The Feng Shui of CPAN

«Palms create a moiré pattern at the Helsinki Botanical Garden.»

Friday morning began a bit more abruptly than usual since the normally rather inperturbable Jarkko grabbed my arm and pulled me out of bed. He noticed that the CPAN's main web page had somehow changed and thought that we had either been hacked or that someone had hijacked the DNS so I had to start poking around before being appropriately caffienated for the day. It was not an auspicious beginning. After a while, I determined that our main web host for CPAN, which is separate from the FUNET mothership since that host is ftp only, decided to redo the main index page, include a bunch of ads with a link to the 'real CPAN page'. I moved the DNS to another host inside the US which has a lot of bandwidth and who had offered previously to be the primary web host for CPAN while we figured out what was going on. The explanation we were offered was that they 'forgot' to tell us about the change in spite of remembering to show it to others. I have some beachfront poperty in Siberia to sell, too.

CPAN has, over the years, been a popular target for criticism since it's not a portal, an enterprise solution, or a myriad of other faddish things that seem to come and go every week on the internet. Many people from other languages have asked how to make their own CPAN and Jarkko wrote The Zen of Comprehensive Archive Networks to try to explain how and I've given the Grokking the CPAN talk at a few conferences attempting to explain how it all works. The CPAN is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, a simple ftp archive. This is all it is; no more, no less. This very simplicity is its strength and its secret to longevity. The various search engines, the RT queue, the testers results, and every other service in the CPAN domain is wholly separate from the archive itself. Those who wish to do something with CPAN and offer it to the world are encouraged to do so, but the second you mess with the heart and soul of the archive, you're going to meet a brick wall.

Since those of us who mind the archive have been on the net since 1985 or earlier, we tend to forget that the obvious for us is not common sense anymore in the post-AOL age of the internet. CPAN has very few rules as we'd like to think of it as one of the last and true holdouts of what the 'free' in free software democracy really means. Open Source is rife with cabals and politics, but unless you're an idiot who really goes out of your way to disturb the overall operation of CPAN, you're free to do what you like. With few exceptions, authors can share their non-commercial code freely via CPAN. People complain that there is a lot of crap on CPAN and, well, they're right, but there's a lot of good stuff there too. CPAN isn't an 'enterprise solution' and I've told people countless times over the years that creating bundles of their own favourite modules or mirroring a subset of CPAN is an attractive option, but CPAN itself isn't going to do that work for you.

There is one policy that we always thought was obvious, clear and self-evident; no ads. In an age of the internet where just about every page you visit has some sort of eyesore layout with blinking ads, CPAN, CTAN and others like us are sites who refuse to sell our souls to the lure of the easy lucre to be made. We can't prevent people who mirror CPAN from placing ads all over their site, but we won't ever list them in the public mirror index. When a few friends at Sun gave us 3 big systems to rescue the search engine, which was chugging on an old Sun Ultra1 with 4GB of diskspace, we settled on doing a little 'powered by Sun' logo addition to try and show our appreciation since it was a tremendous lifesaver. Sadly, it seems to have given folks the idea that it's open season on advertising via their CPAN mirrors. Over the weekend, the following was added to the comments in the index.html to make the policy more obvious;

LEGALESE

You are not allowed to remove or alter these comments.

You are not allowed to rename, remove, or add any files in your public mirror of CPAN.

You are not allowed to alter any file in you public mirror of CPAN EXCEPT that you can add a short acknowledgement for example for your hosting company, company, university, or sponsor into this CPAN top-level index.html by adding a small non-animated image and a hyperlink pointing to your organization with text like "hosted by", "powered by", or "sponsored by" by placing it visually next to the "CPAN master site hosted by FUNET" acknowledgement at the bottom of the page. The image used may not be larger than the one used for the FUNET logo.

Technical sidenote: if you do add an acknowledgement link, please do think of the consequences to your possible downstream CPAN mirrors.

Altering this index.html in any other way is not allowed. Altering any other files is not allowed.

Adding any advertisements or revenue-generating material is strictly forbidden.

Similarly, for your public CPAN mirrors "wrapping" the CPAN web pages into other sites by using e.g. HTML frames is not allowed.

You are allowed to use the files of CPAN to create your own web sites and services since we are just a distributor of the files, we do not own most of them. However, you may not call your creations "CPAN" or "CPAN mirrors". You may say that the files are "mirrored from CPAN".

