Power Outage
Last night there was a power outage here. It lasted over three hours. That’s never happened before, as far as I know. Certainly not in my lifetime. You read about it happening to people living out in the woods, way up north or something, but in a town? No way.
It really brought home to me how dependent we are on electricity. We couldn’t go online, except my mom and sister on their iPhones – and they were rapidly running out of battery time. We couldn’t cook – and it was about dinner time. Not knowing how long the whole thing would last, we hardly dared to open the fridge to get stuff we needed. Due to the thunder storm, the light from outside was very poor, so reading was pretty much out of the question too. It was such a relief to see the light go back on.
Quote
The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
– Moliere
Time for a little whining again…
If you read this blog, it won’t take you long to realize that I love animals. Dogs (some dogs, I should say) are among my favorite animals. My very favorite breed is the lhasa apso. First I’d like to explain that here, in Sweden, it’s quite a rare breed, and is definitely not among the top twenty breeds. As I understand it, it’s quite the opposite in the US.
What I love the most about this breed is their personality and attitude. Don’t get me wrong, I also love the way they look, but that’s really a minor reason.
When I look at the breed sites or read books and printed articles about the breed, I find things like ‘if you don’t like the grooming, choose another breed’. Huh? I love this dog’s personality, like none other (ok, not quite true, I love a couple of other breeds too and basically like all kinds of dogs, like I like most types of animals, period). Should I just decide not to get it, because I’m not a huge fan of all that hairdressing? No way.
Because I love the lhasa apso’s personality, I’m willing to learn and put up with the extensive grooming required. Naturally I want my dog to be healthy and happy. I’ll never learn to love that aspect of sharing my life and home with an awesome, cool Tibetan dog, but I can live with it.
Actually, it’s the same about the amount of excercise some of the bigger or more active breeds need. I love walking, and walking fast, up to a point. Mainly, I love walking in the streets, in parks or in the agrarian landscape surrounding small towns. In other words, I don’t love hiking for days on end in the wilderness or climbing mountains, riding a bike etc.
I’ve also taken the consequences of that, by not choosing a big or very active breed (for instance, I also love, to name a few of my other favorites, the Eurasian dog, the dachshund, the golden retriever, poodles and naturally mixes between similar types of dogs, not to mention some gorgeous ‘working’ dogs that I could only dream about). These dogs deserve to live far more active lives than I can give them, so I don’t adopt them. Sigh. You can’t have everything. I suppose if I had a family member who lived for week long hikes in the woods or mountains or running for hours, we could share a dog. I’m sure no excercise-craving dog would spurn a shorter slightly less energetic walk in addition to their daily runs.
Smaller, less active dogs, like the lhasa apso enjoy about the same type of walking I do – well, up to a point. Mom’s Tibetan spaniel seems to think I’m a cruel bully and a jock, for expecting him to actually move about. His idea of a nice walk is standing still, sniffing lamp poles or ambling along at a leisurely pace, peeing here and there to send messages to other male dogs. But in general, I think my hour or so of walking around the town satisfies my dog and would satisfy other similar small dogs (most tibetan spaniels, the bichon breeds etc).
Great quote
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
– Ray Bradbury
Favorite parts
An American site, that I’m guessing is something like a ladies’ magazine, asked its female visitors which body part/s on a man they appreciated the most.
That started me thinking about what I appreciate. I came to the conclusion that hands are pretty cool body parts, especially male ones. I mean, sure, I like my mom’s hands and my own and my sister’s too, of course, but men’s hands are so big and strong. Though it is impressive how incredibly strong my sister’s little hands are.
So, my dad’s hands. Above all there are two things I recall. In our family we love Macs. Quite a few years ago, the first iMacs came along, and their puck mice got a lot of criticism. Most people, especially men, wouldn’t have anything to do with them. One man said that his daugters had small hands, so they didn’t have much trouble with them, but they weren’t good enough for him. Only that’s not true. It has nothing to do with the size of the hands. I know that, because I conducted a test.
