Like almost every year, we spent one day at the Housing Fair which was conveniently located in Espoo this year. Overall this year was worse than average – there weren’t as many nice houses as some time ago in Heinola or even in Tuusula. Some observations and photos below (click on the thumbnails for the full image – most of the photos were taken by Sarita).
Bathroom fixtures are getting weirder every year. Not only are the faucets bordering on abstract art, the hand basins are becoming works of art while conveniently forgetting that they should be used. Like this one on the right here – sure a wooden hand basin looks nice, and the rectangular form is a cool modern style but come on! How do you clean this? It’s impossible with the corners and edges like that. Plus the let’s – have – a – small – €500 – metal – stick – as – a – faucet – control- style is, IMO, annoying.
Kitchens with no room. Like a lot of people know, I love cooking etc, so I always take an extra careful look at the kitchens. It was amazing to see that kitchen (working) table area was in very low supply; in most kitchens, there’s no room to do any real cooking! If you add the couple of necessary non-integrable appliances, where do you roll a dough or do prep work? Don’t people cook anymore? There were only a couple of kitchens with adequate or even good room in the kitchen.
- External (i.e. separate building) sauna/bathroom things were in fashion. In one house, there was a shower with a nice all-glass door right next to it. And where does the glass door lead to? Theoretically to the yard, but in practise the view you get from the shower (and, incidentally, to the shower) is an intersection. Good for exhibitionists I’m sure, not so good for the rest of us..
Below left is a view from the door towards the shower and right is the view you get from the shower:
In another house a different kind of shower-problem emerged. There the shower was a small recess in the wall – but alas, it was way too short for a normal person to fit in – as witnessed by yours truly standing next to it here on the right.
- On the yard of the shower-for-midgets-house I also encountered the most braindead yard planning idea ever. Take a look at the photos below, what does it look like to you? I’d say trash. Loads of glass shards and broken china. However, what it in reality was was a decorative (I guess) strip of glass shards on the ground, going around the house. Very child- and pet-friendly and I’m sure the neighbors are thrilled. And so will the owners after visiting the emergency room for glass cuts a few times.
Of course the fair wasn’t a total loss – there were some really nice touches in some houses, and even some great houses themselves. But like I said, below par based on earlier housing fair experience.
The most mind-boggling thing about the whole thing were the prices; a normal house had a calculated (and the calculations are always on the low side) building cost of a cool half a million euros – or more. Half a million! Is building really so expensive that a normal mortal cannot afford a house anymore!?
Think I’ll have to start participating in the weekly lottery.
Despite the remodeling going on in our home, I managed to finish another summer book (essentially during bus rides to and from the hardware store), The Human Mind and how to make the most of it by Robert Winston. The title really states the subject and what a fascinating subject it is. The book attempts to capture the current state of knowledge about the workings of the human brain, from the physical level to the emotions. It tries to answer questions like how does our memory work, how do the neurons organize themselves, what level of plasticity does the brain have and so on. That’s a lot of ground to cover in just 500 pages and I looked forward to vastly increasing my knowledge on the workings of the mind.
However, I regret to say I had a few problems with the book. First, it’s apparent that a lot of it is based on the BBC TV-series of the same name. This manifests itself in the story continuity problems and creates rather blunt, short “cuts” in the story entirely unsuitable for books. In short, Winston strays from the main story too often with too short, not always entirely relevant, substories. Second, for almost every “feature” of the brain there are a couple of theories introduced on how and why they are the way they are – this is perfectly fine, of course, but for most theories there’s nothing but a brief mention of it and a sometimes forced inference on how various features would’ve increased our survival chances eons ago. I found this kind of sprinkling of short snippets of incomplete background information a bit annoying – the treatise on evolutionary disimportance/importance of lying and detection of liars was a good example of this with near-self-contradictory stuff presented in a haphazard manner.
But by far the biggest problem I had was the lack of substance to justify the subtitle of the book, and how to make the most of it. This subtitle implies that there are many practical things in this book that each and every one of us can do to make our mind work better. For the most part, this is not the case. Except for a couple elementary hints that everyone knows (e.g. eat more fish, exercise your brain etc), there’s not much practical stuff to act on. Some very interesting information is provided in relation to importance of nutrition in early years & brain development, but for most of the people reading the book it’s too late to correct the diet what we had during the first year of our lives.
