Max Romantschuk's weblog

May 25th, 2004 - 11:30 - My sexy Backlog

The family related stuff mentioned in my previous post is beginning to loosen it's grip on my time allocation abilities. In plain Englsh: I should now have time to blog again. I built up something of a backlog of stuff I wanted to cover during the last two weeks, so I can't really call all this stuff news. Let's just settle for readworthy, shall we?

What's the big deal with Sex?

You'd be amazed how many people end up here through sex related seach engine queries. The funny thing is that my blog isn't exactly sex-centered. I do mention sex related issues from time to time, but it's not like I have my personal porn collection on display or anything. I'll be willing to bet I'll get at least a hundred extra hits during the next three months due to the fact that this post happens to deal with sex.

Oral sex is better than unsafe drunken sex, m'kay?

A British government study has found that Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates according to the Observer story Oral sex lessons to cut rates of teenage pregnancy. If you ask me this is more or less common sense. After all, getting pregnant while practising oral sex would require a rather unusual anatomy. Furthermore, teens are bound to have sex sooner or later. It's better to give them safer options than turn our backs. Treating the problem though education instead of the cause trough abortion just makes sense.

Actually, sex is bad for you.

Rather amusingly, turning their backs on the problem is exactly what the Americans seem to be doing. Robyn Licht's school textbook claims that sex is harmful, along with stuff like tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Fortunately Robyn has taken a stand, asking Why Does My Textbook Say Sex Is Harmful?

Not all porn sites are created equal.

I found Robyn's story through the The Webby Awards: 2004 Nominees & Winners. There was a rather interesting nominee in the community section, SuicideGirls. I'd call SuicideGirls a cross between a porn site, an online community and a punk attitude towards life. It's nice to see something that actually stands out for a change. There are, after all, tens of thousands of really really worthless porn sites out there. If you're going to spend money on porn at least spend it on quality porn.

Disclaimer

I don't believe that a healthy appetite for sex is bad. I don't believe porn to be inheritly bad. Some may disagree, but I stand by my views. I realize some readers may well be offended by me linking a porn site, but I feel this porn site is worth mentioning. Live with it.

May 11th, 2004 - Pressed

Due to various family-related activities I probably won't have time to blog for a week or so. Given that I usually blog three or four times a week I just thought I'd let my regular readership know. Surprisingly, it seems I indeed have something of a readership. I have about 50 visits on days when I post, which I consider quite good taking into account my widely diverse interests and my lack of promoting this blog.

Creative Commons

I've been looking at the different licenses from Creative Commons lately, partly due to the fact that I'd like to get some photographs of mine up here some day. Creative Commons is a really interesting project, especially given the recent issues with copyright on music and films. The different Creative Commons licenses help eliminate all the gray areas, and content authors can easily choose a license which fits their needs. I hope to have both my music and photography up here under a suitable license within a year or so. Free time isn't exaclty abundant at the moment, so there's really no point in rushing it now is there?

May 10th, 2004 - Determined

After careful consideration I have decided the following: I'm going to quit the gym. I'm also going to quit riding the bus to work, during winters too. Instead I'm going to ride my bike to work all year around. The money saved from quitting the gym and not taking the bus will go to a separate account, dedicated to keeping my current bike ridable for as long as it takes to save enough money to buy a new bike. I'm wagering I can keep my current bike ridable until I can afford a new one...

The bike I'm planning to get is (rather obviously) the Gary Fisher Dual Sport 129, mentioned in my previous entry. I've decided on a Gary Fisher bike for several reasons. First of all they seem like a company genuinely excited about their work, something which is rather rare these days. The only other manufacturer who conveys the same kind of spirit that I know of is Mackie, highly recommended for audio equipment.

Anyhoo, both companies have also demonstrated great customer support. I sent Gary Fisher a few questions on the bike, and recieved swift and informative answers. High quality customer support is very important to me, and especially in this case. I have calculated that the bike will cost me around 2000 euros. I don't plan to spend that kind of money unless I can be sure to get support even ten years from now if necessary.

Another reason for me to choose Gary Fisher is the fact that they have a well designed web site. I feel this shows that they are willing to spend money on other things than just manufacturing bikes. The site also has a rather good bike selection tool, which amusingly suggested the Dual Sport 129 to me, after I had already been looking at it. One rather compelling reason to buy their bikes is the fact that you can't buy one off their site. The reason is simple, they don't feel that you can properly select a bike without riding it, just like the way it should be. Good stuff.

Wish me luck saving money, will ya?

Pirate-support, anyone?

There are a lot of pirated (unlicensed) copies of Windows around. Frankly I don't blame people using a copied version of Windows on their home computer, the price for Windows is rather extravagant given their practical monopoly at the moment.

