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Too Close to Home.

Posted 22:04 CET Monday July 12th, 2010 (53 days ago). 157 views. No comments. Tagged with Ramblings.

For many people, living with the constant threat that you can be blown into tiny pieces any minute is an everyday thing. A search on Wikipedia shows a timeline of bombs that has exploded around the world so far in 2010 and should give you an idea of what it’s like to live in certain places¹⁾. Lucky for me, most of the incidents are far, far away from where I’m living; in cold (not today), innocent and naive Norway.

But on Thursday last week, terrorism came a little too close to home. Continue reading "Too Close to Home." →

Three Weeks.

Posted 18:25 CET Tuesday March 9th, 2010 (178 days ago). 358 views. 4 comments. Tagged with Personal, Ramblings.

A while back I saw a TV documentary on the Discovery Channel about space and Einstein’s theory of relativity, in particular special relativity. This is fascinating stuff, most of which is way beyond what I am able to wrap my head around, however. One of the things that comes from special relativity is that the time of a rapidly moving object seems to slow down. This is also something that makes my head hurt if I think about it too much. To summarize, it means that if you jump on a spaceship that travels with a speed close to the speed of light, time will move much slower for you relative to the people who is still stuck on Earth.

This is called time dilation and sounds like science fiction and theoretical mumbo jumbo, but it’s actually possible to prove in everyday life. The clocks on board the GPS satellites orbiting Earth are intentionally set wrong to compensate for time dilation. If they were not, GPS simply wouldn’t be as precise as it is. It’s also possible to see this if you get two very accurate, synchronized clocks, go to an airport, leave one of the clocks there and fly around the world. When you get back, you’ll notice that the clock you brought with you on the journey has actually slowed down a bit relative to the one you left on the airport. You’re probably also fed up with airline food.

Pretty funky stuff right there. I’m venturing a bit outside my normal domain here, so the clock-on-an-airplane story might not be entirely accurate, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it somewhere before. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Continue reading "Three Weeks." →

Movement.

Posted 21:39 CET Saturday February 20th, 2010 (195 days ago). 299 views. 4 comments. Tagged with Personal, Ramblings.

One of the new things in the latest design is a post count for each year in the archives. You can see it if you scroll all the way down to the footer. I was a little surprised to see the massive decrease in the number of posts from 2007 to 2008, the count changed from 204 to 77 respectively. The trend continued in 2009 with only 88 entries. There are of course a lot of reasons for this. In previous years, a great deal of my posts were spiced up with a lot of personal stuff. 2008 was a year with all kinds of things happening in my life, but I wanted to share very little of it. And I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have wanted to read most of it either, so no loss there.

In 2009 there was also a great deal of things happening in my life, but it was different in the way that I didn’t mind writing about it, but for many a reason, I couldn’t. Now, in 2010, however, things are yet again different. Still, I will keep the personal filter on to some degree, and I doubt that you will ever get to hear the really juicy stuff. But you’ll live. And you’ve already had a couple of teasers in terms of what you might expect. Continue reading "Movement." →

Halfway Point.

Posted 21:32 CET Monday February 8th, 2010 (207 days ago). 225 views. No comments. Tagged with Personal, Ramblings.

Anniken is now a few days past the halfway point on her Central America Tour, at least in terms of days. Today they are moving back to Montezuma from where they will go to Panama to celebrate the carnival, which kicks off on February 13. The current time is T-minus 52 days to when she will eventually be back in Norway. Looking back at December and January; those months flew by quickly – I can’t really remember anything that happened, so they must have – but looking forward towards April 2 seems like a damn eternity. But, hey, I’m really good at counting days and we’ve already got stuff planned for when she gets home, so it’s all good, even though I have to miss her dearly. Apparently, I have a soft side, and she brings it out.

Tick, tock.

This weekend I added some good karma to my pool by paying parts of a complete stranger’s taxi fare. Tomorrow I’m seeing Avatar. Damn you, peer pressure!

That is all.

Crack.

Posted 09:44 CET Wednesday December 30th, 2009 (247 days ago). 302 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Personal, Ramblings.

This is a screenshot of one of the GNOME panels on my Ubuntu desktop. There’s nothing wrong with the data, it really is -18 degrees centigrade outside. If it’s colder where you are and you laugh at me, then STFU – this is too cold for me. To put things in perspective; it’s currently 23 degrees centigrade where Anniken is. That’s a difference of 41 degrees, and it’s still very early morning there.

That is all.