Work Xmas party

The day after Huaweis Xmas party, it was time for an Xmas party at my work. For as long as I have worked there I have never heard of such a party. So I went there to hang out with some of my colleagues.

It started around 17:00 but we came there after 17:30 and by then the whole corridor was packed with people eating, drinking and talking. It was a nice way to mingle with hundreds of known and unknown. Most of them were unknown to me, but if we had this a little more frequently then soon it would be a totally different thing. I believe this is good for the atmosphere at a workplace so I would like to see this maybe twice a year.

We were offered some small plate with different pieces of food. Not much at all so I wish they had some bread to fill the belly with. But there was candy here and there so I ate quite a lot of chocolate. With the food we had the option of beer, wine or water. I think I had at least five glasses of wine so I got a bit drunk, but at a party like this most people need to get a bit drunk to create the friendly atmosphere to get people to talk to each others.

During the evening a choir walked down the corridor and stopped here and there to sing some Xmas songs. They were quite good. Better than me at least... :P

The party was supposed to end at 19:00 and by that time they started to clear off all the food and drinks. Many of us were not ready to go home yet so we stayed and talked to after 20:00. By then most people were gone and my friends went downtown to keep the party going in some bar. I went home to Girlwing to help her prepare for our guests from England that will come in the weekend.

I think it was fun and it was good to see people I work with in a relaxed situation. I really home we will do the same for next Xmas.

HuaWei X-mas Party

A couple of days ago I got an invitation to Huawei´s X-mas party at the Chinese Embassy in Sweden. As I was told the dress code was "Business Casual". I thought about this for a while and came up with the idea that for some people this will mean to wear a full suite with tie, because this is what is expected of them in their office. For others this will mean a nice sweater with a shirt under it. The only suite I have is about ten years old and only worn during friends weddings. So I was not so keen of wearing a suit, but a nice sweater and a shirt is something I can wear to dress up. I quite often wear this at work but I felt it was needed to buy something new.

So I went to the store and asked for help to match up something good for me. I am not afraid of something colorful so I got a nice red sweater and a blue/gray shirt to have under it. With this I wore a pair of beautiful black trousers and pair of shiny black shoes. I was so handsome.


The party started at 16:00 with mingle and simple Chinese performance. I could not leave work that early but I got on the subway at about 16:30. On the way I took this picture of the invitation card.
Notice that the R.S.V.P is 18th Nov and I got the invitation late on the 8th Dec. No big deal... Just check out the invitation... I think it is fun that I was invited at all.

About 17:15 I arrived at the embassy with some other of Huawei´s customers and one of the employees that I know. That felt good so I knew that I was going in the right direction. In the entrance of the gates to Chinese territory inside the embassy there were some security guards and employees of Huawei. I knew one of them since before so there was no problem for me to enter. I didn't even have to show my invitation card, but I showed it anyway just for the fun of it. He just waved to me and smiled and I walked in to the Chinese land.

Soon I entered the main building and welcoming me was my sweet Girlwing who for the moment worked with greeting all the guests. I was directed to hang of my clothes in the employee area. Then I walked around among the guests and looking to see if there was anyone I ever met before during my life as a Remedy ARS Consultant. I didn't see any familiar faces from that time. I was hoping too much. Most of the people were purchase managers, CEOs and similar people responsible for decisions about purchasing telecommunication equipment. Not much close to the people that is responsible for IT support and IT process tools. Another thing that struck me that everybody were wearing a dark suite, with a discrete tie. Hmmm.. I am not wearing a suite.... I am wearing a nice read sweater. I was standing out very clear from the crowd. Oh shit... Actually I didn't care that much about this... but instead I was feeling sorry for all the people being so stiff, boring and imagine less. I was expecting some people to wear suite but I didn't expect everybody to wear that. What does "Business Casual" mean really?

Girlwing introduced me to some customers she met through her work and I talked to some of her colleagues. I also watched when some calligraphy artists were writing some of the customers names with Chinese characters. There was also a person there making Chinese tea in the proper way for the customers to taste.

So far the party looked like a western party with some Chinese details. So now it was time to continue in a Chinese way. That means that everybody should do something together. Usually that involves everybody listening to speeches or watching performances. So everybody goes in to a room filled with chairs, just like in a theater, in front of a stage. First we watched a short tourist advertisement movie about Beijing. It was interesting for me with many beautiful scenes. This movie was probably the embassy's idea.

Then there was some performances. Here I think they did a mistake of NOT informing the audience that they didn't bring the best performers they could find in China. Instead they had asked some young Chinese students who for the moment are studying in universities here in Sweden. In Asia it is impolite to say "No" so off course they participate if their country asks them to perform for the Swedish customers.

In China it is very common that the parents pay a lot of money and energy to get their kids educated. It is also very common that the kids get some extra education to play some instrument, dancing, calligraphy or playing weiqi. So many student are skilled in those arts. So we got the opportunity to enjoy some traditional instruments by these student. They were very skilled but it was obvious that they were not professionals. In the dancing acts there was one girl that was very good while the others didn't really match up to her skill. There were also two singing acts and here came the second mistake in my opinion. They sang in English. Hey, we Swedes are quite good in English and we know how these songs are supposed to be sung. But it was cute... I only wish that they had sung in Chinese. In that way we would have no idea if they made any mistakes, and it would be more in theme with the traditional Chinese instruments that were played in other acts.

