When I was a teen it sucked. It sucked really bad. No news there because it does for a lot of people. Had it not been for Knut Fischer I don’t know if I’d be here to talk about it. And when I saw the movie “Pump Up The Volume” it was dead on – it sucked being a teenager, it sucked being different and your parents or any other real adult didn’t understand you. Unfortunately it seems it’s still that bad – if not worse thanks to social media!
Check this YouTube:
It’s about a girl, Amanda Todd, who flashed some random guy through a web cam and it destroyed her life. And no matter where she went that thing followed her and after enough people screwed her over she comitted suicide, but not after posting that “somebody help me… anybody?”-video. That’s fucked up in so many ways. It’s fucked up it still happens and nothing is getting better. It’s fucked up that Facebook pulled the plug on an app designed to show how being bullied on Facebook feels. It’s fucked up that the first thought in my head was “is this real or fake” and had it not been for so many newssites picking it up and the police giving interviews about it I may have written it off as fake. But it’s not. It’s still a reality – that beeing a teenager still sucks.
I just hope I’m somewhat prepared to handle it with Sam in 10 years.
I’ve been home sick 2 days now. I thought it made for an excellent time to watch some movies in my home theater on actual Bluray. So I decided to watch one of my old favorite movies – “Contact”. Yeah, that movie from 1997!
And .. yeah, probably the best movie ever in my opinion. The acting, the scope, the science, the ideas and thoughts behind it and the special effects, all of it is still today unmatched in my opinion. But one thing I didn’t expect is to discover a new aspect of the movie – that of a lone parent trying to raise a child. I’ve never thought much about that until now. That just goes to show how much being a parent changes your views on things, even a movie you’ve seen 10 times before!
I’ve seen 4 movies recently, but this is mostly gonna be about one of them. Colombiana, The Dictator, Hunger Games & Love Bird. Out of all those I had the highest hopes for Hunger Games. And the least hope for The Dictator. ‘Cause Borat really isn’t my kind of humor!
And as it does so often in life the complete opposite happened! I loved The Dictator. The humor was dead on, the sarcastic speech about what a dictatorship allows the elite to get away with, it was hilarious stuff. I didn’t think anyone would be allowed to be that racist in a major movie, but there we had it all! Hunger Games was a huge disappointment ’cause I’ve heard so much good stuff about it and as it turned out it was a knock off of “Running Man”. Granted, most people involved wasn’t even born when that movie came out, but still … and throwing in a bit of teenage love story with a “imossible love”-theme alá Twilight didn’t make it better, quite the opposite. Had they completely dumped the love story it’d been a helluvalot better. In my opinion. I have no idea how the books goes (didn’t even know it was based on books but since I hardly ever read that’s irrelevant), but I was disappointed that they never ever went over “to the dark side” and had her kill anyone unless it was in self defence or by accident. But oh now, we had to take the high road and have this character win the entire thing “the good way”. THe one good surprise was actually the character of Cinna. And it was only after I found out Lenny Kravitz played him. I had no idea he could be so articulate and … good! Every interview I’ve ever seen of him he’s always seemed to be on some slow-motion trip and I’m think “dude have taken way too much of that!” but here he proved me wrong. Nice!
Colombiana was pretty much what I expected. Pretty darn good. Written by Luc Besson (and Robert Mark Kamen) and I could never shake the feeling that “this really should be “Léon 2” (or if it ever was one it’d been called “Mathilda”)! Unfortunately Natalie Portman doesn’t really have the physique to be an action actor and there is a stretch to come up with another long drawn out traumatizing event for Mathilda that’d keep her in that trade. But still, this should’ve been “Léon 2”!
Love Bird was just bad. Predictable, hardly much humor, best part of it was actually the end credits when characters from the movie were singing Queen songs.
As soon as we get a night off to watch another movie we’re doing The Avengers. And I’m afraid I may have gotten my hopes up for that one.
Wow what a weekend! Surprisingly busy!!
Friday started with a nice calm dinner in front of the TV after Sam had gone to bed. Then we kicked into overdrive going to Ikea and Netonnet and blew almost 10.000 SEK on stuff like a new bed for Sam, new shelves, a TV for our bedroom with an arm so we can yell PIVOT!!! I know we made a promise to each other that we were never gonna have a TV in our bedroom but we needed to relocate our exercise equipment and our bedroom was the only place big enough but then the problem is that it’s oh so boring staring into a wall when exercising so we bought a TV. And to make it so we could lie in bed watching TV as well we had to buy a special mount. Oh and a bluray player because … well surprisingly enough we didn’t have one before. We have the PS3 but that’s to our TV in the livingroom and we needed one for the home theater.
