Science has confirmed what we all know: tentacle monsters are kinky!
Apropos, Ghastly has gone completely and utterly bonkers. No surprise there, either...
180 pages to go. Now in the middle of Leibniz and Newton. This era feels rather familiar, since it's only been a couple of months since I read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Curiously, although Newton was born before Leibniz, and they were quite heavily involved with each other, in the book I'm reading, the section on Leibniz is in the chapter on 17th century, whereas Newton has been placed in the 18th century.
Constant reading for days in a row is quite tolling. You'd think that it's no big deal to lie on a sofa all day long, but eventually the words start flowing in slower and slower... Still, it's quite an experience, not having any distractions from reading (apart from this, of course). The last time I did something similar was after last Christmas, when I decided to read the Lord of the Rings as fast as I could. Took about three days, even as a full-time occupation. I'm not a very fast reader. But I think that it gave me a much more coherent and immersive reading experience than had I just read it, say, a hundred pages per day while doing other things the rest of the time. I can hope that this will be true this time, too.
In other news, here is the eternal truth. I'd by the original if it were by a Finn. Which reminds me, I should finally call Petri Hiltunen and buy another Väinämöinen strip I've been intending to...
Gaahh! I am only now getting through the scholastic Middle Ages and the relatively uneventful renaissance, to the point where something actually starts to happen, i.e. Descartes. Two days left, 280 pages to go, this is gonna get tight...
(Yeah yeah, 280 pages should be a piece of cake, and I would read it in a couple of hours if this were, say, Pratchett. Alas, the text is a bit heftier than that.)
Today (oops, yesterday), I have only lain in a sofa, read philosophy, eaten pasta and apple pie, and drunk mind-boggling amounts of tea. (Incidentally, Nordqvist's Bukhial Assam TGFOP is super-duper-yummy.) I have two more days of the same to look forward to. Haste notwithstanding, I'm not complaining. If I cannot be productive or social, this is pretty much the next best thing.
Oh, I think I actually had something contentful to say at some point, but you know how it goes...
Ah.
I'm supposedly on a study leave. I procrastinate.
Finally, I read Eco's latest. It's about a man who loses himself in books. For some reason, after finishing it, I finally feel like studying.
Largely at random, guided by exam dates, I choose to study some literature and philosophy.
I read some weird shit about literary history and intertextuality. And Aristotle's Poetics.
I'm reminded of Eco. Indeed. The Name of the Rose. The lost second part.
I'm reminded of something else. Sandman? Or what? Something about anagnorisis and peripeteia. But I can't find it.
I go to the exam. Ho hum, piece of cake. I start reading for the next one. I read some weird shit about pre-socratics, gnostics and neoplatonists. Aristotle. And the arabs. Quite an open-minded bunch, in those days.
I'm reminded of Sandman. Indeed. Ramadan. Haroun Al-Raschid. In his court were the greatest teachers of the Hebrews, and the greatest monks of the pale Christians, and the greatest scholars of the Q'uran.
I read about Al-Ghazali and Averroës.
I'm reminded of Borges. Indeed. Averroës' Quest. Tahafut al-Tahafut. And Poetics again.
I'm reminded of Eco, again. Indeed. Mouse or Rat? Borges. Averroës. Poetics. It's too absurd to be true. But it is.
There's no escape from this labyrinth. But why would I want one?
It's things like this (entry 03/05) that remind me why I so much want to have kids.
If you read only one thing from the net this year, this ought to be it.
Will Eisner is dead.
Ho hum. 3³a now. Yay. Whee. Whoopi.
Another day, another dollar... another irreplaceable chunk out of a finite and rapidly passing lifetime. --Calvin's Dad
Right. A list. Woohoo. Here's a random sample (which was actually played) from what's on my machine:
This may or may not be in any way relevant to what I actually listen to.
Interim report: I'm over three quarters into the book, and I still have absolutely no idea what "Runes of the Earth" are supposed to be.
Gosh, I've never drunk Darjeeling this good before.
Just some quick notes. Firstly, work is cool at the moment. I'm actually itching to get back to work. The stuff I'm doing is just the sort of thing that I like and am good at, yet it's still not so universally useful that I'd have qualms about letting it become proprietary. I'm not sure how long this state of affairs will last, but for the moment it is quite enough to have something to do that is both fun and profitable.
Yesterday a bookstore beckoned irresistibly and I found myself trapped within its demesne. I released me from its grasp only after I chose to propagate some of its meme-carriers beyond its boundaries. One of these was Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson. I don't read very much of so-called fantasy nowadays, but Donaldson has always been one of my favorites for reasons which I may or may not discuss at a later time. More on the book once I've read it.
The other book was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Apparently the writer is well-renowned in some circles, but I'd never heard of him. The book was just placed prominently and the title caught my eye, so I bought it on a whim because, well, I could. This is still a novel concept to me, being able to buy commodities on a whim. Again, more on the book once I've read it. Maybe.
In nearby blogspace there has been some talk on the effect of role-playing games on imagination. This is a subject on which I have many thoughts whose full treatment must await some hypothetical "moment of spare time". But I just want to mention that I remember reading, about ten years ago, in Michael Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance a passing mention to the effect that the ideas which were vague and intangible to Moorcock's generation must be very clear and concrete to younger ones. And I was quite convinced that here he referred (in part) to role-playing games and how they offer a systematic way to categorize and mathematize various concepts that fiction (intentionally) leaves to imagination.
No further pictures yet. I only have spare time in the evenings, and then it's a bit too dark to get reasonable pictures with a hand-held camera. Maybe I ought to get a pedestal...
Toy! Toy! Toy! I've got a new toy! Boy, oh boy, what a joy! For a boy to have new toy!
Ahem.
After some contemplation, I finally purchased a digital camera. The model I ended up choosing was Canon PowerShot A75. It's rather a low-end model (i.e. cheap enough), but most reviewers seem to hold it in relatively high regard, especially where bang-for-buck is concerned. Its resolution is "only" in the three megapixel range, but I don't think the resolution of the CCD will very soon be the limiting factor in the sharpness of my shots. Most importantly, the camera provides full manual control over all the settings. Now I only need to learn to make use of it...
I bought an additional 256 MB CompactFlash card, too. A funny realization struck me shortly thereafter: my camera now has more than twice as much memory as my home desktop computer. Also, my home machine won't support USB (well, not without some tweaking, anyway), so I have to transfer the images elsewhere...
