A Viking lost in the UK

Kittens

2011-11-19T23:18:00.000Z

Graduation

2011-08-11T20:16:00.000+01:00

A UK style graduation with funny robes, hats and a proper ceremony!

Posing outside city hall, apparently not so easy to make everyone look normal at the same time.

Lecturers and staff were dressed in robes matching their degree.

Graduation production line, we each got about 5-10 seconds on stage, just enough time to walk across and nod to the dean. :)

The compulsory hat throw :)

Joe, me, Jon and Stuart in the Queen's garden after graduation

Robby, me and my mum :)

San Francisco - Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz

2011-06-04T00:22:00.000+01:00

On one of our last days in San Francisco, we headed out on a boat trip taking us under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz - an old military prison.

We all got sunburned (some more than others..), but it was well worth it and we got to hear a lot of good and less good jokes about SF along the way.

John, me and Robby with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background

Alcatraz with the city in the background

Alcatraz

San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco

2011-06-03T23:19:00.000+01:00

Taken from Pier 39 - Alcatraz in the background

Spray paint art - some of the images they made were amazing :)

Impressive buildings...

An edible crocodile..

Never have I wanted sea food so much b...

Photo menu! The mango chicken was excellent...

Chilling in the hacker's lounge @ MeeGo Conference

San Francisco seen from Pier 39

Sea lions!

"You've been charged with being too serious" - seems to have had an effect ;p

Some of the inhabitants of San Francisco

MeeGo Conference 2011 - Angry Birds!

2011-05-31T10:22:00.008+01:00

The conference started with a warm up session including Angry Birds with the attendees building catapults and structures. Some of the catapults did really well... while some failed at first launch.

We came in a bit late, so didn't participate, but it was still a very entertaining evening. :)

Sitting there, waiting...

First launch! (I think)

Faulty bird turns around mid air. Regretting the decision?

Waving for peace?

How far does it stretch... (this was the winning catapult)

If Baywatch were made by pigs?

Piggie taking a dive!

Ouch.

Unbreakable?

Also fairly unbreakable.

This is what happens when you run out of wood, you have to go with rolls of paper instead.

And the piggies were no more...

Angry Birds Live by Netbook News

Duck duck duck, pigeon?

2011-05-11T18:33:00.000+01:00

West park and "Hull General Cemetry"

2011-04-26T21:40:00.001+01:00

Fæ, det dør,

frænder dør,

så en selv og dør;

men ett jeg vet,

som aldri dør:

dom om hver en død.

Cattle die,

family dies

eventually you will die;

but I know one thing that never dies,

the legacy of all that is dead.

At the University of Hull

2011-03-23T00:10:00.000Z

Birds

2011-03-16T18:32:00.000Z

Visiting Jorvik

2011-01-30T02:07:00.000Z

What better place for a viking than the old centre of viking power? We found (fake) vikings, viking games and even viking beer at the Jorvik Viking Centre!

Hnefntafn (the king's table) - a game played in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. The game is about a Viking king (in the middle) defending his castle.

Freesiders in front of Clifford's Tower

The York Castle Museum

View from the Clifford's Tower

From the York Minster

Random metal people

Last set of photos from Norway 2010

2011-01-13T23:14:00.000Z

New years eve in Norway

2011-01-09T14:45:00.000Z

We made a late Pepperkakehus, which turned out better than last year's one:

The Pepperkakehus massacre 2009

Julestjerne - most homes have 1 or 10 of these during Christmas

Our new years eve tradition: turkey, Waldorf salad and vegetables

Fireworks in Leksvik

Snow in Leksvik

2010-12-31T16:06:00.000Z

I promised my British friends some photos of snow so here you go!

No clue who this idiot is, honest.

Christmas in Norway 2010

2010-12-30T23:39:00.000Z

Julegrøt: We always start with a mix of 'risengrynsgrøt' and 'rømmegrøt' - yum :)

Ribs, sausages, 'medisterkaker' and 'sosisser'

My charming brothers...

Boxed kitty

Robby

Kakemenn!

