Min hund har inte ätit mina läxor

Hej mina vänner från Tyskland och olika länder. Tiden går snabbt. Jag har inte skrivit för längre. Vad synd!

Nu är det nästan december och jul står utanför dörren. Den här helgen ska jag åka till Landskrona. Syntax Society ska ha julfest och jag ska följa med. Det ska vara kul tror jag. Medlemmarna från Syntax Society är “computer nerds” och många är intresserad av Demoscene också. Enligt Stefan “Shoe” Nordlander ska det finna mycket mat och glögg. Vi ska pratar mycket på svenska. Det är en bra övning för mig.

I somras var jag på den platsen den första gången och människor var väldiga snälla. Vi har spelat flera frågesporter på Kahoot och jag tror att vi ska göra det igen. Jag vet inte om de ska kasta långt hårddiskar igen — jag har missat det den förra gången eftersom min son hade haft barnkallas i lördags i helgen. Jag har sett foton, det var jättekul.

Eftersom jag ska köra bil till Landskrona ska jag sova i soffan på natten, tror jag. De har en stor källare och det finns mycket plats för den tjugo människor som har anmält sig på julfesten. Det blir trevligt!

Det finns ett fint poem på Syntax Societys hemsida:

Midvinternattens köld är hård,
cursorn blinka och glimma.
Alla sova i enslig gård
djupt under midnattstimma.
Muspekar’n vandrar sin tysta rond,
kod lyser vit på mörkblå fond,
snön lyser vit på taken.
Endast hackern är vaken.

Vi ses och god jul!

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More social events

The last night of April officially injects the life into everyone in Sweden. They celebrate this so-called Valborg night by having a great party. Lund is famous for their Valborg festivities where there’s a lot of drinking and bands playing and they leave the place like a mess — but just for a day.

We recently connected with another family from Germany that moved in into the neighbour town Staffanstorp. They have a daughter who is only a little younger than our boy and they get along pretty well. We visited the spring fun fair in Staffanstorp together — there were an unexpected lot of people there.

Also, ants were also feeling very social and started trying capturing our home, but plastic glue to the rescue, we were able to close (almost) all entry points.

In other news: Our couch finally arrived! And the new living room shelf unit. Unfortunately, it now so bright every day that we can’t watch stuff on our video projector.

Mid of May, more friends from Germany visited us with their kid while they spent some time in Sweden camping. It was pretty awesome and we went to the Skrylle National Park together, which has some really nice paths through the forest and a big playground for kids.

There also was a circus in town where Johannes met some other kids from his school class, which was actually better than the circus performance itself.

Next up, the Katastrofal Karneval came into town. This only happens every four years in Lund, where the students will make a big parade through town with funny costumes and lots of puns. There were also lots of theatre performances and such things, but most people seemed to be standing in lines instead. There were so many people that we left pretty soon.

Tobias, a friend from Kindergarten throughout school and after drove past Lund with his wife on his way up to Norway and paid us a far too short visit. I hope we can see each other for a longer period soon, if… well, we’ll see what happens in the next few years.

And finally, we reconnected with the Staffanstorp family for a walk and café visit. We were caught by heavy rain on our way to the café and again on the way back, but we still had a great time.

That was our month of May. Things really got back to life by now. It feels like we have finally arrived here and that’s a really good thing.

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Easter happiness

Time flew like an arrow. We bought new furniture, unpacked our stuff, went to school, to work, or just stayed lazy cats in the sun. I found the time to register my company at Verksamt, applied for a business bank account, learned some more Swedish on my own while waiting for the SFI course to start some day. Spring was in the air and Swedish people started wearing short trousers and lying the sun at 10°C.

I’ve been not nominated for the Meteoriks Awards, neither for New Talent, Best Midschool (what?) Production nor Outstanding Technical Achievement, so these Hollywood Oscar scene dorks can shove their biggest demoscene easter Revision party up theirs (thanks to an anonymous source telling me that the jury did not have a clue about the Amiga and its capabilities!). Which leaves time to not sit in front of a computer screen the whole easter weekend but instead have friends from Munich visiting us! What a good exchange of possibilities!

I’ll leave you with some photos. Let’s just say that we had a wonderful time together, having a barbecue, visiting the Dalby Söderskog National Park, visiting Lund and Kulturen, searching for Easter eggs, etc. And… hopefully, we will see each other again soon.

