John Hargrove runs a comedy site where he does silly things and writes about them. I was home sick today, so I don’t know if these were really so funny, or if it was just me.

The Turnpike Prank, The All-Natural Prank, The Credit Card Prank.

Never being
a big reader

of Jorn’s Robot Wisdom

(yet knowing who he is
and respecting his work)

I find myself
peculiarly fascinated by

his Auxiliary Wisdom.

So away
you

and visit

his excessories

Click To Add Title — Leslie Harpold and Micheal Sippey go at it with PowerPoint. Who knew there was so much to slideshows?

Erik Spiekermann on type in a BBC clip from the 80s. Be sure to check out his post on the heritage of Nokia’s corporate typeface.

Ray Ozzie’s take on Really Simple Sharing (of calendars and contact lists). Russell has a few questions.

(Geez, what’s up with MSN Spaces’s URLs?)

One important thing to note is that the focus is on sharing personal information with specific people or groups, not the Web at large. The management of these “privilege groups” is tough.

Oh, and today I broke down and finally installed Skype.

Is Matias Tactile Pro USB Keyboard the best keyboard ever? I have no idea. Luckily, there’s a lot more to know about keyboards.

I like keyboards that make loud clacking sounds when you press the keys. You can get big old “clackies” from the Kyl�saari recycling center for five euros a piece.

Muistan, kun Nebula oli ainoastaan pieni ja p�tev� hosting-firma. T�n� p�iv�n� se on varmasti edelleen p�tev�, mutta isommaksi se tosiaan on kasvanut.

Koska Nebulan tiedotteihin ei ole ankkureita eik� permalinkkej�, on tiedote alla kokonaisuudessaan.

11.11.2005

Satama myy hosting-liiketoimintansa Nebula Oy:lle

Satama Interactive on myynyt Sataman hosting-liiketoimintansa Nebula Oy:lle. Hosting-palvelun yhteydess� Nebulalle siirtyy noin sadan asiakkaan sopimuskanta. Samalla yhti�t ovat sopineet hosting-palveluita koskevasta yhteisty�st�. Yhti�t ovat p��tt�neet olla julkistamatta kauppahintaa. Kaupan vaikutus Sataman vuoden 2005 tulokseen on v�h�inen.

Satama luopuu hosting-liiketoiminnasta keskitty�kseen ydinliiketoimintaansa, digitaalisten palveluiden suunnitteluun ja toteutukseen. Hosting-liiketoiminta tuli Satamaan vuoden 2004 syyskuussa ostetun Kuulalaakerin liiketoiminnan ja kes�kuussa 2005 ostetun G5 Digital Design Oy:n my�t�. Hosting-liiketoimintaa on harjoittanut l�hinn� Sataman Turun toimisto.

Satama ja Nebula ovat sopineet yhteisty�st�, jossa Nebula toimii Sataman kumppanina tarjoamalla Sataman asiakkaille hosting-palveluita.

Abandon the Web has some interesting ideas on the evolution of the Web. The author (going by the moniker of J.R. Pessimist) poses five “paradoxes”, or problems with the Web today, and suggests, for one, that we need a whole new platform. World of Warcraft and Skype are examined as examples of alternative networks. Via Evhead.

Whoa, check out the the grass and the rounded corners? Both presenting at next week’s Helsinki MobileMonday, Nokia and Opera seem to be sharing some grass-roots love.

I don’t like threaded discussions. Not in forums, not anywhere. But the way Phil Ringnalda’s blog comments nest is a neat solution that doesn’t take away attention from the general discussion. It provides replying-to context without spreading out the comments by branches. While it still isn’t perfect, I’m not sure there even is a way to have reasonable “discussions” among crowds, online or off.

Mietin, olisiko halvempaa ostaa kirjoja Amazonista vai Akateemisesta, jonka kautta voi tilata my�s kirjoja, joita ei ole liikkeess� myynniss�. Vertailun tekee ty�l��ksi se, ett� Amazon k�tkee postituskulut tilauksen viimeisimp��n vaiheeseen.

