Or: "man, did that movie suck or what".

Indeed, didn't like the Village much.

It's been a while since I truly detested a movie as bad as this. Apart from an excellent debut by Bryce Dallas Howard, and decent acting by some others, this film has close to no redeeming features (music is close to being one, and cinematography isn't bad either). Boring, long-winded and equipped with a tired exposition method, this just did not appeal at all to me.

As in all M. Night Shyamalan movies, plot twists abound, but in this one they're pretty shallow, and surprising in only one case out of three, and even that one is a pretty badly written scene.

You go record shopping. Swamp Music did not fail this time either.

Picked up two Candlemass albums (as two-disc extended editions and cheap to boot), the very first Voivod album (for completeness' sake, I don't have too high hopes for War and Pain) and a Pain album (their Dance with the Dead has been by far the most popular disc at the Lavonardo HQ this month).

This blog is now two years old.

Since the humble beginnings, it has seen 926 postings (including this one), 570 of them during the second year. Bringing the average to well over one per day.

Whether this one makes it to the second grade, like Jason Kottke's just did remains to be seen.

Late payday spoils brought home a brand new game machine, and an appropriately flashy game to showcase its capabilities.

The XBox360 is the first piece of Microsoft hardware I've ever bought at full price, and design-wise it is quite a nice addition to the living room array of electronics.

That is, until you notice the humongous power supply. No wonder the console itself is noticeably tiny, when the supply is some half of the actual box.

Setup was a piece of cake, and signing up for the Xbox Live-network was simple indeed - and my old nickname was available among the thousands and thousands virtual presences already hard at work.

Verkkokauppa had run out of wi-fi adapters, so there's need to get additional supplies soon.

And a new television, since the graphics in the previously raved new Ghost Recon game seem to be filled with detail that the old reliable Sony 29" is struggling to adequately display. Part of the blame goes to the lack of an RGB-cable within the box.

Stay tuned for a gamer-card in the sidebar here. Soon, not right now.

Long time, no meme. So, time to pick up this one from kirja-addikti. Translation, and bugs within mine, all mine.

List 5-10 things that you ALWAYS have present in the household. Concentrate on brands, and avoid listing mere objects (toothbrush is no good, Braun Oral-B is). Explain why you're addicted to just these things.

1. Tropicana juice.
Sanguinello, squeezed from red oranges if at all possible. The taste just has no equal in the finnish grocery stores, and I'm convinced that the steady extra vitamin C supply's kept me less susceptible to flu during the two years of addiction. A carton every three days, and no-one gets hurt - right.

2. Connect fineliner pens
Black felt-tip pens, at 0.4 width. Ubiquitous at work, where they tend to migrate homewards in pockets and backpack. Do not leave unsightly grooves on paper as ballpoints do, and have a bold color without being smudgy.

3. Peppermint Altoids
Easily the finest throat lozenges there are. Pack a punch tastewise and are supplied in metal boxes who exhibit none of the "break apart in coat pockets" tendencies so common with lesser mints.

4. Pepsodent Microgranule
Toothpaste that actually feels cleansing. I'm convinced the grains in the mix do have a non-placebo effect, but there's nothing to back the belief up.

5. Generic Chili Sauce
Preferably Frontera's Chipotle, but many others are almost up to the lofty standard set by that. Because there's always room for extra spice - both in real food and in snacks. And because the more commonly available sauces tend to be awash with vinegar and other unsavory ingredients (and yes, vinegar is good in moderation).

6. Vichy Novelle
Preferably one of the flavored variants. Because too much soda pop is not good for you, and something bubbly and cold is pleasant every once in a while. In mass quantities occasionally.

7. Ryvita Multi-grain
The best hard bread there is. Packed with seeds and grains, a single piece has more taste than a whole box of the blander ones.

8. Lagavulin
Because there's just no better whiskey available. And that's not a debatable opinion, but a hard fact.

There's probably others, but these were the ones that came to mind immediately.

And yeah, the title's an ancient Kreator song, just in case it triggered a synapse failure...

The greatest satirist science fiction has ever known, Stanislaw Lem passed away at the age of 84.

I read a lot of his novels during my formative years, translated on an annual basis into finnish. Couldn't understand Solaris, which creeped me out. Thought that Planet of Death (no idea of an english title, and wikipedia is of no great help here) was a wee bit over the top in worshipping communists. And absolutely loved his most humorous bits like Star Diaries and Cyberiad. Until then no-one had manipulated language in so clever fashion. And to this day I do feel indebted to the man for setting me on a course never to aim for a simple sentence, when a complex one will do.

After the finnish output slowed to a crawl I pretty much lost track of Lem's newer novels. Which means that I have two decades or so worth catching up to do. As soon as the books are translated into english or finnish - this would be a worthy reason to learn polish, but I'm sure it would take absolute ages before I would even begin to appreciate the nuances in the the language the late author was so fond of.

Two plus two still equals seven to the disciples of Trurl and Klapaucius, and the world is now without one of the finest absurdists that have lived.

[ Noted the obituary in boingboing. ]

Yet another beautiful flash game, the excellently animated Fancy Pants Man runs and jumps in gravity-defying fashion through a selection of levels.

Just don't try it out in a meeting. Or at least refrain from whooping when the pixellated dude reaches cosmic speed on screen.

[ Nicked from Janne's blog - he's on a roll with no less than three interesting things in a day (this, the EMI DRM debacle and the pointer toward monolith - that's more than most people come up in a week... ]

A hard movie demanded a pint of dark beer to mull over what was just seen.

Spent an hour at Molly Malone's, most of the time listening to Razamanaz, a swedish cover band at an excessively loud volume. They went through a selection of classic and not so classic songs, only occasionally straying from the original.

Nothing new there. Such bands play the venue almost every week, and most of them manage to have a bit more hibernian tint to their music.

Nope, the roistery bit comes from the frontman of 5.15, who, after having been spotted in the audience, joined the band on stage for one song. After taking of his shirt, boots and socks. And managed to put on a good show.

The show, however, was not entertaining enough to dissuade from taking an early exit and heading home towards an early morning wakeup call.

Saw the just-premiered V for Vendetta, a dystopian movie built upon the eighties comic by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Yeah, it's "built upon" and not "based on", since the movie takes a lot of liberties with the original. For the most part they are done well and unobtrusively - the world is updated from its original 1997 to somewhere in the 2010s, and the story is simplified quite a bit to fit into two hours of visual storytelling as opposed to 200+ pages of intense graphic novel. Britain is still a fascist, totalitarian nation - but the echoes from Mrs. Thatcher's reign have diminished with time. And it's definitely a post-911 movie - the original anarchist has been turned into a terrorist, not that the two viewpoints were very far from each other in the guyfawkes-bedecked revenant anyway.

People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

codename V

This continues the "not so easy movies"-series I've taken to watching lately. It's provocative and at times points an accurate finger at the ongoing demolition of civil rights. Fear is the greatest weapon of an oppressing regime, and its eventual consumption of the nation is told well.

It's a disturbing movie. In broad sweeps it paints a future that no-one wants to see, but a future that seems faintly possible.

