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?