A passing kayaker rediscovers ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas. The bird was thought to be extinct since 1944, and it's not exactly a small tweeter, so this is a major discovery.

And what's really surprising is that the species has a finnish name, rämetulikärki, sometimes the tenacity of finnish hobbyists/scientists is just overwhelming.

Next up... The return of the formidable Moas in New Zealand, couple of Dodo species and whatever the cats, rats and pigs extincted in the pacific islands. You'd wish.

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Yet another piece of entertainment built on top of the mighty search machine.

This one challenges you to discover the word whose search returns the twenty image fragments shown.

The game is short, and the first few rounds (there are ten altogether) are spent in cheerful bewilderment. Got 226 points on first and only try. The top-list is full of people who seem to have mined the game for maximum score with what appears to be graceless repetition and rote learning, which is quite impressive since the right answer is not given out by the game. Or perhaps they just are very quick to spot the search term in the collection of images. But hey, ignore the competitive aspect, and it's jolly good fun.

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Yah, a not totally useless meme. Picking up after Visa Kopu, and initially from defectiveyeti.

What is the URL your browser gives you for each letter (and number):

• A: amazon.co.uk. Was persistently looking for something or the other several times this week.
• B: blogilista.fi/suosikit.php. Well well, what have we here.
• C: cnn.com. Spookily topical.
• D: www.dvdcompare.net. For those anguishing moments of deciding between a bargain price and a full set of features.
• E: www.wikipedia.org. The choice of the digital generation.
• F: www.fimoculous.com. Newly discovered blog. Uncomfortable three-column layout, but decent content.
• G: www.google.com. No surprises here.
• H: www.helsinki.fi/~mjkinnun/blog.html. Matti's blog.
• I: www.imperiumi.net. Metlhdez'r'us.
• J: joystiq.com. Decent games news site.
• K: kottke.org. Jason Kottke's blog.
• L: www.lavonardo.net/blog. Me, myself and I.
• M: www.metacritic.com. A universal review aggregator.
• N: www.nokia.com. Was looking for hard facts on the new N-series phones.
• O: www.oreillynet.com. Still among the best three technical publishing companies, and their web-presence is up to the standard of the books.
• P: www.pelit.fi. The best games magazine (and a decent website too).
• Q: www.qwantz.com/merchandise.html. That shirt with a purple octopus on it will so be mine.
• R: www.roklintu.com. Music news in finnish.
• S: slashdot.org. Daily ritual. Though the community seems to be a living proof of Sturgeon's Law.
• T: telkku.com. No-nonsense tv-guide.
• U: Nothing under the letter 'U'. Surprising.
• V: www.vltava.fi. Checked the menu, both before and after visiting.
• W: wired.com. A decent magazine that survived the dotcom implosion well (though the page count was halved).
• X: xe.com. How cheap is the USD these days really?
• Y: www.ytv.fi. Time tables for the municipal traffic. Or actually just a link to them.
• Z: Nothing under 'Z'.
• 1..0: Nothing under URLs that begin with a number.

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Yes. The Dark Lord, the Hand of the Emperor, has his own blog.

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Went to see Jonna Tervomaa in Tavastia yesterday.

The scheduling seemed odd, since posters stated that showtime was 21:30. Decided against early arrival, and got to the place after half past eleven, when the warm-up act, Tuure Kilpeläinen was playing. Very much singer-songwritery- type stuff, not bad at all but not exactly my cup of tea either. Some good bits in songs, but not enough to really raise the vocalist up from mediocrity. Or perhaps I'm being just too critical.

The main act was accompanied by extremely lame interaction with the audience, but the gig itself was good. Sharp vocals, accompanied by funked-up renditions of classic songs by Jussi Jaakonaho the guitarist. Turns out (as far as I could tell from the confusing raps) that this was indeed the second gig of the day, first one having been played at the appointed hour. But she bravely played the expected hour-and-then-some, and I decided to split around the third song in the encore to escape the rush at the coatcheck. No new songs that I could tell.

