The curse of being an amateur photographer

The biggest curse of being an amateur photographer, is that you never ever get a picture of yourself. I still don't have a picture of myself where I don't look like a complete fool.


Last Tuesday I brought my camera to school (to take photos for KTH), a friend snatched it and tried it out and took a picture of an unsuspecting me. It's alright I suppose, but the focus is all off and I look far too serious. If it was me, I'd take another set but... that's impossible. Thanks Auno for taking it, being your first shot it's really decent ;)

Stallman, the return

This is going to be a long one, bring a cup of tea and get reading.

Richard M Stallman (I will refer to him as Stallman from now on) visited KTH back in 1986 and held a famous lecture. At that time he and FSF also received a considerable amount of money from KTH as a thank for producing useful software for the university, 5000 USD I believe.

Last Tuesday he was back, this time it was not due to the computer club (in which I am a member) but by the union "Unionen" (it means "The union" in Swedish. Yes, I know, it's a terrible name).

Now, how does yours truly get into this mess of free software gurus, unions and university staff? You see, back in 1996 Stallman received an honorary doctors title from KTH, but he didn't attend the ceremony. I know one of our elder professors (he's a nice chap and I have helped him out in the past, I also look up to him as a teacher, but don't tell him ;) ).

The day before Stallman arrived I didn't know if I was to attend the lecture or not, after all, I pretty much know Stallmans opinions on software and I had a deadline that Wednesday. Then, out of nowhere comes an email and I am asked if I can help out with some things just before Stallman arrives and during the lecture. The next morning when my friends woke up I asked whether or not it was alright for me to take three hours off and help out at the lecture. They said that it was alright and I informed my friend the professor that I could help him with what he wanted and bring my camera in-case KTH wanted pictures. I also asked for three of the posters KTH had made for the event, you will learn more about those later.

Now, before we proceed you should know the following. When being awarded an honorary doctors title you receive a hat, it's a symbolic thing really. Because you don't really get to keep the hat.

FSFE (FSF in Europe) was to bring Stallman to KTH at roughly 17:15, so I was there at 16:30. F1 which is the largest lecture hall at KTH had half it's seats taken at 17:00 and we counted an approximate of 700 people (probably more) when the doors closed. It was packed, people in the stairs, I have not seen that many people in a lecture hall before. At ~17:00 Stallman arrived. Meeting him was a strange feeling, he looks like a hacker, talks like a hacker and certainly behaves like a hacker. He's very very frank, no "excuse me" just "I don't hear a word what you are saying." if you didn't speak up well enough. It took a while for yours truly to adapt from his usual very humble and nervous self. I should mention that I did not greet him or anything, picture me as the man in the background waiting for something to do, like bring this or that. My dear professor took care of all the official business.

Stallman wanted to prepare before the lecture (and plug in his laptop), so he was lead into a lecture room near F1. Unfortunately there was to be a lecture in German, so he had to leave in a hurry and was lead into the lecture hall before the huge crowd. He just relaxed, plugged in his laptop and a water boiler and waited for the clock to turn 17:30. I took the opportunity to take some photos, as you can see below. I also managed to talk to the photographer from Computer Sweden, he pointed out something about "Well, I prefer to use natural light sources, when he noticed my flash". I thought "Well, why not?" and switched from my normal zoom to my much more light sensitive 50mm lens and tossed my flash into the bag.

After being introduced by a representative from Unionen, Henrik Eriksson (the professor I mentioned earlier) took the stage.

Ironically, the best shot I got is probably the shot of him. Not one of the ones I took of Stallman, well well, I am still an amateur photographer. First Henrik asked how many that were present back in 1986, I spotted two people raising their hands, there couldn't have been more than 10. Henrik then explained how all went well that day back in 1996, cannon shots were fired (Stallman pointed out "But they missed me!" and grinned) at the doctors ceremony but no Stallman was there. After reading the text which explained why Stallman received the title of honorary doctor at KTH another professor approached him and placed the hat on his head.


Now, that's a picture that you won't see every day. For more images see my dA account, since this blog post is supposed to be more of a story, not a set of images.

Henrik then reclaimed the hat, he also mentioned that it quite looked like a magicians hat and that there probably were rabbits in it. Stallman the made a quick sprint, grabbed the hat and mimicked petting a rabbit, the crowd burst out in laughter.

