Biking

Against all good judgement I went on a biking tour today. The goal was to bike to work and see how long it would take. However my muscles were not in shape after yesterdays longer trip so I had to cut it short, some 1.5km before work (mainly due to some bad decisions about the route). Now my ass hurts like I've been assraped or something. Damn seats that have to so small and hard.

After I came home I talked to Veltsu (he is extremly against the idea of coming to visit here to Helsinki - and there is always the financial situation of a student so it is understandable), hit the shower and went to Capri for a pizza and beer (the proper way to loose some weight yes).

Talked to Peteris also. He's been on his trip to Rome. Would've liked to hear more about it but he was busy. Atleast he has his humor left when I asked what to do with his passport photo that he gave me in Riga. The options what to do included putting it in the bookshelv and loose it or use it for target practice :)

Seems I managed to insult some people also today. This mailing list for the swedish speaking HBT community in Finland has lately gotten quite a lot of feminist messages. I do not think feminism has anything to do with sexuality, but rather equality between the sexes. So yes, lesbians, party until you drop dead, don't care :)

Todays link? Hmm...screw it.

Getting old

Went to my parents place and picked up my bike which I bravely drove back home some 20km. After the first 3km I was ready to give up but pushed on having one heart attack per kilometer. At halfpoint I had to stop at Hesburger and had a coke and some water to drink, mainly to get the fluid balance back up and some sugar to give me energy. After the rest I changed plans and took an alternate route which proved interesting and which I will not be using anymore as it took me through Pasila and a million people on the road. After Pasila my bike broke, the chain jumpped of the wheel and I got a minutes rest while I fixed it. After that it was just a matter of minutes before I was home.

Talked to grandmother today. She told me that she had fallen while trying to go to her neighbours to escape a thunderstorm. She was unable to get up but luckily the neighbours had noticed her flickering flashlight and was able to help her. Nothing broken but a bruised ego and bruises on the legs and face as an reminder that no, she is not young anymore and she needs help. It was decided that during thunderstorms the neighbours will go to her place instead to keep her company.

Her memory is not anymore that good. She had forgotten that my cousin had visited her for a day a few weeks back but she remembered it after she was asked about it. Guess the time is coming near for her to move on, just hope it is painless and quick. She once told me that the women in the family usually pass away fast and without complication. It would be desirable.

Big brother is watching you

Today the second Big Brother starts in Finland. There's been a massive information campaign about the show and there are channels that you can subscribe to (for a certain amount of ?) where you can watch what the people in the Big Brother are doing.

Exciting.

Not.

What is the point of watching what other people are doing in an artificially created environment? It is like the Bold and the Beautiful on steroids or something like that. It is also a question of privacy on one hand and transparency on an other. Is this what we can expect from the future? Hope not.

Made a sweet pie today. I put in too much of eggs and cream so it was quite runny but it tasted good so I'll adjust the recepie for the next time.

Wonderful world

Aah yes, what a wonderful world of human inconsideration. Yet one prime example why people seem to have their head stuck up their ass and use it as an excuse to not think or not care. Without going into details, I've had it. These people can go fuck themselves, I really don't care anymore. Actually I would like to suggest that the state have some sort of obligaroty social aptitude test and if you fail it you're terminated immediatly.

Pressing section forward on the DVD remote seems to put the stereo on Amplitude modulation instead of the normal Frequency modulation.

Funny

Today I confirmed that, yes, my DVD player remote can activate the stereo by pushing Play. It was as I suspected and not that much to do about it either other than not pointing the DVD remote at the stereo when pressing Play.

Been writing on a new novel to be published, this one a bit more daring than the two other. I was asked why I write about heterosexual couples. That is a good question. Maybe there is somekind of challenge and exploration of the unknown as it is literally an unknown country to me. Having, suprise suprise, some problems with the female anatomy but that can always be described in general terms.

Almost called Veltsu today. We already had a brief phone conversation last Saturday with me being drunk. His voice is much deeper than what I expected. Somehow it doesn't fit him or the mental picture that I have of him in my head from the galler pictures and what I've talked to him. Would like to chat with him more. He is an interesting person. I know that he is busy and all but still would be nice to talk to him.

The SciFi flower has a name. It's called ihmepensas. It is supposed to be quite poisonous so maybe I'll take a bite of it when I'm tired of life :)

Todays plans include a trip to my parents house to pick up my bike and take it to my apartment. It should fit quite well in the entrance locked up.

Drapes

Oh thank god finally yes yes yes :) I got my drapes from the shop today. After a bit of cursing (one of the bars was incorrectly installed and thus lacked a stopper) I had the drapes up. After that I sat by the computer listening to music and enjoying the moment. Then it was up and away to my sister for her second childs birthday. Poor kid was a bit disappointed when she didn't get any presents from me but I already bought them all chewing gum as suggested by my sister and since they received that when I came back from Ireland the're not getting anything else until christmas.
This morning as I was eating breakfast in the living room as usual and started to watch Futurama from the DVD to have something to watch when I heard this music beneath the Futurama tune. Thinking it belonged to the theme for that episode I didn't give it any more thought until it continued even when the episode was running. Then I noticed that the stereo was on. Don't know how it came on by itself as I turned it off last night. Maybe there is a conflict between the DVD player and stereo. Must check when I have time.