Natalie Portman, whose role, Evey, has been upgraded to a media flunky from the novice prostitute in the original, proves that her wooden acting in the Star Wars prequels was not a true show of her abilities, and fits the role of a cornered girl without a future perfectly.

Hugo Weaving, as the eponymous 'V' proves that the leading man does not have to show his face in a movie. He's able to express more with a tilt of his porcelain mask or an added note to his voice than many others have available with a full face.

The smaller roles are filled with familiar faces. Stephen Fry shines as a comedian with multiple dark sides, and John Hurt returns to a bleak future in quite a different role he played the previous time.

A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.

codename V

V for Vendetta is a divisive movie - as noted by the wild spread of reviews. Divisive enough that in leaping beyond the original, it has alienated Alan Moore far enough to request the producers to erase his name from the film entirely. An action that was quite understandable in the case of travesty that was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but in this case feels heavy-handed.

Me? This is just short of a five star movie (and may be upgraded to one upon a second viewing) - it definitely is one of the very best comic adaptations ever, and the theme fits the current troubled times like a glove. There are questions no-one likes to hear, and answers that are even more dangerous.

And it's definitely time to re-read the original once again, and spot the few places where the update exceeds the original.

Another one of mostly regular gamenights was held at Lemmy's place. Matti showed up as a new member, and was immediately thrilled by the plentitude of pinball machines available.

Pinball was indeed played - and not to a very good effect. Managed to underperform at Addams Family by quite a wide margin to the previous try. And didn't do much better at Twilight Zone either, and can't explain the lousy result by mechanic failure of the machine that cropped up.

Managed to finally break the scoring drought in Pro Evolution Soccer, and most of the four to six-player games turned out enjoyable indeed. Spent most of the time the others devoted to Eyetoy on pinball, but what little I played convinced that the teensy camera is a workable interface.

Ghost Recon 2 stayed put this time, and had an extended four screen game of Project Gotham Racing Forza Motorsport instead. Sucked rather bad, and after winning one race of the first five (and not finishing in time twice), gave up the seat to worthier drivers.

Called it a night early after a brief glimpse at the newest GR-game on Xbox360 - the game with an inexplicably non-catchy name, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter seemed very pretty and loaded with next-generation graphical wizardry. Definitely one of the highlights of the new console.

Noted that ought to coordinate purchasin of supplies better next time, as multiple copies of the very same (fortunately tasty) things were brought in. Also noted that polish ginger beer is something that everybody should try, but not form an extended relationship with.

[Edited the name of the racing game to correspond with reality.]

Here we go again. Powers that be just robbed a valuable hour of sleep from everybody.

Early mornings and a sunny disposition are not things to be taken for granted this week.

Picked up David Lynch's eighties classic Blue Velvet on dvd from Stockmann.

The movie's been out in digital format for ages, but the original finnish release by Scanbox was criminally fumbled. Sporting an atrocious 4:3 aspect ratio and sub-optimal cropping, it managed to render important scenes much harder to understand, and robbed the viewers of lots of things that happen somewhere else than the exact center of the picture.

This release, fortunately, has been executed properly, and was even decently priced.

Thanks for asking, the virtual sports teams are doing quite swell.

On hockey front, the team placed third in the regular season, and is now fighting for a semifinal spot. The season's been rather easy thus far, and the team's been in the top four for a long time. Picking up Eric Staal in the draft was a stroke of luck, he's been one of the major producers. Peter Forsberg's injuries have not depleted the roster as bad as a few previous years, but his output has not been steady lately. Teemu Selänne (nine points in the last week alone) has staged a magnificent return to greatness. Of the goalies Miikka Kiprusoff has been his trusty self, while Antero Niittymäki has not consistently exhibited the Great Wall of Broad Street-tendencies so evident in Turin olympics.

On the hardwood court, the game's been going even better. The Hakkapeliitat lead the league with a comfortable margin. That, of course, means nothing once the playoffs commence. The team's been far better than anticipated, Shawn Marion leads the entire NBA in combined points (across nine categories), and messrs. Bibby and Billups have given excellent support from the guard position. Chris Paul was a late round rookie pick who has turned out to be an excellent steals-expert. Took Amare Stoudamire as my second pick in the draft - this appeared to be less than a shiny deal, as he underwent knee microfracture surgery just before the season started. For a long time his return to the game looked questionable and I was about to drop him before the playoffs. However, he took to the floor in a win against the hapless Blazers last thursday and knocked off 20 points and nine rebounds. Case closed. Am playing without any Jazz players this year, missed Kirilenko in the draft (took Marion instead), and most of the others apart from Carlos Boozer (who went early as well) have been way too inconsistent to matter.

So, from a dynasty point of view, definitely looking good.

You can never know too many words. And it's a worthy endeavor to try and pick up new ones.

Thankfully, in the internet era, we're not limited to just a single source for vocabular enhancement.

Double Tongued Word Wrester is a fine collection that sticks to the outer edges of the language, whereas the appropriate widget picks its fill from multiple sources (and yes, there is an equivalent dashboard widget as well).

Peace, and especially its absence, in the Middle East is never to be taken lightly. It's not often when you see a good combination of dangerous opinions and good writing.

I think a couple of Robert Fisks would look just right sitting next to Paul Krugman and John Gray.

ISAS 2006 registration is open.

Program seems to be decently interesting, and there's no chance of jetlag when the conference is held four miles away.

In an unexpected turn of events, Sony announced that Playstation 3 will be region-free.

Hooray, no more uncertainty about games making it first) out of Japan and second) into Europe from the states.

Now the only thing Sony has to do is to get the console out in time and in quantity.

Never seen anyone pull out a gaming device (the n-gage, used as a phone, does not count) in public, but the market segment's obviously lucrative as millions of consoles and games are sold annually.

Ok, so the PSP isn't doing too hot right now (at least not as hot as originally expected), but Sony still believes in it. It's running short on must-have games, especially with the GTA: Liberty City Stories shortly being available on PS2 (and probably other formats subsequently).

Nintendo's DS is another story. After a slow start, it's been cooking up hit games steadily, and the revised console's consistently sold out in Japan.

Entering the fray are Microsoft and Nokia. Microsoft is a first timer, and are trying a new market niche after the successful launch of the Xbox 360. Nokia, on the other hand, had miniscule success with N-gage and have now, after a lengthy deliberation declared their intent to return to the frontlines.

It'll be 2007 before either is in position to launch anything. And as both PSP and DS will see a significant boost to their software lineup, it'll be a hard battle against either let alone both.

In the continued lunacy of waging war against nouns (terror, drugs), the leading nation's forces seem to have a definite handicap. Cnn notes that budget limits have eliminated e-mail accounts from thousands of employees.

That's not a "pre 9/11"-mistake as the article notes, it's a pre-1993 mistake...

The third incarnation of the biggest new franchise in television started on mtv3. And managed to miss the episode, due to "thinking that I'd set up the recording already".

Bugger. p2ptv is sure to provide it, and ought to, since trying to figure out the characters in the second episode is a bit more painful.

And time also to watch the double-episode from the fifth season of the original show. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, have heard good things about it.

Saw Steven Spielberg's München, a three hour tale of vengeance.

