"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".