The funnies thing with the whole act were the two presenters that talked between the acts. Especially the girl. She had no idea of her lines and she had to look in the note hidden in her hand all the time. At one moment when the male presenter asked her "Do you like to see movies" and she looked at the note and hesitated for two seconds and then said "Of course". Was that so hard to remember? ;)

Anyway I enjoyed the show and I understood quite soon what the deal was, but I was afraid that many in the audience didn't get it and thought that it was bad. It was obvious that the students didn't get so much time to practice before the show so I hope they were pleased with what they delivered. All credits too you all!

The performance took a while and now we was starving. As soon is was over everybody had to leave the room so they could remove all the chairs and make the room ready for the food. It was an Asian buffet. So tasty! It almost felt as I was back in China. Someone said it was the embassy's chef who had made all the food. If he did... Good chef! And it was a lot of food. After everybody had eaten about two thirds of the food was still left. I was so hungry and focused on the food so I forgot to take any picture of it. :P

After everybody was filled with Chinese food it was time to round things off with a great show of fireworks. This was the most amazing fireworks show I ever witnessed this close. The whole show took about 30 minutes or something like that. The last five minutes there were some really big pieces. The ground shook of the explosion when the rockets left the ground. The alarms of several of the embassy's cars went of "wee wee wee wee". Several seconds of nothing... and then the most amazing colors and lights lit up the sky. Again and again and again. I am still amazed... 8)

When the show was over and we walked out from the embassy, the police came and checked out what was happening. Probably someone had called them about explosions over at the embassies. I am not surprised... :)

New workplace

Now I have moved to a new workplace. Down to the dungeons, far away from the coffee machine. It is a room for 24 persons and so far we are 14 here. There have been no actions taken to reduce the noise from people talking and the wall paint is a sharp orange color from the 70th. We probably have to live with the ugly colors, but I heard that there is some hope for getting some noise reduction in the form of plants and soft screens.

During planning everybody was fighting to get a window seat, except me. I picked the seat far away from the windows in the back of the room. I am a bit more light sensitive than my colleagues and I don't want to annoy them, and me, by pulling down the shades every day.

In the picture here, you can see my small workspace. People tease me for my big fat monitor. I am almost the only one at work still using a CRT. But I am picky about the resolution. I am using 1600x1200 and if I take an 19" LCD that they offer I will get a resolution of 1280x1024. So I rather let them tease me and wait until I can get the LCD displays with 1920x1200 resolution. They exist in the market but it takes a good while until my work decides to bring them in. Actually last week I saw that they now offer 26" LCD widescreens. 26" is a lot... 24" or less would be enough. I will ask my boss and see what she will say about it. The small LCD to the right in the picture is not mine. It was put there by mistake. I let it be for now...

On my big fat screen you can see a pro weiqi game. It is my screen-saver program sgfsaver that is replaying the weiqi pro games on random. On my small laptop screen you can see an old background image I made using povray. It say "ARS". Actually it is not my default background... I put it there only for the picture. :)

O'Learys

I am now at the Copenhagen airport in Denmark with Jimbo. We have been on a BMC CMDB Atrium 2.X Administration course. Now the week is over and we are on our way back to Sweden.

We have a couple of hours to kill at the airport so we are eating dinner and drinking a couple of beers at O'Learys. The burger was good but was not very warm when served. The beer was as usual very good. Soon we are done and will look for some present for our girlfriends.

What should we buy? What do girls like?

Decide before you read

I played a game of go (weiqi) recently. Quite early in the game I was ahead so much that it should have felt so hard for my opponent to continue without to resign.

In those situations you should try to play simple. Don't hesitate to connect and give away small points if that makes you stronger. Never play aggressive moves that create fights that you might lose.

I played an aggressive move to stop my opponents advance in to my territory. It was stupid... but it was a reflex move and as soon as I placed the stone I saw it and thought... OH NO! This is not good... This looks dangerous! And yes... my opponent cross cut me.

From this I had to find the best way to minimize the damage. So I started reading. I read all the variations of all the moves I could think of. Then I saw it! The move! The move that would stop my opponent and then save all my territory in a single move.

So I played it... and after two moves I realized that I read so wrong. Fuck! Now the opponent is running out with his stones in to the heart of my territory. From here it went down the hill and soon I had lost on time.

I showed the game to Girlwing and I got scolded for playing this stupid move that let my opponent run out in to my territory. I tried to defend myself and explain my stupid reading mistake. No use. She just got upset of me blaming on bad reading.

But I didn't feel that I was blaming. So we talked about this for a while and after a while I got it. I should never had read in the first place. First I should have decided in what direction I need to play to get a winning situation. After that I should read and find the move to realize this direction of play.

In my future games this will be something to think about, but it will be really hard. I have really no experience of this way of thinking. Usually I just go on hard reading and sometimes pure feeling. But I think Girlwing have some really good idea about this and it is probably the perfectly right thing to do.

