Blågg

This is an illustration of randomness in a game of Tetris in a very large scale. The game ran for more than 36 hours with no more than 5 minutes of pause and less than 10 minutes of interaction interfearing with the pattern. At first it might appear a bit boring, not more than the collected works of a gang of flies shitting, but once we let ourselves inspect it there is something that could be called beauty to be found.

Is its randomness flawed? Yes, partially, not in the fact that the the pieces is not evenly spread out, but in that the outer regions are completely free. But sure, all is possible, it is just a matter of probability and the probabilty for this to happen seems to be somewhat equal to the keyboard I’m using right now to suddenly appear underneath my table due to the wave aspects of matter.

Assuming that randomness is real inside of these regions there are some neat patterns that can be found in this growth of pieces. Take a look to the right; the first and widest gap to be found from the right continues in a thin, leaning hallway almost all the way to the bottom. At the end a few pillars have emerged and a small mountain to the left which was to deliver the Game Over.

It is sometimes said that if 1 million monkeys were put to type randomly at a typewriter with time one monkey would end up with Hamlet. Or as the more nerdy version goes: If 1 million monkeys were put to programming on a computer they would given enough time end up with Windows. This has of course led some to state that time is so abundant in the universe that every thing that can happen in the universe has happened. I’m sorry copyright-people, you just don’t have a case. If that was our assumption, which is not as farfetched as it first might appear, the world would of imaterial rights would be another one.

In fact, as this final sentence is typed there might be another one out there typing exactly the same thing. Everything is possible and is happening in the infinite world.

What would a fan of fashion write about a fashion show such as the one Cheap Monday gave in Kungsträdgården Tuesday the 27th January? I guess something about flowerbums, thrashcans and colorlessness together with the word ‘collection’.

Regarding bums there were some true bums in the que (no they didn’t see the big que they stepped into), but inside the word would point towards trousers and sweaters picked up from the thrash and thrown out on the catwalk. Indeed they were thrashy and looked really worn in contrast to those straight-out-of-the-oven kittens who wore them.

Well, honesty might not appear as trashy as stated, there were some garments that hadn’t been sewn to appear worn; not complicated, which itself might provide the cardboard Lucia, kings, queens and musicians that participated. Many of them were things you would have hated your mum for forcing on your body if you were born in the earlier part of the 80s’. Lucky for the producers of such clothes, taste is a tounge not connected to some unchangeing realm of the brain. If it were; they might have lost a whole generation of potential consumers!

A good thing were the reappearence of certain style ingredients such as a scarf; if one poor find something thrown away it should be shared with the homies that suffer equal standards and in that way the mixing continues on and on.
The concluding sentence must emphasize that there is nothing more fun to observe the behaviour of other people and especially if they attend something primary because it is regarded as important by others. Remember to let your eyes lick the event horizon, not sticking the head to look inside, be aware – it might be lost forever!

For those of you who are familiar with the English language and might be tired of the somewhat binary way of life expressed here in Blågg, change has taken place. A new independent subsection of Syster Dyster is hereby presented as Tales of the Surface. This is the opposite of most of the things Blågg stands for; it is more personal, more colorful and totally addicted to esthetics and especially to that of fashion! Cynthia Perez Estrada is the author and she will be your guide through the colorful, artificial ways of human life. Less rules and more enjoyment for your eyes is at hand.

In the upcoming week we can expect pictures and reports from Stockholm Fashion Week…
Tales of the Surface
http://surface.systerdyster.se

Not long after the Internet was “introduced” to the broad public in Sweden through some 14,4 kBps modems giving phone line access, the first mp3s were being distributed. It marked the beginning of the end of analogue casette based copying if one weren’t picky about the quality. Finding music was a bit random and finding it at 128 kBps quality could be considered luxury.

At that time burning the first CD:s with pirate material of all sorts was equal to hard cash. How about 400 SEK for one disc with games? And having to know the right people to even get the possibility to put your hands on one? There was one such place in Sjöåkra, a part of Bankeryd which is a small town outside Jönköping. Back then the price of a CD was a bit higher, downloads more costly because of per minute costs and regular BBSs mostly provided the material in question. Keeping filesizes down was important in both up- and downloading because of this. Mobile phones were still scarse, expensive and clumsy; an extra phone line was needed if you wanted to do it the professional way.

When connections changed, not surprisingly, much of the Internet changed. While more and more people got access with faster and faster connections without limits, the limits concerning the material itself were gradually abolished. The Internet has gradually been flooded by useless bytes in the same way that much software haven’t been optimized. To a certain degree this is natural; to optimize your system requires skills many ordinary users don’t have. And the combination between users that likes how things look and a Microsoft that does but nothing to satisfy those user desires according to all so called market logics is not a combination that carries fruit in the field of effectivity. At times Windows feels like the Soviet Union of software; its estetics (ideals) are so pretty yet in reality no more than words that try to cover up a reality which comes in the form of a vampire that drains your upgraded system of its technological achievements.