It's a movie that describes the Israeli retaliation on the München olympic massacre. A long movie, it doesn't rush the viewer, nor the protagonists. The magnitude of the revenge is tangible, and shown on the face of the leader of the team. Indeed, Eric Bana as the point assassin plays the part well. Starting eager and effective, but drawn to a nightmare of shifting allegiances and waning trust - his haggard face is as much an emblem of the tale as the hooded face of the Black September fedayeen from the news.

The movie moves slowly, and interludes the main plotline with both news footage as well as dramatized re-enactments from the olympic village and the infamous Fürstenfeldbruck airfield. The slow pace didn't bother me the slightest, and felt no need to check the time - quite unlike what some other drawn out movies have caused.

The future James Bond plays his part as one of the assassins well, as does the token hippie played by Mathieu Kassovitz. All in all the almost entirely male case is almost faultless - depicting mainly dark emotions throughout the rampage. The cinematography is well done also, the seventies are realized effectively, and the Twin Towers looming in the background of the final shot is quite powerful in pushing forward the last few lines of dialogue about peace unattainable through revenge.

It's not a happy movie. It's not an easy movie. But it's a worthwhile movie. Which is a lot more than can be said of Spielberg's other recent output.

Gotta hand it to the guy who's the voice of Fry. Not many people get featured twice on slashdot on the same day.

The initial report of a whole new season of sorely missed Futurama proved to be too optimistic. Fortunately the show will be de-canned, but in the form of four movies.

In other words, really liked this quote from the same site the other day:

NASA is reporting that two years into its 90-day mission, ...

So, despite the steady decline of the comments and lapses in selection, there's still life in the original link pointer. Which is important in the age of stiff competition from del.icio.us and digg.

Sad, isn't it. As told by the unbribable certifyr.com, my website can boast only 19% of the trappings of shiny tomorrow.

So, in a vain attempt to become compliant with the be-flickrized future, stay tuned for a sillier name, bigger fonts and a gratuitous google maps mashup. Or not. But it sure is time to update the colour scheme soon. And the site's definitely "beta" quality as pointed out with snide regularity, even though I fail to advertise the sad fact.

[ via überkool, who claims a more respectable slice of the pie. ]

Watched Steven Spielberg's Terminal. It's a tale of a Krakozhian man who gets stuck on JFK after his country dissolves into chaos during his entry flight and is thus not allowed into the country by the INS.

It's not a bad movie by any means. Tom Hanks is great, and purposefully annoying as the lead. The airport itself is cleaner and better lit than ever in real life.

However, the story simply does not convince enough. On one hand it's a Kafka-esque tale of falling through the cracks of imperial bureaucracy, on the other Viktor Navorski's quick rise to the hero of the entire working class of JFK (neatly covering all the ethnic bases) fails as a plot device.

The film is based on a true story of Alfred, an Iranian guy, who has famously been stuck at CDG in Paris since 1988, but the fact is not mentioned anywhere.

Not a very good movie, and oddly bad coming from the usually reliable Mr. Spielberg.

Imaginary Foundation's output is easily the most fascinating I've stumbled on in a long while. It combines high concepts with a definitely montypython-era Terrygilliamian derangedness in the images.

The shirts are expensive at 30 dollars each, and without knowing anything about the quality (like, is the color lathered on creating an easily cracking facade), I don't have an immediate craving to order one. However, did check that the store does recognize Finland as a viable shipping target.

Syriana is not an easy movie to watch. If you're unable to juggle multiple, only peripherally connected concurrent plot threads, the two hours watching this are not going to be the greatest cinematic thrill of your life. It's directed by Stephen Gaghan, the guy who wrote the screenplay for Traffic, and the story is quite a bit complex than in that cocaine-drama. After all, tackling the issue of American over-reliance oil from multiple viewpoints would be quite an accomplishment even in longer form.

Syriana is quite blatantly un-American, and that may trouble some viewers. In the creative team's opinion might definitely does not make it right. A statement that is thoroughly underlined by a seriously unraveling niche in the middle east. The human indifference shown in the attempt to create Syriana, a collection of democratic states aligned with American interests is indeed grimly pragmatic. And the non-political entities shown do not exhibit much heart either.

Corruption? Corruption ain't nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are here in the white-hot center of things instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out there in the streets. Corruption... is why we win.

Dan Dalton

The acting is good across the board. George Clooney famously fattened himself for the role, and got an oscar for the depiction of a CIA agent who's willing to see things to the end. He's not the only one putting on a good show, apart from Matt Damon's typically wooden acting, there's a lot to see here. And Amanda Peet returns to the land of real movies from the apparently agent-inflicted diaspora into seriously B-class ones.

The movie also includes a short, but still nasty torture scene, that did register on my somewhat callous squeamishness-index. Not a lot of blood, but its presence is jarring in an otherwise quite placid movie.

Syriana is not a perfect movie. It is very ambitious, and unfortunately falls short of the goal line. While the term "hyperlink movie" used by Roger Ebert applies well to this - most of the things seen, spoken of or even referred to, are meaningful, some of the links are definitely muddled. Not enough to confuse an alert watcher, but enough to dull the edge of the story.

No idea how much material was left on the cutting room floor, an imminent dvd-release's "deleted scenes" may tie the elements together better than what is executed here.

But it's heartwarming to see that Section Eight Clooney's production company is interested in hard topics, and is able to craft interesting movies out of potentially boredom-inducing material. And anyone who dares to take on creating a movie based on Philip K. Dick's paranoia-fest A Scanner Darkly deserves an extra round of applause.

A couple that I seem to have picked up for regular reading lately.

• 71/78 is a finnish blog that rambles on and on about videogames. In an entertaining and readable fashion.
• Still haven't picked up the Search (guess I'll wait for the inevitable paperback edition), but the author's blog is quite interesting at times.
• PopuLAARI devotes itself to exploring popular culture - mainly that of the past, though some entries are more up to date.
• Sunrise is a movie-blog. One that concentrates on the decidedly non-standard-Hollywood stuff.

All recommended. Three of these are in finnish, which is an indication how little I've lately explored the blogosphere outside of the almighty blogilista, pretty much the only finnish blog-listing.

Finished reading Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World I borrowed off mr. Srpnt an embarrassingly long while ago.

It's a decent book that combines several themes into a not-totally convincing whole. While the essays on football, concentrating on the not so good things the individual clubs and their fans have done throughout the years are good, some of the ties into globalization, the subtext of the book (an unlikely theory of globalization) remain vague. While the book acknowledges that the game is as global as a sport can ever be, not all the effects perceived from foreign interest are not always positive.

But despite that shortcoming, this is a good book, worth reading by anyone who likes the eleven man chess played on mown grass. The individual stories are entertaining, and in most cases quite informative. The author provides readers with insights into somewhat common subjects (such as the Old Firm, the longest-running football rivalry) as well as totally alien (jewish football in Europe during the 20th century and beyond and the effect of football on the liberalization of Iranian women). The essays are shortish, clocking in at 20-some pages, and usually consist of stories from multiple interviewees and other sources.

One of the chapters centers on Chelsea's less reputable fans, and is the only one that concentrates on hooligans. They've evolved quite a bit since the ugly days in the last decades of 20th century. Barcelona, on the other hand, escapes historical inquisition unscathed - the team never was the tool of a fascist regime, nor have its fans misbehaved enough to matter.

