journal: archive

Back to journal main page

Quiet heat

Elina visited me in Helsinki in the weekend, it was fun. Visited the Botanic Garden, Linnanmäki, Hietsu beach, Seurasaari and Café Engel during those couple of days, walked around Helsinki and talked a lot.

Otherwise, been working, not enough, but still. Now I'm in Hervanta again, to see Hankku again, it had been like over a week =P since last time. Slept last night in my old Mikontalo room, Nikolay let me in and no one else has yet moved in yet. Didn't think I'd return there again. It was hot, I woke up several times during the night.

On Thursday going to Nuorten Kesä summer happening (link in Finnish), to work for a couple of days for upkeep and a place to sleep (talkootyöläiseksi). I was a bit afraid or something about being a part of the happening but now that I've made the commitment it feels good. As the happening takes place in the same place where I'm going to study for the Autumn, I guess it'll be good to get to know the place a bit beforehand.

Tue 2004-07-27 07:38 in diary No comments #link

en kertonut enhän

Poika kulkee kadulla
kädessä pussi perunoita
pussi uusia perunoita
nenässä nokare sarvivoita
kepin nenässä vanhaa voita
onnea! eikä pipanoita
viheliäisiä, pieniä noita
ei kiertele poika kuppiloita

(Mallia hyvin impulsiivinen =P. Väitin itselleni vielä päivällä, etten tätä tänne laittaisi, mutta jos en laita, se vaipuu vielä unholanpaan kuin täällä ollessaan. Joten näin. Perustuu tositarinaan ;)

Sat 2004-07-24 02:01 in runot No comments #link

Friday evening loner

Screwed up going to a congregation (which I just found out about yesterday) meeting today, though I promised them =(.

Listening to No Man's Band (link: in Finnish), I just love this music. Found Quintessential Player, looks like I'm giving up using Winamp. It's just that goood. Actually, not that much different from Winamp, but the little things about the UI just won me over. Well okay, the tag editing features of this thing are just awesome =P.

There are a few things I wonder about though: the default skin is ...well, strange (I'm currently using QMP experience, which is quite similar to Winamp 5 default). I also am not quite sure whether I should call it QCD or Quintessential Player, doesn't seem like an abbreviation or anything. I'm not sure if it's just the QMP experience skin but non-US-alphabet characters don't seem to show properly everywhere.

The biggest problem I have is that if they (he) have to do another great media player, why don't they write it for Linux in the first place? XMMS is, though good enough, still kinda basic and a bit quirky at times.

So it's a great player, I'm just listing all the small things I found and could remember. Winamp has them too, believe me (=.

{ There's more! See full article }

Fri 2004-07-23 21:00 in tech No comments #link

wish I knew how to Praymore

Some uneasiness for your desktop:
praymore (background JFIF/JPEG, 217 kilobytes)

Fri 2004-07-23 18:40 in visual 1 comment #link

Jesus heal us

Strange day
Done lots of work
Doubted and been cynical
Now, in the end, everything seems to point to the fact
that the only thing I that was worth being cynical
was being cynical and fearing where leading my Lord Jesus will take me.
It's just so clear, nothing in this world is more obvious,
at the end of the day.
I can't afford living a second without humbling myself totally for my Saviour.

Thu 2004-07-22 00:58 in diary No comments #link

NP: Katochan No Scatman

He kaikki ajattelivat kaikkea sinä yönä
se oli suuri, se oli pieni
kaikki oli monenlainen!
Nuoremmille simppeli,
vanhoille jo hieman unohtunut
... kaikki ajattelivat kuumeisesti.

Yhtäkkiä Jumala huokaisi.
Kaiken sen pohdinnan tuoksinassa
kaikkialla kuului vain
Yksi
suuri, kaikenkattava huokaus.

Jumala huokaisi,
ja kaikki ratkesi.
ei ollut enää.

Mitään.

(Eilen, illalla.)

Wed 2004-07-21 19:40 in runot No comments #link

Hyttysfilosofinen dilemmanpoikanen

[written on Monday, at ~midnight]

I've developed a strange philosophy of those small insects oh-so-common in the Finnish summer. I've always had this thought that I really have no justification for killing even the smallest of animals without at least some kind of a reason.

I've taken up the habbit of taking the ones I've found inside inside my two hands and transporting them outside. Sometimes I'm too lazy to do that, though so I often let them just drink as much blood as they want. She sting doesn't feel that much and the risk of getting any actual infection is, as I've understood quite small.

