Pirate Bay, the biggest torrent page in Scandinavia, if not the whole world, was shut down today in a police raid. The head honcho of the Piratpartiet, the political entity that has chosen to fight the copyright legislation has given a lengthy explanation of today's activities.

[via pinseri.]

Football pool initiated at work. For the first round games and nine bonus questions as tiebreakers (though the 48 games ought to scatter the scores quite well). Using the same system as last time (Euro 2004), and definitely aiming for more participants (had 30 two years ago).

Ten days until the FIFA World Cup kicks off on the ninth of june with Germany, the hosts, facing Costa Rica in the first game.

I'm more partial to a Brazil visitor's jersey in its blue glory than the surprising shirt (from mixko) depicted here.

[via teepaitablogi.]

Saw Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code, and wasn't thrilled that much. It's a decent movie, but not an entertaining summer blockbuster by any margin.

It's obviously based on Dan Brown's biggest hit, the book that's sold absolute bazillions all across the world. And selling still, since it finally came out in paperback in the US.

And it's a very booky movie - dialogue filled with lessons about symbols and conspiracies. Bearable in small doses, but lethargy-inducing when the individual soliloques can take minutes to deliver. And it's bad dialogue indeed, lost in exposition as opposed to credible discussion.

The actors, apart from a surprisningly dull and lost-looking Tom Hanks put on credible performances. Ian McKellen reigns as the more than a little eccentric rich benefactor, and Audrey Tatou isn't bad either.

The actors are not able to save the movie from dreariness. It's a boring movie - occasionally fast-paced like a thriller, but often slowing down to a crawl. The book wasn't this bad, so the blame lies at least partially on the screenwriter - clearly not Akiva Goldsmith's finest hour. The exciting bits, even nuances, have been carefully excised, and that's what dooms the film into the annals of mediocrity.

This is not a glowing recommendation, but neither an utter damnation. It's just a missed opportunity, a cinematic dud.

A formal categorization for enterprise bloggers has been proposed.

I consider myself firmly in the second category - after all this is hardly pseudonymous, and not really about work. And I'm not keeping the name of my employer hidden, nor broadcast it daily.

Jakob Nielsen's second web usability book, Prioritizing Web Usability is out. Or has been for a month or so. I'd have expected a bigger brouhaha about the release, so either this has been low key or I've been my reliably oblivious self.

Second season of Lost won't be released until early October, which is quite a shock treatment for us hopelessly addicted. That's the R1-edition, the expectedly extras-free R2 may be out sooner. Just as it happened with Deadwood.

Finally the date of the last update of the blog corresponds with reality. Not writing the entries on the trip directly does not rank among the finest ideas recently.

On a lighter note, here's a perfect example why "when ripping off people, it's important to eliminate all evidence" (and do take time to read the comments as well - the scammer gets involved, and torn apart verbally).

Whoah!

Dropkick Murphys, to whose newish singles collection I've been listening to a lot lately, will play a gig in Ankkarock in early august.

And that's not all, another irish/punk-band is also among the the selected few. Sadly, Flogging Molly will play on a different day - forcing me to spend two days in Korso.

The musical part of the annual Maailma Kylässä festival held in downtown Helsinki begun with Moottörin Jyrinä - heavy metal for children.

Playing classic songs with kid-aimed lyrics is quite an absurd idea, but the guys sure have a killer logo. Shirts of which are available only on the gigs, sadly.

Attended the official celebratory reception for the Eurovision winners on Kauppatori.

An occasion that probably overshot any estimates of attendees - the few video screens were inadequate as was the PA.

Missed the beginning, spent the first two bands in good company and took off when it was an hour till the main event.

Managed to catch a couple of songs by PMMP and Egotrippi on the very crowded square. Probably the biggest finnish gathering I've ever been to (surpassing the '93 Leningrad Cowboys neatly). The attached picture doesn't really show the masses, arrived late and was thus near the edges of the area.

Listened to a couple of songs - usually taking a very long time to identify them (bad PA, remember). The president of the country put in a brief appearance (unlike the prime minister who's been absolutely gushing about the band), and the band launched into their biggest hits.

Which was our cue, started walking away before the masses had the same idea. And heard the winning song while walking and got to Base well ahead of the crowds - a definite win-win situation.

Some Lordi-imitators were present in the audience, but all in all the mood was more expectant than participatory. By far the coolest attendee was a guy dressed up as a construction worker and carrying a poster of Vesa-Matti Loiri.

Missed towel day, the annual homage to Douglas Adams.

Long time, no link. So here goes.

• Yet another precision-aimed wiki: Game Innovation Database. A bit thin, but interesting nonetheless.
• Iron Sky - next from the Starwreck-team.
• Always been partial to surreal art. And Rob Gonsalves' work sure looks delicious.
• Seeonslash collects the worthy comments from the zillions of utterly worthless ones on slashdot.
• Seems that the adventures of spatio-temporal agent Valerian are being turned into an anime series. And the few images prove that the lead characters look nothing like their equivalents in the graphic novels.

Almost forget that today's the official age++ -day.

About as trauma-free as you can get. As per usual.

On a "team building day" in Tallinn.

Took a surprising turn after making landfall, accompanied the more cultural attendees to Kumu, the brand-new museum of modern art.

And spent two hours browsing the collection. Which isn't bad at all. Varies from classic art to rather funky pieces of modern art - of some specific genre, I'm sure, but not willing to speculate further.

All art is domestic - so the mandatory Mondrians, Dalis and Miros are entirely absent. A nice change of pace from traditional equivalent establishments.

The museum is still getting some work done, and the external areas (a sculpture courtyard and the like) were unfinished.

Had dinner in Balthazar in the Old Town. Good, garlicky food, but I was expecting bigger dishes.

No-one stole the trophy during the night. We're still the winners.

After the disappointment in hockey, this is indeed sweet. And I don't have too high hopes against Canada in the bronze game today.

And I think I'm scarred for life by the spanish "song", it'll take a while before bloody mary means just the drink and not gibberish by the team that gave us asereje in 2002.

Thank you, Lordi.

So, after a 40-year drought, finns finally bring home the prize from the eurovision song contest.

By breaking the previous points-record.

By fielding a quintet of escapees from the set of a low-budget slasher flick.

Never under-estimate the power of pent-up demand for decent music.

The plastic babes and by-the-numbers songs lost. Everybody won.

Exactly how many snowballs are visible rolling in Hell right now? And how many of our porcine friends have suddenly sprouted wings and ' cruising the starry sky?

This is a pretty decent consolation for the loss to the czechs in the hockey semifinals. And much much better than almost anybody believed we could go.

(Missing entries inbetween this and the 10th are in the pipeline, and are to be added soonest.)

