Introducing FriendFeed

I read quite a lot of blogs, and I do so easily and efficiently with google reader. And google reader also automatically tells me what people I know "share" in their google reader. This is great, I click "share" on blog posts I really like and others do the same. However, even though I know a lot of smart people, only few of them seem to use google reader, and they don't all use the "share" button that much.

Fortunately for me, I have found a way to follow the "sharings" of a lot of smart people who share links and post on FriendFeed. And even more, I can also follow the discussions they have about the links and posts (and participate). I follow a bunch of individual people and I follow some "rooms" where people share stuff with a common theme. Eg.

• The life scientists 
• Science 2.0 
• Python for Bioinformatics
  

This is one step up from blogs in sophistication, I think.

Yes they can. Today we are all american.

We were told they cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they only grew louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months that came.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of that nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.


For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

Digital restrictions management FAIL (again)

I just read the news that the Blue-Ray Digital Restrictions Management system has been successfully circumvented with a Free and Open Source Software program.

Here is 17 pages of fantastic account of how it was programmed. Those guys are pretty cool, I must say. It seems to be a different group of people, but the same community that circumvented Restrictions Management of the other High Definition format, the (now mostly dead) HD-DVD.

Actually this should be mostly uninteresting to me, as I don't own any equipment or any of the High Definition disks. And as even Apples Steve Jobs admits that Blue-Ray is an expensive pile of crap, I probably won't buy it for as long as I can manage to avoid it.

But the announcement reminds me of what happens when industry lobbyist buy and push through international legislation, that is so at odds with common sense that it has to be reinterpreted. Confusion and non-sense happens.

So is the new software legal to distribute? Or to use? Well, it is hard to say as the Danish Ministry of Cultures interpretation of the lobbyist-law (InfoSoc) leaves something to be desired in the "clarity department". I think the general answer is the sensible "yeah, go ahead, we won't care much what you do inside of your own house". But as that conflicts with the actual wording and intention of the lobbyist law that they support, the ministry just leaves confusion instead.

They have two pages (here and here) that explain that the law doesn't not prevent consumer freedom of choice in operating systems and hardware. Except maybe. So the deal is that even though the lobbyist law says that laws should prevent " the circumvention of any effective technological measures[=DRM]" the ministry of culture sensibly says that circumventing DRM to be able to use eg. a BlueRay dist on a GNU/Linux system is ok. But it is not ok to copy from a BlueRay disk.

This then leaves everyone to wonder what to do when the only way to watch a BlueRay disk on linux involves making a temporary copy...alas!

Great new movie review show on DR2

Denmark has a great new movie review show. Premiere on DR2. The host is really cool - so cool, in fact that his first show was retroactively censured for not living up to political correctness standards (supposedly a case of "Don't mention the war-liars in the Danish government").

And here is an attempt at a transcript of his key points of the movie High School Musical 3

Not since Grease has there been a musical phenomenon like this

 

[...]

 

 looks like a propaganda movie created by reactionary parents and the US department of education.

[...]

The movie is clinically purged of loosers and even people who stand a bit out. It is an example of  motivation that is based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of insufficiency, fear of humiliation.

 

[...]

 

 This is the stuff that annorexia and high school massacres is made of.

[then he cuts to a cool interview with Matt Stone...]


And he then gives the movie one star out of six. For "the occasional reference to better movies". It has sort of a Colbert/Stewart flavor. Seems like TV made for my age group. And people with my tolerance of nauseating Disney movies.

Nice - I wish some Danish politicians had listened...

Christmas comes early

This week is rebate-on-organic-stuff week in my local supermarket, Irma. This week the supermarket is promoting only organic wares, and has announced that it hopes to beat its own record from last year of having more than 29,9 percent of the turnover from organic wares.

Since I already buy all the foods I can get organic, I have planned to do my part by running amok in the organic wines, global financial meltdown be damned.

Nobel laureates publish in PLoS ONE

I have discovered that many scientist don't know about the publishing foundation PLoS, and certainly not about the particular journals. Well, PLoS ONE is the, in my opinion, most exiting of the journals that PLoS publishes. It is a multi-disciplinary journal that publishes any paper that is "is technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record" and it has a system for readers to submit comments and evaluations of papers.

However when I explain about PLoS ONE, the newness, the multidisciplinarity and the criteria for publication that favor "soundness" over "importance" often does not sound appealing to scientists.

Therefore it is great to notice that the newly awarded Nobel Laureate Françoise Barré-Sinouss recently chose to publish in PLoS ONE. If it is good enough for her ...

How to use Google Reader

Some time ago, I tried to write about how RSS feeds and blog-reader programs makes it much easier to keep up to date with blogs.

Now some cool people at http://www.commoncraft.com/  have made a nice video explaining Google Reader, which happens to be my favorite program to read and share blog-posts. Enjoy.

Managing online communities

A really interesting article about the censors/community managers on the photo-sharing community site flickr.com

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/29/onthejob.DTL

Neo FreeRunner

I recently got the chance to play with an OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner. It is a small linux computer made as a phone. With a touch screen and lots of fun hardware. GPS, WiFi, Motion sensors - and of course, mobile phone antenna.

However, my initial impression is that it is much more a toy than a phone. It can actually make phonecalls, but many things are wrong with the software that comes with it by default. It is slow, and misses programs for all the fun hardware. And this warning is really scary:

Can't boot with discharged or missing battery

Issue: Neo FreeRunner requires battery power to boot, because Neo FreeRunner consumes too much current while booting to boot with only a charger. Since charging isn't enabled until the Neo FreeRunner has booted, this means that a discharged battery can not be charged. One manifestation of this problem is a kernel panic (red LED flashes constantly) when trying to boot using the power button.

 
Fortunately the FreeRunner can be upgraded with a bit of effort. I'll try that soon. There is hope:  This guy is way ahead of me and seems to be enjoying his FreeRunner now.

Linus Torvalds reviews new flash based disk drives (SSD - solid state drive)

Here.

I want one too.

Mythbusters with helium and SF6

Lise and I are huge mythbusters fans. And incredibly, given our anemic TV channel selection, we have a channel that shows episodes quite frequently.

Here is a favorite clip

Smart Energy Homes in Barcelona

I wonder where they will be built? Poble Nou? I missed the session about Smart Energy Homes at the ESOF in Barcelona.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/21/greenbuilding.ethicalliving

Catholics and crackers

This post reminded me of mess in Denmark about offensive drawings of Muhammed.

