Henrik Carlsson's Blog

All things me.

Bass Improvisation – 24th jan

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A improvised something-something (a song?) that I made yesterday on bass guitar and modular synth.

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🎞 Watched: The Shining (1980)

Two nights ago Linn and I watched The Shining and I’ve recently finished the book. I have mixed feelings about this movie. I’ll get back to this soon, I hope.

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A small statue of Carl Larsson's head

Carl Larsson

I’m so fed up with content

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Linn and I have started watchning the latest season of Black Mirror. (Season 6, I think.) So far we’ve only seen the episodes ”Joan is Awful” and ”Loch Henry” and I think both were good.

In the past I’ve thought that the problem with ”Black Mirror” is that it’s rarely as clever as it thinks it is.Its good ideas have usually been explored better in earlier works of sci-fi and it has this air of baby’s first dystopia. Two episodes in and I feel that this problem is less present in this season, even though the meta narrative stuff they’re doing at the moment are balancing on the edge of becoming masturbation.

But I’m not here to complain about Black Mirror. I’m here to complain about Netflix.

The problem isn’t the service Netflix, it’s the Netflix apps. They’re just so noisy. When I want to find something to watch I want to browse a list of recommendations, of I’m searching for something specific and want to see the results of a search. Netflix does present a list to browse but doing so is like browsing a minefield. Whenever I stop the cursor for just a second to read something or look at a poster, the thing I’m currently highlighting starts autoplaying.

I’ sure there’s lots of data that suggests that this maximizes the consumers engagement with the content. But I don’t want to consume or engage with content. I want to watch a movie or a tv show. Sometimes to relax and to take my mind off of things and sometimes to challenge myself to new ideas and perspectives!

When I finally find something to watch in this endless sea of content to consume, if that something is a tv show the next annoyance shows up.

”Skip intro”

I HATE the ”skip intro” button. If what I’m watching is something that’s really meant to be watched for its artistic merits, the intro is part of the experience. The director and editor has crafted the pace of the film (or show) with the intro in mind. Is sets the tone, tells part of the story. The ”skip intro” button just tells me that I should rush past this boring thing and get to the content.

And then, after I finished watching an episode of something, enter the stress again. As a movie or an episode ends I like to remain immersed in the world I just visited and think about what I saw while the credits roll. Oh now you don’t, says Netflix and starts pushing the next thing. If I want to stay with the credits I have just a few seconds to find the remote and quickly tell it that yes, I’m actually watching this and I want to continue doing that.

Why, Netflix, are you so afraid of me actually getting a few seconds to think? Are you that worried that I’ll realize that so much of what You present to me are just meaningless, artless content meant to distract my mind and keep me subscribed?


Post scriptum: The rest of the season was good as well.

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Sunnanö Camping,
Öregrund

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Öregrunds hamn,
Östhammar

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18th of July

Linn, the kids and I are currently out with my dad’s camper van. This is the first night this time and we are at ”Furuvik”, an amusement park that we really like.

Last year we did the same thing and back then it took a while before it became a nice experience. The first night, and even more so the morning after the first night, it was really not a nice experience. All of us were in a bad mood and everybody where angry with each other. This year it seems much better.

We took quite a short trip in the park today and headed back too the camper early instead. We ate some food and some snacks, Linn and I have some wine and Ebbe made a new friend. All in all we all had a great evening. Now I’m sitting outside, writing this in my notebook and once I’m done I’ll go inside the van to sleep. Hopefully the others are asleep already. At least in theory they should be.

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The camper

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Today I’m driving to my dad to pick up his camper van. We are going on a trip with it the coming week.

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Quite literally reaping what we’ve sowed, making mojitos out of the mint in the herb garden.