#tut

Shopping visitors

The week after we were in York, we had visit from my aunt and uncle from Oslo, and my cousin Tonje. Tonje is currently working as a volunteer in Stuttgart in Germany, you can read her blog here. They all arrived and spent a day in London on Wednesday, before coming to Oxford for an evening meal with sausage rolls and winter pimm's.

On Thursday, we headed off for the compulsory shopping on Tesco. We got all the food we needed there, but the real shopping didn't start until we went over to NEXT and Sportsdirect.com across the car park. Tonje got a pair of shoes and Marita a sweather on NEXT, before we all went crazy in the sports store. I think we spent over an hour there, buying sports clothing, jackets, cycling wear and I don't know what else. Compared to Norwegian standards sport equipment is very cheap in England, so the general consept is that we saved a lot of money. In the afternoon, we all went to my workplace, and our guests had a tour around the garden and the house, and had afternoon tea.

Friday was planned to be the Oxford-day. We visited the covered market, and had milkshake on Shakeaway. Marita bought a phone, after ensuring several times that it was unlocked, could be used in Norway, and had Norwegian language. After turning the phone on to start using it, we very quickly discovered it did not have Norwegian as a language option, and returned to the store. They asked us to come back a couple of hours later, as the guy that could fix it was back then. So we went shopping for a while, nearly hoarding clothes in the larger clothes chain stores. After a while I was quite tired, not being used to so much shopping in one day, so I went back to the phone store together with Ove. There, the guys talked a bit among themselves and made a call, before the seller took us outside and said we had to go somewhere else. Then he walked us to this very shady kind of Pakistani store with money exchange and mobile unlocking services. They would install new software for £10, the seller told us. Of course we denied to pay that, since we actually bought a phone we thought had Norwegian from the start. It would also take an hour, and we didn't want to wait that long. The seller denied to take the phone back, as "they had no return policy on handsets". I suppose he thought we all were tourists and would be gone the next day. I would have pursued it if the matter had gone further, but in the end, the Pakistani guy (in whose store all this discussion took place) offered to buy the phone, and gave us the money we'd paid for it. A bit annoyed for the waste of time, but happy enough, we left to have dinner. We'll not be returning to Phones 4U in some time... Tollef hooked up with us, and we had a nice dinner in Eagle and Child, the regular pub of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Tonje was quite popular with the bartenders as well.

On Saturday, Marita, Tonje, Ove and I took off to see Stonehenge, and visit Arnstein in Bath. Stonehenge was quite windy, so I stayed in the car, since I'd been there before. In Bath, we picked up Arnstein at his place, and went to the city center. After having brunch at SubWay, the boys went off for sightseeing and beer, and I took Marita and Tonje to the Jane Austen centre. After leaving them there, I walked further on to the Assembly rooms, that Jane Austen mentions in at least one of her novels. It was a very pretty but not spectacular old house. I'd like to attend a dance there! In the cellar there was a fashion museum, unfortunately most of the exhibition was quite modern.

After picking up Tonje and Marita, we went sightseeing and shopping. We was the Bath Abbey and passed the Roman Bath. By then it was raining, so we fled in to the clothe stores to do some more shopping. Tonje and I had "lunch" at Shakeaway again, before we found the guys on a nearby pub. The place where we had decided to have dinner was full, so we ended up having dinner at a Wetherspoons right by the car park. We had an all right dinner while watching rugby games on the sports channel.

On Sunday, we went to Tesco to do some food shopping, and also ended up going through Boots and Sportsdirect, before returning home. Our guests left for the airport in the afternoon (Stansted is definitely the worst airport to get to and from Oxford), and we were once again on our own. A very nice weekend! I got myself two new jackets for the spring, new trousers, sweaters and some sportswear, and I definitely won't be shopping much for a very long time!

March 09, 2010 21:25 UTC

Det er 8. mars, den internasjonale kvinnedagen. Gratulerer med dagen, alle kvinner!

Eg hadde tenkt løfte blikket litt i dag. Vekk frå den heimlege sfæren med pappaperm og foreldrepengar og kontantstøytte og kvinnelege skihopparar og hijab. Dessverre var lysten større enn energien - den slemme hjernen min er visst i ferd med å gjere meg kun dum, iallfall virker det som den har krympa og eg kom ikkje heilt i mål med innlegget eg hadde tenkt å skrive.

På global basis  døyr ein halv million kvinner i barselseng, i følge ein artikkel i Dagbladet i dag.
I Sierra Leone døyr 1 av 8 kvinner ("lifetime risk") som er gravide av komplikasjonar under eller etter svangerskap og fødsel, i følge ein rapport frå Amnesty International.

1 av 8. Det er eit høgt tal. Smak litt på talet og tenk over kva det betyr for deg. Eg er ikkje sikker på kordan dette talet kan overførast til norske forhald (m.a. fordi det ikkje er lett å finne samanliknbar og god statistikk). I faktiske tal døydde minst 2100 kvinner i fødsel i Sierra Leone i 2005 (UNICEF), justert i forhald til talet fødslar (230.000 i Sierra Leone, 60.000 i Noreg) tilsvarer det ca 530 kvinner i Noreg. Det faktiske talet kvinner som døydde i samband med fødsel i Noreg i 2008 var 3, i følge SSB.

I Noreg følges alle kvinner opp gjennom svangerskapet. I følge Helsedirektoratets Retningslinjer for svangerskapskontrollen anbefalast kontrollar i veke 12, 18 (ultralyd), 24, 28, 32, 36, 38, 40 og 41 - altså oftare dess lenger ut i svangerskapet ein kjem. Sett bort frå arbeidskrafta (og ultralydundersøkinga) er ikkje kontrollen spesielt dyr eller teknisk komplisert for dei fleste. Det dreier seg stort sett om kontroll av blodtrykk og ein enkel test av urin - som avdekker om det er behov for ytterlegare oppfølging.

I tillegg foregår så godt som alle fødslar i Noreg med jordmor tilstades, anten heime eller på ein eller annan form for helseinstitusjon. Dess større sjanse for komplikasjonar hos mor eller barn, dess større grad av spesialisering er det på helseinstitusjonen det er planlagt at fødselen skal skje på.

Norske kvinner blør ikkje ihjel i ein drosje på veg til sjukehuset to dagar etter fødselen fordi morkaka ikkje løsna som den skulle.
Norske kvinner døyr ikkje av massiv organsvikt pga uoppdaga svangerskapsforgiftning.
Norske kvinner døyr ikkje av stivkrampe fordi dei har født på eit jordgolv og ingen vaska dei skikkeleg etter fødselen.
Norske kvinner døyr ikkje fordi det tar tre dagar å gå til sjukehuset.
Norske kvinner døyr ikkje fordi sjukehuset nektar starte behandling fordi dei ikkje kan betale for den.
Norske kvinner døyr ikkje fordi sjukehuset ikkje har straum, vatn eller naudsynt medisinsk utstyr til å behandle dei.

Situasjonen i Sierra Leone er ikkje unik. Den er kanskje til og med ikkje den aller verste - styresmaktene der har nemleg vedteke at dei vil satse på kvinnehelse, at gravide har rett på gratis svangerskapsomsorg, at fødande skal få naudsynt hjelp under og etter fødselen, at nyfødte skal få helsehjelp.

Her som så mange andre stader står det om pengane. Det finst ikkje pengar til dette. I Noreg betyr mangel på pengar at helseforetaket foreslår å legge ned eit lokalsjukehus eller ei fødeavdeling, som så etterfølgast av ein lang og oppheita debatt (gjerne med fakkeltog) om dette er rett, kva konsekvensar det vil få og kva lovnader politikaranae no bryt. Men innsjå det, nedlegging av eit norsk lokalsjukehus eller fødeavdeling fører rett og slett ikkje til at nokon døyr. Det fører til litt lengre reisetid for ein del pasientar, det auker sjansen for å måtte tilbringe tid i ein ambulanse (kanskje til og med føde der), det gjer det litt vanskelegare å få besøk på sjukehuset, det blir litt ukomfortabelt. Men døyr av at fødselsomsorgen blir litt meir sentralisert, det gjer vi faktisk ikkje i Noreg. (At desentralisert fødselsomsorg er eit gode vi bør behalde, ser eg ikkje bort frå - men det hadde eg ikkje tenkt diskutere no.)

I Sierra Leone er det i snitt 11 miles (ca 2 mil) til næraste helsestasjon. Dette høyrest kanskje ikkje så ille ut, det er jo mange som har det slik i Noreg også. Skilnaden er at her går vi ikkje 2 mil til fots med blødningar, høg feber, eller ei sjuk kone eller mor på båre mellom oss. Her vel vi i praksis transportmiddel etter kor dårlege vi er - er det ein rutinesjekk og vi elles er friske, kan det hende vi tar buss, ofte tar vi eigen bil, og trengs det vil vi få rekvirert drosje eller ambulanse.

I Sierra Leone gjer mangelen på pengar at det ikkje vert bygd ut helsestasjonar, det vert ikkje bygd fødeklinkikkar nok til alle som treng det (korkje i antall eller i distribusjon), det finst ikkje nok jordmødre eller legar til å følge opp alle som treng det.

Eg har 4 dagar att til min termin. Eg er ikkje det minste redd for at mangel på oppfølging før, under eller etter fødselen skal medføre fare for meg eller barnet.  - At det kan vere andre ting rundt fødselen å vere redd for, får eg berre leve med :-)

March 08, 2010 16:04 UTC

Etter å ha grublet et par dager ble jeg og Jørgen enige om å trene søndag formiddag. Tradisjonen tro var forslaget å komme seg i gang så tidlig som mulig, men det endte med at vi var på plass rundt 12.20. Dagens trening bestod kort og godt av tolv minutter oppvarming på mølle etterfulgt av ~en og en halv time med diverse løfting. Dagens overraskelse for min del var da Jørgen viste meg den øvelsen han bruker en benk til, i Smith-vektapparatet. Klarte å presse meg selv til å ta 80 kilo i knebøy og 50 kilo skulderpress sittende på benken. Hoppet glatt over “øksehugg” i dag, etter å ha tatt godt i på en god del andre øvelser. Planen er visst å ha de øvelsene på tirsdag uansett, da har jeg nemlig PT-time igjen.

Sum: +1 for å orke, på søndag, 3T får få +1 poeng for god kaffe i resepsjonen etter trening.

March 07, 2010 20:18 UTC (Comments)

Guess what? I am bored!! No big surprise, is it? I've been home for two weeks now, doing nothing but housework - cleaning, baking, etc - and a few trips downtown to see friends or my doctor as a break of the monotony. The house is quite clean, I am considering "upgrading" to cleaning the stairs next week, as I remember that being a traditional trick to induce birth (or am I just confusing it with falling down the stairs to abort the pregnancy? Which is definitely NOT my goal now.).

Yesterday my dad came over, with two baskets of clothes from my brother's children. I got around to emptying them today, and to me it looks like we now have enough clothes in the two smallest sizes. Even if the kid is completely opposite any requirement specification when it comes to burping and poo.

Dad also moved the power outlet in the bathroom yesterday, so today we moved the counter top we intend to use for changing table about 15 cm higher up. It really looked like a changing table already (it's quite weird they didn't at least put more shelves, drawers or cabinets below it if it was just a counter top) but it was very low, and even if it was very convenient to have an extra counter top for folding clothes, it didn't quite make sense. Anyway. Now we have a changing table at a height we both hopefully will be happy with (as weird as that sounds - I am 160 cm and Anders is 190+). And we can move it up or down if we desire later.

Today's stuff also included taking pictures of all the clothes we're borrowing, putting everything in the right drawers, and cleaning some of the floors. Other floors were cleaned earlier. And I have spent an awful lot of time on stupid and not-so-stupid forums and internet publications. Gah.

I met with a couple of friends on Thursday, we went to Mormors for huge buns and a nice long chat. In the evening my sewing circle met again, my current project after finishing the blanket is knitted nappy pants. No less.

March 06, 2010 20:43 UTC (Comments)

Jeg har tidligere skrevet om bøker jeg leser flere ganger, og jeg tenkte jeg skulle lage meg ei lita liste over bøker jeg i dag har lyst til å lese igjen i en ikke så altfor fjern framtid:

* Ingen må vite av Aina Basso
* Neverwhere av Neil Gaiman
* Den uendelige historie av Michael Ende

Har du noen bøker du gjerne vil lese omigjen snart?

March 06, 2010 08:31 UTC (Comments)

VG-nett forteller at Kritikerprisen 2009 gikk til Tonje Glimmerdal av Maria Parr i kategori barne- og ungdomsbok. Norsk kritikerlags pris i kategori voksen for bokåret 2009 gikk til Imot kunsten av Tomas Espedal.

Tonje Glimmerdal av Maria Parr fikk som noen kanskje husker Brageprisen 2009 også, så jeg bør vel få somlet meg til å lese den?

