One thing I've done on my Livejournal account is write something on my Profile page. Actually, I don't know the exact wording used on Livejournal. It was so long since I looked at it last... Well, one thing I've written is a section that I called What I'm currently reading. The only problem being, I don't update it very often... So every now and then, when I check how many posts I've done, I notice that the book is not current, I update it and then a few months go by...

Yesterday I got this idea though. What if I write about the books that are in the pile on my bedside table? They will be read soonish (with a few exceptions every now and then), so therefore the reader will find out what I'll be reading in the near future, including what I'm currently reading. Since I add one book a month, plus an extra three every month, that means I should be able to write the contents down once a month and then a totally new list would be there the month after. True, some books will probably still be there a month after. I change my mind a lot.

Interested readers will ask: why the extra three? Well, a few years ago, 2007, I was off work for Christmas. During that time I read a heck of a lot more books than I usually did so the pile was depleted. What I usually do when that happens is to add an extra pile. In an unplanned way. December 2007 I introduced the monthly extra thing. I did it all through 2008. For 2009, I got the idea to stop doing it. Since I had like 7-8 books a month and I don't usually read that many, the pile grew in size which I counteracted by only putting small books there. By now I had read through many of my smaller books and the books on my bookshelves were mostly bigger. So 2009 I chose not to do it! It lasted until April or May or something and then I went back. Yeah, part of me wants to go back to the old days of non-month extras, but... We'll see what happens, eh?

Long intro that. Let's get down to what is actually on the table at this point in time.

Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time. This is a comedy, fantasy, occult, science-fiction, philosophy and religion book. Like me, Pratchett has a tendancy to write about a lot of subjects at the same time. I know that some readers can't get on board with that, but I love it. I have read it before a few times, and I have listened to on an audie book as read by Tony Robinson I think it was. It got into my collection by the simple means of me buying it. I bought four books a little while back. Yes, all of them Terry Pratchett and all of them in English. Surprised?

Terry Pratchett: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. A children's story, comedy, fantasy, mystery, science-fiction drama kind of thing. Yes, it was part of the four mentioned in the previous paragraph. Yes, I've read it before. I just love rereading Pratchett. You can always get something new out of his books even the fourth or fifth time you read them...

Dan Brown: The Lost Symbol. Many say that Dan Brown can't write a coherent story if his life depended on it. I guess me liking his books and owning four of them means that I'm not much of a reader then? Anyway, the interesting bit about this book is how it got into my collection. When I left Jonte Engdahl's, I got a gift certificate for a near by book shop. One day I, for some unknown reason, looked up Dan Brown and saw that he had written a new book. So when I found the book in the store the day after I took it as some form of sign or something. It's in American English (yes, there is a difference) which kind of lead to something of a problem. My next door neighbor borrowed the other two books in the Robert Langdon trilogy, but since she doesn't read English books, she had to skip on that one. I still look for the Swedish translation when I go to the library to lend it to her. Still no luck. It's a reread, but good books deserve to be read often.

Stephenie Meyer: Om jag kunde drömma (Twilight). I mentioned this book yesterday, which inspired this post. Santa Clause, apparently, is into the whole Twilight thing? I remember, when I first opened up the present, I only read bits and pieces on the back. From it I learned that it was a love story? Amazon had awarded it as one of the best teenage romance novels of the decade?! I'm not a teenager, I don't often read love stories, what was going on here?!? After getting my glasses on, I read the word vampire and I got a hunch as to the story... True enough, under original title it said Twilight.

So those are the books currently in the pile. The order in which they appear on the list have nothing to do with which order I will read them in. I tried, for a while, to put the newest book getting into the pile on the bottom, but that made it difficult to view it's content. Currently I have the biggest book on the bottom and so on with the thinnest being second on top. The one on top is of course the books I'm reading: Thief of Time.

You know, it would make more sense to write this list on the first every month, wouldn't it? Oh well, I had the idea yesterday so I wrote the post today. It's the way I get inspiration.

PS. Yes, I finally wrote a Christmassy post yesterday, are you happy now? Please tell me what topic you want me to tackle next :). (preferably a simpler one...)

