The Backup Drive 2008

Doubt anyone will ever read this, considering how seldom I update this page (eg how many readers I probably have due to that), but I thought I'd just post a random issue before they shut this site down for me. If anyone does infact read this, please fire off an email, so I know if I should keep going. (andy@polarbearpodcast.com)

I want a new backup system for my studio and I don't know which way to go. I hesitate between getting myself a big-ass 2 TB drive where I can put everything but live dangerously, and a raid system that will not only do backup per say but also provide me with at least a sense of data security. Which ever way I choose I'm looking at an about 700-1000 USD investment.

So to help myself out I decided to ask my faithful listeners for a little aid. I haven't done this since I asked them to chip in for my US-rip that never happened, but that was over two years ago. After all I put out a show on a fairly regular basis all for free, which I love for the record, but it would be nice getting even just a little something for all the hours I have put into the show.

So I have asked my listeners to grab all spare change they have lying around the house and send it my way. In this way I hope to raise at least a few hundred dollars, which will be of GREAT help in the backup system investment.

What do you think? Is it OK for a podcaster to ask for money from his/her listeners if it happens once in a while like in this case, or am I automatically doomed for stepping away from the "podcasting is free" path?

Hopefully the "Backup Drive", as I have called it (whitty right?), will be recieved well by the listeners and that I can turn on the power switch to the new backup system before christmas!

Hope to hear from you all!

/ Andy

Back from Greece

Greece turned out to be a very nice place, and we got home safe and sound even if the journey was made in the middle of the night!

One week in what might just bee one of the hottest places on earth. Or at least that was the way it felt as me and my daughter stayed in a little village called Gerani, on the north east coast of Crete, whish is an Island off the coast of Greece, right in the heart of the Mediteranian.

Not much to say more than that we had a great time, working on our tans, swimming in the pools and just kicking it, and that I might not be entirely cut out for charter travel, but I'll give it at least one more shot before I give up this very Swedish tradition of travel. Being moved around as a herd of cattle isn't exactly my idea of travelling, but on the up side is the much cheaper tickets so maybe I can learn to live with it. Eventually.

Photos from the trip is posted on my FaceBook page, which you can access if you are a FaceBook user. I will also post a few photos on my website for the podcast over at www.polarbearpodcast.com as soon as get time to do so.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the Cretan population for their enormous hospitality and I hope to be back there next year already if only I can manage to get Marie to get over her fear of flying.

Talk to you all soon, and don't miss episode 136 of the PBP where I talk a great deal about the trip we made, in reference to life in Sweden and how things are different in Greece. See the website for more information about how to listen to the show and subscribe!

/ Andy

Off to Greece

Some might call it stupid, blogging about going away for a week, but since this only applies to myself and not the rest of the family I see no immediate threat in telling you about the trip I am going on, starting tomorrow.

It all began 4 years ago when I took my son, then 7 years old, to the USA to visit my parents, during the time when they were planning on retiring and becoming Florida residents in their late years. We had a lovely trip he and I, and it became one of those great memories for him, that he still talks about from time to time. The reason that I only took my son with me was that my daughter, then 5 years old, was a bit too young I thought to appreciate the long trip, plus I wasn't too confident in taking responsibility over two kids on a trip like that. It was the first trip I made on my own as a parent.

So my daughter stayed at home that time, but I promised her that I would do a similar trip with her when she was 7 years old. Now, things didn't quite turn out the way I had planned it. First off, my parents sold the house two years later, and decided to not become Florida Old People so our natural destination kind of disappeared. Secondly a lot of other things happened in my life that made it difficult to find a suitable time for a journey of that magnitude. I mean it's not like going on a weekend trip to London or Paris. You need to clear at least 10 days or preferably a fortnight in your schedule to pop over the pond.

But this year, when Marie and my vacations where planned and carved in stone we noticed that I would have an entire week all by myself when she had gone back to work, so suddenly I saw an opportunity to repay my debt to my daughter and take her on that trip.

Since one week is bit short to go all the way to the States I figured that a regular charter to Greece would be just what we both needed. So I set it all up, surprised her one afternoon in June with the news and here we are now, only a few hours away from maing the trip that she has been waiting for and longing for for over 4 years. I am so excited and I know she is too.

We are going to a little village called Platanias, on the Island of Crete, south east of the Greek main land. From what I heard it's a nice little place and it turns out that Marie was there when she was ounger together with her parents, which is kind of fun.

I will be sure to post more info about our trip as soon as we get home and hopefully together with a lot of pictures.

So as they say in Greece (if they speak english that is); See you on the other side!

/ Andy

Getting things together

Just a quick post to promote my new website, and to tell you a little bit about why I've made it. Because it wasn't just on a whim.

