Smooth sail

My new travel laptop which is at the same time a gaming laptop works fine. It weighs in at about 9 lbs but it's doable. Going through airport security is a smooth sail and it's totally equipped for running Watch Dogs at reasonable settings.

From phone

Chicago hack blues

OK, so Watch Dogs is out. I'm gonna be playing it throughout the summer on PC. There are some reviews out there for you, who still are reluctant (shame on you!), but they are almost exclusively on console. Check a few of them out:

Joystiq
Gameinformer
UsGamer
PCGamer

Golden oldie

Perry is getting old, old and gray...

From Sarah's iPad

Happy Memorial Day weekend

Happy Memorial Day weekend! Sarah is doing her compulsory (as I call it) workout in a gym and I´m enjoying taking in the GC feeling in our hotel close to Las Canteras. We were here 2 years ago and I liked it a lot, Sarah was more so-so. But she was, and now is, here to work. I never met a woman more passionate about her job than Sarah. Like a fish in the ocean is a cliché but damn it's spot on :-)

From phone

From bustling Barcelona to the laidback Gran Canaria

Barcelona-Las Palmas flight today Thursday. A quick shot after the plane made a u-turn before landing at Las Palmas airport.

From phone

A quick stop in Barcelona

Arrived in Barcelona this afternoon, a day later than planned. Everything went smooth however, but it looks like our 4 days here will be only one (!). Sarah needs to go to Las Palmas and THEN back to Barcelona because of a flaw in the organizational setup. And I'm not gonna make that loop, especially not since she needs to stay in Barcelona more than a week after Las Palmas. So I've decided to take a week off on Gran Canaria while she's messing around with her stuff :-) I definitely need it. Soak up some sun and just feel off the hook before we leave for San Francisco.

But Barcelona seems like a nice city. We rushed from our hotel to a place called Park Guell, something you apparently need to see if you're around these parts. I have no clue what to gawk at else in this densely populated city so I would not feel amiss if we'd just leave for the hotel and spend some quality time together :-)

From phone

Let's hack the city

Watch Dogs is due in little more than a week. Ubi made a little video of a prank they pulled. Staged or not - it's pretty cool :-)

When things start heating up

The upcoming week will be another scorcher for the City. The second heat wave in a short time will hit the Bay Area and places like Livermore may hit record highs for this time of the year. Sarah told me they are expecting triple digits. That's not comfortable. But I'd take any heatwave over the lousy spring weather in Stockholm. It's chilly and dull, as usual. Can't wait to fly out next week!

Pic that makes me homesick

Got a pic taken from Sausalito Yacht Club this morning (you can see San Francisco in the distance) after a phone call from Jason who is checking on our house while the winter tenants are abroad. Sarah is in Seattle and I am in Stockholm. I am looking so forward to leave for my hometown next month!!

Happy Easter Holidays!

Happy Easter Holidays ya'll! Sarah called me last night and yapped about a property in Berkeley that caught her attention. Usually she doesn't wince when East Bay comes up but this one is different. It's a beautiful 1925 house in Claremont for $1.8M. Open House on Easter Sunday. She said she would probably go there and have a peek.

Photos: Liz Rusby

Anchor tenant renames Transbay Tower

Transbay Tower, the huge new skyscraper slated for a 2017 completion is about to be renamed after the main tenant Salesforce, a cloud computing company which has landed a deal to lease half the building. "Salesforce Tower" will be the new name. Hm... I can almost hear the tax breaks kicking in, making this deal possible...

Everyone needs 12gb of frame buffer :-)

I have always been a PC gamer. Not that consoles aren't good enough. I think games ought to be played in a nice chair on a 60 inch TV screen - not leaned forward over a keyboard. But I like good visuals and to be able to tweak stuff, visuals as well as UI and configuration files. And now Nvidia has announced its latest $3000 monster GPU: Titan Z. Do I have to get it? I don't think so, but part of me wants to say: Does the sun rise in the east?

Going to Amsterdam

Going to meet up with Sarah in Amsterdam for the last time before I go to San Francisco again in May. The new enlarged Terminal 2 at Arlanda Airport is looking good.

Worse than NYC

San Francisco is ranked in at the 3rd most congested major metropolitan area in North America. Does not come as a surprise. I love The City but the traffic is murderous.

