Jon Fraczak

This summer, as with most previous summers, we drove around the country visiting family. This summer, as with most previous summers, we told ourselves never again. Why? It’s a hassle, and the kids are totally worn down from all the travel.

If you’re not willing to travel, or spend an obscene amount of money on travels to warmer places (e.g. Spain or Turkey) you could spend the money at home.

Spending the money at home or on your home are two different things. I for one think it’s time to think alternatively …

I would think how I could spend money on our home, and at the same time make the house a perfect resort

First of all we would need a pool … a big one with its own white sandy beach! Secondly, we would need a water-slide … from the top of the garden and out into the pool. The slide would have to be wide enough for two grown-ups to be able to sit on a cool body board … Next we would have to have a big outdoor kitchen with a lounge where we could enjoy our meals and the occasional ice-cream or smoothie. The latter would of course be made from home-grown fruit and berries, a garden where the kids could climb the trees to pluck their own cherries, apples and pears.

To finish it off we would need an outdoor theater where we could set up our own summer shows, and invite neighbours for some fun and laughs.

So the plan now is to make the plans to realize it, and make a rig for the 10 solariums that will make out the fake sun…

Happy summer … rainy Bergen!

May 17th is Norway’s national day and constitution day, a day with lots of expectations from children and adults alike. Our day started early as we decided to bring some homemade rolls to a breakfast get-together with friends in Bergen city center. After breakfast we strolled into the heart of Bergen city to watch the procession. After watching the procession for a couple of hours we went back home, and had lunch with the family before we went to watch the school procession. This year the school procession was a special event for us as our oldest took part for the first time Joining the procession we walked back to the school where the children could enjoy lots of activities, ice cream and something simple to eat. Getting back home it was time for some cake before we packed it in and called it a day! … and yes the flag was down by nine!

Below are some pictures that summarize the day:

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A visit to the archipelago of the municipality of Sund is a first for me. As most of you know, Norway is a country with hundreds of small and large islands. This weekend we were invited by friends to stay on their “private” island. It was a treat, and we all had lots of fun. The kids got a chance to go fishing for fish and crab, rowing a small rubber dingy, swimming and diving (some involuntary) and lots more … not to forget the occasional chase by the island’s only and lonely permanent resident, Mr. Ram.

We arrived early and were picked up by boat. The trip out to the island took no more than 5 minutes. Just arriving we headed straight out again to check on the fishing nets. Sadly there were no fish caught this day, but we were assured that fish is caught on a regular basis, and that today was probably more due to poor placement or whatever … Put it differently, my friend is not exactly your local fisherman … pure luck if you ask me

Getting back to the island we were treated with some waffles before we suited up and jumped into the freezing water, wearing nothing but wetsuits and whatever else you need in order to free dive. Freezing water or not, the wetsuit kept me surprisingly warm. Diving with proper gear is a must and something that really got me thinking that it might be this year’s investment … if I’m allowed that is

Having done our fair share of diving we turned our focus towards other activities such as eating melon and watching the kids rowing the rubber dingy while trying not to drown their friend who were still busy diving for whatever he could find at the bottom of the ocean.

As the evening went on we fired up the barbecue, and no we did not throw a shrimp on it but some proper meat. After having our fair share of barbecue we topped it of with some sweet strawberries for desert.

Thanks guys for a wonderful day … following are some pictures to remember it by!

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Wordpress recently released (early February) their first version of Wordpress for Android (WfA). So I thought I should give you my first impressions.

First of all the installation was really easy. It was just a matter of downloading it from the Android Market, and the phone took care of the installation automatically.

Setting it up proved to be just as easy although I expected to run into problems as I am running a Wordpress solution myself on a private domain. However, it was litterally a walk in the park, or from the toilet and back to the living-room if you like, and a click on the computer to enable xml-rpc (older and simpler version than SOAP) to get things up and running.

Having my HTC Hero connected I immediately started to look through my blog for updates and changes. I marked a comment as spam with a few touches, previewed a post that has been awaiting my attention … and started to write this post.

The interface is really simple and to the point. You basically have three tabs, comments, posts and pages. In my case I use the posts tab to create this new “post”

Now I need to save in order to find an image to upload with this post …

Now that I’m back after finding a suitable image online I noticed one important detail when saving a post on the Android. WfA saves the post as a local copy which is good as it saves bandwidth. In order to upload the draft to the webserver you simply select Upload Draft from the menu. Another small detail that might be annoying to some is that you (as far as I can see) have to manually copy, paste and edit the image tag in order to place it where you want in your blog post. This requires some basic skills in HTML which to most novice bloggers is complicated enough.

Usability wise I don’t see myself as an avid user of this app in order to actively upload posts because touch phones, IMOH, are better suited to send text messages and add comments to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. IOW, short and simple sentences. Anyways, that is not to say the application is totally useless. It has the basic features you need, and the interface is not crowded with buttons.

However, for those who cannot survive 5 minutes without updating their blog, or just love to tap the backspace button on their Android because it cannot keep up with your fast moving fingers, it is the coolest app you will find for your Wordpress blog

Now I’m going to rest my eyes on something else than this bloody phone, and upload this post and see how it went …

Bergen Bus station

These days Bergen city is under the influence of politicians with an environmentally bad conscience!

Winter in Bergen the past 15 years (the time I’ve lived in Bergen) has been a wet affair. This year however most things have been different … very different! Snow has covered the city for several weeks, and created a situation where people actually have started to enjoy being outdoors during winter as well.

Only problem is that nice blue skies, little or no wind and temperatures below zero creates a situation where air pollution increases, creating “a lid” of polluting compounds (e.g. carbon and nitrogen dioxides) that hovers above the city. As a direct effect of this the municipality of Bergen decided to take immediate action, and only allow certain cars to drive (i.e. cars registered with even numbers at the end drive on even dates, and conversely).

Frustration was high amongst most people, and officials needed to explain. IOW, something that seemed to be a simple “rule of thumb” was not that simple. Exceptions were of course made with the effect that most things seemed not to be properly thought through in advance.

So, what was the effect of this rather hasty decision? Most people did as they were told, and those that did not probably had good reasons for not doing so, and so on. What happened to those who were unable to utilize their cars? They took the bus or hitched a ride with those who could drive. Everything seemed to work out fine …

But what actually happened? Yes, people took the bus and drove more than one in each car. Extra buses were put in service, extra buses that most of the time when they were not actually doing anything were parked at the bus station with their engines running … effectively spewing out the same compounds the cars were prohibited from doing!

I’m sure the intentions were good, however, I am also sure that next time around these things should be thought through in advance. Maybe they also need to have a proper plan created for these excact situations. One thing that should be added to the list is of course that people should shut their engines while parked! That includes buses too!!!

PS: Sometimes it is better that the bus station is empty, rather than having 30 buses in a stand still, engines running, and spewing gases!