Why haven't I been blogging?

So why you might ask? Why haven't I been blogging?

Well let's just ignore the obvious and say that amongst other things, Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix has been completed, I have written a good few lines of code, resigned from my job, taken a shitload of photographs, played with the cats of 505, looked after Mintable from 713, ridden on many buses, watched my hometown rugby team play to the top of the log, watched South Africa lose first spot on the rugby union ratings, drunk my fair share of good beer, drunk my fair share of bad beer, started to appreciate the finer side of red wine, gone back to enjoying beer, bought a new pair of jeans, run on a treadmill, subsequently been advised as to which running shoes to buy, bought a pair of anti-pronation Nike+ running shoes, pwned my iPod, repwned my iPod, run, played squash, run some more, run the dhl 5kms in 25 minutes, helped nic out, run dhl again and managed a sad 26 minutes, acquired a dtu running shirt, played poker, won a poker game, been to an REM concert, fallen in love with REM music all over again, bought the t-shirt, made Greek meatballs with tzatziki (τζατζίκι), forgot to remove 1/4 of the garlic and onion mix from the meatballs, woken up at some unearthly hour of the morning in a flat panic stressing that I stank of garlic beyond all hope, had a visit from my mate darryl, played xbox til some silly hour of the morning, eaten really friggin hot overpriced curry in malmo, eaten gauva rolls, decided to eat a gauva roll a day for a month, proposed to ms. 505, planned a wedding in Norway, moved said plans back a few months, decided Spain was a better bet, moved the wedding destination to Madrid, booked tickets to Spain, booked tickets to Durban, taken the metro in the sun, watched summer disappear into the gray wetness that is the Danish autumn, taken the metro in the rain, watched Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds live, thoroughly enjoyed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live again, fallen boyishly in love with Kylie, been to a Kylie concert, found out I am not the only guy who loves Kylie, realized Kylie has a huge gay following, decided never again to go to a Kylie concert without a girl on each arm, eaten some great sushi, drunk some splendid Japanese sushi beer, acknowledged that Counting Crows is full of shit, decided that Counting Crows don't give two shits about their fans, not gone to a Counting Crows concert, two useless refunded tickets to a cancelled Counting Crows concert, found out I really like Seether, decided that the N95 loses to the iPod, had my N95 in for repairs, lusted after the new iPhone since my N95 needs to go in for repairs again, blogged more recently than I realized, enjoyed taking 24 photographs without sleep over 24 hours, upgraded my flickr account to pro, made the bombest shrimp and chilli balls, purchased a new pc, cursed windows vista, fallen in love with windows vista, seen the light with no longer building my own pc from scratch, wished I had built my own pc, calmed down again and started to write a story about a bear named Thomas.

So no I haven't blogged for a while, but I have done a few other things, none of which I shouldn't have blogged about, but isn't that what I just did. Well sort of just did.

Vista vs Linux, now that I have an opinion.

So I got a new pc this week. A shiny new Dell with Vista and all its glass and eye-candy. So far I really enjoy Vista it is pretty, does media extremely well and although not as fast as XP might be, not a dead dog either. I guess it helps that the machine is rather well spec'd, with an AMD Athlon x64 5600+, 4GB or RAM and a few more bells and whistles giving a Vista rating of 5.3. Anyway, I was happily reading a blog  on not being able to get SP1 to install due to driver issues and noting that I had the same problem (that's how I found the blog).

Unfortunately I read the comments and could do nothing but sigh. How anyone can claim that Linux is better than Windows or that Apple is the way to go, I currently do not understand.

If you write software for a living, you are pretty much "stuck" on a windows machine, unless you want to write java, in which case you either have a screw loose, no girlfriend, don't mind hideous interfaces, fighting with classes and are quite simply leaning towards sadomasochistic. So windows it is then.

Some of you may remember how slow XP was when it came out, how wireless networking was virtually unusable until SP1 and how driver support was lagging for a good few months, but nobody had really used wireless networks before. So it took a while to figure out how to work with the masses.

