I’m moving my blog to Blogspot. “Why?”… there are lots of reasons why!
Number one is my ability to update! With blogspot I can just send in a mail on my iPhone on the way to work, while in a meeting or slacking in the couch. I don’t have to log into a computer, find the site, login and browse my way to it.
Number two is the interaction part. You guys and girls can now comment on things here on Blogspot or their affiliates. Not gonna allow anonymoous because if you can’t put your name on what you’re saying maybe you shouldn’t say it.
Then ofcourse there are alot of other benefits too, like the tagging and stuff. I’ll have a huge job ahead of me migrating all of the updates from my database to this one but hopefully won’t be too hard. My photogallery will still be on my own servern though!
What do you think, is this a good thing or am I a sellout? 🙂
You know the old saying about the cobbler’s kid having no shoes? Well I again managed to prove that one.
At work we have one of the best redundancy/backup systems I’ve seen and we’re proud of it. But on the webserver running this website and more importantly NataliePortman.com I’ve totally ignored that part especially since my son was born. So two weeks ago we had someone hacking into the site and completely wiped the server for us. And unfortunately the last backup I had was back in march and april! So that’s why there’ll be several months missing here.
Yeah you can blame me for being really terrible at taking backups, but I really didn’t think anyone would hack the server and erase everything just for fun. I mean what’s up with that? :/
And this is the reason why there are hardly any entries for 2010.
Just wanted to do a quick update to say I purchased the computer game Portal the other day on steam. And loved it. Played it again and loved it even more. Downloaded the song “Still Alive” and loved it.
I also love it when I change my mind about something ’cause it came out 2-3 years ago and I did pay any attention to it. My bad.
Buy it.
Oh, and 3 more days 🙂
Ever used “Dropbox“? It’s a damn good little program you install on your computer(s) that points to a folder and everything you put in that folder is uploaded and stored in their server, backed up and safe, and then synchronized to all your computers running the program so the folder looks identical! And they even have a an iPhone App so I can access and view the files when I’m out and about. And you can also share files with the publuc if you want.
I use it for two of the features – getting my important files (like all my photos) safe and backed up elsewhere “just in case” and I use it to transfer files from home to work and vice versa. It’s awesome, try it! And please use this link so I’ll get some credit 🙂
As you may have noticed the past week have been terrible for this site! It’s been slow and unresponsive and I didn’t really bother to look into it until this weekend when it got really bad. I finally found the culprit – as you may remember over the years I have posted links to mp3s of good or funny songs or “what I like right now”. And somehow for the past week this place have been bombarded with downloads of those mp3s, I’m talking thousands of downloads per day! I don’t know who or why but they are gone now so it should run more smoothly now!
Hey everyone. As I mentioned in the update a few days ago I was working to get a new imagegallery up and running. It’s based on “ImageVue” which has some really cool things going for it but it lacked any form of password protection which made it impossible for me to use. Publishing pictures of me or my family has never been a problem but now when more than half of the pictures I take feature Helena or a member of her family I’ve had to have a password so noone can google their way there. For some reason Helena have been very good at keeping herself off the grid!
Anyway, here it is!
As before the username is “friend” and the password is the name of the company I work for, with a capital first letter. I know it’s easy to figure out but it’s good enough to keep it off Google anyway!!
I haven’t had the time to tag and put captions on all of the photos yet but the albums themselves should be tagged. I had to put the years 1975 to 2005 into a sub-album because otherwise the menu would’ve gone on forever!
I hope you like it. I do!
You may have noticed this site is a bit faster now?.. that’s because I’ve setup a webserver at home that is hosting this site, so you no longer have to go through the states and it doesn’t share the server with NataliePortman.com. So it’s all good for everyone. Except my electric bill 🙂
Yesterday I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when all of a sudden I realise… no matter how I do it, I will not be able to watch cable TV on my projector the way we have it planned now! And no matter how I replanned it, unless I dished out some $300 for another receiver and payed $10 per month extra for the card, there really is no way to solve that situation! And it drove me insane! Seriously, I couldn’t solved it! I had the chance to design my cables in that room the way I wanted it but there’s no way of getting the cable TV in there. Sure I can get the TV but no sound, unless I have extra cables along the wall that will look like crap!… so I guess we’re gonna have to pay that extra money so I can sleep again… until I realise the next problem, whatever that may be.
