jlindberg

Building a 2 line delta kite

2010-09-05T14:31:00.002-07:00

What better to do during a stormy day in southern Sweden than buying some tarp, duct tape and bamboo sticks to build a kite. After a few minutes of looking at instructions online we decided to go for an improvised two line delta kite. It had a wing span of 2.6m (8.5ft) and was surprisingly easy to fly and steer, although it didn't seem to want to do loops for us. Below is the result.

Captain Tommy at the flight controls

Climbing Mount Rainer

2009-11-17T02:29:00.012-08:00

Mount Rainer is the highest volcano (14,411 feet or 4,392 m) and the most heavily glaciated peak in the contiguous United States. Despite being more than a 2 hour drive from Seattle, its presence dominates the area.

The Mount Rainer National Park is a common destination for outdoor loving Seattleites that come for camping, hiking, biking, skiing, climbing or just to practice the good old American tradition of shooting road signs.

This year a couple of friends and I decided to try to climb the mountain, and I hope to share some of that experience in this post. Though we were in decent general shape and were hiking in the Cascades more or less every weekend, neither of us had any experience from glacier traversal or climbing so we signed up for RMIs 4 day summit climb. In retrospect, going with a guide service was definitely the right choice - we didn't have the skills or experience to safely climb the mountain ourselves.

A four day climb may not sound like a big time commitment, but add to that hours spent gearing up at REI and many weekends of training hikes and you've got a decent size project. The four days with RMI were spent as follows:

Day one. Drove the two hours from Seattle to Ashford, a small town at the base of Rainer. We checked in and did a quick intro and gear check. This was a very short day, so we had pizza and explored the surroundings afterwards.

Day two. Traveled by bus up to the Paradise parking lot, which is a common starting point for all kinds of people, ranging from flip flop wearing tourists experiencing snow for the first time to some very accomplished mountaineers. From Paradise we hiked up half an hour and practiced basic skills like self-arrest, rest-stepping and walking in a rope team. This was useful and fun. We headed back to Ashford in the early afternoon with plenty of day light left - would have liked to stay longer and learn more, for example the basics of crevasse rescue.

Day three. Hiking to Camp Muir.

Day four. Climbing to the summit, back to Camp Muir and down to the Paradise parking lot. Meet up in Ashford and drive home.

GPS trace from our climb.

The Good
- Great guides. Experienced and professional!
- Great climb! Very good experience, perfect weather.

The Bad
- First day. Too short. Could have combined with second day.
- Second day. Also too short. Option to stay longer and learn more would have been good.

Tips
- Book early. Call the day RMI starts taking bookings for the season.
- Keep cost down. Guiding and pack list can easily add up to $5000. Borrow equipment from friends or buy second hand.
- Know your equipment before the climb, especially your boots.
- Be in good shape so you can enjoy it. This was harder than I thought it would be.
- Bring 2 friends! Rope team with 1 guide and us three friends was a lot of fun!

Hello, Mobile World

2009-06-03T00:04:00.006-07:00

I've released my first Android application, by accident!

It all begun last weekend when I was hiking up Mt Defiance. I brought my Android G1 device to play with the awesome My Tracks application, and also used it to take some photos.

The G1 camera takes decent pictures (except it doesn't filter UV light well). Unfortunately, getting the photos off your phone and into your web album is not as easy as it should be - you either need to upload through to a computer, or go through a slow UI flow uploading the pictures one by one from the camera app.

Hopefully, the camera app will updated soon to do this better. But I started thinking about short term improvements half ways into the hike. How hard can it be? Playing with the Android platform could be fun... What if I just..? By the time I got back to the car I had convinced myself to write and Android app, and that night I did.

Turns out it's not hard at all. Setting up the development environment and getting a basic app running in the emulator took less than an hour - impressive! Learning about the programing model and limitations of the framework took a little longer. I was disappointed to find out that the built in email api only allows for one attachment per email, but decided to just make the best of it since I didn't want to spend time on a work-around.

After testing the app a little yesterday evening, I decided to see what the publication process is like so I signed up for the Android Market. After spending a hours trying to properly sign, upload and test the app I clicked 'unpublish' for the last time and gave up and went to sleep. It was just one of those nights where things kept going wrong and nothing was going to get done.

