Kypeli's Blog (gee, how unimaginative...)

Leo Laporte pre-ordered the N900 - is N900 getting some momentum in USA?

2009-10-25T21:47:00.004+02:00

I watched the live video feed of Leo Laporte's radio show called The Tech Guy at http://live.twit.tv and I am also following Leo on Twitter.

It seems that the Nokia N900 has now got a new fan that will talk about it in the USA. Yes, Leo mentioned the N900 on his show in the context of Motorola Droid, iPhone and other smart phones. It has been a long long time since Leo has mentioned a Nokia phone in the same context as the iPhone or an Android phone.

Leo also seemed to have pre-order an N900:
http://twitter.com/leolaporte/statuses/5150111906

I told him that I have been really happy with it and Leo's concern was of the N900 is too big. I assured him that this is not the case:
http://twitter.com/leolaporte/statuses/5150207845
http://twitter.com/kypeli/statuses/5150247732

As I stated in the tweet, the N900 is not big in my opinion. The only thing I could say is that it is a bit thicker than, for example, the iPhone but I take a good hardware keyboard anytime for the price of the thickness. And it is not that thick! :)

The N900 is not sluggish my any means if you use it for browsing, email reading, chatting and with a few application open. When you start to have 9+ application open, the transitions from the app switcher will be slower. But it will be fine once the application gets focus again and is fullscreen.

Now let's just hope that Leo has some good words to say about it when he gets his hands on it! :)

A week with the Nokia N900

2009-10-17T17:45:00.013+03:00

The Nokia N900 is probably the hottest new mobile device out there right now. I received my N900 a little over a week ago at the Maemo Summit 2009 in Amsterdam. As you probably already know, Nokia was kind enough to give an N900 for a 6 months loan to every summit attendee so we got our N900s well before anyone else. You can only imagine the amazement in the crowd when Vice President of Maemo Devices in Nokia Mr. Ari Jaaksi announced the news in his key note. Nokia just got 300 very happy community member friends!

I was never a fan of the Symbian OS or the S60 UI. Since early 2000 I only used Ericsson or Sony Ericsson phones, which at the time had in my mind superior UI (they still are nice!). I gave the S60 version 5 a bit of a hope since it looked nice when Nokia introduced it at Nokia World 2007. I thought that Nokia finally got it and could compete against the iPhone and others. Sadly Nokia 5800 XPressMusic wasn't up for it, and still the current flagship model Nokia N97 isn't really in the same league as the iPhone with its UI.

Maemo 5 and the N900 are here to change the game. I can honestly say that this is a device that people start to compare next generation smart phones to and the iPhone looks completely outdated compared to the N900[1].

The conversation
If I had to just pick one thing why the N900 blows my mind, it would have to be the conversation metaphor that the device implements as the messaging application. All SMS, and also IM chats, are grouped be person/receiver in a conversation. Yes I know the iPhone does this too, but the implementation is much nicer. The landscape mode is much more natural to read the conversations in. And as the N900 has a physical keyboard, it feels so nice to reply to an SMS by just sliding the keyboard open and start typing!

Related to Conversations, the built in Email client is very good. I can easily setup GMail account, read my emails from it and reply to them. I also use the Mail for Exchange feature for corporate emails. No problems setting up that either and it works like a charm (without a device lock, thanks Maemo!)

The Browser
The web browser has become maybe the single most important application in today's smart phones. No need to repeat that the browser in the N900 is based on the Gecko engine that powers Firefox too so naturally the page rendering is top notch. But the speed is the thing that is overwhelming. Page rendering is so fast that you can't believe it. And it has kinetic scrolling and will scroll the page, as the iPhone does, while the page is loading.

Also the connectivity implementation has been done in good way. You have the option to automatically connect to cellular data if no known WLAN is in range. If a known WLAN network is in range, the N900 will automatically connect to it and use it for any connectivity needs. Now remember how Symbian implements the connectivity thing. Gee!

Multitasking
I know you probably already know about the multitasking in N900. But no N900 review or blog post would be complete without mentioning it. I could not imagine a smart phone again without at least similar multitasking experience. Really, this is how multitasking should work and it works well. I like it a lot and would call it after the browser the N900's killer feature.

The Media player
There are of course two sides to the media player; content and transfer.

iPhone does the transfer pretty nicely with its proprietary protocol (which Apple also defends, which sucks). The N900 has solved this issue with a way cooler, and IMHO bettert, solution. You connect the N900 to any PC in mass storage mode and you are ready to go. You drag the files you want to the device, unhook the device from PC and the meta crawler in Tracker will find, index and extract meta data from your files! It is very fast so as soon as you open the media player all your new files will be visible in the UI.

About content. Well, it plays MP3s and that's about as much as I have tested it. No surprises there :) UI is intuitive, but I won't go in any details about it as you probably can read and see the UI screenshots somewhere else.

But the video playback will blow your mind. The device supports, out of the box, DivX video playback which means that this is the ultimate portable video player! The Tracker will index and extract data from the files and you can watch them right on the device without any conversion needed. Wow! Did I mention that the screen is gorgeous and you won't have any problems watching the videos on the screen.

And you will also be surprised that after I watched 1.5 hours of DivX on the device, it still had 2/3 of its battery power left!

Compared to S60 v. 5.0?
So what about S60 then? No matter how much Nokia would like us to believe that the N97 is their N-series flagship device, this baby will outperform the N97 in every way possible.

The home screen(s) are much more configurable and developing new widgets for the home screen is quite easy if you know C programming (no need to learn a mystical breed of Symbian C++).

The keyboard is superior to the N97. It has so good tactile feedback that I have no problem writing emails with it.

But foremost the UI is intuitive! No more miles deep menus with the features hidden behind some odd Options-button. No more settings hunting behind several applications or setting menus. No more idiotic, useless dialogs ("Are you sure you want to visit this secure web page?" "YES! I just entered the URL myself!" "Are you sure you want to leave the secure web page?" YES!!!"). No more unresponsive icons or scrolling. Gaah, I hate S60 UI.

Final thoughts
This is a very good device. Overall sleekness shows everywhere, the UI is very polished, UX has been given a lot of thought and last but not least, it is very fast and responsive!

Even though I got now one for free for 6 months I would have bought one for myself anyway. And also, after the 6 months are out and I will need to return the device to Nokia I will buy one for myself. I can't find myself using the 5800 XPressMusic phone anymore after this.

This is a game changer in so many ways as the iPhone was. Although people will still continue praising the iPhone over the N900, I can only say that one phone is not for everyone but for true mobile device hard core users, the N900 is the way to go.

[1] "It completely kicks much of the iPhone 3GS experience into touch. It makes the iPhone look like a Fisher Price ‘My First Phone’ with it’s multi-tasking brilliance." - http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/10/absolutely-blown-away-by-the-n900.html

Disclaimer: I work with Maemo but not as a Nokia employee. I have not worked with Fremantle in any way nor have I ever owned, extensively used or had the chance to explore the N900 or its UI before Maemo Summit 2009.

Why Nokia 5800 (aka. "Tube") sucks.

2009-02-04T19:37:00.005+02:00

...and most of the S60 phones in general.

