I recently visited Japan on vacation, and as always, it was a very interesting experience. Last time I was in Japan was 2½ years ago, where I was introduced to how insulin pen needle tubes were made (very interesting for the nerd in me btw, but I won’t bore you with the details as would probably kill yourself in boredom and valueless information).

During the trip I was invited out to eat traditionally Japanese cuisine (paperhut type enclosures and everything). I was offered a Japanese “delicacy”…. Afterwards I was told I had just eaten salted Octopus intestine – which apparentely *IS* a delicacy?!? So I thought, well, you have to try everything once, right? (I would liket o emphasize the “once” part of this, as I have no intention (whatsoever!!!) of eating it again. Tricking someone to eating it next time I bring someone else to Japan? absolutely!

Cod semen – a heading I didn’t think I would ever have to write

Alright, well this time I was there something similar happened… but before I get to that, I’ll have just briefly mention my trip to Tokyo. I all started in Copenhagen Airport, where the airport security people wanted to inspect my bag…. and in doing so they accidentally (they claim…) dropped my laptop on a concrete floor, breaking my screen and damaging the laptop enclore so I currently have an option insurance claim against them. They were cool about it and handled it very professionally, but kind of a crappy start. When I landed in Narita airport in Tokyo, was so stupid as to inform the customs officer that I had some insulin pen prototupe devices with me, and they almost didn’t let me through, but because I had piece of paper stating “it’s ok, he can bring this into your country”, signed our department assistant, it went ok. My travel companion had not prepared such document, which meant we got to spend another 1½ hours in customs (where whenever I tried to sit down, I was politely asked to keep upright), until ultimately they had to destroy the 500 insulin pen needles he tried to bring into the country – which they had to count in front of him (despite him telling them that “IT’S OK, JUST THROW IT ALL AWAY”)……TWICE. Oh and to top it all off, it had apparently escaped me that in Japan they use a different cellphone system (unless your phone uses 3G…which my blackberry bold does not), so my phone didn’t work…ffs…

Let’s review: In CPH, my laptop was damaged, in Narita my colleagues samples we were to use in a meeting with our subsidiary was confiscated and my phone wouldn’t work for the duration of our stay. Fantastic… Luckily things went better from there on out. We stayed at the Royal Park Hotel and was upgraded to Executive Rooms with complimentary back rubs every morning.

So when are you going to get to the cod semen?

Oh yeah, after the meeting, which despite having our samples confiscated went very well, we were invited out to eat by the affiliate because I had ensured that a product I had been commercially responsible for developing and introducing, won the prestigious G-Mark (Good Design) award.

To celebrate, we went to shijō for world class sushi. It was tuna festival, so we had the full variety of tuna, from red tuna (akami) to otoro – truly a mouth watering experience. but..but..but… As they did last time, this time they also served something they wouldn’t tell me what was, other than “you have to try it and you have this delicacy”. When two of the people at the table (my Danish travel companion as well as the local Group Product Manager) both ate it and told me “go on, it tastes creamy”, I decided I would. It looked like a small brain btw, so they joked that it was the brain from a mouse, but as you have probably already guessed, it was something completely different – cod semen (Japanese term to beware of: shirako)…

I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be another one of those “try once“. A funny side note was the the (Japanese) person to my one side tasted it 15min later and apparently hadn’t been listening when I tried it, because when she was told what he had just put in her mouth she became VERY surprised and a little embarrassed it seemed..hehe…

I love Japanese 17 year olds - whiskeys that is…

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Well recently I have to say I’ve found ivacy to have improved their stability dramatically and their speed less dramatically but still getting better and better (since I wrote my last review they have doubled their speed on my connection which is very noticable).

Anyway I just recently  noticed today they’ve added another feature (on top of their already comprehensive list of features) – Anonymous SIP – how great is that? I had to test it out and, surprise surprise, it works flawlessly. I decided to test on my iPhone 3G. I already have fring installed (if you’re using a computer X-Lite is recommended to make SIP calls) so it was matter of adding a SIP account and turning on the already configured VPN connection on the iPhone (well, in reverse order of what I just wrote).

