History not forgotten

Screenshot from my first blog, January 2001

Screenshot from my first blog, January 2001


We must always be mindful of the past, lest we repeat it.

Almost 12 years ago I started writing my first blog. It was like most blogs at that time; links, thoughts… not much more than are jotted down in a tweet or a status update on Facebook today. It slowly changed through the years that passed. People started writing longer texts about what they cared about. Politics, studies, technology, games — or just the simple diary.

This evening I’ve been sitting still, plowing through the archives of posts I’ve committed to the glowing bits streaming through the intertubes. Spurred on by Jill of jill/txt, writing a chapter in an upcoming anthology about Blogging and its history in Norway by Kristian Bjørkelo.

It just so happens that I was one of the first bloggers in Norway. Never one of the best, nor one of the known. Still, I have fought – nail and tooth – to find some of my lost texts. I have restored, for now, my two first months of writing to this blog. And almost eclipsed them in length by this text.

Go read Internet history in my archives. January 2001 and February 2001 are there, with more coming.

When XP Mode asks for password

Windows Virtual PC in Start Menu

I’m using XP Mode in Windows 7 to run some programs that need access to a specific network via a VPN connection. Today I was stuck after messing up and having to reboot the Virtual PC instance it is running in.

As it booted up, I suddenly was stopped at the login screen of Windows XP, where it demanded the password for XPMUser, the resident XP Mode user. Not having set this up beforehand I did another restart of XP Mode before heading off to my friend, the Internet.

The Internet did, as usual, call other people like me strange things, and insisted I did set a password when I installed XP mode, and that I more or less was lost in a sea of strange and risky options.

One useful and non-invasive suggestion from Microsoft TechNet’s user c a m u s o said to start any application installed in XP Mode from Windows 7 (the host machine).

I tried the following with success:

  1. Close (hibernate) XP Mode when it was asking for password
  2. Start Windows Virtual PC (not XP Mode) from Windows 7 (the host machine)
  3. Selected Windows XP Mode.vmcx
  4. Clicked Settings on the menu line above
  5. Exited Settings and Windows Virtual PC
  6. Started XP Mode (which took me straight to desktop)

Games for Windows LIVE rant

In response to Rutskarn’s recent rant… My “recent” meeting with Games for Windows LIVE ended almost in tears. Documented for posterity:

I once wanted to try out GTA IV , having found it cheap on Steam. Since Steam is a service I feel I know and trust, I got it and was promptly told that I couldn’t autosave without a Games for Windows LIVE account.

First I was flabbergasted, having met LIVE before:

&%¤&¤%#%¤ Windows Live! There should be a warning against it in the Steam description so I could avoid it! I should get paid for the bother!

Then I read the small print, and had to redact my earlier statement. A bit, at least:

Oh, yes – it does say so, on the bottom of the steam store page, small print. Better register *YET* another address then

My previous Games for Windows account strangely did not work, so I tried creating a new one:

When logging in it failed. Ask for a new pw it said “NO ACCOUNT” when I try to make one, it says ALREADY REGISTERED!

After a bit more, I managed to get a LIVE account, little did I know… this was no Gamer account:

Managed to create a Microsoft #Live account. Why can’t I login from the game now? There is internet, game’s not blocked! WTF!

But with a little help from a co-worker over twitter, I managed to get a Gamer account linked in with the LIVE one. It just took another three tries at registering email adresses, and two more passwords to remember. I’ve forgotten them now, by the way. Yay me. Oh, and that included having to register for Wassnames… RockStar Social Club:

steam+gta4+live+games live+social club+linking+install live client=enabled autosave+no more time to play tonight

Oh, and that live thing needs its client, and that must be updated – and that requires reboots…

Actually needed 2xclient update for games for windows #live. I’m memorising live enabled games to avoid buying in the future

So now I can play GTA IV (and also Fuel again)… but then I noticed that playing GTA without a Xbox controller is kind of hard. And silly. So I don’t.

End of year list

It is the last day of the year (indeed), and since I haven’t had any halfway decent posts this whole year, I thought I’d just as well end it with a list. Not at all inspired by Łukasz.

Favorite game of 2010
I haven’t played very many games released in 2010 this year. I had a quick try at Pokémon Soul Silver, after playing through Diamond mainly during travels the last years. It was better, especially with the pedometer adding gameplay while away from the places and times where playing digital games are appropriate. Still, it was mainly more of the same.

As time passed, Elemental: War of Magic was released, and it’s features were the stuff dreams are made of. Mainly dreams made on the memories of Master of Magic of old. Still, missing features and bugs made this less than what I had hoped for. Still, Stardock has delivered before, and with the recent 1.1 release, the game starts to look a little better. Just waiting for multiplayer support.

Judging by time spent playing, Civilization V is a really good game. I mean &emdash; with the Hex based map, limit of one military unit per tile and… well, that’s about it. Bugs, balance issues… I mean, why can’t I play a multiplayer game with someone who didn’t have the same DLC’s as me? That, and a few balance issues has been fixed in a recent patch. Now… why can’t we use leaders from DLC’s in a multiplayer game when all players have the DLC in question?

The bottom line would still be that Minecraft is the game that has brought me the most… feelings. Played as a game is still limited, as there are few late game elements (after making defenses and mining for elements to make better defenses). It is a fun sanbox, both for making fantastic stuff for oneself, and for playing together with children. With the work that is being put into multiplayer, and eventually into gameplay, this is something I’ll keep returning to. Possibly every week.

