Being the thoughts and writings of one Gustaf Erikson; father, homeowner, technologist.
I’ve finally started reading Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion. Its
had “reading” status on my reading
list since July 9. Instead of
reading it however, I’ve read some old issues of the New York Review
of Books, the Economist, and Patrick O’Brian’s Blue at the
Mizzen.
Update: now a fourth of the way in, and it’s heavy
going. Quicksilver was a damn sight more action-packed.
Updated on Monday, 2005-08-08.
Posted at 23:32,
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Russ waxes lyrical about the PSP as a web
tablet.
I must say I agree. I played with Niclas’ Flybook yesterday, and it
pretty much rocked as a tablet.. But the PSP is smaller, lighter, and
has better games. Plus it’s waaay cheaper. I’ll definetely look at one
when it’s launched here.
Posted at 21:58,
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Matt describes the woeful state of N-gage gamitude in the
US.
I already feel like the only N-Gage user on the Eastern seaboard
though.
This is a pity, ‘cause the N-gage (classic, the “taco”) is still a
kick-ass phone. I use mine as a mp3-player nowadays, I’m not
really into games.
Posted at 21:55,
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Whoohoo! Halfway mark. We have a working sink and dishwasher. We also
have an oven (not sure if the wiring can handle it though, must check)
and the old hob cabinet is still working. So it’s a functional
kitchen, although with almost no storage.
I’m off to Halland for a week, but the next step is to close off the
little door, redo the tiling, and install 2 long cabinets of
drawers. The hob will be in the work surface above them.
Posted at 21:47,
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My brother-in-law Niclas came by to help, and together we got the
fridge, dishwasher and sink installed. Unfortunately some critical
parts were missing, so nothing is fixed to the walls yet. Tomorrow we
be finished with the water-related parts at least (sink and
dishwasher). This means that the unsightly heap of dirty dishes
standing outside the bathroom will vanish, at least.
Posted at 22:05,
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Joel describes the five software worlds
This description of “internal software” rang a lot of ( warning ) bells:
Internal software only has to work in one situation on one company’s
computers. This makes it a lot easier to develop. You can make lots
of assumptions about the environment under which it will run. You
can require a particular version of Internet Explorer, or Microsoft
Office, or Windows. If you need a graph, let Excel build it for you;
everybody in our department has Excel. (But try that with a
shrinkwrap package and you eliminate half of your potential
customers.)
Here usability is a lower priority, because a limited number of
people need to use the software, and they don’t have any choice in
the matter, and they will just have to deal with it. Speed of
development is more important. Because the value of the development
effort is spread over only one company, the amount of development
resources that can be justified is significantly less. Microsoft can
afford to spend $500,000,000 developing an operating system that’s
only worth about $80 to the average person. But when Detroit Edison
develops an energy trading platform, that investment must make sense
for a single company. To get a reasonable ROI you can’t spend as
much as you would on shrinkwrap. So sadly lots of internal software
sucks pretty badly.
( emphasis added )
Posted at 01:08,
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Finally finished the floor, and started on the furnishings. First out
was a cabinet for the oven.
Posted at 22:31,
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Time to detail what we’ve been doing with the kitchen the last week.
Removed a large part of the wall separating it from the dining
room. This wall was perhaps not structural, but it supported a wall
above it consisting of 1x3” planks, horisontal planking, reeds and a
whole lot of plaster. So we installed a 1x5” beam to hold it up.
Ripped out all the old kitchen furnishings — we’re keeping the
fridge and the dishwasher.
Removed the old laminate floor, laid a new subfloor consisting of
board, and we’re installing a new laminate floor with tile pattern.
Todo
Finish the floor
Install the new furnishings: sink, dishwasher cabinet, and oven/hob.
Board up the wall between the kitchen and the old hall.
Thoughts
Removing walls is hard — probably should have got a professional to
do it. Also, plaster is a bitch to remove.
Tiling patterns use up more of the planks than a wood pattern
does. Also, you have to be more careful where you start.
Pics will be up as soon as I can remove them from the phone.
Update: I would have finished the floor today, if the blade to the
electric jigsaw hadn’t snapped while sawing the last effing
plank… and did I think to pick up a new one when I was at the
hardware store today? Noooo.
Updated on Friday, 2005-07-29.
