tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-326447982024-03-07T20:16:30.671+01:00Life from my point of view...Is it relative? It is indeed.
And subjective? Why, yes. Always.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-46430528406438122242011-09-06T22:19:00.001+02:002011-09-07T00:09:59.004+02:00There's always something...I've been looking for a job pretty much every day since I graduated, but so far I've had no luck. There haven't been any instrumental teacher positions to apply for, and I'm not quite ready to start applying for whatever random job I can find yet - not that there has been many of those to choose from either. After six and a half years in college, I would like to try to find something that is at least related to what I studied.<br />
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So, basically, I have lots of free time right now, and it's driving me nuts. I have no particular reason to get up in the morning, no reason to leave my apartment, and no money to do anything even if I do. I have about a dozen or so new songs that I would like to record, but I can't really do that either right now. I managed to get myself double-sided carpal tunnel syndrome about two months ago, and the damn thing just won't go away no matter what I do. I've tried anti-inflammatory pills, Voltaren gel, acupuncture and just plain rest, but it refuses to disappear completely. So I can't book any gigs as long as it isn't gone either. I'm starting to feel like the only thing I actually CAN do is sit at home and stare at the walls, while trying very hard not to use my hands for anything. It's really starting to affect my mood, and not in a good way.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-10859289274449026912011-08-26T01:58:00.000+02:002011-08-26T01:58:44.449+02:00A trip to the land of DraculaA couple of friends from Romania got married recently and invited us to the wedding just outside the town of Buzau, so my wife and I got to spend four days in Romania. It was an awesome trip! <br />
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The first thing we noticed was the temperature. Compared to a drizzly Malmö, with temperatures of around 15-20 degrees when we left, Bucarest was a summer paradise, with temperatures of around 35 degrees C when we arrived. That was nice! The second thing we noticed was the way people drive there. That was scary. Apparently, many Romanians don't care as much about traffic laws and regulations as Scandinavians do. They're all over the place, driving way faster than the speed limits, zig-zagging between other cars and oncoming traffic, dodging both animals and people who randomly just appear in the middle of a highway. Fortunately, the guy who picked us up at the airport used to be a street racer, and was an excellent driver. He took it all in stride without so much as blinking, while the rest of us held on to whatever we could find with our hearts going faster than the car. It was an interesting experience...<br />
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The guests not from the area were all staying at a nice little hotel. There was a restaurant at the hotel serving traditional Romanian food. It tasted excellent, but I'm a little sceptical about the sanitary conditions in the kitchen, because several people got sick after eating there, myself included. Worst of all, the bride got really sick the night before the wedding and was up all night throwing up. In the morning, she was pale as a ghost and could barely stand, so they had to call an ambulance to come check on her. Nice start for your wedding day, eh? I'm not sure what the ambulance medics did to her, I think they gave her some shots of something, but she seemed a bit better afterwards, so we all rushed to the city hall. Apparently, in Romania you have to do both a civil ceremony and a religious one in a church if you want to be properly married. The civil one was interesting. There was literally a line of people waiting to get in. A guy told me there were 40 couples getting married that day. They even had a clerk getting people lined up outside the office door when it was their turn. Then the door opened, we were all more or less shoved in through the door to the sound of a very fast version of the wedding march. The wedding officiant started talking very fast, and after asking both the bride and the groom what I assume was the usual questions of "Do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded..." etc. they both signed a paper, and then the clerk more or less shoved us out of the room. The whole event took about three minutes. The weirdest part of it was the music. It started with an oddly fast version of the wedding march, but while the officiant was speaking, the music gradually got faster and faster, and eventually faded into this weird 90's disco beat. Perhaps it was a trick to get people worked up to leave the room faster when the ceremony was over? I don't know. But it was strange.<br />
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After a trip back to the hotel and some drinks, a minibus came to pick us up and take us to the nearby mud volcanoes in Berca. These mud volcanoes are the only ones in Romania, and consist of salt water and natural gases bubbling up from about 3000 meters down, causing mud and gas to erupt, forming cones that look like miniature volcanoes when the mud dries around the opening. It was quite interesting to see.<br />
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After going back to the hotel and resting for a bit, we then headed to the church for the religious wedding ceremony. It was quite different from anything I've seen before. In protestant Swedish weddings, the ceremonies are quite peaceful things. The bride and the groom walk up to the altar, the guests sit down, the minister does a bit of talking, the couple exchange rings and kiss, and everybody leaves. There may be some music or a prayer as well, it depends a bit on the couple getting married and on the priest doing the marrying. The guests usually sit very quietly until the ceremony is over. At the ceremony in Romania, which was orthodox, the whole thing started with a procession lead by two witnesses, who were carrying a huge candle each. The couple, the witnesses, and the couple's godparents went to stand in front of the priests. There were several priests leading the ceremony, and they were all singing their parts more than speaking. There was more ritual, with the priests putting crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, and they walked around kneeling in front of large pictures of what I assume were Jesus and other important figures. We were standing in the back of the church, so I couldn't really see everything very well. That was another thing: All the guests were standing up. And they weren't quiet either. People were talking to each other walking around taking pictures of the couple from all sides, and at one point the witnesses walked around offering sweets to all the guests.<br />
