If you had to describe a potentially interesting person, what would they be like? I've talked with quite many people recently (i.e. in the past year) about subjects which border this topic. I think my personal answer would be a cross of, say, Gordon Gekko, Patrick Bateman, Thomas Crown, and Tom Ripley. One psychopath, one (maybe two?) sociopath and an arrogant asshole.
So, how to combine them? Well, obviously you take the ruthless and calculative nature of Gordon, then you combine it with the the class provided by Thomas and Tom and finally add the socialite tendencies and general contempt against the world that Patrick brings into the equation. Of course all of them overlap each other on quite many different fronts, so maybe this sort of scenario would spawn a relatively familiar result, but only on steroids.
One thing is certain, though. The result wouldn't be a very nice person.
(Oh, and apparently they're making a new movie called Money Never Sleeps where Gordon Gekko will be making another appearance, this time in conjunction with hedge funds. Can't wait.)
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
"Free" vs. chargeable
Thomas Anglero has an interesting entry in his blog on how Google might take on the telco world. I guess speculation as to whether or not this is feasible is sort of pointless on my behalf as I'm obviously not an expert on any matters telco. Anyway, this sort of move would trigger another interesting question: if Google were to provide free wireless speech while utilizing the advertising model to finance the whole shebang, how disturbing would the advertisements be? And could there be a possibility of any sort of (even small scale) slashback from consumers who are getting more and more tired of how advertisements are everywhere?
There have been other similar suggestions for advertisement-based "free" mobile phone access and I guess the same questions must have popped up there too. Namely if the pendulum swings too far away from the equilibrium, will the trend turn towards the direction where some consumers would prefer to pay a -- perhaps even significant -- premium to rid themselves of advertisements. It could also be used as a status symbol; "I am wealthy enough to not have to subsidize my calls with advertisements."
Actually, this would all be in line with some widely held beliefs in regards to corporate strategy; in the long run the players who focus on competing through cost and the ones who compete in the luxury niches will survive and the middle-tier will cease to exist. Maybe in the future we'll have Google & Co. provide free calls and the current telco operators turning into "premium" boutiques, offering a bigger and more polished brand that attracts the upper-middle class?
There have been other similar suggestions for advertisement-based "free" mobile phone access and I guess the same questions must have popped up there too. Namely if the pendulum swings too far away from the equilibrium, will the trend turn towards the direction where some consumers would prefer to pay a -- perhaps even significant -- premium to rid themselves of advertisements. It could also be used as a status symbol; "I am wealthy enough to not have to subsidize my calls with advertisements."
Actually, this would all be in line with some widely held beliefs in regards to corporate strategy; in the long run the players who focus on competing through cost and the ones who compete in the luxury niches will survive and the middle-tier will cease to exist. Maybe in the future we'll have Google & Co. provide free calls and the current telco operators turning into "premium" boutiques, offering a bigger and more polished brand that attracts the upper-middle class?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Clothing goes online
It's actually nothing new that you can buy clothes online. I just personally have shied away from that since I've been sort of skeptical as to the quality and sizing of the clothes. But, as seems to be the trend recently, I've been eating my words and accepting changes to things I previously held to be chipped into stone with a chisel; this time I went ahead and ordered three shirts from T.M.Lewin. They're apparently having a nifty sale and getting rid of shirts for 25 quid a pop. So overall (with the S&H costs included), it's still less than 40 euros per shirt. And in anyone's book, that's quite a bargain. Especially more so considering that it's T.M.Lewin and not some obscure little company from the middle of nowhere who nobody's ever even heard of.
That said, buying suits online is something that I still won't do. At least not until I can find a decently good tailor to take my measurements properly. And that, I would imagine, is still quite a way off.
Oh, and T.M.Lewin isn't the only one of the traditional English clothing companies that has an online presence; it turns out that, for instance, an increasing number of Savile Row tailors and suit makers are also represented online. And that's a good thing since I think the plucky Brits could use a bit more visibility, especially now that they're under fire from not only the Italians, but also from various entities from far east.
That said, buying suits online is something that I still won't do. At least not until I can find a decently good tailor to take my measurements properly. And that, I would imagine, is still quite a way off.
Oh, and T.M.Lewin isn't the only one of the traditional English clothing companies that has an online presence; it turns out that, for instance, an increasing number of Savile Row tailors and suit makers are also represented online. And that's a good thing since I think the plucky Brits could use a bit more visibility, especially now that they're under fire from not only the Italians, but also from various entities from far east.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Neighbors
One of my upstairs neighbors is trying to kill me by getting my blood pressure to rise, I swear. I think his/her only mission in life is to keep the elevator on the fifth floor. I've come to my flat three times today (once in the morning to drop my stuff off before work, then in the afternoon to drop my briefcase off and get the voucher that allowed me to get my DVDs from the post office and then again when I got back from the post office) and every time the elevator has been on the fifth floor. I'm going to go grab some beers tonight and when I come back home later in the evening, the elevator will be on the fifth floor. Mark my words.