March 05, 2010 08:54 UTC (Comments)

Eitt tusen kyss vil kjøpe hjarta mitt;
betal når helst du lystar, eitt for eitt.
Kva er ti hundre stempeltrykk for deg?
Du tel dei fort og klarar summen lett.
og doblar renta gjelda, vil eg tru
at tjue hundre kyss går like bra.

Fra Venus og Adonis av William Shakespeare.

March 05, 2010 04:10 UTC (Comments)

Tyskerjenter. Tyskertøser. Vi har alle hørt uttrykkene om disse kvinnene som under andre verdenskrig hadde en eller annen form forhold til en tysk soldat, til fienden. I Tyskerjentene av Helle Aarnes møter vi noen av disse unge kvinnene, og får høre om deres historier. Dette er “historiene vi aldri ble fortalt”.

Utgangspunktet for boka var forfatterens artikkelserie “Tyskerjentene” i Bergens Tidende (BT) våren 2008. Artikkelserien skapte debatt både i BT og andre medier. Aarnes fikk mange personlige henvendelser i kjølvannet av at den stod på trykk, og det var mange som ønsket å vite mer, forteller hun i forordet. Dermed ble hun motivert til å skrive ei hel bok om temaet.

I boka er det tyskerjentenes egne historier vi blir fortalt, men disse settes også i kontekst, slik at vi som lesere får litt mer “kjøtt på beinene”. Det er sterke historier vi får lese, og vi skjønner raskt hvor urettferdig jentene ble behandlet. Man kan kanskje diskutere hvor rett eller galt det var å “gå til sengs med fienden”, som det heter, men hvis man ser på liknende handlinger til menn, ser man lett hvor diskriminerende det hele var. Mange menn som f. eks. drev handel med tyskere under krigen ble aldri straffet på noen måte. Ei heller menn som hadde forhold til tyske kvinner.

Det var sterkt å lese om hvordan “mobben” kunne behandle jenter de mente kunne hatt befatning med tyske soldater. Jentene hadde i seg selv ikke brutt noen lov, alikevel satte disse mennene seg til doms og straffet jentene med bl. a. å klippe av dem håret, trakkasere og skjende dem. Grufulle handlinger de aldri ville komme til å stå til ansvar for, ei heller blir dømt for av politiet.

De færreste av kvinnene som ble angrepet og klippet, anmeldte saken. Sakene som havnet i retten, endte ofte med henleggelser og svært milde dommer, også i tilfeler der de anmeldte hadde kommet med innrømmelser. Da to klippere nektet å godta boten på 250 kroner de var ilagt, reduserte retten summen – aksjonen var en “naturlig og sunn reaksjon blant den ungdom som har holdt rett kurs i disse vanskelige år”.
- s. 48

Dette var ei sterk og interessant bok, og definitivt ei bok jeg tror de fleste hadde hatt godt av å lese!

March 04, 2010 17:21 UTC (Comments)

One of the worst programming habits I know of, is assuming that everything will work out; you just perform the command/function call, and it has to work. In other words: do not bother checking for error conditions or propagating them, because they are not going to happen anyway. right?

Wrong.

But the code works. Mostly. Except when an error condition occurs. And it will, eventually.

In some instances, such code is a glorified shell script. I have ranted about that before. But catching error conditions properly can be tricker than with in-Perl functions and modules. Especially if you have no control over what the external program does, but the original programmer did.

Even with in-Perl functions and modules, you might run into, ehrm, interesting usage.

Usually, the root of the problem is that the original programmer did not foresee that some his code could grow into something else.

While it may have been a good idea to create an SQL query wrapper to hide parts of what DBI does for auto-committing statements:

sub do_sql {
    my $qry = shift;
    my $ignore = shift;
    if (!$dh) {
        &slogin();
        return if (!$dh);
    }
    my $sh = $dh->prepare($qry);
    if ($sh && !$sh->execute) {
        if ($sh->errstr =~ /(MySQL server has\
 gone away)|(Lost connection to MySQL server)/) {
            &log("Lost MySQL, reconnecting.");
            &slogin;();
            return if (!$dh);
            $sh = $dh->prepare($sqlstmt);
            undef $sh if ($sh && !$sh->execute);
        } else {
            undef $sh;
        }
    }
    &log("SQL failed: '$qry'.") if (!$sh && !$ignore);
    return $sh;
}

my $sh=&do_sql("SELECT * FROM tab1 WHERE\
 x
'$cgi->{data}' AND y<>42");
if (my $res=$sh->fetchrow_hashref) {
    $cgi->{ref}=$res->{ref};
}
&do_sql("UPDATE tab1 SET x='$cgi->{newdata}',\
 y=23, z='$cgi->{ref}'");
&do_sql("UPDATE tab2 SET tab1_changed='yes'");
&log("Updated tab1, ready for externals");
# Process the changes made above:
system("/usr/local/bin/changestuff.pl");
&log("Finished processing");

• do_sql only pretends to do proper error checking, it mostly does not do anything useful about the error situations.
• The query result seems of little consequence.
• There is an obvious need for bound variables in the prepared statement, but do_sql does not support that. So the code pretends the problem does not exist.
• When do_sql is used for updates, there is no check whether the returned statement handle ($sh) is empty or not, there is no way of knowing whether we are clobbering the database.
• Why do we not care whether the external commands succeeds or not?
• SQL transactions, anyone?
• Yeah, other parts of the style sucks, too.

March 04, 2010 16:00 UTC

Da jeg leste Betre død enn homofil? av Arnfinn Nordbø skjønte jeg raskt hvor heldig jeg selv er. Hvor fantastiske mine åpne og tolerante foreldre er, og hvor greit jeg har det som har venner som ikke snudde ryggen til meg da jeg kom ut av skapet.

Denne boka er delt i to: I første del møter vi Arnfinn Nordbø som forteller sin historie. Om sin gode og trygge oppvekst, om hvordan han som ungdom skjønte at han var homofil, om skammen og de vonde følelsene, om hvordan han kjempet mot sine egne følelser. Han forteller sin komme-ut-historie i et konservativt kristent bedehusmiljø, et svært vanskelig miljø å komme ut i. Han mistet venner, familien hans tok det svært hardt, og han går inn i en svært vanskelig tid. Behandlingen han får fra sitt eget miljø får hårene i nakken til å reise seg på meg, og jeg får fryktelig lyst til å gi ham en god klem. (Skulle du komme til å lese dette noen gang, Arnfinn, så får du en cyberklem).

I andre del går han inn på Bibelen, hva den sier om homofili og han kritiserer de konservative “bokstavtro” for hvordan de blåser opp dette med homofili, mens de nærmest “overser” andre ting det skrives om. Han trekker fram paradokser, og forteller og henviser. Og denne delen er minst like interessant å lese, selv for en hedning som megselv.

Dette er ei sterk og godt skrevet bok, og jeg ønsker mange, mange vil lese den. Både skeive, tolerante familier og venner av skeive, men ikke minst disse konservative kristne. Hvis denne boka kan være med på å åpne øynene til i hvert fall én konservativ kristen og få ham eller henne til å se hvilken urett vedkommende begår, da har vi kommet i det minste ett skritt videre.

Takk for boka, Arnfinn, du er en modig og sterk person!

March 03, 2010 18:28 UTC (Comments)

Jorvik Viking Festival and Robin Hood's trail

February started quite nice and easy, with Tollef going off for a weekend on Fosdem, a conference taking place in Bruxelles. Nothing else really exciting happened before the half term, when we were going to York and the Jorvik Viking Festival. This was something I'd been looking forward to for some time, and we did a lot of planning on everything we wanted to attend there.

Arriving at the hotel, we realised that they had no parking, and we ended up paying loads of money for parking the two days, also due to a misunderstanding with the hotel personnel. Note to self: Check that hotels and B&B's have parking facilities before booking!

Unfortunately, the festival was in itself a bit of a disappointment. We started off the first morning to the textile demonstrations at the quilt museum. That appeared to be a volunteer, instructed for the day, showing some embroidery examples, spinning and a few other things of historical textile work. It all took us 10 minutes to go through, and there were nothing that I didn't really know from before.

Next, we went off to Murton Park and the Farming museum. Though it was primarily intented for children, they had a quite good introduction to vikings, and some practical acitivities with toy weapons, and making oil lamps out of clay. Absolutely one of the hights of the festival! After having lunch on our way back, we walked through the town center in the afternoon, finding that the queues outside the Jorvik Viking Centre was as short as it would ever get, and decided to go in there. Being a permanent attraction, they had done absolutely nothing (obvious at least) extra for the festival. It didn't even qualify to a "centre" in my opinion, more like a introduction-to-vikings-tour.

In the evening we had tickets to a theatre performance, also with music entertainment in the evening-show. It was another great disappointment when it appeared to be modern music being performed. Wasn't this supposed to be a Viking-festival? The play was very good though, telling the story of Egil Skallagrimson and Eirik Bloodaxe, in a real, authentic bardic way.

Thursday morning, we headed off to "Design your own dragon"-workshop at one of the historical centres in York. It was related to the "How to train your dragon"-movie, and I was hoping that it would be some kind of digital workshop. It appeared to be a kindergarden-type of making with paper, glue and feathers. We left quite quickly, and headed for the Viking craft fair in the Guildhall. That appeared to be one of the positive surprises on the festival, and it did not surprise me, when another Norwegian participant could tell me that it was not organised by the same people that organised the festival itself. We got to see a lot of very good historical crafts both in jewellery, textiles, weapons and other things. We bought a sheep hide and I bought a drinking bottle in leather, and some glass beads for a viking necklace.

After lunch, we met Dagfinn and Karen and had a tour of York Brewery. It was short but nice, and we had a few beers before leaving.

Heading from York, we went to Nottingham to follow the tracks of Robin Hood. We arrived late in the evening, accompanied by very heavy rain. Due to our bad planning this hotel didn't have parking either, so we ended up paying for another night in an expensive city-center parking house. Friday morning we headed off to follow the Robin hood-trail. After discovering how to get the gps not to just take us to any pub called "Robin Hood"-something, instead of the sites of the trail, we had a nice walk in the Sherwood forest, or "Thieves forest", as it was called back then. We also visited Sherwood forest visitor centre, and the ruins of one of King John's hunting castles. Along the trail we learned a bit more about Robin Hood and the time he lived in. It was a very nice outdoor day, and even though it was cold, it was at least sunny, for once. Odin came with us all the way, and was quite exhausted when we finally arrived at home at the end of the day.

March 03, 2010 12:06 UTC

I følge den britiske avisa The Independent, har syltetøy- og marmeladeprodusenten Robertson’s signert en kontrakt med forfatter, og Paddingtons “far”, Michael Bond. Avtalen går ut på at Paddington fra og med denne måneden skal avbildes på emballasjen til Golden Shred, som er produsentens appelsinmarmelade. På denne måten håper Robertson’s at de skal få barn til å spise mer av deres marmelade. Det er stort sett godt voksne som spiser appelsinmarmelade, sier avisa.

March 03, 2010 07:17 UTC (Comments)

Today I had built up enough willpower to actually clean the kitchen, as I had been planning to do for at least a week. Or not really cleaning the kitchen, but the spice racks and their contents. They are not far from the cooktop, and had a lot of grease and dust on them. I noticed this a week ago, and suddenly it became VERY apparent in my head that they needed some cleaning.... Now they look a lot better, and some old jars of spices are pruned. It's also a nice smell of ammonium chloride in the kitchen, a very clean smell :-)

In addition the stairs and living room got vacuumed, and I got some tulips when I was shopping. Quite nice and with a touch of spring now.

Yesterday I re-discovered the path around the dam just above the shopping mall. I walked there quite often when I was recovering from the back fracture a year and a half ago, and the tracks were nice in the winter, too. They are not actually cleaning it, but enough people are walking there to make it a nice track. In general the ski tracks are separate from the path, too, so no conflicts with them. I went there yesterday, and again today, and it was a nice walk in the sunshine. It started snowing shortly after I came home today, so it was nice timing :-)

After struggling for two evenings I finally managed (I think) to print to the printer hooked up to the printserver in the basement. Stupid typo I didn't see in the config file. (The printer is in the basement and I am on first floor, so I haven't really walked down to pick up the test page yet. But it's either there or it's been eaten by the printer - the logs and status info looks right.) Maybe the fingerprint reader is a suitable project for tomorrow?

Mum called me today to tell me she was ironing all the baby clothes my brother sent me with dad (who has spent a week down there). I was slightly confused - do they need ironing? It turned out she wanted them to be ironed for the first use for some reason. Oh well :-) Very nice of her, though - both my brother and I have earlier annoyed her by ironing bed linen, so it's not like she irons everything :-) (I used to iron the guest bed linen since they could be stored much more compact then. Only convenience reasons.)

Maybe I can wash and re-iron everything if I feel bored after mum and dad have been here with the clothes.

March 02, 2010 21:14 UTC (Comments)

I helga hadde vi vår årlige referansesmaking, der vi sammen med noen venner i besittelse av gode smaksløker gikk igjennom endel av ølene våre for å bestemme oss for hva vi skal sende inn til NM i hjemmebrygging. Nå skal jeg ikke snakke om våre konkurransebidrag, men det er en god foranledning til å lufte min frustrasjon over øltypesystemer - noe jeg i det stille ofte banner og sverter over.