Well, the first night was easy - the second wasn't. Finally fell asleep around six (a.m., unfortunately) and tore myself out of the bed at two.

Gave up on multiple occasions and read through the archives of newspapers that arrived during the trip.

Groggy to the extreme. So out of focus that I managed to break my glasses (for the first time ever) by dropping them into the sink. Do not try this at home. The shop is unable to give a quote for repairs (schedule, couldn't really care less about the cost) over the phone - back to the old ones from late nineties, unfashionable enough to scare randomly encountered people.

Watched the Eurovision song contest semifinals.

For the first time ever Finland got through, and will participate in the final round.

Lordi, the monstrous quintet representing Finland got quite a reception after the song. The qualification order is kept secret - so there's no telling what's going to happen in the finals.

Most of the songs were utterly forgettable. Sweden has a nice Abba-homage (it's Winner takes it all with serial number filed off), Lithuania went for the meta-song and Iceland's Silvia Night's Ali G-esque antics went unrewarded. But for the most part the songs were between lame and awful indeed.

Barcelona are now the reigning champions of european football. Watched the game live as a jetlag-killing measure. First half at Chelsea, but second at home - the former was too full and uncomfortable without a seat.

Slept well as a bonus.

Helsinki sure has changed in the two weeks I was away. The spring is slowly turning into summer, and the scenery is green. But not very warm - definitely felt the cold closing in while waiting for the cab in Seutula yesterday. And ice hockey is everywhere - was pretty much spared of the world championships but here it's unavoidable.

Life smiles again after a good long shower and first two rounds of laundry.

Was a very good trip - and one that'll serve as a city-vacation benchmark for the next while.

• Saw a panda (actually two).
• Didn't read work-related e-mail at all.
• Walked lots and some more (brought a borrowed pedometer and topped out on 29k steps on the longest day).
• Didn't drink any local beers in Philadelphia or DC.
• Liked all cities. A lot. Enough to warrant a return in the not-too-distant future.
• Didn't learn to appreciate baseball.
• Wondered at weirdly fluctuating room prices in DC (vastly different prices on week/weekend days).
• Didn't feel like having spent five days in the murder capital of USA (and I guess the last city indeed has gotten much cleaner).
• Understood how small the White House is, and how immense the federal bureaucracy.
• Didn't read the new white paper on inform 7. Interesting subject, but obviously not enough.
• Bought yet another season of West Wing - fifth, by far the suckiest, but completionism cannot be helped.
• Didn't find Clooney/Soderbergh's K-Street in the shops.
• Understood that distances can be long even on the more compact east coast.
• Didn't see any recognizable politicians.
• Received multiple new state quarters in change.
• Didn't eat at Ben's Chili Bowl.

Got home intact and with all pieces of luggage. So props to the stewards in Munich who came through on a very fast transfer.

Ride got off to a good start after I landed an aisle seat following an extended bout of musical chairs. It was a full plane, with lots of groups that had gotten dispersed at check-in.

Food was just plain horrible, limp pasta on three flights out of four seems like bad luck that is measured on seismic scale.

No sleep, but that's par for the course in planes.

Had a hair-raising experience at the security in Dulles. Bought an SR-71 bottle-opener/fridge magnet, and it's sharp-nosed shape obviously matched that of a knife. Fortunately the supervisor called to scene (in a paniced voice) was able to set things right after noting that it's a pretty dull-edged object. Had me worried for a moment.

Also had my first TSA-break-in into checked luggage. One lock lost, one piece of paper inserted. The new masterkeyable lock proved its worth immediately.

Visited the National Geographic Society headquarters just a couple of blocks from the hotel. Walked through the three exhibits on show: Judas Gospel had something of a crowd in it and consisted mainly of newly interpreted pergament shards (facsimiles, I assume). An exhibit about the crusade-era castles had fascinating models explaining the concepts, models that spanned several square meters at best. Took me until the last one - about coral reefs - to discover that photography was not allowed...

The gift shop was well-stocked with books, but had a surprisingly small amount of the company's magazines available (no back issues at all).

Had an excellent bagel-breakfast on the street (definitely getting warmer once again) while watching the herds of suit-clad salarimen and/or officials hurrying by. I could definitely get used to this...

Had a late plane to catch, so left luggage at the hotel and took one more trip into the depths of Smithsonian.

Ran into the first, and thus far only, finns on the metro station. The National Museum of Natural History was impressive and big. Big enough to allow a partial visit only (wanted to catch up on art as well). The animal bits were interesting, especially the ones on fossils and approximations what the bygone creatures looked like in the flesh. But the geological gallery was time-consuming as well, and not only because they had the largest collection of precious rocks I've ever seen. Rather because the relevant processes were nicely visualized and complemented with attention-grabbing details. One of which was a label on a chunk of gneiss - where the swedish heritage puts in an appearance (as shown on the right, and nope - no clue what "ptygmatic" means or how it can fold things).

Did an extremely quick lap (or actually four, one per floor) in the Hirshhorn Museum, dedicated to modern art. By far the most interesting thing on display was a lengthy video of a complicated rubegoldbergian device put together by two swiss guys. Not as shiny and exact as the Honda commercial, but this one had fire as a component, on several occasions. Just had to purchase it from the museum shop. Which had neat-o DIY-mobiles available as well - they consisted of triangular patches and bendable rods, and allowed the creation of an uncountable number of varieties. Forgot the product name almost immediately (it's a compound word, and the first part is "space", second a plural noun) - anyone who can supply the name earns an appropriate prize...

The misgivings about the rushed schedule to get to Dulles got even worse when the shuttle failed to materialize in time. And in a reasonable slack given for delays in the traffic. Had to grab a cab instead. And that ran my walled dry - they don't accept cards in taxis here.

Late arrival to check-in meant a lousy seat - but a 45K in a 46-row plane sure adds a lot of insult to injury.

Walked around on the George Washington University campus. Which, like its compatriot in Georgetown, was surprisingly empty. School's not out yet.

Had to see the place, because I almost had a school-year's worth of education here. GWU was my #2 choice in the ISEP ranking, and I quite anticipated spending a year in DC in the mid-nineties on an exchange-program. However, the first choice on the list went through, and I ended up in Utah instead.

Which was probably fortunate, I'd gone broke on taxi bills alone here - DC was not exactly the safest city back then. These days it seems to be quite close to the tops on the mellowness-index, aided by the vast number of cops all around the city.

Saw the Watergate-complex (depicted), from which the scandal erupted that almost got Richard Nixon impeached. Wasn't in very good shape (at least when looked at from a distance of a couple of blocks).

Walked back to the hotel - had a delicious mexican salad along the way in a no-name restaurant and wondered about the goings on in the building next door to the hotel. The office complex was surrounded by fire trucks and worried officials of all possible uniforms - but obviously nothing was amiss any longer as I passed them by without any comment.

