… cos you get the direction directly from the street, and that since quite some years, it seems. Hm. Typical Oxford. Always ahead of time.
No GPS needed…
Reply
Nature’s Camouflage
This is some kind of power distribution box. In the middle of nowhere in the nature protection area Björskogsnäs close to Grythyttan.
Nature takes it all back, one could say, or at least nature tries to cover such an ugly thing with some camouflage over time.
Love, simply
Two totally different trees, growing so closely together that it seems they are hugging each other. They live somewhere in the forrest around Grythyttan in Sweden, if you must know. We were lucky enough to have met them some time during summer, and they posed willingly for a picture ;).
Reading is fun!
It most definitely is! At least for this bloke on a tram in Hanover earlier this year. He was just chuckling away over his book, and it was pure fun to watch him, and then the slightly irritated people around him, who didn’t really know how to react, or if they’d need to react at all. He didn’t notice anything of that, he was simply lost in his own little bubble. A pleasure to see someone getting so happily excited about some written lines and not really caring about anything going on around him.
The Marple-Effect
Somehow came to think of this lovely lady today. A heroine and idol, not afraid of anything it seems. And if so, she covers it very well.
Shouldn’t we all be aiming for being a bit like Miss Marple, especially like when played by the legendary Margaret Rutherford?
And next time you want to get something that matters to you done, never mind what other say, then think about this picture – and just DO IT!
Respect the Younger!
This post is probably totally unnecessary. To write and to read. But still, I am kind of sure that it isn’t just me who had these thoughts before. Especially not the elder among you.
My dentist is a young lady in her early twenties. I was well astonished when I visited her for the first time last year, and I had the typical prejudices. Me being afraid a bit of dentists anyway. One never knows what they come up with… And so I wasn’t pleased either when she found two holes that needed fixing. By her. Dear, I went home and googled her to the extend. So young, and will she be able to fix it?? Or will she rather make it worse, turning me into a returning and of course paying customer? One knows what dentists are like after all. If you go by the stereotype at least. Anyway, the results of Google calmed me – I found out that she was the best of her year to take the exam and she was a root specialist. Not that I liked that, but it is a complicated subject to treat dental roots, so I appreciated that and thought that she then surely can fix two small holes on my teeth. Which she did. Marvelously, actually. Now I look forward to meeting her next time!
These days I needed to see a GP for some other reason. And I found out that he was my age! Like the dentist, he did a great job.
But still – it is a strange feeling growing older while your doctors, dentists and also politicians either are much younger, same age, or just insignificantly older.
Not that you get the idea I have a problem with age or younger people. In that case you’re wrong. It is great that people who are younger than me know so much – so much more in certain areas in fact. And I have always been lucky enough to have young and young minded work environments. A huge bonus, if you ask me, and I want to keep it that way. After all it is about respecting and trusting in each other – and about who you are as a person. The rising number that marks our age does not matter at all, if you ask me. Therefore – trust in and respect the Young! And try to get over such silly prejudices like I had against my much appreciated dentist. Cos that is also age discrimination, isn’t it?
And no, it is not a women in her seventies talking here. Just me.
Industrilandskapet Norrköping
These pictures are taken on one of the last nice warm autumn evenings in Norrköping’s Industrilandskapet. “industrilandskapet” means as much as “industrial landscape”.
The old buildings contained once to the old textile manufactures and the paper mill. Especially the textile and cotton manufactures gave Norrköping the nickname of “Swedish Manchester”. The area grew since about 1850 and was alive as an industrial environment until the 20th century, when the competition became too strong and the last manufactures had to be closed down. Wikipedia gives a short history of Norrköping, in case you want to dig a little deeper.
Nowadays, Industrilandskapet is the home to concert halls, businesses, museums, pubs and the new visualisation center, which includes a brand new cinema.
What a history! And such a unique experience to walk around there, every time again.
Nerd Attack! A book recommendation
Want a good read in German? Always wanted to know more about the development of the digital world in general and in Germany in particular since the Commodore 64?
