Saw Poisonblack at Tavastia yesterday evening.

Walked in after the warm-up band, April, had finished and thus missed their entire gig.

Recognized songs from the first album, but the new ones were entirely unfamiliar. None of them seemed to be instantly hooky, but the album ought to grow on listeners.

Was without much cash, so couldn't pick up the album at a very reasonable price.

In a bizarre turn of events, BBC has reported that the new Robin Hood has been hit by theft.

Quite conveniently the hungarian production company had "forgotten" to copy the tapes, so this seems to be rather hefty hit. According to another take on the news item, the million pound ransom is real.

[ via Kasa. ]

Saw Michael Mann's Miami Vice. Had greater expectations than what the film actually delivered. I still refuse any accusations of a bad Mann-film, but after the elegant Collateral, this was a disappointment.

Visually the movie bears little resemblance to the classic eighties tv-series. Pastel clothes are absent, sunshine is substituted by grainy blue night, and no wrong-colored Ferraris are in sight.

The aural environment differs from its predecessor as well. No Jan Hammer appears on the soundtrack, but powerful instrumentals abound nonetheless - both Moby and Audioslave are represented by at least twice.

The plot of the movie does not seem like a 150 million dollar story - it's a plodding tale that never really escapes the premises of a garden variety tv show episode. An even bigger disappointment is the lack of care given to the characters, they remain cardboard cutouts from the beginning to the end. And in a buddy movie the utter absence of any interplay between the leads is just inexcusable. The relevant wikipedia article places the blame on Jamie Foxx, who seems to have evolved to quite an unpleasant figure since the Oscar victory.

But occasionally the movie shines. The few gunfights are done with appropriate fireworks, and some of the supporting characters turn out to be far better defined than the leads.

Definitely a decent movie - I just kept expecting it to powershift to a bigger gear and start zooming. Sadly, that never happened, and the handbrake was left on for disturbingly long intervals.

After Michael Quarshie's recent injury, Klaus Alinen was the lone finn remaining on the rosters of the national football league.

One that sadly did not make the cut into the final lineup of 75. Yes, the team can nominate no less than 75 players, but has to cut down the field to 53 before the actual season starts.

Still haven't set up this year's draft for Yahoo's fantasy football. Haven't really read up on previews on the web (the relevant magazines oddly have utterly failed to materialize in Helsinki. Guess I'll run Peyton Manning for the first spot - he's been pretty much indispensable the last few seasons, and with Edgerrin James gone, the team may have to rely on passing game even more than before. Or not, maybe the Colts have developed a running threat inconspicuously, just like they evolved into a defensive powerhouse last season.

Youtube didn't fail this time either. Went looking for the Helsinki Complaints Choir famous from the recently ended ARS06 expo, and wasn't disappointed. The original Complaints Choiur from Birmingham was an unexpected bonus.

Took until now before the first thunderstorms materialized in Helsinki. And even they were pretty lame, as storms go.

Saw the first (and thus far the only one) lightning bolt on saturday - and nope, haven't got a photograph of that. Accompanied by a couple of distant rumbles, and very little rain, it still was the most advanced storm of the season.

Last night another dry thunderhead crept up on Haaga. Saw a reflection of a bolt on a window and felt the crack of thunder overhead. However, the storm was again a dry one, and died down almost immediately. But it reminded of far more violent summers. Ones that we'd gotten used to.

85 tools. 1200 $. No mention on weight.

By Wenger (whose webpage is unnavigable flash monstrosity), not the classic Victorinox.

The plan to go see Miami Vice was again foiled. And I spent the evening waiting for a plumber. No: it was not Mario, and I haven't developed a new fetish for drainage professionals.

It's never good to step out of a shower into warm water. Warm water at a depth of two inches covering the floor.

A blocked drain was the culprit, and very uncooperative to layman approach (which mainly consists of swearing, trying to flush Real Hard, and wishing the water would just disappear).

A plumber on call showed up, and took care of the problem. Whose root cause turned out to be a ball of string that had got stuck in an intersection a couple of floors below.

Apart from wasted time, no real damage occurred - after all, clothes in the hamper were going into laundry anyway, and I'd read the magazines that were lying on the floor. I'm just glad that I took a brief shower as opposed to a leisurely one, since there was not enough water to spread to other rooms.

Where n is 9.

• A page on the evolution of speech bubbles in comics.
• independent gaming is all about what the title states. Sadly windows-centric.
• Neatest google maps mash-up in a while: NYC subway mapped onto the streets of the city.
• Never tried out the addiction called World of Warcraft - according to a study, a whopping 40% of its players suffer from acute addiction.
• The firefox crop circle.
• Nintendo DS homebrew portal.
• John Heilemann's "counter-historical" article: What If 9/11 Never Happened.
• Llamasoft history, from programming a space invaders clone on zx81 to the modern day (most of the tale still not written).
• Amazing kinetic sculptures (and yeah, it is a BMW commercial, but well worth watching).

Vertigo comics has made first issues of some of its most celebrated comics available on-line. In PDF-format, sized around six megs or so.

DMZ looks interesting, and I remember some credible folks enthusing about it - and with the first collected edition clocking in at less than ten bucks, it's time to take a look. As soon as I've picked up the remaining 100 bullets collections.

Nah. Just never got going out to downtown.

Wasn't too excited with the program (missed out Magyar Posse's gig in the ads), and stuck to such exciting activities as washing dishes and laundry instead.

One of the two finns trying to get a spot in the NFL, Michael Quarshie, was injured in practice (scroll down down on the page), and will likely miss the season with tears to both the ACL and the meniscus.

Having endured a similar injury some years ago (though in less athletic circumstances), he sure has my sympathies and wishes for a rapid recovery and rehabilitation.

Now it's up to Atlanta Falcons' Klaus Alinen to score a place in the lineup as the sole finn in the league.

So, the B-movie with A-class hype behind it didn't quite clear out the box office last weekend.

Thus far I've avoided mentioning the movie rather adamantly, but this funky badge crafted by Jason Kottke proved plain irresistible.

Not really, just a wikipedia author.

Been an occasional editor for a while, but put in my first brand-spanking, created from scratch, article the other day.

The subject?
Some obscure interactive fiction game. Nope.
A catfish species. Not that either.
How about some doom metal record? Yes, that's the ticket, broke the zero with a short article on Cathedral's Ethereal Mirror-album.

