The night is setting upon the hills of Smoking Cove. Or is it receding yet again?

I can not tell. But the ambiance is nice.

I hear the cars on the distant... "high-way"... zip by every now and then.

That old, old, wooden clock, tick-tocks above the door.

A legion of cloudy-blue dots, through that treeish amalgam.

Birds beginning to sing.

* * *

My nephew and his mother returned to Iceland the other day. They're staying with us, since they have no permanent home here at present. He's almost 3 and a half years old, and he's stupendously adorable. He's often described as a very cheerful child. I have a hard time imagining a more cheerful child. It seems the only times he's groggy and irritated, is when he's tired. That's not to say that sometimes he misbehaves, no, he doesn't want any lasagna, he's hardly eaten today, but he definitely doesn't want it, no he doesn't want any food, hey, look at this carriage and my stuff in it!

When he and his mother moved to Canary Islands last summer, he didn't speak any words. He babbled to no end at times, especially on the phone (or when pretending to be on the phone). So it was a very pleasant surprise to be woken with a cheery "Hello! Hello! Look, granma!" the day he arrived.

Thinking all this, I'm reminded how much I look forward to having kids of my own. That time will come one day.

Well, the year 2008 has come. The Year of the Big Two-Five B-day.

To be honest with you, I hadn't really given it much though. I was reminded of it when a couple of my friends' birthdays got closer, because that was when they themselves realised.

In recent years I haven't been inclined to throw a party, maybe just invited had a nice dinner with my family, or simply a meal my girlfriend and a bottle of wine.

But this year, I feel as if I ought to do something bigger. After all, reaching the age of a quarter-century is pretty big! 25 trips around the sun, on this ball of rock we simply call "earth". The age of 5², which is appropriate, as 5 is my mental age.

So I can call myself lucky to have friends with birthdays so early in the year. This gives me ample time to prepare for some sort of get-together in the summer.

Then again, I could just ditch it all and play the ultra violent Ninja Gaiden 2 through my birthday month.

But it's everything but a walk in the park. To be frank, I'm a bit disappointed. You see, it keeps freezing on me. It first started happening just shortly after I got it. It always happened when I had just selected a track or podcast to play, and the menu was just starting to shift over to the player view out of the list view. The scroll-bar would start to move, and stop a centimetre from the right side of the screen. And after that, no response. The built-in speaker would still emit scrolling sounds for a few moments, but then fall silent. Since the Nano has no power button, my sole choice in the matter was to let it drain its battery out. Since this was in the evening, I just left it on the table and waited till morning. In the morning, I tried plugging it to the computer. And lo, it was accessible. After a bit of a charge-up, it was acting as nothing had happened. It's as if it just freezes sometimes, goes into an eternal programming loop, and has to be restarted to work.

This has happened 4 or 5 times since, in these 2 months I've had the device, the last instance being today. I was thinking about the song "Göng" from the most recent Sigur Rós album, "Takk...". Pretty soon I had it bouncing around my head uncontrollably, and since I have the album on my iPod, I just had to put it on (I'm at the university, so I can't just put the album in the CD player). When I did, I knew I'd have to turn the volume down, since I always listen to podcasts at the highest volume, due to the nature of spoken word. So, as soon as I pressed on the song in the song list, I started to slide my finger along the scroll wheel, in a counter-clockwise direction. The volume bar came on screen, and then - nothing. It had frozen again. It's sitting in my pocket right now, back-lit screen ablaze, draining its battery away. I'm guessing I won't be able to use it until late in the afternoon.

It seems that the Nano can't handle too much input. It also can't handle some type of sound files (be it AAC or MP3, either at various bit rates). The first time it froze I was playing an Autechre song I'd just ripped to the computer with iTunes, in AAC format. The later instances I was playing a podcast, usually an MP3 in 24-92kbps format. The last time I was playing an AAC and giving instructions to lower volume while the song was loading.

Is this really normal? Is iPod supposed to be so fragile in usage? Do I have to give it a time to process before inputting additional commands?

These are the questions I intend to ask those dudes at Apple IMC, Iceland.

Things change. Evolve.

We... get older.