I asked my dad to use the puck mouse on one of our iMacs. He said it was fine, he had no trouble at all, using it. Dad’s hands were big, not disproportionately so, but as big as you’d expect on a man who was 200 cm tall. That means it’s got nothing to do with size.
Dad was great at fixing electric appliances too. He took care of our all electric cables. Anything a layman was capable of doing, and was allowed to do, he did, and he did it well. He also taught my sister everything he knew, so now she can do it too.
My maternal grandfater had big hands too, even though he was shorter than my dad. Grandpa’s hands could build just about anything. Once when I was little, so little I can’t remember it myself anymore, I saw a helicopter and pointed up to it and told a little friend: I’ll ask my grandpa to make me one of those. Apparently, she was very impressed, though my grandpa couldn’t build helicopters, no matter how many other things he could build. He could also boil potatoes and make rice porridge (rice pudding – typical Christmas food in Sweden).
Some internet services
A while back I blogged about some favorite sites and I feel it’s time for a little update. Some sites are gone and as for the others, I’ve had time to try them out some more and can be more clear on how I feel about them.
This time I’ll limit myself to one post.
Blogs:
WordPress. If you know you’ll be writing long texts and mainly text (as opposed to sharing links, quotes, videos etc) this is the blog for you. If you want to keep things simple use wordpress.com – a web host that provides free wordpress blogs (with some ads – in the years I’ve been using wordpress.com I think I’ve seen one ad, once, though I’m not sure). It’s very easy to setup and use and there are plenty of free (and premium) themes to choose between. Lately, many new exciting themes have been added, so there’s quite a lot to choose from. Of course, if you would like to put your own ads on your blog to advertise your etsy or cafepress store, for instance, or your ‘real’ business, you can’t do it here. You can post fan fiction here, but it’s not really a great place for it. I have read a fanfic or two on wordpress and as with any text wordpress does a great job of displaying it. Some people post original stories too, but mainly this is a place for ‘ordinary’ blog posts. As such it’s a great community.
WordPress can also be downloaded to your computer, then uploaded to a web host or your own server. In most ways it works exactly like wordpress.com, except for the fact that you need to do all the work of upgrading, downloading plugins, new themes and so on. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult. First you’ll need a domain name. You might be able to find a good web hotel for free and a provider of free domain names (usually subdomain names, which isn’t exactly the same thing, but close enough), but you could also find web hosts and domain name providers at very reasonable prices. It depends on what you want to do. What you can do here, that you can’t do at wordpress.com (with a basic, free account) is make your own themes, or edit existing ones.
Tumblelogs
Tumblr is one of my favorites in this category. It makes it very easy for you to share links, media, quotes and short blog posts, though there’s no one stopping you from posting long blog posts as well. There’s also a community of sorts. You search for whatever you’re interested in, and the search will turn up posts from other tumblelogs. You can like (note) these posts, if you like them, and you can also reblog them. That will get the other blogger’s attention and they might follow you or at least like or reblog your posts. There’s a way to create communities, for instance you can allow people to ask you questions or you can pose questions that you let others answer.
Soup is similar to Tumblr, except in one way. So far I haven’t noticed much of a community here. You can search for, join or create groups, but they don’t seem to work very well. Also, though you can search for blog posts, I haven’t found Soup very good for finding interesting content. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Even so, I must say I like Soup anyway. It’s extremely easy and practical to use. You can either post directly or you can automatically import content from other sites, then share the link to Soup so your friends and family can check out your own personal mix.
Microblogs/Status updates
Twitter is the most famous microblog. Despite the name, I see very little blog-like about Twitter. To me it’s mostly a place to keep up with what others are saying and most importantly, sharing. I have found links to many fun and useful sites here. You can follow celebrities. Some of them are actally the real celebrity – look for the official approval. Others are very clever fakes, that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Some are just jokers masquerading as a celebrity for fun or even to discredit the real celebrity.
Plurk is another relatively famous microblog. I have been using it for such a short time I can’t really tell much about it. So far I haven’t found anyone to follow, if that’s what you do. What I do know is that you can customize your background, and you can vary the verb that prefaces your post. You say, wish, think etc whatever it is you post. That’s about it. What I like about Plurk is that they don’t claim the rights to whatever you’re posting, like Twitter and Facebook do.
