nuzzaci - an online journal

Willow (girlfriend), Imola (cat), Bibi (Fiat 500) and I left London for Stockholm on the 4th of August and it isn’t until today, the 25th 27th, that I find time energy and the will to write anything.

In short, this is what has gone down.

The Drive

BiBi at Fredrickshavn Ferry Port

The drive over from London to Stockholm went very well. Bibi and Imola were superstars on the road. What I would change, if i’m driving BiBi (or any other Fiat 500) for a longer stint (which I think is very likely) is;

1. not to drive more than 500km per day
2. have less stuff in the car
3. do what ever it takes to stay off horrible motorways

We did stay off the motorway as much as possible, but our schedule didn’t allow us to experiment to the extent I would have wanted.

Me and BiBi having a break next to the lake Vättern, Sweden.

My favorite part of the drive was probably everything after Bremen, Belgium, to Fredrikshavn, Denmark.

But generally, driving Bibi is so extremely fun. It totally puts the joy of driving in another dimension.

The House

For the first three weeks in Sweden, Willow and I stayed at my very good friend, Vinh Kha’s, flat (who’s currently in New York). In the beginning of September, we moved into a lovely little house in Saltsjö-Boo, Nacka.

It’s a huge contrast from our flat in London. Maybe not the space that much (they are both very nice), but the surroundings and the peacefulness. Time rolls slower in Saltsjö-Boo compared to Hackney.

Imola is absolutely loving it. She’s outside most of the time and brings in all sorts of things from the surroundings. Twice (so far) i’ve needed to save small animals from Imola’s playful paws.

The Job

It’s way to early to tell how well I will adapt to the working life in Sweden. I’m still crossing hurdles as I go and ironing out and accepting the differences. I’m also still a bit undecided what I would like to focus on and what part I would like to develop and change / not change from my working life in London. Generally the roles and responsibilities in Sweden seem much more divided. So being a bit of a hybrid makes the work situation a bit more tricky. One company I met up with even had a problem to work out what sister company to place me in… let alone department or title. They had divided production, strategy, interactive design into different companies.

I’m currently working on a project at a company called Doberman. Doberman got nominated as the best workplace in Sweden 2007 by Alecta and have for the last five years been selected as one of the top three interactive agencies in Sweden by the industry magazine Resumé. So, without a doubt, it’s a good place to be. I also have plenty of good friends working here, among two old POKE’rs — Henrik Engdahl and Patrik Berg and some other really good and nice people. So don’t get me wrong — I’m enjoying it at the moment. It’s just that i don’t run smooth on all cylinders, yet.

Collage of photos from the Doberman office. Photos captured by Daniel Källbom

In the beginning of December Willow and I will be flying out to New Zealand to celebrate Christmas and New Years with Willows parents. My parents will also join us. Beside holiday celebrations, Willow and I are doing two longer walks.

I have told myself that after that break I will make a more active decision and commitment when it comes to my job situation in Stockholm.

If you want to see some photos of the trip, the house etc, head over to Willow’s flickr photostream.

When i was younger i had a belief that in one of my previous lives i was a successful business women in New York. I thought once i go to New York i will feel familiar with the city, it’s people and it’s roads. I believed New York and I had some previous life history together; almost family blood band. Once i go there i wouldn’t want to come back to wherever i came from. As i have grown older this belief has faded, but going there for the first time brought the memories of the belief back. It turned out NY and I didn’t have that much in common. Maybe my belief was wrong — there is no pre-life, maybe NY has changed since i lived there as a business women. Most probably, i just had a romantic view of the Big Apple.

With great beard comes great responsibility

Last year i saved a beard for christmas (photo), and this year i’m doing the same. As a joke people said that i wouldn’t get past the US custom with my beard. Sadly, it seems like the perceived ideas that a man with a beard has something to hide (or is a terrorist) is true. Quite a racist belief if you ask me. Whenever they had a random security check; they checked me. I got asked question while standing in queues. They went through my hand luggage. Metal detector beeped even if i had nothing on me, which resulted in a head too toe frisk. The US custom guy, when talking to Willow, referred to me as “so, who’s the felon standing next to you?”. So all bearded people, remember: with great beard comes great responsibility.

