The Butt Ugly Weblog

Scary. This morning, it took me an hour to decide what to wear.

Metanote: This entry is funny. Depending on how well you know me and my life, there are at least three different ways of reading it. And essentially, every single one of them is correct, yet they are woefully incomplete on their own. I guess that's one of the lures of blogging: you get to choose what to reveal of yourself. You are in complete control of your own public image, as opposed to traditional journalism where someone else writes about the misconceptions they had, while listening you talk.

I'm also sure there are a billion incorrect ways of reading this entry. But to the reader, it does not matter. They form their own opinion anyway, and as such, it is correct for them until proven otherwise. And to most people, it does not really matter anyway.

Arg! Another annoying day when all shops are closed. They must be haunting me. I seem to have time to do grocery shopping only on Sundays these days. But that does not help much, because yet again I bang at the closed doors, 'cos it is Yet Another Annoying Christian Holiday (YAACH).

OK, I don't mind holidays, not at all, but I do mind the backward Finnish law which says that even though the majority of the people are so spineless that they belong to the church even though they don't really believe in the Christian God, nor do they actually go to the church, everybody must not go shopping on Sundays.

Many young people (esp. women) tell me they belong to the church because they want to have a "princess wedding". I think there's market now for private companies that arrange civil marriages as if they were Christian weddings, with proper locations, carefully constructed phrases and everything. Currently, the power to wed people is only with the city officials (and clergy), but perhaps that should be licensed out.

Hell, I'm a priest. I could wed you people ;-).

Update: As EG pointed out, it is even more odd that you can legally buy beer and hard liquor from bars on Sundays. Surely there must be something inherently evil in buying milk for little Charlie, but it's okay for mum and dad to get wasted. I just don't get it.

It makes me wonder though whether I should grow a moustache and a mullet? I'll need to do some barberblogging next week anyway ;-)

(Via SchizoBlog, the guaranteed source for good music.)

You know... I have nothing planned for the weekend (except for the optional regular events). It feels so strange - I don't think I've had a zero weekend for months. Rest will do some good, I'm sure.

Though, knowing myself, I'll probably end up coding some sorely missed JSPWiki stuff regardless of the weather; sitting in a dark room and becoming generally obsessed with finally releasing 2.2 :-)

A few years ago I got really tired of not being able to read or send email on the go, wherever I was. So I bought my own server, and have configured it so that I can read email with IMAP, or via logging in using SSH, or - if everything else fails - using the ever-so-clunky webmail. I also have my own private SMTP server, so I don't have to care what the local mail settings are - I just authenticate to my own server and send email through there. Everything is, of course, fully encrypted. I also keep all my email on the IMAP boxes, which reside in my $HOME/Mail, so I can easily go through them with a shell script, if necessary. It's good to have access through multiple means.

My preferred method of reading email these days is the Apple Mail.app. It's a very intuitive mail client, and does essentially everything a good mail client must do. And it has also the Apple Search - just type in stuff into a small box and it will look it up for you. No "Find" -buttons. Very convenient.

(Now I'm happy that I had the webmail backup, because here on the Kansai airport it seems that only HTTP and HTTPS traffic is allowed through the WLAN network. Oh well... Good things rarely come free. :)

Saw Mount Fuji. Impressed.

Didn't feel like going out tonight, so I went to the Shinagawa IMAX theatre to watch Innocence, the new film from Mamoru Oshii.

It's... Well, it has the most beautiful, painstakingly detailed matte paintings, very complex 3D imagery, a deep, yet completely incomprehensible script (Japanese only, no subtitles :), one of the more disturbing dream sequences I've ever seen, classical Japanese animation, a mind-blowing musical score, naked female sex robots with guns and kung-fu skills, a magical atmosphere to boot, and the heartbreakingly cute dog.

It's beautiful. I pity the fool who downloads and watches this on a laptop. See it in a theatre.

Update: Check out the trailer.

Ow.

(By the way: perhaps confessing to all your colleagues that you have a weblog is not such a smart idea.)

I do feel thqat I'm rater drnk. Then again, I hacve been drinkin g with someboday else's corprate account for the entire eving in Tokyo. And it's 4:10 in the morning AS I a wrting thisl with no sort of spelll cheking wiatsoever,.'