I will likely add this to the CPAN FAQ as well. Yes, everybody has to eat, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you can't afford to be a public mirror without advertising, then don't be a mirror. Chris Nandor and OSDN have hosted use.perl.org for years and never has there been a single ad or blinking anything as they've been happy with the acknowledgements in the FAQ. If you enjoy using the search.cpan search engine, Webster University in St. Louis and Ben Hockenhull are the ones to blame and I don't get to St. Louis nearly often enough to buy him the countless beers I owe him in lieu of blinking banner ads. Numerous mirrors spread the CPAN to almost every continent on the globe [anyone in antarctica want to mirror CPAN? :)] without the expectation that someone owes them something for the service. At the very least, they should be able to mirror CPAN from somewhere other than the FUNET mirror and not get someone elses advertisements. It's not an advertising portal or a dessert topping or a floorwax; it's an ftp mirror. Remember that and if you see a mirror with google ads or other advertising, know that it is not to be called a CPAN mirror.

permalink Ω 31 May 2004, Helsinki

Greetings from a dynamic shopping mall

I've seen collections of boring postcards but always wondered where people found such random tributes to a humble gas station or burger joint out in the middle of nowhere. A few days ago I found this deliciously boring postcard of the Forum shopping mall in Helsinki which is described as "The dynamic, continental shopping centre in the heart of Helsinki." Wow, what's a dynamic shopping centre?! Who would send this postcard to someone and what would they say?

Darling Veronica,

Salutations from Helsinki! The shopping center is nothing like Palm Beach but they have a food court with two McDonalds! They have this shop, Merimekko, that is just like Lilly only with a bit more of the kitchen curtain appeal! They have electricity, plumbing, and FedEx! Can you believe it? I always thought Russia was filled with a bunch of people living in yurts or something and riding reindeer! What a scream! Those Japanese wireless Nokia phones sure seem popular around here, too, as everyone seems to be talking into them. Can't understand a single word they're saying though. Nothing seems to be open all night, except for the sunshine [no tanning rays :(], so we have to run and go find something to eat before everything closes. The cruise ship heads for Stockholm tomorrow, bork! bork! bork! Love to Mopsie!

XXXOOO Boopsie and Trip

One curious thing about the postcard is, if you look closely, there are only 2 people on the sidewalk standing at the crosswalk waiting for the light. The snow on the rooftops and lack of holiday decorations put the time of year sometime in the Jan/Feb/Mar timeframe, and the direction of the glow in the sky indicates that it's dawn. Since the sun rises very late during those months, the number of people on the sidewalk is still too sparse for a weekday and the photo must have been taken on a cold Sunday morning at dawn. Why go to all that trouble just to make it look like the post-apocalyptic shopping mall?

permalink Ω 29 May 2004, Helsinki

The Day Before the Day After Tomorrow

Jarkko and I got to see a sneak preview of The Day After Tomorrow last night courtesy of a green party candidate, Satu Hassi, who raffled the tickets off on her website. What made the event more interesting than the average movie was that she invited 2 professors to speak after the movie and answer questions from the audience. Someone, of course, asked the meteorologist how they can predict weather in 50 years when they get the daily forecast wrong so often. :) The movie gives you a lot to think about if you can see beyond the Hollywood effects and it was strangely comforting to have a couple of people who spend their lives studying this very subject discuss how realistic they think the story is. While they both seemed to think it wasn't a likely scenario, they didn't say it was impossible. Their models seem to indicate drought and famine in India along with dramatic warming and coastal flooding instead. Given the choice, perhaps being flash-frozen is a better way to go. Wouldn't it be fun to have the oil reserves depleted about the same time? I knew I was screwed years ago when I got that fortune cookie with a may you live in interesting times message.

I won't offer any spoilers, but there are a couple of intensely gratifying parts of the movie like the random storm in LA that takes out the entire city. There's apocalyptic goodness for the people of England, too. :) I was annoyed with the terribly predictable boy gets the girl, the dog survives and everyone has a happy ending features, but much of the movie does try to get your attention by taking a plausible, albeit very unlikely, scenario without overdoing it more than necessary. The idea that only folks south of the Mason-Dixon line in the US survive is also a bit too depressing to contemplate. Well, at least Florida was swallowed by the sea before the golf carts could escape. I think watching this movie helped me pinpoint why I have loved apocalyptic and dystopian movies and books for almost all of my life; adversity forces people to drop the bullshit and concentrate on one thing, survival. I'm still rooting for the planet, but there is the slightest sliver of hope that maybe humanity will smarten up sometime soon. I'm a dreamer, I know. It's a good movie that is best watched with a big box of popcorn and a beer or three afterwards. Prepare.

permalink Ω 28 May 2004, Helsinki

The Year of the Gnome

The Meilahti Art Museum has an upcoming exhibit of puutarhatontut, garden gnomes, titled "Paradise Garden". It's not on the website yet, but it opens on 9 June and closes on 19 September. Surprisingly, 2004 is also The Year of the Gnome. I'm surprised that the Gnome Liberation Front hasn't made the news, but if I see a few hanged garden gnomes swinging from the trees in the park it won't be much of a shock since gnome theft and torture is on the rise this year.

permalink Ω 26 May 2004, Helsinki

The missing 997 words

The power of a picture to evoke a feeling and convey a meaning more elegantly and more efficiently than mere words is, especially in these times, awe inspiring. One of the reasons I enjoy illustrating many of my entries with photos is due to their ability to describe my subject far more completely and without bias than I can. In the wake of the Iraqi prison torture photos I have been waiting and hoping for an explanation of how people could do this, take photos of it and display them proudly on their PC. Regardless of all the rhetoric about 'this is war' or 'but they attacked first' or 'they beheaded an American', I want to understand how anyone and everyone who knew about it and participated in it could follow their orders so completely that they went an extra mile and posed for pictures in which they exuded a pride one usually only sees in game hunter photos including the dead carcass of the one that didn't get away.