Linux is great for people that use there pc to surf or write documents. Yes that is naive and narrow minded and I know that with a little bit of know-how you can do anything on a Linux box, but you need to spend the time. Have you managed to sync a Bluetooth device on a Linux box?

A two year old machine will of course be able to run Linux, the hardware is old, and thus there is drivers. Windows 3.11 would run fine on it. There isn't drivers for the latest ATI and Nvidia cards. That's just a fact. My new Canon printer won't play happy and Canon didn't spend the time to write drivers for it either.

If you know what goes into an operating system, to get it to "plug-n-play" with all hardware combinations and software and still stay sans BSOD, you would appreciate what MS puts together. Then you have software vendors complaining that the OS isn't open enough and that they need access to the kernel, otherwise it is unfair practices. So MS opens up and holes appear. When did Apple last open up the OS's APIs for Norton or Symantic?

Apple is great and all, but iMac is custom hardware for a custom OS, of course it works, but I have seen it crash on more than one occasion and as far as viruses and hacking goes, it has a minute install base, it just isn't worth spending time on yet.  Same thing goes for FireFox vs IE. A larger install base means more will try hack it. No firefox 3 isn't perfect, 8 million downloads in one day and a huge security flaw to boot. Oh, and while on the negatives, an Apple will also set you back at lest 2 or 3 times what a pc with even Vista Ultimate will.

As for Windows ME, that was the first OS to be built on a non-Dos based kernel and it didn't manage very well. But as far as I remember, MS released Windows 2000 between it and XP as the first NT based OS and many people still use 2000.

I have played with Linux, I prefer XP and I am pissed my new (pre-installed) machine won't accept Vista SP1 just yet. I won't go back to XP at home, I turned off User Account Control and it no longer bugs me. Vista is still young, but it is a step in a new direction. Linux may get there one day, but until hardware gets sold with "Linux Certified" I will be using windows.

Call me a fanboy, I make a living providing a service to the millions of other people who, like me, live in a windows world and most would probably agree, it does just work!

(original post: http://blogs.computerworld.com/my_nightmare_trying_to_upgrade_to_vista_sp1)

Saturday 14th June 2008

After a year of pressure, the residents of 505 have decided to give in and hold a house warming - they would like to apologize to all those with new apartments who have been waiting for them, before holding theirs and in some cases have even held off buying altogether. Beer, wine and finger food will be provided to those who promise not to mess on the floor. Shoes are optional, but if worn, must be taken off before entering the apartment. Royal beer will not be served and the fridge is full if you ask for it to be chilled. Most of the snacks will be meat based or contain traces of peanuts, so if for some bizarre reason you cannot handle real food, then please bring something you find more palatable, but be prepared to share as some people just seem to be unable to take a hint. Hege and Bruce hope you all like Spanish style tapas, not that this is going to be on any menu, but they enjoy them, so it would be a good starting point for conversation. Plastic cups and paper plates will be provided and are to be used. This is because the host won't be able to clean much, due to a future recent operation. ONLY plastic cups are to be used! Seriously ONLY plastic cups! Music will be provided and yes, apartment 505 does have dance music, however its use will be limited. 80's music will most likely feature, but please don't expect this to be a given. The same applies to rock classics. Pop music such as Britney, Kylie and Robbie may be spun once or twice. However the 505 DJ is forgiving and has a broad genre under its belt, so don't worry too much. Jazz will under no circumstances be played. This is due to the 505 cats preferring not to have to handle it. While on the subject of the cats, please, no feeding the animals. They are pedigree Siamese cats, and as such have a bizarre tendency to puke on the floor and sofa when fed something they are not used to, and as mentioned previously the host will not be able to do much cleaning. Smokers will be sent down to street level for their addiction needs. Hugo and Bella are awfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco and are concerned with its effects on passive smokers. Raclette Grills are not good gifts, any attempt to bring one into the building will be met with much displeasure and if it does end badly, its reception will be taken as a challenge and approached in a like manner in the future when considering what to give others for their house warming's. These are not guidelines, but the way this event will be handled. Apartment 505 is looking to have an entertaining day and as such, any specific points may be wavered during the event. This wavering includes only those topics listed under food, beverages and music. However Jazz is seriously not music. Northern Scandinavian death metal is classified as Jazz in 505. Bruce, Hege, Hugo, Bella and the future recent breasts can't wait to welcome you to their home.