Today, this appeared in my inbox:

"Hey I downloaded your photo uploader software. Was just wondering if u guys are planning to make it possible to browse the pics u wanna send . The app is pretty sweet though fellas, good job."

Huh, what's going on?! I go to the market, and there it is. Published, working, and installed by 100 people! With no recollection of how this happened, I'm happy to see the app being used. Weird things happen when staying up too late :)

The app is called Photo Mail Uploader and is available for free in the Market and described as follows:

Crude application that provides a basic streamlined UI for sending new camera photos as emails.

Due to limitations in the Android platform, you still can only send one photo at a time, but it's faster than using built-in camera app.

Useful for sending multiple photos to a friend or to your Picasa email upload drop box.

Looking forward to feedback and hope people will find it as useful as I do!

2009-07-23 update: The app now has "1000-5000" downloads. http://www.nd.com.cn (en) wrote to say they might translate it to Chinese.

---

Note: The project is hosted on http://code.google.com/p/photomailer/, including source code (license) and bug tracker. If you'd like more features, build them!

Camp Muir Hike

2009-05-24T00:17:00.007-07:00

Playing some more with the browser plug-in for Google Earth. Below is a GPS trace that shows a hike I did today from Paradise to Camp Muir on Mt Rainer. The trace ends half on our way back because the GPS device I was using (Android phone) ran out of batteries. Too bad - glissading conditions were good, and I was hoping to find out my top speed going down the mountain.

(Raw kml file download as alternative for those with Google Earth)

McClellan Butte Hike

2009-05-20T00:36:00.007-07:00

Last weekend, I tried this popular trail just off the I-90. There were still lots of snow, and we lost trail pretty quickly. Below is a (partial) track recorded with an Android phone showing the not so good way we took:

(Requires Google Earth plugin, or download kml file and view in Earth)

Sipadan Diving Permits

2009-04-21T07:11:00.005-07:00

Sipadan is considered one of the worlds best dive sites (videos), made famous when diving celebrity Jacques Cousteau called it "an untouched piece of art" in 1989. It's a small island in the Malaysian province Sabah on north east coast of Borneo.

While on vacation in Borneo (pics) last week (April 2009), I spent a couple of days in the area but unfortunately did not get to dive at Sipadan because I did not get the required diving permit.

Finding information about the diving permits is a bit tricky and it is sometimes conflicting. I asked around among the staff at the Sipadan-Mabul Resort ("smart"), and though their responses were also not coherent, I'll share my experience and what I learned so far in hope that the information will benefit others.

In 2004, the Malaysian government ordered all on-site Sipadan resort operators to move their structures off the island to protect it's echo system. They also added the permit requirement for visiting Sipadan (diving or snorkeling), and there's a daily quota of 120 permits which is far less than the demand.

Permits are allocated by the local authorities using an unknown criteria. Most of the staff said that it's some form of queue, and that it's very important to apply for the permit far in advance. There are 12 resorts that can apply for permits and they should do so when you book (pay), so book in good time and make sure to give all information needed to apply for a permit.

But booking early does not guarantee permits. Those who book early and stay for 5-10 days at the resort days seemed to get about 2 or 3 days at Sipadan. For those staying only two nights, getting a Sipadan permit sounded unlikely in general.

A particularly frustrating part of this is that you wont know ahead of time whether you'll get the permit. The resort staff said they need to call the government every day to get a list of the next days permits. Luckily there's great muck diving around Mabul and Kapalai for days when you can't get a Sipadan permit.

So when do you need to book? We booked 2-3 weeks in advance and the on-site dive masters almost laughed when I asked for my chances for a Sipidan permit (although text in the booking confirmation indicated that one could expect diving at Sipadan). Common advice seemed to be booking at least 1-2 months in advance. Most dive-only tourist I talked to had booked 3-6 months before their trip.

That's my permit experience from the Sipadan-Mabul Resort, but I would recommend also looking at other resorts (good info here). I'd probably pick a different one next time as I didn't like the how the dives were organized with multiple intro dives, revisiting the same sites, and very large groups.

Nov 2009 Update: Someone with insight into this business tells me each guide service has a permit quota and that they pick who goes. Knowing the right people at the resorts allows you to dive Sipadan all days. For those who don't, the setup is a bit of a scam. The same person also tells me that the "conservation" efforts on the island is a disgrace - that island is now full of military personnel and remaining structures are falling apart.

