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The son of a friend of mine from the Middle East will be attending Norwegian classes in Oslo this school year, and to that occasion my work place decided to setup a laptop for him. It was a rolled-out Dell Latitude D620, and having replaced the hard disk drive I opted for Ubuntu 10.04 as main operating system. This is largely due to my pleasant discoveries I have made about Ubuntu's performance and stability on ~4 year old systems, who are fully capable of running this modern OS without dragging its feet. In addition, everything worked out of the box. As I expected, this did not go unnoticed by his father, and I wrote this explanatory e-mail to him, that I thought I would share with you:

Hi,
I was expecting some feedback on the choice of operating system, so no worries:) Please let me explain.

[Our company] only has windows XP which is 10+ years old and not officially supported by Microsoft any longer. We're slowly migrating to Windows 7 64-bit on a machine-by-machine basis for newer machines. We've never used Vista, which is a two steps backwards system..

On the other hand, the Ubuntu operating system is a GNU/Linux OS with the system stability and security that entails. It is backed by the Canonical foundation. Programs (called packages) are installed via Synaptics package manager from central repositories, meaning you do not have to know what program you want or where to get it from, a search in Synaptics will find all you need and provide automatic configuring and updates. Most tools and small programs needed in everyday use are pre-installed. The system and the adhering packages are Free in both senses: no cost and free from legal restrictions. The license of the operating system ensures that this will never change, regardless of Canonical's financial backing. Google is one of many large enterprises using Ubuntu on the desktop.

The office applications available are OpenOffice (of which Writer, the word-equivalent, is already installed), which offer the functionality of Word without the considerable price tag and poor inter-operability of Word. Arabic tools can be installed with a few clicks. This also goes for the system locale (menus and system language) which can be changed during login. Arabic language packages (locale) can be installed from Synaptics.

The rest of the OpenOffice packages (Impress for presentations, and Calc for spreadsheets etc) are available already or installable from Synaptics.

I use Ubuntu all the time at [Our company], and if it had been up to me we would not migrate to Windows 7 but use Ubuntu instead. Unfortunately it is uncertain what infrastructure we will have in 2 years.

Also, the reason why Windows 7 is a great improvement on XP and Vista, experts agree, is because it is moving towards a Linux-like operating system. It is not there yet however, and its license and closed platform provides a lot of future problems ([Our company] already has trouble accessing its own documents from older Windows and Word versions), that will not occur on open platforms.

The main reason to go for Ubuntu with this particular machine is because it is 4 years old already, and the Ubuntu system does not falter with time the way XP does. Windows 7 will not be preferable on the D620 given its hardware architecture. Linux is however, very well-versed on backwards compatibility and will provide the modern usability and offerings without compromising on system performance or stability.

So give it a try for a while and maybe you will reconsider. My girlfriend is not very computer savvy but after a couple of weeks with it she switched entirely and didn't look back. Ubuntu is also very popular among Norwegian students.

If you would still like to switch after using it a little while, it doesn't take long to do so. Your son can have my email and cellphone number:)

Sincerely,
Sigg3

As most of you who have used Ubuntu will know, you cannot watch DVDs on systems (even outside the US) without installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras (or their kubuntu or xubuntu siblings) that installs some restricted packages that are illegal in some countries. What is new as of recently, AFAIK, is that you have to download and install libdvdcss2 manually afterwards in addition to installing the above packages. Installing livdvdread4 in Synaptics won't actually enable you to watch DVDs, so here's how to get it done nice and easy:

1. Open Synaptic Package Manager and install the ubuntu-restricted-extras packages 
2. Close Synaptic and open up a terminal 
3. Run 'sudo apt-get install libdvdread4' 
4. Then ' sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh' 

And reboot! Now, while I understand you need to use caution with regards to these packages because you don't want it to appear as if Canonical is somehow encouraging breaking the law (in a few countries, including the US); I just don't understand that you have to hide them as well. The install info is available here: Installing libdvdcss, but you'd have to read the package description pretty carefully in Synaptics to even notice it.. If I remember correctly, on earlier versions you could just install the restricted packages and you were ready to go. This little difference almost ruined Lady C's vacation!

If there's a webcomic that literally puts the coffee through my nose and onto the laptop keyboard at work, it's the awfully funny guys at Explosm whose Cyanide & Happiness as a true work of genius. Just check it:


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Here's the deal. We need to get Dave into America! They write:

Its four creators (Kris, Rob, Dave and Matt) all live in different parts of the world. In order for us to make more animated shorts, we need to get Dave into the states from Ireland. And for that he needs a visa.

