Aeron by Herman Miller

This is something I wanted for at least 15 years since I first tryed one out. How can an office chair become something you have an obsession for. This year I turn 40 years old so I wanted to give my self something that I can enjoy. 

If they dont where so damn expencive I would use this chairs to the dinner table. 

DAMN Samsung TV

Samsung TV in/out

I bought a Samsung TV from a friend some mounth ago. I had it in my bedroom untill now. Yesterday I was going to watch a movie. It was late so people was sleeping in the room next to me. So I took my headphones and... "#¤% there was no headphone jack. WHAT? An almost brand new top of the line TV, and it dont have a headphone jack! In the middle of the night I could not find any solution to my problem. The only output I could find was optical. I had this kind of problems befor for other reasons, then it was damn hard/expencive to fix.
To day I had to fix the problem some how. I was thinking I had to get a amplifier for $xxx, or just get a new TV. I use the headphone all the time. 

Audioengine-D1

Anyway, not having high hopes I whent to the  electronics market and feared the worst. The sale person just said -Sure, I can fix your problem. Oh oh... Here it comes.

But no, he actualy showed me exactly what I wanted. Optical to 3.5mm headphones jack. I seen this befor but only in hi-fi shops and they cost alot more then I want to spent. OK, this one was not for free, but it was alot better than getting an amplifier.

Audioengine D1 is a nice little gadget that you can use not only for optical to headphones. You could use it to drive you active speakers directly from you computers USB. Realy sweet if you missing a audiocard in your computer.

One nice thing is that the Audioengine-D1 is that it takes it's power from the USB, and most TV's to day have an USB. So no extra powersupplys is needed. 


Just for fun I sent an e-mail to Samsung asking what solution they might have to the problem. They did not have one...

Grand Opening Friends Arena

We got some free tickets for the grand opening of Friends arena here in Solna. The show was all nice and the feeling of been there was all good. 
But there is one thing that I cant let go. On the back of the ticket there are this rules that say what you can and cant do. One thing that I peculiarly dont like it the rule: Camera are not permissible to bring. Befor the show was starting they wanted us to use our mobile cameras and send pictures to Facebook and other social media... 

Change the damn text on the ticket or confiscate everyones mobile phones. You cant have it both ways!

I did bring my big camera just to hope to start an argument, but that did not happen.

I put my pictures here:
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/62498250@N02/8131615810/in/photostream/lightbox/

Volvo V70 ETS

The ETS (electronic throttle system) broke on my Volvo V70. So naturaly I think that a Volvo service place will repair this things. WRONG! We can excange it for you and it will cost about $1200.

In my world you fix things when they are broken, you dont replace whole parts. In my line of work we fix broken things all day long. People come in to us and we do electronic service changing the component that are bad. It can be a transistor or a resistor that usaly cost almost nothing compaired to the whole circuit board.

Anyway, I ended up getting a new one because this part was super duper special and only Volvo sold it. But I said that I want the old part and that I was going to take it a part and if I see that it is something stupid like a component for $1 I will come back and !"#¤%! So I ended up "only" paying $600, if I promist that I would not come back and !"#¤% them up.

I got the old part back and tonight I took it apart.

On both sides of the ETS there are this black plastic caps that house two potentiometer that keep track on where the axel are and how much it is open. This is the problem, because they are about the only thing that wear out. I mesured this and they are not consistant as they should be.

The ETS are build to be in a tough enviroment so I can see that it is hard to change this and get every thing back together and be all weather proof, but for a Volvo service place they should realy have the tools to fix this kind of things.

Im not an engineering but I could have made this product alot better, both in precision and easy to maintain. 

It piss me off that most stuff to day are ware and tare. When it breakes throw it out and buy a new one.  

SHAME ON YOU VOLVO!

Stupid GPS

I have a Tomtom navigatior in my car, and there is one thing that have been bugging me for some time. I dont know if it's the same in other countrys, but here in Sweden we have even numbers on one side of the street and odd on the other. So if I tell my navigator that Im going to the number 137 and it cant find it. It suggest the closest number that it know of. Sure that would be fine most of the times but if it cant find 137 you would guess it would suggest the closest number on that side of the street, right... WRONG, it suggest'ed 24. Some streest are long and it's not always that 25 is on the other side of the street from 24. So fist of all suggest a number on the same side. Second dont suggest a number that is miles from each other.
One time the damn GPS lead me in to the forest, the road become more narrow and finaly it ended up with a barrier. It took me miles to get on the right track again. I later heard that the road had been closed for over 15 years! Nice that your maps are updated Tomtom!

Battlefield 3

Phu, only took me about 100 houers to start getting a desent score. I still dont get how some people get over 100 kills and only die 5-10 times i a game. I suspect cheating. Damn shame they never can do a game that dont allow scripts and hacks.

