Infinite Resolution

What We Keep; not worth keeping

2005-11-15T14:21:00.000+01:00

I just want to put out a public warning: Do not read Elisabeth Berg's What We Keep.

Seriously; I would chew off my right arm rather than read this book, but since both the reading experience and my right arm are needed for an upcoming English exame, that is not an option.

Edit: I would like to tell you something about the plot, but as far as I can see there isn't one...

Thanks for the advice

2005-07-10T16:12:00.000+02:00

Define irony:

Oops, we can't open the web page you requested ...
And then there's a couple of tips. Try this. Among others, this one:

If you have a network firewall installed, please make sure your firewall is not preventing Avant Browser from accessing Internet.

Yes, I have a network firewall. In fact, it's the network fucking firewall I'm trying to access!
Crappy D-Link junk.

Better late than never

2005-04-29T21:48:00.000+02:00

Dear Pete,

You'll never receive this letter. I've lost your adress, if it's still accurate. For all I know you might have left Vancouver, or even Canada, years ago. After all it’s been eight years since that slice of pizza you offered me at that hotel in Cancun, Mexico.

I’ve always wondered about that. Why did you do that? It seemed very odd to me. But I’m grateful that you did. Not that the pizza itself was anything to write home about, but we had a lot of fun the following days, didn’t we? At least I did.

I know I promised to write, but it just never happened. I do that often. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve run in to an old friend on the street and suggested we’d grab a beer sometime, I’d be a rich man. On the other hand; had I had all those beers I’d be an alcoholic by now.

Jess and I broke up less than a year later. She called me one day and said she wanted her records back, and that was it. Almost five years, and it didn’t mean more to her. We lost contact soon after that, when she found someone new. Although I suspect that he was in the picture earlier. It doesn’t matter anymore, just thought you wanted to know.

So how’s life? Do you still live in that house you were so proud of to have paid for up front? It must be nice to own your own home, without being in debt. I’ll probably never be able to do that, and like most other Swedes I’ll blame it on taxes, politicians, immigrants, bad luck, or what ever comes in handy. Or I can try to do something about my situation, like get an education.

You know what? I think I’ll do just that. I’ll write again in a couple of years, when I’m done filling out all the forms needed to get me into school.

Sincerely Yours

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon

2004-12-27T01:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve developed a kind of love-hate relationship with this game. I really enjoy the mood in it, the fact that it’s not all action and that I have to be careful otherwise I’m dead. It’s not like in a lot of other games where the enemy can’t hit a barn even if their inside it, and even if they do hit you it doesn’t really matter. No, it’s realistic in that way. They shoot you, and you die. If you’re lucky you survive the first hit, but that doesn’t really matter because you’ll be so disoriented that you can’t even get your soldier to hit the ground for cover, so you’re pretty much dead already anyhow, you just don’t know it yet.

But: The problem with this game is that it strives so much for realism, and still shows so much lack of just that. The graphics engine sucks to be honest. It’s happened several times that I can’t shoot over a rock or another obstacle, yet the enemy can shoot me. Or that I’m perfectly covered by a thick tree and still get killed. Trying to lean out and shoot to the side of the tree I’ve seen my bullets stopped by the tree’s aura! Swear to God! There are bullet holes in thin air to prove it. On the other hand it’s a great help for me and my co-players when the enemy reveals himself by shoving the barrel of his Kalashnikov through a wall…

Or take this example: On one level there’s a bunch of huts on poles at the insertion point. What happened was the following: I lay down, crawling toward a hut. My barrel way in beneath it. At this point I could aim through my sight, but trying to shoot the enemy I saw, to my surprise and frustration, that the bullets hit the wall above my head. I’ve always thought bullets exit through the muzzle of a gun, but obviously I was wrong. I now know that bullets exit from the helmet. The rifle is like a sextant, just an instrument to plot the course of the bullet. Thanks for setting me straight on that one, Tom.

And speaking of those huts – my experience tells me that if you can lie down and put a gun to your shoulder underneath something, the space ought to be enough to crawl under. Not in Tom Clancy’s world. My guess is that my soldiers backpack is too big. Which raises the next question: Why the hell does my soldier have a backpack? He can’t pack hand grenades, and a sidearm or extra ammo. Nope, you have to choose one of the above. So what does he pack in his backpack? A goddamn tent? Toilet paper? What? I’d really like to know why an elite soldier, inserted for a single attack against an enemy camp, need a backpack.

