Laptop Day
Category: NOIBN
I'm enjoying one of my infrequent laptop days, that is, days during which it actually makes sense for me to tote such a device around.
Posted by Martin R at 5:42 AM • 2 Comments •
Aardvarchaeology
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Profile
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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Recent Posts
- Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Like an Elephant
- Laptop Day
- Early Medieval Magnates Talk in Lund
- Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
- Information Longevity Talk in Gothenburg
- Upgrading Ubuntu Linux is Risky
- Odin from Lejre? No, it's Freya!
- Recent Archaeology Mags
- Intellectual Aristocrat
Recent Comments
- yogi-one on Dan Simmons's Scientific Let-Down
- Martin R on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Doug Alder on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- ArchAsa on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Ex Biochem Prof & occasional brewer on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Pär on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Eric on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Martin R on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- DaleP on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
- Martin R on Why Malt the Barley for Beer?
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Blogroll
Good Blog Carnivals
Tech:
Information Longevity Talk in Gothenburg
Category: Tech
On Tuesday 17 November 17:30 I'm giving a talk as part of Mathias Klang's information security course at the University of Gothenburg. The theme is "Årtusendenas glömska: arkivsäkring i det riktigt långa perspektivet", which may hint to the intelligent...
Posted by Martin R at 8:00 AM • 4 Comments •
Upgrading Ubuntu Linux is Risky
Category: Tech
Hear me, Ubuntu-using brothers and sisters! Never use the on-line upgrade option to switch to a newer version of the operating system! In little more than two years, it has trashed my setup twice, once killing the machine outright, and...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 41 Comments •
Goodbye to ICQ
Category: Tech
I've been on the instant messaging service ICQ daily since 1997. Last week, though, my entry in some database apparently got screwed up, so my password no longer works and I can't get the retrieval mechanism to send me a...
Posted by Martin R at 9:22 AM • 0 Comments •
Weekend Fun
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...
Posted by Martin R at 2:51 PM • 14 Comments •
Tech Note: Our Crappy Computers
Category: Tech
I find it a bit infuriating the way old computers become unpredictable.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 18 Comments •
Air Source Heat Pump
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 •
Course on IT Society's Vulnerabilities
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 •
Mapping Swedes and Geats
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 •
Elusive Randomness
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 •
Windows Mobile Media Player is Crap
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 •
Walls Impede Wifi
Category: Tech
The bandwidth of a wifi connection is extremely sensitive to obstacles.
Posted by Martin R at 9:03 AM • 5 Comments •
Finally On-Line Again
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 •
Wikipedia Eight Years Old
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 •
Aard's Second Blogiversary
Category: Blogging
I'm still having fun and hope you are too!
Posted by Martin R at 10:42 AM • 6 Comments •
No More Pocket Calendar
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 •
Death in the Age of Facebook
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 •
Email Ghosts
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 •
One Laptop Per Child and One For You
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 •
Garmin's Swedish Grid Confusion
Category: Archaeology
Recently I discovered a really annoying glitch in Garmin's firmware.
Posted by Martin R at 9:17 AM • 7 Comments •
R.U. Sirius Heads New Transhumanist Zine
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 •
Swedes Produce Hot Water, Dump It Into Sea
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 •
Book Review: Alsdorf, Auf den Spuren
Category: History
Things were grim in the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.
Posted by Martin R at 2:52 PM • 10 Comments •
Ocular Character Recognition
Category: Books
The CAPTCHA project uses brain time that would otherwise just go to waste.
Posted by Martin R at 1:56 PM • 11 Comments •
Shermer and the Drake Equation
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 •
Google as an Emergent AI
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 •
Tech Note: Flash Memory Random Remix
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 •
Irrefutable Evidence: Cell Phone Alarmism Does Cause Harm
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 •
W00t! Phoenix Survived!
Category: Space
It has deployed its solar panels successfully and is transmitting pictures!
Posted by Martin R at 1:47 AM • 1 Comments •
Kickass Archaeological Sites Register On-Line
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 •
Liveblogging
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 •
Tech Note: Samsung SGH-i780 Smartphone
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 •
Skyping
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 •
Tech Note: Ubuntu Linux 8.04 Hardy Heron Running Fine
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 •
Tech Note: Help Me Choose a Smartphone
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 •
Tech Note: Handheld File Transfer Woes
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 •
Tap Water is Not a Naturally Occurring Substance
Category: Biology
Water suppliers use natural water to make tap water.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 25 Comments •
Tech Note: Diacritic Characters
Category: Blogging
I've twiddled some knobs behind the scenes.
Posted by Martin R at 5:22 PM • 22 Comments •
Filter My News You Muthas
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 •
Early Neolithic Amber Hoard CT Scanned
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 •
Trainblogging
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 •
ICQ Gender Wars
Category: Psychology
"Errrr, do you think we might perhaps simply have a civilised conversation?"
Posted by Martin R at 12:39 PM • 31 Comments •
Wish I Could Do That In Linux
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 •
Mars Rovers Still Working After Four Years
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 •
Bandwidth Blues
Category: Tech
I guess nobody actually gets 24 Mb/s from an ADSL connection.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 9 Comments •
Google Definitions
Category: Tech
Maybe there are people who don't know about Google Definitions? OMG!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 2 Comments •
Magnetometry in Kaga
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 •
Jules Verne's Tomb
Category: Books
"It's Jules Verne who's been resurrected and learned to fly!"
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Vice Magazine and the Stockholm Sluice
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 •
The Intelligence of Game-Playing Software
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 • 22 Comments •
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