Freeday 25 February 2000

Pic of the day: Since I neglected to bring my digicam to work, I'll stave you off with yet another "winter wonderland in Norway" picture.

The very name symbolized a glorious new age, a quantum leap in human evolution. From broadcasting to pointcasting, where each customer would select the type of content he or she wished. It wasn't perfect, but it was a step in the direction of the future I had imagined: A place where the computer puts together the newspaper for me while I sleep, picking the topics that interest me from the sources I respect.

As of February 24th, there is no longer any support for Pointcast. I've tried the successor, Entrypoint. It failed to personalize in both IE and Opera, so it's probably not gonna stay. Too bad. [1] On the other hand, the ideas originally in Pointcast have been implemented to some degree in Internet Explorer, which allows you to "subscribe" to certain pages and automatically download them as they are changed. Or so it says. IE is too big and bloated for me to use it regularly. Using a portable with 32MB RAM, I stick to Opera most days of the month.

In related news, we bought a new PC at work, from a small local firm. We had trouble with it from the minute we turned it on: The monitor (a smart one from Siemens) claimed that there was no signal input. I went and fetched an old monitor that's mine, and connected it. Then we turned on the PC again. It counted up allrigth and worked fine until it presented the Windows desktop. At this point the screen resolution changed, the screen became illegible, then it started to flicker, then the power-on light on the monitor started to flicker, then it started to smell burnt electronics, then I dived for the OFF switch of the monitor. That helped ... the monitor recovered later.

At this point there were some rather emotional calls to the company from which we had bought the beast. They, however, had no technicians to spare today. So I went and fetched another old monitor, this time in black and white. It too became illegible at the same point as the other, and rather more so. But it did not crash or burn. Once up and running, I disconnected that monitor and connected the new large Siemens. And wonder, it worked. Quite nicely. Until we restarted the computer, at which point we had to do it all over again.

Sometimes help comes from the most unexpected quarter. In this case, I went and fetched the old modem of mine which we still use there. (I got it quite cheap at the time where the Internet companies were pushing modems in order to lure in new subscribers.) As the computer took up the search for a suitable driver, it also mentioned in passing that it had detected a plug-and-play monitor. My coworker sputtered at the phrase, but I calmly allowed it to find a suitable driver for the monitor, too. It did, and after that both modem and monitor have worked quite nicely. Yay Windows 98! Plug and pray in practice!

When not doing strange things to computers, I've finished the second Tarzan book and downloaded the third, and bought another magic and love story by Margit Sandemo. And like so often, I've daydreaming about a novel of my own. Lately I've been working on the story of a 78 year old man who has been searching all his life for the pattern of reality behind all things - to get behinds the screens of the universe and find how it really works. As his body is slowly fading, his mind finally realizes the truth he has been searching for, and he touches the Pattern. As usual we see it all from people outside him. As he practices his newfound ability to touch the pattern of all things, he very gradually assumes superhuman powers and virtual immortality. Most of the story is seen from the viewpoint of a widow who was his girlfriend fifty years ago. She sees his gradual transformation and while there is still a kind of love between them, she is torn between him and the life she has behind her. He offers to rejuvenate her body to the full health of youth, if she wants to, and share the future. Otherwise he wants to leave the world in search for higher evolved creatures elsewhere in the universe. I must admit that I don't know her well enough yet to say for sure what the outcome will be. :)

I have a sick and twisted imagination at times, don't I?