Sunshine at Bjorli

After a fantastic weekend at Bjorli we return to Oslo in sunshine. The snow is still about a meter outside Anton´s Balcony.

Bjorli last weekend April

Together with the Old Bunch at Bjorli. This is the Standal residence

5 years on FaceBook

In the beginning of April 2007 I wrote about Twitter in my blog. One of my blogfriends Rune Eide wrote as a comment "Dette må da være noe for deg: http://www.facebook.com/", and my daughter followed up with "facebook er stort sett knyttet opp i mot skoler og universiteter, nettverk for studenter/lærere/forelesere etc.". 
I followed up my interest for Twitter with another post on April 12th describing that Twitter was the "hottest" IT-product for the time being.


Two weeks later I signed up with FaceBook, and can today celebrate my 5th year anniversary as a member of this social medium. My FB-timeline shows very little of how I used this medium in the first years, and I believe that I was affected by the bad attitude to FB from "my generation", together with my heavy blog activity. 


Last year I started using FaceBook more active and was called "ungdoms-gamlis" by those who believed that FB only was for young people and that we 60+ had nothing to achieve by get friends here.
Then and today I advocate that everybody should be part of social media and wrote a blogpost about The Stream in February 2011. 


Now it is up to you to Dive into the Stream

Passing 100.000 unique visitors

Occasionally I present some statistics describing my blog´s communication level.
I celebrated my 7th year as a Blogger in March, and have totally now posted 1619 more or less interesting blogposts.
I passed the 100K unique visitors together with the seven years milestone.

My visitors are spread around the world and come from 177 different countries.
When I started in 2007 my text was in Norwegian and almost everybody was from Norway.
Today almost 64 % of my visitors come from other countries.

I have lately more and more been active in FaceBook and Twitter (jumped into the Stream), and that has resulted in reduced contact with people through my blog. The blog-world is not yet dead, and I will still try to reach visitors around the world with text and images of my way of living.
Life is still Great.

More Democracy more Openness

It is Sunday in the first week of the trial against the mass murderer from 22/7 last year. The slogan more democracy, more openness was fully shown in Oslo City Hall today. The "Tourist in own city" campaign  used the City Hall for stands and information, but we could walk around completely without seeing any security guards or men in uniforms. Maybe they were personnel guarding the venue in civil, but the feeling of an open house was paramount. Hopefully we have taken back our city from last year´s terror.

 In addition to visit some of the stands, we took the opportunity to walk around the different halls in the building including galleries and closely study the decorations and frescos.
The first one can be found at the beginning of the staircase from first floor and up to the galleries. It show St.Halvard and his woman.

 On the east side of the building we find the Banquet Hall with portraits of the royal family. Here our late King Haakon VII. I have posted from this hall earlier when we celebrated the first heart transplantation together with the Major of Oslo in November 2008

 The art-tour continuous out on the gallery above the main hall and Alf Rolfsen´s "Eventyret" (the adventure) on the north wall.

 From there we can enter the East Gallery decorated by Per Krogh (also known from the UN Security Council Hall). A strange room.

 Between the east and west gallery is the City Council Hall. The vast tapestry of Else Poulsson, one of the building´s architects niece is on the wall behind the Major´s chair. 
Central on the carpet thrones Oslo's St. Hallvard over the seven virtues, and the life in Oslo at the bottom. 
The artist's desire was that this design should remind the city's politicians on ethics and good governance principles in the decisions they make.

 Like the east gallery the Western Gallery is covered with frescos from floor to ceiling. Here is a section of Åge Storstein´s fresco with the Book of Human Rights

 The visiting tour for us this Sunday continued through the Present Gallery where different gifts from other cities in Norway and foreign visitors are shown. Here is the present from the King of Thailand.

 This room of 100 square meters on top of the staircase, is called the Munch Hall because the painting "Livets tre" by Edvard Munch is placed there. The previous owner was Thomas Olsen which son now is selling "The Screem" at Sotheby´s in New York.
In this Hall I was married to Tullen in 1977.

At the extension to the south of the main hall an interesting painting by one of my favorite painters from mid 1900, Reidar Aulie, has been given place for his work "Development of the Labour Class".
Another painter from the same period Arne Ekeland was refused when he wanted to decorate the other wall with the painting Sisters of Freedom. This painting is now part of the art at the Parliament.

These two sections are from the left and right corner of the painting. From poverty to social democratic life in the fifties. Looking as a place like my cottage at Solvang, and not yet an Oil producing country.

IWorld

Busy with IT tools and communicating with Apple-tv and Get PVR box, iPhone, iPad and macBookAir Internet and emails.
It is hard to be a gadget man

Missing my MacBook Air - Alternative eye-catching

 This afternoon I got my MacBook Air back after a few days extraordinary service with the professional staff at Eplehuset. I had to get a new top-case due to error in the shift function. Now it is working better than ever and my life is back to "normal". I have missed my computer during these days.

During this absence of my Air my time could have been replaced by watching the TV and the trial against the mass murderer of 22/7 last year, and I must tell that some time has been used this way. However, some time has also been used to look at the very interesting facade on the other side of the street from my house.
The beauty of the decorations recovered after the restoration and removal of old plaster on the building, tell me of how we built our houses before and around the millennial shift 1800/1900.
Take some time to look up when walking the street in Oslo (or other cities). There are many houses worth eye-catching in my neighborhood.