Ok, so my previous post was a long time ago with high hopes and desires for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. As we all probably already know it is the first touch screen phone by Nokia. I've had mine now for two months and despite my previous post, my high hopes and dreams, I am now going to tell you where, in my opinion, the Nokia 5800 sucks most.

Please note, when I say "sucks most" it doesn't mean that I think Nokia 5800 is a bad phone. It is, after all, the best S60 phone out there. Unfortunately that is not a huge accomplishment after all the even worse S60 phones out there.

No proper bookmarking for music or podcasts.
No on demand album art download.
Bad response time in the music player control buttons.
No "play all songs from this album/artist/genre/year". You always have to go through the "see all songs of this artist/album/genre/tag". Elementary usability.

All in all, this should be a music experience phone. Take an iPod or SonyEricsson W-series phone and put the music player experience from those into the S60 music player. The music player in the 5800 is the same crappy as they have in S60 3.2.

The browser. The Webkit browser in S60 is just SLOOOOOOOOW to render pages. End of story.
Panning usually doesn't work. This is related to the previous point. While the page is loading, you cannot pan the page. The page loads slowly => usually you cannot pan the page smootly.

I would also like to see some quality in basic functionalities:

The IMAP email client is buggy. It simply won't show me the latest messages from the university IMAP mail server. Cannot figure out what to do next. Maybe the number of messages in the inbox is too great for the client - I don't know. Bad!
Bluetooth dies usually at least once during my 2h commute to Helsinki by train when I use it as a modem for 3G connectivity. A remove the battery -reboot is required.
A tap on the icons in the main menu doesn't launch the application. The icon indicates that a press was registered on the icon and the vibra tells me also that the phone registered my tap, but the application doesn't launch.

Some integration, please?

Why (oh WHY!?) is this phone not supported by OVI.com?
Lack of applications. Why does not even Nokia support S60 5.0 in their new beta labs S60 apps?

Most of the issues I listed above are more or less usability nagging, but they are annoying in any case. In these times when the iPhone dictates good usability and is basically the benchmark for what users nowadays expect from an UI, it is quite frustrating to get this 10 year old legacy stuff from Symbian. Yes, there are several good usability improvements as well! For example, I like alot the new standby screen and the the new menu structure.

I just hope Nokia will get back into the game with the N97 with even more improvements to the S60 UI - good luck! :)

Is Nokia "Tube" my next phone?

2008-09-26T22:21:00.008+03:00

Ok, so the rumors are out: Nokia is about to release its first touch screen phone (in years) with an upgraded, modern S60 user interface. October the 2nd is around the corner so let's wait and see what it holds for us. I still have my SonyEricsson K610i as my main phone and I am looking to upgrade it. But none of the phones have really impressed me so far. I have had my opportunities to play with other Nokia phones, mostly S60 3.1 and 3.2 but I hate the old version of the S60 UI. If Nokia has managed to pull of a decent modern touch based UI, I think Tube has what it takes to replace my SonyEricsson.

Tube's specifications (again, according to rumors) are really impressive; 3.2" touch screen with 640 x 320 pixels, HSDPA connectivity, 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, A-GPS, Wifi and, most importantly for me, a 3.5mm headphone jack. It should also be shipped with a 8 GB memory card and this makes the phone my perfect MP3 player as well. See, I am also looking to replace my current 1GB iPod Nano (1st gen) with something else and I really want to be able to use my phone as an MP3 player as well. But I don't want just an ok MP3 player in my phone - I want an MP3 player in my phone to replace my current one!

Looking at the specs, I really can't understand what the fansboys are whining about that this would "only" be a mid-range phone. Come on! What do you expect from a phone? How is some N96 or N85 any better than Tube, based on the rumors floating on the Internet? Nothing in the specs point to anything mediocre in this phone. True, it looks a bit plastic, but if the build quality overall is good I wont complain.

Overall, Tube is looking quite good, but I am really worried about the UI. I say again; S60 3.2 UI SUCKS big time. Nokia really has to pull this one off and I am sure Nokia feels the burdain. Tube is automatically compared to the iPhone and its slick UI. I really hope the UI in Tube is polished and works well, fast and logically. Then I think Tube will be my next phone.

Whenever it is available in Finland that it. Let's wait and see. Fingers crossed.

Pictures from Maemo Summit 2008 in Berlin

2008-09-24T20:08:00.002+03:00

I took a few (could have taken a lot more...) pictures from the Maemo Summit 2008 held in Berlin 19.9.-20.9.2008. You can see them on my Flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/kypeli/sets/72157607472568981/

Thanks again Maemo and Nokia for giving us a great summit!

Re: Engadget "A few more details confirmed on Nokia's next-gen Internet Tablet"

2008-09-22T20:19:00.005+03:00

Engadget calls the photo of "leaked specs" of the upcoming Maemo 5 device from the Maemo Summit as a "spy shot". I can only think that Engadget had to add this make it seem more mysterious.

Engadget, That picture is not a spy shot! I attended the Maemo Summit in Berlin and the summit was open to anyone willing to walk in, without any NDA requirements. I have a photo of the same slide on my camera. Do you want that too? There is nothing in the powerpoint slide that you didn't hear from other sources during the summit or otherwise was already known from OSiM World.

Engadget, check your sources.

My Master's Thesis

2008-09-16T19:42:00.002+03:00

Master's Thesis
Originally uploaded by Kypeli

One final time. This time with covers and all :)

P.S. get it here: http://www.johanpaul.com/thesis_johanpaul.pdf

Thesis: Quantitative Approach for Lightweight Agile Process Assessment

2008-09-09T20:53:00.004+03:00

Yes, I have finally finished my Master's Thesis. And I must stress, finally. Some spell checking might still occur and I will print it next week. But I am quite pleased with what I current have. I am more than happy to receive any feedback and comments on my theses!

My thesis is about about our experiences at Plenware Oy on how to assess the agility of a process in a lightweight fashion, but still to be accurate and to support the Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiative. We came up with the idea that the assessment could be a set of predefined questions that could be easily answered by taking process metrics from a project management tool. The answers would be compared against reference answers and points would be given based on the assessment. Finally, a weighted sum gives the agility of the process.

The same approach could be implemented for other assessments, but our goal was to assess the agility of the process. The processes were in a transition phase to go towards agility and it was important to be able to measure the agility in a lightweight fashion.

I express my deepest sense of gratitude to my supervisor PhD Luka Milovanov at Plenware Oy for assisting in writing of this thesis.

Here's the abstract:

One focus in software development is to achieve high quality without loss of agility in the development process. In software engineering an agile development process is able to react to frequently changing customer requirements and also able to develop the software in small well tested increments. This is not an easy thing to do and will not emerge on its own, but requires well optimized and continuously improved software development processes. The quality of a process can be assessed by some external audits but they usually are heavyweight and costly processes. To measure the quality and follow the improvements in a process a lightweight assessment method is desired.

In this thesis I will look at Software Process Improvement (SPI) paradigm from the perspective of both Reference Process Models and the Experience Factory (EF) infrastructure. Then, I will present a quantitative lightweight process assessment method for agile projects. This method allows the assessment of a process in less than two hours. The method yields numeric results of the agility of a process in a lightweight fashion. I will conclude by stating that the work done in this thesis is only indicative of this kind of assessment for agile processes there is a need for further research. The results presented here result from the current need in Plenware Oy related to SPI evolvement.

