Thinking about Ipad stands. If I get one, it still feels like it would be the Compass. But when I think about mobility and where I like to write on my Ipad it starts feeling less useful. The only somewhat common situations for usage would be at the kitchen table (especially when watching videos), and while at work. Those are the times I most reliably use the Ipad on a hard surface. In most other situations, which include where I do most of my typing), I am in places like couches and beds where a Compass-type stand would be useless. A foldable, adjustable case would actually be useful much more often, but I do not really feel like having he Ipad in a case in general. Right now I only really use my Apple case for protection when I put the Ipad in my backpack, and then I do not even bother to actually insert it into the case, I just slide it in between the "covers".

So, we shall see what happens.

Rediscoveries

While out and about doing some Saturday shopping, I actually spent time in a clothes store. I enjoyed it. I found plenty of items I would like. I feel like a new, or dormant, part of me has awakened. It will complement all the others nicely.

All it is waiting for is me to allocate it some funds.

Fargo, and the odd ways we sometimes rate films

In the evening I finally got around to seeing Fargo. After which my sister and I discussed a feeling you sometimes get when rating a film (which we both do as habitual users of film recommendation site Filmtipset). The feeling is that of a film being "worth" a certain score in some kind of abstract way, even though you do not actually feel like you appreciated it that much. People may have spoken highly of the film, it may be really well made, thought out and acted. It may have got awards. You feel it is really well made when you watch it. And yet, you find yourself quite neutral afterwards.

I reflexively gave Fargo a four out of five, but after we discussed this I changed to a three and felt it was completely right. One of those weird things we humans do, rating something according to a completely imagined standard ... Perhaps it is something like rating a film after what we think (with that dry logical part of the brain) rather than according to what we feel?

Speaking of feeling, I think I enjoy the different qualities of text input devices and methods for computers about as much as I do writing with different types of pens and pencils on different types of paper. I realized that I have not used my Moleskine (which, my sister noted, I pronounce differently every time) notebook in a while, but while I sort of miss the feel of writing and reading my thoughts on paper, I do not feel that the writing I do instead (on my Ipad mostly) is in any way inferior. Writing things like this has a charm of its own, digital and. artificial though it may be.

Oh, and Elements is the perfect IOS text editor for me. Plain text, no nonsense, and built right on top of Dropbox so my notes automagically show up everywhere I need them to.

There is so much more that I do not write here. I write more just for myself, and I speak of things too (shocking, I know). Processing is going on all the time. Thoughts flow, incessantly and mesmerizingly, and I try to catch, nurture and shape as many of them as I can.

Jag vaknade, lägligt nog, strax innan jag gick upp. Jag tror klockan var strax före nio. Jag drack två små kannor te och nöjde mig med ett päron eller något liknande till frukost, eftersom det lutade åt ganska tidig lunch.

Strax efter elva mötte jag besökande bekanting T utanför Universeum. Vi tog en promenad på stan och intog sedan lunch på Steinbrenner & Nyberg på Södra vägen. Det innebar en utmärkt soppa, kanongott bröd och tårtbuffé till efterrätt. Ett glas vatten och två koppar kaffe slank ner som dryck. Ordentligt mättade vandrade vi på stan en stund till innan vi begav oss hem till mig. T avlöstes sedan av gamla bostadsdelare K och medföljande M. Medan vi pratade blev det i runda slängar två koppar kaffe till och åtminstone en tredjedels rejäl kanellängd. Under kvarvarande bit av kvällen var jag (helt oväntat ...) inte speciellt hungrig, så det blev en kopp vatten eller två medan jag läste ut den sjätte Harry Potter. På väg mot Heden och starten - jag tog en promenad, det verkade enklast - laddade jag med de sista två bitarna kanellängd. Väl framme på Heden vandrade jag runt lite, lämnade in mina överdragskläder och sprang lite lätt i startfållan för att prova känslan. Senaste gången jag sprang var för en och en halv vecka sedan, och efter det hade jag gått runt med en envis känsla av halsont som hängt kvar utan att bli varesig större eller mindre med tiden. Innan halsontet dök upp var "under 45" min målsättning. När det inte gav med sig lade jag alla tidsmål på hyllan och tänkte enbart starta och känna efter, springa på så länge det kändes bra och sakta ner eller bryta om det började kännas dåligt på något sätt. Jag kände mig fortfarande rätt normal, lite tung i magen och osäker på formen som jag brukar och borde efter en lite längre paus och mycket tårta.

Själva loppet kändes väldigt ... kort. Speciellt de första fem kilometrarna. De första två-tre kilometrarna var det lite trångt mellan löparna, sedan blev det klart bättre med utrymme och det kändes som att det var klart fler som sprang i ungefär mitt tempo. Jag startade i tredje gruppen av sju. Jag har ingen koll på hur löparna var fördelade, men jag kan lätt tänka mig att det kan ha blivit irriterande trångt under åtminstone första halvan av loppet för många som startade längre bak. Nog är det mysigt att springa på smågator (och mindre besvär för arrangörer och trafik, kan jag tänka mig), men mer utrymme hade definitivt inte skadat.

Jag tog inte tid själv, men om mellantiderna (de togs vid, om jag minns rätt, ungefär tre, fem och åtta kilometer) kommer ut tippar jag att de första fem kilometrarna var snabbast, fem till åtta/nio lite gradvis långsammare (även om man justerar för att de hade majoriteten av banans få backar) och sista kilometern lite snabbare igen. Jag kan inte påstå att jag hade några sjukdomskänningar under loppet, och inga problem med muskler eller andning heller. Mest kändes det som att det var ett tag sedan jag sprang sist, och jag kände mig lite osäker på vad kroppen skulle klara av.

Men det gick ju precis som det skulle. Jag tog som sagt inte tid själv, men Midnattsloppets resultatsida säger att jag preliminärt sprang på 44:19. Det gick ju helt enligt planerna, och jag är helnöjd med resultatet. Trots halsontet vad jag ändå riktigt fokuserad och peppad att ge allt (eller så nära allt som kroppen tillät) - lite av samma energi som jag kände inför och under Göteborgsvarvet 2009.