I will probably post further pictures once I get the gist of this photography thingy, but pending that, here's the first picture I took and here's yours truly, taken with the traditional "hold it out as far as you can and point it at yourself" -technique. And yeah, both images are crappified even further by downscaling and recompression.
Ho hum. Evenings are hard to measure. Interesting topics, good food and drink and lots of nice people, but also alienation, jealousy and dejection. Pretty much evens it out.
Then again, my salad was apparently a success despite the lack of quality materials, so maybe it was all ultimately worthwhile.
Well, it's 13th already, but never mind. No real content this time, but I'm just trying to get into the habit of frequent updates. For lack of anything better, I'll just indulge in mindless link propagation: here's something beautiful.
Back. Yay. Maybe.
I took a day off from work today. I intended to take a math test, but eventually I realized that a couple of hours is not quite enough to prepare for a test for a course that nominally requires six weeks of studying. Not in this case, anyway. It might have been.
So instead, I went to the Kumpula campus where they had a health day of some kind, and among other things there were open demonstration classes for various sports. So I ended up trying capoeira (for an hour) and wall-climbing (for maybe half an hour). Both were pretty fun, and I was actually pretty proud of getting all the way to the ceiling on my first try (but of course it was the easiest possible route). After that, I couldn't resist going to the gym, too, since it was just so conveniently close. Just some back exercise, bench presses and a couple of deadlifts. Maybe an hour or so.
Then to Exactum, and I printed out the really-really-final version of my MS thesis, but found out that it was too late that I could really submit it properly. Ah well, but at least I managed to forage some sorely needed nutrition from Gurula. Though "nutrition" is probably not the most accurate word...
And after that, there was the regular acrobatics class. An hour and a half.
I haven't even eaten a real meal today. By all accounts, I should be dead asleep by now, and I'm expecting to doze off any moment now. But awaiting that, here's a quick update after the blogging pause.
Yeah, so I went to work. The pay is OK, the distance is optimal, the place is nice, and it seems that I'm soon going to get to do something that falls within my particular line of expertise. I find that work eats all my time, but then again, I haven't had time for anything meaningful even earlier, so now I'm at least making money while lamenting that.
I got my thesis ready. Really ready. I still need to put it in a nice plastic cover and hand it over for official acceptance and archival in the library of the department, but that's all that remains to be done. You can read it here. Note the fancy PDF stuff I added at the last minute. Especially in the bibliography.
Physical activity these days includes acrobatics and modern dance, and the occasional gym, maybe once a week or thereabouts.
Mental activity only manifests itself during leisure, and I haven't had much of that these days, weeks, years...
The same goes for social activity. Next to nil, but thankfully not quite.
So that's about it for now. Still no life, but at least enough diversions so I don't have too much time to worry about it.
Next update to be expected in a day, week, year...
Yesterday's workout:
And again miscellaneous smaller moves.
Off for midsummer, now.
Yesterday I was thoroughly depressed about the usual things: loneliness, stalling of the thesis, general lifelessness, etc. This morning I find that I'm fairly happy again, although my situation has not changed one bit. I have been quite prone to these mood fluctuations lately (well, maybe always), which is, in a way, scary. It drives home the point that instead of being dependent on your goals, your views and your way of life, happiness is simply a matter of random (or assisted) chemical changes in the brain...
Was off to the country for the weekend, for a small-scale family reunion. Only minor and occasional exercise, and of course a teensy bit of real work: carrying water, shoveling sand, etc. Yesterday again to the gym:
And some lunges and military presses with 30 kg or so. And some shoulder abductions, and whatnot.
Gym day. Back and hamstrings still a bit sore, so no deadlifts today. Instead, squats and bench presses. Again, sets of 10:
I have to admit, bench press is pretty darned addictive. It's just so easy: all you have to do is lie comfortably on a bench, and then just push the bloody bar upwards. Plain and simple, no hassles. And of course it's kind of neat to get such a direct quantifiable measure of your strength. Maybe that's why this particular feat is so commonly practiced in some circles: it's your ability score for Strength. :)
Of course it's a fairly useless exercise really, exactly for the same reasons that make it so comfy: you don't need to strain your lower body at all, only your arms and chest. An overhead press or some Olympic weightlifting forms would probably be more beneficial, but, hey, the bench press is just such a classic thing that I have to find out the answer to "paljonks nousee penkistä?" first.
Viljo was again very supportive and full of praise. Which was nice. I don't get genuine spontaneous compliments very often.
Nada. Rest day. My hamstrings and spinal muscles are fairly sore, which is rather an unusual feeling, what with those being the kinds of muscles one rarely exerts during the course of an ordinary day.
Still, it's a great feeling. By being sore, the muscle makes me more aware of its existence and nature. I've known previously, in theory, that the erector spinae muscle stretches all the way up from the tail bone, yet I've usually conceptualized the lower back and the upper back as separate entities. But now, when the muscle is tender to the touch all through its length, I can really feel that I've got these two long thingies surrounding and supporting my spinal column. Which is nice.
Ran to Vallila with gym gear on my back. Maybe 3 km or so. It was just a warmup, so I had no qualms slowing down to a walk occasionally.
At the gym some basic exercises with free weights, again with some advice from Viljo. My knee is still a bit sore when it's flexed under stress, so I skipped squats. So mainly deadlifts and bench presses, then.
And again miscellaneous other stuff. Still just trying to get the hang of it, I don't want too much strain yet. I'm very interested in seeing what my 5 rep maxes are for various moves, but I don't want to move into such intensity very fast.
Still, my back and arms feel a bit tired even now. It's pretty clear that my lower back is rather weak relative to the surrounding muscles. No wonder, it's almost impossible, or at least very uncomfortable, to train without any gear. So deadlifts are really valuable here.
I happened to check some server statistics today. Apparently this log has been accessed 159 times during May. This despite the fact that there had been no updates between January 28th and May 23rd. And this is pretty friggin' scary. I thought I had managed to bore everyone away, but apparently this isn't the case. Or then those are just scans by bots, not by people.
I'm extremely thankful that I have no access to more detailed server logs. Ignorance is bliss, truly. If I knew accurately who read this, I might very well become even more cautious about what I write. So I will rather be in the dark and fantasize that this is being read by exactly the people whom I would like to read this, and no one else.
But I think my plan will from now on be to produce more frivolous drivel about mundane things, until I've convinced everyone that there's nothing worth seeing here. Then I might perhaps move on to more consequential things.
