Tesla Cybertruck dual motor will have a 130kWh battery and the solar option will cover both the roof and the bed.

Although I can't be sure about the upcoming spec for the Cybertruck we did actually get enough information during the unveil to get a good estimate of the energy consumption required by the car. Once we know the energy consumption of the car we're also able to learn some more details about the solar option for the Cybertruck which Elon Musk tweeted about.

130kWh battery in the Tesla Cybertruck Dual motor

At the presentation, they showed the fuel cost for a conventional truck vs the electricity cost for the Tesla Cybertruck. The cost of fuel was estimated at $130 while the electricity was estimated at $40 as can be seen in the picture below. 

By checking the cost of fuel for the average 1/2 ton pickup we should be able to get a pretty good idea of how many miles they estimated for this comparison and by using the cost of electricity we should then be able to get the energy consumption of the car.

Fuel consumption for the Ford F-150 which is the main competitor ranges for the diesel/gasoline version between 25/22 mpg and 22/16 mpg. As the current price of diesel/gasoline in the USA is $3.01/$2.93 for a gallon of fuel this means that the cost per mile should be between 11.7 cents and 18,8 cents. This means that the range used for the comparison fat the unveil should be between 744 and 1195 miles per month. The average annual miles travelled by light trucks is 11712 miles which equal 976 miles/month, as this value is well within the expected range we'll use it for the rest of the estimates.

Given the number of miles travelled we also know that the cost of electricity should be around 4.1 cents/mile.

Since the price of electricity in the states varies between 9.57 and 21.76 cents/kWh the needed energy per mile should be somewhere between 0.428 and 0.188 kWh/mile. The Model X requires about 0.38 kWh/mile so we'll have to assume that they have used the cheapest price of electricity for their calculations as the Cybertruck probably isn't more efficient than a Model X.

This is how we can estimate the battery size to at least 128.5 kWh for the dual motor version given its 300+ miles range.

Solar option covers both the roof and bed

Elon Musks tweeted that there should be a solar option that could generate 15 miles of range per day. 

To learn more about the solar option we can use the consumption estimate of 0.428 kWh/mile to know how much energy the solar option must generate per day. To get a range of 15 miles the solar panels would have to generate 6.4 kWh of energy each day.

From the images at https://tesla.com/cybertruck we can easily find measure the size of the bed since we know that the total size of the truck and that the length of the bed is 6.5 ft. The cover of the bed should thereby be about 2.7 sqm. If the solar panel is just in the cover it would have to generate 2.4 kWh/sqm each day.

The available solar energy at sea level is about 1000 W/sqm. If we check the solar maps for California we see that they average around 7 hours of sun per day which gives us 7 kWh of available solar energy each day. To reach the required 2.4 kWh/sqm the panel would have to be 34% efficient. That is much higher than anything commercially available, and also higher the most efficient panels introduced by SolarCity in 2015 which had an efficiency of 22%. 

It's highly unlikely that the solar option would be that efficient, so we have to instead assume that the rear roof window would also be replaced with solar panels to increase the total area for solar panels to arround 4.8 sqm. This bring the energy requirement down to 1.3 kWh/sqm or 19% which actually is exactly what the current SolarCity panels provides.

x

Microsoft i have had enough now!

I have had enough of this now!

Forced reboots, BSoD and freezes, windows feels worse then ever. Apple please release a new laptop so we can get away from this shit.

I use my computer for business and primary development but to have to wait for reboots on a daily basis because of one problem or the other is just killing creativity. The only good thing is that I get time to write this blog post and complain about it. Apple surely has their problems as well but it generally has felt that with apple at least things are getting better over time which hasn't been my Windows experience this year.

Can't wait to change back and will do my best to stay away from Microsoft software going forward. 

Windows reboots

From BSOD to freezes to intentional reboot, when will Windows learn...

If you're anything like me you'll have a bunch of program open and a number of taps in Chrome with things that you're working on. The last thing you need when starting your day or getting back to your computer after dinner is to notice that everything has been closed thanks to Windows forcing just another update on you.

Don't take me wrong I think it's great that computers get updated and better over time but if the computer is running and I have programs open windows shouldn't be allowed to close them for me unless it can reopen them so everything is back as I left it after the update.

