I haven't made a post in ages - even though I've had plenty of time because of the summer holidays. I guess I have some catching up to do... But today is gonna be about OneNote 2010!

I had my first day on my 3rd semester today and it is a tradition for me to reformat my computers, so they are ready for the burden, that is to be used as a school computer. Since OneNote 2010 has been released and I get a free copy through a deal between my university and Microsoft, I of course wanted to try it out. And lots of good things can be said about it!

In ON 2010 Microsoft has enabled the use of SkyDrive. SkyDrive is Microsofts cloudsystem - if you have a Windows LiveID (a hotmail or live account) you already have a SkyDrive which can store a nifty 25GB of data. Think DropBox. If you create a web notebook in OneNote 2010 you will _always_ have access to your notes - simply from the browser! Pretty awesome. My main use of the service is to share my lecture notes between my laptop and stationary computer. And this takes me to my point - how does one setup such a system? Even though everything is so glassy and user friendly in Office it wasn't really obvious how to do this.

Setting up a shared notebook. Create a new Notebook and choose "Web" as type. Enter a logical name and proceed. OneNote will ask if you wish to send a link to the Notebook. Since you're only sharing between yourself on your own account, I simply recommend to just use a web interface - so click No.

Opening the shared notebook on another computer. It's actually really easy when you know what to do. Here's 3 steps:

1) Navigate to the SkyDrive. Open Internet Explorer (will _only_ work in IE), go to live.com and login using your liveID. In the top bar find the "Office"-link and click it. Now find the link where it says "SkyDrive" (below your file(s)) and click it.

2) Open the file. You will most likely see a folder or two. Open the folder which contains the file (probably "My Documents"), and find the OneNote-file inside and click it.

3) Opening the file in OneNote. In your upper left, click "File" and "Open in OneNote". Hurray - if you are using IE, the file should automagically open in OneNote and be a shared Notebook (it should have a globe in the icon).

Just repeat step 2&3 if you have more than one Notebook. Also, this also works on more than 2 computers (obviously) - just repeat the actions above for each computer.

Perhaps I will make a follow-up post on OneNote 2010 features. It really is an awesome program.

Cheers

I'm a Chrome-guy now. I never thought I would let Firefox go. It has always worked wonders for me, especially since I'm all into addons and personalization. What changed my mind then?

Well, most of all: the speed. Chrome is fast! As in awesomely, turbo, "the Flash"-fast. It starts within a second after clicking the shortcut in my taskbar, and it opens every page at a speed I've never seen in Firefox.

It did take a while to change, though. The Firefox shortcut sat for months in my taskbar, mostly because of habit (and the affection you get for a loyal app over the years, I guess), but also because Chrome didn't support addons at first. I couldn't use adblock, flashblock, X-marks, videodownloadhelper etc., so I naturally had to keep a copy of FF on my computer.

Nevertheless, this all changed when Chrome released a version in which extensions had been added! I did a little dance that day. As quick as I could I installed AdThwart and Flashblock along with some other tools such as RSS Subscription Extension and Google Dictionary. I finally had my good old "Firefox" back, just a lot faster. And till this day, that's all I need. Perhaps Google really is taking over the world after all.

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Death Note

After watching all the incredible movies I naturally moved on to find some good anime series. I purchased the first season of Naruto together with the first manga volume. I was quickly absorbed by the world of hilarious ninjutsu and bought 31 other volumes (in Danish, on dba.dk).

I abandoned the TV-series since it was way too slow-paced compared to the manga. In mere two weeks I had finished off all the currently released volumes in Denmark. Sigh, now I have to buy the rest from UK! I can heartily recommend both the manga and the anime. However, I still find the Dragonball manga better, but _please_ keep me away from the anime - it's nothing short of horrible!

So, having ploughed through both Studio Ghibli and (most of) Naruto, I looked for something new. I did some quick research and got hold of Death Note (by personal recommendation) and Elfen Lied.

I put on Death Note and was absolutely thrilled! The protagonist (Light/Kira) is a very intelligent high school student, who stumbles upon a notebook called "Death Note". It gives a brief description of it's purpose on it's own cover: write a person's name in it while visualising his or her face and he/she will die!

It may sound silly, but it's extremely convincing and as the story moves on, one of the coolest detectives are revealed: L, another genius, who is willing to die if only he can catch Kira. This was definitely the anime I was looking for! It is simply the Twin Peaks of anime!

If you're looking for an anime as well, seek this out; you will love it! The series contains 37 episodes.

The evening after I wanted to try out Elfen Lied. This is a short series with only 13 episodes, each of 25 minutes. The soundtrack deserves a mention: it has the most beautiful opening theme. Seriously, listen to it, it just goes so well with the story.

And the story, basically? Naked babe ripping people apart in various, bloody ways. Even though I normally wouldn't enjoy that, I found the first episodes brilliant. It somehow captivates you instead of disgusting you - even though I usually can't stand gore. As the story progresses, however, I was a bit dissapointed. There are 4 girls and 1 boy in the series and most of the time at least one of them is crying hysterically. It's just.. too much and boring. Nevertheless, I can recommend the series - even though it gets a bit tedious at times.

By now, I still need almost 20 Death Note episodes. I'm always on a lookout for new series though I expect to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion afterwards. If you can recommend a series, I would be very delighted if you would write it in a comment!

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I just stumbled upon some cool W7 tweaks on SevenForums and figured I'd post them here.

