Following the success of Liberty City Stories on the PSP (and nowadays also PS2), Rockstar North has chosen to create a similar sequel for the second game in the series.

Vice City Stories debuts on october 17th, and will hopefully end up on the PS2 as well.

Of the three modern GTA-games Vice City is my favorite. The eighties' pastel- and blood-colored excess is well-realized within. The old nemesis of mission imbalance (and long restart times) plague the game, and thus I never finished it. Perhaps now's a good time to try out the infamous Cop Land mission again...

Watched Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider on dvd. I'd seen this before on television, and quite forgotten how powerful a movie it is.

It is indeed much more than just a drug-fuelled joyride to see Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

It's a cruelly cutting analysis of the late sixties America - how the beautiful country got surrendered to conformists afraid of anyone daring to rock the status quo. The images of nature are breathtaking, as are most of the people encountered on the road. The former on account of beauty, the latter on bigotry.

Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

George Hanson

Jack Nicholson's great as an alcoholic and talkative lawyer, who seems to be the only character in the movie that is interested in broadening his horizons. The rest (apart from the hippies in the outdoor commune, of course) choose to stay entrenched in their shelters. Henry Fonda and Dennis Hopper are quite silent observers for protagonists, and a lot of their dialogue is improvised.

This is the quintessential road movie, and as such should be treated as mandatory. It's not an easy movie to watch, its pace being deliberately slow, and the poignant bits of dialogue stealing by without any warning.

Attempted to go visit the India Express-exhibition in Tennispalatsi's museum. Failed. The gates were closed, and the exhibition basically had been torn down ahead of the schedule. The museum held no information what had happened, and every poster and ad still pointed towards 30th of july as the last day of the show. A convenient employee stated that the "show had been taken out ahead of the schedule", but refused to speculate why. Especially the lack of updated schedule was strange, adding a post-it note to the posters and changing the dates in relevant "what to do"-pages in hesari wouldn't have consumed much effort. If any.

Went to ARS06-exhibit in Kiasma instead. Which turned out to be quite a variable collection of modern art. Ranging from impressive (snow globe miniatures) to boring (video installlations) via the semi-interesting (most of the content). The two complaints choirs (Birmingham and Helsinki) were interesting as well - and quality youtube-fodder, if not already available there. Kiasma's layout is as confusing as ever, and one floor almost got skipped due to oversight.

Cool, the two globe artists (Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz) have a decent site where their whole output can be examined.

Finished the first video game in ages. The very well done New Super Mario Bros. on the DS.

Quality entertainment, and not too demanding for outplayed fingers. And with enough possibilities to save the game to shorten the sessions to an appropriate 40 minutes or so at a go.

Finished the game, but that's not the end, as there's still quite a few levels to solve and star coins to locate.

But not right now.

All in all the DS has been a very positive discovery. The design ethics are straight from Apple's playbook, and the battery life's respectable indeed. And as a sofa entertainment-unit it's very good, especially with the improved screen over the original.

And with a humongous backlog of available games (including the entire range out on GBA), and a future release schedule peppered with interesting entries - Sony's PSP does have a fight in its hands.

Despite the sunshine, some interesting destinations have accumulated:

• DRM is bad, mmmkay? And it's always good to know the enemy.
• Wanted to check out whose song Radar Love originally was, and was broadsided by this information blast. Never guessed that it was this popular.
• Ptolus looks like it'll be the biggest game-related publication ever. And most expensive. Though the idea of having lots and lots of unprinted material available on an attached cd is a very good idea.
• It's been a week since the world jump day, and at least I'm oblivious to any axial wobble the six hundred million participants have caused.
• Finland's selection of insects (and related animals) is far narrower than that of the US. And especially that of any big/poisonous enough to be hazardous to health is very small. But a bug-identification site like or would still be good.
• Now this is getting seriously funky and impressively twisted! Doom 1 is playable on a monitor screen in Doom 3.
• Amit Singh's book on the internals of Apple's OS X looks very interesting. And the web-only bonus content is an excellent addition - the latest extra chapter is a 140 page history of all the operating systems put out by Apple, since the seventies.
• And hopefully Singh's book is still valid after the fifth release of OS X (codenamed Leopard). The content's been kept under wraps solidly, and the best guesses as to what's going to be in can be found in the keynote bingo for the Worldwide Developer Conference on the first week on august.
• Now this registers high on the nift-o-meter: gotapi.com is an interactive syntax guide for those awkward moments when, say, the attribute names of <SPAN> tag prove elusive.

Missed this year's annual Linux Symposium in Ottawa. Fallen far enough from technical responsibilities to be a suboptimal attendee.

The traditionally quite thick proceedings are available, and at 900+ pages quite a handful.

Coverage at newsforge is done on a daily basis and available right now: tuesday, wednesday, friday and saturday (pretty much just the keynote).

Most of Linux Weekly News' coverage is still under embargo for non-subscribers and will be freely available in a week.

This year's keynote speaker was Greg Kroah-Hartman, and he has conveniently put up the slides on his blog. And quite a presentation it is. One which probably provoked lots of interaction with the audience. Fortunately it's not just slides that are available, but also additional background information. And how could any keynote that gives props to the flying spaghetti monster be anything less than great?

