nicnotes.net

Niclas Thorsteinsson - Musician/Writer

Starfield

Can’t say I’ve gamed much in the last couple of years, but when Bethesda released Starfield combined with the fact that I’m an irrational space nut, I knew what I had to do. Great game. Here are some gameplay stills.

Reading: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Neverends at Fair Isles Distillery

Well, first gig in a long time. The festival Summartónar, which holds concerts all over the Faroe Islands during the summer suggested we play at the Fair Isles Distillery, an exciting new brewery with lots of driven people behind it. I can certainly recommend visiting the place, should you find yourself in the Faroe Islands.

Neverends? Just a silly version of  ‘Reverends’, which we pretty much broke up some time ago. We were only three guys from the old band, hence a different name was in order.

Gig fast approaching, I’ve spent the morning trying to tune my Howard Low D whistle and also my cheap Generation tin whistle, which is certainly not meant to be tuned (glued mouthpiece, anyone?). Both were obscenely out of tune and I must proudly proclaim that both operations were successful.

 

 

Reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (with a few spoilers)

I’m on page 25 and Nora Seed is currently a depressed, realatable character who feels she squandered most of her opportunities in life. So far, so good. Very readable. Will update later.

page 85: A slightly pedantic exploration of three specific life choice regrets, foreshadowed in earlier pages. All of them end poorly, so Nora Seed is now three regrets lighter. I suspect the book will bring about some ambivalent situations, where a regret will actually makes sense… and that some sort of twist is on its way.

page 135: Still very readable, albeit somewhat simple arrangement of sections. You can sort of feel the author plotting… all right, here we’ll use this bit and Nora will come to this realization and in the next chapter she’ll finally understand that she doesn’t wish to die when she encounters a genuinely life threatening situation and then… Most writers plan their plots, of course), but as a reader I don’t want to be too aware of it. It’s sorta up there with having your characters go against their nature in order to satisfy your pet plot idea. Also, the story is a bit linear. I suppose I prefer a bit more murky and interweaving plots and like to be surprised. We’ll see what happens.

page 146: Ok, a interesting change. There are more of them and they can interact.

quite a bit further on: Ok, the idea with there being several “sliders” (yes, they were called that in the book, like the old sci-fi show about parallel universes), wasn’t really developed much further and that is good thing. It would have been a bit cheesy.

final thoughts: It was a fine book, simple at first, but slowly a few more themes came into play. It did certainly feel like a spiritual and philosophical self-help book at times, but I enjoyed it. Recommended.

Klingurstjøn

Book Sematary – Part 2

What is this? Just me having trouble getting rid of books, so I’m creating a quick memory before I send the little guys to the red cross thriftstore in Tórshavn. Hopefully they’ll find a good home.

#21 Masters of Animation – John Halas

As someone with a love for films, I was naturally interested in animation. I remember loving Wizards by Ralph Bakshi.

 

#22 A Dry White Season – André Brink

A fine critique of apartheid. Worth a read.

 

#23 Nostradamus – Jean-Charles de Fontbrune

Yes, I was intrigued by Nostradamus as a young lad. Today, not so much.

#24 Neuromancer – William Gibson

Yeah, I just didn’t like it. Ok, kidding. I loved it. For some reason I had two copies lying around, so this one will venture forth and hopefully expand somebody’s mind.

#25 The Film Director – Richard L. Bare

I was very interested in filmmaking in the late 80s and early 90s and took whatever courses I could find, but my interest was slowly overtaken by stronger interests in music and literature. I bought this book while in the States in 1989.

 

#26 Making Movies – John Russo

Another filmmaking book.

#27 A Glossary of Literary Terms – M. H. Abrams

A remnant from my time studying English at the university. This is a very good book, which I never use anymore. Whenever I find myself wondering about the difference between allegory, alliteration and allusion I use google.

 

#28 The Language of Advertising – Angela Goddard

Also a remnant from my university days. Fine book, as far as I remember.

