That was the summer!

Tomorrow I have to get back to work again. So, summer 2006 is history. Or maybe not completely, it is still nice and warm in Norway, and I plan for another week of vacation later in august - hopefully I can go swim in the fjords a bit more then. 

As I am back to work, there will be updates of the blog from time to time. And WWDC is comming up the next week, and I will be there, so expect some comments on that! 

Update on M600i

I have now used the Sony Ericsson M600i for a few days, and want to
give a status update. I think what's going on is that I adapt my
habits to the equipment, and therefore the equipment start feeling
better over time. So also with the M600i.

Initially, I had some problems with the built in Opera 8.60 browser,
it crashed on me a few times and things like that. Now, I think it
functions quite well. Probably because I visit pages that I know
works. Still, there are no pages that I need to visit regularly that
does not work, so it is probably ok for general use.

As for email reading, there seems to be something funny going on in
the network I am using. I tried a whole lot of different settings for
both imap for my regular mail accont, as well as pop from my gmail
account without any success. Then I tried pop against an account I
created with the Ventelo, the provider of the cellphone subscription,
and alas, then it works. Maybe the block pop and imap traffic? At
least something strange is going on. Anyway, as soon as I got things
right with my provider, I can send and receive email on the phone. It
is quite comfortable both to read and write messages as well.

So, in general I am quite happy with the M600i, but I still need to
figure out stuff. Maybe I write down a more complete review later on
(but don't hold your breath, it may never happen!)

Take care, and have a nice summer :-)

It took some time!

Finally, after a maybe 6 or 7 years wait, I can finally suspend/
resume my laptop!

What I am saying? Ok, this story need some background. Again, those
who are reading this blog on a regular basis, knows that I have quite
a few computers. I am talking laptop running linux this time.
According to an article at linux.com: http://www.linux.com/article.pl?
sid=06/05/24/1716222, it should be possible to suspend/resume a linux
laptop with only ACPI bios, as long as a recent kernel is used. This
is something I searched for for years, but eventually gave in and
installed software suspend (and later switched to MacOSX). But I
still have the small FSC P1510D, which only supports ACPI, no APM.

To make the story short, I grabbed the script from the article,
checked that I had the necessary commands available on my system, and
gave it a try. And guess what, it works quite nice.

The strange thing is that recent distribution, like Debian unstable
which I am running, does not come with a thing like this preinstalled
and integrated. These days, all it should take really is to shut the
screen down and put the laptop in your bag. But, hey, we're approaching!

To be fair, this could have been supported on my laptop for a few
months, I have not upgraded my kernel that recently. I discovered
this now due to the mentioned article. But it is true that I have
tested this in the past (of my 5 last laptops all but one have
supported ACPI only) without any sucess. It's essential stuff like
this which make people switch to MacOSX. But as I am not putting in
any effort to help the development of Linux in this direction, I
can't really blame anyone - that's the nice and bad thing about open
source!

Take care in the summer folks - Norway is getting really hot these days!

OS X upgrade and M600i

For a small moment, we kept our breath, as we installed the update to Mac OS X, v. 10.4.7. Eagerly, we started up iSync to check whether support for our new cool phone was added - the Sony Ericsson M600i.

But, no. Not this time. On to something else. Maybe the M600i must rest in the drawer until either Apple or Sony Ericsson releases some updated software.

Take care!

Amobil :: Telenor tester super-3G

Amobil :: Telenor tester super-3G

Yet another option for decent net connectivity not to far into the wilderness... (The rest of this goes in norwegian, as I link an article in norwegian).

Som en oppfølger til 3G løsningen basert på NMT-450 som jeg kommenterte for noen dager siden, skriver Amobil idag at Telenor har satt igang tester med HSDPA, en utvidelse av 3G (UMTS) teknologien. Jeg vet lite om dette, men går utifra at det dreier seg mer eller mindre enn software som man kjører oppå den eksisterende infrastrukturen, kanskje på samme måte som EDGE i GPRS. Det skulle i såfall tilsi at rekkevidden på HSDPA blir tilsvarende rekkevidden i 3G; ikke fantastisk, men ikke helt ille heller. Og mer interessant, så langt ut i ødemarken som jeg holder til til daglig, er det ikke usannsynlig at 3G støtten snart er ok (det er av og til 3G dekning i dag, litt avhengig av atmosfæriske forhold virker det som).

