"Plumber's block", and does the 'net make citing sources unneccesary?

I just heard a witty thing: What is it about writers and their whining and moaning? Do plumbers get "plumber's block"?!

I heard it on a BBC Radio 4 show, The Museum of Curiosity (series 6, episode 4), and whoever it was who mentioned it did also mention the originator of the witticism, but I didn't catch it. I could theoretically rewind half a minute and try to jot it down. But I am far too lazy, and if I felt I HAD to do that this post would never have been written.

But it did get me thinking: will the web, and the tools we use to navigate it, at some point become complete enough, and smart enough, that including such attributions will become totally unneccessary. Maybe it already is?

And what was the name of that woman interviewed on The Life Scientific (Radio 4 again) who talked about the nascent evolution of a "Semantic web" (I think it was), internet as a net or web of linked data (or even meaning) as opposed to linked documents...

Best cure for blogger's block seems to be to adopt the attitude of "I could check that, but I can't be arsed".

A letter to playdom support...

Again, someone really should teach you how to write non-rude, effective communications.

The issue I reported had to do with my in-game level not matching my profile level - not the tournament glitches (I might have mentioned that, but I actually put in a separate ticket mostly about that).

Anyway, even if your communications departement need an overhaul, that issue (level in game not matching level in profile) has actually been resolved - happened sometime yesterday. I don't know if it was anything you did except for kicking a server somewhere, but at least it is as it should be now.

Rules of communication: 

- Adress the issue mentioned

- Do NOT mention other issues without context

- Do NOT mention the lack of compensation.

When you break these rules the effect is:

- They didn't read my letter

- They are really incompetent, they are having other problems

- They are only afraid of claims, not interested in delivering good service

A better answer to my ticket about the miss-match between in-game level and profile level would have been something like this:

"Thanks for telling us!

This is a common/rare problem, that we thought was fixed/have never heard about before. 

It should hopefully go away when routine re-boots are done. Please report if you are still experiencing this xx-hours after reading this!

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to tell us! Gamer-feedback, especially about discovered bugs, are very valuable to us! Hope you continue to enjoy the game!"

It doesn't take much to give the gamer/user/customer a nice fuzzy warm feeling of being appreciated. Just as it is easy to destroy that.

And since I am giving out pointers on customer communication:

 -The issue of people wanting extra gold in compensation for glitchy tournaments 

Your current stock-phrase isn't good:

"Unfortunately, we will not be able to credit any gold or items that may be missing for these tournaments."

It is too impersonal, and too absolute. A better way of putting it would be:

"In the interest of fairness, since these technical glitches seem to affect all players equally, we have decided to not compensate for any losses reported via the ticketing system by issuing credits of gold or items. We do appreciate every report, and we hope to be able to offer our long-time players some small rewards in the future."

And then, at some point when things technical are a bit better sorted (2-4 weeks?), you give everyone registered before a certain date (probably not including me, since I am pretty new on the platform) some small thing: a few avatar outfits, a collection of extra legends, anything really.

And you announce it publicly in the forum! There are few things as attractive and enticing as a company that is seen to value long-time loyal customers.

HTH, HAND

            Aspsusa

Beer

The Ukraine. A big surprise, they brew their own Hefeweisse! And it is very popular, too. It's called "Bile Pivo" (white beer), and is often available on tap. Also in 1 litre bottles in supermarkets and corner stores! 
Very Yummy. 
There are also dark varieties of "bile pivo", but not as easy to find (picked up a can in a small supermarket), quite good that one too. 

Biggest brand/manufacturer is Obolon (which also exports a bit to neighbouring countries, seen Obolon brews on the shelves in at least Poland and Belarussia), which also has a big range of more normal lagers. My lager-drinking SO says they are ok, too. 

But Obolon isn't the only Ukrainian brewery. In Lviv we encountered several others, in particular a small one that called itself something like "First Private Brewery". Reportedly their "Stare Misto" lager is quite good, and I tasted (in Uszgorod, so it's not just a local Lviv-thing) another one of theirs that - on a hot day - might almost have converted a lager-hater, a very deep amber thing, almost red. 

It was actually weird to come from Ukraine to Slovakia - Slovakia (along with the Czech R) should be *the* beer mecca, but for a non-lager person it really isn't. 
And as Heineken and SAB now owns nearly every brewery in Czech&Slovakia, the variety is even more limited. Good luck with finding non-light/pale lagers in a normal, non-specialised, pub/café/restaurant. And finding anything that isn't a lager? Forget it. 