No-one has thus far screamed bloody murder about non-neutral point of view or typos in song titles.

E!, the barrel-scraping vulture of celebrity media had a bright idea: it's been more than a year since the on-stage murder of "Diamond" Darrell Abbott, so it's about time someone made a dramatized re-enactment of the act.

Thankfully, the management and Darrell's family agreed that the idea is bad beyond belief. And said so, in public, and request that the gross tastelessness of E! is to be spread around the web.

Consider it done.

Continuing from the literary meme, here's one on music. Originating from the silent polevaulter.

1. One record that changed your life
Metallica's Ride the Lightning. No comebacks after the state-of-the-art speed metal record. It took me years to pull myself back from the metal ghetto.

2. One record you've listened to more than once
Pretty much all on the shelves. Achtung Baby is one of the few with most spins, I guess.

3. One record you'd want on a desert island
No easy answers to this one. Audiobook of Dummies Guide to Surviving on a Desert Island is a cheap answer. Still haven't tired of Nirvana's Nevermind, and played loud enough would attract rescuers...

4. One record that made you giddy
Ramonesmania by the Ramones. On the very first round on the platter. Especially Bonzo Goes to Bitburg-song. Which still brings out a wide smile.

5. One record that wracked you with sobs
None, really. Of the recent, I'd say Sigur Rós' newest album comes close. And not because of boredom, but due to the massive crescendos within.

6. One album that you wish had been recorded
A Metallica live album from the era when Cliff Burton was still alive.

7. One album that you wish had never been recorded
Anything by David Hasselhoff. Yeah, that's a quippy answer, but I don't actively hate any single album.

8. One record you're currently listening to
Draconian Times by Paradise Lost.

9. One record you've been meaning to listen to
Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. It's been a while since the last time.

Should have known this: wikipedia does have an article about exploding whales.

Seems that I'll soon get my first ever movie in triplicate, as Richard Linklater's finest hour (thus far), Dazed and Confused, gets the Criterion treatment.

Who would have guessed - went to see the movie back in '93 just to while away a boring evening, and ended up discovering a definite lockdown on a top-ten movie.

The three editions in my collection have an increasing amount of extras. Seems that this one is the final stop in the evolution - you can't really beat the Criterion guys at their own game.

Bah, looks very certain that I'll miss Nevermore's gig in early september.

Haven't been an exactly huge fan of theirs, but at least their albums are never boring.

Was much more partial to the predecessor of this band, Sanctuary. And this would be a good time to start seeking out their output on cd - the twin vinyls haven't been out of their sleeves since the first digit of the year changed...

In a truly unexpected move, the Buena Vista company has decided to ship the second season on dvd earlier than previously announced.

And there was much rejoicing.

Especially when the collection is brimming with extras, unlike the UK-release that beat it to the stores by a few weeks.

You have been sentenced.

• Get Lamp is a forthcoming movie about interactive fiction.
• A mean, but pointful strip, showing the lack of clothing on the emperor.
• Yet another worth1000-contest, this one about outdoing Escher.
• nethack on DS.
• Classic video games, re-enacted with common household objects.
• Google re-launched writely.
• A blog that concentrates on roguelike games sounds like an interesting concept (and could be more frequent than an entry every two weeks).
• Important skills for origami-retreats held in the outback: how to open a bottle of beer with just a piece of paper (and yes, you're so much better off with pretty much any other object).
• Iron Sky, the next movie by the guys who did Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning has a writer: Johanna Sinisalo.

In the long series "you've got to see this, but telling anything about it would spoil the fun": flash (safe for work).

A recent announcement by an irish company called Steorn has raised lots of eyebrows. They claim that they have accomplished nothing less than the invention of an eternal source of energy. In their own words:

We have developed a technology that produces free, clean and constant energy. This means never having to recharge your phone, never having to refuel your car. A world with an infinite supply of clean energy for all.

Quite a bold statement, right?

To back up their invention, they have now issued a challenge to the science community at large to pick their proposed microgenerator-based idea apart. In public. The challenge was issued in this week's economist, and it has brought in the crowds - both of scientists and lookenpeepers in general. Ought to be entertaining.

On the other hand, the finnish company claiming to have invented an universal compression algorithm has been met with appropriate disbelief. The whole exercise smells like a guerrilla marketing stunt that got out of hand.

[ Steorn-link via kasa. ]

Visited Finncon again briefly today.

The crowds were as thick as yesterday, when the organizers apparently had to turn away lots of people due to hovering close to the fire hazard limits.

Like yesterday, spent most of the time listening to panel discussions.

First up was one about alternate histories, and it was quite a good session. Occasionally the participants got stuck on a subject (like "what would have happened if Hitler had won WWII"), but most of the time the discussion was free-flowing and filled with pointers to more or less interesting novels of the genre. Noted a couple of books I'll have to look up in the future, but nothing truly earth-shattering came up. uchronia.net, the grand seam of alternate history-ore didn't come up in the session, but was conveniently included in the program-booklet.

Second session was Starbuck is a woman?, a panel about how science fiction-franchises have been updated (mainly in television and movies). The new (and much-improved) Battlestar Galactica was the lead item, but by no means the only one discussed (King Kong kept cropping up at an unbvelievable frequency). Updates were noted to be mainly good things - bringing old series to the mainline by making them more realistic (and occasionally darker). The final topic "update another show" got the panelists jamming on how to bring Knight Rider to the 21st century, and sadly eg. Sapphire and Steel was left almost untouched ("like, the invisible enemies in the new show could be even MORE invisible with the aid of ILM"). Learned that J.M. Straczynski (of Babylon 5-fame) has attempted to reboot Star Trek and that the ever-green Robin of Sherwood is being considered for a remake.

The costume play-crowd was even more numerous than yesterday, and the organizers had put up special routing to get the queues to the "group cosplay"-session in kosher shape. Managed to sneak through and briefly visit the dealers' floor, while listening to shouted advice to the dressed-up kids. Bought a short story collection from Johanna Sinisalo, J. Pekka Mäkelä's first novel (a bargain at six euros, I presume), and old translation of Michael Swanwick's Iron Dragon's Daughter and finally (and unexpectedly) a kids book: Walter Moers' 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear.

