Breki Tomasson

Today has been one of my more productive days at the office, and...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:08:01 +0100

Today has been one of my more productive days at the office, and it’s only 9 AM. I’ve cleared out our joint inbox, I’ve answered the customers who were waiting for answers, I’ve reorganized my desk and I’ve discovered the cure for HIV*.

Who knew that being productive and good at my job was this easy?

* I haven’t really discovered the cure for HIV.

RMPEA

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:53:40 +0100

Every now and again, a new abbreviation is born and spreads the Internet like wildfire. I’d like to make a suggestion for one that I think needs to be used, an abbreviation that speaks to a situation so common that I think every office worker has needed it.

It’s the sort of abbreviation that you’ll be wanting to throw out there every time your “Press this button to get the answer” is met with a simplistic “how i get answeR?”

The abbreviation is RMPEA, pronounced “rum-PEE-ah”. It’s short for Read My Previous E-mail Again.

You’re welcome.

"The rallying cry of the 1960′s was Love and Peace. The 2010′s brought us Openness and Free..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:37:32 +0100

“The rallying cry of the 1960′s was Love and Peace. The 2010′s brought us Openness and Free Expression. The groundswell against SOPA and PIPA isn’t just a reaction to the censorship, it’s the reaction to a real threat to these values we hold closest to our hearts. This is a generation who has seen the erosion of influence from voters to corporate interests with money. The only power that remains in the hands of this generation is their self expression, and SOPA/PIPA sought to restrict this last bastion. This is the zeitgeist of their anger.”

RSS Problems

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:26:16 +0100

I’m having some really strange issues with my RSS feed right now, so it’s not an issue on your end. The problem means that many old posts are reappearing as unread new posts all the time.

I hope the problem will be fixed during the week, so stay tuned.

"An outbreak of Chikungunya has been reported in Brazzaville, with at least 20 confirmed cases since..."

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:23:01 +0100

“An outbreak of Chikungunya has been reported in Brazzaville, with at least 20 confirmed cases since early June 2011 and a further 900 suspected cases. Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted by mosquito bite. Health authorities in the ROC report that cases have typically suffered from fever, skin lesions, headaches, muscle and joint pain and general fatigue.”

- Yay, I’m going to Congo!

Wiretap Anywhere by Ambrosia Software

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:40:00 +0100

Hi,

I’ve got to say that I’m extremely disappointed in the way you have handled customer information as regards WireTap Anywhere. It’s been since June that you informed us that it wasn’t going to be compatible with OS X Lion - but ever since then, you’ve been conspicuously silent on the subject. For those of us who use WireTap Anywhere in our daily work and registered it despite the high cost, this is scandalous, to say the least.

Your customers, which include some of the most prolific and vocal podcasters out there, deserve to know more about what efforts you are taking to get Wiretap Anywhere to be compatible with Lion, including a transparent record of what communications you are having with Apple in order to get them to cooperate with you on this matter. I’m not asking for a refund, but right now I’m sitting with $129 worth of nothing. I expect _something_.

Best regards,
Breki Tomasson

I feel sorry for the folks over at Ambrosia Software who have their most popular software destroyed by a Mac OS X update, but they’ve handled customer communication dreadfully since then.

I got an answer from Evan Smith of Ambrosia software today and kind of feel pretty sympathetic for him. I know they’re doing their utmost, but I still can’t but help feel they should keep us updated about things, even if it’s just: “Situation the same, still working on it” every now and again:

Hello Breki,

I agree with everything you have said. Unfortunately this doesn’t change the fact that I have been given nothing more that I can share with the public in terms of development or progress. The answer remains the same for the time-being. The product has not been abandoned and the developers are still looking into solutions. I’m sorry that I have nothing more to offer at this time…

"The number of Christians around the world has more than tripled in the last 100 years, from about..."

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:14:35 +0100

“The number of Christians around the world has more than tripled in the last 100 years, from about 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion in 2010. But the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up about the same portion of the world’s population today (32%) as they did a century ago (35%).”

- I don’t know why, but I think stuff like this is fascinating. Especially interesting is when you look at it in relationship to the geographic distribution of Christians, which has changed dramatically over the century in question.

Are we to assume that this - a rough third of the population of Earth - is a golden number of sorts and that the distribution of Christians on Earth will remain more or less stable? If so, then why? If not, then what would explain this trend?

I’d be very interested to see similar numbers for Islam and Judaism; possibly even Hinduism and Buddhism as well.

Creative Frustration

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:05:45 +0100

One of the problems that I encounter relatively regularly is a sense of enormous creative frustration. I can go around feeling as if I’ve got libraries worth of stories, plots, characters, worlds, mythologies and mysteries in my head, but not enough time or skill to get them out of my head.

At no point in my life does this become more clear than when I’m reading a particularly good book. It happened a couple of weeks ago when I read Zero History by William Gibson and is happening right now as I read REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. I felt it when I read his Baroque Cycle, and I feel it when I start to find interesting patterns in the news.

