Anders Pollas

Well, here I am, doing a lit­tle group­ware sup­port gig at the Uni­ver­sity of Copen­hagen, Insti­tute of Dan­ish lan­guage and lit­ter­a­ture. It’s all part of a major scheme meant to facil­i­tate bet­ter inter­ac­tion around and dur­ing courses; my job is to assist the teach­ing staff in using the soft­ware. So I’ll be at my new lit­tle office for the next cou­ple of weeks, curi­ous to whether the pres­ence of a sup­porter will have any effect on if this thing will lift off or not. Any­way, it’s a bril­liant idea (actu­ally, it’s just what should be expected, but still–things aren’t going too fast here in Uni-land all the time, so a small round of applause is appro­pri­ate I guess…) and I first thought of blog­ging the whole expe­ri­ence as a log of the first steps of adapt­ing new tech­nol­ogy in major institutions–and for the obvi­ous enter­tain­ment value bound to fol­low jobs of this nature. But the thing is, it might just be a rather bad idea. I haven’t got any idea if I’ll be busy or not, and I’m not going to do a “noth­ing hap­pened today” piece every­day about how bored I am. So I think I’ll just do a wrapup at the end, let­ting you know how it all went.

For now, I’m pretty much set­tled in, decent browsers and news read­ers installed (though it’s pretty damn hard being allowed to do any­thing with­out admin priv­i­leges on the machine I’ve been given due to its place­ment in the net­work), bad ass drum’n’bass in my head­phones, canned bev­er­ages, cof­fee on its way… I think I’ll just enjoy being good ol’ fash­ioned employed for a while…

Update: Things are cook­ing, lots of peo­ple sign­ing up, learn­ing how to use the system.

Mez­zoblue on an all to famil­iar sub­ject: RSI and Dis­com­fort. A bit of a clas­sic, unfortunately…it seems tightly con­nected with our mis­sion to save the world from the (dis)comfort of our offices. Remem­ber to excer­cise, take a walk, change posi­tion once in a while. We’re all hav­ing fun here, but it’s not worth it if we’re being to hard on our bod­ies at the same time. I rec­om­mend going out for lunch a lot more. It’s not really some­thing we do too much in Den­mark. Take a good break, meet up with some nice peo­ple, take a walk after a good meal. Tips from Mez­zoblue include:

Avoid sit­ting for pro­longed peri­ods of time, as this causes pos­tural strain.
Take fre­quent breaks to stand up and stretch.
Place both feet flat on the floor when sit­ting.
Avoid cross­ing your legs — this habit can lead to an imbal­ance in the pelvis.
Sit back on the chair. It is very impor­tant that you give your back the proper sup­port.
Adjust your chair so that your knee is slightly higher than your hip. If your chair is not adjustable you will need a footrest.
DonÂ’t sit in a chair that is too large, too high or too low.
Avoid lean­ing for­ward with your back arched. Work toward not being a slouch.

Ommer.dk bringer dig: Crack.dk — din guide til alt brunt… Og en særdeles værdig konkur­rent til sit forbillede.

My mail server has been act­ing funny since 10 AM this morn­ing. I get some of my mail here and there, but still miss quite a bit. If you have sent me some­thing today, please try again, pos­si­bly using an alter­nate email address. Thanks.

Damn, this is the sport I’ve been look­ing for: Cross­golf­ing. No hand­i­caps, no dress­code, no fixed tar­gets, just aim at what­ever you agree on and have fun. Check out the nice site of Nat­ural Born Golfers..

Plas­tic piece on Flash Mobs: All The Action, None Of The Respon­si­bil­ity. Inter­est­ing point, though the riot part prob­a­bly requires a few other things of the participant’s minds than just the abil­ity to flash mob. This, how­ever, is one of the rea­sons why it can’t go on for­ever. How long will this be fun:

It’s a spec­ta­cle for spectacle’s sake — which is silly, but is also, as I’ve dis­cov­ered some­what to my sur­prise, gen­uinely trans­gres­sive, which is part of its appeal, I think. Peo­ple feel like there’s noth­ing but order every­where, and so they love to be a part of just one thing that nobody was expecting.

Mean­while on Smart­Mobs, Roland Pique­paille points out the dif­fer­ence between smart mobs and flash mobs. Which (back in the Plas­tic piece) makes good sense; smart mobs are a the vehi­cle mak­ing flash mobs pos­si­ble, and while most flash mobs are pure fun and games (though likely to be a lot less fun very soon), in the right hands they’re capa­ble of mak­ing some quite con­vinc­ing manifestations:

Oth­ers, mean­while, have adapted flash mob­bing to ful­fill their activist agen­das. Boston’s Reg­gie Cum­mings, for instance, ‘coor­di­nates “friendly takeovers” by crowds of black yup­pies of down­town bars with a tra­di­tion­ally white clien­tele’. The genius orgina­tor of flash mob­bing, ‘Bill’, sim­ply appre­ci­ates its sub­ver­sive value

Cool edi­tor, for­merly known as Hydra seems to have run into some legal trou­ble regard­ing the name…

When I first heard of this flash mob busi­ness a coupe of months ago, I found it quite cool; a proof of the orga­ni­za­tion capa­bil­i­ties of mod­ern mobile tech­nol­ogy, an exam­ple of how to inter­act with your phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment and just plain funny. But the con­cept itself, doing ran­dom gath­er­ings as an event, is pretty much not fun any­more once it’s been done a few time and the word gets around. But hav­ing your flash mob men­tioned on Dan­ish national radio (unfor­tu­nately I couldn’t find any links to the pro­gram or a pos­si­ble web­site — I bet it’s there) before­hand, mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment about how and when they’re gonna do it and what they want to accom­plish is just plain daft. Freak­ing amateurs…

Update: Via NSOP, Flash­Mob Aal­borg and a Berlingske arti­cle.

And I though I was a busy geezer… Globes [online]: Schwarzeneg­ger is sig­nif­i­cant investor in IsraelÂ’s Cell­Guide — report.
[via tex­tu­al­ity]

Noon-lounging at Hel­goland, hav­ing cof­fees, read­ing mags, over­look­ing the sea — with a smart­phone for blog­ging and check­ing email. Hell, I’m not going anywhere…

Boston Globe Online: Kids, lies, and Pres­i­dent Bush.

Think about your val­ues as they relate to this sit­u­a­tion. What are your family’s val­ues about telling the truth? What would you do if your child lied to you and when you scolded him or her, he or she replied: ”I am not a fact-checker.” Or added, ”Isn’t it time to move on?”

The fun never stops… [via About as funny as income tax]

Doones­bury on Blog­gers Block. [via TheShift­edLi­brar­ian]

Rus­sell Beattie:

If some­how you’ve got­ten all starry eyed, please remem­ber that all Repub­li­cans are lying sacks of elit­ist shit includ­ing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Don’t fuck­ing believe his bull­shit he’s going to spout over the next cou­ple of months. This is the guy who stood up smil­ing with Rea­gan and kissed both Bush’s ass.

Thought of post­ing some­thing along these lines, but Rus­sell Beat­tie saved me the trouble ;-)

Love boxes? Well, I cer­tainly do, so ULINE Ship­ping Sup­plies is just the place… Loads of good stuff in there; you’ll now be able to send any­thing anywhere…mmmm… [via Mike Cina @ Kaliber10000]

The always won­der­ful NowWashY­ourHands brings you: Oper­a­tion Slaps — a nicely done hand to hand com­bat facil­ity. [via Lounge72]