2008-12-10T17:55:00.011-08:00

SMS in Gmail, for real!

Yay! Today we rolled out a really neat feature in Gmail Labs: SMS. And this time it's here to stay! Read all about it in Leo's post on the Gmail Blog.

One important thing to note is that standard text message fees apply for the mobile phone user, so don't get too carried away :) If you'd like to learn how to get the most out of your SMS $$$, or if you simply want to help the environment a little, talk to the IM tutor:

Tip: tutor can also hlp U wth rvrse trnsltn (IM -> En), in cse U've frnds tht insst on sendng incmprhnsble shrtnd msgs.

2008-12-07T21:51:00.005-08:00

Man this place has been quiet for a while. In the mean time lots of stuff has happened. Obama got elected and my neighborhood's celebration (photos) made national news. My new neighbor got into the spot light and is the talk of the town. We released the awesome video feature in Gmail and a few other things. I spent a week relaxing in Belize and got to dive in the famous Blue Hole.

Now Christmas is approaching real fast, so this weekend I started polishing my Glogg recipe and picked up a Christmas tree from Ikea, that exploded in my living room when I removed the wrapping!

2008-09-02T12:09:00.002-07:00

Couple of interesting links today:
- The Chrome Book
- Useful Google Talk Bots

2008-08-09T09:47:00.010-07:00

RAMROD 2008

Last week, I finally rode RAMROD (course information). It was a great ride and the most fun one so far this summer. Below are some pictures I took with my iPhone (should have brought a camera!) and a short description of the race I wrote for some interested friends.

(Also, an Eatonville photo by Jon Brunk can be found here)

Drove down the evening before and had a good nights sleep before
starting at 5am. Little chilly the first couple of hours before the
sun got up and the incline started. First 60mi was just cruising with
a couple of quick stops. After that came the first climb to Paradise
which was great. The sun had come up and the weather was beautiful!
I took it real easy when climbing since it was my first time. Lots of
lowest gear and lots of beautiful scenery. It was a good workout but
still felt pretty strong when reaching the top. The decline from there
was the best part of the ride, very open and scenic, and very fast. It
wasn't very crowded at this point which was good. After that another
quick food stop, small climb up a ridge, down again and shortly after
got to the second climb. Didn't have as much energy this time and
there was some construction along the road. Kept biting of mile after
mile, but started cramping a little and had to stop for a stretch and
a cliffbar. This was the toughest part of the ride. Once I got back on
I turned a couple of corners and discovered that I had stopped less
than a mile from the top. The sharp decline from there was again
really fast and less curvy than the first decline. The fastest 8 miles
ever for me before the next food stop appeared with sandwiches and
soda. Everyone seemed to consider the race over when reaching the
second peak, and most people were just relaxing in the sun and
enjoying the food so I decided to take my time here and enjoy it. The
final 30 miles were a gradual decline with significant head-wind so I
joined forces with one guy early on and then picked up more and more
people until we were a pace line of about 15 people. This part was
pretty fun and fast, no need to save the energy anymore. The last few
miles we split up, half the gang going faster and half slower than I
wanted. I was feeling quite tired at this point so I started drafting
behind a man going just slightly faster than myself. He was
participant #2, and I couldn't help asking how he got such a low
number. Turns out they are assigned in declining age order. The guys
was 73, doing the race for the second time. At that point I felt
pretty bad about having him do all the hard work so I pulled him in
the last couple of miles. Finished ~4.40pm feeling pretty good so I
changed and drove back to Seattle.

Overall, it was a very rewarding race. Not as crowded as many other,
some fairly challenging climbing and lots of stuff to look at. The
declines were fantastic. It was also nice that it was in the middle of
the week since it probably help keeping the number of cars down.
Strongly recommend signing up next year!

2008-06-21T09:44:00.004-07:00

Last week: Flying Wheels

2008-06-07T15:07:00.006-07:00

7 Hills of Kirkland: Done.
Next is Flying Wheels and I just learned that I got in to RAMROD! Woo hoo!

7 Hills of Kirkland - 100
Find more Bike Rides in Redmond, Washington

2008-06-07T15:02:00.002-07:00

From an interesting self critical article from the Swedish Police organization (translated to English):

Many police officers is happy on major roads in rush hour to get up the statistics on action against traffic offences. The system of quantitative targets creates pressure and injustice in the police force, and important tasks sidelined. The rule of law and common sense disappears. Eight out of ten police officers do not believe that the current quantitative targets for law enforcement is a good way to measure the police.