Was a good con, though the huge crowds of anime-persuasion seemed to be irkful to the panelists as well. Nothing wrong with them, obviously, but the sheer number must have been a surprise for everybody. A big chunk of the attendees had worked out their dresses meticulously, and as such the area was full of characters (and critters) from comics, tv-shows and movies. Didn't bring a camera - would have felt like a dirty quasi-old man snapping photos without being able to hide behind a badge (and anyway, the S3 would have been a hindrance in some of the thickest crowds). There were lots of people with cameras, and the crop of the con has been collected in (at least) flickr, with the finncon-tag.

So, Paasitorni sure was a lot more packed than I expected - when Finncon returns to Helsinki, it's time to split from the Animecon-collaboration, introduce non-trivially priced tickets (which would exclude random passers-by, which is not good) or look for a bigger venue. I'm betting on the last option. But it'll take a detour at least once, since the next one will be in Jyväskylä next summer (no link yet).

Browsed through the history of previous cons during a lull in the activity, and noted that since becoming aware of the even back in the late eighties I've missed only one that has been organized in Helsinki (the one back in 2000). And am definitely looking forward to the next one (and may even consider a trip to the countryside next year if the timing works out OK).

Wasn't sure how authentic the supposedly very Grand Theft Auto-based new Coca-Cola commercial was until seeing it.

And it's either real, or someone has spent CPU-years rendering the most elaborate joke in ages.

Visited Finncon 2006 today. And ended up spending seven hours in Paasitorni due to the quality of the program.

The five floor building was packed to the gills. The con was co-organized with Animecon, and the floors were teeming with kids, an unexpected number thereof in full cosplay outfit. Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with school uniforms and the like, but the rules of engagement in confined spaces were not exactly followed to a letter.

Abandoned the floors to the kids and retreated to the official program (sharp readers can derive parallels to behaviour at recent ropecon). And the program was both wide, and good. Running on four concurrent tracks, it was not hard to pick out interesting presentations.

First up was a panel on Mandatory Bookshelf Contents. Missed the first fifteen minutes or so, and thus came in after the introductory bits had been dispensed with. No new candidates, but it was nice to hear that one of my genre favorites David Brin's Startide Rising was deemed to be an excellent start. Another personal favorite, Burroughs' Mars series got a very mixed response, whereas the "new" Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson was hailed as an example of eco-sf (a topic on which there's a full talk tomorrow).

Second session was another panel: SciFi and Fantasy in Games. A table packed with academics, journalists (from the two respectable finnish game magazines) and a bona fide member of the parliament. Yes, Finland has a gaming MP, Jyrki Kasvi, who has a long (and public) gaming history. The panel started with a brief slide show on classic (and also not so well-known) games with a suitable theme. Nothing really new came up in discussion - playability and sense of wonder came vastly ahead of any other game characteristics, and it was indeed pleasant to see that everybody agreed that a good game can be very ugly and possess a terrible soundtrack. Infocom classics got namechecked multiple times, and nethack nominated as a game where imagination has a far better resolution than the niftiest new graphics board. The only new game to be investigated based on the panel is Ceremony of Innocence. And I definitely have to finish up a couple of classics that have been on the backburner for way way too long.

Originally planned to take a deep look at the dealers offerings at this point, but stayed for the world premiere of a short movie based on Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek. The fifteen minute-movie was actually directed by a finn, who unfortunately was not attending. Never having read the Ambergris-books, I sure was at a disadvantage in trying to understand the movie (a task not made any easier by the fluctuating volume). Not bad, and mercifully short.

Moved to a smaller room to see a panel on criticism. Interesting, and amusing. But not very deep. Not that I, or anybody else, expected it to be.

Skipped Fantasia Noir which I figured would be interesting, and visited the bar instead. Food wasn't very lucrative, but beer was available, liquid and pleasantly cold.

The finnish broadcasting company starts off showing the Doctor Who series in early september. A very informative presentation described the long history of the show, including many clips from different eras. The show has indeed been running long, the current doctor is the ninth actor in the role. The presentation was as spoiler-free as you can get, and covered the history quite well (not that you can do justice to a 720+ episode show in less than an hour). A nice ending was a clip from a Comic Strip take on the show, which played with the cliches in the traditional iconoclastic way.

Last session of the day was yet another panel. This one was about how to communicate with an extra-terrestrial intelligence. The participants were obviously somewhat well-informed, but the show never really got started - the discussion wasn't really interesting, and meandered off to dead ends on a disappointing frequency. End result was pretty much that communication is hard, needs a lot of thought and energy - but should obviously be done, since loneliness, even on a species-level, is not a good state of affairs.

Bought three books, which is kind of low for this kind of occasions. All in finnish. A brand-spanking new anthology on the recently-minted new weird genre, an old short story collection of Pasi Jääskeläinen, and the latest translated novel by Stanislaw Lem. The last one was an absolute steal at mere five euros in hardback format.

A sum of the day:

• Friends run into: Two (which is surprisingly low).
• Obstructed photos of chicks in costume: Many (cameras were snapping all the time).
• People dressed up as Totoro: One (and that must have been hot indeed).
• Brochures of forthcoming festivals: Two (Rakkautta ja Anarkiaa and Helsingin Sarjakuvafestivaalit).
• Foreign Guests of Honor sighted: One (hard to miss the guy introducing the world premiere of a movie based on his novel).

Two reworkings of the ubiquitous kids' learning aid have surfaced. Neither of which really passes the politically correct-test. Which means that both are fun to read.

First up is SusuPetal's aapinen, which is text-only, but retains the simple rhyming format used in the finnish book. It's just the words and expressions chosen to represent each letter that are quite different.

An anonymous author has put up a visual alphabet consisting of unnamed, but mostly recognizable caricatures of words that may not be entirely suitable for a young audience.

Thankfully we're not bound by whatever the cover of a dvd says, but are free to choose the most appropriate language for subtitles.

Falling Down was as disturbing as it has ever been. But far less annoying if it had only borne the subtitles indicated by the front cover.

Experienced the first rain in Helsinki for fifty or so days yesterday. Also heard a few rumbles of thunder, for the first time this summer. No rainbows or lightning thus far.