New York. New York is OK

It is probably a combination of my high expectations and the fact that we only were present between Friday evening to Monday morning, but after round one New York hadn’t knocked me of my feet. The cultural step from London to New York is tiny. The biggest cultural hurdle is probably understanding how to tip — when and how much. You get a bigger cultural different if you go 2 hours on the train outside London.

A few thing i found positive are the availability of goods (gadgets, clothes), good food and groceries (and all that in combination with the week dollar). It’s almost a bit like we here in Europe still can’t escape the after math of the second world war. Or, we simply aren’t as creed and feel we need to overindulge us in an literally a sea of options and endless possibilities. Or, what do i know, maybe our foreign trade laws are different. Maybe our economy is set up differently. I don’t know.

I’m sure if you live in New York for a while (or elsewhere in the United States i guess), you start taking all this overindulgent for granted and see it almost as a basic need and civil right. “What was the life before we all had mobile phones?” or “How would i survive without my pastrami sandwich!” kind of question.

Since we were aware of the fact that the dollar is weak, we had agreed that we would focus a bit more on shopping than we normally do when we are abroad. But neither Willow or i really got in the mood. I’m not really the kind of person who can just switch a switch and be in über shopping mode. I did manage to stumble over a few things. The only one worth mentioning is the enormous (47-54mm from 9 to 6 o’clock position) but yet so gorgeous 51-30 PU from Nixon (photo below).

I don’t think i will return to New York in a hurry, or phrased another way; don’t think i will invest any of the coming years holidays on New York. I’m quite sure though that our paths will cross sooner than later anyway.

Having said all that; before i moved to London 4 and a half year ago — i hated this city, and my encounter with it had been very limited. So, basically, my opinions and thought on New York are currently worth as much as a piece of toilet paper — after it’s been wiped and flushed away.

Not long ago Willow and I had serious thoughts of moving to New York.
So never say never.

A new way to document a holiday

I don’t like the common concept of a digital camera — snap snap snap snap snap snap snap it’s all free so let’s snap snap snap snap — almost like a chorus of a 120bpm radio hit song (rubbish). I don’t own a camera, i once did but i gave it away, and i can’t really see myself buying one soon. At the moment Willow fills all my digital photography needs with her camera.

Before we left for New York, Willow brought some film for her Polaroid camera and a Moleskine City Notebook for New York. I didn’t think much about it, but as we left our brilliant accommodation on Avenue C, Bed and Coffee, on Saturday morning it just felt so natural to start taking snapshots with the Polaroid and file them in the Molskine notebook. On the back of that, i also saved a few receipts a long the way and slowly i started collection business cards from stores and other small things that crossed my path. Very natural. Not force feeding the idea or the concept.

The line between the concept described in the above paragraph and digital photos is very thin. Maybe most of you can’t even see what i’m getting at. But for me it’s a big difference. It’s a but like advertising vs spam or singing vs talking. Small different but still not the same. And i rather look back on a holiday through a mixture of collected items wrapped in a book filled with small notes than only composed digital photography.

Have uploaded a few things to my flickr account. You can find it on http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuzzaci/tags/newyorknovember2007/. Most of the stuff is accommodated with a description.

The 44 links posted below are not actually all from today. They stretch all the way back to beginning of august.

