Category Archives: personal

Yet Another Anniversary Looms

Current Matters, Nostalgia, personal

As faith (and not just faith, but to be honest, a whole bunch of natural laws and the accumulated experience of human kind to this moment) has it, I will turn 3-fucking-5 just week from today. My initial plan to celebrate this occurrence of maturing process is to spend it at Linnanmäki, the local amusement part down the street, after which I will promptly denounce sobriety.

If anyone of you bots out there would like to suggest something else, or even better, engage in the above mentioned activities with me, don’t hesitate to contact me. I have some monetary means at my disposal to take part in various kinds of arrangements. You have exactly one week! Can you handle it?! No! I asked CAN YOU HANDLE IT!?!

Summer Vacation Update

Current Matters, personal

Hi all! I’m doing great, thank you for asking. My sense of humour is gradually returning to normal, which is good, since everybody thinks I’m a funny guy. I’ve just passed the middle of my summer vacation and the weather has been nominal. On every day that I’ve travelled it has rained, but there has been some sunshinage as well. Sometimes at the same time.

Not everything has gone according to plans, but in my mind the whole idea of a vacation is not to have too rigid a plans. How are you doing? I hope this entry finds you well. I hope you are currently wearing a bikini and preparing to send me all the photographs of yourself in them to me. For personal usage only.

I hope you a many ice lattes,

Yours, devoid of any sarcasm,

K.

Summer Vacation!

Current Matters, personal, Social

To my complete expectations my Summer vacation has just started. Five weeks of non-work-related activities are in store. Which means I’ll be available for all kinds of suggestions and invitations of non-work-related nature. Be proactive, don’t let me invite myself over!

“That’s OK, we make new ones”

Nostalgia, personal

Way back in the 90’s a somewhat renowned Finnish sci-fi author and comics writer Johanna Sinisalo visited my local library as a guest for the local Friend’s of the Library Association. The visit was informal with around ten people present. She told us among other things about her career, telling us that she nearly graduated from something, missing only her thesis work and I remember thinking that that doesn’t count and I still agree…

She told also about her views on sci-fi and how she felt that it’s not supposed to foretell future, but to tell something about this day and age by projecting things somewhere else. She also said something I fehemently disagree with, if I remember correctly, that sci-fi’s role is not to entertain first but to ‘say something’. My memory faulters and that’s the clearest I can put it. In my mind the purpose of all art is first and foremost to entertain and if you disagree, I’m sorry you have such a narrow view of entertainment.

Johanna Sinisalo has wrote what I think is the best Finnish sci-fi short story called “Suklaalaput”. It is a story of a generational spaceship with a carefully crafted and balanced economy/production/economy system and how it crumbles when tokens for chocolate-rations are introduced (hence the name). Since not everybody enjoyes chocolate as much as everyone else, those tokens have value, and thus become the local currency. I didn’t have the guts to confess my admiration in that meeting, even though it was informal and quite intimate. Sometime around then a friend of mine described her looks saying “she looks like a feminist”. That should net him a few hundred years in the purgatory.

I had a second chance when she published her first novel and was giving an interview in an art festival. I didn’t have the guts then either. Her novel went on to win the most prestigious literary award in Finland, the Finlandia Prize. I could have bought the first edition and gotten a dedication for it too…

Johanna Sinisalo is one of the nominees for this years Nebula Award with her novelette “Baby Doll”.

My Ideal Woman

Hedonism, personal

My ideal woman doesn’t work in a traditional woman’s job. She will be a black smith or a police, alternatively she will run a business of her own with the huge inheritance she has received from her “grandparents”. She practices at least one martial art and she’s keen to experiment with her physical abilities. She’d be glad to try new things (such as parkour) and approaches them with intrigue and patience.

She will be quite tall and as the result of her self-confidence, she won’t wear high-heels and although she rarely does wear one, she looks absolutely smashing in a suit. Her silhouette is classic, akin to Joely Richardson, otherwise her looks bare a striking resemblance to Rachael Stirling. On her face she has a small scar, partly crossing her upper lip. She received the scar when a mountain lion attacked her on a hiking trip. Her bra size is a D but on occasion, depending on the manufacturer, she’s resorted to a bigger size. She keeps her hair short and has, at least on one occasion, shaven her head completely, a feat she can get away with with her bone structure.

She understands that that which makes female legs interesting is the calf and is appreciative in displaying them. Her favourite way to do so is to sit in the morning sun, infront of a french window, sipping coffee, reading Donald Duck’s pocketbook, wearing cargo-pants, with her other leg lifted up on the arm rest of my favourite chair, where she is sitting.

Her only physical characteristic that might not strike as perfect is her slightly proportionately large feet.

Her approach to computers is pragmatic, she has ascended at least two characters in Nethack and is working on her pacifist-ascension. She has produced at least one patch to Nethack “because it was the only way to have a ferret as a pet”.

Her personal conduct is slightly frivolous, her signs of affection can be surprising and bordering on lewd. Her sexual conduct is omitted from this entry apart from her being a willing proponent of pegging.

She is immortal. In this timeline one of her names has been Ada Lovelace. When all is said and done and it’s her time to try out a new one, she will share the gift of immortality with me and will also reveal the location of an ancient timemachine. All thanks to my performance as a Man.

Time to Change

Current Matters, personal, This Blog

Not too long ago, I attended a cinematic event. Now that I can actually afford them I’ve grown to dislike them more and more. My biggest gripe are the advertisements. I’ve payed dear money for the priviledge and then they see it fit to show me probably the finest concentration of tripe known to man. Some of the ads are obviously mean’t for radio. Thats multimedia for you.