It's been a truly dry summer - the driest since the starting of gathering statistics back in 1844. And the lack of storms is perplexing as well, usually we're hit by at least a couple of proper thunderstorms each summer.

Observer has picked the fifteen websites that changed the world. Such a list cannot, obviously, be left without analysis:

ebay.com

Been an occasional shopper. Usually to satisfy the collecting urges (infocom games, Garbage singles, ...).

wikipedia.org

Am an avid reader. Have edited two dozen articles or so. Am a firm believer that wikipedia, and collective intelligence in general, will prove fruitful.

napster.com

Missed the .mp3-train back in the nineties. Have occasionally dabbled with p2p, but usually to pick up something otherwise unavailable or just checking out whether something is worthy or not. And a subscription-model to own music is just fundamentally wrong.

youtube.com

The easiest way to waste time, these days. Has lots and lots of Daily Show clips, which is always a bonus. A big fat bonus.

blogger.com

Never owned an account there, but have read dozens of blogs hosted there.

friendsreunited.com

Never visited. The finnish equivalent koulukaverit.fi seems to be very low on old classmates.

drudgereport.com

Checked once. Didn't feel like returning. Ugly layout. Banal content.

myspace.com

Myspace is to the web what aol was to the USENET back in late nineties. Massive influx of clueless people.

amazon.com

Returning customer. In multiple country-specific locations.

slashdot.org

Read it just for the articles. Not for the comments. Occasionally useful, often amusing.

salon.com

Used to read semi-frequently, but have lapsed during the last few years. Subscription model works. As does leaving the annoying ads temporarily behind in another tab.

craigslist.org

US-centric. Never read.

google.com

The motherlode.

yahoo.com

Use it less and less. Traditional fantasy sports provider.

easyjet.com

UK-centric (and seems to have spread out to quite a few non-Finland countries). Never read.

Time magazine also recently published a list on web pages, theirs on the fifty coolest ones. And lots of anguished designers are competing to declare at least half of those listed to be "so 2005".

Lately, it's been the following innocent words that have brought people in:

• Aussie Bar - with or without Kamppi for added value.
• Moottörin Jyrinä.
• salakuunneltua - the blog of choice for the masses.
• dropkick murphys - always without the extra apostrophe that plagued the Ankkarock advertisements.
• Why does bloodymary will always appear on Friday?

Rather boring, apart from the last one, I'd say.

Had dinner at Raku-Ya, a japanese restaurant located in the South Harbor of Helsinki. Visited the place for the second time, the first time having been pleasant indeed.

Started off with a couple of sushis: siika and spicy tuna nigiris and anago maki. Very good across the board, though the last item could have tasted less mayonnaise-y.

For main course kororin, or japanese meatballs. Fried rice and steak in spherical form, swimming in salty dontare-soy. A good, but way too small dish. It had just four balls, which is rather little considering the eleven euro price of the plate.

Capped the meal with a wasabi-parfait dessert accompanied by my first ever glass of Suntory-whiskey. Expected it to be more of a curiosity (obvious to all the fans of Lost in Translation), but it was actually pretty decent - a bit smoky and sweet in taste, and entirely without a sharp bite.

I stand by my old analysis of the place: good, if slightly overpriced food in laid-back surroundings. Will be back.

Somehow, this guy got more than he bargained for when requesting "claws, just like this Wolverine-guy has on X-Men".

They are temporary, thankfully. Though what it actually means is far from clear. Hopefully temporary enough that they can be removed before a trip to the bathroom.

The 32 worst lyrics have been collected. Well worth checking out. Including the comments. Some truly inspiring entries included. And some that I've never heard of. And probably hope that I never will, based on their verbal competence.

EDIT 17.8.2006/23:46: Bugger, thephoenix seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, or the local DNS has issues with it.

Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now!, the very finest movie of the Vietnam War gets yet another treatment on dvd.

While not nearly as vanilla as the two first: the original, and the redux edition, this isn't perfect either. The seemingly lost Hearts of Darkness documentary would be nice to finally see, but a commentary track is obviously way better than nothing.

Opted out of the Redux back when it came out, but it seems that this version is finally a one to get.

Death: At Death's Door is another view into the storyline of Sandman: A Season of Mists. Told from the perspective of Death, and drawn in a manga-like style.

It wrings a lot out of the story, and concentrates on the bits that had anything to do with the lead character while providing a very abbreviated version of the main arc.

It doesn't add anything to the story, but it is a decently told rosencrantz&guilderstern-version of the original. It doesn't stray from what has been previously established as a fact, and adds a lot by changing the protagonists (here, from Dream to his three sisters) and supplementing the storyline with unconnected subplots (such as that involving Edgar Allan Poe).

Never been much of a manga-fan, but the art in this 200-pager was pleasant enough - it didn't give a rushed impression at all, and while the detail-level was obviously below par when compared to the normal Sandman-artists, the frames were by no means barren. I'll probably try and scrounge her other contribution (The Li'l Endless Storybook).

Threadless has two newish old-skool gamer heart-warming designs. One that's already sold out, and one that's still getting reviewed.

The first combines Mario with Magritte, and while the design itself is on the sparse side, the idea is great.

The second is a Kubrick/Miyamoto-mash, and works even better. Apes and the Monolith from 2001, seen through an Nintendo-approved lens.

Finally registered as a user in threadless (you can order without membership), and I still haven't read the recent article about the dynamics of such community sites.

The russian forest fires have been spewing smoke for a couple of weeks now.

The smoke's not really that noticeable. The first few breaths on the outside do provide a slight nuance of smoke, and there's a visible haze in the air that's easily spotted in sunken areas.

Helsinki has smoke related activities today - the national championship in sphere-barbecuing and a short test run by a formula 1 car in the downtown. These shouldn't the affect the situation much one way or the other.

The trailer for Black Dahlia is out. The film shall have its premiere in the Venice film festival in late august, and be released on september fifteenth.

It's not been an easy movie to produce - it was caught in development hell for years, with both directors and stars moving in and out.

But it's here now, and it looks and sounds way more than OK. Even Josh Hartnett seems bearable, thus far he hasn't exactly convinced me, but he seems all right as a hard-eyed detective in Los Angeles.

I thought that this was the third movie of Ellroy's, but the relevant wikipedia entry proved that quite a few more have been produced. L.A. Confidential was worth the accolades it got, and I liked the low-budget rendition of The Cop (based on Blood on the Moon novel) a lot.