2008-05-10T20:25:00.001-07:00

Mt Si Hiking

2008-04-01T00:36:00.005-07:00

Save Energy with Google Talk!

In hnr of Earth Day (3 wks frm tday: April 22, 2K8), on tht day our Google Talk srvrs wll *t atmtclly sndng UR cnvrstns usng IM-speak instd of nrml wrds. But U can hlp sve sme cmptng pwr (& mre wstd enrgy!) by shrtnng UR cnverstns yrslf.

Note: quote above has been translated to "IM-speak". Read more on the Google Talk blog.

2008-03-16T17:16:00.003-07:00

Base Jumping Video

Eh, wow?

2008-03-16T16:18:00.003-07:00

Uh oh! ICQ Toothpaste!

I just had to echo this news from Gizmodo. ICQ toothpaste, how cool is that?!

ICQ was one of the first apps I really liked. But then it got too bloated. I still remember my six-digit UIN and have actually started using it again now that I can login through Gmail.

2008-03-10T00:00:00.001-07:00

Hawaii Pics

2008-01-22T02:08:00.002-08:00

Corbet's Couloir
After having talked about it for a long time, I finally tried the famous couloir in Jackson Hole. Graceful? No. Scary? A bit. Fun? Very!

We went twice. Below is a video clip from the second run, which went fine until my board cut into a large chunk of snow.. Didn't get the first run on video, so that one was of course a lot more controlled and stylish :)

nough said, here are some pics from within and the video:

oh, and you'll need to rotate your screen or head 90 degrees when watching this :)

2008-01-10T22:53:00.000-08:00

Hawaii

A couple of friends and I spent Thanksgiving on Hawaii. Here's a bit of a video from an amazing night dive we did. I hope to add some more here in the near future.
more, moore, mooooore!

2007-12-19T18:59:00.002-08:00

Simple Echo Bot in Java

Google Talk now comes with translation bots. While translation is fun, even more fun is to build your own bot! And with the Smack library, it's also easy.

As an example, here's a simple echo bot implementation in 40 lines:


public class EchoBot {

 private final XMPPConnection conn;

 // Simple bot that echoes incoming messages.
 private EchoBot() throws XMPPException {

   // Login as my-bot@gmail.com with password "my-password".
   conn = new XMPPConnection("gmail.com");
   conn.connect();
   conn.login("my-bot", "my-password");

   // Become available.
   conn.sendPacket(new Presence(Presence.Type.available));

   // Auto-accept all friend requests.
   conn.getRoster().setSubscriptionMode(SubscriptionMode.accept_all);

   // Echo incoming messages.
   final MessageListener messageListener = new MessageListener() {
     public void processMessage(Chat chat, Message message) {
       if ((message.getType() == Message.Type.chat
           || message.getType() == Message.Type.normal)
           && message.getBody()!= null) {
         try {
           chat.sendMessage(message.getBody());
         } catch(XMPPException e) {
           e.printStackTrace();
         }
       }
     }
   };
   conn.getChatManager().addChatListener(
       new ChatManagerListener() {
         public void chatCreated(Chat chat, boolean createdLocally) {
           chat.addMessageListener(messageListener);
         }
     });
 }
}

Feel free to re-use the code and go build something awesome!

2007-12-15T11:56:00.002-08:00

Reader becomes more social

You can now share items in Reader with your Google Talk friends. Check out their blog post for more info.

2007-11-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

Sodertalje, a Swedish city of 80000, is this year accepting more refugees from Iraq than the US and Canada together, according to a Swedish newspaper (http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=717715)

2007-07-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

Sicko

I recently watched Michael Moore's new movie. I don't have the patience to write a review, but this one is pretty good. In short, I thought this was the best Moore movie so far. The subject is important, the stories interesting, some parts funny, and Moore doesn't do too much of confronting and ridiculing individuals but instead focus on the problem and the alternative of socialized health care.