And this post (with back-ground story) exactly mirrors my opinion on the drawings (although I think much, much better of PZ Myers than I do of Flemming Rose).

Google docs - for web-polls

I just completed this questionaire - because all the cool kids are doing it. And I noticed that the poll was done with Google Docs. Cool! I haven't bothered to find out how, but I still find it cool. So, Google Docs, and doodle.ch has me covered with all the polling ability I can imagine needing.

PLoS and the future of publishing - as framed by Nature

There has been many good comments about the recent opinion pieces on PLoS from Nature employees (you can find the link via the comments - here is the second).

One perspective which has been overlooked a bit, as far as I can tell is that Nature has managed to frame the debate. Intentionally or not.

The framing can be summarized as "the problem is that top tier journals can't be profitable as open access - author pays, in competition with Toll-Access journals". This framing is advantageous to Nature as it implies that "the author-pays principle must generate all revenue for OA journals - subsidies are not ok". Equally advantageous is it when "top-tier journal" is defined not only as "high rejection-rates" but also "high overheads". Nature has an interest in making the two things seem inseparable.

For society and everyone who is not Nature (or other Toll-Access, high overhead journals) the framing does not make sense. The debate is part of a broader debate of the future of scientific publishing. And it is unreasonable to assume that a future of efficient digital publishing must be hobbled to serve to needs of businesses adapted to the past of high cost of paper distribution. Or that it must be measured by the same criteria of success (high profit from monopoly priviledges) as old businesses.

For society the question (obviously) is "how do we maximize society-gain from published research". There is no question that the enormous subsidy that is coorporation held monopoly priviledges via copyright can make publishing of popular content profitable for some publishers. But since this arrangement maximizes monopoly profit for select organizations and not gain for society, society should look at other arrangements. Other arrangements, which secure access also for those that value the access below the monopoly pricing but above the neglible cost of digital reproduction. And in no area of publishing is the fairness of society interference with current buisiness models larger than science, where the producers of content are mostly publically financed and the consumers also.

Among "other arrangements", one obvious extreme is lump subsidy and no access restrictions. This gives maximum society benefit at a fixed price.

Other arrangements are "some subsidy + other revenue" which is exactly the model that PLoS explores. And which should be explored. And which does not need to be successful by the same measures as Nature was successful in the past.

And as a personal opinion on this - I think that what will (and should) happen is that the market (lead by initiatives like PLoS) will drive costs of top-tier publishing down. Future top-tier publications will simply have to have unbundle, have less costly content, and less costly procedures - and will consequently look different from today. I see an obvious analogy to newspaper-publishing which was discussed at the Becker-Posner blog recently: Posner - Becker

And as Greg Laden relates, Nature supplied somewhat opaque answers to the UK parliament on Nature finances. But from those, to me, there seems to be plenty of costs to cut.

(Updated: fix link, clarify last sentence)

Shucks, real nature needed.

Apparently the nice pictures of bounty islands and pretty scenery that I sometimes put on as background on my computer desktop is not as effective as I hoped. I might as well just stare at the wall.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080610154746.htm

Someone I know on TV

Seat has a new advertisement on TV (Spanish and Catalan - and even Dutch TV). And they have put real Seat employees in the spot. Yay for Seat - it always seems idiotically fake when models pose in company promotional material - especially if they pose as employees.

A fun detail about this advertisement is that the owner of the flat that I live in is in it. He works for Seat.

Danish patent office messup

Some weeks ago I saw a post (on slashdot probably) about a new copyright treaty being negotiated in secret, basically by industry lobbyists.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_(2007)


The great copyright jurist William Patry blogged additional details here, here, and here.

So I decided to ask on the weblog of the Danish patent office who is representing Denmark in the negotiations, and by which mandate he is negotiating.

First the patent office blogger replied that he would look into the case and then get back to me, but then later both his comment and my subsequent comment was deleted. Well, the comments can currently be found in googles cache - so here they are for reference.

Current blog-post

Google cache from the 11. july before posts were deleted.

Intersting posts on scienceblogs

I normally share interesting blog-posts simply by sharing them from google reader. See the box on the right of the main page of this blog.

Scienceblogs is a wonderful site with blogs about...science (mostly), but unfortunately there are simply too many post that I want to have them in my reader. So I can't share them the usual way.

So here is an interesting post about SAD - "winter depression".

http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/05/serotonin_transporter_changes.php

And here is one about blogging being good for people

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/05/blogging_is_good_for_you.php

On being a vegetarian

Andreu from work sent me a link to a story about how one guy feels about being a vegetarian.

The story is well written and funny and I agree. Go have a look here. It is from Slate magazine.

Google Appengine

Last tuesday I was at a meeting in the local python-interest group in Barcelona. We discussed http://appengine.google.com/ - the new service from google that allows people who know just a bit about programming to make their own internet programs.
How is that different from the blogging service that google already offers here on blogspot? Blogspot lets you type text, and then displays the text. Appengine allows you to create a program that lets you input data (directly or indirectly) and then have those data processed and displayed in a structured manner.

Why is this great? Because "activation energy" is a dominant obstacle to creativity, and Appengine lowers the activation energy of making internet programs drastically. With Appengine, you just need to program. The easy and fun task. You don't need to buy a domain name, buy hosting or set up a server, install stuff and look out for the server.

Appengine is the kind of tool that allows the internet to run on love (see below about the internet running on love).

Nuclear winter?

Reading mostly biology papers it is not that often I see a scientific paper with the keyword "nuclear winter".

However, here is one:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/105/14/5307?rss=1

Unfortunately it is not open access and I can't find it on arXiv , but I guess the paper shows that nuclear war is an even worse idea than previously recognized.

An honest R&B song

Hat-tip: Mailund

Uh oh, I'm trapped by evolution

I was not made for unlimited information on the internet

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120527756506928579-3wNdJRXhkpLqY4EDBt4j3ly1foo_20090312.html?mod=rss_free

Fun with 3D

PyMol is my favorite program for protein structure visualization. It is Free Software, and I just saw a video about how some people from the University of Toronto have used PyMol to make a module to implement "Head tracking" for giving a 3D feel to looking at the proteins.



The video doesn't give such a great impression of how it will be. But it is really nifty if the head-tracking-by-webcam works.

Here is another video that gives a great impression of how head-tracking (by Wii-mote) works.