Vertasin verkkokauppoja t�n��n, ja yhden kirjan otannalla Amazon vaikuttaa edullisemmalta.

Pehme�kantinen Moneyball maksaisi 22 euroa Akateemisessa, ja Amazonista tilattuna, edullisimmalla postituksella, 17,20 euroa. Kirjakohtaisesti ero on aika suuri.

Asiaan liittym�tt�m�n�, osoite “akateeminen.fi” ei johda Akateemisen kirjakaupan sivuille, vaan johonkin ep�m��r�iseen ty�paikkailmoituspalveluun. �rsytt�v��, tuo squattaus, varsinkin kun Akateemisen osoite on akateeminen.com.

Ajax-based “Web desktops” are sprouting up like mushrooms. What’s funny, is that their functionality is basically the same as Netscape’s customizable portal back in 2000.

Cribbed from Techcrunch’s round-up, the newcomers are Netvibes, Protopage, and Zoozio. Then of course there’s Google Reader and Microsoft’s Start (or is that Live?).

While I really liked Start at first, Bloglines fairly quickly won me over. It’s better as a feed aggregator, at least. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but I was impressed that, despite being hard to find, there is a way to export feed subscriptions as an OPML file.

Free sheet music. Taneli and I thought a lot about sheet music on the Web back in 2000. We had a business plan worked out, and a lot of ideas on neat things to do with the sheet music. Phase one would’ve been to offer music in the public domain for free.

Memeorandum glues blog posts and news pieces together as newspaper-like frontpages. Unfortunately, my first look didn’t impress me. Wired talks to Gabe Rivera, the creator of Memeorandum.

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore is a fascinating read. Well, the first sample chapter is (pdf version also available). There’s also excerpts of chapters 12 and 19.

Via Retromania.

Blogi on kuollut, p��kirjoittaa M&M:n Matias Erkkil�. Omituisia v�itteit� ja todisteita. Eik� blogeja tulla kirjoittamaan en��, kun niiden uutuudenvieh�tys loppuu? Onko blogien huonoutta se, ett� niiden kirjoittamisesta ei (yleens�) makseta? Ja kyll�, se, ett� Nieminen, “bloggaamisen edell�k�vij�”, lopetti bloggaamisen, on selke�sti merkki lopun alusta. Ei kannata v�litt�� siit�, ett� Nieminen py�ritt�� nyt yrityst�, joka omistaa Blogilistan. Blogi on kuollut.

P�ivitetty: Erkkil� pehment�� julistustaan, muttei malta olla t�kk��m�tt� haarukkaa monologibloggaajien silm��n.

There’s something about We Got Beef (a bar in Helsinki): when I almost never come here, it’s even worse than when I’ve come here more frequently; and I’ve never really felt comfortable here. I’m okay in whatever shithole Kallio has to offer, I love checking out the over the top nightclubs, so how is it I always seem to bust at Beef?

RSS to Blog (don’t want to link directly to it) is a horrible idea! The sheer audacity of it!

“Never Search For New Content For Your Blogs Again, Let Other People Write the Content. You Just Post it to Your Blog!”

Well, gosh darnit, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! Never again will I have to strain my fingers hunting-and-pecking away, writing my own posts. I’ll just let someone else do that!

Which vs. that. The basic rule: Use “which” plus commas to set off nonrestrictive clauses; use “that” to introduce a restrictive clause.

And what a backstory there is to it: Paul Ford started writing a column under a fake persona, and scored a book deal. I’m buying the book today. I have not kept up with the author of a long-time favorite Website of mine.

I wrote a quick and dirty script to detect whether an entry was English or Finnish. It’s based on two explicit lists of signifiers (frequent words that are in only in one language). Each signifier is assigned a weight in order to make up for the fact that signifiers may occur in bodies of text of another language.

It’s actually much easier to match English than Finnish.

I couldn’t find any real natural language models for PHP, which is really a shame. A Markovian language classifier would’ve been exactly what I needed. I bet Ispell would work.

So this is my first post via SMS. I had to implement the metaWeblog API for my homegrown publishing system to get this to work, but besides some problems with PHP’s strtotime function, it was a breeze. Thanks, MS!

