Linda recently bought herself a QuicKutz Silhouette plotter/cutter (a re-branded Graphtec CC200-20, actually), and I thought it would be an interesting project to get the device working under Linux. And it was! After a few days of intense observation (my first real USB-sniffing project) I had most of the protocol pat down, and I hereby present graphtecprint v1.0 (a somewhat odd name, considering it’s not really a printer, but since itself claims to be I’ll just go on and humour it).

Now, if that subject doesn’t make you want to run away screaming, you’re a sick, sick person.

Anyway, allow me to explain. last.fm is a 100% free internet radio station that actually plays music that it predicts you will like, based on what you already have listened to. Very clever and highly recommended. I have discovered more new bands that I could possibly count based on their recommendations.

Allright, moving on. About my pants, in the last.fm community, there has been an incredibly silly game going on there for a while. The rules are simple:
- Play 25 random songs from your collection
- Add the words "in my pants" to the song titles
- Mark the best ones with bold
- Post the results in your last.fm journal

How could I possibly resist?

Here is my contribution:

Swallow the Sun - Don’t Fall Asleep in my pants
Kamelot - Center of the Universe in my pants
Trivium - Dying in Your Arms in my pants
Dimmu Borgir - Dreamside Dominions in my pants
In Flames - Worlds Within the Margins in my pants
Dark Lunacy - Now is Forever in my pants
Swallow the Sun - Too Cold of Tears in my pants
Opeth - Death Whispered a Lullaby in my pants
Kamelot - Serenade in my pants
Samael - Reign of Light in my pants
Norther - Death Unlimited in my pants
Graveworm - Dreaming into Reality in my pants
Dimmu Borgir - Blood Hunger Doctrine in my pants
Communic - Frozen Asleep in the Park in my pants
Sirenia - Save me from Myself in my pants
Searing Meadow - Infamous Lines in my pants
Satyricon - Delirium in my pants
Pain - Play Dead in my pants
Process Of Guilt - Motionless in my pants
In Flames - Food for the Gods in my pants
Shape of Despair - Angels of Distress in my pants
Trail of Tears - As it Penetrates in my pants
Tristania - Pale Enchantress in my pants
Swallow the Sun - The Giant in my pants
Blind Guardian - War of Wrath in my pants

Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if you accidentally snicker at any of these titles. It will be our little secret.

The size of our family has increased yet again.

One of Linda’s online friends recently found a litter of kittens in her garage and announced the find online, asking for adopters. In a dramatic surge of mushiness, Linda managed to talk me into rescuing one of them, and this saturday we took a trip to Stavanger to pick him up. After a lengthy debate about names, we finally settled on Laban, after a friendly little ghost from one of Marius’ books. Disappointingly ungeeky, but such is life.

And in an unprecedented display of generosity, I have uploaded some pictures to Flickr for your enjoyment.

Eek, time is running away from me again. It has been close to two months since my last confession. Eh, blog-entry. (I still hate the name “blog”, by the way. Just so you know.)

Much of my spare time has been spent offline lately. Partly due to us trying to convince Marte to kick the habit of demanding food during the nights - a probject which we declared a failure after about three weeks of little to no sleep for any of us. Our excuse was that she wasn’t putting on enough weight, so maybe she actually needs the extra meal.

Oh, and speaking of Marte, no less than two teeth popped up just before the weekend!

In other news, we are redecorating the top floor of the house. Luckily I was mentally present enough to remember to take a “before”-picture before we had actually disassembled the whole room. And equally clever taking an “after”-picture before we went and filled the room with all sorts of crap again:

(No, Tim, the one with the horrible colours is the “before” one. )

Bands that rock these days: Scar Symmetry, Trivium (thanks, Mel!), Slumber

Pi, our gerbil died today, peacefully curled up in her sleep, a few weeks shy of four years old. Her health had been declining steadily for a few weeks now, so we knew it had to happen sooner or later. I suppose the recent heat wave gave her the final nudge into peaceful retirement.

Anyway, she had lived a long and full gerbil life. She was mother to no less than nine children, and grandmother to god-knows-how-many. (Five of her children were given away to friends and a pet shop, and one of the ones we kept was lucky enough to get to provide genetic material to one of my sister’s females. So Pi’s family tree has got branches way into the unknown. Which is kind of cool to know.)

Thanks for sticking around, Pi. It’s been great knowing you!

Hmm, I should update my journal a bit more often. I always have a ton of things to say, but when I finally get the round tuit working, I can’t remember any of them.

Anyway, I have finally discovered Flickr. (You can also find my latest few entries in the sidebar. Click any to zoom.) In turn, this has sparked my enthusiasm for all things photography again (I have these waves of burning interests that come and go, you see), which I consider a very good thing. Accomplishments in this field includes buying a stepdown ring for my camera (Canon EOS 350D), so that I can use my 49mm Hoya macro kit with it, without having to hold the lenses in front of the motive. Also, I have finally gotten around to setting up my own (hence very amateurish, but it works) studio. A slightly outdated picture can be found here. Outdated, because I now have a much larger reflector screen available as well.

So, I have finally managed to persuade Linda to start blogging! (Note how shamelessly I take credit for something someone else did. Truth be told, it was her fellow scrappers that did it.)

Anyway, her site is to be found here. It’s in Norwegian, but such is life.

Whee, today is Linda’s birthday. Happy birthday, love. *smooch*

Interestingly, all the family members’ ages match up in some strange and beautiful ways today. Linda is 5² years old (25), and I am 2⁵ (32). Marius is 2.5 years old, and Marte is 0.25. Clearly, the numbers 2 and 5 will be tremendously meaningful to us in the near future. (Too bad we moved into house number 23. Although that’s interesting all on its own.)

Allrighty then. Just about every single bit of our lives have now been thoroughly wrapped and boxed. In a measly hour we will be the proud owners (debtors) of two houses, at a combined estimated value of 2.84 million NOK.

It’s slightly disconcerting to know that the ADSL won’t be hooked up for another couple of days, but I’m sure we’ll get by somehow. (I’m kidding, of course. The withdrawals will slowly suck the life out of us all! Aaah, I can feel it starting already!)

So, I guess I have some catching up to do…

Marte is growing. No surprise there, really, but it happens much faster than you would think when you’re smack in the middle of her doing so. She can smile (occasionally), lift her head, kick (to the extent of *almost* pushing herself forward when lying on her tummy), and today she rolled over from her back to her tummy all by herself. You know, all those strange little things that make parents go wonky.

In other domestic news, we’re moving in just under 3 weeks. I can’t say I look forward to that ordeal, but I do look forward to having done it and getting settled in the new house.

Also, I have discovered some new music. Summoning, an austrian epic black(ish) Tolkien-metal duo, is well worth a listen! I haven’t dug too deeply into their older stuff, but their two latest albums, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame, and their brand new Oath Bound are terrific. Another great one is Amorphis‘ latest album, Eclipse.

And I would like to extend my gratitute to Albie for reminding me about Top Secret! I haven’t seen that since I was the size of a (largish) cabbage, and I had almost forgotten all about it, until now. Definitely on my to-see-again list.

Oh, I almost forgot; Comment and trackback spammers should be stabbed in the face. As should the pricks who hire them to market their useless crap. (If it wasn’t useless they wouldn’t have to resort to spamming to sell it, would they…) In the end it’s the customers’ fault, though. If nobody bought anything as a result of unsolicited junk mail, they wouldn’t bother sending it out…

OK, I think that will do for now…