This is my last entry. My new home is www.oliverw.net.

I finally managed to get my own domain: www.oliverw.net. I'll be moving this stuff over there in a few days and close the pages hosted at blogspot and blogger. Blogger is fabulous, but I craved for more.
I'll propably leave my entries at blogspot around for a while with a notice that it's also elsewhere. After all google has a pretty good index of it. Since I don't have any incoming links, the move should be fairly easy.

The moon hoax claims must be familiar to many. I just saw an episode of The Planets (ep. 4), and it shows NASA re-creating a rather large portion of the moon. The blew up a part of a desert to simulate the craters of the moon. This would familiarize the astronauts to the environment. If some passer by would see this, it might create some confusion. My guess is it did, and the rumours were originally based on such sightings.

Btw the movie For All Mankind is fantastic. It's about the first moon landings. The movie itself is of bad quality and cut from very old material... but it does have one argument not many movies can claim... the movie ends with the words "...filmed on location". (Still makes me shiver.)

More amazing stuff: Nanometer-Scale Light Source. They made a lightsource with 2-8 silver atoms.

Soon we will have all kinds of nano machines available. Too weird. When I was a kid this stuff was in science fiction and it's feels really weird to see it in real life.

I wonder if we can harness sub-quantum structures in some way. Like having a super computer the size of an atom. Or transferring an AI through an atom size wormhole.

Kuvia ja videopätkiä Hauskoilla Sivuilla.

"Etelä-Suomen Kerrostalokyttääjät ry. on vuonna 1965 perustettu järjestö, joka valvoo ns. "kyttääjien" etuja. Kyttääjät ovat tunnollisia kansalaisia, jotka valvovat vapaa-aikanaan kerrostalossa naapuriensa elämää ja taloyhtiön järjestystä."

Suomenkielisten vitsien hakemistosta löytyy sähköposteista tms. kerättyjä juttuja jokunen kappale.

I just couldn't stay away from the latest craze. Here's the genealogy tree of Oliver Weinitschke Blog.

Tuntuu hieman hassulta kirjoitella välillä Suomeksi, kun on oikeastaan käyttänyt vain Englantia. Mutta osa tutuista osaa vain Englantia. Mutta toisaalta suurempi osaa osaa Suomea. Ja toisaalta jos tästä sattuisi olemaan iloa isommalle yleisölle, olisi Englanti kivempi.

Mutta ei tämä oikeasti paljoa murehdituta. Kirjoitan jollakin kielellä ja siirrän vastuun lukijalle.

Tuli vaan mieleen kun luin tommipommia (1.8.).

I am a Breakout Bat.
I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along. What Video Game Character Are You?

It would appear that our brain has a builtin circuit for detecting cheats. New Scientist and Brain's 'cheat detector' is revealed.

Part of the human brain is dedicated to detecting cheats, say evolutionary psychologists, after a study with a brain-damaged man.

"Drink several glasses of water daily." I've heard this advice too from various sources. It's apparently a myth. Dave Harris writes about it in his blog. The news itself was found in American Journal of Physiology.
The american version of this myth has apparently a lot more details. Like it's 8 x 8oz daily, and that it does not include other drinks (like soda).

Of course you should try it yourself and see what amount of water does you good. For many drinking water has definite positive effects.

Don't Link to Us! is a blog about sites that would like to prohibit links to their site and/or pages.
Thanks for the link, visakopu.

Lai Lai Boy wrote a summary about Anime and its history called "Anime: A Primer". And yes, most of the Studio Ghibli movies are really that good. Currently there are 3 Ghibli movies on the IMDB top 10 (of 50) all time Animation movies: Mononoke Hime, Grave of the Fireflies and Spirited Away. I can also recommend Tonari no Totoro (ranking: 15) - a movie I've seen already several times and expect to see again and again. Read Roger Eberts review.

BAEN is selling the next Honor Harrington book "War of Honor" with a CD-ROM included. It has 22 complete novels on it - including the previous Harrington books. Unencrypted.

Excellent idea and I'll be ordering the book soon. Mainly because I just love the Harrington series. The CD is an excellent bonus, even if books are kinda tiresome to read on an iPaq.

I've read two books an a bunch of arcticles on my iPaq. It's not that bad actually. The screen is great and easy to read, but:
- I occasionally lost a bookmark. Keeping track of the position you are reading is sometimes difficult. The page numbers aren't real and making a real bookmark requires a bit of typing.
- The screen should be bigger
- iPaq should have a better battery. With backlight I get almost 2 hours, which is a bit short.

I picked up the news from Slashdot.

A beautiful view about Nokia R&D "Nokia's Hit Factory" by Business2.0. Well Nokia did do amazing stuff a few years back... but the next generation of mobile devices seem to be more difficult for them. Check out the reader comments at the end.

Löytyipä eräänä päivänä uutisryhmästä sfnet.keskustelu.lapset: Koulun järjestyssäännöt vuodelta 1913. Tässä koko viesti:

Jumala on rakkaus
Velvollisuus, Kohteliaisuus ja Säädyllisyys

Kotona
Osoita kuuliaisuutta, kunnioitusta ja avuliaisuutta vanhempiasi ja vanhempia sisaruksiasi kohtaan! Käyttäydy niin, että tuotat kaikille iloa kodissasi!

Koulussa
Osoita kuuliaisuutta ja kunnioitusta opettajia ja opettajattaria kohtaan! Noudata koulun järjestysohjeita! Älä hutiloi työssäsi. Istu hiljaa ja tarkkaavaisena lukutunnilla! Ole ahkera! Älä anna koskaan toverisi viattomasti kärsiä rangaistusta sinun tähtesi, sillä sellainen menettely on sekä pelkurimaista että häpeällistä!