The Independent cover is a testament to the sad state of affairs. Especially when it's a week-old paper, and the battle rages on.

[ Originally sighted in Jason Kottke's blog. ]

Back in the late eighties, one of William Gibson's first novels (I think it was Mona Lisa Overdrive but am not certain) featured a character whose job was to check whether proposed company names would not mean something rude in rare languages such as burmese.
I thought that this was quite a far-out concept.

Little did I know.
Fast forward a couple of years, and Wired runs an article on a company that specializes in creating safe names for products and businesses. (Bugger, I seem to be unable to locate a link to the exact article. Might be that it was in another magazine instead.)

And it's clear that a lot of companies have not consulted such naming wizards. And while the page does bear warning that some of these are just urban legends - some of the worst have indeed happened and breached the news threshold.

An even more hilarity is to be had from mis-selected URLs selected (and subsequently advertised). Some are obviously dictated by the name of company. But really, people ought to Know Better.

[ Last link, from which the whole entry sprung forth discovered at hittegodsbyrån. ]

The third Sandman collection, Dream Country contains the most famous story of the whole 75-issue lifetime of the comic. A Midsummer Night's Dream won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 1991.

The four stories collected within (yeah, this is much thinner book than the two preceding parts) are independent, and there's no arcing storyline to connect them in any way.

Three of the four issues are classics, and the fourth one is the oddest single issue of them all.

The first three all concern themselves with the hidden power of a story. Power that can be used for good, or misused for selfish goals.

Calliope, the first issue is definitely of the latter kind - it deals with the forcible removal of a writer's block, by using a real muse to effect a literary comeback. Needless to say, messing with mythology meets with a sticky end. The story ideas thrown about with wild abandon pretty could form the basis of future works in many genres.

Dream of a Thousand Cats is appealing mostly to people who like cats. Neil Gaiman obviously does. Otherwise it would be hard to imagine a whole issue dedicated to the species from such a bening viewpoint. And it's a nice diversion, pointing out that dreams are not confined to humans (as anybody who has watched a sleeping pet can verify).

The third issue is the much-raved-about A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's a tale that mixes Shakespeare (with whom Morpheus made a deal back in issue #13) and the Faerie folk. Within the eponymous play as a backdrop for the story. This is one of the most heavily annotated issues.

This was the first issue drawn by Charles Vess, whose style, once witnessed, is hard to mix up with others. Very well-suited to a fairy tale, he returned for several issues later in the saga, as well as collaborated with Gaiman on Stardust, a short story that should be real in the fully-illustrated form.

The fourth story, Façade has no Dream in it at all, it's got big sister Death, and her only in a minor role. The protagonist is a superheroine (from an earlier era of DC comics, and badly neglected since), whose retirement has not been all that successful. It's by no means a bad story, just seems misplaced in the context of Sandman. Death plays her part as an upbeat grim reaperess as she has in previous issues.

The stories are interludes in the overall storyline, which picks up speed in the next campaign: A Season of Mists.

Figured that a cover image and clip of the comic would be appropriate additions to the entries. And added them to the previous two parts as well. Picked the clips at random (and will replace them if more suitable ones pop up).

Really, I truly expected to like Douglas Coupland's JPod, the sequel to his masterful Microserfs from 1996.

But I didn't. It's not really a sequel at all - as all the characters have changed. And it's not really a novel - as the plotlines are vague at best, and downright illogical most of the time.

In Coupland's previous output it's been the characters and observations of the real world that have made the books worthwhile. In JPod neither factor sadly materializes. The plot feels like an early Monty Python movie - just a collection of individual scenes unsuccessfully glued together. Here, sadly, even the majority of the scenes is drowned in the thickly pasted sticky goo.

The characters are one-dimensional and hollow, most drawn with a wide brush on a single stroke. And while the previous books have been filled with eccentrics and odd individuals, the author really went to town on this one. And to top it off he uses himself as a character - several times the whole plot hinges on a chance encounter. The only other author who uses himself as a deus ex machina that I know is Clive Cussler - and he only uses a page or two per novel, but in this book the main plot converges on the author as a protagonist. Which just feels wrong, and its vanity is squirm-inducing.

The book contains two 21-page spreads of numbers. Yes, numbers. One is a collection of decimals of pi, and the other some primes. So, out of a 400-page book, a full tenth is used on pure filler. Arrogance, or a witty statement on the futility of publishing books on paper. I'm betting on the former. And sure don't want to hear the numbers read in a monotonous voice in an audiobook.

The writing is OK, but nothing stellar (like in the author's early output). Oneliners work, but the observations of work/consumerism/geekdom are shallow. And often nothing more than chunks of spam as text-separating elemenst are used verbatim instead of trying to figure out how to tie them into the surroundings.

As a novel this is a failure. As a zeitgeist tool this is a failure. The characters rarely work, and the lukewarm, but mainly positive, whimsy so well-established in the previous novels is totally absent.

