Ethan Poole - Technology, Politics, Language, and More

A man who does not know foreign language is ignorant of his own. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Recent Blog Posts

Bo Kaspers Orkester - I samma bil

492 days ago
The American Swedish Institute

509 days ago

The American Swedish Institute (ASI) is one of my favourite places in the Twin Cities. For those who don’t know, Minneapolis-Saint Paul was the destination for nearly every Swede and Norwegian immigrating to the United States. There is a long Scandinavian immigrant history and community here in Minnesota and a lot of elderly still speak Swedish, although it’s a slightly older version compared to what is spoken in Sweden today. ASI was started by Swan Turnblad, a prominent business man from Småland who made his riches off of the Swedish language newspaper Den Svenska Amerikanska Posten, because so few people spoke English in the Cities around that time. The institution is located in Turnblad’s former mansion.

ASI has a museum, a rather-popular shoppe (with handcrafts and other Swedish stuff), a Swedish-language school, a café, and tons of events throughout the year. During the Christmas season, there is a huge Lucia festival and a huge Christmas dinner. There are celebrations for Midsommar too. Overall, ASI does a lot to promote Swedish culture and to preserve the American-Swedish heritage in the area.

I am volunteering at ASI in the Youth and Family Programs office now, helping with basic office tasks. The Swedish-language community here at the University of Minnesota is pretty intertwined with ASI, as most of us volunteer there in some capacity. ASI even lent us a kubb set last week!

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Over-scheduled

516 days ago

I think that I have really over-scheduled myself with tasks, appointments, class, work, and more. My iCal calendar has never looked as full as it does now, with nearly every day this week some meeting or appointment on top of everything else I had to do. Obviously, being in a university, I have a lot more school work and I have to take care of many things on my own, since I am living on my own. Here are all of my obligations:
- School. This includes both going to class (about 3 hours a day), homework, and studying.
- Work. I have been hired for an on-campus job to go around every morning and inspect that classrooms are ready for the day. I work every weekday from 6:30AM to 8:30AM.
- Lowter. I have made a commitment to try to maintain and to improve Lowter, which I am keeping up with. Various pages on Lowter are being redesigned and new content is being published. In fact, I recommend to read my latest article about Technology in the ‘08 US Presidential Election, it’s a great article!
- American Swedish Institute. I am soon going to start volunteering at the ASI here in Minneapolis in their office to help with various projects every Monday and Thursday. Volunteering at the ASI goes along with what I’m studying and is good experience. It’s an amazing place too; I’ll try to get some photos of it next Thursday when I bus over there.
I also have had a few freelance projects recently, but nothing at the moment. I’m only taking projects from current clients, unless I get something monetarily worth the time I would dedicate to the project. Anyhow, I’m at the point where I feel largely overwhelmed with everything. Hopefully I can get a hold of everything soon.
Around the U of M's Campus

520 days ago

Last Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day here in Minneapolis, with the sun shining and the air a crisp 60F (15.5C). I took a nice walk across the 10th Avenue Bridge, which crosses over the Mississippi River. I figured since the nice days remaining in this year for Minnesota are dwindling down quickly, I ought to take a few pictures around the University of Minnesota’s campus. The pictures don’t quite capture what a perfect day it was, but it’s the best I could do with only my iPhone.

The Mall Area, which is the centre of campus.

The Knoll Area is where my residential hall is located. The buildings are a bit older and there are lots of trees everywhere.

The Mississippi River from the 10th Avenue Bridge. It was pretty windy at the spot if I remember correctly.

The tall red building in the left is Sanford Hall, the residential hall in which I currently live.

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Laser Inc - Det ar en gång en fågel

524 days ago

Jag lyssnade på den här låten i svenskklass och nu är jag beroende av den! Musikvideon är också kul:

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SPORE is Very Addicting

529 days ago

Being a university student and having no money, I naturally shelled out the $50 to purchase SPORE. I have been waiting for SPORE to come out for such a long time. When they first announced the game, I was very excited because I am a fan of sandbox-style games (the Sims, Civilization, etc.). Years later, the game is finally released and installed on my computer!

I will not get into the awful DRM situation, except to say it was not a smart move of EA’s part to include such controversial and restrictive DRM. Personally, I had no problems installing the game and getting it to run. Of course, most people do not care about DRM until it affects them personally, so perhaps I fall under this category. I will say DRM is bad no matter what.

Anyhow, SPORE is an amazing game that is very addicting. I sat and played for five straight hours last Saturday without realising how much time had passed. I have played through all the stages twice, both times as herbivores.

My first creature is pretty ugly, but it was my first time playing through and I did not have any experience creating cool creatures. My second creature is a little more interesting and turned out to be pretty good at making friends with other tribes and civilisations.