About half a week ago, the door bell on my door started playing Wagner. Don't ask why we got rid of the old door bell or why my dad chose Wagner of all the available music themes on the electronic door bell. I guess he just liked it *shrug*. Since I was, mostly, asleep at the time, I let my dad open the door. There was noone there! (spooky, isn't it?). A wrapped present laid by the door as he opened it. A present for me? Wow. Who was it from? It was from Santa Clause! It was a book! I just love getting books, don't you? (I know most of the world don't read, but this is my blog and I'll assume that who ever reads this reads, otherwise they wouldn't have read the question). Later in the evening, he text messaged me, asking if I had gotten it, to which I replied yes and all was well.

That got me thinking... Who is this tubby, red clad dude anyway? Why does he give presents? Where does he live when he's not making visits to all the children of the world? Why a red coat? It's winter, surely white is more appropriate...

Many questions, most of which won't be answered today. I will simply write down a few of the legends as I remember them from school and we'll see what we can see.

Let's start with the birth of Jesus Josefson Christ. According to the legend, he was born on December 24th, year 0. The day after, three shepherds came visiting and brought him gifts. Now hold on a second there... How did the shepherds find their way to a crib in Betlehem? By the way: that's a literal crib, as in dispenser of food for animals, not the modern day phrase crib meaning house. Apparently, according to the legend, the three of them were following a star? Ok, let's get that straight: three SHEPHERDS were out and about in the MIDDLE of the night in DECEMBER looking at stars? Take a few seconds to think that through. Now imagine the consecuenses of our lord and savior being a Capricorn! However, had the story taken place in spring, when shepherds are out to help the sheep with the lambing, that would make more sense, wouldn't it? Also, the travel would be easier. Tax gathering is usually handled in the spring. It would've made more sense, wouldn't it? It MIGHT have something to do with the fact that people have been celebrating winter solstice for thousands of years, complete with giving gifts to each other. POSSIBLY the Christian tradition simply stole the holiday from old pagan religions? Just speculating here, let's move on...

270-346 a dude called Nicholas of Myra lived in what is now known as Turkey. One of his traditions was the giving of aid to the poor around winter solstice each year. Why? Because it's cold in winter and the poor need blankets and food. Does it sound like the behavior of a saint? Well, yes, it does. So he's known since then as Saint Nicholas. His occopation, by the way, was that of a bishop. There is a bit of a colour clue there for you, if you're paying attention.

Let's go all the way to paganism, shall we? Have you ever heard of a guy called Oden, Odin, Wendel and about a hundred other names? Can you remember how the paintings of him look? Long flowing beard and a hat that comes to a top. Kind of similar to Gandalf if you think about it... Why did I mention that guy? Well, it's another clue, put them all together and you might figure it all out.

At least back in 17th century England, there were legends of a bearded, well fed, guy with a green, fur lined suit and a inclination of giving out presents to children. We're getting closer to today, isn't history fun?

Somewhere along the line, the giver of toys was a goat. Somehow, that got made into the devil, which followed the present giver around. Only like 100 years ago, those that were nice got presents, but those that were naughty got taken back to hell by the devil. It's the old carrot AND stick ruitine. You know, if it bribery doesn't work and threats don't work, do both!

Around the mid 1800ds a version of Father Christmas turned up in the nordic countries. Wearing a sensible grey coat the Tomte DID have a red hat on. We're almost there, aren't we?

Ok, time to pull all this together. We got all the colours of the rainbow for clothes now, don't we? Surely we can combine them into a dancing elf in a rainbow coloured swede jacket singing? No? Just a thought, just a thought... Somehwere in the 1930s someone took the red bishop's coat of Saint Nicholas, the fur-brim of Father Christams and the red hat from the Tomte and put them all together. Red and white? What does that remind you of? Well, what that advertiser WANTED the audience to think about was the red and white logo of the Coca-Cola company. However, even if the Santa Clause we know today was used as an advertisement plug, the history of his appearance goes back quite a long time, as mentioned above.

Where he lives? Mora. Lappland. The North Pole. Outer space? Another dimension?! The basic idea is: somewhere where it's always winter. As we populate Mora, Lappland and even have base stations on the North Pole, those have proven to be difficult to house the jolly bearded man. I have no idea where his address is these days, but somehow he still gets all those wish lists the children write him. Oh, and he uses reindeer to pull a sled around the world so that he can visit millions of homes on one night. Yeah, let's not get into the physics of world wide travel, those calculations have a tendency to get really messy...

