Futurama will be back earlier than expected, november to be exact, with a full-length film called Bender's Big Score. Straight to dvd, obviously, but who cares, Futurama is back.

And there was much rejoicing.

And once again it's the incurable satirists at Lehti that have the most striking eulogy.

"Dude, you just gave a Michael Bay movie four stars!"

Sue me, I did. The Transformers movie continues the surprisingly successful series of pleasant summer movies (of which the less than optimal third installments of the Spiderman and Pirates franchises have no piece).

Indeed, I'm pretty much the least optimal customer of the movie. I have no fond recollections of the toys and original cartoon-series at all (being from a satellite-dish-free home), and thus immune to the nostalgia-factor.

The film succeeds on many fronts. Of which the plot is not among the top, that must be stated immediately. But the plot is not really the main thing in a movie that concentrates on gigantic robots that can pretend to be cars, is it?

The actors are surprisingly good. And consist pretty much of unknowns. And the most familiar faces, Jon Voight and John Turturro execute their parts as members of the government well. But it's the new crowd that kicks down the fences and refuses to go quietly. Shia LeBeouf isn't exactly the second coming of Tom Hanks that the industry hopes, but he's likable as the loser that ends up with a transformer in his garage. Megan Fox emulates a young Jennifer Connelly effectively, but doesn't have that much to do in the limited role. The second string is filled with actors familiar from decent television shows (Anthony Anderson from the Shield, Tom Lenk from Buffy, Josh Duhamel from Las Vegas), none of whom vomits on the carpet in their big Hollywood debut.

The human actors actually end up being head and shoulders above their mechanical equivalents. Though a credible explanation is given for their upgraded personalities, the autobots end up on the grating side. And surprisingly the nasty variants of the transformer are left empty-handed in the personality department - the chief badass Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) is the only one who has been given any dialogue. And even that is not particularly good.

The pace is quick, very quick - the two and half hours pass by painlessly, though without the speed seeming artificial. Could it indeed be that Mr. Bay has found the golden gear inbetween hectic and slack?

The plot ranges from youthful suburbian angst to military-industrial conspiracies to big robots pummeling each other to bits. And while the last element is the main attraction for viewers, the rest are not just mandatory bits inbetween the fight scenes. No, the humorous bits of dialogue are actually pretty decently written, the military set pieces in Qatar showcase hardware very well and altogether the film successfully covers a surprisingly number of spots. And the CGI on the robots doesn't really leave anything to be desired - a lot of rendering CPU-years clearly went into constructing the frames.

Especially considering how unevent Bay's previous work has been, I'd actually consider this to be the suprise hit of the summer. I ended up linking Transformers a lot more than I anticipated (prejudiced, definitely).

For old-skool Bay fanatics there's still plenty of slow motion shots of people disembarking airplanes to dramatic music. And I'm sure that a lot of scenes ended up on cutting room floor, and as such at least a three-hour-plus edit will be pushed on dvd for christmas.

Lego Star Wars was one of the sleeper hits of last year - a licensed game that actually captured something of the original.

And now the pact between LucasArts and Lego has been renewed. Actually twice. The first fruit is a game that covers both trilogies. But the far more interesting and important piece of news is the inception of Lego Indiana Jones. The game will debut next summer - likely to coincide with the release of the fourth Indy movie.

August is knocking just around the corner, and the deep summer season has begun, symptoms:

• Raspberry season has begun.
• The annual Viivi ja Wagner compendium is out.
• An oppressive knowledge of the vacation trailing off after next week creeps in.
• It actually gets a bit dark after midnight.
• Unlike last summer, the scenery remains pleasantly green all around - the irregular rains have taken care of that.

Missed Pixar's latest movie, Cars in the theatres last year, and had to resort to watching it on dvd.

It continues on the well-worn but pleasant trail blazed by previous movies: interesting cast of characters with quality voice acting, main storyline that concentrates on finding yourself and becoming true to friends, lots of intertextuality for adults and altogether excellent visuals.

Cars covers all these bases and remains a pleasant movie to watch - after all, anthropomorphized vehicles are not a subject that gets covered very often (and no, Transformers doesn't really count).

But it's not perfect, or even close. The issue of Providing Important Lessons seems a lot more prevalent than in previous Pixar productions, and that occasionally threatens to cross the borderline of annoyance.

That, obviously, is hardly criticism worth deduction of multiple stars. While the movie does not fire on all cylinders as previous Pixar fare has, it's nonetheless a very enjoyable two hours.

Updated the listing of movie reviews with all seen in 2005.

