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Tag "Ramblings"

A couple of days I go I read a review of Street Cleaning Simulator. This might sound like the definition of slowly getting bored to death for most of you, but for some reason I find this kind of games surprisingly appealing. I’ve spent countless hours flying virtual passengers around the globe, hauling virtual cargo through the great Australian outback and mining tons upon tons of very virtual ore in outer space.

I’m suspecting that it’s the non-challenge about it all that I like. After a long week of facing challenge after challenge at work, it’s great to kick back and do something that doesn’t require any brain activity whatsoever. So, inspired by the Street Cleaning Simulator review, I decided to try out another game by the same publisher; Garbage Truck Simulator 20111).

Continue reading "Simulator." →

Oslo has a serious graffiti problem. It’s more or less everywhere you walk and it’s ugly as hell. I wouldn’t call myself a globetrotter, but I’ve been around the block and from what I can remember I have never seen as much graffiti anywhere in the world as I see in Oslo. The same goes for drug addicts and drunks, but that’s another story. It’s so bad a brilliant Norwegian musician wrote a song about it, here accompanied by a video that sort of proves my point:

Continue reading "Urban Art." →

At lunch earlier this week, one of my colleagues told us about a turntable he’s finally installed in his new house. Turntables, or “phonographs” if you will, and LP records are becoming increasingly popular again and maybe I’ll get myself one some day, too. To me, the technology used in turntables is absolutely amazing, the pickup in particular: It bumps around on the record and sound is coming out of the loudspeakers. CDs I get; it’s essentially just a computer reading a digital file off of the CD. Easy as pie, probably because my mindset is focused on digital technology.

Analogue technologies, however, I can’t wrap my head around. Take loudspeakers, for instance. They can create every sound audible to man just by changing the voltage of an electromagnet that in turn move a diaphragm back and forth. How is it possible to know exactly how much power is necessary to create the sound of Frank Sinatra singing “Come Fly With Me”? I’m pretty sure this is alien technology!

We all agreed that loudspeakers are amazing stuff. But right up there with loudspeakers is another piece of technological mind fuck I find simply baffling. The others didn’t agree with me, though, but maybe you will. Continue reading "Everything Ever." →

Norway. About 5 million people. Way too many online newspapers. Verdens Gang (VG) is one that I rarely visit because it’s basically just a compilation of annoyances. I know I’m stepping on a lot of sore toes now, but that’s my humble opinion. In spite of my opinion, however, it’s the most popular domestic site, according to Alexa. Boy, is my thumb not on the pulse of Norway.1)! Every now and then, though, I take my chances and head into the journalistic void that is VG in the hope that something might have changes since my last visit.

Unfortunately, it rarely does. When I went to the site just now I was greeted with an article with the heading “Ordered jacket — got poop“, while their main story is that it’s more environmentally friendly to own an SUV than a German Shepherd. For some reason they have used a picture of a Belgian Tervuren to illustrate this point. And let’s not get started on the design of the site itself and the comments people post on the articles. Well, to be honest, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory can be studied in detail on every single site on the internet that allows anonymous commenting, not just VG.

Anyway. I wasn’t going to ramble on about the fall of journalism or crappy web design, but rather an article I read on VG a few days ago when I ventured so innocently to the site. Continue reading "Dirty Talk." →


No, no, not “Raptor”. That’s something else entirely. I’m of course talking about The Rapture, the end of the world, the return of Jesus himself and the gathering of his saints. According to Harold Camping of Family Radio it will all start tomorrow, May 21, and end five months later, on October 21, when God will completely destroy this earth and its surviving inhabitants.

How does Harold know all this? Because he’s been reading the Bible. In fact, he has been a tireless student of the Bible for over five decades. This is not the first time someone has predicted the end of the world, though. You might think of Jehovah’s Witnesses when you think of the apocalypse and they are pretty hard core when it comes to rapture predictions (source). Harold Camping has been around the block once before himself, too, he actually predicted the return of Christ back in 1994.

Wait. What? Continue reading "Rapture!" →

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Today in...

2010: Halfway Point.
2008: Tickets.
2006: From the Past.
2004: Google Manipulation 101
2003: Don’t drink and play: An excuse I use.