Before the anniversary update you where able to disable these automatics restarts to ensure that you confirmed when you wanted to reboot, but now those options are gone and you can only specify upto 12 hours a day where it won't update. Hopefully I have found a solution (https://techjourney.net/permanently-disable-prevent-automatic-restart-of-windows-update-in-windows-10/) that hopefully will work even now, but this kind of attitude towards the customers makes me seriously consider changing OS again.

Leave the reboot to me the user PLEASE!

Time for change

New computer

Has been time for me to refresh my computer for a while so last week I finally got my preordered Surface Pro 4.

After more than a decade with OSX I thought that Windows deserved a chance with their promissing Windows 10 release. Have been running windows occationally on the Mac also both dual boot and with Parallells/VMware Fusion but the experience was never great with limiting performance or the hassle of having to reboot the computer and then not having all the other tools while running Windows.

I started to look at the Surface line already with the Surface Pro 3 and found it to be a tempting concept, and when they released the Surface Pro 4 I couldn't find any reason to stick with a traditional laptop. I'm a developer and my main work is done either at home or at the office but I also do quite alot of traveling and work at clients locations all over the world.

I got the The Surface Pro I7 with 16GB of ram to ensure it could keep up with my work, and it clearly is a quick and capable machine, I also got the dock to support my dual screen setup in my home office including a 4K Samsung screen doubling as a monitor. The single Surface connect cable is a great idea but I found the connection from the dock to be a bit sensitive, so I quickly learned not to move around the computer while it was docked.

Since my primary usage of the computer is while docked with at least one secondary screen and a real keyboard and mouse I didn't bother with getting the type cover, I might just as well bring a real keyboard for me while I'm traveling and use the on screen keyboard in between.

Hardware and performance wise it shouldn't really be anything to complain about... I thought it was a good time to jump over to Windows now that it had matured and with Windows 10 finally felt like it didn't try to be two different OS at once, but one coherent experience.

4th generation still have child issues...

If you followed the news on Surface Pro 4 you might have read about glitching screens and there was an update available before I received my computer so I was kind of relieved that I shouldn't have to deal with child diseases but it seams like I was mistaken. Below is a summary of the issues I'm currently having with the computer (with all the available updates installed as of 17th of December 2015).

Sleep and keep sleeping

This was the first issue I experiences and basically meant that the computer didn't come back from sleep at all, hard power off and power on was required to get the computer back which obviously meant that all open program and windows would be closed and any unsaved documents lost. I changed the setting to disable the sleep mode and after recommendation from the support I have also disabled Hyper-V. It's been a while since I had the issue now but still don't trust it to be gone.

Freeze instead of BSOD?

I never enjoyed the BSOD (blue screen of death) that plagued Windows in the past, but now I have experiences something even worse, the total freeze of the system, first time was during lunch today, I thought it was because the computer tried to go to sleep but later this after noon it happen again while I was actively sitting in front of the computer and was working. I surely hope that is just an issue with my computer and that a replacement unit will solve...

Pen detection

Have had a few issues with the pen, had the button not working one and atleast once that the screen wouldn't recognize the pen at all. But over all has the pen worked okey but the remaining complaint that I have is that it doesn't register while you press the screen ever so lightly, what's the point of having 1024 pressure levels if they don't start counting until you press the screen firmly? At least for me it totally destroyed the feel that this would be anything like a normal notebook (paper thing you know). Hopefully this is just an issue with the pen itself and an easy fix...

External displays

As I mentioned I got the surface dock and are using a three screen setup at home, when it works it's great but occationally when coming back from sleep or after having any of the screens turned of they simply don't get detected correctly or at all, the TV does for instance not accept any audio any longer or one of the two screen just stays black. Unplugging the cable from the dock to the TV and back again usually solves the issue, just plugging the surface connect cable in and out does not however.

Kickstand

Let me start with saying that the kickstand is awesome and I have no issues to use it in my lap while traveling, again I don't use the touch cover which might make it easier, but without the touch cover it's really slim and you can really use this device anywhere without any issues. I do however have a small complain and it might just be my unit but in quite often is a little bit wobbly as the kickstand and the screen haven't created a perfect flat square.

