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Unless you've been living under a rock or in a cave or otherwise completely inaccessible and unexposed to any type of news update during the last week, you probably know that Michael Jackson died recently.

Now, I know MJ was a great artist and dancer, but I also feel that he indeed was quirky at best as a person. Okay, fine, he probably was a pedohile (or at the very least had an extremely childish mind - way beyond the far end of normal, that is). Plus, his head in the recent couple of decades hasn't been completely in the game, considering the plastic surgery and modifications (as I seriously doubt anyone has a chronic disease that permanently changes the color of your skin).

But now that he has passed away, I feel it's time to forgive him for most of his quirkyness and remember him as the great artist, composer, choreographer, dancer and music producer that he was. I'm not saying we should let every detail go, but we should at the very least tone down the bad things about him for a while.

Just let his family, friends and fans mourn his passing in peace, mmmkay?

In the recent times, we shouldn't forget that other celebrities have passed away as well; I'm of course talking about Farah Fawcett and Ed McMahon. Although Farah Fawcett wasn't that big in Norway, and Ed McMahon even less known (bordering on unknown), I've seen references to the latter in other media (cartoons, movies, TV series and such). I know that these are all big names in the U.S. (and somewhat smaller in the rest of the world as well), and their passing should also be shown the same respect as if your best friend's brother/sister/father/mother just passed away. In this entertainment-hungry world, big celebrity names might as well be just that close (as long as you don't act on that closeness in a stalker-ish manner, of course).

On the brighter side of things, I'm lifting off in the direction of the U.S. of A. in a little less than 10 days and 17 hours from now. The first leg of the journey starts from the Ålesund airport at 10:40am (Norway time) Sunday next week, and I'm expected to land in Las Vegas (after an overnight in Orlando) at around 11pm the following Monday.

If you're curious about the overnight in Orlando, it's by my own arrangement and design, considering it was cheaper to book a flight (with return flight), first from Ålesund to Orlando, and then from Orlando to Las Vegas, rather than arranging direct flight routes from Ålesund to Las Vegas to Orlando and back to Ålesund. Here's the full flight route, in case you're curious:
Sunday, July 12: Ålesund, Norway - Oslo, Norway - Philadelphia, PA - Orlando, FL (total time: about 16 hours)
Monday, July 13: Orlando, FL - Denver, CO - Las Vegas, NV (total time: about 9.5 hours, 3.5 of them waiting in Denver - arriving in Las Vegas at 11pm)
Monday, July 20: Las Vegas, NV - Denver, CO - Orlando, FL (total time: also about 9.5 hours, and almost 4 of them waiting in Denver again - arriving in Orlando at almost 1am)
Monday, July 27: Orlando, FL - Philadelphia, PA - Oslo, Norway - Ålesund, Norway (total time: about 15 hours, arriving home at around 2pm the following Tuesday)

As you can imagine, it's going to be a major bitch of travelling, but I'm trying to focus more on the fun I'll have in the days between those long flights.

Some things have already been planned, some things are semi-planned (will do, but undecided on which day), and some things are yet to be decided.

As I've said previously, I'm staying at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Blue Man Group fans will already recognize that name from the fact that their Vegas show is at that very same hotel (which was also the main reason I chose that hotel). I'm planning on catching a show with them while in Vegas, and maybe even a show with Penn & Teller (I'm a bit of a fan of them too). No idea which day(s) that will be, though.

If you're in the Las Vegas area and want to hang out with a fat Norwegian guy, do let me know.

And as I'm staying at the Loews Pacific Resort Hotel in Orlando, I'm going to spend a few days at the Universal Studios Orlando park (I do have a few attractions I definitely want to catch while there). The hotel package I selected also includes a Blue Man Group show Wednesday evening (the 9pm show on the 22nd), plus the big fan meet is on Saturday, so those are the only things that are locked in.

And yesterday, I bought myself a ticket for two days at Disney World (I wanted to check out a certain selection of attractions at Disney Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom and Epcot - and yes, considering two days spread over 3 theme parks, I did add the Park Hopper option to my tickets), considering it's a 25-30 minute drive from my hotel at Universal. I'm not really a rollercoaster guy, so it's going to be mostly 3D movies, simulator rides and a couple of galleries and tours at both Disney World and Universal Studios. In particular, I'm at least catching the MuppetVision ride at Disney Hollywood Studios, the Simpsons ride at Universal and the studio backlot tours at both. I've planned it to a point where I have a specific list of attractions I want to check out (some of them even clearly marked out on a printout of the park maps found online). I've yet to decide which two days I'll spend at Disney World, though, but I will have to find out when I arrive, as I have to let the Mears service know at least 24 hours before going to the Disney parks (I've already booked the attraction shuttle ride from my hotel to the attraction and later back to the hotel).