And hopefully this movie will be enough to rehabilitate Brian De Palma from the career doldrums he's been since Mission to Mars.

[ Via killinki. ]

Having waged a war in the trenches against my alarm clock most of the week, how come I wake up un-pinged well before eight o' on the very first free day after the first week back at work?

I'm sure this will cause some crash-resembling events in the afternoon.

Utterly forgot some quality links in the previous entry. Centered on the latter speaker:

• Out of the box: newest article and archives.
• Blog. Written in the style of his speech, and discussing other things than gaming as well. Will end up on the blogroll on the left column.
• Dubious Shards, a collection of essays on Lovecraft-initiated Cthulhu mythios. The booklet has a formidably ugly cover, but I have very high hopes for the quality of the contents.

Visited Ropecon, the annual finnish gaming convention, for the first time in four or so years. I'm guessing at the interval, it sure has been a while - and previous few years' cons have been missed due to being abroad or lazy.

First impression upon arrival in Dipoli was of disbelief: "what am I actually doing among these kids". Kids that have either dressed up, dressed down, ingested far too much sugar or are lethargic to the point of catatonia. A brief trip on the very shallow sales floor didn't really much improve matters (though the first sighting of Ptolus confirmed that it is indeed a humongous tome). Figured that following the official program would be a better bet than roaming the halls.

The first of the guests of honor to speak was Bruno Faidutti, a french boardgame designer. The topic was the distinction of theme and mechanics in the games. A good talk, peppered with references to well-known games as well as to Faidutti's own output (which is pretty much a blank slate for me, have played only Warrior Knights). The boardgame industry seems to be in decent shape, and the publishers have slightly retreated from the "all games must be easy"-stance - and true gamers' games (such as Twilight Imperium) occasionally show up. The american (theme first) and german (mechanics optimized) schools are mixing up - and the market is bristling with interesting offerings. Mr. Faidutti didn't much like online ("for me gaming is a social event") or co-operative games ("they are so hard to balance, since the players do not play each other"). A long interactive session followed the presentation, and I think I have to take a serious look at his Mystery of the Abbey, a dedcuction game in the style of Name of the Rose.

Kenneth Hite was the guest of honor I chose the friday to show up in the con. A prolific author who has written more ideas about alternate history and conspiracies than pretty much anyone. He first gave a "state of the industry"-style speech (like his annual Out of the Box-post about the topic). And the state is bleak, very bleak - substandard books and a needlessly complex three (or even four) tier system are sapping the profits. And most companies are clueless to see the writing on the wall, and especially to react to it. Massmarket sales in bookstores are one way to increase the volumes - but only very few companies attempt to gain a foothold in, say, Borders. The future lies in two directions: PDF and small press. PDF because the sales can be controlled, without any inventory out in the field, and because the middlemen are eliminated from the equation. Small presses fill niches, and fill them in a way in which they know their customers and play to them as the customers want, and do not attempt to court the wider market.

Favorite games were discussed at length. Call of Cthulhu's position at the very pinnacle is not threatened by anyone - and an appropriate comparison to old western movies was spot on. The #2 spot is held by Unknown Armies and Over the Edge, both games that have simple rules and a complex milieu in which to act. Lots of other games (and individual supplements) were named to be of rabidly good quality - both from massmarket publishers as well as some of the independents. My poor AMEX is going to scream soon, the tips will be put to good use.

Mr. Hite was quite simply one of the best speakers I've had the pleasure to listen to in ages. Precision-aimed sentences at the hobby were a good beginning, but when the delivery was drily witty and completely deadpan, I was sold. And the skill of deprecating himself and the audience was impressive. After all, in most circumstances repeated statements to the fact that the people on the other side of the stage were "basement-dwelling bozos" wouldn't have gone down so well. But Hite, having been one of them just made himself more available to the audience. And availability was indeed made good use of, in another lengthy Q&A-session. The two statements (heavily paraphrased) that crystallize the event: "the industry may be dying commercially, but the hobby itself if flourishing" - to cap the state of the union-part, "do not be disturbing weirdos" - on how to attract more players (especially women).

Hite's questions-n'-answers was curtailed by the arrival of the next speakers. The session turned out to be a game, not a description of the jeepform. A massivish LARP-ish game whose topic was a dating show on stage. Watched for fifteen minutes and decided that I wasn't really into it (being a card-carrying member of reality-tv haters club) and sneaked out.

Seems that the local magazine agencies have stopped importing any preview magazines for the soon-starting football season.

Not that reading any made a difference in the draft in fantasy football on yahoo, but at least the illusion of choice would be preserved. And debates between this or that wide receiver would have some facts behind them.

The web's rife with corresponding material I'm sure (just too lazy to google for it right now), time to go hunting before the draft doors are closed.

bubblegumfink contains fake cards for movies that never qualified for the sugary tie-in back in the day.

And lots of other suspicious stuff as well.

Certainly not as zeitgeist-y as the top 100 of youtube. But entertaining from a nostalgic perspective.

Observer has selected their top 100 novels, like, ever.

The list is brave, and contains unexpected entries that I was pleased to see: Philip Pullman and James Ellroy are not exactly everybody's cup of tea. The former has provocative treatment of religion, especially considering the expected audience, and the latter is just a rollicking good violent crime in the city of angels (though the recent books have been increasingly unreadable).

Have read exactly a fifth of them. And several on the list are in the pipeline. Just not very close to the exit.

And I have to buy a second copy of Catch 22.

The comments are worth a peek as well. Apart from those by shrill aynrandists.

Oi, haven't been challenged, but that never stopped anyone. So here's a winning set of answers to ten tough questions:

1. One book that changed your life
Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. Made me understand that absurdism can be a functional in a book. Still haven't read it in english, but the translation by Kristiina Drews is nothing short of brilliant.

2. One book you've read more than once
Several fit the bill, but I'd say that Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams has seen most repeats. Not much of a fan of parts 3 and onwards. Showed that dry wit can be lethal when aimed well enough.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island
Well, from a practical point of view, there'd be no beating Dummies Guide to Surviving on a Desert Island.

