I accidentally wrote this poem while translating texts to German: In stoltzen reihen stehen, mit Blick auf höchstem Traum Und danach vorwärts, einfach schlagen: Brauchen Lebensraum! Zum Aktion läuft unser Heer, Soldaten schnell mit Mut Vorwärts, Männer! Vorwärts, Panzer! Voll mit rechtem Wut! Eins, zwei, drei, vier! Wir marschieren hier! [...]
Monthly Archives: September 2006
September 29, 2006
13:21
13:21
September 28, 2006
17:19
17:19
Aquarium at Work
Some nice guys came by today and installed an aquarium at my job. It’s right outside of my room, so I can sit and look at it all day. Looks neat!
September 27, 2006
13:51
13:51
Autonomous Systems and Sensors
Computers and machines have a marked deficiency: They live inside of an engineering world that’s been constructed for them. This world consists of bits and bytes, instructions and programs; but it is generally impossible for them to reach outside of this world and examine themselves in detail, or to carry out repairs. While we human [...]
September 21, 2006
13:58
13:58
Those Blinding Moments of Insight
It is with a profound sadness that I realize that the serialization subsystem I built for Delphi a few months back, while working for Visionutveckling, was so comparatively inefficient. While studying .NET Remoting, I suddenly understand what dispinterfaces is all about. And suddenly, in a blinding flash of insight, I realize that I had, in [...]
September 20, 2006
13:44
13:44
Personal Registration Numbers
“19741234-1231″ This little number holds a lot of power. (This one is fake, though. And invalid.) In Sweden, during the build-up of the national computer databases such as SPAR (Statens Person- och AdressRegister, i.e. Government Register over People and Addresses), the brains behind this chose to assign each person a special registration number, composed of [...]
September 20, 2006
13:05
13:05
Accordions
I’m not sure if accordions hold a special place in my heart. It’s an instrument associated with folk music and midsummer’s, and I’m not a great fan of either. Well, at least, Swedish folk music — I appreciate a lot of other types of folk music: bluegrass, country, irish, etc. I think there are many [...]
September 19, 2006
16:43
16:43
.NET Developer by Day, Delphi Hacker by Night
Being a .NET programmer is, I guess, okay. We build our business objects, code our stuff, do our thing. And .NET is a pretty good environment to work with, I suppose … it has a lot of stuff, lots of classes, serialization built in, whatever. Lots of remote stuff. Good for building three-tier enterprise solutions. [...]
September 18, 2006
14:27
14:27
New Politics
The socialists are gone. We can breathe again. Yesterday’s election swept the socialist-communist bloc from power and we now have a center-right block in power instead. The actual shift will take place in October, but it’s kind of a relief, for now. The question is how much they will be able to accomplish until Sweden [...]
September 12, 2006
15:46
15:46
When I Become Dictator, I Will…
straighten out all streets in Gothenburg in a nice north-south, east-west pattern. declare Stockholm as the official “wrong side of the country”. move my residence to Skåne. invade Denmark. reinstitute the union with Norway and take all their oil. have free hunting of social democrats during May through September. wipe out the income tax. You [...]
September 11, 2006
13:00
13:00
September 11
I had taken this particular week off. I felt I could use some rest after a long year of coding, and looked forward to brisk walks in the woods. This morning was easy; I had woken up, read the news, had my coffee and made plans for taking a walk, when suddenly the phone rang. [...]
September 7, 2006
08:46
08:46
My Favorite Little Doggy to Hate
This is one great example of how to build things that almost work, but not quite. There is no more annoying thing in Windows than to have to search for a file that contains a specific word, but you don’t know what file it is. The happy-go-lucky people will open the Windows File Search, with [...]
September 6, 2006
16:42
16:42
Timesheets
I’ve always had a problem with time reporting. When it comes to the end of the month, I’ve found myself dreading that terrible moment when I’ve had to sit down and figure out what I have done during the past month. Sometimes I’ve even resorted to checking the emails I’ve sent during the month to [...]
September 6, 2006
16:18
16:18
On the Proliferation of Languages
It’s getting a little international right now. I’ve just listened to a webcast by the CEO of our business area, who is in Finland, who spoke in English, about the future of our operations and how we’re going to change it. I’m busy reading specifications written by Germans, mostly in English – but sometimes in [...]
September 5, 2006
15:12
15:12
3pm
3 o’clock in the afternoon: That peculiar time of day when you’ve already checked all the email you can possibly check, visited all of your regular websites, read the funnies, and have no other way of squandering your time but to actually sit up in your chair and try to focus your attention on the [...]