Buh-bye-blogger

PLEASE GO TO http://hjornevik.wordpress.com. Sorry blogger/blogspot, but there are too many features missing...

Windows Live Writer

Ok, so here I am, after putting my kids to bed, I lay on the guests bed waiting for my son to fall asleep (he's a bit afraid of the dark, so I tend to lie in his room), surfing randomly around.

And, behold, what do I find. A lifehack.org article about a Microsoft product, which assumably works? I read more, seeing possibilities never seen before; blogger/blogspot lacks some features, and is not as good as I want it to be in some areas, but here is a product from Microsoft which actually makes it easier to blog!

Windows Live Writer is a WSIWYG (what you see is what you get) tool, which lets you write posts for (all) your blog(s). You can easily add pictures, tables, maps and videos, and then upload the full post directly to your blog.

You can make drafts, and I hear that there are some add-ins too, which gives you even more flexibility. I haven't tried any of those yet, but I will as soon as I have looked into some of the standard features (which seems pretty good so far).

 

I wonder what happens if I edit the post I just published, and the hit "Publish" again...

Answer; sweet. It actually managed to amend it to the post instead of doubleposting... ;)

 

And, with tables available, and the option of adding pictures directly, instead of "upload to server - then select a size and a placement which doesn't seem to matter no matter what you do", this can actually turn out to be one of my new favorite tools! I think I read something about it beeing able to add videos, del.icio.us links and more on the fly as well (might need some plugins), which will be a major step for my blogging!

Three secrets of the one minute manager

Three secrets of the one minute manager by Kenneth Blanchard. More on The CPA Journal.

The First Secret: One-Minute Goals.
All good performance starts with clear goals. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. This is about as fundamental as God, mother and apple pie. If we were going to improve the performance of people all over this country, the simplest and easiest way would be to make sure people have clear goals.

The Second Secret: One-Minute Praisings.
Of all the things I've taught over the years, I can't say enough about the importance of praising. The key to developing people will always be to concentrate on catching them doing something right instead of something wrong. Yet most people are still managed by being basically left alone until they make a mistake that's noticeable and then their boss criticizes them. I call that a "leavealone zap" management style or "Sea gull management." Sea gull managers fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, and then fly out.

The Third Secret: One-Minute Reprimands.
What do you do when people do not perform well or make limited or no progress toward their goals? You have to hold them accountable.

The first alternative for poor performance should be redirection, which means going back to goal setting trying to find out what went wrong and getting them back on track. Never reprimand or punish a learner -- you'll immobilize them. If you are dealing with somebody who knows better, who as performed a similar task well in the past, then a One-Minute Reprimand might be appropriate.

Stickies

A small program for making Post-it notes on your pc.
Very handy for taking notes, ToDo-lists etc.

It has many nice features, but not unnecessary ones like animated dancing naked ladies, so it's small and doesn't take up much system resources.
...and, it's completely free.

Zhorn Software - Stickies

One minute management course

LESSON ONE
An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.
A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing?"
The eagle answered: "Sure, why not."
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle, and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

MANAGEMENT LESSON
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

Top 10 Secrets from Anthony Robbins

Thomas Murrel at Ezine Articles has an article, Top 10 Secrets from Anthony Robbins, which is the authors gift to us, building on his experiences from a seminar with Anthony Robbins.

I'm gonna add the secrets here, without the rest of the story, which can be read at Ezine Articles

1. YOUR POTENTIAL IS DETERMINED (OR LIMITED) BY YOUR SELF-BELIEF.
The simple message is if you believe in yourself enough you can achieve anything.
A memorable one-liner was "the only thing that's keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself".

2. MOST PEOPLE HAVE SELF-DOUBT AROUND UNIVERSAL THEMES.
Ask anyone and most people will admit they lack confidence in some areas of their life. The interesting thing I learnt from this seminar is that this self-doubt is around universal themes. These themes cross age, gender, religous, cultural and language barriers.
Common doubts include 'I am not good enough', 'I am lazy' and 'No-one loves me'.

3. YOU CAN LEARN MECHANISMS TO ELIMINATE SELF-DOUBT.
Robbins calls it 'immersion' where you break old patterns and build new ones by repetition. He uses a lot of Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to achieve this with his audiences.
He says "progress is not automatic".
A memorable moment in the seminar was when we had to visualize ourselves inside a bubble and inside that bubble was a series of videotapes neatly arranged in a time-line that represented all our memories in our lives so far. We had to pull out the negative videotapes and destroy them. This was followed by time spent visualising the future and how your life will look 10 and 20 years from now.

4. BELIEF IMPACTS ON MANY LEVELS.
The Robbins message was that 3 things shape our self-belief. He calls them the Triad. These are our patterns of physiology, focus and language or meaning.
He highlighted this with the quote: "where focus goes energy flows".