Så, hva snakker vi om? HSDPA skal kunne gi 3.6Mbps, altså langt bedre enn de 1.2Mbps'ene som ADSL leverandørene klarer å pushe på linjene ut til meg idag. Vi får vel regne med at dette også er en asynkron tjeneste, men det er sikkert mulig å få noen hundre Kbps den "andre" veien. Dermed skulle HSDPA være en bedre løsning enn det som kan tilbys av ADSL idag.

Alt dette er selvsagt helt i det blå, siden Telenor ikke har sagt noen ting om om og i såfall når noe slikt kan bli lansert for sluttbrukere. De skal selvsagt melke kua maks først, sånn de har gjort hele veien, fra før ISDN tiden. Og jeg lever sikkert godt med crappy ADSL fra Bluecom en stund til jeg - helt til flere i familien blir aktive surfere og skal dele båndbredden med meg. Det blir ihvertfall spennende å se hva som blir første teknologi som gir noe mer enn 1.2Mbps ut i villmarken.

Bondehilsen fra ødemarken Follo!

take care,

Don't buy M600i if you're a MacOSX user!

Today, I received a brand new cellphone, Sony Ericsson M600i. It's a business oriented phone, which should be strong on messaging and keepting track of appointments and the like. It also comes with an RSS reader, which is quite cool, and decent Web (Opera) and email software.

Unfortunately, there is no support for this phone in iSync on MacOSX (10.4.6). Hopefully such support appear in the near future, but for now I will advice you MacOSX users out there to avoid this phone.

Also, the software in the phone seems to be a bit buggy. While I was doing some experiments with the webbrowser it seg.faulted a couple of times. Among other places, I tried to visite calendar.google.com, which wasn't especially sucessfull. Compared to other SonyEricsson mobiles I owned in the past, this one also seems to operate quite slow; this may be to buggy and bloated new software. So, stay away from this one for a while and wait for software updates, both in the phone and on MacOSX. The idea with this phone is so great, so hopefully it wouldn't last to long before we see the necessary updates. I'll report on this later on (if what I need ever appears, before I move on to something better :-)

Take care!

digi.no - Snart får Norge sitt tredje mobilnett

digi.no - Snart får Norge sitt tredje mobilnett

Kanskje det endelig er en mulighet til å få noe mer enn 1.2Mbps ut på bondelandet! Bor man litt lengre enn et par kilometer fra nærmeste adsl sentral i dette landet, er det jo umulig å få noe særlig hastighet på ADSL. Og all utvikling (ADSL2+ osv) dreier seg om å få stadig raskere linjer, på bekostning av linjelengden. Det er fint å se at noen forsøker å få til noe annet av og til - bedre dekning i grisgrendte strøk.

Det hører med til historien at jeg bor rett øst for Oslo, i Ås kommune, så man skal ikke så veldig langt ut på landet før problemene dukker opp!

Take care,

The Macbook Pro has arrived

Hey folks, 

just a quick note to let you know that I am now playing with a brand new Macbook Pro with 17" screen. Pretty unusual stuff for me; the largest screen on any laptop I have used in the past was 14", and I thought that one was actually a bit to big. So this is huge...

Anyway, I'll let you know more about the setup and how it works later on. 

In other news, the oldest niece of mine, my older sisters oldest child, turned 18 yesterday. It's actually quite odd - it's a new generation coming up and we are soon the oldtimers. Old the best to you, Trude, and God Bless; may you have many, many, many great years.

Take care,

Confused about my recent posts?

You are with good reason. Somehow, a draft I thought was accidentally was deleted from the server actually showed up as published today. So there you are, two different versions of more or less the same post; written with a few days in between and with the content recreated from memory because the original post was lost (but wasn't anyway...)

