Ég er pólitískt viðrini... Svo segir stjórnmálaáttaviti Moggans.



Það er ekkert nýtt við Nýtt Afl.

Finally got around to watching Clockwork Orange tonight, have owned it on DVD for a while. Fantastic movie. You can easily see why it's considered a classic. I agree with the comment I saw on the web that it hasn't aged much, only minor details would be different in a similar movie today.

A good day. I had my nephew, his wife and 8 month old daughter for lunch, fed them rabbit. Was very nice. Then United beat Spurs to extend their Premiership lead. All in all a very nice weekend.

whoohoo. My decision to go downtown when the Arse were 2-0 up and cruising after a crap first half paid off. Djorkaeff scored before I had stood up (see the .is blog entries below) and then Bolton pulled off the equaliser. Marvellous. Now to beat Tottenham tomorrow.

Jahér. Bolton skorar, 30 sek. eftir að ég ýtti á postandpublish í fyrri færslu. Ég fer samt í bæinn.

Skrapp í Kringluna í morgun, ekkert gaman að sjá eða fá þar. Arsenal er 2-0 yfir og öruggir um sigur, þó hálf vörnin sé farin meidd útaf. Þannig að ég ætla bara að taka smá heilsubótarrölt niður í bæ, og sleppa restinni af leiknum.

*sob* bloody Iker Casillas. What a match.

Real are 1-0 up. It's not looking great.

First day back after a five day weekend. *phew* Lots to do. It's good just to sit back, do nothing and let the football on telly roll, without being stressed over the result. There'll be enough stress for the match tomorrow.

Occasionally there are downsides to atheism. Yesterday wasn't the greatest day of celebration of the year, and I can't ever get one of those

Been tidying up a bit. Found out I hadn't put all my ties up on the tie hangers in the clothes cupboard, there'd always been a few floating around. Anyway, the result was that I was five spaces short. So I had to relegate five old ties from those hangers and fold them up and put them aside. Not that I've used them in a long time. Also realised that a tie i bought last year and thought I'd lost was hanging there all the time, it just looked a bit like a very old tie that I used to have so when I was looking for it I overlooked it.
For the curious there are four tie hangers in my cupboard, each hangs 20. You do the math *grin*.

yay! Waking up at 3am and not falling asleep again is so fun! Insomnia rocks! The only thing to do about it is to put on some good music atm it's "Kim i circus", Kim Larsen live in the Circus in Copenhagen. What do you mean you don't know who he is? Awww.... Pity. Mind you part of his greatness is understanding (more or less) his lyrics.
...blip båt...

Edward Norton is a fabulous actor, and in an interview in the Daily Telegraph, he has the following to say:

How does he rate George W Bush's performance as president? "As an actor," he[Norton] says, "I know in my gut, watching him, what a low-quality mind he has. Because I've been doing this since I was five years old, I know when a person is saying words that aren't their own - and it's as apparent as it could possibly be to me that he's a mouthpiece, and not even a good mouthpiece. Reagan was a B-movie actor, but at least he had the ability to touch certain emotional notes. Bush is just utterly incapable of it."

Wonderful...

Oprah is on telly, just about to start, and it looks like the show is about 'What to do with my life' and the magic words are 'Follow your heart'. No doubt there'll be heart warming stories of people switching careers and doing what they want to do and being very successful. This has of course set me thinking. How many people actually have such a calling?
Take me (I would do that wouldn't I?). Five years ago I wouldn't have dreamt I would be doing what I'm doing, but here I am, and liking it pretty much. I think I'm pretty good at what I do, and all in all it's not bad. But in no way am I doing it because I followed my heart blindly. I went to uni, studied stuff, was good at some stuff, less good at other stuff and great at some stuff (last part being the smallest). And then I got a job more or less at random. etc.
So, to me it's more a case of 'Find something you're good at and that you don't hate doing. And do it as well as you can'. For those people with dream jobs, great, but don't come yapping to me about how I should dream and and follow my dreams.
Being content with your life is underrated.
Finally I cant let today pass without saluting Michael Watson. Because sometimes you have to fight, despite my previous call for mediocrity *grin*

ohe... forgot about yesterday. Yesterday was good. Lots of B5, read a bit, tidied a lot and had mum'n'aunt over for dinner. A near-perfect day off

Blogger has started to dislike Opera. Started by not allowing me to re-publish archives, and now the post page is blue, no input window. *grr*
Onthe other hand, it's Saturday, it's time to buy some audio hardware and wires for the 'puter, lots of football on the telly and enough books to last the day. And the some. And if that's not enough, I'm only seven eps into watching Babylon 5. Damn, this is nice.
Saw Buffy 7.18 this morning. Good one, and shaping up to be a terrific end to the series.

