Whoah, january sure was a busy month in this blog - no less than eightyeight entries saw daylight in thirtyone days.

Do not expect a similarly freeflowing performance in the coming months.

Been a while since I stumbled onto the blog of Greg Kroah-Hartmann, one of the key Linux kernel hackers.

And there's quite a crop of interesting things in the recent entries:

The most recent topic is the offer to assist vendors in crafting device drivers. While this effort is unlikely to budge the likes of ATI and Nvidia from providing binary drivers, it's a mighty public relations blow for the kernel community - no longer can they be accused of being aloof and distanced.

Another interesting entry is the one on Linux Kernel in a Nutshell, a brand new book from O'Reilly. It's a thin book on a weighty subject. And like a few other of the publisher's books on the Linux kernel, it's freely available on the web.

Saw a halo (or more accurately, an icebow) this morning.

Would have really wanted to photograph this with a real camera, but the 6680's handiwork fortunately isn't distractingly bad.

This is the first halo I've ever seen, and while the circle is by no means complete, it's still a spectacular sight. The sundogs on both sides were not plain white (as shown in the image), but bore vague colours of a rainbow.

Rule #n for aspiring video game companies: when localizing games, make sure it's done by someone truly competent.

Case 1: Travian and amateurs.

Case 2: Blizzard and a true lapse of professionalism.

Suosituin Verkoppeli Suomessa.

Disastrous. Spellchecking, it's your friend when treading unknown waters of language.

Google Maps + Books = showing where the story happens. Brilliant.

Now if only somebody put up a map of the Middle Earth or Westeros in fully zoomable form.

DNS down. This is never good. And lasted uncomfortably long. Like four hours (after which I went to bed).

Welho, you've been warned.

Watched Guillermo del Toro's fairy tale set in wartime Spain yesterday.

The movie has been nominated for six academy awards, and quite rightly so, it is an amazing spectacle to watch. Filled with fabulous scenes mixed with gritty realism. Of the former my favorite was the verdant forest glade, with sun-lit pollen dancing in the air.

But like most fairy tales, it is simplistic. A majority of the characters are one-dimensional, and this detracts from the power of the story, since their motivations (and expected fates) are pretty much given from the very start.

Like most unedited tales, this one has a definite mean streak. Death is present in almost every scene, and painful lessons are sown with abandon.

And like the best fairy tales, this one has moments of utter sense of wonder, carefully built into everyday scenery. Doug Jones' twin performances as the faun and the unnamed child-eating monster run circles around garden variety fantasy.

Go watch Pan's Labyrinth - this and Prestige have kicked off the cinematic year nicely.

South Korea, often touted as the model of a broadband society, has hit an unexpected snag.

The country seems to be held hostage by IE6-specific ActiveX software. And the reason behind this is "security". All financial transactions must be encrypted with such controls. An approach that was fumbled when the government permanently tied the on-line security to an immature standard that was quickly superseded. A standard that is not supported by the new windows version just about to surface.

Somehow I doubt that Vista will sell like hotcakes in Seoul.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is "exertion".

My take is the attached image - of doubtlessly gigantic mental exertion required to design this toilet. A toilet, which seemingly seems to be equipped to handle wheel-chair bound customers. But actually doesn't, as the paper-dispenser is spectacularly misplaced.

Completely forgot to mention the Razzie counter-awards in the annual Oscar nomination entry.

The Razzies site is hopelessly non-navigable, and hence the nominees are much more easily browsed in Wikipedia.

Apart from Da Vinci Code (which isn't really bad enough to be featured alongside such greats of BloodRayne), I've seen only one movie of those listed for any category. And of that, Just My Luck, just a few snippets over lunch on a plane to Boston.

And I am seriously considering picking up the new Pink Panther one of these days, it seemed to be on the OK-side of things based on the trailer. Then again, it might be that the only two non-disastrous minutes have been distilled into that snippet, and the rest of the film is grounds for justifiable homicide.

On a nudge from the guys of katuoja I took a look at the first issue of Phonogram - freely available courtesy of Newsarama.

Music, magic, underground occult and complicated characters fronted with an unsympathetic protagonist. Sounds like yet another Hellblazer/Books of Magic/whatever ripoff, but manages to bring in enough good vibes to be interesting enough to warrant a page-per-page read.

I'm not very good when it comes to buying comics as single issues (especially with finnish vendors shying away from them towards collected editions only), and thus the news of this six-issue miniseries arriving in trade paperback form in march is welcome news.

Surprisingly, the scandinavian edition of the first season of the "new" Doctor Who is much cheaper than the UK original and the US release.

They cash in at 70 pounds and 100 dollars, respectively. The scandinavian one costs 30 euros. Which in my book is a much more decent price.

Sure enough, the release is not perfect, for some reason english subtitles have been left out. But at a fraction of the cost, this is hardly anything for serious complaints.

Second batch of Wiis arrived in Finland, and picked up one. And an RGB-cable, just to be on the safe side even though the console is on the high end of this generation.

No games yet. Though Zelda looks mighty good, and Wario proved its worth as a party game already.

The online component seems nowhere near the quality of XBox Live, with slow connections and a need for multiple rounds of updates at the very beginning. The games offered in the Virtual Console do contain some to pick up, sooner or later - Mario 64 being one of the very few 10/10 games in Edge, and the Donkey Kong Country something out of the Rare stables that I never had a chance to play yet.

And yeah, the attached Mii is not a truly convincing copy of me, but the best that fiddling with the editor a minute came up with. The worst clash with the reality are the glasses, the frames being too thick and of wrong colour.

The annual parade of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business is out.

Unfortunately parcelled out at a rate of one per page. But that decision isn't nearly dumb enough to land cnn on the list.

Lost a game of Arkham Horror. And by "lost" I mean that the game beat us, and no-one won.

Score is now 3-1 for the human element, and we came quite close to beating the Challenger from Carcosa in the final battle.

Indeed, this was the first game that ended in the Great Old One awakening, previously we'd been efficient enough to take care of the gates and minions in short order.