Favorite book of 2010
This year that has passed has seen me reading mostly old books, both the ones I’ve read before and “new” old books. Of the newer stuff I’ve enjoyed books like Unseen Academicals by Sir Terry Pratchett, Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson and, by recommendation, Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Still, most favorite book is impossible. I’ll put down Terry Pratchett as my favorite writer this year.

Favorite Movie of 2010
Oh. Right. I’m not sure I’ve seen any movies made this year. Like the other years before this. Like any at all. I kind of saw the relatively new Sherlock Holmes movie while traveling by bus earlier this year. Nice Steampunk Action/Comedy – but not much of an Sherlock Holmes movie. So instead I’ll put up The First Great Train Robbery as my favorite. 1979? Oh, right. Well, well…

Favorite TV Show of 2010
I’m just about thrice as happy watching television as watching movies. So I’ll share this one between the odd episode of Mythbusters and some year old episode of Top Gear. Or possibly the first episode of The Muppet Show. Oh, that is not especially recent is it? Oh, well.

Favorite Gift received this year
A hard match between all the games I bought myself on Steam and GOG, and what my mother knitted me. No, actually – no contention. Here’s my favorite gift:

Knitted Totoro

Knitted Totoro by Tesha

Happy new year,

Might 2011 be a better year for you all than 2010 was. Because, there is no need to wish for anything worse is it?

Solution to “Error starting modern compiler”

Right. So then I had the chance to open a old project in in eclipse today. From an old workspace. Tests still ran, code looked just as bad as badass as before.

Running the clean-build target through ant produced a message I haven’t seen before, though.

C:\Users\tormod.haugen\workspace\PROJECT\build.xml:38: Error starting modern compiler

Luckily Google was just a browser away, and I discovered through pitr’s blog that I needed to update the JVM used by Eclipse to the same as pointed at by JAVA_HOME.

I guess there can be more to it, and I guess you could override JAVA_HOME for that build, but this worked. Thanks.

Java plugin in Firefox under Ubuntu 9.04

I needed to install a Java plugin for Firefox under Ubuntu 9.04 (beta). This didn’t happen by itself when I installed sun-java6-plugin, but a quick search showed me what Eirik Hoem found out a year ago.

Or, as Karl Trygve said in a comment; messing about in /usr is usually not a good idea – the link could be made in /usr/lib/firefox-3.0/plugins, and the plugin would then be available for all users on the computer.

Linking the java plugin to Firefox (paths might vary a bit, depending on Java versions):

cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/.default/plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

I didn’t have Icedtea installed, but I do use OpenJDK for development. Works now, at least. :D

Promises, promises

I can only say; don’t make too many promises. I said I should blog a it more yesterday – but reality has made it so that my only working computer at home is my Aspire One, and the time I had set off for blogging and fixing up a theme download went into a drain marked “fix desktop computer”. Will be back.

Skype on Acer Aspire One

Yesterday I installed Skype on my Acer Aspire One. I did it on the Linpus Lite Distro, and it was quick and painless. Everything I had read up until yesterday had prepared me for a difficult and time consuming task. I set at it with grim persistence, though – I needed Skype, and my desktop is crashing every one or two hours now.

With a bit more research it all looked brighter. It seems as if Linpus is built on Fedora (6?), and then I could at least use the rpm (package) from skype.com. There still was a few troubling hints that I had to download it and install with yam – getting every prerequisite package before I could get it installed.

Reality was even easier than I had guessed, and about as easy as I could hope. I located the terminal and changed the root password, fixing a system menu to the right mouse button, as described by Laptop Magazine. After that I downloaded the rpm package from the net – and it opened by default in the package manager. A few ok‘s later, and it had installed all dependencies and skype itself.

I’m still planning on getting easy peasy installed on it later, but I guess I’ll wait until I got time, money and inspiration to get more memory, a SD card and a bigger battery pack for it. Then I probably got a < 1.0 kg computer with almost as much processing power as my aging desktop…

Start of a new year

Then there was a new year. I mentioned, at the end of last year, that I wanted to structure my personal projects a bit more, to actually get something out of the time I spent on them. And not, like usually, jump from one to the next without getting anything done.

In that respect I plan on getting this blog re-themed. I’m jumping to the Simpla theme, and I will be documenting my changes through the process of making it my own. I’ll try and preserve some of the touches of my current theme, inspired by Hemingway for WordPress. This will be my focus for the next two weeks. No other major project will be worked on during that period.

Two other announcements are; My two month goal is to get the blog up and running nicely again, with at least three posts each week. I need this practise in writing, and I also see that in it’s current state this blog leave much to be desired in terms of content. I’ll try and get something good going here, and would love feedback in the time ahead – if nothing more than a quick comment or a word on twitter.

The other minor thing is that my goal for 2009 is to get better at languages. I’ll try and get from a skill level of nothing and up to awful in Japanese. Why that one? I have a few reasons, the most important is that I like its sound. Or rather, acquaintances of mine has rekindled my interest. I was looking for evening classes, but they sadly fall in on the same days and time that my SO is attending choir practise this spring. I’ll go for the cd/workbook courses, and hope to report on my progress as I improve. Don’t expect anything the next two weeks, though – I’m working on my blog… ;)