So the year is 1998. I’m sitting in my room in my parent’s house in Lyngsta on an idle Sunday and randomly ends up on the channel showing Formula 1. It’s the Belgium grand prix. At the first start there was a massive car pileup in the first corner. At the restart two more were taken out. And then Schumacher in the lead was about to pass Coulthard who slowed down and due to poor visibility Schumacher plowed right into the back of the McLaren. After they both came back to the pits, Schumacher was as red as his outfit and stormed into the McLaren garage to give Coulthard a piece of his mind. (highlights are here)
And I was hooked right there. Previously I’d watched F1 when I more or less accidentally flipped channels to it but now I really started following it and 15 years on I’m still hooked. And I’ve always been a Ferrari fan. I dunno why but I have a thing for Italy. The year after he had an accident on Silverstone and crashed into a wall and broke his leg. But he returned later that year and was better than before the accident. Then Ferrari went ahead and pretty much dominated the sport for 4 years. Then it’s been up and down. And then Shumacher retired from Ferrari which most of us feared would be the end of their dominance – which it unfortunately was. Kimi did a good job of it and brought home the title and Felippe was pretty damn good too and so close to winning the title but noone stood out as much as Schumacher. And when Massa had his accident and Ferrari called Schumi and asked if he could drive the remianing races it was so close but didn’t pan out. But he came out of retirement to help his buddy Brawn out with the Mercedes team for a few years and then calling it quits to just be with his family.
And what most people don’t know is everything he did beside drive Ferraris. He was a big force behind car safety, especially in F1 after being there for the fatal Senna-crash. And he was also big on charity, not just money but also events. He used to rally together enough people for charity football events all the time. And he was also a family man, not a player like some of F1’s stars.
So it’s a real tragedy that he’s injured like this, when out skiing with his family. I really hope he pulls through this as well! It’s also a reminder that life is damn dangerous! How he can drive a F1 car for almost 20 years and only break a leg, but has a lethal accident skiing.
This year my sister AC turned 40. Like always we planned something special. And this is the story…
Due to scheduling conflicts we had to do it last weekend in November. And since my other sister Amy had to be present it had to be in Scotland. And since AC loves Edinburgh so much we decided that’s where we were going to go, much like we did when Amy turned 40 two years ago. But we couldn’t let AC know what was going on at all so we served up plenty of curveballs to keep her guessing. Then Ryan Air did what they do best – cause problems. Out of the blue the cancelled the flights to Edinburgh! Fortunately we got our money back but it still meant we had to look at options, and KLM it was. Unfortunately with KLM it means stopping by Amsterdam! And we’ve kept her in the dark all the time and even got her thinking she was going to Budapest. And we all lied that we were too busy to go and she was going all by herself. I actually didn’t have to lie – because we did have a mandatory kick off on the friday, and the kindergarten was closed and my wife had to attend a funeral and there was a sci-fi con that I was going to miss!
But on Wednesday the 27th my father Lars, brother Jocke, sister’s boyfriend Matte and my sister’s son Alex got into the car and drove not to Skavsta, where Ryan Air flies from, but to Arlanda. And to terminal 2 (which is for non Star Alliance flights). And then they boarded a flight to Amsterdam and she had no clue what was going on. Unfortunately they couldn’t keep it secret for long once they got to Amsterdam since she had to state her final destination to pass a checkpoint, so the cat was dragged out of the bag there. Meanwhile I was in Sweden working since I didn’t have enough paid vacation days to go. And it also kept her from thinking I wasn’t actually going. But on friday I had already a vacation day granted and my wife handled everything herself so I could actually go! Made the same trip as they did and when I arrived I just came into the pub with a bang and joined the fun!!
Most of the weekend was spent at pubs. Or walking around wondering where to eat – trying to find a place that can take 9 people spontaneously that vegetarians and non-vegetarians can eat at during Christmas shopping-days wasn’t easy! On Friday evening we found some place on George Street/Charlotte Square but that turned out to be really disappointing. Atleast for me – never had such a dull burger before. Then bed at 1 am for me. Up the morning after to enjoy a full english breakfast at a bakery on Rose Street. Then some shopping and a quick visit to a pub before we had to say good bye to my sister Amy and her daughters that had to go back home to Aberdeenshire. Then some more shopping before we ended up at KFC. Because we don’t have KFC in Sweden so we had to try it!