That did not happen in this game - we all drew gunslingers, which is nice for normal combat encounters, but sucks painfully as a balanced party. Managed to stave off disaster for many, many turns (game lasting well over four hours) after the sealing of gates in a few key locations. But that was just a temporary advantage, as an unresolvable rumor soon doubled the planar activity, and the three of us were unable to cope with the avalanche.

Next time, a date with a late pharaoh, and after that, a detour to Dunwich.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is "why?".

My take is the attached image - of a wire sculpture of a woman, but what's the reason of her grin?

In addition to finally sinking to a proper temperature for the season, Helsinki has been covered with powdery snow.

Which is nice. And much later than usual. And not really deep by any means.

No snowmen have been sighted yet - it's been below zero all the way. The ones in the attached image are by Joscha Sauer, a german cartoonist of the garylarsonian persuasion (and one who that singlehandedly proves that the germans are not averse to absurdism). Sadly his output has been seriously curtailed of late.

Pop. 7.

Elevation 1069'.

• Bill Gates said that spam would be gone by 2006 - according to a new study it's back and worse than ever.
• Never was much of a Final Fantasy fan, but the games long history covered in a lengthy article on IGN makes interesting reading.
• Employer2.0, just when you thought the bubble couldn't get any more inflated.
• ogleearth, a cornucopia of geographic-web- connected things.
• eat.fi, a gourmet/map site of Helsinki.
• A very brave bunny, wouldn't expect many rabbits to dare to pester a snake like this.
• The new and supposedly authentic chinese restaurant has opened its website.

The nominees are out.

And amongst them are unknowns, good choices, odd omissions and controversy enough to last until the ceremony.

Amongst the good: Departed for best picture, Prestige for art direction. Among the odd: Leonardo di Caprio for Blood Diamond (at least the south african accent in the trailer is way less convincing than his act in the Departed), replacing Jack Nicholson with Mark Wahlberg (as the angriest cop in the world) for supporting character.

But the tally of unseen films (starting from Pan's Labyrinth) is too high for comfort - so the new year's resolution of "a movie a month" must be upgraded, at least to two per...

A good rule of thumb if I ever saw any.

Unfortunately this Celine Dion masterpiece of "covering" AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long has recently escaped to Youtube.

[ via Jason Kottke. ]

Rage Against The Machine is back. And they will play in the Coachella Festival in California late april.

Whether this is a permanent arrangement, or just a one-off, has not been stated.

[ via roklintu. ]

Finally, Indianapolis Colts reach Superbowl. Peyton Manning shed the monkey on his back (called playoff victory) and guided his team into the season's most important contest for the very first time.

Haven't yet watched the game, but according to ESPN it's nothing short of phenomenal, with odd scores racked up in both ends.

Colts will face the Chicago Bears, who apparently turned up their game quite a few notches after I retired last night, increasing the score to something approximating a beatdown. Drew Brees of the Saints was in good form, but the team just couldn't resist the blue machine.

Bring on february fourth and the bowl! I'll be sure to plonk down a big "nothing here" event into the monday morning in my outlook calendar tomorrow.

Second ever corruption dinner at La Cocina in downtown Helsinki. And an even more pleasant occasion than the first dinner there.

Settled for a pre-set menu this time, and was actually much more sated than in november. So the portions are not really as tiny as they appeared to be on first visit.

Started off with mixed pintxos and followed them up with pleasantly red beef (and the cheek of a veal as an added bonus) as main course. Dessert consisted of the expected (creme catalana) and unorthodox (stickiest chocolate mousse cookie spiced with salt).

Pleasant indeed. Pleasant enought that the next visit might be self-funded.

Decided on prioritizing Christopher Nolan's newest film on top of the "shall see"-list upon it being relegated to one of the smallest screen in Helsinki (and probably subsequently dropped from circulation) on account of low box office. Which just proves that the ticketbuyers have little taste, since this is an excellent movie.

And it's a movie whose plot shall not be discussed further than "two stage magicians unwisely engage in a long professional struggle". Anything beyond could be considered spoilers - and such are to be avoided at all cost in a quality mindbending movie such as this.

Acting is good across the board, as are the late nineteenth century milieus. Christian Bale and Michael Caine (best supporting Oscar candidate?) shine brightest, but the whole cast is convincing in their roles. And it sure was a pleasure to see Andy Serkis used as himself, and not just a motioncapture-source...

Go watch it - you will not be disappointed. And I most certainly will seek out the unseen Nolan movies - with a 3-of-3 track record, the remaining two (Following and Insomnia) ought to be on the worthwhile side as well.

Visited Pasila for the second time yesterday for a bit of ice hockey in the Hartwall Arena.

This was a derby game with the dearest enemy of the Jokerit: IFK. The home team got dismantled by the visitors, and the result was pretty much fair, considering how bad the jesters played. The game was enjoyable enough - though the third period was pretty lacklustre effort from both teams.

And sure did enjoy my first experience in a booth - there is a difference to the life in the stands.

Visited the annual Helsinki Travel Fair yesterday.

The exhibition centre was more crowded than ever before, and at times it was actually hard to move around. The walkways were packed with standing tourists (pun intended) with no idea how to behave in such places.

The offerings were of the expected kind - finnish blue chip vendors (skipped), finnish boutique vendors (picked up brochures) and country representatives (some of them quite interesting).

No purchases, Mondo wasn't able to charge a book on my card, and the flights offered by the likes of Finnair and Blue1 were not cheap enough to mandate an immediate purchase.

The newly initiated martial arts discipline of Honya Budo (how to behave in bookstores) proved to have a steep learning curve.

Failed the very first step, by "just happening" to buy an apologetic biography of Niccolo Macchiavelli on friday evening.

The doomsday clock indeed ticked forward earlier this week.

Watched the BBC television show Threads to drum in the fact that a nuclear war is not survivable. At least on the level of society, individuals may withstand an atomic exchange, but the infrastructure as we know it will be gone.

It's a very sombre two hours, one that does not inspire faith in post-apocalyptic existence (even as shown in the likes of Mad Max). The end will be a collection of bangs, followed by a long whimper (to misquote T.S. Eliot).

The production values are low in comparison to modern fare - but that never detracts the core message.

Old meme. And since the blog has twice the entries as the last time, it's a suitable slot for a repeat.

The 100th entry [29.7.2004] was written under the influence of jet lag.