On screen keyboard

Since I don't use the touch cover keyboard I have been using the touch keyboard and it hasn't been great, I think part of it is just a question of getting used to it finding myself pressing the wrong key over and over again, also took ages until I found out how to enable the full keyboard so you can use the arrow keys etc. Don't understand why that has to be a hidden feature and not enabled together with the other keyboard alternatives as default, they do actually even show the icon for selecting the keyboard but it's grayed out until you find this hidden menu which I can't remember myself now or I would have told you all about it. The other major complain I have about the on screen keyboard is in the tablet mode, while in tablet mode the keyboard is suppose to be shown while needed but this doesn't always work with normal windows apps resulting in no keyboard available, in normal windows mode there's a button to open up the keyboard when ever you want but this button doesn't exist in tablet mode leaving you to say the least a bit crippled.

Windows for developers

I'm a long time Unix fan and that was one of the main reasons I went with OSX all these years ago. I didn't however expect how much trouble it could be to setup a half decent setup in Windows. We use alot of git repos and uses Google repo to manage them all together. Repo isn't supported in windows but I was able to run it with the help of cygwin and also found a fork which could be used in windows. However regardless of what I did (and enabled proper symlinks in Cygwin) I couldn't get a setup which just worked. I could get repo to work in the command line and build all our projects with no problems but when I tried to open up the projects in Netbeans nothing worked, after trying everything I could thinkof and find on the net I finally had to abandon repo and just run git manually for all our repos as in the old dark days before repo....

Netbeans are still giving me some warnings when I add files but atleast it works now and I can't be asked to spend any more time to get it to work any better now. I assume if we where using visual studio it might have been much better but I really just wanted to setup the computer as I was used to and now afterwards I think it would have been quicker and better to set everything up in Linux, if they only would have had all the drivers for the computer...

Would I recommend it?

So the final and perhaps most important question, would I recommend this computer? 

First of all let me start with saying that this clearly is a tablet which can replace your laptop. The tablet experience might not be as polished as an iPad but you can do so much more that you forget about some of the rough edges.

Hardware wise it's a great machine and Windows hello makes me smile each time I have to unlock the computer.

So for any other company this would have been a home run, they done everything they could to perfection, but for Microsoft it's different, almost all the issues I have with the computer is software related, and for Microsoft there isn't any good excuse for why they haven't solved these. So what I would say, if you need a new computer wait until early next year when Microsoft says they should release a number of updates and hopefully we can all recommend the Surface Pro 4 for the brilliant machine of the future that it really is.

What is currently the best "smart" watch?

Introduction

Smart watches has finally got into the mainstream market but what's the benefit with these smart watches and are they really any clever?

I been wearing watches for as long as I remember and enjoy the basic functionality plus the various bonuses that various watches have provided on the wrist, I most however admit that historically you had often to be quite happy with a stopwatch, an alarm and some simple timers.

There is clearly many benefit with having a smart device directly on your wrist and the requirements and need is probably different for everyone.

Comparison

So before I get into my personal opinions and experiences I made a simple table with the basic specifications for some well known premium watches.

Watch	Pepple Steal Time	Apple Sport Watch	Garmin Fenix 3	Garmin Fenix 3 Sapphire	Apple Watch
Price	From 300 €	From 449 €	449 €	549 €	From 699 €
Screen size	1.25"	1.7"	1.2" (round)	1.2" (round)	1.7"
Size (WxHxD)	37.5x47x10.5mm	42x35.9x10.5mm	51x51x16mm	51x51x16mm	42x35.9x10.5mm
Touch screen	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
Screen material	2.5D glass	Ion-X	Mineral glass	Sapphire	Sapphire
Body material	Stainless	Aluminium	Stainless	Stainless	Stainless
Water rating	30m	Water resistant	100m	100m	Water resistant
Weight	62.3g	81g	82g	85g	101g
Screen always on	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Sun readably	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Battery time	10 days	18 hours	Upto 6 weeks	Upto 6 weeks	18 hours
Apps	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
iOS support	Yes	Only iPhone	Yes	Yes	Only iPhone
Android support	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Heart rate	No	Yes	Accessory	Accessory	Yes
GPS/GLONASS	No	No	Yes/Yes	Yes/Yes	No

My experience

My first real smart watch was the Samsung Gear Fit which I got when I changed over from my third iPhone to the Note 4. Since I bike almost daily I really liked the fact that I could start and stop Runkeeper from the watch instead of having to fiddle with the phone before setting off on the bike. I also enjoyed to get the notifications on the wrist and it became my daily wearer for a while with an okey battery life at about two days with some shorter bike rides. Everything was quite well and I was pleased with the watch until I got tired of waiting for Samsung to release Lollipop to the Note here in Sweden, and after trying to use their German version I finally settled for Cyanogenmod which was both a later version and didn't drain my battery in half the time. This change of OS on the phone did however come with an unexpected drawback, the Gear Fit wouldn't connect to the phone any longer, or wouldn't do it in any meaningful way.