Let's just say: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Hogswatch to all!

Yesterday, well, earlier today in fact (I don't count 2 am as earlier today, but according to the rules of the 24 hour clock, it is) I kind of, sort of, promised to write a post about Blood Bowl. It's the game I'm playing currently. Well, off and on. Sometimes I have the attention span of a kitten and I'll forget about, oh, look, a shiny thing over there...

Anyways. I told someone about the fact that I've been waiting some 15-20 years for a good computer game version of the game and that this year it had arrived. His assumtion that it was bad was a good one. So often, after having waited for that long, nothing good can come of it. However, it's actually very good. True, I've only played the straight to computer version yet. Since, to today's youth, that is boring and takes too long, there is also a version with real time playing time. I, who've played the board game that it originates from, like the slow, turn based mode.

History? Oh, ok. Somewhere in the 80s, apparently, Europeans started getting an interest in American football. I guess we finally got over the facts that:

A. American Football, after the kick off, is not played using your feet.
B. The item being thrown around is not spherical like a ball.
C. There is already a game called football, where you use your feet all the time, kicking a spherical ball around.

Anyway, somewhere around that time quite a few attempts were made to create a tabletop board game out of it. One such was Crrrunch!!! Actually, don't ask me to spell it. It has, litterally, been over a decade since I played it, and it's not mentioned in any historical record of Blood Bowl that I've read. Why did I mention it then? Well, the basics were layed down with that game. The basics being: violence, on field war and fantasy creatures used to play the game. It was not great though... As I recall, the playing things were cut out pieces of paper moved along a field that was simply too big for the game. And since the game didn't end until you got three touchdowns, the game could go on forever, the ball being thrown across the field, both teams running after it, back and forth... It was rather messy, in retrospect.

In 1987 the first version of Blood Bowl was released, the creater being Jervis Johnson. A very talented man who also co-created Warhammer 40.000, a future version of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and also Necromunda, which was set in the WH40K universe. By the way, now that we've finally gotten Blood Bowl up and running, could we look to Necromunda next? That was my favourite game for years. The simplicity of it, compared to WH and WH40K, was that you only had like 10 figures on each side instead of hundreds or thousands. Which is also true of Blood Bowl.

In 1988 a second version was created. This time with actual figurines for the players to play with. The game mechanics started going more towards a sports game and less of the Warhammer influences were there.

In 1994 we finally get to the third edition. This is where we are today, more or less. The game comes with two complete teams, Orcs and Humans. 24 plastic figurines in all. I still have 11 of them, I think... I chose one side, the guy I purchased the game with chose the other. But then I lost one thrower... Such things happen. The original box game got added to with playing cards that added a lot of flavor to the game, but was rather disliked by many players, since it added a bigger element of luck to play a part. No matter how well you played, no matter how good you planned each action, your oponent might get just the right card to say: nope! You didn't score that touch down. Ha ha.

A fourth edition was released in a gaming magazine and then added to and subtracted to a lot over the years. Since I didn't read it, I've only read about it. Jervis Johnson himself states that some rule changes should've been better play tested before release...

Currently, there is a "living" rule book online. The idea is that rules are added in and taken out by players over the years. I actually printed out a copy once. Thick wad of paper that was... The basic ideas of the game remain the same though. Also, there is of course the dreaded house rules to take into account... Those state, pretty much: in this house or in this gaming club, we skip some rules and add a few of our own. They're dreaded by people who come along from outside the group. Also, if you play under house rules for too long, you forget what the official rules are.

Oh well. In 1995, during the hype of the 3rd edition, a computer game was released. In my mind: the developers should be flogged. The graphics were horrible, meaning that you couldn't see a difference between a 10 foot troll and a 3 foot dwarf. You had to physically direct your mouse pointer over the player to find out what was what. Also, all the players were seasoned players. Meaning that you couldn't start out with a new team of players. They all had special skills from the get go. Now imagine trying to keep track of your 11 players and the oponents 11 players, where all of them are represented by a player that looks exactly the same as the rest...

