Bright, beautiful - and quiet!

Well, managed another three hours sleep - which I think I will be very grateful for later in the day! It is a glorious (if windy/chilly) day in Reykjavík and the flat is bright and beautiful - roll on spring and summer!

But of course what I want to do is go out for a drive with Hjölli and soak up the day - sigh, this will take some getting used to!

Áfram, áfram! :-)

Hjölli starts the big adventure!

Well, I delivered Hjölli safely to the airport this morning and left him with Jói to check in for the flight to London. I have a really good feeling about this three month course he will be doing at Escape Studios - but, boy, it was still a really lonely drive back home! The only compensation was the chance to see the slow tranquil sunrise over the Reykjanes penninsula - Iceland really is beautiful!

And now it is a matter of sitting with a hot chocolate, blogging and trying to wind down in the hope of catching a few more hours sleep...

Hjolli @ Brons

Packing done - rubbish dumped - hangover receding - yummy food at the new Kaffi Brons - and he leaves early tomorrow :-( :-( :-(

Hjolli @ Hereford

Hjolli enjoying a luscious peppery red wine at Hereford Steakhouse on our 3rd anniversary dinner. :-D

Hjolli at Grotta

Two and a half days before Hjolli goes to London :-( Here is the handsome man at the Grotta lighthouse in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland.

3 IT Cultures

...and following discussions of mobile platforms and different operating systems, here are some comments on 3 IT cultures (please take with large pinches of salt) ;-) :-)

Macintosh
Everyone should want the one thing that we offer because it´s the best (and so we´re the best - and those that want it are the best)! If you want anything else/more then that it is just because you´re rubbish!
[fascist elitism]

Microsoft
People can demand whatever they want - as long as they get it from us and our friends - if they try anything else we´ll have to make them an offer they can´t refuse (as the godfather said).
[cut-throat capitalism]

Linux
There is a whole world of possibilities and aspirations out there - let´s share resources so that everyone can work towards their individual goals as efficiently as possible.
[moonie-eyed communitarianism]

Long live Android! A true open mobile platform!

Feeling excited by the prospect of a genuinely open mobile phone platform that will allow free and open development across the developer community - the Android platform from Google and partners. Microsoft is famous for its corporate control but its platform does support extensive third-party development even if it is ruthless at cutting out competing platform and disfavoured third-party developers. Ironically iPhone, for all its impressive innovation in user interface, is even more fascist in its restrictive development strategy - they took forever to release a development framework for third party developers and when they did it still contained unbelievable restrictions (third party apps can´t run in the background!) which cripple whole areas of development - and of course there is only one piece of hardware you can have that platform on - not much choice however gorgeous that single model may be. Even the sorts of platform you find on Nokia phones are subject to the current fragmentary nature of the market. If Android can put together an open flexible mobile platform that invites developer innovation across the board - and allows hardware manufacturers to exploit that platform across a range of devices, there will be a true revolution in the area of mobile technology - roll on the day!!!

Fun for all the family - watching youtube on the phone!

A happy icelandic Easter morning!

A thorougly nerdy Holy Saturday

What a nerdy Holy Saturday this is turning out to be! No surprises for those that know us ;-)  Hjölli introduced me to a new web browser a couple of weeks ago - Flock - the "social web browser"! As cliche as that sounds it has turned out to be a revelation - basically Flock is a spin-off from Firefox but it integrates into its sidebar a whole bunch of socionetwork sites - facebook for general social networking, flickr/picassa etc for photos, eblogger etc for blogs, delicious and magnolia for social bookmarking etc etc - and makes info from these sites easily accessible and reviewable during the process of web browsing.  I wouldn´t have thought I would be that interested given my pretty limited use of these tools but in fact the browser has reactivated my use of facebook, got me trying out e.g. delicious and eblogger, and generally got me exploring ways of using web2 in a way that works for me.  It´s been great fun.  I´ve even learned how to post )photo) blogs from my phone and post photos from my phone to smugmug. All a lot a fun (yes, I AM a nerd!).

I´m surprised that they haven´t got any integration for lastfm which seems a major omission (sharing sounds) in light of their other coverage - and I´m sad that smugmug isn´t on their photo site list. But otherwise, well worth checking out even if you are a bit dubious first ;-)

The Bear.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Enjoying a mellow saturday morning!