We will see if this knowledge will make any measurable impact on the results in my games.

Bowling hall dessert

Yeah, ice cream! This was a really great treat. The vanilla tasted great but strange and and was the subject of discussion for about 20 minutes. I am not sure that it was pure vanilla ice cream. Probably some other spice included.

Bowling hall dinner

Dinner time! I got a toast with red onion slaw(?) and a beef on top. A bit strange but good. Of course a Newcastle Brown Ale to drink.

Disco Bowling

It's hard to take any pictures of people in the bowling hall. So here is a picture of the bowling hall in Västerås. Our department is out for fun on our yearly get together. I didn't perform so well but ended in top-10.

Fika at work

After lunch we had a department meeting. Halfway through the meeting we took a fika break with coffee and ice cream. I love ice cream! :D

Sambal Oelek, Västerås

Today I ate lunch at Sambal Oelek in Västerås. Tasty tasty! But it could be a lot more spicy. The name of the dish is Bò kho.

Mobile blogging test

I have had this blogger applet in my Sony Ericsson mobile phone for quite some time now. So it is about time to test it out.

The picture is taken with the phone camera not so long ago this autumn. Cold in the air and the poor bug have problems moving. I helped him off my path to the grass on the side and then kept walking home.

Slackware 13.0

It has been out since the end of August but I just noticed it last week. I was used to be freshly updated about this distribution for many years. Every now and then I went in to the Slackware change log to see how far they progressed on the next release. I have been using Slackware since my first experience with Linux in 1994 when I installed it on my i486 PC. 15 years is a long time...

But now I have been using Ubuntu for half a year since my old server melted and I had to buy new hardware. So I didn't find as much interest in following the Slackware distribution in detail. It is a bit sad and I feel like a traitor, but I was so impressed by Ubuntu that I just had to try it. Ubuntu has been a lot of joy and a lot of ripped hair from my soon bald head (because I am used to the Slackware way), but that is another story.

Slackware write in the release anouncement "Probably the biggest change is the addition of an official 64-bit port." and that is so cool. Personally I think it is a little late considering that AMD came out with 64 bit processors ages ago. Other than that there is a load of new cool and improved stuff in the latest release and I am tempted to install it somewhere.

Why don't you download it and give it a try!

Star Wars X-Wing Origami

Would you like to create your own Star Wars X-Wing starfighter out of paper? Just use a square piece of paper and fold it in to this famous Star Wars starfighter.

I am sure it won't fly, but it can be good knowledge to impress your son, sibling or any other younger Star Wars fan.

Follow this origami instruction and soon you have your X-Wing starfighter in your hand.

If you think this origami is too hard or if you don't think it is fancy enough, you can try to print out the Star Wars X-Wing starfighter parts with your computers printer, cut them out and glue them together to something that looks like the thing here.

On this site you can find the free down-loadable parts to a lot of different Star Wars objects. They really look amazing! I guess you need a lot of patience to cut out all the fine details and a steady hand to glue them all together. I dare you to try!

Chinese weiqi cartoon

A new Chinese cartoon about weiqi might give some hope for old Hikaru No Go fans.

I have not seen the cartoon so I have no idea what it is about, but it really looks like there is a lot of weiqi involved. I will ask Girlwing later what it is about.

Riots in Xinjiang, China

These days there have been some media coverage about the riots in Xinjiang, China. What strikes me is how biased the news is based on who is telling them. So far the most neutral source I found is wikipedia.org. That site is probably closest to the truth, but you should never trust anything you read. So if you are interested you can read about the Ürümqi riots there.

For reference you can read some here in Swedish:
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kravaller-i-kinesiska-xinjiang-1.905589
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/hankinesiska-motdemonstrationer-mots-med-targas-1.906625
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/nya-kravaller-i-vastra-kina-1.907036
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/soldater-strommar-in-i-urumqi-1.907126
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/kinesisk-polis-forsoker-stoppa-nya-oroligheter-i-urumqi-1.907175

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/stor-oro-bland-uigurer-i-sverige-1.906102
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/terroriststamplade-organisationer-beskylls-for-upplopp-1.907259
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/kina-expert-socialt-missnoje-bakom-valdet-1.906834
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/konfrontationen-parallell-till-konflikten-itibet-1.906387

It looks like the same no matter what Swedish news paper you read. Probably because no reporter is on the remote location anyway and all information they get is from TT and for some reason this information can be trusted so no one is checking anything before printing the news.

Do you know of any truly neutral news source out there?

It is really a joke if one has to trust a wiki to get "reliable" information about current happenings.

Joseki Every Double Digit Kyu Should Know

As a beginner of weiqi (go) there is always this problem in how to play in the opening. The primary suggestion is to start playing in the corners and then move out along the sides and save the center for last.

But how should you play in the corners? First you can place one stone on or close to the 4-4 point and wait for the opponent to approach it. And then what? I would tell you to experiment and learn from your mistakes. Others say that you should learn Joseki. We are both right!

