Los Unanues

So, I’m on a reading kick about the technical side of the cold war. Books such as Command and Control, technical data on the different systems and more. Awesomely scary reading, but when watching some movies about the C2 systems on YouTube, I really fell in love with the sounds of the cold war. They are extremely practical in nature, made to be heard and impossible to ignore, and also the sounds of impeding doom. They are the sounds of missile control centers and operation centers.

My thought: They would make awesome ringtones. Continue reading →

Many of those who follow my Twitter account ask me if I have a gripe with Ruter# (sic), the public transport company in Oslo responsible for underground, bus, trams and ferries. I really don’t. Honestly! My issue is that, for other than cruising around the countryside in an English classic, I hate cars for everyday commuting. Cars are the bane of every modern city, and should be superseded by excellent public transport. And thus the problems start. Continue reading →

It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but still it’s sad to see a true visionary disappear from the information technology stage. Jobs  was a catalyst for improvement, in the respect that Apple, Pixar and NeXT seldom invented things. They perfected them. The PC, the GUI, the point-and-click, the laptop, wifi, the stationary computer, the digital music player, the smart phone, the tablet, 3D animation. All ideas that were on the market, but lacked the clear vision and stern leadership to make them into everyday icons.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Jobs on stage twice, in 2007 and 2008 at MacWorld in San Francisco. It was a captivating show, a beautifully organized circus of fan boys, cool devices and borderline hysterical media. In charge of it all, a man that kept it all together, inspired by words like “insanely great” and “it’s better to be a pirate than join the navy”.

There’s not many that mourn the businessman Steve Jobs. He ran some businesses great (Pixar, Apple round 2) and others not so well (NeXT, Apple round 1). What I’m sad to see go, is a person with a unique set of skills needed to push the humankind an inch closer into the future.

At my current work place, I’ve adopted one of Jobs’ quotes from the 2005 Stanford speech into a everyday motto:

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

So, I had a simple task the other day:

• Find the opening hours of Frogner stadium to plan some exercise.

Sounds easy, right? Just pop over to the Frogner stadium web page and look it up. Nope. There are only opening hours for the winter seasons and the skating rink. The ice is long gone and all we (Christina, Vidar and I) is a good 12 laps around the field.

When we were there a week ago, we were ushered out around 17:00 so we presumed they were closing at that point. It seemed a bit early, but we left. Not wanting to make the same mistake today, I tried to call ahead.

I looked up the page for the stadium “owners”, the Park and Sports department of Oslo Municipality but there was only a general number to the Oslo municipality there. 02 180, if you were wondering. All opening times were for the winter season, when Frogner stadium is an ice skating rink. No word on the summer season.

I call them, the switchboard lady looks up the proper person to contact and transfers me. So far, so good. It rings for 30 seconds… …and goes to an answering machine. “Hi! You’ve reached blah blah, I’m on vacation until the 27th of April”. Ok, today is the 27th of April, and the switchboard lady has no “busy” marks on your number. Whatever. No info on alternate numbers given.

Another call to the switchboard, she transfers me to the front office of the department. Nobody answers the phone and after a  minute or so the call is disconnected. However, they call me back. Wow! The caller ID is working in the department and the clerk is service mined enough to get back. However, the front office has no information on one of the biggest stadiums they administrate, so she tries to transfer me. Fine.

After some rustling of papers to find the correct person, the clerk tries to transfer the call. It disconnects. I call them up, they try again. Once more, another disconnection. This happens two more times.

I finally got transferred… …to the person who was supposed to end her vacation yesterday. I call the main switchboard again, they give me a number directly to a person in case I get lost in transfer. The person answering is head honcho of the Park and Sports department and do have the answer. He tells me it’s strange that we got ushered away from the track, but assures me that it is open to the public.

Final answer: 22:00 hours is the closing time.

(No work time was affected during this phone odyssey as I could answer email while calling.)

So, an article in Aftenposten about how the automated emergency systems in the Japanese Shinkansen reacted much faster and correct than humans possibly can, and stopped the trains before the earthquake struck. This probably saved tons of lives as having an earthquake strike the tracks at 400 km/h is not something you’d like to see. Some damage was recorded on and near the tracks, good thing the trains were halted when the power lines went down.

Oh, look! There’s an article just below on the front page about the Norwegian railway system. Let’s have a look.

…right. At one of the railway tracks passing through Oslo, a derailments happened when the wooden ties (seriously, wooden ties on a busy track in 2011?) slipped out of alignment and destabilized the track. The ties were so rotten that the fixing plate screws could be unfastened by hand, said the investigators.

As a passionate advocate for public transport, this is quite disheartening to read.

One one hand you have a country being hit by the biggest quake in modern history, and everything went according to plan.

On the other, you have a piece of critical infrastructure, man rated (meaning it’s qualified to carry persons), going through the capital of the country and maintenance is ignored for decades resulting in a critical failure. Pure luck, and nothing else save lives that evening.

Today has been the Day of Booking! Restaurant date with wifey, epic battles with HRG to get tickets done for Hungary (not for me), an evening with Jerry Seinfeld in June, the list goes on. Looking forward to the Seinfeld evening, I’m taking my mother, a Seinfeld fan in a big way. It’ll be fun!

At Reddit, someone linked something other than cute kittens and NSFW pictures;  a small cheat sheet to life. Tomorrow I’ll turn all Christina’s coat hangers inwards and in one year we can see what clothes the actually use in one year… 🙂

As some of you may have noticed, Vidar, Baard and I are owners of a small (6,5 meter) sailboat. I prefer the term yacht, though. Today Baard signed the lease for a dock space in Oslo and we all got a swift kick in the behind to do some restoration work and launch the boat.

If you are interested in dropping by this summer, the boat is docked right outside Oslo:
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