As I mentioned I go biking quite often and started to wear my Suunto training watch more and more, it did however still require me to manually start run keeper on my phone and fiddle with everything but atleast I now could get some heart rate readings. With my hairy arms I have never been able to get a reliable (if any) reading from the optical heart rate sensors, like on the Gear Fit and Apple Watch.

In my office we got the Apple Watch a while back and my colleges each tried it for a few weeks and their consensus was that "it's not quite a nice to have" basically meaning that when they forgot to charge it in the evening the benefit of wearing the watch didn't make up for the hassle to charge it and one of my colleges stopped using it altogether and my other college changed back to his old analog watch instead as a daily watch, bear in mind that these where both technology enthusiasts just like myself.

So now to my big question, What if the best smart watch would be just an "ordinary" watch with some smart features? This was one of the reason that I took the leap and got the Garmin Fenix 3 with Sapphire glass. Given that the watch is still brand new I might miss some details but the initial experience has been great.

1) First when unpacking the watch I could start use it directly and with the assistance of GPS it got the exact time without me doing much at all. Just as a comparison when I thought I should try out the Apple Watch I first realized that it couldn't even start without being activated from the phone, and secondly that it had to be paired with an iPhone and that my iPad wouldn't work.

2) Since I like to use the watch while I'm training I have been reluctant to have a watch with touch screen since I haven't tried one which always works as expected without registering false touches, have this problem with my phone as well when it's raining but I can accept that I shouldn't use the phone in the rain but for the watch it's a requirement to handle the wet. Tactile buttons also means that I can interact with the watch without actually looking at it, great for races and other times when you're literally on the run.

3) Runkeeper, or to keep running while running... while I like runkeeper and been using it or similar apps for the past two years it has a severe impact on the battery life of the phone, so much that when I go paddling for extended periods of time I now bring a spare battery to charge my phone while I'm out. With the Fenix 3 they state 20 hours of concurrent GPS usage and if I would feel like an even longer run I would use the UltraTrak feature to get the GPS to last for upto 50 hours, all of this without requiring me to bring my phone with me whenever I like to train, or just keep the phone for emergencies and ensure it has some juice left in it.

4) Show me the time, the key feature of a watch has always been to show the current time, and regardless of how reactive a smart watch is to your wrist movement nothing can ever beat a screen which is always on, do I even need to say that I like to check the time even if the sun is shining or if I'm in a dark room without turning on a "flash light".

5) Notifications and apps, a smart watch which can't display notifications are probably not even allowed to be called a smart watch by today's standard. The question is if you need the watch to do much more or if it's not just as good to bring out the phone for more advanced interactions and communication? The Garmin watch has it's own app store just as the Pebble and the Apple watches but of cause no one will be able to compete with the share amount of apps that will become available to the Apple watch, the question we need to ask is if we really need all these apps? Got the find my car app to the Fenix watch which will save my both hassle and battery of my phone if I ever like to find back to my car easily, many other apps I'm happy to use on my phone as before.

I know that the price for the Fenix is quite hefty, but compared with the Apple Watch it's actually hard not to see it as a bargain considering what you get, this is actually a smart watch and not just an extra small screen to your phone. And with the Sapphire version you get a respectable looking watch with an included extra steel link armband, which however more than double the weight of the watch with an extra 104g. To get the Apple watch just in the same premium materials (Stainless steel and Sapphire Crystal) you have to pay an additional 150 €, and if you like to get a steel link armband that will be an additional 500 €, so for the same materials you would end up paying more than double the price for the Apple Watch.

Drawbacks

There are however of cause some drawbacks with the Fenix also, first and most noticeably, it's a big watch, but for some like myself it could be considered a good thing since I like to see my stats at a glance (even in sunlight...)

The watch run it's own software and will not benefit from the development efforts for the Apple Watch or the Android Wear platforms. If you like a training watch this might not be a big deal since the development community for Garmin is quite active to enable most types of customization from a sports perspective, but if you like to call an Uber taxi from your watch you might have to wait for quite a while. The watch has been on the market for about 6 month and I seen some complaints regarding the software from the beginning of the summer but from what I can see they been quite active in producing firmware updates and the latest update was only a few weeks ago.