Like I said. I expected to like this book. I wanted to like this book.
But I just couldn't.
And if the user-provided reviews at amazon.com are any indication, a lot of frustrated readers agree.

Some recent arrivals / changes on the blogroll:

• Matti has given up his quest for anonymity.
• Salakuunneltua brings forth the overheard lapses of reason, in finnish.
• Charles Stross has changed from bloxsom to MT - and changed the URL of the blog as well.
• The official Google blog is usually a worthwhile visit.

Leaving a camera home on purpose is obviously an open invitation for all manner of critters to show up and cavort when there's no means to capture them properly on film.

Saw a hedgehog in Pikkuhuopalahti, and trying to snap a photograph with the phone had the expected result, the animal was bothered by the close distance and rolled into a ball. And uncurled in moments, and immediately disappeared into the underbrush, hunting for a juicy earthworm or two.

Visited the Mikätin (Wossname in english) exhibition in the Museum of Technology in Viikki.

The collection of unlikely objects is worth the price of admission, and recommended to all who'd like to puzzle over the function of mysterious domestic tools.

Of which there's more than three hundred pieces on display. And a score more whose identity has been left open for the visitors to guess. Spread across several decades - there's both everyday things and utter enigmas to see.

Confined photography to the rather dry Vantaanjoki flowing by the museum on both sides. Especially the overflow of the dam was miniscule, the river's undergoing a shallow period following the recent dry times. The white balance seems to be rather overwhelming in the first image, it wasn't nearly this nice out.

Saw the sequel to the sleeper hit of 2003. It's a decent movie, but so painfully obviously the tough "middle part" of a trilogy that it's at times awkward to watch.

Not a bad movie by any means, but far less entertaining than it could have been. The lead actors repeat their roles from the first part - Johnny Depp still hams it up as Captain Jack, but hasn't really added anything to the character since the last outing. So, it's Mr. Davy Jones who ends up leading the pack - Bill Nighy's great as the drowned sailor who has ended up an imitation of Cthulhu, with an octopus for a beard.

Plot-wise this resembles a video game, in uncomfortably many ways. The main storyline is a haphazardly put together quest from one location to the other, and it's neatly supplemented by visually excellent action scenes that are easily translatable into an interactive form. And the whole thing just reeks of the venerable LucasArts' Monkey Island tetralogy of adventure games.

The third, and probably final part of the movie will be out next summer. As far as Disney is to be trusted, the two were shot back to back.

The movie has a long credit sequence, and the ten seconds of additional movie footage is not really worth it. Unlike X3, which supposedly has a very significant add-on post-credits.

Things that have alerted the powerful cybernoid lately:

• Stat City is the coolest Threadless design lately (and I sure haven't bought many t-shirts lately).
• Crash-only software is another interesting article at lwn.net. And I refuse to use work-credentials to read about the ongoing symposium right now.
• CNN interviews the guy who creates the occasional day-specific logos for google.
• Prestige definitely shoots to the top of "should definitely see"-list. Christopher Nolan (with no bad movies on his belt) directing Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Scarlett Johansson on an interesting premise sure sounds worthwhile.
• Pitwall, a Formula-1 management game. For the inner Jean Todts and Flavio Briatores. It cannot be any more boring than the real thing has been, recently.
• Despite being officially abandoned by Activision, the Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines game keeps getting gamer-provided patches to enhance the original release in many unexpected ways.

Spent a lazy four days visiting relatives in Nivala, Pohjanmaa.

The annual "eating too much pork, and pork-related products"-ritual was repeated, once again.

The new arrival in this year's program was the football championships organized for the kids of the clan. With some adult players thrown in for good measure, but banned from scoring goals and performing any defense apart from gentle obstruction.

Discovered also that petanque is much more enjoyable in the offroad-fashion, where the whole yard (grass, shrubberies, gravel and all) serves as the playing field, not just leveled sand.

Four days of no e-mail. Four days of minimal surfing. Four days without a thought like "it'd be so cool to blog this". So clearly I need a longer and more thorough exposure to reality before cold turkey kicks in.

Didn't play with the camera enough. The attached picture is taken at midnight, with some dramatic clouds overhead kind of marring the semi-midnight sun. Far more light than in Helsinki, and easily enough to conduct a meaningful conversation or even read.

To contrast the featherweight (but certainly enjoyable) books read lately, grabbed Martin Rees' Just Six Numbers to finally read. Owned the book for several years, but thus far it has eluded attempts to read.

As per its title, it concentrates on "just six numbers". Six numbers that define the fundamentals of the universe (like the ratio between strong and weak electromagnetic forces). Six numbers that have been tagged with specific symbols. Six numbers, of whose explanations I expect to miss a decent chunk.

Also, the author has one of the coolest titles. An Astronomer Royal is just so much more expressive than a "Chief Scientist" employed by NASA.

Not dry as in the Blackfoot song, but dry as in parched with thirst. The emerald green grassy fields have been turned to burnished straw that's prickly to walk on.

The fields have indeed dried out - only those bits next to ditches seem to exhibit any major greenery, the rest is turning yellowish gray.

