Floribbean: Part Serious

Notes from the conference - the only notes, since this was one of the more interesting lectures I attended..!

Virtual Training Simulations & Game-Based
Systems: Large-Scale Adoption Issues
Chair: Amala Sadagic

Training beyond the technical stuff.
Military situation: large people turnover

Training needs: many noobs, new skills, short time frame

System succes criteria:
- large majority adoption (>80%).
- methodical and consistent use.
- 24/7 availability.

Comment: perishable skills issue

Literature: Diffusion of Innovation, Everett M. Rogers

Adopters:
1. innovators
2. early adopters
3. early majority
4. late majority
5. laggards

Opinions on new technology often formed on basis of subjective evaluations received from peers.

Factors on adoption:
1. relative advantage
2. compatibility
3. complexity
4. trialability (-> incremental adoption)
5. observability

Game systems never the full solution. Explore synergies between old and new systems.

Other media: forums, blogs, project diaries, podcasts, etc.

Mandatory deployment w. challenge programs (competitions).

Floribbean: Part 2

Friday now, and of course my note processing has not been entirely as planned.
For one thing, our hotel really sucks. Avoid the Orlando Metropolitan Resort if you can. It has the same steep pricing as the rest, $119 a night, but the standard of at least half of its rooms is that of a typical motel: run down and unpleasant. The WiFi provided is visible but almost impossible to access, and of course the regular staff just point to their 'business booth' which costs a fortune and provides crappy computers in a closet-sized, poorly lit cubicle in the lobby. An official conference hotel needs free WiFi, dammit!

Rant is well over now. I hardly spend any time in my shabby room, but after 5 days I really miss my own bed.

ITSEC conference has been so-so. We hit a couple of good sessions in the beginning but nearly all sessions have been 90% military-related. It has required a very concious effort to extract points and good ideas for our own industry context.
Best things have been a session on large scale adoption of virtual training technology, and a session on ROI (return-of-investment) assessment regarding simulation, modelling, and virtual reality integration. Both things extremely relevant, but all in all the price tag on the full conference participation has not quite been justified.

Actually, we have learned just as much on the exhibit floor, looking at a lot of visual technologies. I have seen amazing new projection systems, large scale simulators, loads of almost vulgar weaponry, and a lot of geo-based imaging software. The latter was really the largest category, as if all companies had fled into that domain, once the data was there to support a market.

I have more to tell, but right now I need to get up and running. Today is the last day. It's our one day off so it's all about FUN!
25 degrees...mmmm...

JIEDDO

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.

A worthy cause indeed - and one of the few abbrevations which is actually surpassed by its original parts in terms of obscurity.

Floribbean: Part 1

Well on the ground here in Orlando, Florida - right now laying sleepless in my bed, waiting for breakfast time to arise. Not that I am particularly jetlagged but we turned in early when we got here.

Thankfully, they are a lot more generous with WiFi access points here than in Europe, so the Ipot is going to be really handy over here. I plan to update the blog each day, if not with long boring narratives then at least with basic notes from the conferences.

A great thing is that the Ipod location services seem to be accurate, so my Nearby and Around Me applications are spitting out large amounts of local shops and restaurants. Tonnes of both so in danger of webformation overload. Suggestions for good eating around Orlando are welcome!

Mental note to self:
- must start global airline for tall people.
- should include kindergarten rooms for hysterical toddlers.
- must not rely on half-frozen lunch meals.

Go West

Heading off to Orlando, Florida tomorrow. My colleague and I are attending 2 conferences. The ITSEC training and simulation conference and the PowerGen energy convention. Still mortally tired after two mad work weeks, but I think I'll manage to cram in some leisure time ;)
Only worry is the inevitable Christmas shopping that needs to be done!

Business: the original concept

As in "being busy" which is what I am. Profoundly so - in fact, the past 10 days are the busiest I can remember. Vestas is really an ant's nest and the initial weeks of noobness have been replaced by full-on schedules, very short lunch breaks, and quick decisions. I am loving it. Other places it would be a problem but the nature of my work is so interesting that I am awaking with a smile every morning. Even if I am dropping dead early every evening :)

Signing up...again

Congrats to the world on the Obama victory!
If you need a downer to quench all the emotional giddiness of having beaten the insane GOP, have a look at Ralph Nader's response. He ain't too impressed - and although I think he misses the point in regards to the tactics Obama needed to employ for that win, it is certainly true that Obama has to deliver before he may be worshiped.

On another note, I have been trying to update my digital signature, a task which is not for the faint-of-heart. I will explain my results here, just so others may accidentally stumble over them in search of happiness.

Problem:
The newer versions of TDC's digital signature are all slick and need to be so in order to 1) use Java for installation, 2) avoid ActiveX problems during installation, and 3) avoid general Windows (Vista) mayhem during installation.
In my case, hating IE like the plague, I wanted to install my new certificate on Firefox. Having received my TDC confirmation code by snail mail, I set out to do this but was quickly stopped by all sorts of odd error messages. If not a Firefox or Java negative, then a Windows Vista negative.

Solution:
TDC is an ailing dinosaur which has not performed well for several years, and this is also the case with the digital signature. While you can easily install the signature through IE, you are effectively stuck with a signature that IE will not export for subsequent import into FF. FF only takes the proper certificate format and IE refuses to hand that over. The digital signature installation only delivers a proxy HTML address for another export process, which - surprise surprise - is not compatible with FF.
So, as far as I can see, there is only 1 solution. The "Eksportér signatur" link on this particular help page will actually let you export the IE certificate directly in the proper format (PKCS12) for later import in Firefox.
I sure hope that page stays up.

They are threatening to change it all to a new kind of certificate soon - one which will actually require a code booklet. You might consider getting the old, simple version. Perhaps it will last a few years and postpone your TDC/DANID agony.

Vista madness

I opted for Windows Vista a few months ago when I got my new home computer. Having heard a lot of bad things, I still thought it would be cool, since this computer is fairly upscale.
I soon learned that raw power is one thing, the interactive feel to a operating environment is another. Vista really sucks...and I am even saying this with my usual guarded perspectives in mind.

A huge annoyance has recently fallen into the category of "solved", however. Or maybe it should just be "explained", since this piece of clarity hasn't really made life simpler. Nowadays, I usually copy my installation files to the desktop before running them.
I needed to disable the UAC disaster before my sanity was compromised - but it seems I only forced myself into another dead-end of Microshaft usability.

What kind of a moron does it take to come up with this kind of crap?

Ninja!

Several weeks ago, on Ninjatune.net, I ordered the recent single Dita Dimone by the strangely compelling Pop Levi.

I received an order confirmation that didn't contain any download link. It hardly described the product either, so I wrote an e-mail to customer support, failed to find any online reference of my purchase, assumed it had failed, and forgot all about it.

Today, I got an apologetic e-mail with my download link...and they even threw in a brilliant compilation as a consolation gift.

VR Designer

...is now my official title. How cool is that :)

Through my first week and it certainly looks promising. I'll have to get back into the CAD/3D domain again but this does not bother me the least. Actually, it is weird to see that even though it is more than 2 years since we stopped our 3D company (and more like 3 years ago I knew a lot about the state of the technology), things have not evolved all that much.
I'll have to use a software frame that is 7-8 years old, once made and back then not very successful, yet now coming into favour again. Strange, but I guess companies the size of Vestas are acknowledging future competition and that development and innovation has to be driven on all levels. At least that is my naïve, stubborn conviction while I look at the newspapers and silently pray that big finance turbulence doesn't mean immediate layoffs here in Aarhus...

iPod Touch location services

For some reason I have big problems with iPod programs that need to localise my iPod. My iPod (1st generation Touch) should be using the "location services" for its networks, but each time I try to access a program that depends on localisation, I get a "Allow me to use your existing location" followed by a long wait and inevitably failure.

I turned into Ze Googlemeister for a few minutes, and actually found something interesting:

Ipots (the smart and geeky slang for Ipod Touch'es) don't have GPS or any of that fancy, battery-bashing 3G stuff. So they rely on WiFi triangulation which is not very accurate but better than nothing.

Turns out that a privat company, Skyhook, is responsible for the WiFi, GPS and 3G localisation coverage for these Apple products. Or at least, this is how I interpret it. The corporate affiliations aren't exactly crystal...that's Apple, alright :P

Now, it appears that Skyhook is mapping WiFi coverage slowly but consistently. You can pay $20 and get some VIP-status that gets you there quicker, but online there is a WiFi access point submittal service where regular (free) users can add access points to Skyhook's database, which then within some weeks gets updated and allows your iPod to query the location services and hopefully get an accurate answer on where the hell it is.

