…kan vere så mangt. Som regel er det lite å skryte av, men i enkelte tilfeller kan det vere riktig så bra. Som for eksmpel i fjor sommar då vi køyre sørover østerdalen og stoppa på ØsterdalenHotell på Hovdmoen rett ved Rena. Dei hadde ein god buffét, ein leikekrok og greie priser. Vi kosa oss fælt med vesla før vi køyrde vidare. Så i år skulle vi gjenta suksessen. Kona gleda seg heile vegen nedover, og vi kunne ikkje komme fort nok fram. Men til slutt: Hovdmoen. Fulle av forventning og med tomme magar gjekk vi inn for å bli møtt av eit fantastisk…. gatekjøkken??!? wtf.
Vi tykte det var lite bilar utafor til å vere midt i fellesferien, men med ein meny som består av hamburgertallerken, pommes frites, slapp karamellpudding og den evinnelege løv”biffen” var kanskje ikkje det så rart. Vi klarte likevel å overtale oss sjølve til å ete der sidan vi var så sultne etter seks timar køyring, noko vi egentleg angrar på no. Sjølv om dei hadde elgfrikadeller som i seg sjølv var heilt greie klarte dei å øydeleggje måltidet med overkokte grønsaker. Pølsa og chipsen dei hadde til barnemeny rann av feitt så vesla fekk dele litt på elgfrikadellene. Etter middagen kosa vi oss fælt med sur kaffe og skitne leiker i leikekroken. Herleg. Det begynte å regne då vi skulle ut i bilen igjen.
Etter gode opplevingar på Espa og Kløfta – begge eigd av Marché – byrjar vi å lure på om det verkeleg er overtaking av utlendingar som skal til for at ein sulten reisande skal kunne få kjøpt seg eit bra mål mat her til lands. Kva meiner DU – finnest det gode norsk-eigde vegkroer her til lands?
“Lille” pusen på 6 år blir aldri for gammal til å herje litt med eit snøre 
Two days ago I picked up a brand new MacBook Pro 15-inch with a Intel core i7 CPU from my local hardware pusher. I have to admit it’s a DAMN fast machine, especially after fitting it with a Corsair SSD disk. However, it has one major grievance in my opinion – the button-less multitouch trackpad. My old 2007 model MBP has a physical button located below the trackpad, and I have gotten accustomed to resting my right hand thumb there when using the trackpad.
The new multitouch trackpad does not come with a physical button, but it can detect “idle” fingers on the trackpad so when resting my thumb I can still use the trackpad as if the thumb was not in contact with the pad. Most of the time. If I am to move my thumb only the slightest – which I typically do when I try to tap-to-click with my index finger – it will start interpreting my movements as multitouch gestures and very diffrent things than I intended will start to happen. Most annoying.
After searching for a software solution to disable the lover one third of the trackpad I got pissed of and typed “I hate the macbook multitouch trackpad” and guess what, I am not the only one. First hit in the result list is Kustaa Nyholms site over at sparetimelabs.com, which on his Multitouch page explains why he hates the trackpad and what he did to fool it into behaving properly. I have to admit, It’s a sexy solution
Now my thumb rests nicely on a piece of former DVD case, and my erranous click rate has gone down to zero. It even looks good, although I will try to get some thinner double sided tape and do a better job with my scissors to get it perfect. Thanks Kusti!
Yesterday at 23:00 I discovered that the cache “The middle of somewhere” was published at 16:16, and that noone had found it, or at least had not posted any FTF (First To Find) logs on geocaching.com. This is a mystery cache, and I had to recall my old geometry skillz from school to be able to calculate the coordinates. Then I downloaded a free GPS waypoint finder program for my iPhone, plotted the coordinates in and went to bed.
This morning the first thing I did was check my mail to see if there had been any finders of this cache. It was nothing there, but I was a bit worried that one of the other regular FTF hunters I know had found it but not logged it on the website so that other FTF hunters would come rushing to the scene just to be disappointed by finding a not-so-much pristine log sheet in the container. A despicable practice, that.
However, after dropping the kid off to kindergarten and the wife off to work I went down to see if I got my calculations right. And after some detours – the iPhone GPS isn’t all that.. – I had to use the hint to start bruteforcing possible cache locations. And I found it! And it was an FTF! There was much rejoicing, and then I went to work
Wondering about the picture? Well, little Halden seems to be a dangerous town, that’s a bullet hole in a sign near the cache!
After doing geocaching for a little over a year, I still love it. But geocaching has some features that makes the activity pattern change a bit over time. In the beginning there’s a lot of caches not very far away, and you can go grab caches in between other things that you need to do, like shopping and dropping the kid off in kindergarten. However, after some time you need to drive for quite some time or do time consuming walks in the woods just to get to the cache site – as there is a proximity limit of 161 metres between caches and the bureaucracy of placing geocaches is quite overwhelming for the less eager among cachers . This makes having time for geocaching more difficult since you have to dedicate whole days to geocaching since the distance to the nearest cache is steadily growing – and not everyone has full days to spend on something that does not help in building the house or fixing the garden… Of course, those rare business trips to other cities are treasured as that often gives one the possibility of finding a cache or two.
Enter: Gowalla. This is more of a social networking thing compared to geocaching, it helps you see where your friends are, and their status updates. Gowalla is actually quite similar to geocaching, in that it has geographical spots that you can find, and you can log that you have found them on the system’s website or on a mobile client. However, there’s a lot of small differences. While Geocaching uses various physcal containers that you actually have to get a hold of in order to write something in the enclosed log book, Gowalla only reqires you to be in the proximity of a spot in order to log – or Check In to – the spot. This means you can find and log the spots without even getting out of your car, and you don’t need to worry about getting a cache muggled which may result in unwanted attention from law enforcement and so on – a great advantage in urban areas. Also placing spots is a lot less hazzle with Gowalla – there’s no formal requirements for placing a spot and no approval process. So anyone can play Gowalla very easily. Geocaching also has this more or less unwritten rule that one should only find a cache once, while Gowalla encourage you to find the same spot multiple times by introducing a leaderboard for each spot. Gowalla even has virtual “cache content” (swag) that’s trackable like Geocaching’s travel bugs. But I can’t say I’m really into that part of Gowalla -yet.
Of course, Gowalla is a more virtual game, and is as such not really much suited for the family sunday trip with kids – the instant reward of having your toddler/child finding tupperware treasure chests in the woods is something Gowalla just can’t provide
For the Norwegian readers out there this piece on NRKBeta has more about Gowalla. Translated version here.