Bah, missed the mini-festival in Kaivopuisto yesterday. Utterly forgot about it. No major damage, just a couple of bands that I'd have been interesting to see: von Hertzen Brothers and Moottörin Jyrinä.

Perhaps this calendar-less (let Outlook at work take care of it all) and PDA-less (the T3 is still AWOL in Lavonardo HQ) way is suboptimal in some ways. But not enough to start planning for something extensive in the middle of summer.

The first nuggets of information about the fall season on finnish television are dropping in.

One of the bright spots on the schedule is MTV3's acquisition of House, M.D. In it Hugh Laurie plays a sociopathic doctor who gets to address tough medical cases week after week in a seriously unorthodox manner. And the cases themselves are not common ailments either, and the healing process is usually complicated by lying/distracting relatives, thus neatly pushing the stories into the realm of investigative cop shows.

It is severely formulaic - so severely, that watching it weekly is probably more advisable than going on a by-season spree on dvd. At least I've found a slower pace better.

Despite the show not having long story arcs, I'm averse to spoilers, and have thus avoided careless related browsing. A couple of sites have been useful in following the sarcasm-filled show: House, M.D. Guide is an episode guide on steroids (and carries chunks of dialogue), whereas play.house lists the songs played (and they handily have similar sites for some other shows).

Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is now out on general release in the states. And the critical reception has been rather positive - monday's news shall tell how it performed in the box office.

Sadly, neither finnish distribution company, finnkino nor sandrew-metronome (which are the same thing, these days) has any indication on their "forthcoming"-pages whether this rotoscoped Philip K. Dick-film makes it to the silver screen, or is it relegated straight to dvd.

Toscanini has very decent mushroom risotto. And although their menu is on the short side, there are multiple interesting dishes on offer.

The new Aussie Bar next to Kamppi (in the Presidentti-building) has a decent selection of antipodean brews. Sadly Steinlager is not as good as I remembered.

There is room enough on the stage of Molly Malone's to play a slide trombone. Even when the band has five other members.

Herald Tribune has a very decent retrospective on what was good, and what was not so good in the cup.

And the italian court system did not bury the corruption charges against four top teams following cup success. In a bold move, three teams were relegated to Serie B, and all four subjected to lowering of points from last season. Meaning that we will see unexpected teams in the champions league. Juventus is hit heaviest, and with the -30 points given to them for next season, likely to remain in the lower division for two years. If not longer, when the mass exodus of quality players begins, and true economical desperation sets in.

When McSweeney takes on Axl Rose on the lyrics of Sweet Child O' Mine, the result is smirk-inducing.

And do take a look at an earlier story, titled Superman Returns (a defective dvd player).

In the seriously non-blockbuster niche.

My Name is Bruce is definitely a high concept movie. And the crew definitely got to the producer on one of the latter's not-so-bright days.

B-Movie Legend Bruce Campbell is mistaken for his character Ash from the Evil Dead trilogy and forced to fight a real monster in a small town in Oregon.

IMDB

Then again, being a Bruce Campbell-movie, this might be just something surreally beautiful. Like the unexpectedly bright Bubba-Ho-Tep. Which, on second thoughts, is probably worth more than just three measly stars.

Bobby Kennedy's assassination in 1968 has been completely overshadowed by that of his big brother five years before. And seems to be almost as muddled by conspiracy theories and contradictions. I'm sure that Emilio Estevez' forthcoming Bobby will not tackle the hardest issues, but at least it should re-raise some ancient questions.

Missed Chris Anderson's offer of a free copy of the book for reviewers. Bought the book nonetheless, and will attempt to produce a review of sorts afterwards (and aim to do a better job than what happened with the still-pending entry on Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class).

Or a mojito, if you're so inclined.

• William Gibson's Alien III-script. Which, obviously, wasn't used.
• An annotated list of non-errors in the english language. Now I finally understand what "splitting an infinitive" really means.
• An interesting article on community sites as games.
• Kyle MacDonald traded up his one red paperclip, and now owns a house. In Saskatchewan, Canada, but a house nonetheless.
• This year's annual transhumanism-conference will be organized in Helsinki.
• On the very same weekend as Finncon 2006, the biggest finnish speculative fiction-occasion.
• Minutes from the very first Linux file system workshop are available (and now for free at lwn.net).
• A Chinese company claims that it has cracked the Skype protocol.

Had dinner at Cantina West for the first time in a long while.

While the place itself is the same, with confusing layout and correspondingly hard to locate facilities, the menu has been updated.

In addition to being updated to contain lots of new dishes, it's been physically changed as well. It's no longer a foldable poster, but a proper folder. Avoided tequila, but noted from the menu that the selection has been vastly improved (easily above a dozen varieties) - unfortunately the slammer girls still prowl the premises.

Food was very good. Couldn't avoid the classic Lucky Luke's Jalapenos as a starter - tried jalapeno poppers in dozens of places, and Cantina still comes out on top. Had gnu for the main course - very juicy steak, served with vegetables and a bit too peppery sauce (which was, obviously, easily pushed aside).