I found several IP-addresses on my router and through good ol'e "ipconfig /all". The only one that the Skyhook service wanted to acknowledge was the "default gateway" that my router configuration is displaying.
When I added that address, the map reset itself to a particular street corner in Taipei. I am still uncertain whether a taiwanese chap has the same WiFi IP-setup - but somehow I take this to be a factory setting. It seems likely that my internal router or WiFi router is made in Taiwan. Even if I have no clue how that information is stored or transferred through IP exchange...

After this, I was asked to add the MAC-address of the WiFi router and my e-mail address. Confirmation came per e-mail - and now I'm waiting to see if this will help anything at all. I am not exactly located in the city center so I have some serious doubts.

I am still wondering how on earth regular non-technical users would have any chance of finding and implementing this information. How many people out there just sit around, accepting that key parts of their products do not really function properly?

[Edited on Oct 13th:]
To my big surprise, my localisation service now works here at home. My actions actually helped! Hooray!
I hereby recommend that everyone living up Shit Creek do the same.

Betting on a landslide

After the recent events over there, I am now proclaiming to the world that I foresee a landslide victory for Obama, come election day.
I've actually been thinking this for a couple of weeks now, ever since the initial evidence of Palin lunacy began to ticker in on my newsfeeder.

Winds of Change

It may safely be called official now - I had actually completely forgotten about my blog, so it's been official for at least 4 weeks now.
I have a new job at the Danish wind power company Vestas, namely in their Technology & Development department in Aarhus. About 250 meters from my current spot...so scenery was clearly not the objective.

What will I be doing - some of that is still confidential, actually. But it involves returning to 3D and computer graphics - and not least project development surrounding data visualisation and the likes.

The Rush '08

The past weekend was celebrated in Northern Jutland, near my childhood town - at the farm Krogsgaard.
A festival my old mate Mikkel has created (along with several others of course). I played a DJ set and was completely blown away by the quality of the venue. 200 people didn't sound like much...but in part this accounted for 30+ bands...so the schedule was packed. And along the weekend everyone more or less got to know each other.

A unique, local atmosphere...the perfect supplement to Roskilde's gargantuan playground. I hope I can help make it happen again next year.

The band quality was amazing, highlights being Transmission Low, Pow Pow, DJ Mescal and Albertslund Terror Korps. But, really, all the bands played excellent gigs. I did not experience a single bad set...but maybe that had to do with the happiness and relaxation everybody radiated.

My next post will be called "Winds of Change" and will reveal an exciting development, taking place during these very days. I just need to tie up loose ends before I get official. =)

Summer buzz

Roskilde was a blast, as always. My brother came along this time - a spectacular comeback after 11 years in hiding.
Musically, I didn't hear as much as I hoped, but highlights were Mugison, Girl Talk, La Kinky Beat, Solomon Burke, Radiohead, and susprisingly Slayer (I didn't hear it all of it, but half of it wasn't half bad...)

Recently returned from 2 weeks of holidaying, which were like a drop in the desert. Had a blast in rural Sweden, where my uncle has his summer residence. Swimming in a forest lake, picking berries, dazing in the sun, and I even got to go boar-hunting.

Recently, I also acquired an Ipod Touch...which I am already well into hacking. The design of this thing is amazing. I'll hand that to Apple - even if I usually dislike the smart-ass snobbiness they radiate.

My next big thing is preparing for a short festival in late August where I need to do some DJ-ing. Very anxcious about this...I've been shortlisting tracks for months now. I need to start selecting soon...

Gearing up

Almost ready to hit Roskilde - once again.

News from the front tells that we have secured our classic spot in area G39. I don't know how my mates pull it off every year. Apparently, the fence barrier was broken at 5 a.m. this morning...they were probably in the middle of it.

Roskilde Festival has also been hit by non-smoker's paranoia, along with the rest of Western civilisation, I am sad to say. In 2008 stages Lounge and Astoria are off limits...it marks the beginning of the end to the joyful and carefree festival spirit as we know it.

Oddly, this news hit me along with news of new legislation in Amsterdam - where coffee shops now, of course, have had a smoking ban imposed. You are, however, still allowed to smoke pure weed - which underlines the hypocrisy in a "laugh or weep" kind of way. What is it with this "ban all that is harmful or risky" surge that makes me cringe so?

Perhaps it upsets me that there is no opposite attractor. No crowd or political campaign that makes a statement like "Yeah, we like risks, we live unconcerned of reality, and we don't want to wear fucking bicycle helmets by law!"
It is always an escalation on basic liberties - public health, traffic safety, surveillance, [add other collective impositions].

Well, never mind that now - two days of work to go - and then it's Radiohead along with countless others... :)

The Slip is Hip

This NIN album is 100% free - and it is very good.
I liked 'With Teeth' but didn't get into 'Year Zero' much.
'The Slip' is a nicely balanced mix of aggression, melancholy, and ensnaring rhythms.

Reznor's new anti-establishment recording strategy is interesting; he seems very dedicated to it. Much more than Radiohead.

Grats, my boy

Obama clinches it - and I'm pleased.
Although I've despised the bashings between the campaigns, I couldn't help laugh at this comparison:

Centipedes

Here's a great new metaphor from Bruce Sterling (if he first coined it, not sure).

Feed me funk and soul

On my Spanish course, I've been pushing some sources of 60s and 70s soul and funk. Often old Latin American and Cuban goodies. Might as well post them here for others to enjoy - so much music from back then that just needs to be (re)discovered...

http://www.waxingdeep.org

http://www.soulstrut.com

http://www.djferrari.com

The radio channels, podcsts and archives of WMFU: http://www.wmfu.org

Terraforming Suburbia

A romantic and glamorous name for the activity of shoveling dirt and debris into wheelbarrows, nudging them 50 meters away, just to empty them again.

My garden needs a lot of extra earth on one side to become level to the property boundary - and time is running out because people are coming to plant the hedge. I reckon I must have moved at least 60 loads at about 50 kilos a piece today. That's 3 tonnes worth of crap-moving. I'm completely broken...limp and almost drooling...and just a little bit proud.

Busdriver, go vote!

So it's Pennsylvania today - I hope youngsters do their duty...Obama will likely need it.
Saw an interview with HC today - and while she says many smart things and seems sincere, I also sense a undercurrent of camouflage. She is very smart at turning critical questions in her favour...usually ending any answer with a minute of predictably formal political speechiness. That just does not go down well with me. In comparison, Obama actually seems to dig into the question, not dig into getting away from it.

My new favourite gave a show here this past Wednesday - 30 people showed up, yet he gave 120%. My friends and I (and most of the crowd) were thoroughly impressed. I bought 3 of his CDs and stated that one of my best memories of LA (his hometown) was in fact riding a public bus, drunk. He must have figured me completely insane. But then again, he cannot really complain...listen to the man.

[EDIT]
I found this image of the venue, courtesy of Jint.dk:

Way cool

This is way cool.
And I am wondering how the Hell they did it. Of course, they have the angle of the photo material...and they have some offset factor compared to the regular 2D maps - but I would assume that height infomation is needed to determine which buildings shadow what and how much. Looking at some of those buildings, there is a near-perfect correlation between overlaps and stitching. Que es possible?

Redirected from there, I discovered Swivel, a magnificent concept for data geeks. I'm not heavy on statistical data - but my escapades into 3D and visualisation make me naturally curious about all this. There are magical mashups just waiting to be uncovered in this realm...

Super Feary Animals

Courtesy of Susanna Hertrich

D-E-L

One of my old favourites is back after a long hiatus. Well, only concerning solo albums - he's been in tonnes of projects...not least Gorillaz, of course.
The new album is good - I am not quite sure if it's great. Musically, you get something completely unique...but I feel the critics are right when they say most of his topics are too shallow for his calibre.

Barcelona express

Back this week from a "long" weekend in Barcelona. What a bloody great city.

I was there by leisure albeit with my company department - a bonus trip earned through good results the past year. A really nice trip but much too short and much too socially anti-social.
By this I mean the general problem in moving in large tourist packs of foreigners. It will never be my thing. I saw my chances to get away on my own a few times but at the end of the trip I had only spoken 2-3 times to any native Barcelonian, not related to trade.
It was not much I got to train my beginner's Spanish - although I suspect I would not have anyway, since everyone was very keen to speak English :)

Best site was by far the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família which everyone must see before they die. I have seen many impressive buildings in my life but this takes the prize - not in grandeur, though it certainly is huge, but in sheer uncompromising creativity.
Gaudí was apparently a mathematical genius which I can certainly see the importance of, since those spacy ideas would have never been possible to build, had he not himself figured out the foundational engineering behind it. The scale of his projects are simply enormous, considering how many details they contain - looking at the amount of modern building project fuck-ups that seem to come in abundance, Gaudí's achievements are really blinding.

