Old news for most of whom it concerns, but I’d like to air some thoughts about it nonetheless.

My impression so far - again, as a hacker, not an end user: I like it, and I like it alot. The refreshed look-and-feel is one thing, as well as the integrated IM and Google Talk, but to me the underlying system bits are more interesting.

First, though, the device feels much more responsive. Both when navigating around on the device itself as well as when using the web browser. Good job to whomever did that.

And the new Application Manager is very nice, and having a proper package repository system up and running is invaluable. I’m very pleased they decided to drop the /var/lib/install model from the earlier versions. Also, being able to use “apt” to cleanly remove parts of the stock system, e.g. games and RSS-reader (which I’m sure are nice, but I don’t really use them) is very handy.

As for the “beta” part of the release name, I haven’t found any showstopping bugs or flaws yet, so things are really looking promising. Great work, team. Looking forward to the final release!

One small disappointment, though. It was a bit sad to see binary compatibility with ARMedslack packages go (it was incredibly handy to just drop a few precompiled binaries into /home/user/bin and off you go), but I guess the switch was done in the name of the greater good.

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.

Well, sort of. I have moved the journal and a couple of the static pages have been added as Wordpress pages, but quite a bit of fiddling remains. That’ll have to wait, though. All in all, the move went surprisingly well.

One thing, though. Don’t try to embed javascript in a Wordpress page. Ugh.

As mentioned earlier, I recently set up a blog for Linda, using Wordpress 2.0.2. Very slick, I must say. So slick that I am very tempted to migrate my site over to it as well.

Being the geek that I am, the fact that it was very easy to customize and tweak was a big selling point for me. I added a simple gallery-like function to Linda’s blog in a matter of minutes, simply by adding some include statements to one of her theme’s php-files.

So, while you all are waiting for me to move over, sit back and enjoy the slightly improved (IMHO) look of my site while I summon up some motivation. (I was just playing with my stylesheet to see what I should aim for with my Wordpress theme.)

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…

This morning, at the ungodly hour of 05:32, our daughter Marte was born. Things went very smoothly (says me, who wasn’t the one who was in labour all night, but hey), and all is well with mother and baby girl. She weighed in at a pretty average 3622 grams, and measured 49 cm. All in all, a perfect little princess.