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GERP 2022 demoparty

Some of you may be familiar with me being part of the so called Demoscene. The Demoscene has nothing to do with people demonstrating for things, but is a subculture of computer artists trying to create technically impressive or beautiful pieces of computer software that will create effects and graphics in realtime (compared to being just a recorded video). I’ve been writing demos for the 35 years old Amiga computers back in my youth and returned to this a couple of years ago (with Ham Eager, there’s a video capture link there, too). Many people returned to the retro scene, this might be some kind of handling their mid-life-crisis 🙂

Anyway, one more benefit of moving to Sweden: There is a large demoscene culture in Scandinavia. So when I gathered one of the 100 tickets for the demoparty GERP in Skövde north east of Götenborg, I took the chance to go there to meet fellow sceners (who go by fantasy names called handles), who have a similar quirky and nerdy life-style and appreciation for the kind of art that I produce by coding. Usually, people gather in so called groups with strange names because you usually need different people for coding, painting graphics (pixelling) and composing music. At these demoparties, the groups show off their productions in all sorts of competitions, also to win prizes 🙂

I joined the group Desire last year and we (Hammerfist, mA2E and I) wanted to have an intro (that’s a small version of a demo) ready for the GERP party. Unfortunately, the project got delayed (as usually, also with me moving locations), so Optic, mA2E and I made a “filler” intro for the 40k competition (this means the program, that creates the audio-visual demonstration may not be bigger than 40960 bytes!). Usually, those “compofillers” are nothing too serious, but I got dragged in with the great graphics Optic provided and the wonderful music by mA2E and spent a lot of time coding on the intro.

Bifat of the demo group The Electronic Knights (bifat/TEK), Nero/TEK and Krill/Plush from Berlin wanted to give me a lift to Skövde, but unfortunately, a train derailed on the ferry they planned taking and thus they were late by about 24h. So I took my car with my fresh new number plates and drove up myself (4h drive). It was actually quite nice to drive and see the more of the lovely landscape in Sweden.

I stayed at an AirBnB as all the hotels were booked out and I didn’t want to sleep under the table as I had done when I last visited a demoparty 20 years ago (yeah, that’s a bit lame). After unpacking my stuff, I went back to the hotel where Optic and mA2E stayed and we had a couple of beers and other beverages before going to the party place for the music competitions that were held at Friday evening.

I knew almost nobody there, being away from the scene for such a long time and never being in a demogroup before. Luckily, I was introduced to people I knew from their nicks, including Photon, Blueberry, Prowler (who helped me with some gfx for Ham Eager), Wasp, Magnar, Magic, Bonefish, Frost and a few other people I can’t remember their handles anymore.

The music competitions had so many wonderful entries, it was really hard to decide which one was best. Check out the Amiga four channel, the chip music, the Amiga 500 EXE music compo (32 KB!). Both mA2E and Optic had various entries there.

The next day we explored a bit of Skövde, had some food and a couple of beers in a pub before the final compos. In the meanwhile, Bifat, Krill and Nero had arrived and it was nice talking to them and exchanging some tech tech.

The 40k intro competition came up and they showed our intro called Ramontic Getaway which was well received by the audience. Unfortunately, it was the only entry to this competition, which is a shame, because it really could have had some competition. It was an easy win, still I am rather proud of it. The other highlights in the demo competition were Kick the Sofa by Focus Design (with lots of great graphics by Optic) and Transhuman / Pachinkoland by TEK. The latter won the competition easily, running on a 7 MHz Amiga 500 from 1987 with 1 MB of memory.

It was my first real life demo party for over 20 years and it’s been fun, especially hanging around with mA2E and Optic!

On the way back, Bifat, Krill and Nero came by for a fika at our place in Lund and it was really nice having them over. So Katharina also got to know some of these demoscener-nerds in real-life 🙂

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Bil carful — I’m no l0n63r 1337

According to the Swedish Rules(TM), one has to register his/her bil about a week after (permanently) entering the country. Which is a joke, really, because you can’t get anywhere without your personnummer or a Swedish bank account. Moreover, you can sail any shore in the EU for at least up to six months without changing registration.