Now, the main event. Stallman was to speak for roughly an hour and half. For those who don't know Stallman, he's about as radical as you get when it comes to software. You don't think software is politics? That software isn't closely related to the state of our society? Well, Stallman does, and he will tell you.

The speech was exactly what I expected from Stallman, he presented his view on how all software was to guarantee four freedoms for it's users. He made jokes now and then about software vendors and Bush. The only thing that surprised me was that he often pointed out that "Just because mentioned Microsoft as an example, don't think that this just applies to Microsoft, all proprietary software vendors are capable of doing this and many do". He also made an interesting remark about piracy, "When people ask me what I think about piracy, I say, burning ships is very bad", this made the crowd burst out into laughter once more.

To be honest, you can find a ton of better sources than me on Stallmans views so just read one of those instead of my interpretation. Instead I will present some points he made.


*Four freedoms of software and how the GPL guarantees them.
*How freedom of software guarantee a free society without unjust control.
*The GNU project and how it was like back in the good old days.
*How GNU/Linux is split into separate camps due to all the distros and this potentially stops what he wants to achieve with free software. He want users to care about what they are using, not just to go for "Well this works"
*How attitudes like Linus Torvalds hurts the movement since he won't side with the philosophy of the GPL.
*And more...

Personally, I agree with him on some of his views, for example that free and open source software might benefit our society in many ways. But in just as many ways I disagree with his views. I am happy for what he has done, but I won't stand beside him. His views are in many ways a religion, good and bad, it's all there.

The aftermath is Swedish papers has been very much about Stallman being paranoid. He mentioned a lot of things about cellphones being able to track you, programs spying on you, credit cards etc. etc. I agree that it might sound like he is all afraid of being tracked, but I think the answer is much more reasonable. Stallman is a freedom fighter, a radical one. He wants people to have, in a way, an ultimate power over their devices. He wants them to be able to choose whether or not they want someone to know anything about them. It's a philosophical stand, not a statement of some paranoia. I was once told that you should never rush to the conclusion that someone is stupid if there is a more rational conclusion, and although I am not a Stallman expert this very much seems to be the case here.

Afterwards, Stallman stayed and wrote autographs in exchange for a 30 SEK donation to the FSF. I got one for free on one of the posters which I handed to another Stacken member. He promised to put it on the wall in the computer club room. What ever you say about Stallman, he has been influential and probably will be for the years to come. For good or for bad? I guess we won't know for sure for at least another 20 years.

Observations on my way home

When walking home this Friday I noticed something peculiar. Usually when a pedestrian enter a store he moves in an arch, much like my sketch to the right. He also maintains roughly the same speed as before entering the arch until he reaches the door to the store where he slows down slightly, opens the door and enters the store.

But one store is different, here, people enter the store in a radically different way. They maintain normal walking speed and keep their eyes fixed straight forward, unlike when entering other stores where they always look around observing other stores and pedestrians. Then, when they have passed the point when at other stores they would begin their approach in an arch, they suddenly turn at a sharp angle and increase their speed substantially. They maintain this increased speed pushing the door open with force and does not appear to slow down until inside.

The reason might be, that the store is the most well known adult video store in Stockholm.

Swedish Anti-Piracy Commercial

Now and then Swedish anti-piracy agencies and the Swedish movie and music industry makes a commercial in order to tell us, the people of Sweden, how morally wrong piracy is. If you just cut the crap and don't argue whether piracy is wrong in the first place, the latest movie, and all other movies they have ever made, has a pattern. Let's describe the latest one.

A person walks up to a public toilet and pays the fee of roughly 5 SEK (about 1 USD). Just as he enters the booth, another person forces his way into the booth with him. He is then forced to pee along with a stranger although he paid for the booth himself and the stranger does various embarrassing things and is not the least embarrassed about "stealing" his spot.

Something like this is usually the theme, previously we have seen people borrowing movies from rental shops without paying.

Now, what is the problem with this? It portrays the person conducting piracy as someone who is stealing from a customer or a store. Is this really the case? I certainly don't think so, a person conducting piracy don't steal anything. They certainly do some economic damage, but they don't steal. By portraying them as simple thieves, the industry leaves an open goal, their opponents laugh at them and most Swedes just think that they are silly. They look stupid, and won't get paid.