Friendfeed is sort of halfway between a microblog and a tumblelog, at least it seems that way to me. It’s owned by Facebook, but doesn’t claim ownership over your posts. There are groups/rooms you can join, but my brief attempt to network there didn’t work out. I still enjoy those groups a lot, though, for the links to interesting sites that they provide.
Here too you can automatically import feeds from your blog, tumblelog or other microblog, or other sites, like Goodreads too or simply post. You can also customize your background. They also provide little widgets you can put on your homepage or blog.
Search engines
At the moment, I only use Ixquick (apart from Wikipedia). It’s a very nice substitute for Google for those of us who don’t want to use that. Unlike Google, they don’t record your searches. It’s quick and easy to use and gives great results.
Gmx.co.uk is the best free email I’ve ever tried. Again, this is quite a good replacement for Google, although of course it doesn’t work exactly like Gmail. You get plenty of storage, you can collect mail from your other email accounts there and you get as many aliases as you like, that is email addresses. They allow you to download your email to your email program, or you can just access your mail online, whichever you prefer. Or you can do both, and choose imap. They offer quite a few different suffixes, ie .com, co.uk etc. And they use ‘green’ servers.
Social network/community
Care2. I’ve been a member of Care2 for years and I still love it as much as I did from the start. There’s not a lot that’s new about it, so I won’t go into all the features in detail. I’ll just list them. Free email, free e-cards, free donations, petitions. You also get your own profile page and you can join (or create) groups.
Livejournal, Insanejournal and Dreamwidth are blog communities, but to me they’re also very successful social networks. The blogging part works great, and the communitites are/can be great, depending on what you’re into. All three are fan fiction friendly. (Which doesn’t in any way imply that WordPress is against fan fiction. I have had absolutely no indications about that.) At LJ etc you’re far more likely to run into people interested in fan fiction, than on WordPress (can’t say anything about Blogger, since I don’t use it)..
Other
Book communities. Librarything and Shelfari aren’t at all bad, but Goodreads is the best book community I’ve tried. When I’m going to buy books, I always consult Goodreads first.
Though I still use AIM, MSN and ICQ as well as LJ Talk, I prefer to use Jabber, which is an independent chat/IM. To use it, you need a multichat program, like Adium for Mac or Trillium (?) for the PC. I could be wrong about the latter. It’s been a while since I used a PC. Wikipedia can tell you more.
Skype. I’m told you can use Skype for video chats. That’s not really my thing. I do know you can voice chat, which is basically like talking on the phone, for free. If you can use Skype in your mobile/cell phone, you can actually talk on the phone for free. Naturally, you can also text chat. The main drawback with Skype is that it’s kind of ‘heavy’ so if you are short on RAM, it might not be the best choice. If you’re wiling to pay, you can also talk on the phone for a very reasonable price. There’s even a real, physical phone you can use with Skype, which means you don’t need to have a computer online. You get a ‘real’ phone number that ordinary users, without Skype or even internet, can use to reach you.
I suppose I should mention Blip.fm. My use of Blip.fm is a bit erratic. Sometimes I more or less forget I have an account there. At other times, I ‘blip’ lots of songs that occur to me. When I’m in the mood for it, I like Blip.fm a lot.
Fan fiction. I can’t leave Archive of Our Own out. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a really great (relatively) new online fan fiction archive. It’s absolutely awesome. If you’re into fan fiction it’s a must. AOO is a major reason I’ve started reading fan fiction again. Actually, I never stopped, but Archive of Our Own (along with LJ, IJ and DW) makes it such a pleasure.
Finally, Project Gutenberg. It’s a treasure trove filled with older literature available for free. You can read it online or download it to your computer, smartphone or e-book reader. There are other sites with free books, but Project Gutenberg is the most famous one, I think. I’ll finish with a list of a few of the authors you can read for free at Project Gutenberg’s site. Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie (just a few early titles), LM Montgomery, Edith Nesbit.