Unfortunately, the powers that be believe Dave's work is not notable enough to qualify him for an O1 visa (for extraordinary artists). We created this petition to give evidence that this is untrue; that his work and the comic he's a part of have a huge global audience.

We urge you to please sign this if you are a fan of the creative work Dave McElfatrick has put into the online comic Cyanide & Happiness.
Please leave a personal comment as well, about why you like his comics and animations, so that those reading this will know that each one of you is a real person. Also note that the donation at the end doesn't go to us and is optional, you do not need to donate anything to this cause.

Link of the day: Let Dave into America online petition

Just sign up, fool. It doesn't cost you anything the petition is signed before the donation stuff so just close the tab afterwards unless you're a filthy rich bastard. And if that is the case, can you lend me a fiver? Like 5 mill?

It's about that time of the month again! And I'm not some emo LSD chick raving haphazardly about her menstrual cycle, no! Not at all! I'm a man. The Alpha Male. It's what I told my girlfriend Lady C the other week; "I'm the alpha male, baby." and she did not object. Instead she wrote down what improvements she would expect from a Beta version..

This month I'm sharing a musing on an old tale from the bowels of the metropolitan region, a near legendary story unknown to the most of you. Or anyone else than me and Kornelius, for that matter. As far as I recall, this all happened back in 2004 when we stopped by a bar called Connections.. But that's enough coffee for me. Here's what author of Lost Vegas doctor Pauly writes:

The August issue is right on the heels of the delayed July issue. August includes contributions from three vets: Sigge, Johnny Hughes, and May B. Yesno. That power trio anchors this issue which also marks the debut of Mark Verve. Oh, and I penned a tale about insobriety in the City of Angels, while Tenzin McGrupp makes a cameo this month with a throwback story from the early 2000s.

The Truckin' scribes write for the love of writing, which is a fancy way of saying that they share their blood work for free. I encourage you to spread the word about your favorite stories. The writers, myself included, certainly appreciate your assistance. Good karma will be coming your way for any help you can provide.

Invisible by Paul McGuire
I'm about six to seven inches off the ground with each bouncy step. That's the best way to describe the feeling, like the astronauts doing the slo-mo kangaroo hop on the moon. Floating. Bouncing. Sedated. Happily sedated, I should add. Demons quelled. Anxieties locked away...

Of New Cars by May B. Yesno
The problem, from his view point in his new office, was the distances he once considered large and satisfying were now mean and narrow. He felt he had to expand those horizons...

Connections by Sigg3
Smoking indoors was not allowed... rather, it was encouraged. Nobody had ever bothered to change the wallpaper or interior decorations since the first tenant set up trap decades ago. You could feel the horribly clouded history by placing your hand on the scarred wood that had cigarette burns and scratches from fingernails, broken glass and knives...

Russian Spies by Johnny Hughes
In the Army we did a atomic bomb drill. We put on our plastic, rain ponchos. The Sergeant said to sit on the ground and cover your head with the poncho. Then he said, "Now kiss your ass goodbye."...

A Troll's Life by Mark Verve
Look for the hottest girl in the place that's crying. Approach and ask if there's anything you can do to help. Use sympathy and understanding. You're going to have to do some listening...

Bryant Park by Tenzin McGrupp
A suit on a cell phone almost ran over a group of trust fund yentas with freshly painted manicured toes, the unoriginal ones carrying Gucci handbags with tiny yapping poodles given French sounding names by their malcontent owners...

Live blogging from a meeting. Excited yet? BORED.
We've got four salesmen (one female) sitting around the round table selling us their SharePoint solution. We're one and a half hour into this meeting, which is one of four that I'm required to attend, and I've finally come to the realization that it's a complete waste of my time. I'd rather waste my time doing actual work than sit here and listen like a fool. A fool because I don't understand the language. We even had to hire a damn special (and especially well-paid) sales-man CONSULTANT, that can translate the snake oil to "our very specific situation".

That's right. Some f*** in management thinks that because we're not a sweatshop, or a factory, but a research foundation we're somehow special and has special needs. Eff that. Why not ask the guy who keeps the shop running? It's a mid-sized business with regular Windows XP users and the communication problems that are wholly regular when more than ten people get together. We sell research instead of baby milk or soccer pads, and who cares.

I give up!

