http://(www.)foolip.org/ -> http://blog.foolip.org/
RewriteRule ^$ http://blog.foolip.org/ [R,L]

If you are one the approximately three readers of this blog, you don’t need to do anything. Your browser and feed reader will automatically find the way (because cool URIs don’t change). However, as wordpress.com is blocked in mainland China I will have to make some special arrangements for those users, possibly using a mirror blog on wordpress.com.cn. As soon as all of that is handled, I will enable redirection and my private web server will enter eternal downtime.

Update: .htaccess made more strict, only redirecting known URLs

Electrolux Ice Server Home Edition

2008-05-12T18:47:41+00:00

The last week or so foolip.org has been available only sporadically, as I have moved to a new apartment. After acquiring a new silent hard drive and silenter fans, I had to find a discrete place to put the server. The first though was in the closet (where many respectable home servers live) but that would mean having cables running across the floor. I eventually decided on the cleaning cupboard in the kitchen. I pulled the refrigerator out to make room for some cables when, lo and behold, I found...

Some genius has made room on top of the refrigerator just big enough for my server! It was clearly meant to be...

With the refrigerator pushed back in place, there’s little to tell that there’s a server in hiding. What makes it even cooler (pun intended) is the perfect positioning next to the air circulation system:

Could this all be a coincidence? I think not! Check out the revealing hint in the freezer compartment below...

With my new Ice Server™ up and running, foolip.org is open to the world again!

周杰倫為其他歌手創作的歌曲

2008-03-16T19:25:10+00:00

1998
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
吳宗憲	三暝三日	周杰倫/吳宗憲	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	大聲說出心內話	周杰倫	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	唱歌的人尚快樂	周杰倫	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	容易破碎的心	周杰倫	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	相思是啥密	周杰倫	吳宗憲
S.B.D.W	世界末日	周杰倫	周杰倫
S.B.D.W	哈啦	周杰倫	鐘昀呈/劉畊宏
S.B.D.W	野孩子	周杰倫	S.B.D.W
S.B.D.W	你走	周杰倫	劉畊宏
1999
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
江蕙	落雨聲	周杰倫	方文山
吳宗憲	你比從前快樂	周杰倫	方文山
吳宗憲	屋頂 (溫嵐合唱)	周杰倫	周杰倫
吳宗憲	平衡點 (溫嵐合唱)	周杰倫	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	放我一個人	周杰倫	吳宗憲
吳宗憲	傷心的樹	周杰倫	方文山
柯受良	溫柔壞男人	吳宗憲	周杰倫/吳宗憲
王力宏	打開愛	周杰倫	施立
王雪娥	愛情俘虜	周杰倫/希德	許常德
康康	催淚	周杰倫	吳宗憲
康康	離開你不得已	周杰倫/佚名	吳宗憲/康康/佚名
康康	電燈泡	周杰倫	方文山
許茹芸	禁止悲傷	周杰倫	方文山
許茹芸	蝸牛 (齊秦、動力火車、熊天平合唱)	周杰倫	周杰倫
許茹芸	一天一天	周杰倫	劉畊宏
徐若瑄	姐妳睡了嗎	周杰倫	易家揚
動力火車	不會哭的人	周杰倫	周杰倫
動力火車	重傷的汗水	周杰倫	劉畊宏
溫嵐	You Will Get My Heart	周杰倫	溫嵐
溫嵐	喜歡這樣子	周杰倫	溫嵐
溫嵐	胡同裡有隻貓	周杰倫	方文山
溫嵐	耳邊風	周杰倫	周杰倫
溫嵐	不告而別	周杰倫	周杰倫
2000
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
古巨基	夜空的精靈	周杰倫	方文山
梁漢文	我就是忘不掉	周杰倫	小寒
梁漢文	找快樂的人	周杰倫	厲曼婷
迪克牛仔	出賣心碎	周杰倫	方文山
吳宗憲	耍花樣	周杰倫	劉畊宏
吳宗憲	脫離軌道	周杰倫	方文山
錦繡二重唱	月光	周杰倫	林怡芬
S.B.D.W	不是不想	周杰倫	周杰倫
S.B.D.W	La música	周杰倫	劉畊宏
徐若瑄	快過期的草莓	周杰倫	徐若瑄
2001
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
陳小春	抱一抱	周杰倫	徐世珍
陳小春	我愛的人	周杰倫	施人誠
陳小春	二楞子	周杰倫	鄭中庸
陳小春	犯賤 (抱一抱粵語版)	周杰倫	黃偉文
呂方	悲傷的斜對面	周杰倫	方文山
劉德華	一壺鄉愁	周杰倫	方文山
溫嵐	北斗星	周杰倫	方文山/溫嵐
溫嵐	動心 (林邁可合唱)	周杰倫	方文山
溫嵐	眼淚知道	周杰倫	方文山
溫嵐	屋頂 (周杰倫合唱)	周杰倫	周杰倫
蔡依林	你怎麼連話都說不清楚	周杰倫	毛毛
4 in Love	命中註定	周杰倫	易家揚
陳奕迅	冤家	周杰倫	徐世珍
吳宗憲	瞎了聾了	周杰倫	吳宗憲
張學友	算命	周杰倫	林夕
李玟	刀馬旦	周杰倫	方文山
康康	定時炸彈	周杰倫	劉畊宏
康康	電燈泡Ⅱ	周杰倫	方文山
康康	刀鋒邊緣	周杰倫	方文山
2002
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
S.H.E	熱帶雨林	周杰倫	方文山
王雪娥	誰是白痴	周杰倫	王裘依
谷祖琳	六壯士	周杰倫	陳少琪
陶晶瑩	兩個寂寞	周杰倫	廖士賢
溫嵐	地獄天使	周杰倫	劉畊宏
溫嵐	走	周杰倫	方文山
溫嵐	發燙	周杰倫	黃俊郎
溫嵐	定時炸彈	周杰倫	劉畊宏
陳冠希	流浪車票	周杰倫	陳少琪
潘瑋柏	站在你這邊	周杰倫	方文山
江蕙	到底誰是伊	周杰倫	方文山
芮恩	白色羽毛	周杰倫	方文山
2003
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
游艾迪	Girl Power	詩人(周杰倫)	許世昌
蔡依林	說愛你	周杰倫	天天
蔡依林	布拉格廣場	周杰倫	方文山
蔡依林	騎士精神	周杰倫	蔡依林
S.H.E	河濱公園	周杰倫	方文山
莫文蔚	黑雨	周杰倫	李焯雄
陳小春	一定要幸福	周杰倫	鄭中庸
陳小春	獻世 (一定要幸福粵語版)	周杰倫	林夕
徐若瑄	面具	周杰倫	徐若瑄
阿杜	退讓	周杰倫	方文山
2004
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
陳冠希	戰爭 (feat. Hanjin, MC仁 & 胡蓓蔚)	周杰倫	MC仁/陳少琪/陳奐仁
蔡依林	就是愛	周杰倫	天天
蔡依林	海盜	周杰倫	陳鎮川
蔡依林	倒帶	周杰倫	方文山
南拳媽媽	瓦解	周杰倫	宋健彰
溫嵐	祝我生日快樂	周杰倫	鄭中庸
溫嵐	夏天の風	周杰倫	天天
李威	雲淡風輕 (極速傳說片尾曲)	周杰倫	李威
S.H.E	候鳥	周杰倫	方文山
2005
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
羅志祥	自我催眠	周杰倫	陳天佑
劉畊宏	失落的入場券	周杰倫	劉畊宏
劉畊宏	心動心痛	周杰倫	劉畊宏/陳劍龍
劉畊宏	心靈交戰	周杰倫	劉畊宏
劉畊宏	直到最後	周杰倫	劉畊宏
劉畊宏	情畫	周杰倫	劉畊宏
劉畊宏	西域傳奇	周杰倫	劉畊宏
江蕙	愛作夢的魚	周杰倫	潘協慶
2006
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
莫文蔚	天下大同	周杰倫	林夕
莫文蔚	眾生緣 (天下大同粵語版)	周杰倫	林夕
S.H.E	觸電	周杰倫	施人誠
梁詠琪	給自己的情歌 (粵語版)	周杰倫	陳少琪
梁詠琪	給自己的情歌 (國語版)	周杰倫	陳鎮川
徐若瑄	美人魚	周杰倫	徐若瑄
梁靜茹	失憶	周杰倫	周杰倫
許慧欣	詩水蛇山神廟	周杰倫	方文山
郭富城	愛情	周杰倫	方文山/桂子
璽恩	時尚工業	周杰倫	趙治德
伊能靜	念奴嬌	周杰倫	伊能靜
鍾鎮濤	魔鬼的情詩	周杰倫	林若寧
2007
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
費玉清	千里之外 (獨唱版)	周杰倫	方文山
陳奕迅	淘汰	周杰倫	周杰倫
容祖兒	小小	周杰倫	方文山
張惠妹	如果你也聽說	周杰倫	李焯雄
周渝民	我不是F4	周杰倫	李宗恩
張韶涵	親愛的那不是愛情	周杰倫	方文山
許茹芸	手寫愛	周杰倫	方文山
2008
藝人	歌曲	作曲	作詞
Twins	連帶關係	周杰倫	陳少琪
南拳媽媽	妳不像她	周杰倫	宋健彰
S.H.E	安靜了	周杰倫	Selina

遺漏的或錯誤的請大家補充更正！

最近更新於2008-10-12

資料來源：

Epileptiska vietnameser göra sig icke besvär (hos det sociala)

2008-03-13T02:51:00+00:00

Jag såg på midnattssändningen av Rapport att ett vietnamesiskt par fick sitt nyfödda barn taget ifrån sig på bb och blev t o m lite upprörd när jag hörde kvinnan prata (textat) om hur det gått till. Även skvallerpressen skriver. Kvinnan lider av epilepsi och hade själv kontaktat socialen för stöd, som istället beslutade att ta barnet. Det är verkligen inte min nisch att blogga om mina upprörda känslor, men se här vad Arnold Karlzon (kd), ordförande i Värnamos medborgarnämnd, säger:

”Vi strävar alltid efter att lösa så mycket som möjligt på hemmaplan. Men i det här fallet hade vi inte resurser att klara det, för det behövdes 24-timmars tillsyn i princip.”

Ska man tolka det som att det hade gått ge rätt stöd till dem, men att det inte fick plats i budgeten? Sedan när kan omhändertaganden baseras på sådana grunder? Myndigheterna menade föräldrarna hade svårt att ta till sig råd, men hur jävla lätt är det att ta till sig råd på ett så barockt språk som svenska tror ni?! Tillåter verkligen socialtjänstlagen omhändertagande av barn även där föräldrarna faktiskt vill ta hand om barnet själva och där det enda hindret är fysisk sjukdom (till skillnad från psykisk sjukdom/förståndshandikapp)?

Sverige har ett ganska bra rykte i Vietnam, mycket tack vare vårt starka ställningstagande mot USA-invasionen och för ett hyggligt generöst bistånd inom bl a sjukvård. Biståndet slopade alliansen redan förra året och när ”omhändertagandet” blir känt i Vietnam så kanske vi äntligen kan ta vår plats som en arrogant och bufflig nation bredvid Frankrike och USA (samt till viss del Kina).

Det kan förstås hända att det finns ytterligare skäl som media inte rapporterat om, men tills vidare så ställer jag mig frågande till rimligheten i det hela. Med mina ytterst begränsade kunskaper i språket har jag ännu inte kunnat hitta några Vietnamesiska bloggar eller nyheter om det inträffade...

I övrigt rekommenderar jag den kinesiska filmen The Treatment (刮痧) där ett kinesiskt pars barn blir omhändertaget av amerikanska socialtjänsten p g a ett ”missförstånd”.

Uppdatering torsdag:

Silverkällan var upprörd en hel timme före mig.

The news clip is now available with English subtitles.

Hy vọng họ sớm được đoàn tụ!

Uppdatering fredag:

SVT: Socialens beslut kan vara olagligt (igår)

Sydsvenskan skrev kort igår. I dagens ledare på SvD skriver Maria Abrahamsson att länsrätten i sin dom påpekade att mamman var förståndshandikappad (något som inte tidigare framkommit), men lägger till att ”hittills tyder dock det mesta på motsatsen”. Gunilla Hjelm (c) är kritisk mot den vinklade mediarapporteringen. Det har också bloggats lite här och var. Enligt min ”Vietnam-korrespondent” så har det ännu inte rapporterats något i Vietnamesiska medier om det inträffade.

Det verkar alltså som att familjen fick vara på ett utredningshem under 10 veckor innan beslutet att omhänderta barnet gjordes. Jag skulle bli ganska förvånad om föräldrarna under den tiden var helt förstående och medgörliga, med tanke på språksvårigheter och en (vad gäller föräldraskap) extrem kulturskillnad. Om detta kanske man inte ska spekulera allt för mycket, men men...

The second news clip is also available with English subtitles.

再见，我的北京

2008-01-31T01:08:23+00:00

我本月一日已经离开了北京，我正在黑暗冷清的瑞典生活。在北京那一年半的时间只能说是我生活中最精彩的，大胆地过日子，过得快乐。去北京之前我跟自己说绝不要谈恋爱，到时候怎么忍受分离？不过，思想的力量不如爱情，结果我在北京语言大学爱上了我的越南同学。遇见爱是唯一最重要的事，但我对北京的好感不只源于爱情的记忆。反而，我认为北京固有一种魅力，一个使我念念不忘的气氛。一般说起北京的优点都会提长城、故宫、京剧、烤鸭等传统的象征。长城是很长，颐和园是很伟大，可是给我印象更深的却是最小的事。在路边买烤栗子、在教室里分析“而”的语法、在五道口吃石锅拌饭、劳动节和女朋友在后海无计划地逛逛、在电影院看姜文的作品、在KTV厅唱周杰伦——这是我的北京。

瑞典著名作家佩尔·安德斯·福格尔斯特龙(Per Anders Fogelström)的小说《我的梦想的城市》描写了一个普通工人在十九世纪的斯德哥尔摩的生活。除了家庭故事以外，小说还充满了他对斯德哥尔摩的热爱和希望。描述的是一个发展中的城市，一个“活着”的城市。北京现在同样不停地变，也带着希望往前冲。更多新高楼和汽车不见得是百分好的事情，但反正无人能否认北京有“心跳”。我在北京的时候还渐渐发觉了不仅仅是北京在变，而且北京改变了我。也许任何在国外生活的人都会受新的语言和文化的影响，但我确实低估了它的力量。我并不是说我变成了中国人（我不会也不愿），而是说通过中国的文化发现瑞典的思想未必都完美，自己的一些成见也显然不正确。反过来中国也有它的缺点，可是我相信中国人民能管好自己，不用我说。

失去了后才懂得珍惜是人之常情，现在我连北京的出租车司机也想！或许太多空气污染影响我的脑子……无论如何我知道我早晚会再去北京，再去我的梦想的城市。

喔对了，我不是直接回瑞典来的，先去越南看了我的宝贝。一切都好，你们不用担心！

Get Carsick Cars’ debut album for FREE!

2007-10-27T19:28:37+00:00

First something about Thursday’s gig at Mao. Snapline opened the show with electro-pop-rock and English vocals delivered in a “slowly going crazy” but yet charismatic manner. Next in line was what I came to see – Carsick Cars. As they entered I noticed that two of the members are actually shared with Snapline. The music, however, is not in the same genre. Rather, it’s riffy and swingy rock with lots of noisy things in between. Some would call it indie rock I suppose.

There were quite a few non-Chinese in the audience, a number of which formed a brief mosh pit to the horror of some Chinese visitors. “No thanks, I don’t mosh.” Unfortunately the band only played about 5 songs, but short is sweet I suppose. When they played the last song – 中南海 (Zhongnanhai) – every smoker in the audience bombarded the band with cigarettes while the rest of us shouted along with the not-so-hard-to-remember lyrics.

The main band was the Beijing girl punk band Hang on the Box, but as far as I’m concerned the gig was over. Afterwards I chatted a bit with the record label guy and bought an undisclosed number of copies of Carsick Cars’ album. I sat in a couch until bassist 李维思 (Li Weisi) and drummer 李青 (Li Qing) turned up and signed my album. Li Weisi smoked Zhongnanhai and I waited a bit longer until guitarist/singer 张守望 (Zhang Shouwang) came along and made my album autograph-complete. I assure you that I’m not crazy, I just thought it would be neat...

Adapted from Maybe Mars without permission.

The album includes 7 songs in Chinese and 3 in English. I’ve been listening more or less non-stop and I do think it’s really cool, especially 志愿的人 (Volunteer), 中南海 (Zhongnanhai) and 广场 (Plaza). The undisclosed number of copies that I have in my possession have a purpose, which is this: I will send a copy of Carsick Cars’ album to anyone who requests it for free, with no conditions attached whatsoever. Just contact me and tell me where you want it delivered. When all my copies are gone I hope that there are an undisclosed number of new Carsick Cars fans in the world!

