Only slightly bent

When doing our daily grocery shopping the other day, I thought I’d make one fun exercise and see where our food actually comes from. The result: all over the place. Or, to be more exact, all over the planet. While some fresh produce like salads, onions etc. come from Finland (i.e. “locally” with transportation distances of max. few hundred kilometers), a lot comes from faraway places. Like these basic things:

• Oranges: South Africa
• Mangos: Ivory Coast
• Cantaloupe: Spain
• Cheese: Italy
• Sesame-seed oil: Netherlands
• Bananas: Costa Rica
• Almonds: USA
• Beef: Brazil
• Spices: India

So a simple, basic shopping trip consists of getting goods from five continents. And even with all this produce flying around, we can’t get decent corn in Finland for anywhere near reasonable prices. Good chilies can’t be gotten period, which is why they have to be homegrown – but you can’t grow everything yourself. By coincidence there was an article in today’s Helsingin Sanomat about ingredients of “Finnish” foods also coming from all over the world, this awareness sparked by an incident where dioxin-laced guarkum, indirectly from India or Pakistan, poisoned some cream products. Even such Finnish staple foods as rye bread can have ingredients from several countries, so “Made in Finland” should really just be “Assembled in Finland” also for food.

Seriously though, all this trafficking raises some questions; what if all global shipping was stopped for some time? What happens to peoples’ diets when air travel became prohibitively expensive for shipping groceries and it no longer makes sense to fly them from halfway across the planet?

It’s not just a matter of taste either – eating healthily around the year is simply not possible if one were to rely purely on Finnish stuff. We already know that healthy food costs more as it is (How about those tax cuts for healthy foods? Earth calling the government, hello?) but if the price gap between healthy and unhealthy food increases further in the future, we’re looking at (an even worse) a national health problem also.

Looking at the logs, there are still people ending up here via a redirection from my old homepage at the Department of Computer Science, looking for course papers and other stuff I’ve written. In the interest of having that old stuff still lying around somewhere, I’ll keep some of them here. So if quickly written, ancient course papers of old topics interest you, check out the below – listed from the most recent to the oldest:

• MSc Thesis (fall ‘06): [Service-based Requirements for Future Mobile Networks]
• Collaboration of autonomous business services (spring ‘06):
  [Essay: From B2C to C2C e-commerce]
• Seminar: Instant Messaging and Presence in the Internet (fall ‘05):
  [Paper on OMA IMPS]
  [Presentation on OMA IMPS]
• Seminaari: Tiedonhallinta semanttisessa webissä (fall ‘05, in Finnish):
  [Paper on Social Semantic Web, XFN and FOAF]
  [Presentation on Social Semantic Web]

As the first book to read over my summer vacation this year I chose Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid. It’s an autobiographical tale of growing up in the 50s in Des Moines, Iowa.

An autobiography covering only the part of somebody’s childhood may not sound like much fun, but if you know Bill Bryson, you’ll also know better. Bryson has a rather amazing capability of making even mundane things sound exciting and fun. Plus the book, in all fairness, isn’t just about Bill’s childhood – it’s a remarkably vivid description of life in general in the USA in 1950’s; an age where everything was good for you and everything was exciting and new.

In his familiar sharp, sarcastic and exaggerating style, Bill takes you on a fascinating journey to what it was like – adolescent fantasies abound (hence the Thunderbolt Kid-title), but serious issues like the threat of nuclear war, national obsessions like Communism and international events like the Cuban missile crisis and other things aren’t left out either. In addition to being laugh-out-loud funny, the book provides one with interesting insights into historical events and life half a century ago, a lot of which may seem ludicrous and even scary in retrospect today. Like the plans on using hydrogen bombs for this and that:

Representative James E. Van Zandt of Pennsylvania, a leading proponent of devastation, promised that soon we would have a device of at least a hundred megatons – the one that might consume all our breathable air. At the same time, Edward Teller, the semi-crazed Hungarian-born physicist who was one of the presiding geniuses behind the development of the H-bomb, was dreaming up exciting peacetime uses for nuclear devices. Teller and his acolytes at the Atomic Energy Commission envisioned using H-bombs to enable massive civil engineering projects on a scale never before conceived – to create open-pit mines where mountains had once stood, to alter the courses of rivers in our favor (ensuring that Danube, for instance, served only capitalist countries), to blow away irksome impediments to commerce and shipping like the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Excitedly they reported that just twenty-six bombs placed in a chain across the Isthmus of Panama would excavate a bigger, better Panama Canal more or less at once and provide a lovely show into the bargain. They even suggested that nuclear devices could be used to alter the Earth’s weather by adjusting the amount of dust in the atmosphere, for ever banishing winters from the northern US and sending them permanently to the Soviet Union instead.
[...]
In short, the creators of the hydrogen wished to wrap the world in unpredictable levels of radiation, obliterate whole ecosystems, despoil the face of the planet, and provoke and antagonize our enemies at every opportunity – and these were their peacetime dreams.

