Latest updates from Christian Christiansen's log.
The windy windy west coast route Jutting out from the Continent, splitting the seas of the North from the Baltic, lies the peninsular of Jutland, land of the Jutes; the west coast is battered by winds blowing down from the Arctic and the unruly North Sea, whereas the east coast is sheltered from the worst of oceanic caprices, its calm and warming waters are beginning to be described in in-the-know…
25 songs and tracks of 2025 Little, if any, of 2025’s broader zeitgeist is reflected in the best music of the year. Facing War , a documentary following the trials and tribulations of Jens Stoltenberg, the former Secretary General of NATO, shows a world which is more split, strung between multiple possible nightmares, whilst war and worse rage on. Possibly 2025’s best album of the year, Big City…
The White Book New inventions require new terms. 电脑 (diànnăo in Mandarin), literally electric brain, is the Chinese term for a computer. The Danes tried out datamat , arbejdsstation and edb-maskine before giving up and just copying the English. The Koreans, with 컴퓨터 (keompyuteo), and Japanese, with コンピュータ (konpyūta), did the same. Icelanders went with a bunch of different terms, including loaning…
Northern Winter Beat 2025 For three evenings in February, Aalborg plays host to Northern Winter Beat, a music festival set to defrost and challenge its audience. Thursday The 2025 edition began with a performance from Lubomyr Melnyk , a Ukrainian pianist, at Budolfi Church, Aalborg’s grandest building. Over six centuries worth of architecture and extravagant decoration set the stage to be graced…
De rerum natura As his first act as the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, voted in as the leader of the Liberal Party, has signed away consumer carbon tax. Six years prior, in 2019, he was a UN Special Envoy for Climate Change. In 2021, he launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. In March 2021, in an interview on CBC’s Rosemary Burton Live, he said, There’s a recognition that the…
Trip to a wedding In a rush after Danish class, I grabbed a luggage case, one of my partner’s, I had no time to fish out my own, I’m not sure where it’s stored anyway, I hoped she would be okay with it, if not… Anyway, where was I? I get confused. I grabbed a luggage case. Passport, yes, as always in the inside pocket, and, This detail is going to be tedious, isn’t it? It reads far too much like a…
Cultural stagnation: what’s so important about culture? Exercise left for the reader.
Cultural stagnation: false start What are the most salient reasons for cultural stagnation? I wish to write an essay which addresses this. Yet each attempt so far has failed to unburden itself from the weight of the necessary preamble. Before seeking explanations for a phenomenon, the phenomenon’s existence should ideally first be established. Other people’s insistence on the phenomenon does not…
Northern Winter Beat 2024 In the depths of each February, Aalborg, a city split by a fjord, hosts Northern Winter Beat, a music festival of odd-ball bands and askew soloists. I saw six acts in the 2024 edition, across two days in five different rooms at three different locations. Six performers took to the stage when I saw HHY & The Macumbas on the Friday: two drummers, two synth tweakers, a…
Yes, we saw Swans last night We’d heard the forecast: inclemency on Tuesday evening. A couple hundred townsfolk gathered outside the local church in anticipation. All of us had heard rumours of the impending phenomenon. Its might was legendary. Newspaper clippings from survivors in America warned of incineration, annihilation, and worse. But despite the evidence of destruction and land laid to…
Hurt God is dead proclaims a coked up Nietzsche on stage. And no one cares responds the congregation, writhing in unison, thrashing the air, spilling testosterone into the arena which sloshes between the stage and the bullpit, infecting those gathered into a state of existential bliss. Raucous applause follows Nietzsche shuffling off and an old man shuffling on. The old man ignores the crowd…
A case for copyleft Table of Contents What is a software licence? The legal default: proprietary Free (as in freedom) software Permissive Copyleft What is a software licence? Coding is difficult. Communicating a set of instructions to an overly pedantic machine and dealing with the aftermath – the misplaced comma, the fallacies in your logic, the unplugged cable, the pervasive self-doubt – is no…