Then one of the highlights and biggest surprises – “Limbo“! Matte had googled “what to do in Edinburgh” for that weekend and that was one of the things that popped up. So we dished out some money to go see it. It was a bit of a gamble. And man did it pay off! It was a great combination of circus acts, dancing, music, comedy and one or two magic tricks. But the most surpring thing was the energy and chemistry of the performers! It was just awesome! If you’re anywhere close to Edinburgh you have to go see it! And the bendy guy, Jonathan Nosan, is really active on Twitter so he’s a “+Follow” for sure!
After that we tried another pub but realised we’d be better off buying two 6 packs and going back to the hotel and talk about stuff. Then off to bed and up – at 3:30 am! The flight left at 5:50 am but we had luggage that needed to be checked in “an hour before the flight” so that’s the way it had to be done. Then stopping in Amsterdam and waiting for the flight home. As we boarded that flight I saw that Maria Montazami was on the same flight which was kinda fun, I like her. Also on the flight was the medical rescue team that flew from Sweden to the Philippines to help with what they could. And they had some stories to tell. I’m really glad we have people like that! When we got home it was ofcourse awesome to see my wife and son waiting for me in the arrival hall, it was one of those Hallmark moments!!
I hate flying. Well not the actual flying part, but all the stuff that goes with it. Everytime I go flying I’m reminded how we as a civilization needs to come up with a transport-system! The saying “time is money” would indicate that there is a helluvalot of money to be made from such a patent, right?
Ryan Air used to fly to Edinburgh directly but now in time for Christmas they’ve cancelled that line so we had to go with KLM instead with a stop in Amsterdam. When flying home we started from our hotell at 4 am on sunday morning. I arrived home at 1:45pm. That’s almost 10 hours. Out of that only 4 hours were spent in the air!! First it was the taxi to the airport, got there early because we needed to check in 2 bags as luggage, then security checkpoint then wait…. and wait. And off to Amsterdam and after we landed it was atleast 10 minutes to the actual terminal, then another checkpoint. Then wait. And more wait. And then the next flight and we got home. And waited for the luggage. And then going home from the airport is another 30 minutes (which for Arlanda is pretty decent since we live on the “right side of town”, for the others it’s atleast a full hour.
That is such a waste of time! Not that I’m too important for this, not at all. It’s just .. a waste of time. 10 years ago when I was travelling to our embassies around the world I didn’t mind as much, probably because I got paid even when sitting at a pub on the airport. But now that it’s my spare time, I kinda mind. In this modern age where hours are important and your life is so stressfull, having a transporter to instantly beam you over to where you’re going instantly might be worth it. “What about all those transport accidents in Star Trek” you ask? Well what about all those air crashes in real life!? But considering how many gazillion people that work in logistics would get laid off I guess that’d be bad for employment figures, not to mention the airlines 🙂
I haven’t made a post for a while, not that there hasn’t been anything to write about, quite the contrary. I’ve had so much to do that I haven’t had the time to write anything here. And now that I do, I can’t remember all the stuff I was too write. Totally my bad. But I’m pretty sure it’ll come back to me.
Right now I got a Sharepoint farm to get stable enough to work with which is, as always, easier said than done. But thanks to google and alot of blogs I’m getting there.
And tomorrow we have our annual kick-off, yay! I’d be glad about if it wasn’t so badly timed with the kindergarten being close and a funeral for my wifes grandfather – not to mention a party in Scotland I can’t attend… oh well.
You simply can’t go wrong with a Ferrari …
But deep down I really hope this is fake.
What’s with the new Facebook app permissions!?
I got my HTC phone back after being sent to the shop for taking really blurry photos. They didn’t bother to fix it so they gave me a new One (see what I did there 🙂 )
So I promptly proceeded to install all the apps that I’m used to having. Everything went smooth right up until I got to the Facebook app. It requires pretty much every permission you can give an app, everything from making phonecalls to writing to other apps. Seriously, why does it need all that? If I want to call a friend I won’t use Facebook for it! I really don’t get it, why can’t they have an explanation side of the permission requirements to explain why they need it ’cause to me it doesn’t make sense. But I’m no Android expert so I wouldn’t know but it just seems weird!