Entertaining and educational, worthy reading to prepare for the looming World Cup.

The book has a double title, in the states it's known as ... soccer ..., whereas elsewhere the real name of the game is used (as in "football").

Trying to get a ticket to the second gig proved as fruitless as the first attempt. Sold out in eleven minutes or so, I finally got through to the local ticketmaster-equivalent in fifteen, my refresh-hitting finger is certainly getting rusty.

But the influx of new tickets is bound to cause some sales never to reach the point of payment in huuto.net, so there's hope to score a decent place on the floor on a rebound.

Ok, someone took offense at Guitar Hero.

It is bloody expensive, but creating a phony spinoff is taking things quite far beyond the expected shrugged dismissal.

And as Janne notes, the real thing now has a distribution deal in Finland. And the price is expectedly steep, around a hundred euros.

As usual. Things that are worth a little look-see.

• Bruce Sterling's lengthy speech at O'Reilly's Emerging Technology 2006 conference. All the papers seem to be available already.
• Annual Bloggies-awards. Multi-categoried, surely something for everyone. At least I've never seen a vast majority of these ever before.
• Annie Proulx did not take kindly Crash beating Brokeback Mountain for the best movie Oscar award.
• nxtbot. Because there's never enough time for a bout of home robotics.
• A set of snidely commented old advertisements for computers. "Back in the old days, the time of IBM and Uniblab, a picture of a computer required a wide-angle lens. And a woman in a thigh-high skirt". Genius.
• Sour Grapes? The world's richest man openly mocks the $100 laptop initiative headed by MIT. Sure, the kids all over the developing world would be much better off with the windows XP only, when the redeeming feature of the cheaper alternative is the crank that can be used as a power source.

Watched Tim Burton's latest film, Corpse Bride, released almost concurrently with a much higher-profile Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last summer.

It is resembles the old favorite, Nightmare Before Christmas, a lot. Both depict scary things in a warm, even whimsical light, while carrying a wicked undercurrent of black humour.

It's not a complex film, the storyline is pretty much predictable, but never stoops to over-explaining things, which is a pleasant surprise. Especially when considering that the movie's mainly for kids. Ok, so the tale is not complex, but the implementation thereof is: this is a stop-motion movie, complemented with an occasional digital effect.

Danny Elfman's music, as usual in the case of a Tim Burton film, accompanies the story perfectly. And the other usual suspect, Johnny Depp, plays his part well - but it's Helena Bonham Carter's voicing the deceased Emily, the corpse bride of the title, which is the highlight of the movie.

It's not a long movie. In fact, clocking in at mere 74 minutes, it's probably one of the shortest in a long while. But it's a perfect package as it is right now, additional content would probably just dilute the appropriately macabre experience.

Lawrence Lessig, the man behind Creative Commons is not the only one fighting for more sensible copyright legislation.

Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has published a comic book about fair use and filmmaking. Drawn in styles resembling Scott McCloud's books, the Mad magazine and EC's classic horror comics, the art is not the book's strong point, the story is.

Unlike the finnish copyright-comic fiasco, it's unlikely that anyone will attempt to remix this.

I'm not alone!

Christian Lindholm's behaviour eerily resembles mine. Though the tear-off bits do stand out as kind of extreme. And seems that I have a new pen to try out. If these Mujis are available at all in Helsinki.

Had a corruption dinner at Frescorante on Korkeavuorenkatu.

Decent italian homecooking, complemnted with an excellent amarone. The venison was on the dry side, but had pleasant currant sauce. Neither the appetizers (generic antipasto misto) nor dessert (tiramisu) were anything special. But the service was. Not often the waiter decides the main course for the whole group and dispenses with allowing any of the customers to taste the wine.

Not bad, but neither something that I will rush back to.

In recent news, the local promoter just announced that Guns n' Roses will play a second concert in Helsinki on the fifth of july. Considering that that it took a whole ten minutes to sell out the first gig, it's likely that the second one will do likewise.

The gig in july was sold out immediately. While I was nodding off in a car towards Tampere. As a passenger, for the easily-worried among the readers, not behind the wheel.

The post-sales market (read scalping) is in full bloom in huuto.net, the local eBay-equivalent. The potential for cancellation remains on the high side (exactly what they did four years ago), so I'll hold on bidding until later.

In other news...

Alice in Chains is indeed back, despite their vocalist passing away in 2002. They've been booked to play in Provinssirock. Perhaps it's finally time to make the first trip ever to Seinäjoki.

The new David Gilmour album, On an Island has been spinning in the player a lot. Quite a pleasant album, lacking immediate hooks, but full of things to be discovered on repeated rounds. And the guitar, as noted in Mr. Musicnaut's brief review, sounds delicious.

Have to get a new pen for note taking. The pages in the new moleskine book seem thinner, and the ink shines through the pages.

On a two-day work trip to Tampere.

Did the mandatory record shopping at Swamp Music, who are undergoing some severe plumbing renovation. In the resulting chaos missed several discs I was looking for, but managed to spend the per diems easily.

Had dinner at The Grill, a new steakhouse next to the Siperia-reworking of the old Finlayson factory. Calamari was drowned in wet dough, but the steak itself was nothing short of great. Noted that Siperia has a bunch of interesting things inside, but browsing the spy museum and viewing an enormous steam engine have to wait till next time. Capped the evening by with a pint at Plevna, their new smoky beer called James was quite a pleasant discovery.

The Scandic hotel next to the railway station turned out to be very well renovated. Room was effectively decorated and clean, and the free wifi-connectivity an unexpected bonus.

Google expanded their mapping service to cover Mars.

But it seems to be missing the canals, and I couldn't find Dejah Thoris' palace either. Perhaps she's just getting ready for Jon Favreau's movie adaptation of the ERB classic.

And the famous face in Cydonia (at 40.75N, 9.46W, and available as a tagged object) seems less prominent on the maps than in the theories spouted by those convinced that it is a monument of extraterrestrial nature.

The weather remained nice and went back onto the ice. Forgot to pack a real camera, and as such the quality of the images is not very high. The 6680 simply is not good enough.

Planned to walk around Seurasaari, but was forced to replan as the wind was on the chilly side, and I'm still nursing the last remnants of a persistent flu. So walked from Seurasaari to Huopalahti instead.

The paths on ice were not really packed, there's room for plenty. Even though today's article in hesari probably did attract an extra few. In addition to walkers, there was a surprisingly large number of skiers.

As the two lowest images show, the sun was shining pretty hard, and glare was hard to escape. Though the bottommost goes to the extreme on purpose.

Next week is supposedly nice and sunny as well, so there's time for a triumphant return. Definitely with a better camera, probably with a circumnavigation of the island.

It's been ages since I walked under a bridge. Felt odd, especially when there was little snow on the thick ice underneath.

The 2006 season of formula 1 racing started this weekend. Missed yesterday's qualification, and aimed to keep the actual race in the background as opposed to watching it intensely.

Unexpectedly the plan was derailed by the quality of the race. It was actually interesting and at times even somewhat exciting.

