Gommit.com Blog

Why can't we just have links in Tweets?

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:22:55 GMT

Does this not bother any of the standards aware geeks out there?

If Twitter is a micro blogging service, why can't I embed links in my tweets. At the end of the day, it's HTML.

So rather than posting:

Just had beer with Erik and Marcus Bonfante, he is a brilliant musician.

I have to do something like this:

Just had beer with @mossgrowonrock and Marcus Bonfante http://bit.ly/1Z1I8C, he is a brilliant musician.

This is just bad in so many ways but nobody seems to care.

Iceland 2.0 needs a CTO

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:16:10 GMT

I have touched on this topic a few times and this tweet from Geir linking to Obama's idea for an US CTO sparked a short Googling session with the following results.

Denmark has had an IT minister since 2001. The ministry is responsible for the following areas: Research, Information technology (IT), Innovation, Telecommunications, University educations.

In the UK we have a CIO and a council "ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of Government itself so that we can provide better, more efficient, public services".

In Iceland we published a report (only in Icelandic) and set up a comity (like we always do when we need things to go away). It's more like a project management group with members from 6 ministries.

I think we need a cool CTO. Any ideas?

Make cheese at home

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:59:32 GMT

Cheese making at homeDuring these latest and worst of times (seinustu og verstu) it's very important to pick up some basic skills to increase your fighting chance in the depression. I have always dreamt of making cheese, and let's face it, If you can make cheese your are pretty much covered. Everyone loves cheese and you can exchange your cheese for things like bread and wine. My partner in crime and neighbour Hjörtur and I studied the art and necessary equipment for a while and ended up purchasing a pack from the Moorland Cheesemakers. We got some mesophilic starter, 60ml animal rennet, dial thermometer, M3 cheese mould with a M5 follower, cheesecloth and some rocking jet black cheese wax. Our research was mainly based on these videos made by a hairy man with questionable taste in music and Dr Fankhouser's cheese page. Cheese pressA tip: don't double your budget with a fancy cheese press, it is just as effective to pile books on the mould. Our first attempt was some mix of the Cheddar and Gouda recipes made from 4 liters of whole milk from the store. But last night we went all out and made some more Gouda from unhomogenised milk (ekki fitusprengd). We need to wait for 2 more weeks until we can taste it while turning it every day. It is a bit like watching paint dry but we are very excited to taste the black cheese of death. Here are some videos from the first batch: http://uk.youtube.com/p/B14FA4CD9BE81238

Poor cab driver

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:27:42 GMT

I wonder how much this guy got paid for plastering his car with Icesave and what impact it is having on his bottom line. I recorded this in my street this morning:

The currency rate

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:13:14 GMT

I created this nifty tool for us Icelanders living in the UK wondering what the exchange rate is at the moment.

Who owns the money?

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:45:04 GMT

Do the bankers even care about us out here? Luckily my income is in the UK, but my better half can't get her Icelandic currency transferred out here. If you get through to the bank, the answer is "Sorry dear, you just have to wait". So we use the plastic and pray for a good currency rate on each purchase. As of now, 1 GBP to ISK is: * Central bank 221.37 * Landsbankinn 250.63 * Kaupþing 251.23 * Google 319.89 Should this not be consistent?

Neighbours

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 20:13:26 GMT

Everybody needs good neighbours, but mine are better because I can get on their wifi across the street :p Moved in today and it feels like home already. I just got back from a welcoming dinner with said neigbours, Lindsay and Hjörtur, at my new local the Kings Arms. They make a mean Rib eye with green pepper corn sauce and serve Leffe on tap. That's all great but the best thing I just realised is that I can get on their Wifi across the street. It makes me very happy in a country where hooking up your internet connection can take up to 3 weeks. So here's to the best neighbours in the world. Also I'd like to recommend Street Car. Great service and a brilliant idea. Signed up on Thursday, got my pack on Friday and drove a van over Tower Bridge today. Their slogan hits the spot for me: All the convenience of your own car but without the cost and hassle.

Happy days

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:37:30 GMT

I like changes and currently there are a lot of extremely positive changes in my life. I have my woman with me every day now and even through we have spent most of our time searching for a new place to live it has been great. We where thinking about moving to Richmond but after having been there and back 3 times looking at average flats at extortionate prices we where back to square one which was going back south of the river where I used to live. We have been fish sitting for our friends Hjörtur and Lindsay in the Circle which is a nice apartment complex close to Tower Bridge and it made perfect sense to chat to the local agent and signing up for a flat next to them. So come next week we will be moving in to a nice flat with a balcony. We are also buying all the furniture from the current tenants so the move will be extremely easy. Included in the package is a very nice sofa bed so you can start signing up for sleepovers. I feel great being in this area again, being so close to Borough farmers market and the pubs and restaurants in this area is so much nicer than the Hackney neighbourhood. We are also neighbours to Boris Johnson´s office so we can just drop by for tea if we need to sort out London city related issues. There are changes at work as well which I will explain later but at the moment I´m working on a very exciting project for a Finish company which used to be better known in Iceland for quality rubber boots. I have also been helping my friend Kiddi building a social network for marine energy management geeks. Today we reached a very important milestone taking up the number 1 place on Yahoo, Live and Google for the term. It might not be the most competitive phrase out there, but with over 2 million results on Google I think it´s quite an achievement in only 15 days. But now I need to focus on my dram of Caol Isla and a game of Backgammon. Gulla is getting better than me at this game so I need to focus.

Family values and social networks

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:44:20 GMT

I'm back in London after having helped Gulla pack her things and paint her flat and we are now living together in Enfield road. The plan is then to move again at the end of this month to Richmond. Recently I have been writing a white paper on the use of social web applications within the enterprise and hope to release it soon. On that train of thought I have been thinking about the purpose of social networks and how they might evolve. Last year I signed up for Geni, the online family tree and since then my relatives have helped in populating my tree to the size of 138 individuals. Geni has also grown and now they offer photo and video sharing in addition to my favorite feature, the birthday calendar. My family is also on Facebook but I find that the older generation doesn't get it, they seem to be more active on the Geni site because it has a clearer function in their mind. I just read on Techchrunch that the largest tree on Geni has 680.000 profiles and 40.000 users. Ning has also been doing well as a platform for more focused social networks and my guess is that smaller distributed social networks will be the major challengers of Facebook and Myspace in the next couple of years and with technologies like the Google Social Graph, we won't mind signing up and participating in multiple social networks. I just helped my mate Kiddi set up a social network for Marine Energy Management. How´s that for a clear focus...

Great 3 years

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:21:47 GMT

Tonight is our 3 year anniversary and I can truly say those have been the best years of my life. It will only get better as I'm going to Iceland on Tuesday and bringing my sweetheart with me back to London. From now on, this remote relationship stuff is over so I'm looking forward to the next 3 years and the future actually living with the girl I love.

Who am I?

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:21:34 GMT

Well if you look at the blog posts on this page you get something like this:

But if you take my del.icio.us links you get somthing like that:

I guess I´m somewhere in the middle...

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