All this is not to say that The Human Mind is a bad book (because it’s not) but my expectations were clearly higher than the result. Whle I didn’t learn as much as I had expected, I certainly still learned quite a few things. If you haven’t read much about the workings of the mind and the brain, you will find The Human Mind to be a good introduction to the various aspects of our brain. For those who have missed them, it repeats some well-known stories / case studies (such as that of of Phineas Gage), introduces the research of Antonio Damasio and other “classics” and covers, at least briefly, most aspects of how our mind works or is thought to work.
The last chapter on intelligence, creativity and intuition was perhaps the best one. While Gladwell’s Blink gives a much better overview to intuition, there is some good discussion on the definition and types of intelligence, effects of the environment, the fascinating mind-body connection etc. To demonstrate the latter, it has been proven that the mental state has a significant impact on your physical well-being (and vice versa) – but it hadn’t occurred to me this is true even in mice, as shown by this interesting though a bit cruel experiment:
The field of psychoneuroimmunology is new, but one that is gaining some acceptance within the scientifi community. [...] Robert Ader, of University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York, experimented by conditioning mice to feel sick after they had drunk sweetened water. He enforced this conditioning by giving the mice a drug immediately after consuming the sweet water, which made them vomit. After a few repetitions, the mice were sick whenever they drank the sweet water, without needing to ingest the vomiting drug. But Ader’s curiosity was alerted by the fact that these conditioned mice started to die, becoming susceptible to infections that they would normally have fought. When he studied the side effects of the vomiting drug, he discovered that it also suppressed the immune system of the mice. But its effects were short-lived; they ought to have reversed after the mice stopped taking it. The fact that the mice were dying suggested one thing – it was their brains that were causing the suppression of the immune system.
Overall, The Human Mind was perhaps the first time that my seemingly inexhaustible source for brilliant science books has left me a bit disappointed. Like I said, The Human Mind is not by any means a bad book as such, but I expected more – so I’ll give it 3- out of 5.
Nokia’s current 3rd edition Series 60 devices have by now loads of software made for them. Some really good stuff already comes with the phones – especially the latest models. For example, the #1 application on the phone is still the browser (it’s great), but a bunch of useful stuff will still need to be installed by the user. The only problem is that lots of the other stuff is crap and finding the good applications is a pretty lengthy process, especially when people often don’t know what’s out there and what are the possibilities.
To perhaps aid in this search for these valuable applications, below is a list of my favorites along with screenshots. Most applications are free, which I prefer, but there are a couple which are so good that I consider them worth the money. If you get these, please buy them from clicking the links on this page to support this site!
For older applications that run on the older S60 platform, refer to my older post for these devices.
Recent updates to the list
Update April 2008: Related to the Location Tagger-application; the new firmware versions for N95 and N82 support automatic geotagging from the camera application itself, thus obsoleting any additional SW. Highly recommended if you can upgrade the FW; go to Nokia Software Update at nokia.com/softwareupdate
Update February 2008: Redid most of the screenshots as to reflect the latest versions of the applications. Added more screenshots as well as displaying all in “real life size” now. Updated descriptions. Added Location Tagger and Sports Tracker.
Update January 2008: Added EmTube, an application for playing YouTube videos. Changed Smart2Go Maps to Nokia Maps. Removed Raccoon as I really didn’t find good, lasting use cases for it. OggPlay works again with an updated certificate, but has an annoying bug causing the phone volume buttons not to work – I’ll add it back here once those work as it’s a vastly superior music player to the included one.
Update November 2007: Google Maps now has GPS and cell-id based location support
Calcium
The calculator that comes with Nokia phones sucks. Its user interface is quite inconvenient and I’m pretty sure you’ll agree after trying Calcium. It’s a basic calculator with a wonderfully usable UI.
Download from: http://www.mtvoid.com/calcium/index.html
Price: free
Handy Weather
Handy Weather is an excellent application for everyone interested in the weather. It automatically updates the weather forecast and current conditions for cities of your choice. Beautiful graphics make taking a quick peek at the forecast a pleasure. The latest version also includes a screen saver, displaying the immediate weather forecast when your phone idles.
Price: €19.95 for one year subscription – click here to buy!
(Note that unlike many applications, this is NOT bound to a single device or IMEI code – when you upgrade your phone, you don’t need to re-purchase it)
More screenshots: [Screenshot 2]
Handy Clock
Handy Clock supplies some of the “missing” essential applications; in addition to the nice day/night map pictured here, it has a set of alarms, countdown timers and stopwatch functions that are extremely convenient e.g. in the kitchen. There’s also an elementary time log for logging project durations.