I could be sitting on the train, listening to a World of Warcraft podcast, staring out the window and trying not to fall asleep when I suddenly realize that I’ve got the basics for an extensive story in my head. It features Iranian hackers, energy extraction from Thorium instead of Uranium, trade routes and their evolution since the 1600s, the Arab Spring, Russian nuclear equipment disappearing, the evolution of the Coal and Steel Union into the European Union and plenty of other things, all woven together in an interesting tapestry of intrigue and mystery.

That’s when the problem begins. I begin to doubt whether I have the knowledge and expertise required to do this story justice. Will people reading it see through my attempts and be able to shoot me down, exposing me as not having any formal education in nuclear physics? Will they realize that I don’t have a dual Ph.D in Muslim History and Intellectual History? Will they write horrible Wikipedia entries about me, exposing me for the fraud that I am?

Writing it down like this, I realize how silly it all sounds, but I can’t deny that there’s a huge creative block in my head, a Hoover Dam of an affair that blocks everything that I try to do.

I have no idea how to unblock my creativity. Am I just being too critical of my own creativity or is it something else?

Truer words never spoken.

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:23:33 +0100

Truer words never spoken.

"Starving poor people with guns and nothing to lose scare the rich; their presence in large numbers..."

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:54:17 +0100

“Starving poor people with guns and nothing to lose scare the rich; their presence in large numbers is one major component of a pre-revolutionary situation.”

- I like his books, but I don’t always agree with Charlie Stross when it comes to various other things. On this point, however, and in the rest of the post, I can’t but feel that he hits the nail square on the head.

"Adblock Plus, the sophisticated surfer’s best friend, is trying something that is sure to make..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:44:11 +0100

“Adblock Plus, the sophisticated surfer’s best friend, is trying something that is sure to make waves: Adblock Plus is going to start showing “Acceptable Ads” by default. Yep. There’s no arguing that this flies in the face of, well, Adblock’s very name, but there’s actually some very strong logic behind it if you give it a little bit of thought. The assumption is, however, that most user’s won’t give it a little thought, which is why it’s going to be enabled by default. Don’t worry though, you can turn it off if you really, really want to.”

- Thank you, Adblock. As a content creator that tries to keep a site afloat using advertisement revenue, I salute you.

"Some of you may have heard of the Megaupload video which Universal Music Group has had removed from..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:20:00 +0100

“

Some of you may have heard of the Megaupload video which Universal Music Group has had removed from YouTube. Megaupload claims it is entirely their property. UMG seems to believe it violates their copyright and has twice ordered it removed from YouTube. On Tech News Today we exercised our fair use rights to comment on the story by playing some of the video.

Our episode has now been removed from YouTube at UMG’s request. Even if UMG does have a copyright issue in the Megaupload video, they do not have the right to silence commentary on their actions.

”

- Tom Merritt, host of Tech News Today on twit.tv fights the good fight.

Ekstropodium

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:58:00 +0100

I seem to have stumbled onto a mystery on the Internet; a mystery that just becomes more and more astounding the further I dig into it. It all began when I was searching the webs for news from Congo, a country that I will be visiting in a month’s time (Brazzaville, not Kinshasa). One of the sites I landed found durnig the search was www.congoportal.com, which I opened up in a separate tab to peruse when the time came. Once I’d gone through the other tabs and checked out this Congo Portal, I was met with a single block of text, black on white background:

It is necessary to understand only that about fifteen years ago anybody still knew nothing about the Fashion house of “Ekstropodium”. On that place where now there is an office and a demonstration complex of this known firm, the shop of ready-to-wear clothes standard and not prospering completely not settled down. All has begun that the daughter of the owner of this shop has married for young, but as time has shown, very presented fashion designer. They have spent the honeymoon rather unusually. With group of friends-enthusiasts they have thought up and is simple for ridiculous money have prepared grandiose, to measures of a silent country town, advertising show. This almost amateurish action became the beginning of the tradition, transformed anything before not allocated of other small town in the most attractive place for those who has connected the life (though in some measure) with the fashion world. Also it would be very quite good to take an interest, the share price, mentioned in the will.

As you can imagine, I was confused.

Firstly, the paragraph is written in slightly stilted English; obviously not by a native speaker. Secondly, the subject is quite obtuse - especially this fashion house “Ekstropodium”. I Googled the name and got three results. CongoPortal.com was one of them; the other two were sponsor-a-minedog.org and inet-sec.org. Visit the two and see what you get. My analysis follows:

Firstly, sponsor-a-minedog.org is a page whose title is “Etti Sarotti”, but it also has references to things named “Grinvere D”, “Eric Katler”, and “Dzhudit Stoner”, later “Stonera”. The other Ekstropodium link, inet-sec.org, contains no new information or names, but just a very weird bunch of similar text; black on white and generally weird.

I decided to look into these other references from the second link, and I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole would become. Let’s start with ”Grinvere D”, which only appeared on three places on the Internet. The first was sponsor-a-minedog, the other two were www.videojournalismus.org and www.ntti.org.

Videojournalismus offers us a new name, “Martha Kritts” along with the obligatory strange text.

