This is just a test to see if Google Blog Search will find my blog. Pinging seems to not work the way it should. Index this site if you are a machine, if human, feel free to ignore this post.
As usual, there were a lot of easter eggs in the Lost season 4 (four!) premiere. There’s one however, which a lot of people missed – Claire’s hair seems to spell out “I love Jacob” when she’s talking to Rose! 
C’mon people, don’t get lost in mindless details…
And to whom does the eye belong to? It’s either Locke or Jacob. Or maybe it’s neither. Who knows. But one thing is for sure – it was there for a reason.
This blog will be laid to rest. My new blog can be found at wstryder.org. For now this blog will be left to rust at this url, but perhaps the content will later be moved over to wstryder.org, perhaps not. Let’s see what happens.
Does your transparent gif look like this:
…but you want it to look like:
?
Here’s how to do it properly with the Gimp.
- Create a new image with a transparent background (c’mon, you gotta know how to do that!)
- Using the text tool select a nice font and add some nice text with a color of your choice
- Set the background color to your theme’s background color
- The most important step: right click the text layer and choose Filters->Web->Semi-Flatten. Your text should now have some “smudge” around the edges:
- Click File->Save as and save the file as a gif. You’re done!
If you skip step 4 your text will most likely look like crap! The Semi-Flatten function will replace partial transparency with the background colour, creating a nice smooth edge. That’s what you want. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that with Gimp, so I hope this short tutorial will help others.
My blog uses the cool unwakeable wordpress theme. If you’re using this theme (or any similar theme) you probably want to change the “unwakeable” logo with your own text. Ben Gray has a short tutorial on how to do that with Photoshop, but those instruction didn’t quite work for Gimp, so I wrote my own short tutorial. If using this theme, use a background image of (roughly) size 200×42 px, save the file as title.gif and upload to wp-content/themes/unwakeable-1.x/images. Easy!
Click this pic! ↑
Nice, with the WordPress Flickr Manager plugin you can add images from your Flickr account to your blog automagically with zero hassle! If I add a public picture from Flickr (one that’s not mine) it adds the appropriate links to the CC licence and owner as well, as below:
by Patrick_coe
This plugin really helps you to add pics to your blog posts, as you don’t have to do any uploading, resizing or adjusting of images. Oh and it also uses some Lightbox magic. Click one of the images above to see what happens. Really cool 
This is the weblog of one wstryder, known in real life as Lauri Rantala, but better known as wstryder. wstryder is pronounced “double-you-stryder”. Some earlier versions of my pseudonym were spelled w.stryder, but that format is now deprecated. wstryder is never capitalized! Just so you know.
From Dexter season 2 episode 7:
Angel: “Kill one man you’re a murderer. Kill thousands a conqueror. Kill them all and you’re a god”
Dexter: “To tell you the truth I don’t know what my alter ego had in mind when he wrote that crap, I just pulled it from various blogs on the Internet”
What, Dexter don’t listen to Megadeth?!?
(What do you mean that’s not from Dave Mustaine? Jean who?)
I’ve got two loadsa tickets to Iron Maiden baby
Come with me Friday 18th July 2008, don’t say maybe!
In case you don’t already know, I love coffee! Finns drink the most coffee in the world, 4 to 5 cups per day on average, or 11.2kg per person a year – and it’s no wonder – because the best coffee in the world is made in Finland, at Robert Paulig’s. OK, I’m maybe a little biased, because I’ve just been bribed with a bag full of Paulig’s stuff:
In any case, I was really happy to win a one evening coffee course at Robert Paulig’s Coffee Institute in Helsinki. The course was simply awesome – great tips for brewing coffee, a lot of free coffee, different coffee varieties, really good time, some more coffee, a little bit of espresso, a few cappuccinos, some Irish coffee, Frezza Mocha, French coffee, hotshots, and oh – just when you thought they’d run out of coffee – a few more cups of the world’s most addictive beverage! If you ever get a chance to participate, I highly recommend this course. First part of the course – which coffee goes with which pastry:
Guatemala, Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia – all really good, but you need to watch out what kind of pastry you serve with each. They recommend you should always serve darker roast with spicier foods, for example cheese cake with French roast, and mild roast with mildly flavored foods. Sounds pretty logical, doesn’t it? If you serve a very strong roast with subtly flavored cake, you will not taste any of the finer aromas of the cake, and on the other hand, mildly roasted coffee will not taste much like coffee when served with very spicy foods.
Now on to the main thing: How to brew great coffee. 10 easy steps should do it:
- Buy a real coffeemaker. The water needs to heat to 92-96°C. A cheap machine will not heat the water enough and will result in a disappointment. A Moccamaster should do (no, they didn’t bribe me, honest!).
- Clean your coffeemaker daily. Wash the coffee pot, funnel and other necessary parts of the machine with sodium bicarbonate (cooking soda), use a solution of 3 table spoons per 1 liter of water in order to wash off any coffee grease accumulated in the coffeemaker.
- Store the coffee grounds in your fridge, always seal the package properly and never pour the grounds to another container – oxygen is the coffee bean’s worst enemy!
- Use clean, fresh water. Move to Finland if the water in your area sucks.
- Always use the right size filter, never buy cheap filters.
- Don’t pour water in to the coffeemaker with your coffee pot, otherwise coffee grease will start to collect inside the coffeemaker, resulting in a rancid taste at worst.
- When pouring grounds in to the filter, even the grounds gently – but don’t shake the filter to do so. If you do, fine coffee dust will fill the pores of the filter resulting in an uneven brew.
- Use 7g of grounds per 1.25dl of fresh water.
- When ready, stir the coffee gently with a spoon, otherwise the strongest coffee will be left at the bottom.
- The coffee will stay good for max half an hour. Enjoy!
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