Väl i mål fick man sportdryck (varav jag spillde ut åtminstone hälften), banan och någon lustig och seg men ändå rätt god yoghurt- och havrebit. Väl hemma och ur duschen fick det bli några mumsiga äggmackor och någon liter vatten.

Halsontet sitter kvar, det känns faktiskt väldigt exakt som det gjorde innan. Jag förstår ingenting av det, men jag blir inte direkt ledsen och arg om det inte blir mer än såhär oavsett vad jag gör. Men jag tycker allt att det lika gärna kunde lägga ner helt om det ändå inte ska bli något ... Resten av kroppen känns i princip exakt som jag kunde vänta mig efter ett snabbt millopp med längre uppehåll innan - lite sliten och vimmelkantig men varken mer eller mindre så än utan halsont.

Jag har alltid gillat att springa, sedan långt innan jag var vuxen nog att erkänna att jag gillade någon sport. De senaste fyra åren har jag försökt att springa varannan dag, och ofta lyckats ganska hyfsat. Det längsta jag sprungit är distanser kring en halvmara.

Det är härligt att så många människor springer numera, men det känns ändå som om det är en ganska polariserad idrott. Antingen gillar folk jag möter löpning väldigt mycket eller så kan man knappt tänka sig något värre.

I veckan stod jag i kö på Stadium för att hämta min nummerlapp för Midnattsloppet i Göteborg. Plötsligt började jag undra om en anledning att folk inte gillar löpning är att mycket av vad man ser och hör om sporten får den att verka svår och farlig. Vägen fram till nummerlappsutlämningen var kantad av vattenflaskor, sportstrumpor, smärtstillande sprayer, energidrycker, återhämtningsmedel och energibars. Gratistidningen som delades ut innehöll en lång text om vikten av att dricka tillräckligt mycket före, under och efter ett längre lopp.

Allt detta för ett lopp som på tio kilometer, i lätt och snabb terräng (storstad) och med start klockan tio en augustikväll.

Det kanske inte är så konstigt att min bekanta M som inte springer själv tycker att en löprunda på en mil låter mycket och jobbigt?

Jag har som sagt sprungit regelbundet i dryga fyra år, med upplägg helt efter eget huvud. Jag har inte hållit någon speciell kost. Jag har ofta gett mig ut direkt efter jobbet utan att äta innan. Jag har hittills aldrig haft vätska med mig på en vanlig runda (inklusive de gånger jag sprungit halvmaror på egen hand). Jag har inte bytt skor varje år. Ändå har jag blivit bättre och bättre hela tiden, sluppit vara skadad och mått väldigt bra på kuppen.

Magiskt, eller hur?

Med andra ord: jag vet att det är enkelt att springa. Jag törs säga att jag aldrig skulle komma ut och springa om det var svårt. Det är bara jag och mina skor. Att ta på sig dem och ge sig ut är allt som behövs. Man hittar ett tempo och tuffar runt en runda. Går det snabbt så går det, blir man trött sänker man tempot. Gör man så rullar kilometrarna på så länge man vill. Man dör inte av att inte dricka Gatorade varannan kilometer (snarare tvärt om skulle jag tro ...) om man inte känner att man verkligen behöver det. Man lever gott på att äta fullt normal mat före och efter att man sprungit. (Och oj så gott det smakar!)

Det kan man inte tro om man tittar in i en genomsnittlig sportaffär ... Jag har svårt att tänka mig att någon frestas att börja springa av sportens framtoning, det måste nog till eget initiativ och/eller att man känner sansade löpare själv.

Har löpning som sport ett framtoningsproblem? Vad tycker du?

I currently have a gas stove. It was there when I moved in. It is probably not expensive (nothing about the kitchen indicated that the previous owner had any actual interest in cooking), in fact it did not even have a proper grille above the heating elements. Nevertheless, I have used it for a couple of months and have become a fan of gas-based cooking in the process.

Now, the gas is about to be turned off so it became time for me to, for the very first time, pick and buy a whole new stove for myself. During my investigations, I gradually came to realize that a induction-based stove is what I want. Close to gas in reaction time, energy efficient, modern et cetera. All good. The one downside (apart from higher average price than other options) is that all your old cooking ware may not work.

The fact that my cheap and cheerful moka pot will need to be replaced annoys me more than anything else about the switch. It is, clearly, the one piece of cooking equipment which by itself gives me some joy. It was cheap and it is not extraordinarily well built. But I went through a whole little process choosing and buying it and I have fun every time I use it. I can actually feel like making coffee just because it is enjoyable - I can feel like making coffee as a feeling distinct from feeling like consuming coffee. My little pot, in itself, adds to my whole coffee experience.

I feel something similar is the case with Apple devices. The things Apple create (hardware, software, ideas and emotions) make things fun to do and inspire the creation of more things in the same vein. It is not about any of the parts, it is all about the whole.

Who cares about processor versions,
graphics chips,
benchmarks
if I feel so happy making coffee that I can almost do it for the gratification of the process itself? Things like that never grow obsolete, either. They do not change just because a thing with bigger numbers come out.

Sitting on a (the?) peak in Överåsparken, under cool grey evening skies, listening to the wind, the traffic far below and My life story, typing on this sheet of glass.

Today my very first Iphone application, Filmtips, became usable by the general public.

It has actually been available in the app store for quite a while, but generating the key required to actually connect to Filmtipset's API did only became possible today.

The delay was kind of good actually, as it enabled me to have an improved 1.1 version on the way through approval on the release day and the beginnings of a 1.2 - wherein I can fix any horrible problems people may find - in Xcode.

So it is a grand day for me as a developer, and I have celebrated (well) in my usual way: good food. Home made kebab pizza and some (quite some) great italian-style ice cream together with moka coffee and Monsters inc. Anyone beat that?

Pondering leaving my hill and purchasing some beer on the way home, as a way to continue celebrations. But who needs to make too careful plans, life is great when typing up here.

Back downhill

Both the panoramas above were taken near the spot of writing, and can be clicked to see larger versions.

Not original size though.
The output of the Iphone 3G camera
is not
that impressive.

