Have you dreamed of riding a fast motorcycle on a hot summer night? Now you have the opportunity to buy a really nice looking, fast and well kept Suzuki GSX-R 600 -06 supersport bike :)
Look here: http://www.nettimoto.com/551965 and here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kypeli/sets/72157600428185763/
Highlights:
It is very scary to notice the lack of reasoned thinking in the world most notable in USA. I would hope that in the last 100 years when science has given us so many answers and new technologies, people would not rely, believe and put their world view on a 2000 year old myth, a tale. The Bible does not give any answers - only questions.
I admire Mr. Dawkins very much for calling upon reason instead of belief. Here is his presentation from the 2002 TED seminar where Mr. Dawkins calls atheists to arms against intelligent design and religion as a whole. I would also absolutely recommend his book, The God Delusion, to anyone claming that religion is for any good. In fact, I would agree with Mr. Dawkins that religion is dangerous and it doesn't do any good in a modern society where we don't need a god (or more) to explain every day things. Why would we need a god to be on our side in a war, listen to my thoughts and do things I want, or bother about any sexual views one might have. This is ridiculous!
Please, watch the video below of his presentation and think for yourself.
It is true: once you seen a film in HD you never want to see a film in DVD anymore. Period. And I mean HD as in 1080p. Not the marketing bullshit wannabe-HD 720p.
The moment of truth for me was a film called Happy Feet. I think it was the perfect film to see as my first HD experience because animation by nature looks even better on HD than regular film. The animation in this film is stunning. But when you see the level of details with HD it really blows your mind away. The brain is just not adjusted to the fact that unlike with DVD you can actually see the details in the background, the crisp lines of a snowflake or the outline of a feather.
I knew HD would be something different from DVD. I remember when I watched for the first time DVD over a SCART RGB signal and that was amazing compared to VHS films. The difference in picture quality was staggering. This time I would argue that the difference in experience is even more dramatic! Only this time the audio was still "only" Dolby Digital 5.1 so as an overall shift in movie experience this probably won't compare to the one with DVD. But still I must say that watching a DVD film after a HD film is pretty lame! 
Oh yeah - just to make one thing clear; the HD format of the future is of course Blu-ray :)
Yes, I write this with Windows Live Writer. I heard about the Live.com products through the Twit's Windows Weekly podcast. I never thought the applications Microsoft would offer for free would be any good but I was proven wrong. I downloaded and installed Live Photo Gallery and this Live Writer and I have to say Microsoft has done a phenomenal job. Both applications are really easy to set up and do exactly what I would expect them to do!
With Image Gallery I can import photos from the camera, tag them, view them by date and more - but also publish them in Flickr! This is great! I love Google Picasa because of the integration to the web site with the photos. Now I can have the same for Flickr!
Posting to the blog site is always a bit tedious because I have to login to the web page and editing the posts just with the web browser never felt natural. This is great! Let's see if I even would post stuff more often ;)
Thanks Microsoft!
I know this is silly but I feel so honored that two of my vacation photos from Prague were picked up and accepted to the Schmap online tourist guide! :D
I feel like I am there with the people that can take good photos or that are professionals. I know I'm not and also used a cheap pocket camera to snap the pictures. Of course Schmap don't give money if your photo is selected but that's ok since the pictures are already online at Flickr for anyone to look - or steal.
But here they are, my two pictures from Prague:
http://www.schmap.com/prague/sights_attractions/p=163186/i=163186_1.jpg - A picture of the the Jan Palach memorial.
http://www.schmap.com/prague/tours_tour1/p=155030/i=155030_10.jpg - A picture of the National Museum.
I probably could have expressed myself in a more polite way in the subject, but why bother? Nokia is technically superior to every other cell phone manufacturer but they give way too much advantages to others by sucking in user interface design. Let me give just a few
examples.
I speak with the experiences I had with Nokia E90 Communicator and the intensive time I spent using the device on my 5 days long motorcycle trip. Nokia E90 Communicator served as my cell phone (well, duh), Internet device, camera and GPS navigator. I wanted to really test the device and see if it is up to what Nokia wants us to think it is capable of. I will concentrate on the user interface for now but will continue in later posts on for example the Nokia Navigator (aka. smart2go).
Let's start with the sluggishness of the UI. It came as no surprise to me that Symbian/Series 60 UI is slow. But at times it is frustratingly slow! Why does opening an sms message have to take several seconds? Or loading image thumbnails even longer?