Kadulla
Tervehdi kunnioittavasti ja kohteliaasti koulun opettajia, opettajattaria ja kaikkia, joille olet velvollinen osoittamaan kohteliaisuutta! Älä kirjoittele seinille, penkeille tai muille esineille! Älä käytä katukäytävää leikkipaikkana! Vältä väentungoksia! Älä tee pilaa vanhoista, rammoista tai juopuneista, vaan auta heitä, jos he ovat avun tarpeessa! Vältä sopimatonta huutamista ja kirkumista!

Matkoilla
Istu hiljaa valitsemallasi paikalla rautatievaunussa! Älä juokse vaunusta toiseen, äläkä oleskele vaunusillalla! Älä astu junaan äläkä siitä pois sen liikkeellä ollessa! Se voi aikaansaada mitä arveluttavampia onnettomuuksia. Älä puhu kovalla äänellä vaunussa! Se häiritsee muita matkustavaisia. Noudata myös höyrylaivoilla ja muilla kulkuneuvoilla varovaisuutta ja osoita kohteliasta käytöstä!

Pöydässä
Älä istu kyynärpäät pöytää vasten! Älä puhu kun ruokaa on suussa, se on epäkohteliasta.

Leikissä
Ole ystävällinen äläkä riidanhaluinen ja muista, että viisas antaa myöden. Älä tee pilkkaa tovereistasi!
Kun ruumissaatto tai muu juhlallinen kulkue menee ohi leikin aikana, niin keskeytä leikki, siksi kun saatto tahi kulkue on mennyt ohitse!

Ylimalkaan
Ole aina rehellinen, totuutta rakastava, järjestystä ja säntillisyyttä harrastava! Älä koskaan panettele toista! Nouse seisomaan, kun vanhempia henkilöitä astuu sisään, ja pyydä heitä istumaan! Älä unhota sanoa: "olkaa hyvä", kun annat jotakin, ja kiittää, kun saat jotakin! Älä keskeytä toisen puhetta! Älä koskaan syljeksi lattialle tai katukäytävälle! Älä koskaan hauku ketään! Älä kiroile! Ole kohtelias ja auttavainen sekä vanhoja että nuoria, niin hyvin rikkaita kuin köyhiäkin kohtaan! Pidä ruumiisi puhtaana sekä vaatteesi puhtaina ja ehyinä!

Ajattele Luojaasi jo nuoruudessasi

Lähde: Virpi Mäkinen: Oravasaaren kylän historia

Joelin (1.5v) tervehdys on "Hei-hei-moi!". Vieläpä selkeästi äännettynä. Hymyilyttää joka kerta kun Joel sanoo tuon :-) Muutoin sanavarasto on vasta n. sata sanaa, joista suurin osa epäselviä muille.
Onnistuisikohan tuon nauhoittaminen...

Absum has a map of finnish bloggers - Bloggaajakartta

Pekka Haavisto has an MMS Blog called Kuvia tien päältä. An image-only blog. With source code. Neat stuff. Took a while until the Nokia 7650 got into stores, but now stuff like this is finally real. I was hoping for usage like this for a while. That sms thing is so last year.
Pinseri found the link.

Cryptonomicon

I recently read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. A rather long book – over 900 pages... the side tracks were extremely long. But the characters had life, were smart and felt real.

Here are some quotes I liked.

The basic problem for Lawrence was that he was lazy. He had figured out that everything was much simpler if, like Superman with his X-ray vision, you just stared through the cosmetic distractions and saw the underlying mathematical skeleton. Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart's content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin. He saw it in the curve of the silver bars on his glockenspiel, saw it in the catenary arch of a bridge and in the capacitor-studded drum of Atanasoff and Berry's computing machine. Actually pounding on the glockenspiel, riveting the bridge together, or trying to figure out why the computing machine wasn't working were not as interesting to him.

I know exactly how he feels. I'm lazy like that myself.

"You can assume anything that pleases your fancy, Alan," Rudy responded, "but I am a mathematician and I do not assume anything."

I fall into the same reasoning myself quite often. It helps me professionally, but socially it can be quite irritating to the other party.

Randy could see where it was going. Kivistik had gone for the usual academician's ace in the hole: everything is relative, it's all just differing perspectives.

Again, I use this myself quite often…

Alan climbs back onto his bicycle and they ride into the woods for some distance without any more talking. Actually, they have not been talking so much as mentioning certain ideas and then leaving the other to work through the implications. This is a highly efficient way to communicate; it eliminates much of the redundancy that Alan was complaining about in the case of FDR and Churchill.

I just love it when this happens. Unfortunately only at work, but they are very enjoyable situations.

It is trite to observe that hackers don't like fancy clothes. Avi has learned that good clothes can actually be comfortable--the slacks that go with a business suit, for example, are really much more comfortable than blue jeans. And he has spent enough time with hackers to obtain the insight that is it not wearing suits that they object to, so much as getting them on. Which includes not only the donning process per se but also picking them out, maintaining them, and worrying whether they are still in style--this last being especially difficult for men who wear suits once every five years.

So true.

It seems that when you are a certain age, somewhere between about two and five years, your mind just gels. The part of it that's responsible for sex becomes set into a pattern that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.

There’s even recent research to back this up. (Se this years Scientific American issues.)

Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.

…I’m still learning…

An then the longest quote about a Business Plan template.