I also seem to not get that much of an itch, and it seems that the itch is even less noticeable if I let the insect finish in peace - compared to if I should kill it or just violently push it away while it's still there.

I haven't decided yet whether or not to really live by these words for much longer, though (x.

The Finnish word is "hyttynen". It seems that there is no separate word in English for this insect - my dictionary says it's just "mosquito" though in Finnish, moskiitto is a different insect. Not that I know anything.

Wed 2004-07-21 19:26 in diary No comments #link

glib c?

[written on Monday, at ~midnight]

The last four days can be summarized with the following words: sauna, swimming, food, XSLT.

Somehow that last one doesn't seem to fit in. I'm one of those (un)lucky ones who can take their jobs anywhere with them. So here I am with a laptop, on an island in one of the many lakes called Pitkäjärvi: my mom's and Ville's summer cottage.

Today I managed to create an XSLT stylesheet to get the XML data from GCC-XML transformed into a cleaner XML format. There's still work to do, though. The idea is to get an XML (tree) representation of the class hierarchy of a C++ application generated automatically.

I've been swimming a lot, love it now that I can do it in an actual lake with warm (20°C) water in it. Maybe I'll start swimming in Helsinki, too once I get there. We're going to leave from here tomorrow morning.

All this living without having to worry about much anything seems to have done something to both my physical and mental health. Things seem very stable now... Mom's doing most of the cooking and I'm left with just some occasional household chores.

It seems that Katri's coming to visit me in Helsinki next weekend.

Wed 2004-07-21 19:18 in diary No comments #link

Trombone escapism

Listening to Axelle Red. Seems to be the only thing that can calm me down. Supposed to work but can't get a grip. Well I did do a lot yesterday but all in all, I've done way too little so there are no excuses. Besides, I'm (sorta almost) interested in what I'm now supposed to do, finding an XSLT solution for a problem. But no.

Tried installing Mandrakelinux 10 this morning from CD images (which are) on a FAT volume. Failed. Some packages couldn't be installed, it said. Blah.

Saw the movie Après vous (Teidän jälkeenne) yesterday. It was good enough, though a little shattered and the music didn't seem to work too well.

Wed 2004-07-14 12:11 in diary No comments #link

rainy july

Lots of things which have just ... born half-accidentally.

Is it sad or is it not
repeat repeat ask yourself
go on while the issue is hot
shoud you get buried in grief?

deve_lovent (ehm, formerly known as Piirto, 880px*485px)

And then there's this background image, edited from a photo of Tammerkoski. 1024*768, about 120 kilobytes.

Mon 2004-07-12 20:05 in visual No comments #link

an effort of constant prayer

A slow morning, though I got up something like 7.30, having woken up an hour before that for the first time.

Dreaming of rebuilding the pilpi.net layout, after looking at the sheer simplicity of the layouts of Oliotalo and Lars Wirzenius. I have several ideas waiting, namely some things about the layout and then using a proper CMS now that there seem to be quite a few of them around. I've heard a lot of good things about Mambo, for instance.

Still, tired. Again in my family's Helsinki flat, alone. Everybody's having a holiday except for me. Just give me a week for tweaking pilpi.net, pleez (=. Keywords? Simplicity, usability, clean code. Perhaps less content, since people often seem to get lost in my little sandbox of vanity.

Mon 2004-07-12 10:27 in diary No comments #link

Under

Spent several weekdays at Hankku's. There were lots of good moments, lots of boring and annoying ones and then, some perioids of just joy™. Still don't know what we're about, but mostly I feel good and not lonely with her, so I'll just concentrate on being happy.

Lotta's (Jennitys' little sister) confirmation party was yesterday. It seemed like she might have realized some things important about Jesus though I didn't ask. Met lots of people though interacted mostly only with the younger guests. The confirmation ceremony was at Päiväkumpu, which I got to visit for the first time in my life. Pekka Simojoki was there, too (a Finnish gospel singer and preacher etc. etc.).

In the evening I took off to my mom's place at Vantaa, where I've spent today, mostly being obsessively fed by my mom and working on the Väinö project's photos. People have been telling me I look awfully thin lately, so today I had a website calculate my weight index and, what do you know, I'm about a kilogram underweight.

