OMFG is this going to be the best movie ever or what! *drool*

300 <---click here to see the trailer/teaser

"...our arrows will blot out the sun"
"Then we will fight in the shade"

The addiction ends

I was kinda like this minus the being guild officer part...scary in hindsight! It's an addiction like anything else. Especially the part about a sense of accomplishment etc etc rings true. A good read.

World of Warcraft: Addict

End

These are not just empty words i hope but i cancelled my subscription to the world of warcrap now and will cancel my account tomorrow. Damn Blizzard make you call them to cancel the account. This way i can make sure i don't go crawling back and pay another £9 a few days later as has happened many a time before. Even wiping the damn game off my drive couldnt keep me off.

Perhaps its time to face the music at last. I can't keep away :/ I'm addicted, i truly am...

"Hello, my name is Emil and i'm a WoW addict"

"Hey Emil"

Meh

I'm stuck in a vicious circle that sucks all energy and motivation out of me and it refuses to let go. It used to be fun but now it's just a chore. The only reason for keeping it up is the thought of how much time and effort I've already put in it and it would feel like a waste to stop. Not stopping is more of a waste...

It has suspended my life, I dont take the time to take care of myself, my hobbies, my friends.

Should i stop? YES
Will I stop? YES....eventually

Addiction is a myth...im an extremely mythical being.

In and out...

Yet again I've been missing for a long period of time but I am back. I'm not gonna run the whole "hopefully I'll be around longer this time" because, frankly, that shit just doesn't carry any weight at all. I write and blog whenever i feel like it and during some periods of my life i write more than others. Recently it's been a period of the latter. So what have i been up to then...

Well i'll do a bulletpoint version since my last post, which was just before my exams if i remember correctly

> Back in Sweden mid June-Beginning of July
> Spent 1 month in Thailand from Beg. of July till end July.
> Got my Bachelor's in Psychology
> Dossed about a lot after my vacation in Sweden doing f*** all

...and now i'm living in a Swedish city/town called Örebro where i've resumed my psychology studies start from the 3rd year on the 5yr program here. I just got my new flat today and moved all my stuff in just before i headed back to Gothenburg (where i'm presently writing this text).

The city seems nice and the people ive met sofar seem nice as well. Each cohort consists of about 40 people so it feels more like i'm back in Highschool than at Uni (as opposed to the UK format where you're one for 200 students).Everyone is on good terms with everyone else and more focus is on group project where u get cases to work on...bla bla bla.
Starting next semester i will get my placement, either in Örebro or in Gothenburg if i can find a good one. I'm really looking forward to that actually, finally i'm allowed to get in there and do some damage :P

oh well, enough for now...

E.

Tips from down under

Something i picked up from a mate's blog, he's been lookin for something like this for a while and i'm glad (weee) he found it. Just installed it and it looks sweet as. Have a try if you're running Mac OS X.

Menu Shade

Late night compositing

Been trying to figure out a way to get this coffee mug onto the computer and here is what i came up with. If you have any grand ideas please feel free to comment or whatever (and preferably something that doesn't involve ripping the paper off the mug :)



Drew this while on a (moving) train on my way back from Paris, and might i add i'm quite surprised it turned out like it did. Hope the doodles are visible :)

Bah

In an attempt to rectify past financial misteps i might have taken i have decided to put my recently purchased PSP on eBay. I really need the money and i hope i can get a good price for it. Only owned it for abit over a month really and haven't had alot of time to play with it. It's just laying there, £230 worth of equipment and games, reminding me of my poor finance management skills.

On a lighter note(!)...

I'm starting the 3 week long cramming sessions tomorrow and i should be finished, and hopefully still with my sanity in check, sometime early June. Can't say i'm thrilled about the whole idea but it seems it's the only way i can revise. Organisation and pre-planning evidently hasn't worked so well for me (think 4 resits) and it pains me to say that this cramming technique does. I think it's because it appeals to my lazy side. I can't get off my arse to do anything and some days when i know i should really be studying i sit in front of the computer and don't get up until several hours later (6h+ usually) due to pure inertia. And i think it is safe to say that i cannot be trusted to sit in front of a computer and study at the same time (not effectively anyway). Let's just say my room isn't entirely conducive to my learning :)

My solution is thus: get up bright and early, head straight for the library and not leave until it is dark outside, which is normally around 7-8 pm these days. I hope i can stick to this routine for longer than 2 days. And also, on top of the 6 exams i need to revise for i have a 6ooo words dissertation due in on tuesday (9th May) and im still about 4ooo words short :/

Needless to say, i have alot of exciting times to look forward to; after which i will hopefully be able to put it all behind me and rest easy on some desolate beach in Thailand. For now, I'm going to finish an episode of E.R. and then read for a bit, if i can manage to keep my eyes open, before hitting the sack.

Bonne nuit my nooblings

one more thing...

I just read a passage in the book i spoke of earlier, the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind, that kind of sums up what the author, Julian Jaynes is proposing, however tentatively.

"...man and his early civilizations had a profoundly different mentality from our own, that in fact men and women were not conscious as are we, were not responsible for their actions, and therefore cannot be given credit or blame for anything that was done over these vast millenia of time; that instead each person had a part of his nervous system which was divine, by which he was ordered about like any slave, a voice or voices which indeed where what we call volition and empowered what they commanded and were related to the hallucinated voices of others in a carefully established hierarchy..."

"...The gods were in no sense 'figments of the imagination' of anyone. They were man's volition. They occupied his nervous system, probably his right hemisphere, and from stores of admonitory and preceptive, transmuted this experience into articulated speech which then 'told' the man what to do.."

