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not.doing.anything.

I prayed a bit an hour or two ago. The fact that my way of seeing the world really is rather shattered is a bit difficult at times. I don't remember things that well and... lots of other stuff I don't remember right now (as it so happens). Anyway, during/after that prayer I realized that remembering might be something I could learn, for instance by looking back at the day's happenings.

Been doing all things useless today, just grabbing anything fun that I come across (like tweaking linux) and then concentrating on that just in order to concentrate on something. Even writing this is a bit of an effort right now. That just doesn't work too well with having a job that's kinda interesting "but personally, there's a million other things I'd rather be doing".

{ There's more! See full article }

Wed 2004-06-30 21:49 in diary No comments #link

Mandrake 10 upgrade

So today I proceeded to upgrade my Mandrake 9.2 to 10.0. Now that I'm over the PAIN, things seem nice. The general outlook has been enhanced a bit, as well as the "Start menu" - things seem to be organized in a bit more friendly way. KDE runs a LOT faster, too. Also, it's nice to know that I'm running the 2.6 breed of kernels (=.

The process of upgrading was rather painful.

{ There's more! See full article }

Tue 2004-06-29 22:50 in tech No comments #link

agony

Spent all day with Emil. I love the fact that I have the opportunity to really spend time with him now that he's getting older and easier to be with, but still: playing with a 4½-year-old can be a wee bit tiring.

My dad said it'd be only the forenoon, as in reality he arrived something like at 4 or 5 in the afternoon. By that time I was feeling deceived, very tired and angry, and although spending so much time with Emil has made me tired before, I surprised myself by getting really mad at dad. Now they left to the family trailer several days and just before they left dad reminded me of locking the doors at a certain tone of voice. That annoyed me too so I shouted something rude back at him. So now I'm left with a feeling of having a fight with him.

He just doesn't understand my world at all and doesn't seem to be interested, either. I feel I've never known him personally anyway. I feel like I'm having my puberty about seven years late (I was a rather shy kid at my actual teenage) .

And as if I wasn't tired enough already, I started upgrading my Mandrake distro to version 10.

This summer is just filled with work and loneliness. At least I'm still praying relatively lot.

And of course, I really don't have anything to complain about. Take my depression with a grain of salt: outside these moments of tiredness I am really content with my life. I'd just like to have more of an idea where God is taking it.

Tue 2004-06-29 18:00 in diary No comments #link

Juhannus

Written on June 25th (there was no internet connection easily available =)
Location: Kesälahti, The summer cottage of Katri's family

We just watched the newest from Jack Nicholson, Something's Gotta Give. It was great, though very Hollywood. Relationship drama. I won't bother further describing it here, go see it. As I'm making another attempt to build a list that I won't forget about in a week, I'm adding this movie in "my list of best movies" or whatever, in the category "soaps"... or whatever (=.

Otherwise, it's been a rather traditional kind of Finnish summer. Katri's family are long time friends for me and though I've been here quite a few times they still treat me like a guest. Sauna, good food. I swam in a lake for the first time this summer (so late! And it's still cold!). Like usual for the Finnish midsummer, it's been raining quite a bit but we don't mind.

After buying that book, "Maailman kauneimmat rukoukset" (Finnish for "the most beautiful prayers of the world") last week, I've been somehow praying a bit more this week. It's great to feel my relationship with Jesus is really developing.

I hate the fact that nucleus doesn't use <p>aragraphs in the HTML it generates.

Mon 2004-06-28 01:07 in diary No comments #link

no saat puolisekuntia

Two unfinished images.

one. This image, created a week or two ago, was originally something that was a week or two ago supposed to demonstrate a red-green-yeallow-striped drop curtain. Then I played around it a bit but never had the patience to really tweak it so here it is, as finished as it will ever get.

two. Tonight I was supposed to edit some images for the Väinö project, but my patience ran out, so this is the result.

Sleep now.

Thu 2004-06-24 01:42 in visual No comments #link

gThumb

I had still been using Windoze a lot for my photo collection browsing since sadly, I hadn't found a decent app for that purpose. Now I was looking for a way to losslessly rotate my JPEGs since my Konica Minolta GiMAGE Z2 can't do that by itself (HP 850, my former camera could), and found gThumb, which at first glance just rocks. A clean interface and most of the features you would expect:

• lossless JPEG rotation
• resizing
• adjustments for brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, posterize and color balance
• JPEG metadata editing (also edit the comments for many images at a time) and searching
• slideshows

To name some of them. Too bad there's no crop, sharpen or unsharpen mask. Haven't yet tried with anything else than JPEGs.

