World of Vikkel

Yet another blog

Vikkel.com — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:07:00 GMT

This is not breaking news, but still worth sharing. I took on the challenge of blogging about my job at Sitecore before summer 2008. My main goal with this initiative was to let the partners (and other interested parties) know what is going on in my unit (Sitecore International).

Many of my colleagues are also sharing nice valuable information. Most of these blogs however are very technical. I took my blog in a different direction to promote the initiatives and work we are doing in the field. Regardless, I may post something technical, or share a module of my own now and then.

Interested in what i'm busy with at Sitecore..? Then head over to http://sitecore-on-the-road.blogspot.com/

Dammit Alexa!

Vikkel.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:35:59 GMT

It's been countless days since I last shared some info here. I blame it on my job and my sparetime interests.

Regardless, I just realized something today when I was checking up on stuff on Alexa.com. (Alexa is a register of basically all of the worlds websites, ranked by amount of traffic.) How they collect the data, and if it can be considered accurate is not the subject of my post this time around.

However, my current ranking (vikkel.com) was a bit of a surprise to me. I rank 4,298,595 in their list. Wow I'm in top 5 million. What is interesting here I guess, is how other Danish sites rank in comparison. Carlsberg.dk rank 803,034 (about 5 times better than me), which is not very impressive.

Microsoft.dk however, ranks at 3,700,343 - which means I only have to be a little more active to generate as much traffic as the Danish Microsoft office. Makes you wonder what the hell they are doing out there in their fancy office. Obvoiusly their marketing dept. should consider working faster if they don't want to be passed by yours truly on alexa.

Ok, enough blabbering for now, welcome back to hopefully a lot more posts coming

A new year and a new job

Martin Vikkelsø — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:08:52 GMT

First of all, happy new year dear reader!

As the headline suggests, I started 2008 at a new company. This means that I no longer work at Mondosoft, which was actually my ticket to Copenhagen way back in 2000. That's right, I worked there for 7+ years.
It wasn't just the bad news about the company that made me look for new adventures. I must say I was beginning to feel like a dinosaur (a MondoSaurus?!?).

Anyway to make a long story short (and skip over the part of the story that should just be left untold*) I now work for Sitecore. An old colleague of mine needed some help building his channel and had a feeling I was right for the job. I can't wait to prove him right :-)

So I got a new job, new job title, new responsibilities, new challenges, new laptop, and new colleagues. What else can you ask for?

However, despite the job change I still plan (and actually have current plans) for getting together with most of my old co-workers. Quite a team we had, kinda like the musketeers. All for one, and one for all. :-)

Ok, but enough about the job situation. Here's some of my plans for the first part of 2008:
Loosing 8-9 kilos, updating my server, installing the Sitecore Express for a web-project of mine and hopefully showing off my mad skillz. Oh, and continuing my education of course. And then I owe about a tonne of postings on this site and the Danish mirror. Ooof. I really gotta get my act together.

* lets just say that declaring bankruptcy can result in unwanted tension, stress and disbelief.

Busted Cellphone

Martin Vikkelsø — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:03:42 GMT

My trustworthy old Nokia 6100 had a stroke during my holiday. Somehow the display managed to implode in a way that now only offers me about 1/4 of vision. Luckily this breakdown still allows me to talk on the phone - but reading and writing sms messages is impossible.

So im at a crossroad. Should I invest in a new phone, or should i replace the LCD?

My tele-provider offers a broad range of new phones which can do all sorts of un-needed crap.
When it comes to phones, I am very conservative and certainly NOT an early adapter. My phone should only cover the basics: calling and sending messages. Triband and bluetooth functionality is welcome though.

I'm a big Nokia fan. They have so far been able to provide phones I can drop on the floor by accident - without breaking it. Both my previous Nokia's lasted 3+ years. Quite impressive I might add. My only problem is, that my tele-provider apparently have chosen NOT to retail the model im interested in (which is the 3110 in case you wonder).
I could go out an buy it somewhere else, but then I stand to loose all the credit i have built up with my current provider.

Therefore im seriously considering to simply replace my LCD on the old one, and wait for another good model to appear in stock in my providers shop.

New phone will cost: 100-150 Euro.
Replacing the LCD will cost: 15 Euro.

You do the math, and I will try not to break any other components in the act. Stay tuned for an update on the phone surgery once I have receive the new LCD part...

A new cool toy

Martin Vikkelsø — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:16:12 GMT

I may not be the biggest gadget freak in the world, but I do love getting some cool toy every now and then.

Gitte made my dream come true on my recent birthday, and got me a Sony HDD video camera. How cool is that!!!

I've been taping her nephews confirmation + my buddy's recent wedding with it. Very nice piece of hardware I might add. The 30GB of storage can hold hours and hours of footage, and the usability is top notch.

Also, the camera has a 40x optical zoom and yet, it is so small it fits in the palm of my hand. The camera also comes with a USB 2.0 docking station, so transfering video onto my PC is as easy as it gets.

I actually guarantee you, that my "DVD Project" category will list quite a few new posts over the summer...

Possibly the best gift ever!

Another year almost gone

Martin Vikkelsø — Fri, 11 May 2007 21:16:56 GMT

Tomorrow im turning 27.

Twenty-seven. Damn.
This last year has passed by so fast, that I can hardly remember all the things that happened. Maybe I'm just getting old... ;-)

It's been quite a ride actually, and I hope the coming year will have at least the same amount of good times. For now, the whole next month seem to be packed with places to go and stuff to do. But alas, its almost vacation time, and I am very much looking forward to get offline for a while.