Here's the PDF: Quantitative Approach for Lightweight Agile Process Assessment

So I bought the Apple Airport Extreme...

2008-08-07T22:27:00.005+03:00

I needed a new WLAN base station because I will move in with my girlfriend to our own apartment. In the new apartment I want to extend my local network from my computer room to the living room and I also want to be able to play music in the living room - all this without cables. Apple Airport Extreme combined with Apple Airport Express is a suitable combination for achieving this - at least on paper.

We have not yet moved to our apartment so I haven't really connected the Airports to my network. However, I have played with the Airport Extreme just to to see what it's all about. I expected a great Apple out-of-the-box experience. Everything just working - or so I thought! I had spent almost double the amount of money than would on a normal WLAN+ethernet switch and the first time I launch the Airport Utility on my Windows XP box I am faced with an "unsuccessful network connection" error message. Bugger!

I reboot the Extreme and try again.
Bingo.

This time I see the Airport Extreme in the Airport Utility. Now I am faced with the question if I want to upgrade the firmware on my Airport Extreme. "Now that is nice", I thought. Why not upgrade to get a even more working box. However, I am, mildly said, disappointed when I see a dialog informing me that the firmware upgrade was unsuccessful. Bugger again!

Oh well, I just go on an configure my new cute white box. I again select the Airport Extreme from the Airport Utility. Failure again - the box shows the green status light indicating everything is fine, but the Airport Utility cannot connect to the damn box. DAMN! Reboot.

Now I am able to connect to the box, I tell the utility I do not want to upgrade the firmware and finally I have configured Airport Extreme to suit my needs. The configurations I made included port forwardings and specifying a MAC address into the DHCP server so that my server can always get the same IP address. I also changed the address space of the internal network. Nothing too fancy, for an expensive Apple box, right?

Wrong.

I am not sure what is going on, but Airport extreme will randomly disconnect all network connections. I can get an IP address to a client machine, but the machine cannot connect to the Internet. NAT problems? The only thing that helps me in this situation is to reboot the Apple extreme.

What is going on here?! I will tomorrow call Apple service desk and ask for a replacement unit. I don't know if that will improve anything, but I am very disappointed in Apple right now! Shouldn't Apple be all about easy setup and reliable hardware?

..and I haven't even tried to connect my Airport Express with WDS to the Extreme and stream music with AirTunes. What should I expect the outcome from that to be?

Edit: So. After two replaced Airport Extremes it seems that Apple has finally managed to find me a unit that actually works. The first replacement unit died the first evening and its MAC address for the WLAN card had disappeared and it failed to go into 802.11n mode. Now I have the latest revision on my replacement Airport Extreme and it, believeit or not, actually manages to do a reasonable good job - something I would have expected from Apple from the very beginning.

My experiences with Apple regarding Airport Extreme has raised some serious questions about Apples quality control. Why pay extra for Apple's products if you don't get anything extra? I am willing to pay for a good device, that "just works" and probably even looks good. But this was not a good Apple experience for me.

Many thanks to VAR Import in Turku and Mika who helped me with the service!

My Asus EEE and the bus to St. Petersburg, Russia

2008-07-06T10:08:00.002+03:00

I often wonder about the modern marvels of IT and the Internet. I am on my way to St. Petersburg in Russia on a bus and here I am writing this blog post with my Asus EEE, SCM Bluetooth dongle and Sony Ericsson K610i with (almost) broadband 3G connection. And it works great! The battery lifetime on the EEE of course sucks but I cannot complain since a few years back I couldnt even imagine using the Internet on a laptop in a bus.

I took my EEE with me on my trip because I hope to fins open WLANs in the city and update my blog as a diary from St. Petersburg. It is my first trip to Russia so I imagine I have a lot to write about. I will also be intresting to see Sanna's hometown. She will be showing me around and I guess there cannot be a better guide than a local.

I don't get the Adobe Lightroom methodology

2008-06-15T19:41:00.001+03:00

I like photographing, although I don't think I am not even on the par with amateur photographers, but it is a better way to waste time than laying on the couch watching The Simpsons or something (don't get me wrong, I love the Simpsons). I have a Nikon D40 to play with and I take a lot of picture of one subject just to experiment with different settings and compositions. I guess this is the way SLRs are supposed to be handled. Hence I looked into Adobe Lightroom as a way to import, organize, pick good shots and publish photos. Yes, I like Lightroom over Windows Live Photo Gallery - in the matter of fact, it's not even close!

But there are some things I don't get about Adobe Lightroom. First is the methodology that you never ever overwrite the original photos. I personally don't get this design decision. Lightroom offers me a great set of tools to manipulate and insert metadata in the pictures. But it is like I should only be allowed to use these great tools if I only use Adobe Lightroom. I have no easy way to immediately save my cropped picture over the original one. I probably have no reason why I would not like to overwrite the original picture. At least give me an easy way to save the modified picture into the same folder as the original one with a, for example, different name (picture1_mod.jpg). That is why I agree with the complaint made by for example KDern at Flickr forums.

The other thing I really don't get is why I am not able to out-of-the-box export my photos to Flickr. It is an other example of how Adobe wants me to only play with them in their sandbox. Come on, Adobe! Even its competitor, Aperture, has this feature built in. Yes yes, I know there are some extension that allow me to do this, but Flickr export integrated would probably give me better support.

Nevertheless, I will give Adobe Lightroom the 30 day trial period Adobe offers me. I like the overall feel of the user interface and of course, as you would expect from Adobe, Lightroom gives me more than enough tools to manipulate the photos.

Nokia swetting today? I guess so :)

2008-06-10T08:00:00.000+03:00

Oh, and now that I mentioned WWDC in my previous post, lets see how it goes. Steve will probably launch the new 3G iPhone today. It has already, before its' launch, got widespread attention and worldwide delivery contracts announced. I think Nokia is starting to feel the pressure, since now Apple can start competing for real in the markets where Nokia has previously dominated with their E- and N-series smartphones.

But Nokia really needs to get their UI into this century! S60 3 feature pack 2 is horrible compared to iPhone's UI! If (and when) iPhone will have 3G, GPS, an application store with native 3rd party application and in the future even more enterprise specific features, Nokia really has to get its act together with that UI because it will eventually draw people to buy a iPhone, which is nice to use, instead of a old-fashioned S60 UI.

I will probably comment on WWDC afterwards.

Update:Yeah, so the 3G iPhone is here. Apple did a really impressive announcement to sell the new 3G iPhone (8GB) for only $199. "The price is a maximum of $199 all around the world". This is really impressive! But I won't hold my breath yet; Sonera will sell the new iPhone here in Finland and I just hope that there will not be a some kind of forced data plan for 24 month, like I would guess. If the new iPhone is 199e with no strings attached, I will buy it the day it becomes available. But unfortunately not Sonera nor Apple has said anything about data plan requirements.

