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...

Why I am boring

Cars can be a source of endless debate. Just go over to a local pub and you can pretty much start a heated debate anywhere by throwing some car-related provocative comment. Naturally, you can also get beaten up if you don't know when to shut up, considering the amount of intoxicated buffoons who reside at a local pub. But that's another thing. Debates centering around incredibly expensive cars are also always nice, considering the fact that no one has typically ever even seen, let alone driven, any of the cars that are debated.

So considering this, I decided that I want to argue why the Aston Martin DB9 is so brilliant. And why, because of that, I'm a boring person. Consider your typical debate over fast cars. There's always a Ferrari, perhaps a Lamborghini, some AMG tuned Merc, a Porsche and whatever. But the point is that just about all of the debated cars are in the sports car or supercar category. Granted, they're quite possibly incredibly fast and can go around corners decently well. But I happen to be keener on grand tourers. I guess the whole idea that I can have a fairly fast car which doesn't sacrifice ride comfort on the altar of POWERANDSPEED just attracts me more. And of course, a car has to also be discrete. A Lamborghini is anything but. And Ferraris, well... The DB9, styling-wise, is just lightyears ahead of the style of the other manufacturers. And that's an absolute truth.

And then there's the brand. What Aston symbolizes is something that the other manufacturers can't get even close to, at least from my point of view. It's the understated elegance, the craftsmanship, it has a soul. Ze Germans can undoubtedly make brilliant cars and I guess I'd be lying if I'd say that I'd be unsatisfied if I owned a Porsche 911 Turbo. But it just feels so cold, so sterile. As an analogy, I guess one could argue that whereas an orchestra that's perfectly in tune and executes some piece flawlessly might (and actually should) be the ultimate goal, over a long period of time that just gets boring. No, wait, that actually wasn't that good an analogy, as an orchestra that's not in tune will also get incredibly annoying fairly quickly. But I guess that sort of describes the situation.

Overall I'm fairly boring because the F430 doesn't do anything for me. It lacks the finesse. It's sort of like some teenage punk, lacking the maturity and the appreciation of the finer things in life. It's a show off. It's the Rolex of cars. Well, that analogy is also a bit flawed as Rolex isn't, even in the technical sense, a top watch maker. You can find more expensive and more impressive (again, in a technical sense) watches elsewhere. The Ferrari is arguably a brilliant piece of engineering, but the status it has just doesn't attract me. I don't want to go to the track and shout POWEEER! while driving sideways. I want some elegant, soulful car with which I can pop in Monte Carlo to have lunch and drive to Paris for the night. And I want to do that while being subtle and not attracting too much attention.

But alas, this is in no way a relevant problem. And most likely never will be. At least for me. Maybe I should just get back to schoolwork and stop daydreaming.

Music

Music is such a wonderful thing. I'll offer a guess that just about everyone will agree with that. But I've noticed an interesting thing with myself. I don't even know what the current top-40 list looks like. Haven't known for quite a while. It seems that I'm stuck in the 90ies. But being stuck in some decade or some specific genre doesn't mean that you're stuck in a one single thing (like the people who wear through their favorite CDs). It's unbelievable how much music has been written. And the network that is created by just following one artist to another keeps on growing and growing. I was recently writing how brilliant Craig Armstrong's stuff is. Well, I just recently stumbled upon E.S. Posthumus, and it's sort of craigarmstrong-esque, but still have their own sound. Granted, they started in the early '00s, but still. I'm guessing that over 80% of the stuff I listen to and continue to find is from the 90ies, although the balance is beginning to shift a bit more to "contemporary" music now that I've been attracted to Amie Street and the like.

Archery

Continuing the line of interesting hobbies, we had the chance to try archery with a recurve bow at our team's workshop yesterday. Naturally, I sucked at it. Never been that good at shooting with things. But as a hobby, archery seemed very interesting. I guess one could say that I'm not that big a team player, so sports which I can practice as an individual have always appealed to me more. And archery is precisely that. It's also a more of a psychological than a physical sport. And the discipline it requires... I guess I'll seriously need to look into taking that up as a hobby.

Mindsets

I was visiting Accenture in November (or was it December). They have fairly nice offices in Ruoholahti, pretty near the Nokia buildings. Actually part of the same block, essentially. Anyway, I talked to some guy who's apparently in some sort of lead position at the Finnish operations or something. I was interested in hearing what sort of attitude Accenture has towards supporting their employees if they decide to pursue a second academic degree or work towards doctorate degree. I was sort of surprised to hear that the company per se does not encourage their employees in this regard and overall remain fairly neutral.

Some wiser people have told me that although initially when you graduate, the piece of paper you get is important when looking for jobs. But after 10 years nobody cares which degree you've already forgotten. I guess they have a good point. But in my opinion there are some things that a degree will teach you (at least in the ICT field and when talking about Finnish MSc (eng) programs)... Firstly you learn to get projects done. Mathematics might not be the funnest subject, but you learn that work is work is work and you have to do it. Additionally you also demonstrate that you can finish larger projects; you did graduate right? That's the first large project.

Then there's the mindset. Recently I've been studying quite many software business and strategy related courses. It has changed my view of the world slightly. Now when I encounter a new idea or piece of software or anything, the first thought is: how does one make money with this? You find yourself looking at the angles without even noticing it. That's a big thing with any degree. It'll teach you the mindset, how to approach things. And this is a major point why I'd want to study another degree for myself at some point. Don't get holed in the single box, since things are never black and white. They're shades of grey and by being able to assuming different viewpoints is, in my opinion, a great advantage. Of course this is also part of the personality traits that were passed onto us in one way or another. But don't underestimate the power of learning and conditioning yourself. And that can cause not only positive things, but also negative. I've recently experienced this first-hand and I'm not entirely certain I like myself right now. But we're all learning and continously adapting to change and external stimuli.

Information addiction

I don't know, I may have already blogged about this. Or not. And yes, this is quite a cliché, but it's just so true. Many people say that when you finally turn your mobile phone off and cut yourself out of the information distribution loop altogether is luxury and something to strive towards. I call bullshit. It's not true, at least not for me. I don't know if it's because I haven't been able to detach myself for a long enough time, but I find that I have to know that I have at least the possibility of getting my hands on information at any point of time with little work.

The mobile phone is turning into a more and more important part of my daily life. This itself is something that I would have been fairly skeptical of just a few years back, but oh well. I mean, firstly it's a phone that I can carry with me all the time (well, duh! and the SMS capability). Then I can get my work emails pushed to it, which is nice. I can synchronize it with my Google calendar that's online. I can browse the web, I can type blog entries on it (painful), I can send pictures, location data, presence data, set up an SSH connection to another box so I can check IRC and my personal emails, etc. And that's just with a phone. The interface is a bit of a pain and it's slow, but I can do that. Then there's the computer, which brings the entire multitasking dimension to the equation. RSS feeds, music, blogging, reading web pages, IM, emails coming in, etc. Everything open all the time. It's when you silence all that that I get sort of annoyed. Think about giving up coffee, for example. Or I would imagine cigarettes would be an even better example. Although I don't really see that many negative effects in being tuned into the information flow as long as you are able to manage it relatively easily. It just takes some time to sort routines out, but afterwards it's fairly nice.

I don't really even want a vacation, in fact. I mean, sure I'd like to travel, but just cutting all the lines to my daily life, that's something I don't want to do. So if I do travel somewhere, I'll sure as heck have my laptop and phone with me. It gives an entirely new dimension to life and increases efficiency. Where to eat today? Let me just quickly check some reviews from this site or possibly use this location-enabled feature to see what's close by. It's not fairly romantic, I'll admit that. And that's quite possibly the biggest issue with all this.

Customer loyalty & buying books

We had some guys from the Boston Consulting Group a while back talking about various current trends and other things. They also touched on the trend of "trading up" as they called it. The idea is that more and more consumers start buying premium brand products in the segments that they value and then to finance these premium purchases, they offset the difference by buying cheap stuff in other segments. So for example, to finance my new Boss overcoat, I'm going to eat rice for the next month. So the natural evolution, then, is that the middle-class players who aren't quite competing with the premium brands but also aren't in the price game will just die a boring death.

