Not nearly warm enough....

permalink Ω 29 August 2003, Helsinki

Global Balalaika Show

We got to see a terrific show on Saturday night in Helsinki: The Leningrad Cowboy's Global Balalaika Show. There is a mention of the show being webcast after Tuesday and televised on YLE2 on New Year's for those who missed it. I took a few pictures with the little Canon Elph I have since I didn't want to lug the big camera bag around with me in such a large crowd. The lighting was a bit on the dark side, so much so that even the video crew had problems at times getting a good shot. The photo in the Sanomat was a better photo than I would have gotten. The smog machine and the lighting made it very challenging, even for the pros, to manage a decent photo.

In the early afternoon we went to have lunch and walked by the square to see if it might already be crowded and found it mostly deserted. The t-shirt vendors were setting up so we took the opportunity to buy a couple before the rush. After a few beers at a local pub I ran back to the apartment to walk HB and drop off a bunch of stuff along with the nice camera while the guys snagged a good spot on the steps of the church.

The warm-up band was an Eminem wanna-be rapper dude who seemed to be a favourite of many of the teenage girls in the crowd who were singing along and waving their arms to the music. Mercifully, they only played a few songs. :) Not long before the main event, someone announced that Helsinki was out of power. The Sanomat mentioned it was the first time in 2 years Helsinki had lost power but the show went on since they had generators and the outage was brief. The annoying part of a power outage is coming home to all clock equipped appliances blinking 12:00 and having to remember how to set them all, especially the ones with a horribly unintuitive UI. Why aren't modern appliances able to use NTP via the power lines to set the time? You can get every other bloody feature these days but the LED clocks are still stuck in the 1970s? *Grumble* ...but I digress.

The first half of the show was terrific and I was nearly convinced that the lead singer was Tom Jones in costume. A hyperactive smog machine unfortunately blotted out much of the Red Army Choir most of the time and I salute them for being able to sing with the cloud hanging over them. My only real disappointment with the show was that choir was not as much a part of the show as I had hoped. Hearing them sing "Sweet Home Chicago" made up for a lot even though it made me a bit homesick. It is a bit disorienting to hear it in downtown Helsinki being sung by a Russian Army choir. It's like popping out in some alternate universe briefly and noticing Iraqis singing "New York, New York" in downtown Baghdad; interesting, entertaining, cool and weird simultaneously. :)

When the musical guests from around the world came on in the second half of the show it became obvious why "Global" was part of the show's name. There were steel drums, African drums, samba dancers, Russian folk dancers and dancers with torches that added some not-terribly-local colour to the spectacle. Two of the guitarists had a jam duel which ended with them both smashing their instruments. Big Chief "Bo" Dollis performed "Papa was a Rolling Stone" and really added a dimension to the show since Soul/R&B artists aren't here very often that I've noticed.

"Stairway to Heaven" afforded the opportunity to light my Bic and yell "FREEBIRD!". It is at this moment that you realise that your self-amusement and brief excitement at this time honoured tradition is a signal that you've earned one too many grey hairs to be sitting with 60,000 people at an outdoor concert. Well, that and thinking that the kids should turn the volume down a bit. "Ghostbusters" was the finale, complete with fireworks and a stage full of Russian, Caribbean, samba and go-go dancers all gyrating and yelling "who ya gonna call". If I told a shrink I had dream like this, I'd probably be in a padded cell by now. :)

Anyone who went to the show expecting it to be like it was 10 years ago would likely be disappointed since the band has changed a lot over a decade and anything that could be duplicated over that span of time would already be a tired cliche. The world has changed since the Total Balalaika Show and they choreographed this new show with that in mind. I only hope we don't have to wait another 10 years for the next one. :)

The list of guests and songs is pretty impressive. I highly recommend checking out Angelique Kidjo as she has an absolutely amazing voice.