The absolute minimum, just about. I didn't do anything all day, and then I was on my way to shower and thought: "well, might as well make use of it". So I just quickly did a couple of crunches, push-ups, chin-ups, sideways leg raises with ankle weights, and some lying side exercises (don't know the proper name). When I was finally sweaty, there was some point to going to shower. Some wrist curls later in the day. Those are pretty easy with hand weights, when watching TV with arms on the arm rests.
I intended to go to Unicafe for a late lunch, but I found out that the only one that was still supposed to be open was closed for repairs. So I went to Rax for a bite, but I needed something to pass the time with. I went to Akateeminen, browsed here and there, and spotted LXG 1 in the comics shelf. Leafed around a little, and on a sudden burst of inspiration, I bought Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. The English translation was only 3 euros as a trade paperback.
It's a marvellous book, really. Gripped me along instantly. I don't think I've ever read it properly before. My dad used to read passages from it as a bedside tale when I was but a wee bairn, but I don't really remember anything about it. Further comments once I've finished it.
There are only a couple of TV series which I follow with any regularity. One of them is Agency, shown on Monday nights on Nelonen. It's got intelligence games, internal power politics, paranoia and technobabble, just in the right proportion. And today's episode showed that there is even a measure of continuity, always a good thing.
Yes, I've been lazy.
Today I ran to Seurasaari, around it, and back. Circa 8 km or thereabouts. I went a bit too fast at first, though, and lapsed to walking every now and then when on my way back. Lovely weather, lovely surroundings. The soil was still damp in Seurasaari after yesterday's rains, which strengthened all the smells. The world seemed to be full of cuddling couples, which was a bit depressing, though.
Occasional casual training at home for the past few weeks, no free weights or anything serious. I do note, though, that I can now do 14 chin-ups, whereas a couple of weeks ago I could only do 12. Visible progress, whee.
A week or so ago I ran a bit around Töölönlahti, and then proceeded to do some pushups and squats on the grass. I don't know exactly what happened, but suddenly my right knee got sore and I couldn't really squat at all. I let it be for a while, though, and now it seems to be all right again.
The Wikipedia project has been on hiatus: I've skipped several articles. I do intend to catch up, though.
I participated in the 2004 ICFP Programming Contest. The task was a bit too big for a single person in three days (and I'm really bad at time management on a tight schedule), but I left a crappy submission anyway. The task itself was unbelievably fun, though. I'm still working on it.
I wrote some CipherSabers for myself. These are not meant to be pretty or modular, simply compact (in fact they were much prettier when I first wrote them): C, Java, Haskell and O'Caml.
Some mindless link propagation: Donald Knuth's thoughts on the future and pricing of scientific journals.
Finally, I'd like to note that BBC World has some neat documentaries on brains and consciousness and the OED.
Incidentally, if you have an account at the University of Helsinki, you have access to OED online. Just use the university proxy, and it will let you directly in. I just mentioned this, because it is utterly neat and it has not been advertised very much.
It's past midnight, but this is really the entry for May 25th.
I went to the gym with Viljo, who showed me some basic barbell moves: squat, deadlift, and bench press. Apparently I grokked the technique fairly well, although my ankles don't seem to flex quite enough to retain balance during a deep squat with toes pointing directly forward. Thankfully nothing prevents from turning the toes slightly outwards. Also, it will take time to learn to balance the bar in a bench press. Then again, for me the coordination challenge is really the thing that justifies the exercise: if it were just about pushing power, I'd find it pretty distasteful. More about my distastes perhaps later.
I really only tried to get the feeling of the moves with an empty bar (20 kg), so I can't really say that I had a systematic "workout". Nevertheless, here's a bit of what I remember doing, again very approximate, as I wasn't really striving for predetermined sets or anything.
Plus some miscellaneous other tidbits like push-ups, chin-ups, crunches, back extensions, and some seated cable rows. But again, nothing very systematic, just playing around.
All in all, it was relatively fun, especially since the Wallila gym is small, quiet and cozy. If I keep at it, with a couple of weeks' adaptation I should be able to get into some actual strength training.
I once dreamt about reading the entire Macropædia (the encyclopedic part) of Encyclopædia Britannica someday. I doubt this will happen in the limited time allotted to me, but it's a nice thought, anyway.
I think I figured out the next best thing, though: if I just have the tenacity to keep at it, I'll henceforth read every featured article on Wikipedia's front page. In general they are of reasonable length, and from what I have gathered, they contain more information than misinformation. And, most importantly, they span the whole range of human knowledge (although the distribution is understandably biased) while still concentrating on fairly notable subjects.
I have no experience in maintaining training logs, but here goes. Today I mostly concentrated on the arms. The following were intermingled throughout the day. The numbers are approximations.
...plus some weighted crunches and maybe something else. And a fairly thorough (for real, this time) stretching for the lower body.
No, this is not typical. But I'm currently a bit excited about exercise, and apparently I will do anything if it gives me an excuse not to touch my thesis... :)
I had some further thoughts about the nature of physical exercise in today's society, but I'll leave that for later.
There are many things I would like to write about. Things I really care about. However, all of those issues are too big. Whenever I start writing about one of those things, the text just keeps on inflating until I get tired of it, and it never gets finished.
Yes, it's bloody frustrating, especially considering that this blogling is just about my only channel for venting random thoughts (which is, incidentally, one of those Big Issues). Still, I'd like to show at least some signs of life in the case that someone out there has any interest in my ramblings.
So, I'll give up. At least for now. All the significant things require patience that exceeds mine. So I'll just write about some frivolous everyday matters that don't require any real editing effort.
The good news is that I have perhaps learned to take a little less stress about the thesis. The bad news is that this doesn't change the fact that it still isn't finished.
For the past month or so I've been pretty much stuck. There have been a number of reasons: some good feedback from the advisor made me relax momentarily, except that the moment seemed to stretch indefinitely. The weather has been so good that it's hard to convince oneself that struggling with the thesis is a better thing to do than enjoying the air and the sun. And Java's class loaders are just such a crock that it's nigh impossible to write about them briefly and clearly.
In general, I'm starting to feel like I never ever ever again want to write about other people's work. It puts you into an impossible dilemma: you have to describe the original work faithfully, but you also have to explain things simply enough that the reader can understand it. So when I'm writing about some existing work and trying to put it into an understandable form, I can simultaneously hear the original authors complaining: "That's not what we wrote! You're altering it beyond recognition!" and the reader complaining: "That's too complex! I can't understand it! What does all of this extra stuff have to do with the issue at hand?"
Wish I could just move on to original work. When you're writing about your own ideas, your only responsibilities are to the reader.
