3 lion puppies enjoying Xmas holidays?

 

... of course with some occassional (frequent) occassional (frequent) occassional (frequent) fight for space.

Cool collaborative experiment... YSO

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/symphony

Soul Night: UMO Jazz Orchestra, Tuomo Prättälä, Osmo Ikonen, Axl Smith

Just the perfect evening out... wish could replay the whole thing again and again

 

 

Faure's Requiem... Spotify

After some "What's so cool about this?"-thoughts I'm falling increasingly for Spotify... it has pretty awsome selection of classical music. Many of them I don't seem to be finding from anywhere else than in Spotify(?).

Fantastic(ly comforting) recording of Faure's Requiem bu Seiji Ozawa and BSO... Agnus Dei just takes you out of here.

 

etätyö rokkaa

One on my favorite theme ;o)

 

http://www.pelastamaailma.fi/pelasta/pelastustehtavat/43-Tuomo-Sihvola-etatyolla-5-karpasta-yhta-aikaa/


Pelastustehtävän kuvaus:

1-3 etäpäivää per viikko lakisääteiseksi pääkaupunkiseudulle kaikille mahdollisille toimialoille. Edut:
1. CO2 päästöt tippuvat radikaalisti kun porukkaa poistuu autoilemasta
2. isot tieinvestoinnit muuttuvat osittain tarpeettomaksi kun liikenteen määrien kasvu saadaan maltillistumaan
3. lapsilla on edes muutamana päivänä vanhemmat kotona kun tulevat koulusta kotiin
4. työn todellinen tehokkuus nousee kun työntekijät pääsevät edes muutamana päivänä keskittymään asioitten pitempijänteiseen ja perusteelliseen tekemiseen ilman jatkuvaa palavereitten ketjua
5. työjaksaminen paranee kun voi parina päivänä ottaa relammin ilman työmatkaruuhkia.

Ympäristön pelastamisen, infrarakentamisen rahojen oikein suuntaamisen, yleishyvinvoinnin, perheen yhteyden ja työn kokonaistehokkuuden puolesta addressi/aloite liikkeelle missä eduskuntaa pyydetään lainsäädännöllisesti velvoittamaan työnantajia teettämään tietty osa töistä etätyöskentelynä.

Aloittaja: Tuomo Sihvola
Perustettu: 22.05.2008

Wierd realityTV world...

... keeps suprising me.

News headlines in Helsingin Sanomat the other day

3 will be prosecuted of Madrid flight accident
No inquiry in prosecutor Sim's case
Finnish banks have minimal risks in Island
2 candidates with same voting number
Big Brother Harri return to house
Hurricane Omar hammers Virgin Islands


Big Brother Harri return to house ????
...and they keep writing and interviewing these persons all the time.
Leipää ja sirkushuveja - food and circus for masses?

 

Cool ad for Wii in Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

 

Timing is crucial

 

THE optimal time to cause sense of universal happiness in all humans travelling thru Ruoholahti is to drive the cargotrain thru Ruoholahti of course just around the afternoon traffic peak every day. I'm sure VR Cargo has good reasons for this excellent timing....?

so what x 2

 

Exercise your brains - swear

 

Sikasiistiä kansanomaistamista....

... wish it would be already here! Great

Best session ever...

Today Jarmo showed me Hanko's Silverstrand ... what a joy it was - in my short windsurfing career this was close to dream come true. "Halssi" was endless. Nice slighty bursty winds. "Faster than ever" moments. I even managed to jump first time ever :o)
Great place - gotta go back with Jarmo and Simo!

A bit frigthening that I seem to only understand when I'm about to loose all my strenghs when I fall and try to get the sail up again. In Pihtipudas I was lucky it was home beach - now I was in the middle of fairly bigish swells and swimming, then trying to get the sail up and realizing I'm not sure if I can due to totally finished hands. Well, I got it finally and the board back to beach. More self awareness required.

















Oh, on Saturday I went to Melsten beach for the first time too. Great fun.... until I came to beach for some water and tuning. When heading back I was welcomed with not too loud snap - lost the fin. End of fun.
Luckily Matti from outdoorpoint.com was in Hanko and kind enough to help me - got a brand new one :o)

Pretty "ace" similarity match in LastFM....

Seether and Nielsen ... an obvious match :o)))

DNA's brand ... part 3 or so

This is now enough to bring DNA Finland and it's slogan "DNA - exceptionally fair" to my mind

From Sci-fi to Sci-fa...

