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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Magnus Itland's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | |
| 12:09 am | Whew Finished watching the Touch anime, all 101 episodes. What a long trek. It was pretty girly for a baseball anime, was it not? And incredibly old. People even have vinyl records in it, and no cell phones. It is strange to think that there already existed anime in such a time. |
| Friday, November 27th, 2009 | |
| 8:04 pm | Food! I think I may accidentally have made the best meal in my life today. And I ate it all alone. Oh well. I guess it has to happen to us all sooner or later. Current Mood:  full |
| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | |
| 4:44 pm | Ubuntu improves again Earlier this fall I moved the ADSL modem and router out in the hallway for various good reasons. The downside to this was that my old laptop with Ubuntu fell off the home network. I had to attach it to my mobile phone to go online. The problem is that the OS did not recognize either of my USB devices for the wireless network. I have 3 different models from 3 different manufacturers: Jensen, D-Link and SparkLAN. Unfortunately the drivers were all for Windows. There are supposedly ways to get around that, but they are extremely technical and more disturbingly, each website that has a solution has a different solution. Anyway, I had used cabled connection but that was no longer an option. The easiest seemed to be one that required me to download the source code for the driver and compile it myself. I could probably have done that if it was necessary to impress a woman, but I am past the age of compiling for fun. So, I let it gather dust for a while. Today I had a compelling reason to try to hook the machine onto the local network again. Since I have in the meantime upgraded Ubuntu to a new version (9.10) using the mobile phone, I decided to let it have another go at my oldest USB wireless receiver, the SparkLAN. I plugged it in, and a few seconds later it told me there were wireless networks present. I selected my home network (the neighbors seem to have one too) and gave the encryption key, and moments later I was connected. Just like that. That's a lot easier than it was in Windows when I first got it, although I am not sure, it may be just as easy in Windows 7. I don't have that. Anyway, I believe it is now as simple and easy as physically possible. Good work, free software folks! (While writing this, I suddenly lost connection to the Internet, for all of my computers. After half an hour of trying various remedies, I found that the dial tone of my landline is gone too. Looking out the window I then saw a guy near the top of a nearby phone pole. Whether he is the problem or the solution, I don't know, but I'll not be able to send this until he is finished at best.) |
| 6:32 am | There is still some evil inside me So I was reading the NaNoWriMo forums, and someone was asking if there was free (creative writing) software for the Mac, and I was thinking "If you don't have more money than you need, why do you have a Mac in the first place?" |
| Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | |
| 5:13 pm | Coming soon to a charging station near you The Era of the Electric Vehicle Started Now (Discovery News) Electric cars have been around for a while, and for the last couple years they have been competitive with diesel cars for the uses most people actually use their car for. They are certainly a contender for the number two cars for the American or Norwegian family. (Not all nations have two or more cars per family, of course, so that market is smaller.) But this is the first time we are seeing massive implementation on the corporate level. This is not an experiment. If the recession really ends (as opposed to the technical ends achieved by unsustainable government stimuli) and oil prices go back to their pre-crash level, the gas-powered car may be headed toward extinction. But that is a big if. Peak oil may be delayed for years if we get a double-dip recession followed by a Japan-style zero-growth decade. Even so, the price of electricity compared to fossil fuels is bound to improve as alternative energy technologies mature and gain scale. It is only a matter of time. Take good care of your gas-powered car, it may be your last. |
| 3:27 am | Leg cramp I think this is the first time I have woken up to a leg cramp in winter. They have always been in the summer before, to the point where my doctor thought dehydration was a trigger. Now it is November, I've been drinking plenty, and I exercised (with proper warmup) the day before. I also always get plenty potassium because milk is part of my daily diet. Perhaps it really is random. Oh well. I am still off from work because Norwegian law mandates that we must have a month of vacation and naturally I picked NaNoWriMo as mine. The stiffness usually only lasts for one day if I take NSAIDs as soon as I can get up afterwards. |
| Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | |
| 10:44 am | |
| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | |
| 5:16 am | I feel your pain, but... ...how do you manage to drop your trousers when you're stuck halfway through a tiny window? (Reuters Oddly Enough) Because I've been in such a window, although that was my own, and I am pretty sure I did not have any body parts on that side of the window prehensile enough to take off my pajamas bottoms, much less a pair of trousers. Current Mood:  sympathetic |
| 1:10 am | In Google we trust - well, at least a bit I've enabled Google Latitude on my HeroPhone. I don't have any latitude friends - I actually have only one LJ-friend in Kristiansand, and none in Mandal where I will hopefully be moving one of these weeks. But I like the idea of having a log of my movements on some offshore server, to pull out if I need an alibi. Or just to know where I've been without having to write a Facebook entry about it. It must be thrice awesome for those of you who have close friends in the fleshworld. |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | |
| 11:54 pm | Dreaming of the afterlife I slept for about 8 hours, which is very long for me. As usual in those cases, at the end I had a very long and very strange dream. This time I got to see the parts of Hell and Heaven where new arrivals first came. Well, they were not really Hell and Heaven, just temporary lodgings I think, for those going that way. After much confusion that I don't remember clearly, I ended up on the good side. There were not many angels around, I was shown to my room by another recent arrival, and did the same for a woman who came a bit later. The rooms were along a corridor that just grew on itself while no one was looking, so that there were always free rooms at the end of the corridor when someone new came. The woman whom I helped spoke only Norwegian so I had to find a place where there were already other Norwegians. Luckily I had noticed a cluster of them when I passed. Each of us got a spacious room and there were common rooms where people gathered, and also you could go outdoors. It was all rather ordinary. What made one of the places hellish and the other heavenly was the people who got sent to one or the other. You could tell you were heaven-side because people were going out of the way to help each other. |
| Monday, November 16th, 2009 | |
| 10:43 pm | Unintentional metaphor With the dollar sinking again, gold prices have been going through the roof. I just saw Forbes write an article about the "Gold Bull Market". It took me some lines to realize that they were not alluding to the biblical story of the golden calf. |
| Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | |
| 5:24 am | Memories of Acid Reflux  Hi guys Paragon City sure has a lot of work for a battle-porcupine, and the city is teeming with nice humanoid cuties. But every so often I miss the old gang and the times we roamed the world of Irving fighting creatures almost as fantastic and improbable as ourselves. Wish you were here, or I were there or something. Thanks for all the fish! Hugs... oops! *bandaid* Itland the wereporcupine. Current Mood:  nostalgicCurrent Music: Pikku-Orava - Pokka |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 | |
| 8:51 am | When you're dying you'll trust Big Pharma. Medicines to Deter Some Cancers Are Not Taken (NY Times) This long, long, long article documents two related topics. 1) There are drugs that are proven by big, elaborate studies to dramatically reduce the risk of certain cancers. People don't effing care. 2) The usual stuff that is believed to prevent cancer does not work, or causes more cancer. People still believe in it. It is a dismal picture indeed. This article confirms that a lot of correlations turns out not to be causations. Eating fruit or losing weight won't prevent cancer, at least if you do it the last 20 years or so before the cancer breaks out. Eating various supplements that are supposed to prevent cancer will give you more cancer. But most importantly, people don't care until they actually are diagnosed with cancer. Then most of them decide to give medicine a try anyway. So pharmaceutical companies have taken the hint. They have stopped developing drugs that prevent cancer, and are investing in treatments instead. That's where the money is. Current Mood: still alive |
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | |
| 9:12 am | Some people need to sleep more From the NaNoWriMo forums. Q: Why are the squirrels sinister? A:The squirrels think the characters are nuts. They intend to seize them and bury them in the leaves for future storage. |
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | |
| 8:09 pm | Politics is a noxious soup. Have some! I think the US government would have become more popular in the short run if it made the economy (and mainly employment) its only priority until it was, like, fixed. Not that they would not have to make various decisions about other things that come up - things always come up. But not pushing anything else, not starting to talk about anything else unless someone asks, things like that. Because this was, as far as I could hear from a distance, what they were elected for. I have a pretty good memory and I don't think the independents who voted Obama did so because he promised tax-funded abortions or some such. It was the economy, stupid. And most people don't perceive the economy as fixed just because some stocks go up. When they get a new job, they will say it is fixed. Then you can start reaping the political capital from it. Then you can start pushing your agenda. There is of course the small question of whether the Democrats CAN fix the economy. Opinions on this will obviously vary. I'd say that the whole stimulus thing would be a defensible answer to a normal recession. But if the problem is that the American model is Just Plain Wrong (that is, if you can't outsource production but keep consumption at home), then the large stimulus package will actually make things worse faster. But we shall have to wait and see about that. In the case that this fails, in the case that the counter-bubble burst just in time for the next election, people will say: "These jackasses promised to fix the economy, but once in power they broke their promises and spent four year driving through their commie agenda", and Palin will return in glory while Riflejugend patrol the neighborhoods. OK, probably not, but it could get mildly unplesant to be openly Democratic for a while in some districts. |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 3:47 pm | Getting better I seem to be getting slightly better instead of worse from the current virus infection. So I'll assume it is just a bad cold. After the course I failed to go on today I have unbroken vacation out the month, so it should be easy to stay home for some days so as to not bring it on to others and give them the same scare. Current Mood: sick |
| 9:06 am | Cold or flu? So yesterday I had a bad head and throat cold, of the kind I have a couple times a year. This was not surprising, since my fellow bus passengers the past week were coughing and sneezing like they were alone on a secret island. Whatever they had, I was likely to get. And if not them, then the person coughing beside me on the software course earlier in the week. Although that may be a bit too early again. So is this a normal cold or the Killer Flu of Doom? I honestly don't know. My temperature has hovered just below 38 C since yesterday afternoon, but at this time of the morning it is usually closer to 36. And it is probably not a good sign that I was shaking so badly I had trouble shaving. If this is the flu, this is when I should start eating Tamiflu. But of course, to get that I would have to take the bus to the city, infecting a random number of other people on my way. But I am definitely not going to the second part of that course today. |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | |
| 3:48 pm | That's why we have a separate WIS stat, folks "A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ." New Scientist, Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart |
| 1:41 am | Exercise, fat, etc Phys Ed: Why Doesn’t Exercise Lead to Weight Loss? (NY Times) Most of us actually burn off a lot of the calories we eat, rather than storing them. This is particularly true for carbs, as we don't have a good system for storing carbs over and above approximately one day's use (which is stored as glycogen). Converting sugars to fat is cumbersome and most of the energy is lost in the process. (There is a difference between sugars though, as fructose is a bit easier to convert to fat. Or so I read, back when I tried to get my weight back.) Anyway, even if we don't exercise, we leak away many of the extra calories as heat. If we exercise, the body simply processes less calories during the rest of the day, as also this study shows. Negative afterburn. Still, it is better to be fat and healthy than fat and unhealthy! |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | |
| 8:06 pm | Lease signed I am sitting in the living room in my new rented house. It is heated by a wood burner, but that is not quite enough for the living room and kitchen combined. (There is a door frame but no door between them.) Heat pump will be installed during the next two weeks. As will fiberoptic cable, the other modern necessity. The house is small and old-fashioned, but brought up to near modern standard. The location is great, but I can't see that on a dark and rainy Norwegian November night. The neighbourhood has zero crime until now, and the landlord is also living nearby. He is friendly and very helpful (he was the one who came to with the idea of the heat pump here first). He is also OK with my employer. Actually he sounded outright enthusiastic about them, which is rare since we are working for the government exclusively. (In fact, I am still officially state-employed.) Anyway, that's the news today. |