Ok, først en kort quiz: Hvorfor er ikke løping valgfri lengde en olympisk gren? Svar: fordi det gjør det nærmest umulig å bedømme hvem som vinner. Det nytter ikke å være verdens raskeste på 550 meter, om det ikke er en gren det konkurreres i.

Av lignende grunner misliker jeg BJCPs typeinndeling og med den også Norbryggs hierarki av øltyper. De faller mellom to stoler. Først og fremst er det mange øltyper som ikke er med der, og det er også mange øltyper som nok er langt bredere enn det som BJCP-systemet indikerer. Det finnes også mange nasjonale varianter av ulike øltyper, ofte fordi ulike lands historie og skattepolitikk ofte har vært mer retningsgivende for hvordan øltypene har utviklet seg enn vi liker å tenke på. Kort og godt: BJCP-systemet er ikke nødvendigvis noe godt rammeverk for å kategorisere øltyper.

Så langt er egentlig alt greitt, under forutsetning av at BJCP-typene ikke er ment som en uttømmende liste for å kategorisere ethvert øl i sin korrekte og riktige type. Problemet er at det synes å være nettopp hva de forsøker på - i hvert fall synes mange å mene det. Med andre ord, om bare ølet er godt og typeriktig, så skal det finnes en kategori for det i BJCP-systemet.

Men, øltypene er tidvis altfor vide til å være meningsfulle som en presis blink å sikte på. Samtidig er endel av kategoriene dessuten i prinsippet ikke ulike øltyper, men kort og godt kunstgrep for å partisjonere en øltype i ulike trinn, gjerne en høy-middels-lav-inndeling som man ser med bitter (8A-C) og med scottish ale (9A-C).

Dette er hvorfor jeg mener at det ramler mellom to stoler: det blir meningsløst å være så inkluderende at ethvert øl skal få en klasse det kan konkurrere rettferdig i - over slikt er litt karakter av Steinerskole og barneskirenn med idealtid. Samtidig er ikke oversikten i nærheten av å være en uttømmende taksonomi over alle øltyper.

Kanskje kunne man strammet kraftig inn på bredden i hver types definisjon. Ja, man kunne til og med snevret det så mye inn at det var å reprodusere bestemte kommersielle referanseøl som var målet, slike som Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, Bass Pale Ale osv. Men da mistes samtidig endel av utfordringen ved å lage et godt balansert øl innenfor mål-øltypen.

Men det er flere problemer. De litt mer sære og eksotiske øltypene havner lett under store, vidtspennende samlekategorier, der det uvegerlig blir til at man sammenlikner epler og bananer. Klasse 5N hos Norbrygg er et godt eksempel på det.

Videre har jeg gjort følgende observasjon: blant de ti ølene med høyest poengsum på Ratebeer er det åtte Imperial Stouts. De er alle godt utenfor Norbryggs stipulering av denne øltypen. (BJCP opererer med en Russian Imperial Stout som er sterkere enn Norbryggs Imperial Stout - det er knapt nok overlapp i styrke på dem - men selv de oppgir eksempeløl som ligger utenfor det styrkeområdet de angir). Så, skal man satse på det man tror blir likt, eller på det som teknisk sett er innenfor klassedefinisjonene?

Klassesystemene som brukes for konkurranser er ofte bare samtidige avbildninger av hvordan kommersielle øls typer oppfattes idag. Det sier lite eller tildels helt feilaktige ting om vi ser historisk på øl. Et godt eksempel er en mild, som idag er en mildt og sagtmodig øl som hadde sklidd rett inn på enhver kirkekaffe, men som så sent som på siste halvdel av 1800-tallet fremdeles i ekstreme tilfeller kunne ha en OG på over 1.110. I en ølverden hvor det er blitt «in» å brygge historisk, blir et typehierarki uten en historisk dimensjon alt for tynt og endimensjonalt.

Litt i samme retning har vi konseptet med fusion-brygg, eller brygg som ligger i grenseland mellom ulike øltyper, brygg som utvikler helt nye sider ved øl, eller brygg som kort og godt er bare sære, men likevel interessante, brygg innenfor konseptet «ekstremøl». Kan eller bør man ta slikt inn i konkurranser? Neppe. Men likevel er denne trenden på vei inn, og det virker litt inkonsekvent at man tillater tildels stor frihet innenfor enkelte brede konkurranseklasser, men ikke mellom klassene der det skjer spennede ting.

For å oppsummere: man trenger å skille tydelig mellom konkurranseklasser og et ekte, altomfattende øl-taksonomi. Dessverre har jeg sett få gode samlinger av det siste.

Arrgh.

March 01, 2010 22:22 UTC

The week has been pretty calm and relaxing. I'm off work now, and still pregnant, which means I have a lot of time to use for... whatever. It means mostly domestic stuff, since it's snow outside and thus no garden to work in. Earlier this week I went to IKEA with a friend, since experience has shown that it's always good to be two when you plan to buy even the smallest things there. My friend's list covered items like a bed for their baby, and mine had a wine rack for the cellar, so it was good to be two ;-)

On Wednesday I had lunch with an old friend I used to work with a couple of years ago, we've been talking about having lunch for a while and had to use the opportunity now when I was available during the day and she still had time - she starts her new job tomorrow. After lunch and some shopping I drove her home. It was snowing quite a lot, so the traffic was horrible despite the winter vacation (it's typically significantly less traffic then, since many parents take a week off with their kids, who have a week off from school). I continued to Lundamo afterwards, and in total I used an hour and 45 minutes from downtown to my mum at Lundamo, a trip that takes 40 minutes in the evening and usually not that much longer when you leave town before 1500 (as we did). Phew. I still managed to pick up my mum before she was too far from her work, so she didn't have to walk all the way home (although it wasn't the worst day to walk, it was relatively mild and not windy), and we had dinner and chatted quite a bit. The main reason for going there was to extend the straps of the Meitai I got last week so Anders can also use it - mission accomplished :-) It now has super-long shoulder straps, maybe too long but I figured it was easier (and nicer) to cut them than to extend them once more.

Besides that and a visit to the doctor (everything was very well) I have spent most of the time at home. The house is relatively clean, and I have made homemade dinners every day. On Friday I made a huge batch of lasagna - dinner for us on Friday, plus lunch for tomorrow and three dinners for 2 in the freezer. I have also baked bread. Yesterday I made breadrolls filled with brie cheese - extremely yummy, as good cheese is one of the things I really miss while being pregnant ("forbidden" due to the hidden dangers of Listeria and then Listeriosis, which pregnant women for some reason have a higher risk of, and the fetus can be seriously ill or die. Luckily the bacteria dies when heated above 65C or so.). Today I made vanilla buns with poppy seeds (recipe from Johanne), they were also very good, but next time I will use a bit more sugar and a bit less lemon peel (since I don't particularly like the latter).



Shiny vanilla&poppy; seed buns,



Not so shiny, but nevertheless extremely yummy, cheese-filled rolls.

I also mounted the wine rack (I got a combination with 7 wine shelves and some normal ones) from IKEA, and placed it in the cellar. It just fitted between an existing shelf and the pantry there - a bit more "just" than I anticipated, perhaps, at least it fitted :-) Anders bottled the cherry wine from the last harvests last weekend, so it's now filling the new wine shelves. Anders has also bottled most of the beers they have made over the past months now, to avoid having a backlog he has to bottle over the next weeks.



Since this post turned out so picturesque (doh), I included a preggy-picture. This is my standard position when I am not cleaning, doing laundry, shopping, baking or mounting wine-racks.

Yesterday some friends came over to taste the brewers' beers and decide which ones were up for The National Homebrew Competition (in USA) and the Norwegian Homebrew Competition. They seemed happy to have some honest feedback on their brews, although the feedback wasn't always quite what they hoped (or expected?), I think. My taste buds are either destroyed during the pregnancy or (hopefully) just completely out of training, so I didn't have much feedback to give and didn't bother to taste (and that means sticking my tongue into a small sample, not really drinking it) more than one beer, which only tasted "beer". I really hope it's just a temporarily out-of-training problem :-)

Oh, and I finally finished the blanket I have been knitting since August or so :-) It turned out quite nice, and also stretched more than I imagined when I washed it so it became quite square and more fluffy in the end. I am now knitting a tiny matching cap from the left-over yarn.





The baby blanket.

February 28, 2010 17:16 UTC (Comments)

I’m Nobody! Who Are You?

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Fra Selected Poems av Emily Dickinson.

February 26, 2010 05:44 UTC (Comments)

Parentheses and precedence

if (expr1 ||
    (expr2 && expr3) ||
    expr4
    ...)

if (expr1 or
    (expr2 && expr3) or
    (!expr4)
    ...)

if (expr1 ||
    expr2 && expr3 ||
    expr4
    ...)

if (expr1
    || expr2 && expr3
    || expr4
    ...)

February 25, 2010 15:42 UTC

Kjære NAV Midtbyen.

Takk for hyggeleg brev med vedtak om foreldrepengar ved fødsel som eg mottok i dag. Vi har ei felles forståing av lengda på permisjonen og foreldrepenge-utbetalinga (sjølv om de har fjerna alle ferieperiodane eg sirleg hadde tilpassa for å få best mogleg utnytting i forhald til høgtidsdagar og liknande og berre lagt til ein passus om at ferieperiodar vil forskyve maksdato tilsvarande).

Imidlertid er ordlyden i 4. avsnitt feil i forhald til våre permisjonsynskjer. Her står det "Når far tar over mors periode 191110-231210 og 010111-030311, må mor dokumentere arbeid."

Mors periode med foreldrepengar går frå 190210 til 290710 [inkludert 7 veker ferie]. Deretter skal mor og far dele 50/50 ein periode, før far skal ha permisjon i 28 veker. Av alle desse vekene er 3 veker før termin og 6 veker etter fødselen forbeholdt mor, 10 veker er forbeholdt far (fedrekvote) og resten er fellesdelen som foreldra kan dele etter eige ynskje. Eg forstår difor ikkje kvifor de meiner "mors periode" framleis pågår hausten og vinteren 2010/2011, all den tid dette (på same måte som mors periode 240410-290710) er tatt frå fellesdelen av foreldrepengeperioden.

På NAVs websider framgår det at "Tre uker før og seks uker etter fødselen er forbeholdt mor. Ti uker er forbeholdt far (fedrekvoten/pappapermisjon). [...] Resten av stønadsukene er felles for begge foreldrene." Det blir difor feil å seie at far tar av mors periode med permisjon. Både mor og far tek den delen av permisjonen dei må ha i fylgje lovverket (for ikkje å miste permisjonstid), samt ein del av fellesdelen kvar.

Eg er klar over at regelverket dykkar seier at mor må dokumentere arbeid/utdanning under fars uttak av permisjon frå fellesdelen, og det vil sjølvsagt bli gjort (sjølv om eg finn det merkeleg at ikkje tilsvarande krav gjeld for fars aktivitet når mor tar permisjon frå fellesdelen). Eg går tilbake til jobben min etter den perioden eg har søkt permisjon frå der, slik det er naturleg å gjere når ein har avtalt noko med arbeidsgivar.

Eg klager med dette på tilsendt vedtak, og ber om å få tilsendt eit nytt med ein ordlyd som er i tråd med gjeldande regelverk.


Med venleg helsing
ein litt småirritert snart-mamma

February 25, 2010 12:36 UTC

Yesterday I had the biggest cinnamon bun I've ever seen. I have no idea why I have never been to Mormors Stue before, since I love good buns. I'll be back, though. Oh yeah. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like a hit among parents, at least there were no prams there yesterday - but it could be due to the cold, too, it was -18C when I left home yesterday. (Does any locals know if it's common practice to bring babies and prams to Mormors?)

I met a friend at Mormors, and suddenly almost 5 hours had run. The plans about shopping afterwards were cancelled and I headed home instead. Some cleaning and relaxing in the evening, then sleep.

Today I have done some laundry, and will soon go to town to pick up a friend and go to IKEA. We need some small items, including a wine rack, and it's always a good idea to be two on an IKEA trip - just in case the small items multiplies or grows and you suddenly find yourself in need of TWO trolleys....

I found a nice surprise in the mail today: a wonderful pair of crocheted baby socks and a jacket from my friend Jenny. Thank you! :-D

A small complaint about the weather in the end: -20C and below (I think we dipped to -23C last night, other parts of the city had -25C) is a bit too much on the low side. Dear weather, can you please remain at -15C or a bit above, please? kthx! (puzzlement, feel free to come for a visit to cool down a bit. i can promise absolutely no sticky humidity and heat. Or perhaps we should rather wish for a fair split of the weather - I guess neither of us want the average of +35C and -20C, but what about you getting like 10 or even 15 degrees from us? Please keep the humidity, though, I don't want loads of snow...)