Copies delivered as of 2007-11-05:

China: 2
France: 1
The Netherlands: 2
Norway: 1
USA: 2

Disclosure: The original number of copies were actually only 4, but since there were so many who wanted the album I went to buy all the copies in a record store here in Beijing, bringing the total to 8. Despite my best efforts I have not been able to find any more, so at this time I can’t offer to send any more. Nonetheless, I do hope that there are at least 8 new Carsick Cars fans on the planet now!
See also:

Gig photos on Flickr
Carsick Cars’ MySpace page (has a few downloadable tracks)
Carsick Cars on MusicBrainz (correct tags for your CD rip)

Carsick Cars: who fucking smoke my Zhongnanhai?

2007-10-24T01:15:32+00:00

Carsick Cars is a fairly new Beijing rock band which I discovered via MusicBrainz only yesterday. After listening to the repetitive lyrics and riffy guitar of 中南海 (Zhōngnánhǎi) I think I’m hooked! The title refers to the name of a popular brand of cigarettes, but Zhongnanhai is also the name of the area to the west of the Forbidden City (called the New Forbidden City by Beijingers) from where the Party runs the People’s Republic.

中南海，中南海……中南海，中南海
中南海，中南海……抽烟只抽中南海
中南海，中南海……生活离不开中南海
中南海，中南海……谁他妈抽了我的中南海？[source]

Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai... Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai... I only smoke Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai... I can’t live without Zhongnanhai
Zhongnanhai, Zhongnanhai... who fucking smoke my Zhongnanhai?

Figuring out which Zhongnanhai the lyrics might refer to is left as an exercise to the reader. I haven’t been able to get hold of their self-titled debut album yet, but a record shop in 东单 has a copy booked for me. On Thursday they’re playing at the Mao Club and everyone must go! For those not in Beijing, here’s the video of Zhongnanhai instead.

I’m sorry. Life is good!

2007-09-28T23:47:59+00:00

I’m sorry that I haven’t updated my blog in such a long time. I’m sorry that I’ve written too much in Chinese. I’m sorry that I am in Beijing when all of my friends are not. I’m sorry that I’m not going to translate that article about me until I write my memoirs.

Since my last post I’ve been back to Sweden to get myself a new visa and was back in Beijing on August 15. Even though I still have one year of left on my computer science degree I am already doing my thesis project here at Opera Software’s Beijing office. The topic may or not be secret and involves many things that I really enjoy doing. I should be done by January, because that’s when I’m going to continue my studies in Linköping.

Next week is a national holiday in China, at which time my angel/girlfriend is coming from Việt Nam to see me. I cannot imagine a better way to spend the week than roaming around Beijing, going to all the places we used to like. 太幸福了! What’s more, I’m going to visit her in Hà Nội (the capital of Việt Nam) in the first two weeks of January before going back to Sweden. Life is good!

Interview with me in Shanghai IT Times 2007-06-15

我要暂时离开北京

2007-07-24T00:20:58+00:00

I’m leaving Beijing temporarily.

前一个月是期末考试和毕业的时间，所以我都没有写blog。至于这一年学习的成果我很满意，虽然我比不上任何五岁的中国孩子我还是得到了我的目的，那就是一定的中文水平。目前我的北京生活到期了，明天一早就动身回国。不过，如果一切顺利我很快就回来，我将要在Opera的北京分公司做我的计算机毕业设计。我现在回瑞典去是为了办好签证（国家规定必须出进）。

我在北京经历了很多好事、一些坏事，如果写出来恐怕我讲不完。反正我今天写不了，天都黑了，我要睡觉了。晚安北京！

早期中国电影《十字街头》

2007-06-23T01:40:42+00:00

The 1937 Chinese film Crossroads is now available on archive.org.

看得出来，我是电影迷。今天又推荐一部影片：1937年的《十字街头》。

接受了IT时报的采访

2007-06-21T01:36:59+00:00

I’ve been interviewed been by Shanghai IT magazine IT时报. I’ll try to find the time to translate it into English soon.

大约一个月以前我接受IT时报记者的采访，在这一期报纸上发表了。权IT时报，用许可。

我的BSP，在瑞典公寓的衣柜里

IT时报记者王珏磊

在长途电话的那一头，Philip的普通话说得很溜，完全能听懂记者的提问，回答也很少语病，我们的交流很顺畅。听他说话，你不会想到他是一个只学了一年中文的瑞典人，在他抵达北京之前，他所有的汉语基础只是在瑞典夜校上的12节中文课而已。不只会说，Philip还会写。去年秋天刚到北京，他便在博客上用中文写些小短文，现在，他的博客更是中文、英文、瑞典文并行，中文小文章已经写得颇为地道。问他，是否瑞典人都有语言天才？他的回答是否定的：“是因为我对中文感兴趣！”

博客故事

Philip决定写博客，是从到了中国以后开始的。作为一个在瑞典学计算机的大学生，难道他不知道博客？Philip打消了记者的疑问：“不是这样的，我早就知道博客。只是我觉得写博客是让别人看的，如果我在瑞典写博客，我的生活和别的瑞典人一样，他们不会有兴趣看一种同样的生活。但如果我到了中国，写些中国的事情，这就有人看了。”而之所以用中文写博，Philip也有着自己的“小九九”：“我的英文比中文好得多，但在中国，如果用英文写博客，会有人看，但很少会有人留言，我会觉得很寂寞。如果用中文写的话，那就是‘老外写中文’，会比较有特点，比较吸引人。”看来，Philip“算盘”打得还蛮精。

Philip的这一招果然奏效。比如，某一天，他在博客上提出，不知怎么进入中国的博客圈，请大家推荐自己爱看的博客，以及好玩的网络漫画，并请大家指出自己这篇小短文中可能有的错误。果然，就有人告诉他，某个网站可以作为博客圈的入口，又有人表示愿意给他发来些网络漫画的链接，还有网友不客气地指出，文中提到的“破插件”只是自谦的说法，用来指别人的插件，可就有点不妥当了。Philip对这些留言有问必答，对大家的热心敬表谢意，像一个热忱的主人答谢客人一样，把博客经营得颇像一个热闹的会客厅。

我是自己的BSP

问Philip，喜欢看哪些中国博客，Philip告诉记者，他经常会看新浪的一些知名博客。话锋一转，他开始批评起新浪博客的缺陷，“作为一个BSP，新浪的技术很落后，如果你用RSS订阅，照片就不能打开，并且，如果你不用IE浏览器，你就不能参加博客上的讨论。”那么，Philip选的是哪家BSP的服务呢？他的说法让记者大吃一惊：“我是自己的BSP。我的BSP在我瑞典公寓的衣柜里。”

到底是学计算机的学生，Philip的手段还真是不一般。“做起来其实很简单，用Wordpress做的，跟一般博客一样，想干什么都可以，想用什么软件就用上去。我喜欢玩游戏，就在博客上加了些游戏，还上传了几部电影。自己做BSP，博客会有独特的个性，比较漂亮一点。”而作为服务器的电脑，则乖乖地躺在Philip瑞典公寓的衣橱里，由他的哥哥帮忙照看着。
记者问：“那我可不可以在你的BSP上注册一个博客呢？”
Philip委婉却坚决地拒绝了记者：“你完全可以自己做的。做BSP，我是要付钱的，虽然不多，但也不能开放注册，我承担不起。”

人物故事

来中国之前，Philip在瑞典读大学，学的是计算机。去年春天，Philip误打误撞地去读了一个夜校，学中文，总共上了12节课。读完夜校，Philip就作了一个决定：他要申请中国的学校，专门学这种“很好听的”的语言。就凭着12节课打下的底子，Philip竟然真的拿到了北京语言大学的入学通知，来中国学一年普通话。

去年9月，Philip到达北京，在“妈妈的朋友的　”家里安下了身，成了一名留学生。就此，他边读书，边用好奇的眼睛打量中国。

素食者的天堂

来到北京，Philip最先爱上了中国的食物。他是一个素食者，可是，瑞典的传统食物是土豆和肉，蔬菜的种类很少，而且很有可能买不到。在北京，Philip发现自己来到了一个素食者的“天堂”，素菜的种类非常多，并且做法极其丰富多彩。比如土豆，在瑞典，一般只是开水炖熟而已，可是，在北京，就有炒土豆丝、酸竦土豆丝、土豆炒四季豆等等多种做法。更不用说豆腐了，瑞典极其少见的豆腐，中国的做法更是洋洋大观，什么家常豆腐、麻婆豆腐、冻豆腐、老豆腐等等，应有尽有。他还吃到了很多以前根本没见过的东西，比如“面筋”。Philip开始时还在公寓里自己做饭，没多久干脆顿顿在外面大快朵颐，他只去中餐馆，“味道很好，而且还不贵。”

两米零二的尴尬

Philip的博客上，有他自己画的一幅四格漫画，描绘一个身高只有一米零二的小人，在街头的种种尴尬遭遇：有人拿他跟自己比较，说他只到自己胸口；有人拿着相机，说“太好玩了，来，照一个！” Philip在漫画下面注明：这都是自己在北京的真实经历，只不过，是反过来说而已。

实际上，Philip的身高是两米零二。可以想象，走到北京街头，Philip是多么的显眼。每天，只要他一出门，就会被人围观，有人在他背后指指点点，肆无忌惮地大声议论。有人掏出手机，在他背后“咔嚓”拍照。可他一回头，那些人又装作若无其事的样子。一次两次还则罢了，天天如此，Philip难免有生气的时候。Philip告诉记者，有一回，他去哈尔滨玩，有两个人没征得他同意，就站在他旁边，把他作为陪衬，让朋友赶快按快门照相。Philip有些火了，告诉他们：“我不是动物园里的动物。”可两人不管不顾地继续拍。Philip想想还是算了，“我知道他们没有恶意，这不是什么很严重的事情，我不应该生气。可是我真的有点烦。”至今，Philip还是无奈地天天被人围观。

我找到了我的“天使”

来中国时间长了，Philip也有些“中国化”了。经常有人称赞他：“你的中文说得很好”，Philip会谦虚地回答：“哪里哪里，还差得远。”他告诉记者，一开始，他觉得这样的回答“有点假”，如果在瑞典，只需要说“谢谢”就行了。可现在，他越来越习惯于这种“中国式谦逊”了。就算是瑞典人夸他，他也会说“哪里哪里”，有一回倒是搞得一个瑞典朋友摸不着头脑。

在中国，Philip还遇到了一件重要的事：他恋爱了！他找到了他的“天使”。那是一个越南姑娘，和Philip一样，也是来中国学习语言的留学生。他们是同学，天天一起上课，一起吃饭，一起聊天。他们之间只能说中文，中文是他们共通的语言。恋爱让Philip的北京生活更添了一层幸福和甜蜜，不过他也有些苦恼：学完后，他们各自要回国，恋爱如何继续呢？Philip甩甩头，“到那时候再说吧！”

Philip对博客的看法

博客是一个很好的东西，它让普通人前所未有地获得了说话的权利。昨天我买了一本杂志，竟然发现它的扉页的栏口就叫做“博客”，这说明博客是多么流行。但博客绝对是存在于网上的东西，它本身有一定的技术，让人们可以在这里展开讨论，得到回馈。博客一定要能实现RSS订阅，否则的话就只是文章、照片的展示而已。

早期中国电影《大路》

2007-06-20T18:52:31+00:00

The 1934 Chinese film The Big Road is now available on archive.org.

今天又上传了一部电影：孙瑜1934年导演的《大路》。我还没看完，不过影片开头的合唱镜头很好玩：轰！轰！轰！哈哈哈哈！轰！我们是开路的先锋……

以前上传过的电影 Previously uploaded films

华语音乐、last.fm、MusicBrainz

2007-06-18T21:47:15+00:00

今天乱写一些与华语音乐有关的事情。1999年父母、哥哥和我到中国来旅行。我当初一句汉语也不会说，不过我在北京友谊商店决定买一张唱片。看了看架上摆着的流行专辑，拿下张信哲的《回来》，听了之后感觉不错。去年又到北京来了，发现张信哲还在出音乐，风格跟过去还差不多。接着喜欢上光良的歌曲了：《童话》、《第一次》、《约定》等等。不知道他什么时候会录下新的唱片。张信哲和光良都唱情歌……好听是好听，不过我也喜欢摇滚乐，中国真的缺乏这些。我刚发现了台湾乐队五月天，不是什么Iron Maiden，可是我觉得他们还不错。

如果中国缺乏摇滚乐，那难看的（女生）歌手更不存在。这并不是什么好事，漂亮并不相等于唱歌的才能。电视上天天都出现长得好看但是唱起来像喜鹊乌鸦一样的女人。当然，欧美也如此，不过在东方这个毛病似乎更严重一些。也许我不太了解华语音乐因而忽视了那些不漂亮但是很会唱歌的歌手……

我一般是通过百度MP3或者VeryCD找到新的音乐。last.fm中文版称为“推动社会音乐革命”，也是个很好的东西。有兴趣的话你可以做我的last.fm朋友。我也特别想推荐MusicBrainz音乐资料库，跟Wikipedia相同的是谁都可以编辑。如果你的MP3文件中 ID3标签不太标准你可以试试MusicBrainz，结果让我非常满意。不过MusicBrainz有两个缺点，首先网站和软件全是英文，如果你的英文不好可能有点困难。其次资料库中的华语音乐不算多，不到一千个专辑……我经常编辑，希望你也会喜欢上MusicBrainz！

和瑞典人打招呼！Hej!

2007-06-11T01:17:07+00:00

不少中国人误认为瑞典人讲英语。实际上，瑞典人的母语就是瑞典语。今天我想介绍介绍我的语言的特点，并且教大家怎么和瑞典人打招呼。瑞典语属于日耳曼语系，类似于挪威语和丹麦语。字母表中有29个字母，除了A至Z之外，还有ÅÄÖ三个字母。每个字母基本上代表一个音，但是单词的发音还是比较复杂，相同的拼法会有不同的发音，而且相同的发音又会有不同的拼法。不过，瑞典语的“你好”和“再见”特别简单。

你好：Hej! ［黑］

这是瑞典最普遍的招呼语，无论对方地位高或者低你都可以说“hej”。发音和“黑”相似。听听录音！

再见：Hej då! ［黑多］

注意å上面有一个小圆，不能省略。发音和“黑多”相似。听听录音！

大家来交流吧！Hej då!

Anita Jägenstedt

2007-06-05T02:05:46+00:00

Min bror Gabriel gjorde en liten googling på vår familj och fick ganska intressanta resultat:

Bo Jägenstedt – 291 träffar
Anita Jägenstedt – 1 träff
Gabriel Jägenstedt – 812 träffar
Philip Jägenstedt – 770 träffar

Vad har hänt vår kära mor?! En enda träff, som dessutom är en beskrivning till en bild på pappa som inte ens syns i vanliga fall (alt-text). Jag har ju refererat till mamma mer än en gång och hon har själv kommenterat flera gånger, men tydligen har hennes namn aldrig dykt upp. Här kommer därför lite ledtrådar till framtida släktforskare...

Min mamma hette som flicka Anita Grenholm och bodde i Kålaboda tillsammans med föräldrarna Folke och Britta samt de tre syskonen Rune, Bengt och Märtha.

Folke och Britta Grenholm

Vid sexton års ålder flyttade hon hemifrån (men mormor och morfar bor fortfarande kvar). Tids nog träffade hon min pappa och gifte sig.

Anita Grenholm blev Anita Jägenstedt

Hur många träffar får din mamma på Google?

上面的美女是我的妈妈安妮塔（Anita）。黑白的照片上是我的姥姥和姥爷。

Paraxylene and grassroots in Xiamen

2007-06-04T02:14:37+00:00

Xiamen (厦门) is a coastal city in Fujian province, China. It was one of the first cities to open up to foreign investment in the 1980’s and has seen good economic growth since. Only 16 km from the city center, Tenglong Aromatic PX is constructing a 10.8 billion RMB chemical plant that is expected to produce 800,000 tons of paraxylene (PX) per year. Fears of an environmental disaster has lead to the rise of what looks like a grassroots movement to stop the plans. There was some movement in the Chinese blogosphere and in the middle of May Memedia reported on anti-PX graffiti in Xiamen (the blog of the graffiti artist has since been shut down).

On the 25th of May, an SMS began spreading like a virus among the 1.5 million residents of Xiamen, being resent nearly 1 million times and also posted by some bloggers.

台湾第一通缉犯陈由豪与翔鹭集团合资已在海沧区动工投资Px（苯）项目，这种巨毒化工品一生产，厦门岛意味着放了一颗原子弹，厦门人民以后的生活将在白血病、畸形儿中度过。我们要生活、我们要健康！国际组织规定这类项目要在距城市100公里以外开发！我们厦门距此项目才16公里啊！为了我们的子孙后代，行动吧！参加万人游行，时间六月一日上午八点起，由所在地向市政府进发！手绑黄色丝带！见短信群发给厦门所有朋友！

English translation:

Taiwan top fugitive Chen You-hao and Xianglu Group’s joint venture has already begun construction of the PX plant at Haicang. Once this extremely poisonous chemical is produced, it will be like an atomic bomb for the people of Xiamen, we will have leukemia and deformed babies. We want to live, we want to be healthy! International groups prescribe that this kind of plant must be at least 100 km from cities, but our Xiamen is only 16 km away! For the sake of our grandchildren, take action! Join the 10,000 people march, beginning at the 1st of June at 8:00. We will march towards the City Hall. Wear a yellow arm ribbon! When you read this message, send it to all your friends in Xiamen.