Not to worry, this painful planning process is only a rough outline on how to get the most fun out of every park hour available.

And so far, I don't know about the quality of the Mears service, but I liked the way I could make my shuttle reservation (and payment) online and way in advance. The price wasn't too bad, either - from the airport to my hotel (round-trip) cost me $29, plus $18 per attraction transport (two days to Disney World), a total of $65 for all the transportation I'll need in Orlando. And I can even make adjustments to the whole itinerary until the day before my first arrival (judging by the time listed in my confirmation e-mail, I'd have to say about 12 hours before my first use of their service). All pre-paid and ready when I finally arrive. One less thing to think about. I'll get back to you on how that went, though.

And before you start suggesting rental cars: I don't drive. I don't even have a license. For now, I'm using buses to get around in Ålesund (and the occasional taxi), and I'm doing just fine.

And again, if you want to hang out while I'm in Las Vegas or Orlando, just let me know.

I'm also on Twitter now, giving the occasional update.

I've also booked cell phone rental (actually just a SIM card, as I'm using my own phone) while I'm in the U.S., but I won't know the number until next Wednesday (when the rental company starts shipping the SIM card to the Orlando airport hotel where I'll have my first overnight stay). I'll publish that number on Twitter when I know (and maybe here, depending on whether I remember doing it).

I've already planned (and paid for) most of my summer vacation this year. This time, the trip goes to..... (drumroll)...... USA!

That's right, I'm going overseas to spend one week in Las Vegas and one week in Orlando. I'm excited already! On July 12, I leave the comfort of my home for connecting flights to Orlando, just to spend one night at the airport hotel while waiting for another flight that takes me to Las Vegas on the 13th (via Denver), where I'll be spending my first week (checking in on a Monday and checking out on the next Monday). I then have a return flight back to Orlando, where I'm also attending the Orlando Monster Meet for Blue Man Group fans on the 25th. My return flights back home are on the 27th, so technically, I'll be spending a total of 15 days in the US.

If you're in any of these areas, do give me a signal in advance so we can meet up.

Between the 13th and the 20th, I'm staying at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas (where there's a big show with Blue Man Group as well).
Between the 20th and the 27th, I'm staying at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando (right next to Universal Orlando).

I can hardly wait!

For those few who follow me on Twitter, I got the new puppets on Saturday.

After spending a few minutes unpacking them, I got slightly disappointed when I started trying them on... I could barely get my hand in there! That is, I could barely fit my hand inside one of them, I had to give up trying on the other. And the one I was able to fit my hand inside, it was a tight fit. I had to spend almost a full minute on getting it on, and a full minute getting it off, both requiring some effort of tugging and wiggling. Judging by that, and the fact that one of the attached labels said it was intended for children 5+, I'm thinking these are more suited for - exactly - children.

This also means that the initial plans regarding which characters to use will have to be scrapped. I do have some puppet patterns to work from, but that means I'll have to wait until I unpack my sewing kits before I continue, and create a new character from scratch. It's not too hard, but it's a time-consuming process. My sewing kits (mainly, the outside fabric of the puppets) are packed pending my room redecoration, which in turn means that the original time table has to be extended a fair bit.

Also, the puppets I received were not true Muppet Whatnots per se (although they did have the Muppet look), as they both had their features sewn or glued on (non-removable).

Though I won't be able to use these puppets too much myself, that doesn't mean I won't feature them on the show once in a while. I just have to figure out how to perform them without too much strain on me. One of my ideas for this is to use some sort of rod control to perform the mouth from a few inches below the puppet neck. Another idea involves the training of a youngster in the art of puppeteering (which will be a lot harder to find in this area), so this boy or girl can perform the Whatnot characters alongside my own designs. Judging by my own hand size and how hard I had to work just to get my hand inside, I'd say the best puppeteer age would be around 13-16 for these (or even up to 19-20), or simply just someone with smaller hands, considering my mom was able to fit them on her own hand without seemingly too much trouble. I'm not too comfortable with the idea of training someone else in the art, as I don't think of myself much as a teacher.

