#tut

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

Kommentarane på denne bloggen er moderert, dvs at eg godkjenner dei før dei publiserast. Som regel går dette kjapt - minutt snarare enn timar.

Viss nokon som kjenner Blogspot kan forklare meg kordan eg kan moderere kun brukarar som ikkje er innlogga nokon plass  så slår eg gjerne av moderering for desse. Det er fleire autentiseringsmekanismar som kan brukast, men eg kunne tenke meg at alle får lov å kommentere utan  å måtte registrere seg. Dog vil eg gjerne manuelt godkjenne dei som ikkje er registrert nokon stad. Dei einaste alternativa eg finn er moderering av alle eller ingen kommentarar, eller på innlegg som er eldre enn n dagar.

January 20, 2010 21:02 UTC

Fedrekvotedebatten held fram. Også denne gongen kjem "sjølvstendig opptjeningsrett for far"  inn i debatten, og nok ein gong er eg usikker på kva politikarar og/eller journalistar meiner (så eg har sendt sistnemnde ein epost og spurt).

Far har heilt sidan 2000 hatt opptjeningsrett til foreldrepengar i varierande grad. Så vidt eg hugser var det først i form av utbetaling basert på eiga løn (dei fyrste åra med fedrekvote fekk far utbetalt tilsvarande mors løn under permisjonen), deretter også uavhengig av mor - gitt at mor er ute i jobb eller utdanning. Han kan då vere heime i heile den delen av permisjonen som ikkje er forbeholdt mor, altså 37/47 veker, viss han har jobba minst 50% dei siste 6 av 10 mnd før fødselen (dette er dei same krava som for at mor skal få rett til fødselspengar).
Dette er ikkje det same som full sjølvstendig rett til fedrepermisjon, men det hjelper spesielt for familiar der mor er eller har vore student medan far har jobba.

Det hjelper ikkje viss far har vore student før fødselen, eller viss mor ikkje har jobb (det er krav om tilnærma fulltid, dvs minst 75%, elles får far mindre enn 100% permisjon/pengar) og ikkje studerer (i tillegg kan ein kombinere jobb og utdanning til fulltid). I tillegg er det ein del mottakere av trygdeytingar som fell utanfor.

Å gi far sjølvstendig oppteningsrett er i følge enkelte (no sist Merete Ranum) "fryktelig dyrt". Eg er usikker på kva som ligg i "fryktelig dyrt", det kjem iallfall an på kva ein samanlikner med.

January 20, 2010 19:17 UTC

I am taking part of my lunch break today to blog a bit about a book I just read. It's called "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. The location is Jackson, Mississippi, and the year is 1960. The racial tensions are high, as emancipation has started. Rosa Parks sat in front of the bus and Martin Luther King, Jr. is about to tell America that he has a dream.

The story starts with Aibileen, a black maid working for a white family. We hear of her love for the little girl, Mae Moebly, and her dislike for the girl's mother. It is an intriguing story told in a black womans voice, and the English is a bit hard to get a grasp of in the beginning, as it's written as it would be spoken.

We also hear about "Skeeter", a young white woman, who is starting on her life. She isn't pretty according to her mother, and at the ripe age of 24, she is still single, never had a boyfriend, and wants to do something with her life. All her friends are married, and desperately trying to set her up with eligible men, but have to a large degree given up, as Skeeter avoids the subject quite well. Her mother cannot help herself by trying to change her daughter, but Skeeter want more out of life than a husband and a family. She wants to write.

To make a long story short, she starts interviewing black maids about their lives. It has to be a secret, because the maids could lose their jobs, their houses, everything. Of course, there is also the fear of being beaten, maybe even to death, so it's a long journey towards a book.

A few side stories are important in this book. Skeeter meets a man, and their first date is a disaster. He comes back after a few weeks and apologises for his behaviour, and slowly, she starts falling for him. I wish the author would have developed that story a bit further. The other story that brought tears to my eyes is Skeeter's mother. She gets cancer, and it's heart braking to hear how they grief on what everybody thinks is her final days. It brings back memories of when my mother lay dying of cancer, and I did have to wipe a few tears.

The book is well written, although the characters are underdeveloped. Ms. Stockett seems to have captured something very special in her book, and it is as a result, on the best-seller list. I would definitely recommend this book, it is a fun, sad, interesting read, and I hope there will be a followup, although I doubt it. So many stories are unfinished and left up to our imagination, although it does actually bring positive thoughts at the end. While the characters are someone one-dimensional, it is easy to set yourself in the settings, and I could figuratively hear the crickets, and wanted to fan myself from the heat. I really did find it a worthwhile read, and as said, would definitely recommend.

January 20, 2010 18:36 UTC (Comments)

27.01.2005 postet jeg det første innlegget i denne bologgen som bokblogg. Jeg hadde tidligere blogge en rekke annet mer eller mindre interessant (har blogget i over ti år), men nå hadde jeg bestemt meg for å holde meg til ett tema: litteratur. På det tidspunktet var det ikke så mange andre som blogget litteratur, men i de siste par årene har det virkelig blomstret med bokblogger, noe jeg synes er riktig så moro. Uansett, dette betyr altså at Av en annen verden fyller fem år, og dette må feires! Det hele vil jeg starte med en liten konkurranse:

Ved å skrive et innlegg i din egen blogg hvor du skriver om Av en annen verden, for så å sende meg lenke til innlegget til meg på e-post blir du med i trekningen om en bokpakke. Jeg setter dog som krav at innlegget skal inneholde en lenke som peker tilbake til AV en annen verden. E-postadressen min finner du i menyen til høyre.

Innsendingsfrist: Senest tirsdag 26. januar 2010 kl. 20.00.
Vinneren offentliggjøres onsdag 27. januar 2010.