A bit of luck for once
For once I’ve had a bit of luck. A while back, my sister entered a contest to win a pair of glasses, frames and all. Strangely enough she won. I decided that if there was ever such a contest again, I’d enter. And there was. I was sure I wouldn’t win too. I mean, what are the odds for that?
This time around, ‘only’ five hundred people would get free glasses, as apposed to a thousand the first time. Still, it was worth a shot. There was a bit of room for more than luck, a little tenacity. Every contestant received a code and on a certain day at a certain time, you were supposed to click, then enter your code.
Needless to say I was waiting in front of my computer for the specified time to come, then just clicked as fast as I could. Later that day I got an email saying I’d won. If it hadn’t been for my sister’s experience, I would have been sure this was just a trick, but fortunately for me, it wasn’t.
Yesterday, the glasses arrived. I need some more time to get used to them, then maybe there’ll be a photo. Not making any promises, but maybe.
At least that’s over now…
Most of yesterday I was at a funeral. A relative has passed away. She was old and I suppose we should have expected this, but somehow, you’re never prepared. In a way, we weren’t all that close, but in a way, we were. It’s only now that I’ve realized how different it will be without her. We didn’t meet in person, not for a long time, and now I feeel guilty about that. I always meant to try to see her one way or another, but it never happened and now it’s too late. We did talk on the phone now and then, but it was mainly my mom she called. They were cousins. For many years she was the only person, outside the immediate family who remembered my birthday. She always sent me a postcard and I always called her and thanked her. She was also my sponsor, at my christening.
That meant that there was no question of my not going to her funeral. I hate funerals, but this time, I definitely needed to go. After the ceremony – which made me cry – all that talk about death – all visitors were treated to food and coffee and cake. Not for me though. Being vegan, I couldn’t eat anything that was on offer. Not that it mattered to me. I’m used to it.
During the meal, we were encouraged to share memories we had of our relative or friend. I couldn’t think of anything in particular. Partly, I suppose, because I was so tired. I hadn’t slept all night. I sat at the table, next to my mom, in a room full of strangers. Some people were nice and tried to include me in their conversations, but most ignored me.
Losing someone always makes me think about others I’ve lost and that definitely didn’t help. While we were in church, it started to snow. I’d been hoping we wouldn’t get any more snow, but as it turned out, none of it remained on the ground. It all melted away before the guests began to disperse.
It was a bit slippery though and I’m totally out of shape, so when I got back, I was hurting all over. (Shame on me.) I was completely exhausted and had to go to bed early and slept until very late. I’m still not back to normal.
There’s another thing that’s made me think about dead relatives. A while back, my sister had someone ask to do a ‘reading’ on her. She didn’t feel she could refuse. Some of what this woman told her could be just general stuff she could have told anyone, but there were a few things that made us think. Stuff only we knew about the relative she claimed to speak for. It was an eerie sensation, being forced to consider things in a new way. Whether or not there’s anything in these psychic readings, it got me thinking about this relative. What we knew about him and all the things we didn’t.
All this has put me in a very strange mood. I hope I’ll snap out of it soon.
Bone Mountain
When I first came across Eliot Pattison’s mysteries set in Tibet, I was thrilled. Tibetan culture is something I’ve been interested in for years, in fact ever since I first read Tintin in Tibet. My love for Tibet only increased when I discovered Tibetan dogs (but that’s another story.)
Like the two earlier books in the series, Bone Mountain was fascinating, but sad. Parts of it read like a fantasy because of the incredibly interesting and unique culture and lifestyle of (some of) the Tibetans. Pattison’s ‘sleuth’ Han Chinese Shan, first came to Tibet when he was deported to a gulag. He survived the harsh conditions in the camp by embracing Tibetan religion and culture (the two are completely interwoven, so it’s hard, if not impossible to separate the two).
Bone Mountain deals with the desctruction of Tibet’s nature, by the Chinese occupation force. Reading about it almost made me cry. The ‘hero’ of the book is really Tibetan culture, in many ways illustrated by the characters. They’re all unique, fascinating and mostly sympathetic. It’s obvious that Pattison has come to care about his Tibetan friends and their culture, that, like the country it originated, is threatened by extinction.