A normal Slovak place would have 1 or 2 lagers on tap, and an additional 3-5 in bottles. Usually 2 different brands, plus one "foreign" (license brewed Stella or Carlsberg). 
All but one light/blond/ "Svetle". BUT usually in different strengths (not alcohol - what is it called in English? Plato?). 
And of course at least one, not that seldom two, "ne-alko" beers. And the locals actually drink those! So they are probably not that bad. But since I a) don't drink lager, and b) don't drive, I saw no reason to try them. 

But in Slovakia, outside of specialized pubs or brew-pubs (there are a few, one in Kosice called "Golem" in particular is fun) finding anything but lager is just impossible. Luckily they produce wine, too.

I'll deal with the weird Poles in another post...

Coffeeee!

Lviv (in Ukraine today, used to be Polish Lwow, at times under either Moscow (Lvov) or Vienna (Lemberg)) surprisingly was a great city for coffee & cakes.
Unfortunately the ubiqutous espresso machines have taken over completely, so we didn't get to taste the local variant of what is called "Turkish" in Poland & Slovakia; lots of rather course grind stright in the cup (or preferably a glass mug) with hot water.

But the Ukrainians at least know how to use the machines. If you want a "long" cup you order an Americano*.

We also discovered one of the best cafés ever when it comes to coffee. "Svit Kavy" (~ "The world of coffee"), a coffee menu of upwards 30 different *non* flavoured coffees (and pretty good descriptions too, even in English). Good pastries, too. And many locals seem to really dig their ice cream and milkshakes.
I'm still kicking myself for feeling economical and not ordering a Blue Mountain.
I think I made a faux pas when I ordered as a latte - the girls behind the counter rolled their eyes. But damn, it was *good*, AND just subtly different from the usual stock-Italian espresso base.

Other observations from Lviv: Local men (and especially middle aged overtly successfull but non-flashy "biznesmen") seem to like meeting over a cup of coffee and cakes. And they carry handbags! (Or very small briefcases.)
"Svit kavy" is absolutely the place to go for *coffee*, but for pastries we were lucky enough to discover about the most marvellous patisserie ever just across the avenue from our hostel. It is called Veronika, and not only do they make cakes and such, they also make chocolates and truffles. Plus, the restaurant in the cellar is pretty darn good (my first suckling pig!), and has lots of exotic (to us) Ukrainian, Moldovan, Armenian and Georgian wines *per glass*.

* The Americano thingy seemed to have caught on in the provinces, too. In the Carpathian holiday, sheep and timber village of Yaremche we managed to find probably the only "real café" (ie not selling beer or vodka or even food) and either the girl who runs it is an extreme purist (& a very overworked one) or a bit vague on the concept of an Americano: my SO got a small espresso in a big (cappucino-sized, roughly) cup and a small pitcher of scalding hot water!
Actually pretty nifty, when you think of it. You can take a small sip of the really concentrated espresso and then dilute to exactly the strength you want. (I like to do this with milk when I get the chance.)
This same small place (really not an esthetical hit - small and murky inside, not so good plastic furniture outside, construction work going on everywhere around) actually did produce one of the better Lattes I had during the whole trip. Very pretty, and quite tasty too.

Other things from our trip: it is a good idea to still be a bit wary of "cappucino" on menus in Ukraine - those nasty, nasty overly sweet aromatized, artificial all-in-one instant thingies are still overly popular. AND served in cafés too. (They did this in Estonia too, around 1996 or so, hopefully it will be a passing fad in Ukraine too.)

And we discovered - after 5 years! - that "turkish coffee" in the Polish sense isn't something we have to give up once we cross the border into Lithuania. When I was finishing my (on the border between acceptable and bad) "machine coffee" while having breakfast in Marijampole (a dump of a town between Kaunas and the Polish border) I spied the waitresses taking a break from setting up the restaurant of the B&B for the day drinking coffee in this way! So I naturally went over and asked to get one too. Unfortunately (and weirdly, because they were all pretty young) the waitresses didn't speak much English, so they didn't understand my question about what they called the coffee they were drinking. But the receptionist could help (she too didn't understand at first what I was asking) and she told me that "grinds in the cup" coffee is just "normal", and the way to get it in Lithuania is to ask for "normal" and "not from machine" coffee.
And that she personally prefered it too, but that tourists seem to always be afraid of anything that doesn't come out of a machine. She was honestly shocked when I told her this manner of coffee was unknown in Finland.