I did get myself those beers, and then took a quite random and unplanned way home across the hill, feeling a nice sense of playful exploration following fences stopping my progress and half-sliding down hills clearly not intended for walking.

I stepped through the door, hot from the walk from the train station carrying luggage plus groceries.

Unpacked quickly, watered the plants, then was out for a run almost before I could react.

Sometimes I wonder if I am too focused on getting things done even when I am on holiday.

In any case, I have had a nice almost-whole-week in Örebro with lots of great food, friends and family.

Right now, I am pretty much just sitting around awaiting an appropriate time to walk toward Trädgårdsföreningen. Kent is playing tonight, and, as is par for my course, I find myself quite unable to focus on anything for very long. The appropriate time is almost two hours away, yet all the (few) things I need are already in my pockets.

Forward-looking statements

On Monday, it would be kind of appropriate to hold a little release party. But more thinking about that once it is actually a done and official thing.

Restless

Dags att snurra min jord igen? Spelar radion vår sång?

It has been a surprisingly good day.

Starting way too early, I rolled hungry out of bed after much too few (around four by own guesstimation) hours of sleep. Some combination of post-running high, exhaustion and Iphone app-related excitement conspired. In any case, I decided sleep was a lost cause for now, got up and breakfasted.

Then I sat down with Xcode and spent most of the time before noon making just about as little progress as I thought made sense for my energy level. When lunchtime rolled around I was really hungry for pizza and slightly annoyed at my whole angle toward coding.

I am not sure when a lunch of pizza (and a surprisingly varied and good offering of salads), cola and coffee last hit the spot this perfectly.

I returned to my code full, rather happy, both well sugared and caffeinated and made nice and steady progress all afternoon.

(My Iphone app is actually all finished and available, but some more things outside my control need to be fixed for it to actually be of any use to people. In the meantime, the things I have got done today add up to large parts of a great 1.1 release.)

For evening entertainment, I tried my hand at Metroid prime 3 for a few minutes. But my mood clearly was not one for a boss fight tonight, so I instead watched Good Will Hunting. Great film, and I once again watched without ruining the experience with too much idle stuff on the side. Holidays having a good effect on my attention span and focus, I think.

I sort of expect to sleep really well tonight.

But I can not say I am counting on it.

Nor am I sure
that sleeping poorly
would automatically mean bad things
for tomorrow.

Questions:
1) When am I supposed to watch and/or listen to all these podcasts?
2) Will this cosy rain last all night like I hope?
3) Will I play Monkey island 2 in bed again?

I did some carefully planned shopping today. Most important was this:

My very first moka coffee pot. If you have never seen one, I recommend the external to wikipedia.

Every time I have knowingly had moka brewed coffee, it has been excellent. Sort of like espresso, but with its own full and round feel. I also suspect that the uniformly excellent coffee I had each morning during a wonderful week in Verona a couple of year back may have been moka brewed, but I have no proof of this.

In any case, from time to time I have missed the ability to produce small amounts of stronger coffee at home. I do like the coffee produced by my humble press very much (I dare say the quality is consistently above that of most other machines I have tried, home as well as office/hi-volume ones), but it requires a certain minimum amount to do a good job, and you simply never get anything truly espresso-like out of it. A real espresso machine still feels like vast overkill to me, but as soon as I started to learn more about moka pots I felt an immediate appeal. The whole concept is no nice and simple, and ones made for just a few cups seemed common.

Thus, I began checking prizes and sizes, and, as is so often the case, real life filtered down the options quite a bit. To start off, brand-name moka pots just felt too expensive to a beginner like me. So, off they went. The limited selection of pots in stores provided another great filter One sunny Saturday in July, I went around to some stores and had a look at their options. It turned out that many had a very sparse selection of moka pots, and when they had one, it was often either expensive, for more cups than I needed, or both. I primarily wanted my pot for personal use, so I figured one sized for two or three cups would be about right. Having checked on Prisjakt (a Swedish price comparison site) I knew what one might be found for. The large stores I checked had a few pots with neither felt too appealing, nor were cheap enough to make up for the lack of appeal.

However, there was no need to despair. From Prisjakt, I knew that there was a store right next to where I live which had moka pots at good prices. That was where I made my way after a fun but fruitless excursion to many other stores. The name of the store is Kaffelunden, and as soon as I stepped inside the cosy store I found some nice looking moka pots at just the right price and size. Prefect. Deciding on one of three colours seemed to be the only problem.

But I had not counted on the great service I would receive. After exchanging a few words with the nice woman manning the store, she pointed out that they had a special offer on pots of two different colours right now. So, if I chose one of those colours, I would get a pot at half the price I had even seen anywhere else. While thinking, I also got a quick but thorough introduction to using a moka pot as well as a demonstration of a coffee grinder. Finally, I settled on the nice red pot pictured above. Yes, it was one of the colours covered by the special offer. That did not matter for the service level though, the packaging was opened, carefully checked for defects and switched for a different one when some colour scratches were noticed. I left Kaffelunden very happy with my purchase and certain I will come back many more times. They also have a shop online, so if you live in Sweden and need some coffee related items I highly recommend you check Kaffelunden out.

See, this is what providing good service gets you.

Once home, it was high time for lunch, and then of course for the maiden brew.

My brother had told me that it took some experience to get the hang of moka brewing. With that in mind, I think the first brew went splendidly. (I did of course follow the Kaffelunden woman's adivice to the letter.) My pot rated for three (espresso sized) cups produced about one standard cup's worth of coffee just as strong, black and well-rounded as I had hoped for.

All is well that ends well. My moka brewing life is just beginning, but it certainly has begun very well indeed.

What I am talking about when I talk about running is a book by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It has a sort of diary or refined diary form, as the chapters are in chronological order and written on given dates. The binding theme is the author's relation to and thoughts about running.

To condense my experience: after finishing the book I went out for a 20 kilometer run (my longest in over two months), and every step and breath was thoroughly enjoyable.

I think I have found the energy and fun in running again after a sort of slow period. It is, of course, not all because of the book. There are a whole series of circumstances and events which together make up this pleasant situation. But having the book right at the end of the chain seems completely right.

