lars backlund | blog of lasseman

For some work. Will also visit grandma.

Heh. It’s fun too google on your way old quake nick name, fireztar, fireztar[tcc], fireztar tcc .. and so on.. and find old levels you designed :)

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Bought myself a new toy today..and look.. Its not an ipod :)

If you got some time over, take a look at these.

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With regards to the disclosure project, one really have to wonder why we spend so much time reporting on news such as Britney shaving her head or which pop star does coke and who doesn’t. Then again, finding issues more news-worthy than the life of Britney isn’t difficult, still one would truly hope that people payed these issues a little more concern since they have the chance of affecting us as a race in dramatic ways. It’s like a constant reminder of what a curious kind we are watching these witnesses.. how much time we spend on trivial matters while we so rashly dismiss items that are mind boggling.

Stuck at arlanda airport. Sigh

Rainy days here in Sundsvall and work feels kind of sucky. My dear frien zeeke got a job here in town at emhart glass which is awesome! There are extremly few jobs out for civil engineers in town so he managed to snatch one of the few – congrats!

=

Hey thanks WontFlyMe for filing for bankruptcy and totally fucking up my vacation plans to Rome plus ripping me of 720 bucks. I fucking hate you and I hope you burn in hell.

Update, 2 weeks later: We’re getting our money back thanks to our bank, not FlyMe. 

Been workshopping in Växsjö for two days. If the word “workshop” was a person..he’d be a tool. Wikipedia states:

“A workshop is also a gathering or training session which may be several days in length. It emphasizes problem-solving, hands-on training, and requires the involvement of the participants. “

I’m so curious how the more down to earth definition:

“A workshop is a room or building which provides both the area and tools (or machinery) that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods. Apart from the larger factories, workshops were the only places of production in the days before industrialisation. “

.. ended up in a corporate environment where you call almost any gatherings related to a task or a problem at hand with employees from different parts of an organization a “workshop”? Like why? “They were the only places of production in the days before…” – how did we go from that to the exact opposite of today? I’m not saying workshops are bad, I am saying though that they are not the place where actual productivity take place..and that it’s a stupid label (it’s a god damn meeting).
Anyway…

We’ve been talking about flowcharts. On that topic I’d like to point out how clumsy most of these tools are. And as with everything Microsoft Office, you have tools that are capable of tons but what users really need are a bare essential. I’ll argue that many Office products do more harm than good in a large corporate environment since the users are free to do whatever they like and as long as the user is defined by rules (and not physical limits set in place). More simplistic web products are more productive, easier to control and easier to collaborate around. Plus they’re dirt cheap.

Microsoft Visio for example can be extremely powerful if used right but it can also be pretty useless.The exported files from Visio 2003 are a mystery, generating a gazillion gif files, XML schemes and uses a JavaScript based solution for search.. which is all nice on it’s own but it doesn’t play well with other applications (say..any search engine that crawls basically). Why not simple HTML, what’s wrong with that? Why not an option for it at least? Hell why not Flash even? Anything but the shit it generates.

• Visio vs Gliffy
• Sharepoint vs Confluence
• Office & Outlook vs Google Apps
  (and maybe with a hint of Star in it for fancy needs)
• Windows vs Linux or Mac OSX for that matter

I sure as hell know what I would choose
if I started anything up in this day an age.

Ah anyway. Off to sleep.