After that we went to Nykvarn (over an hours drive from where we live) to visit som friends and check up on their progress with the house and daughter. Then back home, sleep and on sunday it was time to mount up those shelves, the TV, all the wiring for it, change around the bedroom, move furniture, do the shopping for the week and all of that stuff, all the while Helena was entertaining some guests but once they left we really got going and by 8 pm Sam tried out his new bed which he loved. At first. Unfortunately at around 3 am he fell out of it and hit the floor so he spent the rest of the night in our bed. We went to bed early but not to sleep. Or that other thing. But to watch a movie in bed. Unfortunately it was a pretty lame movie (“Love Birds”) but it was still fun 🙂
So now we’re back to trying to make it to next payday 🙂
I had a great weekend!! It was Midsummer’s Eve on Friday in Sweden and we went to Kungsängen to check out their “old school” celebration, complete with band and everything. And somehow I ended up helping to carry and raise that big pole that’s so symbolical of swedish midsummer (and yeah, there are pictures of that coming soon). Then on the afternoon we went over to our neighbors down the street for a somewhat casual celebration of midsummer’s eve. On saturday Helena’s brother with his family came by and that made Sam go energizer bunny wanting to be everywhere and play with everyone. They have two kids and they did the best to play with him. And we ended up watching “Wrath of the Titans” which was really, really disappointing, even on a 100″ screen 🙂
And on Sunday they went home and then there was the Formula 1 race from Valencia. I had some hopes that Ferrari would do well even though the qualified poorly. And it turned out to be one of the best races I’ve ever seen since the golden era of Schumacher / Barrichello! Lots of good overtaking, some crashing, cars breaking down – and best of all, that all happened to people who threatened Alonso for the win! I thoroughly enjoyed that race! And on the podium there was no less than 3 Ferrari drivers, 3 world champions (2 of which champions driving for Ferrari) so it was all good! Only thing that could’ve made it better was Massa taking second …
Here’s the story of when we (or rather I) bought a new projector.
After looking around the web for “what’s the best projector I can get for under 10.000 SEK” (which was the approved budget) I found the answer – Epson TW3200. It had gotten great reviews from reviewers and consumers and it was going down in price. So on Saturday before we went to a 2 year old’s birthday party and then my own birthday party we stopped by one of my favorite stores in the whole world – Netonnet. They have good electronic products for good prices, good internet store and a “no bullshit, no fanciness, no flashy stores, just the products”-attitude I love. And they had just lowered the price of it to from 8.300 to 8.000 SEK so I was happy camper. When we got home on Sunday (yeah, I managed to wait a whole day!) I mounted it in my universal ceiling mount and turned it on. I guess I should have turned it on first because I was met with a “Auto iris error, please contact Epson support”… tried the old “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” and it started up without the error. Did some quick calibation and tested a bit of Star Wars Episode III (the opening space battle is pretty sweet) and it looked decent. Turned it off again, did what a husband, father and homeowner does on a Sunday (which included mowing the lawn).
On the evening my sister came by for the F1 race from Canada. Turned on the projector .. same error. Turned it off and on and it worked. But I don’t want to have to turn it off and on again until the error message goes away, especially not on a newly bought product for 8.000! So I called Epson who simply said “return it for a new one”. Called Netonnet customer service who agreed, no questions asked. So after I got home from work on Monday evening I took a 20 minute drive to Netonnet to have it replace, making sure they had one in stock. I turned it in and no questions asked, money back or buy a new one. So I went to pick up a new one … and no, as I’d feared they didn’t have any. According to their inventory they were suppose to have one, but reality said otherwise. But their other store in Slagsta on the wrong side of town had one, or I could get my money back. More than that, I noticed on their computer screens it cost 8.500 now! Yeah, for some reason it had gone from 8.300 on friday, to 8.000 on saturday to 8.500 on monday? But I argued against that since “there’s no reasons I should pay 500 more today for something I bought on Saturday just because I had to return it” and they agreed. Also I could have bought it anywhere else cause 8.500 was the price it was going for everywhere else!
But I was really set on this projector so I took another 30 minute drive to Slagsta and eventually found the one TW3200 projector they had in stock (which wasn’t where it was supposed to be). Went to the cashier who played the “I’m just a blonde girl at the checkout counter I can’t authorize this reduced prize, I have to call my manager”. Fortunately for me he had the very good service mind I had hoped for and I ended up paying 7800 for it after a 200 reduction for mileage and fueld for the car since I had to drive all the way there! And another 45 minute car trip home, tested it quickly to see I didn’t get the same message and mounted it.
