The ancient and evil brotherhood

I found this brilliant picture on the interwebs, and it sort of set me off...
So firstly thanks to http://thegreatgeekmanual.com/blog/picture-of-the-week-even-sith-lords-get-the-blues
Check it out.

 

How to get a million followers on G-plus (upd)

Something very unexpected happened the other day. Google+ told me that I had 1200+ 'followers. I'd decided that I'd celebrate if I ever reached 1000. Well... Too Late!

Edit: by March 7 the counter says 1502....
Edit: by March 14 the counter says 1665....
Edit: by March 17 the counter says 1706
Edit by March 26 the counter says 1802
Edit: by October 10 (2013) the counter says 2313...

This unexpected development raises a number of questions. How did that happen? Are G+ followers a 'bankable' asset. Will it get me laid - And what about my own user experience?

The answer to the most important question is of course 'no'. According to the very impressive Circle Count website 68% of Google plussies are of the male persuasion. 28% are female while the rest are sort of in between...

• Link to Circlecount

I've followed a few simple steps from the beginning. I've added the Google+ contributor suggestions regularly to my following circle. I share some thoughts and ideas I think I would find interesting. Old youTube clips and so on. I 'harvest' the stream for stuf I personally find interesting and re-share that. Conscientiously given credit where credit is due and all that. And eventually this tactic would have brought me 1000 followers. But then something unexpected happened. Two brothers named Keith and Scott Cramer had a bet (say hallo to Scott / link to Google+). They'd selected a number of G+ contributors and the winner would be the one whose team had gained most followers combined. Though I seem to have been on the loosing 'team' the resultant extra buzz is quite evident on the Circlecount graph below.
I wonder whether I can maintain that level of growth?

• You can read more about the whole competition thing by doing the clicky stuff here.

To be honest I find the G+ user experience 'out of the box' a little bland. You get a lot (and do mean a lot) of Google employees who - not entirely un-cult-like - plug various amazing Googlisms. Not to mention animatied gifs and litterally billions of cute kittens. Though I like a ...cute kitty cat as much as the next guy It. Gets. Old. Then theres the videos of people getting terribly hurt, pornography and spam. What I probably disklike the most are the SEO's and the Tech-evangelists. Yes we get it: You're so cool. Like a piece of stale bread hidden in the back of your senile great grand mother's frigde. Plus za chance... as they say.

Furtunately you can easily ban anyone you don't like from your stream and you shouldn't hesitate to use that option. Problem is that you'll get the feeling that things are getting slow and the place is emptying. It's important to keep adding more people than you disconnect and then use G+'s semiexcellent sorting system to differentiate them. I'm still working on that.

Is it a bankable asset? - At this scale probably not. It might be something to put on a CV for certain job applications, so there's that. Many of my 'followers' must share some interests and world views and though I'd bever do spam, I get the feeling that it's considered Ok to promote pet projectss and interests within reasonable limits of course. I guess that it might just make som things that used to seem impossible much less so.

As Terry Pratchett would say: we live in interesting times.
In deed!

Værd at tænke på: Politisk amok som metode

Denne video med indenrigs- og sundhedsminister Bertel Haarder opnåede omfattende berømmelse i sin tid. (19/12 2010)

Helt fundamentalt mener jeg ikke man kan have folk i ledende ansvarsfulde stillinger, der reagerer så voldsomt på helt almindelige normale, fornuftige og relevante spørgsmål. Man kan konkludere at var han ikke i en ledende stilling ville den slags opførsel få ham fyret ret hurtigt. Der faktisk heller ikke ukendt at netop politiske ledere har et ustyrligt temperament. Ikke at denne egenskab har gjort det nemmere for nogen af dem.
Men det interessante i vores sammenhæng er ikke at Bertel går fra Snøvsen. Det interessante er spørgsmålet. Baggrunden er at Haarder har indført nye skrappere retningslinjer for fedmeoperationer. Og journalisten spørger efter ca 7 minutter og 30 sekunder omtrent således "der sidder jo en arbejdsgruppe og arbejder med netop dette spørgsmål. Hvorfor venter I ikke på den?"
Det er - alt andet lige - et spørgsmål områdets minister på have et svar på. Sagen er at selvom de pågældende operationer er dyre, hævder tilhængere at de kan forebygge typiske overvægtsrelaterede sygdomme som hjerte-kredsløbslidelser og diabetes. Hvis det er helt eller delvist korrekt er det faktisk højst sandsynligt at en fedme-operation kan tjenes ind på et par måneder. Jeg ved ikke om påstandende er holdbare eller om forventningerne er for optimistiske. Man skal faktisk bruge en vurdering fra en ekspertgruppe inden man gør noget overilet.
Hov! Vent!...
For sent.
Du kan læse mere om baggrunden for spørgsmålet her.
DRs side med videoen finder du her.
Se nu kunne vrede Bertel på videon have været en enlig svane. Men faktisk ligner det lidt en fast metode hos den gamle regering. Man nedsætter faktisk ofte grupper af eksperter men så ignorerer man deres rådgivning. Som i forbindelse med Kamphunde-loven eller man indfører indlysende idiotisk lovgivning som fx med knivloven for at følge en eller anden tilfældig aktuel folkestemning eller senest med grænsekontrolloven
Jeg kan såmænd godt se hvori det tillokkende består, men det er altså ikke en måde man kan styre et land på!