On Sensei's Library there is now a page about Joseki Every Double Digit Kyu Should Know. With "Double Digit Kyu (DDK)" they mean beginner players with a rank from 10 kyu to 30 kyu. A player that just learned the rules is said to have the rank of 30 kyu. I am at the moment a player of the strength 4 kyu (Singe Digit Kyu) so I don't really qualify, but I have always been ignoring to learn joseki so there is even something for me there to learn.

But remember... you don't get strong just because you know some (or a lot) of joseki by heart. You get strong when you understand the moves behind the joseki and understand how to choose the best joseki for the current board position.

So don't memorize... Study!

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Released

Finally we have a new version 3.5 of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. As usual there are several new and improved features. The most talked about is the new "private browsing" porn mode. Other nice features are improvements to tabs, speed and the awesome "awesome bar".

There were three days ago that this Mozilla Firefox 3.5 arrived and the Mozilla Foundation have this cool live download statistics. As of this writing there are almost nine millions downloads. Quite impressive! :)

If you are new to Mozilla Firefox you can start with some nice Tips & Tricks. After that you should really take a look at all the nice
add-ons that exist for Firefox.

The first add-ons that I added was:

• AdBlock Plus
  
• Tiny Menu
• Googlepedia
• ColorfulTabs
• AutoPager
  

Have fun with your safe and fast Firefox web browser!

I saw a Swedish star!

I saw a Swedish star! Or as we say in Sweden "Jag mötte Lassie". It was on the Stockholm Arlanda airport and I just picked up my suitcase from the luggage band. I started to walk away with my suitcase when I looked over to my right and saw this blond girl standing a couple of meters away and looking me straight into my eyes.

I was thinking "She is cute... She looks very familiar, how do I know her?". Then I realized "It is Amanda Jensen"! I like her a lot and I think that she is a very good artist. She seem to be a fun and nice person in private. I also read that she likes cats a lot, just like me. Many points to people that likes cats!

After a few seconds I realized that it is not nice to stare at people so I looked away and a couple of steps later I looked back at her and I was surprised to see that she was still looking at me. Maybe she recognized me as somebody else and believed that she knew me too.

Too bad I didn't go over there to take a picture of her and ask for an autograph. That would have been nice to have. Maybe I will get another chance later in my life. We will see...

Stockholm Open 2009 - Day 2

So the second day of Stockholm Open weiqi tournament is over. How did it go? Very well I must say. After two losses and one win in the first day, I managed to get two wins in the second day, leading up to a total of three wins out of five! This was my goal and I am happy to have achieved it.

My losses both came from two 3 kyu players and my wins came from a 4 kyu and two 5 kyu players. This clearly shows that I am stable at my 4 kyu for the moment, which is kind of a relief.

The first game of today was not very interesting. My main worry was my opponents large potential territory. I made some invasions and one was quite successful but I played wrong which could have led to a ten thousand year ko but I played wrong again and it became a regular ko. But my opponent ignored my first ko threat so it ended quite soon. Instead I could play two moves in a row to make life in another corner. In the end I made quite a lot of territory in the middle of the board and I won by 19,5 points.

The second game was much more interesting. I opened as black with a chinese opening. White started direct with an invasion of the upper left and left some stones there without a base. I left them too, waiting for a good opportunity to attack. Next to this group I had a not so secure group myself. Halfway in the game my stones got cut of but I managed to get enough space for eyes. After some preparations I managed to cut of the group of white stones that I had my eyes on for such a long time and I captured eight stones. You can see the hole after them in the upper left in the picture. As a price I had to pay with the stones in the top middle. Then white made some small attacking moves around the board and then I realize that the whole center is white. Oh... I must get in to the center... now! So I put a stone quite deep with hope of easy escape. It turned out to not be so easy. As you see in the picture, they are not free yet. For a moment I believed that I was safe and I forgot to think of my stones... we played a bounch of stones until I wake up and realized that I was not connected with the outside. Oh no... I have to capture something! Lucky for me I had the liberties on my side and my opponent was forced to resign. An interesting game with a very nice opponent (Chibisai).

Yes... how did it go for Girlwing? She won the whole tournament! All five games! :D

Before the tournament I promised her a boat cruise if she won the tournament... So sometime during the summer you might see some blog entries from that adventure. So far I only know that she want to go with a big, new and fancy boat. I guess there are not so many of that kind but we'll see what we'll find.

Stockholm Open 2009 - Day 1

Stockholm Open 2009 - Day 1

The first day of Stockholm Open 2009 is now over. At the moment Girlwing is in the lead after three wins. I didn't play so good and is below the middle in the result list after the first day.

The first game I played against Chili. At first it looked OK for me but then I made a really stupid mistake in the opening which ruined most of my big corner/side territory and made my group split in two. Later I made another mistake on the other side of the board reducing the territory a lot. So I lost quite big...

The second game you can see in the picture. The lover right corner was totally black (mine... all mine... my precious...). White in the middle, top and right was not secure and I just had to attack and gain more points. But I wasted everything and for a while my groups was in danger. In the end I had taken his territory and he had taken mine. So strange game... but I won by 2.5 points.

The third game was another loss. I made a couple of big mistakes and my opponent did not. He thinks a lot and don't do anything hasty and then think some more. I was a bit restless and that is probably why I make mistakes like that.

