Monday, August 14, 2006 Spent the day trying to install a PCI USB2.0 card into the computer I use for the server in Norway. The problem is that we have a HP LaserJet 1022, and after some extended testing, it turned out that if you print using an USB1 connection, one A4 page will take about 30 min to print. Too long. So, I bought a USB2.0 card to plug into the server. Sounds easy enough, right? Nope, of course not. Turned out the server didn't have enough power to both power the USB and the rest of the system (230W). So, I'm back to the old system with the printer connected directly into the Windows machine, and none of the other computers on the network can print.
Trust is an exercise in self-deceit
Tuesday, August 8, 2006 Hmmm... 8/8. 8 being a lucky number in Asian mythology, or stuff or something. Forgot about that.
Thinking about redesigning my website again. I want to do some more AJAX on the site, and I really need to rewrite the gallery section. Right now there is no text, and the gallery sucks... Probably would have make some more server side scripts, then.
Currently in Norway visiting the old folks. I'm going a little crazy. Need to get out, back home, to the US. I miss my car and TV, and just being alone. I really need to cut down how much time I spend in Norway.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 Wow, I can't believe it's been almost 6 months since I updated this site last. Time really flies when life is interesting. Not that I'm going to write much about that here (what do you think this is, MySpace?)
I'm not going to be able to graduate this spring as originally planned, mostly because I didn't finish one of my required classes. Not fun. Looks like I will be graduating March next year. Oh, well...
I bought a new laptop, when the old one started dying on me (sorry, but a system shouldn't shut down because of overheating just because I'm compiling the Linux kernel). I'm more or less happy with the buy. It's a very nice system.
Otherwise, I spent the day today, learning about subversion. In fact, I moved the all the homepage files from CVS to subversion. One of the reason I hadn't moved to subversion before was because there didn't seem to be very good support for it in my favorite editor, Emacs. Fortunately, subversion does come with en Emacs extension that lets Emacs manipulate subversion repositories, even though it's not as nice as the default revision control controls in Emacs (no ctrl v v).
So far, I really like subversion. It does let you do stuff that was hard to do in CVS, like deleting or moving directories or files. On the other hand, subversion does seem to impact your project layout, something that CVS never did (ie. branching and tagging is not meta data in subversion, but rather a copy of your trunk, intersting concept). I need to play with it some more before I know if I really like it, but so far so good.
Sunday, December 18, 2005 Updated the webpage to use a special stylesheet when accessed by a handheld device. CSS is pretty sweet.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 I bought a new cellphone, the Nokia N70, replacing my Nokia 7250. One of my criteria, is that it will work both in the US and Europe (must be tripple bandwidth support). I also wanted one that could play MP3 files, because I don't always carry my Ipod with me. So far, I must say I really like my new phone.
One of the new applications I really like is the world clock. This makes it possible to have the phone keep track of the timezones. All I need to do is specify the city I'm in, and the time gets updated accordingly. Really nice when you cross timezones a lot like I do. Especially, if you are moving from England to Norway, and you can't really remember whether you updated the clock yet or not. The music player is not too bad. I can't really hear anything wrong with it. The screen is big and bright, and the keyboard is pretty comfortable. The updated menu system is somewhat confusing, especially compared to the Sony Ericsson, but it might just me not being used to it.
I love the fact that N70 uses a RS-MMC. That means that, although you can use the Nokia PC Suite to put software, pictures and music on the phone, you can also copy the media over to the multimedia card. It's nice, since I'm using Linux, and it means I don't have to find a Windows machine to update my phone.
One of the things I don't like is the battery life. I bought my phone Saturday morning, and by Monday morning, the battery was dead. I hadn't even used it that much. That's pretty bad. The old 7250 lasted at least one week without a recharging the system. This means that I can go away for a weekend without bringing a charger with me. This is pretty silly, since Sony Ericsson seems to be able to have much better battery life on their phones with the same basic functionality.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my phone.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 I've been back in Norway for almost a month now. As much as I love my parents, living under their roof again is a pain in the ass. Now, maybe if you are from one of those Asian countries, you don't mind living with your mummy until you get married, but I just find it really restricting. Maybe it's because I've been living alone for so long. Or maybe because I spent a year at home least year. In any case, I'm thinking of spending a week off somewhere on the European continent, not Norway. Prague sounds nice, or Dublin... Haven't really decided.