Seeing this movie made me take a second look at the Social Security Statement i received earlier this week. The statement is straight forward. In the "Work to build a secure future..." paragraph, it states that one should not rely on Social Security as an only source of income after retirement and in "About Social Security's future..." it further explains that "the Social Security system is facing serious financial problems".

The interesting part is "Your Estimated Benefits". Here it tell me that I have 8 credits of work and what this buys me. "To get benefits if you become disabled right now, you need 9 credits of work". Guess I'd better not become disabled before earning that 9th point. It also tells me that if I die now a spouse caring for my child may get some monthly benefit and "may be eligible for a one-time death benefit of $255".

I don't know the details of the American health care system or any other countries' system, but this doesn't seem very good to me. While on the phone with a Swedish friend today we started talking about Sicko. My friend and his wife recently had a child so I asked about this. In this case the mother had stopped working 5 weeks before birth and was going to stay at home with their child for another 8 months. After that my friend was going to be a home dad for another 8 months. Needless to say he had a hard time believing me when I told him how it works over here...

In the movie Moore also talks about various health insurance companies, including the one I use. The stories are pretty scary. Luckily, I don't have much personal experience with these sort of things, but a friend recently had a bad experience. In short, he lost two teeth when punched in the face by a random drunk guy, fixed it and got a $6000 bill just to discover that his dental insurance had a "life time maximum" of $2000. This is the dental insurance provided to employees of Seattle's largest software companies.

Since this post is already is mostly random remarks and comments, I figured I'd toss in this funny clip of CNN challenging facts in Sicko:

Moore later responded on his web site.

2007-04-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

Biking around Bainbridge Island

Bainbridge provides 33 miles of paved road and pathways, lots of hills (over 2,000 ft. climb) and beautiful scenery. We had a great ride and were lucky enough to stay dry the whole time. If you'd like to go but don't have a bike, Gregg's Greenlake Cycles have rental bikes for $25 per day.

2007-04-15T22:28:00.004-07:00

Last week the Google Maps launched My Maps which lets you annotate maps. I tried plotting down the route from today's bike ride and it turned out pretty good. Once I realized that it was better to use the keyboard arrows and pg up/down to move around things got a lot easier. I also noticed that there are now more detailed zooming and 3d models of Seattle buildings. Good job Maps!

2007-04-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

Another creation from the same course: Simulation of Tree Blowing in the Wind.
And then there are a few others variations of winds, for example "very strong" and "ridiculous"...

2007-04-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just found that this old artifact is still around. It's from a UW CSE graphics course I took in 05. This was one of the most fun courses I've taken, especially the ray tracing part. If you'd like to experiment, the tracer skeleton code is still available on the old project page.

2007-03-30T15:47:00.004-07:00

An interesting story about a Chinese couple that are refusing to abandon their house is spreading in the sphere, read the (translated) interview with house owner Wu Ping, comments and the nytimes article.

2007-03-26T23:17:00.003-07:00

Mercer Island Loop
Yesterday I biked around Mercer Island for the first time. The sun was finally shining again and it turned out to be a very enjoyable easy ride with good views, interesting houses, smooth curvy roads and few cars. Much better than my attempt to commute Seattle-Kirkland by bike on Google's Alternative Transportation Day earlier the same week. That time it was raining and when I finally got home I realized I'd left the apartment keys at work... Anyway, the Mercer loop is about 15 miles and accessible from both Seattle and the Bellevue side thanks to the I-90 bike lanes. Directions here.

2007-03-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

Boten Anna
Several American friends independently mentioned a pop song called 'Boten Anna' to me in the last couple of weeks. Turns out this song was a really popular in Scandinavia last summer and apparently it's still being played in bars. The lyrics are hilarious and the video below has English subtitles.

If you want to know more there's a detailed wikipedia article here.

2007-03-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

Finally a somewhat sunny weekend in Seattle!
After several rainy weekends and a very wet attempt to bike around Lake Washington on Saturday the nice weather on Sunday was a great surprise. Some friends and I spent the whole day outdoors, running around Green lake, hiking up the Rattlesnake trail and playing soccer in Gasworks park. Not bad.

The hiking turned out to be the highlight of the day. I had never hiked this trail before but it was very rewarding considering the short drive and quick hike. From the top of the trail one gets a good view of the lake, Mount Si and North Bend.

The Rattlesnake trail is about 35 minutes from Seattle (I-90 exit 32, see map). The hike is easy and takes about 1 hour round-trip.

