Brainblast 0.1 released
I made the first release of the small game I have made. I have a long list of things to fix and improve upon but at least it is playable so one can see the basics. I have currently made a debian package, but will provide rpm also later. You need linux, there is not any builds for other platforms available at the moment.
If you feel like trying it you can visit http://brainblast.sourceforge.net/
Old blog posts about the game can be found in the category.
Pollution
During the Olympics in Beijing there have been quite a lot of discussion about the bad air in Beijing. And as I have myself visited Beijing several times I can say that the pollution is something that you definitely notice and can be quite bad at times. It's quite boring when you do not see the blue sky for many days in a row. But it's also shifting a lot, suddenly the air is very clear.
By the way here is an image of me in front of the olympic stadium which was under construction about one year ago:
There are official measuremnts of the air quality in Beijing that can be seen at MEP, while both BBC and Associated Press are making their own measurements.
The figures differs a bit and of course there can be big local variations, but until now AP has measured an average value of 326 micrograms per cubic meter of PM10 which is the most common measurement for air pollution. You can read more about PM10 at Wikipedia but one reason for importance of this measurement is that it measures particles with a size smaller than 10 micrometers, which is small enough to settle in the lungs and cause health problems. BBC's values are a little lower with maximum values around 300, also according to BBC the yearly average is around 89. The official government data is around 160 under the olympics so far. Nevertheless it can be interesting to compare these values with other cities and your own local area.
BBC also mentions that the yearly average for London is 21. The most polluted city in the world, Cairo has a yearly average of 169, thats almost double the average of Beijing.
I found an article with numbers from Linköping in Sweden which is not far from where I grew up, there the numbers for the yearly average ranges from 18-26 depending on location in the city. Perhaps the numbers can't be compared, but just looking at them it seems that London and Linköping is equally polluted, I find that hard to believe but anyway they are far from Beijing. In Sweden the yearly average can not be above 40 without actions being taken.
Looking at the city where I live (Oslo, Norway) one can see that the yearly average is around 25, and the report I looked at actually had data back to the 1970's and it's interesting to note that the PM10 values for Oslo are now only a third of what it was then, the average for 1971 for example was 74. In the 1980's it was around 40-50, in the early 1990's around 30. The same report also looks at SO2 where the measurements go back to the 1950's with values around 300-400 micrograms per cubic meter, and in the early 2000's the values were down at only 4-5 micrograms per cubic meter. NO2 was also down by the way. I was not aware that the air is so much better now (at least when looking at those three pollutants) then a few decades ago, interesting... But I am just looking at some numbers, how much of an improvement this really means I can't say. Anyway all reports about Oslo and daily measurements can be found at luftkvalitet.info.
Well enough numbers and measurements, I am going to watch some Olympics instead :-)
Photo Weekend
Last weekend I was out photographing a bit again since I got my camera back from reparation. I went up to holmenkollen:
This panaroma has many flaws, but it gives a nice overview. I also saw some people skijumping into the water:
After that I went up towards frognerseteren, I tried to make a very thorough panorama on one of the houses here in the image, but when done I realised that I had used a stupid setting on the camera and as I was quite hungry so I did not bother to redo it.
I walked down to Slemdal and took the subway back home.
Iron Maiden
This weekend I was visiting Göteborg and watched Iron Maidens concert at Ullevi stadium. According to the band it was the largest arena in the world they are playing at, and I checked it and it seems to be correct. It was sold out with over 56 000 people. However they are performing in front of more people in non stadium shows like Wacken Open Air in Germany with over 70 000 people and some place in Canada with over 90 000. I have a small crappy video from my phone before they entered the stage here. The concert was great and the weather was perfect :-)
Today I was out with my bike, quite hot but it was nice. I have not been so good with the training lately but hopefully I will change that. I found a Swedish site funbeat.se where you can track all the training you are doing, set up goals and see statistics. Sounds fun, but we will see if it remains fun, I have at least created an account and will try it and see.
Thunderstorms ( Tor/Þórr does not like me... )
Yesterday there was a quite big thunderstorm in Oslo. This is not so common here, and not that it is so close.
I heard it in the distance but did not initially think it was coming much closer. But when I sat in my couch with a glass of water in my hand there was suddenly a huge bang with lightning and thunder at the same time, I jumped so I spilled out all the water in my couch and car alarms started in the street. I also got a ringing sound in my right ear for several hours after from the loud sound. I did not see where the lighning hit, but it must have been very close to my house.
When there is a thunderstorm it's of course good to disconnect electrical machines, but I was a bit surprised by how fast it came so I never got to that. So unfortunately I have now a long list of things not working anymore:
* My flat screen computer monitor died ( I had a dual monitor setup, so fortunately only one died and I can still use my computer )
* The DVD player for my tv is dead
* The sound in my PSP is gone ( which unfortunately was on charging when it happened )
* The network card on my computer was fried ( fortunately everything else on the computer seems to work though)
* My digital TV box is also completely dead.
