<![CDATA[Martin's blog]]>

<![CDATA[Martin's blog]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:10:55 -0400 forum@invisionmodding.com (Invision Modding) IP.Blog 60 Ordered a MacBook Pro! Daily life Last entry was that I quit smoking, and that's gone pretty well, I must say. There have of course been the occasional cigarette at parties and such, but people can get used to the fact that I don't come with a disgusting smell any more.

Me getting rid of that nasty habit is kind of relevant to what I am no about to write about.

For the last 2-3 months I've seen the guys I follow at Twitter go on and on about their Macs, some of them have just bought one (or TWO....), others are just bragging. And that have made me a bit jealous, I must confess.

With the summer, vacations, traveling and all approaching, I changed my focus over to my laptop. Cleaned it up (formatting, reinstalling etc), and then I remembered why I don't use it. It is rubbish. It gets insanely hot, even when it's on a flat surface, and to be honest, it's not a Ferrari. Well, seeing as it's named "Acer Ferrari", it is. But it just isn't. Booting into Vista takes ages, doing anything take decades, and then it's the overheating issues. And no, Windows 7 did not make it any better.
Due to all these "troubles", I decided to look for a new one. As most of you know, there is quite a large selections on "normal" laptops, which makes it quite hard to find the right one for you. So I looked at Apple instead.
I might have been a bit too optimistic when I went straight for the MacBook Air. It looks gorgeous, but sadly too small, and WAY too expensive. We were looking at roughly $3500-4000 for a decent model.
So I settled down for a MacBook Pro. But which one? 13", or 15"? At the store I was currently looking at, we weren't talking about a huge price difference, really. Only $200. But I was still in doubt if I really wanted to pay ~$2000 on a new laptop. My old one does still work, and all that.

And that brings us back to the me quit smoking subject.
A month after I quit, I opened a new bank account, which I hid from the list of accounts. During a normal week I blew 400 dollars up in smoke, so I started a saving plan where I placed $500 every week into that account.
With this being nearly 7 months ago, I've completely forgotten about that. Till last night....

And that was it really. Placed the order at 03:45AM, went to sleep, and I didn't feel bad about it when I woke it. I only regret that I didn't pay the extra for over-night delivery :|]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:37:00 -0400 <![CDATA[I've quit smoking!]]> Daily life

So we had this chat in the smoking room, and we decided to quit. As simple as that. The plan is to introduce a total ban on smoking in the entire building. They almost have it today, but we've got an exception from that rule, until now.

I've tried this once before, and I lasted almost three weeks. But it's actually pretty hard when everyone around you smokes.

This time it's FINAL! So which me good luck

]]> Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:37:04 -0400 New camera! Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 Computer things Her name is "Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1". Casios new "flag-bearer" (couldn't find a proper word for it) when it comes to compact cameras.
This camera has some amazing functions;

It have the ability to take 60 6MP(MegaPixel) pictures in 1 second! That is unbelievably fast. You can also set it to take 5 pics per sec in 12 seconds. I can't see the end of the usage areas of this function!
HIGH SPEED MOVIE! This is the reason I bought it. Set the movie mode to "HS", and press record. The camera will now film at 300/600/1200fps (frames per second). Both 600fps and 1200fps requires a huge amount of light to capture the object. You've probably seen the huuuge lights they use when shooting "Mythbusters". I guess they are around 1500W to 2000W, a normal light bulb is 45W, just to give you an impression on the amount needed.
Full HD movie. It can film continuous at Full HD resolution (1920x1080) in 29minutes. That should be enough to cover the things you need in crystal clear view. You can of course switch to a lower resolution, which gives you a longer recording time.
Extremely short shutter time. It can take one picture in 1/40.000 second, or 0.000025 sec if you like. This requires even more light then 1200fps high speed video, so I'm not sure when that high shutter time will be needed. If any of you are into photography, could you please tell me?
And a bunch of other functions that regular cameras have. You can even take normal photos!

Here are a few images of her:

I've also uploaded all the high-speed videos I've taken that is worth watching to my private website: http://ma.rtin.no/hs_movie/
Feel free to download and watch

]]> Mon, 26 May 2008 19:46:57 -0400 Topic referral thingy IP.Board related This is a mod that let you see which sites linked to a specific topic. If Site A linked to topic 10, Site A would be listed as a referrer in that topic. It's pretty much like the "Links" function YouTube has.
So, this is how it looks so far:

Any thoughts? Feedback? Done before? Anything?]]> Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:52:43 -0400 A new mod coming up! IP.Board related Update 25th March: A new tab is under development. Read this comment for more information.

During the past weeks I've been developing a new mod. Kind of a statistics tab to your profile.
I first saw it on a SMF powered board (http://www.melbshuffle.com (check out the videos, that dancing genre rocks!)). This is basically a tab that shows the visitor (and yourself) when you're most active at the forum, and which categories/forums you're most active in, ordered by number of posts. Plus some other basic stuff, like how many topics you've opened, how many polls, posts, etc. Just have them all gathered in one place

I'll also try to make it compatible with AH Modding's Socialiser.

The part that I'm most satisfied with is the cache system! I ran a little betatest on my own board, where I have 7000 (counting) posts, and the whole tab took 30 seconds to render. Then I took use of the members cache, which by default is only used to store the friends and stuff for other mods. So the first time you open the tab, it looks at the cache and sees if there are anything in there. If it's not, then build the whole thing manually, which takes quite some time, and store it. The next time someone tries to use it, it's all pre-parsed in there, and shown to the user in under a second. And after a given time (set by the administrator) the whole thing would be ran all over again, to make sure all the numbers are accurate.

But before I can do the final touches to it, I think I'll have to most of the bugs to my last mod

As an end to this entry, I'll give you a little sneak peak!

That is taken from my developmentboard, so the graph look a little groggy. Therefor I'll post another picture taken from my live board. It's taken from an early state, but that's more like a normal graph should look like

EDIT:
Getting pretty close now! Here is a picture of the final product.

]]> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:31:59 -0500 New springs mounted on my car Bought the complete set in June, and now it's done

Took it for a little test drive (around 60km/37miles), and I didn't get seasick

And now over to something completely different. My blog. This blog. First time ever I'm writing it, and I don't even know what to write about. As you see in the header, this is everything about nothing. Could be interesting, could be a rubbish. Who knows?]]> Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:26:42 -0400