On May 30 the local authorities held a press conference and declared that the project would be put on hold in response to public opinion (reported by Xinhua). Despite this, demonstrations went ahead on the 1st of June. Zola (“China’s first citizen reporter”) was there and reported both via his blog and twitter, as did shizhao. Good English information on the demonstrations has been provided by Jeremy Goldkorn and John Kennedy. More than 10,000 people attended the demonstrations that even continued for a second day. Although there were some reports of injuries, the authorities seem to have kept calm and not interfered much.

Oppose PX, Protect Xiamen

The end of this story has yet to come, but it seems unlikely that the project could go on when the public opinion is so massively against it. This represents a victory of the grassroots against the authorities, who have done their best to suppress reporting on the protests. The graffiti mentioned earlier has become a symbol in an Internet campaign to oppose PX which has been popping up on several of my favorite blogs the last few days:

Pass on the yellow ribbon, care for Xiamen

张信哲《做你的男人》 Jeff Chang – Be Your Man

2007-05-31T01:12:43+00:00

This Friday I’m going to do something rather stupid: I’m going to sing on a stage for the first time in more than four years, in Chinese. It’s actually just outtakes for a talent contest at school, so it’s hardly important. Anyway, the song is Be Your Man (做你的男人) by Jeff Chang (张信哲) and to prepare I’ve annotated and translated the lyrics, which I might as well share. On a side note, Jeff Chang has a small but important role in the fairly popular film Ming Ming (明明), which also stars Zhou Xun (周迅). See it if you get a chance.

东京纽约每个地点 (Dōngjīng Niǔyuē měige dìdiǎn)
带你去坐幸福的地下铁 (dài nǐ qù zuò xìngfú de dìxià tiě)
散步逛街找电影院 (sànbù guàngjiē zhǎo diànyǐngyuàn)
累了我就帮你提高跟鞋 (lèi le wǒ jiù bāng nǐ tí gāogēnxié)
塞车停电哪怕下雪 (sāichē tíngdiàn nǎpà xiàxuě)
每天都要和你过情人节 (měitiān dōu yào hé nǐ guò qíngrénjié)
星光音乐一杯热咖啡 (xīngguāng yīnyuè yī bēi rè kāfēi)
只想给你所有浪漫情节 (zhǐ xiǎng gěi nǐ suǒyǒu làngmàn qíngjié)

Tokyo, New York, every single place.
Take you for a ride on the happy subway.
Go for a walk, windowshop, look for a cinema.
You’re tired, I carry your high heel shoes for you.
A traffic jam, a power out, it even starts to snow.
I want to spend valentines day with you every day.
Starlight, music, a cup of hot coffee.
I just want to give you an all romantic valentines day.

让我做你的男人 (ràng wǒ zuò nǐ de nánrén)
二十四个小时不睡觉 (èr shí sì gè xiǎoshí bù shuìjiào)
小心翼翼地保持 (xiǎoxīnyìyì de bǎochí)
这种热情不退烧 (zhè zhǒng rèqíng bù tuì shāo)
不管世界多纷扰 (bùguǎn shìjiè duō fēnrāo)
我们俩紧紧地拥抱 (wǒmen liǎ jǐnjǐn de yōngbào)
隐隐约约我感觉有微笑 (yǐnyǐnyuēyuē wǒ gǎnjué yǒu wēixiào)
藏在你嘴角 (cáng zài nǐ zuǐjiǎo)

Let me be your man.
I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours.
I carefully protect
this kind of non-stop passion.
No matter how much commotion in the world,
the two of us hug tightly.
I can faintly sense a smile
hidden in your lips.

做你的男人 (zuò nǐ de nánrén)
二十四个小时不睡觉 (èr shí sì gè xiǎoshí bù shuìjiào)
让胆小的你在黑夜中 (ràng dǎnxiǎo de nǐ zài hēiyè zhōng)
也会有个依靠 (yě huì yǒu gè yīkào)
就算有一天爱会变少 (jiù suàn yǒu yī tiān ài huì biàn shǎo)
人会变老 (rén huì biàn lǎo)
就算没告诉过你也知道 (jiùsuàn méi gàosu guò nǐ yě zhīdào)
下辈子还要和你遇到 (xià bèizi hái yào hé nǐ yùdào)

I’ll be your man.
I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours.
If you’re afraid in the dark night,
there will be someone there for you too.
Even though one day love becomes weaker,
and people grow older.
Even though I haven’t told you, you still know.
I’ll encounter you in my next life as well.

Previously translated lyrics:

En mors ögon (妈妈的眼力)

2007-05-27T22:17:23+00:00

为中文见下面

Idag är det morsdag, dagen till ära översätter jag en berättelse som jag skrev i skolan nyligen.

När jag var liten älskade jag att lyssna till morfars sagor. Han berättade alla möjliga typer av sagor, men jag tyckte ändå alltid bäst om att lyssna på berättelser från hans eget liv. Mer än tio år har gått sedan dess, men jag minns fortfarande följande berättelse.

När morfar var ung bestod livet inte bara av skoj som när jag var liten. Var han inte i skolan så hade han arbete att göra antingen där hemma eller någonstans i närheten. Byn han bodde i (och fortfarande bor i) var omgiven av skog, vilket inte så få människor tjänade sitt levebröd på. På den tiden fanns det inga lastbilar, istället flottades timret på ån ner till sågverket. En vår jobbade morfar med just timmerflottning. Han var en vågad pojke som ibland tog sig för att hoppa på stockarna över till andra sidan ån – hur riskabelt det var behöver väl knappast nämnas. Så en dag halkade han och föll mellan stockarna ner i vattnet, men som tur var fanns en kamrat i närheten som hjälpte honom upp och han klarade sig oskadd. Trots att han var genomvåt vågade inte gå hem, för han visste att mamma skulle bli arg – det var faktiskt inte första gången han ramlade i ån. Istället klädde han av sig och hängde kläderna att torka i solen. Inte förrän två timmar senare då kläderna hade torkat vågade han sig hem, i hopp om att mamma inte skulle förstå. Men han hann inte mer än in genom dörren innan mamma fick syn på honom och utbrast: ”Har du blött ner dig nu igen? Klä av dig och gå i säng!”

När jag själv var liten och hade gjort något dumt hoppades jag alltid, precis som morfar, att mamma inte skulle få veta. Men hur torra ”kläderna” än var så insåg hon ändå vad som hänt, ty en mor behöver bara se sitt barn i ögonen för att förstå.

小的时候我很喜欢听姥爷讲故事。他讲的故事内容丰富多彩，不过我总是最喜欢听他亲身经历的故事。现在我长大了，十年多过去了，可是我还记得下面的故事。

那年姥爷还很年轻，可是他的生活并不像我小的时候那样整天玩的方式。不是上学就是在家里工作或去别处打工。村子周围都是森林，不少人靠伐树谋生。当时因为没有汽车，所以原木沿河顺水漂到工厂。那个春天我的姥爷在河边管原木。他是个非常大胆的男孩，有时候在滑的原木上一跃一跃地跳到河对面的岸上。不必说，这个活动十份危险。有一天他不小心掉进河里去了。幸运的是，他的朋友在附近，跑过去把姥爷扶了起来。姥爷浑身湿透了，可是他不敢回家去。事实上，那不是第一次姥爷掉进河里。如果妈妈知道她会很生气，所以他脱下衣服，把它们挂在树上晒太阳。两个小时以后衣服干了，他就会家去了。他以为妈妈不会明白，谁知进门以后妈妈一看就说“又掉进河里了吗？快脱下衣服去睡觉！

我自己小的时候犯错误时跟姥爷一样不想让妈妈知道。不过无论如何妈妈都看得明白。妈妈看孩子眼睛的表情就知道，她不用看他的衣服。

不怕贼偷，就怕贼惦记

2007-05-23T22:01:41+00:00

我来中国以后几乎每周都遇到骗子。有的出租车司机不愿意打表，而说“朋友，那个地方很远，给你便宜一点”。有的售货员多要我几百块钱。有的人试图给我伪造的钱币。当然我一般不受骗，不过我在这个陌生的社会已经上了几次当。

我最近的一次被骗使我很愤怒。那天午夜我从北京语言大学南门走出来，右手拉着一个箱子。路边停着一辆出租汽车，司机帮我把东西放进行李箱里后我们就开往我的家。达到地点时司机要了我11块。我因为没有零钱，就让司机等我去旁边的一个商店买某种小东西，然后再交给他钱。这样我就给司机留机会，他在背后拉我的行李偷走了。我问站在楼前的两位保安车到哪儿去了，可他们只说它往前开走了。黑夜里找那辆车是没有希望的，出租车都差不多。随后我打110问我该怎么办，可是他们也帮不了我。第二天我写了一个书面报告去公安局报警。车号、型号和出租汽车公司我都没记住，我只记得时间和司机大概的样子。两位警察都很负责任，拉我去看电眼的录像、询问保安等等。我跟警察说“整天有人试图骗我，他们肯定会有一天成功”时，他们笑笑并补充，说了“不怕贼偷，就怕贼惦记”……说得太对了。被偷走了的东西不太昂贵，可是对我很重要。警察还没弄完，所以我不写详细的情况。说实在的，这件事不大可能成功，但是我还没放弃希望。

事后诸葛亮是很容易的，我似乎不应该相信别人。我仍然不是特别傻的，不少留学生也遭遇了相似的事情。事实上，不仅中国这样，全球都有骗子。不管怎么说，北京给我的印象中有了一点苦味。

I miss my lolcats

2007-05-16T23:06:43+00:00

I miss my lolcats.

Alla talar svenska: en noll två!

2007-05-13T23:26:25+00:00

Efter begäran av ingen mindre än min mor översätter jag mitt kinesiska mästerverk till svenska. På tunnelbanan är de stora gubbarna formade som tecknet ”stor” (大) medan den lilla har formen av tecknet ”liten” (小). Det hela är förstås en omvänd parodi av mitt dagliga liv här i Beijing.

漫画：一米零二

2007-05-13T16:18:12+00:00

我首次画漫画，内容都是我在北京亲身经历的事情，只是地位颠倒了。我希望大家能理解……

今天吃火锅了

2007-05-12T02:18:03+00:00

今天又去了民宝火锅城，想起来第一次去多么麻烦。菜单上的汉字大部不认识，服务员说的话也不太明白。“点菜吗”，她问了。“我想吃一种东西，可是我不知道它叫什么”，我回答。“这个东西呢，是黄色、圆的……球……好像是用面做的”。服务员没明白，于是我又说了几遍，哈哈大笑地做手势。她终于问“求切半，对吗？”我没听清，可是已经说了半天，所以只点了点头。随后她把菜端过来，其中居然有我想要的面筋。成功了！

第二次去，点菜没有那么难。菜单上找到了面筋，就指了指给服务员看。“面基、面近、面什么？”我问她了。“面筋。”成功了！

我今天对菜单很熟悉，自信十足地说“麻酱、炸豆皮、土豆片、白菜、鸡毛菜、粉丝、腐竹、面筋。”成功了！

上面有错误的话，请帮我指出来。

怎么进入中国的blogosphere呢？

2007-05-09T20:39:06+00:00

来中国以后我一直想多看中国人的博客，多用中文来写自己的文章。不过到现在为止，我写了很少（大部分是我的作业！）也没有看那么多中文博客。没写文章主要的原因就是我怕我的中文写得太差，谁都不愿意读。也许我对自己的要求太高。写那种随便的文章可能写得不美，但是写总比不写好。从今天做起我会多写一点！

我喜欢看电影，所以经常看一些Mtime的博客。还有什么比较好中国的呢？我估计新浪是中国最大的博客网，在他们最流行的博客中也看到了一些有意思的日志。好是好，可是新浪博客怎么没有trackback呢？再说，用Opera的话开不了讨论，是用某种JavaScript的。真是有点落后。大家都喜欢看哪些博客呢？提出自己的博客也可以，不要害羞！

最后我也想问，有哪些好看的网络漫画？看漫画挺好玩的，可是我从来没看中文的。

中国朋友，上面有错误的话请指出来，帮我提高我的中文水平。谢谢啦！

AddThis Sidebar Widget

2007-05-06T22:44:16+00:00

This plugin is now hosted at wordpress.org. It is not being maintained as I am no longer running my own WordPress installation. Please contact me if you want to take over development.

I’ve written a wordpress widget to put AddThis buttons in your sidebar. This is a convenient way for visitors to subscribe to your feed or bookmark your pages without cluttering the sidebar with a gazillion buttons for all the different feed readers and social bookmark sites.

Installation:

For WordPress 2.0/2.1, first install the widgets framework.
Download the plugin and unzip it in wp-content/plugins.
Activate AddThis Sidebar Widget in the plugin configuration panel.
Visit the widgets configuration panel and drop one or both of AddThis Subscribe and AddThis Bookmark into your sidebar.

Widget configuration is pretty self-explanatory. You will most likely want to leave the title blank. If you want stats from AddThis, enter your username. The AddThis page can be opened either in the current window, in a new window or in a JavaScript popup.

~~You can see the widget in action right here in my sidebar.~~ If you use it on your site or have any problems, please leave a comment/trackback.

History:

1.0 Initial release for WordPress 2.1 and earlier.
1.1 Updated for WordPress 2.2 (breaks support for 2.1 and earlier).
1.2 Minor changes. Now works on any WordPress 2.x.

Zhang and me

2007-05-05T00:40:24+00:00

Zhang is a random Chinese person, I meet him everyday. Sometimes he’s a man, sometimes she’s a woman. Sometimes old, sometimes young. Sometimes she drives a taxi, sometimes he’s a cashier. Zhang is everyone.

One day, I walk into Zhang’s store to buy some groceries. After finding my head far up in the sky Zhang’s eyes quickly fall to the floor, as if to see if I might be standing on something. While I buy my things Zhang whispers and gestures indiscreetly to his co-workers to check out the foreigner. I walk across to the checkout counter and Zhang starts conversing with me while bagging my things.

—You’re very tall, he tries.

—I know, I reply coldly.

—Are you two meters?

—Yes, two meters two centimeters.

—Wow, so tall.

Zhang goes on to tell his co-workers how tall I am, and then asks the same question Zhang always asks.

—Do you play basketball?

—No, I don’t play basketball. I don’t like the ball and the ball doesn’t like me, I reply trying to be funny.

—Such a waste, Zhang sighs and moves on to ask where I’m from. I tell him where I’m from. He looks impressed and continues talking, but I soon interrupt him.

—No, Switzerland has good watches, I come from Sweden. We don’t make watches in Sweden, and not famous chocolate either. Zhang looks slightly puzzled.

—Sweden is in the north of Europe.

—Oh, Sweden was it? Zhang seems to realize his mistake, but I’m not sure if he really knows where northern Europe is.

—How long have you been here, Zhang proceeds to ask.

—Hmm... seven or eight months.

—Wow, you’re Chinese is so good

—Oh not at all, my Chinese is far from good, I say while secretly smiling.

—Hehe, you’ve learned Chinese modesty too, Zhang mutters.

Zhang has individually bagged the toothbrush and the instant noodles, and now puts the two bags into a third bag. I hand over the money and we say goodbye. Tomorrow I will meet another Zhang in some restaurant and we will have the same conversation all over again...

早期中国电影《小城之春》

2007-05-04T22:13:04+00:00

The 1948 Chinese film Spring in a Small Town is now available on archive.org.

再提出一部电影：1948年的《小城之春》。尽情看吧！

早期中国电影《马路天使》

2007-05-04T17:28:26+00:00

The 1937 Chinese film Street Angel is now available on archive.org.

我把1937年的《马路天使》放在archive.org上了。本片2005年被选为最佳华语片100部中的第11名。片中陈少平和小红的关系十分可爱，使我很感动。大家可以下面看看，希望你们也喜欢！

参看：上海底层的贫苦爱情——《马路天使》在哪里？

China National Film Museum

2007-05-03T22:29:30+00:00

Today we visited the China National Film Museum out in the north-east suburbs of Beijing. It’s a huge complex with a three-story exhibition, an IMAX theater, a digital theater and the usual 35 mm theater. The exhibition focuses on the history of Chinese cinema from its beginning more than 100 years ago till the present. Since I am a big fan of Chinese cinema I recognized many of the actors, directors and films that I love.

I was disappointed, however, to find some glaring omissions – one of the best films by the most famous director was mysteriously missing. I’m talking about Zhang Yimou’s To Live, which was banned for its unfavorable treatment of the Party and the cultural revolution. Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite suffered the same fate. This makes me wonder what else might have been omitted. In the 1930’s film-making was heavily influenced by the politics of the day – might great films from this time be missing because of aligning with the Nationalists?

