I'm a 31 year old American expat living in Oslo, Norway, with my bulldog, Ada, and my husband, Johannes. My interests include interaction design, especially information architecture, philosophy of mind and ethics, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, feminism, yoga, fat acceptance, knitting, pottery, and cooking.
I’ve put up more photos from our summer vacation in the North of Ireland. Some are just from around Belfast; the ones from the Black Taxi tour we took are the most interesting of this newest lot.
I’m finally getting around to sorting out the pictures from our summer vacation.
The ones we took on 11th night in Belfast are probably the most interesting.
I have just built myself a new computer from scratch. I bought the best components that aren’t unreasonably expensive–e.g. the q9450 and not the qX9770; the Radeon 4870 and not the GTX 260 or 280. Here are the specs:
The most hardcore technical bit was when I had to rewire the connector for the front USB ports.
Everything worked perfectly the first time I powered it on and has continued to work perfectly since. With the exception of the clicking of the Raptor X, it’s virtually silent. It runs a little hot, but I understand that’s typical for these motherboards. The video card runs very hot, but from the reading up I’ve done, that’s normal for these 4870’s. I have played with the fan speed a little to get the temperature stable and quiet–25% seems to be the magic number.
The only disappointment has been with the new mouse I bought—I wanted a rechargeable mouse, but it turns out that the one I bought doesn’t work with the old Intellipoint software that allows the user to change the mouse orientation. I was able to get a driver filter to reverse the y axis, but this disabled some of the mouse button functions I use the most, like middle-clicking to view the desktop. Thus I have switched back to my trusty Wireless Intellimouse Explorer with Intellipoint 4.12.
My monitor is the same HP F2304 23″ LCD I’ve been using for the past few years, although it now has to be propped up by the orb Johannes bought me for my birthday a few years back. And, of course, I continue to enjoy using my vintage Model M keyboard.
Next I will put some pretty lights in it, and then I will water-cool it.
In researching why I haven’t been able to access ModBlog or Feministe for the past week or so, I learned how the Internet works, and am now absolutely terrified.
Here’s some stuff I’ve made lately. Thumbnails are for pussies!
Orange Chicken. This is another of my favorite dishes from
The Chinese Kitchen.
Kitchen Curtains. These I just made on the fly with my new sewing machine. Pretty dark green gingham to go with the green trim in my kitchen. I’m hoping the color keeps these from looking too kitschy.
Wavy Scarf for my Mom. This was her Christmas present and it took FOREVER to make. I used Idena Bamboo…that stuff’s the best yarn EV4R. Durable yet soft. Splits like a mutha, but it’s a joy to have sliding through your fingers and it’s worth it for the end result.
And now, for some pots. I think I’ve only posted one pot here before. Here are the pots I’ve made that I’m more or less proud of:
This one I gave to my brother-in-law for Christmas. I think it’s the best pot I’ve ever made, so I hope he damn well appreciates it. :Þ
This was my favorite pot before the one above. It was one of the first pots I made.
This pot I gave to my in-laws for Christmas, with a gift card inside informing them that we’d donated an XO in their name. No, you’re really not supposed to throw pots with this coarse clay.
These were originally meant to be a set of three, but one of them split during firing. Pain teaches: I learned to cut out the slabs for only one pot at a time. I still like ‘em as just a pair; they’re sitting out on my kitchen counter.
Another of my first pots. This one I sent to my Uncle Scott.
Chun glaze experimentation.
Another pot.
This one sits in the hand so nicely. I gave to to HansO because he likes dark red.
Another very early pot. A gift to my in-laws.
Sadly, it seems like the best pots I made were the post I made a long time ago.
In the future, I’ll try to be better about posting pictures as I finish things as opposed to posting them all in one big glut.
The graduate degree I was supposed to get fron UiO’s insitute for linguistics was in “Språk, logikk og informasjon”: Language, Logic, and Information. It was mostly geared towards studies in AI, but was the closest thing I could find to cognitive science or information architecture at the University of Oslo. I really enjoyed all the logic I took, and I really enjoyed the general linguistics stuff. I especially enjoyed the courses on human-computer interaction and the psychology of judgment and decision-making. I lost it when I took a class in formal semantics, though. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever failed a class, and I failed it even though I read the textbook and understood the material (in my defense, it’s a lot easier to fail a course in the Norwegian system than in the US system, and I was so sick that I didn’t make it to any lectures). I hated that subject matter with the fire of a thousand suns. My master’s thesis was on prototype theory. 
This is the Nokia N81. It’s the successor of the N91, which I had, but spilled coke on. In terms of sound, the N91 is widely considered to be one of the best portable music players on the market (yes, surpassing even the much-vaunted iPod); the N81 has the same high-end audio components, including the separate DAC, but has a better screen and is smaller and prettier.
Although the N81 was released on the 10th, it’s out of stock in all the online stores. There are at least nine stores on the 15-minute walk between Byporten and my apartment, and none of them had the model in yet. I am miserably music-less now without my N91, but I guess I’m just gonna hafta to wait.
Johannes is making his idea happen: Smidig 2007 is going to be held on November 26th and 27th at DogA here in Oslo. For those who don’t read Norwegian, he has written a little about the conference on his blog.