Kære Tøger, Out with the old The specifications of HTML (and CSS) have greatly matured since the days of Macromedia Shockwave and <blink> tags. Even JavaScript has become more sane, admittedly from a low starting base (see wat ). Yet few people today would propose writing articles in HTML: closing tags are cumbersome, naming body parts in code seems outdated, angle brackets – despite their winsome…
Øresund Øffensiv The heat hit first. Emanating from the mass of bodies, it clung to our skin as we dithered along the aisle, looking for free seats in the cinema-cum-sauna. We found two too near to the screen, draped clean towels over the burgundy upholstery, sat down and shuffled out of our clothes. ‘Good evening folks! Welcome to Ritz Cinemas and our first showing of Nude Tuesday ! As some of…
A new pet Isabella, popular Isabella, got one first. Her aunt in the Alps had gifted it to her, after a trip to see the spring blossom. ‘I’m sorry about your hamster,’ she had said, ‘I’m sure it can never be replaced,’ she had continued, ‘but here is a new… all the way from Japan… it’s like a pet, and you’ll have to take care of ‘Gerbil’ ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘It was my gerbil. Jeremiah.’ ‘Well here’s a…
That time of the year The signs had been there. The red and green beach balls. The notices from HR. The upcoming events. The planning, the organisation, the planning the organisation. My local magpie had told me the other day that the eastern koels were back, yapping on about their time spent in Queensland – it couldn’t wait for the koels to go back, if they thought it was so bloody good there. Or…
Glebe chairs deck the tarmac where the cars used to be flickering in and out of light filtered through the leaves of a tree a party atmosphere pervades the parade this saturday a trio provide a sonic background upon which a child’s laugh a bird’s squawk an enthusiastic embrace dance and pirouette hand in hand we reach the restaurant far past the market there’s nothing vegan we umm and ahh and…
A review of A Collection of Reviews I had finished sipping my orange green tea and set off back to the station, when a blockade in the pavement of books for 5 dollars stopped me. The Agatha Christie’s reeled me in, but my nose led me away, into the shop. Suddenly, I was confronted by vast stacks of porcelain knick-knacks, sculpted felines serving as bowls, pots and other vessels to hold pumpkin…
Back for a holiday A particular patriotic pride presided the passage to the pissoir. Upright men of all ages stood tall in an orderly British queue. We filed in, awaited our turn, and – as our forefathers had done in the Boer – carried out God’s duty, before we filed back to refill and rearm ourselves for another round. Ahead of me, two young gents shuffled along, bravely directing their attention…
Wonderful world The days were becoming shorter. Summer had been kind to us. Travelling from loch to loch, broch to broch, Stewart and I spent sunrise to sunset soaking in the Scottish sun, savouring the sharp contours of the landscape, the briskness, the too real beauty surrounding us. Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Brenda Lee sang through our stereo, as we drove along the long, lonesome roads.…
Harry Potter and The Master and Margarita ‘Are you feeling litigious?’ J. K. reponds with an empty smile. She brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and looks back out of the carriage window, staring into the space between the pane and the Scottish fields sliding past. The dull scenery dances through droplets which clutch onto the exterior for a while, before drifting diagonally out of our…
Wellness Productivity While following the scent of some sparkly stones, I have become trapped by wall-high posters, shiny DVD cases; cursive, serif and sans-serif types string me to an unseen ball and chain, dangling my prospects afore a row of bared lips, which strain to contain the overflowing bleached whites within. One by one the infinite smiles approach me. A clean bugle call precedes each…
Heard whilst hyperventilating on Fiddlesticks, Organ Pipes Christian. Christian? Can you hear me? Christian… you’re safe. We’ve got you on rope. Christian, talk to us. It’s all good. We’ve got you. Yes, yes. It’s incredibly chossy. You don’t need to worry about us. We’re safe. You can do it. Keep going. Use those chimney skills. You can dangle the bag between your legs, if you want to. Just keep…