Where did The Blue Kite go?

The treatment of Chinese animation was very satisfying. Original sketches from Uproar in Heaven were on display, as well as information on Princess Iron Fan and other old gems. Furthermore there were sections on costumes, special effects and the abomination that is dubbing. All in all very nice, but I should warn that there’s very little information in English. Visit only if you’re a film buff, can read some Chinese and already know a fair bit about Chinese cinema.

Making of Uproar in Heaven

Having been through the 20 exhibition halls, we watched an IMAX 3D screening. It was a 30 minute gimmicky movie about the creatures of the sea, obviously made only to showcase IMAX technology. If you ever go to an IMAX theater, be sure to watch a real movie.

Watching IMAX makes you look stupid

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

2007-05-02T13:48:03+00:00

Digg has gone crazy over this 128-bit number.

This means that there is hope of being able to back up HD-DVDs, making me actually consider buying them in the future.

Labor day in Beijing

2007-05-02T00:57:47+00:00

In Sweden I usually demonstrate on labor day, but that’s obviously not an option in China. Instead we went to Houhai, a lake area north of the Forbidden City. I accidentally stumbled upon this big thing:

It’s the Bell Tower and is actually a tourist attraction, but I didn’t feel very attracted to it. There are a lot of Hutongs in the area – Hutong is what the old narrow streets in Beijing are called. More and more of them are destroyed to make room for the modern life, which is a pity in some cases. However, many of them are actually really shoddy. Would you want to live here?

Soon we arrived at Houhai. This area is very un-Chinese with reggae cafes, bars and the like. Nonetheless, walking around the lakes (Houhai is just one of several) is pretty nice.

Feeling kind of bored, we went to Wangfujing to watch a movie. If you get a chance to see Shanghai Red, do pass. It’s unoriginal, slightly pretentious and has corny dialogue, mostly in English (it’s a Sino-American production, I found out too late). Enough about that. I found a huge DVD shop and wandered around for a long time. I was kind of surprised to find Devils on the Doorstep, which I wrote yesterday has never been shown publicly in China. Finally, I bought Mongolian Ping Pong, by the director of the popular hit Crazy Stone.

In all, a great day for the international labor movement (and the international film industry). Last but not least, a warning from the kitchen of BLCU’s dorms:

Actor come director Jiang Wen

2007-05-01T03:54:21+00:00

Jiang Wen (姜文) is a well-known name in China but appears to be fairly unknown to the rest of the world. As an actor he has worked with some of the biggest names in Chinese cinema, including Zhang Yimou, Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi. Out of the films I have seen, I especially enjoyed Keep Cool and The Missing Gun. An accomplished actor as he is, I like him even better as a director. In thirteen years, he has only directed three films, the latest of which has not yet premiered. Despite this, it would not be flattery to call him a master director. His style is his own, he fits in neither with the famous fifth generation directors, nor with the young, hip directors of the so called sixth generation.

Chinese films set during the cultural revolution are generally what might be called “trauma dramas”, heart-breaking films made by directors with dark memories from that era, sometimes to atone for their own complicity. Jiang Wen’s 1994 directorial debut film In the Heat of the Sun (阳光灿烂的日子) stands in stark contrast – it looks back at that time with nostalgia. A semi-autobiographical coming of age story, the film follows Ma Xiaojun (a young Jiang Wen) during his teenage years in Beijing. His father is in the army, which gives Xiaojun great personal freedom. Together with his friends he skips class, watches movies, hits on girls, smokes cigarettes and gets into occasional fights. The main focus of the film is Xiaojun’s infatuation with Mi Lan, who is a few years older than himself. His insecure, trembling voice and slight desperation as is spot on and landed Xia Yu a prize for best actor at the Venice International Film Festival.

In Jiang Wen’s own words, he worships Mao Zedong. The references to the politics of the time are plentiful and this film is quite unique in depicting the cultural revolution as an adventurous and cheerful time. This does not imply that In the Heat of the Sun is a propaganda film made to please the Chinese censors, if you have seen one of those films you will notice the difference. More than anything this is a nostalgic film, longing for the careless summer days of the past.

Compare with the three big “trauma dramas”:

Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige)
The Blue Kite (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
To Live (Zhang Yimou)

In 2000 Jiang Wen directed and acted in his second film, Devils on the Doorstep (鬼子来了). It is shot in black & white and set during the Japanese occupation of Northern China in the 1940’s. One night, a man who only calls himself “me” knocks on of Ma Dasan (played by Jiang Wen) and leaves a Japanese captive and his Chinese translator tied up and gagged. At gunpoint, he tells Dasan that they must be kept hidden from the Japanese and he will be back to collect them after the new year. Fearing both the Japanese “devils” and the unknown “me”, Dasan seeks the help of the other villagers. There is no lack of comic relief in the film, especially in a scene where they interrogate the prisoners. The solider curses the Chinese and demands to be killed, while his translator instead shouts “He begs you not to kill him!” and so on. “Me” never comes back, and as time passes the Japanese prisoner begins to feel grateful to the townspeople, who treat him well.

Devils on the Doorstep is quite different from most Chinese war-time films. The Japanese aren’t one-dimensional devils and the Chinese aren’t brave heroes. Sadly, because of a debacle with the film censors, it has never been show publicly in China. Jiang Wen competed with it at the 2000 Canne’s Film Festival and won the Grand Prix (2nd prize), but without the film first being approved by the Chinese Film Bureau. This is unacceptable to them regardless of the films content. Furthermore, they allegedly weren’t too happy about the frequent use of “turtle fucker” (王八操的), apparently unable to appreciate such fine humor. I, on the other hand, have approved the film for viewing in all regions!

In a few months Jiang Wen’s new film, The Sun Also Rises (太阳再次升起), will premiere. It spans over about fifty years of history and tells a story in four parts: mad, love, gun and dream. The main storyline appears to be that of Old Tang and his wife who get relocated to the countryside for re-education during the cultural revolution. Tang finds out that his wife is having an affair with a younger man when he overhears her telling him that “my husband says my belly is like velvet”... (Source: 醉生梦死)

Some gossip. Jiang Wen has something of a playboy reputation and actually had a son with Zhou Yun, one of the actresses, late last year. The kid has come to a good start in the film industry, as Jiang Wen added a scene with him after principal photography was finished. What “role” the baby has is unknown to me.

The film was submitted and approved by the Film Bureau well ahead of time, so as to not repeat the previous failure. It was supposed to premiere at Cannes, but surprisingly it was not selected for the competition lineup. Jiang Wen is currently doing all he can to complete the film and hopes to have it included at the last minute. Failure to enter the Cannes Film Festival will likely also delay the public premier, as it would first premiere at some later film festival, such as Venice. (Source: sina)

Tuya’s Marriage

2007-04-22T02:37:44+00:00

Today I went to the cinema to see Tuya’s Marriage (图雅的婚事), the film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The film is set in Inner Mongolia and revolves around the willful and witty Tuya. Since the spoken language is not so standard Mandarin and I watched this with only Chinese subtitles I might not be clear on all the details, but the story goes something like this: Tuya’s husband Bater is bound to a wheelchair and can’t help with the family’s sheep or do any other useful work. Out of pity for his wife, Bater wants to divorce so that Tuya can find a man who can better care for her and the two children. However, Tuya cares very much about Bater and will only accept a proposal if the the new husband also agrees to care for him. There are several proposals and the developments that follow put quite an emotional pressure on both Tuya and Bater.

Looking at the poster, I expected this film to be a serious act shot in gray and brown colors. To my surprise the dialogue is often witty, especially on the part of Tuya. The characters and their words still linger in my mind after leaving the cinema, which is certainly not true of all films. The cinematography isn’t bad either, making the dull plains of Inner Mongolia more interesting than they probably are. If Tuya’s Marriage comes to your country (in the cinemas or on DVD) don’t miss it!

My rating: 4 out of 5 sheep

What a few Chinese bloggers are saying:

Tuya should love Bater, but if she really does why does she divorce him? [...] This kind of sacrifice doesn’t seem to have any meaning.

Tuya’s Marriage [...] has none of the tiring sour narcissistic quality of some of the sixth generation director’s so called art films.

Wang Quanan displays his outstanding control over the medium. He can make the audience cry, for example when...

Do you want to be Jackie Chan’s successor?

2007-04-10T17:37:03+00:00

I just saw on CCTV 9’s Culture Express that Jackie Chan (成龙) is launching a TV show to search for his successor. This is very good news as Jackie Chan was at his peak in the 70’s with Drunken Master (醉拳) and hasn’t been quite so agile lately. The Disciple (“龙”的传人), as the show is called, will be aired on a local Beijing TV channel. If you are of Chinese origin and feel the calling, why not sign up? The top 10 contenders will appear in a movie produced by Jackie Chan, to premier before the 2008 Olympics.

Chan has actually already realized that his real successor is Tony Jaa of Ong-Bak fame. Jaa was offered a part in Rush Hour 3, but he was busy and declined.

一位独特的人？

2007-04-10T02:06:26+00:00

Homework for everyone’s entertainment.

老师布置的作业：写一篇关于一位很独特的人的文章。我想了很久也没有想出任何可写下的。我终于决定写自己的故事。我不是个自高自大的人，对于自己来说我不是独特的，而是个普通人。不过我常被人认为奇怪，尤其是我的朋友。

有一天，我走在路边时看见一只很可怜的鸭。它~~一身肮脏~~浑身脏脏的，我一见就想把它抱回家去洗。我的朋友说我傻，关心鸭无用。我向旁边一看，发现了那只鸭是从一个烤鸭饭馆跑出来的。到这时，我不但想把它洗干净，而且想救它的命。朋友正在哈哈大笑，我无法处理，终于不得不离开了。那只鸭后来被烤了。这种情况对于人家来说是小事，甚至可笑，他们看我的反应就会说我奇怪。

也许我实际上有点奇怪，但是我永远不认为奇怪是坏事。我对各种各样的事情都有不同的观点。我爱讨论，能学会用中文来争论我很高兴。

更新：红色字体为老师指出的错误。

Turkish Star Wars

2007-04-07T16:45:50+00:00

I have just finished watching the 1982 Turkish movie The Man Who Saves The World (a.k.a Turkish Star Wars) and I am appalled. This movie is so bad that it has an international cult following. I now understand why.

An evil wizard wants to conquer the earth and two courageous Turks try to stop him. A big wooden sword and a brain in a box are key elements in the magnificent plot. The space battles are made by using footage from Star Wars, but it is stretched (anamorphic) so that the death star looks like an egg instead of a moon. Most of the action sequences are set to the music of Indiana Jones and the monsters are made of toilet paper or red plush. Also, there’s a short lecture on Islam thrown into the middle of it all!

The whole movie with English subtitles is available on Google Video. Beware, watching this movie is painful!

中国著作权保护期 Chinese copyright term

2007-03-27T20:17:50+00:00

English translation below.

我研究了一下中国的著作权法，目的是了解在哪年之前拍的电影将不再受到保护。我找了很久也没有找到答案，所以终于往知识共享电子邮件讨论中发信问了问。他们让我参考中华人民共和国著作权法（翻译成英文）。这是我找出的：（第二十一条）

电影作品和以类似摄制电影的方法创作的作品、摄影作品，其发表权、本法第十条第一款第（五）项至第（十七）项规定的权利的保护期为五十年，截止于作品首次发表后第五十年的１２月３１日，但作品自创作完成后五十年内未发表的，本法不再保护。

这意味着在1957年之前拍的电影可以自由发行了。我已经把1941年卡通片《铁扇公主》放在archive.org上了，希望将来能上传更多老电影。

这样关于法律的事情很不容易写。Jess已经帮我改正了一下，多谢！如果还有错误请指出来。

我正在尽量做《铁扇公主》英文字幕，希望会有人来帮助。

I’ve done some research on Chinese copyright law with the purpose of learning the copyright term of movies produced in China. Having searched for a long time without results I finally sent an email to the Creative Commons China mailing list asking my question. They referred me to an English translation of the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China. Here’s what I found: (Article 21)

The term of protection for the right of publication or protection for the right of publication or the rights referred to in Article 10, paragraphs (5) to (17), of this Law in respect of a cinematographic work, a work created by virtue of an analogous method of film production or a photographic work shall be fifty years, and expires on 31 December of the fiftieth year after the first publication of such work, provided that any such work that has not been published within fifty years after the completion of its creation shall no longer be protected under this Law.

This means that movies made before 1957 can now be freely distributed. I’ve already uploaded the 1941 animated film Princess Iron Fan to archive.org and hope to be able to make more old movies available in the future.

I am currently working on English subtitles for Princess Iron Fan. All help is appreciated!

孙悟空在《铁扇公主》中
Sun Wukong in Princess Iron Fan

www is deprecated

2007-03-18T20:04:23+00:00

I discovered today that there’s actually a site speaking out in favor of the www prefix. However, the site with the prettiest URL clearly wins the debate:

http://no-www.org vs. http://www.yes-www.org

Notably, only one of the URLs below work:

http://www.no-www.org vs. http://yes-www.org

Updates from the schoolyard

2007-03-18T11:49:23+00:00

After 2 weeks in school I’ve changed classes twice and in the end only take 5 classes with a total of 18 hours per week. The main Chinese class has the greatest teacher ever, teacher Zhang (张老师). She’s a middle aged woman who dresses formally, wears a big smile and doesn’t waste a minute of class time with nonsense. There is only one teacher who is a bit vague in her teaching. She’s the same age as me so I guess it will work out with a few years of experience.

I’ve taken a closer look to find that the person on the North Korean’s badges is the Eternal President of the Republic, Kim Il-sung (i.e. the deceased father). Also, not all of the North Koreans are teachers. One studies automatic control, the stuff you need to make missiles hit their targets (when I studied it in Sweden the examples were often military aircraft or similar). Actually, automatic control is used in lots of industrial processes, so there’s no need to jump to conclusions. If I were a bit less lame I would just ask him.

Back to school

2007-03-06T00:43:46+00:00

The Spring Festival is over and by now I’m almost certain that it’s some kind of mass psychosis. During all the 15 days of celebration there have been fireworks and yesterday the car alarms rang one last time to welcome the new year. I’ve heard that one person was killed and many others injured by fireworks during the festival.

Today classes started again. I’ve jumped up a level since last semester so things are a little different now. I have 2 mandatory courses and 4 selectable courses, in total 20 hours per week. I’ve only had one subject today, so I don’t know yet how things are going to be, but it seems that the level is OK anyway. One seriously cool thing is that I have no less than 5 North Koreans in my class. All of them are men over 40 and some or all of them are teachers. What’s more, all of them wear badges with the beloved leader Kim Jong-il (or maybe his dad, I haven’t looked closely). Given that North Koreans generally can’t leave their country I had never expected to see them in real life, much less talk to them. I’m not sure why but it’s kind of exciting!

Chuandixia: the ancient mountain village

2007-03-01T01:36:53+00:00

My parents will soon be going home to Sweden, so today we made a last little trip. The destination was the small mountain village Chuandixia (川底下) which is two hours west of Beijing by car. In the morning I talked to one of the “freelance” taxi drivers outside of my gate, gave him a look at the map and asked how much he would want to take us there, wait three hours and then take us home. 260 RMB. We jumped in but not having travelled 100 meters he realized he didn’t really know how to get there and called another driver. We waited a while for the new guy to get out of bed and then switched car to his flashy new Volkswagen. He didn’t think 260 RMB sounded to good and wanted 300 RMB which was OK with us. Off we go!

The town is made up of a few hundred buildings thrown up on the foot of a mountain. Since the Ming dynasty this town has been so backwards and uninteresting the houses haven’t changed much at all. When someone discovered this they made the town into a living museum and began charging for entrance. Today both the inhabitants and the tourists were very few so it was quieter than any other place I’ve been to in China so far.

Some of the buildings are very worn down, but there are still many left in good shape.

It’s not only ancient architecture that has been preserved, slogans written on the walls in the Mao era are also left intact.

I’m not positive, but it means something like “Use Mao Zedong’s thought to arm ourselves.” If you know what 头脐 means, please leave me a comment! On the next wall was written “Workers of the world, unite!” Perhaps a lot of people associate this kind of thing with China, but this is actually the first time I’ve seen it in these six months. It seems that ideology isn’t very fashionable in the modern China.

On the way home our driver was complaining that 300 RMB was too little and that he hadn’t realized how far it was. This was probably partially true since the first guy we made the 260 RMB deal with told our second driver that it wasn’t very far, not taking much notice of the distance on the map. Taxi drivers (not just “freelance” drivers) occasionally (try to) trick me in different ways, but I figured 300 RMB was a bit on the low side and offered him 400 RMB. Suddenly he wanted 600 RMB which was plain ridiculous so I just said it was to expensive and we didn’t discuss it anymore. When we arrived back home he again started whining about the 400 RMB I gave him, so I began delivering the prepared “we already agreed on the price” speech. He interrupted me half way through at which point we just walked away. Haggling is very common in China, but trying to double an already negotiated price is just insulting.