The 200th entry [7.11.2004] was all about having attended a weird chronically misplaced Halloween party and seen the very second gig of a friends' band.

The 300th entry [16.2.2005] was written when it was clear that the NHLPA would carry out their threat and wipe out the hockey season.

The 400th entry [30.4.2005] was a meme. An alphabetical overview of the browser's recent history.

The 500th entry [6.7.2005] was quite a happy one. The EU parliament had just turned down software patents with an almighty majority.

The 600th entry [12.9.2005] is a review of Rule of Four, one of quite a few mystery novels breezed through in the lazy days of summer.

The 700th entry [21.11.2005] contains some decent phone camera pictures from a day trip to sunny Kirkkonummi.

The 800th entry [24.1.2006] had a note on the cancellation of West Wing after its seventh season.

The 900th entry [17.3.2006] was about the hardships of trying to get a ticket to the Guns n' Roses gig in july.

The 1000th entry [15.5.2006] consisted of a brief report on the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C.

The 1100th entry [12.7.2006] announced that my trusty old iPod suffered mild water damage (in pretty much the only rain worth mentioning the whole summer) and was rendered almost unusable.

The 1200th entry [29.8.2006] noted that the remake of BBC's Robin of Sherwood show had been hit by thieves. (No idea now whether the footage was recovered.)

The 1300th entry [19.10.2006] was a jetlag-addled description of the very first few hours in smoky Singapore.

The 1400th entry [10.12.2006] consisted of a very brief description of one of the many christmas parties of the season.

The 1500th entry [19.1.2007] hailed the long-awaited arrival of winter in Helsinki.

Winter.

Just in case your Dirty <language> Phrasebook has been displaced, the Omniglots provide a convenient way of asking for a matchbook in many languages.

Voodoo Extreme has listed twenty of PC gaming's most wanted sequels.

A lot of the proposals on the list have no hope in ever seeing green light (a Planescape sequel), but some are just a matter of time (like Half-Life 3, no matter what Valve Software says).

The list, obviously, is a matter of personal opinion - but where, exactly where, is System Shock 3?

Note to self: while visiting a city council session, remove the baseball cap when so instructed.

The consequence of disobedience can be quite severe.

Unless, of course, you belong to the class of sartorial fundamentalists that suffers no headgear indoors.

Following equally improbable recent tv-show greenlightings, HBO has acquired the rights to the great fantasy epic by George R. R. Martin - the seven part Song of Fire and Ice.

At a season per book, this will be a long show to produce. And while there are not as massive battle scenes as in say, Lord of the Rings, the sheer number of required sets and featured actors will be expensive.

The first three books were nothing short of phenomenal, but the fourth book, A Feast for Crows was not nearly up to the standard of its predecessors. A lot of unnecessary characters were introduced, and the pace, taut in the first three books, slackened significantly. Fifth book is supposedly out "soon", and hopefully that will uplift the saga from the depths it sank in the latest installment.

MTV3's selection of the best advertisements is a sure source for nostalgia.

Though watching them with a non-windows computer is unnecessarily painful - no reason is given for the selection of such an unsupported format. And if youtube and its cohorts survive with flash, it sure ought to be good enough for an endeavour of much smaller magnitude.

It's not often that interesting biodiversity-projects leap at you from the pages of the free newspapers. Yesterday morning exactly that happened, browsed 100 on the bus on the way to work (early morning, didn't bother walking), and a small article outlined the work undertaken by the EDGE Group.

In the organization own words:

EDGE species have few close relatives and are extremely distinct in the way they look, live and behave. These unique species are also on the verge of extinction, and if they disappear there will be nothing like them left on the planet.

Certainly the group has its work cut out - this will not be an easy task, a lot of the animals concerned are both vulnerable, extremely badly known to science and even less well-known to the general public.

But losing out any of these critters would be a blow - as stated they're pretty much unique in their niches and no immediate and easy replacement would follow.

Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age is not one of the most filmable books.

Despite the expected hardships in trying to visualize a society fully transformed by ubiquity and a young girl's experimentation with encryption camouflaged as a fairy tale, George Clooney's production company will bravely attempt to craft a six hour miniseries of the novel.

Impressive. Or doomed to fail. Take your pick.

Some things never change. And neither should they. I couldn't imagine a world where David Caruso's Horatio Caine would have something to sensible to say in the last line of the CSI: Miami teaser.

Consider me impressed.

Amazon.com promised that a parcel would take 16-25 days to arrive in Finland, yet got it done in exactly a week. Without resorting to using a courier, just plain postal services, that's definitely a surprisingly speedy delivery.

Watched Sam Mendes' Jarhead, a movie about the first Gulf War.

The story is told edntirely from the perspective of the protagonist, a scout sniper named Anthony Swofford. The movie begins in the boot camp, with a drill instructor that attempts, but cannot outshout the immortal Lee Ermey (in his greatest form in Full Metal Jacket).

Welcome to the Suck!

Multiple characters, multiple times

The time in Desert {Shield | Storm} is filled with weeks and weeks of boredom suffered in the company of fellow marines, and capped with a brief taste of action at the end.

This is not really a war movie - but a movie about people caught in it. It's not the rare action scenes that make this a good film, but the absurdities of the military life that the script (based on Swofford's memoirs) is full of. And the unimaginably hellish scenery at the very end can't be discounted either. When the platoon moves into an area filled with oil wells set on fire, high-concept cinematography takes over: the skies are black with smoke, and the blazing pyres bring out the desert in colors straight out of Danté.

Supplementing the story and scenery is some quality acting. Jake Gyllenhaal's greatness has been evident all the way since Donnie Darko, and he doesn't disappoint as the often-confused Swoff. Most of the other roles of the platoon are filled with appropriate yet unremarkable actors - Peter Sarsgaard effectively turns from a slacker to a bundle of nerves and Jamie Foxx puts in a good performance as staff sergeant Sykes (and appears to have none of the disturbing post-Oscar attitude that ruined the Miami Vice shoot).

And based on the quality of this movie and Mendes' debut, I really need to get my hands on the Mendes' film I haven't seen yet: Road to Perdition. Having seen bits and pieces of it while eating and nodding off on a flight to Newark does not count as having seen it. And Swofford's book ought to be worthwhile reading as well.

