E-dating

A couple of months back I decided to embark upon another shrowded territory of the Web 2.0 world. Social networking is fun and everything, but e-dating was something that I have been fairly succesful in avoiding. But what's more fundamental then migrating the whole social game of dating and paír making to the internet? It's the penultimate thing in migrating a person entirely to the internet.

But it's not all dancing on roses, obviously. These thoughts are partly backed by what I experienced and partly by what I've read and heard on various forums and other contexts. Interestingly enough I got the impression that one of the major problems in fact is the anonymity that the net provides. Apparently lying and deceiving are a real issue; I personally didn't witness this, but then again, I only got around to meeting one person in the Real World, so who knows how many actually lied. But apparently, and quite understandably, people do seem to distort the facts, some more than others.

In the traditional practice of dating, it's been said that as with financial markets, liquidity is the key to collective success. If so, then the e-dating scene would certainly be nirvana. But it apparently isn't. Due to the aforementioned distortion of facts, trust is somewhat difficult to form when you people don't attach their names to the things they say. This isn't even restricted to only e-dating, but to everything that happens on the internet. I try to stand by everything I say with my real name, so if you're reading this blog entry right now, it should be fairly easy to figure out who I am and how to contact me. But because of the voluntary nature of attaching your real life identity to your internet persona, people are naturally tempted to push the boundaries because they feel they cannot get caught. Completely understandable.

Then there is the issue of wasting effort. Or the fear of wasting effort. Because of the trust issue, people tend to be somewhat reserved and skeptical of each other and not give out very much of themselves. A typical ad for someone usually includes non-information like "I'm outgoing, social, like to travel, exercise, and I'm 23 years of age." Or something to that extent. It doesn't matter, because you haven't given any sort of edge to grasp. It's like saying "I like to breathe". Well, not quite, but you get the point. So naturally an ad like that will only provoke responses that are as shallow. And as a result, the original poster of the ad will develop a negative mindset after only getting shallow, uninteresting responses from people who most likely are lying anyway. And this turns into a self-reinforcing negative loop that feeds itself.

Now, of course the above will give an impression that I'm very hostile against e-dating. I have to admit that on some level I'm disappointed in seeing how the system works (or how in reality, it doesn't) in a large scale. But I'm still cautiously optimistic that it might work for some people. As proof of that, I did actually meet one interesting person and even though it resulted in no romantic love story, I think that even that has been a positive experience and made me a better person, if only by so much.

And of course one can't circumnavigate the issue of the taboo nature of e-dating. I think to some extent there is still a slightly negative stigma attached to e-dating, at least in some circles. Some thoughts are that e-dating is still for people who cannot attract any form of relationship in traditional face-to-face situations. Fortunately this stigma is losing its former might as the emerging generations of young people are getting comfortable with the fact that the internet is just another forum or extension to their daily, real lifes.

Will I engage in any more e-dating? It's difficult to say. Right now I would venture a guess that I'm not in that interested in pursuing this venue any further due to the negative issues which, from my point of view, outweigh the positive effects. But I'm not ruling it out entirely, since I do still believe that just like your local coffee shop or some party, the internet is capable of providing a venue for finding and creating relationships.

Is this it for tailcoats?

I just finished reading an article from a few years back by Nicholas Antongiavanni on the status of tailcoats. I have to agree that the tailcoat is one of the most brilliant items of clothing today. I personally don't own one, but I've worn one on some occasions. But Nicholas outlines some points and trends in fashion and style and without a doubt I can believe that tailcoats will be all but extinct in the near future. Americans already consider the Tux to be the most formal thing. At least the rather small group which I've talked to regarding this seemed to believe so...

But Finland seems to be perhaps one of the last standing bastions of the tailcoats. There are essentially two types of white tie events in Finland these days; the ball held by the President of Finland on the independence day and then academic ceremonies. Even in the student world, white tie is the preferred form of dress for the annual celebrations for different guilds and student bodies. Naturally there's an increasing trend to use a dark suit with this latter event, considering that acquiring a complete white tie attire will be fairly steap to your average student who looks to stear clear of loans and finance his/her studies with the dismal student allowance and by working on the side.

As such, however, be the tailcoat as brilliant as it is, I will not see myself purchasing one anytime soon. Unfortunately.

(Oh, and I finally got around to ordering Mr. Antongiavanni's book, The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style.)

Second Nature

I previously discussed about the Nseries commercials some time ago and I thought they were fairly brilliant. Just now I stumbled upon this new Nokia commercial, which I've embedded above, and I think one thing is clear. In my opinion the commercials Nokia is pushing out are excellent and well ahead of the competition. Although I guess it may also be that I represent only a small segment of the overall market which actually likes these commercials that aren't all "in your face", so to speak.

There is, however, one possible problem. In the past Nokia had such a strong brand and recognition that you didn't see that many commercials. It was also fairly refreshing to see that they didn't jump on the marketing bandwagon and shove silly commercials down everyone's throats. But now with these increased advertising efforts - undoubtedly mainly because of the increased competition in the marketplace (well, at least up until 1Q2007, anyway...) - there are tons and tons of Nokia commercials, which from my point of view might damage the brand. Especially if the quality of the commercials deteriorates. And again, it may be that I'm so unhip and uncool that I don't really get what's the current status of different brands in the mobile phone world and that in fact this is precisely the direction a company should go towards if it wishes to capture the youth markets. And the youth markets are precisely where Nokia has in the past couple of years had trouble, if I've understood correctly.

And I still need to go take the marketing exam...