2007-03-20T00:52:00.001-07:00

Go Gadget, Go! Last week we launced the Google Talk Gadget. Try it out here! Update: check out the cool firefox sidebar hack!

2007-02-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

Stevens Pass in January
A quick replay from the Stevens Pass public web cam in January. One second in the video represents one day (86400x speed-up).

Did you notice the tree branches bending up and down as snow accumulates and melts? The jump that is built and torn down? The snow falling off the fast moving clock? About half the days being cloudy? The night-time groomers?

Here's how the video was created:

Download images. A scheduled cron job downloaded the web cam image once every minute throughout January.

Select a subset of images. For 1s/day and 30fps I only need 1/48th of the images.

Remove duplicates. The web cam sometimes seemed to get stuck and not update the web image. I have filtered out images that are identical to the previous image to avoid having the video appear frozen at moments.

Stitch images into video. There are several tools for doing this, some better than others. The important thing is to use one that does not try to load all image data in memory up front. I found that RAD Video Tools worked quite well. The UI is not very polished but it's reasonably fast.

Add audio track. Something Windows Movie Maker can actually do :)

2007-02-11T20:35:00.001-08:00

NPEs and Static Analysis
Some days ago I was happily coding away when I stumbled over a bug in some Java code that I was using. More specifically I was getting a so called Null Pointer Exception, which is fairly common problem type. The funny thing this time was how long I had to stare at the one line of code before I saw the problem. The line contained several potential problems, but even a simplified example might look non-obvious...

  public void printWinner(String name) {
    System.out.println("The winner is: "
      + name != null ? name : "n/a");
  }

Do you see the problem? A quick code search shows that this bug exists elsewhere too. Now, if it's that easy to find a bunch of bugs like this, shouldn't there be a whole class of problems that can be detected automatically? Of course! Check out the Google engEdu tech talk on Static Analysis.

2007-02-05T22:54:00.000-08:00

Visitor Stats for my Google Videos
4th of July fireworks	254
Whistler ski action...	249
Whistler Couloir Extreme	128
Zero Gravity	83
Bears in Bern II	70
Night Riders	63
Traffic	49
Mt Rainer	17

2007-02-05T20:26:00.001-08:00

A New Duck!
Last week Adium 1.0 was released (screenshots) - it's a really slick Mac client that handles a number of services: AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, Google Talk and more. Love at first sight. You can download it from their webpage, where you also find help videos, a blog and xtras.

2007-01-29T02:32:00.002-08:00

Photos from Corbet’s Couloir
A few of my photos from the famous and scary(!) Corbet's - closed at this time, probably because there's a big rock sticking up in the middle of the drop-in area. Click on a photo to enlarge it.

2007-01-24T23:53:00.001-08:00

Corbet’s Couloir
Having just arrived in Jackson Hole, we started talking about tomorrow's skiing and looking at the trail map. Soon we got into talking about Corbet's Couloir - a very challenging and famous run on the Rendezvous Mountain. None of us had skied it, and most maybe none of us will, but the legendary run made us curios. Being geeks, we fired up the laptops and started searching for information and photos.

Unfortunately, we didn't find that many good photos, but the ones we did find were impressive and a press release about this year's opening of Corbet’s Couloir described it like this:

Corbet's degree of steepness is nearly vertical at the top, thus creating the need to jump into the couloir. The slope then “flattens” to 50 degrees. The overall average steepness is 40 degrees. The width of Corbet's is 40-50 feet within the chute, widening toward the bottom. The vertical drop of Corbet's is 500 feet.

Flattens to 50 degrees??!

Searching youtube showed that there's even a short movie: "Someday, Somebody Will Ski That" by Peter Pilafian (2006). The trailer shows a few clips from the drop-in.

Tomorrow's plan is to go to the edge, look down and turn around.

2007-01-21T20:29:00.000-08:00

My beloved iPod
...and what I don't like about it.

The most irritating "feature" is how difficult Apple makes it to recover purchased music after a hard drive crash. They could easily fix this by allowing users to download purchased media multiple times - that's how Google Video works. Another option would be to make it easy for users to copy music from the iPod to the new hard drive.