5. OUR VALUES AND BELIEFS SHAPE OUR ACTIONS.
Robbins believes you can "vanquish whatever is holding you back from taking action".
Walking barefoot across a bed of glowing coals is the physical metaphor he uses in his seminars to prove this point to the skeptics.
Eliminate negative self-belief and take massive action are his keys to success.

6. TO CREATE POSITIVE OUTCOMES YOU MUST TAKE MASSIVE ACTION.
"Where focus goes energy flows" is a quote used by Robbins in his presentation to highlight why you need to know your outcome and why achieving this is a must.
But many people fail to take the next step. They delay, put off and find many reasons or excuses not to act.
Robbins believes "progress is not automatic" and "action is power". Take action, even if it is the wrong action. He says it is "never a failure if you learn something".

7. MATCHING & MIRRORING CREATES CONNECTION, TRUST & EMPATHY.
Robbins spent a fair amount of time in the seminar talking about and demonstrating interpersonal communication skills.
He used people from the audience to show how the process of "matching and mirroring" the non-verbal communication and body language of others can be a very powerful way to connect with people.
In essence, you create rapport by adopting the body language of the person you are communicating with.
He believes "rapport is power" and "total responsiveness is created by a feeling of commonality".
If you have learnt these techniques before and haven't used them for a while, I suggest it is time to dust them off and put them into action next time you are communicating with someone on a one-to-one basis.

8. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IF YOU FOCUS ON PASSION AND PURPOSE.
Robbins believes that "to have an extraordinary quality of life you need two skills: the science of achievement (the ability to take anything you envision and make it real) and the art of fulfilment (this allows you to enjoy every moment of it)."
He says "success without fulfilment is failure".
Find your passion and purpose in life. My purpose is to make a difference in people's lives and use my gift as a speaker.

9. MODEL YOURSELF ON OTHER ACHIEVERS.
To gain improvements quickly and step up to a new level of achievement, Robbins believes learning from others who are the best in their field is the fastest way to achieve success.
He told the story of how he wanted to improve his tennis game and so employed Andre Agassi, the then number one ranked player to help him achieve this.
Who could you model yourself on?
"People's lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group," according to Robbins.

10. SUCCESS IS BUILT ON A HEALTHY, HIGH ENERGY BODY, HEART AND MIND
If you are not healthy - all of the above points are a waste of time.
Your health is determined and influenced by your lifestyle.
One major change I've made since the seminar is to eat a healthier diet and exercise more regularly.
As a speaker, my whole business depends on my ability to perform at a peak state. Like any professional athlete, the success of business is directly linked to my diet and health.
Take care of yourself, your body is ultimately your most important asset.

--- End of rip ---

This was so well written, I ripped majority to keep it for immediate access. All credit to Thomas Murrel at Ezine.

7 Ways to Improve Defect Reports

As a software tester, it is easy to get carried away when digging into a new piece of software; the unexplored area of newly developed software calls to us "Test me, test me!".

If the development has been poor, and several defects are found at once, it is often easy to skip one of the most important tasks the tester does; create good reports. In a hurry, several failures have to be transformed into defect reports, and to make sure none is forgotten while the first ones are written, it is quite common to type in the short version, which often lack important information.

When we test, we tend to be engaged in what we do, and we forget that the developer who'll receive the defect won't be able to understand what situation the failure occured: What test data was used. Which environment was the test performed, and what kind of known/business data was loaded into the database. Did we do any workarounds to be able to reach the frontend, and what other parameters did we enter.

If the software is in an early phase of the project, the development team might have quite a different version in their environment, so the screens may look completely different. There may have been changes to the code, or even just a dataload may cause the software to behave differently in the development environment, so it is of great importance to deliver good test reports.

Defects and test execution reports are not only for the development team; they can be used to show the evolution of the software as the project goes along, and if a failure occurs at a later stage (e.g. in Acceptance Test or even in production), the test team can refer to the test report and tell if the feature (and/or surrounding area) has been tested before.

There are two main reasons for making the test execution reports and the defect logs as good and descriptive as possible:

• The developer needs to understand what the failure is, and how it is caused. The better the description is, the easier it is for the developer to understand what's causing it.
• When the defect is fixed, and the development team has released it to the test environment, it is very likely that some time has passed by. It may have been days, or even weeks, since that time when the tester was really engaged and digging into that part of the software, and thus the tester won't neccesarily remember how the failure was caused (if the report is poorly written, that is)

 

So, what are the steps to write a good defect report..? Here are some tips:

1. Start with a short description of what the failure is. In a short sentence, sum it all up so that the developer might go straight to fixing the problem, if he understands right away what's causing it. Even though the description is short though, it should be precise and meaningfull, so that it is possible to understand what the problem is.


