Note to self: whenever I seem to have bad service on a flight, just a thought on what happened on Continental 71/1970 ought to remind that things could be much worse off, service-wise.

(Obviously there's a related blog that follows the Continental response.)

And that's the NBA Draft, not the genuine one by Miller.

This year's proceedings are spiced up by a potentially high-placing finn among the draftees. Petteri Koponen is the first finn expected to be drafted early since Hanno Möttölä, and he enters the draft without having spent four years in the NCAA.

In mock drafts his star has been rising steadily, but a first round pick is still unlikely, even though Fox Sports has Clips choosing him at #14.

The draft is a lottery, nothing more, nothing less. SI lists some of the greatest steals and busts. Some familiar faces, but a lot more (especially in the latter list) buried in the annals of the league.

Saw Sam Raimi's third installment of the Spiderman-franchise. And walked away disappointed, this was a definite letdown after the first two movies.

The plot is way too busy - the three villains are just too much to tackle alone, and on top are several B-plots (most of them conveniently sheared of their origin in the comics) that consume their own good slice of screen time. It's not too hard to follow, since the target audience consists of sugar-rushed kids, just pointlessly busy. But there are plot devices (such as Venom, Gwen Stacy and the twist sprung by the Osborne's Jeeves-clone) left completely in the cold.

Like with the previous movie, it's not the main cast that takes top honors, acting-wise. Topher Grace is surprisingly good as the opportunistic rival to Peter Parker's workingman ethos, and Thomas Haden Church blunt as Sandman. And Bruce Campbell, the series mainstay, is present again, again as a foil for Spiderman's civilian alter ego. But, as usual, he's present in one scene only - and, as usual, J.K. Simmons as Bugle's despotic editor is also chronically under-used. The less said about Tobey Maguire's presence, the better - one trick can only take a pony so far. And the emo/badboy-scenes were just taking him beyond his ability/comfort zone, and were painful to watch.

While the movie has some great moments (most of the occurring near the top of Manhattan skyline), it's the bad stretches inbetween that drag the film down. At 140 minutes it's a long movie, and like with the newest Pirates-episode, the going gets very boring at times.

The attached image is from the Sony store in New York - a promotional Sandman statue climbing through the window.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is ice cream summer.

My take on the subject is the attached image, the old-schoolest of finnish ice cream enjoyed on the bridge to Seurasaari. The piercing calls of seagulls and the droplets of the quickly melting ice cream obviously cannot be captured on photograph.

(As usual, the full-size photograph is available by clicking the attached image. And the previous photo thursday pictures are all available through the gallery page.)

Blade Runner's been near the top of the lists of films in need of a definitive dvd edition.

A five disc monstrosity will be offered later this year, and the four different edits in the box should suit the most serious Deckard-o-philes amongst us.

Of course, the advent of the high definition discs means that an even more ultimate edition will be offered sooner or later.

No. I'm not retreating off to countryside to feed the mosquitos, but retreating nonetheless.

Five point clue: look at the URL.

But good reading nonetheless. Even if some of the stuff is hard to follow for those that don't read Valleywag and equivalent.

Just when you thought lawyers were restrained and full of professional conduct: the interweb proudly presents Robert Tourtelot.

Meh. Never got a real hangover from yesterday, but seemed to enter bouts of cosmic nausea occasionally.

Which slightly marred an otherwise very enjoyable barbecue evening in Jollas.

Two excellent cuts of steak, greatest salad I've eaten in months and dessert worth beheading a few french nobles. Of any of which I took zero pictures, proving that an omni-present camera is no good if not used.

Missed out on most public transport on the way out, and walked a couple of kilometers through the still very well-lit, but completely deserted Jollas. The picture is taken off a ridge, just before the sun slightly dips below the horizon.

Annual company summer party was held traditionally on the wednesday before midsummer.

Actually, this was a doubleheader party, as both Nokia and the brand-spanking new Nokia Siemens Networks had a joint shindig.

