New passport
Monday, 7. April 2008, 07:59:17
I changed one of the most important documents I have...
STICKY POST
Me, my blog, I, id
Thursday, 23. June 2005, 20:31:03
I work for Opera, but the opinions here are my own, not Opera's. Although from time to time we agree. This blog is written with the (fairly easy-going) terms of Opera's employee blogging policy in mind, of course...
Chicken in China
Wednesday, 7. May 2008, 16:21:32
I spent a few days in Beijing recently. Interesting place...
On top of the world...
Thursday, 3. April 2008, 15:20:57
Well, around the top half of the world, followed by a break over easter...
Acid (3) drops
Friday, 28. March 2008, 15:10:26
When I was a kid, this meant sweets that were usually lemon flavoured. Then I discovered that before I was a kid this could also mean taking a particular drug. But now I am a geek most of the time, so it means dealing with very complicated tests.
This week's tempest in geekland was about the Acid3 test - we were first to announce we had got to 98/98, and just afterward first to score 100/100 on the test (with Webkit in each case hot on our heels). Now you can get a special preview testing build (for Windows or Linux) that gets the right rendering and 100/100 on the test.
But what does that really mean...?
This week's tempest in geekland was about the Acid3 test - we were first to announce we had got to 98/98, and just afterward first to score 100/100 on the test (with Webkit in each case hot on our heels). Now you can get a special preview testing build (for Windows or Linux) that gets the right rendering and 100/100 on the test.
But what does that really mean...?
South by...
Monday, 17. March 2008, 20:32:29
SxSW (South by SouthWest) is a huge festival of music, film, interactive stuff, in Austion Texas. There are those who have suggested it is just an excuse to spend a week drinking at someone else's expense - and for some people that is true - but there are intersting things there too.
This year I went for a repeat of a panel I was on last year - so here are some impressions.
This year I went for a repeat of a panel I was on last year - so here are some impressions.
Adios, Rafa
Friday, 14. March 2008, 18:07:03
Rafael Romero was a great champion of accessibility, doing practical stuff that made things better. Like smiling, and bringing up the mood of those around him. And calling it like he saw it, not like he would like things to be.
The first time I saw a real movie on the Web with captions, he had done it (and translated it into spanish for good measure). He was one of the people who taught me to speak Spanish, and to love Spain.
He turned up one day at a conference with his guitar and sang us a song he had written, to a tune of his, that I recorded on my phone. He later recorded it in a studio. For me, it is the song of accessibility. It may not be the best song he ever wrote, but as a memorial it's not a bad one.
Te echaré de menos, Rafa. Ahora tengo lagrimas en lugar de las palabras.
The first time I saw a real movie on the Web with captions, he had done it (and translated it into spanish for good measure). He was one of the people who taught me to speak Spanish, and to love Spain.
He turned up one day at a conference with his guitar and sang us a song he had written, to a tune of his, that I recorded on my phone. He later recorded it in a studio. For me, it is the song of accessibility. It may not be the best song he ever wrote, but as a memorial it's not a bad one.
Te echaré de menos, Rafa. Ahora tengo lagrimas en lugar de las palabras.
Patently silly?
Tuesday, 26. February 2008, 19:37:54
I am not a lawyer, I don't hold a patent on anything although I might one day, and I am not a big fan of the patent system. Here are some thoughts about why, and how we might improve the world a little...
MMMM, Pan de frutas
Sunday, 24. February 2008, 14:33:06
Hice un pan de frutas ayer. De vez en cuando hago pan pero este era lo mejor de que me acuerdo.
Mas o menos es como se llama - un pan hecho con frutas. La "receta" (no estoy muy de recetas) salió asi:
Harina integral, (1/4 kilo ?)
Un poquito de sal.
algunas (7?) cucharitas de azucar y miel
levadura
agua y leche 50%/50%
La mitad de una manzana, un puñado de orejones de alboricoque y uno de pasas de uva - todos cortado en trozos pequenos (tamaño un garbanzo pequeño o por alli)
Ops! Olvidé - agregué un puñado de almendras cortado bastante fino.