Despite this being quite a bit later occasion than yesterday's, there were still buses going north. Which was good, since there seemed to be a bit of shortage on taxis.

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A pub-owner, bitten by a rampaging spider, survives after receiving correct antidote based on a picture of the critter (arachnophobia alert). Sounds like a publicity stunt, but the story is reported by the BBC. Not that they wouldn't have been fooled before...

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So, the annual finnish blog-awards gala was held yesterday. Skipped, in favor of friends and blacksabbathinfinnish, thank you very much.

Haven't really many of the winning blogs, so can't really comment on most of them (Kari Haakana, kasa and hockeyblog are worthy). But I agree on the honorary winners. And the anti-award as well - though I haven't yet tested whether this blog passes the Karpela-koolaid-test. Well, I'll find out the next time I have time to kill near a public web-kiosk.

Anyway, all's not truly well in the blogosphere. The counter-award by lehti is pretty much what it appears. And a severely pseudonymous Täti Pensiö is stirring up trouble.

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Broke a long and boring no-live-music season, and went to see Sapattivuosi at Tavastia.

Arrived pretty much eleven o' sharp, and the band was just kicking off with Hautuumaan Lapset. Perfect timing, for once. Played a good chunk of songs from both albums: Sotasiat, Elävinä Kuolleisiin, Tarviin Pimuu (a genial rendition of Dirty Women), and many many others. Good 75 minute show. No Paranoid, but a merciless version of Symptom of the Universe as encore.

Ran into Pekka. Skipped buying a t-shirt (silver on black), and got home surprisingly early (starting early on a weekday is a good thing, especially when there's an early meeting waiting on the unwary rock-cop).

Maybe I have to invest in the second album as well, since many of the new songs sounded good indeed.

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Ok, so it's not Nokia, but Samsung who will sponsor Chelsea next season. And for quite a bit more money than was originally reported.

Too bad, would've been cool to have the most famous finnish logo on the most expensive football jersey, but that's not to be had. And perhaps this is for the good. After all, sponsoring one team might have alienated the fans of others...

The roundabout of sponsors in the premiership goes on, as the Blues' current sponsor, Emirates Air, moves on to Highbury Lane.

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Yet another great comic artist goes beyond the veil of ink. Romano Scarpa, whose long career (spanning fifty years almost to a day) in creating Duck/Mouse stories leaves most of the others standing.

He was not the most technical of artists, nor did all the stories make much sense (though the writer's usually to blame in this case). But prolific, oh yes.

And the best stories, from the turn of sixties/seventies (published and republished in Finland during the next decade) had a kind of Lynchian sense of wonder to them. Everyday tales, under whose surface lies hidden menace. Needless to say, these were kinda standout stories at ripe age of less than ten years when most of the magazine was already getting stale. So, it's now back to re-reading the Iroquois Necklace and Swedish Matches amongst others, stories from a time when the monthly pocket issues were done with care instead of just by the numbers.

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And not by EA, but the real thing. First round of playoffs, and the series wide open.

Indeed, Miami - New Jersey 2215 on canal+. Probably not the most appropriate background noise for finalizing a presentation for next week, but it'll have to do.

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Updated blogger code:

    B5 d t++ k s u f i- o+ x-- e l- c

Changes:

• B4 -> B5 (time takes its toll)
• s-- -> s (figured it'd be useful to know who visits)
• l -> l- (like, what was the previous useful meme)

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Seems that the service provider had a bit of trouble with servers this morning. Ping worked, but anything above that didn't.

Fine now, but no reply to my problem report yet (would be nice to know the reason, extent and duration of the incident).

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Began experimenting with comments, and after a three point clue from Aaro chose to play with the free tool from Haloscan instead of trying to whip something up on my own. It's a start, and replaceable if it gets iffy.