In addition to the food quality, also the service was much improved. So I'm sure I'll be back - a year ago I'd have stated to avoid the place, as it was in a downward spiral. Too bad the daily live music sessions seem to be gone for good.

Took the camera out for a test ride on a traditional Seurasaari-trip. Turns out that the 12x zoom is good indeed, and able to cause even distant subjects to fill out the frame. Unfortunately the local fauna seemed as dumb-struck by the heat as the visitors. Squirrels were nowhere to be seen, and the ducks were exhibiting seriously non-photogenic moods. So a couple of closeups of seagulls were the cream of a rather fallow crop this time around. But as the camera is quite carriable; not compact by any means, but definitely smaller than the G3, expect a lot more images of unwary subjects soon.

The ice cream kiosk next to the entrance still sells the oldskoolest ice cream available locally. The "vanilla stick" by Helsingin Jäätelötehdas is exactly as it was 25+ years ago. Should definitely snap a photo of one, next time.

Noted that the Arboretum in Meilahti is undergoing a rather severe update, with vast tracts of land being reworked. Have to find another oasis for this summer, it seems.

Just to contrast how decent the new camera actually is, here's a picture of an oyster eater (that's meriharakka in finnish) I saw the other day - image snapped with the 6680, whose lack of zoom definitely shows... The bird was surprisingly tame - walking to a distance of ten feet or so did not spook it at all.

Thanks to a nifty jersey-creation page, the world finally can see what would have happened had I been born in Belem, as opposed to Meilahti.

So yeah, a single rainy evening all summer long, and I manage to soak the trusty white jukebox.

It's not completely dead, but the wheel refuses to recognize counterclockwise rotation, making the device rather useless.

Bought the S3. As expected.

Shockingly there's no manual in the box. I repeat: there's no manual in the box. So everybody's supposed to print out the .pdfs themselves. Bastards. Time to drop in at work next week, no way I'm printinting these single-sided at home...

The camera itself is nice. As expected. The only worrisomely fiddly bit seems to be the battery compartment cover. Which is designed for people with more joints in their fingers than yours truly, I suspect.

The software provided looks to be useful, but that analysis is based on a six-second glance.

In other news: drinking more than three liters of mineral water a day is inadvisable, even though it is blazing hot outside. Haven't felt this weird in a while.

Syd Barrett, the original Pink Floyd guitarist, is dead.

Time to watch Shine On You Crazy Diamond in its full glory from the newly released Pulse.

Been thinking that the kickoff of the vacation would be Even Better with a new camera.

Not sure of the make and model, but requirements are pretty clear:

• Vastly better optical zoom than what I have now in the G3 (4x).
• Image stabilizer.
• Good macro-facility (and ability to enhance them with extender lenses).
• Decent amount of pixels (5+ is OK).
• Semi-compact size (a wee bit smaller than the G3 would be fine).
• One-piece solution (haven't yet graduated to the SLR + a backpack of objectives-stage).
• Not too expensive (below 650 euros).
• Positive reviews across the web.
• Available right here, right now (and especially in Helsinki).

A couple of cameras seem to fit the bill. Canon's S3 IS looks very good, and Panasonic's DMC-FZ7 fits the criteria above as well. Been happy with the G3 thus far (apart from its sluggish startup/focus times), so there's no fundamental reason to move away from Canon.

Showing why "best player"-awards should be voted on after the final, it's Zidane who now gets the prize. Red carding over a head butt notwithstanding.

+28 outside.

+30 inside.

So I'd say it is summer. Real summer. I think I've drunk more than a quart of mineral water today, and vast quantities of normal water, juice and soda pop on top.

Spent a big chunk of the day lounging on the grassy knoll next to water in Pikku Huopalahti. No presidential assassins were present, and fortunately no loud kids or drunkards either.

Finished reading Charles Stross' Hidden Family. Not that much of an improvement over the first part of the trilogy. But then again, the first part wasn't bad at all.

Italy took the biggest prize of them all in the cup late last night.

And it wasn't a bad game at all. Both teams played active offense, and both had several scoring chances throughout the two hours. But it was the goalies' skill that finally turned the game into penalties, and not the usual (and expected) extra-careful play by the teams.

The penalties were impeccably shot - just one miss in ten. For the french this time, this was actually the first time Italy won a penalty contest in the World Cup. Ever. And Trezeguet's shot was a good one, and an inch off a score. But an inch off, in the end.

However, it's not the penalties that will be remembered from this game, but Zinedine Zidane's ugly exit from international football. After all, he was not really expected to go out on a red card following a cruel headbutt on Materazzi.

But then again, it's not his first violent outburst on the field. He got redcarded for stomping on a saudi-arabian defender in 2002 Cup, and has previous experience from a long head-butt-related ban from the champions league.

Materazzi (in addition to ever-present Cannavaro) was clearly the man of the game. After all, he caused the french penalty, scored Italy's goal off Pirlo's corner, trashtalked Zizou out of the game and finally scored in the penalty contest. Quite a show from someone who was supposed to be just a substitute - but Nesta's injury changed all that. Cannavaro, on the other hand, just mastered the italian defense - challenging whoever he could, and instructing others whom he couldn't. No wonder Italy was the least-scored-against team in the whole cup.