Working about 50 hours a week is ok for shorter periods of time, but holidays are greatly appreciated after that kind of effort. For now I got 2 weeks planned with Gitte, and 1 week is reserved to go sailing with my mates. Yarrr.

In the mean time, I will of course keep posting stuff here now and then + on my company blog. And maybe I will also get my new project at imitatingsanity.com jumpstarted as well.

Take care, and feel free to send me presents tomorrow...

Rolling Stones - A Bigger Buck Tour

Martin Vikkelsø — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:39:13 GMT

Rolling Stones is doing a "Bigger Bang Tour 2007": Great!
Rolling Stones if coming back to Europe and Copenhagen: Cool!

Rolling Stones is charging 1500 DKK (roughly $250 USD / €200 Euro) per ticket: WHAT!

That's it. I am personally going to BOYCOTT the Copenhagen concert and you should too. Read on and see why.

The previous "Bigger Bang" tour grossed the Rolling Stones a staggering $437 million USD. Thats roughly 2.6 billions DKK!!! This amount was made over a period of about 14 months. Do the math. On top of that Rolling Stones is channeling their income through The Netherlands, where they only have to pay 1.5% in tax.

For a long time, well since the Internet became widely available, the Music Industry have been frustrated and argued that they were losing money to online piracy. Whatever is true in this respect, does not make it fair to boost ticket-prices to the amounts the Stones are asking. I mean, they have made a ton of millions. More than they can ever spend.

My take is, if youre selling out like that - you're not a rock 'n roll band.

Give back to the true fans what they deserve. I demand fair ticket prices for a start!

Speaking of the upcoming concert in Copenhagen, tickets in the nosebleeds starts at $100 USD (650,- DKK). Thats outrageous in so many ways I don't know where to start.

To make matters worse, $100 USD was the price for the BEST tickets last time they visited Copenhagen in 2003. Can they really double the price in just 4 years. I think not. It is way beyond reason.

What's your take on this..?

Due to my frustration about this matter, I decided to double-post this in Danish as well.

Vikkel also available in Danish

Martin Vikkelsø — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:44:18 GMT

Hi all

To favor some recent requests to provide content in Danish, I have now setup my blogging tool to run the domains vikkel.dk/vikkel.com as two seperate sites.

From now on, Danish stuff will be posted to vikkel.dk only
and all material written in English will be posted here on vikkel.com.

Don't be confused, it's gonna work out just fine I think

Moving in, it's now official

Martin Vikkelsø — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:56:13 GMT

As of today, Gitte's old apartment is put up for sale and her new address is officially here at the bachelor pad formerly known as "Casa del Vikkel" :-)

Although we have lived here together for almost a full year, she decided that it was a good time to cash in on her investment.
Yay! Hopefully somebody's going to buy it very soon.

As you may have noticed in the post about the rear view mirror, we have already moved her stuff here (and thrown some out) - so I now consider myself a black-belt Furniture-Tetris Master. Of course this kind of step of moving in together is a game of compromise, which means that we both had to throw out / sell some of our old furniture. Its all good though, i even managed to sneak my favorite sofa into the office. So there's been quite a bit of moving stuff around, but its looking good so far :-D

Also, when moving in/out you realize which of your stored items are actually expendable. So somethings went from the basement directly to the containers. And somebody might even enjoy those old clothes we both delivered to the 2nd hand collection program.

Stay tuned for info about the housewarming. We're not ready yet - but its going down this spring. We promise!

I am Vikkel, you're not!

Martin Vikkelsø — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:57:35 GMT

So i was bored and tried google'ing myself to see what turned up. Apart from most of my own pages on the vikkel.com/vikkel.dk domains quite a few odd hits appeared.

Hits are listed in their particular ranking on the day of posting

Apparently there's an actress by that surname living somewhere in Russia?
- fair enough, I don't have anything against unknown moviestars.
There's also some kind of event called Vikkel-fest. Im wondering a few things here:
a) why was I not invited?
b) if somebody named a party after me, could it at least be some rock thing instead of a folk-dance event?
c) does it come with skimpy chicks and lots of beer?
Knitting is NOT for male IT-people, just so we are clear on that. Its what your grandmother does when she wants to make you a personal x-mas present. Anyway, somebody had the nerve to blog about some kind of technique referred to as vikkel braid. WTF is that..?
While I'm listing all those insults, another author had to take it a step further and smother my name in some weird language.
I'm not even gonna guess what the hell it means.
Another site mentions the Vikkel-fest. Must be a killer party!
3rd site mentions "the fest". Maybe I should start taking accordion lessons and make a surprise visit next year..?
Finally a little testosterone input - sadly it turns out to be some bodybuilder-freaks forum profile. To make matters worse, its some Dutch dude. I'm imagining a stoned-off-the-chart 300 lbs steroid-meathead. Eeek! Run Forrest, RUN!
Arrg! somebody else mentions knitting. Quick: do something manly!!!

Words of advice, if you get bored - don't google yourself - you'll only end up making jokes about yourself.

Anyways, Vikkel is not my real name - but its the closest you get while adhering to the unified character-set allowed in domains. Furthermore, I've been called by that name for 10 years now.

For the record, my name is Vikkelsø and im that laidback dude you see to the right. And no, I dont knit, or enjoy folk dancing, or shoot steroids, or act in Russian movies or anything like that. I just write silly posts on this blog while drinking beer.