Recently I've gotten a bit excited about training again. Or perhaps rather I've allowed myself to pay more attention to it since I've learned to worry less about the thesis.
I find myself currently more interested about the fundamentals: strength, flexibility, balance, body control, than about particular applications. I haven't been to sword classes for two months now, partly because I've thought (wrongly) that it'd save me more time for the thesis. But also because right at the moment other things interest me more.
In the summer I expect I'll get acquainted with weight training, and try to do other forms of training a bit more systematically. Usually I've been really haphazard: I've done a couple of push-ups or chin-ups or crunches or whatever when I have felt like it, and I've often had long pauses of inactivity. A real schedule might help.
To help me with being systematic, I think I might start a training log, at least in the form of blog notes about what I have or haven't done recently.
So. Today I took it pretty easy. It was a nice weather, though a bit cold, so I took a training mat and went to Hesperia park (the western end) and camped under a nice tree. I decided just to do a warm-up and a thorough stretching, with "thorough" meaning "takes more than half an hour". I did it all wrong, though, since I had forgotten everything I had learned from Brad Appleton's guide. Ah well, I'll do better next time.
I have been attempting to cut down all inessential activities to let me better concentrate on my thesis. So far the attempt has mostly been in vain, but as a consequence I haven't contributed anything to this log for a while.
In addition, all the topics I would like to write about are so huge that it'd take quite a while to give them a proper treatment even if I didn't have other things to do. And I find myself quite unable to write in brief. I'd find a shortened version merely vague and misleading.
However, for what it's worth, here are some of the things I would post here, had I the time and the stamina to spew out some text. So, below are descriptions of rants, some of which exist only in my mind, while some are unfinished sketches.
I spent the week after Christmas doing practically nothing but reading.
Scientific dialogue ain't what it used to be. Nor are the scientists. Here's a pearl by Russell:
There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.
The perfect introduction to understanding the endless language design wars in comp.lang.scheme.
The numerous reasons why Peter Jackson sucks and Kersti Juva rules. Also some Eówyn-fawning and a discussion on reading ergonomics.
I didn't know that a dream could make you laugh yourself awake.
Something that began as a comment to the "why is everyone whining" -theme, but evolved into a rant about the purpose of life and the nature of Man. Includes uninformed comments about Buddhism, and some choice quotes from eg. Tolkien, Stephen Donaldson and Eino Leino. And some whining of my own, of course.
The stupendous cultural value of P2P systems. The nature of musical genres. Amazon's proximity metric.
Also, on understanding Metal: a quest through Wikipedia, a gazillion songs and reviews, and finally to Tavastia.
Surviving through fencing, acrobatics and ballet. Some notes on each. How dance teachers seem to know lots about dance but little about teaching.
So. That was a sample of the things I might have posted here, had I posted anything. I may yet finish these rants, like a gazillion others. But for now I'll still try to direct my quite insufficient writing energy to the thesis. Expect few updates in the near future.
Tadaima!
Christmas went by, and I came back to Helsinki for New Year. Now I'm off again. Will be back in a week or so.
I do have a wealth of things to write about, but I have been too busy (read: lazy) to put the thoughts into words. I hope to correct the issue when I get back.
Due to a chmod blunder, this page was unavailable for a while after the previous update. Thanks to Seanna for pointing it out. Fear not, avid readers, I'm not quitting quite yet.
I'm too lazy right now to think of anything very profound to write, so I think I'll just indulge in some uncharacteristic exhibitionism and tell miscellaneous things and thoughts about my day. That's what a log is originally supposed to be about, after all...
I've been mostly pissed off for the last few days. I'm not sure why. It seems to be a kind of a feedback loop: first I get stressed by the hassle of Christmas shopping, then I get pissed off because I note that I'm wasting my precious holiday by being stressed instead of relaxing, and finally I'm pissed off simply for being pissed off... it's a vicious circle. Seems to be finally getting better, though.
I once again spent a while wondering why I can't have a more social musical taste. I'm jealous to all the people who find a wealth of festivals and gigs with music to their liking, where they can gather with similarly minded people. But where can I go? There are no concerts on John Williams' scores (though eg. "Luke and Leia" can occasionally be heard on Classic FM). The Adiemus singers are Finns, but I doubt Jenkins and Stockley will ever tour in Finland. Nor will Enya. Half of the Beatles are dead. My taste in "classical" music is so irregular that in any given concert I will be lucky if there is even one piece that I truly appreciate. The Finnish bands from the eighties, that I've only now learned to appreciate, are no longer. I guess I should try to acquaint myself a bit better with eg. domestic melodic metal, although Nightwish and Sonata Arctica aren't very easy to see live in the near future...
(Hm. Intriguing. Apparently Amorphis sounds much better when one is drunk. Perhaps this is the real secret...)
The last time I felt true bliss from a live performance was last summer at the Hauho music festival while listening to Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence. Of all the performances during the festival, that was the only one that I could at all relate with, and even that was a rare, rare occasion. Still, that alone was worth it...
To other things. For some reason I only today opened the birthday present my father had given me. It turned out to be (a Finnish translation of) Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. It attempts to pierce the mystery enshrouding a controversial meeting of Wittgenstein, Popper and Russell, where Wittgenstein supposedly threatened Popper with a hot poker. Of course the real meat of the story is the background of the philosophical differences that led to such a heated debate. After some thirty pages into the book, it seems quite interesting. Much better written than most of the textbooks on contemporary philosophy that I've read.
In the morning I'm going to Hyvinkää to spend Christmas with relatives. I'm not sure how long I'll stay there, so I made sure I have enough to read. I'll take with me The Lord of the Rings, Maailmanhistorian Pikkujättiläinen, Lisp in Small Pieces plus my thesis folder that is full of papers on reflection and type systems...
I haven't read LotR for many years, and actually I've never read it in full in English. This fall I decided to get all the "canon" Tolkien books in hardback, so I've had this beautiful Harper-Collins edition for some months now, and I've been itching to delve into it. I thought it might be interesting to see how fast I can read it, so I'm looking forward to spending my every waking moment in Middle-earth for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year.
I'll be taking time off from the Net, and probably won't be updating the log for a while.
Good night, merry Christmas, live long and prosper.
Rhia wrote about creativity and (not) finding the time to capitalize on it. I'm afraid the problem of organizing one's time is all too familiar to myself, too, and it actually depresses me to even think about all the time I never have because I manage to waste it on pointless things. But here goes, anyway...