But it seems Microsoft does realize some things are better left alone than messed about with. Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP will install even on a copied version of Windows. This, is a Good Thing. Most of all, this will help reduce the problems associated with worms and viruses. There's a Slashdot discussion on the subject, with at least one rather interesting comment. Compare this to the recent behaviour of the RIAA. Which makes more sense to you? After all, Microsoft could be throwing lawsuits right and left to people copying Windows...

May 6th, 2004 - 12:23 - Objects of desire

I mentioned wanting a Tunturi F600 last week, but I think I've found an even better bike to desire. The Gary Fisher Dual Sport series, more precisely the Dual Sport 129. It's like dream come true for someone like me, who needs good road performance, but wouldn't mind hitting the woods every now and then. Maybe I'll just quote their site...

Dual sport riding. It.s what many of us do each and every day. It.s the kind of riding that requires a bike built for the challenges of a technical singletrack, as well as a fast city street. In other words, a bike that feels equally at home on the dirt as it does on the asphalt. Well, we have that bike. It.s called a Fisher Dual Sport. It.s a tried-and-true 29" mountain bike with road bike details. For starters you can switch to 700c road tires. And you can attach racks, fenders, and other roadworthy accessories. Dual Sport bikes feature full-size chainrings that give them the widest gear range possible. Ride the trail. Ride the road. Just ride.

I haven't actually tried one, but it just feels right, you know?

The truth be told, I'm contemplating scrambling together the money for a bike like this, and riding to work all year round. I rode to school one winter, that was not nearly as long a ride. I still think I'd be up to it. In any case, I'd need a pair of these.

Beat that drum

While I'm at it, I might as well blurt out that I want a Roland HPD-15 as well. I've tried one, it's the single most intuitive, responsive and fun electronic percussion instrument I've ever played.

May 4th, 2004 - 12:01 - Clarifications

I do not consider myself a journalist. Despite of this, every now and then, my blog takes on characteristics of more traditional online (and real world) publishing. I wrote a short blurb yesterday on YesLogic, who in my view were spamming the W3C www-style mailing list.

This morning my mail box contained a message by Michael Day from YesLogic. I have taken the liberty to reproduce the message below. (Double quotes have been replaced with single quotes, and the message has been edited for whitespace.)

Subject: YesLogic Prince announcement

Hello,

Following our recent release announcement for YesLogic Prince on the W3C CSS mailing list I noticed that you described this on your website as 'spamming the list'. This is not entirely correct, as spam is unsolicited email, but our product announcements are welcomed by the CSS mailing list administrator as they are related to the ongoing development of CSS.

While it is true that it was an announcement regarding a commercial product, we believe that it was a fairly unintrusive post that was relevant to topics under discussion in the CSS community. In particular, this release of our product implements several CSS properties which are still experimental and likely to change in future revisions of the working drafts. As a CSS implementer, we provide feedback on the implementation of experimental properties to the working group, and participate in the discussion of extensions to CSS.

We also provide a free personal license for our product, which allows CSS enthusiasts to experiment with new features that browsers have not yet implemented, such as the list ::marker pseudo-element and paged media properties.

Finally, we do not post such announcements to the list very often. I think that the recent flood of virus/worm emails that has proliferated through all of the W3C mailing lists is much more of a spam problem.

I apologise for any inconvenience our announcement has caused you.

Best regards,

Michael Day

My view

Michael feels that his message to the list was not spam. I don't wish to claim my view is the absolute truth, but here's why I claimed it was spam in the first place:

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are mine and mine alone. I am in no way affiliated with the W3C, nor do my views represent the views of the W3C. I do not wish to impose my own views upon others, so please make up your own mind about this issue.

And in totally unrelated news...

I found a link to my blog on a Fistful of Euros under the heading Life in Europe. I'm quite flattered that a high-profile blog like AFOE feels me worthy of such recognition. Thanks guys (David!)

May 3rd, 2004 - 12:48 - Untitled

My SPD pedal purchase (mentioned last week, April 26th) has begun to pay off. This morning I noticed a subtle change in my pedalling style. I'm adapting to pulling upwards and I seem to be able to keep a higher gear while riding. Of course it might just be the result of a weekend's worth of rest, but I'll stick to my more optimistic adaption theory.

A commercial announcement!

These people spam W3C mailing lists, do not purchase their products. Here's proof. Feel free to spread this meme far and wide, join the anti-spam bandwagon! W3C's policy on spamming their lists isn't exactly hard to comprehend.

April 30th, 2004 - 13:08 - A study in iconic design

Check out 300 Images From 1800 Sites. The words infinite variations on a theme spring to mind. Via Blogdex.

April 30th, 2004 - 11:28 - Screw you Saunalahti Group Oyj

Up until yesterday I used an Internet connection provided by Saunalahti. The connection was a rather flaky one, and very complex to set up. My firewall box connects to a HomePNA switch in the basement through a 1 Mbps link. The switch has a 2 Mbps xDSL link to Saunalahti. My firewall box gets an IP through DHCP. Simple enough, right?

