Marcus Mattsson

This is gonna be spoiler-filled, and hopefully very, very sad if you were a child in the nineties.

Håkon Håkonsen

This is one of those scenes that are just kind of bland today. I loved this movie as a kid and still do, it actually holds up pretty good. It’s a decent Norwegian/American pirate movie, and in this scene Håkon leaves his family to work on a boat for two years. Disney apparently re-shot all Norwegian scenes in English for the international version (which I own), and the Norwegian version is only available in Norway. Meh.

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey

Come on! :’D (go to 5:45 for epic Disney moment)

The Lion King

You knew this was coming. This still gets me going, let’s hope Disney’s resurrection of their old animation style also gives us back the old-school, honest stories.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

This seems so ridiculous and cheesy now, but I cried like a baby when I saw this. Remember, I must’ve been like 12 and James Bond was the coolest guy around (we had the entire collection on VHS).

The NeverEnding Story

This scene gave me the idea to write this entry. Still a very touching scene.

That’s all I could come up with for now. Do you have other suggestions?

This is going to be in Danish.

Inden DR’s medielicens kunne danske borgere se DR’s programmer gratis (og lovligt) vha. en tuner i deres pc. Dette satte Brian Mikkelsen en stopper for i 2006, da han fremlagde et medieudspil, der lagde op til, at alle apparater, der kunne gengive lyd og billedprogrammer, skulle gøres licenspligtige. Dette blev bl.a. gjort for at fremtidssikre licensbegrebet, da planen var, at en væsentlig del af licensmidlerne fremover skulle bruges til at gøre indhold tilgængeligt over internettet. Medielicensen forpligtede dog ikke DR til at udvide deres serverkapacitet, og det lider vi nu, små fire år senere, under, hvilket jeg ville give et eksempel på i dette indlæg.

En lang række af DR’s programmer kan rigtig nok streames på dr.dk, men kvaliteten er så ringe, at det på ingen måde kan betale sig. Lad os tage et kig på “Det Nye Talkshow”. Streamer man programmet i såkaldt “høj kvalitet”, får man følgende:

“Det Nye Talkshow” streamet i “høj kvalitet”.

Ikke nok med at kvaliteten er skræmmende lav (478 x 359 pixels), så har DR sjovt nok også valgt at ændre formatforholdet til 4:3 ved at indsætte sorte bjælker (letterboxing), hvilket medfører at videoen set i fuld skærm på en widescreen-monitor vil være centreret med sorte bjælker hele vejen rundt. Det er ren dovenskab.

Jeg valgte tilfældigvis også at hente et afsnit af programmet via iTunes, hvor det også er tilgængeligt. Her er det downloadede resultat sjovt nok anderledes:

“Det Nye Talkshow” hentet fra iTunes. (Tryk for at se billede i fuld størrelse.)

Her er kvaliteten sjovt nok betydeligt bedre med en opløsning på 640 x 360 og det oprindelige formatforhold er bibeholdt. Én ting er at lægge en lavkvalitets-version op til streaming, en anden er samtidig at tilbyde en langt bedre version andetsteds uden at nævne det på programmets hjemmeside. Uanset er begge udgaver af så lav kvalitet, at medielicensen er en farce.

DR’s hykleri stopper dog ikke her. På hjemmesiden for DR’s HD-kanal står følgende:

“DR’s HD-kanal samsendes/streames ikke på dr.dk, da den desvære ikke kan udsendes på nettet i ægte HD-kvalitet.”

Hvilket naturligvis er klart, hvis man bruger licenspengene på Emmy-fester i stedet for nye servere.

A neat example of focusing too much on aesthetics instead of usability.

I got my PlayStation 3 which is great and all, and I also ordered the Bluetooth remote. Already when I ordered it I winced at the horrible, horrible design choices and they’re even more apparent now that I’ve used it a little. Not only is it filled with a lot of useless buttons, it even has buttons that do the exact same thing! I recently bought a WD TV Live media player, and its remote looks like this:

It’s brilliant! It does everything it needs to with a minimum of buttons (17 to be precise). Now let’s take a look at the PlayStation 3 remote:

I mean, come on, this thing has 51 buttons. Who uses numbers for their DVD/Blu-ray player? I don’t even know what the “CLEAR” and “TIME” buttons do and I’ve never in my life used those colored buttons. Under those we have the four standard menu buttons, but the triangle, square, cross and circle buttons do the same thing! It’s the same with the L1-R3 buttons, which do the same as the arrow buttons underneath. It’s ridiculous, so in the WD TV Live spirit I decided to photoshop it into this:

Honestly, do you need more?

Other than the design flaws the remote seems to work fine, it’s weird not having to point it anywhere though.

Tags: playstation 3, wd hd tv live

I’ve recently started considering jailbreaking my iPhone because I’ve started getting these spam calls from Somalia – sometimes 15 calls per night – and I know that there’s a jailbreak app which makes it possible to block calls. So, after stumbling upon an extremely simple jailbreaking guide, I went ahead and followed it, thinking I could always just restore my iPhone if something got messed up.

First of, the jailbreaking process itself is incredibly easy, it probably took less than 60 seconds. Then I started exploring the new world of Cydia, an application which makes it possible to download other applications for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. It looks very similar to the official App Store, i.e. you find an app and press download. After surfing various sites for neat apps, I now use the following:

Winterboard

This app manages the themes you are using, I settled on Matte Nano and Glasklart, as seen in this screenshot:

Backgrounder: This simply lets applications run in the background.

Cycorder: A video-recording app. I haven’t tested the quality yet.

CyDelete: Makes it possible to delete Cydia apps without opening the Cydia app itself.

Five Icon Dock: Makes it possible to have 5 apps in the dock.

iBlacklist: This app blocks incoming text messages and phone calls, bye, bye, African spammers.

LockInfo: Customizes the lock screen, as seen in this screenshot:

I still need to find a better wallpaper, but this app is amazing.

OpenSSH: Makes it possible to use SSH to transfer files (themes and icons for example) from your computer to the iPhone.

SBSettings: Very useful app which is accessible from anywhere on the phone. You just slide your finger on the status bar and a GUI drops down making it possible to enable/disable 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. on the fly.

And that’s it for now. At the moment I’m kind of confused why I didn’t do this a year ago. Oh, well.