In any case, there will be no training of new puppeteers by me until the new puppet is created. I currently have fleece (skin) fabric in dark blue (like marine blue) and light blue (blue like sunny skies), so far I've worked with the light blue while creating the half-made ones; one puppet head with ugly glue spots (my first attempt), and one puppet head not yet attached to a body (second attempt, where I also discovered why the puppet pattern was specific enough in the step-by-step process that the cardboard and foam rubber inside mouth was glued on after attaching the body) - both are of ProjectPuppet.com's "Glorified Sock Puppet" pattern.

I haven't given up on the planned show just yet, though. I just have to recast it, that's all. I'm now thinking that the next puppet I create, which will now be headlining the show, should either have a roly shape or a melonhead shape. I already have both of these patterns, I just have to decide which one. I'll get to that later, though (but I'm certainly open for suggestions).

So to sum things up, I was a little disappointed about the puppets I finally received, but I haven't given up on neither the puppet show or the Muppet Whatnot puppets I bought. I just need to rethink some of my original plans.

I'm about to start a new hobby project of mine, which has been a long time coming. I have something of a blurry vision of what it will be like, but I have somewhat of an idea. I don't, however, have a more clear idea of the name of this pet project of mine.

First off, let me just blurt out what the project actually is about. For some time now, I've been "secretly" training my skill as a puppeteer. This comes heavily into play in this new project, which is, in general, about a group of puppets living together and vlogging (video blogging) on YouTube about their lives using a webcam. The project is not meant to be daily, but hopefully at the very least a weekly segment will come out of this, and the current plan is to eventually expand this to live segments on BlogTV (or similar site) and to some segment parts filmed outdoors and on the move (to show off some sights and on vacation). These are future plans, but it will all start from a webcam in front of a computer. The starting premise might change, though, depending on the name suggestions I get. There might also be a possibility I'll make some minor changes to the format these segments are produced.

To start with, this group of puppets (both performed by myself) will consist of two male characters (the puppets are actually in transit from across the pond at the time of this post). These will not necessarily be performed simultaneously (not without some heavy post-production editing, at least), but the segments will be improvised upon a partial pre-written script (which will be more like a summary of events to talk about).

Now all I need is a name for these vlogs. The name needs to be short enough to be memorable and easy to type as a URL (short domain name as well). I won't necessarily use the full name suggested by my reader(s), I just need a few starting points to brainstorm my way out of. Please note that if the name I choose isn't available for registration (as a username at YouTube and BlogTV, and as a domain name), I won't use it. I might consider the name if you've already registered the domain name for it and is prepared to donate it to the project (or at least sell it at GoDaddy.com's retail price), but that's not a given.

The puppets themselves should arrive here in about two weeks (or a little less), but I also have some room cleaning and redecoration to do before that time arrives. I will also have to do some test scripting, test filming and general preparations before the actual project starts up. There's really no telling when this first video will be released, but I'm setting my sights on being ready for mid-April or the beginning of May.

I know there aren't a lot of people reading this, but if you guys would e-mail me a list of suggestions that pop into their minds, I'd really appreciate it. Those who provide suggestions that are used, either in part or in full, will of course get listed in the (short) end credits unless you don't want me to.

I'll be accepting name suggestions up to the point where I announce the name of it in a new blog post here.

Big thanks to anyone who participate.

Happy Belated New Year!

OK, so we're almost a full week into 2009, so this blogged New Year greeting is 5 days late, three weeks early or even two months or more early, depending on where in the world you are (and which New Year you celebrate).

I thought I'd bring on last year's Christmas catch (ie. the X-mas presents of 2008):
- DVDs: "WALL-E", "Diamonds Are Forever", "Live And Let Die", "The Man With The Golden Gun", "You Only Live Twice" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
- 2 large tea cups (in a certain series I'm collecting)
- 4 coffee cups in another series, along with 4 small tea bag saucers (for used tea bags, essentially) and a set of tea spoons
- SteelSeries 5 1/2 H headset
- a decorative cat and a pair of decorative musicians (the latter pair are Christmas decorations, too)

I did plan on posting this small list on Christmas Eve while the catch was still fresh in mind, but what the hey.. And yes, in Norway, we unwrap our presents on the evening (late afternoon, around 5-6-ish) on Christmas Eve.

Today, my parents started taking down the Christmas decoration for the season. In Norway, these come down around January 6th (the 13th day of Christmas), but we decided to start a little early this year, considering we already had time to spare.

And I'm preparing a special surprise for later this week. I'll give a small hint by saying I've started taking up a hobby that includes sewing and performing arts. That's probably already saying a lot, but I did get properly started on it just before Christmas. I hope I'll be able to show the end result by the end of this week. One of my sisters turns 11 this coming weekend, and I hope to have my little special project completed by that time. The completed project won't be a present, of course, but I do hope it will be a nice surprise even so.