The last time Neil Gaiman visited Finland, he was, once again, asked the standard question: "Where do you get your inspiration?" His answer was: "Boredom. Excrutiating boredom." According to Neil, when you watch a school play (something by Henrik Ibsen) with very bad acting, and you just can't leave in the middle of the play, then your brain will attempt to escape the horror of it by starting to generate fantasy diversions. Hence, creativity.
And I pretty much have to agree. At least to me, original thoughts come up only when there is nothing of interest to distract the mind. But this is a rare situation in today's hectic world, where it is all too easy to find something external to occupy the mind with for every waking moment. And the non-waking moments are no doubt productive but often too transient...
Funnily enough, for me running is one of the few situations when there is such a lack of external stimuli that I find myself delving into thought. While running, one just can't read a book, or surf the net, or watch TV, or do anything else that might draw your attention. At first one of course has to concentrate on my breathing and rhythm, but once one has a steady pace, and the route is the same old and there is nothing interesting in the scenery, then the internal entertainment generators will kick in.
Now, I don't think I've ever pondered four-dimensional geometry while running, but I have thought about technical matters every now and then. For instance, one time when I was running around Töölönlahti (quite a boring route to repeat endlessly), I started thinking about internal data representations for lists, and ended up reinventing cdr-coding.
Unfortunately, running, and taking a shower, and being in a transport without anything to read, are for me just about the only common situations where there are no external stimuli, and no immediate way to obtain them. The rest of the time there is always something at hand, and there is always some need to do something. True leisure, without any pressure to do anything, is a rare commodity these days. I sure as hell don't have it during semesters, when there is always some project that needs to be done, or some material that needs to be studied...
The best word for this elusive state is joutilaisuus. It is when there is absolutely nothing for you to do. Then, if you get a pen and a piece of blank paper, you will eventually be forced to relieve your boredom by scribbling something on it. But this state is difficult to achieve. And paper is not always the handiest tool. I wish there was an electronic equivalent to a piece of blank paper. A laptop doesn't cut it, no: it's always too full of interesting stuff you can play with...
Thankfully, I think I will get to be joutilas for the next week or two. Must be the first time in ages...
Been busy lately, hence the delay. I've built this huge entry but haven't managed to post it earlier.
As can be seen, I added "permalinks" to individual entries. I also fixed the document to be really valid XML, since somebody already pointed out that it didn't quite pass validation.
This kind of thing is exactly why I feared that even using plain XHTML would be bad. However much I try to avoid it, I already started adding features. And since this is not automagically generated, I had to add those anchors semi-manually. Soon this page, too, will become an unmaintainable mess...
I should have sticked to plaintext.
On the 18th I turned 26. It feels like graduating from a belt exam: not so much an accomplishment, but more an increase in the expectations from you. And if you can't do anything you couldn't do the previous time, you've spent your time pretty badly...
As a birthday present, my mom bought me an hour's osteopathic treatment. It felt kind of funny, because, well, it didn't really feel like anything. The osteopath just moved my limbs a little this way and that but nothing very extreme. Then he did a couple of abrupt pushes and something said "click" in my neck and in my lower back. It was funny to hear such a sound without it actually feeling like anything. But he claimed that it was noticeably better afterwards. I guess I will see the truth of this once I go back to the acrobatics class...
Christmas must have been invented so I wouldn't be bored from lack of stress even during holidays.
I have nothing against Christmas. I don't even have much against the implied commercialism and materialism. I quite like giving and getting presents, and I don't much mind spending money either. Usually I try to save what little money I have, but presents are one of the things that money is saved for.
Yet still the past week has been hell. It's just too bloody hard to figure out presents that the receivers would appreciate and don't already possess. I fear that this really is an indication that I don't know my relatives as well as I should...
Esse est percipi. Qui solus est, nemo eum percipit.
...and now that I think about it, this log may be a sort of an emergency measure to alleviate the issue. Not a particularly discriminating one, though...
I've never really cared much about money. It's mostly a bother, a completely inadequate way to quantify the "value" of things, which people nevertheless seem to take seriously, because quantifiability by itself is so useful. As long as I've been able to afford all the basic necessities, I've usually decided to spend my time on things I've considered more worthwhile than amassing wealth. Mostly studying and other forms of self-development.
Lately, though, I have come to reconsider my position, not least due to witnessing the effects of being a little better off. And I think I have to concede that some material wealth would be advantageous for my purposes: it would yield more books, more space, better tools, more options on everything. It is a startling realization that money really is essential not only for frivolous luxuries but also for the things that really are important.
This is really the optimization problem from Chez Geek: you need to get the optimal combination of time and money. I know several "corporate drones". One friend of mine works for an IT consulting firm and makes hoards of money and even spends it on spectacular home theatre equipment and gazillions of DVDs... and then never has the time to watch them. Then there's me, at the other end of the spectrum: quite a lot of time available, but not really enough wealth to make the most out of it. Not good either.
To remedy the problem I guess I'll have to get a real job pretty soon now and put my studies on hold, or at least give them a secondary priority. I'll try to graduate first, though. That seems like a sensible turning point.
A day job, even an interesting one, tends to feel like misuse of time: "why am I here working for the sake of mere money when I could be somewhere else doing and learning really important things". But I guess one just has to think of it as a kind of an investment: you sacrifice some of your time so that you could make better use of the rest of it.
One of the reasons why I'm a bit loath to become "well-off" and get bigger quarters quite yet is that it feels kind of like an admission of defeat. I've thought that it would be too much hassle and waste of money to get a bigger single apartment because I've always expected to eventually need to move into a double. So it seemed more sensible to retain my low lifestyle and unbeatably economic tiny apartment until that need arose. But, alas, it never did. Not all things are to be...
Now I just wish I had had this revelation about the value of money already during the heyday of the IT boom... :)
Spoilers forthcoming. Avert thy eyes lest they be revealed untimely.
So then. Yeah, I saw the movie, like everyone else by now. Yes, it was visually pretty darn astounding. Minas Tirith was Minas Tirith. The right feeling was there, and the original plot was followed better than in The Two Towers.
But. From the Battle of the Pelennor Fields onward I couldn't really enjoy the film. I was too saddened with the knowledge that the one good chance of getting a good filmatization of LotR was now blown. It wasn't this one, and there probably won't be another one in my lifetime.
So what was wrong? I can understand that the new format requires many concessions and divergences from the original story. I can accept that elves were a bit more active in the movie than in the book. And I can even accept the seemingly pointless excursions in The Two Towers. But there is a limit. And the RotK movie stepped over it.
There is no Gondor in the movie.