January 20, 2010 17:41 UTC (Comments)

Det hender seg, som nevnt tidligere at det ramler inn spørsmål fra lesere av bloggen i innboksen min. Denne gangen er det ei ung jente med forfatterdrømmer som har skrevet til meg og lurt på følgende:

Hei =) Jeg er ei jente på 19 år som holder på å skrive en bok. Handlingen syntes selv blir veldig bra, men Det åplasere det riktig slik at selve boka skal bli bra er jammen ikke så lett. Har du noen tips og hint til meg ? =)

Nå er ikke jeg noen forfatter, men kan tipse om et par bøker som kanskje kan være til hjelp:

Skriveboka av Merete Morken Andersen. Andersen er forfatter og tidligere forlagsredaktør, og har lenge undervist i skrivekunst og i sakprosaskriving. Denne boka tar for seg det å skrive skjønnlitterære tekster, for eksempel romaner.

Skriv! av Anders Johansen. Anders Johansen er professor ved Institutt for medievitenskap ved Universitetet i Bergen, og har tidligere gitt ut esseys, samt debatt- og fagbøker. Denne boka kom ut i fjor, og i motsetningen til Andersens murstein, er denne på kun 109 sider.

Manual til skrivekunsten av Robert Zola Christensen. Denne danske boka tar for seg hvordan man bygger opp karakterer i romaner og noveller, hvordan handlingen skal komme til sin rett, og hvordan man skal få dialogen i romanen eller novella man skriver til å fungere. Jeg vil tro at den unge kvinnen som sendte meg e-posten over nok ville ha mest utbytte av denne av de tre, og da forhåpentlig ikke latt seg skremme av at den er på dansk.

Jeg håper dette var til hjelp, og ønsker deg lykke til med historien!

January 20, 2010 16:22 UTC (Comments)

Du som les dette synes kanskje ikkje er virkar så slem. Well, be afraid, be very afraid, *mwahhahaha*!

Ideen til namnet på bloggen kom i grunnen etter at eg tidlegare i vinter posta eit innlegg på eit eller anna forum for vordande mødre om fordelinga av foreldrepermisjonen. Dei fleste innleggsskrivarane skulle dele permisjonen med fedrekvoten til far (gjerne med litt gråt og tænders gnidsel, for far hadde så viktig jobb, arbeidsgivar så negativ eller fars løn så høg) og resten til mor (altså 10 veker til far og 36 (eller 46, viss dei tok 80% løn).

Unntaket såg ut til å vere meg og Mannen. Vi deler med 18 veker til meg og 28 til han.

Dette vart motteke med vantru av mange. Ein del syntes det var snilt av meg å gi han s mykje, eller meinte eg var heldig som hadde ein mann som ville vere heime så lenge (eg veit jo eg er heldig med Mannen, sånn generelt).

Det som tok kaka og verkeleg fekk meg til å føle meg slem var ho som spurte korfor eg ville ha barn, når eg ikkje ville vere heime med dei.

Eg vart svar skuldig. Ikkje fordi eg ikkje visste svaret, men fordi spørsmålet var så langt utanfor banen eg speler på at det føltes som bortkasta energi å løpe etter ballen.

Men dette er altså haldningar ein kan bli møtt med  i 2010, dessverre trur eg ikkje denne innleggskrivaren er den einaste som meiner permisjonen er mors eineveldige rettigheit og nærast eit mål på kor høgt du elskar barna dine. Og noko av bakgrunnen for at eg meiner det er til barnas beste å "tvinge" far til barnerommet for nokre veker.

January 19, 2010 20:53 UTC

Høgres kvinneforum vedtok i helga at dei vil fjerne fedrekvoten, kan leiar i kvinneforumet Linda C. Helleland i dag melde. Argumentasjonen er at dette vil gi familien full valfridom.

Mon det. I dei tid der 16.5% (i følge adressa.no) tar meir enn obligatorisk fedrekvote og der det er behov for å avsette ein del til far er eg i tvil om kor stor valfridom det vil gi.  Vil det ikkje heller gjere at vi fell tilbake på det gamle mønsteret der foreldrepermisjonen i realiteten var mors?

Mor har ein obligatorisk del på 3 veker før og 6 veker etter fødselen, men denne er primært medisinsk motivert. For å "slippe" denne må mor ha legeerklæring på at det er betre for henne å jobbe. For diskusjonen sin del trur eg det er lurt å halde iallfall dei 6 vekene etter fødselen utanfor. Den er lovpålagt, og det finst internasjonale konvensjonar det tek seg dårleg ut om Noreg bryt ved å ikkje lovfeste denne delen, kor gullbelagt den gode intensjons veg enn måtte vere.

Fedrekvote har vi hatt sidan 1993. Før dette var det nesten ingen fedre som tok permisjon utover 2 veker omsorgspermisjon ved fødselen (og den vart nok i størst grad brukt fullt ut når arbeidsgiver dekte løna, og slik er det nok i dag òg), sjølv om fedrene hadde hatt rett til permisjon sidan 1977.

I 2000 tok  9.6% av fedrene meir enn fedrekvoten  (den var då 4 veker), i 2008 var andelen som tok meir auka til 14.8% (og kvoten til 6 veker) - så det går framover. Ettersom utvidinga til 10 veker kom sist sumar, er det neppe så mange fedre som har tatt ut så mykje av den enno, så det er tidleg å seie noko om kor mange som tar meir enn 10 veker.

Dessverre er det ein god del fedre som tek mindre enn fedrekvoten. I 2000 var det 21% som tok under 4 veker, i 2008 var det 20.5% som tok under 4 veker og 43.5% som tok under 6 veker. (Men mange av 2008-fedrene kan ha avtalt fleksibel permisjon med avvikling av permisjonen fram til barnet er 3 år, og altså ikkje ha tatt ut alle vekene dei har planlagt å ta enno.)