In the past few years when I've been buying something, I've been preferring small, local companies. Even if they charge a bit more, but at least I get good service and that the money goes to financing Finnish entrepreneurship. For instance, I could purchase my contact lenses online through some company and save a bit, but instead I use the small, privately owned optometrist in Salo. The service is always nice and personal and they know my name. The same thing goes for clothing, fairly often. There's this nice place in Salo called Eino Heino, which has brilliant service and quite a decent inventory. And history.

So I tried to order some books from BookPlus last night. Nothing fancy, just some stuff from the list I keep on my homepage. I gather the books into the shopping cart, go to the check out and start filling out the forms, and... Database connection error! Brilliant. Oh well, they're still a decent company, so I restart the process, select the books, check out... Database connection error! And it happened a third time too. Long story short, ended up ordering the books I wanted (and then some) from Amazon.com. If the service becomes degrades or something in the process doesn't click, then that's it. I know what I want, I know what price I'm ready pay and if something doesn't just work, I'm not going to jump through hoops, especially if I'm the customer.

However, depending on how this Amazon.com venture (I've never bought anything from there before) goes, I may just move back to BookPlus. We'll see...

More great quotes...

I think this one scene from The Thomas Crown Affair is just pure brilliance. It is... Pure genius...

The Psychiatrist: I want you to talk about women.
[waits for a few moments]
The Psychiatrist: Mr. Crown?
Thomas Crown: I'm sorry?
The Psychiatrist: Women. You get to talk about women.
Thomas Crown: Oh, I enjoy women.
The Psychiatrist: Enjoyment isn't intimacy.
Thomas Crown: And intimacy isn't necesarily enjoyment.
The Psychiatrist: How would you know? Has it occured to you that you have a problem with trust?
Thomas Crown: [smirking] I trust myself implicitly.
The Psychiatrist: But can other people trust you?
Thomas Crown: Oh, you mean society at large?
The Psychiatrist: I mean women, Mr.Crown.
Thomas Crown: Yes, a woman could trust me.
The Psychiatrist: Good. Under what extraordinary circumstances would you allow that to happen?
Thomas Crown: A woman could trust me as long as her interests didn't run too contrary to my own.
The Psychiatrist: And society? If ITS interests should run counter to your own...?

Thesis troubles...

Haven't blogged in a while as I've been fairly busy on quite a few fronts. Schoolwise I've been juggling quite a few balls in the air at the same time. I finally got everything done for the Management of a Software Company course I was on. The course was actually quite interesting and the exercises were very good - although they did take some time as you had to actually look into them before just typing away 15 pages of text. Then there was the Stanford Prison Experiment paper for the Basics of Work Psychology and Leadership. And the plans and preliminary reports for the Multimedia Technology course. And then of course the thesis...

The thesis is actually turning into something of a problem. I have a feeling that my scoping has gone terribly wrong. I decided to embark on a venture to look into the motivators and challenges associated with IT outsourcing and then conclude by looking at how the motivators and challenges change when the outsourcing company is an SME. All nice and smooth, right? Wrong.

I think the scope right now is way too broad and I'm getting swamped with material. Additionally I don't want to touch the scope anymore since that would require even more time more digging for material, and I don't have any extra time. Then there is the completely idiotic requirement that the thesis has to be written in Finnish. Come on! There are like two papers written in Finnish about it and the terminology is in English! How the heck do you translate offshore outsourcing into Finnish in the first place? What about motivator? I mean, this is just plain stupid. I guess I could go on and on and on, but instead I won't. Sufficient to say, I think I'm quite deep in shit right now.

Valoa kansalle joka pimeydessä vaeltaa...

Or "Let there be light!". Someone installed a new lamp over my cubicle while I was gone. I'm not quite sure that that's a good thing, either. After five minutes, I think it's a bit too bright...

Edit (5 minutes later...): I found the button that turns the lamp off! Huzzah!

Monday mornings

I typically will argue the point that I'm not a sadistic person in general. As, I'm sure, the majority of folks also aren't. But I'll also argue that there is some small sadistic tendencies in everyone (check out the Stanford Prison Experiment for some interesting points...). Mine is that every Monday morning when I have a car and am driving to Helsinki, I get extremely happy in traffic. I put on some Stan Getz or whatever and then just chill in the jam and just enjoy all the people who're completely pissed off at the traffic jam. I don't know why, but I sort of enjoy the situation. Maybe because I don't have to experience that very often as I always commute to the opposite direction when compared to the masses and my commute is something like 7-15 minutes via bus.

Cufflinks

Can't remember if I've noted this before, but cufflinks are quite possibly the best things in the world. They're the extra mile towards differentiating yourself from the masses. Especially useful for work-related things. And especially disregarded and ignored by most. But nonetheless, I think that in certain situations it's extremely important to quietly give out the message that you're the type of person who also focuses on the small details on the quest to perfection.

An interesting statistic which I've come across in the past six or seven months is that just about all management consultants appear to wear double cuffs and cufflinks, about half of the venture capitalists I've seen wear double cuffs and cufflinks, and just about no ICT consultant wears cufflinks. Naturally the situation may be different, but this is just something I've noticed recently when looking at the appearance of the people who've been lecturing to us at school or at work-related seminars. Also gives some food for thought; at least I'll be wearing cufflinks to all future interviews...

Escape

Craig Armstrong is an amazing bloke. The guy does incredible stuff. Just came across Escape from some movie he'd scored. Amazing song. Mixes these heavy drums with slow and dragging strings and tops it with a choir. The feeling and the atmosphere is unbelievable. When the choir kicks in, it's like the feeling after a long and dark storm when the first rays of light penetrate the clouds and the heavens open up the fight with the darkness. These clichés don't do it justice, although perhaps the song itself is quite full of clichés itself, too... But yet it's so fresh that I could just listen to it non-stop.

Body mass index

I think the BMI has been more or less dubbed as useless among the people who are capable of any sort of rational thinking. I've also been somewhat critical of it, but an even more interesting thing is that I just weighed myself and right now (in the morning) I was slightly below 90 kilograms and height-wise I'm roughly 190 centimeters. As such my BMI is about 24.9 and the line for obese is 25. Yet people are continously reminding me that I need to eat, so I guess that's motivated by two possible scenarios: a) people have some hidden agenda and want to see me get fat or b) I'm thin. Since I'm entertaining a guess that it's not the former, that only leaves the latter left. And right now I would personally say that I'd need to gain a bit more mass... So much for the BMI.

Jeans

Ok, so the last post was about suits. Today I went looking for new jeans from Salo (yes, I know, I could've picked a better town for this...) and it turns out that getting jeans is incredibly difficult. You can't just go in and tell them that "I want a size 152 dark grey suit with slight pinstripes in a slim cut, side vents, two buttons and notched lapels". Or I guess you could, but they'd be lost. Or I'd have to learn the jeans jargon.

Anyway, after 15 minutes I got sort of desperate and decided to just go to the next store and just take something that didn't have holes in the pockets (see? I'm quite an easy customer after all). So now I bought some random jeans that didn't have holes in the pockets. The entire purchasing process was also quite interesting. When I came into the store the girl started asking what brand I wanted. Brand is a completely secondary thing, in my opinion. Especially considering that they weren't even selling any especially prestigious brands. I'm sure they make a decent buck with the inflated prices, but this itself is an interesting case, as I some blokes from the Boston Consulting Group were giving a lecture a while back and they talked about the trend of trading up. Trading up is essentially the phenomenon of people focusing on some things that are important to them and shelling out the bucks to buy the premium product (or brand) and then scaling down in something else to make up for the dent. This in turn leads to the top, high-end brands and the bottom low-cost suppliers to lead the way and leaving the guys in the middle to deal with a slow and painful death.

Secondly, who the hell actually wears the jeans that they sell these days? I mean, there's only a marginal group of jeans from the catalog that you could actually wear to work. And what is it with the ultra-slimness? This iteration of the ultra-slim trend in clothing has been going on for a year or two now, wouldn't it be time to ditch it once and for all and banish it for all eternity? Ultra-slimness in clothes is not in any way aesthetic - not in suits, not in jeans. Period.

Looks like this is turning into a rant and I could go blasting away at a lot of stuff, but I think instead I'll just stop now...

The problems with suits...

The problem with suits is multifold. Essentially getting a good suit and looking great in it is a long-term process involving sweat, money, and time. Or that's the conclusion that I've come to. Granted, I don't have any first hand experience.