Being an American abroad in a country that is neither NATO or supplying combatant troops to Iraq amplifies my feelings of betrayal by my own country and the scrutiny by the rest of the world who don't wonder at the news since they've known all along that we're just a bunch of thugs who frequently break or refashion the rules of engagement to suit our whims. I haven't been proud to be an American in so many years that it seems pointless to try to count them, but this is a new low. Much of America, in a collective white trash playground yawp, will rebutt the outrage by saying something ignorant like "War is hell" or "We saved them from Saddam" while forgetting that the whole exercise was to liberate Iraq, not take over the country and pick up where Saddam left off at Abu Ghraib. Who knew about this and why did it take so long to hit the press? There are a lot of troops over there and a number who have returned already. Why aren't we asking them to stand up and testify? I know a few people serving in Iraq, one of whom was even an MP in or near Baghdad, and every day I resist the urge to send them an email with one line: Did you know? I suppose I don't because I'm afraid that all of them will say yes and I don't know that I have a response to that which wouldn't sound confrontational and accusatory. Of course they knew.

The most disturbing part of the photos is the gloating and posing by the soldiers, but there was something oddly familiar about them, too, that I just couldn't place. Fortunately, Susan Sontag has reminded me why in What Have We Done?":

So, then, the real issue is not the photographs but what the photographs reveal to have happened to "suspects" in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken - with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the second world war took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare. (See a book just published, Photographing the Holocaust by Janina Struk.) If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs - collected in a book entitled Without Sanctuary - of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880s and 1930s, which show smalltown Americans, no doubt most of them church-going, respectable citizens, grinning, beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

If there is a difference, it is a difference created by the increasing ubiquity of photographic actions. The lynching pictures were in the nature of photographs as trophies - taken by a photographer, in order to be collected, stored in albums; displayed. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib reflect a shift in the use made of pictures - less objects to be saved than evanescent messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common possession of most soldiers. Where once photographing war was the province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all photographers - recording their war, their fun, their observations of what they find picturesque, their atrocities - and swapping images among themselves, and emailing them around the globe.

I've seen some of those pictures from the age of lynching as a sport and they are every bit as repellent as the ones from Abu Ghraib. It's pretty sad to think that, in spite of exterminating 6 million people during a war, the Nazi's didn't pose with piles of skulls like a game fisherman who just hauled in a great catch, no, they apparently still had some shred of decency left somewhere. They even had fine Leica cameras to document it with, not some crappy, grainy mobile phone camera. I mean, what in the fuck is going on here? Baseball, Apple Pie and Torture: The American Way makes an attempt to put some of the blame where it belongs, on Americans. Why is America behaving like it's the only damn country who ever sustained an attack by terrorists and are lashing out as though rounding up all the people in Iraq and torturing them is going to either stop terrorism or elicit good will from those who aren't planning to bomb the US?

As someone who isn't living in the back patting, thumbs up, alrighty let's kill some terrorists enclave of the continental US, I'll gladly inform those who are that the only thing that is working, is making those of us with US passports feel even more exposed, more ashamed and desperate to not be mistaken as an American. We keep waiting and watching for some sign, some faint hope that the people of America will find someone to rally around and march on Washington and riot in the streets. I suppose we'll be waiting until the Wal-Mart runs out of cheap crap to buy. America is a country of sheep who follow orders, obediently consume and optimistically hope that no matter if they sit on the couch and do nothing that everything will turn out alright. Optimism. Always.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words and the only words I've been getting from them are "Fuck the World." I want the other 997 words explaining how in the hell it happened, continued to happen, pictures made it onto screensavers and everyone just watched and 'followed orders'. I want to know this as it's the same thing that happened with Hitler's willing executioners. How is it that the US is the arbiter of democracy and truth? I want those 997 words that the pictures were at a loss to explain.

permalink Ω 25 May 2004, Helsinki

My nephew is a dumbass

I found out over the weekend that my nephew, who just turned 18 and is graduating from high school in the next few weeks, has done something ridiculously stupid, he joined the Army. He apparently was good in the high school version of the reserves, the ROTC, and didn't know what to do with his life aside from get the hell outta dodge. I have a lot of sympathy for his quandry as I was in the same boat when I left high school, but I knew that the one sure way to give myself opportunities in life was to take advantage of the 4 years of free college tuition and get myself an education. Sadly, he ignored this advice and I'm sure he'll wind up in Iraq at some point in the not too distant future. Although, if the draft reinstatement bill goes through he'll have plenty of company. Being bored and wanting out of the boondocks is just not a well reasoned excuse to go start shooting people. If I find out that he has taken part in the prison tortures, pictures or not, I'll go to Iraq myself and hand him over to the families of the Iraqis with no chance for the 'but I was only following orders' crap. I'm completely unable to understand enlisting voluntarily to the Army, especially now with the musical blame game for the commonly accepted policy of torture. All I can think of is 'dumbass'!

permalink Ω 24 May 2004, Helsinki

Fluffy Bunnies and Lilly pads

Lilly pads in the Helsinki Botanical Garden taken on XP2 film.