Then the UI inconsistency. If I want to attach an image via a web form with the web browser I only see the file names. That does not come to much help when I see for example 20070806.jpg... But when I attach an image with the email client I get nice thumbnails. It probably isn't that hard to use the same thumbnail component.
Also if I open an image with the web browser I have to see it using the external image viewing application. Why!? Even Opera Mini manages to show pictures inside the browser, and so does Nokias web browser too - if they are embedded inside HTML. Sigh...
Well, let's continue with the image viewing application. I can nicely rotate images but I can't save them rotated.
Related to images it is a nice feature to put your own picture as wallpaper. Quite standard feature nowadays. But Nokia manages to implement it in an aweful way. The image is shown only in the desktop application. So, it is not a big surprise that the clock, application
icons and the backgrounds on selected applet notes are not transparent for example.
Nokia just doesn't get the small details in user interface that makes using the phone FUN, smooth and enjoyable. Now that Apple's iPhone seems to have delivered at least the majority of the hype I hope Nokia takes notice of this and starts focusing on the UI.
I am currently writing this from Lahti with my Nokia E90 Communicator. This is a true test for the communicator since I dont have any other Internet device with me nor camera. So far E90 has been working fine. WLAN from the hotel work and previusly I was ircing with 3G. I use Nokia Maps for navigation and planning future paths. Wikipedia is a great source for interesting places I should visit on my trip. Nice device :)
The weather in Lahti is fabulous. It was kind a hot driving my bike with all the bike clothing on but the trip went fine. I will be post pictures I took from Lahti with the E90 once I get back home but I will post some random updates via the communicator to this blog as well.
I am heading for a motorcycle adventure riding around Finland's beautiful countryside for about 1500km and visiting 5 cities. Naturally I intended to take a camera with me. But because of weight and capacity issues when traveling with the motorcycle I have to minimize my luggage.
So I thought I put my Nokia E90 Communicator up for a test! I take all my pictures on the travel with it instead of my Canon E701 IS :) Let's see how it does. I will be commenting on that after my ride here on my blog.
PS. Yes, I will also use my E90 Communicator as my GPS navigator, Internet-communication device and memo during my travel. And I will also use Nokia Sports Tracker as my location plotter to later look through different parts of the travel :)
Sain eilen, perjantaina, yllättäen henkilökohtaisen sähköpostin (tai sitten ei...) Saunavisionin tuotepäällikkö Sami Saariselta. Hän kertoi sähköpostissa mm. että laitteet toimitetaan ensi viikoksi eli kaikesta päätellen alkuperäinen aikataulu pitääkin, eli toimitukset tosiaan alkavat heinäkuussa.
Oletan, että kaverilla on aika kovat paineet uuden palvelun suhteen ja haluaakin osoittaa, että palvelua todella ollaan kehitetty ja asiakkaista pidetään huolta. Toivotaan niin. Palveluhan on täysin uusi Suomessa ja olen jo valmiiksi virittäytynyt siihen, ettei homma nyt kuitenkaan toimi ihan ongelmitta ja alkukankeutta esiintyy. Toivottavasti olen väärässä.
Sähköpostissa oli myös ohjeet tallennusten tekemiseen netin ja kännykän kautta. Näihin on tehty varsin simppelin, ja osittain sekavan, oloinen virtuaalinen EPG, vähän Telkku.com tyyliin. Ei mikään esteettinen, mutta toivottavasti toimiva.
Jotain pientä tuossakin jo on joka häiritsee ja toivonkin, että pienet ärsyttävät asiat korjataan mahdollsimman pian. Esimerkiksi tallenetut ohjelmat -lista ei ole järjestetty ohjelmien päivämäärän mukaan, vaan ovat suoraan siinä järjestyksessä kun tallennuspäätös on tehty. Ehkei tätä olla ajateltu, mutta come on! ORDER BY DATE ei pitäisi olla vaikea sanoa siinä SQL-lauseessa joka tuonkin tekee.
Noh, palvelu on tietenkin pioneerimainen ja tässä ensikäyttäjänä ollaan väkisinkin testimielessä mukana - joka tosin maksaa minulle 14,95e/kk. Pidetään peukut pystyssä ja katsotaan mihin päädytään. Kirjoittelen tänne sitten lopullisia sanoja kun saan vihdoin ja viimein laitteen ja olen leikkinyt sen kanssa jonkin aikaa.