The problem is this: to look incredibly good, you first have to invest time and effort into getting your body into good shape. Then you have to invest more time and effort into maintaining yourself in good shape. Although one might argue that this should be done anyway, so it's not that big a deal. But at least to me it takes some work. I mean, it's not like I'm in that bad a shape, but that's mainly thanks to buying some free weights for myself. So now I just daily do a bunch of sit ups, push ups, squats, throw around some hand weights, etc. But sometimes there may be a week or two during which I do nothing. And this year I've been to the gym at work... Oh... Three times? Pathetic.

Then the problem with suits. The suits that come from the rack rarely fit just right. Then there's the whole process of adjusting the suit, or should be. I haven't been arsed to, since the 152 sized suits with a slim cut for the jacket suit me (no pun intended) decently enough. And every time you buy a suit, it should be the same process. And what if you change brands? You'll have to check the sizing again.

So then... The money. Bespoke. Costs like hell, but should be worth it. Now you have to find a tailor. Then you, according to some guidelines, need to have at least two to three jackets/suits made to see the quality and get to grips with your tailor and for the tailor to get things just the way they should be. Apparently they'll naturally create - draw, cut, sew - the suits to fit you just right. But there is some small variance.

And then the issue with personal taste. Being the slightly slim but tall person I am, and also been putting on some mussle mass, I would want my suits to have form fitting jackets and a sharp shoulder line. Something you'd imagine that a somewhat sporty suit would have. Except that it shouldn't be too clean, i.e. the shoulder padding should look just ever so slightly as if it'd form according to my shoulders, but still flatter the torso by giving a sort of athletic look. Without too much padding.

Difficult? You bet. And without being able to drop two grand a suit (in pounds sterling...)? Doubly so.

Sleep, she is for the weak!

... and right now I'm starting to think that it might just be better to acknowledge that in fact I want to be weak and sleep. And have a vacation. When you start getting back responses to emails you don't even recall sending, it's getting bad (and no, I was entirely sober; heck, who has the time to drink these days let alone waste a day being hung over...).

Online music

For a while I held the opinion that online music business won't just work thanks to idiotic DRM-limitations and too high a price tag. And other annoying stuff. My opinion started to slowly change when I tried out Apple's iTMS. Of course it still had DRM. And it was decently expensive considering that you didn't even get the physical CD. And then you had to rip the DRM away so you could actually listen to it. No wait, I'm in Finland, I can't talk about overriding DRM protection. Silly me.

But the point remained, the Apple user interface, again, was done brilliantly. Without even noticing I had spent somewhere around 30 euros there. But it was still sort of annoying. Enter Amie Street. I'd actually been aware of Amie Street since the end of summer, 2006. I'd even plugged it and the idea in some conversations with people, but never actually got around to spending any more than 10 minutes with it myself. Until tonight. I paid them 10 bucks and was essentially expecting to get a couple of albums for that money. And mostly crap. But instead I bought the couple (three) albums and lo and behold, they were actually fairly decent. And I still have somewhere around nine bucks to spend! I can see how this service would, in the long run, be actually able to make a dent in my wallet. At least a larger dent than iTMS, not to mention the people selling physical CDs. I can just click-click-click and download a new album. And it'll cost something like 20 cents. Do that ten times and it's still just two bucks. Do that on 90 days a year and it's already 180 bucks...

Oh, and a shameless plug (I'm entitled to these because a) it's my blog and b) I don't even know the person who I'm plugging, this time). Go listen to Manic's stuff on Amie Street and possibly buy something if you like it. Brilliant stuff.

Hideous card...

So I decided to join the 20th century... I've been a firm believer in the fact that I neither want nor need a credit card, but the plans to move abroad for a while essentially spawned the understanding that I would need to bend my principles a bit. So I went ahead and ordered a Visa from Sampo. Swell. They even let me pick the image I wanted on the card from a predefined set. I picked the black card. A simple, black card. No image. Just black. Neutral and stylish. And fairly often I wear at least something black, and at times I'm completely dressed in black. Simple decision, huh?

Well, the card arrived yesterday, and it was black. But it had these little sparkling bits on it. To sum it up, it was hideous. I was planning on actually starting to use the debit card features of it since they're a lot more widely supported than Visa Electrons, with which I'd been living before. But my god... The card looked so hideous that I don't think I can even take it out of my wallet, let alone pay with it.

So naturally, after a bit more than 24 hours of contemplation, I put in a new order for the same card but with the standard Sampo image on it. Hopefully it won't be glittery...

The Modern Road Warrior

Well, ok, I don't really travel that much, but I've been noticing a trend in the stuff I buy. Especially electronics. I like small, durable, and wireless. So what do I have with me when I do travel?

• laptop (Thinkpad T40)
• external hard drive (small aluminium LaCie USB drive, 100 GB)
• mobile phone (Nokia E70)
• headset (some random Nokia Bluetooth headset)
• a bunch of chargers (this is actually a real problem!)

If I have to be able to do work, then I'll need to either take along another laptop or replace the T40 with the work laptop and of course the SecurID card.

And then of course a pile of books, clothes, sanitary equipment (toothbrush, contact lense stuff, haircare stuff, face-care stuff, etc.), and a portfolio case with relevant papers/magazines and so on. Previously I've been typically lugging along a duffel bag and a laptop bag, but recently I pretty much got rid of the laptop bag and just throw the laptop and other stuff in between clothing (works well, I don't fly that often and I typically have my bag with me at all times).

It's nice to know that packing has become a routine already. I guess I can pretty much pack a bag for a week-long trip in about 15 minutes. The only problems are jackets; you can only take one with you without any hassle...

Phew... That was close!

I've been advocating this On Demand (with apologies to IBM...) lifestyle for a while. What this means in practice is that I don't keep any food at my flat, usually. If I get hungry, I go and get something to eat... On demand. Also works with other aspects of life.

Anyway, on my way back home from work, I decided to go get some müsli for the morning; I'd already picked up a box a while back but of course I had taken the wrong type; it was by some random company and tasted like crap. Anyway, got the right box of müsli and on a whim decided to actually get some chicken filets also. And by this point the people who know me must be shocked - me buying some raw materials which implies I'm going to cook! The horror...!

Long story short; I ended up cleaning my flat, doing the dishes and then, just before actually starting to cook I walked out, walked to the local Chinese restaurant and grabbed some takeaway food. Danger averted!

And on a completely different note; a small survival tip for anyone employed by N who happens to have a phone number that's exactly identical to a general telephone conference number and is different by only one number... Start blacklisting the phone numbers that most often call you (e.g. meeting room numbers, telephone switch numbers, etc.) and never answer anyone calling from any number you don't know if the phone rings on the hour or on the half hour. It's just one of these nice little things you learn to live with when you're at a large company...

Sometimes...

... I think I like the idea of studying more than the actual studying...

But right now I think I might actually be having an exceptionally strong drive in getting stuff at school done.

MSc or... MSc...?

Starting January 1st of 2006, the Finnish polytechnic schools (ammattikorkeakoulu) have been calling themselves Universities of Applied Sciences. Predating that, when the entire ammattikorkeakoulu system was being introduced, many people voiced concerns as to whether or not having an alternate higher education route was needed as there already existed schools which took care of the technician-level of education. But the system was created nonetheless. And now they're at it again; up until now they've technically provided students with Bachelors degrees, but apparently now they're starting to offer Masters level degrees also. Which are recognized as equivalent to the university Masters degrees that have been handed out before by the actual universities.

The reason why this is an issue for me is that the ammattikorkeakoulu system is trying to play a publicity stunt by trying to make it appear as if it's an actual university, which it most definately is not. If you look at the main responsibilities of universities (doing research, influencing in society through educated opinions, upholding culture, giving scientific education which builds a strong foundation for doing academic research and so on) and you'll notice that the Universities of Applied Sciences don't really do any of those things. They do serve a purpose, mainly training people to do something concrete. And those people are needed. But their current moves are just bringing unnecessary confusion to the landscape. And in the long run this my actually turn against them...

Let's take a scenario where they are indeed considered as equals to universities and the degrees are also equivalent. The scope and level of teaching is still drastically different. The credits are handed out a lot more easily than in, say, TKK. Eventually you'll have a two-story system of universities in Finland. You'll have the first tier universities (the "real" universities) and then the second tier universities, which are considered inferior to the first tier schools. And that will in turn completely destroy their reputation; if you play basketball and like to play basketball but have never played golf, you'll just get completely creamed at a golf competition. Focus on basketball instead, since that's where you're good at.