Some people might say that the solution is for users keep backups on separate hard drive (i.e. keeping a 3rd copy of the music), but that's more hazzle than most people want. Last time a hard drive crashed for me I had been out of the country for a few months and because of that I did not have a backup of my most recently purchased music. Since then I have not bought anything from the iTunes Store.

Another thing that irritates me is how the iPod displays music by Artist. Some artists' albums feature many other artists, and for these the iPod will display one line per unique combination of artists. I have for example row displaying "Jay-Z" and 19(!) rows that start with "Jay-Z Feat.". If I choose the plain "Jay-Z" option and then an album, the iPod plays the songs in the album that are "only" by Jay-Z, i.e. no featuring artist. When choosing "The Dynasty..." I get 4 songs, even though the album really contains 16. The only way I can play all songs is to go back to the top menu, display music by album and then choose this album.

This is bad user experience because many people think about their music in terms of artists, don't care much about who's featured on the different songs and don't know all album names by heart. Also, there's no easy way for me to play all my Jay-Z albums in a row.

2007-01-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Zero Gravity

Today's adventure with my visiting little sister was to go flying. I've recently gained interest in aviation and thought she should try it so I had her take an intro flight lesson. That means flying around with an instructor for an hour and learning a few things about the plane, a Cessna 172.

I brought my camera jumped in the back. The whole thing reminded me very much of my own intro lesson. The instructor very quickly went over checklists and explained the various instruments. I could see that my nodding sister couldn't make much sense out of this, as one would expect from someone who's never been in a cockpit before.

Once we got off the ground she got to take the flight controls and fly most of the time while the instructor handled the radio communication and made sure we stayed free of the sea-tac airspace and other planes. During the one hour of flying, we got a good view of Snoqualmie Falls and Seattle's surroundings.

The highlight of the flight was when the instructor took the flight controls and showed what zero gravity feels like. Below is a short video of it. You can see how the pen my sister is holding, and other things, start flying around. The beeping sound just before the dive is the stall warning horn going off.

2007-01-19T00:31:00.001-08:00

Weekend in Whistler
My sister is visiting so we spent the weekend in Whistler with some friends. Here's a short clip from Blackcomb's Couloir Extreme.
Funny note: Couloir Extreme was originally called "Saudan Couloir" by locals, but extreme skier Sylvain Saudan complained about the unauthorized use of his name so the company simply changed it. (source: wikipedia)

2007-01-10T19:20:00.001-08:00

Snowy Seattle...

...almost 3 hours to get home...

2007-01-10T03:11:00.000-08:00

iPhone announced at Macworld 2007

- Recording of Steve Jobs keynote speach (quicktime mov).
- Minute-by-minute coverage.

2007-01-03T00:59:00.000-08:00

2007-01-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

BitTyrant
"A selfish BitTorrent client that improves performance"

Modified version of the java Azureus BitTorrent client. Downloads for Win, OS X and Linux.
http://bittyrant.cs.washington.edu/

2007-01-02T22:06:00.001-08:00

Spaghetti Accident?
When setting up this blog I created a Google Analytics account as a simple way to track traffic. Today I looked at it for the first time and as expected there's not much traffic. In fact, there's so little traffic that my misspelling 'fettucino alfredo' are among the top five search terms of all time. This spelling seems to appear rarely on the web - my blog currently turn up as result #6 on google - but people obviously search for it. Maybe misspelling some word is a good idea if you're looking for traffic? (...how do you spell it anyway? fettucini? fettucine?)

2006-02-05. Breaking news! Google's webmaster tool now reports that cokementhos is even more popular!

2006-12-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

STS-116 Launched!

NASA: Latest news

2006-12-03T20:52:00.000-08:00

I've finally moved from Kirkland to Seattle and one of many things I found when packing boxes was an old web cam. It has a remote monitoring mode where it takes a picture every n seconds and I've temporarily put it on my balcony.

Another feature is creating time lapse videos - I've uploaded a few "traffic", "night riders" and "24h"

2006-11-12T22:14:00.000-08:00

Bodies in Seattle
The controversial Bodies exhibition is currently on display in Seattle. It's controversial because the bodies used were bought from a Chinese medical school and the arrangers, Premier Exhibitions, are not sharing evidence of consent for using the bodies this way. Seattle Times' has an interesting article that gives more details.