All in all, it just works and does it like you expect it to. Another step forward for Linux in my eyes.

These ones were taken today in the park and resized with gThumb: Anna-Maria, Emil
Had there been a crop function they might look a bit better (=.

Tue 2004-06-22 21:33 in tech 1 comment #link

EmilEmilEmil

Anna (my sister, real name Anna-Maria) and me have been with Emil since yesterday, now a couple of hours ago my dad and Leena came home. During yesterday and today Emil has learnt to play with Anna's old SNES.

Otherwise, just coding.

Tue 2004-06-22 21:33 in diary No comments #link

the day is long, and the night

It's annoying how the most important things to say often seem to just slide away... and I lack the capability to catch them.

NP: REM - Everybody hurts

The night is gentle. I talked with Anna, my sister, for the last couple of hours. Even she hasn't really been aware of what I Believe in, which is really sad. Now she knows some things, at least. And I'm happy there was the courage to tell her about the things I rarely have the strength to talk about with anyone face to face.

Still, my relationship with Jesus is something quite contradictory for me, in the sense that for instance, I still have difficulty in believing that what I know is the Truth and Right and Life for me must be so for everyone else as well. And it's ridiculous.

Funny how the words "religious" and "ridiculous" aren't that far from each other. Or "me" and "mad". Luckily I know that whereever my disregard for reality lies, it's not in Jesus.

Tue 2004-06-22 02:04 in diary No comments #link

soft*wind*night*longing

After a couple of days in Helsinki, I'm feeling free (=. I don't have all that much to do, or of course I do, but it's not too much to make me really stressed. I'm going to Katri's family cottage for the midsummer, looking forward to it: it's really beautiful there and her family is very nice to be with. Checked with Hankku, too, and she seemed to be okay with the fact that I'm going.

Until then, learning to use libxml and libxslt, among other things.

Mon 2004-06-21 23:59 in diary No comments #link

Book list

I decided that I need to have a list of books I want to read. Obviously, there are enormous amounts of those that I simply won't remember to mention here so don't take this for... umm, anything.

• The Bible. Yes! The Bible! I'm such a sad case when it comes to trying to read it. That's a few books, though.
• That book of Camut's, which Hankku recommended and the name of which I don't remember
• Lots of Kierkegaard's production (how many years have I been saying that?)
• More C.S. Lewis, Narnia in particular
• Some J.R.R. Tolkien
• more Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, perhaps

Oh this is pathetic =P. There was this list I cheated from but it was too long for me at this time of the night so I quit. I've read few of them, not many but more than a quarter of a dozen I guess (=.

But really, this list was supposed to serve more of a purpose than it seems to be doing. Maybe I'll get back to the subject. If you have anything in mind, please tell me (=.

Sun 2004-06-20 00:11 in diary No comments #link

Sacred Space

Sacred Space - Produced by the Irish Jesuits

Somehow, possibly affected by the book* I mentioned in the previous entry, I did a Google search on "prayer", and found this. Found something special in the Prayer for Today.

*Maailman kauneimmat rukoukset (the original goes by the name Die schönsten Gebete der Welt by Christoph Einiger)

Sat 2004-06-19 23:50 in links No comments #link

Etävarmennus

Etävarmennus tulee suomeen

Tuonmoisen voisi hankkia jos tarjolle tulee.

Sat 2004-06-19 22:15 in links No comments #link

Jäätelöä, valokuvia ja rullaluistelua.

Vieläkin pahvilaatikoita joka puolella.

Ostin torstaina kirjan, Maailman kauneimmat rukoukset. Olen ollut kovin onnellinen kun sen tein. Tänään löysin taas Jumalan pitkän ahdistuksen jälkeen kun jäin sitä lukemaan. Lisäsin sivuillekin yhden sen teksteistä.

Äiti Teresa: Rukous avartaa sydäntä

Sat 2004-06-19 20:53 in runot No comments #link

Forgive them anyway

Mother Theresa's Daily Prayer

Sat 2004-06-19 20:22 in links No comments #link

Life in Helsinki: summary

After approximately 895 days of living in Mikontalo of Hervanta, Tampere, I moved yesterday. I'm writing this in my corner of dad's and his wife's flat in Helsinki - the same place I used to live in before moving to Tampere to study in the university. I'm thinking of returning there in summer 2005, but before that:

• Working in Stadia Polytechnic for the summer. Linux programming, mostly.
• In the autumn, Bible studies in Ryttylä.
• In the spring 2005, Metz, France. I guess.

This entry feels like it has loads of grammatical errors. Oh well.