Then maybe ‘Nerd Attack’ from Christian Stöcker is for you.
Start with reading my review on Literaturweltblog and then go and buy the book. And then read all weekend long. It’s well spent time.
Bye Bye Friendfeed & Co.
I realised that I am on an awful lot of platforms, to the extend that I do not really cope with keeping track of every service I am registered with.
Already since a while back I was contemplating to get delete some of my accounts that I absolutely do not use.. Which I started with yesterday.
You won’t find me anymore on…
…Gowalla – I am a heavy Foursquare user. Cannot even explain why, but I really like their interface and service, and they will be ‘my’ only location based service. I will also leave Friendticker, since I simply don’t use them. Although they got much better on the international level by now and continue to make a huge effort there. And please – stop sending me invites to Forecast. Why would I want to share where I will be in the future if I don’t even know myself where I will be then?
…Friendfeed – Facebook replaced Friendfeed for me. People connect their Twitter accounts and blogs to Facebook anyway, or they have fan pages and groups I am interested in. So most of the information I have now on Facebook, where I can comment and discuss not only with the person who posted it, but also with other followers and friends.
…Netvibes – Although it is a great place to keep all accounts together, I haven’t been using it since like over 2 years.
…MyGreatWorld – a photo community I contributed to a bit about 2 years ago. Not sure that this one still is alive, since there is not much happening at all.
…identi.ca – I love open source, but what’s the point of being a heavy Twitter-user and publishing ones tweets to more or less the same people again via identi.ca? Shame it didn’t take off further in early 2009, then the game was still open. Now it seems the winner is Twitter, well deserved as well, if you ask me.
I even contemplate leaving Posterous since I hardly post stuff in German anymore. I might do like I did before and throw in a few German posts again here on Wha’ever, especially since I started writing reviews on books in German on Literaturwelt now.
Interesting how the different services develop over the years, to see which ones stay, die or enter the scene.
Facebook I joined as late as in February 2010, on Twitter I am since August 2008. Foursquare I cannot really recall right now, but it will have been early 2010 as well. I joined before I even had a smart phone to check in with 🙂 but I did not hesitate to already then foursquare-map my favourite places in Norrköping.
These are my 3 core favourites at least. Businesswise you find me on Xing as well as on LinkedIn, and another new (fun) kid on the block I get excited about is EyeEm.
That much for today’s Social Media rants!
Twitter – faster than an Earthquake!
Love this video.
Discovered thanks to Doris Schuppe who recommended to read this (German) article on Zeit Online.
It is written by André Vatter and he describes why Twitter is the only tool with best transparency, especially in comparison to Facebook and Google+. There are some very good points in there!
Creatures
This creature lives at Motala Strömmen in Norrköping. Have you met it yet?
Retro Location Based Services & Twitter Search
You did know that the entire discussion about location-based services in real-time is an old hat, didn’t you? And that Twitter really wasn’t that innovative with their idea about public short messages, you knew as well, didn’t you?
Not sure if Martin at Twingly got inspired by that a little bit when creating the fastest retro real-time Twitter-search ever. After all one has to keep all the old tweets available, doesn’t one?
And it really does work, check it out:
Literaturwelt
This is a post for all German readers, so the rest will be in, guess what, German 🙂 ! Good occasion to check how much you understand in that language, though, don’t you think?
So. Kurze Mitteilung!
Heute habe ich meinen ersten Beitrag auf Literaturwelt veröffentlicht – einem deutschen Blog für Buchrezensionen.