Pay no attention to the screams and spilled chemicals. They are necessary artifacts of progress. The styling is far from final. I hope. It's between lame and awful at the moment. And anyway, spring cleaning for the bloated .css would be beneficial.

And nope, I'm not going to enable comments on any previous entries. Unless appropriately bribed. Let the past be static and undisturbed.

Still missing a real perma-link thingy. But that's more a fault of the publishing system than anything else. And would necessitate some additional hackery. Which is not a bad thing, of course, but no thanks on a lazy saturday night, please.

And no categories either. Since the content tends to wander between subjects in entries, this would not be a very important addition.

Jury's still out on doing RSS/Atom/whatever-feeds.

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The very suspicious penguins were originally reported by Bruce Schneier, definitely a blog worth following if you're interested in either Big Brother's encroachment on us all or the general cluelessness regarding electronic security issues.

Schneier's idea of a real concentrated Individual Rights campaign is a very good one - thus far all efforts to question authority have pretty much been lost in the noise. A single front will help matters.

And yeah, been a Schneier-reader for a long while. My initial plan regarding my master's thesis was to do it on everyday corporate cryptographical applications, and at that time (mid '96) the definitive volume on the topic was Applied Cryptography, which is still highly regarded. However, due to one reason or the other, the cryptography topic fell by the wayside, and I embarked on the road to describe a way to revolutionize a thoroughly proprietary operating system with standard interfaces. And yeah, once I locate the elusive .pdf of the final version, the outdatedness of the study will be quite painful.

Yesyesyes, the Niners show that they can put 1 + 1 together. And get a two for an answer.

Indeed. Alex Smith is now a San Francisco Fortyniner. Here's hoping for a quick revovery. After all, a 2-14 season is definitely something not to repeat.

Two penguins waddling through airport security.

Looks like the homeland security czar still has his plate full...

Vltava - the new (and large) czech-style restaurant smack in the middle of downtown Helsinki has been receiving lukewarm reviews recently (eg. nyt).

Decided to cap a "winding the workweek down"-session with a chunk of some serious meat. The visit does not start well, a five-person table takes "like some 40 minutes" to get, according to a waiter. The forty minutes quickly turn into almost seventy before we're ushered to the table on the third floor. The menu looks good, hearty food all around. The appetizers don't take very long to arrive, but beer does. And that's inexcusable, piping hot onion rings pretty much scream for a chilling liquid on the side, even the appearance of water was very much delayed. Food itself is good, and the portions (had pork with potato pancake and sausage) pretty optimally sized, definitely could have eaten another chunk of Vltava's own sausage, but that's a minor niggle. The check was given on a by-person basis without any extra hassle, which is always a plus.

Not a bad place, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for a second visit. And they really, really ought to stock some plum-brandy.

Well, this is a well-camouflaged response towards the Pirkka blogs.

Still amusing, though.

Whoo, the funniest man on tv (unless you count Conan O'Brien) gets pressed into dvd-format.

Indeed. Too bad his appearance on Crossfire won't be on the disc. But it ought to be good, very good, since it distills the absurdity of the american electoral process down to its finest ingredients.

In the slowly continuing series, "what's spinning in your dvd player": Seinfeld and Angel.

Never been a big fan of Seinfeld, but when the three first seasons on dvd were going dirt cheap in a sale, nabbed them. I don't think I've seen a single season 1 episode before, and at least the couple first ones definitely have not hit the ground running. And the pilot's definitely weird (no Elaine, Kramer's called Kessler). So, the bullseye episodes are yet to come, but the dialogue has occasionally already hit all cylinders, but it's just not consistent thus far.

To contrast the early Seinfeld, there's the late Angel. Late as in "cancelled" as well as "season 5". The first eight or so episodes have been of uniform good quality (nothing exceptional, but neither truly wretched). And clearly Whedon & co. are still hoping that they'd get an extension on the show - haven't yet resorted to weirdness or tying up all the loose ends. But I'm sure there will be time enough for both.