I følge statistikk frå NAV har alle dei store aukene i andelen fedre som tek ut mange veker permisjon omtrent utelukkande kome når lovendringane har kome: vi hadde 4 veker (20 dagar, som NAV tel i denne statistikken) fedrekvote fram til juli 2006, så vart den 5 veker, for så å bli 6 veker frå juli 2007. Eg trur ikkje det er kynisk av meg å hevde at det ikkje er ei haldningsendring som førte til at talet fedre som tok 6 veker permisjon gjekk frå 223 i 2006 til over 16000 i 2008. Og eg vil påstå det er rimeleg naivt å påstå at det har skjedd ei haldningsendring - eller ein haldningsrevolusjon - blant foreldre mellom 2006 og 2010 som gjer at like mange fedre automatisk vil tilbringe like mange veker med det unge avkommet sitt heilt utan ein viss form for tvang eller press.


Eg er for valfridom, og synes valfridomen er ganske stor når det gjeld foreldrepermisjonen - sjølv om det er visse føringar. Dei fleste og det meste av utvidinga av den delen som er avsatt til far har kome i form av ei forlenging av permisjonstida (unntaket er at det vart teke 2 veker frå fellesdelen ved den førre utvidinga i juli 2009, medan dei 2 andre vekene var ei forlenging av den totale permisjonstida).

I tillegg er det staten som betaler foreldrepengane (opp til 6G), og som med mange andre statlege ordningar synes eg det er heilt greitt at det vert stilt visse krav til bruken av dei. Det er trass alt ingen tvang i å ta korkje fedrekvote eller fellesdelen av permisjonen - vel du å arbeide i staden for å ha permisjon får du heller ingen pengar frå staten. Om ein familie meiner det er mykje betre at mor er heime i staden for at far er heime, kan mor ta ulønna permisjon i eit heilt år etter at den lønna permisjonen er over.

January 19, 2010 20:16 UTC

Velkomen til den slemme mammabloggen. Eigentleg er eg korkje slem eller mamma, men eg blir mamma om nokre veker, og det er nok nokre som vil oppfatte ein del av meiningane mine rundt det å bli og vere mamma som litt slemme, eller iallfall kjetterske. Dei om det.

Her er planen å skrive litt om dei slemme mamma-tankane mine, om foreldrepermisjon og foreldrepengar, fruste litt om NAV (eventuelt skryte av dei viss dei fortener det!), og generelt vrenge hovdet mitt litt.

Debatt er eg for, men sidan dette er min blogg og ikkje nettavisenes debattsider, forbeheld eg meg retten til å moderere slik eg vil. Det betyr at viss du ikkje gidd spa opp eit minimum av argumentasjon så får du ikkje publisert kommentaren din her. Synd for deg, gå og leik ein annan stad.

January 19, 2010 18:11 UTC

Forfatter og multitalent Jo Nesbø har gjort det igjen. Sammen med skuespiller Henrik Mestad har han regissert kortfilmen Konto og Gitra, som han også har skrevet manus til. Filmen, som kommer på norske kinoer som forfilm i midten/slutten av februar, handler om unggutten Jo, som drømmer om å kjøpe Watson-kassegitar og lære seg “Independence Day” – den fineste sangen han vet om. For å få råd til dette jobber han på brusfabrikken, men da han går i banken for å ta ut penger treffer han “Bank ass.” Gudny, som sier at ekte mannfolk ikke tar ut penger, de setter dem inn… Og på to sekunder har Jo rukket å stormforelske seg i Gudny.

Det er en søt film om det å være ung og om drømmer og hvor lett det er å forelske seg som tenåring. Og her får du en aldri så liten førpremiere på filmen:

January 19, 2010 17:04 UTC (Comments)

I've been using an iphone since late 2007 as my primary phone and so I've gotten quite a few contacts and SMS conversations stored on it. Now that Collabora has given me a nice and shiny N900, I wanted to move my contacts and conversations over, but this proved to be a bit more work than expected. Please note that the following procedure worked for me, I have tried to take reasonable steps to prevent anything breaking, but if something breaks, you get to keep both pieces. I am not responsible and this comes with absolutely no warranty. Take backups.

What you need

• the addressbook and SMS SQLite databases. On my phone, they live in /var/mobile/Library/AddressBook and /var/mobile/Library/SMS.

• A copy of my iphone-contacts-convert script. It's written in Perl and should be reasonably easy to understand. Put it in the same directory as AddressBook.sqlitedb.

• A copy of my iphone-export-sms script. It's also written in Perl and should also be reasonably easy to understand. Put it in the same directory as sms.db.

• The smstools program you can get from this thread on talk.maemo.org.

The address book conversion script takes the SQLite database structure and converts that into a VCF file. It should be completely safe to run multiple times (it only does SELECT from the different tables in the contacts database, and you have made backups, haven't you?).

If it dies with an "Unknown property", "Unknown label" or other error, you can poke it and see if you can work out what's wrong or drop me an email and I'll see if I can help you. Assuming it doesn't fall over, it will spit out a series of VCards, which you should store in a file, which you then to the N900 and open in the address book. Assuming you have less than 1000 contacts, they should now all be in your address book. If you have more, you need to split the file.

A couple of known limitations:

• It doesn't handle some of the attributes, like job title, notes, department, display names, prefix and suffix. None of my contacts used those, so I just didn't care. Patches to change this accepted. Also, it doesn't handle custom attributes and birthdays. I intended to handle birthdays, but forgot and I have few enough contacts with birthdays that I just did it by hand.

• When it hits something it doesn't know how to handle, it stops and you need to add the relevant handle to the code. I think it is mostly clear, how to, but again, feel free to contact me with any problems.

• Only tested on firmware version 2.2. Yes, ancient, but it's what my iphone is running.

• If you have contacts that are organisations, they will come up with a blank full name. Just edit them on the N900 (pressing edit and then save immediately works fine) and they'll be automatically fixed.

• No picture support. This looked a bit involved, so I didn't do this bit. Should be possible with a bit of effort.