4. One book that made you giddy
Schott's Miscellany by Ben Schott. Yes, I am very easily amused.

5. One book that wracked you with sobs
Well, no single book had me in tears from the very start. Apart from some by the classically clueless Petteri Järvinen, but they don't really count. Not being literature or anything. So I'd say that bits of Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman has been the most recent one, and thus takes the prize here.

6. One book that you wish had been written
Wooster and Jeeves meet Sherlock Holmes (and Cthulhu). Sounds like a third-rate plot for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

7. One book you wish had never been written
Books don't kill people. People kill people. To mis-quote NRA.

8. One book you're currently reading
Accelerando by Charles Stross.

9. One book you've been meaning to read
There are many. Let's say Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

10. Now tag five bloggers
Nah. Anyone this is not a toxic meme, anyone who wants to participate does so without peer pressure.

Indeed, the best monthly comics gets a monthly spin-off, Jack of Fables. By the same author, Bill Willingham, so it's not really a quick cash-in by a second-rate team.

Missed the first issue at the only local comic shop that stocks singles, and will hunt for a copy online - at least ebay seems to have a few available, though the shipping costs on the only one advertising them are high.

In addition to being the biggest (and oftentimes even reliable) encyclopedia on earth, wikipedia also carries pictures. The daily featured pictures are worth a look.

Though there are a lot of panoramas among the catch (dictated by the horizontal formfactor, the selection is wide and interesting. And quite often the site offers lots of supplementary information about the depicted topic - such as crepuscular rays on january 24th.

The annual Apple Worldwide Developer Conference kicked off yesterday. Despite this being of a lesser profile than consumer shows, the media was in a frenzied mood nonetheless. The keynotes and product announcements seem more like religious affairs than business as usual. As evidenced by a trio of livebloggers from the event: boingboing, engadget (with by far most pictures of the three) and gizmondo. Though there's always someone who just didn't drink enough kool-aid.

No new iPods (as expected), desktop Intel machine looks powerful and pricey. Leopard looks interesting in preview, though virtual desktops have been standard fare for ages. The new big cat will be here in 2007, and guys in Redmond will scramble to have something comparable out as Vista.

As reported by the BBC, yesterday, sixth of august, was the fifteenth anniversary of the web.

BBC's nifty timeline chronicles the years. Quite a long strange trip it has been thus far. And the evolution sure isn't stopping here. Nor starting to take prisoners.

Back at work it felt like I'd had a good vacation, and would have benefited from a softer landing.

• Had forgotten the password to my laptop. And spent quite a bit of time waiting for it to be unlocked.
• Had received close to seven hundred e-mails during the four weeks. And have more than 500 to take care of still.
• Since spent most of the day in meetings. Only the first hour was painful, then I was back in the jungle.
• Enjoyed bland, but obviously nutritious lunch.
• Commiserated with colleagues. At length.
• Noted that most of the essentials (such as Guinness coasters for the noticeboard) still remain unpacked.
• Drank no soda. Which was a surprise. After all - the rhythm was shellshocked back into 8 am wakeups without any intervening early mornings.

Four weeks of glorious idling has gone by. Time to head back to the office tomorrow morning and start the painful evolution towards being an actually useful and productive member of society.

Sure could use some more, especially with the weather still being on very much pleasantly warm.

Visited the annual event remembering the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The occasion was in the Töölönlahti park, in the amphitheatre of the opera house. Which was packed, easily couple of hundred people showed up. The event was put together by a multitude of organizations, and was multilingual - most (if not actually all) of the lines were given in both finnish and swedish.

The event consisted of music and some speeches. Of the latter the best by far was the one by Helena Ranta, the finnish coroner who has toured the troublespots on the earth on behalf of the UN during the last decade.

The main event was the release of lanterns, buoyed by pieces of styrofoam, onto the bay. Which happened pretty much just around the sunset. The lanterns were sold by the organizers for a very reasonable price, and around a hundred of them were put out to the still water to slowly drift out to the sea.

Noted that the image stabilizer of the S3 is not optimal in dark conditions, and that I definitely need to read the manual (which is so going to get printed tomorrow).

Just noted that the subscription price of National Geographic Magazine is just 33 euros a year, whereas a single issue costs close to seven euros.

Best deal I've had in a while.

You know the drill.

• Rather clueful article on wikipedia in Atlantic Monthly.
• An an interview with a guy who has edited more than 80000 thousand pages in wikipedia.
• A nifty wallet created with origami (and a convenient update for european paper sizes).
• Admit it: a tsunami hitting a nuclear power station is a scary concept. The folks of hyökyaalto.org wish that the issue should be taken seriously.
• According to Observer, this is the list of fifty albums that changed the world. Not bad, though reggae and soul are rather well-represented, and metal is confined to Black Sabbath's debut (at least Kill 'em All and Slowly We Rot ought to be in...)
• In the series of overdue mash-ups: a simplistic flight simulator built on google maps.
• Frets on Fire for those without Guitar Hero.
• Peter Elk is back in blog-land.

Seasons of Mist, the fourth Sandman anthology is again a full-fledged multi-part story after the independent storylines in the previous collection. Again drawn by multiple artists, the art varies between the parts quite a bit. But remains good, and contains iconic images such as that of Death with the black curl under the right eye - an inspiration to millions of goths around the world.

It is indeed an eight issue tour, whose content ranges from politics of the netherworld to those of different pantheons. The main plotline concerns the ownership of the keys of Hell - Lucifer abandons his domain and tasks Dream to figure out who would best serve as the new host. The suitors are various - ranging from well-known mythos (such as the Egyptian and Norse) to expected (demons and angels) as well as ones invented by the author.

It's a tightly plotted story - one that ties together a lot of plotlines left open in the preceding two dozen or so issues. One issue is drawn from the perspective of two unlucky public school boys in England - they continue their adventures in the best spin-off style in a few outings in the coming years.

We also get to see the whole family of the Endless - the anthropomorphications of reality, some of whom have appeared in previous issues. Apart from one entity, whose absence has been referred to several times already.

Lucifer himself gets a brand-new series of his own after a couple of years. Not nearly as good as Sandman, but then again, very few things are.

Spent most of the day in Korso, in the annual Ankkarock festival. Saw quite a few bands, both finnish and foreign - and was quite pleased about the quality, one bad apple didn't rot the whole barrel.