Of course I have to admit that this might sound a bit elitistic and arrogant and there is naturally my own agenda in which I fear the devaluation of the MSc degree, which might in turn hurt me. But I seriously do think that there is a position to fill for ammattikorkeakoulus, but they are missing the point and trying to be something they are not. They'll never be part of the academia, but that isn't in any way a bad thing for either the academia or the ammattikorkeakoulu system. This current direction, however, will only make things worse for everyone a bit later and some sense should be hammered into the leaders.

Payscales, bonuses and whatnot

Right now I'm less than impressed with N.

Mobile internet

With the big mobile phone companies shoving more handsets out than before and now that some companies actually seem to have rather decent web browsers already deployed on phones (the screen size is still something of a problem, though), the whole mobile internet/web discussion is starting to become relevant and interesting. Although typically this is understood in the .mobi sense of the term and the related things like providing sites for mobile devices. At least that's how I percieved it anyway; the handset is just another device which offers a viewpoint to the web, like your own computer.

But some time back some nice blokes at NRC published a port of the Apache web server to the S60 (Symbian) platform and the implications are somewhat interesting, to say the least. More on the project is available at the NRC Mobile Web Server pages. Sufficient to say, with the whole Web 2.0 boom with mashups and whatnots, one could rather easily provide an open and documented interface to a mobile phone through a web server talking some standardized XML dialect. Presence, etc.

I guess I'll take this up as a personal project for this spring; setting up the S60 port of Apache on my phone and trying to build some nifty app on top of that.

Ready, set, go!

I received confirmation today that I indeed got the outsourcing topic for my BSc thesis and I guess this is the first time that I actually grasp to a some extent that this is real. That I'm actually nearing the finnish of one degree. Eventually. This also sort of defines the path that I'm going to take, mainly that my major will indeed most likely be from the Software Business Lab.

It also turned out that the coordinator for the BSc stuff in SBL will also by my mentor and a quick look at her CV has me sort of spooked. 29 and already a Licentiate of Science (tech) and Master of Arts (educ) and nearly a Doctor of Philosophy (tech) and Master of Science (econ) with a huge list of publications. All the people sporting lists like that who I've met before have turned out to be fairly demanding of other people, so I guess this'll most likely mean that I'll either break down or create a brilliant thesis. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be the latter scenario...

Telemarketers

Telemarketers should die. I think just about everyone shares this view, hopefully even the telemarketers. A new and increasingly annoying trend, however, appears to be that companies who's client I already am have started to call me up. The latest one was a Finnish bank called Sampo and they wanted me to come talk about saving and whatnot. I'd only actually slept roughly three hours last night and rolled around in bed for another three hours and was fairly out of it, so I routinely checked my calendar and booked a meeting with them, before understanding that I didn't really have any interest to talk to them about anything. I just don't believe that anything they say could possibly interest me in any way.

Then something interesting happened. Some other guy called me again and said that the first person who called me had made a mistake and the time she'd agreed with me had actually been booked before and he offered to reschedule me. So of course I took the opportunity and told him that in fact I didn't really think it that important for me to meet them and discuss anything with them and that I despise these sort of direct and aggressive marketing attempts. But did he give up? No. He went on and on about how they wanted to reward their current customers. If they wanted to do that, drop the charges that they make me pay for various services I already use. If not that, then I'm not interested. The persistent asshole finally went away when I told him that I would seriously have to consider moving all my assets completely to Nordea (their competitor with whom I also do business) if they continued to call me. Sheesh.

It's one thing to harass potential clients by telemarketing, because you don't really have that much to lose. But it's interesting that even when I am already Sampo's customer and pay their fees (oh, and bankers should also die ;) they still feel the need to harass me like this. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that I checked the box that said that I didn't want to be contacted. I guess I'll have to double-check that this indeed is the case...

Best introduction ever

The scene in the new Casino Royale where Bond is introduced to Vesper Lynd must be one of the best introduction scenes ever. Especially Vesper's analysis of Bond,

"All right. By the cut of your suit you went to Oxford or wherever, and naturally think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, my guess is you didn't come from money. And your school friends never let you forget it. Which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else's charity, hence the chip on your shoulder. And since your first thought about me ran to orphan, that's what I'd say you are... Oh you are? I like this poker thing."

Calendars

I don't like calendars. I mean, I like to actually know where to be and when, but I don't like calendars. Or more precisely, I have nothing against calendars, but I am very much against multiple calendars. All I remember right now is that I have something to do, someone to meet or some other important thing on the 16th of January; next Tuesday. But I have no idea when or what is going to happen.

Why has this happened? Well, there are too many calendars. I typically use Google Calendar, unless it's a) business related or b) I'm not at a computer/I don't have an internet connection available. The business stuff I keep in my work laptop's Outlook calendar. And if I don't have an internet connection, I either b.1) put stuff in my phone's calendar or b.2) write stuff into my paper calendar or b.3) write stuff on random pieces of paper. And then if I use a phone, I can b.1.1) use my work phone or b.1.2) use my personal phone. And the only things that are automatically synchronized are my work phone and Outlook on my work laptop. And those contain mostly work things.

Complicated? Yes. Are there any easy solutions? Not that I know of. Ok, at work our unit focuses on standardization; perhaps I should try to standardize my calendars and only use one or two calendars, at most. And try to get things to synchronize automatically. But I wouldn't hold my breath. In the meanwhile, I have no idea what's happening on the 16th...

I was wrong.

I was wrong. Peter (you know who you are if you're reading this...) was right.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Moleskines...

I recently brushed upon the problem of blogging and privacy. And it appears that this is a general trend these days; everyone's writing articles about how people don't understand how to protect their privacy and as a result lose it by joining social networks and just by doing the "Web 2.0" thing.

I understand this to some extent; of course some information may be embarrassing if it comes out. But it's a non-issue, since that information isn't meant to be put online in the first place! I don't know how other people approach the problem, but when I say something online, I implicitly make and ratify a decision that I will stand by what I say with my own name. If it's something embarrassing, I don't say it. A guy at work recently told of a case where they were recruiting and a possible candidate was a spokesman for the Finnish cannabis association, or whatever the local thing was. Naturally he didn't get the job. Now, some people will argue that this is unfair. I don't quite follow. You should be intelligent enough in the first place to understand that someone will always notice stuff like that. And if you still decide to stand by something, that's great. It shows spirit. But people should acknowledge the possible consequences. I can't say I have much sympathy for people who can't think more than two steps ahead...

On a related note, I bought my first Moleskine today and I must say that I fell in love with it instantly. It's just so utilitarian and simple. Plus it does have some things that all these web-things don't have; there's a single copy of it which I control and can do with it what I will. Hence I will use it to embark on more interesting quests of introspection, which for reasons or not, can't be posted online. But fear not, whomever may be reading this, I'll still continue to bore you with the same old stuff that I've been posting before; you won't lose anything.

Murphy's Law

Ok, now I'm calm again. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...

Backups. Everyone knows how important they are, and I'm actually a sort of minority who actually takes backups. Of some stuff. And luckily for me, my work laptop just said "Fan error" to me and refuses to boot. Ok, stuff like that happens. What's that got to do with Murphy's Law? Well, I have a workshop tomorrow, i.e. I won't be at the office. And what's nice is that I would've actually had some stuff I would've presented at the workshop. Add insult to injury and the fact that all my presentations and material that I've written isn't in my backup routines.

I just hope some service desk guy will be able to save me on Tuesday... I'd get drunk right now were it not for the fact that I have to be at some random place by 8 AM tomorrow...

Happy New Year 2007!

The year just changed, and I - unlike so many other Finns - was able to celebrate the change of the year while being entirely sober. And it was rather fun. Saw some old friends, then came home to shoot some rockets and met some neighbors and so on.

And right now I'm listening to Theodore Shapiro's Suite from the Devil Wears Prada. The part from about 03:20 to 03:50 is just brilliant. It starts with a transition via strings to drums and guiter, which are subtle and in the background, but move the entire thing forward. Along in the background is a woman humming, which gives it an eery and airy atmosphere. But the thing I'm absolutely in love with is the piano, which complements the background in an unbelievably elegant but yet so simple way. The humming and piano alternate short periods of time. One can't do justice to it by attempting to complement it verbally. The segment moves on at a decent pace, but is by no means aggressive. I feel like this could be a good tune to set the overall theme of the year. Opportunity. Achievement. Movement. Comfort from solitude. Freedom.