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After the ceremony, we headed back to the hotel, where the reception and dinner was held. That was the other big difference between protestand Swedish weddings and orthodox Romanian weddings. In Sweden, there's usually a dinner, and then people party all night. In Romania, there was food, then partying and dancing, then more food, followed by partying and dancing, followed by food... There were five courses of food in total, and by the time the dessert was brought in, I think it was about four o'clock in the morning. Romanians take their wedding parties seriously!<br />
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The morning after the wedding, there was a traditional soup breakfast for all the guests. We could choose between a chicken soup and a traditional tripe soup, both apparently created for the specific purpose of curing a hangover. The tripe soup was interesting. Not something I would like to have often, but not bad. It has a very distinct smell and taste.<br />
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After the soup, we headed back to Bucarest to look around there for two days before flying back home to Sweden. We stayed at Hotel Dalin, which is very near the city center, and a short walk from the shopping areas and the old historical part of town. The hotel was an interesting experience as well... The room had a regular queen size bed in it, but the room itself was probably the biggest hotel room I've stayed in. There was a fridge, a TV and air conditioning, and a bathroom with a shower cabin, and a separate room for the toilet. The way the room looked, I would have guessed it was built and decorated in the 60's, and then just kept in that condition. It was a bit like walking into a time machine. But the weirdest part was the tiny little room for the toilet. The door opened inwards, towards the actual toilet seat, and once you walked in there, you had to climb up on the toilet seat to be able to close the door, since there was less than half an inch of clearance between the door and the toilet seat. Also, the toilet seat was installed diagonally in the room, so when you sat down on it, you had to either sit sort of sideways on it, or have your legs sort of smushed up against the wall. I'm guessing they had to put the toilet that way to be able to open and close the door, but I couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't been easier to just make the door open outwards? The hotel was quite cheap by Swedish standards, so we were all happy anyway, except with the breakfast coffee, which was completely undrinkable. Gin had an omelette for breakfast, which was a mistake, because she got sick after that. Looking back, I remembered that I had also had an omelette at the hotel in Buzau, and that I had started having problems with my stomach after that as well. It got pretty bad on our second evening in Bucarest. I stayed in the hotel room that evening feeling really sick and running a fever. Note to self: Next time I go to Romania, I should stay away from eggs.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-25516465542400056582011-08-17T03:02:00.001+02:002011-09-07T00:11:12.424+02:00Double masterI am now the proud holder of two masters degrees. One in performance of music and one in music education. I actually graduated a couple of months ago in June, but this blog has been so far down my priority list for the past year and a half, it didn't actually occur to me that I could write something in it again until now.<br />
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So yeah. Done with school. And let me tell you, it was madness. The theoretical classes from a 4,5 year program crammed into three semesters - the pace was just ludicrous. Out of our class of originally six students, only two of us managed to graduate on time. Two are maybe graduating for Christmas, and the other two seem unlikely to graduate at all. How I managed to graduate, I have no clue, but it took some serious effort. I'm incredibly happy it's all over, and I'm even more happy that I never have to set foot in that place again. The lack of organisation in that place is just mind-boggling. Apparently, the students are responsible for making sure they have all the information that they don't know the teachers were supposed to have given them. I kinda lost hope after the fifth time I went to ask a teacher about the starting date for a course, only to be met with a blank stare and the question: "Uuhm.... Am I supposed to be teaching you?" The administration doesn't talk to the teachers or each other, and the teachers don't talk to anyone. How anything at all gets done, I have no clue... But I'm done! Done, I tell you! I am officially done with my studies! I graduated, I finished all of it, and I never have to go back! Awesome!<br />
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So much has happened in the last year and a half it feels unreal somehow. Both my grandparents died, I got married, me and my wife moved into an awesome apartment, school happened, I played in concerts, went on a crazy road trip in Finland, and gave myself tendonitis in both wrists by sewing two underquilts and a mosquito net for our camping hammocks. I also managed to write a bunch of new songs, but I haven't been able to record them yet. My new apartment doesn't have grounded electrical outlets in all rooms, so I can't plug in all my equipment. I'll have to do something about that.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-71319893090307423092010-02-07T17:24:00.000+01:002010-02-07T17:24:43.590+01:00Psyched!I've been back in college for about three weeks now, and so far I'm loving it. There's a lot of psychology, a lot more than I was expecting, which is really cool! It's fun stuff. The book we're reading for developmental psychology is incredibly boring to read, though... It's more of a list of facts than a book. It states a fact, quotes the name of the author they got that from and the year, and then states the next fact. Repeat for about 400 pages. Add to that some mediochre translating and grammar mistakes. Blargh... Better than a sleeping pill.<br />