Tomorrow we play the last two games. Lets see how it goes... I want two wins! Let me be strong!

Stockholm Open 2009 - Day 2

Stockholm Open 2009

Tomorrow it is time for the 2009 version of Stockholm Open weiqi tournament. I have not been playing or practicing as I should. I am a bit worried that I will not play at the level of 4 kyu. I will do my best and hopefully I get three wins out of five. I want two wins of three tomorrow. That would feel good.... and then at least one win on Sunday.

Girlwing will be in the top group fighting for the top three places. She didn't either practice as she should before the tournament. Hopefully she have enough knowledge stored away in her weiqi brain. We'll see...

Anyway, we will both do our best and have some fun. The most important is to spend some time with our weiqi buddies. See you tomorrow! :)

Stockholm Open 2009 - Day 1

The White House 2.0

The government of U.S.A. with Barack H. Obama is doing an impressive effort of modernizing the spreading of information. In the official blog from the white house they write about their new channels of information using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube and iTunes.

I think Sweden might be a bit behind here. There are probably many but I only know about one blog being written by a politician and that is one that left office for several years ago. That might say something about the Swedish politicians ability to reach the Swedish people... or maybe it say more about my interest in Swedish politics.

Star Trek 11 - Great reviews

Currently the new Star Trek 2009 movie is getting a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from its 17 reviews. These reviews are supposed to be made of respected film critics, so it is not any hard core Star Trek nerds posting these reviews.

The 100% means that this many critics have given a positive review. The actual score the movie have received so far is an average rating of 7.6/10 which also is very good.

The director J.J. Abrams is getting a lot of positive feedback about how he managed to revive the magic in Star Trek and how he successfully tells the story about young James T. Kirk and Spock.

The premiere will be next week on 7th of May.

I'll be there! Will you?

Apple pie

Yesterday I got the idea to make an apple pie. I googled for a good recipe but it was really hard to find one that seemed to be okay, so I took a couple of them and mixed to make my own recipe.

I started out with a quite small recipe but because I am new at this with baking I cut up way too much apples so I had to compensate with more dough. In the end I had to make two pies of which the smaller one Girlwing and I ate and the larger one I froze to feast on another time.

Boywings apple pie, 6-8 persons.

Dough:
3.5 dl flour
0.5 dl oatmeal
0.5 dl sugar
150 g butter

Filling:
5 apples (I mixed red and green)
1 dl sugar
1 msk cinnamon (I had a little more, maybe 1.2 msk)

• Turn on the oven at 225˚C.
• Mix flour, oatmeal and sugar in a bowl.
  
• Add the butter and use your fingers to break the butters to small pieces so it blends with the flour mix.
• Butter or oil a pan.
  
• Rinse the apples, throw the core but keep the skin.
• Cut the apples into 1x1 cm pieces and put them in the pan.
  
• Add sugar and cinnamon to the apples and mix well.
• Cover the apples with the dough.
• Put in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes. If the pie starts to get too much color you can cover it with some aluminum foil.

Let it cool down some and then enjoy with a lot of vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream. Tasty... :)

In the head of Emily

I just found out that one of my friends have a blog at IT24. Emily is writing about her work with processes, ITIL and all other things she stumble over at work. She is writing in Swedish so if you are able do decrypt the language you can read about what is In the head of a processor. Her posts are written in a smart and funny way and it is worth reading about every one of her trivial and highly interesting reflections.

Get strong at Kibitz

I was reading some random pages on Sensei's Library when I stumble upon this great page about how to Get strong at Kibitz. It is so "on the spot" how it is on KGS.

Check it out!

Who are you, really?

The other day, during a coffee break, we were talking about natural neural programming in the brain of animals and humans. What do we have with us from birth programmed from our genes? Why is some animals ready to run just a couple of hours after being born and why is a human so helpless for several years. I find all of this quite interesting.

Our topic were evolving and transforming several times and somewhere in the discussion while talking about psychology I told about my experience with a personality test I made online a couple of years ago. The Jung Typology Test.

The test is usually referred to as a MBTI-test (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). At first I was a bit skeptical that this was some Internet joke or something, but something felt right and I made the test. It takes some time and then I am done and gets the result.

First it says nothing else than that I have the personality type of an INTJ. What the %¤&# is an INTJ? Well there are some links on the result page to some descriptions of the result. Like this one by Marina Margaret Heiss. More descriptions are made by Keirsey who talk about four temperaments where I belong to the rationals.

Do the test now!

The reason I can recommend this test to people is that it gave me an understanding of who I am. The description of an INTJ fits me very well and I recognize myself in it. I have read special INTJ-forums on the Internet where they discuss the special features we share that are both blessings and handicaps. All of which I too have, more or less.

Only 2% of the population are INTJ so many others might think we are odd and strange... but we are the masterminds and we rule the world! Hee hee hee... ;)

Melodifestivalen song contest

Now it is over for this year. The so loved and so hated song competition Melodifestivalen. For you who don't know what it is I can tell you shortly...

Almost every country in Europe are sending a song (with a performer) to the big Europeans Song Contest (ESC), which will be in Russia this year. It is common that the countries have their own competition first and the winner is sent to the big ESC final.