• The DarkHat: Britney Spears Is Scary
  It is not that scary… just makes you wonder when she will start making the same kind of toasts as Elvis and ultimatly reach the same end screen.
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple admits excessive iPod hours
  “Apple Computer has said a report of labour conditions at its iPod plant in China found workers did more than 60 hours a week a third of the time.”
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection - UT Library Online
  If you ever need a map, these guys have got just about everything.
• My Project Puppet.com Chewbacca!
  He looks a bit weird. But if your planing to make a softtoy Chubacca…
• The Art of Adam Betts
  The guy who designed the Adium icon.
• Apple - Trailers - Borat - Trailer G
  This movie is going to be so great. Not many trailers gets me to laugh out loud.
• Getting Back To The Business Brickyard. . . Bookshelf // Dig Tank
  “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” about marketing and it’s books.
• Internet Soul Portraits
  Screenshots of large site with there text tripped off.
• Marian Bantjes
  Very nice typography skills going on here!
• Starts to play on radio right now
  A very nice interactive piece that show’s you what starts to play on radio right now (in america).
• Jason Kottke, August, 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging
  An interview with Jason Kottke - a full time blogger. I don’t read his blog, but I find the whole “famous blog symptom” interesting. And the choice of accepting ad’s…
• TIME.com: 50 Coolest Websites
  Please define ‘Cool’.
• Not strictly commercial - Los Angeles Times
  “I had a guy come up to me, in my face, saying, ‘You think you’re so cool? You’re not cool’ and I’m saying to him, ‘Dude, it’s a commercial.’ ” Interview with the Apple commercial dude (also know from the TV series Ed).
• Creating graphs, Part 2 | Bartelme Design
  Illustrator tips and tricks.
• RSS Reading Preferences, Part 2 | Bartelme Design
  Feeds and behavior… now that’s the kind of blog post I’d like to see! Someone who spends some time to create content. Not just echoing the internet.
• China bans foreign cartoons from prime-time TV - Yahoo! News
  “Beginning Sept. 1, regulators have barred foreign cartoons from TV from 5 to 8 p.m. in an effort to protect China’s struggling animation studios”
• Is it friday?
  on of those really useful websites.
• Today’s Blog Music / The Hype Machine - discover, listen and buy music discussed on the best mp3 blogs
  An aggregator who search blogs for mp3’s.
• Fernando Leal {Illustration+Animation}
  Some really nice stuff going on here.
• Call Me Fishmeal.: Memes that need to die.
  “WWDC is a developer conference. Aimed at developers. Who develop software. Those of us who are developers are freaking amazed at all the great stuff that’s in Leopard.”
• 37signals: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design
  “… there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make.”
• Balancing Point In Reverse - BREAK.com
  This a pretty awesome movie made entirely in reverse. This must have taken forever to make but I think it turned out really well. It reminds me of that scene in the classic Val Kilmer movie Top Secret.
• Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas, original design by Stamen, press any key to s
  Draw. Click to change color. Very nice. A good way to make art ;) (I really like it and it reminds me of my friend Vinh Kha).
• LiveSurface Layered Image Library
  Introducing the Shift LiveSurface Layered Image Library: high-resolution Photoshop image templates with pre-masked surfaces.
• Quick change
  Honestly, even though the Hoff is in the judging panel - this is good!
• A war on terror simulation.
  “This is not a game. You can’t win and you can’t lose. This is a simulation. It has no edning. It has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shot. Or not. This is a simple model you can use to explore some aspects of the war on terror.”
• Weighing a Switch to a Mac - New York Times
  “Ten years ago, if you were a Windows user, the idea of switching to a Macintosh might not have seemed enticing. An abundance of new Windows software was arriving on store shelves, while the selection available to Mac users seemed to be falling behind…”
• How About an E-mail On That? - Yahoo! News
  “Cell phone users spend lots of time talking into their devices, but they generally communicate with very few people. Just how few? Would you believe four?”
• LOVELINES : From Love to Hate, in Words and Pictures
  Basiclly the same as wefeelfine.org, but this time it’s about love (and done in flash instead of java). I prefer wefeelfine.org,
• Newsvine - Exposing Sony’s Corporate Shills
  This bookmark is saved for later use.
• Blogging the conflict in Lebanon
  The music industry got slapped in the face my Mr Mp3. Will journalism and magazines be slapped in the face by Mr Blogg?
• YMCK Official Web Site
  This made me think about Magnus Lowing. A 8bit NES sound keyboard.
• Interview with Jakob Nielsen [Usability and Information Architecture]
• The GoogleMaps flight sim
  Really nice.
• Macworld UK - Google nabs MySpace search deal
  To be honest I wouldn’t be to worried if I was Yahoo.
• Helvetica
  A movie about a famous typeface.
• Urbancounterfeiters
  Urban Outfitters plagarism, copying, and otherwise ripping-off. found on http://k10k.net/newspost.aspx?id=13898
• Daring Fireball: Highly Selective
  About anchored and unanchored lists in Apple OS X UI. I have no opinion on this one.
• CNN.com - Eskimo village destroyed by fire - Aug 5, 2006
  …. but but but but… were are the igloos?
• YouTube - OK Go - Here It Goes Again
  Since I bookmarked this one, and today (16 days), this video has done a lot of internet travel. The simple explanation for that is - it’s fucking great. (good song too).
• BBC NEWS | Technology | How the web went world wide
  One key date is 6 August 1991
• – madeyouthink –
• The World’s Most Photorealistic Vector Art
• What Web 2.0 means to 500 random Basecamp customers - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

