X10

Detta är en manuellt tillverkad HDR-bild. HDR betyder ”high dynamic range” och gör att man kan komprimera en bilds tonomfång på ett sätt så att man både kan exponera för mörka och ljusa partier samtidigt. I detta fall har jag tagit två stycken bilder, en som är korrekt exponerad för det man ser genom vindrutan och en bild exponerad för manöverpanelen på tåget. Sedan har jag lagt dessa bilder som två olika lager i Photoshop, lagt på en lagermask och sedan ”målat fram” bilden i vindrutan över den andra exponeringen. Till sist har jag plattat till bilden, sparat den som TIFF och konverterat en kopia till JPEG.

Bilden är tagen under en radiosystemstestning när vi åkte pendeltåg mellan Södertälje och Gnesta.

Commuter Train

This is a manually made HDR by the way. HDR means ”high dynamic range” and is a technique to compress the tonal range from several pictures so that you can expose for dark and light parts at the same time. Two exposures necessary, one with the proper settings to expose the outdoors properly and one to expose the instrumentation. Then I put them together in Photoshop, applied a layer mask and then painted through the instrument panel, flattened the image, saved as a TIFF and exported as a JPEG.

This picture was taken when we were doing radio system test drives last tuesday and we had great fun in the older trains (which I prefer, the X1/X6 and X10 rather than the new X60).

Free Programming Books

DSC_5834 RKRM set of books
Amiga Books

Free Programming Books covers most of the today programming languages and many you did never take a look at (or need) from the past.  All books are ebooks free for download and may be an assistance to you if you are learning a new language or just want to brush up your knowledge for some reason.

There are 338 books in this collection so you will have plenty to read for a while now!

Jean-Michel Jarre in Stockholm

My first record that I spend my hard-saved money on as a boy was of Jean-Michel Jarre and the other he released followed quickly and these were my first records that I played to the death on my parents stero.  I re-invested in his music when they came out on CD and was also the reason for me to get a CD player (to transfer to cassette so I could listen in my Walkman) and therefore when I heard he was doing his second oxygene tour here in Stockholm I of course got tickets for it.

 

Image courtesy of Jokuno / Flickr
Image courtesy of Jokuno / Flickr

The entrance was grand, through a curtain of laser light but from there the concert was a bit flat. People in the audience was really more listeners than participants. The light show was just outright brilliant and well orchestrated and the sound was great in the old ice-hockey rink of Hovet near the Globe (where he played the last time but the sound was not very good there) and that saved the concert.

He did most of his well known routine and then thanked the audience and went of the stage. People then called him back and this is when things started to get really interesting, this is where the concert really takes off. People are standing, shouting, whistling clapping their hands and Jarre makes a splendid performance. The extra numbers are long, well though out and he gets called in a second time to do even more of that and practically this is the real concert and it was topped by a great finale.

The concert then ended just as he had entered – drawing back through a curtain of brilliant laser light and afterwards I felt that this was a really good concert even thugh the first part was a bit stiff and flat the extras recovered well.

Go see it.

Datalagringsdirektivet – Bodströms arv

I princip innebär förslaget att alla telekomoperatörer måste spara uppgifter om vem som gjort vad och kommunicerat med vem i minst 6 månaders tid.  Efter domen mot Pirate Bay har flera operatörer tagit många marknadsandelar genom att meddela att man inte lagrar uppgifter längre än absolut nödvändigt för att kunna sköta sin egen verksamhet.

Det blir nu slut med det. Regeringen antog i går en lagrådsremiss som innebär att telekomföretagen i enlighet med det europeiska datalagringsdirektivet måste spara sådana uppgifter i minst sex månader. Det har höjts röster mot den radering av uppgifter som vissa telekombolag utfört – inte mist från polisen som är rädd för att de skall bli utan möjlighet att använda uppgifterna i brottsbekämpningssyfte.

Det föreslås i lagrådsremissen att även misslyckade uppringningar och obsesvarade samtal skall lagras, på samma sätt skall även positionen för en mobiltelefon under hela samtalet, inte bara där det påbörjades, lagras. Denna lagrådsremiss är ett arbete som påbörjades av Thomas Bodström (S) inom EU för flera år sedan och har nu kommit i kapp oss, lagom till andra nya lagar som FRA-lagen, IPRED, domen mot The Pirate Bay-folket och är en kugge i en rad åtgärder som görs för att stärka inte minst skivbolagens ställning på marknaden.