 

#29 The Star Trek Encyclopedia – Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda and Debbie Mirek

Ever since I saw my first episodes of TNG, I’ve been a fan. Episodes were hard to come by in the Faroe Islands, but our local mall had a video store (Top Shop), run by a guy called Joe Golightly and it had a few of the Season 1 episodes for rent. This was in the late eighties. When I went to the states in ’89, TNG was on pretty much every night. That cemented my fandom, resistance was indeed futile.

 

#30 The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard – Edited by Katherine E. Kelly

From my university days. I like a lot of Pinter and Beckett, but I never got around to checking out Tom Stoppard.

 

#31 Blaze – Richard Bachman (Stephen King).

I usually keep most of my King books. partly due to nostalgia and partly because I enjoy the man’s work. King is a great craftsman and any person that can write about a levitating vending machine killing people by ejecting soda cans, while still managing to make it believable is indeed very good at what he does. IT was the very first book I read in the English language, 1117 pages, yes I read King and English/American literature before you, Gudmund, so suck it ;) Blaze, however, is the worst book I’ve ever read by Bachman/King. Of course, the man’s prolificacy was always bound to produce some stinkers. It’s a mathematical certainty, like life existing elsewhere in the universe. Unless we’re living in a simulation created by our descendants, but that goes without saying.

 

#32 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

Well, this shouldn’t need any introduction. I enjoyed it. Haven’t seen the movie.

 

#33 Terra! – Stefano Benni

I remember enjoying this somewhat, I think sometime in the nineties. Can’t remember anything from it, though.

 

#34 The Naked Ape (in danish) – Desmond Morris

What can I say, it’s science! Good stuff.

 

Book Sematary

We recently moved into our new house and during the move we quickly realized that we need to get rid of a lot of stuff. There isn’t much storage in our new house and that, my friends, is an absolute blessing. I’m not much of a hoarder, but if there’s anything I have trouble with, it’s getting rid of books. In the early eighties, my parents divorced and I had to move to the village of Sørvágur (pop. about 900 at the time), which was quite a change from the vast, sprawling metropolis that was Tórshavn, which at the time consisted of at least 10.000+ inhabitants. Sørvágur is a nice village with a great view and a long beach… and a great collection of oddballs. I, however, wasn’t having any of that and didn’t really feel like diving in to the local community, so soon after the the divorce.

My rescue was the local library, run by now deceased Leif Nolsøe and his wife. It was open on tuesdays and thursdays, and I read nearly every book I could find there. It got to the point where I would utter sentences like “Oh, I’ve read that shelf” without blinking an eye. Leif and his wife were very nice and always up for a chat.

So, I suppose I am rather emotionally attached to books, but I need to get rid of a few. What I’ve decided is to honor the books by posting a quick photo and possibly write a small memory about the book. Slightly silly, I know, but it works for me. As a reading man, I like to browse my bookshelves on a drizzly sunday morning, and have the memories of particular books come back to me. So this will be a digital bookshelf, a post mostly for myself, which I can peruse from time to time. I’ll be giving the books away to second hand stores and hopefully, some of them will come back to life in the hands of new readers.

#1 The Color of Magic – Terry Pratchett.

I read it some time ago and remember enjoying it quite a bit, but I never got around to delving further into the the Discworld series.

#2 The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro

Read it in the 90s. I didn’t like it very much. Out you go.

#3 Gaelic Dictionary – Malcolm MacLennan

Received it as a surprise present from my mother. I love etymology, but I know that I won’t use this again anytime soon.

#4 Born on the Fourth of July – Ron Kovic

I was an Oliver Stone fan back in the 80s and and rewatched Platoon (1986), god knows how many times. Born of the Fourth (the movie) came out in 1989 and I remember being 17 years old and sitting alone in a movie theatre in Wichita, Kansas being completely mesmerized. I usually avoid war movies but this is absolutely worth watching. Oh, and another great soundtrack by John Williams. The book? I found it later on and naturally I had to read it.

#5 Sphere (danish translation) – Michael Crichton

I remember enjoying this book when I read it a long time ago.