In 2009, June 26, the game I bought came out. Since I had heard all the hype, I missed the actual release... The logic behind that? I had been caught up in the hype of the follow up game to Duke Nukem 3d and I don't want to get caught up in something like that again... That game is still in development, right? 13 years later? Also, Jagged Allience 3 is still being developed, right? (the list goes on and on...)

So how did I do? Well, I started off with the tutorial. Not much to say there, I knew most of the rules by heart before hand. I did the single match thing. It ended 1-1. The game was more difficult than I remembered... Then I started the campaing. It ... didn't go well.  First match, three dead and then I gave up. This was during the first three days. I was pacing myself, since a lot of build up had gone into me playing the game. Like I said, 20 years of anticipation. The second campaign, where I wore green instead of blue (because green is mean, yeah I've played orcs in a lot of games during the decades of being a gamer) went better. It's still going on. To clarify why this time is better: I faced off against wood elves the first game instead of chaos warriors. Wood elves go for the more agile game style of ducking and weaving, avoiding fighting and chaos does not. Since my own game style is more fighting based, I walked straight into the fists of the chaos team... What race do I play then? The humans. It's boring, I know. What makes humans so special then? In one word: nothing. This is true to most fantasy games. It also presents a challenge, which is good. What is good about not being special, in this case? Well, elves are fast, agile, throw the ball well and dodges out of the way. However, they are also fragile which gives a more aggressive player an edge when it comes to fighting. Chaos warriors are more heavily armoured and can really pound the snot out of you in close combat. Their weakness is that all that armour weigh them down, so a more agile team can dance around them to score touchdowns. Killing your oponents players is good fun, but at the end of the day, the team to score most touchdowns win. So that is where humans excel: against slower, tougher teams, they can move around a lot and throw the ball. Against faster, more agile team, they can kick some serious armour padding.

By the way: yes, I did postpone buying it until recently to coincide with me being off work for Christmas. Remember: red is the colour for Christmas because the blood is flowing all over the field. Well, actually because our ancestors sacrificed to their gods, pleading for the sun to come back. It usually does, so the sacrifices worked, didn't they? Now where's that sheep...

This question has been going around my mind for the last 5 years or so. *looks it up*. Ok, since June 15th 2005. That's when I played a trial version of a game called City of Heroes.

I played it for the trial period, loved it, wanted to buy it, but there was just two small problems: the price and the fee. The price was nothing too spectacular. New games costs a LOT of money. Which of course makes people pirate games more often. Sales go down. And prices get raised even more. It's a vicious circle, really. Anyway, that's not really what I wanted to write about today, it's the other word: fee.

Now, CoH is nowhere NEAR as well known or played as World of Warcraft. I've played WoW. I guess my experience of that game was ruined by my experience with CoH. Above all: the travelling bit. As a character in WoW, you CAN buy a horse or other appropriate mount, at level 20. With it, you can travel faster. I can't remember, is it 100% faster? At the most? However, horses, for some reason, can jump no higher than you can. In CoH you get your travel power at level 14. Want to know how high you can jump? To the moon. Well, there's a cap at the top of the highest sky scraper. In CoH you play superheroes. At level 14, if you so chose, you get the ability to fly. Being able to do that, kind of ruined my WoW experience, since I had to WALK everywhere. Superjump in CoH makes you jump tall buildings in a single bound (congrats if you get the reference).

Yeah, I got side tracked. I actually wrote a school assignment on CoH once. It was years ago now though.

After my two week trial period, I thought about buying the game. Costly, yes, but if I liked it so much, surely I could afford it? Yes, I could. The stinger is the fact that it's a MMORPG. Massive Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game. It's the O there that is the problem... You cannot play the game WITHOUT connecting to THEIR servers. Their servers require maintanence, updates, electricity and on and on. To provide the service of the servers, they have to get payed somehow. They finance this by taking out monthly fees.

I actually held out for over a year. The idea of PAYING to PLAY a game was simply unappaling to me. In November 2006 though, I gave in and started playing. Surely for a month only? Well, it started out that way... According to my account information, I've actually payed for 30 months worth of subscription. At 13 dollars a month that makes 390 dollars. If we assume the dollar to be worth 7.50 (according to Forex.se) that makes 2925 crowns. A new game cost like 400. So, instead of buying SEVEN games, I've spent that money on this ONE game?!