And I guess Nokia will have a crysis meeting tomorrow morning ;)

Update: Well, I guess my first excitement is gone: http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/06/09/iphone-3g-the-details-you-never-wanted-to-know/
Of course this doesn't mean that Sonera in Finland requires a similar data plan, but in this light I think it is a bit naive to think that Sonera wouldn't have a similar requirement for a data plan. After all, this is where Apple gets its' money!

Nothing to see here anymore, move along...

Nokia is doing great fanb...^Wcustomer service

2008-06-09T17:28:00.004+03:00

I don't know about you, but usually when I think of Microsoft, HP or, say, Apple, I tend to think of large enterprises with very hush-hush relationship with their customers - and let's not forget about the "fanboys". We can read about the corporation and their products on their web pages and nice looking product ads and press releases will pop up once in a while. Oh yeah, and I am writing this on the eve of Apple's WWDC, before the event. I bet every single Apple fanboy is wetting their pants at the moment. I can understand them; Apple comes out and presents something new in Steve Job's great mass-like chanting on how everything is superb, wonderful and let's not forget great. "Boom".

But Nokia is doing things a bit different. Nokia has quitely openened Nokia Converstions. I haven't seen it mentioned in a lot of media, even IT centered. It is a Nokia web pages that aggregates and comments on things written about Nokia, and their products, in blogosphere. People get to interact with the giant corporation in a new way that I haven't seen before done by any other major company, let alone a IT company. I think it is Nokia's way of saying thet the company listens to the customers and fans and want to have a two way dialogue going on. Of course they will use the page to promote new things inside Nokia, but also show that Nokia follows trends; they talk about Twitter, social networking, blogging, Mac support and about a lot of other stuff that I don't normally see a "large stiff corporation" talk about. Also, they welcome criticue and try to improve things.

Of course, they will not talk about some things which is fully understandable. But I think this is a great way to interact with real users that in the end use the devices, services and software. Hope other companies would follow Nokia's example.

Japan: Highlights

2008-03-02T22:15:00.005+02:00

So my trip to Tokyo is over. What a wonderful place to visit. The cultural difference is huge, of course, and coming home is always the best thing.

Besides working, we visited Shibuya and Akihabara. Below is a video I took with my camera from Shibuya:

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me when we visited Akihabara, but it was a great experience for tech-guy like me. A lot of small shops packed with electronics. As a contrast, we also visited Japan's largest electronic store, Yodobashi Camera. With 8 stores of only electronics, I was quite impressed. Wow!

Of course, you might not be able to leave Akihabara without exploiting the possibility to buy cheap electronics. So I just had to buy myself a proper DSLR camera; Nikon D40 with extra lens (55-200mm). It was almost exaclty 50% chepaer there than in Finland so I couldn't resist! I was also able to haggle 25000 yens off the price, so I was satisfied :) Btw, I bought it at Yamada which I can recommend since we went to a lot of other electronic retailers and this was the cheapest :)

We then flew from Henada airport to Osaka where we connected to Finnair's flight to Helsinki. 10h on an MD-11 without entertainment system is not a way to spend the day.

Japan: Day 2 - 26.2.2008

2008-02-26T18:16:00.003+02:00

Second day and first morning in Tokyo. We walked today to the office which takes about 20 minutes. This was really the first time I had a chance to feel the Japanese culture around me. The street are amazingly clean and even the truck shine. I was also quite amazed how little traffic there is on the streets compared to for example Paris. I heard that local people use the metro and the train just because there is not parking space downtown Tokyo.

The breakfast was quite amazing. I was escorted to my table and my coffee was served to the table. The selection of breakfast items ranges from fresh fruit juices to blueberries and strawberries. Of course there was also a lot of fresh fruits and local Japanese breakfast cuisine with more western items, like corn flakes. Quite yummy!

Japan is a wonderful place, part 2:

3) Smoke or get fined - You are not allowed to smoke on the streets in Tokyo. There are designated smoking areas on the street that you can smoke in, otherwise you might face a fee of 40 euros!

4) High-tech restaurants - I've worked in the restaurant business so I noticed that the waitresses have wireless PDA-like devices that they take the orders with. The order goes directly to the kitchen, and the food comes out really fast. All waitresses (including breakfast waiters!) have ear-peaces and radio, so they can communicate with each other all the time. This is really cool :)

Japan: Day 1 - 25.2.2008

2008-02-25T16:51:00.004+02:00

So here I am, on the other side of the globe. The world feels really small when you can quite easily fly here and use the Internet as from home. But nevertheless I am 8000km away from home.

The first day has been quite tough. Almost no sleep in the plane, via the hotel directly to the workplace. We started working at 11am local time and it is not 12pm and I am back at the hotel finally, hopefully, getting some sleep.

First of all, I want to say how I miss my Sanna. It is really hard to be for the first time away from the one you love. But I guess I have to do my job...

Japan is a wonderful place, part 1:

1) Canned coffee - Hot coffee, in a vending machine, from a metal can. Yes, it's all in Japan! This is how the local employees have their coffee break. They take something from the vending machine (costing about 100 yens) and having a cigar. And yes, even the coffee (with and without milk and/or sugar!) is from a vending machine. Fascinating, yet frightening.

2) Electronic toilets - I arrived into my hotel room and I could not figure out how to use the toilet. Wow! That's a new one! In the toilet, there was a large remote control with some rather frightening looking symbols and maybe luckily none of them worked when I pressed them. Ok, I then realized that the toilet is flushed beside the bowl itself... I was so reliefed that it actually worked.

I will continue to list odd things from this wonderful culture :) But I love the people, they are so friendly! The city is a large metropol but it is so clean that Paris should be ashamed of itself.

But now some sleep - after 30 hours or so.

Tokyo, Here I come!

2008-02-23T13:23:00.004+02:00

I never thought that I would visit Tokyo, at least yet in my life. Nevertheless, on my winter holiday to Paris, I got a telephone call. It was my boss that asked if I wanted to go to Tokyo the week after I get back from my holiday. After a brief moment of thinking, it was a no-brainer - of course I will go to Tokyo when flight and hotel is payed!

Going to Tokyo is not like hopping on the train and visit Helsinki. Or even Paris, which is only a 3 hour flight away. I leave tomorrow, Sunday 24.2., and will be there all week. I will try to post something every day to this blog about my journey! :)

Suzuki GSX-R 600 for sale!

2007-12-30T18:35:00.002+02:00

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:

Micron power exhaust
Entirely new rear wheel
Very well kept
Only 6100km driven

An atheist's call to arms against intelligent design - and religion!

2007-12-29T19:05:00.001+02:00

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.

I am HD Ready!

2007-12-25T15:16:00.001+02:00

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 :)

Windows Live Writer ruulz!

2007-12-22T17:52:00.001+02:00

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!

Christmas madness begins

2007-11-17T16:18:00.001+02:00

Christmas madness begins
Originally uploaded by Kypeli

Today the Christmas street in Turku opened with the christmas lights lit. I would argue that thew lights are quite aweful. The street was crowded with people trying to find christmas spirit without any snow and replacing it with the need to shop. I hate christmas!

I am a photographer!

2007-09-08T18:20:00.000+03:00

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.

Nokia's user interface design sucks!

2007-08-11T16:40:00.001+03:00

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.

Good beer!