Quote of the day

“I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death—abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term ‘thinking outside the box.’”

Warren Buffett in his annual letter to the shareholders of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY, 2007

Link from the Economist

Organic shoes

I spent last week with Lise in Copenhagen. I usually remember to pack all important stuff for my travels, but this time I forgot my indoor-shoes. In order to avoid catching a cold I had to get some. Fortunately Lise remembered that the supermarkets were selling some inexpensive indoor shoes.

Wow. Organic!

Only when I went to the shop and had the shoes in my hand, did I discover that they were all organic. Yay.

An objection to organic farming (and products) I hear somewhat often is that "it cannot feed the world". Well a group of researchers from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor believe it can [non free link :o(]

Here is the news story http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936


And on the same subject - a nice story of how to make organic mango, from the Economist http://economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9468901

New apartment

For the last 7 months I've been living with some very nice people in a large apartment in central Barcelona. However, my room is very small and not suited for sharing with Lise when she joins me in June.

In January Lise then started looking at the websites that advertise apartments in Barcelona: loquo.com, idealista.com etc.

The first one she found on loquo looked really good. It is in my favorite part of Barcelona; Poble Nou. And it is close to the beach, the lab, and the main street of Poble Nou. It is also a nice apartment. With a kichen/living room in one. The only thing it misses is a nice balcony with afternoon sun.

The kichen. Nice and new. And with room for a dishwasher (oh joy!)

The only other apartment we actually went to see had afternoon sun in copious amounts. But it had a small kitchen and was expensive.

So the decision was not too difficult. And I didn't even have to take it alone. I went to see the apartment the weekend of the week that I contacted the owners. Lise came for a weekend visit the next weekend, and we were given a second look.

The living room (TV not included, regrettably)

We will rent it from April, and I will move in, even though Lise arrives in July. As there is a nice guest-room visitors are welcome anytime. Yes, that means you!

Prenzlauer Berg

Photo is CC-By by Mishkabear

Since visiting Berlin on a vacation some years ago, I have been dreaming about a flat in Prenzlauer Berg. It is just sooooo, trendy. Apparently others agree, and Henning Sußebach has written about the place and the people. "Too trendy for their own good" seems to be his sentiment. I would still love an apartment there.

(Once again a link I got from Luftskibet )

Stieg Larsson in English

Stieg Larssons crime stories, seem to have been read by half the Danes I know. And now I can mention them to English-speakers too.

The first book in his trilogy has been translated, and it gets a favorable review in the Independent.

I got this news at the blog of Information. Information is easily the best newspaper in Denmark, and "Luftskibet", the collective blog of their journalists fantastic. Is almost better than the newspaper.

Blogging advice for me

I didn't blog from September until after this new year. Or so I thought...

In this nice list of tips for new bloggers one of the original bloggers, Jorn Barger, emphasizes the idea that a blog is mostly about sharing what you find interesting on the web.

I actually did this a bit by posting links on Facebook. Which is really easy, because you can just bookmark a link in Firefox, and press it whenever you're on an interesting page, make a short comment, and then it appears in your "Facebook mini-feed"

Ok. Now I will try to post these links on this blog instead. I'm sure that somewhere there is some software that will make it easy....

Skiing in Masella

Saturday I went on a one day ski-trip to Masella, with a couple of colleagues from the lab.



To me, who grew up in Denmark, and therefore had to travel far to find either nice weather or (skiable) snow it is always amazing that other places it is not so. Masella is less than 2 hours drive from central Barcelona.

The skiing was fine, and so was the weather. But it was a bit expensive. Probably around 100 Euros for the day (transport, ski-rent, lift-pass etc.)

Two things I noted: 1) The car sharing scheme, we used as transport seems really cool. I need to find out more (and maybe blog about it). 2) When we got back to Barcelona, it was striking how polluted the air seemed. Yuck!

New years resolutions

This blog has been dead for a while unfortunately. But as part of my new years resolutions it will be revived. Yay!

Without further ado here are some New Years resolutions:

• Blog at least a couple of times per month (preferably once per week)
• Run ca. 10 km once per week (in preparation for a half marathon in May)
  
• Get to work around 9 am instead of 10 am
• Participate in Open Science
  

The little traps of Barcelona

When it has rained or when the streets have been washed, water ca accumulate under some of the sidewalk stones. This particular spot on my way to work is the most dangerous. When walking on the stones yucky muddy water splashes up on ones feet. Even when biking over the stones the splash can reach ones feet.

Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of the "Announcing PRISM" press release

Since a large number of people I know are in science and therefore may have encountered the recent press release from a coalition of reactionary scientific publishers http://www.prismcoalition.org/press.htm - I have decided to supply a translation to plain english of the press release very close in style to the quite famous "Macrovision translation"
(see BoingBoing for context)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

New York, NY, August 23, 2007: The formation of a coalition of scholarly societies and publishers was announced today in an effort to safeguard the scientific and medical peer-review process and educate the public about the risks of proposed government interference with the scholarly communication process.

• "New York, NY, August 23, 2007: We, closed access publishers, sense that the profit from our current business model is in danger."
  

The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine is a coalition launched with developmental support from the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to alert Congress to the unintended consequences of government interference in scientific and scholarly publishing.

• "At the advice of our PR consultant we have therefore decided to spread misinformation rather than change our business model."
  

The group has launched a website at http://www.prismcoalition.org, where it articulates the PRISM Principles, an affirmation of publishers' contribution to science, research, and peer review, and an expression of support for continued private sector efforts to expand access to scientific information. (http://www.prismcoalition.org/prism/about.htm)

• "We have launched this website to do some astroturfing"

"We are enthusiastic about this initiative and the potential of our new website to educate policy makers and citizens about our efforts to increase access to information, to alert them to the very real threat to peer review that ill-considered government interference represents, and to explore the ways in which we can safeguard peer review as a critical component of scientific integrity," said Patricia Schroeder, president and CEO of AAP.

• "Only by associating our current business model with the method of peer review can we hope to effectively lie to policy makers and citizens about our efforts to keep access to information closed"

Mrs. Schroeder stressed that government interference in scientific publishing would force journals to give away their intellectual property and weaken the copyright protections that motivate journal publishers to make the enormous investments in content and infrastructure needed to ensure widespread access to journal articles.

• "If peope are not publishing in our closed access journals that is like the same as...uhmm...stealing from us...yeah!
  

