http://www.flickr.com/photos/powi/ / CC BY 2.0

Well, not quite yet – but we’re getting there! And meanwhile, I always love to trawl through the Internet on December 1st to find all the goodies hidden in the forest of Advent calendars out there

I usually focus on the Norwegian ones, but if you’ve got tips about any international calendars, feel free to post the address in a comment. Here’s the list of calendars I’ve come across and found worthy so far

Norwegian:

• Elkøp
• Gamer.no
• Bokklubben
• Filmweb
• Komplett.no
• PS.no (special offers only)
• Spill.no
• Gjerrigknark.no
• Stormberg (special offers only)
• NSB (Norwegian National Railways) – Possibly the best at getting me in the Christmas mood so far

My scrobling counter on Last.fm just ticked past 30 000 this weekend, and the lucky track (among those recorded by Last.fm), was La Roux with Bulletproof. The song is one of my favourites on the self titled debut album from La Roux.

Are you on Last.fm? Make sure to add me It’s a great way to discover new music!

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the site Geocaching.com, after reading a tweet from Anders Brenna. Since I recently got a new phone with built in GPS, a HTC Hero, I started thinking this could be a cool way to use it a little more than just confirm my position whenever I am on the loo.

So this evening I invited my friend Monique out for a adventurous treasure hunt to find two caches hidden around Fjære in Grimstad. The first cache was found after just a couple of minutes, as it was only a couple of meters from where we parked, but the second cache turned out to be a real adventure! Of course it helped a lot to have a companion with unnatural need for climbing mountains and taking the steep route over instead of the long way around! So we climbed an enormous 40-50 m tall mountain and was very pleased with ourselves – until we discovered that we had just climbed the wrong hill… So much for the incredibly detailed Google Maps!

Luckily after fighting our way through the thick jungle, fighting enormous animals – also known as giant killer mosquitoes (!) –  we found a small road and followed it until we were on the correct hill, and found our second cache! Boy, were we pleased with ourselves!

I think I’ve found a new inspiration for walking in the woods, or just go out walking in general, and I doubt I’ve gone searching for my last geocache!

It’s definitively a tiring sport for an untrained geek, so I am too tired to explain Geocaching in detail now, but you’ll learn it all after checking out Geocaching.com. It’s basically modern day treasure hunting

More pictures are up on Flickr:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaran/sets/72157622143204942/

Following up on Aleksander’s encouragement earlier today, here is my music taste over the last 3 months Good mix of almost everything in there!

I’m into indie, rock, electronic, pop and female vocalists, including:
Röyksopp, Schiller, Carolina Liar, The Killers, Ratatat, U2, Kent, Empire of the Sun, Lily Allen, Sharon den Adel, Ladyhawke, La Roux, Paul van Dyk, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a-ha, Air Traffic, The Duke Spirit, Cut Copy, Paramore, Nightwish, Hard-Fi, Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol, Mr. Mister, KT Tunstall, Nelly Furtado, Iglu & Hartly, Donkeyboy, Adele, Amy Macdonald, James Morrison, Kate Ryan, Kleerup, Sophia Somajo, Rihanna, A Flock of Seagulls, Flight of the Conchords, Razorlight, The Pigeon Detectives, Kings of Leon, The Presets, Keane, Ellie Goulding, Evanescence, Knut Avenstroup Haugen, Garbage, The Sounds, Paul Oakenfold, Peter Buffett, Passion Pit.

Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/lastkarbo

What’s your taste? To Paste Your Taste, go to your Last.fm profile, go the list of “Top Artists” on your profile. Choose “Last 3 months”, then click the link titled “Paste Your Taste”. Copy and paste the text to your blog.

Checking my Google Calendar this morning, I found that Google had automatically added a new alendar; Stardates. Wonder if it has anything to do with the premiere of Star Trek here in Norway today?

Stardates in Google Calendar

A geeky curiosity from Google

Today's stardate.

Opening Facebook after lunch today I was presented with the following nonsense. No idea if it’s an actual language, or just some new Facebook jibberish

Facebook clearly had a little too much to drink last night.

I’ve just finished watching “The Hunt for Gollum” – an independent movie made by fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and his work. The producers claim to have spent only $3000 on the film, and I must say I would have believed them if they said 10 times that.

The movie was released on May 3rd online, and is available for streaming from www.thehuntforgollum.com. I can recommend anyone feeling the slightest connection to, or interested in, the work of J.R.R. Tolkien to watch it. It’s 40 minutes which flies by in no time and you actually wish it was a full-length movie at the end.

With all the sources for music we have today, one thing has struck me: The hassle of playing the music you want – when you are never able to find everything you want in one place.

As you know, I am using Spotify for most of my musical experience these days. However, there are a few songs which I miss on there. Some of them I have purchased and are available in Songbird, some others are only available on YouTube. In this Web 2.0, iEverything and whatnot-age, would it not be sweet with all these things integrated – in The Seamless Music Experience? Imagine a lightweight application, a simple playlist with a play/pause, forward and back button where you could drag & drop media from applications and websites and play them off as if they were all in the same application.

The Seamless Music Experience

If I had the time I would go ahead and develop it – the ultimate media player – but unfortunately I am bound by the space-time continuum as the rest of you (most of you).

Well – the idea is out there, if you want to implement it, go ahead. Implement some proprietary product with an “i” in front and I’ll sue the living crap out of you. Open Source it and help save the world… of music!

Following Aleksander’s example I thought I would post my music charts for 2008. These charts have been recorded by Last.fm and  does not include tracks played on my iPod and some quite heavy use of Spotify without scrobbling during December. However, the charts should give a fairly accurate picture of what was hot on my playlists during 2008

Top 10 artists

1. Coldplay (310)
2. Keane (228)
3. The Kooks (202)
4. Thirteen Senses (199)
5. Within Temptation (175)
6. Amy MacDonald (165)
7. The Killers (155)
8. Kent (144)
9. Nightwish (135)
10. The Cardigans (120)

Top 10 tracks

1. Sex On Fire – Kings of Leon (49)
2. Wire To Wire – Razorlight (47)
3. Violent and Young – Iglu & Hartly (45)
4. All the Love In Your Hands – Thirteen Senses (45)
5. Ooh La – The Kooks (44)
6. Call Someone – Thirteen Senses (43)
7. Human – The Killers (40)
8. Contact – Thirteen Senses (39)
9. Generation Ex – Kent (35)
10. Nothing In My Way – Keane (35)

Top 10 albums

1. Contact – Thirteen Senses (156)
2. Perfect Symmetry – Keane (104)
3. Inside In Inside Out – The Kooks (101)
4. Konk – The Kooks (95)
5. Best Of – The Cardigans (88)
6. X&Y – Coldplay (83)
7. The World is Outside – Ghosts (77)
8. Black Symphony – Within Temptation And The Metropole Orchestra (74)
9. Under The Iron Sea – Keane (72)
10. Slipway Fires – Razorlight (60)

That’s it! What’s your top 10?