Read Some Stewf

Four Hours in Hell, Eight Hours in Heaven

A message to Charles de Gaulle officials: your airport is in disrepair.

One of every two elevators is out of order. It’s a similar story for the escalators, moving walkways, cash machines, and phones. Those phones that do work are of such poor quality that everyone on the other end sounds like vintage Buzz Aldrin, regardless of distance.

The only positive side affect from the lack of maintenance is the sparrow nest inside Terminal 2, which provided some entertainment while I waited for you to locate the bags you lost and damaged.

The rest of the day, however, was ripe with delight and wonder. I met some of my best friends, previously only known to me through the interweb, embarked on a leisurely teaser tour of Paris (which took us under the Eiffel, over the Seine, and in the tres cool Pompidou), and engorged on fine cuisine.

The night ends with this report from my own private apartment on a narrow street made for postcards and movies. I’ll be back home in Salt Lake tomorrow. What a long week this has been.

Summer Scandipop

Halfway through the Two Way Monologue and I’m already in love with Sondre Lerche. If you’re not living in a nordic nation you probably haven’t heard of him. Just imagine a brighter Badly Drawn Boy, sporting the same instrumentation innovation and lyrical wit, but more poppy pop. AMG says “almost every song is worthy of starring on a mix CD made to impress your friends”. Agreed, and I’ll surely put that to the test.

It’s kind of a pity that young boys like Bright Eyes get all the adoring press attention when just over the ocean and a turn to the left there is another young boy with all of the talent and none of the dreary pretension.

See also the similarly flavored John Cunningham who has also seen a lot of playing time in my iTunes of late.

A Bed In Berkeley

Ladies and gentlemen: I am pleased to announce I will not be walking the streets upon my arrival east of San Fran Bay. An apartment is secured! It’s a one-bedroom in a two-story mission-style building from the ’20s. Hardwood floors. Windows abound. Courtyard. Four blocks from BART. Start planning your visits now, folks — my days of one-room living are over.

Marathon Music

The week after I arrived in Sweden I witnessed the Lidingö Loppet — a running race over the most hilly and lightly populated of Stockholm’s main islands. It isn’t very long, but the inclines make for a grueling run. So what music do the organizers blare over loudspeakers to rally the contestants as they push on over hills and muddy terrain? ABBA, of course. Watching hundreds of trained runners do their thing to the sounds of “Dancing Queen” is an amusing sight indeed [see movie]. While I struggled to contain laughter my Swedish companions didn’t see the humor. After all, regardless of its age, this is their most patriotic music, akin to a national anthem. What could be more invigorating? I understood.

Today is the Stockholm Marathon, a longer race through the middle of the city. The course includes Odengatan, the major street just a few hundred feet from my office. To my despair the soundtrack for this race is far more obnoxious than ABBA. Instead, for the next 4 hours I get to hear a loop of three mindless contemporary europop hits, hard-packed with trance techno. If I were a runner in the Stockholm Marathon, I would go mad before I got tired.

So I've been using the office stereo to drown out these sounds with my own marathon tunes: “Serge” by The Folk Implosion, “Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story)” by !!!, “We Like Having These Things” by Numbers, “Take A Walk” by Spoon, “Date With The Night” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Not The Same” by Ben Folds, and “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. They’ve all got that aggressive beat to keep your feet pounding the pavement and they aren’t hideously irritating.

Broken Windows

Windows is like a bad neighborhood, strewn with litter, mysterious odors, panhandlers, and untold dozens of petty annoyances. The Mac is like a good neighborhood, where the streets are clean and the crime rate low. You don’t need bars on your windows in a good neighborhood; you don’t need anti-virus software on the Mac.

The security disparity between the Mac and Windows isn’t so much about technical possibilities as it is about what people will tolerate. And Mac users don’t tolerate shit.

The consistently eloquent technology writer John Gruber describes the reason why Windows is ridden with spyware, adware, and viruses.

Everything Must Go!

Sellin’ stuff before the move.

Midnight Stockholm

I just got back from Monteliusvägen on Södermalm. The view across the water to Stockholm’s northern islands is always postcard material, but tonight the sky is especially cooperative. It's almost midnight and the sun is still setting. Took some photos. Click them to biggify.