The above excerpt may not be entirely characteristic of the book in terms of content, but you get the idea of the writing style. I for one loved the book; it even made me want to visit Des Moines, but it made me want to visit Des Moines of the 50’s. Unfortunately it seems most of what was great back then has since been destroyed.

Anyway, if you like Bill’s writing style, you’ll love The Thunderbolt Kid; if you don’t, you may want to look elsewhere. I would give this 4½ out of 5 and as such, I can highly recommend it.

Though most of these date back earlier, thanks to the unusually wet July, I had time to watch a few movies on my vacation and due to this, the usual package of 10 movies per review post was exceeded. Anyhow, some quite excellent movies this time around – check out at least The Illusionist, Stranger Than Fiction and Blood Diamond. As a reminder, my “rating guide” can be found from here.

The Illusionist

Set in the turn-of-the-century Vienna, The Illusionist tells the story of a brilliant magician, Eisenheim (Edward Norton), who returns to Vienna after many years to rediscover his childhood crush under the most unopportune circumstances. The two try to get together, but the woman in question is unfortunately under the iron rule of the Crown Prince who also suspects and tries to debunk any mystery in Eisenheim’s magic. But as things in the world of magic are rarely what they first seem, what will happen?

The story is narrated and told by Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) – while I typically don’t care for narrated movies, it worked nicely here as the timeline jumps a bit. Illusionist definately has elements of a romantic drama, but I find it hard to classify it purely as such as it’s also a first-class thriller supported by a well-performing (great work from Norton in particular), seasoned cast, well-developed characters and good storytelling, not to mention very nice staging. Overall excellent cinematography, one that I’ll give 4½ out of 5.

A Good Year

Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) is a ruthless banker, not exactly loved by anyone; hist last warm relationship was with his uncle Henry Skinner (Albert Finney) when he was a young boy spending summers at his uncle’s vineyard in France. Now living in London, he hears of his uncle’s death and the vineyard that he supposedly inherited – immediately thinking of selling the place for profit. Once down there, however, he semi-reluctantly ends up spending more than 24hrs at the villa. Could it be that the estate is worth something more than its selling price?

The movie is categorized as a romantic drama / comedy, which I suppose is fair though it’s a bit light on the comedy part. The plot is somewhat predictable but manages to throw in a couple of small surprises. With no unpleasant surprises in the acting or other categories, A Good Year turns out to be a good movie – but not excellent. 3½ out of 5.

The Last Kiss

If there ever was a movie with us as the target audience in terms of life situations, this is it. The Last Kiss is a story about a few couples struggling to find balance and retain expectations of surprises in their lives as they start to settle down in their 30s – and get babies. Anxieties arise especially for the men as Michael (Zach Braff) feels his life is now all planned out for him – and in the process conveniently meets an exciting young girl. One thing leads to another and his pregnant common-law wife Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) finding out about what’s going on is only getting to be a matter of time. At times a clever drama, The Last Kiss manages to be a rather believable and realistic film. Most of the performances are pretty good, though I disliked Braff’s somewhat detached acting. Anyway, a pretty good movie and as such, 3½ out of 5.

Shawshank Redemption

This movie had been sitting on my DVD shelf for close to a decade, so it was about time I actually watched it Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to the Shawshank prison for life. The prison life turns out to be just as unpleasant as one can imagine, but he eventually forms a close friendship with “Red” (Morgan Freeman), a man who can get some things delivered to the prison. As Andy starts to build a life for himself in the prison, he eventually discovers that warden is far from a friendly one. Over the years it becomes clear that when they send you away to Shawshank for life, your life is what they take from you.. despite the somewhat boring-sounding plot, this is a remarkable and emotional film and instead of giving away the plot, I’ll highly recommend it and score it at 5- out of 5.

