Glad Midsommar! :)

Today is midsummers eve in Sweden and everybody drinks schnapps and dance the little-frog-dance! 8D

Optical Illusion

Here is a really cool thing...

Click the LINK to come to a new webpage.
When at the new page be sure to have the cursor outside the loaded picture.
Watch the point in the middle of the picture closely for about 20-30 seconds then move the mouse-pointer onto the picture and enjoy the magic effect!

Cool huh? ;)

BTW. the picture was taken by me in september 2005 in a place called Annecy, in the Rhone-Alps region of France.

Another Trance video...

How could I miss this one in my previous post?



A really beautiful song!

Music Videos (Trance)

So I've been nagging about trance video's for some time... here are some more for ya:


4 Strings - Diving




4 Strings - Turn it around extended




4 Strings - Take Me Away (Into The Night)




Conjure One feat. Sinead O'Connor - Tears From The Moon




Rank 1 - Awakening




Rank 1 - Airwave (Music Clip)




Britney Spears - Everytime (Above & Beyond remix)




Above & Beyond vs Andy Moor - Air For Life




Madonna - What it feels like for a girl (Above & Beyond RMX)




Oceanlab - Clear Blue Water




OceanLab - Satellite




Matt Darey Feat. Marcella Woods - Beautiful




Andain - Beautiful Things




Dallas Superstars - I Feel Love

A little bit about this, a little bit about that!

Hi to anyone that ended up at this page! :)

Today it is Saturday, the clock shows 15:25 and I am sitting in the sun on my balcony listening to "Matt Darey & Marcella Woods - Voice of an angel".
It is quite warm here and because of that I am letting my curious neighbours have a free look at my embarassingly white chest. ;)
Well, you have to start somewhere to build up the tan for this years edition of "Beach 2007", anfortunately there are no beaches close to where live but can't a man have a dream?
My laptop is an old Pentium 2, 400mhz with 128Mb RAM running XP, it's battery is dead but I am lucky to have a power outlet here on the balcony. It still does a quite good job as it can play music and videos without problems, I can surf the web, check my email, write in this blog and even Skype works!
Today a friend of mine is having his 31st birthday, at the same day we celebrate "mothers day" wich I must not forget by the way...
The laptop gets pretty warm though resting here in my lap, and then it is good to find a Vodka-juice-7up drink just by my side to cool me down!

I've been very tempted to get another laptop recently, one that is a bit faster and that has a working battery. The lappie that has really caught my eye is the recently released Apple Macbook "black", it is really nice and can run both OSX and Windows XP in dualboot. Only real drawbacks seems to be it's fairly weak graphics card, good enough for anything except gaming.

I've took friday of from work as we already had the thursday off and now I am really happy to have 4 days of leave joined together before work starts again. I am also looking forward a bit to my vacation that comes up in July (two last weeks) and wich I will spend with family and friends in Sweden.
Only thing on the schedule that vacation is the "Wine-drinking-party" that we have every half year and that will have it's 10th year celebration this year.
It is a good way for me to meet most of my friends and we try to set the date months in advance in order to have as many as possible to be able to join.
This party is a boys only thingy where we make som food and drink large amounts of red wine, the menu is always a chili-chicken made in a clay-pot in the stove (really nice by the way). I know it might sound a bit gay to have a "boys only" party but it is so much fun and we always end up on a nightclub in the end of the evening anyway. ;)

"Darren Tate vs. Jono Grant - Shine" is putting my speakers to some hard work for the moment... and I start wondering why I have started to listening so much to vocal trance lately!? I think it is the combination of the harmonies and the female vocals + the fact that I have always been attracted by electronic music.
If I were to choose one single group to listen to for the rest of my life I would probably pick "Depeche Mode", they have always been favourites of mine and have been going on for over 25 years now producing LOTS of music (their 44th single has just been released btw. "John the revelator"). Every album has been a new sound experience and their music has really grown during the years, not to mention David Gahan's voice! ;)
David were deep down in drugs some ten years ago, so deep in fact that his heart stopped for some time before he could be revived. Today he is clean and still going strong. I can't help the fact that I really think some of thhe music made in the "dark years" are some of their best - take the album "Violator" as an example.

Now my second drink is almost finished and I will go to prepare a third one...

Love to all!

/erikss0n

Sweden wins GOLD in Hockey World Championships!

Excellent!!!
I am very happy, I got some new hope for Sweden... we win the championships and that with the four mayor players not even beeing present!
Congratulations!!! And especially to Jörgen Jönsson, winning Swedish championships, Olympic Games and World Championships all the same year!!!
And for all you aout there that didn't know, Sweden is the first team ever that won the Olympic Game and World Championships the same year!!! Hurrah!!!!