The license and registration, please.

• The release imminent release of Windows Vista is accompanied weird alternate reality game: Vanishing Point (and a related wiki).
• Lounasblogi, about having lunch in downtown Helsinki would be much more usable were I able to actually have lunch somewhere else than the ghetto of Pitäjänmäki.
• Playing Fair with the Player, first new article about interactive fiction in quite a while.
• Feltron's annual report - great idea, great design.
• What do 200 calories look like. There is quite a difference between celery and peanut butter (more than 30 times of weight).
• The initial set of Firefox 3.0 requirements is out. Nice.
• The music of Veronica Mars.
• Mapperz - an interesting blog/newssite on geographic web.
• Video on demand never got off the ground - how about books on demand?

NFL winds to a close, with the final four teams settling down to first conference finals on the 21st and then the superbowl on the fourth of february in Miami.

Among the four contestants are the expected (Colts and Bears), a grizzled veteran (Patriots) and a true cinderella (Saints).

Sadly, the Patriots outplayed the Chargers last weekend, putting an end to their saga, but at least the Pats perennial hero, Adam Vinatieri, is now kicking for their next opponent. Colts have not been in great form lately - going without a single touchdown in their game against the Ravens. The Colts used to have their annual playoff exit at Foxboro - but have apparently shed their fears with multiple wins in New England.

The whole Saints' season has been better than anyone expected. Drew Brees proved that he can work well without the greatest running back and tight end in the league, and Reggie Bush shed the rookie fears and emerged a credible scoring threat on the last quarter of the season. With the receiving corps in more or less full strength (following the lengthy ankle rehabilitation of Marques Colston), the Bears will have their hands full on sunday. The Bears have been surviving an unexpectedly long time behind the shaky production of Rex Grossman.

I'm not making any predictions, but hoping for enjoyable, high-scoring football. Unfortunately only Viasat seems to show the games, so it may be time to go for a month-long subscription.

In the series of unexpected musical moments is the return of the long-gone finnish band Pienet Miehet.

Haven't seen the new album for sale, but am pretty convinced of the need to buy it after the glowing review in Nyt last week.

Saw the band play once, in Natsa on the very last day of school of '89. Stupidly enough, despite liking their stuff a lot (especially Viis laiskaa auringossa), I never got around to buying the debut album. And lost interest rapidly so as not to be even aware of the second. Definitely ought to pick both albums up, though that might not be exactly trivial, the band was never that popular and it's been sixteen years since the release of the second album. Or they might be re-released next week, with plentiful extra material.

One of the things swept wayside by the media torrent known as the iPhone is the Apple TV that'll be released in february. From appearances and description alone, the Cupertino folks are taking the battle of the set-top box seriously - Microsoft is trying to counter the process with new functionality in Xbox 360.

Even less attention was given to the beta-release of Dashcode, the tool to create Dashboard Widgets. Until now the creation of such (for the likes of, say, Konfabulator and Opera) has not been productized at all. Not that it'd matter, since the languages involved are Turing complete, but for debugging purposes the new tool seems to be formidably better than logging from javascript.

So, I was caught in a connectivity-free zone last week, when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in the MacWorld keynote - an event that was covered in the media across the world in an unprecedented depth (after all, the company is trying for a measly 1% of the market).

Despite its well-advertised shortcomings the gadget is undeniably cool - and it probably will sell like hotcakes once it is released.

While a lot of the facts about the forthcoming phone are undisputable (like the lack of 3G in the initial release), there's a lot of uncertainty in the community.

The following is a list of the more useful information sources that I've come across during the week (and it'll probably be updated at irregular intervals - when interesting additional tidbits surface):

• Start from the basics: Apple's product page.
• New York Times' David Pogue's iPhone FAQ, parts 1 and 2.
• Jason Kottke's impressive roundup of links (I'll attempt to avoid duplicates between his selection and mine).
• First indication that the phone will be application-locked, that is, users will not be able to install software on it.
• And directly attempting to reverse the above decision: pleas to allow exactly that from 43 folders and Tim O'Reilly.
• Inspired commentary in Hesari's 5G blog.

As a telecommunications device the iPhone is not too hot - it's missing a lot of key features (a real keyboard for starters - I just can so not see anyone writing a 400 character SMS on the virtual one). The 2MP camera is too late 2005 to qualify as a useful camera - the picture management software may be great, but the camera likely will not. And as a music device it's outstripped by the company's own iPod - we'll be fiddling with 100GB gadgets (and 16GB nanos) by the time the phone debuts.

So, what's left is a seriously bling-bling user interface. Screenwise the iPhone is head and shoulders above the competition, and the Apple's famed UI-engineers can probably conjure up something that will be usable by both absolute beginners and scarred veterans.

If nothing else, the upcoming phone will give the competition a good scare, and probably advance the user interface technology by several leaps and bounds when the incumbent manufacturers are forced to react to the innovations of the upstart. Competition is always good - so the new entrant ought to be welcomed. And simultaneously treated with a healthy amount of suspicion and doubt - after all, it has taken Microsoft forever and day to come up with an adequate mobile phone.

Me?
As a rather recent Apple fanboy I will be keeping my eyes open for the phone, but likely will not seriously consider buying it immediately (after all, the law of 1.0 still holds true).

Following the slowly mounting nuclear tension the world will be yet closer to midnight, the atomic ragnarök, as the clock describing the threat level will be advanced two minutes on wednesday.

The clock has been closer to midnight only twice, during the early fifties and the early eighties. While the mood is far from being as confrontational as way back then (I suppose, having no proper recollections of the latter period, let alone the former), the multitude of atomic players has brought on the new level of threat.

(And yes, Iron Maiden's 2 Minutes to Midnight is all about the Doomsday Clock - the amount of trivia available in wikipedia never ceases to amaze.)

Watched Brian DePalma's Black Dahlia, a decent movie of James Ellroy's novel of the same name.

Reviews have been harsh on the movie across the board - as reflected by the three stars above, I quite liked it. But that's probably my inner Ellroy-fanboy rating the film, not my rational self.

