First Book

My son Tage (4.5y) is writing on his first book. It might become a manual for life I think. This is what he has written so far (although, as he is not fluent in English, he writes in Swedish):

You are not allowed to destroy 

each others pictures in the sand.

You may ...

Written by Tage

My wife said tonight that her first book was a collection of her impression of people. This person is nice. That person is funny. That really hit a spot in my memory from back in the days. Not of writing books. Not even of a time when I was four. But back in the early days of my computerized life. Lets say it was in 7'th grade (I am really unsure of the correct time, but when I think of the people involved it kind of ends up around there). Back then I wrote a Incredibly complex BASIC program on my C64 that, if you entered a persons name (probably people in my class), wrote on the screen a small tidbit on that person. 

    Enter a name: Kristoffer

    Kristoffer is good at ...

I wonder. I really wonder, if this program is still somewhere in my digital archive. Could it be worth going down to the basement and digging through old boxes, finding old floppys, get a computer to read them and look for that specific program among dozens and dozens of programs and texts and stuff. Is it there to be found? What can I learn of myself as a teenager? 

Or Maybe I should just construct a new such 'program' and enter a sentence or two about each and every person that is part of my social network. In the style of the early teen Mattias of course. And then put it up on a webpage somewhere for the whole world to enjoy. 

WTF computers

I wrote a rant the other day on a social media. Basically I hate computers (most specifically win8). It goes something like this (in swedish, use your favourite translator if you are not fluent):
Det jag försökte göra när jag blev förbannad var att ordna ett konto på datorn som T kan använda. Fint, man kan skapa ett barnkonot där man kan ange vilka program som kan användas. Jag blockar alla utan några spel, precis som jag vill, men Nä, det som händer är att 200 olika appar pockar på uppmärksamhet och säger 'be din förälder att godkänna att den här appen får köra', och det är appar och program som jag inte har en aning om vad de gör, olika Launchers etc etc. Det finns ingen info om vad de gör någonstans utan det är bara att godkänna eller fortsätta blocka, båda alternativen gör att samma app igen frågar 'be din förälder godkänna att du kör den här appen'. Fan. tillslut så godkänner jag de som är jobbigast och hoppas att det inte inkluderar 'shredd this file' alternativ... Ok, men hur lägger man nu till nya spel? Jag lägger till några på mitt konto och tänker att nu är det nog bara att godkänna dom till T's konto. Tror ni det? Onej, de nya spelen dyker inte upp i listan över program/appar som man kan godkänna eller blocka. Försöker göra detta lite snabbt efter lunchen (när T ska få spela lite medans jag lägger K för hans lunch-nap), båda barnen står och tjatar på mig och när jag misslyckas totalt över den här jävla skitgrejen så exploderar jag så att båda barnen börjar gråta... 
AAAAAAAAAAhhhhh, Fuck! Loathing, hate and fury.

Today I noticed that my virus protection was gone. Apparently the windows 8.1 upgrade removes any virus programs that are installed, without telling the user that it does just that. Thanx. 

Usb cables. WTF? Why the hell did they not design it so that it doesn't matter which way you put it in? fiddle fiddle fiddle, bend arout the entire desk to try and locate the hole, and ah, I must turn it around to get it in. AAAAAAAHrrrrgghhh fuuuuck.

Whilst installing windows it prompts me to stroke the screen from the outside and in to get this and that to happen. I DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING TOUCHSCREEN. You ought to know that! If you have to design a operating system that runs on your fucking pads and shit do that but could you please just do me a solid and design another one that works for us billions that still have a ordinary fucking computer. 

Apps: 
Just give me a fucking regular program version with a window that I can relocate, resize, close, minimize, have in the background, multi task with. Apps works fine on a Pad I am sure, where the screen is small and the cpu can not handle multi tasking, but I use a computor with lots of cpu, lost of ram and a big fucking screen. Let me use it.

Give me a fucking universal way to shut a program down. Give me a fucking Quit button. Or ok, let me use Alt-F4, but let that be the one and only way to do it then. And if I press Alt-F4, then the program should fucking shut up and shut down. No, I do not want Skype to keep running in the background, I want to shut the fuck off. 

gggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Diary

I think a lot about memories these days.
My childhood memories are very fragmented and I would like that my sons have a better record of their early years than I do. I have only a few photographs of myself back then, and that will not be the case for them. I also try to write stuff down, but I have never been very good at keeping a diary myself (K is better when it comes to that). But I have tried. I know that I did keep some kind of journal on my C64 back in the days. And even if I have always tried to bring all my files when I migrate to a new system I think they have gotten lost some time long ago, even before the double-system crash I experienced some years ago, when both my laptop and stationary machine decided to give up simultaneously (so much for that back-up system). But maybe, just maybe, there might be a copy on a 3.5' floppy down in the cellar. I wounder if I can get the Amiga to work.

(Funny that Tage just came with a tape cassette and asked what the heck that was.)

A folded piece of paper

I just took apart my entire laptop, to get direct access to the cd-drive, into which Tage had stuck a folded piece of paper. And managed to put it all back into fully working order.
Savoring the victory with a few cc of Suntory whisky.

Setback

Two recent hard drive crashes has set me back a bit. First the primary drive in my stationary computer crashed. And yesterday the one in the laptop died. I have been able to salvage quite a bit of files from the first one, but I seem to have lost quite a bit of email's, eighteen months worth to be exact. I can not really say why, but I kind of like to save old emails. I am a gatherer, I gather things, that is my main reason I suppose.
Unfortunately though, the laptop drive is gone for good (maybe I could pay someone to try and rescue that which is rescuable, but I don't think I will put my money there).

I did find a backup of the Thesis that I had managed to rescue from the first broken drive, so that's good.

Ah well, at least apple was kind enough to send me a replacement drive even if the warranty expired a week ago.

Ok, now it is time to go to bed. We have a high workload this week and I am quite exhausted.

Nope

No. It didn't work.

Still pissed off

I am so fucking pissed off that my computer fried that I don't know what to do. I had a lot of work on there that I had backed up on my computer at Ångström, but I do not know what has happened to that computer. I don't know if it still exists. I think that I might be lacking a 95% completed licentiate thesis. That sucks so fucking bad.

A fuck this. I will go and train instead. Maybe the pain from my ankle that I hurt badly when I missteped running down a flight of stairs today will take my mind of the computer shit. Maybe.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

What the hell! The harddrive in my macbook just fried. It is lost. Totally.
FUCK!
I hate computers.
I fucking hate computers.