all things me

Recently I’ve been playing Tomb Raider 4: The Last Revelation quite enthusiastically (when I wasn’t playing Quake 4 or Area 51, or replaying Splinter Cell 3) and today I reached level 33 (out of 35). I’m carrying 3 star-shaped “shaft keys”. I go to a room where there are star-shaped receptacles. An in-game movie starts. It shows the left wall… receptacle 1. The middle wall, receptacle 2… a lever… receptacle 3… The right wall, receptacle 4…! Oh no!

I take the oldest save game I can find and it starts promisingly. I go back through the level, jumping on little slopes on a pyramid, running in underground corridors. And then I come to a ramp where I cannot climb up.

Just great.

I tried some save games I could find but they crashed the game, so I guess I’ll have to give it a little time and start over. In the mean time I could continue Area 51 and I also installed True Crime just now. I would just like to play something relaxing after the insanity of Quake.

[Update July 25] Hurraah! I found out that the place where I thought I should have gone and couldn’t wasn’t the right place! I did in fact have a very good saving point and now I can continue with the adventure! [/Update]

I don’t know if it’s my bad luck, poor choice of products, heavy use or a curse but my DVD+VCR combo is kaput again. This time I think even my dad believes me. I can’t remember when was the last time the device was in service but then it may’ve been a false diagnosis on my part… Now the problem started off with a little vertical jiggle of the picture, then the picture started rolling and sometimes doesn’t show at all. DVD side is all good but neither the TV picture (through the VCR) nor the video picture show properly. Sigh.

It started very suddenly. I taped a movie Friday night (12:40 till 2:30 am) and it shows up properly. Our “lovely neighbours” decided to make a cement-shake from our house on Thursday/Friday so perhaps that has broken something inside the device — I don’t know.

I’m going to have to tape Sex and the City on my old and crappy VCR and hope that because I haven’t used it in a long while, it has recovered enough to work at least a little. I think can tape Gilmore Girls on upstairs’ VCR and everything else I’ll just watch. Luckily this time I won’t have XF worries because I don’t watch the episodes from TV anymore.

This is so frustrating! Only the computer behaves nicely in my hands. (…crash…) kidding!

That’s not a typo — it’s a fact! I only have 8 days of work and then I’ll have 14 days of summer vacation!!! It’s depressingly little compared to past when school holidays were 2½ months or as much as 4 months (in Uni) and I didn’t work or worked only for a part of the summer but it’s a great improvement to last year. I don’t know yet how I’ll spend the precious little time except that I’m going to an art museum and a restaurant with Grandma one day, but what I will not do is get up at 6:30.

I know I haven’t been writing for ages but that’s because I have nothing to write about. I just work and I can’t talk about work. I’ve been playing Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones and I think I’m almost finished (with PoP, you never know). I had to find some help with an abominable fight and found a great place, Stuck Gamer, that has video walkthroughs. Very wow-y! It also has a guide for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which I haven’t played in ages and I’m horribly stuck, but I’ve decided to re-start the level or take an earlier save game to save some sticky shockers and try again.

Thanks to Kory I’ve been listening to some wonderful music by Stabilo. I’ve listened to the songs so much that it doesn’t matter anymore whether I have them playing on computer/mp3 player or not. The other day I had recharged batteries for the mp3 player, replaced the old batteries but then forgot to take the player to work. Of course, inner player isn’t as effective in blocking the outer noise as a tangible player with earphones but it did keep me entertained. If nothing else, go to the Stabilo site » Albums » Happiness & Disaster » listen to Don’t Look in Their Eyes. Listen to all the songs if you have the time!

Owning — or having the possibility to borrow — a season boxset of a TV series is unbelievably liberating. The reruns of the X-Files started last week. They’re shown at 10pm on Mondays and Tuesdays and — hold onto your chair now — I haven’t been watching them. Instead I’ve been watching other channels or dozing off if I’ve felt like it (and boy have I). No need to stare at the little channel logo (it disappears just before the commercial break) in the top right corner with my thumb on the Pause button, no need to keep my fingers crossed that my stupid DVD player records the episode properly. I’m hoping to borrow season 1 box of Lost on my summer vacation so I haven’t been watching that either. Now, if only they had season boxes of the news I’d know what’s going on in the world…

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Yesterday morning (alarm went off at 7:40 — on a Saturday!) I hopped on the train and travelled to my aunt (+ family) near Hämeenlinna

(Map from Wikipedia is in public domain.)

They had bought a new laptop, printer/scanner, and ADSL connection a few weeks ago and needed me to hook it all up. I don’t understand how anyone can keep their hands off a brand new computer, but they’re the sort of people who think computers are the Source of all Evil. Which is why they’re probably planning to keep the thing secret until their 4-year-old and 6-year-old both turn 18.

Nevertheless, off I went and hooked it all up as requested. I didn’t have to do much though, the Internet connection worked as soon as the computer had had time to think a little and the printer-scanner combo had some Easy Peasy installation application (which I didn’t use though…). At least I taught them a little about the programs and created a new Email account (on Outlook Express, ick). I was planning on installing a Real Browser, but I guess it’s easier for everyone if they just use Internet Explorer. Mozilla’s localisation is horrible and incomplete (at least the last time I checked). No offence, Mozilla Localisation team.