THSI ENTRY hgas been designe for you to feelk xtremely envious., Hehe. Shops that sell alcohol 24 hurs a day can be somewhat damaging to your coherence, btw. I love this city. And some people I know. You know who yuou are.

I thinjk sleep would be a agood idea abot hnow,. G'net.

Ha! I knew that there was a reason why I don't wear ties (well, except on some rare occasions)! It's because

a) they are not a part of the universally known "geek uniform"
b) they harbor diseases.

(Via BoingBoing).

Flying east is always so much worse. I thought I had conquered the jet lag with little difficulty, but then I stayed awake until four o'clock this morning, and had only about four hours of sleep. Gng. Well, sunrise over Tokyo was interesting at least. I also got myself some nice new biking shorts, that already look like they had made close contact with the ground at high speeds. BTW, one of the things you don't want to do is to reconfigure your email at 2 am, 7000 km away. It leads to frustration, frustration leads to hate, and hate leads to blinding rage.

And I am not nuts (El Finnish Only). I prefer to think of myself more as "refreshingly complex and deep, with a sweet, yet ambiguous nose (and astonishingly brown eyes!), and a long, fruity aftertaste that has a hint of nut." Thanks for the heads-up, though. I seem to be in good company. :-)

You just gotta love a country where they show live, professional go games on TV... With commentary! :-)

I'm talking about the pilot of the new edition of Battlestar Galactica, which I had the opportunity of catching on the flight. I remember watching the original series when I was really young - we had to get a new TV to watch it. Our old Philips did not have an UHF receiver, and BG was on TV2 - so we got a new Goldstar black-and-white set. Oh, the memories.

But this new version is actually not half bad. OK, so Starbuck and Boomer are women (and there's some electricity between Starback and Apollo already), though I liked the character of Cassiopeia from the original series more. But it's perhaps the sign of the times. No real complaints. The effects were wonderful, and having actually silent space travel and semi-newtonian physics felt good for a change. The space combats were staged well, though I still long for the old-style Cylon fighters. They were the scariest things still seen on TV, these new ones just look like something stolen out of a computer game. I especially loved the "debris rain", and the fact that most of the characters were really rather intelligent. No glaring plot holes or gaping amounts of stupidity yet...

But yeah, I could see myself growing to like this. It's miles better than Galactica 1980, anyway... (Sheesh, flying motorcycles?)

(Yah, I'm in Tokyo now, and managed to catch a flu as well. Bugger.)

Well, first I was enjoying myself a lot, and then I went to see Troy. Here's my review of the movie:

Bollocks.

Lemme put it this way: The only thing I found slightly interesting was Sean Bean as Odysseus, who delivers a very nice performance. If he hadn't been there, I would've walked out of the theatre. Seriously. Ever since Deep Impact have I never wanted to leave the theatre, but this was really, really close. I had to amuse myself during the movie trying to calculate how many modern soldiers would've turned the battle, or what would a Battlemech look like when standing next to the walls of Troy at dawn.

Even the soundtrack - consisting mostly of a woman wailing - was boring. The only interesting thing was the play on the theme from Stargate during Achilles' death. Nice touch.

I really, really, really would not like to see this movie ever again. Hell, if the highlight of the movie is the sight of Brad Pitt without clothes - then something is deeply wrong. And yes, I'm straight. Straight, but in-fucking-credibly bored.

(Via Jyri). Toimitus suosittelee, ja kiroilee kun ei itse pääse paikalle.

KUTSU

Avoin luento ja keskustelutilaisuus
Professor Lawrence Lessig Helsingissä
"The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity"
Maanantaina 24.5. klo 17.30
Kulttuuritehdas Korjaamo, Töölönkatu 51 b

Tervetuloa avoimeen keskustelutilaisuuteen Professori Lawrence Lessigin kanssa Helsingissä maantantaina 24.5. klo 17.30 Korjaamolla, Töölönkatu 51b. Professori Lessig on yksi maailman tunnetuimpia ajattelijoita, kirjoittajia ja luennoitsijoita digitaalisen kulttuurin, median ja tekijänoikeuksien kehityksestä. Nyt suomalaisella yleisöllä on ainutlaatuinen mahdollisuus kuulla ja haastaa kansainvälistä vaikuttajaa. Teemana on "The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity."

