hermiene.net

At least it's not polio.

— Jones Avenue

April 2005

I have added very short summaries of the books I've read and a list of books I want to read.

I also finished reading Angels and Demons. Beside the facts that it was Tim Berners-Lee who invented the WWW and not Tim Berners Lee (the hyphen is elusive), that antimatter can't be used as a bomb (nor as an energy source, which the book also states it can be utilized for), and that CERN still hasn't built the LHC (it's scheduled to be operational in 2007), the book was fairly enjoyable. There's a lot of gore in the book, though, and I wonder if Dan Brown could have told the story equally well without all the graphic detail.

Avoid Coupling season 4 at all costs; the characters (in particular Jane) have completely warped, there's now way too much drama, and Jeff's sorry excuse for a replacement, Oliver, is way too bland and predictable to be funny. Seeing as Jeff is my favorite character, his disappearance really annoyed me. Now where am I going to have characters accidentally say "I have a wooden leg" and "I didn't mean you have a jar full of ears in your apartment" to women? That said, you should still watch the first three seasons.

Incredibly, I have done some semi-crazy stuff to get some russ knots. A russ knot is something you get for doing something semi-crazy, crazy, or ultra-crazy. Doing semi-crazy stuff gives you one knot, doing crazy stuff gives you two knots, and doing ultra-crazy stuff gives you three knots. The things you have to do to get these knots vary from place to place, but here are some examples of semi-crazy stuff we can do in Stavanger:

  • Stay awake for 24 hours.
  • Insist on using a taken seat on the bus (the victim has to be a stranger to you).
  • Bite a freshman on the shins.
  • Speak another dialect or another language for a whole day.
  • Walk blindfolded for a day.

Examples of crazy stuff:

  • Stay awake for 48 hours.
  • Read a pornographic magazine on the bus or another public place with great conviction.
  • Run naked around campus.
  • Strip in front of a camera at a gas station (all clothes come off).
  • Crawl for a day.

Examples of ultra-crazy stuff:

  • Stay awake for 72 hours.
  • Masturbate for five minutes during class, with great conviction.
  • Donate blood.
  • Bathe naked with a russ of opposite sex for ten minutes.
  • Run naked around a police station some time between 24:00 and 06:00.
  • Walk naked through a busy city street.

I've earned five knots, and to get them I had to eat six Kinder Eggs and assemble the toys contained within in ten minutes, crawl into a store, bark at the dog food for five minutes, and crawl out again, scold a statue for five minutes, stand still in a store window for five minutes, and take fifty trips up and down an escalator. Useless, but pretty fun.

I finally told The Girl my feelings for her. Oh, it was no easy task; I was nervous as hell. I had constructed a long-winded speech in my head beforehand, but what she received was a severly shortened version of it and some giggling on my part. I told her that when I first met her and got to know her, I was very in love with her, and that now I'm not really sure what I am. She told me that she actually had a notion of it (I expected her to have a notion of it; I have been flirting). I told her that I really like her as a friend. I didn't really ask her if she'd like to go steady as such, but her response was that she also really likes me as a friend and she'd like it to stay that way (she added, for now). With that out the way, we got up from the table at the library where we were sitting. I fumbled something bad with the two bags I were carrying. (One of which contained Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, incidentally. See Michael, I do get around to reading the books you recommend.) She noticed the fumbling. Well, she must have. Then, silly as I am, I giggled some more. I then managed to calm myself down some, and while we were walking toward the exit, I told her how I'm really comfortable around her, and that I like spending time with her. She said the feeling is mutual.

I'm very satisfied with the outcome of all this; I've gotten a better understanding of what being in love is and what not to do when in love. For instance, making an image of her in my head and then imagining her to be something much more than she really is was a big mistake. As an example, I imagined she would be really computer savvy, while the truth is that she's not competent with computers at all. Not that that's necessarily bad, of course, but the simple fact remains: I was wrong (and on more than one point, but I won't get into those), and being wrong doesn't feel good.

Two things are for sure: One, I now have an extremely good female friend, something I've never really had before and something I'm really happy for, and two, I have wasted way too much time worrying about what she thinks about me. Seriously, it feels like someone dropped an Arclite Siege Tank on me and that it has just now lifted off my shoulders.

On impulse, I joined Niels-Henrik for a beginner's tango session spanning three mondays, two hours of training each monday. While I'm sure tango can be fun for some, let me assure you that dancing is not for me. Well, tango isn't, anyway.

In site-related news, my footer erroneously contained "Hosted by dataportalen.com". That's removed now. Also, Mr. Guthrie made me aware of the fact that my CSS signature erroneously said www-dataportalen-com-pho. That's also fixed; it's now havard-no-ip-info, of course.

I have now started hosting my pages completely by myself. I left an .htaccess file at the old address (dataportalen.com/pho/) which will happily redirect people here until dataportalen is closed for good. I want to thank Alf Otto for hosting my pages all this time.