Check out Dr. Inman’s Mint for look at Mint, the great-looking Bearskinrug weblog, and links to the thoughts of other Mint beta testers.

WACT is a PHP-based MVC framework. I wonder how it stacks up against Cake, a PHP framework based on Ruby on Rails.

Update: And there are plenty more.

Olen seurannut Jaakko Kuivalaisen Tekij�noikeus-raportointia suurella mielenkiinnolla. Teksti on sujuvaa, ja k�sittelee lain kehittymist� ja mahdollisia vaikutuksia ymm�rrett�v�sti ja yksityiskohtaisesti.

Huvittavin (ja kenties h�lyytt�vin) sivujuonne l�ytyy merkinn�st�, jossa viitataan Mediaviikon p��kirjoitukseen Lex Karpelasta. Kuivalainen ehtii p�ivitt�� merkint��ns� sen verran toteakseen, ett� p��kirjoitus on her�tt�nyt paljon negatiivista palautetta, mutta sittemmin juttu on h�vinnyt kokonaisuudessaan Mediaviikon saitilta!

Tosiasia on kuitenkin se, ett� lain ep�kohdat kiinnostavat vain pient� erikoisryhm��. Se, ett� Lex Karpela ei ole mediassa ja suuren kansan riveiss� her�tt�nyt suuremmin vastustusta, ei sin�ns� ihmetyt�. Mik� kyll�kin kummastuttaa, on se, ett� ep�kohdat vaikuttavat niin r�ikeilt�. T�m� merkint� purkaa hyvin kotiin murtautumisen metaforan ongelmia.

Kopiosuojauksen murtaminen ei ole ainoa ongelmakohta, jossa oikean maailman lakeja sovelletaan tietoverkkoihin. Yksi klassinen esimerkki on tapaus, jossa teksasilainen it-ammattilainen ilmoitti er��lle yliopistolle havaitsemastaan tietoturva-aukosta yliopiston verkossa. Mies pid�tettiin ja tuomittiin murtoyrityksest� — vaikkei ollut yritt�nyt itse hy�dynt�� aukkoa mill��n lailla.

Jos k�visi kokeilemassa pankin ikkunoita, ja huomaisi, ett� yksi on j��nyt lukitsematta, ei kannata kertoa siit� kellek��n. Ikkunoiden kokeilua pidett�isiin murtoyrityksen�: eih�n kukaan lainkuuliainen kansalainen pankin ikkunoita muuten kokeilisi.

MS bloggaa. Pit�nee pummata h�nelt� tekstarijulkaisumahdollisuutta.

Books24x7 is Dataclub’s new online reference library. It contains the full texts of some 4000 information technology books. The price for under ten user licenses is 399 euros (plus VAT) a year. I’m thinking we’ll sign up for a free week’s trial during code-time in our next project. I wonder how it compares against O’Reilly’s Safari.

The table of contents of Sommerville’s Software Engineering is useful for figuring out which chapters correspond between the sixth and seventh editions.

Step-by-Step Guide to Remote Assistance for Windows XP.

A few days ago, Saras asked me if I read any blogs. “Only Kottke,” I said, “and even that only when I want to surf.”

Saras had read in some survey that weblogs are one of the major passtimes of Web users, and he’d been looking into them to see what they’re all about.

Now, Saras is a Unix geek, of the rabid “vegan, no TV, there’s more to life than consuming” variety, and not in the least ignorant of current events, so I found his questions about weblogs curious.

“I don’t understand blogs,” Saras said. “Why people are into them. I haven’t been able to find one that I could read for more than ten minutes. There were some almost-well-written ones, but they were only good for five minutes.”

I didn’t quite know what to tell him. I ended up shrugging: “to each their own.”

For me, following blogs has become less like reading books and more like reading a newspaper. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just changed how it feels.

Anyway, here’s a few blogs I found noteworthy (but which I probably won’t really be following).

Republic of T — “Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.”

Business Logs. — “BusinessLogs helps companies communicate better with their customers through the use of weblogs and smart user interface design.”

Professional PHP. — “Web Development with PHP, PHP Advocacy and Best Practices.”

