Nothing to see here

I have moved from Blogger to my own domain. Head over to

http://www.eldholm.net/
http://www.eldholm.net/
http://www.eldholm.net/

and let me know what you think

Goodbye Blogger. Hello WordPress

Yes, I have moved on to WordPress. Please update your bookmarks/feeds/whatever:

http://disused.wordpress.com/
http://disused.wordpress.com/
http://disused.wordpress.com/

Who knows, someday I might even get my very own domain...

About me

When I fist started this blog I did not have very high hopes of its longevity: it was basically a response to a blog just started by a friend of mine. In creating the blog I more or less made a prediction of its future and named it disused.

As some time has passed since I first created it I have been hard (that’s a lie, but not really a big one) at work to make sure the prediction would not become reality – and so far it’s been working.

There have been quite a few changes from the very start, most of them for the better, and the few that have been mistakes have quickly been weeded out. But one thing has remained the same: the lack of information about me, the writer (or in some cases the ranter).

For some time now I have contemplated putting up an ‘About’ page, and reading these two pages by Andreas and Marvin finally convinced me that I should get it done. I’m not sure yet if I’ll go for the long or the short version, but at least I have an image ready. Expect to see some changes implemented shortly
 

Ten year anniversary?

We’ll see in a few hours time I guess. For now enjoy the Starcraft splash from blizzard.com

This page best viewed in Netscape 4.0 or higher

It’s been a while since I that phrase last – though I did find this page through a quick Google search - but it might be time to get it out of storage again.

This page best viewed in Opera 9.0 or higher



If you cant notice the difference, good for you! It probably means you’re not experiencing perfectionist tendencies or don’t care as much as I do. And for the record the Opera way of portraying the page is the intended one.

(No the Google search box is not it)
 

Paper bricks

I have more books that I haven’t read than I care to think about. Right now for instance there is a big brick of a book lying on my bedside table collecting dust, and it has been doing so for the last couple of months.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is one of two (I think it’s two) books that I am currently not reading. These two are books I started to read at one point, only to put them down and not pick up again – it is not because they are bad or uninteresting books, I just do not find the time and/or interest to sit down and read more than a few pages. And to get into a book I need to read a bit more than that.

At some point I will finish them though: There are only two books that I can remember (and that I started to read voluntarily) that I did not finish. And only one of those because it was a book I did not like at all. Considering that I manage to get through quite a few books each year I’d say that’s quite a good track record…

As far as the brick on my table: At some point I am sure that I will pick it up again, but right now I’ll opt for a few more layers of dust before I do.
 

Human beatbox meet human chellist

Remember him? Of course you do, well he's back with his latest project:

Pidgin – don't shoot the messenger, eh?

This whole issue started when Windows Live Messenger started to act up and use all available CPU power for no apparent reason. In general I like Live Messenger – it looks and feels nice, has the features I want (and a bunch that I don’t, but selective awareness filters out those). But using all available CPU power is not something I can live with: the laptop gets hot, the fan starts going into overdrive and everything on the computer starts to go really sluggish.

So I started to look for a replacement. The name Pidgin came up more than once, so I decided to give it a go. I went through the usual download and install process: Windows platform, Norwegian language, the usual install directory. A few moments later the program was ready to run.

Cue problem one: Syncing with Live Messenger.
For every contact I have Pidgin decided to present me with a yes/no option. An option that might have made sense if I had been a long time user of GAIM, but since I’m not I went with the safe answer: Yes.

Bad call: An Unexpected Error Has Occurred. Oh well, these things happen in Windows. “No I don’t really want to send an error report; I just want to get the program up and running again.” Again I start up Pidgin, get presented with a bunch of yes/no windows and go for the safe answer: An Unexpected Error Has Occurred. At this point ‘no’ start to look like a good alternative.

Click. “Wow it worked.” Click. Click. “This could take a while.” Click. “How about a ‘yes/no to all’ button in the next version?” Click. An Unexpected Error Has Occurred. Yeah, baby! I missed you. At least I got 5 fewer windows to wade through the on the next restart. Repeat until window count is at 0. It was almost enough to dissuade me from using the program, but I decided to at least give it a fair chance. I should have known better…

Cue problem two: Meldingen kunne ikke bli sendt på grunn av en tilkoblingfeil.
Translated: The message could not be sent due to a connection error. Now, this is not the first time I have seen the error message; Live Messenger produces one like it occasionally. But it does not produce one in every conversation; usually multiple times per conversation; and even every other message at times. It might not be the worlds most important smiley I’m trying to send as a response to something being said, but I’d like for it to be sent nonetheless.

Cue problem three: Norwegian?
This problem I probably should have anticipated. Translations may vary much in quality in different programs and applications, and Norwegian is not really a high priority language so it tends to get little attention. But translating about half of the program, then leaving the rest in English is the first time I have encountered. This image should give a clear example of the problem, and it is like that throughout the program.