When I was done, I headed to my grandparents in Hämeenlinna proper. My uncle (not a blood-relative, but I guess one calls the spouses uncles/aunts, too?) drove me there because he went to pick up their kids. They were care-of the grandparents because, as I said, they weren’t allowed to see the new toys. (I suspected that they probably smell that there’s something new and electric in the house…) When we were sitting in the car he asked me when was the last time I drove. I ho’ed and hummed and replied I didn’t remember (probably 2-3 years ago, at a different aunt, forced by a different uncle). He said I should try it out. I said I didn’t have my driver’s licence. “That doesn’t matter, we’re in the country side now! And besides, the police could look it up on their computer” (already having police in the picture, hu?). I politely turned the offer down a couple of times but when he suddenly pulled over I didn’t really have a choice. So — trembling — I circled the car to the driver’s side, sat down, struggled to position the seat so I could even reach the pedals. At first I didn’t realise I could hold on to the steering wheel to pull myself forward. Instead, I kept sliding back.

The car was wonderful to drive compared to our humongous VW Passat whose sideview mirrors feel 10 meters apart, ready to collide with the passing cars, mobile or immobile. Alright, maybe it’s not that bad but I haven’t driven the Passat for… hold on, have I ever driven it?

The road was wonderfully empty except once I had to pass a car on a snowed-in road. It went alright if going a little over the snowbank is ‘alright’. When I turned to the grandparents’ house Grandpa was outside and surprised to see me get out of the car on the wrong side. He said my entrance had been quite swift but I don’t think I drove that fast… If I did, I’ve been known to do that. I’ve been known to cause grown men slap their hands over their eyes — at least mentally. But hey, the entrances have never ended with a crash.

At my grandparents’ I helped them with some anti-virus woes — the software wanted to upgrade and there was a double icon in the tray. The double icon made Grandpa nervous. The download took a while with their 56kb modem. Yeah, some still have those things. I also installed a similar printer/scanner for them, this time using the Easy Peasy installation wizard (took considerably longer than the old school installation). The printer is pretty nifty; maybe I should get one of those.

Nowadays I can’t help but feel like a procrastinator in everything else but work. The infamous magazine article is still waiting for a final glance which shouldn’t be such a big hurdle but in reality I’m terrified. An ontology is waiting to be built, an article waiting to be read, and I haven’t played in ages (except Minesweeper)!

Yesterday I did manage to finish something: a website for a relative, an entrepreneur. Usually I hate taking the smaller screens and Internet Explorers in consideration but this time I had to because of the target audience. It wasn’t so bad after all — no mysterious spaces after I put a doctype on the page. I even left the font size to default and it scales to humongous proportions (on Mozilla and Firefox). Then again, having the doctype in place, I couldn’t do trickery in order to get the smallish boxish page center vertically. Oh well, usability over looks — that’s the way to go. It’s valid XHTML and looks alright even when you remove all the images. No fancy-schmancy JavaScript either. I even made a special stylesheet for printing! Ah, gotta pat myself on the shoulder for once.

Here’s a little tasting. Nothing fancy.

On my regular just-checking-out-the-prices trip to a couple of stores resulted this time in “Saw” DVD and a triple pack of CSI games (it was Winter-een-mas, so I guess that was allowed). I had read how horrible the first CSI game was but I wanted to try them out, nevertheless.

The first CSI reminded me of the X-Files game where you didn’t have much freedom of movement, you just needed to spot evidence on the screen, click it and use a proper tool, or go around asking questions in pre-set order. CSI didn’t offer much of an intellectual challenge in the figuring-out part but playing peek a boo with the drops of blood or tiny threads of fiber was difficult enough (although the hotspot cursor spoiled some of the fun, but also saved a couple of moments of frustration). Second CSI, Dark Motives, introduced difficulty levels which allowed me to turn off those active hotspots (cursor changes when there’s something to examine) and other help features. I played with “auto-evidence questions” off as long as I could stand the repetitive reply of “I don’t know anything about that” and “Why you asking me?” every time I dragged and dropped an evidence over a suspect to bring out new questions. In CSI:Miami (in progress), in addition to the continuing “why you asking me” torture, there are more puzzles with crypted emails and torn notes which is nicely refreshing after the first two just-drop-it-on-the-lab-guy games. Alas, it’s CSI:Miami with the Horrendous Horatio.

The characters don’t look much like the real actors but at least they’ve got real voices (I once heard a smile in Nick Stokes’s voice!) and there are too few cases to play but still I’ve enjoyed the brief moments of heureka I get — when active hotspots aren’t enabled.

As usual, a meme picked up at Jafer‘s.

Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. Office assistant
2. Sales assistant
3. Research assistant
4. CAT support
(I’m glad this is only a four meme )

Four movies you would watch over and over again:
1. Indiana Jones(es)
2. Matrix(es)
3. Moulin Rouge
4. something very very good that’s yet to come…? (aka I can’t think of any)

Four places you have lived:
1. Espoo
2. Helsinki
3. Kirkkonummi
4. Vantaa

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. The X-Files
2. Gilmore Girls
3. CSI
4. any scientific (or -ish) documentary

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Kuopio, Finland
2. Seinäjoki, Finland
3. Berlin, Germany (4 days)
4. Nummi-Pusula where we had a summer cottage

Four web-sites I visit daily:
1. University email
2. Homepage (to check mail + comments)
3. Ctrl-Alt-Del
4. Jay Is Games

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Feta-cheese and spinach pie
2. Noodles
3. Blue cheese
4. Pasta

Four places I’d rather be right now:
1. Next to a radiator
2. Sauna
3. Sleeping
4. Watching TV (gotta go!)

Four victims for this meme:
Nah, if someone wants to do this, let ’em.

I thought I’d post for a change even though I don’t have anything special to say.

It’s freezing here and I’m yawning/dislocating my jaws. It was warm (10 celsius) up till the end of last week then came a storm that sounded like a bunch of kids in a rollercoaster and the past few days have been a few degrees below zero. I’m thinking of hooking up my extra radiator.
This week I’ve also been awfully tired for some reason (no, X-Files isn’t on later than usual). The other day, Monday or Tuesday, I overslept but luckily Mum noticed I wasn’t at the breakfast table and came to wake me up.

Yesterday I ordered Colorado Kid and Blood & Smoke (audio book), by Stephen King of course– a little pre-Xmas present for yours truly.

I borrowed Dolores Claiborne (S.K. movie) DVD from a colleague. He’s quite a movie buff. I told him I’d list my puny DVD collection if there’s anything he doesn’t have already, but I’m pretty sure I can’t offer anything in return.

I figured out what I’m going to buy my godson for Xmas: a subscription of Bionicle magazine. It wasn’t available for order at the publisher’s website but I sent them a query.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’d ask Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas… I’m such book-picky but I’ll give them a list of King books I don’t have and a picture of the series I’m collecting and hope for the best. It’s really not such a big deal if the books aren’t from the same series, but it’d be so nice if they were! Well, I’ve already bought mismatching books so it’s really not big a deal. As long as the book is not ugly I’m happy. I once went to exchange a book I had bought the day before because I found a prettier one (correct series!) in another bookstore. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone! I did buy a new book during the exchange, of course.

Oh yeah, I promised to write something about Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy… I’ve forgotten everything I meant to write! I finished my 2nd round the day before yesterday. Next time I have to try and play badly to see what will happen. Anyway, like Kory said, it’s like an adventure game / interactive movie. Sometimes you need to be quite quick in deciding what you want to do (what to say to people etc.). Every once in a while there is an action sequence and depending on how well you do, you may for example avoid cars trying to run you over or find out something new about the story. I haven’t yet tried what happens in certain situations (where you can’t die if you do badly!) if you fail the sequences on purpose. You can decide what you want to do or not do and the story, naturally, changes every time you do things differently.

There is some humour in the game as well. Especially with one of the “cops”, Tyler Miles. His facial expressions are excellent! The main character looks annoyingly and disturbingly familiar but I can’t figure out who he reminds me of. I’ll try and dig up a good picture (maybe take a screen shot).

The soundtrack is wonderful and the graphics are very beautiful, especially during the fights (as far as I can tell, I’m too busy at staring at the Action sequence indicator). I love the Matrix-y moves the main character does. Refreshing change: a game I can, and have the patience/time/endurance to, finish! It is very short; I played it in a Saturday (12 hours minus distractions). Regardless, I recommend it. You US people get a censored version of it (called Indigo Prophecy), in Europe we have Fahrenheit, which includes some nudity. You’re not missing anything with the censored version; in my opinion the sex scenes were unnecessary. But that’s just me.

Today I read the strangest definition for ‘blog’: a website, which is regularly updated. Which means this — currently — isn’t a blog.

I clicked on to Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes from Blogging Pro. An interesting read but I’ve raged about item 2 in the past: using a photo. I understand that people want to see faces, but who wants to see my mug? I don’t! How shocking would it be if I posted my photo and you’d see that I’m actually male?

I am, however, going to implement some of the enhancement ideas. When I was designing this site, I didn’t find a good colour for visited links (I did notice that some of the links, in blog content, lose underlining after a visit) so I forgot about it (accidentally!). Also I’m going to try and list some of the “must-read” entries but I’m afraid I might not find any (This is a blog for dog’s sake! Not a magazine. Why do people take blogs so seriously? It’s supposed to be fun, not 2nd or nth job (for most)). I did have a category for these, something like Minna’s picks, but apparently I removed it at some point (or it doesn’t have any posts!).
(There’s a list in the archives now.)

Jafer woke me up from my work-daze. In addition to not having written in over half a month (I honestly don’t know how that’s possible), I haven’t finished a book since July! (I’ll need to check my papery booklog, but the one here says July.)

I had hard time not laughing today. A group of people were talking and roaring with laughter (at work, of course) and I was sitting at my desk. Because I wasn’t in the group I couldn’t laugh along but I kept bursting so I had to leave for a while to cool off. I went and washed my coffee mug. Interesting, innit?