Swirly Flower Cane

A new polymer clay project - a square flower cane.

Building the cane. The swirls and the stem are a mix of Fimo browns - 76 Cognac, 7 Caramel, and 75 Chocolate. The background is one fifth 39 Peppermint and four fifths 0 White. Petals are layers of 26 Cherry Red and 22 Raspberry.

The cane is wrapped in an extra layer of background, before reducing, to protect the pattern. On the right, the cane reduced to a size of a few square centimeters. I later made beads and a bracelet from this cane.

Antivirus Anger

We planned to release a new version of the platform game last weekend, but unforeseen technical problems appeared. Compiling the game for Windows turned out to be difficult. We program the game in c, using Linux. Thanks to the SDL library and MinGW, a Windows port of the GNU c compiler, the game should be easily portable to Windows as well.

The first problem was F-secure's antivirus program. When I compiled our game, it immediately recognized the game's executable file as a virus and removed it (for our protection). It turned out that not just our game got treated this way, but even the smallest possible c-program with an empty main function was detected as malware as soon as I compiled it. I am using the current MinGW, with gcc 4.6.2.

My various test programs were classed as Gen:Variant.Graftor.11442, Gen:Variant.Graftor.11230, Gen:Variant.Graftor.10418, Trojan.Generic.KDV.492012, Gen:Variant.Kazy.50358. Of course we could turn off the stupid antivirus scanner, but then the problem would probably just move to whoever tries our game and has the same antivirus system installed. Switching to an older gcc (version 3.4.5 which I had lying around) made the problem go away. Also, the most recent version of the game seems to avoid the virus scanner, for no apparent reason.

EDIT 21.1.2012
I was going to report the problem today on the MinGW-users mailing list, only to discover that an empty program is no longer classed as a virus. Maybe f-secure updated their scanning system?

Street Things Belgium, part three

Part of the Atomium.

Street Things Belgium, part two

Street Things Belgium, part one

Platform game

Today we proudly release the first version of our computer game!

The Game for Windows. Download the zip file. Extract the folder anywhere. Double-click the file game001.exe to run the game.

The Game for Linux 32 bit, and The Game for Linux 64 bit. Download one of the files above, according to your operating system (typically 32 bits for older computers). Save the file anywhere. Additionally, you need to install some libraries. For Ubuntu, run this command in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian libsdl-mixer1.2 libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-gfx1.2-dev libzzip-0-13

Any comments and ideas are welcome. Please report any problems or bugs!

Small print: The game, program and artwork are copyright 2011 by Johanna and Fredrik. No Warranty is given! Please do not distribute.

Chewing Gum Foil Hearts

Chewing Gum Foil Snowflakes

Printable Christmas Card

...for family and friends! The card as a pdf.

Print the pdf. Cut out the card by cutting away the grey in the background, halving the larger circles. Then fold along the rows of smaller circles, as in the picture, to make an S-shape. Place in your collection of Christmas cards.

Still life

Street View Netherlands, part two

 Some more of these street objects, from our recent trip to the Netherlands...

...and some uncategorized bonus objects, such as some surprisingly pretty moss between paving stones. I'm guessing "hond in de goot" means that dogs are not allowed in some store nearby. The red-and-yellow graphics was lighted up at night, and depict the bombing of Rotterdam. The silhouette is of a Rotterdam statue which also commemorates this.

Street View Netherlands, part one

Our bread machine

Ingredients: flour, water, olive oil, sugar, salt, dry yeast. Sunflower seeds are nice. Pumpkin seeds are also nice, and may give the bread a slight green tint.

The ingredients are put into the bowl of the bread machine. It is important to insert the mixing blade first! Then dry yeast is added in a small cup on top of the machine.


Our machine is an old one, made by Panasonic. Wikipedia says the first bread machine was made by Matsushita, now Panasonic, in 1986.

After four hours the bread is ready.

With this post we celebrate a 100 bread jubilee, counting since moving to a new country and taking the bread machine with us. During this time, we have consumed 30 kg of the standard 405 wheat flour, bought at the standard price of 25 cent/kg.

Here is a blog by fellow bread machine enthusiasts.

Fascination