What should the industry show instead? You don't have to be a genius to come up with an honest and probably better commercial. So, here you are STIM, APB, SF and so on, here's my suggestion, all for free. Instead of portraying the person who you so clearly, don't want to continue copying your material, as a thief, which he is not and will never associate himself with and therefore will continue copying your material and you have run down your many million SEK commercial down the drain. Why not show him what he actually does, show him how a movie is made, show him how money spent on a movie get people paid for their hard job, show him the set of actors and so on, showing numbers and faces. Don't go all silly and show sentimental letters, just facts, "When you condone piracy, all these people get nothing and to you, they give you the very best of their efforts". This will work, this is honest, this is what piracy is all about and how you might actually win. Stop acting like idiots with a multi-million SEK budget who are unable to send a message but able to make great movies, albums, etc. It ain't that hard, all you need is the ability to reason.

Glögg review 2: Tillmans Glögg av Svarta Vinbär

I have had the luck of finding a really strange bottle of glögg. Tillman, which is a small rather local brand, makes glögg using black currants instead of red wine. It's also completely alcohol free, let's see how good it gets.


The smell is stronger than usual, it reminds me of some glögg sweets that I stumbled upon last summer in a small candy shop. It doesn't smell like glögg usually does, but it still is rather pleasing. I suspect the smell is because of the black currants, because after the initial aroma of spices it's something like a strong cup of black currant tea.

The taste is a little less punchy than one would expect from a sip of glögg, there is a lot of taste from the berries and it's not even remotely as sweet as one would fear. But, you miss the wine, the taste just won't last as long and be as deep as wine. But it is not a bad substitute for red wine, unlike most mixes of grape juice and other juices that makes glögg taste terrible you do enjoy drinking the strange mixture of black currants and glögg seasoning. I would certainly recommend it, perhaps not for a big party, but certainly as a pleasant and refreshing Christmas beverage for yourself or in the company of a friend or two.

Tillmans Glögg av Svarta Vinbär
3/5
Price: ~40SEK per bottle of 750ml

Glögg review 1: Blossa lättglögg

As you have seen in my profile, I like glögg. Glögg is rather typical for northern europe and is served hot with raisins and almond during the winter season. It's most of all associated with Christmas, but some (like me) enjoy it from mid November to mid January. Glögg is made from wine, traditionally red but nowadays also white. It's seasoned, which gives it a unique sweet and rich taste. Do note that during my test sessions, I do not add almond, raisins or eat ginger snaps. It's only the glögg and nothing else that I will test.

Since a lot of people never hear of this excellent beverage I thought that I'd make a set of reviews of different kinds of glögg with low-alcohol content. There are plenty of brands and flavours to chose from when it comes to high-alcohol content, but for low-alcohol there are about eight kinds to chose from. But I will try to find more.

First out is the true classic "Blossa lättglögg". When you think of glögg, this is the brand that first springs to mind. It's sweet and has a rather spicy taste. You can clearly make out the traces red wine somewhere amidst all the other tastes.


Currently, this is my personal favourite. But it's rather plain, most Swedes ought to be used to this taste, so it's really nothing special about it. You just see it as what defines glögg. Therefore, I can't give it five out of five. Since, you can't stop thinking that perhaps there is another glögg out there, one that is richer, leaner and will taste even better with your ginger snaps. I therefore give it four out of five, it's good, really good. But still, there is nothing special about it.

Blossa lättglögg
4/5
Price: ~25SEK per bottle of 750ml

Those who want to know more about glögg should take a look at the Wikipedia article.

Friday night, is physics and Python night

It's Friday night, you don't have anything to do. Well, you could of course work. But after working hard for more than a week and not even having a weekend last weekend you don't want to do that. Besides, your studies and your employer must let you have some fun.

What I did was dig up Python, some upper secondary school physics and my Fundamentals of Physics (as I am a CS student I have only taken one course in physics at university level) and started to hack some code. Planetary orbits and gravity, I thought, could look rather nice when simulated. So a few hours later I have constructed a small program that simulates the effects of gravity.


What you see is a "sun", well, it's really just a much bigger astral body (just like a sun) and some smaller planets moving in orbits around it. The lines represent gravity vectors, speed vectors, acceleration vectors and so on. They are just there to help me debug the whole thing.

It has been a rather nice Friday night in my opinion. Perhaps I should hack a little more on the concept, who knows. Now I will get some sleep and tomorrow it's all school work and work again.