Workforce at Solvang

The working team responsible for the new (old) path at our cottage prepared yesterday (see last post):
Lasse, Sander, Eva, Maja, Rikke, Mari and Tor-Marius as a shadow in the bottom right corner.

Well done.

Thank you Tor, Rikke, Lasse, Maja and Sander

 Sometimes it is fantastic to have children, grandchildren and friends visiting our cottage. Today they have really done an important workload up there. The entrance (path) from the "Plassveien" has been reconstructed. 

The old slabs covered under the lawn have been brought to surface and Sander and Maja have helped as good as they are capable to.

It is not summer yet but winer-sausages plus, plus are great lunch for children and workmen.

Thank you all for the job performed.

China 15 years later

Deng Xiaoping died at 9:08 pm on February 19, 1997. He was the most important leader in China since Mao Zedong although his economic policies were at odds with the political ideologies of Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution but regained prominence in 1978 by outmaneuvering Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. (photos: Xinhua and Asiaweek)


A few weeks after Deng´s death the magazine Asiaweek presented some articles regarding the Next Generation of leaders and probably coming stars in China. 

Now, 15 years later we are informed that one of these coming men, Bo Xilai, and considered a likely candidate for promotion to the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, was dumped.


From The Economist I copy:
"Since the unexplained dismissal last month of the Communist Party chief of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, rumours had swirled about his family’s alleged wrongdoings. On April 10th the government broke its silence, accusing Mr Bo of “serious”, though still unspecified, wrongdoing and, more startling, making Mr Bo’s wife a suspect in the murder of a British businessman. The political career of Mr Bo, one of China’s most prominent politicians, appears to be over."


Looking back to the list from 1997 the other "forth generation" leaders career have been:  
Wu Bangguo is currently Chairman and Party secretary of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, a position that makes him China's chief legislator. 
Huang Ju died in 2007
Shi Yunsheng lost his positions in 2003
Cao Gangchuan was Minister of National Defense until 2008
Xu Kuangdi is vice-chairman of cppcc
Wen Jiabao  is the sixth and current Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, serving as China's head of government and leading its cabinet.
Jia Qinglin is the fourth ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Chairman and Party secretary of the National Committee of the People's Political Consultative Conference.


Maybe Bo Xilai will, as Deng, return to power sometimes in the future. He is still only 62 years old and age is not an disadvantage in this great culture. 

Spring is progressing in Oslo

Yesterday the streets around our house were cleaned and washed. Leftovers from the winter´s snow and icy streets and pavements were removed. Heavy equipment was used, and the result very good.

 This morning Toyota had opened their garage for a free swapping of winter tyre to summer tyre. With Toyota´s tyre-hotel this process has become an easy quick fix compared to the work we did earlier by ourselves.

 Then It was time to visit our cottage for the first spring work this season. Rotten leaves removed from the flowerbeds and moved to our compost site for the continuous transformation to mould. The apple-trees are also happy for the spring and show it by presenting the new leave buds towards the warming sun.

A drummer in the family

Some days ago I could present one artist in my family. Today Maja showed her capability in front of the drums. Maybe she once in the future can add her name to the famous List of Drummers

An ultramodern artist in the family

At last I have found one of my grandchildren that has the real capability to develop into an international wanted painter by galleries and private collections.
I here present Hedda Emilie Davidsdatter Bjørkmann Berry´s last work:

Easter Resurrection .

An Easter smile

Take some minutes, watch this video and have a Happy Easter

10 years with Apple Mac

I have sometimes been alleged that I am involved in Apple / Mac´s PR activities or at least have some stocks in the Apple Inc (AAPL) Corporation.
I am not employed although I should have wanted that part of the $576.8 billion value of the corporation was mine.
It is almost 45 years since I started to work with IT (or EDP as we called it in the 1960s). First as a developer and later as a professional user within the HR area.

It is 10 years since I got my first Mac. My white IBook G3(back left) introduced me to modern laptops with OS X, photo processing and wireless operation.
Two years later I was so interested in photo manipulation that a larger screen became interesting, and my iMac G5 PowerPC desktop computer (back middle) arrived to my home.
After two more years I once more found out that a portable laptop was the only way ahead. My choice therefore became the 17-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (back right)

The white IBook which my wife had used for many years, needed to be renewed and she got the MacBook Pro Unibody in 2010 (front left). That is still her main computer in addition to her iPhone 4S and the latest iPad 3 Wi-Fi 4G (front right).

I bought my MacBook Air (front center) last year after we returned from our longterm stay in Andalusia. My iPhone 4 replaced my iPhone 3G which now is lost somewhere in the Canaries.
I now wait for the iPhone 5

I forgot to put forward all the iPods (shuffle and nano), Airports and Apple-TV on the image, but feel that my museum is good enough for the decennium of loving Mac and Apple products.

Home again and new iPad 3

Back in Norway and the new iPad became a too great temptation. Tullen´s "old" MacBook Pro was really a heavy machine compared to my MacBook Air, so why not buy a iPad 3 to bring with us on the next journey.
The few tests performed so far are really return of investment.

Returning to Norway and Norwegian Spring

With this photo of our granddaughter Helene showing "Blåveispiken" (although these flowers are Scilla), we say goodbye to Costa del Andalusia for this time and are looking forward to spring in Norway.
6 weeks and only one day with rain. Lots of good food and wines. Almost 10 km walks per day. Blisters on several toes but a great stay this time too.
Now we plan for the next stay in October / November.