Friday Five
1. Who is your favorite celebrity?
I don't have a favourite 'celebrity'. I have favourite writers, musicians, footballers etc.
2. Who is your least favorite?
Even less of an issue
3. Have you ever met or seen any celebrities in real life?
I collected autographs from foreign footballers when they came up here when I was a kid. If you can call that meeting
4. Would you want to be famous? Why or why not?
Heck no. I want my life for myself.
5. If you had to trade places with a celebrity for a day, who would you choose and why?
I would want to be me in the body (and with the footballing ability) of any United player to be able to experience playing for United at Old Trafford

Watching Opera 7.10 rendering is *bizarre* as it applies .css *after* showing the page 'bare' for a split second. It's like watching a woman before and after she puts on her face in the morning. Content is the same but the look is the one she wants to present to the world. And on that topic, I want to re-vamp my web pages and probably this one too with some nice new .cssy features

Six AM and All Is Well.
Five days of lazing around, reading, watching B5 and recharging batteries.

What a match. and a draw. Their 2nd was offside, but we scored our while they were celebrating. So maybe it evens out.
11 book package arrives from amazon, just to make sure my easter holidays will be fabulous

Waiting for Arsenal - Manchester United to start. Am a bundle of nerves...

Húsfundur búinn, reikningar staðfestir og megnið af húsfélagsbókhaldi síðustu 10 ár komið í hendur 'nýja' gjaldkerans sem var kosinn fyrir ári, en við komumst aldrei í að hann tæki við heftinu

In a fit of boredom, tiredness and general apathy, I added a comment system. I expect massive use,

Skoðandi reikninga húsfélagsins var að fara út, og er búin að undirrita reikningana. Nú styttist í að ég losni.

Have been reading Theresa Nielsen Hayden's weblog after the previous entry explained how I found. It's just wonderful. Exhibit B:
If you’re a person from the future, reading this perhaps-historically-interesting old weblog post, please understand that we are in equal measure delighted and terrified by the frequency with which the most accurate news reporting in the United States is done by The Onion.
Of course it helps agreeing with her general political stance (so far at least) but the writing is great and the comments are darn good too. All in all a delight.
And to cap my Sunday, I've noticed Diane Duane has added me to her very long list of weblogs. Given the lenght of the list I doubt she's a regular visitor. But, *neat* and *grin*

I should've said something about this before, but when I've remembered I've basically been lost for words. In Neil Gaiman's journal I found a link. Theresa Nielsen Hayden says basically what I would like to say.
I just posted this link on irc, and a friend said "That's from before they set fire to the library, I take it?" He heard it on Dutch radio. It makes me want to cry. Apparantly the library in q. is the Iraqi National Library and National Archives according to a Dutch newspaper website. Cheers Dubya, by ineffective warfare you're enabling the Iraqis to destroy what little there is left of culture there. You rock man. You rock.
*laugh* ok something to cheer me up. Some poor girl (12-13 year old i'd guess) on TV is choosing between Ararat and Narodnaja as the resting place for Noah's Ark. And she needs a phone call. And her friend says Narodnaja. You just *have* to laugh.

I'm now watching kids playing on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Some of the things they don't know is shocking. 30% of the audience thinks that the statue on Austurvöllur is of Snorri Sturluson. Note for foreigners: This is like London kids thinking that the statue on Trafalgar Square might be of Shakespeare.
Maybe it was just as bad back when, so I won't say 'Kids today, eh?'

The weekend is nearing its end and as usual there's quite a lot of stuff I was going to do that I haven't done yet. Flat is looking a bit tidier though and there are still a few hours left. FA Cup Semi-finals went according to League positions. Boring.
Harry Potter is on TV next Saturday. On the RÚV open state channel no less. Stöð 2, the pay TV channel seems really to be losing it...
I've actually been to Eric Meyer's css/edge before but I really think I'll do something about it now. The Lair's due a redesign anyway.
Finally. Damn You Abacus. Iain (M.) Banks' publisher has changed the format of his books. Dead Air is very different from the format I have all his books in (b/w for 'real' fiction, colour for SF). *grr* I hate it when publishers do that. Sue Grafton's publishers did that with her last. *snf* I love having a series on my shelves that add to the look of the shelf and are a whole, rather than a jumble.

