Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Welcome to the new version of my homepage :) Hope you like the colours! This is the seventh incarnation of this site. It is still lacking some polish, but i’d say it’s 95% per cent done. Which is about as finished as the old theme ever got… There will probably still be some changes around here as I gain some critical distance, but this is the result of a lot of work (and a lot of scrapped drafts!) so the changes won’t be drastic (hopefully). Mostly bugfixes (there are still a few bugs crawling around).

I just updated to Wordpress 2.6 and suddenly I can’t use Yet Another Photoblog to post pictures… :( Must be a compatibility issue which I hope will be fixed soon, but meanwhile I can’t update my blog…and I have tons of pictures to post…

Update: there were more people than me who had this problem. Apparently, it was caused by the new revision history feature in Wordpress. I found a hack to disable that feature, and voila, I can post pictures again.

A major update just occurred here regarding the structure of this website. I removed the /en/ and /no/ suffixes. From now on, the structure is simpler.

English is now the default language. If you want Norwegian, try adding the prefix no.laurelindon.com.

No permalinks will break! If you have something as a favourite (how likely is that… *sardonic smile*) you can use the old link, it will redirect - for a few months at least. Or you can remove the language part, and add the prefix if you want.

One bug I know of: Photoalbums do not work.

I have to do this directly in the live environment as I have no other way of testing it.

Sorry, and thanks for your understanding.

**Update** Renovations complete and upgrade successful. All parts of the site are known to work!

Hei! Det er lenge siden jeg bestemte meg for å ha denne siden både på norsk og engelsk. Det viste seg snart å bli uhorvelige mengder med dobbeltarbeid og etter at jeg installerte Wordpress, nesten uoverkommelige tekniske vanskeligheter.

Det siste er nå løst, og to versjoner av hjemmesiden min lever endelig fredelig side ved side. Den norske versjonen er nå fullt funksjonell! For alle linker som fungerer på engelsk kan du nå slenge på no. helt i begynnelsen, for eksempel http://no.laurelindon.com/photography/

Før du sier noe mer (”men det er jo på engelsk jo!”) — joda, det er sant det. For det blir fortsatt en del dobbeltarbeid. Mesteparten av bloggen kommer _alltid_ til å være på engelsk, men en og annen post på norsk blir det nok. I tillegg jobber jeg med å oversette menyer og statiske (faste) sider.

Så hvis du er mer komfortabel med norsk enn engelsk er det alltid bedre å gå til no.laurelindon.com :)

-Bjornar

I’m still waiting for more information about the Global Governance programme, which I’m starting this fall. Here’s a summary of the information I’ve been able to gather so far, mostly through press releases and news coverage. Then there is a selection of links for further reading. I will write more later about the Global Governance programme specifically when I know more.

• The Global Governance programme is part of a new school called the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a major new joint initiative between the University of Waterloo (UW), the Wilfred Laurier University and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), all located in Waterloo.
• The Balsillie School also has a PhD programme and an MA in International Public Policy.
• The school bears the name of Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry phone. Balsillie also founded CIGI.
• Balsillie donated $33 million to the school, and another $17 million to CIGI at the same time. UW and Laurier will contribute approximately $25 million each, totalling over $100 million.
• The school has attracted Thomas Homer-Dixon, one of Canada’s leading political scientists, from the University of Toronto.
• The school will get a new building in downtown Waterloo, to be done in 2009 (I hope so, so I can enjoy it too…).

Am I allowed to be excited?

Links to further information

• Press release: $100 million initiative in Waterloo for social science
• Globe and Mail article: Grand ambitions drew professor to Waterloo
• Embassy Magazine: New School Aims to Breath Life into Global Affairs
• Balsillie School of International Affairs home page
• Global Governance home page

That’s a no brainer, but seriously, don’t do it. This is nothing to be proud of, but where better than to humiliate yourself than on the intertubes, for all to see. Jenna and I have missed our flight three times now. Three! How is that possible? Border crossings, traffic, parking trouble, but most of all, we only have ourselves to blame. Here’s what transpired and the result:

• Flying to Lima, Peru, via Houston from Detroit with Continental: it took an hour to park the car and get to the terminal. Missed our flight to Houston by 10 minutes. The very kind people of SkyTeam put us on a Northwest flight to Houston that left 20 min later and we caught our connection to Lima.
• Flying to Oslo, Norway, via Detroit and Amsterdam with Northwest. We were just late. Checked in 30 min before the flight, security took an eternity. I arrived at the gate 5 min before it was supposed to leave. They wouldn’t let me on, said there was nothing they could do. I pleaded with them. They did some computer wizardry. Then they said, “go, board the airplane. Just go!”. And we did.
• Flying to Tampa, Florida, via Atlanta with Delta. The border in Buffalo took forever and parking too. Missed check in by 5 min. Ran for the gate, with our luggage, but the people there would not do the same wizardry as last time. Flight missed. We rebooked our flight for $50 each and it took 7 hours longer and a lot of stress to get to Florida.

Need I say that this will never happen again?

I guess I’m going to the University of Waterloo then! I accepted their offer today. I’m slightly overwhelmed with work right now (papers, exams) so more information will follow later.

Newsflash :P I know, I don’t use my website for that much. I realise a lot of people prolly don’t know what’s going on in my life (that is, if anyone actually care).

Anyway, I was accepted to do a master’s degree in Global Governance at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, not Belgium :P). I haven’t decided whether I should accept yet. We’ll see whether I’m accepted in Toronto, but I still like the Waterloo programme better I think. Stay tuned.

Here’s the programme website: http://globalgovernance.uwaterloo.ca/

I finally got through some of the backlog. Enjoy some albums from this summer.

This is a part that was left out of SICKO because it would just sound too otherworldly….that’s right, because people won’t believe it….

Is Norway truly that good? It’s not utopia. Having lived in Canada and visited many countries, I know every place has its good sides and its bad sides. Norway is no exception. And it may not sound completely fair to know that we’ve accomplished all this with oil revenue. The party has been free, but it won’t last forever.

Sorry, I never seem to get done, do I?

This time I’m trying to integreate a Lightbox into the photoalbums, and it hasn’t been going very well. Lightbox = more eyecandy and shorter load time for each individual picture. I’m determined to get it to work though.

In case everything is messed up when you get here, please come back later, hopefully it’ll work then.