Sweden just had their own local final to figure out which song to send to the European final ESC. Actually it is a little more complicated than that because we first had thousands of applications sent in to the organizers and they pick out 32 songs that compete in live television in four semifinals. One every Saturday night. Then the TV viewers can vote for their favorite song (or artist) by calling an expensive pay number and the two song with the highest votes get sent to the Swedish final. The two with second highest votes will be sent to the "second chance" and they can perform again after the semi finals and before the big final. Then the two "best" in the second chance get sent to the final and there are 10 songs in the final. But then we have the "international jury" in the background who picks their favorite and sends it to the final and suddenly we have eleven songs in the final. All this is very complicated... and actually I have simplified the rules a lot in my description... :P

Before the final I listened to all the songs and I was sure which one were going to win. Ok, you can never be sure but I knew which one I believed would have the best chance. My favorite was Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory”.

Girlwing and I watched the final last Saturday. I was hoping for Måns and Girlwing was hoping for H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles”. Both Girlwing and I didn't like the desperate song Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla”. The international jury's choice Sofia – ”Alla” was really good but it would feel more right if it was performed by Greece in the EGC. Another song that I liked was Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” and I think it is the largest threat to Måns. Higher in the results I would like to see Emilia – ”You're My World”. B.t.w. You might remember Emilia from her debut song Big Big World.

In the end of the final when all the artist had sang their songs the voting starts. First there are 12 juries giving points. This year it was very strange when the first six juries all had different songs for highest score of 12 points. Usually you can see a pattern of a specific song get several top scores. But not this time and that felt a bit suspicious. Are they trying to make it more exciting and to trigger more people to make phone votes so they can earn more money? I didn't call anyway, but it felt strange.

After all the juries had given their vote the top scoreboard said:

1. Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory” (96 points)
   
2. Sarah Dawn Finer – ”Moving On” (75p)
   
3. Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” (67p)
   
4. H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles” (58p)
   
5. Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla” (51p)
   

After this I felt quite good because Måns were so much ahead. But the thing is that now is it up to the TV viewers to keep voting and their votes are exactly as much worth as the professional juries and you never know how the Swedish people will vote. They usually don't vote as I want. They have a strange taste in music. And now it happens...

Sarah get 12 points from the Swedish TV viewers. Måns got a low score of 48. Alcazar get a medium high score of 72. Caroline get the second highest score of 120 points and now all in the top got their points and it looks like Caroline will win with her terrible song. Girlwing and I swear and say that damn if Caroline win.

We got the time to calculate and reflect over the points. Five in the bottom had not got their points yet and three of them could win the whole contest if they get the last highest score of 144 points. We said that let anyone win as long as it is not Caroline. The points went to the 8th place holder of Malena Ernman – ”La Voix”. That was not expected...

This is the final result:

1. Malena Ernman – ”La Voix” (182 points)
2. Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla” (171 points)
3. E.M.D. – ”Baby Goodbye” (145 points)
4. Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory” (144 points)
5. Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” (139 points)
6. Sarah Dawn Finer – ”Moving On” (87 points)
7. H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles” (82 points)
8. Agnes – ”Love, Love, Love” (40 points)
9. Emilia – ”You're My World” (28 points)
10. Sofia – ”Alla” (12 points)
11. Molly Sandén – ”Så vill stjärnorna” (2 points)

So Sweden will compete with a opera/pop in the European Song Contest later this spring. It can be great and it can become a fiasco.

What do you think?

Create a social network on Ning.com

Do you want to create your own Facebook.com? Or maybe your own XiaoNei.com? Maybe you want to make it more specialized to a certain area? You don't care that much about all your current friends but instead want to focus on your special areas of interest and maybe make some new friends?

That is where Ning.com has found their idea. Let people create their own Social Networks on the Internet. I just heard about it today and it sounds really good compared to Facebook that is getting more and more boring for every day. When will the hype die out? Probably when someone figured out something better and neither Facebook or Myspace will be fast enough to catch up. Maybe that is what we are seeing now? Maybe Ning.com will be able to activate us again and keep the interest alive and permanent? We'll see...

Anyway... I just registered and created a new Social network called The world of WeiQi. The reason that I created it is that there were no social network that was general enough. There only existed one for a weiqi club in America. I thought about creating one for Sweden or Stockholm but I feared that was too small, so what a heck here is a network for the whole world!

Next I need to find a social network for Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, Programming, Linux and all other stuff I find interesting. There already exist a lot of specialized networks and if you miss one, you can always create one on just a couple of simple steps.

If programming languages were...

As a computer programming nerd you often find yourself amused with smart jokes about nerdy stuff like programming and other things like that. So when I the other day got an email with a link where they compare different famous programming languages with religion I can not help to read it and smile approvingly.


If programming languages were cars...

• Ada is a tank. A butt-ugly tank that never breaks down. People laugh uncontrollably if you tell them you drive Ada, but really, do you want to be driving a sports car in a war zone?

• Assembly Language is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it's running, but if you're careful it can go like a bat out of hell.

