Who is who

I recently got into Dr. Who, I started with the Netflix episodes available here where I started out with the eleventh doctor portrayed by Matt Smith. Being an old fan of Star Trek, and other vintage Sci Fy, I do not know if I made a mistake of not starting with earlier incarnations of the Doctor. On the other hand, really cheasy old Sci Fy can at times be too much of stretch for even my enthusiastic imagination. I liked Matt Smiths rendering of the Doctor, the wacky slightly goofy yet ancient alien. So the next installation with Peter Capaldi was a bit of a shock. His more dark rendition was in my opinion a little bit difficult to transition into. But as I see more of it, it reminds me of the James Bond universe, despite the changes in characters, you get the bonus of a known universe. The entire history, the villains, the “rules” but we get a new series. It works when it works, however the legacy is like dragging mines, if you are not careful it can be destructive.

Serving the Public recanned spam

So Dansk Folkeparti has indicated that they intend to suggest massively reducing Denmarks Radio, the public radio and television network funded entirely by a license fee. First of all I dislike the license idea, it has become such a broadly defined when you are obligated to pay the license, and as soon as you trigger one of the criteria you are committed for the entire package. That sort of deals usually entails shady Bulgarian coupon salesmen and “clubs” or “subscriptions” that  seem to have no identifiable product or ways to terminate your membership.

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That links to the second problem, which is reason why I dislike the license idea. Denmarks Radio has gotten to big. They are in Danish Media present on every media platform. There is the classics TV and Radio, but we are talking 6-7 channels of TV and similarly on radiostations, they have a huge website, offering, streaming, live-tv, they have a full size orchestra, choirs,concert-hall even a circus for the kids. “That all sounds very nice” you might say, and it is but is expensive as well. So why have all those channels and outlets, what is the point?

The idea for DR is do Public Service. So in my opinion that means ensuring a good and comprehensive news coverage, and offer shows and content that would not be available if the market is solely run as a business. So I like shows that otherwise would not be made,  I do not watch it all, I do not even like it all, but I appreciate the fact that narrow subjects get a place and a voice, someday it might be my field of interest they cover. I even accept that they experiment with expensive drama, to offer good danish speaking and produced drama, when no one else is willing to do it. Even picking up brand new concepts of tv, radio or media content, if no one else is doing it in the Danish market. But as soon as it becomes mainstream, as soon as there is someone in the private sector willing to do it for money, because it now has been proven, valuable, DR should retreat and focus on new topics for what otherwise would not get the chance. No more X-factor, do not make drama or tv to compete with the others.

Last I know the movies and series DR shows are not that expensive, but when you have that many channels you need to fill them, but if what they fill them with is shit, 80 % of the time is not worth it. Yesterday, on the main channel DR1, before 18.30 there was not a single programme that FDposterhad not been shown before. Why are they showing an Australian Drama series from the late eighties what is the public service here? Then they had about 3 hours and 40 minutes of “new programming. After which Midsomer Murders took over.

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The idea of the “mandatory” license is only reasonable if you offer them a service that serves the public in a way that would not otherwise be served, due to cost vs. earnings ratios that might be too poor. But is does not warrant a 12-15 hours of recanned spam a day pr. channel. And do not even get me started on the cartoons…I think DR in this case less would be more.

Disclaimer, Flying Doctors & Midsumer Murders pics are not my own, lost my collection of tv poster from the 90’s in the great fire of 2004, so if you own them and want me to take them down, let me know. 

A common enemy

I have watched enough SciFy to conclude that there is a basic premise behind most of them. That the emergence of Aliens, that is recognized as Aliens. Not the never seen green ones, that seem to abduct mostly Americans and probe their bodily cavities, but an actual other species. Whether they look like us, in the Vulcans from Star Trek, or are the odd looking ones from Independence Day, or even the obscure shrouded ones from Contact it has to be a clearly recognizable Alien. Across it all there is the premise that the discovery of an outer-worldly presence would somehow unite the people of earth and we would put aside our local struggles. Join in the “Earth race” as just humans and face the others as joint species. What is a slight color difference between ourselves, if the other guy has tentacles and can breathe liquid Helium. And those maintaining a nationalistic attitude in the face of an entire Universe is always considered, the idiots.