Conclusion

To get the best "smart" watch for you the best thing to do might be to find the best watch for you and then see if it is "smart" enough to fulfill your smart requirements also. I still need to put this watch though it's paces but I'm confident that it will fulfill my expectations and if something isn't working as expected it seems like new firmware versions are pushed quite regularly so the watch will hopefully continue to improve over time.

How much does it cost to rent a car for 48 € (excl. fuel)?

Not to long ago we all knew that we have to watch out when we compared prices on flights to avoid paying 1 € for the flight and 200 € for the taxes and other surcharges. Thanks to massive critics the airlines have changed this somewhat and now we can normally compare the actual cost of flights.

Today I found out that the car rental companies have adopted this practice instead.

First a short background, I needed a car for the day down in Amsterdam and checked a few different sites to see if I could get a reasonable deal. I finally went with Rentalcars.com since they had the best deal on a reasonable car and since the rental was with Hertz with I used many times and usually been quite pleased with.

I prepaid the booking for 48 € and was quite happy since it clearly stated that "Local taxes" was included, no strange surcharges to worry about I thought and was happy to get away with the ridiculously expensive location charge of 55€.

When I picked up the car the lady at Hertz informed me that I had fooled myself and that I indeed had to pay the additional 55€, irritated by the fact that my rental had more than doubled in price already I asked her that there wouldn't be any other additional charges if I returned the car ful since the preliminary surcharges included refueling and came to a total of 160 €.

After a days driving around the Netherlands I returned the car this evening only to find out that there was an additional 21% tax on the location charge plus some other bullshit surcharge of 2 € (still don't know what that one is for). So my 48 € car rental ended up being a 117 € car rental, and I who thought that the fuel was the only extra cost of the rental...

I have registered a complaint with both Rentalcars.com and Hertz for misleading information and will update this if any of them replies and want their companies not be like some airlines have been in the past.
____
Fick svar från Hertz efter ett tag, men har än idag inte fått nått svar från Rentalcars.com (2014-02-18)

Hej

Tack för ditt mejl, du har bokat din hyrbil via Traveljigsaw och ska då kontakta deras kundtjänst med alla ärenden som rör din hyra. De ansvarar för att bistå sin kund med alla ärenden före under och efter din hyra och kontaktar i sin tur den biluthyrare i det aktuella landet som levererat bilen till dig.

Med vänliga hälsningar
Beatrice
Customer Relations Sweden

Hertz First Rent A Car | International Franchisee
Box 14, Skogsgatan 5, 933 21  Arvidsjaur, Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)960- 473 30 | Fax: +46 (0)960- 108 01

Email: customerrelations@hertz.se | www.hertz.se | www.hertz.se/omhertz

10 reasons why I support the Ubuntu Edge and you should to

Thanks to all the support and interest in the Ubuntu Edge, they have been able to negotiate the price of the components and have just reduced the price of the phone to only $695, there haven't been a better time than now to support this project!

1. Support a new movement and prove that crowd funding can compete against big companies.
2. Be among the first to get your hands on a real super phone. The spec of the phone can still improve, but is already impressive and who knows maybe it will be more powerful than the MacBook Air in the end.
3. Designed to be used with one hand, this is the reason it's 4.5" instead of 5", the perfect size will differ between people but I like the fact that they prioritize the usage of the device rather than the spec on paper.
4. A phone with specs which has a purpose: 300dpi is as good as normal printed paper, no need to go beyond than, instead they are promising to select the screen with the best picture quality and brightness.
5. A camera that can be used, instead of getting the highest megapixels they will provide a camera which can take good photos even in low light.
6. Scratch free crystal glass, it's currently to expensive for mass production but Cronical likes to push the envelope and give us the best possible glass which doesn't get scratched.
7. Best battery, using new battery technology which is believed to increase the capasity with up to 40%, this could result in a phone which actually last more than one day without charging.
8. If we don't like the phone Mark Shuttleworth offer us to return the phone within 28 days for a full refund (shipping excluded).
9. I was among the first to buy the iPhone and the Android G1, both devices which I could have sold at a great profit when I got my hands on them. I'm sure that the demand for this phone will be equally great when it arrives especially since you have to be a backer to get your hands on it. With a bit of luck my second phone might pay the bill for the first one, getting a super phone for free sounds like a good deal to me.
10. If the phone sucks and I can't sell the second phone I can always return them both for a refund and will end up spending about 50 euro (including shipment, missed intrest etc) and if the project doesn't hit the target I won't have spent a dime to support support this great project with a great vision, sounds like a low risk deal to me.

