Lavonardo

In the slowly continuing series, “what’s spinning in your dvd player”: Seinfeld and Angel.

Never been a big fan of Seinfeld, but when the three first seasons on dvd were going dirt cheap in a sale, nabbed them. I don’t think I’ve seen a single season 1 episode before, and at least the couple first ones definitely have not hit the ground running. And the pilot’s definitely weird (no Elaine, Kramer’s called Kessler). So, the bullseye episodes are yet to come, but the dialogue has occasionally already hit all cylinders, but it’s just not consistent thus far.

To contrast the early Seinfeld, there’s the late Angel. Late as in “cancelled” as well as “season 5″. The first eight or so episodes have been of uniform good quality (nothing exceptional, but neither truly wretched). And clearly Whedon & co. are still hoping that they’d get an extension on the show - haven’t yet resorted to weirdness or tying up all the loose ends. But I’m sure there will be time enough for both.

Well, UK is now covered by maps.google.com. The detail level is not up to the US/Canadian one, but it’s still good. And the tube-signs in London are a nice touch (even though they’re not listing the disused stations).

And Seppo pointed out, to ease people’s discoveries on the merkin maps, there’s a nifty site called Google Sightseeing that lists locations someone has deemed interesting.

Outlook seems to be having some sort of vendetta against yours truly. I use it at work only, don’t worry, I do practice safe communication at home.

Anyway, looks like that moving the good ol’ laptop between offline and on-line states too many times terribly confuses the sad excuse of an e-mail client, and it goes sulkingly into permanent offline mode. And with w2k taking close to five minutes to restart, it isn’t really a solution. But at least the relevant help files provide no assistance in this. The usual reward applies - sufficient or even helpful answers get beer. Not that anyone really came forward with a solution when I was waging personal warfare against the w2k DHCP-client. Which, by the way, still sucks.

Yeah, bought it on saturday. Along with Teräsbetoni’s debut.

Ok, so the reception’s been lukewarm. But I like it. More organic than the previous album - fewer loops, more guitars. But kind of devoid of hooks. Or then I’ve just not been paying attention enough. Well, I anticipate this to grow on me, hence a good position near the very top of ipod’s disk.

And since pretty much every second inbound person seems to be looking for the lyrics to “Taivas lyö tulta” via google, it’d be polite to have them here. Perhaps some day. Anyway, the rest of the album is not nearly as good as the first single, but there are some bright moments.

Whoo, good old ESPN.com has really outdone itself lately, three biggish articles worth reading in a row…

First up is a neat-o collection of cheating tales. Some familiar, some less so. My favorite is #19, which shows why Grouchy Souness is not really destined for a bright future.

The second, an analysis of the quarterbacks for the almost-immediate NFL-draft. And unless the niners manage to pull a Sounessian moment of genius, they will draft Alex Smith. After all, their previous smart [Smith graduated in two years, majoring in economics] Utahn [that's, like, Steve Young, for the less enthusiastic readers] QB only took them to several championships.

And last, a ten year retrospective on ESPN history. As far as I can remember, an annual membership therein (or actually Starwave sports with whom they merged) was my very first web-purchase. And no, my credit card number was not nabbed, and I gave up the subscription after a year as the information kept getting more and more liberally shelled out for non-subscribers as well. Thanks for the ride, and here’s looking for another decade of decent reporting.

Well, as Dan Brown’s readers know, Vatican is in for a spot of trouble, now that the conclave has been shut in.

And don’t believe a word what the evil geniuses at CERN are saying. They’re off to singularitetize the whole world!

Well, our yard is not big enough for this. Just imagine the possibilities: this spectacular ride, a couple of blinky lights and Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On playing in an infinite loop. And you’ll probably get the “most hated guy in the neighborhood”-award right away…

[via boingboing, a trusty purveyor of weird linkage.]

The first finnish band that ever really made it, Hanoi Rocks, is back with a second album after reforming a couple of years ago when Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy finally decided that they can tolerate each other (and that they need the money…). The other two remaining guys decided to opt out of the reunion, so they’ve been replaced by younger players (the original duo must be pushing 45 these days), and Razzle was killed in ‘85 in a drunken car accident caused by Crüe’s Vince Neil.

Played a free promo gig on top of the “stockan kello”, a balcony on the department store’s second floor. And caused chaos, as an estimated 10000 people crowded the area around the store. Did not see much from the corner of Aleksi and Keskuskatu, but heard well, the PA system must have been turned close to eleven. And this was around 50 meters away from the stage, so closed up must have been way louder. According to a couple of trusted sources (hesari, roklintu) the entire gig was done with playback, but Mike Monroe played up his usual rock’n'roll rooster antics to cover up the fact.

Five songs. Recognized none. All from the new album, I’d expected some old classics to cap the set, either Tragedy or Don’t you ever leave me, but nope, they concentrated on the new material.

Wasn’t bad by any means, but not on the top of my shopping list.

Not much different from previous years, standard seems to be high and there are a lot of familiar faces and names among the speakers. Yet another good crop. And this continues to prove the fact that OLS is, indeed, the technical conference on Linux.