I don’t know if my soldier is really fit for this kind of action. He’s obviously not strong enough to carry more than one item except his rifle. I doubt he’s strong enough to even carry a grudge. He can’t jump. Tom Clancy’s elite soldiers are the only mammal beside the elephant that can’t jump. Sure, they say white men can’t jump, but this is ridiculous. He can’t get his ass over a small rock or a log. And the most annoying thing is that every item has a personal space that can’t be violated, so you have to move three feet beside the tree/rock/whatever, and occasionally you get stuck in the polygons. Or worse, in the aura of things.

I understand that a game map needs restrictions, and Ghost Recon really deserves credit for letting you move freely, but still: These obstacles that shouldn’t be obstacles are just the symptoms of a rather poor graphics engine.

Another thing I would like explained to me is this: What’s the point of all the camouflage and technology that these guys are supposed to use; when they still give you no advantage whatsoever? When the enemy can still spot you from 300 yards, and worse: hit you in the face with an AK47, a gun well known for it’s low hit ratio at long range (and if I know that, Tom Clancy, with his hallmark weapon knowledge, sure as hell knows). Especially since my hi-tech sniper rifle hits the grass in front of me when I fire it lying down. I might as well go into combat dressed in a Hawaii shirt armed with an umbrella drink.

And forget about filling out your team with AI support. Now there’s a bunch of morons who should never have been allowed to leave boot camp. They’re just too stupid. If you order them to follow you they will, but at their best they will just stay behind you making no difference whatsoever, or just get shot, and at their worst they will stand in your way when you try to retreat. Of course, you can always leave them at a strategic point hoping that they’ll make themselves useful. Which they won’t. Either you tell them to fire at will, and in that case they’ll start firing as soon as they see the enemy, and get themselves killed. Or you tell them to hold their fire, and then the enemy can walk up to them and beat them to death with a stick. One time I gave it a serious try, using several teams that I manoeuvred across the map. Once I had gotten a team in position I ordered them to lie down, and then proceeded with the next team. It didn’t take long until I heard gunfire and ran as hell (and let me tell you: these guys are no sprinters) to help my troops, wondering what they were up to. I came up in time to see what was going on. They all stood up, in line, getting killed off one by one. After that I gave up the idea of playing with AI support. It’s just not worth the effort.

As I said in the beginning; it’s a love/hate thing. I really enjoy the game, and it’s wonderfully entertaining at its best, but the annoying little things are just too many to be acceptable.

Elite soldiers who can’t get their asses up a stair unless they’re standing right in front of it? Who can’t even crawl? Realism, my ass.

The dubious greatness of Mr Jordan

2004-11-22T01:54:00.000+01:00

Despite my mild dislike of fantasy writer Robert Jordan, I’ve begun reading his Wheel of Time novels. Again. I read the first one, The Eye of the World, when the Swedish translation first came out in the early nineties, and I remember being modestly impressed. The story was unoriginal – not necessarily a deal breaker in fantasy, but I found this one exceptionally uninspired – and the fantasy world was improbable and brimming with literary loot. At that time I borrowed the books* from a friend, but never saw it worthwhile buying them myself. A while back however, I got hold of a number of Jordan’s books really cheap.

I should point out that I actually read precious little fantasy, even though I am a fantasy writer myself. This might seem paradoxical, but I find it easier to focus on my own work if I’m not constantly exposed to the genre. Anyway, I decided to give The Wheel of Time another shot since ten years had passed since I last read any of Jordan’s work, and during that time my taste had changed slightly. Maybe I would enjoy them more this time around. After all, Robert Jordan is said to be one of the greats of modern fantasy, and there must be a reason why so many people like him, right?

Right. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what. I’m halfway through book three, The Dragon Reborn, and so far I’ve found the experience a trifle boring at best. Nonetheless, I haven’t stopped reading yet, even though I’m not one of those obstinate people who just have to finish a book even if they hate it. If I don’t enjoy a book at all, I simply stop reading and put it away. I’m not saying I hate Jordan’s books, mind you; hate is a passionate feeling, and I can’t say I feel passionate about them in any way. Robert Jordan’s “master of fantasy” status just mystifies me.

I mean, some writers you read even if you know they’re not that good, simply because you like some aspects of their writing so much you will happily disregard the bad stuff. Take David Eddings for example, a writer I have sort of a love/hate relationship with (not personally of course, but you know what I mean). His plot lines are the worst conceivable tripe – and he keeps rehashing them shamelessly – but in spite of that I can enjoy a few Eddings novels every now and then. Because, among other things, he has good and likeable characters, he writes quite well when he’s not just rushing things through, and he has a sense of humor (a silly and repetitive sense of humor, but I’ve grown to like it). Jordan doesn’t have any of that. His characters are uninteresting save maybe one or two, his dialogues are overly talkative, and his writing is stiff and colorless. Not to mention humorless.

