How many different washing programmes have I used in my life? Probably three. Or attempted to use. Often, I am not hundred percent sure of what combination of temperature, prewash or not, spin cycle etc the thing is actually going to do. Or what I actually “need”. What is the difference between “economy” and “quick”? When would I choose a ten degree difference in temperature? 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 degrees Celsius? And what real difference does the alternative spin cycles make? “baby clothes”? “Clinical rinse”? “Normal”? “economy”? “bio”? Do I need “prewash”?

Read The Fucking Manual, I hear you say. Seriously. I think not.

In Ireland, I was confronted with washing machines that let you adjust all manner of things, but would only use cold water, regardless of temperature chosen.

Washing clothes in our cleanliness-obsessed world is not difficult. They slosh around in some water, with some soap and possibly some fabric softener. We probably wash clothes more often than necessary; no tar, oil, sap or heavy duty filth. And yet, I am given a million options.

Granted, I am not a very domesticated animal, but the endless options are way beyond the call of duty for a pretty simple appliance.

A friend of mine have a cooker, and if the power goes for a split second, the watch starts blinking the familiar 00:00. The interesting thing is that the cooker does not work until the clock is set. How does that happen, what mad set of circumstances made him figure that out? And the guy who made the thing; what was he thinking?

This is interface design. Process and product.

I am, in a way not a fan of user testing left, right and centre. I suspect a lot of pointless user harassing are being done out there, but maybe we need to employ the village idiot to ask “why is this button here?”
Someone to break what we make, so that we can fix it.

I am thinking around information architecture, interaction design, human-computer interaction, infographics. You’d think that would be reasonably easy to find. Nah.

Some classify HCI under psychology, some see infographics as either arts or engineering. Some see it as information technology, but then from a programming perspective. Some see it as art, but then with crayons and brushes. Some see infographics as library studies or mathematics. Or “informatics”. In some cases, “information” is bundled with “education”, and on top of that is classes in pedagogy. With pictures of teachers and little children..

So what search terms do I use? Is this my fault, for being stupid at searching, is it that the obvious cross-field master I am looking for does not exist, or is it the relatively low-level information handling that is the problem? I cannot search for “masters degree usa information” – though this would be the lowest common denominator of what I am after. I want to work with information. Visually. Adding “visual” gives me a squillion hits in art.

At one large university I was asked to fill in a questionnaire, and doing that, I got the message that they do not accept applicants from my country… somehow, I do not believe that for a moment. It is disturbing; that the basic level of information gathering is obviously faulty: what else is not correct?

Not to mention the religious aspect. It is hard for Europeans to get their heads around universities with religious connections, connotations or allegiances. What does it actually mean? Why get religion into it? I find it a little disturbing, but suspect I don’t really know how it works.

ANSA, the association of Norwegian students abroad have a desperately outdated list of subjects. The only thing there that is vaguely related to what I am looking for is “engineering” or “art”. None of which, on their own, is anywhere near being relevant.

I have found one master programme, that seems to suit me, at one of the most prestigious universities – it was difficult to find, but once I got the pages, the information is clear and straight. But surely; I cannot rely on one application to one university, and so the hunt goes on.

There are engines. There are search engines for grad studies. They have the same problem; and I end up wading through piles and piles of irrelevant stuff. Am I “Arts and architecture”?.. not quite. “Computers and technology”? .. hmm, a little, but not entirely. Those engines do not give me courses I know exist; that tells me that not all courses are represented in those engines. Then what else is missing?

All I want is to play with complex information.

Why should that be so difficult?

“America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.”

– A. Toynbee –

Scraps from a few weeks in the US of A:

USA is a strange place. Very, very recognizable. We’ve seen it a million times on telly. It is mundane, large, transparent, obvious, loud, surprising, well known, scary, lovable and at times plain odd. A weird counterpoint feeling of walking in a film; I realized how Americanised my own country is.

The first thing that struck me, as we drove from the airport in Washington D.C., was that USA is dark. Simply; not a lot of streetlights. Here, the highway from the airport and into town would be a string of lights. Additionally, people close their curtains, across the foam. Not so here, so you don’t get light spilling out from living-rooms either. The result being sharp, sudden shifts of pools of light and utter darkness; and I suddenly understood the term “edge of town”.