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I made a simple music video for one of my songs and put it on youtube yesterday. Loads of fun! The reaction I've gotten so far has been rather stunning. People seem to love it! I got asked to feature on a music channel and a music blog, and it hasn't even been 24 hours since I posted it. Pretty happy about that. I'm going to make some more videos. :)<br />
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Here's the video. Check it out and let me know what you think. :)<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KDUkpnnbm6Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KDUkpnnbm6Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-25782392259623753912010-01-30T04:26:00.001+01:002010-01-30T04:28:14.224+01:00A house on a hillI find politics a fascinating subject. This is largely due to the fact that so many have such strong opinions about it, while so few of those who do seem to know what they are actually talking about. As someone who lives in a social-democratic country, I find it rather horrifying how many Americans keep calling the Obama administration "socialist" and voting against pretty much everything they come up with, even when it's completely against their own interests to do so simply because they'd rather be dead than caught supporting something that could even remotely be linked to communism. Socialist? Good grief, people... You don't know what the word socialist means...<br />
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Cop15 came and went, and as I expected, they didn't really achieve much, if anything at all. To me that proves once again that people don't really care about saving the planet, or making the world a better place for their children, or making the air cleaner, or just making any kind of change whatsoever unless they directly benefit from doing so. Look at the oil companies. We know cars pollute. Whether this contributes to global warming doesn't even matter at this point. Cars that run on gasoline spew out all kinds of toxic substances. "Oh, but they are so much more fuel efficient than they used to be" one might say.<br />
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Well... Yes and no. An engine made in 1970 consumed more fuel than an engine of the same size made now. But the problem is this: As the engines become more fuel efficient, what do they do? They stick a bigger engine in the car, so it still consumes the same amount of fuel! Sure, you get more horsepowers and you can accelerate faster, but you're still using up just as much gasoline! And you can still only drive the speed limit. Gahh...<br />
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I'm kinda fed up with people, politics and big companies, who all keep promising things, but never seem to actually get around to doing something about them. When the time comes to buy a house, I'm going to find one that sits on top of a hill that is at least 200 meters above sea level. Even if it is possible to do something about global warming, I don't believe for a second that the governments in the world are actually going to do something about it. They are going to be too busy with their pathetic pissing contests and refuse to do something unless everyone else does something first, or unless someone else pays for whatever needs to be done. Do we prevent the ocean from drowning every single coastal city in the world, or do we whine about how we don't make enough money if we have to spend some on preventing the cities from being drowned? Well, duh, that's a no-brainer. Of course we try to save money!<br />
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So... ice caps *will* melt. Sea levels *will* rise. I don't care if global warming is man made or not. What difference does it make? The result will be the same. Everything less than 65 meters above sea level will drown, it's just a matter of time, it seems.<br />
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At least my house will be ok, because it's sitting on top of a hill at least 200 meters above sea level.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-88819989835220471922009-11-18T14:57:00.000+01:002009-11-18T14:57:26.761+01:00Rain and packingThe weather has been incredibly wet here lately, not at all the kind of weather you'd want for November... It's been raining and raining and raining and raining... There seems to be no end to it. How boring... The sky is covered in heavy, gray clouds, and it's always dark. I want either sunshine or snow, dammit! I'm sick of this rain! <br />
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In other news, I finally finished my album! It's called "The first dozen" and is now available for download. You can use the player on the right to listen to it, or go to my <a href="http://www.rainhatmusic.com/">Rainhat website</a> and download it for free, or buy it on my <a href="http://rainhat.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a> page. The next thing for me to do is to promote it and let the world know that it's there, so that as many people as possible hear it. If you like the music, tell a friend or download and share the music online! <br />
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I'm moving to Malmö soon, so I've started packing a bit. We got a bunch of cardboard boxes the other day and I'm trying to pack down all my stuff in them. The hardest part is to figure out where to start... I have lots of stuff, and it's kinda scattered all over the place, but I guess it will get done eventually. I can't wait to move...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-18472712212911505432009-10-21T17:14:00.003+02:002009-10-21T17:23:51.020+02:00Online overloadI've been completely and utterly sick of computers and everything online lately, kind of like when you eat too much ice cream too often and just get sick of it and don't want to see another ice cream ever again. Not sure about the 'ever again' part in this case, but it's like I completely lost interest in everything online. I used to check the metrics for my websites at least once or twice every day, but now I just don't care enough to check more than once a week, if that. Seems pointless somehow, I know me checking the metrics isn't going to change anything anyway. I used to be fairly active in some online forums as well, but lately I just haven't seen anything worth commenting on. So I've been staying away from everything online, and doing more stuff offline instead.<br />
