May 2006 Archives

I’ve seen “Chicago” three times now. And while the first two were fine, I really didn’t like the last one in London.

First was of course the movie. Then there was a local open-air production in Tallinn a couple of years ago. Despite some rain, the show was great. And now I went to see it in London, hoping to see it whip the crackers out of the previous one.

As I’ve bought FeedDemon, I also got a subscription to NewsGator Online. I hadn’t really used it until today, as I’ve mainly been using FeedDemon Client. But today I wanted to access my feeds from another PC, so I thought why not give it a whirl.

It’s actually not bad at all. The part that really turns me on is that my folders, subscriptions and unread items list, even though web-based, looks and works exactly like the FeedDemon client one. This is good because I really like consistency in interfaces, and this is a good example of a consistent interface between the client and the web.

The individual feed view is different on the web, as it displays all the items at the same time. Which was a bit unexpected, but it’s actually good and I’d even go as far as to say that reading the content on the web could be faster, since you don’t need to click through all the unread items individually.

The best part of course is that the read/unread stats are in synch between FeedDemon and NewsGator, so whichever I use, I don’t need to read the same stuff twice. Good work guys.

Last night around 9:30pm I was waiting for a train in the London Underground Piccadilly station. As usual — train tracks, some people (not too many at that late hour), station smell… when suddenly something ran on the platform. I looked. It was a mouse. Or maybe a small rat, but it looked more like a mouse. Since not too many people were around to disturb it, it was around for quite a while, going back and forth until it finally appeared into the tunnel darkness void.

It looked out of place. A touch of nature in that human-created artificial underground space. At the same time many would argue it was unhygienic or spreading disease or just “uuuuuuuughhhhh” for those people who don’t like mice. For me it was just… different. Out of place. Unexpected. I kind of felt sorry for it, I hope it found its way “home” — I’m not sure what that looks like for a mouse.

And then the train came and I went to wherever I was going.

A good, short, powerful essay by Bruce. “He did it again.” This passage to me is especially meaningful:

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

Those spammers keep coming up with amazing stuff. You think you’ve seen it all, but here’s a question I just can’t wrap my head around.

“would you like to have an unbelievable sex…” what’s “an unbelievable sex”? (it would make sense without “an”, but this is not how they sent it.) A rabbit? A pumpkin? An armchair? Me non comprendo. No thanks — I’m totally fine with being believable all day round.

I kept hearing this subtle “klinnnng” sound at random intervals, with nothing seemingly happening in my computer. This made me alert, since it sounded like some background process was on to something, and in the worst case I had become 0wn3d/trojanized.

So after consulting with NASA and the British scientists, I figured out that this was actually how my Windows Live Messenger was configured — when a contact comes online, it plays a sound, but doesn’t show a popup. Funny thing is, I never touched the sound and alert options for quite a long time, so some recent upgrade/installation must have made its own tweaks there. I previously had “no sound, no popup” for “contact online” events and it was fine, but now it started playing a sound. So had to disable that again. With Skype, some people have been sometimes victimized by the same things, since you can configure the visual notifications and sounds separately.

So the next time you hear a klonk, first go through the settings of all your programs before going OMG OMG I AM TEH PWNED

Ahh, the wonder of undocumented settings. Somehow I was getting “403 Throttled” error on some MT blogs I run, and wondered what’s that. This thread provides an insightful response. Why doesn’t MT manual say anything about this??? It’s a significant issue with higher-visibility blogs.

So we released this piece of news today. Cool stuff eh. Leave your hurrah’s and comments on that blogpost. (For the record, I think this is one of the most exciting and significant news pieces/changes that Skype has… umm… basically ever done to date.)

So aanyway… the launch team was assembled in the “war room” and we had a beamer show us the news popping up in various channels. And this is what Google News came up with. I’m not sure what rules their robot uses for image selection, but this is kinda funny.

So the volcano image was somehow syndicated from Reuters’ “related news” for this announcement. The three related pieces apparently are:

• Mount Merapi erupts but some reluctant to leave. Yeah… I guess you could liken this announcement to a volcano in the telco industry. Reading the news must have been interesting for quite some people today.
• Bush to call for National Guard on Mexico border. Makes sense — Mexicans want to make free calls too and are now probably flocking to the US and the country needs to protect itself from everyone else eating up those calls. (Btw, hint to Mexicans — just get other people on Skype and then you can make free calls from any Internet-equipped computer.)
• How did the “Da Vinci Code” become a success? We honestly have nothing to do with that. Really.

Last week I was in a Mini Cooper equipped with it’s built-in navigation system. (See elsewhere here for discussions of Hertz Neverlost and Ford Focus built-in ones.) It’s sort of fine, but two large deficiencies.

• fitting a rectangular map into a round display (all Cooper displays are round) … well … it just doesn’t work. And looks like there’s a lot of wasted space.
• the voice synth is really bad and sounds like a crossover between Britney Spears and vocoding vacuum cleaner. Both Neverlost and Focus “speak” quite naturally, so that even though you know it’s just a robot, it helps you instead of disturbing you. I’m not sure what’s the problem of Mini Cooper, but the said strings don’t sound like anything a human would ever do — intonation goes strangely “up” and “down”, word cuts are not easy to understand, and generally it’s just bad.