"The free market of scholarly publishing is responsive to the needs of scholars and scientists and balances the interests of all stakeholders."

• "We sure smoke a lot of crack"

Critics argue that peer reviewed articles resulting from government funded research should be available at no cost. However, the expenses of peer review, promotion, distribution and archiving of articles are paid for by private sector publishers, and not with tax dollars.

• "We dont actually pay the scientists who do peer review, but let's for the sake of argument pretend we do."
  

Mrs. Schroeder pointed out that these expenses amount to hundreds of millions of dollars each year for non-profit and commercial publishers. "Why would a federal agency want to duplicate such expenses instead of putting the money into more research funding?" she said.

• "Why should anyone do be allowed to do something we do if they do it better and cheaper?"

The PRISM website includes factual information and reasoned commentary designed to educate citizens and policy makers, to dispel inaccuracies and counter the rhetorical excesses indulged in by some advocates of open access, who believe that no one should have to pay for information that is peer reviewed at the expense of non-profit and commercial publishers.

• "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Featured on the PRISM website are backgrounders on peer review, dissemination and access, preservation of the scholarly record and new approaches publishers are taking along with discussion about the risks of government intervention to the sustainability of peer review, copyright infringement, the possibility of selective bias in the record of science, federal budget uncertainties and inefficient allocation of government funding that duplicates private sector investments. Importantly, the site has information to assist the public in making their concerns known to Congress.

• "We wish you, the public, to lie for us - and we have supplied you with the means to do so."

"We want to share as much scientific and medical information as possible with the entire world. That's why we got into this business in the first place," Mrs. Schroeder said.

• "We want to continue to profit from restricting the access to scientific and medical information. That's why we got into this business in the first place"

Anyone who wishes to sign on to the PRISM Principles may do so on the site.

• "Gullible fools are welcome to sign"

Editors: For more information, visit the PRISM website at http://www.prismcoalition.org

Bicing

Barcelona has very recently gotten system of "citybikes" like the "Bycykler" we know in Copenhagen. The system is different from the old system in Copenhagen in several ways however. Most of them enabled by new technology. The system is called Bicing (and here is a small comment on how it relates to similar system in other cities)

The homepage has a nice view of the bikestations (as an overlay of google maps).

The procedure for using Bicing is that one orders a plastic card from the internet or from the centrally located office. The plastic card is used to free a bike at the bikestands. The card itself costs 24 Euros and the registration requires submission of a valid credit card number. While rides shorter than 30 minutes are free, longer rides cost a small fee. And if one fails to return a bike 300Euros are withdrawn from the credit card (!).

Mostly the system works ok. In the beginning I expirienced a little paranoia and insecurity when returning bikes because of possible fines. No recipt is given when the bikes are returned.

While the system seems to work well overall, some small problems can be observed. Hopefully just starting trouble. The first installations of the system started in January 2007. For example it is a bit confidence sapping when one sees a stand like this:



And the system then says "Sorry no bikes available". Another day many stands were not working because of "Connection problems". Probably it was just start-up problems. I've used the system for almost 2 months now, and it seems to have fewer and fewer problems.

The net of roads with bike-paths is by no means complete, but it is adequate for my current use. Here is a map of current and planned bike-paths.

Zapatero at the lab

Today our building had a prestigious visit. Jose Luis Rodrigues Zapatero came to see it. People assembled on the balcony to see - great idea. Then Zapatero can see an entire building of non-working scientists. Maybe to compensate two group leaders who would present their labs wore labcoats (just for the visit of course).




The visit was slightly delayed so I got bored and went inside. When he came Zapatero actually went unexpectedly to our side of the building first. So while everyone were outside I was in the office which he passed. So I smiled and nodded to the prime minister. Cool. Maybe I should join the PSOE while I am here? Hmm. Maybe I should learn Spanish and Catalan first.

Elche

I just spent a week in Elche. I was there to learn about some of the earlier work on SH3 domains. Work which my thesis hopefully will expand. The learning was good. I now see much more of the big picture of my work. And I also got to work with Estefania, a post-doc, who will also expand on the same earlier work as me (but for another protein domain). This is nice. Hopefully we can share a lot of the debugging and improvements to earlier techniques that we will both need.

5 long days of learning is tough though. Fortunately we left a little earlier wednesday to do a sightseeing of Elche. Elche seems to grow a lot. The part western part of Elche where my hotel was seems to be all new (all the buildings seem new). The center looks more like a real city, with a mix of old and new houses.

5 random observations:

1) Elche is famous for its palms. And there really is a lot of palms, and nice palm gardens. And all of the public parks seem to have palms.



Palms in front of the hotel where I stayed. I should have taken more photos of palms.


2) Whereas Barcelona has Bicing and quite extensive possiblity for biking, this is not the case in Elche. There are no bike-paths. And Estephania has a car, her boyfriend too. Anybody who wants to go somewhere has a car. What is this? Texas?

3) The trafic in roundabouts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout) is more interesting (and fast!) than what I am used to. Maybe this is a result of spanish driving mentality. However, the roundabouts are also built with curved entries that enable high speed, almost "tangential" entry to the trafic of the roundabout (as opposed to the danish version which is with entry that is orthogonal to the tangent and forces a slower, sharper right turn to enter the traffic).



4) In the summer the university of Elche allows kindergartens to use some of the university facilities. And to eat in the canteen. Wow, 50-80 kindergarten children make a lot of noise!

5) Close to the new part of Elche, where I stayed, is an old industrial zone. Many of the old factory halls have no been converted into night clubs.



Heres a nightclub with a pirate theme, yay! (maybe a Columbus theme, hmm)

Lises visit

Last weekend Lise came to visit for the first time. Yay! She met me at the lab friday at around 15. The rest of the day we mostly spent shopping. In the evening we had dinner at the excellent organic restaurant mentioned below, and we discovered another organic restaurant close by.
Saturday we did more shopping. I actually need some new clothes, and Lise didn't mind the shopping. However, we did find some time for girls-clothes-shops also.

We also visited the lab:


Saturday evening was night of ... So the trams ran all night and everyone seemed to converge on the beach with fireworks. This sort of conflicted with our plans for a nice quiet dinner in Barceloneta. We did have the dinner, but with the background sounds of a warzone (the fireworks).