Not so fast... The IP is an internal IP in Saunalahti's network. In order to connect to the Internet I have to create a VPN tunnel using PPTP, through which I can finally connect to the Internet. In order to make things worse the PPTP implementation in question uses weird authentication protocols developed largely by Microsoft. My GNU/Linux based firewall does manage to connect, but it's not like anyone wanted to help me with the settings.

Adding insult to injury, they call this broadband...

This crazy ass configuration would not be so much of a problem if things actually worked after I got it all configured. But noooo... until very recently the VPN gateway kept crashing and dropping connections. Then they got a new gateway, and told me to use that one. It seemed to work for a while, apart from a weird HTTP problem.

In the beginning of this week the connection pretty much went dead. I was able to connect to the gateway, and pinging worked, but that was about it. I proceed to call Saunalahti's error reporting number. After queuing for ten minutes I gave up. Queuing to this number isn't free. The help desk is not an option, it's 1.34 euros per minute. No way am I going to pay in order to find out if they broke something.

The next day I take a look at the Saunalahti news page, no problems are mentioned. I try to call the error reporting number both during the day and in the evening, no luck. At work I mail the helpdesk and ask if there are any problems.

I try again at home the next day. No luck. I finally call their general customer service number, and explain that I would like to find out if there are any known problems with the gateway I'm using. They tell me to call the error reporting number. I explain I can't seem to get through the queue, and I don't wish to pay for finding out if they have their systems in order. I request they have the error reporting guys call me instead. Nope, not possible. I ask if they are in the same building, yes they are. I ask if it is totally impossible to write my name on a piece of paper and carry it over there. Yes it is indeed impossible. They suggest I call the help desk, then I shouldn't have to wait so long. I explain it is unreasonable that I pay for information, and explain I've tried looking at their news page. They still make no effort to provide a constructive solution. I ask them if the error reporting number is open 24/7. Yes it is. I request they make an effort to solve this problem, there needs to be a way to find out if everything is working right. They say something about employing more people maybe sometime perhaps... I give up and end the call.

I finally reached the error reporting number yesterday, at 0700 hours. This time I only had to queue for 5 minutes. I explain my problem and they confirm that a security update to the VPN gateway has caused problems for Win98 and Linux users. I ask them why there has been no mention of this at the news page, they say something about the news page not being their responsibility. They give me a few tips on what might work, but explain that there is no known sure-to-work fix at the moment. I ask them if there is a way to be notified when a fix eventually turns up, like information being posted on the news page perhaps? No, you have to call us. I ask them if they plan to continue to do updates without telling people anything. They think that it is unnecessary to tell people when systems are updated. I ask them if they plan to start telling people when they break stuff. This guy doesn't know. I give up.

Conclusions, resolution

In a nutshell it seems Saunalahti plans to keep making it next to impossible to find out when they break something. Given that my connection has been flaky for quite some time It's quite amazing I've put up with it at all. The reason is simple, the fee is included in my rent, regardless of if I use it or not.

But after this last episode I figured I'd rather pay for something which actually works than keep messing up my head by trying to fight virtual windmills.

I ended up fetching an HTV cable modem yesterday. I had my connection up and running in about ten minutes. That about 0.002% of the time it took to find out Saunalahti had broken my connection, not me.

'nuff said.

April 28th, 2004 - 12:09 - What do you mean I'm not focused enough?

I've ran across a few interesting things today, rather unrelated amongst each other but computer-related none the less. Here goes:

Here's a little something on How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less by dive into mark. Not new, but rather amusing. Via Slashdot

Next up I've got a little something on the growing social impact blogs are having. It seems blogs are now interesting enough for intelligence officials to read. It seems I semi-predicted this a while back... check out the entry for November 1st in the November archive. Not the same thing, but still not far off either. Via Blogdex.

Last but not least, the vision game engine by Trinigy GmbH looks promising. Foto-realism should be commonplace in a few years time at this rate. the screenshots speak for themselves. Via the Inquirer.

April 27th, 2004 - 11:15 - Biketastic

Still rambling on about bikes... I'm able to access Shimano's site, so check out the PD-M324 pedals and SH-M038 shoes if you were interested. (Shimano's site isn't link-friendly, so for browsing go to the front page.) After about 30 Km of riding I do feel like I made a worthwhile purchase. Power gains will probably increase as I learn to pedal more efficiently and my leg muscles adapt to the bidirectional pedalling style.

On to the subject of a new bike for next summer. I'm dreaming of getting a Tunturi F600. Check out the high res pic.