This chat with the very nice receptionist also gave some perspective of why it is that especially in Poland one is in such a danger of encountering *really* bad coffee (of the "bitter cheapest instant made in a thermos" or "sure, we clean our machine once a year!" -varieties). If "real coffee" is only "grinds-in-cup" it probably seems to lots of people that stupid foreigners or snobs from Warsaw or Krakow can't tell the difference between good coffee and bad anyway, since they don't appreciate "real coffee".

OTOH being a fan of *good* instant coffee, Polish supermarkets are a mecca. Probably because when the traditional way of making coffee is putting grinds in your glass mug and then pouring water on it, doing the same procedure sans the grinds doesn't seem so far fetched.

I still have a few un-opened jars of various "exotic" instants at home, so I didn't buy any this trip (except for the drugged variety, good instant spiked with Guarana). But in a happy marriage between probably Europe's two most instant-coffee loving cultures, the Tesco hypermarket in Lublin actually carried quite an assortment of Tesco fair-trade *origin* instants! Darn, as with the Blue Mountain in Lviv, I really should have bought some...

Dumping ground? Why not?

I never got around to digging up old and new AC and depression texts from various sources to post here (I did start looking, I did!), but these last days I've been feeling a bit bad about inundating forums and mailinglists with looong posts about my recent travel. So why not post those texts here?

Longish rambling text about coffee in the Ukraine and in Poland coming up!

Feminist premise elegantly illustrated

Take a look at this essay, from which I'll borrow this lovely sentence:

"I like incidents of that sort, when forces that are usually so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say, an anaconda that's eaten a cow or an elephant turd on the carpet."

Thinking about re-activating this space

... and maybe turn it into a sort of archive/repository of texts I've originally written in other forums.

Most of those concern depression, bipolarity, medicines to treat the aforementioned, or Asperger's syndrome, autism, "broader autistic phenotype", and a jumble of mixed observations on ACness. Also a quite a few autobiographical snippets.

I started thinking about this when I stumbled upon the website PatientsLikeMe.com and decided to try to use the mood tracking tools they have there (their somatic communities (ALS, MS etc) seem to be really useful, their mood community is very much beta still).
Another stimulus for perhaps putting some of my AC/bipolar writings on the web was that I, quite by chance, stumbled upon the Swedish blog Spiro Spero. While the Aspie author of that blog is about my age (perhaps a year older or so), and has very different experiences from me, there is so much in her writing that I recognise. Mostly from an earlier, younger, me but some fundamental things just don't change.

With PLM I of course experienced the usual very active "new forum" phase and spewed out lots of long and thoughtful posts. And even got into a few private discussions about ACness.

And then there is all my posts to various mailing-lists. There are probably a few of those (most are from 10+ years ago) that would be interesting to revisit.

Reworking posts and parts of conversations into blog article format will probably be something of a challenge. Especially since I'm a heavy quoter, and of course I can't use other people's text (especially not since some of the mailing-lists are confidential). So posts like that will either have to be extensively re-worked or the quoted parts paraphrased in a way that maintains the original message and tone.

Ack - thinking about all of this makes it seem like far too much work! And the possible options for how to do this seem almost endless.

How about posting the original, unedited (except for quotes), and then posting an edited version as comparison? Not edited to be up to date, but edited to be more readable in a blog format. That sounds like an idea, and creating separate labels for these different types of posts should make it easy to keep track of what's what.

If I go that route will try as much as I can to NOT correct discrepancies between texts dealing with the same subject matter, except for clear typos. That will be hard, because sometimes when I look at texts written earlier I can clearly see that I've misremembered dates, fudged some facts to make my main point clearer, slightly exaggerated some parts etc.

Enough for now. I think I'll start with trying to dig up my first posts to INLV and ANI-L. There's also a post about how different the 'net looks today from a bipolar or AC POV compared to the early and mid nineties waiting to be written.

Why do we drink so much coffee?

According to Wikipedia, citing the World Resource Institute, the five Nordic countries top the list of coffee consumption per capita.
(That Aruba figure so high in that list is a total fluke, it seems that it is a trans-shipping point and looking at the figures over a 30 year span Aruba's yearly "consumption" varies from 0 to 121 kg/capita. Bermuda's historical figures OTOH are more consistent.)