Well, the blogosphere experienced a collective slashdot moment over the past week with the sound and the fury over the news that the MovableType software decided to change licenses and pricing. While I read quite a lot more than I probably should have, I wasn't going to mention it here at all except that I think there are some valid concerns being drowned out by the angry rhetoric out there that resembles a playground where the popular kids still call the shots with the only discernable difference being that now they want far more than your lunch money. Amidst all the rage and rebuttals there are some older and calmer voices who have some interesting and intelligent things to say.

Perhaps the most surprising person to discuss the MT licensing switch is Alan Burlison. Alan is the British version of Jarkko as he is taciturn and shrewd with his opinions, particularly with technology. Alan's no freeloader as he has been an active perl developer for quite a few years, is largely responsible for all the perl in Solaris and helped CPAN get 3 free enterprise class systems from Sun for the CPAN search engine and other sites. He took particular notice of and offense to the original source being pulled from the 6A sites and the poorly written license. Phil Ringnalda also takes apart the license and this blog does the economics of the backlash. Shelley also has a heartfelt rant which, in spite of the vitriolic tone, is spot on. Licensing and copyright probably make my eyes glaze over faster than Dan Sugalski talking about the innards of the VMS kernel. There's nothing like getting an email from RMS over your morning coffee trying to stir the pot about licenses and the lack thereof on CPAN. It's not a great way to kick of your morning but, in the end, licenses and copyright in a litigation happy society do matter quite a lot, even if you think that there's no possible way to enforce them.

In an age where quite a few open source projects have made a profitable business out of offering service, support, consulting and training for their software, TypePad made, and still makes, a lot of sense in the 'everybody has got to eat' mantra that seems to be the most popular defense of the MT announcement. There is also corporate licensing of the software. I doubt anyone is actually going to starve at 6A, especially in America, so that's a bit of a red herring. So, too, is the argument that we're all a bunch of freeloaders. A lot of us are involved in open source in one form or another and have given our time freely to projects without compensation in the form of cash. Many of us are not zealots in the service of RMS or the FSF and actually buy software and shareware on a regular basis. We're a bunch of people who liked the software enough at one point to use it, continue to use it, donate a little money and now find all that good will replaced by a positively awful license and a fee schedule that seems all about screwing the very people who put them on the map to begin with.

In the end, it's just software that we can choose to use or not use, this is the one true shining light in the sea of words spawned by this whole debacle. However, it's rather galling when some call the reaction 'childish'. A lot of the opinions defending 6A against the onslaught sound eerily like the 'you're either with us or against us' anti-terrorism chant. We're not against them, but people tend to react negetively when they feel like they're being given only one option, one that is radically different than the one expected. I started using MT because Nat Torkington said he liked it and because the server I have my blog on also hosts a number of CPAN websites which already had mod_perl[obviously :)] but I didn't really want to wedge mod_php into it. Sure, I read the license and I lived with the 'free enough' attitude since it was reasonable to assume that they'd go the same way as a few of our friends have who are making 6 figures a year by selling training and support for their perl products. It comes down to a few sticking points that lead a thinking person to believe that there are parts to this story that we're still missing.

• What happened to the 2.6X source code? If we're all still welcome to continue using it for free, where is it? A new user who wants to install MT today will be forced to use MT3 which is still a development version.
• More than a few developers and coders on the beta test of MT3 have quietly registered a feeling of betrayal since they weren't informed of the license update any sooner than the rest of us. I don't know whether to think of that as an implication of sneaky doings behind the scenes or just a continuing pattern of infrequent communication.
• Aside from minor improvements in spam management, MT3's only new feature would appear to be the license which, after more than a year of promising the addition of some of the typepad features, is a huge disappointment.

These 3 things are primarily what is driving a lot of the discontent which put 6A into a reactive instead of proactive stance. Perhaps we should think that they do need the money to eat since I'd really like to believe that the license wasn't written by or checked by a practising copyright lawyer. But how could a company of smart people bungle this so incredibly badly? I mean, the Aw shucks, gee whiz kind of explanation is endearing like a fuzzy bunny, but if we're going to cough up $150 for a bit of software shouldn't we expect something a lot more polished and professional? When you ask people for $150 for your software and give them a license it's no longer about friends and fuzzy bunnies, it's a binding contract that deserves a lot more care and respect than it seems to be getting. It's a tough way to learn that it's essential to hire business professionals. Programmers always like to think they can be sysadmins, too. Well, at least until the system melts down at 4am and they've no clue what to do. Programmers always like to learn things the hard way I think.

