Dreams Come True

Stroke out few items from my wishlist. Didn't make me any happier. Even if I get the rest of it like a BMW convertible it won't make me happy either. Am I that depressing person? Or maybe you just can't put the true values of life in a wishlist and then strike them out one by one when you buy them.

Weekend In Levi

Three days of snowboarding. It was fun. Nothing else to say, actually. Just photos.

I start to wonder why do I even have a blog. Nobody's writing and nobody's reading. And the layout is screwed up in Safari because of one CSS hack to make it look the way I want in Internet Explorer. And I don't even feel like fixing it. It's much easier to shut the whole thing down.

Wout's Goodbye Party


Independence Day Party


Didn't have time to blog about these and probably not going to. But at least I've published plenty of photos.

I've presented my last project, did my last exam, presented my thesis. No more classes. No more exams. Now I just have to finish my thesis which is almost done as well. Makes me kind of sad.

Halloween

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siansaparo/sets/72157608586824318/

MacBook Pro

2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT 512MB, 320GB + Apple Remote and Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter adapter. This beauty is mine now as well as the new iPod Nano.

Russian Drinking Tricks

Which end bad sometimes.

Starving Children of Romania

And obviously thirsty as well.

I'm going to speak at a conference! I feel myself super-important.

I must be really pathetic because I drove to Prisma to buy canned fruits and Pringles instead of going to shop next door just for the sake of driving to Prisma as it is like a little adventure and feels much better then just sitting at home alone and doing nothing. I do have stuff to do, actually, but thinking about my thesis gives me a feeling of giant fist squeezing my stomach. I have a topic, I have an almost ready product, I have at least some idea what I'm going to write about, the deadlines are tight but it won't be critical to miss them and graduate next spring. But still something is just sitting inside of my and keeps squeezing my stomach when it notices that I start thinking about it. And the usual winter depression is on its way. I feel it.

Kemijoki

Autumn Colors

© me

Been to Samara. Didn't have time to do much because of driving around the city in awful traffic jams and doing some important stuff. Was diagnosed with insulin resistance. Nothing lethal. Bought my boss Rodnik vodka which is produced in Samara. Brought a bottle for myself as well. Bought him Art.Lebedev's Matryoshkus, the geek matryoshka. I hope he liked it.

Now I'm back to Kemi. Working. Working out. Soon I'm gonna start studying, the last semester is coming. Thinking about buying MacBook Pro and dreaming about buying a motorcycle. Planning to start writing thesis one day.

Mindbending Rotations

Life seems to be not as bad as I thought it would be here in Kemi all alone abandoned by everyone. I don't even have to stress about variegating it myself anyhow, it all just comes by itself. I don't think I've had that much activities during the "active" part of the year. Partying seems to be fun at first but when it becomes routine it brings no joy no more.

I've spent Juhannus in Saarikoski. I've finally visited more than IKEA in Haparanda but its surroundings including the old church in Alatornio. No matter how creepy it sounds it's really wonderful to take long walks at the cemetery. I've finally visited The Church of St Michael in Keminmaa, something I've been planning to do for the last three years. It was really impressive. I visited a regional museum there which was quite interesting as well.

I've been driving ATV and sailing Katarina with my boss, colleagues and some partners, an old ship built in thirties of the last century which is still in action and in perfect condition. Dinner, sauna, few drinks, beer festival, drunk cycling :D, night club. It was really fun! I've been to Murhaniemi checking the wind turbines. They are amazingly huge! And the views are just terrific.

Exciting work and regular work outs in gym have been keeping me pretty busy these days also. And the perspectives seem to be so bright. Though the winter is coming I hope it won't be as depressive as always. I feel the changes coming.

I've been updating my Flickr album more often than my blog. I think it's worth checking.

All-Terrain Sunday

My boss is flying on his ATV.



And this is me detaching.

Movable Type vs. WordPress

I have tried out both WordPress and Movable Type in order to be able to decide myself which one I like the most as a stand-alone publishing platform which I've been planning to switch to for some time already. And I choose Movable Type for a number of reasons.