There are many things i recognize, from thoughts about life, how running connects and relates to the rest of it, to certain types of feelings while running. All filtered through and clarified by the humble mind of a writer with much more experience. It is a great joy to be able to relate to someone like this, to feel that you can connect with someone higher up a ladder of some type of experience.

I got the book as a birthday present, a fantastically right present to give a runner who is becoming one year older. So right that I can think of several people who , in turn,I might give it to, spreading it like a positive virus.

So, thank you for sharing, mister Murakami! I am looking forward to reading some of your other books as well.  

Other people may be more difficult to convince, but I am on my third day of Ipad ownership and already just as sold on it as I expected to be. Even though the Ipad experience can be quite correctly characterized as that of a larger Iphone, that simple scaling at the same time makes everything completely different. In a way, I find the Ipad experience more exciting and full of unexplored possibilities than the Iphone ever was. This is the first time someone has created an excellent device of this size and has got so many great developers on board to explore and define the experience. While Iphone apps often and naturally tend to end up sharing many paradigms (most importantly "navigation by drilling down lists") the screen and power of the Ipad provides the room for a lot more individual and focused designs. I hope for and expect a lot of fantastic designs moving forward, designs which we would never see on the Iphone or any other device.

Is there a case for a case?

Friends of mine did the actual purchase of my Ipad, and from their own experience  they bought me Apple's Ipad case as well. I would not have bought a case myself, at least not right away, but now that I have one I have already used it. The feel with and without a case is pretty different. Putting the Ipad in the case, or removing it, takes a bit of work (and a measured amount of force), so it it not something you feel like doing very often. I have only inserted and removed the Ipad from the case once so far, and both times I started wondering how resistant the case might be to careless pushing and pulling. Although nice and rubbery, it somehow does not give that Apple feel of luxury and build quality that, for example, the Ipad itself does. Update: the case eases up with use, subsequent insertions and removals are noticeably easier.

My main use of the case so far is for its functionality as a stand. Getting a little bit of height and angle while typing in bed like this is very convenient, plus the case provides more grip and friction whether you hold it or rest it on some surface. I can see a case making me feel a lot better about setting the pad down anywhere and everywhere while out and about, but in a way it feels like a created need and point. That is, would I ever have worried about that if I did not have a case? I have gone happily case-less for all my Ipods as well as my Iphone (and previous phones for that matter). Then again, all those are held the vast majority of the time, while a Ipad is definitely put down or propped up against something much more often.

I will probably keep using the case, or at least a case, whenever I pack the Ipad into a bag. Yesterday it got to travel, inside the case, in my backpack together with a whole lot of groceries, and that would not have felt quite as good without a little extra cover over the screen. Perhaps transportation mode is the deciding factor - if something will travel in shirt or pants pockets I feel no need for a case, but for something which is likely to go inside a backpack or bag I do.

Connectivity

I have already had the time to miss 3G connectivity a few times. My SIM card will hopefully arrive in the next few days, and this just removes any last hesitation about whether I would actually find the extra cost worth it. It is of course no guarantee that I will use it all the time, but having felt limited by its lack already me and that I will definitely appreciate having the persistent connection.

Random application notes

Yes, everything is just so much smoother and faster than on the Iphone (but I should note that I have yet to try an Iphone 4). Safari is a dream to use.

Using Flipboard, a just released news reader-ish app, really feels like living in the future. Smooth, stylish, all laid out for you. There is no telling how amazing it might end up being if they keep improving it along the lines already in place.

I have yet to decide on an app for RSS reading, as the free options seem a bit limited and I want to research properly before purchasing an app. Currently, though, Reeder seems like an attractive option.

However, i may well be able to live without dedicated apps for some purposes (RSS and Facebook come to mind) as Safari on thee Ipad is such a wonderful experience.

That said, well made native apps with innovative functionality should blow web alternatives out of the water. But using Facebook or Google reader in Safari on the Ipad is a world of difference to doing the same thing on the Iphone. Smooth and quick and of course with a whole different resolution and screen size. So I am not in any desperate hurry.

Notes app annoyance: while typing in landscape mode, it is not hard to accidentally tap the list of notes while aiming for the top left keys (q, w, e, r), suddenly throwing yourself out of editing and into a whole different note. It does not lose you any data, but it sure breaks your stride.

Lost apps

To my surprise, and, I have to say, more of delight than disappointment, the Ipad ships without some of Apple's default applications. There is no stocks app to hide away as far as you can anymore, neither is there a weather app. Nor, for less clear reasons, is there a calculator any more. Voice memos are gone too. Perhaps Apple removed everything for which there are plenty of options in the app store? In any case, I doubt the apps will be missed by many, and the certainly are not missed by me.

Typing

I am currently trying to get into something approaching touch typing on the landscape keyboard. It seems to be coming along rather well. Portrait actually sort of works for this too, but there I am more likely to be holding the Ipad in both hands and use classic thumb typing. That is a bit slower due to the larger movements required compared to the Iphone, but it works just fine.

There is no support for a Swedish keyboard or dictionary yet, which makes typing in my mother tongue rather like a constant fight with the whole system. But I knew that from the start, and know support will come, and until then I am happy to do most of my writing in English. I am curious, though, if the occasional outbreaks of Swedish will wreak any havoc on the dictionary ...

One thing I notice is that English corrections and dictionary seems quite a bit better than the Swedish ones on the Iphone. I feel like I can trust them more here and type faster. But of course the larger keys alone probably play a big part in this.

Orientation aspects

On the whole, I am using the Ipad in landscape mode a whole lot more than I ever have with the Iphone. The combination of a keyboard large enough for both hands, plenty of space left to see where you are typing and many well-designed landscape modes combine to make landscape mode a whole lot more useful on the Ipad. I dare say supporting landscape mode well is a lot more important for an app on the Ipad than it was on the Iphone.