If I had unlimited funds I'd probably add on a Rockshox GPS Metro front suspension, as well as a Brooks leather saddle. Leather saddles shape according to their rider, just like leather shoes.

Actually, if I had unlimited funds I'd get a custom designed titanium frame from Merlin, and assemble my bike from individual parts. Ooooh... Drool...

I'm sorry, I'll stop now.

April 26th, 2004 - 10:59 - Self-propelled until the snow falls

Last weeks I bought myself a few new toys: Shimano PD-M324 SPD pedals and SH-M038 shoes. That's jargon for cool bicycle equipment. (Sorry, no links, I can't seem to be able to access Shimano's site right now.) The shoes attach to the pedals using a clever locking mechanism, thanks to which one can pull upwards as well as pressing downwards while pedaling. You release your foot by twisting your heel to the side, something which is wise to practice before you start riding.

The whole sheebang cost me 133 euros, thanks to which I had to promise my wife to take the bike to work until winter hits. Actually I already did that last summer, so I should be good to go. I only hope my bike won't fall apart before fall... For summer 2005 I hope to get a new bike. Maybe. If we can afford it.

The whole bike upgrade procedure was rather eventful though. After getting the pedals I noticed that some arsehole had stolen part of my rear brake. Fortunately the bike shop let me dig their used parts box for spares free of charge. I eventually got my bike into riding condition yesterday. Unfortunately, while working on my wife's bike, I found that her bike is missing parts too. The worst part is that since our bikes are kept in a common storeroom which is in use by everyone in the building it's rather impossible to prevent these things. I couldn't even install a security camera if I paid for it myself, as the law doesn't allow them in common areas. Not that I'm a security camera fan, but it would be the only realistic way to prevent people from dismantling their neigbours' bikes in the privacy of the night.

Baby-watch

Last week's announcement seems to have been anticipated by a few people. Antti/Geek Savant wrote an entry about my ascension into parenthood, and I got some congratulative mails too. It's sort of scary-cool that people actually read this stuff.

April 21st, 2004 - 13:09 - I Dad.

Acute readers of my blog can probably guess why I've been quiet for the past month. On Monday the 22th of March, at 02:13, my son was born. Eighteen minutes later, at 02:31, my daugter was born. I am pleased to announce that I have been blessed with the two most beatiful children in the universe. In a freak deviation from regular probability calculations it seems that almost every parent is just as blessed as I am...

As one can probably guess I've been quite busy fot the past month. In Finland we have the possibility for the father to take out three weeks of father's leave, which I have. I combined this with my winter vacation for a grand total of one month, during which I've helped my wife take care of the babies.

I have now returned to work and can thus return to my regular routine of lunchtime blogging. The babies are still quite active at night, so for the time being I am slightly sleep-deprived. This might well result in a lower-than-usual blogging frequency, but I'd rather post good stuff seldom than mediocre crap all the time. Stay tuned!

March 19th, 2004 - 11:28 - Star Trek Fans Rejoice

I for one expected technology to catch up with the Star Trek TNG Combadge sooner or later. It seems the honours should go to Vocera Communications. The size is not quite there yet, but the device works pretty much the same as in the TV series. Yes, I admit to being somewhat of a Star Trek fan, so sue me... Via Slashdot.

March 17th, 2004 - 13:14 - Wrong.

Some laws are just sick.

'nuff said.

March 17th, 2004 - 11:13 - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!

Talk about being made... Not many people have started making a movie in the privacy of their own home, and ended up producing feature film. Kerry Conran has. The film also looks like every geek's dream, I mean, how can you go wrong with giant flying robots, cheezy fifties-style sci-fi cliches and huge amounts of computer-generated video? Especially when it's cut like a comic book. Check out the trailer. I didn't regret downloading QuickTime for this one. Via Slashdot

March 15th, 2004 - 11:24 - Lets not jump the gun, shall we?

No, I did not rush off to the hospital in order to experience the birth of our twins. Yet, that is. The truth be told, I did end up at the hospital on Wednesday (March 10th,) but instead of getting there really quickly I slowly, and very carefully delivered myself there in agonizing pain.

I woke up on Wednesday morning with a sore and stiff neck. Figuring it'll go away I went off to work, where I started having horrible cramps in my neck after half an hour or so. I figured I'd better take the day off and went home, thinking that a day's worth of rest should take care of it. Not so. A few hours later my head was ending up in an ever more tilted position, and any amount of staying put didn't seem to help at all. A quick phone call to the local health services revealed I'd have to wait until four o'clock to get treated. I figured it would be OK, as I didn't experience any cramps as long as I didn't move

When I finally got to the hospital I had to keep my head in a severely skewed position to keep my neck from cramping (try taking a really close look at your left shoulder aiming your nose in the direction you're looking. Yep, that's about it.) I went and asked the nurse at the counter what I needed to do to get signed up for a doctor's examination at four o'clock. It's at 1600 hours. she told me (It was around 15:50 at that time.) I told her I was aware of this, but I needed to know what to actually do in order to get treated eventually. You report here at 1600 hours. the nurse told me.