Language connection: US is the first English-speaking country I have been to where they drive on the right – took me over a week (two?) to look the right way when crossing the streets. Snow chaos in DC did not help, as all rules for traffic was suspended, and both driving and walking in the middle of the road made sense. It was bizarre; that language should dictate this. Odd connections in the brain. Wonder what will happen when I go back to Ireland or Australia…

Christian nuts on planes. Why do I always end up next to one? I make a point of avoiding chatting to people on flights, absolutely not before they have proven an ability to entertain themselves. Books, magazines, music, x-words. anything. So I end up next to The Religious Ones, on three out of six flights. Protestants ministers as far as I could figure, they read their magazines and books, yellow highlight pens in hand. And I feel only anger. Why? I don’t really know. These old old men with their cheaply printed religious magazines an pamphlets, body language spelling out “I want to talk to you”. I feel like screaming at them, without knowing why. Being trapped in a plane might have something to do with it.

Looking at the pics from DC, I strangely & strongly re-live the feeling of arriving at the hotel. The photo of Lars at the hotel with the Capitol shimmering in the distance, contains the whole three weeks. The relief, the tired joy. Smelly feet, sweaty, airplane-stuffed sinuses. All tense annoyances behind. The quiet expectation and excitement; the prospect of a comfy bed. No need to be extraordinarily polite to immigration (always. be. veery. nice.). The coolness of the hotel room. Relief. A sense of it is all good. That sweet, sweet feeling of the start of a new, little adventure. This is the best part of travelling. Setting out. Transportation over; enter adventure.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

– Cesare Pavese –

D.C. felt like a bubble. It is a strange city; an administrative centre. You see it in the shops, architecture, cafés, cars, peoples clothes; the things they carry. Yet, it has an abundance of wonderful museums, an endlessness of interesting things to look at. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance to explore them, as the snow closed the entire city. A lot of knowledgeable people work in these places, and I wonder what this means for the demographics. Who hangs out with whom, in this odd, smallish city of national administrators, lobbyists, museum people and researchers. And sheer power.

Music – most of the random music I heard was things I have, like and appreciate. To hear The Doors blasting out of a shop would not happen very often in this part of the world. It felt good and odd in equal measure. Hardly any hip-hop, plastic pop or electronica.

Chicago is a city full of strange people. It is a hard, angled, cold city, but still feels oddly familiar and comfortable. Maybe it was the mid-west-thing. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was because I have two good people in Chicago. They will happily tell you about the atrocious number of crime and murder, with a similar smirk as the Northern Irish used to chat about the gory bits of the troubles. I was comfortable. It felt good. Chicago treated me well.

There is a vibrant loony-scene, and it spills into the streets, dancing in the middle of the zebra crossing. People talking to thin air. And no, they do not all have hands-free. A good deal of drugs around, clearly. Chicago was the end of the trip, I had a lot of impressions to digest, my head spinning with sorting it all out; getting used to the idea of heading home. Building a buffer for that; knowing it will always be awful, I mumbled to myself.
Standing on a cold street corner in Chicago smoking a cigarette, talking to myself, I blended in.

“I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.”

– Caskie Stinnett –

Going back – The little things that trips you up when you come home. The exquisite pain & pleasure of travelling and coming back.  There is no life without travelling, yet it balances on a knife’s edge. The sweet excitement of adventure, the depression of coming home. I get better at dealing with it as I get older, but there is a protective buffer I am not sure is a good thing.

We are heading back to D.C. soon. It starts over again.

I can’t wait.

In this shithole I live in at the moment (I think I have mentioned that before), there are three boys on the first floor, and two women on the second. I live in the bloody basement – the troll under their feet. The Internet connection is atrocious – I think I have mentioned that too – and it turns out that all is honky dory down, but not happening up. One of the women have never had it working properly, and as I call the manufacturer of the miserable pile of technology, she butts in.

-Can you press some buttons on my pc? This guy did once, and then it worked.

She points vaguely at the navbbar on my mac. Somewhere in the general direction of top left corner.

-He pressed something here, and then it worked.

She knows as much about computers as I know about celebrities. Nothing.

-I have internet, all works, she says. And it turns out she cannot use her online bank, and have never been able to send mail. Yea. Well. Not my idea of working. I try to explain the basic data up, data down idea. That I checked one of those speedometers. It doesn’t register.

-The other place I lived. He just pushed something, and then it worked.

I am beginning to feel a slight echoing sensation in my head. Push. Dumb. Woman. Down. Stairs. I try to explain. The wireless thingy is sick. Connecting the router directly into my Mac, all is well. Using the wireless – nothing goes up. Out. Away. I cannot send information out, basically, but can receive anything at reasonable speed. It turns out she borrows the computer of one of the boys when she has to pay bills.