Check out my Chuandixia flickr set for some more pictures.

People’s Republic of Me

2007-02-26T00:57:14+00:00

Hangzhou

2007-02-22T01:56:11+00:00

My parents have come to visit me and we’ve travelled to Hangzhou (close to Shanghai) for a few days. With a population of 6 million it’s considered a small city in China and the air is much better than in Beijing. Hangzhou is in the south so it’s a little warmer, spring has already arrived. Our hotel is quite close to West Lake – the main attraction of this city – so we’ve been spending the day discovering it.

My mother discovered the joys of being grabbed in both arms and forcefully photographed by happy Chinese tourists (probably because she has blonde hair). I know by experience that shouting “I am not a zoo” has no effect what so ever, so there’s really nothing to do about it.

We strolled around for about six hours, taking the tourist boat to the islands in the middle of the lake. I took some photos for your viewing pleasure:

Bridge by West Lake

Cherry blossom and Chinese pavilion

This is a very naughty tree. It was caught talking a lot of nonsense about Taiwanese independence and was swiftly dealt with.

There are more pictures in my flickr Hangzhou set.

Hur ser ett kinesiskt tangentbord ut?

2007-02-19T01:46:49+00:00

Min mammas kollega Johan Öjeheim har gått och funderat på hur ett kinesiskt tangentbord ser ut. Är det 30 meter långt? Har det 30 000 tangenter? Har kinesiska datoranvändare jättelånga fingrar? Nej, tråkigt nog ser tangentborden här ut precis som i Sverige. Skulle det finnas en tangent för alla de vanligaste tecknena skulle det behövas runt 2 500 tangenter, men även det är förstås en praktiskt omöjlighet. I kinesiska består de flesta ord av ett eller två tecken, där varje tecken är en stavelse. Hur ett tecken uttalas går i allmänhet inte att se, så därför har man utvecklat pinyin-systemet för att kunna skriva uttal med västerländska bokstäver. Det används bland annat i grundskolan och i ordböcker. För att skriva kinesiska tecken på en dator skriver man ordens uttal med pinyin och låter datorn göra en kvalificerad gissing om vilka tecken det motsvarar. Så här kan det se ut:

Här har jag skrivit ”jingli” och datorn gissar först på ”erfarenhet” (经历 jīnglì). Eftersom det finns många ord som uttalas ungefär likadant så finns här flera alternativ, bland andra ”direktör” (经理 jīnglǐ) och ”energi” (精力 jīnglì). Programvaran för att gissa är förstås ganska komplicerad och ibland blir det fel, då måste man själv välja de rätta tecknena. Så funkar det.

Shellshock Festival

2007-02-18T04:28:23+00:00

Tonight is the Spring Festival (the Chinese new year) and it’s like a war zone. Starting at nine o’clock people began building up to an ear-deafening frenzy of fireworks and firecrackers which was simply unbelievable. The firecrackers were bigger, louder and more dangerous than any I’ve seen before:

Gunpowder smoke and metal oxides created a mist that lay thickly on the streets. The really big fireworks triggered a few car alarms, adding to the feeling that the world was coming to an end. I’ve been told that the Spring Festival is a traditional family holiday, but first and foremost I will remember it as a celebration of shellshock. These video clips don’t quite do justice to the scene, but they’re something to look at anyway:

Fireworks (10 sec, ~500 KB) DivX/MP3 or Theora/Vorbis
Firecrackers (35 sec, ~3 MB) DivX/MP3 or Theora/Vorbis

Svensk Köttinformation lär barnen laga köttbullar

2007-02-16T14:46:00+00:00

Läste i DN på morgonkvisten att Järfällaskolan lagat godast köttbullar i en mattävling. Det låter ganska oförargligt, men den här formuleringen väckte misstankar:

Tävlingen ingår i projektet Barnens egen matskola som är ett samarbete mellan flera organisationer och företag för att uppmuntra unga att laga egen mat.

En av dom välgörande organisationerna visade sig just Svensk Köttinformation. I projektet ingår även en liten råvaruskola, som i år handlar om just kött. Svensk Köttinformation är en branchorganisation vars enda syfte är att förklara för oss svenskar hur nyttigt kött är, hur naturligt det är och hur bra svenska djur har det. Det är inte första och knappast heller sista gången som jag läser om hur Svenskt Köttinformation tillåts göra reklam för sin egen produkt i svenska skolor utan att ifrågasättas. Så här skriver man i materialet:

Sverige har en sträng djurskyddslagstiftning som anses vara den mest omfattande i världen. [...] När djuren mår bra och sköts om på rätt sätt ger de oss bra kött av hög kvalitet. Allt kontrolleras noggrant, från hur djuren har det på gården till hur köttet hanteras i affären.

Sverige har förvisso världens bästa djurskyddslagstiftning, men vi följer den inte. Att djur som mår bra smakar bra kanske inte är osant, men djur som inte mår bra smakar faktiskt likadant. Det är inte sällan man hör nonsens i stil med ”om djuren inte behandlades väl skulle de inte producera bra kött/ägg/mjölk”, men den kopplingen finns helt enkelt inte. Man nämner inte heller köttets påverkan på miljön eller ett enda ord om det (eventuellt) etiskat tveksamma i att föda upp, döda och äta miljontals kännande varelser varje år. Och självklart gör man inte det, deras jobb är ju att göra reklam för sin produkt.

En hyllning till kön

2007-02-13T14:03:02+00:00

Jag läste DN:s artikel om den kinesiska kökampanjen och blev väldigt glad. I Sverige är det väldigt poppis att klanka ner på Kinas kampanjer (förmodligen har man svårt att göra skillnad på den som driver en kampanj och kampanjen i sig) men den här kampanjen borde vi verkligen hylla!

I Sverige har vi en djupt rotad kökultur, vi kan t o m köa utan att stå i rad. Är det t ex flera personer som väntar på att få hjälp i en butik kan vi ställa oss lite utspritt men ändå ha en osynlig kö där alla vet sin plats och väntar på sin tur. Jag har hört en del utbytesstudenter förundras över att vi köar så mycket i Sverige, men jag tycker att det ett smidigt och rättvist system som vi borde sprida över världen. Kina framstår i jämförelse som barbariskt och ociviliserat.

När jag var på filmpremiär och dörrarna slogs upp så behövde jag inte använda fötterna, tryckvågen från hundratals kineser som inte har hört ordet kö bar mig brutalt in i salen och väl inne var det bäst att springa för att hinna få en plats i tumultet. Helt psykedeliskt. Om man ser att det finns lediga platser på tunnelbanan infinner sig en tryckt stämning. Innan dörrarna öppnas är det till synes lugnt. En ton som betyder att dörrarna ska öppnas ljuder och luften stannar nästan. När dörrarna sedan öppnas bryter det loss med full kraft. Samma sak gäller förstås också på bussarna. Och skulle flera personer vänta på taxi på samma ställe kan man bara glömma den svenska osynliga kön, det är bara att försöka manövrera ut dom andra genom smart placering och ivrigt vinkande.

I den nya kampanjen blir den 11:e i varje månad ködagen då alla ska komma ihåg att stå duktigt i kö som civiliserade människor. Så här ser kampanjmaterialet ut:

”Jag står i kö, jag lämnar företräde, jag är lycklig”

Jag vet inte om vi svenskar faktiskt blir lyckliga av att stå i kö, men fint är det i alla fall.

Missa för övrigt inte avsnitt 3 av Världens modernaste land (även på TPB) där Fredrik Lindström, Peter Englund och Lena Sundström pratar ganska roligt om den svenska kökulturen.

在北京的时间一半过了

2007-02-04T22:45:28+00:00

English translation below.

好久没有用中文来写。现在放假，同学们都走了，留下我一个人。我来北京五个月了，天天都上课我的汉语水平提高了不少。我因为期末考试考得不错，所以可以跳班了。如果我跳班我会觉得难一点，可是那样我的进步会更大。这是学习的事情，当然还发生了很多其它事，所以我想写下一些我的经历。

我对北京的生活早就习惯了。空气污染、危险的交通、难吃的面包，在北京遇到这些困难，不过好东西还很多。我特别喜欢的是中国菜，又便宜又好吃！瑞典饭店的菜差不多都有肉所以我很少去，可是在这儿大多数饭店有好吃的素菜。我最喜欢的一些菜是家常豆腐、香辣土豆丝、鱼香茄子、炒面、老醋花生米等等。

北京菜好吃，可是我不喜欢北京的面包。在瑞典面包外面硬、里面软。在中国呢？面包的外面和里面都软！包装上印着“有牛奶！”，可能这是主要原因之一。一般面包不应该有牛奶，我不知道为什么中国人喜欢这种面包。我很想念瑞典的。

中国的谦逊很有意思。这个“哪里”听起来很假的，但我被影响了。有人夸奖我的汉语时我一般说“还差得远呢”，可是我有时候感到不舒服，什么也说不了。有一次一个瑞典人夸奖我，我一下子回答“不是，我没有什么”。以后我就觉得很奇怪，在瑞典说谢谢就行了，说“我没有什么”太谦逊，其实有点不礼貌。

我最快乐的事是私事，不过现在我想让大家知道。我来北京以后很快就爱上了一个天使。她是我的同学，又聪明又漂亮。去香山、做面食、看黄金甲、过圣诞节都是跟她一起的。我们已经在一起四个月了，能当她的男朋友我非常自豪。现在她回越南去了，我当然很想她。我不应该写下来一封情书，我只想说：清娥，我爱你！ Thiên sứ, anh yêu em!

My classmates have all gone home over the holiday, leaving me alone in Beijing. I’ve been here for five months now, attending class every day, so my Mandarin has improved quite a bit. I did well on the final exams so if I want to I can jump up a level. It will get harder if I do, but that way I would be able to improve even more. These are school matters, there have been a lot of other things happening too of course and I’d like to write down a few of my experiences.

It didn’t take long to get accustomed to life in Beijing. Air pollution, dangerous traffic and bad bread, these are a few of Beijing’s downsides, but the positives outweigh the negatives. I especially like Beijing food, it’s both inexpensive and tasty. I very seldom eat out in Sweden, since as good as all dishes have meat. Here however, most restaurants have good vegan food. My favorites include jiachang tofu, fried thin potato strips, sweet & spicy eggplant, fried noodles and peanuts in rice vinegar.

Beijing food may be good, but I do not like the bread. In Sweden bread is hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Here, however, it’s soft inside and out! The packaging says “CONTAINS MILK!” and perhaps this is one of the main causes. Bread shouldn’t generally have milk, I don’t know why the Chinese like this kind of bread. I really miss Swedish bread.

Chinese modesty is very interesting. The standard reply to praise, “where do you get that?” (literally “where?”), sounds very put on, but I’ve also been influenced by it. If someone praises my Mandarin I usually reply “it’s still far from good”, although sometimes I’m too uncomfortable to say anything at all. A while ago a Swedish person complimented me and I instantly replied “oh no, I’m nothing”. Afterwards I thought that was very strange as in Sweden saying “thank you” suffices. Saying “I’m nothing” is too modest, even a bit impolite.

The most joyous matter is a private one, but at this point I’d like the world to know. After arriving in Beijing I very soon fell in love with an angel. She is my classmate and is as intelligent as she is pretty. Going to Fragrant Hills, making pasta, watching Curse of the Golden Flower, celebrating Christmas, we did all of that together. We’ve been together for four months now and I am very proud to be her boyfriend. She’s gone home to Vietnam now, so obviously I miss her a lot. I don’t mean to write a whole love letter, I just want to say: Nga, I love you! Em đẹp lắm, anh yêu em!

Den svensk-kinesiska julen

2007-01-08T00:46:25+00:00

The Swedish-Chinese christmas. Pictures below.

Både jul och nyår är över och det kanske är lite sent att publicera mina bryderier, men jag har ju redan skrivit det så det vore slösaktigt att slänga bort det.

Kineser firar inte jul, för dom tror inte på Jesus. Jag tror inte heller på Jesus men firar jul ändå, en kommersiell, glittrande och dekadent jul. Hade inte julafton varit på en söndag hade jag varit tvungen att skolka, men nu behövdes inte det. Att förbereda julfirande i Beijing var minst sagt intressent. Jag är ju lite konservativ på vissa sätt, så jag ordnade både plastgran, pepparkakshus, risgrynsgröt och glögg.

Saker som jag tagit för givet i mitt liv visade sig vara väldigt svårt att hitta i Kina, som sirap t ex. Jag har varit på alla dom dyraste importbutikerna och letat, men det finns inte sirap. För att lyckas med pepparkaksbaket var jag tvungen att göra egen sirap genom att smälta socker och tillsätta vatten, men det smakar just smält socker och inte sirap. Till slut tog jag en del farinsocker och en del hemmagjord sirap och något till min förvåning smakade pepparkakorna inte konstigt på något sätt, utan just som pepparkakor ska.

Det här med att koka risgrynsgröt var lite spännande. I Sverige köper man grötris, men det finns ju inte här. Men det finns ris, massor av ris. Dessutom har dom en sorts rissoppa som på vissa sätt påminner om just risgrynsgröt, så jag gick till affären och frågade vad man använder för ris till sån soppa och blev hänvisad till vad som i alla fall ser ut som grötris. Jag berättade att jag faktiskt inte skulle göra soppa utan koka ris med mjölk och dom tyckte det verkade väldigt suspekt. Kanel hittade jag också till slut, men det är lite lustigt för här används kanel som krydda till kött, så namnet på namnet kanel innehåller tecknet för kött.

Glögg är ju också gott! Mamma skickade glöggkryddor till mig, så jag hade bara att köpa rödvin. Jag gillar inte vin och har inte köpt en enda flaska tidigare. Dessutom hade jag blivit varnad av en svensk på skolan att kinesiskt rödvin smakar apa. Så jag knallade till affären och frågade efter franskt eller tyskt rödvin och fick några föreläsningar av de två butiksbiträden som samtidigt skulle hjälpa mig (det är ofta så, dom är ju så många och har säkert tråkigt om dom inte får hjälpa nån kund då och då). Till slut valde jag ett Bordeux-vin för 99 RMB (86 SEK). Jag vet inget om vin eller om det är dyrt, men om det är helgerån att använda sånt vin till glögg är jag desto gladare. Glöggen dracks med russin och mandel och smakade glögg.

Några bilder från mitt julfirande:

Det krävs (ett) år av träning för att bli så här bra.

Ovanför dörren står tecknet för lycka (福) skrivet upp-och-ner. När man säger ”lycka är upp-och-ner” (福倒了) låter det som ”lyckan har kommit” (福到了), ett slags ordvits som man använder vid kinesiska högtider. Lite töntigt mångkulturellt kanske, men det var kul i alla fall.

Julen finns på IKEA, så även den här lilla plastgranen med dekorationer.

Curse of the Golden Flower

2006-12-15T02:41:38+00:00

I have just been to the Beijing premiere of Zhang Yimou’s new film, Curse of the Golden Flower. (Zhang Yimou is the director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers.) This is allegedly the most expensive film ever made in China, and it shows. Furthermore, it is the first time Zhang Yimou and Gong Li have worked together in over 10 years. Also joining the game is Hongkong action star Chow Yun-Fat and Taiwanese pop-singer, first-time actor Jay Chou.

The story is set in the Forbidden Palace in 9th century, the Tang dynasty. It revolves around the dysfunctional imperial family, plotting and counter-plotting against each other while trying to maintain a facade of family unity. The cold-hearted and brutal emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) has a chilly relationship with the empress (Gong Li). Although the empress does not consider herself sick the emperor makes her drink medicine every other hour, with her health steadily declining. The crown prince has a secret love affair with the imperial physician’s daughter and wants to leave the palace in order to be with her. The second prince (Jay Chou) is concerned by the empresses failing health and her obsession with embroidering golden chrysanthemums. The third prince is all but forgotten. As the plot unfolds, action ensues as dark secrets are revealed and the private armies of the members of the imperial family fight it out with each other.

Gong Li truly is a wonderful actor, and it’s great to see Zhang Yimou and her working together again. The result is, not surprisingly, splendid. Chow Yun-Fat is obviously also a very experienced actor and does a great job as the emperor. Before watching the movie I was very worried that Jay Chou (obviously cast for his popularity as a singer and not his acting skills) would ruin the movie, but I am happy to report that he speaks relatively little and isn’t an horrible actor, albeit not a great one either. I feel that the acting of Liu Ye (the crown prince) also deserves mention, not bad at all.

As you can expect from a Zhang Yimou film, it is a treat for the eye. A replica of part of the Forbidden City was built for this movie, and it is truly grand. The outer palace is covered with yellow chrysanthemums and the inner palace is clad in bright, beautiful colors. The costumes are all very beautiful, the emperor and empress are literally covered in gold. My sympathy for the women in this movie, who all had to wear push-up costumes showing a lot of bosom. A few sequences of the movie that are set in the mountains are also very impressive. The music (which feels surprisingly un-Chinese) of course also helps to add to the grandness of the settings.