In that sea of meaninglessness something caught my attention as I was hoping to see Tropic Thunder instead. It was an ad for some jewelry which was apparently an improved version. Thus it had “2.0” added to its brand name.

Internet, I’ve known since my Blog began in it’s present form that the name was already a tired joke and that there would be a time when even Stephen Colbert would announce that it’s done. At that moment, in that movie theatre, when that deep voice claimed the reason for naming that jewelry something + “2.0” it was clear to me that now was that time. It’s time to get back to basics.

Ladies and Gentlemen, fÃ¥r jag presentera… Kimmo’s Blog (classic)!

I’m Officially Certified!

Beginnings, Current Matters, personal

Certified ScrumMaster that is. I took a two-day course, led by Jens Østergaard and James O. Coplien, both outstanding lectureres. It wasn’t an impediment that the subject matter hit my local repository of human experience and values with good matches. Which means to say that I agreed on the explicit and implicit values and preconditions within Scrum.

It is kind of ironic but I recognize that the characteristics of Scrum that speak the most sense to me probably make it also incredibly difficult to wield in practice. For example, in Scrum, no-one and I mean no-one, can come and tell the development Team what they should be doing. The Team selects and co-ordinates itself, what it is going to do. But the Team itself is not responsible for the process and results, the ScrumMaster is. The ScrumMaster owns the process, i.e. is responsible that everything is running smoothly, including doing any- and everything to remove obstacles from the Team.

If there’s anyone wondering what’s the point of majoring in Philosophy in the Real World(tm), acquiring and assimilating different ways of thinking is probably a lot easier. I feel that I have at least one new one in my toolbox now.

Ninja Skill: Acquired!

Current Matters, personal

I went bouldering for the first time in my life. This is the practice of climbing (in this case) walls with artificial holds, arranged to put up problems of most physical in nature. Since the climbs are only up to 5 metres tall, theres no safet equipment involved apart from common sense and cushions. To my surprise it’s not my arms that were the most to suffer but my hands. The skin in my hands and fingertips feels quite tender at the moment.

There’s always the problem of how much abuse are you going to subject yourself to when you are trying something physically demanding the first time. I think I did well. I expect to find myself a bit difficult to fist my hands in the morning and probably also my wrists will feel tense but probably nothing too bad to avoid me from operating a mouse.

Now I’ll just have to get to know the lingo involved.

Complete Peanuts

Nostalgia, personal

Every now and then, some things happen that make you take note and remember when you have one of those why-does-everything-always-not-go-well -moments. Fantagraphics books are printing all the Peanuts comics in the existence. They have been for a few years actually, but only last year those books started to appear in Finnish. The pace is two books per year, with each book containing two years of comics. Even at this pace it will take 10 years to reprint them all. This pace is much more moderate in Finnish though, one book last year and so far, one book this year. Impatient as I am, I have opted to collect the originals.

I have been a friend of the Peanuts for a long time. At some point I noticed that the pocket books they were printing here in Finland didn’t contain all of the strips, not to mention none of the Sundays either. The existence of which I didn’t come to learn until much later.

Therefore I find it a priviledge to get to read all of the strips in order, to get to see Snoopys transformation from a yipping dog to an “internationally renowned hockey-player” and “the first beagle on the moon”. Not to mention how ‘the bird’ turns into ‘Woodstock’ and how Lucy cultivates her bitchness and how the whole universe of Peanuts builds up. I also enjoy reading about Charles M. Schultz himself.

There’s far too little of Complete anything in the universe. Especially in comics. The works of Carl Barks are re-printed in dozens of different packages and when they do reprint the whole of it, the print is limited. But as I implied at first, I feel I am lucky to exist in the same universe as the Complete Peanuts.

Saving the God-Damn Planet

Comparison, Inquiry, personal

Just over a week ago some kind soul relieved me from the pain of owning a bicyclelamp. Forgetting the effect this incident have had on my attitude toward my fellow creatures, I have been involved with the process of choosing what kind of light-inducing solution will I mount to my bicycle from now on.

I have considered a hub-dynamo, which would provide light whenever I’m in motion, without having to worry about changing batteries or the lamp getting stolen. Stealing would have to include the whole front wheel in that case. Only thing that I’ve wondered is that why there aren’t any LED -based solution with hub-dynamos? Ok, not a bad solution, a bit expensive (including not just the lamp and dynamo but the wheel as well), but probably well-worth its prize in the future.

Petzl is somewhat legendary spelunker and famous for head-mounted lamps carrying his name. One sly sales-man introduced me to this choice, making the case for a model that has a retractable string allowing an easy mounting to almost everywhere, from your wrist, to your head and bicycles handlebar as well. It requires batteries though, but three small batteries would last for 120 hours, that would probably be enough for one winter. Expensive, but a quality product.

Yet, my solution was one which has 3 leds and get this, gets it’s charge from a fucking crank! Thats right, no batteries, 1 minute of cranking produces, supposedly, 40 minutes of light. The whole thing costed me 10€ and I’m left wondering whats wrong with this choice. It seems too good to be true. Will the built-in battery explode if its over-charged? Will it’s capacity wain in a year? What?

Internets, this is a mission for you. Dig up any and all bad sides this solution might have and report it here. You have time only up till eternity or the heat-death of the universe to complete this task. Your time begins now.