Sat 2004-06-19 16:26 in diary No comments #link

leaving mikontalo

This is my last day in Mikontalo. Most of my stuff is in boxes now and everything is ready, dad's coming in about an hour with a van. It never stops to surprise me how much work usually always is.

Hankku left for Jyväskylä and from there on to lots of places =P. It'll be several weeks before I see her again. Good thing we spent a lot of time together this week.

Helsinki, here I come. Summer. Feels like a fun idea, roller skating around Töölö.

Fri 2004-06-18 11:53 in diary No comments #link

not afraid, except of being afraid

Mom was here yesterday. <3

Now most of my belongings are in cardboard boxes.

A couple of hours ago, Hankku sung me some songs. A few of them were in latin and the one that wasn't was a Jesus-hihhuli song. That girl knows how to sing!

This is also a campaign to promote the usage of the word "hihhuli" in the English language. Just wait and see! (x

I didn't take milk offline a bit too early. The hard drive just experienced what I believe to be something rather serious.

Thu 2004-06-17 13:03 in diary No comments #link

ihana, mutta imbesilli

Wasting time. Fun with Hankku. Mom's coming tomorrow to help me with the cleanup of this flat before I move.

I decided to not have milk running for the year, the king is dead, long live the king. Oh, I just had to say that. Anyway, I'm going to have my ISP handle the subdomain milk.pilpi.net so almost none of the actual services that milk was being oh-so-good at are being shut down. I betcha most of you wouldn't even have noticed the change if I hadn't told you. In fact, you wouldn't have noticed even if I hadn't decided to maintain the service. Bugger =P

Trying to set up reverse DNS, but since Joker.com's DNS panel doesn't let me configure the IN AAAA field, I've started using freedns for DNS. The stupid nameservers still haven't updated their databases, though. It's been quite a bit over 24 hours (somehow I was in the (mis-)conception that it's supposed to happen in 24 hours. (Later: actually it seems to be 48 hours)

So no, nothing to say this time, either.

Mon 2004-06-14 21:33 in tech No comments #link

trial, error and total failure at once

It's been a week of

.being at my workplace, trying to grasp the bigger picture of what is the project I'm involved in actually trying to accomplish. I

.wondering the absurdity of the world. Whether or not the world actually is the way people seem to see it, relatively organized. It seems more probable that the world is very surreal in itself but people just need to pretend it's organized so that they can cope with their minds.

.being rather impractical, useless and quite unsocial too.

This entry is just an excuse, it seems.

Fri 2004-06-11 17:21 in diary No comments #link

joukkoliikenne

joukkoliikenne.fi (in Finnish)

Fri 2004-06-11 00:26 in links No comments #link

Sympathy

Tuukka Virtapelko (in Finnish)

Oh. Yeah. Sorta. Well.

Thu 2004-06-10 23:59 in links No comments #link

ja minä katselen maailman menoa silmät pyöreinä vilkkuen

maailmassa on ihan liikaa kivoja nettiksiä, ja niistä aivan luonnottoman moni näyttää olevan kasaantunut livejournalille.

mutta minäpä en kolmannen pohdintakerran jälkeen enää ollutkaan katkera, sillä minä asun mikontalon kolmannessa kerroksessa vielä joitakin viikkoja (miinus työpäivät helsingissä) ja aurinko nousi juuri.

tein äidille kortin (juu, se on se sama edellisen kirjoituksen by-product kuvassa + omenasta otettu se tikku josta se roikkuisi puussa mikäsenyton). en ole kunnolla muistanut äitienpäivinä enkä minään eikä ole oikein ollut huonoa omaatuntoakaan. kortissa kyllä luki tekstiä, mutta ilmeisesti en ole vielä riittävän varttunut kertomaan julkisesti rakastavani äitiäni.

Mon 2004-06-07 04:09 in nettis 3 comments #link

Tätä sä et pysty selittään

I miss Hankku. It's not been 24 hours yet since I saw her.

Yesterday I got her to put the cover tape on the keys of the other keyboard, which I today painted.Also, there was a by-product (fine, it's edited x).

Listening to Radio Helsinki net radio. Tomorrow: Helsinki.

Sun 2004-06-06 23:40 in diary No comments #link

mp3gain and vorbisgain

Processing all my files with MP3gain and Vorbisgain (thanks for the tip crwl), since the XMMS on-the-fly volume adjustment didn't quite work as well as that of Winamp. All's good now, though.