The main one is that Movable Type allows to run several blogs per installation which is a crucial feature for me as I'm running two blogs, one in English and one in Russian, and I would like to continue that way though centralizing the publishing in one interface. Movable Type is perfect for that whereas WordPress allows one blog per installation.

WordPress has quite bad security track record, something I haven't heard of Movable Type.

Movable Type has built-in OpenID support as well as LiveJournal, Vox and own authentication. I guess such functionality can be added to WordPress using some third-party plug-in but why should I bother when a ready solution already exists?

I liked Movable Type template engine and Movable Type Template Markup Language (MTML) quite much. The built-in template editor with syntax highlighting and shortcuts to various tags with description and included templates list is very handy.

I have test blog up and running so it's about time I say farewell to Blogger and transfer it to the main domain.

New Design

Isn't it cute? I hardly ever smile in photos but when I do it might actually turn out to be something nice like this one. Now I can enjoy this wonderful photo every time I open my website. :) You can enjoy as well if you want. :)

Proud As A Peacock

I'm proud as a peacock. Software integration took just one day. Probably because the code I've written is just flawless. :) The architecture I've developed for our product has been accepted by everyone and seems to be working just fine. So I have the server, I have the clients and I have the user interface. The skeleton is built and functioning. Few features left and it's done.

Show Jumping

Meri-Lapin Ratsastajat.

Bachelor Thesis

Seems like I'm getting more and more clear idea what I'm going to write about and what I want to write about: "Distributed Systems in Industrial Process Monitoring and Control Applications". Sounds very interesting, doesn't it? It interests me at least and this is what I'm developing at the moment so it could save me some work if I could use documentation I'm writing about the project I'm working on in my thesis. The main obstacle is the non-disclosure agreement I have signed with my employer so I have to discuss about how what can be disclosed as a part of my thesis and what cannot.

Happy Dances

One of the many advantages of being alone in the office is the possibility to perform happy dances after implementing another cool feature which is working exactly the way you expect it to work. ^_^ And happy dances are especially easy to perform wearing my new supercool Bluetooth stereo-headset and listening to music without being attached to computer.

wage *= 1.5;

For non-geeks: now it's 1.5 times higher.

I know I deserve even more. But you can't always get what you want. At least not at once. But my time will come. I'm 100% sure of that.

Body Center Golden V.I.P.

The card is for one year. Now I have motivation to go there regularly. =)

Hedgehogs

I've been cycling around nearby forests and met these two cute little creatures. One crossed the road in front of me, another was rustling in nearby bushes.

Eurovision 2008

I think I like Bulgaria the most.

Soft Toy USB Flash Drive

The case of my Kingston USB flash drive has recently fallen apart so I made a new one. Some electric tape on the board to insulate it, some super glue on top of it, a soft toy and few stitches.

I'm finally working at Mionex and I've been pretty busy for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately I cannot tell anyone what am I doing there because I have signed non-disclosure agreement and I cannot disclose any information for the next four years. And no matter how drunk you'll make me I won't tell. Otherwise I would have to kill you and I don't wanna do that. :)

The only thing I can say is that it's something to do with machine vision and I like it a lot. It's nice to be finally part of a team, a balanced team as it seems to be. Not like at school when we have projects and I'm the one who's doing the majority of the tasks. And not like it used to be at the company I worked for before when they didn't trust me enough to delegate anything except software testing. Here everybody is developing own part of the product and I'm making a great contribution as well.

The only thing that bothers me is the wage I'm getting. It's less than I expected and asked for but it's better than nothing anyways. And there's a hope that it's going to be higher as the contract we signed is just for one month which is kind of evaluation period. And my boss expressed his interest in me working for him after graduation after he asked what are my plans for the future. So I guess he does want me to work for him.

Bread

This plastic bag is full of bread. This is the amount thrown away by a rather small local supermarket daily.