Together we can enable the Ubuntu edge to evolve and we can finally together assist in deciding how future super phones should look.

Go on to the campaign site at Indiegogo and back the project yourself before it's to late.  

Software "update" ?

What is it with Apple these days?

They release a new version of OS X and all of us in the office who had been required to update to Lion thought - "It can't be any worse can it?".

Here are the good news:

* It isn't any worse than Lion...

The bad news is however:

* It's not really any better than Lion either.
* The features which was highlighted and we thought would be nice to get either didn't work as we hoped or required a brand new Mac to work, we are currently having 1-2 year old MacBooks in the office which I would call far from obsolete.
* It cost all of us big parts of a day to update the computer and ensure that all the applications would still run after the update.

Feature updates which wasn't much of an update in the end...

AirPlay

Required a brand new MacBook to work, we could however use it to stream music from any app but for the video to work Apple requires the latest generation of MacBooks.

Full screen mode

In Lion one big draw back was that the full screen mode wasn't of much use when you use multiple screens, in Snow Lion they had enabled the full screen application to be on any screen - Great we thought we can use that feature on one of the screen while maintaining a work bench on the other - Nope, full screen applications are full desktop screens and fill all screens, however the screens which a the active one are just displaying a desktop background. Great feature right....

VMWare

I been running VMware fusion for some time to run Linux and occasional Windows application, after the update it wouldn't start and VMware have the currency to now inform their customers that version 3  (version 4 is their latest version) will not be made to support Snow Lion.

So what has this update given us so far?

* The understanding that Apple isn't trying to maximize the user experience for their customers but rather forcing them into buying newer product at an ever higher rate (did I mention the iOS updates which does even less if you don't have the last generation device).

* One day of taking care of paper work and other tasks while waiting for all required software on our computers to start working as expected again.


Thanks for the cold software, and thanks for not making it worse than Lion.

Madonna MDNA Tour in Gothenburg

• Opening act 1/10 - Started over an hour late and after the show it was more than another hour before the actual show started
• Visual Effects 10/10 - Can't think of anything that could have done it better...
• Dancing 8/10 - It's Madonna after all, can't be anything but great.
• Sound 3/10 - Important to not misstake this for the music, the music was fine but the sound technician was doing a lousy job with the discant  breaking through repeatly making it almost unbearably to listen to at times.
• Show 8/10 - Got pace any no breaks from start to finished with a feeling of a red thread going through the whole performance

Total points

• As a show 7/10, the opening act and the sound takes down the points from a solid nine.
• As a concert 4/10, good music but to many remixes and the failing sound leaves the audience untouched until "Like a prayer" concludes the performance.

Put a move on it...

Just saw this really cool product at Kickstarter and just had to support it.

Have a look below and take the opportunity to also support Motrr and thier Galileo, probably one of the best accessory for your iOS device so far.

LION SUX!!!

After month of staying away from Lion Apple finally found a way to force all of us to update to this shit!

If it wouldn't been for X-code and the new iOS release I wouldn't have had to do this update and could happily been waiting for the next version.

Lion is iOS for Mac and here are just two example why this was a bad idea!

1 - Scroll view in the wrong direction by default (easy to change but still idiotic!)
A desktop is not a touchscreen, so the scroll shouldn't be the same way!

2 - Full screen mode which leaves my second screen unusable! I can't even leave a document open on that screen.
THIS IS NOT AN IPAD!!!


Now I just hope that Mountain Lion or whatever the next version will be won't be such a huge let down.



Apple if you are reading this:

Please don't force your developers to upgrade when you know the newest version isn't an improvement over the last one!

EagleUp released in a new more user friendly version

I'm happy to announce that Jerome have just released version 4 of EagleUp

If you work with Eagle and like to visualize your design in 3D this is the project you been looking for, EagleUp is with this version providing a simple export from Eagle which can be used to import the design into SketchUp. Please see the official project pages for more details:

http://eagleup.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/new-version-released/
http://code.google.com/p/eagleup

Finally true 3D without any glasses

3D has been a hot topic for a while now but all the limitations simply doesn't make it appealing enough. Todays 3D movies are still just presenting the viewer with one view, one view per eye but there is no third dimension that the viewer can move around in.