Hopefully, she doesn't read my blog (yet), so I can reveal that her birthday present from me this year is a full year's subscription of a biweekly horse magazine aimed at teenagers. No surprise, she's very much into horses, so I hope she'll appreciate it very much.

Well, that's pretty much it for this time around. I hope it doesn't take another few months for my next update.

It seems like every time I make a blog post, I'm doing it out of plain guilt. Last time I posted anything (and I do mean anything) was back in May, and even that one was long overdue.

Okay, I think I need to do this one thing at a time; what's new and my opinion on current world events....

My personal life
Still no news to speak of, I'm afraid. I'm still single, still looking (slightly), and feeling kinda desperate. Thankfully, I'm able to hide my desperation - I'm told that desperate guys are even more likely to be ignored by attractive females (at least in my target age group; twenties). Aside from a ticking biological clock, everything is just about the same.

Computers
I finally worked up the nerve to go for a brand new laptop last month. I had been drooling a little over the Dell Studio laptop range for a few weeks, and considering my then-current laptop had just passed its third birthday, I thought it was about time to renew myself. The old one was also a Dell (Inspiron), but it was starting to run a bit slow again, and that's after a 1GB upgrade the year before. After some upgrading in the configuration menus of the Dell online shop, I ended up with the following new features (not on my old one); 15.4 inch widescreen with WLED backlighting and up to 1440x900 resolution (in pixels), BluRay reader and DVD-writer combo drive (with slot feeding), HDMI port, 4 USB ports (the old one had "only" 3), Firewire, built-in Bluetooth, built-in smartcard reader, built-in 2MP webcam, built-in microphone, infrared remote control (a standard Windows Media Center one), Wi-Fi Catcher (which can detect the presence of a wireless network without having to boot up Windows), fingerprint reader, and, of course, Windows Vista Ultimate edition. That, combined with Office 2007 Ultimate obtained from my employer, makes up quite a laptop. The price wasn't too shabby, either (considering the features included). The multimedia keys are quite fancy as well. OK, you'd have to see them to know what I mean.

Not to worry, the old laptop will also have a renewed life. Once I'm 100% sure I've transfered everything from the old one to the new, I'm reinstalling the laptop (with the system recovery CD/function which basically resets the laptop back to factory condition), and I think I'll lend it to my stepdad. He has yet to have a laptop of his own (he has just been sharing my mom's laptop when she's not using it herself).

Work life
Meh, just about the same here as well, even though the projects we're getting involved with are getting motivation up a bit. I feel I'll be with this company for a while longer. I've even put my own home-business on semi-hiatus just to avoid catching focus from any new customers, and to let me maintain focus on IntraHouse as well as other half-done projects.

Puppetry
I've started to dabble a little in puppetry in the last 6 months or so (practicing mainly "sans-puppet", ie. with just my hand), with inspiration from the Muppets, and I'm working myself up mentally to buy the final few components that enable me to build a puppet of my own. I've already bought small sheets of fleece (two shades of blue), felt and cardboard to use as skin, mouth and jaw skeleton (in that order, mind you), and I'm just missing foam rubber to use as insides. From before, I already had bought me a premade puppet (mid-teen boy with blue sweater, jeans, keychain and one pierced ear - you might notice it if you go looking for hand puppets yourself), but I also wanted a puppet I could completely call my own. Granted, I did buy instruction sheet and template for the type of puppet I'm about to build ("glorified sock puppet"), and the materials I've bought is likely to last for two complete puppets, one in each shade of blue. This will tell me whether I'm skilled enough to make the puppets by myself (or at least able to keep my interest in building it from the ground up), or if I'm better off just making a design on paper (or a generic design concept) to pass off to an actual (and more skilled) puppet builder. If my skills are up to it, my next step will be to buy larger quantities of the materials and fabric dye to create variance in puppet colors. Also worth mentioning is that the two different shades of blue I've already bought are also of two different fleece textures. I will be buying rolls of white fleece of whichever type works out the best. At least it's somewhat of a starting point, but judging by my usual progress, I'll be heftily surprised if I get started on building one of these puppets before Christmas. So there.

Website back-end
I'm not sure I want to think about it. The project is still in the starting blocks, and the starter forgot his starter gun at home. I'm trying to push a little through every once in a while, though.