I sat down and waited, and after a few minutes the nurse comes up to me and asks: You've got your neck locked up, right? I confirmed this, and the nurse asked me to come back to the counter and report. I did, and ended up first in line to get examined. When I finally did get to see the doctor it took him around thirty seconds to diagnose the problem, after which I was sent off to get two shots (painkillers and muscle relaxants.) He also gave me a recepie for the same stuff in pill form, and wrote me the rest of the week off on sick leave.

So, that's why I haven't blogged for a while. No babies as of yet. It's still darn probable I'll be a dad any day now, though.

A sidenote:

I've never realized how important having your neck working properly really is. I was totally incapacitated on Wednesday. As it turns out, almost every possible movement you can think of involves the neck. Just try not to move your head all while doing everyday tasks for a while. Now imagine you'd be in severe pain every time the muscles in your neck contract... you get the idea.

March 9th, 2004 - 11:27 - Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?

In an attempt to be completely unoriginal, and spreading memes in the process, I urge you to read Where Is My Gay Apocalypse? by Mark Morford over at SFGate.com. Props to Petri//var/log/orava for brightening up my day. While you're at it, be sure to educate yourself over at Landover Baptist. And don't forget to get yourself and/or your significant other a "What Would Jesus Do?" Thong!

March 8th, 2004 - 11:31 - Thoughts on memes

According to The Virian Lexicon: MEME: (pron. `meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by symbiotically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic. (Wheelis, quoted in Hofstadter.)

I ran across a rather disturbing meme today, featured (as always,) on Blogdex. It goes by the name of the The Mystery of Dalarö. The thing which makes it disturbing is the fact that it's a commercial dressed up like a documentary. We're all aquainted with infomercials, but this one goes a bit too far... The thing is, the whole shebang seems to be fictious. If something is a commercial, it should clearly be labeled as such. Passing fiction off as fact in order to sell a product may be common practice by some, but Volvo should know better.

PS. Check out the Excorcist Bunnies... Yes, I spread memes, proudly so.

Baby-ETA: Unknown

A quick note on the yet-to-be-born members of our family: It could be any day now. If I suddenly go silent for a month you'll know why...

March 5th, 2004 - 11:21 - Buffer overrun?

It seems the Internet wants to make up for last Friday (see February 27th,) and run me over with interesting stuff to post. I'll try none the less.

For people who are fed up with having a virus friendly email client I'd recommend this review on modern email clients ou there, for both Windows and Linux. Via Slashdot.

Honey, who was that moaning in the background when I called you earlier?

No one, baby. It's just one of those silly background noises you can download.

Scary cool technology... check out the comments in the Slashdot story, there are some real gems in there...

Your Concept Car

I like many of the ideas in the Volvo YCC. In a way, I wouldn't mind having a car like this myself, but I'd prefer a less feminine implementation of the concept.

RoboPower!

Human robotics are slowly leaving the gee whiz factor behind and turning out actual applications. The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton is a very interesting piece of technology, and not only for military applications. I suspect stuff like this will eventually replace wheelchairs and a bunch of different prosthetics in the forseeable future. Via Slashdot.

Last but not least...

... a little something I found on Blogdex.

March 4th, 2004 - 20:27 - Automotive Endeavors

A week or so ago, I noticed the bulb had gone on the left side headlight of my car. I finally got around to doing something about it today. I had previously consulted the owner's manual, and convinced myself that I was able to do the necessary replacement procedures myself.

So I went and bought myself a replacement bulb of the correct type, drove home, and got to work on the car...

The Good
I now know how to change the bulbs for my car's headlights.
The Bad
The instructions in the manual were a prime example of getting away with the bare minimum. I took me ten minutes to figure out the release mechanism for the bulb connector, which was indicated in the manual by two arrows... I presumed the arrows refered to the bulb connector's placement, not the fact that I had to press while pulling the connector. Argh.
The Ugly
As it turns out, the bulb was fine. It's the connector which is faulty. And no, I didn't break it. There seems to be a slight short-circuit which has bured the connectors innards to a nice crisp... Great.
I guess I should just be glad that I can still drive the car until I find the time to take it to have the necessary repairs done.

Old habits die hard.

Adding insult to injury it turns out that I had yet again managed to write 2003 instead of 2004. Please see the entry for February 3rd for explanations on the yet again thing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I need a better engine for this site. Fortunately I've already got one in the works, but it's still far from finished...

March 4th, 2004 - 11:33 - Downtime

The server hosting this site decided to shut itself down some time last night, staying off until a few hours ago when it was manually restarted. Naughty server...

