My new gaming rig is under way. It is set out to replace the AMD 1700+ Thoroughbred system I have had for just about three years. It is showing its age even with a decent GeForce 5900 card up its ass.

The specs for the new system are as follows:

• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
• AMD Athlon64 3200 Winchester (90nm)
• ThermalTake Silent Boost K8 (A1838)
• Corsair XMS Pro 2×512 MB Dual DDR RAM. (TWINX1024-3200LLPRO)
• Point of View 6600 GT PCI Express graphics card (w. SLI option)
• Chieftec Dragon Big DA-01
• Antec NeoPower 480W
• Zalman NB47J chipset cooler

Now bring on Battlefield 2.

Redesigned my consultancy site Aeon Blue. All in all it took no more than a weekend adjusting the existing layout and employing Marianne’s fine arts for the graphics. She rocks.

We are now the proud owners of an Opel Kadett 1.6. Yeah.

So I was going to adjust the font size and ended up with a brand new design. Don’t look at me. I don’t know what happened!

It was a couple of days work along with a few backend changes, changing of content and so on. As can be seen it’s a switch back to a bright look. Suitable for the bright days to come. I learned that designing a site with a dark background is a royal pain sometimes. I won’t be doing that in the near future unless a monetary reward is in the picture.

A rather huge gallery of mopeds. I’m not into mopeds at all. Never even owned one but I still enjoyed browsing this. Must be that engine-gene.

We launched Marianne’s new site. I am quite happy with the design.

So the other day, Tuesday to be exact, we went to Oslo. The place where polar bears and penguins stroll the streets. We had bought tickets for a show with one of our long time favourite bands R.E.M. Now it would have it that the tickets had been bought through their fan club so we were able to get inside a good thirty minutes or so before the rest of the mob. This handed us the possibility of placing our gorgeous selves right at the front left side of the stage. The left side and not center because someone had to buy a coke! Not mentioning any names here.

So there we were.

This was, however, almost three hours before R.E.M. would start their set and I, being tired due to only two hours of sleep the night before along with walking around Oslo during the day, was not really up to standing much so I planned leaving the others to find a more comfortable spot and possibly some fascist expensive beer.

I didn’t move.

The Thrills opened the show at half past seven and played around 45 minutes I believe. After a short break R.E.M. came on.

Some girls from some godforsaken city in the northern parts of Norway asked us to move so they could stand in front. We were rather perplexed at their uninhibited request but politely wasted our time and asked why.

“It’s her birthday”, the one girl said pointing to her friend, “and we traveled so many miles to get to the show.” (add more whining).

We flew in from Denmark but then again.

I told her to shut up and when she spouted more useless information in my head I gestured to her that I couldn’t hear what she said because of the music and turned around. That was when I decided definately not to move an inch. They would suffer later on.

After or during (can’t remember really, it was such a wild night) the third song Stipe came over to our side and he bloody waved at me like he knew me. I’m sure I was immediately the envy of the entire surrounding army of hardcore R.E.M. fans, whining girls and what not. Anyway the show was just getting started.

Much R.E.M. ensued. Let’s fast-forward to the last song of the show which was Man On The Moon.

At the end of the song Michael came down to the security pit. Obviously everyone went wild and tried to touch him. The girls behind us more or less jumped on my back but I was fearless. My arms went out and when Stipe came down to our area I managed to grab his right arm. He then, much to my total shock, stopped and walked up on a ledge soldered to the railing we stood by. Right in front of me.

So what else to do than hold around him (in a totally non-gay-but-you’re-a-cool-rockstar-so-I’m-going-to-do-it-anyway kind of way of course) while he continued singing. After maybe five or ten seconds he went on his merry way.

I’m not sure if we locked eyes but it was quite a close call.

If you’re still not done with the Christmas shopping here’s a bit of help (with shameless affiliate links to go):

Best Movies Seen 2004

• Big Fish
• Cidade de Deus
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Mystic River

Best Albums Heard 2004

• Joss Stone – The Soul Sessions
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
• Tom Waits – Real Gone
• Tool – Salival
• Wilco – A Ghost is Born

Best Games

• Doom 3 (best overall experience; I was scared shitless)
• Half Life 2 (incredible story, sound, action and scenery)

Best Gadgets

• iRiver iHP-120 MP3 Player
• Nikon D70 Digital SLR Camera Kit

Last But Certainly Not Least

• Subversion replacing CVS as my SCM tool.
• The bloody pensionists downstairs moving out.

Blabbering Web Usability Specialists Are Not The Answer to Security Problems.

Well not quite but she slaved away for days drawing some funny cartoons for a late night talk show Senkveld. In the end it amounted to a five second snippet shown leading up to a major part on Harald. Apparently they liked it enough to want some more. We’re talkin 7-8 shows so that’s cool.

In other news, dear diary, I am completely wasted from work and a destroyed sleeping pattern. One more week of slavery and I’ll see the first vacation since February. I can’t wait.