Author Archives: mihtjel

Using the Nokia N95 for geocaching

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For a long time, I have been fascinated with Geocaching. It’s the practice of finding caches hidden in the wild or in cities, using a GPS receiver and some coordinates. Some of the caches are simple, some of them demand that you solve a riddle, and yet some are huge day-long treks across military training grounds.

The ones I’ve liked the most thus far are the simple ones. Punch in the coordinates, park somewhere in the area, and go and try to find the cache. Usually, there’s a nice view, interesting architecture or a nice outdoorsy atmosphere along the way.

I didn’t have a GPS receiver for a long time, so I hadn’t ever really started on this hobby. Then I went to visit Sune and Helle, and we went with a couple of friends to log my first few caches. Shortly thereafter, I bought myself the Nokia N95, as referenced earlier, owing mainly to three things:

  • GPS receiver
  • Wireless networking
  • Calendar/PDA functionality

Oh, and it’s a phone and camera as well, which aren’t bad things. But GPS receiver was really what I wanted, to get started on the geocaching.

So for the first few caches, I picked some rather easy ones, in areas I knew to some extent, and caches that were referenced by some landmark close by. This meant I could at the very least find the general area, and if all else failed, I would go by sheer luck and try to find them 😉 I didn’t have any problems, though, and today I went and did yet another cache, in Selling, an area I have only driven through once or twice.

The main problem was me. I started out walking down the wrong path, which didn’t really help – but once I got down the right path instead, I had no problems at all with the GPS. It reported an accuracy varying between 50 and 125 meters, most of the time around 50 – and in the end, it brought me to within 5 meter of the cache. I am really satisfied with the result, and I would expect nothing more of a low-price commercial GPS receiver.

All in all, using the Nokia N95 for geocaching: I approve.

Street naming

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As I’ve commented on this (in Danish) and this (in Danish) both on IRC and on another blog (in Danish), I think it would do me good to describe it here as well.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, the technical mayor, Klaus Bondam, has proposed re-naming a street, Pumpehusvej, after Danish composer Thomas Koppel (1944 – 2006). This is a in some accordance with a Danish tradition of honoring artists by naming streets after them – H.C. Andersens Street, Karen Blixen Street and even Wagner Street.

A member of the Copenhagen city council, Lars Dueholm, flatly refused this, on behalf of his party, the reason being that Thomas Koppel had openly criticized the Danish government, openly voiced support to the terrorists in Iraq, and even compared the Danish press to Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine.

Now, really, what’s with this? This man, Thomas Koppel, was an immensely talented artist, whether or not you agreed with his view. He wasn’t even, as far as I have been able to find out, violent – unlike Richard Wagner, who we have streets named after, who ordered the production of weapons and hand grenades for revolutionaries in Dresden. It would seem the ban on naming streets after controversials only applies if their criticism has been directed at the current government.

Give it a rest, I say. If you can’t take some criticism, get out of politics! And don’t start determining what artists get honored based on their views or their beliefs, but base it on a fair look at the work of their life. We may all yet be a lot wiser in the future, and maybe it turns out these critical individuals were right all along.

Thanks to Alex for pointing out the weapons and hand grenades Wagner ordered.

Intelligent systems

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I started back at work yesterday, and I’ve gotten up to speed today and gotten a few things done. In particular, I have added some more intelligence to one of the web systems I work on, in order to avoid duplication of users. It’s the form for creating users I’ve been working on, and it now looks at the data you enter, compare it to the data already in the LDAP directory, and tries to guess if the user is already there.

I showed it to a colleague, having explained the nature of the script, and we agreed it looked okay. Then I showed it to my boss, who immediately mistook the functionality for a search engine – clearly unwanted behaviour! I will have to find a way to make it more obvious that it’s just trying to help you.

Now I think I’ll sit down for half an hour and practice on my piano.

William Gibson – Virtual Light

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I just finished reading William Gibsons 1993 novel Virtual Light. Apparently, it’s the first in a series of three novels, based around a grim vision of a future post-earthquake California in a broken-up world. Apparent character-ages, and some years mentioned in the book, puts it around 2007. This makes it a lot of fun to look at how William Gibson envisioned a possible future.