Yes, in 2005 that sounded like an impossible idea to me too. Looking back though, I've gotten a lot of fun out of that game. I usually start playing it again every few months. It's very addictive.

The question arises though, what exactly am I paying for? Most of the time, I play solo. I've had some REALLY bad experiences with teaming with other players (mostly in WoW for some reason). That means that if the game had existed in an offline version, I'd definitely play it more. There would be less strain on their servers and everything would be better. Well, better for me.

Imagine that WoW has, oh, about 10.000.000 players. They all pay 13 dollars per month. That makes 1.560.000.000 a year. Not including the sales of more games, which they make expanses off, so you have to buy the game anew every so often.

You know that question I had about why they charge fees? Yeah, I just answered it...

Anyway, the main question of today's post was how much people are willing to pay to play. Apparently a lot. Pricing here is the same as it is everywhere. If people were to disagree with the high fees, they'd stop paying them. Revenue would go down and the company would lower the price hoping to get back their customers. Well, actually, in the gaming business, they'd introduce new content to lure their customers back.

Actually, that was the topic of my assignment. I concluded that what makes MMORPGs so popular was NOT the massive part, but the fact that the game kept changing. True, more social beings than myself would like a static, non-changing, gaming world. But in the end, it's hard to justify paying fees for that. Yahoo games are rather static, but they don't charge fees, do they? I haven't played for a while though... My favourite Yahoo game, when I actually played? Pool. Simple, easy. I lost more than I won, but had fun playing. That's my strategy: lose and your oponent will continue playing, thereby giving me the enjoyment of the game. I've had that strategy for years... There was this one girl I talked to... She repeatedly told me that she'd swim from Liverpool to get to my house, wisk me away and marry me. The fact that I was younger than her son didn't seem to bother her :). The strange people you can find online sometimes...

How much are we willing to pay? Not a lot really. Which is why the gaming developers have to stay one step ahead of the myriad of free MMOs that exist online. I've tested like a dozen or so. NONE of them even comes close to CoH :(. Oh well, I've taken a break from that. These days I'm playing Blood Bowl. But that'll be a topic of another post, some other day.

Ok, new things have been happening. It all started yesterday morning... But, before we get to yesterday, let's go back further because there's been things happening all over for a while now.

Just recently I've gotten into the idea that Jonte Engdahl's WAS a bad place for me to be. After three months of brain washing by the Work Distributers, it has finally gotten to the point where I can see their viewpoint. That took some effort.

A few days ago, I finally saw how my knowledge of Smalltalk (a programming language similar to Java), SQL, Visual Basic, XML, SPSS, SAS and Matlab IS a good ground for me to have to work at a factory folding boxes. You know that suspension of disbelief? Yeah, it took a LOT of suspension to pull that off... A deportation of disbelief is more like it...

I've actually, recently, been warming up to the idea of me working with card board folding full time as my lot in life. I've studied the maps of Eslöv a bit, I've talked to it's residents and I've slowly, slowly, gotten into the idea that the town could be a nice place to live. The reason for moving would of course be that I could NOT travel two hours to and two hours from work every day WITH an eight hour work day.

So that was my state of mind. Then, yesterday, I got a call from my contact person at Samhall. Aparently, the Work Distributers, the ones that are responcible for this whole mess, have decided that I shouldn't be at Samhall anymore. Typical, I've only just gotten around to the idea that it doesn't suck and I'm told to leave. They're very good at timing like that... The 27th of January I will have to find a company that will give me some kind of job. I've been searching for a job for four years, but now I need to find one in four weeks? Thanks!

There is one bright sparkle though. Well, the Samhall dude mentioned it. He's a nice guy. He and Samhall didn't really deserve the unnice things I've written about them over the months... It was all the Work Distributers' fault really. But since I STILL haven't met my contact person there, I displaced my dislike to Samhall. I appologize for that. Well, his idea was that I knew of a company that would take me in. A company where I had some actual work experience and they would actually have work tasks for me. That's right: Jonte Engdahl's!