I've always loved Science Fiction stories ... they tickle my brain and make ideas fly. Just seems that scaringly many of the Sci-Fi "speculations" are turning into Sci-Fa, Science Facts, and fast.

The other day I accidentally run into video clips about robotics. I've sort of settled to the level of Honda's friendly Asimo. I was sort of shocked (don't really know why since this is of course higly anticipated driver for most of technical developments)of how strongly military has been driving robotics. Robotic insects I've seen before but good old exoskeleton and robotic mule were new ones. The mule especially is so very capable of "living" things.

Sadly the elements from future world's as decribed eg in Stanislaw Lem's Futurologist Conference and Frederick Pohl's and C.M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchant and The Merchants' War also gets closer.

Showing the products part 2

Bauhaus has touch for showing the products.... part 2

http://tuomosthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/03/about-showing-your-products-in-shop.html

Dapper.net was ever so cool... and it's getting better

It's a bit more than 6 months since I last visited and fiddled around with www.Dapper.net. It was cool already then and I created feed for EPS windmeter which I then used in a WidSets widget ... and have been using ever since. Now I checked Dapper again since I wanted to add the same windmeter feed to my iGoogle, and found some great new additions like Firefox plugin to RSSisize any page and flash widget code generator. Excellent !

And virality seems to be well thought of too since there's a small green plus ;o) in amazingly industry defacto standard style for "add to webpage"...

Add to your site   powered by Dapper

Two kind of charm & charisma...

Pauli and Kolmas Nainen, Peruna Teatteri (both my old super favorites), and now with new band Hehkumo in UMG Spring Break... Always new great stuff from Pauli.

















Retropop - all 4 persons in the band very radiently live in the stage ... somehow rare. Great stuff.

Aiming high, execute to perfection...

I had to take my N82 to be serviced. I took it to Nokia Flagship Store in Aleksanterinkatu which also has care service point in it. Sitting in there with about 10-15 other persons queuing to the service made me think WHY do they have care service point there ?
The store is very nice, all the devices are well placed, location couldn't be better, and there are lot's of helpfull staff there.

However, care service point has 2-3 persons working which means that store is actually growded with pretty grim looking persons queuing for more than half an hour to get serviced.
In practise this all turns out pretty much followingly for the total experience...
Those persons who actually just come to see the devices and discuss about them (as I guess is the main purpose) will see first a showroom full of pretty unhappy/bored looking persons just waiting (=sitting in front of the device tables blocking the way to the devices) to get serviced, then they wonder why there are lot's of Nokia store staff just waiting to get customers but the ones waiting and staff do not connect (since only care personnel can service care cases... which take some time to understand for the first timer), and then finally visitors inevitably start to wonder how the store is filled with customers with problems with Nokia devices...
So yes, very convinient idea to combine showroom and care service, but I think the execution is not on the level of the idea and thus the result is not the wanted experience.

Flagship store must be pretty hefty investment both money- and imagowise - I hope someone is really watching after it and making sure that it really serves the purpose...

ps. as it is a world's mobile communication leaders showroom one should expect to be able to use all devices core features including calling and messaging...

Last warning Tuomo - start exercising ...now

I haven't really done any decent (or actually to be honest any at all) physical exercises during the winter ... if eating does not count as exercise. Today I found bitterly and the hard way how you should really keep in shape even if you don't eg really gain too much weight by just eating and sleeping.

Very nice wind was promised for today (execpt for the direction of the wind which was NW-NNW... land wind which causes lot of turbulance in the beach), so Simo and I had agreed over the weekend to go and start the season on Monday. This we did.

After lots of turbulances when heading to the open channel where the wind was at max, we had some great but very close to edge planing.
I was flat out after some time - the wind was extreme and change directions in big bursts. Too extreme to my current skills and 7m2 sail.... plus my incredible bad physical condition :o( We both went back to beach to rest and drink. For a few moments I thought this was it for me, but the stupidity and sense of "immortality" won, and we headed back.

The wind twisted sail like hell and I did not have guts to go more downwind. Both us went ashore on the other side to rest again. After some time we headed back. Or actually Simo headed back - I dropped off with hardening twisting wind right in the middle of the channel, and simply did not managed any more to get the board going well without dropping again. Run out of energy, and that was it ... could do anything else except to sit on a board and try to recover. Failed in all tries to get going again.

Finally I saw a Buster boat, and luckily they saw me waving at them. And the guys came to rescue me - throw me a rope and took me to next island where I packed my gear. We lifted the gear to the boat, and they took to home beach. Thanks a lot two gentlemen fishing Baltic Herring ! Thanks Simo for looking after !