Battery life

In short: yes, absolutely. My Ipad indicated 75% charge when I first turned it on. It turned out my Imac does not supply enough power through USB for charging, so all the initial syncing was done on battery power. After that, I let it charge to full power (both using it and letting it just charge). Then I unplugged it, and it has been running on that one charge ever since. The charge was finished on Friday evening. I am now well into Sunday afternoon, and the indicator, while getting low, has yet to turn red or otherwise announce that it is running dry. Once again, the difference from the Iphone (or the laptops I have used) under similar usage is just amazing. Even more so when I consider the fact that the Ipad has this enormous screen and other hungrier hardware under the hood compared to my Iphone (3G).

Closing notes, for now

The Ipad does not charge at all from USB on my Imac. Low power, as games of old would have put it.

This text was entirely written and edited on the Ipad, in the Notes application.

Yes, including the HTML markup. That, I will certainly not be doing regularly in the Notes app ...

I can believe it as little as anyone else, but Filmtips, my very first and very own Iphone application, has reached 1.0 and is ready to be sent to Apple for approval and release on the app store.

Fortunately, I created some problems for myself on the way to submission which mean the total unreality of actual approval and release is still a little further away.

Still, though.
Darn.

Speaking of cool and unreal

My awesome brother gave me a fantastic birthday present: on Tuesday evening mom and I drove to Slussens pensionat on Orust, had a great dinner and watched the Soundtrack of our lives play an amazing gig.

They started somewhere around ten in the evening, and around eleven announced that the first set was finished and that there would be a break of maybe twenty minutes.

After said break, they kept going to a quarter to two in the morning, pretty much just getting better and more energetic with each song. When we got Firmament vacation for what turned out to be the second last extra song I thought it could not get any better. But then they finished off by running us all over with Confrontation camp, one of the songs I had been wishing for all evening. A gig actually can not get any better than that, I promise.

We headed home floored, exhausted, ears ringing slightly and totally happy.

Catching up on missed sleep the night to today was, of course, pretty good in its own class of activities.

I turned a year older in the beginning of this week. The only organized celebrations I have planned are tomorrow, with just the immediate family. Apart from that I brought a home made cake which I think turned out really well (everyone else, luckily, seemed to agree) to work and everything felt happy and relaxed.

Then the week drifted, as so many weeks do, and suddenly I found myself with only a Friday evening between me and Saturday, standing around with a vague feeling I had a bit too many things to fix (clean, mostly) before people arrive. To improve my mood further I had a lot of cakes with the afternoon coffee (and pizza for dinner the night before), so I managed to really put myself in one of those grumpy afternoon moods on my way home; feeling tired, out of energy and motivation as well as a bit unhealthy.

Also contributing was the fact that I missed one exercise time in my regular every other day scheme this week. Because of that, I also wanted to make sure that I would not miss running tonight. But combining that with the other things I felt a need to do did of course not make anything feel simpler.

I ended up vaccuuming and doing some dust wiping, then getting my running done. And, as usual, the running completely turned around and evened out my mood and energy levels.

There will, once again, be cake

So now the cake
the second of the week
has been baked, the floors have been wiped, I am clean and shaved and am feeling happy and relaxed about tomorrow. And
as so many times before
all it took was some rythmic sweating outdoors.

Last night's random doodling in Brushes

Geek stuff - IOS, Ibooks, Islowness

I promptly pushed IOS 4 onto my Iphone (a cranky oldsturdy non-S 3G) as soon as I could. The differences are undeniable - most obviously a great many activities feel slower and choppier than ever before. Enough so that I actually consider downgrading every now and then.

Despite this, I have been putting a few books and magazines into Ibooks and done some reading. It is definitely made for faster devices, and the way it feels on the Iphone's screen size makes you yearn for more space, but I still kind of like it.

(Could that be a conscious thing - putting Ibooks on the phones to make people realize how great it must be to read on an Ipad?)

Every previous time I have tried ebooks or something similar it has been a pretty brief if intensive phase. Perhaps it will blow over once I am through my current little crop of material as well. Perhaps then I will downgrade.

Or - extremely wishful thinking - perhaps a minor update to IOS 4 will come out and put just a little bit of snappiness back into things again.

One can always wish, right?

(In any case, I see myself ending up with a new Iphone
and/or an Ipad
in many visions of possible near futures. No more slowness then.)

I have tried a few times to log into Itunes connect to learn how to submit my Filmtips app to the App store. Currently, I get stuck in a ping pong game between a login page and accepting the "new" terms and conditions. It is at least an improvement from before, when all I got was a message about an internal server error.

Lazy days

Weather has been undeniably summer-like, if somewhat unstable. People are starting to slide off into holidays, and I am beginning to really look forward to mine as well.
Only ten days of work left now ...
To speed that time up even more, and make it feel more like a holiday in itself, it looks like I will be getting a whole group of Hospitality club visitors next week. Nothing breaks the feeling of everyday ... days ... like meeting some new people.

All is, I dare say, pretty great.

The idea of coding every day is alive to a pretty great degree, summer is clearly here, friends and family are dropping by regularly, I had a great midsummer and am shaking off the last hints of cold.

Plus, I may get my wardrobe assembled tomorrow. Fancy that, my bedroom looking all furnished and finished.

Midsummer promotion

Apart from the odd sneezing and such I had quite the perfect midsummer, hanging out with old friends (Bonnie and Kristoffer) and a whole set of other interesting and fun people. First at Liseberg (my first visit since when, 2002? 2003?), then on to Kullavik for barbecuing, eating and drinking in the best of cottage-based summer traditions.

There are photos, I am sure.

On Midsummer's eve Kristoffer also showed me his latest creation - Ohm chess HD - on the Ipad. It looks, sounds and plays great (the last to whatever level a decisively fifth-rate chess player like myself can tell). I especially fell for the title screen, which really sets a mood and yet again reminded me of the expression that the Ipad "becomes" whatever application you are using. Ohm chess HD is awaiting approval in the App store right now, and to pass the time you can visit Ohm interactive and get your own copy of that sweet title screen in several resolutions ideally suited for desktop backgrounds. Trust me, I am looking at it right now.