Today I’m pissed! I was planning to make an update explaining how much I love my Helena, but instead I find myself being pissed about an article in Metro this morning. I’ve always like Metro cause they have like a no-bullshit attitude towards news, they just report the news. Sure they have a columnist or two but this wasn’t it. No, this was a 30-40 year old woman (juding by the photo) writing about a report from a swedish company that said that “there’s not a single case of computer game addiction that doesn’t have any links to World of Warcraft. It’s a computerized cocaine”!!
Oh man…. I don’t know where to begin. But lets!!
To start with, let me introduce myself. I started playing Warcraft at european launch in early 2005 and from fall of 2005 to may 2008 I was in one way or another leading guilds and 40 man raids (that was later slimmed down to 25). I played the game almost as much as I worked during that period and I feel pretty comfortable saying I know the game inside and out, every aspect of it. Then in may 2008 I met the woman of my dreams, sold off my main account and settled for my B account that I play occasionally with my friends. But enough of me, let us start…
First off, it’s “what’s the source of the news”. It’s a company. Complete with CEO and everything. Sure they have a green light from the social office, but it still comes down to making money and to do that people need to know they exist so what better way than to call the most played game in the world for cocaine!?
(and yes I do realize the irony of me writing about it here increases their audience, but I’m sure as hell not gonna link to them!)
Secondly, don’t people commit crimes to pay for their cocaine addiction? I have no problem dishing up the 10 euros per month it costs me to play Warcraft. And the kids today ask their parents for money for it. Now how would that sound if a 15 year old asked his mother for 10 euros for cocaine? And don’t ask me how much cocaine you get for 10 euros per month, I have no clue!
Thirdly, the drug dealer. In this case it’s Blizzard who has such a high profile thanks to Warcraft that they can’t afford to NOT listen to criticism. A company so responsible they even built in a parent tool into the game so parents (remember, the ones that pay for the account) can set limits to how much and when the account can be active. How would that go with a drug dealer? “Sorry, can’t sell to you, it’s past your bed time!”…
Fourthly (is that even a word), there are no documented health related issues to playing Warcraft on a regular basis. Yes there have been one or two cases of people dying after playing computer games for days at an end, but that’s not a regular basis! And really people, take two normal people, give one of them cocaine constantly and let the other level up a new char in Warcraft and see which of them dies first! More people die from ice falling off buildings than of Warcraft!
Fifth, I don’t know why people take cocaine but the only reason a person would play the game more than what can be considered “healthy” is if they have serious psychological problems! Because there really is just two ways to play the game. Either you can do it “the casual way” which is to play occasionally with friends and do some small scale stuff and you’re happy just playing with friends and maybe making new ones. Or you can do it “the hardcore way” which is all about one thing – E-PENIS! Yes, that’s the correct word for it! To make your character better geared, more powerful and more so called achievement points for achieving different in-game goals. But it’s all in game and if you have a need to get such a huge e-penis that you play it that much, then you’re not right in the head. And what would you rather have people who are not right in the head do – play Warcraft or do cocaine?
Sixth, now that sweden fails in pretty much every sport we used to own (like skiing or tennis), what’s not so known in the general media is the status Sweden has in cyber athleticism! We dominate! And last time I checked the most famous Warcraft player (besides Jenkins) was “kungen” who happens to be Swedish, leading the most famous guild that’s made up of a lot of swedes. Now how is that related to cocaine? Do we have any chart of cocaine addicts that are doing well and putting Sweden on the map?
Seven – the good feelings of cocaine (as I understand it) are artificial and chemically induced and effects your body so much that if done on a regular basis makes the body so addictive to it that you need weeks of detox to get out of it. Cause as I understand my House, cocaine isn’t something you cut cold turkey. The good feelings in Warcraft comes from achieving goals in game and the “just a little bit more” feeling is constantly there. However, pulling the power cable will quickly remedy that – cold turkey style. The body won’t be chemically dependant on anything and after a few days he/she won’t even care. I know, I sold my paladin account without any drawback symptoms what so ever.