Freedom Writers

Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) is a young, inexperienced teacher who is put to the test teaching a restless bunch of high school students. As one would expect, there are massive troubles with the kids at first but gradually they become to accept and even respect her. Erin’s troubles don’t, however, end with the kids she’s teaching as she’s also fighting another fight at home where her husband feels neglected and another one at school where she feels the the school management neglects her students. A run-of-the-mill MTV movie that suffers from too slow a start and from being quite predictable. As such, maybe 2½ out of 5 is in order.

Because I Said So

Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton) is worried about her daughter Milly (Mandy Moore) – specifically, she’s worried about her luck with men, or the lack thereof, so she decides to help fate along a bit and place a personal ad for her daughter. And screen the candidates. Of course this spells for a disaster to begin with, but added complexity comes from the fact that by chance, two eligible bachelors enter Milly’s life, only one of the mom-approved. Overall an okay movie, though the acting somewhat over the top at times, there were no surprises in the thoroughly predictable plot, the acting was a bit off at times etc – a bit of a substandard romantic comedy. 2 out of 5.

Notes on a Scandal

A sort of a psychological thriller/drama, centered around an older teacher, Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) who befriends a newcomer, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). The friendship starts off well and when Sheba hits a crisis that could cost her her job, Barbara is there to bail her out. But in the overall, is the friendship completely normal? Does Barbara really want just a friend … or something more? Good performances abound and the plot holds together to the end. Nothing stellar, but a thoroughly enjoyable psychological drama anyway. 3½ out of 5.

Stranger Than Fiction

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is a tax auditor with a remarkably boring and simple life. But one morning Harold’s life takes an unexpected turn as he begins to hear someone narrate his own life – and once it begins to seems that the narrator knows more about Harold’s life than Harold himself does, he becomes a bit unnerved. The narration begins to affect his whole life, and for the most part for the better. At least there’s now some excitement in Harold’s life – perhaps a little too much after some surprising news. A very clever movie with a good idea but even better realization. Despite – and maybe also because – of it’s unusual storytelling, highly recommended at 4½ out of 5.

Painted Veil

Set in the early 20th century China, a somewhat introverted doctor Walter Fane (Edward Norton) brings his reluctant, adulterous and estranged wife Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts) along for a dangerous mission of helping out in a cholera outbreak in a remote village. Surrounded by death and danger and with few friendly faces, Walter and Kitty must face their own problems and work out something themselves. Another great performance from Edward Norton, The Painted Veil turns out to be a very good movie. Not a happy one, but not without a laugh or two. Not a love story as such, but not without love. Not only a drama either, but definately not without drama. Recommended. 4 out of 5.

The Groomsmen

Paulie (Ed Burns) is getting married. The Groomsmen follows his life and the lives of his four groomsmen leading up to the wedding; the fears and anxieties they have, the personal problems and the usual things: not everyone gets along, not everyone is sure about the future etc. In other words, nothing to write home about plot wise, but considering the not-so-good ingredients, The Groomsmen comes out rather nicely. In short, it’s quite fun but only that – it won’t keep you thinking later on but is decent entertainment. 3+ out of 5

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Originally Majo no takkyûbin; I’ve always liked Hayao Miyazaki movies and Kiki’s Delivery Service was no exception. Kiki is a young witch who decides to leave home and find a city to settle in. She and her cat fly off and land in Korico, a coastal city that provides both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Mostly in the former category is a certain boy who lays his eyes on Kiki as soon as she lands in the city.. As usual for Miyazaki’s movies, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a great fairytale with wonderful drawing style and warm characters. Definitely worth seeing. 4- out of 5.

Ocean’s Thirteen

I liked Ocean’s Eleven a lot – Ocean’s Twelve was also good, but not as good as Eleven. Now Thirteen gets back on the right track; I don’t want to give away the plot for those who haven’t seen it; the plot at first sight is never very complicated in the “Ocean’s” series, but the details are fascinating. But when you put so many excellent actors together – people like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac and Al Pacino – can you go wrong? What’s also nice is that the whole cast looks like everyone was genuinely having a lot of fun when shooting the film, something that’s also nice to watch on the screen. A perfect clean and fun thriller. 4+ out of 5.

Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond is a story of the dirty diamonds in Africa; while a fictional film, the circumstances and problems depicted are all too real. The village where Solomon Vandy lives is raided by rebel fighters; Solomon is put to work as a slave in a diamond mine while his family manages to escape – at first. When Solomon finds a huge pink diamond, an opportunity presents itself to hide the diamond; but the existence of such a rock could never remain a secret and one Danny Archer, a smuggler, also hears of the discovery. The story soon involves many people after the diamond as well as a reporter after a good story and, perhaps, imparting a difference.

