Lavonardo

Saw Poets of the Fall in Tavastia on Wednesday.

Missed the warm-up band, but Phoenix Effect seems to be popular enough based on the number of t-shirts and a namecheck by the headliner.

While the 75-minute gig was good, and included nifty extra numbers (like a bossanova-rendition of Sorry Go Round, I kept expecting the band to kick into a higher gear. Even the biggest hits like the title song from the previous album (Carnival of Rust) felt strangely subdued.

The set list is taken from the band’s forum, I haven’t listened t the newest album much, and was pretty much clueless when it came to naming some of the songs. And yeah, that’s a cover of Chris Cornell’s Casino Royale-theme song there.

The Ultimate Fling
Diamonds for Tears
Sorry Go Round
Revolution Roulette
Stay
Psychosis
Fire
Don't mess with me
Illusion & Dream
Locking up the sun
Clevermind
Carnival of Rust
Lift
You Know My Name
Late Goodbye
Miss Impossible
Sleep

This week’s Macro Day challenge is asiana.

My take is the attached photo, a pair of Neko cat statues.

A Brace of Braces by Anyhoo (CC)

This week’s twin games were a brace - a pair of victories. A pair of victories entangled via a single player - Arizona Cardinals’ Tim Hightower. The running back had been on a scoring roll lately, and facing the porous San Francisco Fortyniners’ defense on MNF, I was pretty sure that Hakkapeliitat is in for a beating (the opponent fielded the rookie) and my niners unnecessarily extend their margin (where I was expecting big points). That never happened, the SF defense swamped the Cardinals’ running game and I actually won both of the games

The Hakkapeliitat victory was a much tighter game. The usually reliable Green Bay offense shut down, and the trio of Rodgers/Jennings/Driver scored twelve points altogether. The newest pick in the team, Tennessee Titans tight end Bo Scaife (replacing Zach Miller) scored, well-recovered Marques Colston did not (but brought in a bagload of points from yardage), but in the end it was the New York Jets’ defense that won the game. Forcing five turnovers, and returning one of them for a touchdown cemented my choice - and the fact that St. Louis does not field a very good team this year. The bye season, and Willie Parker’s continued injury woes meant that the team was stretched to a limit - the upcoming weeks will be earlier when the teams will all be on the field.

The ‘niners game over Herwood Punishers got an excellent kickoff in the thursday night game. Bronocs’ Eddie Royal put in 160+ yards and a score, netting a neat 22 points. With Drew Brees and Jerious Norwood (excellent pickup from last week’s droughty set of byes) playing well, the game was settled on early. With Jason Witten nursing a broken rib on a bye, I had to pick up a new tight end - and like Hakkapeliitat, the niners lucked out: Giants’ Kevin Boss scored again from an Eli Manning pass (saw them play last sunday, was impressed, and surprised that he was still a free agent). Chicago’s defense had a mellow night in their loss to Tennessee, a single sack is a very minor harvest from the usually very aggressive team.

Bring on week eleven.

Were it not for advertising on Jason Kottke’s blog, I would have missed some gloriously good t-shirt designs at Glennz.com.

Glennz is a brand shop set up by a guy who has successfully submitted and sold twenty-one designs at threadless in the last couple of years (and many of the shirts that failed to make the grade are worthwhile).

Count me in as a fan, even if I’ve managed to avoid purchasing any of the earlier ones.

I don’t think there would be a better candidate for the annual information award than Matti Nikki.

After all, it’s a rare person that can be a conspicuous thorn in the side of both governmental and commercial disinformation providers.

[ via Kari Haakana. ]

NVidia has announced a $3500 graphics card.

That’s right, a single peripheral card that sells for more than two top of the line laptops, and has more memory than any computer I’ve ever owned.

Probably, just probably, there’s an industry that benefits from the technology for real, but I still think there will be a couple of gamers with more money than sense that feel this is the ultimate weapon in assaulting the steep hardware requirements of Crysis.

