The life and times of a fallen hacker
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The entire 2800+ entry breadth of this blog is now available in WordPress, properly categorized, all shiny and nice.
The effort begun in August took quite a bit more time than expected.
To celebrate the union under one umbrella I’m going to watch a bit of House and quaff a well-deserved glass of metaxa, just the thing to spark up a dark October evening.
Not surprising absolutely anyone, Metallica’s twin gigs next June sold out in minutes.
The local ticketers web pages were as helpful as usual.
And nope, I don’t have a ticket yet, thanks for asking.
It’s been about a year since my debut in Nyt. Been doing occasional game reviews and game-related sidebars for the supplement throughout the year.
Last friday’s issue marks the first step beyond mere games, a foray into the movies-page. The article is a brief sidebar and explains the gaming context of Max Payne that just had its premiere. Haven’t seen the movie yet, but based on overwhelmingly negative reviews, this is not the first good film based on a game.
Vuoden Luontokuva 2008: Etelä-Suomen Talvi by Simo Mikkonen
The Nature Photograph of 2008 has been selected, this year’s winner is the attached image. An image that shows the worst season of the year - the gloomy and wet november. Which, of course, has been stretching for months on end the last few years.
(The nature photographer’s sites seem to be hit hard tonight, I’ll update the link when they’re back online).
Nice, this year’s Rakautta & Anarkiaa Film Festival broke all previous records with over 48000 tickets sold.
That’s right, a large group of italians have put together a knitted bunny whose length is over 60 meters.
Probably the world’s only soft toy visible from the orbit.
Dr. Pepper aims to stand by their promise. Back in March, with Chinese Democracy firmly in limbo, the company announced that it will provide a can of its soda to all americans if the record ships this year.
With the announcement of the awkward licensing agreement with Best Buy, it looks like the soda pop-quaffing public is going to indeed have a free can.
This week’s Photofriday challenge is freeze frame.
My take is the attached close-up of water droplets splashing on the surface of a waterfall pool. Even at 1/1600, the motion is pretty well frozen.
One more free science/fiction (yeah, the use of slash is entirely intentional) magazine is born with the release of its first issue on the web.
H+ (seemingly abbreviated from Humanity +) explores transhumanist themes and convinced me to have a look on basis of having Charles Stross amongst the writers.
Faking the tilt-shiftness of a photograph definitely has ended up on the things to learn properly.
This image of Boston’s Fenway Park shows how well real life imitates model railroad aesthetics.
Episode 2 of Forumwarz is out.
Mr. Tucson Lepht: How do you plead to the charges of Haxx0ring and Blowing the Fuck Up of a Nuclear Power Generation Facility?
The second episode of the world’s finest massively single-player online game is not free, but at 10$, it’s still more than reasonably cheap.
Iso Suomen Kielioppi is now available for free on the web. I haven’t read a single thing about the finnish grammar since high school, but now there’s no hurdles on the way of learning.
This week’s photo thursday takes its inspiration from a seventies’ thriller: Desmond Bagley’s Tightrope Men, translated as Suomalainen nuorallatanssi (Finnish tightrope dance) back in the day.
Decided to go for a concrete image this time, and chose the closest high wires around - a very visible part of the power grid over Pikkuhuopalahti. Haven’t seen any aspiring artists atop the pylons, and certainly no-one in their right mind would attempt to cross the bay using the wires.
This week’s thursday challenge is appropriately autumn.
My participation in the gathering is the attached image of a brightly colored rowantree.
Metallica has announced back-to-back concerts in Hartwall Areena in mid-June next year. Sweet. Apart from the fact that the gigs will be sold out in minutes.
A far more mysterious entry in the calendar is a brand-new outdoor event planned for 80000 attendees. Of the artists, there’s nothing beyond wild speculation at this time.
I bought a new toy today.
A CCD-based barcode-reader that hooks up to the USB-port.
“Why on earth”, I hear the collective cry of perplexed millions.
The answer is simple, I’m going to catalogue my books.
Indeed, I’ve been a paying member of the fabulous librarything for a while now. The social network / collection site boasts a decent interface and easy means to export the data (one of my main beefs with the otherwise interesting Delicious Library).
Even when the site boasts a very nifty ISBN-based book adding mechanism, typing the ten+ digit numbers is both a chore and error-prone. Hence the reader, which emulates an external keyboard perfectly.
It will be a while before the contents of the shelves have been fully documented, and I’ll definitely keep up commenting both the site and the progress.
The Marson reader itself is a solidly built piece of plastic, whose only unfortunate feature I’ve discovered thus far is its eagerness to let out a piercing beep upon successfully deciphering a set of parallel bars.