But wait a second here!!! The Work Distributers will never agree to that, surely? JE is a vacuum. A black hole. A dead end. Not sutible considering my student records. And on, and on and on... I asked the Samhall guy about it, he asked my Work Distributer contact and she apparently said yes. What?! JE was so unsutible that I had to be DRAGGED away from there, kicking and screaming, to work at cleaning floors (since that is appropriate work for someone with a Bachelor of Science degree). And NOW they think Jonte's is the best place to put me? MAKE UP YOUR MINDS!!! Then, WHEN you've done so, wreck other people's lives, not before.

If everything goes perfectly (wish upon a star, the moon, a space station, what ever) I will go back to Jonte Engdahl's. Why then did they drag me away from it in the first place?

Oh well, I went to Jonte Engdahl's today. Jonte himself told me that he'd phone them up and give them a piece of his mind... I fear for the sanity of who ever takes that phone call, I really do. He's ... very straight forward. My former / future (?) collegue, Cuno, did start a story about how things had changed around there. Things were rougher now. They worked harder. And... He was cut off. Repetedly. That is common though. Phone calls, customers, people asking questions, e-mails... That poor guy has to have the brain of a super computer to keep track of things like that! I did beat him at chess today though :). Then he beat me. It's the way it goes.

Then I got to thinking... Those that know me know that nothing good can come of this. And nothing will. My thought was that I had 20 days leave at Samhall. During the Christmas Holiday I will be using 5 of those. That leaves 15. I was thinking 5 for Easter, 5 for Midsummer and 5 for the Malmö Festival in August. But my time at Samhall ends on the 26th? Hm, how many days is that... Using a gift I got at Samhall, a day planner (with the name Samhall on the cover and text relating to the company on the first pages), I found out that I had 16 days left. Assuming, knowing full well that assumption is the mother of all mess-ups, that I won't need to take a day off for the Work Distributer - Samhall - Me conference on the 14th that leaves... *drumm-roll* 15. *cheers and fireworks* *looks around wondering who brought the drums and the fireworks?*. A-hem. I wrote my contact at Samhall, asking about it. He'll read the mail tomorrow and respond. Could it be that tomorrow is my last day at Samhall?

Regardless of that, I will start my Christmas vacation tomorrow. The first thing on my list of things to do for my vacation? Visit Social Services on Monday. *shrug* I have to. I need money for rent and food and stuff. Also, Cuno thought I needed a hair cut... I've had that thought myself for a while. Maybe some day.

So, Christmas is almost here. True, the stores have been selling Christmas stuff for months already, leading to a lot of Christmassy things being on sale, A WEEK before Christmas Eve. But that's not the subject of today's post. No, what I want to write a bit about is a song called:

Do They Know Its Christmas?

That song is, as far as I know, on EVERY collection of Christmas songs ever recorded. The idea is that the listener will be informed about the troubles of a continent known as Africa. Now, if you want to keep your ignorance, remembering that ignorance is bliss, you do NOT listen to the lyrics. Above all, you should NOT read today's post, because I did listen to the lyrics and I have a few things to say about a few of them...

"the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears"

Yes, because there are no rivers in Africa, right? The Nile does NOT flow in Africa, right? The longest river in the world does NOT flow there, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_length

"And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime"

Noteworthy: this is the first time we're introduced to the fact that it's definitely Africa we're talking about. Also, no snow in Africa? Yeah, because Kilimanjaro isn't 5.895 metres high with the top covered in snow all year around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_mountain_peaks_of_Africa

"Where nothing ever grows No rain nor rivers flow"

I've covered the river part already. No rain? Yeah, because Africa isn't partly covered in a RAIN FOREST? Wherein plants GROW in abundance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:800px-tropical_wet_forests.png

"Do they know it's Christmastime at all?"

40% of the population is Christian, so yes, I do believe they know who Christ was and what Christmas is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Religion

The idea is good. Help those in need. But saying that AFRICA, the second largest continent in the world, is all Sahara desert is a lie. Telling us that it is and making the song one of the most played during Christmas is spreading that lie.

I'm all for helping, I'm for the idea of telling other people to help, but I have a problem with lies. I just can't stand them...