Lots of things have taken place since last here was writ.

I am engaged!

And I'll get married next summer.

I have also moved out. My fiancée and I live in this cute little house in the middle of Reykjavik. Even though we are situated between two car-veins of heavy traffic, it is a very peaceful neighbourhood, and with long stretches of green grass along the road. We really do like it here.

Eddie Izzard is performing in Iceland tonight.

And I'll be attending!

I really can't wait.

He's starting a Scandinavian tour that's closely detailed on his official website, and the first gig is here in Iceland.

I'd been hearing rumours regarding him coming here since late 2004, notably that the certainty would be better determined by how successful Jamie Kennedy's stand-up in December here would be.
But there were somethings awkward in the announcing of the stand-up. First I heard of a definite date was on the community site Hugi.is that appeared in the beginning of February and seemed to be based on rumours. Maybe the one who posted the write-up had read about the stand-up on Eddie Izzard's website, but I did not know of it then - it mentioned he was supposed to perform at this club we have called (drum roll) Broadway, but Broadway's website mentioned nothing about Eddie anywhere.

My friend utlendingurinn decided to stay on alert for any news. We didn't have to wait long, because the next week an article appeared in the Morgunblaðið, Iceland's biggest news paper.

As it stood, sale of ticket's was to begin the Monday after the Wednesday the article was printed, and the venue only had room for 800 people.
800! Wow, they must have been afraid of meagre interest in the comedian.
Though I must admit that I don't hear people talking about Eddie Izzard often, unless they are people I know to take active interest in comedians or people who've found him by chance through other British comedy, like Monty Python.

Thankfully for me though, some Icelandic/United States Start-up named Event.is was having a pre-sale of tickets. I figured out how to participate in that, and soon enough I had reserved tickets for me, my girlfriend, utlendingurinn, handofme, my younger brother, and my girlfriend's best friend.

The next day, my mother heard of the news and beckoned my sister to run to me to tell me, while I was quietly chilling in a short session of Tekken 4. I told them I'd already bought tickets, to which my mother asked "Didn't you buy a ticket for me as well?". I was a bit surprised, but she had liked his stand-up named Dressed to Kill that my girlfriend and I had watched with her weeks before. She told me she'd very much like to go, and it turned out my father was interested too (though possibly only to not be left out), so I went online again and reserved tickets for them.

On the day of the official start of the ticket sale, it was broadcast on the news that it had sold out in less than 8 minutes. Seems Eddie Izzard really is rather popular in this country. The quick sale prompted another stand-up the day after this one, which proceeded to sell out almost instantaneously as well. He's also holding shows in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, all of which sold out in about 10 minutes. They also crammed in extra shows in Norway and Sweden, as can be seen here.

Quite Wondrous, I say!

Though I guess you can apply that to any kind of literature interest. Let me define it a bit better.

I really like it when I actually have to strain and focus while reading to make sure I'm understanding everything right, or even if I'm just understanding them at all. Books that barrage you with information, references to things of scientific nature.

The last novel I read that had thad effect on me was the book by China Miéville named Perdido Street Station. I had a hard time starting to read it, and put it on hold for almost a whole year, but after starting it again this summer I gradually sped up in reading it, and finished last month. It's a book with many really cool ideas, and what's more, it's very beautifully written. Not exactly science fiction, China calls it "weird fiction". Whatever the label, it's a fantastic read.

I just finished reading a novelette by another young writer named Charles Stross - it's called 'Lobsters', and it's available for reading online, just put his name and the novelette name into google and click "I'm feeling lucky". It's extremely powerful, and will leave you in the dust if you're not on your toes.

This renewed interest of mine in Science Fiction - or rather, a fiery drive to more actively discover new and exciting science fiction writers and books - was kindled a while ago when I read an article I found through Slashdot. It's focus was science fiction's and many writer's ailments regarding the times we live in - how technology and the world we live in are changing so fast it feels ever more impossible to try to envision a plausible future.
But the article introduced two writers who have been very active and talked about lately; Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow. I was instantly intrigued by their ideas - just their lingo they used to each other was inspiring, because they seemed exactly the kind of characters to write books to my liking.

