Oliver Weinitschke

Joulukuva

2005-01-18T21:25:00.000+02:00

20041214 HauskaaJoulua 2004
Originally uploaded by Owl.

Kuvia lÃ¶ytyy Flickr-sivultani.

Flickr

2005-01-18T21:22:00.000+02:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Testing

2005-01-18T20:40:00.000+02:00

I have reinstalled my workstation, and am considering of using a hosted blog service again... It would be either this or Spaces.

I may go with Spaces, since it has pictures support.

New host

2003-08-29T00:39:00.000+03:00

I'll use my ISP web space (only 10M and only html). Nameservers should update after a couple of days... Lets see how this works out. I'm using sitecopy to duplicate my local movabletype site to the ISP.

The familiar domain oliverw.net should redirect to the new server www.pp.htv.fi/oweinits/.

Back

2003-08-28T17:09:00.000+03:00

Back again. My hosting service ended and I need a new home. The template is still all wrong... I'll fix it soon. I might also use my ISP web server...

2002-08-21T12:23:00.000+03:00

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

2002-08-20T12:49:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-17T23:43:00.000+03:00

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.)

2002-08-16T14:08:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-15T19:56:00.000+03:00

Kuvia ja videopätkiä Hauskoilla Sivuilla.

2002-08-15T19:22:00.000+03:00

"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."

2002-08-15T19:20:00.000+03:00

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

2002-08-15T10:49:00.000+03:00

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

2002-08-14T14:47:00.000+03:00

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.).

2002-08-14T14:38:00.000+03:00

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?

2002-08-14T11:21:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-14T10:59:00.000+03:00

"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.

2002-08-14T10:42:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-08T09:56:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-05T11:06:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-03T21:29:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-08-01T11:52:00.000+03:00

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

2002-07-31T10:07:00.000+03:00

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...

2002-07-31T09:25:00.000+03:00

Absum has a map of finnish bloggers - Bloggaajakartta

2002-07-31T09:01:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-29T20:27:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-26T21:13:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-24T09:56:00.000+03:00

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

2002-07-20T19:49:00.000+03:00

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 :-)

2002-07-20T15:23:00.000+03:00

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

2002-07-20T15:12:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-19T11:28:00.000+03:00

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

2002-07-19T11:15:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-18T21:51:00.000+03:00

Amazon Light. Love it.

2002-07-18T21:17:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-04T20:34:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-01T19:43:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-07-01T19:40:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-28T23:45:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-28T23:34:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-22T22:54:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-21T17:22:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-19T09:07:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-15T22:11:00.000+03:00

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

2002-06-14T09:31:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-08T23:44:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-05T21:17:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-06-01T14:47:00.000+03:00

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

2002-06-01T14:46:00.001+03:00

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

2002-06-01T14:46:00.000+03:00

Looking at the sea.

2002-06-01T14:45:00.001+03:00

The sandbox experience.

2002-06-01T14:45:00.000+03:00

Me with Joel riding a spring-bike.

2002-06-01T14:44:00.000+03:00

The doorway.

2002-06-01T14:41:00.000+03:00

Having fun with a towel.

2002-06-01T14:39:00.000+03:00

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

2002-06-01T14:36:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-31T21:25:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-05-29T21:15:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-26T20:59:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-25T20:46:00.000+03:00

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...)

2002-05-23T22:27:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-05-22T14:45:00.000+03:00

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...).

2002-05-20T22:12:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-05-15T13:08:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-04T21:18:00.000+03:00

Scientist splits atom, finds toy prize inside.

2002-05-03T22:36:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-01T22:52:00.000+03:00

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

2002-05-01T22:46:00.000+03:00

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

2002-04-29T13:32:00.000+03:00

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.)

2002-04-25T14:38:00.000+03:00

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

2002-04-24T09:15:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-04-22T09:20:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-04-14T09:31:00.000+03:00

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)

2002-04-11T09:28:00.000+03:00

Gregory Benford met Stephen Hawking and wrote about it.

2002-04-10T21:09:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-04-08T16:17:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-04-06T10:39:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-04-04T22:15:00.000+03:00

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

2002-04-01T20:47:00.000+03:00

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.

2002-03-30T17:48:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-29T12:03:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-28T16:45:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-26T18:38:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-26T18:35:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-18T09:29:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-15T14:49:00.000+02:00

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...

2002-03-13T22:34:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-11T19:05:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-11T17:56:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-08T22:12:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-04T21:25:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-03-02T12:49:00.000+02:00

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

2002-03-02T10:27:00.000+02:00

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...)

2002-02-27T00:11:00.000+02:00

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 :-)

2002-02-26T23:43:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-02-26T22:02:00.000+02:00

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).

2002-02-26T19:46:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-02-24T00:43:00.000+02:00

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

2002-02-22T22:00:00.000+02:00

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.

2002-02-22T21:41:00.000+02:00

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