Christmas holidays...

So Christmas came and went and this was the first year that I didn't spend it with my immediate family. Actually, I was completely alone the entire Christmas, and it was quite a welcome change (not that I mind spending time with my family, quite the opposite, in fact). No stress, no real human contact, just lying around and so on. Oh, and I did watch both Bridget Jones movies, and I have to say that they still are very brilliant (and for those that say that they're only for chicks; sod off!). They are really quite clever and I'm actually pretty happy that Mr. Darcy still was the one who came out on top. Maybe because I identify myself more with Darcy than Cleaver. Well, ok, I may not exactly be on par with Mr. Firth, but oh well. The films did, though, trigger some fairly sensitive and personal memories and scratched open some old wounds, but I think I can safely say that this is a healthy and most likely the final part of a healing process of sorts. Good as new, at last. But of course these things have no place in a blog, especially not mine. I'm not that open. ;)

Overall the break from normal life for the extended weekend allowed lots of time for introspection (again) and I am actually fairly pleased; I can, with quite a bit of certainty, say that I am learning more about myself each time and I think I'll have to take a moment some time during 2007 and try to figure out and organize a lot of thoughts and try to get them on paper.

Anyway, I did also get around to planning my schedule for next spring and I decided to start my BSc thesis and also keep log of the process on my web page (available here, only in Finnish, though). The topics seem quite interesting, but I still have to see if I can actually do the thesis as I'm only taking the course on managing a software company this spring, and it's listed as a pre-requisite for two of the BSc thesis topics. Hopefully there'll be room to negotiate a bit - otherwise I may have to push the thesis to next fall.

In any event, I also typed up a list of resolutions for 2007 and put that online, too (available here). The idea is simple; I'll set that as the homepage for my browser and I'll have to confront that screen every time I open up Firefox. That way I can't get away from those. In addition, by making the resolutions public, Google will most likely index them (as will The Way Back Machine), and I'll seriously have to work towards keeping them. The toughest two will be getting my BSc done entirely by next Christmas and getting a place as an exchange student in some eastern European country. I guess we'll see what will happen in about 365 days...

Rate of Change

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's third law, if my memory serves correctly (ha! I know something about physics even though I haven't gotten around to passing my obligatory physics courses!). Although I guess that is primarily applicable to mechanics, it might have some interesting applications in other fields as well. Anyway, if you consider the current ICT field, it's obvious that in order for a company to be succesful, it must be able to react to changing situations immensely quickly (first-mover advantages, anyone?). This of course has some practical implications as well - namely that the individual people who make up a company need to be able to also react quickly and reinvent themselves as the need arises. All in all it would seem that the entire culture of doing business in high-tech is being pumped more and more full of steroids every passing year.

So, about Newton's third... That would explain why in the recent year Morgans have started to look very appealing. Well, ok, they still won't be very practical in your typical Finnish climate, but come on; a car for which you have to buy door handles from the options list has got to be immensely cool! Morgan Motor Company itself has been operating the same way since it was founded in 1910 and their cars are still reminiscent of the cars the predate the war. Perhaps because they, in fact, do. I guess you can't go further away from the rate of change of the ICT world than that. Unless you want to look at the British bespoke clothing scene, which predates the Morgans by a hundred or so years...

Equestrianism

I just love the Rolex commercials and I think the marketing campaign has been one of the better ones. The commercials all contain snippets of the same song with traditional strings mixed with a modern backbeat (I hear this was specially made for Rolex and isn't based on any existing track) and show bits and pieces of various "prestigious" sports - tennis, golf, equestrianism, car sports... Place the different disciplines and athletes on a high enough podium and make them seem cool and then associate yourself with that. It never fails.

Anyway, I still would never wear or get myself a Rolex (*cough* yeah, like I'd even afford, but it's nice to play with ideas... :), but I think I actually should try equestrianism at some point...

Hi ho, hi ho...

... it's off to [the] opera we go. Eugene Onegin on the 27th is now on the agenda. Just got the tickets ordered.

The future

I recently got to take part in a nice seminar about the current and future stuff happening in the internet world and N. I can't remember the fine print of my NDA, so I guess I won't be saying that much about the N part, but sufficient to say that just as OPK has been drumming, there seems to be some sort of movement towards becoming an internet company.

Anyway, the most interesting parts of the seminar were when a couple of investment bankers (Mark Tluszcz of Mangrove Capital Partners and Doug Richard of, well, many things) took the time to come tell us about what the future seems like and so on. The general consensus seemed to be that in the cellular world (at least), the operators will be taking quite a beating and will become increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps not now, or not next week, but it'll happen as they will be reduced to mere bit-pipe suppliers, pushing one bit from one node (be it a server, a handset, etc.) to another at a time. VoIP, etc. Oh well, I think that this is nothing new, really, but it's always nice to be able to throw around big names to back up your views; thirst is nothing, credibility is everything.

Asides from the impending doom of the operators, the guys talked about some of the other trends, such as the fact that Google may have a tough time in the future, since even they can't beat search engines that focus on certain specific topics (e.g. real estate). I can see where Mark was coming from, but Google does have some advantages, namely the current size, the user base, the shear size of their bank account and the fact that they have the cash to hire the best of the best. But yes, I can see a small niche for specialized search engines, that's true. What else? Eastern Europe continues to remain strong, etc. And a comforting thing is that even though everyone else has slimmer phones than N these days, both Mark and Doug seemed to agree that N are the leaders in phones, thanks to the feature set and capabilities. In addition to the bankers, the same type of message was heard from Oliver of MobileCrunch. Comforting to know that even amidst all the RAZRs and KRZRs, N still seems to have a decent looking future. Oh, and I can also see why Mark and Doug are backing players that are bent on shaking up the status quo; they're both investing in small businesses and that's where the profit is at. If you can shake the foundations, you'll make a huge profit. So of course, as always, their views too are skewed a bit. But not as much as some, I would argue, since if you truly want to see the future, follow the money. And I'm guessing these guys have a couple of dollars.

Save the planet, they said

This week's The Economist had an interesting article about ethical food and whether or not it's really ethical. Overall ethical food products consist of three groups; organic foods (save the environment), Fairtrade products (save the poor farmer in some 3rd world country) and local products (support local farmers).

The article suggested that producing organic food is less efficient and in order to produce the same amount of food by organic methods than what is produced right now with more efficient methods would require us to just about eliminate the rainforests; that much land is needed. Fairtrade products in turn help drive down the prices of a market that is already overflooded with goods and gives the 3rd world farmers the message that instead of diversifying, they can make a buck by driving the supply up and prices down even more. And buying local products in turn hurts the 3rd world farmer by disregarding his goods and then the environment because producing lamb in Britian takes more effort and resources than doing so in New Zealand and just transporting it the Britain.

Overall this just goes to prove that nothing is black and white anymore. Grey is, has and will be the trend for the next century.

Marketing Management & Luck

The exam for Marketing Management was today and let's just say that I got moving a bit late in the semester when it came to preparing for it. In the end I didn't even have time to delve that deeply into Kotler & Keller, but thankfully there were rather decent summaries at the end of each chapter which helped create a rather good high level view of what the course was about. Additionally the questions in the exam couldn't have been better for me.

They'd also done away with the multiple choice questions part, which has traditionally been the hit or miss part of the exam. I stumbled a bit in the first exercise in which you were to explain various terms briefly. The maximum was 10 points, I'll venture a guess that I should get about five.

Then there were the essays. Three essay choices and you had to answer two. The two I did were on differentiation (what is it, what are the different dimensions of it and then examining how IKEA differentiates itself from the competition) and segmentation (what is it, when should it be done, advantages/disadvantages and then how the traditional segmentation model differed from the "Strategic Segmentation" concept which was discussed at a lecture). And best of all, English was allowed. Overall I'd say that the exam went extremely well considering the amount of effort I put into it.

I'm starting to get to the conclusion that school, in fact, isn't that difficult at this level either. It's just a question of optimizing workload and goals. I'm satisfied enough to have a grade average of 3 or higher, preferrably closer to 4 than 3. Of course 5s would be nice, but they're hardly worth the extra effort, especially if that extra mile would most likely increase the required effort by an additional 40-50%. Oh, and right now I'm becoming increasingly certain that I indeed want to do my minor at the dept. of industrial engineering and management.