2007-08-07T23:12:00.001+03:00

Here in Lappeenranta I tasted for the first time a beer called Snake Dog Indian Pale Ale. It was really good! And it has a nice name as well :) It seems to be brewed by a small brewery in Colorado, USA.

SST 2007: Lahti

2007-08-06T17:40:00.000+03:00

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.

Nokia E90 Communicator in photo test

2007-08-03T14:32:00.000+03:00

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 :)

SaunaVisio tulee, oletko valmis?

2007-07-14T10:57:00.000+03:00

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.

Sonic Syndicate, Live @ Tavastia 7.7.2007

2007-07-09T15:16:00.000+03:00

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 :)

Moottoripyörälenkki: 30.6.2007

2007-06-30T19:05:00.001+03:00

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.

Turku medieval market

2007-06-29T19:58:00.001+03:00

IMG_0187
Originally uploaded by Kypeli

Turku arranged a market in medieval style and feeling. Actors dressed as medieval knights, noble people or peasants walked around and chanted at visitors. They also participated in several plays for example representing the bishop of Uppsala visiting Turku in 1412, catching the murderer of the governor of Turku, priests bashing hookers giving booze to minors - and such...

You could also buy medieval style food and handicraft. Everything done in medieval style.

You can see photos I took from the market event at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kypeli/sets/72157600536603909/

Sonera, Pohjoismaiden suurin teleoperaattori, osaa: ADSL-liittymä alhaalla 18h

2007-06-28T14:25:00.001+03:00

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;

Miten palvelimiin päästetään käsiksi ihminen joka ei osaa asettää koneen kelloa oikein, vaikka tietää minkälaiset seurakset siitä tulee jos sen nyt vaikka pistää yhdellä kuulla väärin.
Miksi Soneran palvelimiin ylipäätään asetetaan ajat käsin? Eikö Sonera ole kuullut NTP:stä?
Jos isolta osalta asiakkaita (Sonera ei ole kertonut kuinka suurelta osalta) voidaan Internet-yhteys katkaista automaattiajolla noin helposti, miksei niitä saada yhtä helposti automaattisesti ylös?
Miksi DSL-linkin paluun jälkeen TCP/IP -verkko ei toiminut?
Miten Sonera voi olla näin käsi?

Kyllä, olen vaihtamassa Saunalahteen, joka taitaakin olla alkuperäinen syy netin katkeamiseen sillä siirtoaika on 20.7. joka osuu sopivasti tuohon kämmin piiriin.

Motorcycle gathering by River Aura

2007-06-20T19:26:00.001+03:00

20062007036
Originally uploaded by Kypeli

River Aura at its' best! Hundreds of motorcyclists gather each Wednesday evening at River Aura in Turku. My bike is in the middle! :)

The picture really doesn't give credit to the crowd and number of bikes. There are hundreds of bikes on a distance of about 300m side by side. There are not only motorcyclists but also other people just admiring beautiful bikes!

See Turku =)

2007-06-17T16:03:00.001+03:00

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!

SaunaVision - The true IPTV?

2007-06-16T10:56:00.000+03:00

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:

Tallennettavat ohjelma voidaan valita Internet-selaimen avulla WWW-käyttöliittymän kautta. Tämä on varmasti (=toivottavasti) paljon mukavempaa kuin kaukosäätimellä sählääminen TV-ruudun kautta
Tallentavat ohjelamt voidaan valita kännykän kautta. Monta kertaa on tullut mieleen lähettää tekstiviesti omaan Humaxiiniin, että nauhoittais jonkun ohjelma, mutta se ei ole oikein toiminut.
5 teratavua on paljon tilaa, eli käytännössä voin tallettaa kaikki haluamani ohjelmat koko vuoden ajalta. Mutta koska teknisesti tuo tila on kuitenkin jaettua, eikä minulla ole omaa 5 teratavun tilaa, herää kysymys, että kauanko tallennukset säilyvät. Saunalahden tekninen kaveri vahvisteli kyllä, että kyllä minun omat tallennuksetkin vuoden kestäisi. Saapi nähdä...
Sopimusehdoissa ei ole mainintaa tuosta, eli kuluttajasuojalain mukaan minun on voitava olettaa, että tila on (ainakin lähes) omassa käytössäni ja voin olettaa tallennettujen ohjelmien säilyvän siellä tarpeeksi kauan.
HDTV, HDMI, DD 7.1, HDTV... Onhan se hienoa kun on komeita lyhennyksiä boksissa. Saa katsoa milloin niitä päästään hyödyntämään tosissaan. Ainakin minun pitäisi ensiksi ostaa HDTV :)

Mitä mainospuheiden alta paljastuu?

Mutta ei tuokaan täydellinen palvelu ole. Ihmetystä herättää ainakin seuraavat seikat:

Miksei voi tallettaa jo alkanutta ohjelmaa, tyyliin kaukosäätimen REC-napista? Ei sen pitäisi olla tekijänoikeudellisesti sen kummempi juttu kuin, että ennen ohjelman alkua valitsin että haluan nauhoittaa ohjelman.
Miksei EPG:stä voida valita hakusanoilla tallennettavia ohjelmia? Tai edes valita, että nauhoitetaan sama ohjelma joka viikkoa. Kuten yllä, ei pitäisi olla tekijänoikeudellisesti sen kummempi juttu sillä saman voin tehdä jo nykyisellä digiboksillani eikä YLE ole siitä nillittänyt.
Ohjelmia ei voida pysäyttää tai kelata taaksepäin, kuten nykyisellä digiboksillani. Tiedä sitten onko teknisesti hankala toteuttaa, sillä ohjelmien live feed ei tallennu suoraan digiboksille vaan tallennus on ihan oma komponenttinsa erillään boksista... mutta harmittaa se ehkä silti.

Kerronpas sitten miten yllä olevat seikat toimivat oikeasti kun saan palvelun käyttööni, joskus heinäkuussa. Ehkä.

Why I hate Linux!

2007-06-12T22:46:00.000+03:00

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

The latest Ubuntu's installations procedure is buggy, and because
Linux doesn't correctly support open AHCI standard.
Ubuntu doesn't work with ACPI and causes non-related hangs and other problems (for me at least unrecognized hard drives during boot and flickering screens...)

I finally got my server up and running and once I get this far, I don't expect any further problems. I like Ubuntu's (= Debian's) apt+dpkg packaging system. I like the reliability of Linux. But this doesn't come without a fight. And really, how hard would it be to give valuable feedback to the user when things go wrong? Or have feasible error checking so that some of the problem debugging could have been avoided all together.

I think next I have to write a column called "Why I love Linux!" :)

BOOL != BOOLEAN != VARIANT_BOOL != bool

2007-06-11T14:18:00.000+03:00

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++.

Moporeissu: 10.6.2007

2007-06-10T16:19:00.001+03:00

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

Moporeissu: 4.6.2007

2007-06-10T16:12:00.000+03:00

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

Bike Ride 3.6.

2007-06-10T16:08:00.000+03:00

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

Bike Ride: 1.6.2006

2007-06-01T19:21:00.000+03:00

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

Bike Rides!