Efter lagrådsremissen kommer en proposition som väntas antas i juni månad. Förmodligen blir lagen tvingande till hösten.

Do you want to know more? »

The victims of Swine Pest

Who are the real victims of the recent Influenza A/H1N1, also known as Swine Flu, scare from the media? Of all the cases of people who unfortunately got infected there were 26 deaths and still it got a whooping rating of 5 out of 6 on the WHO pandemic scale, the highest rating anything ever has got on the scale since its start in 2005 (just after the last scare the bird flu). 

It is clear that this scale is not based on the actual lethality or how easy people are infected, a normal flu that we have yearly kills somewhere around 500 000 people (mostly those already sick or at a avery young or very advanced age) world wide and infects millions and it never get more than a ”yeah whateva” from the WHO pandemic scale – the . Where is the sense for proportions here?

I even had several people sending emails, almost daily about buying stocks of gloves, breathing masks, handwash alcohol, sterilization fluids and other such good to have if the Great Pandemic should strike us down.

Let’s take a look at what actually happened. The three top nations had the following statistics:

Mexico: 1 112 cases, 42 deaths
USA:  653 cases, 1 death
Canada: 165 cases, 0 deaths.

Out of a total of 1 930 confirmed cases in three countries there were 43 deaths.

The name itself provoked some responses, Egypt took the chance to rid the country of some 250 000 pigs because of it. Other nations had similar responses, some of the more extreme left-wing people in in Europe started to demand new vaccine factories being built.

For this people where hammered in the media with article after article about how to isolate themselves from the greater society and avoid the pig plague by avoiding contact with other people. The economical cost of the scare when people starts hamstering medicine and canned food is outrageous. In Australia people where told by local goverment no less to stock up for at least two weeks worth of food, for their personal survival.

Whole communities in the US shut down schools, work places and public office buildings for no other reason than fear based in the drummed up scare tactics of the public media conglomerates. Even when the more scientifically sound organisations finally came out and tried to calm people down they did not get by far the same headlines as the stories designed to scare people got.

Cuba closed all air traffic with Mexico, other countries followed suit leaving people there on holiday stranded for fear of a pandemy that already showed all signs of being low-risk.

I find this to be total madness.

Give it up

Akismet has protected your site from 1,598 spam comments already, but there’s nothing in your spam queue at the moment.

That is the greeting as I log in to my content management system. Does spammer really get around these things and make money from it.

It hink the answer must be that they do – otherwise they would not do it. Or at least – they believe that they make money from it…

Ye Olde Theatre | Den gamla teatern

Here is finally some results from a wonderful photo shoot in the studio together with Karin who is the model in all these pictures. We were aiming for getting that feeling of old French postcards á la 1920ies or so – and here is the first set on display, there will be at least one more set later on since we got so many nice pictures from this session.

Till sist här är en del av resultatet från en mycket trevlig session i studion tillsammans med Karin som är modellen i alla bilderna. Vi försökte få till känslan i gamla franska vykort från säg 1920-tal ungefär. Det kommer minst ett set till efter detta eftersom vi fick ihop en hel del trevliga bilder.

Silk stockings
Stockings
Behind the screen
Behind the Screen
After the show
The Corset
In the mirror
Finishing Touches
Posing to the audience
Drama
Queen of Drama
The Prima Donna
The Final Moment
Endgame

En hämnd mot rättsväsendet

Piratpartiet på Medborgarplatsen
Piratpartiet på Medborgarplatsen. Tack till Axbom.se

JO-anmälningarna strömmade in efter avslöjandet om att det finns misttanke om jäv i rättegången mot männen bakom torrent-sajten ”The Pirate Bay”. Några är förvånade över detta, en del applåderar det som nu sker, personligen tycker jag det är en sorts tragik för jag ser många vanliga människor som är upprörda över de grymt hårda domarna som utdömdes och nu ser en chans att ta hämd på rättsväsendet.

Någonting är inte bra när en dom faller som strider mot vad det stora flertalet människor anser vara rätt och riktigt. Människan har en sorts kollektiv känsla för vad som är rimligt i sådana här fall och när det nu visade sig att det fanns en chans att ge sig på domslutet genom jävmisstanke så tar man den.