February 23, 2010 11:40 UTC (Comments)

My maternity leave started on Friday (it starts 3 weeks before due date). So far it's pretty boring :-P (I actually managed to wait until day #2 until declaring it "boring". "Wow, that was one day longer than anticipated", as a colleague said.)

On Friday (day #1) I slept in. I have decided to sleep in every day, that's as far as I can go on the "make sure you rest a lot" that everyone are nagging about. Sleep can unfortunately not be debited in a bank, so it doesn't really matter in the long run. But I imagine doing my very best to be well-rested when the birth starts should be good.

Then I went downtown to get a baby carrier. We had decided to get a meitai, since it looks easy to use and have no adjustable clasps etc. Both of us will use it, so it's nice to have something that HAS to be adjusted for every use, not something we'll be annoyed because the other has adjusted since last use. All the different slings and wraps look very nifty (when worn), but I imagine 5 m fabric will be a bit too much work to apply. Meitais, on the other hand, has two sets of straps, one to tie around the waist before positioning the child, and one that goes over the shoulders, is crossed behind the back and then around the baby's back, under its legs and behind your back again. With some practice, it doesn't look that bad ;-) I went to a local store, Krusedull, that had several kinds of baby carriers, and the owner agreed that a meitai would probably be easiest and best for us. I chose a Freehand MeiTai in the pattern "Marie". The straps are too short for Anders, but they should be pretty easy to make longer with some extra fabric - so I'll put that on my list for Monday.

What I just discovered was that the pattern is (apparently) named after Marie Curie - how cool is that :-) Madam Curie was the first female professor at the University of Paris, she won a Nobel Prize in Physics, and another one in Chemistry. The first woman to win a Noble Prize and the only person to ever receive the prize in two different sciences. Marie discovered radium with her free hands. (The alternative I looked at was the black/white pattern, called Amelia - after Amelia Earhart. That wouldn't have been bad, either.)

Yesterday and today have been much more passive, on the edge of booooring. But I have almost finished the baby blanket I am knitting, not least including fastening all the loose ends (pictures to come when it's really finished). I should start reading some of the books in my pile soon, too. Yesterday I suggested to Anders that I could make dinner as long as I was at home (at least before the birth!), and he agreed - and was slightly shocked when I made a list of dinners for all of next week. "It was nice to plan a bit, so we can use the left-overs next day and such. I have never been able to do that before." [We normally cook every second day each, interrupted by whatever plans we have that crash with dinner that day.] "If that was what you wanted, you could cook every day if you want to!" Well, you wish :-P (I guess I'd be fed up in the long run. But perhaps we could make a common list for "next week" when we switch back to every-second-day-cooking again.)

Some friends came for a surprise visit yesterday and made the day slightly less boring. They have a well-behaved almost-2-year-old boy and expects their second in May, so I guess we'll hang around more with them. A bunch of the people I know from skydiving are procreating these days. (Or perhaps I am just noticing it more than I used to, I don't know.)

Work was busy enough over the past/last week, but I (mostly) just said .no whenever anyone asked me to do something. Most of the time, at least. My todo-list got shorter and shorter, partly because I finished stuff and partly because I decided to skip it. I just worked about 50% (or a little bit more) for the last week, so in addition to having a blocked todo-list I also had limited time to finish it. For a change I mostly managed to work less than normal, and thus accepted that I had less time to finish tasks, too. It will be the same when I return to work in August, except then I can't work extra the same way as I did last week....

Next week includes lunch and cafe with a teacher friend (so winter vacation next week) tomorrow, a trip to IKEA on Tuesday, some cleaning of the house on Wednesday (but I took care of dustiest spots today, plus scrubbed the bath tub (am I not supposed to do that now? Why not?)) and then nothing much planned. It's better to spread it over three days than three weeks - it increases the chances that I'll actually get around to do it :-P

Trivia about our pram: The basket below it can take ten 3l bag-in-box wines. (No, it wasn't me who found it out.) "That may be the kind of thing you don't tell the public health nurse", a colleague wryly commented.

February 21, 2010 20:04 UTC (Comments)

DET EVIG KVINNELIGE

Jeg gav bort sjela mi
til ei jente.

Hun så på den.

Smilte umerkelig.

Og droppet den
i rennesteinen.

Elegant.

Det var dame med stil!

Fra Å føre krig mot den gjengse maratonprosa av Richard Brautigan, gjendiktet av Jan Erik Vold.

February 19, 2010 04:29 UTC (Comments)

Edit: There are, apparently, strong feelings that I should not post my personal preferences. Reader discretion advised: this post expresses my personal opinions regarding a limited use case for file handling and filehandles, and must not be read as general advise on how to deal with filehandles in Perl, and so on.

Today's theme is: unnecessary variable clutter.

my $fh = new Filehandle("/usr/bin/somecmd someargs |");
while (my $l=<$fh>) {
    if ($l=~m/foo bar zot/) {
        # lots of code that does not depend on
        # a variable file handle, nor creative
        # usage of $l where $_ could not be used
        # implicitly just as easily
    }
}

open my $FH, '-|', '/usr/bin/somecmd someargs'
    or croak "OMG\n";
while (<$FH>) {
    if (/foo bar zot/) {
        # lots of code
    }
}

February 18, 2010 20:23 UTC

Jeg har egentlig hatt sansen for Kristopher Schau lenge, så da jeg fant ut at biblioteket hadde kjøt inn den nye boka hans, På vegne av venner fortet jeg meg å sette meg opp på venteliste. Og det er jeg glad for, for mannen kan faktisk skrive også! På vegne av venner er ingen stor eller tykk bok, men med sine 92 sider og lommeformat så viser den at kvalitet ikke nødvendigvis betyr kvantitet.

Kristopher Schau skriver om da han vinteren og våren 2009 gikk i kommunale begravelser i Oslo, begravelser som i avisa ble annonsert med “på vegne av venner”:

Det var en artikkel i Aften Aften der det stod om kommunale begravelser i Oslo. Altså begravelser betalt av Oslo kommune. Begravelser som av ulike årsaker måtte tas hånd om av det offentlige og ikke av venner eller eventuell familie. Og så var det bildet. En tom kirke med en hvit kiste foran alteret. Ingen hadde kommet. Vedkommende ble altså bisatt foran en tom sal.

s. 7-8

Boka berører et tema som egentlig er veldig trist: Mennesker som tilsynelatende dør uten pårørende. Det er kommunen som arrangerer deres siste farvel, men det er ingen der for å ta farvel med dem. Og som Schau påpeker, vi som har familie og venner er egentlig veldig heldige.

Jeg synes Kristopher Schau skriver om hele prosjektet sitt veldig fint. Blant annet får han en favorittprest, en som virkelig har funnet ut om den som skal bisettes’ liv. En prest som forteller varmt om vedkommende. Og Schau får gjennom sin skrivestil oss til å føle det som om vi er der med ham, der han sitter på benken og følger sermonien.

Dette er, kort sagt, ei bok jeg trygt kan anbefale andre.

February 17, 2010 22:15 UTC (Comments)

Yesterday my FB account was cracked. I am not sure how they did it, either managed to get to my very strange password (which only consist of random alpha-numeric characters), or hi-jacked my session. Thanks to my cousin Anne, who alerted me to it, I was able to check this out immediately, while the attach was happening. I could see them send messages as me! I managed to alert everybody they were chatting with that no, I was not in both London and Wales at the same time, and no, I didn't need any money. I changed the password, added a comment, but it was promptly deleted by the crackers. When they tried to play mp3's on my desk, SELinux kicked in and prevented that, and that is when I logged out. After logging in again, nothing more happened, so that's at least good!

Unfortunately, FB decided to disable my account :( It's a double whammy, isn't it? First I'm violated by criminals, and then I cannot communicate with friends through FB! I emailed them, and asked them to enable my account, and gave them loads of info, but not heard back from them yet :( It's a sad story all around.

February 17, 2010 20:40 UTC (Comments)

I recently upgraded kemper.freedesktop.org to lenny. Collabora are nice enough to sponsor some of my sysadmin work for freedesktop and so making sure we are actually running a supported distribution was a good start. The actual dist-upgrade went fine, but when I rebooted with a 2.6.26 kernel, it just hung in the early boot phase. Luckily, a newer kernel worked fine. However, a newer kernel also breaks the NFS kernel server in Lenny. A short backport later, NFS was working fine, except annarchy (which NFS mounts from kemper) didn't have nfs-common installed at all, meaning it lacked mount.nfs. Ooops.

Now, bugs was broken. It used an SSH tunnel from annarchy to kemper, but the startup script was nowhere to be found. I replaced it with a trivial stunnel setup which has the added advantage of reconnecting if the tunnel goes down.

The ssh config had to be fixed slightly. We used to use an old and patched sshd that stored all the keys in a single file. I added a tiny script to split that again. We also had MkHomeDir in sshd's config, now replaced with pam_mkhomedir.

Another interesting thing I learnt is that the iLO ssh daemon chucks you out if you try to send enviromental options to it. Like, LANG which is sent by default. Slightly confusing, but easy enough to fix once I knew what the problem was.

In addition to kemper, I upgraded, but did not reboot fruit (the admin and LDAP host), due to not having the iLO password. I did not want to risk sitting there with a non-booting machine I could not fix. It's going to be rebooted at some later stage. I also did not have the iLO password for gabe, which runs mail and some other faff, so I'll have to schedule some more downtime in the near future.

February 16, 2010 09:05 UTC

I have been a good girl and relaxed a lot this weekend. Yesterday I vacuumed and cleaned downstairs, after Anders took out the rugs (bending down to roll them and carry them out seemed a bit too much, but I put them back again), did some shopping for baking ingredients in the early afternoon, and we both did shopping for about four days in the evening. (Lists! Planning!) Then I spent most of the remainder of the day in a chair with my laptop or knitting and feet rather high. I am slightly proud that I managed to sit still that long.

Today I made a double batch of dough for buns (I actually started yesterday, but forgot to buy more flour when going for the first shopping trip) and made 5 or 6 sheets of buns with and without raisins and some with vanilla filling. We have indulged on them twice today, now we plan dinner soon and then lemon sherbet and more buns with clotted cream and jam for dessert, then the remaining buns go into the freezer. (People, DO tell me before you come for visits after birth, so we can get some of these goodies from the freezer. (Or tell you to come another day, for the matter.))

The reason for this bun orgie is that today is Lent Sunday, and the Norwegian tradition is to eat a lot of buns filled with cream (and sometimes also Berliners filled with jam or vanilla cream and fried). We don't observe Lent, but that's no reason for not making buns today, is it?

In addition the second Sunday of February is also Mother's Day in Norway. The business people probably selected February since January is full of new years sales, in March and April we have Easter, in May it's the constitutional day and also lots of confirmations, in June-August it's vacations and school start etc. For some reason Father's Day is in November, which has become far too close to Christmas - in retrospect they should probably have chosen October or even September for that. Anyway, Mother's Day means flowers (traditionally tulips), gifts and cake for mums. Since this year's day coincides with Lent Sunday, they probably sell less cakes than usual, or perhaps people prefer to buy a cake rather than to bake buns (you just don't buy buns for your family (buns from the bakery are either snacks or an alternative baked goods to enjouy with coffee), at least not beyond the Berliners).

More serious, though, is that Mother's day this year crashes with Valentine's Day. Oh noes! That certainly meant a drop in flower sales! I got tulips from Anders, and he got roses from me. In a way I hope he would have gotten me tulips if it was only Valentine's, too, since I love tulips :-) Roses are nice, but tulips are really my favourites. And I got a cup and bear for Mother's Day (meepes!). He joked that the baby had escaped during night to get the gifts herself - why didn't she just stay outside, stupid baby! (On the other hand, if I didn't notice this, it should be a breeze in a few weeks, too.) (Lalalalala.)

The weather has been pretty warm all weekend, so for those reading this on livejournal, I am using a spring user icon. The planet and aggregator people could just imagine the daffodils. "Warm" in my context means up to 5C, by the way. I prefer it colder, it's still February. According to the forecast it will drop within a day or so - fingers crossed.

February 14, 2010 19:27 UTC (Comments)

Ten years ago, it was a Monday. I woke up on the floor of my living room in Guildford, Surrey, UK. I got out my clothes, dressed, made breakfast and headed out to my Volvo. The Volvo was soon to be named "the Viking-mobile." I was going to work at Red Hat for the first time. I had to drive in to town on small roads and on the wrong side of the road. I got in, said hi to the people there, got a desk, well, I would share it with my boss. The office consisted of a huge room, with a small meeting room. The phones were always ringing: we had support in this room too, as well as sales. I got a computer I could borrow before my real computer got there. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do.