I don’t for a second regret the almost 3 years I spent playing the game as much as I did. I made alot of friends. I learned a lot more about people skills. I learned how to motivate people, how to balance being nice and enforcing discipline, I learned alot. And I had fun.Which is what it’s all about for me.
So yeah, you come here and call me a cocaine addict if you want to and I’ll give you a crushing blow with my thunderfury! (how very old-school!)
//RoLaren aka Tandie
Edit: My bad, they said “cocaine”, not “heroin”.
I guess you all know that there’s this big trial in sweden against Pirate Bay. The prosecutor and representatives of the media business are charging them with aiding and abetting copyright violations and all that crap because of the site and torrent tracker. And the defense is saying “no haven’t done anything wrong”…
The fun thing here is that from a legal stand point they didn’t (as far as I understand it). Morally they did ofcourse and their disregard for copyrights and encouraging anarchy is way off, but nothing they can’t get convicted for. And the swedish court system has time and time again proved that they are all about the letter off the law rather than the spirit of the law so it’s my bet they’ll walk away free.
For whatever it’s worth, either way the losing side will appeal and we’ll be right back here in a year or so…
I’m pretty proud to be as high tech as I am, but sometimes being hi tech sucks! Last week me and my girlfriend had a sensitive argument, the kind that can kill a relationship if you phrase things wrong or say stuff in the heat of the moment. So it was done through SMS. The advantage of that is ofcourse you don’t risk ending up calling her fat just to be cruel. But it also has one big setback! Sometimes if you send long text messages it doesn’t deliver it all at once, but in small pieces. Some messages where chopped so badly that if we hadn’t waited for the rest it’d killed it! So that really didn’t help… hate emotional rollercoster rides like that!
I forgot, there was a small point to that road trip – testing my new HTC smart phone with builtin GPS! Although it was never a problem finding anything it was a good test run and it worked perfectly 🙂
Just wish they could make better batteries!!
The other day I got to talking with one of our senior partners at the lawfirm about some case he was working on and what a big mess it was with this company that had been bought up and merged with some other company and split it by the EU and stuff, it was a big mess. So I told him to “just google it, you’d be surprised” but he didn’t really believe me so he asked if I could do it. So I got 3 things to look up on the internet, information about 2 different companies and try to find if they had anything to do with each other and the third was to find info about some guy that was involved. After about 3 hours of searching around I had complete background info of both companies and how they were related (which unfortunately for them they were!) and a pretty good biography of that dude, including his wife’s age and maiden name.
It’s scary what you can achieve with all the public search engines and archives on the internet. And it also got me to think just how much information someone could put together about me an dmy family only using this website… let’s hope noone ever has a reason to do that!
There’s alot going on but I really don’t know how much I can say without having to face the music “in real life”. That “chapter closed” is still closed, we’re simply just not talking anymore which makes me kinda sad how something so good can end so badly. But I did manage to get another date through the web-dateing site, but she had found this place even before we first met so I’m not gonna go into details, don’t wanna ruin another one. And I “dinged” 93 kilos the other day (“dinged” is a very technical World of Warcraft term for achieving a goal), but unfortunately I’ve really slacked the past few days so gotta be careful with that. Other than that – life walking along nicely with my biggest concerns being if I should buy a new 8 gig Clix MP3 player or wait for the 16 gig Apple iTouch.
It took a friend reminding me of a topic of conversation on saturday night to realise what it was that had that affect on me that I couldn’t explain. It seems we got to talking about computer gaming, one of the few things here in life where I rule, and _she_ (you all know her by now) expressed some opinions that … well, let’s just say that had a guy said it may have gotten physical. I dunno if I am way, way too analynical about stuff, but I can spend hours wondering about one little conversation, the phrasing or even one word. But yesterday as I was going over what was said and done on saturday evening… I think I don’t like her at all anymore. Which is cool considering that for the past few months I haven’t known what to feel..
Oh, pizza!!
Talk more about the Live Earth concert tomorrow, right now I’m gonna go all geek on you. Two major things in the geek world at the moment that’s pissing me off alot at the moment.