Tilaisuuden järjestää Aula. Aula on avoin verkosto, joka tukee ajatusten vaihtoa poikki rajojen.

Tätä kutsua voi lähettää sähköisesti eteenpäin kaikille kiinnostuneille.

* * *

INVITATION

You are invited to an open discussion with Professor Lawrence Lessig on Monday 24.5. at 17.30 at Korjaamo, Töölönkatu 51 b in Helsinki. Professor Lessig will speak on "The Future of Copyright, Culture and Creativity" followed by a discussion with the audience. The event will be held in English and is free and open to the public.

The event is organized by Aula. Aula is an open network that promotes the exchange of ideas across boundaries.

Please forward this invitation to anyone you feel would be interested in attending.

About the speaker

Lawrence Lessig (http://www.lessig.org/) is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Lessig was also a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

More recently, Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online."

Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, law and high technology, Internet regulation, comparative constitutional law, and the law of cyberspace. His book, Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace, was published by Basic Books, and The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, is available from Random House. His most recent book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, is now available online at http://www.free-culture.cc and from Penguin Press.

Professor Lessig chairs the Creative Commons project (http://creativecommons.org/faq). Professor Lessig is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a board member of the Center for the Public Domain, and a Commission Member of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Warning: highly übergeeky drivel follows.

I wrote a small JSP page which essentially gobbles up the Pinseri RSS feed and transforms it into the changes.xml -format used by weblogs.com. Why is this cool?

Because I was just informed that Technorati has now added all the Finnish blogs on the Pinseri list into their search engine... This means that you can easily check if someone refers to your weblog. Example: try this link to see all references to my blogs from the 2.4 Million weblogs that Technorati is currently following. Or check this link to see all references to Hassuja Heräämisiä.

Technorati is cool. It's the best egoboosting tool since, well, the Pinseri top-list. :-)

I've been essentially doing nothing today.

Well, I did save my flowers by changing new soil for them.

But that's pretty much it.

And yeah, I did write a Pinseri-RSS-to-changes.xml -converter, so we might soon get all Finnish blogs in Technorati.

But nothing else.

Perhaps a couple games of go on KGS.

Otherwise, I've been doing nothing.

Except writing a bunch of emails.

And blogging.

But nothing else. I swear!

Well, I did eat. And vacuum the apartment.

But that doesn't count, does it? I mean, it's cleaning - it's like doing nothing useful. Things get dirty again real soon. Eating is also something you have to do. So that doesn't count either.

Ok... Then answer me this:

If I did nothing, why am I so bloody tired and out of my wits now? It's as if I had just been doing something really exhausting...

Sorry, Finns only:

Heli kirjoitti pienen mukavan tarinan uljaasta prinssistä, joka uponnee jokaiseen naiseen, joka on ikinä seurustellut nörtin kanssa. On suorastaan pelottavaa tunnistaa itsensä. (Ei se komeuskohta. Mutta se muu...)

Kiitos! :-D

The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom).

Iä iä, Cthulhu ftaghn...

(Thanks to Ebu for the link).

"So, what were you planning to do tomorrow, then?"

"Do this X and that Y, because the deadline is on Friday, why?"

"It's Ascension Day! It's holiday!"

"WHAT!?!"

All my schedules were just shot to hell.

Think: I am supposed to "be on the edge", keep track of new developments, surf the information superhighway with a jet engine strapped to my back, be cool and know all the new buzzwords, implement the latest, state-of-the-art technology - and I don't bloody know that I'm not supposed to come to work tomorrow.

*laugh*

The universe has a built-in mechanism of putting you back to your own place and reminding you of yourself. It's called irony. :)

Changed the layout of the page slightly, resulting in significantly improved rendering speed. It's funny how a small piece of Javascript in a wrong place can suddenly block the entire rendering...

Note to self (which every web-designer knows, but often forgets in a hurry - and that's my story and I'm sticking to it): Always put the important content first, and all your fluff last.

Let me know if this does not work with some browsers. Don't bother with Netscape 4 :)

My reputation as a sad metaübergeek (thanks, Matt) simply requires it.

An amateur rocket carrying a ham radio avionics package reached the edge of space May 17, reports ARRL.

This is a Big Thing. It marks the first time amateurs have been able to reach the 100km altitude, commonly regarded as the lower edge of space. It's still a long way from a manned spaceflight, though there are many people shooting for the X-Prize.

