One night at Sundvollen - Mørkganga

Today's May 17th, Happy Constitution day to Norway.  Wooo.. So I haven't blogged in a while.  But maybe I'll start blogging again.  And since today is one of those days where I feel like blogging, I will.  Maybe it's a promise I can keep or maybe I can't.  Anyway, 2 days ago on the 15th work organised an event called Techzone, which is pretty much a company wide outing to somewhere, with technical talks held throughout the day, but in the end the reason is pretty much to get drunk.  But before that, there's plenty of activities to do.  The last time this event happened was in 2011 when I was still an uninitiated newbie to Norway.  Ever since then there have been plenty of "micro techzone" events held in the comfort and confines of our work canteen, and we were waiting for "nano techzone" events where we would pit toy figures against each other and watch technical talks on youtube, so this was a big surprise.  But anyway, the day kicked off something like this.

15th May

8:30am - The buses arrived, I was one of the first to show up at work.  Usually I'm a late riser.  Today,  I had to get up early.  And believe me that was a hard thing to do.  We caught the bus which departed at 8:55am and then arrived at the hotel, Sundvolden hotel at 9:30 where we were greeted by a marching band and ice cream.  Impressive, as Darth Vader would say.  There were about 360+ of us, but only 200+ of us were going to stay overnight.  The rest had wives, husbands, babies, mistresses, were either mummy's boys or daughters, and had other affairs to look after, and so could not stay overnight.  The day started out in one word, sunny.  Unfortunately it didn't turn out to be that way the rest of the afternoon.

Between 9:30am to 5pm there were technical talks in all the rooms, and plenty of food and drinks in-between.  Here's a photo to summarise the hotel.

Sundvolden hotel

Yeah there's an indoor heated pool and I spent close to two hours in it later that night.  Read on for the best bits.

In a state of limbo

Currently I'm in a state of limbo in Norway.  What do I mean by this?  Well I'm waiting for the next opportunity to come along.  So right now this is the state I'm in.

Waiting for it all to unfold...

For the past few weeks I've been out of Norway, getting a tan, getting burnt (literally), and doing some extreme exploration.  By that I mean 6 hour walks.  Come Easter I'll be out of this country as well.  Next destination will be revealed soon enough.

Personally nowadays it's very hard to get inspired, at least personally, and being in this country isn't helping, nor is the office.  I've been very fortunate in my life, to have lived here and there, to have been granted scholarships, to have travelled here and there and everywhere, and to be able to see different aspects of people's thinking and lives.  Not even a million dollars will inspire me, so whatever's gonna happen has to be truly different.  The next step is going to have to be really inspiring.  All in due process...

Remembering Aaron Swartz

Today I'm going to talk about an unsung hero that you probably don't know of, Aaron Swartz.  You might not know who he is, but you probably owe him a lot more than you think.  Aaron was the inventor of the RSS format, and involved in the founding of Reddit.  He pretty much single handedly stopped the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have profoundly changed the way we view the web by granting the US government powers to do whatever they want by taking down websites which were merely being accused of copyright.  If this bill came to pass, I can just take down your website by simply accusing you of copyright, and poof, adios to your website.  It's a big win for freedom.  Yours and mine.  In 2011 he was arrested for allegedly illegally accessing labs at MIT and charged with breaking the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, a law passed in 1984 because the US government became paranoid after watching the War Games movie (with Matthew Broderick).  In 2013 he committed suicide and died at the age of 26.  A life cut too short.  He has done more in his life than what many people combined have done in their lifetimes.  It' a real tragedy for everyone that such a bright mind is gone.  I've never met him before, but anyone who defends freedom is a hero to humanity.  If you're reading this you probably take freedom for granted, and let me tell you you, you don't know what freedom is until you've lost it.

Aaron Swartz documentary

What is SOPA?

"It's not enough to live in the world as it is.  You should always be questioning."

RIP Aaron Swartz (November 8, 1986 - January 11, 2013)