The action sequences are different from Hero or House of Flying Daggers in that they are less stylized and feel more real. A group of assassins who dress in black and fly through the air with the aid of grappling hooks are seriously cool. An army of 10,000 men in golden armour is also very impressive, given that they are not computer generated but actual people (there are a lot of people in China). There is also a level of brutality that is completely new for Zhang Yimou in that the violence isn’t just violent, at times it’s also deeply emotional and personal.

Seeing this movie at the premiere here in China is special to me since I liked Zhang Yimou’s movies long before I came here and might even attribute some of my interest in China to him. Sitting in a cinema full of Chinese people was interesting. First, everyone laughed when Jay Chou was first shown. Jay Chou is a very well known face here and seeing him in armor is obviously very funny to a lot of people. Also, there is some humor in this movie that I would never have picked up without the help of a cinema full of laughing people. At first I didn’t get it, but after thinking for a few minutes it came to me (much too late to laugh). It’s all word play, so it just doesn’t translate into the English subtitles.

Needless to say, I like this movie. Although it is not perfect, I have nothing in particular to complain about. I hope you like it too.

Det finns inga prinsessor mer

2006-12-11T18:35:02+00:00

About Laleh’s new album. English summary below.

Nu har jag lyssnat på Lalehs nya skiva Prinsessor och tänker leka musikrecensent. Efter en fantastisk första skiva hade jag stora förhoppningar på Prinsessor. Jag kan inte säga att besviken, men tycker ändå inte att den är lika stark som den första skivan. Överlag är den mindre sprallig, med fler lugna låtar. En mer pretentiös recensent skulle kanske säga att den här skivan är mer mogen, men jag uppskattade verkligen spretigheten på den första och tycker inte att det är en förbättring. Detta till trots är det en bra skiva och jag ska säga något om höjdpunkterna.

November. Den här låten känns positiv trots att texten handlar om människor som är elaka mot varandra. Musikaliskt är det också den låt jag gillar bäst.

Prinsessor. Pianoslingan påminner mig om en gammal spökfilm. ”Det finns inga prinsessor mer, kan vi inte sluta leka det? Det finns inga soldater mer, kan vi inte sluta leka det?” Jag vet inte riktigt vad den här låten vill säga... jag vill gärna tolka det som ”avskaffa monarkin och försvaret”, men det är nog inte hela sanningen. Kanske är det bristen på tydligt politiska låtar (i stil med Bostadsansökan) som får mig att vilja tolka in mer än vad som finns.

I Know This. Jag gillar både texten och musiken. ”Let’s see how society would work without the people go to work.” Först trodde jag att texten ironiserade över naivt idealistiska människor, men Laleh känns inte så ironisk. Den avslutas med ”I change my mind daily” så den ska nog inte ses som ett manifest.

Andra bra låtar är ”Det är vi som bestämmer”, ”Call on Me” och ”Step on You”. Sammanfattningsvis gillar jag Lalehs nya skiva, men den är inte perfekt.

Summary

Laleh’s new album Prinsessor (princesses) is really good, but not as good as the first one. About half the songs are in English, of which I especially recommend November, I Know This and Step on You.

Hjortron, jag älskar dig!

2006-11-28T23:35:06+00:00

Cloudberry, I love you!

Idag åkte jag till IKEA för att köpa en kakform. Enligt ryktet är IKEA-varuhuset här i Beijing näst störst i världen efter det i Stockholm. Utanför kassorna har dom svensk sprit, svensk mat och svenskt godis. Jag såg en burk hjortronsylt och köpte direkt! Jag köpte även lingonsylt, knäckebröd, pepparkakor och fläderbärsaft. Jag blir nog tvungen att laga pannkakor för att få tillfälle att äta min hjortronsylt... jag älskar hjorton!

Sympathy for the gloveless

2006-11-20T21:23:55+00:00

I would like to publicly express my sympathy for those who have no gloves, especially for my friend Tobias who is having difficulties finding a suitable pair.

Goodbye Wikipedia?

2006-11-19T20:42:30+00:00

It seems like Wikipedia is once again inaccessible. Maybe it was just a glitch in the political/technical system after all.

Chopstick pasta

2006-11-10T22:09:09+00:00

Today I once again made pasta, with real pasta this time! A little bird whispered in my ear that you can actually eat pasta with chopsticks... I’m just writing to tell you all that it’s true, who would have thought?

Yes, that’s a knife and fork on the table. Yes Emil, the V-sign is just to spite you. No Carl, the ketchup is not just there to spite you.

I can’t believe it’s not pasta!

2006-11-05T18:22:39+00:00

Since I have mid-term exams next week I need to spend a lot of time on elaborate cooking experiments instead of studying. In Sweden I often make pasta (spaghetti or macaroni) with some tasty sauce. Yesterday I accidentally made something resembling pasta sauce when I used a kind of tofu that disintegrated into small pieces much like the soy granulate I use in Sweden (which in turn imitates ground meat). Therefore, today I set out to make pasta!

Making the pasta sauce was simple enough, I used onion, garlic, tomato, disintegrating tofu, ketchup, pepper, bouillon and parsley. However, my local store doesn’t have any kind of pasta, so I ended up buying a type of noodles. After all, the ingredients and shape are the same... Actually, the Chinese really like to claim all kinds of inventions as Chinese, and pasta is no exception. Allegedly, Marco Polo saw noodles in China and brought back the concept to Italy. As of recently, however, we can all consult Wikipedia to learn that this is not true (if we understand English anyway). Nevertheless, using noodles as pasta kind of works.

Eat me!

Wikipedia accessible in China

2006-11-04T23:23:52+00:00

My life online hasn’t been quite the same since I came to China because I haven’t been able to access Wikipedia. It seems that tonight, however, I can. The Wikipedia article on the issue claims that Wikipedia may have been accessible as early as October 10, but today is the first time I’ve had such luck. It doesn’t work completely reliably however... Also, it seems that only the English Wikipedia is affected, the Swedish and Chinese Wikipedia are still inaccessible. Still, it’s progress.

Long live Wikipedia! Wikipedia万岁!

Fragrant Hills

2006-10-28T23:41:55+00:00

I was at Fragrant Hills Park (香山公园) today and found myself in a tree.

童话

2006-10-13T22:05:59+00:00

I really like this song by 王光良 (Wáng Guāngliáng). The first time I heard it was in Sweden. The second time was outside a market here in Beijing. I recognized it and asked someone what it was called. I thought he said 红花 (hóng huā) but when I came home I couldn’t find a song by that name, nor did I remember the melody or lyrics. A few days later I heard it again but again failed to remember anything afterwards. One morning I suddenly remembered the melody and sang it to my computer. With a little help from friends I now know that it’s called 童话 (tóng huà), fairytale. In the unlikely event that it might be useful to someone else, here is my translation of the lyrics:

忘了有多久
再没听到你
对我说你最爱的故事
我想了很久
我开始慌了
是不是我又做错了什么

I’ve forgotten how long it’s been
since I last listened to you
tell me your favorite story.
I’ve wondered for so long,
I’ve begun to worry,
have I done something wrong again?

你哭着对我说
童话里都是骗人的
我不可能是你的王子
也许你不会懂
从你说爱我以后
我的天空星星都亮了

You cried when you said to me
fairytales are all make believe,
I can’t be your prince.
Perhaps you can’t understand,
after you said you love me
the stars on my sky are bright.

我愿变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信
相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

I’m willing to change into
the angel in your fairytale,
stretching my hands like wings to protect you.
You must believe,
believe that we can be like that fairytale.
And we will live happily ever after.

你哭着对我说…

You cried when you said to me…

我愿变成童话里…

I’m willing to change into…

我要变成童话里…

I want to change into…

我会变成童话里…

I can change into…

一起写我们的结局

Together we write our ending.

I’m still alive

2006-10-11T22:10:52+00:00

Things have started to become familiar now. School is good, the food is good, my apartment is good. Yesterday I successfully took a taxi to pick up a package at the post office. I chatted a long while with the taxi driver, which feels like real progress since previously I’ve had serious difficulties understanding what the taxi drivers are saying. After being here for a while, a few things seem to come up more often than not:

Do you speak English in Sweden? It’s hardly strange that Beijingers don’t know, but I still find it a little amusing that so many think that English is Sweden’s official language. I recently learned that Sweden actually doesn’t have an official language.
瓦尔德内尔 (Wǎěrdénèiěr) J O Waldner, the Swedish ping pong player. A lot of people seem to know of him. I’ve heard that he has a bar in the embassy area here in Beijing.
啊，这么高啊！ “Woa, so tall!” Especially children say this. I pretend not to notice.

One thing that is less than cool is the massive amount of security guards, surveillance and the like. Gated communities are the norm for the middle class (I live in one). Trying to walk in the general direction to where you’re going will often fail because there is a brick wall stopping you. There are cameras everywhere and every building has someone sitting in a room watching it all.

Of course this is all for our “protection”, but it feels quite uneasy since the thing it protects us from is all the people who have nothing. Not only is the gap between rich and poor very big, the poor are also very poor. There are often beggars on my way to school which isn’t exactly what I’m used to. I hate it when they thank me, I shouldn’t be allowed to decide if they live or die, shouldn’t be thanked. It’s very easy to become cynical about it all, and I don’t know if it’s really any use giving them money. Nothing I can do makes me feel “good” anyway, and my pity is utterly useless.

So long.

我的一天

2006-09-28T16:24:17+00:00

Today’s homework is to write about a typical day in my Beijing life. Enjoy.

我每天早上六点半起床。早饭我常吃米酒汤或者馒头。因为大学有点儿远所以我差一刻八点应该去教室。虽然走路比较长久但是我喜欢。八点半上课。我们每天都有四节课、十二点半下课。下课以后我跟同学们一起去吃午饭。我们有时候在食堂吃、有时候在校园外面的饭店吃。然后我回去家。下午如果我累我休息一下。我常常用电脑编程、听音乐、上上网跟朋友们一起聊天儿、给爸爸妈妈发电邮。晚上我做饭、做作业、洗澡。我大概十一点钟睡觉、以后做梦奇妙。

Don’t worry mom

2006-09-27T22:03:55+00:00

Since my previous food related post, I’ve actually succeeded at ordering vegan food every time. Today I went to eat dinner without any friends or dictionaries and still succeeded to communicate my wishes. There weren’t even any pictures in the menu! My standard phrase is now 《我什么肉也不吃，你有素菜吗？》 and it hasn’t failed yet. The problem now is rather that my diet isn’t very varied, I mostly eat tofu and rice. I just moved to an apartment of my own, so I should start making food myself to get a bit of variation (in terms of taste and nutrition). Just thought I’d share...

Humanisterna

2006-09-23T18:41:35+00:00

About a Swedish organization I recently discovered, Humanisterna.

För några månader sen såg jag en debatt på Nyhetsmorgon mellan en ”häxa” och en person som sa en massa bra saker, sånt som jag skulle vilja säga. Idag läste jag på SVT Opinion om det omoraliska i att hindra stamcellsforskning på religiös grund och tyckte att det var väldigt bra. Jag gillar särskilt språkbruket – utan omsvep kallas religiösa motiv för ”irrationella” och ”vidskepliga”. Det visade sig att det är samma person som var så bra i Nyhetsmorgon som skrivit det: Christer Sturmark, ordförande i förbundet Humanisterna. Vid första anblick verkar Humanisterna väldigt bra, deras paroll är ”för en sekulär livssyn byggd på förnuft, medmänsklighet, tolerans och ansvar”. Förhoppningsvis är det inte en toppstyrd gubbförening, men det vet jag inte än.

Jag drar mig till minnes en diskussion jag hade med Emil för tre år sen. Vi satt i hans kök och pratade politik (jag hade fel, för övrigt). Av någon anledning kom vi in på ”humanism”, ett ideal som Emil sade sig bekänna sig till. Han kunde inte konkret förklara vad humanism är, så jag tyckte att det var otroligt flummigt och ville inte vara med. Dessutom gillade jag inte namnet, ”humanism”, som tycks förutsätta en människo-centrisk syn som bortser från de icke-mänskliga djurens intressen. Den kritiken är nog, efter lite eftertanke, ungefär lika välgrundad som föreställningen att feminismen sätter kvinnor före män för att det heter just ”feminism”. Nej, sånt trams borde jag inte hålla på med, inte utan att först ta reda på vad humanism faktiskt innebär.

Jag hittade Humanist Manifesto 2000 på Humanisternas hemsida (utöver det finns ingen koppling). Jag har inte läst hela än, men ska göra det. Min förhoppning är att det kan vara en hjälp på vägen att knyta ihop axiom som jag tror på (utilitarism, typ) med en del fluffiga (men sympatiska) ideal som jag skulle vilja kunna bekänna mig till (demokrati och mänskliga rättigheter, typ). Jag vill vara som du, Emil!

A few pictures

2006-09-18T17:46:40+00:00

I apologize for the appalling lack of pictures so far. I don’t want to carry around my camera everywhere, but here’s a few pictures for you anyway:

I really am in China. This is the flag in front of Tiananmen.

I was a bit lost the first day and visited another university. BLCU doesn’t have a Mao statue, by the way.

A street in Haidian, not far from where I live.

Yes, it’s the tobacco (烟), tea (茶) and liquor (酒) shop.

Hej då Sverige

2006-09-18T07:32:26+00:00

About the results in the Swedish election. I am not pleased.

Jaha, så vann borgarna valet, lagom kul. Nu kan vi väl glömma att Sverige ska föra en bra miljö- eller utrikespolitik. Djurskyddsmyndigheten lär dom väl också lägga ner. Något spår av feminism har väl ingen sett till hos borgarna heller. Nu ska vi alla vara individer och göra fria val istället...

Tangdynastin och Li Ruihuan

2006-09-17T12:42:02+00:00

Sorry, this is about a Chinese version of a Swedish song and is therefore written in Swedish and Chinese.

Eftersom jag har tråkigt idag sitter jag vid datorn och lyssnar på Doktor Kosmos. Sista spåret på EP:n Jimi Tenor och Kennet Johnsson är en kinesisk version av låten med samma namn. Den kinesiska titeln är 唐朝和李瑞环, ”Tangdynastin och Li Ruihuan”. Tangdynastin är namnet på ett gammalt kinesiskt rockband och Li Ruihuan är en kinesisk politiker. Den som kan läsa Wikipedia kan istället läsa om Tangdynastin och Li Ruihuan.

Texten är mer eller mindre direktöversatt:

我骑看摇滚
唐朝在那儿演出
真他妈的好，真他妈的好
我觉得真他妈的他妈的好

Jag går för att titta på rock.
Tangdynastin spelar där.
Så jävla bra, så jävla bra.
Jag tycker att det är så jävla, jävla bra.

因为我会恋爱
因为我会恋爱
因为我在这儿
因为我可以恋爱

För jag kan bli kär.
För jag kan bli kär.
För jag är här.
För jag kan bli kär.

哦多么陶醉
肏多么陶醉

Å, vad bra.
Fan, vad bra.

Jag varken kan eller orkar skriva ner hela texten, men biten om Li Ruihuan är rolig. Precis som Kennet Johnsson har han en t-shirt från Fruit of the Loom och är cirka 43 år.

他说仍然我很累听说瑞典工人阶级不生存

Han säger att han är trött på att höra att svensk arbetarklass inte finns längre.

Demoversionen av Länderna (sista spåret på Le Punkrocker) är också väldigt lärorik:

I Kina är dom supermånga. Tjenare är det vanligaste ordet i Kina eftersom dom träffar så många personer. Om man ställde alla kineser på rad så skulle det bli en skitlång rad. Då förstår du kanske att dom är supermånga.

Kinesiska hälsningar till alla Doktor Kosmos-fans!

一封家书

2006-09-15T17:36:18+00:00

In class today we listened to a song called 一封家书 (A Letter Home) by 李春波 (Li Chunbo). It’s from 1993 and is quite well known (in China). Because I’m bored and because I think the song says something about Chinese culture, I’ll try translating the lyrics. Our teacher already did part of the job, of course. Also, thanks to Jess for helping out. Pinyin in brackets.

亲爱的爸爸妈妈 (qīnài de bàba māma)
你们好吗 (nǐmen hǎo ma)
现在工作很忙吧 (xiànzài gōngzuò hěn máng ba)
身体好吧 (shēntǐ hǎo ba)

Dear dad and mom.
How are you?
Have you been busy at work?
Do you have your health?

我现在广州挺好的 (wǒ xiànzài Guǎngzhōu tǐng hǎo de)
爸爸妈妈不要太牵挂 (bàba māma bú yào tài qiānguà)
虽然我很少写信 (suīrán wǒ hěnshǎo xiě xìn)
其实我很想家 (qíshí wǒ hěn xiǎngjiā)

I’m doing very well in Guangzhou now.
Dad and mom don’t need to worry.
Although I don’t write very often,
I’m actually very homesick.