Now, Jordan’s plots are of course infinitely better than Eddings’. Maybe that’s why I haven’t given up. I’d really like to know what happens in the end, not so much because I like the characters (I don’t), or because I find the story itself fascinating (again, I don’t) – I’m simply curious if Mr Jordan will be able to untangle this veritable gordian knot of subplots.

For a while I suspected that the stiff language was due to a less than stellar translation, which is often the case with fantasy in Swedish. The fantasy market here has boomed the latest decade, and the publishers can’t crank the big name novels out fast enough. But after leafing through parts of A Crown of Swords and Lord of Chaos in English (which have been sitting unread in my bookshelf for years), it became apparent that the translator was not to blame. I admit it, I may be missing certain nuances of Jordan’s style since English is not my native language. But I have read lots and lots of books in English and consider myself at least fairly capable of telling a gifted writer from a not-so gifted one. But hey, tastes differ.

By now I’ve probably offended every Jordan fan alive. That’s a good days work I’d say…

* Yes, books. Many fantasy novels are published as two or more volumes in Sweden. And sold at full price. Yes, it’s outrageous – and one of the reasons I seldom buy fantasy in Swedish – but that’s the way it is.

Myths about Swedes

2004-11-18T18:58:00.000+01:00

As I am now making my blogger debut in English, I thought that instead of introducing myself, I’d kill some myths about Swedish people.

First of all: Sweden and Switzerland are not the same! At all. There are certain similarities, such as being about the only two countries in the world that were neutral during WWI, WWII and any other war fought since somewhere back in the 18th century. So forget about showing off when you talk to a Swede by saying, “Ah! Watches!” because that’s Switzerland. Chocolate? Switzerland. The Alps then? That’s also Switzerland.

Switzerland is situated in the very heart of Europe, squeezed in between Germany and France, and they would have to be an extraordinarily diplomatic people to stay neutral for two hundred years considering the fact that Germany and France never missed an opportunity to take a swing at each other. Sweden on the other hand is in Scandinavia, between Norway and Finland, and perhaps a bit isolated from the rest of Europe. Going north from Germany really doesn’t take you anywhere, so there’s not a lot of people passing through. Maybe that is why others don’t know much about us.

Now, let’s kill some myths.

We don’t have polar bears running loose in Stockholm. We don’t have any polar bears at all in Sweden, except in zoos. Polar bears live on the Arctic, and as far as I know there are some polar bears in Canada as well. But not in Sweden. And no penguins either. They’ve heard about the polar bears and stay away from here.

Swedish girls are not called Inga or Ingrid. It’s a rather uncommon name among girls younger than 50. And they’re not constantly horny either. At least not in my experience. But that could actually say more about me than about Swedish women.

Not all Swedes are blond with an athletic build. That’s some sort of pre-Nazi, Viking-romantic image, and it’s not true and never was. In fact; lots of the Viking stories are myth as well, and the existing Vikings where mainly from what is now Norway and Denmark. However, the Vikings reached America way ahead of Columbus who, to my knowledge, never even reached the mainland. And by the way: He was looking for India for crying out loud! Now there’s a guy I’d never trust with a map.

In American movies, whenever a Swedish character shows up, he/she almost always speaks with a distinct German accent. It’s a forgivable mistake since the Swedish and German languages are closely related. Therefore I can understand that it may sound somewhat similar to the untrained ear. Still, they’re actually no more similar than for example French and Spanish.

And finally: Swedish does not sound anything like the chef in the Muppet show!

Here and There

2004-11-18T13:47:00.000+01:00

I realized the other day how… odd it is using hi-tech tools to create fantasy fiction. I mean, when I wrote my first fantasy novel Blodsvinter [Blood Winter] in the early-to-mid nineties I didn’t have a computer. I didn’t even have a typewriter, I wrote it all by hand; pencil, paper, eraser and loads of patience. Of course, I eventually transcribed it all when I finally got a computer – some 700 handwritten pages. After that ordeal I vowed never to rely solely on writing by hand again, for sooner or later your work must be moved to electronic form. At least if you want it to be published. In one respect, as far as Blodsvinter was concerned, all my hard work was in vain since I never even bothered sending the manuscript out to publishers (by the time I was finished with transcription and editing, I had come to realize how immature and poorly thought-out the novel was). But in another respect it was also a sobering experience, learning the hard way that you can not depend on handwritten material in this day and age, and the price to be paid for doing so. But I digress.

