Three obvious revelations

I spend the last night in the cozy flat of my good friend "oh-I-really-love-Microsoft-but-they-still-haven't-came-up-with-anything-as-good-as-the-iPhone-so-that's-why-I-use-an-Apple-product"-Viktor. That made me realize a few things:

Revelation no. 1: Watching TV can be fun

Alright, this headline might sound bloody obvious, but let me explain. Those of you who know me somehow well must have noticed my - what should I say - ignorance of television. I don't like to watch it, and I almost never do - except the news in the morning, for a short period during my second college year. In fact, I don't even have a TV in my apartment anymore. And I'm good with it! This morning however, I zapped a bit between Discovery Channel, National Geographic (both in HD!) and VH1 and got kinda stuck... I really felt like I wanted to watch more and more, and couldn't help myself checking those three channels (which just happened to match my expectations of what I wanted to see and hear that morning). It got worse: I couldn't get away and do what I really wanted to do (and that was to eat breakfast - those of you who know me at least a little know how important that is to me). So here's the strange conclusion, which might be obvious to pretty much anybody except me (till this morning): watching TV can be fun! But hey, I noticed something else: it's really easy to get stuck, not realizing the time going by and end up with nothing done! Have you noticed that?

Revelation no. 2: Music videos may have an impact on the song's popularity

As I watched VH1, they played a lot of familiar songs, among them Amy Winehouse's "I'm no good for you" and Coldplay's "Viva la vida", both of which are on records I recently enjoyed. The funny thing was that the music video kind of exaggerated my reception of the music - it seemed even better than what I expected it to be. Yeah.. sure, I know that people since 1639 say "seeing is believing"...

What I realized through my own experience led me to an thought-provoking conclusion: music videos may have an impact on a song's popularity. That might explain why it is so important for artists to get air-time on MTV, Viva or VH1, but also why popular music aired on those channels gains so much popularity! Now, this is of course just one of many other reasons, among which social impact of the music video's air-time might be crucial (that is when you - or your subconsciousness - go like: "hey, since it's aired on the TV, many others must think it's good, and if other's like it, I might as well give it a go and listen to it"). So that might be the solution to the mystery of popular music. Or... perhaps I'm just over-analyzing it a little...? ;-)

N.B. Even now, I can hear "Viva La Vida" playing at a party somewhere nearby. Guess they watched VH1 this morning too...

Revelation no. 3: Sofas can be comfortable

Yes, they can. 

Well that was it, three damn obvious facts, for your reading pleasure. Something you never thought about. But I did. And I wrote it down. And that's the difference between me and you! Peace out ;-)

Coming up next: A "new" ocean

This is something we already knew, you could hear it throughout the summer: the ice in the Arctics is melting and reaching new, record-low levels. This has led to some political dispute, when Russia about a year ago claimed a vast territory of the Arctic as Russian, and also placed their flag below the North Pole. If somebody back then - in 2007 - doubted the Russian imperialistic ambitions, I guess they can stop hesitate now: just take a look at the development in Georgia recently (English BBC, Swedish Dagens Nyheter and Polish Gazeta Wyborcza all have special service about the on-going conflict). 

This development on it's own is of course a great storyboard for blogs like this, but it's not what I was intending to talk about in this post. Something else is a big issue, and as I said, I'm sure that pretty much everybody have heard about the melting Arctics. Well, hearing about something and seeing it are two different things, cause - as they say - a picture is worth a thousand words. So here are the pictures I wanted to show you in the first place: the world with an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Scientist say we can expect this somewhere between 2030 and 2050. But than again, remember how they underestimated the melting so far? So this 2030-2050 looks to me as a conservative calculation. But hey, let us hope we're all wrong!

Hello, again!

It's been over a year since the last post (which by the way happen to cover the original iPhone launch) and a lot has changed since - although I still don't own an iPhone, when it seems like the whole world does. For example, my friend Viktor - who btw makes living by being an excellent Microsoft .NET coder and isn't really known for being an Apple fanboy - recently picked up his second one (3G this time) of those all-in-one devices. Beside this I've seen people everywhere - from Palestine to Poland and from Sweden to Sharm el Sheikh - using these phones and I was just about to get one this fall, when something changed.

I was looking for interesting opportunities for job, as well as for collecting some data for my upcoming master thesis, when I got stuck in Egypt where I found both - and even more. One funny thing I can say about this guys is: read The Secret. 

When the summer of 2008 came to a rainy end (at least in the northern parts of Europe) I returned to Sweden to move out of my apartment and say a "see-you-soon" to my friends (I don't believe in good-byes for some reason). I got out of the flat two days ago, spend a night at bullshit-Mackan's house and finally got picked up by my family and went to visit them. So this weekend I'm gonna be in the charming city of Göteborg (or, technically, just outside) visiting my family. I'm also planing on using this new DSLR of mine and shoot some pictures while I'm here. Talking about pictures, don't forget to check out my Flickr account, where you can see some of the better shots from around here. I'm also working on adding some photos from Egypt, and these will come continuously, as I shoot new when I get back there soon!

So what can you expect from this blog from now on? Well... more frequent updates - that's for sure (shouldn't be too hard to achieve since the last update was something like 400 days ago). Besides, I will of course talk something about the life in Sharm el Sheikh - what, where, when and how - and illustrate everything with knife-sharp photographs. Furthermore, you can expect the usual crap about tech, geeky stuff (such as the world politics, travels and weather) and of course, music. 

That's it for tonight! Thanks for reading and stay tuned (preferably by adding this blog to your RSS reader of choice - I recommend Google's web-based solution). Ciao!