When I’m watching TV series and such, I tend to forget where I am. This problem can be solved by the primitive method, as illustrated below.

This worked for a while, but I kept forgetting to pull out a pen everytime I had to update it. Also the method failed when I ran out of (or didn’t find) Post-It notes. The perfect soution for the computer age is of course to use an application. I’m sure there are similar applications out there, but I wanted to make my own. I called it TVTracker.

You add series with the text fields, the long one for name and the short one for the max number of episodes in the season. As we know this varies from show to show, and season to season, so you can change this later in the settings. The data is stored as XML, so you can easily view and edit it, or use it for some other purpose.

TVTracker is written in Java, and is available for any platform Java support. This means if works for Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS and others. I have only tested it in Windows, but there should not be any trouble with other platforms.

Plans for further development:
-style it to make it more attractive
-make the “add fields” hideable, and make a File->Add option in the menu
-selection for if the app should promt for saving and loading, or just do it

Download TVTracker here: http://ogrim.no/files/TVTracker.jar

It can be smart to save TVTracker to its own folder, because the XML file will be created where the application is saved.

Update!
Camilla from the comments have had some trouble getting TVTracker to run on a Mac. This was hard for me to test, as I don’t have access to one. However, it now seems like the problem was due to a Java version mismatch. TVTracker is build with Java version 1.6.0_13, so you need at least version 1.6.x.x. To check this, you need to open a command line or terminal window and type “java -version”. If you have 1.4.x.x or 1.5.x.x you need to upgrade. Please head over here to do so: http://www.java.com/en/download/

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Music made in the style of old video games is something I enjoy, along with several styles of music, something my Last.fm profile can prove. Scatman is an artist I enjoyed when I was much younger. I still think he is awesome. Or was, as he passed away in 1999. Anyhow, can there be something better than the sound of old video games performing the best Scatman song ever? I think not.

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The Norwegian postal service is a state owned limited company (Wikipedia tells me) and our state is the main shareholder in the largest company in the oil and gass industry, Statoil. Or StatoilHydro as it now is called after the merge with Norsk Hydro. No worries, they will change their name back to Statoil again by 2010.

Anyhow, does anyone know how these companies come to be such copycats?

Posten

Posten changed their logo from this good, old fashioned post horn

to this new, trendy, thingamablob

that totally looks like a Pokéball

and the Death Star somehow combined

Statoil

Statoil on the other hand have gone from a modern and iconic design

to a rather boring, and simple font during the merge

and now they are going to use this

which totally looks like the mobile phone plan, djuice

and even more like the old fashioned Norwegian domestic crafts guild

Summary

A noteworthy observation is that Posten goes from old fashioned to modern, while Statoil seems to go from modern to old fashined. What gives?

The idea for this post came from this tweet from Rygh

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