Well, that was ten years ago to the day. I think I got myself chocolates as a Valentines present. I am still with Red Hat, in the same department, but my role has changed. Instead of teaching, I now deal with the operational part of certifications. I still love what I do, although it's very different from what I was hired to do, but that's a good thing! I really do love working for Red Hat! True love story :)

February 14, 2010 14:42 UTC (Comments)

Day 2 of the Olympics. I am actually excited about it this year, as I will have a chance to watch some. Today I've seen Norway appointing in K95, and I'm in the middle of watching the 5000m skating. And I miss watching it on NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corp). I have watched as much commercials as I have watched sports, and while mostly new commercials, I would rather watch the sport. I am so excited to watch skating again, I only see it sporadically here. And I usually stumble upon it, winter sports isn't very huge here... Heck, anything not American isn't very huge here! Gosh, I don't remember who the reporter is called, I don't even know if he's still alive, but I miss hearing about "skjema" (or plan) and the lap times and how far or in front of the plan they are. Here they have to explain what the sport is all about, the difference in skates, the importance of the turns, the gliding in the stretches etc etc. At least they mention my hero: Eric Heiden :)

February 13, 2010 21:37 UTC (Comments)

Morgonen heng
i dropar i mørke tre.
Eg var ute på runesteinane og leita
etter vokalar
medan eit sparsamt lys skreiv seg
inn i natta.
For alltid.

Fra Kongepingvinens fargar av Marit Brenner.

February 12, 2010 05:52 UTC (Comments)

I never thought I would blog THIS much about snow... But here we are, talking about it again.

Today I went out in an attempt to free my car of snow. After wading in snow up to my knees, I got HALF of the car free. I actually had to use the shovel, I still have not attempted opening the doors to the car to get the snow brush out. While I was wading in the snow, I was also standing on a lot. I had snow up to the windows almost! So I dug out half of my car and hope the sun is going to do the rest. Well, I may make another attempt tomorrow. We'll see. Pictures will be uploaded later, I got a couple of nice ones on my phone.

I then went to the store to get some more groceries, milk, Pepsi Max and such (he, he, essentials). I then had to get everything home. Fortunately, I had a cart on wheels, so I got all my Pepsi and milk and fruits and stuff with me. Had to walk in the street, no pavement was taken care of, they really don't care about pedestrians here. Then again, keeping roads clear is a stretch at the moment! Cars took care, though, so no big deal. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day! I stopped at the store, had a hot chocolate and a salad for lunch before heading home.

My upstairs neighbour, who is from Russia, btw, was out digging his car out. It was parked next to mine, so we chatted a bit. He carried my groceries in the front door, I very much appreciated that! There was just a small path for walking, so I really thought that was nice of him! My cart has a handle, like suitcases and wheels, so moving it along from the store and even up the stairs wasn't that bad, just that short patch of wading through snow. So that was very nice of him!

I will probably get my car out by Saturday, at least that is the plan, and then I'll do another grocery-purchase round, maybe. Best be prepared for round number 3 on Monday! Hopefully that won't be too bad. And guess what! We're getting ANOTHER one next weekend! But on the plus side, the sun is really warm now, it feels like April at home :) Although I cannot really say spring is in the air (hah), at least we're headed for summer. Longer days, warmer days are ahead!

February 11, 2010 22:40 UTC (Comments)

A few hours ago, I suddenly had a bright(?) idea, or desire if you will:

Proper (Unicode) exponents in Perl.

That is, I want to be able to write 2², 4¹³⁷, 3^-9, etc. and have Perl understand them.

For Perl 5, I suspect someone would use a source filter to implement it.

For Perl 6, PerlJam++ suggested introducing each of the exponents as postfix operators, using this example for squaring:

our &postfix:<2> := &infix:<**>.assuming(b => 2);

February 11, 2010 01:05 UTC

Just wanted to let everyone know that I just los power. It's actually a storm outside, with wind and snow. I don't know when I am back... Must preserve power.

February 10, 2010 16:51 UTC (Comments)

A couple of months ago I tried to find a decent RSS reader. I have ended up with Google Reader (at least so far), and I am pretty happy with it. It gives a good overview, and I don't miss any particular feature or experience any annoyances. I may try out some of the other suggestions I got whenever I have time for it, but so far it does most of what I need. The only exception is friends-only postings in Livejournal and Dreamwidth, which I haven't really looked at integrating into Google Reader or whatever. I just try to remember to read those pages regularly... I guess a feature request for the developers there would be to see only friends-locked posts, since I have usually already seen many of my friends' posts.

This weekend I was asking for advise on how to carry my yarn around. I found a box from IKEA in the basement and made a hole in the cap, and this works sufficiently well. The box is perhaps a bit too narrow for my yarn balls (maybe because I don't make actual balls of the yarn I buy), so I sometimes need to use some force to get the thread out of it, but usually it comes out pretty smoothly and the yarn has yet to break as I pull. Now my "problem" is that I knit too fast for the bus trip, so I need to bring two balls of yarn in stead of one to be activated throughout the ride...

February 08, 2010 20:28 UTC (Comments)

På starten av året spurte jeg om det fortsatt var interesse for “Dikt på en fredag. Jeg skal ikke påstå at responsen var overveldende… 25 svarte, og av disse svarte 18 ja, det vil si 72%. Jeg kommer derfor til å starte opp igjen med fredagsdiktene, så dere kan allerede på fredag vente dere et nytt dikt!

February 08, 2010 18:26 UTC (Comments)

It's stopped snowing. It seems to be lightning up in the distance. This is what it looked like around noon:

February 06, 2010 22:03 UTC (Comments)

As usual not much is going on in my life. I'm mostly nesting, meaning I have finally done some shopping for smaller baby items, and washed all the clothes. The blanket I am knitting has had some progress, as I am knitting on the bus trip to work in stead of reading. (Does anyone have good tips for how to store the yarn ball I am currently using, to avoid it falling down on the floor when I pull it to get more yarn out? Using a tea pot may be a bit inconvenient on the bus, but I found this - looks promising. Well, when thinking about it, we probably have some high plastic boxes from IKEA in the basement - I'll see if any of them can be used.)

I have been quite busy at work recently. For a change the in-side of my TODO-list has pretty much closed, so I get quite a lot off the list as the days pass. Strange feeling, but nice :-) Since Anders has been quite busy this week, with a trip to Oslo in the beginning of the week and then a few late meetings later, I have used the opportunity to work late (not that I can't do that when he is at home, but he makes a better incentive to get home) so the number of extra hours I can use for flexing later has grown. My manager insists that pregnant women with less than 35 days to due date are not supposed to do that, though. I guess he just fears the birth to start when I am at work, statistically the risk clearly increases the more hours I spend there. *mwhahahhaa*

Today was however a relax day. I slept in, and have spent a lot of time in a chair with my laptop or the EEE I am borrowing from Anders to bring to the hospital (my own laptop is too heavy for me to lift from bed after birth, I think), trying to configure it to my taste and not least getting used to the tiny keyboard. We also went for a walk and some shopping while it was light outside and the weather was nice. It's been hovering around zero for the past days, I don't like that as it too easily get slippery. Give me more stable winter, please! (I won't complain, though, it's been more or less excellent - albeit periodically too cold - since, uhm, mid-December? I like it cold rather than mild, even if it makes it harder to keep it comfortably warm inside.)

Except for all this I am still pregnant, and still don't find it a nuisance although I am starting to feel a bit big now. It's still PLENTY of time left, at least two months (February and March). Or perhaps it's only 5 weeks....

February 06, 2010 18:26 UTC (Comments)

Det snør, det snør, tiddelibom
det er deet det gjør, tiddelibom
Nå snør det mye mer enn før
tiddelibom, og huttemegtu!

Translation: It's snowing, it's snowing, tiddelibom, it is what it does, tiddelibom, it's snowing much more than before, tiddelibom, and shake-in-my-shoe (well, sorta).

Well, it IS snowing. For my fellow Norwegians: it's like a normal day where it is snowing a bit. It's coming down slowly, not too bad, and it's about 30 cm (1 foot) on the ground. Maybe a bit more, it's hard to tell from inside my apartment. One day of snow-fall. I see the snow-plough out on the road, and I heard the janitor outside last night clearing the roads in the complex. There are no other cars on the road. I have half a meter of snow in front of my car. It's compacted. I was sitting here, suddenly craving nachos. I wish I had brought my skis, because it's really the easiest way to get around. I may decide to dig out my NWSC (Nordic World Skiing Championship) gear from 1997 (shoes, sweater and jacket) and head out, the store isn't more than a couple of hundred meters away. If it's open, that is ;) Oh, well, still have power, which is great, although I had blips last night (my router stopped working. It's on the fritz, and I have a new replacement, I just have to configure it). It's actually quite nice to be snowed in. I may make hot chocolate later, fire up the fireplace (it's got real flames, but it otherwise a fake), and roast marshmallows (which I happens to have). Yeah, I am not wanting or needing anything, Princess and I are doing great :)

February 06, 2010 16:43 UTC (Comments)

We're in big trouble! State of emergency has been declared! Now, before you start panicking, don't worry, we're just expecting snow. BUT, it will be record braking snow. We get like 12" a YEAR on average, and we hit that earlier this winter. 1-2 feet (50-60 cm). We're already at 10", I think? It's snowing outside, and as such it's quite bright out. But I can still look into the apartments in the house on the other side of the "yard"/"park". They are about 50-100m away, not that far. I have ordered a snow shovel. It will arrive on Tuesday. I am ready to be snowed in, as I am NOT going out on the roads. I am not afraid of my own behaviour, but I worry about others. And while my training probably would save me, it HAS been 10 years since I had to contend with snow on a daily basis. My car doesn't have proper tires for snow either.

Anyway, I expect to spend time in front of the TV until I lose power (I am not going to be surprised), and then I'll spend time reading books on my Kindle and search the web on my phone. I have enough food to survive (although I 'need' milk), so I am not worried about being stuck here until Tuesday :) At that time, I hopefully should be able to appear, if UPS manages to deliver my shovel, that is ;)

February 06, 2010 01:28 UTC (Comments)

This is just a small anecdote.

Tonight, I finished a small Perl 5 script that I've been wanting to complete for a while, but where I was a bit nervous that I'd fsck it up right and good.

It was a script designed to handle two tab-separated text sources; one a list of tournament IDs and tournament names, the other a list of player results, one line per result with the player ID, tournament name, position and score achieved.

I achieved this by creating a hash of hashes for each file, referencing the first while parsing the other, and bravely inserting the data into a single database table.

I tested my code piece for piece while building it, which is sensible in itself, but what spooked me was this:

There was not a single bug. The script did what it was supposed to do, all along.

That's not supposed to happen.

I need a drink.

February 03, 2010 23:21 UTC

I desse dagar er det kanskje ein del studentar som oppdagar at dei skal ha barn - med fødsel etter at studietida er over, og således etter at dei kunne fått foreldrestipend frå Lånekassa. (Lånekassa har etter mi meining websider som går NAV ein høg gong i lesbarheit og informasjonskvalitet....)

Kravet til foreldrestipend er at du har hatt rett til stipend eller lån frå Lånekassa dei siste seks månadene før fødselen/adopsjonen, og dei tel med sumaren i denne seks-månadersperioden dersom du var i utdanning på våren dersom du held fram med utdanning på hausten. Det vil seie at du må ha søkt om studieplass som du så kan søke permisjon frå. Det er kun ein av foreldra som kan få foreldrestipend til eikvar tid, og akkurat som for foreldrepengar frå NAV så er 3+6 veker reservert mor. Resten kan delast som ein vil, men det gis ikkje foreldrestipend medan den andre foreldren mottar foreldrepengar frå NAV - dette blir altså dei same reglane som viss far tar meir permisjon enn fedrekvota, då må mor ut i jobb/utdanning. Samstundes får ein både foreldrestipend og foreldrepengar viss ein har rett på begge delar.

Kva så viss du er ferdig som student i vår, og har termin utpå hausten ein gong?
NAV krev av du har jobba 6 av 10 månader før stønadsperioden din tar til (mi utheving). Mors stønadsperiode startar 3 veker før termin, så ho har ikkje mykje fleksibilitet å gå på der. Fars periode startar derimot den første dagen han tar permisjon (fedrekvote eller av fellesdelen). Byrjer han å jobbe 1. juni, har han altså rett på foreldrepengar frå 1. desember. Avvikling av lovbestemt ferie inngår i opptjeningstida, og arbeidstakar har krav på ferie-fri sjølv om han ikkje har tjent opp feriepengar for perioden. Det kan difor vere lurt å sørge for å starte i jobben før ein tar ut ferie, i staden for å ta ferien i perioden etter eksamen og før arbeidskontrakten startar. (I praksis avtaler ein då at ein startar arbeidet med ferieavvikling...)

NAV har lagd ei eiga side med informasjon om rettar ved fødsel og adopsjon retta mot far. Denne inneheld mykje nyttig, for all del. Likevel er det eit paradoks at rundskriva dei har lenka til under "Regelverk" stort sett gir minst like god, og i mange tilfelle mykje betre og klarare informasjon. Mange gode eksempel, og språket i regelverket som sådan er heller ikkje heilt utilgjengeleg.

(Dei som les om gradert uttak vil samstundes få ei enkel innføring i løysing av likningar med ein ukjend. NAVs avrundingsreglar for desimaltal bør ikkje nyttast på eksamen i andre fag enn trygderett.)

