A 9 to 5 job from 10 to 6.

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

I’m not doing a whole lot these days. Many people would call it a job. I really do not understand how people can work like this. I guess it’s because of work-load and outer demands and seeing as i have both of those hovering over me, I’ll try this method, for a while.

So every morning at 0800h I haul my ass out of bed. Then I sit that ass down on an exercises bike (which I got from my brother a couple of days ago) and “ride to work”. Then I have breakfast, take a shower and walk the dog. at around 1000h I get in. I put on a pot of coffee and then begin to study. At 1300h I have lunch. Then I study. At 1700h I have dinner. Then I have an hour where I can study if I feel I haven’t rapped it up for the day. In any case: at 1800h I get off.

I hope that this kind of thinking and this kind of behaviour will help me get done with my bachelors thesis.

As for music, well there’s not much going on. I have written the embryos for two new songs but I do not think that there’s any room for them on the new album. Rob and I are waiting for a phone call to make our lives just a tad easier. When we get it I’ll tell you.

Kids! Don’t try this at home!

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

gun2

An update of lesser importance.

Posted on March 29, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

A couple of type-o’s found tem self into yesterdays blog. (See post below.) Firs the so before Earth Hour… don’t know what that is about. And the no football was of course supposed to be now football, which makes all the difference in the world.

Now Camilla and I are trying out our new coffee grinder or mill or whatever. We also tried to roast a batch of beans ourselves but they turned out under-roasted, so the coffee became a bit blunt or weak or whatever. The roasting bit also turned our apartment into fog-central… and the grinder was set to the wrong setting so the grounded coffee wasn’t grounded fine enough.

So were giving it another go.

Other than that it’s yes another study day. Bring it on. Oh it’s already been brung. Ok.

Today:

Posted on March 28, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

So today so Earth Hour. Camilla and I turned out the lights and joined in. Our neighbors did not. Sad. Other than that I’ve just been kicking it. Doing laundry, general tidy up, cocking and no fotball.

Day off.

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

So, no blog yesterday. Maybe that’s a bit of a lie. There was no proper blog. Just a phone-blog; me blogging from my phone, and a crap picture of me in the tram with Camilla (not in picture) going to the movies. (The post I am referring to is the one below.)

We went to see Watchmen. I thought it was really entertaining and different from your usual superhero-movie. Camilla didn’t like the movie at all. I give it a 7/10. Dragging the grade down was some initial, explanatory, bad dialog, the scenes with the most CGI which could have been better and the length of the movie (I’m not saying it should have, or even could have, been a lot shorter but some 15 minutes could have been taken off).

Yesterday I also took a day off from studying, to recalibrate my brain. I played a lot of guitar, cleaned the apartment and took a trip into town. Also, let’s not forget, the new Bob Hund album “Folkmusik för folk som inte kan bete sig som folk” dropped yesterday. I got it off iTunes, got it into my iPhone and walked all along the Avenyn listening to it. A 7/10 here also.

Spring is in the air, and in Göteborg. (Another thing I did on Avenyn; saw that.) The restaurants and cafés are all getting there beer gardens…? up. The Swedish term is Uteservering and it’s when the restaurants place some tables and stuff on the outside, on the street, and serve food and stuff there as well. (Be ing the Nordic country that we are. This is not a year round thing. When it gets hot enough, in spring, the beer gardens go up. Therefore it’s a sure sign of the season.) And why beer garden? Well i tried an Internet translating service and Beer Garden was its translation. So there.

Now I better crank it up a notch. I have a Bachelors Thesis to write!

No!

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Just letting you all know: no blog today.

If you can’t read this you’re too far from the screen.

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Sorry for the day of silence. (Like anyone cares, it’s kind of saying sorry to myself…)
I’ve been studying my ass of and I’m not done yet. And I’m more or less going in to the 14:th hour. (Normal breaks of food aside… and oh, I watched an episode of House.)
I have the little fixing of the text left. Man, I sure hope I pass this course. It’s been the hardest yes, and probably the one in which I have taken in, and remembered, most info.
Tomorrow I am going to sleep until I wake, no alarm! Then it’s just back to the books. Big thesis ahead of me. Deadline for first draft of primary discussion: April 2:nd. Oh my.

