JaranBlog

Dagbladet.no

A huge forest fire is raging in an area near Grimstad and Arendal these days. It has been going on for 4 days and only today the firemen hope to gain some control over it. According to Dagbladet.no it is the largest forest fire in Norway in modern times and it can even be seen from “space”.

Luckily no lives has been lost yet, but it’s still pretty scary. I am relatively safe about 40 km from the fire, but it’s still close nough to see the smoke and smell the burned wood. I woke up this morning to the sour smell of newly burned out wood. Yesterday around noon Arendal was completely covered in smoke and last night a cone of smoke was covering the sky above Grimstad. Aparently you could see the smoke as far south as Kristiansand. 10 000 acre has burned so far. That’s an area larger than downtown Oslo, and it will probably be more before they manage to stop the fire.

Dagbladet.no

Dagbladet.no

Dagbladet.no

Dagbladet.no

Agderposten

Agderposten

Agderposten

Agderposten

Yeah, you guessed right: Jaran is back on the MMO-wagon, wasting another good portion of his life in yet another virtual universe.

I have had a few weeks in Hyboria now and so far I am loving every little piece of it. I started writing this blog post with the title “I hate you, Funcom!”, and the reason for that is that I am starting to get the good MMO-feeling I had with World of Warcraft a few years back - when you easily can spend several hours in front of your computer just playing, chatting with friends either via voice on Teamspeak, or via in-game chat. You meet new people, you go questing and explore a completely new world.

This must sound so incredibly uber-geeky to some of you that you must start to wonder if I have gained 100 kilo, started wearing unwashed clothes, never see the light of day anymore and only have the weekly 10 minutes shower. Relax. It is not that bad But yes, I love MMOs - and while you watch your football matches I play Age of Conan

Anyways, back to the game. I have so far climbed the level ladder to 34 on a HoX and 29 on a Ranger, which I ditched in a trench somewhere in Conall’s Valley. I think I have found a great class in HoX - the combination of a fire mage and huuuuuge fancy two handed blades is just awesome But it’s not just the character that makes me love this game; it’s the whole composition of scenery, music and atmosphere.

Hyboria is a cruel world. Full of people just waiting to screw you over and stick a blade in your back. But Hyboria is also a beautiful world. Full of extremely well designed zones. The graphics are stunning (no matter what you may say, Eivind ;)). The wild life is a great combination of the kind of animals you expect to find in the different areas, and more both exotic and scary monsters. And have you noticed the mosquito sound effects? I actually start to itch and wave my hands around my head whenever I hear a mosquito sneak up on me… And I haven’t even tested it on a 5.1 or 7.1 system yet, which I have heard will just knock you off the chair.

The next thing which is worth mentioning is the new combat system. In Age of Conan there is no auto-attack, you will need to press keys to make your character swing his or her sword, or throw a spell. For this you use directional keys to tell your character in what direction to hit. Combos, combinations of these directional keys, enables you to do significantly increased damage as these become more and more complicated. As far as I know this combat system is something completely new to MMOs and has also been patented by Funcom? The software-patent debate is something we will save for another post…. Anyways, this new combat system is actually making it challenging to fight. You can’t just tell your character to throw a fire ball or use a special attack; you need to “perform” this spell or special attack. And the more you pratice and the more you memorize, the better a combatant you will become.

Oh, and did I mention how fascinating it is to plunge your fist into the chest of your oponent, rip his heart out, eat a little of it while he’s watching you before you throw it away and he falls to the ground? Or how awesome it is to swing your blade and cut your oponent in three pieces, making his head tumble down the hill?

Well, enough of this Age of Conan “review”, because I want to play and you should really experience for yourself! If you want something new to play, Age of Conan is definitively worth a try! Just make sure you clear your evening schedule for the coming month… Just in case.

Karbina/Karbo of Crom

The official release of Opera 9.5 is just around the corner, and yesterday a release candidate was made available as a small teaser. I have usually been a eager beta-tester of Opera, but with this version I decided to hold off untill there was a more stable version out. So, this morning I took my chances with the latest RC!

Oh boy, is this great. When you didnt think a browser could become any faster, Opera goes ahead and surprises you. It is really incredibly fast. It’s amazing!

Another thing I love about the new Opera is the Link implementation. Opera Link is synchronization of your bookmarks, notes, speed dial and personal bars, which means that you will have the same setup on all your computers The synchronization is working silently in the background and you don’t even notice it. Now I have the same bookmarks etc on my computer and on beach with Opera Mini Geek!

Opera 9.5 also comes with a brand new skin, which helps freshen up the “new browser” experience. I love the new tabs, but have mixed feelings about some of the icons used in the Mail panel etc.

All in all, Opera 9.5 is just frikkin’ awesome!

*mip mip* WRRRRROOOOOOOooooooooooommm….

I’ve been subscribing to a feed from a site named TED for a few months now, and it’s been really entertaining.

The site hosts talks by many different people from all kinds of fields, anything from food experts to computer wizards. The majority of the talks I have watched so far have really brought up interesting topics, and topics which makes you think. These are indeed clever people, and they know how to talk.

Most of the talks are reasonable lenghts, which means they can be watched with your morning or afternoon cup of tea. The video that came down the feed today was about deep sea exploration and how major parts of our own planet are still unexplored, even if there are signs of incredible things down there. Highly recommended!