Brea is a great font. “Toying with antiquity in two realms, Brea uses primitive dot matrix, the first electronic print, as a medium for expressing a once intensely manual Old English hand. These incongruous historical allusions update the Middle Ages, but places them squarely in the early ’80s.”

Good Behaviour makes your HTML cleaner! Pun, pun, hooray!

Marc has some good points on Behaviour on O’Reilly Radar.

Kas, Hesarillakin on blogeja: Kuukausiliitteen toimittaja Unto H�m�l�inen aikoo seurata weblogissaan presidentinvaaleja. Mit�k�h�n muita blogeja HS:lla on?

Blogilistalta l�ytyv�t ainakin HS:n tiedetoimituksen Kvarkeista galakseihin ja Anssi Miettisen Kuukausiliitteest�, p�iv��!, joka toimii apuv�lineen� blogeista kertovan jutun kirjoittamisessa.

Digitodaykin julkaisi t�n��n perjantaina uusimman bloginsa, harmittavan pliisusti nimetyn Ulan-Ude-blogin. Tekstiviestitse raportoiva Tuomas Karhu kirjoitti kes�ll� huimaa suosiota nauttinutta Moskova–Vladivostok-blogia.

“There is a natural trend to reach an ‘equilibrium’ between the agent and the host interests, in order to guarantee concomitant survival for a longer time,” Dr Marco Vitoria said.

If you’ve ever played Star Control when you were a kid, you should check out The Ur-Quan Masters. Ur-Quan is an open source version of Star Control 2, based on material from the game’s original creators. What got me thinking about Star Control was the sounds in the game. I remember some of the “alien themes” vividly. I was hoping I’d find the game and try to create ringtones out of them.

Evidently, I’m not the only one who’s liked SC’s music — Precursors is a group of (Finnish!) enthusiasts who have remixed the music from Star Control II.

Digitodayn Moskova–Vladivostok-blogi aukesi viime torstaina. Toimittaja Tuomas Karhu p�ivitt�� blogia ainoastaan tekstiviestein. Vaikka viestit ovatkin haircut-tyyppisi�, on blogia ihan hauska lukea.

Alla oleva viesti on yksi blogin parhaimmista. (Anna on Karhun tapaama puolalainen kanssamatkustaja. Parilla ilmeisesti synkkaa.)

5.7.2005 klo 18:20 — Ravintolavaunussa on pari muuta asiakasta minun ja Annan lis�ksi. Taustalla soi hiljaa ven�l�inen musiikki. Vanha tarjoilija palvelee verkkaisesti.Viet�mme vaunussa kolme tuntia jutellen viime p�ivien tapahtumista ja juoden ven�l�ist� olutta. Koko tilanne tuntuu ep�todelliselta, kuin elokuvasta. V�lill� alamme k�ytt�yty�, kuin olisimme osa elokuvaa. Olen koko matkan aikana lukenut kolme uutista tekstiviestin�. El�m� on t��ll�, t�m�n junavaunun sis�ll�. Ainutlaatuista kokea, miten ymp�r�iv� maailma menett�� merkityst��n. Olen kahden p�iv�n sis�ll� Vladivostokissa.

Werewolf is another name for Mafia the game. Janne’s played it, lucky him.

Web color schemes is a neat collection of websafe color schemes inspired by many sources.

Both links via Kuutio.

I’ve enjoyed reading the Project Aardvark weblog. Fogcreek’s idea is great: four interns create a working, saleable software product in the course of one summer. Last Friday, they finally revealed their product.

Ever since Marko Samuli showed me Firefox’s Session extension, my pain has been less. I’m actually able to close Firefox once in a while. It’s still miles behind Opera’s usability.

The Games Journal is a great small magazine on board games. I just discovered it this month, when it’s celebrating its fifth year anniversary. My favorites are the reviews; I’m interested in finding a few new board games. Read more

Enterin mukaan yli 30 prosenttia 15–17-vuotiaista suomalaisista on rekister�itynyt IRC-Gallerian k�ytt�jiksi. Oho. Via Janne Jalkanen.