But as time was ticking and it stopped raining, no longer turning my car into an aquarium, I figured I could go through the motions of registering my car here in Sweden. Little did I know that this would be complicated, but not that complicated at all.

So I filled out the application form for the Verification of Origin from Transport Styrelsen on the mid of February and sent it to them, together with my original vehicle papers (Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil 1 und 2), a copy of the bill when I bought the car in 2006 (as proof that the car has been legitimately bought over a year ago), a copy of my flat lease contract from Germany (as proof that I’ve been using the car more than a year in Germany) and a copy of the last Hauptuntersuchung. And no, I wouldn’t get any of these papers back. They keep them.

Usually, some kind of temporary insurance is required while the registration process is ongoing, but I figured I wouldn’t want to make things more complicated as necessary and come on, I do have my insurance from Germany, right?

Then I waited for them to get my papers and send me instructions how to pay the application (1100 SEK). After that was done, I needed to make an appointment at the Bilprovning, some kind of TÜV. Or so I thought. I clicked myself through the endless realms of telephone loops and computer voices before I was speaking to somebody at Besikta Bilprovning in Malmö, who told me that my application was not ready yet. It said that Transport Styrelsen had received my money, but not that they actually completed my application.

So I waited for another week, checking every day at the website, if my application had been processed.

And finally it was ready. On March, 10th, I took my chances and just drove up to the Besikta Bilprovning about 1.5km away. I parked my car and went into the building. There only was a computer screen where I should be entering my registration plate number or my case number. I had neither.

So I walked around the building and finally met some human staff member whom I explained to that I wanted to make an appointment for Verification of Origin testing. He was very kind and answered, they wouldn’t do that here, but I could call his colleague in Lomma, handing me his business card.

I went home, called him and made an appointment in Lomma. I immediately got a text message to my phone confirming the appointment, with a link, but the link didn’t work. Never mind.

I drove to Lomma on March, 16th, went inside, entered my case number and something showed up on the screen and disappeared again before I could read it with my limited Swedish language knowledge.

So I waited outside for things to happen.

Behind which door does the Zonk wait?

About five minutes after my official appointment time, the cut-off case number with destroyed “Ä” letter replaced by a “?” showed up on a LED display, and I drove into door number 2.

The friendly staff person I talked to on the phone took and kept my documents (the original “Certificate of Conformity” that I actually should not need because my car was already registered in Germany, but who cares; and the original Hauptuntersuchung certificate). He then briefly looked at my car for about five minutes, writing down the VIN, looking at the chassis etc. And then disappeared for 30 minutes without a word. Seems whatever I had paid for at Transport Styrelsen, entering all the data for my car into their computer was not their job but his. I paid 2488 SEK for this service and drove home. I wonder how much I would have paid if he had examined my car in-depth. Next TÜV will probably be in around eleven months time — I’ll automatically get a letter.

Then I had to get a Swedish traffic insurance, which, like most stuff in Sweden, is split into two parts: the obligatory road insurance and the optional comprehensive insurance. This was a bit more difficult than I thought because I didn’t have a Swedish driver’s license, so the (price comparison) web portals didn’t work or spat out ridiculous fees. I had to write the companies by email for them to make me an offer.

In Sweden, a private car travels about 1,000 miles per year. Just if you’re wondering how people are covering their vast distances: one Swedish mile equals 10 km.

Unlike in Germany, these companies are not interested in the number of years you have been driving without damages (which is a pity, because I spent time on getting a letter stating my Schadensfreiheit rating). Instead, they will take the amount of years you have been driving. Probably because this information is electronically available — if you have Swedish driving license.

As my car is approaching its 16th birthday, I didn’t go for the comprehensive insurance, but just the mandatory road insurance (2844 SEK/year). Most of the benefits are lost with my car being so old anyway.

A couple of days later, I got an email from my old insurance company in Germany that my car had been deregistered (and no, I don’t want to continue that insurance, thanks). The new Swedish number plates (that are bound to the car itself, not to the owner — and unfortunately you cannot pick a custom number yourself) arrived at the supermarket where I fetched and mounted them.

I got the German taxes and insurance fee back and I paid another 319 SEK service fee and taxes in Sweden in return. And that’s that. Easy peasy.

The old leet number plate is now sticking to my Amiga
Categories: Comedy, Daily Wisdom, Tragedy | Leave a comment