Henrik Lantz

The other day, I was sat at home trying to find something, anything, on the telly since I was too lazy/snug to get out of bed and go over to the DVD player. In Stockholm, we have 108 TV channels via digital cable; the whole world in a little black box in our living room. What did I end up watching? State television channel 2, displaying a test card, accompanied by J. S. Bach’s “Air on a G String”.

The times of 57 channels and nothing on are gone. (But then, hasn’t Bruce Springsteen always been hopelessly out?)

As I write this, I am listening to my first ever iTunes Music Store purchase; The Pet Shop Boys‘ magical new album “Fundamental“ - the extended version (including the remix CD “Fundamentalism” plus two demo songs and the video for the single “I’m With Stupid” - total 24 tracks + 1 video) is priced at a reasonable €11.99. I created my iTunes account, submitted my credit card details and clicked the “Buy Album” button. After a brief warning telling me I was about to spend money, the songs started downloading, and I had the whole album before I’d finished listening to “Psychological”, the first track. Wow. Really impressed with this.

Then, of course came the big, and I mean ELEPHANTINE, stumbling block. I tried transferring the song to my MP3 player, which was a - in the words of Jack Slater - Big Mistake. You see, I am one of the non-believers who chose to go for a player of another make than Apple; and since people like creating their own monopolies, they of course were not compatible. Apple’s M4P files are only recognized by iTunes, and this FINE application refuses to convert them. It does, however, allow me to burn them on an audio CD. Windows Media Player 10, then, was kind enough to let me rip this audio CD into MP3:s, which could then be transferred. Not anywhere near impressed by these limitations.

I do like gadgets, I really do. But I am NOT buying an iPod until I really, REALLY need a video player. And I don’t.

…the massive backend system used for your intranet falls over (and it’s not your responsibility to fix it) and the error message presented to the user is actually visible in the URL of the returned page; like

https://……./error.aspx?ErrorText=Unable+to+connect+to+database.++Check+database+connection+information+and+make+sure+the+database+server+is+running.

This really inspires people to be creative in tweaking the error message to endless hilarities. I prefer the subtle changes (inserting a single word or changing some tiny detail), but the one that said “Your boss gave you 3 minutes to fix this 5 minutes ago, you are FIRED!” was good too!

Friends and former flatmates Ulrica and Paul gave birth to their first child at 22.45 last night (actually, I think Ulrica probably did most of the work); a 4.2 kg ginger boy by the name of Sid Morris. Congratulations to all three of you, looking forward to see you all again soon!