I’ve said this before but it can’t hurt a repeat – expectations are bad! There should be a class in high school called “lower your expectations” because in high school all you wanted was to be a grown up and look how that worked out. Another thing about managing expectations is very much related to the video above. Guys growing up expecting chicks to look like they do in the movies are so in for a disappointment, ’cause not even those chicks look like they do in the movies.
It was time for a facelift on this blog so I got this theme which I think looks pretty ok. Not “great” but it’ll do for now.
Other than that I’m dropping Dropbox (see what I did there?) for GoodSync ’cause $200 per year is more than we can afford right now in these days of next-gen consoles, Christmas and everyone’s birthday is coming up. I think November is gonna be a killer month for my credit rating.
Haven’t written anything here in a while, pretty much because all is good at the moment. The son had a little surgery so we had to deal with him being down and out for a few days. Could have written a post about the reacent ruling in the second highest courts in Sweden that said that 6 guys cornering a girl in a dark room after a party and having sex with her again and again wasn’t rape, but it feels like I’ve beaten that horse a few times already.
But I finally got around to uploading some new photos to my 2013 album. Enjoy!
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Sometimes I really wonder how normal mortal humans manage their online safety?! I got a pretty good grip on IT security and have strong passwords on almost all the places I can and 2 step authentication (that is a double check that I’m who I say I am) on the ones that offer it. But there was one chink in the armor – my Twitter. Because Twitter don’t offer 2 step authentication with Telenor in Sweden I can’t activate it and pure lazyness from when I first set up that account led to me having a pretty week password there. “Week” as in 7 random characters & numberals. Yet that’s how someone got me yesterday. Managed to log into my Twitter and send bullshit links to the few followers I had, which are mostly friends of mine so pretty quickly I got a message saying “Hacked? Or do you really think I need diet-pills?”. Another chink in the armor is my Android phone. I’m pretty relaxed about installing stuff on my phone as long as it comes from the Play Store but it wouldn’t be hard for anyone to sneak something in there to hijack the phone. I knew there was one dubious app on the phone already so as a precaution I wiped the phone today and started from scratch. Really no point to restore it from backup, is there ?
But it lead me to wonder how mortal humans do it? Mortal humans who might not know what 2 step authentication is, let alone have it activated? Or people who can’t memorise random passwords?
So there’s this huge game-release today. Namely Grand Theft Auto V. Now let me say this first – I haven’t played it. So I can’t say if it’s good or not. But I have played III and IV, both legally purchased. So even though this i V with alot more I’m pretty comfortable in saying that it’s really not my kind of game. I can see how some people can like it, going around being politically incorrect, robbing banks, driving over pedestrians, visit strip clubs and being all “gangsta”. And it may be good story, great music, whatever. And the only real thing I have to clamp down on is that it’s console only. But that’s not what this is about.
What this is about is that the default setting in the gaming world seems to be “it’s GTA so it’s getting 10/10 unless we find something really game-breaking or awful about the game”. And if you dare give it criticism you maybe just have a poll to get you fired – like Carolyn Petit at Gamespot. Or be ready to duck if you only give it a 9/10 like Jim Sterling at Desctructoid that gave it 9/10. What’s wrong that picture?! I mean, just because it’s GTA and let’s you be a gangsta even if you’re as white as they come living at home and all you got is your Xbox, that doesn’t make it the greatest game in the world. I could appreciate the status if it was a revolutionary game that did something that no other game in the world could do, but so far I haven’t seen anything in GTA that no other game has done. If I wanna rob banks I play Pay Day 2. If I wanna go to a strip club … I’ll just go to a strip club! I don’t get the craze at all! I really don’t get any craze at all that, as an observer, seems more like blindness following! I loved Dead Space 1 & 2 and I was psyched about 3 but I didn’t buy it and loved it because it was Dead Space! I loved Deus Ex : Human Revolution, but when “The Fall” came out I was just like “no”. I loved Diablo 1&2, but after playing the beta I was really sceptical and after playing the real game I wanted my money back.
See where I’m going with this? Blinded following is bad. It’s ok to be the one voice in a crowd saying “I’m different”. Usually I’m not that one person. But here I am – saying It’s Ok Not To Like GTA. That’s not a statement that the game is bad, just that it’s ok to have a different opinion. And that’s the good thing about being a Trekker – it’s ok not to like “the original series” from the 60’s, or “the new era” of movies coming out, and that’s totally fine. You don’t have to like it just because you’re a trekker!