The finnish premier of Sin City has been delayed until late july. Bastards.

Saw F. Gary Gray’s Be Cool. A movie selected by a committee of six people, this was the one that didn’t annoy anyone enough to veto the selection.

And that’s pretty much what’s wrong with the movie. It’s bland, derivative and pretty much hits every cliche on its way to a predictable end. As a sequel to Get Shorty from way back when (1995, sheesh) it just plain fails.

So, the story’s not good - but characters do save the film to a certain extent. Not the leading pair - John Travolta is even more wooden than usual, and Uma Thurman never gets going (though [dunno if intentional] skulking with a wine bottle in similar stance to Kill Bill’s Bride brought up a smile). Nah, the duo just fails, and their extremely long-winded and very much tacked on dance scene is a good reminder that the equivalent scene in Pulp Fiction was good, this is just a cheap re-run. But the not-so-leading guys are responsible for most of the stars… The man with the weirdest name in Hollywood, Cedric the Entertainer, plays a highly educated gangsta to the very edge of over the top, and Outkast’s Andre Benjamin is just plain excellent as his hapless relative. Vince Vaughn camps it up as a homeboy-wannabe, and Harvey Keitel seldom disappoints. The much-touted “Rock as a gay bodyguard who wants to act” never got going. And Aerosmith guys were cool as usual (though the fatherhood-spiel between Steven Tyler & Travolta was very very cringe-inducing and way too long).

Bah. Not worth seeing in a theater, this’ll be on tv soon enough.

The trailer for Episode III was packed with effects, lessee if they’ve included a real script this time (as opposed to the two previous star wars films).

Whoo. It’s out tomorrow. But a week later than US and UK. Just plain forgot to order it from play.com.

Nabbed from various places:

• Graveyard of airplanes in Davis Monthan air force base in Arizona rendered via good old maps.google.
• The webcammed home of a flying squirrel.
• Ferners go for Skynyrd’s Free Bird, the
  finnish variant is to request Sabbath’s Paranoid. The following study is sadly cut off around 2001, but the practice is still ongoing. And yeah, the existence of either, let alone both of these, in wikipedia does not cease to amaze…

Exactly what happens to all current browsers with the Acid2 test. Only goes to show that full CSS2 support is still a long way off. And that it’s not only IE that’s broken. Though IE’s CSS support is fundamentally broken, and unfixed for the last three+ years.

Or so it seems, the sole remaining pinball manufacturer Stern Pinball Inc. may be in for some stiff competition from a newcomer with a formidable back catalog of old Bally/Williams designs.

Ok, so some people do have enough spare time for toys such as this. Mouse interface suits the game perfectly, and you’ve just got to admire the trickery needed to implement the game in such a hostile environment.

EDIT 19.8.2008: The game is gone (at least from the original URL), but reinterpretations abound.

Hey, if ex-president Rodham thinks games are not good for you, then it’s definitely time to go back to the early nineties virtual California, turn up the volume and grab a trusted nine-millimeter deathdealer…

Indeed. Been playing GTA: San Andreas again. Got semi-stuck in one of the early San Fierro missions way back when (just couldn’t accomplish what Jizzy wanted), but this time around things seemed to be easier. And been having a jolly good time raising the crime rate numbers lately.

It ain’t perfect. The draw distance is nothing to really distinguish the game, and the controls occasionally freak out as well. But it’s got its share (and then some) of quality gaming moments. The soundtrack’s too packed with hiphop and rap, but some of the radio channels (classic rock, country and grunge/metal) work wonders as ambient background to mayhem.

The other big topic shattering the quiet spring tranquillity of finnish blogosphere is the arrival of commercial blogs hosted by the Pirkka magazine. A monthly magazine whose biggest claim to fame is its “nifty tricks”-column, which usually involves the use of pantyhose in non-obvious situations.

Like Janne, I don’t really mind their existence, it’s just another tool for the marketdroids, and they are about as open about their affiliation as you can get.

But I sure ain’t going to read them.

The almighty blogilista.fi aggregator site has been href="http://www.pinseri.com/archives/001256.shtml">purchased [in finnish only] by Manta Ray Holding company (appears to be a local venture capital entity).

The timing is impeccable, the purchase occurred almost immediately after this very blog was listed on it. Capitalism at its very finest.

There’s a new library in Helsinki. Smack in the very middle of downtown, maximizing convenient access by being located next to the railway station.

But it’s not a full library - actually very far from it. Seems to concentrate on music, with shelves after shelves full of cds; and comics and travel literature as an afterthought.

Picked up some in each category - KMFDM live is pleasantly crunchy, the lonely planet guide to Madagascar interesting, and the classic “Hunting Trip” graphic novel penned by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Enki Bilal as good as I remembered. Though not really topical any more, communism having gone the way of the dodo.

Old library card worked well, it’s been ages since its last use, and it has shed a lot of ink, but the self-service machinery was able to pick up the bar code still.