At this point I (foolishly) though that a reinstall of the program would do the trick. I could just choose English at the start of the installation and everything would be peachy: I was wrong.
Reinstall one: “That’s odd. I’m sure the language selection was at the very beginning.”
Reinstall two: “Nope, restarting the machine between uninstall and install did not help. And how come it keeps all my settings”
Reinstall three: “How foolish of me to think that deleting the application data folder would change anything.”
Reinstall ‘one more for good measure’: Yeah, right…

Cue problem four: Documen…wha?



How foolish of me to think that the Help function in the program would lead to a valid webpage. I should have known better, right?

To be fair, there is a section that deals with my language problem in the FAQ section. It is even the first question in the Windows Specific section.

How does Pidgin for Windows determine which language to use?

For the user who installed Pidgin, the language selected during installation will be the default. This can be overridden by setting the PIDGINLANG environment variable (for example, PIDGINLANG=de). If neither of these are specified, it will fall back to the default Windows user locale setting.

Oh right, you just change the PIDGINLANG variable. How could I have missed that! The PIDGINLANG variable! (At this point, your sarcasm metres should be spiking)

If this is indeed a frequently asked question, one that is even asked so much that it gets to be number one; how come the answer can only be understood is you have intricate knowledge to the program code?

If Pidgin aspires to be a real alternative to proprietary IM clients like Live Messenger, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger a few things need to change.
1: Stable connection with the various providers’ services: I don’t want to repeat myself over and over again just to get my single smiley across to whomever I’m talking to.
2: Language packs: complete them or don’t offer them. Most people will be more annoyed at bad translation than the fact that their language is not available yet.
3: Documentation: I know that Pidgin is supposed to be clean and easy to use, but at times, someone, somewhere will have a question that they need answered. Having the help function lead to a non-existing webpage does not answer that question. Forcing people to use the developer wiki as their only source for information only accomplishes to make non-programmers, like me, feel stupid. You really don’t want to alienate your users like that.

Until those three changes I’ll stay right here with my proprietary, advertise-filled, CPU hogging Live Messenger, thank you very much!
 

Microsoft to Google: We got cash too!

Google picked up DoubleClick right from under Microsoft’s nose. And prior to that, they snatched the deal to provide search advertising on AOL sites. Things like that can make any multi-billon dollar company a little bit upset. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, we’re buying Yahoo!. Think about that for a while.”

Microsoft has showed renewed interest in a takeover of Yahoo, the New York Post reports. This is not the first time Microsoft has showed an interest in taking over the internet giant, but sources now say that Microsoft is willing to dig deeper in their pockets and find the money a deal requires. And it’s not small sums we are talking about here: Wall Street sources estimates a price tag of around $50 billion. (In comparison Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick)

Yahoo! stock prices are up 18% from yesterday, in anticipation of a future takeover. Microsoft stocks not doing as good with a drop of one point five percent.

I just have one thing to say: You go Bill!
 

Imagine the Possibilities

The social technography of Web 2.0

Mac users are almost twice as likely to generate content on the web as Dell users, according to a new report by market research firm Forrester

Mac users were also more likely than Dell users to be "Critics" (those who comment on blogs and otherwise participate in discussion about the content posted by others), "Collectors" (those who use RSS and bookmarking/tagging services like del.icio.us), and "Joiners" (the group that uses social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook). The biggest percentage difference came in the "Spectators" category—those who merely read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos, etc.—where roughly 55 percent of Mac users fell but only 30 percent or so of Dell users.

The Mac/Dell breakdown makes sense if demographic stereotypes about Mac users are true: Mac users tend to be more active with new media online than PC (specifically, Dell) users traditionally are

I have noting to add here, so I'm adopting the dvorak.org/blog setup for todays post
 

Adam, Jamie and the Ninja

Digg users spark a riot

Something happened yesterday that angered the Digg community beyond belief. Someone has done some magic with a HD DVD player to disable the copy protection on HD DVD disks. This is apparently nothing new, as the code surfaced in mid-February according to computing.co.uk. The thing that sparked a riot, however, is the fact that an article got submitted to Digg with the code, and then subsequently got removed. Removing articles from Digg for anything but a double post is a big no-no.

As I am writing this the Top in 24 Hours section of Digg is now filled with the 16 digit code or stories connected to it. In fact only one story has made the top fifteen not regarding the whole HD DVD issue, and that’s in at number fifteen.

This whole riot will die down eventually, more people use Digg than own HD DVD players, I’m sure. What is interesting is how this will affect the format war with Blu-ray. Probably in no way at all, but an end to the format war would benefit all the consumers not wanting to get stuck with the latest Betamax.

And how will this affect Digg? In the words of founder Kevin Rose:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.