Watched almost the whole length of George Bush addressing the nation on new immigration initiative. Missed the very first minute - so still haven't heard Hail to the Chief in its natural environment. The media coverage of the event started a couple of hours before the speech, and continued well into the night. I tuned to basketball early - and seem to have picked new heroes along the way. Steve Nash and Devon Harris, of Suns and Mavs, respectively admirably fulfill the role of a playmaker not afraid to take shots when necessary.

Busy afternoon.

Bought a new suitcase. A Delsey carryon from a decently cheap shop in the Union Station (have to check back home how badly ripped off I got). Not because of excess retail therapy, travelled with just one bag packed to the brim, so the need was well-anticipated.

Had forgotten how good Ben&Jerry's ice cream was. A cone of chunky monky (banana with big lumps of dark chocolate) set things right. Some of their stuff was supposedly available at Stockmann's - seriously have to look into it...

Visited the National Postal Museum, and seem to be suffering from overload. Or perhaps the subject just wasn't thrilling enough. Managed to buy two sheets of Muppet Stamps at the co-located shop.

Walked through the rather small Chinatown (or just wrong streets therein). Just a couple of blocks in size, and rapidly being westernized by the influx of commerce from the nearby sports arena.

Seems that there's no diners club lounge at Dulles, and that I have a late plane out. Upon consulting with the people at reception, booked a ride on a shuttle at an uncomfortably late hour (considering that security measures are being beefed up all the while).

Slept long - it apparently takes five or so days to acclimatise to a drastically different time zone. Which means that it'll be as hard to shift back after heading home.

The hotel provided a copy of USA Today, which was nice - something to read over breakfast / lunch.

Walked to a different part of town today, towards the International Spy Museum. It turns out to have an admission fee, took free entry for granted after the Smithsonians. There's also a strict "no photography"-clause in the galleries.

The spy museum is a worthwhile place to visit - and the suggested two hours is pretty much the duration I spent inside. The contents range from interactive things for kids (assume a cover identity and be interrogated a couple of times along the way) to seriously historical details through the depcitions of espionage in the show business. The artifacts are described well, and on several occasions I caught myself reading deep into the long explanations.

Had lunch at the museum cafeteria. The food was OK, but the highlight of the visit was the rediscovery of twist-off caps. Had forgotten how cool it actually was to be able to open metal caps without any tools (and of course asked for one, when confronted with such a cap...)

There's no metro service to Georgetown, but with the very convenient circulator-buses it's trivially reached.

Sunday evening seemed not to be the optimal time to visit the bubbling university area, as the crowds were on the thin side, and most of the shops were closed.

Walked around the campus and nearby streets for a good while. Certainly this was reallly the first visited location where people actually lived, and in very expensive-looking houses. The campus area wasn't shabby either. The architects were very fond of red brick as a design element, even more so than in Otaniemi.

Watched a couple of quarters of baseball in the lobby bar. The quarterefinals are far from clear-cut, and the underdogs (cavaliers, suns to name two) are putting up a good fight against higher-finishing favorites.

Dropped into the Smithsonian Castle to pick up a bottle of water, and noted that today's the last day of the Hokusai exhibition. Decided to drop into the art galleries to see at least the classic japanese woodcarvings.

First was a visiting Amazonia-exhibition in the Ripley galleria, of which there was next to no material available outside. It turned out to be a very worthwhile show indeed, as it concentrated on the biodiversity of the region, especially of fish. And the main exhibit of the south american fish were the catfish, the most diverse group of them all.

The show got off to an excellent start in the foyer with a huge painting by Ray Troll, part of which is depicted in the first photograph in this entry, tens of square feet full of well-painted catfish species in a single frame. Certainly worth looking into whether this piece (or a section thereof, more likely) would be available as a serigraph or something.

The rest of the exhibition was very interesting as well. And being hosted in a scientific establishment, the facts behind the displayed items were carefully listed.

Indeed, the fish shown were not just pretty pictures, but individually named (including several species I'd never heard of). And with the All Catfish Species Inventory being namechecked alongside, the taxonomy seemed to be very much up to date.

The show was not constrained to catfish alone, freshwater rays also featured quite well, and there was a short, but very much interest-inducing movie about a whole new fish family (the "muck fish" who live in leaf litter) being recently discovered, but thus far not officially described.

The Hokusai exhibition was indeed available for viewing for the last day. And the galleries crowded accordingly. Walked through the show, and indeed saw some of his most famous woodcarvings (with some paintings thrown in for good measure). The Sackler gallery was organized in a fashion that you ended up seeing other exhibitions as well - the theme seemed to be East Asia, as there were both ancient sculptures from various countries, japanese photography and an introduction to manga available.

Dropped into the National Air and Space Museum to view the last remaining exhibits (had to cut the visit short on thursday).

The previously unseen ones were no less interesting than the first ten or so humongous rooms.

The Apollo-room presented replicas of things that flew to the moon. The engines of the Saturn rocket were bigger than anything seen here or in the Udvar-Hazy location. Which is to say, pretty large indeed. The moon buggy used on apollo 15 was surprisingly big, but turned out to have been shipped in folded up fashion.

Saw the remaining highlights of the collection. For the Wright Brothers' flyer from 1903 there's a separate gallery that depicts the history of the earliest powered flight thoroughly. That plane's big enough to be hard to photograph properly (especially when there's no means to take pictures from above). Missed Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis on the previous visit and had to search for it this time as well - it's not amongst the most gaudily colored things shown.

The uneven weather outside had degenrated into proper rain, and thus had time to kill. Visited the giftshop and got a serious case of Coveting A T-Shirt. Had to give in - after all, I'd been very frugal with shirt-buying (one thus far) on the trip.

Slept rather decently late, and had a leisurely brunch at the hotel. Not exactly on the cheap side, but having the ability to pick and choose items from a selection of dozens is always good. Plus it's always a pleasure to be able to order a two-egg omelette with "the works", where that consists of more than ten toppings. And despite the local newspaper not being of the size of Globe or the New York Times, it'd be quite a juggling feat to read this somewhere without a proper table.

Walked to the National Aquarium, and spent an hour inside. The place was quite disappointing and not up to the standard of, say, the New England Aquarium in Boston. The location (basement of a huge treasury building) is not exactly optimal, and the tanks themselves were lacking attraction. First of all, quite a few of them were dirty, and their contents just nothing special. Highlights were the aquaria filled with native specimens - especially the marine biotopes, and I've never seen so many gars (of multiple species) as were present here.