On account of the usual location being a humongous crater, the party had been moved - to Kaisaniemi, closer to downtown you cannot easily get a playing field for thousands and thousands of attendees, that's for sure.

Yeah, the location. Not bad at all, featuring such components as non-level ground, grass and trees. Almost enough to shield the participants from the goings on on stage.

You see, this year's occasion continued the cluelessly cruel selection of artists. And in 2007, the headliner was the finnish tango king emeritus: Jari Sillanpää. Who, thankfully, did play other stuff than his zillion-selling schlagers. Katri Ylander (runner-up in finnish idols some years ago) was missing in action, and replaced by Nina Autio, another artist who took the "I'll sing harmless classics"-option out of a potentially hard situation.

But music has never been the main idea in these parties. And neither has the freely flowing beer, though this year's crop did service as a useful social lubricant for the thousands of variably repressed engineers. Nope - it's the meeting of friends - those whom work has tossed into other niches in the company, schoolmates, and just people with whom occasional encounters do not regularly turn into flaming agony. Lots of friends sighted, though a couple of conspicuous omissions happened.

Nachspiel took a turn for the weird - visited Lux not once, but twice. First shot was a "quick" in-n-out trick (using the word quick in the loosest and most inappropriate sense, since merely queuing in took almost half an hour), but on the second ended up in the private section, away from the hoi polloi, music pumped out too loud, glass shards on the floor and just plain the things why I purposefully avoid Sedu Koskinen's oeuvre in general.

It's been a while since the listing of interesting new blogs that crossed the event horizon. Here goes, the choice to browse is yours. All yours.

• Jari Lindholm, the essential angry man of the finnish media. Writes well, and keeps kicking conformists in the shins.
• Sexkidsrocknroll - the life of a single mother is not my #1 topic, but when the content is as well-written (and prone to rants), it's worth the price of admission.
• Marc Andreessen's blog (the wunderkind of the Bubble1.0 writes well).
• harmaahattu - I'll have what he's having.
• n95 Plaza - because codename deep plum just is a bit on the complicated side.
• Koposkyttäämö - A brand-new blog about Petteri Koponen's looming career in the NBA.

Looks like O'Reilly, the publisher of quality computer books is looking to expand. Big time.

They've kicked off two conferences on topics even further removed from their fare than usual:

Tools of Change, running in San José as this is written is a lesser departure. After all, it's a short step from publishing books to speaking about publishing books.

The conference on Enery Innovation, on the other hand, is something else altogether. Expected to see Al Gore as one of the keynote speakers, but thus far the prophet of climate change du jour is absent from the program.

And someone might find the ability to purchase books chapter-by-chapter useful. Me? I'm happier with whole books, physical ones by preference. Though in the age of almost infinite storage capacity a fully searchable copy would be a nice bonus.

Bah. Seems that the third season of Lost won't be released on dvd until december. On R1 at least.

Likely the R2 dvd and nelonen's broadcast will precede the release, like last year.

And just like last year, the release is hopefully accelerated to match the start of the next one on television in the states.

Why, certainly!

• One more great map from strangemaps, this one showing which US state matches with which country size- and GDP-wise. Finland = Colorado, which ain't bad at all.
• Photographs of speed. Some seriously great snaps.
• The end is nigh: multicore programming is hard.
• With candidates like these, the seven new wonders are bound to be boring. Where's teh internet from the list?
• Been a happy google reader user for quite a while, but with their recent data loss issues, having another RSS-reader might be worthwhile. Or not. Anyway, seems that there's quite a selection of the tools available.
• Sushi books.
• Editing CSS isn't exactly the best fun available, a good editor makes it less of a chore.
• Airlinemeals, just the thing to check before a transatlantic crossing in the cattle section of a 757.
• The 65 million dollar pants-case makes it to the court. By the description the session was high on surreal, and fortunately low on understanding the accuser.

