Lavonardo

The only 2000+ point word in Scrabble continues to pull in visitors.

Found out the definition for singhiozzerebbe at the very source, the discussion board for the Scrabulous-game in facebook.

What does it mean, then?

Simply: “She/He would hiccup”. Quite efficient, packing all that into a single word. And before anybody asks, yes, the Italian Scrabble game actually has TWO Z-letters.

Didn’t play much pinball at the semi-irregular gamenight on saturday. And the games that got played, were nothing to write home about. Certainly not that good training for the Sörkka Pinball Open looming on the horizon.

On the other hand, the video games-side of things was a wee bit more successful. Against all odds scored a goal in NHL 08, and managed to both assist and shoot several in Pro Evolution Soccer. Even Halo 3 multiplayer was not an utter disaster. For that we have to go for driving games, once again. Though nowhere near as terrible as Moto GP, I was not really that efficient at the fourth installment of the Project Gotham Racer-saga.

This week’s macroday challenge is sneakers.

Quite an appropriate timing, considering that today was the day I finally broke out my North Faces, as the long-stretched winter has let go of Helsinki.

Today’s monthly supplement of Hesari contained a pleasant surprise, an interview with the finnish biodiversity researcher Ilkka Hanski.

Nice insight into collecting 30000 beetles from Madagascar, and fascinating glimpses into the extinct fauna of that island (gorilla-sized prosimians, gigantic birds).

Incidentally, the link into the magazine doesn’t take surfers to requests for payment. On account of its 25th birtday, the digital version of the April issue is free for all.

The first collection of Fingerpori comics is out.

It’s published by Arktinen Banaani, and very reasonably priced at 14 euros (I didn’t expect a hardcover album at that price).

The contents are not laid out in publication order, but arranged in themes (historical things here, Hitler-strips there and so on). Also, there’s a lot of strips missing, and surprisingly also some comics from the era when the town was known as Karl-Barks-Stadt.

Worthy purchase to all who appreciate absurdism and (occasionally terrible) puns.

This week’s photo friday challenge is far from home.

The pictured spot (the southern edge of Singapore) is not the furthest away I’ve been, but probably the best signposted location.

Yeah, the name of the game is a blatant rip of the first song off Pearl Jam’s third album.

But that doesn’t diminish the appeal of Alejandro Guillen’s Spin the Black Circle.

Simple controls, addictive gameplay, effective physics model - what’s there not to like. Apart from the fact that once addiction sets in, the inertia/gravity combo is pretty hard to let go.

Yeah, it’s not game of the week still, and this is not the interactive fiction-dose that was promised (still haven’t finished Lost Pig.)

Been reading an interesting book, a page a day for the last fifteen weeks or so. Know-it-all Book tackles various fields of study with a cliff’s notes version of a topic for each day. I’m pretty sure that in a year (the book has 365 pages) I can namedrop philosophers and discuss rococo art on surface level, but as to actual knowledge, this book shares the wealth with a small spoon.

Wired’s Geekipedia, on the other hand, is just a semi-random collection of topics that are of some interest to the magazine’s readers. Topics vary from the origin of LOLcats to a debate on string theory. The articles are not long in this booklet either, but a tad more entertaining than in the slightly dry Know-it-all book.

The former might come in useful in Trivial Pursuit, the latter will be useful in coffee table discussions at work.

Geocached for the first time in a long, long while yesterday.

Picked up Hangala Urban yesterday (next to the house I work in).

This was almost the last chance to find this, since the cache will be deactivated over the weekend.

With the spring looming on the horizon, I figure there will be more loggings soon. (At least of the three pending hides from 2007).

This week’s thursday challenge concerns pets.

My take on the subject is a photograph of a small catfish, Palespotted Corydoras (Corydoras gossei, kultapäämonninen in finnish). Typically to an armored catfish, it’s a bottom-dweller and happiest when presented with mosquito larvae on soft sand.

Timo Tolkki just disbanded Stratovarius.

I guess the solo album wasn’t getting enough publicity without yet another stunt.