A music file compressed with mpeg layer 3 at 192 kBps quality is probably more than enough for a human ear. Yet, 320 kBps seems to become more and more popular (whether musicians are enjoying the same trend and becoming better and better is questionable). You might think that well, maybe that’s best to be on the safe side since recordning techniques have advanced and should be given more space. True, but guess what? There is actually people who compress bootlegged concert recordnings in 320 kBps stereo (a bootleg is by standard mono since you would need two mics at somewhat different positions to make it stereo). That is aswell the case for some materials copied from LPs’.

Still this is just not enough for some people. You maybe thinking that “if an album occupies less than 100 megabytes that is sufficient; we have reached a point where lessening compression makes no sence – a suitable point for software evolution to stop for a breath a moment.” But now, the FLAC codec is on the move. It stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec” and is supposed to produce a flawless transcription of audio. If you have bat ears it might be a welcomed arrival.

Worth remembering is that a human ear usually can hear frequencies (the amount of oscillations of a wave per seconds) that range from about 20 Hz up to 15-20 kHz. Ordinary speech ranges between 300 Hz to 3 kHz. That the sampling standard for a CD is 44,1 kHz appears contradictory to reason, but certain theories show that high frequency can affect lower frequency and has hence made an effect of the standard. Still some folks hit the gas pedal and encode in 48 kHz.

A suggestion is that the less you know the more you will be inclined to take in honey dripping technology; technology that says it will enhance your experience just by being advanced technology. But is that so? What has for instance changed when it comes to literature since its beginning (if it is possible to talk about a beginning and not a stage-like process)? The writings of the ancient philosophers are still read today without much change except the translation and modernisation of the language in which it is written. The major change has been the way the text has been accessible, not the idea; what it has depicted. With this fact in mind it is also possible to compare it with the audio evolution.

The relationship between the technological possibilities and the idea are a hierarchical one; advanced technology won’t make a song, but a good song can through technology achieve a stronger correlation between input and output. “Return to sender” therefore will not be a greater experience in 320 kBps than it will in 128 kBps since the technology at the moment of recording is not equal to that of today. And many nerdy, hardcore Elvis enthusiasts would object fiercly to even comparing the experience of listening to the King on CD or mp3 or FLAC with that of the “original” media, LP. It reduces the authenticity in the music, would probably be the argument and whether we think it’s hypocricy or not; just making music in the 50’s fashion isn’t enough to make it true 50’s in these surroundings. It has to have “the 50’s sound” too.

It is even questionable if we ever will need to step past 192 kBps until we can improve our brains and ears. For now, artists need to start go farther than stereo recordings if it’s deeper sound experiences we have in mind. Maybe one day, when somebody is being irritated about some 600+ bitrates, others will be irritated at some copycat bands making 00’s stereo recordings.

Well, where’s the cold war then? As stated above software developers and distributors feel less restraint on keeping filesizes down and software optimized when hardware technology is advancing rapidly. In fact, the “soft” side will eat away quite a bit of technology advancements made on the hard side. If thinking of market conspiracies this certainly is soil where such seeds could be placed. So cold war? If you’re a stressed hardware engineer you might be pissed of at lousy software engineering and the latter might be mad for slow development on the hard side. But it could aswell be a way to familiar relationship between those parts.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

“Blogging belongs to the future. It is an effecient and environmental friendly way of bringing forward news”

Welcome to one of the biggest non-news of the 2000’s yet. At least this peculiarity with its cult must rank high since in a handfull of years it was publicly discovered that it was possible to publish text and images to the internet even for people that think that the keyboards constructed after the first 8-bit game console is a bit tricky. Some voices, especially in the halls of the power to the people-left, rasied this peculiarity as the savior of the participatory democracy. Or at least make that what we have a more vital one.

Well goood morning News dudes!

If it was a revolution you just missed it! And the result maybe wasn’t as fantastic as the theory. It simply isn’t that simple to change the world we live in just because it is easy in theory. A democracy consisting of people nurtured by video games, fabulous bodies and the TV machine won’t turn out to be the binary knights of democracy when thrown a keyboard. Rather they will waste bytes at the most rapid pace since what looks good is good and we like to dig in at easily digested stuff.

Things are probably just as usual; when technology gets simple enough to those in control of the public pen, you’d bet they’d call it news!