February 03, 2010 13:31 UTC

It's still 6 weeks left until my due date (or 3 months, as I like to think - January, February, March!), and the baby will sleep in our room for the first months anyway, but yet it feels nice to be more or less done with the nursery. Today I mounted the chest of drawers we got a while ago, and also bought a used Quinny Buzz to have in the boot and use with the car seat. I also lazy-housewife-hemmed the new curtains - no need to take them down from the curtain rods when using IKEA's iron-on hemming bands, is it?? (My mum will scream - or at least sigh loudly - when she hears this.)

Anders commented how much cosier the room looked with curtains [it actually had curtains before, too, they were darkish grey and faded and now rest in the trash], and suggested that perhaps we should get curtains for our bedroom, too? For someone not interested in interior design at all, this was a powerful statement. So I guess we're looking at curtains for our own bedroom on the next trip to guess which furniture store.



The baby pram.



The car seat, with our training monkey Julius.



The drawers and one pair of curtains.



The bed and an old collection of fluffy animals.



Watched by penguins. It annoys me that the picture is not centered, but since we don't know for sure where in the room to put the bed, and the picture needs a new frame anyway, I manage not to care (it's old and the cardboard on the back may cause it to fall down. Bad combination for a nursery.)

January 31, 2010 20:28 UTC (Comments)

January

January became quite an eventful month here in England. Both expected and unexpected events and encounters, both of positive and negative outcome, took place.

The second weekend in January, I went for a short trip to Norway, to attend my grandfather's 90 year birthday celebration. It was good to see everyone again, and very strange to come to Norway as a tourist. I have never been away from Norway that long before. It was cold, dark, they drove on the wrong side of the road and had all strange food! I was sure to stock up on tyre chains and brought the lot of four sets back to Oxford, to different people. Already the first two days after getting back I got to use them...

The next week I believe will be a week to remember for some time. First, I got a letter from NAV, the Norwegian social services. I have been entitled to some payments since I moved to England, but have got none. Now, this letter didn't only give me a confirmation of getting payment through the coming year, but I also got repaid all the money I'd been entitled to since September, which is a nice sum of money. Even though a good part of it went straight to the house mortgage, I kept some for myself also. Just another two days after this event, I got another letter. This time from my book club, who could tell me I'd won 10,000 NOK (about 1000GBP) in their lottery. Such things doesn't happen to me! It feels very comfortable to have a handful of money in backhand, and I also have afforded myself a few treats.

The first thing I did was to buy myself a couple of board games I have wanted for some time. One of them was Oregon, a Norwegian-made board game which appeared to be very good. I saw it first time when Kristine and Geir got it, and got very eager to try it. Unfortunately, it didn't make it in the mail before the boardgame weekend here in Oxford, as I hoped it would.

The weekend January 23rd/24th, OxCon was taking place in Oxford city centre. I was there together with Anne Jorunn from Trondheim and a lot of townies from Brettspielwelt, which is an online board game portal. Anne Jorunn and her husband Håvard drove from Trondheim to England mcuh for the same as us, to see England. Just in less time, about two weeks. Tollef met up with them on Cambridge beer festival, before they drove to Oxford for the boardgame weekend. We had a great time, learned some new games, rediscovered some old, met some new friends and old faces. It was very nice to meet all our online friends, which we talk to almost daily but have never met before. My only regret was that I lent my totally new Puerto Rico game to the tournament, and afterwards it seemed to have disappeart. I didn't even play it myself.

As Anne Jorunn also is sewing a lot of things, she was looking to buy an overlock machine in England, since they are quite a lot cheaper here. I searched up a few places on Internet, and on Monday after the boardgame weekend, we went to Banbury on overlock-shopping. We found a nice sewing maching-shop with a nice man. He was quite surprised and very kind when we said we were buying two machines, and we got a couple of decent machines, already on sale, with an additional discount. It was even a good deal cheaper than I had expected it to be, and I am really looking forward to starting using it!

On Tuesday, we followed our friends to Milton Keynes, where we visited Bletchley Park again. Last time we didn't get to see other than the main building, and the area is quite big. It was rather more spread out than more interesting, but it was all right to have seen it. A lot of exhibitions were also closed on weekdays. But fortunately a very nice man gave us a private tour of the computer museum, which was really a treasure!

Afterwards we went to the Milton Keynes shopping center for dinner and shopping LEGO in the brand store, before going to an excellent pub. Tollef and I drove back quite early not to leave Odin alone for too long, while our friends continued their pub-and-brewery-tour.

January 30, 2010 20:54 UTC

Snow in England

Last winter, England was shut off from the rest of the world for a few days, because of a quite heavy downfall of snow, appearantly the worst in 20 years. And appearantly it was not to be a once-in-a-lifetime either. Around christmas time we had cold periods, and in the week between Christmas and New Years the horses had to stay in. It was snow and ice everywhere, and we couldn't risk the horses going out and slip on the ground. Towards New Years it got better, and we carefully longed the horses before riding and letting them out in the field again.

The day after we got home from Scotland, my employer went on skiing holidays with the family, and left me and Daniel to look to the horses. All fine, but then came the snow again. This time it was a lot more snow, but less icy, so the horses could still get out in the field. Worse was, that the rest of England couldn't seem to get anywhere. It seemed a bit ridiculous to us Norwegians, but of course they don't have the routines and equipment to handle the snow here in England, as is in Norway.

As the cars doesn't have winter tyres, it was hard getting anywhere. Only the main roads were gritted, and everyone were warned not to drive anywhere unless they had to. Well, the horses can't tend to themselves, so I managed to drive as far as to the nearest village, Cuddesdon, and walked to Denton House from there. The roads became very icy, so I didn't take the chance of driving down to Denton House the rest of that week. The horses seemed all right with the snow, and were for once all clean when day got back in the stable in the afternoon, instead of covered in mud.

Another funny aspect was people hoarding milk and bread, and some other food. We didn't bother to, of course, but it lead to the grocers having short supplies of a lot of things, and of course the deliveries were lacking due to the weather, as everything else.

After a good weeks time the snow disappeared again, and things got back to normal. The experts says it's going to be another snowy period like that in February, and people are awaiting, a bit nervous and expectant, to see if it will be so.

January 30, 2010 20:33 UTC

Aller først: Hva er en podkasting? Wikipedia definerer det på følgende måte:

Podkasting er en måte å publisere lyd- eller videoopptak på Internett som kan abonneres på ved hjelp av RSS. Podkasting (eng. podcasting) er en sammenslåing av ordene iPod og kringkasting (broadcasting).

Jeg synes podkasting er en fin måte å høre litterære programmer fra hele verden, når det måtte passe meg. Kanskje du også synes det? Derfor tenkte jeg å gi noen lenker til noen av de mange som finnes der ute:

* Books and Authors (BBC) [RSS] – lyd
* World Book Club (BBC) [RSS] – lyd
* Bokprogramet (NRK) [RSS] – video
* Bok i P2 (NRK) [RSS] – lyd
* The Guardian Books Podcast (The Guardian) [RSS] – lyd
* Skønlitteratur på P1 (DR) [RSS] – lyd

Selv bruker jeg Rythmbox Music Player for podkastinger i lyd, og Miro for video, og legger inn RSS i disse, men valg av programmer er selvsagt avhengig av smak og behag, samt hvilket operativsystem man har.

January 30, 2010 16:37 UTC (Comments)

If you've been hanging around the right blogs and the #perl6 IRC channel on Freenode, then you've probably seen references to a slightly mysterious "ng", or "Rakudo ng".

That's the upcoming (next) version (generation) of Rakudo, which will form the basis for Rakudo *.

In essence, this is a refactoring/rewrite of Rakudo for the purpose of better compliance with the specification and performance improvements (yay). The old Rakudo master made it difficult — if not impossible — to implement several essential parts of the Perl 6 spec and top priorities on the Rakudo roadmap.

In January, this has led to less focus on the current Rakudo version's bugs and gotchas, and instead on working to prepare ng as the new master branch — that is, the Rakudo that you will be downloading the next time.

For those of us who do some Perl 6 coding in Rakudo, this means that we can expect a nice little bunch of incompatibilities as compared to the current master. And yes, it's very close, so it's time to prepare.

Here's a list of the blindingly obvious things I think we need to watch out for:

• Older Rakudo was not in line with parts of the spec that ng will be.
• The spec has changed. (ng development has uncovered several necessary changes.)
• Older Rakudo is in line with parts of the spec that ng perhaps isn't.
• Rakudo ng is, of course, not feature complete when it replaces older Rakudo as the master.

The good news about Rakudo ng

If you judge by the above paragraphs, you'd think that Rakudo ng was bad for Perl 6 developers. But that's far off the mark. I prodded #perl6 and Patrick Michaud before publishing this post, and here's a brief summary of (most of) the improvements we can see coming with Rakudo ng as opposed to the current implementation.

• Most of the top priorities of the Rakudo roadmap will be implemented!
• Laziness will mostly work (the spec is undergoing change)
• Performance improvements, many due to laziness
• Array/List/Parcel/etc. will be compliant with the updated spec
• Protoregexes
• Better longest token matching
• Meta-operators are really meta, and generated on demand
• The base object metamodel is far closer to the spec than before
• Major portions of the metamodel are implemented in Perl 6
• Array and hash vivification will work properly
• Lexical subs and variables work properly
• Operators have the correct names (with angles)
• Subs have the correct sigils (with ampersands)
• Phasers work, and the phaser model is much improved

January 29, 2010 17:24 UTC

January 28, 2010 18:05 UTC

Ei av bøkene jeg leste da jeg var sørpå på juleferie var den islandske krimen Det tredje tegnet av Yrsa Sigurdardóttir. Jeg leser jo egentlig ikke så mye krim, men etter at jeg tok islandsk litteratur som valgfag på bibliotekarstudiet, har islandsk krim fascinert meg. Jeg tror det er en kombinasjon av spenningen og hvordan kulturen på Island gjenspeiles i historiene.

Romanen handler om advokat Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, som er partner i et lite firma som sliter med økonomien. En dag finner man plutselig liket av en tysk historiestudent på universitetet i Reykjavik, og selv om politiet har arrestert en gammel kjenning og anser saken som oppklart, er ikke studentens velstående foreldre fornøyde med løsningen, og kontakter i den anledning Thóra. Det er studentens mor, en iskald kvinne, som er overbevist om at politiet har tatt feil mann, og tilbyr det lille advokatfirmaet en svimlende sum for å oppklare saken ved hjelp av den tyske tidligere etterforskeren Matthew Reich. Saken viser seg raskt å være mer komplisert og grotesk enn hva Thóra hadde forestilt seg, og det tar ikke lang tid før hun oppdager hvilket utsvevende og utradisjonelt liv Harald, den tyske studenten, har levd…

Jeg må innrømme at denne boka raskt grep meg, og jeg likte den godt. Jeg valgte kjapt å overse de små “oversettelsesfeilene” man ofte kommer over i oversatte bøker, samt enkelte fakta jeg stusset over, og tenkte at dette tross alt var skjønnlitteratur, og jeg lot meg heller glede av den gode historien. Nok en gang synes jeg islendingene viser at de kommer fra en fortellerkultur. De får fortalt historier som fenger, og jeg synes ofte de skiller seg fra skandinavisk krim på en positiv måte. Jeg liker dessuten at vår heltinne er en ganske alminnelig kvinne, en fraskilt tobarnsmor som sliter med å få endene til å møtes. På denne måten får hun mer dybde, og framstår troverdig.

Dette er definitivt ei krimbok jeg kommer til å trekke fram hvis noen ber meg anbefale krim!

January 28, 2010 16:17 UTC (Comments)

Tenk, i dag er det fem år siden første innlegg i denne bloggen som det den har blitt til: En blogg med tema litteratur. For meg er begrepet “litteratur” ganske vidt, og dermed favner bloggen mer enn bare bøker.

Når jeg tenker tilbake på for fem år siden i dag, føles det som en evighet siden. Mye har skjedd siden da jeg satt på nasjonalbiblioteket i Budapest og fikset på bloggen. Den gang var jeg bibliotekarstudent på siste året, og ante ikke hva framtiden hadde å by på eller hvor veien ville gå. I dag har jeg jobb som barne- og ungdomsbibliotekar, og selv om det ikke akkurat er en jobb man blir rik av penger av, så blir man definitivt rik på opplevelser og inspirasjon.

Jeg har blogget i over ti år, og var antakelig blant de første bloggerne i Norge. Da jeg startet Av en annen verden som en litteraturrelatert blogg hadde jeg lenge tenkt på dette med å skrive om et bestemt tema. Valget falt naturlig nok på nettopp litteratur, siden jeg alltid har elsket å lese og det er en av tingene jeg virkelig brenner for.

I flere år hadde jeg benyttet meg av Blogger som “bloggmotor”, men bestemte meg etterhvert for å skifte til Wordpress. Dette skjedde sommeren 2008, og i starten syntes jeg det var ganske tungvint, men etterhvert som jeg har blitt kjent med dette systemet, har jeg likt det bedre og bedre. Å bytte system og alt det medførte tok dessuten lenger tid enn planlagt, mye på grunn av en bilulykke jeg var med i i starten av juli samme år.