The other link, NTTI, which titles itself “National Television Transport”, brings Ekstropodium back, but spelled differently this time. “Ekstropodiuma” has two more mentions on the Internet. We also got the name ”Ronen Kritts” (Related to Martha Kritts?) and a repeat mention of Dzhudit Stoner, only this time without the “Stoner” bit added on.

Digging into what “Eric Katler” yields, I found a veritable treasure trove of information. I won’t quote them, but feel free to visit them:

I’ve read through them all and wondered about them for a while now, and I’m still nowhere near making sense of it all. There seem to be conflicting reports and a whole host of new characters introduced here, not all of which seem to jive well with each other.

A journalist named David Soms is mentioned in Scenari-Territorial, a “Centre Bermana” is mentioned in two different articles, and apparently Etti Sarotti is taken there in grave condition. Also, Etti Sarotti is somebody’s niece, but also somebody is the son of somebody else’s late wife Ronen Kritts. There’s a Mister Stafs and a Mister Shefner, who seem to be Criminal Police in the town of Sent-Riovera.

This is all becoming way too mysterious for me to dig into properly, so I’m setting up a Wiki so that I can summon the full power of the Internet to analyze this with me. I need your help. Please, join me in the examination of this mystery and help me dig into it! I won’t sleep well until we’ve figured this one out! Link to the Wiki coming soon.

HERE IS THE WIKI. I’m still working on getting all the info I have on there, but feel free to join me as we search for more!

Edit: I’ve found that many - if not all - of these domains are owned by the same person, and I’ve dug up the e-mail address to him. I’ve sent him an e-mail asking what’s actually going on here. Not too optimistic for an answer, but we’ll see.

"You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people."

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:50:00 +0100

“You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.”

- You know, it’s times like this that I really think we need a good alternative to PayPal to rise up and become the new industry standard. As if it wasn’t enough that these guys are stealing 3.9% of our money every time we send something through there, now they’re imposing arbitrary regulations on people, just because they don’t seem to like them.

Also, the simple fact that the things that the people over at Regretsy had to go through are just a drop in the ocean is just sad. I see stuff like this every week, and it’s always PayPal screwing people over.

"#SOPA is the vinyl-era legislation trying to manage the industry that requires a different approach."

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0100

“#SOPA is the vinyl-era legislation trying to manage the industry that requires a different approach.”

- The Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab has decided to leave the Anti-Piracy lobby group for software companies, Business Software Alliance, over its position on US piracy laws.

Good for you, Kaspersky!

"Iceland’s special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir..."

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:24:00 +0100

“Iceland’s special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir Bank, into custody, Reuters reports.”

- You know, it surprises me over and over again how Iceland seems to be the only country actually doing things right. They let the banks fail, they arrest people who did things wrong and enforce accountability.

Why are other countries bailing out their banks, rewarding the bankers and then pepper spraying the people protesting these decisions?

It’s become an iconic picture already, the picture of...

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:33:58 +0100

It’s become an iconic picture already, the picture of officer John Pike pepper spraying silent protesters at the UC Davis campus. The picture of him has become a meme and now we find him pepper spraying everything as “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop”.

But what I find most interesting about it all is the guy with the laptop in the background. See him? He’s holding his laptop up, most probably using the built-in camera to record what’s going on.

I don’t know what it is about him that I enjoy, but there’s something inherently funny about somebody dragging his laptop out to a demonstration to use as a camera.

(Picture via Buzzfeed - The 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011)

"Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the..."

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:51:00 +0100

“Under SOPA, you could get 5 years for uploading a Michael Jackson song, one year more than the doctor who killed him.”

- The worst part of it all is that what he’s saying is absolutely true. SOPA and the related copyright enforcing laws have to be abandoned and follow the example of Switzerland, where piracy for personal use is legal.

I have a dog of many peculiarities. One of the things...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:18:50 +0100

I have a dog of many peculiarities.

One of the things that’s always been a source of confusion to me is his attitude towards food. For the first three years of his life, he hardly ever ate, just picking into the pieces a couple of times a week and just grabbing what he needed to stay alive. That all changed a couple of months ago, when he decided that it was time to just start wolfing down the food that was given to him - but he kept one of his peculiarities.

Late at night, when he decides it’s time to have a bite to eat, he will saunter over to the bucket of food and fill his mouth with food, walk over to a carpet and spit it out. Most of the time, he’ll be able to carry about six or seven pieces of kibble in his mouth at the same time. He’ll then pick at the pieces, sniffing them and examining them, picking his favorites and eating them one by one before resuming the process. Sometimes, one of the pieces that he’s spat out onto the carpet doesn’t pass his careful scrutiny, and a couple of pieces of kibble will be left on the carpet when I go to the kitchen in the morning.

I’ve never managed to understand why he does this. What is he doing? Is this an example of some sort of OCD that forces him to eat his kibble in a specific order? Does he check them for possible mold or other problems?

It’s all very strange, but at least he’s eating.

So Shoot Me

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:52:40 +0100

Remember that time when I said I was done with Wordpress and moving to Tumblr? Then that time I said I was done with Tumblr and moving back to Wordpress? I think that I, after that, said I was done with Wordpress and moved back to Tumblr. Oh, and then there was that time I was done with Tumblr and moved back to Wordpress.

Guess what?