Somehow I feel that the pencil and paper method – despite its obvious shortcomings – seems more fitting when you’re writing fantasy. An archaic means of creating stories of archaic worlds, if you will. It’s not like I’d be willing to trade all the benefits of a computer for the sake of being “period”, but sometimes I feel that all this technology is more distracting than helpful. The tools distance me from the subject matter, instead of bringing me closer to it. I don’t know why this is, but I have a theory. This theory is based on what I call Being There, which is, simply put, the highest level of creative immersion you experience when writing. I think most writers know what I’m talking about, even though I’ve coined this term myself. It’s that special feeling you get when you are really inspired, really into your text, when you’re no longer just a narrator of fictitious events, but a participant. Then you are There. Sounds far out, I know, but it’s the best way I can describe this very special (and for me, rare) state of mind.

Now, the arch enemy of Being There is Distractions. If you can’t focus, for whatever reason, you’re not going There. So, my theory is as follows: it is hard for me to get There because my means of travel, so to speak, are so fascinating I tend to forget about the destination. Maybe I should track down some ancient Amstrad word processor or something, a machine that will let me work with text documents and nothing else. Or maybe I just need to learn to be more disciplined in my writing. All I know for sure is that I didn’t get distracted quite as easily when I wrote Blodsvinter, and I remember feeling closer to the story.

By all this I’m not saying there might be any immediate creative benefits of moving to a cabin in the woods, with no electricity or running water, and writing on parchment with ink and stylus. But then again, you sure as hell wouldn’t be bothered by the many distractions of a modern, broadband-equipped computer. Such as writing blogs…

I hate my handheld

2004-11-18T10:28:00.000+01:00

Actually I don’t, but the damned thing is driving me crazy. You see, I use my Palm Zire 71 for writing when I’m away from home. I’ve had it for… uh, I don’t know, eight months or something, and up until recently it’s worked just fine. But the latest month or so it’s become extremely crash-prone, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

I’ve used Data Viz’s Documents To Go for word processing all along, and as far as I can remember I’ve had no problems with the program. But a while back it started crashing everytime I closed a document. Annoying as this was, it got worse. I reinstalled the handheld apps to no avail. I hard reset my device and reinstalled everything, and at first I thought that had remedied the problem. But no; instead, the app started crashing as soon as I saved, which in turn resulted in the doc being deleted from the SD card when the Zire reset itself (my suspicion is that the crash occurred just after Word To Go deleted the original file, and before it had a chance to replace it with the edited version). As you may have guessed, this is a nightmare scenario if you’re not anywhere near your stationary computer. The document is gone, and there’s no way of getting it back without hot syncing. Not to mention that your fastidious edits are but a memory. In effect my handheld was now unusable as a word processor, but since all other apps worked flawlessly I drew the conclusion that Docs To Go was the felon.

So finally I decided to ditch the DataViz suite and look for an alternative. My choice fell on Wordsmith, which I’ve been trying out for a few days now. Aside from that it can’t sync files on expansion cards like Docs To Go, it’s a superb program. Really much, much better than Word To Go… faster, more options, more intuitive, not to mention more aimed at writers rather than corporate users. But… (maybe you guessed it) Wordsmith crashes on me too! Not as often and not as severely, and the Fatal Alert I receive is not the same one as with Word To Go. But nonetheless, crashes it does. Last night, lying in bed writing the previous post, the program went belly up three times before I managed to finish the piece.

The thing is… I also bought a new SD card (Kingston 256MB) in October. Yes, around the time the Docs To Go problems began. So I’m starting to wonder if the card can be faulty somehow, but that does not explain a) why Wordsmith crashes, since it does not store anything on the card, or b) why the card works in other programs. I play mp3s from it, and I have several games and ebooks stored on it that all work fine. Maybe there’s something wrong with the handheld itself… that’d be just my luck. Since the Zire’s less than a year old it’s probably still under warranty, but who knows how long it would take to get the device repaired or replaced (I don’t even know if Palm Sweden could replace it right away, or if they’d have to ship it back to the US before they can give me a new one).

Damn these technological gadgets you can’t be without once you’ve gotten used to having them around.

Welcome to Infinite Resolution

2004-11-17T16:49:00.000+01:00

Do I really need a blog? Probably not. It's not like I don't have enough things to occupy my time. But I just wanted somewhere to rant away without having to worry about staying on topic. Thus I have no particular theme in mind for this blog; I'll be covering anything and everything that interests me (I suppose that can be said to be a theme in itself, even if a very vague one). As of now your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what to expect. But it's a fairly safe bet it'll be about writing, since I'm a writer; music, since I'm a musician; and computer hardware/software, since I'm a geek :P

So what's with that blog title? Nope, Infinite Resolution does not describe the capabilities of my monitor and graphics card. It is in fact (or in fiction, more correctly) the name of a seedy rock club in a story I'm co-writing with Joshua_Tree. If you're wondering what the hell that has to do with blogging, the answer is: nothing. But I had to call this blog something, so... *shrug*