The Swedish melodic death metal band, Sonic Syndicate performed at Tavastia club in Helsinki a day before their big gig in Ruisrock music festival in Turku.
By all meters the gig was great! Because Sonic Syndicate is a young band with young members, they performed with great energy and enthusiasm. Because they performed the next day in Ruisrock and the Tavastia gig was announced with a short notice there were quite few people in the audience. I think most of the fans bought a ticket to Ruisrock because it was announced a long time before this smaller club gig.
One special things about this gig was also that I noticed it thanks to Last.fm! It recommended this gig based on the music I listened to. Once again all music labels crying how bad thing Internet and piracy is for the music industry CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES!
It was of course a lot better seeing them in a small club than seeing them play on a big festival with tens of thousands of people not actual coming to see Sonic Syndicate. Instead now we had the opportunity to see them close up, in a small club, and the band playing with full energy! It was like a private performance :)
Usually I don't even buy band shirts from gigs, but this time I had to support them.
I also tested my Nokia E90 Communicator as a video recorder. See below a small video I uploaded to YouTube :)
Tänään päätin ajaa saaaristolenkin minkä viime vuonna ajoin Hondalla ja olin hiukan eksyksissäkin. Nyt matka meni ihan hyvin.
Minulla oli mukana matkassa Nokia E90 Communicator navigaattorina ja se toimi kohtuullisen hyvin. Eli puhelin taskussa ja nappi korvassa ja ääniohjeiden mukaan navigoidaan. Toki asiaa helpottaa huomattavasti jos näkisi ruudun samalla, mutta kaikkea ei voi saada. Pitäisi varmaan kirjoittaa joku juttu E90 navigaattorinakin, sillä mopoilessa GPS on varsin loistava juttu!
Pysähdyin Vahdossa asettamaan navigaattoriin kotiosoitteeni jotta pääsisin kotiin. Olin pysähtynyt linja-autopysäkille. Sain huomata miten mukavaa porukkaa ja yhteenkuuluvaista motoristit ovat. Siinä kun olin vajaat 5min, niin kohdalleni pysähtyi vanhempi herra endurollaan ja kysyi jos minulla oli ongelma! Joten kiitos siitä! :) Varsin mukava ele.
Tässä päivä lenkki:
Naanantali - Merimasku - Askainen - Mietoinen - Mynämäki - Nousiainen - Vahto - Rusko - Turku, 105km.
Lenkki on varsin miellyttävä! Varsinkin Merimaskussa on komeita merimaisemia kun korkealta ylitetään vesi siltaa pitkin. Muutenkin maisema on komeeta maalaisseutua, tiet hyvässä kunnossa. liikennettä on jonkin verran.
Viitaten mediassa jonkin verran esillä olleeseen uutiseen, Nolo näppäilyvirhe katkoi Soneran nettiliittymiä, niin tottakai olen Soneran kämmäyksen uhri! Se, mitä uutinen ei kerro on se, että miten kauan toi katkos kesti. Lisäksi ihmetyttää miten Soneran uskomattoman lahjakas tekninen asiakaspalvelu ei osannut sanoa asiasta mitään - tai onneksi myönsivät että liittymä on katkennut ennen aikojaan.
Poikki 5h 30min
Irssin ruudulta huomasin, että nettiyhteys oli mennyt poikki kello 6.19. Kesäloman kunniaksi heräilen joskus puolen päivän aikaan ja huomaan, ettei DSL-linkkivalo enää pala. No soittoa Soneran tekniseen asiakaspalveluun. Jonotan sinne 1h 45min. Sitä sopii ihmetellä mistä Sonera on repinyt tilastolliset vastausajat jotka Ficora velvoittaa yritysten ilmoittamaan. Jos joku on onnistunut saamaan Soneran laajakaistapalveluiden asiakaspalvelusta vastauksen alle 1min, tai edes keskimääräseen aikaan, 2min, niin tarjoan banaanin!
Kun vihdoin saan vastauksen, kertoo virkailija, että heille on intrassa kerrottu, että tekninen vika on (no voihan sitä sellaiseksikin kutsua, kai...) on katkaissut joidenkin laajakaistaliittymiä, mutta olen kuulemma ensimmäinen joka soittaa hänelle.
No virkailija lupaa pistää merkinnän liittymäni tietoihin, että se pitää nostaa takaisin asap ja lupaa pistää asiaa eteenpäin.