Photo: Justin Sullivan

East bay

"Berkeley? Claremont Hills?" said Sarah yesterday on the phone when I talked to her from a gray and boring Swedish late winter weather and she from a soaking wet, just as gray but so much warmer San Francisco weather. "I don't think so but I'll check it out if you want!"

Yes, it's another property on display. But this time on the "wrong" side of the bay (Sarah's words) but with a heck of a nicer price tag. You can check it out HERE.

Photo: Liz Rusby

Noe Valley

Sarah is going to an open house in Noe Valley today. She went to a rather nice piece of property last year in Noe Valley and it's a neighborhood we both like. This time around is a big one, asking price is $3.795 million which is probably $750.000 more than what we can get for our house in Sausalito. I'm half a world away and can't join - but I can gawk at some of the pics ;-)

You can see the whole property right HERE.

The empty beauty of a lone city

Imagine the city you love - without all the people you love and everyone you know. What would be left? When I saw this video for the first time I almost wept. It's so beautiful. I know every nook and cranny of my hometown - but it felt soo wrong. A city is nothing without its people.

When light is dying

They say you can never have too many zombies. I think you can. But I'm cautiously optimistic about Techlands upcoming Dying Light. Especially when they present it like this, their latest trailer on their multiplatform title:

Let it rain, let it rain...

Finally the end of the 3-year drought? The Bay Area will be pounded with storm after storm this weekend. Sarah told me on the phone the grass and the flowers in our backyard are getting greener by the minute :-)

Photo: Justin Sullivan

California "winter"

While a big chunk of the US is freezing its butt off California has summer. It's mid January and the Bay Area is expecting record highs in almost all spots around San Francisco. The average is 13 to 16 degrees warmer than usual. Damn do I miss my hometown!

Merry X-mas!

Merry X-mas everyone! Hope everything is well with you and that Santa's being nice to you and all :-)

I'm in Sweden at the moment and there's no X-mas feeling at all, with the temps in the mid 40s this very X-mas Eve. But I don't mind. Winter is not my plate, as you know ;-)

Gearing up for Xmas

SantaCon 2013 kicked off yesterday in San Francisco. But to be honest this pic by Michael Short should be considered typical of SF anytime of the year. Everything is there. Such a great shot.

Photo: Michael Short

"Happy Thanksgiving"

Stewie on a landline yesterday: "So you guys think Brian is gone? Just you wait and see. Oh, by the way: Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your stupid turkey. Me, on the other hand, am gonna set things straight!"

The wizard of id resigns

John Carmack leaves id. Not really a game designer but hell of an engineer, he can fuse software and hardware like no one else. What will he do now? Keep on with the Oculus Rift project, presumably.

The One and Only (?) is out

On Friday the 22nd, the Xbox One was launched in the US. Microsoft reports of more than 60 million zombies killed in Dead Rising 3 on this very first day alone. What a crazy and understandable way to start the Holiday season, guys ;-)

Photo: Gerardo Mora

Our special blend

Gas prices are in general 40 cents higher per gallon in California than in the rest of the US. Everyone from out of state who comes to the Golden State usually wonders why. Well, it's because California has a high gas tax and - this is not so widely known - it's own special fuel blend to fight air pollution. There are only a few selected refineries that can produce it and this "blends in" in the equation. You can read more about it here.

Photo: The Chronicle. Pay cash and you get a discount!

Going to Amsterdam

Going to Amsterdam over the weekend to meet Sarah. She has flown in from Cairo and we are taking our chance to meet of course :-)

From phone

West coast in my heart

In the Stockholm subway Scandinavian Airlines are advertising for their newly opened destination San Francisco. I feel homesick to the bones when I see it. Especially now when it's freezing cold and the friggin dark season is here.

From phone

Our sweet Sausalito

A remodeled house on Alexander avenue in Sausalito is on sale. Asking price? $7.195 million. Follow the link if you want to see what you can get in Sausalito if you dig really deep in your pockets. Speaking of Sausalito, our house there is now in the hands of a young executive couple until May next year. Feels great to know someone can take care of it while Sarah and I can't be there.

Photo: Jason Wells

A controller steaming with possibilities?

Yesterday Valve revealed their Steam PC game controller. This little fella uses haptic feedback which basically makes this controller a device which should satisfy keyboard and mouse users as it is "allowing precise control over frequency, amplitude and direction of movement". Read more here.