That being said – can’t wait for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. But it’d better be good because so far I’m not that impressed with “Revelations”! (yes, I’ve played through I, II and Brotherhood in less than two months, so far II was by far the best one)
Retro-warning!!
Back in the early 90’s when I was but a teenage nerd playing games in my little room on my Amiga I got when I turned 15 and then PC at 18, one of my favorite gaming series was called “Wing Commander“. As a space sim I’d say it was not as good as the X-Wing series but the story was pretty damn good! It was so good that by the time the third one was produced they had actual films – with none other than Mark Hamill as the hero of the story! And the fourth one took it one step further when it launched as DVD and the story became even better!! Then there was Privateer which took up where Elite left off. Anyway, back then space sims where good and had a huge focus on story and a “being there”-feel. Graphics was secondary. And the man behind it all was Chris Roberts.
After being successful with all this he took a break from the game-world and went to Hollywood (and made the underrated and under-budgetted movie “Wing Commander“). But last year he came back and started a crowd funding campaign for a new ambitious space sim called “Star Citizen“. Crowd funding is basically telling people “I wanna do this and this and I need your money to do it, if you give me this much this is what you’ll get” and the people reponds with giving what they feel it’s worth for them, or they don’t and it fails. Well, “Star Citizen” blew all records of crowd funding and reached their goal pretty quickly. After than they launched their website where people could purchase ships and stuff and all the money goes into the development of the game. They are right now almost up to $18.000.000 that people have donated to the project! That’s how much people want this to succeed! There are people that have donated upwards of $1.000 each to this! I’m only at $125 but that will get bigger I think.
But the main reason why this is so “big” in the gaming world is the crowd funding part of it. Normal games go from being an idea to seeking investors to back it up and the always have investors and publishers dictating terms and conditions and every time they want to invest money into something they have to get an OK for it and launch dates are pretty final. Just look at what happened with Condor, the makers of “Diablo”. They got bought by Blizzard but after a while they didn’t like working there so they broke off to start Flagship Studios. And there they had to push out a game that was far, far from finished (“Hellgate London“). And the company went to hell.
But that’s what I love about this. They have their money (and getting more and more all the time) so they are just pushing on with the development. And they show us sneak peaks at specific stages of development, last week they launched the hangar which shows us our hangar and our ship. Next stage in 5-6 months is a working dog fighting simulation. And so on and so forth until they launch the final game. Another thing that’s great about this is the community is so very involved and energetic about the game. Just check the YouTubes from when Chris demoed the hangar last week in Germany, the crowd went wild!! It’s awesome! And we don’t have to pay for a big campus, middle management, no publishers, no marketing, it goes to the development of the best, most ambitious space sim game ever. I hope. Because crowd funding is a lot about hoping that they deliver what they promise. Like Ouya, as far as I can tell right now it really isn’t delivering what they promised.
But I have faith in Chris Roberts. I don’t think they are going to be able to push everything they want into the game when it launched but pretty sure it’ll be an ongoing development. Stay tuned!!
So Obama is coming to town this Wednesday. Although our government, and especially Bildt, are very eager to brag about it. But I wonder if they ever stopped and wonder if we, the people, even want that. Because you see, we had Condoleza Rice here about 5 years ago and that was a nightmare for the traffic in the entire Stockholm-region. I was sitting in queues for over an hour in a tunnel because of it. But now it’s the president which means it’s going to be atleast 10 times worse!
Today “they” declared that driving a car on Wednesday and Thursday was the most stupid thing you can imagine because basically the entire region will be shutdown for this. My question is – who’s paying for it? People will either stay home, be in queues for hours or take the trains resulting in overload of the train system with queues there too. Either way, people and companies are going to lose a lot of money and man hours on this. Not to mention taxi- and truck-drivers and everyone else who drives around in Stockholm for a living! It’s going to be total and utter chaos costing companies and people a lot of money. And who okay’s things like this in the first place, or is it just an order from above “make it happen” and we, the foot soldiers, just have to live with the consequences?! I really don’t get it. And it doesn’t help that the traffic system in Stockholm today will literally get shutdown if you cut off the E4, which they are going to do. There aren’t any other roads that can handle the traffic and there is noway to get around Stockholm. So this is going to be chaos. And usually I should be able to work from home – but this week I’m attending a course about EpiServer so I’m definitely going to have to go into the heart of Stockholm both of these days. Wish me luck. 🙂
Sorry but I’m about to go very political and existential on your asses so buckle up!