Price: €24.95 – click here to buy! (Note that unlike many applications, this is NOT bound to a single device or IMEI code – when you upgrade your phone, you don’t need to re-purchase it)
More screenshots: [Screenshot 2]
Nokia Podcasting
Nokia has made a nice podcasting application that supports most N- and E-series devices. It was only after this application that I really “got” podcasts; you can set it to download your favorite podcasts at set times and using a specified network. For example, evenings using the home WLAN is a good choice, especially for those without a flat-rate data plan – video podcasts or vodcasts can easily take few tens of MB each. Then listen or watch to your favorite podcasts on the move the next day.
Price: free
Pre-installed in many new handsets. Also available for download from http://www.nokia.com/podcasting
Nokia Search
Nokia Search now comes pre-installed in at least the new N-series devices, but if you don’t have it yet, get it here. This is basically a search application for both Internet and your own device. The on-device search may not sound very useful, but once you accumulate gigabytes of stuff on your phone it suddenly becomes clear why such an application is needed. It’s most useful thanks to its ability to connect to local yellow pages-style directories so searching for services and businesses is easy. Plus there’s a convenient map that shows you where everything is.
Price: free
Now comes pre-installed in new handsets. Also available for download from: http://mobilesearch.nokia.com/
Internet Radio
Internet Radio is another Nokia-project. It consists of a Shoutcast engine and a front-end – you can listen to streaming radio stations available on the Internet. The quality is not always flawless, but most of the time it works nicely. This is another easy way to rack up your mobile data usage, so a flat-rate plan might be a good idea.
Price: free
Now comes pre-installed in many new handsets. Also available for download from: http://www.nokia.com/internetradio
Screenshot
Screenshot is, as the name would imply, a simple application that allows you to take screenshots of applications running on the phone – something that has been extensively used in making of this post, for example.
Price: free
Available from: http://antonypranata.com/screenshot/screenshot-symbian-os
Google Maps Mobile
Google’s own version of their Google Maps for mobile phones. An excellent map application that now comes with GPS support. What’s more, since late November 2007, Google Maps now uses cell-id based location which means that even handsets without GPS (or outside GPS coverage) can get a rough location estimation based on the cell ID. Very convenient with a nice UI.
Price: free
Available from: http://www.google.com/gmm (visit the URL with your phone)
Nokia Maps 2.0
After Nokia’s acquisitions and movements to mapping space, the Nokia Maps application has become one of the best mapping applications out there, at least in terms of usability and price/quality ratio. The software and maps itself are free but the navigation support is a chargeable add-on feature (GPS support is free, only the navigation feature costs). Still, a very useful and well-functioning piece of software that’s quite useful when one is abroad. The new 2.0 version adds some nice features and more local information.
Price: free / charge for GPS navigation.
Old version pre-installed in many new handsets, 2.0 coming later. 2.0 Beta available for download from: http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps
More screenshots: [Screenshot 2],
[Screenshot 3]
GMail Mobile
Google Mail or GMail is one of the most usable webmails out there, so it’s no surprise they came up with a really good mobile client also. This definitely trumps the built-in mail client. I have two minor annoyances: the ok/cancel-button order is reversed as compared to most other S60 apps which takes some getting used to. Also, it doesn’t handle very long mails well but rather truncates them. Still, it’s very usable for reading your GMail on the move.
Download with your phone’s browser from gmail.com/app
Price: free
DivX Player
One of the worst deficiencies with the 3rd edition terminals are their terrible media players; the RealPlayer is really not up to snuff especially for playing local media and thus needs to be replaced with something better. There are several options out there, but some are rather expensive and not so great – luckily DivX player will save the day. After appropriate conversion if necessary, this players makes it possible to really enjoy videos, movies and TV shows on your phone.
Download from http://mobile.divx.com/.
Price: free
More screenshots: [Video being played full-screen],
[Another full-screen video]
EmTube
One annoying thing about S60 terminals has been their inability to play YouTube clips. The Flash Lite included is not good enough for FLV videos (support coming in Flash Lite 3.0 but that’s not installed in any new phone as of yet) and the available applications have only shown a small part of the YouTube contents. That all changes with EmTube, a great little application that nicely displays all of YouTube contents. On N95 and N82 it even auto-rotates the video when you turn the phone. The best part is that it’s free!