Think of a scenario where you could actually move your head to get a new angle of the movie, finding new details each time that wasn't visible from the seat you had last... This technology might sound like Minority report or Star trek but look at the movie behind to imagine what a real 3D experience should be like:

The hologram above might be a static image but the company is working on a motion display with the same technology, when and if that becomes a reality we can all look back at the 3D technology today and ask ourselves why anyone accepted those glasses for a just a second view.

4 x 2.5km delat på 2

Var med Kettlebell Center och sprang Lindholmenstafetten igår. Vi hade ett 5 fingers lag men på grund av sjukdom och avhopp så blev vi bara 2 till sist. Så blev till att springa 2 x 2.5km var. Märkte nu på morgonen att mina tider inte hade blivit registerade vilket var lite tråkigt, är van vid chipen från andra tävlingar och brukar alltid ha de runt ankeln men det verkar inte ha fungerat med dessa. Ville inte sätta dom på skorna då det fanns risk för att de skulle skava men så här i efterhand hade man ju gärna tagit den risken för att få en registerad tid.

Nåväl som ni kan se på bilden nedan så ledde vårt lag på första raksträckan iaf, vi är lag nummer 319.

The eternal beta is no more...

Just stumbled across this today, and throught that Google Mail Beta deserved a memorial post.

Google Mail Beta is no more - Welcome Google Mail



[UPDATE]
Just saw that they changed their logo again together with the rest of their appearance, this news should be more current than the last might have been....

Travel with a Kettlebell as your only luggage

I have now traveled with my Kettlebells a few times and I thought I should share my experiences with some do and do-not.

When I been traveling with the Kettlebell my first attempt has always been to put the Kettlebell in my luggage as part of everything else but the weight has often resulted in that I have had to rethink that strategy. It's however been kind of fun when you get the the baggage drop with 10kg excess luggage and they inform you that this will never work, and then all of a sudden you got 6kg to spare - How could that have happened.... :-)

Trying to bring it on as hand luggage was however not a really good idea, so that time I did end up getting it sent back to me through DHL since that was much cheaper then paying for the excess weight on the flight.

But the best experience was actually this weeks flight when I got to Hamburg from Gothenburg, on the baggage band the my only luggage was the Kettlebell, they had lost my suitcase! Well at least the kettlebell made the flight unharmed and luckily late in the evening I got a call that they found my luggage, glad not to lose my five-fingers and the rest of my other cloths :-).

Below are the main points that I thought myself throughout my experiments with traveling with the Kettlebell.

1. A kettlebell is a heavy items for flight personnel, if you put 16kg in an already full bag you are very likely to exceed their maximum 30kg lift limit.
2. Even if you get your bag to be below the maximum 30kg your weight limit might only be 20kg. Luckily for me when traveling with a seaman's book I usually get 40-60kg. So it might be tough to get both the kettlebell and your suitcase within your weight limit. Just bringing normal hand luggage and checking in the Kettlebell would be your best solution if you can manage your trip with only that.
3. You can't however bring the Kettlebell as hand luggage, tried that already for you. Even if there isn't a single sharp edge on the Kettlebell it's not permitted as hand luggage the main argument seems to be that it's a potential weapon but since they could just say that it's well above the 4-8kg weight limit for your hand luggage so not much to argue about really :-(.
4. If the kettlebell is not going to fit within your weight limit the cheapest option might be to send it through DHL or similar, costs about 60 Euro while the excess luggage can set you back as much as 100 Euro.
5. But the best option is probably just to check in the kettlebell all by itself, it has a nice handle so with a bit of convincing the airport personnel can't really refuse it.

Running half-marathon in brand new shoes - Good or bad idea?

For all of you who has followed my blog you know that I have been doing barefoot running for a while now.

• 5th of June 2009 - No pain no gain, or no shoes running...
• 23rd of August 2009 - 10 000 meters almost barefeeted

And now I did the Göteborgsvarvet Halfmarathon in a brand new pairs of Vibram Fivefingers Flow that I collected from the post office yesterday evening.

First why did I order new shoes?

My Vibram Fivefingers classic that I bought last year has been great but there was a few things which I missed with them:

• Was getting a blizzard on the left heal when running longer distanses with them
• Unable to swim with them since they are only secured by the toes
• Couldn't use a running pod to measure the speed, my attampt to use one before was the reason for the blizzard during the Midnattsloppet.