When I arrived here as a conscientious objector in 2004 I suggested that perhaps I could redo the company website (and naturally substitute its non-existing back-end) as well as implement the ISO standard file architecture at no cost. At the time, the company had just flushed half a million or more into a no-name Linux guru customized solution (turned out to be a re-written xml database setup with a MS word like GUI, no documentation and crashes half the time). So they wouldn't hear about no-cost solutions because they would lose face.

The system that's limping on as we speak, was in fact a lot better than the .ASP + MSSQL solution the former head of foundation had created when he was not avoiding actual work, but it didn't really take much. This very blog does the same and is based on a php+mysql system created in 2001!

Come 2010 and someone has decided that we're gonna buy a SharePoint license and take the final step into eternal doom. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft's Active Directory and SharePoint content architecture and management are good, well-written software products and great tools as well if implemented correctly. But there's a difference between a razor blade and a lawnmower when all you want to do is shave. Especially when the lawnmower takes all your data as hostage, unless of course you implement the next iteration under a similar yet more expensive license a decade into the future.

My own solution? A combination of FOSS packages that can ideally replace SP as a whole using opensource architecture in the back end. It requires the same hardware, quite a few consultancy hours, but our data is safe from vendor lockin at the neat price of ZERO dollar. AND we can be a flagship example of being ahead of the curve and the rest of the research field as users of intelligent and creative computing. I want viable solutions, not packaged products dammit! .. Oh well. Back to pretending I'm listening. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'die a little inside'.

We'll be going on a much needed summer holiday tomorrow morning, and won't be back until mid-August. But there's no reason to fret! When we come back we will be tanned, hairy and stronger than EVER! ... Like this:


I put it in my Out of office auto-reply mail at work. Just in case.

Yesterday my colleague FRANK! and I put in 4 working hours at home after work to finish the living room flooring as well as move the 500Kg piano from 1880. It's a numbered piano by the Hals brothers, royal piano manufacturers of the Kingdom of Norway and is as heavy as it is old. But with my back problems I was not allowed to carry the damn thing, and Lady C had to step in and save the day. So very much thanks to FRANK! and the awesome muscular girlfriend I have whose ground upon which she walks I am barely worthy of french kissing - we can go on holiday with a clear conscience, and focus on ourselves a little.

We're going away for two weeks to the north to visit relatives on my father's side, including my father, whom has yet to meet Lady C. That will be interesting.

First we'll head up to Tromsø tomorrow morning. Come Monday we'll take the postal flight to Berlevåg near the Russian border to spend a few days with my grand mother. Lady C has never been so far north so it'll be quite the experience. We'll spend a few more days with my father in Tromsø before we head to the third northern county called Nordland (Bodø airport) where we'll spend a week by the fjord just relaxing and avoiding the Internet and work-related e-mail. But I might stop by every once in a while despite better judgement. So long fellas!

Like I said yesterday, Maddox is releasing his own online TV show!

Link of the day: The Best Show in the Universe episode 1

Featuring the careful analysis of youtube's singing children compared to the originals. Will they do justice to the original? Also, Maddox educates us about Vegans and Assholes with nice graphs. Check out the newly released book page for his upcoming I Am Better Than your Kids where you can submit your kid's artwork, or maybe your own artwork, to be included. I've got my tractor MS PAINT artwork of course, but it's too low res for printing. And of course, it wouldn't be polite towards the worthless ill-inspired five minute doodles your kids can come up with. Seriously.

On a side-note, Maddox being a phenomenon, I think he's the modern day version of American Splendor. Any thoughts? Any whatsoever?

The last couple of years there has been a long, shilling silence on The Best Page in the Universe, except for a dust bunny bouncing between the edges of the monitor. Because dust bunnies are from the wild wild west, and the wild wild west was awesome. Beef jerky, scalping Indians and hand-cocked revolvers? You gotta be fucking kidding me. But Maddox is back!!

In his "press statement" (razor blade toilet paper) called Big news from the main man. Maddox shows the statistical correlation of unemployment rates falling as The Best Page in the Universe is less frequently updated. But don't think the main man does this for charity (or Obama). He's been busy on 3 upcoming projects; two TV shows and a new book project! His own show goes live in less than 11 hours on youtube!

What's that I hear? It's your woman having an orgasm.

You should read the news yourself, but as a lumberjack I will have to recommend his literary debut with The Alphabet of Manliness. I've been trying to get it into the philosophy curriculum at the University of Oslo ever since I read it. It was admitted in peer-review as course curriculum when withdrawn in the final stages because all of the women in the committee couldn't stop menstruation (nor having very vivid, explicit dreams).