Siden første innlegg 27. januar 2005 og fram til i dag har jeg lagt ut over 80 bokomtaler, og det var en bokomtale som fikk åpne bloggen: Dagen før hadde jeg lest ut Til odel og eie av Jørgen Gunnerud, og selv om jeg ikke ble kjempeimponert syntes jeg boka var leseverdig.

Jeg regner med at det vil bli mange flere innlegg i tiden framover, da jeg ikke har noen planer om å avslutte bloggingen med det første. Så takk for følget så langt, og jeg håper mange av dere vil fortsette å følge meg lenge enda…

Slik så bloggen ut for fem år siden.

January 27, 2010 20:59 UTC (Comments)

Her sitter jeg med en skål store, kube-skårne ostebiter av ekte, nesten-krystallisert nederlandsk oud gouda, dippet i en sennepsblend av like deler ilter, fransk dijon, et grovt-søtt, svorsk industriprodukt og en dansk, krydret julesennep ... og til alt dette: en egenhjemmebrygget engelsk IPA. Ok, jeg kunne ha valgt en øl med litt mer malt, men akkurat nå er det meste egentlig helt greitt.

January 27, 2010 20:35 UTC

Denne gangen var det såre enkelt å kåre vinneren av bokpakken. Det var nemlig kun én deltaker! Bloggeren er ny i gamet og har kanskje ikke det tekniske helt inne, men gratulerer til Askeladden! Bokpakke kommer i posten så snart jeg har adressen og jeg kommer meg på posten.

January 27, 2010 06:38 UTC (Comments)

Fantasi

Du fargar min kvardag
med regnbogens fargar.

Du er så livleg
og kjenner ingen grenser.

Du dempar mine lengslar
og gjev meg næring.

Du er så sterk
at det eg dagdrøymer om
mesten verkar
verkeleg.

Fra Måneregn av Knut A. Johnson

January 26, 2010 15:47 UTC (Comments)

Lucas asks about how free the N900 is, whether he can download and recompile and reflash. I'll try to answer some of those questions.

No, you can't download all the source. Part of it is just not open. I am not privy to Nokia's decisions on why or why not to open up, but it seems like the user interface bits are only partially open. Hildon itself is open so you can poke at widgets and see how those work. The address book is not open. The telepathy component that talks to the cellular modem is not open.

As for having to accept EULAs, I honestly don't remember accepting one of those, but I'm not going to say there are none. There's at least one which is every time you install a package where you have to check a box saying "Yes, I know this package is third party and will not sue Nokia if it causes my house to burn down, my wife to divorce me or causes somebody to steal the car". It's annoying, but I'm willing to live with it.

The contents of apt's sources.list is:

deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/apps/ ./ 
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/mr0 ./ 
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ovi/ ./ 
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ fremantle free non-free

(technically, it comes from /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hildon-application-manager.list, not sources.list.)

I believe the built-in applications are generally not free, so rebuilding everything that is free will for instance leave you without any address book UI, the built-in map application or camera. Sadly, the X driver is also proprietary, so you won't be able to see anything either.

I don't think you can usefully install another free distro on the N900. You might be able to, at some point, assuming somebody goes to the effort.

The last question is "- Besides the non-free telephony stack, are there any other “antifeatures” I should be aware of?". The telephony stack is implemented around Telepathy, which is LGPL-ed free software. While it's correct that telepathy-ring (which talks to the cellular modem), the call UI and most of the address book are proprietary, the rest of Telepathy is free. There are SIP and XMPP connection managers that are free, and you can install more connection managers for MSN, IRC and so on.

Also, I think it's important to emphasise that the telephony stack does not contain any antifeatures. The closest thing you would be able to find is probably the restriction to one active and one held call at the same time, but as one of the developers said: "That's to prevent the UI from going mad".

While I like to tout the N900 as a free phone, it is in no way completely free. Large parts of it are free, and almost as importantly: most of the programming interfaces are free and at least somewhat documented, so if somebody wants to replace the built-in camera application with a free one, they can replace the DBus interface that the camera app provides. Ditto for maps applications, the address book and so on.

January 25, 2010 18:05 UTC

Noreg er eit rikt land, med mange støytteordningar til folk som av ein eller annan grunn har behov for det. Er du arbeidsledig, får du arbeidsløysetrygd. Får du barn, får du foreldrepengar, deretter barnetrygd og eventuelt kontantstøytte. Er du over 67 år, får du alderspensjon. Er du sjuk, får du sjukepengar. Er du ute av stand til å jobbe pga varig uførheit, får du uføretrygd. Og har du ikkje rett på noko av dette, får du sosialstønad til livsopphald.

(Eg er fullstendig klar over at desse støytteordningane dessverre ikkje hjelper alle som treng det, og at alle ikkje får det dei treng eller har krav på. Det er ikkje poenget med dette innlegget, så det er ikkje nødvendig å kommentere akkurat det.)

Felles for desse støytteordningane er at det i dei aller fleste tilfella vert stilt krav til den som mottar dei, også om det er ytingar ein har opptent retten til gjennom mange års arbeid. For å få motta arbeidsledigheitstrygd, må du søke arbeid. Får du pensjon, er det begrensa kor mykje du kan jobbe i tillegg. Viss du får sjukepengar, kan du ikkje samstundes gå på jobb. Om du over tid er i stand til å jobbe, har du ikkje lenger krav på uføretrygd. Har du anna inntekt, får du ikkje sosialstønad.

Dette er det få som protesterer på, sjølv om det gjerne diskuterast detaljar rundt kor mykje ein skal ha lov å prøve seg i jobb utan å miste ei trygdeyting, eller om alderspensjonistar bør ha andre grenser enn det dei føler sjølv for når dei får lov å jobbe, eller om utbetaling av sjukepengar burde avgrensast.

Det er eitt unntak frå denne ikkje-diskusjonen, og det er foreldrepengane og foreldrepermisjonen. Denne gis fullt ut til alle nybakte foreldre viss mor har jobba fulltid 6 av dei siste 10 månadene (unntak finst her også, men det var heller ikkje eit poeng med dette innlegget). I motsetnad til dei fleste andre typer stønad er dette ei yting foreldra har rett på i eit visst tal veker. Etter dette er det stopp, men perioden kan forlengast ved å ta den på deltid - så lenge totalsummen blir 46 eller 56 heile veker. Dette er ganske unikt for ordningane frå NAV, dei fleste andre ytingar er basert på at du skal få dei så lenge du treng dei, ikkje som eit fast beløp (som det i realiteten blir her).

Men her er det altså snakk om ei ganske stor yting som Staten gir til alle nybakte foreldre, og det diskuterast om korvidt det å reservere 10 av vekene ein får betalt for til far er å gripe inn i familiens rett til å bestemme over eigne liv og kva som er best for dei. Ærleg talt, her gir staten masse pengar, og så skal dei ikkje kunne sette eit einaste krav til det?

Eg synes det er heilt greitt at Staten set som krav at mor skal ha nokre av vekene, og far skal ha nokre av vekene. Det er likevel att 27/37 veker som familien kan disponere akkurat som dei vil. I tillegg har foreldra rett på 1 års ulønna permisjon frå jobben i etterkant av den lønna permisjonen viss dei ynskjer det. Her er det ingen krav til kven som skal ta den, familien bestemmer heilt sjølv. Det er jo faktisk heller ingen krav til at ein skal ta fedrekvota, men om far ikkje gjer det så mister familien den. Trist, men sånn er det. (Mors kvote står meir fast, sidan den faktisk er satt ut frå mors medisinske behov, ikkje frå barnets beste.)

Men her må òg staten ta konsekvensen av at dei sett krav, og sørge for at det dei krev faktisk følgjer den dei krev det av. Fars avsette permisjon må heilt og haldent vere fars rettigheit, uansett kor mykje mor har jobba på forhand eller om mor har jobb eller studerer. Fedrekvoten er fars del av permisjonen, og barnet har ikkje mindre godt av at far er heime viss mor av ein eller annan grunn ikkje jobbar.

Då må reglane naturlegvis endrast, slik at fedrekvoten følger fars oppteningsrett. I dag har far sjølvstendig oppteningsrett til foreldrepengar, men for å ta ut fedrekvota (som ikkje stiller krav til mors aktivitet) må mor ha rett på foreldrepengar. Elles får far "berre" rett på den felles foreldrepermisjonen, med krav til at mor jobber eller studerer samstundes.

Retten må gjelde alle fedre etter dei same reglane som gjeld for mors foreldrepengar. Det betyr at dei same trygdeordningane som mor i dag opparbeider seg rett ut frå òg må gjelde far, og far må ha rett på fedrekvote sjølv om mor mottar trygd.

I tillegg må søknadsordninga endrast. Gi far eit eige skjema som skal fyllast ut, og la han sjølv søke om fedrekvoten. I mange tilfelle, t.d. ved ei deling av fellesdelen (anten det er fulltidsuttak eller samtidig uttak på deltid) vil det vere hensiktsmessig at den andres uttak står på same skjema for oversiktens del, men det er far som skal ha fedrekvoten og det er far som må søke om den. Ærleg talt, kor mange andre støytteordningar for myndige personar er basert på andre myndiges søknad?

(Eg ser dog behovet for å koble mors og fars søknad, og her er nok mors personnummer det mest nyttige sidan barnet trass alt er enklast og sikrast knytta til det før det får sitt eige personnummer.)

Eit aber er at det ikkje berre er familiens valfridom vi snakkar om, men barnas beste. Det er eit bra argument at foreldra veit barnas beste meir enn Staten gjer, men om foreldra meiner det er veldig lite bra for barnet at far er heime (eller atdet ikkje er bra mor ikkje er heime) så kan dei jo faktisk velge å ta ulønna permisjon for  å vere heime lengre. Fedrekvoten forsvinn ikkje ein gong av den grunn, den kan takast fleksibelt fram til barnet er 3 år (feks. annakvar onsdag i to år.)

January 24, 2010 19:05 UTC

I don't think I have written about this in my blog before, so since I will soon enjoy those benefits it's time to write a bit about it. LinuxChix may remember some of it, as I have certainly been explaining it on some of the mailing lists in various discussions over the years.


First some brief info about the health care system. Norway has a National Insurance Scheme (Folketrygden) that covers all citizens and permanent residents. Membership is compulsory, and is paid for by a 7.8% tax on the income (after basic deductions). The tax is claimed at the same time as any other income tax (which is for most people between 28 and 35% of the gross income, mostly varying because 28% of paid interests on loans can be deducted from the income), so nobody really thinks about it in the same way as you'd think about other insurances. The National Insurance Scheme covers all health care (except cosmetic surgery), pensions for old citizens and disabled, pensions for people who are permanently too ill to work, sickness benefits and unemployment benefits. Dentists, short-term medication or birth control pills/implants (the examination is covered) are not covered, but if you have a chronic illness, medicines are covered nevertheless. For any health care/medicine the co-payment is up to ca USD 320 per year, paid as a share of any treatment you receive. It's usually not more than USD 27 for a visit to the doctor or USD 90 every time you use a prescription that is covered. Any treatment involving overnight stays in hospital is fully covered.

The revenue side of Norway's national budget is about NOK 974 billion (USD 163 bill.), while the expenses are NOK 907 billions (USD 157 bill.). The revenue from the employment and national insurance contributions are about NOK 221 bill, while the expenses are almost twice as high, NOK 406 billions, or about 45% of the total budget. The difference is covered through other revenues, in particular the petroleum sector (i.e. taxes) yields about 25% of the budget income. An overview can be found here.

Parental benefits are about NOK 14.2 billion of the budget. All pensions and benefits (not health care as such) are considered regular income and taxed as such. They are usually quite close to regular incomes in size (it's not meant as a minimum income scheme), and the people who receive them are eligible to regular tax deductions, for instance for loan interests. Short-time benefits like sick payment and parental benefits are full salary coverage up to a certain limit (currently maximum NOK 437.000 (USD 75000) per year, which is about the same amount as the average salary for full-time employment here (the living costs are equally high, and the variations in salaries are low compared to most other countries)). Long-term benefits like pensions are usually about 66% of the previous salary, and thus taxed lower since the tax system is progressive. There is a minimum pension of about NOK 144.000 (USD 25000) for people with no or low previous income.

On a side-note I'd be interested in comparing the amounts spent on health care in Norway with other countries. Pointers to relevant statistics (both from government and insurance companies) are welcome.



The most basic economic rule is that if the mother has been working for at least 6 of the 10 months before birth, both she and the father will be eligible for parental benefits provided that also the father has worked 6 of 10 months before his leave starts. The benefits are calculated from the actual income (in principle when the parental leave starts, but there are special rules for people with varying income, and if you have to stop working at night during pregnancy etc) for both mother and father.