MISSION: At [name of company] it is our conviction that [to do the stuff we want to do] and to increase shareholder value are not merely complementary activities--they are inextricably linked.
PURPOSE: To increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]
EXTREMELY SERIOUS WARNING (printed on a separate page, in red letters on a yellow background): Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly-up and only returned her ninety-nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril--you are dead certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony. Still reading? Great. Now that we've scared off the lightweights, let's get down to business.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: We will raise [some money], then [do some stuff] and increase shareholder value. Want details? Read on.
INTRODUCTION: [This trend], which everyone knows about, and [that trend], which is so incredibly arcane that you probably didn't know about it until just now, and [this other trend over here] which might seem, at first blush, to be completely unrelated, when all taken together, lead us to the (proprietary, secret, heavily patented, trademarked, and NDAed) insight that we could increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]. We will need $ [a large number] and after [not too long] we will be able to realize an increase in value to $ [an even larger number], unless [hell freezes over in midsummer].
DETAILS: Phase 1: After taking vows of celibacy and abstinence and forgoing all of our material possessions for homespun robes, we (viz, appended resumes) will move into a modest complex of scavenged refrigerator boxes in the central Gobi Desert, where real estate is so cheap that we are actually being paid to occupy it, thereby enhancing shareholder value even before we have actually done anything. On a daily ration consisting of a handful of uncooked rice and a ladleful of water, we will [begin to do stuff]. Phase 2, 3, 4, . . . , n-1: We will [do more stuff, steadily enhancing shareholder value in the process] unless [the earth is struck by an asteroid a thousand miles in diameter, in which case certain assumptions will have to be readjusted; refer to Spreadsheets 397-413]. Phase n: before the ink on our Nobel Prize certificates is dry, we will confiscate the property of our competitors, including anyone foolish enough to have invested in their pathetic companies. We will sell all of these people into slavery. All proceeds will be redistributed among our shareholders, who will hardly notice, since Spreadsheet 265 demonstrates that, by this time, the company will be larger than the British Empire at its zenith.
SPREADSHEETS: [Pages and pages of numbers in tiny print, conveniently summarized by graphs that all seem to be exponential curves screaming heavenward, albeit with enough pseudo-random noise in them to lend plausibility].
RESUMES: Just recall the opening reel of The Magnificent Seven and you won't have to bother with this part; you should crawl to us on hands and knees and beg us for the privilege of paying our salaries.

There's just something deeply pleasing about walking around the tools section of a hardware store. It's a kind of ancient, evolutionary joy of seeing beautifully crafted Tools that perform some function. Especially the simple tools make you appreciate the achievements of mankind. Just look at a screwdriver, hammer, drill, saw, boomerang... amazing stuff. If you ever wondered about what's so interesting about a tool... that's why. Evolutionary joy.

John Hiler wrote an article titled "The Microcontent News Blogging Software Roundup - Part One".

Remember the quote from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

We have clearly moved on. The new version should read:

...they still think mobile phones are a pretty neat idea.

Either that or the internet. But I do believe that the end of the 90s will be remembered as the age of mobile phones.
And yes - I DO think mobile phones are a neat idea :-)

Pinserin Suomen Blogilista. Näemmä pääsin mukaan ihan automaagisesti :). Kiva.

I've been reading the special edition of Scientific American titled "The Hidden Mind" (2002). It has some great articles about consciousness, the brain, sleep, emotions, etc. Here are some thoughts I'd like to share.

Movie-in-the-brain deals with the concept of consciousness and awareness. (The movie being the composite of sensory input and "self" being the ability to make sense of that input.). The evolutionary edge is or course the ability and incentive to react to alarm signals. "Evolution of self rewards awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage.". But what is the relation of the movie and "self":

Self-awareness is actually part of the movie and thus creates, within the same frame, the "seen" and the "seer", the "thought" and the "thinker". There is no separate spectator for the movie-in-the-brain.
SciAm: The Hidden Mind, pg 9

So our self-awareness is an illusion... But fear not, it only means that our self is coded as information, which should be considered just as "real" as our surroundings... which - based on quantum theory - is "only" information too (quantum bits).
Helsingin sanomat had a small article about this too, referring to the work of Daniel C. Dennett. (Thanks for the link, hoito.org.)

Dreams. Great article about the history of dream research of the current understanding of their meaning.

...dreams reflect an individual's strategy for survival. The subjects of dreams are broad-ranging and complex, incorporating self-image, fears, insecurities, strengths, grandiose ideas, sexual orietation, desire, jealousy and love.
SciAm: The Hidden Mind, pg 60

The unconscious (~= dreaming) works during REM sleep and is an old evolutionary feature. It's like an automated strategy planner dealing with any issues that are related to survival, including sosiological strategies.
Tightly related to this is the processing of memory, which is of course needed for strategy planning. RAM sleep also strenghtens the memory images stored during the day. I suppose sleep focuses on survival memories, but for humans "survival" includes day-to-day life issues. (What kind of a mobile phone to buy?)

I still have a few articles to read... I'll be back.

Hehee. Pinseri löysi hauskan jutun klassisesta huijauskirjeestä, jossa Afrikkalainen hemmo yritää siirtää rahaa tilille. Jutussa yritetään naruttaa huijaria oikein olan takaa.
Lisää huijareiden narutuksia.

Part 3a of Matt's Particle Physics Column. Great stuff.

In this part we'll discuss the history of the electroweak interaction, from Chadwick's discovery of the neutron to the unified electroweak force as it stood in the pivotal year of 1968. The second part will deal with developments since 1968, the discovery of the W and Z bosons, and the era of precision electroweak physics at the Large Electron Positron Collider.

Amazon Light. Love it.

Pretty neat that Neil Gaiman has a Weblog. I like his stuff. Sandman series is just great stuff and his stories/novels reflect a great joy of storytelling. I heard great things about his latest Coraline, which I'll be buying next.

Scary stuff about the process of evaluating school books in California - 38 years ago: Judging Books by Their Covers. Written by Richard Feynman. (Yes, THAT Feynman). And it would seem the same thing is still going on (in the U.S.). I sure hope the books here in Finland are reviewed more reliably. The books I read since the 7th grade were - if I remember correctly - pretty decent, but I can't remember the books before that.

Pinseri kertoo Villeistä Kirjoista. Eli pistetään kirja jonnekin esille, josta sen voi löytää, lukea, ja jättää jonnekin muualle. Bookcrossing kirjoille, Eurobilltracker seteleille ja Cameo valokuville.

Ensimmäinen MMS-kuva, jonka olen (tavallaan) nähnyt. Nokialaisesta Erkkiin. MMS on kova juttu, JOS hinta on halpa. SMS on melko sopivan hintainen, eikä MMS saa kovin montaa prosenttia kalliimpi olla.