[ image nabbed from goopymart's photoset on flickr. ]

Saw the last episode Gore Verbinski's Disney theme park ride-inspired pirate trilogy yesterday. And didn't like it much. Stars-wise even less than part two a year ago (which probably snuck in an extra star based on the great makeup on Davy Jones).

Indeed, this is not a very good movie. While it has some great moments, they are separated by wastelands of meaningless action, most wooden dialogue north of the antarctic, and very little of the unexpected charm that made the first part the hit it deservedely is. The plot turns, but the arcs are slow, and signposted for the viewers to catch. Some of the plot devices are unexpectedly clumsy - good/bad Jacks talking back to Captain Sparrow come to mind first - but some raise the bar significantly. Though the chillest moment is at the very beginning, when the pirates and collaboratiors get to understand what martial law really means.

Johnny Depp is surprisingly subdued in his third outing of Jack Sparrow, and as such the other pirates run rings around him. Especially Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, who has earned a lot of swagger since the first part of the trilogy. Chow Yun-Fat is criminally underused, but his scarred head does make an immediate impression when he hits the screen.

Quite a waste, really. With deft cutting and splicing, the two parts could have made a single good movie - now we're left with two very mediocre ones.

Like last time, there's a post-credits scene - this time more meaningful. But worth the wait? That's for you to decide, especially when hesari spoiled the contents in last week's nyt.

Back for more? Probably - the end is left sufficiently open for the franchise to resurface when the Disney magic starts running dry again.

Encountered my first case of cinema rage in the theatre. Sat in the very last row of Tennispalatsi 1, and noted that a bunch of annoyingly loud and talkative folks sat to the right of me. The volume was loud enough to mask most of the noise, and the guy sitting next to me was thankfully the silent one of the group and functioned as isolation once the film got going. The woman sitting on the other side of the group clearly wasn't thus protected, and let her annoyance show in a verbal lashing when the credits started rolling. Way to go, seriously, and worth a late and remote thank you. It's simply wrong to shown up in a cinema merely chat with your friends.

The first trailer for Wall*E, the ninth Pixar movie is out.

And the trailer is not your usual kind (although it does feature a snippet of the movie), the lunch described sounds like one that'd been interesting to witness. After all, it's not often that a single meeting over a meal ends up producing several billion dollars in gross revenue.

Tuska is sold out.

Despite a not very interesting cavalcade of bands. Had a few I'd have wanted to see, but that's not likely to happen, unless there are vast numbers of expiring reservations still.

The only date with tickets available is sunday. The one with the lowest number of anything meaningful on the agenda.

Wah? No Jack Bauer until next spring (if the previous scheduling decisions hold).

The fifth season was by far the best of the bunch, and finished with a well-placed cliffhanger, leaving the book wide open for the sixth season to pick up. CTU remained as dysfunctional work environment as ever, and the early episodes had a pronounced workmate-thinning effect on the agency. The hobbit throwing hissy fits was just an added bonus. As was the unexpectedly less bloodsheddy finale.

And now, for something completely different, the lottery struck the first of this summer's threequels: Pirates of the Caribbean.

Had the semi-monthly gamenight at Lemmy's place yesterday.

The new addition in the family was immediately obvious: a Scared Stiff pinball machine. It's a 1996-vintage game, which I've confessed liking before. The experience was even better now, repeated games allowed experimenting with shots. Lodged a ball in the spider scoop thrice in half a dozen games, a feat not reproduced by anyone. Either got phenomenally unlucky, or my timing is odd.

Video games-wise the new guy on the block was Virtua Tennis 3 on x360. Our doubles games got off to an odd start, with the game resembling the original very little. After a couple of experiments the balls stayed alive for more than two hits, and the game got the appreciation it deserved (especially of the graphics, killer visuals on the big screen).

The regularest of the regulars, Pro Evolution Soccer, took its good time as well. Low-scoring affairs, with the vast majority of goals firmly in the ugly-end of the scale. True to real life, then.

Halo 2 proved that my FPS-fu is weak (the amount of hits scored over three games was laughably negligible).