2007-05-19T11:55:00.000+03:00

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! :)

My Suzuki GSX-R 600

2007-05-18T19:27:00.001+03:00

DSC00167
Originally uploaded by Kypeli.

Here's my new darling! :)

I am pretty satisfied although I thought I'll be missing my old darling, Honda CBR 600RR. But actually I find the Suzuki a lot better to drive since it has a slippery clutch , steering suspension, wider back tire and better low end thrust. And it's black!!

I already managed to have an accident with my new bike. You can't see it from the picture but this side has some marks on it. Luckily it was a minor accident and I didn't hurt myself. And as a positive outcome, I'll get my exhaust replaced with a Micron power exhaust:

http://www.micronexhausts.com/prod_detail.asp?prod_id=44386

:)

UPDATE: See more picture of my bike at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kypeli/tags/suzukigsxr

My bike coming home!

2007-03-25T22:58:00.000+03:00

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! :)

Human food?

2007-03-25T14:13:00.000+03:00

Can you guess if this is dog food or human food? :)

Yes, this is supposed to be actual human food from a food company called Lunden in Turku, Finland.

Fucking disgusting!

I can honestly say that high quality dog food looks more attractive than this pile of crap. You might wonder why I then bought this? Well, yes - as dog food :) Although, it was a bit repelling to give it even to the dogs. But they seemed to like it.

New bike

2007-01-26T18:35:00.000+02:00

Its snowing like crazy outside but I bought myself a piece of summer! Its a brand new Suzuki GSX-R 600. I cant wait until the snow starts to melt and I will go get my darling home. :)

UPDATE: Ok, so once again I have been lazy and not posted anything here for a while (like anyone would read this so I guess it doesn't matter...). But I got my new bike! I should post pics of if really soon now :)

Significant speedup for Firefox

2006-10-29T13:01:00.000+02:00

I noticed a tweak for Firefox that enables, what they call, HTTP Pipelining. Basically what this means is that instead of sending HTTP request sequentially, send them in parallel. This feature is disabled by default in Firefox (even in the most recent version, 2.0) probably because it is still (at least since 2004...) an experimental feature but it seems to work very well. I noticed a significant improvement in page loading times. I hope that the Firefox team would enable this feature by default since it shouldn't do any harm even for slower Internet connections and it would be yet another improvement over IE.

It feels like Opera has done this kind of page request from day one and that's why it "feels" different to browse the web with Opera, but in this case, the difference is a positive one.

Here are the instructions for enabling HTTP pipelining: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts

A nostalgy trip - my BBS!

2006-10-28T14:24:00.000+03:00

I noticed I had some old screenshots lying around of my old Bulletin Board System, BBS, RedZone! The system was operational from 1996 until 1999m which means I jumped on the BBS wave a bit too late since the big time for BBS' was in the early 90s. But I, as so many other, had a wonderful time running my own BBS and calling other's systems. It was a great way to learn to know other people and several of my good friends are ones I met online - in BBSs that is.

I believe I had about 800 users of which a few tens called regularly. My system attracted users mainly of the discussion forums. No, I wasn't one of the WaReZ boards ;) First I used my main computer as the board and tested it under DOS, but quite soon I got a dedicated PC running OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 with a SCSI disc :) Then later when OS/2 became a bit too old for doing anything else with, I moved over to Linux in 1998. I still have the bought version of RedHat Linux 5.2 lying around here somewhere!

The software I used is called BBBS (greets go to B!) of which I first used the OS/2 version and moved over to the Linux version. BBBS is still available as a shareware version with tons of features, including features supporting the Internet era and the author, B, still offers support for it.

Below are the four remaining screenshots of my board. I wish I took and saved more screenshots... :-/ Please, post your screenshots of your board if you have some!

Login screen
Note: My board offered free email to all users, which was a big thing in 1998.

My file section. About 1GB of files, carefully sorted by hand to include only quality (pictures, tracker music, demos and some shareware/freeware applications)

Bulletins - stats, my own scripts and other's and some door games.
(Greets go to Fopa for the color editor and login scroll!)

My last message to the board.

Special treatment because of a religion?

2006-10-21T12:29:00.000+03:00

I dont think so.

The Guardian web site has an interesting point of view to religions: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2006/10/acgrayling.html. I totally agree with the article. Why should anyone consider themselves somehow special compared to others just because they say they chosen to belive in something? I could also say I belive in the Santa Claus or the Allmighty Spaghetti Monster behind my refridgerator but would I get special treatment because of that? No.

A great quote from the article I noticed:
"They [the belivers]claim, on no justifiable ground, a right to special status and special treatment on the sole ground that they have chosen to believe a set of propositions; and they demand that people who do not accept their beliefs and practices should treat these latter in ways that implicitly accept their holder's evaluation of them."

An example of this is the scandal over the Muhammed cartoons a Danish newspaper published in Denmark.

An other example are immigrants in a countries. I don't consider myself a racist person, but I do feel that people coming to live in a country must live according to the rules of the sociaty in that country. They just can't take a day off from work because their religion says so or take a break at work because they have to pray. I don't say they can't take a break at all - just that they have to take the break according to the same rules as everyone else does!

We have to respect each other, but that goes both ways. No-one can expect special treatment because of their faith.

"No one could dream of demanding that political parties be respected merely because they are political parties, or of protecting them from the pens of cartoonists; nor that their members should be. On the contrary. And so it should be for all interest groups and their members, without exception."

My first video editing test

2006-08-11T11:00:00.000+03:00

Hah! I made my first attempts to play with video editing. It's actually quite fun :) Anyway, you can see the result of what I made at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZFHFT8XNs0

But that said, it's just for testing how editing is done :)

My trip to Helsinki

2006-08-07T20:58:00.000+03:00

I was on a work related trip to Helsinki. I had a really nice time with my friends, Niklas and Mats. A start likeing this way of working ;)

EDIT: The above text was written directly from my SonyEricsson k610i mobile phone which has Blogger integrated. nice :)
Yep, that is Niklas goofing around. He just can't have a straight face when I take a picture of him. :) The picture was taken in the lounge of the hotel I was staying in, Scandic Simonkenttä in Helsinki. I liked the place a lot.

Flickr!

2006-07-24T01:04:00.000+03:00

OMG! I just payed for a free web service!!

That's right. I subscribed to Flickr Pro. I know all the photos I shoot in the future are going to be digital so why not start using a good solution from the beginning. I get 2GB upload stream each month whcih I know is more than enough for my photos. And I can store unlimited number of pictures.

I also like to idea behind tagging and sets. I know not all are happy with them. But I didn't have such a good structure on my computer for my pictures. Maybe that's why I haven't been interested in taking or publishing photos. Maybe Flickr will make me want to shoot more pictures now...

So let's see how Flickr does! I loved it the period I tested it with 20 megs of upload a month and I feel it is like made for me.

SIC's Club Show 2006, Helsinki

2006-07-23T22:40:00.000+03:00

We took a small trip to Helsinki today. We took Elvis to a dog show for the first time with us. It was SIC's (which stands for Italian Greyhound & Cirneco dell'Etna Club of Finland which we are members of) Club Show 2006.