Now, I'll read both posts my self and compare ;-)

Take care!

Me and my computers

For those faithful readers of the blog, you know that I currently use an AMD64 computer at work, running Ubuntu linux, and small FSC P1510 laptop running unstable debian and an dual G5 PowerMac at home.

It's time for updates! Allthough I used to be a strict Linux person, over the later months I start liking MacOSX quite well, and even though my home computer is a dualboot (MacOSX and Ubuntu linux), I tend to prefer running Mac on it for different reasons. In addition to that, more people in our company start running apple computers, so the sysadmin folks need to update their knowledge.

Fast forward - I have ordered a 17" Macbook pro, it should appear hopefully this week. I will probably not install linux on it at all, at least that's the plan right now... I'll report on who the machine feels for me anyway, later on.

As that's a quite big portable computer, I will need something smaller. But the difference between the P1510 and the Macbook is probably not big enough to justify keeping both. Therefore, I will probably try to get my hands on the new Sony UX (check out UX at sonystyle).

As this is not easy to get hold of in Norway, I'll probably try to pick up one when I'm in San Francisco in august.

Take care

Me and computers

As all me faithfull readers know, I mostly use Linux computers, but also have an Apple PowerMac at home. Although that computer have Linux (ubuntu dapper beta) installed, MacOSX tend to see more and more use on it. The reason is that some of the stuff I do at home simply work better on OSX, like playing music. So, instead of rebooting into linux all the time, I just get what ever I need to work on OSX - which is usually possible as I mostly rely on open source software.

Now, this has gone quite far, and in the company I work, Apple users seems to pop up here and there. Therefore, I and a colleague will visit the WWDC in San Francisco in august. And what is more natural than bringing an Apple laptop there. Alas, I have ordered an MacBook pro with 17" screen and 2GBs of memory today. That will be great fun! For the moment, I consider not installing linux on it at all, but we'll see how that goes.

While I have the FSC P1510, which is a quite small computer, Sony has announced their new Vaio UX recently - a real laptop computer in a very small housing. It has a 4.5" screen with great resolution; 1024x600, have wifi, bluetooth and even gsm/edge builtin. My plan is to get hold of one as soon as they hit the street, and then pass the big P1510 on to someone worthy of it - probably someone in the sysadmin group in the company which need something like it. It will, however, take some time, as Sony expect the UX to appear around 5. july, and considering the really bad decisions about Sony Vaio and Norway in the past, I can not expect to just by it in the store around the corner. Maybe I pick up one in SF...

At least for now, I will keep the PowerMac at home and the Amd64 in the office, since this complements the architectures I need to know about and build software on. Now we just need someone who wants to build our PyCC software on Windows, to ensure full cross platform compatibility.

I'll report when things starts to show up!

Take care!

Lei av å være verdens rikeste (N24.no)

N24 skriver:

Lei av å være verdens rikeste (N24.no): "Lei av å være verdens rikeste

Bill Gates synes ikke det er noe stas å være verdens rikeste mann. "

Det problemet er det jo veldig enkelt å bli kvitt skulle man tro. Om han ikke har det som den rike unge mannen i evangeliet, som Jesus spurte om ville bli fullkommen. "Selg alt du har, og gi det til de fattige, så skal du få en skatt i himlene; kom så og følg meg!" Han gikk bedrøvet bort, for han var veldig rik.

Take care,
Mandus.

New car!

I bought the family a new car yesterday. A slightly old (born 96) Volkswagen Caravelle TDI, the looong version. In that car, 8 persons can have a comfy ride, together with a lot of stuff.

So that's what occupied me the last few days. And the day after tomorrow, I'll travel to Madrid. Check out my photoblog, pictures of the new car, and from Madrid will appear!

Dr. Scient

Yesterday, I defended my thesis, and everything went well. So, finally, after 9 3/4 years, I have finished my Dr.Scient studies, and am now a dr. in scientific computing.

Well done, Mandus.

