Gadgets 'n' Thoughts

Two years ago, my wife and I did a golf class to take the Green Card. Here in Norway you need a Green Card to be allowed on the courses. We never completed the tests and we never got to hit the courses. Well, now we wanted to try again.

This weekend we were at Østmarka Golfklubb and did a weekend class that combined theory and practice in a perfect combination. We passed the theory test easily, so now we just have to practise some more before we can take the practical test and get the Green Card.

Since I’m a self-proclaimed geek, I’ve been looking at how to make playing golf more geeky. I’ve found three applications for Windows Mobile that looks interesting. I haven’t tested any of them yet, but I will when I eventually get on the fairway…

Continue reading ‘Playing golf… geek style!’

In my previous job with Compuware we used Webex all the time for virtual meetings across the world. It was a great tool, but expensive and limited to Windows and Internet Explorer only.

Lately I’ve tested Adobe’s new alternative, Adobe ConnectNow. It’s in beta, so don’t expect everything to work perfectly all the time. You can use screen sharing, chat, notes, audio, and video to conduct meetings online with up to three participants. All you need is a PC/Mac with Adobe Flash installed.

I used it for a two hour meeting with a colleague in Sweden yesterday. We had one crash, other than that it worked perfectly! As far as I can see ConnectNow has all the functions that Webex has… and then some.

If you need to host meetings with more than three participants, you can pay for the ConnectNow Pro that supports up to 1500 participants.

At last years Tokyo Motor Show, Suzuki showed off several concept vehicles. A few of them seems to be prepared for production when I’m looking at the global Suzuki site. And as always they come out looking much more boring that the original concepts…

The one concept vehicle I would like to see become reality, is the Suzuki X-HEAD. It’s a 4×4 pickup that looks like a Tonka toy. Autoblog even has a photo gallery, but there is no signs of the car after the Tokyo Motor Show 2007… Come on Suzuki, surprise me, put this cute monster in production and throw in some kind of hybrid engine, that would be cool!

You can see more concept vehicles at Suzuki’s Concept Cars site.

After we bought the XL-7, I’ve customized our TomTom ONE a little bit. First I changed the start-up and shut-down images to show that the GPS belongs to my car.

Since I’m going to install LPG autgas in the car, I would like a Point of Interest database that shows LPG stations on the road. I found some databases in TomTom Home, but none for Norway. After a search on the web I found that LPG Norge AS has released a POI database for Tom Tom that you can download. This is only LPG Norge AS stations, not Shell and Statoil LPG stations, but it’s a start…

Continue reading ‘Customizing my TomTom’

Our new car did not have a car alarm, and there have been a few car break-ins in our neighbourhood lately. So I wanted to invest in a proper car alarm.

After some research I decided to go for the Norwegian brand Defa. And the best price I found for installation was at a retailer called G. Myhren AS. They installed it today already, and I’m very pleased with their service.

The bonus besides reduced insurance was that we now got two remote controls to the car instead of just one, and the Defa remote’s are more robust and reach further away than the original Suzuki remote.

Do you backup? I have large amounts of digital property; pictures, music, documents, licensed software, etc. that are valuable to me, but probably not to anyone else.

I’ve always made backups in case of disk crash or similar, but lately I’ve become concerned about what if we get thieves in our apartment, the backup disk is right next to the laptop, they could quite possibly steal both the computers and the backups.

So today I bought a small safe for home use. It’s a safe from Chubb Safes that rooms about 17 litres, and has a electronic locking mechanism. I’ve bolted it to the floor in one of our rooms, so potential thieves won’t be able to take it with them either without a massive struggle.

…said Elaine in the Seinfeld episode about manbag’s. I didn’t know this was more or less an European thing until I read this old article about manbags, murse or whatever you want to call it.

This bag that is something between a purse and a suitcase has been a fashion item in Europe since the late 1950’s, but have bloomed especially with the “iPod-generation”. Today’s men need to store their gadgets somewhere, and the manbag’s have become mainstream… I’ve even bought one myself.

On our cruise this summer I came across this really cool handmade leather manbag in a small Italian shop in the town of Pisa. It stores my iPod, SmartPhone, camera, creditcards and other stuff I might want to carry. It can even just about fit my MacBook if I need it (but not the charger…).

I’m European and damn proud of my manbag

Friday, July 25th, 2008, is the 9th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your System Administrator something that shows that you truly appreciate their hard work and dedication.

Read more about it.

Today we picked up our new car. Well, it’s not completely new… it’s a 2002 model Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7. It’s got a fantastic 2.7 litre V6 engine with 173hp.

Here it is, parked behind our summer-cabin earlier today. We bought it down here in Tønsberg, and I’m almost looking forward to driving home from our vacation in a day or two…

UPDATE: I’ve created a small picture gallery here.

My wife and I just came back from our 7-Day Western Mediterranean Round-trip with the NCL, Norwegian Gem. Starting in Barcelona we visited five ports in Italy and France.

I’ve made a note on Facebook about it for friends that are interested (Norwegian only I’m afraid) with a few pictures.

I’ve also uploaded a photo gallery from the trip here on Gauteweb.