I've seen this around, but only now with a link to the actual page where the questions are set:
Friday Five
1. What was the first band you saw in concert?
Europe. They were rockier than their album at the time suggested. I seldom go to concerts
2. Who is your favorite artist/band now?
Radiohead.
3. What's your favorite song?
you're joking, right? Pick one?? I have 130 tracks (all from CDs I own) on my Favourites CD. I could probably whittle it down to 10. Teo Torriatte, Karma Police, Tell Me How, Fairytale of New York, Everybody Knows (but you) Nightswimming, Love Of My Life, Lemon Tree. I'm probably forgetting a few.
4. If you could play any instrument, what would it be?
Piano
5. If you could meet any musical icon (past or present), who would it be and why?
Freddie Mercury. Since it would probably be at a very fun party. And, no, I wouldn't want to preach to him to take care so he lived longer. He was who he was.

Kná snilld. Vinna Newcastle 6-2.
Skrapp á mótmælin, þar var fátt. en veðrið gott og gönguferðin ekki til einskis.
Nú er búið að samþykkja að leggja samrunann fyrir hluthafafundi, þannig að það styttist í að ég fari að vinna fyrir Kaupþing Búnaðarbanka hf, og ég sé nú að það er stefnt að að fyrsti starfsdagur verði 30. maí. Áhugaverðir tímar framundan.

Fínt kvöld í gær, fínt djamm, þökk sé öllum sem skemmtu mér! Senn dregur til tíðinda í boltanum, United gegn United eftir einn og hálfan tíma.
Það er auðvitað vitað mál að ég er andstæður stríðsrekstri (er ekki fundur á eftir? Jú,Friður.is staðfestir) en það verður að hafa húmorinn í lagi og það er varla hægt annað en að hafa svolítið gaman af Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. Þetta er líklega maðurinn með vonlausasta PR jobb síðustu ára, og samt er sannfæringin engu lík....

Frekar bissí dagur í gær, ferðalög í vinnu og fundur í frítíma. Lítur út fyrir að ég sé búinn að ráðstafa megni míns frítíma næsta árið.

Match about to end, will United pull a 2nd goal back, naw, no luck. Oh well, we'll need a miracle in the second leg.

Ok. Very odd. I pasted the last entry from TextPad, and it screwed up the link at the end royally. so here're the last lines that should've been there:
It's certainly one of the best holidays I've taken, the mixture of friends, relaxation and history in a very nice city providing an overall sense of contentment. It was maybe slightly too cold the first two days, and Tivoli wasn't open but this is in fact a good thing since it provides a cast iron excuse for visiting again either this summer or the next. Thank you so much, Þórmundur, Sóley and Sigurveig for a wonderful time.
(ah. it was missing a " from the href)

A huge match about to start, so here's the last bit of the Copenhagen story to take our minds off it for a moment
On Monday I packed my small overnight bag and said goodbye to Voldumvej earlyish and went downtown with Þórmundur, he went to meet his parents, but I took on the task of finding the few side streets of the small city centre that I hadn't already walked, and I'm not sure I didn't actually manage that. I went to lunch in a small but very nice restaurant in Christianshavn, another Danish frokost, but didn't go over to nearby Christiania. Christianshavn was very pretty in the spring sunshine, as the day was nice and warm.I'd thought about going to some museums, but in the end I didn't go to any. By the time on Sunday I fancied looking in on Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek it was almost four o'clock, closing time, and on Monday I was just very happy wandering around the shops. I bought a couple of Kim Larsen CDs, very nice, but didn't find a good CD shop until I went to Magasin late in the afternoon, about ten minutes before I was supposed to meet Þórmundur in the Rådhustorv plaza. I met up with my kind host at 5pm and we spent a pleasant hour talking and going to Politiken's bookshop which looking back I should've visited earlier. But all good things must come to an end and shortly after six we said our goodbyes in the train station. I went off to Kastrup Airport, met my cousin's husband Árni there and spent the waiting time in good company. And finally my plane took my home in about three hours.
It's certainly one of the best holidays I've taken, the mixture of friends, relaxation and history in a very nice city providing an overall sense of contentment. It was maybe slightly too cold the first two days, and Tivoli wasn't open but this is in fact a good thing since it provides a cast iron excuse for visiting again either this summer or the next. Thank you so much, Þórmundur, Sóley and Sigurveig for a wonderful time.