It'd been quite a few years since I'd been to Ankkarock. And in the meantime the tickets got pricier, the lineup way more higher profile and the festival area larger. Quite a bit larger - this year they had three stages, and a supplementary one for "heavy metal karaoke".

The best part of the Ankkarock festival is its proximity. After all, being able to take a train almost into the grounds is a definite plus.

The Rasmus never got to play, as their plane was stuck in fog in the faeroe islands. They got filled in by Amorphis - shifted over from sunday. And Rasmus presumably inherits their slot today.

I've never seen Apulanta play a gig. And this time didn't really change things much. Caught some ten minutes of their set. Which sounded good.

But alas, it was time to move to another stage where Don Johnson Big Band was getting started. Knew that the band was technically awesome, and had very varied songs on their records, but didn't really expect them to be as good live. Pleasant disappointment - they were very good indeed. An enjoyable start for the festivities: standing in semi-shade under a an almost cloudless sky, listening to constantly surprising jazz-hop. Included an odd Don Henley-bit from Boys of the Summer in the set, which went almost unrecognized.

Next up was Dropkick Murphys, who were in almost as good for as yesterday. The heat seemed to sap the energy a bit, but a bigger stage was definitely a bonus. The set was indeed shorter than in Tavastia, sadly Fields of Athenry was omitted. As was the classic Clash-cover Guns of Brixton. The ladies on stage during Spicy McHaggis-trick was repeated, but the mass invasion wasn't. Despite strong requests from the audience, the tight time table dictated that no encores were to be played.

CKY was the only real disappointment of the occasion. The sound was simply awful, and the band never got going. As far as I could see. Threatening the audience with Cher and Celiné Dion unless they mosh harder is not a winning ploy. Might have been just a suboptimal mix and a bad location on the field, but the sound really never convinced. Probably got better during the show.

Mirror of Madness, a metal band consisting of fifteen year-old kids wasn't very good either, but that is easily excusable. They played a minimal three song show before PMMP took the stage. Watched them for half an hour and was quite impressed. The songs sounded good live as well (and obviously aren't a product of uncountable hours spent fiddling with protools), and the band's energy was pretty much tangible. These chicks definitely merit checking out later.

Left PMMP playing and wandered up the hill to see the second half of Hanoi Rocks show. Which was good as well. Not really surprising, as their last summer's gig wasn't bad at all. The last songs of the set consisted of old classics - Tragedy, Don't You Ever Leave Me and the CCR-cover Up Around the Bend went down well in the milling audience.

Checked out Danko Jones before heading out to see Opeth. A trio playing violent and simple rock. The eyepatch-wearing frontman had a great rapport with the audience - he was the only artist who dared comment a severely distracting male blow-up doll brought in by some guys who definitely should know better. Again, Danko Jones sounded interesting enough to warrant later investigation.

Last band for the evening (didn't bother waiting for Eläkeläiset, the joke's gone stale ages ago) was Opeth. Operatic death metal from Sweden didn't really belong in the bright sunlight, but was very much enjoyed by the audience. Mikael Åkerfeldt had the best raps of the day - getting more surreal as the gig went on. Played less than an hour, which meant just four songs. But as the pleasantly understated frontman stated, the band will attempt to visit Finland again in the near future - this time in a club setting.

Should have taken more pictures. Should have drunk more water. Should have eaten something. Should probably consider going back for more today.

Mike Mignola's steampunk/horror comic Amazing Screw-On Head has made it onto the small screen.

Unfortunately the pilot has been locked out for Europeans it seems, but the greatest addition to the Internet's arsenal this year, youtube flies to the rescue (part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the pilot episode).

Saw Dropkick Murphys in Tavastia yesterday. One and a half hour of punk/folk was one of the best concerts I've been to this year.

Arrived late-ish and missed both warm-up acts. Tavastia was sold out, and packed so tight that even the corridor to the coatcheck was teeming with people. And unsurprisingly the place was hot as well.

The band played a very varied set, using a varied number of musicians on stage. This was the very first time I saw a bag pipe in Tavastia. Couldn't do a set list (mainly due to not recognizing all the songs). Ranged from ballads (Tessie) to pure punk (Skinhead on the MBTA) via moderate rock (Fields of Athenry).

The floor was full, so didn't see if there was any security fencing between the stage and the audience. Appears that there wasn't, since the gig had the most stagedivers I've seen since the spike of thrash metal gigs in the late eighties/early nineties. The last song of the encore basically deteriorated into a mass invasion of the stage (but the band played on, without hitches) - and for a couple of songs earlier some two dozen women from the audience were pulled to dance on stage. Odd.

Shirts were reasonably priced at 15 euros, and the band's hockey jersey was an absolute steal at thirty (considering that the likes of Iron Maiden demand thrice as much for their football equivalent).

Good ninety minutes of fun. Their set will be curtailed to an hour in today's Ankkarock in Korso.

Not just one, but at least two very interesting new arrivals on the publication schedule:

Alan Moore's and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen continues with part 2.5, the Black Dossier. Following a massive falling out with DC as a publisher (over their treatment of V for Vendetta), this is a contractual obligation-album, and the story will continue in a normally published comic under the wings of another. This one, on the other hand, will be published in a hardcover format right away.

The much-awarded Fables by Bill Willingham and a cohort of artists gets a hardcover prequel: 1001 Nights of Snowfall. Originally meant to be published as a ten-issue limited series, the ten episodes (each by a different artist: ranging from Brian Bolland to Jill Thompson) will be collected into a single hardcover book.

Both are firmly lodged on the shopping list. My faith in the publication dates is much stronger on the second item.

Haven't seen actual program book for this year's EspooCine-festival, but the movies are listed on the website and the ticket store seems to be open.

This year the festival hosts the Méliès d'Or-contest for the best fantasy movie of the year. And accordingly there might be a little more attention paid to the occasion, and lots more media from abroad.

Haven't yet decided which movies to check out, but will, soon. And outdoor show of the classic Calamari Union seems to be a sure thing (been ages since the last time I saw this movie). And the Italian Blairwitch-esque quasi-document about H.P. Lovecraft sure sounds interesting as well.

Happily enough, Poisonblack's back in business. The band wasn't just a single shot therapy project completed during the slack times of Sentenced and tossed aside once the album was done.

