Peter's Corner

Photos from San Francisco

2008-11-11T02:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Klaus from Denmark visited for the second time this year, so I finally found some time to take some pictures. We drove to Treasure Island, then to Fort Point with a stop at the Marina, finally parking my car in Japantown. After lunch in Japan Center (Korean BBQ!) we walked to Russian Hill and back.

I seem to have more time on my hands recently, so I also managed to pick a few of the photos and finish them. The resulting web Gallery is called Autumn in San Francisco.

I'm still working on a much more important set of photos for my sister...

What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?

2007-11-25T01:57:00.000-08:00

Philipp Lenssen asks What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? Very entertaining read.

That was scary

2007-10-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

My first earthquake.

Home Office Ergonomics

2007-08-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

Today the topic of what to be careful about when designing your home office came up. For example, I had heard that you should avoid glass tables. Similarly, Eliot stressed that you ensure that your ass is not too small.

WTF?

2007-08-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

Dead MacBook

2007-07-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

My MacBook died Tuesday, last week. Applications started crashing so I ran the diagnostics and found a RAM error. I took it to the Apple Store and they replaced the bad memory module. Unfortunately, it turned out that the logicboard was also fried :-(

Before sending the machine back for repairs, I was adviced to back up the harddrive. So I bought a "mini Pal" at Fry's only to discover it was broken. Long story short, I was finally able to turn the MacBook in for repairs on Saturday.

But what a great day Saturday turned out to be.

iLove Whole Foods

2007-07-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

3 Hours in Line

2007-06-30T01:12:00.000-07:00

Apple launched the iPhone today. I didn't really expect to get one, but I decided to give it a try 15 minutes before they started selling them in the nearest AT&T store. The line was long, but not too long. However, after two hours they started saying they were running low, and that it was possible to order an overnight delivery. This prompted some people in front of me to leave. I figured I would hang in a little bit more. When I was number thirteen in line, they announced there were twelve left and only the four gigabyte version. Bummer. But I was hanging in and some of the people in front of me decided they didn't want a new phone today after all. So perhaps I would get one anyways. Indeed, they still had a few four gigs left when I was let in the store. The clerk went to the back to get some kind of paper with the serial number of my soon to be phone. He started entering the data but notice a problem. He started walking back to back room while shouting to me: "you wanted the four gig model, right?" I said, "unless you have the eight gig!" Which he had, something had been mixed up: the problem he had noticed was it was the eight gig model.
And that was the story about how I got an iPhone after waiting for three hours. This entry was written on that marvelous new toy of mine. It really flips!

Most Expensive Cities in the World

2007-06-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

When it comes to cost of living, London is the 5th most expensive city according to Mercer's Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2006 – city rankings. Copenhagen is 8th, and surprisingly, San Francisco is only 34th.

Best Sports Car in the World

2007-06-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Team Easy On also Doped

2007-05-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Team Easy On indrømmer doping (in Danish).

A good and a bad Movie

2007-05-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see Pirates 3: really bad; not as bad as Ghost Rider, but really disappointing. Clearly, the writers ran out of material, so it was surprising that the movie was soooo long. Fortunately, I found a Danish movie on Comcast On Demand: Boss of it all/Direktøren for det hele, which turned out to be an outrageously funny movie with a lot of my favorite Danish actors. If you have Comcast, you can find it under "Movies & Events"/"IFC in Theaters" (kind of funny that they call it an "independent" film). I have to warn you: the spoken language is Danish (with subtitles), and you do not want your kids to see it.

Why I don't watch the Tour anymore

2007-05-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

iRack

2007-05-24T14:30:00.001-07:00

Spam Filter Problems

2007-05-19T11:15:00.001-07:00

It turns out that some emails to my personal account have been rejected by a too aggressive SPAM filter. That problem is corrected now. If you suspect that I may not have seen your email, please resend.

Moving Week

2007-05-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

I have decided to move my professional blog from blogs.sun.com/ahe to digital-sushi.org.

Getting Things Done in Action

2007-05-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I have never been able to manage is email. However, after having successfully processed all my papers and stuff at home using GTD techniques, I have tried applying these techniques to email as well. Huge success. My email inbox is always empty. I know exactly how many emails I need to respond to, and how many emails were filed away as potential compiler bugs.

