Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category.

Where to put the mail?

DAIMI has decided to rename itself to CS, and as part of that process my current address of mg@daimi.au.dk will change to mg@cs.au.dk. Okay, I can live with that, except that they apparently want to disable the old address at some point next year! That is stupid if you ask me — there are many, many papers out there that reference a @daimi.au.dk address, and I have been using it for all my software development in the last couple of years.

So instead of just going with mg@cs.au.dk as my new address I want a new address, probably mg@mgsys.dk, which is a not-so-well-known address I’ve had for a while. Please let me know what do you think of that address.

Three days ago I got a mail from the DAIMI, ehmm…, CS staff that informed me that they will be changing their mail system next Saturday. I’m affected by this since I’ve already hacked their system by upgrading it to Dovecot instead of whatever old and slow IMAP server they were using. So I have until Saturday to either migrate my mail back to their slow server or to move to somewhere else.

The mgsys.dk domain is hosted at DreamHost, and they provide all the space I could ever want. Except that they only allow 2000 mails in the INBOX folder! I have 3207 mails at the moment for the year 2008, so this will be sort of annoying for me. Also, their SPAM filter seems a bit crude: it will only allow me to see the messages in the quarantine folder by logging into their webmail system. And I hate such systems.

Another option is to move everything to Gmail — and access it through IMAP. A number of people seem to use Gnus with Gmail, so I guess it will work okay. There is even a Gmail Lab thingy that will let you make Gmail behave more like a normal IMAP server. I don’t know how good Gmail’s SPAM filter is, but I assume it is good? Though, after hearing from Claudio that it has flagged two of my mails to viff-devel as SPAM for no apparent reason I am not really sure.

Right now CS does some graylisting for me and run the mails through SpamAssassin. I run them through SA a second time with my own settings. During the last week I caught about 200 SPAMs by this second filter. By moving to Gmail I would have a much harder time doing such custom filtering (at least if it should be done asynchronously and before the mail hits my folders). Moving to DreamHost would allow me to setup any wacky scheme I want for now, but they too want to consolidate their mail on special servers with no support for .forward files.

Hmm… It sounds like Gmail would be the simplest solution. There is of course the issue about privacy, but I guess Google knows what I’m doing anyway… :-)

Arrived in Switzerland

My three month stay at IBM has started, and so far it is going well. I arrived Sunday and had my first day Monday. The first day was spend doing administration: I got my picture taken for a chip card which is used for opening doors and for paying in the canteen. I also got a bunch of stuff about how I should look after the environment, how I should look after my own health (sit correctly at my desk), and especially about how I should take care not to leave any “IBM confidential” material lying around at my desk when I’m not there. Protecting the IP (”Imaginary Property”, ehh, I mean “Intellectual Property”) is taken pretty serious around here, but since I don’t expect to be involved in anything confidential I should be safe…

I have no pictures to show yet since i don’t have a way to get them off my camera. Back home I always just used the card reader in my monitor, but here I don’t have such a reader. So I will have to find and buy a USB cable (I couldn’t find the original before I left).

So that’s all for now!

Oh, just one more thing… VIFF 0.6 has been released last week. It has greatly improved performance, updated documentation, and various bug fixes. So please try it out!

Vrrmmm!

Yes, we now have a car! Stephanie and I have just signed the contract for a Mitsubishi Colt Insport 1.5 — we will get it next Wednesday, yeah! Behold:

Mitsubishi Colt Insport

We tried a lot of different small cars, and the Colt was the one that fitted our needs and budget the best. It comes with three years of insurance for only 6,900 DKK ($US 1,300, 925€) which is very cheap in Denmark for first-time drivers. The normal prices are around 10,000–15,000 DKK per year.

Now we just have to wait nine days… I’m so looking forward to it!

Thank you so much!

Kissing outside the church. I’m married! I just want to thank everybody for making yesterday such a wonderful day for me and Stephanie!

I’ll put the pictures up somewhere later — for now the “preview” on the right will have to make do. Thanks again to everybody for all the presents, thanks for being there and celebrating with us!