Indeed, while the film begins well, and builds the story in a convincingly slow fashion, it loses a lot due to its haphazardly put-together last half an hour. There's just too much plot to cover in two hours, and the director is very eager to tie up all the loose ends neatly. While it would have required thorough rewriting to adapt the sprawling novel into the movie format, it would have likely been worth the effort, as shown in the earlier, and much better Ellroy-filmatisation: L.A. Confidential. Here a lot has been changed (as noted in wikipedia), but the movie still does not make sense fully.

And while the novel maintains a serious attitude all along the lurid pathways towards resolution, the movie teeters on the brink of campiness a few times. The characters' motivations are among the caricatured and over-simplified features of the film - Aaron Eckhardt's mugging as the obsessed Blanchard is at times rather painful to witness. Hilary Swank is the only one among the main cast to execute herself well - Josh Hartnett remains wooden (though much better than in earlier roles) and Scarlett Johansson feels unexpectedly out of place. So it's the smaller roles that actually manage to carry the movie forward - Mia Kirshner as Dahlia seen on tryout footage and Fiona Shaw as someone out of a vintage David Lynch movie.

This is not the worst DePalma movie, not by far, but it's not nearly what it could and should have been. Saw the trailer for Hollywoodland for the first time - as a similarly themed movie based on almost concurrent mystery, it's probably destined to fall on the "flicks to catch"-sidebar...

Had the regular game night yesterday.

The main event of the evening was the introduction of Nintendo's Wii - which remains in the "so sold out, no-one has any idea of next batch"-category. My not so gentle introduction to the console was the new Wario-game, which is pretty much the same as it has been on other formats - mindless tasks that last a few seconds. It suits wii well, as the wireless controllers allow for a much wider (and odder) variety of tasks to be implemented. Wii Sports wasn't bad either - though the moves in bowling are somewhat far removed from the real thing. And yeah, I want a Wii as well - but it'll be a while before the resupply-round reaches as far as Finland.

Pro Evolution Soccer, the mainstay of pretty much all game nights, was played once again. This time on a PS2, whose version has a lot more bling than the X360. Played 3-on-3, and the games were on the chaotic side. As opposed to the highlight-reel material of the last session, the goals scored actually resembled actual football. No slanting runs through defenses finishing off with a curling shot just inside the bars, nope, these goals were glancing blows from a few meters, usually following a more or less unexpected bounce of the ball within the box.

NHL07 presented as few goals as last time. Though the shooting has improved since the previous encounter, the goalies remain supernaturally good (even at the lower difficulty setting). But it's the rest of the game that gave us problems - controlled offense is hard to orchestrate, and sensible defense even more so.

The team continued its repetitively sucky progress through six man Ghost Recon 2. No finished missions, and some unusually shoddy co-operation. Though this time collateral damage was kept to a minimum, but not entirely eliminated.

The two racing games played (Novadrome and Rallisport Challenge) proved interesting. Apart from the ice stretches in the latter, which ought to be forcibly excised from the disc. Both games were a bit limited in scope, due to the fact that not all of the consoles had the full extent of tracks or cars available. Which neatly brings us to my pet peeve - the game industry is probably the only segment of the market that flogs expensive products, and locks the audience away from most of the content. Having to progress through the game in a single-player mode before reaching all it has to offer is all right, but I'd sure expect the game to offer a wider range of content in multiplayer - at least I feel entitled to it after spending sixty or so euros on it.

Didn't give pinball games the time they'd deserve. Reached semi-respectable scores in both Indy and Attack from Mars - and actually had a game of Getaway that lasted more than a minute. Twilight Zone proved as hard as it usually is, and didn't manage to crack 150 million on any of the three games I played.

A couple of picks from Worth1000, the "folks with too much time in their hands"-frontier, great photo manipulation efforts on many subjects:

• Statues coming to life. The statue of liberty with horns-sign is almost correct (the thumb ought to be folded into the palm.)
• Invisible Subjects in Artworks. Actually fourth part of a series, a similar contest on movies has been even more popular.
• Nature's Script - numbers and letters on animals, plants and fungi.

Obviously the quality is not uniformly high, but invariably each contest has a few images that are worth a browse.

(And yeah, while I don't think that the site owners would fall onto me like a ton of bricks for including a snippet of an image here - I do respect their rules, hence the lack of imagery.)

Visited a couple of record stores, but saw very little mention of the much-hyped campaign. Further strengthening my belief that it's a dud, I wasn't looking very carefully, or that I'm patronising exactly the right stores (these are, obviously, not mutually exclusive).

On Mr. Musicnaut's advice bought the newly released Neil Young live album: Live at the Fillmore East. It's a short, jam-filled record, with just six tracks filling the forty minutes (two of them consuming almost half of it). Mysteriously enough this album is listed as volume 02 of the archive series, hopefully meaning that this is not a one-off release, but part of something much bigger.

Eurogamer provides a pointful (and mercifully brief) scoping of the expected crop of Xbox 360 games of the year.

The forthcoming top five looks promising indeed - with the exception of Forza Motorsport, all of them look like certain buys. With Bioware's Mass Effect on the very top of the list.

The honorable mentions are by no means scraping the bottom of the barrel - a bit too many shooters for my taste, but the likes of GTA IV and Assassin's Creed are both triple-A releases as far as I'm concerned. And unless Criterion completely muffs the release, Burnout 5 is a day-0 purchase as well.

Bring it on.

Helsingin Sanomat has opened a multi-author blog on games.

The first few days' crop has no exceptional entries, but quite a few comments (which, in the case of "choice in games"-topic exceed the original in informative content by quite a distance).

And the blog's list of interesting links is pleasantly long - and has Manifesto Games' Greg Costikyan almost at the very top.

... a stamp with a pig on it.

A stamp that tastes like pork, when licked!

Robert Anton Wilson, the co-author of the original Illuminatus Trilogy and many, many subsequent books on the subject, died yesterday.

Hail Eris!

All Hail Discordia!

Cheap records are a good idea. Too bad the implementation of the campaign's website is screwed up.

The artists are lumped together in lengthy pull-down lists, and the amount of genres is laughable - rock&pop contains pretty much everything, apart from metal.

