Another 15 minutes

Today my ADSL connection was down for a few hours in my area in central Stockholm. I think this is the first unplanned break in my connection for 5 years, and perhaps third time total (atleast that I have noticed) so overall I am very happy with the quality of my DSL service, even though the upstream speed leaves much to be desired.

As a member of the board of our tenant-owner’s association I’m ivestigating prices and offers to connect us to a fiber network which would give each apartment access to very fast Internet and also combined with IP telephony and digital-TV, we have had a few offers during the year but it’s a lot of money for a small association like ours so we’ll see how that goes.

The new 160Gb Playstation 3 will ship with the game “Uncharted: Drakes fortune”, so I have been curious about this game since it’s pretty old and is now on sale at Dustin Home. So after being recommended the game I decided to get it. I have played through the first couple of episodes and the graphics, controls and the experience of the game is pretty nice, a downside for me though is that the game is very restricted in what one can do, there is only one way to go really so there is no room for exploring any vast environments on your own looking for clues.

The International Space Station (ISS) has computers infected by worms, a kind of computer virus. Some reports say that the worm in question is the W32.Gammima.AG worm, which is attempting to steal virtual currency from online games, first discovered in August, 2007. The infected laptop computers have been brought there by astronauts, but it is unclear by whom. A spokesperson at NASA also tells us that this has happened before, but since there is no Internet link on the space station, other than e-mail communication by satellite link and the computers in question are only used for e-mailing and some non important softwares, there is nothing to worry about.

I think it’s pretty remarkable though that someone can bring infected computers onboard a space station, one better hope the life supporting systems are completely isolated from everything else. I would find it rather unsettling to find a virus, even on a non-important stand-alone laptop, when I was in space surrounded by vaccuum and radiation, and totally trusting my life to computers.

Yesterday I went to a few phonestores to check out the HTC Touch Diamond and also peek at the IPhone 3G. I found the IPhone but was surprised about how huge it is, it’s thin and all, but the height and width is just too much for any normal pocket. I usually wear my phones around the neck if possible to prevent scratching and breaking if I have it in my pocket, but with an IPhone on me I think that would just look stupid. The interface looked very nice and smooth though.

I didn’t find the HTC Touch Diamond, it was even removed from the showcase in most stores, I guess it’s sold out. That phone is smaller I think, and thinner, more like an actual phone than a PDA. But I just can’t find it to check it out.

So now the Olympics are over and the results for Sweden are nothing but failures and disappointments, allthough it was nice to win the silver medal in tennis and also the respectful performance by Jörgen Persson in tabletennis was nice to see, too bad he didn’t get a medal, he deserved it. The 2008 Olympics in China was overall a very impressive event, new and well designed venues and arenas, lots of new world records (almost suspicously many actually), and also outstanding both opening and closing ceremonies. I sure hope Sweden will do better in the next Olympics though, we are way better in many sports than was displayed here, it almost felt like we had a curse on us. Actually I think Sweden performed its worst Olympics of 104 years, so I guess it can’t get any worse atleast.

This is the worst sportsmanship I’ve seen in the Olympics, I think it’s very upsetting when players attack the referees in any sport, but Cuban taekwondo contender Angel Matos takes the cake when he attacks the Swedish referee with a kick to the face after being disqualified.

Rules say you have one minute to attend wounds and such during the game, and Matos was disqualified for taking longer than one minute outside the ring. He responded by pushing several of the judges and kicking the main referee in the face and had to be escorted out. The trainer of Matos does not apologize for his behaviour but instead claims he was offered money for Matos to lose the match. The referee, Chakir Chelbat, one of the best referees in taekwondo in the world, started to bleed from his lip and was taken to a hospital. Matos and his trainer are now suspended for life, good riddance. Giving the referee a kick to the face!? Asswipe…

After Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamain and SOK (Swedish Olympic Committee) reported FILA to CAS (international Arbitrary Court of Sports) they are now forced to make changes in the organisation to work towards the Olympic spirit, rules on fair play and always have a jury to receive protests available. In the semi final match that Ara lost FILA refused to even look at Sweden’s protest. I hope this also involved a rule where the judges are decided by lottery just before the game, this should be standard is all sports in international tournaments I think. Ara will still not get his bronze medal though, but that wasn’t so important to him and never expected either.