Pinseri on Suomalainen blogi, joka mm. kerää listaa muista Suomalaisista blogeista. En taida vielä liittyä, kun päivitysväli on hieman pitkä ja kielikin Englanti.

Toinen Suomalainen näyttäisi olevan Suodatin. Ja tuolta löytyy aika monta linkkiä muihin Suomalaisiin blogeihin.

Ja Janne Aukialla näyttäisi olevan oma listansa Suomi-blogeista.

Mark Pilgrim has an ecellent series called "30 days to a more accessible weblog". It provides a few user profiles and then gives practical advice on how to make you website more accessible to them. Great stuff.

At 1 years 5 months, Joel has the following vocabulary. Finnish words, margin of error about +-4 words.
Minä, anna, isi, äiti, kakka, tutti, takki, lapio, pallo, valo, mummi, pappa, Aatu, kenkä, hattu, ikkuna, video, avaa, pois, ei/ei saa, auto, tukka, pää, nenä, peppu, popo, nalle, hauva, keinu, vauhtia, kiitos, hyppää, amme, ankka, kakku, lamppu, kirja, Anni, päälle, kukka, puu, talo, mennään, piippaa, tuut-tuut.
Thats about 45 words. Most popular words emphasized.

I've heard good things about Broken Saints. So I'm gonna recommend the link based on the impressive trailer alone. It's a 24 part story using flash animation.

An interesting article about Mice, Apes and Men.

Explaining why humans are not naked apes, why chimpanzee social structures tell us almost nothing about their human equivalents, and why there are no "alpha males" in human society.

It has some interesting points, and the comments add to the article. It could have been more critical about itself, but the article is still an interesting read. For some reason this evolution stuff is tickling my mind and it's a joy to read other (new) views on the issue.

Someone has been collecting insultingly stupid movie physics with Slashdot comments.

Joel is getting better with words:
- Lihapiirakka (meat pie)
- Voileipä (sandwich)
I doubt - when heard out of context - that his words would sound right, but when in contect, they sound very good. The right rythm and melody.

Kuro5sin has a good article about Superstring Theory. For the last year or so I've been trying to visualize/understand a quantum universe and its implications. Damn hard :). Right now it feels very much like a digital "simulation". Our universe is basically a huge information repository (quantum) with some set of rules of modifying the data - this could be done in a computer. Is it possible to examine the limits of our universe and maybe transfer information "outside"...?

Thinking obout stuff like this terribly fascinating.

I've just finished watching two season of Crest of the Stars, an anime TV series.

I love it.

It begins slowly, and still after several episodes I wasn't sure if I would continue to watch. Glad I did. The series manages to build a sense of a populated galaxy and the infrastucture of it. But the part I liked best: the space battles. After presenting the rules of the universe, the series shows us believable battles between space ships. Mines and torpedoes for long range destruction, energy weapons for short range. Supply requirements are honored (fuel runs out) and big ships can take a lot of beating before blowing up. The maps used to show the overview of the battles are well done and provide a very good sense of how the battle is progressing (only 2-D, but I'm not complaining).

It reminds me A LOT of the Honor Harrington series I love so much. A well crafted universe, an easy to understand way of travelling FTL, and well thought out strategies of space battles that sound plausible.

Crest of the Stars doesn't try to explain the meaning of life, but it's serious (characters don't make funny faces) and provides loads of entertainment and I rank it as one of the better animes out there. Top 10 stuff.

Here's another opinion.

Pop! - pop! - pop! - - - pop music.

A red balloon, a green balloon, ....

Looking at the sea.

The sandbox experience.

Me with Joel riding a spring-bike.

The doorway.

Having fun with a towel.

Time for a picture update of Joel. Seven new images coming up.

I like the way the Multibrowser Bar allows me to browse the web. Excellent tool.

The 256b.htm compo. "task is to create a nice static or dynamic website in just 256 byte". And I like the little chatbox on the right side of the page.

Eight Technologies That Will Change the World on Business2.0:
- Biointeractive Materials
- Biofuel Production Plants
- Bionics
- Cognitronics
- Genotyping
- Combinatorial Science
- Molecular Manufacturing
- Quantum Nucleonics

Is this cool or what: Ice on Mars. And lots of it.
More comments at Slashdot.

I just had a taste of the new Coca-Cola Light they're marketing here in Finland. I have to admit that it's the best sugar free cola drink I have ever tasted. Previously Pepsi MAX was the best, but since the aftertaste of aspartin was too strong, I stuck to the sugar drinks. The new Coca-Cola Light doesn't taste like artificial sweetener at all. I think I'll be drinking it in the future. (I might even loose a few extra kilos due to the switch...)

Oh joy. They are making "Ender's Game" into a movie. I really liked Ender's Game and even read 5 books of the whole series. Orson Scott Card has a web site too.

A nice introduction to Rook, a card game. The page has also a lot of comments about other card games too. I used to play a card games now and then, but its been years since my last card game. I mostly play on-line multiplayer action games now (Tribes2, Counter-Strike...).

Went to see Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones yesterday. And in digital no less. I liked it a lot. The WOW-factor was very high - due to the digital picture and of course because of the fabulous effects.

The things that impressed me:
- The worlds and locations looked real. Having seen a lot of movies the ability for a movie to create a visually "real" fantasy world I can belive in very difficult. The locations in SW2 were utterly convincing.
- Lovely battles
- "Real" aliens
- The Kwaaang! -bomb

Of course it had problems - but yesterday I was thoroughly entertained.

I liked this synopsis of the movie (spoiler alert!). And this analysis of Padme.

Another great article about particle physics. This time about quarks. Last time was about the standard model.

Scientist splits atom, finds toy prize inside.

The Most Beautiful Experiments in Physics. Lovely topic with a bunch of suggestions.

We live in interesting times:
- Proof that true stories are weirder than made-up stories: News of the Weird
- The Obscure Store and Reading Room
- The Journal of Strange Phenomena: The Fortean Times

Introduction to the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Interesting read.