2. Next, write down a summary of what was done. This can be written as a step by step guide saying what you did, or you can write it as more as an essay kind of text. It is still important to remember though: You want to keep the attention of the reader. Too much text, and nobody will read what you've done, and that's a good reason (maybe not good, but still very common indeed) for not getting the bug fixed. The developer will send the defect back to you and say he can't reproduce the failure.


3. Attach scripts for loading test data, and logs from the inserts you did. The developer will probably try to reproduce the failure in her environment, so it is important to attach data so that the preconditions for the test are the same. Also, when the defect is fixed and returned to you, you might get a different result than expected, so you'll want to try it with the exact same script as you did the first time. If the test data is stored in e.g. an excel spreadsheet, and then generated into sql, you don't want to regenerate the data if you have to be 100% sure that no one have made changes to the data.


4. Screenshots are of great value when logging a defect; they are proof of what the situation look liked when the defect was logged, and they are a quick way for the developer to see where the problem is located.


5. Data extract. After code has been executed, what happened with the data? If it has any value, retrieve the altered data from the database, and attach it to your defect. If records were supposed to be created in a table, and were either incomplete or not there at all, show this by attaching it (it can even be a screenshot from the table in e.g. Toad).


6. If you have time to do some debugging, or have a vague idea about where the defect is located, it's a nice thing to help the developer by describing your analysis about the bugs whereabouts.


7. Finally, you'll want to add the general information, such as which environment and version did you perform the test, what part of the functionality were you testing at the time. What test (test case number) were you executing, and so on.

 

Why Testing Is Essential

First of all; testing saves money. Some project managers seems to think that a separate test team will bring extra cost to the project, and therefore leave it out, but it doesn't take much thinking to see that a well organised test team which knows what it's doing can save quite a lot of money in the long run;

Early detection of defects, either by inspection of criteria spesification documents, or by code analysis, or even at a later stage in the testing lifecycle, can save tenfolds as much money as if the same defects were to be detected by a user when the system has been set in production.

Also, a separate test team can be of immense assistanse to the business users making the criteria, as well as to the development team creating the design and building the code, at all stages during a project. The test team can provide an external point of view, which ensures that nothing is left alone just because someone doesn't dare to speak up.

The test team can also provide a history and analysis of defects reported, which again will help the developers understand which areas of the program is more likely to contain further defects.

Also, by creating good testcases, maintenance tests can be delivered to production, which will be very helpfull to ensure that everything still works when new features are added to the software

As stated by Geoffrey Bessin at IBM: Quality is the tangible and intangible aggregate of functionality, usability, reliability, performance, scalability, supportability, security, and any other factors important to your customers and your business.

Sources;
Test Management Approach - Why Test
The Business value of software Quality
Requirement Analysis - Wiki
Inside the Software Testing Quagmire
Best practices for running your testing organisation

Why Testing Is Essential

First of all; testing saves money. Some project managers seems to think that a separate test team will bring extra cost to the project, and therefore leave it out, but it doesn't take much thinking to see that a well organised test team which knows what it's doing can save

Microsoft Visio

Storyboarding Rich Internet Applications With Visio.
Use layers in Visio to filter complex diagrams .
56 Visio Tutorials and Tips.
Then again...

Articles about Management

I'm trying to put together some good sites covering Management, with main focus on Test Management, but also Project/Business Management in general.

Here is a list with some of the best sites I've come across so far:

Articles in English;

TMap (Test Management Approach) - Wiki
TMap - Homepage

Management Methods/Models/Theories
Project Management Body of Knowledge - Wiki
Free Management Library
Steinar Carlsen (huge collection of links etc)
Leadership Styles for Dealing with People  - Pdf
Management Ebook Collection (huge list of ebooks)

Articles in Norwegian;

Integrert ledelse
Ledelsesteoriens historiske utvikling

Total Body Tune-Up

Total Body Tune-Up

from Men's Health

Tap into the power of your hormones to end the day slimmer, stronger, and smarter than the next guy

Here's another myth: You can't harness the power of your hormones. From what you eat to when you exercise, the movies you watch to the games you play, there are a number of surprisingly simple yet impressively effective ways to control these chemicals. And the payoff? Increased energy, faster fat burning, a better night's sleep, and a more productive workday. And that's just a sample.

What follows is a 24-hour plan for first targeting and then tapping into what may be your most valuable natural resource.

