I’ve decided not to blog on Irrelevances no more. Unfortunately though, the blogging goes on – over at Insignificances (one step up from shere irrelevances). Norwegian version Irrelevanser will be discontinued, too, only to be replaced by a Norwegian version of Insignificanses. Still confused? Can’t say I blame you.

Thanks a million for inspiring and challenging comments. See you over at Insignificances?

On the contrary: If it had been, there’d be precious little to love.

You will, of course, forgive my glass or two too many. Ah, and yes… We are, as you may have surmised, talking footbal here (that’s soccer to you colonials).

By the way, I wrote a little piece on the issue over at iNorden today.

Here we go again. But the colours! Not quite there yet, though. Although before long…

Over at iNorden.org we’ve had some 60,000 spam comments over the last couple of months, especially Russian spam, materialising after my repeated slamming of the Russian regime. We did, however, try to install the Bad Behaviour Bad Behavior (must be American or something) plugin some time ago, allegedly capable of refusing even Akismet access. Only problem is, we run a hopelessly outdated version of WordPress, causing the BB installation to not only refuse spam, but genuine blog posts, too. Deactivation it is, then – until we’ve upgraded our WordPress installation, that is.

That aside, I removed a charming spam comment from the Akismet filter last night, of which I kept a copy, simply for its very, very sweet qualities. You just have to hand it to the contributor, Boyperiimmary (how spammy can you get?):

Hullo
Best regards to owner of inorden.org – you created a very nice portal in the Internet!
I was able made only some pages of site
I hope this it is suitable topic for my topic. If there is no forgive for trouble please.
Rate please several pages of my first site :

exuse me for errors – there is so dark and I have small mobile phone keyboard
Thank you
Good by

l swear: If it hadn’t been for the potentially harming porn-script-hacker-phising links, I’d be prone to leave it be. “There is so dark and I have a small mobile phone keyboard”. Quite adorable, wouldn’t you say?

Man, how I still wonder what the boys had been up to. Playing with variations over JFK’s famous Berlin words, perhaps — like Ich bin a Hamburger/Wiener/Frankfurter, or simply sharing a joint in the backroom? No inhaling involved, of course.

To this day I’d really, really like to know, though. If you don’t have a clue what it is I’m talking about, here’s a sample:

The soviet Union’s last president, Mikhail Gorbachev, receives a modest € 623 state pension a month.

I’m quite confident that he’ll be able to change that, one way or the other.

He now claims the Georgians started the war, blaming America for interfering, while he’s at it.

I’m sorry for not elaborating. Too much to do, too little time, but I think the image (digitaly manpipulated by yours truly) sums it all up just nicely – although I have to admit that Heil Hu does sound a little silly (even if the abbreviation remains intact).

In reply to my last post, advocating the advantages of having a mobile camera at hand, I might as well post this everyday scene, demonstrating not only said advantage, but my clearly splendid intellect as well.

Exemplified by my immediate reaction to the tiny jar of fodder, right outside my daughter’s goldfish bowl, which I removed, lest it made the goldfish hungry, of course. I have such confidence in the intellect of goldfish, as in my own, apparently.

If it’s any explanation at all, TV commercials for HDTV channels prompt yours truly to holler witfulnesses like

How about that resolution!? Hey, look at those crispy images!

Should I add, for the record, that we don’t have an HDTV? I’m a little uncertain as to where that leaves me.

I’m just a little like that, I suppose.

You may call me a late bloomer. At long last, weeks after the hype subsided, here I am, blogging about the iPhone. But I’m not about to join the hallelujah choir, if that’s what you think. Well, of course I’d like to have one, but I have to say that professionally the thingy has very little to offer – for someone like me, anyway.

You just have to love the design though, and I’m quite convinced of the iPhone’s qualities as… well, a gadget for entertaining purposes. I’d very much like to have one just for fun, if I had the time, that is, but my professional needs are such that the iPhone simply won’t do, and here’s why:

As a journalist I need a handy mobile camera with a resolution suitable both for web and print – although, when on an assignment, I usually bring a digital SLR, but that isn’t always the case when the need arises, which makes a quality mobile camera useful. The iPhone’s 2 MP camera just doesn’t cut it. What’s more, my compact Sony Ericsson has a flash, in addition to its 3.2 megapixels, which by today’s standards really isn’t much, even if it is better than the iPhone. So there.

Besides, what on earth posessed iPhone’s techies, who stuffed all kinds of whatchamacallit into their little gizmo, omitting ancient MMS functionality altogether? Certainly, there’s always email, but… really. Because it is ancient or simply because they haven’t got around to even think of MMS just yet? That’s what I’d like to know.

I’d like to be able to publish online on the fly, wherever I might be, necessitating a fullblown QWERTY keyboard – or keypad, as it were. Granted, I don’t have one on my current mobile, but the have-it-all iPhone definitely ought to. Apparently, having the cake – and being able to eat it, too, currently seems out of range, no matter what mobile you choose. My own choice, prioritising photo-friendliness, excludes a QWERTY keypad, while those who do offer such devices seem unable to come up with an adequate camera – whereas Apple fail to produce either on their iPhone (even if it indeed sports a virtual keypad). I’ve had a couple of QWERTY mobiles in my time, mind you, but with lousy cameras. Again, having the cake…

The iPhone does however offer WLAN, though, which I sorely miss on my photo-friendly Sony Ericsson K810i (though I have to tell you; that Xenon flash is a lifesaver), but so do mobiles with better cameras – or QWERTY keypads. Alas, all fail to offer the three combined. How hard can that be? We have entered the third millenium, the age of space tourism, haven’t we?