Noughts and Crosses Forging an indefatigable undefeatable foe Table of Contents Setting the scene The game The programming language The program The code Start at the beginning Data representation Icky inputs and outlandish outputs Forging the foe Wrap up What next? Play! Further afield Setting the scene By pitting ourselves against opponents and frequently failing, we develop an understanding of…
Elvis ‘Come on, choose a song!’ Four pairs of eyes implore me to pick up the mic. We’re in a dingy room with a bucket of ice cooling beer bottles set on a low table encircled by a wrap-around sofa. Three walls need their decor updating; the fourth barely holds up a beastly screen, blinking at us for input. ‘All right, all right. Put the cat king on.’ The four faces turn into question marks. ‘Elvis…
Edutainment An arrow skewers my foot. A flock follows, darting above our heads, destined for our flesh, damning us to the ward and worse. I load the rifle and yell out instructions, and in pain. Those still standing speed through the movements, with eyes scanning the hills and bushes. But already they’re in our faces. Bullets wait within barrels as we jab, thrust, parry, pirouette. Blade meets…
Le Ton beau de Marot This poem is going to devil my mettle. My mind's jammed by these damned rhymes: A A B B… Pray, God save me. How can three miserable syllables, fourteen pairs, wring despairs such as these? My ill ease only grows when I pose this question: ‘Translation: all in vain?’ ‘No!’ Doug claims, as Clément retains ton even in (though you grin, believe him!) this poem.
Fun Seated, I survey the venue from the mezzanine, sipping on 4 dollar lemonade. Two young girdled men take to the stage; one wields a guitar, the other dabbles with keys and digital miscellania. With the pulpit still bare, they begin. Electronic pulses ooze out. The man on the keys, the stouter of the two, dressed in a white turtleneck and whiter trousers, sings catchy tunes out of tune. There is…
We Liars Angus is sitting in the corner, in his wedding dress, playing with three red juggling balls. He throws them all up at once. Again. And again. He keeps muttering, ‘this time.’ I watch him with half an eye. After a while, I see he won’t be achieving whatever it is he has in mind soon, so I don a pair of headphones and press The Start . Angus exhales as various electronics begin to purr. He…
Зверь What is there to do in Duisburg? To start with, perhaps a saunter around the world's largest inland harbour? Restaurants hug its banks, keen for a view of the concrete basin. Further to the city centre, kebab stalls line the pathways. There's even a theater where the latest misguided, desperate and lost troupe find themselves performing to the vestiges of a decaying post-industrial…
Develop a Hello World alert for Windows on Arch Linux Only proceed when all possibilities to avoid Windows have dried up. Proceed with care and suspicion: Clippy takes no prisoners. Step 1: Hello World Write the program. helloword.cpp #ifndef UNICODE // Not strictly necessary, but good practice #define UNICODE #endif #include <windows.h> // Use Windows libraries int WINAPI wWinMain( HINSTANCE…
Escape Meta Alt Control Shift Rock climbing, guitar playing, ivory tickling, and GNU Emacs have all become inextricable parts of my life. And all of them demand far too much of my left pinky. After slightly straining my left wrist on a crimpy dynamic slab, I have become acutely aware of the punishing ritual I subject my weakest finger to from dawn till dusk. Emacs pinky is an undeniable issue…
FBi Radio currently playing Amongst all the wild and fantastical affairs humans partake in, music is by far the most baffling. We indoctrinate our infants with lullabies, make pilgrimages to clubs, festivals and operas, and buy our groceries whilst barely pubescent teenagers serenade us over tinny tannoys. There are no clear evolutionary advantages associated with an appreciation of Bach's…
Writing on Balzac's novella, to be found here .
First commit to KDE After years of reading Linux Format, then Linux Voice, now finding refuge in Late Night Linux ; after scouring through countless forums over a decade ago to ornate my desktop with ever fancier bling (and wobblier windows); after wrecking multiple installations from ever more ridiculous projects (who knew that running state-of-the-art games through Wine on a tiny Sony Vaio…