There's a bug or something with Vorbisgain (and my fstab settings) though. My music files are on a FAT32 partition and every time 'vorbisgain -r -a -f "*.ogg"' has finished going through I one album (directory) I get, for example:

...
Note: Couldn't set mode for file '11 - 22 Pistepirkko - Rally of Love.ogg': Operation not permitted
Note: Couldn't set time for file '11 - 22 Pistepirkko - Rally of Love.ogg': Operation not permitted
Couldn't scan directory '.': Operation not permitted


After this vorbisgain stops, but when I issue the same command again, it finds the next album to process, so I just need to issue the command as many times as the number of albums I have. Also, it's strange that I couln't find an RPM for MP3gain so I got bored and used the Winblows version for MP3's and the *nix version for OGG's.

Off to Mikontalo sauna now.

Sat 2004-06-05 14:04 in tech 3 comments #link

so tired, playing, too long

Today milk (my hobby debian box) decided to have a nice little kernel panic. There'd been problems with one of the hard drives before and I had been planning to put into use a newer drive I'd had lying around. So I did, and after all that bad block searching and trying again and again different solutions I actually got the machine running... for a couple of hours, after which it got unstable again. Currently it seems to work but we'll see what it looks like in the morning.

Lower-level computer hassling seems to work like a real psychological game to me. About a year ago I could have gotten really upset about just fighting with the machine for hours and still encountering problems: although I realized it doesn't make any sense to get mad at the machine, it didn't help much. Anyway, today it's been alright, even though I've spent approximately the past 12 hours tweaking the stupid piece of metal.

So not much going on =P.

Taking what I've just told you as a perspective, stories like this seem almost incredibly ... soothing (=.

Sat 2004-06-05 02:46 in diary No comments #link

tahdon, mitä justnyt muistan

• Jeesus, kanssakulkeminen ja oppiminen
• tuon tuollaisen <3
• muistaa asioita, paljon enemmän, pystyä elämään muissakin maailmoissa kuin siinä mikä on milloinkin läsnä
• tietää miten pääasiassa voisin elää ja käyttää luovuutta
• olla menettämättä aisteja. pidän aisteista. (x
• olla riittävän kärsivällinen mm. lukemaan kierkegaardia useampia kokonaisia ajatuksia kerrallaan
• oppia ymmärtämään tätä maailmaa paremmin jotta voisin tehdä siinä kaikkea
• ymmärtää enemmän:
  • tietoturva
  • *nix
  • kirjoittaminen
  • jne. jne.
• oppia olemaan onnellinen siinä, mitä on nyt (x

Thu 2004-06-03 13:56 in nettis No comments #link

ihmisrotu: syntymähumaloidut ja itsestäänselvät

on niinku aika tylsää nyt. töitä tekis.

oli synttärit ja tuli onnitteluij ja katrilta kamut -kirja. illalla oli kivaa ku mentii hankun kans harhailee hervantajärven ympäristöön ja ja jopa päädyttiin katalasta kierosti suunnanneuvovasta tädistä huolimatta sinne itse yleiselle rannalle. kuvailin aika paljon kans. myöhään haettiin kiinalaista mai's:sta. olihyvää eijaksettukaikkee. ainiin. ennen harhailuretkeä käytiin hankun talon kellarissa tutkimassa potentiaalisia pahvilaatikkohankintoja (muutan kuun lopussa) eikä hankku oikein pitänyt tarinasta, jonka kerroin kolmimetrisestä lepakkohämähäkistä.

sit unohettii pyörät sinne mai's:in etee ja koska hervanta on turvallinen vai olioille, jotka ovat ei-polkupyöriä, päätin hankun asian muistettua käydä lukittemassa ne lähikaupan pyörätelineeseen U-lukolla. vähäks olis helppoo elämä rullaluistinpolkupyöränyysijäl. tai siis no ainaki se nyysiminen.

kävin siinä seminaarissa josta puhuin eile ja siellä oli mielenkiintosia mutta päivän jälkee väsytti niinku vähäse. näin niinku siellä esmes sen sumuvalkokankaan: salama päällä näytti hassulta.

Thu 2004-06-03 11:30 in nettis No comments #link

deep breath

Listening to Roxette. It's a good day, umm, so far (=. I was planning to get started about an hour earlier but I'm still at home, drinking my hot chocolate (milk and water base) in order to get the day started for my stomach, too.

I was wondering whether or not to mention that it's my birthday today. It doesn't really mean much and it's been like a decade since I've really celebrated. Anyway, lots of work today, too.

Today: SIGCHI / VR-SIG Finland 2004 yhteisseminaari

There were a couple of things worth mentioning on Monday. Mainly, we really prayed together with Hankku for the first time. It ain't easy for me, yet.

Herran päivänä toinen kuudetta, 2004. Hm.

Wed 2004-06-02 08:48 in diary No comments #link