I recently purchased a iPod Color. Really happy about that. The battery actually lasted the whole trip from San Francisco, USA to Oslo, Norway, with stop-over in New York, a little over 12 hours trip. The harddisk is big enough so that I didn't have to listen to the same song twice during that time. Pretty nice. The only thing I didn't like was iTunes jukebox. Don't see what's so impressive about the program. It might have been great when it first came about, but something like amaroK has pretty much surpassed it now. It doesn't matter really, since I spend most of my time in Linux, so I essentially use amaroK all the time. amaroK also automagically converts the music I have stored in FLAC format to mp3 that the iPod can play, something iTunes can't.
I so love my toys...
Sunday, June 12, 2005 Finished my first year of Graduate studies. One more year to go. It's been interesting going back to school, meeting new people again, and just worry about learning stuff. Really enjoying myself. Well, it's vacation time now.
Two programs that people who are running Linux should try out are amaroK and digiKam. amaroK is a really excellent music player, but a killer music management capability. Never used iTunes, but I think Amarok is probably one of the best out there. digiKam is a photomanagement program. Another killer app. Check them out.
Friday, March 18, 2005 I finally found the time to rewrite the gallery section of the site. It's good, but not good enough. I still want to set up a navigation for going through the pictures. Haven't really seen any navigation code I like, though.
I recently got myself a universal remote, so I don't have to live with five-six remotes on the table. Really nice. I found that there are two main problems with universal remotes. Either, the remote is touch screen, which really doesn't give you the tactile sense of the buttons, or it's a normal looking programmable remote, which means that you lose functionality on your device if you use it.
Fortunately, the good people at Harmony fixed both these problems. I got myself a Harmony 688 (company got bought by Logitech). It's programmable, and it has assignable buttons on the display, that at the same time give you tactile support and custom buttons for your device. It's the best of both worlds. I really love my Harmony remote. The programming of the remote is a snap. All you need to do is go to the Logitech website, set of what you want to do and download the new software image to the remote. All automatically.
There are only two downside. One is that it's currently only for Windows (there is no way to transfer the software image to the remote from Linux, where I am most of the time), and sometimes the timing of the remote is off (as in, I have to push the the button several times for the device to react). The former problem is apparently being worked on, and the latter problem I can problem fix on the website. Just have to get around to it.
All in all, I really like this remote, and would highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for a universal remote.
Sunday, January 9, 2005 Wow, time flies when you're having fun. I felt like it was just yesterday that I wrote my last entry. So much has changed.
I'm currently back in the US, just finished by first quarter as a graduate student at Santa Clara U. It's been really nice being back in the academia after four years in the business world. It's nice to have a new perspective on the stuff we talk about in class.
I updated my webpage after looking at the great website at meyerweb.com. He had some great examples on what you can do with (X)HTML and CSS. Unfortunately, that means that older browser, and probably IE won't render this site properly. Quite frankly, since this is a personal site, I don't care too much. So, if this site looks funky, update to another browser (or this browser), or just live with it.
Well, that's have to be it for now.
Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 Well, so I got accepted to Santa Clara University for my master's degree in Software Engineering. It's going to be fun two years.
I actually spent six weeks in the Bay Area during Easter, just hanging out in the US. Very fun. I took my parents to Las Vegas, and we gambled and had lots of fun. And the fact that we came out slightly ahead was a bit surprise. Oh, and if you ever go to Las Vegas, the Venetian is highly recommended. You can actually get Norwegian newspapers there, although they are maybe a day late. Very nice.
I recently finished a book by Robert Kagan, called "Paradise and Power - America and Europe in the new world order". It's very interesting book that takes up the difference in philosophy between the two continents. I probably have to review it at a later time.