Guests:

• Angelique Kidjo (Benin)
• "Coto" Antomarchi Padilla Juan de la Gruz (Cuba)
• Wild Magnolias, Big Chief "Bo" Dollis (New Orleans, USA)
• Johanna Rusanen
• Tulikansa
• Yamar Thiam & Galaxy Drums (Senegal/Finland)
• Kirsi Tykkyläinen
• Figurantes de Cuba

Concert Playlist:

1. Blackhole sun
2. American woman
3. Sweet Home Chicago
4. Like a virgin
5. Land of 1000 dances
6. Those Were the Days
7. Bad
8. Easy living
9. Stairway to heaven
10. Pennies from heaven
11. That's the way I wanna rock n' roll
12. Afirika
13. Americano
14. No woman no cry
15. Pretty Fly (for a white guy)
16. Papa was a rolling stone
17. La Cucaracha
18. Kashmir
19. El Quarto de Tula
20. Tumba
21. Life is a carnival
22. Eloise
23. Rockin' in the free world
24. Coochie Molly
25. Ghostbusters

permalink Ω 25 August 2003, Helsinki

Best of TPJ

This week, rather unexpectedly, the ORA book fairy visited us via DHL with a big box [ Thanks, again, Gnat :) ]. One of the new titles that was released just about the time we left the US, Games, Diversions and Perl Culture: Best of the Perl Journal is a real treasure. All of the hardcore TPJ subscribers who think that they can just read their old issues should really reconsider getting a copy.

As the self-appointed Perl Historian the article titled TPJ Cover Art: From Camels to Spam is priceless as each cover is explained by the photographer with anecdotes and stories. I'll never forget bumping into Jon in the lobby of the hotel at YAPC19100 when I was hungover, wearing sunglasses and trying to get the valet to fetch my car without being noticed. Jon rather brightly handed me the new issue of TPJ, Issue #14 - sending mail from perl, which featured a Magic 8 ball on the cover. He looked at me rather expectantly and asked, "Do you get it?". Now, see, I was looking pretty mangled but even I got the 8 ball fortune "Outlook not so good" reference on the cover of a magazine about sending mail early in the morning with a vicious hangover. I vaguely remember giving him a tired look and nodded in the affirmative since I'm not much of a conversationalist before coffee. Jon had already consumed about 2 pots of coffee by that point as far as I could tell and I think I cheered him up since he mentioned noone else appeared to be getting his clever joke. :)

My favourite cover of all was Issue #16, Poetic Justice, which featured a photo of e.e. cummings gravestone with his name in all capital letters. I miss TPJ even though I know the reasons why it's now owned by CMP, it doesn't have Jon as the editor or the clever covers which leaves it to be just another run of the mill deadly boring tech rag.

The book even has each of the Quiz Show questions and answers from all of the conferences and Tom's Perl Wizard's Quiz although, it is suspiciously missing the original Perl Purity Test. Just Another Perl Haiku, Damian's unleashing of Coy.pm upon the world, is also featured. I've often lamented that Acme:: found a following but few appear to have written up and shared their own Coy.pm vocabulary/.coyrc as I had envisioned. Some day, I will have to collect all the anecdotes and all the dirt on everyone and write the Perl clerihew generator.

It's the best book [ and index ] evah! Thanks Jon! :)

permalink Ω 24 August 2003, Helsinki

Peter Scott

Peter Scott is one of those quiet perl people whom I think too few people are really aware of these days. His first book, Perl Debugged is one of the best tech books on the subject out there and now he has a new title in the pipeline, Perl Medic: Maintaining Inherited Code, set for a September publication date from Addison-Wesley. It isn't very often I get a manuscript that I have only praise for with few nits here and there, but both of Peter's books have been such exceptions.

Every person who has ever had the distinct displeasure of inheriting someone else's perl code will find something of value in this book, including those who wish to improve their own code for posterity and for uploading to CPAN. I learned a few things myself since I'm a pretty typical sysadmin hacker where writing tests for code is a luxury when things are written in a 'I needed it 2 hours ago' fashion. Peter has a lovely style of writing and imparts a lot of valuable information in a little under 300 pages which makes it enjoyable to read without being a tech version of War and Peace. :)

Sure, the book doesn't have a cute animal on the cover, but this book should be on every perl programmer's desktop. Make CPAN a better place and perl code around the world easier to maintain, get this book when it's released! I'll stop gushing now :)

permalink Ω 21 August 2003, Helsinki

Meet Ms. Average Helsinki

The Helsingin Sanomat had an article on 11.08.03 about the average Helsinki resident which turns out to be female, 37 years old and single. I scanned in the illustration which accompanied the original article but isn't included with the international edition's translation of the article or translation of the captions with the illustration.