The usefulness of the SIP features are, as stated by ivacy themselves (when you would need this if you’re not doing anything nefarious online I can’t imagine, but still…)

• If both parties are making calls inside Ivacy Cloud, it’s impossible for third party to eavesdrop the conversation.
• If only you are inside of Ivacy and you are calling outside, it’s impossible to reveal your true identity, such as the country of living, your ISP, et cetera.

On my feature wish list still for ivacy?

• Well more speed obviously (I’ll keep mentioning that until they max out my connection, which I will keep upgrading…)
• Another thing would be to increase the retention on their usenet server – they curently only have 160 days of retention, where competing good quality usenet servers carry 300+ days, but 160 days is still good enough to get all recent stuff, but classic/rare stuff might be harder to find (I haven’t had any problems though). I use NZBMatrix.com to find NZBs to download and use Alt.binz as my usenet proxy software. Works like a charm with 20 concurrent conncetions it often maxes out my connection (which I find weird as e.g. a torrent does not max it out?)
• Currently a Firefox extension exist that makes it very easy to secure the connection in Firefox, but since I’ve recently found myself using Google Chrome almost exclusively, I find myself missing the feature (especially as I use the instant-torrents.site feature extensively). Even more so with the Chrome 4 beta supporting bookmark sync limiting the need to have XMarks/Weave installed.

So yeah, ivacy is EASILY worth the measly $15/month for unlimited access they currently charge (monthly fee seems to change slightly based on the value of the dollar vs. the Euro, but recently has stabilized @ $15). What do you think?

So now is the time to sign up

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1. IPREDator vs. Ivacy.com VPN service – fits my needs perfectly
2. IPREDator VPN for anonymous filesharing and an introduction to the alternative
3. Wanna chat with me? (Google Voice is cool)

SÅ er det tid til at gøre din borgerpligt igen. Jeg mener virkelig dette er din pligt, og ikke kun din ret,  og hvis du ikke gør brug af at stemme til lokalvalget bør du ikke være berettiget til at bo i landet (enkelte undtagelser, heriblandt hvis man er ude at rejse og dermed ikke i stand til at stemme).

Så se at komme derned. Og “jeg er på arbejde og kan ikke tage fri”, “jeg ved ikke hvem jeg skal stemme på”, “jeg ved ikke hvad der stemmes om”,  og lignende tåbelige undskyldninger er ikke gyldige grunde til ikke at stemme. Det er din pligt at sætte dig ind i, og hvis du ikke gider sætte dig ind i det, jamen så kan der altid stemmes blank.

• Hvis du ikke ved hvor du skal sætte dit kryds, så test hvem du sympatiserer med her hos f.eks. DR ellerPolitiken.

Ved ikke at stemme håner du demokratiet og hylder Chilenske, Iranske, Nordkoreanske og regimer hvor demokrati fortolkes mere frit end vi er vant til. Hvis vi definerer demokrati som…

“en styreform hvor statsmagten – direkte eller indirekte – udøves af hele folket”

….så ligger lande som Danmark mere vægt på ordet “direkte” (selvom nogle mennesker her i landet klager det ikke er direkte nok), hvorimod f.eks. lederne i nogle af de sydamerikanske/mellmeøstlige/afrikanske “demokratier” lægger VÆSENTLIG mere tryk på ordet “indirekte” (nogle vil mene disse ledere foretager alt helt indirekte – dvs. uden at spørge folket til råds overhovedet ).  Så se nu bare at komme ned til stemmeurner!!

• Du kan brevstemme indtil 14. November (som er lørdag) på alle Borgerservice lokaliteter og nogle biblioteker (se steder i København her)

• Afgiv stemme på selve dagen, d.18 November, på adressen angivet på dit valgkort.