Watched Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together in Kino Engel's outdoor cinema.

Nothing wrong with the place, apart from uncomfortable chairs. Screen's not up to the full THX standard, but the lack of modern bells and whistles is part of the charm - especially when watching films that are in as bad shape as this one.

The movie itself was far more experimental than I thought. Both in theme and execution. And way too long-winded, several scenes just drag on and on without mercy on the poor viewer.

This week's photo friday challenge is loud.

My take on the subject is the attached image, from this year's Tuska-festival in Helsinki. Where a second generation headbanger gets an early indoctrination into the loud world of metal, with appropriately powerful protection.

The image in full resolution is available by clicking the attached one, but do take note that this one is taken with a phone camera, and the image quality at 100% size is not that great.

My inaugural participation of the Photo Friday is the attached image that attempts to answer this week's challenge: vacation.

The subject is pretty much "what I did today", on the first proper summer day after a brief spell of cloudier weather.

Not scorchio, but warm

The warmest season is back again, after a few worrisomely lukewarm/rainy/cloudy days.

And what would be better use of the sunshine than to escape the raging roof replacement din to a grassy knoll to continue reading the last Harry Potter-installment, eat vast quantities of fresh raspberries and just lazily while away a more than decent summer vacation day.

Classic cover image.

Weekly World News, the sole source of truth / a joke long grown stale (overstrike as appropriate) is going to call it quits after 28 years of service.

I had no idea what the magazine was about when I first encountered it on the counter of 7-11 back in 1993. It was obvious that the stories were fake (Hubble had photographed heaven, a Challenger crewmember was picked up in Bermudas), but it wasn't immediately apparent how deep the tongue was in the cheek.

Turned out that the answer was "very", and I and a couple of Norwegian friends quickly developed an addiction to the magazine. After all, it's not often that you see the suppressed news from such events as polar bears ruling the streets of Trondheim or unlucky skijumpers flying into the blades of a passing helicopter.

On first glance the tabloid seemed to hit all the bases with its weekly selection of made-up news, but after a couple of months our interest waned. Not to a point of completely dismissing the best headlines, but to the point where it was no longer mandatory to pick it up on a late night snack run every week.

I though the magazine's run had ended on the southern side of the millennium, and was pleasantly surprised to find it available at the Newark airport back in 2003. The content was still worth a chuckle or two, but hardly anything as groundbreaking as the first encounters. But ain't it always so.

The magazine's editors published an anthology of the best stories back in 2005, and there isn't really any reason to expect an update after the tabloid finishes its run in august.

Haagan Hakkapeliitat are ready for yet another year in the violent world of virtual NFL, and hungry for success after the lowly 7th spot last year.

The game's not the same - the scoring (to which I seem to have lost the link momentarily) has been significantly altered: thrown touchdowns have been downgraded to four points from six, not so subtly pushing the message that non-quarterbacks ought to be drafted first. I'll keep LaDainian Tomlinson on the 1st spot in the draft list, obviously, but am not so sure that Peyton Manning deserves the massive downgrading he's been subjected to...

Nope, still haven't categorized all entries in the blog, but spent a rainy wednesday morning putting together a thingy that collects movie reviews on a single page, while at the same time providing access to a couple of useful sites per movie.

Yes, it's heavily inspired by Jason Kottke's similar page.

And no, obviously it's not yet complete, the data's been tagged up to december 2004. The rest is just another rainy day away.

In the never-ending saga of making the blog better, a tiny slice at a time (this time a requested feature, thanks Juha):

Reworked (pretty much rewrote) the RSS-creator-thingy to show the ten last entries whole (as opposed to just showing the first paragraphs of all entries).

Reports of gross misbehaviour taken at the usual address.

Also changed the favorite icon of the pages. In the utter absence of any idea for a proper logo, this collection of colored squared will have to suffice for a while.

Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation never made it to the big screen in Finland. As a non-practicing fanboy of the director, had to pick this one up on dvd.

It's an odd movie - lots of disjoint plot threads that are executed side by side, without a satisfactory finale that ties the strings together in a neat knot. While based on Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, it's nowhere near as scary as the source. The new plot devices do add some drama to the movie, but they also violently dilute the main message: meat industry's questionable practices. But without the Greg Kinnear-starring arc that ties the story together, this would have been without a guiding light at all.

The book beats the movie by sheer imagery - descriptions of spoiled meat-induced misery trumps Avril Lavigne as a budding eco-terrorist any day of the week. The cast is wide - but apart from a few actors the characters are seen just once or twice.