You see, the conquest of the New World did not happen with the government-funded expeditions of Kolumbus, da Gama, Magalhães (Magellan) and others. It really started when your average, hard-working people moved over in search for their own fortune. Because they were working for themselves, not for any ideal, or corporation, or government. They were working just to get their families fed, and have a bit for retirement.

I believe governments still play a large role in space travel, but the real power and the mass will come from amateurs, who will later on create companies around their venture, and sooner or later they will be able to serve launch services for small scale satellites, and later on, even space tourism.

Dave Johnson wonders about the Wiki APIs. Being the author of the JSPWiki:WikiRPCInterface, I concur. XML-RPC pretty much is finished for me as an API standard, and I don't think I will be developing the V2 of the standard onwards.

However, I like Atom. I like Atom a lot. Consider this official: JSPWiki will support both the Atom blog and Atom Wiki APIs. I believe that Atom holds the future instead of XML-RPC. It has the advantage of being designed properly (no timezone hassles, no UTF-8 issues, proper built-in authentication), after all.

We should just remember the lessons we learned with that API: the importance of backlinks, the forward link lists, proper search API, authentication (Atom solves all of my issues by using WSSE, yay!), the ability to handle attachments, introspection, versioning support, and metadata. Most of these vary from Wiki to Wiki.

There is also the issue of the varying markup between Wikis, but I don't think that is such a big issue, API-wise. What we should do is to define a generic WikiMarkup, a variant of XHTML preferably, which is never seen by the user. It's just used to transfer data from a WYSIWYG editor to a WikiEngine, which then does the transformation to the local markup. Or something.

This picture is a simulation of what we might see, rendered with the latest technology.

Err. Nope?

Would you believe that it's a part of a scale Solar System model here in Helsinki, then? :)

(Ah, biking season. Which T9 (predictive text input) wanted first to call "ailing reason", and then "bikini season" instead... I think it's smarter than people give it credit for. :-D )

You know, there's a serious credibility problem with a beautiful, scantily dressed woman, who sings happily "It hurts, how it hurts" (Sweden). I much prefer Finnish rock music, which mostly consists of serious men singing in a very laconic voice about they have been hurt and left in a thousand different ways. At least they mostly look and sound the part.

Which brings me to the general music selection of Finnish weddings. It is supposed to be a happy occasion, but yet somehow most of the music is always extremely depressing. It just makes you want to scream: the three required waltzes, and then a selection of other classics, and then moving towards traditional Finnish rock music, in which a lone, drunken man sings his lament after killing his family, right before blowing his own brains out.

Hel-lo? Happy, anyone? Remember? The state where you don't really want to kill yourself (or anyone else for that matter)?

*sigh*

I guess you would need to listen to a lot of Finnish rock music to understand this entry. Hell, even writing about the music depresses me to another dimension. Then again, being alone in a small hotel room, watching the Eurovision Song Contest (which is complete crap, as usual), feeling the blissful state of inebriation ebb away into tiredness and depression ("laskuhumala" in Finnish, a highly descriptive word, I might add) after having left the party prematurely because of the compound effect of alcohol, little sleep, the afore mentioned music, relatives ("Now when are you going to get married, mmh?"), and the general happiness of everyone else (happily married or at least engaged)... What do you expect? ;-)

Anyway. Lots of luck and love to the happy couple.

Just had the perfect dinner with a beautiful woman in a fabulous restaurant.

Bliss.

This flash animation is wrong on so many levels... ARGH!

Well, I guess it just proves that even memes evolve.

(Via Slashdot, of all places.)

Warning: techtalk follows, you may freely skip this if your eyes glaze over at the word "XML".

I've been in a coding frenzy for the past couple of days. JSPWiki has had some considerable additions, here being the relevant part of the ~ChangeLog:

2004-05-14  Janne Jalkanen  <Janne.Jalkanen@nospam.ecyrd.com>

        * v2.1.97.

        * Added preliminary support for the Atom blog API.  It still does
        not yet completely work, however.

I'll be a non-productive member of the society for the next three-four days (another wedding? Don't people get tired of these things already?), so nothing much may happen. But yeah, I nearly got ecto working with JSPWiki.