Instead of Minas Tirith, the glorious capital of the greatest nation of Men, we see Minas Tirith, the decrepit palace of some decadent old fool. The palace is convincingly disguised as a fortress, but the illusion vanishes the moment the first boulder hits the walls.
Instead of a professional army that has hundreds of years of experience with facing Minas Morgul, we see lots of confused folk who don't even have the sense of moving civilians into safety before enemy trebuchets start to fling.
Instead of the three thousand men that arrive from the Outlands, we see... nothing. It's as if there is nothing else to Gondor except Minas Tirith, and even it is not very glorious in the movie. For a moment, when the beacons were lit, I thought that now we shall see how the alarm spreads into every corner of the realm of Gondor. But no. In the movie, it was just a stupendously silly way of telling Rohan "hey, we need you guys".
Finally we see the battle, which is cool, yes, but not the same battle as the one in the book. That in itself is acceptable, but the problem is that what the movie now portrays makes no sense at all. It's as if all the might of Gondor was just a couple of ragtag companies who can't even make use of their city's defensive design. It's as if Gondor has outsourced its real defense to Rohan. If they really were such losers, Minas Tirith would already have fallen ages ago. That's why it makes no sense.
Incidentally, here is one calculation of the actual numbers involved in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. The author estimates that there were at least 7000 Gondorean troops. And we never got to see them. Instead of Gondor and Rohan fighting together as allies, we see Rohan just come and kick ass by themselves. Duh.
After this disappointment I couldn't really enjoy the rest of the film. The crudeness and lack of subtlety felt even more pronunced than earlier. The Dead of Dimholt as a completely disproportioned army of undead saving the day as a Deus ex Machina? Sauron actually literately staring in one direction and then forgetting about it to look in the other? Oh, please...
So then. It was a good try, but blew its chance. But I guess I'll still see it again. At least the pictures are pretty.
Oh, incidentally, during the infamous scene at Frodo's bed in Minas Tirith, I wondered for a while why the audience started laughing. Then I realized: "Ah. The gay thing. Isn't that joke getting rather old?"
The thing is, I have never seen any particularly homosexual connotations in LotR. Gayness is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I think the recurrence of the joke rather indicates something about our culture: the concept of men openly admitting their affection for each other is just so alien to us that we are unable to think about it in anything but a sexual context.
(Granted, it's hard to define what exactly is or isn't a "sexual" context, but at least I'd say it is clearly possible to love someone without ever intending to fuck him or her.)
It is a common belief that although public transportation shares the economic and ecologic benefits of hiking, cycling and other forms of unmotorized commuting, it nevertheless does not provide the same potential for exercise as those do.
This, however, is a misconception. Public transportation provides ample opportunities for maintaining your fitness, if you just keep an eye open for them. I shall describe some sample applications. Feel free to invent more by yourself.
There are few places with such long, contiguous, non-winding steps as the escalators of subway stations. These offer a great opportunity for some quick cardiovascular exercise.
So, the next time you travel by subway, make sure you are the first one to reach the upwards going escalator at your destination station: then it is likely to be empty. Then just climb it up as fast as you possibly can, but one step at a time. You're likely to feel some lactic acid in your legs before you get to the top. Ignore it and just press on. That's the point of it.
Different stations typically have escalators of different lengths, so you can adjust the difficulty by choosing another station. Every now and then you may be in for a treat: an out-of-order escalator. These are surprisingly difficult to climb without slowing down. Finally, for some real challenge, you may want to climb up the downwards escalator. This requires good timing, though.
Buses tend to bounce and veer quite a lot. Thus they offer an excellent balancing challenge.
When in a bus, go stand in the central space, provided that there is space there. Try to find a steady position. Now just stay there until you reach your destination. If you have to move your feet to keep your balance, subtract one point from yourself. If you have to grasp the bars, subtract five points. Your objective is to get to your destination with a minimal penalty.
For extra challenge, don't look at the road, so you cannot anticipate curves, slowdowns or speedups.
If you find yourself attracting the attention of copassengers, your movements are still too exaggerated. You're supposed to just nonchalantly keep your balance, not look like you're trying to. Keep on practicing.
If you miss a tram, another one will always come. Yes. But if you wait for that, you will be late! So don't whine about barely missing a tram, go after it!
You need to know the location of the next tram stop to determine whether you have chances of getting there in time. It is often surprisingly feasible, provided that the tram needs to stop at traffic lights. It also helps if you are coming to the original stop from the "forward" direction, so if you see from further away that you aren't going to reach that stop in time, then you have a shorter distance to the next one.
Usually once you reach the next stop, you have either catched up with the tram or then you have lost it completely. However, sometimes you only barely miss the tram even at the next stop, in which case it makes sense to chase it further.
I once had to chase a tram until I finally catched up with it at the fifth stop. At an earlier point, too, I had managed to catch up with it at traffic lights, but that was not at a stop. I showed my fist to the driver angrily, but once the traffic lights switched, the tram again went past me. When I finally reached the tram at the fifth spot and went in, I asked why he couldn't wait for me for just a second or two at some earlier stop. He just said, "how was I supposed to know you're running to this?"
It was most fortunate that I was on my way to a sauna.
I just went to see Kill Bill Vol. 1. I have no idea whether the movie was good or not, and frankly I don't care. This movie wasn't made to be "good".
And that is the point. For once someone makes a movie without the least pretense of "artistry", with the full knowledge that anyone who wishes to criticize it will find it very easy. No, Quentin didn't make this film for the critics. He did it for himself. And for, well, us. Us, who have grown up reading Frank Miller's comics and watching kung fu movies and anime. Us, to whom Klingon proverbs feel quite as natural as Shakespeare quotes.
KB1 is about... well, Japan. Not about the real Japan, no (realism has very little involvement with this film), but about the mythical Japan of western pop culture. Possibly eastern, too. The movie is just homage and cultural reference, all the way from the beginning to the end.
So it's even less pointless than usual to try apply any sort of "objective" quality criteria. If you understand and like the culture, you understand and like the movie. If you don't, then, well, this movie wasn't made for you in the first place.
Was it well executed? Probably. Well enough, anyway. Granted, if you want to, you can probably find indications that the people in the main roles aren't quite as accomplished martial artists as some of the supporting cast. But with judicious use of camera and effects it was easy to hide.
What more can I say? I haven't enjoyed watching a film so much in a long time. And as an additional grace, it so happened that the quite possibly last remaining Virtua Fighter 4 arcade machine in the whole city was located just outside the theatre. What better way to vent some of the exhilaration?