• Basic is a simple car useful for short drives to the local shops. Once popular with learner drivers, it has recently been stripped down to a shell and rebuilt by a major manufacturer, The new version has been refurbished for longer journeys, leaving only cosmetic similarities to the original model.

• C is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.

• Cobol is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.

• C# is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you're never allowed to use the competitors' products again.

• C++ is a souped-up version of the C racing car with dozens of extra features that only breaks down every 250 miles, but when it does, nobody can figure out what went wrong.

• Eiffel is a car that includes a built-in driving instructor with a French accent. He will help you quickly identify and learn from your mistakes, but don't you dare argue with him or he'll insult you and throw you out of the car.

• Erlang is a fleet of cars that all cooperate to get you where you want to go. It takes practice to be able to drive with one foot in each of several cars, but once you learn how you can drive over terrain that would be very hard to navigate any other way. In addition, because you're using so many cars, it doesn't matter if a few of them break down.

• Forth is a car you build yourself from a kit. Your car doesn't have to look or behave like anyone else's car. However, a Forth car will only go backwards. FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN !

• Fortran is a pretty primitive car; it'll go very quickly as long as you are only going along roads that are perfectly straight. It is believed that learning to drive a Fortran car makes it impossible to learn to drive any other model.

• Java is a family station wagon. It's easy to drive, it's not too fast, and you can't hurt yourself.

• Haskell is an incredibly elegantly-designed and beautiful car, which is rumored to be able to drive over extremely strange terrain. The one time you tried to drive it, it didn't actually drive along the road; instead, it made copies of itself and the road, with each successive copy of the road having the car a little further along. It's supposed to be possible to drive it in a more conventional way, but you don't know enough math to figure out how.

• Lisp looks like a car, but with enough tweaking you can turn it into a pretty effective airplane or submarine.

• Mathematica is a well-designed car that borrowed a lot from the Lisp car without giving it nearly the credit it deserved. It can solve equations to determine the most efficient way to get to the destination, but it costs a fortune

• Matlab is a car designed for novice drivers going on short trips over terrain similar to the terrain the Mathematica car is usually driven over. It is very comfortable when driving over this terrain, but if you go off the trail even a little the car becomes so hard to drive that more snobby drivers refuse to even acknowledge that it's a car.

• Ocaml is a very sexy European car. It's not quite as fast as C, but it never breaks down, so you end up going further in less time. However, because it's French, none of the controls are in the usual places.

• Perl is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver's manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a Perl car, you won't be able to drive anyone else's.

• PHP is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, it's bizarre and hard to handle but everybody still wants to drive it.

• Prolog is fully automatic: you tell it what your destination looks like, and it does all the driving for you. However, the effort required to specify most destinations is equivalent to the effort of driving there.

• Python is a great beginner's car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.

• Ruby is a car that was formed when the Perl, Python and Smalltalk cars were involved in a three-way collision. A Japanese mechanic found the pieces and put together a car which many drivers think is better than the sum of the parts. Other drivers, however, grumble that a lot of the controls of the Ruby car have been duplicated or triplicated, with some of the duplicate controls doing slightly different things in odd circumstances, making the car harder to drive than it ought to be. A redesign is rumored to be in the works.

• Smalltalk is a small car originally designed for people who were just learning to drive, but it was designed so well that even experienced drivers enjoy riding in it. It doesn't drive very fast, but you can take apart any part of it and change it to make it more like what you wanted it to be. One oddity is that you don't actually drive it; you send it a message asking it to go somewhere and it either does or tells you that it didn't understand what you were asking.

• Visual Basic is a car that drives you.

If programming languages were religions...

• C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

• Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

• PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

• C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

• C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.

• Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.

• Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.

• Erlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.

• Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

• Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.

• Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

• Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.

• COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

• APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.

• LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

• Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...

Star Trek - New trailer

The 8th of May the new Star Trek movie will have its premiere. I will be there! This seem to be a great movie that they have put a lot of effort in. It will tell the story how the original series started off with its young crew.

Check out the new trailer!

OneSwarm

I just read about a new file sharing tool named OneSwarm. It is based on BitTorrent but is more focused on sharing files between friends and their friends and their friends while you are only visible to your own friends.

This new tool might be the new way for file sharers after the regular BitTorrent trackers like The Pirate Bay gets pulled of the Internet.

There are clients to download for Mac, Win and Linux. There are even source code to download if you want to improve the product.

I haven't tried OneSwarm yet but some day I probably will. If I can find some friend that uses it. :)

New server on the way

My old Linux server died. First a fan stopped working so the computer froze now and then. After not so many days it refused to start at all again so something in the hardware is fried. I guess there is something on the motherboard that burned up. I really hope there is no real damage on the hard drive. That would be a small disaster because I have no fresh backup.... :P

So now I have ordered parts to build myself a new server. First time ever that I will get a new computer as server. Previous I have only taken some old computer that is ready to throw away and made it to my server. The one that just died was my fathers before I asked if I could take it when he bought a new one. He had even bought a new one after that switch. My dead server is probably over ten years old and deserves to rest in peace.