His new book's based on the age-old classic I am better than your kids from 2002 where several of his co-workers' kids' drawings are analysed and ultimately found to fail. I'll be harvesting these to put around the libraries where I work. Kick ass.

The summer issue of Truckin' is here! Print it out, fax it to your mother and text it to your friends! It is a versatile literary experiment from a whole range of eco-friendly authors with a seal-clubbin' hidden agenda. Read more to find out!

My friend, poker blogger and published author of Lost Vegas, señor Pauly writes:

[We] have an amazing batch of stories for this issue. Ernest makes his debut. What can I say aside from the fact that I love any short story that starts off with a pregnant woman slamming Jager? Katitude is back with another stellar road tale about a motorcycle adventure she took last summer. Waffles is also making his debut with a story about a webcam scammer. And yours truly penned two stories; the first was inspired by TV shows about hoarders, and the second is an excerpt from a novella that I never got around to finishing about a serial killer on the loose in Seattle.

Everest by Pauly
What was supposed to be the family room was completely unorganized clutter -- bags of clothes, empty containers, Betty Boop memorabilia, canned goods, grocery store fliers, and boxes of Christmas decorations. Everything was piled on top of each other like ever shifting sand dunes...

Baby Boo and the Canyonlands Motel by Katitude
The sun is blazing into your eyes, and no matter how you squint, you can't really see what's up ahead. You can feel the mother of all headaches begin to take up residence between your temples. You're hot. You're tired, and tired of being on the road...

The Lonehorseman by Ernest
The extremely pregnant woman did a shot of Jagermeister, and then started slowly sliding off her barstool. The bartender ran around the corner of the bar and caught her just before she hit the ground. That’s a sound I was glad I didn't have to hear. The sickening thud of a drunk pregnant woman hitting the floor...

Art of the Bluff by Waffles
I was a little bored when one of those Facebook web cam whores came on. You know the ones I am talking about. The ones with hot pictures who call you baby and tell you how hot you are while trying to get you to enter your credit card information on their webcam sites...

Free by Pauly
That abrupt shift in reality does not happen over night. It's a gradual decline as your brain slowly loses touch with reality. It was as though he had been hanging on by one last little thread for many weeks before it... snapped...

So, we've managed to fix the moulding roses and the window sills for the living room, as well as filled up the gap between the old wood floors so that we can lay out the parquet flooring pretty soon. In addition, I put up the 900x800x100mm siporex firewall in the study.




We managed to fit a standard EL ceiling box inside the rose, which is great for future use!


Quick and easy firewall. Add spackle and white paint.


Levelling the floor between the "living rooms"


Living room the 22nd of July 2010

The third and last fireplace will be delivered and set-up the 13th of September. In the meanwhile we must finish the flooring and (hopefully) the remaining finishing touches too (ground moulding) before that date. This presuppose ceiling moulds for both the hallway and the study, putting up the double door between the study and the living room and moving the piano.

We had some bad luck with our moulding supplier Floret who is going out of business, and therefore would not be able to get us the moulding that we ordered July 2nd. So tomorrow we'll go to Vesterbro outside Oslo to have a look at the assortment available at OBS Bygg. Hopefully, the Gracia cornice from Lundbergs will be an acceptable alternative to the F5L. Stay tuned!

Here are some photos of the current stage of our total renovation:


The box in the ceiling has turned out fantastic after Lady C's 6-8 rounds of spackling. She's brilliant. I intend to rent her out to parties, where she would even a wall while the children have cake.


Grace. Excellence. Superiority. The trademarks of my work.


Our living-room on July 12th 2010.


We just need some more paint, a floor and finishing along the edges.


We left a secret note to future DIY generations!

You can see more photos from our Extreme DIY project on flickr.


As you can imagine there is not much left to do here. Today and yesterday while I've been at work watching funny OMG lolcat vids on youtube, Lady C has been at home painting and finishing and painting. I hate it when she gets to be at home working on our "pet project" a.k.a Home, when I have to sit and rot at the office. Really brings me down low. I'll be taking some days off next week to climb up from this hole.

But what remains, really?
Practically, nothing that we can't handle. As you can see from the last photo above, there is a small chasm where there once was a wall between the dining room and the warm living room. We have no idea when the wall came down, but probably in the 70's when mr. I'll-fix-it carpenter lived here and turned it into a dump (see the sales-pictures for comparison).

You should put a parquet floor where the previous (wood) floor is at, but never where there is no floor, as between the living-room floors depicted. This is because the different underlying (wooden) floors move differently, and means that we'll have to lay 2 floors in the living-room separated by a self-made "hat". One of my uncles who's really good at this will make one custom for us.