So how likely is it that we would react this way. Well, just looking at Syria lately, the existence of a clear and common enemy for all the insurgence groups, has not united them the the point they agree on nothing more than they will shoot at that common enemy, but they maintain a conflict with each other also. The Sanskrit saying of “The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend” does not seem to work….ever. Most likely what will happen is that if an Alien race started to drop by, they would just be one more element in a grand giant conflict stew, where we hate liberally across races (humans), borders religions and now planets and species. We have enough conflict to include Aliens.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the fantasy a little longer, hope is as you know, like Aliens ever green.

Google missing in Pokémon Go

So Pokémon Go reached Denmark as well, and not ever having been part of the Pokémon craze at any point in my life, I was completely unaware of the latest Pokémon developments or this phenomenon until numerous humorous references kept rising to the top on reddit.com/r/funny. Actually I confess I purchased a deck of Pokémon trading cards for my son a few years ago, and briefly acquainted myself with the rules. But the kid was more interested in trading a few cards back and forth with his friends, and playing with some plastic miniatures he already had, so I quickly dropped that knowledge from my active memory. Since I am getting older, like my old Nexus tablet i continuously have to purge active memory, to keep it just barely useful.

Anyway back to Pokémon Go, since I am still the go-to tech guy in my family, the procedure is that I have to figure out how this and any other app is working,  with this one preferably before the high pitch whining and pestering from the my kids, became unbearable. I installed the app on my own iPhone. I am not an Apple Guy, I literally end up in furious rage every time I have to do the simplest action on one of those units that goes beyond the apple universe. Copy or move a file to my PC, share with non apple phones, copy a contact, anything you name it I have been annoyed with apple over it. Unless I drink the apple cool aid all the way, owning an apple product just seems annoying to me. My iPhone is a company issued phone, not a personal choice, as I still prefer Android Phones. This was however just a test, as the kids have iPhones and since it did not feature any out-of-apple experience, my sanity was safe. I input my date of birth and opted the easy Google login option, and presto it was working, fairly easy it seemed, gameplay was intuitive, boring in my opinion, but straight forward. So I left it at that and deleted the app again.

My daughter and son now had to get the app, but the load and unresponsiveness of the trainer register/login option left them frustrated and they came running back to me. Quickly i realized the Google option was not found on their phones. Why was this? I searched long and wide on the internet and finally I came across the answer, which I will share with you now, since you have endured the lengthy rambling prelude in lieu of finding the answer like I did.

If you input a birthdate in the Pokémon app as my kids did, and it indicates that you are younger than the allowed age of a googleaccount this google login option will not appear.

Fix. The block is locally on the phone, so…

  • on Android, easy peasy, clear the cache of the app, and type a new birthdate.
  • on iOS, nothing is easy here since there is no option on iPhone or iPad to clean a specific app’s cache unless you uninstall it entirely from your device, so that is what i did. And then typed in a new birthdate.

So there you have it, gotta catch them all.

Creepy Halloween

So Halloween is coming up, and despite it not being part of my cultural heritage, I do enjoy it. It crept in 8-10 years ago, and since I already had kids back then we sort of crept along with it. The first years, we just had a single pumpkin and a little candy for the few kids that came by. But slowly it became more and more, and last year my oldest kid and my self started making our own decorations. And during the summer we grew our own Pumpkins.

This year we are hosting a party, so we are kicking it up a notch.

My kids and I are planning to make the following:

  • 5-6 gravestones.pumkin-debzzies-buddies-and-aka-homies-25856794-418-306
  • Fluorescent Wire ghosts
  • Giant Cobb webs
  • Multiple Bats
  • Scary animals in Jars
  • 5-6 Carved Pumpkins
  • Silhouettes for the windows

all accompanied by scary sounds, skulls, bones and lanterns.

Equality and sexism…and stupidity

I read on a blog which will only be referred to as “the blog”. Since I found the latest content so mindnumbingly stupid, I did not find it worthy to mention by name. All the same I was compelled to hit the keys and respond, someone might read it and mistake it for facts.