Until year 2000 (I think) the mother's income decided the benefits for both parents, and since women generally have lower salaries than men and also more often have part-time work, many parents lost a lot of money if the father was staying home more than the paternal quota (which was then 4 weeks). Since then then rules have been changed several times, and mothers and fathers are now independently eligible for benefits, based on their own income. The maximum benefit is NOK 437.000 per year. Currently the most obvious injustice is that if the mother hasn't worked for 6 of the past 10 months, the father is not eligible for the paternal quota of the leave. He can still take parental leave, but only provided that the mother is working or studying full-time while he is at home.

Many employers covers the difference between insurance benefits and actual salary. All governmental and public sector employers do this, as well as many large companies and previously governmental companies. This means that an employee won't loose money neither for sick leave nor parental leave. This is considered an important benefit for many, and a common philosophy is that this yields more stable employees since they feel secure and have less worries about loss of income. The trend seems to be that more and more small companies also give these benefits, probably to be able to compete about the young work force. A noticeable exception is probably the trade sector, which is in general not known for the best conditions for workers.



Economy aside, what exactly does one get?
In general the parental benefits will cover 46 weeks of parental leave at 100% salary coverage, or 56 weeks at 80% coverage. My examples in this entry will be based on 100% coverage. The maternal and paternal quotas are equal in length for both options, it's the common part that increases with lower salary coverage. Parents expecting multiple children will get 5 (or 7 with 80% coverage) weeks extra leave.

All this is paid leave. In addition parents have legal rights to up to one year unpaid leave after the paid leave.

Expecting mothers get minimum 3 weeks leave before the due date, and must take a 6 week leave after birth. If she gives birth before the due date, 3 weeks are deducted anyway, and if it's after due date, the actual period (e.g. 4 weeks) is deducted. The period after birth is for medical reasons, and cannot be waived.

Fathers have their own quota of 10 weeks leave. If they don't take these weeks, the family generally looses them, as they can only be transferred to the mother in very rare cases (mostly due to sickness). The employer cannot deny the father the right to take this period off.

More details from the National Insurance Scheme can be found here.

The remaining 27 weeks can be split as the family desires. Unfortunately a common attitude is that this is the mother's time off, and many mothers are very reluctant to share with the father. Likewise many fathers will receive surprised or negative comments for taking more than the paternal quota. No serious employer will be openly negative to a woman taking a 36 weeks leave, but if a man wants more than 10 weeks, he will often get a negative reaction from both the employer and from colleagues. His job is always so important, his role so invaluable, and it will be impossible to find a substitute (the latter is probably more true for a 10 week rather than a 36 week leave, though).

All the parental leave from the common share and the paternal leave can be taken through flexible drawing, which means the employer and the employee agrees to a work/leave share. Sometimes the parents takes the flexible leave jointly, or the total leave can be stretched with a flexible employer that allows work from home (telecommuting is not very common in Norway, not even in IT). The flexible drawing can be done until the child is 3 years old.

In 2000 about 10% of the fathers took more than the paternal quota (it was 4 weeks then), in 2008 this had increased to 15% (and the quota was 6 weeks). For children born from July 2009 the paternal quota is 10 weeks, but no statistics about fathers have come yet. Many fathers take the paternal leave towards the end of the total period, and flexible drawing also means it may be spread over the next 2-3 years.

Most of the people I know have the traditional sharing of the parental leave: mother takes the maternal part and the common part, while dad takes the paternal part, maybe prolonged by vacations - or at the same time as mum is taking her vacation. But more and more fathers seem to take more than the paternal quota. Older fathers take longer leaves than younger, according to statistics, and as most of my friends are at my age and thus not considered "young fathers" this is a logical step within my circle. One friend recently worked one day a week for 5 months (he always had a plan for these days, so it was quite a change to go back to fulltime recently, and suddenly not knowing what to do on a certain workday :-)), another took 4 months off with his first and is planning the same for his second. Other are combining paternal leave with kindergarten/daycare and will spend a day a week at home over a full year.



I am due on March, 12, so my prenatal leave will start on February, 19. I am taking 18 weeks in total, plus 7 weeks of vacation (this year's plus some of last year's). Most of this is full-time leave, but I will work 50% for 4-6 weeks towards the end of the leave. Anders will begin his leave 50% during the same period, and take 28 weeks plus some vacation. Our parental leave will end in the beginning of March next year - and we're already keeping fingers crossed for kindergarten (I am unfortunately pretty sure more frustrations about this will be blogged about later).

We both have very flexible employers, and I don't think any of them has ever frowned upon our plans about sharing the leave. They both cover the difference between the parental benefits from the government and our actual salaries. My boss and HR were all thumbs up when I told them about our plans, but I was not the first person there to make an unusual choice when it came to the length of the leave. I am a bit curious about whether Anders' long leave will change anything at his workplace. I would guess that he is making it easier for other employees there to take an untraditional share of the leave, particularly so because he is a manager there. But we're both working in a pretty academic environment, where most employees have higher degrees, and besides age, education certainly is a factor in how long the paternal leave is. In addition (or maybe because?) post-college education also means a more flexible job, at least unless you work in health care or within primary/secondary education.

January 24, 2010 18:13 UTC (Comments)

This week passed pretty quickly, yet not much really happened. Quite a lot to do at work, hopefully next week will be slightly less busy so I can concentrate on the tasks I have on my "MUST DO NOW"-list instead of...other things. My maternity leave starts in less than 4 weeks, The Art of Stressing Boss now includes phrases like "is there anything special you want me to do during the remaining 19 work days before I leave?". I am such a nice girl.

Today the TODO list only included cleaning the bath room and putting up new shelves in the office/guestroom. The shelves are up, it looks nice. I put up new curtains a couple of weeks ago, the style is "cleaner" now. A white crocheted bedspread would make it even more in style with the house, so I will keep looking for one. Or I could crochet one myself. Haha. (It would probably be ready for the baby's wedding. If she marries late.)

In the afternoon I went on an expedition to a few shopping centres on the other side of the city. The main task was to pick up the baby car seat. I ended up with a sheepskin rug and a SuperNova baby call in addition. Plus three clown loaches, a postcard, no lactose for the brewers (They need it for the stout. A pharmacy chain has it for about USD 18 for 100g (between 3 and 4 oz), while a UK homebrew store could send me ten times as much for less than that including shipping. Guess what I opted for.), two trips to large supermarkets, and shelves for the cupboards I am going to build in the hallway. They didn't have shelves in the size I needed, so we'll see how my creativity turns out tomorrow. Doors will come later. Anders and Steinar are brewing my postpartum imperial milk stout, apparently they ended up with two brews due to the enormous amounts of malts the brew required.

After this shopping frenzy I have concluded I am not quite up to that at the moment. My hips and legs felt really heavy as I pushed the trolley towards the car (it didn't help that one of the wheels of the trolley was partly stuck either) after the last supermarket, but at least they didn't hurt much. My back has been pretty stiff for the last couple of days, but I blame it on inactivity and a bad chair rather than the pregnancy. Some extra movement yesterday helped a lot, and hopefully it won't be too bad tomorrow either.

Now it's time to make dinner for the brewers, then I plan to vegetate in front of the TV with my knitting, lots of chocolates and cheesy rice crackers. On the couch, not in the bad chair.

January 23, 2010 18:33 UTC (Comments)

Yesterday, I was working late (guess who is working late today too, waiting for reports to complete), and decided to have a hot chocolate, from my Keurig machine. Well, it was low on water, so I added more, but something was stopping the water from going through the k-cup, so I was rushing to and fro. Well, I had moved my 9 pound dumb-bells to the side of my desk (I use them to strengthen neck muscles at my desk, I need pair of 6 pounds, though), and whaddayaknow... I stumble on the stupid dumb-bells. I swear a bit and see stars, but rush back to my desk, as I was working, and assessing a new examiner! Well, a long story short, I woke up this morning with the middle toe on my left foot all black. It's a bit painful walking, but it's worse that my toe is black... It's not suppose to have a colour!

January 22, 2010 23:28 UTC (Comments)

Folk som enten har fulgt denne bloggen, eller kjenner meg godt nok, vet at jeg er svært begeistret for Neil Gaiman. I fjor var jeg så heldig at jeg fikk billedboka Blueberry Girl fra min bror til fødselsdagen min. Boka startet som et dikt Neil Gaiman skrev mens Tori Amos gikk gravid med sin datter. På sidene Mouse Circus (sider for Gaimans unge lesere) forklarer han blant annet:

This is the kind of book that comes about when a friend phones you and says, “I’ll be having a baby in a month. Would you write her a poem? A sort of prayer, maybe? We call her the Blueberry. . . .” And you think, Yes, actually. I would.

I wrote the poem. When the baby was born, they stopped calling her the Blueberry and started calling her Natashya, but they pinned up the handwritten Blueberry girl poem beside her bed.

(…)

Then artist Charles Vess (whom I had collaborated with on Stardust) read it.

And somehow, it all became simple. I made a few phone calls. We decided to make some donations to some charities. And Charles began to draw, and then to paint, taking the poem as a starting point and then making something universal and beautiful.

Og det er virkelig ei vakker bok. Jeg fikk nesten gåsehud da jeg leste den. Ikke bare er det et vakkert dikt, men Charles Vess’ illustrasjoner er virkelig flotte.

Brady Hall har laget en liten animasjon av boka, hvor han har satt sammen Vess’ illustrasjoner og Neil Gaimans opplesing. Selv animasjonen gir meg nesten tårer i øynene:

January 22, 2010 17:03 UTC (Comments)

That has to be one of the weirdest statements I've read in, oh, at least fifteen minutes.^[1]


(The image is a link to the original strip; if you've got javascript enabled, you can see this bonus strip by hovering over the burgundy red button below to the left.)

A huge thanks to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for this piece of wisdom, but I'm afraid that Zach Weiner got it backwards when he thought that would be expensive.

May I suggest that when a computer "leaks Perl", it does so because the (hopefully brilliant) Perl programmer is contributing a lot to CPAN?

;)


Yes, I've been communicating with customers lately, how did you guess?

January 21, 2010 21:40 UTC

I følge ymse babyfora er det visst lurt å synge for ungen i magen. Helst ein song ein kan halde fram å synge når ungen kjem ut. Tanken er at dette skal bli vuggesangen, trur eg. Ungen kan høyre ganske tidleg, og lærer å skille ut mors (og fars) stemme frå andre.

Så vi syng. Byssanlull og Trollmor og Bæ bæ lille lam og alskens andre barnesongar vi (ikkje heilt) hugser.

Det einaste aberet er at dette er den bombesikre måten å få ungen til å bli skikkeleg aktiv. Omtrent som ein nyfanga ørret i ein plastpose, for dei som har prøvd det. Eller som nokon med klaustrofobi innestengd i dynetrekket sitt. Med andre ord armer og bein overalt og buler over heile magen.

Dette er forsåvidt veldig kult, både å kjenne innanfrå og utanfrå, og å sjå på. Men at sangen har ein roande effekt stiller eg meg meget tvilande til.

Så då blir spørsmålet. Skal vi halde fram med dette, og risikere at alt ungen forbind med Bysanlull er leiketime, eller skal vi ta ein pause til ungen er født og satse på at aktivitetsdelen er gløymd og sangen oppfattast som roande og nattasang, eller skal vi rett og slett gi opp sangkarrierene våre og innsjå at vi korkje er kor-materiale eller har synge-for-barnet-kvalitet på røysta, og heller kjøpe ein CD?

(Eg er ikkje sikker på om dette kvalifiserer til å vere slem mamma, men eg føler iallfall at det kanskje er feil strategi viss planen var å lære ungen at sang == avslapping == sove)

January 21, 2010 21:09 UTC

Forrige helg hadde Kafe Filter et arrangement der de hadde leiet inn en professjonell kokk som laget tapasretter med øl som en ingrediens i mange av rettene. Det var et utsøkt måltid, og et annet høydepunkt var at Dr. Bekken spilte.

Øl bør brukes i moderate mengder i mat, for det er lett at det kan sette for sterk smak. Her som i så mange andre sammenhenger er moderasjon det beste. Jeg har selv flere ganger brukt for mye øl i for eksempel en saus, og ende opp med noe som er nærmere en humlesaus enn en skysaus med litt ølsmak. Nåvel, liksom moderasjon og balanse er målet, så er eksperimentering veien dit.

Men tilbake til Filter, jeg tenkte jeg skulle dele menyen med dere. Det er riktignok ikke oppskriftene, for de glemte jeg å spørre etter, men kun øl-rettenes navn. Det gir i hvert fall et visst inntrykk av kvelden.

1. Brød bakt med Tyttebærøl
2. Biff marinert i Islay Edition
3. Reker og krepsehaler chilimarinert i Kvamsholmer
4. Chilimarinerte blåskjell i Vinterblot
5. Hvitløksstekt sopp med Spesial holiday ale
6. Edamerost marinert i Ut på Tur

Og så hadde Filter laget quiz. Jeg kommer til å irritere meg over at jeg ikke fant det bryggeriet som skulle begynne på et navn og slutte på «berg», og som det ble annonsert var så lett at det kunne bli vanskelig.

January 21, 2010 20:18 UTC