The procedure for exporting and importing SMS-es is a bit more involved. First, export the sms-es by running the perl script. It spits out a tab-separated file which you should copy to the N900 along with the smsimporter program from the smstools thread. Run ./smsimporter foo.csv and you should get all your SMS-es put into the conversation app. I ended up compiling my own smsimporter based on the 0.2.1 from the thread with the UUID patch too. Read the whole thread and it should be fairly clear.

January 17, 2010 10:35 UTC

When you're about to go out to shop groceries, it's a bad idea to break off the door knob of the front door. Just mentioning it.

Also be aware that modern door knobs have fancy springs inside to make really really sure they stay horizontal when not in use. This is not necessarily compatible with older lock systems. They can however be hacked to fit. This may take some time (even for a patient Man).

The door closes perfectly now. And I do (and did) carry a key for the back door on my keyring.

The hardware store also had Linux stoves. If I was getting a new stove for the living room, it might very well have been a Linux - not just because the name is cool, though.

January 16, 2010 18:10 UTC (Comments)

Trondheim has been cold recently, and at the same time very humid - we've had a layer of fog downtown for the past 2-3 days, which has done wonders for the trees.





The view during my lunch today.



Our house yesterday night.

(All of them taken with my mobile, so the picture quality isn't brilliant.)

January 15, 2010 18:33 UTC (Comments)

<@Juerd> frettled: Blog about the mess you found when
         you first logged in on feather yesterday :)

while (<>) {
  if (/^(\S+) (\S+) - - \[[^\]]*\] \"(GET|POST) \S*
       HTTP(|\/1\.[01])\" \d{3} (\d+) \"/) {

frettled@feather:~$ sudo awk '{print $6}' /var/log/apache2/access.log|
sort -u
"CHECKOUT
"CONNECT
"DELETE
"GET
"HEAD
"MERGE
"MKACTIVITY
"OPTIONS
"POST
"PROPFIND
"PROPPATCH
"PUT
"REPORT

Use of uninitialized value $size in addition (+)
at /usr/local/sbin/bandwidthips line 39, 
 line 1002.
Use of uninitialized value $size in addition (+)
at /usr/local/sbin/bandwidthips line 40, 
 line 1002.
Use of uninitialized value $size in addition (+)
at /usr/local/sbin/bandwidthips line 44, 
 line 1002.

frettled@feather:~$ sudo tail -100000 /var/log/apache2/access.log|
/usr/local/sbin/hitips|head
193.200.132.146: Bytes = 14329487 (3.44%), Hits = 51503 (51.82%)
66.249.71.2: Bytes = 132116084 (31.73%), Hits = 18111 (18.22%)
66.249.71.37: Bytes = 50846948 (12.21%), Hits = 6236 (6.27%)
93.158.149.31: Bytes = 54880221 (13.18%), Hits = 1894 (1.9%)
71.194.15.106: Bytes = 460200 (0.11%), Hits = 1894 (1.9%)
209.9.237.232: Bytes = 433388 (0.1%), Hits = 1686 (1.69%)
193.200.132.135: Bytes = 1726871 (0.41%), Hits = 1635 (1.64%)
193.200.132.142: Bytes = 429358 (0.1%), Hits = 1609 (1.61%)
208.115.111.246: Bytes = 8461415 (2.03%), Hits = 1238 (1.24%)
67.218.116.133: Bytes = 18945415 (4.55%), Hits = 1126 (1.13%)

• Add a captcha to the web form. The disadvantage is that this does not really save processing resources, but it probably should be done anyway.
• Add an unnecessary and bogus input field to the web form, e.g. "Phone number". This input field should be hidden with CSS so that web browsers don't display it, and if someone submits anything with data with that field's name, then you can be nearly 100% certain it's spam from someone who's used a web scraper before automatically filling the form. Filter it out.
• Change the webserver delegation architecture, so that each Apache process isn't loading tens of megabytes of libraries and keeping them in memory. Off-loading to shorter-living FastCGI daemons or similar solutions, or even sacrificing program startup speed by using CGI+suexec, etc., may be decent starting points.
• Consider using a front-end proxy like Varnish to gloss over underlying nastiness.
• Start with a new VM and migrate services to that one, gradually.
• Document configuration choices and what each web service does/is there for, so that the next sysadmin coming along can make educated guesses quicker. :)

January 14, 2010 17:35 UTC

The power issues seem to be resolved for now, we've had 210V and thereabout since Friday now. It's been between -5 and -10C outside, so it seems to have been partly a capacity issue and partly a power issue. Still, they are only just within the specs now, so I guess they should be bugged to do more later.

My parents stayed here last weekend, and on Sunday our couchsurfing guest arrived, Joni from Italy. She's the girlfriend of Roberto, who stayed here for 10 days a year and a half ago, and is going to start her PhD in Trondheim. A very nice girl, and it's much much less stressing than I feared (if you read this, Joni, don't be afraid to spend some time upstairs, too!).

Earlier this week we went out to get some baby stuff. We've ordered a pram and a car seat, and bought a complete bed at IKEA. Only... a lot left now. But also a long time left! Oh wait.

January 13, 2010 20:06 UTC (Comments)

Silent All These Years

av og med Tori Amos

Excuse me but can I be you for a while
My dog won’t bite if you sit real still
I got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yellin’ at me again
Yeah I can hear that
Been saved again by the garbage truck
I got something to say you know
But nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me
You never shut-up
Yeah I can hear that

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it’s been here
Silent All These Years

So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thougts
What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts
Boy you best praya that I bleed real soon
How’s that thought for you
My scream got lost in a paper cup
You think there’s a heaven
Where some screams have gone
I got 25 bucks and a cracker
Do you think it’s enough
To get us there

Cause what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it’s been here
Silent All These…

Years go by
Will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by
If I’m stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds
Raining in head
Years go by
Will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we’re too easy Easy Easy

Well I love the way we communicate
Your eyes focus on my funny lip shape
Let’s hear what you think of me now
But baby don’t look up
The sky is falling
Your mother shows up in a nasty dress
It’s your turn now to stand where I stand
Everybody lookin’ at you here
Take hold of my hand
Yeah I can hear them

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice

And it’s been here
Silent All These Years
I’ve been here
Silent All These Years

Se den på YouTube

January 12, 2010 22:21 UTC (Comments)

Jeg har gravd litt og funnet igjen noen gamle dikt jeg har skrevet. Her er ett av dem:

Maling.