The movie is engrossing with great storytelling and breathtakingly beautiful African scenery. Every single one of the cast also knows their stuff; in particular I was impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer in the lead; he pulls off a great performance and definitely deserved the Oscar nomination he got. 5- out of 5.

This second round of summer photos is very miscellaneous in nature; simple shots from here and there along with short commentaries. As always, click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos (and note that this may not work if you’re not viewing the post directly).

If there ever was a cafe / bar that I never want to visit, this is it. A bar in Tampere. Check out their advertising slogan – “Crowds and cigarette smoke since 1938″.

With smoking forbidden in bars now, good luck with that slogan.


Back home, we had our own nature show for weeks. One day we noticed that a baby seagull had ended up on a narrow and steep slope between the sidewalk and a pond. The seagull lived for weeks in this dangerous place, every day venturing on to the sidewalk but luckily never on to the street. His/her parents took good care of him, so unlike apparently many other citizens did this summer, in the process congesting the emergency number and creating pointless work for the fire department, we didn’t call 112 (the local 911) for somebody to rescue the poor thing.

Then, one day, he was gone. We’d noticed a few days earlier that he was getting very good in his attempts to fly, so we’d like to assume he got away safely. Anyway, it was interesting to watch how the parents protected the little guy by diving and aiming some, umm, “organic bombs”, at the heads of passing people – and their dogs. From the safety of our home, it was fun watching people freaking out, ducking down, turning back, running away, their dogs going berserk from the seagull scaring the heck out of them etc. Good summer show and I’m glad the little fellow seems to have survived it

Other than that, a summer is not complete without some flowers, sunsets, sunshine and fire. One of our local sunset watching locations has a stupid general alarm siren tower sitting there spoiling the view, so that’s what the weird tower in the photo on below left is all about.

Unlike the other elements, the fire was luckily contained safely in a fireplace most of the time. I don’t know why it is so, but eating outside (not eating out, eating outside) and cooking your own food on a fireplace or BBQ is always a must during summers. I mean how else is one supposed to get the full yearly allotment of carcinogens?



And of course, water. Only thing is that this summer, the water was in all the wrong places; namely too much of it raining down in July. Luckily it wasn’t rainy 24/7, but it sure rained more than enough. Thanks to this, our local waterfall was always filled with water.

Naturally now in August, as if on cue from my vacation ending, a heatwave found Finland and I’ve had the questionable pleasure of watching cloudless skies and +27C weather – from the cool surroundings of the office! Damn it. But hey, that’s okay. At least there are weekends and some free time after workdays also. Who needs sleep anyway?

Still, my personal Murphy-inspired long-term weather forecast calls for a beautiful August, followed by two weeks of rain in the beginning of September, after which it’ll go back to being a beautiful fall.

The other day I noticed that many Valio’s ice cream kiosks in Helsinki have started accepting mobile payments. The process is simple enough:

1. You choose the ice cream you want and place the order.
2. Two phone numbers are displayed at the kiosk; one that you call for a one-scoop ice cream, another one for a two-scoop ice cream. You call the premium-priced number.
3. In about 5 seconds, you will get a confirmation message from the number and the line will be hung up. At the same time, the merchant gets a notification SMS of the successful purchase and you’re off with your ice cream!

It’s a very simple system that works well enough for all parties concerned; each kiosk has its own number to call that is tied to a mobile phone of the ice cream girl (as we call them in Finland Seriously, 99% of the vendors at ice cream kiosks are young women.). The customer gets charged on his or her phone bill. As no setup is required from the customer and only minimal setup from the merchant, it’s a good system from that perspective. Speed is also quite acceptable; making the call and getting the confirmation message takes perhaps 15 seconds which is not bad compared to fiddling with coins. So far so good.

However, there’s a catch: the price. Paying by cash, the price of two scoops is 2.70eur – paying by mobile phone, it’s 3.37eur. That’s a premium of almost 25% on the price and seriously violates the rule #4 of my rules for mobile payment success. A small premium – like perhaps a price of 2.90eur when paying by phone – is understandable and may be acceptable, but one of 25% is too much.

It’d be interesting to see some usage statistics from the service, but it’s still good to see people trying mobile payments in new places. Especially when solutions like this don’t really cost that much to set up in the first place.