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Onko yö vai päivä

Just read Jakob Nielsen's article about blog usability some days ago and found out even more deeply than before how many guidelines I'm constantly violating with this blog. For instance, my entry titles have often got nothing to do with the content of the entry. But I like it that way, it never was meant for the greater public, that would just be a bonus. :)

In other news, I'm spending the week pretty much alone. Well, not really, these days I seem to know how to get people around me. It's still different with Hankku gone until Thursday. Far behind are days in the Bible school (Ryttylä) when I was mostly away from her.

Yesterday I was in Ada's and Alex's party full of Romanians. It was located in the middle of Tampere. I never knew before that there are so many of Romanians in Tampere. They were warm and made lots of noise, there was plenty of food and I had lots of interesting discussions. The children spoke Finnish, too. They got excited taking pictures with my camera. Beforehand, I was really a bit anxious of how it might go, but it was great.

It's a break week between two periods in the university. So called holiday! Mostly I'm thinking about the Requirements Engineering course I'm on. There's two enormous projects and way too little time to finish them. I've also gotten in these great discussions about the differences between Islam and living in a relationship with Jesus.

It's been a while since I wrote a bit more about what's going on in my personal life, so here you go. Everyday life is quite different of how it was in the Bible school where I was for last year, but also positively different from what life used to be in the university before that.

Mon 2005-10-24 17:22 in diary No comments #link

Keeping studying meaningful: a strategy

I've gone through many, many university courses without actually being aware of... much. The expectation rates for such courses are, needless to say, not too high. The days easily go by just trying to stay on track on each course, and all the surrounding questions, such as "Why am I doing this?" seem to get forgotten. Thus, I have created the following checklist.

• Motivation:Why am I on this course?
• Role in the whole: How does this course relate to what I'm supposed to accomplish in the University? How does it all relate to the degree I'm going for or to other courses?
• Inner self: What am I supposed to learn on this course? What is the inner structure of the course? What are you supposed to know/be prepared for after the course?
• Getting Practical: What are the important dates (a.k.a. deadlines) on this course? Which activities on the course matter the most in the grading (lecture attendance, excercises, essays, presentations, exams, etc.)?

Wed 2005-10-19 23:28 in diary No comments #link

winter

I was on a ragga dancehall dance course today. Perhaps not exactly my thing, but it was actually fun and I got a sweat on.

It's increasingly dark and cold everywhere, life's getting harder to cope with. Lots of things to do, stressing. Been taking it easy for the weekend, but it's not easy since I can't help acknowledging that next week, I probably won't have time to do everything I should.

Everyone, including me, is lonely. Despite all these people.

Sun 2005-10-16 21:46 in diary No comments #link

Steel and candy

Saw the movie Charlie and the chocolate factory. Until just now I thought that the name of the kid was Jali in English too, since the name in Finnish is "Jali ja suklaatehdas" :P. The movie was twisted, as I guess it was supposed to be since the book was written by Roald Dahl. To me it seemed so twisted I would have thought it's not really a movie for children - but the kid sitting in front of us in the cinema seemed to enjoy it. I guess that's just because I'm an uptight old fundamentalist (right). Or maybe how much he liked it doesn't reflect the brain damage he got from it. Buahaha.

Planning to go on a Philosophy and American Television lecture series. A teacher on the logic course I'm in recommended it.

Sat 2005-10-15 15:11 in diary No comments #link

Ifi albumi

I'd like to report a very positive user experience from Ifi Nettikuvat (eng. net photos).

While we were in Haapsalu, Estonia in the summer, I shot some photos with my dad's ordinary film camera. Finally, some weeks ago I managed to get them ordered for development: I ordered an Ifi postal bag in which to send the film. It arrived a couple of days later. I selected nettikuvat in addition to the paper copies and put the bag in the mailbox. Perhaps a week later I got an e-mail with an user id and a password to access the photos online.

The user interface of the application was simpler than most photo browsing web apps, plus I had an option to download the files on my home computer as a zip (or self-extracting exe, among others) package.

Uploaded some of them to my brand-new gallery 2: Emil, his foreign-language friend and a car.. That gallery is not in "production use" yet, mind you (so please don't link to it, links will expire). Just testing and trying to find out about possibilities to embed it into the new pilpi.net theme I'm designing :).

Sun 2005-10-09 14:14 in links No comments #link

white chaos

Too many things to focus on. Prioritizing (them) is... one of them. I'm tired and tend to get frustrated.

Once in a while I get the feeling that although I'm excited and learning all these new things, I could be going somewhere much more strongly. The thing is, although I do have a clue about what that "somewhere" could be like, it's mostly a bunch of hunches so I can't rely on it for making a living. Second, I need to be occupied in all these daily activities, interesting as they are, to get these vague "hunches".

Addicted to firefox extensions

Thu 2005-10-06 16:32 in diary No comments #link

Firefox revolution, sorta

Jakob Nielsen in his new Top Ten Web Design Mistakes:

"Today, however, enough people use Firefox (and various other minority browsers, like Opera and Safari) that the business case is back: don't turn away customers just because they prefer a different platform."

Hooray, foxie :).

Mon 2005-10-03 19:09 in links No comments #link

walking wounded

Buying a TFT screen. Also, buying a new graphics card to accommodate the new TFT and also the old CRT screen, so I'll have a dual screen desktop.

Otherwise, I'm tired. I don't even know why I'm concentrating so much on the new technology - probably because I'm not very comfortable with all the pressure that's being thrown on me in school. I do think most of it is pretty interesting and in theory I like studying what I'm studying. I'm just very, very tired.

I'd like some fresh thoughts, please. Usually I have a ready supply, but now everything's just a crawl. Should allow myself to rest, but all those things that I've to do...

Sun 2005-10-02 15:01 in diary No comments #link