Mikael Fernstrom

>It’s finished. Done. Broadcast. Last night, TXTULTR was performed and broadcast, via air and the web.
Thanks to the staff of Lyric fm, the audience (on site and radio listeners), friends, neighbours and Mona.

>We had a good weekend. Lau visited, she gave a great talk.
The rain was gone. Temporarilly.
I spent the morning in the Limerick City Gallery . Good meeting and great potential.
In the afternoon, I started some serious hacking to get my head around some tricks with OSX and xcode. Good progress, and txtultr should be OK. My code can talk to pd.
I think I need days like this. A few hours in the arts community, then a serious appreciation of maths and hacks. Life is great.

>I’ve been evaluating devices that allow me to carry my music around with me. I’ve been using the iPod for a couple of years now. I’ve listened to other people’s MP3 devices (crap). But, I have to write this, the Apple iPodshuffle is far better than anything I’ve heard! It’s amazing in this day and age, that somewhere (either in algorithms or electronics) there can be such a substantial difference in sound quality. What have they done? I don’t know, but, for example, listening to some Clapton tracks today on the iShuffle, I could even hear a conversation in the back during the recording! I have the same data on my iPod, but on that one it cannot be heard. Same thing if I take the original CD and play it in any of the Hi-Fi systems around the house – you can’t hear it. Most amazing though was, that when I was out walking my dog (as usual…), the iShuffle picked a track from my Final Year Project in 1975 (Radiata Mortificata, third movement). It sounded EXACTLY the way I remember it from mixing the master – reel-to-reel, tape 30 years ago. Apple! – you’re on to something good here 😉

[Steve Jobs, if you read this, we’re open for consultancy! I’d love to do a hack that contributes to Apple’s mission]

>Well, I strongly disagree with this concept. OTH, I’m very happy to have received a new Palm Pilot T5 and an Apple iShuffle yesterday. To me, they are not toys. They are both tools for work and objects for research. I’ll have to recompile my Palm OS code and see if my sound models run better and faster on the new CPU. With the iShuffle, it’s both data storage and handling music. It’s quite interesting to think about what you can do with such a minimal user interface – that has no visual display at all!.

>It’s been a fantastic weekend. Weather has been great – blue skies, sunshine, fresh air. Ireland won over Italy in the Six Nations today.

It started Friday evening, when I discovered that they had missed removing a metal staple from Mona’s navel. We went back to the hospital Saturday and it was easily done. Although both Friday and Saturday, I was feeling increasingly i’ll / a hundred years old / ready to collapse, after some serious rest on Saturday, Sunday turned out great and I feel much better.

The To-Do list is endlessly getting longer but at least I’ve started to give it a serious workout.

>So, this was the end of the Autumn Term. I’ve just finished marking exams and assignment.

As usual, most students don’t know or understand enough maths.

Some may believe they’d get away with anything, others despair.

Still, we have to put marks and grades on their efforts.

>So, today it was the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz. I watched the news, read the papers, and I cried. Many years ago, a friend of mine committed suicide. He was a great guy. Before this, he wanted to investigate his past. I’m not sure if I have the right story, but as far as I know, he’d been adopted. His real parents were killed in the Final Solution. A year or so after he had visited the sites in Germany, Poland, etc., he was quite depressed. Suddenly, he came out of his depression with, what appeared, new positive energy. Next, he was dead. The killing goes much further than you think.

We, humankind, have learned NOTHING! People are still killing, exterminating, torturing and starving each other – for what?!

I guess the Western world had a shake-up with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, as some white people perished. What about the rest of the world, where this happens every day?

Why don’t we start with a Be-Good day all over the planet? Next year, we’ll have two Be-Good days, the year after 3. In 365 years, we might get somewhere. If people start to notice the difference, it might come sooner. If you have – give. If you need – ask.

If you read this: tomorrow, when you wake up, think, “today I will be nice to everybody, I will help everyone, I will forgive everyone”.

Johnny Be Good – Tonight!

>For Christmas, my mother sent me a VHS-tape with selected highlights from Swedish television. One of the programs covered the street kitchen (gatukök = chipper) in our old home town. Apparently it’s known to have the best mashed potatoes (potatismos [short] mos) in the world. Since then, we’ve been talking about this as probably the only thing that we really miss. But as a keen chef I decided to try to replicate the recipe and – sic – this evening we had Halv Special (half special) for dinner!



The design of this Swedish speciality is:

1 oblong piece of white bread

1 really good sausage

some mustard

Mashed potatoes

Prawn salad

Pickled cucumber salad

The really adventourous might even add some lingon-berry jam on top.

Bon Apetite

(or Bonnaptit as it’s said in the local Swedish accent;-)

>We had a great Christmas, or rather, Midwinter. Some time off, and the weather was quite pleasant. Then we got to West Clare for a week over the new year and a bit. Still very nice, but the weather was slightly more hostile (but not bad. There is no bad weather – just the wrong equipment). Standing out there, on the Atlatnic coast, makes you think more deeply about the power of nature. There’s no way you can outrun a wave. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’ll kill you. If anybody reads this, please make donations to teh Red Cross.

This evening, Sweden is off-line due to one of the storms we had a few days ago. Nuclear power plants did shut down due to too much salt water. Networks collapsed. Also telephones. I bet you, the Swedes will use this incident as an argment to go more nuclear (which is the wrong strategy) instead of trying too figure out how to design sustainable living (wich is something completely different).

>Yesterday, while walking down the fields to the river Shannon, we observed that several trees apparently believe (do trees have faith?) that it’s spring! Today, some of the smaller birds seem to follow suite, judging by their general behaviour and singing. Is this a good sign, or is it really bad?

As it’s Midwinter today, let’s celebrate the shortest day of the year and that all Gods in Valhalla will help us to set things right in the world.