But why? Why do the Nordic countries drink so much coffee? And why does the trend even seem to hold for the Baltic states? The further north, the more coffee consumed. Perhaps because geographical "northern-ness" happens to be inversely proportional to "russian-ness"?

Perhaps the Nordic love of coffee is related to it being so dark half the year, and so light a quarter of the year? Perhaps we need to use lots caffeine to keep our diurnal rhytms from too closely mimicing the seasons? And perhaps the statistics also partly reflect the fact that we generally like our coffee strong?

Or perhaps it is somehow related to the generally "dry" official attitude of our countries? Seeing that the order is Finland, Iceland, Norway and then Denmark and Sweden (it is only since 1995 that the Danes have consistently consumed more than the Swedes) makes this a pretty tempting explanation.

Isn't the stereotypical picture of Finns, Icelanders and Norwegians one of guys that like to do things to extremes? A high use of stimulants would tend to fit nicely into that. Especially in conditions that make the availability of alcohol restricted and the booze quite expensive when you get it.

In this scenario the odd man out is Sweden. According to this theory (not to mention the geographical one above) Sweden should trounce Denmark thoroughly in the coffee-drinking championships. It might be that the statistics lie, and the fact that the switch in positions happened in 1995, the year both countries became EU members could point in that direction. But without knowing the price-levels of coffee in Sweden resp. Denmark it is very hard to say for sure if the increase in shopping trips over the border is responsible.

Or it could be that the stereo-typical view of Swedes as unusually susceptible to official health campaigns is an explanations. (Finnish media absolutely loooves to tout any and all scientific pro-coffee findings, Swedish media - not so much.)

And then we have the fact that Finland usually is a whole kg-per-person ahead of the rest (the slump in coffee prices in the early 90ies makes the statistics a bit unreliable - the world market price of coffee more than doubled between January 1994 and January 1995, and the dip that can be seen around 1995-1996 seems to be attributable to diminished imports because of stockpiling in early-mid 1994. The International Coffee Organisation, ICO, has some nice statistics.) - what are the explanations for that?

Most foreigners do note that Finns drink a lot of coffee, and that coffee is available at nearly every imaginable gathering. It is considered quite daring to omit coffee, or substitute some other drink, at any gathering, from funerals and weddings to quick work meetings.

But why? I have no idea. It might be that coffee somehow gained an exalted status as a luxury item early on, and gained almost mythical properties during the scarcity of the war years. And during better times the quality of coffee consumed in Finland has been evaluated as quite high - pre-roasted coffee probably came much later to the average Finnish coffee consumer than in most of Europe. Every small folkloristic museum has one or more "coffee-burners" (ranging in age from late 18th to early 20th century) for stovetop use on display.

But still, why Finland? In comparison to our Nordic neighbours our rise to prosperity (and our urbanisation) has been much more abrupt and quick, really only beginning after the war. Is perhaps the excessive coffee-drinking a rural hold-over? (Sweden again makes for an interesting comparison, I can't seem to find statistics older than 30 years, but Finland only passed Sweden in coffee consumption at the end of the 1970-ies.)

Shouldn't think so much

I've been thinking about posting my definitive views on why porn is so terminally boring for over a week now. Shouldn't think so much, should post things half-baked instead.

Buuut, since I still think I'd like to write about why porn is so boring (& about the interesting phenomenon of various "porntube" -sites, and what those may herald for the biggest industry of the web), I'll just update with a link to a weird, sweet and totally non-porny clip.

Disappointing custard

After reading people (mostly expat Brits I think) waxing lyrically about how Bird's Custard was the only right and true custard powder I was quite pleased to spy a tin of it at a so called "ethnic" food store.

But except for the colouring (very pleasant egg-yolk yellow) I don't think there is anything in that powder that I couldn't replicate, or improve on, with plain Maizena (cornstarch) and some vanilla extract. Even the method of preparing it is exactly like you would with Maizena. The only little thing that I have never thought of is that it contains salt.

Bah! Almost as much hassle as doing a proper custard with eggs, and definitely not easier than whipping up your own Maizena-based one.

"Words, words, words!

I am sick of words! I get words all day through, first from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?!"