All in all the place was indeed disappointing, and just seemed to be awaiting a major renovation. Or just consciously having been deprecated by the second National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Walked down to the Mall, taking a roundabout near the White House. Which proves to be very hard to photograph, having an extensive security perimeter and a thick tree cover surrounding it. I'm not the only one perplexed by the lack of a decent photo opportunity, as bunches of other tourists mill about as well.

Felt sleepy enough not to resort to watching baseball as an insommnia-remedy. But happened by an interesting news report while channel surfing.

The San Francisco Giants' slugger Barry Bonds is nearing #2 position in the career home runs statistic, he's now just two hits away from Babe Ruth.

However, the mood of the nation has been soured by his implicated steroid use and constant railings against perceived racism, and there's none of the exhilaration present that was felt when Sosa and McGwire were chasing the homers per season-record.

Even if (nah, that's a when, he's two homers away) Bonds picks up the missing ones, the statistics are going to have an explanatory asterisk (illegal performance enhancers) next to his name, something that no other athlete has yet had to suffer.

Proved that orienteering is not to be taken exactly for granted, and kept walking the wrong way from the zoo on the avenue despite totally unfamiliar scenery. Happened upon a convenient metro station, the error of my ways was proven and got moving back downtown.

Visited the newest Smithsonian building, the National Museum of the American Indian, a remarkably funkily architected building on the Mall.

Started the visit in the food court, as I was pretty much starving at this point. The key feature of the place is the origin of the dishes, supposedly they are all of native origin - and divided between five distinct areas. Chose my dish from the offerings of the Great Plains - an Indian Taco Salad (with bison meat) and a Smoked Squash side dish. Hit the spot very well.

The museum is quite large (with a collection spread over three floors), and the closing time was inconveniently close. All the Smithsonian buildings close at or around five, which is rather early for visiting more than two in a day. Hence was forced to pick and choose the galleries to visit. At least the ones on myths, current status of various tribes (most of which were on the unfamiliar side) and the arrival of europeans were interesting enough to keep me inside to the deadline. But a lot of the content remained unseen - including several movies.

One of the prettiest things on display was a pair of pearl-encrusted converses. Definitely something indeed to keep in a glass case as opposed to playing basketball in. Kept photography to a minimum, and picked up the relevant guidebook on the museum itself from the gift shop on the way out.

Browsed the scultpture garden of the nearby Hirshhorn Museum. Content varied between rather simple to the extremely unorthodox. The garden consists of separate viewing areas, and the sculptures are placed on lush grass, most next to variably photogenic walls (some with ivy, some just bald concrete).

The rain long gone, the Mall was now packed with joggers, softballers, dogwalkers, frisbeetossers and some of us tourists as well. Walked to the Capitol and noted that access was very limited. Resorted to some medium-range photography and walked around the area. The reflecting pool on the east side of the Mall was dry - the western one was giving off great views from the Lincoln monument yesterday.

The weekend having started, the hotel was now full of people who looked less like civil servants than the week-crowd. There's a big law enforcement convention (or something equivalent) going on, and thus police presence in the city and the hotel as well is even higher than normally.

Got carded at the Mad Hatter pub, which was unexpected, being over ten years over the legal age here. Figured that it's not to me being inappropriately well-preserved, but that the bouncers card everybody. Place proved not to be very good, Guinness was off a can and overpriced.

Had my first experience with the DC metro, and the results were pleasant indeed. It's trivial to use, the stations are clean and have clear screens relaying information about incoming trains. Good, this will make travel even simpler.

Rode to the Washington Zoo, and almost immediately was able to view its most famous residents - the giant pandas. Of the three individuals in custody I saw two. The cub was up a tree, unmoving the whole time, but one of its parents did move about a bit. Not a very large bit, but moved nonetheless. Seem to be remarkably placid creatures. Housed in a very large open air area, with plenty of bamboo to chew on.

Missed the other star attraction, Komodo Dragons, world's largest lizards were obviously having a bad day for an early wakeup, and were hidden somewhere in their roomy enclosure.

The presence of a kiwi-bird was much less heralded, even though it's far from a common animal in zoos. It being a nocturnal and secretive creature, it managed to remain concealed in its cage. Even when viewed from an adjoining dark room.

Most of the animals belonging to the small and/or weird category eluded decent photograpghs. Hence the lack of lemurs and frogs here. One of the nearby gila monster (one of the few poisonous lizards) succeeded remarkably well, but all in all a tripod (or an image stabilizer in the lens) would have been a big help.

The zoo was undergoing major renovations, and a few of the areas were being kept empty. The routes through the park were on the complex side, I'm sure I missed some exhibits due to sub-optimal ramblings.

The Amazonia-house had the obvious animals inside, but the highlight of that building was the presence of the scientific wing of the hosting Smithsonian institute. Several ongoing research programs were on display here. Among them a study on coral red pencilifish, a newly discovered small species of tetra that I happen to have back home as well (it seems very well-suited for accommodation in an aquarium).

One of the things definitely belonging to the "previously unseen"-category was an orangutan walkway about forty feet high in the sky. A set of pylons and wires between them that connects the two primate-housing buildings in the zoo. Didn't see any apes taking advantage of the transport. The pillars had security features as well (at least electricity), orangutans not being exactly harmless and small critters.

The day being a saturday and having started out quite sunny, the park was packed with families. An incoming rain shower didn't really thin out the crowds that much.

Noted that it'd be time to change shoes - had walked a week in the timberlands, and the feet were screaming for a change, definitely time to switch to sneakers in the evening.

Attached are some random images from the zoo. A smallish alligator hiding in tall grass, some surprisingly people-friendly beavers, a view on the biggest pool in the Amazonas-house (yeah, they're five feet long arapaimas swimming about) and the biggest flock of flamingos I've seen outside of a television screen.

Browsed the photos carefully (idle hands, early mornings and nothing on tv is not a good combination) and noted that we saw a bona fide lowrider in Plymouth the other day.

Don't think I've ever seen one before, and the lack of ground clearance (plus the fascinating machinery visible in the open cargo area) seem pretty amazing.

My first ever visit to a confederate state went OK, no rednecks or television preachers appeared on the brief visit. Figured that there's still time for yet more sightseeing, and bought a ticket for an evening tour of the biggest monuments in town.

Tour took off after a very quick bite at the Union Station food court (very decent chicken korma for the meager price). And almost immediately the guide started to grate on my nerves. Patriotic to the extent that he was extolling liberty and need for America to keep the world safe on approximately fifteen minute interval, causing even some of the locals to roll their eyes in disbelief.

The tour went by a couple of presidential monuments first, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt.

The former is an old roman-style shrine overlooking a tidal basin of the Potomac river. At just before the dusk the lighting over the river was sublime indeed.

The latter is a walking trail next to statuary, running water and famous passages written on the walls. Both quite brief and informative visits of dead presidents.