We still need to put up the moulding roses (rosett) in the living-rooms, but only after we've made a secure fix for putting up heavy lamps. There are no such nooks there now, and today Lady C's been in yelling competitions with several hardware shops in town. But when you've done the heavy lifts and construction designs as we have, the know-it-all attitude of the hardware profession will only yield rage and a bad review. Ignorance permeates the business.

In the meantime, there's dust everywhere:)



We've bought the Jøtul F 100 cast iron stove in black for the library/study/guest room and will need to put up a firewall. The Dovre equivalent would let us do without, but the F100 can yield more heat and simply looks better. Besides, having had problems with our Dovre Wood Cassette in the living-room (now solved) and no such trouble with the Jøtul in the kitchen, Lady C put her foot down. Here's a picture with dimensions in millimetres.

Insanely enough, the wood stove workers at the store treated us as simple noobs and wanted to sell us 6 centimetre firewall plates at 1400 NOK per piece. We'd need 2 pieces + glue and the work = around 3500 NOK I guess. Here's what you do; check out the fire stove manual which has the specifics on external/built-in firewall and the right angles and distances to combustible walls/material. In our case we needed only 1 firewall because the other side of the corner chimney is in old brick, and the required dimensions for the F100 at a corner-angle are 800 x 900 mm x 100 mm.

Guess what's approved as firewall material? Siporex, a concrete building block that consists of 80% air, is ultra-light and easily manipulated with a regular handsaw and finishing paper! A 60 by 40 cm block costs you 40 NOK, and for 80 x 90 firewall you'll just need 3 of them, at a price of 120 NOK + glue. You just saved more than three thousand NOK ($400 USD). If that wasn't enough, the result is a lot nicer than the over-priced plates, and only builds 4 cm more. The shit you learn when you DIY is incredible. And economical.

After the painting and finishing of the moulds are ready we can focus on the floors. This means eventually having to move around large amounts of building material, a couple of couches and equipment that's no longer needed or just needed for a little while before we can move up and in. And a piano.

In-between there's our summer holiday in the North, of course, where we'll both die from frustration. I'll blog about that later.

An unnamed individual ("Mike") at an undisclosed location in the US claims to have a family of sasquatch visiting an island of trees visible from his home for the last three weeks during night time.

Mike is an elderly man taking care of his older 90-year old sister who's blind and suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia, in an urban area though some ten miles from a national park.

It's hard to tell whether this is real or not, though he has agreed to take pictures of them and meet a crew of self-appointed bigfoot researchers (the BFRO). Apparently he does not have the means to buy a camera or any equipment capable of nighttime photography.

From the interview I've heard he seems to be sincere. That does not necessarily mean that they are real. In the interview he repeatedly states and expresses that he is concerned about the well-being of these animals and that he wouldn't know what to do if they came in harm's way. This could be the cry for help from an elderly man on the verge of dementia that is not able to take care of his sister or himself any longer. Though granted that these creatures exist there's no reason why their being there would not be the case either.

Let's see what happens. I'll guess we'll know shortly whether this is a lame PR stunt or not. Follow the story @ Cryptomundo!

Postscript 12th of July 2010: Unfortunately, I seem to have been right about his state of mind. For more confirmation see Case of "Mike" Solved: "He Was Seeing Things"

If you haven't dun a LOL today, check the latest Cyanide & Happiness:


Source: Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

It's the Year We Make Contact. And fluffernutters. And our own home! The jingle:

Happy Birthday Sigg3.net!




Here's a quick re-cap of other themes:

• September 30th 2002: Sigg3's Keep 
• 25th of January 2003: news@sigg3.net 
• 12th of June 2003: news@sigg3.net tropical 
• 20th of September 2003: Life Between Stations 

I had a lot of spare time in 2003 apparently. Hehe, please notice how that if you click a link to Koew.tk in the archive, my design pops up: Koew.tk @ 2004. I had forgot I made that. Ah, the days of 800x600 over modem.. websites <20Kb, reminisce!

Why make a new theme when I could just return to the UNCHALLENGED AWESOMENESS of the Tropical theme I used in 2003? Because it contains graphics from two major trademarks (and in violation thereof); namely the Tropical masthead that I snatched from a flash vid of homestarrunner and the Guinness beverage educational icons at the bottom which alone make me regret I went to work today..

But I might consider going with something just as colourful.