Sun 2004-07-11 20:53 in diary No comments #link

The ultimate wget line

wget [--http-user=USER --http-passwd=PASSWORD] [-U=Mozilla] -np -r -k -m http://...

The wget line suitable for most my ways of using the app. Not sure if the parameters are the same for all platforms, this time I was using the win32 version to get some Väinö project files on this work laptop so that I can do something from mom's summer cottage. (This was mainly posted here for my own future reference.)

If you don't know the app, it's a very powerful app for downloading entire websites (or individual files, for that matter) on the local computer for (offline?) usage. Be careful though, you might easily end up downloading HUGE chunks of files especially with the -r (recursive) option - using both your own and the website's bandwith.

wget home page

See wget --help for details.

Fri 2004-07-09 23:58 in tech No comments #link

blop... blop. blop.

There are many things to hide and some things I wouldn't bother saying anyway. There's summer in Tampere and lots of rain. There's work and there's duties (though I refuse to admit it), there are these strange little feelings going in and out of me. I won't have a chance to do anything about them before they've already passed me by. Reading a book, perhaps the most famous one from Camus, and I'm enjoying it. I'm not doing enough for Väinö and if I didn't have any screws left in my head (which I don't) I would probably suspect a conspiracy theory. I've been listening to Radio Helsinki net radio today, plus a bit of Tchaikovsky, yesterday it was a bit of Lasse Heikkilä's/Sons de la vie's (whom I might have voted) record valkoinen uni. In the more recent history, there was walking by Suolijärvi and estimating the ages of the boys who were swimming, plus eating noodels, which I love whether they're cooked or raw.

Wed 2004-07-07 22:37 in diary No comments #link

too many imaginated meanings

no
go now
let me go
drop it
off

oh,
give in
come on in
take it
on

Tue 2004-07-06 21:55 in poetry No comments #link

A helping hand

There's no hope left!
you scream on the streets
The children of the generation
are weaping
The world is powerless
as our gods of clay fall down
crumble to the ground

The monuments we built
didn't everlast, after all

You would only believe
stop doubting, start living
- if you were touched
by a miracle
daily
"it makes sense though?" if only you knew
what a wonder
each day you live, is

Look at all these ruins! You're still standing
See these bruises, broken legs
Jesus offering you Life
at the end of the hallway
And there's still time
your legs still work so run!
It's only your endless doubt
you really can't afford

Sun 2004-07-04 17:27 in poetry No comments #link

hope not broken

Oh, after installing Mandrake 10 a couple of days ago, the system has crashed so that only shutting the machine forcefully down has helped =(. It looks like I have to reinstall both the OSes in this machine.

Fixed my camera bag with some super glue and a plastic bag. It's a gludge but perhaps a working one. Washed both my sneakers in the machine.

I'm living alone (everybody else is on a holiday somewhere) in a 90 square meter flat with both laundry and dish washing machines, nearly in the centre of Helsinki, for most of the summer, working from home. I guess it's a situation some might envy (except for those who have summer cottages by a lake, of course). Now if I just could find some people to be with, or perhaps learn to live with the loneliness.

Perhaps I'll just IRC more \o.

Sat 2004-07-03 17:32 in diary No comments #link

walking the streets

Wonder why does "walking the streets" sound like it's a matter of course that whoever's walking those streets is alone?

Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, it does somehow describe my situation really well. All of the sudden my job feels more like freelancing, there's pretty much no one to talk about it with. I just create some code, report the hours and get paid. Yesterday was spent coding, getting libxml2 to work with the application of the project.

Currently I'm in the machine automation lab the rest of the project crew - I don't have anything to talk about with them, though, since they're working on different areas of the project: I understand almost nothing of their work and vice versa. So I might as well work at home and be lonely. Should find some kind of a group of people to share my faith in Jesus with, I guess, but I just can't get myself moving in that.

Anyway, I can't seem to be capable of finding the right attitude towards working. Mr. Project Manager keeps harassing me when it seems to him that I'm idle - on the other hand, most of the people in this lab seem to be relatively idle. Oh yeah, I would like to be a part of the team somehow, but I just have no idea how to connect with them.

I'm supposed to meet Lauri this afternoon but the last two times I've called him I've woken him up.

I might see Hankku again next week. It's been two weeks and about four hours since last time.

Fri 2004-07-02 15:29 in diary 1 comment #link