Grønn maling på en sommerdag
For å male gresset og løvet og drømmene
For så å fly vekk til et ukjent sted
Hvor nettene aldri ender
Og hvor drømmene varer evig

Blå maling på en vinterdag
For å male himmelen og is og frost
For så å skøyte vekk til et ukjent sted
Hvor solen vil varme ansiktet mitt og hendene mine
Og hvor drømmer vil bli virkelige

Rød maling for å farge blodet i tårene mine
Sort maling for å male hullet i sjelen min

Og så.
Stillhet.

January 10, 2010 00:16 UTC (Comments)

The power issue is improved quite a bit - we can now use fluorescent tubes again. I called the power company on Wednesday night to make a complaint, and the guy there was nice and polite and treated be like an intelligent person. It's something nice about not talking to polished, well-trained first line support staff in the customer centre, but rather to a person who seems honestly interested in listening and helping, not following a check-list to make sure the customer has checked her fuses and have no clue what a volt metre is and that is may be useful in this situation. He couldn't promise anything, though, as the problem might be related to high power consumption in the area.

On Thursday there was a short power outage while we were at work, but the current was still almost as bad as before - 181V in the morning, 187V in the evening. I called the power company again, and talked to a nice person there (the same as the previous night, I think), and even got a ticket number ("I am not sure if the customer centre people are able to search them, but you can try"). 25 minutes later the door bell rang and a technician from the power company wanted to measure the current by the main fuse. It was 190V there, and we also verified that my voltmetre was correct (his Fluke and my cheap Biltema metre differed by maximum 1V).

On Friday I stayed home, and was woken by the sound of something rebooting at 11 in the morning. It was a very brief outage, as the alarm clock was not flashing, which it usually does after a power outage. I measured 200V in the outlets after that, so it looks like they stepped up the power a bit. They will probably not make it any higher until the power consumption is lower, since high consumption may cause low current for those far from the transformer. Maybe I should measure it at night, too, when the consumption is at the lowest - even with extra power needed for heating at night, it should not be far from a normal day in the spring, I guess.

The cold recently has been a nuisance. For almost 4 days we've had temperatures at -20C or lower 24 hours a day. This is a bit too low to keep up with, even after insulating the house (I won't even think about how cold it would have been two years ago!!). Part of the problem is that we don't have enough available, the fuses are too weak. We can use three heaters on low setting in the bed rooms, and that's too little now. It is also extremely annoying to keep the fireplaces warm and burning. The one downstairs needs feeding every 30-45 minutes (I am not sure how much we should feed it - if it's too much, it will burn very fast and only release the heat to the air, according to the propaganda), and the fireplace in the living room will need a couple of logs every hour for continued happiness. Up and down, up and down.

We were afraid the water pipes in the basement could freeze, so we moved the heater from the guest room (which then held about 6C) to the basement. The temperature in the guest room quickly dropped to -7C (no pipes in the walls, at least!), and the living room became impossible to heat above 13C, and the hallway also became very cold (and my fish very still). When we realized this and put back the heater, everything improved quickly - continious use of the fireplace in the living room and on the ground floor raised the temperatures to 20C in both places, and much more lively fish. It also gave me a lot of exercise due to all the running up and down the stairs.

Luckily the weather is a bit warmer now. It's been about -15C all day, and that's a completely sane temperature we can keep up with. It still needs eager maintenance of the fireplace, but at least the efforts actually help and the rooms can be kept at a comfortable temperature.

On Thursday I went to psal, since the skydiving club were having an extra ordinary general assembly. We decided to buy a house, right next to the airport. Yay! The plans were very good and humble, and I think it will be a nice place to stay. It will have bunk beds for about 10 people, as well as matresses for a handful more - perfect for a weekend of jumping, and closer to the hangar than the landing stripe itself is.

This weekend Anders and Steinar have been brewing, and I have done a lot of domestic chores and relaxed quite a bit. Mum and dad came in the evening, they are at a party now, so we've been looking after their dog and they will crash here later at night. I drove them there, but only half-heartedly offered to pick them up - since I am about to fall asleep now, at 23:30, it was probably as well I didn't really offer it... (They will take a taxi in stead. Pregnant daughters are not obliged to make up for parents picking her up at parties 15-20 years ago.)

January 09, 2010 22:34 UTC (Comments)

I received a new HDTV a couple of days ago, and decided to get it up today. My old CRT had to get off the table, and it fell on me. 100pounds (50kg) right on my legs. Well, I was standing but the force pushed me on the floor. Luckily, I have carpets on the floor, so nothing was damaged. I am starting to feel a bit pain on the foot that took the brunt of the hit, though...

I upgraded from 34" 1080i (Panasonic) to 47" 1080p (LG), and the picture difference is astounding. I didn't really see much difference between non-HD and HD on my old TV, but with the new TV, I really do Princess has even found an interest in the TV, it's actually quite funny :) She is lying in front of the TV watching Animal Planet :) My TV is so crisp that I feel dizzy when watching sports ;)

January 09, 2010 19:01 UTC (Comments)

Yesterday I complained about having 4 power outages. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning :( I woke up this morning, got into the office, and whaddayaknow, power goes out. I didn't get through my email, even. So, I am thinking, 10 mins, and it's back. So I decide to take down the Christmas decorations (12th/13th day of Christmas, according to some Nordic traditions, that's when they must go. Some wait 21 days). Princess annoyed me by jumping into the Xmas-tree box (well, duh), and not getting out. By the time I was done, 30 minutes had passed, and no power.