Refridgerated electronics, anyone?

Dave Curtis put his computer into a fridge. Crazy, yet strangely impressive.

C.H.E.S.S.

Behold the Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search! I for one pretty much grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes (or actually Kalle och Hobbe, in Swedish.) You can do nifty searches for strips using a bunch of advanced criteria. Excellent. Via Blogdex.

March 3rd, 2004 - 14:30 - Error Deleting File or Folder

"Cannot delete FILENAME: There has been a sharing violation.

The source or destination file may be in use."

Ever wanted to just kill yourself after seeing this little error for the tenth time in three minutes? Me too. Today I found a solution, amazingly I never thought of searching for it before. Process Explorer by Sysinternals will tell you which program is holding on to the file you want to get rid of, after which you can proceed with closing the offending program and getting on with your business. Sweet.

March 3rd, 2004 - 12:25 - Better l8 than never.

I meant to post this stuff yesterday, but I ran out of minutes. In case anyone's wondering, all is well on the baby-making front.

Now then... Regard the Cybernet Elite-4 Zero-Footprint-PC. I don't know about you, but I can't help thinking Commodore 64... I would have thought the market for things like this had depleated into nothingness, but it seems I was wrong. I can't make up my mind on wether it's really cool or totally horrible. Depends, I guess.

Intelligent Writing by Disturbingly Muscular Men

Bodybuilders aren't exactly the kind of people one would associate with exceptionally clever writing, but the guys at Testosterone Publishning sure know what they're doing. Antti/Geek Savant pointed at this excellent writeup on Navy Seals. Definetly worth a read. Also, if you "suffer" from the same kind of metabolism as I do, check out the Skinny Bastard Diet.

March 1st, 2004 - 22:34 - Lacking

Acute readers of my blog are already aware of the fact that I'm going to be a dad, and of twins none the less. This has mainly been a source of joy for the last 8 months or so, but today things took a rather unfortunate twist. My wife was on a standard issue checkup at the hospital, when the doctor asked her to say at the ward for a week. Basically everything is fine, but there were some signs of the possibility of a premature birth. Therefore they want to keep their eyes on things, and keep her at the hospital.

I find myself facing the undesirable situation of having to sleep alone in our bed. It's not like I can't, but knowing that my wife misses me and I miss her makes it all feel rather awkward. I know she's in good hands, but still.

Anyway, send your positive karma our way if you feel inclined to do so.

March 1st, 2003 - 11:28 - Heart Go Boom

Charlie Demerjian of the Inquirer has written a rather informative piece called The INQUIRER Guide to Exploding Batteries. I probably don't need to explain what it's about, but have a look. I found it entertaining as well as rather educational.

A Collaborate Medium?

There's a story on Slashdot discussing recent news that nearly half of U.S. Internet users post content. The discussion seems to be indicating that a awful lot of people think that posting by the average Joe is a bad thing. Personally I don't agree.

February 27th, 2004 - 11:40 - Nothing to say.

There is absolutely nothing worth noting floating my way today. Ironically it's Friday, which usually means there are plenty of good links around. On the other hand, my coding project (a new engine for this site) is going well. I have made a rather cool dynamic class loader which will return an instance of the correct class based on what content the engine is told to display. There, now that I've bored everyone to death I'll just resume doing mostly nothing. Sorry to have wasted yet another precious minute of your day.

February 25th, 2004 - 12:10 - Professional photography for the masses

I doubled as guest and photographer at my brother-in-law's wedding last weekend. I was using my trusty Canon Digital Ixus 400, armed with two 256MB memory cards, two batteries and the battery charger. I chose to shoot at 1600x1200 pixel resolution, with low JPEG compression. At those setting I had room for something like 500 images, and I ended up shooting around 450 images all during the event.

Which brings me to my main point. Digital cameras have made it possible for anyone to shoot like a professional photographer would, taking hundreds of images and selecting the best ones afterwards. What I mean by making it possible is of course the cost issue, or rather the removal thereof. Digital photographies cost next to nothing until they are printed, and you only have to print the best ones. Good stuff.

Is that a scanner in your palm?

There's a story on Slashdot featuring technology "that lets people use their cellular phones with cameras as scanners. It says all you have to do is move your phone over the surface of the piece of paper while recording a movie, and the technology (some sort of software I presume) will construct a high resolution image from the individual frames of the video." OK, I quoted a whole lot back there, but this kind of technology is really interesting. The story comments note several related projects, like ALE and Video Orbits. I find it very cool that technology is coming to the point where one can compensate for sub-optimal quality using larger quantities of source material combined with sofisticated processing. This is actually rather close to how the human brain is thought to make an image, because the resolution of the eye really isn't that great. Or so it is claimed in some of the cognitive science textbooks I've read.