Update: I came home last night: 5th floor. I left for work this morning (at around 8 AM, so I wasn't the first to leave from the building); 5th floor. What the hell is going on?
Update: I came home last night: 5th floor. I left for work this morning (at around 8 AM, so I wasn't the first to leave from the building); 5th floor. What the hell is going on?
Affordable fine dining
We were celebrating Saku's return from the Caribbean sailing trip (he's been sailing his boat there and back for a year and finally returned last week) and I had to choose a restaurant in Turku. Naturally I took an issue of Kauppalehti Optio at work and checked the restaurant ranking charts from the last page and found a place called Rocca, located right on the western bank of the river Aura. It was the highest ranking restaurant in Turku and the magazine said that the value for money was above par. Some friends from Turku also acknowledged that it had a good reputation. So, easy choice, then.
The only question mark about the place was the price, which turned out to be quite reasonable. The quality was very good (but what do I know about food, anyway?) and starters were ~10e, main courses ~25e and the desserts ~10e. So with 50e you could get a decent meal and then a bit extra for the drinks. The place itself was decent enough too; the design was sleek and sort of minimalistic and the brick wall covering one wall was great. Service wasn't too shabby either; the waitress actually seemed to know what she was doing more often than not, and that itself is quite a feat in Finland.
I guess I could go on telling how great the place was, but since I have no formal background in fine dining and don't really understand how, say, a Michelin star restaurant would be better than this, I'll just conclude by saying that I liked the place and would go there again when in Turku. Who knew that above par dining could be so affordable these days...
On a completely separate note, I happened to play a front nine of +2 yesterday and scored my second eagle of the season (and career). Yay.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Where has the time gone?
Haven't blogged in a while. Again. Pretending to be busy and important. Again.
It's funny how everyone seems to be in a hurry all the time. It's actually quite easy to fill your calendar with all sorts of things and then pretend that you're "busy and important". But for 99% of the cases, I would say that that's nothing but a facade. People want to seem busy to prove that there's some sort of reason for their existance. But by looking at the way people carry out their days, if people truely wanted to be efficient, they could cut a ton of bullshit out by just arranging things better and more intelligently and by reducing all sorts of silly activities which serve no real purpose but where they put tons of effort. I use "they", but I guess I should instead be talking about "us". Just some two cents; of course this may again be a mood swing and I want to feel cynical and poke fun at things like this.
One good place to see "busy and important" people is at work. Someone once described that people in the Keilaniemi campus seem to be walking around that much faster and that the tempo is also faster. Can't comment since my experience of large companies and the difference between HQs and other centers isn't that big.
Oh, but I did play three over par for the front nine this evening. Still need to get a new bag since my old one sort of broke (it's about 7 years old).
And finally, I started working on my thesis again! Moved the scoping around a bit again and ditched the SME focus. Now I'm thinking of looking at the motivators and challenges in general and breaking the types of outsourcing projects into four fundamentally different groups using my own framework of looking at who initiates the outsourcing activity and what the actual scope of the activity is (typically the size; is it corporate-level or just project-level?). I guess now I'm out of excuses and will need to also start blogging about the progress of my thesis more actively. Just to show that I'm actually doing something with that.
It's funny how everyone seems to be in a hurry all the time. It's actually quite easy to fill your calendar with all sorts of things and then pretend that you're "busy and important". But for 99% of the cases, I would say that that's nothing but a facade. People want to seem busy to prove that there's some sort of reason for their existance. But by looking at the way people carry out their days, if people truely wanted to be efficient, they could cut a ton of bullshit out by just arranging things better and more intelligently and by reducing all sorts of silly activities which serve no real purpose but where they put tons of effort. I use "they", but I guess I should instead be talking about "us". Just some two cents; of course this may again be a mood swing and I want to feel cynical and poke fun at things like this.
One good place to see "busy and important" people is at work. Someone once described that people in the Keilaniemi campus seem to be walking around that much faster and that the tempo is also faster. Can't comment since my experience of large companies and the difference between HQs and other centers isn't that big.
Oh, but I did play three over par for the front nine this evening. Still need to get a new bag since my old one sort of broke (it's about 7 years old).
