English
Twirssi
Feb 7th
I am seriously considering trying to tweet, although I’m pretty unenthusiastic about the whole concept. That’s probably the main reason why I’m doing it, I want to dive into it to understand it better. I’m looking at different tools to do the tweets effectively, and I’m considering Twirrsi, a twitter plugin for irssi.
International phone calls on a shoestring
Feb 3rd
In less than five days, I’m going to South-East Asia to spend a month relaxing, trekking, inhaling pollution and fighting cockroaches the size of my fist in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. It’s going to be wonderful.
My problem is that it is very expensive to call to and from most of the countries in the area. The tariff for a call between a Telenor fixed-line in Norway and my prepaid mobile in Thailand is an outrageous €1.41 (NOK 11.38) per minute. The worldwide telecom tariffs are not based on distance, but destination bandwidth, de-facto monopolies, local regulations, corruption and several other complicated factors. In this case, Telenor really helps out with their typically inflated tariffs. For comparison, the Dutch telecom KPN charges “only” €1.08 (NOK 8.69) for the same call. Nevertheless, the tariffs are unacceptable, and Skype is really not an option, as it’s not as flexible and portable as a mobile phone.
Coping with vast amounts of information
Jan 9th
Google Reader
If you spend a lot of time reading on the internet, (by that, I don’t necessarily mean spending the time browsing people’s Facebook oneliners and paying your bills, but actually using it as the information source it is) then you are probably very busy right now, and I’ll get right to the point.
Use an aggregator for RSS feeds. It provides you with a clean view of a great deal of sources, from your favourite 100% online newspapers (and their brilliant political comics, like Doonesbury), to these pseudo-attempts of “established” media desperately trying to justify their dual physical/online existance. (Some do this better than others, but I’ll save that for a later rant.)
The point is that most of these are providing feeds of their news. Look for this symbol in your browser and click it to understand more. It’s worth it.
When you are on a site providing such feeds, then you can click on this icon in your browser in order to get the feed address which is usable in RSS/Atom feed aggregators. Such aggregators are probably integrated to your browser, like the well known Firefox (look at “get plugins/addons”) and even in Internet Explorer.
If you prefer to use a seperate application for this, then you can google¹ for them, or you can do what I do, use the excellent Google Reader which in my opinion just makes the internet a less noisy world to be in. It makes your up-to-date feeds available wherever you are.
For the time being, I don’t know of any better alternatives for me. If you read a lot of stuff happening on the internet (news, comics, torrents, blogs, podcasts), then perhaps you should check it out as well.
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¹) I almost can’t believe that Google seemingly have their own verb in almost all world languages now.
Travel gadgets
Dec 31st
Today I’ve ordered a new gadget for my Asia trip in February. It’s the Globalsat DG-100, a simple GPS data logger utilizing the SiRF StarIII chipset, which has been getting very good reviews out there. It can be set to record waypoints (locations) for a configurable interval based on time (like every 10 seconds) or distance (like every 100m) with storage for up to 64,000 records of time, location and altitude. The output can be exported to a myriad of formats, and can be represented as a Google Maps interface or used to geotag images taken during the trip. I can put this in my daypack during the day, and in the evening I’ll have a complete record of my movements. (Why? I don’t know. It’s fun to play with that kind of data.) Best thing is that it is made for exactly the purpose of logging data, with no fancy and power hungry utilities like bluetooth, giving it up to 35 hours of usage without recharge. It also runs on normal batteries, if needed.
Reportedly, the included software sucks donkey balls, but the good thing is that the vendor has released its specifications, so some guys have already made improved open source software that runs on Windows as well as Linux (as opposed to the original version), an interesting example of how free software helps to make a simple product even better and more available.
As I’ve managed to lose my precious MP3 player somewhere amongst my mess of life possessions, I’ve also ordered a new MP3 player, the Creative Zen 16GB. Flying is one of the most boring ways to spend time when travelling, so music is quite important in order to enjoy every bit of the trip. It is also important that is some kind of support refilling it with music on Linux systems. From what I know from my previous Creative player, the open source application gnomad2 should do the trick. Plus thing is that it also utilizes SD chips, so that extra content easily can be added, and with everything flash the size and weight is comfortable enough to carry around.
The secret war
Dec 19th
This is a damn interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about the Hmong soldiers that fought on the American side during the Vietnam war, and their situation as of today, over 30 years past. They are still being hunted like fugitives in the jungles of Laos, and are pleading for help from the Americans, which is still an open question.
A little bit from wikipedia will tell us a bit more about the Hmong’s efforts:
"In the early 1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to recruit the indigenous Hmong people in Laos to join fighting the Vietnam War, named as a Special Guerrilla Unit [...] Over 80% of the Hmong men in Laos were recruited by the CIA to join fighting for the U.S. Secret War in Laos. The CIA used the Special Guerrilla Unit as the counter attack unit to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main military supply route from the north to the south. Hmong soldiers put their lives at risk in the frontline fighting for the United States to block the supply line and to rescue downed American pilots [...] more than 40,000 Hmong were killed in the frontline, countless men were missing in action, thousands more were injured and disabled."
No wars are just “over”, It’s not like a football game. Or binary.
