Niklas' blog

OK, so Berlusconi says the Italian election was rigged and refuses to concede. “Do you think you’d got rid of me?”, he said on Wednesday. Romano Prodi, who will probably quite soon be appointed the new Prime Minister of Italy, says he and his party-members are “calm” and “serene”, which I think is the right way to combattant Berlusconi’s narcissistic, psychopathic tactics.

It’s like Berlusconi will never leave, and keep pestering even though he’s becoming “just” a neighbour. Well, remember that he’s the richest person in Italy and owns practically all Italian media, so don’t count him out just yet. I predict he’ll take to stronger tactics, and try to face the world even more psychopathic than previously. The next logical step would be his turning into Mussolini, but I really, really hope he won’t. He would, however, like to last longer than some people’s wait for Duke Nukem Forever.

Speaking of desperate actions, Rob Corddry from The Daily Show recently (jestingly) said he’s racist. Click that link, laugh at the list, see the video.

The Guardian has written an article on Germano Facetti, the man who renewed the role of art in books. Or, rather, on books. He is the person who during the 60’s designed the jackets adorning the books that were published on Penguin:

The remarkable thing about these paperbacks is that they offered a visual education, too. Even then, it was obvious that Facetti had a prodigious knowledge of art history and an infallible instinct for the way a single image might capture the essence of a book.

In the end of the article, Julian House’s record label Ghost Box is mentioned as one of the followers of Facetti’s aesthetic. Just check this album-cover out.

A 17-year-old Swedish boy bought a pair of trousers that were styled dirty. No error, the lad just wanted a pair of dirty-looking pants. The problem was, after washing them two times – they turned out clean; even the faux dirt was gone! So the boy wanted them replaced, but the store said no go. He turned to The National Board for Consumer Complaints who said he was correct, and the store had to swap his far too clean trousers with a new, dirty pair. More on this (in Swedish) here.

Microsoft have made Strider URL Tracer available for the public, which enables any MS Windows-user to check if a web-site uses components from other sites:

When a user visits a Web site, her browser may be instructed to visit other third-party domains without her knowledge. Some of these third-party domains raise security, privacy, and safety concerns. The Strider URL Tracer, available for download, is a tool that reveals these third-party domains, and it includes a Typo-Patrol feature that generates and scans sites that capitalize on inadvertent URL misspellings, a process known as typo-squatting. The tool also enables parents to block typo-squatting domains that serve adult ads on typos of children’s Web sites.

Some speculate whether this tool will be built into IE7 or included when Fiji launches, whenever that will be.

Writing on tech, Network Magic seems to be an easy way for common end-users to control their home network. I haven’t tried it, but reliable sources say it should help many users to troubleshoot their home network when troubles arise – at least until Windows Vista pops up, which will (I daresay) help people manage their network a little easier. But we’ll see. Fat lady singing, et al.

Siteadvisor, one of the very few Firefox extensions I cherish, has been bought by McAfee. I don’t think this is bad, and the service will remain free, they say. Good!

Here’s a comparison of ten video-sharing sites. I’ve chosen vimeo, which turned out very well for me. They’ve recently upped the storage-limit from 20MB to 30MB.

It is said that Primal Scream will release their new album, “Riot City Blues”, on 2006-06-05, the first single being “Country Girl”, to be released on 2006-05-22; hear a snippet off that track here. and I’m looking forward to it. Apparently, it’s more alike their “Give Out But Don’t Give Up” than any of their other albums. I want Gillespie political. I want Throb back from his sabbatical. I want to see them live. I want Michael Winterbottom to make a documentary about the band, as has been reported.

You have to love the way savants work; my favourite is the picture the three-year-old girl has drawn. I wonder what she’d make of these tracks.

Speaking of tracks, there’s a new Larry Levan-compilation out, called “Larry Levan – Journey Into Paradise”. Mind you, his “Live At The Paradise Garage” is probably my fave DJ-album, ever. EVA! More about the new album here.

Google has released their online calendar. CNet has released this film of the calendar in pre-beta; it’s now in beta. Techcrunch has published pretty pictures from it here. It will enable users to synch with Outlook. I’m fairy impressed with the speed of the calendar, but still, I miss some of the functions of 30 Boxes. Outlook 2007 actually synchs with 30 Boxes using 30 Boxes’ automatically generated iCal-feed and a feature called “Synchronize with remote calendar” in Outlook 2007 with no problems, so I’m happy with that – I’d just like to be assured that synching Outlook with remote calendars will work when ActiveSync is up to speed with Outlook 2007 – don’t even try to make them work. I have, and I say don’t. It’s hurt, pain, hurt.

Microsoft has let Academic Search fly. They currently index content “related to computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related subject areas”, and “enables you to search for peer reviewed journal articles contained in journal publisher portals and on the web in locations like citeseer”. It also gives some teachers a tool against cheating students, who are plagiarising material straight outta the web.

And I love this t-shirt. And lion-cubs are always sweet.