It was kind of the same story with portable mp3-players which could, did you believe it yourself?, store hundred, thousands fo songs! But the revolutionary action technology wasn’t discovered until some kind of a gey fruit hit the market with something that looked like it was possible to use with sneakers. And then everybody had these hanging, white drule ropes hanging out of their ears…

Exchange students in Swedish university cities probably always live in what a somewhat partially own world were connections spread from the hard tongued Germany to the wide softish U.S. This wedding in San Sebastian gathers many people together in a small town about the size of Uppsala but just a little bit more exotic of which many got to know each other during their studies in exactly this Swedish university town.

Probably as a matter of their own situation as being exchange student they form a long lived friendship as that. For a regular Swede with an own social world this other sphere is easily missed. It is just convenient to continue to live in one’s own world isn’t it? But it is obvious that if they knew what they missed then integration would be favoured!

There are movements in Sweden that don’t want education to be free for exchange students since it isn’t in many other countries. Probably it’s usually the same persons that favour investments in promoting Sweden abroad. There’s an obvious connection. It at least appears as though it would be better to provide free education to exchange students than to spend it on guys to promote by chitchat and priced smiles. Exchange students might not finish their studies, they might not tell anyone of their experiences or even have any good thing to say about Sweden. But at least it’s their opinion. If we are to spend on telling the world who we are, let’s do it by giving others that opportunity in an more honest way.

– When are you going to study? Autumn? Yeah, but it doesn’t matter, you can still write!
– I’d better work with my essay instead…

– No should not be afraid of all your capabilities. I think you should develop them…in your free time… Otherwise it will be like “I can not write for Vouge, because I don’t have time….”
– That’s not the point Silvia, the point is that I don’t have the time.

– This is what you say… If you, if you, this is what I’m telling you; instead of writing the blog, you can write seriously, like for some magazine.
– But I can write for my blog, but that’s just, I can write short things, but I can’t do research, because it takes too much time.

– But it’s not research, you just go and interview someone. You formulate some questions, make them publish them.
– But I still have to know about the subject I’m writing about.

– I can tell you a little bit about it…
– Yeah, but tell me!

…

– It was the same thing with Vogue, I had to write immediately after the fashion show and I got so stressed!
– And I really don’t know what’s the hurry…

– It’s fresh, it changes…
– No it doesn’t, that’s the point!

– It does change!
– No! The world hasn’t changed.

– No, but research changes all the time, like I think that the…like D was telling me today that they were publishing some cases about excorsism.
– Yeah, small details.

– Yeah, and people… We were commenting about the fact that one of my doctor friends recently converted to catholisism, like I don’t know, five years ago. And then I told him that he had this neurological case in which this person came to the hospital like really violent and like out of himself. And the only two persons he attacked in the corridor were ah, him and another nurse and the both of them were catholics and the rest of them were atheists. So he implied in his story that this guy was posessed of some demon. And I said that he couldn’t use that argument because it was just a causality and we can not know. And then he said that he was speaking Greek… When he tried to talk to this patient he was speaking Greek. He was speaking languages he wasn’t supposed to know since he was just a redneck from the north… Sorry for the expression but that’s what hea said.
– What do you mean “redneck from the north”? Oh, was this in Sweden?

– Yeah…
– Yeah, but isn’t that a fact that people can talk languages if they just heard it somewhere…

– Yeah.. And I was like, do you know Greek? He was like “No”. “Oh, how could you tell that he was speaking correct Greek?” He is though a very gifted person, he speaks seven languages very well, all of them. So I think he probably could know some Greek words, but that doesn’t mean that that guy was speaking real Greek. So I told D about this story and he was like “yeah, but there is actually a mental condition, it’s called ‘blablabla'”… I don’t remember what, but people speak languages that they are not supposed to know. But it’s just a recall from something that they’ve heard once in their lives. Because there was this guy who claimed he had the helmet that could make you experience religious experiences.
– Yeah, I’ve heard about this.

– So he destroyed his theory by proving that it was a lie.
– Who did this, the one with the helmet?

– D, D destroyed this Canadian guy argument by proving in Sweden that the helmet didn’t work because this guy was already selling it online…
– Was he the one that disproved it?

– Yeah, he and his group of scientists. They gathered a lot of people with different backgrounds and only those that had religious backrounds or new age could experience something different than the ones that didn’t believe in anything or ever had a touch with religion whatsoever. So it was mostly the people’s mind that drove the whole thing and maybe the magnetic field that the helmet creates.. eh.. helped.
– So the helmet created magnetic fields around the brain?

– Yeah, because I mean, a lot of people that said that they saw poltergeist in different houses they claim that they had different magnetic fields around. So I mean apparently the magnetic environment could affect the perception of different things or could move things around or make you see different things depending on… on how you percieve the world or what is your background. For me for example it would be very easy to see a ghost because I was grown in an environment that was very religious.
– Do you mean that the magnetic field interfer with your perceptions and make things….move?

– Well this was the theory.

[To be continued….]