The first one is a tweak to change the hover delay on Aero Peak/thumbnail previews in the taskbar. The original link is here, but I've written a resume here.

The next one also concerns the taskbar. It's a tweak to enable easy cycling through previews by clicking on the taskbar icon. Copy+pasta:

My last tweak for you is really awesome. By creating transparent shortcuts in the taskbar you can group items in an easy way. Go to LifeHacker and find out how.

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Kommunikation og IT (KommIT) lukkede dørene op for den første årgang på knap 40 studerende i september '09 - jeg var en af de heldige.

Efter jeg blev student i '07, startede jeg på polit, hvor jeg gik i 3 semestre, før jeg droppede det pga. manglende interesse. På min årgang på polit var vi 300, der startede, og det var derfor en noget anden oplevelse at være tilbage til gymnasiekvotienter på KommIT. Forelæsningssalene skrumpede ind til (store) klasseværelser, og man var pludselig på fornavn med alle. For mig var det en befrielse at vende tilbage til dette format, hvor det sociale vægter højt, og diskussion og spørgsmål i langt højere grad er muligt.

På første semester havde vi to fag: Grundlæggende kommunikationsteori (grund.kom) og grundlæggende datalogi (grund.dat). Da studiet var helt nyt var ingen af os klar over, hvad vi kunne forvente. Studieordningen, som er retningslinjerne for studiet (populært kaldet Biblen), blev først frigivet omkring august, så da vi i sin tid søgte ind, var der slet ingen information om fag, eksaminer, omfang osv. Det var dog rimelig straight forward:

I grundlæggende kommunikationsteori var der et formål: at få så meget viden om kommunikation ind i hovedet på os som muligt. Begreber som affordance, medium theory, medier af flere grader, mediematricer, diffusion og naturligvis diverse kommunikationsteorier (Shannon & Weaver, Lasswell, Jakobson) blev introduceret. Det var meget overvældende, og til tiderne opgivende - flere af teksterne kunne virke umulige at forstå eller også tog de mange timer at læse!

Ikke desto mindre åbnede der sig et spændende univers op. Kommunikation er indtrængende og allestedsnærværende, og allerede efter få undervisningsgange så man sig selv lege kommunikationsforsker, når man helt ufrivilligt iagttog folks gestikulationer i byen. Det var kun en lille del af pensum, som man ikke følte havde direkte anvendelse, og som man havde svært ved at relatere til. Og på trods af de svære tekster, var der ikke en eneste af de deltagende til eksamenen, som dumpede.

Grundlæggende datalogi var noget helt, helt andet. Her måtte man finde sin indre nørd frem, for temaet var programmering i Python. Vi er som nævnt 40 studerende, og kønsfordelingen er de perfekte 50/50, hvoraf 80% er i alderen 19-22. Der er ikke tale om en flok nørder, og det var derfor lidt af et chok for mange. Selv har jeg leget lidt med sådan noget før, så jeg havde et lille fortrin. Alligevel gik der kun få uger, før jeg så mig overhalet af søde og smukke piger - hvilket nederlag! ;) For faktisk viste det sig, at langt de fleste med tiden blev mindste ligeså glade for datalogi som kommunikationsteori. Timerne var fantastisk hyggelige med masser af råb af glæde og frustrationer, når noget hhv. virkede eller nægtede at samarbejde. Det var meget givende at se en applikation komme til live!

Python er et meget simpelt programmeringssprog og ofte meget intuitivt. Hvor man i C++ typisk skal skrive en smøre som denne:

#include
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
cout << "Hello World!";
return 0;
}

for at skrive "Hello World", så behøver man i Python blot skrive

print "Hello World"

Det er da nemt! Vi gennemgik emner som billedemanipulation (i Jython), funktioner, dictionaries, pygame (vi lavede et Snake-spil) og klasser. Det var i den første del af kurset. Anden del bestod af web-udvikling vha. python. Her kom der en del HTML ind i billedet, samt databaseprogrammering i sqlite. Det foregik på en linux-server, som underviseren havde sat op. Vi fik hver en konto, hvor vi så kunne køre vores applikationer på.

Vores eksamensprojekt var udviklingen af et site i stil med YouTube, som bare skulle håndtere tekster i stedet. Det foregik i grupper på 1-4 personer og afsluttede i en rapport på ca. 25 sider inkl. programkode. Vi var alle nervøse for omfanget, men det viste sig faktisk, at alle grupper havde problemer med, at der slet ikke var sider nok! Her bestod alle de deltagende også.

Efter en utrolig lang ferie begyndte vi så igen i februar med tre fag på skemaet: empiriske undersøgelsesmetoder, interaktionsdesign og 1. årsprojektet. På kommit laver man hvert år et projekt med en virksomhed. De finder nogle projekter til os, som vi så skal hjælpe til med. Dette foregår også gruppevist med 4 personer. Om et par uger bliver vi smidt ud i det, og det bliver naturligvis spændende at komme ud af den akademiske klokke og ind i den virkelige verden. Men det kan jeg jo fortælle mere om, når jeg ved noget mere!

Som sagt først: Hvis der skulle sidde nogle studiesøgende sjæle derude, så besvarer jeg meget gerne spørgsmål. Skriv bare en kommentar her, så skal jeg nok vende tilbage asap :)

Officielle sider: kommit.ku.dk, vores skema, mef.ku.dk (vores institut).

/Johan