爸爸每天都上班吗 (bàba měitiān dōu shàngbān ma)
管得不严就不要去了 (guǎndé bù yán jiù bú yào qù le)
干了一辈子革命工作 (gàn le yíbèizi gémìng gōngzuò)
也该歇歇了 (yě gāi xiē xiē le)

Does dad go to work every day?
If the manager isn’t too strict, he doesn’t need to go.
Having done revolutionary work for a lifetime,
he too deserves to rest.

我买了一件毛衣给妈妈 (wǒ mǎi le yí jiàn máoyī gěi māma)
别舍不得穿上吧 (bié shěbudé chuānshàng ba)
以前儿子不太听话 (yǐqián érzi bù tài tīnghuà)
现在懂事他长大了 (xiànzài dǒngshì tā zhǎngdà le)

I bought a sweater for mom,
please don’t be afraid to use it.
Before your son wasn’t very obedient,
but he’s sensible and grown up now.

哥哥姐姐常回来吗 (gēge jiějie cháng huí lái ma)
替我问候他们吧 (tì wǒ wènhòu tāmen ba)
有什么活儿就让他们干 (yǒu shénme huór jiù ràng tāmen gàn)
自己孩子有什么客气的 (zìjǐ háizi yǒu shénme kèqì de)

Do brother and sister come home to visit often?
Please give them my greetings.
If you have any housework, let them do it.
You’re own children should pay their respect.

爸爸妈妈多保重身体 (bàba māma duō bǎozhòng shēntǐ)
不要让儿子放心不下 (bú yào ràng érzi fàngxīnbúxià)
今年春节我一定回家 (jīnnián chūnjié wǒ yídìng huí jiā)
好了先写到这儿吧 (hǎo le xiān xiě dào zhèr ba)

Dad and mom, take good care of your health,
don’t let your son worry about you.
This Spring Festival I’m coming home for sure.
I should stop writing now.

此致敬礼 (cǐzhì jìnglǐ)
此致那个敬礼 (cǐzhì nàgè jìnglǐ)
一九九三年十月十八号 (yī jiǔ jiǔ sān nián shí yuè shí bā hào)

Regards.
October 18, 1993.

As a service to my readers, here’s the song for you to download. I’m sorry I can only provide it in mp3-format, but I found it on Baidu (Chinas biggest search engine). Copyright 李春波 1993. Used without permission, of course.

Chinese fonts and input in Ubuntu

2006-09-12T17:02:38+00:00

To whom it may concern. If you install Ubuntu Dapper (for other distributions, see comments below) with another language than Chinese as the main one, getting Chinese fonts and input to work is unfortunately non-trivial. Not all steps can be done via a friendly, graphical interface.

First, install the Chinese language support files. You can do this in “System > Administration > Language Support” or via aptitude:

$ sudo aptitude install language-support-zh

This will install input support via smart-pinyin and SCIM, but you will need to activate it for your locale:

$ im-switch -s zh_CN

This creates a link in ~/.xinput.d/ for your current locale. Next time you login you should be able to activate pinyin input by pressing Ctrl+Space. There are also a lot of other input methods (e.g. stroke based) which you may want to deactivate.

If you have some Japanese and Korean fonts installed (Ubuntu does by default), you will notice that the Chinese characters you write are shown with a mixture of fonts, which looks terrible (the same occurs if you have more than one Chinese font). Tell the font manager (fontconfig) that you want Chinese fonts by default:

$ sudo fontconfig-voodoo -s zh_CN

That’s it. If you are not using Ubuntu, you’ll want to install the smart-pinyin input method in SCIM. Use im-switch to create the hooks that activate SCIM when you start your desktop. If you have no Chinese fonts, look for the Arphic TrueType fonts. fontconfig-voodoo is part of the Ubuntu package language-selector-common. If you don’t have a similar tool in your distribution, consider copying /usr/share/language-selector/fontconfig/zh_CN from an Ubuntu box and hooking it into fontconfig (you’re on your own).

Shit happens, repeatedly

2006-09-09T17:15:01+00:00

The initial success with getting vegan food seems to have been beginners luck, I haven’t done so great lately. Every time that I’ve seen the actual food or a picture of it, I’ve succeeded, but every time I’ve only had a menu and a waiter to consult, I’ve failed. Twice I got stuff with egg in it because I only asked for a vegetable dish (素菜). Today, I really confirmed that what I ordered (常家豆腐) didn’t have meat or eggs. After eating a while, I thought that the taste of the white meaty-looking stuff was familiar. I think it was chicken. Either it was a miscommunication or chicken isn’t counted as meat (肉). I thought a bit about asking what it was and why they had said that the dish had no meat, but I chickened out (no pun intended). I can’t keep failing like this, so I should learn how to ask what the ingredients are and to give a complete list of things I don’t want (meat, bird, fish, egg, milk).

Cooking at home is much safer, but not as fun. The grocery stores actually have lots of cool stuff that we don’t have in Sweden, the most useful being tofu in different shapes, forms and tastes. At the store today I was looking at the bread (not the western kind, more like buns that you steam cook) and the people behind the counter were repeating the same thing a few times until I realized they were addressing me. I just gave them a surprised/confused look and kept on looking. A while later I came back and one guy came up to me and asked me the same question again. I figured he was asking if I was looking for something so I said that I was just taking a look. He went back behind the counter and the others asked him if I had understood. He said I had not. They all seemed somewhat amused and I pretended not to notice.

Chinese South Park

2006-09-05T21:41:45+00:00

I’ve been watching some TV and found something quite psychedelic. The show is called Bravo东东 and the influence of South Park is quite obvious:

Image copyright someone else, used without permission.

I can’t understand what they’re saying so I don’t know if it’s funny, but it seems to be less politically incorrect than South Park anyway. When searching for some info on the show I stumbled up this news item: Foreign Cartoons to Be Banned in ‘Golden Hours’ (17-20). The policy was supposed to come in effect on September 1, so perhaps this could explain why I’ve been seeing this particular show so often (and perhaps not).

Going to school

2006-09-05T14:53:12+00:00

It seems I was wrong about the group I’m in, it’s actually beginners level 1, just starting at lesson 16. This is perhaps less than I had hoped for, but we got the books today and the level seems about right. If it’s too easy (which I’m afraid it won’t be) I can move up one class. Actual classes are Monday-Friday 8:30-12:30, starting tomorrow.

There is one other Swede in my class and people from other places like Australia, The UK, Japan, The Philippines and Germany. We all use Chinese names, and mine is 菲利普 (feilipu).

BeijingMUD

2006-09-04T13:33:10+00:00

Beijing is actually a MUD (online text adventure game)! Almost all the streets run in east-west or south-north direction and the signs in the intersections are marked with east/south/west/north. The city planners obviously thought in terms of a MUD, thousands of years before those silly computer science students. My route to school is south, east, south, east, south, south, south.

Walking takes about half an hour. The taxi drivers don’t know where anything is and air pollution is a big problem (today is the first day that the sky is blue since I arrived) so I think I might try the bus.

I got the results of the placement exam today and had a small oral/written test and it seems I’m going to be in the beginners level 2 group, which is about what I had hoped for.

I also failed miserably at ordering food today. I went to a restaurant and asked for tofu, having come to believe it’s a magic word. I selected one of the two tofu dishes by guessing. Did I want a bowl of noodles too? Well... OK. WRONG! The noodle soup also had plenty of meat, which didn’t look very nice even as meat goes. I wasn’t sure asking for another bowl of noodles without meat would be of any use (in hindsight, this may not be true), so I just ate the noodles and left the meat. Neither the noodles nor the tofu was very good, so I bought some kind of panfried bread on the way home which tasted better (even if the nutritional value is questionable).

Lesson 2: getting scammed

2006-09-01T22:43:14+00:00

I did the placement test at BLCU this morning and had the whole afternoon free, so I played the tourist game by going to Tiananmen square fully equipped with backpack and camera. While trying to get a descent picture of Mao I was approached by what I thought was a middle aged couple. They said (in English) that I was tall. It’s not the first time (nor has it happened often) so I thought nothing of it and started speaking Mandarin with them, with varying degrees of success. I asked where I should go because I would get to see Tiananmen later anyway, and they suggested I go to the older parts of the city, south of Tiananmen square. I got the impression that they were tourists from Hubei (why would a Beijing resident subject him-/herself to the tourists willingly?) and they were also going to old Beijing. After some window shopping I was hungry and they suggested we drink some tea before we eat. What the heck. I had actually read all about the teahouse scam before coming here, but felt smart and unscammable, having deflected an attempt at the art exhibition scam only minutes before I met this couple.

Soon after we got to the teahouse warning bells were ringing. Tea was served without a menu being shown, so I asked to see the prices and then drank no more. No doubt a real teahouse with the ceremony and all can be expensive, but why would someone go to one of those with someone they just met? Trying to cut my losses without putting up a fight (I don’t know what would happen and didn’t want to try) I ended up paying a third of the bill, 145 yuan (after refusing to pay first the full 440 yuan and then half of the bill). A ridiculous price indeed, but still not worth a fight. When asked to sign some receipt (obviously so that the couple could come back later to collect their share) I signed “Musse Pigg” (Mickey Mouse in Swedish) in a desperate attempt to regain some honor. On the way out I noticed we had passed through a opticians shop to get to the “teahouse”. Obviously this makes no sense, but I hadn’t even noticed it when going in. Oddly enough they didn’t immediately disappear even though I gave them the opportunity to do so, so we actually parted in a friendly fashion. It makes me wonder if they didn’t understand that I understood I was being scammed and were looking to scam me some more...

For an hours work, I got humiliated a bit, got to practice my Mandarin a bit and they get to split 145 yuan between three people. They didn’t exactly fit the description of the typical scammer (young pretty girl), nor were they scared away by my talking Mandarin. So, to anyone else coming to China looking to not get scammed:

You’re not smarter than everyone else (be humble).
Don’t trust people, even if they’re friendly (be cynical).
If you find yourself being scammed, stop.

I’ll make sure to go to an actual teahouse with actual friends when I have the opportunity, it does seem quite promising after all.

Update

Here’s a photo I appear to accidentally have taken of the scammers when they first approached me. It’s not great as portraits go, but still...

Lesson 1: food

2006-08-31T23:09:58+00:00

The first order of business is to not die, and therefore food. After registering at BLCU today it was way past lunch and I was very hungry, so I went to a local restaurant. I asked if they had tofu (你有豆腐吗？, thank you Jun) but they didn’t. They did however realize that I wanted some vegetable dish and showed me the menu. Since explaining that I don’t eat meat or fish (which were swimming next to me) didn’t deter them, I ordered something that looked vegan enough. Tea was served with the food, but since I was thirsty and hot I asked to have some water too. Much to my surprise, the water was even warmer than the tea. I though this was simply the custom, but was later told it’s because the tap water is undrinkable, so they boil it first. After eating, I went to buy a bottle of water.

I tried my luck at the food game again some hours later and went to ask at a street stand if they had tofu. They didn’t, but once again this resulted in me being shown the vegetarian options. Paying was interesting... the price was 1 yuan, but I tried paying with a 1 jiao bill, which is 0.1 yuan. To add to the confusion, the jiao is called mao in speech, so reading on the bill is of no use. Anyway, a child explained to me and I was able to pay for the meal in full.

I have arrived

2006-08-30T06:44:59+00:00

Yep, here I am in Beijing. It’s 12:44 local time and I’m at my mother’s friend’s friend’s husband’s brother’s home. Jetlag will no doubt strike me down soon, so I’ll be back with more later...

Motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane

2006-08-27T02:42:38+00:00

Yes, today I went to see Snakes on a Plane with a bunch of friends. I mostly missed out on the online hype that has been going on, but somehow though it would be a good idea to see it. I laughed a lot, because it was so bizarre... Samuel L. Jackson’s line “I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” was apparently added after shooting first finished to please online fans, but it felt completely misplaced and didn’t really work.

In short, it makes no sense... the WTF factor is quite high and makes it almost enjoyable, but really... I’m not going to make a list of how it doesn’t make sense, I don’t doubt others have got that covered. The title is pretty awesome, so expect even worse movies parodying this movie in a year or two.

The two best songs ever

2006-08-19T14:09:19+00:00

Helter Skelter in mono
Helter Skelter in stereo

Onwards to victory!

2006-08-10T21:57:37+00:00

Victory is near! I’m getting on a plane to Beijing in less than three weeks. I’ve got my visa but I haven’t looked for a place to live yet, which is a source of concern for my mother and a source of excitement for myself. The plan is to stay at a hotel the first night and then try to find something. I’ve located BLCU on Google Maps. If you zoom out you can see that it’s to the north-west of the Forbidden City (the big rectangular structure).

There will be a entrance exam on the first day, so I’ve been studying a little in my spare time in the hope of being able to get into a non-beginners group. Part of that “studying” has been watching Chinese (Mandarin) television dramas. I’ve seen a few good Taiwanese dramas (It Started With a Kiss!), but it seems as if all the popular mainland dramas are martial arts and/or period dramas which have failed to impress me. It appears that some of the voices are dubbed which makes it all seem a bit “off” (dubbed in the same same language as the actor speaks, just like old Hong Kong movies). I wish I were German, then I wouldn’t notice. (I wonder if it’s easier for a ventriloquist to fool a German audience...)

My summer internship at Opera turned out super-awesome and I’m going to keep working part-time the whole year while I’m in Beijing. Getting experience working in China would be awesome, so I hope I’ll have a chance to spend some time at the Opera office in Beijing (although I’ll mostly be working at home, wherever that is). I discovered that Beijing is “bigger” than Linköping, so it might take a long time to get to the office by bus/subway, since it’s not in the same district as BLCU.

I’ve been doing some reading on Wikipedia and found out all sorts of useful things: There’s a chopstick tax to discourage the use of disposable chopsticks. Beijing has population of 8.5 million (Linköping: 136,000). The girl:boy birth ratio is 100:117 due to political/cultural reasons. Beijing taxis have license plates that begin with 北B. The average height of the Chinese is approximately 170 and 160 cm for men and women respectively. China holds the world record in capital punishment. Finally, you can’t see the Great Wall of China from the moon!

Riksdagspartierna vs. webbstandarder

2006-07-13T02:30:48+00:00

English summary below.

Det är valår och alla partier vill synas och höras så mycket som möjligt, så även på webben kan man förmoda. Säkert är de mest intresserade av att kommunicera med människor, men jag har istället undersökt hur bra de sju riksdagspartierna är på att kommunicera med datorer genom att se hur väl de följer de webbstandarder som finns.

Många webbsidor är ett hopkok av HTML-kod som saknar strikt struktur, blandar presentation med innehåll och som inte i egentlig mening följer någon standard. Webbstandarder har alltid varit viktiga, för att inte säga vitala, för webbens utveckling. De är den gemensamma plattform som gör webben till just ett nätverk och inte en samling av isolerade öar. Nätverket innehåller otroligt mycket information, men dessvärre är det i dagsläget svårt att tolka informationen eftersom den saknar struktur.

Ponera att man vill skapa en politisk portalsida som automatiskt bevakar partiernas pressmeddelanden på deras webbsidor. Den skulle hämta information om alla pressmeddelanden och presentera dem med titel, ingress och en länk till hela texten på partiets hemsida. För att göra det idag skulle man behöva ganska komplicerade program för att tolka den stökiga HTML-koden och plocka fram de relevanta delarna. Standardiserad, strukturerad XHTML-kod är ett steg mot något som är lättare för datorer att tolka, vilket skulle förenkla skapandet av den typen av tjänster.

Vill man vara en deltagare och inte en bromskloss i webbens utveckling bör man följa standarderna i så hög grad som möjligt. Med W3C:s (X)HTML-validator kan man kontrollera om en sida följer den standard som anges av dess DOCTYPE. Samtliga riksdagspartiers hemsidor anger en DOCTYPE, men inte en ända klarar W3C:s validator. Här följer partiernas resultat, sorterade efter antal fel i valideringen.

Kristdemokraterna använder HTML 4.01 Strict med 14 fel. De flesta av felen beror på att man använder förlegade delar av HTML (t ex <center>) för formattering, vilket helt kan ersättas med CSS. Utöver det så används target-attributet som inte finns i Strict utan bara i Transitional. Kristdemokraterna verkar också använda något som heter SiteCore som genererar ogiltiga attribut såsom sc_url och sc_text. Eftersom sidan nästan är giltig HTML 4.01 Strict så skulle det vara lämpligt att uppgradera till XHTML 1.0 Transitional, då det skulle lösa problemet med target-attributet.

