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.