Yes, it is painful to admit: at some point I was overwhelmed by the amount of emails I got, and the work I had to do that I got into a really bad habit; every now and then, people send me an email alerting me to a potential problem in the compiler, and when I was stressed, I just copied them to a folder to process later. The problem: I never processed the folder. It had gotten to more than a hundred so emails. Combine that with a RAFT (Read, Act, File, and Toss) system I had been using: my act folder steadily grew and I never really processed that either. Consequently, I had at least two folder that were scaring me: the Act folder, and the potential bugs folder.

So I applied some of the tips and tricks from David Allen's book; I now have nine email I need to respond to, and forty potential bug emails. I should be able to get to zero by the end of this week.

Progress on Getting Things Done

2007-04-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

I got started processing all my boxes of stuff yesterday. When I got tired, I decided to stop, and take Monday off as well. I spent most of Monday processing old documents (and some current), and so far I managed to empty my inbox and one of the three boxes. Only two more boxes, and the box of gadgets remaing :-D

So far I have almost filled the top drawers of my two filing cabinets, and there are two drawers remaining. I'm also tossing a lot of stuff, so there should be enough room for everything.

Once I'm through all the stuff, the trick is to keep the system running by tracking all my projects, and next actions on a daily basis. So far so good. Instead of having various papers to remind me about some future action pile up on my desk, I have entered a reminders in Google Calendar. I use Google Docs for my lists. Except for my inbox, my desk remains neat and functional, and I feel really great about my progress so far.

I also went to IKEA yesterday and bought a uplight floor lamp for my office. The change in lighting makes the colors look different.

Getting Things Done

2007-04-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

I'm Getting Things Done (GTD). GTD is a technique for collecting, processing, and organizing all your stuff. So far I have collected most of my stuff, and is trying to get to the process part. Since the processing and organizing is what is different from what I usually do, I'm a little anxious to jump into it before I really understand what GTD is about. However, some of the GTD tricks has already helped me getting more organized; I bought the office supplies, and furniture David Allen recommends. I also bought a printer, and hooked up my old scanner so I now have a very functional home office; there's even a program for my Mac that makes it very easy to make copies.

If you study the Picasa web album you will see that I have a lot of stuff to get through: a regular paper tray (inbox), three banker's boxes, and a case of various gadgets.

The two things that so far has been most valuable to keep my desk neat are my new trash bin, and my new automatic labeler. It is amazing how much trash I had collected on my desk because I didn't have a trash bin near my desk. The labeler is amazing, combined with David's advice on using file folders for all things, makes it so much fun to file away stuff.

Apache

2007-03-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Tommy Seebach is getting an international break-through, post mortem.

Is a Hummer better for the environment than a Prius?

2007-03-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

A while ago I saw an editorial in a financial magazine that claimed that a Prius worse for the environment than most people think. Today I found this article claiming that a Hummer is better for the environment than a Prius.

Not so smart...

2007-03-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

I praised the police for using helicopters (still pretty cool). Then they go and confiscate some poor woman's finals.

More on Global Warming

2007-03-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

I saw Al Gore's an Inconvenient Truth a few days ago. I would really recommend that you watch it. Gore presents some dire predictions about global warming but he also demonstrates that we have the power to reduce C02 emission levels to 1970'ies levels.

However, I'm still of the opinion that we need to balance investments in protecting ourselves against the effects of global warming with investments in reducing CO2 amounts. For example, buy a new Toyota Yaris and save $10,000 compared a new Toyota Prius. Would the environment have been better off if you had used the $10,000 to invest in solar power or insulating your home? What if everyone that bought a Prius in the San Francisco Bay Area had bought a Yaris instead and donated $10,000 to a fund to protect the Area from the effects of rising sea-levels?

Here are some links: Toyota, Consequences of a Rising Bay, the Sun causes global warming, and finally the Sun is not causing global warming.

That'll teach them

2007-03-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Kudos to the police, pretty cool to use an helicopter for clearing the "Ungdomshuset"!

Organizing Your Gadgets

2007-02-20T00:52:00.000-08:00

I just found these gems: cordless desktop, recharging station, and under-desk gadget mount. Combine that with my brother's trick: connect all your gadgets and chargers so you can turn the power off by pressing one button when you leave the house.

Soon you'll have a clutter-free desktop and save money on the electrical bill.