The hair colour should be red and short since that seems to be the favourite hairstyle. I wonder if the flower on her shirt, a bachelor's button, was a cute little bit of cheek by the illustrator. :)

permalink Ω 20 August 2003, Helsinki

Baking for Fido

HB is now in his 12th year and still pretty spry for an aged giant breed dog. I don't give him table food very often and now that we live in Finland the treats he used to like in the US aren't available. I anticipated that it would be difficult or impossible to find the biscuits he likes and ordered 2 cookbooks before moving so I could bake some for him myself; Real Food for Dogs and Better Food for Dogs. He loves both of the following recipes enough to lick every crumb and morsel off of the floor :)

Real Food for Dogs has only one recipe worth noting, the cheese please biscuit recipe, which cleverly binds the fats and flavour to the oats which are usually left uncooked in most recipes. However, much of the rest of the book has recipes that are clearly not for the larger breeds or for anything more than very occasional treats. There are adorable illustrations throughout the book.

Cheese Please Biscuits
pg. 12, Real Food for Dogs

• 1.5 cups boiling water
• 1 cup quick-cooking oats, uncooked
• .25 cup butter or margarine softened to room temp.
• 1 or 2 beef or chicken bullion cubes [ optional ]
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 egg, whisked
• .5 cup powdered milk
• pinch salt
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup wheat germ
• 3 cups whole wheat flour

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F / 170°C
2. Boil water.
3. Pour the hot water into a large bowl and add the oats and the butter [ and bullion cubes ].
4. Stir the mixture and let stand for 5 minutes.
5. Add the cheese, egg, milk and salt and stir with a spoon.
6. Blend in the cormeal and the wheat germ.
7. Slowly add the flour, a bit at a time, until you form a stiff dough.
8. Roll dough to desired thickness and cut into bones or other shapes with a cookie cutter.
9. Place on non-stick or greased baking sheet and bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Turn off heat and let biscuits remain inside the oven for an hour to make them crunchy.

Note: The dough can be quite stiff. Also, these biscuits go from brown to black very quickly due to the cheese so mind the baking time closely.

Better Food for Dogs has quite a few practical recipes which are graduated by weight and dietary need. A large part of the book is about dog health and nutrition which is nicely done and not so scientific as to put you to sleep. The recipes are fairly simple, in both metric and imperial measures, and easy to make. Each chapter also has references and websites listed as further resources. The authors seem to be fond of canola oil [ rapeseed oil ], but I prefer to use sunflower oil as either will do. It's an excellent book if you want a few good recipes for treats and occasional dinners for your dog as well as get a bit of knowledge about canine nutrition.

Carrot Apple Oatmeal [ Peanut Butter ] Flax Cookies
pg. 182, Better Food for Dogs

• 3 cups / 750ml whole wheat flour
• 1 cup / 250ml quick-cooking rolled oats
• 2 tbsp / 25ml flaxseeds
• 1/2 tsp / 2ml ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup / 175ml water
• 1/2 cup / 125ml chopped carrot
• 1/4 cup / 50ml finely chopped cored apple
• 2 tbsp / 25ml each blackstrap molasses and canola oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp / 5ml vanilla

1. In a large bowl, combine flour, oats, flaxseeds and cinnamon. In a food processor, combine water, carrot, apple molasses, oil, egg and vanilla. Puree until smooth. Pour over dry ingredients and mix well.
2. In the bowl and using hands, knead until dough holds together. Transfer to lightly floured surface. Roll out dough with rolling pin to about 1/8-inch(3mm) thickness and cut with bone shaped cookie cutter. Place on lightly greased baking sheets.
3. Bake in preheated oven at 350°F(180°C) for 20 minutes or until firm. Reduce oven temperature to 300°F(150°C). Bake for 30 minutes longer or until hard. Transfer cookies to a rack and let cool completely. Store in a tightly sealed container for up to 30 days.