The second half of the evening was a trio of military monuments (with one president thrown in for good measure).

The Korean War monument proved far too dimly lit for my poor old Canon G3 - the seventeen marble soldiers slowly walking through a rice paddy was quite spooky in the quickly darkening evening.

The Vietnam War monument is the famous chronological list of casualties/MIAs carved on black stone - easily the most effective of the things seen tonight. And the only one which carried remnants of visitors earlier in the day - flowers and small flags deposited on the ground. There were a couple of stalls selling military regalia next to the monument - the advertisements vowing to use the proceedings to carry on the search until everyone's accounted for.

Almost next to the Vietnam War monument stands the Lincoln memorial - with old Abraham seated in a greek-style temple and overlooking the Mall from its west end. As seen in an attached blurry image, the dim conditions (and a lack of tripod) did not exactly make for spectacular photos. The one used here is by far the best, most of the rest have disturbing flashes from the other visitors' cameras.

Throughout the evening there were traffic-halting motorcades in the city (ominous black vans accompanied by police vehicles), either folks from the Capitol heading out, or inbound dignitaries (the Australian prime minister's supposed to have a big dinner with Bush tomorrow).

Took a cab from the endpoint of the tour - still haven't used the local metro system, and around midnight's not the appropriate time to experiment. Especially when I haven't got a really good idea where the closest station of the hotel exactly lies.

Got up early, got bearings on a couple of maps (a pop-out guide picked up in Boston and the relevant eyewitness guide) and walked towards the Mall, not a shopping center (as infamously translated in some forgotten book) but a big esplanade surrounded by the most famous landmarks of the city.

First dropped in to the White House visitors center on the miniscule chance that tours would still be organized in the holistically paranoid environment. Yes, there were tours still, but you had to apply for one through your congressman, or embassy in the case of us nefarious foreigners. Four to five months in advance, and even then the percentage that actually sees Pennsylvania Avenue 1600 from the inside is miniscule. So nope. The White House itself is pretty well distanced from public roads and thus not really visible - hence the lack of any photos of that subject.

Walked to the Mall around nine o' clock, with an hour to kill before the halls of the Smithsonian open. The Washington Monument was much bigger than I expected, and quite impressive in my hunger-addled state. Capitol building is rather large as well, but far enough not to go climb the steps right now. On the vast lawn of the Mall there was a demonstration of the violence in Iraq - a pair of boots for each american military casualty. And a grim note that this is just a scratch on the surface of the civil dead. The Mall itself is big, and surprisingly empty - just occasional joggers and tourists are about, and any souvenir stalls or touts for sightseeing companies are entirely absent. The latter a very welcome change from the in-your-face tactics employed in other cities.

No food vendor is available in the park in the early hours of the day, and according to the informative brochures given out by friendly Smithsonian volunteers, the first target of the day, the National Air and Space Museum has a food court and I figure that breakfast is easily taken care of inside the building.

The visit to the air and space museum is anything but brief. In three hours I manage to cover most of the galleries before shipping out to a second location, as the biggest objects of the collection do not fit within this building that is the size of three city blocks.

The museum contains both aviation and space exploration relics (as well as some occasional missiles gifted by the military). And the selection is nothing less than breathtaking - ranging from the Wright Brothers' first powered aircraft to jet fighters via Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis inbetween. On the space-exploration side the highlights are the Apollo Lunar Module, a life-size replica of the Soyuz-Apollo docking as well as a slice of the Skylab. Somewhere between the two strands is Burt Rutan's Space Ship One, proudly hung in the entry hall of the museum.

Simulators (with long queues and surprisingly high price tag) dominate one gallery, and the building also contains an IMAX-theatre and a planetarium.

As well as a mighty large gift shop, that has the largest collection of aviation and space exploration books that I've ever seen. Right now there's no time to browse the shelves properly, as the shuttle bus to the second NASM-location leaves momentarily.

The second building of the museum, the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, is located in neighboring Virginia. A good 45 minute ride away. The bus is comfortable, and the only things that prevent sleep are the ice cold water purchased from a street vendor and a via-SMS announcing how the FIN-USA- game in the hockey world championships is going.

The Udvar-Hazy Center is absolutely humongous in size, and is expected to house thousands of aviation and space artifacts of the Smithsonian Collection. Obviously, not all of them can be the size of the two star attractions: Concorde and the Space Shuttle. Yes, there is a real space shuttle in the house, that'll give you an idea of the magintude of the building. The shuttle is obviously not one that ever flew in space (they are in quite short supply, these days), but Enterprise, the shuttle used for test flights (fascinatingly launched by piggybacking a 747). The museum also has a flight control tower, where you can see what's going on at the nearby Dulles International, but I managed to forget about that attraction until it was time to board the bus back to DC again.

Right now the building has two galleries, with more to be added in the future. The aviation gallery has planes from all eras, and packs much bigger ones than the downtown location. The Concorde and a Boing 707 are the biggest, but the most interesting to visitors seem to be a B-29 (Enola Gay, the one that dropped the bomb in Hiroshima) and an SR-71 spy plane. The former is just another bomber-plane, but the latter's sleek lines are quite something else than those of more economical jets.

The space gallery has, in addition to the shuttle (which is far bigger than I anticipated) lots of other interesting things on display. Satellites and probes (including a mock-up of Pioneer) hang from the ceiling, and a largish diorama shows the Mars exploration vehicles in action. One of the unexpected artifacts is the model of the mothership used in the Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie.

Arrived painlessly in Washington D.C., riding the amtrak regional again.

The union station is remarkably clean and free of people that Loiter with Intent. A cab ride to the hotel gets off to a weird start when I note that there's no meter in the otherwise immaculate town car. Turns out that the taxi industry is zoned in the district of columbia, and the customers billed according to the number of zones crossed during the journey.

The hotel, Wyndham Washington is quite posh, and the price quoted by hotels.com seems quite a bargain at around 100$ a day.

The drizzling rain during the latter parts of the train ride mutates into a storm, and the radio blares out an actual tornado warning - commanding people in a couple of Virginia counties to seek shelter below ground.

My very first tornado does not materialize, but the steady rain persists, enough to deter from exploring the darkening neighbourhood. The hotel bar offers a decent crab quesadilla, basketball on television and a decent location to browse the collection of tour brochures collected from the concierge. No clear winned emerges from the latter, and I decide not to book one for tomorrow.

Left the luggage at the hotel, and took to the streets for half a day's experience of the Pennsylvania capital.

First visited the Liberty Bell center, which had the tightest security I've ever witnessed. Each compartment of the backpack was scrutinized, and the whole bag rolled on a conveyor belt for a few times. Was successful in fishing out all metal objects out of pockets before approaching the huge metal detector thingy - it appeared to have been set on a hair-trigger response. The liberty bell itself was stored in plain view (even visible from the streets), and surrounded by visitors. It's a cracked copper bell from the 18th century, one that has served as a symbol (it cannot be rung any more) for multiple social advances through the years.