This is the specifications of my new server:

• Antec mATX Cube NSK1380 - (350w)
• Gigabyte Socket AM2+ mATX AMD 780G (GA-MA78GM-S2H)
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.9GHz / 2x512kB Socket AM2 (65W)
• Corsair XMS2 Xtreme 2048MB DDR2 XMS2-6400 800MHz
• D-Link Nätverkskort DGE-530T 10/100/1000 (PCI)
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (7200RPM / 32MB / SATA II / NCQ)
• Samsung SATA DVD±RW 22x - Svart (Dual Layer) (SH-S223F)

and a

• D-Link 5-Ports Switch DGS-1005D 10/100/1000

I didn't do so hard investigations about the hardware so I really hope I didn't make any bad/stupid choices. As long as it works well I don't care much about the performance. My previous server had 350Mhz CPU and 384Mb of memory and that worked very well except in the graphical X Window interface using KDE which was a bit flickery and slow but still usable. Maybe that pain was mostly because of the really bad graphics card.

I am not sure yet if I will use the hyped up Ubuntu or the old reliable Slackware that I have always used before. I have actually used Slackware since summer 1994 and am quite comfortable with that distribution. I have used Ubuntu on my dual boot workstation and think there are both good and bad things about it. Most things I feel that is bad is probably my lack of knowledge about Ubuntu so I should probably choose that one for my server so I learn everything I need to know. But it feels almost like betrayal to not use Slackware any more. Hmm.. so hard decisions... What should I do?

GNU Go 3.8

Finally after over three years of slow developments there has been a new release of GNU Go. As of this writing the homepage has not been updated with the new version but I sent them a reminder of it.

I found the information when I was reading the GNU Go mail archive where they have posted a "press release".

The new version is version 3.8 and as they write in their email the changes since last version is:

• many small improvements and tuning since 3.6
• experimental Monte Carlo mode (9x9 only)
• support for tiny boards
• GPL v3

Another thing what I understand is that they put some extra effort to make it easy to compile the source for windows. It used to be a bit tricky what I understand but now they should have all the needed files and a detailed description of how the process should be executed.

As usual it is very simple to compile the source under Linux.

So go ahead and download the new version to try it out!

Fabeliten Baby books

I want to make some advertisement for my friends online bookshop for babies and kids between 0 to 6 years old. There are currently books in Spanish, German, English, and French. Maybe other languages will be available later. Check it out!

My favourite item for the moment is 101 types of Poo.

Mother of five

One of my friends started to blog. She writes about her daily life with her husband and five kids. Take a look! But don't confuse it with this, this or this.

Blåbär is not Blueberry

Yesterday I was reading about a tasty dessert including bilberry. I like berries and I have never heard of bilberry before so I started to google for it. At the top of the search there was a link to my favourite source of knowledge Wikipedia.

I was quite surprised to see that bilberry is the same as what we in Sweden call blueberry. But we call it the Swedish name blåbär, which directly translated and literally becomes blueberry. This has lead most of us to use the word blueberry when we talk about our blåbär in english. This seem to be very wrong of us.

I asked several of my colleges what they call blåbär in english and all of them said blueberry and none of them knew what bilberry is. This topic covered most of our lunch time. :)

The truth seem to be that we don't have any blueberries in Sweden or any wild blueberries anywhere in Europe. They only exist in North America. What a surprise!

There are some similarities and some differences between the berries.

Bilberry have a dark blue skin and dark red or purple meat with a very juicy sweet taste. They break easily and stains your fingers and the stains are very hard to wash of. The berries are grouped one by one on the plant. They are very hard to cultivate and therefore you only find them in the wild were they usually grow up to 10-40 cm low bushes.

Blueberry have a blue skin and white or light green meat. The meat is firmer and not as sweet as bilberry. The firm meat makes them not as easy to break and are easier to transport. The berries are a little bigger than bilberries and have a "crown at the end". The plants are higher than the low bilberry plants and the cultivated ones are up to 4 meters tall. The berries are grouped together in clusters of several berries.

Here you can see the bilberry at the top and the blueberry at the bottom. As you can see, they are quite different from each others.

Maybe we should use the name bilberry or maybe "European blueberry" if we want English speaking people to understand what we mean.

Play Ogg!

I'm writing today to ask you to support the Play Ogg campaign.

Are you tired of constantly being prompted to download proprietary software and plugins to play the videos and listen to the music you want? Are you fed up with seeing new gadgets that only use incompatible and restrictive audio and video formats? Did you know that it's not a lack of technological know-how that causes this, but software patents and other legal restrictions?

Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction—Ogg.

Ogg provides professional grade multimedia formats. Ogg is used extensively by free software projects, artists and a growing number of music and video distributors.

Soon over a million children and their families will be receiving the One Laptop per Child XO computer designed to play and create Ogg files. By advocating now for Ogg we can help ensure that those children will gain access to, and not be unnecessarily restricted from thousands of educational resources and materials on the web.

Join us in advocating for Ogg right now by taking 4 Easy Steps: Install VLC multimedia player, sign-up for the PlayOgg advocate mailing list, find and share Ogg friendly sites, and put PlayOgg Buttons on your web site or blog. After all that, if you are still looking for more to do, consider encouraging others to do the same.

Start here: http://playogg.org/