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I saw this thing on the news about a big blog award being given out. I couldn't believe my eyes... One of the people who was heralded as a likely winner of the award was this teenage girl, who in only 10 months had managed to gain 40 000 - 50 000 hits per day for her blog by writing about fashion and her colorful fingernails. It's an impressive feat, and well done and all, but seriously? Fingernails? I think another chunk of my faith in mankind just died. The most popular blog is not about science, ecology, society, or even religion, but fingernails? This planet is doomed...<br />
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I practised Yang style tai chi for a few years back when I had just started college. I did pretty well at it, I knew the Yang Cheng Fu style long form and practised regularly. Then school and stuff got in the way, and I never had time to go to the lessons anymore, so I quit the classes. Now it's been around 4 years since I practised, and I had forgotten a lot of it. Recently, I got interested in it again and decided to take it up again. With some help from Erle Montaigue's video tutorials on YouTube for remembering the moves, I'm back at it. Most of it is coming back quite quickly, I guess because I already learned the movements once before.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-71317984662697712332009-09-18T03:54:00.001+02:002009-09-18T04:00:20.812+02:00My Etsy shop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTHyzxcnmPXgYoSHmwPegKHdn_3DMRCBZTifgUjmwyGziBecuMWUlfnVTJ7WIg-QXUKypzZ_FyfQdR9TvtQsntjlyvmWDS90jcU-8k-gRXPDQVprHZHZw2GbVjgqaz-_0MhEPv/s1600-h/titabronze.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTHyzxcnmPXgYoSHmwPegKHdn_3DMRCBZTifgUjmwyGziBecuMWUlfnVTJ7WIg-QXUKypzZ_FyfQdR9TvtQsntjlyvmWDS90jcU-8k-gRXPDQVprHZHZw2GbVjgqaz-_0MhEPv/s200/titabronze.jpg" /></a></div>I put some of the chainmaille stuff up for sale about two weeks ago on an auction website in Finland. It's a pretty small site, being available only in Finnish, so not surprisingly, nobody even looked at the items. Fortunately, the site is completely free to use. <br />
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I've heard some good things about Etsy, so I set up an account there a couple of days ago and put some stuff up for sale. If you liked the chainmaille rings I wrote about in my <a href="http://burnandante.blogspot.com/2009/09/chain-rings.html">chain rings</a> post, I suggest you go take a look at the stuff I have up. There are some rings, a bracelet and a necklace available. The address to my Etsy shop is:<br />
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<a href="http://squigglebird.etsy.com/">http://squigglebird.etsy.com</a><br />
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If you like what you see but can't find a ring in your size, don't worry. I can make you any kind of ring you see there in whatever size you want. Just let me know.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-91294488775860961692009-09-12T19:40:00.000+02:002009-09-12T19:40:11.139+02:00Riding the monkeySo, a couple of weeks ago Gin and I went to Finland to visit my grandparents. It was nice to see them again, it had been a couple of years since I had been there. They have a nice little red house next to a lake, far from everything. It's a very quiet and relaxing place to be. There's a big workshop where I spent a lot of time as a kid. I learned a lot about woodworking there, always building all kinds of stuff. I once made this little wooden submarine. It was hollow and had these little fins on the side that were angled slightly downward, and it had a little hook in the front so that I could tie a string to it and pull it behind a rowboat on the lake. The little fins would pull the sub down under water if I pulled it with the rowboat, and when I stopped it would float up to the surface again. Loads of fun if you're 10 years old. :)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OT1E2gtOnWQ/SqvcvTJFEOI/AAAAAAAAADw/qHj_Wz6AZbs/s1600-h/monkey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OT1E2gtOnWQ/SqvcvTJFEOI/AAAAAAAAADw/qHj_Wz6AZbs/s200/monkey.jpg" /></a></div>My uncle is always building stuff too. He's good with cars and motors, and he always has a couple of more or less odd projects going on. He recently bought a monkey chopper motorbike. A monkey bike is like a motorbike, but tiny, like if you took a full size bike and just shrank everything on it down to a smaller size. There used to be these monkey mopeds that were quite popular for a while too. This monkey chopper that he bought now is not street legal, I'm actually not really sure what it's for, but it's hilarious to ride around the garden. It's like a real chopper bike with a fairly long front fork, a low seat and pretty fat back tire, but it's much smaller, so you look pretty ridiculous sitting on it. I have no idea what he's going to do with it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-81823448751283366692009-09-01T21:33:00.006+02:002009-09-01T21:45:45.941+02:00Chain ringsDue to popular demand, here are some pictures of some of the chainmaille rings and other stuff that I've made. I've been meaning to put these up for sale on eBay or something, but I haven't gotten my ass in gear yet.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv9z6rBb18T0-4j-_MpBF-Ey7Eb09cqLLWSuRrTWvzoHAqbl3br6R1sawaOtxkodWpzZuDqnICZQUz40iPbfDiLCWQdvqinbHfyC_XuVYRfwT5Jd9alu0EHv_jbXXGPjwC0UWy/s1600-h/tisibr-ring.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv9z6rBb18T0-4j-_MpBF-Ey7Eb09cqLLWSuRrTWvzoHAqbl3br6R1sawaOtxkodWpzZuDqnICZQUz40iPbfDiLCWQdvqinbHfyC_XuVYRfwT5Jd9alu0EHv_jbXXGPjwC0UWy/s400/tisibr-ring.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376584893988449922" border="0" /></a>This first one is a ring made out of titanium, bronze and silver. I made up the pattern and used three different metals as an experiment. I think I like the way it looks.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTI8h1laz9QdEhiDm-rf5aiyVpyMU9LQpqp6qx-hpgOKzwmKY5pW9D5lSVbzeAwZEpzPZnlS2vuRYjxM0qSOxL1U8f3-C46kgSAtIOvnUT3FWRUq8vwMEC_MRN2LboFCFCU67C/s1600-h/tist-bracelet.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 392px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTI8h1laz9QdEhiDm-rf5aiyVpyMU9LQpqp6qx-hpgOKzwmKY5pW9D5lSVbzeAwZEpzPZnlS2vuRYjxM0qSOxL1U8f3-C46kgSAtIOvnUT3FWRUq8vwMEC_MRN2LboFCFCU67C/s400/tist-bracelet.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376585262449893714" border="0" /></a>This is a bracelet made of titanium and steel. I found the pattern for this online, I think it's called Dragonback or something like that. It's a pretty dense weave, so the bracelet took forever to make and is quite heavy, even though it doesn't really look it. The chain is about ½ inch wide.