But that's by no means the chief offense. Which is the fact that there's no attempt to show which of the participating stores might have an album available. That's just inexcusably lazy - having two lists without even attempting to connect them in any sensible ways has nothing but a teasing effect on prospective customers. Especially when the prices are not shown at all - there's no indication whether this campaign comes even close to beating the likes of Anttila in their own game.

What a waste.

[ via schizoblog. ]

The finnish parliamentary elections are held in march, and the media companies are climbing over themselves to provide means for the voters to select an appropriate candidate. And to collect a few clicks to ads while the political process is executed.

First up is the mtv3 offering. The interface is quite usable, and the questions aim at precision instead of generalities. No idea how many candidates are already in the system - the scattered few from several parties I got in top five range from total nobodies to semi-familiar names.

It would appear that my visits to München are the only way Helsinki will get a frosting of snow.

At least it's been like this twice within the last month, and those occasions have been the only ones since beginning of november.

Let the local ski resort owners come forth with plane tickets and ample spending money if this performance needs to be repeated still.

Dined in Ratskeller in downtown München.

For the fourth time in a row.

At least I think this is where I had a sausage-filled dinner back in 2003, and know for certain that on previous three trips I've ended up here.

Sure, it's a horrific tourist trap - but it's centrally located, and the food is both good and reasonably priced. And the two novices on this trip were rarin' to taste some Bavarian specialities. Which were indeed offered in the form of a mixed pan of sausages. Went for surf'n'turf instead (it's not good if the entire table has the same meal), which was pleasant enough - though the pea-based sauce with clippings of said vegetable's pods was on the odd side.

Capped the evening out with a liter of Helles in Hofbräuhaus. Again at the request of those who hadn't been there before. Nothing had changed in three weeks - the place was still loud, packed with tourists and had an expectant atmosphere.

Exhibit A: You completely lose the track of time while giving a presentation. Having no wristwatch helps, but not nearly as much as failing to maintain eye contact with a clock widget in the top right hand corner of the screen.

Exhibit B: You start to swear profusely when phone refuses to hook up with the laptop. It is embarrassing to notice that the business end of a USB cable does comfortably fit into a slot meant for an RJ-45 connector.

Exhibit C: Complaining about lack of network connectivity, when packing both an EDGE-capable phone and an USB-cable for it (bluetooth on the venerable T41 is dysfunctional enough not to be usable in any sensible fashion, and the 6680 keeps losing calls when 3G radio is enabled).

Having no network connectivity sucks, when there's no means to check what happened in Macworld yesterday. CNN provides only minimal coverage, and concentrates on the biggest item - the Apple-branded mobile phone.

Spending a few days in the Bavarian capital on business.

The flight in was as smooth as they get. The plane was half empty, and had the luxury of a whole row to myself. Obviously, ample room is not as important on intra-European flights as on intercontinentals, but it still was a pleasant discovery. To add to the confusion (and an overdraft of good karma, it would appear) even the catered food was decent - unexpectedly non-rubbery chicken in tomato sauce accompanied by some funky grains. Odd, usually the Finnair planes are not nearly this bearable when it comes to food.

Finished Newsweek's annual "Issues" magazine, and found it very boring. Previously they have dealt with multiple topics, but this time around the articles all concerned oil (or energy in general). The only bright spot was Bruce Sterling's hyperbole on what would happen if creation of plastics became unbearably expensive on account of oil production peaking out. That, and a heads-up on the french efforts in fusion energy easily rose tall within a tribe of pygmies. Expected much more from the magazine, usually the crop has been much better.

München is enjoying a warm winter - outside the temperature was a balmy +12C long after sunset. I don't think I'll be needing my a hoodie and a jacket on top of two shirts-combo in its full form.

Staying at the Mayerhof Hotel, just like three weeks ago. As sleepy as it was then. Small hotel has its advantages - the receptionist actually remembered us. And the hotel's interpretation of my handwritten registration data was rather funny - the street name is not as bad as "Vihaeste" (as decoded by Sanoma Magazines a couple of years ago), but nowhere close to reality either.

Despite having a tramline next to the hotel, did not venture to town for dinner, but settled for a simple schnitzel in a gasthaus across the street. Of a medium size, and well prepared (and without the anchovy + capers so commonly added back home).

The lack of connectivity at the hotel is as bad as it used to be. The TMO Hotspot gets stuck in the exactly same place in its initialization sequence as it did three weeks ago. Either there's something wrong with the pay-to-connect system or with my venerable laptop. The latter is a far more plausible explanation, since TMO has a golden goose in its hands with this expensive connectivity.

The electronics shop in the Helsinki airport did not have the brand new internet tablet in stock.

Surprising, considering that the Nokia's flagship store downtown sells the gadgets already, and the airport shop was the very first store to have a supply of the 770s back in the day. Then again, today is the first legal day to sell the n800, so maybe my expectations of availability were a tad unrealistically optimistic.

Well, I'll take my chances shopping for it in Germany. The manual is in pdf-format anyway, so there's not a difference where the device is bought.

Web2.0 is the most cited Wikipedia article of last year.

Unlike Tim O'Reilly's classic introduction of the concept back in 2005, the equivalent opening of programming2.0 does not go down well (and yeah, I did note that it's not an O'Reilly article, just referred to in Radar).

As commented bluntly in the original thread, the assumptions are plain wrong and unfounded. A lot of the ideas are by far not new - with both "object-oriented" and "modular" having been on the scene for decades already, they are hardly anything brought forward by the surge of interpreted languages. And if the Web2.0-era isn't just epitome of "end-user beta tests", then somebody ought to scratch that very word off the logos of gmail and flickr.

So no, no new revolution in programming. Just a bunch of new toys.

Comrade-envy can strike whenever it's least expected. But with a low cost you can now have many many new bodacious friends at a cost on myspace.

Me, I don't even have a MySpace page...

(And this does look like a joke that got out of hand - too good to pass up.)

Links with numbers attached. Whatever will Mr. Interweb think of next?

• Ten kick-ass opening sequences.
• Eleven inspired sequels. Inspired, as in: "unexpected".
• Twelve top appearances of bands in films.
• Thirteen photographs that changed the world.
• Fourteen Tipping Points of Evil for Google.