Noted that:
a) I need a bigger better television,
b) I ought to pick up the Vice and Liberty City Stories on PS2, since the gameplay is smoothed up even from San Andreas.

Capped the evening with a decent round of Twilight Zone, still my favorite pinball machine. Started off real bad, with around 30M after the two first balls - got two extra balls with the last, and prolonged the game considerably. Though missing a couple of good scoring opportunities kept the score from advancing much beyond 200 million.

Had the first post-work beers on the cliffs near the office of the summer.

Firmly in the can-mode, the evidence of careless dachshund-walkers is prevalent in the nature, with brown glass and cardboard carelessly strewn around. We took out what we brought.

• Hours of sunshine: Just about right.
• Rabbits sighted: Three (at least).
• "Man, that's a nice camera"-moments: Definitely.
• Re-orgs discussed: Yes, at length.
• Worrisome clouds: Not very many.
• "Like, are there any worthwhile bands at {Tuska/Ruisrock/*}": Probably, but no agreement on any was reached.
• Descriptions of recent cluelessness: Many, very many.
• We'll be back: Certainly.

Visited the S60 marketing event in the Nokia flagship store on Aleksanterikatu.

The catering side of things was good - decent red wine and plentiful nibbles, but the devices side was a bit underwhelming - apart from the new gen communicator (E90), no funky new gadgets were shown.

Talked with the designated Vertu sales guy for a while, and was surprised how well the world's only luxury phone is selling. Especially considering the difficulty of bringing anything non-vanilla in the jantelov-dominated Scandinavia.

Pimped my brand new n95 (yes, syvä luumu was delivered exactly on schedule) with a screensaver, but more about the phone when experiences warrant some discussion. The screen is pretty, keyboard a bit fiddly (with convex keys, that's only to be expected) and the GPS-functionality untried.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is sound.

My take on the subject is the attached image, a didgeridoo playing aborigine on the Circular Quay. The amplified sound nicely reverberates throughout the area, and around noon the soundscape was free of dance-oriented external elements that crept into it after dark.

(As usual, the full-size photograph is available by clicking the attached image. And the previous photo thursday pictures are all available through the gallery page.)

I've been a participant in the weekly photo thursday for thirty-odd weeks now.

The web is full of photography show-n-tells, but like the DPChallenge the rules tend to be on the harsh side (photo must be taken after the challenge is announced), and the crop is usually very good.

The discovery of Photo Friday last week (from benrope's blog) provides a second location where to exhibit, without the spectre of too much competition or too restrictive rules.

No picture leaps out off the albums that screams "Purity", the topic of this week's challenge, so the first participation has to wait a little.

Words cannnot do justice to Obelia Medusa, a tenacious modelmaker who has built an amazing doll house.

And not just another doll house, but one that takes its inspiration from messieurs Tolkien and Jackson: a doll house from the Shire.

Click the link and scroll the distance, the images are worth the effort.

Watched Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's half of this summer's grindhouse double feature. And while it's easily dismissed as a homage to the low budget/high speed flicks of the seventies, it turns out to be a pretty decent movie on its own.

That is, if the viewer is not bothered by a simplistic script, profuse swearing, cardboard characters and bouts of ultraviolence. Fortunately, that's not all there is, since the characters end up being a lot more than the initially apparent set of paper dolls, and camouflaging amongst the regularly repeated seven words you cannot say on television there's long stretches of pleasant dialogue. The script doesn't really get any better, and the violence is an integral part of the film.

So yeah, this is a simple film, and that is by no means a cause to disrespect it. Just tone down the expectations from a Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction- level masterpiece, and all's well.

But despite it being simple, it's very much on the enjoyable side. It's like a steak properly served in a posh restaurant - without garnish. There's the main plot, and nothing else. And the plot servers a good ride - so a penchant for car chases should be added as a criterion, since they form a good slice of the movie.

The movie neatly simulates an old, badly worn copy. There are scratches and hairs on the film, color balance is a tad unstable, and missing frames are used as an excuse for not bridging scenes.