2 news turn 1 news but not for you… yet.

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

I had two potential good music-news to tell you all about. The reasons for me not telling music-news directly when I learn them are two: There might just be a hint of news to them, or news to be or I do not want to jinx negotiations or whatever. This came in handy yesterday. Rob called and gave me the cancellation or undefined postponement of one of the news. On the other news I got a partial ok with a follow up to decision waiting. So I’ll have to keep you on that one as… still.

Apart from this I’ve been studying my head off and feel no nearer to compleating the exam.

Studying leading to cluelessness.

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

I am getting a bit worried. Worried about my exam on David Hume. The exam due on Tuesday at 2359h, at the very latest. I thought I got it, and that all there was to do was to write, but the more I write, the more I put the exam together, the more it seems to fall apart. For the first time in the exam-writing- history of the Halberstadius I am worried that I might not make dead line. And this is a tough one. It feels like an attack on my intellect. I guess one has to take failure when one hasn’t studied enough but to have to take failure just because you’re dumb is really hard. True one can argue that one can never study enough but there are only so many hours in a day. Better get back to not having a clue…

Slow-Mo Sunday (for everyone else).

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

0900h on a Sunday morning and I am up with the poultry. Yes my dear friends it’s study time, or study day, again. I have three crunch days a head of me. Writing, putting together, an exam on David Hume, his criticism of the moral rationalists (in perticulare Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston) and his positive suggestions. So, that is what I’ll be doing the whole day, apart from the normals of eating and walking the dog.

I am, however, in an up-beat mode as Arsenal eased passed Newcastle last night, also both Chelsea and Man United lost. If only Liverpool could loose today as well all would be super dandy.

I have a couple of loose music ends to tie up and report to you but seeing as it is Sunday I do not expect them to bit tied up today. Sundays always suck that way. Everything moves in slow-mo.

I did it!

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

So I went out and did it, I went out and got an iPhone. I’ve been wanting one for quite some time and now, yesterday, my carrier started selling them. I am actually writing this post on it.
Love it!

There is only later.

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Where do all things begin?
I mean, Is it really that difficult a question?
If I mean to seek an answer to the origin, the same, the one origin, to all things the question might be a tad difficult to answer. But, is that what I am asking? The answer is quite obvious isn’t it? All things begin at the beginning. Yes. So do all things. Or do they?
What about time? Do time begin at the beginning? If so, then what was before? No time? There might have been no time. But what is no time? No time must be nothing, or no whatever must be nothing. So can one say that there once was nothing? Well yes! That actually seems to be the case. Science agree, there once was nothing, or singularity, and then there was something (more than the smallest incarnation of the room). But the more intuitive idea seems to be that one can’t say that there once was nothing. Either there was no once or if there were: that once was filled with something. If there was no once, but we agree there is a now, is the now also a nothing or has there always been a now? If there always has been a now then science seem to be at fault, at least at a glance. Might it be that what I call once and now and something only are terms used by us to describe the now and are no terms to apply to the once in which there was nothing hence opening to a once in which there were nothing and again making science right?
But is there a now? If so: when is now? My guess is that there only is a later and later is not nothing, it’s not something, it’s anything.

Beat. Beat? No! Beat? No! Beat? No! Beat!

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

I am beat.
No, not some sort of superhero, parading around in tights with a big B on my chest accompanied by drums.
No, not hit in the face, or some other part of my body, once or several times, by someone.
No, not part of a historical cultural movement involving some sort of intellectualism and drugs.
I am beat as in tired.
Why?
Because I have helped a member of my family move house.
So why didn’t I just write this, or that: I am tired? Why this cascade vomit like excess of words, rolling out from my brain through my torso, via my arms and out of my fingers?
Well because that’s all I have to write today, that’s your lot, and I thought your lot should be of an ok size.

3 things, a text message and no links.