It's not a bad film by any means, just one that tries to cover too many bases at once, and ends up uncomfortably spreadeagled inbetween.

Read the book - it's far better than this mediocrity.

For the previous few years Economist has published a collection of miscellania called Intelligent Life for reading in the summer.

This year, though, the magazine will appear later in the fall. But will appear nonetheless, as originally it seemed to have been superseded by Monocle.

Bought the seventh (and apparently last) Harry Potter book.

Purchase went unceremoniously, and there were absolutely no kids dressed up as Hogwarts' finest on the premises.

Now - a spell for nice weather would be very much appreciated. I'd much prefer reading this baby outdoors.

Spent an extended weekend at my cousin's place in Nivala.

Chilled out appropriately - with proper wood-stoved sauna every night and meals whose meat-index crosses ten. Altogether a pleasant visit, and it's always a bonus to be able to catch up on family affairs in one go.

Took the train up north, and was once again impressed by the paperless web-ticketing offered by VR. A quiet car (as provided by Amtrak) would be a welcome invention in Finland as well, most travelers seem less than willing to cut down on their quality time on mobile phone (or to use the per-compartment sound-proofed booth). Train back to Helsinki was split into two parts, just like back in 2005. This time had a seat on the first batch of cars, luckily.

Rather mystifying is the fact that the ubiquitous info-screens in the trains are not put into much use at all, especially on the IC-trains they basically serve as placeholders for signs - considering the odd stops between stations and related deviations from schedule it would be good to know how late the vehicles actually are.

Again forgot to use the camera much - the traditional midnight dusk is attached.

• Cats sat: two.
• Pages of Bone read: all 1344.
• Conviction that Monocle is a worthy magazine: Yes.
• Harry Potter books read: 0 (and my recollection of the Half-blood Prince's events are not exactly clear)
• Old friends sighted in the 'hood: 0.
• Thoughts about work: fortunately very few and very far inbetween.
• Television watched: Not at all (half of Catch-22 off a dvd doesn't count).
• Post-sauna chillouts: just 1 (tuesday was too nippy).

Two independently operating cats without much need of supervision, pleasant weather, stacks of books and magazines to read, opportunity for a sauna when I want, backyard to lounge around in.

Yeah, that fits the description of holiday pretty well.

Image: 45000 fans can't all be wrong

Saw Metallica yesterday in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium on their Sick of the Studio '07 tour.

The concert was oddly devoid of any real surprises, the band catered for the fans by providing a greatest hits set. Without any new songs off the forthcoming album, nor any from the 2003 St. Anger.

All in all the song selection was very conservative - surprises confined to what was omitted rather than what was included. No Leaf Clover off S&M was a peculiar choice, as was the title track from ... And Justice For All.

This was the first concert ever that had a dedicated shirt, a nice red/black-design with the herald of Helsinki on the front. A shirt which was sold out pretty much immediately at the stands inside.

Image: 48 hours of waiting for the band

While the entry into the stadium was far less painful than back in 2004, the lines stretched long. This time I avoided cutting the line, and joined it pretty much where the tail end was, three years back. According to reliable reports, this was about as good as it got, since both before and afterwards the line had been snaking much longer, way much longer.

A bunch of anxious fans had camped out on the path, and the results of a three-day stay showed - garbage was everywhere, rained on and trampled into the ground.

Missed Diablo, the first warm-up act completely. HIM was plagued with less than optimal sound (at least near the stage), and an indifferent audience. Didn't recognize any songs as being from the forthcoming Venus Doom album, but wasn't really paying that much attention either.

Image: Olympic stadium tower in the evening sun

Metalllica took the stage some ten minutes behind schedule, and played for good two and a half hours. As stated, the set list was very much on the predictable side, with a surprise or two thrown in for good measure (Four Horsemen, especially, was a good choice - but omission of For Whom the Bell Tolls really wasn't).

Creeping Death
Four Horsemen
Ride the Lightning
Unforgiven
Disposable Heroes
... And Justice for All
Memory Remains
No Leaf Clover
Orion
Fade to Black
Master of Puppets
Whiplash
//
Sad But True
Nothing Else Matters
One
Enter Sandman
//
Am I Evil?
Seek & Destroy

A nostalgic selection indeed, without any indication of the style of the next album. But as long as the band keeps playing the likes of Orion and Creeping Death, I certainly will be back for more. And that's probably what Rolling Stones' fans are saying about Paint it Black and Satisfaction. Though Metallica is not yet on the same bandwagon as messieurs Jagger and Richards, they have been skirting the edge of being not much more than a classics-jukebox for the last three tours.

