Helene

This year (as last year) I will celebrate new year at home with martin and a friend of mine. I’m not a party girl, so it’s a calm celebration with people I care about. Just the way I like it.

The Story of Ferdinand (a childrens book written by Munro Leaf) sums up how I live my life (and hopefully will continue to do so for the new year to come). I want to be as happy (and more) in the new year to come.

Pictures taken from my walk today:

When importing mp3 to ITunes, the files is automatically added to the music library. All it takes for making the mp3’s into audiobooks is the correct settings. Search up the files in question and mark them. Right click on the marked files –> Get Info –> Options –> Media kind –> Audiobook.

The files will automatically be transfered from the Music Library to Audiobooks when “OK” is pressed.

MacHeist gives away free software gifts for free on christmas day. Today it’s 1password, doseido, iConquer, SantaSnaps, Enigmo and Synergy. Run and download.

Merry Christmas everybody!

For many people Christmas is today - 25th of December, but Norwegians celebrate this day on 24th. The day usually starts with cartoons on TV in the morning with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The cartoons set the mood for the day to come, but the cartoons and Mickey Mouse have change since I was a kid. That set in motion a new tradition where I purchase one cartoon that I watch in the morning/day. This year I purchased “The Sword in the stone” which gave me that christmas feeling only old disney classics can give. Last year I bought “Cars” and that didn’t work at all. I have decided to start purchasing old disney classics (and hopefully not all of them will have been remade). From next year I will (mostly) stay on the old disney classics and purchase the first Disney classic that was produced, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (if I can find it somewhere available for purchase).

A list of Disney Classics and when they were released.

NRK shows “Tre nøtter til Askepott” and “Reisen til Julestjernen” which have been shown since I was a kid.

About 80% of the norwegian population is part of the state church, but I presume that there are many non-practicing christians here. There are many that only goes to church on Christmas. Me and Martin didn’t go to church, but we visited his dads grave.

The Christmas eve is kicked off by dinner, usually around five pm, with Sølvguttene in the background. This year we celebrated christmas at Irene, Martin’s sister. In the evening we opened presents.

And I got some very nice gifts this year. Martin gave me an ipod nano (16 GB) which I have really been wanting. I spent a lot of the evening just looking at it ;-D. I got an hair dryer, three fleece blanket (so I’ll stay warm this winter), day and night cream, soaps, candles and a lot of other nice things.

Picture taken at Tanum Church on Christmas eve.

Scott Adams published in 2005 a book named God’s debris that can be downloaded. Some of you may recognize the authors name - Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert and he also have a blog that I subscribe to. The blog is regularly updated and he has interesting takes, though he is very interested in how economists would think (he has a very rational take on things) and his visions about the future is… well, enough to make me question his sanity sometimes.
Synopsis

Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God’s Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality.

Brandon Sanderson (and Robin Hobb) is one of my favorite authors. He writes science fiction and fantasy books. Recently tor.com published the first story he wrote, Firstborn, and it’s freely available as download or online reading (you might have to log in to be allowed to download). Tor.com releases drm-free ebooks regularly, so I would recommend getting an account there and start discovering new authors.

He has also made his book, Warbreaker, available for free on his website. It’s a good book. It’s the first book I read by him and afterwards I have swallowed everything he writes.

Tor.com’s statement:

Brandon Sanderson is well-known as the author of Elantris (2005), the novel Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (2007), and the three-part Mistborn series consisting of Mistborn (2006), The Well of Ascension (2007), and The Hero of Ages (2008). And he’s an object of enormous public curiosity as the writer who was recruited by Robert Jordan’s wife-and-editor Harriet McDougal to finish the epic Wheel of Time series after Jordan’s untimely death in 2007. (A Memory of Light, by Jordan and Sanderson, will appear in 2009.)

Now Tor.com is pleased to present the original novelette “Firstborn,” a tale of war and sibling rivalry that happens to also be Brandon Sanderson’s first published work of out-and-out science fiction. Illustrated by Hugo-winning artist Donato Giancola, “Firstborn” is SF like it used to be. Enjoy

One of my favorite norwegian musicians is Biosphere and he makes ambient electronic music. When reading about Biosphere one always come across the word arctic - which is how his music is described. Probably because he lives up north in Norway where it’s a beautiful nature and one can see northern lights on a good day. He has made many albums. I haven’t heard them all (actually - I have only listened to his earlier work), but I love the Patashnik album.

On his homepage one can download several mp3’s for free. Among the freebies I like are “Som Evige Stjerner” (translation: like eternal stars), “Bevegende rytmer” (translation: Moving rythms) and “Kill by inches theme”. I like the ones with more of a rythm in them, but his music is perfect to lay still in bed and just listen. It can be a meditative experience. Try it.

His albums can be purchased from ITunes or may be you just want to read about him on wikipedia.