JaranBlog

It’s been way too long since last time I pulled a prank on someone. Last time we wrapped my friend Bent’s office in plastic wrapping. This time it was Aleksander’s turn…

I realize I have been terrible at updating this thing lately. It’s summer, things are slow, and so is keeping the blog updated.

I has been a good summer so far, I haven’t had that much holidays, but I have managed to see some sun and also had a visit to Hove Festivalen and of course the best festival of them all; Skral Festival!

Skral has been this summers best moment so far. A bunch of great bands playing, possibly the best camp and fairly nice weather This year me and a few friends decided we wanted to participate in the camping part of the festival as well, even though most of us live only a few minutes away by car. We had tents, a party tent, the whole deal. However, I only slept about 4 hours in total in the tent, because as the hours went by the bed at home, only a few minutes away by taxi was too tempting I am not much of a camping guy. I like a little comfort. Especially when it’s that available. But the important part was to experience the atmosphere and crazy life in the camp, and you don’t get that while sleeping.

There was a lot of good music this year. Some of the best moments were Kent, Madrugada, Superfamily and of course the singing under our party tent till 6 in the morning. A legendary moment

I have some pictures and I will see if I can update this blog with some of those later.

Update: Pictures!

Some band at Hove

Aleksander and I at Hove. Aleksander having some issues with understanding “hey look here, we’re taking a picture” However, there were a lot of cute girls…

Every camp of champions have their own sign

Art Brut at Skral

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at Skral

A bird which decided to join our camp. We had a suspicion the bird was drunk as even poking it did not seem to bother it at all…

Big Bang at Skral

Superfamily at Skral

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

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!!

No, not a plastic-fantastic Guitar Hero on the Xbox, but for real. The hero label can probably be discussed and quickly discarded, though…

I got a guitar for my birthday this year. Yes, I know, my birthday is still 6 days away, but I was home on Thursday and got the present from my parents then. A brand new guitar in a brand new guitar “backpack”, whatever you call those things.

I quickly found out that what little I knew about playing the guitar ealier, has been lost somewhere over the years. So I am starting pretty much from scratch, learning the basics, but will soon be touring the world!

A friend of mine have also just started playing, so we are planning a few jamming sessions, hopefully with some mentoring from a few other friends who are a bit more comfortable with the instrument in their hands.

I went downtown and bought a songbook today, so now I’ll play my fingers sore!

Some of you might have noticed that my blog has been offline for a few days. I got an e-mail from my host last week informing me that some script on my site kept overloading their database server and they needed to perform frequent restarts to solve it.

Because of this I had to take the site offline untill I could resolve the
issue and now I am back up. I decided to start over, with a fresh new install of a newer version of WordPress and keep all the old posts in a backed up version (will be available shortly!).

The reason for this whole mess was apparently google bots continously requesting the CAPTCHA i protected my comment system with, according to my host. Whether this is the case or some spam artist consealed himself as a google bot, I don’t know. And I don’t really care.

Now I am back in a new format and hopefully with less load on my host’s database server