I Quit and I Don't Care

You know that feeling when you quit your job and you have to see the remainder of a month out, or whatever the period you may have decided with your soon to be ex boss. That "I just want to get out of here and start fresh, with new promises and better colleagues".

We have all tried it, ok it is going on 10 years since my last resignation, but  I do remember the feeling.

Thing is right, I am working on a project for a customer at the moment, where both the technical and the business responsible's have quit. I have kind of been left all alone. I don't feel sorry for myself or anything, but it really does suck.

I have the feeling that both of them are putting in the very minimum, I suddenly have twice the tasks assigned and when I went in today to finally have some "alone time" with the business guy, he spends it complaining that he has too many tasks to test (I submitted 15 new on Wednesday, which I coded my head off to reach the deadline for test start). To make matters a little worse he complained even more about how long it was until lunch, after which he promptly said his tasks were to complex (he is primarily testing) to complete in an afternoon, and buggered off home.

But ok he did come into the

office as promised and he did answer the most important stuff, so I got some work done. He also managed to pawn 3 new tasks on me, but fair is fair I guess, and I had someone to eat lunch with.

As for the other chap? He didn't make it as far as the office. I got a message that he would be working from home for a bit. Thing is I can see who is online and between 9am and 3:30pm, it was me and my hungry tester. Well it does suck to have to work on a Friday, when we had off yesterday.

No hard feelings then, well except that he has now managed to bail on 3 weeks worth of meetings. Guess his excuse book will soon be running on empty sooner or later, I can only hope.

But that's the problem. They don't give two shits. They have a new job. This project can tank and they will simply blame apartheid or colonialism. It isn't so easy for those left behind.

So just to end off this little rant, I would like to say "Sorry Peter Bolgann, Dick Putter, Hendrik Fourie, Malcolm Thomson, Edgars IT, Mercantile Lisbon IT and all the other people I may have left in the shit".

...Nokia N95 8GB 3 - 1 iPod Touch (thanks Panoman and 505)

Mugabe continued.

But first, if you got to this blog via a barcode, leave a comment please!

Ok now that that's over.

One month ago I wrote that Mugabe was a twat (once again, sorry Mom), since then a good number of days have passed under the bridge and so I was wondering.

Is he still a monkey loving dictator?

Yes, the current most mentally disturbed despot is indeed still a pure, unadulterated arsehole.

Come on Africa, wake up and smell the coffee, these people you vote for (or in Zimbabwes case don't vote for) are people like you and I. However you are giving them power. Stand up tall and kick some ass. They ain't going anywhere and neither are you, as long as you stand there and take the abuse.

On a happier note, I finally found out that my phone is addicted to viral advertising...

Spread the word, barcodes are cool. N95 2 - iPod 1

Mugabe is a twat! (Sorry Mom, but he is)

My walk between the station in Malmparken and Logica each day takes me over this little grass covered mound of earth, not dissimilar to the knoll now so infamous in Dallas Texas. Nothing strange there, however the last two weeks have seen it morph during the evenings.

In the afternoons when  I leave, the hillock is green, the sun is mildly warm and birds are happily chirping for whatever reasons birds chirp. Pleasant, yes. However on my return each morn, it has been covered in a thin layer of snow.

Yes snow, and while bitter winds hamper my enjoyment of the suns glowing rays, the only birds hardy, could be read dumb, enough to be flapping around are ravens.

It's the end of March, and yet nighttime seems to insist that winter
drag on fruitlessly into what clearly is spring. I mean in a few days
time we move the garden furniture out and the little hand an hour
forward. Summer is fast approaching, but mother nature just doesn't get it.

Now I am totally against the whole Bush stance on global warming, I do believe we need icecaps and polar regions, but I will be flying really fuel hungry jets as much as possible, if the seasons don't catch a wake up soon and stick to the program.