I’m giving a talk on this month’s javaBin Sørlandet meeting, about Continuous Integration and our experiences with this, as a small company. I’ve given the title “Continuous Irritation - continuous integration through love and hate” as it will show how we have been working to turn what felt like a constant obstacle into something positive that we benefit from every day

For those of you unfamiliar with javaBin, it’s the Norwegian Java User Group - an interest group for programmers, geeks, or whatever you would like to call us. Three colleagues and I started up a branch of javaBin here in southern Norway about half a year ago and it has been going great so far. We’ve had a good bunch of people showing up, the topics have been interesting and we hope that will continue through 2008 and for years after that.

So, if you’re interested in Continuous Integration, or perhaps you are part of a small development team and aren’t exactly sure how to tacle the CI part of your agile day, stop by the University of Agder in Kristiansand on May 8th at 5pm

There will also be a session on Jira and Mylyn, by the way.

Last night I came back from a business trip to Sweden, exhausted and felt mostly like going to bed, but yesterday was the 29th of April - a date most console enthusiasts have been waiting for since many months - the official release date for the new Grand Theft Auto IV!

I had pre-ordered the game and was crossing my fingers on my way home that they had managed to send it out and that the slow-ass postal service had managed to get my package to my mailbox on time. And they had! So I barely took time to get my suitcase inside the door before I threw myself on the couch in front of the TV.

What a game! I got around 3-4 hours of game time last night and I simply can’t wait to play more. The good old GTA-feeling is back, and it’s feeling even better. The excellent storyline accompanied by smaller side missions and tasks, and lets not forget the beautiful graphics! GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas all took great advantage of the PS2 power when they were released back in the days, but it’s pretty clear the Rockstar developers have understood how to take advantage of the new generation of consoles as well. I remember that, in Vice City, I fell in love with cruising down the high way listening to “Mr. Mister - Broken Wings” in the sunset. San Andreas had several experiences like it, and from what I have seen of the graphics in GTA IV, I am sure there will be similar euphoric expriences. It’s not a coincidence that the engine used in GTA IV is named Euphoria…

Anyways, if you wonder what game to get for your console next you should not sit here reading the rest of this, but be on your way down to the game store!

Well, actually I am done… Run!!

We ordered a new computer at work this week, and two out of three boxes were delivered yesterday (the last one got sent to the wrong part of town apparently, and because Grimstad is such a huge city, it will probably take a day or two before it finds it’s way here).

At first, when we got the boxes, I thought perhaps my boss had ordered some special fish for a party or something. At least I would not think the box contained computer equipment!

I am starting to wonder if PS.no is running out of cardboard boxes Looking forward to see what kind of wrapping they have used for the last part of the shipment!

A few weeks ago a colleague sent me this comic at work. It made me laught, but it also brought a great idea for having a little fun with my dear co-developer, Aleksander:

My office is the one on the left… Of course…

During Easter, many geeks like to come together and play games and socialize with a few thousand other geeks, instead of tumbling down-hill in a huge snowball and eating chocolate. I’ve been there myself and it was great, so no pun intended.

Dagbladet.no just posted a cool high-res photo of the Viking Ship at Hamar, where The Gathering is held. Pretty cool, and you get a quite detailed view of what people are doing. So keep away from the naughty stuff and concentrate on the game, cause people are watching you!

Swedish broadcaster SVT announced over the weekend (article in swedish, sorry) that they are planning to broadcast all of their live shows on the web. “Awesome!”, you may think - the Swedes are really moving along with the digital age, giving the consumers what they want! Well, curb your enthusiasm.

As Sydsvenskan.se reports, SVT are also planning on claiming broadcast receiver licence from anyone owning a computer capable of accessing the Internet! And Swedish SVT are not alone. Here in Norway, the NRK have been thinking about the same strategy since 2006.

What this means, is that the national broadcasting companies want to charge you an annual fee because they are making their content available on the Internet. You’re not interested in their content? Well, why should they care!

I am an opponent of the broadcast receiver licence. I find it a rape of the society to claim a fee of over 2000 NOK (~390 USD) for only having a TV, when I rarely watch the national broadcasting channels, or listen to their radio stations. In addition to this I pay the monthly bills from my satellite provider. But enough about that. This is not what this blog post is about.

What I find outrageous is that a national instance wants to claim a fee from everyone, simply because they have made their material available on the Internet. I mean… you simply can’t do that. I have my strong doubts that such a suggestion will ever get through and accepted, but just the fact that someone can suggest it is quite frightening to me.

What if newspapers should start charging you a monthly fee, just because they are publishing their articles on the Internet? Would you accept that? Of course not! What if I sent you a bill twice a year which read “Licence fee for JaranBlog”? Don’t like my blog, or find any of these ramblings interesting? Well, see how much I care… Pay up, b**ch! Or lose your Internet access!

If you want to get paid for your online content, you implement a closed system where users have to pay to get access. My theory is that these broadcasting stations know that much of their content have a very narrow audience in many older generations and thus very few would be interested (or perhaps capable) of using their online paid service. Therefore, they propose this riddicilous licence and hope that some ignorant smooth talking politician will speak their case.