The return of the ugly web sites

Some might argue that the ugly web sites never even left. Everyone remembers these awful personal home pages people had in the 90ies. With blinking text, marquees, bright colors, etc. The ones that looked like a big mess. Well, now with MySpace and whatever, things have gone to a completely new level. I can't understand how the majority of people who author content online and run their home pages appear to be blind (no offense to blind people, I'm actually fairly certain that you could do an even better job of designing a web page than the MySpace crowd).

And to make things even more fun, the entire Web 2.0 movement has a strong foundation and belief in mashups. Mashups are essentially created when you take data you have in different sites or services (e.g. Last.fm, Flickr, etc.), pull them all together, repackage it and provide onwards. So now every self-respecting site is providing these simple tools for pulling together the data to show on your own personal home page. I can have my Last.fm recently played tracks on my home page. I can have my Jaiku status on my page. Flickr images? No problem. Except that there, in fact, is a really big problem...

All of the plugins/badges/images/etc. are different. They don't offer any sort of nice and consistent feel. You can see precisely which part of the web page is polled from a different service. And it looks ugly. That's one reason why I haven't bothered slapping my sidebar full of stuff, even though I'd like to. Then there's another thing; with people cramming every imaginable thing from Flickr photos to kitchen sinks on their personal home pages, the pages take an incredible time to load and the resource usage is at worst a pure nightmare (first you load the page, then you execute the JavaScript on it, then the JavaScript pulls in even more JavaScript from wherever, or pulls data from somewhere, parses it and then presents it). It's unbelievable. And then the resulting page looks like pure crap.

Thoughts

I just got back from having lunch. Ate some stuff I can't even remember at some Chinese restaurant. Then holed myself in that café at the first floor of the WTC Helsinki building to get through last week's The Economist. Still some work to do with that before the next issue hits the inbox tomorrow morning.

I still need to fix some stuff for work before Monday to make some Chinese people happy. I should've done that yesterday, but instead I just hit the gym at work after my Principles of Strategic Management exam. It's interesting that the entire parking building at work as empty. Nobody was putting in the extra effort, going the extra mile. What does this imply? Dido's Here With Me was playing at the gym, and it's been playing in an infinite loop in my head ever since. Downloaded it just now, so now it's also playing on the PC. Along with some other stuff.

I want a dog. A Siberian Husky or something. It at least looks like a dog. And performs a function. Unlike quite many creatures that carry the name of dog and are in fact very sick due to inbreeding and whatnot and don't even perform any rational function; they just are. It sickens me. The people who think doing that to a dog is acceptable also sicken me. I guess they have some sort of god complex or something.

Saw Melody & Lyrics last evening. Got my quick fix of romantic comedies again. Followed up by watching Pride & Prejudice this morning when I woke up a bit before 8 AM. I think I may have to watch one of the Bridget Jones movies tonight... Or maybe I'll go hit the gym at work again, since I know it'll be completely empty on a Sunday night. Then I could sit in the sauna for half an hour. I always like it when I'm completely alone at some large building. Like at work. Or at airports.

Polyphasic sleep redux

I think I touched up on polyphasic sleep in some earlier blog post. But I don't typically read my blog posts afterwards, so I can't be bothered to search for it. But I recall having thought about it earlier, too. Maybe I should seriously try to start tagging these posts...

Anyway, I've been thinking about polyphasic sleep again lately, and I recently found Steve Pavlina's blog entries on his experiences with polyphasic sleep. I have to say that right now I'm more than intrigued by the possibilities and opportunities offered by such a routine. One thing worries me about it, though. Well, ok, a couple of things. Firstly my diet right now isn't that healthy. I eat just about whatever junk I come across without much thouhgt. I think I'd need to adjust that and eat more healthy things if I were to try to adjust and reduce my sleeptime. Secondly, and this is somewhat related to the first issue, is that I think I would need to give up alcohol consumption. Again, that might not be such a bad move either, but...

Then there's also the issue regarding how to nap at work. I work in a cubicle farm, so I don't really have my own office or anything, so that might cause problems with being able to nap. Steve doesn't touch on this subject (or at least I didn't notice), and this might actually be a dealbreaker for me... Additionally I'd need to do the transition between monophasic to polyphasic sleep over a period of apparently two to three weeks and that would require a long-ish vacation... Oh well. Time to get back to the Principles of Strategic Management course books, since I'll be losing the reading time tonight as Istvan's throwing a goulash dinner.

LibraryThing

What's the first thing you do when you wander into some flat you've never been in before? I always check the bookshelf. Typically. And I'm guessing I'm not the only one who does that. But unfortunately people with their busy lives today don't have time to read anything anymore. It's a pity. And as such, as shocking as it may be, bookshelves are disappearing. But back when everyone had a bookshelf or two, it was easy to determine what type of person someone was by looking at the books he/she reads. Nowadays the same goes for what's on your MP3 player. But I think books are still interesting.

So, enter Web 2.0, or especially social networks. Last.fm already keeps track of what sort of music I listen to, so people can then go "oh, your taste in music is all weird and stuff". Luckily now there's also LibraryThing for when you want to list all the books you have in your bookshelf to tell the world. It's also fairly addictive. I went through a couple of piles of books and entered about 40 books that were lying around in my flat. I guess I'll go through the rest of the books in my bookshelf over the weekend. But a cool feature is that I can include a mosaic of the most recent books I've added in the sidebar of my blog. On the right. I'm so in love with that.

I have retaken my bedside table!

It's true! I finally decided that instead of keeping the enormous pile of unread books, magazines and articles on my bedside table, I should instead just put them in my bookshelf. So for the first time in over a year my bedside table is now essentially empty - only five books, my diary and my calendar. It looks so empty...