Moulin Rouge was finally released on DVD here in Finland. Watched it. Loved it. Of course you would have to know the songs, but I did and thus loved the movie. The DVD-extras were also interesting. Baz Luhrmann seems to focus on the right things an cares for his movies deeply. Everything seems right in this movie.
*smack*
I'm hitting myself on the head for not watching this movie in a theatre. But the trailers looked kinda cheesy. They were very misleading. (Hmm... I may want to see Romeo and Juliet now... didn't like its trailer either.)

The Universe is 13-14 billion years old. BBC.

Joel is getting better with words. In the last week or so, he has managed to speak the following words clearly enough for me (and Tuija) to recognize. In finnish of course.

Valo - Va'lo - "Light", this is his best word
Auto - Au-ty / Au(-to) - "Car", a popular word too
Lamppu - Lam(-puu) - "Lamp"
Auki - Au'(-ki) - "Open"
Äiti - Äi-Ti - "Mother"
(...list still incomplete)

He likes to grab my finger and lead me to a place where he needs my help. Like switching the light on, opening doors, etc. With a small bench he manages to switch the lights on and off by himself too tho. He has become very agile in the last month. He can even run short distances.

He hates brushing his 6 teeth.

John Hiler wrote an article about Borg Journalism. Weblogs are the new Borg. When you share an idea, someone else picks up on it, and extrapolates it further. Meaning you can't own ideas. It's painful, but sounds very healthy for humanity. John continues with Resistance is Futile. I will be Assimilated.
The Borg Meme spreads.

Some blogging-related resources I use frequently:
Blogdex: Tracks what pages are popular among bloggers
Daypop: Search news and blog sites
Blogger: For doing you own blog (I use it)

Gregory Benford met Stephen Hawking and wrote about it.

Just finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. The last few episodes really turned the whole series around. I'm still (after several hours) trying to piece the story and its meaning together. I just love Anime that does that. Kinda like Serial Experiments Lain did. Good pages for analyzing the story: Evangelion.com and The Eva Sage (major spoiler warning! Do not enter unless you've seen the series in full). And here is Google's directory.

And as it happens, LAtimes.com has reviewed the Evangelion seriers. And Slashdot is all over it.

An interesting article on latimes.com titled Press Play to Access the Future. The DVD format has even changed the way movies are made - many directors are considering the DVD version at early film making stages. Also viewers have become much more interested in various extras. Slashdot is also joining the discussion.
Reminds of Ebert's Idea I posted earlier.

Clay Shirky writes about Communities, Audiences, and Scale. Could software join small communities and large audiences? No.

"Can we have a medium that spreads messages to a large audience, but also allows all the members of that audience to engage with one another like a community?" The answer seems to be "No."

As group size grows, the number of connections required between people in the group exceeds human capacity to make or even keep track of them all.

...humans are only adapted for social group sizes of around 150 or less, a size that shows up in a number of traditional societies.

A good and insightful article. I sort of knew the answer already, but haven't bothered to analyze the reasons. Thanks Clay.

James knows where I live. (PS. Spread the word.)

Some April's Fools links I liked:

• The technology behind Google's great results, Slashdot
  
• Indian pigeons lose out to e-mail, Slashdot (ok... it's real)
  
• Microsoft to base next generation OS on OpenBSD
  
• Guardian: Spot the April fool
  
• AOL buys weblogs
  
• Wil to join the Enterprise cast (link will grow old)
  
• Linux needs new leadership
  
• RFC 3251: Electricity over IP
  
• RFC 3252: Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport
  

And to round the list off: The Top Ten April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.

Dave Winer summarized the Web nicely:

It's about publishing without middlemen.

And I guess it's true - the childhood of the web is over.

Found a cool new comic strip. Randolph Itch 2:00 am. Witty stuff.

I removed my comments feature. No one was using it and it was only slowing the site down. Maybe some day.

Gosh. I just notices the long gap between updates on my blog. 8 days. As if I didn't have anyhting to write about.

Joel is really getting up to speed with himself. He is all around our apartment checking everything out while chatting along. And he's finally comfortable with daycare too.

I'm working on Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Quite a big book (928 pages). It has some cool quotable stuff and locations and characters feel real.

Roger Ebert wrote a column about Do-it-yourself movie commentary tracks. Neat idea. With a good implementation, it could be very cool. Heck, I might even pay for some cool commentaries. But I fear the technical problems... like for europe movies are shorter due to the 24->25 fps conversion.

Joel brought a nasty virus from day care and the whole family had a weekend in bed. Some stomach disease. I don't think I've ever felt worse. Absolutely horrible.

Business 2.0 has the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. Some picks:

2. A dozen Burger King marketing execs suffer first- and second-degree burns while walking over hot coals as part of a team-building retreat in October.

27. The Express Desk, which attaches a notebook computer to the steering wheel of a car.

44. 20th Century Fox spends a reported $15 million to produce the comedy movie Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green)

62. Advance and Omni brands of cigarettes unveil new slogans: "All of the taste ... Less of the toxins" and "Reduced carcinogens. Premium taste," respectively.

63. Philip Morris also attempts to counter antismoking measures in the Czech Republic by commissioning an economic analysis of the "indirect positive effects" of early deaths -- savings on health care, pensions, welfare, and housing for the elderly.

Can't say the world is boring...

Paul Zebe might be a distant relative: The Weinitschke Family of Kreis Grottkau.

"A collection of clients' quotes, unadulterated." Hilarious stuff.

Kurs5in has a nice article on Greg Egan and Stephen Baxter - the New Hard Men of SF.

Life goes on... I'm now working at Canter Oy. It's amazing how nervous one gets when changing employers... you get so comfortable with your current work, that a change feels like a loss. But after the change you feel a lot better.
Oh - I also have a new phone number.

BBC News has an article on mapping the brains of meditating monks.

"During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw."

I have the feeling we will have the human brain mapped out in a few years time. All it takes now is a huge amount of tests and test analysis.