Yes, Eliza, it probably is. Though unfortunately the text of My Fair Lady isn't free yet, so I can't check my memory against the text at Project Gutenberg. I could check the ur-text Pygmalion, but I already know that Shaw's Eliza would never have uttered such an emotional thing that late in the play.

I'm running out of things on my Treo to read. Most everything easy, weird or strange I loaded up on it more than a year ago is already read. And for some reason I can't seem to get my various computers sorted enough to re-install the bits and pieces needed to back-up, sync and install new stuff on my phone. Maybe it is some unconscious need for living dangerous that manifests itself in this way?

So being bored and unable to sleep late last night I thought it would be a good idea to surf to Gutenberg and see if I could maybe read something from there straight on my Treo. It turned out it was theoretically possible, but the Treo's tiny browser stuttered to a halt quickly. And Gutenberg's interface (like wikipedia's, unfortunately) turned out to be very small-screen unfriendly.

But it did look like it had evolved quite a bit since I last looked at it a few years ago. New-ish dedicated format for Palms, Torrents, a nice top-100 list to browse. So I simply had to take a better look. And it looks like I've added yet another page to the all too many in my standard opera-view.

What I didn't find was a list of links to other e-text projects. Which is rather weird, since Gutenberg is very English.
Luckily I happen to know of one other similar project, the Swedish Project Runeberg. And they have a rather comprehensive list of links. Unfortunately it is rather too broad, and seems to be quite out of date too.

This is getting annoying. I *happen* to know about both Gutenberg and Runeberg. I don't know about similar projects in German or French. One would have thought either Gutenberg or Runeberg could lead me to those?
But no. Luckily the parallell structure of wikipedia's different language editions once again proved very useful: Gutenberg-DE seems to be the closest thing in German. Unfortunately it really isn't comparable as it is severely crippled in texts only being browsable on-line.

I'm cold!

Downtown? See map
Originally uploaded by Aspsusa

I've been shivering almost constantly since yesterday when I woke up to snow on the ground, slush in the air and temperatures just below freezing.

And I'm lazy, this picture is actually from March, not current. But it captures the bleak, moist and c-c-c-cold somewhat. Though we do have more snow on the ground right now. Which is just wrong. More snow in November than in March? Nuh-uh, shouldn't be.

Guess I will just have to hunt up some winter clothes, remember to close the windows properly and try to get used to it.

The problem of avatars and profiles

I just finally managed to guess correctly what I had used 3+ years ago when I signed up for a blog (called "journal" then) at my.opera.com, and was faced with the need to update some stuff - the look and functionality of the portal/community/blogs/whole-shebang has changed considerably since 2004.

And once again I was reminded of how frustrating it is to be a fairly visual person with almost no skills, and less energy. The my.opera-templates all reserve a big chunk of space for a picture. It looks not only lame, but very, very boring. Especially as everyone else who comments, or visits (while logged in to my.opera), who also haven't uploaded any pic to represent themselves also get stuck with this no-image-image in the sidebar.

Lots of places reserve space for an avatar of some sort. The only place so far where I swiftly caved and cobbled together something has been Flickr. It sort of seemed obligatory on a photo-sharing site. But what I came up with there is not good.
On most boards I've ever registered I've just ignored the avatar-custom. Mostly because I just don't happen to have anything handy. And firing up even a bare-bones graphic app. just to play around and shrink some part of some images to the required dimension? Nah. Not going to happen at the time of registration. And then, not going to happen at all.
On one or two occasions, when the forum in question have had a ready made gallery to pick and choose from I've picked something. But nothing that seemed "me" enough for me to swipe it for further use.

Many people do take the easy and logical way out and just use a photo of themselves. The shy version of this is using a photo of the back of ones head, or a picture of oneself as a baby.
I guess I could just stop trying to be original and individual and go this route. But I photograph very badly. Like really ugly.
Not there yet, but it might still come to that.

Testing out this new space

Very pleased with the adress, and thanks to princessalex on TT for the sub-header. This is probably not the final look of this lame-and-boring blog.

Though the current look is rather lame, so that fits well. But the lameness is at least in part just a result of my wanting to be able to read my own blog on my Treo. Templates that specify a certain column width usually look fine on a real 'puter, but can wreck havoc with the sensitive nonstandardized little apps that try to render them on phones and other small screen-devices.
So until I learn more about what works and what doesn't on small screens, the the format will continue to be ugly on big ass screens.