Vänsterpartiet använder HTML 4.0 Transitional med 23 fel. De allra flesta av felen beror på att de, liksom kristdemokraterna, använder förlegad HTML för formattering. Resterande fel beror på utelämnade type-attribut i script-taggar och en noscript-tag inuti head (noscript innehåller det som ska visas när webbläsare inte stödjer skript och hör liksom allt innehåll hemma i body). Att göra koden till giltig HTML 4.0 Transitional är ett mycket litet arbete, och därifrån är det inte ett jättekliv till XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

Folkpartiet använder XHTML 1.0 Strict med 61 fel. De använder något som heter EPiServer som genererar meta-taggar som inte stängs. Utöver det är det lite spridda fel: ytterligare taggar som inte stängs, några taggar skrivna med stora bokstäver (i XHTML ska alla element och attribut skrivas med små bokstäver), &-tecken som borde vara &, några saknade alt-attribut i img-taggarna, lite förlegad formatterings-HTML och andra småfel. Om EPiServer konfigureras att generera XHTML skulle giltig XHTML 1.0 Strict vara inom räckhåll. Därifrån skulle de sannolikt kunna byta upp sig till XHTML 1.1 utan bekymmer, då skillnaden är mycket liten.

Socialdemokraterna använder XHTML 1.1 med 106 fel. Många av problemen är desamma som Folkpartiet har, men de har också problem med specialtecken (&, < och >) i sina skript. Här måste man måste antingen flytta JavaScript-koden till en extern fil, eller använda en CDATA-deklaration kring koden. Det finns också en del element som är inkorrekt nästlade, exempelvis div-taggar inuti a-taggar. Så vitt jag kan se är det inga fel som är svåra att åtgärda och kan de göra det så skulle de följa den striktaste XTML-standard som finns i dagsläget.

Miljöpartiet använder HTML 4.0 Transitional med 155 fel. Det är många fel, men nästan alla är en av två typer som båda är lätta att åtgärda. Den första är img-taggar utan alt-attribut. Om det inte finns någon meningsfull beskrivning av bilden (för t ex dekorationsbilder) så ska man sätta alt="". Det andra är attributvärden utan citationstecken. Ibland är det giltigt i HTML, men inte alltid, så det är lika bra att alltid använda citationstecken. Att komma till HTML 4.0 Transitional borde alltså vara mycket enkelt för Miljöpartiet. XHTML 1.0 Transitional borde därefter inte vara ett orimligt mål.

Moderaterna använder XHTML 1.0 Transitional med 215 fel. Precis som Miljöpartiet har man i stort sett bara två typer av fel: &-tecken som ska ersättas med & och taggar som inte avslutas korrekt. Att alla taggar måste stängas är den viktigaste skillnaden mellan HTML och XHTML, men ändå har alla partier som försökt använda XHTML misslyckats på den punkten. Det borde rimligtvis vara lätt att fixa de här problemen och för Moderaternas del vore giltig XHTML 1.0 Transitional inte fy skam.

Centerpartiet använder XHTML 1.1 med 410 fel. XHTML 1.1 är ambitiöst, men det spricker redan på första taggen, <HTML>. Felen är många och spridda, nästan alla typer av fel som hittills nämnts återfinns. De flesta felen är just taggar skrivna med stora bokstäver, men också de två fel som Moderaterna hade finns i överflöd. Centerpartiet har mycket att göra för att nå giltig XHTML 1.1, men det är inte omöjligt.

Sammanfattningsvis så har inget riksdagsparti en hemsida som följer webbstandarder. Vissa har en bra bit kvar medan andra mest har småfel som sätter stopp. Alla partier kommer att kontaktas i hopp om att deras webbansvariga ska ta sig en titt på den här genomgången och känna sig manade att förbättra sina webbsidor.

Nyttiga resurser

Summary

Partly for fun and partly because it’s election year in Sweden, I decided to investigate how well the major Swedish political parties’ websites’ use web standards. Unsurprisingly, not a single party’s website passed the test. I will notify all the parties of my findings in the hope that they will improve their support for web standards.

Journey to the East, Part 2

2006-06-08T01:40:07+00:00

English translation below.

我今天接到过一封信从北京语言大学。他们写“我们荣幸地通知您…我校同意接收您作为普通进修生来本校学习，学习的间自2006年9月1日至2007年7月31日”。虽然我是一点紧张但是我很高兴。看来我在9月真的去中国。我现在应该找一房间在北京。

Today I got a letter from BLCU. They wrote “we are pleased to inform you that ... we have decided to enroll you to study at the College of Advanced Chinese Training as a General scholar student from September 1 2006 to July 31 2007”. Even though I’m a bit nervous I’m also very happy. It looks like I’m really going to China in September. Now I have to find a room in Beijing.

Hoping for the worst

2006-05-31T23:10:30+00:00

I just learned that The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån were raided today. I don’t know much about what’s happened, but I really do hope that things have been handled very poorly. I hope that the allegations made by SVT that this was triggered by pressure from America are true and that it will cause public outrage. If Thomas Bodström is somehow involved (unlikely perhaps), that would be absolutely superb too.

Why do I hope for the worst? Because I want this to become a topic of fierce political debate so that it will be very clear who is a friend and who is an enemy in the upcoming Swedish election. It’s been clear for a long time that none of the big parties are friends, but perhaps this will force some of them to make sensible decisions and become more friendly (look at what’s happening in France, it’s not impossible). I don’t know if the recently formed Pirate Party are sane, but hopefully they’ll be given a chance to present their views in the debate that will now follow.

The last time there was some debate about copyrights (when Sweden changed the copyright legislation to conform with EUCD last summer) I discussed and thought about these issues quite a bit. I arrived at the conclusion that copyright probably shouldn’t be abolished all together, but that some of the following might be good ideas.

Shorten the copyright term to something between 5 and 20 years.
Allow all non-commercial distribution use of works covered by copyright. If the copyright term is very short, this may not actually be necessary. Conversely, with a long term it might be useful to allow even more non-commercial uses (e.g. sampling music or re-editing bad movies).
Disallow distribution of works which have not been published. The idea is that a creator should have the authority to stop distribution of copies that have been physically stolen or otherwise leaked before they are completed an published. Without this, I think it would be legal to publish someones private letters or photos without permission, and that wouldn’t be cool.

Why does it matter? I have a vision that my children will be able to access a wikipedia-like database of all culture that has been produced in human history, with high technical quality and instant access. It’s much too hard to find works of culture these days, at least works that are a few years old. If you have access to a warez top-site you might be able to get anything you want, but it’s only for a small elite.

Why are we locking away old culture that no longer makes money for anyone? The works that do make money long after they were created are the ones that were very popular to begin with and don’t need a long copyright term. Some people want to make piles of money from The Beatles even though half of The Beatles are already dead! I want everyone to be able to hear The Beatles at will. Copyright is not given by nature, it’s a political tool and we should use it as we see fit to get the results we want. This is the information age, and with the proper legal framework in place we could reach the point where quality culture is a commons, not something for economic and technical elites.

Staavningsrefårm nuu!

2006-05-31T04:07:43+00:00

This post deals with my proposed spelling reform of the Swedish written language and is therefore written in Swedish (more or less).

Uut määd gamelsvenskan, in määd nyysvenskan! Jaag haar kåmit påå at staavningen ii svenska inte äär såå låågisk åk inleeder därför en kampanj föör en nyy staavningsrefårm. Deet mest upenbaara probleemet i gamelsvenska äär at man använder kånsonanter föör at markeera uuttaalet påå vokaalerna. Deet äär oolåågiskt åk ibland staavas tvåå oolika oord liikadant. Ii nyysvenska använder man istälet dubla vokaaler, vilket bliir myket bätre:

”fiint” (snygt) åk ”fint” (trik)
”ala” (mootsatsen til inga) åk ”alaa” (guud)
”katträäd” (trääd määd kater ii) åk ”katrääd” (rääd påå/aav kater)

Et anat probleem äär at ”o” åk ”å” åfta blandas ihop. ”o”, ”oo”, ”å” åk ”åå” äär fyyra oolika lääten åk skaa inte blandas ihop i nyysvenska: man staavar såm man uuttaalar deet, heelt enkelt. ”e” och ”ä” uuttaalas åkså åfta påå sama sät, men deet fins diialekter (til eksempel gåtländska) såm skiljer påå dåm. Nyysvenska tilåter därför at eendeera används (tils viidare ii ala fal).

En deel kånstiga staavningar aav kånsonantjuud föörsviner åkså. ”j”-juudet staavas määd ”j” åk inget anat. Bokstaaven ”x” byyts uut mot ”ks” ii nyysvenska. Uutööver ”x” fins yterligare tree heelt väärdelöösa bokstääver: ”c”, ”q” och ”z”. Nyysvenska använder tvåå aav dåm til dee juud såm äär svåårast at staava til påå gamelsvenska.

”sj”-juudet bliir ”c”: ”cööröövare”, ”cäärna” åk ”måtconeera”.
”tj”-juudet bliir ”q”: ”qej”, ”qäärna” åk ”duqa”.

”x” åk ”z” taas dåk bårt heelt ii nyysvenska, men fåår vaara kvaar påå tangentboorden såå at man fortfaarande kan skriiva engelska.

Nyysvenskan föörträfligheet äär upenbaar. Alt skriivs såm deet lååter, såå diialekten syns ääven i skriiven fårm. Ståkhålmaren skriiver ”jaag skule vilja qööpa en treeqeed” meedan skååningen skriiver ”jaeg sule vila qöepa en trääcäed”. Jaag cälv skule vilja qööpa en trääceed.

Åm jaag inte fåår jehöör föör min staavningsrefårm kåmer jaag at blii myket besviiken åk heelt sluuta skriiva påå svenska, sååvääl gamelsvenska såm nyysvenska. Staavningsrefårm nuu!

Higher levels of violence

2006-05-20T17:28:20+00:00

A few hours ago I graduated to 3 kyu (green belt) in the Swedish jujutsu system. I think the short but exhausting graduation went well with only a few small mistakes. Many thanks to Johan Gustafsson for being my uke and to Andreas Stenström for taking pictures.

Work for me! Yay!

2006-05-18T17:53:48+00:00

This morning I signed on to work at Opera Software’s Linköping office for the summer. Since the web is my niche, I’m expecting it to be very fun and a learning experience. It also meant signing my first non-disclosure agreement which, apart from prohibiting me to disclose secret information, prohibits my working on or promoting competing products during my stay at Opera and for two years afterwards. I’ve never contributed to Firefox before and probably wouldn’t have, but I still have mixed feelings about it. I don’t have to worry about being able to pay my rent though, which I otherwise would have (although some might say I could always have been a waiter). In any event, real work for me! Yay!

Journey to the East, Part 1

2006-05-15T23:03:26+00:00

Today was the last lesson of my evening classes in Mandarin which I have been taking this semester. We drank green tea and repeated some of what we’ve learned. Our teacher presented me with a Chinese calendar as a top of class reward, which I was very happy to receive. The short speech I gave is reproduced here verbatim as a source of future amusement:

wǒ xiǎng shuō yìdiǎnr dōngxi. Xie lǎoshī, xièxie. nǐ lǎoshī hěn hǎo. wǒmen yǒu xué yìdiǎn hànyǚ. qiū zài jiàn.
(I would like to say something. Thank you teacher Xie. You are a very good teacher. We have learned a little Chinese. See you this fall.)

Earlier today I completed the application form for Chinese language studies at Beijing Language and Culture University. I will send the application tomorrow and, if all goes well, the last part of my speech will not come true because I will be in Beijing in September. The plan is to stay for one year. wǔ hěn gāoxìng! I’m very excited!

The edge of paranoia

2006-04-29T22:52:09+00:00

I’ve happily been using cdparanoia to rip my CDs for years. In the last few days, however, I’ve been finding out things about CDDA extraction in general and cdparanoia in particular that made my bit-exact confidence in my ripped CDs drop to zero. I was trying to exactly recreate a CD by reading the TOC and audio data with cdrdao and then burning it to a CD-R. Ripping the CD-R and comparing it with the original rip showed that the waves did not line up exactly, they were slightly shifted. A little googling revealed that most CD drives read audio data offset by a fixed number of samples that is constant for each drive. I found the offsets for my CD drives from the AccurateRip website, verifying them by ripping the same track with both drives using the offsets (cdparanoia has a --sample-offset option). However, burning a new CD-R with the new audio still didn’t produce an exact duplicate... it turns out that there’s an offset when burning too. Never mind.

When researching the offset issue I found several mentions that cdparanoia was not safe with caching drives, which is worrying as my NEC burner has a 2 MB cache. I tried ripping a scratched CD twice and comparing the resulting waves. They were not the identical. Evidently, cdparanoia with a caching drive is no better than any other cd ripper, perhaps worse since it gives false confidence in the rips. It seems that no development on cdparanoia has been done for the last five years but when asking on paranoia-dev, I learned that libcdio has incorporated cdparanoia with some improvements, although the cache-problem is said to still be unsolved.

Finally, there’s one more thing to get paranoid about which I haven’t seen discussed anywhere. When using cdparanoia’s --sample-offset option on my LG drive with an offset of +594, ripping the last track of an album fails because of a read error. This is not very surprising because a sector on a CD is 588 samples which means that at least some samples must be read by asking the CD drive to read from a sector which doesn’t exist. Ripping with my NEC burner (offset +48) does not fail in the same way, but a little testing showed that the last 48 samples of the last track were set to zero. Most albums I’ve checked have thousands of zero-samples at the end of the last track, but I found a few which did not where 48 samples (1 millisecond of audio) were lost. This doesn’t matter at all on my drive, but some drives have much bigger offsets. Also, verifying cdparanoia rips with something like AccurateRip (if it should be released as Free Software) is impossible if these samples have been lost.

In summary, there’s work to be done before we can have perfect CD rips using only Free Software.

Tagging multi-disc albums

2006-04-20T00:13:07+00:00

Some thoughts which may be helpful to other metadata purists. The music player of my choice, Rhythmbox, uses the ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE and TRACKNUMBER tags in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files to order music by artist and album with the correct track and order. A lot of albums have multiple discs, which until recently I have handled by appending “(CD1)” or something similar to the ALBUM tag. In Rhythmbox, it looks like this:

After some investigation I found that some players (including Rhythmbox) and tag editors have support for a DISCNUMBER tag. I edited my tags using easytag which isn’t great but still the best Free tag editor I know of. I’ve had some issues with the DISCNUMBER tag mysteriously disappearing, but have been unable to reproduce the bug in the latest version of easytag. In any case, I changed the ALBUM tag to “Rock In Rio” and added DISCNUMBER tag with a value of 1 or 2. Rhythmbox now shows only one album entry and puts the tracks in the correct order:

However, there is still one problem which is unresolved. Some albums have names for each disc. One example is Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins where the first disc is called Dawn to Dusk and the second Twilight to Starlight. Googling didn’t turn up anything so I decided that a DISCTITLE tag would be a good idea and proceeded to add those tags where needed (using metaflac). The disc title is not shown in Rhythmbox and I am not sure what might be a good way of presenting it. A DISCTOTAL tag might also be useful for storing the number of discs in the set, although I haven’t used it myself.

A recent google search turned up a slimdevices.com forum thread where the DISCNAME tag was suggested. To my knowledge it is not supported by any software. I think that DISCTITLE is better because it is consistent with the TITLE tag, but if either were agreed upon that would be great. Adding support for the tag to easytag would be easy, but without any idea of how the tag might be used a patch would probably be rejected.

Update 2006-04-29:

I’ve discovered MusicBrainz. I love MusicBrainz. You love MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz mandates the use of “(disc x)”, or “(disc x: disc title)” for multi-disc albums. This brings back my unpretty Rhythmbox album listing, but the benefits of MusicBrainz far outweigh this nuisance. Use MusicBrainz.

Wanna die?

2006-04-15T21:27:22+00:00

One of the first Korean movies I saw was My Sassy Girl. I absolutely loved it and I even dare say that it is the best romantic comedy I have ever seen. I’ve since seen a pile of Korean romantic comedies and of course many more of Hollywood origin, but few come close. The nameless girl in My Sassy Girl is quirky, violent and rather abusive of her boyfriend Gyeon-woo. One of the key phrases of the movie is “Wanna die?”, which the girl will say to Gyeon-woo whenever she wants to have things her way. In one scene, they’re in a restaurant:

Waiter: What would you like?
Gyeon-woo: Coke, please.
The Girl: Wanna die? Drink coffee.

As a tribute to My Sassy Girl, I’ve made a t-shirt with the phrase in Korean:

This is not a fashion blog

2006-04-05T19:11:11+00:00

In my grand plan, the prime purpose of this blog is not to write about things quite so superficial as my hairstyle, but that is what’s on my mind today. Almost four years ago, I stopped cutting my hair. Time and gravity eventually made it so long that a good friend of mine was practically begging me to cut it. Today I did, at hairstyle here in Linköping. The hairdresser began by putting my ponytail in a neat bundle and cutting it off. It’s close to 40 cm in length and I’ve been informed that it’s possible to sell for real money. I thought the following exchange between me and the hairdresser was kind of funny:

—How often have you trimmed your hair?
—Twice.
—Twice a year?
—No, twice.

The mandatory before and after pictures:

I’m quite happy with the end result, but it will take a few days of getting used to. Soon I’m heading off to jujutsu practice to see how well suited it is for some rolling-on-the-floor action.