Underworld - Crocodile

Yes, finally a new album is upcoming; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGe5f5CbXcU&mode=related&search= :)

msDos tool box

tnsping
- The tnsping utility is used to determine whether or not an Oracle service can be successfully reached. See more at OracleUtilities

netstat
- The netstat command is used to display the TCP/IP network protocol statistics and information. (more)

nslookup
- MS-DOS utility that enables a user to look up an IP address of a domain or host on a network. (more)

More msDos commands can be found at computerhope

Essential Opera Shortcuts

F8 : Set focus to address field
Shift-F8 : Set focus to search field
Ctrl-H : Hide Opera
Ctrl+space: Go to your home page
Ctrl+B : Paste and go in current tab
Ctrl+Shift+B : Paste and go in background tab
Ctrl+Alt+R :Reload all open pages
Ctrl+down : next link in page
Ctrl+up : previous link in page
Shift+arrows : Navigate between links and form elements

More can be found here: http://help.opera.com/Windows/9.23/en/keyboard.html

Toad

Ctrl+B                Comment block

Ctrl+Shift+ B    Uncomment block

F2                      Hide Script Output Window

view-options-window: auto-open schemabrowser

Nifty Linux commands

For a linux noob like me, who also has a lack of memory, this list comes in handy: Useful Linux-commands:
ls -la
passwd
write e5093
who
finger
w

(tomt)

Havet lå blikkstille foran henne, ikke en krusning gled over den mørke overflaten. Snart ville dagens første solstråler speile seg i vannet og gjøre det til et gnistrende sølvfat, men hun måtte vente i enda noen timer før det skjedde. Hun elsket å sitte og se utover det mørke havet, vitende om at snart ville lyset fortrenge det sorte ytret, mens alt under overflaten forble mørkt og skjult for menneskene.

The acorn was in the ground, beneath a thin layer of dirt. He spread some water over it and said a short prayer to whoever might listen. He wasn’t really sure if his gods were with him here in this foreign land, but it was better to pray for a blessing nevertheless.

A breeze shook the leaves on the trees, the warm air was filled with the smell of flowers, it was almost hwavy to breath. It had rained the day before, and now the moist steamed from the ground in the hot sun.

His shoulders were bare, only a thin white shirt covered his back, and a shorts made of kaki covered his legs. He wore no shoes, and his feet were black from dirt gathered through many miles of walking.

Two days before, he was at a beach. His boat was tied to a tree, and he had gathered his few possesions and walked towards west. Noone really knew what was there, but they had told him that free land could be discovered if you went far enough, and those with enough strength and will could make themselves a living there, if you only managed to handle the scoring sun.

And so he walked, forever following the sun in the sky and noticing every change in the lands.

There were villains, he knew, but his past in the homelands had also thought him how to avoid strangers, especially those with bad intentions. He walked, steadied himself to a long stick which he had carved from the very first tree he saw as his boat landed on the shore. On his back he carried a backpack, and in a belt he carried two pouches, one with herbs and seeds from his homeland, and one with his tools, which he valued dearly. In his backpack he had all the equipment he needed to survive for months, if only he could find some game to cook, and some vegetables to go with it.

In the homelands he knew how to survive, he could go for weeks with nothing but his bare hands, but here it was different. He didn't know the animals here, and he didn't know the plants on the ground. All he knew was that it was different, and everything smelled stronger and looked more colorful than at home.

After a full day of walking, he came to a vast area filled with sand. All he could see in the direction he knew he had to walk was sand. The sun shone and made it glitter, not a breath of wind cooled the hot air, and the sweat poured from his skin like it was a well.

He had his waterskin around his neck in a string, and he was careful to fill it whenever he found a source of water. But still, looking out on this desert land, he knew that he might be in trouble if he were to cross it carrying only the one skin of water.

He tied his knife to the stick he was carrying, and left his backpack and pouches hidden is some bushes. He took of his shirt, and wearing only his shorts he strode into the jungle behind him. There'd be no animals in the desert. He was certain nothing could live in such a heat, so he backtracked into the jungle he had walked through.

Bathroom touching up with acid tiles

Fun Forever's "Acid morning starts in bathroom" has some nice tiles...

Something to consider next time the batch is getting a touching up. :)

Here's some examples, more can be found at source:

Pretty Good Privacy - for free

◄http://digg.com/software/FireGPG_Firefox_plugin_for_GPG_in_Gmail krever at du har http://www.gpg4win.org/ (som er et underprosjekt av http://www.gnupg.org/ ) 2:08:01 PM◄linken til nedlastingen fra gpg4win virker ikke, så hent fra f.eks: http://files5.majorgeeks.com/files/42240455439aa23182bf604e3b202915/mail/gpg4win-1.0.9.exe 2:09:05 PM◄med firefox-addonen får du kryptering rett i gmail (og egentlig alle sider)

Firefox tweaking

I haven't used Firefox for more than a week, but allready I'm starting to like it, and I've done some tweaking to it :) Here's some of the stuff I've collected to improve Firefox the past week: Addons:

• Kvasir search
• del.icio.us bookmarks
• Download Statusbar
• PDF Download
• Paste and Go

about:config user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word",true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Note: Firefox is allocated 4096 KB of memory by default and in this configuration we give it roughly 65MB as denoted by the last line. This can be changed according to what is used.

about:config tweaks ripped from CodeBetter. To get more "screen space", I have moved the adress field and search box next to the menu (just right of Help). To do this, right click anywhere on the toolbar and drag the fields where you want them. Also, I removed the bookmarks toolbar by going to View - Toolbars and deselecting it. Since I'm using the del.icio.us addon, I'm not showing any addons, but I'm displaying my favorite tags next to the buttons (back, next, home, refresh etc). Finally I used the Customize menu (right click on toolbars) to select small icons. This all together gives me a cleaner browser with more space for the webpages instead of toolbars.

