I used to have an HTC Hero, which also was a good phone, but the screen was a little too small and the CPU a bit short on horsepower. It used a mini USB connector for charging, while the Desire uses a micro USB connector. Of course it would be preferable that it too used the mini USB, but as far as I understand, micro USB is now the new standard for charging connectors on mobile phones. Fingers crossed.

Anyway. I could use an extra micro USB cable to use at work. Let’s face it, the battery capacity on smart phones has something to be desired, and having a charging cable laying around is always a good idea¹⁾.

Where to find a cheap micro USB cable? Why, Deal Extreme of course!

They have a micro USB cable for the low, low price of $2.30. With free shipping. Cool. The problem with Hong Kong based Deal Extreme is that they have just that; a lot of extreme deals. Also, if you buy stuff for less than NOK 200, you don’t have to pay import taxes when the package arrives in Norway. NOK 200 is about USD 32 at the moment, meaning that it’s possible to cram a lot of extreme deals in one small package before the import tax kicks in.

And before I knew it, I’d ordered more crap than you can imagine: One 6-Inch 2.4GHz Antenna for Wifi/WLAN/Wireless Router and Access Point (not really crap, because I actually need it), two Multicolored LED Decorative Snow Ball (these are actually really nice), a Compact USB PC Webcam (300K Pixel), one 2-in-1 LED + Pointer Flashlight (great when I do one of my many presentations and whenever the light goes out), four (4) LED Shot Cups (parties will never be the same again). And the micro USB cable of course.

Here’s to the package not being held up in customs.

¹⁾ I haven’t tried the HTC Desire battery trick yet, but I will soon.

4 cl White Rum
2 cl Gin
Lime
Ice
Schweppes Lemon

Preparation:

1. Fill half the glass with ice, either cubes or crushed ice. Personally, I think ice cubes work better, but it might be because I’ve never tried with proper crushed ice, just slush ice.
2. Cut the lime in four and squeeze the juice from all four pieces. Put two of the pieces in the glass.
3. Mix the Gin and the White Rum in the with the rest.
4. Top with Schweppes Lemon.
5. Add a straw.
6. Profit.

NRK aired a documentary series about the No. 330 Squadron a few months ago and I watched every episode with great interest. It’s still possible to watch it on NRK’s web site and it comes highly recommended. You can even download high quality versions of each episode here.

Despite my childish fascination for the Sea King, I’ve never seen one up close – until two days ago. On my way home from work I bike by the Ullevål University Hospital here in Oslo. And what did I spot on the hospital landing pad? Yes, a real Sea King from the No. 330 Squadron. Yay! Despite my excitement, I was able to capture this video of the helicopter taking off.

You’ll notice some very funky rotor blade movements, it’s like they are not moving much. This is caused by the low FPS on the HTC Hero camera. You can see an even funkier version of the rotor blades RPM vs. camera FPS phenonmon in the video of the magic Russian helicopter.

Unfortunately, the video was recorded on medium settings because I didn’t think of checking the quality before I started recording. So it’s quite crappy. The same goes for the audio. Anyway, here you are: Look, ma! A helicopter!

Nike World Cup “Write The Future” from Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam on Vimeo.

So, what’s up anyway? Not that much, really. Yesterday night I worked a graveyard shift for the first time since the Tahiti earthquake and I hope I won’t be doing it again for a very long time. Even though last night’s work went surprisingly smooth, I simply loathe working during the night. I blame it on the the five years I had of 24/7 office hours. But at least one good thing came out of last night’s session; the bike ride home in the sunrise at half past four in the morning. It was surprisingly cold, but pleasantly quiet and it smelled like spring. Marvelous. So great, in fact, that I’m considering getting up early a Saturday morning just to have another bike ride like it again.

You might have noticed a subtle change on the site as I’ve added a little button from AddThis to every entry. It allows you to share anything you might find interesting on this site to 260+ other sites, like Facebook and Twitter. Not surprisingly, the one-liners are the most shared page. But then again, about 87% of the page views are the one-liners. The front page only get a measly 4% if the page views. I love you, Google Analytics.