The new site is called The Art of Andy and can be found on the internet (where else) through www.theartofandy.com. The point of the site is to gather all things I do on one site. It will work like a portal for all my crazy projects. I have noticed over the years that I have a lot of friends out there from different media, but very few people know of all the stuff I do, so in this way I can get people listening to my podcast to find my blogg, and people who follow me on Twitter to perhaps take interest in the book I'm writing etc.
I have devided the website into a few different categories, making it easier for you to check out what I am up to.

As of now I have the following categories:
• Writing - Here I will present all the books I intend to write, with possibility to order directly from the website. The first one coming up is STATIC, which will be released during the fall of 2008.
• Podcasting - Here I will present the various podcasting projects that I am involved in, foremost the Polarbear Podcast and Podcast Helsingborg. But there might be more stuff in the future.
• Blogging - Well, guess what. Your reading it right now! Plus I will add links to Twitter too eventually.
• Photography - I have started to take an interest in photography, and even if I am still a novice I thought I'd simply post my best work (according to myself) on this part of the website. Maybe I can attach some kind of commenting-system to that. We'll see.

So as you see the categories will be filling up and maybe I'll be adding more categories to as life takes me on more fascinating rides in the years to come. "Music" feels like something that will need to be added pretty soon!

I haven't yet figured out exactly how I am going to approach the site from a technical perspective, but I am sure that I will find a smart solution to that, any day now.

As of now, when I write this, the page is still in beta, so please bare with me and give me a few weeks to get everything in order, but please visit the site today if you want to and just check it out and put the website address in your memory. There will be a lot of creative things coming from that site in the future. Believe me!

/ Andy

David Gahan on top again!

I know I haven't been very good at posting things here lately, but I've been very caught up in life (as usual), writing the book, which is soon to be done, and working. But I made a reflection today, on the musical side and I'd just like to share it with you all.

The lead singer of Depeche Mode, David Gahan, recently release his second solo album. The first one, Paper Monsters, didn't do so well. Not in my taste anyway. The second one however, titled Hour Glass, is really good. I would even go as far as to say that it's better that the last two Depeche Mode albums, which I think weren't as good as I had expected from the Depeche Mode I know and love. But I have to say that Playing the Angel (the latest DM album) was much better than Exciter, which became the "never listened album" for me. I just can't take it.

So to sum it up, I think David Gahan's new album Hour Glass is really good. I would recommend you to buy it if you like this type of music, and you can be expecting a bit more Depeche Mode sound on this album compared to the more drunk-rock sounding Paper Monsters.

Now, I have to get back to work and try to produce a few more pages on the magazine I'm currently working on. I really need some vacation now!

/ Andy

Equality in Sweden

Nowhere in the world is the word "equality" so used in debates and newspapers as in Sweden. The reason? We have the most equal social system in the world, right? Or do we???

First of all we have to look at equality in a historical sense to understand where all this is coming from. And I am talking about equality between the sexes now, just to make that clear. We've been debating equality since the early 1970's, when women in Sweden as well as in the rest of the civilized world started to demand the same rights as men. The struggle to win territory has been going on since then, but the problem that has come up is how to define equality and what kind of equality efforts are positive and which are negative.

For instance (and how it has been widely recieved):
• Feministic people/parties in Sweden have for a long time tried to create laws to force the father in a family to be home more with the children. The plan is to 1) give the kids more time with their dad AND 2) make women more attractive on the job market, since they don't have to be home for as long. (NEGATIVE)
• In Sweden we try to ensure that men and women are paid the same for identical jobs regardless of their sex. (POSITIVE)
• We have ensured that fashion is more unisex and it is today looked upon as very unequal to encourage women to dress sexy, both at work and in their spare time. (NEGATIVE)
• The Swedish government has given women the right to vote in state elections (POSITIVE)
• Swedish women have tought their men to iron, wash, clean, cook etc in order to make the work at home moree equal (POSITIVE)
• Swedish social politics have enabled woman to work outside the house and earn an income (POSITIVE)
• Swedish social politics have made it impossible for a woman to work at home if she wants to. We are dependant on double incomes to survive! (NEGATIVE)
• The laws have forbidden sexual harassment at work and other social functions. (POSITIVE)

So as you see there are both pros and cons with this equality plan. What I react against is among other things the neutralization of the sexes. It reveals itself in style and fashion and the way we treat each other. If you are on a date in sweden with a girl it is expected of you to pay for your meal and your theatre ticket. The
girl will pay for hers. In the name of equality! If you pass a door you are not expected to hold the door for a lady, because she is fully capable of holding the door herself. In the name of equality! If you buy a girl a present it had better not be something sexy or something over feminine, like underwear or - god help us - kitchen stuff. In the name of equality!

WAIT! It is ok to buy jewels for some reason. Probably because they are worth money!