(Jaynes, J. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York.)

These are just excerpts ofcourse but i find the whole idea he proposes very interesting,

back to reading! :D

Roots

More on the topic of books (i should really be reading textbooks at the moment and not these kinds of books) my mother recommended a few books on the history of the Persian Empire. i've ordered them both and they are, or will be soon, en route to me. They are:

Darius the Great: Ancient Ruler of the Persian Empire
Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War

Two books i hope to read very soon and I'm quite eager to do so in fact. There is also another on the same topic which is by the same author of other popular history books such as "Rubicon" on the Roman Empire, namely Tom Holland. Should be an interesting read:

Persian Fire

None of these books i actually have the time to read right now! /cry
but hopefully i can bring them along to Thailand this summer and read on the plane and on the beach. Aaahh...summer...

(＾＿＾)/〜〜

the cookie has gone bad!

Reading a truly fascinating book at the moment that deals with the very essence of our being, our consciousness and its origins. I'm infamous for totally destroying any description or story i attempt to tell so i will not try to explain what it's about but let me just say after reading a few chapters of this book you will start to rethink everything you know or think to know about human experience, history, religion etc etc...

It was recommened to me by a truly superb lecturer at the University of Leicester, an intelligent and great man, although abit eccentric (but isnt that a part of what makes good people great? :)), by the name of Julian Boon. He is a legend in his own right among psychology students here and it's great fun and always rewarding to be in one of his lectures. The book he recommends is part of the Psychology of Love and attraction module which he teaches. I'm yet to fully grasp the link between love and attraction and the subject matter of this book but im sure it will come to me when i start to read through the textbooks.

the book, if you are interested in reading it, is called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and can probably be found at your local book shop if not you can follow the link i provided to get it from Amazon. I bought it from our Uni bookshop here and it cost me £5 so i can't imagine it costing that much on Amazon.

I can safely say that those £5 are the best £5 i've ever spent!

bogtown

Of late, done several things list below, one of which is untrue:

- been to paris for 5 days
- had a haircut for £22
- finished lectures
- bought iPod Video
- bought iMac G5
- bought PSP

who am i kidding? they're all true

Take my money away...i have no in my fridge but i still go and buy gadgets, the most recent a total impulse buy. Im happy with it though. Very interesting "thing".

Sketch #2

Sketch #1

Never was good at taking notes :)

*sigh*

How bored can you be before your head explodes? :/

exams, dissertation deadline, oral presentation for dissertation and essay deadline....*SIGH*

too much play no work makes for an unsuccesful bum

*pinch*

The chief export of Chuck Norris is PAIN!

Check out the latest fad, the infamous Walker Texas Ranger is back and he's coming for you, read up on him before it's too late. Don't be a victim!

For your own safety please read up on these random facts about Chuck Norris. They could save your life!

LOL :D

The Pillows & Co

One of my favourite japanese bands, The Pillows, have released a new album "My Foot"(!) Got it the other day and had a listen. It's got a few true gems and is overall a damn good album. I like the title track especially (my foot), as well as "Third Eye". Those are the ones that get played most and are likely to be put on repeat quite often. Check them out, a brilliant rock band from japan.

On other news, been starting to think about my plans for after graduation and have my eyes set on continuing my psychology studies in Sweden. That's if i'm accepted to the course. Hopefully i will. If i do get accepted, i will study for one term until jan '07 then hopefully have enough money (either scraped from studen loan leftovers or charitable donations from my overworked doctor brother :D). Once you get settled in and get a job money isn't really an issue, but it's just the settling in part that can be quite expensive. Getting an apartment isn't always easy and once you do, there are some fees that must be paid, fees such as a deposit (which is usually the equivalent of 3 months rent) and key money, which is a one-off payment to the landlord (another months rent) who has been so gracious as to let you live there. So as you can see it all adds up and before you've even set foot in your home for the next year you've paid for almost half your time in it. Crazy huh, but that is the way of the japanese and one must follow the rules or be without a place to live, which isn't really an option :D

"hopefully" it will all go to plan and i can gradute -> start studying in sweden -> go to japan for 1year+

after that god knows what will happen!

iPod

Finally got my student loan today! Chi-ching. And what is the first thing i go and do? Straight to the local apple retailer and buy a new ipod :D Got me a 60gb Black (sexy as fuck) iPod Video and my god are they lovely. The video bit has proven to quite a mission (encoding for ipod format etc) but its all good. Especially impressed by the photo bit. The quality is amazing.

Well well, no time to write. gotta go drool abit more over my latest gadget, and maybe some more on the one before that (the new swedish keyboard arrived the other day as well free of charge, courtesy of Apple, so now i have two keyboards yeay)

ba-bai

never ever

Uni has started again and that means new things to study and more lectures to attend. I have 4 lectures a week with wednesdays off. Not much new going on at the moment. Have discovered a new fun pasttime and as usually im abit late to get on the bandwagon. What i'm talking about is Podcasts from iTunes (or other places now). One particular podcast i enjoy is MyExtraLife. Just a bunch of guys, geeks and talented webcomic artists alike, chatting about anything and everything that is geeky, dorky or in any other shape or form, female-repelling. Very funny in other words :P Movies, games, webcomics etc etc, those are the usual topics anyway. Great fun!

A crush

Can you fall in love with the sound of a voice? I think i just did...It's so weird. Got a call from Apple about an order i had cancelled. I missed the call so she had left a message and as soon as i heard that accent i was a goner. I'm really quite worried :) I think i'm moving to Australia...!