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Picked up the repaired family car today…the garage gave her a special prep-for-winter treat, heyhey, let it snow let it snow let it snow…it’s currently -4dgr C, oof!

A nice bonus was the fact that the guy helping me spoke no english at all…first time norwegian class on a Thursday! I managed to understand what he was trying to explain, so I guess I passed the test, yay!

Mike, my best buddy from Down Under pointed me to The Science Show podcast…will check it out in my commute tomorrow, it’s always great to find something new in podcasting land!

Good news! After going down from two to no cars yesterday, today one car got fixed: the Honda turned out to have a problem with one of the (new winter)tires, the remedy was relatively easy (and free :)).

The Scénic is at the garage at the moment, fingers crossed for a fast and not too expensive repair…

My happy friend on the road, the infamous Renault ‘the family-car’ Scénic needs to be repaired, something wrong with the frontwheel and axis they say…estimated 3000-4000 NOK, damn!

Luckily there is the second car, the old Honda ‘red devil’ Civic…hmm, todays latest news on that one is that it uhhh, broke down! Probably the exhaust…damn again!

2 down in one day, it’s certainly NOT a great day to be my car…

Last night I played Guitar Hero for Playstation 2 for the very first time of my life…a true virgin.

I totally digged it, what a game, great with friends! A perfect combination of music and play, adrenaline running through your veins like you’re performing on stage!

Hmm, wonder what Santa is gonna bring me for Xmas.

Tallulah Bankhead: "Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."

Today it’s ‘Say hello to iPhone’-day for Europe as the ‘Invention of the Year’ (according to Time Magazine) hits stores in the U.K. and Germany.

France is to follow on November 29, which makes me wonder when it’s Norways turn…then again, with the current decline of the dollar I’m a lot better off saving my X-mas $’s for a hacked U.S. iPhone.

Jason Calacanis: "The Gillmor Group… is back (don’t tell anyone)"

Check out these Facebook posts for last weeks episode. It’s cut in the usual four parts, for what we all hate Steve ;)…fellow geeks, I am thrilled!!! (looking forward for tomorrows commute)

We just came back from the monthly gathering of the Dutch Club Oslo (Nederlandse Club Oslo)…it was nice to meet with some fellow cheeseheads and exchange experiences.

Most of them have been in Norway for years already and it was good to see that they are well integrated and still positive about the country and its culture (without loosing that typical dutch touch!)

As other norwegians they seem to prepare for the cold and snow…you bet it’s gonna be special this winter!!

The results of my little test were not too surprising…still, without *any* effort I managed to get 4 friends on Facebook and 8 on Hyves. It shows that social networking is what the name implies, SOCIAL networking, a two way communication tool.

One of the most amazing things though is that an old dormmate from Hampstead Centre (way back in 1994 when I was studying in Australia), found me on Facebook last weekend…very cool!!

I’ll start adding friends myself and grow my social network…let’s see what happens. 

For the record, Facebook is relatively small in NL (the ‘Netherlands‘ network only has 80,615 people…Norway for instance has 418,937 people in the ‘Norway‘ network, a country with roughly four times lower population!)

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder, Treason
Should ever be forgot.

The rhyme is commonly known from Guy Fawkes Night…this year the event is used on the internet by supporters of the Ron Paul For President campaign in order to raise *a lot of* money in just one day and thus create (media) attention for the candidate and his message.

Jeffrey Rowland: "We’ve
always been here and we’ll always be here. We are a specific
arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out,
or didn’t we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed,
much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile,
because the fact that you’re able to is almost impossible to
comprehend."

My G4 Mac mini is hooked up to my tv- and stereo system, and I’m using it everyday to watch movies and play music from my iTunes library.

Since there is no IR receiver in the mini I purchased a Keyspan Remote Express (which works great) and have been testing lately some mediacenter apps to work with it (a hack to run Front Row on my G4, CenterStage, iTheater and mMedia which are all freeware. As well as the non-free MediaCentral and XHub in demo mode).

Before I was able to come to a final conclusion I upgraded my system to Mac OS X Leopard.

One of the features of Leopard is the the fact that Front Row now is included in the OS and also runs on older G4-machines…no more need to hack it, and it runs like a charm!

This new version of Front Row (2.0) is doing a nice job as MediaCenter app, the interface is slick (copied from the Apple TV) and it works great with my Keyspan Remote Express. I will keep an eye on CentralStage though…if they can pull off what they show in the screenshots, they have a killer app.

But for now, Front Row it is…Apple pulled it off again!

As of November 1, there is a 60kph speedlimit for the Oslo ring, the roadsigns tell me that this is due to a ‘miljøfartsgrense’…or, a speedlimit to save environment?!?

I also understood it has to do with wintertires with spikes…they cause extra dust particles poluting the air. Lowering the speed lowers the concentration of particles…hmm, guess we’ll have to live with it, until freakin’ March 30 2008…aahhh!

Hmm, someone told me yesterday that from November 1 one can get fined in Norway for not having winter tires when road conditions are bad (snow/ice).

Despite the fact that today is lovely (sun’s out with a amazing temperature of 8dgr!? Winter? No way!), I’d better buy some sticky tires soon…today that is!