February 23rd, 2004 - 13:05 - Draganflyer IV

I quote: "Simply put, the Draganflyer IV gyro-stabilized helicopter with optional Eyecam video system is the highest tech flying toy in the world." OK, the link and emphasis were my additions, but this little baby is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen on the RC helicopter front. The best part is anyone can fly it, because the Draganflyer has it's own space age stabilization system (sorry for using the term space age, I just could't resist the temptation.) I want one of these babies!

The Slashdot article linking this thing has some interesting points on some privacy issues raised by stuff like this, because attaching cameras to these models is rather trivial...

February 20th, 2003 - 12:02 - Maintenance monkey

I moved the entries for December and January into the archive. As I've said before the site is really in need of an overhaul, and I've actually managed to produce some code for a new engine. There's still a long way to go, but I do believe that the solution model I'm implementing is going to work out rather nicely. Time will tell.

refcards.com

refcards.com looks promising, at least the Emacs reference card proved itself useful just now.

February 18th, 2004 - 11:17 - All work and no play...

...makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Play.

Disturbing horror movies aside, people do need to play every now and then. I ran across a look at multi-display gaming over at Tom's Hardware. They showed a game I haven't encountered before, X2 - The Threat. Having been a huge fan of Wing Commander: Privateer back in the day I got really interested in X2, as a quick look around showed many similar concepts. I found a preview at hardCOREware.net which contained some interesting tidbits. X2's press page has more links to reviews and the like. Judging from what I've read I'll probably like this game... providing it'll run on my machine.

February 17th, 2004 - 11:19 - Online culture, and stuff.

I ran across the Wikipedia entry on Slashdot subculture, which I'd be inclined to call a Slashdot survival guide. On the subject of documenting online culture, check out MeatballWiki. It's an excellent resource on all sorts of communities you can find online. MeatballWiki has an entry on Slashdot as well, naturally.

Pressed

I've been short on extra time (and energy) lately... among other things this has resulted in the undone and way overdue task of updating my archives. I'm also trying desperately to find time to code myself a better engine for this site. I think I've come up with a solution model which would be quick(-ish) to implement, but still be extendable in the future. It remains to be seen how I can convince my wife it's OK that I'd spend several hours being ultra-social in front of the computer...

February 13th, 2004 - 12:23 - Spin the wheel of fortune

Several resources across the web are reporting that parts of the Windows 2000 and Windows NT source code has leaked out into the wild:

OK, so what's the big deal anyway? I'd say there are two very serious implications of the leak. First of all I'd say it's quite likely we'll see a whole wave of new worms and virii as a result of the security holes which are likely to be discovered in the code. This, if you ask me, is the lesser concern of the two.

The much more serious implication is the fact that this gives Microsoft a perfect opportunity to launch legal attacks on projects like Samba, Linux-NTFS, Wine, and ReactOS, to name a few. Even if not even a single developer of any of these projects so much as looked at the code, Microsoft is likely to be able find enough "evidence" to drag these projects into court. Regardless of the outcome, a messy legal battle is never a good thing for a community-driven project. I, for one, feel that it may only be a matter of time before one of the projects mentioned above finds itself in the scenario I just depicted. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong.

BlogWoes

I still update this site mostly by hand. I was reminded of one of the disadvantages with this approach when I noticed I had forgotten to note the entry time the last few weeks. Argh.

In semi-related news I found a little something on well-designed weblogs. That, in turn, led me to the rather cool site of Dunstan. He's done some pretty cool things on his site, using homebrewed stuff. He won't give out his own scripts, but recommends WordPress, which seems like a blogging tool ahead of the game. Judging from the site, that is. Haven't had time to try it out as of yet...

February 12th, 2004 - Tough enough?

A man attacked by a shark swam 300 metres, walked to his car and drove to a local surf club with the shark still attached to his leg. 'nuff said.

February 12th, 2004 - Are you is or is you ain't?

Slashdot ran a story on the nature of the Internet yesterday, linking a piece by Doc Searls and David Weinberger titled World of Ends - What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. I'd say it could well be considered recommended reading for all Internet users, despite the fact that I don't agree with the authors on all points.

Haunted cabinet, anynone?

An elaborate scam or a genuine Dibbuk Haunted Jewish Wine Cabinet Box? Who knows, but definetly something for the So Weird it's Fascinating -category. Via Antti/Geek Savant.

February 11th, 2004 - Server swap successsful.

My site is now running off a new server. By now most DNS servers hould have updated, which means most of my readers will see this entry. An unfortunate few might end up at the old server. Some of you might have noticed a default Apache welcome page yesterday, that was the old server getting confused with the updated DNS records... Anyhoo, things should work fine now.

Sexually Addicted?