Lo dejé a levantar (se dice asi?) 8 horas (porque salí, no de proposito) en una sola vez, y puse en el horno medio hasta parecia hecho. Pues lo comí 15 horas mas tarde, tal cual y tostado con mantequilla.
y MMMMMMMMMMM
Mas o menos es como se llama - un pan hecho con frutas. La "receta" (no estoy muy de recetas) salió asi:
Harina integral, (1/4 kilo ?)
Un poquito de sal.
algunas (7?) cucharitas de azucar y miel
levadura
agua y leche 50%/50%
La mitad de una manzana, un puñado de orejones de alboricoque y uno de pasas de uva - todos cortado en trozos pequenos (tamaño un garbanzo pequeño o por alli)
Ops! Olvidé - agregué un puñado de almendras cortado bastante fino.
Lo dejé a levantar (se dice asi?) 8 horas (porque salí, no de proposito) en una sola vez, y puse en el horno medio hasta parecia hecho. Pues lo comí 15 horas mas tarde, tal cual y tostado con mantequilla.
y MMMMMMMMMMM
Sorry. (It's late)
Friday, 22. February 2008, 17:36:28
Sorry is a hard word to say. I know, because I have said it a few times and have left it unsaid when I should have said it a few times more.
Last week, 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia proposed that the parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia make an apology, to the aboriginal people of Australia. It was a long time coming. In 1992, Paul Keating, then Prime Minister, made the "Redfern Speech" (there is also a Redfern Speech video clip complete with aboriginal images and other stuff that shows why video clips are not the same as real speeches given live by real people).
Aboriginal people, despite not being citizens in their own country until 1967, despite a claim that the British Government could own the land since in 1788 there was nobody they were taking it away from, despite mostly being herded into missions, employed in what amounted to legalised slavery within living memory, despite organised manhunts to kill aboriginals, had won legal recognition that some of the land in Australia was theirs. Not because the government, in response to the Homeland and Land Rights movement in the 60s and 70s, had been giving back bits of land, but because according to the existing Australian/British law, they were clearly the legal owners of land.
In 1995, Keating commissioned a report into what became widely known as the Stolen Generations. Basically, aboriginal children and particularly part-aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in teh care of white families, either as a source of cheap servants, or to try and breed out their aboriginality - a sort of long-term genocide - or a combination of these. When I was at school, it was common knowledge that this happened, and the reasoning behind it was common knowledge. Yet somehow when the report, "Bringing Them Home", came out (after a change of government in 1996) this was no longer what really happened at all, and Australia was suddenly not prepared to take a "black armband" view of its own history.
In other words, despite the people of Australia showing a strong predisposition to apologise, despite the State government of Victoria rapidly apologising officially, the government of the country decided there was nothing to apologise for. But then, this was the same government that changed the racial discrimination act, to make it legal to take land away from aboriginal people, in order not to deal with the issues raise by the Mabo case and Native Title.
The stolen generations were in some case already dead. But this had been happening until the 1970s, when I was a kid. So in other cases they are people my age - at that time, people as young as their 20s.
A decade later, last week, the country finally managed, officially, to say "sorry". Rudd's speech might be the most important in the fairly short history of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the most important for some time in the very very long history of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. (And you can watch him giving it on video without the extra artsy distraction). It isn't brilliant rhetoric, but it is still a great speech. because it says sorry, and why we need to say sorry, and points to a way ahead that involves doing something about healing, adding a practical side to the nice words...
For a decade, being an Australian was an increasingly depressing thing to admit to. There are still great things about Australia, there are still things that have been terrible and need fixing. But it finally feels that the country is moving in more right directions than wrong ones, after a pretty sorry decade.
Thanks Kev. I realise you didn't take the children away any more than I did. But our country did, and not being able to own up and say "sorry" was slowly eating at us. It doesn't solve the problem, but recognising that there is something to deal with is a good start.
Last week, 13 February 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia proposed that the parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia make an apology, to the aboriginal people of Australia. It was a long time coming. In 1992, Paul Keating, then Prime Minister, made the "Redfern Speech" (there is also a Redfern Speech video clip complete with aboriginal images and other stuff that shows why video clips are not the same as real speeches given live by real people).