Så valgfart til stemmeurnerne og gør dig berettiget til at leve i vores demokrati eller tag konsekvensen og begynd allerede nu at planlægge din flytning til et land hvor du ikke skal belemres  med medindflydelse som forstyrrer din hverdag og som du ikke kan afse tid til…

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It is just me or is Google Voice pretty cool? Now obviously it doesn’t work here in Denmark where I live, so I had to get a US number to play along (got it from ipkall.com, which forwards a call to my SIP account at musimi.dk, which again forwards to my cell phone…ain’t technology grand? works like a charm to), but I have to say, SOMEONE should be doing this in Denmark. Bibob, are you listening? Revolutionize the cell phone industry in Denmark as you have done before!! I beg you…

On an unrelated note, I have a bunch of Google Wave invitations to give out. If you want one, leave a comment (no need to write your email IN the comment, only in the “email field”, and I will hook you up! So what are you waiting for, call me and hear my brutish, manly, yet soft and sensual voice (I’m not gay, I promise…) while thanking me for the Wave invite I will be sending you.

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The article here is in danish. Consider using Google Translate to read it in English (translate it automatically by going here)

DÉT her er skræmmende. Jeg læste en (overraskende) velskrevet og spændende artikel på Ekstra Bladet’s hjemmeside omkring bandekrigene i Rio de Janiro og hvordan dette er et stort problem og hvordan banderne i Rio ejer forskellige bydele og “er loven” der.

Da jeg læste den synes jeg der var en skræmmende lighed med tilstandende i min egen baghave – Nørrebro her i København hvor jeg bor. Derfor tænkte jeg at jeg ville lave et lille eksperiment hvor jeg udskifter enkelte ord i artiklen og lader så dig min kære læser bedømme hvor stor forskel der reelt er når man ser objektivt på de tilstande der er.

Jeg har taget artikel på ekstrabladet og lavet følgende rettelser:

• farvela = bydel
• Rochino = Nørrebro
• Rio = København
• Eduardo = Mohammed
• Ipanema = København S (jo det er!! )

Den brutale bagside af København

Fra hotellet i Københavns fashionable København S-bydel med lækre restauranter og velhavende turister, der slænger sig i liggestole på stranden, er der kun tyve minutters kørsel i bil til en helt anden verden. En verden, der oser af fattigdom, slum og vold. En verden, hvor hver dag er en kamp for overlevelse. En verden, hvor de stærkeste narkobaroner og banderne med de største og fleste våben sætter dagsordenen. En verden med sine helt egne uskrevne regler. Og hvis disse regler brydes er der afregning ved kasse 1, i værste tilfælde den sikre død. Vi er på vej til Københavns største slumby, bydelen Nørrebro.

Vi er kun fire unge mænd plus Ekstra Bladets udsendte, der vover pelsen med et besøg i dette fascinerende univers, [...] (slettet tekst omkring en film) [...]

Vi har booket turen gennem en lokal guide, der har allieret sig med en bydels-guide, der selvfølgelig har betalt den regerende bande et vist pengebeløb for at få tilladelse til at gennemføre rundvisningen i bydelen.

Skyderi mellem bander og politi

Vi går i starten lidt forsigtigt ind i bydelen med nerverne uden på tøjet. Overalt i bydelen er stemningen lidt anspændt, fordi der samme morgen havde været en razzia med skududvekslinger mellem politiet og den ledende kriminelle bande.

Og allerede efter fem minutters gang råber guiden Mohammed: Her må i ikke fotografere. I må fotografere igen, når vi kommer rundt om hjørnet 100 meter længere op af vejen.

50 meter efter hjørnet er det så igen forbudt at fotografere. Og sådan bliver det bare ved. Vi får ingen sammenhængende forklaring. Men Mohammed har tilsyneladende kun tilladelse til rundvisning med fotografering i visse dele af favelaen. Og vi accepterer selvfølgelig hans ordrer uden modsigelser.

(citat fra artikel på ekstrabladet.dk – rettelser lavet af mig)

Er Nørrebro lige så skræmmende et sted som bydelene i Rio? Formentlig ikke (og jeg vil ikke nødvendigvis undersøge det i Februar/Marts næste år), men så stor forskel er der tilsyneladende heller ikke når man sammenligner objektivt. Eller hvad?