While I am on the topic, why the bloody friggin hell did Mrs Clinton have to go and screw it up so badly. I can't vote, what with not being american and all, but she had mine. However now is a different story. Bill may have buggered up and followed his willy, but at least he didn't have video evidence available to the public when he lied. Jeez woman: "I did not have sexual relations with that sniper". Either you got shot at or you didn't, don't make out like you did. It didn't make a difference. You were there, well some of the time, but that's what counts.

 

Now however Obama has won hands down. Why are politicians so full of shit. At least Mugabe has the colonialism excuse. But don't get me started on that arsehole!

505 is having a busy month

So it has been a busy few weeks here in, or rather not in, apartment 505. The tour kicked off with a working visit to Madrid where I was holding a workshop for MS Spain. Hege came along for the weekend and we hooked up with our eSpanish mate Ricardo.

Have to say that out of the European  cities I have visited so far,
Madrid is my favourite. I like the food too, truth be told.

Then came Easter with all the glorious  free holidays which it
entails. Well 505 has been promising Perchtoldsdorferstrasse 13 a
visit for ages, so we did. I always forget how much I enjoy my big
brothers company. We had our differences as kids, me being second in line and probably really annoying, but we are almost grown up these days. Anyway so we ate schnitzel and bowled and took a trip across the closest border, to Slovakia.

Yes we travelled over the old iron curtain, to Bratislava. The first
thing that crossed my mind, which also used to happen when I went to Prague and Budapest, was that we had bent the old space time continuum and gone back a few decades. I don't know what those old soviets has in mind though. Yes everything was shared "equally" among all men, but an equal slice of nothing other than a hefty amount of bronze statues of communist fellows still sucks in my books.

 

Lovely city though, Bratislava. And on putting the slightly
dilapidated look aside, there seemed to be a crapload of renovation going on. Yes it needs it and you can still tell that the red flags of yesteryear lacked upkeep skills, I recon given a decade, eastern Europe is going to be giving London, Paris and Madrid a good run for their tourist spending money.

So what now? Well the Amsterdamage tour kicks off on Friday and truth be told I am worried. I just can't handle like I once could. Don't get me wrong, I will be smacking it as hard as can be, but I am just not sure Amsterdam will be any the worse for wear. I on the other hand will be needing my soft pillow and sleep come Sunday eve.

Then it's Milan with Mr Gates. Not sure I will be seeing much more of Italy than the MS offices, but ho-hum I will get there one day.

And so dear diary, that's why I have been, well partly, so quiet. Am also kind of playing a fair amount of xbox...

Blog Post Correction and All

So the other day someone decided to read this blog and made a comment. So i have to confess, these guys are a pretty good cure for stress...

  

Friends, Beer, Friends, Risk, Friends, Nights Out, Friends, Late Night Public Transport, Friends, Bloody Mary's... they do beat Master Chief any day! Thanks guys and brewers of the world.

Master Chief, the cure for rainy day blues?

It's raining today, not just your standard wet rain, no this is a very windy, wintry rain. A rain of the kind that bites at your fingers and makes your knees stiff.

Winter has for the most part been mild this year, the last time Copenhagen had a winter like this was, funnily enough, last year. We were talking about it at lunch today and the collective lunch table remembered that  in two days time and a year ago, we had a snowman build-able snow storm, complete with traffic problems and train delays. So now we wait and see.

What does this have to do with rain and me? Nothing much except I need summer. I am cold and wet and sitting in a misted up train coupe needing sun. I will get sun this Xmas, proper Durban Sun with a capital DS, but that's a year away almost.

I digress, last years summer was crap. Really, it was just bland and with the exception of maybe fifteen mediocre days of luke-warm mildness, it was shitty.

So here I stand on the metro platform (line 2), with my coat tails blowing around, in the icy rain, with the prospect of last years weather cycle on the verge of making a repeat comeback and I am almost depressed.

It won't be a bad summer, I will learn a form of black magic and put out some calls, but it still doesn't lighten my current frame of mind.

 

On the plus, I kicked ass in halo 3 last night. I have a wonderful girlfriend and two bomb cats. Life is good, just so long as I get into some warm dry clothes and boot up some master chief.