Nope, the second album from the band is out in a couple of weeks, and they're booked on a major European tour, supporting Lacuna Coil. And a couple of warm-up club gigs before the tour. The concert on 30.8. in Tavastia sounds just like what the doctor ordered.

Big Lebowski is one of the better Coen Brothers films (and even the not-so-good ones are mostly great). A couple of days in the life of a likable slacker, accompanied by diversions into film noir and surrealism can't be all bad, now can it. And when it's mixed with great characters and tied together by bowling, the movie reaches almost divine heights.

The dialogue cannot be faulted either, a lot of the characters do have lines worth preserving. In addition to being naturally snappy, the Big Lebowski has reached position #11 on the f-index. Some enterprising soul has put together a short remix of the movie that concentrates on the essentials. The editing work is obviously great, but the joke wears thin in a couple of seconds.

This is the 1138th entry in the blog, and is dedicated to one of the longest-running homage-strings in movies.

And ought to pick up the movie one of these days. It's from the days before Lucas went completely mushy in his direction work.

Sony, painted into a corner by the massive success of Nintendo's DS takes a new approach in trying to drum up sales for its PSP-console. And it's not a bad tactic, after all, when all else fails, it's always wise to turn to an already proven source.

Indeed, Sony has announced that in 2007 it will provide more than 7000 (yes, seven thousand) PlayStation games for download. Of course, until the first games show up, and the quality of the emulation engine is proven, this remains nothing but a new way of doing FUD.

From a gamer's perspective this is nothing but good news - a lot of the games published for the original PlayStation demand a longer life. But (as far as I know) Sony never had the rights to most of the games, and the third party publishers might be uninterested or dissolved already. The former is not much of an issue if the emulation works without changes to the applications, but the latter - and handling of the commercial issues altogether may prove very thorny.

First batch of links for august.

• Onion has a great Wikipedia-spoof. Obviously, july 25th was the 750th anniversary of the US independence.
• Stephen Colbert, a Daily Show sidekick, famously graduated to have his own show (with a slight right-wing bias). After coining the term "truthiness", he's now beginning to use wikiality as a new tool to advance the incoherent agenda.
• Turns out that there are cheaper alternatives to the almighty Photoshop to play around with high dynamic range images. As pointered by pinseri, hdrsoft's products sure merit taking them out for a spin.
• Panography is something I haven't tried out yet. Apart from a four-to-six image single direction panoramas with the aid of Canon's photostich-application. But that's obviously just a sliver of the cake, as shown in the relevant flickr-group.
• Just discovered: a finnish blog of nothing more than book reviews, and they're looking for additional authors.
• Ok, ok, so blogging and journalism both intersect AND differ, perhaps these five things no longer need to be repeated. Or perhaps they will. Over and over again.
• The Los Angeles Times is not a newspaper I've read, on paper or on the web. But they sure seem to have an interesting series about the state of the oceans ongoing. Props to Matti for the link. Definitely interesting, and the article seems unencumbered by any DRM (unlike the New York Times, sadly).
• The annual O'Reilly-organized Open Source Convention is over in Portland. And, as usual, the presentations can be downloaded right now.

28 achievement points freely available in the newest installment of the Ghost Recon-franchise. Just leave the game on for eight hours, and the committed-achievement is yours.

The rest of the achievements in this game do demand some real work.

Visited Korkeasaari, the Helsinki zoo, yesterday. Hadn't been there in five or so years, so wanted to see what the place had evolved to. And to exercise the new camera further. And to enjoy the still very seasonally appropriate weather.

Not much had changed. Apart from the new bear-holding area no new major additions to the facilities had been added. The selection of animals was very much as before. Though a couple of new arrivals had been added.

Of which the Takini was the biggest. It's some kind of bulky antelope from the mountainous regions of Nepal and Bhutan (not that either has many non-mountainous regions at all). Supposedly handy on the slopes, but looking improbably big for the description.

A far smaller, and way more active critter was Vesikko (whose english name, european mink, is way less decriptive). The two specimens out in public were running around in their large and well-furnished cages, splashing in water and having occasional photo-ops.

The bears were asleep. The seals keeping themselves under the water. The biggest attraction near the seals' lake was a seagull wrestling with an ice cream cone (and unsuccessfully trying to keep relatives away from the booty).

The region-based houses were OK, though after visiting a couple of bigger and (especially) better-funded zoos they did seem rather mediocre. The fish tank in Amazonia was dirty, and almost all the fish unfortunately mis-identified in the information screens. The reptile/amphibian/insect-population in the houses was well-selected, and went far beyond the norm, and avoided the space-consuming crocodiles altogether.

The very first location on the island is the Cat Valley, right next to the harbour. The big cats were all asleep when I came to the island in the early afternoon, but had perked up even with the temperature still high and sun beating down. Both the main attractions, the amur tiger and amur leopard were wandering in their pens, the latter adding guttural grunts to its stroll. I've never seen either of these animals in such active role. And they were indeed worth watching an extra twenty minutes or so. Both awesome predators, but quite unlike each other in body shape. I'd never realized how big a tiger actually is, but he gave an ample display while stretching against the furnishings. Sadly the snow leopards were either hiding or just lying in the sun - not their kind of weather.

A pleasant visit, and I'm thinking of heading back soon. In september the island hosts its annual night of the cats, and the feline critters sure ought to be even more active once the darkness falls.

ihumpedyourhummer.com.

Perhaps this is an existential cry for help in an over-vehicularized society. Or perhaps just a quick way to get hits upon hits.

Third stage of the summer that is. The last chunk has definitely now started, and the way gently easing towards fall has been opened. As witnessed by the following:

• Raspberry-season has begun. The best berries Finland can offer (other than ones you pick yourself) are now available in abundance.
• The annual Viivi & Wagner-anthology has arrived.
• Warnings of blue algae-blooms are common in news.
• Nights that are no longer as light and warm as they used to. No more than two weeks ago.
• But days remain lazy and warm. The former for a further week, the latter hopefully even longer.

Some housekeeping done.

Fixed archives. Or actually a bug in them. Quite an embarrassing one.

Fiddled with the color scheme.

Reports on annoyances, or headaches caused by the greenish colors taken as comments or in mail.

Stay tuned for additional changes - a photograph-related needs still some thinking.