125 Ad spot 125 Ad spot

Hi, I'm Bjørn Børresen - a freelance creator of online magic, aspiring entrepreneur and really, really excited!

How about that? I've been working professionally as a software engineer since 2001. This blog, launched December 2009, will be a collection of random thoughts about my profession, the tools I use, the people I meet, and anything I like to voice my opinion on. The cool people usually subscribe.

27 May 2006 0 Comments

Google Web Toolkit

Just a short note, i found this today – Google Web Toolkit. It looks very promising and I’m just about to start experimenting with it (can’t wait!). It’s a framework for creating AJAX applications with the usual gmail look, but the fresh approach is that you write the application in Java – and then you [...]

10 May 2006 24 Comments

Wow, finally back in…

After being banned by Google for 7 months bie.no is finally back in the index. It must’ve helped sending those ‘reinclusion requests’. One strange thing though – even though I have a robots.txt disallowing Google from indexing odp.php on my site they seem to have indexed it nonetheless. Good the be back in – even [...]

Tags:
18 April 2006 1 Comment

Vitamin launched today!

I’ve been waiting for this; Vitamin by Carson Systems. It’s branded as “Vitamin is a resource for web designers, developers and entrepreneurs”, and I first heard about it in a podcast a while ago. I was so impressed by their lineup of ‘advisors’, that I actually spammed my own forum telling people to signup, before [...]

Tags:
14 April 2006 0 Comments

Spot the dinosaur

Don’t you just love that illustration? I think it says so much. It’s from an article in The Economist about Microsoft and the new threat from emerging Web 2.0 products.I mean, who wants to use the calendar in Outlook, when Google Calendar was just released. In fact, who wants to use Outlook at all, with [...]

Tags:
5 April 2006 0 Comments

PEAR DataObjects vs. Propel vs. EzPDO vs .. Java!

Using an object perstistence layer can be greatly benefitial for any medium to large size project. Or, any project at all some would say. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll give you a quick example. Usually, in PHP we would do something ugly-bugly like this to retrieve info about a certain item [...]

Tags: , ,
25 March 2006 3 Comments

Characteristics of "Great Software Design"TM

This post is not about design-design, but the internal design of a software system. Such a design has several general characteristics, and Code Complete 2 has a list of these. First, a related quote by R. Buckminster Fuller: “When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only how to [...]

23 March 2006 6 Comments

A guide for moving to Norway

Ok, I see this post is getting some traffic from Google on keywords such as ‘relocating to norway’, ‘moving to norway buying a house’, etc. etc. so before you start reading you should know that this article is a joke I published back in 2006. Ok, maybe it’s a little bit of truth in it. [...]

Tags:
23 March 2006 0 Comments

Economist on open-source

This week’s issue of The Economist has an interesting article on open source called Open, but not as usual (subscription required). It’s not all positive, here are some paragraphs: As “open-source” models move beyond software into other businesses, their limitations are becoming apparent.EVERY time internet users search on Google, shop at Amazon or trade on [...]

Tags:
17 March 2006 0 Comments

PHP is the Devil!

I’m a big fan of podcasts, and recently I stumbled upon this jewel. It’s not a podcast per se, but eight audio files containing presentations from Carson Workshops entitled ‘The Future Of Web Apps’. I’ve listened to three of them by now, and here’s what I’ve learnt so far: Joshua Schachter, Delicious [mp3]; Don’t write [...]

Tags: , ,
13 March 2006 1 Comment

Cutting the Gordian Knot

“Gordius, the King of Phrygia, once tied a knot that no one could untie. It was said that he who solved the riddle of the Gordian Knot would rule all of Asia. So along comes Alexander the Great, who chops the knot to bits with his sword. Just a little different interpretation of the requirements, [...]