Essential tools for living online

I'm putting together a list of the most usefull online tools that I use daily. They're all listed on del.icio.us/hjornevik, but I wanted to get them posted here as well.
The tools I use most often are the ones that keep track of my rss feeds and bookmarks, and of course my web based email. With three computers to switch between (both at work and home), I realised I wanted to switch to an internetbased interface, for simplicity.

So, I wanted to collect as many things in one place, to avoid having to surf all around to do my daily "tasks". I finally fell for googles personalised homepage, and added to it a few tabs with different topics:
Main contains gmail, google reader, a date&time gadget, as well as a Reuters news.
News, which contains my selection of newspapers (mostly norwegian, but also some other).
Notes, which isn't the best name, but it contains Google Notebook and a del.icio.us-gadget displaying my bookmarks on del.icio.us, and also a Wikipedia search and a English-Spanish translator.
Bored is my selection of silly stuff, meaning PacMan, Chess, Sudoku and HangMan :)
(I'll link to those gadgets sometime later)

Next, there's the tools that I use for keeping track of my workout. Unfortunatly I was injured for more than a month so my runlog looks a bit silly, but still it's a very usefull tool...
Combined with mapmyrun, the runner's need for logging is complete.

I am also trying to learn spanish, and to do that I firstmost use the podcasts from CoffeebreakSpanish. The main podcast is free, but if you buy a premium membership you can download additional podcasts and a pdf-guide with transcriptions and vocabulary.
I also try to learn an additional word each day, and for that I use about's Spanish Word of the Day. I used to subscribe to this on email, but I felt like it was too much in my mailbox, so I've changed to check on the web instead.

In addition to this, I have some Firefox addons which helps alot, but I'll write about my Firefox tweakings in another post...

Finally though, I'd like to mention WiFi Directory & Hotspot Finder for Wireless Access Locations. This is a great site for finding a place to connect to the internet with your laptop. Only drawback is that you have to be online to use it ;)

Funky Chicken

To become a better version of myself, I'm trying to develop healthy habits like exersising and eating healthy.
I try to work out every morning (not weekends yet, but I'm getting there) before work, and it has
really changed my life. I have more energy, I'm happier because I look better, I feel better generally and I'm stronger and have more endurance than ever.
I also try to eat a loot of fruit and vegetables, and healthy food in general.
Last week I bought a Wilfa blender, so now I'm drinking smoothies as a snack. It tastes really good, and it sure is good for you as well.
I have also gotten myself a clay pot (?) for slow cooking, and I've allready used it three or four times to make some delicious meals.

Here's a recipe I've tried a couple of times now, which really tastes good.
You need a chicken, a garlic, a pot of basil, a lemon, an orange, your favorite chilisauce, salt&peper, and whatever veggies you want on the side (I prefer paprika and onions). Also, couscous or something to go with it.

First I crush basil and garlic in my morter. I also blend in some lemon peel, and then I stuff the chicken with the mixture, as well as with slices of orange and lemon.
Next I make holes in the chicken skin and stuff it with cloves of garlic.
Then I put the chicken in the pot, and spread the skin with salt/pepper and the chilisauce.
Finally I pour just a little wine, water and oliveoil on it to get some moisture, before I put the lid on and put it in the oven.
Cook at low temperature for a couple of hours, then take the lid of and turn the grill on to get that crispy chicken skin.

Cooking in a clay pot like this leaves a lot of juices, which makes excellent sauce.
Mix it with some more spices of your choice, some water and perhaps some red wine, and then cook it till it's reduced to about a third.

Run For Life

Part of my personal development is trying to get fit. Thus, I’ve made exercise a part of my daily (more or less) routine. Every morning I get up, take the bus to work, and then I do about an hour of workout before I start at work. I am so lucky to have a working place with a gym in the cellar. :) Today, reading John Maeda’s blog I found two tools which will make the running a bit more fun. First there’s RunLog. RunLog has a calendar and let’s you type in how much you’ve run to keep track of your milage. To use RunLog, an OpenID is needed, e.g. from myOpenID The other tool, is MapMyRun, which uses Google map to trace your route. You can enter points along your route, and MapMyRun calculates the distance, average speed, calories burnt etc. ¡Estupendo! You can also store your runs, so that you can review your routes and use the data from them over and over, e.g. to see progress.