#6 TNG Q-Squared – Peter David

Love Trek. Enjoyed the book. Can’t remember much from it though. Off it goes then.

#7 Jeg har hørt et stjerneskud – Carsten Jensen

Danish travel writing. I liked it.

#8 Dagbók í árinum 1828 skrivað á eini ferð til Føroya – Carl Julian Graba

Travel writing, originally in german and translated into Faroese. I found it very interesting how a researcher viewed life on the Faroe Islands in 1828.

#9 Stjórnmálafrøði (faroese book on political science) – Zakarias Wang

This guy used to be my teacher in our (sort of) equivalent of high school. Bit of an oddball, but not stupid. The advice I remember best is that in times of prosperity, governments should save money and in times of financial crisis, they should spend it.

#10 Mystikken Verden (an encyclopedia of the occult)

I think I asked my mom to buy this for me, when I was a kid. It had everything an 11 year old kid could want, shamanic stuff, demonic possesion, witchcraft, ghosts and a few naughty pictures, which were always welcome in the days of pre-internet.

#11 The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem – Nathaniel Branden

One of the first self-help books I ever purchased. At some point in my twenties I had analyzed myself and concluded that I had to be suffering from low self-esteem. I don’t really recall that much from the book, but I remember the exercise of mentally going back in time and telling your kid self that things were going to be all right was quite moving.

#12 How to Sell Your Screenplay – Carl Sautter

Yep, my teen self has ambitions of becoming a writer and filmmaker.

#13 Atomic Habits – James Clear

Hmm, not much new stuff in this one.

#14 Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov

I have another version of the three first books I the foundation saga, so I don’t need this one.

#15 The Psysics of Star Trek – Lawrence M. Krauss

Star Trek in the eyes of real science. What’s not to love?

#16 Hotel New Hampshire – John Irving

I read quite a lot of John Irving in my youth. I don’t recall much from the books.

#17 Eon – Greg Bear

I remember reading this while on holiday in France and being annoyed because the book wasn’t very good.

#18 Necronomicon

Any Evil Dead fan will understand.

#19 – A Collectors Guide to Swords, Daggers and Cutlasses – Gerald Weland

I found this subject to be exceptionally interesting as a young lad. Now, not so much. My love for The Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian and swashbuckling fantasy probably had something to do with this.

#20 Cross Kill – James Patterson

This one didn’t do much for me.

 

State of the World by ChatGPT

In my first conversation with ChatGPT I asked if it could write me some lyrics on the current state of the world. It happily obliged. The result is not entirely unlike something you’d write in your early teens. No doubt we’ll see a lot more AI generated lyrics in the future. 

 

State of the World

by ChatGPT

 

Verse 1:

The world’s a mess, it’s true, it’s true

With wars and strife and politics askew

The air is thick with hate, and love is few

But still, we rise, and make our stand anew

Chorus:

In this world of chaos, we stand as one

With hope in our hearts and fire in our eyes

For we know that love will conquer all

And we’ll make a better world, before our time flies

Verse 2:

The pandemic hit, and caught us all by surprise

It tested us, but it didn’t break our stride

We came together, helped each other survive

And though it’s not over, we’re getting by

Chorus:

In this world of chaos, we stand as one

With hope in our hearts and fire in our eyes

For we know that love will conquer all

And we’ll make a better world, before our time flies

Bridge:

We’ll stand up for what’s right, fight for what’s true

With courage in our hearts, and love shining through

For we know that together, we can make a change

And leave a world behind, that’s bright and filled with grace

Chorus:

In this world of chaos, we stand as one

With hope in our hearts and fire in our eyes

For we know that love will conquer all

And we’ll make a better world, before our time flies

Outro:

So let’s raise our voices, high and clear

And sing a song of hope, that everyone can hear

For we know that we can make a difference

And create a world, that’s filled with love and grace.

 

ChatGPT Feb2023. 

Góðan Morgun

All Is Well in the Shire

Dad

My dad died back in march. I don’t think I’m quite ready to write about it yet, but here’s a picture of him and me.

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