Another day in Leksvik

Norway 2010

2010-12-18T15:35:00.002Z

FaceBrick back again!

2010-10-03T00:59:00.000+01:00

FaceBrick was down for about a month earlier due to some unannounced changes to the Facebook API which caused FaceBrick, amongst other Facebook apps, to stop working.

The latest update to libqfacebook (0.1.3-2) contains a fix for this - in other words, FaceBrick is up and running again! Thanks to Ahmad Mushtaq for fixing this. :-)

If you're still experiencing problems with FaceBrick, feel free to stop by the FaceBrick thread for support :-)

Australia - Sydney

2010-10-03T00:38:00.000+01:00

We headed down to Sydney halfway through our holiday to see a bit of the city as I hadn't really been there before (apart from driving through it on the way to and from the airport a couple of times) and got to see a few bits and pieces.

Sydney has a lot of tall and impressive buildings, but looked much nicer when the sun set and left the city lit up by all the huge buildings.

Sydney seen from Darling Harbour (the tower in the background is Sydney Tower)

Sydney Aquarium has a lot of impressive sharks, including shark eggs, baby sharks, and even what looked like teenage sharks (they were showing off by poking their "nose" up from the water and sort of 'dancing around'). Also got to see several variations of turtles (yes, turtles, not tortoises) and penguins!

Lonely nesting penguin, according to the aquarium, they have colonies around Sydney - didn't get to see the "live" though.

Long neck turtle babies

We also went over to see the Maritime museum and I was quite impressed to find a Viking helmet and a pair of Norwegian skis (the skis were real, wooden and all, the Viking helmet wasn't). They also had a war ship and a submarine, but we were a bit too late to go on there.

Sydney also has a monorail (or several, I only saw one), this one takes you through a small part of the city (perhaps 8-10 stops). It goes around in a circle, in one direction, so if you want to go a few stops the "wrong" way, you'll have to take the monorail the whole way around.

Monorail across the bridge

All in all, it's a nice city, well at least the small part I saw was nice and I'd like to go back there sometime to see the bits I missed out on :-)

Australia - Merry beach

2010-09-23T14:14:00.000+01:00

I have spent the past month in Australia, which is why I haven't been very active lately, but I'll be posting a bit about Aus now that I'm back and recovered from jetlag. :-)

Merry beach was just a couple of hours drive, they have their own beach where they offer camping and various cabins and apartments - complete with kangaroos, ducks and possums - didn't get to see any possums though.

A kangaroo greeted us as we arrived

When we arrived, there were a couple of kangaroos jumping around the place and I was told there would be loads of them on the grass outside our place in the evening... I wasn't sure whether to believe that, but once the sun started to go down, there they were!

The big male ones were quite friendly and seemed to enjoy a good scratch, while the female ones jumped away quickly, probably to protect the young ones in their pouches.

We went for a walk on the rocks to look for a good place to fish, but the waves were a bit too big and scary, so we decided to head back to the beach instead. Didn't catch any and managed to make a mess of the fishing line, so figured swimming was a better option.

Water was a bit cold, but swimming/jumping in the waves was a lot of fun (the waves were a lot more impressing than this photo shows) :) As a Norwegian, I hadn't really seen a lot of (big) waves before, for some reason we don't get a lot of them in our fjords!

I also got to see an example of a "boxing kangaroo".

When we were feeding him bread, he was quite friendly and stood there waiting patiently for more bread... he then decided the bread wasn't coming fast enough and used both front legs to rip the bag of bread out of my mother in law's hands. Unlucky for him, it was almost empty anyway. I guess this is why a tiny girl walked up to the kangaroo and kicked him saying they're evil creatures just before we went to feed him.

Merry beach was great, would have loved to stay for longer and hope to go back there sometime. :-) Maybe I'll get to feed the possums they were advertising then!

Photos from Norway

2010-09-14T05:12:00.000+01:00

Some photos from our trip to Norway, taken with my N900.

Revbjelle Trondheimsfjorden

Trondheimsfjorden seen from Vanvikan

Syrin

Kis Old bunny man!

Don't worry, he's not eating anyone (not today at least).

