Thar Desert, originally uploaded by ellieandeza.

Eric and Ellie look like they are having fun with travelling, though they look dressed more for the cold than a desert.

So, despite the slight hangover, I ventured out into Bergen town today. Luckily unlike the day before where I was drenched in torrential rain, I was greeted with a grey but fresh day, hoping to get some bargins for Christmas that was until my usual Bergen shopping syndrome set in. I don’t know what it is about me or Bergen but I can’t stand shopping here and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The shops are fine, theres a reasonable amount of choice, and I am not one to shy away from shopping but we don’t get along. Maybe its the fact that it seems busier than London, something to do with hundreds of people just standing around or generally getting in the way (haven’t they got anything more constructive to do?) or is it that I can’t find what I like or perhaps I am no longer sure about this.

So I decided to take a break from my less than successful shopping spree, I went for some noodles, except that I couldn’t find a decent noodle place to get a Ramen fix and ended up in McDonalds (at least is wasn’t the usual hotdog fast food that seems to be served everywhere). Its at this point that I was reminded of The Economist doing the Big Mac world price index, where the cost of a Big Mac around the world is compared to the cost of one in New York to compare the real exchange rates. Well I opted for a meal, but I know that a Big Mac meal in the UK before I left was about £3.88, and my Big Mac meal here cost 70NKr.

So at todays exchange rates ( 1 GBP = 11.7948 NOK) , my meal just cost £5.94 or about £2 more which is strange because I don’t recall enjoying it anymore, or even at all, but it gives an idea of how much more it is and considering McDonalds in the UK is one of the most expensive in the world I am sure you will see what the real, if you can call eating at McDonalds real, cost of living here is. Oh well at least it was the nicest looking McD’s I have been in.

December morning, originally uploaded by -Kj..

Another picture of Bergen in the snow.

Bergen, originally uploaded by Jarle W..

Over the last few days we have had the 3rd and best snowfall yet in Bergen. Our Christmas tree is up and looking great (along with Mathildes Christmas tree in our hall way – making 2!), our Christmas lights and decorations.

Everything is looking very cosy here. :-)

Just found a really useful widget – the WordPressDash widget, lets me post up to a word press blog from the OSX dashboard which I am alittle happier to say I am actually find use for as a good place to write down notes.

And now that I am back from Førde I can begin posting more!

Yes, I haven’t been posting very much recently as I am in Førde, Norway, at the moment. For those that don’t know Førde is situated north of Bergen where my girlfriend is performing in a Play at the Sogn og Fjordane teater.

As I am without an internet connection I don’t have the opportunity to post much (and get out of being in the cold grey outdoors of Førde but needless to say that everything else in the world of the Net seems to be going on without me.

Well I have had this post about Moving to Norway for a while now and I thought that it deserved its own page so I have moved the content and added some new ones.

Please visit http://blog.timc3.com/moving-to-norway/
to read more.

I’ve been interested in RFID for along time now as it presents amazing possbilities both good and bad once some of its problems are sorted out (such as IDing alot of goods at once, range, personal rights issues) and there are some interesting developments going on particularly in the retail space.

Well things are set to get more interesting with RFID being put into phones, such as the Nokia prototype being beta tested by Mook that shows off what a difference it can make to usability.

Imagine wanting to phone an entry in a phone book – just swipe, or on the back of a cornflakes box, or SMSing to a competition, storing numbers of business cards or sales material in the streets.

Well I have used firefox for ages now, and although it is my preferred browser on Linux and Windows, for Mac it is less than ideal. As I have previously noted Mac users are used to their usual way of working, and although somethings could be improved, such as adding decent package management (the fink project goes someways to rectifying the situation – but one has to ask why this wasn’t included as standard) others are quite well thought out.

Amoungst these are support for the keychain access, and Mac usability. There is a good reason to follow the usability standards set by a OS developers be it Microsoft or Apple (Linux doesn’t seem to have any which is why the Gnome and KDE, and all the other provide such bad usability) as users of these operating systems get quickly accustomed to ways of working and changes in this, cause frustration, hardship in use and other usability problems.

So from now on, even though I really like firefox, particularly the new rendering engine I have to pledge my Mac support to the excellent Camino.

In fact so much so that I have just upgraded xcode and I am going to create a G4 optimised version for my powerbook. It runs fast, but I think that it could run faster on my 1Ghz G4 powerbook.

Of course I could just use Safari but that browsers rendering engine just isn’t as good as Mozilla Gecko.

I will post on how I get on.