Code and design

Yes, my hobby coding is rolling along really well right now. I have pulled things together on the coding front and sent a few friends a first test version of my Iphone application for accessing Swedish movie rating site Filmtipset on Saturday. I got some great feedback, adjusted and fixed things accordingly on Sunday, then promptly discovered some more problems and entered one of those stages where things just seem to be breaking more with every fix you attempt. And then I thought it might be time for a break so I got out and got myself some more sun and fresh air and, once home again, focused more on website coding (and Super Mario galaxy 2) for the rest of the evening. I am trying to create a reasonable companion site for the Iphone app and I find that it, together with designing the icon and other visual aspects of the app itself, provides me a nice variety of things to focus on while still making progress toward the same goal. It has also got me to think more about UI design in general, and look for good and interesting examples of such as well. All with at least some focus retained.

In short: I am having great fun coding, a goal (marked "1.0") is in sight and I hope to make the final pushes to reach it very soon.

But not so soon that I get too out of touch with other things. Like the sun outside, the nice games, and the people around.

Exercise geekiness

Trying for that "balance" people keep talking about.

Because of that cold, I have not been running for more than a week. I am curious, and actually a little bit excited, about how it will feel next time I run. It might be tomorrow.

The social

A chocolate cake has been baked.

People will drop by regularly all week.

There is a lot of pineapple available.

Final words

Gosh-is-that-the-time-already/I-can-not-believe-it-is-almost-July-already/So-much-to-do-so-little-time/Man-things-are-good.

It has been a really good week at work. I have been really focused, got quite a bit done and the hours have pretty much flown by. Off work it has been the usual good running, movies and also receiving a nice large cupboard for my bedroom.

So large that it is troublesome just figuring out the most convenient way of putting it together, and even a stubborn soul like I realized after some thinking that I should really not even try before I have a helper or two on site.

This morning I got up a bit later than usual. It is Saturday after all. I had my usual breakfast before doing some random surfing.

I ended up downloading Myihome server - a small application which runs on your computer to let your Popcorn hour access its media more easily. I hoped it would give me some access to the media in my Itunes library, but for some reason did not have much hope about it beign convenient. But it works much better than I expected. That is, it just works. I just installed and ran it on my Imac. And boom, I get instant access to my Itunes library on my TV. The only annoyance I can think of so far is that the things I view do not get marked as seen in Itunes.

This is the way video podcasts were meant to be watched.

Specifically, I have been watching the HD versions of videos from Apple's recent developer conference.

Then I went off and did some shopping, a much needed refill of the food supplies.

Us hunter-gatherers really have it easy these days.

Once back, I had some sandwiches and some simply wonderful cups of coffee along with Lejonet och björnen's texas pecan ice cream. Best fika in a long time, quite simply.

Ran today, without glancing at the time while on it. Felt really nice, made me run a little slower than I otherwise may have but not much.

It rained on me.

But of course that made no difference to how I looked when I got back.

Got back, showered and weighed myself. I weighed less than last time, much less even. The scales have never showed me a weight this low. So, I started wondering if there may be something off with the scale.

More importantly, I made a lot of dinner. Yummy, yummy dinner and a huge cup of hot cocoa with a pinch of [mynta] for an extra nice touch. I have actually been thinking seriously about eating more on average during the week, and that sure got an extra kick when I stepped on the scales today.

I have had more music than recently playing too, rediscovering how nice it is to have some background sound flowing from the Tivoli. Sparks' Hello young lovers is my most recent discovery. But I have also got my very first Divine comedy record, and I am enjoying that quite a bit as well.

More geekiness - finally enrolled to become a registered IOS (Apple's mobile platforms - Iphone, Ipad, Ipod touch) developer. Once I get approved, I will be able to finish and release and application, and I mean to finish one pretty soon. I am really curious as to how well the thing will actually run on my 3G Iphone the first few times as I am only able to run it in the simulator for now. I have really low expectations, so it will all be a fun learning experience. I have been meaning to pick up this project for quite a while, and it feels great to finally get going on it again.

And now it is suddenly Sunday. I am full and relaxed and happy, watching a developer video on the TV and writing this in Writeroom on Pomum. The world is good.

Perhaps I should have some TED next?

Tonight I did the laundry.

Cooked a nice dish.

Bought what I
hope
will be a good cupboard.

Got running water back again.

Yes, it certainly is a life chock full of adventure.

If I end up excessively lucky, I might have a visiting relative (hello sister!) to trick fool beg into helping me assemble the cupboard when it arrives.

When IKEA explicitly recommends at least two people to handle the flat packages, you obey. And shiver, ever so slightly.

Anyway, the cupboard is finally a new step in getting the apartment ever so slightly more cosy and "complete" (in quotes as I am deeply uncertain what that might mean). It has been a while since I took the previous step, and I did not want to suddenly wake up a few years on, the very same foot still in the air.

Might I get around to those annoying lamps next?

Great reading

The past few days I have been reading a good deal of Mechner. Jordan Mechner, who you may or may not ever have heard of. He is the man behind Prince of Persia, which you may only know as a recent film but which I kind of hope you know as one of the more classic games of Olde. He has put journal entries online of about a seven year period during which he created Prince of Persia parts one and two, traveled a lot and a whole lot more.

I engulfed it like a great short story.

If you think you might like the tales of a young game and/or film maker traveling the world, just follow that external link over on the right.

Go on. That stuff is so much better than anything here, and this site is not going anywhere.

Myself, I am going into light media-blackout mode until I can watch Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote myself sometime in the morning.

A note to random passers-by: this text is about using the Javascript famework Sproutcore to lay out interfaces. If this is not your area of interest you will not get much out of what follows.

Ever wanted to create a more or less dynamic vertical list of views? Perhaps something like this?

Something like a preferences pane with any number of controls of different types. If you happen to be me, you did. I began creating it using the usual absolute layout of Sproutcore, but eventually found myself annoyed by constant adjustments as options came and went, and began wondering if there shouldn't be a better way. I began looking around for a solution, and started looking at the StaticLayout mixin. It seemed to be just what I wanted, but for a long time all my experiments seemed to cause more problems than they solved.

Well, I think I've got it now, and this explains how I went about it fixing my preferences pane. Comments and improvements are extremely welcome. While the solution seems pretty general and boiled down to me, I am sure there are improvements to be made.