The narrative follows the viewpoints of three separate characters, somewhat merging them as the book progresses, but still with the different characters’ slightly differing view of the events. In narrative style, I find it quite similar to that of Mona Lisa Overdrive, although it is a lot closer to home in terms of technology than his earlier novels. The use of fax instead of email is retained, though, as is the use of Virtual Reality for computers.

I picked up the book at an impulse in my local book shop, while I was actually shopping for Neal Stephensons The System of the World. I enjoyed it, and I will surely get the next two volumes as well soon.

Metronome

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To aid in my learning to play the piano, I have considered getting a metronome. Metronomes seem to be subject of some discussion in the world of music teachers, so I’ve collected some of the thoughts here.

When to use a metronome
A metronome attempts to teach the student a consistent rhythm and to aid in determining the correct speed at which to play a piece of music. Some schools of teaching insist that the metronome only be used for teaching how fast a given speed “feels”, and that it should never be used while playing or doing rhythm exercises. This puts the main burden on the shoulders of the student, and should give the student a better internal rhythm. It doesn’t, however, prevent the student from losing rhythm in the difficult parts of a piece, and the student has no external way of keeping track of how well he is holding his pace.

Using the metronome while playing pieces, on the other hand, is recommended by some teachers. It is said to be easier to start at a lower pace, and slowly speed up the metronome until the desired playing speed is achieved. It removes the task of keeping the correct rhythm from the student, giving him time to focus on the notes in the music. However, it may also render the student unable to play consistent speeds without a metronome ticking.

I lean toward the second method, of course with the provision that the metronome should only be used for a period of time, after which pieces should be well enough learned for the student (me) to hold the rhythm without external reference.

Types of metronomes
I found a great article concerning metronomes that I will paraphrase a bit from in the following.

Electronic metronomes
These are little electronic devices that go “beep” whenever there’s a tick. I made stuff like this in the 5th grade or so, though modern ones have all sorts of different stuff like built-in tuning. I’m sure it’s great for guitarists and such – I don’t need it. If my digital piano goes out of tune, I’m sure I won’t be able to fix it that easily.

Electric metronomes
These are apparently bigger metronomes that plug into wall sockets, and take up a whole lot of space. I haven’t seen these, but I expect they do exist… I doubt they’d be much use for me, I would rather go for …

Mechanic metronomes
This is the real deal. Wind-up, moving arm with weight, movable weight. These give of a good, unmistakable ticking sound, and since they use wind-up mechanisms, you can use them wherever you are. I know there’s a German company, Wittner, that makes some quite well-known ones – this seems to be the biggest manufacturer of metronomes. And they also make some funny ones, leading me to …

The one I want
So I found it. The metronome I want. It’s mechanic, and it’s funny – it’s shaped like a cat.

Wittner Taktell Cat
Please, buy me one.

Quick raspberry ice cream

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Ingredients

  • 1 blender
  • Frozen raspberries
  • Icing sugar
  • Cream
  • Optionally: Chocolate

Blend food-type ingredients in blender. Serve right away. The frozen berries cools the mixture to be like soft ice cream.

Suggested mix is 200g raspberries, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2½ dl cream, and some chocolate.

Distributor

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I changed the distributor cap and rotor on my car today, probably the cheapest repair I could attempt to try to get rid of the starting problems it’s been having.

The problems have mostly been apparent in rain or otherwise damp weather, but once I also experienced it after the car had been driven for a while, parked in a carpark, and had been in the sun for a couple of hours. The starter engine would turn, but nothing would happen for a while – then after some turns the engine would start coughing, as if one or a few cylinders would fire, and then it would slowly start being able to keep itself going – for the first few seconds still coughing a lot.

I expected this to be due to an old power distributor, and indeed it didn’t look too nice inside when I got it off. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but the car has been fine the 3 times I’ve started it since… not a very good statistical basis, since it hasn’t rained, but it’s nice to know that it hasn’t ruined the engine. The car felt a bit faster afterwards – but I’m sure that’s just the rush of pride of mending my own car doing that 😉

Blog down for a bit

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Not that anyone probably noticed, but my blog was down for half a day or so, due to the server I’m running it on having gotten a new address from DHCP. Not really something I’d expected would ever happen, but it’s a quick fix, and I just needed to wait for the DNS to propagate.

Piano progress

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I’m slowly progressing with learning to play the piano. Latest to get assimilated is “Love me tender”, though I’ve jumped a few songs on the way there. Rhythm is still a bit of a problem, but I’m getting better at it.