And finally, I started working on my thesis again! Moved the scoping around a bit again and ditched the SME focus. Now I'm thinking of looking at the motivators and challenges in general and breaking the types of outsourcing projects into four fundamentally different groups using my own framework of looking at who initiates the outsourcing activity and what the actual scope of the activity is (typically the size; is it corporate-level or just project-level?). I guess now I'm out of excuses and will need to also start blogging about the progress of my thesis more actively. Just to show that I'm actually doing something with that.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Paper address books and calendars...
I think I may have already posted some entries advocating for paper versions of address books and calendars before. But today was another fine example of why it's quite useful to have stuff on the paper. At work I tried to switch to a new push email/synchronization software. We shall call it software product Foo, which is shipped by a major hardware company Bar.
So, first of all I can't install Foo onto my phone, because my phone was shipped with a previous version of Foo, which is integrated with the phone's software so well that it's impossible to remove the previous version of Foo. It takes quite a while to figure this out. Fine, I think I'll just update the phone's firmware, then. For that I need a cable. Luckily I own a cable and hook up the phone with my PC. The phone notices that it's hooked up, but the PC for some reason decides that it doesn't want to see the phone. What's the problem? Yeah, the cable is of a wrong type and I have to use another cable with the exact same plugs but which for some odd reason actually works whereas my cable didn't.
Ok, so I was able to update the phone's software and I had my calendar stuff and address book backed up on Outlook. You can see where this is going, of course. Anyway, after the update, I restore my backups from the phone memory card (which don't include my contacts as the installation procedure for product Foo advised me to nuke my address book and calendar before installing the software; fortunately the stuff is still in Outlook). Lo and behold, the previous version of Foo is now gone and I can install the new version! Yay! So I install it and it actually works. I fill in the server and user information. It starts to synchronize. It fetches my inbox. And it works! I can access my emails. But then I notice that it didn't fetch my contacts. Ok, maybe there's some checkbox I haven't checked and it won't fetch it because of that. Well, turns out that that wasn't the case. But instead at some point the synchronization features of product Foo decided that I don't need the contacts that I have in Outlook. Nor do I need the calendar entries either.
To sum it up, I now have a spiffy piece of shi*cough*software that can do stuff, but I no longer have any of my contacts in any digital form anywhere. Same goes for calendar entries. And to add to the insult, Foo stopped working for me and will no longer even boot up.
So, first of all I can't install Foo onto my phone, because my phone was shipped with a previous version of Foo, which is integrated with the phone's software so well that it's impossible to remove the previous version of Foo. It takes quite a while to figure this out. Fine, I think I'll just update the phone's firmware, then. For that I need a cable. Luckily I own a cable and hook up the phone with my PC. The phone notices that it's hooked up, but the PC for some reason decides that it doesn't want to see the phone. What's the problem? Yeah, the cable is of a wrong type and I have to use another cable with the exact same plugs but which for some odd reason actually works whereas my cable didn't.
Ok, so I was able to update the phone's software and I had my calendar stuff and address book backed up on Outlook. You can see where this is going, of course. Anyway, after the update, I restore my backups from the phone memory card (which don't include my contacts as the installation procedure for product Foo advised me to nuke my address book and calendar before installing the software; fortunately the stuff is still in Outlook). Lo and behold, the previous version of Foo is now gone and I can install the new version! Yay! So I install it and it actually works. I fill in the server and user information. It starts to synchronize. It fetches my inbox. And it works! I can access my emails. But then I notice that it didn't fetch my contacts. Ok, maybe there's some checkbox I haven't checked and it won't fetch it because of that. Well, turns out that that wasn't the case. But instead at some point the synchronization features of product Foo decided that I don't need the contacts that I have in Outlook. Nor do I need the calendar entries either.
To sum it up, I now have a spiffy piece of shi*cough*software that can do stuff, but I no longer have any of my contacts in any digital form anywhere. Same goes for calendar entries. And to add to the insult, Foo stopped working for me and will no longer even boot up.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Sailing
I've been watching some videos of sailing on YouTube recently and the sport has a certain special appeal to it. Inspired by this, I've been recently reading a bit about small catamarans (e.g. the Hobie Cats) and right now I seriously want to try to sail one. Maybe I'll be able to get some reason into my head and not pursue that any further as my golf is already taking enough time and effort.
Related to golf, I've also started to keep track of my golf for this season and am publishing some statistics online on my web site at the university. The page itself is available here. Again, I'm fairly certain that no one is really interested in those, but as always, that page is more aimed at helping me keep track of my progress than actually offer anything very insightful to other people. Tough luck.
Related to golf, I've also started to keep track of my golf for this season and am publishing some statistics online on my web site at the university. The page itself is available here. Again, I'm fairly certain that no one is really interested in those, but as always, that page is more aimed at helping me keep track of my progress than actually offer anything very insightful to other people. Tough luck.
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