Sunday shops are closed, so we decided to go for a relaxing walk. We stated to stroll down Avinguida Diagonal. On our way we noticed a pretty street crossing Diagonal - the Rambla del Poblenou. So we went down the Rambla del Poblenou - which turned out to be a very nice street all the way. Poblenou is a nice part of Barcelona with many modernized buildings. The Rambla del Poblenou also leads straight to the beach, so we sat down and enjoyed the beach for a while.

All in all it was great. One can really enjoy just a weekend together. A long weekend is better of course, but just a weekend is surprisingly nice. I still look forward to a full week of vacation with Lise though. Just 2 weeks to go.

Organics

As readers of my blog may know, I strongly prefer organic food products to industrially produced, chemically polluted products. I was a little worried that I would have to live with industry/chemistry foods here in Barcelona. On our scouting mission to Barcelona in January, Lise and I found one very small organic foods shop, and one very nice organic, vegetarian restaurant (I just googled, and it also got nice reviews on this random site).



The nearest supermarket to the apartment is a very large "Carrefour". So the first times I shopped there I scoured it for organics. I found few (but important ;o) products: Milk, Musli, chocolate (dark), tea, pasta and tomato sauce. Ok, I can live off that.

Things seem to start to move down here, however. A few weeks into the stay, I saw this stand outside the Carrefour.




In which they handed out leaflets about "how and why" organics. Inside the Carrefour there was a pretty girl handing out the leaflets. And now Carrefour has made a (very small) special section, in which they've collected most of their organic products, so they are easy to find. Great.


Later when I was walking to the central Placa Catalunya, I passed this shop:



The sign says "organic". I didn't go in, but I'm hoping for something like Egefeld (which is a fantastic shop, by the way). All in all I'm mildly optimistic for the organic aspects of my stay :o)

The PRBB building (and One-year party)

The building where I work, PRBB, is a research park, very similar in concept to the one in Copenhagen.

Here's the building (the round one)



It houses the private research institution CRG (somewhat similar to BRIC) and it also houses labs for a nearby research hospital, and other labs. And the building is also very new. Soon after I arrived there was actually a one-year party for the building.



With some strange entertainment



and quite a lot of people



Fewer people as it got late


As it is a new building, the labs and offices are nice and new. However, not all of CRG has actually moved in yet, and this means (apparently) that some servers are on the other side of Barcelona. This should also explain the extremely slow internet connection from the labs (almost too slow to talk on Skype).

The apartment

Since I arrived, I've stayed in an apartment that the lab rents to accomodate visiting researchers (great idea!). The new people like Cedrik and me are then allowed to live there for a couple of months until we find something ourselves. This is extremely nice, as it allows me to be able to be down here and actually visit the apartments/rooms that I might rent. And it removed a lot of stress from the whole idea of coming here, that I didn't have to try to rent rooms over the internet, maybe in Spanish.



The apartment itself is nice. It is a three room apartment with a nice kitchen.



My room on the right.



My room

Most of the furniture is from IKEA, so I feel immediately at home :o). There is even the same chair that I had in my room in Værløse

UPF - Pompeu Fabra

While walking around (looking for wifi, I think) found the main campus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.



The new prestige university in Barcelona. And the university into which I will be enrolled, I think. Unfortunately they don't seem to be famous for science (yet! just see in 3 years).

Well on the campus there was a large banner advertising an exibition on Pompeu Fabra, which was open only two days more. And since I did not know who he was - I decided that now was a good time to find out.



So I went in and discovered that Mr. Fabra was a linguist and the scholar who, among other things, established the modern orthography of the Catalan language. Of course I could probably have found out the same by looking him up in Wikipedia, but this was a little more fun.

You can see the electronic edition of the exposition here.

Internet cafe

As I left Denmark on the 29th and actually worked at IBM until the 31st of May, I brought my IBM laptop to be able to work from Barcelona. However I quickly found out that the IBM Virtual Private Network client (the "AT&T Client") was somehow blocked by the firewall in the lab. Drat! I spent the good part of a day looking for an internet-cafe or some wireless. I looked in the part of town I had been before, and where I thought there should be a good chance of finding some. However, I looked with no success. The Starbucks I knew did not have wifi, and maybe the ubiquity of wifi and net in hotels and hostels has killed the good old internet cafes. I didn't find them. And I decided not to go "war-walking".

At the end of the day, or maybe it was the next day, I walked around the UPF main campus, and I found a small internet cafe a couple of streets away. But they did not have wifi - or wired access for my laptop. The lady in the cafe knew where I could find a cafe with wifi, though. And she managed to explain it to me in Spanish. And I found it!



Great - not only did they have nice fast wifi, but the price was excellent too. "Buy a beer and get free wifi"!



I have returned several times - gotta check the IBM mail....ehrm, or something.

Ungeren@BCN

When I walked to the police station in Barceloneta, during my paperwork treasurehunt, I passed by this house



It looks like a smaller Barcelona edition of Ungdomshuset på Jagtvej. Later I learned that there are several other houses like this in Barcelona. Supposedly there is a rule which makes it legal to occupy houses which have been unused for some time.

Paperwork treasurehunt

On Thursday I did the paperwork treasurehunt. To be able to complete my contract and get a bank account I was told I should get my N.I.E number. I guessed that with the EU common labor market this should be easy. And it was, sort of. I had been warned by Cedrik that I should get up early to wait in line at the office. However, on wednesday I walked by the office just to check. The lady looked at me and asked if I had a ticket - when I said no she rolled her eyes and told me to come back early the next day. Ok. Cedrik was right.

So I got up early and was at the office about 7:40. The office opens at 9:00 but quite a long queue had already formed. Good thing I brought a book. When the office opened the queue was processed at reasonable speed but the "processing" was actually just that people got a number to wait on like in a bank or a post office. After about an hour more of waiting my number was up. The lady who processed my NIE application spoke english, so the paperwork was smooth. She also instructed me that the next steps in my application were

1) Go to a bank and pay 6,70Euro to get a stamp.
2) Take the stamp and go to the police station to have my actual certificate printed.

These last two steps went well. No lines, great.

Arrived

Tuesday I left Denmark. I had packed 16,4kg of stuff - almost all of it clothes. As carry-on I had 2 laptops though. It seems sensible to pack lightly as I will move apartment at least once pretty soon after I arrive. The lab has rented an apartment to be able to accommodate guest-researchers. And it offered that I could stay in that apartment until I find an apartment (or room) myself. Very nice.

The flight was uneventful - but notice the plentiful leg-room. Ahh, the joy of checking in on-line.