Sé núna að Nikolaj og Julie er í sjónvarpinu í kvöld. Þórmundur minntist á þennan þátt þegar ég var úti enda er þetta vinsælasti þátturinn á Voldumvej sem og annarsstaðar í Danmörku. Þá helgina bárust fréttir um að þetta væri að byrja hér heima, enda er núna 3. þáttur. Ég held ég verði að reyna að sjá þetta, nema bíó kalli.

Nice as sleeping late is, it sort of puts me into a coma for the rest of the day. This time I did something about it, and went for a long walk downtown. Very nice. Picked up Lady Slings The Booze by Spider Robinson. I have the complete Callahan series but still missing one or two featuring his wife. It's very seldom that you see his books in shops here. I saw that they had books three and four of Ken McLeod's 'previous series' ie. The Cassini Division and The Sky Road but since I've read only book 2, I now want book 1, The Star Fraction. So when I got home I decided to do somehting about the state of my amazon.co.uk Wish List, and picked up all the books from it where I'm not waiting for the paperback, and ordered them. There's something mildly orgasmic about ordering 11 books off amazon. Unfortunately, the Ken McLeods (I ordered all the three mentioned above) are on 'dispatched after 3 days' so it won't get here this week. Ah well. It gives me a few days to attack those books in my to-read pile that I 'really should' read.
And on final note. Kolo Toure. *snigger*

Manchester United - Liverpool 4-0.
Þessi einfalda setning, þessi mikla gleði.

Denmark travelogue, pt 2: We left our travelling hero late on a Saturday evening. The Sunday started early since Þórmundur had to get back home at 2pm when his wife was playing (handball). We got downtown in much warmer weather and decided some more nationalist fervour was in order so we went direct out to Østerport, and walking past old soldier houses from the 17th century (very few original tho) and to Øster Voldgade 12, or Jónshús, Iceland's Culture House, where Jón Sigurðsson lived the last 27 years of his life. Again we pondered the Independence Fight of the 19th century. From there it was natural to head back to town through the very pretty park. We went down to Strøget again and out to Nyhavn again which understandably much more crowded than on the Saturday. From there we went back street ways a bit, and amused ourselves watching the traffic jam resulting from a few police cars parked on the Nyhavn bridge. Again we got out on Kongens Nytorv and this time we headed towards the Royal Palace, Amalienborg. Walking along Bredgade, Broad Street, going there I was reminded that this was where the childrens' author Nonni lived for a year back in 1870 which he later wrote about. I devoured his books as a kid, and used them as guide books when I was in Copenhagen in 1980. At Amalienborg Þórmundur left for home, but I continued eastwards to Langelinje and Den Lille Havfrue, The Little Mermaid. It's not "little", it's Huge. More than lifesize. Fooled by preconceptions, not for the first time. The very old and by all acounts pretty soldier camp there was closed to tourists due to the war, so I walked around the encircling moat, and ende up again near Østerport, but this time I went straight down to Bredgade again so I could walk the stretch back to Amalienborg and cover the whole street. From Amalienborg I went down to the harbour and thence back up to, surprise, surprise, Kongens Nytorv. The afternoon was spent wandering the side streets of the centre, until at 5pm when i was exactly tired enough for the idea of sitting in a pub watching Everton-Arsenal to appeal a lot. This was very nice, apart from the result. A funny thing, in the second half the guy who'd been sitting in front of me turned around and asked something I didn't hear, He then asked in English "Are you Danish" I said "No, Icelandic" and he goes "Ég hélt það" (I thought so). You can never get away from Icelanders *g* Then I went off to the airport to dine with Þórmundur and his wife and Þórmundur's parents who were stopping by in the airport Hilton on their way to Italy. This is now long enough, so Monday comes later.

Friday evening and the place is rocking. Well as rocking as it can from a small tinny speaker on a laptop. Filed my taxes, a day late. Still haven't done mum's but her deadline's Monday. Should be a nice quiet weekend for the first time a few weeks, only big thing is turning over the bin-dipping, granny-stabbing Scousers when they come hubcap-a-stealing down the M62. Saint Michael of Much Diving may be out. Poor lad.
Anyway after the lunchtime match is over all that remains to do over to do is to do some cleaning and tidying in the flat, and drop into work for some weekend-tidy-up-loose-ends.
Blogger doesn't know how to publish the right time. On this entry page i see the previous entries with the right time stamp, but haven't yet figured out which time option in settings to choose, since the GMT-London one (quite rightly) moves it over to BST. Which means my EOB (end of birthday) entry is moved to the third. Diiiiisaster.
I promise I'll get the photos from Denmark on the web this weekend. And finish the travelogue.