Note: I add about 1/2 a jar of natural peanut butter [ no added sugar ] to the wet mixture for added flavour. I use one of the handheld chopper/blender/mixer gadgets and find it works better than a food processor. The dough is really easy and quick to blend if a bit rubbery so be sure to keep some extra flour handy.

permalink Ω 19 August 2003, Helsinki

Nature Calling

One of the odder bits of living in Finland is the predilection of the Finnish male to pretend their penis is a garden hose. Now, I don't know if this is just a guy thing, but it clearly cannot be a bladder size issue as I don't see women squatting on sidewalks or hiking a leg over a hedge. Pekka Suomalainen, mitä kuuluu?!

It's not a big deal, see, but when I'm walking down the street in the middle of the afternoon and some guy just whips it out to take a leak on a bush next to the Metro station [ which I know to have a loo ] I really have to work hard to not look, stare or giggle. One night we had dinner at the Nepalese restaurant next door. We left and I came back down with HB to take him for a walk when I noticed one of the people who was in the restaurant earlier had come out for a smoke and was peeing on our apartment building. He finished and went back into the restaurant which is also equipped with indoor plumbing.

So, I guess I'm used to only the homeless, a.k.a. residence challenged, presenting this kind of strange behaviour which leaves me at a loss to explain why it appears to be so popular here in Helsinki. Aside from the usual inconvenience of splashing on your shoes and pant legs, I have to wonder if there isn't some sort of deeply rooted from youth tradition of Finnish men eschewing the indoor plumbing for the thrill of the outdoors.

There's one nice thing about -20C Finnish winter weather...no exposed flesh :)

permalink Ω 15 August 2003, Helsinki

New Perl6 book out

And now I want the t-shirt. Really! :) The chimera needs a name.

Update: I have, in fact, ordered the t-shirt and now you can too! :) Download the large image of the cover, go to Fotango, create a login and upload the photo in to an album. Once you do that, all you need to do is select 'gifts', choose the right sized t-shirt and select 'shrink to fit' in the shopping cart then check out. For about 13 quid, it'll be on it's way to you shortly. :)

permalink Ω 13 August 2003, Helsinki

The War on Errorism

permalink Ω 12 August 2003, Helsinki

craneporn

Paul Mison has an unusual fetish: cranes. I mentioned the Kamppi bus station project which is an enormous hole in the ground with 6 or 7 cranes placed around the site. There is a webcam at the site but it doesn't work with all browsers. Anyway, I was inspired to go out and get some Finnish craneporn for his collection. :)

permalink Ω 12 August 2003, Helsinki

UBIK

permalink Ω 12 August 2003, Helsinki

Scotland

Pictures from Scotland: Part 1 and Part 2

We went to Scotland for a week before heading to Paris via London for YAPC::EU. I spent much of the week remembering how to drive in the UK after we decided to get a car in Edinburgh. Jarkko was going to drive but after he demonstrated that he had forgotten what a clutch was, I thought I had better drive instead. :) Neither of us had driven since we moved in January either.

The first few days were spent in Crail with a friend of Jarkko's who is an old Norse and Tolkien scholar, not to mention an utterly delightful host. Paul also took us all around Fife and St. Andrews. Every turn in the road gave way to postcard scenery as much of Fife is still very rural and bucolic. Paul's neighbour came over one morning, too, and took us all to the Crail Boot Sale [ as in car, not as in shoe ] which was an entertaining slice of local colour.

After leaving Crail we made our way to the West coast and stopped in Inveraray to shop at Loch Fyne Whiskies. If you live in a place with as pitiful a selection of single malts as Finland has, they do mail order :) Oban was a pleasant stop where I managed to get a really nice photo of the twilight over the water which I may just enter in the NGS Traveller photo contest for grins and humiliation.