There is still however a question on how the blog and wiki apis should interact. You see, the page Main on this site is both a weblog and a wiki page. I'm having trouble, you see:

• GET to /atom/ lists all wiki pages (which means that even on this site, there are a lot of them) - not just the weblogs (since every page can be a weblog, even the weblog entry pages)
• GET to /atom/Main... Should it list all of the blog entries, or should it GET the Wiki page content? Both are valid interpretations...

I'm confused... Which is the correct way to handle this? Should a WikiWeblog combination have separate URIs for Wiki and Weblog functionality? Isn't that kinda redundant?

Find out and be immediately transported to your dream life.

(Via Smart Mobs.)

On the right, my living room window before washing. On the left, the part of the window that has been washed. Living in the city centre has its downsides as well, and one of them is getting really dirty windows, really fast.

Okay, folks! Here's the cool bit of the day: JSPWiki now officially has support for the Atom feed format in the latest CVS version. It only works for the Weblog plugin for the moment, but there's now an atom.jsp, as well as a ~FeedDiscoveryTag so that you can find the Atom feed easily. It'll just need some tweaks to work for regular wiki pages as well.

It's live now, on this site. Check out http://www.ecyrd.com/ButtUgly/atom.jsp! It even validates! :-)

Off to bed now. Must grab some sleep.

For the past week, someone has been hitting jspwiki.org, adding advertisements to a couple of addresses I am not going to mention here. I figured they were isolated incidents, but... It seems that Dave Johnson of RollerWeblogger has had the same guys on his wiki. I just hope nobody is trying to build a bot to target a specific WikiEngine. It could be devastating to the open nature of Wikis.

You see, the problem with open systems is that they are easy to abuse. For the most part, manual damage can be controlled thanks to social pressure and sheer volume of good people, but automatical damage, as inflicted by bots may become intolerable. The reason why we have so much email spam these days is because of the wonderful openness of the SMTP, mail transfer protocol. Because it was open, license-free, and easy to implement, it became the killer app of the all-pervasive Internet these days. But openness also has vulnerabilities, and as with anything popular, people are abusing it right now.

I am not worried about people trying to destroy wikis. That would be too easy to protect against. But I am worried about bots that would roam around, and change the text or a link slightly to destroy links to competition, or to add Googlejuice for someone. Would it be possible to notice every single change on your wiki, and check every single outgoing link? Considering that most Wikis don't even provide an RSS or Atom feed it may be difficult to keep track on what is really happening. I have two open Wikis which I administer - and I'm having trouble coping with them already. Especially smaller wikis may be in trouble, as their administration have no tools to combat a dedicated spambot.

It is entirely possible that public Wikis will have to start to protect themselves somehow. I think we should start thinking about technologies that would prevent spambots from destroying an entire subculture, but in a ~WikiFriendly way. Let's not do what everybody else seems to be doing these days, and sacrifice the one thing that we want to protect.

How do I turn on the screensaver with a key combination!?! I don't want to use the hot corners (I already have them overloaded with Exposé and I want to have the top left corner free so I don't have to worry about counting pixels when I try and access the Apple menu), but so far the best way to lock the Powerbook is to go and turn the lid down and then back up again. which turns on the screen saver (and stops iTunes, BTW, since the computer goes to sleep for a second).

I know there are Mac people reading me, so please: tell me which key combination I have to use, or which freeware application I have to install to just be able to press Apple-F12 to lock the computer! I've been trying to find the info from Google, but apparently I haven't been able to figure out the right keywords.

Frustrated now!

(Sorry for the headline, just wanted to grab your attention there. My Mac Powerbook does NOT suck, it is a wonderful little machine and I grow more attached to it every day. It is by far the best computer I've ever owned. I just need this one thing to make it perfect. Please?)

The DMCA in the USA allows content owners to shut down almost anything without due process, without the need for a trial or any regard to the First Amendment of the US constitution. Last year, MPAA sent out over 30,000 Cease and Desist -letters. Only one fought back.

These are his words.

(Do not forget that EU has similar legislation: the EUCD. A directive crafted out of fear and greed.)

Still, I feel as if there was something in the air. A lull before a storm. A pause between moments. There are signs of transition: things you see, things you hear, things you read. Things you feel. Things you have done.

I have a feeling that something will change soon. Hard to say in which direction.

Could be the spring, too.