Buenos Dias

My spanish is improving, or at least I'm progressing with the lessons. 
Actually, I am now at lesson 6 but I am going back to do some rehersal of lesson 3-5.
The first lessons, which mostly covered greetings/goodbyes and then introducing your self and saying where your're from, I think I have a good grip on now.
What I need to learn better now, is familiy members and numbers.

I have learned e.g. to say:
Hola, ¿que tal?
Me llamo Lars, soy de Noruego, y vivo en un piso en Lørenskog.
Tengo una hija y tengo un hijo, se llaman Klara y Birk.
Tengo una madre y un padre, se llaman Berit y Terje.
Se vivo ahora en Lørenskog.

As you can see it ain't much yet, but I feel the progress is good. I have learned the main parts of the five first podcasts, but I feel I should go back and reherse now to learn all the words in those podcasts properly before proceeding further.

Some old art

This evening I was listening to a radio interview with Datarock on Dj Friendly @ nrk.no.
They were talking about Datarock's new contract with an independent label, Nettwerk, which they signed recently.

Datarock is norwegian elektronika group, and on their site you can download some songs and e.g. view the brand new Fa-Fa-Fa video. ¡Fenomenal!

Nettwerk also has artists like Dido and other "big artists", but one of the artists mentioned in the interview was, a to me unknown band, Delirium.

This got me thinking of some of my old websites, because one of them was called Delirium.

I couldn't find that page in specific,  unfortunatly, but I found one of my other sites, and I just wanna post two selv-made images:

Changing Looks

Blogger.com has some issues.
I had to change template, because the text disappeard behind the sidebar.
I used to have a right sidebar, but the text didn't break properly, 
so it became unreadable. 

I believe it is because I had a setting, which implied that I should do my own linebreaks,
by single or double carriage returns. Still, if I write a sentence which is too long to fit,
I think the editor/template/whatever should handle it, so that the text doesn't get lost.

Still, I am very happy with my new template (just did some minor changes to personalise it),
so I don't really care.
It's just annoying when stuff doesn't work 100% the way you want it to.
Perhaps it's an even bigger issue when you work as a software tester. :p

P.s. Another annoying issue just came to mind as I tried to write down the labels for this post.
If you have used a label before (e.g. "Software Testing"), and you want to use just the first word,
in example case "Software", blogger.com autocompletes it to "Software Testing" now matter what.

If anyone knows a fix for this, I'd really appreciate it 
(even though I'm not sure if anyone ever reads this, since I only have one comment so far) :D

Spanish improving

Our Man In Granada has a really nice blog about Nicaragua in South America.
As I was browsing through his site, I realised it could be a goal for testing my spanish skills.
I am now on lesson 4 of  CoffeeBreakSpanish, and as I have become a premium member,
I also have the bonus material to learn from. Exiting!

I have a friend who lives in Mexico (hola Ronny, ¿que tal?), and I just figured, I wanna go on
a journey through South America. Something like Ernesto "Che" Guevara (did you know
his nickname "che" means "hi", and he got it because he was so friendly and nice and said
hello to everyone?).
I think such a journey (perhaps by car though, so I can bring my kids)
would be the most awsome way to improve the spanish, so maybe I'll start saving and go.

Testing Resources

I currently work as a software technical tester for one of the biggest insurance companies in Norway.
I've been doing that for about 1,5 years now, and I've gathered some experience along the way.

When it comes to software testing, I believe most of your experience can only be achieved by 
doing the actual testing, but of course there's some interesting reading available.

Beeing a fan of free stuff, I haven't bought any books or ordered any online test courses, 
but I've still managed to come up with a quite powerfull collection of information.
Here's a delta containing some of the documents I use as inspiration and guide for my testing:

• Testing.com
• StickyMinds
• Certified Tester Foundation Level Syllabus
• Testing Techniques @ Testingcraft.com

Klara Elvira's first words

Just want to collect some of my daughter's first words. 
FYI, they are in norwegian. :)

"Se" (look)
"Mamma" (mom)
"Pappa" (dad)
"Se pappa" (Look daddy)
"Der" (There)
"Dette" / "detta" ("This)

Gonna keep editing this post as more words come along :)

Wake up and smell the pollution

Reuters has a showcase showing "a selection of images on a U.N. report on global warming". 

Enough said, actually.

Text by Birk

After showing Birk his drawings posted on this blog, 
he said that he wanted to write an entry. 
So, here goes:

yhiu yhyyyyyyyyuyuyuyut tttkkk¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨'''''''''''

ææææææææææææjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjhhhhhhhhhhhhh 

ggggggggggggggggggggggggdddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

gggggggddddssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---------///////////////

Art by Birk

Here are two drawings made by my son Birk on our computer this morning.
This is the second time he manages to use the mouse properly, and he allready makes these lovely pieces of art!

The first:





The second:



I feel I get positive energy by those colors. So warm and full of spirit. :)
Indeed some happy pictures.