-He fixed it really quickly, just pressing something.

I try to explain my troubleshooting so far. I point at the router and the wireless. And then she comes out with it:

-Aren’t any of the boys at home?

_____________

Because she is thick as a brick and don’t listen and don’t understand. That makes me less capable of troubleshooting computers. Because I am female, she doubts my capabilities. The nature of my private parts, she thinks, decides what ability I have in solving problems, because she has none herself. She would understand less of the boys’ explanations, if they bothered giving one. But she would feel more confident that all that could be done had been done.

Kindergarden teachers – pushing down the stairs is too good for them.

I live in a shithole. I try to ignore that I live in a shithole.  My sleep pattern gone haywire, my eating habits likewise. Time does funny things, and seems to coil and loop. That is why I drove out last night, at three thirty in the morning to capture the early morning light.

There was not much to capture. A handful of drunk people staggering home.
The light was too flat, the morning to far gone for that magic sunrise.
But I found the moon.
And I saw the town I live in – literally – in a new light. It doesn’t make me love the place, but a little more understanding, maybe.

The internet – a neverending source of weirdness, beauty, brutality and the bizarre. Here is the best of last nights wanderings.
I’ll post the rest later – having himalayan bother with my internet connection.

I love this. It makes sense.

The world is sick, and this is the proof, was my first thought. But then, in a way it makes sense.

This is gorgeous. The colours, the rust, the bulletholes, the guy. Ugly-beautiful.

I love letters. I love decay.

Ugly-beautiful.

What I will not do for my kitty..
Due to a million things, I now live – temporarily – in a smelly basement in the most boring town in Norway. I assure you, there’s stiff competition. A filthy kitchen upstairs, where cat is not welcome. The first thing I had to do was to scrub the stove. I am not hysterically antiseptic or dainty, but there seemed to be things living there. So, for the smelly basement – the smell sends me back to ireland; a mouldy, damp cat-pee infested mess of old sofas and wrecked furniture. Naked lightbulbs. Concrete floor. Mouldy carpet. Nice…
All because of a general aversion to cats, lack of information and communication.
I could kill to get out of here. I am pissed off. Too pissed off to take a photo of the dungheap.
I have been here less than three nights, and I grow more miserable by the minute.
And to top it off, the wireless connection is atrocious.

I alternately hate and love my cat – I live here for lack of options because I refuse to get rid of her. Clearly love won.

Bollocks.

In europe, the oldest fabrics are all dyed in shades of red. In fact, they say, in Roman times, the latin word for ‘coloured’ and ‘red’ were synonyms. Greeks and romans rarely dyed in blue, but the celts and germanic tribes did – using woad (that yellow plant you see all around temperate europe). Hence, blue was seen as primitive and barbaric.

Blue dye were used by the ancient people of the Middle East – they imported indigo from Asia and Africa. Indigo was used in biblical times, but it was expensive, and used only for the finest cloth, and for the wealthy. In europe, it was not used much- partly because it was expensive, but also because the colour was not … appreciated. It was also assosiated with the rabid celts and germaic people (Don’t say Braveheart – I detest that film. But I suppose the blue is correct).

In the bible, colour is rarely mentioned, but translations have made words that relate to luminosity, density, light and quality into colours. This of course, have ended in a lot of – to an atheist – delightful, snickering misunderstandings in the «life of Brian»-genre («it’s a sign, it’s a sign! he wants us all to remove our left

shoe and follow!»)

The best bit is that in the english version (and others), words that describe force, richness, love, beauty, prestige, death, blood, fire etc are simply translated as «red». Excellent ground for misunderstandings… and I shall not even start on the jewish tsitsit shawl, Cleopatras sails or the temple of Solomon. Brilliant stories they are – go forth and research!

The high middle ages – is a period we can begin to recognise the outlines of our own society and you should think that at least the painters would use blue. The sky is blue. We see the sea as blue (which it is not), but the painters in the high middle ages painted the sky white, red or gold. Emperors and nobles in the 9-10th century fancied Roman customs, and wore red, white and purple (purple is another story – an enourmously facinating one!). So ignored by nobles, blue was worn by pesants. And it would stay like that until the 12th century.. Blue was descibed by the rich and wealthy as sickening, unnatural, barbaric and ugly.
(is’t this exciting?!)