* Even my wireless router is dead.
I am not sure I have tested all things here so there might be more.
At least I had an older computer standing in a corner from which I could grab an old network card, so I now have internet back even though I have a cable dragged across the floor as the router died.
Well it's all just things...
1980 - The final countdown
In my movie project I am now at 1980 and this time it happened to be the movie "The final countdown" that I decided to watch.
This is an american science fiction movie about a modern (1980) aircraft carrier that suddenly travels into some strange wheather phenomena and is transported back to 1941 just a few hours before the japanese are going to strike at perl harbour. So a question that arise in the movie is of course if they should interfear with history and prevent the japanese from attacking using the much more modern weapons they have available.
I thought the idea of this movie was quite interesting and the movie was not bad. However I felt it lacked a bit and that they could have made much more out of it. Some effects in the movie are good but some are very bad.
All in all a ok movie that I rate 5/10.
Previous entries:
Opera 9.5 Released
Today Opera 9.5 was released.
The two new main features are:
* Quick Find - You can easily search for a word contained in any web page that you have visited previously. This is integrated into the address bar.
* Opera Link - Syncs bookmarks, notes and speed dial entries between your different computers and even your mobile phone. So as soon you store a bookmark on any of your computers at work or at home or on the mobile phone in the bus you will automatically get it everywhere. It will also be available in a web interface if you for some strange reason do not have Opera available at the moment :-)
And of course there are lot's of improvements on speed and better Web Standards support.
Read more and download from here.
If you are a web developer you might also be interested in checking out the alpha version of Operas developer tools named Dragonfly.
Slides (dia bilder)
As I a number of weeks ago bought a printer that can scan slides (or dia bilder in Swedish) my parents have sent me some old slides to scan. It's fun to see those old images again that none of us have seen for many years. Also getting them into digital form will preserve them better and there is a good opportunity to enhance them. There are many under or over exposed images that can easily be fixed on a computer but as a slide they always looked really bad.
Below is one image of me (to the left), my brother and my father 23 years ago, time flies.
This image was horribly over exposed, but now look rather good.
The barometer problem
I found this story on another blog:
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.
I read the examination question: “SHOW HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER.”
The student had answered, “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.” The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.
I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.
In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building.” At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,and gave the student almost full credit.
While leaving my colleague’s office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.
“Well,” said the student, “there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building,and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building.”
“Fine,” I said, “and others?”
“Yes,” said the student, “there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units.”
“A very direct method.”
“Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building,in principle, can be calculated.”
“On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession.”
“Finally,” he concluded, “there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: ‘Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer.”
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
It's just a story but I think it's quite nice :-). It exists in many different variants, and snopes.com has dated the first known version of it to 1958.
Spring, Opera and sneezing
It's now really nice and warm outside. Unfortunately I sat mostly inside at the computer this weekend doing some programming and other stuff. However I did take a walk down to the new Opera building here in Oslo and took some images. It looks very nice. Not very cheap however, I read in the newspaper that around 4 billion NOK of tax money was used to build it. The same newspaper also mentioned that 8000 people from 700 different companies were involved in the building process. On saturday when I was there it was very crowded, you even had to stand in line on the small bridge over the road as it was so crowded in the staircase.
At the computer I tried to find a good way of drawing uml class diagrams in svg on linux. After testing different alternatives such as gaphor and umbrello I ended up using the old classic Dia. Gaphor was terribly buggy. Umbrello is ok, but it could not export proper SVG so I gave up on that too. Maybe there are nicer tools for this that I have not found ? Dia at least exported usable SVG after some tweaking of the fonts used.
Outside in the sun I immediately sneezed because of the bright light. I have sometimes wondered about this strange reflex but never cared to look it up. But now I did (on the net) and apparently it's a genetic thing. However scientists do not know exactly why this happen for some people, except that the connections in the brain are a bit crosswired between the reflex that should close the iris and the sneeze reflex. I am not very bothered by it though. Also sneezing seem to be something that is not really needed in it's current form in humans at all. Because it is thought that sneezing is supposed to clean out the nose to expell bacteria, pollen, virus and dirt. However humans sneeze almost completely with the mouth instead of the nose in contrast to other mammals. Check your dog or cat next time they sneeze, apparently they sneeze only with the nose (which is the proper and useful way of sneezing). So apparently it is a bit pointless to sneeze at all, and to sneeze when looking at the sun is then even more pointless :-). According to the report I found on the net around 20% of the Swedish population have this sun-sneeze reflex, I found that surprisingly high as I can't recall having met someone else that have mentioned beeing affected by this, but then again I have never asked. And to be precise it's not the sun in itself that causes it, for example if I have went to bed and been lying in the dark for some time and then decide to go up and turn on the computer; the bright light from the monitor is usually so bright that I have to sneeze :-).