Strawberries!

Desiere'e

GSOC update - Desktop widget complete

2010-08-06T15:17:00.002+01:00

During the last few weeks I have been making some final changes to the desktop widget and it should be ready to be merged in with the rest of FaceBrick now.

Done:
* Changed the buttons to use default maemo icons (as per Dominik's comment to my last post)

The buttons are slightly different, but not a huge change.

* Switched to using the Qt Homescreen adapter.
When I was setting the widget to be a homescreen widget manually I noticed that in order to click a listview item or a button, you would have to first click the widget once to get it in focus, then once more for the item you're clicking to actually notice something is going on. This is fixed in a later version of Qt, but using the adapter takes care of fixing this for now - which was my main reason for trying it.

It also sorted out some other issues I would have had otherwise, such as making making FaceBrick show up in the "add widget" menu (and re-appear there if removed) and restarting the widget if the desktop were to crash.

(Ignore the gibberish at the top - my phone is set to Norwegian ;p)

Using the homescreen adapter is quite easy, you only need an extra 2-3 lines of code and that's it. The only minus with it is that in order to test your homescreen widget, you need to package the application, install it and add it to your desktop via the menu - which probably wouldn't be too bad if you have done packaging before.

I ended up having a fun time last week trying to sort out packaging, but I eventually managed to package an example widget with help from this tutorial and the forum. Packaging FaceBrick itself turned out to be more hassle though.

FaceBrick uses a third party library called libqfacebook, and MADDE isn't all that happy with third party libraries. In the end I ended up trying scratchbox instead and it worked like a charm (at least for the most part)!

What's next?
* Possible fixes to desktop widget after mentor review
* Continue work on the inbox (fetching messages)

Trip to Blåheia

2010-07-25T00:01:00.003+01:00

Just some photos from my trip to Blåheia in Rissa today (Blåheia is a small mountain with quite a nice view over the town).

View over Trondheimsfjorden

Took this one with my N900 on the way home, can get some nice shots with it :)

Photos from Blåheia in Rissa:

GSOC update - buttons

2010-07-22T01:37:00.000+01:00

As someone commented on my last post, the buttons needed a bit of a touch up, so thought I'd show you guys the new buttons. :-)

Default buttons

Refresh button while getting updates

I'm using a "Qt Resource Collection" (qrc) file for storing the button images, which is quite handy. This way, the images get stored in the program's executable.

The images can easily be accessed through code after adding them to the resource file. I created a prefix called "desktopwidget" in my resource file, and have a folder called "images", so to access "cross.png", I only need to add ":/desktopwidget/images/cross.png" to wherever I want to use the image, as seen below:

QPushButton:disabled {

border-image: url(:/desktopwidget/images/cross.png) -3 -20 -3 -20;

}

That's it for now, but I'll hopefully be back shortly!

GSOC update - transparency!

2010-07-17T00:49:00.000+01:00

The past week has been a bit slow, but I finally managed to get some work done in between fighting with technology :-)

Latest version - with added buttons and transparency

I still have some work left to do on the desktop widget, but the UI is near completion - so if anyone has any feedback/suggestions for it, that would be very much appreciated :-)

Next up is hooking the widget up with the main facebrick app, so that clicking on a post will open the comment window for the post, and I also have some other bits and pieces to sort out during the next few days.

Photos from Oslo

2010-07-08T11:25:00.001+01:00

Just some photos from our trip to Oslo a while back.

Walked up to Maridalsvannet and got to see the sunset :-)

We found a tree completely covered in these

View from the roof of the Opera house

Nice view over Oslo (and me blocking the view)

Trøndelag doesn't look bad when it's sunny either (taken on the way home from Værnes airport)

Another one on the way home

GSOC update - Progress on desktop widget

2010-07-06T15:07:00.001+01:00

Some further progress on the desktop widget, it now fetches status messages and displays them.

I've had some fun while getting this working, apparently Qt isn't very fond of USB networking, so I kept getting the dialog asking me to connect to a network when running FaceBrick (I'm having to settle with USB networking over here as the router does not like N900s connecting to it ;( ). Setting it to automatically connect to WLAN solved that problem though.

