Seven Things – Tagged by Shahar Evron

So, I just got tagged by Shahar. Since he is a big scary military guy I better answer this!

Here are seven lesser known facts about me (in no particular order):

• I used to play golf and was a member of the junior “elite group”. Most of you who know me might think that golf is not really my thing. Well, you’re right. Thats why I don’t play it anymore.
• When I was 16 I decided to become “straight edge“. That lasted for about 4 years, but the next 5 years I still didn’t touch alcohol. I still believe that some of those years are the best years of my life.
• In my straight edge period I sang/screamed for a hardcore band for about a month. Since I didn’t really have time for it I gave that up rather quick.
• I have hundreds of Neil Young concerts (audio) in FLAC format.
• I got my first tattoo at 17.
• I used to play Dungeons & Dragons (both DM and player).
• Besides climbing, chopping wood is one of my favorite things to do.

And thats that. It was actually harder than I would have guessed to come up with these facts.

Now it’s my time to tag some people. I think I’ll just pick the ones on my blogroll list + one more since I can’t really tag Shahar back. I know some of them hates this stuff as much as I do, but since I can be quite intimidating sometimes I guess they’ll answer anyway.

• Jan Petter
• Jo Christian Oterhals
• Kristian Lunde
• Magne Thyrhaug
• Mats Lindh
• Stein Ove
• Hilde Skjølberg

Here are some rules that must be followed by anyone who decide to follow up:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

2008 is almost at an end

Since 2008 is about to end I thought it would be nice to write a post to recap some of the stuff I have been writing about this year.

January started with a new theme on this blog. Then I went on to brag about being 32% genius over at Project Euler. January also saw the first post from my (then new) T61 laptop.

February was a slow month with just 3 posts. The reason was probably the lack of motivation.

March was the month I started playing Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Later that month I was in Zürich for a two day Microsoft Live Services course. I also found out that my blog was not completely worthless after all!

April saw some huge posts about Zend Framework, like Custom validators for Zend_Form_Element and Translating Zend_Form error messages and more. I also wrote about how to use objects with Zend_View’s PartialLoop helper. I continued the Zend Framework blogging with the Quick and dirty custom Zend_Form_Decorator_Label post and ended the month with a post on how to use a SOCKS proxy to connect to MSN Messenger in Pidgin. April had some of the busiest days (traffic wise) on my blog because of the Zend Framework related posts.

May was a busy month with 21 posts. A popular post is the one about debugging Zend Framework in Zend Studio. On the 17th I arrived in New York and wrote some posts about my trip: day 1, day 2, day 3 and day 4. The next 5 days I spent in Chicago attending php|tek 2008. I also blogged about my days there: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5. In between I posted some pictures from New York on my flickr account and created a proposal for a Zend_Service_ReCaptcha component for the Zend Framework.

June started out with a rather rough weekend. I also worked from home using ssh tunnels. Mid-month I got a ticket to the Neil Young concert in Oslo Spektrum. Some days later I attended the Norwegian Developer Conference with Erlend from work. Zend_Service_ReCaptcha was accepted on the 19th and a couple of days later I presented the first Album Of The Week award to Television with Marquee Moon. The last days of June saw the first post in a 3 post series about PHP_CodeSniffer. I still haven’t written the last post in the series btw. I also managed to squeeze in a post about some basic usage of the Zend_Service_ReCaptcha component.

In July I got myself a new bicycle! I also wrote part 2 of the PHP_CodeSniffer series. Did I mention that I haven’t finished it yet? I also wrote a post about cropping and resizing a GIF with PHP’s imagick extension which is pretty popular around here. On the 18th I started the 100 push ups challenge which I had to abandon later on because of an injury in my right shoulder.

In August I wrote about the Neil Young concert and about the flood the destroyed my bedroom, bath and office. Other than that it was a slow month with some AOTW and 100 push ups related posts.

September was a rather busy month! Early in September I wrote a post about how to move Subversion repositories. Later on I went to San Francisco for a couple of days before ZendCon in Santa Clara. I wrote some posts about my stay in San Francisco: Day 1 and 2 (part 1) and part 2. I also wrote about my last day there. At ZendCon I did a series of posts: day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5. I also wrote a post with links to some of the slides presented at ZendCon.

In October I went on a climbing trip to Kalymnos and wrote a series of posts about my days there: day 1, day 2 and 3, day 3 and 4, day 5, day 6, day 7, day 8 and day 9. When I got home I finally managed to upload some pictures from my visit to Alcatraz while in San Francisco. October 2008 was also the last month in Stratos’ life. The last post of the month was Apache+SSL+Subversion+Trac HOWTO which is pretty popular.

In November I picked up Gears of War 2 and attended some concerts: Machine Head, Slipknot, Satyricon and Slayer. I also wrote a post about error handling in SimpleXML (PHP extension).

December has been mostly about music. I got the 1001 albums book and made a list of the AOTW awards in 2008.

And that pretty much wraps up 2008 at my blog.