Until last night I was under the incorrect impression that "sex addicts" are just people who have an above average sex drive. Last night's documentary on the subject really opened my eyes. Actually, sex addicts are like drug addicts or smokers; they are addicted to cretain neurochemicals. In the case of sex addiction we're talking serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline at least. The thing is that (for reasons somewhat uncertain) the levels of said chemicals aren't quite in balance in a sex addict's brain. Sexual arousal naturally increases the levels of these neurochemicals, making you feel better and/or get high. The downside is that you can also get addicted to the elevated neurochemical levels, which in turn drives you towards upping them again... ad infinitum.

In any case serious sex addiction can cause a person to mistreat him or herself just as drug addiction can. Fascinating, yet scary.

Law making - Game breaking

Slashdot reports on the common goals and challenges for government officials and massively multiplayer game designers... What can I say? A community is a community is a community.

The 100-Million Mile Network

Cool stuff in eWeek on the challenges of building a deep space communications network. Also via Slashdot.

February 9th, 2004 - Movies are Magic

I saw two movies during last week. Let's start with the really bad one, shall we? Of all the big budget crappy movies I've seen to date, Scary Movie 3 was the worst one yet. Don't see it. I got free tickets for a preview showing, so I only lost time, not money. There were a few good jokes in the movie, but overall it was really, really, really bad. Most of the jokes were simply tasteless, stupid, and insulting to various groups.

There was one surprising little treat in Scary Movie 3 though... for me that is. At one point the lead character is browsing the web, and I noticed she's running Linux on her laptop, using Mozilla Firebirdfox. It's nice to see Open Source / Free Software in mainstream movies. Firefox (just noticed version 0.8 has been released and the name changed) is an excellent browser. If you're using IE, get Firefox.

Mononoke-hime

The second movie I saw last week was Princess Mononoke. It was a very nice Japanese animated movie, with a plot which gave some food for thought instead of spelling everything out for you. I warmly recommend it. Do remember that it's not for children just because it's a "cartoon", there's a fair bit of violence involved in the plot. In case you didn't know, Japanise anime actually covers all kinds of movies. There's movies for children, movies for grown-ups and even porn.

Siteswap

I'll be swapping servers later today. There should be no problems, but hey, you never plan for those, do you?

February 5th, 2004 - The Buddhabrot Set

My limited knowledge of complex mathematics is not enough to understand The Buddhabrot Set, but I sure know it looks cool. Math can be quite beautiful at times, don't you think? Via Blogdex.

History in the making

Slashdot reports that the Groklaw team has decided to create a 'timeline' for Unix and Linux development. This should be an interesting one to watch play out, as the majority of the original Unix and Linux creators are still around. I'm sure future historians will be grateful, especially taking into the growing social impact software is having on our society.

February 4th, 2004 - Catch-up mixed plate-o-links

Having failed to blog at normal frequency lately I've ended up with quite a pile of stuff worth mentioning (in my opinion, anyway.) In order to get things back on track I'v decided to dedicate a generous 40-someting minutes to today's post. Unfortunately typing with one hand isn't exactly fast, so don't expect a novel or anything.

Far Cry

My brother-in-law showed me the demo of a yet to be released game called Far Cry a while back. It's basically a run around and shoot things style game, but the AI far smarter than most I've seen so far. I wish I had the money to upgrade my machine, as this game promises to be something different. Check out the goodies:

But it's just carbon, right?

The Washington Post is running a story titled For Science, Nanotech Poses Big Unknowns. I was surprised and intrigued to read about some of the less obvious risks of nanotechnology, among others the surprising qualities seemingly harmless materials take on at nanoscale. Via Slashdot.

Hackers of the World - Unite

Slashdot linked a rather good story on BBC News, Linux steps into the limelight, covering a slice of the changes in the IT industry happening. Especially nice is that the article takes into account some of the cultural aspects of the Free/Open Source Software movements. In related news, Richard Stallman met with India's President, discussing open source software. The president had taken things seriously, reading Stallman's biography in preparation of the meeting. Also via Slashdot.

February 3rd, 2004 - 13:06 - Whoops!

I just noticed I've had the wrong year on these entries for the past month... And I feel quite stupid to boot. Feel free to mail me if you notice similar mistakes in the future.

Listen to your body

I've been battling with a case of RSI for far too long by now. Every time it seems like it's getting significantly better I find it's worse next week. Lately I've been using mostly or only my right hand for typing, but it seems even heavy duty resting is proving uneffective to rid my left hand of it's irritated state. As I need my hands for work (and blogging) I'm not very happy with the situation. I've seen a doctor, but it seems I'll have to go for another visit soon unless some fairy godmother solves my problem.

A word of advice: If your hands start hurting from typing, stop immediately. Once the pain eventually forces you to stop it might be too late.

February 2nd, 2004 - 14:41 - Groundhog Day

'nuff said. Via the Inquirer.