Aboriginal people, despite not being citizens in their own country until 1967, despite a claim that the British Government could own the land since in 1788 there was nobody they were taking it away from, despite mostly being herded into missions, employed in what amounted to legalised slavery within living memory, despite organised manhunts to kill aboriginals, had won legal recognition that some of the land in Australia was theirs. Not because the government, in response to the Homeland and Land Rights movement in the 60s and 70s, had been giving back bits of land, but because according to the existing Australian/British law, they were clearly the legal owners of land.
In 1995, Keating commissioned a report into what became widely known as the Stolen Generations. Basically, aboriginal children and particularly part-aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in teh care of white families, either as a source of cheap servants, or to try and breed out their aboriginality - a sort of long-term genocide - or a combination of these. When I was at school, it was common knowledge that this happened, and the reasoning behind it was common knowledge. Yet somehow when the report, "Bringing Them Home", came out (after a change of government in 1996) this was no longer what really happened at all, and Australia was suddenly not prepared to take a "black armband" view of its own history.
In other words, despite the people of Australia showing a strong predisposition to apologise, despite the State government of Victoria rapidly apologising officially, the government of the country decided there was nothing to apologise for. But then, this was the same government that changed the racial discrimination act, to make it legal to take land away from aboriginal people, in order not to deal with the issues raise by the Mabo case and Native Title.
The stolen generations were in some case already dead. But this had been happening until the 1970s, when I was a kid. So in other cases they are people my age - at that time, people as young as their 20s.
A decade later, last week, the country finally managed, officially, to say "sorry". Rudd's speech might be the most important in the fairly short history of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the most important for some time in the very very long history of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. (And you can watch him giving it on video without the extra artsy distraction). It isn't brilliant rhetoric, but it is still a great speech. because it says sorry, and why we need to say sorry, and points to a way ahead that involves doing something about healing, adding a practical side to the nice words...
For a decade, being an Australian was an increasingly depressing thing to admit to. There are still great things about Australia, there are still things that have been terrible and need fixing. But it finally feels that the country is moving in more right directions than wrong ones, after a pretty sorry decade.
Thanks Kev. I realise you didn't take the children away any more than I did. But our country did, and not being able to own up and say "sorry" was slowly eating at us. It doesn't solve the problem, but recognising that there is something to deal with is a good start.
Buying food...
Thursday, 21. February 2008, 12:10:30
Some American guy is making money by selling the following message.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants".
Scarily, this really is a radical idea. But a good one.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants".
Scarily, this really is a radical idea. But a good one.
Go the Oz...
Wednesday, 20. February 2008, 19:54:31
Ben Buchanan, just quietly, is a great bloke. As well as being a choice companion for sharing a beer or three, nice guy, and champion of accessibility and other good things, he has actually done some really basic practical stuff that takes time to show results. And recently he announced something really cool...
Fillums
Monday, 18. February 2008, 22:51:14
I don't watch a lot of movies - not on TV nor anywhere. But I saw a couple already this year...
Been a while
Saturday, 9. February 2008, 13:33:44
It's been ages since I wrote anything here. A rapid factual account of some places I have been and things I have done since then...
One of those days...
Thursday, 6. December 2007, 14:39:51
Today is finnish independence day. It was Granny's birthday too. And this week is unlike any other in my life...
Explorer sinks in Titanic disaster, users saved by Norwegian enterprise...
Saturday, 24. November 2007, 17:13:41
Really. MS Explorer has sunk out of view now, according to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
Fortunately, all 154 users were rescued, making it to their lifeboats after the ship was struck by an iceberg, but before it vanished beneath the fairly chilly waters off the Antarctic where it was on a cruise. The survivors were later transferred to the MS Nord-Norge, apparently.
I hope they are luckier than the people who were picked up by another famous Norwegian rescue - when Captain Arne Rinnan went to thelp 400-odd people in a sinking boat, in his ship the MV Tampa. For his troubles, in an attempt to stop him doing the legal, sane and humane thing and landing the 300-odd refugees on Christmas Island, the former Australian government (in election mode) decided that it made sense to order the SAS to board his ship. Not being international talk like a pirate day, and with real guns, it was apparently hard to see any real humour, let alone humanity.