Saturday, Jan 17, 2004 I just bought my parents a Nokia Mediamaster 260 S, so that they can watch Hotel Cæsar without hurrying through dinner. The Nokia system is one of the first DVRs in the Norwegian marked (I think).
Having owned a TiVo while I lived in the US, it was really difficult watching tv again without a DVR. Once you tried one, it's kinda like watching movies without sound. Sure, you can live it with, if you never knew better, but once you get a taste of the sound experience, it's hard to go back.
One of the thing I love about my TiVo is the Season Pass. It means I can program my TiVo to record the whole season of a tv-show, say Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Note, I mention Buffy, as in I record the show based on the name. That means, if the show is moved to a different time or even different network, TiVo is intelligent enough to know it. It also know when a show is in rerun, and skips that episode. If a show are on more than once in a week, or are extra long a given week, TiVo knows this and adjust accordingly.
The Mediamaster only records shows by date/time. That means it won't be aware of shows moved in time or network. You are also limited to how often you want to record a show to daily or weekly. Some shows, like Hotel Cæsar or The Daily Show, are on weekdays. Which means you have to create five record entries.
The Mediamaster also have some annoying features. I was watching a record of Scrub, when another show I had set up for recording started. Instead of just record the show in the background, the Mediamaster stopped the playback, and showed the live-show. I know better than the system what I want to watch.
TiVo's program list is by date and program name. It also have a short description of the taped show. OTOH, the Mediamaster will only show the name of the show you have taped. There are no indication when the show was taped, nor what the content is. Very annoying. Coupled with somewhat frequent crashes, it is somewhat an exercise in frustration.
The Mediamaster is a nice first try. Unfortunately, it's not the first DVR on the marked, and I fail to see why Nokia didn't just license the TiVo technology, instead of coming out with such an inferior product. Basically, the Mediamaster is an glorified VCR, and nothing like a DVR heaven that TiVo is.
Monday, Dec 29, 2003 So, the year 2003 is almost over. And what a horrible year it has been. Starting with being laid off, leaving the US when I had begun nesting, then friends being attacked. Eartquakes, fires, war... Uncertainty of what the future holds. In many ways, it reminds me of 1993, when I was getting ready for college.
It hasn't been all bad, of course. Being laid off meant I had a chance to really reading a whole load of material I just haven't had the time to do (C++ have changed a lot since I really looked at it last). I also go the chance to get to the Class of '93 reunion, which was a hoot.
One thing I came to realize, though, was how much I really like living in the US, and the Bayarea in particular. OK, for someone who was raised in Norway, the weather in the summer was way too hot, and I miss the live feed of European football games, but in general, I just love the place.
I love the fact that I can get a Subway sandwich on a Sunday morning, eat dinner at a Thai place at night, while my trusted Tivo tapes the latest episode of the Simpsons. The bayarea is basically the world in a microcosm, where you meet people from all cultures. It's just a great place to live and visit.
BTW, Firefly is out on DVD. One of the best shows that never was.
Sunday, Nov 9, 2003 Last week I went to the reunion for Class of '93 of Drammen Gymnas. I must say it was the most fun I have had in months. It was fun to see how everybody has changed the last ten years. Between trying to recognize and remember where you know someone from, and then finding out what they have been doing the last couple of years, it was great. People do change a lot over a period like this, but the core pretty much stayed the same.
I don't think I ever appreciated the people I went to Gymnas (High School) with as much as I should. Although I probably closer to the people I still keep in touch with from Grammar School and college, the people in High School was a great bunch of people.
So, a huge thanks to Britt and Ellen-Beate for arranging the reunion, and thanks to everybody else for the memories.
Wednesday, Oct 8, 2003So, this is my second try at a website. Lost my first website when I changed ISP and didn't make a private backup. Oh, well. It's mostly a work in progress at this point. Still haven't decided on the color scheme, and the menu system still needs some work. Probably want to add some more sections, but I think the organization is good at this point.