Watching and waiting to see what happens is a good plan, but the WordPress application is really generating a lot of enthusiasm. There have been dozens more well done posts around the net about transitioning to another software package, PhotoMatt seems to be doing a fine job of rounding up many of them, including an amazing WordPress blog in Hindi. There's also a nicely done Blog software breakdown for people wanting to comparison shop. I'm going to wait another week or three and see what problems other people encounter and then move to WordPress, even if it is PHP. If it turns out that I wind up using WP, I'll even donate $150 to the project just on principle.

permalink Ω 22 May 2004, Helsinki

Impi

On a random day I happened to pass the Elias Lönnrot statue and noticed that someone had placed a boquet in Impi's hand [Quite a contrast to the statue when covered with snow]. Why is Impi in such a diminutive position on the statue when she is the creator, Väinämöinen is her son and Lönnrot is just a man? I'll guess that the year 1902 and a male sculptor had a lot to do with that.

And, a few links I've been collecting on my post-it pile...

• Helsinki by Bike with pictures and map.
• HS correspondent rebuffs US political party solicitation, hilarity ensues.
• Gen-X Leica Slacker which includes a look at the new Leica-H prototype!
• Photojournalist Michael Hintlian documents the Big Dig with his Leica M's and a lot of chutzpah. The Big Dig also has a photo gallery with hundreds of photos over the duration of the massive project that has screwed up traffic in Boston for over a decade. An interview with Hintlian had one particularly good response:

Q: Did the Central Artery Project present any new technical challenges? Did you use any new techniques for the project?

A: The Artery project is probably the most hostile environment in which I have ever worked; mud, clouds of dust, splashing concrete, an oily mist in the air, subzero temperatures in winter, and summer heat. As far as technique is concerned, I work simply and I changed nothing about the way I approached this project. I normally work with two Leica rangefinder cameras and 3 lenses (one on each body and the third in my pocket). When I shoot I am trying to make the space between the subject and me as simple as possible, and these cameras are perfect for that.  I carry 15 or 20 rolls of film - 10 or 12 rolls of Tri-X and the rest T-Max P3200. And sometimes when I don't think I'll be shooting a lot in the dark I'll bring all Tri-X and rely on a flash to help when needed.

Why black and white?  The Big Dig is a black and white project; there is very little color.  When I shoot color I really want to go for color, I think that's what a photographer is compelled to do...the palette becomes available and, thus, becomes an important consideration.  I tried shooting color of the project and was disappointed.

More important than technique or equipment has been approach, it has not been an easy subject to penetrate.  My access to the sites has been self-granted.  I started shooting the project in 1997. For the first two years I was usually chased out of the sites and told to leave.  To my advantage, the project was so big that I could walk a block or two and enter another totally separate and unconnected site and continue to work.  I got used to it. Then, after several years, supervision got used to me and grew tired of shooing me out.  I made sure I brought 5X7's to pass out on some regular basis, which helped break ice, and after a while I was able to work almost unnoticed.  That was what I worked for and it's made a big difference in the kind of photographs I have been able to make.  Officially I have no status...I don't belong there and never have.  But then, I do, actually.

• The lensbaby, the new fad for those without a Lomo, but even lomo people can get tunnelvision for their Lomo. The effect is a novelty only briefly and quickly replaced with a optical nausea.
• updated Mignon page with translations of 2 informative pages about the Mignon eggs and how they are made.

permalink Ω 20 May 2004, Helsinki

Global Warming Picnic

We had a week or more of summer in the first week of May this year, while last year at this time it was still snowing on occasion. It was weather that begged for a picnic and so a few of us obeyed.

The weather has snapped back to its more normal pattern, but I can't help but be concerned when it's early May and 80+F in Finland and I read articles like Arctic Temperatures Warming Rapidly Polar Explorer, where a polar explorer describes the extreme amount of melting in the polar ice cap. The Arctic ice  has thinned by 40% over the last 20 years so you have to wonder what the dramatic change in the ice over the past year will mean in terms of climate change. The Helsingin Sanomat carried a story yesterday, Finland's climate may become warmer by up to 5°C, coming in the next 50 years, which would make Finland warmer than most of Southern Europe. Not to be forgotten is the Pentagon report: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security. The movie The Day After Tomorrow is being released later next week which will have the effect of making global warming seem like nothing more than an action movie that lasts 2 hours and has the typically happy American ending in spite of the premise for the movie being scary enough to prompt the Pentagon to study worst-case scenarios.

I understand why people don't want to believe in the idea of global warming or dramatic climate change as the consequences are dire, but no amount of optimisim can change the course that nature is on. There has been enough research into past climate changes to support the theory of polar melting initiating a dramatic climate change via gulf stream disruption. It doesn't even need to be dramatic as the very well written, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, describes. So, go enjoy the nice weather while it's here since all the evidence suggests that there may be few years remaining where we can.

permalink Ω 19 May 2004, Helsinki

Hat Girl

Stencil graffiti often incorporates an optical illusion or something evocative into the design. This girl in a hat is unusual and I can't figure out why, when I look at it, I always see an asian female face. Is it the lips? The nose? I'm not sure.

permalink Ω 19 May 2004, Helsinki

Daily dose of affirmation

I try to stay off the political bent as tapping that vein would produce a gushing Niagara these days, but McSweeney's Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush is a series of bite-sized factoids and quotes that hasn't seemed to get much attention. Of course, the folks who avidly listen to Ann Coulter aren't going to read it because, well, a lot of them don't read so gud [sic], but for the rest of the reading, thinking public, it's a daily affirmation of why we feel the way we do.

permalink Ω 17 May 2004, Helsinki

My tricycle lament

I've seen a lot of advertising gimmicks, but wrapping an outdoor ad kiosk in clingwrap is a first. The ad is trying to make paying 50€ for a shrinkwrapped pack of the local telephone books seem alluring. There is a blue 'city info' book that is valuable for the street maps and other very useful information, but it's not worth 50€. I can't remember the last time I used a big, heavy, treeware phonebook to find a phone number so it's a mystery who parts with their cash for them.

