The Leirdal Blog

I found this new bird in the woods today. I guess it is some kind of winter chicken. It is a shy bird with leaf like feathers. It's camouflage colours are well adapted for an autumn wood and few people have seen the bird in the nature. I had a lucky shot sneaking towards it through 1 meter of snow... almost...

I am sorry my site have been a bit silent for a while. I have had a lot of things to do lately, but I have a lot of blog entries in my idea list so hopefully the site will awaken again next year. Until then. Merry christmas and a happy new year.

Over the years I have been a heavy user of small electronic devices. I started with Sony Walkman in different versions. Later I switched to computer devices. That is mostly “small” gadgets often called organizers or smart-phones. It started with me testing some development utilities for Palm Pilot Professional and Palm OS devices back in 97. I had recently started working and could not afford a Palm Pilot myself, but I started testing them and helped configure my colleagues’ devices. I guess you could call it a bit masochistic, a budding gadget-holic without gadgets, just begging to play with the gadgets of my friends and colleagues.

So I got myself a Palm V and later a Palm IIIc back in the late 90’s early 2k’s. Later I switched to a Palm Vx and then Sony Clié. I still think of that little Clié as one of the best devices ever made and used it for several years, it had Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth and everything worked pretty OK. I used to run TomTom Navigator for Palm on it using Bluetooth to a TomTom GPS receiver. It was my little brain, pet and best friend.

In addition to this little infatuation with organizers I also was heavily into mobile phones. Mostly I used different Nokia models. Those models worth mentioning are the Nokia 5110, and later 7110, before I switched to the 6310i. I particularly liked the 6310i. It worked excellently. To get most out of my Palm devices I used to connect them to the internet through my mobile phones, using cables, or later Bluetooth, and thus syncing email and calendar through the network. Okay… there were a few things you had to do on your computer in order for that to work, and there was that little issue with firewalls. But who cares, I got it to work with only a few configurations, and tricks, and hacks applications, and other sneaky smart ideas.

I admit that in parallel with this I also invested in different mp3 players. First I had an Expanium MP3 CD player from Phillips, I am pretty sure I got that sometime in 97. I was a user of Archos MP3 players – the AV340. The player was a bit bulky, but with an enormous amount of features. Hey, how many other MP3-players do you know that you can connect to your TV-decoder and record TV-shows? I am not going to tell you the number of cables I normally am carrying around. Let’s just say that if you need a charger I probably have one nearby, or maybe two. Who am I kidding, how many do you need?

In 2006 I attempted to reduce the number of devices I always carried around and decided to gather them all into one device. I decided to buy a Smartphone. I invested in a Nokia N80, but what happened was that I still used both the Sony Clié and the N80. By connecting the Sony to my Nokia via Bluetooth I had myself a nifty little setup with online email and web-surfing. The calendar and overall GUI was so much better on the Palm OS than on the Nokia. The media player part of the mobile phone was even worse though so I continued to use other MP3-players. The Archos became too bulky in the long run so I switched totally strategy regarding MP3-players and switched to a Creative Zen Nano. Not a MP3-player with a large capacity, but it included 1 GB storage and FM-radio, all delivered in a very little package. It wasn’t until Apple released iPod touch I finally jumped on the iPod bandwagon.

For years I had been walking around with 3 devices. I had hoped to get rid of my Sony Clié when I switched to Nokia N80, but that didn’t work. So I made another attempt in 2008. I switched to Windows mobile and got myself a HTC Cruise and later HTC Diamond. Finally I was one device down. The calendar in the windows mobile was not perfect, but it worked. It could synchronize itself automatically with Exchange, and email, calendar and contacts were synchronized at all times. But what do you know, as long as I had access to Wi-Fi, so was my iPod touch. It had all the features of a smartphone except the possibility to call or use mobile networks. The lock-in with iTunes is a pain in the *** sometimes, but it works. Here I had a device that were simple to use and worked pretty much as easy as my Palm devices did. The biggest issue with Windows Mobile is not its features, Microsoft have an endless list of features. No the biggest issue with Windows Mobile is its slow speed and how annoying it can be to use. It sometimes feels like you have a brick that you want to perform a little bricking operation on. I am sorry to say that the Flow GUI from HTC does not make it that much better. It might flow better when you throw it, but it does not flow particularly while using the phone.