New markets

Seeing as Danish exports to the Middle East, for obvious reasons, are in a sharp decline, we need a 'next big thing' to substitute feta cheese.

New science together with careful evaluation of the number of Danish pigs' bladders compared to the level of Middle East regional violence seems to indicate a vast market, waiting to be exploited. Question is, will regrown limbs make up for the eternal damnation of soiling yourself with wee-wee powder from those filthy animals?

Make this viral, plz

Lars brought it to my attention - but this deserves to go front page. A lot of details I didn't know - but the part about means over principles fits nicely with a hunch I have had for some weeks now. I was beginning to think it strange that Obama had not been more aggressive and 'Rovean'...thinking exactly what Lessig describes; "That's necessary in politics".
However, it seems that Obama refuses to sink to those levels of argumentative engineering. Thanks to Lawrence for summing it up so nicely - I hope this gets some airplay.

Thar she blows!

As you can see on my reading list, I have embarked on a journey into Ruby on Rails. Determined to give it a shot, doubtful whether "it" is my foot.

I decided to drop all pretensions and went straight for the Dummies introduction. So far it is very good.
Time will show if I become a billionaire or go down like Ahab.

And the verdict?

Clinton or Obama?

I have been trying to follow the news on this one - I am hard pressed to decide, I'll admit. I seem to have a strictly rational half of the brain that opts for Clinton because of her "seasoning" as a Washington manipulator. And the other brain half, emotionally seduced, wants to see more Obama speeches and visionary statements.

The optimal solution really would be a team - Obama as a puppet president gathering the masses and leading the sheep, while Clinton substitutes Cheney as the Dark Eminence, doing the hardline negotiations in the congressional back alleys.

I think I lean towards Obama - if only for the fact that he represents some kind of innovation...which Clinton clearly does not.

Kiddos

Some other friends of mine have started a social website focused towards parents with kids in Copenhagen. Great work, great design. You'll probably never get a more enthusiastic web socialite than a proud parent - so I am sure that the site will get loads of content and commentary within no time.

I hope they have learned from other socially based guides - and put a time frame on added reviews, so they don't exist forever and prevent "progress of content", if one might call it that. I remember other examples (the Danish national 'Smiley' food vendor rating comes to mind) where those suffering poor reviews are doubly punished, either because the data just sits there forever regardless of real-life improvements, or because the rating criteria hinge on obeying a rigorous rule system. The 'Smiley' may be unhappy - but as a consumer you can never be sure if that's because there were rats in the kitchen, or because the owner had merely forgotten to jot down sanitary actions for a particular day.

I guess that is a philosophy of 'transcience' in some way - acknowledging that environmental data are always essentially outdated and doing your best to respect that when building stuff.

On another note, the little Thor had his old, relocated friend, Matthias, over for a visit today. Once best buddies in kindergarten, they only see each other rarely now. It was a true joy to see the kids' faces when they met up. 20 seconds later they were playing along like old days. Which mainly meant shouting, crying, and clawing at each other's throats.

The sentimentality of child situations like that lies so much in the heads of us adults, it is hard to fathom. The little guys don't give a shit...they just get on with life. Any parent that decides not to do something (relocate, travel, divorce, whatever) because of 'the children' does not really understand children at all. True, they experience sadness and regret momentarily...but unlike whining adults they don't have any existential terror yet. They adapt to life without that eternal doubt that a 'wasted' or 'potential' other course of life brings with it.

February assassinated by madman

Long live March.

Almost a month since my last posting - and I am wondering what the hell there is to tell.
Friends of mine opened a new shop - looks promising...and their talent, backgrounds and personal networks will certainly see them through, I am sure.

Other than that, life goes on in a non-problematic yet sometimes achingly trivial fashion. I've almost been with EG a year now. I am nearing a crossroads without exactly knowing how. I just feel that within maybe a year or so, I will need to make a major decision on my career - mainly because I can feel that my current selection of work tasks is a waste of my talent and general education - even if I am sharpening my technical claws through it and growing wiser each day.

On the side, I am conceptualising a project with some good friends. We had a great design session last weekend and I think we all ended up feeling that our ideas have some real merit. Exciting where this will go - I have been researching some online collabo project management services that might serve as a base for our further design activities. Mingle seems the best but I cannot grasp their licensing policy...they write about a 30 day trial yet also advertise with 5 free users. ThoughtWorks looks like a damned interesting company, by the way. And they have a lot of job offerings...hmm...

In other news, Muhammad is acting up again. This time cartoon re-prints based on death threats are getting everyone worked up again. Absolutism seems to be the order of the day - either you're for or against free speech. Even if free speech should not incourage insulting other people and religious dogma should not interfere with independent editorials. Nuances are lost, it's out of fashion to admit doubt and apply shades of grey.

Oh, and we got a new car. I have been nutured...stripped of about 125 bhp....left crying in the rain with a small, overly practical, diesel-economical family van. It drives adequately, uses almost no fuel (which is actually a huge relief), and is completely boring. I am very happy with the way it matches all the rest.

Gourmet fridge snacks

Leftovers from the christening of my baby daughter this past Sunday.

I made an informal deal with Philippe at www.phil-good.dk and boy, did he deliver.
Salmon tartar rolls, 2 amazing salads, lamb roast with a sweet cous cous salad, several delicious cheeses, and a traditional french apple pie.
Everyone was dribbling, everyone had something they loved. It really is satisfying to shell out a bit extra for stuff like that and then REALLY get value thrown back at you.

Dindins

I wonder if all women are experts in the fine genre of Banzai Cooking - which involves blowing up the kitchen and eating whatever dish that manages to escape.

Don't overdo it

I like this comment from Alan Alda on the brilliant World Question Center.
I would have labeled myself an atheist until recently when I began to get an ugly taste from the whole Dawkins hysteria. Suddenly some sort of faction-cult solidified when atheists united. Of course, this way of going about things is inherently American - and by and large understandable considering the evangelical power factors threatening the so-called democracy over there.

Once you start referencing yourself with a capital letter (Atheists, in this case) you're broadcasting to the world your membership of a particular order. I don't view atheism as anything like that - for me it is the natural state, not a team I decide to fight for. I fear the only result from this rally is even more division among people.

I once read an elegant argument of the 'rubbishness' of agnosticism, because it basically says that there is a 50% chance of God being there (as in true/un-true). I can see the point. To a true scientist (Atheist) the chance is 0% because no decisive evidence is available. It is a nice argument but it is too categoric since 'evidence' in itself is open to discussion. And in any event, there exists no 'objective' framework to judge the state of divinity anyway. Miracles do occasionally happen, right?

So, I think Alda is spot on - Atheism (capital form) has now become politicised and is, to some, a religion in itself. It risks discounting the basic analysis of anything that does not fit a priori within scientific descriptive categories. The problem lies in automatically assigning the value 'wrong' to anything not proven true within existing limits of knowledge. Moreover, on a directly humanistic level, vigilant Atheists (again, notice the self-important capital letter) seem to regard religious and spiritual people as stupid by definition - which I think is....hmm...exaggerated, at least :)

To most people religious or spiritual feelings are not at all associated with logical thought - when science geeks try to force a connection on their subject it is really a superficial comparison that, while it shows the unscientific character of religion or spirituality, shows absolutely nothing about that subject's mental capacity in general. You are able to believe in spite of your scientific convictions. Often, Atheist science geeks have a hard time grasping this.

In any event, see this as a critical bark up my own tree, since I do not hold religious beliefs at all. I do, however, become curious about spirituality and mysticism from time to time. I also try to respect people that hold religious views - it's when they start contradicting scientific methods that I get grumpy. I have also been quasi-religious or at least interested in historical religions when I was younger, so I can relate to the chasm between religious feelings and logical thought. And since this chasm is so deeply personal, it should stay entirely in the personal domain - get that stuff out of politics, for sure. But it you think you can abolish it by pointing to science, you are the stupid one =)

Scifi memoirs

I've become quite the science fiction aficionado the past year or so. I always was, actually, but recently I've seen scifi being referenced and almost emulated in blogs and online writings. Thanks to the bogosphere and Wikipedia, most scifi worlds and writers are now being celebrated permanently, one might say.

There was a time when I fell over great scifi stories entirely by accident - no readily accessible media bothered to mention let alone recommend science fiction.
Now it is ubiquitous...and Gibson is even making me feel as if certain parts of it are in the PAST, when 'Spook Country' makes an effort to describe technological phenomena that I already know a great deal about. Weird.