And as for the rest, well, thankfully I'm getting my hands on a sword within an hour... :)
Oh, almost forgot. The reason for the title of this particular rant is that I find some similarities between KB and opera. Of all the myriad forms of art, opera is still almost the only one that I don't begin to grasp at all. The music is nice, the arias are nice... but recitative is just horrible. It's not talking, it's not singing. It's not proper acting, it's not proper music. The worst of both worlds. To my mind, if you want to combine music and theatre, musicals do a much better job.
So I wonder what it is that draws people to opera. And I guess the
answer is simply that some people attach with it, and find it to
be a part of their culture. As the Britannica entry for opera
says, "To appreciate opera, one must accept its
conventions
".
And to appreciate Kill Bill, you have to accept its conventions.
Now off to the salle.
Ho hum. This is the third entry for today. Perhaps I should start including timestamps.
I seem to have nothing better to do today, so I have been exploring the nearby blogspace. Some thoughts arose.
Earlier this week, Yoe mentioned a book that claimed that "nice" people are somehow emotionally weaker than others. Now, I can understand the sentiment, and I can even believe that for some people there might be some truth behind it. But as a generalization it is certainly a fallacy.
The thing is, such a statement must be based on an implicit assumption: that people in general strive to maximize their personal gain and if they sometimes fail to do so it must be because they lack the strength to do so. This of course is utter bollocks.
For me at least, "niceness" (in the sense of avoiding offending people unnecessarily) is a quite consciously chosen moral decision. It has nothing to do with my ability to assert my rights, but rather with my ideas on how people should be treated. When I'm seriously pissed off, it takes a noticeable conscious effort to follow my principles avoid turning into a jerk myself. So I find it pretty laughable to say that "niceness" somehow indicates a lack of a force of will.
Onward. Reading the first paragraph of this brought back to my mind a notion that I've had for quite a while.
It's an old idea to identify technology and magic. There's that famous quote by Arthur C. Clarke, and it's an old custom to call skilled hackers "wizards". I'm beginning to feel like the comparison is becoming more and more apt as the years go by.
Traditionally, mages have been portrayed as masters of arcane lore that gives them great powers over ordinary mortals. Hackers have also always been masters of arcane lore that is quite incomprehensible to outsiders. And during the last couple of decades the society has become more and more dependent on computers, and thus given power to those who control computers.
It's worrisome, to say the least. Computers become more and more all-pervasive all the time, yet most people have absolutely no idea about how machines work or how to control them. A skilled hacker could do any number of things that affect people's lives.
Back when I was a kid, it wasn't yet quite that bad. Computers were just nifty toys that weren't a part of everyone's everyday lives. I was interested in computers for their own sake, and I wasn't at all aware that they might have some practical applications. That computer lore might be useful some day. I wish things were still like that, and that computers were studied by people only due to curiosity about their nature, and not because of their economic and social significance.
But alas, those days of innocence are gone. So I really do think of capable hackers, computer-literate people, as an "elite inner circle of the enlightened". Not due to their (our) own choice, though. We are made elite by the society, often much against our own recommendations. So we get power that we didn't ask for, and "with great power comes great responsibility", like it or not.
Yet although in literature mages are often portrayed as taking their powers and responsibilities very seriously, computer lore is usually taught without any emphasis on its implications. Yet when you teach someone about network protocols, you also teach him how to eavesdrop on other people...
Medical students are presumably at least aware of the Hippocratic Oath. But how many CS students have ever read the IEEE Code of Ethics?
I happened to mention the existence of this log, and now there is quite solid evidence that the size of my readership is non-zero. It will be intriguing to see whether my awareness of this fact will have an effect on the nature of future entries.
Actually, since I just got linked to, it is quite likely that my readership will soon be subject to further increments in number. This is really illustrative of the way that the Web works. I haven't even ever published the entire URL of this page, but information wants to be free, and it absolutely can not be stopped.
I have, in other contexts, stated my views on how I think blogs ought to work. Maybe at some point I'll write a longer entry about it, but for now just a short summary: I won't use inline commenting features, nor will I support them. If and when I finally get around to implementing my own Perfect Solution to publishing stuff in the web, I very much doubt that I'll include a commenting option even if it were technically trivial. Blogs are personal playgrounds. I wouldn't want to intrude other people's blogs with my own rants, nor vice versa. It's much nicer to use your own blog to comment on others, and to see others commenting yours in theirs.
Hmm. I note that the awareness of the existence of readership does actually affect my writing process. I spend a lot more time editing and deleting pieces of text I have already written. Or perhaps it's just this hangover-induced headache that prevents me from focusing...
I think I was just to the greatest party I will experience this year.
Nominally, it was the "Niksu and Laura separation party". But never mind the titles. It was a party at Talo. Nuff said.
Apart from the (to my mind) somewhat premature departure, I don't think I have been this happy in a long time. Firstly, earlier in the day I had just submitted the draft of my thesis to the advisors, and until they comment something, I have nothing to stress about. And during in the party, there was Yoe, and Janka, and Seanna, and all the others. There was talk (and practicing) of ballet, and of martial arts, and of physiology in general. And other things.
One moment in particular I shall remember for a long time. I had asked Janka about what it's like to be a researcher. At the same time, next to me, Pare had asked Yoe something about her work. So for a short while, I was in the middle of cute women who were enthusiastically explaining their research.
Gals and science, all around me. What more could a mortal man desire for?
(Lots, actually, but in this imperfect world, whatever we get, must suffice.)
(And it shall suffice.)
It seems like Rhia has left the True Path right after leading me to it. First MovableType, then contemplating additional gadgets... This is precisely what I am afraid of. Start using more sophisticated technologies, and you'll want to add more and more of it. And it won't ever be Just Right anyway.
Today I felt like I actually got something done. Firstly, I managed to write a teensy little bit of my thesis. I'm right now in the most excruciating introductory parts, where I have to explain things that are really quite obvious. Well, at least to me they are. Things ought to go on swifter once I get to the exotic parts.
Secondly, for the past couple of days now I have been in rather extraordinary circumstances: my home is clean and I don't really have much to do besides working on my thesis. Thanks to this happy conjunction, I've found that for the first time in a long while I have both the time, and the space, and the inclination to practice some physical exercise at home. Nothing spectacular, just pushups and pullups and crunches, but it does feel great.
And I was at the salle in the evening. I felt quite keenly aware of the effect that several months of pause from training have had on me. I suck pretty bad. But never mind, it was fun anyway.