I dunno if you heard, but Greenpeace did a pretty fancy job of taking a swing at Shell during their biggest PR event of the year, the Belgian Grand Prix. If you missed it, here’s the clip.
Also I recently saw the SG1 episode “Fallout” in which a planet with 3 major powers who never can agree on anything is about to blow up. The entire planet, yet they can’t get along even in the face of imminent wipeout. I also remember when the Kyoto Protocol was up for voting the US president said that they couldn’t agree with it because “it would hinder their economic growth”. And a few weeks ago, Vattenfall (the biggest producer of energy in Sweden) went on TV and answered the question “don’t you have a responsibility to invest more in greener energy sources?” with “we also have a responsibility to our shareholders to make a profit”.
Here’s a thought. You know that pandemic people seems to be convinced is coming, that will be majorly contagious and infectious, will kill people without prejudice and threaten mankind’s existence as the dominant species? Well I’m thinking it’s already here and it’s called “greed”.
I’m all for making a profit. But not at the expense of people’s life or the health of the planet! Ever since the industrial revolution we have poisoned this planet more and more and we can try to blame our parents or grandparents for it, but the difference is they probably didn’t know it was causing the damage it was. Well my generation has been brought up knowing we’re destroying the planet. And when people use the excuse of making money to defend the destruction of the planet I get upset- Because we know the effect our way of life is having yet we seem unable – or even worse, unwilling! – to change.
I wish I could make more of a difference, but I’m content with donating money to Greenpeace and voting for the Swedish environment party!
Playing as much Assassins Creed as I have religion has popped up in my mind. One of the first screens that pops up every time you start the game is a disclaimer saying that the game was made by people of diverse cultures and religions, as to safeguard them from saying “this is not Jews bashing Islam and Christianity”. Because the game is bashing left and right (hell, you even fistfight with Pope Alexander VI!) and that’s why I kinda love it.
Personally I’m an agnostic which is a sophisticated way of saying my mind isn’t made up yet. People might, and have, respond to that by saying something to indicate that’s a bad or cowardly thing. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s a pretty intelligent approach to it. Considering I did that entire confirmation thing in a Christian church when I was a teenager, not to mention the fact that I credit Knut Fisher for me making it out of my teens, you might think I’d be Christian. But no, I prefer to keep an open mind. To think “this book of genesis makes no sense”. So for me being agnostic is more about keeping an open mind and trying to be objective about it all, rather than choosing a side and sticking by it no matter what happens or anyone, including the leader(s) of whatever religion that may be, says or does. It also enables me to see movies like “Dogma” without being offended.
We saw Oblivion the other day. I didn’t know much about the movie more than Tom Cruises was in it, it was sci-fi and post apocalyptic and most of my friends liked it. Even though I’m no fan of Cruise I gave it a shot. And like the last update – I’m happy I did ’cause it was really good! The story was ok but had some holes in it, the acting was good and I always like a short casting list. But one thing I loved was the special effects. Not of the cool explosions kind, but rather the ones you might not see. Like the background when they were at their place in the skies, they had some beautiful shots there. And when I watched that I was thinking “how that hell did they do that?”. ‘Cause normal blue/greenscreen wasn’t it ’cause the reflections on everything was too perfect. As always IMDB holds the answer 🙂
So, good movie, go and see it!
Now for some spoilers. This will give away the big thing in the movie so don’t read unless you really really want to know. Or if you’ve already seen it!
Ready?
Here I go ..
So as I’m watching the first 10 minutes of this I’m trying to make sense of the plot so far and quickly say to my wife – “the scavs are the humans the the tet are the bad aliens”. The big giveaway to this, and I’m assuming this is 100% delibirate is that if mankind was facing extinnction and the Earth was turned to rubbles and we all had to make an exodus to a distant moon … how did we find the resources, time and energy to build their place in the clouds that looks like it was designed by Apple? Complete with luxury pool and everything, that part didn’t make sense. Humans wouldn’t do that. It’d be a minimalistic “this is what you need” approach. So that gave it away for me.
