A Fond Farewell to What Once Was
10. September 2006, Sunday
And so it came to pass that my Master's thesis is done for! It only took too long and in so many ways that I'm scared to count.
This means that I've got nothing but the rest of my life time to do anything but! Currently I'm still occupied by the Finnish Railroad companys railroad laying division VR-Track Ltd. For a trainbuff such as myself this summer has been a different but nevertheless well-enjoyed departure from my studies.
Increase in my free time and financial resources is bound to show in this Blog sooner rather than later. Watch this space. Please!
Festivus Has Nothing on This Day
20. May 2006, Saturday
This is a festivious day for me and by extension the whole of humanity. Today I left my Master's Thesis for preliminary mincing. I'm half way to rid my brain from that ordeal. Rejoice! Have a wench! Sing! Dance!
This day also commemorates the birth of this blog. It is now a healthy four year old, bristling with potent ideas and verbal shenanigans!
I promise to hold a big party next year, so make sure there's room in your calendar!
Brute Facts
20. April 2006, Thursday
Judging from the unmassive response to my marriage announcement I have to assume that my readers are clever enough not to fall for even to such a believable hoax. Well done!
And just to confirm it, yes, I'm bribable, if you wish to receive some positive grassroots reviews for your product, contact me, my prices are unreasonable but unfair.
'Tis a Sad Day for Women All Around
1. April 2006, Saturday
As it so happens, yours truly is tying the knot and getting married! I know this is a bit sudden, but She just swept me off my feet. My demarketizing will take place on the 31. April this year at the Orthodox Church of Tampere beginning at 2pm. All you bearing gifts are most Welcome!
XXX (with tongue) for my Babe!
The Quantity of Appreciable Things in the World Has Decreased
28. March 2006, Tuesday
Even though my Blog has been put on hibernation until the small matter of my thesis is ready, there are still issues that I can't avoid blogging about.
Yesterday, 27. March, Stanisław Lem, a Polish sci-fi (among others) author passed away. I can honestly say that Stan was one of few authors that has made an impression on me with his writings. I don't mean this lightly. I was simply stunned by The Cyberiad with its puns and masterful trickery of all things language. It is to date, still, I think, the funniest book in the existence. I have a hard time believing how something like that can be translated at all, let alone from Polish to English to Finnish, as is the case with those books of his that have appeared in Finnish. Most haven't.
I remember one interview which began with Stan reciting a poem just so the British team doing the interview would consume more film!
Stan also spoke out his discontent of such displays of sci-fi as Star Trek, where nobody ever has a haircut and Enterprise is clearly void of all manner of lavatories.
Slashdot has somewhat interesting discussion about Stan.
I will end my reminiscence with a caption from The Cyberiad (Kyberias in Finnish). I apologize for third level translation, this is the only book of Stan that I have readily available. This excerpt is from the story Fifth Journey (A) aka. Trurl's method. Trurl, the other one of the books robotic scientists, is helping a friendly race of creatures that are being bullied by a hideous monster. Trurl is just preparing the execution of his method, the Big B...:
"Coffee please, says Trurl, not for me though, but for the job at hand. I don't think I'll be needing anything else. If a steelcrow or servoghost or cyberastic supercapernaster won't help, then you need other kinds of methods: archaic and archivistic, legalistic and therefore sadistic. I've yet to seen a payment order that has to be mailed by the final date at the risk of penalty interest." (translation, with apologies, by KimmoS).
Bursting at the Seams and Getting Down from Caffeine
9. January 2006, Sunday
It's the end of my Christmas holiday and the beginning of a new year. Time for some promises? No. All that is left is that sorry feeling of losing something and the question, where did my holiday go?
By most indicators my holiday was spent quite prudently. I probably managed to gain some weight and develop a year-long overexposure to Christmas food. I also managed to consume a fair bit of various kinds of entertainment. My Civ3 campaign is still a work-in-progress (Hi Hammurabi! You're next! *wink*), but I managed to complete a book of fiction. My first for probably a year. It was Excession by Iain M. Banks, one of those wonderful Culture novels. Recommended. I also bought myself the second season of The Office on DVD, which was something of a luxury.
What will follow soon will be my *final* dash to complete my Master's Thesis. Otherwise I'll cry.
And on the update front, yet another one of my acquaintances gave up and started blogging. Thats another 100 years off of purgatory...