Kicesie
Yep, I've been working with her and her website since May as the technical administrator for the forum section of "Kicesie's Closet" - along with a couple of other administrators covering other aspects of the forum (I just handle the technical part). She has already revealed a little bit to the readers of her MySpace blog, but with the most recent design change for the forum section, she's probably going to introduce her YouTube viewers to the website by the end of September. No promises, though; she's always busy with several things happening at once. Even so, I feel it has been an interesting journey and a quite interesting project to be involved with so far. It has certainly opened my eyes to a couple of things, as well as situations and possible real-life settings I was unaware of.

War on terrorism
Plain and simple, it's not working. At least not in the way that was intended. Tourists coming in to the U.S. are almost seen as possible terrorists until proven otherwise. The latest idea from the United States customs officials - giving them full authority to confiscate a traveler's laptop on suspicion of music or movie piracy - well, it just gives me one more reason against taking a vacation through the U.S. The so-called Patriot Act is also more of a joke. Simply put, it enables the American government to grab any person hostile to the U.S. and even bypass the U.S. legal system completely when accusing that individual of acts of terrorism - even if that person is completely innocent. "Innocent until proven guilty" my sphincter ani externus. Anyone supporting the "Patriot Act" deserves a good slap in the face. I'd like to be the one doing the slapping myself, but I'm afraid there's just too many faces in need of such a facial impact. I won't encourage you to do it for me, but at least make those who support it to provide a valid reason for why they support it before handing out the face slap. Just "stopping terrorists" isn't a valid reason; there needs to be a more well-thought-out reason that will avoid an immediate face slap.

War on piracy
The war on piracy is yet another joke. RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BSA and their likes are showing mafia tendencies in their hunt for pirates. They just don't seem to understand that their behavior hurts the artists and companies they represent more than they're helping them. I've only seen good examples to combat piracy in recent years, and the "Stealing is piracy" preview ad required to be shown on most DVDs nowadays (an ad that can't be skipped, I might add) is not it. Downloading a movie from the Internet is not the same as grabbing a DVD from the shelf in a store; you'd have to subtract the cost of printing and logistics to even begin comparing those losses.

Personally, I think the only way to combat piracy is to redirect the ad campaign a bit. The way it is today, piracy equals criminal activity on the same level of hell as drug dealers, molesters and murderers. Why can't there just be a campaign that says something like "if you buy the movie on DVD, you're encouraging the producers to continue making great movies" or in similar terms for music? Recent laws and the increasing use of DRM just alienates your customers and fans instead of stopping pirates in their tracks. In fact, both the implementation of laws (and legal threats in general) as well as DRM only motivates pirates even more. Just to use one example: Spore is heavily "infested" with DRM, which requires you to have an Internet connection at least every 10 days, or your game stops working. Spore can also just be installed 3 times; meaning, if your computer is being reinstalled or you switch to using a laptop more than twice, you'll have to call EA phone support and beg them to reset the installation counter. You can already see these effects by searching for the game on Amazon.com; the game only has two stars or less (out of possible five), just because of the DRM use. The cracked version of Spore supplied by pirates has been reverse engineered to remove both of these "features" - and is subsequentally DRM free. Also, you've probably seen these FBI warnings and intro on several DVDs, right? The pirated versions do not include any of these, as those warnings are just in the way. Is it any wonder people would rather go for pirated games, software, movies and music?

I personally own roughly 770 movies and TV series on DVD, but I've also downloaded "illegally" from pirate sites. That goes also for some of the music in my MP3 collection. In the case of Weird Al, I downloaded his latest CD from a Russian website (one that charges a small sum for each song to cover their bandwidth bills). I thought the quality of it was so good, I actually bought the full CD from Amazon.com a short while later. And in the case of movies, I've downloaded several from pirate sites. The movies that were good, I've later bought on DVD (legally), as was the case with Chicken Little. The movies that were not so good, I haven't bothered to spend my money on (out of respect to the producers, I'll avoid naming these). Some have turned out to be "a little above average" (but not "great"), and I'll just be on the lookout for these at a bargain bin or during sales campaigns at a number of online stores I normally use.

A little tip to both music producers and movie producers: if you make it good quality, people are more likely to buy. And when it comes to those who only download stuff, you can't stop it. The way producers and industry professionals are fighting piracy can be compared to standing downstream trying to stop the river flow equipped with two regular-sized sporks. Or trying to catch tadpoles with a spear. Or trying to catch a mosquito with a pair of uncooked spaghetti sticks. You choose the analogy. In any case, it's not working. The so-called economic losses due to pirates are actually not due to lost sales because of pirating; it's rather due to the cost of hunting down pirates. You're actually spending more money on catching the pirates than what the material is actually worth.