How Do You Want To Feel Today?

A sensation of emptiness gently fills my body and mind.



It’s like that feeling when your missing someone, except I don’t miss anyone now.
At least, not anyone I am consciously aware of.

The feeling grows, spreads from my stomach to the back of my eyes. Not tears, just a gentle pressure which lets me know that there’s something wrong.

I want to explore this feeling, try to grasp what my sensations are telling me. But am I prepared to face the sorrow which I feel will reveal itself if I enter this vast void inside myself?

Perhaps it has allways been there.
Perhaps have I just connected to something inside of me which I have blocked out for years.
Perhaps it has just recently been created, but why I don’t know.

What is sorrow?
What is emptiness? 

There's so much noise

There is just so much noise.

Every day, everywhere I go, there is noise. Noise filling my ears, my head, my brain and my thoughts.

E.g. when sitting in my cubicle at work, there are so many people around me, talking and chatting, typing and writing, listening to music (which I only hear the baseline from their earplugs), drinking, eating, tapping their feet, and so on and so on.

Noise.

And outside, there are cars, airplanes and a big crane which makes a very cruel noise when lifting stuff that the workers there are going to hammer into place.

More noise.

And when going home, I can choose between the noise from the traffic, or I can choose to listen to music on my Muvo, but that will only block out part of the noise.
I need silence.
Silence.
Peace.


With all the technology available, why haven’t anyone invented earplugs or headsets which brings complete silence?

It can’t be that hard?

And, I don’t want something the size of an orange sitting on the sides of my head, I just want a nice little thing to stick in my ear. Preferably something which I can configure to say, e.g. “ok, now I accept phonecalls” (directly to the plug), or “ok, let conversations in” (preferably from people with pleasant voices.


I have, today, discovered a nice alternative while waiting.
I usually listen to the radio on my way to and from work, but that also gets pretty noisy sometimes.

But, today I discovered the music which is probably the nearest thing you get to silence.
At least, it feels that way for your soul:
Check out one (out of 140!) of the radiostations on Classical Webcast.

They “attempt to collect all live-broadcasting classical radio stations on the Web”, and I think they are doing pretty well.

Hopefully it works as well for you as it does for me: I now have a way to block the noise out, by bringing classics in  

Hola, ¿que tal?

Fenomenal!

I have just discovered CoffeBreakSpanish, and I love it!

One of my goals is to learn a new language, and I was wondering if I should:
a) “Re-learn” and become better in german
b) Learn spanish
c) Learn italian, as a friend has told me that’s the way to go

So, after pondering on this for a while, I it slipped out of my mind, and I ended up with alternative d (not on the original list): let it slide and put it off till later.


But that was before I discovered CoffeeBreakSpanish.

This site has free podcasts which seems to teach you all you need to know about the spanish language.

So far I’ve listened to session 1 & 2, which are very basic, but I’ve read ahead to see what the future podcasts has to offer, and it seems like there’s some great and (to me) pretty advanced stuff coming.


So, finally I’ve started on learning my fourth (1. norwegian, 2. english, 3. german) language, and I am very happy with it.

I also discovered a great online dictionary, WordReference.com, which might be of great assistance, since the podcasts doesn’t learn you have to spell the words you learn.

Actually, there is a premium membership, which hopefully gives you that as well, but I haven’t decided to buy one yet. I reckon I will though, because this was addictive :)


Hasta luego!! 

Fear of the Unknown.

We fear so much what we do not know, first of all the future.

No one knows what the future will bring, but we do our best to control it.


Losing control equals fear, and our brain relate fear to pain.

So, we automatically try to avoid ut, and regarding the future, we try to do what we know best, so that we avoid unknown situations which could bring fear upon us.

By repeating our old habits, instead of trying new things, we keep a feeling of safety, because we know what these habits will bring us.

Even if the habit is actually giving us an amount of negativity in life, they are safer than doing something new


To let go and seize the moment, is so much more difficult than not doing it, even if it brings pain not to do it. If you want to talk to another person, it can be harder to walk the steps over to her desk than to stay put at your own, even if the pain for not taking that walk is dreadful.


Why are we so afraid of the unknown?

Why do we stick to our old ways, even when they bring pain?


Because we relate to them as something we’ve done before, and even if that leads to sorrow, lonelyness and negative thoughts, breaking through is so scary that we choose the pain.

If you never try it, you'll never know.
Take that chance.
Break your habit.
Think new.
Just do it.
Trust yourself.
Have faith.


Love's Loopy Logic @ Psychology Today

DayDreaming

"Scientists believe daydreaming to be the brain's default setting" Reuters announces.

Phew.

Finally someone who takes my side ;)

The power of a smile

I've been reading in a great book lately...
It's nearly 80 years old, but the author, mr. Dale Carnegie, somehow managed to write down some everlasting truths which still apply just as they did back in the 1930s.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is an easy read, and in it mr. Carnegie writes down some facts about human interaction that are really obvious, but somehow we sometimes forget them.