That’s then the other setback hit. I had measured and mounted everything in my home theater, most importantly the ceiling mount, after my old projector. And the lens on this projector was about 4 inches off. Had it been more towards the center it’d been easy fix but this was more away from the center. And this very specific projector doesn’t have a digital compensator for keystone effects like my old one had, which means when it’s that high and that much to one side the image if projected in a straight line is skewed. The way this projector compensates for it is optically, which when it comes to the final image the result is better than digital compensation. And because it’s not only to the side it’s also mounted in the ceiling which means I needed to compensate both vertically and horizontally for it. What this meant is I had to mount my projector so that if the image would be projected in a straight line it would end up in the upper left corner of the room. But when adjusting the lens the image ends up where it should be and with straight lines (or more accurately, “right angles” i.e the corners are 90 degrees). But it took aloooot of fine tuning and with my ceiling mount it was way too much precision for it to be fun or challenging, it was just annoying. Why didn’t they have a digital compensator AND optical compensator for it like my old Panasonic projector had? It was so much easier to sit in the couch and adjust the screen with the push of a button than trying to find that sweet spot where everything lined up! .. but for now the deed is done and it’s sweet as hell!
That usually goes without saying but I’m loving her a bit more right now (and some would argue “love” is a binary thing, you do or you do not, there is no degrees of how much you can love someone).
After a week of peaking and lobbying she said it’s ok to buy a new projector 🙂
Happy Birthday to myself. 37 years old now. But don’t feel older than last year. Although I have changed jobs twice in the past year and learnt alot from it!
And thanks to the best wife in the world my birthday turned out pretty good! The first, “small” present was a Diablo III t-shirt. The next present was a mini-fridge with room for one Coca Cola can, driven by the USB port. Geeky as hell, right 🙂
Then we went to the shopping mall at Kista to eat, shop and watch a movie. None of those things worked out as we’d hoped. The first problem was getting a parking space in their garage which was a very frustrating 15 minutes. Then when we got to O’Learys and eventually got a table we sat there for 20 minutes without any service at all so we left for the foodc ourt instead and that worked out alot better. And I was going to shop for new jeans. And guess what? I’m up to 38″ waists again… I’ve been at 42″ once but I was down to 34″ 🙁 Better watch that! And they were rebuilding the movie lobby but duing the rebuilding it’s completely crap because it’s just too small for the amount of people going in and out. I think the fire department would shut it down cause incase of a fire, that would be a deathtrap!
But fortunately the movie, “Prometheus” (remember?) was pretty damn good!! And then we picked up Sam at his grandmother and went home. All in all a kick ass birthday!
* SOME SPOILER SPACE *
The premise is that in a not too distant future we will not have money. Instead the currency of choice is time. Everyone is born with one year that is activated at 25, meaning if you’re a lazy poor person you’ll die at when you turn 26. This in itself is an interesting idea and then you add how the “upper class” is using this system to control the lower class people and keep them in check. Simply raise the interest if you want to decrease the population in the slums etc. And then ofcourse there’s a “Timekeeper” to make sure the system isn’t tampered with.
All of this would have made for atleast 2 seasons of a good science fiction show. Instead they crammed it into a 2 hour movie and it just never got as deep as the idea deserves.
I don’t regret seeing it though…
Me and H (which is what I write when I don’t wanna write her full name, but I’m talking about my wife Helena, just for future reference) have really been plowing through lots of movies in the past few days!!
So small short reviews: “Killer Elite”, too long and too many twists to be even bother thinking about. “Real Steel”, I didn’t know it was such a kids movie when we started to watch it but combining the robots and Hugh Jackman taking off his shirt all the time and it’s clear that I wasn’t the target audience here. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, I didn’t expect much since the last “Planet of the Apes” was so very sucky but this one was actually pretty good. Only thing to complain about was James Franco which just haven’t got much acting depth to him. “Darkest Hour 3D” – yeah we actually went out to the movies to watch a 3D movie and boy did we regret that! The movie was “meh…” at best and for once the 3D didn’t help, it was actually a downside since both our eyes were sore afterwards. So no more 3D for us I think.
But the biggest surprise was “What’s Your Number”… Yeah I know, of all those previously mentioned action and/or sci-fi movies the movie we’ve watched that I’d rate the highest was a chic flic!! But it was actually quite good, funny and warm and modern. The huge downside to having that theme to a movie (which basically is “how many have you slept with?”) is it makes for really uncomfortable talk afterwards! Cause imagine it, you’re on a date with a beautiful woman and you take the bullet and go see a romantic film and the first thing she says afterwards is “so how many have you slept with?”, woooops! But me and H actually didn’t fall into that trap. Maybe because we really don’t care about what we did before …
This weeks movies have been “Little Piece of Heaven” and “Contagion”.