What if you didn't have to sleep?

I guess most people at some point in life play around with the idea of not having to spend the 8 hours a day sleeping. There also seems to be quite a large consensus that the sleep, however, is needed for a human to function properly. I ran across polyphasic sleep today, and I guess I'll have to do some more reading on that, since it seems quite interesting. To be able to cut back sleep even to 5-6 hours without adding the extra tiredness would be incredibly nice.

Two problematic issues are that it requires a rigid schedule, which I'm not sure I can fit in my life right now (considering the fact that students do occasionally party, and that needs to be offset with proper sleep) and secondly that I have some actual obligations, like work. And I'm not so certain that I'd be able to explain to people well enough why it's imperative that I sleep for 20-25 minutes ever couple of hours. This might, however, be an interesting experience if I ever have a long summer vacation again, though.

More calculations

Ok, after my recent blog entry where I complained about my salary, I figured out that to lift my mood a bit, I should look at some statistics about the salaries for people with MSc degrees in Finland. TEK (the Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers) compiles salary statistics on a nearly yearly basis, but alas they only publish those for their members on the web site.

Anyway, a survey they conducted for the year 2005 shows that things that affect MSc salaries are

• focus on computer science (+7.7%)
• employed by the private sector (+13.8%)
• working in the Helsinki metropolitan area (+7.8%)
• male gender (+5%)
• emplyed by a company with 250+ employees (+2.1%)
• 5+ travel days per year (+6.4%)
• 2.5+ hours of overtime work per week (+3.9%)

There were more things, but these were the criteria that I figured I could meet. So by multiplying those, the overall benefit would be +56.5%. TEK also suggests that a fresh MSc should get paid 3070 euros/month. Now if you take into account the supposed +56.5% increase, that would amount to about 4800 euros/month of gross income. And I'm assuming that TEK's statistics don't take bonus arrangements into consideration.

Then assume that with the overtime work, the average working week would be 40 hours long and there are four weeks in a month for a total of 160 hours of work/month. That equals 30 euros/hour. Also, considering that I'll hopefully be graduating in four years, this'll have to be adjusted with inflation. I can't be arsed to get any statistics on that, so I'll just add a yearly inflation of 1% to that, for a grand total of about 4990 euros/month. So now I know what I should be aiming at...

And now I have to admit that I don't feel any better. I would've been happy with the three grand that TEK suggests. But now because of these damn statistics, 3k sounds sort of... Well... Small. Not to mention my current salary. Oh well, I think it's time to get back to Kotler & Keller, lest I want to ever graduate.

Independence

It's the Finnish independence day today (6th of December) and Finland is turning 89. And as corny as it is, I think independence days are good days to reflect on the whole concept on a personal level. I myself aren't that patriotic a person - those who know me will undoubtedly consider this quite worthy of an Understatement of the Year award. The problem that I have with all this overly patriotic stuff is that it just promotes nationalism. Nationalism itself may or may not be a good ideology, I guess that's still up in the air, but there are problems that it causes. Nearly always there are nationalistic ideals behind racist behaviour, national stereotypes are often funny, but also insulting, and wars/conflicts more often then not have nationalistic zeal in the background.

On a similar parallel, the Olympics and other sporting events that promote competition between nations often result in bigotry - "Damn svensktalande bättre folk, go back to Swedenland and learn to play ice hockey!" I don't remember when I've last watched any sporting event between nations. But the whole nationalistic element in sports doesn't further global integration and interaction.

EU has also been a controversial topic in Finland, at least within certain groups. There are quite many people who are fairly skeptical of the benefits that EU has to offer. That's of course understandable, if the default mindset is that "I'm primarily a Finn and proud of it". That mindset should change to "I'm a European and proud of it". At least that would be a step in the right direction. And hopefully eventually we'd reach a global mindset and we would consider ourselves as citizens of the same world, regardless of the region where you live. And at this point, I guess I could go run in some beauty pageant and tell about my vision of peace on earth. Luckily I'm cynical enough to take all of this with a grain of salt and acknowledge the fact that because of human nature, this will never happen.

Now, don't get me wrong, independence is nice and everything, but I just feel that some things that are pretty integral to the concept of independence are very negative and might even overshadow some of the good things. As such, I didn't celebrate independence in any special way; I just lied in bed with my laptop, surfing the web, listening to music, etc. Might've had something to do with the fact that we had our Christmas party with some of the trainees from N...

Notes on juggling...

How good a juggler you might be, external events may still cause you to drop a ball or two...

Ok, so now that the biggest deadline is behind me (well, maybe it was just a local maximum, i.e. downhill until it's uphill again and the next one will be even bigger), I think it's time to reflect on some issues and recap the learned lessons. I think the most important thing to note is that as competent a person (*cough*, that's still being debated), some things might not always work out. And then there are the other people, the other systems, the external stuff that you typically depend on. And they can fail too.

So, some concrete examples, then. I pulled off a small miracle by actually getting a working piece of software done and packaged by the deadline for the Computer Network assignment. Out of the two protocols, I implemented both, but there was some sporadic glitch occuring in the link-state routing protocol - I'll venture a guess that it's caused in a situation where the network contains more than one optimal route to a given node. The implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm that I based my solution on - as a typical Dijkstra implementation should do - only creates a spanning tree with single routes and only picks one of the optimal routes. I didn't think of this until it was too late, and didn't have any more time to start changing anything. But I guess I'll at least get a 3 from the exercise, a 5 if the assistant who's grading the exercise got laid the nigth before... And with some clever planning, I got my marketing exercises done too, though I must say that the essay on business-to-business customer relationship management was complete and utter bullshit. I think I only had about three or four actual points in the entire essay and the rest was just filler words and lacked all actual meaning.

The next deadline is on Thursday, and that'll be the 5th phase of the Software Development Methods project. Needless to say, that's looking somewhat problematic right now, especially since the SoberIT site is down right now and instead of using the 90 minutes on the train to work on the project, I ended up blogging this entry. So much for automatically assuming that the machines at the uni would be reliable enough to stay up. This isn't the first time that I've had to postpone work due to the SoberIT site blowing up.

Anyway, today there's a Christmas/recruiting party at Accenture, so that'll hopefully be fun. Hopefully this'll shine some more light on the actual future views on the consulting business and what sort of things would be available for a person of some technical competence and understanding of business. And tomorrow we'll be having a Christmas party with some of the guys, who were also trainees last summer at N, at my flat. Still have to go get a bunch of wine and stuff. And a cool Christmas hat. But alas, I guess I'll need to dedicate the entire Finnish independence day (6th of December) to doing the SDM project, so that'll cut back on the partying quota for Tuesday...

Pandaemonium

It's fun to see how different people react under stress and pressure. As much as it might be a cliché, some people fall apart and start acting according to the old rule of "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" and give up on everything. Other people, in turn, get a lot more focused, efficient and are able to go the extra mile. I don't know exactly where I fit in with all of this, I guess I'm the type that continues to be confident that I'll be able to pull something off until the final moment, when I either do pull it off or fail. The trick is to set your own personal goals higher than what others expect you to accomplish; that way even if you do fail to meet your personal goals, there's a slight chance to still get something concrete done.

I also like airports. And cafes. And overall places that are busy and crowded, especially when I need to be able to think. There was a discussion at work regarding the working environment and some people voiced issues that the open office was too noisy and something would need to be done about that. I feel quite the opposite, the noise, life and all things related are able to help me focus on something. I'd even go as far as to say that if I don't continously receive signals of whatever sort, I can't really feel completely at ease. Even when I'm alone, on my laptop, doing something, I typically keep at least a couple of internet relay chat windows open so the text keeps scrolling by. I don't necessarily even have to read them, it's enough that something's happening. The curse associated with the current multitaskin lifestyle.

Or perhaps it's a symptom of me being a left-handed person - I read somewhere that people who are left-handed can typically have a lot more things continously under work than right-handed people on average. E.g. right now I'm blogging, I have the chat window open in the background, I'm working on my computer networks project and I have Kotler & Keller open besides me as I need to do some multiple choice exercises for the marketing course. Tomorrow evening at midnight I guess we'll see if I pull this off or not...

White Teeth

White Teeth is a rather brilliant book on the life of immigrants in England through a couple of generations. I read it quite a while ago, but today the topic sprang back into mind. Not the immigrants, though, but the white teeth.