What else can we see from the Google Analytics numbers if we look at the past 30 days? One of the more interesting things is that Firefox is about to overtake Internet Explorer in usage, with 33% and 37% respectively. Globally, Internet Explorer still has about 53% if the users. My favorite browser, Opera, only weighs in at 2%. Disappointing.

The United States is my number one fan, with 15,736 visits, followed by the United Kingdom, India and Canada. Norway is all the way down on 7th place, but with a much higher average pages per visit and average time on site. Interesting. The number of new visitors from Norway is also much lower than the other countries, so I’m guessing my Norwegian visitors are mainly people I know who is actually reading what I write.

I’m sorry, you guys, for not writing much and not really entertaining you when I am! And why do I bother writing in English, maybe I should just switch to Norwegian. I’ve had this discussion with myself before, a couple of years ago. The result then was, as you can probably guess, that I was to keep writing in English. It’s probably the better thing to do as it keeps me on my English toes, at least to some degree.

Anyway. It’s time to get to bed, I still have some sleep to catch up. I’ll be back later.

As every spring, I turn to Threadless to cover my t-shirt needs. Yes, it’s more expensive that picking up a three pack at the mall, but it’s more fun to walk around in a Communist Party t-shirt than a plain white one.

I’ve usually bought shirts with catching illustrations or funny one-liners, but this year I’ve decided to try out some of the other designs¹⁾. The reason is that Anniken got me a really nice t-shirt with a design that I probably wouldn’t have bought myself, still I think it works very well. I won’t go totally nuts, of course, I’m old and new things scare me.

Anyway.

I picked out a few designs a couple of days ago and just now realized that one of the is suddenly sold out. You snooze, you lose, I guess. But there are still a lot to choose from. Let’s start with Heartless. A very typical design for me to pick, but the color is something I wouldn’t normally wear. The good thing is that it will prepare me for a possible future as a cone. I’ll take it! It’s the characters from The Wizard of Oz getting a heart for the Tin Man. Funneeeeh!

Next up is a text t-shirt, because I just can’t help myself. I Am the Bridge Jumping Friend That Your Parents Warned You About. It’s funny, ’cause it’s not true. I’m not that bridge jumping friend your parents warned you about. The only warning the other kids got about me from their parents was that I would one day sit in a dark room and write about purchasing t-shirts. Better stay away from that kid.

Moving on.

I like both Star Wars and pretending to care about the environment, the latter being a tad annoying for at least one person I know. Yes, I’m looking at you, dear. So what’s better than a t-shirt that combines both Star Wars and an environmentally friendly message? LightSaver gives you both and holy crap I think it even glows in the dark! Cool.

With three t-shirts in the basket and the grand total now being above the import limit per package in Norway – below the limit I don’t have to pay taxes, if the total value of the contents of a packaged gets above 200 NOK, I have to suck up 25% taxes – I decided to split the order into two separate orders and get a little something-something for a little someone-someone that will arrive later this year²⁾. One of These Days We’ll Fly Away. Look at that: totally unisex (because you never really know, do you?) and a color that hides the stains. Or maybe not. I have no idea.

At least the kid will be easy to spot when it gets away.

UPDATE: After actually checking the prices, I realized I will not be able to even split the order in two to avoid taxes, I have to order each shirt separately. With the extra P&P per item, it’s just not worth it, so it seems I will be shirtless this year. Yes, I’m a cheapskate.

¹⁾ In hindsight, that didn’t really happen. Maybe next year.
²⁾ No, there is no secret being revealed, nor is it nothing to read between the lines. It’s not my kid. Relax, ma.

Half way through an episode of South Park, I suddenly heard a lot of sirens that came closer and closer and then stopped not too far from my apartment building. I got up and looked out the living room window and saw this:

The fire brigade pulled two people out of the burning apartment, rescued two or three others from other apartments in the building with two ladder trucks. For me it looked like the firefighters were in total control, the time that passed between the second and third picture above was maybe 2 minutes and then the fire was more or less put out. My heroes! Seriously.