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1. Part 1: My initial excitement and thoughts for choosing the MVix Ultio
2. Part 2: Me trying it out, somewhat disappointed, but still optmistic about making it work
3. Part 3: Me deciding against giving it more chances and getting an Xtreamer instead

The main conclusions should you not want to read three posts above was that buying from ThinkGeek.com was online shopping bliss, the MVix Ultio wasn’t good enough/mature enough, didn’t have the advertised features and were missing features I thought were necessary. On top, the company had used nefarious business tactics by posting fradulant comments on blogs to make googlers mitakenely think the product was the bee’s knees. Fair should be fair though, the MVix Ultio wasn’t a bad product (though advertised features I needed such as being wifi capable were missing and didn’t work at the time), and all things considered I believed there were much better alternatives out there, with the Xtreamer being one of them, so I took the plunge. I chose the Xtreamer because it had DTS downmix, small size (as it uses a 2.5″ SATA drive) and had room for a built-in hard drive.

Common complaints I have encountered when reading about the Xtreamer:

1. Fan noise to loud
I don’t think this is warranted. Sure you can hear the fan if you listen for it, but it won’t disturb your viewing experience. I never notice it when a movie is running. I did some very unscientific testing with my iPhone. I bought a “decibel meter” app from the appstore and, well, you be the judge of whether the fan noise is disturbing (the graph below is half Xtreamer turned on, half turned off)…

While I don’t find it annoying, I do find it perculiar that the fan doesn’t have an “automatic” setting, but you have to set the speed at “low, medium, high”, with no guidance beyond that.

2. Not able to play high-def movies (e.g. BluRay rips)
I have encountered this once and I am not able to reproduce the “error”. For me all movies have played beautifully, but then again I haven’t tried that many very-high-def movies (think +30GB per file).

3. Internet services resolution too low (e.g. streaming movie trailers)
I can DEFINITELY confirm this, but before I go into what sucks, please note that the feature in itself works beautifully and reliably. You can stream youtube, news, stock tickers, music and, most importantly, movie trailers on the Xtreamer. I found the “movie trailers” function to be of great value actually because it just works and buffers the trailer quickly, but having a 37″ FullHD TV means that trailers look VERY grainy, because the Xtreamer doesn’t download a high-def versions of the videos – this is a big mistake on their part I think. Considering who might buy the Xtreamer, it’s aimed at people who watch high-def video (it’s even one of the selling points of the Xtreamer that it plays video upto 1080p resolution), and then all the internet video services are played in the the lowest possible resoution? it doesn’t add up. Hopefully they will fix it in one of their future firmware releases.

My experience of the Xtreamer
Overall the Xtreamer is well worth the money (it costs just €119 including shipping, without a hard drive which will set you back another €40-60 depending on the capacity you want), which I consider a steal. It’s the cheapest of it’s kind of player (when comparing to the likes of e.g. TViX, PopcornHour, MVix (both of them) or AC Ryan) and they all have just about the same features and same GUI (and are based on the almost exact same platforms). Great alternatives such as an AppleTV, XBox360 or Playstation 3 or full blown HTPCs are just so much more expensive than the Xtreamer, so you can’t compare them really – meaning if you’re considering an AppleTV or PS3, go for it, the Xtreamer and the likes won’t be comparable. The Xtreamer fills the need to easily watch video files that you download online in a small package, and that’s the purpose of it as I see it.

Now a lot of the other players I would compare the Xtreamer to (e.g. the MVix Ultio which i sold to buy the Xtreamer) have builtin bittorrent clients, but the implementation (all of them share the same implementation) are so(!!!) lousy it is of no use.  Some of the other players don’t have .N wireless capability (again the MVix Ultio doesn’t have working wireless at all at the time of writing this), which just doesn’t work for me (so please note: if wireless doesn’t matter to you, you may weigh some of the other options higher than I have – the same goes for DTS downmix). Luckily the wireless implementation on the Xtreamer works really well as does DTS downmix.