We had a good time at the flea market today and managed to sell most of the books we lugged there from our apartment. The economic equation of the buyers wanting everything for less than 5€ and your desire to not haul anything back home makes for a good day for tightwads. What you paid originally for an item vs. what you think it's worth vs. what the buyer is willing to pay is an enlightening experience in capitalism in it's most raw form. It also reminds me why neither Jarkko nor I are in sales or marketing. If I ever go again, I'll take a Finnish sales shark to man the table and deal with the more hardcore old ladies haggling over a few cents. :) A couple people also came by and introduced themselves which was really cool, too.

I promised myself that I wouldn't buy anything today and I kept to that promise but there was an adorable, rusty, old three-wheeler bicycle in need of some work that someone in our group was selling which I took a fancy to. It was mechanically sound but it needed a good cleaning and the frame needed painting. I also envisioned redesigning the baskets behind the saddle and decorating the bike in an art car style with a Nordic flair...like maybe making it into a giant herring or Moomin on three wheels with a large enough basket in the rear for groceries for a family of 12. A trailer for HB to ride in was also a fleeting vision which was quickly replaced by the thought of him glaring at me in a decidedly irate and indignant manner. Sadly, someone came along and rescued me from my vacillation by purchasing the bike. If I would have had a proper garage for the project it was sure to become, I would have bought it without a second thought. My pragmatic side is a happy camper while my inner, impractical engineer is a bit miffed.

permalink Ω 17 May 2004, Helsinki

Tori! Tori! Tori! Sunnuntaina

It's the not-winter season again [although it did spit a few snowflakes from the sky today after the brief spell of 25+C weather] which means the Hietalahden Kirpputori is back is business. Arabella, myself and a few others have reserved 2 tables to experience the market as sellers instead of buyers for a change. C'mon out on Sunday, say hello and maybe find a few bargains [hopefully ours :)]. If you like books in English, I'll have a box or two on sale for a lot less than Akateeminen.

permalink Ω 13 May 2004, Helsinki

Through eyes long since gone

A photo taken by my paternal grandfather of the fire at the Purina headquarters in February 1962. It was so cold that the water was frozen by the time it hit the building and turned it into an ice palace. I put a few more of them into a small gallery of grandpa's photos.

My brother-in-law has started scanning in pictures, given to him by my 95 year old grandmother, which were taken over the course of my grandfather's life. It's so strange to see these images taken by a man who was always remote and stoic. He was a brilliant mechanical engineer and mathematician who introduced me to cryptography when I was 7 via the cryptoquip in the newspaper. He patiently explained letter frequency and how to make a crib. Every time I pick up a draw-string bag from a store, I think of him since he designed the machine to make them but, being an 'Organization Man' straight out of Whyte's book, he shared none of the profits that the company reaped from his design. Grandpa was also the guy who, on Christmas, would take a pocketknife and slowly, carefully unwrap the paper from each gift and fold it.

While I respected his intelligence, I never really liked him very much as he made it impossible to warm up to him. I have an exceedingly vivid memory of him talking to me on my 10th birthday about 'niggers' and my immediate reaction of thinking much less of him for it. My mother always remembers him taking back a box kite he had made for me only to give it to my cousin. I didn't think much of it at the time since Robin was only 1 week younger than me, but he had been born retarded due to a negligent doctor with a pair of foreceps and I thought maybe he needed the kite more than I did in the guileless näive way that children tend to see such things. Later in life I would come to understand that he and my grandmother had a long history of playing favourites - from my father's brother, to my oldest sister, to Robin.

I spent several summers over at their house and can't really recall that I learned anything about them as people aside from what was obvious and already known; they loved bridge with friends, he was a type II diabetic and they were active Masons. They used to take me to various Masonic functions and even then I was cynical enough to think of it as a creepy cult-like organisation. They were inscrutable in many ways. It's is particularly odd to see these photographs that he took not only because I didn't know that he liked photography, but that he took more than just the usual family snapshots and appears to have been reasonably good at it. My father bought an Olympus OM-10 at one point and I don't know that he took many photos with it since work was his life. I imagine that had he lived to enjoy some of his retirement that he would have taken a lot more pictures. I started getting interested in photography about 10 or 12 years ago and I wonder now if it might be hereditary. :)

George, my grandfather, died from a massive heart attack at the ripe age of 84 while roofing his house, which wasn't a bad way to go all things considered. I cursed him at the time since it was right before my Calculus 2 and Differential Equations exams and he was helping my understanding of them tremendously. Looking at the few pictures my brother-in-law sent to me, it makes me wonder if he might have had some redeeming qualities as a human being that I didn't or couldn't see when I was much younger.