Saw the newest installment of the recently rebooted James Bond-franchise on Sunday evening. Quantum of Solace is by no means a hollow sequel to the masterful Casino Royale, but not as close to an action masterpiece as Martin Campbell’s take was.

The plot is very busy, and for the most of the 1:50 running time there’s plenty of things going on. The action starts directly off the final scene of the preceding movie, and moves neatly to a nicely juxtaposed urban chase / traditional horse race in Siena.

Pretty much immediately the movie starts moving in uncomfortably many directions at once, and probably works out to a bewildering experience to those not familiar with the plot and characters of Casino Royale. I would have definitely appreciated a brief flashback of sorts.

Quantum of Solace remains a single-minded solo vengeance quest for its duration, and thus is closer to the Bourne films, as opposed to the wide-reaching predecessor. Even though the plot is packed with more or less credible spices of a humongous global conspiracy, the adversaries seem to have selected quite a few odd tools for their schemes.

Daniel Craig continues to excel as Bond, though this time the role borders on one-dimensional. Olga Kurylenko is convincing enough, and far preferable to recent Bond girls (up and until Goldeneye’s Izabella Scorupco). On the villain-side Mathieu Almaric is good as a slimy frenchman, but never quite up to the level of greatest of adversaries.

Further bonus points for creative use of typography and a neat touch-based intelligence visualization engine.

And minus points for too aggressive cutting in some of the action scenes. At times the proceedings were rather hard to follow. And there are plenty of those scenes, some bearing a close resemblance to things seen before, though some do feature novel concepts.

Three and a half stars. That’s half a 007. Not bad. But definitely something to improve on in the forthcoming part three of the quantum-saga, altogether twenty-third Bond-movie.

Attended a gamenight at Lemmy’s on saturday after having missed two previous in a row.

The two new pinball machines, Doctor Who and Theatre of Magic were designed and built in the early nineties. Both of them were nice enough to play, though I never really got a good game going with either. The latter is packed with shots and collectibles, and the former with a nicely elaborated lock-scheme.

On the console-side missed all NHL-action, and participated in Warioware as little as was polite - Nintendo really ought to come up something newer in the low barrier of entry party game-front. Brought in the original Scene It! movie trivia game, which was both respected and vilified - the games do drag on a bit, and are not of much interest to anybody with less than a casual interest in films. The newest of the new entries was Pacific Right the sequel to Motor Storm, one of the launch games for PS3. The intervening year or so has been used well by the producer - this time there’s more variety in the track selection, and most importantly a functional split-screen multiplayer mode. Managed to suck at it less than usual in driving games.

Lost the first week of virtual NBA, and kept winning in the fifth week on virtual NHL.

The first week of basketball was settled on minimal margins: nine in points and two in rebounds, blocks and steals. All but one of them falling the opponent’s way guided in a loss.

Despite the goalies being severely hurt, the goalkeeping actually kept the Hakkapeliitat afloat this week. Roberto Luongo’s three shutouts was nothing short of a stellar performance in the Canucks crease. Neither team scored much - five goals apiece in a week is rather pitiful.

Cassiopeia by folkstone42

As amazing web-contraptions go, the “automatically naming astronomical objects in photos posted to a flickr-group” is nothing short of amazing.

The backend is astrometry.net, and quite a nifty tool it is.

Definitely makes me want to go out and shoot some starry images. As soon as the seasonal rains subside and we actually get a clear night.

Been one of those weeks again.

• Despite two dishes containing the mushroom, I did not get any kind of morel-overdose.
• Martin Brodeur is out for up to four months, seriously screwing up the Hakkapeliitat team.
• A tapas cooking school can be arranged in an irish-themed restaurant without any ill effects.
• Haven’t yet figured an optimal route from Haaga to Ruoholahti.
• Coral’s single collection is out. Haven’t been a big fan of their recent records, but the “eight previously unreleased songs”-sales pitch had me sold from the beginning.