Posted at 23:55,
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Edmund Wilson’s review of the Lord of the
Rings, published
in 1956, could almost be about the Harry Potter series
today. Especially this gem:
Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this
reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes [from some people]?
The answer is, I believe, that certain people - especially, perhaps,
in Britain - have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would
not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age
article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted in Elsie
Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy and which seems to have made
of Billy Bunter, in England, almost a national figure. You can see
it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print:
they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and
Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien
has never touched.
Admittedly, Harry Potter is written for children/”young adults”. But
the series still seems to attract a wide audience, just like
Tolkien. In my not so humble opinion, I still find Tolkien better than
HP, but that’s perhaps because I was younger when I read LOTR for the
first time.
Which leads to another thought: how will my son be able to appreciate
HP when he’s older? The whole series is being exploited in real time,
with the movies more or less following on the heels of the books. How
can he create an internal representation of the HP universe when
Warner Bros have served it up like a McDonalds meal already?
Posted at 00:02,
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Whisky leads to blogging.
Posted at 23:53,
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I discovered by accident that this site looks shite in Internet
Exploder. Rest assured that I will waste no precious brain cycles
trying to fix this.
Posted at 23:51,
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Found 2 mildly interesting sites today: Lloyd Cole’s
weblog and
DagensSkiva.com, a Swedish music review
site. Neither of them have RSS.
What’s with that? If you’re worried
about losing traffic, don’t post the whole text in the feed. Just let
me know that something has changed on your site! You can’t expect
people to return to your site just in case something has been added.
Get with the program, publish a fucking feed already.
Update: I found out today the DagensSkiva do have feeds, (with the
option of choosing per reviewer, natch). So I’ll amend the above to
say “make your fucking feeds autodiscovarable already”.
Lloyd Cole is still feedless, sadly.
Updated on Sunday, 2005-08-28.
Posted at 23:49,
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Darla has a new gig: associate editor at PhoneMag. Congrats!
Posted at 23:20,
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- dagensskiva.com - A Perfect Circle — fredriks recension. Tags: audio cds criticism.
Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.
Posted at 18:05,
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- JRRVF - L’oeuvre d’une vie - Le Seigneur des Anneaux Tags: books criticism tolkien.
Grabbed from my del.icio.us links.
Posted at 00:02,
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Yawn, yet another HP adventure. This was better plotted than the
last, but still not really a good book.
Posted at 20:51,
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I broke down and bought the latest Harry Potter novel. I wasn’t
impressed by the last one, but I couldn’t resist — maybe J.K. Rowling
has learnt to write?
Buying it led me a merry dance from Högdalen (where I was buying 200W
bulbs that actually fit our lamp) to Farsta, but all the bookstores
were sold out. I finally had to go to a hypermarket in Nacka, where it
was prominently displayed for 149 SEK.
Posted at 22:51,
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A “hard fantasy” novel, containing some nice ideas (really only one
idea, but the ramifications are well thought out). Well written, if a
bit confusing at times. As it’s fantasy, of course this is just the
first novel in a series… sigh. I’ll perhaps pick up the next book
when it arrives in paperback.
Posted at 14:39,
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- Patrick O’Brian, The Hundred Days
- Bruce Sterling, The Zenith Angle
- Charles Stross, Iron Sunrise
Posted at 17:04,
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A mix between The Secret History and (I guess, I haven’t read it)
The Da Vinci Code. Not bad at all.
Posted at 22:15,
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Home after a leisurely trip north, with stops at IKEA in Jönköping and
Burger King in Linköping. Tempers were frayed at an unexpected queue
south of Södertälje, but now we’re here and settled in. Even got some
breakfast for tomorrow. Phew.
Now I have 2 weeks worth of feeds and comics to browse…
Posted at 21:26,
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These are the books I read during my two weeks vacation on the west
coast of Sweden.
Four novels by Patrick O’Brian:
- The Nutmeg of Consolation
- Clarissa Oakes
- The Wine-Dark Sea
- The Commodore
In my opinion, The Thirteen-Gun Salute is the last really good
Aubrey-Maturin novel.
- Mike Bryan, Dogleg Madness
- Carl Hiassen, Skinny Dip
- Charles Stross, Accelerando
Posted at 14:08,
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