What to do, what to do. I work from home, so... No work could be done. Before anyone says laptop and office, yes, I do have two laptops and a notebook. No, I am not working on my notebook. One of the laptops won't boot (sits in BIOS. I know I can fix, but I haven't). The other is flaky and needs constant reboots to function (it just hangs, and I am not very patient). So, I went into the bedroom, open the blinds to get light and got under the covers with some chocolate, an apple, Princess and my Kindle. Power came back about 5 hours later, but then I had to go to my chiropractor, then go shopping (I had no bread), and then eat. I had no food that didn't need reheating, so I elected to eat when I got back home. By the time I was done eating, the day was over :(

How did man live without power???

January 07, 2010 05:29 UTC (Comments)

We're having a nice and cosy period of sub-zero temperatures now (and for once I am talking Fahrenheit). It's been like this for many days (and the forecast predicts it will remain like this for a while), just like I remember from the winters when I was a kid. Quite nice in a way, but when it dips below -16 - -17C (0 F) it gets a bit too cold for me (yes, I am glad I don't live in Røros, where the unofficial measurements from last night were -42C - now it's just -40.8C. Apparently no official measurements are available from the night, as the equipment froze...)

The biggest problem so far is that the temperature in the cellar gets a bit too low on the "cellar cool" scale, it's just a few degrees above zero in some places now so I am a bit concerned about the water pipes. I guess we should mount a heater in an appropriate place and see if that helps. Tonight.

It's also quite cold in the living room when we gets home. We don't see much use in heating it to the comfort zone when nobody are at home for 10 hours a day, so we've turned the heaters low during the day (they have a clock function) but it's an art to tune the thermostate so that it actually gets nice and warm. When it's -20C outside, having them on +20 doesn't yield +20 in the room - more like +12 or thereabout.... So fireplace is it when we get home, after a couple of hours it's nice and warm again :-) (It's just boooring to keep the heat going...)

In addition it's the fun of power dips (no, we don't have a UPS). Tonight the current dipped to about 80 V in all the house, as well as in a few of the neighbouring houses. Nice. The cable TV PVR still worked (at least the lights were strong and clear), and my laptop power converter was (sufficiently) happy with this, but most other equipment either died or barely lit up.

I called to report the error, and the guy at the power company first tried to explain me that they had disconnected customers with reduced tariff, which means they pay less for the electricity but can also be disconnected if the power company need their power. But I am not among them, so we agreed that an error in the next street could be the cause of this, and he promised to send someone to fix (and also to call me when it was fixed, which he hasn't so maybe it's not yet fixed?). 45 minutes later a car from the power company parked in the driveway of the neighbour. A good sign. After a while and some phone calls he drove in the opposite direction. Not so good. Two minutes later the power was disconnected completely - in most of the neighbourhood. Progress. A minute after that it came back again, and things seemed normal again.

Good? Well, not quite. I am measuring between 181 and 185V in the outlets here and over at our neighbours', which is a little bit below the specification of 230V +/- 10% (i.e. 207 - 253V) even if my voltmeter might not be 100% correctly adjusted. We've had some trouble with a fluorescent tube in the bathroom, and also the one in the kitchen has been slow recently, and this could explain it. I am just not sure if this justifies calling the 24/7 number for the power company once more to report it tonight, or if I should do it during business hours. The advantage of doing it now is that they are aware of recent errors, and I will (probably) also get to talk to an electrician, while if I call tomorrow I will probably get to 1. line support. On the other hand they will bill me for it if the error turns out to be in the house, and that's cheaper tomorrow... but again, since the low voltage is in two houses, it's probably outside the walls somewhere. Considerations, considerations.

(The neighbour was amazed that I had my own voltmetre. Is that weird?)

January 06, 2010 21:00 UTC (Comments)

Bad things

Good things

January 06, 2010 04:17 UTC (Comments)

Not too long ago, there was a bit of minor cleanup in the Perl 6 specification regarding the use of whatever (*); there were some inconsistencies in how it behaved, depending on context.

The net result is that you now must use @arr[*-1] to get the last element, you cannot get away with simply using @arr[*].

Some may feel that this extra typing is bothersome, especially if you have a Unicode-friendly keyboard setup.

However, we can sneak our way past this problem by using a constant.

This also works with the current release of Rakudo, so it's not quite science fiction:

constant Ω = *-1;

constant Ѡ = *-1;

my @letters = 'a'..'z';
say '→'~@letters[*-1];
→z

constant Ω = *-1;
my @letters = 'a'..'z';
say '→'~@letters[Ω];
→z

constant π = pi;
say '→'~π
→3.14159265358979

January 05, 2010 21:10 UTC

Noen mener kanskje at billedbøker er lettleste greier som passer best for småunger. Og selvfølgelig passer de fleste billedbøker for barn (dog det finnes faktisk billedbøker som passer best for voksne), og bøkene om Charlie og Lola av Lauren Child passer definitivt for barn. Og etter min mening, så passer dem for voksne også!

Bøkene er morsomme og søte og har flotte illustrasjoner. De handler om søskenparet storebror Charlie og lillesøster Lola. Søsknene opplever helt dagligdagse ting, og tar for seg tema nok de fleste barn, og de som har vært barn, kan kjenne seg igjen i.

Mine favoritter tror jeg må være Men unnskyld meg, det er min bok, hvor Charlie og Lola besøker biblioteket, og Jeg er veldig, veldig ikke helt frisk, som handler om å være syk.

January 05, 2010 15:48 UTC (Comments)

Jeg har egentlig lenge hatt lyst til å lese Isaac Asimovs SF-klassiker I, Robot, og lysten ble ikke mindre da jeg fikk den anbefalt av Eirik for en tid tilbake. Da jeg var i Bergen i romjula og hadde gått tom for lesestoff, ble det derfor naturlig å ta turen innom biblioteket, og etter å ha snust litt rundt i hyllene falt egentlig det enkle valget på denne boka.

