Bjourne's blog

Blog Action Day Spam

Two years ago, I participated in the Blog Action Day and wrote a small post about public transporation. Since then, I've decided against it for the following reasons:

Blog Action Day Recap: 31,000 Posts!, 16 okt
Blog Action Day is AMAZING so far!, 15 okt
Blog Action Day TOMORROW!, 15 okt
Al Gore and Blog Action Day, 14 okt
Ideas for Blog Action Day This Thursday, 13 okt
Blog Action Day is Next Week!, 7 okt
2400 Bloggers Want Your Help, 30 sep
Announcing Blog Action Day 2009…, 23 sep
Big News: Change.org to lead Blog Action Day 2009, 26 aug

That is the amount of mass-mail I have received about it this year, and it has crossed my tolerable threshold and has became annoying. I know Blog Action Day is for a good cause, but sending this much mail in a short period gives me a very bad impression.

How do you aquire a parked domain name?

Dear Internet, how do you acquire a parked domain name?

I'm about to launch my start-up company which will sell software services. I'm deciding on an appropriate domain name to use, but all relevant names have already been taken by domain parked sites filled with ads. It is quite frustrating to see good names being wasted on worthless ad spamming pages. I don't mind paying for a com domain, but the prices these domain parkers ask are steep; 500 to several thousand dollars for uncommon names. Especially since they themselves pay at most 8-15$/year to keep the domain parked. So how should I go about aquiring a domain name? Should I use a broker such as Sedo or try and contact the domain owner directly? How do I ensure that I wont get ripped off?

Comparing EC2

: ec2

Recently I've been playing around with Amazon EC2. A small project of mine, datalookups.com is currently hosted on it.

Performance wise, it is very good. Low latency when accessing it from Sweden and fairly decent bandwidth. Cost-wise, I'm not so sure. Without an instance reservation, the monthly cost is about $79 excluding bandwidth costs. But that's when paying on-demand so it wouldn't be a fair comparision to dedicated or VPS hosting where you have to subscribe to the service.

If you sign up for a European reserved small instance for a three year period, you get a monthly cost of $19.5: (350 + 0.04 * 24 * 365) / (3 * 12). That's not to bad when you take into account that one ec2 instance is more like a dedicated server than a VPS. But signing up for a three year lease is a very long time. The monthly cost for the one year plan is $48 which is much less cost competetive.

Here are some informative comparisons I've found. GoDaddy vs ec2, ec2 vs other stuff and ec2 vs VPS.

From everything I've read, it seems that Amazon EC2 underperforms when compared to other hosting options. On the other hand, the job market seem to favor ec2 experience so it might be worth going with it just for that reason alone.

Vart har getingarna tagit vägen?

I år har jag inte sett en endaste geting och bara ett fåtal bin. Nu är det bitande kallt om mornarna och om några dagar kommer frosten. Då dör de och kommer inte tillbaka förrän nästa sommar. Egentligen är jag skraj för bin och getingar, men det är ännu mer oroande ifall de skulle försvinna. Bananflugor däremot finns det gott om. De lägger ägg i bananskalen och låter man soporna stå en dag för länge får man en hel svärm hemma. Då måste man lägga ner mycket möda för att bli av med dem igen. Getingar äter bananflugor tror jag, men inte i år.

I can't belive..

I don't have more interesting stuff to blog about! First business meeting tomorrow with a potential supplier. Almost seen all DS9 episodes up to season 4. I can play Sultans of Swing much better than two months ago. My eyesight is likely worse and I do need lenses when riding my bike.

My Secret Project

Work is chugging along nicely on my secret project. Web app is built using Google App Engine. The domains are hosted using GoDaddy. What remains is to setup my company site with awesome design and many images. The product will be a B2B SaaS app with a hefty monthly subscription fee.

Me me me!

Today I actually did rock at the club. I were awesome. My friend were awesome. I am to damn drunk to write anything else. But I won, I feel validated, I can do stuff. Excusme while i punjke.

Why does beautiful women love crappy music?

I have no idea.

Guadec is great!