First one is Piratebay again. Remember that site that hosts alot of torrent links with which you can download movies, music and all that stuff. Swedish police have tried shutting it down for years, and two years ago our attorney general, Tomas Bodström, pretty much ordered a raid after getting a call from Hollywood and swedish police confiscated all hardware, which shut down alot of unrelated sites who happened to be there in the same datacenter. It was the biggest abuse of power and should have blown up big. And it kinda did cause they lost the election a few months after. But now the guy who was the attorney general is in charge of an anti-child pornography organisation that reported piratebay for hosting child pornography which is gonna result in them getting blacklisted on swedish ISP’s so swedes won’t be able to visit the site. Total powerabuse again! And believe me, every time child pornography is found on that site 10.000 geeks report it right away and it’s removed fast as hell. ‘Cause just because we think it’s ok to download a movie that’s not worth the cost of going to the movies doesn’t mean we have more tolerance for that shit!
Then it’s a consumerist site in the states that got reports that Geek Squad (a bunch of computer geeks fixing everyone’s computer Ghostbuster style) techies were copying stuff of the computers that they were fixing. So they rigged a computer with porno and sent it in with orders to fix something completely unrelated and recorded as the techie copied the stuff and “OMG! the invasion of privacy!! he even copied my holiday pictures!”. I’ve done my time trying to fix computers like that and believe me… it’s common. It’s so common that I didn’t even think people did not know that. Don’t they remember how Gary Glitter got caught? He had child pornography on his computer when it broke down, he handed it in and the geek fixing it saw it and reported it to the police. Copying porn, MP3’s, movies or software isn’t an invasion of privacy (ok, maybe if the porn features you) and I’m fairly sure all these places have a clause saying “we will search your harddrive”. And about the holiday pics? Do you really think geeks wants to see your holiday pics? Nope, it just ends with JPG and was just got copied because you wanted your computer back asap, when the geek sees it he’ll hardly save it. Ofc where I work now this doesn’t happen since we have a “do not save files on your harddrive, and everything on your harddrive belongs to the company!” policy.
Why do people think geek don’t have morals or integrity?!
Busy few days. I’ve been to a course in Sharepoint which is gonna be big. Well, big in the computer world anyway. Other than that I’m … actually almost afraid to write stuff here since my new… is girlfriend too soon to say?… anyway, she’s reading this place so I’m careful right now.
Another thing is that a friend of mine lost her cousin during the weekend and I’ve done my best to support her and it got me thinking back 5 years to when I lost my best friend all of a sudden. Very depressing indeed but a good reminder that no matter how much we try to control our lives there’s nothing we can do when life serves these curveballs.
This server has been acting very strangely in the past couple of days so I had to leave WoW for awhile to try to figure it out. Seems that someone had gotten access somewhere to this server and started putting up moves for download and that caused huge overload in this server. I removed all the files and hopefully capped the little security hole they go through and it should now work just fine
So I’m chatting on MSN with my niece in scotland. She really enjoys talking on MSN and it’s a nice pause from work. The only trouble is she uses some weird sign language that I don’t get. Like when I asked why she wasn’t in school yet, and she said she doesn’t start until 9. Well it’s 9:25 here so?… and she sent this back:
And things are going better now, eliminating one problem at a time. But women are still impossible and unpredictable. I don’t know what, if anything, I may have done wrong with this one but she’s not talking to me for whatever reasons.
Yesterday I had decided to buy a new cell phone. I did my homework and decided to buy a Ericsson Z550i. I checked up where I could buy them pretty cheap and also had them in stock NOW! ANd that was Elgiganten, one of our biggest electonics warehouses. When I got there they didn’t have any in the display shelf so I had to take a number for the information desk dealing with phones. After waiting 15 minutes it was my turn and the guy told me “they are so new we don’t have them on display yet!”, then he punched in some stuff on the computer and gave me a postit with a number on it. “Go to the cashier and give her this number”. Ok, so I did, and you guessed it – take a number. After only 10 minutes of waiting it was my turn, gave her the note, she punched the computer a bit, charged my credit card and gave me a receipt and said “ok, go over there, that’s where they have the actual product!”. So I went over there and… yeap, take a number. 15 minuters after that I had my phone.
Should it really take 45 minute to go to a huge store like this to buy a phone when you know exactly what phone you want and you know they have it in stock?… or am I just a bit too much of a perfectionist for this?
Btw, tribute to Steve Irwin.