Poikki 10h
Soitan toistamiseen Soneran tekniseen asiakaspalveluun ja kysyn, että kai liittymä nousee tänään takaisin sillä kello lähestyy 16 jolloin laiskat teknikot yleensä lähtevät kotiin. Jonotin sinne 50min. Parannusta edelliseen, mutta edelleen jos joku on onnistunut pääsemään asiakaspalveluun läpi 2min ajan, niin tarjoan banaanin.
Poikki 12h 30min
Edistystä; DSL-linkkivalo kertoo, että linkki DSLAMiin on pystyssä! "Loistavaa, pääsen leffaan niin että tiedän, että Internet-yhteys kotona taas toimii", ajattelin. Noh, iloitseminen on ennen aikaista. TCP/IP ja/tai UDP-yhteys ei toimi, enkä saa DHCP:ltä itselleni IP:tä. Leffaan pitää lähteä 30 min päästä ja ajattelin taas soittaa Soneran tekniseen asiakaspalveluun, jos sieltä vaikka oltaisiin päästy lähelle Ficoralle ilmoitettuja keskimääräisiä vastausaikoja.
No eipä tietenkään. Lähden leffaan, enkä jaksa miettiä nettiä sen enempää. Jos se ei aamulla toimi, saan korvauksia Soneralta.
Poikki 18h
Ihme ja kumma! Koneeni on saanut IP-osoitteen! 6h siitä kun DSL-linkki pärähti takaisin ylös!
Herää muutama kysymys Pohjoismaiden suurimman teleoperaattorin toiminnasta;
See through my window how Turku looks right now: http://www.johanpaul.com/webcam.html
UPDATE: Webcam up again :) Thanks to Linux crazy driv... module system I had the time and eager to set the webcam up again after a reboot. Thanks Linus!
Tilasin sitten Saunalahden ihmetystäkin herättäneen uuden palvelun, SaunaVisonin.
Hyvältähän se vaikuttaa
Palvelu vaikuttaa varsin mielenkiintoiselta. Minulla on jo tallentava digiboksi, eli oikeastaan en edes kaipaa uutta digiboksia. Siinä on kuitenkin tiettyjä etuja miksi ajattelin sen olevan mielenkiintoinen ja rahantuhlauksen arvoinen:
First of all I have to say that I don't really hate Linux :) I have used Linux in all kinds of environments and devices since I bought a boxed RedHat Linux 5.2 in 1997. I've used several distributions; several Red Hats, Fedora Core, SuSE, Debian, Ubuntu... I've used Linux in handhelds, on desktop, on server, in development, for multimedia... But ever since the beginning I've heard the legendary line "next year will be the big breakthrough for desktop Linux!". It just hasn't happened.
But the most frustrating thing about Linux is that you always have to be prepared for a fight once you set it up. Linux promises a lot, it has great features, great potential but just don't expect everything to fall in place like it does for Windows and OS X.
My latest frustrating experience is with my new home server when I tried to install the latest Ubutnu Server on it. I didn't want anything extraordinary to the setup, just regular, current hardware; SATA hard drives, Via chipset, Realtek NICs and so on.
I had high hopes when initially installing the Ubuntu 7.07 Live CD, but to my disappointment that ended in a flickering screen after X had successfully started. I say this so you don't need to wonder any more: Ubuntu won't boot with Via chipset without the boot command line option
acpi=off pci=noacpi
Hope that helps someone. This is a common and known bug in Ubuntu.
Next, if you have JMicro's SATA-controller - don't use it.
I also tried to use the the open AHCI protocol, which should work in >2.6.18 kernels but while installing my Ubuntu I only got kernel errors saying IO error. I noticed this after a successful installation procedure, but GRUB saying "Error 21...". YEAH! Great error messages. Once again returning to Google and I managed to find that that means "Drive not found".
Great! Nice! Why then was the installation procedure successful?
I finally got Ubuntu installed when I used the Via SATA controller with regular SATA selected.
So fighting two evening I managed to get Ubuntu at last even to install. And all this just because
I have a background in Java and Linux system programming in C. Currently, though, I've been working in Windows on a USB driver.
I must say that Windows driver development in WDF isn't that bad. WDF is well documented and once you "get it", it is quite nice. I've also had a chance to directly ask question from engineers that built WDF and they are very smart people.
