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Depth.

1 year, 167 days ago
Wednesday August 25th, 2010

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One of the really cool things about using a SLR camera when taking pictures compared to using a compact, is the immense power you get in your hands. You can literary control everything and create a spectacular photography of an everyday situation. The problem with all this power is that it takes a lot of practice to master it.

I’ve got a theory about what Jane Q. Taxpayer considers a good photography: It’s a familiar scene shown in an unfamiliar way. I’m sure you can agree with me. A good example is the cross processing with vignette effect that has become very popular this year. I’ve fallen for the temptation of taking a few myself.

Depth of field is one of the many magical powers you get when shooting with SLR than can make the simplest scene look quite impressive. In my humble opinion, it can easily make or brake a portrait, for instance. A few years ago I got a dead cheap 50mm lens from Canon. With an f-number as small as 1/8 it enables some really funky depth of field images. But it’s very hard to get it right. Continue reading "Depth." →

Bicyclelicious.

1 year, 171 days ago
Saturday August 21st, 2010

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Personal

I’m not very good at bike maintenance, which means that I have to replace my bike every few years. It’s been a while since I last did it – and that time I had to do it because my previous bike was stolen. Now that once shiny new bike has turned into a hunk of junk. Over the years, I’ve replaced small parts, like the brake pads and stuff like that, but now the wear and tear of daily use, often all year through, made it necessary to replace some of the more vital bits and pieces.

After stopping by two bike shops to get estimates on the job, it turned out the frame was pretty much the only thing that didn’t have to be replaced, so in the end I opted for buying a new bike instead. It wasn’t that more expensive and riding this bike is like always having a tail wind pushing me in the back compared to the old one.

Since I don’t have any kids to show you pictures of here’s a picture of the bike. Continue reading "Bicyclelicious." →

“The Zombie Survival Guide” by Max Brooks.

1 year, 179 days ago
Friday August 13th, 2010

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Books, Reviews

I accidentally noticed that August 13 has been a particularly productive day for me over the years, with a new entry posted every year from 2002 to 2007. 2008 and 2009 didn’t see any activity, probably caused by my general lack of commitment to force my ramblings on a limited, but surprisingly faithful audience. Since my goal is to write at least 100 entires this year, I’ll try to reboot the an-entry-every-August-13 this year with a short book review.

I came across Max Brook’s “The Zombie Survival Guide” book while surfing reddit where I read that Bras Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment had secured the rights to another of Brooks’ books; “World War Z”. Actually, this happened all the way back in 2007, but sometimes news travels slow – at least it often takes a while before I notice things. I like Brad Pitt, at least as an actor, I have to admit that I don’t know him personally. But he is probably a likable fellow. I also enjoy zombies, but not the fast moving ones you find in Left 4 Dead, I prefer the slow ghouls you can see in movies like the excellent Shaun of the Dead*. Why? Because it’s possible to outrun, or maybe even outwalk them quit easily. The fast ones tend to kill you.

Max Brooks’ zombies are like that: Outwalkable. And when I imagined Brad Pitt in an action movie with outwalkable ghouls, I decided that I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie for once. Even though there is no actual movie being made right now, and there might very well never be, the book could to our to be entertaining. Brooks wrote “The Zombie Survival Guide” before “World War Z”, and even though the books are not directly linked with each other, the guide contains very detailed information about the zombies in “World War Z”. Because of that, I decided to read the guide first. Continue reading "“The Zombie Survival Guide” by Max Brooks." →

Boot Camp.

1 year, 181 days ago
Wednesday August 11th, 2010

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4 comments

Personal, Work

The BEKK boot camp at Lyngørporten is slowly crawling to an end. After a few days with various lectures, we’re now roughly a day away from finishing work on our assigned case; putting together an application that can be used internally for recruiting new employees. Everything is of course agile, with Scrum as our software development framework/pattern/whatever (pick your poison). Add Struts2, Spring, Hibernate, JPA and mix everything together with the help of Test Driven Development and you have the perfect recipe for a state-of-the-art recruiting application.

Or maybe not.

The Scrum sprints are compressed down to a single work day, and it turned out that the product owner didn’t know much about the project when we started. We got a technical specification before our initial meeting with the product owner, but it was all lies. All lies, I tell you! In retrospect we most likely could have turned this to our advantage and tried to “help” the product owner to understand his real requirements, but of course everything looks all too clear in hindsight. Well, we live and learn – that’s probably the point of the boot camp.

But not all is hard work here down South of Norway! Continue reading "Boot Camp." →

Career Change.

1 year, 188 days ago
Wednesday August 4th, 2010

363 views

7 comments

Personal, Work

Around this time last year, I started working for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, the NRK. Again. I also worked there from 2003 to 2004, before I left with Espen and Ola to found Rubberduck Media Lab, a company that turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. As you probably understand from the title of this entry, things are about to change again. On September 3, I’m leaving NRK to pursue a career as a senior system development consultant with the Norwegian company Bekk Consulting AS.

I have no doubt that it will be a very different and quite challenging task. I’ve received some information about the first project I will be involved in and I’m joining some of the most experienced consultants BEKK employs – maybe they needed someone to make them coffee. I can do that! We’re supposed to rewrite a web application to enable the use of more lightweight and modern application servers and frameworks. Hopefully, I can contribute to that as well.

BEKK is currently in the process of employing a batch of new consultants – none of them women – and I’m spending most of my summer vacation with them to learn the ins and outs of the company. Yesterday and today we’ve been through the administration basics and an introduction to .NET. Being a dedicated Java developer, I felt a bit dirty when we were done. Tomorrow morning we’re going underground for 8 days in an orgy* of team building, business cases and physical education.

*The use of the word “orgy” here is not literal, it’s very, very figurative.

« Older Entries

Depth.

Bicyclelicious.

“The Zombie Survival Guide” by Max Brooks.

Boot Camp.

Career Change.

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