Ich werde dort in Zukunft ab und an über Bücher bloggen, die ich gelesen habe und die entweder im Deutschen erscheinen werden, oder von denen ich mir wünsche, dass sie im Deutschen erscheinen. Oder über deutsche Bücher, von denen ich mir wünsche, dass sie in andere Sprachen übersetzt werden. Darüber hinaus gibt es deutsche Bücher, die eine unglaublich gute Übersetzung in eine Fremdsprache erfahren haben. Dann weiß man nämlich, womit man seine Freunde, denen es nicht vergönnt ist, Deutsch zu können, beglücken kann. “Vergönnt” sage ich hier, weil ich nach wie vor unglaublich dankbar dafür bin, dass die deutsche Sprache meine Muttersprache ist. Wenn dem nicht so wäre, wäre Deutsch wahrscheinlich die letzte Sprache, die ich erlernen würde. Es sei denn, ich wäre ein geborener Grammatikfanatiker. Bin ich aber nicht.
Wann immer möglich, lese ich also Bücher in der Originalsprache. Dann entdecke ich oft, dass manche davon (noch) nicht übersetzt wurden, obwohl sie es verdient hätten, und oft bestimmt auch in Englisch oder Schwedisch ein voller Erfolg wären, bzw. umgekehrt.
Ein Beispiel dafür ist der “Hundertjährige” von Jonas Jonasson, der nun am 1. September auf Deutsch erscheint. Warum gerade dieser mir so am Herzen liegt, könnt Ihr hier lesen.
Wenn Ihr noch ein witziges und spannendes Buch für jemanden sucht, der trockenen Humor mag, wo Ihr aber sonst nicht wisst, was buchtechnisch passen könnte, dann solltet Ihr Euch dies sowieso anschauen.
I am on EyeEm
I don’t get excited about apps and programs that often, but EyeEm got me.
Yesterday we had a bit of fun with that at the Twingly office. Via the Android or iPhone app you can either take pictures directly and post these. You can also upload some from your mobile phone. If you are using EyeEm via your notebook, you can also upload pictures from there. And then publish them as well on Facebook, Twitter, connect with Foursquare even to the locations with which you can tag your pics.
Like on other social platforms, you can easily follow other users and their photo streams. You can fav and tweet their pics (or your own ones) – and – really cool – you can post a reel with pictures on your blog via a widget. You should be able to at least – I haven’t figured out how. When I try to use the embed code, I only get the link to the pics, but no slide show. That might be due to some settings here on the blog, though.
Anyway, let me post the links to the streams then at least!
So these are my pics:
by Agaton
These are the ones of the peeps I follow:
by Caroline Drucker
And these are some for a certain location – London in this case:
by HelloKitty
So yes, you can follow certain topics as well, not just users!
Anton and I played with it yesterday – this is the Twingly-EyeEm-phoo-stream. Which will hopefully grow once all colleagues are back from holidays.
by Anmara
And if you want to know how other people have it at work, then maybe flick through this stream:
by Alice Regester
And what have you discovered so far ?
Pretty Brain Protection
From Denmark!
Read about Yakkam in Dagens Nyheter today and that they do pretty helmets for cycling!
Never heard of Yakkay before, but I know that I am very tempted to buy one now.
And that me, who grew up without wearing a helmet (since it was neither recommended, nor were there any around in the early 80’s). As a grown-up I hated the look of these plastic bowls, and it didn’t make them more appealing when one saw mostly these “green”, alternative parents wearing them, who, when watching them, barely seemed to be able to cycle better than their 5-year-olds in front of them. Wearing a helmet did not really improving their skills either. Nasty comment, I know.
On the other hand, helmets clearly can safe lives. I experienced that first hand when my old boss back in London had a severe cycle accident there… .
As for myself, I often cycle too fast – especially downhills to the railway station, and there are often situations involving heavy breaking. That in autumn or winter time would be extremely hazardous, so I already though about getting some kind of protection before. But uuuuhhh, do these normal ones look ugly!
Now that I know of Yakkay, I think I will consider wearing a helmet more seriously from autumn onwards. These look extremely fashionable and are noticed immediately as “plastic bowls”. They give great protection while it still looks somewhat like a normal nice hat.
Definitely some good stuff for the “anti-helmet”-peeps among us, don’t you think?
I kind of like this one….
But then again there are lots more!
Does anybody of you have one like this already? Willing to share how you like yours here in the comment section?
Wha'ever! 