Boka er strengt tatt en samling av flere historier, men i de fleste historiene treffer vi på de samme personene, og hovedpersonen kan vel strengt sagt sies å være Dr. Susan Calvin. Dr. Calvin er en sterk, intelligent kvinne, og noe så uvanlig som robopsykolog. Et sentralt tema i historiene er kunstig intelligens, og hvilke konsekvenser det kan ha hvis det skjer noe galt med robotene som innehar dette.

Flere av historiene er humoristiske, og boka er generelt svært godt skrevet. Den er relativt kort og lettskrevet, og jeg koste meg virkelig med det som skulle bli årets siste leste bok for meg.

January 04, 2010 18:43 UTC (Comments)

Det var nærmest en tilfeldighet at en kollega snakket om boka Historien om Potet-Isaksen av Eoin Colfer. Jeg er ganske sikker på at adjektivet “artig” ble brukt, og det tok meg i hvert fall ikke lang tid å søke den opp i samkatalogen og bestille orginalversjonen på fjernlån.

Nå begynner det å bli en stund siden jeg leste The Legend of Spud Murphy, men jeg føler at den fortjener en omtale, for denne boka er et “must read”, som det heter på engelsk, i hvert fall for bibliotekarer. “Spud Murphy” er nemlig den fryktingytende bibliotekaren som jobber på biblioteket de to brødrene Will og Marty tvinges til å besøke i ferien. Foreldrene har nemlig bestemt at de denne ferien skal gjøre noe nyttig. Brødrene er ikke spesielt begeistret for avgjørelsen, og er livredde den strenge bibliotekaren som styrer biblioteket med jernhånd. Det er en kjensgjerning at hun ikke kan utstå barn. Hvordan skal de komme seg gjennom en dag på biblioteket? For ikke å snakke om hver dag i en hel ferie?

Boka er humoristisk skrevet om det å oppdage leseglede. Den er relativt lettlest og jeg ville glatt anbefalt den til unge lesere som skal trene engelsken sin. Boka finnes også på norsk, som sagt, og jeg tror den vil kunne fenge de fleste fra kanskje 6 år og oppover, uten å egentlig være for påståelig i verken den ene eller den andre retningen.

January 03, 2010 19:05 UTC (Comments)

A New Year in Scotland

Quite early on, we decided to go to Scotland to celebrate the New Year, of Hogmanay, as they call it up there. After some research we found a good new year's package on a hotel in Stirling that also allowed dogs. We've stayed at Barcelo hotels other places and like them really well. This was no exception.

We left early on Tuesday morning the 30th and drove northwards. It was a bit exciting due to the weather, but apart from some snowy showers and queues about Carlisle, we came well out of it, only about an hour delayed. On the hotel we had a nice 3 course-dinner, and had a short evening walk trough Stirling "city center" before going to bed.

On the new years day we had planned to see the Stirling castle, but I was a bit tired, so we went for the brewery that Tollef wanted to visit instead, hoping it included less walking. We tried to find the Allan Bridge brewery last time we were there a couple of years ago, but gave up finding it by foot. It appeared we turned around just a few hundred metres away from it. Of course. As we were there an hour before they opened, we decided to go to see the Wallace monument that we'd seen on the way to the Allan Bridge Brewery. It appeared to include some walking, but as we could bring Odin it was a good way to give him some exercise before the long evening ahead. It was a 15 minute partly slippery walk up to the monument, where Tollef and I walked to the top of the castle one by one, the other waiting with Odin outside. It was very nice and a lot of history to learn, and the view from the top was very nice when the snow showers stopped.

Both back down on the ground, we went to the brewery, which appeared to be very nice. We got to taste some very good beers, and bought a good bunch of them. The brewmaster was very nice and told us a lot about his beers. He also had a dog that wasn't there that day, because she didn't want to get out of bed. But he had a beer named after her, and we got one of those as a gift. I also bought some dog biscuits for Odin, that they made from the leftovers from brewing! We bought a good lot of beer to bring home, especially a bunch of the 1488 whisky beer, which was one of the best. It is actually beer made just like whisky, without the destillation!

We had a light lunch before going back to the hotel and got a couple of hours rest before the night's dinner. It was 4 courses, including haggis, with a lot of ceremony around it, with a kilt-dressed man playing the bagpipe and proclaiming Robert Burns poetry. I will now defer all rumors about haggis, it really tastes quite good! A bit like Norwegian meatcakes, just a bit more spicy. All the food was good, and afterwards we went to the "Academy Hall" for dancing. Tollef and I joined in one of the Scottish dances, and was complimented by some of the people there.

Just before midnight we dressed warmly (Odin also), and walked up towards Stirling Castle, where the fireworks would be. There was a concert by a Freddie Mercury-performer which was very good, and a lot of people in and around the castle. It was also a lot of ice everywhere, fortunately we got away with no accidents. The fireworks was a bit disappointing, it was only the one from the castle and nowhere else. But again, it was kind of nice knowing that there wasn't a million pounds "blowing up" that night.

After a good breakfast the morning after, we headed back towards the South. The weather was nice and clear, and ice cold, so the wiper liquid had frozen. The landscape looked like it could be anywhere in Norway, snowclad hills with some rocks and trees here and there. We passed the Camelot Theme park and decied to go there some time later. At dinner time we took off towards Stoke-on-Trent, and tried to find somewhere to eat. Everything was closed, all shops, restaurants and kiosks, and we used google maps and an hour to find the nearby retail park and Pizza Hut. Not being one of my favourites, we were both surprised by getting good food and good and fast service.

It was really good to get home, and we are happy to know that we are not going anywhere this far again in England. 60 Norwegian miles are a lot more in England than in Norway!

Karianne

January 03, 2010 17:45 UTC

Tre minutter over midnatt 1. januar 2010 holdt Neil Gaiman denne talen i Symphony Hall i Boston:

Han sier:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously. I hope you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself.