There are remarakably few references to blue in liturgy, placenames and people. Mr. Brown, Mr. Black, Mr White, Mr. Red. But no Mr. Blue. In latin, there are apparently no name with the root in ‘blue’ (this of course being contagious- the same goes for a lot of european languages).

Christianity – you would think that with all that emphasis on the heavens and all, christianity would expand blue. But no, the church stuck to the social and religious symbolisms already in place for regulating society.

Liturgical colours are discussed in sheaves and reams, and all sorts of colours are mentioned- except blue. Even though it is around in stained glass, enamel, paintings and in clothing. Blue is simply not part of the liturgical colour scheme or symbolism. Blue is not really entering the stage properly until the late 12th century… when blue turns up in stained glass windows, and then as a backdrop to sacred figures.

Up until the 12th century, the virgin Mary was depicted in dark colours, to represent suffering and grief, and never in blue. Then something happens, and today, blue is assosiated with the virgins robes. A good example is the Wilton dipthych from 1395.
This combination of the cult of Mary and the idea of divine light, blue becomes wildly popular. (It is of course a long story, what happended – it involves an squillon church meetings, a split on the view on colours – «if colours are light, it is divine, the work of God. If colour is substance, it is the work of the decieving devil»…. chromophobes versus chromophiles, with axes to grind, a God to justify them, and unproveable points to prove… Besides. Ultramarine pops up in Italy as the most expensive colouring. Money talks).

Colours change importance and assosiative power. Blue changed from being a non-colour to represent loyalty, truth, courage, and the fact that the king of France chose the well-known coat of arms: azure with golden fleur-de-lis dotted around (and yes, king Arthur pictured with a blue shield with three golden crowns) surely drove the popularity of blue.
And here’s a good piece of ancient gossip: in the thirteenth century, wealthy red dyers asked stained-glass artists to represent the devil as blue- hoping this would discredit the newly fashionable colour that was threatening their precious profits. From hardly any coats of arms having any blue in 1200, at the beginning of the 15th century one in three coats of arms had ‘azure’.

In fact, there was a fight wether the colours of the rainbow should include blue – and the fact that indigo is squeezed in between blue and violet, well, that seems to be more thanks to stubborn Newton than anything else.
…since then, blues popularity have, erm, skyrocketed. Today, it’s topping the favourite colour scale.

And by the way- blue is not just blue…
Azure, baby blue, cerulean, cobalt, cornflower, dark blue, denim, Egyptian blue, electric blue, indigo, light blue, lapis lazuli, Maya blue, midnight blue, navy blue, periwinkle, Persian blue, powder blue, prussian blue, royal blue, sapphire, sky blue, steel blue, ultramarine…

And no, it’s not my favourite colour.

(Purple is facinating, though. Royal tyrian, slaves, snails and religious blunders.. and yellow – to us, a warning, the colour of hospital bin bags signifying harmful contagious waste; to the chinese, the colour of the emperor. Ah. it never ends.)

Summer at last.
Weekend at last.
Two more exams.

Beautiful weather, gorgeous peace.

Sitting in the garden reading, taking notes, it begins.
The neighbour fires up the lawnmower. This is, in fact more contagious than ebola in a chicken coop. So the neighbour on the other side thinks «oh, mow the lawn, maybe!» and he fires up his machinery. So then the landlord… and the guy across the road, and the next one up…

So when neighbour number 1 is finished with the mower – thank god!… out comes the bloody trimmer. A high-pitched whine, a teeth-grinding squealing. I brace myself, and see that I could go bonkers, and remember a high quality splatter-film I saw once. It included some deranged caracter, a blade lawnmower and about 30 000 liters of fake blood. I get pictures in my head. I see why people go apeshit on planes or turn up at work with sub machine guns. Simply one bleeding lawnmower too many.

The whole day was one continous racket – the peace and bliss of life outside the city. Indeed. So on top of it all: the neighbour on the left have a small tractor. And for good measure, he drove it all over his own and other neighbours lawn..dragging one of those rolling things behind it. The sort of thingy you use to level out your yard. Don’t ask me why. I could see no effect at all.

Deep inside, I suspect there’s an element of keeping up with the Jones’es in all this racket. And that weird relationship between The Man and His Powertools. The importance of the machine that goes bbrrRRRAAAWWWHHH.

I have to get out of here.

So- without further ado:

I give you The Alchemist.