So I scouted the web a bit, googled around. Turns out Cory Doctorow releases all his novels free online as well as in printed form - under the Creative Commons Licence. So if you're intrigued, check out CrapHound.com to read some of his stuff.
Charles Stross has, as I noted earlier, a bunch of short stories online as well. You can probably find them on his website; www.antipope.org/charlie.

I decided to take the chance on one of Stross's published novels, and had the University Bookstore order one for me (since they had none on sale before, despite their impressive catalogue). I've received mail about it having arrived, and I'm very excited about picking it up later today. Especially after that cool short story "Lobsters".

MMm, yes. Reading these intensive sci-fi stories is like when you fall into math text books from time to time, when you understand just enough not to be disoriented enough to have to read the page again, and just really want to drive forward.


//I apologise for weird line structure or article build-up; I was feeling a bit weird but I couldn't help it.

I think a good term for instant coffee would be "zombie coffee" - because according to what a certain someone told me, the way they make it is they brew coffee like anybody would, freeze it, grind it up and dehydrate it or something like that.

Because it isn't really "fake coffee" as I've heard it called, it's coffee re-animated. Brewed, brutally killed and then revitalized with a bit of hot water.

Almost like the fruit-bits they have in many a cereal now.

Here's an article I googled out of my sleeve to confirm what I was told.

I am flower named genkobar !

I consist of my friends!

Are you flower too?

This thing is a bit interesting because it generates a tile for each of your friends, and each friend has his own colour that in unison with all the other friends' colours form that flower. I'm not sure though if it calculates the colours according to number of replies in my journal or mine in them, or how it arranges them. It doesn't do so alphabetically. The form of the flower is too exact though for it to be so randomised, so it's probably simpler than that. And seeing how quick it was to complete, it probably just selects a flower from a set of pixellated flower pictures and assigns links to the participator's friends' in the first [the number of friends] tiles. Note how the last tiles have no links.

Weird though, looking at the final product made from the source code with all the links, they don't seem to work as such.

MMMMMm peppermint tea.

I like starting an entry with those words. It's been a long time. Both since I did that, and since I drank tea last.

So yesterday my old friend and fellow former MH-schoolmate Arnór hailed me on MSN. He was starting an experimental radio station associated with the site he's the main person behind, mp3.is. It's a month's trial run that they're doing, just to see how it will work. But he asked me if I had some sort of a jingle for it - like for "[music starts]...you're listening to mp3 dot blablabla... [music stops]" kind of thing. I don't typically listen to radio, so I wasn't familiar with the word jingle.

To explain the site a bit, mp3.is is a website launched last december that is influenced by the old mp3.com (in more ways than the naming) in such that it offers obscure musicians or people just starting out a chance to have their music heard. As such, it hosts a lot of music from young Icelandic musicians, so if you're in thirst for checking out the scene here it is a good place to start. We have another site like that, Rokk.is, but that one started out mostly for rock (hence the name) and still has mostly rock-aligned bands featured. Check them both out if you're open to everything.
Anyway, that's the music they'll be playing on mp3.is's internet radio. Probably just random cycling through all of the site's music, and they've garnered quite a lot in fact.
You can't set the mp3.is website to English, but it's fairly easy to get to the Icelandic music - you click the link near the top of the main page that says "mp3 - tonlist", which will lead you to a page that has a list of names on it's right-hand side. Clicking one of those will lead to that artist's page, and on the right side of that page you'll see a line with the words "Lög / Songs" - under which is a list of names of songs by the artist, that if clicked, open a small window with a link to the file and the terms you have to agree to if you want to download. Those terms are basically those that these songs are only for individual use, not sale or redistribution.

But back to my story. I was intrigued by the notion, but still a bit of a gamble since I haven't really been making any music for two years. Aside from the music I made to the play Johnny Casanova in summer 2002, one of which's tracks I developed further into the song I won the MH music composition contest with that following fall, I've just not been in music-making mood, or mindset. Well, I've been thinking really a lot about different music that I'd like to make, but I haven't materialised or realised those wants in oh so long.
I have though been thinking for a few months now more heavily about getting myself back on track, set my eyes on the free-time in the summer-time to delve into the various music programs and regulate my composing sessions. So I had my trusty old Modplug Tracker set up right and good to go in this re-install of Windows XP I did in February.