And religion, too ("Imagine" by John Lennon)
I tend to think my religious beliefs are quite out of the ordinary, and doesn't seem to fit any of the organized religions around the world. Without going too deep into it, I'll just say that my beliefs are scientifically based, with elements of Star Wars as well as spirituality. I'm not saying that Star Wars is all true, I'm just saying there are elements of logic in terms of the portrayal of The Force. I personally believe that my beliefs are the real truth, but I also believe that not all of the truth has been uncovered. I guess that categorizes me as an "agnostic".

That said, I don't believe the rest of the world is wrong; I see them as different observations and interpretations of the truth, simply observed and interpreted by people in ancient times, without the same level of insight into science as we do today. I also believe that the Earth has been visited by extra-terrestrial beings in the past, although not as often as some claim.

Homosexuality
Basically, I'm fine with it, even though I'm not homosexual myself. Others think that homosexuality is a disease or even contageous, considering that more and more "come out of the closet" in recent times. It's not contageous; times are changing, and more people are comfortable with exposing their true feelings to the public rather than closing them in. Some also say that homosexuality is a sin according to the bible. Let's just analyze the main passages of the old testament, shall we? For the sake of simplicity, I'm using the New International Version in English:

Leviticus 18:22: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable. Fair enough, as chapter 18 goes into forbidden sexual relations, incest in particular (verses 6 through 17), as well as adultery (verse 18 goes into your sister-in-law: "Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living." -- and verse 20: "Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her."), bestiality (verse 23), sacrifice (verse 21: "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.") and women on their period (verse 19: "Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period."). And if we're supposed to look down on each passage equally, we'd also have to really look into what we're doing today:
- Leviticus 19:3: Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God. -- Teenagers arguing with their parents are just as much sinners as homosexuals.
- Leviticus 19:4: Do not turn to idols or make gods of cast metal for yourselves. I am the LORD your God. -- So we need to remove all idols and religious icons?
- Leviticus 19:5-8: When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the LORD, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up. If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is impure and will not be accepted. Whoever eats it will be held responsible because he has desecrated what is holy to the LORD; that person must be cut off from his people. -- In sort, food must be sacrificed to the "Man upstairs", and be eaten the same or next day. Anyone picking up leftovers from the fridge or freezer two days later will have to be chased out of the city.
- Leviticus 19:15: Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. -- That's OK. We don't need any lawyers and lobbyists, anyway.
- Leviticus 19:27: Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. -- Meaning; no shaving or trimming.
- Leviticus 19:28: Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD. -- Meaning; no tattoos, either. Autopsies are also just as much a sin as homosexuality, apparently.
- Leviticus 19:33-34: When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." -- Yep, we're not exactly treating our immigrants well, are we?

Also, Leviticus chapter 20 goes into detail that all of the above are punishable by death; no trials, judges or jury - all participants should only be killed on the spot (including any animals involved with bestiality). Strangely enough, there's no mentions of woman-on-woman relationships, so lesbians must be exempt from sin, apparently.

My point being, if you're going to consider homosexuality a sin according to the bible, you'll have to accept the entire bible as well. Adultery, bestiality and incest are understandable; the others are not. On the other hand, if you also believe in Jesus, you'll have to accept the New Testament section of the Bible as well. John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. -- Meaning, even homosexuals who believe in God and Jesus are cleared from sin.

So there. Nothing bad about it.

And on my behalf, if you encounter someone who are against homosexuality, ask them why. If they name religious reasons for it, ask them to be specific, ie. name the exact passages for their reasoning. If they can't, please do give them a decent slap in the face and ask them to wake up to the 21st century.

U.S. presidential elections of 2008
I feel that Obama will be the better choice for president, as he seems to be the only one of the candidates with well-thought-through ideas. We really have no business in Iraq or Afghanistan; we (as an international community) need to find better long-term solutions for the people in these countries rather than sending in more troops. You say "stability", I say "occupation". And the good ol' U.S.A. is in more debt than ever. As a stand-up comedian (I don't remember which one) once said "they're more worried that the debt clock won't accommodate enough digits, than the fact that they owe 9 trillion dollars". I mean, if the U.S. was a corporation, they'd be bankrupt several times over. Hopefully, someone like Barrack Obama can turn that around and focus more on the domestic issues.

Aaaand I think this would be enough summarizing for one day. If you want me to elaborate on an issue, or even want my opinion on an issue, do tell. I'll try to not let it be so long until my next post.

Has it really been almost 2 years already? I really need to get a grip on my blogging, then.