The trial lecture and the defense

Maybe some of you wonder what is going on - I promised to report on the progress of the preparations for my trial lecture, and said a few words. After that complete silence...

First, I have worked very hard the last 2 weeks - and tomorrow is the big day. And I think I have the presentations ready by now, although I have to test them a few times to check that I can stick to the schedule.

Next, I have to say that I didn't came up with extremely much interesting content. I tried to investigate the "formal verification" field to see whether there was something there that could be of any use, and find quite some material to read. Unfortunately, most of what I found is still to preliminary to be of any real value for practical verification of scientific codes. So I ended up with the standard pile of tricks, method of manufactured solutions beeing the most prominent, or the most advanced.

The presentation of my thesis is the toughest one, though, as I have to present what I am been doing the last couple of years (I started in -96...) in about 30 minutes. Though call, but I'll manage.

Take care, and wish me good luck tomorrow!

Preparation for the trial lecture

Maybe just for my own future reference... I will now briefly document the preparations for my trial lecture and defense of my Dr.Scient thesis.

So far I have worked on a "mindmap" using kdissert to organize the different aspects of the topic for the trial lecture that come to my mind. I have also search google and other places for relevant information. During thursday and friday I discovered at least 2 books and about 20 papers that seems to be relevant. I am now reading a paper by Salari and Knupp which are very relevant, as it discuss code verification by the method of manufactured solutions, which is a common approach in computational science and engineering.

As I move forward I also want to investigate to some extent the field of more formal code verification in computer science. From what I know from before, it is not possible to prove correctness of a scientific code (in the multi-million lines of code range) using such formal theories, as usually it is required that some special programming language is used, as well as the complexity can not be infinitely large. I am also not sure whether or not these to fields are talking about the same thing, as the interest in comp. sci & eng. is to verify that the output of the code is correct, and does not care that much about how it become correct (ok, I do simplify things here...), while traditional CS probably are more concerned about the correctness of the code itself.

Another topic is how we can relate verification of scientific codes to verification of experiments in other natural sciences, like physics or biology. I have to look further into this as well.

Now on to the reading to see what more I can discover!

The topic for my trial lecture

Today, I have received the topic for my trial lecture. The title of the lecture is:

Verification of Scientific Codes

Not a bad topic at all. Alltough this is something we don't think about every day, it sure is an important part of what I do. If we can't say anything about the correctness of the programs that we write inorder to say something about scientific problems, how can we then use the program to draw any conclusions for the problem that we investigate.

Also, a few years back we discussed this topic within the group, and one of my coworkers even produced some software that target some of the issues within this field. So I have someone to ask, and do have some ideas my self as well.

A trial lecture is never a walk in the park, but at least this is something that I can relate to, so I think it is an ok topic.

Now, on to diggin' out references, reading material and start producing slides for the talk. You wan't see much of me the next two weeks...

Take care folks,

Samsung Q1 - infoSync World - origami

Samsung Q1 - infoSync World

Is it just me, or isen't this very much like the previous U50/70/71 models from Sony? I thought we should expect something new. Ok, you know that I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but for all the hype I at least expected something actually new...

By the way, why can't any pda or small laptop maker consider making something with a formfactor comparable with the Psion models - a decent keyboard, ok display, good batterylife, and software and communication hardware (bluetooth/umts/wifi) up to todays standards. That will be a killer piece of hardware.

In other news, I am at the winterschool at Geilo, on Navier stokes and automation of PDE/FEM software (http://www.fenics.org), this week. Cool stuff!

My Ph.D thesis hot off the press

Not exactly true, but I have paid unipub a visit today, to hand over the press ready pdf-version of my thesis.

Now I only have to prepare a couple of presentation, and give them, as well as answering a few questions from the comitee, before I have earned the right to call my self a Dr. It's been a long and interesting journey, and I'm glad I can see the end.

The important date to remember is 30. March.

Take care folks!

Så sto vi her da...

Så sto vi her da..., originally uploaded by mandus.

Og jeg som trodde vi var vant til litt snø her i landet!