So as you see life in Sweden, as a guy, very quickly becomes a bit boring because we are not allowed to celebrate the women around us for just being women, because that would be sexist. We are not allowed to worship female figures for what they are, because then we "objectify" women. I think this is sad because God was an a very good mood the day he created women and I don't understand why women can't be allowed to be female, and feminine. It sort of takes away the fun. Why is it so wrong with gender roles?!

I am all for equality when it comes to same income, same rights, same treatment, but I HATE IT when it comes to social behaviour. And I hate the limits that we have created for the different laws surrounding equality and sexual harassment for instance. Today it is very easy for a woman in Sweden to get a guy at work fired. All she has to do is say that she has felt like a sexual object and the guy is gone. So it never goes as far as to having to prove physical contact or anything. Just feeling harassed is enough, and you can't defend yourself against that, as a dude.

Today we no longer give each other compliments at work, out of fear of getting sued for sexual harassment. How sick is that? I am afraid to tell my co-workers that they look good in a new dress or something, because I don't want to get charged for it. I think this is stupid. Of course there should be a line drawn at where compliments turn into harassment, but it sure as hell doesn't go at giving one nice compliment. Sometimes you just want to be nice, but no no!

I have never experienced a case of sexual harassment myself, so that is not why I might come off as a bitter old grump, but I have had an aquaintance who had to quit his job because of it. He might have crossed the line, from a female point of view, I don't know. But I think that what he did didn't call for a sexual harassment law suite. He complimented a female co-worker a couple of times and then sent off an email telling her that he thought she looked great and wondered if she wanted to go out on a date with him... Maybe not in those exact words though.

THAT'S FLIRTING! Not sexually harassing someone!

Another example is when psycologists and behavioural scientists tell parents not to dress their little boys in blue and the girls in pink and definitely not give cars to the little boy and dolls to the girl. All this in order to not mold the kids into these gender roles. On the contrary they tell us to give the guy a pink room, and see to that the girls play with cars... What is the point with that?

I believe that boys are boys and girls are girls. We both have different, but just as strong and important, qualities, that need to be used, not surpressed! There are certain things in life than are geared towards a certain sex, like giving birth for example. A man just can't do that, but you sometimes get the feeling here in Sweden that feminists here would like to see a law that forces 50% of all children to be born by men.

So I believe that we have taken the laws of equality to point of absurdity, where we can no longer function properly as two sexes in the span of the universe. If this development continues we'll be looking at a breed of non-sexual, unisexual beings in a couple of centuries not able to reproduce due to lack of interest in each other. Why love the other sex if it is just the same as myself?!

So...keep up the good work and be sure to put proper pants on!

/ Andy

Deep in the unreal

It's friday today. The sun is shining outside and I'm mentally preparing myself to get home after work and do a show. I've made a few notes during the day, looking through the various news sites covering Sweden and the swedish lifestyle.

Ever heard of Myke Bartlett? As I am writing this I am also listening to Electricity, which is a novel written by Myke Bartlett. I had never heard of him myself, but looking through podiobooks.com, in search for information on how to register as a writer (I'll get back to that in a later post) I stumbled across his work.

"Aston Somerfield, casual smoker and part-time alcoholic, has come to London to find himself. He knows who he's looking for, he's seen him on the cover of the NME. Drawn across oceans by fame and fate, Aston is keeping his diary empty to make sure he's available. Won't commit to anything until it's everything.

London, however, has other ideas.

When a virtual stranger calls Aston a few hours before his death, fate catches up with him, derailing his barely-made plans. Amid a hundred boozy evenings and romantic deadends, a mystery unfurls.
Equally assisted and hindered by tremulous accountant Tom Hensley and dedicated loafer Steven Black, Aston uncovers a different London, one of murder, ghosts, dangerous emails and the second big bang.
As chaotic and random as the city it inhabits, Electricity gradually evolves into a mystery bigger than the universe itself. Being of a somewhat useless persuasion, Aston does his best to ignore it."

There was something in this description that fascinated me. I don't know what, because I usually have a hard time with books where the main character is an alcoholic and everything is about booze, but in this case... Well, something got a hold of me. There was a decadence in the air that attracted my attention.

I'm up to the final chapter now and I have to say that it is a wonderful book, that grips you and takes you with, on a strange, annoying, but yet spiffy journey into the unknown. Sort of, anyway. My point is that I would recommend you to read this book, or listen to it as I have. Myke has a fantastic voice and he does the different characters in a way that I haven't experienced before.

Check out the book at Podiobooks.com.
You have to be registered to listen to the entire book, but it's free and only takes about 3 minutes to fix.

Soon time to check out for this week. My birthday is tomorrow so I'll definitely be off-line this weekend. :-D

/ Andy