Watched the game in Vltava, in downtown Helsinki. And ran into a huge crowd of celebrating Italians after the game (including all three I'm on a first-name-basis). The local cops took rather a bright view on the folks. And I'm sure that we saw just a palest possible image of what was actually going on all across Italy.

So, Bastian Schweinsteiger pretty much single-handedly demolished the Portuguese hopes for the bronze medal in the cup. Scoring two goals, and shooting one more via a convenient bounce off the defense is about as good as you can get in a game like this.

Portugal wasn't bad, but seemed a step or two behind. The story of the Golden Generation slowly draws to a close - fittingly it was a hookup between Figo and Nuno Gomes who scored the lone goal for Portugal.

Then again, not many picked the german team to go this far in the tournament, and it's clear that the oft-criticized Jürgen Klinsmann gets a clean record from this one - the italian offense just proved too much to handle in the semifinal.

Went to "celebrate the long-awaited release" of Pink Floyd's Pulse-dvd in Virgin Oil Co. Long-awaited in the sense that the recorded concert is more than ten years old. Accompanying the release party was a gig by Hidria Spacefolk whose output I've liked.

Turns out that the release party consisted of nothing else but playing the dvd on a big screen. At a high volume. Technically the concert was exquisitely reproduced. I guess, wasn't present, but impressive both aurally and visually. Sat perplexed with Mr. Musicnaut, sipping beer from a plastic cup. Yes, plastic. Everything was served in plastic cups. Even Corona. But you did get the requisite lime wedge in the cup.

After playing the first disc of the two-disc affair, the stage was given to the band. Who proceeded to play very well indeed. The music is hard to describe - progressive rock's probably a wide enough base (the band themselves use astrobeat, which is probably good enough as well). Absolutely no idea which songs they played.

Very enjoyable show, but a bit too late, had to leave before they finished to catch the last bus out. This was the second time I visited the Virgin Oil, and the first real concert (the samba evening does not count). The stage's pretty good, the hall fits a lot of people, and all in all the facilities are in good shape. And the plastic's ubiquitous in the other live rock'n'roll establishments as well, so it's not a differentiating factor.

Pulse's a definite buy for saturday. Or monday, if the shops actually honor the official release date. And certainly have to look into future Hidria concerts, this was a very enjoyable experience. And I seem to own only a single album of theirs, so there's some catch-up to play, soon.

Gromit's bluetooth seems to be acting up once again, and hence the posting of any recent images will be postponed.

Don't worry, they aren't particularly interesting (or even good) images.

Four weeks of idleness. Welcome.

And this year it's a contiguous vacation, without an intervening trip to Canada inbetween.

And there was much rejoicing.

The first part of the bothniazed Lord of the Rings is now complete. And I can guarantee that the new Yhyreksän Kökkä makes absolutely no sense unless you speak finnish. And find dialect-wallowing re-interpretations of classic works amusing.

But if you do, do yourself a favour and take a peek inside.

(And the second part, Kaks Komiaa Pytinkiä, is off to a good start already.)

Saw Guns n' Roses in the Hartwall Arena yesterday. Or what's left of the band. Actually it's just Axl Rose, Dizzy Reed (who was never really a member) and a big bunch of guys that have been added and replaced during the last ten or so years. So, hence a single rose (since Duff "Rose" McKagan is gone), and no more of the guns (who are employed mainly in Velvet Revolver these days).

The gig was late. Very late. Even though the previous day's concert had been late, this was even later. The warm-up band started at around 20:55 and the headliner a good two hours later. Meaning that the concert finished somewhere after one am. Not that I really minded, had an easy and late morning today.

The warm-up band was Melrose, a finnish rockabilly band that has been playing since the mid-eighties. Wasn't bad, but not a genre I'm a fan of. Recognized two songs - Rich Little Bitch and a cover of AC/DC's Let There Be Rock.

The wait for the main event was a long one, and plagued by a couple of false starts. However, finally GnR mk. III took to the stage with Welcome to the Jungle. Axl was in fine form, but age had taken its toll - he didn't even attempt to hit all the high notes. The gig consisted basically of three things: old songs, new songs (off the forthcoming Chinese Democracy-album) and solos.

On the old songs-front the band concentrated on material from their debut album. And a lot of the Appetite for Destruction classics did indeed get played. And of the twin Use your Illusions. Material was widely used, from punchy Nightrain to the most pompous song in the repertoire: November Rain.

Four new songs got played. Four quite different songs, ranging from grungy to electronic. None of them sounded like instant classics. But none of the four were bad either. So I have quite high hopes for the new album (which still doesn't have a release date set).

Solos (and a single two-guitar jam), a wide selection thereof, formed the last third of the trinity. Solos that were pleasantly short (around three minutes or so), and mostly interesting. Robin Finck played Sibelius' Finlandia as the first instrumental, and Dizzy Reed got an even bigger applause with his choice for the piano solo: Hanoi Rocks' evergreen Don't You Ever Leave Me.

