Chaos, confusion and me

Yepp, it’s true. I have sold my soul. Today I bought my first ever Apple product, an iPhone. And after spending a few hours with it I love it. Sure, it has it’s quirks. Inserting the SIM-card wasn’t the most obvious thing to do for example. And it still lacks a few features like expected in a modern phone like MMS etc.

The one thing that reminds me that Bill getting nice and cuddly in his old age whereas Jobs only becomes more and more evil is iTunes and the configuration lockdown on my precious iPhone. Why can’t I use my own ringtones? Why do I have to buy them on iTunes? Well I don’t, there are software that can solve this problem but still.

The same is valid for my messaging signal. I can’t use a custom messaging signal. Using some tips and tricks on other blogs I can convert the signal into the correct format but I can not upload it to my iPhone without jailbreaking¹ it. Why Jobs, why? I want to configure my iPhone with my custom sound just as I have on my other phones.

¹ Jailbreaking an iPhone means removing the built in limitations in the software that prevents you from using your phone as you wish.

Hardware, Life, Rant | 1 Comment »

This weekend I went out to visit my parents and siblings on the farm. My first encounter was with a nine week old Cocker Spaniel pup so I was off to a good start. It’s always great to come out to the farm and wind down with some country life and the company of animals. My version of country life is patting the dog and watching the wildlife through the window. My sisters version of country life is currently being an extremly busy midwife to 600+ ewes. So far just over 400 lambs have seen the light of day. I intend to go down and have a look at them as soon as I solved the constant problem of my family’s various ISPs, e-mail accounts and general computer problems.
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Life, Rant, Software | 2 Comments »

I finally got enough courage to update my Wordpress installation from 2.0.4 to 2.3.2 and although time consuming it worked almost out of the box. The pages didn’t render at all at first. After activating my plug-ins the pages rendered but included several messages begining with “Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 0 in …” The More Smilies plug-in is broken and there doesn’t seem to be a new version on the horizon. I deactivated the plug-in and all was back to normal. Woohoo!

If you should come across any other oddities please leave a comment and I’ll try to fix them.

Blog | 4 Comments »

… often lead to unwanted experiences. Currently I have to take the Stockholm undergrounds blue line north out of Stockholm in order to get to my customer. This line forks of into two different directions a few stations before my station. As it is I should only take trains that go towards Akalla, never those that go to Hjulsta.

This morning as I came down to the platform the electrical sign said “Hjulsta 1 minute”. I said to myself: “This isn’t my train, let it go. It’s important to always verify that you get on right train. Make it a habit to always check the sign prior to boarding the train.” I found an abandoned newspaper and started reading it. A train came into the station. I steped aboard, sat down and proceeded to read my paper.
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Life | 1 Comment »

I boldly stole the concept from my friend Mika and his blog Mind Matters. The concept is to challenge one self into changing a bad habit or trying a new habit for a while.

As it is I don’t take particularly good care of myself. I eat too much, I exercise too little, I don’t sleep enough etc. Fairly common stuff as it is but now is the time to change that. This first 30-day trial is in two parts aiming to get me into bed earlier than usual.

Part 1: Not to watch any TV series or movies before 21:00 hours so I can get things done before that.

Part 2: Get ready for bed around 22:00 hours, lights out at 23:00 hours at the latest.

The trial started yesterday, Monday 21 January 2008, and will end on Wednesday 20 February. After one day I score 100% on part 1 but 0% on part 2.

Blog, Life | 3 Comments »

Well, there hasn’t been very much winter in Sweden this winter. Luckily for me my old job, or rather a bunch of enthusiast at my old job, planned our annual ski trip to the north and I hadn’t been spurned for changing my allegiance. This years trip went to Norway, specifically to Trysil where they had snow in abundance. Woohoo!
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Life | No Comments »

Good thing I’m writing this today and not yesterday when I was out shopping, or at least trying to shop, or a lot of very very bad words would have been published on the Internet by yours truly.

I have previously tried to buy furniture for my kitchen at IKEA in Kungens Kurva but they where all sold out. Well, yesterday I made an other attempt. I actually checked on the web that they had things in store before going there. As it turns out everybody else in Stockholm had had the same idea. As it so happens there is a group on Facebook titled “I Secretly Want To Punch Slow Walking People In The Back Of The Head” and I’m a member. Imagine the torture of navigating through a overcrowded IKEA.
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Life, Rant | 3 Comments »

Since I have sold my bookcases, and most other furniture, in conjunction with this move from Linköping to Stockholm all my books live in cardboard boxes (as do most other things as well). This limits my access to the books some what at the moment. Add to this that the ride to work takes 10-15 minutes in a cramped subway making reading while traveling an unfeasible luxury. All this adds upp making it seem unlikely that I’ll finish this soon.

And instead of buying new shiny bookcases I have started oogling Science Fiction Bokhandeln (The Science Fiction Bookstore, a cheap, well stocked Swedish Sci-Fi & Fanstasy bookstore) again. Should I submit to this desire to replenish my selection of good fantasy books RAUBitB¹ will most definitely be delayed for a long, long while.

¹ The Read All Unread Books in the Bookcase project

Blog, Life, Litterature | No Comments »

Sometimes I am truly amazed by human stupidity, or rather lack of reasoning. Recently I sold some stuff on Tradera which is a Swedish branch of Ebay. Among the items sold where bookcases in various sizes. Today one of the buyers, or rather the buyers boyfriend, came by to pay for it and pick it up. The bookcase is a standard tall and wide IKEA Billy. It measures 202 cm in height, 80 cm in width and 28 cm in depth. And the guy had rented a compact car!?
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Life, Rant | 2 Comments »

It’ll be a gargantuan task to find the time but I must upgrade to a later version of Wordpress and Akismet. As it is my comments in moderation fill up in no time with useless spam. And I should probably do something about the theme as well. Oh well, …

And then there are those posts I want to write. The odd thing is when ever I get the urge to blog I don’t have a computer nearby or I’m busy working with/for a customer and it wouldn’t look too good if I started blogging. I wonder if it’s a pavlovian thing or just bad timing.

Blog | No Comments »