Oversatt til norsk blir det noe slikt som:

Måtte ditt kommende år bli fyllt med magi og drømmer og herlig galskap. Jeg håper du leser noen gode bøker og kysser noen som synes du er vidunderlig. Og ikke glem å skape kunst – skriv eller tegn eller bygg eller syng eller lev som kun du kan. Måtte ditt kommende år bli noe flott hvor du drømmer både farlig og villt. Jeg håper du vil lage noe som ikke eksisterte før du laget det, at du vil bli elsket og at du vil bli likt og at du vil ha mennesker å elske og like tilbake. Og aller viktigst, fordi jeg mener det burde være mer godhet og visdom i verden akkurat nå – jeg håper at du vil, når du trenger det, være vis og at du alltid vil være snill. Og jeg håper at du en gang i løpet av det neste året overrasker deg selv.

Mulig det bare er meg, men det er den vakreste nyttårstalen jeg noen sinne har hørt. Den mannen er rett og slett fantastisk!

January 02, 2010 22:29 UTC (Comments)

Well, not as much resolutions as things I want or plan to do. I don't really like resolutions anyway, but having some plans are good.

1. Giving birth. Pretty hard to avoid at this stage. Sometime between now and March, preferably closer to mid-March than mid-January.

2. Building nest-stuff. This includes things like buying more baby clothes (so far we have three creepers, a wool pyjamas, two long-sleeved suit-thingies (I think one is for outdoor use and one is perhaps a pyjamas? It's got penguins.) and a knitted two-piece suit from my mother. The books says we should at least add some pants and socks to the creepers (this is Norway in winter), and either get about trice these clothes or be prepared to run the washing-machine and dryer constantly. In addition to clothes we also need a car seat, a complete bed with linen and a pram (in that order).

3. I tried to decorate the table for New Years Eve, with some colour coordination between napkins, table cloth, candles and flowers. I'd like to do more of that, so table decorations are on the list of stuff I want to do. May be hard to combine with the consequences/symptoms of #1 and #2.

4. Exercise a bit more regularly. Preferably also before #1. And after.

5. Get enough sleep. Also after #1. Haha.

6. Don't waste money or resources in general. Eat less meat, eat more local food, travel less by car and more by feet and bike (obviously mostly for local travel).

7. Read books regularly, although I probably won't get close to the usual goals of one per week or 100 a year or more than last year (which was 42) or whatever resolutions I have had before.

Most of these are related to or influenced by #1, so I suppose it's safe to say the year will be highly influenced by that.

January 02, 2010 20:57 UTC (Comments)

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2010 will be a good year for all of you.

We spent the last evening of the old year at home, with our traditional new years party. Due to the stress of planning and our friends who are...not exactly well-determined when it comes to accepting or rejecting an invitation, many seemed to be uncertain about whether we'd have a party - but we went from 5 confirmed participants on the morning of the 30th to 10 in the evening. And all 10 turned up on the 31st :-) It was a bit fewer than the former years, but a nice bunch of people, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves despite the hostess disappearing for an hour and a half around midnight (to have a very necessary nap).

The menu was a bit different this year - no turkey, in stead we made a game stew with elk and reindeer, served with mashed potatoes, salad and deer sausages. This was followed by two desserts and a cake - yum! I can't promise anything about next new years eve yet, but I may suggest there will be a party then, too - I'd however as usual appreciate more than one days notice from the indecisive part of the crowd.

The last guests left around 4 or so, so we slept in today and the day became rather short. A late breakfast, some time to clean up after the party, then we left for dinner with a colleague of Anders. We got roasted lamb with bell pepper there, very good in deed. Tomorrow we're going to my parents for a family dinner with both my brothers etc.

Coming soon: New years resolutions and a 2009 roundup.

January 01, 2010 21:19 UTC (Comments)

Det er fredag i dag… Er det noe du har savnet her? Et dikt kanskje? Vel, jeg har akkurat tatt en liten diktpause i bloggen, og lurer på om jeg egentlig skal fortsette med det. Hva synes DU? Skal jeg fortsette å poste et dikt hver fredag, eller…?

January 01, 2010 13:43 UTC (Comments)

2009 var for meg et innholdsrikt år. Jeg skiftet jobb, flyttet nordover, kjøpte meg leilighet og flyttet deretter innenbys. Det har vært mange turer både nordpå og sørpå. Leselista er kanskje ikke så skrekkelig lang for dette året, endte opp med “bare” 57 bøker. Noen av disse var noen mursteiner, andre var lettleste bøker for barn. Dog, alle var bøker, like fullt. Jeg har ikke telt med bøkene jeg ga opp.

Høydepunkter for 2009:

A Hat Full of Sky – Terry Pratchett
Twilight-sagaen – Stephenie Meyer
Darlah : 172 timer på månen – Johan Harstad
Høytleseren – Bernhard Schlink
Vindens skygge – Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Host – Stephenie Meyer
The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
Song for Eirabu : slaget på Vigrid. Bok 1. – Kristine Tofte
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
De elendige – Victor Hugo
Ingen må vite – Aina Basso (som jeg leste omigjen)
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

Skuffelser for 2009:

Meg eier ingen – Åsa Linderborg
Trist som faen : fortellinger – Ari Behn
La meg synge deg stille sanger – Linda Olsson
Mengele Zoo – Gert Nygårdshaug
Pilegrimsreisen – Paulo Coelho

Komplett liste over leste bøker 2009 finner du her:
The Books I Read in 2009

January 01, 2010 11:31 UTC (Comments)

I 2010 er “Av en annen verden” hele fem år gammel! Dette må feires! Oppfordrer derfor alle til å holde et godt øye med bloggen famover, kan love utlodninger og annet snacks!

Jeg vil ønske alle nye og gamle lesere av bloggen et riktig godt nytt år!

January 01, 2010 00:39 UTC (Comments)