Here are some numbers from 2008 (inspired by Mats):

Key stats:

• Posts: 143
• Comments: 157

Top 5 referers:

• blog.ekini.net
• zendframeworkinaction.com
• acheashadow.wordpress.com
• googlemapsapi.blogspot.com
• google.com

Most popular posts:

• Translating Zend_Form error messages and more
• Custom validators for Zend_Form_Element
• Bibliography in Latex, IEEE style
• Use a SOCKS proxy to connect to MSN Messenger in Pidgin
• Cropping and resizing a GIF with PHP’s imagick extension

Finally, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to wish my readers (and everyone else of course) a happy Christmas!

Stratos is no more

Yesterday Stratos (one of my cats) went to sleep for the last time. Stratos has had a blather infection on several occasions and has been squirting around inside for a while. When she didn’t have an infection she was peeing inside. I tried to get her to understand that she should do that in the litter box or outside, but that wasn’t too easy.

So, yesterday my mother went to the vet while I was at work and put her to sleep. She was about 7 years old. Me and Lillebjørn (Stratos’ mother) will miss her allot.

I have some pictures of Stratos over at flickr. I’ll include a couple of them here:

100 push ups: Week 2, day 3

Since I was at a reunion party last Saturday I was not really able to gather enough energy to take any push ups at all on Sunday, so I did them today instead!

First I went out bouldering for a couple of hours which was pretty exhausting considering I have almost not climbed at all this summer! When I got home I went for the push ups immediately. Todays set was 15, 15, 12, 12, max (min 15). I set a new personal best today with 40 for the last set. The last 6-7 push ups was a pain! I tried as hard as I could to get 41, but I didn’t have a chance!

The program for week 3 looks somewhat harder (go figure!). I’ll do the max test within a couple of days to see which column I have to follow for week 3.

100 push ups: Week 2, day 2

So … after a long break I decided to try on day 2 of week 2 instead of starting the week over. Todays set was 16, 13, 11, 11, max (min 15). For the last one I did a whopping 34 which was a new personal best! Way to go Christer! I’ll do the last day of this week’s set on Friday or Saturday!

Rain + Flood = Suckage!

The other day there was quite a lot of rain where I live (Fredrikstad, Norway). So much in fact that my lower floor was filled with water because of the pipes where I live could not handle the amount of rain. Too bad my bedroom, bathroom and office was on that floor…I had about 15 cm of water at the most in the floor so all the furniture was destroyed along with a couple of computers (not sure if they are completely dead yet) and lots of other stuff (clothes, bags, computer stuff++).

I have now moved all my stuff up in my livingroom and I’ll be staying there for a while. A company will come and remove the floors and most of the walls downstairs within a week. They will place some kind of heater there that will dry the place up (takes a couple of weeks) and then they can start rebuilding the place. At least my couch is comfortable enough to sleep on! :)

100 push ups: Week 2, day 1

Today I decided to try out the first day of the second week of the 100 push ups challenge. I had not warmed up too good and since I had my last set two days ago I felt a bit tired.

The set today was 12, 12, 9, 7, max (min 10). I did 24 on the last one which was a pain! I’ll try the second day of this week on Sunday so I can get two days of rest. I’ll probably take a ride on my bike before the push ups on Sunday as well since it seemed to have a good effect on the last day of the first week.

100 push ups: Week 1, day 3 AND a long ride on my bike

Mats and I had a short long ride on our bikes today. Well, it was supposed to be a bit shorter but we ended up riding for about 2 hours and 15 minutes (Mats a little longer since he rode his bike to my place first). I covered about 45km with an average speed of 20km/h and max speed 62km/h. Mats had his GPS so he’ll probably post some map-related stuff soon!

Over to the push up challenge! Since I was sick last week I got a little off balance so I had the last day of the first week today!

The set today was: 15, 13, 10, 10, max (min 15) with 120 seconds of rest in between. For the last one I managed 27 which caught me by surprise. I thought I was going to have a hard time managing 15, so I’m very pleased with that. Beeing sick just might have a little effect after all (considering the results I got on Sunday).

Now I’m off to the sofa where a cold beer is waiting for me! Later!

100 push ups: Week 1, day 2

First a little off topic:

This post comes a bit late (like so many other stuff on this blog). Last Wednesday I experienced some pain in my throat along with a fever, so I went to see the doctor, and he found a rather nasty infection in the back of my throat. I was given some penicillin and had to stay at home for a couple of days. On Friday my throat was a lot better and I could drink water without too much pain. The fever was also gone. On Saturday the pain in my throat was totally gone and I felt much better.

Today I have been feeling good and since I’m not the one who enjoys sitting on my ass for too long I took a nice relaxing ride on my bicycle to get some fresh air and move my legs some.

When I got home I decided to try out the second day of the 100 push ups challenge! The 2nd day was supposed to be last Wednesday but because of my throat I had to postpone it for some days.

Todays schedule consisted of 12, 12, 10, 10, max (min. 10) with 90 seconds rest in between. I managed to do this with no trouble but I did noticed that I had been sitting on my ass for some days. Strange how weak your body gets when it’s doing nothing for some days.

I did 15 on the last set today which was ok I guess. I will now have a break for one day and then do the last part of the first week.

Stay tuned for more updates! :)