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht9Czqtq4cD3jiBQOE3IVY69IhJWpQFjYXtix__uM4B67L7KwGvdGjCkLtgKY44EuwPf-4GSqnknep12nSbhCX5i8WC4wJ3q3sQT8I0eLGRG7WQ0c-tELwZdGwMmlDEZj2aTz_/s1600-h/st-ring.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht9Czqtq4cD3jiBQOE3IVY69IhJWpQFjYXtix__uM4B67L7KwGvdGjCkLtgKY44EuwPf-4GSqnknep12nSbhCX5i8WC4wJ3q3sQT8I0eLGRG7WQ0c-tELwZdGwMmlDEZj2aTz_/s400/st-ring.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376586097583426354" border="0" /></a>This third one is a ring made out of stainless steel. The chain is called half-persian 4-in-1, I think. It's not very difficult to make once you get the hang of it, but joining the ends to make it a ring is really tricky. It's a very dense chain, so you need pliers with very thin tips to pull it off. The engagement rings that Gin and I have are made out of this chain, but they are titanium on one edge and rose gold on the other.<br /><br />Gin has started making rings and stuff too, and between us I think we have around 20 rings, and a couple of bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. It's fun stuff to make. :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-1612011078904248652009-08-13T23:26:00.003+02:002009-08-13T23:39:01.339+02:00Would you like to learn how to play the flute or the guitar?I've been unemployed for a while now, and though I've been looking for jobs, there really aren't many that I would have a chance of getting. I'm working on my music with Rainhat, but though that will hopefully take off seriously pretty soon when my album is finished, it's not going to bring me much money anytime soon.<br /><br />Then one day, in a discussion in a forum, a friend told me she was teaching someone how to play the guitar over Skype, and I went "Huh? Hey, that's a great idea!" I immediately started building a site for this purpose. I scraped together 8 bucks for a domain, installed another instance of self-hosted wordpress with the host I already had, and after a couple of seriously intense days in front of the computer, the site is all set up and I'm more than ready to start teaching anyone who wants to learn.<br /><br />So, if you're interested in taking flute or guitar lessons, I suggest you go check out my site:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.musicbywire.com">http://www.musicbywire.com</a><br /><br />Thank you Melinda! :)<br /><br />I also suggest you go check out Melinda's blog: <a href="http://blog.melindaville.com/">Melindaville</a>. It's awesome!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-6949895930761780892009-08-07T00:43:00.005+02:002009-08-07T01:42:51.063+02:00Cooking pastaI cooked today. I help Gin with cooking whenever she cooks and needs a hand of course, but I'm rarely the "main chef" who starts the thing and has the ideas. I used to cook a lot more, but I've been lazy so it hasn't happened all that often lately. Besides, Gin likes cooking, and she's an excellent chef, so I rarely need to. But today I felt inspired to do some cheffin', so I made tagliatielle with a creamy bacon and broccoli sauce. A pretty simple dish, and not the greatest thing I've ever made, but it was food so meh. Here's how I made it:<br /><ol><li>Heat up water for the pasta. </li><li>Chop garlic and one yellow onion to small pieces and fry them in a frying pan with some olive oil. </li><li>Dice two tomatoes and about 2 cups of broccoli and add them to the frying pan. </li><li>Chop up some bacon and throw it in as well. </li><li>Chop up some sun-dried tomatoes in small pieces and add to the mix. I was going to do this, but my sun-dried tomatoes expired two months ago. Bummer.<br /></li><li>Let it cook until the liquid evaporates, stir every now and then so it doesn't burn.</li><li>The water should be boiling by now, so throw in the tagliatielle.</li><li>Pour about a pint of low-fat cooking cream over the stuff in the frying pan. I used the 4% fat kind.</li><li>Add a dash or two of soy sauce and stir well.</li><li>Add black pepper and salt until it tastes good.</li></ol><br />That's it. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OT1E2gtOnWQ/SntqQr22B6I/AAAAAAAAADQ/ob29VOQj6M0/s1600-h/spaceboard.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 253px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OT1E2gtOnWQ/SntqQr22B6I/AAAAAAAAADQ/ob29VOQj6M0/s320/spaceboard.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367000215825287074" border="0" /></a>We went shopping for some groceries today. I bought some reflective stickers and put them on my longboard. It looks pretty groovy, and I will be clearly visible in the dark as well now. Safety is never a bad idea. I also bought a badminton net for about $2 and played badminton with Gin in the garden when we got home. I suck at it, but it was fun. :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-65750609643322393132009-07-31T17:20:00.002+02:002009-07-31T17:34:41.594+02:00New website layoutI installed self-hosted Wordpress and put the entire <a href="http://www.rainhatmusic.com">Rainhat website</a> on it, along with the Rainhat blog. It was a bit of a hassle, but now it's finally all done and I'm pretty happy with how it looks. The only function I wish wordpress would have is to be able to put up link and archive widgets on only certain pages, like only in the blog part and not on the static pages. The way it seems to be now is that if you put up a widget, it automatically appears on every page, unless you add separate sidebars only for the pages. But I'm not that great with coding, so I'm not even going to try.<br /><br />We drove out to a forest and picked blueberries yesterday. The area looked like someone had already been there and cleared it of berries, but we managed to pick around 2 liters anyway. We decided that was enough and drove home and made a blueberry pie and Crème Anglaise. Fresh berries straight from the forest and into a pie. Delicious! :) <br /><br />The neighbors seem to have stopped hammering, so I think I'm gonna try recording a bit.<em><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-23758389964972432212009-07-25T14:40:00.004+02:002009-07-25T15:12:21.862+02:00Intermediate stuff for complete beginnersI logged into my Twitter account yesterday and noticed that the amount of followers had suddenly dropped from 25 to 12, but now I can see all 12 in the list of followers. It makes more sense now. I guess the whole thing with the invisible followers was just a bug...?