Hilariously fun at the library! :)

Rollerblading

Ahh, just back from a rollerblading-session... feels great! :)
Now some dinner -cooking and then CL-finals (Arsenal -Barcelona)

Go ARSENAL!!!

Sweden beats USA!

Todays World Championships hockeymatch finished some time ago, result: 2-0, 2-0, 2-0 for a total of 6-0 :)

Talk about timing... or pure luck!

MATRIX - Blue LED Watch

I am bidding on EBAY for a new watch!


"An impressive brilliant blue Genuine LED wirebond display with visible circuit board and incredibly unique mirror lens. Time or date will only display when a button is pushed...so in normal state...all you see is a mirrored watch. Suitable for retro collector, pimp or techno geek...this is top shelf collectible chrono gadget. Reliable and consistent, the large display is as easy to read in the dark of night as it is on a sunny day (an improvement over vintage LED displays!). Featuring a sleek, space age/retro design inspired by 1970s icons Pulsar, Hamilton, Wittnaeur etc."

New blog layout!

Today I have been playing around with the "theme" -colors for my blog in order to have a nicer and more warm feeling to it. In the picture you can see how my blog looked before the change.
It was a lot of fiddling around before I got what I wanted but I am really satisfied with the end-result. :)

I am thinking of more things to add to my blog but at the moment no new ideas spring to my mind...

Going to Sweden over easter!

9 days left!

I am leaving Geneva at lunchtime on the 13th of April to visit my family and friends in Sweden and will be back here again on the 18th. The reason is that I found a quite cheap ticket with SAS and most of my friends will be away anyway.
Does this mean I will experience winter another time this year?
From what I have heard it has been cold and a lot of snow in my home town region lately and people are frustrated that spring has yet not arrived!
Anyway, it's going to be nice to have some relaxing days with good food (mummy's) before work starts to get serious down here again... :)

MIO A701 Smartphone/GPS

After plenty of webresearch, I am getting more and more interested in one of these machines now.
It is a little bit pricey with it's ~€650. I have been looking into getting a GPS for my car for quite some time now, maybe this could be what I have been looking for!?
The included GPS software brings detailed maps for 22 european countries on a DVD wich can be transferred when needed to the phone.
The phone lacks built in wifi (wich is a letdown) but that could be fixed with a SPECTEC SDIO wifi-card that can fit in the SDIO-slot on the phone.

The Mio A701 smartphone incorporates a SirFStar III GPS receiver, mobile phone and PDA functions into one compact ~(150g), distinctive product.

It is based on the Intel PXA270 processor running at 520MHz and has a 2.7-inch touchscreen, which is capable of displaying a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels.
It runs Windows Mobile 5.0 which provides new features including persistent memory and the latest office applications Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Media Player 10.
Memory is catered for with a total memory of 192MB which is split in 128MB of ROM and 64MB RAM. An SD/MMC memory card slot (SDIO) can boost that to 2GB.
Other features are Bluetooth 1.2, a 1.3 Megapixel camera and a navigation system with an incorporated SiRFstar III GPS receiver which is capable of quick, reliable satellite fixes.
It's Tri-Band (900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS phone functionality ensures that the A701 can be used in most countries and for internet/e-mail access and offers up to 4 hours talktime and up to 200 hours standby.
Along with simultaneous calling and navigation when using MioMap v2, a pedestrian mode to help you explore cities without losing track, one touch calling of points of interest (restaurants, cinemas etc) and in case you do get lost, the ability to text your GPS co-ordinates it makes you wonder how you have managed to live your life without one up til now. :)

Happy 30th Birthday

Well done Steve Jobs with employees!
You've been in business in 30 years now and are doing better than ever, introduced INTEL processors in your computers, launched OSX and the most successful mediaplayer in the world, IPOD. iTunes are selling loads of music and Mac-Mini's are damn sexy!

My first computer was an Apple II+ and the year was 1983, it was simpler then... 1Mhz CPU, 48Kb Ram and a green amber monitor with a resolution I cannot even remember!?
But ever since then I have been hooked to computers and I wouldn't have made it to where I am today if it wasn't for you - Thank You!

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Since a few days I have been playing the PC-game "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" by Bethesda Softworks, this game is truly breathtaking! The size of the gameworld is incredible and has really to be experienced to be understood!
I must admit I got really sucked into it yesterday, came home from work at around 17.30 and played more or less non-stop until 23.30 (with a small break for a dinner-snack).




It is absolutely immense and fun-fucking-tasticly gourgeous!