Light them up!

I turned 50 yesterday.
Thanks to all for greetings and kind thoughts. But I got to tell you: that was a h*** of a lot of candles!

How the brain works....

It's all very delimpified as explained by a true expert.

Apple tablet revealed (again)

From Boing Boing: This is what it looks like! - It really is. Except that this design prototype is from the (19)eighties and designed by the Frog Design company which did a lot of early work for Apple.
As far as I can figure out the screen might have been monochrome and not touch-sensitive if it wasn't complete nonfunctional. Flat, touch-sensitive, full color screens haven't been around for that long!

Looking g.g.g cool!???

Rappers, Sexuality, bling and blunks.
:o)
Read all about it!
by following this link to Slate's interesting piece here...

yes but celery?

It seems that Chelsea, top british soccer team, has banned celery from its home grounds. Enthusiastic Chelsea fans have been throwing celery for years, but now club management has issued a statement saying: "In future, if anyone is found attempting to bring celery into Stamford Bridge they could be refused entry and anyone caught throwing celery will face a ban," according to Guardian Unlimited.

Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do - with or without celery.

computer therapy

Sunday, just before noon, my computer 'died'... It just stopped starting and after a couple of resets I realized that this was no ordinary glitch but a real disaster. It didn't exactly come as a surprise either. I had been ignoring the occasional you-should-do-a-surface-scan-of-your-disk warnings for a long time.
So I removed the hard disk from my machine and plugged it into our spare computer/printer server and started the surface scanning routine. No problem. Several hours later the scan was completed and I put the disk back in its rightful place. However the expected happy feeling didn't materialize: All I had achieved seemed to be to exchange the nothing that originally happened with an interesting combination of error messages.
Now I ain't exactly Einstein but I must be just a little smarter than the guy who once decided that it was a good idea to rename every file retrieved during a disk scan "file0001.chk, file0002.chk, file0003.chk". What had happened was that my entire windows directory had been transformed into 9999 numbered files. What the h... is one supposed to do with 9999 unidentified files? It should be technically possible to come up with a slightly more meaningful solution?
Yes I know I should have had a system back up ready. But I didn't. And I'm almost ashamed to admit that actually finding the Windows installation disk took me the better part of a day.
The good news is, that I didn't loose any important files and that my computer is up and running after a long session of open heart formatting and reinstalling windows (twice)...
The bad news is that my incredibly funny and intelligent piece on comic heroes in Hollywood lighting probably will have to be reconstructed from memory.

bushiness as usual

Having just received what many lesser men than he might have seen as a clear message from his fellow Americans, my friend George W. has made some reassuring noises and booted his slightly less than popular minister of defence.
So that's a good thing?
Well: While nobody was paying attention he's been going through his old stuff with a fine tooth comb, and have found a number of initiatives he wants to have approved by lawmakers before the formal changeover takes place.
Some of the proposals are truly horrifying. So while some things never change others remain the same.

didn't think he'd do that

So much has changed in so few days. President Bush's fired Rumsfeld. A move that by all accounts seems to have been long overdue. I *really* didn't think he'd do that. Not because it wasn't the right thing to do. It was. But because he's repeatedly said that he wouldn't.
So that's a good thing?
Well yes. It may be the only way to reach som sort of Iraqi "closure". Problem is, it shows how the presidents mind works. Full speed ahead untill you reach a locked door. Then change the direction. That's no way to lead a country. Or a world for that matter.
Interesting times lie ahead.

that's not funny - part V

So here's proving that Kerry was right after all.

that's not funny - part IV

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney on a hunting trip

that's not funny - part III

Donald Rumsfeld

that's not funny - part II

Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan must be the film-title of the year. But Sacha Cohen's not funny - he's Borat. A rather sad, self-aggrandizing moron from a remote backwards country. So what's the joke: the backwardness of the country, the idiocy of the Borat figure or our reaction to those things? The answer seems to be: "I'd recommend a 9mm or a Glock automatic."
That's scary stuff!

that's not funny - part I

Senator John Kerry doesn't exactly look like the kind of guy who should try for a career as an stand up comedian. Nonetheless it seems he's tried to make a joke. He said:

"Education, you know, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

That's not funny!
- It's true.
(You can watch the video clip here)