“Little Piece of Heaven” is so totally a chick flic that is damn predictable as hell. Decent acting and story and everything but still predictable chick flic. But if you want some nice “cuddle in the soffa during a dark december night with some candlelight and watch a movie” it does work quite nicely.
“Contagion” is the recent “oh my god a new über virus is unleashed on us and we’re all going to hell”-movie. Atleast that’s what I thought it was. But the movie didn’t quite work for me, or Helena for that matter. I don’t know if it was too fast paced or trying to convey so much or what but you just never got involved in the plot or the characters. Never really felt for any of the characters at all. I guess from a “yeah that could happen” this movie is the best pandemic movie but for pure entertainment I’ll go with “Outbreak” any day of the year. It’s got Keven Spacey, military coverups, bad Donald Sutherland and a monkey saves the day! If you make the comparison to the “oh my god a über asteroid is gonna hit earh and blow us all to hell”-movies “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” I guess “Contagion” would be the latter. Which is weird cause I prefered the “yeah that could happen” feel of “Deep Impact” way more than the entertainment factor of “Armageddon”…
But I’d still recommend it to you 🙂
Slowly getting how things are setup here and what’s doing what. But it feels I could work here for a year and still I’d be surprised when some server popups up because there are so many everywhere doing things it’s impossible to get them all.
The bad thing now is that the media here in Sweden is doing everything they can to paint the company I started working for as “the evil empire” because of things that went down in some elderly care centers and that wouldn’t make anyone feel good about just starting working there. Kinda reminds me of the “did the subcontractors building the deathstar know that the empire was evil and did they condone the empire by taking the job there”-discussion from “Clerks” 🙂
Let’s talk toys. Specifically media players, or media streamers or whatever you wanna call it. Small boxed that you connect to your TV or projector to play your digitalized movies. I started that project about 3 years trying to find a good solution to it. And I’m still not happy! The closes to “satisfied” that I’ve come is actually Popcorns A110 which is so low tech and “just the facts”-scaled down you can get. But the fewer “cool features” you have the less things can go wrong!
I’ve tried having a PC but in the end with their fans and harddrives it just makes too much noise to have it at the TV. So I’ved tried it with the PS3 and that kinda worked but doesn’t play all the stuff I have and some stuff bugs out. Lately I’ve tried two “Xtreamer” products. First I tried their “Pro” which was suppose to be media player and network storage all in one, so I could have 2 2tb harddrives in the same machine where I store the movies, awesome to combine them. But their idea of “network storage” didn’t exactly jive with my idea of it so after playing with it over the weekend I exchanged it for their “media player only” product “Sidewinder 2”. So far it looks awesome and it plays everything I’ve thrown at it…. BUT!!! they have a major error in their software. Either that or they have a weird since of “interface”! Because their “Back” button is really an “Up” button. For example, I have shortcuts that points directly to my Movies directory on my server. And I have a shortcut pointing to my TV directory. When I go into the shortcuts menu and click “TV” I come to the TV directory fine. Now when I click “Back” I, and I believe the rest of the world, would expect to get back to the shortcuts menu. But instead I’m take to the parents directory of “TV” which is just wrong and I have to go back to the home screen to go into the shortcut menu to go to the movies catalog again. It’s messed up and you’d think a very small thing but it’s actually a big deal when browsing around!
This all just means I’m left wondering … “how hard can it be!? Why don’t I get together with Ricki and Jimmi and design one ourselves and just make three copies of it for ourselves and leave everyone else wanting one”…
This is what you’d in sweden call an “i-lands problem”, a small insignificant problem that someone in Africa would say “I wish I didn’t have bigger problems than that”. But it still annoys me!
Really good weekend there. Our “Star Trek” day was everything it was supposed to be – good episodes, good company and good calories! The F1 was pretty ok, could’ve been better since Ferrari didn’t win.
And we also got alot, and I do mean ALOT, of work done around the house. The greenhouse we’re building is now cemented in place and it’s time to fit the glass. That’ll take alot of weeks to sort out but I’m not in any rush. Helena unfortunately is since the stuff she’s already growing needs to move out of the house and into the greenhouse before it takes over our bedroom! It’s pretty amazing how I’ve gone from spending a sunday morning/afternoon in the World of Warcraft to spending it building a greenhouse and still being happy about it!
I have no ideas what’s gonna happen this weekend, remains to see if we’re gonna have another couples dinner with Helenas friends or just the two of us. Maybe we can make a breake for it and catch “Thor” in the movies somehow … anyone willing to step in and take care of Sam a few hours ? 🙂
I realised it while trying to watch Twilight and Smallville I kinda hoped it was a one time thing. But yesterday there was no more denying it – I’m really am too old for high school movies!