Om rättssystemet fjärmar sig för mycket från vad allmänheten anser vara rätt och riktigt, moraliskt och etiskt så uppstår en klyfta som kan leda till stora samhällsproblem. Redan idag finns ett uttalat förakt mot rättsväsendet i landet vilket börjar med polisen själv och vidare genom domstolarnas utslag som i vissa fall upprör och tycks märkliga för en inte insatt allmänhet till ett uttalat politikerförakt – även om just detta verkar lite bättre nu för tiden med den sittande regeringen eftersom Fru förutvarande Stadsrådet Sahlin verkar dra till sig det mesta av föraktet just nu. Men hos många (särskilt ungdomar har jag en känsla av) byggs det vidare på en ilska och förakt för ett rättsväsende som kan döma våldtäktsmän till 30 dagar öppen anstalt och skadestånd på några tio-tusen-lappar.

Är det konstigt egentligen?

  • Huvudmännen bakom The Pirate Bay fick 1 år och 30 miljoner kronor i skadestånd.
  • Englas mördare fick 100 000 i skadestånd (men skakar galler betydligt längre)

Eller som någon uttryckte det, skadeståndet gällde sju filmer och att piratkopiera en film skulle då skadeståndsmässigt vara värt ungefär 12 barnmord.

Det är inte konstigt att Piratpartiet snabbt avancerade till att idag i opinionsundersökningarna faktiskt klara 4-procentspärren och få platser i Riksdagen. Att partiet sedan är ett enfrågesparti som egentligen inte har några andra idéer än att man skall ha rätt att kopiera spelar i sammanhanget ingen roll, folk är arga och upprörda och vill visa det.

The Swine Pest

The scare of the Influenza A/H1N1 type that goes around the world is parallelled only by the scare in 2004 about the avian flu. That time the situation was actually scarier because of the aggressiveness and severity of the infection in humans in those cases that got infected. The fear that H5N1 would cross with another strain, say the ordinary Hong Kong flu and create something potent and lethal that easily transmits between people was real however.

Oh boy...
When the swine strikes back

But this time it is a little bit different. Out of 77 deaths in Mexico health officials have found only 2 deaths related to the actual Influenza A/H1N1 strain. In countries outside Mexico the infections does not seem to be that severe and although influenza is always a nasty business people are recovering and in many cases it seems to be no workse than the yearly influenza that hits us, usually from Asia and the type that the elderly and infirm is recommended to get influenza inoculation shots for.

The swine flu name is actually a misnomer since the current strain that everyone is watching is not normally found among pigs (but pigs may become infected just like humans may). It is a new strain and right now it is thought that ”patient zero” has been found in Mexico a small boy who apparently got infected with more than one flu at the same time and the new hybrid was born, infecting people around him and so on.

People in different parts of the world are responding in different ways most of these more drastic actions are based in religious superstition and fear. In the Islamic faith the pig is viewed as an unclean animal. Most Muslims do therefore not eat pork in any form and even in the old testament it is written that pigs are not fit as food for people.

Recently in Egypt, a predominately Muslim country where 90% of the population are osbserving and confessing Sunni Muslims and the remaining population mainly Coptic Christians (and many observes the prohibition against eating the flesh of swine) and what happens?

The government decided to cull some 250 000 pigs as a response in an insane strike against – you guessed it – swine flu. It was not until WHO came out in the open and recommended everyone to stop using the name ”swine flu” that officials in Egypt came forward and said they only used the swine flu as an excuse to rid the country of ”disorderly pig rearing”.

Here in Sweden we see other responses equally based in fear and superstition as the Egyptian decision to cull all pigs, one is to spend money on starting to build vaccine factories and similar. The point here is that it takes between 3-9 months to find a effective vaccine and normally we have that kind of warning before influenza strikes, but this time a strain like this may be far more complex to beat and the influenza would be over us already before the vaccine could have been developed. And there are no ”fit all” vaccines, they have to be tailored specifically for each strain. By the time the vaccine is out this scare is probably over already.

Sweden has a contract with one of the biggest makersof vaccine, Glaxo Smithkline that allow us access to 18 million doses of flu vaccine in case a world wide outbreak should hit us in the coming years.