Here is an example: My employer recommends us to switch on the password protection included in the mobile phone. This is a feature that locks the phone after some inactivity. Now, let’s say you want to use a HTC Diamond to call a Taxi. In Oslo you are now supposed to press a lot of numbers on your phone in order for you to feel that you are not waiting as long as you really are. These numbers should be pretty easy to click on a phone, right? Not when you are talking HTC Diamond. You see while you wait to be connected to the automatic voice the password protection has suddenly activated. So when you have to select number 1-9 in the Taxi menu you first have to punch the password. Why it doesn’t understand that you are using the phone I have no idea. Now when you pull out the stylus and have punched your pin, Windows Mobile has decided that since you used your stylus during a phone-call you want to use the notepad feature of the phone. So you have to close that. Oh right. Now you have to activate the keyboard. Yeeees right again. That is that small little button on the bottom of the screen. Now you can click the number, but guess what, the automatic voice has kept on talking while you panicky have tried to navigate to the correct feature on your mobile and you are in a new menu and since you have not been listening to the voice in the phone lately you have no idea where in the menu you are, what choices you have or how to get back to the first menu. My phone has been very close to flowing very far in situations like that.

Enter the iPhone 3GS. The summer 2009 Apple releases the new iPhone 3GS, and I decided that maybe I could finally live with only one device.

One device to rule them all,
One device to find them,
One device to bring them all and in the brightness bind them.
(Freely adapted from the Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien)

So far it looks good, now if I only could get some of the old calendar features from my Palm devices: A 5 or 7 day week view, week number display and the possibility to set privacy status on calendar entries…

Google is really pushing the pedal this fall. They have a lot of new features and products lined up and recently a few new nice features showed up on google.com. Their market leading search engine has gotten a list of new filter options on a search. After you search you now get a Show Options button straight below the search field. When you click upon that button, you may now filter your search result, showing only the latest entries and so on.

One of the features available is what Google calls a Wonder Wheel. This a wheel that shows semantically interesting searches near the one you just performed. This is a very interesting feature, but sometimes this can give you unexpected results. As you can see in the search results below, Odd is a Scandinavian name. He is not necessarily odd, strange or weird. We have just experienced a nice example of semantics that have gone a bit awry. I guess Google might identify situations like this soon, but until then we may laugh a bit at this little screen dump.

What is really interesting though is how this might be handled. Consider a world where the source data Google is analyzing is telling Google that this is a name, and thus cannot be a synonym to other words. Where there is no doubt whether this is the first name or last name. You might have heard the name before. It's called a semantic web.

I've gotten a new iPhone 3GS (32 GB) and of course I need to test all the features. There are a few small configuration tidbits still left for me I see. And if I continue to use it as I have so far, I have a serious battery problem. (Yes I disabled 3G networking as quick as I could, in order to save some part of my battery usage)

I am testing a lot of applications at the time being and I admit that there are some applications that are excellent, some fair and some I still am testing.

I have been using GPS on my mobile phones and Palm organizers for years. So that part of having an iPhone is not really new. I have noticed that the integration of location into several other features is a nice added value though. In addition to this I have been a satisfied owner of an iPod touch for years now, so some of the applications are fairly well known to me.

Social media is maybe one of the stronges feature sets available from the iTunes app store. So far the Facebook app is proving to be excellent, and I also like Twitterific and Nambu. I am still evaluating Shozu though.

The biggest plus in my eyes though is the massive increase in response time compared to Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 HTC phones. Even my Nokia N80 was faster than those. Palm organizers have always been responsive and simple to use, I would have liked to test the Palm Pre, but somewhere even my gadget budget have to stop.

More news soon to follow.

22 July 2009 the biggest Solar Eclipse this century occurred over Asia. Escape Travel in cooperation with Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard arranged several alternatives for visiting both China and viewing the Solar Eclipse. My girlfriend and I have always wanted to visit China, and this seemed to be an interesting opportunity. We went for the longest alternative, a 2 week roundtrip of China culminating with the Solar Eclipse and a visit to Shanghai. China is a beautiful country and very different compared to Norway. A 2 week long roundtrip do not give the country justice, but that was what we had available this time around. It would have been better to visit in April, May, September or October though. We experienced mostly temperatures above 35°C and a humidity around 98% or more, but since we wanted to see a Solar Eclipse as well, that was not an option.

Escape had hired two experienced Norwegian China travellers and guides to help us in our quest to experience China safely. In addition to this, several Chinese guides that spoke English pretty well guided us through the several cities and sites we visited. China turned out to be something different and exciting pretty fast. In a strange mix of familiar logos and products new sights, smells, foods, and plants displayed themselves everywhere. The biggest turn-downs were the pollution and the way some Chinese laughed loudly and pointed at us when they saw us. I guess we look different and “ugly” in their eyes, but most people do not like to be ridiculed like that everywhere they go. Most people we met were kind, helpful and pleasant though, and I would say that China is probably one of the safest nations in the world to travel.