Tickle.com

What www.tickle.com says about...

A suitable job for me:

Your right job will allow you to be Creative and Practical Creative

You're a visionary in many people's eyes — able to think outside the box to come up with your own solutions. You are not necessarily creative in the artistic sense, but because you can expand your mind to do things differently it might take a while for colleagues to recognise and reward you for your entrepreneurial spirit and abilities.

You make it hard for people to pigeon hole you so you need a job that allows you to play to your strengths, break out of the mould, and truly excel.

Great Jobs For You

Because of the way you process information, these are just some of the many careers in which you could excel:

* Physicists
* Chess player
* City planner
* Astronomer
* Physicists
* Mathematician
* Researcher


Some of Your Greatest Talents
You've got tons of strengths. It wouldn't surprise us if you:

* Can give practical application to abstract thought
* Can predict patterns
* Are resourceful & practical
* Envision the "big picture"

You have a strong ability to process visual-spatial and mathematical information. These skills combined with your strengths in logic are what make you a Visual Mathematician.

You're able to understand patterns visually and in numbers. That means your mind can create a mental picture for any problem. In addition to that skill, you possess an intelligence that allows you to apply math to that picture, too. That helps you manipulate multiple parts of the picture (or problem) to come up with a solution.

You have many skills that are critical to success and problem-solving. Your talents help you understand the "big picture," which is partly why people may turn to you for direction — especially in the workplace. You flourish in environments where tasks are clearly defined, and you are a whiz at improving processes and making things more efficient. Your ability to detect patterns and your skills in math and logic, make it natural for you to come up with ideas and theories that simplify processes for everyone.

Outside of work, Visual Mathematicians tend to do well at strategic activities like chess. It must be that ability to recognize patterns — both as they are and how they develop. Regardless of how you put your mind to use, you've got a great set of talents. You will be able to envision a clear path and calculate the risks, and more importantly, the rewards, of anything you take on.

According to their tests my IQ is 127 and I am a "Visual Mathmatician" - isn't that just great! :)

Maybe I should change job and be that chessplayer I have always dreamt of? *LOL*

Weather report

Geneva Weather Forecast
presented by

Maggi The Weatherman

24/02-2006 Today	25/02-2006 Saturday	26/02-2006 Sunday	27/02 -2006 Monday	28/02-2006 Tuesday
Rain/Snow showers	Light Snow	Snow showers	Snow showers	Snow showers
High: 4° Low: -2°	High: 5° Low: -3°	High: 4° Low: -2°	High:-1° Low: -4°	High:0° Low: -6°

Have a nice weekend!

Music Video (Vocal Trance)

This is a tribute video to the song "Beautiful Things" from ANDAIN that I found on www.youtube.com
The animated graphics seen in the film is from the videogame "Kingdom Hearts" by Square/Enix.

World's largest plasma screen

The plasmascreen from Matsushita Electric counts 103" (inches), and is according to the company the largest of its kind on the market today.

Embedded Video Test

This is a live recording of the song "Hosni2005 - Kiiltopiste" performed by Hosni2005 using the Korg Electribe MX.

(Trance music)

Performer: Harri Lähteenmäki

PACO (Test via PICASA 2)

Beware of

PACO

Kraftwerk

Yes... I know... a little bit late...!

But I was looking through my harddrive with an excellent picture-organizing program that is free from google called 'Picasa' and found these pics from a kraftwerk consert that was in Montreux, Switzerland last summer (4th of July 2005) and which I attended!

For those who don't know Kraftwerk I can tell you that they were pioneers in electronic music and started in the late 60-ies by Ralf Hütter och Florian Schneider.
Later on Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür joined, during the years members have changed but the Ralf and Florian is still in the band and beside them they now have 2 new members (Fritz Hilpert, Henning Schmitz).
Kraftwerk members are now around 60 years of age but still going strong!

1.2 Petabytes harddrives@home in 5 years!?

1.2 Petabyte is a quite sufficient amount of storage I.e. an almost infinite amount of storage that most likely will not be intimidated by neither 200GB Blu-ray discs nor Holographic discs with over 300GB capacity.
The last six months we've seen several new new harddrive models being launched using perpendicular recording; a technology that makes it possible to store more information on the same surface.
The technology American inventor Michael Thomas has developed is something completely different and al lot more efficient.

'Spintronics' is the name of the new technology that in the future will make it possible to create electronis units or a 3.5" harddrive with 1.2 Petabytes storage capacity.

"Normally all the electrons could spin randomly working against the best electrical signal. The electrons are also capable of spinning in both directions a once. But my unique method for creating uniform in-sync spinning electrons will for the first time allow a whole new field of science and electronics to emerge. With the ability to control electron spin we will see much smaller electronic devices on the market."