Blocket.se

Ska det vara så jävla svårt att göra en sökfunktion som funkar? Om jag söker på flipperspel så vill jag väl inte få upp annonser från folk som kan tänka sig att byta sin sketna Volvo 240 mot ett flipperspel.
En enda liten funktion som man kan klicka i som säger: SÖK ENDAST I RUBRIKEN, ska det vara så jävla svårt?
Idag skulle jag se om jag kunde hitta en ny Axis nätverkskamera. Butt nooo... Flera sidor med annat skit som kanske också heter axis kommer upp. Står det inte i rubriken så vill jag inte se skiten!

Better Lens?

Was looking for a new lens for my camera today. Have seen some asum lenses for movie cameras and they cant be that special so they could not fit a normal Nikon, right?
There are lenses that goes from 10-410mm or with built "in" extenders 19-820mm.
That would be a sweet lens to have.

Anyway I did an experiment with the junk I have and the result is not all that bad. It not close to what "THEY" have but for a simple amature...

What "THEY" have:

What I came up with:
Nikon 70-200mm @ 200mm with extender 1.7 = 340mm

Stupid People...

I hear people complain about there stocks going bad. So I think to my self, well if you got stocks in Ericsson or Nokia maybe you dumb ass should not go and buy an iPhone. You support the company that you have stocks in, and you get stocks in companys that are "close to your heart".

Another thing that have been bugging me for some time now is all this phone sales people calling that wants to take care of all my pension money. I always ask what they do with the money if they can take care of them. The all tell me the same shit. We save your money in the environment and ethics right stocks and funds. 

I tell them: Well is that where all the money is? I want you to put all my money where they get the most yield. Like in tobacco, alcohol, arms, and the sex industry. But no, that would not be ethicly right. Listen I say, when it comes to my money it does not have anything to do with ethics, you are there to make my money grow. The environment and ethics right is all fine, but when it comes to producing money...

Call me back when you have what I want. They never do.

Another Wedding

Helped out with a wedding shoot yesterday. Took some pictures even thou I consider my self to be the assistant for this "job".

Even thou it was late and the sun had set behind the trees, I am glad that my Nikon D3s preform so well even under low light. I set my ISO to 4000-8000 and the pictures is fine. Some time back I saw pictures from an cheaper camera that used ISO 2000 and thos pictures was so bad that we could not use them for anything. Well maybe icons but that is about it.

All pictures

Wrong is not always bad...

I was in the photo store the other day because I wanted to look at some cheap flashes that I had seen on the web, and I wanted to see them for my self. I dident remember the name of the flashes so I said I wanted to look at thos cheap flashes you sell. The store person took me over to the flash and lightning part of the store. I tought they looked good and stable for the price, so I did what I usaly do, I "impulse buying". When I came home I realize that this is not the flashes that I was supose to look at. This is not flashes at all. This are lights, lights that is on permanently.

But I unpack them anyway because Im to curious to try them out. Now I feel that this is better than what I was going to get. With permanent lights I can move them in to possition and get the light exactly where I want them instead of shoting with flash and adjusting them. So something wrong turned out to be good in the end anyway.

Did a test of my girlfriend and I like the result.

Fotografiska Museet

To day I went to Fotografiska museet (Museum of Photography) here in Stockholm. Right now there was a special of Robert Mapplethorpe, but it was not becuase of that I went. This Robert Mapplethorpe photos was not something that I would pay to see, they where boring and I feelt the same about almost all pictures that was in the museum. There was nothing special about the pictures at all. I expect work to be displayed in an museum to be good.

There where pictures from Liu Bolin - The Invisible Man, and thos pictures where fun to watch, but it was nothing special about them. The lightning was not special, the subject was not special, the angles was not special, but there was alot of work put in to the pictures in another way.

But then again why did they display them in a museum? It was no diffrant from body paint that I have seen in alot of diffrant ways.

So the only thing that I got out of to days visit is that I can feel good about my own pictures, because I feel that my own work is alot better than most crap that is hang in a museum.

Wedding Photographer

Me and a friend got a job as wedding photographer. This is my first wedding. It was held at the Grand Hotell in Stockholm Sweden. It is an very old building with alot of rooms, perfect place to find nice locations to shoot at. We where taking pictures all day long, and my body have not fully recoverd yet. We where doing this for 11 houers straight. Having a Nikon D3s + 70-200mm is heavy after a wild. Now I just have to go through about 2600 pictures. But it was a good experience. Not going to do that again. Not 11 houers straight anyway.

Need more memory

It does not matter if you get the latest computer and the best software and so on. Eventually the best things are not good enough. Last computer I build got 6 GB of ram. I thought that would be enough for the stuff I do. But no... 

I remember the good old days (Amiga time) when 512kB was more than you needed. As a little side note, some years ago I found an extra memory for my VIC-20. That extra memory was at 2 kB...

Quality capacitors...

We had a dance machine at Heron City that behaved strange. So we took back the computerbox and started looking in to it. After alittle time I saw the problem. All the capacitors on the graphics card had poped. Normaly they pop from the top, but this once had "jumped" out of there casing. I am most amazed that the graphics card worked at all, it started up fine and booted the game, but after a wild it crashed. 

Anyway, I changed them for new once and now it workes fine again.