The roundtrip of China started in Beijing where we visited Tiananmen square, the forbidden city, the Great Wall of China and a few other sights. It was a bit strange to realise that almost every way we were used to communicate with people in Europe were unavailable. Very few people spoke English, we could not write out our destination or our questions with letters and maps was not something the average Chinese had ever used or even seen. The only thing we had left was body language!





One of the biggest memories from Beijing was actually the pollution. The smog was thick on most days and hung low everywhere we went. The day we visited the Great Wall was a very lucky exception. A pleasant wind blew the smog away and we were treated with a stunning vista of the wall, the mountains to the North and West of Beijing and the smoking city behind us.


After Beijing we flew west towards Xi'an where the famous terracotta warriors had been found next to the grave of the first Chinese emperor. The story about their discovery by two farmers digging a new well is well known, and I feel it may have turned into somewhat of a modern myth in China. One of the farmers is still alive. He was currently employed as kind of a living part of the exhibition, the way he was put to signing books for the tourist and displayed in the museum shop. The terracotta figures themselves were amazing though. Hundreds of them were lined up in neat rows like soldiers in a parade. I just hope that they manage to excavate the tomb itself in my lifetime. I can't wait to see what that contains.


After a short stay in Xi'an we travelled south to Guilin. An area famous for its landscape and beautiful nature. The area is an old part of the ocean and the famous geology of the area is a frequent part of Chinese art. This type of geology is called karst limestone formations. This area was one of the most beautiful areas I have ever seen. It had a lot of bird-life, and the green scenery together with all the big butterflies, dragonflies and other strange sights made this one of the most beautiful experiences in China.





The next stop was Hangzhou and the Solar Eclipse. For many of the participants this was the highlight of the trip. For me it was an important part, but I had never seen a total solar eclipse before and felt that the visit to China would have been exciting even without this event. But now, in hindsight, it was a bit more thrilling than anticipated. On the evening before the eclipse the weather was not promising. July is the Monsoon month in China, but we were now in the last few days of the rainy season, and might have nicer weather, but the clouds and the rain were returning from the sea, and large cloud formations were shaping up to the north of us. On the morning of the eclipse we left the hotel at 0345 in 3 buses and Knut Jørgen checked out the satellite photos of the clouds several times on our way to Tianhuangping(alternative in english) where we and a lot of other tourists had been directed to stay during the solar eclipse. We were in luck. It was partly cloudy, but just as the eclipse took place most of the clouds opened up and we had a really good show. You might say that the difference between a partial solar eclipse and a total solar eclipse is like the difference of eating a tasteless meal on a plane to sitting down in a top class restaurant and eating a splendid meal with good friends. Experiences that I hope that all of you may enjoy.

After the solar eclipse we enjoyed the sights of Hangzhou before we left by bus for Shanghai and the return to Norway. Shanghai with its tall skyscrapers turned out to be a nice ending to an amazing journey.

I would like to thank Escape Travel, Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard and all the people we met for making it a successful and enjoyable holiday in China.

This is the season for visiting the beaches in Norway. The last two weeks have been fantastic, but as this image tells: Everything have an end. Hopefully the nice weather will be back soon.

I admit that I have fixed a few small details in the upper right corner (I hid an ugly wall with the clone tool in Photoshop). This picture is from the Denja, Spain.

As I have mentioned earlier, my little brother is a designer. The most recent news is that they have achieved a Red-Dot award (opens in a new window) for their Orio Wire and Tube Collector.

Opera has released their new "revolutionary" Opera Unite. It is an interesting way of handling the sharing of services and information and probably also a quite natural extension of the browser as an platform. Now we just have to sit back and wait for some more exciting services in addition to those available in the beta release.

Here are some of the services I would like to see (Some of them might be available or not possible, I have not read the documentation fully yet):

• WebDav - I would like to be able to upload and download files easily within my normal desktop tools.


• HTTPS connections - I would like to be able to do this securely


• A versioning system - A simple subversion implementation maybe?


• Easy Backup - A way to create a backup of some of your files on a friends computer.


• Easy Wiki/Blog/Portal - A simplified tool for creating a site in Opera Unite. Hopefully with RSS support (both out and in)


• RSS Reader

What do you think, are there other tools you would like to see? Please leave your wishes in the comments.

Do you want to know more about how it works?