One of the few game series I’ve never given a try has been Assassin’s Creed. Not that I had much against it but it looked like it was another massproduced series of games with little story or thought. Man was I wrong and I’m glad I gave it a shot!
That shot came about when I saw the gameplay trailer for the one comming in November. The animation, the graphics, how they’d gotten the movement rights, the seemless of it, it got me interested. And as part of the Steam Summer Sale I bought the entire series and I’m already done with the first one and halfway through the second one. And yeah, it has good graphics, animations etc. And great atmosphere. And also great story and alot of thought went into it, atleast the second one where they are basically redifining the Bible and creationalism. Ofcourse it’s just a game so take it for what it is, but still, a bold move. And I like it when sci-fi (which I’d call it) meets the Bible. The revelation of the Vorlons in “Babylon 5” was pretty awesome too. As is the Adam and Eve movie-clip in “Assassins Creed II”!
Tonight I’m pulling an all nighter to go through the second one and atleast have a little taste of “Brotherhood”. The only bad thing so far is that it’s hard to find any good points to quit. There’s always 2-3 minutes or longer dialogue when you think you’re gonna quit.
Now I’m just slacking! Vacation and everything and not a single update?
Well surprisingly enough, now that I’m on vacation I have the least amount of time to care about this place. You see I have a wife that get’s worked up everytime I sit in front of the computer so I don’t have much opportunity to post things here from home. Yeah, you could call me whipped and you wouldn’t be wrong.
But now I’m back at work so now I have time to post things here. And I have time on the train to get through the rest of SG1 as well and all of that other stuff that I don’t have time to watch at home. And unfortunately F1 is on summer break, and besides, the Ferraris aren’t doing too well this year. Oh well, there’s always next year.
Most of my vacation was spent at home with my family. We tried to do things, we went to Gröna Lund and Skansen but in the end it just costs more than we can afford right now, especially since we bought new phones and we spent alot more money in Crete than we thought we would. “Don’t do the crime …” eh? But this week my parents will take Sam for a few days so we can get a slow weekend. “Slow” as in “celebrating my brothers 30th birtyday this friday”, let’s see how that turns out!
Other than that, I’m chugging along just fine!
It’s been a while since I threw crap on the “evil corporation” trying to stop piracy on the internet. A few weeks ago it looked like we had made a bit of a breakthrough because one studio exec actually said that they should look at the piracy seen to learn what the consumers want and adapt.
And today? Well today we know that was just talk and a smokescreen. Because yesterday the Swedish anti piracy organization fixed a raid against a Swedish site. Not a torrent site. Not an FTP site or anything like that that supplies people with movies. No, this site was a source of subtitles!! Seriously – subtitles !! Apparently Henrik Ponten missed being in the spotlight so he went for a site serving up subtitles! And I’d get it if the charge was “aiding copyright violations” like they used to get the Piratebay guys, because they kinda are (although not more so than Winrar!). No, they played the “dialogue is copyrighted too”-card. Which is really great because this isn’t a gray area at all!!
I get how dialogue is copyrighted, but if a person sits down, takes his time to go through a movie and translates it to his tongue, makes his own interpretation of the dialogue and the gives it away for free, is that really copyright violation? If you just write the dialogue in the same language as the movie, word for word, than yea, I can get how that’d be problematic. But I know just how much interpretation goes into translating movies. When I was last tasked with translating a movie we actually had to read the notes that came with the preview to know exactly what they meant in some specific cases. So does a interpretation & translation fall under copyright of the movie? If so .. then I’d say they owe me some money, because that’s exactly what I did for them for free not too long ago and noone told me what we did there was going under any copyright protection?
This’ll be fun to see how it goes. If they end up with the same judges as the piratebay guys they don’t stand a chance if there’s a gray area. I just hope some defense lawyer makes it black and white.
I’ve finally upgraded my image gallery and imported it into WordPress with a cool addon. Took me about 3 days of work to get it sorted and adding comments and stuff but it’s been fun going down that memory lane again.
Here are some of my favorite galleries:
As usual the password what the company I work at is know as in Sweden.
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