I did intend to write other things, too, but I'm too tired. Tired in the right way, for once, though: exhausted, not drowsy. So I'll leave this entry at this. Maybe I can finally correct my sleep cycle.
The full moon was pretty amazingly bright tonight. I wish I were far from the city lights.
There's a small war going on in sfnet, the predominant Finnish Usenet hierarchy. Well, not a war really. More like a rebel insurgency. Or just a bunch of malcontent protesters who manage to annoy others but mostly just get themselves into trouble.
The actual reasons for the conflict aren't particularly interesting, but here's a rough analogy: a group of people come to a restaurant and sit by a table. Their talk gets louder and louder and they start smoking. Eventually nearby people tell them that they are on the non-smoking side and could they please move to the smoking side. They refuse, and after repeated complaints the administration forcefully removes them from the table. Bitterly the group starts complaining loudly about how their rights have been violated, and they start blowing fumes into other customers' faces and generally being a bloody nuisance. Instead of just moving to the new quarters that had been prepared for them and continuing their discussion there.
The whole thing makes me sad, really. Not that the vandals caused anyone any real harm, but it's tragic that in the end they were so convinced that they had been thoroughly wronged, despite all the efforts to explain to them that this was just an administrative measure to ensure the comfort of other people. So they had to be dragged out kicking and screaming when everything could have been done quite amicably in good spirit. And the result would still have been the same.
I feel a bit frustrated about this personally, because despite my repeated attempts to explain the issue, I still couldn't really make them understand what this was all about. Such powerlessness in the face of a communication barrier is rather depressing.
It was especially disheartening to see these people complain that sfnet was clearly an elitist forum and it was now clear that "non-academic" people would be driven away. Yet this is probably quite opposite to the truth. The popularity of Usenet is declining, and I for one welcome each and every new participant, since I want News to thrive: despite certain technical problems that show its age, Usenet is still the only global distributed and well-specified open discussion system. Its continuing existence doesn't depend on any single entity or server, and it can be accessed by a variety of ways. It is also easily archived. So I definitely don't want anyone to feel unwelcome in the News.
Unfortunately, the recent skirmish is likely to result in greater segregation between the traditional old-school news users and the newcomers. I wouldn't like to speak of "academic" and "non-academic" people, but doubtless there is a noticeable correlation. The newcomers feel that we're trying to drive them away, and in response they begin to disrupt our discussions. The result is, of course, that one way or another we're going to make sure that they won't be able to bother us. Even when, eventually, they might actually have something to contribute.
The thing is, I've always wanted to think that even people with different backgrounds can get along (even if they might not have much to talk about), provided that they just show each other a little respect. But this sfnet-conflict was a case where it was impossible to even establish any real dialogue between the parties: the standards of communication were just so different. "Their" way seemed a bit vulgar to "us", granted, but I think the real problem was that "our" way, ordinary polite and civilized discussion, probably felt posh and pretentious to them. It might very well be that politeness feels to them more like hidden sarcasm than genuine respect.
So, in the end, we feel like we have been as accommodating as possible and they've been really unthankful assholes, and they probably feel similarly about us. Who's right? Well, me being me, I of course think that I am. But never mind who is right or not, or what the actual result is, some party will always feel wronged.
Yes, I'm rambling... Anyway, the point of all this is simply the following: if even within our society, when two groups of people clash, we can so easily get into a situation that leaves grudges and cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, then what chance do we have of ever resolving issues that involve entire cultures that are alien to each other?
All right. I was having a cider or three with Jaakko, Rhia and Risto, and eventually the talk turned to weblogs. Now, the very same subject was the focus of a heated discussion on The Channel some days ago, and I think that spouting all these opinions on the nature of weblogs finally made me start my own. It would feel kind of silly to continue such debates without having some first-hand experience to draw upon.
For a longer time now, I have entertained in my head the idea of having something like a weblog. There have been two main reasons that have held me back. Firstly, I'm naturally somewhat cautious about what (if anything) I wish to divulge (semi-)publicly. Not that I don't want to rant about certain things, but to me it just feels like the sort of undertaking that isn't to be taken lightly.
Secondly, I have very strong preconceptions about how a blog should be technically implemented and what features it should have. I also have a severe (and chronic) case of the Not Invented Here -syndrome, so I have always deferred the establishment of a real home page and a weblog until some later date when I have finally implemented a system that fulfills all my requirements. That date has been somewhere in the unforseeable future for some years now. I'm only now finally beginning to grasp that maybe, just maybe, it'd be more productive to get something, however imperfect, done right away, rather than wait indefinitely for the Perfect Solution.
Given that all the existing technologies always seem somehow inadequate to me, I then decided that if I am to write something right away, then I will use the simplest possible way, since adding fancy features wouldn't make it feel any less insufficient.
I first considered just using plaintext, but finally I made a concession to my principles, so now this is written in XHTML. Some markup and hypertext are just too handy. I just hope I won't get too frustrated by having markup and hypertext, but not exactly the way that I'd like it.
In fact, I think that the straw that broke the camel's back was that Rhia mentioned that her blog was essentially just a plain XHTML file. For some mysterious psychological reason, this statement seemed to give just enough encouragement for me to accept that this might be a worthwhile approach. So thanks, Rhia.
Continuing on this meta-introductory theme, I'll make a quick comment on my language. During the same yesterday conversation, it was mentioned that most Finns who write logs in English don't really do it all that fluently. That is, their language clearly shows that they are non-native English-speakers. Mine will too.
The reasons I write this in English are twofold: firstly, precisely because English is not my native language, the text feels a bit remoter, and I can perhaps also write more freely. Secondly, I just happen to like the language (its linguistic ugliness notwithstanding), and I find it's easier to toy with than Finnish is. So yes, my language is likely to be very poor, because I write for fun rather than legibility. I'll use strange word orders, archaisms and neologisms and mix them anachronistically if I want to.
Now then. A blog is, I think, traditionally expected to convey some bits and pieces about the author's life. I have no idea if that will turn out to be the case here, but if it does then, well, perhaps some sort of an overview ought to be given to bring the reader up to speed.
So. At the moment, my life consists mostly of the following activities:
...and eating, sleeping and reading during the occasional spare moments between other activities.
I don't really know the exact proportions of these different aspects, but I do strongly suspect that they are quite Horribly and Utterly Wrong. What better evidence than the fact that even now I'm writing this instead of working on my thesis? :)
I did intend to write on some other things, too, but since this entry seems to be growing indefinitely, perhaps I will just post this right now and continue later. It's already Sunday, after all...