Summing up the Xtreamer is hard. One thing the Xtreamer passed which I was most doubtful about was the girlfriend test – i.e. can Julie operate it even when I am not at home to answer questions? A big fat yes was the answer. She could watch movies, turn on/off subtitles, use the internet services to watcher trailers, copy movies from her computer to the Xtreamer etc., so that’s good. Other than that, I would mention the following in bullet form format to keep this post short(..er than otherwise):

• first of, who the f… designs the GUI of these devices (this goes for all current generation Realtek and Sigma based players) – it’s awful – like TRULY awful, as in it must have been designed by an engineer with absolutely ZERO flair for design. I mean, c’mon people, “Apple TV – Take 2″ came out years ago..steal borrow a little here!!!
• It plays every file I’ve thrown at it
• The size of the box is “just right”.
• The fan noise people are complaining about online, you would have to be really anal about sound for it to disturb your viewing experience in my humble opinion (and I mean anal to the degree that ordinary breathing would disturb you)
• DTS downmix also works on all files I have thrown at it
• UPnP implementation works as it should, streaming wirelessly from both my computer and my NAS without a hitch
• The built-in FTP server works (but WHY is there a limit that the ftp server port has to be setup below port 6000?)
• Similarly, why does the UPnP port have to be below port 9999? *sigh*
• DDnS service works flawlessly (but see above on port usage)
• Integration with TVersity media server integration works like a charm
• Network shortcuts are not only possible, they make your viewing easier if you have a NAS unit on your network (and it even remembers your password)
• F….ing $119, shipped to my door. ’nuff said!

Overall, keeping in mind what need the products tries to fulfill, I would give it a 7/10 rating (6/10 for features and 1 additional point for pricing it so low) in its current form. Sure the Xtreamer guys have announced upcoming firmware additions they intend to implement (see them here), which will make me love my Xtreamer even more and might increase the rating, but I’m reviewing it in its current  form. It’s not the end-all of media players, but certainly it is good, if not great, value for money as a discrete media player. If you need a product that plays all video files you can find online, all backups of your DVDs, then the Xtreamer is for you. Throw in the internet services and it’s clear why I whole-heartedly recommend the product. Keep in mind, though, it is NOT a HTPC replacement.

Fourtwenty2009 – a douche

No company is perfect, neither is Xtreamer. They have made a good, if not great, product, but it seems karma needs to dump a little on me anyways making me like the product a little less, and the turd that hit me’s forum name was Fourtwenty2009.

//rant-on
Apparently whomever owns Xtreamer has allowed someone’s 16 year old douché bag of a kid to become an admin on the Xtreamer forum. Why 16 you say? Well just check the name, fourtwenty => 420 => urbandictionary says it best. A douche bag? Yes, well because I posted a post on the Xtreamer eTrayZ forum asking whether the upcoming Xtreamer eTRAYz NAS device would be using 2.5″ or 3.5″ drives. Fourtwenty2009 had apparently been smoking up that day and felt the need feel important (I’m guessing because of general lack of self worth) and deleted my post and wrote me a personal message telling me I should search before I posted on the forum and that I would be banned if I posted again about the issue – crappy service right?

Whomever owns Xtreamer probably aren’t aware that people they enlist as Administrator’s on the forum are their ambassadors, and douché bags such as as the (likely – based on observed behavior) 16 year-old yet pre-puberty, power-hungry, overweight, acne-attacked, pot-smoking, coke-drinking, sun-light deprived person that goes under the Xtreamer forum name “Fourtwenty2009″ actually hurt their image as a professional company that cares about their customers’ experience with them.

So anyway, I was surprised of the response from an administrator who seemed to know the answer but would not provide it, but I could still thought that many the harsh tone was due to a “give a man a fish and he won’t go hungry for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry” mentality, so I searched the forum for all the terms I thought likely terms to provide the answer but came up empty. I wrote fourtwenty2009 again that there was no answer in the forum and whether he could provide me the answer or I should just post again. His answer? I’ll let his words speak for themselves:

“You can read the FAQ. Or you could try disobeying the warning I just issued and be banned instead.”

