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Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Category: Tech
Saturday me and the kids went on an unusual package tour. First we took the 1903 steam ship Mariefred from Stockholm to Mariefred, and got to visit the engine room while the machine was working. Mariefred is a small town...
Posted by Martin R at 2:51 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Tech
I find it a bit infuriating the way old computers become unpredictable.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Tech
An air source heat pump makes your house into a fridge turned inside out.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Tech
The course imparts knowledge about the role of information technology and issues of responsibility, determinism and free will.
Posted by Martin R at 5:11 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
I used to do all my plans and maps in a hard-core CAD program using a digitising tablet, but then WinXP came along.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Psychology
Getting a really random number into a computer when you need one is tricky.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Tech
My switch from the iPod of course led to a huge drop in the ease of use.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Tech
The bandwidth of a wifi connection is extremely sensitive to obstacles.
Posted by Martin R at 9:03 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Homeownership
After a bit less than a month's wait our new house is finally on-line! The winter of our off-line discontent dissolvèd made glorious broadband summer. So far only at 11 Mbps when we were promised at least 12, but the...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Tech
Today's the eighth birthday of that excellent open on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Posted by Martin R at 4:52 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Blogging
I'm still having fun and hope you are too!
Posted by Martin R at 10:42 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Tech
Two weeks ago I left my pocket calendar on my desk at the Academy of Letters where I only work one day a week. This was inconvenient as I rely entirely on the calendar to remember what I'm supposed...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 20 Comments •
Category: Tech
"In the morning I left voice mail messages to call me on my mother's and sister's numbers. As I came in to work I saw S still logged in to his Skype account, where he'd left it going for his...
Posted by Martin R at 2:40 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Tech
I correspond with a lot of people and my email program remembers them all. Every time I type in the first few letters of an address, Thunderbird suggests a list of people it thinks I might want to write to....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Tech
I instantly desired the tiny XO. That's the kind of size my next computer will have.
Posted by Martin R at 5:08 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Recently I discovered a really annoying glitch in Garmin's firmware.
Posted by Martin R at 9:17 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Psychedelic
After over a year's near-invisibility on the net, cyberculture guru R.U. Sirius resurfaces as editor of H+ Magazine, a web zine about transhumanism. Explains Wikipedia, transhumanism is a "movement supporting the use of science and technology to enhance human mental...
Posted by Martin R at 6:32 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Environment
For historical reasons having nothing to do with engineering or rationality, Swedish nuclear power plants dump a lot of warm cooling water into the sea. In a revealing blog entry, Paddy K offers an estimate of just how much energy...
Posted by Martin R at 9:02 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: History
Things were grim in the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.
Posted by Martin R at 2:52 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Books
The CAPTCHA project uses brain time that would otherwise just go to waste.
Posted by Martin R at 1:56 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: History
Extraterrestrials won't be interested in the political details of small parts of Earth's surface over time.
Posted by Martin R at 4:56 PM • 15 Comments •
Category: Tech
Here's a cool update on the old Programmer Mel story, a tech-nerdy short story by George Dyson on Google as an emergent AI. It's sort of a fantasy-fulfillment tale for the boomers who seem to make up the bulk of...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Tech
The micro-SD flash memory chip that came with my new smartphone has some interesting issues with data integrity. I mostly use it to store sound files in the mp3 format, both pop songs of a few MB each and podcasts...
Posted by Martin R at 3:11 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Tech
An elderly gentleman saw his grand-daughter answer her phone while holding her newborn baby...
Posted by Martin R at 3:52 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Space
It has deployed its solar panels successfully and is transmitting pictures!
Posted by Martin R at 1:47 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
With its extremely late urbanisation, Sweden doesn't have much of an archaeological record compared to Italy or China or Peru. But we keep really good track of the stuff we have: active organised surveying for ancient monuments has been...
Posted by Martin R at 3:24 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Tech
I'm at my son's end-of-term violin concert. Wonder if I can blog from the new smartphone w/o using email and a human intermediary? [Yay, I could! The Samsung for some reason comes with both IE and Opera preinstalled. Though Sb's...
Posted by Martin R at 9:53 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Tech
After some deliberation, I bought a Samsung SGH-i780 smartphone to replace my Qtek 9100. It has served me well for 2 1/4 years, but I felt it was time, and I've put it up for sale. I've only had the...
Posted by Martin R at 4:18 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Tech
I'm messing around with Skype and I find it's working very well indeed. (Skype is in fact the only part of my linux installation that can interact with my Logitech USB headset.) So, Dear Reader, feel free to give a...
Posted by Martin R at 3:52 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Tech
I just installed Hardy, the brand new version of Ubuntu Linux, on the household's two Dell PCs. They're a Dimension 4550 mini-tower and an Inspiron 6000 laptop, and I'm happy to say that everything's running fine so far. (Almost.) The...
Posted by Martin R at 3:34 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Tech
The audio connector on my Qtek 9100 smartphone (handheld computer cum cellphone) has crapped out for the second time in two years. The warranty's lapsed, and repairing the thing would cost a third of what an equivalent machine of a...
Posted by Martin R at 3:29 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Tech
For the past two years I've been packing a soap-sized handheld computer named the Qtek 9100. It's a version of a design named the HTC Wizard, sporting a slide-out qwerty keyboard and running Windows Mobile. The machine's been good to...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Biology
Water suppliers use natural water to make tap water.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 25 Comments •
Category: Blogging
I've twiddled some knobs behind the scenes.
Posted by Martin R at 5:22 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Sweden
It's February 2008. I've had access to the WWW for 13 years. Yet I can still not get a news feed filtered to any reasonable approximation of my tastes. I want very little news: only the important stuff. I think...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 16 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
What were they supposed to do with a six-litre volume of crumbling amber?
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Tech
I'm on a train in Östergötland. A while back I caught a fond glimpse of the barrow at Stora Tollstad in Sjögestad that me & Howard Williams trial-trenched and dated to the 9th century in 2006. I'm giving a talk...
Posted by Martin R at 6:37 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Psychology
"Errrr, do you think we might perhaps simply have a civilised conversation?"
Posted by Martin R at 12:39 PM • 31 Comments •
Category: Tech
Back in April, I installed Ubuntu Linux on my oldish Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, bought in early 2005. Ubuntu's rapid boot process and snappy action has made it my favourite operating system (while I continue to run Win XP and...
Posted by Martin R at 12:15 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Space
These machines were originally meant to work for three months, yet they continue to trundle around that cold, distant planet.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Tech
I guess nobody actually gets 24 Mb/s from an ADSL connection.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Tech
Maybe there are people who don't know about Google Definitions? OMG!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
The lower sensors pick up the planet's magnetic field plus any subsoil anomalies, while the upper sensors only get the planet's field.
Posted by Martin R at 4:16 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Books
"It's Jules Verne who's been resurrected and learned to fly!"
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Books
I don't think I'll be taking on any more work for Vice.
Posted by Martin R at 2:36 PM • 12 Comments •
Category: Gaming
If you talk to present-day software you soon become aware that there's no intelligence in the box.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 20 Comments •
Category: Tech
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Tech
"What if the machines don't feel like improving themselves."
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Children
To get kids to eat veggies, hand them out while they play video games.
Posted by Martin R at 7:46 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Tech
Us Algonet users are a dwindling group of old-timers now.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
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