I always had planned to finish off my vacation story before blogging about anything else, but I just never found the time to actually finish it off. More than anything, it has more to do with the fact that when I created my simple blogging system, I never expected to post as many photos as I have so far, which means that I never built in any image uploading/posting functions into it, or even a gallery function of any kind. The blogging system inputs pure HTML code and replaces only line breaks with the appropriate HTML codes for line breaks. Nothing else.

This means that if I want to insert any images, I have to resize them down to a more useful size (both as a thumb and as a "full" image"), then watermark them with my logo (to avoid too much stealing), then upload them via FTP, and finally insert the HTML code for displaying the image. For one or two images, that's usually fine, but with vacation photos, this time numbering up to 55 photos, this steals a lot of time beforehand.

And if you look at the image gallery below.... yes! All that is hand-coded by me (using a text editor and a lot of copy+paste) to make it look like it does. And even then, I don't always get it as good as I really want.

This also means that I'm putting off things like this until I finally cave in and get my ass in gear, to phrase it like that (American censors, go home). That's exactly what happened to me today. I just couldn't take it anymore, I had to get it out of the way.

I do have a more advanced content management system (or CMS) in the planning stages (some of the architecture behind it is more or less decided on), but since this is also something I need to do on the side of my day job, it could take weeks, months or even years to complete, although I hope it doesn't come to that.

I know, I could probably go for something open-source and already out there (like WordPress or something like that), but I really just want something to call my own.

There's not so much going on in my life of late (other than a slowly downturning slope economically the last couple of months, but I expect that to turn upwards in the next week or so - which has nothing to do with the next part).

On the positive side of my life right now, I've been working with a very sweet girl/woman called Kicesie (which, btw, is pronounced Kice-see, in case you're wondering) along with a team of administrators and moderators to create a forum for her upcoming website (to be launched Soon™). I can't go into more details right now, I can only say that it's been fun so far, and it's going to be fun seeing it take off once the website launch is in place. To say the least, we're all excited. I'll leave the full details up to Kicesie when the grand opening is closing in.

Anyway, to conclude where I left off about my vacation back in 2006, the trip continued on to an overnight in Leipzig (for July 10-11) the day after my last post, but not after spending a few extra unnecessary hours in Prague. Not by choice, mind you, but because we had managed to lock one of our room keys inside our apartment while checking out. We had two room keys, and had already gotten all of our luggage into the car. The keys were of the security lock type (T-shaped at the end), and the door auto-locks when it's shut. One of the keys had been left inside the lock on the inside after everyone had left the room, and in the worst possible position as well; ninety degrees across the keyhole, and not alongside the keyhole, enough so there was no way to wriggle the key out of the lock on the other side. This also meant that it was impossible to push the remaining key in to the lock from the outside, and without both room keys, we couldn't just check out of the room either. This also meant calling in a local locksmith to get the key out and get in to the apartment. Me and my mom stayed in the car, waiting for it all to pass, and I can tell you it was a very long wait. Just another dent in our vacation plans, I suppose (the first being a speeding ticket on the first leg of our trip). Anyway, after some hours of waiting and some more miserable hours driving, we finally arrived in Leipzig, where we got to this amazing luxury hotel called Hotel Fürstenhof. I tell ya, that is actually the first time I've experienced a hotel to look exactly as the pictures have promised. I'm also guessing that we came in during a low season, since we were told at the reception desk that they had upgraded our rooms. We were left speechless. If you ever come across a good deal on a hotel reservation site (like booking.com or hotels.com), I can absolutely recommend this hotel. At the time, I had paid about NOK 700 for each room, which is probably less than for a random "regular standard" hotel in Norway (or anywhere in Western Europe, for that matter). The only downside was that we were only staying for 1 night, since we had already a hotel waiting and paid for further down the road for the next night.

The next overnight stop was Schwerin (July 11-12, still in Germany), which was back to a "normal" hotel standard. The whole trip there was sorta pressing, and my mom had a small headache most of the way. Just after we had checked in and loaded our suitcases into our rooms, we heard several thunders, followed by a few hours of heavy, straight-down rain - which would rather explain that pressing feeling we had on our way over.