The other independence-era buildings in the area seemed to have even longer lines for attendance - clearly this is a big attraction for local and visiting schoolkids. Field trips seem to be at their most popular at the end of season around the world.

Booked a trip on a double-decker tourist bus, and while waiting for the tour to start walked to the now-open visitors center nearby. Picked up facsimiles of couple of locally important documents (they were cheap and you never know when an authentic-looking Constitution may prove handy).

The tour was interesting - one of those hop-on-and-off type things, with ability to visit some attractions on the way, and limited photo opportunities for others (decided to buy a book instead of resorting to emergency snapshots from a moving vehicle). Saw a copy of Rodin's Thinker for the first time. And the stairs of the art museum made famous in Rocky. Of which the sixth installment has just been finished.

Jumped off the bus next to the Philadelphia Zoo, and figured to spend a couple of hours looking at creatures common and rare. And it turned out to be a decent collection of animals indeed.

No pictures of the funkiest trio (each of which I figure I saw for the first time right here), due to difficulty of conditions. Echidna, the spiny anteater, was accommodated in a dark house, and the animals shuffled fast enough among the leaves to render all pictures (flashless, obviously) to mere blurs. Naked Mole Rats had a neat terrarium with views into multiple underground chambers, but again in a very dark building. The Okapi persistently stood next to a Really Ugly shed, partially hidden by an inconvenient pillar.

So the attached pictures are of animals that I was able to capture. Tree shrews, giraffes, rattlesnakes, red panda (the only relative of the big black'n'white giant panda) and an elephant that seemed to be in some dental distress and being looked at by multiple worried-looking custodians.

Sadly the much-advertised Big Cat Falls-area was not yet open, and the felines were pretty much out of sight. Opened just too late, supposedly in the second half of may.

The zoo was indeed good fun for two and a half hours, and I managed to jump on the exact same bus later and ride back downtown. Emboldened by the previous days experience I ate a second cheesesteak.

Walked back to the hotel, grabbed the second bag and headed off to train station.

Could easily have spent a lot more time in Philadelphia - missed out on a lot (battleship New Jersey moored nearby, Camden Aquarium, any local beers). Perhaps it's time to test the waters and put in an application to attend a very interesting conference organized in june. After all, I will miss the annual ISAS conference in Helsinki next week.

Walked a few miles through the city of Philadelphia. The hotel was indeed conveniently and centrally located, just a few blocks from more interesting areas. The surrounding blocks were not empty by any means, and neither was the downtown. Unlike many other big cities, even the central sections seem quite inhabited, and as such the bars, shops are restaurants keep the city lively.

Washington Square has the only Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the war of independence, with the attendant perpetual flame burning in a brazier.

All the historical section buildings (including the rather big visitor center) were closed already, but spent a good while walking through the area and grabbed a few tour brochures along the way. After all, I'll be here only the the first part of tomorrow and wish to see the mandatory bits. With a decent explanation what the said bits are, if possible.

Walked a long roundabout route back to the hotel, visiting the much bigger than in the movies bridge over Delaware river and Society Hill. The South Street is packed with bars whose customers spill out to the streets, this being a warm evening. The street also has the apparently legendary Jim's Steaks, supposedly the best place to pick up a local culinary classic, the cheesesteak. The wait is long, the place packed with schoolkids in identical uniforms, on some extended field trip. The sandwich itself is quite tasty, filled with shredded meat, veggies, fried onions and plenty of cheese, especially when washed down with a can of ice-cold Miller. The simple square plan presents no difficulties in getting back to the hotel and getting to bed early, this has been the first day of any serious walking on this trip.

Took the Amtrak "Regional" to Philadelphia. The very first train trip in the states ever (the local trains of the Silicon Valley don't count, obviously).

Took the Regional instead of the speedier Acela Express, since the latter is quite a bit more expensive and I was in no hurry to get to Pennsylvania, this being the first day of vacation and all. Stocked up with water, newspaper and a huge sandwich for the trip, which took almost six hours. And the train was quite packed, turned out one of the other trains scheduled for the evening was cancelled, and the people squished into this one. All the tickets were unnumbered, but for the most part the added folks had no trouble locating seats.

The east coast scenery running before the car windows was varied enough to hold interest. For quite a bit the train travelled next to the coastline, over vast vistas over the atlantic ocean and huge trestle bridges spanning a few inconveniently located bays and rivers. The train was indeed a regional one and stopped on many stations - not all of them big at all. And travelled through many towns and cities, varying from picture-perfect to shabby. One constant bit of scenery was the repeated sight of a school bus depot - filled with the familiar orange'n'black vehicles.

Noted that a decent cell phone coverage has finally reached America - people kept talking throughout the journey. Have to look into getting into a "quiet car" on the second train-leg of the trip.

Reached Philadelphia quite a bit behind schedule. Noted that the hotel was not that far from the station on the maps, but scale was conveniently omitted from them. Hence, decided to grab a cab instead of walking. Which turned out to be a decent choice, as the two buildings were not exactly next to each other.

Picked the hotel, Alexander Inn, on recommendation in the National Geographic Traveler magazine. It's a small boutique hotel, having around 50 rooms and located just outside downtown, on the corner of Spruce and 12th streets. The room's about the size of the bathroom in Cambridge (and does have its down teensy bathroom as well), but I'm obviously not going to spend an extensive amount of time therein, so it doesn't matter at all.

Another seafood dinner. This time at Legal Seafoods in Burlington. Which was "interesting" to find, in the chinese proverb sense. Neverlost finally gave out reasonable instructions after some gentle prodding, but the initial coordinates were quite a bit out of touch with reality.

Again, chowders for all and a few shared appetizers, which included delicious spicy popcorn shrimp. For the main course I experimented with a first foray to the realm of the softshell crabs - they taste better than they look. More than half of the participants chose lobster, and as such there was quite a bit of loose shell particles and other collateral damage-inducers flying about around the table.

Visited a Brookstone-shop at the mall and bought a TSA-proof suitcase lock - it's got an override mechanism, so they don't have to break it in case something in the luggage tickles their fancy in an inappropriate way.

But one's good enough, if there's basketball on it. And even better if the game in question is a shootout and not between two defensive teams.

The playoffs having gotten started, the awards for the league are being shelled out. Steve Nash repeated his MVP from last year and one of the lucky picks of my virtual NBA-dynasty in Yahoo, Chris Paul, was indeed the rookie of the year.