The raps between songs seemed pretty much routine, but the thanks given by all band members following the show were on the genuine side (and devoid of any "Heavy Metal Capital"-expressions so loved by the likes of Bruce Dickinson).

The troubled Ayn Rand-movie is definitely Darren Aronofsky's weirdest hour. And considering his earlier Pi, that's saying quite a lot.

Didn't catch this in the big screen, where a single copy spent something like a week of two in Finland, bought a dvd from Virgin in New York to ensure a timely viewing.

I'm not at all familiar with the original, and cannot thus comment on how the novel is captured on screen. As a movie the three-fold story is not that great - rambling, confusing and obscure to the point where pretty much the entire story needs to be tied together in the watcher's head. Not your typical Hollywood-fare, that's for sure - and the difficulty of the film wasn't really rewarded neither in the box office where it bombed nor by the vast majority of critics.

It's not a bad movie by any means, I just found it boring and even more worrisomely: completely detached emotionally - the characters plain did not work for me. But indeed, it's not a bad movie at all, the underlying message of hope is understated and the chronologically disparate storylines are crafted with great visuals. Altogether it's an experience so much on the odd side that it's worth a shot.

Mission accomplished. Picked up a ticket for tomorrow's show.

Let the good times roll. And hope for better entry protocol than what was used back in 2004.

Image: Patvinsuo by Hannu Vallas

Noted that this summer's outdoors photo exhibition at the old bus station was shut down earlier than scheduled.

Indeed, Hannu Vallas, the finnish equivalent of Yann Arthus-Bertrand (whose show I raved about back in 2004 and 2005), had two dozen or so images displayed, a lot of the selection taken from the archipelago.

Walked through the exhibition a couple of weeks back, and was impressed enough to consider buying Vallas' book, after all, Arthus-Bertrand's doesn't have a single image from Finland in his sizable tome.

Watched the not really expected fourth part of the venerable Die Hard saga. The naming of the movie is questionable, while the print showed the "Die Hard 4.0"-name on screen, all the US media seem to be using the old name still. Like the recently sighted Ocean's Thirteen this movie turned oout to be a really good summer movie - lots of flash, but not utterly devoid of cerebral matter either (unlike the latest Spiderman and Pirates installments).

The movie takes a while to get going - the first ten minutes aren't really quality entertainment, but once the director gets comfortable, the viewers are in on a rollicking ride. A ride that remains credible for the most part of the show, barring a few stretches straight out of True Lies, this could pretty much have been an extended episode of 24.

Bruce Willis plays the aging John McClane to a hilt - spewing one-liners with precision, whilst getting shot, hit, skewered by flying glass and all around walking wounded. Justin Long, as the hacker sidekick is far less annooying than expected, and the hacker culture altogether is rather drawn without major snapping of disbelief (albeit drawn with a really big brush). Kevin Smith's über-geek Warlock is saddled with too many cliches for comfort, but like Willis and Timothy Olyphant (yeah, the Deadwood guy) he fits his part like a glove.

Lots of screentime is given to product placement - Nokia phones and communicators are frequently seen, and Gears of War makes it on screen twice.

Those wondering where the hacker guy is familiar: he's the Mac in Apple's television ads. And those wondering what's the song playing when McClane enters Farrell's apartment: no clue (Flyleaf sounds about right when looking at the choices on the soundtrack).

As a conclusion: easily the best in the series since the original adventure at Nakatomi Plaza, and a very good summer movie on its own. Wouldn't bet on part 5 ever appearing, but if the quality remains on this level - further episodes certainly wouldn't hurt.

Continuing the annual tradition of reading stacks and stacks of mystery/thriller novels in the summer, finished Michael Connelly's debut novel, Black Echo.

The book was recommended by a very reliable source, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Especially considering that this was the author's first book, the twisting and turning plot was well-realized, and unsurprisingly the novel took home the Edgar Award.

Wasn't aware of the book's chronology, and was perplexed by repeated references to older cases of the protagonist, Hieronymous "Harry" Bosch, but that turned out to be a narrative trick only, not homework to be completed before approaching this book.

Next up, James Lee Burke - following a second recommendation from the same guy who was behind the purchase of this book. Both authors seem to have extensively long bibliographies (as well as multiple awards) behind them, so this could indeed be the beginning of a beautiful literary friendship.

Wow. Wasn't aware that wikipedia is this well-spread.

There's no less than 253 variants of the encyclopedia available.