There is ice on Mars. (And on Slashdot.)

John Robb has a great idea for making some online subscriptions actually worth their price.

I don't want to deal with the paper (it sucks -- I can't search it and it clutters up my home). I also don't want just the website. It isn't enough. It seems shallow. I want a full copy of the website on my desktop. Full searchable archives for all the issues I get while I am subscribed. A full list of all issues, by date that I can click on and explore. I want to take it on the road with me. Nothing less will do.

Getting something (semi-) real to use instead of virtual content that requires an online connection would make a huge difference for me. If the opportunity arises, I will try to sell this idea to online publishers.
(Bad stuff: copying of entire issues will certainly be a lot easier...)

To continue my previous post: the real word is also virtual world - in your brain. Of course using all your senses to feel the world makes a much more coherent simulation than just using sight and sound (movies). But the idea and mechanics are the same. Your own body also maps into the same space as the real world. You know you body usually better than other objects, but you still map your immediate environment and your body into the same virtual space.

The room you are in now is your current "real world" - without looking you can estimate the shape of the room, the size of it, the furniture, some textures, lighting, etc. And in addition to your position in the room, you can also feel the position of other items; chair, table, lamps, monitor, etc.

To prove that the brain isn't very picky about using your own body as a fixed reference, I'll challenge you to try the following experiment. It's from the book "Phantoms in the Brain : Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee. It doesn't work for everyone - about 50% can experience it.

You will need two helpers.
Sit on a chair blindfolded, and ask person 1 to sit in front of you, facing the same direction as you.
Have person 2 standing on your right side and instruct him/her:
"Take my right hand and guide my index finger to the nose of person 1. Move my hand in a rhythmic manner, so that my index finger repeatedly stokes and taps the nose of person 1 in a random sequence, like a Morse code.
At the same time, use your left hand to stroke my nose with the same rhythm and timing, perfectly syncronized."
After half a minute, if you're lucky, you feel your nose being out there, streched half a meter in front of your face.

There are other experiments too, where you believe a table is a real, feeling part of your hand. (I may write about them later, if anyone is interested :-)

It's pretty amazing how fast children learn to use tools. Joel recently learned to use a spoon for eating and is pretty good at it already.
The use of tools seems to be hard coded into the brain. The plasticity of the brain allows for very quick adjustments to the sensory and motor functions, which in turn means that we can quickly learn to use new tools. The tool really becomes a part of you. Just think about riding a bike, wearing shoes, driving a car or holding a tray - in every case you learn to do it by instinct. The bike, shoes, car and tray becomes a part of you and you can estimate its weight, momentum, size, balance, etc.
The same feature applies to computer games too (action games). After a while you can feel you game character and his environment in detail. And you don't need fancy virtual reality hardware for it. Your brain does virtual reality all by it self. Fast 3D and great graphics helps of course.
Movies also create virtual worlds in your brain. When you are really into a movie, you can feel the movie enviroment and its effect on the characters. Books work too, but you'll have to train yourself a bit longer to be able to enter a book world. (There's the extra step of translating text into mental images first.)

It's the way your sensory and motor cortex is built. Cool feature.

Just saw Monsters Inc. Lovely movie with a heart. Could have had a bit more depth, but still a great movie. Have to get the DVD.
I especially liked: The slow-motion entry of the scarers, the door repository, the CDA (Child Detection Agency), the voice of the child (sounds just like Joel).

Just testing posting from Newz Crawler, which is a pretty nice RSS aggregator. It could have a few more features, but it's still already very good.

I'll try YACCS commenting system. Not that anyone reads this blog, but at least I'll know how they work.

Karma works. From ABC.net.

It seems that karma really does exist. A new study has shown that acting selflessly has rewards, even from those you haven't helped.

The system just needs to make your previous actions public.

A List Apart has a nice article on writing a better weblog. Lets hope I'll learn from it.

J Spolsky has a pretty good checklist for better code.

Oh man. Farscape just blows my mind. I just finished watching season 3 - and it rocks! This is easily the best SciFi series out there. And it also has the best villain ever: Scorpius. (A good villain is important.) Each season has managed to top the previous one on so many levels. I can still vaguely remember seeing the first episode... "I'll have to see a few more episodes before I make up my mind about whether I like this or not.". ... Well I love it.
Some excellent resources to Farscape: Farscape World and A Snurcher's Guide.

I wonder when we can buy antimatter for our personal powercells... CERN believes they created anti-hydrogen. (From Slashdot)

Mark Pilgrim has a nice Accessibility statement of his site.

The Mouse Demo. That's 2 years before my birth.

On December 9, 1968. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

I guess this is just one of those days. 20.02.2002. Finnish notation. Todays babys will get a social security number starting with 20022002. Cool.
And of course we can take the timestamp also: 20.02.2002 at 20:02. Cnews noticed this too.

Someone scanned the web for numbers, and made a nice applet to display them. Neat.

Ever heard the phrase: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer"? Apparently in the last 40 years the rich got 75% richer and the poor 200% - richer. But it's still a catchy phrase I suppose.

This is written using a WiFi card with my iPaq. I have to admit that a wireless pda is really cool. Too bad it's not an option in Finland. Maybe when the CompactFlash GPRS card becomes available.

I finally moved my webfiles around. Images are now stored chronologially by year, all under the images folder. It would seem the only working method of archiving miscellaneous data, is to use chronological naming with folders and/or files. I've been naming most of my work files with a date prefix.

Joel had his first visit to the dentist. All ok. 4 teeth visible. They told me that if he manages to avoid a certain bacteria (dental caries) from entering his mouth by the age of 3, he will live the rest of his life without any dental cavities. And the most likely source of the bacteria are his parents - me. If I use xylitol gum regularily, it will improve Joel's odds of avoiding that nasty bacteria.

Whoa. Digital Data Porn. I still remember every part of my (now gone) C64. Sigh. This was cool stuff at the time.

How to RTFM.

A gallery of motherboard returns. If those customers were working on - say cars, they'd get an entry on the Darwin Awards.