As I'm sure some people who may or may not stumble across this blog already know, I'm having a rather large project with my jaws and teeth, and I get to be 13 again and got braces (the orthodontic kind...) again last winter. Brushing my teeth has been a fairly mechanical operation ever since; how can you really judge the job when you can't even see your teeth from all the metal contraptions. I just brush for a while and that's it. But apparently that's not enough, and I got to go through a 60 minute training today on how to properly clean my teeth, and the whole operation is starting to feel like rocket science. I mean, I now have four different kinds of brushes for brushing my teeth and tonight I stood about 15 minutes in the bathroom trying to brush my teeth like the nice dental hygienist girl had instructed me. It's pure hell and I don't see myself investing 30 minutes every day for brushing teeth. It's just too much.

Anyway, 2-3 more years and then I'll have a nice smile, or so they tell me. Too bad I don't usually smile that much - such a waste...

Pressure...?

My schoolwork is going straight to hell. Forgot to sign up for that damn Algorithm Analysis & Something course and the DL for the obligatory home exercises is this evening at 8; 1.5 hours away. Well, I wouldn't have needed the 5 credits anyway... Accounting & Profitability? Skipped the exam, hadn't had time to... No wait, I just hadn't prepared. 3 credits... Puff! (Granted, I'll take the exam in January.) And so on. And the courses that I still actually do still have left all have exams and exercise deadlines coming up; a router emulator needs to be written by Friday, the multiple choice questions and an essay on some random topic need to be done by Sunday. Then the Software Development Methods exercises, which have taken way too much time already... (Try doing all the work intended for a competent three person group all by yourself due to... Well... Some unfortunate circumstances.) Pressure? Pfft! What's that? Bring it on!

Umbrellas

Just stumbled across James Smith & Sons again today, and I think that I will have to get one of their umbrellas. And no, this isn't a trip down snobbery lane, it's much more of a thing related to quality, as I recently described. Luckily I just talked with a friend of mine and he told me that he was planning a trip to London in early 2007, so I guess I'll have to try to get him to grab me one of the umbrellas while he's there...

Shoe maintenance...

One of the best feelings in life is the one after taking a long shower, putting on a crisp and clean white shirt and freshly polished shoes (and then of course the other clothing articles, too...). There's actually a joke in Finland regarding how you can determine whether or not a business traveller at an airport is a Finn or not; just look at his shoes. And like behind all jokes that are based on stereotypes, there's truth behind this one too.

On introspection...

Introspection is quite a fun hobby, and I think quite many of my blog entries actual deal with a certain need to understand myself (yeah, and because of this, they may not make for very entertaining reading to others, but that's not really my problem, now is it? :) . Even though many people have commented on the fact that I supposedly am very open and give out a lot of information about myself, I would actually describe myself very reserved and keep certain inner topics closely to myself, and to a select few others (aha! it's only now that I can precisely define what I meant earlier). The people who actually know me very well in turn have commented that if I'd spend all the effort I put towards introspection towards something "useful" (their definition, I think that's relatively subjective :), I'd be able to achieve quite many things. Oh well, I guess I'm doomed, then.

Anyway, I've acknowledged the fact that according to the MBTI test I'm an INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging) and that I fit the short description of the type. The problem with short descriptions are that competent people can usually craft short pieces of text with which anyone can reflect against - think about horoscopes, most of the time they don't actually say anything, but you feel that it's meant precisely for you; the horoscope itself is just so general that everyone can reflect his or her personal situation against it. That's why I've been fairly sceptical with the results of the MBTI test (especially when considering the fact that I don't really feel like shelling out ~100 dollars for some test like that and have only done some unofficial, free tests).

Now, I was just going through random topics on Wikipedia, and stumbled across the INTJ topic. I'd read it before, but had missed quite possibly the most interesting stuff there; the external links. Turns out that there was a page with a relatively detailed description of the INTJ personality, and it was eerily close to me, my views, etc. And I know this thanks to the endless introspection that I do. It also offered some clearer and more exact solutions to stuff that I hadn't yet been able to fully explain and motivate for myself. But(!), not so much good that not something bad; there were one or two things that I didn't fully agree with. For one, the article suggested that INTJs are very loyal to organizations/goals/etc. I sort of understand and associate with this, but I would suggest that instead of being fiercely loyal to an organization, I'm even more loyal to myself. I don't do charity unless I see something in it for me. I guess that's the cynic inside me talking again, but that's how I feel. The endgame or motivation for something, however, doesn't need to be purely selfish. I may do something classifiable as charity just because I feel that it furthers something that's close to me, my beliefs and my views.

That said, I'm afraid that this entry may actually be one of the most honest and open entries that I have written or will write in the future.

Christmas is coming...

... and I'm buried in a shitload of work (both workwork and schoolwork). I've already done ~11 hours today (~8.5 hours at work, ~2.5 hours of school stuff) and I've yet to get anything finished. The Software Development Methods phase 4 deadline is on Thursday at noon and that's going to take at least a couple of hours more today and about six hours tomorrow. Then I have to get my hours for this week in at work and that means going in on Friday. And on Saturday I have my Accounting & Profitability exam for which I've yet to start preparing for. Yay! Top that with some social obligations tomorrow evening, and there's no more spare time.

And if that wasn't enough, the CN course exercise is due on the Friday, December 2nd, and that's turning out to be slightly more tricky than I had predicted...

Now for some interesting math... I would guesstimate that I do about 30 hours of work-work a week and something like 35 hours of schoolwork on top of that. That's about 65 hours of work per week. Now, the student allowance for me is roughly 320 euros/month and I get paid for something like 20 hours per week at work and that's about 900 euros/month of salary for a total of 1100 euros/month minus taxes. Now, 65 hours/week equals 9.3 hours/day (if spread out evenly through the entire week) and with 30 days in a month, that's about 279 hours/month.

Now divide the 1100 euros/month with 279 hours/month, and you get about 3.95 euros/hour minus taxes. That's less than what they pay at McDonald's. And according to Kela, I make way too much money and I get to pay back the student allowance eventually. So overall I earn about 3.22 euros/hour minus taxes. There's something inherently wrong with the system. In order to study and live a decent life, I need money. And because of the small amount of student allowance I get, I have to work part time to earn a bit more (and I'm being paid too little at work, too). And then Kela decides that I am too rich and I have to pay the aid back. Amusing.

All the while the leaders of the country want students to graduate faster and get employed right away in order to start earning more money which can then be taxed at a higher percentage. And in the meanwhile companies also want us to graduate, but that's not enough since we should also have work experience on the side. And right now that I'm gaining more work experience and furthering my studies, I get slammed by the government, which wants its money back, and by the company, which pays me too little.

Ah, it's certainly fun to be a student.

The problem with blogging...

We've been promoting the use of wikis and blogs at work as means of collaboration and dialogue amongst people. The initially reaction to wikis was very positive and we actually witnessed that people started adopting them fairly quickly. However, there were some concerns voiced and the largest issue was that of restricting the viewers and editors. That itself goes against the nature of wikis (and also blogs). The idea is to allow anyone and everyone to read and contribute, and if we institute measures to restrict access, the whole nature of the system changes. The cool thing about wikis is not the technical stuff, but instead the social aspect.

Now this brings me to the problem with blogging. As much fun as this is, the problem why I stopped blogging the last time (and the time before that, and before that too...) was that I can't just type anything I want here. Granted, obfuscating names goes a long way, but people are clever enough to still figure out what's going on. And some things are just not meant to be written down. A pity, actually, but I guess that's just how things are. There'd either have to be multiple levels of access control or multiple blogs for different subjects, and that's not fun anymore. Oh well, no discussion on endgames and long-term personal strategies on this blog, then. :)

Journey to Reims

Every year there are one of two things that will be engraved into your mind and they'll set the overall theme of the year - or how you'll remember it afterwards in the following years. As I've been bitching and moaning lately, this year the theme will be "All work and no play destroys T's social life". Unless some drastic measures are taken, my social life will have consisted mostly of school, work and going out to bars with the same core group from the uni, and even that's been declining a bit on my part. Well, at least the salary's good... *cough*

So anyway, following my previous encounter with the theater (which was brilliant), this Saturday it was time for some opera. Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims (or Journey to Reims) had been brought to life by Dario Fo & Co. at the Finnish National Opera, and granted, I was a bit skeptical on whether or not I'd make it through the three hours. It turned out, however, that it was pure brilliance. Even though it was written in the 19th century, it still covers some topics that have recently become increasingly relevant in our 21st century lives. And when the curtains closed for the final time, it wasn't relief that I felt. In some way I think I could've just went on and watched it again. I could go on and rave about it further, but suffice to say that it was great. And the company was also great, a big thanks for H for taking the time out of her busy life and accompanying me there and making sure I didn't do anything too stupid during the show... :) I think I should just learn to focus more on doing fun stuff and cutting back on work+school lest I become a boring person who lives in a cubicle and you get the idea.