Thanks to a blog post from Ivy I recently re-checked my XHTML 1.0 Strict version of this very template in Internet Explorer 8. And it works! Sort of. You can't scroll. Instead you have the infamous javascript mockup at the top reading: "Internet Explorer prevented you from experiencing a better internet." That's cute.

There are many contenders to the title of 'Sigg3.net new backend', ranging from the academically appraised Plone to funky Django and enterprise Drupal. I've recently meddled with MongoDB and other non-relational databases, but they are not really needed for my kind of site. Though I have a good PageRank and receive new readers from all across the world every day, I don't really need to scale for great masses. This site is my personal webpage, and nothing else. Happy birthday!

PS. Also, you should buy Pauly's book right away: Lost Vegas!
I know I would. And guess what, I have bought it! And so should you. Stop licking the fence and get down n' dirty with the poker priest of NYC.

I got an e-mail this morning from the radiohead mailinglist. It was about Philip Selway's independent album Familial. You can download a free mp3 of the first track on his website. I am not convinced yet, but I know he's a great drummer. Good luck!

I was reading up on Radiohead history and news when I noticed a couple of 2009 releases that I had missed entirely, namely Harry Patch (In memory of) and These are my twisted words. The first one is a tribute to "the Last Fighting Tommy", namely the last British soldier surviving WWI. He had strong anti-war views from his dreadful experiences, and a BBC Radio 4 interview inspired Tom Yorke to write a song based on the interview.

i am the only one that got through
the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i've seen devils coming up from the ground
i've seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn

The song is a download-only that costs £1 BGP, proceeds going to the British Legion. Download/buy here

The second track called These Are my Twisted Words is a single released as direct download and a torrent on mininova (original link dead) at no cost. You can download the mp3 from Radiohead's dead air space website.

My good friend Pauly has finally released his long-anticipated Lost Vegas diary and depiction of decadence. As far as I know, it's a collection of shorts he's written in and about Sin City, feat. existential conversations with strippers, the World Series of Poker as well as every other dirty aspect of the only place on Earth where angels snort cocaine. Order your copy today!

I've got mine down for Oslo, Norway. So, how about that Truckin' Zine collection?

So we had a busy week last week trying to get everything done, or at least as much as possible. I mean, we knew we wouldn't be 100% finished because we don't have all the remaining materials yet. But we're getting there, despite the fact that we have added some work for ourselves as well as had to do some other family stuff. And was sick inna hedge.

This post is freckled with pictures from the Extreme DIY 2009/2010 gallery.

I took Friday 18th off work as comp time and we headed down to Place du Carl Berner, Oslo, to retrieve our mouldings. Turns out the shipment was split up, so we only received the moulding roses ("rosette") for our two living room ceilings:


See also this top-view blurry picture

It's very modest but still attractive, even though it's not attached yet. They were ordered from Floret Interiør Design who will accept orders till around September when they're closing the business. They are the cheapest in Norway on these kind of products, as far as I know. As well as friendly and professional.

The rest of Friday was spent setting up one and a half wall, leaving one remaining wall.

Come Saturday 19th we were almost out of tile mortar, the economically viable alternative to plaster mortar ("gipsbruk") from Norgips. Being without a car though, we emptied our peach-colored roller suitcase and headed for the nearest Maxbo only a bus stop away. They didn't have any tile mortar cheaper than Norgips' plaster mortar, so we ended on 25Kg of the latter.

Upon arriving home we found that the last shipment from Floret had arrived with the mouldings for the living room and hallway ceiling, so we just quickly scurried down to Carl Berner hoping that we would be able to carry the package(s) between us. Turned out Floret had done a nice packing job, and we managed to haul it home before the skies opened:


That package is taller than me. See sample of blurry close-up here

Here's the mouldings for the living room and the hallway respectively:





We finished the day by putting up the the last wall of our apartment!

Saturday evening my brother Koew had a get-together, and since my sister was in town we decided to join in and get drunk. POOR DECISION. It was a lot of fun, no doubt, but since this year's been cold as frak you can't stay warm in the evenings. So Lady C got really cold, then hot, then slept for two days.. All Sunday and parts of Monday were wasted.

On the third day, more specifically Tuesday 22nd, I rose up from the dead and began working out different solutions to our timber log problem while Lady C was asleep. As you may have seen from previous pictures and below, there's a beam across the ceiling where a light brick wall between warm living room and dining room once stood. The wall's removed long ago, making a pretty decent 40 sq. metre living room, but we got a pretty ugly and SATANICALLY UNEVEN log to stiffen the outer and inner walls horizontally in return. They obviously didn't care how it looked when they set it up, just see this picture feat. electricity tubes and networking cables, because they subsequently lowered the ceiling by some 40cm. So we needed to box it in, but being that we would have to live with the results, it had to be carefully levelled.