Actually I almost forgot Lise's nice goodbye present in the plane. Yikes.

I arrived in Barcelona Tuesday evening. The weather was perfect - warmer than in Denmark, as I made my way to the lab to meet Cedrik, my lab-apartment roommate. He was there and I even arrived before he expected. I arrived at around 19:15, but the secretary had said that I would be there around 19:30. Nice, but had she gone online to see that the plane was late? I had told her that I would be at the lab around 19.

Cedrik showed me the way to the apartment. The T4 tram-line seems to be the optimal transportation as we don't have bikes yet. The apartment is nice, more on that later.

Barcelona

I've applied for and received a 3-year ph.d. at the Center for Genomic Research in the Systems biology group under Luis Serrano. And now, I am actually getting used to the idea.

I believe that I have a place to stay (for the first couple of months), and I've pretty much settled on which day to leave. So May 28 is my last day in Denmark (except for visits), for quite a while.

I hope to blog more from Barcelona - instead of sending mails.

"Either you're with us, or you're with the liquid!"

...I'm not sure that is what President Bush said exactly, but judging from the from the annoyance of bringing your toothpaste or shampoo onto a plane, it must be what he meant.

And since the exact number of complaints seem to matter to the current government, I wrote a letter to the minister of justice, Lene Espersen. Please write something similar to her to stop the "war on moisture". Airport security right now is completely idiotic, and not based on any real assesment of danger.


Kære Lene Espersen,

Vil du ikke nok være flink at stoppe vanviddet med vilkårlige
begrænsninger på hvor megen tandpasta, og shampoo man kan tage med i
sin håndbaggage på flyveture.

Reglerne er helt åbenlyst vilkårlige, og ubegrundede[1] og jeg vil
vove at påstå at fokus på vilkårlige og ubegrundede regler om
tandpasta og shampoo svækker alles tillid til kompetencen i
sikkerhedskontrollerne. Samtidig vil denne fokus medvirke til at
distrahere sikkerhedsfolk fra virkelige trusler [2]

Hvis du har tid, så skriv endelig tilbage ang. hvordan du vil få
stoppet de idiotiske regler, og forhindre at lignende regler kommer
til verden.


Venlig hilsen
Anders Nørgaard, flyrejsende


[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6175427.stm

[2] http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=67166

Busy at work

So...I've been out of student life for almost 3 months now, and it is OK. I don't feel i have more time now than I did before. Even though I have evenings and weekends free now, without the flexibility of student hours, one has to squeeze all shopping and errands into the few hours that are available.
Fortunately my job at IBM is still interesting so I won't complain too much. Being at IBM it is fortunately ok to have a moderately geeky humor. So here's a video I find funny. My dad does too. :o)

Prisons and parking tickets

Today I read a story about privatized prisons around the world in the Economist. It reminded me about a conversation I had with a colleague yesterday about parking tickets in Copenhagen. My colleague mentioned some instances of parking tickets that he had been given, but that he did not find fair.

One example was a ticket for parking slightly outside the demarcation and thereby intruding upon a path made to serve Copenhagen tour-boats. However at the time of parking (winter) no tour boats are active.

Another was given for parking closer than the requisite 10m away from intersections (maybe 8 or 9) meters away.

My colleague wondered that rigid mechanical enforcement of the rules was applied instead of a more balance and sensibility based approach (no need for the boat-path in winter, 9 m is sufficient for traffic safety).

The reason for this is, to me, clear. The enforcement of parking rules has been sold to a private company, and as private companies maximize profits, they have no interest in ever doing sensible interpretations of rules if this interpretation is not in their economic favor.

How does this relate to prisons. Well, are we able to formulate contracts that can protect prisoners against always being underprioritized relative to economic gain of prison-companies? Is it ethical for parking ticket-companies to lobby for more restrictive parking regulations, that will lead to more parking tickets? Is it ethical for prison-companies to lobby for longer prison sentences?

Ineffective C++

I'm currently porting my protein simulation program from Java to C++. At the same time I have started reading the classic book by Scott Meyers "Effective C++" (which, incredibly, does not have a wikipedia-page).

Item 19 in the book is a list of things to consider when designing a new class. It strikes me that the considerations are a strict superset of the things to consider when designing a new class in Java.

1. How should objects of your new type be created and destroyed?
2. How should object initialization differ from object assignment?
3. What does it mean for objects of your new type to be passed by value?
4. What are the restrictions on legal values for your new type?
5. Does your new type fit into an inheritance graph?
6. What kind of type conversions are allowed for your new type?
7. What operators and functions make sense for the new type?
8. What standard functions should be disallowed?
9. Who should have access to the members of you new type?
10. What is the undeclared interface of the new type?
11. How general is your new type?
    

The corresponding book for Java "Effective Java" doesn't have a similar item, but I'd say that 1,2,3,6 clearly don't apply to Java. 8 only applies in a very limited sense. Almost half the points to worry about, to create a class in Java, compared to C++. Hmmm....

CRAP on our computers

In Denmark we have a special tax on digital storage media. The tax is justified as a compensation for artists whose woks are illegally copied. However, this justification seems strange, given that many storage media are used strictly for non-music data eg. in digital cameras or for computer software. Many people also find it strange that copying music is illegal - now that they pay for the copying.

Then recently I noticed this analysis of the hidden costs of new Digital Restrictions Management (DRM or CRAP) in the new Windows Vista.

How should we think of these costs? By virtue of the de-facto monopoly of Microsoft - all users of computers and computer hardware will pay for the inefficiencies of these DRM initiatives.

Whereas the danish copyright laws and rules on special taxes on digital storage media are made by politicians, the designs for DRM are made by private companies. And the monopoly of Microsoft is tolerated (almost) by politicians but not exactly made by them. Who can we vote for that will make sure we don't have to pay for CRAP on our computers? And what can they do?

The IBM christmas tree

My friend Frances reminded me of the IBM christmas tree. I felt the same way, that the tree this year was disapointingly small and scrawny. However, the other years I thought that the 8 meter Maersk Data christmas trees were ridiculously large - so I guess that I'm just hard to please...

It is smart being a vegetarian

Of course I've known that for a while :o), and this study, at least, claims that there is some statistical relation between IQ and eating habits.

Joining the Web 2.0 revolution (with music)

Web 2.0 is a somewhat nebulous term that among other things covers collaborative websites. Well I just found one that I really like.