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Today, as yesterday and as many days to come, all though not tomorrow, has gone in the sign of studies. I have read up on my Hume, on his criticism of the rationalist, in particular the moral, or morality writing, ones. I have also watched the entire video from the iPhone OS 3.0 presentation. Good stuff. Can’t wait to get my hands on a iPhone but I’m holding out for the next generation. There are more than a few hardware updates I would like. More: I have walked the dog and, together with Camilla, made tacos! That’s it and that’s that. All in all a pretty uneventful day but the hours ran by anyway.

Got a text message from Rob. Were going to have a talk about what we both want to do and then we are going to do it. It’s not harder than that. (This is in reference to the recording of my next album.)

I’m sorry that there aren’t any links to all the good stuff I am talking about, I know how you all like to surf those and discover all the great content about Marks Municipality and John Rawls and Ice Cream, but the Safari 4 beta and WordPress just don’t click yet and the folks over at WordPress say they won’t do anything about their code until the beta tag is out of there (which is right I guess one thing I can’t understand though is the fact that in there own spell-checker, the WordPress spell-checker, WordPress isn’t a word). So you just have to bare with me. I mean, it’s not like I run PC and have a computer that sux.

(And I am not even going to talk about how crap Hull and their Manager and assistant manager are… You can look for yourselves over att bbc.co.uk/football.)

Last real lecture, essay.

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Last proper lecture of the semester today! The rest of the time, until June, will contain of writing an essay and all around that. I am going to take my friend Johan’s advice and make up some sort of schedule so I do not end up getting up at 1100h every morning, drinking chocolate milk for breakfast and watching the “Back to the Future”-trilogy over and over. (I’ll probably just do that on the weekends.)

A part from my essay, which I really will get in to on march 25:th, I have an exam to write on David Hume. I will get all my info on that sorted tomorrow and then I’ll start writing. 3500-5000 words and also it has to include a comparison with another philosopher. I’m going with Derek Parfit.

I’m having a little trouble choosing minor. I have to choose another subject ro study for a year and a half before I am eligible for the Master Program in Practical Philosophy… I really do not know what to choose.

We’ll see.

Recording in the bin.

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Had a talk with Rob on the phone a couple of days back. We talked about one good thing and one bad thing, or maybe two good things. It depends.

The good thing we talked about I can’t share with you yet (I’ve already touched on it once). The bad, or possibly other good, thing that we talked about was the song ‘One Fear’ or more accurately the recording of that song. I do not like it, the recording. Rob does not like all of it and thought that working on it so that we would like it would take a lot of time. So we’ve decided to throw it away. Erase it. Start fresh.

We need a plan. And we are working on that plan right now. We need an idéa as how to work. For the last album the idea was clear. For this one we just headed into the studio and got going, and immediately took a wrong turn (if any turn).

So I’ve sent Rob a long e-mail today with thoughts, ideas and clarifications. We will hit this ball back and fourth a few times until we know what we want to do and then well do it.

Sun-day.

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

A really slow one today. Taking it really easy with just two walks with the dog marked down as activity. The weather has been really nice. How many times can I get the word really in this post? I’ve been having my left eye on the two Premier League games that were on today (Chelsea- Man City and Aston Villa-Tottenham). The only thing I can say about that is: Yes! Now Arsenal really is fourth looking up.

I’ve tried to write some music but my hands really hurt. It’s a seasonal thing I get. Sometime between winter and spring my skin, so to speak, starts to really hurt and gets really thin. A bit icky perhaps but that’s just the way it is… really. Have to wait a few weeks before I grip the axe and really shred the frets.

Answer: 10.

The Anger recording pics out there.

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Tomas Halberstad

Once I used to have a Flickr page, with pictures and stuff. I thought that I erased that account… apparently I didn’t. Take a look for yourselves. It’s pictures form the recording of ‘The Anger’. Might be fun to look at. Might not be.

A sneak peek (or if you can’t be bothered) here’s me and Lars-Martin (from the post before).

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Lars Martin Hall.