Modular robotics at PARC. "Instead of designing a new and different mechanical robot for each task, you just build many copies of one simple module." Cool stuff.

Ambrosia Software has a neat licensing scheme. It's slashdotted too.

The fundamental change we made was to place the date a license code was generated into the code itself. ... Now, and this is important, the timestamp has absolutely no effect on the operation of the software after the code has been entered.

How to make a printer friendly web page using CSS. I'll have to get me one of those.

A good list of different MPEG-4 Codecs at Slashdot.

This entry was written on an iPaq, using a GPRS connection. I wish it was with Bluetooth... only infrared for now.

Don's Amazing Puzzle. I actually had to use a text editor to figure this one out. (You'll have to go and see - I don't want to spoil it for you.)

Cool stuff. Edge asks questions:

"To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves."

Darn. Lappeenranta city decides to use MS Office instead of Linux and OpenOffice. It would seem the administrative cost of Linux is much higher than with MS due to networked support tools.

Neat stuff: The Powers Of 10 Java applet.

Joel is 1 years old today. Happy Birthday! I'll try to be a gread dad for you.

Joel just had his checkup. 81,7cm, 10,5kg. He's a bit longer and lighter than the average finnish (same age) child. (Looks ok to me :-)

Some rejected iMac designs.

Jakob Nielsen wrote an article for ZDNet called Users First! Redesign: When and How. It paints a good picture of the current web design situation. E.g. a redesign is usually not required for a year or two.

I just can't believe they are still studying mobile phone health risks. It's like the panic with the subliminal messages by using very quick images/sounds. They were B.S. too, but managed to create legislation to ban them. The money could be spent so much more wisely... sigh.. what a waste.

New Scientist: Planet reveals telltale signature of plant life. It's Earth, but the idea is to be able to identify life on other planets too.

J. Spolsky writes about his software rewrite by replacing his codebase function-by-function with better and easier versions.

I'm updating my CSS again. I was convinced by A List Apart to go for CSS. The new stylesheet is still very basic, but one has to start somewhere. I do like the way it works so well on browsers without stylesheets, especially my iPaq.

Funny thing actually... I told my wife about the blog entry of my computer specs. Her question: "Do you think a system like that will be still up?". That was a quick question, but does open up a bigger bag. Maybe not blogger, but I do believe that I can backup this blog and even use it as long as I live. 50 years. I may have to update the markup language tho. Wild thought; reading my 50 year old blog entries. (I will have problems with attachments, like images. Maybe that's something that needs improvement.) But 10 years should be easily doable. And now I want my own domain even more. (Hmm... 10 years at 100€...)

The Solar System Simulator. Great stuff.

For my kid(s): In early 2002, dad had a computer that had a 1200Mhz AMD CPU, 20GB of disk, 512Mb of mem, Voodoo3 video, a CD-RW (4x), 17" CRT, a wired keyboard and an optical mouse. My camera takes 1600x1024 pictures on a 32MB CF card. So quit complaining.

If and when I'll get an MP3 player, the NEX II from Frontier Labs might be it. The review on Slashdot sounds promising and I certainly prefer a CF capable unit.

Just read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It has a nice balance to it and works just great for younger readers. When I switched myself back to a 15 year old, the book was wonderful - having been a real geek at the time, the book really boosts your ego in a pleasant way. A few plot threads could have used more closure, but maybe the next books will explore them. I'm not sure if I'll read the next books... the characters, while mostly interesting, were a bit shallow, stereotypical.

It reminded me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (the existence of a parallel London) and of course the Books of Magic (a nerd becoming a wizard). Both for much older readers tho.

Distributed robotics. Picked it up at slashdot. These robot coordinate their actions using virtual phermones. Original articles. I was thinking about distributed computing (like gnutella, napster...) more of an information issue, but doing it with physical robots makes it a lot more interesting. (This virtual stuff with information systems usually lacks physical form :-)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on DVD. An announcement tells us that there's 10 minutes of additional footage and a lot of extras. Also on slashdot. The BBC series is a bit too faithful to the book, and doesn't come out quite as funny as the book. As a TV-series it should have taken a more visual approach to the jokes. But it's still funny and the "computer" graphics are fabulous (they're animated).

Copyrights, DRM, digital media. After The New Yorker and winsterspeak visits this (old?) issue, I'll throw in some of my thoughts.

BigCos' defend their businesses by nature. When new technology comes along, they will fight it as long as they think it's cheaper for them. That part is understandable. A new business model costs a lot. But the goverment should take care that the common good (for humanity and individuals) is considered. Finland (where I live) is pretty enlightened, but with the U.S. pressing on EU with similar restrictions as DMCA, it's getting a bit scary here too.

If the U.S. is moving towards a very restricted content usage, wouldn't that mean that the internet (and information) will be walled? If you are only allowed "legal" content, and your devices won't accept other content. Sounds a bit like China or the Soviet Union. Not that it fully worked there, but they kept trying.

I guess these are the waves of history. If something is "too free", we wall it up - until it's all locked up and we'll free it up again. First too much then not enough. Etc. Ad Inf. And again. Recursive.

"May you live in interesting times"
an old Chinese curse

Found new music. Air - 10,000Hz Legend. I liked their video of "How does it make you feel?" (the one where a woman is sliced up), and had to get the album. A review sums it up nicely:

...an orgy of lo-fi meets hi-fi, of Beck meets Floyd, waving at Jean-Michel Jarre and Abba along the way.

Micropayments. Bad idea. It's an old issue, but since Kuro5in tells us the Danish are going for it, I'll throw some links. Clay Shirky's article The Case Against Micropayments (I agree with him totally), Jacob Nielsen's The Case for Micropayments (a bit off, as others have noted).

John Robb writes good things about K-Logs.

Extrapolating the SMS posting idea: MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). More text and a photo taken at the same time. Now would that be cool or what. If I get the chance, I'll try to create a prototype. (Depends of whether I get my hands on an MMS server, the API of it and an MMS mobile device.)