Ever since I started hosting my pages on my own machine, I have been pretty lazy about mentioning small updates and fixes here and there in my news posts. You see, back when I had to upload files to my host's server in order to view the results, I used to append a 2 to my files (like foo2.php) and work with that until I was happy with the result. Then I'd delete the 2 version and upload the real version. This means that when I did an update, changes had been accumulating over time and the change was rather big. Nowadays when I add and fix stuff, it's visible immediately after saving the file, so I feel that because the updates have already been there for some time, it's kind of old news and doesn't deserve to be mentioned. Oh, I'm wrong, of course, but feelings aren't always rational. So, in recognition of and in apology for this, allow me to present some StarCraft quotes. Also, a few new books have appeared in my book list. Yes, that table is created manually, and yes, that should really be pulled from a database and assembled properly afterward.

My job at Amnesty International, Rogaland division is now official! I was in for an interview about one and a half month ago, and while Atle Espedal (my boss) said the job was more or less mine except in writing, I didn't want to mention anything in case nothing came of it. I will start on July 4 and will work there for 14 months. I look forward to starting.

I've been watching a lot of Coupling together with Even lately. Coupling is so funny! My favorite character is Jeff, but Jane comes pretty close at times. I've also started watching anime, and the first series I'm churning through is called Angelic Layer. It's pretty cool, though I think I need to watch more anime to really get the gist of it. Some of the stuff those crazy characters do is just plain weird.

I got around to watching I, Robot. It's something special watching the stuff you've previously imagined in your head come to life on the screen. For instance, Alfred Lanning was more or less the same as I imagined him, though I imagined him to be chubby, not skinny. I also imagined Susan Calvin to be a little older than she is. The CGI in the movie is superbly done, Sonny is an awesome robot, and I really like the design of the NS-5s. Overall it's a very good movie, but there was one thing I didn't quite like. Unfortunately I can't tell you what it is, because that will basically spoil the movie for you. Suffice to say that something interpreted something in something's own way, and as a result, some other things started doing this-and-that. The problem isn't that the other things started doing so-and-so, but rather that something was behind it and not the other thing, which is usually the case in Asimov's novels when the other things start doing stuff. Also, the movie lacks a surprising and breath-taking ending, which Asimov's novels tend to have. Hmmm... I hope they make a movie based on Elijah Baley and Daneel Olivaw in the future.

Let's see... Doing a Google search for "Håvard" places my (now obsolete) dataportalen site at place number five. My self-hosted site (that is, the one that you're viewing now), is at place number thirteen. Not too shabby! Doing a Google search for "Håvard Skjæveland" places my dataportalen site at the top and my self-hosted site on place number four! That's pretty nifty.

I am now a russ, apparently. I will wear my russ clothing and hand out my russ cards, but damn it, I refuse to participate in silly activities such as throwing rotten eggs at other russ (and potentially hitting innocents), kidnapping, and getting senselessly drunk. In fact, I will not get drunk at all, as I'm a teetotaler. You will also be glad to know that I do not intend to be a nuisance to students younger than me; I was soaked in water in my first year by russ, and that was not very pleasant. In case you're curious, here's my russ card:

Håvard's russ card.

Unfortunately, dataportalen will be sold on April 15 and not June 1. Be sure to start using the other URL.

I had a pretty cool thought the other day. Close your eyes. Then, imagine that somewhere out there might be the perfect girl for you. And then imagine that the perfect girl for you really exists and that she is also closing her eyes and thinking that somewhere out there is the perfect boy for her, namely you. Call me mushy, but I think that's a pretty neat thought. (If you're anything but a heterosexual male (say, a homosexual female), modify genders accordingly.)

Is this silly, you think? Maybe it is, but God damn it, this is my site and, by extension, my silliness. :-)

Interesting fact: The fourteen first pages of Asimov's Foundation's Edge were written in 1973, while the rest of the book was written in 1981.

It appears that some people believe I am asocial and that I should socialize more. They are wrong, and on both points. I am social and I do not need to socialize more, and here is why.

At school, I have two people in my class whom I know better than the others, one of whom I also occasionally see after school (admittedly not too often, but I'm working on that). Outside my class, I have about six very cool people whom I usually hang around with in the school library (mostly girls, interestingly). We talk, we play games (not very often), and we read books. Outside of school, I have a bunch of interesting friends whom I chat with on IRC quite a lot. Some would argue that chatting via IRC isn't really socializing, but they're forgetting that there are actual people at the other end. I don't occasionally go outside to visit people, but that does happen. I'd estimate that it happens about once every two weeks or so.

All of this makes for quite enough socializing for me; I'm not going to socialize more because some people think it will do me good, and help me get more "perspective". I have an incredible amount of perspective already, I'm constantly working on acquiring more, and you don't necessarily need to socialize more to get that.

That, more or less, is my social situation right now, and I'm pretty satisfied with it. I have few friends, but they're good friends.

Enough ranting. MoonJihad linked to me, and the only polite thing to do is link back. Some of the stuff he writes is hilarious, such as The Cat That Came Out Of Nowhere and Doom 3 Review. In addition, I must echo his recommendation on some very good stepfiles. There are 202 songs in this collection, most of which are excellent, some of which are mediocre, and a diminishing few of which are somewhat poorly synchronized. But the bulk is good. From bemanistyle.com, here are some others I recommend:

There are 5 posts for April 2005.