www.vegard.net

Yeah, you probably heard what went down in Haiti. If you haven’t, here’s a quick summary: On Tuesday, a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and a country that was in rather miserable shape already is now on its merry way to hit rock bottom. The estimates of number of casualties are rather hazy as of now, I’ve seen numbers ranging from 30,000 to 500,000 – and that’s just form the earthquake itself. If you want to know more, Wikipedia has a detailed article about the 2010 Haiti earthquake you can read.

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. Continue reading "When it Hits." →

I should probably have written this entry in Norwegian because it’s only relevant for people living in Norway, but there are quite a lot of people who live in Norway who don’t speak a single word Norwegian – I know a few – and it’s very relevant for them.

Anyway.

I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in Norway it’s possible to avoid getting your mailbox stuffed with advertising, leaflets and whatnot simply by attaching a sticker to your mailbox or front door saying that you don’t want it. The sticker doesn’t even have to be a pre-made one, you can just create your own. And from the 1^st of June this year, it was possible do the same to avoid getting free newspapers as well. When I came home from work today, I’d received one district newspaper, one city newspaper and one that was strictly not a newspaper, but an advertisement newspaper from a real estate broker.

I don’t read any of them. If I’m interested in district or city news, there are great sites on the internet that give me just that and when I eventually decide that I need a bigger apartment, I can collect information I need to achieve on the fantastic interweb, too. So today I’m taking action, I’m attaching a sticker to both my mailbox and front door.

If you don’t read any of the free newspapers you get in your mail either, you should do the same. Below are two versions of such a sticker, one that I grabbed from the site Grønn Hverdag and a version I made without the Grønn Hverdag URL in case you for some reason don’t want to advertise for the site. For kicks, I’ve also included the same two versions of a sticker that should stop the flow of advertising you really don’t need if you haven’t done that already. Right click the images you want to save and select “Save image…” or whatever your favorite browser might call saving an image to your computer. Then print, attach with scotch tape and live happily ever after.