Contriversial or not, I found the exhibition interesting and educational. Seeing a full human neural system laid out on a table, arteries and veins, and knee joints with muscles attached makes you want to sign up for a classs in anatomy.

A couple of facts interesting things I learned:
- When removing the part of a lung that contains a tumor the remaining part can still function.
- Smoking a packet of cigarettes on average shortens your life 2 hours and 20 minutes.
- Eyes don't grow after birth.

The exhibition is open until end of December and the ticket is $24.50. There's also a youtube commercial that gives some idea of what it's like.

2006-11-12T02:07:00.000-08:00

Another great coke+menthos video: Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments II - The Domino Effect

2006-11-12T01:48:00.001-08:00

Stevens got 18"
(webcam)
Can't wait for the ski season to start - already booked trips to Jackson and Whistler in Jan...

2006-11-11T03:02:00.001-08:00

Look, the orkuteers are talking!

2006-11-10T00:43:00.000-08:00

Borat is conquering the world!

...and some people are pissed off! Borat (Sacha) previously received criticism after his "utterly unacceptable" behavior at the '05 MTV Europe Music Awards. Shortly after, he posted his response on the "official" Borat site (www.borat.tv - Kazakh authorities shut down www.borat.kz).

I'm now looking forward to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry's reaction on this "xenophobic" movie. And while waiting I've started to go through the long list of
video clips that are available online - many of which were not shown in the movie or on the Ali G show.

Oh, and does anyone need more proof that video clips spreading online doesn't need to hurt the film industry? The smart marketing people behind Borat recognized the opportunity and that's one of the reasons they sold for $26.5M the first weekend in the US. Now if only the Kazakh officials were as clever they'd use this movie to their advantage. Lonely Planet is already featuring the Real Kazakhstan on their website and I bet their Central Asia edition is selling better and better for each day.

2006-11-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

Remember the old 90s movie Rocketeer? I had almost forgotten about it until I recently stumbled over this 1966 clip of the real thing. Somehow the idea of strapping a rocket on your back is just so incredibly fascinating, although the pilots comment about getting down with the help of gravity after the 21.5s burn of fuel sounded a bit worrying... For now I'll stick to the good ol' Cessna 172, but as soon the break-through of commercial rocket backpacks come...

2006-10-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

On Popular Demand: The Swedish Pancake Recipe

2.5 dl flour

1 tea spoon salt

3-4 eggs

6 dl milk

Mix flour, salt and eggs. If you're using an iron casket pan you might want to add some fat too. Add a little bit of milk (~1dl) and mix until smooth. Once you've gotten rid of all chunks of flour, add the rest of the milk. Warm up the pan, add fat if necessairy. Put some of the mix in the hot pan and tilt it so that all of the pans bottom if covered by a thin layer. Once the pancake becomes solid enough you flip it and wait another minute or so until it looks good.

Serve with ice cream, cream, butter, sugar, jam (cloudberry is excellent!), blue berries, strawberries, apples or whatever you like.

If you don't have the patience to make pancakes this way you can pour the same pancake mix into an owen form and bake it for 45 min on 225C. For extra credit add some apple slices in there and some cinamon on top.

2006-10-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

Weekend @ Villa Vista

Villa Vista is a nice old fasion wooden cabin a stone throw from the entrance to the Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Peninsula. There are two minimalistic bedrooms, a small bath room, kitchen with iron cascet frypans - perfect for making Swedish pancaces - and a living room with a great view over the lake. The living room is heated by a pellet eating fireplace which produces more that enough heat as long as it doesn't run out of pellets.

The cabin is very well maintained by the friendly owners, Mary and John, who lives next door. When we arrived, the fireplace was lit and Mary had stocked up some cookies and coffee for us. We unloaded the car and drove up to the top of the Hurricane ridge and walked around on various paths for some hours. The walk was very easy - a man on crutches passed us - and the view amazing, we saw both remote glaciers and Victoria island.

We returned to the cabin as the sun was setting behind the mountains and spent the night cooking food (fettucino alfredo, mmm!), drinking flaggpunsch, and playing hold 'em and dize while listening through my collection of gangsta rap. Back to nature, ey? The next day we had pancakes with cloudberry jam for breakfast and went for a short row on the lake before we checked out.

For more information on the cabin, check out http://www.olympicgetaways.com/villavista/index.html.