Round Robin.

After having found and installed a well-hidden MCE update on the Microsoft site, my copy of Windows Media Center 2005 seems to be behaving a bit better. It looks like the turning-itself-on-in-the-middle-of-the-night-mystery is gradually fading away; the box didn’t turn itself on last night. With a little luck it will sleep silently through this night, too.

I read somewhere that it’s a good idea to stick to the topic through an entire entry because rambling on about nothing and everything makes it hard for the reader to stay focused.

Consider this entry a test of your attention span, because now I’m about to change the topic. I’m not worried about you, really, you’re an intelligent bunch. I’d even call you the elite of the interweb crowd. So here goes.

On Saturday I went to a downtown record slash DVD store and took advantage of their sale to get some of the DVDs I needed to get a respective collection. Of course, “respective” is a matter of opinion, but at least I got some good - also subject to opinion - releases. I even stumbled across a DVD I decided to give Klas for his birthday. So hurry up, man, invite me to your birthday party!

While we’re talking about DVDs - see, I’m not changing the topic in this paragraph - season eight of both The Simpsons and South Park are now available in the stores. At least in some countries, The Simpsons won’t be released until the 25th of October in Norway and ordering it from abroad is way too expensive because of the import taxes.

Since I started my South Park collection with the American editions - dumb, dumb, dumb - I have to keep ordering the DVDs from the US - dumb, dumb, dumb. Being a neurotic collector there is no way I’m moving to another edition…

I have issues, I know.

A Better Block Quote.

From time to time, I nick ideas from other sites. I’m a bad boy. This site design was heavily influenced by Subtraction, a blog I read for a brief while before getting bored with it. And today I changed the way block quotes are displayed.

Now block quotes are displayed like this.

Much nicer than the old way that you probably don’t remember anyway. The block quote design was borrowed from A List Apart, but I really doubt that that’s the only site on the interweb that display their block quote in that way. Credit is due to ALA anyway, since that’s where I got the quote graphics. Besides, it’s a great site with some good reads if you’re into web site design and usability.

I’ve found a site today that looks somewhat interesting, jogin.com. The site belongs to Tomas Jogin, a Swedish programmer and designer who also knows how to write entertaining entries.

Yesterday I missed Battlestar Galactica because of work. I really need a PVR, but they are still a tad expensive.

This is just incoherent rambling.

Scientific.

Around the time I started to play Eve Online, a Norwegian TV station started airing the “re-imagined” version of Battlestar Galactica based on the original 1978 TV series. So far I’ve watched three episodes, it’s OK, but not gotta-get-this-on-DVD-good.

Science fiction is probably the one genre I like the most, both in literature, movies, TV series and computer games. I’ve been through tons of science fiction books, including the extremely well written original Dune series and the infamous Neuromancer, the book that in many ways defined cyberpunk when it was released in 1984.

My favorite movie of all times, Strange Days also has a science fiction-ish theme as it’s set around new years eve 1999, about five years into the future relative to 1995, the year it was released. Of course, that’s all ancient history now. The movie also has other elements that makes it a hell of a movie.

When it comes to TV series, Babylon 5 is without doubt the best science fiction series I’ve ever watched. I never got the hang of Star Trek, it takes itself too seriously, while Babylon 5 had just the right attitude.

Babylon 5 is, as opposed to Battlestar Galactica, gotta-get-this-on-DVD-good. Or maybe it will just ruin everything. After all, it’s over 10 years since I watched it.

The Hunt Continues.

Another interesting fact about living in a shared apartment is that people move in and out all the time. Now, three - half - of the people living here move out. Hans Olav and Frida, who found each other and true love move in to their own place. Karine, who decided to try to move in with her boyfriend a month ago hasn’t been seen since, which means that it probably went very well or very, very bad. Either way, she’s moving out and we now have three vacant bed rooms in the apartment.

Since we’re keeping a strict balance between the sexes, we’re looking for two hot chicks, preferably Miss Universe contestants, and some guy. The process begun today and will continue until Monday. Whish us luck, because we have fucked up the selection process before.

If you’re able to tune in to Norwegian TV channel TVNORGE be sure to watch tonight at 21:30 CET when Dino, one of Gine’s* friends and a semi-frequent commenter here, makes his reality TV debut.

Today I witnessed my first Windows Vista related crash, without even having touched the OS or any software running on it. Extremely low-quality photo available in the Moblog.

*Just to clarify: Gine == The Girlfriend, she has just decided that it was OK that I used her name now. But I wouldn’t expect to see her in the cast any time soon.

Thursday.

Today is a day to remember. Not only is it Udo Dirkschneider’s birthday, it’s also the day when I laid my hands on both The Complete 7th season of both The Simpsons and South Park. I don’t know about you, but I know what I’ll be watching for the next three weeks. I really don’t hope I get hooked on Family Guy, too.

I’ve been debugging the Moblog but can’t quite figure out why it’s not working. It looks like there is either something with the global PHP configuration used by my host or something with the operator’s firewall. Right now I’m hoping my host might be able to help me. In the meantime I’ve manually uploaded a picture of a limo painted by a colour blind guy. It looks a little bit like that Audi TT I saw a couple of years ago.

Tomorrow Klas passes through Oslo on his way to Trondheim, so I’ll probably meet up with him and have a couple of beers. It’s Friday, after all.