Well, UK is now covered by maps.google.com. The detail level is not up to the US/Canadian one, but it's still good. And the tube-signs in London are a nice touch (even though they're not listing the disused stations).

And Seppo pointed out, to ease people's discoveries on the merkin maps, there's a nifty site called Google Sightseeing that lists locations someone has deemed interesting.

Outlook seems to be having some sort of vendetta against yours truly. I use it at work only, don't worry, I do practice safe communication at home.

Anyway, looks like that moving the good ol' laptop between offline and on-line states too many times terribly confuses the sad excuse of an e-mail client, and it goes sulkingly into permanent offline mode. And with w2k taking close to five minutes to restart, it isn't really a solution. But at least the relevant help files provide no assistance in this. The usual reward applies - sufficient or even helpful answers get beer. Not that anyone really came forward with a solution when I was waging personal warfare against the w2k DHCP-client. Which, by the way, still sucks.

Yeah, bought it on saturday. Along with Teräsbetoni's debut.

Ok, so the reception's been lukewarm. But I like it. More organic than the previous album - fewer loops, more guitars. But kind of devoid of hooks. Or then I've just not been paying attention enough. Well, I anticipate this to grow on me, hence a good position near the very top of ipod's disk.

And since pretty much every second inbound person seems to be looking for the lyrics to "Taivas lyö tulta" via google, it'd be polite to have them here. Perhaps some day. Anyway, the rest of the album is not nearly as good as the first single, but there are some bright moments.

Whoo, good old ESPN.com has really outdone itself lately, three biggish articles worth reading in a row...

First up is a neat-o collection of cheating tales. Some familiar, some less so. My favorite is #19, which shows why Grouchy Souness is not really destined for a bright future.

The second, an analysis of the quarterbacks for the almost-immediate NFL-draft. And unless the niners manage to pull a Sounessian moment of genius, they will draft Alex Smith. After all, their previous smart [Smith graduated in two years, majoring in economics] Utahn [that's, like, Steve Young, for the less enthusiastic readers] QB only took them to several championships.

And last, a ten year retrospective on ESPN history. As far as I can remember, an annual membership therein (or actually Starwave sports with whom they merged) was my very first web-purchase. And no, my credit card number was not nabbed, and I gave up the subscription after a year as the information kept getting more and more liberally shelled out for non-subscribers as well. Thanks for the ride, and here's looking for another decade of decent reporting.

Well, as Dan Brown's readers know, Vatican is in for a spot of trouble, now that the conclave has been shut in.

And don't believe a word what the evil geniuses at CERN are saying. They're off to singularitetize the whole world!

Well, our yard is not big enough for this. Just imagine the possibilities: this spectacular ride, a couple of blinky lights and Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On playing in an infinite loop. And you'll probably get the "most hated guy in the neighborhood"-award right away...
[via boingboing, a trusty purveyor of weird linkage.]

The first finnish band that ever really made it, Hanoi Rocks, is back with a second album after reforming a couple of years ago when Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy finally decided that they can tolerate each other (and that they need the money...). The other two remaining guys decided to opt out of the reunion, so they've been replaced by younger players (the original duo must be pushing 45 these days), and Razzle was killed in '85 in a drunken car accident caused by Crüe's Vince Neil.

Played a free promo gig on top of the "stockan kello", a balcony on the department store's second floor. And caused chaos, as an estimated 10000 people crowded the area around the store. Did not see much from the corner of Aleksi and Keskuskatu, but heard well, the PA system must have been turned close to eleven. And this was around 50 meters away from the stage, so closed up must have been way louder. According to a couple of trusted sources (hesari, roklintu) the entire gig was done with playback, but Mike Monroe played up his usual rock'n'roll rooster antics to cover up the fact.

Five songs. Recognized none. All from the new album, I'd expected some old classics to cap the set, either Tragedy or Don't you ever leave me, but nope, they concentrated on the new material.