After some trial and error (not to mention all the sleepless nights prior in planning this) I ended up constructing 8 U-profiles in 23mm wood with metal mountings for an approximated 90° angle on either side;


3 of 8 handmade U-profiles



Each of them took around 30 minutes to make, after which I would have a breather, being I was not entirely well. This last photo shows my quick and dirty hack of using a Norwegian crowner (1 NOK) with a slightly expanded hole to serve as support for the screws that were just too small-headed for the hole. This is actually QUITE ILLEGAL, namely defacing a Norwegian coin, and I could be arrested for treason for this attack against the King and the Kingdom of Norway. Guantanamo next, I suppose, since I had to spend as much as 3 NOK to get the profiles done proper.

That same evening I got an SMS from my uncle telling me he needed some of his equipment back, including the plaster board elevator needed for this project! This left us with little choice but to go on with my plan. On Wednesday 23rd, even though Lady C was still a bit feverish, we began boxing in our arch enemy, the log:


5 of 8 U-profiles, all level to each other, fastened with 2 high-strength screws on the ears and 1 stabilizing screw from below.


Adding the first plaster board


Ready to add the last board (feat. the much loved plaster elevator)

As you can see the result was rather professional looking. Being that the log itself was not level, the only easier method would have been to first cut it with a chainsaw to allow for level attach points and then box out from there. Since I don't have a chainsaw and Lady C would never let me use one, we had to box it out like this instead. Takes some more levelling but you'll get there eventually!

We don't have a car that we own. Instead, we've been borrowing a car from The Army Dude, which is more like a Volkswagen wreck than a rolling dream of safety. But it's perfect for our dirty kind of projects which involves driving a lot of waste material to the dump in the back.. Unfortunately it was in repair when we had to deliver the plaster board elevator to my uncle, Thursday 24th, so we finally ended up renting this car from Hertz:


Volvo V50!

Counting all the extras, this car new costs more than an entire year on my salary.. And I learned to drive in a metallic green Volvo 940. Being that I was still feeling a bit iffy, it was the perfect car for the long journey out of rush-time Oslo, despite my being paranoid about the paint coat. The only downside I could find were the large beams between the windows blocking the view. This exercise took all day and we were back at 8 o'clock in the evening.

Friday 25th I cut up the remaining materials, wood and plaster, and vacuumed dust while Lady C began the spackling horror job. I say horror because I don't like spackling very much. In fact, I hate it. I like doing something useful, but since I could never get into the zen of spackling I only seem to work against myself, removing too much or adding too little. Luckily, Lady C does a GREAT job and has the mild temper that I lack with this sort of thing. While I do my best to assist her and not get in the way.

Getting in the way means toilet-lockup for 30 minutes for each error that I made. "Bad Sigg3, very bad Sigg3!" she shouts, and turns the key. Then she turn off the lights and turn on the ceiling fan, and I sit there in the corner, trembling. No wonder I don't like spackling.. but while I rock back and forth in the aura of a not-recently-cleaned WC, I remind myself of the results, which are great!





Come Saturday June 26th we didn't have much spackle left, even though the job requires more. Instead we headed butt-first into repairing our last ceiling. It doesn't have many flaws except the few cracks it has sustained over the course of 80 years since it's birth. Just spackling it would postpone the problem a few years, but we didn't want to stretch a canvas across the room, taking some 5-10cm of the height, or put up plaster boards.

Instead we used a special wall-paper reinforcement called wall-renewer from Leco Reno. We both hate wallpapering, since that dreadful day we found an entire wall in our bedroom filled with BUBBLES! and broke down crying. Luckily, this product was much thinner and easier to work with than the last renewer we used. It also helps to be nazi about the preparations; first you go over the ceiling with a fine finishing paper to remove any flecks of paint that's loose. Then you wash it with a special cleaning product. Then you wash that with pure water. Then you pre-glue the entire ceiling. When all that's done? You can start doing the effin' job. But kids, I shall say this only once; the result of your labour depends 90% on your preparations.







As you can't see from these photos, the seams are nearly invisible. I think a good 4 layers of ceiling paint will take care of the rest.

Having been through all that and more, I collapsed on Sunday 27th and slept all day. Lady C, bless her, held up the torch and mended the windows she's repaired in the living room. And today it was back to work again!

