Opera engineering seminar – fun, fun, fun 
This year’s seminar for the Opera Software engineering department was held at Quality Hotel & Badeland[1] Sarpsborg, and was a great success! As usual after these seminars, I’m filled with motivation and good feelings about the future of Opera, and I really just want to get back to work to get started on all those improvements we’ve talked about. However, a very common mistake companies do after seminars, is to come back to the same pressure of having projects to finish and releases to make. My goal is to avoid that mistake, and really do my best to make those improvements happen.
[1] Badeland = indoor swimmingpark with a waterslide, jacuzzi, where we spent a lot of time.
I really wish I could give some details about the plans ahead at Opera, but I can’t. What I can do is promise that we will continue to do our very very best to keep making the best browser in the world!
Oh, almost forgot; me, Allan, Walter, Tim, and Sverre teamed up in a hackathon where the task was to create a simple web application. We won! Whohoo!
Now I’m going to relax the whole weekend, and enjoy the nice weather in Oslo.
What application did you create?
Well, we only had a day to make it, so the main limitation was time. We made a small application that shows you the current running TV-shows for a number of norwegian networks, using xmlHttpRequest to do the updates seamlessly. On that note, I really really love the endless possibilities xmlHttpRequest brings with it. I have already made my own little contacts/birthday calendar thingy that feels much more like an application that a website, since there are no page reloads whatever you do. Much better for the user, much more fun and possibilities for the developer
Is this in any way related to me getting a phone call from Karl Henning as I was drowsing off on the couch, saying:\r\n\r\n\”Halla. Er du i de kakegreiene, eller?\”\r\n\r\nMind you, the human brain does not cope very well with such questions when brutally powered up by loud ringing.\r\n\r\nI was initially a tad confused about my whereabouts, but I certainly didn\’t get any indications that I might currently be inside a cake thingy.
Hehe, that sounds like a likely explanation for that question…
Answering the phone when you\’ve just been woken up can be quite interesting, at least for the person who called you. I have on several occasions started a conversation based on what I was dreaming when the phone rang, because my brain would linger in a semi-dreaming state 
Bah, silence, you!\r\n\r\nSounds like a lot of fun, too bad the IS department of Opera wasn\’t invited. Talks by Joel Spolsky generally has nothing to do with the BTS (which is our responsability), and badeland – I guess they just assumed none of us could swim.\r\n\r\nAh well, glad you had a nice trip
Dude, you should have been there! Or actually, come to think of it, with you there we would have had much more competition in the hackathon
\r\n\r\nJoel Spolsky\’s talk was fun and motivation, he\’s like a standup comedian more than a serious speaker 