So after finding the right samples to use and playing around for two or three hours, I came up with these two: 5s and 10s jingles.
Arnór had told me to have it light but a bit rough, but as I tend to do really moody and dark songs I had to really strain myself to be able to keep it relatively happy sounding:P
Overall, I think it turned out ok, considering I was asked to do it the day before it was needed and only had time to spend 2-4 hours on it. Tell me what you think.

Or better yet, you could head over to mp3.is/utvarp, (try to be among the few that can listen to it in this trial run) and listen to the broadcast. [Press the big button on the right that says 'Hlusta á útvarp mp3.is' and has blinking arrows] You'll hear it every once in a while, and you can tell me what you think of it there.

I've talked about the music from Diablo II before. I recently got a chance to listen to the music from Diablo II's expansion pack, named Lord of Destruction, and I must say, it's some of the best stuff I've heard from Matt Uelmen. Frankly, at first I thought it was a new composer. But Uelman has proven himself to be able to create magnificent mostly-orchestral pieces as well as well as what he did in the main two Diablo games.
The music he made for the first two games was a very middle-eastern or Indian in flavour, use of citars and Indian-style singers, as well as having gongs and lots of fast tribal style drums. Occasionally the songs have a heavily echoed classical guitar, which works very well.

In Lord of Destruction though, the score uses almost only classical orchestral instruments - a string ensemble is playing the main part, with occasional usage of choirs and brass instruments. The pieces are often very complicated with interesting twists and turns, and I think it's best if you heard some of them by yourselves.
Fortunately, Blizzard themselves provide a few tracks for free download. On this page on battle.net they have the tracks Ice Caves, Halls, Ancients, Siege and Fortress. All of them I highly recommend, though you could start with Siece or Ice Caves if you'll only give one track a chance.

So now, Matt Uelmen is up there amongst my favourite musicians. I remember loving more tracks by Yasunori Mitsuda, but I also remember disliking more from him. I don't really remember a song from Matt Uelman that I dislike. Though this might of course be in the nature of the soundtracks they're made create for each's games - Yasunori makes music for japanese RPG's that often sport a very varied soundtrack - even if they have a pretty constant theme for a certain style of music (like Namco's XenoSaga, with a very war-like epic theme) they also have muzak and j-pop and a few songs that are a bit out of place on a soundtrack as such. In the PC RPG's that Matt composes music for (especially since they are from Blizzard) they are much stricter in their consistency towards theme of music - maybe also because games like Diablo II have pretty much the same gameplay type throughout the whole game.

Was my last entry really the Please Use Me! thing? I haven't written in a while, have I...

</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black	</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black
</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black	</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black
</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black	</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black
</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black	</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black
</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black	</td> PLEASE USE ME! Mr. Cooper Black

Postcard in this likeness, ten of them, were given to me today by two hair-rich and slightly less blood-filled than usual individuals through my window. They did proceed to throw blood-drop/vodafuck shaped gum candy at me, which I took well, because I like that kind of candy. Thus I threw some of my homemade chocolate butter at the ground before them.

Now, they did walk around not-said house, only for me to open the front door and greet them in an wild-horse manner, and of course this all happened wilst heavily conversing in an alien tongue, which, henceforth, is this language, that I'm writing; this entry, in.

BTU. [sic], but supposed to be BUT, that was not what this ghastly entry was for. It is to inform ye, my heavenly buddies, that these there postcards, with all their bloodly meanings and preaching of which I have no knowledge, and I have recreated for your leisure, comfort and glee, shall adorn my white white walls in a moment or two days.

I'm quite looking forward to it.


No, of course they won't be in such a rectengular-based-gridly manner, they'll be in a more.. flowing,plowing... funnish and pun . Manner. Yes.
No need to be daft, we're all pens here.