permalink Ω 12 May 2004, Helsinki

Periodic Updating

Sometime last week I was reacquainted with an internet classic, the colour version of the F.N.O.R.D version of the Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad. Both of them look so dated and the HTML shows its age too. So, since I've got far too much free time on my hands and a copy of BBEdit, I spent an hour and brought it up to 21st century HTML/CSS, fixed a few typos and restyled the durations to look more like atomic orbital notation: Another Periodic Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad. I'm thinking of adding family headings as well as some of the radioactive condiments like sriracha sauce and others. The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements, The Periodic Table of Dessert, The Periodic Table of Candy and The Periodic Table of Haiku may provide me with some inspiration.

While I was updating the HTML, I was thinking about how many of the golden oldies of the net are moldering away and how long before they are completely lost. I squirrel away a lot of pages, documents and other information that might be of interest to Perl people sometime in the future, but how long before today's PDFs are unreadable by any readily available application? There are things from only 20 years ago that require quite a lot of machinations to decipher from formats that are only a footnote in the annals of computing. And what about jpegs? I know a few people who didn't make backups of their digital photo archives and accidentally deleted them all in just a few keystrokes - *poof* gone. A lot of archivists, real archivists, are concerned about the persistence of data since they don't live in internet time and think about 100 or more years into the future. SunSITE has a nice page filled with preservation resources for the digital age, but given the vast amount of data that's already disappearing, I think many of the goals are too lofty and dated for the current grim reality that the likelihood of large holes in the historical record from the 80s, 90s, 00s and beyond is a reasonable certainty. Relying on metadata and periodic updating of all the data out there on the net is just not very realistic in a time where most newspaper websites still can't render a single page in valid HTML and all current storage and backup media have a short shelf life in archival timelines.

permalink Ω 9 May 2004, Helsinki

It's certainly mental

A terrifc time sink that is just a notch above completely pointless to make you think that the time might not be completely wasted is the mental_floss quiz and factoid library. It's surprising the amount of useless information you can recall on demand but have trouble remembering what you had for lunch yesterday. mental_floss magazine would appear to be the USA Today of trivia magazines and part of the growing fad of publishing bound collections of trivia like Schott's Original Miscellany. The Freudian Slippers they sell on their site are pretty cute and unusual though. :)

permalink Ω 9 May 2004, Helsinki

It's a dog's life

While I was walking HB this morning, before I had my quota of coffee, I started thinking about all the things he can do out on the sidewalk and I can't. I made up a list and sent it to McSweeney's Internet Tendency for grins. I'm coming back as a dog next time, my dog.

Things my dog can do in public, but I can't. It's a dog's life.

• lie down on the sidewalk
• poop and have a well trained human dispose of it
• pee freely
• fart
• stick his head in other people's crotches
• hump other dogs
• eat garbage off the sidewalk
• sniff another dog's butt
• roll in the grass
• howl at the moon
• bark or growl at another dog we don't like
• lick his balls
• eat grass
• drool
• nap
• beg for food from random passers-by and succeed
• wear a collar and walk on a leash
• elicit a smile from almost everyone
• limp and have other people notice or give a damn
• ride the trams for free

permalink Ω 7 May 2004, Helsinki

Drinking and Shooting

The Vappu 2004 pictures are online. Vappu this year had fabulously warm, sunny weather which was a nice change from last year's cold and rain. I was either stupid enough or brave enough to take my camera along for Vappu since photographing people in large crowds with a fully manual camera requires you to know your camera and have the ability to focus quickly. Vappu is a perfect place to practice and I had a great time getting some decent shots of friends and strangers. I'm still amazed that some of the photos I took later in the evening were in focus at all since my vision was already a bit fuzzy. The Portra UC film seems to utterly adore red and sucks up more of it than any other colour. [Those unfamiliar with Vappu might enjoy the International Hessa's explanation of sorts.]

The picnic at Francis' house with the deadly punch and toxic jell-o was very entertaining, especially as the evening wore on and we managed to make it to downtown where the jell-o was proffered to various ladies. Later in the evening, the guys gave the jell-o to a couple of guys who had a table full of empty shot glasses. Amazingly, they seemed game enough to try it. The jell-o was so strong with the homemade Canadian vodka that you could have gotten drunk from the fumes it gave off alone.