Huhujen mukaan Sanoman toimitusjohtaja k�vi Jenkeiss� kuulemassa blogigospelia, ja on k��ntym�ss� uskoon. Heti kun keksii, miten siit� saisi bisnest�. Kuinkakohan usein h�n ja Alex Nieminen nyky��n lounastavat?

There’s a strange belief that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was written to be an alternative score for the Wizard of Oz. While for me the idea’s a hmph, it still sounds like fun to try.

What is the box jellyfish, A.K.A. Tripedalia cystophora. And it’s helping solve Darwin’s “how can a complex organ like the eye be explained by evolution” question.

Valinnanvapaus is my favorite piece in Rikkaus, UIAH’s graphic design department’s spring exhibition. Rikkaus explores the things all around and in everyday life that make us rich.

Robert Evans, the subject of the most stupefying bio I’ve ever read, meets the “Helmut Newton of porn,” Andrew Blake. A great read. Very Thompsonesque.

Whirlpool’s site is an excellent example of “blugracu design”. That’s short for: blues, grays, gradients, and curves.

I can’t believe I’m admitting to reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Let alone reading New Spring, a friggin’ prequel to the ten novels already published.

Well, my name is Ilya, and I’m a fantasy reader.

There, I’ve said it. Yes, I’m a fantasy reader, though I hope my reading list shows that I don’t read fantasy exclusively. In fact, about a year and a half ago, I found that I couldn’t stomach most fantasy novels. Ever since, I’ve half-joked that “real literature” has ruined me for fantasy.

But back to Jordan. New Spring felt nicely familiar, like visiting Grandma’s. I can’t help it: I liked it.

I am a little miffed, though, that Jordan is writing prequels instead finishing off the Wheel of Time series. I’d like to finish that and be over with it.

There is only one fantasy series that I’d ever recommend non-fantasy junkies to read: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (the fourth book is still under progress).

Unlike most Vonnegut novels, I actually had a hard time getting into The Sirens of Titan. Maybe it was because it is one of his early works, maybe because it was a British edition, which was set in a horrible Bodoni-style font.

I managed to finish The Sirens (no feat at all, of course, I always finish the books I start), and it was okay. Not as good as Galapagos (a low book of Vonnegut’s — despite the deeply resonant ideas it revolved around), but better than Vonnegut’s early short stories collected in Welcome to the Monkey House.

Jonathan Snook, web designer extraordinaire, has written a javascript to clear links that lead to the current page. Such a simple, clever idea. Why didn’t anyone else think of that?

There’s been some talk about how innovative Google is in allowing its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time on personal projects. Turns out, Toshiba was already doing this in the 70s. The Japanese electric typewriter — no small achievement — was developed as such a personal project.

Proximity is addicting. By what logic are the numbers presented?

PBS has 100 examples from The Big Book Of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide For The Careful Speaker by Charles Harrington Elster.

Bruce Schneier’s Individual-i is a symbol for personal liberty.

The end of the world if God is a juggler.

Theo Jansen is the father of strandbeest. From Mark Hurst’s interview:

Q - Will these creatures live on in some fashion?

They can do it in two ways. They might live on the beach; the guy who works for me, he’s quite young, and he knows how to build them now. Maybe after I’m dead he can keep the beach animals alive, and he could get a pupil as well, and maybe it could go on for some generations.

But it would take several generations to make the beach animals truly independent from us. Today, every five minutes I have to do something to repair them again. But that’s longer than it was before; it used to be a few seconds. Storms, especially, are terrible for these beasts, but they’re surviving them better now. There must be a point where this period could go to weeks, or months even. They’ll need a way to repair themselves, and to multiply. They do that already a bit, but I have to help them very much doing that.

To block Firefox’s prefetching (if you don’t want it to mess up your web statistics), trap HTTP request headers reading “X-moz: prefetch” and return a 404 error.

Tufte’s goal in his work: “Simple design, intense content.” If I had to describe in four words why the weblog format works, these would be the ones.

JJG on Ajax: “Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
• and JavaScript binding everything together.”