Thomas is apparently having discussions with manufacturers in Japan in an attempt to develop a prototype in 2-3 years while he means a commercial model should be ready in 5 years costing $750 a piece.

Source: p2pnet

Weekend report!

Finally,

On Saturday morning I made it to the mountains to ski... I must say it went pretty well considering I hadn't skied for almost a year. The weather was not very nice with fog, wind and snow falling.
The pists were not prepared and a layer of 10-30cm of new snow were all spread out over the area. But that didn't stop me from speeding down the slopes! :)
Luckily there was also a resturant that served beer and food which made the skiing even more fun after some visits.

The place visited was "The Grand Bornand" and it is one of the closest resorts to where I live and you get there within 45-60 minutes...
A skipass was €25.5 for an adult / (satur)day.
Today I have a little bit of body-ache and feel kind of stiff but it was great fun and well worth the effort! :)

Saturday evening was dinner and a movie and then a very nice and long sleep, yesterday I started up with a coffee and Irish coffee at the pub and later on I saw Sweden beat USA in hockey with 2-1. I finished of with a re-watch of the movie "51st State" and got to bed at 22.30-ish.

And of course I didn't miss out on the ordinary Friday-after-work-beers at Charly's. :)

Koenigsegg CCX

Gimme... :)

Here's two photo's of the Koenigsegg CCX, the eagerly awaited swedish repsonse to the Bugatti Veyron. In couple of weeks' time everything about this new super-car should be revealed in Geneva.

UPDATE!

Rumoured specs:

• Engine: Aluminium V8
• Power: 900 BHP
• Weight: 1180 kg
• 0-100 km/h: 3.1 secs
• Top speed: > 400 km/h

Thanks, David Naylor for the info!

Maggi's Weekly Weather Report

Geneva Weather Forecast
presented by

Maggi The Weatherman

17/02-2006 Today	18/02-2006 Saturday	19/02-2006 Sunday	20/02 -2006 Monday	21/02-2006 Tuesday
Rain/Snow	Rain/Snow	Snow	Rain/Snow showers	Rain/Snow showers
High: 3° Low: -3°	High: 5° Low: -2°	High: 1° Low: -1°	High: 0° Low: -1°	High: 3° Low: 0°

Have a nice weekend!

Laser Projector

The company Light Blue Optics Ltd have managed to produce an extyremely small projector (matchbox size) that uses laser as its light source. They call the technique PVPro and the projector has no moving parts not even a fan!
It is said to be able to produce a picture with a resolution up to 2048x1280 pixels - Impressive!!! Nothing mentioned about it's price yet and we can expect quite some waiting time until it shows up at resellers...

Link

Higgs Boson particle a-go-go (CERN related)

Physicists have trialed an international computing grid that will help probe the moments following the Big Bang. The Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid will manage data from a huge particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland, which it is hoped will answer mysteries in particle physics.

These include whether the hypothetical Higgs Boson particle, postulated as the progenitor of mass, actually exists. In 2004 bookies Ladbrokes offered odds of 6-1 that it would be proven by 2010.

The grid reached an unprecedented sustained data transfer rate during the week-long trial, breaking the 1 gigabyte per second barrier - roughly equivalent to a full DVD every five seconds. An earlier test last year managed 600 megabytes per second.

Once up and running in 2007, the Large Hadron Collider will produce 15m gigabytes of data per year.

Geneva-based CERN sent out data to 12 major academic computing centres across the globe. The UK grid received 200 megabytes per second during the evaluation, a figure they hope to double in time for the LHC coming online. Dr Andrew Sansum of Oxford's Rutherford Appleton Lab explained: "Then we'll really be approaching the speeds we need."®

Source: www.theregister.com

World's fastes digicam goes to CERN, Geneva!

I just snapped this up... it is interesting news especially since I work at CERN! :)

A group of 20 scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have spent the past five years developing this project. The 8-foot-tall camera can take images at less than two-billionths of a second. The project, called the Regional Calorimeter Trigger, is used to take pictures of colliding particles. This $6 million digicam will finally be put to the test later this year when it is shipped to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

World's fastest image processor aids search for elusive form of matter

Weekend weather

Geneva Weather Forecast
presented by

Maggi The Weatherman

10/02-2006 Today	11/02-2006 Saturday	12/02-2006 Sunday	13/02 -2006 Monday	14/02-2006 Tuesday
Snow showers	Few snow showers	Partly Cloudy	Mostly sunny	Partly cloudy
High: 0° Low: -5°	High: 1° Low: 5°	High: 3° Low: -4°	High: 3° Low: -2°	High: 3° Low: -1°

Have a nice weekend!