<br /><br />This summer has been pretty crappy so far. It's been raining a lot lately, and it hasn't been very warm. Even in these parts of Sweden it should be more than +13 C in July... There was about one week of nice weather a couple of weeks ago, but the rest has been just rain. Bleh...<br /><br />We have this tent-like thing in the garden. It's like a frame of metal tubes with a soft plastic shell over it. The roof and the corners are a flimsy kind of plastic and the actual walls are made of a very fine kind of net. The point of the whole thing is to be able to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air, while keeping the bugs out, and with a roof to keep you dry if it rains. Unfortunately, this thing was very cheap and the quality matches the price. The roof is leaking a bit and the shell is just a bit too small for the frame, so the mosquito net walls don't actually go all the way down to the ground. Now, I like rain, so last night I got this idea to go out into this tent thingy with a couple of candles and lanterns and just chill with a book while listening to the rain. When I got out there, I noticed that the place was just crawling with red beetles. Apparently they had found their way in under the walls and thought it was a good place to stay dry. There were hundreds of them. I went back inside the house and watched TV instead.<br /><br />I finally figured out how to format links in different ways for different content boxes with CSS. I wanted the links in the main text box of my website to be red so you can see them. I also wanted the links to be black in another box, because red links just looked bad in it. But I couldn't figure out how to have both at the same time. After looking through a ridiculous amount of websites about CSS coding, I finally found one that explained this particular thing. Not surprisingly, it was quite easy to do. I just had to define each box I wanted to format as a different span class in the html and then define the format of the links in that class in the CSS code. Easy enough to do, once you know how.<br /><br />With all the millions of tutorial sites out there, it's surprisingly hard to find a site that actually explains everything well and from the very start. Even on sites for beginners, most of them seem to either assume that you know stuff already and start with stuff that actually isn't so basic, or just leave important steps out, probably because they seem obvious to the writer. If you really, truly do not know anything whatsoever about the subject, those kind of sites are pretty useless.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-56387851642457847592009-07-16T23:42:00.003+02:002009-07-17T00:03:59.306+02:00Artistic integrity, I guessHeh, it seems I have gotten two new followers on twitter after my last post. So now I have 21 followers, but there's still only 7 followers visible in the list. Weirdness...<br /><br />I'm getting bored out of my head with being at home all the time. I still haven't found a job, so I'm as broke as ever. Freakin' Swedish bureaucracy... I can't have any unemployment insurance either, because apparently the 2,5 years that I was working in Canada was too long to be abroad and it made me ineligible for it back here. So I haven't had any income at all in about 7 months now. Sucks @$$. On the bright side, I've had plenty of time to write and record music. I've recorded 8 out of 12 songs for my album. Lots of fun, but I'm not making any money off that yet either.<br /><br />I have written around 45 songs lately, but in my opinion most of them are crap, so I don't want to use them for anything. Counting all the songs that I think might be good enough to perform, I have about 45 minutes worth of music. I will keep writing more songs until I have a full 60 minutes worth of songs I think are good enough. Then I will start looking for gigs. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I refuse to do a concert with songs that I don't like. If I don't like the songs, I feel they don't represent me, and so I don't want anyone to hear them. I'd rather wait until I have something I can be somewhat proud of than try to make money with something I would be ashamed of.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-57468015970455286552009-07-15T22:32:00.002+02:002009-07-15T22:43:08.230+02:00Tweetin' and stuffTwitter confuses me. I have an account where I post random stuff and updates about Rainhat. At the moment I have 19 followers, but when I click on the link to see who's following me, there are only 7 users in the list. For the seven that are visible, I can if so choose block them from following me. Not that I have any reason to do so, but theoretically I could. But what about the other 12 followers? If I for some reason wanted to block them, I couldn't, since I can't even see them. Doesn't make much sense to me. Also, how can the 12 not be in the list? I've never seen any option that would allow me to follow someone secretly. Do the 12 even exist at all? Who knows.<br /><br />Anyway, feel free to follow me on Twitter if you like. My username is <a href="http://twitter.com/rainhat">Rainhat</a>.<br /><br />I've been having fun with tweaking the layout of my other blog. I found some interesting websites with info on how to add a third column and such. All kinds of fun layout editing. After all the messing around with my website, I think I'm starting to kind of understand how html and css work. There's always more I could learn, of course, but I got it to do what I wanted, so I'm happy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-69145717226405710572009-07-08T16:23:00.002+02:002009-07-08T16:38:08.388+02:00Vampire modeI'm very good at turning the days upside down, staying up all night and sleeping all day. Especially if I have no particular times to keep, which I don't right now, since I don't have a job. There just aren't very many of those buggers around. Me not having a driver's license doesn't seem to help either, since many job ads request those. Maybe I should finally get my butt in gear and get one... Only reason I don't have one yet is that I never really needed one. I always lived in places where I could get anywhere by bike, bus or train. The damn things are freakin' expensive here in Sweden too... Gah!<br /><br />Oh, well. No job means lots of spare time, and I've spent pretty much all of it working on music, writing and recording songs. I'm not making any money on it (yet), but if I keep at it, maybe I will. I really need a new steel string acoustic guitar. The one I have is a no-name Epiphone copy of some kind that I bought in Hungary. It sounds like crap. But guitars are a bit expensive too, so it will just have to do for now.