Being Social Being and a Tourist
13. November 2005, Sunday
I attended the blog meeting I mentioned earlier. It was refreshing, interesting and only slightly disturbing. It was clearly not a case of a wider range of people coming together with the connecting link being only that they happen to blog. Mappings had been laid down long ago. "They" had their own words, concepts and people and events of importance. Verily, these are the Real Bloggers! A fringe of them I might add. I felt a tad out of place, so I assumed the role of an observer. That and my lousy spoken production is the reason why I prefer written text.
Present were Matti, Markku, Tommi, Simo, Timo and Jari, for whom my humblest apologies for not remembering us meeting before. I've only a request: can you please cut down on the admissions of shame, it appears fraudulent?
*Bitch* *Slap* *Whine*
10. November 2005, Thursday
Oh dear. People continue to read this Blog despite of my non-efforts to produce more content to it. As always, you can get your money back.In the mean time, I guess I can share an experience here that I've had trouble sharing anywhere else. Recently I applied for a job in the Computer Game industry. I was invited to an interview, and all is well. The job itself doesn't seem to offer much longterm challenge (I was subjected to a small test which turned out quite trivial to me), but I don't care, I need the experience. This job would however require me to re-locate to Helsinki and it would be (at first) for 6 months only.
This Tuesday they call me back and let me know on the situation. Apparently they had had more good candidates than they had at first thought, with yours truly as one of them. Immediate vacancy was for two people however. I should hear in a few weeks whether they can employ me beginning next year. That to me sounds like a definite maybe.
If it came to it, I'd take the job, I know the continuation of it wouldn't be left to my effort. The biggest bummer would abandoning my straneosly built (yet faint) social circle. It would be almost the same as little over 4 years ago when I started my University studies.
Matti is hosting a Blogging meeting. I should attend to it, or they make me give up my Blogger Card.
A Week ago I Was Cycling with a T-Shirt -update
17. October 2005, Monday
Well, it seems I can go on almost indefinetely without anyone crying out in anguish for me not updating my Blog. Shame on you. I am filled with the outmost confidence that Kimmo's Blogging Software will see its first deployment in the near future. It won't be feature rich, but then again you'll only get to see the results.
Alas, I will still have to do all the writing myself, since singularity seems to keep us waiting for itself. What can I say? It's cold outside.
Merry Birthday everybody
13. September 2005, Tuesday
31 small ones today.
Announcement of Incoming Festivities
11. September 2005, Sunday
Yours truly is sorry to announce that I will be turning 31 this coming Tuesday. In order to alleviate the mental burden of it, I'm having a small party coming Saturday 17.9. Any reader of my Blog is welcome to join me and whoever is brave enough to show up. I'll be starting at 12am. You can come at anytime after that, but I advice you that serving will last only as long as theres something to serve. If you don't know where I live but you're still tempted to attend, you can reach me through electronic means:
Slight Update
22. August 2005, Monday
I'm busy learning Python, the choice for the up-and-coming Kimmo's Blogging Software, and not so busy wrangling with my Thesis. I hope it would just go away...
But where there's darkness, there's always a twinkle of light... balls... which... you eat.
Late Night Blather
12. August 2005, Friday
Heres something from the late Friday night for you. This past summer I have been reading, or trying to read something with a bit of oompf, namely History of Science - Ancient and Medieval Science (ed. Rene Taton). It's copyright dates back to 1953 but I think I can get away with most of its teachings. Not that most of them stuck to me. I am notoriously lousy with details (such as dates or names). I've become almost as lousy in reading books. Prose has escaped me practically completely these past 4-5 years. Same with anything else outside credit-acquisition. I've traced it back to the bane of getting something done, which I haven't despite of 30 years of age... Are you still reading this? Go read something useful instead.
Excuses, Schmexcuses
8. August 2005, Monday
Glad to see you've all found yourself this way. I've been burned with the bane of finishing my Master's Thesis. That has meant my brain has been occupied with various types of quantitative and qualitative thoughts. A spin-off of this process has been a version of Gödel's incompleteness theorem for computer games. How nice. It probably wont make it to my Thesi, it will make everybody shake their heads and question what is the meaning of it all. Maybe I'll post it here once I get it in writing.
The Worst of the Best of the Web Just Got More Mediocre
2. August 2005, Tuesday
I now declare this website opened! Welcome everybody to my new little corner in the web! It's pretty rudimentary at the moment and for awhile to come. I've a full intention to code a simple blogging software for myself and anyone else brave enough to use it after I corner some time to devote on the project.
It's Kimmo's nameday here in Finland and I wish to declare this day as a new national holiday, so if you have work today you don't have to go there. And I hope you don't mind when I say "yatta!".
c-Ôo