Set list:

Welcome to the Jungle,
It's so Easy,
Mr. Brownstone,
Live and Let Die, 
Better,
Finlandia,
Sweet Child of Mine,
Knocking on Heaven's Door,
Don't You Ever Leave Me,
somenewsong,
You Could Be Mine,
Guitar jam,
Out Ta Get Me,
November Rain,
Think About You,
Don't Cry, 
yetanothernewsong,
Patience,
Nightrain,
onemorenewsong,
Paradise City.

So, after a controversial-ish penalty, it'll be France who joins Italy in the final game.

And Portugal is relegated to trying to equal their finest hour on saturday, the bronze from the '66 cup in England. Perhaps forty dry years inbetween have been enough.

Well, if the azzurri approached every game with the attitude and poise they exhibited in the extra time, football would be so much more enjoyable to watch.

I don't know what made Marcello Lippi change his tactics to an all-out offense, perhaps the specter of penalty kicks (Italy's 0-of-3, Germany a 4-of-4). But it sure was pleasant to watch. Rampant attack netting two goals and two shots on posts.

Whoever faces Italy in the finals will have their hands full if they retain this form.

It looks that Guns n' Roses are finally coming back to Finland, after a fifteen year gap. Depite Axl having a bite of a security guard in Stockholm. Sadly, however, the warm-up band (Bullet for My Valentine, who were decent supporting Metallica) will not play the last three shows in Oslo and Helsinki.

... here's the six links.

• Summer's definitely not the fireworks season in Finland, but tips on photographing nocturnal pyrotechnics are bound to come in useful sooner or later.
• What would happen if some classic photographs would be posted on a review site. The responses are ghost-written, obviously, but the caricatures are cruel indeed.
• Not all the video games have cool names. Gamerevolution has put together a list of the fifty worst ones.
• Carnival of Gamers, again something for a rainy day.
• On the internet, there's room for everything. Including a photo collection of yawning rabbits. (Which seems to be down due to exceeding bandwidth limits at the moment).
• A decently long interview with Ron Gilbert, the man behind the classic Secret of Monkey Island.

The second Sandman collection, comprising of issues #9-16, was the one that convinced me that this is indeed a comic to follow.

The book consists of a seven issue story called the Doll's House (with a unrelated tidbit in the middle) and an independent tale of African origin.

The african folk tale begins the show, partly tying up an earlier loose end, and showing that Morpheus can be a mean man when pressed. As already seen in the very first issue - but that was pretty much justifiable vengeance. The story is original to Gaiman (as far as I know, and the annotators agree), but has an authentic feel to it.

The main event of the book is the story of the Doll's House. At six issues it manages to go deep, much deeper than the individual tales in the first collection.

It returns to many strands pulled free in the first issues, and adds a lot more to a very complex knot. A knot that is unravelled at the end, with again many more strings to follow up in later issues. Tributes are again given to older comics, in some cases even the format of the story changes (to match Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland).

The single most stand-out aspect of the storyline is the "cereal convention", a gathering of serial killers. An occasion whose participants end up changed men after a few select encounters. An occasion that still, on re-reading the story, just oozes potential. And characters that probably could give Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter an even match.

The amount of coincidences in the story is a bit high, but that's easily explained by the vortex that is screwing up cause and effect to everyone. Explained by the reader, the story itself resorts to no such easy way out.

The unrelated issue in the middle of the Doll's House concerns a man who chooses immortality over an easy way out off the mortal coil. A man who gets to experience the seven centuries, all the way to the present day. The tale itself is not very interesting, though has an unexpected human element within. Nope, the main issue are the changing times seen through the man, and in the centennial meeting location - and especially the other visitors therein: Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare amongst many.

Two siblings of Dream and Death put in appearances - Desire in an active role, Despair as a mere observer. As does the Corinthian, a stray nightmare in human guise - with both an attitude and an appetite. Delirium and "the Lost One" are referred to, as are grave sequences of kinslaying amongst the Endless. And we get to meet another constantine, Johanna, an ancestor of Hellblazer - the cold, occult ways obviously run in the family.

I'll be ready.

First with my pirate Totti-shirt bought from Firenze back in 2003 (and almost discarded in the aftermath of the spit-ola debacle in Euro '04).

And tomorrow with an authentic Portuguese jersey.

Some things are impossible to parody. They make fools of themselves far too efficiently for anybody else to put in a good word.

Two exhibits of recent lack of a clue stem from the Big House in the states.

First up is a Daily Show clip on the recent video game hearings in the Congress. Even though this does feature the ever-reliable Jon Stewart, he's upstaged by the politicians. Big time.

The second exhibit is a seriously, yet amusingly misguided attempt to describe why net neutrality is bad. It isn't. Really.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

I'm sure the finnish legislators are almost as adept to putting their feet in their mouths, but without an equivalent to C-SPAN here the juiciest bits are never caught.

Joined Mr. Musicnaut today in impromptu fashion for a bit of progressive rock in the Esplanadi park. Viima, the band, turned out technically competent but hollow in its execution. Thankfully we had scored seats on the Kappeli patio, it would have been more boring to watch without a convenient pint.