According to our plan posted about a week ago, we only missed "Start laying out the floor". Here's the current status quo of what needs to be done, in somewhat chronological order, before we can finally move our stuff up from storage:

What remains, then:
- Moulding and moulding roses; living room, hallway & study
- Firewall for the study *
- Start laying out the floor; living room & study
- Moving the piano (hiring professionals); living room
- Setting up the double door; study
- Paint the place in full 24-bit technicolor; living room & study
- Finish EL (hiring professionals); living room & study

+ finish network cabling
+ new fireplace in study (hiring professionals)
+ moving up all the boxes

This may seem like a lot, but actually the worst part is over. Most of this we can manage on our own, not having to take any extra vacation to finish. Moulding takes time and precision, but I can do that myself in the weekends. The only problem is transport since The Army Dude's car is in repair for an indefinite period, and we need some more spackle paste as well as siporex blocks (aerated concrete) for the firewall. Not to mention the now on-sale Bosch PFS 65 spray-paint system.

That's right, I'm taking a short break from office life to continue work on our flat. During this time I'll only have cellphone access to the internet, meaning no blogging except perhaps a flickr photo posting every once in a while. See my profile @ flickr.com/photos/sigg3net

What we're hoping to get done in 1,5 week is:
- Setup remaining walls in living room
- Finish both living room ceilings
- Box in the timber log between rooms (ceiling)
- Start laying out the floor
- Move away more garbage and cut up extra materials
- Finish imperial living room fireplace

What remains, then:
- Finishing moulding
- Moving the piano (hiring professionals)
- Setting up the double door
- Paint the place in full 24-bit technicolor
- Finish EL (hiring professionals)

But who knows? Maybe we'll just have sex and drink champagne all day..?

I was picking up some nice RL hacking tips on a youtube channel when I came across a user who were introducing freeware games people could run live @ school. Not really interesting, but he also linked to the source music of his presentations, which was rather good. It turned out to be some electronica artist called Le Castle Vania. I found it's great work music for the office. Here 'tis:

Le Castle Vania free music downloads

Today's playlist
Tigertron (Toxic Avenger Remix)
Go Back (Le Castle Vania Remix)
Meet Your Replacement
Rave Is King (Le Castle Vania Remix)
Come Out (Le Castle Vania's Electric Disco Mix Extended)
In For The Kill (Le Castle Vania Remix)

If you're a fan of Daft Punk, Aphex Twin or can dance, you'll like Le Castle Vania.

You know you're a nerd when you see the license plate of the car driving in front of you starting with the letters ST and you immediately know it's a Hitachi manufactured hard disk drive..

This happened to me yesterday as we, the admin staff at my work, were driving to a colleague's home to have a meal. It took about ten seconds for my brain to catch up with the error!

When we got there we were brought around her "new" home to see the sights. But when you've been doing total renovation of your own home you only first see the faults of others'. Like the first thing I noticed was the shoddy finishing her carpenters had done on the baseboards. They were pre-painted and they hadn't bothered to paint over the nails so both the floor and the ceiling were framed in white with hundreds of little black holes looking like termite holes from a distance. Not good.

And then my colleagues were raving about the windows. It was a lot of windows in the first floor and it was very nice, but the first thing that came to mind was: "Yeah, you couldn't have done a better job of facilitating break-in and entry.." Especially true nowadays with the "villa-robbers" driving around Norway and the police just playing catch-and-release.

I had to use the bathroom to wee and ended up checking the way the vertical acrylic seams had been done in the corners. It wasn't very bad but Lady C did a better job in our kitchen. And their home was pre-made, pre-bought and done by so-called professionals.

Sometimes the faults are more invisible, Feng-shui like problems. This is called the room layout, and though I'm no master at all, you can tell if there's something wrong. If you have a large condo or penthouse but the room layout is wrong it will feel a lot smaller. Or usually you'll feel that the room layout is messy. This will have an impact of how you live there and how content you are about it, without you explicitly knowing it. Our own flat has brilliant room layout, that the new 50m2 "family units" built in Norway today will never compete with. People aren't getting smarter at building homes, just more economically efficient.

Lady C is experiencing the same thing, over and over again. Whenever we go into the home of someone we immediately survey the workmanship, for good and bad, and always find that our own home and work is better. Which is a very nice thing with regards to our self-esteem as DIY masters, but it's only a question of time before someone throws us out for demeaning their home and castle. As a disclaimer then, we just can't help it. When you've touched every surface of your home and everything underneath it your eyes adapt to immediate assessing of property. You may not be aware of this but your property probably sucks. Have a nice weekend!