Of course, the vast majority of them remains in the category of "not really wide", meaning that there's just tens or hundreds of articles available. But that's definitely a start.

The Klingon edition has 62 articles, whereas the one in Esperanto has a very respectable 86k entries. But the most mysterious item is the -1 images used in the Kanuri wikipedia.

The thus far failing perpetual energy machine has a blog devoted to following the progress.

Sweet. This means that tidbits no longer need to be sought out amongst the regular news.

If the regularly scheduled hesari supplements are any kind of indication, I've moved beyond the limits of a young urban go-getter to the staid life of gently sipped single malts and roaring fireplaces.

Indeed. Just noted that the weekly nyt-supplement has gone downhill so bad, that there really isn't much to interest any more. Apart from the comic strip by Jukka Tilsa, that is. The movie reviews are decent, but the music reviews oftentimes turn out nothing more than the praises of the author's wide and far-reaching tastes. The lead articles have turned out to be badly imitating City (but are missing its arrogance and occasional bite) or just plain boring (like this week's expose on a completely unknown race car driver).

The monthly supplement, on the other hand, believes in long and researched articles as opposed to an elusive soundbite, and that pays off. Not all the content is interesting, obviously, but at least one or two long articles make it every month. And the time spent on them (and the food pages) far outstrips that on nyt. Even if the latter would have a thought-provoking column on the last page for a change.

Vanity Fair has a lengthy history of America's favorite family, done as a mega-interview of tens of folks involved with the show.

(Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a daily lovefest on a single subject until the premiere [like the World Cup 2006 last year]. I think and sincrely hope. But the mini-trailers of the movie are undeniably funny.)

After the disaster that was Ocean's Twelve a couple of years back, I didn't have such high hopes for the newest installment. But was disappointed, in the best pessimistic kind of way - the third part of the franchise turned out to be a great movie.

You see, this time the ensemble had an actual script to build up from, and not just some ad-hoc scenes crafted on Clooney's villa in Lake Como. That's right - this time there's a properly planned and executed heist, not a plotless tale camouflaged behind cameoing stars.

And the plot actually works well, and the guys of Danny Ocean's team (Julia Roberts has fortunately been excised from the troupe) have to actually use their skills instead of lounging through Europe. But the team is not equally used - Don Cheadle gets criminally little screen time, and way too much is given out to a peculiar factory liberation subplot in Mexico.

The pacing varies, as does the level of exposition - every plot device is not spelled out explicitly. The planning coasts along for ages, causing the actual operation to feel rushed at the end. Dialogue is also much improved from the previous part - while there's little to approach the quality of the first installment, this time the repartee is not cringe-inducing.

Al Pacino, as the guest villain of the episode overdoes his act a couple of times, but Ellen Barkin gets the top mark as his overbearing lieutenant.

Best summer movie thus far - and the latecomers have a fight in their hands to outdo this. And the latest Pixar film, Ratatouille has done extremely well reviews-wise.

Fourteen? And the first ten chapters as prequels? If the quality remains on this level, I wouldn't mind...

(And sure, I seriously, overrated the Twelve back in the day. Must have been the christmassy feeling instilled by copious amounts of mulled wine. Downgrade to two stars, please.)

Ignition at 1500, today - following the tying of a few loose ends left from less-than-employed last week. Into the sunshine cracking the few remaining clouds of the morning's rain. (Kodak-moment, definitely, but utterly forgot to capture the scene.)

Four weeks of idling ahead, with minimal plans.

Just the way things ought to be.

Indeed, the somewhat delayed Akvaariokalat is finally out. No link to the book, the publisher's web page is stuck somewhere in 2006, and thus missing all pertinent information.

The book clocks in around 700 species, with a very good hit ratio, only a couple of conspicuous omissions exist (mudskippers for one). The content is very catfish-heavy, with cichlids (especially middle american species) treated quite lightly.

The layout is pleasant, photographs well-selected and the textual bits actually contain useful information - clearly worth the fifty euros asking price.

Heavily recommended, and if it weren't for the Aquarien Atlas, this new book would be very close to the top of its class.

(Yeah, resurrecting the long-dormant fishblog ought to happen soon, with a much more precise review of the book amongst its first entries.)

Sami in pinseri brought forward an unpleasant turn of events. The evidence seems beyond reasonable doubt to convict sitemeter of fraternizing with cookie-mongers and other low-lifes.

The paradigm of no free lunches is proven once more. Now what does that make of Google Analytics remains to be seen.

Anyway, the blog doesn't pull in enough visitors to warrant much ado about the statistics, and good old awstats gives a pretty good idea of the hot search terms and such.