This season there are two finns in the mix - though the other races with a german license. Both of whom scored points today. Again, this was quite unexpected: Kimi Räikkönen placed third against all odds after starting from the last position on the grid after the disastrous qualification yesterday, and Nico Rosberg placed seventh in his debut grand prix - quite an introduction to the sport. With one additional pilot waiting in the wings (Heikki Kovalainen, the test driver for Renault) looks like the finnish presence in the sport is here to stay for a while.

And who knows, if the races remain as entertaining as today's, it is remotely possible that I'll return to the fold as a watcher. It's been a couple of years since the sport held any real interest for me, and I've even stopped participating in the massively successful annual Pick6 competition.

Comparing to the scary effectiveness kept up for the first ten days of the month, long time no blog. So in the interest of preserving eyeballs, here's a compressed view of the beginning of the weekend.

The big "hindsight is always 20/20"-moment was had when reading an article about the inventor of the cubicle. Even he now agrees that it was probably not a good idea, which is, of course, small consolation to the zillions of workers subjected to the treatment daily. Could be worse, much worse - it's just a step away from flexispace (as explained about halfway down the article).

The other issue that broke newsbarriers across the world was about google about to unleash three more technologies soon, or soonish - they are in beta. But so are gmail and groups, and have been for years. Writely is a web-based collaborative word processor / editor. Which probably will take a few eons to get used to. It's in closed beta, so no idea how documents are versioned, or about whether off-line editing is possible. But it's yet another Web2.0-company that reached a credible exit without bringing in a cent of money - an exception, definitely as Russell Beattie points out in his excellently named WTF2.0-rant. The other two: GDrive and a calendar seem to be born in-house. Both look interesting, but I'm sure the most paranoid/wise (delete as appropriate) will balk as exposing their precious data on a virtual data storage hosted in the states. The calendar looks interesting as well, but bears the same problem - potential customers have their days filled with things swimming clearly under the waterline of NDA-ness - so this does not look like a credible candidate for synchronizing with the mailbox at work.

Missed the sauna-party celebrating Matti's return from MIT, but joined a subset of the guys way later in the day. Learned yet another thing in the long journey to adulthood: "do not drink a liter of Hoegaarden in the space of 40 minutes", nice bit of acceleration there.

Weather's been turning real nice towards the end of the week. Not yet spring by any means, the nights are cold and there's plenty of snow. But "nice" in the "sunny" and "pleasant to walk around in" senses of the word. Spring is not far, the equinox is on the 20th and at that point the green is supposed to start gaining on the white. Took advantage of the latter and went walking on the ice. Wasn't the only one who had the idea, but the wide open bays allow plenty of crowds. Closer inspection of the blocky building in the center of Huopalahti brought no better idea what it actually is.

And Finland now has its probably most controversial contestant in the Eurovision song competition. Lordi dresses in industrial grade monster make-up, and plays revivalist eighties hair metal. So, the traditional folkers, bad disco and siliconed up eastern europeans have something quite unexpected to meet in Athens. This is not the first time we've dabbled with sending metal-ish competitors - Nightwish won the popular vote in 2000, but was replaced by an italian gospelist by a panel of "experts". Considering how well the uncrowned kings of operatic metal have done since, this was probably not one of the brightest ideas. But then, institutionalized popular music is something finns have sucked at for ages.

Finally remembered to check the availability of the second part of P. Craig Russell's adaptation of Ring of Nibelungen as a graphic novel. Not one of his finest hours, but far easier to manage than sitting 15+ hours at Bayreuth.

Lent out the offensively bad tv-adaptation to an unsuspecting friend. Let's see what develops of this.

I, for one, did not pick up the racial theme at all from the books, but a lot of people have thought that the race card was badly fumbled in this.

Race or not, it does not change that the mini-series sucks in ways not imaginable. As stated, the plot contains elements from the novels, but the main storyline is nothing but a two-bit tale of greed. Considering that this was not done on a tiny budget, it once again proves that the first place where Hollywood saves money is the script.

Fortunately there's another Earthsea movie moving towards completion. Tales from Earthsea is an animated film directed by Goro Miyazaki (yes, he's Hayao's son). Out next summer - at least in Japan, a western release may be further along.

Gazing at her bibliography, there are two books in the saga that I haven't read yet: a short story collection called Tales from the Earthsea and Other Wind, a novel. Read the first three in early eighties, liked them a lot. The fourth one, Tehanu, on the other hand did not appeal at all. Which probably just means that it's just waiting for another round, and there's not better way to set up a good position for that than by starting from the very humble beginnings on the island of Gont. Sadly, though, the newest editions in the original trilogy bear covers from the sci-fi channel travesty of an adaptation.

The newest Dortmunder caper, Watch your Back, is out in paperback.

At least in the states, might take a while to arrive in Finland.

After a couple of weaker novels in the series (Drowned Hopes, especially), the author hit his stride again, and the last few have been good indeed. But not as good as the classic first few from the easygoing seventies. But then again, few things are.

Did Han shoot first, or not?

That, of course, depends on the edition you're watching.

No matter which, nothing changes the fact that rodian bounty hunter called Greedo is dead, slain by a known felon and smuggler Han Solo. He did not escape the long arm of the law, and will now bear the burden of his actions. After a trial of course.

Two instances of interactive fiction (text adventure games if you wish to be vulgar) have recently been employed as parodies.

First up was a tale of the war in Iraq, followed by a story set in the World of Warcraft. As I've thus far avoided bites of the WoW-bug completely, can't say much about the subject matter of the latter, but the former is spot on, and much closer to the command-response cycle than the WoW-parody.

So, I'm not the only one who prefers his comics in a collected form.

Good source of news, and the reviews are not bad at all. Even if I think that he's a bit harsh on the Fables - even though Homelands is not the finest hour of the comic, it's still head and shoulders above the common junk and worthy indeed. Just not as good as the previous albums, but such a sustained high level would probably be too much to expect, especially in a monhly comic.

Been an inveterate Neil Gaiman fanboy for ages. Started off with a single issue of Sandman on recommendation from Tähtivaeltaja, the finest sf-magazine in the universe.

That issue happened to be #19, the one where reality and faery tales are mixed up in a re-telling of Shakespeare's A Midnight Night's Dream. Yes, the one that everybody else raves about, as well. Yes, the one that won the World Fantasy Award in 1991 as the first comic book ever.

Needless to say, I got hooked. Big time. However, as a poor student (both words being operative), I started off buying collected editions as opposed to individual issues (bang for the buck per issue is much lower), and thus missed a year's worth. By that time had collected all the four collections available, and decided to upgrade to individual issues. And kept collecting until the very end. Which took a long time coming, but finally the story was wrapped up in #75. And then supplemented by two extra albums: Dream Hunters (which was quite weak) and Endless Nights (which was uneven, but a very pleasant read nonetheless).

A couple of years ago I noted two things. That reading single issues (well-kept, of course) is a pain - the paper is not optimal, and the advertisements are distracting. And the question of consistently rising price was a factor as well - obviously I had turned from a reader to a collector in the meantime. So decided to resort to buying the collected editions, which are a vastly superior way to read (just like full seasons of tv shows on dvd are preferable to weekly episodes). Vertigo, the relevant imprint of DC Comics had just introduced a new cover design to the ten collected editions. And for perfection's sake decided to buy a full set to avoid creating extra visual chaos on the bookshelf.