To try and generalize and simplify the problem: I wanted a vertical list of views. I wanted to be able to have any type of content, views or layouts inside each view, but I did not want to adjust heights and top positions of everything each time I added or removed a view.

Here is the complete application I used to create the screenshots. It does all the views the declarative way (so no use of the getTwoItemRow helper function I mention below) and all the action is right in main_page.js. I developed and tested this using the 1037 gem release of Sproutcore, and where I have been informed of differences in newer releases I note them below.

For me, there were two key areas or problems:

• Figuring out how and where to apply StaticLayout in general.
• Figuring out how to get a working ListView nested inside statically laid out views.

Figuring out how and where to apply StaticLayout in general

Here are the keys, as far as I can tell:

• Both the top (parent) view and all its immediate children should have the property useStaticLayout set to YES. For older versions of Sproutcore (gem releases before 1047, I think) the views also need to have the StaticLayout mixin.
• The immediate children should have a height set.

That is the essence, really. Inside each child you can lay out in any way you like as normal, including using static layout. Besides making it much easier for you to get things positioned, it also gives you automatic updates if you show or hide things dynamically.

Here's a pretty minimal example:

      settingsPane1: SC.View.design({
        useStaticLayout: YES,
        layout: { height: 400, width: 300 },
        childViews: ['row1'],
        row1: SC.View.design({
          useStaticLayout: YES,
          layout: {height: 20, width: 300},
          childViews: ['label1', 'label2'],
          label1: SC.LabelView.design({
            value: 'First headline',
            tagName: 'div',
            layout: {left: 10, width: 150, height: 20}
          }),
          label2: SC.LabelView.design({
            value: 'Second headline',
            tagName: 'div',
            layout: {left: 160, width: 150, height: 20}
          })
        })
      })

It produces a view with just the two labels at the top of the first image. As you can see, the two labels are laid out as usual, but wrapped inside a statically laid out view, "row1", which has a height set (and width too, in this case).

A little help(er)

As I was doing a preferences pane, I had a lot of lines looking like this:

Some type of control along with a headline on one "row". As I was creating my views inside the createChildViews function, I created a little helper function, getTwoItemRow:

  getTwoItemRow: function(item1, item2, height, useStaticLayoutForChildren) {
    if(!SC.none(useStaticLayoutForChildren) && useStaticLayoutForChildren === false) {
      return SC.View.design({
        childViews: ['item1', 'item2'],
        layout: {height: height},
        item1: item1,
        item2: item2
      });     
    }
    return SC.View.design({
      useStaticLayout: YES,
      childViews: ['item1', 'item2'],
      layout: {height: height},
      item1: item1,
      item2: item2
    });
  }

Then, creating a new row looks like this:

      this.getTwoItemRow(
        SC.LabelView.design({
          value: 'Dessert',
          layout: {width: 150, left: 25, height: 20}
        }),
        SC.CheckboxView.design({
          layout: {left: 0, height: 20, width: 20},
        }),
        26
      )

The boolean flag at the end allows me to put multiple items on one row. A result like this:

is created like this:

      this.getTwoItemRow(
        this.getTwoItemRow(
          SC.LabelView.design({
            value: 'Cola',
            layout: {width: 120, left: 25, height: 20}
          }),
          SC.CheckboxView.design({
            layout: {left: 0, height: 20, width: 20},
          }),
          26, false
        ),
        this.getTwoItemRow(
          SC.LabelView.design({
            value: 'Orange',
            layout: {width: 80, right: 0, height: 20}
          }),
          SC.CheckboxView.design({
            layout: {right: 83, height: 20, width: 20},
          }),
          26, false
        ),
        26
      )

Yes, in the case of checkboxes I could just put the text in the property of the box, but it serves to illustrate the situation.

Figuring out how to get a working ListView nested inside statically laid out views

Note The fixes I apply here are built into the latest development versions of Sproutcore. So if you are from the future and using some release after the 1047 gem, do not need to worry about this at all.

After I got the general cases working, ListViews held me up for a while. What would happen was that I would get errors telling me 'frame is null' whenever I tried putting one inside a view with a statically laid out parent. This in itself was not so strange, as the documentation for StaticLayout clearly states that you lose the ability to use frames and certain other properties if you lay things out statically. But the ListView clearly expected frames, so what to do?

Well, I solved it. It works great for me, but I am hoping for insights and feedback here as I am not sure whether this is a good general solution, or if there may be other even better ones out there.

Anyway, what I did was to first make sure that the ScrollView wrapping the ListView was not statically laid out. That is, I made sure it was wrapped in another view.Then, I overrode the standard clippingFrame function for the ScrollView, adding two null checks:

  clippingFrame: function() {
    var pv= this.get('parentView'), f = this.get('frame'), ret = f, cf ;
    if (!SC.none(pv)) {
      cf = pv.get('contentClippingFrame');
      if(!SC.none(cf)) {
	ret = SC.intersectRects(cf, f);
      }
    }

    ret.x -= f.x ;
    ret.y -= f.y ;

    return ret ;
  }.property('parentView', 'frame').cacheable(),

And that was it. Everything works and lays itself out the way I want it without me needing to bother about vertical positioning.

And, hopefully, this can help someone else too. It seems that questions about StaticLayout pop up every now and then, but that answers are fewer and farther between.

Göteborgsvarvet 2010 är mitt tredje och mest välförberedda. Jag har sprungit något mer än inför förra året, och dessutom klart längre i snitt. Mina kilometertider har knaprats ner några snäpp och jag har inte ens haft några nojiga sjukdomskänningar veckan innan varvet. Förra året kom jag ju runt på knappa 1:44 och var extremt nöjd med det. I år är siktet inställt på att komma under 1:40 och jag känner mig säker på att klara det om inget väldigt oväntat inträffar.