The fourth and last volume of the ultimate collected edition of Sandman is out next week.

The Bradley effect never manifested, and Barack Obama’s historical victory is now an undisputable fact.

Taking firm control of both houses is a nice bout of collateral damage.

Missed the first week of virtual NBA, and the Hakkapeliitat team got going this monday.

Draft was far from optimal, lottery gave the eleventh pick, and that meant that the biggest guns were long gone by the time of the first pick. Which landed on Celtics’ Kevin Garnett. Landed a few faces familiar from previous seasons, such as Richard Hamilton and Corey Maggette. And Monta Ellis, who got dropped immediately - a thirty game ban is not a good way to start the season.

No jazzmen this year either.

Breaking the Surface by Today is a good day (CC)

After a long dry spell, both of the football teams won last weekend. Neither with a surplus of style points, but those don’t count anyway. The important piece of news is that both teams breached through the .500 surface, and are again on the winning side of the standings.

Hakkapeliitat won mostly thanks to an opponent failing to replace bye-weeked players from his squad. This was by no means an easy game. The usually reliable Aaron Rodgers had his hands full with the Tennessee defense, but managed to play a decent, if not high-scoring game. Apart from Miami’s Ronnie Brown, none of the offensive players had a touchdown, which does not bode well for future either. Marion Barber’s productivity is seriously hurt by him being the pretty much only viable weapon on the field, following Tony Romo’s injury.

Niners had a much tighter game, but prevailed in the end, thanks to Shaun Suisham’s two field goals in MNF. I initially picked Tim Hightower in the draft with the assumption that he might in some games see serious action with Cardinals’ Edgerrin James getting on a bit. The hunch has now paid off fully - the Arizona rookie has scored seven touchdowns already, and seems to have acquired the starter role in the team. Eddie Royal was just a lucky late round pick, who paid off this week also (and has seriously cut into Brandon Marshall’s catches). With the Saints trio laid off by the bye week, had to dig deep for offense. Picked up two new guys, and the result was pleasant indeed. Both Buccaneers’ Alex Smith and Hawks’ Jerious Norwood scored touchdowns.

Bring on week ten.

Another week, another victory. With low margins in almost all categories.

But sadly, also another hurt goalie. With Martin Brodeur nursing a hurt elbow, and Manny Legace still recuperating from the Sarah Palin-induced mishap, the goalkeeper situation is getting worse.

As noted a while back, I resigned from Nokia Siemens Networks at the end of September.

Today I started working as a product manager for Nokia’s Maemo platform.

The commute is a bit longer than it used to be, but at least it’s within the borders of a single town.

This week’s macro day challenge is about leaves.

My take is this snapshot of an orchid, just about to bloom. The leaves of the bud stand out nicely from the blurred background.

It’s been a while since a movie rubbed me the wrong way completely (Izo and Domino seem to be the latest entries in the slowly growing list). I expected to like The Host, the most popular piece of south korean filmcraft, but ended up just waiting for the credits to roll in.

It’s a shameless monster movie, with large chunks of physical comedy and family drama mixed in. Of which only the first part is anywhere near convincing. Despite the plot containing plenty of useful strands like personal tragedy, government conspiracies, a particularly nasty bout of lobotomy and lots of screentime for the creature, it never really gets going on all cylinders. The protagonist family hovers close to being nothing but caricatures. The roles of the government and protesters seem just silent screams against the status quo that reigned for a couple of decades in Soul.

I didn’t like the film, but plenty of audiences across the world have, so give this a movie a try if aquatic monsters are near your heart.

Back in 1985, a laser printer had just broken the 7000$ barrier and become affordable even in small offices and homes.

Right now the the first sub-5K three-dimensional printer has been announced.

The laser printer ushered in the postscript age of non-boring documents and desktop publishing, there’s no bets on what the upcoming printing revolution will bring about, but it ought to be something vastly cooler than the ability to exercise bad taste by including seventeen fonts in a three page document.

[ via O'Reilly Radar. ]