Have a look at IO9, a new scifi blog splicing the playfulness of Neatorama with the intellectual coolhunting of BoingBoing.

Thinking back, I guess these are science fiction books that I remember most vividly:

Jon Bing - 'The Chronicles of the Starship Alexandria'
This series is maybe the earliest scifi literature I remember where I have not forgotten the author's name. I doubt that these have been translated into English, but for a Danish lad of 9-10 years these are thrilling tales of weird worlds and inventions.

Brian Aldiss - 'Helliconia Spring'
Actually part of a trilogy, however I suspect I only read the first novel back as a young teenager. The vastness of the environment and the strange mixture of detached science and struggling characters captivated me, I recall.

Larry Niven - 'Ringworld'
I must have read this when I was 13 or 14...I remember thinking 'Wow'. A grand space opera, bordering on fantasy. Douglas Adams without the silliness. I am planning to revisit this one soon.

Alan Dean Foster - 'Midworld'
A scifi ecological thriller. I was crazy about nature and strange species and stuff like that. This book is full of it :)

William Gibson - 'Burning Chrome'
Although I think that word of 'Neuromancer' got to me first, I seem to recall it being off the shelves at our library due to popular demand. There was however one available copy of 'Burning Chrome' in the entire Eastern part of Northern Jutland, and so this became my first cyberpunk experience. Luckily perhaps, because the short story pieces probably suited a young teenager better than the poetically heavier descriptions of 'Neuromancer'.

William Gibson & Bruce Sterling - 'The Difference Engine'
I never finished this at the time. At 14-15 years of age I suspect some of the very rich social and environmental descriptions in this book turned me off. At least that is what I remember. I am quite sure they would thrill me today. The book did actually serve a noble purpose since it primed me for the title below - several years later. It shares some of the neo-/pseudo-Victorian vibe.

Neal Stephenson - 'The Diamond Age'
I liked 'Snow Crash' like everyone else but this is probably his best true scifi work. An amazing story filled with emotion, technological gadgets, social perspectives, and murky motives.
And guess what? I never finished it! Why? I simply forgot it on the plane, coming home from a trip to Thailand in 2001. I am still missing the last 50 pages, goddammit!


Recent honorable mention:
Iain M. Banks - 'The Algebraist'. Very refreshing (and quite funny) after a long time of absence from the spacier part of science fiction.

[EDIT]
Today, in a strange cooincidence, IO9 suddenly talked about this which I suddenly recalled was also one of my favorite book series when I was 12-ish. Of course, at the time I was reading the Danish translation, first of which was named "Telekattene". This is a childhood space mythology not to be missed - bring it to your pre-teens now!

1st time's a winner

I don't know if he is referencing someone else or quoting a paraphrase from his own work - but it instantly rang intuitively true to me.

[anything done for the first time releases demons...]

I think a big reason that people my age develop forms of mid-life crisis is the lack of "1st timers". Not necessarily because there exist fewer but because family life, mature social circles, and career structures make it quite hard to encounter 1st timers. You have to make an active effort to meet them, whereas in my younger days I would run across them daily or weekly.

Maybe that would constitute a fine New Year's resolution; weekly 1st timers...or maybe just monthly, depending on your degree of Weltschmerz and suburban assimilation.

Radiohead technician

Merry whatever and happy likewise!

Christmas has come and gone. December was as always the shortest month of them all...3 weeks passing like a runaway freight train. Food was great, gifts were good, company was laid back and soothed a weary mind, tired of repetitive labour.

My brother and I managed to gift-cross each other with Gibson's new 'Spook Country' which I am now enjoying. Gibson has a special gift with urban and trendish settings, expanding the vocabulary of literature through lifestyle observations. Sometimes he gets a bit too poetic but it's ok - and actually more easily deciphered in his recent 'scifi-now' novels.

A lengthy mention goes to my immense accomplishment today - I managed to get my car stereo to work! This project has been haunting me and my car for 2-3 months now. Facts are, I bought a budget car radio to replace the one that was wrecked when our car was stolen last year. Ever the wanna-be handyman, I have also bought a Saab 9000 Haynes manual and expected the replacement of a stereo to be a walkover. But, it soon turned awkward because the new stereo did not come with a simple ISO connector - and even if it had, the old car stereo was itself a replacement during which the former handyman had opted to snippet ALL the in-bound wires and attach them to the old stereo through tiny, singular screw couplings.

So, I needed to attach 13-14 wires which was only possible after I had dislodged the entire glove compartment so I could get my hand in from behind to fixate the wires properly. On top of this, old Swedish Saab engineers seem to have been less rigorous with the colouring of wires than might be expected - I was juggling 3 different reds, 2 different greens and 2 different white-browns, constantly hoping that I would hit the right match to the stereo wires. I half expected the entire fusebox to blow up whenever I went out to reconnect the battery for testing. Testing in itself became a pain, because 3x2x2 gives 12 different combinations, 11 of which are unforgivingly wrong.

Since this all took forever, and my weekends were mostly booked for other things during the daytime, and the Danish winter dusk made it even more difficult to see wire colours, the project just dragged on and on. If I wasn't having a fit of rage the umpteenth time a test didn't even let out a single sound from the speakers, I was usually procrastinating, trying not to think about it. Stubbornly getting my music needs fulfilled through my portable MP3 player instead. Really a sad story of a frightened academic lost in the woods.

Then yesterday, I gave it another go without any luck. This morning I had a thought about switching two specific wires, and I decided on one last try. It worked. It must have been the single most uplifting moment since I was contacted on my job applications. But all things considered, I think I am better off earning money to pay people to do that! It just does not interest me enough, I'm afraid.
I will, however, try to install a new automatic aerial - once my handyman anxiety has subsided a bit.

New Year's Eve? A night with the neighbours, celebrating mostly through tonnes of food. This might have a chance of getting some airplay in the background. :)

Seasonal blabberings

So, what's new..?

I am ill again - for the 3rd BIG time inside 2 months. I am seriously beginning to question my general health. Before this autumn I remember thinking how little I had actually been ill the past few years - child and all taken into account. And now it's turned into one massively diseased end-of-season, sprinkled with fragments of mediocre well-being.
I suspect my almost complete lack of exercise the past 6 months, since we moved to the countryside. I ride the car to work 3 out of 5 days. The rest is by bus. My only weekly exercise (apart from being a Dad which certainly also counts) is a good long walk from work to the school where I am currently studying Spanish, each Monday evening. Without that I would probably be snapping bones and losing teeth during work hours.

Speaking of illness, there is always someone worse off. Really sad, although I did wonder about the sinister tone that many of his supporters have been sporting. Until I read more on AD, that is, and realised what a bastard condition it actually is. Not because it is immediately dangerous, but because it is fairly inevitable. Symptoms may be suppressed but the chemical deterioration will steadily continue. And if PTerry has been having phantom strokes already then his case is surely not trivial.
He is trying to be cheerful, though - and on the bright side, I realised that Hogfather has already been produced as a mini-series. And 'The Colour of Magic' is also in the works, starring Sean Astin of The Shire.
So, in any event, Mr. Pratchett surely has triumphs to come and plenty of them.

And now it is almost Christmas - and I am steadily forgetting (as usual) to write my annual card to my friends in Australia. I think I will drop the paper format - and send a digital piece this year.

Gifts are almost in place - although Vat19 parked my order in limbo because of some weird credit card approval procedure they apparently have. Please, don't just park the order, less than a month from Christmas. Other web shops have a credit check incorporated directly and finish it straight away - why can't you?

Last comment is on the climate conference in Bali - once more a piece of hypocritical bullshit politics, flamboyantly showing the inability of ALL politicians across the globe to keep promises that got them elected. And, once more, the US makes an ass of itself, demonstrates its status as the Idiot Bully of the schoolyard. Obstructing the entire process till the very end...instead of giving concessions in the beginning that would have risked progress towards further, constructive steps.
I may still be skeptical towards the wobbly scientific rhetoric that is commandeering both media and world demagogues on this issue, but the fact that everyone has been barking about global warming the past year and yet cannot coordinate ANY substantial actions other than "now we agree that we will agree NEXT time", makes me infinitely disappointed and increasingly cynical. That feeling is not pleasant - what do I do? Usually, I laugh - but recently I find it harder and harder to laugh about this stuff. On a larger scale, it is all so monumentally incompetent that tragedy just kicks comedy in the bollocks.

Dominionated

If you're up for a nice strategy game during the Christmas holidays, Dominions 3 is a great game. Brings back the old Civilization feeling.
Graphics are nothing special but the depth of gameplay is extraordinary. Just one more turn, Mom...then I'll come eat supper...promise.