The Author claims that sexism and sexual assaults are running rampant in the state of Denmark, based solely ,it appears, on the flow of thoughts of the author. The only hard fact that is cited is the EU report where Sweden and Denmark suddenly popped up as the hardcore sexist societies, where testosterone apparently is the only guiding principle, and men do not hold back in grabbing a handfull of boob, if the mood strikes us. But having read the report, I can find several problems in the conclusion that is drawn from the data. I do not deny that some may be victims of sexual assault in Denmark and Sweden also, this is of course deplorable and should be  dealt with. But I do think that women in Sweden and Denmark suffer from a misconception, most likely from the many years  they have spend labeling themselves as victims in a society, that is already feminized to the point of insanity. Denmark and Sweden are perhaps the most feminine societies in the world, but since no objective data exist on this, this is for now merely my opinion. Anyhow the report states that a third of all danish women have experienced sexual and/or physical violence since they were 15. So either I have been shielded in my life, or… I do know, and have known a number women, family, wife, friends and despite this still is a big taboo, I suspect I would have met a lot in my nearly 40 years if these numbers were valid. But I have ever only heard of couple in my entire life, which would leave us with a number closer to 1-3% instead of 33%. Additionally, who does the beating, I know no one who have displayed, or even indicated that they thought it would be OK. So how does this work, who is getting beat up and who is doing it? Or is the women who answer this study really answering something else. Is there an equal study that indicates how many men have been involved violence, if so sign me up. I got slapped around at a party when I was 16. But does that constitute a general problem, or just the fact that 3 guys were idiots.

I think the debate looses its validity because the argument seems to come from a group that is more than 50% of the population, who has better education, longer avg. lifespan, better health and yet still insist on viewing themselves as victims.
Like the increasing pressure we see to the freedom of speech coming from religious and other groupings whenever their sensibilities are grazed, so do the female agenda feel that any non-preferential treatment of women is inherently sexist. The individualized idea is that if I felt any discomfort at all as a women, it must have sexism. But women and the blogger seem to have forgotten, that equality means no preferential treatment, to either men or women, that does not equal qoutas, designated spots and behavior to cater to women. I once read a mathematician, who said that many people mistakenly thinks random is evenly distributed, but that is wrong. So if sex is not be considered, is also means that 5 men may be chosen over 5 women, without this being anything other than parameters other than sex, picked these 5. That denial of breastfeeding in a restaurant is not sexist, It can be merely be a preference of the owner, like the choice to serveronly fish, or have a mariachi band. Just beacuse you would like to do something, it does not follow that you can do it in a restaurant. Some people like to dress up as an orcs, but you can most likely not get a table at a  Michelin restaurant in that outfit. Is that sexist?

It’s Ascii time

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It’s about time

[ezcol_3quarter]I have been looking for an reason to buy a new phone, and the Moto 360 watch seems like a perfect excuse. I have a the HTC One X, the first one. I found it very attractive because of its Quad Core and large screen. I ordered it back in April 2012.
All in all I have been satisfied with the phone, except for a minor issue with the screen, where the a yellow shade started to emerge.[/ezcol_3quarter] [ezcol_1quarter_end]666-htc-one-x-white-front_1340794327[/ezcol_1quarter_end]I discovered that it was a problem with the adhesive, and I got it fixed under warranty, so no big problem. I like the phone, I like the software, the performance etc. But my issue with HTC is that they pump out new phones, like their life depended on it. If that’s their business strategy, it sort of does, but perhaps the lessons from Nokia and their fall from grace, should have warned HTC of this approach. Anyhow this strategy also means that even newer phones like mine, is no longer being updated.[ezcol_1quarter]motorola-moto-360[/ezcol_1quarter] [ezcol_3quarter_end]The HTC One X was sold up until 14 months ago. That is a very short time, from purchase to being obsolete. So how does this relate to the Motorola watch, you may ask, well the watch requires the 4.3 version of the android core system, and since HTC have decided no longer to support updates the HTC One X, with new versions, the Moto 360 and my old phone is not compatible.[/ezcol_3quarter_end]

I understand that supporting numerous phones, displays is costly, and perhaps therefore HTC should take a lesson from the most successful singular mobile phone producer Apple. I have no great love for the Apple or its iStuff, but the strategy of making one phone, and doing it well, and then keeping it supported for an extended period seems preferable to the mayfly lifespan the current HTC phones have. For me at least I need to upgrade to a new phone, but I will despite my satisfaction with HTC seriously reconsider a new HTC.