Last.fm is a website that helps you listen to music. It records which songs you listen to, and based on that it can recommend other songs you might like, or other people that you might like to discuss music with. Cool! (More info on wikipedia and here )

Last.fm also offers web-radio in which you can tag the songs with "love" or "ban" to further sharpen your musical profile.

Many music players on linux integrate last.fm directly, but on windows and mac OS X you can download a music player that offers all the functions of the service. My favorite music player the amazing Amarok has great integration, as can be seen here



Rock on!

I didn't know they made these...

From Misc

Normally I'm not very fond of these December count-down (or count-up?) julekalender things, but Lises mother knows my weaknesses and bought me a calendar with Valrhona chockolates. Uhmm - chocolicious...

Reading blogs easily

To many people it is anoying to have to visit different pages to read different peoples blogs. So they don't. However, the technology of blogs is made such that it is extremely easy to stay up to date with many (or few) different blogs.

On my home page I've posted a small explanation of how to read blogs easily. I hope you'll enjoy reading my blog (and maybe the blogs I read) using this tip.

If you write a blog yourself, you might install an RSS reader for some of the people you want to read your blog. I know I'll install one for my mom :o)

Economist on the internet

I've subscribed to the Economist for about a year and a half now. Before that I read as many articles as I could on their homepage. Lately I've noticed that almost all their articles are free for non-subscribers to read.

So, go on, have a read, try it out, maybe you'll like it as much as I do. I will keep my subscription for the paper edition (which includes web access) as the paper edition is easy to bring around and wonderful on an otherwise boring train ride.

Onkel Danny

Thursday, Lise and I went with Søren and AC to see Onkel Danny. It was a great show, I recommend it to anyone. I even got interested in the main character Dan Turell. I think I have to read one of his books sometime.

Danisco

A while back, Lise and I went to the Sicef job-fair. There I met a "kichen-mate" from the kollegium where I used to live. She is working on the sustainability policies of Danisco. Great, to see companies take sustainability seriously! I haven't read all of the material yet, but it looks promising. I think Danisco just entered the list of places I'd like to work. Next to the likes of Novozymes, IBM, Redhat and Google. Of course it also helps that Danisco recently bought Genencor, and they do a lot of interesting protein science.


I also got some promotional material for Danisco. Among the material is my favorit TV-ad in a long while.

No phd for me (yet)

The faculty of science did not see fit to give me a phd. And I don't know why, as no feedback is given. I wonder if I would get any explanation if I wrote the dean and asked him.
Maybe I'll apply again in february.

Denmark rocks

Sometimes I manage to appreciate the little wonderful things in life. I've forgotten my bike-lights on the bike three times lately, when I've parked the bike different places in Copenhagen. And all three times the lights were there when I got back.
Two of the times some nice person had even turned them off, saving the battery. Yay!

An Inconvenient Truth

Lise and I went to see the movie An Inconvenient Truth. It was a great and somewhat depressing movie. At the end the audience is encouraged to spread the word. I could participate here, but instead I'll buy the DVD when it comes out (26. December on amazon.co.uk), and lend it to anyone who wants to see it.

Meanwhile it is usefull to think about that for the last 5 years the Danish government has been sitting on its hands, stopping practically all programs related to CO2 reduction in Denmark. See here and here. And a status of the policy until 2005.
The latest development is that the Danish prime minister once again blindly does what George W. Bush does, namely claim that "energy independence" is an important goal, and for that reason, something should be done about Denmarks consumption of oil.

First public calendar

I've made my first public calendar for Google Calendar. It contains the presentations arranged by FritForum Copenhagen. The schedule is already available here, but if you press the button below the calendar will be automatically added to your google calendar. I'll even try to keep it updated with changes.

Everyone is welcome to attend a few presentations to see if they want to join FritForum.

Cafe Copenhagen

Last wednesday (still in France) we drove to Antibes along the coast. Antibes is a nice touristy town with sandy beaches. I had a tuna sandwich (again!). Later however we noticed a cafe with "Søbogaard" juices in the window. And Lise heard someone speak Danish. Then we noticed the name of the Cafe. "Cafe Copehagen". It was a very trendy cafe - with stylish interior and a cosmopolitan menu. Smoothies, bagels, søbogaard juice and ice moccachinos.
The two girls who served were very busy. One was the owner and the other was a friend of the owner who acted as stand-in, as the day was unexpectedly busy, apparently.

The owner and the friend were both Danish and the cafe had been open for only three months. Lise and I shared a smoothie and tasted a chiliflavored bagel. But we noticed that the ice moccachino looked very delicious also.

While making the smoothie the owner asked me "haven't I seen you somewhere before? Somewhere in Nord-Sjælland?". This is pretty funny because Lise thinks that I say that a lot (after an unfortunate episode where I couldn't quite place Mette Vestergaard). Apparently the owner had danced in Værløse also (though not with me, I think). Small world.

Oh - and next time I go to Antibes, I think I'll skip the tuna sandwich and go for something more exciting and delicious at Cafe Copenhagen.

New foods in France

I've noticed a few changes since I was in Nice last (May 2004).

1. More organic foods. I managed to buy organic milk (only whole milk), organic cheese, organic baguette and another bread. And organic chocolate. On signs by roads I have also seen advertisements for at least two organic supermarkets eg. www.satoriz.com (currently broken).

2. Apparently "Thon au naturel" has become the common thing. I eat a lot of tuna sandwiches on vaccations. Earlier they would always be with oily tuna. This year they were all with tuna in water.

Vaccation in Nice

The vaccation in Nice is just about over. Tomorrow Lise and I will fly back to danish weather. Meh. The stay was good however. And I think I coined a new word: "søl" (pronounced with a short ø, as in "øl"). It describes the taste I had when I ate a scoop of Corona-beer-sorbet. "Wow, it tastes like søl".

Great course in journalistic writing

Today I attended a course in journalistic writing. It was arranged by the editors of "scient" - a student magazine for the facculty of natural sciences.

The course was great. It was well done. About 20 people attended, mostly science students. First we had an introduction to journalistic writing. Then a little more theory. Then we were divided into four groups, and each group was given some background info on an interview subject. We discussed how to prepare the interview with an instructor(and prepared it). Then we performed the interview. Then we had some do's and don'ts of language.

After that we wrote an article from the interview. Finally we had some more theory and some polishing of the article and prestentations of the articles of the four groups.