The "new" seven wonders of the world were announced yesterday. The selection, apart from Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer-statue, is not surprising at all.

In fact the selection is nothing short of mindnumbingly boring.

If these are supposed to be the new wonders, then I take serious exception on things such as the great wall and colosseum. The first has no redeeming features above its length, and the latter has a less-than-shiny reputation, and is in ruins anyway.

And hey, even Sid Meier's Civilization got the modern wonders right with internet leading the way amongst the recent arrivals.

Anyway, the selection is nothing but a well-executed marketing stunt - the new wonders are bound to pull in myriads of tourists, even with a tiny cut to the initiative organized by Bernard Weber. And the profits from tens of millions of votes cast over SMS are not exactly tiny pickings either.

18 more days to the Simpsons movie.

It's not one of the prettiest days of the summer, been hanging at the HQ, with television tuned to Live Earth in the background.

Thus far the catch has been meager: Wolfmother was interesting, as was Genesis (from a dinosaur-collection point of view), but for the most part the selection hasn't been exciting (caught 15 seconds of Linkin Park only on the Tokyo highlights reel).

There's more to come, obviously, probably starting with Spinal Tap any time soon, but those'll have to be caught up on youtube, since the utter lack of scheduling doesn't inspire confidence in programming the DVR.

I've raved about Charles Stross' books for a couple of years now.

Not only is he a prolific author, but manages find time to to publish interesting and lengthy articles on his blog as well. Such as the ones on viability of space colonization and future (especially the latter is very much worth the read).

Eight days to go before the gig in Helsinki, and haven't yet been able to score a ticket.

Huuto.net ought to be of assistance... Though the premium over the original price will probably be calculated in tens of euros.

Matt Barton is at it again. Following the successful trilogy of computerized RPG history, he's moved on to interactive fiction.

The history of Zork in Gamasutra is supplemented with a much wider selection of interviews in Armchair Arcade.

Interesting. Apart from Howard Sherman of Malinche Software, who comes off as a self-important whiner so full of himself he's about to pop. And whose claims of being the "sole remaining implementor" are hollow anyway, as commercial releases of games such as City of Secrets (freely available now) and 1893 testify.

As the newest chapter in the ongoing saga, Steorn issued a press release today in which they postpone their demostration of free and limitless energy until further notice.

And man, I hope this resurgence of runnynosiness is not a premonition of the whole flu getting nasty again.

At least the paper mill owners ought to be happy when I keep maiming tissue after tissue.

And despite an earlier promise, no topical photograph shall accompany this entry...

Very much in the interactive fiction vein, with a healthy dose of classic and ultra-violent videogames thrown in for good measure.

• Telltale Games, who have singlehandedly birthed the episodical adventure game with Bone and Sam & Max recently received a nicely round six million dollars in venture capital.
• Yet another variant of the Z-Machine, Ziggy uses forums for input and output, and the effect is quite an odd multi-player experience.
• Rockstar continues its defiant progress: Manhunt 2. The release of the game has now been suspended following bans in both United Kingdom and United States.
• The H.P. Lovecraft 70-year anniversary games are out. My own effort got sidelined almost in square one.
• Mr. Grownup Gamer is blogging his way through the entire Zelda-series.
• Top 10 massively multiplayer games/worlds holds quite a few surprises: WoW at #1 is not one of them, but the 15:1 advantage enjoyed by Habbo Hotel over Second Life definitely is.
• A games writer for Guardian bravely tries to organize the writing of a multi-author text adventure on a blog.
• There's a wiki for everything, and multiples thereof on hype-y subjects. Interactive fiction certainly doesn't carry hype, but the jointly authored site on the subject provides lots of information.
• IGN's games of the summer feature has very optimistic (but also vague) release date for Bioware's inbound science fiction extravaganza Mass Effect.

As noted in an earlier entry, read Matti Rönkä's entire mystery novel output this week.

And the evolution of the author is quite remarkable. While the characters are drawn with good detail from the very beginning onwards, it's the plot and especially dialogue that improve in later books. The first two books are filled with so many worn one-liners, that it's not clear whether their use is a conscious mannerism. Apparently not, since the last book Ystävät Kaukana rises above and beyond the suboptimal wordsmithing.

The protagonist of the novels is quite like Harri Nykänen's Raid - a criminal with a well-developed sense of right and wrong. But Rönkä's Vikor Kärppä is not a torpedo, but a businessman. A shady businessman, but a part of the establishment nonetheless. As an immigrant from Russia he brings a lot of baggage with him - and as a man with finnish roots, even more. A lot is made of the eastern mob-angle, but that's only to be expected.