The show started at 10a.m. and because we don't own a car and we had to take taxi, the train, taxi to get there - and the same back - we had to take a train departing at 6.30 a.m. *sigh*. It was a really beautiful morning and we had time to eat our breakfast at Töölönlahti, Helsinki which was nice.

The feeling at the show was family like. The same people seems to travel to different shows and they know each other. So it didn't feel the least a competition after all. We had the chance to meet all of the sisters to Elvis (the dog) and his parents as well. And he was excited about it, of course! The weather was hot and maybe a bit too hot for Riki, as you can see from the picture. Overall it was quite a nice experience!

Ok, so what was the outcome of the show and/or competition? Well, Elvis didn't qualify in his class. Although Elvis got some good comments from the judge, he felt Elvis was too unsure of himself. After all, he has a tendency to freak out of even the smallest thing, bicycles and trollies for example. So I felt he did ok after all. Here is what the judge said about Elvis (translated from Swedish to English):

"An elegant puppy. Beautiful skin, correct expression. Good eyes, thin fine lips. Excellent ears. Good angles (?) in front, ok breast depth. Good angles on the rear feet. Moves good from the side and back, although still a bit sloppy. Needs to be a bit more sure of himself."

So taken into account that Elvis is only soon 9 months old and this was his second or third apperance in a dog show, I think he did quite well! I couldn't see large differances between the dogs so I feel Elvis got quite nice reviews.

I set up a small collection of the photos we took at Flickr. Go see them by visiting this set.

Air conditioning

2006-07-09T17:03:00.000+03:00

I never saw myself being one of those who buy air conditioning at home. But the weather has been so hot the couple of past days that I cracked. I think you cant put a price on a good nights sleep.

It is ugly as hell and has a quite loud noice. But the room is at nice temperature of 21C :) That's all that matters!

My bike is hot!

2006-07-08T17:01:00.000+03:00

I was riding my motor cycle for fun because the weather was this time so great (approx 9 months of the year the temperature in Finland is below 15C...). The sun was shining from couldless sky and the temperature was at 30C (a bit too hot for riding a bike with all the gears on).

I ended up in Paimio. A really beautiful small town in the country side approx 30km from Turku. I stopped for some Coce and ice cream and suddenly these two nice looking girls come up to me. I was stunned because usually no attractive looking girls come suddenly and talk to me ;) They asked if they could photograph themselves on my bike! Of course!

I think they were from Russia and I have no clue what they were doing in the middle of nowhere, Paimio. But I hope they got some good pictures :)

My new mobile phone - a Sony Ericsson K610i review

2006-07-04T22:11:00.000+03:00

Today I received my new mobile phone, Sony Ericsson K610i.

I had been waiting for "The Perfect Phone" for some while because my earlier phone, Sony Ericsson K700i, is having some construction problems with the joystick (that Sony Ericsosn won't of course confess. But it is a general known fact that earlier Sony Ericsson joystick's are crap, dust collectors).

To put a long story short, I just have to say that I really like the K610i! You can read other general reviews of the phone (for example at Mobile Review) so I wont write anything conclusive. Just give some of my opinions based on some hours of playing around with it.

Pros

3G - I don't know if 3G has delivered even half of the huge hype from the past, but I just have to love it! It's not like wireless broadband but a great improvement from GPRS. Maybe the speed difference feels like the one between a modem and a ISDN connection; nothing like ADSL but a great improvement! 3G was one of the reasons I chose this phone.
size - it's small. I wanted a small phone over a full features Nokia 9300i communicator for example. Weighting at just 96g it lighter than my previous phone, K700i. It's a bit taller in size, but then again a but thinner.
RSS - a perfect application for a mobile phone. I what I really love, is the integration between the RSS reader and the web browser. If a web site has a RSS feed, I can subscribe to it directly from the web pages. I can schedule the feeds to be updated automatically or manually.
Blogging - Blogger is integrated! I can take a picture and publish it directly on my blog without needing to login first. When I first published a picture from the phone, I got a new blog. But when I logged in to this "temporary" blog, I got the chance to merge the mobile blog with my real blog and then in the future all the entries are automatically published on my blog. It's really well implemented! You can take a nice picture and publish an entry for it in literally seconds.
Camera - ok, so the camera is not anything like the one in K800i. It doesn't have autofocus or a flashlight. But who cares? I am not intending to replace my digital camera with my phone. The camera is a really decent 2MP camera that I can take snapshots with. The image manipulation features integrated in the phone are really good which will compensate a bit from the lacking quality of the camera. I can for example take panorama pictures, adjust color levels, brightness, eliminate read-eyes and other basic stuff.

Sony Ericsson has promoted very stongly Sony's Walkman brand. This phone does not have the Walkman MP3 player, but the MP3 player is really decent anyway! I can find songs by artist, genre and playlist. And the MP3 player is playing in the background so I can continue to use my phone as before. Nothing fancy, but works better than in older Sony Ericsson phones.
The phone also includes a Memory Stick micro card reader. I am thinking of buying a 512 MB memory card to hold some music :) (The phone description says that the card is not included, but my phone had a 64MB card inside!)

And needless to say, the Sony Ericsson's GUI is supirior to the Series60 GUI! It's really fast and intuitive. All the settings are in correct places, I can make my old shortcuts and the general placement of menus and icons just feels right, in contrast to the S60 GUI.

Cons:

The web browser is unable to render event slightly more difficult web pages. I haven't tried using it with "Smart-fit" turned off or without pictures. But I guess Opera Mini will have to do.

Sony Ericsson K610i is a great replacement for my K700i! It has all the features I looked for in a modern mobile phone. One can always ask for mobile TV or iPod-like MP3 players in mobile phones, but I already have an iPod and I don't think I currently need mobile TV - I don't really watch TV anyway. So I was looking for a mobile phone and got one that suits me really well.

My bike

2006-07-04T19:30:00.000+03:00

This is a picture of my motorcycle. Its also a test to send a picture from my new Sony Ericsson K610i phone :)

allofmp3.com - too good to be true?

2006-06-10T15:44:00.000+03:00

What would you be willing to pay for a music album in mp3 format if that same album would be available for free, if illigally pirated, from for example The Pirate Bay? Not much, I guess? I think this is the fact what makes allofmp3.com so successful. The site offers music albums in mp3 and ogg vorbis formats, among others, for a price of about $2. And this site is legal! At least under Russian law.

Now the US government has demanded that the site must be shut down. Why? When does the US government realize the small fact that the so called "world outside US borders" is not one of US states! The same thing happened with The Pirate Bay. The rumor has it that the US government forces Swedish authorities to seize the servers despite the fact the the Swedish police knew the server didn't contain anythin illegal!

From the site http://www.museekster.com/allofmp3faq.htm:
â€œMP3's, OGG's, etc are not illegal in the USA and therefore can be imported. There is also no law against importing music from other countries (including Russia). Because you are buying this legally in Russia and then importing to the USA, this should be 100% legit. For example, assuming that Russian Vodka is illegal to buy in the USA on Sunday, but you buy the Russian Vodka in Moscow on Sunday, then you import it into the USA, you have done nothing wrong. Again, this assumes that 1) it is illegal to buy Russian Vodka on Sunday in the USA 2) it is legal in Moscow and 3) it is legal to import Russian Vodka.â€�

The license agreement on allofmp3.com states that you may not use the service if it is in conflict with the legislation of your country. How should I know if this kind of international business between for example myself and a Russian company is legal or not if the product(s) itself is legal!?