20 of my favourites of Trance/Club music !!!

Hi,

If you like electronica or music that wanna make you dance I urge you to check out these songs as they are some of my absolute favourites, some are a bit old but really good and should not be forgotten...

Many of the mixes can be found(use search function) and listened to on: http://www.audiojelly.com

So without any specific order, here we go... happy listening! ;)

1.	Scott Bond vs. Solarstone	3rd earth
2.	Andain	Beautiful things (Gabriel & Dresden unplugged mix)
3.	4 Strings	Diving
4.	Rank 1	Breathing
5.	Chicane feat. Marie Brennan	Salt water
6.	Konkrete	Law unto myself
7 .	Madonna	What it feels like for a girl (Above and beyond club mix)
8.	Axwell	Feel the wibe
9.	David Guetta feat. JD Davis	The world is mine (Deep dish radio edit)
10.	Darren Tate vs. Jono Grant	Shine (Original mix)
11.	Mylo	Drop the pressure
12.	Above & Beyond	Far from in love (Shane 54 remix)
13.	Avanto	The flute
14.	Mind One feat. Rena	Star for me
15.	Matt Darey & Marcella Woods	Voice of an angel (Vocal dub)
16.	Perasma	Swing 2 harmony
17.	Oceanlab feat. Justine Suissa	Clear blue water (Ferry Corsten remix)
18.	Conjure One feat. Sinead O'Connor	Tears from the moon (DJ Tiësto Mix)
19.	Nalin & Kane	Open your eyes (Radio mix)
20.	Above and Beyond	Alone tonight (Original mix)

Still didnt get enough?
Here's a bonus for you (a relaxed version of another great song):

"4 Strings - Take Me Away (Into The Night) (Chill Out Mix)"

Military Costs of U.S.A. - 2007

The news bureau Bloomberg reports that George W. Bush will ask the congress for 439 billion dollars to cover the U.S. military costs for their defence year 2007.
In Swedish money that is the same as "3400 miljarder Sek" wich corresponds to the total BNP together of the following countries:

Sweden, Georgien, Honduras, Cyprus, Lithuania, Jordania, Cuba, Kenya, Iraq

This sum does not include the extra $120 billion that Mr President wants to use for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and 2007.

Ohh, I am now confident that Mr Bush must love peace since he is prepared to spend all that money where it is really needed...

(Source: CIA World Factbook & http://bloomberg.com)

Maggi the Weatherman goes onto blog!

Geneva Weather Forecast
presented by

Maggi The Weatherman

03/02-2006 Today	04/02-2006 Saturday	05/02-2006 Sunday	06/02 -2006 Monday	07/02-2006 Tuesday
Partly Cloudy	Sunny	Few snow showers	Partly Cloudy
High: 5° Low: -2°	High: 5° Low: 0°	High: 4° Low: -3°	High: 3° Low: -3°	High: 0° Low: -3°

So we have soon reached another weekend, weather looks OK for Saturday if M.T.W. can be trusted !?

I wish all of you a very pleasant and relaxing weekend!

Cheers,
Maggi

Skiing season is here...

...and I have still not skied yet !?

I live 100km from Chamonix and I have alot of other cool skiing resorts close to where I live; Avoriaz, Flaine, Verbier, Tignes, Val d'isere ....to name a few!
Maybe I will get my ass into one of this slopes this weekend!?
Weather will make me decide, I think.
Isn't It kind of funny? When you live far away from something, you really long for it sometimes, but if you live very close to that thing you do not really take advantage of that situation.
This year I have been far too lazy, it is so nice when you finally get there... sun, mountains, blue sky, white powdery snow and gorgeous skiing (maybe even a cold beer or two and some nice food).

I must admit that I have become more of a chicken nowadays compared to my wild days back 8 years ago or more... or is it maybe just that I have grown up and think things through more now? Naaahhh!!! ;)
Boys will be boys and I will never grow up, the day I do, the days are counted! *LOL*

Anyway here are some pics from my "Wild Period" of skiing, 8 years ago as of this winter (January, 1998)... maybe I should be lucky to be alive and appreciate life even more than I do!?

24 meter backflip - 1st try!


2nd try, same length, same stupid skiier!


Cliff jump, 5 meters up... still no birds!


"Aguille de midi", Chamonix, France (3842 metres)

To my defence I will say that doing a backflip on ski's had always been one of my goals in life, I can happily say that I reached that goal and I see no reason of trying it again. ;)