It has been suggested that Moore's Law could hold for about 600 years before we hit the maximum amount of computability there is.

Clarke's Third Law says that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Fermi's Paradox asks "where the hell are all intelligent creatures of the universe?"

You know, 600 years to take on the entire universe is not a long time. In fact, it is a laughably short time. And, if there's any intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, wouldn't they have discovered it already, meaning that we would already be a part of a gigantic supercomputer? And would we even notice, if we were a part of it?

And if we're the first sentient beings to succeed in building a supercomputer the size of the universe, will it all end in a massive Bluescreen of Death in the year 2604?

Now there's something to lose your sleep over...

Enjoying a bit of green tea and yōkan, one of the odd Japanese things that only I seem to have developed a taste for. Oh well. More for me. :-)

Today, I have mostly been annoyed at the fact that all stores are closed due to Mother's Day. I mean - this is pretty much the only day on the week when I have free time to do any shopping whatsoever, and thanks to our arcane legislation, most shops are closed on most Sundays, and on this particular Sunday everything is closed. Bloody annoying. Makes me want to move abroad again. Grr.

For me, shopping is relax. Well, some shopping is. The kinda shopping I want to do on Sundays anyway.

Congratulations, my friends! May your marriage be long and prosperous!

Axis of Ævil has a funny story about what your dog can do in public, but she can't (but apparently would like to).

Couple of the bullet points do make me somewhat worried, though: "Shag other dogs?" "Eat garbage off the sidewalk?" "Wear a collar and walk on a leash?" Well, the last one you do see occasionally at least - but the first one? I do believe it's illegal...

I think I should try the "beg food from random passersby" -thing though. Might be fun.

(Aw. What a stupid post from me. Ah well... ohoy mates, off to a wedding I go. Being in a suitable mood is very important on occasions such as those. No worries. Bing.)

As summer comes, Finns open up and actually start talking to each other. I was just having lunch with a colleague, sitting next to the Ruoholahti channel, chatting mindlessly as usual, as a girl - probably around ten years of age - comes to us and strikes conversation.

"Hello"

"Well, hi", I say.

"Isn't the weather wonderful?" she asks.

"Yea! It's fantastic" I say, desperately trying to remember how I should communicate with someone so young, that I could be her father.

"Do you have a boat here?" she continues. We shake our heads, looking regretful.

"Well, goodbye" she chimes and marches on with her friends.

I start to explain to my British friend the conversation that just took place, as I overhear a young girl's voice, bragging to her friends:

"See, I was brave enough to talk to them!"

I nearly fell to the channel: I was laughing so hard. Us, a dare?

Spent a few good hours chatting, drinking cider, and enjoying the sun.

And now my right arm has a suntan, but my left arm does not. I don't dare to look into the mirror to see if my face is one-sidedly brown, too.

Today, at the office: a guy stands up, and bellows at me in a very astonished voice: "You have the Dr. Snuggles theme song in your playlist!?"

You know, you learn interesting things from people if you peek at their music collection. And iTunes music sharing over the LAN is one of those things that boggles your mind.

I was in a hotel the other day, connected to the local network. I started iTunes and found like six people sharing their music over Rendezvous. So I got to peek inside the heads of complete strangers, sitting somewhere in the building, happily doing their own stuff, while I see and find interesting new music completely effortlessly. It's like listening to everybody else's personal radio stations, except that you get to mix and match and shuffle to your heart's content.

Hmm... Is it possible to distinguish between a man whistling and a woman whistling from the sound alone?

Sleep has been lost over smaller things, you know...

Units!?! What is this - an engineering company?

Drinking all these behind the sauna, direct from the bottle.

They're all a part of Finnish national romantic scenery, immortalized by hordes of people, who are very good at optimizing the price/inebriation ratio.

First of May is always a big celebration in Finland, especially among students. Traditions go rampant, all who are able to get out to party (except for the most hardened cynics), alcohol is consumed in alarmingly large quantities, and the entire city of Helsinki becomes one giant outdoor toilet. It is the celebration of life and the end of winter.

This morning, 50,000 people gather in the Helsinki Kaivopuisto park to eat breakfast, drink champagne, and enjoy the sun.

Me?

I'm watching Teletubbies with my niece. And chatting with one-syllable words.

And can't really say that it's a bad thing either.