As is a medium-profile mini-series for television. After all, the author is a long term veteran of both yleisradio and MTV3.

Recommended, and persistence pays off even when the two first books are rough around the edges.

Two new adaptations:

More images. Much more images. Taken from the myriads of Flickr, ones with an appropriate Creative Commons license, obviously.

Captions. At least for photographs taken by someone else.

Also fixed the photo thursday gallery page.

Reworked the CSS behind the blog.

Which is not visible as anything but a different color scheme hopefully.

Excised a lot of cruft, and made the stylesheets a lot more understandable (the previous incarnation was cobbled together in a frankensteinian fashion).

Report anomalies, annoyances and such (preferably with visual evidence).

The new stylesheets will be taken into use slowly, don't hold your breath on them making it to all of the pages any time soon.

Chris Anderson's idea of a long tail was the subject of one of the best books last year.

Surprisingly, HP has taken an active role in trying to pull the tail much further. The sheer amount of data in archives puts all current efforts to shame.

Image: Välkelude by Teemu Rintala

Colour me impressed.

PUTTE, the finnish biodiversity program has discovered 1400 new species in the finnish nature. Of whom 180 are new to science altogether.

So, the research is by no means constrained to amazonian highlands or remote islands - even though such hotbeds have more new species on a single square meter than uncovered here.

The depicted creature is välkelude one of the many new insects covered during the study. The program is far from over, and the researchers aim to publish a number of books on less-known groups during the next four years.

Perpetual energy will not be demonstrated today.

Not an entirely unexpected announcement.

It's now been almost a year since the bold claims on infinite energy by Steorn.

Tomorrow their Orbo technology will be revealed in London. To a skeptical audience, I'd expect.

The other bit of dodgy technology from last summer (also referenced in the original article), the limitless data compression technology from Meliavolume seems to have disappeared, more efficiently than the company's web presence.

Image: Celebrating Freedom by Creativity+ (CC)

Come to think of it, I've never spent the independence day in the states.

Certainly thus missed quality barbecues, patriotic speeches, over-chilled lager, Hail to the Chief ad nauseam, post-BBQ football, and many other things besides.

Something to think for the upcoming years, definitely. And preferably somewhere out in the boonies, not in a heat-scorched city.

The annual Ottawa Linux Symposium is over.

The proceedings have been published, as has coverage of the event: in lwn.net and excess. The former will be available for free in a week and the latter has separate pages for the later days of the conference.

Subject matter looks interesting - and it wouldn't have been hard to pick out at least a dozen must-see sessions. Not this year, though.

Long time, no weekly five. Who have been whittled down to the size of just one question for the summer.

This week's question concerns itself with what's been read recently:

1. What are the last five books you read, and why did you read them?

Two Viktor Kärppä semi-hardboileds (Tappajan Näköinen Mies and Hyvä Veli/Paha Veli) by Matti Rönkä - simple enough stories that my fever-addled brain can wrap itself around them. Third story of the anthology to be begun tomorrow.

Michael Connelly's Black Echo, another mystery novel. Bought after a recommendation from a very reliable source and wasn't disappointed.

Ben Elton's Past Mortem, train reading par excellence. With more gratuitous kinky sex and occasional violence than expected.

Andy Clarke's Transcending CSS, figured that further education and odd ideas on using and abusing the technology wouldn't hurt.

There, that's a fiver.

This week's photo thursday challenge subject is dance.

My take on the subject is the attached image, a collection of dance-related subjects off book and record shelves (Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance, Hugo Pratt's Tango and Pain's Dancing with the Dead to be exact).

My original plan was to take a couple of good shots of the inevitable mosh pits in Tuska, but encountered surprisingly few of them (and wasn't really looking forward to venturing forward), and in the end the n95 managed to capture headbanging without the motion blur I was looking for. So, got stuck with static objects.

(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'm not a regular reader of the obituaries. But something in this morning's hesari caught my eye. An obituary for Tomi Ervamaa, a long-time correspondent for Helsingin Sanomat. (Yeah, I'd definitely link to the article, but it's embargoed in the digilehti only).

Tomi Ervamaa was one of the very few writers in hesari who had a voice. It was usually obvious from the very first sentences of a piece to deduct whether it was his work. Always facts-based, but often irreverent, even iconoclastic - his output was a joy to follow. I was especially fond of his articles from the united states. While it would have been trivial to poke fingers at jingoism and all things bad in the sole remaining superpower, his articles regularly found well-meaning aspects even in the most bigoted places. World reflected in the pieces was never a clear-cut black/white-dualism, just like it never is, in reality.