Well, the FAQ is here, and I invite you to go there yourself and tell me the answer (I’m won’t kid myself with my blog being of big enough influence for the Xtreamer team to include this information in their FAQ). Anyway, based on the claim that drives as big as 2TB can be used, I’m fairly certain it’s a 3.5″, but since I can’t write to ask in the forum without getting banned and no one will tell me, I’m left guessing…
//rant-off

The reason for the story you ask? Well one conclusion could be that if you build a product of great enough value, customer service and customer experience post-sale doesn’t matter and any company can just hire or allow kids with a lust for power to manage customer forums. I’m fairly certain fourtwenty2009 feels this way.
Naturally, that’s not the point. There’s an old saying in marketing (the area of my work), that goes like this “1 satisfied customer tells one person about about the product, 1 dissatisfied customer will tell 10 about the poor experience”. Well, guess what, with blogs, you can tell thousands of people, so it becomes more important.

edit: Turns out that someone has been granted to ask my question now…thanks Xtreamer team minus FourTwenty2009

The future of my (Xteamer-powered) media setup
Enough ranting – The Xtreamer is a great product and their next in line will change my current media setup at home. My current media setup currently looks like the following:

As I briefly mentioned above, the guys are making (to be released in November) a NAS device called Xtreamer eTRAYz which looks very promising and costs a mere €59 (introductory pricing) and will require host hard drives and be able to run in a RAID configuration for added security and lots of other features (see here for details).

I’m going to buy this device (despite the poor customer service as exhibited by Fourtwenty2009 – I’ll hope that his admin rights are revoked due to him being too incompetent handle the “job” as an admin), which will streamline my media setup, and probably most importantly, move the internal 2.5″ hard drive from the Xtreamer to my laptop, shut off the fan, hide the Xtreamer eTRAYz  in a closet with a direct connection to the router and since the eTRAYz also support direct bittorrent and (is road mapped to support) usenet-NBZ-file downloading (which, from the description given by the Xtreamer guys, works like it is supposed to). This I will describe in more detail in a later post. In the mean time, see the chart of my expected setup below. while It’s closely related my current setup, the notable addition of the Xtreamer eTRAYz makes me move the hard drive out of the  Xtreamer, disable the fan and put all my music and videos on the eTRAYz and put it in a closet. Noise free and with centralized media storage (in a a RAID configuration for added data integrity)…nerdgasm bliss

PART 2 (coming soon): Buying the Xtreamer eTrayZ and chanigng my media setup (see link below if I have posted it)

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1. MVix Ultio part 2 – It’s great, but not quite as advertised… (English)
2. Mvix Ultio: My new “Special Retirement payout (SP)” funded media center (English)
3. Mvix Ultio – part 3: I think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence

Modern Family

This has been touted as a comedy to replace Arrested Development…yeah right!!! Don’t set the bar that high ABC, it will be VERY hard to live up to. BUT, I will say that the first episode of the first season WAS pretty good. I doubt it can be as good as Arrested Development, but so far I’ll keep watching it. I like the big gay guy in the series.

Curb Your Enthusiams

This is not a new series, it’s really old actually. Starting its 6th season this autumn, it is created by the brains behind Seinfeld from the 90s. This 6th season will see the reunion of the full cast of Seinfeld (but not as their characters, their real life selves). It’s not quite as funny as Klovn, but American humor usually isn’t. It still has it’s moment. I’m particularly admused when Larry David (main character) says “preeeeeettty preeeetty prettty good“.

Dexter

Dexter is not a new series either. I started watching it a coupleof the years ago but never really fell for it. I guess I have become older and wiser (or my TV viewing standards have dropped – who knows). Nothing really special and the 2nd season is definitely not as good as the first so far (I’m a couple of episodes in).

Where do I find the time to follow all of these TV shows I don’t know, but somehow I manage. Luckily Julie is good a scoping out new series and pre-screen them so I only get to watch the good stuff…hoorrah for her!)

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2. My experiences with Danish Cable operator, YouSee’s, TiVo knock-off! (…and tribute to Arrested Development)
3. Comedy & Music is a mix I love (starring Justin Timberlake) (English)