I try to read a chapter every day. I first read through it quickly (like an ordinary book), and then I
go back and repeat them (with a pencil in my hand, ready to make notes and underline the important stuff).

Yesterday, I was reading about smiling. :)
The true, sincere smile which lights up our eyes, and which makes other people feel warm inside. It is so easy, and it can really change your day, and others' as well.

Try it tomorrow when you meet another person. The first person you'll probably meet, is yourself in the mirror. Do as Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) in The Last Boyscout, look yourself in the eye and say "smile you fuck". Or, just smile ;)

Just smiling alone actually gets you in a good mood. In a hospital expirement I heard about, they made ten people who suffered from depression smile for twenty minutes a couple of times daily. And their state actually changed, with no other input or stimulation. Just smiling (fake) made the brain happier, so the sincerity of the smile changed too.

If just a smile can do magic for you, imagine what it can do to another person you meet. Greet them with your warmest smile, and show them that you're happy to meet them. In doing so, you'll alter their state of mind, and they'll be glad they met you.
They'll also think warmly of you later, and they'll probably be in a better mood and feel better about themselves too. Can you achieve more in a day? :)

And another fact about smiling/laughing:
"When we laugh, endorphins (chemicals produced in the brain) are released, and those chemicals help us sense pleasurable events. when we feel good emotionally, it affects how we feel mentally and physically" (quote from ThunderGnome)

Here's some good links about smile and laughter:
Is Laughter the Best Medicine or Any Medicine at All? (Psi Chi)
Laughter is the Best Medicine (Richard G. Petty).
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Basic Summary.
.

Le Grand Content by Clemens Kogler

This you gotta see: Le Grand Content by Clemens Kogler  sdf.
Truly an excellent use of diagrams and tweaking effects to state a point.
Also, very simple and easy for the mind to absord, so it's a good example of a good presentation.

Also commented on: PresentationZen.com

P2P-television

Now would be a good time for some of the major media companies to look at new ways to reach audience.
With Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström (creators of Kazaa and Skype) using their skills and experience to develop a way to broadcast video using P2P network, the old fashion way is going to be old school pretty soon.

Joost, aka The Venice Project, will use the same peer2peer way of connecting computers for shared broadband as this guys have done with huge success before.
Instead of limiting the source of media to a huge server (which eventually will run out of resources/broadband when enough users connect), every user will share parts of the media to other users, thus making use of every bit available in every broadband cable around.

I believe this way of network sharing may be just the thing that jolts the larger media companies to think new.

I want to be able to search for programs which meet my requirements and interests, and immediatly be able to see them either on my computer, or on my tv.
Not just at home, but anywhere there's a wireless network available!

---
Visit Joost, aka The Venice Project
Read "Why Joost is good for tv" on Wired News asd
Read "Hands on with The Venice..." on Engadget
Read "Kazaa, Skype and now the Venice Project" on BusinessWeek

Some Blog-tools

I want to share some of the blog tools that got me started today, and which I find to be some great tools. I reckon these are just as valuable for the newbie as for the advanced blogger.

First, some starter guides I find valuable:
How to Evangelize a Blog by Guy Kawasaki
Blogging Starter Checklist by Rajesh Setty

Next, some really cool tools:
Veotag:
http://www.veotag.com
Example: Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start

iStockPhoto:
http://www.istockphoto.com

Technorati:
http://www.technorati.com


And I'm currently reading my self up on making a dime (without any readers yet, it's a little optimistic, but hey):
Guy Kawasaki's experiences from first year of blogging.

Getting Started

I got myself a Technorati Profile, which means, I'll be invading the blogmosphere any day now.

To let you know what I have in mind for this site, please refer to the topic:
Developing Me.

Getting Started
I know myself, but not nearly as well as I should. I have discovered that recently, and I am trying to change that.
I don't want to be a stranger to my own self! I want to feel fullfilment, I want to be complete, and I want to know why I am who I am.
I also want to know how I can become who I want to be, and how I can complete my goals. First though, I want to figure out what my goals are.

The last year or so I have discovered that I am not who I want to be anymore. I've felt like I've been drifting away from myself, so for the past month I've started my journey towards selv-discovery and realisation.

I've discovered alot. From who I was a couple a years ago, and compared to the future goals I had then, I was far from it.
My emotions are in unbalance, and not as positive as I'd like them to be.
My self-confidence level is far from as good as it should be.
My body doesn't look as good as it should.
My economy is better than it used to be, but think I can reach for more.
My relationship to friends and family is not good enough.

I will explain and explore all these "My's" in later posts.
I will try to make my goals clear, and use this as a tool to follow through.
Also, I will write down my experiences, so that others can use this as a tool for themselves.