Mad Skeptic's Disease

The internet is a wondrous thing, to be sure. All that information, waiting to be sucked up.
A very conservative estimate; I look up 6-8 things on Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, Google, UrbanDictionary, whatever, during my average work day. Half of it is probably work-related, the other half is trivia or based on interests.

Wikipedia has the unique property of sending me off on link rampages, and I guess everyone experiences this. Yesterday, I read a fun article on the crappiest beasts of the old televised Star Trek series. I followed one of those beasts to Wikipedia, remebered that I had always wanted to know more about Q and went through to that section. From there, I went on to read about the Borg which lead me to a passage about physics and dimensionality and - briefly - to the anthropological description of the Finns (who are, by some, referred to as Borg). I then returned through the biography of Patrick Stewart. Star Trek waved goodbye by linking to the definition of fusion power which led me to Hydrogen-3 and the apparently impending space race to the Moon. Since that has to do with withering energy supplies, I returned to Earth through a Peak Oil reference. At this point I left Wikipedia, reading an interesting Wired article - in which a comment links to this.

Now, of course I don't really read all this. Like most webformation-addicts (I suspect that is what I have become) I have perfected a skimming-style that allows me to read 3-page articles in, say, 3-4 minutes. Definitely a heavy information loss there - I don't pick it all up. However, there is also a technique to reading blog and newspaper articles. I usually begin with the first 2-3 sentences, to get a feel for the topic. If I am interested, I jump to the last 4-5 sentences to judge the conclusion, if it is present. If the conclusion is as expected, I let it go and head on for other stuff to pique my curiosity. If the conclusion is absent or controversial, I begin scanning back towards the middle section - usually the meat of the arguments in any article lie between the 50% and 75% markers of the bulk text, this seems to be my experience.
I wasn't really aware that I did this skimming until someone commented the way I was skipping ahead (I have a habit of marking up the text with my cursor while reading it).

I expect these habits are quite common, but compared to how one reads a book the difference is really quite huge - and I think it goes to show how much one needs to "shut out" in order to get anywhere, webformationally speaking.

Anyway, my main point was the skepticism that this leads (should lead) to. The example with the whole Peak Oil discussion above is quite vivid. Both articles are well-written - the second is more biased and as such weighs in less on my overall opinion - but how are we to believe anything? I don't dare take a stand anymore - I'm still trying to fathom the mechanisms behind the immense discourse shift on global warming - not because of scientific evidence but because of media attention through Gore.

Disclaimer: I am not saying the evidence is not there...I am saying that it has, in its basic form, been there for at least a decade. Gore put it in the discourse. So does that make him a scientist or a spin-doctor? Assuming there is a difference these days...

NiggyTardust!

Stumbled over this when I was reading about how pissed Trent Reznor is at his record company, Universal.

Apparently, he wants to have fans remix and upload his latest album to the official site - but Universal are spooked because they are involved in a humongous lawsuit against YouTube and MySpace. Legal paranoia ruining a fine idea - even if it is not very ground-breaking. David Bowie did the same with one of his albums a couple of years ago - although I seem to recall it was tied to the music program Acid and some limited track selections. I remember I was all agitated and downloaded everything to give it a go - but lost heart after one measly evening of slider-pulling and creative vacuum.

Funny how you can be bubbling with ideas when walking under a clear sky. Then, when you want to activate and actualise all those dreams you are hit in the face by the inertia of reality's tools.

Hm, what a strange paragraph...I stand by it, though.

Well, back to the initial point - Saul Williams (left field poetic rapper) is giving away his album for free, much like Radiohead. Except he has optimised the concept and asked $5 for the really high-grade download (320 Kbit/s or FLAC). Very reasonable - I opted to pay even if 192 Kbit/s is usually fine for me.
Reznor is deeply involved in the production of said album - and that pairing cannot be half bad.

Immuno-deficiancy?

I'm ill again - sore throat and heavy coughing. For the second time within two weeks.
I think exercise might be needed. Badly.

Sub-primes

This sketch on modern finance and specifically the sub-prime crisis is absolutely brilliant (courtesy of onegoodmove.org):

Populism all across the board

The Danish vote for parliament is coming up and every politician in the country has suspended real work for a while in order to enjoy a few weeks of mock-faced mud slinging, promise-brokering, and void-eyed exchanges of superficial clichés.

You guessed it, I'm sick of it already. I'm not sure if my late years at uni rendered me too academic and philosophical on social and economic issues - but I really do feel that the discourse is shamefully ignorant and shallow. Even worse, I think it is ignorant and shallow intentionally. As if there is a contract between politicians, however far apart, to never dive deep into anything of substance.
Of course, the spin and media dilutions of political issues have always been there...but I really feel it is getting worse every year. I wonder if it's just me, getting old, losing my ideological innocence, becoming ever more cynical.

This year has been promising, though, since 'Ny Alliance' has arisen to kick some excitement into the melting pot. Usually we have 2 or 3 "circus parties", as I like to call them, in the Danish parliament. Generally represented on the wings, of course. The far lefties that wail about human degradation and want communism reinstated in a cleaner form, the far righties that wail about immigration and want to shut out the surrounding world as much as possible. Both sides weigh in heavily on certain popular groups - often the helpless destitutes and the easily spooked elderly citizens, respectively.

'Ny Alliance' rose from the middle ground, apparently claiming a group of voters that were either just tired of the traditional political landscape or needed to express their support for the current government but wishing to expel the far righties.
Usually, this would suit me fine. I'm not too distraught with the policies of the current government - not on the basic economical level anyway. I do feel there have been too many mistakes made, eg. the war in Iraq, the immigration policies, the priorities on specific social areas. However, the country has been doing fine - and virtually everyone (except maybe incapacitated destitutes and immigrants) have the opportunity of a job these days. Perhaps the most important thing of all.

But, however nicely 'Ny Alliance' may suit my general feelings on the political landscape, they just seem too smooth and calculating. The past couple of days were really bad. They seem to be catering to the most popular topics on both sides of the divide, gathering a nice bouquet to entice the voters with. It seems too glittery and "marketed". So, I am thinking of them increasingly as the third circus act of the election show.

I am also thinking of making my own party, something like The Reasoned People's Party. Main goal is to present accurate facts and figures. And insist on 5 minutes of answering time for each question on nationally transmitted debates.

Now, that would constitute Utopia.

I've succumbed

I should apologise for my previous rant on the phenomenon of LOLcats. While I still hold contempt for the aesthetic derangement that the LOLcat lingo brings into the fine art of subtitling, I've recently been active myself in this respect.

Place? Neatorama's occasional Caption Monkey contests - good fun :) And with prizes too!

PS. I stubbornly refrain from using silly language. Good old English will suffice.

Musing of the day

I wonder if "bad software" will ever be dismissed on a bill of human rights.

Isolated illness

*Cough*

Today I never bothered to get up for work. Illness was on the rise this past week, today was too much.
After shipping the lad to kindergarten, the girlfriend and baby decided to go to town. I was alone...for the first time in...eh...can't say, actually. Almost 1½ months, maybe?
That is the one thing that bothers me most about family life. The lack of privacy. I think I have discovered myself to be a loner these past years, relatively speaking. I really need those occasional puffs of solitude at the surface - and then it's all a matter of making this acceptable and even scheduled, if possible. But, when you're not big on schedules these things tend to slip - and then the pressure cooker starts whistling. I've got to get better at planning steam-venting getaways =)

Nothing like a good rant

This is a great summation of the worst things religion has to offer in America.

We want 3D datamining

At work we have this system...this big, huge 20-year-old system. Consisting of 1500 programs and who knows how many subprocesses.

They are currently discussing how to get on from here, since the framework support will cease within a few years - and the idea of a completely new start (named "The Big Bang" approach) is nothing but scary. Platform migration was done once before - and was entirely cumbersome, resulting in years of patching.

So, the idea is to cut the system up into more or less self-contained parts that may be swapped for specialized new commercial pieces of software.
Main problem now is getting to grips with the connections between software parts, users, and organisational structures. It reminds me of a process I saw with LEGO a few years ago - in which they also were trying to abolish, maintain and develop their software system - all at the same time.

I suddenly thought of visualising the whole thing, when dozing off at a meeting yesterday - so now I am on the lookout for 3D data visualisation tools that may have system data added (preferably along several dimensions) and then show the entirety of the mess. I've looked into a few already on this page - unfortunately, many are quite old...and have no easily accessible interface - which is sort of key - if you want many different actors to use them readily.