Felt like shopping for a t-shirt yesterday, and dropped in to check on the firefox wearables at the Mozilla Foundation's store. And the designs, while not breathtaking, were pretty much OK.

Settled on two shirts into the virtual shopping cart, and decided to check whether the shipping charges had gotten cheaper since the last peek, and disappointingly enough they had not. While no exact price was quoted, the equivalent shipment to Germany had a freight charge of 69 dollars.

Needless to say, I backed out rapidly. And the statement on the shipping page on "this year Mozilla opening a store, based in Europe" is about as true as it was back in 2005.

And it'd seem that no enterprising soul is selling the shirts in ebay either.

Frank FlynnJack Bauer is back, to save the united states in a single day for the fifth time.

The local channels (both subtv and mtv3) are providing the show in back-to-back episode installments, meaning that season will last twelve weeks. The first batch was aired today, and while no conclusions ought to be drawn of the first two hours, it must be said that the plot appears to be on the complicated side.

Decently entertaining - but as plot devices and characters are chewed up with great speed I'm pretty sure this season will deteriorate into incoherent mush by halfway point, just like happened with the previous.

And as an added bonus Kim Bauer, the most accident-prone woman in the world, seems to have been written off the series.

Watched Robert Schwentke's Flightplan the other day. And while it's no great movie, it's at least one of the few recent thrillers that aspires to be Hitchcockian instead of relying on guns and terrorists.

The plot is simply told: a woman loses her daughter in an airplane.

A woman who has recently experienced severe mental anguish, and consequently her story appears to have several holes in it. Holes big enough to cause rising self-doubt about what has happened. Intimate knowledge of the plane combined with persistence causes conflict with the increasingly adversarial crew, and the audience is only slowly pulled to realize what is really going on.

While the plot initially seems to make some sense, upon further reflection it's full of gaping holes. And that's a shame, since out of the pieces - the actors and the props for the huge plane - something much more credible could have been built. Again, the script turns out to be the weakest link in the chain, and here it's pretty weak indeed.

But Flightplan is by no means a bad movie - it nicely resembles a classic Hitchcockian movie (e.g. Notorious), where there's both a mystery and the protagonist is forced to choose between two evils. The MacGuffin of the plot, however, is hard to spot until the very end.

As noted above, the actors are in great form. Though Jodie Foster's anxious mother resembles her previous role (David Fincher's Panic Room) a bit too much. Sean Bean's under-used as the captain, but manages to evoke authoritative menace in the moments he's given.

(And yeah, the old "person vanishes from a hotel" urban legend has been applied in analysis of the movie previously.)

The prospect of gloomy days, overcast skies and muddy grounds has pretty much nullified desire to play with the camera. I'm sure there are proper moments, just spaced too far inbetween (and inconvenient to photograph).

Thus, even with the lack of any new images here, I'm not abandoning the "photography"-tag on blogilista, just stating that normal conditions shall return. Potentially next week, when photo thursday returns from its winter vacation.

Nokia N800, the replacement for the year-old 770 internet tablet is out. At least in the states. It took a long while before reliable stock of the previous gadget was available in Europe.

The specs of the new device look interesting - both RAM and CPU have been significantly upgraded. And the addition of a built-in camera and the switch to a more sensible memory card type do not hurt either.

Played around with a friend's 770 on friday after a long break, and I'd forgotten just how good the screen is on that beast. A natural environment for the likes of ScummVM and nethack. Now if they only had maemo working on the OS X...

[ via virtuaaliset nuppineulat. ]

Looking at the constantly updating hotlisting of finnish blogs, several things are apparent:

• Knitting blogs are still formidable.
• New arrival on scene: dieting blogs (with lots of them bearing very similar imagery (tape measure).
• Election blogs have not yet arrived en masse, even though there's less than a quarter to the parliamentary event.
• And the entry occupying the very top spot on the list, Bad Cop, is well-written, even though there's no indication of it being based on reality.

I've said it before, but here it goes again: read salakuunneltua, you'll be a happier person.

Even if only small minority of the overheard tales makes you smile, every once in a while there's something so good amongst the snippets that uncontrollable laughter ensues.

Two additional spices to the stories are given: one obvious, the other less so. The former, the comments, are usually not worth browsing, but the headlines given to the individual entries are.

"Ei etania, vaan etanioita."

salakuunneltua.fi

If the local offering isn't enough to satisfy your eavesdropping needs, try the original a few times. Definitely an idea that has travelled well.

Theophany must officially qualify as the most boringest day of the year (perhaps slightly even compounded by the continually sucky weather): all the movies in Helsinki tonight are booked solid.

Was looking forward to seeing Black Dahlia, but that isn't going to happen today. Bugger. Was looking forward to it.

On wednesday there's a special theme evening - preceding the movie is a premier for the newest translation of Ellroy's book (Blood on the Moon), and some kind of panel discussion led by Jone Nikula (an advertised addict of the author).

In other news, finnkino's web pages seem to be perpetually locked to displaying movies in Pori by preference (here's a free clue: use a cookie to store the user's location), and the language used on some of the parts of the page definitely is not finnish (here's another clue: when outsourcing coding, check all the strings to be shown to users in advance).

Just like Kari Haakana says, an effective headline is half the victory.

Sure.

But I prefer to dip into the chaotically flowing stream of consciousness, at least occasionally. So don't expect this blog to devolve into an organized set of short and pointful headlines, even when the audience fails to "be able to grasp what a story's about simply by reading a headline you", as stated as a requirement in poynter.

But then again, this blog is not a news source, or even journalism to any degree, so headlining really doesn't matter jack.

Wired has posted a set of ten questions that Apple must answer in 2007.

Good questions, all of them, and a lot of them have nothing to do with the product portfolio. And surprisingly, there's nothing about the predicted Apple phone on the list, even though it's the most hyped item on the agenda.

After waiting for the train in Valimo in the chilly mist, the stale and warm air of the A-train brought out Mr. Sandman unexpectedly soon.

Started nodding off somewhere just past Huopalahti, but was jolted wide awake by a previous victim. The guy sitting in the next row reached a particularly fruitful phase in his sleep, and snored enough all the way to Helsinki. Loud enough to dissuade any further attempts of rest.