Wasn't bad by any means, but not on the top of my shopping list.

Not much different from previous years, standard seems to be high and there are a lot of familiar faces and names among the speakers. Yet another good crop. And this continues to prove the fact that OLS is, indeed, the technical conference on Linux.

The finnish premier of Sin City has been delayed until late july. Bastards.

Saw F. Gary Gray's Be Cool. A movie selected by a committee of six people, this was the one that didn't annoy anyone enough to veto the selection.

And that's pretty much what's wrong with the movie. It's bland, derivative and pretty much hits every cliche on its way to a predictable end. As a sequel to Get Shorty from way back when (1995, sheesh) it just plain fails.

So, the story's not good - but characters do save the film to a certain extent. Not the leading pair - John Travolta is even more wooden than usual, and Uma Thurman never gets going (though [dunno if intentional] skulking with a wine bottle in similar stance to Kill Bill's Bride brought up a smile). Nah, the duo just fails, and their extremely long-winded and very much tacked on dance scene is a good reminder that the equivalent scene in Pulp Fiction was good, this is just a cheap re-run. But the not-so-leading guys are responsible for most of the stars... The man with the weirdest name in Hollywood, Cedric the Entertainer, plays a highly educated gangsta to the very edge of over the top, and Outkast's Andre Benjamin is just plain excellent as his hapless relative. Vince Vaughn camps it up as a homeboy-wannabe, and Harvey Keitel seldom disappoints. The much-touted "Rock as a gay bodyguard who wants to act" never got going. And Aerosmith guys were cool as usual (though the fatherhood- spiel between Steven Tyler & Travolta was very very cringe-inducing and way too long).

Bah. Not worth seeing in a theater, this'll be on tv soon enough.

The trailer for Episode III was packed with effects, lessee if they've included a real script this time (as opposed to the two previous star wars films).

Whoo. It's out tomorrow. But a week later than US and UK. Just plain forgot to order it from play.com.

Nabbed from various places:

• Graveyard of airplanes in Davis Monthan air force base in Arizona rendered via good old maps.google.
• The webcammed home of a flying squirrel.
• Ferners go for Skynyrd's Free Bird, the finnish variant is to request Sabbath's Paranoid. The following study is sadly cut off around 2001, but the practice is still ongoing. And yeah, the existence of either, let alone both of these, in wikipedia does not cease to amaze...

Exactly what happens to all current browsers with the Acid2 test. Only goes to show that full CSS2 support is still a long way off. And that it's not only IE that's broken. Though IE's CSS support is fundamentally broken, and unfixed for the last three+ years.

Or so it seems, the sole remaining pinball manufacturer Stern Pinball Inc. may be in for some stiff competition from a newcomer with a formidable back catalog of old Bally/Williams designs.

Ok, so some people do have enough spare time for toys such as this. Mouse interface suits the game perfectly, and you've just got to admire the trickery needed to implement the game in such a hostile environment.

Hey, if ex-president Rodham thinks games are not good for you, then it's definitely time to go back to the early nineties virtual California, turn up the volume and grab a trusted nine-millimeter deathdealer...

Indeed. Been playing GTA: San Andreas again. Got semi-stuck in one of the early San Fierro missions way back when (just couldn't accomplish what Jizzy wanted), but this time around things seemed to be easier. And been having a jolly good time raising the crime rate numbers lately.

It ain't perfect. The draw distance is nothing to really distinguish the game, and the controls occasionally freak out as well. But it's got its share (and then some) of quality gaming moments. The soundtrack's too packed with hiphop and rap, but some of the radio channels (classic rock, country and grunge/metal) work wonders as ambient background to mayhem.

Ok. So this is very late. But did not really check for updates to this for a long time.

Anyway, the situation seems to be resolved, one way or the other. Seems to be positive, but you can never tell.

Oh well, back to watching football. First the digibox freaked out completely (though did not crash), and then Birmingham scored. Let's see how Chelsea responds...