As I was taking pictures of the drapes I also took a picture of the SciFi plant that I bought. If someone knows the name of it, please let me know. I forgot it after I bought it :)

Coffee

Since I yesterday was unable to find an MP3 player that would work with Linux I finally had to hop to work to format the damn thing. On my way to work I called Antti and asked if he would be interested in going for a cup of coffee. As luck would have it he was free in the afternoon so we decided to meet at Cafe Java at half past three. I arrived to work and talked some with my co-workers and asked about some things that I was unable to finish before my vacation started. It was nice to see them. Anyway, I got the damn thing formatted and music copied to it. Signed some papers that required my signature and sent an SMS to my boss when he was going to be present. But no reply so I left.

Arrived in a bit of advance to the meeting so I went flower shopping but found nothing. Got a few hinters as to what I could be getting according to my criterias. After that I went to Kirjatori where I picked up three books: Peter Lodenius's Bushin uusi maailma - syntyykö imperiumi, Vandana Shiva's Voiko tietoa omistaa? and Entäs jos... Vaihtoehtoinen Suomen historia. When I'll read them I have no clue.

Antti arrived a bit late since his dentist appointment had taken longer than expected and he was in a bit of pain. We went to Kamppi up to the trendy cafe up on the fifth floor where we sat and talked over a cup of coffee for about an hour. After that Antti wanted to go and buy something so we went through Kamppi center without finding anything. At all. We ended up in a flower shop where I bought a flower. I don't know what it is called but it has colored leaves. I call it a SciFi flower as it looks like something that would be found in the 60's and 70's B-rated SciFi shows planet scenes. Think Startrek and the SciFi literature of that time.

Todays link is about generating .htaccess and .htpasswd files. Found it to be quite convenient for my purposes :)

Music

Pissed from yesterday and having spent most of today troublingshooting why I cannot move music from Linux to my MP3 player I finally gave up (I think there is somekind of bug in the way KDE handles the safe removal of USB devices which just messes everything up), looked at the net for some alternatives to a new MP3 player. Decided anyway to go to Verkkokauppa to check out their sortiment. After having waited for a fair time at the queue to customer service I was presented with the options but none of them would support Linux. So there you are. So in order to lift my spirits with something (as Snusnu had to cancel our coffee meeting) I went to hunt for the next thing I've been wanting for quite some time, a stereo. Went from Ruoholahti with the metro to Kamppi and from Kamppi to the Central Railway Station (as Anttila didn't really have any stereos at all) and from there to City Tunnel Anttila. Finally. I looked at some models and saw one that was reduced by 50% and would even play MP3 cd's. Hooray! So I bought the one. Except when I was going to pay for it the price was suddenly double from what they said it would be. After some coughing and some running by cashier I got my stereo with a 50% discount (actually the discount had ended on the 15th but someone had left the discount notice next to the stereo). So now I have a stereo and I've been listening to Sävelradio all day and evening.

Veltsu came online after having been offline for a few days which was nice to talk to him, even though he is busy. Asked him if he would like to come to Helsinki instead of me going now to Oulu as he is uncertain as to when he'll be getting his own appartment but we'll see. I know he is not that keen on coming to Helsinki but that is something that is ok.

Todays link is not related to wikipedia but to slashdot that actually had a piece of news that is directly related to my MP3 problem. The player doesn't require any drivers to work with Linux and the 8GB capacity is more than enough.

Sigh

Yet another example of human inconsideration. Had to move my trip to Oulu until Veltsu gets his appartment. The one I was supposed to stay with already cancelled once and now I can't get an answer not has he informed me of anything so instead of going back and forth and moving around all the time wasting everyones precious time I sent an SMS to Veltsu saying that I'll come to Oulu when he has his own appartment. That way I don't have to rely on a third party to visit Oulu. Arto suggested that I take in on a hotel but I'm sick of hotels (not that there is anything wrong with them), I'm just sick of them. Although it could be nice to spend a weekend together at the hotel... Hmm, no.

Talked with Snusnu. Hopefully we'll be able to go to coffee tomorrow. Perhaps he is right. Maybe I have too high expectations but damn it, if I cannot trust people to keep their promises then who and what can I trust?

Looked at the two novels that were published. Comments have been so far mostly positive. Even the first one which was very non traditional for the site. Maybe I'll continue

Todays wikipedia link is about Levenshtein distance which is an exiting algorithm to
calculate how much different words differ from each other. Can be applied to spell checking and thesaurus but could also be used at work. Just haven't figured out any exiting application for it yet.

In the beginning there was light..

..at least I hope so. Tried to find a somewhat normal name for this blog but every suggestion I entered into the wizard was rejected. Then finally I took an object from my desk .. a beer glas and it was suprise suprise accepted.

Been fairly quiet day today. Still trying to recover from the Saturdays cousin party and the hangover and throwup the next day. Went into the city to pick up an DVD that Joonas had borrowed when he was dropping in on Sunday. Joonas was on his way to his parents place to be on "Summer" vacation.

Managed to wash to loads of dishes. Definitly the last time I make food for a gathering. Unless we use disposable plates and forks and glasses. But then again, that is not ecological and "green" so .. Although I had to cheat. The plates were paper plates :)

The tooth thats broken is making itself known again. Think I broke a piece off from it when I finally managed to get some food into my stomach yesterday. Darn. Now I should decide if I want to leave it like it is, remove it completely (yes!) or replace it (expensive!). Decisions, decisions.

Talked with veltsu today. Should ask Haisuli when he's in Oulu so that I can go and visit them both. Veltsu I would really like to meet and see what kind of person he is. Very interesting personality :) Must remember to send Haisuli an SMS and query his status and where he is.

Read some old saved wikipedia entries today, like the Viterbi algorithm
Very interesting stuff.

Well, two more weeks of vacation and then back to work. Getting used to this not doing any work thing =)