For those about to click.

• IBM has published a gentle introduction of the wonders of virtualization.
• The collected wisdom of lifehackery is out in book form.
• The D programming language, somewhere beyond C, but not in the same direction as C++.
• Tony vs. Paul (which goes to show that stop motion is still a viable technology).
• Map of Gotham City, straight off the pages of Batman.
• A truly scary article on ultra-right wing mercenaries running wild in Iraq.
• The weather in Helsinki sucks, we've established that much recently. Space weather is much more interesting.
• Of the 365 days of 2006, the Internet Explorer was unsafe for 286 of them.

Jason Kottke has listed the cream of the crop of his 2400 links remaindered last year. Most still as interesting as on the day of posting.

Two amazing Star Wars-related webpages crossed the event horizon the other day.

First up: a worrisomely long and detailed report on the injuries Darth Vader has suffered through the six parts of the saga (as well as uncountable novels and comics). Attention to detail is perplexingly thorough.

Second: The whole first trilogy as rendered as a silent film. Complete with grainy black&white visuals, a jolly soundtrack and an utterly incomprehensible plot. There is, after all, only so much you can fit into seventyfive seconds.

It's now official, the past december's weather was freaky.

With no snow, and temperatures 6-8 degrees above the 30-year norm, it sure was an unusual month. January's first few days haven't exactly turned down the heat, so it's still a long way to go before the expected winter conditions are reached.

After a half year hiatus Aponogeton, the free finnish fishkeeping webzine is back in business with its fifth issue of 2006.

47 pages of pdf-goodness on a wide variety of topics. Here's hoping for a normalized schedule for the next issue.

(And yeah, before you ask, the long-dormant fishblog will return this spring, in one form or the other.)

As noted in Schizoblog and many other fine establishments, the first Macworld of 007 is coming up next week.

And the rumormills are indeed spinning fast, with predicted changes to pretty much all of Apple's product lines (with the probable launch of a phone as the cherry on top of the cake). Leopard's release date is "spring 2007", so I guess it will be presented in a lot more details than in previous outings.

And for comparative purposes, Cnet's UK corps have gathered the top ten Apple rumors of all time. Some of which are not entirely implausible.

And following the heroic investigation, the mirroring test just had to be done...

Your results: You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 74% Lex Luthor 64% Riddler 54% Green Goblin 52% The Joker 52% Mr. Freeze 51% Apocalypse 43% Kingpin 39% Magneto 38% Poison Ivy 35% Venom 33% Mystique 32% Juggernaut 32% Dark Phoenix 30% Two-face 28% Catwoman 25%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Could have been worse, much worse. Though I'd have preferred The Riddler to the old metal face.

As tradition demands, I read the annual Ilkka Remes novel on Christmas Day, finishing 150 or so last pages of the book after the turkey.

This year's book, 6/12, is an improvement on the previous few, and the author has upped the ante seriously after 2002's Itäveri that almost degenerated into a parody.

The thriller focuses on a hostage situation that takes place on the finnish independence day, hence the name. The book flows well, action taking enough twists and turns to keep the readers amused, while dropping enough technical data to satisfy the geeks among the audience.

As with many of his novels, Remes uses the book to spotlight the burdens of yet another suffering minority - though this time the selection is on the unexpected side. The anti-heroes are serbs, and their attitudes towards the rest of the world are well-drawn (media and NATO get many a verbal spanking).

For protagonists the author dips into previous output - both Vahtera and Korpi have been sighted in other books. Both characters are still functional, and the strong main plotline prevents them from being led into sidetracks as has occurred previously.

As has been the case for four years already, Remes published a "young adults" book concurrently with this one. None of the kids' books have yet made it out into paperbacks - and at 20 euros it'd be costly to test the waters with a hardback.

New year, old memes. Though one I hadn't seen before (but twelve million folks had).

Your results: You are Spider-Man

Spider-man 85% Superman 65% Catwoman 65% Green Lantern 65% Iron Man 60% The Flash 60% Robin 45% Hulk 45% Supergirl 42% Wonder Woman 27% Batman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Not a bad result. At least compared to the other fare on the menu mr. Parker is able to engage in battles of wits as opposed to mere fisticuffs.

A small batch this time:

• Searchblog, John Battelle's take on things.
• Bad Astronomy, good blog, and interesting articles.
• Blake Ross, the man behind firefox.

Only good things listed as previously, no use recalling things that suck...

Movie:

The Departed. With Borat, Casino Royale and V for Vendetta skulking near the top.

Book (fiction):

Donald E. Westlake's Watch Your Back.

Book (non-fiction):

Chris Anderon's Long Tail (with Freakonomics as a close second).

Comic:

100 Bullets.

Album:

Poets of the Fall's Carnival of Rust (so, I like simplistic rock, sue me).

Song:

Carnival of Rust off the album by the same name.

Gig:

Dropkick Murphys at Tavastia (though both Metallica and Guns n' Roses were formidably good as well).

Restaurant:

Split: Smith&Wollenski (Boston) and Toscanini (Helsinki).

Gadget:

Procaster's DVR.

Game:

Split: Guitar Hero and New Super Mario Bros.

Athlete:

Jari Litmanen (for leading the finns to an unexpected top slot in the Euro 2008 qualifier group).

So, 2006. How was it?

• As noted here ad nauseam, visited Australia, and liked it a lot.
• Went to Munich for the Utah European Alumni meeting.
• Saw Metallica in Tallinn, Guns n' Roses in Hartwalll Areena and Dropkick Murphys twice.
• Read a lot.
• Devolved further at work: managerial epithets include salesman, hustler and rock star.
• Started geocaching.
• Managed to keep two recurring new year's resolutions: live music and a movie once a month (on averages, october turned out to be too challenging schedulewise).
• Hooked up with lots of old and current friends and colleagues in Linkedin.
• Snorkelled for the first time ever.
• Was surprised by the Nokia / Siemens merger.
• Blogged a lot (688 entries) here, and never got the fishblog restarted.
• Upgraded my camera.
• Did not upgrade my phone (waiting for the n95).
• Bought my first biking helmet.
• Chinese Democracy did not see daylight.

Previous retrospectives available for 2005 and 2004.