I think the music industry, and the US government for that matter, has failed to realize that people will find music illegally and are not willing to pay if they can find the same content for free. They should realize that if they can get any money for downloaded mp3s they should be happy! I am willing to pay for the kind of service allofmp3.com provides, that is, provides fast download rates and latest albums even if I could the same for free and the artists wouldn't get anything at all. Now they get at least something...

Last but not least; I am not supporting piracy in general! I do buy CD albums from all the bands I really like (I have about 150 CD albums)! These CDs I would anyway rip to mp3s and put them into my MP3 jukebox.
But then there is music I might be interested in, but I wouldn't want to pay the full price for it - then the options are to pirate the content, or buy it cheap from allofmp3.com.

DogCam

2006-06-08T12:55:00.000+03:00

I put up a webcam so I can follow from work what our two dogs are doing :) So can you at http://www.johanpaul.com/rikicam.html

Note: The webcam if probably offline in the evenings. And probably even more often :)

The next game console?

2006-06-07T09:46:00.000+03:00

I started playing computer games on my friend's Commodore64. I've always loved computer gaming over console gaming but sooner or later I have to admit that console gaming is somewhat more enjoyable than playing a game on your PC.

First of all you can sit on the couch, sit back and relax. With HDTV resolution the console games look even better on your TV than on your monitor. And your monitor is probably not a 32" wide screen either.

XBox introduced the fact that online gaming can be done with consoles. The next generation consoles all have online support. So not even this supports PC gaming anymore.

But in some areas console gaming can't beat PC gaming - at least yet. I can't imagine playing Civilization 4 or The Sims on a console. Strategy and simulators will probably be the strong point for PC gaming even in the future. But the fact is that shooters (Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2...) and RPG games (The Elder's Scroll: Oblivion, ...) are enormously popular genres which both work very well on consoles.

So probably I have to upgrade my Playstation2 to a next generation gameing console anyway (of course I can stop playing console games, but maybe that's not an option in the short run...)

Playstation 3
Sony's PS2 is the second most sold game console after the PS1. So Sony has an enourmous influence on the whole console gaming phenomenon. It is thanks to the PS2, the gaming industri is a larger business than the Hollywood movie industry!

But I don't know what to expect from the upcoming PS3.

It's late. Microsoft's XBox 360 will have an 1 year upfront before Sony even gets the hardware to stores. During this time, the 360's games have also evolved to a second or third generation. SOny will have some catch-up to do.
The price. I can buy a XBox 360 with all the goodies for 400 euros. Why would I want to spend 600 euros on some other hardware with probably the same (or even less) processing power?
Blu-ray. Why?! What's with the new technology? Why invent the wheel once again? We already have DVD and HD-DVD which both are already working technologies and would be enough for next generation gaming. *sigh*
Online gaming. If you belive the myths, Sonys online gaming platform is still vapourware when Microsoft already has a working online community.

And that's not even all. It seems that Sony's engineers screwed up big time. Just read this article from Ihe Inquirer: PS3 Hardware slow and broken. I think we have to be optimistic if we think Sony will get the hardware to stores this year.

The only thing that can save PS3 is the games. People buy the hardware to play games. Killer exclusive games like the GTA series could save it. But unfortunately for example GTA4 will be available for the 360. And the next big hype thing from Remedy, Alan Wake, will be exlusivly available for the 360 and Windows Vista. Great marketing campaign there from Microsoft!

Maybe I just wait and see. And then buy the XBox 360...

Sony-Ericsson or Nokia - that is the question.

2006-06-06T23:27:00.000+03:00

I've been looking for a new phone for about six months now. I know the features I look in a phone but it just seems that there isn't a phone with everything I want. That is a typical dilemma in life of course, but at least I want to try to find the perfect phone for me.

(Sony-)Ericsson has been my phone for the past 5 years now. I never really liked the Series60 user interface and at the time I change my Nokia 6110 for a Ericsson T39, I haven't looked back. I still think Sony-Ericsson makes the best phones out there. But don't get me wrong; Nokia has phones with loads of features that no one else has, but I don't see myself in the market spot using those kinds of phones (e.g. I don't want to open an Excell spreadsheet in my phone... gee!).

I didn't see any reason to buy a Nokia before Nokia E60 came out. It has loads of features other phones a waiting for. But Sony-Ericsson seems almost too perfect for me.

I got this opportunity to buy the Nokia E60 really cheap. But now I really don't know which one to buy. Here's my thoughts of the both phones:

Really small, like my current phone, K700i. Fits the hand really nice.
3G communication
HTML4 complian www-browser.
2MP camera + integrated VGA kamera => video calls possibly.
I love the S-E user interface. It's logical and fast.

Brilliant display (16M colors).
Great communication (3G + WLAN)
Great WWW-browser (Opera)
Better email client than S-E.
I don't like the Series60 user interface.
Earlier Symbian OS versions have been really buggy, slow and both!
The phone is really big in my hand (not compared to a 9300i, but compared to the K610i)
I get it really cheap (which is not anything close to free though...).

So I don't really know what to do. In any case, both are great phones. Now I guess it is a matter of prioritizing. If I had lots of money, I would probably buy them both ;)

We got a new dog

2006-06-06T19:24:00.000+03:00

Today we got our second dog! It's an 7 month old Italian Greyhound called Elvis.

We wanted a second dog as a friend for our first dog, Riki. Of course Elvis will not replace Riki in any way and thus Elvis is on a trial period for a while. If we have any kinds of problems, we have to give Elvis back. But that's ok because Riki is of course number one :)

But an Italian Greyhound is an interesting breed. They have been used a lot in painting and have been a popular dog by the royalties. It is an active dog that is popular in for example agility courses. Lure coursing is another activity well-fitted to the Italian Greyhound, and they seem to enjoy it tremendously. Although the Italian Greyhound is a very fast dog, it is not as well suited to racing as its larger cousin. In a matter of fact, our interest for the Italian Greyhound waked some weeks ago when we tried lure cursing with our Riki dog.

An other interesting aspect of the breed is that it is not that common. During our first walks out, Elvis cought a lot of attention. It looks anything but a typical dog like a Golden retriever for example. It look maybe more of a overgrown rat :) ...just kidding. Elvis is quite addorable.

Lordi won Eurovision song contest - YES!!!

2006-05-21T16:49:00.000+03:00

Lordi did something to the Finnish music industry no-one thought possible some weeks ago. Lordi won the Eurovision song contest with an all-time score record!

I am totally speechless! I have loved heavy metal music all my life and I didn't see a day coming where heavy will win the most ridiculous pop music contest. But here it is. Now metal music can been seen as an accepted trend of music.

I think a part of it is just because of what the Eurovision song contest has become - a ridiculous song contenst and Lordi was the right type of anarcy it needed. But the song was good!

HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH!!

The first post

2004-05-25T02:56:00.000+03:00

Yes, here it is!

This is the beginning of Kypeli's Blog - first post ever. More to come...