Now, however, hot on the heels of the lavish Absolute edition of the finest superhero comic ever, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, comes the news that the Sandman-series will be republished in similar fashion. Facts about the forthcoming Absolute Sandman are scarce, but some tidbits are available, as well as notes on progress from Neil himself (scroll to about the middle of the page).

Pricewise the Absolute edition is likely a hard hit on the wallet. Even when published in multiple volumes (currently content seems to be divided into four) over a couple of years.

Sandman was the first comic for which I thought annotations, explaining references both intertextual and within the comic itself are necessary. As the size of the collection shows, at times the series at some points was suffering from rather heavy need to include everything - from the proverbial kitchen sink to foreshadowing forthcoming events by years.

It's been absolutely ages since I last read the story in chronological order, and some bits I've read only once (like the weakest and most extended of the storylines: the Kindly Ones). So I'll do a thorough re-reading now, supplementing the process with the prolific annotations, and will document the progress through the ten album storyline here. It's not the first Sandman Reader page on the web, and likely not the last either.

Yesterday's extended loitering outside did not improve the flu. No fever worth mentioning, but I think I've more than exceeded my tissue quota for the year. Had to supplement it with napkins, when I ran out of proper nose-wiping equipment during a lengthy meeting. Those chafed up the nasal region something fierce.

Voice remains huskily drawn lower from its usual pitch. But not by much, so I don't think a repeat of last winter's enforced silence is happening.

Missed Natalie Portman's unexpected rap on saturday night live. Thankfully it's preserved on the web, to which I got my first ever "must-see URL"-note via SMS. Indeed, it's well worth seeing, even if you don't particularly like her or gangsta-rap. Didn't know that Queen Amidala harbored such inner distress.

As everybody and his cousin already know, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in Wales is the longest town name in the world.

But that's nothing compared to the length of the URL that points to the blog of the Mayor of Helsinki. It's a real monster, and probably good practice for those individuals who make a living by reciting decimals of pi (broken up so that renderers don't go berserk):

http://www.hel.fi/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy 0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4p3DgDJmMUbxDvqR0IFfD3yc1P1g4ASkeZ ACSMPR_2onNT0xORK_WB9b_0A_YLciHJvR0dFAIBlFuE!/delta/base64xml/ L0lJSk03dWlDU1lBIS9JTGpBQU15QUJFUkVSRUlrLzRGR2dkWW5LSj BGUm9YZnJDRUEhLzdfMF8ySEEvMTAzNzA1?WCM_PORTLET=PC_7_0_ 2HA_WCM&WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/fi/Helsinki/ P%C3%A4%C3%A4t%C3%B6ksenteko+ja+hallinto/Kaupunginjohtajat/ Kaupunginjohtaja+Jussi+Pajunen/Blogi

The prosecution rests.

All of a sudden gromit the iBook has started to exhibit worrisome behaviour.

First was the unexpected thought that my wi-fi basestation had suddenly changed its security settings. The poor laptop had to be restarted to rectify the situation.

The other, but far less acute cause for worry is the occasional disappearance of the menulets from the far right of the menu bar. Has happened a couple of times.

Lost bluetooth now twice - all of a sudden it just fails to work, and trying to pull the relevant control panel from system preferences hangs. Not the system, of course, just the preferences process.

Mystifying, but apart from the first symptom not something I'm really going to worry about.

In the long series of video game controllers that are easy to imagine, but hard to justify in the livingroom, witness Exhibit A: the plastic musical instrument from Harmonix's Guitar Hero.

Yes, music fans, it's a miniscule replica of a Gibson SG. That you can use to play an attached rhythm action game. A game that just happens to contain no less than sixty (that's six-o for the people scoring at home) songs to play along - half of which seem to be cover songs from different genres, the other half songs originally played by the game creators' and their friends' bands.

Probably this hasn't actually anything to do with a real-life ability to play a guitar. Which is a major relief for people like me that are blessed with an absolute lack of musical ability. And if this game equips me with an illusion that I can actually play White Zombie's Thunderkiss 65, then I am sold. Definitely.

The game's goes on sale in april, at least in the UK - no release date in the finnish market's been announced yet.

I think my trusty air guitar's going to get some serious competition.

Watched the sci-fi channel production of Ursula LeGuin's fantasy classic, Earthsea. Had read a few reviews when it was shown on tv, and they were not exactly positive. So expectations were low, yet I was still disappointed.

The story combines elements from the two first novels and mixes them up with substandard additional bits into an incoherent whole. Adding to the mix is a big chunk of lame dialogue and even worse CGI.

So I didn't like it much. The individual things listed above stand out, but all in all it's just wrong, barely watchable. And LeGuin hates it too, as she has said in articles in Locus and Slate.

And the lack of subtitles is rarely a redeeming feature on any disc. Especially on productions with as lousy sound quality as on this one. Had to crank up the volume to make sense of the story. A lot.

This tv-movie is indeed lousy, but at least it made me want to read the books again. So there sure was a definite silver lining on this cloud.

Axl brings the band to Finland in july. Sadly they play inside, in the Hartwall Arena, and not on the olympic stadium.

Of course, with him as the sole remanining member of the glory days, some doubting thomases might be likely to ask whether this is the band at all.

And who knows, maybe we get to experince some Chinese Democracy before the concert.

Too bad the servers at the ticketing service will probably be utterly unable to handle the strain, and resorting to second hand tickets may be necessary. We'll see about that next monday.

Fell asleep before remembering to program in the recording of the Oscars. Not good. According to the cnn-report Jon Stewart as host was rather scathing, so I'm sure I missed a couple of cruel jabs.

Gotta get me one of those stick-on Do What I Mean-buttons. Or rather many of them, the digibox is not the sole misbehaving appliance in the house.

Nope, not really interested who takes what. Haven't seen most of the candidates, and am thus unqualified to pick and choose.

And anyway, the awards and speeches are the boring part of the show. Me, I'm going to concentrate on watching Jon Stewart, emceeing for the first time. Missed Chris Rock's profanity-laden monologues last year - I trust the Comedy Central anchor with the sharpest tongue in the business to deliver the goods.

Definitely not going to watch live - the show begins at 3 am. That's exactly what the digital recording device is for. And I seem to have extended my flu to threat level two: "guarded", meaning that fever will keep me out of the office tomorrow.

The 26th annual Raspberry awards were, as per tradition, handed out a day before the Oscar gala.

Seems that a busdrivers strike is a semi-annual event now. Slated to begin today at 1800, the strike would mean that almost all companies jointly handling the municipal traffic in the Helsinki metroplex area would stop.

Originally the strike was set to begin already two weeks ago, but that date, being the start of kids skiing vacation, would have not been disruptive enough. Tomorrow will be, considering that mr. weatherman has promised an ample supply of snow for the beginning of the week.

As collateral damage to the bus drivers, also the grabagemen go on strike. Of which the Lavonardo HQ gets to enjoy the benefits sooner than most - sometimes it's not advantageous to share the house with a grocery store. And no pied piper of Haaga has yet shown up to take care of the local rat population.

Had a bit of time to kill yesterday before the movie. And the time taken was worthy, since the theatre was almost sold out and having first row seats next to the screen is never pleasant.