Well, just bursty high wind and sail size are just lame excuses - root cause is my bad physical condition. This was a wake up call - start excersing again !

Mouth explosion....

Deli lunch
Originally uploaded by jyri

Cotelette et Caviar in Kapteeninkatu next to KOM theater exploded my taste nerves today... rarely if ever have experience the kind of mouth sensation during lunch time thanks to some magical bluecheese sauce and buttery wedgies.

Excellent (as almost always is ... )!

And it smelled great ...

Finally managed to visit Surf & Kite exhibition in Lahti..... and oh boy it smelled like windsurfing. The season is officially on ;o)

At the risk of sounding ....

Build it throughly, minimize content, maximise message

DNA has been building it's "DNA - Exceptionally fair" image for long time ... now they don't even need to mention who is advertising, it does not anymore actually somehow even feel like advertising... Colour and font is enough and I make the association to the brand.
























Having said that to be fair, at least in "fairness" DNA is less fair in it's roaming pricing - got a horrid bill for some plain voice and messaging in States.

Turning brains off ... laughing them off

... always finding new laughs from The Simpsons. This time from one of Tree House of Horrors...

Maggie turns out to be a half alien child (Marge's "dark secret"). Maggie's pacifier is a radiobeacon and activates to call her "real dad" to come and pick her up. Aliens come to ring the door bell - Homer opens....
"Hello ... oh, mormons"
"No actually we are Qvantum Presbyterians"













Another goodie - Homer the Bear ... in his dream

About showing your products in a shop...

Could the drills be better "displayed" ?

Broken heart...

Quite a sense of drama... we had bit of a disagreement of the way home work should be done - "dad broke my heart"

Cliponomy

Clip Economy aka cliponomy = all content is split to clips by users communities. These clips then actually receive nowadays the most if not all of the communities' power as added value creator (ratings, dicsussions, sharing = community marketing).
Cliponomy is also the basis for new cultural renewal - in music hiphop, rap,... have lead the way by "shamelessly" ripping riffs as building material for the new songs. Nobody speaks anymore about somebody ripping the "original" off.
(Just read from Eero Hämeenniemi's book that) In Classical music a techique called parodytechnique (?) was largely used by eg Haendel. "Borrowing is acceptable, but you need to return what you borrowed with interest".
Skateboard movies seem to be the ultimate cliponomy product at the moment - could they be leading forming of a new kind of movies ? Don't see why not actually since the kiddies at home seem to be mostly consuming all video content as videoclips. Actually all reality TV shows are just collection of clips - clips are what matters, the "plot" and theme are there just as frame for "juicy" videoclips which get max attention and are easy get circulated and re-spinned ?

Clips get the attention, are easy to share, meet the diminishing attention span of people ... the most important thing with YouTube is that it clipotized permanatly the last long format media and made "sharing of a clip" part of our normal net behaviour ?

Hello bartender...

Sick at home (pretty tough horkka in the morning) and all this goughing has opened again ~4 weeks old "hello ribs - meet lumikola"- case... auts.

Well, finally some time to watch Futurama: Bender's Big Score in peace ;o)






















This time painfully hilarious spot:
"Hello bartender. I've thought it over, and far from being a fat big, you are very nice. And I would like to have another drink......"

Bueno Vista !

I'll take all my bad words back... Vista rocks - I messed somehow the file system, but Vista's wonderfull Restore system actually works. I managed to return the precisous travel photos and work stuff ... Way to go Microsoft !

California...

I've heard about it but it (=the extremes in California) is still pretty awsome to experience... from people surfing in sunshine to 2-3 meters of snow and really great snowboarding all within just 3 hours of driving ...and snowstorm which I've never experienced anywhere before.
Since I managed to loose all the pics from the week's trip due to Vista (or my lack of Vista understanding), a short recap of the trip just to remember it.... Verbal pictures in no particular timely order:

Nice walks all over the city with the help of SFO's nice buss network. Great local cafes (especially where accidentally the skateboard shops were ;o). Excellent snowboarding with Antoine in Lake Tahoe's Squaw Valley until the snow strom hit the area. Then next day 8 hours of home coming driving in the strom with longest ever traffic jam time for me - close to 1.5 hours from Olympic Village cross road to I80 chain check-up point...
AM1610 frequency and all the infosigns enforcing "you are only allowed to go on I80 if you have 4wheel drive and all weather tires - all other cars must use chains", and then few guys checking basically all the cars in I80 when going into Sierras. And still during the first 5 minutes after the chain check point there was a big SUV sideways in the Interstate, back wheels spinning wildly and 2 guys in their shorts trying to push it.... we are all immune to traffic conditions since we are all such bloody good drivers ;o)

Before the storm Antoine also took us to the other (left) side of Golden gate - very nice views to the city, bridge and the sea. There were some gun station from 2nd world war when US was getting prepared fro potential Japanese invation.