We didn't make it to Kaivopuisto last year due to a sahti induced vicious hangover and the rainy weather. Wading into the park on Vappu for the first time was a tremendous sight with a sea of people, young and old, wearing white caps. I felt left out without a hat so maybe next year I'll dig out my mortarboard and hood to wear around the park. With so many people in such a small space, I was rather pleased to see how peaceful everyone was. Perhaps it's because most people are either hungover or still drunk from the night before. :) Entire families and young children, grills, hookahs, discoballs, minstrels, tents, a VW Bus sauna and all the usual mayhem that comes with picnics en masse were to be had in Kaivopuisto. Vappu is a great party for everyone. Now we just have to hope that the weather isn't too hot and dry until Juhannus.

permalink Ω 7 May 2004, Helsinki

A Subtle Drink

A random and unusual find on the front steps to our building. I was greatly amused by the thought of the apoplectic shock it would give most of the population of the US if it were found lying about. Billy Boy is a Red Bull clone only it includes a condom and features a bouncy, fruit juggling penis on the can. The BevNet Review was unsurprisingly negative. I can't wait to see all the Viagra 'energy drinks' once it goes OTC. "Boner" would be a perfect name for a Viagra soft drink. :)

permalink Ω 6 May 2004, Helsinki

Food on a stick

Random signage which, without the text warning you of drowning and strong currents, might give you the impression that there are dangerous black creatures under the ice trying to grab you. Maybe the designer watched old Star Trek episodes with changelings a few too many times. Illustrating a person drowning in an iconic fashion that would be understood regardless of language would present a challenge though. Maybe a rebus would work in this situation where it would have a picture of hole in the ice + a picture of a guy jumping into the hole = picture of a blue guy with X X for eyes.

My brain is on a news meltdown after reading most of the news over the last few days. It's too depressing to even comment on, as what is there left to say that hasn't been said already? I've purposefully stayed away from politics over the past 2 years since it's a really tired topic and it usually draws far too many kooks and wackos which I can live without. The more I read the news, the more I daydream about moving to a cabin above the Arctic Circle, learning survivalist skills and waiting for the world to finally do itself in. On the bright side, I don't think I'll have any problem keeping my vow to never return to the US to live.

I have been craving corn dogs lately. Those unfamiliar with this delicacy which blends meat, cheese and cornmeal on a stick, should have a look at a corndog recipe [pdf 96k] and take a gander at the Corn Dog Festival where people do fun things with corn dogs. National Corn Dog Day in March had the best poster ever this year featuring corn dog sperm. There are chili-cheese-onion variants of corn dogs as well. At some point during Vappu, obviously after a beer or two, I started to think that the grilli's around Helsinki might love to have food on a stick in addition to the delicious, yet terribly messy to eat when drunk, sandwiches. Could there be a more perfect food for drunks? :) Perhaps Pronto Pup would be interested in a Finnish distributor. Mmmm.... chili-onion-aura cheese corndogs at 2am...mmmmm.

A new book from David Kahn might interest cryptography history buffs, The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking, was just released by Yale University Press. It's apparently the first biography of Yardley who was the key figure behind MI-8 and the "Black Chamber" who later became something of a cryptographer for hire. Kahn is an excellent author on the topic so it should be a very good book.

permalink Ω 4 May 2004, Helsinki

Pinhole Day

My first attempt at pinhole photography for Pinhole day.

April 25th was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day and I was prepared with a Finney pinhole bodycap for my camera and Jarkko to valiantly carry my tripod around town while looking for things that might look interesting through a pinhole. Jarkko continues to be amused that I turned my camera into a cardboard box with film in it, too. :) I wanted to try it since I hadn't ever taken a pinhole photograph before and thought it might be fun. The exposure guide that comes with the bodycap is pretty disappointing so I had to do the math and calculate the range of exposure times. Amazingly, all of the photos were recognizable and reasonably well exposed, except I hadn't counted on so much flare from the sun and it was a gloriously bright, sunny day. We had a picnic of sorts while waiting for the sun to set on the Kide crystals as I figured that it would make an interesting photo as well as it being a very lovely place enjoy the colours of the evening sun. Those Kide crystals really do need a check-up from the lightbulb replacement guy as half of them are barely illuminated these days.

permalink Ω 3 May 2004, Helsinki

chemically impregnated brass band

Vappu is 2 parts carnival, 1 part dive bar and 100% good, clean entertainment. After wandering around downtown yesterday afternoon where I got to see a tractor pull in front of Zetor [the bar named after the tractor manufacturer and is filled with tractor kitsch] and scores of people just warming up for the evening drinkfest, we went to a small barbeque with some friends. We missed the capping downtown but the evening was perfect for grilling outside on the lawn. I made a double batch of my sister's potato casserole, all of which disappeared without a trace in no time at all. Francis, the host, made some jell-o shots since someone had brought jell-o back from a recent trip to Canada and they were so strong that they were watery or, well, vodka-y. The big idea was to take them downtown and give them out to cute girls. Single guys crack me up sometimes. :)

We didn't get too horribly drunk last night so we made the trip down to Kaivopuisto park and, wow, what a scene. I took a bunch of pictures that I'll get online later this week as I think they'll do a much better job of describing Vappu without words. While we were sitting on the couch after we waddled home from the park, the sound of a sick tuba came through the window. When we got up and looked out the window, we saw the "Drunken Vappu Brass Band", a.k.a. Retuperän WBK from HUT, parked across the street. They are the guys who drink entirely too much beer and then play the music for the capping ceremony. The guy on the hood of the wagon looks like he has had quite enough "chemical impregnation". Ah, Vappu. :)

permalink Ω 1 May 2004, Helsinki