If you thought Timecube and Gene Ray were weird, then this will simply stun you. Because dividing by zero is simply done in the wrong way. We live and learn... and then we find the person in queston's web. Kookiness rules

I know I didn't sleep my usual long hours, but the shattered feeling I've had all day is not good. Tax returns need to be done.

That really was a very nice, if slightly uneventful, birthday. Many thanks to Eyvindur and Elfa for inviting me to a birthday dinner at theirs. Next time things should be the other way 'round.

Have decided to post the Copenhagen story in bits. it's shaping up to be a long one... Not much today. Work was a bit nutty due to April Fools'. Which is good. Because that means tomorrow's tomorrow *grin*. Now for some of that travel story:
Copenhagen March 21-24. Flew to Copenhagen in the morning, landing at 11.40 local time, and thanks to only having a carry-on bag, was at the Hovedbanegård (train station) in the city centre at 12. My very good friend and host, Þórmundur met me there a little later and we took off into the city. We had booked 'frokost', a Danish lunch at Huusmanns Vinstue at 1.30 and used the time until then to walk around and see some houses important to Icelandic history, the house where Jónas Hallgrímsson lived for the last year of his life, breaking his leg coming home from the pub one night and dying 4 days later. Also the house where Baldvin Einarsson, a caller for independence in the 1820s died in '32 after a candle set fire to his bed. The latter was in the same street as Husmanns, so it was a short way to some very nice herring, oxmeat and beer.
After lunch we continued along Icelanders' footsteps, seeing the university and university campus, the Rundetårn and ending out on Kongens Nytorv plaza. From then it was time to take the train out to the suburbs and relax a bit before a late dinner and some quality catching up with my friends.
Friday was a bit chilly, but Saturday was downright freezing. We made our way into the city centre early, this time it was time to walk the main shopping street, Strøget. We had vague plans to watch the United-Fulham match if we found a pub showing it. After a couple of failed attempts we found one and welcomed the diversion from the cold. United winning 3-0 didn't hurt either. Then it was off home to get ready for going out to dinner at the Restaurant Gråbrødretorv 21. Fantastic food in a traditional Danish way. Another late night at home talking.

hm. Despite umpteen post-and-publish and edits, the previous entry is still not updated with my correction. Will a new entry fix this?

Usually I don't want to blog at this time of day, even though it's fairly usual for me to be awake. Having the laptop in bed certainly means that it is a bit warmer and more relaxing to be 'netting this early. Also makes it a bit easier to read and keep an eye on IRC.
Finished Jón's bio and have picked up The Great Settler, 1st volume of the biography of Stephan G. Stephanson, probably Iceland's greatest poet of the late 19th and early 20th century, a poor farmer in Canada and the U.S. who emigrated young with his parents in the great exodus of late-mid 19th century which gave rise to those called then and their decendants still now the West-Icelanders. A few years ago I even met some of my relatives from Canada when they visited here. It is quite revealing how they have managed to live in a multicultural society yet never forgotten who their great-grandparents were, where they were from and how that affects who they are today.
Following Morgunblaðið's editorial yesterday about how they did defend and support free speech, but that they did not want to publish overly insulting articles and that namecalling was not they way to support your argument, I was yet again reminded of the "Agnosticism destroys society" speech by the bishop of Iceland (see my blog from January 9th for my reaction then. I'm still astounded that the good bishop in his zeal to sell Christianity is allowed to confuse agnosticism (the Icelandic word being literally 'lack of faith') with 'lack of morals' which is what he is really attacking, but since he's in marketing, he takes what wields better in an attempt to browbeat folks into thinking that good morals must derive from faith, God, and believing Death Is Not The End.
On a much lighter note, I Love My WLAN. Streaming mp3s from my main server wirelessly into my bedroom rocks. Especially since my collection got a little boost from my collegue Svenni and then the extra disk space I have and the power of the new desktop means that ripping the rest of my CD collection is just so much easier.
Oh. Now I remember. Saturday. mmmm... much alcohol, food, dancing, fun people, great music, good conversation and the inevitable finding of people who know people you knew years ago. One of the beautiful things about living in the tiny village that is Iceland. In short Saturday was fabulous, and not even having a useless, clueless coach in charge of the national football team will dampen that.
(this is turning out long??)Many many congrats to my Italian teacher, Paolo Turchi, who grabbed 1st prize on the Icelandic 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' on Sunday.
Never mind that it's only 5 million ISK, about 65 thousand USD and the good old government grabs 38%, still something to enjoy. Going to class tonight will be fun!
'nuf for now, take care y'all.