On Monday we did 49mile scenery road thru SFO different areas - nice sunny day and nice trip. Saw surfers having their immense fun under the Golden Gate. Twin peaks. Great Ocean road. Nice Dinner with HeGe and Antoine.

We had the same Delta stewardess on the way to SFO and coming back to home, and it was a nice start for the trip to get her greetings "oh hey guys - did you have fun, was it nice ?" ;o)

Both ways over the states we had almost totally clear skies thru the trip. Awsome scenery - took a lot of pics (whch are now lost :o( ). Anyway funny to see how different areas seemed to repeat typical patters - 1st came an area where all the farms were square with farm houses along the roads. Then next area has square areas but with triangles cut from each corner. Then Square again with farm house in the middle and with bit of a forest around them. Then suddenly only circle farms ....
Lake Tahoe and Utah, Colorado looked wild and great from 11km.

Otto had his skateboard with him and oh boy is that a magnet for good will ;o)
well also without skateboard I have to say that I've rarely experienced so much street kindness ...

Succesfully used combination of staying awake for 48hours and enegry drinks for the next 2days to overcome jetlag ... barely noticed the time diff.

Ou jees and the Jelly Bean factory visit before Sacramento was an experience on the way to Lake Tahoe. Kiwi and Watermelon rocks.

The beer scenery in SFO rocks too. 10-15 meters of top notch brewery stuff is tough to pass without some serious ad hoc shopping. The only bummer is that since it's US you can only buy them in 6packs.

Ou jees 2 - US is the only place in the world where Audi Q7 looks like moderaly sized car.

Thanks Antoine !

SoG...

Found this http://www.strategyofgiving.com/Download_files/SoG.pdf book thru Leo's post in Valve internal blog ... very "thinking boosting"

"Although the giver might find her gift valuable, the receiver might find it worthless. Similarly, a company can approach its customers in a way that it finds valuable, but which the customer perceives as worthless.Therefore, it is only the receiver’s act of receiving that makes the giving process complete. It is then left to the receiver to decide whether giving took place. It is here that the perceived value of the gift becomes its actual value....

The planning of strategic giving needs to start with the generated motion. First of all, it is good to start by thinking about the nature of the motion you are interested in generating. Next, you need to determine what the receiver’s needs. Then, it is crucial to look at both of these aspects to determine what might be
an appropriate gift...."

How to do marketing for your new service release?

First Bill announces that he will start actively using LinkedIn as "his community service". LinkedIn does a service revamp at the same time. Then Bill is place in all pages placing his question into the community. Next MS invests in or buys LinkedIn (or is it already owned by some of the big ones ?) ;o)

HP.... Finnair ... Delta - changing preferences

HP..... We have bought 2 laptops over the 2 last years from HP - in total close to 2000€ which I think is pretty big amoutn of money in a household. As a gear really nice I must say. We bought the 1st one as Xmas present for the boys 2006. Worked fine. That's why we bought another one for Xmas 2007.
This last one was broke straight on - did not charge the it's battery at all. I took it to service December 29th. It took over 5 weeks to get it repaired and after all the only issue with it was the battery. Anttila/HP service promised to come back on reimbursing something on the way too long service time but even after series of phone calls nothing so far.
The first laptop from 2006 started first to use it's cooling constantly about the same time we bought the next one, and then it just went dead after some time....
HP website in Finland guided to a service point which has not been there since Dec 27th. Very nice = absolutely the last HP gear our family will ever spend our € to.
Challenging business since it not about the gear but also how you handle the total life cycle of the gear. (btw I have had 5 IBM laptops with no probs ever...)

Finnair..... my favorite airline so far. Seems that in their quest of corporate effectiveness they have definately taken the fleet-in-air-time/maximise the return on the fleet investment as their key target and into extreme over the customers. In pratice this means eg that any delay on any single long distance airplane will simply be paid by Finnair's customers. Our short SFO vacation started "nicely" with 6 hours delay in Helsinki-Vantaa. (They gave basically an additional delay announcement every hour.) We missed of course our connection to SFO. Food was absolutely ______ - all three of us felt like ___ afterwards even thinking of it (for some days). On the way back again late arrival of the plane from Helsinki made us miss the slots in JFK so nice rough hour waiting in taxi queue. I have actually never been in that tighly packed MD-11. Finnari cabin crew is still great thought but anyway - fare well Finnair for overseas flights until you put the customer in front again.