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-67409955393739900612009-07-01T23:43:00.003+02:002009-07-02T00:25:03.447+02:00Rum and beerIt's incredibly hot right now. 30 degrees in the shade outside. Aaargh...<br /><br />I went to the library a couple of days ago and borrowed some books. I found some books about working in the cultural field, with music, art, etc, how the taxes and such work. There was a book called "100 pages about bookkeeping for those who hate it", but so far that one was incredibly boring. It definitely doesn't make you like it any more. I also borrowed Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse five" and "The rum diary" by Hunter S. Thompson, but I didn't look at those yet.<br /><br />We went to the liquor store the other day and bought a bunch of different kinds of beer, one can or bottle of each. I don't care much for the Swedish beers I've had before, so I wanted to try something new and see if there's anything I like.<br />Here's a short list of what we tried, along with completely subjective opinions about them:<br /><br />Crocodile - It says on the can that it won a gold medal in the biggest European beer competition. There couldn't have been much competition going on... Not very impressive. Tastes ok, but is quite flat. Not much aftertaste at all.<br /><br />Åbro sommaröl - This was a thorough disappointment. It didn't taste like anything at all. Seriously. Nothing at all. It was like carbonated water. No flavour whatsoever. Good if you don't care about the taste and just want to get severely drunk very quickly, I guess.<br /><br />Sarek - This was slightly better, though not remarkable in any way. A pretty neutral, unoriginal light lager. Tastes like beer, not much else. No aftertaste at all.<br /><br />Åbro sigill - An ecological beer. It was pretty decent, it has a bit more flavour than the average bland beer, but still nothing special. Bonus points for being ecological though.<br /><br />Bellmann 6.0 - This one was pretty good. The best one out of the ones we tried so far.<br /><br />Saku kuld - An Estonian beer. Not bad at all. It's quite mild, but without being tasteless. Quite ok, but pretty neutral.<br /><br />Also: 4 cl of Captain Morgan spiced rum + 10 cl of Piña Colada mix + 15 cl of pineapple juice = a tasty and dangerously easy to drink mixture. Getsh you drrrunk quite eashily... (hic!)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-57938832142602984602009-06-22T14:35:00.005+02:002009-06-22T14:50:48.993+02:00Back in businessAah, the computer problem has been solved, so now I can finally start recording again. I wasn't quite happy with the guitar tracks on "It's all gone", so I re-recorded them and updated the song on my MySpace page and the website. Now there's also a shop up on the website in case anyone feels like buying the songs to show their support. So, what's left to do is figure out a way to get loads and loads of traffic to the website. As someone said about the music business:<br />"He who promotes the most, wins."<br />It's kinda true. Promotion might even be more important than the actual music.<br /><br />I noticed that there was a typo in the link to the website in the link list on the right. Whoopsie! I fixed it now.<br /><br />I've been carting and stacking some more firewood. It never seems to end. There's probably enough wood out there to heat up the house for several years. If the house was mine and I had some money, I would re-build the heating system in the house to make it way more efficient, toss up a few high-efficiency solar panels on the walls and put up a small wind turbine or two on the roof. Then I would sit back with a beer and never carry another stick. But alas, the house is not mine and I don't have any money. So back to the wood pile...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-50879538153871865832009-06-18T15:23:00.002+02:002009-06-18T15:38:46.437+02:00Rainhat website is up!Finally, after plenty of frustration over html and css coding, and my somewhat lacking skills with these, the official Rainhat website is online! Check it out!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.rainhatmusic.com">http://www.rainhatmusic.com</a><br /><br />I still haven't quite solved the problem with recording, but I'm working on it. After the midsummer holidays I should be able to start recording again quite soon. I have plenty of music left to record.<br /><br />Midsummer is here. Fresh potatoes with pickled herring, partying and people picking flowers for midsummer poles all around, but the weather is still disappointingly chilly. It's mid-june and it's still only around 15 degrees C outside. Bah...<br /><br />I've been helping my father carry firewood and stack it up in big piles for winter. There's loads of it. I had these white workman's gloves made of leather, and I've worn big holes in them. One could say that I've carried so much wood that I've worn a hole in a cow. There's this makeshift roof over the wood pile made of boards and a big tarp, but for some reason dad chose to make the roof only around 1,5 meters high, so you can't stand up straight under it while stacking the wood. And stacking it takes quite a bit of time... I think that could maybe have been planned a bit better. My back is killing me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-8625311956242995182009-06-08T20:17:00.004+02:002009-06-08T20:27:16.733+02:00New song, finally!Now that I'm back home again, I have finally had the opportunity to record a bit. I finished one song, and it's now available on my MySpace page. Here's the address:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.myspace.com/rainhat">http://www.myspace.com/rainhat</a><br /><br />The song is called "Falling out of love". Enjoy!<br /><br />I'm going to record as much as I can, so hopefully I will have a new song up every 1 or 2 days for the next week or so at least. I have plenty of new material to record.<br /><br />I know I just got back from the mediterranean, but still: The weather here in Sweden is freakin' cold. It's +11 outside right now. It's supposed to be a bit warmer than that in June even here. I hope it warms up a bit soon.<br /><br />I went on a 7 km trip on longboard yesterday. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but man was I tired afterwards... This whole exercise thing is something I haven't done in a while, unfortunately. I'm gonna have to do something about that.