I also ran into some problems moving the code for fetching news feed around, as some of the existing code was depending on the news feed methods being a part of the MainWindow.

What I'll be doing next is to make the status messages fit into the widget and make it scrollable. I have been trying to make the ListView displaying the status messages transparent, but I haven't had any luck with that so far, so will also be trying to sort that out.

GSOC update - desktop widget!

2010-07-01T00:39:00.000+01:00

Just a small update on my progress with the desktop/home screen widget for FaceBrick.

We are still waiting for Facebook to whitelist FaceBrick so that it will have permission to access facebook messages. This means that the amount of work I'll be able to get done on the inbox is very limited, which is why I have started looking into doing the desktop widget for it instead.

After a bit of looking at existing projects and fiddling around with it, I've finally got something resembling a desktop widget.

This is of course nowhere near complete, but it's progress!

I found this blog post very useful - thanks aep!

GSOC update - Settings dialog

2010-06-24T00:08:00.001+01:00

It has been a while since my last update now, and a lot has happened since then.

The first weeks of GSOC went a bit slow due to exams and dissertation - all of which are over now, meaning I've more or less finished my Bachelor's degree (just need to get my results back now :-) ).

My task for the first weeks was to implement the use of volume keys for changing font size, this feature was altered in the end. After talking it over with a few people I realised that this might not be the best idea because reallocating keys will only add confusion for the user and isn't all that practical.

Menu on the main form

Instead of this, I have added a settings dialog where the user can set the font size. I've also added a setting for changing the automatic update interval.

Settings dialog

The automatic update interval can be set to 1 - 15 minutes or 'off'.

As you can see on the first screenshot, I have also started working on the inbox, but I am now having to wait for Facebook. It turns out that to be able to fetch a user's messages, the application needs to be on Facebook's Inbox API whitelist - which is something I only realised today.

Since it might take up to a week for this to go through, I might start working on the desktop widget, unless there's a way for me to get around this for now.

That's it for now, but I'll be back next week with another update :-)

GSOC - Volume keys

2010-06-03T02:13:00.000+01:00

Since last update I've made my first contribution to facebrick - using the volume keys to change the font size. This still needs some work, and I have gotten some feedback from my mentor, so I'll be making some fixes/changes before it can get merged in, but so far so good. :-)

Next I'll be adding a setting to let you disable/enable changing font size via the volume keys, and also a setting to change the update interval of facebrick.

It's been a bit tricky getting used to Qt since I didn't have much experience with it already, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. :-)

Norway Day - also known as 17. mai!

2010-05-24T00:05:00.000+01:00

I have lived in the UK for 3 years now, but this year was the first time I really got to celebrate 17th of May (Norway's national day) over here. The lack of other Norwegians around here has made 17th of May a dull day.. until now!

I had a great time with the Freesiders (freeside.co.uk) in the park, we had home-made flags, pepsi max, ice cream and Norway Day cake! Only missing a parade and a bit of snow to make it perfect.

Norway Day cake - yum! (Photos: Stuart Hicks)

People gave us a few weird looks, but we were happy to yell "Norway's!" when asked "Who's birthday is it?".

(Looking at this photo, who can blame them for giving us weird looks?)

Thank you Freeside for the best "Norway Day" I've had in years!

GSOC update

2010-05-23T23:14:00.001+01:00

Just a small update on my GSOC progress.

What I've done so far during the community bonding period:
- Gotten to know the tools I'll be using and installing everything I need
- Started working on the first feature I'm implementing (change font size using the volume buttons) and have made some progress
- Gotten my blog added on planet maemo (*wave*)
- Introduced myself in the Facebrick thread on talk (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=49216)
- Registered on gitorious

It has been going a bit slow as I still have university commitments, but will soon be done with the last bits and pieces there :-)

For next week I'll continue working on the volume buttons and integrating it with Facebrick.