"burn things to show you aren't violent"

There is an area in Copenhagen called Vanløse. I know this as I catch the metro there most mornings and then catch a train to WMdata where I am working at the moment.

Anyway there is nothing special about this place per say, but this morning I was using my iPod on the station platform and I got access to a wireless network. No hacking or anything "funny". The catch? Well nothing other than that the Vanløse public library is next to the station and it has a free wireless network for surfing or searching for books.

This got me thinking, in a country with a proper democracy, a usable social system and a high standard of living, how can there be ghettos and 15 year old kids, who hate society so much they run around at night stabbing people, burning cars and physically attacking the civil servants, who are just doing their jobs and trying to protect the rest of us.

I am by nature rather politically opinionated, and I happen to agree with the opinion that unprovoked violence can only be solved by using bigger guns. I am sure someone somewhere knows why these kids are so far gone, but I know it can't have started with them. This is conditioning. Their parents or piers are bitter and are manipulating situations into grounds for social misbehaviour.

In a county were freedom of speech and equality is praised, I think things have gone to far. I am a guest here and I know some people don't like that my "kind" is here either, but I follow the rules. Why can't everyone else. I am all for the Swiss way of managing integration: if you don't contribute and follow their rules, then you and your family can sod off to where ever your DNA originated from. And that's fine, that's how it should be.

It isn't always black and white, but handle the easy cases like that and scare the shit out of the difficult cases.  Worst case scenario, last I checked there is plenty of space on Greenland.

80's revival

Last night we went to a concert. During the 80's Robert Smith decided that hair was the path to success, so he mixed it up a little. Well actually as I am sure you know, he mixed it up one hell of a lot.

This last week, apartment 505, along with Des and the DJ (not the Sonos), hit Forum. Why, well because The Cure was about to bring Copenhagen to life.

Did they manage?

Yes, yes and oh so friggin 100% yes!

The sound was crap, the lights were 80's, the only redeeming show feature was a video of a trains journey that ran in the back during "jumping someone else's train" - amazing. Well who needs a fancy show, when you can play for 3 hours straight, 34 songs and not a single drop or dip in energy or intensity.

It was absolutely great, and 505 wasn't the only ones who thought so, what with all of forums sold-out 10,000 attendees jumping, clapping, singing and screaming along to every single howled out, acoustically tinny Cure classic from the last 30 years.

The atmosphere was superb and carried on through the entire evening. As for the current standings of the iPod Touch vs Nokia N95-8GB? The Nokia captures the world better than anything to-date (that isn't a dedicated device), but the iPod presents the world how it should be... 1-1 :)

What does one do when it's time for a change?

This weekend we awoke and someone had the idea that apartment 505 needed a change, something different, an addition, something to scare the living crap out of the kittens. Well in all honesty, they aren't scared of it, but twice an hour they get all, well, all curious. See Saturday we decided to go shopping in Malmö. Sweden is as close as Copenhagen and once you factor in the return tickets and the exchange rates, it works out almost, maybe a smidgen cheaper. So off we went, Beate saw a cuckoo clock last time we were over and so that was the goal. Low and behold, the shop still had them, unfortunately not in red, but then I am sure I am destined to live in a monochrome apartment for the rest of time, but I digress. So we go a black one. A black cuckoo clock, with a yellow bird and so the adventures begin.

Did you know that the cuckoo doesn't give two shits what the hands say? That no matter what you do, the little bird decides when the hour is to be chimed and when the little bag-pipey-thingies are to be compressed and thus the world famous cuc-koo can be heard. So what does one do? Apartment 505 found out, you wait for him to sing, then you stop the clock and wait until time catches up to the little yellow bird and then you start the clock again and wait for the next chirp and see if you did good. We did that. We waited til 7 o'clock and then we started him again. only to notice that an hour later he was 2 minutes slow.

Two minutes slow! Well how do you solve that? You wait until 7 o'clock in the morning, by which time is is 20 minutes slow, and you stop him again. See you now have to adjust the pendulum, so it swings faster. Lower is slower, so we stopped the clock and then 2 hours ago, after moving the weight up a fraction, we started Ralph again.