Here are the contents.


It is put into a special locked container. Huge amounts of meat, diary and other products are thrown away as well.

And somewhere in the world children are dying of starvation.

Engineers To Be

Boredom Is...

Everybody knows Love Is... comic strip. I should probably start making Boredom Is... as I get more and more ideas almost every day. So, today's boredom is driving to a big supermarket to buy smoothie ingredients which you can get from a shop next door.

My New T-shirt

Handmade. Here's the comic and here's the technology.

Balcony BBQ

Thought it got a bit colder in the evening and the sun wasn't shining anymore the will to grill something outside wasn't gone. The stationary grill was still covered with snow and seemed to be in ruins so we used couple of disposable ones. On a dorm's balcony.

And then we built an empty beer bottles pyramid. Here it is with two Portuguese girls:


We should do it again tomorrow.

Snowing Again

Internet Explorer is the biggest pain in the ass of every web designer. Fuckin' hate it!

Svanstein

New owner seem to be investing money into the place. It looks much better than it used to be previous years thanks to renovation. I hope this one won't go bankrupt like the previous owners did.

Saving your ass by signing a petition blaming your teacher for incompetence just because you can't solve some assignment isn't that nice, don't you think so? If you don't understand a shit it might not be just teacher's fault. I managed to pass this course last year and no, I wasn't familiar with the subject before. So don't call me an exception. And I'm not gonna solve or sign anything.

Insomnia can be productive sometimes. I couldn't sleep last night at all. To many ideas were going through my head. I felt sleepy for awhile but I couldn't fall asleep. So I went to computer and programmed a client for the XML-interface for the project I've made earlier. Seems like my teammates don't have that much left to do. I wish I could dedicate tasks and get some result out of it. But I have to deal with what I have and most of the time I have to take "if you want it to be done, do it yourself" approach.

Exactly!

Ylläs

Ylläs was pretty crowded this Easter. But thanks to the herd instinct still left in humans I didn't have to wait in 100 meters long queue every time I was taking a ride up. Nobody was entering from the other side of the lift at all! And people were just waiting in line because there were people waiting in line. I see no other reason.


I've visited a home zoo there. I wanted to steal one of these cute little creatures so much!


Ostriches wanted to peck me all the time.


Reindeers wanted to gore me.


And I ate bear, reindeer and moose meat.

Postcrossing

After a year break I'm back to postcrossing again.

Windows Mobile 6

My hp iPAQ hx2410 is running WM6 now! Pretty cool, huh? It's not officially supported but its warranty expired couple of years ago anyways so I had nothing to loose. It worked perfectly fine with WM5 and the latest firmware from hx2790 but for some unknown reason it didn't want to connect to my university's wireless network which uses PEAP authentication. I didn't want to go back to WM2003SE so I gave WM6 a chance. And it works! It works quite fast and no bugs were noticed so far.

b0r1ng

Blah blah blah...

Home, Sweet Home

Yes. We made it back. We made it back by the same '89 Ford Escort. Here are some photos: http://flickr.com/photos/siansaparo/sets/72157604065024062/. Comments and descriptions later.

Oh yeah!

Amsterdam is so fucking great! And yes, we made it. We made it through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands and finally we are in Amsterdam. We were laughed at and called insane but we made it by '89 Ford Escort. :D The way back is left but I hope it will be as easy as here.

Road Trip

Yay! Despite everything we're going! Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, The Hague and Oslo on the way back are waiting! Let's hope Daniel's shitmobile will take us there and back safely.

Job

Happiness isn't about money but it's hard to be happy without any money. Being a sponger sitting on parents' shoulders brings me some money but it definitely isn't making me happy. I do need a job. But what I can have at the moment is a minimal wage general worker position, web-master with just one client, the one who can offer only a minimal wage general worker position besides web-site support, and an unpaid trainee position at lab as they claim they don't have sufficient funding to pay trainees though I think they just don't take trainees seriously. Though I've showed my skills and knowledge last year and they seemed to be impressed. Maybe they really don't have enough funding.