McCormick&Schmick remain the purveyors of the bestest seafood in the known universe. Known to me that is, obviously. And their restaurant in Faneuil Hall is the place to visit in Boston.

Started off with a deliciously chunky clam chowder - a Boston classic if there ever was one. Had triple appetizers for the five of us, which seemed to be a decent ratio, since the portions were not exactly small. Ordered yellowfin tuna for the main course, and was surprised by it being sashimi and not grill-seared, was fabulous nonetheless. Key lime pie was a certainty for dessert - strayed from the well-trodden path to an applecake last time, and just had to doublecheck whether the frisky pie was as good as I remembered. Sure was. Got to get the recipe for this one. Even though key limes might be tough to find back home.

The traditional post-dinner- visit to Boston Beerworks was skipped due to an unfashionably early morning wakeup call.

Fiddled with a 770 internet tablet for the very first time in an extended fashion. They seem to be readily available in the shops here, very much unlike the situation back home, where it's sold only over the web (and the quantities offered have been small). Screen's great on the pad, as is its effortless connectivity, but it does seem to have some speed issues. Nothing what a couple of decent software updates wouldn't fix.

Woke up indecently early as expected. And this time attempted to work. Operative word being "attempted", as the VPN refused to work as it should.

A quick breakfast over USA Today did not help, but a quick call to IT helpdesk back home did. And yes, it was quite obvious. So obvious that the current setting used as a default is quite stupendously wrong.

Continued hunt for a decent hoodie and was successful after browsing several shops. Visited the Garage-minimall and noted that the rather nice game store (old skool, none of this computerized stuff) is gone, but the nearby comicstore was doing steady business. Bought an unknown Lewis Trondheim album (on fantasy clichés of all possible subjects) and left the brand-new Gladstone collection of Rosa's Life of $crooge on the shelf (the lazy publishers left out all the B-parts published since the original twelve-parter).

Tower Records is conveniently close to the hotel. Which is bad for the wallet. Though managed to spend less than usually. Which is to say: a couple of albums (ranging from John Coltrane to Dropkick Murphys) and a single dvd (Napoleon Dynamite).

Kicked back after a long day at John Harvard's, a spacious cellar brewhouse that seemed to have quite a bit of variety on its menu.

Visiting three states is not that big a feat in New England, as the states are rather small and thus packed tight, could have easily included New Hampshire on the agenda as well, but decided for longer visits in the other two instead. Decided to supplement mere visitation with some precision-aimed geocaching - I'm not hooked yet, but my ever-loyal travel companion is. Anyway, it's better to have something to aim at in the states rather than just aimless driving on the freeways. And one of the caches selected is the grave of H. P. Lovecraft, so I'm not complaining at all.

A big tree in full pinkish-purple bloom next to the hotel turns out indeed to be a magnolia. Botanical skills are possessed by surprising folks. The tree is shedding its petals fast, and the people parked underneath have a soggy layer on top of their vehicle (yes, it occasionally even rains in Boston).

First up: Connecticut. Picked up a useful-seeming town on the neverlost, the navigation system that has proven invaluable on previous trips also.

Bought essential supplies (ice cream, soda) at a gas station and headed out to Old Furnace State Park. The cache there is not badly hidden, but the GPS keeps on giving very inconsistent results, thus prolonging the search. The scenery is nice - a couple of brooks, a dammed lake, forested hills all touched by a warm morning sun. Despite the sometimes somewhat hazardous terrain, no wounds are inflicted during the search.

Road to Rhode Island, the smallest of the states is pretty much straight. Providence, the capital, is not very well guided, and after some circling (arrangements complicated by a big circus in town) we decide to skip lunch here, and head toward the cache immediately. The cache is virtual, and I recall the needed epitaph, so the visit is needless, but we proceed towards the cemetery containing H.P. Lovecraft's grave nonetheless. The cemetery is large indeed, and the roads are easily wide enough for much bigger cars than ours. The nondescript grave (picture to be added later, didn't take any) is easily located with the GPS, and we spend a longish while walking around - newenglanders go for quite varying headstones; square-cross-sectioned obelisks and large raised platforms are common, whereas crypts seem entirely absent. The graveyard has huge trees, which add to the tranquillity of the area.

The last state of the day, unsurprisingly, is Massachusetts, Cape Cod peninsula avoids us again, as we decide to visit Plymouth instead, and then head back to Boston. Plymouth is famous for the pilgrims who arrived in Mayflower back in 1620, a fact that is hammered in almost everywhere in town. Starting with the replica of the original ship (the copy turns fifty next year, and the locals expect to party hard), and continuing in menus and streetsigns. Didn't locate the Plymouth Rock where the pilgrims supposedly landed, but it having been voted the "most disappointing landmark in America", I don't think that's an inconsolable loss...

Plymouth is obviously next to the sea, and the chilly wind constant. The need for a long-sleeved garment is quite pressing, but I refuse to give in to the local hoodies, which are either zipperless and/or garishly designed. However, despite the mild winds, the day is the first real spring day in the region, and there's big crowds milling about in the harbour area. The most noticeable group is a big bunch of motorists, all riding Harley-Davidsons, all without visible gang-regalia so commonly connected to the HD-crowd back home.

Had dinner in Weathervane in Plymouth. Disappointingly the food is not good at all, everything is smothered in heavy batter, and the exquisite taste of seafood is masked by the bland covering.

Another mainstay of a visit to Boston is dropping by the Cambridgeside galleria mall. Spent an hour, and left with one new shirt, two albums by Tool, and the first season of 4400 (the last to be couriered to Finland ASAP, the rest are for personal use).

Yes. As expected, woke up early, very early. Multiple times. So, the night was long and consisted of catnaps of various durations. Not the worst I've had, not bad at all. Somehow the west coast nights are much much worse - the extra three hours screws up the internal clock just something fierce.

Had an a la carte breakfast, accompanied with the sunday edition of Boston Globe. As usual, it's of an arm-breaking weight - packed with ads both commerical and classified as well as editorial content.

It's a day off, so yours truly and Mr. Serpent decided to go on an extended road trip - aiming to visit no fewer than three states in a single day.

Had dinner in Uno-restaurant on Harvard Square. A gourmet burger packing a way too large steak (a fact that completely escaped notice while browsing the menu). Washed down with a very welcome pint of current Sam Adams' seasonal product, a tasty summer ale. Even the last remnant of the flight, my left ear, becomes almost unlocked during the meal, proving that Otrivin is indeed good medicine.

There's no fast-paced sports on television (baseball would be a great insomnia-reliever), and reading proved downright hard with drooping eyelids.

Time to crash. But this is quite a decent time, much better than falling asleep at eight. I will wake up around four o', no matter what...

In Boston, Massachusetts, once again. Or actually in the neighboring Cambridge, where the hotel is located.