I heard about Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning quite early after its release, but never took the trouble to watch it. But now I did and I’m happy about that. It’s hilarious and heavily recommended. To appreciate it to the fullest, it would help if you knew a bit about Finns, Russians and their relations and also Finnish lifestyle. Also, knowing the language helps because although the translation in English subtitles is not bad at all, some puns are inevitably lost. Just witness how Finns say “Tserrrnobyl” or “purilaiset”

Production-wise it’s quite impressive too, combining CGI (that’s Computer Generated Imagery, not Common Gateway Interface this time), on-location shots and “greenroom” on a shoestring budget that honestly as a final product whips the ass of a lot of B-class junk shown in the cinema.

A flight I had to take today was delayed for about an hour because while all the people were already onboard, someone was injured by the falling luggage. A bunch of medical and police officers ran back and forth and finally the person had to be taken off the airplane. I hope whoever’s piece it was will get his butt whipped properly.

I saw many people coming onboard with oversized and multiple pieces, even though the regulations are pretty clear about one piece and limited size. I don’t understand why they are not enforced. And I don’t understand all those people who take all this junk with them. Do you really need it during those few hours? I don’t think so.

The only plausible excuse I can find for carrying all your junk with you would be being afraid of lost luggage, but these days it’s really a non-issue — it doesn’t really get lost, it’s just delayed by few hours or days. All the airlines should do here (both with passengers and with each other) is to have some sort of insurance and compensation mechanism, so that if your stuff gets lost or delayed, you are compensated similarly as to when your flight gets delayed, and ultimately the responsible airline/airport bears the cost.

I’ve been driving with Hertz Neverlost for about half a week. It’s great to have some comparison against my own current system.

What’s thumbs up

It works. It’s positioned quite smartly in the car, attached to the middle console’s right side so that it’s closed to the passenger’s knees but facing the driver. And can be turned and tilted freely.

Display is good and readable. Even though smaller than the builtin one.

Usage of the whole thing was pretty easy to figure out, menus and button labels make sense.

The “lady” talks loud and clear and instructions make sense.

I somehow seem to develop an affection for songs which have a bit of, for lack of better term, “cultural background”. First it was San Francisco as performed by Scott McKenzie, and California Dreamin’. Now it’s Down Under (see also the interesting song facts about this one). So these songs are a bit more than just a chunk of words and notes thrown together — they actually mark a point in space-time continuum in a particular geography and culture. This can sometimes only acknowledged in retrospect — for their writers, they can be just songs. I’m wondering what are other recent songs of similar cultural significance… gotta find some more.

I’m writing this from somewhere above Iceland or Greenland. I’m onboard a Boeing 747 en route from Frankfurt to San Francisco. 10+ hours of pure flight fun being cranked up in the economy class. But there’s Internet at least..

This is a special flight for me. I always wanted to fly onboard a 747. And I wanted to go back to America, too. (I was in summer school ten years ago.) Now I’m doing both. Cool.

747 is more than a plane. It’s an icon of many things. To me, it’s an icon of 60s and 70s where the world was still simple and international travel and economy was booming. No fuel crisis yet, no terrorists or any other silly things. A 747 with the “Pan Am” logo on it is an icon you can see in many movies of that era. These days it’s not much different, except there’s Internet and the in-flight movies are newer.

Dirty laundry of web hosting and Internet Marketing, or why most “top 10” type of sites are phony.

I added the Skypecasts widget to the sidebar here. Go to the index page and scroll below — looks really slick, eh. On the public site, it’s only available for Typepad but I got it here since I asked nicely. We want to roll this out to everyone else too. If you really desperately need it until then, ask me for the code.

Skype for Windows 2.5 BETA out now. With new emoticons, shared groups and Skypecasts. Cool. Great work by the team — thanks to everyone who put their work in this.

Subservient Programmer. A demo of .NET technology and at the same time kind of parody of Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, done to catch up with McDonald’s on the chickenburger front and recognized as one of the best internet ad campaigns of this/last year. (From Scoble.)

I don’t really get this USA illegal immigrants thing. Some people have sneaked their way into a country, and are now claiming they are such an asset to economy that they should be legalized just like that?

This is like an arrested mobster saying that since his cover businesses generate so much tax revenue to the country, he should be let go. I know this is an offensive comparison and most illegal immigrants actually don’t do any harm. I’m just using this to dramatize the point.

Being an illegal person is just that. If the illegal immigrants are such an asset to economy that their missing would hit it hard, well, let the market and supply-demand take care of that. If there were no illegal immigrants, then maybe prices would rise a bit, but all in all they’re an abnormality in economy, not a desirable normal status.

Several Estonians have been working in the US as illegal immigrants, some of them have been arrested, deported and banned. It’s not something to be proud about and the public generally frowns upon them, since they unfairly bring down the reputation of the whole nation in that country. Having a proper, legal career is much more respected.

There’s an old English saying, “good fences make good neighbours”. Being a EU border country, Estonia certainly recognizes the logic there and takes appropriate measures.