Category: Life

Temporary redirect for wikileaks

December 6th, 2010 · · Life No comments - Tags:

To help aid the WikiLeaks site with a readable URL I have created a redirect to them. I will try to keep it updated as and when I find that it’s been moved and/or the old one has stopped working. The URL is http://www.tomasmalmsten.com/wikileaks

I support WikiLeaks work and I think any kind of investigative journalism should be supported. And to say that they have committed a crime by publishing material leaked to then, not by them, is to say that any journalist that publishes material of any kind that has been leaked to them is a criminal. This is certainly not the case. The journalist is doing her/his job. Please read Jim Naureckas blog WikiLeaks Hasn’t ‘Leaked’ Anything for a better explanation.

Tequila old-fashioned

November 4th, 2010 · · Life, Mixology No comments - Tags: , ,

I have been contemplating writing about cocktails for a while now. It is after all one of the things I’m most passionate about. To kick this subject and section of I would like to write about an old-fashioned cocktail introduced to me at Ruby in Copenhagen. The Tequila old-fashioned.

It is pretty simple to make. Take an old-fashioned glass and fill with a large chunk of ice. I prefer using a single block that just fits into the glass then using ice cubes. Add two spoons of agave syrup and two to three dashes of orange bitter. Pour two shots of good quality tequila and stir thoroughly.

Ingredients:
1-2 spoons agave syrup
2-3 dashes orange bitter
2 shots tequila

To vary this delicious drink use some Angostura bitters as well or instead of orange bitters.

ThoughtMade

June 7th, 2010 · · Life No comments - Tags: ,

A couple of weeks ago I was part of the first ThoughtMade. ThoughtMade is a “bring-a-thing party”, or as Jonas Lundström titled it: “An Invention Party”. At Inkonst in Malmö 17 installations were exhibited during a couple of hours. The space was alive with buzz and excitement, both from the exhibitors and the audience.

A couple of the coolest installations were: ThoughtMade Candy Machine, RepRap and Lighten Your Load.

The candy machine, set up in the weeks leading up to the event, got attention from around the world. It dispensed a M&M every time someone tweeted #thoughtmade. There are plans to put it to use for charitable causes in the future. Visit www.slickstreamer.info or www.giveawaycandy.com to get more information about it.

The Replicating Rapid prototyper, RepRap, is a 3d printer that can print everything from every day items to prototypes. It uses cad drawings to print items in plastic. At the event a bottle opener and a cup was printed. The technology was previously only available to engineering firms. Now several RepRap printers have been built by normal people, and each can make most of the parts for a new RepRap. The RepRap at ThoughtMade was created by Gustav Nipe.

Lighten Your Load was a cool installation done by Christian Liljedahl from illutron.dk. It is a discarded diode box from the Danish National Arena connected to a rope. When someone pulls the rope the diodes lights up. The heavier the pull the lighter the diodes. It is one of the best lightning displays I have seen.

There were of cause loads of other really cool things to look at and experience. There is a full list of installation over at ThoughtMade’s site. But the above are the ones I remember most vividly. I was however gutted when I realised I did not get a chance to test Chris Hughes Mindflex EEG game.

Mashmobile and one of the organisers, Jacob Hansson, created an image stream that was projected onto a wall at the event. Guests that installed the Mashmobile client and took pictures during the night had them displayed on a wall. It was a great idea although most of the pictures were taken by us at Mashmobile.

The event was a great success and it has brought allot of much needed attention to this region, which is buzzing with creativity and innovation. Already before the first had have time to finish the next one was being planned and it will probably take place during the fall. If you have a chance to and visit it it will be a wonderful experience full of excitement and creativity.

Useful Information Technology

April 19th, 2010 · · Life 4 comments - Tags: , , ,

At work we have an organic fruit basket. The other day I grabbed a grape fruit. I noticed that there was a sticker on the fruit, something I don’t usually like, but this one caught my eye. It was a picture of a smiling man and the text “enter 450 at natureandmore.com“. This got me curious so I had to do it.

I was greeted by a flash interface where I could enter the three digit code and then hit enter. This took me to a presentation of the farming community that grew the very fruit I had in my hand. In a video one of the farmers talked about the community (I think, I don’t understand Spanish). The feeling of authenticity is excellent.

The site was created to increase the transparency between the producers and the consumers of organic produce. This have certainty succeeded. It feels good to get to know something about the farmers from the other side of the world, in the same way as the local farmers when I go to the Farmers Market. It is also great to see that the choices that we make when buying fair trade and organic actually makes a real difference.

This is one of the best ways I have seen to utilise the Internet and Information Technology. It so brilliant because it uses simple concepts to deliver answers to quite complex questions around the environmental and social impact of our food choices.

The only real critique I have is of a technological nature (of course) and has to do with the choice to use flash as the technology that welcomes the user. I am not a big fan of flash and especially not when it is so easy to replace it with normal HTML. To complete a HTML form would have been just as easy and much more elegant in my opinion.

The move from Blogger to WordPress is finally done

April 13th, 2010 · · Life One comment

I have been in the process of moving from Blogger to my own WordPress blog for a long time now. With a demanding job and small children there just isn’t much time and energy left to pursue such things as changing the look and feel and the hosting of ones web presence. But now it’s finally done.

The immediate benefits as I see it is a an updated look and feel that is more to my liking and also that I now have one design for my web presence, rather then two as was the case before.

Longer term, well WordPress is a much richer application with a lot of neat features. And an abundance of good looking themes. Further it is installed at my service provider so I have control over the content and don’t need to be dependent on Google. Which in my humble opinion is a good thing.

Anyway, now that it’s done I may have some time to start writing new articles instead of scratching my head over the look and feel and the plug-ins to choose (there are so many of each that you could probably justify a full time job keeping up with them, if not several).