: GUADEC

Been fucking awesome so far. I've met lots of great people all very friendly. The partyin has been long and tough with no nights ending before 3am. I have no clue why I'm not sleepy at all. Must be the strange Canary coffee... It's not hot, not cold and tastes kind of sweet, very different from what I'm used to.

The beach is great and the weather almost perfect. It's hot as hell but a cold breeze is blowing so it never becomes unbearable. I already sunburned which is as expected. The best thing about the beach is the topless girls. And I am a dirty bastard so I've been staring until my neck gets sore. Haven't taken a dump either. Probably I should be doing it right about now but I'd rather first walk back to the hotel. I don't like shitting in public toilets.

Fucking Fair Scheduling

I'm running a compile in a terminal which takes most of the CPU. In another terminal I'm viewing a log with less. And less is fucking lagging!! How fucking broken is that?

Deep Space 9

Turns out Deep Space 9 is quite good after all. There are a little to many similarities with TNG, but that's also good in a way since the TNG seasons was fantastic. Ben Sisko is the station commander and is in many ways comparable to Picard. Except he doesn't have the same interesting personality and charisma that Picard had. He is kind of a light version of Picard.

I almost wrote black version of Picard. It wouldn't have been accurate because he fits the role well and his skin color neither adds nor subtracts from it.

I like Julian Bashere as the stations doctor. He manages to convey his role very well and isn't as bland as Bevery Crusher was. My guess is that he will play even better in the next seasons of the series (I've only watch the first one so far).

Even the child actors are bearable. Nogg and Jake. They bring some mischevious funnyness into the series. Definitely not my type but since they are good actors it manages to become decent. That's in stark contrast with TNG in which all child actors without exception were horrible. Especially Wesley Crusher, yuck. I believe one of their reasons for existance is also to give Odo some "lighter" scenes.

Odo is a shapeshifter, grumpy and seem to dislike everyone and is the chief of security on DS9. I don't know who the actor is but I know it's someone famours. I just can't remember where I've seen him before. His character is in many ways like Worf, but I'd say his acting is a tad bit stronger than Worf. Or maybe like Data in that he is a non-human and have special powers.

I miss Data. There is no Data on Deep Space 9. And also no Geordie LaForge, which is a shame. Those were the best actors in TNG.

Then we come to Commander Kiera, Sisko's right hand. She is not bad and not good. Kind of bland so far and cries to much. Apparently one of the main storylines will be the Bajoran independence (DS9 is a Federation outpost in the Bajoran system). Since she was a member of the resistance movement during the Cardassian occupation. Undoubtedly there will be more sad, emotional and heart breaking scenes to come for her. Which is BOOORING.

Not to forget, Chief O'Brian were transferred from Enterprise to DS9 and now serves as chief of technology on the station. He is exactly like he was on Enterprise but now he gets more scenes. Good move by the produces, I like him.

And then to forget, Liuetenant Dax. Totally boring, emotionless and perfect in every way. She has a nice ass, firm tits and tight costume. I hope the producers were smart enough to include some shower scenes with her.

Quark is the ferengi bartender. Not in the least similar to Guinan. He has already got lots of scenes and been able to build up a lot of character. In the DS9 universe, ferengi apparently aren't as disguisting as in TNG. Nogg is even wearing some kind of "cute ferengi" costume. Like fewer wrinkles and better teeth. I can live with that.

Who ever is playing Q is playing well. But it just makes no fucking sense that he would stop harassing Picard and begin harassing Sisko. It's just silly and unrealistic. I always had a hard time for the Q episodes even the good ones (e.g. the trial against humanity), the DS9 ones will be worse.

All in all, I've enjoyed the episodes so far. I'll give it four out of five comm badges.

I'm an ASSHOLE

Alltid. Dagen efter jag varit full oroar jag mig för ifall jag varit ett arsle eller inte. Gjorde jag bort mig, var jag ett svin mot folk eller bara allmänt social och trevlig? Det är svårt att veta för jag kan ju inte fråga de inblandade vad de tyckte om Björns beteénde på en skala ett till tio liksom... Den här gången tänker jag inte grunna på det iallafall.

GUADEC 2009