Apart from Kurt Russell as the badass stuntman, there are no major league stars in the cast. Of whom a lot seem to be present in the second half of the set, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Which, unfortunately, doesn't premiere here until late july.

And an even worse omission is the fact that the set of fake trailers for further grindhouse-mayhem shown inbetween the movies will most likely not see the silver screen in Finland.

And I so need to see Vanishing Point, referred to multiple times in the dialogue.

Gave up on xemacs ages ago (TextWrangler and TextMate superseded it), and haven't bothered to install the full selection of xscreensaver eye candy.

And I certainly am not a regular reader of Jamie Zawinski's rants, but occasionally he hits the nail head on, and thankfully the message is spread far and wide.

Like when coining the term wikigroaning, the despair you feel when noticing that a perfectly sane term (like Wall Street crash of 1929) has way less attention than a completely insignificant event or topic (say, the video game crash of 1983).

The WWDC is upon us, and it means that St. Steve of Jobs will appear on stage to preach to the choir. Some of whom carry means to convey the message almost live. (Yeah, many other sites do pretty good coverage, as well, I picked engadget, sue me).

While the apparent return of Macintosh as a decent game platform probably raised quite a few eyebrows, it's the next incarnation of OS X, Leopard, that's the most interesting topic of the presentation.

We've got a basic version that will cost $129,
we've got a Premium Version which will cost $129...
We've got a business version! $129.
Ultimate version! We're throwing everything into it, it's $129.

Steve Jobs

Yes. Unlike Vista, with its half a dozen different versions, buying Leopard is simple. The official release date is stated to be "in october".

But it looks like the company is going to be able to keep the iPhone's imminent launch on the 29th. So the fears of cascading delays pushing it back ought to be on the unwarranted side.

Taunon Systeemi, the best (and only) finnish System of a Down-cover band has expanded their domain from myspace to a proper website.

And vastly expanded their song repertoire as well. Including my personal favorite: Old School Hollywood Oulun Halutuin Veistos.

Picking two clues from katuoja: two worthwhile webcomics. Both with ingrown limitations to narrow down the audience.

Sarasvatin Hiekkaa is a graphic adaptation of Risto Isomäki's Finlandia-nominee novel from 2005. The ecologically minded sci-fi story is done on a page-per-week- basis in Aamulehti, with a collected edition looming in the horizon (it's a pretty thick book). Based on the first few episodes the art looks pleasant indeed, and the necessary exposition is woven into the story without seams that are too visible. Verdict: to be read on a weekly basis (and hope it doesn't get cancelled befor its time).

DM of the Rings, on the other hand, has less-ambitious goals. It's a comic that shows what kind of a roleplaying campaign could have been hidden behind Tolkien's masterpiece. Or Peter Jackson's, actually, since it's based on captures from the movie trilogy. It's filled with obvious in-jokes (which may open to a slightly wider audience) and references that wallow in gaming cliches (this, probably, is where most of the readers end up leaving, scratching their heads). But for long-time victims of the genre this is mandatory reading - with grin-inducing "I've so been there"-moments copiously sown into the panels. Tolkien-fundamentalists may find the proceedings too iconoclastic for comfort. Verdict: read 'em all (and stay on board to the finish).

Two notable entities decided that time is now ripe to abandon ship.

Nyt Pelittää, the game-blog of hesari quotes lack of audience as the main reason to quit. True, the nine-strong writer corps never found their voices - but amongs the long gaps inbetween entries and occasionally missing points there were some worthwhile articles. The same cannot, obviously, be said of a large segment of the whole blogistan. Time out, hopefully, and not a full-scale rout from covering games.

Perplex City, probably the largest alternate reality game right now has indefinitely postponed the launch of the second season of the game. Of course the situation is not as clear-cut as the announcements would lead to believe - the second season cards have been for sale for quite a while, so the reception among players has not been uniformly positive to say the least.