It is now three minutes past and he just sang nine times... guess it's not going to be ticking between 7am and 7pm tomorrow again...

iPod Touch does it on the train

So how does one write a blog when you no longer have daily 
unrestricted access to the Internet? well recently I was persuaded to  purchase an iPod Touch. Well in all honesty after Steve J. announced  that the new version would allow for the email, maps and widgets and  in a month 3rd party legal software, it was a given.

It isn't the cheapest mp3 player in the world, and yes you are stuck  to using iTunes for you music collection, but all the music in 505 was  in iTunes already. Hege has spent the last 3 months (we have around  500) ripping every cd and finding cover art. This, because 505 is dj'd  by a sonos, which I will get into another day, but in short it is  litterally amazing.

But back to the case at hand, I am typing this now as I sit in a train  and the verdict? As close to perfect as it could be, it does what you  need and it honestly does it brilliantly and that's before you start  playing music or videos (not my beloved divx though). It is honestly  an incredible little wonder.

I just got a Nokia N95 8GB for work, so we will see which of the two  win in the long run, but without being overly bias, I think my "fun"  time will be spent on the touch and I am quit ok with that .

Coffee and Crisps

I like the fact that some of the baristas who work at Estate know that I like my croissants on the softer side, in the early morning it's a large latte, in the afternoon a rooibos tea or a chai latte. I really like that all their milk is organic, that they give you a small chocolate with every drink and that it varies depending on what you order. They know what they are doing at Estate and they do it well, very, very well indeed. And having one of the best baristas know your coffee habits isn't a bad thing. Surely an innocent latte can't do you any harm? Surely!

Well we have started detoxing in apartment 505. I think over the last 3 years or so, we have been eating rather healthy. But not well enough and it isn't just food, we changed our toothpaste for one that doesn't contain titanium, non-aluminium deodorants and paraben free soaps and creams. It is quite scary when you look into what we actually do to ourselves just by living and how much of it can be stopped, if we just spend a few extra minutes reading the contents of what we buy.

So coffee has been killed, the first week was full of headaches because of it and since that I know it isn't a bad thing to quit. Rooibos with honey for me thanks, Estate does those too and all organic to boot.

As for crisps? We have switched to grapes for 3 weeks now instead of candy and chips and yes, this is just the beginning.

Grapes and Mobile Phones

Saturday came and went, not, I must add, as most of my Saturdays tend to go, but with a touch of spice and a hint of that little something extra. In plain unforgiving English - I lost my phone. It wasn't stolen, it wasn't taken from me by force, it wasn't even somebody else's fault, I simply forgot to take it with me when I left the cafe after lunch. Had the chicken salad been outstanding or the mineral water been of some divine source, or if it all been crap and given me a reason to wake my doctor for, it could be accepted that I forgot my routine. No, it was in itself a routine meal, average, border-line bland and without being cruel or unfair,  in a word or two, just another forgettable meal. But did I forget that meal? No, no I did not. I forgot my phone, my flip face memory keeper, my earpiece to the world, my (not so) little sony-ericsson. But I digress, for it was a good day, a memorable day and I live in a society of mostly good and honest people, so today I called and they had the little chap, my silver buddy, my s700i. He'd had a weekend away, he'd met some new people and I am sure somewhere in all this, he had taught me a lesson. So I am me again, the full unadulterated, grape eating me. I so need a new phone.

2008? maybe now i will write a blog...

I haven't exactly been active in the "my blog" scene of late - who says 3 years is quitting? I can say I haven't had time, or was in a creative lull, but that's neither here nor there, I enjoy writing, I don't do it enough and so, with a little kick from a troll book and a little help from my E-500, I am hoping that perhaps this year I will spend the time needed, to get some interesting writing in place, so that it isn't only me who is listening to all the crap inside my head...

from a session Hege (my puks) and I did a few weeks ago

Thursday is as good a day as any to start and so I downloaded "windows live write", which promises all kind of blogging ease, including putting my pictures in the correct place, I will once again attempt to bring my blogging to life.