There's one dry wit less in the world. And in a pool as stagnant as finnish journalism, that's a big loss all right.

Bah. A visit to a doctor confirmed the sad state of affairs: I have a full-blown bronchitis.

Albeit not a very violent one, the fever's been low all through the week. Got antibiotics and cough medicine. And a stern warning that there's a lot of summer flu going around, and I ought to refrain from adding to the toll. Hence: sick leave until friday.

Well, it would have been surprising, if there would've been two sensible legal cases in a row in the states.

But nope. As expected, #43's pardon means that the very much scapegoated Lewis Libby scoots out of jail.

This is hardly anything new or unexpected - and it turns out that the current president has actually exercised his legal rights much less than his predecessors (scroll down to the sidebar for the dirt).

Spent the day in the Tuska Festival, the prime scandinavian metal fest, organized conveniently in downtown Helsinki annually.

Saw (or heard) the vast majority of bands - on the three stages there was either one or two groups playing at any given time.

Sturm und Drang, the teen sensations from Vaasa were surprisingly worthy of the hype. The kids played well, their own songs were by no means cut from a single tree, and the covers were well-selected. After all, it's hard to fault an up and coming band for including Paranoid in their set - and this was played without prompts from the audience.

Blind Guardian was german power metal. Enough said. Not bad, and probably even likeable, but the genre seems to be just well-populated already now, thus the lack of interest.

Moonspell had been given full honours on the main stage (even if their logo was miniscule on the ads). Haven't paid any attention to them in years, output wasn't bad at all, and it might be time to give these portuguese veterans a second look.

D'espairs Ray probably had the most fanatical audience, with people camping in front of the stage for hours. On first sight the combination of j-rock and metal is not an obvious one, but the band turned out to be not utterly useless on basis of couple of songs.

Vader was a complete surprise - polish thrash metal that convinced to stick around till the end of the gig. Which was summarily rewarded with the selection of the last song: Slayer's almighty Raining Blood was a very well-executed cover. And bonus points for the guitarist for the well-aimed fan, the wind-blown hair had shades of Joe Perry in it (though a lot more headbanging).

Stratovarius, as the last band of the festival, played to a tired audience. Set was bristling with hits from a decade and a half of albums. The pyrotechnics were suitably dulled by the still-bright finnish summer evening. The band seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the much-publicized rift between Kotipelto and Tolkki was non-existent. The band has progressed a lot since I last saw them - surprisingly enough it's been seventeen years or so - they played a gig in the not-at-all mourned Alibi back in 1990, and I can't recall that I would have seen them in the meantime.

The organization was very much on the decent side - the bands started their shows as planned, and violence was absent as well (though Moonspell's vocalist told "some guys" to "stop fighting").

Sunday wasn't sold out, but the area was quite packed. Packed with a pleasantly variable audience. Black-clad and pierced individuals were a vast majority, but the participation ranged from full families (including kids) to a couple of grand-parent-era folks. And a very disturbing refugee wizard from a C-class fantasy campaign.

As noted ad nauseam before, missed the first two days, of which the biggest omissions were DragonForce (whose over-the-top power metal seems to have been well-liked), WASP (another dinosaur not yet seen) and ISIS (who are hailed as yet another saviour of metal).

The n95 proved its worth in optimal conditions - sunlit stills are OK, but the camera struggles with anything more complex.

... make Ville a slow author.

Yeah, no use trying to formulate the majority of last week into sensible entries, so here goes in trusted stream of consciousness-style.

• Got sick, summer flu is never nice, it's been half a decade since the last mentionable one (on account of which missed both AC/DC and Ozric Tentacles).
• Petteri Koponen got drafted as the very last player on the first round. And immediately shipped to Trail Blazers. Portland got aggressive behind their #1 pick, and Koponen ought to fit well into the team's accelerated rebuilding theme as one of the point guards struggling for starter job.
• Carcassonne continues Catan's trail into XBLA. And continues it rather well.
• No tickets for the two first days of Tuska materialized miraculously.
• Justice was served, the judge who valued his pants at 65 million lost the case.
• Smashing Pumpkins got greedy, real greedy, with their upcoming Zeitgeist album. Then again, a chainstore-specific bonus track is as emblematic of our times as anything.
• Blade Runner turns 25 years old, and the effects haven't aged, as the 50% of the Mythbusters testifies.