I have had lot of doubts on US airlines, which this trip quite honestly removed totally. In the next US flight I'll invest my money to US airline or BA.

Voi vista ...

Lost all my new stuff from the computer due to some Vista's wierd virtual file saving... all SFO pics, Lake Tahoe pics and work powerpoints files gone - nice. Vista seems to be like a modern car's engine - not a chance to service it on your own. Should really have a sticker in the laptop next to Intel Centrino, Microsoft Vista and NVDIA sticker warning users "DO NOT DO ANYTHING ON YOURSELF"....

Herald Tribune...

Spend the whole flight back from Prague reading thru HT... good stuff.
Very informative story about how French economical and political elite is formed/has formed for long time (thru Ecole Polytehcnique and thru ENA) and how's it's now under fire with the Kerviel catastrophy.
Great story about how some of Iran's former lead revolutionalists and key political figures Ibrahim Yadzi (former deputy prime minister and first foreign minister) and Abbas Abdi (lead figure behind US embassy former hostage horror) have been strongly disaggreing about how republican & democratic Iran should be build... and they have been set aside. Not how I thought it's there..
Iran and Syria hunting down together a mysterious killig of Hamas leader in Syria. which Israel so firmly denies of being responsible that makes really wonder who it was - who videotaped that ?
Interesting story on Sarkozy's wierd "how to teach 10 years old to school kids about holocaust"-plan.
Another horror gunman incident in Illinois - after giving up medication a normal person shot 20. Basic trust to fellow beings/anyman slowly degrading - breaking one of the corner stones of our society ?
Eco anxiety moms strike back with community services - Looks like real change on our living values is taking place - promising, wakes up hopes for the future.
California 5150 - ex drug addicts shout for help to improve eg mentally disturb persons' and drug addicts' possibilities to survive by improving their relatives possibilites to force aid on them. But still keeping in mind the thread of misuse - standard theme in horror and thriller movie scenes.
Did someone actully temper with Kerviel's and his mates IM dialog to make them look bad ? propably yes, and head will drop soon in the bank ?
Very interesting article about firms (again) cultivating loyalty by investing in worker clubs and worker benefits in US. Competition for the competent people and their loalty is tough in US - in Finland it seems that outside of SME scene competences do not really interest corporates ... expect of course management competence ;o) Let's hope that current lack of true interest for competences will not be eventually the achilles heel for bigger Finnish corporates.

...and finally a familiar face in the last page - big picture about Tanja Poutiainen who won the slalom in Zagreb.

Loads of stories - time to expand Sunday morning's Hesari hours with subcription of HT ?

Fatal separation of the act and the consequence... I'm becoming old ?

A young guy kills his little sister with a hammer and a knife after a heated debate over a math calculation. Then he also kills his other sister who is just coming back home so that she would not see her little sister dead. The boy says that nothing would have happened if the hammer would not have been lying next to him.

Four young guys aged 17, 19 23 break into a random appartment. They torture to death 66 years old man and his 33 old son and then burn the appartment. They get some money.

The horrible incidence in Jokela at end of last year, and in Myyrmanni 5 or so years ago, and actually now when I think of it the list of such deeds seem to go on and on ...

I cannot help thinking that commodization of the violence in everything we see (TV series, TV news, movies, games, ...) has managed to permanantly separate the act and the consequence from each other in the minds of our new generations, and that the results can now be seen everywhere.
Not a world and future which I specificly would like to live in and nor do I like the idea that it's where the boys have to live for the next 60orso years. I feel old.

1971 Grange, horse races, taxi licences and rare coins...

This xmas I bought 5 course dinner in Postres for Nina. While I waited for her in the restaurang I had my hands on a great looking magazine Fine - Scandinavien fine wine magazine if I recall it correctly... very interesting story about Penfolds Grange as an investment. Had a good spontanous "räkänauru" when I bumbed into this: "For many year Access Economics was using 1971 Grange as measurement for economics. As an investment it beat other top alternative investments as horse racing, taxi licenses and rare coins" ;o)

well actually not too much to laugh at since 40x return on the investment is not too bad ? just that the combination of top investments was so odd