Things of note, so far: GraphViz, Atlas info, Tinderbox, mind-mapping.org
The latter points to an interesting list, with 3D Topicscape as the first reference. Promising at first sight - but I quickly found that it was really only a narrowly hierarchical structure that it could visualise. A shame with all that 3D and then they only use it for things better shown on regular diagrams.
I want the x,y,z dimensions to hold parameter references - and nodes that are equally dependent, not necessarily in a parent-child relationship. I want navigation around clouds of connected elements, coloured by their business value, ordered by their program hierarchy, translated by their [insert parameter here].
Still looking....makes me annoyed I didn't become a graphical coder.

[EDIT]
Seems I have found something useful in TheBrain. Not exactly 3D...but the way of adding, linking and dragging nodes has me somewhat persuaded. After all, what good is a big, shiny 3D structure if it is impossible to update easily or navigate quickly. Seems like TopicScape actually imports TheBrain XML-structures...so maybe I can visualise it all more deeply later on.
Next step is to get to work and start adding systems data...=)

Time for an upgrade

The past two years have gone by like a maglev - it really dawned on my when I bought the new game Bioshock, expecting my hardware to be just around the absolute minimum requirements. No way, José.
My gfx-card (ATI x800 pro) was nowhere near even the bottom of Tom's Hardware tests. And I've hardly played anything but WoW with it...wasted my money on it back then, I did.

I find it a bit odd that games are also still pushing Moore's envelope. But then again it is only a few games that can provide the quality of content that Bioshock supposedly does.

The trick is trying to avoid wasting my money this time - a colleague just assembled a fairly nice machine for about 3000 Dkr in parts, which is peanuts. I'd like to spend a bit more maybe - but then again come 6 months and it's worth half already.

The worst thing is RAM systems - I tried to find an internet guide on it but most are 5-6 years old. Luckily, I found this table - which also shows the formula by which SDRAM is calculated. One of those things you need to study again each time you need it :)

RAM type	Theoretical max. bandwidth
SDRAM 100 MHz	100 MHz X 64 bit= 800 MB/sec
SDRAM 133 MHz	133 MHz X 64 bit= 1064 MB/sec
DDRAM 200 MHz (PC1600)	2 X 100 MHz X 64 bit= 1600 MB/sec
DDRAM 266 MHz (PC2100)	2 X 133 MHz X 64 bit= 2128 MB/sec
DDRAM 366 MHz (PC2600)	2 X 166 MHz X 64 bit= 2656 MB/sec
RDRAM 600 MHz	600 MHz X 16 bit= 1200 MB/sec
RDRAM 700 MHz	700 MHz X 16 bit= 1400 MB/sec
RDRAM 800 MHz	800 MHz X 16 bit= 1600 MB/sec

Read it and weep...joyfully

If I were to be asked which people I am really really a fan of, I suspect I would be hard-pressed to answer...either I might find too many candidates, thus diluting the point of mentioning them. Or I might claim that I am not that big a fan of anyone in particular.

However, this guy comes close - and now he has started blogging!

Hint: All people that claim to recognise depth, humour, and intelligence should be like this -> \o/

Shocker

Today I learned that a good friend of mine, Morten Lindholm, recently passed away - apparently due to brain cancer.
Although we were not all that close, we always had time to stop and chat - and give each other updates on life and mutual acquaintances. We were classmates at university since 1996.
As late as Friday, 3 weeks ago, I thought of him during the 25th anniversary gathering of IMV. Wondered why he wasn't there, actually - since I knew that he still worked on campus.
I feel quite sad. I always thought he was one of the nicest people I knew during my university studies and work.

This coincides with another recent tragedy where one of my Roskilde festival buddies' 7-year-old son also died from some kind of brain tumour. Makes you feel way too fragile.

WTF are LOLcats?

I've just researched the term, having heard or read it several times without really getting it.
Halfway through the Wiki explanation, I still didn't get it.

What the hell is so special and hilarious about digital pictures with subtitles? This stuff has been going on for the past decade; we did similar stuff back in '96-'97 at Uni. Yet, the web pop culture seems so (im)mature now that it only takes one funny caption, allowing for replication and customization - and then everyone goes ape shit, invents new terms, entire fandom websites, not to mention taking up space in otherwise respectable news media.

You've got to hand it to American pop culture - they really know how to arouse each other when they're bored. That's probably how cheerleading and professional wrestling was invented.

New developments

On Monday, September 10th, my daughter was born - a big kicker at 4900 grams.
She's, of course, adorable - and very mild-mannered so far. Nevertheless, she does get a bit grumpy when deprived of pacifiers of any sort. :)

There has been so much to do and get in order that I am still fairly knackered - but I'll try to put up some better descriptions soon, along with some photos.
I'm on a short 2-week paternal leave, yet I feel as stressed out as ever!


[EDIT]
Here's a couple of shots. Thor is overjoyed as you might suspect from his expression.
And then there is me, at post-op (we had a caesarian). Cute, but I dread the huge turd underneath that hair cap of mine. It sure gives Donald Trump a run for his money.

My cartoon dreams

When I was a teenager, I thought seriously about becoming a cartoonist. I have always been doodling a lot, although it has dwindled ever since I started studying.
Sites like Flight, Insanely Twisted and the blog of Michel Gagné make me wish I had started properly back then.

Still, I guess I always found cartoons a fun pastime, not an obsession. And I think you need to be almost obsessed to make a living off it. I remember attending a cartoon convention in Melbourne (or was is Sydney?) back in 1995. At the time, I thought I was getting pretty good but when I saw what some youngsters were creating, I sort of lost heart. Talent be as it may, it mainly requires very high amounts of dedication, practice and maybe also an inspiring environment of like-minded artists or aficionados. Cutting edge cartoons were not readily available in Northern Jutland back then..! :D

I might have a small amount of talent - but I think persistence is more important. I'm not patient enough to be a cartoonist, but I wish I was.

I see giants falling

The introduction I saw didn't really mention the scope or quality of collaboration services and file storage - but I think this appears fairly impressive. And it's lean...supposedly.

I.R.I.S.H.

They beat us the day before yesterday....by 4 goals to nil. A nice, warm evening at the Aarhus Arena, even if the Danish team was disastrous.

Best moment by far: the Irish cheering for Denmark, in the 2nd half.
Cracked everyone up.

Stock, Mayhem & Waterman

This news clip had me laughing today.

Apparently, an error in one of the subsystems of the Nordic Stock Exchange (OMX) put the Maersk stock on the market for a measly 1,99 Danish crowns. 150 transactions went through, before the error was discovered. One transaction involved 556.200 stocks - which, in a less unforgiving world, would have saved the lucky buyer more than 35 billion Danish crowns (since the Maersk stock is generally going for about 65.000 DKR each).

The faulty transactions are, of course, already annulled. However, I wonder how they measure the indirect costs of the error. If we assume it took 10 minutes before the error was corrected and the assets were frozen, then a drop of, say, 2% (the Danish stock fell quite a bit during the first hours of today) would mean that the sellers "avoided" losses of nearly 15 mio. DKR.
Of course, I expect that the stock value is written back and updated correctly. And if it is not, then I'm going into brokering software.

Spacy philosophy

A few blogs of note that I am watching at the moment:

Sentient Developments
Have a look at the posting on the Simulation Argument which assumes that the Matrix plot might have some real merit. Personally, I think it's an artificial construct, assuming way too much. But it's a funny thought, at least.

Futurismic
Nice bits of compiled techno-babble.

In other news, I am well into home improvement at the moment. Yesterday I got into a fistfight with a roll-up curtain and this weekend I might look at tool shed insulation...a domain of kings.

Sleepy hollow - the anecdote

Some years ago (maybe 7 or 8 - I seem to remember being single) I'd often have some weird experiences in my sleep.
I would wake up in the middle of the night and be completely paralyzed. Hearing, feeling and thinking as if awake. Not seeing, naturally, since I couldn't force open my eyes.

It happened maybe once a month over a period of 4-5 months. At first it was quite scary. Once the sense of capture seeped through my sleepiness, a huge sense of claustrophobia would kick in. I would start struggling, trying desperately to move a limb - sit up, flail an arm, get those eyelids up. Sometimes it resulted in a violent break-through. I must have looked like an unlucky fish out of water, caught up in my sheets, gasping.

Later on, I actually got used to it. Tried to go with flow and sense the physical state I was in. It was virtually impossible to go back to sleep, though. The feeling of powerlessness was usually too heavy to ignore.

It concerned me a great deal, of course. I also had a lot of "falling into sleep" in the literal sense of the expression - most people have probably tried this. The big sleep-dive that has you jerking like an idiot.

I researched it and became aware of the medical concept of "sleep paralysis" (although the phrase had not been so accurately coined back then). The human brain sends signals - in the form of hormones and neurotransmitters - to the muscles, telling them to ignore physical instructions during the dream sleep phases. Sometimes the brains sends too much or lets one wake up before the effect has worn off...and then you're in the iron maiden.

