villia

State of Things

6 January 2016 by villia Leave a Comment

The blog is quiet on the surface, but don’t be fooled. Here is what’s up.

My second novel, Blood and Rain, is as good as complete. A few minor tweaks, then a bit of photography, cover design, trailer and a Twitter storm.

The site went offline in September 2015, as my hosting account was shut down. This was detailed in an earlier post. A quick summary, FatCow proved to have a horrible support department. They led me on for weeks before deleting my database. They kept saying it would be solved, or at least didn’t say it wouldn’t. Whatever, if you’re looking for a hosting solution, don’t look at FatCow.

Old posts I salvaged via WayBackMachine are being recreated and put up again. All comments are gone. I couldn’t get those. But most of the posts will be up in the coming days. All but the very last one from late summer 2015. They are gone forever. It’s a tedious affair, but I want my blog back.

So, see you very soon. I am looking forward to leaving the past behind and looking towards the future. A reader of my new novel described it as “beautiful”, so I’m itching to get it out there.

Mad World

20 November 2015 by villia Leave a Comment

The day so far.

1. Men are free to rape women in Iceland.

2. Icelandic working class can’t get a payrise because it’ll cause inflation. Politicians will get a 9.4% hike though. Because they’re so useful, I guess.

3. Most of the Paris attackers are either dead or arrested. The rest are known. France has decided to bomb thousands of civilians in Syria though. Tit for tat, because that’ll solve everything and not create more jihadists.

4. American presidential candidates are insane. And fascists.

5. An old man released a new music video. Nobody has a clue what it’s about, but it has been watched 650.000 times in the last 24 hours. I may be responsible for half that, so who is the other fool?

David Bowie – Blackstar

19 November 2015 by villia Leave a Comment

David Bowie ★

What can I say? Just watched this for the first time. I have no idea what to think. Bowie has a way of doing that. He creates something completely unexpected. Sure, he is a very talented artist, but the unpredictability and the willingness to take risks is probably why I regard him as the best rock star of all time. No competition. There are lots of great musicians, great stars, but Bowie is the man. Nobody else has managed to stay interesting (not always really good, but always interesting) for 50 years.

So, what do I think? No idea. Last time I had this WTF feeling after hearing a new Bowie song was in 1995 when he released 1.Outside. That was weird, difficult, unaccessible, but after listening to it a few times, it became a favourite.

As for this. ★ It seems to be about religion. Jesus is a scarecrow, Ahmen, a solitary candle at the centre of it all, the book with the ★, the women kneeling on the day of execusion. It definitely seems to be about religion, but it doesn’t glorify it. It makes it scary. People seem to have lost all individuality. They are spastic in their prayer. On the day he died.

Musically, it reminds me a bit of David Byrne and St. Vincent.

But what do I know? Except that this song is a real achievement. Bowie could easily be churning out China Girl like songs into eternity, basking in the glory of his past. But that would be boring. He doesn’t do boring. That’s why he’s the man.

Now, I’m off to watch this again. See if I can make sense of it.

Zouheir

16 November 2015 by villia Leave a Comment

The name of security guard that stopped one of the killers from entering the stadium in Paris is Zouheir. He is a Muslim and this is somehow a big deal. I don’t see why.

Being somehow surprised, relieved or extra happy that the hero is a Muslim seems to indicate some kind of a belief that a Muslim would react differently from a person of another faith. That he would have let the killer in or that he would have had any kind of understanding or sympathy for the killer’s motives.

This is ridiculous. A decent human being will try to stop a murderer and Muslims are just as likely to be decent human beings as people of other faiths.

His name should be remembered and celebrated, but his faith is of no relevance, except to prove to idiots that Muslims are not the problem. Idiots are.

Facebook’s Fear of Death?

31 October 2015 by villia Leave a Comment

Yesterday was the day I discovered Tsü. I’d heard of it, but as I have a mild phobia of signing up to every and any new social media fad, I never paid attention to it. A couple of Facebook friends were posting about this platform and it looked kind of interesting. But it was Facebook itself that sparked my real interest.

Facebook has decided to block all links to Tsü. This is two things. Censorship, and I hate censorship more than anything. And fear. If Facebook is afraid of Tsü, then it must be worth a look.

I signed up. Connected my youTube and Twitter accounts and tried to connect Facebook, but that didn’t go so well. Facebook won’t let anyone post a link to Tsü on their network and they won’t let anyone connect the profiles.

The fact that Tsü promises to be less intrusive is a great thing. They also say they’ll share 90% of the advertising revenue with content creators. That would be the users. Image the content you’ve created for Facebook in the 5-6 years you’ve been there. The photos, posts, links, clicks, likes. It’s enormous. Now, imagine they would share their profits with you, or a charity you choose?

A social network is nothing without users, so here’s hoping that Tsü manage to grow and that they stay true to their vision.

If you want to follow or befriend me on Tsü, go here: http://www.tsu.co/VilliAsgeirsson

What Have You Done, WordPress?

27 October 2015 by villia Leave a Comment

Twitter followers will be well aware that I’ve had some issues with FatCow hosting. They wouldn’t restore my data, they stalled at every opportunity until “the system” deleted the files.

But there was hope. Archive.org’s WayBackMachine did have my site on file and I managed to copy my scribblings into a word processor. It’ll be quite a bit of work to get it all back onto the site in correct order, but it’s a challenge that I have no choice but to accept.

I did have much of my posts in the WordPress iPhone app. I realised that today. I jumped for joy! I could probably use the app to restore much of my posts. I signed into the app with my new login and password… and promptly watched as all my posts disappeared. They were all gone, except for the two posts already on the restored site. Other pages, such as the one with information on my novel disappeared too. It was all gone.

Now, I understand that it may make sense that the website has priority over the app. The app replicates the site. Sure. But would it not be an idea to have the app prompt you if deleting posts is actually what you want to do? If the app had asked if I wanted all the posts gone, I could have pressed the button saying NO. And then looked for a way to get the posts onto the site.

As it is, the website dominated and all my posts, bar the two, were deleted. It was like watching a hacker delete everything from a server in a movie. It was horrible.

So, WordPress team, a suggestion for a future update. Let the app prompt you if you want posts stored in the app – but not on the site – deleted. Let the app give some options. Delete, keep unchanged, move to drafts, publish. Something like that.

Because, after all, our data is what it’s all about and a company that does everything to preserve that data is king.