The other big topic shattering the quiet spring tranquillity of finnish blogosphere is the arrival of commercial blogs hosted by the Pirkka magazine. A monthly magazine whose biggest claim to fame is its "nifty tricks"-column, which usually involves the use of pantyhose in non-obvious situations.

Like Janne, I don't really mind their existence, it's just another tool for the marketdroids, and they are about as open about their affiliation as you can get.

But I sure ain't going to read them.

The almighty blogilista.fi aggregator site has been purchased [in finnish only] by Manta Ray Holding company (appears to be a local venture capital entity).

The timing is impeccable, the purchase occurred almost immediately after this very blog was listed on it. Capitalism at its very finest.

There's a new library in Helsinki. Smack in the very middle of downtown, maximizing convenient access by being located next to the railway station.

But it's not a full library - actually very far from it. Seems to concentrate on music, with shelves after shelves full of cds; and comics and travel literature as an afterthought.

Picked up some in each category - KMFDM live is pleasantly crunchy, the lonely planet guide to Madagascar interesting, and the classic "Hunting Trip" graphic novel penned by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Enki Bilal as good as I remembered. Though not really topical any more, communism having gone the way of the dodo.

Old library card worked well, it's been ages since its last use, and it has shed a lot of ink, but the self-service machinery was able to pick up the bar code still.

Bah. As noted by Aaro, missed tonight's gig by Alamaailman Vasarat & Tuomari Nurmio at Tavastia. Forgot to pay a visit to Tiketti yesterday, and this was the result. Bugger.

Dropped by Vltava on the way home, and was left in an ambivalent mood - the selection is wide, but it still seems more than a wee bit clinical and sterile. Time will heal that wound, that's for sure.

Time for amp-surgery this weekend, the noise that just does not belong is getting out of hand. And if the operation fails, time to go shopping. And I certainly could upgrade the front speakers on the same visit.

Oh yeah, used the "ln -sf" editor for the first time in a while to accidentally remove a pesky file that I needed. Sheesh, the order of the arguments just isn't intuitive. Not now, and not in the days when fiddled with shells more. Nah. Perhaps I should lay off the use of --force flag for damage control purposes instead.

Nope, since going public the blog has not seen massive spikes in traffic. However, perusal of the referrers has brought forward an interesting trend, after blogilista.fi, the second most common entry is via google search for "teräsbetoni lyrics". Hope the vistors will not be too disappointed upon finding none such here.

Did my duty as a consumer today and visited Stockmann's crazy days. Not as crowded as during some previous visits, but then, the offerings were one the meager side. Bought a couple of books (the recent visually very nice book about finnish dragonfiles was on sale at a good price), two dvds (Spirited Away and the newest part of the Harry Potter franchise) and a decent-sized USB-memory stick.

Just a bunch of remaindered links, enjoy.

• The whole 'toothing scene was faked. An excellent media stunt, and clearly a case that should cool the media's interest to jump on any onrolling bandwagon.
• Eric von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation is now available under a Creative Commons license. Good book, bought it from the publisher - nice to see it's now getting a way vaster audience.
• And you can never have too many cool t-shirts.

Finished season 3 of the Shield on dvd. Best current cop show by a mile, and not very far from the almighty Hill Street Blues in quality. But not close enough, the cast of characters simply isn't as large and varied as in that classic show.

It's a good season indeed, with intertwining stories of both personal and work-related challenges. Violent, raw, testosterone-ridden. But not all the time, all the distance - at times whimsical, almost hopeful. Believable, most of the time, but occasionally overreaching.

Still, it's been a good while since a tv show kept me up this late.

And with the addition of Glenn Close as [whatever, I missed the season premiere in Boston], the quality ought to stay firmly plateaued.

Roll on the last season of Whedon's Angel, that ought to be a good show as well...

Both extreme enough respectively, that there ain't much new content here.