It was a bit jarring when we left Scotland for London as it is everything that Crail is not. Next time I think we'll spend far more time in the quiet corners of Scotland drinking whisky and go there after we've been through London for books and visiting friends.

permalink Ω 12 August 2003, Helsinki

Ninja moment of Zen

permalink Ω 10 August 2003, Helsinki

YAPC::EU 2003 Photos

The photos for YAPC::EU::Paris are finally on-line. There were over 400 photos which I trimmed down to 275 which I then weeded to 80 with thumbnails. The venue was difficult to get really good pictures since the lighting was dim in most of the lecture theatres and I didn't want to use a flash during the talks. Also, I had a new camera, the Canon 10D which replaced my Canon D30, which seemed to have a intermittent problem with backfocusing. Canon has yet to acknowledge this problem but I've used AF with all my Canon cameras and haven't ever had a problem so I'm hoping they fix it soon. So...I'm sorry there aren't as many really nice shots as I had expected.

• I tried to get pictures of everyone. If you don't see yourself anywhere, please don't take it personally.
• If you'd like a copy of the original JPEG from the camera, send ONE email with the IMG_* filename(s) [ I kept the iPhoto filenames just for this purpose ] to eashton at mac dot com and I'll send them to you. Please note that these are large files so if you can't take a 1.5mb file in your inbox, tell me and I'll put it somewhere on the web for download.
• Do send me corrections and additions for names. I am utterly awful with names so please don't be offended if I have forgotten or misspelled your name.
• Feel free to share them.

There are a few different ways you can view and/or obtain the pictures:

• YAPC::EU::Paris - part 1 and YAPC::EU::Paris - part 2
• a big tarball [12mb] which includes all of the HTML and an /other directory with all the photos that didn't make the gallery cut.
• Copenhagen.pm's photo gallery offered to host the full selection of photos.
• and Claes, too.

Thanks again to the Paris.pm for hosting such a terrific conference and I hope the photos live up to your expectations :) I'll be sending a CD with the raw images on them to you.

It has also occured to me that I'd like to archive many of the photos from the conferences over the years in the history.perl.org archive so if you've got photos you'd like archived, make a tarball and send me an URL where I can download them. :)

permalink Ω 7 August 2003, Helsinki

The Believer

One of the few things I managed to find in the London bookstores was a copy of The Believer Magazine, the new lofty lit mag from Dave Eggers. I got the June issue and I must say, in spite of my disdain for pretentious lit rags, it's a really good publication. I enjoyed nearly every column and article, especially Tom Bissell's article about reality TV. At one point he even makes the case for it being much like pornography:

It is a dodgy form of entertainment indeed when its victims are literal, and Reality Television is filled with victims, however willing they often are. This sense is, I believe, precisely what fills one with unease about Reality Television. The whole genre leaves one both vaguely unnerve and completely dissatisfied, for it does not even attempt to explain why anyone would want to do to him- or herself what Reality Television so often asks people to do. Maybe I am naive, but money is not an answer enough. Neither is the dark black asterisked sort of fame one garners from appearing on a Reality show. The scales do not balance. Reality Television ask everything of its subjects and nothing of its audience but that it watch. This makes it identical to, among other things, pornography. That what Reality Television depicts is basiclly real, that it happened, is finally not compelling enough. Things "happen" all the time: the banality of reality.

Another good piece is an interview with David mnftiu Rees. I also really like the idea share column which has a few interesting ideas for the creative set. The Tool column is a wonderful visit with arcane and wacky tools for the more literary engineers.

One of the more entertaining and curious bits was a small block of text called "A Query":

For a book about the alphabet and its uses, we are looking for authors' experiences with the following letters: Y,T,R,I,Ø,F,U,N,W,H,P,L,B,J.

For a brief period, we had saisfactory entries for the above letters. However, many were revealed to be hoaxes, jokes, or both.

Bonnie Demby-Lyons and Jennifer H. Thoms
P.O. Box 471108
San Francisco, CA
94147

Damn, if only they needed an essay about the sublime K! :)

One of the writers is apparently working on a 'cultural history of demolition' to be published sometime next year that I'll have to look for.

It's a spendy mag at $65 per year [ no foreign subscription info but it would likely be double that price ] but the quality is very good and there are no ads anywhere. Maybe I'll subscribe and have my mother send it to me every quarter.

permalink Ω 5 August 2003, Helsinki