Oh god. What sensless babble, what inane nonsense. The story and the point of the whole painful exercise is that there is gold in your back yard, but you would never have seen it without a nonsensical and stupid adventure (alchemy). The language is for children at best, and you can open it at any page and find skin-irritants like «The boy thought. The boy thought about the stars – I wonder what they think.» – or somesuch terror. Godawful stuff – and would not have earned a place on my bookshelf of shame if not for the immense popularity. I am sorry – but when people list this book among favourites, I write them off as idiots. Period (Actually – I’m not sorry about that).
The language is disgusting, the plot childish and daft. A lot of people like it and say it’s inspirational, a word that makes me shudder. Believe me: it is crap. I have read a lot. It’s dumbing down.

Then, to the more laughable and serious

Atlas shrugged.
What self-centered idiocy! What blind narcissism, what racist, stupid, vapid and cloyingly vomity. I read the first hundred pages thinking it was sarcasm, irony, a weird sense of humour – not so.
The woman is dead, that is a comfort, so she cannot spew out more braindead half-baked social commentary and «philosophy». What an affront! She tries to present her «philosophy» through «drama» – it is neither, and both is godawful.
She’s got charming views on social systems, classes and government, but most of all she is basically an «elitist» with facist leanings. Tipping over, rather. So. Poo-poo!

Here’s the brilliant thing: she divides the world into do’ers and wiengers. Do’ers – that’s about one in 10 000 are the only ones worth anything, obviously. Without these do’ers and leaders, the rest falls back to the stone ages and society falls apart into caveman behaviour at record time. See? So every single person reading this book will identify with the leaders and do’ers. The brilliant result is that the woman has a following (!), a cult and a bunch of fans…. now there’s a liiittle contradiction. You see yourself as a leader, and then hang after the author. But her whole «theory» is based on opposite. Result: the loosers hanging after the author and going to «appreciation groups» (how weird is THAT!) proves by going that they belong to the authors cavemen.
Wonderful. The author was an idiot. That doesn’t justify that tail of fools…

The whole book is ..oh.. about 1200 pointless pages of bad, bad drama and exceptionally bad thinking. If you find it in a garage sale, buy it, burn it and make the world a tiny little bit better.

One day I will invite you all to a bookburning, methinks. And we can laugh and read the worst sections of favorite pet-hates before getting hotdogs and hot whiskeys all around. And make the world a little bit better.

..and another day – I might tell you about my loathing for Mr. Hemingway, Anna Karenina and some of the Brönte clan.

In the spring of 2008 campuses all over the country exploded in political protest. Riots spread like wildfire, and creative students built barricades of tables, vending machines and arming themselves with molotovcoctails and general kitchenwear found on campus.

The first buildings they occupied, was the server and computer labs, and from there coordinated their actions. In Østfold, they painted the glass walls and brick buildings with slogans of politcal dissent, and set up watches with web cameras and sensors on the roof of the university college.

The leaders of the riots said to the press, via video interviews, that they will not give in, that the demands must be met, and that the educational system..

is going down the drain anyway, and does it matter if we paint the school fluorecent green? It should not blend into the environment, it should be a beacon, the spokesman said. They say that the local, national and international leaders cannot ignore the world wide actions of students- there’s a lot of us, said an anonomous spokesman in the student pub. And we’re supposed to run this country eventually. For how long can you ignore your successors?

The riot police were deployed, and high pressure water and mustard gas was used against the students. This caused an outcry, as this is prohibited by the Geneva convention, but the police defend the use, saying it was a neccesary measure against aggressive and rampaging students (certain parts of the Geneva Convention has been ignored by most signatories since implemented in 1925). A few rounds of rubber bullets was fired, as students tried to occupy the local newspaper. Setting fire to a number of cars, the black plumes of burning vehicles drifted over town for over a week.
Some of the college staff joined the students. As one professor said: this has been a long time coming. The government have not taken education or the students seriously, or seen what’s cooking on their own doorstep. It’s suprising who will listen, as soon as you break a few windows and hurl some cobblestones. And if someone is to protest inequalities, who else but students?

yeah, right.

Here is the alternative version of what happened in spring 2008:
The students, not arguing about much, created no ripples. Being too concerned about who had what software, what gadget, and wienging about dismal student loans, there was no detectable interest in social equality, global commitment or political insight. They kept slouching around in the corridors, moaning about lectures, and generally had their noses stuck in their own private virtual world. Nothing to report, except a stunning amount of cars, at such a small university college.