Kids.

We live on the fourth floor in a five storey apartment building. The last floor now works as a buffer floor after a mobile network operator suddenly installed a base station cell tower on the roof. When all the people on the fifth floor have got cancer, we’re moving out.

A good thing about this apartment building is that the walls are not made of paper, so we rarely hear anything from the next door neighbours. The couple that lives above us is another story - they are very easy to hear when they bounce around. She likes to go out to party every now and then, and as we all know most women tend to spend quite some time getting ready. The first thing she does is to put on her high heals, and then she runs around for about an hour before she finally leaves. Not he most entertaining thing to listen to, but nothing we can’t live with.

For about a week now they’ve had visitors; another couple with a kid, a boy, about two years old. And he is a wild and active kid! When he does not run around in circles upstairs in what can only be tap dancing shoes, he jumps around in his concrete shoes. What did this two year old kid do to the mafia to deserve that? Continue reading "Kids."

Television Digitales.

By the end of 2008 analogue TV will be a thing of the past in Norway. By then all the analogue terrestrial broadcast equipment will be shut down and replaced by digital equipment. Personally, I’ve been trying to avoid digital TV solutions because they are usually encrypted, closed systems that are not compatible with my Windows Media Center. And I love my media center - when it works, that is. But soon a digital TV system will replace the nice analogue system in my apartment building and I don’t have any choice but to embrace it.

Yesterday me, Gine and the other members of the cooperative building and housing association who bothered to show up, had a meeting with the company that will implement the solution in our four apartment buildings. I guess it will be very interesting in September when they are supposed to have everything in place. They’ve been in business since late 2004, but their set-top box does not have PVR functionality, something that should be a very least common denominator for set-top boxes. The company do, however, say that this will be in place before September. We’ll see.

An interesting side effect of the introduction of digital TV in the apartment building is that there will suddenly be a dedicated fiber optic connection to each apartment building. This means that I can upgrade my internet connection to a whooping 100/10Mb. Good stuff, but not very necessary, I’ve got a theoretical maximum of 24Mb downstream on my current connection, and I never, ever use that much. Besides, the wireless connection inside my apartment only supports 54Mb anyway.

Tickets.

For 20 odd years the city of Oslo has been working their way towards an electronic ticket system much like the Transport of London’s Oyster card. So far they have used about 600 million Norwegian kroner (roughly one hundred and ten million US dollars with today’s exchange rate) on the ticket system that they call Flexus. About two years ago, the first ticket machines and card validators were installed, and a month or so ago they started a limited public trial of the system. I’ve been one of the lucky ones to test the system and I’m sorry to say that after 20 years of planning, designing, more planning and then some redesigning there is still a long way to go before everything is ready for the masses. Continue reading "Tickets."

NTP Anyone?

This is what happens when you’re not in sync. Seen on Oslo Airport Gardermoen.

Winter Wonderland.

Finally, a little bit of snow. Good because that’s the way it’s suppsed to be, bad because it makes traveling by bike harder.