A public service announcement: Upon learning that Dave Cridland describes identi.ca as a snark broadcast facility and claims to use it that way, too, I have decided that when I cannot repress my snarkiness, letting it out at identi.ca/arnt is acceptable.

Maybe even good. rant.g/rant has helped me regain calmness more than once.

Stronger: I have two desks, and both are now reasonably tidy.

I've had a tidy desk before, such as when I moved to a new office in 1998, but this time no force majeure is involved. I tidied my desks, and kept at it until I was done. Three days.

I congratulate myself. My mother would, too, if I were to tell her.

Once upon a time, Norwegian residents could apply for a personal .priv.no domain by sending email to the hostmaster. I did so.

Times have changed, registrars and proper procedures now complexicate such things. Still, those who have .priv.no domains can keep them, (more…)

The icon was drawn by Brodd Nesset, based on exactly two sentences about what I wanted. I like it very much; it represents exactly what I want it to represent, and in a manner which represents me. Very grateful.

That's good, because posting this on my birthday would be a little boorish.

Every programmer has bad days. Days on which no code wants to be written, days spent tinkering with the CSS of a blog noone reads, or posting something to said blog.

Every programmer can do that. It takes a very special kind to
☑ finish a long posting on a subject which interests noone
☑ post it to a blog which noone can read, due to the sad state of IPv6
☑ tinker with the CSS of that blog
☑ — using CSS3 text-justify, which no browsers support
☑ and finally to reconfigure the blog to withstand heavy load, as if IPv6 deployment were to happen before 2011. All on one day.

Canter & Siegel posted a few thousand spams (the famous green card spams), probably helped by someone with imagination and technical skill. Long and tiresome threads discussing the legality, morality and all other aspects of this resulted. Canter & Siegel then tried again on a different subject, this time without able help.

On the same evening, my friend Chris Owen posted a 300-line diatribe, rebutting something or other point by point. I clicked. I just couldn't bear to read it, and decided: It's time to stop discussing this and do something. (more…)

Postings to this blog represent the opinion of Arnt Gulbrandsen, arnt@gulbrandsen.priv.no, Schweppermannstraße 8, 81671 München, Germany, fax +49 89 45029758. If something sounds more like fact than opinion, then it represents my understanding at the time of writing, no more.

Links to other sites worked as intended at the time of writing, but of course I cannot vouch for their accuracy or veracity at the time of reading.

There is no comment form here, because German law requires moderation, and in my opinion comments aren't worth that horrible chore.

Please send me email if necessary.