P1: It this also the internet?

P2: Yes.

P1: I always go down there (pointing to some other place of the screen). That’s also an internet.

Seams there is multiple internets all over the place. That’s very fortunate, eh.

I just can’t get over how awesome he looks in this shot. On a scale from 1 to 10, he looks really awesome. ;)

First of all, there’s a new kid on the blog. Allow me to introduce Steffen (his profile will return 404 until he publishes something), whom many of you already know. I’ve been hoping to have him join this blog for a long time now, but my old blogging software wasn’t rigged for it. I’ve finally gotten over myself and installed a standard platform, which I’ll get into in a second, but first: Welcome to the blog Steffen, I hope you’ll like it here.

Now, this new standard platform I mentioned, is (as you may have guessed) WordPress. At first I was a bit hesitant to move to such a platform, but with the ability to easily write plugins, widgets, modify templates and stuff, there’s really no reason not to. Setting up WP was a breeze and the migration from my old system to the new was a matter of 2 really simple PHP scripts — one for converting the old entries and one for the comments. A million thumbs up to the WP developers for making something so accessible, simple and easy.

Apart from a new blogger and a new platform, other things have changed a bit around here. When migrating to WP, there were some decisions to be made. One of those were whether or not to move stuff like phpCF and DynDNSupdate to the new site and I ended up deciding that DynDNSupdate wasn’t worth moving, since I haven’t coded on it for years (and I don’t intend to ever again) and it didn’t appear to be all that popular anyways. So DynDNSupdate is gone. phpCF survived though, mainly because I still code on it every now and then (and I have some huge improvements planned) and because it actually has a future (where DynDNSupdate only had a past — not even a present).

Now, no migration of this sort is without problems and I’ve tried my best to make sure that no old links are broken and stuff, but should you encounter any problems, let me know.

On a side note, the site isn’t the only thing that has had an overhaul (1 and 2).

Apart from that, we’re starting to get settled in our new and absolutely awesome flat and now that we’ve got a 5 mbit/1 mbit connection, it’s all so much better. I’ll probably post some pictures later (of the flat, not the internet connection), when I can get hold of a camera. We ordered a D-Link access point yesterday, which will probably be delivered monday, so this summer I’ll be blogging from the roof terrace. Oh yeah…

Apart from that, I’m really looking forward to moving away from this “collegium” or whatever you want to call it. I hate that I don’t have my own kitchen and bathroom. Right now I have to walk, like, 50 fucking meters to go to the bathroom or to make a cup of coffee! And, of course, sharing an apartment with Julie is going to be great.

I might be offline for a little while though (and the server too), but fear not! The server will be living with my dad from now on — and he’s getting a 2048/2048 kbit pipe, so the server will finally be able to deliver stuff at a reasonable speed. Everything seems to work out! Now all I need is a Nintendo Wii (check this out — thanks Stffn!) and everything’s perfect.

Anyways, I’ll probably be looking into installing some Debian or Ubuntu on it at some point, but for now I just want to try out OS X.

Seriously… I’d probably use it a little every now and then if I was able to, but they do not even support Linux! I am actually able to watch the shows with a some human interaction with the sources of the pages that embeds the video stream and a little going through the ASF playlist files manually to copy/paste the actual stream URLs to my media player of choice. I am not sure that my dad would be able to do that though — or for that case, nor would most of my Linux- (and Mac-)using friends.
OK, great, so I am actually able to watch the shows… Good, because their FAQ specifically states, that even if you use Linux or Mac (and are thus (in most cases) unable to watch the programs) you still have to pay. And as far as I know, this also goes for game consoles with internet access and cell phones that are capable of WAP, GPRS etc… I guess, even my Nintendo DS is enough, since I am able to buy a browser for it and use it to access the web. Same goes for all the PSPs out there.

Another problem presents itself…
Until very recently I was on a 256/256 kbps connection and that was definitely not fast enough to even watch the low-quality streams from DR without major hiccups or buffering half the show before pressing start. I would say that a 1 mbps pipe would be the slowest possible, to watch their streams — and the quality would still be questionable at best. (Especially the sound, they are really doing a bad job compressing that.)