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-4583009066461079602009-05-31T19:25:00.003+02:002009-05-31T19:46:12.829+02:00LanguageLanguages are funny things. Their main purpose is for people to communicate with each other, but there are all kinds of rules about the structure and spelling and such, which sometimes don't make much sense. Take English spelling, for example. The letter combination "gh" can be pronounced in different ways, like in "though" and "tough". There's a pretty well-known, and perfectly logical example showing how the word "ghoti" can be pronounced as "fish".<br />Languages evolve, so spelling standards change. I've been wondering... How would it be if you standardized English according to a kind of universal phonetic system, so that all the spellings for all the words were perfectly regular and intuitive? Here's an example. I shall write the rest of this post using such a phonetic system.<br /><br />It mait seem streinch at ferst to riid text that is ritten laik this, but ai think yu mait get usd tu it after a wail. Inglish is such an irregulur langwich, the spelling of diffrunt werds siims almoust randum. Wudnt it bi sou much iisiur if spelling was purfektli lodjikul? It wud bi a pritti radikul breik from tradishuns, thou. It mait liid tu a lot ov konfjushun. Ivun well-noun things wud luk unfemiljur.<br /><br />Hau match wud wud a wudchak chak if a wudchak wud chak wud?<br /><br />Theur is alsou thu problum with ridgunul diffrunses in hau werds ar prunaunst. Yu wud hav to spell werds diffruntli depending on weur yu ar. Yu wud end ap with duzins of rittun langwiches ivun within thu seim kantri. That mait bi bad.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-30600383836975774222009-05-27T14:19:00.003+02:002009-05-27T14:51:45.520+02:00CountdownIt's countdown time, and I'm counting down to a couple of different things right now.<br />I got the flight tickets home from Alicante; we're leaving this great place on June 5th. Time in Spain is coming to and end for now, and I must say I've had a great time! I'm still far from fluent in Spanish, but I understand it a whole lot better than when I came here, and I got some grammar books and stuff that should help me improve quite a lot even after I go home.<br /><br />The second thing I'm counting down to is launching an effort to seriously become a self-sufficient musician. I've done a whole lot of research while I've been here, written a bunch of songs, and gotten a bunch of other useful things done. I've signed up with a couple of very handy online services and even made a website of my own, so I'm mostly set up and ready to go. There are just five things left to do when I get home:<br /><ol><li>Find a good webhotel service and put my website up.</li><li>Record the music I've written and put it on the website.</li><li>Start marketing myself like mad, all the time, everywhere.</li><li>Find gigs.</li><li>Get noticed by all the big music sites, win a couple of grammys, and become incredibly popular, rich and famous.</li></ol>Actually, there is a number 6 as well, and that is to lose weight after all the good food here in Spain, but since it doesn't really have all that much to do with becoming a musician, I didn't include it in the list. Also, I suspect number 5 might take some serious effort, if it happens at all, but I figure why not aim for the stars while I'm at it? If I miss, I might land on the tree tops, which would be fine with me too.<br /><br />Launching an attempt at musicianship in this day and age is a pretty interesting endeavor. There is so much stuff you can do with the internet that you never could before, so it's not as much up to knowing all the right people and sucking up to record label managers anymore. I'm quite eager to see just how far I can get with just creative thinking and hard work. Now, only 9 more days and then I get to go at it full speed. Wish me luck!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-4546327073905950312009-05-23T02:03:00.004+02:002009-05-23T03:05:47.577+02:00Bright orangeI bought myself a nice, bright orange suitcase to put stuff in.<br /><br />We flew to Spain with Ryanair, and they have these silly rules for luggage. Each check-in suitcase can weigh a maximum of 15kg, as opposed to around 20-23kg with most other airlines. I didn't bring much stuff on the way here as one of the main purposes of the trip was to bring back some of our belongings to Sweden, and I wanted to be able to bring back as much as possible. My old suitcase was quite broken after having gotten lost between Canada and Sweden and getting quite banged up on the way somewhere, so I decided to not bring any suitcase at all and just buy a new one here instead. It's bright orange with lighter orange patterns, so it should be a great deal easier to recognize on the conveyor belts than my old one, which was plain black.<br /><br />Spain is quite warm this time of year compared to Sweden. It's not really all that surprising, but I've noticed that it's very easy to get dehydrated here. Since it's on average quite a bit warmer, you sweat more than you think. It's easy to forget to drink more to make up for it.<br /><br />Note to self: Drink more water.<br /><br />Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Alicante! Woohoo!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32644798.post-61411402178324801912009-05-21T01:17:00.003+02:002009-05-21T01:29:31.878+02:00A new lookIf you've read my blog before, you'll notice that I've updated the layout. I figured it was time for something new. I kinda like this look. It's a bit more fresh and lively than the old one.<br /><br />I'm still in Salamanca, Spain, and I'm having a hard time not gaining weight because of all the delicious food my fiancee's grandmother cooks for us all the time. She's quite the lady. I sometimes can't find the clothes I was wearing before, or a towel or something, and I turn around only to find the things I was looking for washed, ironed and folded on the bed. Whoa! And then some more food. "Would you like some tortilla? How about a steak? Here, I cooked some baked fish, filled eggs, steamed potatoes and made a big salad. I had three minutes to spare, so I thought why not. Are you hungry?" I'm feeling quite spoiled here. The food is awesome!<br /><br />We're going to Alicante on Saturday to visit some more of my fiancee's relatives. I'm looking forward to it. I've heard a lot about palm trees, swimming pools, and great mediterranean paellas. Oh boy. I'm gonna have to go on a serious diet when I get back home...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0