It hasn't happened to me in a long time now. Probably because I never get as much sleep nowadays as back in my student days. Fuck all risk of me waking up late at night these days =)

This fun article / tutorial spurred my memory, however. I have had lucid dreams, too - but I only recall them dimly, none of them so totally in control as the article suggests.

I'm not sure I want to experiment with my dream phases - but it is tempting. The absence of logical coherence when you're dreaming is fascinating, especially because that same absence seems so perfectly natural in situ.

Leftover sludge event horizon

The narrow transitional phase of leftovers - which leaves you indecisive as to pour it in the sink or in the trash bag.

I really hate that one.

Cleaning recipes

Just because I'm a homeowner now...

Vanessa's Cleaning Recipes

Strange magic

Just started the, apparently, award-winning "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. Promising, so far.
I was struck with a heavy feeling of recognition - due to my few attempts at the roleplaying game Ars Magica. Also focused on "true magic" and mythical, un-categorizable faery folk.

Set in the 1800s, it also reminded me of "The Baroque Cycle". Read this if you haven't!

A place for my garbage heap of snapshots

Check out Photosynth - a technology on the horizon by Microsoft. Pretty impressive - and fits perfectly with the mindset of tourist photography. Get it ALL in there!

Now is the winter of our discontent...

So that was that. Summer holidays are over...I'm back at work. Bored as hell. Must stay strong.

I've had a great vacation, though. 9 days in sunny Austria...with soaring temperatures and bikini sightings. Back in Denmark, I am trying to adjust to temperatures as low as 16-17 degrees. I really, really hate this climate.

On the upside, we got a new sofa yesterday. It's about the size of an aircraft carrier...zzZZzzzzZZZZZZzzzz...
The Tour de France is looking mighty good from there. Naturally, I am cheering for another Doped Dane of Doom:



"Hey, at least we're almost honest about it."

Survival completed

Sitting on my Dad´s porch in Austria, enjoying a strange wheat beer in about 35 degress celsius.
This past monday I returned from what was by all non-participants generally agreed to be a disaster, namely the Roskilde Festival.

We had some rain, sure. In fact, we had twice the amount of rain that the next-worst year provided (1997). My tent got washed away by a mud flood Thursday around noon. I still have scars on my calfs from where my wellingtons gnawed (before I got smart and padded them properly).

Nevertheless, the drama has been a bit exaggerated by the media, I felt - once I got home and had a chance to study the reactions. Wednesday and Thursday up to the official festival start it rained for 30 hours straight - a single, long event that pretty much caused all the problems. I´m not sure I have ever experienced 30 continuous hours of fierce rain, not even in Denmark. By noon on Friday, however, the weather was tolerable with only few showers and, at least in our camp, the mood was flying high. After all, this year people had been prepared for troublesome weather, unlike in e.g. 2004.

Saturday and Sunday was a blast - and all the adversity, in a sense, only contributed to the feeling of togetherness and common cause. Strangers at Roskilde had even more to talk about this year (not that they usually hold themselves back).

Musically, I didn´t have my most active year. I quickly realized that the sheer mud-wrestling energy necessary to see all the bands I wanted to was way too high. So, instead I relaxed a bit and chose a fair selection of known goodies as well as smaller acts.

My best experiences this year (in no particular order):

CSS - great party.
Mahmoud Ahmed - Ethiopian funky vocalist supreme.
Stones Throw (Percee P) - this guy can flow.
Beastie Boys - no comment necessary.
The Who - I remember I thought it was good.
Flaming Lips - weird and different and quaint and feel good.
K´naan - Somali new-yorker with a message. I´m getting that album ASAP.
Justice - french excentric house madness.

Looking back at the program, I see at least 5 acts that I really regret not seeing. But that was this year´s festival for you. Mud madness had you making too many last minute decisions.

I was sick of seeing reviews of e.g. the Chili Peppers in Ekstra Bladet when I got home. I agree it was no awesome concert, but they did most of it at a medium level. Flea´s bass play alone is enough to generate a good show. Thomas Treo at that crap paper gave them 0/6 which just shows that too many reviewers either come out each evening from their cosy Copenhagen apartments or sit in hiding in the backstage Media Village trying to not get mud on their fashionable pants before they venture out to take a peak at the artists. There is too much of that musical snobbery going on at the moment, methinks.

Pitchfork was attending the festival this year - they have some good coverage including fantastic photos - go take a look (search for "Roskilde").
It´s fun to read an American perspective on the whole thing, although I think they use too much space on artists they have previously experienced or already condone professionally.
Oh, and they are a bit prissy when it comes to excessive drinking and urine. They´re young...I guess they can still learn.

Happy summer to all - I´ll try to post some pictures as I receive them.

Beware

If Hitchcock had lived today, this fellow would surely have been his next apprentice.

ATnotes - so far so good

I've mentioned the need for a truly contextual notes application. I haven't made one but so far I am using ATnotes.
A certain option allows ATnotes to minimize the notes and park them for later onMouseOver access - which works pretty well for me right now =)


ATnotes

Roskilde on the rise

As ever, I'm ready for it. Apparently, a criticized lineup this year - I think it's damned good. Screw the others.

Moreover, a good sound check initiative here. It's not all that amazing and has a clear bias towards metal. Much more convenient than Last.FM, though - I doubt I am ever going back there...every 2nd mouse click a waste of time, bleh...

This was a geeky joke...yesterday

http://www.physorg.com/news100445957.html

Minute ideas

Since starting my recent job as a developer, I've been noticing an increase in my interest in digital tools or "helpers", if you will. Mostly to do with productivity issues - or small everyday personal needs.

Might as well list a few of them - maybe someone has access to these exact things - if so, I'd love to hear about it :)

• An application- or window-based notes apparatus
  
  Right now I have a more or less crazy setup at work where I access the development platform remotely on a distant rack server. Beside issues like latency and singular command transfers of e.g. mouse clicks and scrolling interactions, I'm annoyed when having to remember say 3 or 4 concurrent minor projects. Since the tasks are very similar both in content and nomenclature (many work orders and packages have almost the same ID tags), I'm regularly confused and inhibited in my mental "flow" which, as popular psychology would have it right now, is critical to efficient task handling during one's work hours.
  
  I'd like a notes app that attaches notes (post-its or the like) to specific development applications, ideally to specific windows within those same applications. So, if I am holding 2 windows related to one project and 4 related to another project, the notes application shows relevant notes contextually for whichever windows I have configured and subsequently activated. Of course, I could theoretically ALT+Tab my way to a dedicated notes document, but in my case the remote calls generally fuck that up - they cannot distinguish between Alt+Tab at home and "abroad".
  
  The functionality should be useful regardless of remote development, anyway. Digital post-its have a tendency to become increasingly invisible to me by each passing minute, and such an app would help call them into focus exactly when needed.

• A personal tag/shop/item list
  
  Probably covered in one way or the other by certain e-shopping sites or services like del.icio.us, but nevertheless I found myself dreaming of a service (likely a FF add-on) that could help me store specific products, collected through the random cool-surfing that particularly BoingBoing, Lifehacker and Neatorama are responsible for, in my case.
  
  In other words, a repository that - upon receiving a tag from a specific product posting (like this cool clock) - would store the URL for easy panel access and also provide updated pricing information. Perhaps along with some statistics on price development, stock status, recent related products, or the like. I'm not sure if products in general (apart from books, I guess) have completely unique identifiers accessible through web scrapes - but if so, one could also imagine price comparisons across several vendors.
  
  As it is now, I all too often come by gadgets, books, furniture, etc., which I store on my Del.icio.us or in my bookmarks and then usually forget. Sometimes I'm not sure about whether I want it, sometimes I don't have the money, sometimes it's not available. The point is having the "system" remind me and keep it zuhand.
  

• Productivity twittering
  
  I've been following some of the debate on Twitter and its (non-)usefulness. I was ever the staunch critic of the concept of spamming strangers with atomized everyday crap - but experiences on my not-always-so-lively team of developer colleagues has made me ponder twittering in a productivity sense. Bearing the earlier description of some of my work in mind, we lads at work are sometimes so concentrated on handling all the reigns that we forget to communicate entirely. This happens despite the fact that most people there have known each other for years and certainly know that the bloke at the next desk is an expert on so-and-so specific data process. Basically, it's the well-known dilemma of knowledge sharing in an environment that both demands relative calm in order to get things done, but also could jump many leagues if communication was better nurtured and accurately timed.
  
