Now, what the heck is this..?

Your race number is:
19971
Green Start


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Götatan, a cold day in october...

Promoe vs Helt Off with Timbuktu @ Berns STHLM

some images from the concert with Zoro (SA), Helt Off + Timbuktu and Promoe yesterday night at Berns STHLM.

Great audience, excellent venue. This was the Grand Finale on the national tour, which made the event even more maxed. The sound was very good, and very loud. The whole crowd danced, there was a huge selection of CDs for sale, and afterwords both Timbuktu and DJ Large kept on playing music. I picked up this album.

Reggae act Zoro opened up the evening, and appeared
on stage throughout the night.



Helt off



Helt off guested by Timbuktu


Promoe on stage




Related Links:
Promoe official homepage
Loop Troop official homepage
Timbuktu official homepage
Zoro official homepage
JuJu Records/Helt Off official homepage
Helt Off: Helt Off

Just how down is this guy?!

Introducing... Mr Sverker Åström!
The other day I was invited to listen to the one and only Swedish diplomat after Raul and Dag, Mr Sverker Åström! An honour on my part and extremely interesting. It was an evening of connecting diplomacy with communication, which really isn't that farfetched.

Mr Åström was properly introduced, having worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1039! He has lived through 2 world wars (b. 1915) and here is a couple of milestones in his career, where he has represented Sweden.

A global career
1940-1943 Moscow
1943-1946 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, STHLM
1946 -1948 Washington
1948 - 1953 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, STHLM
1953-1956 London
1964 - 1970 UN
1970 - 1972 Brussels
1972 - 1977 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, STHLM
1978 - 1982 Paris

Some quite heavy achievements
Not only did Mr Åström pull the great environmental conference in the UN in 1972, he has also been a known critic agains the US foregin policy. And aside from that, in his late 80s he has interpreted Michelangelos forgotten Love Poems!

Charm and Honesty
In short what Mr Åström declared was that besides being a decent civil servant, there are two attractive features in his line of work; Charm and Honesty. The quintessence being "The truth should always be persued, firm and engaged!"

Related Links:
Wikipedia on Mr Åstöm (in English)
Wikipedia on Mr Åsröm (in Swedish)
QX on Mr Åström
Kärleksdikter, Love Poems by Michelangelo, interpreted by Mr Sverker Åström

Bob Log III and his amazing helmet!

How does a guy come up with this concept?
I took this picture at a concert the other day. I read about this act, appearing on my favorite venue in STHLM, Södra Teatern, featuring a guy playing on his helmet. I pictured someone hitting himself with drumsticks or something. Also, the entrance was free, so what the heck. Let me tell you, I was in for a surprise...

Bob enters the room...
A bit delayed, suddenly the sound of a regular sound check fills the bar. But there is no one on stage? Everyone starts gathering around, when Bob to everyones surprise enters from behind, through the crowd, playing with a wireless (yeaha) transmitter, and with his helmet on.

What IS that helmet anyway?
Looking like an old MC-helmet, with silver flakes in the paint job and a smoke colored visor, Bob has created a complete instrument. In the visor, and this took a while to notice, he as actually mounted an old phone, which looks like a trunk and doubles as a mic. The spiral cord goes over his shoulder, and gives him a very unique sound, to say the least.

This clip should give you a hint on what the concert was like...


Check out Bob raft-surfing the crowd on Youtube...


Related Links:

The Ugly Truth: Cables, cables, cables

Cables, can't live with them, can't live without them...
I have dedicated a fair amount of my time to eliminate cables. Wireless speakers, wireless X-Box 360 connection, 11 mb WiFi, cordless phone, BT headset, you name it. But Hi quality audio and video requires cables, its as simple as that.

The backside is always the backside
This is the backside of the AVR 3806 Receiver and the DVD 1920. And cables can be expensive. Its not unusual to pay €100 for a couple of feet HDMI cable. I cant really say if it makes a difference, but after investing in the hardware, it seems like risky business to be cheap on the cables... I have connected 6 + 1 speakers (2 front, 1 center, 2 satellites, one rear and one sub bass), one X-Box through component video + optical audio, the DVD through HDMI and both optical and Coaxial sound, a cassette deck, a VCR (as TV tuner), the LCD-TV and output to the projector via HDMI. It's a whole lot of cables.

Related links:
QED Cables

Street art STHLM: GREEDY NEED

STREET ART: GREEDY NEED
On my way to work one morning, i sweeped this with my phonecam. Someone had texted GREEDY NEED on the roof of one of the sheds along the railroad tracks heading in to the Central Station. Quite needy, quite cool.

What good is a love affair without..? Denon DVD-1920

A Home theater of course needs a decent CD/DVD player.
Since HD-DVD and BlueRay is coming within a year or two, I went for a cheaper one, the Denon DVD-1920. It sets you back about €300 and fits perfectly with the Denon AVR 3806 receiver. Main purchase incitament was, again, the HDMI output. This baby also plays back Super Audio CD, which has more than 60 times higher sampling frequency!

This was the cheapest model in the Denon range that featured HDMI. It is good in more ways then just getting an all through digital signal. It also reduces the amount of cables that has to be connected to the projector, since HDMI (as opposed to DVI, which is otherwise compatible) includes audio.

Some specifications
* HDMI with HDCP Digital Video Output
* Component Video Output
* HDMI with Scaling from Silicon Image 480p/720p/1080i
* 216MHz/ 11bit high-end Video DAC
* 24-Bit, 192-kHz High Resolution Audio D/A Converters
* Progressive Scan
* Dolby Digital and DTS Output
* SACD Playback

i'm satisfied with this unit, I would of course love to watch both HDTV and HD-DVD, but a lot of technical obstacles effectively blocks this for the moment. Meanwhile, I can write a bit more about SACD. Its a format developed by Sony, mainly for music. As mentioned above, the sampling frequency is a mindboggling 60 times higher than your ordinary Audio-CD, 2.8 Megahertz, as opposed to 44 kilohertz. Some SACD come only in traditional stereo, and some come in surround sound. Many SACDs comes as hybrids, with both a regular CD-track, and a SACD-track, which means you can play them back in any regular CD-player as well. You can read more about SACD here, and there is also a lot of good information about SACD on Wikipedia.


Related Links:
www.sa-cd.net
SACD on Wikipedia

Je sui un Festis...

Header
Sometimes, just sometimes, I actually think i have a meaningful, responsible and important job. Then these things happen...