But anyways it's all in my hands. And I know appreciation will come sooner or later but I have to work really hard to prove that I am worth it. All I need is an opportunity. Summer is coming and a summer job is an excellent opportunity. All I need is to find one. So once again I'm sending applications to companies all around hoping for the best. Lab would be the last resort but this time I want something more.

OMFG!!!

New Addicton

It might sound weird but caviar with banana tastes really great! Unfortunately the only place you can get the banana one is Sweden but I'm lucky to live 30 km from the border.

Unexpected Income

It's nice to get wage especially when you don't expect it. Not much though but better than nothing. And I thought I'm not working there anymore. The breakup was kinda weird and I didn't know what to think. But it turned out that I actually have work. And I will have at least for awhile. It won't bring much income and I won't make my living but it will let me be at least a little bit less thrifty.

Twenty

I am not a teenager anymore. And now I can buy any booze from Alko I want. Earlier the strongest booze they could sell me was wine. Nothing else changed.

Buses

Buses do suck. Though free ticket provided by school in any case is cheaper than gasoline burned while driving 30 km there and back but today I thought that the comfort and time saved might be actually worth it. I copied couple of episodes of House to my PDA to kill some time in a bus on my way to school today but was unable to watch them because Salmela's buses' engines produce way louder sound than my PDA can produce through the headphones. And they are shaking. And the seats are way too narrow. And I've waited 30 minutes for it after school and have spent 45 minutes inside the bus. Such a waste of time!

Nice Weather

I can't believe my eyes. It's sunny outside! Dark season is over!

Kallinkangas

Everyone had a hangover after Friday's party but only Alex wasn't able to go with us. So Masha, Ovidiu and me went to Kallinkangas to have some fun in the snow. Ovidiu borrowed Esa's snowboard and broke one of its bindings the day before. He tried to ride it anyways and broke another one. The rented board's binding didn't last for long either and there was nothing left of his wish to snowboard so he rented skis and giving up snowboarding once and for all.

Here's the video I filmed:


And here are some photos:

Keep Trying

I didn't feel like blogging about it and I still don't but somehow I feel I have to write about it. The job interview went fine. Actually it went quite good as I was confident and I knew that I have the skills and I have nothing to be afraid of. The interviewer seemed to have quite a good impression about my background and me in general but he wasn't the one to decide. He tried to reach CEO several times but he wasn't picking the phone so I was told to wait until the next week. I waited. On Monday I got an email saying that unfortunately they can't hire me at the moment. So the only thing I have left to do is just to keep trying.

The Mana World Buddy List

Something I've been busy with lately. I hope I'll finish it before I loose all the interest. The buddy list looks like this:


And it has a nice tray icon and notifications:



There are still few features to be implemented. I hope it'll find its users when it's ready.

MacBook Air

I'm gonna drown in my own saliva soon.

You Wanna Piss On Me?

I am not a perv, not yet a woman. I couldn't resist typing that. I am not dreaming about golden showers but this Brithey's song just sounds way too disturbing. And it has been playing in my head all day long! I'd better listen some Kraftwerk. Simple lyrics, catchy melodies. The best way to give your brain some rest. Giving it some sleep would be a nice thing to do also and surely it will get some rest this way but it's not sending proper signals yet so I guess it's ok. Well, it can switch off itself if it needs so I'll just let it take care of itself.

Compiz Fusion

I am not a fan of eye candy and my relatively old computer isn't either so I didn't bother to install it earlier. I don't get any kicks out of using bleeding edge software but when it's available in the official distribution repository why not to try it? So I did. I've been making some screenshots of Compiz earlier which can be found here. And here are some of the nice features you get using Compiz Fusion.



You can switch between the windows this way.




Or this way. Or in many other ways available.




The cube can be made transparent with its reflection beneath.
It's useless to take screenshots of other effects. They should be seen live or at least on video. On YouTube there are plenty of such videos.