The former had a long slide into obscurity - with increasingly stretching intervals between articles, so the decision to pull the plug was pretty much expected. The latter was a surprise, especially considering how much revenue the first season generated (though the company's decision to abandon bookkeeping after the gig was over was a bit odd). Bought a couple of packs of cards and quite liked the varied selection of puzzles. With just a few dozen solved cards had no clue about the big picture, obviously.

Spent a good chunk of the evening in the Sauna Open Air festival in Tampere.

Walked into the area in the middle of Timo Rautiainen's set. Heard the last two songs. Not bad, very much in the form of his previous output, and thus nothing to entice an immediate purchase.

Stam1na, on the other hand, immediately put in a one-two punch of angry thrash - varied enough to be interesting beyond the first three songs, yet consistently powerful. This was the first time I ever saw the band, and was very convinced. The world needs this kind of pissed-off metallers, and I clearly need to pay a visit to a convenient record store.

The main event was Megadeth. Megadeth as in "was a hasbeen, disbanded for two years and put out a surprisingly good album". Clearly the hiatus and a bunch of new musicians has done Dave Mustaine good - this was an excellent gig. The raps between songs were cut to a minimum, the band was playing against a hard deadline, the show was to be over at ten sharp, and it was - with a set of convincingly humble thanks on top. Somehow Dave comes off as way more believable speaker than Metallica's James Hetfield, whose words seem to be stiffly repeated night after night. The finnish audience was profusely thanked for pushing the new album to #2, the highest chart position in the world thus far ("and without this Parkin Link we would have been the number one here").

The set list was great, classic song upon classic song - with surprisingly little material from the United Abominations thrown in. Mechanix (better known as Four Horsemen) was my personal highlight of the evening, but many songs off Rust in Peace and Peace Sells came close, very close.

Set list is off the air - one song remains unrecognized:

Sleepwalker
Take no prisoners
Set the world afire
Skin o' my teeth
Devil's island
Gears of war
Wake up dead
Hangar 18
Kick the chair
She-wolf
Tornado of souls
In my darkest hour
Washington is next
Reckoning day
Mechanix
Peace sells
//
Symphony of destruction
Holy wars

The rest of the bands in the three day festival have their hands full trying to top this. And this also sets the bar nicely high for Metallica's visit to Helsinki in july.

EDIT 10.6.: Added missing songs - TWO, not one. And corrected spelling errors of the ones previously remembered.

The Ducks did it, beating Ottawa Senators 4-1 in the Stanley Cup finals, and have thus brought the hockey glory to Anaheim.

The team did not have an auspicious start. After all, having the team named after a Disney flick did not exactly pump up the cred.

But like with so many non-obvious teams in the NHL (Tampa Bay, anyone?), the team slowly grew and prospered. And with the introduction of new rules in the league, a couple of key players and a healthy amount of luck, the team is now the top dog.

Congrats, again, and remember that the top of the heap is a hard place to be.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is machine.

My take on the subject is the attached image, a glass-cabin elevator. From an acrophobic perspective, the ride up to the 30th floor was interesting.

(As usual, the full-size photograph is available by clicking the attached image. And the previous photo thursday pictures are all available through the gallery page.)

Out of the 25 best movies I supposedly haven't seen my score isn't that high: three and a half movies (gave up in the middle of Spike Lee's Girl 6).

Some omissions are on the grave side (Heavenly Creatures alone strips several layers of street cred), and I seriously need to see Buckaroo Banzai sooner or later (had no idea Peter Weller starred in it). Bubble Boy too.

Munchkin Cthulhu must have been an immediate hit, since Steve Jackson Games has already come up with a sequel: Call of Cowthulhu.

Which, based on the first images and words, attempts to combine the Lovecraftian mythos with an unhealthy dose of rusticity.

Inspector Morse, the greatest of the british detective shows is back on finnish television.

Episodes are to be broadcast weekly, and I aim to catch a few to see whether the old magic is still left - and if so (as I very much suspect), go ahead and purchase the whole series on dvd.

