Henrik Lantz

Boss: So do you think I should get 3 pies for the meeting since we have 30 people?
Worker Bee #1: Sure, 3 pies should be enough.
Worker Bee #2: I think you need more than 3.
Worker Bee #1: How many do you think we should get?
Worker Bee #2: We need 3.14159 pi.
Boss: Get out of my office. Now.

1010 Second Avenue
San Diego, California

(snipped from Overheard in the Office.)

• Internet take-away places where you can pay with a credit card and that send you an email when your order is sent from the restaurant AND deliver in half the communicated time.
• Knowing that I will sleep like a baby the second my head hits the pillow.
• Depeche Mode’s coming single, “Precious". Their best in ten years?

Everytime you sign up for some new service, register an account with a web shop, join a community or want to download something from somewhere, you have to register your email address. One possibility could be to register temporary email addresses unique for each site (which is handy if you have your own mail server, not so handy if you need to register a new webmail account for each site) and then drop that alias once you start getting too many emails from a given site. Problems with this method still include mass-mailings that don’t show you which alias it’s going to (in case you’ve got several similar ones) and it also does not protect you if someone hijacks a site’s email database and uses it for spam; you still need to figure out which alias they are using.

Enter Mailinator. Mailinator is a new kind of webmail site - one that doesn’t require registration or loads of tricky setup. It’s basically a receive-only temporary email address; emails sent to [anything]@mailinator.com are accessible via the web page for a few hours and then automatically deleted. You cannot send emails from Mailinator or reply to ones you have received, and all sorts of fancy formatting and attachments are stripped immediately.

When registering an account on a website, give as your email address xuxufufifdff@mailinator.com. Later on, go to the Mailinator website, enter “xuxufufifdff” in the Check your inbox! field and hey presto - there’s your welcome message. You don’t need a password to open the mailbox, so choose your address very carefully and don’t use it for secret information. (Mailinator graciously provides random 13-letter prefixes that could be used for your correspondence.)

Cool idea. Hope it works, that they don’t harvest the source addresses for their own spam and that people don’t try to blast it off the air just to prove themselves. Good idea? Definitely. Worth donating a couple of bucks? Quite possibly.

• Wacom board (Graphire4 Studio XL)
• 14″ TV/DVD combo (for the kitchen)
• Carrying case with poker chips

We went for a ride tonight, armed with our cameras; better take all the chances you can get when you’ve got access to a car. We both got a few good shots on magnetic media; I took a series of shots of Fredrike that turned out quite well; she looked all cool and dark in her big heavy boots, tights, skirt and cardigan, and this worked out very well with the dusky lighting conditions. I shot most of the frames using flash, which is fairly uncommon for me.

Also uncommon for me is to be Really Happy with one of my pictures, but this one I am really proud of. I’ve skipped all my usual Photoshop weaponry (curves, sharpen filters, grayscales, auto levels, etc) and gone for more exotic tools like layer masks, median filters, overlays plus tons of dodge and burn. Come to think of it, I didn’t even crop the picture; the original framing was just what I wanted. Check also the five pictures preceding that one on Pixamatic; they’re all shot at the same location.

The ultimate cul-de-sac for the 21st century:

“I’ve got rid of all my spam, and now I need a bigger penis!”

(Courtesy of the Boom Chicago website from some time ago.)

When getting ready to board the plane bound for Turkey, the very kind officer told us that we both needed to get new passports, as our old ones showed signs of tearing. She hinted that there was an entire batch back in the early days that was of inferior quality and that ours probably were from that batch.

Anyway, researching a bit on the Police website, I have found some info on how to proceed, and also that Sweden are taking the first step towards biometric information in the new passports that are introduced on October 1st; a digital photograph will be embedded on a computer chip in the photo page. I also found an interesting situation where theory and practise go different ways.

Sweden is a member of the European Union, and with that the Schengen treaty. In theory, this means that you are no longer obliged to carry a passport when travelling to the other member states; a valid photo ID is enough. HOWEVER - this photo ID needs to state/confirm your citizenship - and the only form of Swedish ID that does this today is - you guessed it - the passport. So in practise, you are still required to carry the passport with you, even though you in theory don’t.

(Note: On October 1st, Sweden also launches a new type of ID card that DOES state your citizenship.)

• bath tub
• breakfast buffet spread
• good pack of information material

• Garlic
• Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• Crème Fraiche

The heading [Three…] will be used from now on to list triplets of varying types and interest. It’s not intented to be an exhaustive list or an indication of any order of preference. All is based on my own personal taste right that minute, and it’s all a bit of fun, remember.