On snobbery

This topic is something that has been troubling me for a while and I can't give a clear answer on it. So let's see if I can get something rational about it down on paper...

Being a snob is something that has become a sort of long running joke with a friend of mine. He accuses me of being a snob, but I don't really consider myself one. I'll grant that I get annoyed of people who buy fake Louis Vuitton bags, and other such things, and I would typically leave something unbought than to buy a fake, or a copy. But that's not because of snobbery, as defined by dictionaries. The primary reason is that I don't like cheating, plagiarism, or anything of the kind. And with fake goods, the problem is two folded...

First of all, someone went through the trouble of designing something, creating a brand, etc. It isn't easy to create something like that. That's something that should be recognized and given credit to. By buying fake stuff, you're in fact not supporting or giving credit to the original creator, but just acting in a childish "I want, I want, I want" fashion. The motive must be some sort of posing, since fake goods are typically of lower quality. Which brings me to the second point...

Because of the cheap price, the goods are typically of lower quality. I'm a firm believer in betting on quality over quantity, mostly because poor people can't afford to buy cheap. It's not because of snobbery, it's because I value quality, that I try to always buy the best that I can afford at the moment. If the quality which I can afford doesn't satisfy me, I just don't buy it. And this seems to be something that may appear as snobbery to some people, but the motives are what distinguish between snobbery and something else.

So to sum it up, no, I wouldn't consider myself a snob, as I'm not trying to elevate myself to some class I'm not in nor am I trying to imitate such classes. And as far as I know, those are precisely the key points of snobbery. I'd rather like to think that I lean more towards perfectionism and value traditions and handicraft. As a matter of fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that the people buying fake purses are in fact a rather large group of snobs themselves. Granted, the end goals are sometimes the same (e.g. I wouldn't mind wearing an Omega Speedmaster), but whereas a snob would obtain something - the Omega - to show off, I would want it because of its beauty, elegance, quality and because I value the knowledge and skill required to make a watch of that calibre. And that's the key point.

Move over, movies...

I'm slowly starting to assume the stance that while movies are ok and all, theater and other forms of art may be even better. Or maybe I've just had luck with the stuff I've seen so far. As I blogged before, the stuff during the URB festival were excellent and tonight I saw €uroja Taivaasta (Euros from Heaven, sorry, the site's only in Finnish), which was just brilliant. Granted, it had quite a bit of Salo-specific stuff which wouldn't be understood by people who haven't lived in Salo for at least a couple of years, but. And unlike with big Hollywood blockbusters, the money goes more or less straight to the actors and people behind the entertainment, not to some faceless corporations. And that's always a plus.

Commercials...

I haven't owned a TV in quite a while, so I can usually avoid most commercials fairly well (well, ok, every time I walk out the door, I'm subjected to umpteen different forms of adverticements, I know, I'm taking TU-91.1002 Marketing :). Most commercials are rubbish, but then there is the occasional good one, too.

Nokia's been in a bit of trouble in the press lately. Motorola had the tremendously cool RAZR, etc., and N just can't seem to stay on the ball. All the cool kids have dumped N long ago. My personal phone is still from 2000 and I haven't bothered to get a new one, so that makes me either incredibly cool or incredibly outdated; I've been told retro is the thing right now. Anyway, I went to see some movie I can't even remember a while back and I saw the commercial for the N93 - the one with Gary Oldman, the one below, and as far as advertisements go, it was immensely cool. And I'm not even saying this because I'm sort of biased (*cough*), it really is...



In addition, I also went to the N Flagship Store in Kamppi to check out the concept, since people had talked about it at work. The whole experience was incredibly pleasant and I actually started thinking of purchasing a phone from N as my next phone; six months back I was about to jump ship and buy a Motorola, but just never got around to buying a new phone. The clerks were nice and very helpful - something you can't take for granted in Finland these days. I wondered about the data transfer rates on the E series phones, but the non-3G phones didn't have a SIM in them for me to test. Now, typically in Finland at this point the clerk basicly tells you to piss off, but this guy actually went through the trouble of fetching a SIM from the back so I could test how EDGE faired against the 3G network in a real world scenario. I was sold. Well, ok, I still haven't bought a new phone, but when I do, I think it'll have to be a phone from N.

I think more companies should focus on selling an experience like that to the customer. At no point was I harassed about actually buying a product. Nor did I get a feeling that the clerk was staring at me from behind the counter and wishing that I'd buy something or fsck off.

Oh, and Moby's In My Heart was also a brilliant pick for the N series commercials...

No biz like showbiz...

Breathtaking...

Update 2006-11-13: It seems that someone took the video down from YouTube. :( Oh well, anyway, it was a video of Fred Astaire doing Puttin' on the Ritz. And it's still brilliant.

"Sorry, our e-store isn't open right now..."

There's been an increasingly disturbing trend in, atleast, Finland concerning web-based stores; namely that they appear to close for the night. It wasn't too long ago that one of the key arguments for web stores were that they would allow you to not only do your shopping from anywhere, but also any time that suits you. But now VR.fi (Finland's only railway company) allows you to only buy tickets from around 6 AM to roughly 11 PM. Granted, they're still open longer than the actual physical ticket offices, but...

Tonight I tried to buy tickets to a showing of Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims, but the Finnish National Opera decided that I'm not going to buy tickets, since it was passed 10 PM. For crying out loud, it's not as if computers require overtime compensation! Why can't a buy some bloody tickets when I want to buy them?! WHY?!?

Long time, no blog

Been nearly 20 days since I last blogged, and if an internet year is three real months, then that means that I haven't been blogging in nearly a quarter of an internet year (or something, been a while since I last took part in a basic mathematics course, and even then they just did a bunch of Fourier transforms instead of anything remotely practical :).

Anyway, one thing's at least becoming very certain; work won't end by doing it. I thought that this part-time job would bring some balance into my life, and in a way I was right. But the balance right now is that work+school take up 75% of my time, or something. Oh well, I guess I could be worse off and the assignments at work are actually fairly interesting. Can't say that much for all the accounting and profitability stuff at school, though...

Today was a good day

For the majority of our lives, we're dissatisfied. Or at least I usually spent more time worrying about long-term goals and such than being happy with the present. But today was one of those days that was just a good day. And it's good to mark those days in your calendar.

Anyway, today was me "big" moment, my first real presentation at N. Granted, it was a short presentation and on nothing that important in the grand scheme of things. But I've held a presentation at work before in front of this many people. Overall the situation was actually fairly relaxed and easy. And my portion turned into more of a dialogue than a monologue. We were already late with our schedule, so there was added pressure to cut things as short as possible, but apparently people were actually interested about what we were discussing. On another positive note, I got a lot of interesting insight on the stuff we've been working on and a chance to meet guys from different parts of the world.

And to top things off, we had a nice dinner in Suomenlinna and then headed to a local pub on the mainland with some other guys from work. It's events like these that return your motivation and show that the things you do might actually have some point in them, too.

Who said getting to work was easy, anyway...

As said, my old contract ended last Friday and my new contract began today. And of course things didn't go very smoothly. I came to work a bit after nine and just walked in as normal. Then when I got to the fourth floor and tried to enter the actual working spaces, it turned out that my access rights to the building had been revoked. Well, luckily social engineering is easy and I just waited a while and followed someone else who happened to go through the door.

It turns out that even though my contract had been renewed, all of the systems hadn't been updated and that in turn ment that I had indeed lost my access rights on Friday. Luckily I still had our HR contact's contact information in my phone and I got her to bully my access rights back from the security guys. Only to have them expire again in the afternoon. And after a few emails I got them back again. Can't wait to see if I can still get to work tomorrow or not.

Oh, and I'll be having my first day off from work this Wednesday (I'm working 20 hour weeks from now on, so I can focus more on my studies and actually have a couple of days out of the office a week. Yay!) and to celebrate I thought I'd go get some sushi.