The next day, after a quick stop in Flensburg for our annual hoarding of alcohol and wine (way cheaper down there, as opposed to the heavily taxed alcoholic wine and liquor back home), we crossed the border into Denmark, drove all the way through this time, and ended up in Malmö just across the Swedish border for another overnight (July 12-13). The hotel we had prepaid for there was rather awful, though. I mean, we entered the reception desk on the ground floor, and after being handed the our keys, we were told the rooms started at the 3rd floor (!). For my mom, who's highly claustrophobic, it meant she couldn't just use the elevator, but had to get a set of keys to the "emergency stairs". When we finally got to our rooms, which appeared to be a five minute walk between (roughly a 2 minute walk in each direction from the elevator), we found the room standard was pretty low as well. Judging by the looks of the rooms, I wouldn't have classified it more than 2 stars, even though it officially had 3 stars. You can imagine we were pretty pissed. We decided to leave this hotel to find a different hotel instead, and after driving around for an hour or so, we ended up at The Mayfair Hotel (previously known as Hotell Tunneln). The rooms we had were at an OK standard, given that we were just spending a single night (I'm guessing we just took the cheapest rooms available, just to have somewhere to sleep).

The next stop we had planned was in Hamar, but our car engine was pretty much coughing and running at low power all the way to the Swedish border. You can imagine how tense it felt, considering how much we had in the trunk (alcohol over the limit), fearing that we wouldn't make it across before the car broke down (considering that road assistance is free in Norway with our car owner's association membership, but only once inside the Norwegian borders - outside Norway, it's cheap, but still a price to pay). We barely made it across the Svinesund crossing station, though, stopping at the first gas station possible. Luckily, there was a new motel located off the main road called Svinesundsparken Motell, which was just across from the Shell station we had stopped at. After a station attendant and a car mechanic had looked at the car engine, it became clear that repairs needed to be done (I don't remember the exact component that needed to be replaced, though). Considering the time was already around 4pm, we had no choice but to leave the car overnight. The car mechanic said he would come get the car at around 8am the next day (July 14, a Friday, no less), so we spent the night, got our car fixed, and were back on the road home.

And that, more or less, concludes the story of my summer vacation in 2006.

Eh, what the hell, I'll throw in the photos I took on that vacation as well...

It's me, the lots-of-updates guy! I usually try, but I generally don't get any further than thinking about it. I am, of course, talking about making a post in my blog.

Right now, I'm in Prague, enjoying the sun and a good vacation. We arrived here yesterday, and we're leaving tomorrow. And as I've come to notice, that's not nearly enough to experience the multitude of culture this city has to offer. At least we know that now for next year.

My only sadness is the loss of Internet connectivity, and I don't have the ability to bring along my laptop to the Internet café I'm at now. I do have the ability to use the GPRS connection off my mobile phone and connect to the Internet using my laptop there, but using GPRS from Eastern Europe costs about 4 or 5 times per megabyte than back home, so I've come to the conclusion that I can use that connection, but only in extreme emergencies. Another bad thing is the Czech keyboard layout, which is quite different from the Norwegian layout (or even the US layout), making it hard getting used to. The letters themselves (a-z) as well as the numbers (0-9) are in the same places, though (as is the same difference between the Norwegian and US keyboard layouts).

Other than that, it's been nice. So far, the route has been the following:
July 1-2: Oslo, Norway
July 2-3: Langeskov, Denmark
July 3-5: Berlin, Germany
July 5-8: Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic
July 8-10: Prague, Czech Republic

Meaning, we're checking out tomorrow morning and setting "sail" for Leipzig in Germany, where we have hotel rooms waiting.

And yes, the road trip part of my vacation is hot, awful and tiresome. Only the end stops along the way make the trip worthwhile.

I've taken a few photos, although not as frequent as on last year's trip, but still a small handful. I'll try to post 'em when I get to a proper Internet connection (ie. somewhere that allows me to connect my entire laptop), and, of course, if only I remember to update my site.

I've published the pictures I took at the LAN party this Easter.

Check out pictures from Exotic-LAN.

I think the next time I'll involve myself in something like this, I'd rather be on the arranger side of the thing. I'm basically too old for this.

Now's that time when I figured I might jump back on the LAN-party bandwagon for a little bit, just to see what it felt like.

Today (Thursday), I logged in to the Exotic-LAN area, setting the start of this year's Easter pastime for me. I'd show you pictures, but I forgot my camera at home. At least I don't live far from the party area (less than a km distance), so I figured I'd come home for dinner and grooming/showering/cleaning and a little bit of family time on Friday and Saturday. It all ends on Sunday (doors close at 4pm), though. I guess I'll grab my camera when I stop by at home tomorrow.

I'm 26 now, and the average participant age appears to hover around 16-17. You could say I'm more or less a fish out of water here. I did point out to myself I'd participate this year just to get the feel of it, and I think I'll settle for just this one.

More to come later.