This is a photo taken of me by my good friend Vinh Kha, on the 12th of June 2004. I wasn’t aware of that he took the photo. It’s just magic how he manage to capture the ‘morning Snus’ and all it’s glory with such discretion and stealth.

Yesterday was my last day as a Snusare… it’s over. After about 14 year. You may ask me why, and I will answer that why - but not now. I will deal with the whys at another time in another rant further down the line. Let me first focus on quitting.
And wish me good luck.

As I said last week - I been to Skelleftea. Im now sitting in my sofa watching a recording of the Canadian grand prix, waiting for my parents to call from the airport saying; we are here now. Ferrari and Michael Schumacher are currently quickest… but as we all know - he didn’t win this past weekend.

Midsummer was good. It’s just so nice going back and meet all my lovely old friends. They all are truly an amazing bounce of people.

We (Willow, Mr Tall, Henrik and I), rented a car in Stockholm and drove up during Thursday night. I love driving. Especially during the night. And especially Swedish summer nights. It was a pure pleasure.

First thing on Friday morning was a lunch involving fish. I had fish. I just can’t eat it. I did my best. Thanks to the lovely company it went down alright. Then we were of to give my sister a warm hug before finally going to where we the last 4 years have celebrated the midsummer weekend - Olov Nilzens cabin in Boviken. HUGE amount of love and cred to Olov and Carina for putting up with everyone every year.
One of the highlights was definitely when Anders Norberg sang ‘far jag kan inte fÃ¥ upp min kokosnöt’ at the end of a long karaoke session.

On Sunday, we (Willow, Mr Tall, Henrik and I), drove to Burea to play Football Golf with my half brother other brother - Marcus Vaneryd, at Myggvalla (translates to Mosquito Valley).
Football Golf was very very fun. I definitely can suggest that to anyone in any age and any sex.
It is/was a lot more fun then Frisbee Golf, which we played on Monday evening before once again hitting the road to drive down to Stockholm again.

In Stockholm I had a tight schedule. During the day I had plans to visiting Vinh Kha, Simon Kallgard, Isak Wikstrom, Staffan Lamm, Karl Thyselius, Karl Ringman and my brother - Jonaz Vaneryd… turned out to be a bit to tight of a schedule (woke up way to late after the long drive down), so I never manage to get to Karl Thyselius and Karl Ringman =(.

Overall it was a very nice weekend.
And I’m looking forward to next year.

Two friends, Henrik Engdahl and Vinh Kha, were suppose to visit me here in London this weekend, sadly only one made it — Henrik Engdahl a.k.a the ginger ninja; Vinh had to stay back in stockholm to do some work.

Beside all the general hanging about etc and so on, we visited the Science Museum for the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exibition. I (and I think I speak for all of us attending) really enjoyed it. It’s really worth a visit.
I also found that some of the original sketches of Sully in Monsters Inc looked quite similar to me.

Was really nice having the ninja back in london, if even for only three days. And I most say that the ginger ninja have become quite a handy man with a deck of cards. Think we need to rename ‘the ginger ninja’ to ‘the magic ginger ninja’.