If you like strategy and sandbox games, then I highly recommend trying out SPORE. The game is well worth the money because it will yield you hours and hours of amazing gameplay! Now I am going to go and play SPORE myself…

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Pan's Labyrinth

583 days ago

My brother talked for months about having to see a movie called Pan’s Labyrinth, directed by some guy who made Hellboy or something. Finally, one day he recorded the movie off of HBO and was going to watch it. Since his movies generally suck, I went upstairs, but he later told me that he didn’t watch it because it was in Spanish. He said that he hadn’t recorded it off of HBO Español, but that it was still in Spanish. I asked him if it had subtitles and he said he wasn’t sure because he stopped watching it after it wasn’t in English. Lo and behold, I looked online and found out that the movie is suppose to be in Spanish and that the recording also had subtitles.

So, I sit down and start watching the movie with him, figuring I can at least practise my Spanish a little. It ended up being a really, really good movie. The costumes of the monsters were amazingly realistic and creepy. The story was intriguing and bizarre, in the traditional magical realism theme. The Basque exchange student staying at our house, Erune, said she never saw the movie (“El laberinto del fauno”) because she thought it was too scary. Now, the movie is pretty scary and the monsters actually did frighten me, but I wouldn’t classify it as a horror film.

Just everything about the movie was very well done. It is one of those movies that is really hard to explain to someone, but I highly recommend watching it. It is the best Spanish movie I have ever seen, that’s for sure.

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Trip from Florida to Minnesota

602 days ago

Just last week I got back home from my family’s trip from Florida to Minnesota. We drove all the way to the Twin Cities, which was certainly a long time in the car, but showed us a huge chunk of our country’s landscape. Really, I do not have many things to tell about our journey across the country, as most of the trip was in the car itself. Basically, the Midwest is full of corn … lots of corn … like literately everywhere. Wisconsin and Minnesota are both beautiful states in every way; during the summer, everything is blossoming and green: a site to see.

The Twin Cities are very nice, although I really did not see too much of St. Paul, only Minneapolis. It is a very liveable area, with a good amount of residential housing right near the town centre (downtown). The University of Minnesota’s campus is amazing and I am even more eager to move there in about a month’s time! Otherwise, I do not have much to say about the trip, as most of my time was spent at the University. You can read my entry on Lowter about Minneapolis’ city-wide wireless Internet. Also, I have some cool pictures from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the St. Louis Gateway Arch that I took.

Now I have a month left in Florida before I am back in the car and headed up to Minnesota for the long term!
Trip to England

631 days ago

I just got back from England a few days ago and I have to say that England is an amazing country. There are so many things I could write about, but I’m going to try to summarise the trip as best as possible. First, I went with my dad to England as a sort-of graduation present. We stayed with my step-aunt, who lives in Reading, which cut down on the costs of going. For transportation, we purchased nine-day rail passes, which let us use the train unlimited for anywhere in England. Over the ten day trip, we managed to travel to London, Chepstow (Wales), Stonehenge, Manchester, Poole, and York. It also did not rain once!

Overall, there are a lot of positive things about England. First, the food quality is much higher than in the US, so the produce and such taste so much better. Everything is also really expensive, especially petrol, which is about double the price of that in the US. Lots of people there do not actually speak English, but are immigrants from Poland, the Middle East, India, Africa, etc. Unlike the US, you can walk pretty much anywhere and it is completely plausible not to own a car. Towns also have funny names like Staines, Leamington Spa, etc.

There are a few things I did not like about England:
- People are generally not friendly. In the US, you wave and say hello to complete strangers all the time out of politeness. If you do this in England, people look at you as if you are from outerspace. No one holds doors for others or any of those other courteous acts we commonly do in the US. On the trains, the only people who ever talked to us were foreigners.
- Service sucks everywhere. England is not a service country like the US. In my opinion, when tipping is not a custom, then servers and such really just do not care about their attitudes towards customers.
- Plumbing is awful. The pipes are on the outsides of walls. Most places had awful water pressure too. You cannot have light switches in your bathroom, but rather pull-chains, because the voltage is too high. Instead, they just place low-voltage plugs like right in the freaking shower, as if that isn’t dangerous. Also, most sinks have separate hot and cold water taps and the hot water is scorching hot and, hence, useless for washing your hands. Instead, people fill up the sink with water to wash their hands, a huge waste of water. Speaking of wasting water, toilets there use like eight gallons of water to flush.
- Signs just say “toilets”, instead of something more polite like bathrooms or, preferably, restrooms. It is also kind of funny that instead of “Exit”, signs say “Way out”, like you’re trying to escape.
- There is an utter lack of street signs and proper road signals. Hardly any streets are labelled and there are no driving-instructional signs anywhere. In Reading, there were these weird nests of ten traffic lights where an overhanging set would have sufficed. However, the roundabouts are a really good idea that we are just now starting to use in the US.
- Everything is simply dirty. People throw their trash on the ground. Houses seem cluttered and dirty. Also, put some freakin’ trash cans around the cities! My dad and I had to store our trash in our pockets until we got home because there were not trash cans anywhere. In the US, it is socially unacceptable simply to throw trash on the ground. It seems England would rather clean up trash, rather than properly collect it in an organised manner.
This may seem like a lot of negative factors, but in reality they were only minor annoyances. It was certainly worth it because everything else is amazing and well worth the bad service! Now for a little bit on each specific area I visited in England:

London
I was surprised that London did not suck; it was actually a really nice city. It was amazing to see the sites like St. Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, the Parliament Building, Westminster Abbey, etc. There are a lot of statues and monuments all over the city. Buckingham Palace was a letdown and a rather boring building. Personally, I walked through every room in the National Gallery, which was amazing. It was unbelievable to see all the historic art so close. Also, I discovered Monet was a really crappy painter, and van Gogh was better in person. The Tate Britain museum was rather lame; in reality, there are not many good British artists, sorry. St. Paul’s was breathtaking, all the intricate detail on every inch of the building. We climbed all the way to the top for a nice view of central London. I liked London a lot, but it was a bit touristy at the same time.

Chepstow
Wales is downright beautiful and it largely resembles the Carolinas in appearance. We went to the small town of Chepstow near the border. We saw Chepstow Castle and the abbey ruins not far from there. It was a very peaceful little town.

Stonehenge
Our aunt drove us to Stonehenge one of the days. It was interesting to see the actual structure in person, but if it had not been close to Reading I wouldn’t have bothered visiting it. We were driving along the motorway and Stonehenge is literately right there next to the road, which was striking. The little audio tour was nice too.

Manchester
Manchester was a much nicer city than London, in my opinion. Everything was cleaner and the people were much friendlier. There are tons of shoppes on the market street and the city has a very modern, industrial look to it. We visited the Museum of Science and Industry, which was interesting, seeing the basic textile industry that put Manchester on the map. If I was to return to England, I would stay in Manchester as a hub for travelling around the north.

Poole
Poole is lame. Do not bother going there. The “beaches” are mediocre and the harbour is ugly. It was like as if you took Florida, vomited all over it, ran it through the washer, and then spit it back out. Everything was very touristy and rather expensive.

York
York was my favourite part of the trip. It is the quintessential English town, with ruins, a castle, a cathedral, dungeons, etc. The little market streets are very mediaeval looking. The York Minister is absolutely amazing and well worth the four hour train ride to York. We attended Evening Prayer there, which was everything I would have imagined in a cathedral. Overall, the Minister is much prettier and spectacular than St. Paul’s. The Yorkshire countryside was beautiful and certainly much more pretty than the rest of England.

Basically, in the end, England was amazing and I want to go back some day to travel more around the north! If you want to view more photos I took, check out my Flickr set.

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The Dangers of Impulse Buying

666 days ago

Americans in general have very bad spending habits, which has led to our country having huge amounts of consumer debt over our heads. Nearly everyone has debt in some form, even if it is only their house and car loans. Being debt free seems like something in the past to most Americans.

The main problem Americans and bad spenders have is that they buy on impulse. You see something you like in the store and you simply buy it right when you see it, without giving the decision much thought. Of course quick buying decisions are okay for routine items (food, toiletries, cleaning products, etc.), but for items like TVs, computers, and other non-standard items it is not. If you buy on impulse, you simply end up spending much more money than you should, living way out of your means. It is rather easy to avoid impulse buying. There are two things that you can do to avoid falling into the habit.

First, whenever you want to buy something that you do not need (gadgets, expensive clothing, furniture, etc.) put it on a list and date it. Then wait thirty days. If you still want that item after thirty days then purchase it. However, it is highly likely your desire for the product has entirely died out, especially if you are use to impulse buying. Eventually, you will become accustomed to differentiating between something you just want now and something you will want later, without having to do the thirty-day-list process. You will end up seeing how much you buy that you really do not even want.

Second, avoid shopping without an objective. People often go to the store simply to go to the store, without the objective of buying something. This becomes dangerous, especially with the mega-stores that bombard you with seemingly-good deals on items. You have to go into a store with a clear plan of what you want to buy. Purchase nothing that you did not plan to buy already and stay clear of those “bargain” buys on the end aisles. Shop with an objective and you will spend less money.

Buying on impulse is a dangerous practice of so many Americans. It is easy to avoid by using a thirty-day list and by shopping objectively. Now, this problem may or may not exist in Europe, I am not sure, but either way impulse buying is a bad practice wherever it is done. Remember it is never too late to develop good spending habits.

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