maj 2004 Archives

virus_norway.txt

DEAR RECEIVER,

You have just received a Norwegian virus. Since we are not so technologically advanced in Norway, this is a MANUAL virus. Please delete all the files on your hard disk yourself and send this mail to everyone you know. Thank you very much for helping me.

Ole Hacker

 

I gave Citrix GoToMeeting a quick try this morning and it works rather good. Simply it is a shared presentation tool where the whole desktop is shared to all receivers. No audio, no video.

The user interface was really nice. Nice colours. Nice buttons for inviting users and sharing control. The shared desktop was scaled nicely on the receiving side. I got a 86% scaling and it looked very good. The update could have been a bit snappier though.

The client was installed via Java and I installed it and hosted a quick meeting within 3 minutes.

Regarding control, one or several other users could control the shared desktop. As far as I could tell only one desktop could be shared at one time though.

Seems to be a Windows only solution. MacOSX just gave an error "Your Operating System Is Not Supported".

A simple shared deskstop/presentation tool that really seems to do the job.

 

I just watched the beheading of Nick Berg. Sigh..... I shouldn't have. I am stunned and I don't know what to say...

 

I am home alone again. Johanna was going to her school in Borås and Tovah tagged along. She will be staying her first night without either mother or father, but with Johanna's mother.

I have been working all day and will work most of the time when I am alone so I can spend more time with the family when they get back.

Got my second fan in Orkut today. Patrik Fältström!! My first is Jeff Pulver. I guess I have to start becoming a fan myself :)

A bit over a week ago the experts regarding my associate professorship responded and signed off on the scientific part (i.e. they both approved it). One of them though, questioned my pedagogic skills and I had to submit evidence of that I am a good teacher. So I produced a 22 page document for them. I hope they will respond immediately so a decision can be made by the next faculty board meeting at the end of May. If not, then there won't be any decision until after the summer. This whole procedure started at the end of 2002 :-/ We really have a speedy organization.

 

"The best information environments will take advantage of the ability of IT to overcome geography but will also acknowledge that the highest bandwidth network of all is found between the water fountain and the coffee machine."
- Tom Davenport

 

I am sitting here at the University listening to Kåre talk about Media Technology. He is very good and is much more interested in the undergraduate related issues than I am.

Last week the whole division went to Piteå for a 3 day retreat. It included many good discussions, bathing, a lot of beer and too little sleep. During some discussion the following popped into my head:

Sometime we forget where we come from. Why do we educate people into a dedicated role instead on giving them a knowledge base, i.e. giving our students a knowledge area to work with in the future?

Tuesday we spent at the Academic Music Center in Piteå where we among other things got a crash course in how to create a news program. I have a taped version of it and will make it available later. It was fun fun fun :)

Got back and had 1.5 hectic days including a presentation about E-Media on the net with the subtitle: "Do we need physical libraries". It was basically only library people listening, but it was a very very fun presentation to create and present. My conclusion is that physical libraries are no longer needed, but instead information meeting places are needed and the librarians will be replaced by information diggers.

After the presentation I was as always "over pepped" and I decided that I had worked enough that week and I threw a spontaneous BBQ party. SUMMER time. I was really nice just to kick back and relax.

During Saturday we started building the porch on the front of the house. We went and ordered all the timber we needed and it got delivered today. More later... Anyhow during the afternoon I started digging and moved all the old stone plates (about 1000KG of plates and the same amount of sand). The digging continued over Sunday.

A fun thing is all this digging and building makes me full of energy.

Today, all the timber arrived from Beijers and of course 10 minutes after it arrived it started raining so I had to "run" with it all into the garage. During the morning I was called into a interview with a major Swedish newspaper. It was of course done over the net and we will see if he prints anything. Today has been very hectic day and I haven't had much time to think and actually do anything.

Damn, the seats in the A117 room are bad. I have been sitting down 45 minutes and it already hurts. Is this what my students have to bear with ?

 

Yesterday we cleaned out the garage and suddenly we can fit our bikes in there without having to use a shoehorn. We threw away tons of stuff. It was hard work but you feel so good afterwards. During the coming week is "odd garbage week", i.e. they come a fetch all the garbage you cannot throw away normally. The problem is that we have sooooo much garbage standing next to the street right now. We'll see if they take anything at all.

Today we started preparing for the new porch on the front side of the house. I removed about 1/3 of the stoneplates and then tore down the old porch. We left the small deck for now. It is fun causing mayhem with a chainsaw. Unfortunately it broke down when I was cutting all the big pieces into smaller ones. :( Need to get some spare parts (a tiny metal peace that holds the chain got bent.).

Tomorrow I am off for a three day division trip to Piteå for creative discussions, bathing, gocart and tons of good food!!! I might be online. We'll see....

Have fun, Hakuna Matata!