If ever in need of some practical information on optimizing PHP code, John Lim’s howto is a great resource. The article has been kept up to date with changes in PHP, and serves as a reminder to focus on what really matters in optimization.

There has been some discussion lately about whether it worthwhile to use single quotes over double quotes in PHP. Yes, it’s faster to use single quotes since PHP doesn’t have to look for variables within a string. But no, it’s not really worth the effort to use single quotes exclusively. Why? Most significantly, the performance gain is neglible (if you need more speed, this isn’t where you’re going to get it). And secondly, if you have to change code (or coding practices), you’re only making it harder to read and creating more work.

I’ve heard people advocate extreme optimization before. My favorite was the tongue-in-cheek school of thought that recommended that all HTML code be parsed so that tags with long names are replaced with shorter ones, and all “unnecessary” whitespace be removed. The browser doesn’t care what your code looks like, and the less whitespace there is, the less data there is to transfer.

Baekdal demonstrates usable XMLHttpRequest forms in practice. He makes a good point that plain-vanilla HTML forms actually have some things going for them in the usability department; designers need to be aware of these when creating forms with more advanced features and behavior.

Processors can’t get much faster, so they’re going parallel, and sooner than you think. From a sidebar: “� Today’s single-threaded applications as actually used in the field could actually see a performance boost for most users by going to a dual-core chip, not because the extra core is actually doing anything useful, but because it is running the adware and spyware that infest many users’ systems and are otherwise slowing down the single CPU that user has today.”

While I haven’t jumped on the GTD bandwagon (yet), I really like Cory’s transcript of Danny O’Brien’s talk about the productivity of alpha geeks.

I have a dozen text files on my desktop with various lists. Mainly URLs, but also song names and notes and books recommendations. I never used the desktop until I stopped blogging for a while and started keeping this miscellaneous stuff in flat text files.

Janne’s always-excellent Kuutio has moved. No links are broken, but the old site is still up and there’s no forwarding.

Via Kuutio: Fontleech, a weblog for free fonts, and some recommendations on free fonts that all designers should have, Vera and Libertine. This is a topic that has crossed my mind often, and Janne whistfully says that it’d be nice (if he had time) to upkeep a list of must-have typefaces.

While on the topic of keeping comprehensive lists, I will now meander into a little talk about weblogs, a favorite subject matter of oldtimer-bloggers everywhere.

One of my principles of running a weblog is to collect, in atomic entries, items that could be collected later into a list of resources. While categorization is one way of providing this kind of structure, it generally fails due to the difficulties of using categories in the first place. In my own blogging system I also use a freeform textfield called “topics”, in which is meant to tie entries together by other factors than their topic.

For example, when I was importing old posts into Fathom this, I noticed I had many posts in which I mused about Sunday evenings. Now, Sunday evenings is not something I would give its own category, but it is a topic I had returned to several times, and might do so again. How then, to connect each post without manually linking to each one? Topical keywords.

While I do have a tool that shows me all my existing topical keywords, I decided when I was designing the system that I’d leave the field as open-ended as possible. I hoped it’d allow me to accidentally create unexpected connections and complementary two-way links between entries of superficially irrelevant nature.

My excitement over topical keywords has so far proven unfounded — I have the same problems with keywords as I do with categories. How many keywords should I assign? What should they be based on? Feelings, moods, people, places? General or specific topics? Some of the problems of categorization go away with keywords, but others arise.

Tags have created a big stir lately in blogland. I like the idea. What I would really like to see would be open ontologies to map different tags together. And then I want automatic categorization. CS (that’s computer science, not Counterstrike) gods, do you hear me?

“Photoshop, Windows, Office cheap! Aphorisms tolerated.”

World Jump Day is a grand attempt to shift the world into a new orbit and stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogenous climate.

World Jump Day is on July 20, 2006. The time to jump in Helsinki is at 9:39:13, so find a hard surface, and synchronize your clock.

Robert H. Frank writes about how the self-interest model may skew the perspective of economists. “Repeated exposure to the self-interest model makes selfish behavior more likely.”

“The narrow self-interest model, which encourages us to expect the worst in others, often brings out the worst in us as well.”