So, had a bit of time in my hands, and went to see the newly opened second phase of the Kamppi mall located pretty much next door.

As expected it was crowded, but not to the point of claustrophobia. However, must have been the fresh paint or some otherwise absent factor that caused the roiling masses to totally forgot how to use escalators. Crowds gathered on both ends oblivious to others wishing to step on or disembark. Seriously, it's not that hard, folks - and you can practice at your leisure even with regular stairs.

Browsed a couple of stores in semi-interested fashion. The much-touted Niketown (first in Scandinavia, supposedly) was very much on the small side. The Quiksilver outlet had a thin selection of t-shirts and the ones available were ugly, expensive and usually both.

The mall seemed to be entirely without a record store, and the resident petstore looked very generalistic - the fishtanks were newly set up, so the cloudiness has a natural explanation.

The twelve-lane bowling alley seemed packed to the gills, and if nothing else, that arena is a worthy addition to the services offered by downtown Helsinki. To add to the big chunk of floorspace in the basement devoted to feeding customers, a couple of new establishments had been opened. Spotted one bar - big, dutch-style pub; and there's supposedly a brewery at another location. Time to investigate when the crowds have thinned out.

Monster Magnet just cancelled their gig in Tavastia on the 20th along with the whole spring tour.

Dave Wyndorf, the troubled frontman of the band overdosed, hence the cancellation.

The very same press release notes that the band's first two albums (Tab and Spine of God) shall soon be re-released on cd. Which was nice.

Started using a moleskine notebook back in last june to jot down things to write about here. Started off as a supplement to electronc notekeeping, but as I unexpectedly misplaced the T3, the old school alternative got bumped into the starting lineup.

And a good companion the little black book with its cloth bookmark and a rubberband snapping the cover shut has indeed been. The first book is now filled up, and it's time to crack open notebook number two. Right now.

Initially, upon first reading about such notebooks in Juha-Pekka Tolvanen's blog I didn't think of them highly. I scoffed at the idea of having such an ubiquitous book with me, and thought the users quite pretentious gits. Happened upon a stand of the products in Harvard Bookstore, and decided to buy one 96-pager, just to see what use it would be, if at all. In a couple of weeks it surreptiously mutated into the note-taking medium of choice. Long-time readers may see a parallel to my embrace of blogging here. And this probably isn't the last case I turn out to be hopelessly wrong in disrespecting something that addicts, given a chance.

Started using one at work as well. A laptop borne into a meeting is usually an invitation for sly surfing or getting volunteered to take minutes. Hence, these days I much prefer a paper notebook - it does not allow mind to wander through the gaping portals of digg or del.icio.us, and forces concentration on the ongoing topic. And copying action items subsequently to Outlook Tasks is not enough of a duty to start dragging the thinkpad by default. Of course, if there's something to present, or even a threat of such a need, the taking the laptop along just cannot be avoided. These days, I'll just carry the black notebook as well.

Akateeminen kirjakauppa carried the a wide selection of the products around christmas, and even promoted the calendars with ads. These days, however, their basement seems empty of Moleskines.

Another notebook-use benefit is the preservation of handwriting. A couple of years ago I noted that the only things I write are signatures on receipts. And that's not good. Of course, the tiny A6ish-sized pages are not optimal for pen acrobatics, but at least my output is no longer restricted to a single string, copied over and over.

And I'm not alone extolling the virtues of these notebooks, there are blogs devoted to them, and even a flickr group.

So, until someone comes along with a better notebook, this remains my choice. And the bar's set pretty high for improvements.

As a desperate attempt to shed a few movie tickets before they expire, went to see the fourth Harry Potter film, about a certain Goblet of Fire.

Directed by the third guy in the four movies of the franchise, it maintains the concentration on essential bits-tack wisely chosen in the previous installment. After all, fitting 600+ pages into two and a half hours would have proven impossible if every subplot and quidditch match would have been followed at the same level of detail as in the books. Unfortunately this meant that some interesting characters were just window dressing as opposed to major plot devices. While the defusing of the plotline concerning Miranda Richardson's Rita Skeeter was almost completely done, underusing Alan Rickman's poisonous as ever Severus Snape is nothing short of criminal.

Originally I thought that the book was quite disjointed and too long. While it has been neatly compacted in movie form, the basic fault of just trying to accomplish too much remains. But it's entertaining, and a reasonably well-executed chapter in the chronicle. Visually it's on par with the previous parts - spells and dragons have been crafted with care. And especially the latter, hounding after the protagonist, climbing clumsily like a bat/lizard-hybrid on castle walls must have cost a mint and a half to animate and render. The Hogwarts surroundings seem permanently shifted to the rough-hewn parts of northern England, and the vistas are exposed through repeated flying camera rides.

Like the book, the movie is cruel, and I'm sure some of the kids the theatre was packed with will go away with medium-grade scares. I know I would have, were I seven years old and exposed to such wilful evil on a close range.

The dvd is out this month. As an owner of the previous three parts, I think I'm obligated to pick this up as well. Not immediately, the previous three have succumbed to the Reductus Pricius-curse pretty fast, and this one'll probably follow suit.

The fifth movie in the series shoots for a 2007 release. And that should see a lot more Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, his part in Goblet of Fire was tiny to say the least.

Preceding trailers included Keeping Mum, seemed like a good black comedy done with an appropriate amount of stiff upper lip. And Rowan Atkinson is usually reliable in his movies. Nanny McPhee, on the other hand, instantly went to forget-and-avoid- pile. Especially with the worst finnish dubbing my poor antennas have been exposed to in a long while. The prequel to an old Blake Edwards' classic, curiously synonymous Pink Panther, seemed much better than I prejudiced. Its reviews haven't been exactly positive, but being a long-time Steve Martin-fan, this probably gets the benefit of doubt. Tennispalatsi already had Pink Panther on one screen, but that might have been a sneak preview, as far as I know the finnish premiere is next friday.

A second surprising sequel raises its head, almost coincidentally with the first.

Indeed, Douglas Coupland, whose work I've quite liked, has penned a sequel, JPod, to his 1995 novel Microserfs. To be published in may, this year. And probably getting a lavish reception in the hands of e.g. Wired, who did a fabulous job promoting the original book.

Which still remains my favorite from the Coupland's bibliography. Depictions of geeks at work and home struck home ten years ago, and are still valid today. Dilbert has continued to mine the same seam for years and years, still occasionally hitting chunks of the motherlode, but getting tiresome all the while.

Haven't read many of Coupland's latest books - Hey Nostradamus was OK, but nothing too special. But based on the strength of his old material (Gen X and Shampoo Planet as well), I'm pretty sure this one'll be picked up. In hardback.

And I'm still worried that some misguided producer will attempt to put together a film on the book. Though with already two films based on Coupland's books firmly in the pipeline, that's no longer a too distant possibility.

And yeah, the original book teems with references to old school geekness. There's no reason to expect this one to avoid the key elements of the previous books either: whimsy mixed with nostalgia, carefully drawn characters, and unexpected plot devices and vocabulary choices.

Reached the last 10-odd percent mark in Sands of Time. And was dismayed when an obvious Game Extension Device plopped down and tore the rules apart.

