raymondpoort.com

TechCrunch: ‘Google Acting Against Squidoo Due To Spam’.

Funky, this news seems to give Jason Calacanis a major boost on his influence on the web! Because? Well, the thing with Squidoo (being a (potential?!) platform for spam and not taking the correct measures to fight it) has been going on for MONTHS, Jason recently has been all over them and NOW Google responds?!? Sjeez, this almost sounds like a perfect setup, mastered by Jason and Google!

Then again, Jasons new project Mahalo (cool like beans!) is a….uuhhh…search engineSERVICE, an alternative for Google (and so far very effective I must say)…so nah, Jason is still the great guy I ‘know’ from his contributions to the Gillmor Gang! Right?

Always wanted to know how the mouse cursor actually works? Of course the Japanese know the answer! 🙂

Having had weeks of rain, wind and autumn temperatures, we really enjoyed this ONE sunny day…with friends, a bbq, lovely rose wine and Rhythms del Mundo in the air…yeah, it was a great day!

I added the Twitter badge to the ‘Miscelany’ part on the right hand side of this site!

At the same time I decreased the number of displayed Flickr photos from 5 to 1…hmm, not entirely satisfied…still some more redesign to do…later though.

I hold off for 6 months, but decided to go with the next big thing on the web: Twitter.

There’s a lot to say about the service, from Wikipedia; ‘Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific.’

I just subscribed, check out my Twitter page…will add friends in the coming days and then start ‘twittering’…expect more on this soon!

This blog is using the Pivot-engine to maintain the site, mainly coz it’s purely php based and, unlike the popular WordPress weblog tool, it doesn’t require MySQL (handy since that is not available in my current hostingplan).

The Pivot dev-team just posted some screenshots of what version 2.0 will look like (current version is 1.40.3 ‘Dreadwind’)…holy cow, a *lot* of changes on the back-end! Have to admit, it looks mighty good…can’t wait to upgrade! Gotta hold off for some months though, the final is only expected after summer. 🙁

Common guys, push it! 🙂

We bought a new car today! Obviously I left the company car with the company after quiting my job and the last two weeks in Norway showed that a car is a requirement for the area we’re gonna live in.

Made a good deal with our neighbors, so here it is; the Renault Mégane Scenic!

It has the full options, even a towbar! Not quite a pussy-magnet :), but really happy to have it.

Great value for money and for sure big enough to get stuff moved to the new house in Norway by the end of this month.

These weeks are filled with cleaning up old shit and packing things we’re gonna take to Norway.

You would not believe what I found laying around in the techroom (the attic :))…old network stuff like 10 Base-5 (thick ethernet) cables and terminators, AUI to UTP convertors, etc., etc….guess it’s about time to trash it! 🙂

Time is relative; an hour, a day, a year…all just one moment in time. Some moments make us go back in time, passing the thin line of human invented time boundaries.

Today is one of those days…a true butterfly moment, here for a reason…the people who should, know the meaning.

Was able to get the most important things arranged while being in Oslo the last two weeks; I started the norwegian registration process and obtained a tax-number. The lather is needed to open a bankaccount…just a minor detail, still important since I want to give my employer the opportunity to pay my salary, yeah…I’m a nice guy! 🙂

Next challenge is to work my way through the Internetbanking in the norwegian language…guess I’ll need a dictionary!

Got back home late last night and boy, am I knackered!! Not much planned for this weekend, looking forward to a quiet and relaxing Saturdaynight!

Today Apple will release the iPhone…considering the big buzz around it in the last months and the extensive newscoverage everywhere the last days it definately will be a HUGE success. And if they are able to deliver what is promised (should be possible…hey, it’s Apple :)), the device will set the new standard in the industry…just check out the introduction video, this is an amazing device (and simple to use too!)…definately a must-have!

I want, I want, I want, can’t wait till it’s released in Europe!! 🙂

Adam brought back some good memories from October 2004 in his Daily Source Code, #625…grrrrreat to hear this while being in Norway, sitting in the bus to work…totally trippin’!!

Dude, guess I won’t catch you here on the road, or would I? 🙂

PS. hmm, realized that I wasn’t even blogging back in those days, sjeez!

Today it has been two years ago when my grandpa passed away…he is still with us in thoughts!

Jeg var på båt tur på onsdag – I was on a boattrip on Wednesday!

That wasn’t too hard was it? Oof…

A major bummer; the weather has been crap the last days :(…it made me miss a concert near the Oslo harbor Fridaynight as well as the midsummernight celibrations in the Oslo fjord yesterday. Today was no exception, it has been raining so bad that I saw a car stuck in a flooded tunnel!!

Check out the pics:

I haven’t seen anything like this even in The Netherlands, where I live 5 meters below sealevel…amazing…I guess it’s a welcome to Norway! 🙁

Anyway, gonna hit the hay early tonight, busy second week coming up!

A new job, a new phone…I had the opportunity to *choose* a phone, which was nice for a change. Did some poking around and the winner is: the Nokia E65!!

It’s a smartphone, I hope it’s not outsmarting me :), so besides calling there is more much more that you can do; the WiFi for instance makes it possible to connect to the internet whenever there is an WiFi-accesspoint around as you’re used to…*without * bearing the high costs for 3G mobile networking.

I tried the Gmail and Podcasting (alternative) applications already and they truly are a charm. Was able to overcome a returning problem I normally run into when being away from home; my iPod is syncing to my Mac mini at home which is mastering iTunes including podcasts. Hehe, I catched caught up with this weeks Adam Curry‘s Daily Source Code…am truly becoming more and more mobile!!

There is so much more in this phone, need more than just a few days to ace the device, but sofar…a happy geek here, up in Norway! 🙂

Went to our future house today and got a tour around it. Am really looking forward to move in from August, the place totally kicks ass!

It’s in a nice and quiet environment, very close to nature and not too far from Oslo…uhhh, well, the first trip going there by bus wasn’t that big of a success, the tranfer from one bus to another, finding the right busstation took a while, almost got lost in the city, lost in translation eh?…still have to find my way around in Oslo. 🙂

I’ve had four days at work now and everything is grrrrreat. Time however is flying, usually a good sign as time flies when you’re having fun…:)

A nice way to start working; there is a social event this afternoon/evening which I will join…a boattrip in the Oslo fjord!! Free drinks and a great way to meet my new colleagues. I’ll be leaving NOW, yay! 🙂