So, there you have it. Bad idea: Set fire to your apartment. Good idea: Don’t set fire to your apartment.

According to the same source, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas by most economic measures. It had a nominal GDP of 7.018 billion USD in 2009 with a GDP per capita of 790 USD, about $2 per person per day. Needless to say, the country’s infrastructure was in no way capable of handling a natural disaster like the one we’re seeing now even before the earthquake hit, and most of us can only imagine what it’s like now. So, please, if you can spare a few dollars – or whatever currency you might use – donate to your favorite humanitarian organization.

That concludes today’s morale encouragement. Now let’s put everything into perspective.

In the time it took you to read the above three paragraphs, 9 children died of starvation somewhere in the world. In the next hour, on average around 700 more will die. In the next day, 16,000. In 2010: 6,000,000¹⁾. It’s possible that the CNNs and BBC Worlds you are watching are also running 24/7 coverage of that catastrophe, but I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong, what happened in Haiti is a disaster of biblical proportions, and we should all help in whatever way we find possible, but why do we keep forgetting about the disasters that happening all the time? It’s just that: They are happening all the time.

If Haiti had been struck by earthquakes three times a week, most of us wouldn’t give a rat’s ass. We’d all forget about it quickly, because in a short while it would no longer have the shock factor it once had and the continuing earthquakes would no longer be news worthy. Take suicide bombings in Iraq, for instance. Remember when they first started to occur back in 2003 when the United States military invaded the country? You probably don’t remember the details, but maybe you remember the enormous media coverage they got. Today? There might be a small note somewhere towards the back of the newspaper, and if you’re lucky, you might notice it.

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but that’s what you have to do to make a point these day.

Most people don’t care much about the tragedies we don’t hear about in the news. Or, it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we don’t remember – or even know. And I’m no better; I had no idea the starvation figures were that bad. But now that I know, maybe it’s time not just to look at isolated catastrophes like the Haitian earthquake, but to consider what’s happening every second of every day all year? Maybe it’s time to finally start that monthly donation?

1) Wikipedia – Starvation.

From The Weekly Vice:

When officers arrived at his home, Basso initially denied that he called 911 and refused to turn his phone over. An officer then dialed the number that called 911 from her personal cell phone and Basso’s phone rang in his pocket while he was standing next to her. He then reportedly admitted to making the obscene calls.

This is another classic example of someone who has broken the “don’t-do-something-really-stupid”-rule, because if you do something really stupid it’ll probably end up on the internet. I wonder what happens if Joshua Basso’s next employer does a quick Google search for his name.

Why am I writing about this guy? It was a great reference for something that happened yesterday when me and Anniken went to a birthday party. There we met a guy who I’m a bit worried might end up like Joshua Basso one day. Anniken had never met him before, and one of the first things he asked her was if she’d helped paint the living room we were sitting stripped down to her underwear. A great way to start a conversation. I’ve heard about ice breakers, but this guy took it to the next level.

Everything went downhill for him from there on: After several unsuccessful attempts on chatting up every girl at the party, and doing a little strip tease, he showed his butt to everyone who wanted to see on the tram towards downtown. This was just after he asked one of the girls from the party if she squirted. While her boyfriend was sitting next to her, telling the romantic story about how they first met.

In his defense, he admitted that he had some serious problems when it came to talking to the opposite sex. Yes, we also noticed that somehow. The reason was that he had no female friends and all his co-workers were guys. So when he partied, he basically just entered a pattern of circus tricks his beer belching Neanderthal friends probably enjoy.

This guy needs some serious help or he might end up calling 911 with a masturbation emergency by the time he is 29. I think I know some people that might be of assistance.*

*While proof reading this entry – yes, even though it might not look like it, I actually do proof read – I realized that the last paragraph came out a bit wrong. I don’t know people who can assist him with any future masturbation emergencies, rather to prevent it from ever happen.