To lay down some facts now… I own an old Thinkpad R32 running Debian Linux (unstable) on what is now a 1024/128 kbps[2] connection, I don’t own neither a TV or a radio (and I am getting along just fine, thanks). Until now, I have not been paying the license fees, which is perfectly legal, because I am not able to watch or listen to their programming, nor do I have any desire to. But, from Jan. 1, 2007, where nothing in my life changes — except for the calendar year — I will have to cough up 2000 DKK (~355 USD / ~270 EUR) a year just because I have a computer (and a Nintendo DS) and an internet connection. That is half a month’s income for a student such as me — it doubles the cost of my internet connection!

Now, the question is: is this fair?
I say NO!, not by a long shot! If DR wants people to pay for the content they access over the internet, then they will have to put some access control on their website, which can easily be done[3] — that is the only sensible way to do this; not force everyone with an internet capable device to cough up. This is the government forcing people to pay DR (a public service TV network, for crying out loud!) for having an internet connection!
By this logic, I should start lobbying for the government, so they can make everyone pay for being able to access lillesvin.net. That’s public service too! I’m telling you all the things you didn’t know you wanted to know… And all the things you didn’t know you didn’t care to know.
This reminds me so much about when Jubii.dk (a danish search engine that started out as a ripoff of Yahoo!) started talking about making the ISPs pay for their costumers being able to access the search engine — and take my word for it if you have not tried it out, it is nothing special. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Not surprisingly, that idea did not quite get the support that Jubii.dk had hoped for.

1

This is not to be confused with the likes of the American public access channels. DR actually run some decent programs every now and then.

2

The good people at Tele2 upped my downstream from 256 kbps to 1024 kbps! Wow, that’s a friggin’ 400% increase!!! OMG!!!1 … And, well, they downed my upstream from the lousy 256 kbps to an even lousier 128 kbps… They were even kind enough to give me notice 5 days after… Can they do that?!? I mean, decrease my upstream… I’ve got a server running on this line — 256 kbps was bad enough!

3

Hire me to do it — I would love to!

On top of that my ISP has decided that I should no longer keep the IP address that I’ve had for 3 years, so they changed it — no notice or anything. Unfortunately I didn’t notice until today because of lillesvin.net DNS trouble. So I’m still waiting for the change to be registered on the DNS servers.

So what else is new? I’m still living in the same crappy place (at least for some months yet) and I’m still studying linguistics, though I am doing my supplementary year on Cognitive Semiotics — so far it sucks and it’s really confusing. I might change my mind later on, but for now it sucks. Oh yeah, my laptop battery is dead and so is the cd-/dvd-rom drive — no warranty… But apart from that, all is great — believe it or not, everything is absolutely great! :)

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve put up a little Paypal donation thingy on my googlepages music site in case anyone should like my music so much that they’d actually want to pay for it. Don’t like it that much? Don’t donate! It’s that simple! (If you’re considering asking what your money will be spent on, then the answer will be: “drugs and hoes”.)

So now I’ve found other nerdy stuff to do — e.g. play Magic: The Gathering. Yeah, I know it’s sooo ’96 but it’s still a hell of a lot more fun than looking at the screensaver being activated every 5 minutes. Besides, I really like the game and have never played before, so a great big many thanks to my two great nephews for being consistent in their effort to teach me how to play.

Also I’ve been writing a lot of songs lately, I just need to get some lyrics done too, then I’ll be unloading some three or four new songs on the world. But for me the lyrics are the hardest, so it will probably take a while still.

And then, of course, I’ve got my linguistics study and my tutoring in Phonetics and Phonology – man, that’s a whole lot of fun. The IPA and the sounds it describes become surpringly interesting (at times even hilarious) when you’re teaching it to others!

By the way, if someone should have (or know where to get) either of the following things, please contact me.

• Heroes of Might and Magic III for Linux
• Rune for Linux and possibly also the Halls of Valhalla expansion.
• Magic card: Psychic Venom (I need 3 more, for a great blue deck)

Man, I wish Loki hadn’t gone out of business. :(

UPDATE: (Apr 15, 2005 09:17) I found 2 more Psychic Venom. ;-) And Rune + expansion has been tracked down (see the first (and by now: only) comment on this post).