  The idea could be to expand a given messenger-service with a sort of twitter notification property. This would allow a developer to "post" a current activity or shortly stated problem through a common, real-time medium. It should stay non-obligational so that receivers could choose to ignore or postpone any feedback - but, once again, the goal is just to make topics visible but only intrusive to a certain extent. So, no pop-ups that need receiver acceptance or dismissal - maybe just a transient interface alteration that teases a bit.
  
  I'm aware that RSS as a broad concept is useful for some of this. Problem is, not all people - not even developers - keep an eye on the feed reader all day long. Nor do they really want another application to handle, professionally. It would only involve more navigation and distraction. My guess is the key is to use existing, accepted time-eaters and just nudge them towards my stated goal - possibly abandoning their original purpose altogether.
  
  Soon Lotus Notes 8 is arriving to my work place, and I know it will feature lots more RSS-related stuff...but I still bet bloatedness will be the order of the day, not simple improvements. I hope I'm wrong.
  

I have other small ideas...some of them more graphically rooted - one day I hope I have the time and technical insight to work on these things actively. :)

Thrill ride

Sure beats the crap out of Danish theme park commercials.

The Arrogance of Power

Reading this almost makes me want to cry.

I remember my horror when Wolfowitz was first appointed. A man so biased and with his right wing cowboy-hawk track record should never have been appointed to that office.

It is quite ironic that a man accused of nepotism is now being defended vigorously by his old buddies in the political system. If that doesn't constitute political nepotism and a lower form of corruption, then I don't know what does. I know it's all part of the geopolitical game but at the very least the Americans should have the decency to acknowledge due process - saving Wolfowitz' face doesn't help either the World Bank nor the US administration itself. It only enhances the feeling that there is some kind of Men's Club over there, always ready to bend global issues to favour personal causes.

According to NYT, it's really the British that have no balls and continue to suck up to an American administration that is probably weak as never before. What does it take to challenge the American political arrogance, even when they continue to fuck everything up?

A chance to study

Roskilde 2007 is right around the corner - and I've dived headlong into Last.FM to easily access an artist radio channel. Not a bad thing.

Last.FM is a beginner's disaster, however. As a registered user I see a general level of menus to access Last.FM on the surface. I also have my personal profile (accessed by either a very small link to the far left or to the far right) and a Dashboard (first thought to be the same thing as the profile)...which I think handles the building of my musical profile. Each of the sub-levels hold 7-8 distinct menu tabs. I was on the verge of giving up when I finally found a way to actually see the Roskilde 2007 group I had previously subscribed to.

Why on earth make things so complicated and bloated? Pandora has a much easier concept...but I still - much more easily - manage to hear the music I like. LFM is obviously extremely customizable...but I get so weary when I enter the page :/

[Edit]
Pandora's shut down for extra-terrestrials, by the way. Easily circumvented, I read. Some simple proxy setting in the browser should do it. No idea where I read it, unfortunately. Must tag more often.

What I'm payed for

Here's a list of stuff I need to relate to in my new job:

IBM VisualAge Generator (v.4.5)

IBM AIX

NetOp Remote Control
This gadget works a charm, actually - although I have no clue how complicated it is to configure. Danware.

Reflection for IBM
Mainframe connectivity/emulation software. We use it to access what we program, as users.

PuTTY
Mainframe connection app. We use it to access what we program, as nerds.

Lotus Notes (v. 6.5.4)
The user interface is a disaster - learning curve surpassed only by the slopes of Everest. Still, it is extensive...and covers a lot of ground if you're a medium-large company. This version is from 2003...the new 2008 looks promising, with blog, wiki and web2.0 features integrated.

TestDirector
A test management environment. Seems pretty cool and customizable.

Advanced Query Tool
Used for accessing and checking the DB2 database records on various accounts. Neat little program for the SQL dependant.

Apart from these, Word and Excel are the order of the day - of course.

I'm also getting very much into productivity tools, thanks to my favourite site at the moment, Lifehacker.
Through it, I stumbled upon the best app of the year.
I even integrated it into the remote VisualAge development through NetOp that I need to do every day. Mouse scrolling bliss restored remotely..!

Brilliant and unexpected

In some abstract sense, I (we?) have always missed such a "tool" or just a method of identifying melodies stuck in our brains. I never dreamed that it would come as a web service.

The wonderful world of ERP

A short update on my employment status.
I started with EDB Gruppen on March 14th - after an interview for a project coordinator position they asked me if I wanted to join them as a developer instead. Not sure whether that was a compliment or not, but in any event I've now begun my new career. I'm currently trying to find out what the hell is going on around me.

I'm working with the CargoLink division which is the department that handles the main transport ERP system for the big big DSV transport group. Basically, if DSV wants some cargo to go from A to B, CargoLink makes them able to book trucks/planes/ships, pick up, and deliver that cargo - as well as invoice the crap out of every player involved.

It's an old 70's system, recently ported from HP3000 to the IBM AIX platform...so it's UNIX and DB2 SQL mingled with some old COBOL code. And if that gibberish means nothing to you, think about how I feel..! I doubt the sentence was quite accurate.

I'm not sure how I feel about this job just yet. On one level, it's very interesting because I'm experiencing "real stuff" that makes "real physical actions" happen. Not as "virtual" and conceptual as most of my other projects. On the other hand, it doesn't feel all that sexy - and I'm still wondering how my broad skills are going to come into play in the long run, if I am to specialize in very specific system functionalities.
But, then again, I've often felt that I lacked some deeper technical insight and a bit of dirt on my shoes...so hopefully this will just enhance my generalist skills even more.

The workplace is great on all other levels. Nice location, good facilities, benefits and a great cantina :)

List of startpages

I've been meaning to ditch Google Desktop for a while now. It's handy but I have the feeling that it consumes too much processor power held up against how much I actually use it. It slows down the startup, that's for sure.

Similarly, I'm getting fed up with my Google startpage. Recently, they added a fold-out functionality, so you can read entire articles within the startpages instead of spawning a new tab. Good stuff but it doesn't go down well with all kinds of feeds, of course. Also, I am getting pretty tired of its dull appearance. So far, my browser (FF) starts with a GMail tab and the Google Startpage. I want to put all those 3 things together, since I am actually checking mail/news 3 or 4 different places. You get to the point where all your nice little helpers divert your attention so much that you are wasting time instead of saving it.

So, I went to look at some alternatives...and I thought I might as well list them here, briefly commented:

Netvibes
- The extensive one. Everything is here and the focus is clearly on news feeds. Styling is nice but options of customization are few.

Pageflakes
- Tight and neat. Compares to Webwag and is strictly functional. I can't decide whether it's too boring. Love the "flakes" metaphor, though :)

Protopage
- The playground. You can drag anything anywhere. Yikes. Luckily, you can turn on "gravity" to bind feeds in place. The background is fully customizable, nice touch. Something about the styling puts me off, though. Too idiot happy, maybe the Protopuppy reminds me of Stimpy...and the lower menu hangs when I scroll, too.

Webwag
- I nearly chose this over Google in the beginning. Maybe I should have...the styling is nice and neat, not too much, not too little. Since this is a newcomer, I'm doubtful of durability and compatibility.

Webjam
- The all-in-one. I chose "personal homepage" as the start template...you can do "blogging" instead and one or two others. It's admittedly very good. The styling is nice and simple, yet characteristic. You can scale it as you wish...move into blogging further down the road. Problems: apparently it doesn't go beyond 1024 pixels, so I have 1/4 of white browser space to the right. Not pretty. Also, it has 3 privacy levels that can be configured per feed through an ugly drop-down. I don't want that choice, basically. Don't default it - who makes a startpage with feeds that need hiding? I'd place my porn a lot deeper than that..!

Yourminis
- The stylish gay cousin (let's call him Mac). When you see this, you automagically think "oh, man...this has to be sluggish"....but in fact, it's not too bad. It has some of the happy stuff of Protopage...but a bit more subtle and designer-like.

I know I've left some out...but I don't know which...so feel free to point me in other directions.

My choice? Tough one. My rational mind says Netvibes, or possibly Pageflakes/Webwag. You get tight, no-nonsense service. However, the dull Google startpage has me craving for something pleasing to the eye...something that actually makes me want to look at the headlines every morning.

Netvibes can come on a bit strong because there is so much text. Protopage is too much stress. Webjam is great but has a few, serious flaws. Pageflakes is prehaps a bit stronger than Webwag, if not in terms of style then in terms of feed setup and the option of importing feed templates.

That leaves Yourminis which I have chosen...as soon as I get the time to configure it properly! It may disappoint me with bloatedness and lag, but it looks good and seems fun to interact with. And it is certainly different from the other industry leaders...which gives me street cred in my own shallow mind...

It's just like a mini mall

We need more guys like this.