May 20, 2005
I am slowly beginning to realize the shortcomings of self-hosting. Due to my recent liberal LAN partying, my site has experienced more downtime than it ever deserved. There are two solutions: Either I can get proper hosting (I have considered B-one and Micfo), or I can get a hold of a second box that stays permanently in my house. The former isn't possible at the moment, but the latter may be possible. We'll see. In any case, LAN parties are more important than uptimes. (Yes, that is a sleazy joke intended to cover up my own incompetence.)
The 17th of May is the National Day of the geographical unit called Norway into which I was randomly born and currently reside. On this day, Norwegians dress up in their national custume, bunads, march in line in big parades, wave their flags, eat ice cream, and barbecue with friends and families. I didn't participate in any of these activities, except the last one. (And even then, all I did was play frisbee with the ten-year-olds present. I didn't even dress up.) Seeing as quite a few people harassed me about this (and by "harass" I mean "ask me about it, listen to my answer, and then give out an audible sigh"), I'll try to get people to understand why. First of all, I am chronically lazy; my reluctance to participate in any given activity is inversely proportional to how fun and meaningful the activity is. I do not consider marching in line to silly, repetitive band music while waving a tricolor flag fun, nor do I find it particularly meaningful. Not only am I not listening to my own music (which is bad enough), but marching (heck, even casually walking) in line stinks of militarism.
No, no, no. I'm not ashamed of my country, as you might think. But I'm not proud of it either. Norway is a mediocre, mostly secularized Western European nation, and therefore a mediocre habitat for me. But it isn't worth the strains that are the 17th of May. Besides, I don't really identify with most Norwegians in the first place (with a few notable exceptions, of course), and would like to be classified by what I do and what I say rather than by the boundaries of the country I live in. You see, in my personal utopic little world, there are no nations, only areas and districts (or whatever you want to call them).
A slightly related issue is that of Norway's national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". I'll be damned if I'm going to listen to (let alone sing) a song that mentions feudalistic warfare and tells me to "thank [my] great God" (that's the Christian god, in case you forgot) without a very good reason.
Cars are the spawn of Mephistopheles. Or, at the very least, the moronic bipedals that operate these machines are. Why do nine out of ten of these five-seater transportation devices contain only one individual, and why can I walk faster than they can move in the morning and in the afternoon? It's pathetic. I will take my driver's licence, but Korenchkin and Delacroix be willing, I will not allow my clean hands to touch the vile steering wheel of a car if I can help it. Public transportation, a Segway (when I eventually get one), a bicycle, and even my own feet are enough for me, thank you.
The Archive is now more user friendly than ever, and so are the permalinks. Doesn't archive/2005/03/10 look infinitely more nifty than archive.php?news_item_date=2005-03-10? A natural progression from this was of course to make, say, archive/2005/03 list all news posts from March, 2005. And guess what, it does! Go ahead, try! It works the same for years and any combination of years and months, provided there are entries for the requested year/month.
I am working on a massive page, whose topic shall remain secret (no, it's not a CSS tutorial, although that is coming, sooner or later). Suffice to say that this new page will detail one of my all-time favorite hobbies. I have already started it, but I have a long way to go. Mentioning it will perhaps imprint the illusion of a deadline in my mind. Not that I need worry about such a thing on a purely personal site (insert large grin here).