So what was so great about the course? Hmm, everything just worked very well. The presentations were interesting, relevant and not too long. The interview subjects were "real" with real, interesting stories. The group-work worked very well. The instructor present during our group-work was attentive and engaged, and guided our work well.

The course was free, but the scient-team could easily have charged for it. Maybe I'll pay to go again next year.

New laptop

I've been thinking about getting a new laptop. Not too seriously, as the old one works ok.

If I am going to get a new one, however, I now know which companies to choose from. Greenpeace has made a study of how environmentally responsible electronics companies are. Fortunately for me the companies I prefer are at the top. I have been very satisfied with the Dell I have now, and I would certainly buy a new one.

Celbrity sysadmin

Tuesday I noticed that the new sysadmin at Bioinformatics looked somehow familiar. And she is. She has been involved with Linux User Groups in Denmark for a long time, so I've probably seen her at a Linux Forum.

Graduated!

Yesterday I gave a presentation of my thesis as my final examination, and I am now M.Sc in Bioinformatics. The presentation went well, but afterwards I was slightly desoriented, so when Agnete from my Biochemistry class asked how it went and what I got, I replied "three bottles of red wine, and a book".

What she wanted to know was which grade I got, and I was happy to tell her "13". (Yay!). Now I hope that the Faculty ph.d. committee will be impressed and awards me a scholarship...

Yay! Thesis handed in....

The title says it all. I handed in my thesis monday.....ahhh!

Lises books

Some days ago I read a bit of the book Lise was reading: "Michael Laudrups tænder".
It seems pretty funny, but I wonder - am I even supposed to think a book like that is funny? (I found Nynnes Dagbog to be pretty funny too)

News about friends' girlfriends

Mikkel has just asked his girlfriend Ola, to marry him. She said yes, so now they're engaged. Wiehhh!

And Mads' girlfriend Evelyn has started blogging. Here.

Who needs TV when you have...windows

There is a spider on the outside of our living room window. And Lise is observing how it is cleaning its web by rolling little balls of old web and dust and stuff. Now it appears that it has cleaned enough, and has started rebuilding its web. Great entertainment, who needs TV?

Now if I only had some flies soaked in drugs - I could try this.

Sick in a cute way...

A "Hello Kitty" Fender electric guitar. Here

Wow! Real shoes can be soft...

For years I've preferred skater-shoes, because they're soft and comfortable. Lise (among countless others), however, doesn't think skater-shoes are very pretty or stylish, so she has suggested that I try some new types of shoes.

So, at her specific suggestion I tried a pair of white leather shoes, in a non-skater look - to replace the old black ones. She found them in this shop on Osterbrogade. Nice shop, great selection.

And the new shoes are really nice and soft and light! Uhmmm.

10...10, comme Zidane

...is a classic line from Taxi.

And today I found a nice video with Zidane footage. Here.

Bio95, Tom K and Flemming H

Well, Tom K didn't win in Le Mans. His teammates in the other diesel powered Audi did win however. I guess that it is sort of cool in a technical way that a diesel powered car won, but I'm not extatic.

If they run on BioDiesel next year, THEN I'll think it's very cool.

Meanwhile, little steps are possible outside the track. Lise's mom goes for Bio95, and Lise sent me a picture...

Mads tells me that Novozymes is in the news in the US with their enzymes for biofuels. Now if Flemming Hansen, the danish transport and energy minister, wasn't such a complete dimwit there might have been a real market for biofuel-products. Who knows. Oh well, I guess he's too busy keeping the consequences of his economic deals secret* from the danish public, to do anything useful.


* Maybe requires a subscription.

Is Denmark a Microsoft-protectorate, prime minister?

I didn't even know that the online IT-news magazine Computerworld had "Leaders" articles.

Well - here's a refreshing one "Is Denmark a Microsoft-protectorate, prime minister?" on the sensibility of the danish prime minister getting very cosy with the company Microsoft and its chairman Bill Gates.

The article spawned quite a lot of comments, but the editor summed up the comments by asking for concrete proposals as to how the Denmark-Microsoft relation should be formalized.

Is it OK, that danish school children cannot participate in exams, unless they buy and use Microsoft products? Is it ok, that danish public TV sends its webTV in Microsoft formats only?

Soccer season

Well - with a nice opening game yesterday I'm ready for the World Cup. So here's a little link to get you warmed up also

Great moments on GoogleVideo.

Who can find the coolest links? And who can find a "Zidanes greatest" DVD?

Doing good things...

...well, not me, unfortunately. But I could, and probably you could also. My friend Frances, has found the UN online volunreering organisation and she has joined as a translator.

She can translate to chinese, I can't, but there is lots of different tasks, and there seems to be a need for programmers also! Oh, well - if I get spare time, I think I'll try to program some Free Software. That could then benefit everyone in the world and if it then ends up in something like OLPC it would just be great!

"XP", "Vista" - bah! "Lordi Rules"

The name of the most recent version of linux...

VERSION = 2
PATCHLEVEL = 6
SUBLEVEL = 17
EXTRAVERSION =-rc5
NAME=Lordi Rules

See kerneltrap.org

Not much new...

Well, I'm still working on my thesis. Now there is about 2 months left until hand-in. So I have to start writing.
The program is mostly finished - so I need to run it to get the results I want. But argh! it takes longer than I had thought.

New look

New look for my blog - to match my home-page (see link on the left).

Not much happens - I work on my masters thesis - only three months left now. Scary.

V for Vendetta

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." -- V's introduction to Evey

Wikipedia rocks!

Gotta love the wierdness of english spelling

And some poems that highligts it

Now I wonder if something similar for Danish exists?

Posts about ninjas

Pede you cant do a post about ninjas without a link to this

Real Ultimate Power

More cool organic-goods news

Wieeh. An "organic-o-meter"

Irma Oekometer

Total øko!

Tjek irma-avisen. Noget skelsættende er sket. En hel reklameavis, kun med øko-varer.

Irma Avisen (4MB pdf)

Fantastisk!

80 kg's of chrome

...well, maybe not.

We got the bed ( http://www.bedandbeauty.dk/acatalog/BEDchuncky_stor.gif )


But, I guess it was not solid chrome - but polished stainless steel. Oh well, it still looks nice in the bedroom.

Everybody should know this guy - and why he is cool - and why you should support the EFF!

Cory Doctorow
quit his job but still supports the EFF and explains why you should too.