Check out these articles:
digi.no - Slik fungerer Opera Unite (in Norwegian)
digi.no - Opera flytter webserveren til nettleseren(in Norwegian)
Opera.com - An introduction to Opera Unite

Some are not that excited:
DagensIT - Operas viktigste nyskapning(in Norwegian)

Last night I attended a project dinner in Oslo after a long day at work. On my way home I noticed a lot of people looking up. I did as they and was a bit shocked by this woman balancing on top of a very flexible pole about 40 meters above ground. (This number is a guesstimate on my part based on the height of the nearby buildings). She was standing on top of the pole, balancing, hanging by a leg and doing several other stunts. I admit that she was wearing a safety rope, but hey it looked pretty scary anyway. While she was up there it even started to rain a few drops as well.

In the picture below you can see her looking down at me. I have also included a video in the full blog entry (click on the title above to see the video). Please have a look at that to see how the pole and the acrobat was swinging beneath the clouds.
Continue reading "Fearless"

During my last London visit these cranes were greeting my arrival. At least that is what I felt when I spotted them on the horizon the evening we arrived.

My girlfriend celebrated her xx birthday on Friday, and we marked the event by visiting UK. We arrived in London Wednesday evening and jumped on a bus to Bath, Stonehenge and Salisbury the following day. These are a few of the pictures from Stonehenge. Other pictures will follow later.

• Alternative Stonehenge image 1


• Alternative Stonehenge image 2


• Alternative Stonehenge image 3

It’s kind of interesting to see the turn among most companies out there concerning the use of different software tools for different tasks. For years we have had a mentality that either you create your own monster of a solution or you customize one product from some big vendor. But since the appearance of internet and the web our world has gotten a lot more fragmented.

(All links in this post opens in new windows)

Lately the consumer market has created a feel for sites and products on the net that is not only OK to use, but “necessary” to use. I am of course talking about web based applications and social software. In other words, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, instant messaging products and other similar tools. Several companies have their own Wikis, blogs, forums and instant messaging products. Micro-blogging tools like Twitter and Yammer is also being used more and more these days.

For years we have had Open Source Software (OSS), and except for Linux and Apache not all of them have been accepted by big business. And the only reason that Linux and Apache got accepted was due to their track record and the support from some pretty large vendors, among else IBM.

Lately I have got the feeling that a lot of corporations have accepted the risk of using products with a smaller support organisation than what these corporations are used to. The acceptance of small vendors and OSS products into the suite of software used by corporations have given me as a professional both benefits and challenges.

The biggest challenge is the same as it has been for years now, integration. We need information and functionality integrated on several layers and in infinite ways. So what the big vendors do and have done for years is to create tools for us to help integrate our fragmenting world.

The increasingly complex world of tools and services always make me think of the second law of thermodynamics. Luckily we do not have a closed system; we have the opportunity to impose change and to establish ways to solve our complexity.

So, the next time you use a wiki for documenting your experiences, the next time you rate some other users post on the web, the next time you chat with a colleague or the next time you write a blog post, consider this - how do you use such information from other products and sites within your company. Are you able to use the information? Should you be able to use it? Do you want to be able to use it? And finally, if the answer is yes on any of those questions, how do you integrate your tools?

I have deliberately not mentioned search, archiving and all the other corporate necessities like reviewability, reusability, accountability and so on. Neither do I want to mention the words service oriented architecture (SOA), web services or integration platform. What I want is a world where this information is seamlessly available to me, stored indefinitely and persistently at no cost. As a professional I do not trust this, so I need to gather knowledge I have produced in such a way that it is still available to me even though the service I originally used to create this information no longer exists.

How do you do that?

It has been quite mixed weather in Oslo today. It rained in the morning, then we had a few hours with beautiful sunshine. Then some thunder and lightning with heavy rain. And now the sun shines again. Kind of weird.
On my way to work I took a few pictures of my umbrella using my Canon G9 camera. I converted them to grayscale and then to duotone with a dark blue colour. There is another picture here.

Yesterday evening my girlfriend and I went to check out a stunt they tried out on top of the new Oslo Opera building. The Opera Carmen was sold out after just a few days, so they rigged up a big screen outside on the Opera roof and had a free Live show of the same concert as it was performed indoors. It turned out to be an enormous event with over 7000 people coming for a look. This was April in Norway... cold is a key word. Not everybody stuck it out for the full opera, but it was a better experience than I expected.

The first part had the most viewers. After a while the sun came and we had a magnificent view of the sunset as it set behind one of the big buildings next to the Opera, Havnelageret. (The big pink building in one of the pictures below). Some of the people nearest the traffic had some noise during the concert, but except for that the sound was pretty good.

Read more (opens in a new window): Carmen på Operataket ble en knallsuksess