Those people, having fled countries that Australia was right then deciding to help destroy completely, were subsequently locked up in concentration camps hastily set up around the Pacific, some for a number of years, before being scattered again in a macho attempt to prove that a 60-year-old lawyer was still virile enough to be allowed to play soldiers with real lives (if with almost transparent dishonesty).
Luckily for them, the folks on MS Explorer are apparently the kind wealthy enough to cruise dangerous waters for the fun of it, and therefore deserving of all our sympathy and assistance. Even more fortunately, the government that instituted the appalling "Pacific solution" was finally, 6 years and 3 chances later, voted out of office today.
Watching my country from the other side of the world, I am more relaxed and comfortable about it than I have been for a decade or so. But there is work to do - I can only hope that the short-sighted and cruel approach to dealing with refugees will be amng the things rolled back with the shirtsleeves as Australians get on with cleaning up the country.
There is a lot of work to make Australia the fair and decent place it once was, but hopefully that is the direction it is now headed. Thank you, people of Australia, for finally making me relaxed and comfortable. And good luck to the folks on the MS Explorer. Not necessarily a name that would have filled me with confidence, but whatever the history I am glad that you are all safe...
Fortunately, all 154 users were rescued, making it to their lifeboats after the ship was struck by an iceberg, but before it vanished beneath the fairly chilly waters off the Antarctic where it was on a cruise. The survivors were later transferred to the MS Nord-Norge, apparently.
I hope they are luckier than the people who were picked up by another famous Norwegian rescue - when Captain Arne Rinnan went to thelp 400-odd people in a sinking boat, in his ship the MV Tampa. For his troubles, in an attempt to stop him doing the legal, sane and humane thing and landing the 300-odd refugees on Christmas Island, the former Australian government (in election mode) decided that it made sense to order the SAS to board his ship. Not being international talk like a pirate day, and with real guns, it was apparently hard to see any real humour, let alone humanity.
Those people, having fled countries that Australia was right then deciding to help destroy completely, were subsequently locked up in concentration camps hastily set up around the Pacific, some for a number of years, before being scattered again in a macho attempt to prove that a 60-year-old lawyer was still virile enough to be allowed to play soldiers with real lives (if with almost transparent dishonesty).
Luckily for them, the folks on MS Explorer are apparently the kind wealthy enough to cruise dangerous waters for the fun of it, and therefore deserving of all our sympathy and assistance. Even more fortunately, the government that instituted the appalling "Pacific solution" was finally, 6 years and 3 chances later, voted out of office today.
Watching my country from the other side of the world, I am more relaxed and comfortable about it than I have been for a decade or so. But there is work to do - I can only hope that the short-sighted and cruel approach to dealing with refugees will be amng the things rolled back with the shirtsleeves as Australians get on with cleaning up the country.
There is a lot of work to make Australia the fair and decent place it once was, but hopefully that is the direction it is now headed. Thank you, people of Australia, for finally making me relaxed and comfortable. And good luck to the folks on the MS Explorer. Not necessarily a name that would have filled me with confidence, but whatever the history I am glad that you are all safe...
While you were out...
Monday, 19. November 2007, 12:56:40
I've been on a travel-meeting-travel-talk-travel jag for what seems like forever (but it was really only three weeks).
While I was away, a whole lot of cool Opera things came out. MathML, Mini 4, A video build with 3D canvas, ...
So in roughly chronological order...
While I was away, a whole lot of cool Opera things came out. MathML, Mini 4, A video build with 3D canvas, ...
So in roughly chronological order...
Where do you go to
Sunday, 28. October 2007, 02:26:33
Some thoughts on dead bodies. Maybe not everyone's idea of a fun read.
Spam and beef salami
Tuesday, 16. October 2007, 12:40:14
I get a lot of email. Sometimes it looks a lot like spam (I get a lot of that too) but is really very important. How do people learn to write email?
Showing posts 1 - 20 of 252.
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