This week’s photo thursday challenge is bogeyman, mörkö in finnish.

According to wikipedia, a bogeyman has

… no specific appearance, and bogeyman can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear.

My take on the subject is a small creature with a fearsome face. This is an unknown mantis species, about five inches long, climbing on a shrubbery. It’s probably dangerous only to plants (or other insects, should it be a predatory species), not to man. But blown up to a big enough size, or looked at from a short distance, the critter certainly is scary enough.

The image is available in full-size (albeit there’s lots of out-of-focus bits) by clicking the photograph.

That’s why the Japanese have switched to using appropriate search terms in advertising. In faux search boxes in the ads themselves.

Once again the net is ripe with proof that quantity does not win over quality, as just a few of
year’s April Fool’s jokes make the grade.

The flying penguins was a cute idea, though.

But reality surpassed pranks this week, as the two most improbable headlines were pulled out of real news tickers. After all, neither Max Mosley’s Nazi-regalia romp or Ilkka Kanerva’s SMS-fuelled dismissal could have been planned beforehand…

The completely reworked image uploader of WordPress 2.5 seems to be seriously broken.

The flash-based tool fails miserably, and the error messages (especially on screen) do not help much.

Thankfully I’m not the only one suffering from this fault, and even more thankfully, a plugin that replaces the tool with a traditional HTML-form has already been released. The plugin doesn’t work perfectly either, but as long as it stores the images properly, any faults can be fixed in markup.

Other than that, the new version of the engine seems to be OK (and the draft-manager has definitely been fixed, which is nice).

Haagan Hakkapeliitat made it to the basketball semifinals of Yahoo! Public 159358.

The quarterfinal was a tight battle, but on the very last day the 6th seed pulled off an upset over the highest placed team in the quarters, Hakkapeliitat managed to inflict a serious increase in free throw percentage on sunday, and that turned the tables: 5-4.

Semifinals are not going to be pretty - Shawn Marion, my first round draft choice, is still hurt, and anyway languishing in the lottery bound Miami Heat. I have full confidence in Kevin Martin and Vince Carter racking in points during the final weeks of the regular season, but the other categories are a cause for worry. Erick Dampier has been a shadow of himself lately, and the number of blocks per game is uncomfortably low.

I’ll keep the audience informed.

Saw Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War yesterday. Went in expecting to see an average movie, filled with potentially annoying actors, but was pleasantly disappointed: this was a very good movie, and all the big-name actors managed to stay on the not-so-annoying side of things.

Charlie Wilson is an average congressman from the Texas 2nd district, who just happens to end the cold war by driving the Soviet Union out of Afghainstan. That’s the film in a jiffy, and cannot be considered to be even mildly spoilerish, since the first minute of the movie explains exactly that.
But again, it’s not the end result that matters, but the journey from place A to place B. And here the plot takes a few pleasant turns, is packed with interesting characters and absolutely stacked with quality dialogue.

I had no idea who the scriptwriter was until the credits rolled in, but had a hunch, based on a few scenes from the Congress, in which the characters engage in meaningful dialogue while walking around. Yes - this movie marks Aaron Sorkin’s return to the world of political drama.

It’s not only the scriptwriter that makes this movie a joy to watch, but the acting is good across the board. Neither Tom Hanks nor Julia Roberts exhibits too much of pretentiousness, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s CIA agent fills out the triangle at the expected highly enjoyable way. Hanks is excellent as the affable congressman with a penchant for single malts and pretty employees.

This is an old school movie, where a quality plot supersedes a budget dominated by CGI-costs. Stock footage is used instead of pyrotechnical pornography, a nice change of pace. Charlie Wilson’s War is over in about a hundred minutes, and the time is well-spent, the pacing of the movie is just about right.

And even though it hits a worrisomely preachy note at the end for half a scene, it pretty much expects the viewers to build the connection between the muffed end game of Charlie Wilson’s War and the 2001 tragedy. If any exists.

Updated the blogging engine to the brand spanking new 2.5-version. Painless to the extreme.
Report anomalies if any appear.