Det enda osäkerhetsmoment som börjar segla upp dagarna före loppet är vädret. Det ser ut att bli ett klart varmare varv än de jag sprungit innan, och eftersom det varit en kall vinter och sval vår har jag inte mycket vana av att springa i värme. 2009 stannade jag bara på tre vätskestationer, men i år börjar jag planera för att stanna på fler. Eftersom jag hört att det tar ett tag (var det tjugo-trettio minuter som var tumregeln?) för intagen vätska att komma till nytta i kroppen stryker jag de sista stationerna ur planen. Och den allra första, strax innan Älvsborgsbron, brukar vara så välanvänd att jag hellre hoppar över den för att hålla lite rytm. Min grova plan blir till slut att använda så många som känns bra av de sju vätskestationerna från Älvsborgsbron till och med Nordstan.

Dagen börjar och fortsätter med så gott som strålande sol. Allt känns bra, från frukosten över det traditionella pastasalladsätandet till ombyte och inlämnande av saker. Jag är ganska tidigt inne i startområdet och står i princip i första ledet i min startgrupp. Humör, fokus och självförtroende är på topp.

Starten går och jag kommer iväg bra och känner att jag snabbt hittar ett bra tempo. Under sista halvåret har jag blivit mycket bättre på att titta på min pulsklocka, och under hela varvet håller jag ett öga på den för att se att jag inte tar i för mycket. Allting flyter på precis som jag hoppats genom Slottsskogen, upp och över Älvsborgsbron. Jag håller ett ganska högt tempo för att vara mig, 4:19 per kilometer i snitt under de första fem kilometrarna, men eftersom allt känns bra och pulsen också ligger fint fortsätter jag så.

Värme och sol är det verkligen gott om, men än så länge känner jag mig inte speciellt påverkad av dem. Men jag, som alla andra, håller mig i skuggan så fort chansen finns. På de här sträckorna är färre löpare på samma sträckor som jag i år än tidigare, så på många gator ligger vi allihop i den skugga som erbjuds på kanske en fjärdedel av gatan, eller på ena trottoaren medan båda körfälten är tomma.

Planenligt gör jag mitt första vätskeintag direkt efter Älvsborgsbron. Det blir en klunk vatten eller två och en lätt dusch med det som blir kvar i muggen. Precis som förra året håller jag mig till vatten på alla stationer, och jag tror att jag totalt dricker sex gånger istället för förra årets tre.

Första milen går som smort på 43:43, och det är inte förrän framåt Götaälvbron och Nordstan som jag börjar känna mig påverkad av värmen på allvar. Jag dricker lite en sista gång på vätskestationen vid Nordstan, och sedan börjar det kännas motigt på allvar. Hela Avenyn ska betas av utan någon skugga i sikte, jag känner mig riktigt varm i hela kroppen och den mentala energin går ner många nivåer. Det känns tungt på ungefär samma sätt som det gjorde under mitt första varv, även om jag litar mer på min egen kropp nu, håller ett högre tempo än då och inte börjar gå. Men känslan av motighet och att motivationen tryter är precis densamma, och under hela resten av loppet är mitt tempo mycket lugnare. Förmodligen var det precis rätt sak att göra eftersom värmen är tung och mängder av löpare visar sig ha brutit, men det är ändå frustrerande att se och känna hur tiden kryper iväg och plötsligt börja känna mig osäker på om jag ska klara min målsättning.

När Götaplatsen äntligen rundas kommer jag över på skuggsidan och får dessutom lite underbar nedförsbacke. Jag fokuserar nu ganska aktivt på att helt enkelt hålla igång när det går uppför och försöka springa återhämtande och lugnt så snart det går lite nerför och är skuggigt. Det känns som att någon ond människa smugit in en extra kilometer någonstans mellan 18 och 19, men jag segar mig ändå vidare mot målet och motstår frestelsen att gå.

Lite ny energi hittar jag nog på upploppet på Slottsskogsvallen, men det är verkligen inte mycket. När jag väl korsat mållinjen och blivit sprejad med härligt svalt vatten ett par gånger sjunker jag ihop längs kanten och hämtar andan en minut eller två innan jag orkar ta mig vidare. Matt på det här sättet har jag nog aldrig varit efter ett lopp, så det var nog extremt rätt att jag inte kunde eller ville försöka pressa mig mer.

Och tiden då? Jodå, klockan stannar på 1:37:03 och en snittid per kilometer på 4:37. Ett resultat jag bara blir mer och mer nöjd med ju längre dagen går. Jag klarade mina 1:40 trots allt! Och jag tog inte ut mig bortom all vett och sans. När jag reser mig och går mot inlämningen av tidtagningschipet har den sköna känslan av endorfiner efter avklarat Göteborgsvarv börjat infinna sig. Bananen, kaffet och kexchokladen är lika himmelskt goda som alltid och humöret är på topp när jag börjar promenera mot effektförvaringen i solskenet.

Två andra saker jag är nöjd med är att jag inte började gå någon gång (det hade nog bara dragit ner mig ännu mer) och att jag verkade lyckas få i mig en tillräcklig mängd vatten. Lite mer vatten (eller en svamp på svampstationen) mot slutet hade kanske varit skönt rent psykiskt, men samtidigt tror jag att ett brott i lunken på det stadiet kunde ha blivit rätt tungt i sig.

the sands of time

The film, not the game.

Unfortunately.

As soon as I saw the posters and trailer, I felt that this could work really well as a film. I was not expecting too much depth, just a good ride in the spirit of the games.

In short, I was ready to like this film.

The game was a wonderful experience. Tight and focused, it played to its strengths and wrapped acrobatic puzzle solving and fighting into a nice and cleverly written cover story.

The film, the way I see it, spends a lot more time telling much the same story in a much less engaged and focused way. It takes ages going to places much less interesting only to arrive at a very similar yet much less satisfying end.

I can not call it a climax because I sort of felt robbed of a payoff. I feel like they could have pulled at least half an hour out of the film and only made it better in the process. Even better, they could have stuck closer to the story of the game. I wonder if there were good reasons not to. If only we could go back in time and explore the alternatives ...

I found myself looking up at the script credits and thinking "Well, they can't be too proud of this."

Many of us have a reflexive doubt about games made as film tie-ins. Prince of persia goes to show that even with a strong story there is nothing certain about going in the other direction either, even when the filmmakers have this many years to get their act together.

Pity, all this money, talent and effects could have come together into something even better.