Wow! Bachelor Party

Today was an incredible day… it started with Thomas calling me at 7:30 in the morning. I was still sleeping at that point, so when he started talking about us having breakfast at 8:00 I didn’t really understand him. But when he said that it was at my place and that we would be doing a bit of a tour afterwards, then I knew that I was in for a bachelor party. “Uh-oh”, I thought… I hope they wont do anything bad to me :-)

Early morning at the bakery They went to the bakery half past six in the morning! Waiting at the bus stop

They showed up half an hour later, the whole gang was there: Mikkel, Lars, Anders, and Svend. We had breakfast and wouldn’t tell me anything about what was going to happen, at this point I was getting quite curious and a bit nervous.

Me and my new friend: the parrot Pux The Gang Better view of the ugly tie

We drove into Aarhus and the first appointment was at 10:00 in Vestergade 45. What lies there, you wonder… a yoga school! “Cool, this is something new!”, I thought, and so it was. We spend an hour doing exercises and it felt really good. It might have been because he was giving us an easy program, for we spend quite a bit of time lying on the floor relaxing. Easy or not, it was a great idea!

Small madrases seem important for yoga... Anders preparing for some yoga

We then had a soda/beer at a cafe and continued to the train station. To my surprise the day included a train trip to someplace which they didn’t want to tell me. The place turned out to be Silkeborg, a nice town situated between a couple of beautiful lakes and a city which I had never visited before. We had a nice lunch at Jensens Bøfhus.

Getting a beer/soda at a cafe in Aarhus Walking down the central pedestrianized area, towards the train station Aboard the train with my trusty parrot keeping watch from the top of the chair Mikkel is looking quite satisfied with his beer... Walking around in Silkeborg One side of the table at Jensens Bøfhus The other side of the table Me A happy Lars after the meal Mikkel and me waiting outside the restaurant

After the lunch we walked for a bit and ended up at a bowling alley. I like bowling even though I’m not particular good at it, so it was a good surprise. We had time for one and a half games and I didn’t win or loose either of them — instead I had a lot of fun.

Getting ready for my turn Impressive style by Svend!

When I thought that we were done at the bowling alley and heading for the door, the guys had another surprise up their collective arms: the place also had a laser game arena… I’ve played laser game before and it’s an intense experience with lots of adrenalin, loud music, and fun. It is also physically demanding and I was completely wasted 20 minutes later when we were done. We then went home, this time for real :-)

Getting ready for battle Armed and ready!

Going back to the train we missed the bus and had to walk at a fast pace all the way to catch the train. We reached the station at 17:55 with the train scheduled for 17:56. The train turned up six minutes late, so Thomas and Anders had time to run to the shop and buy some much needed sodas. The weather was stunning all day, so we really needed the refreshments.

Walking back to the train station The photographer, Thomas The long walk home. Svend fell a bit behind... ... but made it in the end, with one minute to spare! Relaxing in the train More relaxation

Back in Aarhus we went to Chinese restaurant called Restaurent Lotus. I had never been there before, but Thomas had so he could explain their buffet system. The idea was that you picked whatever raw meet (chicken, beef, bacon, deer, kangaroo, and a couple more) and vegetables you wanted and then brought it to a chef who would then quickly fried it in a wok and gave it back to you, mixing it with a sauce of your choice. It was really cool that you could mix and match things like that and the food tasted great.

The restaurant was the last point on the schedule and afterwards we sat a bit on a lawn relaxing in the yoga positions we had learned earlier :-) It had been a really long day for me (and even longer for the guys who went to the bakery before spending half an hour in a bus to reach me). So we decided to call it a day and head home.

Practicing yoga on the lawn Sunset

All in all this was an amazing day. I was super surprised that they had planned so much for me and I think we all had a great time. I was also very happy that they didn’t had any scary plans for me. The only thing they wanted was for me to wear an ugly yellow tie and to carry a cute parrot-doll along with me the entire day. I happily did both things! :-) Thanks for a day to remember!