Then there's the not-so-smart-people. I think they designed Visual C++.
I just have to say that once you touch Visual C++, you cry back to Java! Documentation on MSDN regarding Visual C++ is incomplete, hard to navigate and poorly written. I found function calls that were not documented in MSDN and the ones that were, didn't compile (I have old code to work with and probably there is a "logical" explanation to this, but to me it seems very frustrating...).
And what's with the VARIANT data type!? It seems to be the greatest kludge of all time! A data type which type you define my setting a constant - I mean WTF! Just take a look at this: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/12/22/329884.aspx
I get back to this topic once I manage to parse my XML and things seems to work :) Then I can probably say some nicer thing about, this so (in)famous, Visual C++.
Sunnuntai. Ulkona 25C eikä mitään tekemistä. Terassille vai mopolla jonnekin?
Päätin lähteä mopolla Kemiöön, sillä siellä päin ei ole vielä tullut käytyä. Todella mukavaa tietä taas. Alkupätkä tosin tylsää Kemiöön asti, sitten muuttui pikkutiekis. Strömmän kanaali oli kaunista seutua; puut lähellä tietä ja vettä näkyy aina välillä.
Sitten käännyttiin Teijolle päin. Olin kuullut, että siellä on hieno leirintäalue ja se on muutenkin vanhaa tietä, eli mutkia tiedossa. Valitettavasti asfaltti ei ollut parhaassa mahdollisessa kunnossa, mutta tie oli kyllä mutkikas. Lisäksi oikein kaunista vanhaa seutua. Mopojakin tuli kymmenkunta vastaan.
Ensi kerralla kyllä taidan jaktaa Perniön suuntaan ja sieltä vielä pikketeitä itään. Kartasta voisi päätellä, että mukavaa seutua.
Turku - Kemiö - Teijo - Halikko - Tarvasjoki - Lieto - Turku, 190km
Äh, enpä jaksa enää kirjoittaa englanniksi sillä tuskin Lontoon murteella kirjoittavat jaksavat kuitenkaan lukea tällaisia höpinöitä.
Tällä kertaa vähän pidempi reitti. Lähdin töistä mopolla, enkä oikein tiennyt mihin ajaa. Muistin kuitenkin, että työkaveri oli suositellut tietä Tarvasjoelle ja sieltä Auraan. Kulkee vanhaa Hämeen Härkätietä mikä nyt on legendaarinen reitti mopoilijoille.
Alkupäktä Liedonperäntietä aivan unelma reittejä. Asfaltti hyvässä kunnossa, mukavia pitkiä mutkia ja kaunista peltomaisemaa. Karinaisista olisi voinut jatkaa Pöytyäälle, mutta työpäivän päätteeksi ajattelin että käännynpä jo takaisin.
Onneksi otin Auran kk:lle menevän tien, sillä sieltä Lietoon oli mukavaa pätkää myös. Lopun motaripätkä ihan siksi, että saisi antaa moottorille vähän ilmaa ;)
Turku - Lieto - Liedonperä - Tarvasjoki - Karinanenen - Aura - Auran kk- Liedon Asema - Turku
This is a pretty standard bike trip you can take if you don't have a lot of time but want to spend it taking a nice bike ride. I think I had about 45 minutes of spare time and decided to take the bike and hit the road.
Turku - Maaria - Paattinen - Liedon Asema - Lieto - Turku, 35km
I took a nicer ride home today since the weather was so nice! This is classic road. All bikers from Turku knows this route. Kakskerta is a really nice island just outside center of Turku. It gor nice curvy roads with heights and in the last part of the trip is a really great road were you can get great speeds if you dear :) 180km/h *wink wink* *notch notch*
Turku, Center - Hirvensalo - Kakskerta - River Aura - Turku, Center, 52km
I thought I start a new little segment where I show on Google Maps my recent bike rides. I hope some fellow bike rider will find these useful to find nice new roads I explored. And eventually send me a note with some of his/hers roads!
Here's a link to my first bike ride in this series:
Turku - Salo - Paimio, 18.5.2007, 180km
Enjoy! :)
It was a warm spring day today so I thought it might be a nice idea to finally post some pictures from the trip when I brought my new motorcycle home to Turku from Espoo.
It was raining slush and the weather was not very appealing for bike ride in any way either. But here is my baby riding home in the van! :)
Can you guess if this is dog food or human food? :)