Nostalgic dog
noble oolong
I consist
of furry blue gongs

wheather she built
in a fort

I try to swallow
as I wallow in swallows

Really, what is the mean?

swift swift, swiftswiftshiftswift
swiftswift swift lift
Arachnophobia hirundinidaephilia


( how fast this medium works on the world, it's like wild fire )

On Ókind's Heimsendi 18 album, the song Hraðbankar ("ATM's" or "Speedbanks") is my current favourite.

It has a rather carefree guitar melody but a powerful bass-line, and a well flowing drum pattern - most of the drums start right away with the rest of the instruments after the intro where singer sings the first lines over the melancholic... keyboard melody. But shortly after the song sets off, a backbone of a 'treble' drum sneaks in a very cool way. (Excuse my lack of a vocabulary when it comes to common instrumentalists' terms...).

The song is very cool. And the lyrics are very interesting too;
(I quickly threw together some sort of English translation so more would understand)

á þessu korti er mynd af manni sem líkist ekki mér en myndin er af mér og ég á kortið og kortið er inni í þér einhvern tíman seinna skal ég koma því í lag en ég man bara ekki í dag hvað þú vilt að ég slái inn

printed on this very card is a portrait of a man who doesn't look like me but the portrait is mine and so is the card and the card is inside of you at some later point in time shall I fix this problem of mine but today I can't recall what numbers you want input

I like his non-chalantly dreamy and cut-off but still complete stories - he's a very good poet, this singer of the band Ókind named Steingrímur.
He has a blog he where often writes some poems and short stories at this site. Yes, it's in Icelandic.

The band's members are all very good instrumentalists. The guitarist named Ingi Einar Jónhannesson, bassist is Birgir Örn Árnason, Ólafur Freyr Frímannsson plays the drums and Steingrímur Karl Teague sings and plays the keyboard.

If you get the chance, listen to some of their stuff. Speaking of which, they have some songs up for download at the Icelandic music promotion site www.Rokk.is - their page is here.
And their CD released last year is available for purchase here on Smekkleysa's website.

Earlier I was listening to a rendition of Arvo Pärt's Fratres and Tabula Rasa. I listened through Fratres and my favourite part of Tabula Rasa. But then I really wasn't in the mood for it - I knew this because I was anxious for it to finish, so I could listen to the next album I had in mind.

I cut it out of my playlist and put on Ókind's Heimsendi 18. It had been a while since I'd listened to it, so I appreciated hearing it. Still not exactly what I was in the mood for.

Minibosses? This rock band plays pretty much only old videogame music from games of the 8-bit and 16-bit era. I listened their version of the Metroid Theme and a few others, but still a bit to much noisy rock for my current mood.

Now, TeXhnolyze. That's a very interesting anime, from the same core of creative talent that brought us Serial Experiments Lain. I've only watched 8 out of 22 episodes of it, but it's really picking up where I am right now. I'm just afraid I'd spend all my time watching it and not studying if I delved back into it now.
The music in the series is very interesting. And it can complement my studying instead of distracting me from it. The music is done by the same guy that worked on the music for the movie Jin-Roh, if you've heard of that.
Like the show, it's somewhat experimental. Somewhat tribal too - one song features distorted beats and an e-guitar melody, and a noise that's constant through the song, but slowly morphs to the voice of a vocalist sporting rap-tistic lines, you can only hear what he's saying near the end.

Listening to that song however made me remember an album that would be perfect to listen to, in continuation of the TeXhnolyze feel (maybe skipping a few of the less interesting songs): The Diablo II Soundtrack.

And yes. The mood is perfect for listening to the music from Diablo II.
It's not too sunny outside, cloudy, which means my room at the back of the house with a window to the East is rather dark now that it's 20:35. The sun's not going to set yet, but in a country with a more normal sun-cycle I'd say it feels like after 17 and maybe a bit close to six in the evening.
It seems to have rained a bit, or the air outside is a bit moist, so the grass outside has a vibrant dark-green colour, and sparkles oh so slightly. The bushes outside have started to sprout buns, so they're kind of a mix green and brown right now.
I have one lamp on my desk lighting up my book, and just about an hour ago I had a good cup of coffee with my own steamed milk and all.

Yes, the setting is just right for the music of Diablo II.