The reason that I went with the flow was that I wanted a pair which I could swim with and use all year around. I also wanted to be able to use the running pod as well as get rid of the flap that was causing my blizzards.

I got my order for the new shoes done online on Monday morning and was crossing my fingers that I would get them before the race, I did hope to get them a bit earlier to have a chance to try them out but knew that might been a longshot. So I got the shoes yesterday evening and tried them on while I was bicycle back home from the post office, they fitted well and I was feeling confident about using them at the race.

So how did it go?

First - who ever you asks they will tell you that you have to run in your shoes, since the fivefingers are almost like a sock I was hopping that would be the case for them... I was kind of wrong...

When you run a half-marathon of 21km most shoes will give you some blizzard, so how did a brand new pair of fivefingers compare?

• 10km bare feeted resulted in massive blood filled blizzards - notthing to really recommand before you have adjusted your feets.
• 10km with Fivefingers Classic resulted in blizzards at the heal but not much more.
• 21km with Fivefingers Flow resulted in massive blizzards under both feets and on some of the toes, the big difference against other blizzards was however that they didn't bother me during the race, even now after the race they don't bother me so if it could be better and worse kind of blizzard these where atleast the better kind.

So what is the verdic? Fivefingers are not immune to blizzards especially not when they are brand new and not worn in. They where however extreamly nice to run in and I don't think that I ever will got back to run in "normal" running shoes ever again.

Regarless of a minimum amount of training, which didn't even feel good when I did it - the Five fingers help me complete the half marathon more than a minute quicker then last year with a final time of:

1hour 46minutes and 48seconds.

Not my personal best but considering my training leading up to the race I'm more then pleased with the result. If there only is one thing that I want you to take away from this post so is it this, after 21km of running my legs, knees and rest of the body is still in a very good shape and that is not thanks to my physical form but to the fact that bare feeted running truly works.

Brilliant executed review of StarWars the Phantom Menance

Just found this video review of the Phantom Menace and it's absolutely brilliant. I'm a bit of a StarWars fan myself but this is just to good and true to miss! Sure the review is almost as long as the movie but the review might actually be better then the movie, so if you only plan to see one of them, consider watching this review then.

Part 1 of 7:


Part 2 of 7:


Part 3 of 7:


Part 4 of 7:


Part 5 of 7:



Part 6 of 7:


Part 7 of 7:

Video of Anti-Glare film application

Video done with the Canon 7D showing how to apply an Anti-Glare film to the MacBook, music by Kate and After (http://www.kateandafter.com). Max time of filming in 24fps full HD is about 12 minutes which results in a 4GB file.

Bye bye glare, welcome sunshine...

From first being very pleased with my glossy screen on my MacBook I soon realized that even if it was great inside it didn't matter how strong the LED backlight was, it would still not be readable outside on a sunny day.

For a while I have been considering changing my MacBook for no other apparent reason than to get a non glossy screen. But once I say http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/12/swap-a-macbooks-glossy-display-for-matte/ this week I decided that I should solve the glossy issue and save myself over 1000 Euro. I didn't go for the exchange of screens but went for an even cheaper and quicker solution, I ordered an anti-glare protection film from RadTech (https://www.radtech.us/Products/ClearCal-Displays.aspx). The Fedex package arrived from the States today and I'm happy to announce that I no longer have a glossy screen.

First impressions is that it's obviously not as good as getting a non-glossy screen from the beginning but it feels like a really good alternative when you can not get a non glossy screen or as in my case when you already has a glossy screen. The only real drawback that I have noticed yet is a slight shimmering effect from the film, it might be something that goes away when the film has cured properly but I guess not. But the main thing to mention is that the difference between before and after is much greater than I had hopped for and I'm looking forward to try out the "new" screen in the sun tomorrow.

The film is suppose to been specially sized for the 13.3 inch MacBook, I would however have preferred it to fill out the whole screen area to the outer edges and not just the display area. Maybe not a major thing for many people but if it would have gone all the way to the edges it would be hard to see that there are a film on the screen while now you now clearly can see the edge where the film is starting.

I took some video while applying the film and will see if I can manage to upload it for everyone to see and make their own judgment. The whole procedure took well under 30 minutes, but will require a bit of patience to ensure that no or minimum amount of particles get trapped behind the film.