Tuulipukuviihteen kurkot jahtaamaan taviksia verkkoon, tapahtumiin ja k�nnyk�ihin. Oh no.

Joey Comeau is raising money for his tuition by serializing his unfinished novel online. The first chapter of Lockpick Pornography is up and waiting to impress you. Comeau writes disturbing and hilarious job applications at Overqualified and creates the webcomic A Softer World together with Emily Horne.

Instiki may be easy to install, but I wonder if it’s so easy to learn to use it to its full extent.

From the Literary Saloon: “A ‘book’ in five days. That’s what Mara Reinstein and Joey Bartolomeo — writers at Us Weekly — have done: 40,000 words (on Brad & ‘Jen’, who have apparently broken up, which is apparently of interest to someone out there) in less than a week.”

Ohjelmointitekniikka-kurssilla (3 ov) tutustutaan mm. Javan 1.5-versioon, assert-lauseisiin ja graafisiin k�ytt�liittymien toteutuksiin. Kurssi suoritetaan opintopiireiss�. Ryhmien ratkaisut ovat verkossa.

Reserving some books today, I noticed that Helmet now shows users their rank in the reservation line. Based on my place on the waiting list, it would appear that Mikko Rimminen’s Pussikaljaromaani is trouncing Tuomas Vimma’s Helsinki 12.

Assuming that there are only single copies of each book, and that each person picks up their reservation promptly, reads it, and returns it within 30 days, I will be reading the first lines of Helsinki 12 sometime in October, 2009. I’ll still have to wait another eight years until it’ll me my turn to pick up Pussikaljaromaani in February 2018.

Of course, that Helsinki 12 is in its second printing and ten euros cheaper than Pussikaljaromaani could affect these standings. Or it could be that the kind people who use the library like reading about drinking beer more than they like reading about assholes living it up dotcom style.

“Star Wars” despots vs. “Star Trek” populists. I read this David Brin’s article from 1999 yesterday for the first time. It touches on the topic of why the scifi genre is held in such little regard outside of its fanbase. Be sure to read Brin’s note on the Enlightenment, Romanticism and science fiction.

Neal Stephenson discussed a similar topic, why commercial authors aren’t respected in the literary scene, in an interview on Slashdot a while ago.

Tuomas Vimman Helsinki 12 -kirjan kansikin on pornoa. Janne havainnollistaa. Kirjaa lukemattakin ja sen uusmediamilj��t� kavahtaen siit� on vaikea olla pit�m�tt�—jo pelk�st��n sen markkinoinnin vuoksi.

On par with me not writing here, like, forever, I’ve failed to mention that my computer (which has been acting up and bluescreening daily for a long time) is much better. I was given a brand-new 512MB RAM chip, and after removing the two older chips, everything’s been working almost flawlessly. Knock on wood.

G�ten Iselilja oli Yle X3M:n viikon levy pari viikkoa sitten. G�ten l�himm�ksi Suomen sukulaiseksi veikkaisin Nightwishi�, joskin sen norjalaista mytologiaa luotaava folkpoprokki ei varmaan ole tarpeeksi raskasta Nightwishin faneille. B�ndi on tulossa Suomeen maalis- tai huhtikuussa.

Stephen Johnson writes about how his note-taking system has changed the way he writes — and thinks. Sounds familiar. I had lofty goals for my personal CMS (which I use to publish this weblog) to do basically the same thing. Only my heap-of-code doesn’t have any of the contextual search features of DevonThink, which means my CMS does nothing like it.

The University of Helsinki computer sciences department is planning to put together a collection of open source software and other programming material generated by students and researchers. For now there’s only a germ of a list.

I installed Audioscrobbler today. Not sure what to do with it, but still.

Neil Stephenson interview at Slashdot. In his answer to the second question, Stephenson has a great explanation for why “commercial authors” aren’t respected by the literary scene.

The Prelinger Archives contains over 40 000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. One gem: Are You Popular?, “one of the best examples of post-World War II social guidance films, with examples of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ girls, proper and improper dating etiquette, courtesy to parents, and an analysis of what makes some people popular and others not.”