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 …
If you’re swedish, read this. If you’re not, let me summarize. An expert and translator of Manga (animated stuff from Japan) here in Sweden was caught with some animated magazines and images portraying animated 12-13 year old characters in sexual context. So they raided his home and computer and found alot of it. So he was charged with one of the worst accusations – posession of child pornography. The reason was – this was children in sexual context and it didn’t matter that it was animated and thereby without victim, it was the fact that this guy had these in his possession and, supposedly, enjoyed to look at it. And they didn’t care that this was his job. He was found guilty by the first two courts but today the supreme court acquitted him on the grounds that it was animated and could not be confused with the real thing.
And I gotta give credit to the guy for defending this and taking it all the way. And he didn’t hide away or try to cover himself, he publicly admitted to having these things but didn’t agree it was a crime to have them, if anything they should go after the “twisted mind” (his words) that created them.
Two problems with this story:
1) So the state decided to put a man on trial for what he likes to look at? … I mean I would seriously want to give any person who watch child pornography for enjoyment a good beating and yes it’s illegal, but really, if it gives the state that much power to put a person on trial for what he likes to look at, where could that end?
2) This has set a legal precedent for whoever makes these godforsaken images and films to just add a filter in post production to make it look animated and it’d be completely legal to sell in Sweden! Somewhere someone has to decide what constitutes “animated” and where that line is drawn.
I really hope the lawmakers sit down to go through this decision and comes up with some way to handle this. And all I can say is … Lawmakers, tread carefully!
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!