(This is the vintage About-page from before my reboot. Some of this stuff is no longer relevant, for example am I no longer running Wordpress from a converted database.)

Who am I? My name is Petter Senften, I’m currently 31 years old and living in Umeå, Sweden.

This is the place where I vent my opinions on a wide range of subjects. Usually this means a lot of computers, movies and music but also some dissecting of the common media or the current politics appear occasionally. Mostly I try to avoid writing about politics, but like a lot of people I get upset from time to time about stupid policies that get implemented around the world. I identify myself as a humanist, but I also have strong socialist and some liberalism opinions. Additionally there are opinions I maintain which are difficult to fit into any existing -ism. Add to this that I am a convinced atheist who is vehemently convinced that organized religion hurts a lot of people, and have done so over hundreds of years. I’m of the firm opinion that religion is more implemented to prevent people from enjoying their lives rather than the other way around.

Occasionally I write about deeply personal things, usually revolving around the struggle with my depression. Read these entries with caution.

A large amount of time I write about thoughts and experiences which don’t have anything in common with the above mentioned subjects. Add to all this that I have the relatively unique experience of being both American and Swedish, and I often amuse myself by sympathisizing and making fun of both or either nationalities. I’m a cynic by experience and I am equipped with large amounts of both sarcasm and irony. I also have a somewhat dark sense of humor, which might color my writings.

The name of this blog is a pun on the nickname/alias that I use on the ‘net and have used for more than a decade. I usually call myself “isecore” which is a concious miss-spelling of “icecore” which in turn is a shorter form of “the core of the ice”. Thus, my blog was named Solid Block of Ise. Solid block of ice, get it? I stole my slogan from one of my favourite movies, and in the future I’ll explain the origin of it since the entry that explains it is in Swedish.

The photo to the right is a somewhat accurate depiction of me. It was taken by my then-girlfriend in August 2006, way up in Porjus which is about 50 km above the arctic circle. It was a beautiful and warm day and I guess the heat kind of went to my head since I started being really goofy and making lame bodybuilding-poses. The result is that photo.

Technical Stuff

This blog is powered by Wordpress. It originated as a somewhat mundane blogging-tool written in PHP but have since grown quite a lot and can now be used as a CMS (Content Management System) if so inclined. Wordpress is free and Open Source, you can download it from their site and install it for no money whatsoever. It’s fairly simple to install and even without years of experience most everyone will be able to install it and run it provided you’re not a complete dunce. It requires a webserver with PHP and MySQL capabilities.

I switched to Wordpress in March 2006. Previously I had used a similar system called B2Evolution, which was what this blog was started with. I made the switch since I felt that B2 hade become very unwieldy, and the amount of hacks and tricks needed to maintain it was rather silly. All the ugly custom-hacks also made it a pain in the ass to upgrade, since the customized hacks had to be redone for each version. Additionally I felt that the focus of development had shifted to (in my opinion) useless functions and additions.

The site should function pretty well under most modern browsers. I try to make sure it validates, but I’m not a complete W3-nazi and thus at times it might not validate. It should be quite readable though anyways. I have personally tried it in most recent Mozilla-versions, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Everything above Opera 7 worked fine as well.

However I strongly recommend you change your browser if you’re using Internet Explorer. Microsoft does not spend a lot of time on their browser, and this forces everyone else to work extra. Choose one of the listed browsers instead. I personally recommend Firefox since it’s quite excellent.

• Firefox
• Mozilla
• Opera
• Safari

The visual appearance of this blog is courtesy of a theme called “WP-Andreas09″. Despite it’s rather boring name it’s really a brilliant theme in almost every department. It’s designed by Andreas Viklund, a good friend of mine and later fitted as a Wordpress-theme by Ainslie Johnson. The theme is available for download here. Originally I modified the theme since I felt the included colors were rather garish. Both Andreas and Ainslie asked if the updated version of the theme could include my modified color and I thought it was a great idea. Thus, if you want to you can have an “isecore-blue” Wordpress blog!

I run my own server, and it’s powered by Debian GNU/Linux. It runs Apache2 and PHP 5.2 as well as MySQL 5. It stands in my home office and does its magic.

Cookies

Swedish law dictates that any site that uses cookies has to declare this somewhere. This was introduced July 25th 2005.

This bit in Swedish since it only concerns swedes:

Vad är en Cookie?

En cookie är en liten textfil som webbplatsen Du besöker begär att spara på din dator. Cookies används på många webbplatser för att ge en besökare tillgång till olika funktioner. Informationen i cookien är möjlig att använda för att följa en användares surfande. Det finns två typer av cookies. Den ena typen sparar en fil under en längre tid på din dator. Den används till exempel vid funktioner som talar om vad som är nytt sedan användaren senast besökte den aktuella webbplatsen. Den andra typen av cookie kallas session cookie. Under tiden du är inne och surfar på en sida, lagras den här cookien temporärt i din dators minne exempelvis för att hålla reda på vilket språk du har valt. Sessionscookies lagras inte under en längre tid på din dator, utan försvinner när du stänger din webbläsare. (Källa: PTS)

Personally I find this law extremely silly and bordering on complete inanity. A whole bunch of politicians who though they did something great for net-security but in fact just introduced more clutter into the system. Cookies on this site is used simple to store a users information when commenting. Nothing else. If you don’t like it, then feel free to delete the cookie. Next time you wish to comment however you’ll have to fill in your name and such again. That’s the only thing the cookie does. If you don’t leave a comment you will receieve no cookie. Interpret that any way you want.

Comments

Since this website is located physically in Sweden it mostly falls under Swedish laws. I am not responsible for commenters opinions, only the commenter is.

I reserve the right to remove or edit comments which breaks the laws as well as the common netiquette and good behavior. I will delete inflammatory and trollish comments without thinking twice about it. If you insult me as a person in a comment it will also be quickly excised. Comments which include offending language might be edited for content, but I’m not a prude when it comes to harsh language.

As of May 2006 I no longer approve of anonymous comments. Say what you want, but use some form of identification. I don’t mind if it’s an alias or a pseudonym as long as it serves as a unique identifier. I really like commenters that include a link to some kind of site where I can read more about them. Obviously faked comments will mercilessly be deleted – this especially includes comment where the email is an obvious fake such as yousuck@whatever.com. I also reserve the right to be a complete dictator and decide on a case-by-case basis what’s acceptable.

Email-Adresses

When commenting there is a field for email-adress. This is used for one single purpose: as a way of getting in touch with the commenter should some need be. The adresses are not harvested for spam or other nefarious uses, and are not displayed publicly.

Contact Me

If you really need to get in touch with me then use my email adress: isecore(a)isecore.net istället. Remove the (a) and replace with @.