During the last few chapters the protagonist no longer has access to the time alteration tool, and any mistake proves instantly fatal. Thus, the very well-received way to rewind back after a mishap is no longer usable, and the same paths keep getting trod over and over.

Maybe it's just a case of "etvaanosaa", but I prefer my games challenging, not irritating. Hence a switch to Treasure's Ikaruga, at least with that game you know what's going on - shoot or be shot.

Been overusing the term "old school" for a long while, without a clear idea what are its actual origins. Knew that it had something to do with some of the original rap/hip hop artists, and used it even without liking that genre too much. Knew that it's nifty when used to refer to something that has a long history behind it. But didn't have any hard facts backing the belief up.

So, in the interest of not prolonging a ten year extent social gaffe any longer, went looking for an explanation.

First stop in wikipedia confirmed that I haven't stretched the expression beyond its common uses. And even though urbandictionary has some unorthodox definitions for it, there's nothing too alarming.

To celebrate, a moment with the best song of 2005, SOAD's Old School Hollywood is in order.

The expression makes sense even in finnish. Though it's less often used. The long-gone Hamara-magazine had its own version: vanha liitto sounds about the same, and has an even more medieval feel to it. I still feel more comfortable with an occasional anglism than resorting to translations.

Ooh, as trusty dvdcompare.net shows, for some odd reason there's a special two disc edition of Serenity, but only for the German and Australian markets.

The set of extra features is not extensive, but the 55-minute Q&A-session with Whedon does whet the appetite. Time to check whether there'd be something else to purchase from the deutschland branch of amazon, it seems.

iTunes just turned one billion. Wikipedia has reached a thousandth of that figure. At a steady pace that's equal to 560+ new articles a day, but the pace has tightened from a slower start, and on average 1700 articles are added daily.

Wikipedia might not be perfect. It might even be wrong. Or biased. But it's a good font of knowledge. One that I keep returning to on almost a daily basis.

Utterly forgot that Serenity, Joss Whedon's movie based on the already cancelled Firefly-show was released in R2 on 27.2. Despite positive initial sightings the film never made it to theatres in Finland, and we had to wait for the dvd-release.

Borrowed a copy from Ile today, and went through the movie without pausing for a second. And decided to return the disc tomorrow and order a copy of my own. It's that good, and bristling with sensible extras.

The story follows up on the crew of the decrepit ship Serenity after its seventeen episode tale chronicled in the series ends. The movie does not assume any knowledge of previous events, but it sure helps in understanding who is who and what is going on. Even in general. Things are explained, but not underlined, and for a veteran of the show it's actually hard to estimate how much fun a novice would get from watching. A definite scientific experiment waiting to happen.

The movie retains the charm of the show. Space is not clean, technology is unreliable, and people even more so. Dialogue is snappy and imaginative, but does not reach the zenith of whedonian scripting. Visually the film is nothing short of a treat, space is deep and weird - cities and towns ooze charm, spanning a range from frontier villages to bladerunneresque metropolises. And the characters have stayed the course set in the series. Not all of them are treated equally, but in a two-hour movie that's only to be expected.

And yes, it ties a knot on the biggest plot strand from the show.

So why only four stars? Unfortunately the story is not the high point of the movie. It's head and shoulders above most in the theatres right now, three quarters of a body length in front of a generic science fiction movie, and especially half a parsec ahead of any of the Star Wars prequels. But from a movie by the man who held us captive by not just one, but three television shows, it's simply not enough. While the big plot is big indeed, I kept expecting something even bigger. While the new characters introduced spring to life almost immediately, I kept expecting tighter integration to the backstory.

And that probably is the biggest fault of the movie - high expectations. Ones that cannot be fulfilled in a single film, which thus feels unnecessarily truncated, stuffed to the brim with almost every element from the show. And without the means to combine working both in the small (details abound in the background) and in the large (story arcs spanning lesser tales across hours of intertwined acts), the director feels lost at times, resorting to lengthy spells of bone-crunching violence as an easy alternative to progress via other means.

Did not yet check the half a dozen deleted scenes on the disc, I'm sure they will expand the movie. Whether that is enough for a rating update remains to be seen.

All of a sudden the hardest-spending teams in NFL find themselves against a wall due to a persistent holdup in bargaining negotiations between the players union and the league itself.

The salary cap is going to be enforced at $94.5 million per team. Which means that a lot of the teams have to shed a lot of players before they are compliant. Worst hit are the Oakland Raiders, who are a glorious 23.5 million over the limit. Let me repeat that, they are 23.5 million over the limit. That's quite hard to understand, especially when considering their rather meager pickings in last season's campaign. But every league needs its own under-achieving but over-spending equivalent of the New York Rangers, I guess. Steelers, the reigning champions clock in at 4.5 million over, and the niners at 20 million below.

So, it looks certain that players will be cut tonight to avoid league-enforced penalties. And the teams with room under the cap may end up with plentiful pickings. Boding well for the niners team that did not get much done this season, clearly the #1 pick of last year's draft takes time to mature.

Traditionally, it's known as the art of paper folding, but it is also the name of a Microsoft project that is readied for launch tomorrow.

The promotional website is not of much help, but as expected, the web is rife with speculation.

It's probably not a phone. It likely competes with the Nokia 770 for the kingship of sofa surfboards. And it sure would make a killer geocaching tool were it equipped with an onboard GPS-receiver.

One of the finest concept albums ever, Queensrÿche's Operation:Mindcrime gets a surprising sequel, a full 18 years after the original. Unexpectedly named Operation:Mindcrime II, it is slated for release on april fourth.

While the 1990 followup-album, Empire, was a very pleasant disc indeed, the subsequent output hasn't reached an equivalent level. Not even close. So this is either a hopeless cash-in for the fans expecting a second coming, or a fortuitously named return to good form. Without hearing a single song off the new album, it's hard to say which is more likely. But I'm definitely hoping for the latter.

And their phenomenally well-dated gig on the sixth of june seems to have been postponed.

Noteworthy also is the band's novel use of the heavy metal umlaut in their name. That very entry convinced me that wikipedia.org is a) here to stay and b) populated by verbally talented people with interesting things to say about exotic subjects.

On one hand, it turns out that the much-maligned finnish loss was not all wasted.

If we had won, there would have been thousands and thousands of people witnessing an utter catastrophe of a celebration.

Almost to a day twenty years ago, Olof Palme was shot and killed outside a movie theatre in downtown Stockholm. The killer still has not been convicted.

Back in the day there was no 24-hour news service in Finland, and it took well into the afternoon of the following day before the news had sunk in. We're much better nowadays, thank you. The debacle of having no news whatsoever during the Romanian uprising in 1989 brought a much more frequent news cycle on a 365-day basis, and the cycle has continued to speed up. These days the only thing that can slow the online news to a crawl seem to be major terrorist attacks or Apple product launches. Otherwise the tidings just keep on coming.

While the failure to catch the killer is nothing new - more prominent statesmen have been assassinated before but not since. However, considering the fact that the act occurred during a busy friday night in plain sight, the omission of a conviction is indeed rather strange. And it cannot be blamed on CSI:Stockholm, as it was the detectives who persisted on following up obscure leads instead of concentrating on down to earth theories. Not the first time someone fails to apply Occam's Razor - and certainly not the last.