Flights were uneventful. Unless the rather meager culinary offerings of Lufthansa are taken into account. Somehow both of the flights had the some of the highest-placing contestants in the "worst pasta, like, ever"-competition. Fortunately stocked up with a bag of cashew nuts in Frankfurt (during a very tightly timed layover), and that kept hunger at bay. Avoided watching the in-flight movie Rumor Has It, and concentrated on Dennis Lehane's Mystic River instead (when in Boston, you read Lehane. Or Parker. Or others stories based in the city).

Donated a sleepy facial image (this time in a cap for good measure) and fingerprints to TSA. Neither has changed much since the collection was taken into use.

Exit from Logan was speedy - picked up our luggage at the carousel without slowing down at all and picked up our car (a Pontiac Grand Prix) with minimal hassle.

Was accommodated into the club floor in the Sheraton Commander, which basically means nothing more than breakfast being available in a separate lounge away from the hoi polloi (who, really, aren't much of an issue in this rather stiff establishment).

Nursing a flu is not the best physical state to fly - and my nose and ears seem quite locked up from the pressurized atmosphere. With frequent blowing the former begins to clear, and the latter ought to soon clear after applying some nasal spray. This is not the worst travel-flu ever, the unthroned champion is the horror of Gran Turismo of 2004, when I spent five days with a partially locked left ear.

Not all six shots expended here.

• ASCII maps renders google maps through a slightly lossy pipeline. The site seems to have lost colour in the maps since the first visit.
• Not all the depictions of the "Internet" in the movies have been truthful - a decent WSJ article exposes some of the good, bad and the ugly.
• Woo. Warren Ellis is a guest of honor in the Helsinki comic festival
• Been looking for a new camera recently - the G3 is good, but a bit slow and definitely a bit bulky. The good old dpreview.com seems to be the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to analyzing equipment.
• Rob Hubbard was the composer in 8-bit days, now his output has been carefully collected and catalogued.

And that's the magazines (old storage houses as opposed to weekly newspapers) smack dab in the middle of the town. The ones that were in severely worn condition. The ones that were slated to be demolished next week.

Looks like someone beat the official demolition team to the show.

And nope, didn't see the fire - the flu has taken a sudden surge upwards, which sure isn't nice. Didn't even see the smoke, proving that there's a serious dead angle between Haaga and downtown.

The incident is considered to have been an arson, according to witnesses there was a loudish bang and the fire spread unnaturally quickly within the southernmost house.

Citizen journalism was very much in action as well - there's plenty of images available on the web - view them through the likes of pinseri.

Watched Jonathan Demme's remake of the John Frankenheimer original the other day.

The story is the same, but the milieu has been updated from the red scare sixties to the military-industrial evil of the 21st century.

It's not a bad movie by any means, and not at all a by-the-numbers remake, significant bits have been altered from the original version. Meryl Streep, albeit scary as the D.C. powerplayer pales in comparison to the manic Angela Lansbury in the original. The heroes in the two versions are quite different - but well-played in both. While Frank Sinatra puts on his best moves ever, Denzel Washington coasts all the way to the finish in the modern version.

Worth seeing even if you've seen the original - decent mindtwisters are not exactly common these days.

Saw the second white wagtail today (first one was on mayday), so the summer's just around the corner, if old nursery rhymes are to be believed. And that's a västäräkki in finnish - in case the way less expressive english names are not familiar.

No pictures.

George Lucas sure knows how to squeeze money from a rock.

The original trilogy arrives on dvd again, this time as original cuts - as opposed to the 2004 digitally "enhanced" ones.

Worrisome is the fact that this is a "limited" release - available only between september and december. And this is limited to old skool technology, so the sound will be dolby 2.0, and the lack of any extras on the discs will be profound.

Now if only he would put up a definitive cut of the second (chronologically the first, obviously) trilogy, where the shallow plot, unimaginative characters and mindnumbing dialogue would have been excised. That probably would last some 35 minutes altogether.

Never been much susceptible to pollen, but this newly arrived flu (or a flu-like thing) sure has an awkward timing. But it does indeed feel like a genuine flu - still waiting for the sniffles and cough to kick in and join the sore throat.

To be enjoyed without a thought for tomorrow.

• Pimp My Laptop. Exactly what the company name promises, nothing more, nothing less. Finnish origin but ships worldwide.
• scanR - turning bad phone-cam images of carefully laid out whiteboard scribbles into PDFs.
• Stephen Colbert, the spinoff from the glorious, and previously often admired and linked Daily Show, had a grand day out at the White House press corps dinner.
• Ten things to hate about Star Trek. Some of them obvious, some not. And do read the comments as well - a lot more good prose within.
• June sixth is when the new Omen-movie premieres. But far more interestingly (like, who needs yet another remake) it's also the National Day of Slayer, and I do not mean the frisky blonde from Sunnydale here.
• In Praise of Loopholes is a far lengthier article than the others linked to. But not lengthy enough to deter anyone from reading it.
• The myth about american kids being illiterate iin geography proves to be a fact.
• A good font is one of the most important tools of a programmer. After all, you end up staring at it for hours on end. (Me? I'm using Monaco).

Another mayday gone.

Spent it in good company on Ullanlinnanmäki. As is traditional.

Weather was pleasant, and prancing around in a mere t-shirt (as opposed to layered clothing) was very much an option.

The crowd was large, as per the weather - numbering in tens of thousands. Which meant serendipitous meetings with old schoolmates and the like very improbable. And the laws of probability indeed held.

On its traditional release date, april thirtieth, the inform programming language got updated.

Got updated in a big way. Bigger than anyone would have expected.

The language itself has changed unexpectedly - it no longer looks like a second cousing to perl, but is english. A small and well-defined subset thereof, but english nonetheless. And it's compiled in two passes, first the natural language is translated into an inform program, which is subsequently compiled. Double-ten on the nift-o-meter, and bound to increase the ranks of authors.

The programming model is changed from object-oriented procedural into rule-based logic. But my language theory is rusty, and might be quite wrong in the analysis.

The compiler is no longer a command line tool, but has evolved into a full-fledged frontend. A scarily effective one. One that places a lot of previously unseen tools into the hands of the author. Again lowering the barrier for new authors.

And it looks like the whole thing just got evolved from the jurassic era into the 21st century - meaning the vast chunks of documentation (unfortunately not in easily printed form) are waiting to be digested.

The tool is out for OS X and Windows right now, but the relevant USENET groups are already teeming with individuals who are going to take this to new systems, or wrap it in a multi-platform Java solution.

Yes, the above sounds like an extended advertisement, but it isn't. The price is the same it has always been, exactly zero dollars. Despite the toolset being in public beta-phase, I do expect to take a plunge into its depths soon.