GSOC 2010

2010-05-06T10:39:00.000+01:00

This is a bit late, but I have been busy with coursework and my dissertation lately, so here it comes :-)

I have been accepted to GSOC 2010 for Maemo and will be working on FaceBrick - a Facebook client for maemo / the N900 over the summer!

The main features I will be implementing are sending and receiving normal facebook messages through the application and a desktop widget which will be linked to the main app.

FaceBrick is done in Qt/C++ so I'm looking forward to working with that :-) Will be a nice change to the .NET marathon I've been having at uni!

I will be posting regular updates on how this is going as soon as I get started working and http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=49216& is also somewhere to watch.

Ducklings!

2010-05-06T00:51:00.002+01:00

I think my favourite time of the year is when the park across the road gets filled with these wonderful small creatures.

Poor duckling couldn't find its mother, luckily they were reunited a few minutes later :-)

I thought it was weird that it looked so wet and shabby, but apparently ducklings don't only get oil glands when they get bigger (which is what makes them "waterproof" and able to float), so the only reason ducklings are able to swim around is because they hide underneath their mother and get oil from her.

The whole family "Duck"

After having enough bread, she decided to take her kids for a swim instead.

Family swim trip

We also spotted a duck with *15* ducklings, can't help feeling sorry for her having to try keep all of them under control :-)

Summer is (nearly) here!

2010-04-10T19:13:00.000+01:00

You know it's summer when ..

...they start selling ice cream in the park!

... and when all the ducks have already been fed by the other 100 people having a walk in the sunshine ;(

Exploring Hull!

2010-04-02T23:30:00.000+01:00

On the way home from gym we decided to have a look for one of Hull's windmills - I always see it when walking home from Uni, and was wondering where it was... didn't realise it was so far away.

Flowery tree outside Uni

Weird tree?

We found some cuddly kitties on the way (no not trying to catnap them, just petting!)

We ended up running away from them because they kept following us.

(Photos: Stuart Hicks)

And we found a cat... who really seemed to like Stuart

Found it! Sort of.. after a long walk we settled with that this was the closest we could get to it.

Minty hot chocolate at Planet Coffee

Dr Kutte? Ikke en doktor jeg vil gå til iallefall!

2010-03-16T16:37:00.001Z

Funny!

Oppskrift på kløbb / recipe for kløbb

2010-03-09T22:40:00.000Z

Here's a recipe for klubb/kløpp/raspeball/potetball (or dumplings) with bacon, syrup and "duppe" the trønder way.

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):
Dumplings:
4-5 medium sized potatoes or 0.5 kg
5 dl flour
1 - 1 1/2 ts salt
Should boil for 45 minutes.

Duppe:
100 gram brunost
about 1 dl milk

Golden syrup/lys sirup
Bacon

Dumplings:

Chop the potatoes into pieces, size depending on how good your blender is. Ours isn't very good, so we need small pieces :-)

Put the pieces into a blender or use a handheld one as on the picture and blend until the paste is like porridge.

Put a big pan of water on the stove so the water will be boiling by the time the dumplings are ready to go in. Add a teaspoon of salt to the water.

Put some flour in and mix it together with the potato dough.

The more flour you add, the harder the dumplings will be when they're finished. A general rule is to stop adding flour when a spoon can stand upright in the dough without falling over.

If the water is boiling, it's time to add the dumplings to the water.

Get a spoonful of dough and shape it into a ball using your hand, and drop the ball into the water. Do this with all the dough.

One in!

Let them boil for around 45 minutes, they should all be floating when they're done.

All the dumplings swimming happily in the water (it looks like milk, but it is actually just water).

Sometimes the dumplings get stuck to the bottom of the pan and can get burned, so you should check to make sure they're not stuck to the bottom after 10-15 minutes and loosen them if they are.

Duppe

Chop the cheese into pieces and put the pieces in a small pan adding a bit of milk, keep stirring until it's all melted and add more milk as needed if the mix is getting too thick. Only needs to cook for a few minutes, but be careful as it will burn easily.

Serve with bacon and "lys sirup" or golden syrup.

A foggy morning

2010-02-20T15:08:00.000Z

Hull University on a foggy morning

The fog generating library