rastplats

I’m off to Tasmania for a short holiday in a few hours.. so I wont be able to answer emails until sunday.

Take and don’t do anything I would do!

I’ve finalised the design I want for my new surfboard now and sent it over to Ashley Surfboards to see what they say.. hopefully they’ll approve (complexitywise that is). Cant wait to ride my new lovely 7.0″ Hybrid.. check out the design below!

We have a very cute grandma-cup in our kitchen.. decorated with pink and blue flowers. Perfectly made for drinking tea with an old woman. It’s branded underneath with:

“Made in China for Action Industries Ltd.”

Action Industries.. tough guys.

Really..

Right now it’s 3am in the morning and it’s a fairly cold and windy night.. I should be cuddling in a warm soft bed under a massive doona, asleep.. Yep, thats precisely what I should be doing, but am I?

Not really no..

..not even close..

…damn

I’m spending the night in the computerlab at uni hacking on an assignment due later this morning.. debugging causal ordering of messages using logical vector clocks in a distributed C application is pretty much the opposite of what I want to do at the moment. If only I could blame my shitty time-allocation on someone else..

Me and my housemates are going to the Cat Empire concert at the Prince of Wales in St. Kilda tonight.. and the sun is shining over Melbourne.

If you dont have a ticket it’s perfectly normal for you to go postal of envy right now.

Your brand new computer is more powerful than yesterdays NASA supercomputer.. and Windows still takes 10 minutes to load and Office crash equally often as it did at version 4.0 in 1992. You need change. You need LUnix! Out with the new and in with the old. The incredibly cool LUnix-NG unix clone for the Commodore 64 has now been ported to the Oric Atmos. Check out the screenshots and download it here.

Big Breadbox is watching you. Old is New.

Here we go again.. I got pulled over by the cops again today for no reason. Unlike last time when I was walking, this time around I was driving my Kingswood down St.Georges Road when a familiar car pulled up behind me. Just like last time though they let me go after taking my name, address and a breathtest..

Perhaps I’ll get a christmas card from them?

I’ve finally made arrangements for visiting the old country during the summer holidays. I arrive at Copenhagen Airport on the 28th of December and stay in Svedala until the 13th of February. Anyone up for a coffee?

Another planned escape from old Melbz is a couple of days in Tasmania during the midsemester break a week from now.

Good times..

The surfing season is finally picking up speed again after a long winter..well, not that long actually. Me and Ted headed down with the S@LT surfteam last night to Torquay for a day in the wet stuff. Nice waves, sunshine, warm weather and cool people.. good combination.

I ended up buying a surfboard from Ashley Surfboards, the coolest surfboard shapers in the world. I’m getting a custom 7.0 feet board made up for me in a shape similar to a Mini Malibu but with a sharper nose.. and I get to go down there before the board is finalized so I can add my own design to it.. I’m so excited I’m wetting my boardshorts.

Pictures from the weekend have been added to the gallery..

Now I need to change pants.

According to the latest waterbill we consume roughly 900 litres of water daily in this house.. thats more than 200 litres per person a day. I wonder how many of our neighbours are hooked up to our meter..

A couple of months ago I was down at the Portland Hotel on Russel Street to watch Sweden get humiliated by Germany in the Soccer World Cup. Through the smoke and beermists I see a familiar face.. but it couldnt be.. no.. shit no.. or?.. bloody hell it is!.. The sharply dressed gentleman a meter away from me happens to be one of my childhood mates from the incredibly small place Bara in Sweden with about 4000 people. He has like me moved 20.000km southeast and ended up in Melbourne.. and he went to the exact same pub as I to watch the game..

Freaky.. but in a very good way.

The game was shit though..

My camera has been somewhat inactive during my recent adventures, a few shots have however made it to my galleries. Check out the updates.

My paper on the ethical implications of performing surveillance through the use of data mining and clustering on output gathered by using technologies intended for non-surveillance purposes. The paper can be downloaded here.

Abstract: During the course of our daily lives, the activities we undertake interact with a wide range of systems. The information that gets recorded in these when we shop, perform bank transfers, pass toll booths etc can when put together disclose a lot about ourselves. This information is highly valuable to companies who can use it to increase profits by e.g targeting marketing or handle insurance claims investigation and policy adjustments. In order to gain this knowledge, surveillance is undertaken by harvesting the data disclosed to these systems. In this paper we look at two different technologies, where the intended purpose isn’t surveillance, but which can be used to gain knowledge on the participating individuals. The information which can be extracted, the potential benefits of the systems and the implications this can have on our privacy is discussed and the ethical implications of using these technologies is analyzed using established ethical theories.

The last month or so brought a lot of stuff, perhaps not so much change but insights. So many things has changed for me over the past 6 months that I’ve had to work overtime to catch up.. gradually I’m coming to terms with my new life.. and I like it. I just needed some time for myself, hence the silence.

Since last time I’ve been doing, among a lot of other things, this:

• Joined a researchgroup in Bioinformatics
• Been riding snowboard at Falls Creek, Mt Hotham and Mt Buller
• Remodelled my room and made it really nice (pictures to appear)
• Had lots and lots of coffee
• Trying to be less selfdestructive and succeeded
• Spent a lot of time with my girlfriend
• log x+y = z²
• Finished two big university assignments
• Beerdrinking
• Read more journalpapers than I own underwear
• Been to an emergency room
• Been to a policestation
• Listened to a talk by Bob Bishop (ex SGI CEO) at Melbourne Uni
• … et. al

Have a nice afternoon.