Morse hit unexpectedly hard back in the early nineties. The episodes were long enough to give room for serious plot development, the characters anything but carved from cardboard, and the pervasively melancholic mood the last straw.

While not every episode was up to the standard set by those penned by Colin Dexter, the quality never sank to a level to cause worry. And even then, the irritable yet gifted inspector and his sidekick Lewis (Kevin Whately, fresh off Auf Wiedersehen, Pet) very rarely strayed from their prime spots.

As noted in Nono as well, the protagonist was indeed a piece of work not often seen in as complex package as this: on one side a cultivated art lover - on the other a jaded police officer who has seen it all, a vulnerable borderline alcoholic with serious emotional baggage and a serious tendency for biting cynicism. Thus obviously a character that's easy to mock as the Hale & Pace sketch of Inspector Morose proves.

The 33 televised episodes have been available on dvd for ages, but I wasn't aware that the spin-off series centered on Lewis, and dated five years after the Morse finale, has been released as well (though without subtitles, it would seem).

Something off the side of the trawler.

• Yes, the whole american nation feels the pain of the wrong guy nearing Hank Aaron's home run record.
• World Domination 201, a surprisingly lucid document from the lately very frothy keyboard of ESR.
• Songbird, an open source love child of iTunes and Firefox.
• Climate change accelerating evolution - sounds fishy, but apart from some clever accounting, the Smithsonian guys aren't exactly the lowest-regarded scientists on the globe.
• Worst lyrics of all time - turns out that I had always mentally shuffled War Pigs lyrics to a more sensible direction, this tautology is terrible...
• A very upmarket moleskine jacket. I'm happy with mine as-is, though the spine does exhibit worrisome tendency to age less than optimally.
• Launch cost back in the boom: 5M$ and up,
  launch cost now: 12K and change. Things have changed. For the better, obviously.
• Social networking and the chasm.

Peter Nepstad's self-published interactive fiction game, 1893: A World's Fair Mystery just extended its audience by a large chunk.

A download version off Manifesto Games site sure makes things easier than dealing with a non-traditional web shop (which seems to have been replaced by the common Paypal lately).

Definitely something tasty for the inevitable not so optimal summer days.

Got summoned to watch the european cup qualifier against Serbia in the recently renovated Sports Academy yesterday.

The most striking thing about the game was not Finland's loss (2-0) that pretty much guarantees yet another non-entry to the cup itself. No, it was the prevalence of guys whose surnames ended in "ic" in the opposing team - of the starting eleven, no less than ten players had a corresponding name.

Yeah, we lost - two defensive errors cost a lot, and Serbia's defense proved its worth against the hapless finnish offense. The lack of playing time by the two strikers was obvious - missed passes, bad positioning and altogether lack of scoring was consistently dismaying.

I quit passive smoking two days ago (with some help from the government, of course), and it was indeed pleasing not to be forced to toss all clothing in the laundry hamper upon getting home. I'm certain some bars do have to do some remodelling once the clientele notices the reek previously conveniently camouflaged by smoke.

If it only had been this easy back in the day... The margin to reality as it was at the end on ninth grade is close to two points. Two full points.

Of the grades, the one on music is the most bogus - as anybody who's ever had the misfortune of being standing within hearing range in an inspring concert can testify.

Spent most of yesterday in Suomenlinna, capping off a long project with appropriate ceremonies.

Skipped the official tour of the islands and sought four caches instead. Some climbing, some lurking in the dark and some plain old carefully-looking-at-things needed, but nothing extraordinary.

Weather was on the odd side, but rather warm. Clouds hung low, just meters off the surface of the sea. Didn't get too good a picture of the mist, but the effect was very peculiar, especially when climbing to the top of the battlements, and not being able to see the horizon at all.

Had forgotten what being tossed out of a bar felt like - not on account of being drunk & disorderly, but clothing. Had a disagreement with a roaming bouncer whether long denim shorts are proper attire for a summer evening - I lost the argument obviously, and am sure that my attitude didn't really help much.