I suppose this is kinda funny. Kuro5in thinks about why the universe is a soothing blue-green color. I doubt the color will raise any deep evolutional response on earth.

Kuro5in takes on the Fermi Paradox too. Relates to the Manifold novels I mentioned reading a couple of days ago.

Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python. I have to admit I'm getting more into this philosophy thing as I'm getting older.

SMS posting to a weblog. David Davies' Radio Weblog does it. Already for a year it seems. I hade the same idea a few days after starting my own blog. If SMS blogging could be something a mobile operator could offer - automatic setup and mainly SMS updates will create traffic for operators and value for users. Others could receive the updates via SMS too. (I bet someone in the U.S. is already patenting this...)

Nature.com report that a new observatory could detect hidden dimensions by detecting miniature black holes. The Standard Model estimates that there shouldn't be that energetic cosmic rays (i.e. the observatory should not find black holes). This is also slashdotted.

Although extra dimensions are not detectable, their consequences could well be. In theory, they would allow black holes to form at considerably lower energies than first calculated.

Dan Gillmor writes about how the `Google effect' reduces need for many domains. I have to agree. Search engines and especially Google have reduced the need to remember domain names.
(I don't even have one domain... I still don't feel it's worth it...)

I just finished reading the last part of Stephen Baxters Manifold trilogy. The parts are Time, Space and Manifold. The last part didn't quite have the impact of the first two, but it did complete the story nicely. It gets your head spinning with the multiple timelines that still (seem) to be logical. Overall the Fermi Paradox is approached from multiple angles - most sounding quite plausible.

But most of all the books got me thinking about the long term. And not just a few years ahead, like The Long Now. I mean how can minds survive in a universe that either cools down or crunches. Would it be eventually possible to create an information network (a mind) that would not require new energy? And is this a multiverse/universe that allows infinite states (opposed to one with finite states and thus pointless)?
(My previous comment relates to this one and has a couple of interesting links.)

Sigh... already 9 days and I'm still not well. This is some virus based cold that just won't quit.

I can't believe people are still trying this: Compression of near-random data. The Register noted the press release of ZeoSync. Usenet FAQ explains why it can't work.

This is just too much fun to be true. Some moron sent spam to get a job. And didn't know when to quit. Slashdot joins the fun.

Is it just me, or has the common cold become more vicious. It takes me at least a week to get well again. I'm probably just getting old. Sigh.

Jeol Spolsky writes about Fire And Motion. I can relate to his experiences with productive work hours.

Jacob Nielsen writes about Site Map Usability on his Alertbox site.

I just installed a weblogging SW (Movable type) at the office for a project I'm leading. We don't really use anything beyond email currently, so lets hope this works. I need to demonstrate blogs to quite a few people there.

A typical software project client? (478Kb wav)

Dave Barry wrote a funny story about "Learning to love the computer, warts and all".

At least once per day, without fail, my computer, like every computer I have ever owned, has some kind of emotional breakdown.

More articles about the Universe at Economist.com.
Sounds like we live in a multiverse, where quantum choices allow us to exist in this very unlikely universe where life is possible. Where the constants of the universe are just right for advanced information exchange (life) to exist. And a place for me.

Reminds me - again - of a fiction novel I read. Quarantine, by Greg Egan. It plays with the idea of men using quantum mechanics as a technology to reach any goal. Just flip a switch and wait for the outcome you want - forced quantum collapse. I may have to read the book again with a new perspective.

Man I hate being sick. I got a running nose that's making its second round around the globe. Thanks Joel.

Amy Wohl writes about Blogs, Klogs, and User Interfaces, based on John Robbs Klog group and an LA Times article. And how klogs just might be the future.

The Wisdom of Supermodels. Like really like deep.

"I wish my butt did not go sideways, but I guess I have to face that."

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies has a nice collection of different ways logic can fail. For example:

argumentum ad ignorantiam:
Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they must exist.

I noticed some time ago, that my Baby Stuff is a bad archive. After a few years, I will have to change the structure and destroy old links because the directory naming is no longer valid (baby/). Live and learn. On the other hand I still don't have my own domain to keep a permanent URL anyway. If this blogging thing is still fun after several months, I may have to get some hosting service. (Looks like weinitschke.com is already taken.)

Adam Curry is publishing stories at The MTV Chronicles about bands and performers. Cool stuff. The latest is about the Rolling Stones.
They never show any of the really cool stuff on tv!

Ars Technica discusses the future of the universe based on The New York Times article. (An article that expands your mind.)
Stephen Baxter is writing a fictional series called Manifold, where he creates models of the universe and analyses them using some of the theories as the NYT article. Manifold: Time and Manifold: Space are available. He is very optimistic concerning life in the universe. (As was the NYT article.)
I really enjoyed those two books - and will have to get the next one too when it's ready.

Finally got some Euros. I think they look cool. Better than our old Finnish money. But it will take a few days or weeks before I learn to think in Euros when valuating. (Now I constantly multiply by 6).

Genomic Art.

There's a first-hand account of the attempted shoe bombing. This is one of the reasons blogs are so cool.

For a few days Joel has been really walking. Not constantly, but he spontaneously gets up and takes several steps when he feels like it. It took about a week from the day he managed to balance himself.
And that's not all.
His first 2 teeth are finally visible. (3 months later than everyone expected. Sorry, no photo.)

Happy new year 2002!

We (me + wife + 11m son) had a nice new years eve. From our apartment on the 6th floor we can see quite a lot of Espoo. Rockets were flying near and far. And it was a pretty clear night, so the view was magnificent. The whole town was pulsing with joy.

Whoa... what a way to start a new year: the building in front of my apartment caught fire. No-one seemed to be inside, and the smoke smells mostly like burning wood.
And I finally got a chance to have a close look at how the Finnish fire department works. Relaxed and efficient. Maybe this new years eve didn't burn to many buildings.
Oh and it's about -20°C outside. Brrr.