The Esplanadi stage has daily shows, some of which do seem interesting.

As noted a rather long time ago, I started re-reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Or was supposed to, the process has been slow. Anyway, as noted, here's the kickoff for the Lavonardo's Reading Sandman collection, the first part, on the collection of the first eight stories - Preludes & Nocturnes.

The collection is easily divisible to two parts - the first seven issues form the first story arc, describing the return of Morpheus from a seventy-year imprisonment, and the eighth issue looks inside the protagonist.

Indeed, the seventy-five issue tale begings with the imprisonment of Sandman. The first issue plays with the conventions of horror. Including elements from mythology, history and classics of the genre. However, already the very first issue also sets in motion things that will not be apparent until much later. And hence annotations are welcome - especially when reading the issues one by one, and probably thus missing even the easier references to things gone recently by. In addition to ubiquitous foreshadowing, there are lots and lots of references to other DC comics, the majority of which breeze past uninformed readers (such as myself, my knowledge of DC history is very limited). There are not many answers, and most things are left deliciously undeveloped, to be taken up in forthcoming issues.

The second issue introduces the Dreamtime, the homeland of Morpheus, and its varied inhabitants. Some familiar from legends, some conveniently picked up from earlier comics. Here, especially, the references are thick on the ground - but fortunately they are not necessary to understand the tale, they just add depth. A considerable amount thereof. The three witches outline the quest the weakened Morpheus should undertake to reclaim his powers and position - something the following few issues concentrate on.

The third issue shows the readers the price of fiddling with the possessions of the Endless. Co-starring one of the Vertigo mainstays, John Constantine - the Hellblazer. An ex-owner of the first liberated item, who is pressganged to assist in its recovery. Modern horror dominates the story, as do the constant bits of lyrics sprinkled amongst the dialogue. A bit hard-fisted technique, but effective in differentiating from the otherwordly nuances of the previous two issues.

The fourth issue is probably my favorite of this set. It is a crafty tale of besting the innumerable legions of Hell. On their home turf. While seriously underpowered. Obviously this is a battle of wits, not brawn - and here Gaiman shines, the trickster-like guile of Morpheus is a pleasure to watch. References to Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno abound - and lots of old comics get namechecked as well.

The next three issues form a sub-arc. A storyline in which Morpheus faces both powerful enemies and assistance from actual costumed heroes. And one where I definitely was lost in the widely strewn names and references to things that had occurred in long-lost pages of Justice League of America and such. Once again, lack of knowledge is no barrier, and the story itself flows well. The middle-part of the threesome has clever characterization of lifelike individuals, pretty much the first time any normal humans appear in the stories. Humans than quickly descend into a lord of the fliesian anarchy with a little prodding by the villain. Well-done, and proof that the comic is not just rewriting mythology.

The eighth issue is the first big hit of the comic, a story where Dream meets his big sister, Death, and gains perspective into his own existence, finally ridding himself of the nagging melancholy that's been plaguing him the length of the entire collection. I thought the story's set in London, but it's actually in and around the Washington Square Park in New York. This is the first time any of the other six Endless are seen at length - and Death, as invented by Mike Dringenberg does put on a good show, the ankh-necklace and the black circlet under one eye have been hewn into the goth myths unerasably by the comic. Definitely a powerful issue, but I sure preferred the fourth one to this one. Not by much, and the margin seems to narrow each time I return to this.

I originally read the first few issues in the short-lived finnish monthly comic Kalma, but quickly had to purchase the collection instead, as the paper was not exactly turning out its issues fast enough.

Stay tuned for part two, Doll's House, soon.

So the quarter-finals are now over, and the field has narrowed to just four teams vying for the trophy.

And the biggest news obviously is that Brazil is not within the quartet. They got solidly outplayed by France and sent out of the contention. The team just never got clicking in the game, and the 0-1 margin is so low because of the goalie's heroics. The offense got shut down by the tight french defense, and the lack of a playmaker in the midfield meant that the attacks were less than optimally coordinated. Ronaldinho was just a shadow of his brightest moments in Barça, and instead of him it was good old Zidane and Ribery, the new french winger, that displayed most technical prowess.

But it's hard to place the blame of the unexpected exit on any single direction. Complacency might have been a factor, the #1 favorite position was not necessarily the best place to start from. Parreira's insistence of starting Ronaldo brought jeers (and kudos, when el Gordo finally laid Gerd Müller's scoring record to history). A more thorough re-thinking of the offense might have been advisable, especially after the formidable display put on in the Confederate Cup last year. For example Robinho and Fred really stepped up and delivered in the game against the Australia, when the rest of the team seemed indifferent.

In the other game on saturday England got trounced by Portugal for the second time in a row. And again on penalties, just like in Euro 2004. Portugal put on a good, albeit ineffective, show, and will have their hands full against France on wednesday. And less said about Mr. Rooney's crotch-stomping activities, the better. England put on a good show underhanded, but were outplayed by the portuguese goalie in the penalties.

The pages of the movie theatre confirm that the seven-screen miniplex has ceased to function.

"For the time being".