Download from http://www.emtube.yoyo.pl/emTube_S60_3_0_v_1_0_10.zip (the site seems to be down at the moment, though this direct link to the file still works)
Price: free
Location Tagger
Many recent phones are equipped with a GPS receiver and a camera, so it’s quite amazing that these two haven’t yet been fully combined – that is, the phones don’t automatically embed location information to the image metadata (EXIF). Location Tagger from Nokia Beta Labs corrects this omission; keep it running on the background, take pictures as usual and your photos will be geotagged. Very useful. Includes a timeout counter so it doesn’t drain your battery by keeping the GPS always on.
Update (April 2008): The new firmware versions for N95 and N82 support automatic geotagging from the camera application itself. Highly recommended if you can upgrade.
Download from Nokia Beta Labs at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/locationtagger
Price: free
Sports Tracker
Sports Tracker has a really nice idea – it maintains a comprehensive log of your exercise; speed, route with GPS, distance, elevation changes and everything you can think of. Later you can look at the routes you traveled on a map or whatever. Perfect for walking or biking trips and a good sparring partner if you’re after an improved time in a certain route.
Of course, the one downside is that it’s not useful for all kinds of sports – I for one prefer to leave my phone home when going swimming or running 
Download from Nokia Beta Labs at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/sportstracker
Price: free
Bonus applications: P2P stuff
A couple of great P2P apps have made their way onto the Symbian platform also. Check out Symtorrent and Symella.
Other stuff
If you’re looking for free themes for your S60 device, check out http://symbian.mobilethemes.com/ – plenty of good quality themes are available from there and all free of charge!
It’s inevitable, at some point in a blog’s life, to ask for identification of those reading it. That time has now come here – so if you’ve been reading this blog for, say, more than just this post, please let yourself be ‘seen’ by leaving a comment. The reason? Though I have some kind of an idea about the readership from the blog statistics and log analysis, I would love to know who and how many are lurking around here. There are a few old acquaintances and lost friends that I’d be especially interested in hearing from.
If you know I know you’re reading this – or if you have commented on something earlier, thus effectively accomplishing the same – you’re excused from performing this task.
If you prefer to remain publicly anonymous, drop me an e-mail. Or use a pseudonym. Or state in the comment that you don’t want it published and I won’t (works only for new commenters). There are as of yet unknown readers in at least Sweden, Netherlands, Singapore, UK, Texas, Austria and from several employees of various companies in Finland. So ‘fess up!
We have been spending some precious summer days remodeling our condo; we had long ago decided it needed wooden floors and now was the time for implementation. Since starting the project last week, I’ve made several interesting observations:
- Wood is heavy. This became apparent after lugging half a ton (500kg) of wood from the street where it was unceremoniously dumped, to what is essentially the fourth floor. Yes there was an elevator, otherwise I wouldn’t be alive.
- Floor tiles are also heavy. It’s incredible how something so small can possess such mass.
- Pianos are even heavier, requiring many kind neighbors to help move it.
- Books are also heavy. And a lot of them fits in a single bookshelf, let alone more than one.
- I hate baseboards. Largely thanks to baseboards, the 80/20 rule (or even worse) applies to this project; i.e. the first 80% of the task takes 80% of the time and the remaining 20% of the task takes 80% of the time.
- Amazing amount of stuff fits in one room. It really is unbelievable.
- Cheap mitre boxes are evil. Next time I’ll buy a powered version that does the same thing.
- It is remarkably difficult to do elementary math and easy to mess up simple measurements.
- It’s sort of fun to be able to annoy some of our neighbors (there’s a lot of noise created in various stages of the process) for a change; usually it’s them annoying us with their cigarette smoke. The well-behaved other ones I feel sorry for.
Basically a lot of things were discovered heavy. An alternative explanation to this is, of course, that I’m weak.
Oh, and did I mention I hate baseboards? Here’s why: when you first try to install them with nails, the board shatters when it apparently cannot handle a normal baseboard nail. Then when you switch to using thinner nails, the board will not stick to the wall as the nails are so lame. Then you go with screws that are supposed to bite firmly on the metal back plate holding the wallboard in place – only they don’t. After all this trial-and-error you find out that the only method that works is to first drill through the metal plate with a small drillhead and only then screw in the screw that was supposedly capable of drilling itself through the metal. And don’t even get me started on drilling into steel re-inforced concrete walls.. sheesh.
Man, I need a vacation after this vacation. And I feel sorry for Sarita who has been helping me out a lot even while she’s had to work every day.. I’m sure we’ll be happy with the end result, but there’s still some way to go – so it’s back to work for me.
Die Weisse Massai
The Family Stone
Match Point
Saving Face
Shackles
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Just Like Heaven
Proof
Derailed
The Da Vinci Code
Guess Who
