I've now done an extensive cleanup on the site to remove spam comments. I should have been able to filter out and delete only the spam comments, but as always, the human mind is fallible... even mine... so if you're missing a comment you remember having written, I'm sorry, but it's been zapped. You could always write a new one, of course.
In order to try to prevent spam filling up this site in the future I've implemented a new CAPTCHA from the free (!) service called reCAPTCHA. I hope this will be good enough to hold the spambots at bay.
If you're one of the people sending spambots to my site, remember the wise words of modern day philosopher geek Wil Wheaton: Don't be a dick!

It seems Twitter is down. Now I'm all lost. I don't know what to do. I keep speaking in sentences of only 140 characters. I keep wondering what Barack Obama is up to. Suddenly I have no funny links to articles on the web or funny videos on YouTube. I can't even tell the world what I'm doing or what I've just seen.
So I've stooped to the level of actually writing on my blog again. That's what happens when the world stops.
So here's a short tweet:

"Watchmen". Very true to the graphic novel. Visually stunning (including Malin Akerman). A bit on the long side. 8/10

I found this site, where you can make your own hero, through this blog. The hero I made for myself didn't exactly turn out to be a big surprise to me (or the people who know me). It's a good idea, though, and I hope someone will pick up this comic book idea and call me in as a consultant.

If you're using the browser Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) or an older one, you should have got the message at the top of the browser telling you you should upgrade.

Why do I, and many other Norwegian companies, care about which browser you use? Shouldn't it be up to every individual what they want to use?

New, Now and Back. Apparently I like to use those words a lot. This is a Word Cloud with the most frequently used words appearing in my blog, generated with big help from Wordle, an online word cloud generator. I think the result turned out quite artistic, even though there are no big buzz words in the resulting cloud.
Tip of the hat to the Bad Astronomer for Wordle tip.

I got a new mobile phone yesterday, which has just about all the functionality you would ever need (and also a bit more). The only thing it doesn't have is a touchscreen, but I already have an iPod Touch so I didn't really need an iPhone.
My new phone is a Nokia E71. My main requirement for a new phone was that it should have a full QWERTY keyboard, and after reading a lot of reviews I decided on that one.
Of useless features it even has a barcode reader to read those fancy 3D barcodes. Try reading the barcode attached to this article.
So far, after 24 hours of owning the phone, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm even happier that I didn't have to pay anything for it. Since I also use it as an office phone my boss paid for it. Free phones for everybody! Well, no... only for me.

Yesterday I bought a new TV. Not a big screen TV, but a huge screen TV. The specific make and model is Sony KDL-52W4500. It has excellent black levels and colours, plenty of peripheral inputs, and, of course, an enormous screen. If a movie is showing and the camera pans across some nature shots, I can't even walk beside the TV without getting dizzy.
This is definitely a big upgrade (pun intended) from my previous TV, which will see its final days in my parents downstairs living room.

This one is going its rounds in the blogosphere these days, so I thought I'd continue the trend:

How long could you survive in the vacuum of space?

My mom and dad had brought my sister and her boyfriend along on their boating trip vacation. When I looked at the weekend weather forecast on Thursday that seemed to be the greatest thing in the world. So I called them up and wondered if I could come along as well, by driving to wherever they were and joining them for Saturday and Sunday. It so happened that they were bringing my sister back to her town on Saturday, and that created an available cabin on their boat, and I was allowed to meet them in her town and join them.
So I did, and yesterday at around 1600-ish we went back out to sea. We found a nice little island called Mostein (a bit north of Tjøme for those familiar with the topography) about an hours sailing at 7-10 knots and yelled "Anchor's away". We stayed there until around 1600-ish today, and went back to town so that I could drive back up to my place. The weather was also extremely perfect. Not a cloud on the sky all weekend with temperatures averaging 30 degrees Celsius in the day and 20 degrees at night. The water was also nice and warm at 24 degrees, so I did get wet a couple of times.
It was a bit hard to sleep that night, though. At 0300-0400 some seagulls started fighting. It sounded like it was right next to my porthole. The noise made it impossible to sleep. After an hour of getting annoyed by those darned birds I remembered I'd brought earplugs in my bag. I dug them out, put them in, and suddenly I couldn't hear anything but the blood rushing by my ear.
The weekend trip proved to be excellent. The big and bright orange blob in the sky has turned my skin orange, which hurts... but it was totally worth it. I shot some 120 photos (which I'll plow through, sort, crop, adjust, etc. some time tomorrow or Tuesday to be published in the photo album) and got a nice and "healthy" sunburn.
This trip was also the perfect excuse to buy a new toy, namely an iPod Touch. I wanted to listen to some music and podcasts when I was soaking up the sun, and my old MP3-player is getting... well... old... and not so fun nor technologically advanced. I also figured the iPod would go perfectly with my new MacBook, which it, of course, did.
Now I'm about to go to bed since I'm extremely worn out from doing nothing at all (as well as some seagull-imposed sleep depravation). It'll be a bit hard falling asleep, though, since the sunburn hurts (I'm sure that when I turn off the lights my sunburn will literally glow to light up the room) and my inner ear still thinks I'm out on the seven seas. Why won't the floor keep still!?

My trusty old laptop is getting noticeably older. It's not as fast as I remember it being when it was new (newer and faster computers both at home and at the office has that effect), the coverings are starting to come up, and the power supply has started failing. I was also in the need for an airline adapter so that I could use it on the plane from London to Los Angeles (only 6.5 weeks left) and those are ridiculously expensive for this old model. So I figured I needed a new laptop, and what did I end up with? An Apple MacBook! I've always been a PC and Microsoft guy, and yet I ended up buying a MacBook. Why?
First of all I thought I'd try something new. New is always good. Second I needed a no-hassle laptop that just works without me having to do much tinkering. Third, it came with a cheap airline adapter.
The next days will be very exciting learning how to use it. Experimenting with technology is exactly what us geeks of today live for, so life is beautiful.

PS: This was posted from my brand new MacBook. My first blog entry from the new laptop.