Yesterday we saw “I Am Number Four”. Pretty good story and everything but what ruined it was all the high school drama. The stereotypes set by John Hughes 25 years ago were still there. And what tha hell was that teen-party thing they threw in completely misplaced and irrelevant! No I am most certainly too old for this!
Which is kinda sad considering some of my all time favorite movies belong to this genre – Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Ferris Beuller, Can’t Hardly Wait, Pump Up The Volume, Heathers and there are probably10 more I forgot.
Hope your Easter weekend was as good as mine!? Playing alot of computer games as always, but I also went out to my parents place to enjoy my mothers awesome cooking and a good old round of Trivial Pursuit (that I won, but granted, my father wasn’t playing) and it also happened to be a Formula 1 weekend but that race could’ve been alot better. Then off to a friend to try to fix her computer problems and just lame about. All in all an awesome weekend!
I also saw “300”. I had no idea about that movie until someone showed me a trailer a few weeks ago and the first thing I said was “that has to be seen on the big screen!” and on Friday I actually went to the cinema again to see it. Back in my teens I was a big fan of Greek mythology and stuff like that, and although this battle doesn’t really qualify as mythology I still remember reading about it. The movie was overall great, and I was right – it had to be seen in the cinema. As always with movies like this they get a few of the things wrong or left out (like the second part of the oracle’s prophecy) but overall a good movie. But one thing that really, really annoyed me all throughout the movie was all the muscles, pex and six-packs wherever you looked. Right away it annoyed me and it kept on annoying me. But I’m still gonna buy the DVD because it was still a great flick.
My life has turned into a series of routines as it is right now when I’m on parental leave. It’s just a matter of keeping the son happy, well fed and.. well that’s all really, everything else is a bonus! And I get about 1-2 hours of “else” every day which right now goes to “Starcraft 2”. Yeap, I finally gave up on “World of Warcraft”, it just wasn’t as rewarding continuing on lvl 85 as I’d hope. “Starcraft 2” is still challenging, I have a 50% win rate which I guess is as it was meant to be played (because the more you win, the higher rank you are and the better your opposition is so when you’re ranked perfectly I guess 50% is just the way it’s supposed to be).
ANYWAY, I’m going back to work in 4 weeks time, probably gonna spend the first week just catching up to what’s new and even what’s old since I haven’t been there for 6 months! Other than that everything is good, we’re still waiting for a place at some daycare so we can both work full time, not sure how that’s gonna work out otherwise!
Also trying to catchup with movies since we have missed alot since Sam was born. So far the best one has been “Tron 2” that we actually saw at the movies in 3D. But then again, you’d expect nothing else from a computer geek, right 🙂
Also updated alot in my photo album so check it out. You should know the password by now!
Me and Helena have gone into “counting down the days”-mode, which right now is down to 2 weeks! It’s going slower and slower now when we know our son can come out at any moment! He’s really kicking her hard in there! We’re also running around trying to predict what we’ll need and buying everything but as always you won’t know what you’ll need until it’s too late!
Meantime we’re warching tons of movies. Weirdest good one yet was the timetraveller’s Wife. Weirdest bad one yet was New York I Love You, even though it had Natalie in it. 2012 was better than I thought, then again I am a big Cusack fan!
Do you remeber this? My monologue about how terrible “Star Wars Episode I” was and why it sucked so bad? It was written back in 2001 and my english & typing is so bad I’m embarrassed but it was written for fun.
Well this guy here takes it to a whole new dimension! How long did that guy work on this clips? Months probably! And they are hilarious, brilliant and makes so many good points, everything from shallow comments like “what’s that doing there” to downright deep analysis of lightsaber duels! It’s really fun if you have the time (7×10 minutes)
Had a very slow, relaxed weekend with alot of movies. Ended with a Christmassy market, overall a very good weekend!
Saw “District 9”. Not sure what to say about it or how I feel… it was an ok story, but a bit even and very graphical and very greasy and dirty. “My Life in Ruins” was the complete opposite, nice, sweet clean fun movie without any major thinking required to understand and appreciate. Then “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. Had no idea what kinda movie it was, except it was kinda obvious it would be a version of “A Christmas Carol” and it was. Some funny moments and sweet but oh so predictable and cliche. Had it not been for Michael Douglas and his Hefner-clone character it’d been a waste of time.
And to finish it off we saw “The Hangover”. Best movie of all weekend. Hilarious as hell. No major thinking here either but that’s not a requirement 🙂