Tri-level home in Oakland

A Victorian for less than $1M? In San Francisco? No, no, no... in Oakland. My personal experience of Oakland is over all good. And I think I could live there. But Sarah, who has so much more experience of the Bay Area would never in her life move there. But she said on the phone from Hong Kong she likes this tri-level home right smack in the middle of Oakland Great Lake neighborhood.

Photo: OpenHomesPhotography

Does China have a Chinatown?

When Sarah's in Hong Kong she usually bombards me with photos. This time around she is reacting on how dirty the streets and street buildings are while most skyscrapers are shiny and beautiful. She also thinks Chinatown in San Francisco is more colorful than the real deal. But isn't that just typical? Isn't everything more colorful in SF, Sarah? ;-)

What is this, seriously?

Am I gawking at an example of neo-colonialism taken seriously or simply a piece of art?

Stockholm subway, September 5 2013.

From iPad

No snow in sight

Nice late summer weather in Stockholm.

From iPad

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day ya'll! It's the first time since 2009 I'm not in the US to celebrate. Feels kinda weird. But Sarah's in muggy Hong Kong working and I'm in chilly Stockholm working so we both have to suck it up. No Labor Day holiday for us this year. We're saving it for later ;-)

No fire without smoke

After already arrived in Sweden since a couple days and Sarah in Hong Kong, though with a few days delay via Dubai, we got a pic from our friends in Nevada, close to Reno and Lake Tahoe. The big Rim Fire in Yosemite is spreading and the smoke is spreading even further, actually much further. Maybe you don't see anything special in this pic but the truth is in the distance there should tower beautiful mountains - now it's a smoky haze. Our friends are pretty pissed, because who wants to live in a house that smells like a Ranger's cabin?

The flight

It's a 4-hour flight to O'Hare. Been there before. Sarah doesn't mind the airport but my experience of it is no good. Hope this time will change my opinion.

From iPad

Gate 94

The San Bruno mountains with the ocean layer on top and parts of South San Francisco
can be seen from our Chicago bound gate at SFO this Wednesday morning.

From iPad

Stuffed

Our friendly neighbor Terry is driving us and our luggage to our rental apartment in SF. Sarah and I are flying together to Chicago tomorrow and then Sarah will go for a 3-week working trip to Hong Kong via Dubai. I'll be heading back to Sweden. This is her stuff for her trip. It fills up a whole friggin car (!).

From phone

1st Year Anniversary

1st year Anniversary breakfast! We have the whole day ahead of us to do whatever we want. No one else. Just us. Gotta love that...

From phone

[EDIT: We will be uploading our private photos onto Sarahs FTP throughout the day, so sign in any time you like and browse at your heart's content.]

Playful reference - serious business

A superhero agency is certainly needed to deal with the chaotic traffic situation in the Bay Area...

Bay Bridge opens

Looks like the new Bay Bridge will get its Grand Opening on Labour Day Holiday weekend after all, despite the broken rods and all. Feds have signed off on the temporary fix.

Photo: The Chronicle

Yet another veggie eatery pops up

My old colleagues took me to a relatively new veggie restaurant in Oakland today. Crazy cheap lunch and a crazy amount of dishes and entrees to choose from. The verdict after my sesame "chicken" lunch? So so. I have had better. The soup that comes with the lunch menu was absolutely OK but the spring roll was stale.

From iPad

Vintage SF

At the corner of Geary and Larkin. A piece of vintage San Francisco.

From iPad

Change of theme

Speaking of murals, the good old whale theme on Olive is now gone. Instead there is a clown theme of sorts.

From iPad

Say whaat!

There's a new mural on Geary, one block from our rental on Jones street. I don't know what it's supposed to say. It's well done but it doesn't emit good vibes. It's like it wants to say: You're close to Tenderloin so get 'scared to the bone' and 'jump out of your skin' cuz you're gonna get chopped up anyway. Weird.

From iPad

Filbert street

A part of San Francisco I can never get tired of...

Community BBQ

Every other Sunday we're having a community bbq on the hill. Good for the neighborhood and for maintaining friendships. Today Sarah's the emcee :-)

The "other" America

You can easily tell you're in the Bay Area by the liberal standpoints just about anything. Sweet.

Stay on your toes - and don't scratch

California's got its share of monsters. Real ones.